The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Sr., by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
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Title: The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
Release Date: October 20, 2004 [EBook #3252]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PG WORKS OF O.W. HOLMES ***
Produced by David Widger and Several Other Project Gutenberg Volunteers
THE ENTIRE PROJECT GUTENBERG WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.
By Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
CONTENTS:
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table
The Professor at the Breakfast-table
The Poet at the Breakfast Table
Over the Teacups
Elsie Venner
The Guardian Angel
A Mortal Antipathy
Pages from an Old Volume of Life
Bread and the Newspaper
My Hunt after "The Captain"
The Inevitable Trial
Cinders from Ashes
The Pulpit and the Pew
Medical Essays
Homeopathy and its Kindred Delusions
The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever
Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science
Border Lines of Knowledge in Some Provinces of Medical Science
Scholastic and Bedside Teaching
The Medical Profession in Massachusetts
The Young Practitioner
Medical Libraries
Some of My Early Teachers
A Memoir of John Lothrop Motley
A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our Hundred Days in Europe
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The interruption referred to in the first sentence of the first of
these papers was just a quarter of a century in duration.
Two articles entitled "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" will be
found in the "New England Magazine," formerly published in Boston
by J. T. and E. Buckingham. The date of the first of these
articles is November 1831, and that of the second February 1832.
When "The Atlantic Monthly" was begun, twenty-five years
afterwards, and the author was asked to write for it, the
recollection of these crude products of his uncombed literary
boyhood suggested the thought that it would be a curious experiment
to shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were
better or worse than the early windfalls.
So began this series of papers, which naturally brings those
earlier attempts to my own notice and that of some few friends who
were idle enough to read them at the time of their publication.
The man is father to the boy that was, and I am my own son, as it
seems to me, in those papers of the New England Magazine. If I
find it hard to pardon the boy's faults, others would find it
harder. They will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor as I
hope, anywhere.
But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear reproducing, and
with these I trust the gentle reader, if that kind being still
breathes, will be contented.
--"It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when you
find yourself felicitous, take notes of your own conversation."--
--"When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary.
The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences.
The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their fhape and
luftre have been given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the
fineft fimile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I
will fhow you a fingle word which conveys a more profound, a more
accurate, and a more eloquent analogy."--
--"Once on a time, a notion was ftarted, that if all the people in
the world would fhout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So
the projectors agreed it fhould be done in juft ten years. Some
thousand fhip-loads of chronometers were diftributed to the
selectmen and other great folks of all the different nations. For
a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the awful
noise that was to be made on the great occafion. When the time
came, everybody had their ears so wide open, to hear the universal
ejaculation of BOO,--the word agreed upon,--that nobody spoke
except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman in
Pekin, so that the world was never so ftill fince the creation."--
There was nothing better than these things and there was not a
little that was much worse. A young fellow of two or three and
twenty has as good a right to spoil a magazine-full of essays in
learning how to write, as an oculist like Wenzel had to spoil his
hat-full of eyes in learning how to operate for cataract, or an
ELEGANT like Brummel to point to an armful of failures in the
attempt to achieve a perfect tie. This son of mine, whom I have
not seen for these twenty-five years, generously counted, was a
self-willed youth, always too ready to utter his unchastised
fancies. He, like too many American young people, got the spur
when he should have had the rein. He therefore helped to fill the
market with that unripe fruit which his father says in one of these
papers abounds in the marts of his native country. All these
by-gone shortcomings he would hope are forgiven, did he not feel sure
that very few of his readers know anything about them. In taking
the old name for the new papers, he felt bound to say that he had
uttered unwise things under that title, and if it shall appear that
his unwisdom has not diminished by at least half while his years
have doubled, he promises not to repeat the experiment if he should
live to double them again and become his own grandfather.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
BOSTON. Nov. 1st 1858.
CHAPTER I
I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the
many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical
and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is
an extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula:
2+2=4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general
character of the expression a+b=c. We are mere operatives,
empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead
of figures.
They all stared. There is a divinity student lately come among us
to whom I commonly address remarks like the above, allowing him to
take a certain share in the conversation, so far as assent or
pertinent questions are involved. He abused his liberty on this
occasion by presuming to say that Leibnitz had the same
observation.--No, sir, I replied, he has not. But he said a mighty
good thing about mathematics, that sounds something like it, and
you found it, NOT IN THE ORIGINAL, but quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid.
I will tell the company what he did say, one of these days.
--If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration?--I blush to say
that I do not at this present moment. I once did, however. It was
the first association to which I ever heard the term applied; a
body of scientific young men in a great foreign city who admired
their teacher, and to some extent each other. Many of them
deserved it; they have become famous since. It amuses me to hear
the talk of one of those beings described by Thackeray--
"Letters four do form his name"--
about a social development which belongs to the very noblest stage
of civilization. All generous companies of artists, authors,
philanthropists, men of science, are, or ought to be, Societies of
Mutual Admiration. A man of genius, or any kind of superiority, is
not debarred from admiring the same quality in another, nor the
other from returning his admiration. They may even associate
together and continue to think highly of each other. And so of a
dozen such men, if any one place is fortunate enough to hold so
many. The being referred to above assumes several false premises.
First, that men of talent necessarily hate each other. Secondly,
that intimate knowledge or habitual association destroys our
admiration of persons whom we esteemed highly at a distance.
Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, who meet together to dine
and have a good time, have signed a constitutional compact to
glorify themselves and to put down him and the fraction of the
human race not belonging to their number. Fourthly, that it is an
outrage that he is not asked to join them.
Here the company laughed a good deal, and the old gentleman who
sits opposite said, "That's it! that's it!"
I continued, for I was in the talking vein. As to clever people's
hating each other, I think a LITTLE extra talent does sometimes
make people jealous. They become irritated by perpetual attempts
and failures, and it hurts their tempers and dispositions.
Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak
flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It
spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the
rinsings of an unwashed wineglass spoil a draught of fair water.
No wonder the poor fellow we spoke of, who always belongs to this
class of slightly flavored mediocrities, is puzzled and vexed by
the strange sight of a dozen men of capacity working and playing
together in harmony. He and his fellows are always fighting. With
them familiarity naturally breeds contempt. If they ever praise
each other's bad drawings, or broken-winded novels, or spavined
verses, nobody ever supposed it was from admiration; it was simply
a contract between themselves and a publisher or dealer.
If the Mutuals have really nothing among them worth admiring, that
alters the question. But if they are men with noble powers and
qualities, let me tell you, that, next to youthful love and family
affections, there is no human sentiment better than that which
unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And what would
literature or art be without such associations? Who can tell what
we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of which Shakspeare, and
Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or to that of
which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us the
Spectator? Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and
Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admiring among all
admirers, met together? Was there any great harm in the fact that
the Irvings and Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable
cabal in the literary union of Verplanck and Bryant and Sands, and
as many more as they chose to associate with them?
The poor creature does not know what he is talking about, when he
abuses this noblest of institutions. Let him inspect its mysteries
through the knot-hole he has secured, but not use that orifice as a
medium for his popgun. Such a society is the crown of a literary
metropolis; if a town has not material for it, and spirit and good
feeling enough to organize it, it is a mere caravansary, fit for a
man of genius to lodge in, but not to live in. Foolish people hate
and dread and envy such an association of men of varied powers and
influence, because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and, by the
necessity of the case, exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the
title M. S. M. A. than of all their other honors put together.
--All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called
"facts." They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact
or two which they lead after them into decent company like so many
bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or
convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no "facts"
at this table. What! Because bread is good and wholesome and
necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe
while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent a
hundred loaves of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten
thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my
speech?
[The above remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar
mind. The reader will of course understand the precise amount of
seasoning which must be added to it before he adopts it as one of
the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims all responsibility
for its abuse in incompetent hands.]
This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are
men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's
fasting would do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as
good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing:
It is better to lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have a
nerve tapped. Nobody measures your nervous force as it runs away,
nor bandages your brain and marrow after the operation.
There are men of esprit who are excessively exhausting to some
people. They are the talkers who have what may be called JERKY
minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence.
They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags
rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of these
jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief.
It is like taking the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel.
What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times!
A ground-glass shade over a gas-lamp does not bring more solace to
our dazzled eyes than such a one to our minds.
"Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the lady-boarders,--the
same that sent me her autograph-book last week with a request for a
few original stanzas, not remembering that "The Pactolian" pays me
five dollars a line for every thing I write in its columns.
"Madam," said I, (she and the century were in their teens
together,) "all men are bores, except when we want them. There
never was but one man whom I would trust with my latch-key."
"Who might that favored person be?"
"Zimmermann."
--The men of genius that I fancy most have erectile heads like the
cobra-di-capello. You remember what they tell of William Pinkney,
the great pleader; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of his
neck would swell and his face flush and his eyes glitter, until he
seemed on the verge of apoplexy. The hydraulic arrangements for
supplying the brain with blood are only second in importance to its
own organization. The bulbous-headed fellows that steam well when
they are at work are the men that draw big audiences and give us
marrowy books and pictures. It is a good sign to have one's feet
grow cold when he is writing. A great writer and speaker once told
me that he often wrote with his feet in hot water; but for this,
ALL his blood would have run into his head, as the mercury
sometimes withdraws into the ball of a thermometer.
--You don't suppose that my remarks made at this table are like so
many postage-stamps, do you,--each to be only once uttered? If you
do, you are mistaken. He must be a poor creature that does not
often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the excellent piece of
advice, "Know thyself," never alluding to that sentiment again
during the course of a protracted existence! Why, the truths a man
carries about with him are his tools; and do you think a carpenter
is bound to use the same plane but once to smooth a knotty board
with, or to hang up his hammer after it has driven its first nail?
I shall never repeat a conversation, but an idea often. I shall
use the same types when I like, but not commonly the same
stereotypes. A thought is often original, though you have uttered
it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new
and express train of associations.
Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making the same speech
twice over, and yet be held blameless. Thus, a certain lecturer,
after performing in an inland city, where dwells a Litteratrice of
note, was invited to meet her and others over the social teacup.
She pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in his new
occupation. "Yes," he replied, "I am like the Huma, the bird that
never lights, being always in the cars, as he is always on the
wing."--Years elapsed. The lecturer visited the same place once
more for the same purpose. Another social cup after the lecture,
and a second meeting with the distinguished lady. "You are
constantly going from place to place," she said.--"Yes," he
answered, "I am like the Huma,"--and finished the sentence as
before.
What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had made this fine
speech, word for word, twice over! Yet it was not true, as the
lady might perhaps have fairly inferred, that he had embellished
his conversation with the Huma daily during that whole interval of
years. On the contrary, he had never once thought of the odious
fowl until the recurrence of precisely the same circumstances
brought up precisely the same idea. He ought to have been proud of
the accuracy of his mental adjustments. Given certain factors, and
a sound brain should always evolve the same fixed product with the
certainty of Babbage's calculating machine.
--What a satire, by the way, is that machine on the mere
mathematician! A Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and
without heart, too stupid to make a blunder; that turns out results
like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it
grind a thousand bushels of them!
I have an immense respect for a man of talents PLUS "the
mathematics." But the calculating power alone should seem to be
the least human of qualities, and to have the smallest amount of
reason in it; since a machine can be made to do the work of three
or four calculators, and better than any one of them. Sometimes I
have been troubled that I had not a deeper intuitive apprehension
of the relations of numbers. But the triumph of the ciphering
hand-organ has consoled me. I always fancy I can hear the wheels
clicking in a calculator's brain. The power of dealing with
numbers is a kind of "detached lever" arrangement, which may be put
into a mighty poor watch--I suppose it is about as common as the
power of moving the ears voluntarily, which is a moderately rare
endowment.
--Little localized powers, and little narrow streaks of specialized
knowledge, are things men are very apt to be conceited about.
Nature is very wise; but for this encouraging principle how many
small talents and little accomplishments would be neglected! Talk
about conceit as much as you like, it is to human character what
salt is to the ocean; it keeps it sweet, and renders it endurable.
Say rather it is like the natural unguent of the sea-fowl's
plumage, which enables him to shed the rain that falls on him and
the wave in which he dips. When one has had ALL his conceit taken
out of him, when he has lost ALL his illusions, his feathers will
soon soak through, and he will fly no more.
"So you admire conceited people, do you?" said the young lady who
has come to the city to be finished off for--the duties of life.
I am afraid you do not study logic at your school, my dear. It
does not follow that I wish to be pickled in brine because I like a
salt-water plunge at Nahant. I say that conceit is just as
natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But
little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five
minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine
their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect
does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the
third vowel as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest
thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does not
obviously imply any individual centre.
Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is always imposing.
What resplendent beauty that must have been which could have
authorized Phryne to "peel" in the way she did! What fine speeches
are those two: "Non omnis mortar," and "I have taken all knowledge
to be my province"! Even in common people, conceit has the virtue
of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his
house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is
almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be
tedious at times.
--What are the great faults of conversation? Want of ideas, want
of words, want of manners, are the principal ones, I suppose you
think. I don't doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found
spoil more good talks than anything else;--long arguments on
special points between people who differ on the fundamental
principles upon which these points depend. No men can have
satisfactory relations with each other until they have agreed on
certain ultimata of belief not to be disturbed in ordinary
conversation, and unless they have sense enough to trace the
secondary questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their
source. In short, just as a written constitution is essential to
the best social order, so a code of finalities is a necessary
condition of profitable talk between two persons. Talking is like
playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hand on the
strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out
their music.
--Do you mean to say the pun-question is not clearly settled in
your minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and
language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide--that is,
violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate
meaning, which is its life--are alike forbidden. Manslaughter,
which is the meaning of the one, is the same as man's laughter,
which is the end of the other. A pun is prima facie an insult to
the person you are talking with. It implies utter indifference to
or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious. I
speak of total depravity, and one says all that is written on the
subject is deep raving. I have committed my self-respect by
talking with such a person. I should like to commit him, but
cannot, because he is a nuisance. Or I speak of geological
convulsions, and he asks me what was the cosine of Noah's ark;
also, whether the Deluge was not a deal huger than any modern
inundation.
A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow
were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be
judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter
were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable
homicide. Thus, in a case lately decided before Miller, J., Doe
presented Roe a subscription paper, and urged the claims of
suffering humanity. Roe replied by asking, When charity was like a
top? It was in evidence that Doe preserved a dignified silence.
Roe then said, "When it begins to hum." Doe then--and not till
then--struck Roe, and his head happening to hit a bound volume of
the Monthly Rag-bag and Stolen Miscellany, intense mortification
ensued, with a fatal result. The chief laid down his notions of
the law to his brother justices, who unanimously replied, "Jest
so." The chief rejoined, that no man should jest so without being
punished for it, and charged for the prisoner, who was acquitted,
and the pun ordered to be burned by the sheriff. The bound volume
was forfeited as a deodand, but not claimed.
People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the
railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but
their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for
the sake of a battered witticism.
I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two books, of which I will
mark the places on this slip of paper. (While he is gone, I may
say that this boy, our land-lady's youngest, is called BENJAMIN
FRANKLIN, after the celebrated philosopher of that name. A highly
merited compliment.)
I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. Now be so good as to
listen. The great moralist says: "To trifle with the vocabulary
which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the
currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the
sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the
paternal till without remorse, and repeat the banquet of Saturn
without an indigestion."
And, once more, listen to the historian. "The Puritans hated puns.
The Bishops were notoriously addicted to them. The Lords Temporal
carried them to the verge of license. Majesty itself must have its
Royal quibble. 'Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh,' said Queen
Elizabeth, 'but ye shall make less stir in our realm than my Lord
of Leicester.' The gravest wisdom and the highest breeding lent
their sanction to the practice. Lord Bacon playfully declared
himself a descendant of 'Og, the King of Bashan. Sir Philip
Sidney, with his last breath, reproached the soldier who brought
him water, for wasting a casque full upon a dying man. A courtier,
who saw Othello performed at the Globe Theatre, remarked, that the
blackamoor was a brute, and not a man. 'Thou hast reason,' replied
a great Lord, 'according to Plato his saying; for this be a
two-legged animal WITH feathers.' The fatal habit became universal.
The language was corrupted. The infection spread to the national
conscience. Political double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal
double meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the
Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was
levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in
the age of the Stuarts."
Who was that boarder that just whispered something about the
Macaulay-flowers of literature?--There was a dead silence.--I said
calmly, I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a
hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my example. If _I_
have used any such, it has been only as a Spartan father would show
up a drunken helot. We have done with them.
--If a logical mind ever found out anything with its logic?--I
should say that its most frequent work was to build a pons asinorum
over chasms which shrewd people can bestride without such a
structure. You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove
anything that you want to prove. You can buy treatises to show
that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of Bunker-hill was
ever fought. The great minds are those with a wide span, which
couple truths related to, but far removed from, each other.
Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of which these
are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for his primary
relations with truth, as I understand truth,--not for any secondary
artifice in handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in
argument are notoriously unsound in judgment. I should not trust
the counsel of a smart debater, any more than that of a good
chess-player. Either may of course advise wisely, but not
necessarily because he wrangles or plays well.
The old gentleman who sits opposite got his hand up, as a pointer
lifts his forefoot, at the expression, "his relations with truth,
as I understand truth," and when I had done, sniffed audibly, and
said I talked like a transcendentalist. For his part, common sense
was good enough for him.
Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied; common sense, AS YOU
UNDERSTAND IT. We all have to assume a standard of judgment in our
own minds, either of things or persons. A man who is willing to
take another's opinion has to exercise his judgment in the choice
of whom to follow, which is often as nice a matter as to judge of
things for one's self. On the whole, I had rather judge men's
minds by comparing their thoughts with my own, than judge of
thoughts by knowing who utter them. I must do one or the other.
It does not follow, of course, that I may not recognize another
man's thoughts as broader and deeper than my own; but that does not
necessarily change my opinion, otherwise this would be at the mercy
of every superior mind that held a different one. How many of our
most cherished beliefs are like those drinking-glasses of the
ancient pattern, that serve us well so long as we keep them in our
hand, but spill all if we attempt to set them down! I have
sometimes compared conversation to the Italian game of mora, in
which one player lifts his hand with so many fingers extended, and
the other gives the number if he can. I show my thought, another
his; if they agree, well; if they differ, we find the largest
common factor, if we can, but at any rate avoid disputing about
remainders and fractions, which is to real talk what tuning an
instrument is to playing on it.
--What if, instead of talking this morning, I should read you a
copy of verses, with critical remarks by the author? Any of the
company can retire that like.
ALBUM VERSES.
When Eve had led her lord away,
And Cain had killed his brother,
The stars and flowers, the poets say,
Agreed with one another
To cheat the cunning tempter's art,
And teach the race its duty,
By keeping on its wicked heart
Their eyes of light and beauty.
A million sleepless lids, they say,
Will be at least a warning;
And so the flowers would watch by day,
The stars from eve to morning.
On hill and prairie, field and lawn,
Their dewy eyes upturning,
The flowers still watch from reddening dawn
Till western skies are burning.
Alas! each hour of daylight tells
A tale of shame so crushing,
That some turn white as sea-bleached shells,
And some are always blushing.
But when the patient stars look down
On all their light discovers,
The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown,
The lips of lying lovers,
They try to shut their saddening eyes,
And in the vain endeavour
We see them twinkling in the skies,
And so they wink forever.
What do YOU think of these verses my friends?--Is that piece an
impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19 +. Tender-eyed
blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain.
Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads
Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior, while her mother makes
the puddings. Says "Yes?" when you tell her anything.)--Oui et
non, ma petite,--Yes and no, my child. Five of the seven verses
were written off-hand; the other two took a week,--that is, were
hanging round the desk in a ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condition as
long as that. All poets will tell you just such stories. C'est le
DERNIER pas qui coute. Don't you know how hard it is for some
people to get out of a room after their visit is really over? They
want to be off, and you want to have them off, but they don't know
how to manage it. One would think they had been built in your
parlour or study, and were waiting to be launched. I have
contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane for such visitors,
which being lubricated with certain smooth phrases, I back them
down, metaphorically speaking, stern-foremost, into their "native
element," the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now, there are poems
as hard to get rid of as these rural visitors. They come in
glibly, use up all the serviceable rhymes, DAY, RAY, BEAUTY, DUTY,
SKIES, EYES, OTHER, BROTHER, MOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN, and the like; and
so they go on until you think it is time for the wind-up, and the
wind-up won't come on any terms. So they lie about until you get
sick of the sight of them, and end by thrusting some cold scrap of
a final couplet upon them, and turning them out of doors. I
suspect a good many "impromptus" could tell just such a story as
the above.--Here turning to our landlady, I used an illustration
which pleased the company much at the time, and has since been
highly commanded. "Madam," I said, "you can pour three gills and
three quarters of honey from that pint jug, if it is full, in less
than one minute; but, Madam, you could not empty that last quarter
of a gill, though you were turned into a marble Hebe, and held the
vessel upside down for a thousand years.
One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, such as you see in
that copy of verses,--which I don't mean to abuse, or to praise
either. I always feel as if I were a cobbler, putting new
top-leathers to an old pair of boot-soles and bodies, when I am
fitting sentiments to these venerable jingles.
. . . . youth
. . . . . morning
. . . . . truth
. . . . . warning
Nine tenths of the "Juvenile Poems" written spring out of the above
musical and suggestive coincidences.
"Yes?" said our landlady's daughter.
I did not address the following remark to her, and I trust, from
her limited range of reading, she will never see it; I said it
softly to my next neighbour.
When a young female wears a flat circular side--curl, gummed on
each temple,--when she walks with a male, not arm in arm, but his
arm against the back of hers,--and when she says "Yes?" with the
note of interrogation, you are generally safe in asking her what
wages she gets, and who the "feller" was you saw her with.
"What were you whispering?" said the daughter of the house,
moistening her lips, as she spoke, in a very engaging manner.
"I was only laying down a principle of social diagnosis."
"Yes?"
--It is curious to see how the same wants and tastes find the same
implements and modes of expression in all times and places. The
young ladies of Otaheite, as you may see in Cook's Voyages, had a
sort of crinoline arrangement fully equal in radius to the largest
spread of our own lady-baskets. When I fling a Bay-State shawl
over my shoulders, I am only taking a lesson from the climate that
the Indian had learned before me. A BLANKET-shawl we call it, and
not a plaid; and we wear it like the aborigines, and not like the
Highlanders.
--We are the Romans of the modern world,--the great assimilating
people. Conflicts and conquests are of course necessary accidents
with us, as with our prototypes. And so we come to their style of
weapon. Our army sword is the short, stiff, pointed gladius of the
Romans; and the American bowie-knife is the same tool, modified to
meet the daily wants of civil society. I announce at this table an
axiom not to be found in Montesquieu or the journals of Congress:-
The race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries.
Corollary. It was the Polish LANCE that left Poland at last with
nothing of her own to bound.
"Dropped from her nerveless grasp the SHATTERED SPEAR!"
What business had Sarmatia to be fighting for liberty with a
fifteen-foot pole between her and the breasts of her enemies? If
she had but clutched the old Roman and young American weapon, and
come to close quarters, there might have been a chance for her; but
it would have spoiled the best passage in "The Pleasures of Hope."
--Self-made men?--Well, yes. Of course everybody likes and
respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in
that way than not to be made at all. Are any of you younger people
old enough to remember that Irishman's house on the marsh at
Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with
his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one
could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in
outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A
regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was
a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people
praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had
succeeded. They never thought of praising the fine blocks of
houses a little farther on.
Your self-made man, whittled into shape with his own jack-knife,
deserves more credit, if that is all, than the regular
engine-turned article, shaped by the most approved pattern, and
French-polished by society and travel. But as to saying that one is
every way the equal of the other, that is another matter. The right
of strict social discrimination of all things and persons, according
to their merits, native or acquired, is one of the most precious
republican privileges. I take the liberty to exercise it, when I say,
that, OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, in most relations of life I prefer a
man of family.
What do I mean by a man of family?--O, I'll give you a general idea
of what I mean. Let us give him a first-rate fit out; it costs us
nothing.
Four or five generations of gentlemen and gentlewomen; among them a
member of his Majesty's Council for the Province, a Governor or so,
one or two Doctors of Divinity, a member of Congress, not later
than the time of top-boots with tassels.
Family portraits. The member of the Council, by Smibert. The
great merchant-uncle, by Copley, full length, sitting in his
arm-chair, in a velvet cap and flowered robe, with a globe by him,
to show the range of his commercial transactions, and letters with
large red seals lying round, one directed conspicuously to The
Honourable etc. etc. Great-grandmother, by the same artist; brown
satin, lace very fine, hands superlative; grand old lady, stiffish,
but imposing. Her mother, artist unknown; flat, angular, hanging
sleeves; parrot on fist. A pair of Stuarts, viz., 1. A superb
full-blown, mediaeval gentleman, with a fiery dash of Tory blood in
his veins, tempered down with that of a fine old rebel grandmother,
and warmed up with the best of old India Madeira; his face is one
flame of ruddy sunshine; his ruffled shirt rushes out of his bosom
with an impetuous generosity, as if it would drag his heart after
it; and his smile is good for twenty thousand dollars to the
Hospital, besides ample bequests to all relatives and dependants.
2. Lady of the same; remarkable cap; high waist, as in time of
Empire; bust a la Josephine; wisps of curls, like celery-tips, at
sides of forehead; complexion clear and warm, like rose-cordial.
As for the miniatures by Malbone, we don't count them in the
gallery.
Books, too, with the names of old college-students in them,--family
names;--you will find them at the head of their respective classes
in the days when students took rank on the catalogue from their
parents' condition. Elzevirs, with the Latinized appellations of
youthful progenitors, and Hic liber est meus on the title-page. A
set of Hogarth's original plates. Pope, original edition, 15
volumes, London, 1717. Barrow on the lower shelves, in folio.
Tillotson on the upper, in a little dark platoon of octo-decimos.
Some family silver; a string of wedding and funeral rings; the arms
of the family curiously blazoned; the same in worsted, by a maiden
aunt.
If the man of family has an old place to keep these things in,
furnished with claw-footed chairs and black mahogany tables, and
tall bevel-edged mirrors, and stately upright cabinets, his outfit
is complete.
No, my friends, I go (always, other things being equal) for the man
who inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities of at
least four or five generations. Above all things, as a child, he
should have tumbled about in a library. All men are afraid of
books, who have not handled them from infancy. Do you suppose our
dear didascalos over there ever read Poli Synopsis, or consulted
Castelli Lexicon, while he was growing up to their stature? Not
he; but virtue passed through the hem of their parchment and
leather garments whenever he touched them, as the precious drugs
sweated through the bat's handle in the Arabian story. I tell you
he is at home wherever he smells the invigorating fragrance of
Russia leather. No self-made man feels so. One may, it is true,
have all the antecedents I have spoken of, and yet be a boor or a
shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and yet be fit for
councils and courts. Then let them change places. Our social
arrangement has this great beauty, that its strata shift up and
down as they change specific gravity, without being clogged by
layers of prescription. But I still insist on my democratic
liberty of choice, and I go for the man with the gallery of family
portraits against the one with the twenty-five-cent daguerreotype,
unless I find out that the last is the better of the two.
--I should have felt more nervous about the late comet, if I had
thought the world was ripe. But it is very green yet, if I am not
mistaken; and besides, there is a great deal of coal to use up,
which I cannot bring myself to think was made for nothing. If
certain things, which seem to me essential to a millennium, had
come to pass, I should have been frightened; but they haven't.
Perhaps you would like to hear my
LATTER-DAY WARNINGS.
When legislators keep the law,
When banks dispense with bolts and locks,
When berries, whortle--rasp--and straw--
Grow bigger DOWNWARDS through the box,--
When he that selleth house or land
Shows leak in roof or flaw in right,--
When haberdashers choose the stand
Whose window hath the broadest light,--
When preachers tell us all they think,
And party leaders all they mean,--
When what we pay for, that we drink,
From real grape and coffee-bean,--
When lawyers take what they would give,
And doctors give what they would take,--
When city fathers eat to live,
Save when they fast for conscience' sake,--
When one that hath a horse on sale
Shall bring his merit to the proof,
Without a lie for every nail
That holds the iron on the hoof,--
When in the usual place for rips
Our gloves are stitched with special care,
And guarded well the whalebone tips
Where first umbrellas need repair,--
When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot
The power of suction to resist,
And claret-bottles harber not
Such dimples as would hold your fist,--
When publishers no longer steal,
And pay for what they stole before,--
When the first locomotive's wheel
Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore;--
TILL then let Cumming a blaze away,
And Miller's saints blow up the globe;
But when you see that blessed day,
THEN order your ascension robe!
The company seemed to like the verses, and I promised them to read
others occasionally, if they had a mind to hear them. Of course
they would not expect it every morning. Neither must the reader
suppose that all these things I have reported were said at any one
breakfast-time. I have not taken the trouble to date them, as
Raspail, pere, used to date every proof he sent to the printer; but
they were scattered over several breakfasts; and I have said a good
many more things since, which I shall very possibly print some time
or other, if I am urged to do it by judicious friends.
I finished off with reading some verses of my friend the Professor,
of whom you may perhaps hear more by and by. The Professor read
them, he told me, at a farewell meeting, where the youngest of our
great Historians met a few of his many friends at their invitation.
Yes, we knew we must lose him,--though friendship may claim
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame;
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own,
'Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.
As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,--
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel,--
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.
What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom
Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom,
While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes
That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!
In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time,
Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime,
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung,
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue!
Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed
From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed!
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom,
Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom!
* * * * *
The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake,
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine,
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine.
So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed
When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed:
THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING,--the world holds him dear,--
Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career!
CHAPTER II
I really believe some people save their bright thoughts, as being
too precious for conversation. What do you think an admiring
friend said the other day to one that was talking good things,
--good enough to print? "Why," said he, "you are wasting
mechantable literature, a cash article, at the rate, as nearly as I
can tell, of fifty dollars an hour." The talker took him to the
window and asked him to look out and tell what he saw.
"Nothing but a very dusty street," he said, "and a man driving a
sprinkling-machine through it."
"Why don't you tell the man he is wasting that water? What would
be the state of the highways of life, if we did not drive our
THOUGHT-SPRINKLERS through them with the valves open, sometimes?
"Besides, there is another thing about this talking, which you
forget. It shapes our thoughts for us;--the waves of conversation
roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Let me
modify the image a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an
artist models in clay. Spoken language is so plastic,--you can pat
and coax, and spread and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and stick
on so easily when you work that soft material, that there is
nothing like it for modelling. Out of it come the shapes which you
turn into marble or bronze in your immortal books, if you happen to
write such. Or, to use another illustration, writing or printing
is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader's mind, or
miss it;--but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an
engine; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can't
help hitting it."
The company agreed that this last illustration was of superior
excellence, or, in the phrase used by them, "Fust-rate." I
acknowledged the compliment, but gently rebuked the expression.
"Fust-rate," "prime," "a prime article," "a superior piece of
goods," "a handsome garment," "a gent in a flowered vest,"--all
such expressions are final. They blast the lineage of him or her
who utters them, for generations up and down. There is one other
phrase which will soon come to be decisive of a man's social
STATUS, if it is not already: "That tells the whole story." It
is an expression which vulgar and conceited people particularly
affect, and which well-meaning ones, who know better, catch from
them. It is intended to stop all debate, like the previous
question in the General Court. Only it doesn't; simply because
"that" does not usually tell the whole, nor one half of the whole
story.
--It is an odd idea, that almost all our people have had a
professional education. To become a doctor a man must study some
three years and hear a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how
much study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not
more than this. Now most decent people hear one hundred lectures
or sermons (discourses) on theology every year,--and this, twenty,
thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many religious
books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except
what they preach themselves. A dull preacher might be conceived,
therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi heathenism, simply for
want of religious instruction. And on the other hand, an attentive
and intelligent hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers,
might become actually better educated in theology than any one of
them. We are all theological students, and more of us qualified as
doctors of divinity than have received degrees at any of the
universities.
It is not strange, therefore, that very good people should often
find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep their attention fixed
upon a sermon treating feebly a subject which they have thought
vigorously about for years, and heard able men discuss scores of
times. I have often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull
discourse acts INDUCTIVELY, as electricians would say, in
developing strong mental currents. I am ashamed to think with what
accompaniments and variations and fioriture I have sometimes
followed the droning of a heavy speaker,--not willingly,--for my
habit is reverential,--but as a necessary result of a slight
continuous impression on the senses and the mind, which kept both
in action without furnishing the food they required to work upon.
If you ever saw a crow with a king-bird after him, you will get an
image of a dull speaker and a lively listener. The bird in sable
plumage flaps heavily along his straight-forward course, while the
other sails round him, over him, under him, leaves him, comes back
again, tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, never
losing sight of him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the
same time the crow does, having cut a perfect labyrinth of loops
and knots and spirals while the slow fowl was painfully working
from one end of his straight line to the other.
[I think these remarks were received rather coolly. A temporary
boarder from the country, consisting of a somewhat more than
middle-aged female, with a parchment forehead and a dry little
"frisette" shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold
beads, a black dress too rusty for recent grief and contours in
basso-rilievo, left the table prematurely, and was reported to have
been very virulent about what I said. So I went to my good old
minister, and repeated the remarks, as nearly as I could remember
them, to him. He laughed good-naturedly, and said there was
considerable truth in them. He thought he could tell when people's
minds were wandering, by their looks. In the earlier years of his
ministry he had sometimes noticed this, when he was preaching;
--very little of late years. Sometimes, when his colleague was
preaching, he observed this kind of inattention; but after all, it
was not so very unnatural. I will say, by the way, that it is a
rule I have long followed, to tell my worst thoughts to my
minister, and my best thoughts to the young people I talk with.]
--I want to make a literary confession now, which I believe nobody
has made before me. You know very well that I write verses
sometimes, because I have read some of them at this table. (The
company assented,--two or three of them in a resigned sort of way,
as I thought, as if they supposed I had an epic in my pocket, and
was going to read half a dozen books or so for their benefit.)--I
continued. Of course I write some lines or passages which are
better than others; some which, compared with the others, might be
called relatively excellent. It is in the nature of things that I
should consider these relatively excellent lines or passages as
absolutely good. So much must be pardoned to humanity. Now I
never wrote a "good" line in my life, but the moment after it was
written it seemed a hundred years old. Very commonly I had a
sudden conviction that I had seen it somewhere. Possibly I may
have sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but I do not remember that
I ever once detected any historical truth in these sudden
convictions of the antiquity of my new thought or phrase. I have
learned utterly to distrust them, and never allow them to bully me
out of a thought or line.
This is the philosophy of it. (Here the number of the company was
diminished by a small secession.) Any new formula which suddenly
emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of
thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance
among the recognized growths of our intellect. Any crystalline
group of musical words has had a long and still period to form in.
Here is one theory.
But there is a larger law which perhaps comprehends these facts.
It is this. The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories
is in a direct ratio to the squares of their importance. Their
apparent age runs up miraculously, like the value of diamonds, as
they increase in magnitude. A great calamity, for instance, is as
old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains
backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of
life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we
are turning. For this we seem to have lived; it was foreshadowed
in dreams that we leaped out of in the cold sweat of terror; in the
"dissolving views" of dark day-visions; all omens pointed to it;
all paths led to it. After the tossing half-forgetfulness of the
first sleep that follows such an event, it comes upon us afresh, as
a surprise, at waking; in a few moments it is old again,--old as
eternity.
[I wish I had not said all this then and there. I might have known
better. The pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress, was
looking at me, as I noticed, with a wild sort of expression. All
at once the blood dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury drops
from a broken barometer-tube, and she melted away from her seat
like an image of snow; a slung-shot could not have brought her down
better. God forgive me!
After this little episode, I continued, to some few that remained
balancing teaspoons on the edges of cups, twirling knives, or
tilting upon the hind legs of their chairs until their heads
reached the wall, where they left gratuitous advertisements of
various popular cosmetics.]
When a person is suddenly thrust into any strange, new position of
trial, he finds the place fits him as if he had been measured for
it. He has committed a great crime, for instance, and is sent to
the State Prison. The traditions, prescriptions, limitations,
privileges, all the sharp conditions of his new life, stamp
themselves upon his consciousness as the signet on soft wax;--a
single pressure is enough. Let me strengthen the image a little.
Did you ever happen to see that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed
steam-engine at the Mint? The smooth piston slides backward and
forward as a lady might slip her delicate finger in and out of a
ring. The engine lays one of ITS fingers calmly, but firmly, upon
a bit of metal; it is a coin now, and will remember that touch, and
tell a new race about it, when the date upon it is crusted over
with twenty centuries. So it is that a great silent-moving misery
puts a new stamp on us in an hour or a moment,--as sharp an
impression as if it had taken half a lifetime to engrave it.
It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale professional
dealers in misfortune; undertakers and jailers magnetize you in a
moment, and you pass out of the individual life you were living
into the rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery. Do the
worst thing you can, or suffer the worst that can be thought of,
you find yourself in a category of humanity that stretches back as
far as Cain, and with an expert at your elbow who has studied your
case all out beforehand, and is waiting for you with his implements
of hemp or mahogany. I believe, if a man were to be burned in any
of our cities tomorrow for heresy, there would be found a master of
ceremonies that knew just how many fagots were necessary, and the
best way of arranging the whole matter.
--So we have not won the Goodwood cup; au contraire, we were a "bad
fifth," if not worse than that; and trying it again, and the third
time, has not yet bettered the matter. Now I am as patriotic as
any of my fellow-citizens,--too patriotic in fact, for I have got
into hot water by loving too much of my country; in short, if any
man, whose fighting weight is not more than eight stone four
pounds, disputes it, I am ready to discuss the point with him. I
should have gloried to see the stars and stripes in front at the
finish. I love my country, and I love horses. Stubbs's old
mezzotint of Eclipse hangs over my desk, and Herring's portrait of
Plenipotentiary,--whom I saw run at Epsom,--over my fireplace. Did
I not elope from school to see Revenge, and Prospect, and Little
John, and Peacemaker run over the race-course where now yon
suburban village flourishes, in the year eighteen hundred and
ever-so-few? Though I never owned a horse, have I not been the
proprietor of six equine females, of which one was the prettiest
little "Morgin" that ever stepped? Listen, then, to an opinion I
have often expressed long before this venture of ours in England.
Horse-RACING is not a republican institution; horse-TROTTING is.
Only very rich persons can keep race-horses, and everybody knows
they are kept mainly as gambling implements. All that matter about
blood and speed we won't discuss; we understand all that; useful,
very,--OF course,--great obligations to the Godolphin "Arabian,"
and the rest. I say racing horses are essentially gambling
implements, as much as roulette tables. Now I am not preaching at
this moment; I may read you one of my sermons some other morning;
but I maintain that gambling, on the great scale, is not
republican. It belongs to two phases of society,--a cankered
over-civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and the
reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism
of a civilization resolved into its primitive elements. Real
Republicanism is stern and severe; its essence is not in forms of
government, but in the omnipotence of public opinion which grows
out of it. This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with dice
or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep comparatively
quiet. But horse-racing is the most public way of gambling, and
with all its immense attractions to the sense and the feelings,--to
which I plead very susceptible,--the disguise is too thin that
covers it, and everybody knows what it means. Its supporters are
the Southern gentry,--fine fellows, no doubt, but not republicans
exactly, as we understand the term,--a few Northern millionnaires
more or less thoroughly millioned, who do not represent the real
people, and the mob of sporting men, the best of whom are commonly
idlers, and the worst very bad neighbors to have near one in a
crowd, or to meet in a dark alley. In England, on the other hand,
with its aristocratic institutions, racing is a natural growth
enough; the passion for it spreads downwards through all classes,
from the Queen to the costermonger. London is like a shelled
corn-cob on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk who could raise
the money to hire a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down
on his office-stool the next day without wincing.
Now just compare the racer with the trotter for a moment. The
racer is incidentally useful, but essentially something to bet
upon, as much as the thimble-rigger's "little joker." The trotter
is essentially and daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for
sporting men.
What better reason do you want for the fact that the racer is most
cultivated and reaches his greatest perfection in England, and that
the trotting horses of America beat the world? And why should we
have expected that the pick--if it was the pick--of our few and
far-between racing stables should beat the pick of England and
France? Throw over the fallacious time-test, and there was nothing
to show for it but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we
all have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, which some of us
must plead guilty to.
We may beat yet. As an American, I hope we shall. As a moralist
and occasional sermonizer, I am not so anxious about it. Wherever
the trotting horse goes, he carries in his train brisk omnibuses,
lively bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly butcher's
wagon, the cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon drive with wife
and child,--all the forms of moral excellence, except truth, which
does not agree with any kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings with
him gambling, cursing, swearing, drinking, the eating of oysters,
and a distaste for mob-caps and the middle-aged virtues.
And by the way, let me beg you not to call a TROTTING MATCH a RACE,
and not to speak of a "thoroughbred" as a "BLOODED" horse, unless
he has been recently phlebotomized. I consent to your saying
"blood horse," if you like. Also, if, next year, we send out
Posterior and Posterioress, the winners of the great national
four-mile race in 7 18.5, and they happen to get beaten, pay your
bets, and behave like men and gentlemen about it, if you know how.
[I felt a great deal better after blowing off the ill-temper
condensed in the above paragraph. To brag little,--to show well,
--to crow gently, if in luck,--to pay up, to own up, and to shut up,
if beaten, are the virtues of a sporting man, and I can't say that
I think we have shown them in any great perfection of late.]
--Apropos of horses. Do you know how important good jockeying is
to authors? Judicious management; letting the public see your
animal just enough, and not too much; holding him up hard when the
market is too full of him; letting him out at just the right buying
intervals; always gently feeling his mouth; never slacking and
never jerking the rein;--this is what I mean by jockeying.
--When an author has a number of books out a cunning hand will keep
them all spinning, as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates; fetching
each one up, as it begins to "wabble," by an advertisement, a puff,
or a quotation.
--Whenever the extracts from a living writer begin to multiply fast
in the papers, without obvious reason, there is a new book or a new
edition coming. The extracts are GROUND-BAIT.
--Literary life is fun of curious phenomena. I don't know that
there is anything more noticeable than what we may call
CONVENTIONAL REPUTATIONS. There is a tacit understanding in every
community of men of letters that they will not disturb the popular
fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded celebrity. There
are various reasons for this forbearance: one is old; one is rich;
one is good-natured; one is such a favorite with the pit that it
would not be safe to hiss him from the manager's box. The
venerable augurs of the literary or scientific temple may smile
faintly when one of the tribe is mentioned; but the farce is in
general kept up as well as the Chinese comic scene of entreating
and imploring a man to stay with you with the implied compact
between you that he shall by no means think of doing it. A poor
wretch he must be who would wantonly sit down on one of these
bandbox reputations. A Prince-Rupert's-drop, which is a tear of
unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if you keep it from meddling
hands; but break its tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself
into powder. These celebrities I speak of are the Prince-Rupert's
drops of the learned and polite world. See how the papers treat
them! What an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic phrases, which can
be arranged in ever so many charming patterns, is at their service!
How kind the "Critical Notices"--where small authorship comes to
pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and sappy--always are to
them! Well, life would be nothing without paper-credit and other
fictions; so let them pass current. Don't steal their chips; don't
puncture their swimming-bladders; don't come down on their
pasteboard boxes; don't break the ends of their brittle and
unstable reputations, you fellows who all feel sure that your names
will be household words a thousand years from now.
"A thousand years is a good while," said the old gentleman who sits
opposite, thoughtfully.
--Where have I been for the last three or four days? Down at the
Island, deer-shooting.--How many did I bag? I brought home one
buck shot.--The Island is where? No matter. It is the most
splendid domain that any man looks upon in these latitudes. Blue
sea around it, and running up into its heart, so that the little
boat slumbers like a baby in lap, while the tall ships are
stripping naked to fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-
sails banging and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles;
beeches, oaks, most numerous;--many of them hung with moss, looking
like bearded Druids; some coiled in the clasp of huge, dark-stemmed
grape-vines. Open patches where the sun gets in and goes to sleep,
and the winds come so finely sifted that they are as soft as
swan's down. Rocks scattered about,--Stonehenge-like monoliths.
Fresh-water lakes; one of them, Mary's lake, crystal-clear, full of
flashing pickerel lying under the lily-pads like tigers in the
jungle. Six pounds of ditto killed one morning for breakfast.
EGO fecit.
The divinity-student looked as if he would like to question my
Latin. No, sir, I said,--you need not trouble yourself. There is
a higher law in grammar, not to be put down by Andrews and
Stoddard. Then I went on.
Such hospitality as that island has seen there has not been the
like of in these our New England sovereignties. There is nothing
in the shape of kindness and courtesy that can make life beautiful,
which has not found its home in that ocean-principality. It has
welcomed all who were worthy of welcome, from the pale clergyman
who came to breathe the sea-air with its medicinal salt and iodine,
to the great statesman who turned his back on the affairs of
empire, and smoothed his Olympian forehead, and flashed his white
teeth in merriment over the long table, where his wit was the
keenest and his story the best.
[I don't believe any man ever talked like that in this world. I
don't believe _I_ talked just so; but the fact is, in reporting
one's conversation, one cannot help BLAIR-ing it up more or less,
ironing out crumpled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping
and plaiting a little sometimes; it is as natural as prinking at
the looking-glass.]
--How can a man help writing poetry in such a place? Everybody
does write poetry that goes there. In the state archives, kept in
the library of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of
unpublished verse,--some by well-known hands, and others quite as
good, by the last people you would think of as versifiers,--men who
could pension off all the genuine poets in the country, and buy ten
acres of Boston common, if it was for sale, with what they had
left. Of course I had to write my little copy of verses with the
rest; here it is, if you will hear me read it. When the sun is in
the west, vessels sailing in an easterly direction look bright or
dark to one who observes them from the north or south, according to
the tack they are sailing upon. Watching them from one of the
windows of the great mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, and
moralized thus:-
SUN AND SHADOW.
As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green,
To the billows of foam-crested blue,
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
The sun gleaming bright on her sail.
Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,--
Of breakers that whiten and roar;
How little he cares, if in shadow or sun
They see him that gaze from the shore!
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,
To the rock that is under his lee,
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,
O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea.
Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
Where life and its ventures are laid,
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves
May see us in sunshine or shade;
Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark,
We'll trim our broad sail as before,
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
Nor ask how we look from the shore!
--Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good
mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if
anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or
reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough
to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. We
frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in
consequence of what are called RELIGIOUS mental disturbances. I
confess that I think better of them than of many who hold the same
notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy life very well,
outside of the asylums. Any decent person ought to go mad, if he
really holds such or such opinions. It is very much to his
discredit in every point of view, if he does not. What is the use
of my saying what some of these opinions are? Perhaps more than
one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight
over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any
human feeling in your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel,
heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and
perhaps for entire races,--anything that assumes the necessity of
the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated,
--no matter by what name you call it,--no matter whether a fakir, or
a monk, or a deacon believes it,--if received, ought to produce
insanity in every well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a
normal one, under the circumstances. I am very much ashamed of
some people for retaining their reason, when they know perfectly
well that if they were not the most stupid or the most selfish of
human beings, they would become non-compotes at once.
[Nobody understood this but the theological student and the
schoolmistress. They looked intelligently at each other; but
whether they were thinking about my paradox or not, I am not
clear.--It would be natural enough. Stranger things have happened.
Love and Death enter boarding-houses without asking the price of
board, or whether there is room for them. Alas, these young people
are poor and pallid! Love SHOULD be both rich and rosy, but MUST
be either rich or rosy. Talk about military duty! What is that to
the warfare of a married maid-of-all-work, with the title of
mistress, and an American female constitution, which collapses just
in the middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber,
if it happen to live through the period when health and strength
are most wanted?]
--Have I ever acted in private theatricals? Often. I have played
the part of the "Poor Gentleman," before a great many audiences,
--more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not wear a
stage-costume, nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork; but I was
placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper
hour I came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my
countenance, and made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my
name stuck up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself
in the place by daylight. I have gone to a town with a sober
literary essay in my pocket, and seen myself everywhere announced
as the most desperate of buffos,--one who was obliged to restrain
himself in the full exercise of his powers, from prudential
considerations. I have been through as many hardships as Ulysses,
in the pursuit of my histrionic vocation. I have travelled in cars
until the conductors all knew me like a brother. I have run off
the rails, and stuck all night in snow-drifts, and sat behind
females that would have the window open when one could not wink
without his eyelids freezing together. Perhaps I shall give you
some of my experiences one of these days;--I will not now, for I
have something else for you.
Private theatricals, as I have figured in them in country
lyceum-halls, are one thing,--and private theatricals, as they may be
seen in certain gilded and frescoed saloons of our metropolis, are
another. Yes, it is pleasant to see real gentlemen and ladies, who do
not think it necessary to mouth, and rant, and stride, like most of
our stage heroes and heroines, in the characters which show off their
graces and talents; most of all to see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled,
high bred young maiden, with a lithe figure, and a pleasant voice,
acting in those love-dramas which make us young again to look upon,
when real youth and beauty will play them for us.
--Of course I wrote the prologue I was asked to write. I did not
see the play, though. I knew there was a young lady in it, and
that somebody was in love with her, and she was in love with him,
and somebody (an old tutor, I believe) wanted to interfere, and,
very naturally, the young lady was too sharp for him. The play of
course ends charmingly; there is a general reconciliation, and all
concerned form a line and take each others' hands, as people always
do after they have made up their quarrels,--and then the curtain
falls,--if it does not stick, as it commonly does at private
theatrical exhibitions, in which case a boy is detailed to pull it
down, which he does, blushing violently.
Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going to change my caesuras
and cadences for anybody; so if you do not like the heroic, or
iambic trimeter brachy-catalectic, you had better not wait to hear
it
THIS IS IT.
A Prologue? Well, of course the ladies know;--
I have my doubts. No matter,--here we go!
What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach:
Pro means beforehand; logos stands for speech.
'Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings,
The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings;--
Prologues in metre are to other pros
As worsted stockings are to engine-hose.
"The world's a stage," as Shakspeare said, one day;
The stage a world--was what he meant to say.
The outside world's a blunder, that is clear;
The real world that Nature meant is here.
Here every foundling finds its lost mamma;
Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa;
Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid,
The cheats are taken in the traps they laid;
One after one the troubles all are past
Till the fifth act comes right side up at last,
When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all,
Join hands, SO happy at the curtain's fall.
--Here suffering virtue ever finds relief,
And black-browed ruffians always come to grief,
--When the lorn damsel, with a frantic screech,
And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach,
Cries, "Help, kyind Heaven!" and drops upon her knees
On the green--baize,--beneath the (canvas) trees,--
See to her side avenging Valor fly:-
"Ha! Villain! Draw! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die!"
--When the poor hero flounders in despair,
Some dear lost uncle turns up millionnaire,--
Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy,
Sobs on his neck, "MY BOY! MY BOY!! MY BOY!!!"
Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night.
Of love that conquers in disaster's spite.
Ladies, attend! While woful cares and doubt
Wrong the soft passion in the world without,
Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere,
One thing is certain: Love will triumph here!
Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule,--
The world's great masters, when you're out of school,--
Learn the brief moral of our evening's play:
Man has his will,--but woman has her way!
While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire,
Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire,--
The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves
Beats the black giant with his score of slaves.
All earthly powers confess your sovereign art
But that one rebel,--woman's wilful heart.
All foes you master; but a woman's wit
Lets daylight through you ere you know you're hit.
So, just to picture what her art can do,
Hear an old story made as good as new.
Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade,
Alike was famous for his arm and blade.
One day a prisoner Justice had to kill
Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill.
Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed,
Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd.
His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam,
As the pike's armor flashes in the stream.
He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go;
The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow.
"Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act,"
The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.)
"Friend I HAVE struck," the artist straight replied;
"Wait but one moment, and yourself decide."
He held his snuff-box,--"Now then, if you please!"
The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze,
Off his head tumbled,--bowled along the floor,--
Bounced down the steps;--the prisoner said no more!
Woman! thy falchion is a glittering eye;
If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die!
Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head;
We die with love, and never dream we're dead!
The prologue went off very well, as I hear. No alterations were
suggested by the lady to whom it was sent, so far as I know.
Sometimes people criticize the poems one sends them, and suggest
all sorts of improvements. Who was that silly body that wanted
Burns to alter "Scots wha hae," so as to lengthen the last line,
thus
"EDWARD!" Chains and slavery!
Here is a little poem I sent a short time since to a committee for
a certain celebration. I understood that it was to be a festive
and convivial occasion, and ordered myself accordingly. It seems
the president of the day was what is called a "teetotaller." I
received a note from him in the following words, containing the
copy subjoined, with the emendations annexed to it.
"Dear Sir,--your poem gives good satisfaction to the committee.
The sentiments expressed with reference to liquor are not, however,
those generally entertained by this community. I have therefore
consulted the clergyman of this place, who has made come slight
changes, which he thinks will remove all objections, and keep the
valuable portions of the poem. Please to inform me of your charge
for said poem. Our means are limited, etc., etc., etc.
Yours with respect,"
HERE IT IS--WITH THE SLIGHT ALTERATIONS!
Come! fill a fresh bumper,--for why should we go
While the [nectar] [logwood] still reddens our cups as they flow?
Pour out the [rich juices] [decoction] still bright with the sun,
Till o'er the brimmed crystal the [rubies] [dye-stuff] shall run.
The [purple glebed clusters] [half-ripened apples] their life-dews
have bled;
How sweet is the [breath] [taste] of the [fragrance they shed]
[sugar of lead]!
For summer's [last roses] [rank poisons] lie hid in the [wines]
[WINES!!!]
That were garnered by [maidens who laughed through the vines.]
[stable-boys smoking long-nines.]
Then a [smile] [scowl], and a [glass] [howl], and a [toast]
[scoff], and a [cheer] [sneer],
For all [the good wine, and we've some of it here] [strychnine and
whiskey, and ratsbane and beer]
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall,
[Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all!] [Down, down,
with the tyrant that masters us all!]
The company said I had been shabbily treated, and advised me to
charge the committee double,--which I did. But as I never got my
pay, I don't know that it made much difference. I am a very
particular person about having all I write printed as I write it.
I require to see a proof, a revise, a re-revise, and a double
re-revise, or fourth-proof rectified impression of all my productions,
especially verse. A misprint kills a sensitive author. An
intentional change of his text murders him. No wonder so many poets
die young!
I have nothing more to report at this time, except two pieces of
advice I gave to the young women at table. One relates to a
vulgarism of language, which I grieve to say is sometimes heard
even from female lips. The other is of more serious purport, and
applies to such as contemplate a change of condition,--matrimony,
in fact.
--The woman who "calculates" is lost.
--Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
CHAPTER III
[The "Atlantic" obeys the moon, and its LUNIVERSARY has come round
again. I have gathered up some hasty notes of my remarks made
since the last high tides, which I respectfully submit. Please to
remember this is TALK; just as easy and just as formal as I choose
to make it.]
--I never saw an author in my life--saving, perhaps, one--that did
not purr as audibly as a full-grown domestic cat, (Felis Catus,
LINN.,) on having his fur smoothed in the right way by a skilful
hand.
But let me give you a caution. Be very careful how you tell an
author he is DROLL. Ten to one he will hate you; and if he does,
be sure he can do you a mischief, and very probably will. Say you
CRIED over his romance or his verses, and he will love you and send
you a copy. You can laugh over that as much as you like--in
private.
--Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed of being funny?--Why,
there are obvious reasons, and deep philosophical ones. The clown
knows very well that the women are not in love with him, but with
Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat. Passion
never laughs. The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a
procession.
If you want the deep underlying reason, I must take more time to
tell it. There is a perfect consciousness in every form of wit
--using that term in its general sense--that its essence consists in
a partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It throws a
single ray, separated from the rest,--red, yellow, blue, or any
intermediate shade,--upon an object; never white light; that is the
province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,--all the
prismatic colors,--but never the object as it is in fair daylight.
A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much shallower
trick in mental optics throwing the SHADOWS of two objects so that
one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special
effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white
light of truth.--Will you allow me to pursue this subject a little
further?
[They didn't allow me at that time, for somebody happened to scrape
the floor with his chair just then; which accidental sound, as all
must have noticed, has the instantaneous effect that the cutting of
the yellow hair by Iris had upon infelix Dido. It broke the charm,
and that breakfast was over.]
--Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say
disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer
you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact
and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare,
leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his enemies; they
are ready enough to tell them. Good-breeding NEVER forgets that
amour-propre is universal. When you read the story of the
Archbishop and Gil Blas, you may laugh, if you will, at the poor
old man's delusion; but don't forget that the youth was the greater
fool of the two, and that his master served such a booby rightly in
turning him out of doors.
--You need not get up a rebellion against what I say, if you find
everything in my sayings is not exactly new. You can't possibly
mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I
once read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for
its latitude. On examination, I found all its erudition was taken
ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should
have shown up the little great man, who had once belabored me in
his feeble way. But one can generally tell these wholesale thieves
easily enough, and they are not worth the trouble of putting them
in the pillory. I doubt the entire novelty of my remarks just made
on telling unpleasant truths, yet I am not conscious of any
larceny.
Neither make too much of flaws and occasional overstatements. Some
persons seem to think that absolute truth, in the form of rigidly
stated propositions, is all that conversation admits. This is
precisely as if a musician should insist on having nothing but
perfect chords and simple melodies,--no diminished fifths, no flat
sevenths, no flourishes, on any account. Now it is fair to say,
that, just as music must have all these, so conversation must have
its partial truths, its embellished truths, its exaggerated truths.
It is in its higher forms an artistic product, and admits the ideal
element as much as pictures or statues. One man who is a little
too literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men of
esprit.--"Yes," you say, "but who wants to hear fanciful people's
nonsense? Put the facts to it, and then see where it is!"
--Certainly, if a man is too fond of paradox,--if he is flighty and
empty,--if, instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, those
harmonious discords, often so much better than the twinned octaves,
in the music of thought,--if, instead of striking these, he jangles
the chords, stick a fact into him like a stiletto. But remember
that talking is one of the fine arts,--the noblest, the most
important, and the most difficult,--and that its fluent harmonies
may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note. Therefore
conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which
lets out the most of each talker's results of thought, is commonly
the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is not easy, at the
best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each
other's thoughts, there are so many of them.
[The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.]
When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is
natural enough that among the six there should be more or less
confusion and misapprehension.
[Our landlady turned pale;--no doubt she thought there was a screw
loose in my intellects,--and that involved the probable loss of a
boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a
sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I
understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring
theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down
of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to
Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe
the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the
carving-knife; at any rate, he slid it to one side, as it were
carelessly.]
I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin here,
that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be
recognized as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas.
Three Johns.
1. The real John; known only to his Maker.
2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike
him.
3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but
often very unlike either.
Three Thomas.
1. The real Thomas.
2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.
3. John's ideal Thomas.
Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a
platform-balance; but the other two are just as important in the
conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and
ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men
the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly
conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks
from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him
to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is, so far as
Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful
rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply
to the three Thomases. It follows, that, until a man can be found
who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as
others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every
dialogue between two. Of these, the least important,
philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real
person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are
six of them talking and listening all at the same time.
[A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made
by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me
at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little
known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me via this unlettered
Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket,
remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him
that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the
mean time he had eaten the peaches.]
--The opinions of relatives as to a man's powers are very commonly
of little value; not merely because they sometimes overrate their
own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are
quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the
habit of considering like themselves. The advent of genius is like
what florists style the BREAKING of a seedling tulip into what we
may call high-caste colors,--ten thousand dingy flowers, then one
with the divine streak; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up in
old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly little fruit, the
seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen in shop-windows. It is a
surprise,--there is nothing to account for it. All at once we find
that twice two make FIVE. Nature is fond of what are called
"gift-enterprises." This little book of life which she has given into
the hands of its joint possessors is commonly one of the old
story-books bound over again. Only once in a great while there is a
stately poem in it, or its leaves are illuminated with the glories of
art, or they enfold a draft for untold values signed by the
million-fold millionnaire old mother herself. But strangers are
commonly the first to find the "gift" that came with the little book.
It may be questioned whether anything can be conscious of its own
flavor. Whether the musk-deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still
more eloquently silent animal that might be mentioned, is aware of
any personal peculiarity, may well be doubted. No man knows his
own voice; many men do not know their own profiles. Every one
remembers Carlyle's famous "Characteristics" article; allow for
exaggerations, and there is a great deal in his doctrine of the
self-unconsciousness of genius. It comes under the great law just
stated. This incapacity of knowing its own traits is often found
in the family as well as in the individual. So never mind what
your cousins, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and the rest, say
about that fine poem you have written, but send it (postage-paid)
to the editors, if there are any, of the "Atlantic,"--which, by the
way, is not so called because it is A NOTION, as some dull wits
wish they had said, but are too late.
--Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest persons, has
mingled with it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute,
peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them
are apt to get a bullying habit of mind;--not of manners, perhaps;
they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet
assertion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy Weights,
commonly the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears
upon what he very inelegantly calls his "mug." Take the man, for
instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. There is no
elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against it, it
never yields a hair's breadth; everything must go to pieces that
comes in collision with it. What the mathematician knows being
absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering question, it should
tend, in the nature of things, to breed a despotic way of thinking.
So of those who deal with the palpable and often unmistakable facts
of external nature; only in a less degree. Every probability--and
most of our common, working beliefs are probabilities--is provided
with BUFFERS at both ends, which break the force of opposite
opinions clashing against it; but scientific certainty has no
spring in it, no courtesy, no possibility of yielding. All this
must react on the minds which handle these forms of truth.
--Oh, you need net tell me that Messrs. A. and B. are the most
gracious, unassuming people in the world, and yet preeminent in the
ranges of science I am referring to. I know that as well as you.
But mark this which I am going to say once for all: If I had not
force enough to project a principle full in the face of the half
dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think
only in single file from this day forward. A rash man, once
visiting a certain noted institution at South Boston, ventured to
express the sentiment, that man is a rational being. An old woman
who was an attendant in the Idiot School contradicted the
statement, and appealed to the facts before the speaker to disprove
it. The rash man stuck to his hasty generalization,
notwithstanding.
[--It is my desire to be useful to those with whom I am associated
in my daily relations. I not unfrequently practise the divine art
of music in company with our landlady's daughter, who, as I
mentioned before, is the owner of an accordion. Having myself a
well-marked barytone voice of more than half an octave in compass,
I sometimes add my vocal powers to her execution of
"Thou, thou reign'st in this bosom."
not, however, unless her mother or some other discreet female is
present, to prevent misinterpretation or remark. I have also taken
a good deal of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to,
sometimes called B. F., or more frequently Frank, in imitation of
that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity and convenience,
adopted by some of his betters. My acquaintance with the French
language is very imperfect, I having never studied it anywhere but
in Paris, which is awkward, as B. F. devotes himself to it with the
peculiar advantage of an Alsacian teacher. The boy, I think, is
doing well, between us, notwithstanding. The following is an
UNCORRECTED French exercise, written by this young gentleman. His
mother thinks it very creditable to his abilities; though, being
unacquainted with the French language, her judgment cannot be
considered final.
LE RAT DIES SALONS A LECTURE.
Ce rat ci est un animal fort singulier. Il a deux pattes de
derriere sur lesquelles il marche, et deux pattes de devant dont il
fait usage pour tenir les journaux. Cet animal a la peau noire
pour le plupart, et porte un cerele blanchatre autour de son cou.
On le trouve tous les jours aux dits salons, on il demeure, digere,
s'il y a do quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eternue,
dort, et renfle quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblant de lire.
On ne sait pas s'il a une autre gite que cela. Il a l'air d'une
bete tres stupide, mais il est d'une sagacite et d'une vitesse
extraordinaire quand il s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On ne
sait pas pourquoi il lit, parcequ'il ne parait pas avoir des idees.
Il vocalise rarement, mais en revanche, il fait des bruits nasaux
divers. Il porte un crayon dans une de ses poches pectorales, avec
lequel il fait des marques sur les bords des journaux et des
livres, semblable aux suivans: !!!--Bah! Pooh! Il ne faut pas
cependant les prendre pour des signes d'intelligence. Il ne vole
pas, ordinairement; il fait rarement meme des echanges de
parapluie, et jamais de chapeau, parceque son chapeau a toujours un
caractere specifique. On ne sait pas au juste ce dont il se
nourrit. Feu Cuvier etait d'avis que c'etait de l'odeur du cuir
des reliures; ce qu'on dit d'etre une nourriture animale fort
saine, et peu chere. Il vit bien longtems. Enfin il meure, en
laissant a ses heritiers une carte du Salon a Lecture on il avait
existe pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il revient toutes les nuits,
apres la mort, visiter le Salon. On peut le voir, dit on, a
minuit, dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal du soir, et
ayant a sa main un crayon de charbon. Le lendemain on trouve des
caracteres inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce qui prouve que le
spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les Professeurs de
Cambridge sont des imbeciles qui ne savent rien du tout, du tout.
I think this exercise, which I have not corrected, or allowed to be
touched in any way, is not discreditable to B. F. You observe that
he is acquiring a knowledge of zoology at the same time that he is
learning French. Fathers of families in moderate circumstances
will find it profitable to their children, and an economical mode
of instruction, to set them to revising and amending this boy's
exercise. The passage was originally taken from the "Histoire
Naturelle des Betes Ruminans et Rongeurs, Bipedes et Autres,"
lately published in Paris. This was translated into English and
published in London. It was republished at Great Pedlington, with
notes and additions by the American editor. The notes consist of
an interrogation-mark on page 53d, and a reference (p. 127th) to
another book "edited" by the same hand. The additions consist of
the editor's name on the title-page and back, with a complete and
authentic list of said editor's honorary titles in the first of
these localities. Our boy translated the translation back into
French. This may be compared with the original, to be found on
Shelf 13, Division X, of the Public Library of this metropolis.]
--Some of you boarders ask me from time to time why I don't write a
story, or a novel, or something of that kind. Instead of answering
each one of you separately, I will thank you to step up into the
wholesale department for a few moments, where I deal in answers by
the piece and by the bale.
That every articulately-speaking human being has in him stuff for
ONE novel in three volumes duodecimo has long been with me a
cherished belief. It has been maintained, on the other hand, that
many persons cannot write more than one novel,--that all after that
are likely to be failures.--Life is so much more tremendous a thing
in its heights and depths than any transcript of it can be, that
all records of human experience are as so many bound herbaria to
the innumerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breathing,
fragrance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving, death-distilling
leaves and flowers of the forest and the prairies. All we can do
with books of human experience is to make them alive again with
something borrowed from our own lives. We can make a book alive
for us just in proportion to its resemblance in essence or in form
to our own experience. Now an author's first novel is naturally
drawn, to a great extent, from his personal experiences; that is,
is a literal copy of nature under various slight disguises. But
the moment the author gets out of his personality, he must have the
creative power, as well as the narrative art and the sentiment, in
order to tell a living story; and this is rare.
Besides, there is great danger that a man's first life-story shall
clean him out, so to speak, of his best thoughts. Most lives,
though their stream is loaded with sand and turbid with alluvial
waste, drop a few golden grains of wisdom as they flow along.
Oftentimes a single CRADLING gets them all, and after that the poor
man's labor is only rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All which
proves that I, as an individual of the human family, could write
one novel or story at any rate, if I would.
--Why don't I, then?--Well, there are several reasons against it.
In the first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain
that verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm and
rhyme and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the
fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness
of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in
the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A
beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the
glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms
and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain
calico, she would be unendurable--in the opinion of the ladies.
Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends. I
should like to know if all story-tellers do not do this? Now I am
afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well; for they
have an average share of the common weakness of humanity, which I
am pretty certain would come out. Of all that have told stories
among us there is hardly one I can recall who has not drawn too
faithfully some living portrait that might better have been spared.
Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I might be too dull
to write such a story as I should wish to write.
And finally, I think it very likely I SHALL write a story one of
these days. Don't be surprised at any time, if you see me coming
out with "The Schoolmistress," or "The Old Gentleman Opposite."
[OUR schoolmistress and OUR old gentleman that sits opposite had
left the table before I said this.] I want my glory for writing
the same discounted now, on the spot, if you please. I will write
when I get ready. How many people live on the reputation of the
reputation they might have made!
--I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possibility of my being
too dull to write a good story. I don't pretend to know what you
meant by it, but I take occasion to make a remark which may
hereafter prove of value to some among you.--When one of us who has
been led by native vanity or senseless flattery to think himself or
herself possessed of talent arrives at the full and final
conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the
most tranquillizing and blessed convictions that can enter a
mortal's mind. All our failures, our shortcomings, our strange
disappointments in the effect of our efforts are lifted from our
bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian's pack, at the feet of
that Omnipotence which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gift of
high intelligence,--with which one look may overflow us in some
wider sphere of being.
--How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, "I hate
books!" A gentleman,--singularly free from affectations,--not
learned, of course, but of perfect breeding, which is often so much
better than learning,--by no means dull, in the sense of knowledge
of the world and society, but certainly not clever either in the
arts or sciences,--his company is pleasing to all who know him. I
did not recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so
distinctly as I did simplicity of character and fearless
acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think
there are a great many gentlemen and others, who read with a mark
to keep their place, that really "hate books," but never had the
wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it. [Entre nous, I
always read with a mark.]
We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an "intellectual
man" was, as a matter of course, made up of nine-tenths, or
thereabouts, of book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if
he is actually so compounded, he need not read much. Society is a
strong solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best
worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If
_I_ were a prince, I would hire or buy a private literary tea-pot,
in which I would steep all the leaves of new books that promised
well. The infusion would do for me without the vegetable fibre.
You understand me; I would have a person whose sole business should
be to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to.
I know the man I would have: a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive
fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books
about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts
and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and
the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in
new costume; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet
and a wink, and you can depend on it; cares for nobody except for
the virtue there is in what he says; delights in taking off big
wigs and professional gowns, and in the disembalming and
unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yet he is as tender and
reverential to all that bears the mark of genius,--that is, of a
new influx of truth or beauty,--as a nun over her missal. In
short, he is one of those men that know everything except how to
make a living. Him would I keep on the square next my own royal
compartment on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another
pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom he would
of course take--to wife. For all contingencies I would liberally
provide. In a word, I would, in the plebeian, but expressive
phrase, "put him through" all the material part of life; see him
sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, just to be
able to lay on his talk when I liked,--with the privilege of
shutting it off at will.
A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like a harp, with
about a dozen ringing intelligences, each answering to some chord
of the macrocosm. They do well to dine together once in a while.
A dinner-party made up of such elements is the last triumph of
civilization over barbarism. Nature and art combine to charm the
senses; the equatorial zone of the system is soothed by
well-studied artifices; the faculties are off duty, and fall into
their natural attitudes; you see wisdom in slippers and science in a
short jacket.
The whole force of conversation depends on how much you can take
for granted. Vulgar chess-players have to play their game out;
nothing short of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies
their dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble
game! White stands well enough, so far as you can see; but Red
says, Mate in six moves;--White looks,--nods;--the game is over.
Just so in talking with first-rate men; especially when they are
good-natured and expansive, as they are apt to be at table. That
blessed clairvoyance which sees into things without opening them,
--that glorious license, which, having shut the door and driven the
reporter from its key-hole, calls upon Truth, majestic virgin! to
get off from her pedestal and drop her academic poses, and take a
festive garland and the vacant place on the medius lectus,--that
carnival-shower of questions and replies and comments, large axioms
bowled over the mahogany like bomb-shells from professional
mortars, and explosive wit dropping its trains of many-colored
fire, and the mischief-making rain of bon-bons pelting everybody
that shows himself,--the picture of a truly intellectual banquet is
one which the old Divinities might well have attempted to reproduce
in their--
--"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the young fellow whom they call John,--"that
is from one of your lectures!"
I know it, I replied,--I concede it, I confess it, I proclaim it.
"The trail of the serpent is over them all!"
All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have ruts and
grooves in their minds into which their conversation is perpetually
sliding. Did you never, in riding through the woods of a still
June evening, suddenly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum
of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of atmosphere
beyond? Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back
Bay,--where the Provincial blue-noses are in the habit of beating
the "Metropolitan" boat-clubs,--find yourself in a tepid streak, a
narrow, local gulf-stream, a gratuitous warm-bath a little
underdone, through which your glistening shoulders soon flashed, to
bring you back to the cold realities of full-sea temperature? Just
so, in talking with any of the characters above referred to, one
not unfrequently finds a sudden change in the style of the
conversation. The lack-lustre eye rayless as a Beacon-Street
door-plate in August, all at once fills with light; the face flings
itself wide open like the church-portals when the bride and
bridegroom enter; the little man grows in stature before your eyes,
like the small prisoner with hair on end, beloved yet dreaded of
early childhood; you were talking with a dwarf and an imbecile,
--you have a giant and a trumpet-tongued angel before you!--Nothing
but a streak out of a fifty-dollar lecture.--As when, at some
unlooked-for moment, the mighty fountain-column springs into the
air before the astonished passer-by,--silver-footed, diamond-
crowned, rainbow-scarfed,--from the bosom of that fair sheet,
sacred to the hymns of quiet batrachians at home, and the epigrams
of a less amiable and less elevated order of reptilia in other
latitudes.
--Who was that person that was so abused some time since for saying
that in the conflict of two races our sympathies naturally go with
the higher? No matter who he was. Now look at what is going on in
India,--a white, superior "Caucasian" race, against a dark-skinned,
inferior, but still "Caucasian" race,--and where are English and
American sympathies? We can't stop to settle all the doubtful
questions; all we know is, that the brute nature is sure to come
out most strongly in the lower race, and it is the general law that
the human side of humanity should treat the brutal side as it does
the same nature in the inferior animals,--tame it or crush it. The
India mail brings stories of women and children outraged and
murdered; the royal stronghold is in the hands of the babe-killers.
England takes down the Map of the World, which she has girdled with
empire, and makes a correction thus: [DELPHI] Dele. The civilized
world says, Amen.
--Do not think, because I talk to you of many subjects briefly,
that I should not find it much lazier work to take each one of them
and dilute it down to an essay. Borrow some of my old college
themes and water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the Homeric
heroes did with their melas oinos,--that black sweet, syrupy wine
(?) which they used to alloy with three parts or more of the
flowing stream. [Could it have been melasses, as Webster and his
provincials spell it,--or Molossa's, as dear old smattering,
chattering, would-be-College-President, Cotton Mather, has it in
the "Magnalia"? Ponder thereon, ye small antiquaries who make
barn-door-fowl flights of learning in "Notes and Queries!"--ye
Historical Societies, in one of whose venerable triremes I, too,
ascend the stream of time, while other hands tug at the oars!--ye
Amines of parasitical literature, who pick up your grains of
native-grown food with a bodkin, having gorged upon less honest
fare, until, like the great minds Goethe speaks of, you have "made
a Golgotha" of your pages!--ponder thereon!]
--Before you go, this morning, I want to read you a copy of verses.
You will understand by the title that they are written in an
imaginary character. I don't doubt they will fit some family-man
well enough. I send it forth as "Oak Hall" projects a coat, on a
priori grounds of conviction that it will suit somebody. There is
no loftier illustration of faith than this. It believes that a
soul has been clad in flesh; that tender parents have fed and
nurtured it; that its mysterious compages or frame-work has
survived its myriad exposures and reached the stature of maturity;
that the Man, now self-determining, has given in his adhesion to
the traditions and habits of the race in favor of artificial
clothing; that he will, having all the world to choose from, select
the very locality where this audacious generalization has been
acted upon. It builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, and
trusts that Nature will model a material shape to fit it. There is
a prophecy in every seam, and its pockets are full of inspiration.
--Now hear the verses.
THE OLD MAN DREAMS.
O for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy
Than reign a gray-beard king!
Off with the wrinkled spoils of age!
Away with learning's crown!
Tear out life's wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!
One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame!
--My listening angel heard the prayer,
And calmly smiling, said,
"If I but touch thy silvered hair,
Thy hasty wish hath sped.
"But is there nothing in thy track
To bid thee fondly stay,
While the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished-for day?"
--Ah, truest soul of womankind!
Without thee, what were life?
One bliss I cannot leave behind:
I'll take--my--precious wife!
--The angel took a sapphire pen
And wrote in rainbow dew,
"The man would be a boy again,
And be a husband too!"
--"And is there nothing yet unsaid
Before the change appears?
Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years!"
Why, yes; for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys;
I could not bear to leave them all;
I'll take--my--girl--and--boys!
The smiling angel dropped his pen,--
"Why this will never do;
The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!"
And so I laughed,--my laughter woke
The household with its noise,--
And wrote my dream, when morning broke,
To please the gray-haired boys.
CHAPTER IV
[I am so well pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to
remain there, perhaps for years. Of course I shall have a great
many conversations to report, and they will necessarily be of
different tone and on different subjects. The talks are like the
breakfasts,--sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes dry. You must
take them as they come. How can I do what all these letters ask me
to? No. 1. want serious and earnest thought. No. 2. (letter
smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes; wants me to tell a
"good storey" which he has copied out for me. (I suppose two
letters before the word "good" refer to some Doctor of Divinity who
told the story.) No. 3. (in female hand)--more poetry. No. 4.
wants something that would be of use to a practical man.
(Prahctical mahn he probably pronounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged,
sweet-scented)--"more sentiment,"--"heart's outpourings."--
My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but report such
remarks as I happen to have made at our breakfast-table. Their
character will depend on many accidents,--a good deal on the
particular persons in the company to whom they were addressed. It
so happens that those which follow were mainly intended for the
divinity-student and the school-mistress; though others, whom I
need not mention, saw to interfere, with more or less propriety, in
the conversation. This is one of my privileges as a talker; and of
course, if I was not talking for our whole company, I don't expect
all the readers of this periodical to be interested in my notes of
what was said. Still, I think there may be a few that will rather
like this vein,--possibly prefer it to a livelier one,--serious
young men, and young women generally, in life's roseate parenthesis
from--years of age to--inclusive.
Another privilege of talking is to misquote.--Of course it wasn't
Proserpina that actually cut the yellow hair,--but Iris. (As I
have since told you) it was the former lady's regular business, but
Dido had used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood firm on
the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian Here--Juno, in Latin
--sent down Iris instead. But I was mightily pleased to see that one
of the gentlemen that do the heavy articles for the celebrated
"Oceanic Miscellany" misquoted Campbell's line without any excuse.
"Waft us HOME the MESSAGE" of course it ought to be. Will he be
duly grateful for the correction?]
--The more we study the body and the mind, the more we find both to
be governed, not by, but ACCORDING TO laws, such as we observe in
the larger universe.--You think you know all about WALKING,--don't
you, now? Well, how do you suppose your lower limbs are held to
your body? They are sucked up by two cupping vessels, ("cotyloid"
--cup-like--cavities,) and held there as long as you live, and
longer. At any rate, you think you move them backward and forward
at such a rate as your will determines, don't you?--On the
contrary, they swing just as any other pendulums swing, at a fixed
rate, determined by their length. You can alter this by muscular
power, as you can take hold of the pendulum of a clock and make it
move faster or slower; but your ordinary gait is timed by the same
mechanism as the movements of the solar system.
[My friend, the Professor, told me all this, referring me to
certain German physiologists by the name of Weber for proof of the
facts, which, however, he said he had often verified. I
appropriated it to my own use; what can one do better than this,
when one has a friend that tells him anything worth remembering?
The Professor seems to think that man and the general powers of the
universe are in partnership. Some one was saying that it had cost
nearly half a million to move the Leviathan only so far as they had
got it already.--Why,--said the Professor,--they might have hired
an EARTHQUAKE for less money!]
Just as we find a mathematical rule at the bottom of many of the
bodily movements, just so thought may be supposed to have its
regular cycles. Such or such a thought comes round periodically,
in its turn. Accidental suggestions, however, so far interfere
with the regular cycles, that we may find them practically beyond
our power of recognition. Take all this for what it is worth, but
at any rate you will agree that there are certain particular
thoughts that do not come up once a day, nor once a week, but that
a year would hardly go round without your having them pass through
your mind. Here is one which comes up at intervals in this way.
Some one speaks of it, and there is an instant and eager smile of
assent in the listener or listeners. Yes, indeed; they have often
been struck by it.
ALL AT ONCE A CONVICTION FLASHES THROUGH US THAT WE HAVE BEEN IN
THE SAME PRECISE CIRCUMSTANCES AS AT THE PRESENT INSTANT, ONCE OR
MANY TIMES BEFORE.
O, dear, yes!--said one of the company,--everybody has had that
feeling.
The landlady didn't know anything about such notions; it was an
idee in folks' heads, she expected.
The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of way, that she knew
the feeling well, and didn't like to experience it; it made her
think she was a ghost, sometimes.
The young fellow whom they call John said he knew all about it; he
had just lighted a cheroot the other day, when a tremendous
conviction all at once came over him that he had done just that
same thing ever so many times before. I looked severely at him,
and his countenance immediately fell--ON THE SIDE TOWARD ME; I
cannot answer for the other, for he can wink and laugh with either
half of his face without the other half's knowing it.
--I have noticed--I went on to say--the following circumstances
connected with these sudden impressions. First, that the condition
which seems to be the duplicate of a former one is often very
trivial,--one that might have presented itself a hundred times.
Secondly, that the impression is very evanescent, and that it is
rarely, if ever, recalled by any voluntary effort, at least after
any time has elapsed. Thirdly, that there is a disinclination to
record the circumstances, and a sense of incapacity to reproduce
the state of mind in words. Fourthly, I have often felt that the
duplicate condition had not only occurred once before, but that it
was familiar and, as it seemed, habitual. Lastly, I have had the
same convictions in my dreams.
How do I account for it?--Why, there are several ways that I can
mention, and you may take your choice. The first is that which the
young lady hinted at;--that these flashes are sudden recollections
of a previous existence. I don't believe that; for I remember a
poor student I used to know told me he had such a conviction one
day when he was blacking his boots, and I can't think he had ever
lived in another world where they use Day and Martin.
Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the brain's being a double
organ, its hemispheres working together like the two eyes, accounts
for it. One of the hemispheres hangs fire, they suppose, and the
small interval between the perceptions of the nimble and the
sluggish half seems an indefinitely long period, and therefore the
second perception appears to be the copy of another, ever so old.
But even allowing the centre of perception to be double, I can see
no good reason for supposing this indefinite lengthening of the
time, nor any analogy that bears it out. It seems to me most
likely that the coincidence of circumstances is very partial, but
that we take this partial resemblance for identity, as we
occasionally do resemblances of persons. A momentary posture of
circumstances is so far like some preceding one that we accept it
as exactly the same, just as we accost a stranger occasionally,
mistaking him for a friend. The apparent similarity may be owing
perhaps, quite as much to the mental state at the time, as to the
outward circumstances.
--Here is another of these curiously recurring remarks. I have
said it, and heard it many times, and occasionally met with
something like it in books,--somewhere in Bulwer's novels, I think,
and in one of the works of Mr. Olmsted, I know.
MEMORY, IMAGINATION, OLD SENTIMENTS AND ASSOCIATIONS, ARE MORE
READILY REACHED THROUGH THE SENSE OF SMELL THAN BY ALMOST ANY OTHER
CHANNEL.
Of course the particular odors which act upon each person's
susceptibilities differ.--O, yes! I will tell you some of mine.
The smell of PHOSPHORUS is one of them. During a year or two of
adolescence I used to be dabbling in chemistry a good deal, and as
about that time I had my little aspirations and passions like
another, some of these things got mixed up with each other:
orange-colored fumes of nitrous acid, and visions as bright and
transient; reddening litmus-paper, and blushing cheeks;--eheu!
"Soles occidere et redire possunt,"
but there is no reagent that will redden the faded roses of
eighteen hundred and--spare them! But, as I was saying, phosphorus
fires this train of associations in an instant; its luminous vapors
with their penetrating odor throw me into a trance; it comes to me
in a double sense "trailing clouds of glory." Only the confounded
Vienna matches, ohne phosphor-geruch, have worn my sensibilities a
little.
Then there is the MARIGOLD. When I was of smallest dimensions, and
wont to ride impacted between the knees of fond parental pair, we
would sometimes cross the bridge to the next village-town and stop
opposite a low, brown, "gambrel-roofed" cottage. Out of it would
come one Sally, sister of its swarthy tenant, swarthy herself,
shady-lipped, sad-voiced, and, bending over her flower-bed, would
gather a "posy," as she called it, for the little boy. Sally lies
in the churchyard with a slab of blue slate at her head, lichen-
crusted, and leaning a little within the last few years. Cottage,
garden-beds, posies, grenadier-like rows of seedling onions,
--stateliest of vegetables,--all are gone, but the breath of a
marigold brings them all back to me.
Perhaps the herb EVERLASTING, the fragrant immortelle of our autumn
fields, has the most suggestive odor to me of all those that set me
dreaming. I can hardly describe the strange thoughts and emotions
that come to me as I inhale the aroma of its pale, dry, rustling
flowers. A something it has of sepulchral spicery, as if it had
been brought from the core of some great pyramid, where it had lain
on the breast of a mummied Pharaoh. Something, too, of immortality
in the sad, faint sweetness lingering so long in its lifeless
petals. Yet this does not tell why it fills my eyes with tears and
carries me in blissful thought to the banks of asphodel that border
the River of Life.
--I should not have talked so much about these personal
susceptibilities, if I had not a remark to make about them which I
believe is a new one. It is this. There may be a physical reason
for the strange connection between the sense of smell and the mind.
The olfactory nerve--so my friend, the Professor, tells me--is the
only one directly connected with the hemispheres of the brain, the
parts in which, as we have every reason to believe, the
intellectual processes are performed. To speak more truly the
olfactory "nerve" is not a nerve at all, he says, but a part of the
brain, in intimate connection with its anterior lobes. Whether
this anatomical arrangement is at the bottom of the facts I have
mentioned, I will not decide, but it is curious enough to be worth
remembering. Contrast the sense of taste, as a source of
suggestive impressions, with that of smell. Now the Professor
assures me that you will find the nerve of taste has no immediate
connection with the brain proper, but only with the prolongation of
the spinal cord.
[The old gentleman opposite did not pay much attention, I think, to
this hypothesis of mine. But while I was speaking about the sense
of smell he nestled about in his seat, and presently succeeded in
getting out a large red bandanna handkerchief. Then he lurched a
little to the other side, and after much tribulation at last
extricated an ample round snuff-box. I looked as he opened it and
felt for the wonted pugil. Moist rappee, and a Tonka-bean lying
therein. I made the manual sign understood of all mankind that use
the precious dust, and presently my brain, too, responded to the
long unused stimulus--O boys,--that were,--actual papas and
possible grandpapas,--some of you with crowns like billiard-balls,
--some in locks of sable silvered, and some of silver sabled,--do
you remember, as you doze over this, those after-dinners at the
Trois Freres when the Scotch-plaided snuff-box went round, and the
dry Lundy-Foot tickled its way along into our happy sensoria? Then
it was that the Chambertin or the Clos Vougeot came in, slumbering
in its straw cradle. And one among you,--do you remember how he
would have a bit of ice always in his Burgundy, and sit tinkling it
against the sides of the bubble-like glass, saying that he
was hearing the cow-bells as he used to hear them, when the
deep-breathing kine came home at twilight from the huckleberry
pasture, in the old home a thousand leagues towards the sunset?]
Ah me! what strains and strophes of unwritten verse pulsate through
my soul when I open a certain closet in the ancient house where I
was born! On its shelves used to lie bundles of sweet-marjoram and
pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip; there apples were
stored until their seeds should grow black, which happy period
there were sharp little milk-teeth always ready to anticipate;
there peaches lay in the dark, thinking of the sunshine they had
lost, until, like the hearts of saints that dream of heaven in
their sorrow, they grew fragrant as the breath of angels. The
odorous echo of a score of dead summers lingers yet in those dim
recesses.
--Do I remember Byron's line about "striking the electric chain"?
--To be sure I do. I sometimes think the less the hint that stirs
the automatic machinery of association, the more easily this moves
us. What can be more trivial than that old story of opening the
folio Shakspeare that used to lie in some ancient English hall and
finding the flakes of Christmas pastry between its leaves, shut up
in them perhaps a hundred years ago? And, lo! as one looks on
these poor relics of a bygone generation, the universe changes in
the twinkling of an eye; old George the Second is back again, and
the elder Pitt is coming into power, and General Wolfe is a fine,
promising young man, and over the Channel they are pulling the
Sieur Damiens to pieces with wild horses, and across the Atlantic
the Indians are tomahawking Hirams and Jonathans and Jonases at
Fort William Henry; all the dead people who have been in the dust
so long--even to the stout-armed cook that made the pastry--are
alive again; the planet unwinds a hundred of its luminous coils,
and the precession of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of
heaven! And all this for a bit of pie-crust!
--I will thank you for that pie,--said the provoking young fellow
whom I have named repeatedly. He looked at it for a moment, and
put his hands to his eyes as if moved.--I was thinking,--he said
indistinctly--
--How? What is't?--said our landlady.
--I was thinking--said he--who was king of England when this old
pie was baked,--and it made me feel bad to think how long he must
have been dead.
[Our landlady is a decent body, poor, and a widow, of course; cela
va sans dire. She told me her story once; it was as if a grain of
corn that had been ground and bolted had tried to individualize
itself by a special narrative. There was the wooing and the
wedding,--the start in life,--the disappointments,--the children
she had buried,--the struggle against fate,--the dismantling of
life, first of its small luxuries, and then of its comforts,--the
broken spirits,--the altered character of the one on whom she
leaned,--and at last the death that came and drew the black curtain
between her and all her earthly hopes.
I never laughed at my landlady after she had told me her story, but
I often cried,--not those pattering tears that run off the eaves
upon our neighbors' grounds, the stillicidium of self-conscious
sentiment, but those which steal noiselessly through their conduits
until they reach the cisterns lying round about the heart; those
tears that we weep inwardly with unchanging features;--such I did
shed for her often when the imps of the boarding-house Inferno
tugged at her soul with their red-hot pincers.]
Young man,--I said,--the pasty you speak lightly of is not old, but
courtesy to those who labor to serve us, especially if they are of
the weaker sex, is very old, and yet well worth retaining. May I
recommend to you the following caution, as a guide, whenever you
are dealing with a woman, or an artist, or a poet--if you are
handling an editor or politician, it is superfluous advice. I take
it from the back of one of those little French toys which contain
pasteboard figures moved by a small running stream of fine sand;
Benjamin Franklin will translate it for you: "Quoiqu'elle soit
tres solidement montee, il faut ne pas BRUTALISER la machine."--I
will thank you for the pie, if you please.
[I took more of it than was good for me--as much as 85 degrees, I
should think,--and had an indigestion in consequence. While I was
suffering from it, I wrote some sadly desponding poems, and a
theological essay which took a very melancholy view of creation.
When I got better I labelled them all "Pie-crust," and laid them by
as scarecrows and solemn warnings. I have a number of books on my
shelves that I should like to label with some such title; but, as
they have great names on their title-pages,--Doctors of Divinity,
some of them,--it wouldn't do.]
--My friend, the Professor, whom I have mentioned to you once or
twice, told me yesterday that somebody had been abusing him in some
of the journals of his calling. I told him that I didn't doubt he
deserved it; that I hoped he did deserve a little abuse
occasionally, and would for a number of years to come; that nobody
could do anything to make his neighbors wiser or better without
being liable to abuse for it; especially that people hated to have
their little mistakes made fun of, and perhaps he had been doing
something of the kind.--The Professor smiled.--Now, said I, hear
what I am going to say. It will not take many years to bring you
to the period of life when men, at least the majority of writing
and talking men, do nothing but praise. Men, like peaches and
pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay. I
don't know what it is,--whether a spontaneous change, mental or
bodily, or whether it is thorough experience of the thanklessness
of critical honesty,--but it is a fact, that most writers, except
sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about the
time when they are beginning to grow old. As a general thing, I
would not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he
is himself an author, over fifty years of age. At thirty we are
all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of this
tenement of life; twenty years later we have carved it, or shut up
our jack-knives. Then we are ready to help others, and care less
to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in our way. So I am
glad you have a little life left; you will be saccharine enough in
a few years.
--Some of the softening effects of advancing age have struck me
very much in what I have heard or seen here and elsewhere. I just
now spoke of the sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you
know that in the gradual passage from maturity to helplessness the
harshest characters sometimes have a period in which they are
gentle and placid as young children? I have heard it said, but I
cannot be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain,
Lochiel, was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An
old man, whose studies had been of the severest scholastic kind,
used to love to hear little nursery-stories read over and over to
him. One who saw the Duke of Wellington in his last years
describes him as very gentle in his aspect and demeanor. I
remember a person of singularly stern and lofty bearing who became
remarkably gracious and easy in all his ways in the later period of
his life.
And that leads me to say that men often remind me of pears in their
way of coming to maturity. Some are ripe at twenty, like human
Jargonelles, and must be made the most of, for their day is soon
over. Some come into their perfect condition late, like the autumn
kinds, and they last better than the summer fruit. And some, that,
like the Winter-Nelis, have been hard and uninviting until all the
rest have had their season, get their glow and perfume long after
the frost and snow have done their worst with the orchards. Beware
of rash criticisms; the rough and stringent fruit you condemn may
be an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked up beneath
the same bough in August may have been only its worm-eaten
windfalls. Milton was a Saint-Germain with a graft of the roseate
Early-Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet skinned old
Chaucer was an Easter-Beurre; the buds of a new summer were
swelling when he ripened.
--There is no power I envy so much--said the divinity-student--as
that of seeing analogies and making comparisons. I don't
understand how it is that some minds are continually coupling
thoughts or objects that seem not in the least related to each
other, until all at once they are put in a certain light, and you
wonder that you did not always see that they were as like as a pair
of twins. It appears to me a sort of miraculous gift.
[He is rather a nice young man, and I think has an appreciation of
the higher mental qualities remarkable for one of his years and
training. I try his head occasionally as housewives try eggs,
--give it an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so to
speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, or only
contains lifeless albumen.]
You call it MIRACULOUS,--I replied,--tossing the expression with my
facial eminence, a little smartly, I fear.--Two men are walking by
the polyphloesboean ocean, one of them having a small tin cup with
which he can scoop up a gill of sea-water when he will, and the
other nothing but his hands, which will hardly hold water at all,
--and you call the tin cup a miraculous possession! It is the ocean
that is the miracle, my infant apostle! Nothing is clearer than
that all things are in all things, and that just according to the
intensity and extension of our mental being we shall see the many
in the one and the one in the many. Did Sir Isaac think what he
was saying when he made HIS speech about the ocean,--the child and
the pebbles, you know? Did he mean to speak slightingly of a
pebble? Of a spherical solid which stood sentinel over its
compartment of space before the stone that became the pyramids had
grown solid, and has watched it until now! A body which knows all
the currents of force that traverse the globe; which holds by
invisible threads to the ring of Saturn and the belt of Orion! A
body from the contemplation of which an archangel could infer the
entire inorganic universe as the simplest of corollaries! A throne
of the all-pervading Deity, who has guided its every atom since the
rosary of heaven was strung with beaded stars!
So,--to return to OUR walk by the ocean,--if all that poetry has
dreamed, all that insanity has raved, all that maddening narcotics
have driven through the brains of men, or smothered passion nursed
in the fancies of women,--if the dreams of colleges and convents
and boarding-schools,--if every human feeling that sighs, or
smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or groans, should bring all their
innumerable images, such as come with every hurried heart-beat,
--the epic which held them all, though its letters filled the zodiac,
would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and
analogies that rolls through the universe.
[The divinity-student honored himself by the way in which he
received this. He did not swallow it at once, neither did he
reject it; but he took it as a pickerel takes the bait, and carried
it off with him to his hole (in the fourth story) to deal with at
his leisure.]
--Here is another remark made for his especial benefit.--There is a
natural tendency in many persons to run their adjectives together
in TRIADS, as I have heard them called,--thus: He was honorable,
courteous, and brave; she was graceful, pleasing, and virtuous.
Dr. Johnson is famous for this; I think it was Bulwer who said you
could separate a paper in the "Rambler" into three distinct essays.
Many of our writers show the same tendency,--my friend, the
Professor, especially. Some think it is in humble imitation of
Johnson,--some that it is for the sake of the stately sound only.
I don't think they get to the bottom of it. It is, I suspect, an
instinctive and involuntary effort of the mind to present a thought
or image with the THREE DIMENSIONS that belong to every solid,--an
unconscious handling of an idea as if it had length, breadth, and
thickness. It is a great deal easier to say this than to prove it,
and a great deal easier to dispute it than to disprove it. But
mind this: the more we observe and study, the wider we find the
range of the automatic and instinctive principles in body, mind,
and morals, and the narrower the limits of the self-determining
conscious movement.
--I have often seen piano-forte players and singers make such
strange motions over their instruments or song-books that I wanted
to laugh at them. "Where did our friends pick up all these fine
ecstatic airs?" I would say to myself. Then I would remember My
Lady in "Marriage a la Mode," and amuse myself with thinking how
affectation was the same thing in Hogarth's time and in our own.
But one day I bought me a Canary-bird and hung him up in a cage at
my window. By-and-by he found himself at home, and began to pipe
his little tunes; and there he was, sure enough, swimming and
waving about, with all the droopings and liftings and languishing
side-turnings of the head that I had laughed at. And now I should
like to ask, WHO taught him all this?--and me, through him, that
the foolish head was not the one swinging itself from side to side
and bowing and nodding over the music, but that other which was
passing its shallow and self-satisfied judgment on a creature made
of finer clay than the frame which carried that same head upon its
shoulders?
--Do you want an image of the human will, or the self-determining
principle, as compared with its prearranged and impassable
restrictions? A drop of water, imprisoned in a crystal; you may
see such a one in any mineralogical collection. One little fluid
particle in the crystalline prism of the solid universe!
--Weaken moral obligations?--No, not weaken, but define them. When
I preach that sermon I spoke of the other day, I shall have to lay
down some principles not fully recognized in some of your
text-books.
I should have to begin with one most formidable preliminary. You
saw an article the other day in one of the journals, perhaps, in
which some old Doctor or other said quietly that patients were very
apt to be fools and cowards. But a great many of the clergyman's
patients are not only fools and cowards, but also liars.
[Immense sensation at the table.--Sudden retirement of the angular
female in oxydated bombazine. Movement of adhesion--as they say in
the Chamber of Deputies--on the part of the young fellow they call
John. Falling of the old-gentleman-opposite's lower jaw
--(gravitation is beginning to get the better of him.) Our landlady
to Benjamin Franklin, briskly,--Go to school right off, there's a
good boy! Schoolmistress curious,--takes a quick glance at
divinity-student. Divinity-student slightly flushed draws his
shoulders back a little, as if a big falsehood--or truth--had hit
him in the forehead. Myself calm.]
--I should not make such a speech as that, you know, without having
pretty substantial indorsers to fall back upon, in case my credit
should be disputed. Will you run up stairs, Benjamin Franklin,
(for B. F. had NOT gone right off, of course,) and bring down a
small volume from the left upper corner of the right-hand shelves?
[Look at the precious little black, ribbed backed, clean-typed,
vellum-papered 32mo. "DESIDERII ERASMI COLLOQUIA. Amstelodami.
Typis Ludovici Elzevirii. 1650." Various names written on
title-page. Most conspicuous this: Gul. Cookeson E. Coll. Omn.
Anim. 1725. Oxon.
--O William Cookeson, of All-Souls College, Oxford,--then writing
as I now write,--now in the dust, where I shall lie,--is this line
all that remains to thee of earthly remembrance? Thy name is at
least once more spoken by living men;--is it a pleasure to thee?
Thou shalt share with me my little draught of immortality,--its
week, its month, its year,--whatever it may be,--and then we will
go together into the solemn archives of Oblivion's Uncatalogued
Library!]
--If you think I have used rather strong language, I shall have to
read something to you out of the book of this keen and witty
scholar,--the great Erasmus,--who "laid the egg of the Reformation
which Luther hatched." Oh, you never read his Naufragium, or
"Shipwreck," did you? Of course not; for, if you had, I don't
think you would have given me credit--or discredit--for entire
originality in that speech of mine. That men are cowards in the
contemplation of futurity he illustrates by the extraordinary
antics of many on board the sinking vessel; that they are fools, by
their praying to the sea, and making promises to bits of wood from
the true cross, and all manner of similar nonsense; that they are
fools, cowards, and liars all at once, by this story: I will put
it into rough English for you.--"I couldn't help laughing to hear
one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be heard, a
promise to Saint Christopher of Paris--the monstrous statue in the
great church there--that he would give him a wax taper as big as
himself. 'Mind what you promise!' said an acquaintance that stood
near him, poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for it, if
you sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, you
donkey!' said the fellow,--but softly, so that Saint Christopher
should not hear him,--'do you think I'm in earnest? If I once get
my foot on dry ground, catch me giving him so much as a tallow
candle!'"
Now, therefore, remembering that those who have been loudest in
their talk about the great subject of which we were speaking have
not necessarily been wise, brave, and true men, but, on the
contrary, have very often been wanting in one or two or all of the
qualities these words imply, I should expect to find a good many
doctrines current in the schools which I should be obliged to call
foolish, cowardly, and false.
--So you would abuse other people's beliefs, Sir, and yet not tell
us your own creed!--said the divinity-student, coloring up with a
spirit for which I liked him all the better.
--I have a creed,--I replied;--none better, and none shorter. It
is told in two words,--the two first of the Paternoster. And when
I say these words I mean them. And when I compared the human will
to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to DEFINE moral
obligations, and not weaken them, this was what I intended to
express: that the fluent, self-determining power of human beings
is a very strictly limited agency in the universe. The chief
planes of its enclosing solid are, of course, organization,
education, condition. Organization may reduce the power of the
will to nothing, as in some idiots; and from this zero the scale
mounts upwards by slight gradations. Education is only second to
nature. Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and
Timbuctoo to change places! Condition does less, but "Give me
neither poverty nor riches" was the prayer of Agur, and with good
reason. If there is any improvement in modern theology, it is in
getting out of the region of pure abstractions and taking these
every-day working forces into account. The great theological
question now heaving and throbbing in the minds of Christian men is
this:-
No, I wont talk about these things now. My remarks might be
repeated, and it would give my friends pain to see with what
personal incivilities I should be visited. Besides, what business
has a mere boarder to be talking about such things at a breakfast-
table? Let him make puns. To be sure, he was brought up among the
Christian fathers, and learned his alphabet out of a quarto
"Concilium Tridentinum." He has also heard many thousand
theological lectures by men of various denominations; and it is not
at all to the credit of these teachers, if he is not fit by this
time to express an opinion on theological matters.
I know well enough that there are some of you who had a great deal
rather see me stand on my head than use it for any purpose of
thought. Does not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two
letters a week, requesting him to. . . . ,--on the strength of some
youthful antic of his, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent
constituency of autograph-hunters to address him as a harlequin?
--Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting to laugh, and I like
to make you laugh, well enough, when I can. But then observe this:
if the sense of the ridiculous is one side of an impressible
nature, it is very well; but if that is all there is in a man, he
had better have been an ape at once, and so have stood at the head
of his profession. Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels
of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the
other water-power; that is all. I have often heard the Professor
talk about hysterics as being Nature's cleverest illustration of
the reciprocal convertibility of the two states of which these acts
are the manifestations; But you may see it every day in children;
and if you want to choke with stifled tears at sight of the
transition, as it shows itself in older years, go and see Mr. Blake
play JESSE RURAL.
It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to indulge his love
for the ridiculous. People laugh WITH him just so long as he
amuses them; but if he attempts to be serious, they must still have
their laugh, and so they laugh AT him. There is in addition,
however, a deeper reason for this than would at first appear. Do
you know that you feel a little superior to every man who makes you
laugh, whether by making faces or verses? Are you aware that you
have a pleasant sense of patronizing him, when you condescend so
far as to let him turn somersets, literal or literary, for your
royal delight? Now if a man can only be allowed to stand on a
dais, or raised platform, and look down on his neighbor who is
exerting his talent for him, oh, it is all right!--first-rate
performance!--and all the rest of the fine phrases. But if all at
once the performer asks the gentleman to come upon the floor, and,
stepping upon the platform, begins to talk down at him,--ah, that
wasn't in the programme!
I have never forgotten what happened when Sydney Smith--who, as
everybody knows, was an exceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman,
every inch of him--ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties of
Royalty. The "Quarterly," "so savage and tartarly," came down upon
him in the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a
"diner-out of the first water," in one of his own phrases; sneering
at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking
behind the anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to do to a
man of his position and genius, or to any decent person even.--If I
were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or three
facets to his mind, I would tell him by all means to keep his wit
in the background until after he had made a reputation by his more
solid qualities. And so to an actor: Hamlet first, and Bob Logic
afterwards, if you like; but don't think, as they say poor Liston
used to, that people will be ready to allow that you can do
anything great with Macbeth's dagger after flourishing about with
Paul Pry's umbrella. Do you know, too, that the majority of men
look upon all who challenge their attention,--for a while, at
least,--as beggars, and nuisances? They always try to get off as
cheaply as they can; and the cheapest of all things they can give a
literary man--pardon the forlorn pleasantry!--is the FUNNY-bone.
That is all very well so far as it goes, but satisfies no man, and
makes a good many angry, as I told you on a former occasion.
--Oh, indeed, no!--I am not ashamed to make you laugh,
occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk
which would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of
these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and
reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the
universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine ideas,
illustrated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long
before Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it is that we
always consider solemnity and the absence of all gay surprises and
encounter of wits as essential to the idea of the future life of
those whom we thus deprive of half their faculties and then call
BLESSED! There are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be
preparing themselves for that smileless eternity to which they look
forward, by banishing all gayety from their hearts and all
joyousness from their countenances. I meet one such in the street
not unfrequently, a person of intelligence and education, but who
gives me (and all that he passes) such a rayless and chilling look
of recognition,--something as if he were one of Heaven's assessors,
come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met,--that I have
sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent
cold, dating from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his
kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with it. Please tell
me, who taught her to play with it?
No, no!--give me a chance to talk to you, my fellow-boarders, and
you need not be afraid that I shall have any scruples about
entertaining you, if I can do it, as well as giving you some of my
serious thoughts, and perhaps my sadder fancies. I know nothing in
English or any other literature more admirable than that sentiment
of Sir Thomas Browne "EVERY MAN TRULY LIVES, SO LONG AS HE ACTS HIS
NATURE, OR SOME WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OF HIMSELF."
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand,
as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven,
we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,--but
we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is one very
sad thing in old friendships, to every mind that is really moving
onward. It is this: that one cannot help using his early friends
as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and
then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a string of
thought tied to him, and look--I am afraid with a kind of luxurious
and sanctimonious compassion--to see the rate at which the string
reels off, while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor fellow!
and we are dashing along with the white foam and bright sparkle at
our bows;--the ruffled bosom of prosperity and progress, with a
sprig of diamonds stuck in it! But this is only the sentimental
side of the matter; for grow we must, if we outgrow all that we
love.
Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the log, I beg you.
It is merely a smart way of saying that we cannot avoid measuring
our rate of movement by those with whom we have long been in the
habit of comparing ourselves; and when they once become stationary,
we can get our reckoning from them with painful accuracy. We see
just what we were when they were our peers, and can strike the
balance between that and whatever we may feel ourselves to be now.
No doubt we may sometimes be mistaken. If we change our last
simile to that very old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the
harbor and sailing in company for some distant region, we can get
what we want out of it. There is one of our companions;--her
streamers were torn into rags before she had got into the open sea,
then by and by her sails blew out of the ropes one after another,
the waves swept her deck, and as night came on we left her a
seeming wreck, as we flew under our pyramid of canvas. But lo! at
dawn she is still in sight,--it may be in advance of us. Some deep
ocean-current has been moving her on, strong, but silent,--yes,
stronger than these noisy winds that puff our sails until they are
swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cherubim. And when at last the
black steam-tug with the skeleton arms, which comes out of the mist
sooner or later and takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off
panting and groaning with her, it is to that harbor where all
wrecks are refitted, and where, alas! we, towering in our pride,
may never come.
So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of old friendships,
because we cannot help instituting comparisons between our present
and former selves by the aid of those who were what we were, but
are not what we are. Nothing strikes one more, in the race of
life, than to see how many give out in the first half of the
course. "Commencement day" always reminds me of the start for the
"Derby," when the beautiful high-bred three-year olds of the season
are brought up for trial. That day is the start, and life is the
race. Here we are at Cambridge, and a class is just "graduating."
Poor Harry! he was to have been there too, but he has paid forfeit;
step out here into the grass back of the church; ah! there it is:-
"HUNC LAPIDEM POSUERUNT
SOCII MOERENTES."
But this is the start, and here they are,--coats bright as silk,
and manes as smooth as eau lustrale can make them. Some of the
best of the colts are pranced round, a few minutes each, to show
their paces. What is that old gentleman crying about? and the old
lady by him, and the three girls, what are they all covering their
eyes for? Oh, that is THEIR colt which has just been trotted up on
the stage. Do they really think those little thin legs can do
anything in such a slashing sweepstakes as is coming off in these
next forty years? Oh, this terrible gift of second-sight that
comes to some of us when we begin to look through the silvered
rings of the arcus senilis!
TEN YEARS GONE. First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or
three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. CASSOCK, a
black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts
commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first
quarter. METEOR has pulled up.
TWENTY YEARS. Second corner turned. CASSOCK has dropped from the
front, and JUDEX, an iron-gray, has the lead. But look! how they
have thinned out! Down flat,--five,--six,--how many? They lie
still enough! they will not get up again in this race, be very
sure! And the rest of them, what a "tailing off"! Anybody can see
who is going to win,--perhaps.
THIRTY YEARS. Third corner turned. DIVES, bright sorrel, ridden
by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play fast; is
getting to be the favourite with many. But who is that other one
that has been lengthening his stride from the first, and now shows
close up to the front? Don't you remember the quiet brown colt
ASTEROID, with the star in his forehead? That is he; he is one of
the sort that lasts; look out for him! The black "colt," as we
used to call him, is in the background, taking it easily in a
gentle trot. There is one they used to call THE FILLY, on account
of a certain feminine air he had; well up, you see; the Filly is
not to be despised my boy!
FORTY YEARS. More dropping off,--but places much as before.
FIFTY YEARS. Race over. All that are on the course are coming in
at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the
winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that
turf where there is no more jockeying or straining for victory!
Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure
that these matter very little, if they have run as well as they
knew how!
--Did I not say to you a little while ago that the universe swam in
an ocean of similitudes and analogies? I will not quote Cowley, or
Burns, or Wordsworth, just now, to show you what thoughts were
suggested to them by the simplest natural objects, such as a flower
or a leaf; but I will read you a few lines, if you do not object,
suggested by looking at a section of one of those chambered shells
to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble
ourselves about the distinction between this and the Paper
Nautilus, the Argonauta of the ancients. The name applied to both
shows that each has long been compared to a ship, as you may see
more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the "Encyclopedia," to which
he refers. If you will look into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you
will find a figure of one of these shells, and a section of it.
The last will show you the series of enlarging compartments
successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the shell, which
is built in a widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this?
THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every clambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:-
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
CHAPTER V
A lyric conception--my friend, the Poet, said--hits me like a
bullet in the forehead. I have often had the blood drop from my
cheeks when it struck, and felt that I turned as white as death.
Then comes a creeping as of centipedes running down the spine,
--then a gasp and a great jump of the heart,--then a sudden flush and
a beating in the vessels of the head,--then a long sigh,--and the
poem is written.
It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write it so suddenly,
--I replied.
No,--said he,--far from it. I said written, but I did not say
COPIED. Every such poem has a soul and a body, and it is the body
of it, or the copy, that men read and publishers pay for. The soul
of it is born in an instant in the poet's soul. It comes to him a
thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet words,--words that
have loved each other from the cradle of the language, but have
never been wedded until now. Whether it will ever fully embody
itself in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain;
but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet turns pale
with it. It is enough to stun and scare anybody, to have a hot
thought come crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those
parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging
along in their regular sequences of association. No wonder the
ancients made the poetical impulse wholly external. [Greek text
which cannot be reproduced]. Goddess,--Muse,--divine afflatus,
--something outside always. _I_ never wrote any verses worth
reading. I can't. I am too stupid. If I ever copied any that
were worth reading, I was only a medium.
[I was talking all this time to our boarders, you understand,
--telling them what this poet told me. The company listened rather
attentively, I thought, considering the literary character of the
remarks.]
The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me if I ever read
anything better than Pope's "Essay on Man"? Had I ever perused
McFingal? He was fond of poetry when he was a boy,--his mother
taught him to say many little pieces,--he remembered one beautiful
hymn;--and the old gentleman began, in a clear, loud voice, for his
years,--
"The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens,"--
He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint flush ran up
beneath the thin white hairs that fell upon his cheek. As I looked
round, I was reminded of a show I once saw at the Museum,--the
Sleeping Beauty, I think they called it. The old man's sudden
breaking out in this way turned every face towards him, and each
kept his posture as if changed to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or
Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a
sentiment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high-
shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are
known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop
forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk,--the
waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy
footfall. Bridget, constituted for action, not for emotion, was
about to deposit a plate heaped with something upon the table, when
I saw the coarse arm stretched by my shoulder arrested,--motionless
as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she couldn't set the plate
down while the old gentleman was speaking!
He was quite silent after this, still wearing the slight flush on
his cheek. Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man
because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him
when his hand trembles! If they ever WERE there, they ARE there
still!
By and by we got talking again.--Does a poet love the verses
written through him, do you think, Sir?--said the divinity-student.
So long as they are warm from his mind, carry any of his animal
heat about them, _I_ KNOW he loves them,--I answered. When they
have had time to cool, he is more indifferent.
A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes,--said the young fellow
whom they call John.
The last words, only, reached the ear of the economically organized
female in black bombazine .--Buckwheat is skerce and high,--she
remarked. [Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady,--pays
nothing,--so she must stand by the guns and be ready to repel
boarders.]
I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I had some things
I wanted to say, and so, after waiting a minute, I began again.--I
don't think the poems I read you sometimes can be fairly
appreciated, given to you as they are in the green state.
--You don't know what I mean by the GREEN STATE? Well, then, I
will tell you. Certain things are good for nothing until they have
been kept a long while; and some are good for nothing until they
have been long kept and USED. Of the first, wine is the
illustrious and immortal example. Of those which must be kept and
used I will name three,--meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems. The
meerschaum is but a poor affair until it has burned a thousand
offerings to the cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without
complexion or flavor,--born of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but
colorless as pallida Mors herself. The fire is lighted in its
central shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad leaves of
the Great Vegetable had sucked up from an acre and curdled into a
drachm are diffused through its thirsting pores. First a
discoloration, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber
tint spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to her old
brown autumnal hue, you see,--as true in the fire of the meerschaum
as in the sunshine of October! And then the cumulative wealth of
its fragrant reminiscences! he who inhales its vapors takes a
thousand whiffs in a single breath; and one cannot touch it without
awakening the old joys that hang around it as the smell of flowers
clings to the dresses of the daughters of the house of Farina!
[Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for _I_ DO NOT, though I
have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked Pict
(of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk
and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on
his right check. On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest
silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little
box-wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth; I have
often compared it to a figure in Raphael's "Triumph of Galatea."
It came to me in an ancient shagreen case,--how old it is I do not
know,--but it must have been made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time.
If you are curious, you shall see it any day. Neither will I
pretend that I am so unused to the more perishable smoking
contrivance that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a
ground-swell on the Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that
fusiform, spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous
incombustibles, the CIGAR, so called, of the shops,--which to
"draw" asks the suction-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to
relish, the leathery palate of an old Silenus. I do not advise
you, young man, even if my illustration strike your fancy, to
consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe,
for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic
may strike deeper than you think for. I have seen the green leaf
of early promise grow brown before its time under such Nicotian
regimen, and thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly bought at
the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved.]
Violins, too,--the sweet old Amati!--the divine Stradivarius!
Played on by ancient maestros until the bow-hand lost its power and
the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate, young
enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his
inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his
monotonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold
virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till,
when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the
stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of
their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident
artists; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy
hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies
in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were
shut up in it; then again to the gentle dilettante who calmed it
down with easy melodies until it answered him softly as in the days
of the old maestros. And so given into our hands, its pores all
full of music; stained, like the meerschaum, through and through,
with the concentrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies which
have kindled and faded on its strings.
Now I tell you a poem must be kept AND USED, like a meerschaum, or
a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum;--the more
porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is
capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own
humanity,--its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its
aspirations, so as to be gradually stained through with a divine
secondary color derived from ourselves. So you see it must take
time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony with our nature,
by staining ourselves through every thought and image our being can
penetrate.
Then again as to the mere music of a new poem; why, who can expect
anything more from that than from the music of a violin fresh from
the maker's hands? Now you know very well that there are no less
than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These pieces are
strangers to each other, and it takes a century, more or less, to
make them thoroughly acquainted. At last they learn to vibrate in
harmony, and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as if it were
a great seed-capsule which had grown from a garden-bed in Cremona,
or elsewhere. Besides, the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty
years or so, but at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets
tolerably dry and comparatively resonant.
Don't you see that all this is just as true of a poem? Counting
each word as a piece, there are more pieces in an average copy of
verses than in a violin. The poet has forced all these words
together, and fastened them, and they don't understand it at first.
But let the poem be repeated aloud and murmured over in the mind's
muffled whisper often enough, and at length the parts become knit
together in such absolute solidarity that you could not change a
syllable without the whole world's crying out against you for
meddling with the harmonious fabric. Observe, too, how the drying
process takes place in the stuff of a poem just as in that of a
violin. Here is a Tyrolese fiddle that is just coming to its
hundredth birthday,--(Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760,)--the sap
is pretty well out of it. And here is the song of an old poet whom
Neaera cheated.--
"Nox erat, et coelo fulgebat Luna sereno
Inter minora sidera,
Cum tu magnorum numen laesura deorum
In verba jurabas mea."
Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these old dead Latin
phrases? Now I tell you that, every word fresh from the dictionary
brings with it a certain succulence; and though I cannot expect the
sheets of the "Pactolian," in which, as I told you, I sometimes
print my verses, to get so dry as the crisp papyrus that held those
words of Horatius Flaccus, yet you may be sure, that, while the
sheets are damp, and while the lines hold their sap, you can't
fairly judge of my performances, and that, if made of the true
stuff, they will ring better after a while.
[There was silence for a brief space, after my somewhat elaborate
exposition of these self-evident analogies. Presently A PERSON
turned towards me--I do not choose to designate the individual--and
said that he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good
"sahtisfahction."--I had, up to this moment, considered this
complimentary phrase as sacred to the use of secretaries of
lyceums, and, as it has been usually accompanied by a small
pecuniary testimonial, have acquired a certain relish for this
moderately tepid and unstimulating expression of enthusiasm. But
as a reward for gratuitous services, I confess I thought it a
little below that blood-heat standard which a man's breath ought to
have, whether silent, or vocal and articulate. I waited for a
favorable opportunity, however, before making the remarks which
follow.]
--There are single expressions, as I have told you already, that
fix a man's position for you before you have done shaking hands
with him. Allow me to expand a little. There are several things,
very slight in themselves, yet implying other things not so
unimportant. Thus, your French servant has devalise your premises
and got caught. Excusez, says the sergent-de-ville, as he politely
relieves him of his upper garments and displays his bust in the
full daylight. Good shoulders enough,--a little marked,--traces of
smallpox, perhaps,--but white. . . . . Crac! from the sergent-de-
ville's broad palm on the white shoulder! Now look! Vogue la
galere! Out comes the big red V--mark of the hot iron;--he had
blistered it out pretty nearly,--hadn't he?--the old rascal VOLEUR,
branded in the galleys at Marseilles! [Don't! What if he has got
something like this?--nobody supposes I INVENTED such a story.]
My man John, who used to drive two of those six equine females
which I told you I had owned,--for, look you, my friends, simple
though I stand here, I am one that has been driven in his
"kerridge,"--not using that term, as liberal shepherds do, for any
battered old shabby-genteel go-cart which has more than one wheel,
but meaning thereby a four-wheeled vehicle WITH A POLE,--my man
John, I say, was a retired soldier. He retired unostentatiously,
as many of Her Majesty's modest servants have done before and
since. John told me, that when an officer thinks he recognizes one
of these retiring heroes, and would know if he has really been in
the service, that he may restore him, if possible, to a grateful
country, he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply, "Strap!"
If he has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the
reprimand for its ill adjustment. The old word of command flashes
through his muscles, and his hand goes up in an instant to the
place where the strap used to be.
[I was all the time preparing for my grand coup, you understand;
but I saw they were not quite ready for it, and so continued,
--always in illustration of the general principle I had laid down.]
Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody thinks of. There was
a legend, that, when the Danish pirates made descents upon the
English coast, they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape
of Saxons, who would not let them go,--on the contrary, insisted on
their staying, and, to make sure of it, treated them as Apollo
treated Marsyas, or an Bartholinus has treated a fellow-creature in
his title-page, and, having divested them of the one essential and
perfectly fitting garment, indispensable in the mildest climates,
nailed the same on the church-door as we do the banns of marriage,
in terrorem.
[There was a laugh at this among some of the young folks; but as I
looked at our landlady, I saw that "the water stood in her eyes,"
as it did in Christiana's when the interpreter asked her about the
spider, and I fancied, but wasn't quite sure that the
schoolmistress blushed, as Mercy did in the same conversation, as
you remember.]
That sounds like a cock-and-bull-story,--said the young fellow whom
they call John. I abstained from making Hamlet's remark to
Horatio, and continued.
Not long since, the church-wardens were repairing and beautifying
an old Saxon church in a certain English village, and among other
things thought the doors should be attended to. One of them
particularly, the front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it
were, and as if it would be all the better for scraping. There
happened to be a microscopist in the village who had heard the old
pirate story, and he took it into his head to examine the crust on
this door. There was no mistake about it; it was a genuine
historical document, of the Ziska drum-head pattern,--a real cutis
humana, stripped from some old Scandinavian filibuster, and the
legend was true.
My friend, the Professor, settled an important historical and
financial question once by the aid of an exceedingly minute
fragment of a similar document. Behind the pane of plate-glass
which bore his name and title burned a modest lamp, signifying to
the passers-by that at all hours of the night the slightest favors
(or fevers) were welcome. A youth who had freely partaken of the
cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, following a moth-like
impulse very natural under the circumstances, dashed his fist at
the light and quenched the meek luminary,--breaking through the
plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now I don't want to go into
minutiae at table, you know, but a naked hand can no more go
through a pane of thick glass without leaving some of its cuticle,
to say the least, behind it, than a butterfly can go through a
sausage-machine without looking the worse for it. The Professor
gathered up the fragments of glass, and with them certain very
minute but entirely satisfactory documents which would have
identified and hanged any rogue in Christendom who had parted with
them.--The historical question, WHO DID IT? and the financial
question, WHO PAID FOR IT? were both settled before the new lamp
was lighted the next evening.
You see, my friends, what immense conclusions, touching our lives,
our fortunes, and our sacred honor, may be reached by means of very
insignificant premises. This is eminently true of manners and
forms of speech; a movement or a phrase often tells you all you
want to know about a person. Thus, "How's your health?" (commonly
pronounced haalth)--instead of, How do you do? or, How are you?
Or calling your little dark entry a "hall," and your old rickety
one-horse wagon a "kerridge." Or telling a person who has been trying
to please you that he has given you pretty good "sahtisfahction."
Or saying that you "remember of" such a thing, or that you have
been "stoppin"' at Deacon Somebody's,--and other such expressions.
One of my friends had a little marble statuette of Cupid in the
parlor of his country-house,--bow, arrows, wings, and all complete.
A visitor, indigenous to the region, looking pensively at the
figure, asked the lady of the house "if that was a statoo of her
deceased infant?" What a delicious, though somewhat voluminous
biography, social, educational, and aesthetic in that brief
question!
[Please observe with what Machiavellian astuteness I smuggled in
the particular offence which it was my object to hold up to my
fellow-boarders, without too personal an attack on the individual
at whose door it lay.]
That was an exceedingly dull person who made the remark, Ex pede
Herculem. He might as well have said, "From a peck of apples you
may judge of the barrel." Ex PEDE, to be sure! Read, instead, Ex
ungue minimi digiti pedis, Herculem, ejusque patrem, matrem, avos
et proavos, filios, nepotes et pronepotes! Talk to me about your
[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]! Tell me about Cuvier's
getting up a megatherium from a tooth, or Agassiz's drawing a
portrait of an undiscovered fish from a single scale! As the "O"
revealed Giotto,--as the one word "moi" betrayed the Stratford
atte-Bowe-taught Anglais,--so all a man's antecedents and
possibilities are summed up in a single utterance which gives at
once the gauge of his education and his mental organization.
Possibilities, Sir?--said the divinity-student; can't a man who
says Haow? arrive at distinction?
Sir,--I replied,--in a republic all things are possible. But the
man WITH A FUTURE has almost of necessity sense enough to see that
any odious trick of speech or manners must be got rid of. Doesn't
Sydney Smith say that a public man in England never gets over a
false quantity uttered in early life? OUR public men are in little
danger of this fatal misstep, as few of them are in the habit of
introducing Latin into their speeches,--for good and sufficient
reasons. But they are bound to speak decent English,--unless,
indeed, they are rough old campaigners, like General Jackson or
General Taylor; in which case, a few scars on Priscian's head are
pardoned to old fellows who have quite as many on their own, and a
constituency of thirty empires is not at all particular, provided
they do not swear in their Presidential Messages.
However, it is not for me to talk. I have made mistakes enough in
conversation and print. I never find them out until they are
stereotyped, and then I think they rarely escape me. I have no
doubt I shall make half a dozen slips before this breakfast is
over, and remember them all before another. How one does tremble
with rage at his own intense momentary stupidity about things he
knows perfectly well, and to think how he lays himself open to the
impertinences of the captatores verborum, those useful but humble
scavengers of the language, whose business it is to pick up what
might offend or injure, and remove it, hugging and feeding on it as
they go! I don't want to speak too slightingly of these verbal
critics;--how can I, who am so fond of talking about errors and
vulgarisms of speech? Only there is a difference between those
clerical blunders which almost every man commits, knowing better,
and that habitual grossness or meanness of speech which is
unendurable to educated persons, from anybody that wears silk or
broadcloth.
[I write down the above remarks this morning, January 26th, making
this record of the date that nobody may think it was written in
wrath, on account of any particular grievance suffered from the
invasion of any individual scarabaeus grammaticus.]
--I wonder if anybody ever finds fault with anything I say at this
table when it is repeated? I hope they do, I am sure. I should be
very certain that I had said nothing of much significance, if they
did not.
Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat
stone, which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found
it, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round
it, close to its edges,--and have you not, in obedience to a kind
of feeling that told you it had been lying there long enough,
insinuated your stick or your foot or your fingers under its edge
and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says to
herself, "It's done brown enough by this time"? What an odd
revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a
small community, the very existence of which you had not suspected,
until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members produced
by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened
down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and
ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or
horny-shelled,--turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them
softer, but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine
watches; (Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a
joint in a tavern bedstead, but she always has one of her
flat-pattern five timekeepers to slide into it;) black, glossy
crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of
four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, young
larvae, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in
the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned
and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded
community of creeping things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury
of legs--and some of them have a good many--rush round wildly,
butting each other and everything in their way, and end in a general
stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by
sunshine. NEXT YEAR you will find the grass growing tall and green
where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle
had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and
the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden
disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate
through their glorified being.
--The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very
familiar way,--at which I do not choose to take offence, but which
I sometimes think it necessary to repress,--that I was coming it
rather strong on the butterflies.
No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images,--the
butterfly as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The
grass is human nature borne down and bleached of all its colour by
it. The shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings that
thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms kept helpless by it.
He who turns the stone over is whosoever puts the staff of truth to
the old lying incubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious
face or a laughing one. The next year stands for the coming time.
Then shall the nature which had lain blanched and broken rise in
its full stature and native hues in the sunshine. Then shall God's
minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a new-born humanity.
Then shall beauty--Divinity taking outlines and color--light upon
the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the beatified spirit
rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor grub,
which would never have found wings, had not the stone been lifted.
You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a
terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population
that dwells under it.
--Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of
somebody or other. As soon as his breath comes back, he very
probably begins to expend it in hard words. These are the best
evidence a man can have that he has said something it was time to
say. Dr. Johnson was disappointed in the effect of one of his
pamphlets. "I think I have not been attacked enough for it," he
said;--"attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard
unless it rebounds."
--If a fellow attacked my opinions in print would I reply? Not I.
Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long
ago called THE HYDROSTATIC PARADOX OF CONTROVERSY?
Don't know what that means?--Well, I will tell you. You know,
that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a
pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would
stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy
equalizes fools and wise men in the same way,--AND THE FOOLS KNOW
IT.
--No, but I often read what they say about other people. There are
about a dozen phrases which all come tumbling along together, like
the tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the
bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows.
If you get one, you get the whole lot.
What are they?--Oh, that depends a good deal on latitude and
longitude. Epithets follow the isothermal lines pretty accurately.
Grouping them in two families, one finds himself a clever, genial,
witty, wise, brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished,
celebrated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and first
writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked, pert, shallow,
ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black-hearted outcast, and disgrace
to civilization.
What do I think determines the set of phrases a man gets?--Well, I
should say a set of influences something like these:---1st.
Relationships, political, religious, social, domestic. 2d.
Oyster, in the form of suppers given to gentlemen connected with
criticism. I believe in the school, the college, and the clergy;
but my sovereign logic, for regulating public opinion--which means
commonly the opinion of half a dozen of the critical gentry--is the
following MAJOR PROPOSITION. Oysters au naturel. Minor
proposition. The same "scalloped." Conclusion. That--(here
insert entertainer's name) is clever, witty, wise, brilliant,--and
the rest.
--No, it isn't exactly bribery. One man has oysters, and another
epithets. It is an exchange of hospitalities; one gives a "spread"
on linen, and the other on paper,--that is all. Don't you think
you and I should be apt to do just so, if we were in the critical
line? I am sure I couldn't resist the softening influences of
hospitality. I don't like to dine out, you know,--I dine so well
at our own table, [our landlady looked radiant,] and the company is
so pleasant [a rustling movement of satisfaction among the
boarders]; but if I did partake of a man's salt, with such
additions as that article of food requires to make it palatable, I
could never abuse him, and if I had to speak of him, I suppose I
should hang my set of jingling epithets round him like a string of
sleigh-bells. Good feeling helps society to make liars of most of
us,--not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of truth that
its sharp corners get terribly rounded. I love truth as chiefest
among the virtues; I trust it runs in my blood; but I would never
be a critic, because I know I could not always tell it. I might
write a criticism of a book that happened to please me; that is
another matter.
--Listen, Benjamin Franklin! This is for you, and such others of
tender age as you may tell it to.
When we are as yet small children, long before the time when those
two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to
us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and
in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless
ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold--TRUTH. The
spheres are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark
crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a
certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three
letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered very probably
clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in
the world; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the
child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they have a
great talent for standing still, and always keep right side up.
But very soon the young philosopher finds that things which roll so
easily are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get out
of his way when he most wants them, while he always knows where to
find the others, which stay where they are left. Thus he learns
--thus we learn--to drop the streaked and speckled globes of
falsehood and to hold fast the white angular blocks of truth. But
then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last of all
Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth must ROLL, or nobody can
do anything with it; and so the first with her coarse rasp, and the
second with her broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve,
do so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white cubes of
truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by use, it becomes
hard to tell them from the rolling spheres of falsehood.
The schoolmistress was polite enough to say that she was pleased
with this, and that she would read it to her little flock the next
day. But she should tell the children, she said, that there were
better reasons for truth than could be found in mere experience of
its convenience and the inconvenience of lying.
Yes,--I said,--but education always begins through the senses, and
works up to the idea of absolute right and wrong. The first thing
the child has to learn about this matter is, that lying is
unprofitable,--afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity
of the universe.
--Do I think that the particular form of lying often seen in
newspapers, under the title, "From our Foreign Correspondent," does
any harm?--Why, no,--I don't know that it does. I suppose it
doesn't really deceive people any more than the "Arabian Nights" or
"Gulliver's Travels" do. Sometimes the writers compile TOO
carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geographies, and
stories out of the penny papers, so as to mislead those who are
desirous of information. I cut a piece out of one of the papers,
the other day, which contains a number of improbabilities, and, I
suspect, misstatements. I will send up and get it for you, if you
would like to hear it.--Ah, this is it; it is headed
"OUR SUMATRA CORRESPONDENCE.
"This island is now the property of the Stamford family,--having
been won, it is said, in a raffle, by Sir--Stamford, during the
stock-gambling mania of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this
gentleman may be found in an interesting series of questions
(unfortunately not yet answered) contained in the 'Notes and
Queries.' This island is entirely surrounded by the ocean, which
here contains a large amount of saline substance, crystallizing in
cubes remarkable for their symmetry, and frequently displays on its
surface, during calm weather, the rainbow tints of the celebrated
South-Sea bubbles. The summers are oppressively hot, and the
winters very probably cold; but this fact cannot be ascertained
precisely, as, for some peculiar reason, the mercury in these
latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern regions, and thus the
thermometer is rendered useless in winter.
"The principal vegetable productions of the island are the pepper
tree and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper being very abundantly
produced, a benevolent society was organized in London during the
last century for supplying the natives with vinegar and oysters, as
an addition to that delightful condiment. [Note received from Dr.
D. P.] It is said, however, that, as the oysters were of the kind
called NATIVES in England, the natives of Sumatra, in obedience to
a natural instinct, refused to touch them, and confined themselves
entirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were brought over.
This information was received from one of the oldest inhabitants, a
native himself, and exceedingly fond of missionaries. He is said
also to be very skilful in the CUISINE peculiar to the island.
"During the season of gathering the pepper, the persons employed
are subject to various incommodities, the chief of which is violent
and long-continued sternutation, or sneezing. Such is the
vehemence of these attacks, that the unfortunate subjects of them
are often driven backwards for great distances at immense speed, on
the well-known principle of the aeolipile. Not being able to see
where they are going, these poor creatures dash themselves to
pieces against the rocks or are precipitated over the cliffs and
thus many valuable lives are lost annually. As, during the whole
pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this stimulant, they
become exceedingly irritable. The smallest injury is resented with
ungovernable rage. A young man suffering from the PEPPER-FEVER as
it is called, cudgelled another most severely for appropriating a
superannuated relative of trifling value, and was only pacified by
having a present made him of a pig of that peculiar species of
swine called the Peccavi by the Catholic Jews, who, it is well
known, abstain from swine's flesh in imitation of the Mahometan
Buddhists.
"The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its branches are well known to
Europe and America under the familiar name of maccaroni. The
smaller twigs are called vermicelli. They have a decided animal
flavor, as may be observed in the soups containing them.
Maccaroni, being tubular, is the favorite habitat of a very
dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly ferocious by being
boiled. The government of the island, therefore, never allows a
stick of it to be exported without being accompanied by a piston
with which its cavity may at any time be thoroughly swept out.
These are commonly lost or stolen before the maccaroni arrives
among us. It therefore always contains many of these insects,
which, however, generally die of old age in the shops, so that
accidents from this source are comparatively rare.
"The fruit of the bread-tree consists principally of hot rolls.
The buttered-muffin variety is supposed to be a hybrid with the
cocoa-nut palm, the cream found on the milk of the cocoa-nut
exuding from the hybrid in the shape of butter, just as the ripe
fruit is splitting, so as to fit it for the tea-table, where it is
commonly served up with cold"--
--There,--I don't want to read any more of it. You see that many
of these statements are highly improbable.--No, I shall not mention
the paper.--No, neither of them wrote it, though it reminds me of
the style of these popular writers. I think the fellow who wrote
it must have been reading some of their stories, and got them mixed
up with his history and geography. I don't suppose HE lies;--he
sells it to the editor, who knows how many squares off "Sumatra"
is. The editor, who sells it to the public--By the way, the papers
have been very civil haven't they?--to the--the what d'ye call it?
--"Northern Magazine,"--isn't it?--got up by some of those
Come-outers, down East, as an organ for their local peculiarities.
--The Professor has been to see me. Came in, glorious, at about
twelve o'clock, last night. Said he had been with "the boys." On
inquiry, found that "the boys," were certain baldish and grayish
old gentlemen that one sees or hears of in various important
stations of society. The Professor is one of the same set, but he
always talks as if he had been out of college about ten years,
whereas. . . [Each of these dots was a little nod, which the
company understood, as the reader will, no doubt.] He calls them
sometimes "the boys," and sometimes "the old fellows." Call him by
the latter title, and see how he likes it.--Well, he came in last
night glorious, as I was saying. Of course I don't mean vinously
exalted; he drinks little wine on such occasions, and is well known
to all the Peters and Patricks as the gentleman who always has
indefinite quantities of black tea to kill any extra glass of red
claret he may have swallowed. But the Professor says he always
gets tipsy on old memories at these gatherings. He was, I forget
how many years old when he went to the meeting; just turned of
twenty now,--he said. He made various youthful proposals to me,
including a duet under the landlady's daughter's window. He had
just learned a trick, he said, of one of "the boys," of getting a
splendid bass out of a door-panel by rubbing it with the palm of
his hand. Offered to sing "The sky is bright," accompanying
himself on the front-door, if I would go down and help in the
chorus. Said there never was such a set of fellows as the old boys
of the set he has been with. Judges, mayors, Congress-men, Mr.
Speakers, leaders in science, clergymen better than famous, and
famous too, poets by the half-dozen, singers with voices like
angels, financiers, wits, three of the best laughers in the
Commonwealth, engineers, agriculturists,--all forms of talent and
knowledge he pretended were represented in that meeting. Then he
began to quote Byron about Santa Croce, and maintained that he
could "furnish out creation" in all its details from that set of
his. He would like to have the whole boodle of them, (I
remonstrated against this word, but the Professor said it was a
diabolish good word, and he would have no other,) with their wives
and children, shipwrecked on a remote island, just to see how
splendidly they would reorganize society. They could build a
city,--they have done it; make constitutions and laws; establish
churches and lyceums; teach and practise the healing art; instruct
in every department; found observatories; create commerce and
manufactures; write songs and hymns, and sing 'em, and make
instruments to accompany the songs with; lastly, publish a
journal almost as good as the "Northern Magazine," edited by the
Come-outers. There was nothing they were not up to, from a
christening to a hanging; the last, to be sure, could never be called
for, unless some stranger got in among them.
--I let the Professor talk as long as he liked; it didn't make much
difference to me whether it was all truth, or partly made up of
pale Sherry and similar elements. All at once he jumped up and
said,--
Don't you want to hear what I just read to the boys?
I have had questions of a similar character asked me before,
occasionally. A man of iron mould might perhaps say, No! I am not
a man of iron mould, and said that I should be delighted.
The Professor then read--with that slightly sing-song cadence which
is observed to be common in poets reading their own verses--the
following stanzas; holding them at a focal distance of about two
feet and a half, with an occasional movement back or forward for
better adjustment, the appearance of which has been likened by some
impertinent young folks to that of the act of playing on the
trombone. His eyesight was never better; I have his word for it.
MARE RUBRUM.
Flash out a stream of blood-red wine!--
For I would drink to other days;
And brighter shall their memory shine,
Seen flaming through its crimson blaze.
The roses die, the summers fade;
But every ghost of boyhood's dream
By Nature's magic power is laid
To sleep beneath this blood-red stream.
It filled the purple grapes that lay
And drank the splendors of the sun
Where the long summer's cloudless day
Is mirrored in the broad Garonne;
It pictures still the bacchant shapes
That saw their hoarded sunlight shed,--
The maidens dancing on the grapes,--
Their milk-white ankles splashed with red.
Beneath these waves of crimson lie,
In rosy fetters prisoned fast,
Those flitting shapes that never die,
The swift-winged visions of the past.
Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim,
Each shadow rends its flowery chain,
Springs in a bubble from its brim
And walks the chambers of the brain.
Poor Beauty! time and fortune's wrong
No form nor feature may withstand,--
Thy wrecks are scattered all along,
Like emptied sea-shells on the sand;--
Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain,
The dust restores each blooming girl,
As if the sea-shells moved again
Their glistening lips of pink and pearl.
Here lies the home of school-boy life,
With creaking stair and wind-swept hall,
And, scarred by many a truant knife,
Our old initials on the wall;
Here rest--their keen vibrations mute--
The shout of voices known so well,
The ringing laugh, the wailing flute,
The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell.
Here, clad in burning robes, are laid
Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed;
And here those cherished forms have strayed
We miss awhile, and call them dead.
What wizard fills the maddening glass
What soil the enchanted clusters grew?
That buried passions wake and pass
In beaded drops of fiery dew?
Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine,--
Our hearts can boast a warmer grow,
Filled from a vantage more divine,--
Calmed, but not chilled by winter's snow!
To-night the palest wave we sip
Rich as the priceless draught shall be
That wet the bride of Cana's lip,--
The wedding wine of Galilee!
CHAPTER VI
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
--I think, Sir,--said the divinity-student,--you must intend that
for one of the sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Boston you were
speaking of the other day.
I thank you, my young friend,--was my reply,--but I must say
something better than that, before I could pretend to fill out the
number.
--The schoolmistress wanted to know how many of these sayings there
were on record, and what, and by whom said.
--Why, let us see,--there is that one of Benjamin Franklin, "the
great Bostonian," after whom this lad was named. To be sure, he
said a great many wise things,--and I don't feel sure he didn't
borrow this,--he speaks as if it were old. But then he applied it
so neatly!--
"He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you
another than he whom you yourself have obliged."
Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my
friend, the Historian, in one of his flashing moments:-
"Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its
necessaries."
To these must certainly be added that other saying of one of the
wittiest of men:-
"Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris."--
The divinity-student looked grave at this, but said nothing.
The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she didn't think the wit
meant any irreverence. It was only another way of saying, Paris is
a heavenly place after New York or Boston.
A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with the young fellow they
call John,--evidently a stranger,--said there was one more wise
man's saying that he had heard; it was about our place, but he
didn't know who said it.--A civil curiosity was manifested by the
company to hear the fourth wise saying. I heard him distinctly
whispering to the young fellow who brought him to dinner, SHALL I
TELL IT? To which the answer was, GO AHEAD!--Well,--he said,--this
was what I heard:-
"Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't
pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
straightened out for a crowbar."
Sir,--said I,--I am gratified with your remark. It expresses with
pleasing vivacity that which I have sometimes heard uttered with
malignant dulness. The satire of the remark is essentially true of
Boston,--and of all other considerable--and inconsiderable--places
with which I have had the privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys
think London is the only place in the world. Frenchmen--you
remember the line about Paris, the Court, the World, etc.---I
recollect well, by the way, a sign in that city which ran thus:
"Hotel l'Univers et des Etats Unis"; and as Paris IS the universe
to a Frenchman, of course the United States are outside of it.
--"See Naples and then die."--It is quite as bad with smaller places.
I have been about, lecturing, you know, and have found the
following propositions to hold true of all of them.
1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of
each and every town or city.
2. If more than fifty years have passed since its foundation, it
is affectionately styled by the inhabitants the "GOOD OLD town of"
--(whatever its name may happen to be.)
3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to
listen to a stranger is invariably declared to be a "remarkably
intelligent audience."
4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to
longevity.
5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the
world. (One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember,
sent short pieces to the "Pactolian" some time since, which were
"respectfully declined.")
Boston is just like other places of its size;--only perhaps,
considering its excellent fish-market, paid fire-department,
superior monthly publications, and correct habit of spelling the
English language, it has some right to look down on the mob of
cities. I'll tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the
real offence of Boston. It drains a large water-shed of its
intellect, and will not itself be drained. If it would only send
away its first-rate men, instead of its second-rate ones, (no
offence to the well-known exceptions, of which we are always
proud,) we should be spared such epigrammatic remarks as that which
the gentleman has quoted. There can never be a real metropolis in
this country, until the biggest centre can drain the lesser ones of
their talent and wealth.--I have observed, by the way, that the
people who really live in two great cities are by no means so
jealous of each other, as are those of smaller cities situated
within the intellectual basin, or suction-range, of one large one,
of the pretensions of any other. Don't you see why? Because their
promising young author and rising lawyer and large capitalist have
been drained off to the neighboring big city,--their prettiest girl
has been exported to the same market; all their ambition points
there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes from there. I
hate little toad-eating cities.
--Would I be so good as to specify any particular example?--Oh,--an
example? Did you ever see a bear-trap? Never? Well, shouldn't
you like to see me put my foot into one? With sentiments of the
highest consideration I must beg leave to be excused.
Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. If they have an
old church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here
and there an old dwelling with the second story projecting, (for
the convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front-door
with their tomahawks,)--if they have, scattered about, those mighty
square houses built something more than half a century ago, and
standing like architectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium
of wealth, whose refluent wave has left them as its monument,--if
they have gardens with elbowed apple-trees that push their branches
over the high board-fence and drop their fruit on the side-walk,
--if they have a little grass in the side-streets, enough to betoken
quiet without proclaiming decay,--I think I could go to pieces,
after my life's work were done, in one of those tranquil places, as
sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be rocked to sleep in.
I visit such spots always with infinite delight. My friend, the
Poet, says, that rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the
imaginative and reflective faculties. Let a man live in one of
these old quiet places, he says, and the wine of his soul, which is
kept thick and turbid by the rattle of busy streets, settles, and,
as you hold it up, you may see the sun through it by day and the
stars by night.
--Do I think that the little villages have the conceit of the great
towns?--I don't believe there is much difference. You know how
they read Pope's line in the smallest town in our State of
Massachusetts?--Well, they read it
"All are but parts of one stupendous HULL!"
--Every person's feelings have a front-door and a side-door by
which they may be entered. The front-door is on the street. Some
keep it always open; some keep it latched; some, locked; some,
bolted,--with a chain that will let you peep in, but not get in;
and some nail it up, so that nothing can pass its threshold. This
front-door leads into a passage which opens into an ante-room, and
this into the inferior apartments. The side-door opens at once
into the sacred chambers.
There is almost always at least one key to this side-door. This is
carried for years hidden in a mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers,
sisters, and friends, often, but by no means so universally, have
duplicates of it. The wedding-ring conveys a right to one; alas,
if none is given with it!
If nature or accident has put one of these keys into the hands of a
person who has the torturing instinct, I can only solemnly
pronounce the words that Justice utters over its doomed victim,
--THE LORD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL! You will probably go mad within
a reasonable time,--or, if you are a man, run off and die with your
head on a curb-stone, in Melbourne or San Francisco,--or, if you
are a woman, quarrel and break your heart, or turn into a pale,
jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it were alive, or play
some real life-tragedy or other.
Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys of the
side-door. The fact of possessing one renders those even who are
dear to you very terrible at times. You can keep the world out from
your front-door, or receive visitors only when you are ready for
them; but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain grades of
intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and
in any mood. Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system,
and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones,
--touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his
instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this
nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of
performance. Married life is the school in which the most
accomplished artists in this department are found. A delicate woman
is the best instrument; she has such a magnificent compass of
sensibilities! From the deep inward moan which follows pressure on
the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of taste
are struck with a crashing sweep, is a range which no other
instrument possesses. A few exercises on it daily at home fit a man
wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he
returns from them. No stranger can get a great many notes of torture
out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well,--parent,
child, brother, sister, intimate. Be very careful to whom you give a
side-door key; too many have them already.
--You remember the old story of the tender-hearted man, who placed
a frozen viper in his bosom, and was stung by it when it became
thawed? If we take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better
that it should sting us and we should die than that its chill
should slowly steal into our hearts; warm it we never can! I have
seen faces of women that were fair to look upon, yet one could see
that the icicles were forming round these women's hearts. I knew
what freezing image lay on the white breasts beneath the laces!
A very simple INTELLECTUAL mechanism answers the necessities of
friendship, and even of the most intimate relations of life. If a
watch tells us the hour and the minute, we can be content to carry
it about with us for a life-time, though it has no second-hand and
is not a repeater, nor a musical watch,--though it is not enamelled
nor jewelled,--in short, though it has little beyond the wheels
required for a trustworthy instrument, added to a good face and a
pair of useful hands. The more wheels there are in a watch or a
brain, the more trouble they are to take care of. The movements of
exaltation which belong to genius are egotistic by their very
nature. A calm, clear mind, not subject to the spasms and crises
which are so often met with in creative or intensely perceptive
natures, is the best basis for love or friendship.--Observe, I am
talking about MINDS. I won't say, the more intellect, the less
capacity for loving; for that would do wrong to the understanding
and reason;--but, on the other hand, that the brain often runs away
with the heart's best blood, which gives the world a few pages of
wisdom or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one other heart
happy, I have no question.
If one's intimate in love or friendship cannot or does not share
all one's intellectual tastes or pursuits, that is a small matter.
Intellectual companions can be found easily in men and books.
After all, if we think of it, most of the world's loves and
friendships have been between people that could not read nor spell.
But to radiate the heat of the affections into a clod which absorbs
all that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the sunshine of
smiles or the pressure of hand or lip,--this is the great martyrdom
of sensitive beings,--most of all in that perpetual auto da fe
where young womanhood is the sacrifice.
--You noticed, perhaps, what I just said about the loves and
friendships of illiterate persons,--that is, of the human race,
with a few exceptions here and there. I like books,--I was born
and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into
their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't think
I undervalue them either as companions or as instructors. But I
can't help remembering that the world's great men have not commonly
been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. The Hebrew
patriarchs had small libraries, I think, if any; yet they represent
to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, and, I think,
if we could ask in Abraham to dine with us men of letters next
Saturday, we should feel honored by his company.
What I wanted to say about books is this: that there are times in
which every active mind feels itself above any and all human books.
--I think a man must have a good opinion of himself, Sir,--said the
divinity-student,--who should feel himself above Shakspeare at any
time.
My young friend,--I replied,--the man who is never conscious of a
state of feeling or of intellectual effort entirely beyond
expression by any form of words whatsoever is a mere creature of
language. I can hardly believe there are any such men. Why, think
for a moment of the power of music. The nerves that make us alive
to it spread out (so the Professor tells me) in the most sensitive
region of the marrow just where it is widening to run upwards into
the hemispheres. It has its seat in the region of sense rather
than of thought. Yet it produces a continuous and, as it were,
logical sequence of emotional and intellectual changes; but how
different from trains of thought proper! how entirely beyond the
reach of symbols!--Think of human passions as compared with all
phrases! Did you ever hear of a man's growing lean by the reading
of "Romeo and Juliet," or blowing his brains out because Desdemona
was maligned? There are a good many symbols, even, that are more
expressive than words. I remember a young wife who had to part
with her husband for a time. She did not write a mournful poem;
indeed, she was a silent person, and perhaps hardly said a word
about it; but she quietly turned of a deep orange color with
jaundice. A great many people in this world have but one form of
rhetoric for their profoundest experiences,--namely, to waste away
and die. When a man can READ, his paroxysm of feeling is passing.
When he can READ, his thought has slackened its hold.--You talk
about reading Shakspeare, using him as an expression for the
highest intellect, and you wonder that any common person should be
so presumptuous as to suppose his thought can rise above the text
which lies before him. But think a moment. A child's reading of
Shakspeare is one thing, and Coleridge's or Schlegel's reading of
him is another. The saturation-point of each mind differs from
that of every other. But I think it is as true for the small mind
which can only take up a little as for the great one which takes up
much, that the suggested trains of thought and feeling ought always
to rise above--not the author, but the reader's mental version of
the author, whoever he may be.
I think most readers of Shakspeare sometimes find themselves thrown
into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music. Then
they may drop the book, to pass at once into the region of thought
without words. We may happen to be very dull folks, you and I, and
probably are, unless there is some particular reason to suppose the
contrary. But we get glimpses now and then of a sphere of
spiritual possibilities, where we, dull as we are now, may sail in
vast circles round the largest compass of earthly intelligences.
--I confess there are times when I feel like the friend I mentioned
to you some time ago,--I hate the very sight of a book. Sometimes
it becomes almost a physical necessity to talk out what is in the
mind, before putting anything else into it. It is very bad to have
thoughts and feelings, which were meant to come out in talk, STRIKE
IN, as they say of some complaints that ought to show outwardly.
I always believed in life rather than in books. I suppose every
day of earth, with its hundred thousand deaths and something more
of births,--with its loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, its
pangs and blisses, has more of humanity in it than all the books
that were ever written, put together. I believe the flowers
growing at this moment send up more fragrance to heaven than was
ever exhaled from all the essences ever distilled.
--Don't I read up various matters to talk about at this table or
elsewhere?--No, that is the last thing I would do. I will tell you
my rule. Talk about those subjects you have had long in your mind,
and listen to what others say about subjects you have studied but
recently. Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used, till they
are seasoned.
--Physiologists and metaphysicians have had their attention turned
a good deal of late to the automatic and involuntary actions of the
mind. Put an idea into your intelligence and leave it there an
hour, a day, a year, without ever having occasion to refer to it.
When, at last, you return to it, you do not find it as it was when
acquired. It has domiciliated itself, so to speak,--become at
home,--entered into relations with your other thoughts, and
integrated itself with the whole fabric of the mind.--Or take a
simple and familiar example; Dr. Carpenter has adduced it. You
forget a name, in conversation,--go on talking, without making any
effort to recall it,--and presently the mind evolves it by its own
involuntary and unconscious action, while you were pursuing another
train of thought, and the name rises of itself to your lips.
There are some curious observations I should like to make about the
mental machinery, but I think we are getting rather didactic.
--I should be gratified, if Benjamin Franklin would let me know
something of his progress in the French language. I rather liked
that exercise he read us the other day, though I must confess I
should hardly dare to translate it, for fear some people in a
remote city where I once lived might think I was drawing their
portraits.
--Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. I don't know whether
the piece I mentioned from the French author was intended simply as
Natural History, or whether there was not a little malice in his
description. At any rate, when I gave my translation to B. F. to
turn back again into French, one reason was that I thought it would
sound a little bald in English, and some people might think it was
meant to have some local bearing or other,--which the author, of
course, didn't mean, inasmuch as he could not be acquainted with
anything on this side of the water.
[The above remarks were addressed to the school-mistress, to whom
I handed the paper after looking it over. The divinity-student
came and read over her shoulder,--very curious, apparently, but his
eyes wandered, I thought. Fancying that her breathing was somewhat
hurried and high, or thoracic, as my friend, the Professor, calls
it, I watched her a little more closely.--It is none of my
business.--After all, it is the imponderables that move the world,
--heat, electricity, love. Habet?]
This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made into boarding-school
French, such as you see here; don't expect too much;--the mistakes
give a relish to it, I think.
LES SOCIETES POLYPHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUES.
Ces Societes la sont une Institution pour suppleer aux besoins
d'esprit et de coeur de ces individus qui ont survecu a leurs
emotions a l'egard du beau sexe, et qui n'ont pas la distraction de
l'habitude de boire.
Pour devenir membre d'une de ces Societes, on doit avoir le moins
de cheveux possible. S'il y en reste plusieurs qui resistent aux
depilatoires naturelles et autres, on doit avoir quelques
connaissances, n'importe dans quel genre. Des le moment qu'on
ouvre la porte de la Societe, on a un grand interet dans toutes les
choses dont on ne sait rien. Ainsi, un microscopiste demontre un
nouveau FLEXOR du TARSE d'un MELOLONTHA VULGARIS. Douze savans
improvises, portans des besicles, et qui ne connaissent rien des
insectes, si ce n'est les morsures du CULEX, se precipitent sur
l'instrument, et voient--une grande bulle d'air, dont ils
s'emerveillent avec effusion. Ce qui est un spectacle plein
d'instruction--pour ceux qui ne sont pas de ladite Societe. Tous
les membres regardent les chimistes en particulier avec un air
d'intelligence parfaite pendant qu'ils prouvent dans un discours
d'une demiheure que O6 N3 H5 C6 etc. font quelque chose qui n'est
bonne a rien, mais qui probablement a une odeur tres desagreable,
selon l'habitude des produits chimiques. Apres cela vient un
mathematicien qui vous bourre avec des a+b et vous rapporte enfin
un x+y, dont vous n'avex pas besoin et qui ne change nullement vos
relations avec la vie. Un naturaliste vous parle des formations
speciales des animaux excessivement inconnus, dont vous n'avez
jamais soupconne l'existence. Ainsi il vous decrit les FOLLICULES
de L'APPENDIX VERMIFORMIS d'un DZIGGUETAI. Vous ne savez pas ce
que c'est qu'un FOLLICULE. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un
APPENDIX UERMIFORMIS. Vous n'avez jamais entendu parler du
DZIGGUETAI. Ainsi vous gagnez toutes ces connaisances a la fois,
qui s'attachent a votre esprit comme l'eau adhere aux plumes d'un
canard. On connait toutes les langues EX OFFICIO en devenant
membre d'une de ces Societes. Ainsi quand on entend lire un Essai
sur les dialectes Tchutchiens, on comprend tout cela de suite, et
s'instruit enormement.
Il y a deux especes d'individus qu'on trouve toujours a ces
Societes: 1 (degree) Le membre a questions; 2 (degree) Le membre a
"Bylaws."
La QUESTION est une specialite. Celui qui en fait metier ne fait
jamais des reponses. La question est une maniere tres commode de
dire les choses suivantes: "Me voila! Je ne suis pas fossil,
moi,--je respire encore! J'ai des idees,--voyez mon intelligence!
Vous ne croyiez pas, vous autres, que je savais quelque chose de
cela! Ah, nous avons un peu de sagacite, voyez vous! Nous ne
sommes nullement la bete qu'on pense!"--LE FAISEUR DE QUESTIONS
DONNE PEU D'ATTENTION AUX REPONSES QU'ON FAIT; CE N'EST PAS LA DANS
SA SPECIALITE.
Le membre a "Bylaws" est le bouchon de toutes les emotions
mousseuses et genereuses qui se montrent dans la Societe. C'est un
empereur manque,--un tyran a la troiseme trituration. C'est un
esprit dur, borne, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit dans les
grandeurs, selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne l'aime pas dans
la Societe, mais on le respecte et on le craint. Il n'y a qu'un
mot pour ce membre audessus de "Bylaws." Ce mot est pour lui ce
que l'Om est aux Hundous. C'est sa religion; il n'y a rien audela.
Ce mot la c'est la CONSTITUTION!
Lesdites Societes publient des feuilletons de tems en tems. On les
trouve abandonnes a sa porte, nus comme des enfans nouveaunes,
faute de membrane cutanee, ou meme papyracee. Si on aime la
botanique, on y trouve une memoire sur les coquilles; si on fait
des etudes zoologiques, on square trouve un grand tas de q' [square
root of minus one], ce qui doit etre infiniment plus commode que
les encyclopedies. Ainsi il est clair comme la metaphysique qu'on
doit devenir membre d'une Societe telle que nous decrivons.
Recette pour le Depilatoire Physiophilosophique
Chaux vive lb. ss. Eau bouillante Oj.
Depilez avec. Polissez ensuite.
I told the boy that his translation into French was creditable to
him; and some of the company wishing to hear what there was in the
piece that made me smile, I turned it into English for them, as
well as I could, on the spot.
The landlady's daughter seemed to be much amused by the idea that a
depilatory could take the place of literary and scientific
accomplishments; she wanted me to print the piece, so that she
might send a copy of it to her cousin in Mizzourah; she didn't
think he'd have to do anything to the outside of his head to get
into any of the societies; he had to wear a wig once, when he
played a part in a tabullo.
No,--said I,--I shouldn't think of printing that in English. I'll
tell you why. As soon as you get a few thousand people together in
a town, there is somebody that every sharp thing you say is sure to
hit. What if a thing was written in Paris or in Pekin?--that makes
no difference. Everybody in those cities, or almost everybody, has
his counterpart here, and in all large places.--You never studied
AVERAGES as I have had occasion to.
I'll tell you how I came to know so much about averages. There was
one season when I was lecturing, commonly, five evenings in the
week, through most of the lecturing period. I soon found, as most
speakers do, that it was pleasanter to work one lecture than to
keep several in hand.
--Don't you get sick to death of one lecture?--said the landlady's
daughter,--who had a new dress on that day, and was in spirits for
conversation.
I was going to talk about averages,--I said,--but I have no
objection to telling you about lectures, to begin with.
A new lecture always has a certain excitement connected with its
delivery. One thinks well of it, as of most things fresh from his
mind. After a few deliveries of it, one gets tired and then
disgusted with its repetition. Go on delivering it, and the
disgust passes off, until, after one has repeated it a hundred or a
hundred and fifty times, he rather enjoys the hundred and first or
hundred and fifty-first time, before a new audience. But this is
on one condition,--that he never lays the lecture down and lets it
cool. If he does, there comes on a loathing for it which is
intense, so that the sight of the old battered manuscript is as bad
as sea-sickness.
A new lecture is just like any other new tool. We use it for a
while with pleasure. Then it blisters our hands, and we hate to
touch it. By-and-by our hands get callous, and then we have no
longer any sensitiveness about it. But if we give it up, the
calluses disappear; and if we meddle with it again, we miss the
novelty and get the blisters.--The story is often quoted of
Whitefield, that he said a sermon was good for nothing until it had
been preached forty times. A lecture doesn't begin to be old until
it has passed its hundredth delivery; and some, I think, have
doubled, if not quadrupled, that number. These old lectures are a
man's best, commonly; they improve by age, also,--like the pipes,
fiddles, and poems I told you of the other day. One learns to make
the most of their strong points and to carry off their weak ones,
--to take out the really good things which don't tell on the
audience, and put in cheaper things that do. All this degrades
him, of course, but it improves the lecture for general delivery.
A thoroughly popular lecture ought to have nothing in it which five
hundred people cannot all take in a flash, just as it is uttered.
--No, indeed,--I should be very sorry to say anything disrespectful
of audiences. I have been kindly treated by a great many, and may
occasionally face one hereafter. But I tell you the AVERAGE
intellect of five hundred persons, taken as they come, is not very
high. It may be sound and safe, so far as it goes, but it is not
very rapid or profound. A lecture ought to be something which all
can understand, about something which interests everybody. I
think, that, if any experienced lecturer gives you a different
account from this, it will probably be one of those eloquent or
forcible speakers who hold an audience by the charm of their
manner, whatever they talk about,--even when they don't talk very
well.
But an AVERAGE, which was what I meant to speak about, is one of
the most extraordinary subjects of observation and study. It is
awful in its uniformity, in its automatic necessity of action. Two
communities of ants or bees are exactly alike in all their actions,
so far as we can see. Two lyceum assemblies, of five hundred each,
are so nearly alike, that they are absolutely undistinguishable in
many cases by any definite mark, and there is nothing but the place
and time by which one can tell the "remarkably intelligent
audience" of a town in New York or Ohio from one in any New England
town of similar size. Of course, if any principle of selection has
come in, as in those special associations of young men which are
common in cities, it deranges the uniformity of the assemblage.
But let there be no such interfering circumstances, and one knows
pretty well even the look the audience will have, before he goes
in. Front seats: a few old folk,--shiny-headed,--slant up best
ear towards the speaker,--drop off asleep after a while, when the
air begins to get a little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright
women's faces, young and middle-aged, a little behind these, but
toward the front--(pick out the best, and lecture mainly to that.)
Here and there a countenance, sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen
pretty female ones sprinkled about. An indefinite number of pairs
of young people,--happy, but not always very attentive. Boys, in
the background, more or less quiet. Dull faces here, there,--in
how many places! I don't say dull PEOPLE, but faces without a ray
of sympathy or a movement of expression. They are what kill the
lecturer. These negative faces with their vacuous eyes and stony
lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him;--that is the
chief reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over.
They render LATENT any amount of vital caloric; they act on our
minds as those cold-blooded creatures I was talking about act on
our hearts.
Out of all these inevitable elements the audience is generated,--a
great compound vertebrate, as much like fifty others you have seen
as any two mammals of the same species are like each other. Each
audience laughs, and each cries, in just the same places of your
lecture; that is, if you make one laugh or cry, you make all. Even
those little indescribable movements which a lecturer takes
cognizance of, just as a driver notices his horse's cocking his
ears, are sure to come in exactly the same place of your lecture
always. I declare to you, that as the monk said about the picture
in the convent,--that he sometimes thought the living tenants were
the shadows, and the painted figures the realities,--I have
sometimes felt as if I were a wandering spirit, and this great
unchanging multivertebrate which I faced night after night was one
ever-listening animal, which writhed along after me wherever I
fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, turning up to me the
same sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed with my last
drowsy incantation!
--Oh, yes! A thousand kindly and courteous acts,--a thousand faces
that melted individually out of my recollection as the April snow
melts, but only to steal away and find the beds of flowers whose
roots are memory, but which blossom in poetry and dreams. I am not
ungrateful, nor unconscious of all the good feeling and
intelligence everywhere to be met with through the vast parish to
which the lecturer ministers. But when I set forth, leading a
string of my mind's daughters to market, as the country-folk fetch
in their strings of horses--Pardon me, that was a coarse fellow who
sneered at the sympathy wasted on an unhappy lecturer, as if,
because he was decently paid for his services, he had therefore
sold his sensibilities.--Family men get dreadfully homesick. In
the remote and bleak village the heart returns to the red blaze of
the logs in one's fireplace at home.
"There are his young barbarians all at play,"--
if he owns any youthful savages.--No, the world has a million
roosts for a man, but only one nest.
--It is a fine thing to be an oracle to which an appeal is always
made in all discussions. The men of facts wait their turn in grim
silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the
consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact or a
revolver gives the individual thus armed. When a person is really
full of information, and does not abuse it to crush conversation,
his part is to that of the real talkers what the instrumental
accompaniment is in a trio or quartette of vocalists.
--What do I mean by the real talkers?--Why, the people with fresh
ideas, of course, and plenty of good warm words to dress them in.
Facts always yield the place of honor, in conversation, to thoughts
about facts; but if a false note is uttered, down comes the finger
on the key and the man of facts asserts his true dignity. I have
known three of these men of facts, at least, who were always
formidable,--and one of them was tyrannical.
--Yes, a man sometimes makes a grand appearance on a particular
occasion; but these men knew something about almost everything, and
never made mistakes.--He? Veneers in first-rate style. The
mahogany scales off now and then in spots, and then you see the
cheap light stuff--I found--very fine in conversational
information, the other day when we were in company. The talk ran
upon mountains. He was wonderfully well acquainted with the
leading facts about the Andes, the Apennines, and the Appalachians;
he had nothing in particular to say about Ararat, Ben Nevis, and
various other mountains that were mentioned. By and by some
Revolutionary anecdote came up, and he showed singular familiarity
with the lives of the Adamses, and gave many details relating to
Major Andre. A point of Natural History being suggested, he gave
an excellent account of the air-bladder of fishes. He was very
full upon the subject of agriculture, but retired from the
conversation when horticulture was introduced in the discussion.
So he seemed well acquainted with the geology of anthracite, but
did not pretend to know anything of other kinds of coal. There was
something so odd about the extent and limitations of his knowledge,
that I suspected all at once what might be the meaning of it, and
waited till I got an opportunity.--Have you seen the "New American
Cyclopaedia?" said I.--I have, he replied; I received an early
copy.--How far does it go?--He turned red, and answered,--To
Araguay.--Oh, said I to myself,--not quite so far as Ararat;--that
is the reason he knew nothing about it; but he must have read all
the rest straight through, and, if he can remember what is in this
volume until he has read all those that are to come, he will know
more than I ever thought he would.
Since I had this experience, I hear that somebody else has related
a similar story. I didn't borrow it, for all that.--I made a
comparison at table some time since, which has often been quoted
and received many compliments. It was that of the mind of a bigot
to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it
contracts. The simile is a very obvious, and, I suppose I may now
say, a happy one; for it has just been shown me that it occurs in a
Preface to certain Political Poems of Thomas Moore's published long
before my remark was repeated. When a person of fair character for
literary honesty uses an image, such as another has employed before
him, the presumption is, that he has struck upon it independently,
or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it his own.
It is impossible to tell, in a great many cases, whether a
comparison which suddenly suggests itself is a new conception or a
recollection. I told you the other day that I never wrote a line
of verse that seemed to me comparatively good, but it appeared old
at once, and often as if it had been borrowed. But I confess I
never suspected the above comparison of being old, except from the
fact of its obviousness. It is proper, however, that I proceed by
a formal instrument to relinquish all claim to any property in an
idea given to the world at about the time when I had just joined
the class in which Master Thomas Moore was then a somewhat advanced
scholar.
I, therefore, in full possession of my native honesty, but knowing
the liability of all men to be elected to public office, and for
that reason feeling uncertain how soon I may be in danger of losing
it, do hereby renounce all claim to being considered the FIRST
person who gave utterance to a certain simile or comparison
referred to in the accompanying documents, and relating to the
pupil of the eye on the one part and the mind of the bigot on the
other. I hereby relinquish all glory and profit, and especially
all claims to letters from autograph collectors, founded upon my
supposed property in the above comparison,--knowing well, that,
according to the laws of literature, they who speak first hold the
fee of the thing said. I do also agree that all Editors of
Cyclopedias and Biographical Dictionaries, all Publishers of
Reviews and Papers, and all Critics writing therein, shall be at
liberty to retract or qualify any opinion predicated on the
supposition that I was the sole and undisputed author of the above
comparison. But, inasmuch as I do affirm that the comparison
aforesaid was uttered by me in the firm belief that it was new and
wholly my own, and as I have good reason to think that I had never
seen or heard it when first expressed by me, and as it is well
known that different persons may independently utter the same
idea,--as is evinced by that familiar line from Donatus,--
"Pereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixerunt,"--
now, therefore, I do request by this instrument that all
well-disposed persons will abstain from asserting or implying that I
am open to any accusation whatsoever touching the said comparison,
and, if they have so asserted or implied, that they will have the
manliness forthwith to retract the same assertion or insinuation.
I think few persons have a greater disgust for plagiarism than
myself. If I had even suspected that the idea in question was
borrowed, I should have disclaimed originality, or mentioned the
coincidence, as I once did in a case where I had happened to hit on
an idea of Swift's.--But what shall I do about these verses I was
going to read you? I am afraid that half mankind would accuse me
of stealing their thoughts, if I printed them. I am convinced that
several of you, especially if you are getting a little on in life,
will recognize some of these sentiments as having passed through
your consciousness at some time. I can't help it,--it is too late
now. The verses are written, and you must have them. Listen,
then, and you shall hear
WHAT WE ALL THINK.
That age was older once than now,
In spite of locks untimely shed,
Or silvered on the youthful brow;
That babes make love and children wed.
That sunshine had a heavenly glow,
Which faded with those "good old days,"
When winters came with deeper snow,
And autumns with a softer haze.
That--mother, sister, wife, or child--
The "best of women" each has known.
Were schoolboys ever half so wild?
How young the grandpapas have grown,
That BUT FOR THIS our souls were free,
And BUT FOR THAT our lives were blest;
That in some season yet to be
Our cares will leave us time to rest.
Whene'er we groan with ache or pain,
Some common ailment of the race,--
Though doctors think the matter plain,--
That ours is "a peculiar case."
That when like babes with fingers burned
We count one bitter maxim more,
Our lesson all the world has learned,
And men are wiser than before.
That when we sob o'er fancied woes,
The angels hovering overhead
Count every pitying drop that flows
And love us for the tears we shed.
That when we stand with tearless eye
And turn the beggar from our door,
They still approve us when we sigh,
"Ah, had I but ONE THOUSAND MORE!"
That weakness smoothed the path of sin,
In half the slips our youth has known;
And whatsoe'er its blame has been,
That Mercy flowers on faults outgrown.
Though temples crowd the crumbled brink
O'erhanging truth's eternal flow,
Their tablets bold with WHAT WE THINK,
Their echoes dumb to WHAT WE KNOW;
That one unquestioned text we read,
All doubt beyond, all fear above,
Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed
Can burn or blot it: GOD IS LOVE!
CHAPTER VII
[This particular record is noteworthy principally for containing a
paper by my friend, the Professor, with a poem or two annexed or
intercalated. I would suggest to young persons that they should
pass over it for the present, and read, instead of it, that story
about the young man who was in love with the young lady, and in
great trouble for something like nine pages, but happily married on
the tenth page or thereabouts, which, I take it for granted, will
be contained in the periodical where this is found, unless it
differ from all other publications of the kind. Perhaps, if such
young people will lay the number aside, and take it up ten years,
or a little more, from the present time, they may find something in
it for their advantage. They can't possibly understand it all
now.]
My friend, the Professor, began talking with me one day in a dreary
sort of way. I couldn't get at the difficulty for a good while,
but at last it turned out that somebody had been calling him an old
man.--He didn't mind his students calling him THE old man, he said.
That was a technical expression, and he thought that he remembered
hearing it applied to himself when he was about twenty-five. It
may be considered as a familiar and sometimes endearing
appellation. An Irishwoman calls her husband "the old man," and he
returns the caressing expression by speaking of her as "the old
woman." But now, said he, just suppose a case like one of these.
A young stranger is overheard talking of you as a very nice old
gentleman. A friendly and genial critic speaks of your green old
age as illustrating the truth of some axiom you had uttered with
reference to that period of life. What _I_ call an old man is a
person with a smooth, shining crown and a fringe of scattered white
hairs, seen in the streets on sunshiny days, stooping as he walks,
bearing a cane, moving cautiously and slowly; telling old stories,
smiling at present follies, living in a narrow world of dry habits;
one that remains waking when others have dropped asleep, and keeps
a little night-lamp-flame of life burning year after year, if the
lamp is not upset, and there is only a careful hand held round it
to prevent the puffs of wind from blowing the flame out. That's
what I call an old man.
Now, said the Professor, you don't mean to tell me that I have got
to that yet? Why, bless you, I am several years short of the time
when--[I knew what was coming, and could hardly keep from laughing;
twenty years ago he used to quote it as one of those absurd
speeches men of genius will make, and now he is going to argue from
it]--several years short of the time when Balzac says that men are
--most--you know--dangerous to--the hearts of--in short, most to be
dreaded by duennas that have charge of susceptible females.--What
age is that? said I, statistically.--Fifty-two years, answered the
Professor.--Balzac ought to know, said I, if it is true that Goethe
said of him that each of his stories must have been dug out of a
woman's heart. But fifty-two is a high figure.
Stand in the light of the window, Professor, said I.---The
Professor took up the desired position.--You have white hairs, I
said.--Had 'em any time these twenty years, said the Professor.
--And the crow's-foot,--pes anserinus, rather.--The Professor smiled,
as I wanted him to, and the folds radiated like the ridges of a
half-opened fan, from the outer corner of the eyes to the temples.
--And the calipers said I.--What are the calipers? he asked,
curiously.--Why, the parenthesis, said I.--Parenthesis? said the
Professor; what's that?--Why, look in the glass when you are
disposed to laugh, and see if your mouth isn't framed in a couple
of crescent lines,--so, my boy ( ).--It's all nonsense, said the
Professor; just look at my BICEPS;--and he began pulling off his
coat to show me his arm. Be careful, said I; you can't bear
exposure to the air, at your time of life, as you could once.--I
will box with you, said the Professor, row with you, walk with you,
ride with you, swim with you, or sit at table with you, for fifty
dollars a side.--Pluck survives stamina, I answered.
The Professor went off a little out of humor. A few weeks
afterwards he came in, looking very good-natured, and brought me a
paper, which I have here, and from which I shall read you some
portions, if you don't object. He had been thinking the matter
over, he said,--had read Cicero "De Senectute," and made up his
mind to meet old age half way. These were some of his reflections
that he had written down; so here you have.
THE PROFESSOR'S PAPER.
There is no doubt when old age begins. The human body is a furnace
which keeps in blast three-score years and ten, more or less. It
burns about three hundred pounds of carbon a year, (besides other
fuel,) when in fair working order, according to a great chemist's
estimate. When the fire slackens, life declines; when it goes out,
we are dead.
It has been shown by some noted French experimenters, that the
amount of combustion increases up to about the thirtieth year,
remains stationary to about forty-five, and then diminishes. This
last is the point where old age starts from. The great fact of
physical life is the perpetual commerce with the elements, and the
fire is the measure of it.
About this time of life, if food is plenty where you live,--for
that, you know, regulates matrimony,--you may be expecting to find
yourself a grandfather some fine morning; a kind of domestic
felicity that gives one a cool shiver of delight to think of, as
among the not remotely possible events.
I don't mind much those slipshod lines Dr. Johnson wrote to Thrale,
telling her about life's declining from THIRTY-FIVE; the furnace is
in full blast for ten years longer, as I have said. The Romans
came very near the mark; their age of enlistment reached from
seventeen to forty-six years.
What is the use of fighting against the seasons, or the tides, or
the movements of the planetary bodies, or this ebb in the wave of
life that flows through us? We are old fellows from the moment the
fire begins to go out. Let us always behave like gentlemen when we
are introduced to new acquaintance.
Incipit Allegoria Senectutis.
Old Age, this is Mr. Professor; Mr. Professor, this is Old Age.
Old Age.--Mr. Professor, I hope to see you well. I have known you
for some time, though I think you did not know me. Shall we walk
down the street together?
Professor (drawing back a little).--We can talk more quietly,
perhaps, in my study. Will you tell me how it is you seem to be
acquainted with everybody you are introduced to, though he
evidently considers you an entire stranger?
Old Age.--I make it a rule never to force myself upon a person's
recognition until I have known him at least FIVE YEARS.
Professor.--Do you mean to say that you have known me so long as
that?
Old Age. I do. I left my card on you longer ago than that, but I
am afraid you never read it; yet I see you have it with you.
Professor.--Where?
Old Age.--There, between your eyebrows,--three straight lines
running up and down; all the probate courts know that token,--"Old
Age, his mark." Put your forefinger on the inner end of one
eyebrow, and your middle finger on the inner end of the other
eyebrow; now separate the fingers, and you will smooth out my
sign-manual; that's the way you used to look before I left my card
on you.
Professor.--What message do people generally send back when you
first call on them?
Old Age.--Not at home. Then I leave a card and go. Next year I
call; get the same answer; leave another card. So for five or
six,--sometimes ten years or more. At last, if they don't let me
in, I break in through the front door or the windows.
We talked together in this way some time. Then Old Age said
again,--Come, let us walk down the street together,--and offered me
a cane, an eyeglass, a tippet, and a pair of over-shoes.--No, much
obliged to you, said I. I don't want those things, and I had a
little rather talk with you here, privately, in my study. So I
dressed myself up in a jaunty way and walked out alone;--got a
fall, caught a cold, was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to
think over this whole matter.
Explicit Allegoria Senectutis.
We have settled when old age begins. Like all Nature's processes,
it is gentle and gradual in its approaches, strewed with illusions,
and all its little griefs soothed by natural sedatives. But the
iron hand is not less irresistible because it wears the velvet
glove. The button-wood throws off its bark in large flakes, which
one may find lying at its foot, pushed out, and at last pushed off,
by that tranquil movement from beneath, which is too slow to be
seen, but too powerful to be arrested. One finds them always, but
one rarely sees them fall. So it is our youth drops from us,
--scales off, sapless and lifeless, and lays bare the tender and
immature fresh growth of old age. Looked at collectively, the
changes of old age appear as a series of personal insults and
indignities, terminating at last in death, which Sir Thomas Browne
has called "the very disgrace and ignominy of our nature."
My lady's cheek can boast no more
The cranberry white and pink it wore;
And where her shining locks divide,
The parting line is all too wide--
No, no,--this will never do. Talk about men, if you will, but
spare the poor women.
We have a brief description of seven stages of life by a remarkably
good observer. It is very presumptuous to attempt to add to it,
yet I have been struck with the fact that life admits of a natural
analysis into no less than fifteen distinct periods. Taking the
five primary divisions, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old
age, each of these has its own three periods of immaturity,
complete development, and decline. I recognize on OLD baby at
once,--with its "pipe and mug," (a stick of candy and a
porringer,)--so does everybody; and an old child shedding its
milk-teeth is only a little prototype of the old man shedding his
permanent ones. Fifty or thereabouts is only the childhood, as it
were, of old age; the graybeard youngster must be weaned from his
late suppers now. So you will see that you have to make fifteen
stages at any rate, and that it would not be hard to make
twenty-five; five primary, each with five secondary divisions.
The infancy and childhood of commencing old age have the same
ingenuous simplicity and delightful unconsciousness about them as
the first stage of the earlier periods of life shows. The great
delusion of mankind is in supposing that to be individual and
exceptional which is universal and according to law. A person is
always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man
for the first time.
Nature gets us out of youth into manhood, as sailors are hurried on
board of vessels,--in a state of intoxication. We are hustled into
maturity reeling with our passions and imaginations, and we have
drifted far away from port before we awake out of our illusions.
But to carry us out of maturity into old age, without our knowing
where we are going, she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we
stagger along with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow
enough has fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains out of
their stupid trances.
There is one mark of age that strikes me more than any of the
physical ones;--I mean the formation of Habits. An old man who
shrinks into himself falls into ways that become as positive and as
much beyond the reach of outside influences as if they were
governed by clock-work. The ANIMAL functions, as the physiologists
call them, in distinction from the ORGANIC, tend, in the process of
deterioration to which age and neglect united gradually lead them,
to assume the periodical or rhythmical type of movement. Every
man's HEART (this organ belongs, you know, to the organic system)
has a regular mode of action; but I know a great many men whose
BRAINS, and all their voluntary existence flowing from their
brains, have a systole and diastole as regular as that of the heart
itself. Habit is the approximation of the animal system to the
organic. It is a confession of failure in the highest function of
being, which involves a perpetual self-determination, in full view
of all existing circumstances. But habit, you see, is an action in
present circumstances from past motives. It is substituting a vis
a tergo for the evolution of living force.
When a man, instead of burning up three hundred pounds of carbon a
year, has got down to two hundred and fifty, it is plain enough he
must economize force somewhere. Now habit is a labor-saving
invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel,--that is
all; for fuel is force, you know, just as much in the page I am
writing for you as in the locomotive or the legs that carry it to
you. Carbon is the same thing, whether you call it wood, or coal,
or bread and cheese. A reverend gentleman demurred to this
statement,--as if, because combustion is asserted to be the sine
qua non of thought, therefore thought is alleged to be a purely
chemical process. Facts of chemistry are one thing, I told him,
and facts of consciousness another. It can be proved to him, by a
very simple analysis of some of his spare elements, that every
Sunday, when he does his duty faithfully, he uses up more
phosphorus out of his brain and nerves than on ordinary days. But
then he had his choice whether to do his duty, or to neglect it,
and save his phosphorus and other combustibles.
It follows from all this that THE FORMATION OF HABITS ought
naturally to be, as it is, the special characteristic of age. As
for the muscular powers, they pass their maximum long before the
time when the true decline of life begins, if we may judge by the
experience of the ring. A man is "stale," I think, in their
language, soon after thirty,--often, no doubt, much earlier, as
gentlemen of the pugilistic profession are exceedingly apt to keep
their vital fire burning WITH THE BLOWER UP.
--So far without Tully. But in the mean time I have been reading
the treatise, "De Senectute." It is not long, but a leisurely
performance. The old gentleman was sixty-three years of age when
he addressed it to his friend T. Pomponius Atticus, Eq., a person
of distinction, some two or three years older. We read it when we
are schoolboys, forget all about it for thirty years, and then take
it up again by a natural instinct,--provided always that we read
Latin as we drink water, without stopping to taste it, as all of us
who ever learned it at school or college ought to do.
Cato is the chief speaker in the dialogue. A good deal of it is
what would be called in vulgar phrase "slow." It unpacks and
unfolds incidental illustrations which a modern writer would look
at the back of, and toss each to its pigeon-hole. I think ancient
classics and ancient people are alike in the tendency to this kind
of expansion.
An old doctor came to me once (this is literal fact) with some
contrivance or other for people with broken kneepans. As the
patient would be confined for a good while, he might find it dull
work to sit with his hands in his lap. Reading, the ingenious
inventor suggested, would be an agreeable mode of passing the time.
He mentioned, in his written account of his contrivance, various
works that might amuse the weary hour. I remember only three,--Don
Quixote, Tom Jones, and WATTS ON THE MIND.
It is not generally understood that Cicero's essay was delivered as
a lyceum lecture, (concio popularis,) at the Temple of Mercury.
The journals (papyri) of the day ("Tempora Quotidiana,"--"Tribuinus
Quirinalis,"--"Praeco Romanus," and the rest) gave abstracts of it,
one of which I have translated and modernized, as being a
substitute for the analysis I intended to make.
IV. Kal. Mart. . . . .
The lecture at the Temple of Mercury, last evening, was well
attended by the elite of our great city. Two hundred thousand
sestertia were thought to have been represented in the house. The
doors were besieged by a mob of shabby fellows, (illotum vulgus,)
who were at length quieted after two or three had been somewhat
roughly handled (gladio jugulati). The speaker was the well-known
Mark Tully, Eq.,--the subject Old Age. Mr. T. has a lean and
scraggy person, with a very unpleasant excrescence upon his nasal
feature, from which his nickname of CHICK-PEA (Cicero) is said by
some to be derived. As a lecturer is public property, we may
remark, that his outer garment (toga) was of cheap stuff and
somewhat worn, and that his general style and appearance of dress
and manner (habitus, vestitusque) were somewhat provincial.
The lecture consisted of an imaginary dialogue between Cato and
Laelius. We found the first portion rather heavy, and retired a
few moments for refreshment (pocula quaedam vini).--All want to
reach old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it; therefore
they are donkeys.--The lecturer will allow us to say that he is the
donkey; we know we shall grumble at old age, but we want to live
through youth and manhood, IN SPITE of the troubles we shall groan
over.--There was considerable prosing as to what old age can do and
can't.--True, but not new. Certainly, old folks can't jump,--break
the necks of their thigh-bones, (femorum cervices,) if they do;
can't crack nuts with their teeth; can't climb a greased pole
(malum inunctum scandere non possunt); but they can tell old
stories and give you good advice; if they know what you have made
up your mind to do when you ask them.--All this is well enough, but
won't set the Tiber on fire (Tiberim accendere nequaquam potest.)
There were some clever things enough, (dicta hand inepta,) a few of
which are worth reporting.--Old people are accused of being
forgetful; but they never forget where they have put their money.
--Nobody is so old he doesn't think he can live a year.--The lecturer
quoted an ancient maxim,--Grow old early, if you would be old
long,--but disputed it.--Authority, he thought, was the chief
privilege of age.--It is not great to have money, but fine to
govern those that have it.--Old age begins at FORTY-SIX years,
according to the common opinion.--It is not every kind of old age
or of wine that grows sour with time.--Some excellent remarks were
made on immortality, but mainly borrowed from and credited to
Plato.--Several pleasing anecdotes were told.--Old Milo, champion
of the heavy weights in his day, looked at his arms and whimpered,
"They are dead." Not so dead as you, you old fool,--says Cato;
--you never were good for anything but for your shoulders and
flanks.--Pisistratus asked Solon what made him dare to be so
obstinate. Old age, said Solon.
The lecture was on the whole acceptable, and a credit to our
culture and civilization.--The reporter goes on to state that there
will be no lecture next week, on account of the expected combat
between the bear and the barbarian. Betting (sponsio) two to one
(duo ad unum) on the bear.
--After all, the most encouraging things I find in the treatise,
"De Senectute," are the stories of men who have found new
occupations when growing old, or kept up their common pursuits in
the extreme period of life. Cato learned Greek when he was old,
and speaks of wishing to learn the fiddle, or some such instrument,
(fidibus,) after the example of Socrates. Solon learned something
new, every day, in his old age, as he gloried to proclaim. Cyrus
pointed out with pride and pleasure the trees he had planted with
his own hand. [I remember a pillar on the Duke of Northumberland's
estate at Alnwick, with an inscription in similar words, if not the
same. That, like other country pleasures, never wears out. None
is too rich, none too poor, none too young, none too old to enjoy
it.] There is a New England story I have heard more to the point,
however, than any of Cicero's. A young farmer was urged to set out
some apple-trees.--No, said he, they are too long growing, and I
don't want to plant for other people. The young farmer's father
was spoken to about it, but he, with better reason, alleged that
apple-trees were slow and life was fleeting. At last some one
mentioned it to the old grandfather of the young farmer. He had
nothing else to do,--so he stuck in some trees. He lived long
enough to drink barrels of cider made from the apples that grew on
those trees.
As for myself, after visiting a friend lately,--[Do remember all
the time that this is the Professor's paper.]--I satisfied myself
that I had better concede the fact that--my contemporaries are not
so young as they have been,--and that,--awkward as it is,--science
and history agree in telling me that I can claim the immunities and
must own the humiliations of the early stage of senility. Ah! but
we have all gone down the hill together. The dandies of my time
have split their waistbands and taken to high-low shoes. The
beauties of my recollections--where are they? They have run the
gantlet of the years as well as I. First the years pelted them
with red roses till their cheeks were all on fire. By and by they
began throwing white roses, and that morning flush passed away. At
last one of the years threw a snow-ball, and after that no year let
the poor girls pass without throwing snow-balls. And then came
rougher missiles,--ice and stones; and from time to time an arrow
whistled, and down went one of the poor girls. So there are but
few left; and we don't call those few GIRLS, but--
Ah, me! Here am I groaning just as the old Greek sighed Ai, ai!
and the old Roman, Eheu! I have no doubt we should die of shame
and grief at the indignities offered us by age, if it were not that
we see so many others as badly or worse off than ourselves. We
always compare ourselves with our contemporaries.
[I was interrupted in my reading just here. Before I began at the
next breakfast, I read them these verses;--I hope you will like
them, and get a useful lesson from them.]
THE LAST BLOSSOM.
Though young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty's dear deluding wiles;
The leagues of life to graybeards seem
Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles.
Who knows a woman's wild caprice?
It played with Goethe's silvered hair,
And many a Holy Father's "niece"
Has softly smoothed the papal chair.
When sixty bids us sigh in vain
To melt the heart of sweet sixteen,
We think upon those ladies twain
Who loved so well the tough old Dean.
We see the Patriarch's wintry face,
The maid of Egypt's dusky glow,
And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
As April violets fill with snow.
Tranced in her Lord's Olympian smile
His lotus-loving Memphian lies,--
The musky daughter of the Nile
With plaited hair and almond eyes.
Might we but share one wild caress
Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall,
And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress
The long cold kiss that waits us all!
My bosom heaves, remembering yet
The morning of that blissful day
When Rose, the flower of spring, I met,
And gave my raptured soul away.
Flung from her eyes of purest blue,
A lasso, with its leaping chain
Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew
O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain.
Thou com'st to cheer my waning age,
Sweet vision, waited for so long!
Dove that would seek the poet's cage
Lured by the magic breath of song!
She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid,
Love's drapeau rouge the truth has told!
O'er girlhood's yielding barricade
Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold!
Come to my arms!--love heeds not years
No frost the bud of passion knows.--
Ha! what is this my frenzy hears?
A voice behind me uttered,--Rose!
Sweet was her smile,--but not for me;
Alas, when woman looks TOO kind,
Just turn your foolish head and see,--
Some youth is walking close behind!
As to GIVING UP because the almanac or the Family-Bible says that
it is about time to do it, I have no intention of doing any such
thing. I grant you that I burn less carbon than some years ago. I
see people of my standing really good for nothing, decrepit,
effete, la levre inferieure deja pendante, with what little life
they have left mainly concentrated in their epigastrium. But as
the disease of old age is epidemic, endemic, and sporadic, and
everybody that lives long enough is sure to catch it, I am going to
say, for the encouragement of such as need it, how I treat the
malady in my own case.
First. As I feel, that, when I have anything to do, there is less
time for it than when I was younger, I find that I give my
attention more thoroughly, and use my time more economically than
ever before; so that I can learn anything twice as easily as in my
earlier days. I am not, therefore, afraid to attack a new study.
I took up a difficult language a very few years ago with good
success, and think of mathematics and metaphysics by-and-by.
Secondly. I have opened my eyes to a good many neglected
privileges and pleasures within my reach, and requiring only a
little courage to enjoy them. You may well suppose it pleased me
to find that old Cato was thinking of learning to play the fiddle,
when I had deliberately taken it up in my old age, and satisfied
myself that I could get much comfort, if not much music, out of it.
Thirdly. I have found that some of those active exercises, which
are commonly thought to belong to young folks only, may be enjoyed
at a much later period.
A young friend has lately written an admirable article in one of
the journals, entitled, "Saints and their Bodies." Approving of
his general doctrines, and grateful for his records of personal
experience, I cannot refuse to add my own experimental confirmation
of his eulogy of one particular form of active exercise and
amusement, namely, BOATING. For the past nine years, I have rowed
about, during a good part of the summer, on fresh or salt water.
My present fleet on the river Charles consists of three row-boats.
1. A small flat-bottomed skiff of the shape of a flat-iron, kept
mainly to lend to boys. 2. A fancy "dory" for two pairs of sculls,
in which I sometimes go out with my young folks. 3. My own
particular water-sulky, a "skeleton" or "shell" race-boat,
twenty-two feet long, with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with
ten-foot sculls,--alone, of course, as it holds but one, and tips him
out, if he doesn't mind what he is about. In this I glide around
the Back Bay, down the stream, up the Charles to Cambridge and
Watertown, up the Mystic, round the wharves, in the wake of
steamboats which leave a swell after them delightful to rock upon;
I linger under the bridges,--those "caterpillar bridges," as my
brother professor so happily called them; rub against the black
sides of old wood-schooners; cool down under the overhanging stern
of some tall Indiaman; stretch across to the Navy-Yard, where the
sentinel warns me off from the Ohio,--just as if I should hurt her
by lying in her shadow; then strike out into the harbor, where the
water gets clear and the air smells of the ocean,--till all at once
I remember, that, if a west wind blows up of a sudden, I shall
drift along past the islands, out of sight of the dear old
State-house,--plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at home,
but no chair drawn up at the table,--all the dear people waiting,
waiting, waiting, while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into
the great desert, where there is no tree and no fountain. As I don't
want my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches in company with
devil's-aprons, bladder-weeds, dead horse-shoes, and bleached
crab-shells, I turn about and flap my long narrow wings for home.
When the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splendid fight to get
through the bridges, but always make it a rule to beat,--though I
have been jammed up into pretty tight places at times, and was caught
once between a vessel swinging round and the pier, until our bones
(the boat's, that is) cracked as if we had been in the jaws of
Behemoth. Then back to my moorings at the foot of the Common, off
with the rowing-dress, dash under the green translucent wave, return
to the garb of civilization, walk through my Garden, take a look at
my elms on the Common, and, reaching my habitat, in consideration of
my advanced period of life, indulge in the Elysian abandonment of a
huge recumbent chair.
When I have established a pair of well-pronounced feathering-
calluses on my thumbs, when I am in training so that I can do my
fifteen miles at a stretch without coming to grief in any way, when
I can perform my mile in eight minutes or a little less, then I
feel as if I had old Time's head in chancery, and could give it to
him at my leisure.
I do not deny the attraction of walking. I have bored this ancient
city through and through in my daily travels, until I know it as an
old inhabitant of a Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, it was I who,
in the course of these rambles, discovered that remarkable avenue
called Myrtle Street, stretching in one long line from east of the
Reservoir to a precipitous and rudely paved cliff which looks down
on the grim abode of Science, and beyond it to the far hills; a
promenade so delicious in its repose, so cheerfully varied with
glimpses down the northern slope into busy Cambridge Street with
its iron river of the horse-railroad, and wheeled barges gliding
back and forward over it,--so delightfully closing at its western
extremity in sunny courts and passages where I know peace, and
beauty, and virtue, and serene old age must be perpetual tenants,
--so alluring to all who desire to take their daily stroll, in the
words of Dr. Watts,--
"Alike unknowing and unknown,"--
that nothing but a sense of duty would have prompted me to reveal
the secret of its existence. I concede, therefore, that walking is
an immeasurably fine invention, of which old age ought constantly
to avail itself.
Saddle-leather is in some respects even preferable to sole-leather.
The principal objection to it is of a financial character. But you
may be sure that Bacon and Sydenham did not recommend it for
nothing. One's hepar, or, in vulgar language, liver,--a ponderous
organ, weighing some three or four pounds,--goes up and down like
the dasher of a churn in the midst of the other vital arrangements,
at every step of a trotting horse. The brains also are shaken up
like coppers in a money-box. Riding is good, for those that are
born with a silver-mounted bridle in their hand, and can ride as
much and as often as they like, without thinking all the time they
hear that steady grinding sound as the horse's jaws triturate with
calm lateral movement the bank-bills and promises to pay upon which
it is notorious that the profligate animal in question feeds day
and night.
Instead, however, of considering these kinds of exercise in this
empirical way, I will devote a brief space to an examination of
them in a more scientific form.
The pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely physical
impression, and secondly to a sense of power in action. The first
source of pleasure varies of course with our condition and the
state of the surrounding circumstances; the second with the amount
and kind of power, and the extent and kind of action. In all forms
of active exercise there are three powers simultaneously in
action,--the will, the muscles, and the intellect. Each of these
predominates in different kinds of exercise. In walking, the will
and muscles are so accustomed to work together and perform their
task with so little expenditure of force, that the intellect is
left comparatively free. The mental pleasure in walking, as such,
is in the sense of power over all our moving machinery. But in
riding, I have the additional pleasure of governing another will,
and my muscles extend to the tips of the animal's ears and to his
four hoofs, instead of stopping at my hands and feet. Now in this
extension of my volition and my physical frame into another animal,
my tyrannical instincts and my desire for heroic strength are at
once gratified. When the horse ceases to have a will of his own
and his muscles require no special attention on your part, then you
may live on horseback as Wesley did, and write sermons or take
naps, as you like. But you will observe, that, in riding on
horseback, you always have a feeling, that, after all, it is not
you that do the work, but the animal, and this prevents the
satisfaction from being complete.
Now let us look at the conditions of rowing. I won't suppose you
to be disgracing yourself in one of those miserable tubs, tugging
in which is to rowing the true boat what riding a cow is to
bestriding an Arab. You know the Esquimaux kayak, (if that is the
name of it,) don't you? Look at that model of one over my door.
Sharp, rather?--On the contrary, it is a lubber to the one you and
I must have; a Dutch fish-wife to Psyche, contrasted with what I
will tell you about.--Our boat, then, is something of the shape of
a pickerel, as you look down upon his back, he lying in the
sunshine just where the sharp edge of the water cuts in among the
lily-pads. It is a kind of a giant pod, as one may say,--tight
everywhere, except in a little place in the middle, where you sit.
Its length is from seven to ten yards, and as it is only from
sixteen to thirty inches wide in its widest part, you understand
why you want those "outriggers," or projecting iron frames with the
rowlocks in which the oars play. My rowlocks are five feet apart;
double the greatest width of the boat.
Here you are, then, afloat with a body a rod and a half long, with
arms, or wings, as you may choose to call them, stretching more
than twenty feet from tip to tip; every volition of yours extending
as perfectly into them as if your spinal cord ran down the centre
strip of your boat, and the nerves of your arms tingled as far as
the broad blades of your oars,--oars of spruce, balanced,
leathered, and ringed under your own special direction. This, in
sober earnest, is the nearest approach to flying that man has ever
made or perhaps ever will make. As the hawk sails without flapping
his pinions, so you drift with the tide when you will, in the most
luxurious form of locomotion indulged to an embodied spirit. But
if your blood wants rousing, turn round that stake in the river,
which you see a mile from here; and when you come in in sixteen
minutes, (if you do, for we are old boys, and not champion
scullers, you remember,) then say if you begin to feel a little
warmed up or not! You can row easily and gently all day, and you
can row yourself blind and black in the face in ten minutes, just
as you like. It has been long agreed that there is no way in which
a man can accomplish so much labor with his muscles as in rowing.
It is in the boat, then, that man finds the largest extension of
his volitional and muscular existence; and yet he may tax both of
them so slightly, in that most delicious of exercises, that he
shall mentally write his sermon, or his poem, or recall the remarks
he has made in company and put them in form for the public, as well
as in his easy-chair.
I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite delights, that
intoxicate me on some sweet June morning, when the river and bay
are smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping
it up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after
me like those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam
still shining for many a long rood behind me. To lie still over
the Flats, where the waters are shallow, and see the crabs crawling
and the sculpins gliding busily and silently beneath the boat,--to
rustle in through the long harsh grass that leads up some tranquil
creek,--to take shelter from the sunbeams under one of the
thousand-footed bridges, and look down its interminable colonnades,
crusted with green and oozy growths, studded with minute barnacles,
and belted with rings of dark muscles, while overhead streams and
thunders that other river whose every wave is a human soul flowing
to eternity as the river below flows to the ocean,--lying there
moored unseen, in loneliness so profound that the columns of Tadmor
in the Desert could not seem more remote from life,--the cool
breeze on one's forehead, the stream whispering against the
half-sunken pillars,--why should I tell of these things, that I
should live to see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves blackened
with boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? What a city of idiots
we must be not to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas and
wherries, as we have just learned to cover the ice in winter with
skaters!
I am satisfied that such a set of black-coated, stiff-jointed,
soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we can boast in our
Atlantic cities never before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon
lineage. Of the females that are the mates of these males I do not
here speak. I preached my sermon from the lay-pulpit on this
matter a good while ago. Of course, if you heard it, you know my
belief is that the total climatic influences here are getting up a
number of new patterns of humanity, some of which are not an
improvement on the old model. Clipper-built, sharp in the bows,
long in the spars, slender to look at, and fast to go, the ship,
which is the great organ of our national life of relation, is but a
reproduction of the typical form which the elements impress upon
its builder. All this we cannot help; but we can make the best of
these influences, such as they are. We have a few good boatmen,
--no good horsemen that I hear of,--I cannot speak for cricketing,
--but as for any great athletic feat performed by a gentleman in
these latitudes, society would drop a man who should run round the
Common in five minutes. Some of our amateur fencers, single-stick
players, and boxers, we have no reason to be ashamed of. Boxing is
rough play, but not too rough for a hearty young fellow. Anything
is better than this white-blooded degeneration to which we all
tend.
I dropped into a gentlemen's sparring exhibition only last evening.
It did my heart good to see that there were a few young and
youngish youths left who could take care of their own heads in case
of emergency. It is a fine sight, that of a gentleman resolving
himself into the primitive constituents of his humanity. Here is a
delicate young man now, with an intellectual countenance, a slight
figure, a sub-pallid complexion, a most unassuming deportment, a
mild adolescent in fact, that any Hiram or Jonathan from between
the ploughtails would of course expect to handle with perfect ease.
Oh, he is taking off his gold-bowed spectacles! Ah, he is
divesting himself of his cravat! Why, he is stripping off his
coat! Well, here he is, sure enough, in a tight silk shirt, and
with two things that look like batter puddings in the place of his
fists. Now see that other fellow with another pair of batter
puddings,--the big one with the broad shoulders; he will certainly
knock the little man's head off, if he strikes him. Feinting,
dodging, stopping, hitting, countering,--little man's head not off
yet. You might as well try to jump upon your own shadow as to hit
the little man's intellectual features. He needn't have taken off
the gold-bowed spectacles at all. Quick, cautious, shifty, nimble,
cool, he catches all the fierce lunges or gets out of their reach,
till his turn comes, and then, whack goes one of the batter
puddings against the big one's ribs, and bang goes the other into
the big one's face, and, staggering, shuffling, slipping, tripping,
collapsing, sprawling, down goes the big one in a miscellaneous
bundle.--If my young friend, whose excellent article I have
referred to, could only introduce the manly art of self-defence
among the clergy, I am satisfied that we should have better sermons
and an infinitely less quarrelsome church-militant. A bout with
the gloves would let off the ill-nature, and cure the indigestion,
which, united, have embroiled their subject in a bitter
controversy. We should then often hear that a point of difference
between an infallible and a heretic, instead of being vehemently
discussed in a series of newspaper articles, had been settled by a
friendly contest in several rounds, at the close of which the
parties shook hands and appeared cordially reconciled.
But boxing you and I are too old for, I am afraid. I was for a
moment tempted, by the contagion of muscular electricity last
evening, to try the gloves with the Benicia Boy, who looked in as a
friend to the noble art; but remembering that he had twice my
weight and half my age, besides the advantage of his training, I
sat still and said nothing.
There is one other delicate point I wish to speak of with reference
to old age. I refer to the use of dioptric media which correct the
diminished refracting power of the humors of the eye,--in other
words, spectacles. I don't use them. All I ask is a large, fair
type, a strong daylight or gas-light, and one yard of focal
distance, and my eyes are as good as ever. But if YOUR eyes fail,
I can tell you something encouraging. There is now living in New
York State an old gentleman who, perceiving his sight to fail,
immediately took to exercising it on the finest print, and in this
way fairly bullied Nature out of her foolish habit of taking
liberties at five-and-forty, or thereabout. And now this old
gentleman performs the most extraordinary feats with his pen,
showing that his eyes must be a pair of microscopes. I should be
afraid to say to you how much he writes in the compass of a
half-dime,--whether the Psalms or the Gospels, or the Psalms
AND the Gospels, I won't be positive.
But now let rue tell you this. If the time comes when you must lay
down the fiddle and the bow, because your fingers are too stiff,
and drop the ten-foot sculls, because your arms are too weak, and,
after dallying awhile with eye-glasses, come at last to the
undisguised reality of spectacles,--if the time comes when that
fire of life we spoke of has burned so low that where its flames
reverberated there is only the sombre stain of regret, and where
its coals glowed, only the white ashes that cover the embers of
memory,--don't let your heart grow cold, and you may carry
cheerfulness and love with you into the teens of your second
century, if you can last so long. As our friend, the Poet, once
said, in some of those old-fashioned heroics of his which he keeps
for his private reading,--
Call him not old, whose visionary brain
Holds o'er the past its undivided reign.
For him in vain the envious seasons roll
Who bears eternal summer in his soul.
If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay,
Spring with her birds, or children with their play,
Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art
Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart,--
Turn to the record where his years are told,--
Count his gray hairs,--they cannot make him old!
End of the Professor's paper.
[The above essay was not read at one time, but in several
instalments, and accompanied by various comments from different
persons at the table. The company were in the main attentive, with
the exception of a little somnolence on the part of the old
gentleman opposite at times, and a few sly, malicious questions
about the "old boys" on the part of that forward young fellow who
has figured occasionally, not always to his advantage, in these
reports.
On Sunday mornings, in obedience to a feeling I am not ashamed of,
I have always tried to give a more appropriate character to our
conversation. I have never read them my sermon yet, and I don't
know that I shall, as some of them might take my convictions as a
personal indignity to themselves. But having read our company so
much of the Professor's talk about age and other subjects connected
with physical life, I took the next Sunday morning to repeat to
them the following poem of his, which I have had by me some time.
He calls it--I suppose, for his professional friends--THE
ANATOMIST'S HYMN, but I shall name it--]
THE LIVING TEMPLE.
Not in the world of light alone,
Where God has built his blazing throne,
Nor yet alone in earth below,
With belted seas that come and go,
And endless isles of sunlit green,
Is all thy Maker's glory seen:
Look in upon thy wondrous frame,--
Eternal wisdom still the same!
The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves
Flows murmuring through its hidden caves
Whose streams of brightening purple rush
Fired with a new and livelier blush,
While all their burden of decay
The ebbing current steals away,
And red with Nature's flame they start
From the warm fountains of the heart.
No rest that throbbing slave may ask,
Forever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net
Which in unnumbered crossing tides
The flood of burning life divides,
Then kindling each decaying part
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.
But warmed with that uchanging flame
Behold the outward moving frame,
Its living marbles jointed strong
With glistening band and silvery thong,
And linked to reason's guiding reins
By myriad rings in trembling chains,
Each graven with the threaded zone
Which claims it as the master's own.
See how yon beam of seeming white
Is braided out of seven-hued light,
Yet in those lucid globes no ray
By any chance shall break astray.
Hark how the rolling surge of sound,
Arches and spirals circling round,
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear
With music it is heaven to hear.
Then mark the cloven sphere that holds
All thought in its mysterious folds,
That feels sensation's faintest thrill
And flashes forth the sovereign will;
Think on the stormy world that dwells
Locked in its dim and clustering cells!
The lightning gleams of power it sheds
Along its hollow glassy threads!
O Father! grant thy love divine
To make these mystic temples thine!
When wasting age and wearying strife
Have sapped the leaning walls of life,
When darkness gathers over all,
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms
And mould it into heavenly forms!
CHAPTER VIII
[Spring has come. You will find some verses to that effect at the
end of these notes. If you are an impatient reader, skip to them
at once. In reading aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and
seventh verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and,
unless your audience is of superior intelligence, will confuse
them. Many people can ride on horseback who find it hard to get on
and to get off without assistance. One has to dismount from an
idea, and get into the saddle again, at every parenthesis.]
--The old gentleman who sits opposite, finding that spring had
fairly come, mounted a white hat one day, and walked into the
street. It seems to have been a premature or otherwise
exceptionable exhibition, not unlike that commemorated by the late
Mr. Bayly. When the old gentleman came home, he looked very red in
the face, and complained that he had been "made sport of." By
sympathizing questions, I learned from him that a boy had called
him "old daddy," and asked him when he had his hat whitewashed.
This incident led me to make some observations at table the next
morning, which I here repeat for the benefit of the readers of this
record.
--The hat is the vulnerable point of the artificial integument. I
learned this in early boyhood. I was once equipped in a hat of
Leghorn straw, having a brim of much wider dimensions than were
usual at that time, and sent to school in that portion of my native
town which lies nearest to this metropolis. On my way I was met by
a "Port-chuck," as we used to call the young gentlemen of that
locality, and the following dialogue ensued.
The Port-chuck. Hullo, You-sir, joo know th' wuz gon-to be a race
to-morrah?
Myself. No. Who's gon-to run, 'n' wher's't gon-to be?
The Port-chuck. Squire Mico 'n' Doctor Wiliams, round the brim o'
your hat.
These two much-respected gentlemen being the oldest inhabitants at
that time, and the alleged race-course being out of the question,
the Port-chuck also winking and thrusting his tongue into his
cheek, I perceived that I had been trifled with, and the effect has
been to make me sensitive and observant respecting this article of
dress ever since. Here is an axiom or two relating to it.
A hat which has been POPPED, or exploded by being sat down upon, is
never itself again afterwards.
It is a favorite illusion of sanguine natures to believe the
contrary.
Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic as its hat. There
is always an unnatural calmness about its nap, and an unwholesome
gloss, suggestive of a wet brush.
The last effort of decayed fortune is expended in smoothing its
dilapidated castor. The hat is the ULTIMUM MORIENS of
"respectability."
--The old gentleman took all these remarks and maxims very
pleasantly, saying, however, that he had forgotten most of his
French except the word for potatoes,--pummies de tare.---Ultimum
moriens, I told him, is old Italian, and signifies LAST THING TO
DIE. With this explanation he was well contented, and looked quite
calm when I saw him afterwards in the entry with a black hat on his
head and the white one in his hand.
--I think myself fortunate in having the Poet and the Professor for
my intimates. We are so much together, that we no doubt think and
talk a good deal alike; yet our points of view are in many respects
individual and peculiar. You know me well enough by this time. I
have not talked with you so long for nothing and therefore I don't
think it necessary to draw my own portrait. But let me say a word
or two about my friends.
The Professor considers himself, and I consider him, a very useful
and worthy kind of drudge. I think he has a pride in his small
technicalities. I know that he has a great idea of fidelity; and
though I suspect he laughs a little inwardly at times at the grand
airs "Science" puts on, as she stands marking time, but not getting
on, while the trumpets are blowing and the big drums beating,--yet
I am sure he has a liking for his specially, and a respect for its
cultivators.
But I'll tell you what the Professor said to the Poet the other
day.--My boy, said he, I can work a great deal cheaper than you,
because I keep all my goods in the lower story. You have to hoist
yours into the upper chambers of the brain, and let them down again
to your customers. I take mine in at the level of the ground, and
send them off from my doorstep almost without lifting. I tell you,
the higher a man has to carry the raw material of thought before he
works it up, the more it costs him in blood, nerve, and muscle.
Coleridge knew all this very well when he advised every literary
man to have a profession.
--Sometimes I like to talk with one of them, and sometimes with the
other. After a while I get tired of both. When a fit of
intellectual disgust comes over me, I will tell you what I have
found admirable as a diversion, in addition to boating and other
amusements which I have spoken of,--that is, working at my
carpenter's-bench. Some mechanical employment is the greatest
possible relief, after the purely intellectual faculties begin to
tire. When I was quarantined once at Marseilles, I got to work
immediately at carving a wooden wonder of loose rings on a stick,
and got so interested in it, that when we were set loose, I
"regained my freedom with a sigh," because my toy was unfinished.
There are long seasons when I talk only with the Professor, and
others when I give myself wholly up to the Poet. Now that my
winter's work is over and spring is with us, I feel naturally drawn
to the Poet's company. I don't know anybody more alive to life
than he is. The passion of poetry seizes on him every spring, he
says,--yet oftentimes he complains, that, when he feels most, he
can sing least.
Then a fit of despondency comes over him.--I feel ashamed,
sometimes,--said he, the other day,--to think how far my worst
songs fall below my best. It sometimes seems to me, as I know it
does to others who have told me so, that they ought to be ALL
BEST,--if not in actual execution, at least in plan and motive. I
am grateful--he continued--for all such criticisms. A man is
always pleased to have his most serious efforts praised, and the
highest aspect of his nature get the most sunshine.
Yet I am sure, that, in the nature of things, many minds must
change their key now and then, on penalty of getting out of tune or
losing their voices. You know, I suppose,--he said,--what is meant
by complementary colors? You know the effect, too, which the
prolonged impression of any one color has on the retina. If you
close your eyes after looking steadily at a RED object, you see a
GREEN image.
It is so with many minds,--I will not say with all. After looking
at one aspect of external nature, or of any form of beauty or
truth, when they turn away, the COMPLEMENTARY aspect of the same
object stamps itself irresistibly and automatically upon the mind.
Shall they give expression to this secondary mental state, or not?
When I contemplate--said my friend, the Poet--the infinite
largeness of comprehension belonging to the Central Intelligence,
how remote the creative conception is from all scholastic and
ethical formulae, I am led to think that a healthy mind ought to
change its mood from time to time, and come down from its noblest
condition,--never, of course, to degrade itself by dwelling upon
what is itself debasing, but to let its lower faculties have a
chance to air and exercise themselves. After the first and second
floor have been out in the bright street dressed in all their
splendors, shall not our humble friends in the basement have their
holiday, and the cotton velvet and the thin-skinned jewelry--simple
adornments, but befitting the station of those who wear them--show
themselves to the crowd, who think them beautiful, as they ought
to, though the people up stairs know that they are cheap and
perishable?
--I don't know that I may not bring the Poet here, some day or
other, and let him speak for himself. Still I think I can tell you
what he says quite as well as he could do it.--Oh,--he said to me,
one day,--I am but a hand-organ man,--say rather, a hand-organ.
Life turns the winch, and fancy or accident pulls out the stops. I
come under your windows, some fine spring morning, and play you one
of my adagio movements, and some of you say,--This is good,--play
us so always. But, dear friends, if I did not change the stop
sometimes, the machine would wear out in one part and rust in
another. How easily this or that tune flows!--you say,--there must
be no end of just such melodies in him.--I will open the poor
machine for you one moment, and you shall look.--Ah! Every note
marks where a spur of steel has been driven in. It is easy to
grind out the song, but to plant these bristling points which make
it was the painful task of time.
I don't like to say it,--he continued,--but poets commonly have no
larger stock of tunes than hand-organs; and when you hear them
piping up under your window, you know pretty well what to expect.
The more stops, the better. Do let them all be pulled out in their
turn!
So spoke my friend, the Poet, and read me one of his stateliest
songs, and after it a gay chanson, and then a string of epigrams.
All true,--he said,--all flowers of his soul; only one with the
corolla spread, and another with its disk half opened, and the
third with the heart-leaves covered up and only a petal or two
showing its tip through the calyx. The water-lily is the type of
the poet's soul,--he told me.
--What do you think, Sir,--said the divinity-student,--opens the
souls of poets most fully?
Why, there must be the internal force and the external stimulus.
Neither is enough by itself. A rose will not flower in the dark,
and a fern will not flower anywhere.
What do I think is the true sunshine that opens the poet's
corolla?--I don't like to say. They spoil a good many, I am
afraid; or at least they shine on a good many that never come to
anything.
Who are THEY?--said the schoolmistress.
Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and their praise is his
best reward.
The schoolmistress reddened a little, but looked pleased.--Did I
really think so?--I do think so; I never feel safe until I have
pleased them; I don't think they are the first to see one's
defects, but they are the first to catch the color and fragrance of
a true poem. Fit the same intellect to a man and it is a
bow-string,--to a woman and it is a harp-string. She is vibratile and
resonant all over, so she stirs with slighter musical tremblings of
the air about her.--Ah, me!--said my friend, the Poet, to me, the
other day,--what color would it not have given to my thoughts, and
what thrice-washed whiteness to my words, had I been fed on women's
praises! I should have grown like Marvell's fawn,--
"Lilies without; roses within!"
But then,--he added,--we all think, IF so and so, we should have
been this or that, as you were saying the other day, in those
rhymes of yours.
--I don't think there are many poets in the sense of creators; but
of those sensitive natures which reflect themselves naturally in
soft and melodious words, pleading for sympathy with their joys and
sorrows, every literature is full. Nature carves with her own
hands the brain which holds the creative imagination, but she casts
the over-sensitive creatures in scores from the same mould.
There are two kinds of poets, just as there are two kinds of
blondes. [Movement of curiosity among our ladies at table.--Please
to tell us about those blondes, said the schoolmistress.] Why,
there are blondes who are such simply by deficiency of coloring
matter,--NEGATIVE or WASHED blondes, arrested by Nature on the way
to become albinesses. There are others that are shot through with
golden light, with tawny or fulvous tinges in various degree,
--POSITIVE or STAINED blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as
unlike in their mode of being to the others as an orange is unlike
a snowball. The albino-style carries with it a wide pupil and a
sensitive retina. The other, or the leonine blonde, has an opaline
fire in her clear eye, which the brunette can hardly match with her
quick glittering glances.
Just so we have the great sun-kindled, constructive imaginations,
and a far more numerous class of poets who have a certain kind of
moonlight-genius given them to compensate for their imperfection of
nature. Their want of mental coloring-matter makes them sensitive
to those impressions which stronger minds neglect or never feel at
all. Many of them die young, and all of them are tinged with
melancholy. There is no more beautiful illustration of the
principle of compensation which marks the Divine benevolence than
the fact that some of the holiest lives and some of the sweetest
songs are the growth of the infirmity which unfits its subject for
the rougher duties of life. When one reads the life of Cowper, or
of Keats, or of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson,--of so many gentle,
sweet natures, born to weakness, and mostly dying before their
time,--one cannot help thinking that the human race dies out
singing, like the swan in the old story. The French poet, Gilbert,
who died at the Hotel Dieu, at the age of twenty-nine,--(killed by
a key in his throat, which he had swallowed when delirious in
consequence of a fall,)--this poor fellow was a very good example
of the poet by excess of sensibility. I found, the other day, that
some of my literary friends had never heard of him, though I
suppose few educated Frenchmen do not know the lines which he
wrote, a week before his death, upon a mean bed in the great
hospital of Paris.
"Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive,
J'apparus un jour, et je meurs;
Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, ou lentement j'arrive,
Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs."
At life's gay banquet placed, a poor unhappy guest,
One day I pass, then disappear;
I die, and on the tomb where I at length shall rest
No friend shall come to shed a tear.
You remember the same thing in other words some where in Kirke
White's poems. It is the burden of the plaintive songs of all
these sweet albino-poets. "I shall die and be forgotten, and the
world will go on just as if I had never been;--and yet how I have
loved! how I have longed! how I have aspired!" And so singing,
their eyes grow brighter and brighter, and their features thinner
and thinner, until at last the veil of flesh is threadbare, and,
still singing, they drop it and pass onward.
--Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them
up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the
hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.
Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop
them; they cannot stop themselves, sleep cannot still them; madness
only makes them go faster; death alone can break into the case,
and, seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the heart,
silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have
carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.
If we could only get at them, as we lie on our pillows and count
the dead beats of thought after thought and image after image
jarring through the overtired organ! Will nobody block those
wheels, uncouple that pinion, cut the string that holds those
weights, blow up the infernal machine with gunpowder? What a
passion comes over us sometimes for silence and rest!--that this
dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time,
embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, could have but
one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off
from beams in hempen lassos?--that they jump off from parapets into
the swift and gurgling waters beneath?--that they take counsel of
the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory
monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is
dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building which we pass
every day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar,
nor bed-cord, nor drinking-vessel from which a sharp fragment may
be shattered, shall by any chance be seen. There is nothing for
it, when the brain is on fire with the whirling of its wheels, but
to spring against the stone wall and silence them with one crash.
Ah, they remembered that,--the kind city fathers,--and the walls
are nicely padded, so that one can take such exercise as he likes
without damaging himself on the very plain and serviceable
upholstery. If anybody would only contrive some kind of a lever
that one could thrust in among the works of this horrid automaton
and check them, or alter their rate of going, what would the world
give for the discovery?
--From half a dime to a dime, according to the style of the place
and the quality of the liquor,--said the young fellow whom they
call John.
You speak trivially, but not unwisely,--I said. Unless the will
maintain a certain control over these movements, which it cannot
stop, but can to some extent regulate, men are very apt to try to
get at the machine by some indirect system of leverage or other.
They clap on the brakes by means of opium; they change the
maddening monotony of the rhythm by means of fermented liquors. It
is because the brain is locked up and we cannot touch its movement
directly, that we thrust these coarse tools in through any crevice,
by which they may reach the interior, and so alter its rate of
going for a while, and at last spoil the machine.
Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the mind which work
independently of the will,--poets and artists, for instance, who
follow their imagination in their creative moments, instead of
keeping it in hand as your logicians and practical men do with
their reasoning faculty,--such men are too apt to call in the
mechanical appliances to help them govern their intellects.
--He means they get drunk,--said the young fellow already alluded
to by name.
Do you think men of true genius are apt to indulge in the use of
inebriating fluids? said the divinity-student.
If you think you are strong enough to bear what I am going to say,
--I replied,--I will talk to you about this. But mind, now, these
are the things that some foolish people call DANGEROUS subjects,
--as if these vices which burrow into people's souls, as the
Guinea-worm burrows into the naked feet of West-Indian slaves, would
be more mischievous when seen than out of sight. Now the true way to
deal with those obstinate animals, which are a dozen feet long, some
of them, and no bigger than a horse hair, is to get a piece of silk
round their HEADS, and pull them out very cautiously. If you only
break them off, they grow worse than ever, and sometimes kill the
person who has the misfortune to harbor one of them. Whence it is
plain that the first thing to do is to find out where the head lies.
Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this vice of
intemperance. What is the head of it, and where does it lie? For
you may depend upon it, there is not one of these vices that has
not a head of its own,--an intelligence,--a meaning,--a certain
virtue, I was going to say,--but that might, perhaps, sound
paradoxical. I have heard an immense number of moral physicians
lay down the treatment of moral Guinea-worms, and the vast majority
of them would always insist that the creature had no head at all,
but was all body and tail. So I have found a very common result of
their method to be that the string slipped, or that a piece only of
the creature was broken off, and the worm soon grew again, as bad
as ever. The truth is, if the Devil could only appear in church by
attorney, and make the best statement that the facts would bear him
out in doing on behalf of his special virtues, (what we commonly
call vices,) the influence of good teachers would be much greater
than it is. For the arguments by which the Devil prevails are
precisely the ones that the Devil-queller most rarely answers. The
way to argue down a vice is not to tell lies about it,--to say that
it has no attractions, when everybody knows that it has,--but
rather to let it make out its case just as it certainly will in the
moment of temptation, and then meet it with the weapons furnished
by the Divine armory. Ithuriel did not spit the toad on his spear,
you remember, but touched him with it, and the blasted angel took
the sad glories of his true shape. If he had shown fight then, the
fair spirits would have known how to deal with him.
That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil is not perfectly
clear. Men get fairly intoxicated with music, with poetry, with
religious excitement, oftenest with love. Ninon de l'Enclos said
she was so easily excited that her soup intoxicated her, and
convalescents have been made tipsy by a beef-steak.
There are forms and stages of alcoholic exaltation which, in
themselves, and without regard to their consequences, might be
considered as positive improvements of the persons affected. When
the sluggish intellect is roused, the slow speech quickened, the
cold nature warmed, the latent sympathy developed, the flagging
spirit kindled,--before the trains of thought become confused or
the will perverted, or the muscles relaxed,--just at the moment
when the whole human zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown rose,
and is ripe for the subscription-paper or the contribution-box,--it
would be hard to say that a man was, at that very time, worse, or
less to be loved, than when driving a hard bargain with all his
meaner wits about him. The difficulty is, that the alcoholic
virtues don't wash; but until the water takes their colors out, the
tints are very much like those of the true celestial stuff.
[Here I was interrupted by a question which I am very unwilling to
report, but have confidence enough in those friends who examine
these records to commit to their candor.
A PERSON at table asked me whether I "went in for rum as a steady
drink?"--His manner made the question highly offensive, but I
restrained myself, and answered thus:-]
Rum I take to be the name which unwashed moralists apply alike to
the product distilled from molasses and the noblest juices of the
vineyard. Burgundy "in all its sunset glow" is rum. Champagne,
"the foaming wine of Eastern France," in rum. Hock, which our
friend, the Poet, speaks of as
"The Rhine's breastmilk, gushing cold and bright,
Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light,"
is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism as an insult to
the first miracle wrought by the Founder of our religion! I
address myself to the company.--I believe in temperance, nay,
almost in abstinence, as a rule for healthy people. I trust that I
practice both. But let me tell you, there are companies of men of
genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect
and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I
thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober.
Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if any, were ruined by
drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined
before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a
vice, no doubt,--sometimes a misfortune,--as when an almost
irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it,--but
oftenest of all a PUNISHMENT.
Empty heads,--heads without ideas in wholesome variety and
sufficient number to furnish food for the mental clockwork,
--ill-regulated heads, where the faculties are not under the control
of the will,--these are the ones that hold the brains which their
owners are so apt to tamper with, by introducing the appliances we
have been talking about. Now, when a gentleman's brain is empty or
ill-regulated, it is, to a great extent, his own fault; and so it
is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or
aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre,
and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings
into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled
being as to apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no
chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and to be taught
the lesson of self-government. I trust the tariff of Heaven has an
ad valorem scale for them--and all of us.
But to come back to poets and artists;--if they really are more
prone to the abuse of stimulants,--and I fear that this is true,
--the reason of it is only too clear. A man abandons himself to a
fine frenzy, and the power which flows through him, as I once
explained to you, makes him the medium of a great poem or a great
picture. The creative action is not voluntary at all, but
automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and
wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it.
Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie, or
dreaming. If mind and body were both healthy and had food enough
and fair play, I doubt whether any men would be more temperate than
the imaginative classes. But body and mind often flag,--perhaps
they are ill-made to begin with, underfed with bread or ideas,
overworked, or abused in some way. The automatic action, by which
genius wrought its wonders, fails. There is only one thing which
can rouse the machine; not will,--that cannot reach it; nothing but
a ruinous agent, which hurries the wheels awhile and soon eats out
the heart of the mechanism. The dreaming faculties are always the
dangerous ones, because their mode of action can be imitated by
artificial excitement; the reasoning ones are safe, because they
imply continued voluntary effort.
I think you will find it true, that, before any vice can fasten on
a man, body, mind, or moral nature must be debilitated. The mosses
and fungi gather on sickly trees, not thriving ones; and the odious
parasites which fasten on the human frame choose that which is
already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian humorist, declared that
he had such a healthy skin it was impossible for any impurity to
stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face
which was of necessity always clean. I don't know how much fancy
there was in this; but there is no fancy in saying that the
lassitude of tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative
natures in their periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds
untrained to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the
germination of the seeds of intemperance.
Whenever the wandering demon of Drunkenness finds a ship adrift,
--no steady wind in its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its
course,--he steps on board, takes the helm, and steers straight for
the maelstrom.
--I wonder if you know the TERRIBLE SMILE? [The young fellow whom
they call John winked very hard, and made a jocular remark, the
sense of which seemed to depend on some double meaning of the word
SMILE. The company was curious to know what I meant.]
There are persons--I said--who no sooner come within sight of you
than they begin to smile, with an uncertain movement of the mouth,
which conveys the idea that they are thinking about themselves, and
thinking, too, that you are thinking they are thinking about
themselves,--and so look at you with a wretched mixture of
self-consciousness, awkwardness, and attempts to carry off both,
which are betrayed by the cowardly behaviour of the eye and the
tell-tale weakness of the lips that characterize these unfortunate
beings.
--Why do you call them unfortunate, Sir?--asked the divinity-
student.
Because it is evident that the consciousness of some imbecility or
other is at the bottom of this extraordinary expression. I don't
think, however, that these persons are commonly fools. I have
known a number, and all of them were intelligent. I think nothing
conveys the idea of UNDERBREEDING more than this self-betraying
smile. Yet I think this peculiar habit as well as that of
MEANINGLESS BLUSHING may be fallen into by very good people who met
often, or sit opposite each other at table. A true gentleman's
face is infinitely removed from all such paltriness,--calm-eyed,
firm-mouthed. I think Titian understood the look of a gentleman as
well as anybody that ever lived. The portrait of a young man
holding a glove in his hand, in the Gallery of the Louvre, if any
of you have seen that collection, will remind you of what I mean.
--Do I think these people know the peculiar look they have?--I
cannot say; I hope not; I am afraid they would never forgive me, if
they did. The worst of it is, the trick is catching; when one
meets one of these fellows, he feels a tendency to the same
manifestation. The Professor tells me there is a muscular slip, a
dependence of the platysma myoides, which is called the risorius
Santorini.
--Say that once more,--exclaimed the young fellow mentioned above.
The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip called Santorini's
laughing muscle. I would have it cut out of my face, if I were
born with one of those constitutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am
uncharitable in my judgment of those sour-looking people I told you
of the other day, and of these smiling folks. It may be that they
are born with these looks, as other people are with more generally
recognized deformities. Both are bad enough, but I had rather meet
three of the scowlers than one of the smilers.
--There is another unfortunate way of looking, which is peculiar to
that amiable sex we do not like to find fault with. There are some
very pretty, but, unhappily, very ill-bred women, who don't
understand the law of the road with regard to handsome faces.
Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in conceding to all males
the right of at least two distinct looks at every comely female
countenance, without any infraction of the rules of courtesy or the
sentiment of respect. The first look is necessary to define the
person of the individual one meets so as to avoid it in passing.
Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient
apology for a second,--not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but
an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may
inoffensively yield to a passing image. It is astonishing how
morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the slightest
demonstration of this kind. When a lady walks the streets, she
leaves her virtuous-indignation countenance at home; she knows well
enough that the street is a picture-gallery, where pretty faces
framed in pretty bonnets are meant to be seen, and everybody has a
right to see them.
--When we observe how the same features and style of person and
character descend from generation to generation, we can believe
that some inherited weakness may account for these peculiarities.
Little snapping-turtles snap--so the great naturalist tells us
--before they are out of the egg-shell. I am satisfied, that, much
higher up in the scale of life, character is distinctly shown at
the age of--2 or--3 months.
--My friend, the Professor, has been full of eggs lately. [This
remark excited a burst of hilarity which I did not allow to
interrupt the course of my observations.] He has been reading the
great book where he found the fact about the little snapping-
turtles mentioned above. Some of the things he has told me have
suggested several odd analogies enough.
There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in their brains the
OVARIAN EGGS of the next generation's or century's civilization.
These eggs are not ready to be laid in the form of books as yet;
some of them are hardly ready to be put into the form of talk. But
as rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies, there they are; and
these are what must form the future. A man's general notions are
not good for much, unless he has a crop of these intellectual
ovarian eggs in his own brain, or knows them as they exist in the
minds of others. One must be in the HABIT of talking with such
persons to get at these rudimentary germs of thought; for their
development is necessarily imperfect, and they are moulded on new
patterns, which must be long and closely studied. But these are
the men to talk with. No fresh truth ever gets into a book.
--A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow,--said one of the company.
I proceeded in spite of the interruption.--All uttered thought, my
friend, the Professor, says, is of the nature of an excretion. Its
materials have been taken in, and have acted upon the system, and
been reacted on by it; it has circulated and done its office in one
mind before it is given out for the benefit of others. It may be
milk or venom to other minds; but, in either case, it is something
which the producer has had the use of and can part with. A man
instinctively tries to get rid of his thought in conversation or in
print so soon as it is matured; but it is hard to get at it as it
lies imbedded, a mere potentiality, the germ of a germ, in his
intellect.
--Where are the brains that are fullest of these ovarian eggs of
thought?--I decline mentioning individuals. The producers of
thought, who are few, the "jobbers" of thought, who are many, and
the retailers of thought, who are numberless, are so mixed up in
the popular apprehension, that it would be hopeless to try to
separate them before opinion has had time to settle. Follow the
course of opinion on the great subjects of human interest for a few
generations or centuries, get its parallax, map out a small arc of
its movement, see where it tends, and then see who is in advance of
it or even with it; the world calls him hard names, probably; but
if you would find the ova of the future, you must look into the
folds of his cerebral convolutions.
[The divinity-student looked a little puzzled at this suggestion,
as if he did not see exactly where he was to come out, if he
computed his arc too nicely. I think it possible it might cut off
a few corners of his present belief, as it has cut off martyr-
burning and witch-hanging;--but time will show,--time will show, as
the old gentleman opposite says.]
--Oh,--here is that copy of verses I told you about.
SPRING HAS COME.
Intra Muros.
The sunbeams, lost for half a year,
Slant through my pane their morning rays
For dry Northwesters cold and clear,
The East blows in its thin blue haze.
And first the snowdrop's bells are seen,
Then close against the sheltering wall
The tulip's horn of dusky green,
The peony's dark unfolding ball.
The golden-chaliced crocus burns;
The long narcissus-blades appear;
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns,
And lights her blue-flamed chandelier.
The willow's whistling lashes, wrung
By the wild winds of gusty March,
With sallow leaflets lightly strung,
Are swaying by the tufted larch.
The elms have robed their slender spray
With full-blown flower and embryo leaf;
Wide o'er the clasping arch of day
Soars like a cloud their hoary chief.
--[See the proud tulip's flaunting cup,
That flames in glory for an hour,--
Behold it withering,--then look up,--
How meek the forest-monarch's flower!--
When wake the violets, Winter dies;
When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near;
When lilacs blossom, Summer cries,
"Bud, little roses! Spring is here!"]
The windows blush with fresh bouquets,
Cut with the May-dew on their lips;
The radish all its bloom displays,
Pink as Aurora's finger-tips.
Nor less the flood of light that showers
On beauty's changed corolla-shades,--
The walks are gay as bridal bowers
With rows of many-petalled maids.
The scarlet shell-fish click and clash
In the blue barrow where they slide;
The horseman, proud of streak and splash,
Creeps homeward from his morning ride.
Here comes the dealer's awkward string,
With neck in rope and tail in knot,--
Rough colts, with careless country-swing,
In lazy walk or slouching trot.
--Wild filly from the mountain-side,
Doomed to the close and chafing thills,
Lend me thy long, untiring stride
To seek with thee thy western hills!
I hear the whispering voice of Spring,
The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry,
Like some poor bird with prisoned wing
That sits and sings, but longs to fly.
Oh for one spot of living green,--
One little spot where leaves can grow,--
To love unblamed, to walk unseen,
To dream above, to sleep below!
CHAPTER IX
[Aqui esta encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcias.
If I should ever make a little book out of these papers, which I
hope you are not getting tired of, I suppose I ought to save the
above sentence for a motto on the title-page. But I want it now,
and must use it. I need not say to you that the words are Spanish,
nor that they are to be found in the short Introduction to "Gil
Blas," nor that they mean, "Here lies buried the soul of the
licentiate Pedro Garcias."
I warned all young people off the premises when I began my notes
referring to old age. I must be equally fair with old people now.
They are earnestly requested to leave this paper to young persons
from the age of twelve to that of fourscore years and ten, at which
latter period of life I am sure that I shall have at least one
youthful reader. You know well enough what I mean by youth and
age;--something in the soul, which has no more to do with the color
of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with the
grass a thousand feet above it.
I am growing bolder as I write. I think it requires not only
youth, but genius, to read this paper. I don't mean to imply that
it required any whatsoever to talk what I have here written down.
It did demand a certain amount of memory, and such command of the
English tongue as is given by a common school education. So much I
do claim. But here I have related, at length, a string of
trivialities. You must have the imagination of a poet to
transfigure them. These little colored patches are stains upon the
windows of a human soul; stand on the outside, they are but dull
and meaningless spots of color; seen from within, they are
glorified shapes with empurpled wings and sunbright aureoles.
My hand trembles when I offer you this. Many times I have come
bearing flowers such as my garden grew; but now I offer you this
poor, brown, homely growth, you may cast it away as worthless.
And yet--and yet--it is something better than flowers; it is a
SEED-CAPSULE. Many a gardener will cut you a bouquet of his choicest
blossoms for small fee, but he does not love to let the seeds of
his rarest varieties go out of his own hands.
It is by little things that we know ourselves; a soul would very
probably mistake itself for another, when once disembodied, were it
not for individual experiences which differ from those of others
only in details seemingly trifling. All of us have been thirsty
thousands of times, and felt, with Pindar, that water was the best
of things. I alone, as I think, of all mankind, remember one
particular pailful of water, flavored with the white-pine of which
the pail was made, and the brown mug out of which one Edmund, a
red-faced and curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a
fragment in his haste to drink; it being then high summer, and
little full-blooded boys feeling very warm and porous in the
low-"studded" school-room where Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled
over young children, many of whom are old ghosts now, and have
known Abraham for twenty or thirty years of our mortal time.
Thirst belongs to humanity, everywhere, in all ages; but that
white-pine pail, and that brown mug belong to me in particular; and
just so of my special relationships with other things and with my
rice. One could never remember himself in eternity by the mere
fact of having loved or hated any more than by that of having
thirsted; love and hate have no more individuality in them than
single waves in the ocean;--but the accidents or trivial marks
which distinguished those whom we loved or hated make their memory
our own forever, and with it that of our own personality also.
Therefore, my aged friend of five-and-twenty, or thereabouts, pause
at the threshold of this particular record, and ask yourself
seriously whether you are fit to read such revelations as are to
follow. For observe, you have here no splendid array of petals
such as poets offer you,--nothing but a dry shell, containing, if
you will get out what is in it, a few small seeds of poems. You
may laugh at them, if you like. I shall never tell you what I
think of you for so doing. But if you can read into the heart of
these things, in the light of other memories as slight, yet as dear
to your soul, then you are neither more nor less than a POET, and
can afford to write no more verses during the rest of your natural
life,--which abstinence I take to be one of the surest marks of
your meriting the divine name I have just bestowed upon you.
May I beg of you who have begun this paper nobly trusting to your
own imagination and sensibilities to give it the significance which
it does not lay claim to without your kind assistance,--may I beg
of you, I say, to pay particular attention to the BRACKETS which
enclose certain paragraphs? I want my "asides," you see, to
whisper loud to you who read my notes, and sometimes I talk a page
or two to you without pretending that I said a word of it to our
boarders. You will find a very long "aside" to you almost as soon
as you begin to read. And so, dear young friend, fall to at once,
taking such things as I have provided for you; and if you turn
them, by the aid of your powerful imagination, into a fair banquet,
why, then, peace be with you, and a summer by the still waters of
some quiet river, or by some yellow beach, where, as my friend the
Professor, says, you can sit with Nature's wrist in your hand and
count her ocean-pulses.]
I should like to make a few intimate revelations relating
especially to my early life, if I thought you would like to hear
them.
[The schoolmistress turned a little in her chair, and sat with her
face directed partly towards me.--Half-mourning now;--purple
ribbon. That breastpin she wears has GRAY hair in it; her
mother's, no doubt;--I remember our landlady's daughter telling me,
soon after the schoolmistress came to board with us, that she had
lately "buried a payrent." That's what made her look so pale,
--kept the poor dying thing alive with her own blood. Ah! long
illness is the real vampyrism; think of living a year or two after
one is dead, by sucking the life-blood out of a frail young
creature at one's bedside! Well, souls grow white, as well as
cheeks, in these holy duties one that goes in a nurse may come out
an angel.--God bless all good women!--to their soft hands and
pitying hearts we must all come at last!--The schoolmistress has a
better color than when she came.--Too late! "It might have been."
--Amen!--How many thoughts go to a dozen heart-beats, sometimes!
There was no long pause after my remark addressed to the company,
but in that time I had the train of ideas and feelings I have just
given flash through my consciousness sudden and sharp as the
crooked red streak that springs out of its black sheath like the
creese of a Malay in his death-race, and stabs the earth right and
left in its blind rage.
I don't deny that there was a pang in it,--yes, a stab; but there
was a prayer, too,--the "Amen" belonged to that.--Also, a vision of
a four-story brick house, nicely furnished,--I actually saw many
specific articles,--curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and could
draw the patterns of them at this moment,--a brick house, I say,
looking out on the water, with a fair parlor, and books and busts
and pots of flowers and bird-cages, all complete; and at the
window, looking on the water, two of us.--"Male and female created
He them."--These two were standing at the window, when a smaller
shape that was playing near them looked up at me with such a look
that I----poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, and then
continued.]
I said I should like to tell you some things, such as people
commonly never tell, about my early recollections. Should you like
to hear them?
Should we LIKE to hear them?--said the schoolmistress;--no, but we
should love to.
[The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and had something very
pleasant in its tone, just then.--The four-story brick house, which
had gone out like a transparency when the light behind it is
quenched, glimmered again for a moment; parlor, books, busts,
flower-pots, bird-cages, all complete,--and the figures as before.]
We are waiting with eagerness, Sir,--said the divinity-student.
[The transparency went out as if a flash of black lightning had
struck it.]
If you want to hear my confessions, the next thing--I said--is to
know whether I can trust you with them. It is only fair to say
that there are a great many people in the world that laugh at such
things. _I_ think they are fools, but perhaps you don't all agree
with me.
Here are children of tender age talked to as if they were capable
of understanding Calvin's "Institutes," and nobody has honesty or
sense enough to tell the plain truth about the little wretches:
that they are as superstitious as naked savages, and such miserable
spiritual cowards--that is, if they have any imagination--that they
will believe anything which is taught them, and a great deal more
which they teach themselves.
I was born and bred, as I have told you twenty times, among books
and those who knew what was in books. I was carefully instructed
in things temporal and spiritual. But up to a considerable
maturity of childhood I believed Raphael and Michael Angelo to have
been superhuman beings. The central doctrine of the prevalent
religious faith of Christendom was utterly confused and neutralized
in my mind for years by one of those too common stories of actual
life, which I overheard repeated in a whisper.--Why did I not ask?
you will say.--You don't remember the rosy pudency of sensitive
children. The first instinctive movement of the little creatures
is to make a cache, and bury in it beliefs, doubts, dreams, hopes,
and terrors. I am uncovering one of these CACHES. Do you think I
was necessarily a greater fool and coward than another?
I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell. The masts looked
frightfully tall,--but they were not so tall as the steeple of our
old yellow meeting-house. At any rate I used to hide my eyes from
the sloops and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of the
bridge, and I confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted
very long.--One other source of alarm had a still more fearful
significance. There was a great wooden HAND,--a glove-maker's
sign, which used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from a
pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside of the city.
Oh, the dreadful hand! Always hanging there ready to catch up a
little boy, who would come home to supper no more, nor yet to bed,
--whose porringer would be laid away empty thenceforth, and his
half-worn shoes wait until his small brother grew to fit them.
As for all manner of superstitious observances, I used once to
think I must have been peculiar in having such a list of them, but
I now believe that half the children of the same age go through the
same experiences. No Roman soothsayer ever had such a catalogue of
OMENS as I found in the Sibylline leaves of my childhood. That
trick of throwing a stone at a tree and attaching some mighty issue
to hitting or missing, which you will find mentioned in one or more
biographies, I well remember. Stepping on or over certain
particular things or spots--Dr. Johnson's especial weakness I got
the habit of at a very early age.--I won't swear that I have not
some tendency to these not wise practices even at this present
date. [How many of you that read these notes can say the same
thing!]
With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which I loved so well I
would not outgrow them, even when it required a voluntary effort to
put a momentary trust in them. Here is one which I cannot help
telling you.
The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard is easily heard at
the place where I was born and lived. "There is a ship of war come
in," they used to say, when they heard them. Of course, I supposed
that such vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite years of
absence,--suddenly as falling stones; and that the great guns
roared in their astonishment and delight at the sight of the old
war-ship splitting the bay with her cutwater. Now, the sloop-of-
war the Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing the
Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from the face of the ocean,
and was supposed to be lost. But there was no proof of it, and, of
course, for a time, hopes were entertained that she might be heard
from. Long after the last real chance had utterly vanished, I
pleased myself with the fond illusion that somewhere on the waste
of waters she was still floating, and there were YEARS during which
I never heard the sound of the great guns booming inland from the
Navy-yard without saying to myself, "The Wasp has come!" and almost
thinking I could see her, as she rolled in, crumpling the water
before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered spars and
threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts and tears of thousands.
This was one of those dreams that I nursed and never told. Let me
make a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to have
outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far on towards manhood,
when the roar of the cannon has struck suddenly on my ear, I have
started with a thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight,
and the long-unspoken words have articulated themselves in the
mind's dumb whisper, THE WASP HAS COME!
--Yes, children believe plenty of queer things. I suppose all of
you have had the pocket-book fever when you were little?--What do I
mean? Why, ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that
bank-bills to an immense amount were hidden in them.--So, too, you
must all remember some splendid unfulfilled promise of somebody or
other, which fed you with hopes perhaps for years, and which left a
blank in your life which nothing has ever filled up.--O. T. quitted
our household carrying with him the passionate regrets of the more
youthful members. He was an ingenious youngster; wrote wonderful
copies, and carved the two initials given above with great skill on
all available surfaces. I thought, by the way, they were all gone;
but the other day I found them on a certain door which I will show
you some time. How it surprised me to find them so near the
ground! I had thought the boy of no trivial dimensions. Well, O.
T., when he went, made a solemn promise to two of us. I was to
have a ship, and the other a marTIN-house (last syllable pronounced
as in the word TIN). Neither ever came; but, oh, how many and many
a time I have stolen to the corner,--the cars pass close by it at
this time,--and looked up that long avenue, thinking that he must
be coming now, almost sure, as I turned to look northward, that
there he would be, trudging toward me, the ship in one hand and the
marTIN-house in the other!
[You must not suppose that all I am going to say, as well as all I
have said, was told to the whole company. The young fellow whom
they call John was in the yard, sitting on a barrel and smoking a
cheroot, the fumes of which came in, not ungrateful, through the
open window. The divinity-student disappeared in the midst of our
talk. The poor relation in black bombazine, who looked and moved
as if all her articulations were elbow-joints, had gone off to her
chamber, after waiting with a look of soul-subduing decorum at the
foot of the stairs until one of the male sort had passed her and
ascended into the upper regions. This is a famous point of
etiquette in our boarding-house; in fact, between ourselves, they
make such an awful fuss about it, that I, for one, had a great deal
rather have them simple enough not to think of such matters at all.
Our landlady's daughter said, the other evening, that she was going
to "retire"; whereupon the young fellow called John took up a lamp
and insisted on lighting her to the foot of the staircase. Nothing
would induce her to pass by him, until the schoolmistress, saying
in good plain English that it was her bed-time, walked straight by
them both, not seeming to trouble herself about either of them.
I have been led away from what I meant the portion included in
these brackets to inform my readers about. I say, then, most of
the boarders had left the table about the time when I began telling
some of these secrets of mine,--all of them, in fact, but the old
gentleman opposite and the schoolmistress. I understand why a
young woman should like to hear these simple but genuine
experiences of early life, which are, as I have said, the little
brown seeds of what may yet grow to be poems with leaves of azure
and gold; but when the old gentleman pushed up his chair nearer to
me, and slanted round his best ear, and once, when I was speaking
of some trifling, tender reminiscence, drew a long breath, with
such a tremor in it that a little more and it would have been a
sob, why, then I felt there must be something of nature in them
which redeemed their seeming insignificance. Tell me, man or woman
with whom I am whispering, have you not a small store of
recollections, such as these I am uncovering, buried beneath the
dead leaves of many summers, perhaps under the unmelting snows of
fast-returning winters,--a few such recollections, which, if you
should write them all out, would be swept into some careless
editor's drawer, and might cost a scanty half-hour's lazy reading
to his subscribers,--and yet, if Death should cheat you of them,
you would not know yourself in eternity?]
--I made three acquaintances at a very early period of life, my
introduction to whom was never forgotten. The first unequivocal
act of wrong that has left its trace in my memory was this:
refusing a small favor asked of me,--nothing more than telling what
had happened at school one morning. No matter who asked it; but
there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no
heart to speak;--I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant
excuse, stole away, and the first battle of life was lost. What
remorse followed I need not tell. Then and there, to the best of
my knowledge, I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned
my back on Duty. Time has led me to look upon my offence more
leniently; I do not believe it or any other childish wrong is
infinite, as some have pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, oh
if I had but won that battle!
The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it was that had silenced
me, came near me,--but never, so as to be distinctly seen and
remembered, during my tender years. There flits dimly before me
the image of a little girl, whose name even I have forgotten, a
schoolmate, whom we missed one day, and were told that she had
died. But what death was I never had any very distinct idea, until
one day I climbed the low stone wall of the old burial-ground and
mingled with a group that were looking into a very deep, long,
narrow hole, dug down through the green sod, down through the brown
loam, down through the yellow gravel, and there at the bottom was
an oblong red box, and a still, sharp, white face of a young man
seen through an opening at one end of it. When the lid was closed,
and the gravel and stones rattled down pell-mell, and the woman in
black, who was crying and wringing her hands, went off with the
other mourners, and left him, then I felt that I had seen Death,
and should never forget him.
One other acquaintance I made at an earlier period of life than the
habit of romancers authorizes.--Love, of course.--She was a famous
beauty afterwards.--I am satisfied that many children rehearse
their parts in the drama of life before they have shed all their
milk-teeth.--I think I won't tell the story of the golden blonde.
--I suppose everybody has had his childish fancies; but sometimes
they are passionate impulses, which anticipate all the tremulous
emotions belonging to a later period. Most children remember
seeing and adoring an angel before they were a dozen years old.
[The old gentleman had left his chair opposite and taken a seat by
the schoolmistress and myself, a little way from the table.--It's
true, it's true,--said the old gentleman.--He took hold of a steel
watch-chain, which carried a large, square gold key at one end and
was supposed to have some kind of time-keeper at the other. With
some trouble he dragged up an ancient-looking, thick, silver,
bull's-eye watch. He looked at it for a moment,--hesitated,
--touched the inner corner of his right eye with the pulp of his
middle finger,--looked at the face of the watch,--said it was
getting into the forenoon,--then opened the watch and handed me the
loose outside case without a word.--The watch-paper had been pink
once, and had a faint tinge still, as if all its tender life had
not yet quite faded out. Two little birds, a flower, and, in small
school-girl letters, a date,--17 . .--no matter.--Before I was
thirteen years old,--said the old gentleman.--I don't know what was
in that young schoolmistress's head, nor why she should have done
it; but she took out the watch-paper and put it softly to her lips,
as if she were kissing the poor thing that made it so long ago.
The old gentleman took the watch-paper carefully from her, replaced
it, turned away and walked out, holding the watch in his hand. I
saw him pass the window a moment after with that foolish white hat
on his head; he couldn't have been thinking what he was about when
he put it on. So the schoolmistress and I were left alone. I drew
my chair a shade nearer to her, and continued.]
And since I am talking of early recollections, I don't know why I
shouldn't mention some others that still cling to me,--not that you
will attach any very particular meaning to these same images so
full of significance to me, but that you will find something
parallel to them in your own memory. You remember, perhaps, what I
said one day about smells. There were certain SOUNDS also which
had a mysterious suggestiveness to me,--not so intense, perhaps, as
that connected with the other sense, but yet peculiar, and never to
be forgotten.
The first was the creaking of the wood-sleds, bringing their loads
of oak and walnut from the country, as the slow-swinging oxen
trailed them along over the complaining snow, in the cold, brown
light of early morning. Lying in bed and listening to their dreary
music had a pleasure in it akin to the Lucretian luxury, or that
which Byron speaks of as to be enjoyed in looking on at a battle by
one "who hath no friend, no brother there."
There was another sound, in itself so sweet, and so connected with
one of those simple and curious superstitions of childhood of which
I have spoken, that I can never cease to cherish a sad sort of love
for it.--Let me tell the superstitious fancy first. The Puritan
"Sabbath," as everybody knows, began at "sundown" on Saturday
evening. To such observance of it I was born and bred. As the
large, round disk of day declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a
somewhat melancholy hush came over us all. It was time for work to
cease, and for playthings to be put away. The world of active life
passed into the shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun
should sink again beneath the horizon.
It was in this stillness of the world without and of the soul
within that the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to
make itself most distinctly heard,--so that I well remember I used
to think that the purring of these little creatures, which mingled
with the batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamp, WAS PECULIAR
TO SATURDAY EVENINGS. I don't know that anything could give a
clearer idea of the quieting and subduing effect of the old habit
of observance of what was considered holy time, than this strange,
childish fancy.
Yes, and there was still another sound which mingled its solemn
cadences with the waking and sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was
heard only at times,--a deep, muffled roar, which rose and fell,
not loud, but vast,--a whistling boy would have drowned it for his
next neighbor, but it must have been heard over the space of a
hundred square miles. I used to wonder what this might be. Could
it be the roar of the thousand wheels and the ten thousand
footsteps jarring and trampling along the stones of the neighboring
city? That would be continuous; but this, as I have said, rose and
fell in regular rhythm. I remember being told, and I suppose this
to have been the true solution, that it was the sound of the waves,
after a high wind, breaking on the long beaches many miles distant.
I should really like to know whether any observing people living
ten miles, more or less, inland from long beaches,--in such a town,
for instance, as Cantabridge, in the eastern part of the Territory
of the Massachusetts,--have ever observed any such sound, and
whether it was rightly accounted for as above.
Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the low murmur of
memory, are the echoes of certain voices I have heard at rare
intervals. I grieve to say it, but our people, I think, have not
generally agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with skins that
shed water like the backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces neatly
padded beneath, and velvet linings to their singing-pipes, are not
so common among us as that other pattern of humanity with angular
outlines and plane surfaces, and integuments, hair like the fibrous
covering of a cocoa-nut in gloss and suppleness as well as color,
and voices at once thin and strenuous,--acidulous enough to produce
effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous enough to sing duets
with the katydids. I think our conversational soprano, as
sometimes overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young
persons, who may have taken the train at one of our great
industrial centres, for instance,--young persons of the female sex,
we will say, who have bustled in full-dressed, engaged in loud
strident speech, and who, after free discussion, have fixed on two
or more double seats, which having secured, they proceed to eat
apples and hand round daguerreotypes,--I say, I think the
conversational soprano, heard under these circumstances, would not
be among the allurements the old Enemy would put in requisition,
were he getting up a new temptation of St. Anthony.
There are sweet voices among us, we all know, and voices not
musical, it may be, to those who hear them for the first time, yet
sweeter to us than any we shall hear until we listen to some
warbling angel in the overture to that eternity of blissful
harmonies we hope to enjoy.--But why should I tell lies? If my
friends love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I never
heard but two voices in my life that frightened me by their
sweetness.
--Frightened you?--said the schoolmistress.--Yes, frightened me.
They made me feel as if there might be constituted a creature with
such a chord in her voice to some string in another's soul, that,
if she but spoke, he would leave all and follow her, though it were
into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance to keep our wits is, that
there are so few natural chords between others' voices and this
string in our souls, and that those which at first may have jarred
a little by and by come into harmony with it.--But I tell you this
is no fiction. You may call the story of Ulysses and the Sirens a
fable, but what will you say to Mario and the poor lady who
followed him?
--Whose were those two voices that bewitches me so?--They both
belonged to German women. One was a chambermaid, not otherwise
fascinating. The key of my room at a certain great hotel was
missing, and this Teutonic maiden was summoned to give information
respecting it. The simple soul was evidently not long from her
mother-land, and spoke with sweet uncertainty of dialect. But to
hear her wonder and lament and suggest, with soft, liquid
inflexions, and low, sad murmurs, in tones as full of serious
tenderness for the fate of the lost key as if it had been a child
that had strayed from its mother, was so winning, that, had her
features and figure been as delicious as her accents,--if she had
looked like the marble Clytie, for instance,--why, all can say is--
[The schoolmistress opened her eyes so wide, that I stopped short.]
I was only going to say that I should have drowned myself. For
Lake Erie was close by, and it is so much better to accept
asphyxia, which takes only three minutes by the watch, than a
mesalliance, that lasts fifty years to begin with, and then passes
along down the line of descent, (breaking out in all manner of
boorish manifestations of feature and manner, which, if men were
only as short-lived as horses, could be readily traced back through
the square-roots and the cube-roots of the family stem on which you
have hung the armorial bearings of the De Champignons or the De la
Morues, until one came to beings that ate with knives and said
"Haow?") that no person of right feeling could have hesitated for a
single moment.
The second of the ravishing voices I have heard was, as I have
said, that of another German woman.--I suppose I shall ruin myself
by saying that such a voice could not have come from any
Americanized human being.
--What was there in it?--said the schoolmistress,--and, upon my
word, her tones were so very musical, that I almost wished I had
said three voices instead of two, and not made the unpatriotic
remark above reported.--Oh, I said, it had so much WOMAN in it,
--MULIEBRITY, as well as FEMINEITY;--no self-assertion, such as free
suffrage introduces into every word and movement; large, vigorous
nature, running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but
subdued by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly culture
of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a lean soil,
independence, enterprise, and east winds, are not the best things
for the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among us,--I have
known families famous for them,--but ask the first person you meet
a question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic,
matter-of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that
produces the effect of one of those bells which small trades-people
connect with their shop-doors, and which spring upon your ear with
such vivacity, as you enter, that your first impulse is to retire
at once from the precincts.
--Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I saw and heard
in a French hospital. Between two and three years old. Fell out
of her chair and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient,
gentle. Rough students round her, some in white aprons, looking
fearfully business-like; but the child placid, perfectly still. I
spoke to her, and the blessed little creature answered me in a
voice of such heavenly sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it
which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at
this moment, while I am writing, so many, many years afterwards.
--C'est tout comme un serin, said the French student at my side.
These are the voices which struck the key-note of my conceptions as
to what the sounds we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall
enter through one of the twelve gates of pearl. There must be
other things besides aerolites that wander from their own spheres
to ours; and when we speak of celestial sweetness or beauty, we may
be nearer the literal truth than we dream. If mankind generally
are the shipwrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set
adrift in these little open boats of humanity to make one more
trial to reach the shore,--as some grave theologians have
maintained,--if, in plain English, men are the ghosts of dead
devils who have "died into life," (to borrow an expression from
Keats,) and walk the earth in a suit of living rags which lasts
three or four score summers,--why, there must have been a few good
spirits sent to keep them company, and these sweet voices I speak
of must belong to them.
--I wish you could once hear my sister's voice,--said the
schoolmistress.
If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one,--said I.
I never thought mine was anything,--said the schoolmistress.
How should you know?--said I.--People never hear their own voices,
--any more than they see their own faces. There is not even a
looking-glass for the voice. Of course, there is something audible
to us when we speak; but that something is not our own voice as it
is known to all our acquaintances. I think, if an image spoke to
us in our own tones, we should not know them in the least.--How
pleasant it would be, if in another state of being we could have
shapes like our former selves for playthings,--we standing outside
or inside of them, as we liked, and they being to us just what we
used to be to others!
--I wonder if there will be nothing like what we call "play," after
our earthly toys are broken,--said the schoolmistress.
Hush,--said I,--what will the divinity-student say?
[I thought she was hit, that time;--but the shot must have gone
over her, or on one side of her; she did not flinch.]
Oh,--said the schoolmistress,--he must look out for my sister's
heresies; I am afraid he will be too busy with them to take care of
mine.
Do you mean to say,--said I,--that it is YOUR SISTER whom that
student--
[The young fellow commonly known as John, who had been sitting on
the barrel, smoking, jumped off just then, kicked over the barrel,
gave it a push with his foot that set it rolling, and stuck his
saucy-looking face in at the window so as to cut my question off in
the middle; and the schoolmistress leaving the room a few minutes
afterwards, I did not have a chance to finish it.
The young fellow came in and sat down in a chair, putting his heels
on the top of another.
Pooty girl,--said he.
A fine young lady,--I replied.
Keeps a first-rate school, according to accounts,--said he,
--teaches all sorts of things,--Latin and Italian and music. Folks
rich once,--smashed up. She went right ahead as smart as if she'd
been born to work. That's the kind o' girl I go for. I'd marry
her, only two or three other girls would drown themselves, if I
did.
I think the above is the longest speech of this young fellow's
which I have put on record. I do not like to change his peculiar
expressions, for this is one of those cases in which the style is
the man, as M. de Buffon says. The fact is, the young fellow is a
good-hearted creature enough, only too fond of his jokes,--and if
it were not for those heat-lightning winks on one side of his face,
I should not mind his fun much.]
[Some days after this, when the company were together again, I
talked a little.]
--I don't think I have a genuine hatred for anybody. I am well
aware that I differ herein from the sturdy English moralist and the
stout American tragedian. I don't deny that I hate THE SIGHT of
certain people; but the qualities which make me tend to hate the
man himself are such as I am so much disposed to pity, that, except
under immediate aggravation, I feel kindly enough to the worst of
them. It is such a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so much
worse than to inherit a hump-back or a couple of club-feet, that I
sometimes feel as if we ought to love the crippled souls, if I may
use this expression, with a certain tenderness which we need not
waste on noble natures. One who is born with such congenital
incapacity that nothing can make a gentleman of him is entitled,
not to our wrath, but to our profoundest sympathy. But as we
cannot help hating the sight of these people, just as we do that of
physical deformities, we gradually eliminate them from our
society,--we love them, but open the window and let them go. By
the time decent people reach middle age they have weeded their
circle pretty well of these unfortunates, unless they have a taste
for such animals; in which case, no matter what their position may
be, there is something, you may be sure, in their natures akin to
that of their wretched parasites.
--The divinity-student wished to know what I thought of affinities,
as well as of antipathies; did I believe in love at first sight?
Sir,--said I,--all men love all women. That is the prima-facie
aspect of the case. The Court of Nature assumes the law to be,
that all men do so; and the individual man is bound to show cause
why he does not love any particular woman. A man, says one of my
old black-letter law-books, may show divers good reasons, as thus:
He hath not seen the person named in the indictment; she is of
tender age, or the reverse of that; she hath certain personal
disqualifications,--as, for instance, she is a blackamoor, or hath
an ill-favored countenance; or, his capacity of loving being
limited, his affections are engrossed by a previous comer; and so
of other conditions. Not the less is it true that he is bound by
duty and inclined by nature to love each and every woman.
Therefore it is that each woman virtually summons every man to show
cause why he doth not love her. This is not by written document,
or direct speech, for the most part, but by certain signs of silk,
gold, and other materials, which say to all men,--Look on me and
love, as in duty bound. Then the man pleadeth his special
incapacity, whatsoever that may be,--as, for instance,
impecuniosity, or that he hath one or many wives in his household,
or that he is of mean figure, or small capacity; of which reasons
it may be noted, that the first is, according to late decisions, of
chiefest authority.--So far the old law-book. But there is a note
from an older authority, saying that every woman doth also love
each and every man, except there be some good reason to the
contrary; and a very observing friend of mine, a young unmarried
clergyman, tells me, that, so far as his experience goes, he has
reason to think the ancient author had fact to justify his
statement.
I'll tell you how it is with the pictures of women we fall in love
with at first sight.
--We a'n't talking about pictures,--said the landlady's daughter,
--we're talking about women.
I understood that we were speaking of love at sight,--I remarked,
mildly.--Now, as all a man knows about a woman whom he looks at is
just what a picture as big as a copper, or a "nickel," rather, at
the bottom of his eye can teach him, I think I am right in saying
we are talking about the pictures of women.--Well, now, the reason
why a man is not desperately in love with ten thousand women at
once is just that which prevents all our portraits being distinctly
seen upon that wall. They all ARE painted there by reflection from
our faces, but because ALL of them are painted on each spot, and
each on the same surface, and many other objects at the same time,
no one is seen as a picture. But darken a chamber and let a single
pencil of rays in through a key-hole, then you have a picture on
the wall. We never fall in love with a woman in distinction from
women, until we can get an image of her through a pin-hole; and
then we can see nothing else, and nobody but ourselves can see the
image in our mental camera-obscura.
--My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave town whenever the
anniversaries come round.
What's the difficulty?--Why, they all want him to get up and make
speeches, or songs, or toasts; which is just the very thing he
doesn't want to do. He is an old story, he says, and hates to show
on these occasions. But they tease him, and coax him, and can't do
without him, and feel all over his poor weak head until they get
their fingers on the fontanelle, (the Professor will tell you what
this means,--he says the one at the top of the head always remains
open in poets,) until, by gentle pressure on that soft pulsating
spot, they stupefy him to the point of acquiescence.
There are times, though, he says, when it is a pleasure, before
going to some agreeable meeting, to rush out into one's garden and
clutch up a handful of what grows there,--weeds and violets
together,--not cutting them off, but pulling them up by the roots
with the brown earth they grow in sticking to them. That's his
idea of a post-prandial performance. Look here, now. These verses
I am going to read you, he tells me, were pulled up by the roots
just in that way, the other day.--Beautiful entertainment,--names
there on the plates that flow from all English-speaking tongues as
familiarly as AND or THE; entertainers known wherever good poetry
and fair title-pages are held in esteem; guest a kind-hearted,
modest, genial, hopeful poet, who sings to the hearts of his
countrymen, the British people, the songs of good cheer which the
better days to come, as all honest souls trust and believe, will
turn into the prose of common life. My friend, the Poet, says you
must not read such a string of verses too literally. If he trimmed
it nicely below, you wouldn't see the roots, he says, and he likes
to keep them, and a little of the soil clinging to them.
This is the farewell my friend, the Poet, read to his and our
friend, the Poet:-
A GOOD TIME GOING!
Brave singer of the coming time,
Sweet minstrel of the joyous present,
Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme,
The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant,
Good-bye! Good-bye!--Our hearts and hands,
Our lips in honest Saxon phrases,
Cry, God be with him, till he stands
His feet among the English daisies!
'Tis here we part;--for other eyes
The busy deck, the flattering streamer,
The dripping arms that plunge and rise,
The waves in foam, the ship in tremor,
The kerchiefs waving from the pier,
The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him,
The deep blue desert, lone and drear,
With heaven above and home before him!
His home!--the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the spotty globe to find it;--
This little speck the British Isles?
'Tis but a freckle,--never mind it!--
He laughs, and all his prairies roll,
Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles,
And ridges stretched from pole to pole
Heave till they crack their iron knuckles!
But memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant:-
"An islet is a world," she said,
"When glory with its dust has blended,
And Britain kept her noble dead
Till earth and seas and skies are rended!"
Beneath each swinging forest-bough
Some arm as stout in death reposes,--
From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow
Her valor's life-blood runs in roses;
Nay, let our brothers of the West
Write smiling in their florid pages,
One-half her soil has walked the rest
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages!
Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp,
From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather,
The British oak with rooted grasp
Her slender handful holds together;--
With cliffs of white and bowers of green,
And Ocean narrowing to caress her,
And hills and threaded streams between,--
Our little mother isle, God bless her!
In earth's broad temple where we stand,
Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us,
We hold the missal in our hand,
Bright with the lines our Mother taught us;
Where'er its blazoned page betrays
The glistening links of gilded fetters,
Behold, the half-turned leaf displays
Her rubric stained in crimson letters!
Enough! To speed a parting friend
'Tis vain alike to speak and listen;--
Yet stay,--these feeble accents blend
With rays of light from eyes that glisten.
Good-bye! once more,--and kindly tell
In words of peace the young world's story,--
And say, besides,--we love too well
Our mother's soil, our father's glory!
When my friend, the Professor, found that my friend, the Poet, had
been coming out in this full-blown style, he got a little excited,
as you may have seen a canary, sometimes, when another strikes up.
The Professor says he knows he can lecture, and thinks he can write
verses. At any rate, he has often tried, and now he was determined
to try again. So when some professional friends of his called him
up, one day, after a feast of reason and a regular "freshet" of
soul which had lasted two or three hours, he read them these
verses. He introduced them with a few remarks, he told me, of
which the only one he remembered was this: that he had rather
write a single line which one among them should think worth
remembering than set them all laughing with a string of epigrams.
It was all right, I don't doubt; at any rate, that was his fancy
then, and perhaps another time he may be obstinately hilarious;
however, it may be that he is growing graver, for time is a fact so
long as clocks and watches continue to go, and a cat can't be a
kitten always, as the old gentleman opposite said the other day.
You must listen to this seriously, for I think the Professor was
very much in earnest when he wrote it.
THE TWO ARMIES.
As Life's unending column pours,
Two marshalled hosts are seen,--
Two armies on the trampled shores
That Death flows black between.
One marches to the drum-beat's roll,
The wide-mouthed clarion's bray,
And bears upon a crimson scroll,
"Our glory is to slay."
One moves in silence by the stream,
With sad, yet watchful eyes,
Calm as the patient planet's gleam
That walks the clouded skies.
Along its front no sabres shine,
No blood-red pennons wave;
Its banner bears the single line,
"Our duty is to save."
For those no death-bed's lingering shade;
At Honor's trumpet-call,
With knitted brow and lifted blade
In Glory's arms they fall.
For these no clashing falchions bright,
No stirring battle-cry;
The bloodless stabber calls by night,--
Each answers, "Here am I!"
For those the sculptor's laurelled bust,
The builder's marble piles,
The anthems pealing o'er their dust
Through long cathedral aisles.
For these the blossom-sprinkled turf
That floods the lonely graves,
When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf
In flowery-foaming waves.
Two paths lead upward from below,
And angels wait above,
Who count each burning life-drop's flow,
Each falling tear of Love.
Though from the Hero's bleeding breast
Her pulses Freedom drew,
Though the white lilies in her crest
Sprang from that scarlet dew,--
While Valor's haughty champions wait
Till all their scars are shown,
Love walks unchallenged through the gate,
To sit beside the Throne!
CHAPTER X
[The schoolmistress came down with a rose in her hair,--a fresh
June rose. She has been walking early; she has brought back two
others,--one on each cheek.
I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I could muster for the
occasion. Those two blush-roses I just spoke of turned into a
couple of damasks. I suppose all this went through my mind, for
this was what I went on to say:-]
I love the damask rose best of all. The flowers our mothers and
sisters used to love and cherish, those which grow beneath our
eaves and by our doorstep, are the ones we always love best. If
the Houyhnhnms should ever catch me, and, finding me particularly
vicious and unmanageable, send a man-tamer to Rareyfy me, I'll tell
you what drugs he would have to take and how he would have to use
them. Imagine yourself reading a number of the Houyhnhnm Gazette,
giving an account of such an experiment.
"MAN-TAMING EXTRAORDINARY.
"THE soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently captured was subjected to
the art of our distinguished man-tamer in presence of a numerous
assembly. The animal was led in by two stout ponies, closely
confined by straps to prevent his sudden and dangerous tricks of
shoulder-hitting and foot-striking. His countenance expressed the
utmost degree of ferocity and cunning.
"The operator took a handful of BUDDING LILAC-LEAVES, and crushing
them slightly between his hoofs, so as to bring out their peculiar
fragrance, fastened them to the end of a long pole and held them
towards the creature. Its expression changed in an instant,--it
drew in their fragrance eagerly, and attempted to seize them with
its soft split hoofs. Having thus quieted his suspicious subject,
the operator proceeded to tie a BLUE HYACINTH to the end of the
pole and held it out towards the wild animal. The effect was
magical. Its eyes filled as if with raindrops, and its lips
trembled as it pressed them to the flower. After this it was
perfectly quiet, and brought a measure of corn to the man-tamer,
without showing the least disposition to strike with the feet or
hit from the shoulder."
That will do for the Houyhnhnm Gazette.--Do you ever wonder why
poets talk so much about flowers? Did you ever hear of a poet who
did not talk about them? Don't you think a poem, which, for the
sake of being original, should leave them out, would be like those
verses where the letter A or E or some other is omitted? No,--they
will bloom over and over again in poems as in the summer fields, to
the end of time, always old and always new. Why should we be more
shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of blossoms or
the night of stars? Look at Nature. She never wearies of saying
over her floral pater-noster. In the crevices of Cyclopean walls,
--in the dust where men lie, dust also,--on the mounds that bury
huge cities, the wreck of Nineveh and the Babel-heap,--still that
same sweet prayer and benediction. The Amen! of Nature is always a
flower.
Are you tired of my trivial personalities,--those splashes and
streaks of sentiment, sometimes perhaps of sentimentality, which
you may see when I show you my heart's corolla as if it were a
tulip? Pray, do not give yourself the trouble to fancy me an idiot
whose conceit it is to treat himself as an exceptional being. It
is because you are just like me that I talk and know that you will
listen. We are all splashed and streaked with sentiments,--not
with precisely the same tints, or in exactly the same patterns, but
by the same hand and from the same palette.
I don't believe any of you happen to have just the same passion for
the blue hyacinth which I have,--very certainly not for the crushed
lilac-leaf-buds; many of you do not know how sweet they are. You
love the smell of the sweet-fern and the bayberry-leaves, I don't
doubt; but I hardly think that the last bewitches you with young
memories as it does me. For the same reason I come back to damask
roses, after having raised a good many of the rarer varieties. I
like to go to operas and concerts, but there are queer little old
homely sounds that are better than music to me. However, I suppose
it's foolish to tell such things.
--It is pleasant to be foolish at the right time,--said the
divinity-student;--saying it, however, in one of the dead
languages, which I think are unpopular for summer-reading, and
therefore do not bear quotation as such.
Well, now,--said I,--suppose a good, clean, wholesome-looking
countryman's cart stops opposite my door.--Do I want any
huckleberries?--If I do not, there are those that do. Thereupon my
soft-voiced handmaid bears out a large tin pan, and then the
wholesome countryman, heaping the peck-measure, spreads his broad
hands around its lower arc to confine the wild and frisky berries,
and so they run nimbly along the narrowing channel until they
tumble rustling down in a black cascade and tinkle on the
resounding metal beneath.--I won't say that this rushing
huckleberry hail-storm has not more music for me than the "Anvil
Chorus."
--I wonder how my great trees are coming on this summer.
--Where are your great trees, Sir?--said the divinity-student.
Oh, all round about New England. I call all trees mine that I have
put my wedding-ring on, and I have as many tree-wives as Brigham
Young has human ones.
--One set's as green as the other,--exclaimed a boarder, who has
never been identified.
They're all Bloomers,--said the young fellow called John.
[I should have rebuked this trifling with language, if our
landlady's daughter had not asked me just then what I meant by
putting my wedding-ring on a tree.]
Why, measuring it with my thirty-foot tape, my dear,--said I,--I
have worn a tape almost out on the rough barks of our old New
England elms and other big trees.--Don't you want to hear me talk
trees a little now? That is one of my specialities.
[So they all agreed that they should like to hear me talk about
trees.]
I want you to understand, in the first place, that I have a most
intense, passionate fondness for trees in general, and have had
several romantic attachments to certain trees in particular. Now,
if you expect me to hold forth in a "scientific" way about my
tree-loves,--to talk, for instance, of the Ulmus Americana, and
describe the ciliated edges of its samara, and all that,--you are an
anserine individual, and I must refer you to a dull friend who will
discourse to you of such matters. What should you think of a lover
who should describe the idol of his heart in the language of
science, thus: Class, Mammalia; Order, Primates; Genus, Homo;
Species, Europeus; Variety, Brown; Individual, Ann Eliza; Dental
Formula
2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3
i---c---p---m---
2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3'
and so on?
No, my friends, I shall speak of trees as we see them, love them,
adore them in the fields, where they are alive, holding their green
sun-shades over our heads, talking to us with their hundred
thousand whispering tongues, looking down on us with that sweet
meekness which belongs to huge, but limited organisms,--which one
sees in the brown eyes of oxen, but most in the patient posture,
the outstretched arms, and the heavy-drooping robes of these vast
beings endowed with life, but not with soul,--which outgrow us and
outlive us, but stand helpless,--poor things!--while Nature dresses
and undresses them, like so many full-sized, but under-witted
children.
Did you ever read old Daddy Gilpin? Slowest of men, even of
English men; yet delicious in his slowness, as is the light of a
sleepy eye in woman. I always supposed "Dr. Syntax" was written to
make fun of him. I have a whole set of his works, and am very
proud of it, with its gray paper, and open type, and long ff, and
orange-juice landscapes. The Pere Gilpin had the kind of science I
like in the study of Nature,--a little less observation than White
of Selborne, but a little more poetry.--Just think of applying the
Linnaean system to an elm! Who cares how many stamens or pistils
that little brown flower, which comes out before the leaf, may have
to classify it by? What we want is the meaning, the character, the
expression of a tree, as a kind and as an individual.
There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of tree, which, if
well marked, is probably embodied in the poetry of every language.
Take the oak, for instance, and we find it always standing as a
type of strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever thought of
the single mark of supremacy which distinguishes this tree from all
our other forest-trees? All the rest of them shirk the work of
resisting gravity; the oak alone defies it. It chooses the
horizontal direction for its limbs, so that their whole weight may
tell,--and then stretches them out fifty or sixty feet, so that the
strain may be mighty enough to be worth resisting. You will find,
that, in passing from the extreme downward droop of the branches of
the weeping-willow to the extreme upward inclination of those of
the poplar, they sweep nearly half a circle. At 90 degrees the oak
stops short; to slant upward another degree would mark infirmity of
purpose; to bend downwards, weakness of organization. The American
elm betrays something of both; yet sometimes, as we shall see, puts
on a certain resemblance to its sturdier neighbor.
It won't do to be exclusive in our taste about trees. There is
hardly one of them which has not peculiar beauties in some fitting
place for it. I remember a tall poplar of monumental proportions
and aspect, a vast pillar of glossy green, placed on the summit of
a lofty hill, and a beacon to all the country round. A native of
that region saw fit to build his house very near it, and, having a
fancy that it might blow down some time or other, and exterminate
himself and any incidental relatives who might be "stopping" or
"tarrying" with him,--also laboring under the delusion that human
life is under all circumstances to be preferred to vegetable
existence,--had the great poplar cut down. It is so easy to say,
"It is only a poplar!" and so much harder to replace its living
cone than to build a granite obelisk!
I must tell you about some of my tree-wives. I was at one period
of my life much devoted to the young lady-population of Rhode
Island, a small, but delightful State in the neighborhood of
Pawtucket. The number of inhabitants being not very large, I had
leisure, during my visits to the Providence Plantations, to inspect
the face of the country in the intervals of more fascinating
studies of physiognomy. I heard some talk of a great elm a short
distance from the locality just mentioned. "Let us see the great
elm,"--I said, and proceeded to find it,--knowing that it was on a
certain farm in a place called Johnston, if I remember rightly. I
shall never forget my ride and my introduction to the great
Johnston elm.
I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I approach it for the
first time. Provincialism has no SCALE of excellence in man or
vegetable; it never knows a first-rate article of either kind when
it has it, and is constantly taking second and third rate ones for
Nature's best. I have often fancied the tree was afraid of me, and
that a sort of shiver came over it as over a betrothed maiden when
she first stands before the unknown to whom she has been plighted.
Before the measuring-tape the proudest tree of them all quails and
shrinks into itself. All those stories of four or five men
stretching their arms around it and not touching each other's
fingers, if one's pacing the shadow at noon and making it so many
hundred feet, die upon its leafy lips in the presence of the awful
ribbon which has strangled so many false pretensions.
As I rode along the pleasant way, watching eagerly for the object
of my journey, the rounded tops of the elms rose from time to time
at the road-side. Wherever one looked taller and fuller than the
rest, I asked myself,--"Is this it?" But as I drew nearer, they
grew smaller,--or it proved, perhaps, that two standing in a line
had looked like one, and so deceived me. At last, all at once,
when I was not thinking of it,--I declare to you it makes my flesh
creep when I think of it now,--all at once I saw a great, green
cloud swelling in the horizon, so vast, so symmetrical, of such
Olympian majesty and imperial supremacy among the lesser
forest-growths, that my heart stopped short, then jumped at my ribs
as a hunter springs at a five-barred gate, and I felt all through me,
without need of uttering the words,--"This is it!"
You will find this tree described, with many others, in the
excellent Report upon the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts. The
author has given my friend the Professor credit for some of his
measurements, but measured this tree himself, carefully. It is a
grand elm for size of trunk, spread of limbs, and muscular
development,--one of the first, perhaps the first, of the first
class of New England elms.
The largest actual girth I have ever found at five feet from the
ground is in the great elm lying a stone's throw or two north of
the main road (if my points of compass are right) in Springfield.
But this has much the appearance of having been formed by the union
of two trunks growing side by side.
The West-Springfield elm and one upon Northampton meadows, belong
also to the first class of trees.
There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hatfield, which used to
spread its claws out over a circumference of thirty-five feet or
more before they covered the foot of its bole up with earth. This
is the American elm most like an oak of any I have ever seen.
The Sheffield elm is equally remarkable for size and perfection of
form. I have seen nothing that comes near it in Berkshire County,
and few to compare with it anywhere. I am not sure that I remember
any other first-class elms in New England, but there may be many.
--What makes a first-class elm?--Why, size, in the first place, and
chiefly. Anything over twenty feet of clear girth, five feet above
the ground, and with a spread of branches a hundred feet across,
may claim that title, according to my scale. All of them, with the
questionable exception of the Springfield tree above referred to,
stop, so far as my experience goes, at about twenty-two or
twenty-three feet of girth and a hundred and twenty of spread.
Elms of the second class, generally ranging from fourteen to
eighteen feet, are comparatively common. The queen of them all is
that glorious tree near one of the churches in Springfield.
Beautiful and stately she is beyond all praise. The "great tree"
on Boston Common comes in the second rank, as does the one at
Cohasset, which used to have, and probably has still, a head as
round as an apple-tree, and that at Newburyport, with scores of
others which might be mentioned. These last two have perhaps been
over-celebrated. Both, however, are pleasing vegetables. The poor
old Pittsfield elm lives on its past reputation. A wig of false
leaves is indispensable to make it presentable.
[I don't doubt there may be some monster-elm or other, vegetating
green, but inglorious, in some remote New England village, which
only wants a sacred singer to make it celebrated. Send us your
measurements,--(certified by the postmaster, to avoid possible
imposition,)--circumference five feet from soil, length of line
from bough-end to bough-end, and we will see what can be done for
you.]
--I wish somebody would get us up the following work:-
SYLVA NOVANGLICA.
Photographs of New England Elms and other Trees, taken upon the
Same Scale of Magnitude. With Letter-Press Descriptions, by a
Distinguished Literary Gentleman. Boston & Co. 185..
The same camera should be used,--so far as possible,--at a fixed
distance. Our friend, who has given us so many interesting figures
in his "Trees of America," must not think this Prospectus invades
his province; a dozen portraits, with lively descriptions, would be
a pretty complement to his large work, which, so far as published,
I find excellent. If my plan were carried out, and another series
of a dozen English trees photographed on the same scale the
comparison would be charming.
It has always been a favorite idea of mine to bring the life of the
Old and the New World face to face, by an accurate comparison of
their various types of organization. We should begin with man, of
course; institute a large and exact comparison between the
development of la pianta umana, as Alfieri called it, in different
sections of each country, in the different callings, at different
ages, estimating height, weigh, force by the dynamometer and the
spirometer, and finishing off with a series of typical photographs,
giving the principal national physiognomies. Mr. Hutchinson has
given us some excellent English data to begin with.
Then I would follow this up by contrasting the various parallel
forms of life in the two continents. Our naturalists have often
referred to this incidentally or expressly; but the animus of
Nature in the two half globes of the planet is so momentous a point
of interest to our race, that it should be made a subject of
express and elaborate study. Go out with me into that walk which
we call THE MALL, and look at the English and American elms. The
American elm is tall, graceful, slender-sprayed, and drooping as if
from languor. The English elm is compact, robust, holds its
branches up, and carries its leaves for weeks longer than our own
native tree.
Is this typical of the creative force on the two sides of the
ocean, or not? Nothing but a careful comparison through the whole
realm of life can answer this question.
There is a parallelism without identity in the animal and vegetable
life of the two continents, which favors the task of comparison in
an extraordinary manner. Just as we have two trees alike in many
ways, yet not the same, both elms, yet easily distinguishable, just
so we have a complete flora and a fauna, which, parting from the
same ideal, embody it with various modifications. Inventive power
is the only quality of which the Creative Intelligence seems to be
economical; just as with our largest human minds, that is the
divinest of faculties, and the one that most exhausts the mind
which exercises it. As the same patterns have very commonly been
followed, we can see which is worked out in the largest spirit, and
determine the exact limitations under which the Creator places the
movement of life in all its manifestations in either locality. We
should find ourselves in a very false position, if it should prove
that Anglo-Saxons can't live here, but die out, if not kept up by
fresh supplies, as Dr. Knox and other more or less wise persons
have maintained. It may turn out the other way, as I have heard
one of our literary celebrities argue,--and though I took the other
side, I liked his best,--that the American is the Englishman
reinforced.
--Will you walk out and look at those elms with me after
breakfast?--I said to the schoolmistress.
[I am not going to tell lies about it, and say that she blushed,
--as I suppose she ought to have done, at such a tremendous piece of
gallantry as that was for our boarding-house. On the contrary, she
turned a little pale,--but smiled brightly and said,--Yes, with
pleasure, but she must walk towards her school.--She went for her
bonnet.--The old gentleman opposite followed her with his eyes, and
said he wished he was a young fellow. Presently she came down,
looking very pretty in her half-mourning bonnet, and carrying a
school-book in her hand.]
MY FIRST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.
This is the shortest way,--she said, as we came to a corner.--Then
we won't take it,--said I.--The schoolmistress laughed a little,
and said she was ten minutes early, so she could go round.
We walked under Mr. Paddock's row of English elms. The gray
squirrels were out looking for their breakfasts, and one of them
came toward us in light, soft, intermittent leaps, until he was
close to the rail of the burial-ground. He was on a grave with a
broad blue-slate-stone at its head, and a shrub growing on it. The
stone said this was the grave of a young man who was the son of an
Honorable gentleman, and who died a hundred years ago and more.
--Oh, yes, DIED,--with a small triangular mark in one breast, and
another smaller opposite, in his back, where another young man's
rapier had slid through his body; and so he lay down out there on
the Common, and was found cold the next morning, with the
night-dews and the death-dews mingled on his forehead.
Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave,--said I.--His bones
lie where his body was laid so long ago, and where the stone says
they lie,--which is more than can be said of most of the tenants of
this and several other burial-grounds.
[The most accursed act of Vandalism ever committed within my
knowledge was the uprooting of the ancient gravestones in three at
least of our city burialgrounds, and one at least just outside the
city, and planting them in rows to suit the taste for symmetry of
the perpetrators. Many years ago, when this disgraceful process
was going on under my eyes, I addressed an indignant remonstrance
to a leading journal. I suppose it was deficient in literary
elegance, or too warm in its language; for no notice was taken of
it, and the hyena-horror was allowed to complete itself in the face
of daylight. I have never got over it. The bones of my own
ancestors, being entombed, lie beneath their own tablet; but the
upright stones have been shuffled about like chessmen, and nothing
short of the Day of Judgment will tell whose dust lies beneath any
of those records, meant by affection to mark one small spot as
sacred to some cherished memory. Shame! shame! shame!--that is all
I can say. It was on public thoroughfares, under the eye of
authority, that this infamy was enacted. The red Indians would
have known better; the selectmen of an African kraal-village would
have had more respect for their ancestors. I should like to see
the gravestones which have been disturbed all removed, and the
ground levelled, leaving the flat tombstones; epitaphs were never
famous for truth, but the old reproach of "Here LIES" never had
such a wholesale illustration as in these outraged burial-places,
where the stone does lie above, and the bones do not lie beneath.]
Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's sigh over poor
Benjamin's dust. Love killed him, I think. Twenty years old, and
out there fighting another young fellow on the Common, in the cool
of that old July evening;--yes, there must have been love at the
bottom of it.
The schoolmistress dropped a rosebud she had in her hand, through
the rails, upon the grave of Benjamin Woodbridge. That was all her
comment upon what I told her.--How women love Love! said I;--but
she did not speak.
We came opposite the head of a place or court running eastward from
the main street.--Look down there,--I said,--My friend the
Professor lived in that house at the left hand, next the further
corner, for years and years. He died out of it, the other day.
--Died?--said the schoolmistress.--Certainly,--said I.--We die out of
houses, just as we die out of our bodies. A commercial smash kills
a hundred men's houses for them, as a railroad crash kills their
mortal frames and drives out the immortal tenants. Men sicken of
houses until at last they quit them, as the soul leaves its body
when it is tired of its infirmities. The body has been called "the
house we live in"; the house is quite as much the body we live in.
Shall I tell you some things the Professor said the other day?
--Do!--said the schoolmistress.
A man's body,--said the Professor,--is whatever is occupied by his
will and his sensibility. The small room down there, where I wrote
those papers you remember reading, was much more a portion of my
body than a paralytic's senseless and motionless arm or leg is of
his.
The soul of a man has a series of concentric envelopes round it,
like the core of an onion, or the innermost of a nest of boxes.
First, he has his natural garment of flesh and blood. Then, his
artificial integuments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their
cuticle of lighter tissues, and their variously-tinted pigments.
Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or a stately mansion.
And then, the whole visible world, in which Time buttons him up as
in a loose outside wrapper.
You shall observe,--the Professor said,--for, like Mr. John Hunter
and other great men, he brings in that SHALL with great effect
sometimes,--you shall observe that a man's clothing or series of
envelopes does after a certain time mould itself upon his
individual nature. We know this of our hats, and are always
reminded of it when we happen to put them on wrong side foremost.
We soon find that the beaver is a hollow cast of the skull, with
all its irregular bumps and depressions. Just so all that clothes
a man, even to the blue sky which caps his head,--a little
loosely,--shapes itself to fit each particular being beneath it.
Farmers, sailors, astronomers, poets, lovers, condemned criminals,
all find it different, according to the eyes with which they
severally look.
But our houses shape themselves palpably on our inner and outer
natures. See a householder breaking up and you will be sure of it.
There is a shell-fish which builds all manner of smaller shells
into the walls of its own. A house is never a home until we have
crusted it with the spoils of a hundred lives besides those of our
own past. See what these are and you can tell what the occupant
is.
I had no idea,--said the Professor,--until I pulled up my domestic
establishment the other day, what an enormous quantity of roots I
had been making during the years I was planted there. Why, there
wasn't a nook or a corner that some fibre had not worked its way
into; and when I gave the last wrench, each of them seemed to
shriek like a mandrake, as it broke its hold and came away.
There is nothing that happens, you know, which must not inevitably,
and which does not actually, photograph itself in every conceivable
aspect and in all dimensions. The infinite galleries of the Past
await but one brief process and all their pictures will be called
out and fixed forever. We had a curious illustration of the great
fact on a very humble scale. When a certain bookcase, long
standing in one place, for which it was built, was removed, there
was the exact image on the wall of the whole, and of many of its
portions. But in the midst of this picture was another,--the
precise outline of a map which had hung on the wall before the
bookcase was built. We had all forgotten everything about the map
until we saw its photograph on the wall. Then we remembered it, as
some day or other we may remember a sin which has been built over
and covered up, when this lower universe is pulled away from before
the wall of Infinity, where the wrong-doing stands self-recorded.
The Professor lived in that house a long time,--not twenty years,
but pretty near it. When he entered that door, two shadows glided
over the threshold; five lingered in the doorway when he passed
through it for the last time,--and one of the shadows was claimed
by its owner to be longer than his own. What changes he saw in
that quiet place! Death rained through every roof but his;
children came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away,
threw themselves away; the whole drama of life was played in that
stock-company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his,
and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling.
Peace be to those walls, forever,--the Professor said,--for the
many pleasant years he has passed within them!
The Professor has a friend, now living at a distance, who has been
with him in many of his changes of place, and who follows him in
imagination with tender interest wherever he goes.--In that little
court, where he lived in gay loneliness so long,--
--in his autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, where it comes
loitering down from its mountain fastnesses like a great lord,
swallowing up the small proprietary rivulets very quietly as it
goes, until it gets proud and swollen and wantons in huge luxurious
oxbows about the fair Northampton meadows, and at last overflows
the oldest inhabitant's memory in profligate freshets at Hartford
and all along its lower shores,--up in that caravansary on the
banks of the stream where Ledyard launched his log canoe, and the
jovial old Colonel used to lead the Commencement processions,
--where blue Ascutney looked down from the far distance, and the
hills of Beulah, as the Professor always called them, rolled up the
opposite horizon in soft climbing masses, so suggestive of the
Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he used to look through his old
"Dollond" to see if the Shining Ones were not within range of
sight,--sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday walks which carried
them by the peaceful common, through the solemn village lying in
cataleptic stillness under the shadow of the rod of Moses, to the
terminus of their harmless stroll,--the patulous fage, in the
Professor's classic dialect,--the spreading beech, in more familiar
phrase,--[stop and breathe here a moment, for the sentence is not
done yet, and we have another long journey before us,]--
--and again once more up among those other hills that shut in the
amber-flowing Housatonic,--dark stream, but clear, like the lucid
orbs that shine beneath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry-wine-eyed
demi-blondes,--in the home overlooking the winding stream and the
smooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills, where the
tracks of bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the
winter snow; facing the twin summits which rise in the far North,
the highest waves of the great land-storm in all this billowy
region,--suggestive to mad fancies of the breasts of a half-buried
Titaness, stretched out by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden
away beneath the leaves of the forest,--in that home where seven
blessed summers were passed, which stand in memory like the seven
golden candlesticks in the beatific vision of the holy dreamer,--
--in that modest dwelling we were just looking at, not glorious,
yet not unlovely in the youth of its drab and mahogany,--full of
great and little boys' playthings from top to bottom,--in all these
summer or winter nests he was always at home and always welcome.
This long articulated sigh of reminiscences,--this calenture which
shows me the maple-shadowed plains of Berkshire and the mountain-
circled green of Grafton beneath the salt waves which come feeling
their way along the wall at my feet, restless and soft-touching as
blind men's busy fingers,--is for that friend of mine who looks
into the waters of the Patapsco and sees beneath them the same
visions which paint themselves for me in the green depths of the
Charles.
--Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress?--Why, no,--of
course not. I have been talking with you, the reader, for the last
ten minutes. You don't think I should expect any woman to listen
to such a sentence as that long one, without giving her a chance to
put in a word?
--What did I say to the schoolmistress?--Permit me one moment. I
don't doubt your delicacy and good-breeding; but in this particular
case, as I was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very
interesting young woman, you must allow me to remark, in the
classic version of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin
Franklin, it is nullum tui negotii.
When the schoolmistress and I reached the school-room door, the
damask roses I spoke of were so much heightened in color by
exercise that I felt sure it would be useful to her to take a
stroll like this every morning, and made up my mind I would ask her
to let me join her again.
EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL.
(To be burned unread.)
I am afraid I have been a fool; for I have told as much of myself
to this young person as if she were of that ripe and discreet age
which invites confidence and expansive utterance. I have been
low-spirited and listless, lately,--it is coffee, I think,
--(I observe that which is bought READY-GROUND never affects the
head,)--and I notice that I tell my secrets too easily when I am
downhearted.
There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, like that on Dighton
Rock, are never to be seen except at dead-low tide.
There is a woman's footstep on the sand at the side of my deepest
ocean-buried inscription!
--Oh, no, no, no! a thousand times, no!--Yet what is this which has
been shaping itself in my soul?--Is it a thought?--is it a dream?
--is it a PASSION?--Then I know what comes next.
--The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy hill; those glazed
corridors are pleasant to walk in, in bad weather. But there are
iron bars to all the windows. When it is fair, some of us can
stroll outside that very high fence. But I never see much life in
those groups I sometimes meet;--and then the careful man watches
them so closely! How I remember that sad company I used to pass on
fine mornings, when I was a schoolboy!--B., with his arms full of
yellow weeds,--ore from the gold mines which he discovered long
before we heard of California,--Y., born to millions, crazed by too
much plum-cake, (the boys said,) dogged, explosive,--made a
Polyphemus of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt with a
stick,--(the multi-millonnaires sent him a trifle, it was said, to
buy another eye with; but boys are jealous of rich folks, and I
don't doubt the good people made him easy for life,)--how I
remember them all!
I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of Eblis, in
"Vathek," and how each shape, as it lifted its hand from its
breast, showed its heart,--a burning coal. The real Hall of Eblis
stands on yonder summit. Go there on the next visiting-day, and
ask that figure crouched in the corner, huddled up like those
Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the sitting posture,
to lift its hand,--look upon its heart, and behold, not fire, but
ashes.--No, I must not think of such an ending! Dying would be a
much more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty. Make a will
and leave her a house or two and some stocks, and other little
financial conveniences, to take away her necessity for keeping
school.--I wonder what nice young man's feet would be in my French
slippers before six months were over! Well, what then? If a man
really loves a woman, of course he wouldn't marry her for the
world, if he were not quite sure that he was the best person she
could by any possibility marry.
--It is odd enough to read over what I have just been writing.--It
is the merest fancy that ever was in the world. I shall never be
married. She will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so
far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take tea with her
and her husband, sometimes. No coffee, I hope, though,--it
depresses me sadly. I feel very miserably;--they must have been
grinding it at home.--Another morning walk will be good for me, and
I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be glad of a little fresh air
before school.
--The throbbing flushes of the poetical intermittent have been
coming over me from time to time of late. Did you ever see that
electrical experiment which consists in passing a flash through
letters of gold-leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some name or
legend springs out of the darkness in characters of fire?
There are songs all written out in my soul, which I could read, if
the flash might pass through them,--but the fire must come down
from heaven. Ah! but what if the stormy nimbus of youthful passion
has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged cirrus of
dissolving aspirations, or the silvered cumulus of sluggish
satiety? I will call on her whom the dead poets believed in, whom
living ones no longer worship,--the immortal maid, who, name her
what you will,--Goddess, Muse, Spirit of Beauty,--sits by the
pillow of every youthful poet, and bends over his pale forehead
until her tresses lie upon his cheek and rain their gold into his
dreams.
MUSA.
O my lost Beauty!--hast thou folded quite
Thy wings of morning light
Beyond those iron gates
Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates,
And Age upon his mound of ashes waits
To chill our fiery dreams,
Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams?
Leave me not fading in these weeds of care,
Whose flowers are silvered hair!--
Have I not loved thee long,
Though my young lips have often done thee wrong
And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song?
Ah, wilt thou yet return,
Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn?
Come to me!--I will flood thy silent shine
With my soul's sacred wine,
And heap thy marble floors
As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores
In leafy islands walled with madrepores
And lapped in Orient seas,
When all their feathery palm toss, plume-like, in the breeze.
Come to me!--thou shalt feed on honied words,
Sweeter than song of birds;--
No wailing bulbul's throat,
No melting dulcimer's melodious note,
When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float,
Thy ravished sense might soothe
With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth.
Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen,
Sought in those bowers of green
Where loop the clustered vines
And the close-clinging dulcamara twines,--
Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines,
And Summer's fruited gems,
And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems.
Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,--
Or stretched by grass-grown graves,
Whose gray, high-shouldered stones,
Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns,
Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones
Still slumbering where they lay
While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away.
Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing!
Still let me dream and sing,--
Dream of that winding shore
Where scarlet cardinals bloom,--for me no more,--
The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor,
And clustering nenuphars
Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars!
Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!--
Come while the rose is red,--
While blue-eyed Summer smiles
On the green ripples round you sunken piles
Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles,
And on the sultry air
The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer!
Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain
With thrills of wild sweet pain!--
On life's autumnal blast,
Like shrivelled leaves, youth's, passion-flowers are cast,--
Once loving thee, we love thee to the last!--
Behold thy new-decked shrine,
And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine!"
CHAPTER XI
[The company looked a little flustered one morning when I came in,
--so much so, that I inquired of my neighbor, the divinity-student,)
what had been going on. It appears that the young fellow whom they
call John had taken advantage of my being a little late (I having
been rather longer than usual dressing that morning) to circulate
several questions involving a quibble or play upon words,--in
short, containing that indignity to the human understanding,
condemned in the passages from the distinguished moralist of the
last century and the illustrious historian of the present, which I
cited on a former occasion, and known as a PUN. After breakfast,
one of the boarders handed me a small roll of paper containing some
of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three of
them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless
talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the
presence of more reflective natures.--It was asked, "Why tertian
and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." Some
interesting physiological relation would be naturally suggested.
The inquirer blushes to find that the answer is in the paltry
equivocation, that they SKIP a day or two.--"Why an Englishman must
go to the Continent to weaken his grog or punch." The answer
proves to have no relation whatever to the temperance-movement, as
no better reason is given than that island--(or, as it is absurdly
written, ILE AND) water won't mix.--But when I came to the next
question and its answer, I felt that patience ceased to be a
virtue. "Why an onion is like a piano" is a query that a person of
sensibility would be slow to propose; but that in an educated
community an individual could be found to answer it in these
words,--"Because it smell odious," quasi, it's melodious,--is not
credible, but too true. I can show you the paper.
Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such things. I know
most conversations reported in books are altogether above such
trivial details, but folly will come up at every table as surely as
purslain and chickweed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This
young fellow ought to have talked philosophy, I know perfectly
well; but he didn't,--he made jokes.]
I am willing,--I said,--to exercise your ingenuity in a rational
and contemplative manner.--No, I do not proscribe certain forms of
philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd
or the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio
of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous Disputations,
"De Sancto Matrimonio." I will therefore turn this levity of yours
to profit by reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my friend
the Professor.
THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE:
OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS-SHAY."
A LOGICAL STORY.
Have you heard of the wonderful one-shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits,--
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive,--
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always SOMEWHERE a weakest spot,--
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,--lurking still
Find it somewhere you must and will,--
Above or below, or within or without,--
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise BREASTS DOWN, but doesn't WEAR OUT.
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell YEOU,")
He would build one shay to beat the taown
'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';
It should be so built that it COULDN' break daown--
--"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan the strain;
'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,
Is only jest
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,--
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"--
Last of its timber,--they couldn't sell 'em,
Never an axe had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through."--
"There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew."
Do! I tell you, I father guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grand-children--where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;--it came and found
The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten;--
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came;--
Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive,
And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.
Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it.--You're welcome.--No extra charge.)
FIRST OF NOVEMBER,--the Earthquake-day.--
There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay.
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn't a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whippletree neither less nor more,
And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, AS A WHOLE, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be WORN OUT!
First of November, 'Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-horse-shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
"Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday's text,--
Had got to FIFTHLY, and stopped perplexed
At what the--Moses--was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,
Close by the meet'n-house on the hill.
--First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill,--
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half-past nine by the meet'n-house clock,--
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
--What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once,--
All at once, and nothing first,--
Just as bubbles do when they burst.
End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
--I think there is one habit,--I said to our company a day or two
afterwards--worse than that of punning. It is the gradual
substitution of cant or flash terms for words which truly
characterize their objects. I have known several very genteel
idiots whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen
expressions. All things fell into one of two great categories,
--FAST or SLOW. Man's chief end was to be a BRICK. When the great
calamities of life overtook their friends, these last were spoken
of as being a GOOD DEAL CUT UP. Nine-tenths of human existence
were summed up in the single word, BORE. These expressions come to
be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or
indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of
intellectual bankruptcy;--you may fill them up with what idea you
like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the
treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing
smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi
spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper
use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to
conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better
than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the
intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of men and
youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear flash
phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater from the washings of
English dandyism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a
three-volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted from the
pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial
climate.
--The young fellow called John spoke up sharply and said, it was
"rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang
line," when I used all the flash words myself just when I pleased.
--I replied with my usual forbearance.--Certainly, to give up the
algebraic symbol, because A or B is often a cover for ideal
nihility, would be unwise. I have heard a child laboring to
express a certain condition, involving a hitherto undescribed
sensation (as it supposed,) all of which could have been
sufficiently explained by the participle--BORED. I have seen a
country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one-horse
vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable time (and mine) freely,
in developing an opinion of a brother-minister's discourse which
would have been abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped
sophomore in the one word--SLOW. Let us discriminate, and be shy
of absolute proscription. I am omniverbivorous by nature and
training. Passing by such words as are poisonous, I can swallow
most others, and chew such as I cannot swallow.
Dandies are not good for much, but they are good for something.
They invent or keep in circulation those conversational blank
checks or counters just spoken of, which intellectual capitalists
may sometimes find it worth their while to borrow of them. They
are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of dress, which, but
for them, would deteriorate, and become, what some old fools would
have it, a matter of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I
like dandies well enough,--on one condition.
--What is that, Sir?--said the divinity-student.
--That they have pluck. I find that lies at the bottom of all true
dandyism. A little boy dressed up very fine, who puts his finger
in his mouth and takes to crying, if other boys make fun of him,
looks very silly. But if he turns red in the face and knotty in
the fists, and makes an example of the biggest of his assailants,
throwing off his fine Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned jacket, if
necessary, to consummate the act of justice, his small toggery
takes on the splendors of the crested helmet that frightened
Astyanax. You remember that the Duke said his dandy officers were
his best officers. The "Sunday blood," the super-superb sartorial
equestrian of our annual Fast-day, is not imposing or dangerous.
But such fellows as Brummel and D'Orsay and Byron are not to be
snubbed quite so easily. Look out for "la main de fer sous le gant
de velours," (which I printed in English the other day without
quotation-marks, thinking whether any scarabaeus criticus would add
this to his globe and roll in glory with it into the newspapers,
--which he didn't do it, in the charming pleonasm of the London
language, and therefore I claim the sole merit of exposing the
same.) A good many powerful and dangerous people have had a
decided dash of dandyism about them. There was Alcibiades, the
"curled son of Clinias," an accomplished young man, but what would
be called a "swell" in these days. There was Aristoteles, a very
distinguished writer, of whom you have heard,--a philosopher, in
short, whom it took centuries to learn, centuries to unlearn, and
is now going to take a generation or more to learn over again.
Regular dandy, he was. So was Marcus Antonius; and though he lost
his game, he played for big stakes, and it wasn't his dandyism that
spoiled his chance. Petrarca was not to be despised as a scholar
or a poet, but he was one of the same sort. So was Sir Humphrey
Davy; so was Lord Palmerston, formerly, if I am not forgetful.
Yes,--a dandy is good for something as such; and dandies such as I
was just speaking of have rocked this planet like a cradle,--aye,
and left it swinging to this day.--Still, if I were you, I wouldn't
go to the tailor's, on the strength of these remarks, and run up a
long bill which will render pockets a superfluity in your next
suit. Elegans "nascitur, non fit." A man is born a dandy, as he
is born a poet. There are heads that can't wear hats; there are
necks that can't fit cravats; there are jaws that can't fill out
collars--(Willis touched this last point in one of his earlier
ambrotypes, if I remember rightly); there are tournures nothing can
humanize, and movements nothing can subdue to the gracious suavity
or elegant languor or stately serenity which belong to different
styles of dandyism.
We are forming an aristocracy, as you may observe, in this
country,--not a gratia-Dei, nor a juredivino one,--but a de-facto
upper stratum of being, which floats over the turbid waves of
common life like the iridescent film you may have seen spreading
over the water about our wharves,--very splendid, though its origin
may have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unctuous
commodities. I say, then, we are forming an aristocracy; and,
transitory as its individual life often is, it maintains itself
tolerably, as a whole. Of course, money is its corner-stone. But
now observe this. Money kept for two or three generations
transforms a race,--I don't mean merely in manners and hereditary
culture, but in blood and bone. Money buys air and sunshine, in
which children grow up more kindly, of course, than in close, back
streets; it buys country-places to give them happy and healthy
summers, good nursing, good doctoring, and the best cuts of beef
and mutton. When the spring-chickens come to market--I beg your
pardon,--that is not what I was going to speak of. As the young
females of each successive season come on, the finest specimens
among them, other things being equal, are apt to attract those who
can afford the expensive luxury of beauty. The physical character
of the next generation rises in consequence. It is plain that
certain families have in this way acquired an elevated type of face
and figure, and that in a small circle of city-connections one may
sometimes find models of both sexes which one of the rural counties
would find it hard to match from all its townships put together.
Because there is a good deal of running down, of degeneration and
waste of life, among the richer classes, you must not overlook the
equally obvious fact I have just spoken of,--which in one or two
generations more will be, I think, much more patent than just now.
The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy is the same I have alluded
to in connection with cheap dandyism. Its thorough manhood, its
high-caste gallantry, are not so manifest as the plate-glass of
its windows and the more or less legitimate heraldry of its
coach-panels. It is very curious to observe of how small account
military folks are held among our Northern people. Our young men
must gild their spurs, but they need not win them. The equal
division of property keeps the younger sons of rich people above
the necessity of military service. Thus the army loses an element
of refinement, and the moneyed upper class forgets what it is to
count heroism among its virtues. Still I don't believe in any
aristocracy without pluck as its backbone. Ours may show it when
the time comes, if it ever does come.
--These United States furnish the greatest market for intellectual
GREEN FRUIT of all the places in the world. I think so, at any
rate. The demand for intellectual labor is so enormous and the
market so far from nice, that young talent is apt to fare like
unripe gooseberries,--get plucked to make a fool of. Think of a
country which buys eighty thousand copies of the "Proverbial
Philosophy," while the author's admiring countrymen have been
buying twelve thousand! How can one let his fruit hang in the sun
until it gets fully ripe, while there are eighty thousand such
hungry mouths ready to swallow it and proclaim its praises?
Consequently, there never was such a collection of crude pippins
and half-grown windfalls as our native literature displays among
its fruits. There are literary green-groceries at every corner,
which will buy anything, from a button-pear to a pine-apple. It
takes a long apprenticeship to train a whole people to reading and
writing. The temptation of money and fame is too great for young
people. Do I not remember that glorious moment when the late Mr.----
we won't say who,--editor of the--we won't say what, offered me the
sum of fifty cents per double-columned quarto page for shaking my
young boughs over his foolscap apron? Was it not an intoxicating
vision of gold and glory? I should doubtless have revelled in its
wealth and splendor, but for learning that the FIFTY CENTS was to
be considered a rhetorical embellishment, and by no means a literal
expression of past fact or present intention.
--Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative
virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach others to abstain, from
all that is sinful or hurtful. But making a business of it leads
to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the
more nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence.
--I don't believe one word of what you are saying,--spoke up the
angular female in black bombazine.
I am sorry you disbelieve it, Madam,--I said, and added softly to
my next neighbor,--but you prove it.
The young fellow sitting near me winked; and the divinity-student
said, in an undertone,--Optime dictum.
Your talking Latin,--said I,--reminds me of an odd trick of one of
my old tutors. He read so much of that language, that his English
half turned into it. He got caught in town, one hot summer, in
pretty close quarters, and wrote, or began to write, a series of
city pastorals. Eclogues he called them, and meant to have
published them by subscription. I remember some of his verses, if
you want to hear them.--You, Sir, (addressing myself to the
divinity-student,) and all such as have been through college, or,
what is the same thing, received an honorary degree, will
understand them without a dictionary. The old man had a great deal
to say about "aestivation," as he called it, in opposition, as one
might say, to hibernation. Intramural aestivation, or town-life in
summer, he would say, is a peculiar form of suspended existence, or
semi-asphyxia. One wakes up from it about the beginning of the
last week in September. This is what I remember of his poem:-
AESTIVATION.
An Unpublished Poem, by my late Latin Tutor
In candent ire the solar splendor flames;
The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames;
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes,
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.
How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes,
Dorm on the herb with none to supervise,
Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine,
And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine!
To me, alas! no verdurous visions come,
Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum,--
No concave vast repeats the tender hue
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue!
Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids!
Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,--
Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--erump!
--I have lived by the sea-shore and by the mountains.--No, I am not
going to say which is best. The one where your place is is the
best for you. But this difference there is: you can domesticate
mountains, but the sea is ferae naturae. You may have a hut, or
know the owner of one, on the mountain-side; you see a light
half-way up its ascent in the evening, and you know there is a home,
and you might share it. You have noted certain trees, perhaps; you
know the particular zone where the hemlocks look so black in
October, when the maples and beeches have faded. All its reliefs
and intaglios have electrotyped themselves in the medallions that
hang round the walls of your memory's chamber.--The sea remembers
nothing. It is feline. It licks your feet,--its huge flanks purr
very pleasantly for you; but it will crack your bones and eat you,
for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as if
nothing had happened. The mountains give their lost children
berries and water; the sea mocks their thirst and lets them die.
The mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity; the sea
has a fascinating, treacherous intelligence. The mountains lie
about like huge ruminants, their broad backs awful to look upon,
but safe to handle. The sea smooths its silver scales until you
cannot see their joints,--but their shining is that of a snake's
belly, after all.--In deeper suggestiveness I find as great a
difference. The mountains dwarf mankind and foreshorten the
procession of its long generations. The sea drowns out humanity
and time; it has no sympathy with either; for it belongs to
eternity, and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and
ever.
Yet I should love to have a little box by the seashore. I should
love to gaze out on the wild feline element from a front window of
my own, just as I should love to look on a caged panther, and see
it, stretch its shining length, and then curl over and lap its
smooth sides, and by-and-by begin to lash itself into rage and show
its white teeth and spring at its bars, and howl the cry of its
mad, but, to me, harmless fury.--And then,--to look at it with that
inward eye,--who does not love to shuffle off time and its
concerns, at intervals,--to forget who is President and who is
Governor, what race he belongs to, what language he speaks, which
golden-headed nail of the firmament his particular planetary system
is hung upon, and listen to the great liquid metronome as it beats
its solemn measure, steadily swinging when the solo or duet of
human life began, and to swing just as steadily after the human
chorus has died out and man is a fossil on its shores?
--What should decide one, in choosing a summer residence?
--Constitution, first of all. How much snow could you melt in an
hour, if you were planted in a hogshead of it? Comfort is
essential to enjoyment. All sensitive people should remember that
persons in easy circumstances suffer much more cold in summer--that
is, the warm half of the year--than in winter, or the other half.
You must cut your climate to your constitution, as much as your
clothing to your shape. After this, consult your taste and
convenient. But if you would be happy in Berkshire, you must carry
mountains in your brain; and if you would enjoy Nahant, you must
have an ocean in your soul. Nature plays at dominos with you; you
must match her piece, or she will never give it up to you.
--The schoolmistress said, in a rather mischievous way, that she
was afraid some minds or souls would be a little crowded, if they
took in the Rocky Mountains or the Atlantic.
Have you ever read the little book called "The Stars and the
Earth?"--said I.--Have you seen the Declaration of Independence
photographed in a surface that a fly's foot would cover? The forms
or conditions of Time and Space, as Kant will tell you, are nothing
in themselves,--only our way of looking at things. You are right,
I think, however, in recognizing the category of Space as being
quite as applicable to minds as to the outer world. Every man of
reflection is vaguely conscious of an imperfectly-defined circle
which is drawn about his intellect. He has a perfectly clear sense
that the fragments of his intellectual circle include the curves of
many other minds of which he is cognizant. He often recognizes
these as manifestly concentric with his own, but of less radius.
On the other hand, when we find a portion of an are on the outside
of our own, we say it INTERSECTS ours, but are very slow to confess
or to see that it CIRCUMSCRIBES it. Every now and then a man's
mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks
back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt
that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its
elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I
had to spread these to fit it.
--If I thought I should ever see the Alps!--said the
schoolmistress.
Perhaps you will, some time or other,--I said.
It is not very likely,--she answered.--I have had one or two
opportunities, but I had rather be anything than governess in a
rich family.
[Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman! Well, I can't say I
like you any the worse for it. How long will school-keeping take
to kill you? Is it possible the poor thing works with her needle,
too? I don't like those marks on the side of her forefinger.
Tableau. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view. Figures in the
foreground; two of them standing apart; one of them a gentleman
of--oh,--ah,--yes! the other a lady in a white cashmere, leaning on
his shoulder.--The ingenuous reader will understand that this was
an internal, private, personal, subjective diorama, seen for one
instant on the background of my own consciousness, and abolished
into black nonentity by the first question which recalled me to
actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron shop-blinds (which
I always pass at dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over some
poor but honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and
unexpected descent, and left outside upon the sidewalk) had come
down in front of it "by the run."]
--Should you like to hear what moderate wishes life brings one to
at last? I used to be very ambitious,--wasteful, extravagant, and
luxurious in all my fancies. Read too much in the "Arabian
Nights." Must have the lamp,--couldn't do without the ring.
Exercise every morning on the brazen horse. Plump down into
castles as full of little milk-white princesses as a nest is of
young sparrows. All love me dearly at once.--Charming idea of
life, but too high-colored for the reality. I have outgrown all
this; my tastes have become exceedingly primitive,--almost,
perhaps, ascetic. We carry happiness into our condition, but must
not hope to find it there. I think you will be willing to hear
some lines which embody the subdued and limited desires of my
maturity.
CONTENTMENT.
"Man wants but little here below."
Little I ask, my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone,
(A VERY PLAIN brown stone will do,)
That I may call my own;--
And close at hand is such a one,
In yonder street that fronts the sun.
Plain food is quite enough for me;
Three courses are as good as ten;--
If Nature can subsist on three,
Thank heaven for three. Amen!
I always thought cold victual nice;--
My CHOICE would be vanilla-ice.
I care not much for gold or land;--
Give me a mortgage here and there,--
Some good bank-stock,--some note of hand,
Or trifling railroad share;--
I only ask that Fortune send
A LITTLE more than I shall spend.
Honors are silly toys, I know,
And titles are but empty names;--
I would, PERHAPS, be Plenipo,--
But only near St. James;--
I'm very sure I should not care
To fill our Gubernator's chair.
Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin
To care for such unfruitful things;--
One good-sized diamond in a pin,--
Some, NOT SO LARGE, in rings,--
A ruby and a pearl, or so,
Will do for me;--I laugh at show.
My dame should dress in cheap attire;
(Good, heavy silks are never dear;)--
I own perhaps I MIGHT desire
Some shawls of true cashmere,--
Some marrowy crapes of China silk,
Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.
I would not have the horse I drive
So fast that folks must stop and stare
An easy gait--two, forty-five--
Suits me; I do not care;--
Perhaps, for just a SINGLE SPURT,
Some seconds less would do no hurt.
Of pictures, I should like to own
Titians and Raphaels three or four,--
I love so much their style and tone,--
One Turner, and no more,--
(A landscape,--foreground golden dirt
The sunshine painted with a squirt.)
Of books but few,--some fifty score
For daily use, and bound for wear;
The rest upon an upper floor;--
Some LITTLE luxury THERE
Of red morocco's gilded gleam,
And vellum rich as country cream.
Busts, cameos, gems,--such things as these,
Which others often show for pride,
_I_ value for their power to please,
And selfish churls deride;--
ONE Stradivarius, I confess,
TWO Meerschaums, I would fain possess.
Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn,
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;--
Shall not carved tables serve my turn,
But ALL must be of buhl?
Give grasping pomp its double share,--
I ask but ONE recumbent chair.
Thus humble let me live and die,
Nor long for Midas' golden touch,
If Heaven more generous gifts deny,
I shall not miss them MUCH,--
Too grateful for the blessing lent
Of simple tastes and mind content!
MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.
(A Parenthesis.)
I can't say just how many walks she and I had taken together before
this one. I found the effect of going out every morning was
decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the
places for which were just marked when she came, played, shadowy,
in her freshening cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to
me from the school-house-steps.
I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if
I should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen
walks we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint
from my friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own
risk and expense, would be the proper method of bringing them
before the public.
--I would have a woman as true as Death. At the first real lie
which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly
chloroformed into a better world, where she can have an angel for a
governess, and feed on strange fruits which will make her all over
again, even to her bones and marrow.--Whether gifted with the
accident of beauty or not, she should have been moulded in the
rose-red clay of Love, before the breath of life made a moving
mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congenital endowment; and I
think, after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued natures it
belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them.--Proud
she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride in the
sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, deserves the
two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the
punishments are Smallpox and Bankruptcy.--She who nips off the end
of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to
bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize,
proclaims the fact that she comes not merely of low blood, but of
bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people
gracious in proper measure to all; but if a woman puts on airs with
her real equals, she has something about herself or her family she
is ashamed of, or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged
people, who know family histories, generally see through it. An
official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, that is the maternal
grandfather,--said a wise old friend to me,--he was a boor.--Better
too few words, from the woman we love, than too many: while she is
silent, Nature is working for her; while she talks, she is working
for herself.--Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men;
therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's speech
can dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold.
--Whether I said any or all of these things to the schoolmistress,
or not,--whether I stole them out of Lord Bacon,--whether I cribbed
them from Balzac,--whether I dipped them from the ocean of
Tupperian wisdom,--or whether I have just found them in my head,
laid there by that solemn fowl, Experience, (who, according to my
observation, cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs,) I
cannot say. Wise men have said more foolish things,--and foolish
men, I don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, the
schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and long talks, all of
which I do not feel bound to report.
--You are a stranger to me, Ma'am.--I don't doubt you would like to
know all I said to the schoolmistress.--I sha'n't do it;--I had
rather get the publishers to return the money you have invested in
this. Besides, I have forgotten a good deal of it. I shall tell
only what I like of what I remember.
--My idea was, in the first place, to search out the picturesque
spots which the city affords a sight of, to those who have eyes. I
know a good many, and it was a pleasure to look at them in company
with my young friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in the
Franklin-Place front-yards or borders; Commerce is just putting his
granite foot upon them. Then there are certain small seraglio-
gardens, into which one can get a peep through the crevices of high
fences,--one in Myrtle Street, or backing on it,--here and there
one at the North and South Ends. Then the great elms in Essex
Street. Then the stately horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in
Chambers Street, which hold their outspread hands over your head,
(as I said in my poem the other day,) and look as if they were
whispering, "May grace, mercy, and peace be with you!"--and the
rest of that benediction. Nay, there are certain patches of
ground, which, having lain neglected for a time, Nature, who always
has her pockets full of seeds, and holes in all her pockets, has
covered with hungry plebeian growths, which fight for life with
each other, until some of them get broad-leaved and succulent, and
you have a coarse vegetable tapestry which Raphael would not have
disdained to spread over the foreground of his masterpiece. The
Professor pretends that he found such a one in Charles Street,
which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble vegetation,
beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public Garden as
ignominiously as a group of young tatterdemalions playing
pitch-and-toss beats a row of Sunday-school-boys with their
teacher at their head.
But then the Professor has one of his burrows in that region, and
puts everything in high colors relating to it. That is his way
about everything. I hold any man cheap,--he said,--of whom nothing
stronger can be uttered than that all his geese are swans.--How is
that, Professor?--said I;--I should have set you down for one of
that sort.--Sir,--said he,--I am proud to say, that Nature has so
far enriched me, that I cannot own so much as a duck without seeing
in it as pretty a swan as ever swam the basin in the garden of the
Luxembourg. And the Professor showed the whites of his eyes
devoutly, like one returning thanks after a dinner of many courses.
I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in of Nature
through all the cracks in the walls and floors of cities. You heap
up a million tons of hewn rocks on a square mile or two of earth
which was green once. The trees look down from the hill-sides and
ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe,--"What are these people
about?" And the small herbs at their feet look up and whisper
back,--"We will go and see." So the small herbs pack themselves up
in the least possible bundles, and wait until the wind steals to
them at night and whispers, "Come with me." Then they go softly
with it into the great city,--one to a cleft in the pavement, one
to a spout on the roof, one to a seam in the marbles over a rich
gentleman's bones, and one to the grave without a stone where
nothing but a man is buried,--and there they grow, looking down on
the generations of men from mouldy roofs, looking up from between
the less-trodden pavements, looking out through iron cemetery-
railings. Listen to them, when there is only a light breath
stirring, and you will hear them saying to each other,--"Wait
awhile!" The words run along the telegraph of those narrow green
lines that border the roads leading from the city, until they reach
the slope of the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs to each
other,--"Wait awhile!" By-and-by the flow of life in the streets
ebbs, and the old leafy inhabitants--the smaller tribes always in
front--saunter in, one by one, very careless seemingly, but very
tenacious, until they swarm so that the great stones gape from each
other with the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar begins to
be picked out of the granite to find them food. At last the trees
take up their solemn line of march, and never rest until they have
encamped in the market-place. Wait long enough and you will find
an old doting oak hugging a huge worn block in its yellow
underground arms; that was the cornerstone of the State-House. Oh,
so patient she is, this imperturbable Nature!
--Let us cry!--
But all this has nothing to do with my walks and talks with the
schoolmistress. I did not say that I would not tell you something
about them. Let me alone, and I shall talk to you more than I
ought to, probably. We never tell our secrets to people that pump
for them.
Books we talked about, and education. It was her duty to know
something of these, and of course she did. Perhaps I was somewhat
more learned than she, but I found that the difference between her
reading and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a
library. The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman
goes to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the
dust, nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it,--but she goes into
all the corners, and attends to the leaves as much as the covers.
--Books are the NEGATIVE pictures of thought, and the more sensitive
the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest
lines are reproduced. A woman, (of the right kind,) reading after
a man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, and her
gleanings are often the finest of the wheat.
But it was in talking of Life that we came most clearly together.
I thought I knew something about that,--that I could speak or write
about it somewhat to the purpose.
To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge sucks up
water,--to be steeped and soaked in its realities as a hide fills
its pores lying seven years in a tan-pit,--to have winnowed every
wave of it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that runs through
the flume upon its float-boards,--to have curled up in the keenest
spasms and flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing-
sickness, which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or
four score years,--to have fought all the devils and clasped all
the angels of its delirium,--and then, just at the point when the
white-hot passions have cooled down to cherry-red, plunge our
experience into the ice-cold stream of some human language or
other, one might think would end in a rhapsody with something of
spring and temper in it. All this I thought my power and province.
The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets
with a single soul greater than all the living pageant which passes
before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken
eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a
balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all which
this planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the
palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. Fortune had
left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labor and the
loneliness of almost friendless city-life were before her. Yet, as
I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness
which was often sprightly, as she became interested in the various
matters we talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and
lip and every shifting lineament were made for love,--unconscious
of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty
with the natural graces which were meant for the reward of nothing
less than the Great Passion.
--I never addressed one word of love to the schoolmistress in the
course of these pleasant walks. It seemed to me that we talked of
everything but love on that particular morning. There was,
perhaps, a little more timidity and hesitancy on my part than I
have commonly shown among our people at the boarding-house. In
fact, I considered myself the master at the breakfast-table; but,
somehow, I could not command myself just then so well as usual.
The truth is, I had secured a passage to Liverpool in the steamer
which was to leave at noon,--with the condition, however, of being
released in case circumstances occurred to detain me. The
schoolmistress knew nothing about all this, of course, as yet.
It was on the Common that we were walking. The MALL, or boulevard
of our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in
different directions. One of these runs down from opposite Joy
Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston
Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it.
I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as we
came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I
tried to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At
last I got out the question,--Will you take the long path with me?
--Certainly,--said the schoolmistress,--with much pleasure.--Think,
--I said,--before you answer; if you take the long path with
me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no more!--The
schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow
had struck her.
One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by,--the one
you may still see close by the Gingko-tree.--Pray, sit down,--I
said.--No, no, she answered, softly,--I will walk the LONG PATH
with you!
--The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm,
about the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly,
--"Good morning, my dears!"
CHAPTER XII
[I did not think it probable that I should have a great many more
talks with our company, and therefore I was anxious to get as much
as I could into every conversation. That is the reason why you
will find some odd, miscellaneous facts here, which I wished to
tell at least once, as I should not have a chance to tell them
habitually at our breakfast-table.--We're very free and easy, you
know; we don't read what we don't like. Our parish is so large,
one can't pretend to preach to all the pews at once. One can't be
all the time trying to do the best of one's best if a company works
a steam fire-engine, the firemen needn't be straining themselves
all day to squirt over the top of the flagstaff. Let them wash
some of those lower-story windows a little. Besides, there is no
use in our quarrelling now, as you will find out when you get
through this paper.]
--Travel, according to my experience, does not exactly correspond
to the idea one gets of it out of most books of travels. I am
thinking of travel as it was when I made the Grand Tour, especially
in Italy. Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes
it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it
without sticking. I can prove some facts about travelling by a
story or two. There are certain principles to be assumed,--such
as these:--He who is carried by horses must deal with rogues.
--To-day's dinner subtends a larger visual angle than yesterday's
revolution. A mote in my eye is bigger to me than the biggest of
Dr. Gould's private planets.--Every traveller is a self-taught
entomologist.--Old jokes are dynamometers of mental tension; an old
joke tells better among friends travelling than at home,--which
shows that their minds are in a state of diminished, rather than
increased vitality. There was a story about "strahps to your
pahnts," which was vastly funny to us fellows--on the road from
Milan to Venice.--Caelum, non animum,--travellers change their
guineas, but not their characters. The bore is the same, eating
dates under the cedars of Lebanon, as over a plate of baked beans
in Beacon Street.--Parties of travellers have a morbid instinct for
"establishing raws" upon each other.--A man shall sit down with his
friend at the foot of the Great Pyramid and they will take up the
question they had been talking about under "the great elm," and
forget all about Egypt. When I was crossing the Po, we were all
fighting about the propriety of one fellow's telling another that
his argument was absurd; one maintaining it to be a perfectly
admissible logical term, as proved by the phrase "reductio ad
absurdum;" the rest badgering him as a conversational bully.
Mighty little we troubled ourselves for Padus, the Po, "a river
broader and more rapid than the Rhone," and the times when Hannibal
led his grim Africans to its banks, and his elephants thrust their
trunks into the yellow waters over which that pendulum ferry-boat
was swinging back and forward every ten minutes!
--Here are some of those reminiscences, with morals prefixed, or
annexed, or implied.
Lively emotions very commonly do not strike us full in front, but
obliquely from the side; a scene or incident in UNDRESS often
affects us more than one in full costume.
"Is this the mighty ocean?--is this all?"
says the Princess in Gebir. The rush that should have flooded my
soul in the Coliseum did not come. But walking one day in the
fields about the city, I stumbled over a fragment of broken
masonry, and lo! the World's Mistress in her stone girdle--alta
maenia Romae--rose before me and whitened my cheek with her pale
shadow as never before or since.
I used very often, when coming home from my morning's work at one
of the public institutions of Paris, to stop in at the dear old
church of St. Etienne du Mont. The tomb of St. Genevieve,
surrounded by burning candles and votive tablets, was there; the
mural tablet of Jacobus Benignus Winslow was there; there was a
noble organ with carved figures; the pulpit was borne on the oaken
shoulders of a stooping Samson; and there was a marvellous
staircase like a coil of lace. These things I mention from memory,
but not all of them together impressed me so much as an inscription
on a small slab of marble fixed in one of the walls. It told how
this church of St. Stephen was repaired and beautified in the year
16**, and how, during the celebration of its reopening, two girls
of the parish (filles de la paroisse) fell from the gallery,
carrying a part of the balustrade with them, to the pavement, but
by a miracle escaped uninjured. Two young girls, nameless, but
real presences to my imagination, as much as when they came
fluttering down on the tiles with a cry that outscreamed the
sharpest treble in the Te Deum. (Look at Carlyle's article on
Boswell, and see how he speaks of the poor young woman Johnson
talked with in the streets one evening.) All the crowd gone but
these two "filles de la paroisse,"--gone as utterly as the dresses
they wore, as the shoes that were on their feet, as the bread and
meat that were in the market on that day.
Not the great historical events, but the personal incidents that
call up single sharp pictures of some human being in its pang or
struggle, reach us most nearly. I remember the platform at Berne,
over the parapet of which Theobald Weinzapfli's restive horse
sprung with him and landed him more than a hundred feet beneath in
the lower town, not dead, but sorely broken, and no longer a wild
youth, but God's servant from that day forward. I have forgotten
the famous bears, and all else.--I remember the Percy lion on the
bridge over the little river at Alnwick,--the leaden lion with his
tail stretched out straight like a pump-handle,--and why? Because
of the story of the village boy who must fain bestride the leaden
tail, standing out over the water,--which breaking, he dropped into
the stream far below, and was taken out an idiot for the rest of
his life.
Arrow-heads must be brought to a sharp point, and the guillotine-
axe must have a slanting edge. Something intensely human, narrow,
and definate pierces to the seat of our sensibilities more readily
than huge occurrences and catastrophes. A nail will pick a lock
that defies hatchet and hammer. "The Royal George" went down with
all her crew, and Cowper wrote an exquisitely simple poem about it;
but the leaf which holds it is smooth, while that which bears the
lines on his mother's portrait is blistered with tears.
My telling these recollections sets me thinking of others of the
same kind which strike the imagination, especially when one is
still young. You remember the monument in Devizes market to the
woman struck dead with a lie in her mouth. I never saw that, but
it is in the books. Here is one I never heard mentioned;--if any
of the "Note and Query" tribe can tell the story, I hope they will.
Where is this monument? I was riding on an English stage-coach
when we passed a handsome marble column (as I remember it) of
considerable size and pretensions.--What is that?--I said.--That,
--answered the coachman,--is THE HANGMAN'S PILLAR. Then he told me
how a man went out one night, many years ago, to steal sheep. He
caught one, tied its legs together, passed the rope over his head,
and started for home. In climbing a fence, the rope slipped,
caught him by the neck, and strangled him. Next morning he was
found hanging dead on one side of the fence and the sheep on the
other; in memory whereof the lord of the manor caused this monument
to be erected as a warning to all who love mutton better than
virtue. I will send a copy of this record to him or her who shall
first set me right about this column and its locality.
And telling over these old stories reminds me that I have something
which may interest architects and perhaps some other persons. I
once ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the
highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone filigree-work,
frightfully open, so that the guide puts his arms behind you to
keep you from falling. To climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to
think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's
twenty digits. While I was on it, "pinnacled dim in the intense
inane," a strong wind was blowing, and I felt sure that the spire
was rocking. It swayed back and forward like a stalk of rye or a
cat-o'nine-tails (bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I mentioned it
to the guide, and he said that the spire did really swing back and
forward,--I think he said some feet.
Keep any line of knowledge ten years and some other line will
intersect it. Long afterwards I was hunting out a paper of
Dumeril's in an old journal,--the "Magazin Encyclopedique" for l'an
troisieme, (1795,) when I stumbled upon a brief article on the
vibrations of the spire of Strasburg Cathedral. A man can shake it
so that the movement shall be shown in a vessel of water nearly
seventy feet below the summit, and higher up the vibration is like
that of an earthquake. I have seen one of those wretched wooden
spires with which we very shabbily finish some of our stone
churches (thinking that the lidless blue eye of heaven cannot tell
the counterfeit we try to pass on it,) swinging like a reed, in a
wind, but one would hardly think of such a thing's happening in a
stone spire. Does the Bunker-Hill Monument bend in the blast like
a blade of grass? I suppose so.
You see, of course, that I am talking in a cheap way;--perhaps we
will have some philosophy by and by;--let me work out this thin
mechanical vein.--I have something more to say about trees. I have
brought down this slice of hemlock to show you. Tree blew down in
my woods (that were) in 1852. Twelve feet and a half round, fair
girth;--nine feet, where I got my section, higher up. This is a
wedge, going to the centre, of the general shape of a slice of
apple-pie in a large and not opulent family. Length, about
eighteen inches. I have studied the growth of this tree by its
rings, and it is curious. Three hundred and forty-two rings.
Started, therefore, about 1510. The thickness of the rings tells
the rate at which it grew. For five or six years the rate was
slow,--then rapid for twenty years. A little before the year 1550
it began to grow very slowly, and so continued for about seventy
years. In 1620 it took a new start and grew fast until 1714 then
for the most part slowly until 1786, when it started again and grew
pretty well and uniformly until within the last dozen years, when
it seems to have got on sluggishly.
Look here. Here are some human lives laid down against the periods
of its growth, to which they corresponded. This is Shakspeare's.
The tree was seven inches in diameter when he was born; ten inches
when he died. A little less than ten inches when Milton was born;
seventeen when he died. Then comes a long interval, and this
thread marks out Johnson's life, during which the tree increased
from twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter. Here is the
span of Napoleon's career;--the tree doesn't seem to have minded
it.
I never saw the man yet who was not startled at looking on this
section. I have seen many wooden preachers,--never one like this.
How much more striking would be the calendar counted on the rings
of one of those awful trees which were standing when Christ was on
earth, and where that brief mortal life is chronicled with the
stolid apathy of vegetable being, which remembers all human history
as a thing of yesterday in its own dateless existence!
I have something more to say about elms. A relative tells me there
is one of great glory in Andover, near Bradford. I have some
recollections of the former place, pleasant and other. [I wonder
if the old Seminary clock strikes as slowly as it used to. My
room-mate thought, when he first came, it was the bell tolling
deaths, and people's ages, as they do in the country. He swore
--(ministers' sons get so familiar with good words that they are apt
to handle them carelessly)--that the children were dying by the
dozen, of all ages, from one to twelve, and ran off next day in
recess, when it began to strike eleven, but was caught before the
clock got through striking.] At the foot of "the hill," down in
town, is, or was, a tidy old elm, which was said to have been
hooped with iron to protect it from Indian tomahawks, (Credat
Hahnemannus,) and to have grown round its hoops and buried them in
its wood. Of course, this is not the tree my relative means.
Also, I have a very pretty letter from Norwich, in Connecticut,
telling me of two noble elms which are to be seen in that town.
One hundred and twenty-seven feet from bough-end to bough-end!
What do you say to that? And gentle ladies beneath it, that love
it and celebrate its praises! And that in a town of such supreme,
audacious, Alpine loveliness as Norwich!--Only the dear people
there must learn to call it Norridge, and not be misled by the mere
accident of spelling.
NorWICH.
PorCHmouth.
CincinnatAH.
What a sad picture of our civilization!
I did not speak to you of the great tree on what used to be the
Colman farm, in Deerfield, simply because I had not seen it for
many years, and did not like to trust my recollection. But I had
it in memory, and even noted down, as one of the finest trees in
symmetry and beauty I had ever seen. I have received a document,
signed by two citizens of a neighboring town, certified by the
postmaster and a selectman, and these again corroborated,
reinforced, and sworn to by a member of that extraordinary
college-class to which it is the good fortune of my friend the
Professor to belong, who, though he has FORMERLY been a member of
Congress, is, I believe, fully worthy of confidence. The tree
"girts" eighteen and a half feet, and spreads over a hundred, and is
a real beauty. I hope to meet my friend under its branches yet; if we
don't have "youth at the prow," we will have "pleasure at the 'elm."
And just now, again, I have got a letter about some grand willows
in Maine, and another about an elm in Wayland, but too late for
anything but thanks.
[And this leads me to say, that I have received a great many
communications, in prose and verse since I began printing these
notes. The last came this very morning, in the shape of a neat and
brief poem, from New Orleans. I could not make any of them public,
though sometimes requested to do so. Some of them have given me
great pleasure, and encouraged me to believe I had friends whose
faces I had never seen. If you are pleased with anything a writer
says, and doubt whether to tell him of it, do not hesitate; a
pleasant word is a cordial to one, who perhaps thinks he is tiring
you, and so becomes tired himself. I purr very loud over a good,
honest letter that says pretty things to me.]
--Sometimes very young persons send communications which they want
forwarded to editors; and these young persons do not always seem to
have right conceptions of these same editors, and of the public,
and of themselves. Here is a letter I wrote to one of these young
folks, but, on the whole, thought it best not to send. It is not
fair to single out one for such sharp advice, where there are
hundreds that are in need of it.
Dear Sir,--You seem to be somewhat, but not a great deal, wiser
than I was at your age. I don't wish to be understood as saying
too much, for I think, without committing myself to any opinion on
my present state, that I was not a Solomon at that stage of
development.
You long to "leap at a single bound into celebrity." Nothing is so
common-place as to wish to be remarkable. Fame usually comes to
those who are thinking about something else,--very rarely to those
who say to themselves, "Go to, now, let us be a celebrated
individual!" The struggle for fame, as such, commonly ends in
notoriety;--that ladder is easy to climb, but it leads to the
pillory which is crowded with fools who could not hold their
tongues and rogues who could not hide their tricks.
If you have the consciousness of genius, do something to show it.
The world is pretty quick, nowadays, to catch the flavor of true
originality; if you write anything remarkable, the magazines and
newspapers will find you out, as the school-boys find out where the
ripe apples and pears are. Produce anything really good, and an
intelligent editor will jump at it. Don't flatter yourself that
any article of yours is rejected because you are unknown to fame.
Nothing pleases an editor more than to get anything worth having
from a new hand. There is always a dearth of really fine articles
for a first-rate journal; for, of a hundred pieces received, ninety
are at or below the sea-level; some have water enough, but no head;
some head enough, but no water; only two or three are from full
reservoirs, high up that hill which is so hard to climb.
You may have genius. The contrary is of course probable, but it is
not demonstrated. If you have, the world wants you more than you
want it. It has not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark
of genius that shows itself among us; there is not a bull-calf in
our national pasture that can bleat a rhyme but it is ten to one,
among his friends, and no takers, that he is the real, genuine,
no-mistake Osiris.
Qu'est ce qu'il a fait? What has he done? That was Napoleon's
test. What have you done? Turn up the faces of your picture-
cards, my boy! You need not make mouths at the public because it
has not accepted you at your own fancy-valuation. Do the prettiest
thing you can and wait your time.
For the verses you send me, I will not say they are hopeless, and I
dare not affirm that they show promise. I am not an editor, but I
know the standard of some editors. You must not expect to "leap
with a single bound" into the society of those whom it is not
flattery to call your betters. When "The Pactolian" has paid you
for a copy of verses,--(I can furnish you a list of alliterative
signatures, beginning with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe
Zenith,)--when "The Rag-bag" has stolen your piece, after carefully
scratching your name out,--when "The Nut-cracker" has thought you
worth shelling, and strung the kernel of your cleverest poem,
--then, and not till then, you may consider the presumption against
you, from the fact of your rhyming tendency, as called in question,
and let our friends hear from you, if you think it worth while.
You may possibly think me too candid, and even accuse me of
incivility; but let me assure you that I am not half so
plain-spoken as Nature, nor half so rude as Time. If you prefer the
long jolting of public opinion to the gentle touch of friendship, try
it like a man. Only remember this,--that, if a bushel of potatoes is
shaken in a market-cart without springs to it, the small potatoes
always get to the bottom. Believe me, etc., etc.
I always think of verse-writers, when I am in this vein; for these
are by far the most exacting, eager, self-weighing, restless,
querulous, unreasonable literary persons one is like to meet with.
Is a young man in the habit of writing verses? Then the
presumption is that he is an inferior person. For, look you, there
are at least nine chances in ten that he writes POOR verses. Now
the habit of chewing on rhymes without sense and soul to match them
is, like that of using any other narcotic, at once a proof of
feebleness and a debilitating agent. A young man can get rid of
the presumption against him afforded by his writing verses only by
convincing us that they are verses worth writing.
All this sounds hard and rough, but, observe, it is not addressed
to any individual, and of course does not refer to any reader of
these pages. I would always treat any given young person passing
through the meteoric showers which rain down on the brief period of
adolescence with great tenderness. God forgive us if we ever speak
harshly to young creatures on the strength of these ugly truths,
and so sooner or later, smite some tender-souled poet or poetess on
the lips who might have sung the world into sweet trances, had we
not silenced the matin-song in its first low breathings! Just as
my heart yearns over the unloved, just so it sorrows for
the ungifted who are doomed to the pangs of an undeceived
self-estimate. I have always tried to be gentle with the most
hopeless cases. My experience, however, has not been encouraging.
--X. Y., aet. 18, a cheaply-got-up youth, with narrow jaws, and
broad, bony, cold, red hands, having been laughed at by the girls
in his village, and "got the mitten" (pronounced mittIn) two or
three times, falls to souling and controlling, and youthing and
truthing, in the newspapers. Sends me some strings of verses,
candidates for the Orthopedic Infirmary, all of them, in which I
learn for the millionth time one of the following facts: either
that something about a chime is sublime, or that something about
time is sublime, or that something about a chime is concerned with
time, or that something about a rhyme is sublime or concerned with
time or with a chime. Wishes my opinion of the same, with advice
as to his future course.
What shall I do about it? Tell him the whole truth, and send him a
ticket of admission to the Institution for Idiots and Feeble-minded
Youth? One doesn't like to be cruel,--and yet one hates to lie.
Therefore one softens down the ugly central fact of donkeyism,
--recommends study of good models,--that writing verse should be an
incidental occupation only, not interfering with the hoe, the
needle, the lapstone, or the ledger,--and, above all that there
should be no hurry in printing what is written. Not the least use
in all this. The poetaster who has tasted type is done for. He is
like the man who has once been a candidate for the Presidency. He
feeds on the madder of his delusion all his days, and his very
bones grow red with the glow of his foolish fancy. One of these
young brains is like a bunch of India crackers; once touch fire to
it and it is best to keep hands off until it has done popping,--if
it ever stops. I have two letters on file; one is a pattern of
adulation, the other of impertinence. My reply to the first,
containing the best advice I could give, conveyed in courteous
language, had brought out the second. There was some sport in
this, but Dulness is not commonly a game fish, and only sulks after
he is struck. You may set it down as a truth which admits of few
exceptions, that those who ask your OPINION really want your
PRAISE, and will be contented with nothing less.
There is another kind of application to which editors, or those
supposed to have access to them, are liable, and which often proves
trying and painful. One is appealed to in behalf of some person in
needy circumstances who wishes to make a living by the pen. A
manuscript accompanying the letter is offered for publication. It
is not commonly brilliant, too often lamentably deficient. If
Rachel's saying is true, that "fortune is the measure of
intelligence," then poverty is evidence of limited capacity which
it too frequently proves to be, notwithstanding a noble exception
here and there. Now an editor is a person under a contract with
the public to furnish them with the best things he can afford for
his money. Charity shown by the publication of an inferior article
would be like the generosity of Claude Duval and the other
gentlemen highwaymen, who pitied the poor so much they robbed the
rich to have the means of relieving them.
Though I am not and never was an editor, I know something of the
trials to which they are submitted. They have nothing to do but to
develope enormous calluses at every point of contact with
authorship. Their business is not a matter of sympathy, but of
intellect. They must reject the unfit productions of those whom
they long to befriend, because it would be a profligate charity to
accept them. One cannot burn his house down to warm the hands even
of the fatherless and the widow.
THE PROFESSOR UNDER CHLOROFORM.
--You haven't heard about my friend the Professor's first
experiment in the use of anaesthetics, have you?
He was mightily pleased with the reception of that poem of his
about the chaise. He spoke to me once or twice about another poem
of similar character he wanted to read me, which I told him I would
listen to and criticize.
One day, after dinner, he came in with his face tied up, looking
very red in the cheeks and heavy about the eyes.--Hy'r'ye?--he
said, and made for an arm-chair, in which he placed first his hat
and then his person, going smack through the crown of the former as
neatly as they do the trick at the circus. The Professor jumped at
the explosion as if he had sat down on one of those small CALTHROPS
our grandfathers used to sow round in the grass when there were
Indians about,--iron stars, each ray a rusty thorn an inch and a
half long,--stick through moccasins into feet,--cripple 'em on the
spot, and give 'em lockjaw in a day or two.
At the same time he let off one of those big words which lie at the
bottom of the best man's vocabulary, but perhaps never turn up in
his life,--just as every man's hair MAY stand on end, but in most
men it never does.
After he had got calm, he pulled out a sheet or two of manuscript,
together with a smaller scrap, on which, as he said, he had just
been writing an introduction or prelude to the main performance. A
certain suspicion had come into my mind that the Professor was not
quite right, which was confirmed by the way he talked; but I let
him begin. This is the way he read it:-
Prelude.
I'm the fellah that tole one day
The tale of the won'erful one-hoss-shay.
Wan' to hear another? Say.
--Funny, wasn'it? Made ME laugh,--
I'm too modest, I am, by half,--
Made me laugh'S THOUGH I SH'D SPLIT,--
Cahn' a fellah like fellah's own wit?--
--Fellahs keep sayin',--"Well, now that's nice;
Did it once, but cahn' do it twice."--
Don' you b'lieve the'z no more fat;
Lots in the kitch'n 'z good 'z that.
Fus'-rate throw, 'n' no mistake,--
Han' us the props for another shake;--
Know I'll try, 'n' guess I'll win;
Here sh' goes for hit 'm ag'in!
Here I thought it necessary to interpose.--Professor,--I said,--you
are inebriated. The style of what you call your "Prelude" shows
that it was written under cerebral excitement. Your articulation
is confused. You have told me three times in succession, in
exactly the same words, that I was the only true friend you had in
the world that you would unbutton your heart to. You smell
distinctly and decidedly of spirits.--I spoke, and paused; tender,
but firm.
Two large tears orbed themselves beneath the Professor's lids,--in
obedience to the principle of gravitation celebrated in that
delicious bit of bladdery bathos, "The very law that moulds a
tear," with which the "Edinburgh Review" attempted to put down
Master George Gordon when that young man was foolishly trying to
make himself conspicuous.
One of these tears peeped over the edge of the lid until it lost
its balance,--slid an inch and waited for reinforcements,--swelled
again,--rolled down a little further,--stopped,--moved on,--and at
last fell on the back of the Professor's hand. He held it up for
me to look at, and lifted his eyes, brimful, till they met mine.
I couldn't stand it,--I always break down when folks cry in my
face,--so I hugged him, and said he was a dear old boy, and asked
him kindly what was the matter with him, and what made him smell so
dreadfully strong of spirits.
Upset his alcohol lamp,--he said,--and spilt the alcohol on his
legs. That was it.--But what had he been doing to get his head
into such a state?--had he really committed an excess? What was
the matter?--Then it came out that he had been taking chloroform to
have a tooth out, which had left him in a very queer state, in
which he had written the "Prelude" given above, and under the
influence of which he evidently was still.
I took the manuscript from his hands and read the following
continuation of the lines he had begun to read me, while he made up
for two or three nights' lost sleep as he best might.
PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY:
OR THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR.
A MATHEMATICAL STORY.
Facts respecting an old arm-chair.
At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there.
Seems but little the worse for wear.
That's remarkable when I say
It was old in President Holyoke's day.
(One of his boys, perhaps you know,
Died, AT ONE HUNDRED, years ago.)
HE took lodging for rain or shine
Under green bed-clothes in '69.
Know old Cambridge? Hope you do.--
Born there? Don't say so! I was, too.
(Born in a house with a gambrel-roof,--
Standing still, if you must have proof.--
"Gambrel?--Gambrel?"--Let me beg
You'll look at a horse's hinder leg,--
First great angle above the hoof,--
That's the gambrel; hence gambrel-roof.)
--Nicest place that ever was seen,--
Colleges red and Common green,
Sidewalks brownish with trees between.
Sweetest spot beneath the skies
When the canker-worms don't rise,--
When the dust, that sometimes flies
Into your mouth and ears and eyes.
In a quiet slumber lies,
NOT in the shape of unbaked pies
Such as barefoot children prize.
A kind of harber it seems to be,
Facing the flow of a boundless sea.
Rows of gray old Tutors stand
Ranged like rocks above the sand;
Rolling beneath them, soft and green,
Breaks the tide of bright sixteen,--
One wave, two waves, three waves, four,
Sliding up the sparkling floor;
Then it ebbs to flow no more,
Wandering off from shore to shore
With its freight of golden ore!
--Pleasant place for boys to play;--
Better keep your girls away;
Hearts get rolled as pebbles do
Which countless fingering waves pursue,
And every classic beach is strown
With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone.
But this is neither here nor there;--
I'm talking about an old arm-chair.
You've heard, no doubt, of PARSON TURELL?
Over at Medford he used to dwell;
Married one of the Mathers' folk;
Got with his wife a chair of oak,--
Funny old chair, with seat like wedge,
Sharp behind and broad front edge,--
One of the oddest of human things,
Turned all over with knobs and rings,--
But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand,--
Fit for the worthies of the land,--
Chief-Justice Sewall a cause to try in,
Or Cotton Mather to sit--and lie--in.
--Parson Turell bequeathed the same
To a certain student,--SMITH by name;
These were the terms, as we are told:
"Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and holde;
When he doth graduate, then to passe
To ye oldest Youth in ye Senior Classe.
On Payment of"--(naming a certain sum)--
"By him to whom ye Chaire shall come;
He to ye oldest Senior next,
And soe forever,"--(thus runs the text,)--
"But one Crown lesse then he gave to claime,
That being his Debte for use of same."
SMITH transferred it to one of the BROWNS,
And took his money,--five silver crowns.
BROWN delivered it up to MOORE,
Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four.
MOORE made over the chair to LEE,
Who gave him crowns of silver three.
LEE conveyed it unto DREW,
And now the payment, of course, was two.
DREW gave up the chair to DUNN,--
All he got, as you see, was one.
DUNN released the chair to HALL,
And got by the bargain no crown at all.
--And now it passed to a second BROWN,
Who took it, and likewise CLAIMED A CROWN.
When BROWN conveyed it unto WARE,
Having had one crown, to make it fair,
He paid him two crowns to take the chair;
And WARE, being honest, (as all Wares be,)
He paid one POTTER, who took it, three.
Four got ROBINSON; five got DIX;
JOHNSON primus demanded six;
And so the sum kept gathering still
Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill
--When paper money became so cheap,
Folks wouldn't count it, but said "a heap,"
A certain RICHARDS, the books declare,
(A. M. in '90? I've looked with care
Through the Triennial,--NAME NOT THERE.)
This person, Richards, was offered then
Eight score pounds, but would have ten;
Nine, I think, was the sum he took,--
Not quite certain,--but see the book.
--By and by the wars were still,
But nothing had altered the Parson's will.
The old arm-chair was solid yet,
But saddled with such a monstrous debt!
Things grew quite too bad to bear,
Paying such sums to get rid of the chair!
But dead men's fingers hold awful tight,
And there was the will in black and white,
Plain enough for a child to spell.
What should be done no man could tell,
For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse,
And every season but made it worse.
As a last resort, to clear the doubt,
They got old GOVERNOR HANCOCK out.
The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop
And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop;
Halberds glittered and colors flew,
French horns whinnied and trumpets blew,
The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth
And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath;
So he rode with all his band,
Till the President met him, cap in hand.
--The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,--
"A will is a will, and the Parson's dead."
The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he,--
"There is your p'int. And here's my fee.
These are the terms you must fulfil,--
On such conditions I BREAK THE WILL!"
The Governor mentioned what these should be.
(Just wait a minute and then you'll see.)
The President prayed. Then all was still,
And the Governor rose and BROKE THE WILL!
--"About those conditions?" Well, now you go
And do as I tell you, and then you'll know.
Once a year, on Commencement-day,
If you'll only take the pains to stay,
You'll see the President in the CHAIR,
Likewise the Governor sitting there.
The President rises; both old and young
May hear his speech in a foreign tongue,
The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear,
Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair?
And then his Excellency bows,
As much as to say that he allows.
The Vice-Gub. next is called by name;
He bows like t'other, which means the same.
And all the officers round 'em bow,
As much as to say that THEY allow.
And a lot of parchments about the chair
Are handed to witnesses then and there,
And then the lawyers hold it clear
That the chair is safe for another year.
God bless you, Gentlemen! Learn to give
Money to colleges while you live.
Don't be silly and think you'll try
To bother the colleges, when you die,
With codicil this, and codicil that,
That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat;
For there never was pitcher that wouldn't spill,
And there's always a flaw in a donkey's will!
--Hospitality is a good deal a matter of latitude, I suspect. The
shade of a palm-tree serves an African for a hut; his dwelling is
all door and no walls; everybody can come in. To make a morning
call on an Esquimaux acquaintance, one must creep through a long
tunnel; his house is all walls and no door, except such a one as an
apple with a worm-hole has. One might, very probably, trace a
regular gradation between these two extremes. In cities where the
evenings are generally hot, the people have porches at their doors,
where they sit, and this is, of course, a provocative to the
interchange of civilities. A good deal, which in colder regions is
ascribed to mean dispositions, belongs really to mean temperature.
Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, at noon, in a very
hot summer's day, one may realize, by a sudden extension in his
sphere of consciousness, how closely he is shut up for the most
part.--Do you not remember something like this? July, between 1
and 2, P. M., Fahrenheit 96 degrees, or thereabout. Windows all
gaping, like the mouths of panting dogs. Long, stinging cry of a
locust comes in from a tree, half a mile off; had forgotten there
was such a tree. Baby's screams from a house several blocks
distant;--never knew there were any babies in the neighborhood
before. Tinman pounding something that clatters dreadfully,--very
distinct, but don't remember any tinman's shop near by. Horses
stamping on pavement to get off flies. When you hear these four
sounds, you may set it down as a warm day. Then it is that one
would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra
Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into the market in
natural costume,--buy a water-melon for a halfpenny,--split it, and
scoop out the middle,--sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap
the other on one's head, and feast upon the pulp.
--I see some of the London journals have been attacking some of
their literary people for lecturing, on the ground of its being a
public exhibition of themselves for money. A popular author can
print his lecture; if he deliver it, it is a case of quaestum
corpore, or making profit of his person. None but "snobs" do that.
Ergo, etc. To this I reply,--Negatur minor. Her Most Gracious
Majesty, the Queen, exhibits herself to the public as a part of the
service for which she is paid. We do not consider it low-bred in
her to pronounce her own speech, and should prefer it so to hearing
it from any other person, or reading it. His Grace and his
Lordship exhibit themselves very often for popularity, and their
houses every day for money.--No, if a man shows himself other than
he is, if he belittles himself before an audience for hire, then he
acts unworthily. But a true word, fresh from the lips of a true
man, is worth paying for, at the rate of eight dollars a day, or
even of fifty dollars a lecture. The taunt must be an outbreak of
jealousy against the renowned authors who have the audacity to be
also orators. The sub-lieutenants (of the press) stick a too
popular writer and speaker with an epithet in England, instead of
with a rapier, as in France.--Poh! All England is one great
menagerie, and, all at once, the jackal, who admires the gilded
cage of the royal beast, must protest against the vulgarity of the
talking-bird's and the nightingale's being willing to become a part
of the exhibition!
THE LONG PATH.
(Last of the Parentheses.)
Yes, that was my last walk with the SCHOOLMISTRESS. It happened to
be the end of a term; and before the next began, a very nice young
woman, who had been her assistant, was announced as her successor,
and she was provided for elsewhere. So it was no longer the
schoolmistress that I walked with, but--Let us not be in unseemly
haste. I shall call her the schoolmistress still; some of you love
her under that name.
When it became known among the boarders that two of their number
had joined hands to walk down the long path of life side by side,
there was, as you may suppose, no small sensation. I confess I
pitied our landlady. It took her all of a suddin,--she said. Had
not known that we was keepin company, and never mistrusted anything
particular. Ma'am was right to better herself. Didn't look very
rugged to take care of a femily, but could get hired haalp, she
calc'lated.--The great maternal instinct came crowding up in her
soul just then, and her eyes wandered until they settled on her
daughter.
--No, poor, dear woman,--that could not have been. But I am
dropping one of my internal tears for you, with this pleasant smile
on my face all the time.
The great mystery of God's providence is the permitted crushing out
of flowering instincts. Life is maintained by the respiration of
oxygen and of sentiments. In the long catalogue of scientific
cruelties there is hardly anything quite so painful to think of as
that experiment of putting an animal under the bell of an air-pump
and exhausting the air from it. [I never saw the accursed trick
performed. Laus Deo!] There comes a time when the souls of human
beings, women, perhaps, more even than men, begin to faint for the
atmosphere of the affections they were made to breathe. Then it is
that Society places its transparent bell-glass over the young woman
who is to be the subject of one of its fatal experiments. The
element by which only the heart lives is sucked out of her
crystalline prison. Watch her through its transparent walls;--her
bosom is heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle,
compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of
Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that
frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as
slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we
call Civilization!
Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you foolish, plain,
overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized, self-saturated young
person, whoever you may be, now reading this,--little thinking you
are what I describe, and in blissful unconsciousness that you are
destined to the lingering asphyxia of soul which is the lot of such
multitudes worthier than yourself. But it is only my surface-
thought which laughs. For that great procession of the UNLOVED,
who not only wear the crown of thorns, but must hide it under the
locks of brown or gray,--under the snowy cap, under the chilling
turban,--hide it even from themselves,--perhaps never know they
wear it, though it kills them,--there is no depth of tenderness in
my nature that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere,--somewhere,--love
is in store for them,--the universe must not be allowed to
fool them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the small,
half-unconscious artifices by which unattractive young persons seek
to recommend themselves to the favor of those towards whom our dear
sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled by their God-given
instincts!
Read what the singing-women--one to ten thousand of the suffering
women--tell us, and think of the griefs that die unspoken! Nature
is in earnest when she makes a woman; and there are women enough
lying in the next churchyard with very commonplace blue
slate-stones at their head and feet, for whom it was just as true
that "all sounds of life assumed one tone of love," as for Letitia
Landon, of whom Elizabeth Browning said it; but she could give words
to her grief, and they could not.--Will you hear a few stanzas of
mine?
THE VOICELESS.
We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,--
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;--
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
Nay, grieve not for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts' sad story,--
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory!
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.
O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his cordial wine
Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,--
If singing breath or echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven!
I hope that our landlady's daughter is not so badly off, after all.
That young man from another city who made the remark which you
remember about Boston State-house and Boston folks, has appeared at
our table repeatedly of late, and has seemed to me rather attentive
to this young lady. Only last evening I saw him leaning over her
while she was playing the accordion,--indeed, I undertook to join
them in a song, and got as far as "Come rest in this boo-oo," when,
my voice getting tremulous, I turned off, as one steps out of a
procession, and left the basso and soprano to finish it. I see no
reason why this young woman should not be a very proper match for a
man that laughs about Boston State-house. He can't be very
particular.
The young fellow whom I have so often mentioned was a little free
in his remarks, but very good-natured.--Sorry to have you go,--he
said.--School-ma'am made a mistake not to wait for me. Haven't
taken anything but mournin' fruit at breakfast since I heard of
it.--MOURNING fruit,--said I,--what's that?--Huckleberries and
blackberries,--said he;--couldn't eat in colors, raspberries,
currants, and such, after a solemn thing like this happening.--The
conceit seemed to please the young fellow. If you will believe it,
when we came down to breakfast the next morning, he had carried it
out as follows. You know those odious little "saas-plates" that
figure so largely at boarding-houses, and especially at taverns,
into which a strenuous attendant female trowels little dabs, sombre
of tint and heterogeneous of composition, which it makes you feel
homesick to look at, and into which you poke the elastic coppery
tea-spoon with the air of a cat dipping her foot into a wash-tub,
--(not that I mean to say anything against them, for, when they are
of tinted porcelain or starry many-faceted crystal, and hold clean
bright berries, or pale virgin honey, or "lucent syrups tinct
with cinnamon," and the teaspoon is of white silver, with the
Tower-stamp, solid, but not brutally heavy,--as people in the green
stage of millionism will have them,--I can dally with their amber
semi-fluids or glossy spherules without a shiver,)--you know these
small, deep dishes, I say. When we came down the next morning, each
of these (two only excepted) was covered with a broad leaf. On
lifting this, each boarder found a small heap of solemn black
huckleberries. But one of those plates held red currants, and was
covered with a red rose; the other held white currants, and was
covered with a white rose. There was a laugh at this at first, and
then a short silence, and I noticed that her lip trembled, and the
old gentleman opposite was in trouble to get at his bandanna
handkerchief
--"What was the use in waiting? We should be too late for
Switzerland, that season, if we waited much longer."--The hand I
held trembled in mine, and the eyes fell meekly, as Esther bowed
herself before the feet of Ahasuerus.--She had been reading that
chapter, for she looked up,--if there was a film of moisture over
her eyes there was also the faintest shadow of a distant smile
skirting her lips, but not enough to accent the dimples,--and said,
in her pretty, still way,--"If it please the king, and if I have
found favor in his sight, and the thing seem right before the king,
and I be pleasing in his eyes"--
I don't remember what King Ahasuerus did or said when Esther got
just to that point of her soft, humble words,--but I know what I
did. That quotation from Scripture was cut short, anyhow. We came
to a compromise on the great question, and the time was settled for
the last day of summer.
In the mean time, I talked on with our boarders, much as usual, as
you may see by what I have reported. I must say, I was pleased
with a certain tenderness they all showed toward us, after the
first excitement of the news was over. It came out in trivial
matters,--but each one, in his or her way, manifested kindness.
Our landlady, for instance, when we had chickens, sent the LIVER
instead of the GIZZARD, with the wing, for the schoolmistress.
This was not an accident; the two are never mistaken, though some
landladies APPEAR as if they did not know the difference. The
whole of the company were even more respectfully attentive to my
remarks than usual. There was no idle punning, and very little
winking on the part of that lively young gentleman who, as the
reader may remember, occasionally interposed some playful question
or remark, which could hardly be considered relevant,--except when
the least allusion was made to matrimony, when he would look at the
landlady's daughter, and wink with both sides of his face, until
she would ask what he was pokin' his fun at her for, and if he
wasn't ashamed of himself. In fact, they all behaved very
handsomely, so that I really felt sorry at the thought of leaving
my boarding-house.
I suppose you think, that, because I lived at a plain widow-woman's
plain table, I was of course more or less infirm in point of
worldly fortune. You may not be sorry to learn, that, though not
what GREAT MERCHANTS call very rich, I was comfortable,
--comfortable,--so that most of those moderate luxuries I described
in my verses on CONTENTMENT--MOST of them, I say--were within our
reach, if we chose to have them. But I found out that the
schoolmistress had a vein of charity about her, which had hitherto
been worked on a small silver and copper basis, which made her
think less, perhaps, of luxuries than even I did,--modestly as I
have expressed my wishes.
It is a rather pleasant thing to tell a poor young woman, whom one
has contrived to win without showing his rent-roll, that she has
found what the world values so highly, in following the lead of her
affections. That was an enjoyment I was now ready for.
I began abruptly:--Do you know that you are a rich young person?
I know that I am very rich,--she said.--Heaven has given me more
than I ever asked; for I had not thought love was ever meant for
me.
It was a woman's confession, and her voice fell to a whisper as it
threaded the last words.
I don't mean that,--I said,--you blessed little saint and seraph!
--if there's an angel missing in the New Jerusalem, inquire for her
at this boarding house!--I don't mean that! I mean that I--that
is, you--am--are--confound it!--I mean that you'll be what most
people call a lady of fortune. And I looked full in her eyes for
the effect of the announcement.
There wasn't any. She said she was thankful that I had what would
save me from drudgery, and that some other time I should tell her
about it.--I never made a greater failure in an attempt to produce
a sensation.
So the last day of summer came. It was our choice to go to the
church, but we had a kind of reception at the boarding-house. The
presents were all arranged, and among them none gave more pleasure
than the modest tributes of our fellow-boarders,--for there was not
one, I believe, who did not send something. The landlady would
insist on making an elegant bride-cake, with her own hands; to
which Master Benjamin Franklin wished to add certain embellishments
out of his private funds,--namely, a Cupid in a mouse-trap, done in
white sugar, and two miniature flags with the stars and stripes,
which had a very pleasing effect, I assure you. The landlady's
daughter sent a richly bound copy of Tupper's Poems. On a blank
leaf was the following, written in a very delicate and careful
hand:-
Presented to . . . by . . .
On the eve ere her union in holy matrimony.
May sunshine ever beam o'er her!
Even the poor relative thought she must do something, and sent a
copy of "The Whole Duty of Man," bound in very attractive
variegated sheepskin, the edges nicely marbled. From the
divinity-student came the loveliest English edition of "Keble's
Christian Year." I opened it, when it came, to the FOURTH SUNDAY
IN LENT, and read that angelic poem, sweeter than anything I can
remember since Xavier's "My God, I love thee."--I am not a
Churchman,--I don't believe in planting oaks in flower-pots,--but
such a poem as "The Rosebud" makes one's heart a proselyte to the
culture it grows from. Talk about it as much as you like,--one's
breeding shows itself nowhere more than in his religion. A man
should be a gentleman in his hymns and prayers; the fondness for
"scenes," among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly with that--
"God only and good angels look
Behind the blissful scene,"-
and that other,--
"He could not trust his melting soul
But in his Maker's sight,"--
that I hope some of them will see this, and read the poem, and
profit by it.
My laughing and winking young friend undertook to procure and
arrange the flowers for the table, and did it with immense zeal. I
never saw him look happier than when he came in, his hat saucily on
one side, and a cheroot in his mouth, with a huge bunch of
tea-roses, which he said were for "Madam."
One of the last things that came was an old square box, smelling of
camphor, tied and sealed. It bore, in faded ink, the marks,
"Calcutta, 1805." On opening it, we found a white Cashmere shawl
with a very brief note from the dear old gentleman opposite, saying
that he had kept this some years, thinking he might want it, and
many more, not knowing what to do with it,--that he had never seen
it unfolded since he was a young supercargo,--and now, if she would
spread it on her shoulders, it would make him feel young to look at
it.
Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid of all work! What must
she do but buy a small copper breast-pin and put it under
"Schoolma'am's" plate that morning, at breakfast? And Schoolma'am
would wear it,--though I made her cover it, as well as I could,
with a tea-rose.
It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I could not leave them
in utter silence.
Good-by,--I said,--my dear friends, one and all of you! I have
been long with you, and I find it hard parting. I have to thank
you for a thousand courtesies, and above all for the patience and
indulgence with which you have listened to me when I have tried to
instruct or amuse you. My friend the Professor (who, as well as my
friend the Poet, is unavoidably absent on this interesting
occasion) has given me reason to suppose that he would occupy my
empty chair about the first of January next. If he comes among
you, be kind to him, as you have been to me. May the Lord bless
you all!--And we shook hands all round the table.
Half an hour afterwards the breakfast things and the cloth were
gone. I looked up and down the length of the bare boards over
which I had so often uttered my sentiments and experiences--and
--Yes, I am a man, like another.
All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these old friends of
mine, whom you know, and others a little more up in the world,
perhaps, to whom I have not introduced you, I took the
schoolmistress before the altar from the hands of the old gentleman
who used to sit opposite, and who would insist on giving her away.
And now we two are walking the long path in peace together. The
"schoolmistress" finds her skill in teaching called for again,
without going abroad to seek little scholars. Those visions of
mine have all come true.
I hope you all love me none the less for anything I have told you.
Farewell!
THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION.
The reader of to-day will not forget, I trust, that it is nearly a
quarter of a century since these papers were written. Statements which
were true then are not necessarily true now. Thus, the speed of the
trotting horse has been so much developed that the record of the year
when the fastest time to that date was given must be very considerably
altered, as may be seen by referring to a note on page 49 of the
"Autocrat." No doubt many other statements and opinions might be more or
less modified if I were writing today instead of having written before
the war, when the world and I were both more than a score of years
younger.
These papers followed close upon the track of the "Autocrat." They had
to endure the trial to which all second comers are subjected, which is a
formidable ordeal for the least as well as the greatest. Paradise
Regained and the Second Part of Faust are examples which are enough to
warn every one who has made a jingle fair hit with his arrow of the
danger of missing when he looses "his fellow of the selfsame flight."
There is good reason why it should be so. The first juice that runs of
itself from the grapes comes from the heart of the fruit, and tastes of
the pulp only; when the grapes are squeezed in the press the flow betrays
the flavor of the skin. If there is any freshness in the original idea
of the work, if there is any individuality in the method or style of a
new author, or of an old author on a new track, it will have lost much of
its first effect when repeated. Still, there have not been wanting
readers who have preferred this second series of papers to the first.
The new papers were more aggressive than the earlier ones, and for that
reason found a heartier welcome in some quarters, and met with a sharper
antagonism in others. It amuses me to look back on some of the attacks
they called forth. Opinions which do not excite the faintest show of
temper at this time from those who do not accept them were treated as if
they were the utterances of a nihilist incendiary. It required the
exercise of some forbearance not to recriminate.
How a stray sentence, a popular saying, the maxim of some wise man, a
line accidentally fallen upon and remembered, will sometimes help one
when he is all ready to be vexed or indignant! One day, in the time when
I was young or youngish, I happened to open a small copy of "Tom Jones,"
and glance at the title-page. There was one of those little engravings
opposite, which bore the familiar name of "T. Uwins," as I remember it,
and under it the words "Mr. Partridge bore all this patiently." How many
times, when, after rough usage from ill-mannered critics, my own
vocabulary of vituperation was simmering in such a lively way that it
threatened to boil and lift its lid and so boil over, those words have
calmed the small internal effervescence! There is very little in them
and very little of them; and so there is not much in a linchpin
considered by itself, but it often keeps a wheel from coming off and
prevents what might be a catastrophe. The chief trouble in offering such
papers as these to the readers of to-day is that their heresies have
become so familiar among intelligent people that they have too
commonplace an aspect. All the lighthouses and land-marks of belief bear
so differently from the way in which they presented themselves when these
papers were written that it is hard to recognize that we and our
fellow-passengers are still in the same old vessel sailing the same
unfathomable sea and bound to the same as yet unseen harbor.
But after all, there is not enough theology, good or bad, in these papers
to cause them to be inscribed on the Protestant Index Expurgatorius; and
if they are medicated with a few questionable dogmas or antidogmas, the
public has become used to so much rougher treatments, that what was once
an irritant may now act as an anodyne, and the reader may nod over pages
which, when they were first written, would have waked him into a paroxysm
of protest and denunciation.
November, 1882.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
This book is one of those which, if it lives for a number of decades, and
if it requires any Preface at all, wants a new one every ten years. The
first Preface to a book is apt to be explanatory, perhaps apologetic, in
the expectation of attacks from various quarters. If the book is in some
points in advance of public opinion, it is natural that the writer should
try to smooth the way to the reception of his more or less aggressive
ideas. He wishes to convince, not to offend,--to obtain a hearing for
his thought, not to stir up angry opposition in those who do not accept
it. There is commonly an anxious look about a first Preface. The author
thinks he shall be misapprehended about this or that matter, that his
well-meant expressions will probably be invidiously interpreted by those
whom he looks upon as prejudiced critics, and if he deals with living
questions that he will be attacked as a destructive by the conservatives
and reproached for his timidity by the noisier radicals. The first
Preface, therefore, is likely to be the weakest part of a work containing
the thoughts of an honest writer.
After a time the writer has cooled down from his excitement,--has got
over his apprehensions, is pleased to find that his book is still read,
and that he must write a new Preface. He comes smiling to his task. How
many things have explained themselves in the ten or twenty or thirty
years since he came before his untried public in those almost plaintive
paragraphs in which he introduced himself to his readers,--for the
Preface writer, no matter how fierce a combatant he may prove, comes on
to the stage with his shield on his right arm and his sword in his left
hand.
The Professor at the Breakfast-Table came out in the "Atlantic Monthly"
and introduced itself without any formal Preface. A quarter of a century
later the Preface of 1882, which the reader has just had laid before him,
was written. There is no mark of worry, I think, in that. Old opponents
had come up and shaken hands with the author they had attacked or
denounced. Newspapers which had warned their subscribers against him
were glad to get him as a contributor to their columns. A great change
had come over the community with reference to their beliefs. Christian
believers were united as never before in the feeling that, after all,
their common object was to elevate the moral and religious standard of
humanity. But within the special compartments of the great Christian
fold the marks of division have pronounced themselves in the most
unmistakable manner. As an example we may take the lines of cleavage
which have shown themselves in the two great churches, the Congregational
and the Presbyterian, and the very distinct fissure which is manifest in
the transplanted Anglican church of this country. Recent circumstances
have brought out the fact of the great change in the dogmatic communities
which has been going on silently but surely. The licensing of a
missionary, the transfer of a Professor from one department to another,
the election of a Bishop,--each of these movements furnishes evidence
that there is no such thing as an air-tight reservoir of doctrinal
finalities.
The folding-doors are wide open to every Protestant to enter all the
privileged precincts and private apartments of the various exclusive
religious organizations. We may demand the credentials of every creed
and catechise all the catechisms. So we may discuss the gravest
questions unblamed over our morning coffee-cups or our evening tea-cups.
There is no rest for the Protestant until he gives up his legendary
anthropology and all its dogmatic dependencies.
It is only incidentally, however, that the Professor at the
Breakfast-Table handles matters which are the subjects of religious
controversy. The reader who is sensitive about having his fixed beliefs
dealt with as if they were open to question had better skip the pages
which look as if they would disturb his complacency. "Faith" is the most
precious of possessions, and it dislikes being meddled with. It means,
of course, self-trust,--that is, a belief in the value of our, own
opinion of a doctrine, of a church, of a religion, of a Being, a belief
quite independent of any evidence that we can bring to convince a jury of
our fellow beings. Its roots are thus inextricably entangled with those
of self-love and bleed as mandrakes were said to, when pulled up as
weeds. Some persons may even at this late day take offence at a few
opinions expressed in the following pages, but most of these passages
will be read without loss of temper by those who disagree with them, and
by-and-by they may be found too timid and conservative for intelligent
readers, if they are still read by any.
BEVERLY FARM, MASS., June 18, 1891.
O. W. H.
THE PROFESSOR
AT THE
BREAKFAST-TABLE.
What he said, what he heard, and what he saw.
I
I intended to have signalized my first appearance by a certain large
statement, which I flatter myself is the nearest approach to a universal
formula, of life yet promulgated at this breakfast-table. It would have
had a grand effect. For this purpose I fixed my eyes on a certain
divinity-student, with the intention of exchanging a few phrases, and
then forcing my court-card, namely, The great end of being.--I will thank
you for the sugar,--I said.--Man is a dependent creature.
It is a small favor to ask,--said the divinity-student,--and passed the
sugar to me.
--Life is a great bundle of little things,--I said.
The divinity-student smiled, as if that were the concluding epigram of
the sugar question.
You smile,--I said.--Perhaps life seems to you a little bundle of great
things?
The divinity-student started a laugh, but suddenly reined it back with a
pull, as one throws a horse on his haunches.--Life is a great bundle of
great things,--he said.
(NOW, THEN!) The great end of being, after all, is....
Hold on!--said my neighbor, a young fellow whose name seems to be John,
and nothing else,--for that is what they all call him,--hold on! the
Sculpin is go'n' to say somethin'.
Now the Sculpin (Cottus Virginianus) is a little water-beast which
pretends to consider itself a fish, and, under that pretext, hangs about
the piles upon which West-Boston Bridge is built, swallowing the bait and
hook intended for flounders. On being drawn from the water, it exposes
an immense head, a diminutive bony carcass, and a surface so full of
spines, ridges, ruffles, and frills, that the naturalists have not been
able to count them without quarrelling about the number, and that the
colored youth, whose sport they spoil, do not like to touch them, and
especially to tread on them, unless they happen to have shoes on, to
cover the thick white soles of their broad black feet.
When, therefore, I heard the young fellow's exclamation, I looked round
the table with curiosity to see what it meant. At the further end of it
I saw a head, and a--a small portion of a little deformed body, mounted
on a high chair, which brought the occupant up to a fair level enough for
him to get at his food. His whole appearance was so grotesque, I felt
for a minute as if there was a showman behind him who would pull him down
presently and put up Judy, or the hangman, or the Devil, or some other
wooden personage of the famous spectacle. I contrived to lose the first
of his sentence, but what I heard began so:
--by the Frog-Pond, when there were frogs in and the folks used to come
down from the tents on section and Independence days with their pails to
get water to make egg-pop with. Born in Boston; went to school in Boston
as long as the boys would let me.--The little man groaned, turned, as if
to look around, and went on.--Ran away from school one day to see
Phillips hung for killing Denegri with a logger-head. That was in flip
days, when there were always two three loggerheads in the fire. I'm a
Boston boy, I tell you,--born at North End, and mean to be buried on
Copp's Hill, with the good old underground people,--the Worthylakes, and
the rest of 'em. Yes,--up on the old hill, where they buried Captain
Daniel Malcolm in a stone grave, ten feet deep, to keep him safe from the
red-coats, in those old times when the world was frozen up tight and
there was n't but one spot open, and that was right over Faneuil
all,--and black enough it looked, I tell you! There 's where my bones
shall lie, Sir, and rattle away when the big guns go off at the Navy Yard
opposite! You can't make me ashamed of the old place! Full crooked
little streets;--I was born and used to run round in one of 'em--
--I should think so,--said that young man whom I hear them call
"John,"--softly, not meaning to be heard, nor to be cruel, but thinking
in a half-whisper, evidently.--I should think so; and got kinked up,
turnin' so many corners.--The little man did not hear what was said, but
went on,--
--full of crooked little streets; but I tell you Boston has opened, and
kept open, more turnpikes that lead straight to free thought and free
speech and free deeds than any other city of live men or dead men,--I
don't care how broad their streets are, nor how high their steeples!
--How high is Bosting meet'n'-house?--said a person with black whiskers
and imperial, a velvet waistcoat, a guard-chain rather too massive, and a
diamond pin so very large that the most trusting nature might confess an
inward suggestion,--of course, nothing amounting to a suspicion. For
this is a gentleman from a great city, and sits next to the landlady's
daughter, who evidently believes in him, and is the object of his
especial attention.
How high?--said the little man.--As high as the first step of the stairs
that lead to the New Jerusalem. Is n't that high enough?
It is,--I said.--The great end of being is to harmonize man with the
order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so
still. But who shall tune the pitch-pipe? Quis cus-(On the whole, as
this quotation was not entirely new, and, being in a foreign language,
might not be familiar to all the boarders, I thought I would not finish
it.)
--Go to the Bible!--said a sharp voice from a sharp-faced, sharp-eyed,
sharp-elbowed, strenuous-looking woman in a black dress, appearing as if
it began as a piece of mourning and perpetuated itself as a bit of
economy.
You speak well, Madam,--I said;--yet there is room for a gloss or
commentary on what you say. "He who would bring back the wealth of the
Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies." What you bring away
from the Bible depends to some extent on what you carry to it.--Benjamin
Franklin! Be so good as to step up to my chamber and bring me down the
small uncovered pamphlet of twenty pages which you will find lying under
the "Cruden's Concordance." [The boy took a large bite, which left a very
perfect crescent in the slice of bread-and-butter he held, and departed
on his errand, with the portable fraction of his breakfast to sustain him
on the way.]
--Here it is. "Go to the Bible. A Dissertation, etc., etc. By J. J.
Flournoy. Athens, Georgia, 1858."
Mr. Flournoy, Madam, has obeyed the precept which you have judiciously
delivered. You may be interested, Madam, to know what are the
conclusions at which Mr. J. J. Flournoy of Athens, Georgia, has arrived.
You shall hear, Madam. He has gone to the Bible, and he has come back
from the Bible, bringing a remedy for existing social evils, which, if it
is the real specific, as it professes to be, is of great interest to
humanity, and to the female part of humanity in particular. It is what
he calls TRIGAMY, Madam, or the marrying of three wives, so that "good
old men" may be solaced at once by the companionship of the wisdom of
maturity, and of those less perfected but hardly less engaging qualities
which are found at an earlier period of life. He has followed your
precept, Madam; I hope you accept his conclusions.
The female boarder in black attire looked so puzzled, and, in fact, "all
abroad," after the delivery of this "counter" of mine, that I left her to
recover her wits, and went on with the conversation, which I was
beginning to get pretty well in hand.
But in the mean time I kept my eye on the female boarder to see what
effect I had produced. First, she was a little stunned at having her
argument knocked over. Secondly, she was a little shocked at the
tremendous character of the triple matrimonial suggestion. Thirdly.--I
don't like to say what I thought. Something seemed to have pleased her
fancy. Whether it was, that, if trigamy should come into fashion, there
would be three times as many chances to enjoy the luxury of saying, "No!"
is more than I, can tell you. I may as well mention that B. F. came to
me after breakfast to borrow the pamphlet for "a lady,"--one of the
boarders, he said,--looking as if he had a secret he wished to be
relieved of.
--I continued.--If a human soul is necessarily to be trained up in the
faith of those from whom it inherits its body, why, there is the end of
all reason. If, sooner or later, every soul is to look for truth with
its own eyes, the first thing is to recognize that no presumption in
favor of any particular belief arises from the fact of our inheriting it.
Otherwise you would not give the Mahometan a fair chance to become a
convert to a better religion.
The second thing would be to depolarize every fixed religious idea in the
mind by changing the word which stands for it.
--I don't know what you mean by "depolarizing" an idea,--said the
divinity-student.
I will tell you,--I said.---When a given symbol which represents a
thought has lain for a certain length of time in the mind, it undergoes a
change like that which rest in a certain position gives to iron. It
becomes magnetic in its relations,--it is traversed by strange forces
which did not belong to it. The word, and consequently the idea it
represents, is polarized.
The religious currency of mankind, in thought, in speech, and in print,
consists entirely of polarized words. Borrow one of these from another
language and religion, and you will find it leaves all its magnetism
behind it. Take that famous word, O'm, of the Hindoo mythology. Even a
priest cannot pronounce it without sin; and a holy Pundit would shut his
ears and run away from you in horror, if you should say it aloud. What
do you care for O'm? If you wanted to get the Pundit to look at his
religion fairly, you must first depolarize this and all similar words for
him. The argument for and against new translations of the Bible really
turns on this. Skepticism is afraid to trust its truths in depolarized
words, and so cries out against a new translation. I think, myself, if
every idea our Book contains could be shelled out of its old symbol and
put into a new, clean, unmagnetic word, we should have some chance of
reading it as philosophers, or wisdom-lovers, ought to read it,--which we
do not and cannot now any more than a Hindoo can read the "Gayatri" as a
fair man and lover of truth should do. When society has once fairly
dissolved the New Testament, which it never has done yet, it will perhaps
crystallize it over again in new forms of language.
I did n't know you was a settled minister over this parish,--said the
young fellow near me.
A sermon by a lay-preacher may be worth listening--I replied, calmly.
--It gives the parallax of thought and feeling as they appear to the
observers from two very different points of view. If you wish to get the
distance of a heavenly body, you know that you must take two observations
from remote points of the earth's orbit,--in midsummer and midwinter, for
instance. To get the parallax of heavenly truths, you must take an
observation from the position of the laity as well as of the clergy.
Teachers and students of theology get a certain look, certain
conventional tones of voice, a clerical gait, a professional neckcloth,
and habits of mind as professional as their externals. They are
scholarly men and read Bacon, and know well enough what the "idols of the
tribe" are. Of course they have their false gods, as all men that follow
one exclusive calling are prone to do.--The clergy have played the part
of the flywheel in our modern civilization. They have never suffered it
to stop. They have often carried on its movement, when other moving
powers failed, by the momentum stored in their vast body. Sometimes,
too, they have kept it back by their vis inertia, when its wheels were
like to grind the bones of some old canonized error into fertilizers for
the soil that yields the bread of life. But the mainspring of the
world's onward religious movement is not in them, nor in any one body of
men, let me tell you. It is the people that makes the clergy, and not
the clergy that makes the people. Of course, the profession reacts on
its source with variable energy.--But there never was a guild of dealers
or a company of craftsmen that did not need sharp looking after.
Our old friend, Dr. Holyoke, whom we gave the dinner to some time since,
must have known many people that saw the great bonfire in Harvard College
yard.
--Bonfire?--shrieked the little man.--The bonfire when Robert Calef's
book was burned?
The same,--I said,--when Robert Calef the Boston merchant's book was
burned in the yard of Harvard College, by order of Increase Mather,
President of the College and Minister of the Gospel. You remember the
old witchcraft revival of '92, and how stout Master Robert Calef, trader
of Boston, had the pluck to tell the ministers and judges what a set of
fools and worse than fools they were--
Remember it?--said the little man.--I don't think I shall forget it, as
long as I can stretch this forefinger to point with, and see what it
wears. There was a ring on it.
May I look at it?--I said.
Where it is,--said the little man;--it will never come off, till it falls
off from the bone in the darkness and in the dust.
He pushed the high chair on which he sat slightly back from the table,
and dropped himself, standing, to the floor,--his head being only a
little above the level of the table, as he stood. With pain and labor,
lifting one foot over the other, as a drummer handles his sticks, he took
a few steps from his place,--his motions and the deadbeat of the
misshapen boots announcing to my practised eye and ear the malformation
which is called in learned language talipes varus, or inverted club-foot.
Stop! stop!--I said,--let me come to you.
The little man hobbled back, and lifted himself by the left arm, with an
ease approaching to grace which surprised me, into his high chair. I
walked to his side, and he stretched out the forefinger of his right
hand, with the ring upon it. The ring had been put on long ago, and
could not pass the misshapen joint. It was one of those funeral rings
which used to be given to relatives and friends after the decease of
persons of any note or importance. Beneath a round fit of glass was a
death's head. Engraved on one side of this, "L. B. AEt. 22,"--on the
other, "Ob. 1692"
My grandmother's grandmother,--said the little man.--Hanged for a witch.
It does n't seem a great while ago. I knew my grandmother, and loved
her. Her mother was daughter to the witch that Chief Justice Sewall
hanged and Cotton Mather delivered over to the Devil.--That was Salem,
though, and not Boston. No, not Boston. Robert Calef, the Boston
merchant, it was that blew them all to--
Never mind where he blew them to,--I said; for the little man was getting
red in the face, and I did n't know what might come next.
This episode broke me up, as the jockeys say, out of my square
conversational trot; but I settled down to it again.
--A man that knows men, in the street, at their work, human nature in its
shirt-sleeves, who makes bargains with deacons, instead of talking over
texts with them, a man who has found out that there are plenty of praying
rogues and swearing saints in the world,--above all, who has found out,
by living into the pith and core of life, that all of the Deity which can
be folded up between the sheets of any human book is to the Deity of the
firmament, of the strata, of the hot aortic flood of throbbing human
life, of this infinite, instantaneous consciousness in which the soul's
being consists,--an incandescent point in the filament connecting the
negative pole of a past eternity with the positive pole of an eternity
that is to come,--that all of the Deity which any human book can hold is
to this larger Deity of the working battery of the universe only as the
films in a book of gold-leaf are to the broad seams and curdled lumps of
ore that lie in unsunned mines and virgin placers,--Oh!--I was saying
that a man who lives out-of-doors, among live people, gets some things
into his head he might not find in the index of his "Body of Divinity."
I tell you what,--the idea of the professions' digging a moat round their
close corporations, like that Japanese one at Jeddo, on the bottom of
which, if travellers do not lie, you could put Park Street Church and
look over the vane from its side, and try to stretch another such spire
across it without spanning the chasm,--that idea, I say, is pretty nearly
worn out. Now when a civilization or a civilized custom falls into
senile dementia, there is commonly a judgment ripe for it, and it comes
as plagues come, from a breath,--as fires come, from a spark.
Here, look at medicine. Big wigs, gold-headed canes, Latin
prescriptions, shops full of abominations, recipes a yard long, "curing"
patients by drugging as sailors bring a wind by whistling, selling lies
at a guinea apiece,--a routine, in short, of giving unfortunate sick
people a mess of things either too odious to swallow or too acrid to
hold, or, if that were possible, both at once.
--You don't know what I mean, indignant and not unintelligent
country-practitioner? Then you don't know the history of medicine,--and
that is not my fault. But don't expose yourself in any outbreak of
eloquence; for, by the mortar in which Anaxarchus was pounded! I did not
bring home Schenckius and Forestus and Hildanus, and all the old folios
in calf and vellum I will show you, to be bullied by the proprietor, of a
"Wood and Bache," and a shelf of peppered sheepskin reprints by
Philadelphia Editors. Besides, many of the profession and I know a
little something of each other, and you don't think I am such a simpleton
as to lose their good opinion by saying what the better heads among them
would condemn as unfair and untrue? Now mark how the great plague came
on the generation of drugging doctors, and in what form it fell.
A scheming drug-vender, (inventive genius,) an utterly untrustworthy and
incompetent observer, (profound searcher of Nature,) a shallow dabbler in
erudition, (sagacious scholar,) started the monstrous fiction (founded
the immortal system) of Homoeopathy. I am very fair, you see,---you can
help yourself to either of these sets of phrases.
All the reason in the world would not have had so rapid and general an
effect on the public mind to disabuse it of the idea that a drug is a
good thing in itself, instead of being, as it is, a bad thing, as was
produced by the trick (system) of this German charlatan (theorist). Not
that the wiser part of the profession needed him to teach them; but the
routinists and their employers, the "general practitioners," who lived by
selling pills and mixtures, and their drug-consuming customers, had to
recognize that people could get well, unpoisoned. These dumb cattle
would not learn it of themselves, and so the murrain of Homoeopathy fell
on them.
--You don't know what plague has fallen on the practitioners of theology?
I will tell you, then. It is Spiritualism. While some are crying out
against it as a delusion of the Devil, and some are laughing at it as an
hysteric folly, and some are getting angry with it as a mere trick of
interested or mischievous persons, Spiritualism is quietly undermining
the traditional ideas of the future state which have been and are still
accepted,--not merely in those who believe in it, but in the general
sentiment of the community, to a larger extent than most good people seem
to be aware of. It need n't be true, to do this, any more than
Homoeopathy need, to do its work. The Spiritualists have some pretty
strong instincts to pry over, which no doubt have been roughly handled by
theologians at different times. And the Nemesis of the pulpit comes, in
a shape it little thought of, beginning with the snap of a toe-joint, and
ending with such a crack of old beliefs that the roar of it is heard in
all the ministers' studies of Christendom? Sir, you cannot have people
of cultivation, of pure character, sensible enough in common things,
large-hearted women, grave judges, shrewd business-men, men of science,
professing to be in communication with the spiritual world and keeping up
constant intercourse with it, without its gradually reacting on the whole
conception of that other life. It is the folly of the world, constantly,
which confounds its wisdom. Not only out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings, but out of the mouths of fools and cheats, we may often get
our truest lessons. For the fool's judgment is a dog-vane that turns
with a breath, and the cheat watches the clouds and sets his weathercock
by them,--so that one shall often see by their pointing which way the
winds of heaven are blowing, when the slow-wheeling arrows and feathers
of what we call the Temples of Wisdom are turning to all points of the
compass.
--Amen!--said the young fellow called John--Ten minutes by the watch.
Those that are unanimous will please to signify by holding up their left
foot!
I looked this young man steadily in the face for about thirty seconds.
His countenance was as calm as that of a reposing infant. I think it was
simplicity, rather than mischief, with perhaps a youthful playfulness,
that led him to this outbreak. I have often noticed that even quiet
horses, on a sharp November morning, when their coats are beginning to
get the winter roughness, will give little sportive demi-kicks, with
slight sudden elevation of the subsequent region of the body, and a sharp
short whinny,--by no means intending to put their heels through the
dasher, or to address the driver rudely, but feeling, to use a familiar
word, frisky. This, I think, is the physiological condition of the young
person, John. I noticed, however, what I should call a palpebral spasm,
affecting the eyelid and muscles of one side, which, if it were intended
for the facial gesture called a wink, might lead me to suspect a
disposition to be satirical on his part.
--Resuming the conversation, I remarked,--I am, ex officio, as a
Professor, a conservative. For I don't know any fruit that clings to its
tree so faithfully, not even a "froze-'n'-thaw" winter-apple, as a
Professor to the bough of which his chair is made. You can't shake him
off, and it is as much as you can do to pull him off. Hence, by a chain
of induction I need not unwind, he tends to conservatism generally.
But then, you know, if you are sailing the Atlantic, and all at once find
yourself in a current, and the sea covered with weeds, and drop your
Fahrenheit over the side and find it eight or ten degrees higher than in
the ocean generally, there is no use in flying in the face of facts and
swearing there is no such thing as a Gulf-Stream, when you are in it.
You can't keep gas in a bladder, and you can't keep knowledge tight in a
profession. Hydrogen will leak out, and air will leak in, through
India-rubber; and special knowledge will leak out, and general knowledge
will leak in, though a profession were covered with twenty thicknesses of
sheepskin diplomas.
By Jove, Sir, till common sense is well mixed up with medicine, and
common manhood with theology, and common honesty with law, We the people,
Sir, some of us with nut-crackers, and some of us with trip-hammers, and
some of us with pile-drivers, and some of us coming with a whish! like
air-stones out of a lunar volcano, will crash down on the lumps of
nonsense in all of them till we have made powder of them--like Aaron's
calf.
If to be a conservative is to let all the drains of thought choke up and
keep all the soul's windows down,--to shut out the sun from the east and
the wind from the west,--to let the rats run free in the cellar, and the
moths feed their fill in the chambers, and the spiders weave their lace
before the mirrors, till the soul's typhus is bred out of our neglect,
and we begin to snore in its coma or rave in its delirium,--I, Sir, am a
bonnet-rouge, a red cap of the barricades, my friends, rather than a
conservative.
--Were you born in Boston, Sir?--said the little man,--looking eager and
excited.
I was not,--I replied.
It's a pity,--it's a pity,--said the little man;--it 's the place to be
born in. But if you can't fix it so as to be born here, you can come and
live here. Old Ben Franklin, the father of American science and the
American Union, was n't ashamed to be born here. Jim Otis, the father of
American Independence, bothered about in the Cape Cod marshes awhile, but
he came to Boston as soon as he got big enough. Joe Warren, the first
bloody ruffed-shirt of the Revolution, was as good as born here. Parson
Charming strolled along this way from Newport, and stayed here. Pity old
Sam Hopkins hadn't come, too;--we'd have made a man of him,--poor, dear,
good old Christian heathen! There he lies, as peaceful as a young baby,
in the old burying-ground! I've stood on the slab many a time. Meant
well,--meant well. Juggernaut. Parson Charming put a little oil on one
linchpin, and slipped it out so softly, the first thing they knew about
it was the wheel of that side was down. T' other fellow's at work now,
but he makes more noise about it. When the linchpin comes out on his
side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old
cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which
may get hurt. Hope not,--hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing
place,--always cracking up something.
Cracking up Boston folks,--said the gentleman with the diamond-pin, whom,
for convenience' sake, I shall hereafter call the Koh-i-noor.
The little man turned round mechanically towards him, as Maelzel's Turk
used to turn, carrying his head slowly and horizontally, as if it went by
cogwheels.--Cracking up all sorts of things,--native and foreign vermin
included,--said the little man.
This remark was thought by some of us to have a hidden personal
application, and to afford a fair opening for a lively rejoinder, if the
Koh-i-noor had been so disposed. The little man uttered it with the
distinct wooden calmness with which the ingenious Turk used to exclaim,
E-chec! so that it must have been heard. The party supposed to be
interested in the remark was, however, carrying a large knife-bladeful of
something to his mouth just then, which, no doubt, interfered with the
reply he would have made.
--My friend who used to board here was accustomed sometimes, in a
pleasant way, to call himself the Autocrat of the table,--meaning, I
suppose, that he had it all his own way among the boarders. I think our
small boarder here is like to prove a refractory subject, if I undertake
to use the sceptre my friend meant to bequeath me, too magisterially. I
won't deny that sometimes, on rare occasions, when I have been in company
with gentlemen who preferred listening, I have been guilty of the same
kind of usurpation which my friend openly justified. But I maintain,
that I, the Professor, am a good listener. If a man can tell me a fact
which subtends an appreciable angle in the horizon of thought, I am as
receptive as the contribution-box in a congregation of colored brethren.
If, when I am exposing my intellectual dry-goods, a man will begin a good
story, I will have them all in, and my shutters up, before he has got to
the fifth "says he," and listen like a three-years' child, as the author
of the "Old Sailor" says. I had rather hear one of those grand elemental
laughs from either of our two Georges, (fictitious names, Sir or Madam,)
glisten to one of those old playbills of our College days, in which "Tom
and Jerry" ("Thomas and Jeremiah," as the old Greek Professor was said to
call it) was announced to be brought on the stage with whole force of the
Faculty, read by our Frederick, (no such person, of course,) than say the
best things I might by any chance find myself capable of saying. Of
course, if I come across a real thinker, a suggestive, acute,
illuminating, informing talker, I enjoy the luxury of sitting still for a
while as much as another.
Nobody talks much that does n't say unwise things,--things he did not
mean to say; as no person plays much without striking a false note
sometimes. Talk, to me, is only spading up the ground for crops of
thought. I can't answer for what will turn up. If I could, it would n't
be talking, but "speaking my piece." Better, I think, the hearty
abandonment of one's self to the suggestions of the moment at the risk of
an occasional slip of the tongue, perceived the instant it escapes, but
just one syllable too late, than the royal reputation of never saying a
foolish thing.
--What shall I do with this little man?--There is only one thing to
do,--and that is to let him talk when he will. The day of the
"Autocrat's" monologues is over.
--My friend,--said I to the young fellow whom, as I have said, the
boarders call "John,"--My friend,--I said, one morning, after
breakfast,--can you give me any information respecting the deformed
person who sits at the other end of the table?
What! the Sculpin?--said the young fellow.
The diminutive person, with angular curvature of the spine,--I said,
--and double talipes varus,--I beg your pardon,--with two club-feet.
Is that long word what you call it when a fellah walks so?--said the
young man, making his fists revolve round an imaginary axis, as you may
have seen youth of tender age and limited pugilistic knowledge, when they
show how they would punish an adversary, themselves protected by this
rotating guard,--the middle knuckle, meantime, thumb-supported, fiercely
prominent, death-threatening.
It is,--said I.--But would you have the kindness to tell me if you know
anything about this deformed person?
About the Sculpin?--said the young fellow.
My good friend,--said I,--I am sure, by your countenance, you would not
hurt the feelings of one who has been hardly enough treated by Nature to
be spared by his fellows. Even in speaking of him to others, I could
wish that you might not employ a term which implies contempt for what
should inspire only pity.
A fellah 's no business to be so crooked,--said the young man called
John.
Yes, yes,--I said, thoughtfully,--the strong hate the weak. It's all
right. The arrangement has reference to the race, and not to the
individual. Infirmity must be kicked out, or the stock run down.
Wholesale moral arrangements are so different from retail!--I understand
the instinct, my friend,--it is cosmic,--it is planetary,--it is a
conservative principle in creation.
The young fellow's face gradually lost its expression as I was speaking,
until it became as blank of vivid significance as the countenance of a
gingerbread rabbit with two currants in the place of eyes. He had not
taken my meaning.
Presently the intelligence came back with a snap that made him wink, as
he answered,--Jest so. All right. A 1. Put her through. That's the
way to talk. Did you speak to me, Sir?--Here the young man struck up
that well-known song which I think they used to sing at Masonic
festivals, beginning, "Aldiborontiphoscophornio, Where left you
Chrononhotonthologos?"
I beg your pardon,--I said;--all I meant was, that men, as temporary
occupants of a permanent abode called human life, which is improved or
injured by occupancy, according to the style of tenant, have a natural
dislike to those who, if they live the life of the race as well as of the
individual, will leave lasting injurious effects upon the abode spoken
of, which is to be occupied by countless future generations. This is the
final cause of the underlying brute instinct which we have in common with
the herds.
--The gingerbread-rabbit expression was coming on so fast, that I thought
I must try again.--It's a pity that families are kept up, where there are
such hereditary infirmities. Still, let us treat this poor man fairly,
and not call him names. Do you know what his name is?
I know what the rest of 'em call him,--said the young fellow.--They call
him Little Boston. There's no harm in that, is there?
It is an honorable term,--I replied.--But why Little Boston, in a place
where most are Bostonians?
Because nobody else is quite so Boston all over as he is,--said the young
fellow.
"L. B. Ob. 1692."--Little Boston let him be, when we talk about him. The
ring he wears labels him well enough. There is stuff in the little man,
or he would n't stick so manfully by this crooked, crotchety old town.
Give him a chance.--You will drop the Sculpin, won't you?--I said to the
young fellow.
Drop him?--he answered,--I ha'n't took him up yet.
No, no,--the term,--I said,--the term. Don't call him so any more, if
you please. Call him Little Boston, if you like.
All right,--said the young fellow.--I would n't be hard on the poor
little--
The word he used was objectionable in point of significance and of
grammar. It was a frequent termination of certain adjectives among the
Romans,--as of those designating a person following the sea, or given to
rural pursuits. It is classed by custom among the profane words; why, it
is hard to say,--but it is largely used in the street by those who speak
of their fellows in pity or in wrath.
I never heard the young fellow apply the name of the odious pretended
fish to the little man from that day forward.
--Here we are, then, at our boarding--house. First, myself, the
Professor, a little way from the head of the table, on the right, looking
down, where the "Autocrat" used to sit. At the further end sits the
Landlady. At the head of the table, just now, the Koh-i-noor, or the
gentleman with the diamond. Opposite me is a Venerable Gentleman with a
bland countenance, who as yet has spoken little. The Divinity Student is
my neighbor on the right,--and further down, that Young Fellow of whom I
have repeatedly spoken. The Landlady's Daughter sits near the
Koh-i-noor, as I said. The Poor Relation near the Landlady. At the
right upper corner is a fresh-looking youth of whose name and history I
have as yet learned nothing. Next the further left-hand corner, near the
lower end of the table, sits the deformed person. The chair at his side,
occupying that corner, is empty. I need not specially mention the other
boarders, with the exception of Benjamin Franklin, the landlady's son,
who sits near his mother. We are a tolerably assorted set,--difference
enough and likeness enough; but still it seems to me there is something
wanting. The Landlady's Daughter is the prima donna in the way of
feminine attractions. I am not quite satisfied with this young lady.
She wears more "jewelry," as certain young ladies call their trinkets,
than I care to see on a person in her position. Her voice is strident,
her laugh too much like a giggle, and she has that foolish way of dancing
and bobbing like a quill-float with a "minnum" biting the hook below it,
which one sees and weeps over sometimes in persons of more pretensions.
I can't help hoping we shall put something into that empty chair yet
which will add the missing string to our social harp. I hear talk of a
rare Miss who is expected. Something in the schoolgirl way, I believe.
We shall see.
--My friend who calls himself The Autocrat has given me a caution which I
am going to repeat, with my comment upon it, for the benefit of all
concerned.
Professor,--said he, one day,--don't you think your brain will run dry
before a year's out, if you don't get the pump to help the cow? Let me
tell you what happened to me once. I put a little money into a bank, and
bought a check-book, so that I might draw it as I wanted, in sums to
suit. Things went on nicely for a time; scratching with a pen was as
easy as rubbing Aladdin's Lamp; and my blank check-book seemed to be a
dictionary of possibilities, in which I could find all the synonymes of
happiness, and realize any one of them on the spot. A check came back to
me at last with these two words on it,--NO FUNDS. My check-book was a
volume of waste-paper.
Now, Professor,--said he,--I have drawn something out of your bank, you
know; and just so sure as you keep drawing out your soul's currency
without making new deposits, the next thing will be, NO FUNDS,--and then
where will you be, my boy? These little bits of paper mean your gold and
your silver and your copper, Professor; and you will certainly break up
and go to pieces, if you don't hold on to your metallic basis.
There is something in that,--said I.--Only I rather think life can coin
thought somewhat faster than I can count it off in words. What if one
shall go round and dry up with soft napkins all the dew that falls of a
June evening on the leaves of his garden? Shall there be no more dew on
those leaves thereafter? Marry, yea,--many drops, large and round and
full of moonlight as those thou shalt have absterged!
Here am I, the Professor,--a man who has lived long enough to have
plucked the flowers of life and come to the berries,--which are not
always sad-colored, but sometimes golden-hued as the crocus of April, or
rosy-cheeked as the damask of June; a man who staggered against books as
a baby, and will totter against them, if he lives to decrepitude; with a
brain full of tingling thoughts, such as they are, as a limb which we
call "asleep," because it is so particularly awake, is of pricking points;
presenting a key-board of nerve-pulps, not as yet tanned or ossified, to
finger-touch of all outward agencies; knowing nothing of the filmy
threads of this web of life in which we insects buzz awhile, waiting for
the gray old spider to come along; contented enough with daily realities,
but twirling on his finger the key of a private Bedlam of ideals; in
knowledge feeding with the fox oftener than with the stork,--loving
better the breadth of a fertilizing inundation than the depth of narrow
artesian well; finding nothing too small for his contemplation in the
markings of the grammatophora subtilissima, and nothing too large in the
movement of the solar system towards the star Lambda of the constellation
Hercules;--and the question is, whether there is anything left for me,
the Professor, to suck out of creation, after my lively friend has had
his straw in the bung-hole of the Universe!
A man's mental reactions with the atmosphere of life must go on, whether
he will or no, as between his blood and the air he breathes. As to
catching the residuum of the process, or what we call thought,--the
gaseous ashes of burned-out thinking,--the excretion of mental
respiration,--that will depend on many things, as, on having a favorable
intellectual temperature about one, and a fitting receptacle.--I sow more
thought-seeds in twenty-four hours' travel over the desert-sand along
which my lonely consciousness paces day and night, than I shall throw
into soil where it will germinate, in a year. All sorts of bodily and
mental perturbations come between us and the due projection of our
thought. The pulse-like "fits of easy and difficult transmission" seem
to reach even the transparent medium through which our souls are seen.
We know our humanity by its often intercepted rays, as we tell a
revolving light from a star or meteor by its constantly recurring
obscuration.
An illustrious scholar once told me, that, in the first lecture he ever
delivered, he spoke but half his allotted time, and felt as if he had
told all he knew. Braham came forward once to sing one of his most
famous and familiar songs, and for his life could not recall the first
line of it;--he told his mishap to the audience, and they screamed it at
him in a chorus of a thousand voices. Milton could not write to suit
himself, except from the autumnal to the vernal equinox. One in the
clothing-business, who, there is reason to suspect, may have inherited,
by descent, the great poet's impressible temperament, let a customer slip
through his fingers one day without fitting him with a new garment.
"Ah!" said he to a friend of mine, who was standing by, "if it hadn't
been for that confounded headache of mine this morning, I'd have had a
coat on that man, in spite of himself, before he left-the store." A
passing throb, only,--but it deranged the nice mechanism required to
persuade the accidental human being, X, into a given piece of broadcloth,
A.
We must take care not to confound this frequent difficulty of
transmission of our ideas with want of ideas. I suppose that a man's
mind does in time form a neutral salt with the elements in the universe
for which it has special elective affinities. In fact, I look upon a
library as a kind of mental chemist's shop filled with the crystals of
all forms and hues which have come from the union of individual thought
with local circumstances or universal principles.
When a man has worked out his special affinities in this way, there is an
end of his genius as a real solvent. No more effervescence and hissing
tumult--as he pours his sharp thought on the world's biting alkaline
unbeliefs! No more corrosion of the old monumental tablets covered with
lies! No more taking up of dull earths, and turning them, first into
clear solutions, and then into lustrous prisms!
I, the Professor, am very much like other men: I shall not find out when
I have used up my affinities. What a blessed thing it is, that Nature,
when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to
make critics out of the chips that were left! Painful as the task is,
they never fail to warn the author, in the most impressive manner, of the
probabilities of failure in what he has undertaken. Sad as the necessity
is to their delicate sensibilities, they never hesitate to advertise him
of the decline of his powers, and to press upon him the propriety of
retiring before he sinks into imbecility. Trusting to their kind
offices, I shall endeavor to fulfil--
--Bridget enters and begins clearing the table.
--The following poem is my (The Professor's) only contribution to the
great department of Ocean-Cable literature. As all the poets of this
country will be engaged for the next six weeks in writing for the premium
offered by the Crystal-Palace Company for the Burns Centenary, (so
called, according to our Benjamin Franklin, because there will be nary a
cent for any of us,) poetry will be very scarce and dear. Consumers may,
consequently, be glad to take the present article, which, by the aid of a
Latin tutor--and a Professor of Chemistry, will be found intelligible to
the educated classes.
DE SAUTY
AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE.
Professor. Blue-Nose.
PROFESSOR.
Tell me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal!
Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you,
Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder,
Holding talk with nations?
Is there a De Sauty, ambulant on Tellus,
Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in night-cap,
Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature
Three times daily patent?
Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal?
Or is he a mythus,--ancient word for "humbug,"
--Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed
Romulus and Remus?
Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty?
Or a living product of galvanic action,
Like the status bred in Crosses flint-solution?
Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal!
BLUE-NOSE.
Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger,
Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster!
Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me,
Thou shalt hear them answered.
When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable,
At the polar focus of the wire electric
Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us
Called himself "DE SAUTY."
As the small opossum held in pouch maternal
Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia,
So the unknown stranger held the wire electric,
Sucking in the current.
When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger,
Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy,
And from time to time, in sharp articulation,
Said, "All right! DE SAUTY."
From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading
Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples
Till the land was filled with loud reverberations
Of "All right! DE SAUTY."
When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger,
Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker,
Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odor
Of disintegration.
Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead,
Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence,
Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended,
There was no De Sauty.
Nothing but a cloud of elements organic,
C. O. H. N. Ferrum, Chor. Flu. Sil. Potassa,
Calc. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang.(?) Alumin.(?) Cuprum,(?)
Such as man is made of.
Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished!
There is no De Sauty now there is no current!
Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him
Cry, "All right! DE SAUTY."
II
Back again!--A turtle--which means a tortoise--is fond of his shell; but
if you put a live coal on his back, he crawls out of it. So the boys
say.
It is a libel on the turtle. He grows to his shell, and his shell is in
his body as much as his body is in his shell.--I don't think there is one
of our boarders quite so testudineous as I am. Nothing but a combination
of motives, more peremptory than the coal on the turtle's back, could
have got me to leave the shelter of my carapace; and after memorable
interviews, and kindest hospitalities, and grand sights, and huge influx
of patriotic pride,--for every American owns all America,--
"Creation's heir,--the world, the world is"
his, if anybody's,--I come back with the feeling which a boned turkey
might experience, if, retaining his consciousness, he were allowed to
resume his skeleton.
Welcome, O Fighting Gladiator, and Recumbent Cleopatra, and Dying
Warrior, whose classic outlines (reproduced in the calcined mineral of
Lutetia) crown my loaded shelves! Welcome, ye triumphs of pictorial art
(repeated by the magic graver) that look down upon me from the walls of
my sacred cell! Vesalius, as Titian drew him, high-fronted, still-eyed,
thick-bearded, with signet-ring, as beseems a gentleman, with book and
carelessly-held eyeglass, marking him a scholar; thou, too, Jan Kuyper,
commonly called Jan Praktiseer, old man of a century and seven years
besides, father of twenty sons and two daughters, cut in copper by
Houbraken, bought from a portfolio on one of the Paris quais; and ye
Three Trees of Rembrandt, black in shadow against the blaze of light; and
thou Rosy Cottager of Sir Joshua, roses hinted by the peppery burin of
Bartolozzi; ye, too, of lower grades in nature, yet not unlovely for
unrenowned, Young Bull of Paulus Potter, and sleeping Cat of Cornelius
Visscher; welcome once more to my eyes! The old books look out from the
shelves, and I seem to read on their backs something asides their
titles,--a kind of solemn greeting. The crimson carpet flushes warm
under my feet. The arm-chair hugs me; the swivel-chair spins round with
me, as if it were giddy with pleasure; the vast recumbent fauteuil
stretches itself out under my weight, as one joyous with food and wine
stretches in after-dinner laughter.
The boarders were pleased to say that they were glad to get me back. One
of them ventured a compliment, namely,--that I talked as if I believed
what I said.--This was apparently considered something unusual, by its
being mentioned.
One who means to talk with entire sincerity,--I said,--always feels
himself in danger of two things, namely,--an affectation of bluntness,
like that of which Cornwall accuses Kent in "Lear," and actual rudeness.
What a man wants to do, in talking with a stranger, is to get and to give
as much of the best and most real life that belongs to the two talkers as
the time will let him. Life is short, and conversation apt to run to
mere words. Mr. Hue I think it is, who tells us some very good stories
about the way in which two Chinese gentlemen contrive to keep up a long
talk without saying a word which has any meaning in it. Something like
this is occasionally heard on this side of the Great Wall. The best
Chinese talkers I know are some pretty women whom I meet from time to
time. Pleasant, airy, complimentary, the little flakes of flattery
glimmering in their talk like the bits of gold-leaf in eau-de-vie de
Dantzic; their accents flowing on in a soft ripple,--never a wave, and
never a calm; words nicely fitted, but never a colored phrase or a
highly-flavored epithet; they turn air into syllables so gracefully, that
we find meaning for the music they make as we find faces in the coals and
fairy palaces in the clouds. There is something very odd, though, about
this mechanical talk.
You have sometimes been in a train on the railroad when the engine was
detached a long way from the station you were approaching? Well, you
have noticed how quietly and rapidly the cars kept on, just as if the
locomotive were drawing them? Indeed, you would not have suspected that
you were travelling on the strength of a dead fact, if you had not seen
the engine running away from you on a side-track. Upon my conscience, I
believe some of these pretty women detach their minds entirely,
sometimes, from their talk,--and, what is more, that we never know the
difference. Their lips let off the fluty syllables just as their fingers
would sprinkle the music-drops from their pianos; unconscious habit turns
the phrase of thought into words just as it does that of music into
notes.--Well, they govern the world for all that, these sweet-lipped
women,--because beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom.
--The Bombazine wanted an explanation.
Madam,--said I,--wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the
promise of the future.
--All this, however, is not what I was going to say. Here am I, suppose,
seated--we will say at a dinner-table--alongside of an intelligent
Englishman. We look in each other's faces,--we exchange a dozen words.
One thing is settled: we mean not to offend each other,--to be perfectly
courteous,--more than courteous; for we are the entertainer and the
entertained, and cherish particularly amiable feelings, to each other.
The claret is good; and if our blood reddens a little with its warm
crimson, we are none the less kind for it.
I don't think people that talk over their victuals are like to say
anything very great, especially if they get their heads muddled with
strong drink before they begin jabberin'.
The Bombazine uttered this with a sugary sourness, as if the words had
been steeped in a solution of acetate of lead.--The boys of my time used
to call a hit like this a "side-winder."
--I must finish this woman.--
Madam,--I said,--the Great Teacher seems to have been fond of talking as
he sat at meat. Because this was a good while ago, in a far-off place,
you forget what the true fact of it was,--that those were real dinners,
where people were hungry and thirsty, and where you met a very
miscellaneous company. Probably there was a great deal of loose talk
among the guests; at any rate, there was always wine, we may believe.
Whatever may be the hygienic advantages or disadvantages of wine,--and I
for one, except for certain particular ends, believe in water, and, I
blush to say it, in black tea,--there is no doubt about its being the
grand specific against dull dinners. A score of people come together in
all moods of mind and body. The problem is, in the space of one hour,
more or less, to bring them all into the same condition of slightly
exalted life. Food alone is enough for one person, perhaps,--talk,
alone, for another; but the grand equalizer and fraternizer, which works
up the radiators to their maximum radiation, and the absorbents to their
maximum receptivity, is now just where it was when
The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed,
--when six great vessels containing water, the whole amounting to more
than a hogshead-full, were changed into the best of wine. I once wrote a
song about wine, in which I spoke so warmly of it, that I was afraid some
would think it was written inter pocula; whereas it was composed in the
bosom of my family, under the most tranquillizing domestic influences.
--The divinity-student turned towards me, looking mischievous.--Can you
tell me,--he said,--who wrote a song for a temperance celebration once,
of which the following is a verse?
Alas for the loved one, too gentle and fair
The joys of the banquet to chasten and share!
Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine,
And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine!
I did,--I answered.--What are you going to do about it?--I will tell you
another line I wrote long ago:--
Don't be "consistent,"--but be simply true.
The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that the
truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many
facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them;
secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind us
down to a single flat surface. It is hard work to resist this
grinding-down action.--Now give me a chance. Better eternal and
universal abstinence than the brutalities of those days that made wives
and mothers and daughters and sisters blush for those whom they should
have honored, as they came reeling home from their debauches! Yet better
even excess than lying and hypocrisy; and if wine is upon all our tables,
let us praise it for its color and fragrance and social tendency, so far
as it deserves, and not hug a bottle in the closet and pretend not to
know the use of a wine-glass at a public dinner! I think you will find
that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves
much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent." But a great many
things we say can be made to appear contradictory, simply because they
are partial views of a truth, and may often look unlike at first, as a
front view of a face and its profile often do.
Here is a distinguished divine, for whom I have great respect, for I owe
him a charming hour at one of our literary anniversaries, and he has
often spoken noble words; but he holds up a remark of my friend the
"Autocrat,"--which I grieve to say he twice misquotes, by omitting the
very word which gives it its significance,--the word fluid, intended to
typify the mobility of the restricted will,--holds it up, I say, as if it
attacked the reality of the self-determining principle, instead of
illustrating its limitations by an image. Now I will not explain any
farther, still less defend, and least of all attack, but simply quote a
few lines from one of my friend's poems, printed more than ten years ago,
and ask the distinguished gentleman where he has ever asserted more
strongly or absolutely the independent will of the "subcreative centre,"
as my heretical friend has elsewhere called man.
--Thought, conscience, will, to make them all thy own
He rent a pillar from the eternal throne!
--Made in His image, thou must nobly dare
The thorny crown of sovereignty to share.
--Think not too meanly of thy low estate;
Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create!
If he will look a little closely, he will see that the profile and the
full-face views of the will are both true and perfectly consistent!
Now let us come back, after this long digression, to the conversation
with the intelligent Englishman. We begin skirmishing with a few light
ideas,--testing for thoughts,--as our electro-chemical friend, De Sauty,
if there were such a person, would test for his current; trying a little
litmus-paper for acids, and then a slip of turmeric-paper for alkalies,
as chemists do with unknown compounds; flinging the lead, and looking at
the shells and sands it brings up to find out whether we are like to keep
in shallow water, or shall have to drop the deep-sea line;--in short,
seeing what we have to deal with. If the Englishman gets his H's pretty
well placed, he comes from one of the higher grades of the British social
order, and we shall find him a good companion.
But, after all, here is a great fact between us. We belong to two
different civilizations, and, until we recognize what separates us, we
are talking like Pyramus and Thisbe, without any hole in the wall to talk
through. Therefore, on the whole, if he were a superior fellow,
incapable of mistaking it for personal conceit, I think I would let out
the fact of the real American feeling about Old-World folks. They are
children to us in certain points of view. They are playing with toys we
have done with for whole-generations.
--------FOOTNOTE:
The more I have observed and reflected, the more limited seems to me the
field of action of the human will. Every act of choice involves a special
relation between the ego and the conditions before it. But no man knows
what forces are at work in the determination of his ego. The bias which
decides his choice between two or more motives may come from some
unsuspected ancestral source, of which he knows nothing at all. He is
automatic in virtue of that hidden spring of reflex action, all the time
having the feeling that he is self-determining. The Story of Elsie
Yenner, written-soon after this book was published, illustrates the
direction in which my thought was moving. 'The imaginary subject of the
story obeyed her will, but her will Obeyed the mysterious antenatal
poisoning influence.
--------
That silly little drum they are always beating on, and the trumpet and
the feather they make so much noise and cut such a figure with, we have
not quite outgrown, but play with much less seriously and constantly than
they do. Then there is a whole museum of wigs, and masks, and
lace-coats, and gold-sticks, and grimaces, and phrases, which we laugh at
honestly, without affectation, that are still used in the Old-World
puppet-shows. I don't think we on our part ever understand the
Englishman's concentrated loyalty and specialized reverence. But then we
do think more of a man, as such, (barring some little difficulties about
race and complexion which the Englishman will touch us on presently,)
than any people that ever lived did think of him. Our reverence is a
great deal wider, if it is less intense. We have caste among us, to some
extent; it is true; but there is never a collar on the American wolf-dog
such as you often see on the English mastiff, notwithstanding his robust,
hearty individuality.
This confronting of two civilizations is always a grand sensation to me;
it is like cutting through the isthmus and letting the two oceans swim
into each other's laps. The trouble is, it is so difficult to let out
the whole American nature without its self-assertion seeming to take a
personal character. But I never enjoy the Englishman so much as when he
talks of church and king like Manco Capac among the Peruvians. Then you
get the real British flavor, which the cosmopolite Englishman loses.
How much better this thorough interpenetration of ideas than a barren
interchange of courtesies, or a bush-fighting argument, in which each man
tries to cover as much of himself and expose as much of his opponent as
the tangled thicket of the disputed ground will let him!
---My thoughts flow in layers or strata, at least three deep. I follow a
slow person's talk, and keep a perfectly clear under-current of my own
beneath it. Under both runs obscurely a consciousness belonging to a
third train of reflections, independent of the two others. I will try to
write out a Mental movement in three parts.
A.---First voice, or Mental Soprano,--thought follows a woman talking.
B.--Second voice, or Mental Barytone,--my running accompaniment.
C.--Third voice, or Mental Basso,--low grumble of importunate
self-repeating idea.
A.--White lace, three skirts, looped with flowers, wreath of
apple-blossoms, gold bracelets, diamond pin and ear-rings, the most
delicious berthe you ever saw, white satin slippers--
B.--Deuse take her! What a fool she is! Hear her chatter! (Look out of
window just here.--Two pages and a half of description, if it were all
written out, in one tenth of a second.)--Go ahead, old lady! (Eye catches
picture over fireplace.) There's that infernal family nose! Came over in
the "Mayflower" on the first old fool's face. Why don't they wear a ring
in it?
C.--You 'll be late at lecture,--late at lecture,--late,--late--
I observe that a deep layer of thought sometimes makes itself felt
through the superincumbent strata, thus:--The usual single or double
currents shall flow on, but there shall be an influence blending with
them, disturbing them in an obscure way, until all at once I say,--Oh,
there! I knew there was something troubling me,--and the thought which
had been working through comes up to the surface clear, definite, and
articulates itself,--a disagreeable duty, perhaps, or an unpleasant
recollection.
The inner world of thought and the outer world of events are alike in
this, that they are both brimful. There is no space between consecutive
thoughts, or between the never-ending series of actions. All pack tight,
and mould their surfaces against each other, so that in the long run
there is a wonderful average uniformity in the forms of both thoughts and
actions, just as you find that cylinders crowded all become hexagonal
prisms, and spheres pressed together are formed into regular polyhedra.
Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no
man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped by him. So,
to carry out, with another comparison, my remark about the layers of
thought, we may consider the mind as it moves among thoughts or events,
like a circus-rider whirling round with a great troop of horses. He can
mount a fact or an idea, and guide it more or less completely, but he
cannot stop it. So, as I said in another way at the beginning, he can
stride two or three thoughts at once, but not break their steady walk,
trot, or gallop. He can only take his foot from the saddle of one
thought and put it on that of another.
--What is the saddle of a thought? Why, a word, of course.--Twenty years
after you have dismissed a thought, it suddenly wedges up to you through
the press, as if it had been steadily galloping round and round all that
time without a rider.
The will does not act in the interspaces of thought, for there are no
such interspaces, but simply steps from the back of one moving thought
upon that of another.
--I should like to ask,--said the divinity-student,--since we are getting
into metaphysics, how you can admit space, if all things are in contact,
and how you can admit time, if it is always now to something?
--I thought it best not to hear this question.
--I wonder if you know this class of philosophers in books or elsewhere.
One of them makes his bow to the public, and exhibits an unfortunate
truth bandaged up so that it cannot stir hand or foot,--as helpless,
apparently, and unable to take care of itself, as an Egyptian mummy. He
then proceeds, with the air and method of a master, to take off the
bandages. Nothing can be neater than the way in which he does it. But
as he takes off layer after layer, the truth seems to grow smaller and
smaller, and some of its outlines begin to look like something we have
seen before. At last, when he has got them all off, and the truth struts
out naked, we recognize it as a diminutive and familiar acquaintance whom
we have known in the streets all our lives. The fact is, the philosopher
has coaxed the truth into his study and put all those bandages on; or
course it is not very hard for him to take them off. Still, a great many
people like to watch the process,--he does it so neatly!
Dear! dear! I am ashamed to write and talk, sometimes, when I see how
those functions of the large-brained, thumb-opposing plantigrade are
abused by my fellow-vertebrates,--perhaps by myself. How they spar for
wind, instead of hitting from the shoulder!
--The young fellow called John arose and placed himself in a neat
fighting attitude.--Fetch on the fellah that makes them long words!--he
said,--and planted a straight hit with the right fist in the concave palm
of the left hand with a click like a cup and ball.--You small boy there,
hurry up that "Webster's Unabridged!"
The little gentleman with the malformation, before described, shocked the
propriety of the breakfast-table by a loud utterance of three words, of
which the two last were "Webster's Unabridged," and the first was an
emphatic monosyllable.--Beg pardon,--he added,--forgot myself. But let
us have an English dictionary, if we are to have any. I don't believe in
clipping the coin of the realm, Sir! If I put a weathercock on my house,
Sir, I want it to tell which way the wind blows up aloft,--off from the
prairies to the ocean, or off from the ocean to the prairies, or any way
it wants to blow! I don't want a weathercock with a winch in an old
gentleman's study that he can take hold of and turn, so that the vane
shall point west when the great wind overhead is blowing east with all
its might, Sir! Wait till we give you a dictionary; Sir! It takes
Boston to do that thing, Sir!
--Some folks think water can't run down-hill anywhere out of Boston,
--remarked the Koh-i-noor.
I don't know what some folks think so well as I know what some fools
say,--rejoined the Little Gentleman.--If importing most dry goods made
the best scholars, I dare say you would know where to look for 'em.--Mr.
Webster could n't spell, Sir, or would n't spell, Sir,--at any rate, he
did n't spell; and the end of it was a fight between the owners of some
copyrights and the dignity of this noble language which we have inherited
from our English fathers. Language!--the blood of the soul, Sir! into
which our thoughts run and out of which they grow! We know what a word
is worth here in Boston. Young Sam Adams got up on the stage at
Commencement, out at Cambridge there, with his gown on, the Governor and
Council looking on in the name of his Majesty, King George the Second,
and the girls looking down out of the galleries, and taught people how to
spell a word that was n't in the Colonial dictionaries! R-e, re, s-i-s,
sis, t-a-n-c-e, tance, Resistance! That was in '43, and it was a good
many years before the Boston boys began spelling it with their
muskets;--but when they did begin, they spelt it so loud that the old
bedridden women in the English almshouses heard every syllable! Yes,
yes, yes,--it was a good while before those other two Boston boys got the
class so far along that it could spell those two hard words, Independence
and Union! I tell you what, Sir, there are a thousand lives, aye,
sometimes a million, go to get a new word into a language that is worth
speaking. We know what language means too well here in Boston to play
tricks with it. We never make a new word til we have made a new thing or
a new thought, Sir! then we shaped the new mould of this continent, we
had to make a few. When, by God's permission, we abrogated the primal
curse of maternity, we had to make a word or two. The cutwater of this
great Leviathan clipper, the OCCIDENTAL,--this thirty-wasted
wind-and-steam wave-crusher,--must throw a little spray over the human
vocabulary as it splits the waters of a new world's destiny!
He rose as he spoke, until his stature seemed to swell into the fair
human proportions. His feet must have been on the upper round of his
high chair; that was the only way I could account for it.
Puts her through fast-rate,--said the young fellow whom the boarders call
John.
The venerable and kind-looking old gentleman who sits opposite said he
remembered Sam Adams as Governor. An old man in a brown coat. Saw him
take the Chair on Boston Common. Was a boy then, and remembers sitting
on the fence in front of the old Hancock house. Recollects he had a
glazed 'lectionbun, and sat eating it and looking down on to the Common.
Lalocks flowered late that year, and he got a great bunch off from the
bushes in the Hancock front-yard.
Them 'lection-buns are no go,--said the young man John, so called.--I
know the trick. Give a fellah a fo'penny bun in the mornin', an' he
downs the whole of it. In about an hour it swells up in his stomach as
big as a football, and his feedin' 's spilt for that day. That's the way
to stop off a young one from eatin' up all the 'lection dinner.
Salem! Salem! not Boston,--shouted the little man.
But the Koh-i-noor laughed a great rasping laugh, and the boy Benjamin
Franklin looked sharp at his mother, as if he remembered the
bun-experiment as a part of his past personal history.
The Little Gentleman was holding a fork in his left hand. He stabbed a
boulder of home-made bread with it, mechanically, and looked at it as if
it ought to shriek. It did not,--but he sat as if watching it.
--Language is a solemn thing,--I said.--It grows out of life,--out of its
agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a
temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. Because
time softens its outlines and rounds the sharp angles of its cornices,
shall a fellow take a pickaxe to help time? Let me tell you what comes of
meddling with things that can take care of themselves.--A friend of mine
had a watch given him, when he was a boy,--a "bull's eye," with a loose
silver case that came off like an oyster-shell from its contents; you
know them,--the cases that you hang on your thumb, while the core, or the
real watch, lies in your hand as naked as a peeled apple. Well, he began
with taking off the case, and so on from one liberty to another, until he
got it fairly open, and there were the works, as good as if they were
alive,--crown-wheel, balance-wheel, and all the rest. All right except
one thing,--there was a confounded little hair had got tangled round the
balance-wheel. So my young Solomon got a pair of tweezers, and caught
hold of the hair very nicely, and pulled it right out, without touching
any of the wheels,--when,--buzzzZZZ! and the watch had done up
twenty-four hours in double magnetic-telegraph time!--The English
language was wound up to run some thousands of years, I trust; but if
everybody is to be pulling at everything he thinks is a hair, our
grandchildren will have to make the discovery that it is a hair-spring,
and the old Anglo-Norman soul's-timekeeper will run down, as so many
other dialects have done before it. I can't stand this meddling any
better than you, Sir. But we have a great deal to be proud of in the
lifelong labors of that old lexicographer, and we must n't be ungrateful.
Besides, don't let us deceive ourselves,--the war of the dictionaries is
only a disguised rivalry of cities, colleges, and especially of
publishers. After all, it is likely that the language will shape itself
by larger forces than phonography and dictionary-making. You may spade
up the ocean as much as you like, and harrow it afterwards, if you
can,--but the moon will still lead the tides, and the winds will form
their surface.
--Do you know Richardson's Dictionary?--I said to my neighbor the
divinity-student.
Haow?--said the divinity-student.--He colored, as he noticed on my face a
twitch in one of the muscles which tuck up the corner of the mouth,
(zygomaticus major,) and which I could not hold back from making a little
movement on its own account.
It was too late.--A country-boy, lassoed when he was a half-grown colt.
Just as good as a city-boy, and in some ways, perhaps, better,--but
caught a little too old not to carry some marks of his earlier ways of
life. Foreigners, who have talked a strange tongue half their lives,
return to the language of their childhood in their dying hours.
Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large libraries, taken by
surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes let slip a word they
knew as boys in homespun and have not spoken since that time,--but it lay
there under all their culture. That is one way you may know the
country-boys after they have grown rich or celebrated; another is by the
odd old family names, particularly those of the Hebrew prophets, which
the good old people have saddled them with.
--Boston has enough of England about it to make a good English
dictionary,--said that fresh-looking youth whom I have mentioned as
sitting at the right upper corner of the table.
I turned and looked him full in the face,--for the pure, manly
intonations arrested me. The voice was youthful, but full of
character.--I suppose some persons have a peculiar susceptibility in the
matter of voice.--Hear this.
Not long after the American Revolution, a young lady was sitting in her
father's chaise in a street of this town of Boston. She overheard a
little girl talking or singing, and was mightily taken with the tones of
her voice. Nothing would satisfy her but she must have that little girl
come and live in her father's house. So the child came, being then nine
years old. Until her marriage she remained under the same roof with the
young lady. Her children became successively inmates of the lady's
dwelling; and now, seventy years, or thereabouts, since the young lady
heard the child singing, one of that child's children and one of her
grandchildren are with her in that home, where she, no longer young,
except in heart, passes her peaceful days.--Three generations linked
together by so light a breath of accident!
I liked--the sound of this youth's voice, I said, and his look when I
came to observe him a little more closely. His complexion had something
better than the bloom and freshness which had first attracted me;--it had
that diffused tone which is a sure index of wholesome, lusty life. A
fine liberal style of nature seemed to be: hair crisped, moustache
springing thick and dark, head firmly planted, lips finished, as is
commonly sees them in gentlemen's families, a pupil well contracted, and
a mouth that opened frankly with a white flash of teeth that looked as if
they could serve him as they say Ethan Allen's used to serve their
owner,--to draw nails with. This is the kind of fellow to walk a
frigate's deck and bowl his broadsides into the "Gadlant Thudnder-bomb,"
or any forty-port-holed adventurer who would like to exchange a few tons
of iron compliments.--I don't know what put this into my head, for it was
not till some time afterward I learned the young fellow had been in the
naval school at Annapolis. Something had happened to change his plan of
life, and he was now studying engineering and architecture in Boston.
When the youth made the short remark which drew my attention to him, the
little deformed gentleman turned round and took a long look at him.
Good for the Boston boy!--he said.
I am not a Boston boy,--said the youth, smiling,--I am a Marylander.
I don't care where you come from,--we'll make a Boston man of you,--said
the little gentleman. Pray, what part of Maryland did you come from, and
how shall I call you?
The poor youth had to speak pretty loud, as he was at the right upper
corner of the table, and the little gentleman next the lower left-hand
corner. His face flushed a little, but he answered pleasantly, telling
who he was, as if the little man's infirmity gave him a right to ask any
questions he wanted to.
Here is the place for you to sit,--said the little gentleman, pointing to
the vacant chair next his own, at the corner.
You're go'n' to have a young lady next you, if you wait till
to-morrow,--said the landlady to him.
He did not reply, but I had a fancy that he changed color. It can't be
that he has susceptibilities with reference to a contingent young lady!
It can't be that he has had experiences which make him sensitive! Nature
could not be quite so cruel as to set a heart throbbing in that poor
little cage of ribs! There is no use in wasting notes of admiration. I
must ask the landlady about him.
These are some of the facts she furnished.--Has not been long with her.
Brought a sight of furniture,--could n't hardly get some of it upstairs.
Has n't seemed particularly attentive to the ladies. The Bombazine (whom
she calls Cousin something or other) has tried to enter into conversation
with him, but retired with the impression that he was indifferent to
ladies' society. Paid his bill the other day without saying a word about
it. Paid it in gold,--had a great heap of twenty-dollar pieces. Hires
her best room. Thinks he is a very nice little man, but lives dreadful
lonely up in his chamber. Wants the care of some capable nuss. Never
pitied anybody more in her life--never see a more interestin' person.
--My intention was, when I began making these notes, to let them consist
principally of conversations between myself and the other boarders. So
they will, very probably; but my curiosity is excited about this little
boarder of ours, and my reader must not be disappointed, if I sometimes
interrupt a discussion to give an account of whatever fact or traits I
may discover about him. It so happens that his room is next to mine, and
I have the opportunity of observing many of his ways without any active
movements of curiosity. That his room contains heavy furniture, that he
is a restless little body and is apt to be up late, that he talks to
himself, and keeps mainly to himself, is nearly all I have yet found out.
One curious circumstance happened lately which I mention without drawing
an absolute inference. Being at the studio of a sculptor with whom I am
acquainted, the other day, I saw a remarkable cast of a left arm. On my
asking where the model came from, he said it was taken direct from the
arm of a deformed person, who had employed one of the Italian moulders to
make the cast. It was a curious case, it should seem, of one beautiful
limb upon a frame otherwise singularly imperfect--I have repeatedly
noticed this little gentleman's use of his left arm. Can he have
furnished the model I saw at the sculptor's?
--So we are to have a new boarder to-morrow. I hope there will be
something pretty and pleasing about her. A woman with a creamy voice,
and finished in alto rilievo, would be a variety in the
boarding-house,--a little more marrow and a little less sinew than our
landlady and her daughter and the bombazine-clad female, all of whom are
of the turkey-drumstick style of organization. I don't mean that these
are our only female companions; but the rest being conversational
non-combatants, mostly still, sad feeders, who take in their food as
locomotives take in wood and water, and then wither away from the table
like blossoms that never came to fruit, I have not yet referred to them
as individuals.
I wonder what kind of young person we shall see in that empty chair
to-morrow!
--I read this song to the boarders after breakfast the other morning. It
was written for our fellows;--you know who they are, of course.
THE BOYS.
Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys?
If there has, take him out, without making a noise!
Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite!
Old Time is a liar! We're twenty to-night!
We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more?
He's tipsy,--young jackanapes!--show him the door!
--"Gray temples at twenty?"--Yes! white, if we please;
Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze!
Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake!
Look close,--you will see not a sign of a flake;
We want some new garlands for those we have shed,
And these are white roses in place of the red!
We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told.
Of talking (in public) as if we were old;
That boy we call Doctor, (1) and this we call Judge (2)
--It's a neat little fiction,--of course it's all fudge.
That fellow's the Speaker, (3)--the one on the right;
Mr. Mayor, (4) my young one, how are you to-night?
That's our "Member of Congress,"(5) we say when we chaff;
There's the "Reverend" (6) What's his name?--don't make me laugh!
That boy with the grave mathematical look(7)
Made believe he had written a wonderful book,
And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true!
So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too.
There's a boy,--we pretend,--with a three-decker-brain
That could harness a team with a logical chain:
When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,
We called him "The Justice,"--but now he's "The Squire."(1)
And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,(2)
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith,
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,
--Just read on his medal,--"My country,--of thee!"
You hear that boy laughing?--you think he's all fun,
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!(3)
Yes, we're boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,
--And I sometimes have asked,--Shall we ever be men?
Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay,
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?
Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys!
1 Francis Thomas.
2 George Tyler Bigelow.
3 Francis Boardman Crowninshield.
4 G. W. Richardson.
5 George Thomas Davis.
6 James Freeman Clarke.
7 Benjamin Peirce.
III
[The Professor talks with the Reader. He tells a Young Girl's Story.]
When the elements that went to the making of the first man, father of
mankind, had been withdrawn from the world of unconscious matter, the
balance of creation was disturbed. The materials that go to the making
of one woman were set free by the abstraction from inanimate nature of
one man's-worth of masculine constituents. These combined to make our
first mother, by a logical necessity involved in the previous creation of
our common father. All this, mythically, illustratively, and by no means
doctrinally or polemically.
The man implies the woman, you will understand. The excellent gentleman
whom I had the pleasure of setting right in a trifling matter a few weeks
ago believes in the frequent occurrence of miracles at the present day.
So do I. I believe, if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island,
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of cocoa-palms and
bread-fruit on it, and put a handsome young fellow, like our Marylander,
ashore upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, you would find
him walking under the palm-trees arm in arm with a pretty woman.
Where would she come from?
Oh, that 's the miracle!
--I was just as certain, when I saw that fine, high-colored youth at the
upper right-hand corner of our table, that there would appear some
fitting feminine counterpart to him, as if I had been a clairvoyant,
seeing it all beforehand.
--I have a fancy that those Marylanders are just about near enough to the
sun to ripen well.--How some of us fellows remember Joe and Harry,
Baltimoreans, both! Joe, with his cheeks like lady-apples, and his eyes
like black-heart cherries, and his teeth like the whiteness of the flesh
of cocoanuts, and his laugh that set the chandelier-drops rattling
overhead, as we sat at our sparkling banquets in those gay times! Harry,
champion, by acclamation, of the college heavy-weights, broad-shouldered,
bull-necked, square-jawed, six feet and trimmings, a little science, lots
of pluck, good-natured as a steer in peace, formidable as a red-eyed
bison in the crack of hand-to-hand battle! Who forgets the great
muster-day, and the collision of the classic with the democratic forces?
The huge butcher, fifteen stone,--two hundred and ten pounds,--good
weight,--steps out like Telamonian Ajax, defiant. No words from Harry,
the Baltimorean,--one of the quiet sort, who strike first; and do the
talking, if there is any, afterwards. No words, but, in the place
thereof, a clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a spank like
the explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a
sand-bank,--followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both
rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those
inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general melee,
which make our native fistic encounters so different from such
admirably-ordered contests as that which I once saw at an English fair,
where everything was done decently and in order; and the fight began and
ended with such grave propriety, that a sporting parson need hardly have
hesitated to open it with a devout petition, and, after it was over,
dismiss the ring with a benediction.
I can't help telling one more story about this great field-day, though it
is the most wanton and irrelevant digression. But all of us have a
little speck of fight underneath our peace and good-will to men, just a
speck, for revolutions and great emergencies, you know,--so that we
should not submit to be trodden quite flat by the first heavy-heeled
aggressor that came along. You can tell a portrait from an ideal head, I
suppose, and a true story from one spun out of the writer's invention.
See whether this sounds true or not.
Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin sent out two fine blood-horses, Barefoot and
Serab by name, to Massachusetts, something before the time I am talking
of. With them came a Yorkshire groom, a stocky little fellow, in velvet
breeches, who made that mysterious hissing noise, traditionary in English
stables, when he rubbed down the silken-skinned racers, in great
perfection. After the soldiers had come from the muster-field, and some
of the companies were on the village-common, there was still some
skirmishing between a few individuals who had not had the fight taken out
of them. The little Yorkshire groom thought he must serve out somebody.
So he threw himself into an approved scientific attitude, and, in brief,
emphatic language, expressed his urgent anxiety to accommodate any
classical young gentleman who chose to consider himself a candidate for
his attentions. I don't suppose there were many of the college boys that
would have been a match for him in the art which Englishmen know so much
more of than Americans, for the most part. However, one of the
Sophomores, a very quiet, peaceable fellow, just stepped out of the
crowd, and, running straight at the groom, as he stood there, sparring
away, struck him with the sole of his foot, a straight blow, as if it had
been with his fist, and knocked him heels over head and senseless, so
that he had to be carried off from the field. This ugly way of hitting
is the great trick of the French gavate, which is not commonly thought
able to stand its ground against English pugilistic science. These are
old recollections, with not much to recommend them, except, perhaps, a
dash of life, which may be worth a little something.
The young Marylander brought them all up, you may remember. He recalled
to my mind those two splendid pieces of vitality I told you of. Both
have been long dead. How often we see these great red-flaring flambeaux
of life blown out, as it were, by a puff of wind,--and the little,
single-wicked night-lamp of being, which some white-faced and attenuated
invalid shades with trembling fingers, flickering on while they go out
one after another, until its glimmer is all that is left to us of the
generation to which it belonged!
I told you that I was perfectly sure, beforehand, we should find some
pleasing girlish or womanly shape to fill the blank at our table and
match the dark-haired youth at the upper corner.
There she sits, at the very opposite corner, just as far off as accident
could put her from this handsome fellow, by whose side she ought, of
course, to be sitting. One of the "positive" blondes, as my friend, you
may remember, used to call them. Tawny-haired, amber-eyed,
full-throated, skin as white as a blanched almond. Looks dreamy to me,
not self-conscious, though a black ribbon round her neck sets it off as a
Marie-Antoinette's diamond-necklace could not do. So in her dress, there
is a harmony of tints that looks as if an artist had run his eye over her
and given a hint or two like the finishing touch to a picture. I can't
help being struck with her, for she is at once rounded and fine in
feature, looks calm, as blondes are apt to, and as if she might run wild,
if she were trifled with. It is just as I knew it would be,--and anybody
can see that our young Marylander will be dead in love with her in a
week.
Then if that little man would only turn out immensely rich and have the
good-nature to die and leave them all his money, it would be as nice as a
three-volume novel.
The Little Gentleman is in a flurry, I suspect, with the excitement of
having such a charming neighbor next him. I judge so mainly by his
silence and by a certain rapt and serious look on his face, as if he were
thinking of something that had happened, or that might happen, or that
ought to happen,--or how beautiful her young life looked, or how hardly
Nature had dealt with him, or something which struck him silent, at any
rate. I made several conversational openings for him, but he did not
fire up as he often does. I even went so far as to indulge in, a fling
at the State House, which, as we all know, is in truth a very imposing
structure, covering less ground than St. Peter's, but of similar general
effect. The little man looked up, but did not reply to my taunt. He
said to the young lady, however, that the State House was the Parthenon
of our Acropolis, which seemed to please her, for she smiled, and he
reddened a little,--so I thought. I don't think it right to watch
persons who are the subjects of special infirmity,--but we all do it.
I see that they have crowded the chairs a little at that end of the
table, to make room for another newcomer of the lady sort. A
well-mounted, middle-aged preparation, wearing her hair without a cap,
--pretty wide in the parting, though,--contours vaguely hinted,
--features very quiet,--says little as yet, but seems to keep her eye on
the young lady, as if having some responsibility for her My record is a
blank for some days after this. In the mean time I have contrived to
make out the person and the story of our young lady, who, according to
appearances, ought to furnish us a heroine for a boarding-house romance
before a year is out. It is very curious that she should prove connected
with a person many of us have heard of. Yet, curious as it is, I have
been a hundred times struck with the circumstance that the most remote
facts are constantly striking each other; just as vessels starting from
ports thousands of miles apart pass close to each other in the naked
breadth of the ocean, nay, sometimes even touch, in the dark, with a
crack of timbers, a gurgling of water, a cry of startled sleepers,--a cry
mysteriously echoed in warning dreams, as the wife of some Gloucester
fisherman, some coasting skipper, wakes with a shriek, calls the name of
her husband, and sinks back to uneasy slumbers upon her lonely pillow,--a
widow.
Oh, these mysterious meetings! Leaving all the vague, waste, endless
spaces of the washing desert, the ocean-steamer and the fishing-smack
sail straight towards each other as if they ran in grooves ploughed for
them in the waters from the beginning of creation! Not only things and
events, but our own thoughts, are so full of these surprises, that, if
there were a reader in my parish who did not recognize the familiar
occurrence of what I am now going to mention, I should think it a case
for the missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of Intelligence
among the Comfortable Classes. There are about as many twins in the
births of thought as of children. For the first time in your lives you
learn some fact or come across some idea. Within an hour, a day, a week,
that same fact or idea strikes you from another quarter. It seems as if
it had passed into space and bounded back upon you as an echo from the
blank wall that shuts in the world of thought. Yet no possible
connection exists between the two channels by which the thought or the
fact arrived. Let me give an infinitesimal illustration.
One of the Boys mentioned, the other evening, in the course of a very
pleasant poem he read us, a little trick of the Commons-table boarders,
which I, nourished at the parental board, had never heard of. Young
fellows being always hungry--Allow me to stop dead-short, in order to
utter an aphorism which has been forming itself in one of the blank
interior spaces of my intelligence, like a crystal in the cavity of a
geode.
Aphorism by the Professor.
In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food of
different kinds at short intervals. If young, it will eat anything at
any hour of the day or night. If old, it observes stated periods, and
you might as well attempt to regulate the time of highwater to suit a
fishing-party as to change these periods. The crucial experiment is this.
Offer a bulky and boggy bun to the suspected individual just ten minutes
before dinner. If this is eagerly accepted and devoured, the fact of
youth is established. If the subject of the question starts back and
expresses surprise and incredulity, as if you could not possibly be in
earnest, the fact of maturity is no less clear.
--Excuse me,--I return to my story of the Commons-table.--Young fellows
being always hungry, and tea and dry toast being the meagre fare of the
evening meal, it was a trick of some of the Boys to impale a slice of
meat upon a fork, at dinner-time, and stick the fork holding it beneath
the table, so that they could get it at tea-time. The dragons that
guarded this table of the Hesperides found out the trick at last, and
kept a sharp look-out for missing forks;--they knew where to find one,
if it was not in its place.--Now the odd thing was, that, after waiting
so many years to hear of this college trick, I should hear it mentioned a
second time within the same twenty-four hours by a college youth of the
present generation. Strange, but true. And so it has happened to me and
to every person, often and often, to be hit in rapid succession by these
twinned facts or thoughts, as if they were linked like chain-shot.
I was going to leave the simple reader to wonder over this, taking it as
an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrow of
subsoil in it.--The explanation is, of course, that in a great many
thoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrest our
attention. Now we shall probably never have the least idea of the
enormous number of impressions which pass through our consciousness,
until in some future life we see the photographic record of our thoughts
and the stereoscopic picture of our actions. There go more pieces to make
up a conscious life or a living body than you think for. Why, some of
you were surprised when a friend of mine told you there were fifty-eight
separate pieces in a fiddle. How many "swimming glands"--solid,
organized, regularly formed, rounded disks taking an active part in all
your vital processes, part and parcel, each one of them, of your
corporeal being--do you suppose are whirled along, like pebbles in a
stream, with the blood which warms your frame and colors your cheeks?--A
noted German physiologist spread out a minute drop of blood, under the
microscope, in narrow streaks, and counted the globules, and then made a
calculation. The counting by the micrometer took him a week.--You have,
my full-grown friend, of these little couriers in crimson or scarlet
livery, running on your vital errands day and night as long as you live,
sixty-five billions, five hundred and seventy thousand millions. Errors
excepted.--Did I hear some gentleman say, "Doubted? "--I am the
Professor. I sit in my chair with a petard under it that will blow me
through the skylight of my lecture-room, if I do not know what I am
talking about and whom I am quoting.
Now, my dear friends, who are putting your hands to your foreheads, and
saying to yourselves that you feel a little confused, as if you had been
waltzing until things began to whirl slightly round you, is it possible
that you do not clearly apprehend the exact connection of all that I have
been saying, and its bearing on what is now to come? Listen, then. The
number of these living elements in our bodies illustrates the
incalculable multitude of our thoughts; the number of our thoughts
accounts for those frequent coincidences spoken of; these coincidences in
the world of thought illustrate those which we constantly observe in the
world of outward events, of which the presence of the young girl now at
our table, and proving to be the daughter of an old acquaintance some of
us may remember, is the special example which led me through this
labyrinth of reflections, and finally lands me at the commencement of
this young girl's story, which, as I said, I have found the time and felt
the interest to learn something of, and which I think I can tell without
wronging the unconscious subject of my brief delineation.
IRIS.
You remember, perhaps, in some papers published awhile ago, an odd poem
written by an old Latin tutor? He brought up at the verb amo, I love, as
all of us do, and by and by Nature opened her great living dictionary for
him at the word filia, a daughter. The poor man was greatly perplexed in
choosing a name for her. Lucretia and Virginia were the first that he
thought of; but then came up those pictured stories of Titus Livius,
which he could never read without crying, though he had read them a
hundred times.
--Lucretia sending for her husband and her father, each to bring one
friend with him, and awaiting them in her chamber. To them her wrongs
briefly. Let them see to the wretch,--she will take care of herself.
Then the hidden knife flashes out and sinks into her heart. She slides
from her seat, and falls dying. "Her husband and her father cry
aloud."--No, not Lucretia.
-Virginius,--a brown old soldier, father of a nice girl. She engaged to
a very promising young man. Decemvir Appius takes a violent fancy to
her,--must have her at any rate. Hires a lawyer to present the arguments
in favor of the view that she was another man's daughter. There used to
be lawyers in Rome that would do such things.--All right. There are two
sides to everything. Audi alteram partem. The legal gentleman has no
opinion,--he only states the evidence.--A doubtful case. Let the young
lady be under the protection of the Honorable Decemvir until it can be
looked up thoroughly.--Father thinks it best, on the whole, to give in.
Will explain the matter, if the young lady and her maid will step this
way. That is the explanation,--a stab with a butcher's knife, snatched
from a stall, meant for other lambs than this poor bleeding Virginia.
The old man thought over the story. Then he must have one look at the
original. So he took down the first volume and read it over. When he
came to that part where it tells how the young gentleman she was engaged
to and a friend of his took up the poor girl's bloodless shape and
carried it through the street, and how all the women followed, wailing,
and asking if that was what their daughters were coming to,--if that was
what they were to get for being good girls,--he melted down into his
accustomed tears of pity and grief, and, through them all, of delight at
the charming Latin of the narrative. But it was impossible to call his
child Virginia. He could never look at her without thinking she had a
knife sticking in her bosom.
Dido would be a good name, and a fresh one. She was a queen, and the
founder of a great city. Her story had been immortalized by the greatest
of poets,--for the old Latin tutor clove to "Virgilius Maro," as he
called him, as closely as ever Dante did in his memorable journey. So he
took down his Virgil, it was the smooth-leafed, open-lettered quarto of
Baskerville,--and began reading the loves and mishaps of Dido. It would
n't do. A lady who had not learned discretion by experience, and came to
an evil end. He shook his head, as he sadly repeated,
"---misera ante diem, subitoque accensa furore;"
but when he came to the lines,
"Ergo Iris croceis per coelum roscida pennis
Mille trahens varios adverso Sole colores,"
he jumped up with a great exclamation, which the particular recording
angel who heard it pretended not to understand, or it might have gone
hard with the Latin tutor some time or other.
"Iris shall be her name!"--he said. So her name was Iris.
--The natural end of a tutor is to perish by starvation. It is only a
question of time, just as with the burning of college libraries. These
all burn up sooner or later, provided they are not housed in brick or
stone and iron. I don't mean that you will see in the registry of deaths
that this or that particular tutor died of well-marked, uncomplicated
starvation. They may, even, in extreme cases, be carried off by a thin,
watery kind of apoplexy, which sounds very well in the returns, but means
little to those who know that it is only debility settling on the head.
Generally, however, they fade and waste away under various
pretexts,--calling it dyspepsia, consumption, and so on, to put a decent
appearance upon the case and keep up the credit of the family and the
institution where they have passed through the successive stages of
inanition.
In some cases it takes a great many years to kill a tutor by the process
in question. You see they do get food and clothes and fuel, in
appreciable quantities, such as they are. You will even notice rows of
books in their rooms, and a picture or two,--things that look as if they
had surplus money; but these superfluities are the water of
crystallization to scholars, and you can never get them away till the
poor fellows effloresce into dust. Do not be deceived. The tutor
breakfasts on coffee made of beans, edulcorated with milk watered to the
verge of transparency; his mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment
when it becomes tired out and tasteless; his coal is a sullen, sulphurous
anthracite, which rusts into ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow
grate; his flimsy broadcloth is too thin for winter and too thick for
summer. The greedy lungs of fifty hot-blooded boys suck the oxygen from
the air he breathes in his recitation-room. In short, he undergoes a
process of gentle and gradual starvation.
--The mother of little Iris was not called Electra, like hers of the old
story, neither was her grandfather Oceanus. Her blood-name, which she
gave away with her heart to the Latin tutor, was a plain old English one,
and her water-name was Hannah, beautiful as recalling the mother of
Samuel, and admirable as reading equally well from the initial letter
forwards and from the terminal letter backwards. The poor lady, seated
with her companion at the chessboard of matrimony, had but just pushed
forward her one little white pawn upon an empty square, when the Black
Knight, that cares nothing for castles or kings or queens, swooped down
upon her and swept her from the larger board of life.
The old Latin tutor put a modest blue stone at the head of his late
companion, with her name and age and Eheu! upon it,--a smaller one at her
feet, with initials; and left her by herself, to be rained and snowed
on,--which is a hard thing to do for those whom we have cherished
tenderly.
About the time that the lichens, falling on the stone, like drops of
water, had spread into fair, round rosettes, the tutor had starved into a
slight cough. Then he began to draw the buckle of his black trousers a
little tighter, and took in another reef in his never-ample waistcoat.
His temples got a little hollow, and the contrasts of color in his cheeks
more vivid than of old. After a while his walks fatigued him, and he was
tired, and breathed hard after going up a flight or two of stairs. Then
came on other marks of inward trouble and general waste, which he spoke
of to his physician as peculiar, and doubtless owing to accidental
causes; to all which the doctor listened with deference, as if it had not
been the old story that one in five or six of mankind in temperate
climates tells, or has told for him, as if it were something new. As the
doctor went out, he said to himself,--"On the rail at last.
Accommodation train. A good many stops, but will get to the station by
and by." So the doctor wrote a recipe with the astrological sign of
Jupiter before it, (just as your own physician does, inestimable reader,
as you will see, if you look at his next prescription,) and departed,
saying he would look in occasionally. After this, the Latin tutor began
the usual course of "getting better," until he got so much better that
his face was very sharp, and when he smiled, three crescent lines showed
at each side of his lips, and when he spoke; it was in a muffled whisper,
and the white of his eye glistened as pearly as the purest porcelain,
--so much better, that he hoped--by spring--he--might be
able--to--attend------to his class again.--But he was recommended not to
expose himself, and so kept his chamber, and occasionally, not having
anything to do, his bed. The unmarried sister with whom he lived took
care of him; and the child, now old enough to be manageable and even
useful in trifling offices, sat in the chamber, or played, about.
Things could not go on so forever, of course. One morning his face was
sunken and his hands were very, very cold. He was "better," he
whispered, but sadly and faintly. After a while he grew restless and
seemed a little wandering. His mind ran on his classics, and fell back
on the Latin grammar.
"Iris!" he said,--"filiola mea!"--The child knew this meant my dear
little daughter as well as if it had been English.--"Rainbow!" for he
would translate her name at times,--"come to me,--veni"--and his lips
went on automatically, and murmured, "vel venito!"--The child came and
sat by his bedside and took his hand, which she could not warm, but which
shot its rays of cold all through her slender frame. But there she sat,
looking steadily at him. Presently he opened his lips feebly, and
whispered, "Moribundus." She did not know what that meant, but she saw
that there was something new and sad. So she began to cry; but presently
remembering an old book that seemed to comfort him at times, got up and
brought a Bible in the Latin version, called the Vulgate. "Open it," he
said,--"I will read, segnius irritant,--don't put the light out,--ah!
hoeret lateri,--I am going,--vale, vale, vale, goodbye, good-bye,--the
Lord take care of my child! Domine, audi--vel audito!" His face whitened
suddenly, and he lay still, with open eyes and mouth. He had taken his
last degree.
--Little Miss Iris could not be said to begin life with a very brilliant
rainbow over her, in a worldly point of view. A limited wardrobe of
man's attire, such as poor tutors wear,--a few good books, principally
classics,--a print or two, and a plaster model of the Pantheon, with some
pieces of furniture which had seen service,--these, and a child's heart
full of tearful recollections and strange doubts and questions,
alternating with the cheap pleasures which are the anodynes of childish
grief; such were the treasures she inherited.--No,--I forgot. With that
kindly sentiment which all of us feel for old men's first
children,--frost-flowers of the early winter season, the old tutor's
students had remembered him at a time when he was laughing and crying
with his new parental emotions, and running to the side of the plain crib
in which his alter egg, as he used to say, was swinging, to hang over the
little heap of stirring clothes, from which looked the minute, red,
downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,--in that
unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which
gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant's life the character
of a first old age, to counterpoise that second childhood which there is
one chance in a dozen it may reach by and by. The boys had remembered
the old man and young father at that tender period of his hard, dry life.
There came to him a fair, silver goblet, embossed with classical figures,
and bearing on a shield the graver words, Ex dono pupillorum. The handle
on its side showed what use the boys had meant it for; and a kind letter
in it, written with the best of feeling, in the worst of Latin, pointed
delicately to its destination. Out of this silver vessel, after a long,
desperate, strangling cry, which marked her first great lesson in the
realities of life, the child took the blue milk, such as poor tutors and
their children get, tempered with water, and sweetened a little, so as to
bring it nearer the standard established by the touching indulgence and
partiality of Nature,--who had mingled an extra allowance of sugar in the
blameless food of the child at its mother's breast, as compared with that
of its infant brothers and sisters of the bovine race.
But a willow will grow in baked sand wet with rainwater. An air-plant
will grow by feeding on the winds. Nay, those huge forests that
overspread great continents have built themselves up mainly from the
air-currents with which they are always battling. The oak is but a
foliated atmospheric crystal deposited from the aerial ocean that holds
the future vegetable world in solution. The storm that tears its leaves
has paid tribute to its strength, and it breasts the tornado clad in the
spoils of a hundred hurricanes.
Poor little Iris! What had she in common with the great oak in the
shadow of which we are losing sight of her?--She lived and grew like
that,--this was all. The blue milk ran into her veins and filled them
with thin, pure blood. Her skin was fair, with a faint tinge, such as
the white rosebud shows before it opens. The doctor who had attended
her father was afraid her aunt would hardly be able to "raise"
her,--"delicate child,"--hoped she was not consumptive,--thought
there was a fair chance she would take after her father.
A very forlorn-looking person, dressed in black, with a white neckcloth,
sent her a memoir of a child who died at the age of two years and eleven
months, after having fully indorsed all the doctrines of the particular
persuasion to which he not only belonged himself, but thought it very
shameful that everybody else did not belong. What with foreboding looks
and dreary death-bed stories, it was a wonder the child made out to live
through it. It saddened her early years, of course,--it distressed her
tender soul with thoughts which, as they cannot be fully taken in, should
be sparingly used as instruments of torture to break down the natural
cheerfulness of a healthy child, or, what is infinitely worse, to cheat a
dying one out of the kind illusions with which the Father of All has
strewed its downward path.
The child would have died, no doubt, and, if properly managed, might have
added another to the long catalogue of wasting children who have been as
cruelly played upon by spiritual physiologists, often with the best
intentions, as ever the subject of a rare disease by the curious students
of science.
Fortunately for her, however, a wise instinct had guided the late Latin
tutor in the selection of the partner of his life, and the future mother
of his child. The deceased tutoress was a tranquil, smooth woman, easily
nourished, as such people are,--a quality which is inestimable in a
tutor's wife,--and so it happened that the daughter inherited enough
vitality from the mother to live through childhood and infancy and fight
her way towards womanhood, in spite of the tendencies she derived from
her other parent.
--Two and two do not always make four, in this matter of hereditary
descent of qualities. Sometimes they make three, and sometimes five. It
seems as if the parental traits at one time showed separate, at another
blended,--that occasionally, the force of two natures is represented in
the derivative one by a diagonal of greater value than either original
line of living movement,--that sometimes there is a loss of vitality
hardly to be accounted for, and again a forward impulse of variable
intensity in some new and unforeseen direction.
So it was with this child. She had glanced off from her parental
probabilities at an unexpected angle. Instead of taking to classical
learning like her father, or sliding quietly into household duties like
her mother, she broke out early in efforts that pointed in the direction
of Art. As soon as she could hold a pencil she began to sketch outlines
of objects round her with a certain air and spirit. Very extraordinary
horses, but their legs looked as if they could move. Birds unknown to
Audubon, yet flying, as it were, with a rush. Men with impossible legs,
which did yet seem to have a vital connection with their most improbable
bodies. By-and-by the doctor, on his beast,--an old man with a face
looking as if Time had kneaded it like dough with his knuckles, with a
rhubarb tint and flavor pervading himself and his sorrel horse and all
their appurtenances. A dreadful old man! Be sure she did not forget
those saddle-bags that held the detestable bottles out of which he used
to shake those loathsome powders which, to virgin childish palates that
find heaven in strawberries and peaches, are--Well, I suppose I had
better stop. Only she wished she was dead sometimes when she heard him
coming. On the next leaf would figure the gentleman with the black coat
and white cravat, as he looked when he came and entertained her with
stories concerning the death of various little children about her age, to
encourage her, as that wicked Mr. Arouet said about shooting Admiral
Byng. Then she would take her pencil, and with a few scratches there
would be the outline of a child, in which you might notice how one sudden
sweep gave the chubby cheek, and two dots darted at the paper looked like
real eyes.
By-and-by she went to school, and caricatured the schoolmaster on the
leaves of her grammars and geographies, and drew the faces of her
companions, and, from time to time, heads and figures from her fancy,
with large eyes, far apart, like those of Raffaelle's mothers and
children, sometimes with wild floating hair, and then with wings and
heads thrown back in ecstasy. This was at about twelve years old, as the
dates of these drawings show, and, therefore, three or four years before
she came among us. Soon after this time, the ideal figures began to take
the place of portraits and caricatures, and a new feature appeared in her
drawing-books in the form of fragments of verse and short poems.
It was dull work, of course, for such a young girl to live with an old
spinster and go to a village school. Her books bore testimony to this;
for there was a look of sadness in the faces she drew, and a sense of
weariness and longing for some imaginary conditions of blessedness or
other, which began to be painful. She might have gone through this
flowering of the soul, and, casting her petals, subsided into a sober,
human berry, but for the intervention of friendly assistance and counsel.
In the town where she lived was a lady of honorable condition, somewhat
past middle age, who was possessed of pretty ample means, of cultivated
tastes, of excellent principles, of exemplary character, and of more than
common accomplishments. The gentleman in black broadcloth and white
neckerchief only echoed the common voice about her, when he called her,
after enjoying, beneath her hospitable roof, an excellent cup of tea,
with certain elegancies and luxuries he was unaccustomed to, "The Model
of all the Virtues."
She deserved this title as well as almost any woman. She did really
bristle with moral excellences. Mention any good thing she had not done;
I should like to see you try! There was no handle of weakness to take
hold of her by; she was as unseizable, except in her totality, as a
billiard-ball; and on the broad, green, terrestrial table, where she had
been knocked about, like all of us, by the cue of Fortune, she glanced
from every human contact, and "caromed" from one relation to another, and
rebounded from the stuffed cushion of temptation, with such exact and
perfect angular movements, that the Enemy's corps of Reporters had long
given up taking notes of her conduct, as there was no chance for their
master.
What an admirable person for the patroness and directress of a slightly
self-willed child, with the lightning zigzag line of genius running like
a glittering vein through the marble whiteness of her virgin nature! One
of the lady-patroness's peculiar virtues was calmness. She was resolute
and strenuous, but still. You could depend on her for every duty; she
was as true as steel. She was kind-hearted and serviceable in all the
relations of life. She had more sense, more knowledge, more
conversation, as well as more goodness, than all the partners you have
waltzed with this winter put together.
Yet no man was known to have loved her, or even to have offered himself
to her in marriage. It was a great wonder. I am very anxious to
vindicate my character as a philosopher and an observer of Nature by
accounting for this apparently extraordinary fact.
You may remember certain persons who have the misfortune of presenting to
the friends whom they meet a cold, damp hand. There are states of mind
in which a contact of this kind has a depressing effect on the vital
powers that makes us insensible to all the virtues and graces of the
proprietor of one of these life-absorbing organs. When they touch us,
virtue passes out of us, and we feel as if our electricity had been
drained by a powerful negative battery, carried about by an overgrown
human torpedo.
"The Model of all the Virtues" had a pair of searching eyes as clear as
Wenham ice; but they were slower to melt than that fickle jewelry. Her
features disordered themselves slightly at times in a surface-smile, but
never broke loose from their corners and indulged in the riotous tumult
of a laugh,--which, I take it, is the mob-law of the features;--and
propriety the magistrate who reads the riot-act. She carried the
brimming cup of her inestimable virtues with a cautious, steady hand, and
an eye always on them, to see that they did not spill. Then she was an
admirable judge of character. Her mind was a perfect laboratory of tests
and reagents; every syllable you put into breath went into her
intellectual eudiometer, and all your thoughts were recorded on
litmus-paper. I think there has rarely been a more admirable woman.
Of course, Miss Iris was immensely and passionately attached
to her.--Well,--these are two highly oxygenated adverbs,
--grateful,--suppose we say,--yes,--grateful, dutiful, obedient to her
wishes for the most part,--perhaps not quite up to the concert pitch of
such a perfect orchestra of the virtues.
We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it
much. People that do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than is
good for them, or use anything but dictionary-words, are admirable
subjects for biographies. But we don't always care most for those
flat-pattern flowers that press best in the herbarium.
This immaculate woman,--why could n't she have a fault or two? Is n't
there any old whisper which will tarnish that wearisome aureole of
saintly perfection? Does n't she carry a lump of opium in her pocket?
Is n't her cologne-bottle replenished oftener than its legitimate use
would require? It would be such a comfort!
Not for the world would a young creature like Iris have let such words
escape her, or such thoughts pass through her mind. Whether at the
bottom of her soul lies any uneasy consciousness of an oppressive
presence, it is hard to say, until we know more about her. Iris sits
between the Little Gentleman and the "Model of all the Virtues," as the
black-coated personage called her.--I will watch them all.
--Here I stop for the present. What the Professor said has had to make
way this time for what he saw and heard.
-And now you may read these lines, which were written for gentle souls
who love music, and read in even tones, and, perhaps, with something like
a smile upon the reader's lips, at a meeting where these musical friends
had gathered. Whether they were written with smiles or not, you can
guess better after you have read them.
THE OPENING OF THE PIANO.
In the little southern parlor of the house you may have seen
With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking westward to the green,
At the side toward the sunset, with the window on its right,
Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night.
Ah me! how I remember the evening when it came!
What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame,
When the wondrous boa was opened that had come from over seas,
With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ivory keys!
Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness of joy,
For the boy would push his sister, and the sister crowd the boy,
Till the father asked for quiet in his grave paternal way,
But the mother hushed the tumult with the words, "Now, Mary, play."
For the dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign balm;
She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm,
In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills,
Or caroling to her spinet with its thin metallic thrills.
So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please,
Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys.
Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim,
As, floating from lip and finger, arose the "Vesper Hymn."
--Catharine, child of a neighbor, curly and rosy-red,
(Wedded since, and a widow,--something like ten years dead,)
Hearing a gush of music such as none before,
Steals from her mother's chamber and peeps at the open door.
Just as the "Jubilate" in threaded whisper dies,
--"Open it! open it, lady!" the little maiden cries,
(For she thought 't was a singing creature caged in a box she heard,)
"Open it! open it, lady! and let me see the bird!"
IV
I don't know whether our literary or professional people are more amiable
than they are in other places, but certainly quarrelling is out of
fashion among them. This could never be, if they were in the habit of
secret anonymous puffing of each other. That is the kind of underground
machinery which manufactures false reputations and genuine hatreds. On
the other hand, I should like to know if we are not at liberty to have a
good time together, and say the pleasantest things we can think of to
each other, when any of us reaches his thirtieth or fortieth or fiftieth
or eightieth birthday.
We don't have "scenes," I warrant you, on these occasions. No "surprise"
parties! You understand these, of course. In the rural districts, where
scenic tragedy and melodrama cannot be had, as in the city, at the
expense of a quarter and a white pocket-handkerchief, emotional
excitement has to be sought in the dramas of real life. Christenings,
weddings, and funerals, especially the latter, are the main dependence;
but babies, brides, and deceased citizens cannot be had at a day's
notice. Now, then, for a surprise-party!
A bag of flour, a barrel of potatoes, some strings of onions, a basket of
apples, a big cake and many little cakes, a jug of lemonade, a purse
stuffed with bills of the more modest denominations, may, perhaps, do
well enough for the properties in one of these private theatrical
exhibitions. The minister of the parish, a tender-hearted, quiet,
hard-working man, living on a small salary, with many children, sometimes
pinched to feed and clothe them, praying fervently every day to be blest
in his "basket and store," but sometimes fearing he asks amiss, to judge
by the small returns, has the first role,--not, however, by his own
choice, but forced upon him. The minister's wife, a sharp-eyed,
unsentimental body, is first lady; the remaining parts by the rest of the
family. If they only had a playbill, it would run thus:
ON TUESDAY NEXT
WILL BE PRESENTED
THE AFFECTING SCENE
CALLED
THE SURPRISE-PARTY
OR
THE OVERCOME FAMILY;
WITH THE FOLLOWING STRONG CAST OF CHARACTERS.
The Rev. Mr. Overcome, by the Clergyman of this Parish.
Mrs. Overcome, by his estimable lady.
Masters Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Overcome,
Misses Dorcas, Tabitha, Rachel, and Hannah, Overcome, by their
interesting children.
Peggy, by the female help.
The poor man is really grateful;--it is a most welcome and unexpected
relief. He tries to express his thanks,--his voice falters,--he
chokes,--and bursts into tears. That is the great effect of the evening.
The sharp-sighted lady cries a little with one eye, and counts the
strings of onions, and the rest of the things, with the other. The
children stand ready for a spring at the apples. The female help weeps
after the noisy fashion of untutored handmaids.
Now this is all very well as charity, but do let the kind visitors
remember they get their money's worth. If you pay a quarter for dry
crying, done by a second-rate actor, how much ought you to pay for real
hot, wet tears, out of the honest eyes of a gentleman who is not acting,
but sobbing in earnest?
All I meant to say, when I began, was, that this was not a surprise-party
where I read these few lines that follow:
We will not speak of years to-night;
For what have years to bring,
But larger floods of love and light
And sweeter songs to sing?
We will not drown in wordy praise
The kindly thoughts that rise;
If friendship owns one tender phrase,
He reads it in our eyes.
We need not waste our schoolboy art
To gild this notch of time;
Forgive me, if my wayward heart
Has throbbed in artless rhyme.
Enough for him the silent grasp
That knits us hand in hand,
And he the bracelet's radiant clasp
That locks our circling band.
Strength to his hours of manly toil!
Peace to his starlit dreams!
Who loves alike the furrowed soil,
The music-haunted streams!
Sweet smiles to keep forever bright
The sunshine on his lips,
And faith, that sees the ring of light
Round Nature's last eclipse!
--One of our boarders has been talking in such strong language that I am
almost afraid to report it. However, as he seems to be really honest and
is so very sincere in his local prejudices, I don't believe anybody will
be very angry with him.
It is here, Sir! right here!--said the little deformed gentleman,--in
this old new city of Boston,--this remote provincial corner of a
provincial nation, that the Battle of the Standard is fighting, and was
fighting before we were born, and will be fighting when we are dead and
gone,--please God! The battle goes on everywhere throughout
civilization; but here, here, here is the broad white flag flying which
proclaims, first of all, peace and good-will to men, and, next to that,
the absolute, unconditional spiritual liberty of each individual immortal
soul! The three-hilled city against the seven-hilled city! That is it,
Sir,--nothing less than that; and if you know what that means, I don't
think you'll ask for anything more. I swear to you, Sir, I believe that
these two centres of civilization are just exactly the two points that
close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence! And I
believe there are spiritual eyes looking out from Uranus and unseen
Neptune,--ay, Sir, from the systems of Sirius and Arcturus and Aldebaran,
and as far as that faint stain of sprinkled worlds confluent in the
distance that we call the nebula of Orion,--looking on, Sir, with what
organs I know not, to see which are going to melt in that fiery fusion,
the accidents and hindrances of humanity or man himself, Sir,--the
stupendous abortion, the illustrious failure that he is, if the
three-hilled city does not ride down and trample out the seven-hilled
city!
--Steam 's up!--said the young man John, so called, in a low tone.
--Three hundred and sixty-five tons to the square inch. Let him blow her
off, or he'll bu'st his b'iler.
The divinity-student took it calmly, only whispering that he thought
there was a little confusion of images between a galvanic battery and a
charge of cavalry.
But the Koh-i-noor--the gentleman, you remember, with a very large
diamond in his shirt-front laughed his scornful laugh, and made as if to
speak.
Sail in, Metropolis!--said that same young man John, by name. And then,
in a lower lane, not meaning to be heard,--Now, then, Ma'am Allen!
But he was heard,--and the Koh-i-noor's face turned so white with rage,
that his blue-black moustache and beard looked fearful, seen against it.
He grinned with wrath, and caught at a tumbler, as if he would have
thrown it or its contents at the speaker. The young Marylander fixed his
clear, steady eye upon him, and laid his hand on his arm, carelessly
almost, but the Jewel found it was held so that he could not move it. It
was of no use. The youth was his master in muscle, and in that deadly
Indian hug in which men wrestle with their eyes;--over in five seconds,
but breaks one of their two backs, and is good for threescore years and
ten;--one trial enough,--settles the whole matter,--just as when two
feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and dunghill, come
together,-after a jump or two at each other, and a few sharp kicks, there
is the end of it; and it is, Apres vous, Monsieur, with the beaten party
in all the social relations for all the rest of his days.
I cannot philosophically account for the Koh-i-noor's wrath. For though
a cosmetic is sold, bearing the name of the lady to whom reference was
made by the young person John, yet, as it is publicly asserted in
respectable prints that this cosmetic is not a dye, I see no reason why
he should have felt offended by any suggestion that he was indebted to it
or its authoress.
I have no doubt that there are certain exceptional complexions to which
the purple tinge, above alluded to, is natural. Nature is fertile in
variety. I saw an albiness in London once, for sixpence, (including the
inspection of a stuffed boa-constrictor,) who looked as if she had been
boiled in milk. A young Hottentot of my acquaintance had his hair all in
little pellets of the size of marrow-fat peas. One of my own classmates
has undergone a singular change of late years,--his hair losing its
original tint, and getting a remarkable discolored look; and another has
ceased to cultivate any hair at all over the vertex or crown of the head.
So I am perfectly willing to believe that the purple-black of the
Koh-i-noor's moustache and whiskers is constitutional and not pigmentary.
But I can't think why he got so angry.
The intelligent reader will understand that all this pantomime of the
threatened onslaught and its suppression passed so quickly that it was
all over by the time the other end of the table found out there was a
disturbance; just as a man chopping wood half a mile off may be seen
resting on his axe at the instant you hear the last blow he struck. So
you will please to observe that the Little Gentleman was not, interrupted
during the time implied by these ex-post-facto remarks of mine, but for
some ten or fifteen seconds only.
He did not seem to mind the interruption at all, for he started again.
The "Sir" of his harangue was no doubt addressed to myself more than
anybody else, but he often uses it in discourse as if he were talking
with some imaginary opponent.
--America, Sir,--he exclaimed,--is the only place where man is
full-grown!
He straightened himself up, as he spoke, standing on the top round of his
high chair, I suppose, and so presented the larger part of his little
figure to the view of the boarders.
It was next to impossible to keep from laughing. The commentary was so
strange an illustration of the text! I thought it was time to put in a
word; for I have lived in foreign parts, and am more or less
cosmopolitan.
I doubt if we have more practical freedom in America than they have in
England,---I said.--An Englishman thinks as he likes in religion and
politics. Mr. Martineau speculates as freely as ever Dr. Channing did,
and Mr. Bright is as independent as Mr. Seward.
Sir,--said he,--it is n't what a man thinks or says; but when and where
and to whom he thinks and says it. A man with a flint and steel striking
sparks over a wet blanket is one thing, and striking them over a
tinder-box is another. The free Englishman is born under protest; he
lives and dies under protest,--a tolerated, but not a welcome fact. Is
not freethinker a term of reproach in England? The same idea in the soul
of an Englishman who struggled up to it and still holds it
antagonistically, and in the soul of an American to whom it is congenital
and spontaneous, and often unrecognized, except as an element blended
with all his thoughts, a natural movement, like the drawing of his breath
or the beating of his heart, is a very different thing. You may teach a
quadruped to walk on his hind legs, but he is always wanting to be on all
fours. Nothing that can be taught a growing youth is like the
atmospheric knowledge he breathes from his infancy upwards. The American
baby sucks in freedom with the milk of the breast at which he hangs.
--That's a good joke,--said the young fellow John,--considerin' it
commonly belongs to a female Paddy.
I thought--I will not be certain--that the Little Gentleman winked, as if
he had been hit somewhere--as I have no doubt Dr. Darwin did when the
wooden-spoon suggestion upset his theory about why, etc. If he winked,
however, he did not dodge.
A lively comment!--he said.--But Rome, in her great founder, sucked the
blood of empire out of the dugs of a brute, Sir! The Milesian wet-nurse
is only a convenient vessel through which the American infant gets the
life-blood of this virgin soil, Sir, that is making man over again, on
the sunset pattern! You don't think what we are doing and going to do
here. Why, Sir, while commentators are bothering themselves with
interpretation of prophecies, we have got the new heavens and the new
earth over us and under us! Was there ever anything in Italy, I should
like to know, like a Boston sunset?
--This time there was a laugh, and the little man himself almost smiled.
Yes,--Boston sunsets;--perhaps they're as good in some other places, but
I know 'em best here. Anyhow, the American skies are different from
anything they see in the Old World. Yes, and the rocks are different,
and the soil is different, and everything that comes out of the soil,
from grass up to Indians, is different. And now that the provisional
races are dying out--
--What do you mean by the provisional races, Sir?--said the
divinity-student, interrupting him.
Why, the aboriginal bipeds, to be sure,--he answered,--the red-crayon
sketch of humanity laid on the canvas before the colors for the real
manhood were ready.
I hope they will come to something yet,--said the divinity-student.
Irreclaimable, Sir,--irreclaimable!--said the Little Gentleman.--Cheaper
to breed white men than domesticate a nation of red ones. When you can
get the bitter out of the partridge's thigh, you can make an enlightened
commonwealth of Indians. A provisional race, Sir,--nothing more.
Exhaled carbonic acid for the use of vegetation, kept down the bears and
catamounts, enjoyed themselves in scalping and being scalped, and then
passed away or are passing away, according to the programme.
Well, Sir, these races dying out, the white man has to acclimate himself.
It takes him a good while; but he will come all right by-and-by, Sir,--as
sound as a woodchuck,--as sound as a musquash!
A new nursery, Sir, with Lake Superior and Huron and all the rest of 'em
for wash-basins! A new race, and a whole new world for the new-born
human soul to work in! And Boston is the brain of it, and has been any
time these hundred years! That's all I claim for Boston,--that it is
the thinking centre of the continent, and therefore of the planet.
--And the grand emporium of modesty,--said the divinity-student, a little
mischievously.
Oh, don't talk to me of modesty!--answered the Little Gentleman,--I 'm
past that! There is n't a thing that was ever said or done in Boston,
from pitching the tea overboard to the last ecclesiastical lie it tore
into tatters and flung into the dock, that was n't thought very
indelicate by some fool or tyrant or bigot, and all the entrails of
commercial and spiritual conservatism are twisted into colics as often as
this revolutionary brain of ours has a fit of thinking come over it.--No,
Sir,--show me any other place that is, or was since the megalosaurus has
died out, where wealth and social influence are so fairly divided between
the stationary and the progressive classes! Show me any other place
where every other drawing-room is not a chamber of the Inquisition, with
papas and mammas for inquisitors,--and the cold shoulder, instead of the
"dry pan and the gradual fire," the punishment of "heresy"!
--We think Baltimore is a pretty civilized kind of a village,--said the
young Marylander, good-naturedly.--But I suppose you can't forgive it for
always keeping a little ahead of Boston in point of numbers,--tell the
truth now. Are we not the centre of something?
Ah, indeed, to be sure you are. You are the gastronomic metropolis of
the Union. Why don't you put a canvas-back-duck on the top of the
Washington column? Why don't you get that lady off from Battle Monument
and plant a terrapin in her place? Why will you ask for other glories
when you have soft crabs? No, Sir,--you live too well to think as hard
as we do in Boston. Logic comes to us with the salt-fish of Cape Ann;
rhetoric is born of the beans of Beverly; but you--if you open your
mouths to speak, Nature stops them with a fat oyster, or offers a slice
of the breast of your divine bird, and silences all your aspirations.
And what of Philadelphia?--said the Marylander.
Oh, Philadelphia?--Waterworks,--killed by the Croton and Cochituate;
--Ben Franklin,--borrowed from Boston;--David Rittenhouse,--made an
orrery;--Benjamin Rush,--made a medical system;--both interesting to
antiquarians;--great Red-river raft of medical students,--spontaneous
generation of professors to match;--more widely known through the
Moyamensing hose-company, and the Wistar parties;-for geological section
of social strata, go to The Club.--Good place to live in,--first-rate
market,--tip-top peaches.--What do we know about Philadelphia, except
that the engine-companies are always shooting each other?
And what do you say to New York?--asked the Koh-i-noor.
A great city, Sir,--replied the Little Gentleman,--a very opulent,
splendid city. A point of transit of much that is remarkable, and of
permanence for much that is respectable. A great money-centre. San
Francisco with the mines above-ground,--and some of 'em under the
sidewalks. I have seen next to nothing grandiose, out of New York, in
all our cities. It makes 'em all look paltry and petty. Has many
elements of civilization. May stop where Venice did, though, for aught
we know.--The order of its development is just this:--Wealth;
architecture; upholstery; painting; sculpture. Printing, as a mechanical
art,--just as Nicholas Jepson and the Aldi, who were scholars too, made
Venice renowned for it. Journalism, which is the accident of business
and crowded populations, in great perfection. Venice got as far as Titian
and Paul Veronese and Tintoretto,--great colorists, mark you, magnificent
on the flesh-and-blood side of Art,--but look over to Florence and see
who lie in Santa Crocea, and ask out of whose loins Dante sprung!
Oh, yes, to be sure, Venice built her Ducal Palace, and her Church of St.
Mark, and her Casa d' Or, and the rest of her golden houses; and Venice
had great pictures and good music; and Venice had a Golden Book, in which
all the large tax-payers had their names written;--but all that did not
make Venice the brain of Italy.
I tell you what, Sir,--with all these magnificent appliances of
civilization, it is time we began to hear something from the djinnis
donee whose names are on the Golden Book of our sumptuous, splendid,
marble-placed Venice,--something in the higher walks of literature,
--something in the councils of the nation. Plenty of Art, I grant you,
Sir; now, then, for vast libraries, and for mighty scholars and thinkers
and statesmen,--five for every Boston one, as the population is to
ours,--ten to one more properly, in virtue of centralizing attraction as
the alleged metropolis, and not call our people provincials, and have to
come begging to us to write the lives of Hendrik Hudson and Gouverneur
Morris!
--The Little Gentleman was on his hobby, exalting his own city at the
expense of every other place. I have my doubts if he had been in either
of the cities he had been talking about. I was just going to say
something to sober him down, if I could, when the young Marylander spoke
up.
Come, now,--he said,--what's the use of these comparisons? Did n't I
hear this gentleman saying, the other day, that every American owns all
America? If you have really got more brains in Boston than other folks,
as you seem to think, who hates you for it, except a pack of scribbling
fools? If I like Broadway better than Washington Street, what then? I
own them both, as much as anybody owns either. I am an American,--and
wherever I look up and see the stars and stripes overhead, that is home
to me!
He spoke, and looked up as if he heard the emblazoned folds crackling
over him in the breeze. We all looked up involuntarily, as if we should
see the national flag by so doing. The sight of the dingy ceiling and
the gas-fixture depending therefrom dispelled the illusion.
Bravo! bravo!--said the venerable gentleman on the other side of the
table.--Those are the sentiments of Washington's Farewell Address.
Nothing better than that since the last chapter in Revelations.
Five-and-forty years ago there used to be Washington societies, and
little boys used to walk in processions, each little boy having a copy of
the Address, bound in red, hung round his neck by a ribbon. Why don't
they now? Why don't they now? I saw enough of hating each other in the
old Federal times; now let's love each other, I say,--let's love each
other, and not try to make it out that there is n't any place fit to live
in except the one we happen to be born in.
It dwarfs the mind, I think,--said I,--to feed it on any localism. The
full stature of manhood is shrivelled--
The color burst up into my cheeks. What was I saying,--I, who would not
for the world have pained our unfortunate little boarder by an allusion?
I will go,--he said,--and made a movement with his left arm to let
himself down from his high chair.
No,--no,--he does n't mean it,--you must not go,--said a kind voice next
him; and a soft, white hand was laid upon his arm.
Iris, my dear!--exclaimed another voice, as of a female, in accents that
might be considered a strong atmospheric solution of duty with very
little flavor of grace.
She did not move for this address, and there was a tableau that lasted
some seconds. For the young girl, in the glory of half-blown womanhood,
and the dwarf, the cripple, the misshapen little creature covered with
Nature's insults, looked straight into each other's eyes.
Perhaps no handsome young woman had ever looked at him so in his life.
Certainly the young girl never had looked into eyes that reached into her
soul as these did. It was not that they were in themselves
supernaturally bright,--but there was the sad fire in them that flames up
from the soul of one who looks on the beauty of woman without hope, but,
alas! not without emotion. To him it seemed as if those amber gates had
been translucent as the brown water of a mountain brook, and through them
he had seen dimly into a virgin wilderness, only waiting for the sunrise
of a great passion for all its buds to blow and all its bowers to ring
with melody.
That is my image, of course,--not his. It was not a simile that was in
his mind, or is in anybody's at such a moment,--it was a pang of wordless
passion, and then a silent, inward moan.
A lady's wish,--he said, with a certain gallantry of manner,--makes
slaves of us all.--And Nature, who is kind to all her children, and never
leaves the smallest and saddest of all her human failures without one
little comfit of self-love at the bottom of his poor ragged
pocket,--Nature suggested to him that he had turned his sentence well;
and he fell into a reverie, in which the old thoughts that were always
hovering dust outside the doors guarded by Common Sense, and watching for
a chance to squeeze in, knowing perfectly well they would be
ignominiously kicked out again as soon as Common Sense saw them, flocked
in pell-mell,--misty, fragmentary, vague, half-ashamed of themselves, but
still shouldering up against his inner consciousness till it warmed with
their contact:--John Wilkes's--the ugliest man's in England--saying, that
with half-an-hour's start he would cut out the handsomest man in all the
land in any woman's good graces; Cadenus--old and savage--leading captive
Stella and Vanessa; and then the stray line of a ballad, "And a winning
tongue had he,"--as much as to say, it is n't looks, after all, but
cunning words, that win our Eves over,--just as of old when it was the
worst-looking brute of the lot that got our grandmother to listen to his
stuff and so did the mischief.
Ah, dear me! We rehearse the part of Hercules with his club, subjugating
man and woman in our fancy, the first by the weight of it, and the second
by our handling of it,--we rehearse it, I say, by our own hearth-stones,
with the cold poker as our club, and the exercise is easy. But when we
come to real life, the poker is in the fore, and, ten to one, if we would
grasp it, we find it too hot to hold;--lucky for us, if it is not
white-hot, and we do not have to leave the skin of our hands sticking to
it when we fling it down or drop it with a loud or silent cry!
--I am frightened when I find into what a labyrinth of human character
and feeling I am winding. I meant to tell my thoughts, and to throw in a
few studies of manner and costume as they pictured themselves for me from
day to day. Chance has thrown together at the table with me a number of
persons who are worth studying, and I mean not only to look on them, but,
if I can, through them. You can get any man's or woman's secret, whose
sphere is circumscribed by your own, if you will only look patiently on
them long enough. Nature is always applying her reagents to character,
if you will take the pains to watch her. Our studies of character, to
change the image, are very much like the surveyor's triangulation of a
geographical province. We get a base-line in organization, always; then
we get an angle by sighting some distant object to which the passions or
aspirations of the subject of our observation are tending; then
another;--and so we construct our first triangle. Once fix a man's
ideals, and for the most part the rest is easy. A wants to die worth
half a million. Good. B (female) wants to catch him,--and outlive him.
All right. Minor details at our leisure.
What is it, of all your experiences, of all your thoughts, of all your
misdoings, that lies at the very bottom of the great heap of acts of
consciousness which make up your past life? What should you most dislike
to tell your nearest friend?--Be so good as to pause for a brief space,
and shut the volume you hold with your finger between the pages.--Oh,
that is it!
What a confessional I have been sitting at, with the inward ear of my
soul open, as the multitudinous whisper of my involuntary confidants came
back to me like the reduplicated echo of a cry among the craggy bills!
At the house of a friend where I once passed the night was one of those
stately upright cabinet desks and cases of drawers which were not rare in
prosperous families during the last century. It had held the clothes and
the books and the papers of generation after generation. The hands that
opened its drawers had grown withered, shrivelled, and at last been
folded in death. The children that played with the lower handles had got
tall enough to open the desk, to reach the upper shelves behind the
folding-doors,--grown bent after a while,--and then followed those who
had gone before, and left the old cabinet to be ransacked by a new
generation.
A boy of ten or twelve was looking at it a few years ago, and, being a
quick-witted fellow, saw that all the space was not accounted for by the
smaller drawers in the part beneath the lid of the desk. Prying about
with busy eyes and fingers, he at length came upon a spring, on pressing
which, a secret drawer flew from its hiding-place. It had never been
opened but by the maker. The mahogany shavings and dust were lying in it
as when the artisan closed it,--and when I saw it, it was as fresh as if
that day finished.
Is there not one little drawer in your soul, my sweet reader, which no
hand but yours has ever opened, and which none that have known you seem
to have suspected? What does it hold?--A sin?--I hope not. What a
strange thing an old dead sin laid away in a secret drawer of the soul
is! Must it some time or other be moistened with tears, until it comes
to life again and begins to stir in our consciousness,--as the dry
wheel-animalcule, looking like a grain of dust, becomes alive, if it is
wet with a drop of water?
Or is it a passion? There are plenty of withered men and women walking
about the streets who have the secret drawer in their hearts, which, if
it were opened, would show as fresh as it was when they were in the flush
of youth and its first trembling emotions.
What it held will, perhaps, never be known, until they are dead and gone,
and same curious eye lights on an old yellow letter with the fossil
footprints of the extinct passion trodden thick all over it.
There is not a boarder at our table, I firmly believe, excepting the
young girl, who has not a story of the heart to tell, if one could only
get the secret drawer open. Even this arid female, whose armor of black
bombazine looks stronger against the shafts of love than any cuirass of
triple brass, has had her sentimental history, if I am not mistaken. I
will tell you my reason for suspecting it.
Like many other old women, she shows a great nervousness and restlessness
whenever I venture to express any opinion upon a class of subjects which
can hardly be said to belong to any man or set of men as their strictly
private property,--not even to the clergy, or the newspapers commonly
called "religious." Now, although it would be a great luxury to me to
obtain my opinions by contract, ready-made, from a professional man, and
although I have a constitutional kindly feeling to all sorts of good
people which would make me happy to agree with all their beliefs, if that
were possible, still I must have an idea, now and then, as to the meaning
of life; and though the only condition of peace in this world is to have
no ideas, or, at least, not to express them, with reference to such
subjects, I can't afford to pay quite so much as that even for peace.
I find that there is a very prevalent opinion among the dwellers on the
shores of Sir Isaac Newton's Ocean of Truth, that salt, fish, which have
been taken from it a good while ago, split open, cured and dried, are the
only proper and allowable food for reasonable people. I maintain, on the
other hand, that there are a number of live fish still swimming in it,
and that every one of us has a right to see if he cannot catch some of
them. Sometimes I please myself with the idea that I have landed an
actual living fish, small, perhaps, but with rosy gills and silvery
scales. Then I find the consumers of nothing but the salted and dried
article insist that it is poisonous, simply because it is alive, and cry
out to people not to touch it. I have not found, however, that people
mind them much.
The poor boarder in bombazine is my dynamometer. I try every
questionable proposition on her. If she winces, I must be prepared for
an outcry from the other old women. I frightened her, the other day, by
saying that faith, as an intellectual state, was self-reliance, which, if
you have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so much of a paradox
as it sounds at first. So she sent me a book to read which was to cure
me of that error. It was an old book, and looked as if it had not been
opened for a long time. What should drop out of it, one day, but a small
heart-shaped paper, containing a lock of that straight, coarse, brown
hair which sets off the sharp faces of so many thin-flanked, large-handed
bumpkins! I read upon the paper the name "Hiram."--Love! love!
love!--everywhere! everywhere!--under diamonds and housemaids'
"jewelry,"--lifting the marrowy camel's-hair, and rustling even the black
bombazine!--No, no,--I think she never was pretty, but she was young
once, and wore bright ginghams, and, perhaps, gay merinos. We shall find
that the poor little crooked man has been in love, or is in love, or will
be in love before we have done with him, for aught that I know!
Romance! Was there ever a boarding-house in the world where the
seemingly prosaic table had not a living fresco for its background, where
you could see, if you had eyes, the smoke and fire of some upheaving
sentiment, or the dreary craters of smouldering or burnt-out passions?
You look on the black bombazine and high-necked decorum of your neighbor,
and no more think of the real life that underlies this despoiled and
dismantled womanhood than you think of a stone trilobite as having once
been full of the juices and the nervous thrills of throbbing and
self-conscious being. There is a wild creature under that long yellow
pin which serves as brooch for the bombazine cuirass,--a wild creature,
which I venture to say would leap in his cage, if I should stir him,
quiet as you think him. A heart which has been domesticated by matrimony
and maternity is as tranquil as a tame bullfinch; but a wild heart which
has never been fairly broken in flutters fiercely long after you think
time has tamed it down,--like that purple finch I had the other day,
which could not be approached without such palpitations and frantic
flings against the bars of his cage, that I had to send him back and get
a little orthodox canary which had learned to be quiet and never mind the
wires or his keeper's handling. I will tell you my wicked, but half
involuntary experiment on the wild heart under the faded bombazine.
Was there ever a person in the room with you, marked by any special
weakness or peculiarity, with whom you could be two hours and not touch
the infirm spot? I confess the most frightful tendency to do just this
thing. If a man has a brogue, I am sure to catch myself imitating it.
If another is lame, I follow him, or, worse than that, go before him,
limping.
I could never meet an Irish gentleman--if it had been the Duke of
Wellington himself--without stumbling upon the word "Paddy,"--which I use
rarely in my common talk.
I have been worried to know whether this was owing to some innate
depravity of disposition on my part, some malignant torturing instinct,
which, under different circumstances, might have made a Fijian
anthropophagus of me, or to some law of thought for which I was not
answerable. It is, I am convinced, a kind of physical fact like
endosmosis, with which some of you are acquainted. A thin film of
politeness separates the unspoken and unspeakable current of thought from
the stream of conversation. After a time one begins to soak through and
mingle with the other.
We were talking about names, one day.--Was there ever anything,--I
said,--like the Yankee for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious,
detestable appellations,--inventing or finding them,--since the time of
Praise-God Barebones? I heard a country-boy once talking of another whom
he called Elpit, as I understood him. Elbridge is common enough, but
this sounded oddly. It seems the boy was christened Lord Pitt,--and
called for convenience, as above. I have heard a charming little girl,
belonging to an intelligent family in the country, called Anges
invariably; doubtless intended for Agnes. Names are cheap. How can a man
name an innocent new-born child, that never did him any harm, Hiram?--The
poor relation, or whatever she is, in bombazine, turned toward me, but I
was stupid, and went on.--To think of a man going through life saddled
with such an abominable name as that!--The poor relation grew very
uneasy.--I continued; for I never thought of all this till afterwards.--I
knew one young fellow, a good many years ago, by the name of
Hiram--What's got into you, Cousin,--said our landlady,--to look
so?--There! you 've upset your teacup!
It suddenly occurred to me what I had been doing, and I saw the poor
woman had her hand at her throat; she was half-choking with the "hysteric
ball,"--a very odd symptom, as you know, which nervous women often
complain of. What business had I to be trying experiments on this
forlorn old soul? I had a great deal better be watching that young girl.
Ah, the young girl! I am sure that she can hide nothing from me. Her
skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the
flushes they send into her cheeks. She does not seem to be shy, either.
I think she does not know enough of danger to be timid. She seems to me
like one of those birds that travellers tell of, found in remote,
uninhabited islands, who, having never received any wrong at the hand of
man, show no alarm at and hardly any particular consciousness of his
presence.
The first thing will be to see how she and our little deformed gentleman
get along together; for, as I have told you, they sit side by side. The
next thing will be to keep an eye on the duenna,--the "Model" and so
forth, as the white-neck-cloth called her. The intention of that
estimable lady is, I understand, to launch her and leave her. I suppose
there is no help for it, and I don't doubt this young lady knows how to
take care of herself, but I do not like to see young girls turned loose
in boarding-houses. Look here now! There is that jewel of his race, whom
I have called for convenience the Koh-i-noor, (you understand it is quite
out of the question for me to use the family names of our boarders,
unless I want to get into trouble,)--I say, the gentleman with the
diamond is looking very often and very intently, it seems to me, down
toward the farther corner of the table, where sits our amber-eyed blonde.
The landlady's daughter does not look pleased, it seems to me, at this,
nor at those other attentions which the gentleman referred to has, as I
have learned, pressed upon the newly-arrived young person. The landlady
made a communication to me, within a few days after the arrival of Miss
Iris, which I will repeat to the best of my remembrance.
He, (the person I have been speaking of,)--she said,--seemed to be kinder
hankerin' round after that young woman. It had hurt her daughter's
feelin's a good deal, that the gentleman she was a-keepin' company with
should be offerin' tickets and tryin' to send presents to them that he'd
never know'd till jest a little spell ago,--and he as good as merried, so
fur as solemn promises went, to as respectable a young lady, if she did
say so, as any there was round, whosomever they might be.
Tickets! presents!--said I.--What tickets, what presents has he had the
impertinence to be offering to that young lady?
Tickets to the Museum,--said the landlady. There is them that's glad
enough to go to the Museum, when tickets is given 'em; but some of 'em
ha'n't had a ticket sence Cenderilla was played,--and now he must be
offerin' 'em to this ridiculous young paintress, or whatever she is,
that's come to make more mischief than her board's worth. But it a'n't
her fault,--said the landlady, relenting;--and that aunt of hers, or
whatever she is, served him right enough.
Why, what did she do?
Do? Why, she took it up in the tongs and dropped it out o' winder.
Dropped? dropped what?--I said.
Why, the soap,--said the landlady.
It appeared that the Koh-i-noor, to ingratiate himself, had sent an
elegant package of perfumed soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate
expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having
met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by
Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged in
most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his
hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt
like a civet-cat for weeks after his great acquisition.
After watching daily for a time, I think I can see clearly into the
relation which is growing up between the little gentleman and the young
lady. She shows a tenderness to him that I can't help being interested
in. If he was her crippled child, instead of being more than old enough
to be her father, she could not treat him more kindly. The landlady's
daughter said, the other day, she believed that girl was settin' her cap
for the Little Gentleman.
Some of them young folks is very artful,--said her mother,--and there is
them that would merry Lazarus, if he'd only picked up crumbs enough. I
don't think, though, this is one of that sort; she's kinder
childlike,--said the landlady,--and maybe never had any dolls to play
with; for they say her folks was poor before Ma'am undertook to see to
her teachin' and board her and clothe her.
I could not help overhearing this conversation. "Board her and clothe
her!"--speaking of such a young creature! Oh, dear!--Yes,--she must be
fed,--just like Bridget, maid-of-all-work at this establishment.
Somebody must pay for it. Somebody has a right to watch her and see how
much it takes to "keep" her, and growl at her, if she has too good an
appetite. Somebody has a right to keep an eye on her and take care that
she does not dress too prettily. No mother to see her own youth over
again in these fresh features and rising reliefs of half-sculptured
womanhood, and, seeing its loveliness, forget her lessons of
neutral-tinted propriety, and open the cases that hold her own ornaments
to find for her a necklace or a bracelet or a pair of ear-rings,--those
golden lamps that light up the deep, shadowy dimples on the cheeks of
young beauties,--swinging in a semi-barbaric splendor that carries the
wild fancy to Abyssinian queens and musky Odalisques! I don't believe
any woman has utterly given up the great firm of Mundus & Co., so long as
she wears ear-rings.
I think Iris loves to hear the Little Gentleman talk. She smiles
sometimes at his vehement statements, but never laughs at him. When he
speaks to her, she keeps her eye always steadily upon him. This may be
only natural good-breeding, so to speak, but it is worth noticing. I
have often observed that vulgar persons, and public audiences of inferior
collective intelligence, have this in common: the least thing draws off
their minds, when you are speaking to them. I love this young creature's
rapt attention to her diminutive neighbor while he is speaking.
He is evidently pleased with it. For a day or two after she came, he was
silent and seemed nervous and excited. Now he is fond of getting the
talk into his own hands, and is obviously conscious that he has at least
one interested listener. Once or twice I have seen marks of special
attention to personal adornment, a ruffled shirt-bosom, one day, and a
diamond pin in it,--not so very large as the Koh-i-noor's, but more
lustrous. I mentioned the death's-head ring he wears on his right hand.
I was attracted by a very handsome red stone, a ruby or carbuncle or
something of the sort, to notice his left hand, the other day. It is a
handsome hand, and confirms my suspicion that the cast mentioned was
taken from his arm. After all, this is just what I should expect. It is
not very uncommon to see the upper limbs, or one of them, running away
with the whole strength, and, therefore, with the whole beauty, which we
should never have noticed, if it had been divided equally between all
four extremities. If it is so, of course he is proud of his one strong
and beautiful arm; that is human nature. I am afraid he can hardly help
betraying his favoritism, as people who have any one showy point are apt
to do,--especially dentists with handsome teeth, who always smile back to
their last molars.
Sitting, as he does, next to the young girl, and next but one to the calm
lady who has her in charge, he cannot help seeing their relations to each
other.
That is an admirable woman, Sir,--he said to me one day, as we sat alone
at the table after breakfast,--an admirable woman, Sir,--and I hate her.
Of course, I begged an explanation.
An admirable woman, Sir, because she does good things, and even kind
things,--takes care of this--this--young lady--we have here, talks like a
sensible person, and always looks as if she was doing her duty with all
her might. I hate her because her voice sounds as if it never trembled
and her eyes look as if she never knew what it was to cry. Besides, she
looks at me, Sir, stares at me, as if she wanted to get an image of me
for some gallery in her brain,--and we don't love to be looked at in this
way, we that have--I hate her,--I hate her,--her eyes kill me,--it is
like being stabbed with icicles to be looked at so,--the sooner she goes
home, the better. I don't want a woman to weigh me in a balance; there
are men enough for that sort of work. The judicial character is n't
captivating in females, Sir. A woman fascinates a man quite as often by
what she overlooks as by what she sees. Love prefers twilight to
daylight; and a man doesn't think much of, nor care much for, a woman
outside of his household, unless he can couple the idea of love, past,
present, or future, with her. I don't believe the Devil would give half
as much for the services of a sinner as he would for those of one of
these folks that are always doing virtuous acts in a way to make them
unpleasing.--That young girl wants a tender nature to cherish her and
give her a chance to put out her leaves,--sunshine, and not east winds.
He was silent,--and sat looking at his handsome left hand with the red
stone ring upon it.--Is he going to fall in love with Iris?
Here are some lines I read to the boarders the other day:--
THE CROOKED FOOTPATH
Ah, here it is! the sliding rail
That marks the old remembered spot,
--The gap that struck our schoolboy trail,
--The crooked path across the lot.
It left the road by school and church,
A pencilled shadow, nothing more,
That parted from the silver birch
And ended at the farmhouse door.
No line or compass traced its plan;
With frequent bends to left or right,
In aimless, wayward curves it ran,
But always kept the door in sight.
The gabled porch, with woodbine green,
--The broken millstone at the sill,
--Though many a rood might stretch between,
The truant child could see them still.
No rocks, across the pathway lie,
--No fallen trunk is o'er it thrown,
--And yet it winds, we know not why,
And turns as if for tree or stone.
Perhaps some lover trod the way
With shaking knees and leaping heart,
--And so it often runs astray
With sinuous sweep or sudden start.
Or one, perchance, with clouded brain
From some unholy banquet reeled,
--And since, our devious steps maintain
His track across the trodden field.
Nay, deem not thus,--no earthborn will
Could ever trace a faultless line;
Our truest steps are human still,
--To walk unswerving were divine!
Truants from love, we dream of wrath;
--Oh, rather let us trust the more!
Through all the wanderings of the path,
We still can see our Father's door!
V
The Professor finds a Fly in his Teacup.
I have a long theological talk to relate, which must be dull reading to
some of my young and vivacious friends. I don't know, however, that any
of them have entered into a contract to read all that I write, or that I
have promised always to write to please them. What if I should sometimes
write to please myself?
Now you must know that there are a great many things which interest me,
to some of which this or that particular class of readers may be totally
indifferent. I love Nature, and human nature, its thoughts, affections,
dreams, aspirations, delusions,--Art in all its forms,--virtu in all its
eccentricities,--old stories from black-letter volumes and yellow
manuscripts, and new projects out of hot brains not yet imbedded in the
snows of age. I love the generous impulses of the reformer; but not less
does my imagination feed itself upon the old litanies, so often warmed by
the human breath upon which they were wafted to Heaven that they glow
through our frames like our own heart's blood. I hope I love good men
and women; I know that they never speak a word to me, even if it be of
question or blame, that I do not take pleasantly, if it is expressed with
a reasonable amount of human kindness.
I have before me at this time a beautiful and affecting letter, which I
have hesitated to answer, though the postmark upon it gave its direction,
and the name is one which is known to all, in some of its
representatives. It contains no reproach, only a delicately-hinted fear.
Speak gently, as this dear lady has spoken, and there is no heart so
insensible that it does not answer to the appeal, no intellect so virile
that it does not own a certain deference to the claims of age, of
childhood, of sensitive and timid natures, when they plead with it not to
look at those sacred things by the broad daylight which they see in
mystic shadow. How grateful would it be to make perpetual peace with
these pleading saints and their confessors, by the simple act that
silences all complainings! Sleep, sleep, sleep! says the
Arch-Enchantress of them all,--and pours her dark and potent anodyne,
distilled over the fires that consumed her foes,--its large, round drops
changing, as we look, into the beads of her convert's rosary! Silence!
the pride of reason! cries another, whose whole life is spent in
reasoning down reason.
I hope I love good people, not for their sake, but for my own. And most
assuredly, if any deed of wrong or word of bitterness led me into an act
of disrespect towards that enlightened and excellent class of men who
make it their calling to teach goodness and their duty to practise it, I
should feel that I had done myself an injury rather than them. Go and
talk with any professional man holding any of the medieval creeds,
choosing one who wears upon his features the mark of inward and outward
health, who looks cheerful, intelligent, and kindly, and see how all your
prejudices melt away in his presence! It is impossible to come into
intimate relations with a large, sweet nature, such as you may often find
in this class, without longing to be at one with it in all its modes of
being and believing. But does it not occur to you that one may love
truth as he sees it, and his race as he views it, better than even the
sympathy and approbation of many good men whom he honors,--better than
sleeping to the sound of the Miserere or listening to the repetition of
an effete Confession of Faith?
The three learned professions have but recently emerged from a state of
quasi-barbarism. None of them like too well to be told of it, but it
must be sounded in their ears whenever they put on airs. When a man has
taken an overdose of laudanum, the doctors tell us to place him between
two persons who shall make him walk up and down incessantly; and if he
still cannot be kept from going to sleep, they say that a lash or two
over his back is of great assistance.
So we must keep the doctors awake by telling them that they have not yet
shaken off astrology and the doctrine of signatures, as is shown by the
form of their prescriptions, and their use of nitrate of silver, which
turns epileptics into Ethiopians. If that is not enough, they must be
given over to the scourgers, who like their task and get good fees for
it. A few score years ago, sick people were made to swallow burnt toads
and powdered earthworms and the expressed juice of wood-lice. The
physician of Charles I. and II. prescribed abominations not to be named.
Barbarism, as bad as that of Congo or Ashantee. Traces of this barbarism
linger even in the greatly improved medical science of our century. So
while the solemn farce of over-drugging is going on, the world over, the
harlequin pseudo-science jumps on to the stage, whip in hand, with
half-a-dozen somersets, and begins laying about him.
In 1817, perhaps you remember, the law of wager by battle was unrepealed,
and the rascally murderous, and worse than murderous, clown, Abraham
Thornton, put on his gauntlet in open court and defied the appellant to
lift the other which he threw down. It was not until the reign of George
II. that the statutes against witchcraft were repealed. As for the
English Court of Chancery, we know that its antiquated abuses form one of
the staples of common proverbs and popular literature. So the laws and
the lawyers have to be watched perpetually by public opinion as much as
the doctors do.
I don't think the other profession is an exception. When the Reverend
Mr. Cauvin and his associates burned my distinguished scientific
brother,--he was burned with green fagots, which made it rather slow and
painful,--it appears to me they were in a state of religious barbarism.
The dogmas of such people about the Father of Mankind and his creatures
are of no more account in my opinion than those of a council of Aztecs.
If a man picks your pocket, do you not consider him thereby disqualified
to pronounce any authoritative opinion on matters of ethics? If a man
hangs my ancient female relatives for sorcery, as they did in this
neighborhood a little while ago, or burns my instructor for not believing
as he does, I care no more for his religious edicts than I should for
those of any other barbarian.
Of course, a barbarian may hold many true opinions; but when the ideas of
the healing art, of the administration of justice, of Christian love,
could not exclude systematic poisoning, judicial duelling, and murder for
opinion's sake, I do not see how we can trust the verdict of that time
relating to any subject which involves the primal instincts violated in
these abominations and absurdities.--What if we are even now in a state
of semi-barbarism?
[This physician believes we "are even now in a state of semi-barbarism":
invasive procedures for the prolongation of death rather than
prolongation of life; "faith",as slimly based as medieval faith in minute
differences between control and treated groups; statistical manipulation
to prove a prejudice. Medicine has a good deal to answer for! D.W.]
Perhaps some think we ought not to talk at table about such things.--I
am not so sure of that. Religion and government appear to me the two
subjects which of all others should belong to the common talk of people
who enjoy the blessings of freedom. Think, one moment. The earth is a
great factory-wheel, which, at every revolution on its axis, receives
fifty thousand raw souls and turns off nearly the same number worked up
more or less completely. There must be somewhere a population of two
hundred thousand million, perhaps ten or a hundred times as many,
earth-born intelligences. Life, as we call it, is nothing but the edge
of the boundless ocean of existence where it comes on soundings. In this
view, I do not see anything so fit to talk about, or half so interesting,
as that which relates to the innumerable majority of our
fellow-creatures, the dead-living, who are hundreds of thousands to one
of the live-living, and with whom we all potentially belong, though we
have got tangled for the present in some parcels of fibrine, albumen, and
phosphates, that keep us on the minority side of the house. In point of
fact, it is one of the many results of Spiritualism to make the permanent
destiny of the race a matter of common reflection and discourse, and a
vehicle for the prevailing disbelief of the Middle-Age doctrines on the
subject. I cannot help thinking, when I remember how many conversations
my friend and myself have sported, that it would be very extraordinary,
if there were no mention of that class of subjects which involves all
that we have and all that we hope, not merely for ourselves, but for the
dear people whom we love best,--noble men, pure and lovely women,
ingenuous children, about the destiny of nine tenths of whom you know the
opinions that would have been taught by those old man-roasting,
woman-strangling dogmatists.--However, I fought this matter with one of
our boarders the other day, and I am going to report the conversation.
The divinity-student came down, one morning, looking rather more serious
than usual. He said little at breakfast-time, but lingered after the
others, so that I, who am apt to be long at the table, found myself alone
with him.
When the rest were all gone, he turned his chair round towards mine, and
began.
I am afraid,--he said,--you express yourself a little too freely on a
most important class of subjects. Is there not danger in introducing
discussions or allusions relating to matters of religion into common
discourse?
Danger to what?--I asked.
Danger to truth,--he replied, after a slight pause.
I didn't know Truth was such an invalid,' I said.--How long is it since
she could only take the air in a close carriage, with a gentleman in a
black coat on the box? Let me tell you a story, adapted to young
persons, but which won't hurt older ones.
--There was a very little boy who had one of those balloons you may have
seen, which are filled with light gas, and are held by a string to keep
them from running off in aeronautic voyages on their own account. This
little boy had a naughty brother, who said to him, one day,--Brother,
pull down your balloon, so that I can look at it and take hold of it.
Then the little boy pulled it down. Now the naughty brother had a sharp
pin in his hand, and he thrust it into the balloon, and all the gas oozed
out, so that there was nothing left but a shrivelled skin.
One evening, the little boy's father called him to the window to see the
moon, which pleased him very much; but presently he said,--Father, do
not pull the string and bring down the moon, for my naughty brother will
prick it, and then it will all shrivel up and we shall not see it any
more.
Then his father laughed, and told him how the moon had been shining a
good while, and would shine a good while longer, and that all we could do
was to keep our windows clean, never letting the dust get too thick on
them, and especially to keep our eyes open, but that we could not pull
the moon down with a string, nor prick it with a pin.--Mind you this,
too, the moon is no man's private property, but is seen from a good many
parlor-windows.
--Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you
may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full
at evening. Does not Mr. Bryant say, that Truth gets well if she is run
over by a locomotive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her
finger? [Would that this was so:--error, superstition, mysticism,
authoritarianism, pseudo-science all have a tenacity that survives
inexplicably. D.W.] I never heard that a mathematician was alarmed for
the safety of a demonstrated proposition. I think, generally, that fear
of open discussion implies feebleness of inward conviction, and great
sensitiveness to the expression of individual opinion is a mark of
weakness.
--I am not so much afraid for truth,--said the divinity-student,--as for
the conceptions of truth in the minds of persons not accustomed to judge
wisely the opinions uttered before them.
Would you, then, banish all allusions to matters of this nature from the
society of people who come together habitually?
I would be very careful in introducing them,--said the divinity-student.
Yes, but friends of yours leave pamphlets in people's entries, to be
picked up by nervous misses and hysteric housemaids, full of doctrines
these people do not approve. Some of your friends stop little children
in the street, and give them books, which their parents, who have had
them baptized into the Christian fold and give them what they consider
proper religious instruction, do not think fit for them. One would say
it was fair enough to talk about matters thus forced upon people's
attention.
The divinity-student could not deny that this was what might be called
opening the subject to the discussion of intelligent people.
But,--he said,--the greatest objection is this, that persons who have not
made a professional study of theology are not competent to speak on such
subjects. Suppose a minister were to undertake to express opinions on
medical subjects, for instance, would you not think he was going beyond
his province?
I laughed,--for I remembered John Wesley's "sulphur and supplication,"
and so many other cases where ministers had meddled with
medicine,--sometimes well and sometimes ill, but, as a general rule, with
a tremendous lurch to quackery, owing to their very loose way of
admitting evidence,--that I could not help being amused.
I beg your pardon,--I said,--I do not wish to be impolite, but I was
thinking of their certificates to patent medicines. Let us look at this
matter.
If a minister had attended lectures on the theory and practice of
medicine, delivered by those who had studied it most deeply, for thirty
or forty years, at the rate of from fifty to one hundred a year,--if he
had been constantly reading and hearing read the most approved text-books
on the subject,--if he had seen medicine actually practised according to
different methods, daily, for the same length of time,--I should think,
that if a person of average understanding, he was entitled to express an
opinion on the subject of medicine, or else that his instructors were a
set of ignorant and incompetent charlatans.
If, before a medical practitioner would allow me to enjoy the full
privileges of the healing art, he expected me to affirm my belief in a
considerable number of medical doctrines, drugs, and formulae, I should
think that he thereby implied my right to discuss the same, and my
ability to do so, if I knew how to express myself in English.
Suppose, for instance, the Medical Society should refuse to give us an
opiate, or to set a broken limb, until we had signed our belief in a
certain number of propositions,--of which we will say this is the first:
I. All men's teeth are naturally in a state of total decay or caries,
and, therefore, no man can bite until every one of them is extracted and
a new set is inserted according to the principles of dentistry adopted by
this Society.
I, for one, should want to discuss that before signing my name to it, and
I should say this:--Why, no, that is n't true. There are a good many bad
teeth, we all know, but a great many more good ones. You must n't trust
the dentists; they are all the time looking at the people who have bad
teeth, and such as are suffering from toothache. The idea that you must
pull out every one of every nice young man and young woman's natural
teeth! Poh, poh! Nobody believes that. This tooth must be
straightened, that must be filled with gold, and this other perhaps
extracted, but it must be a very rare case, if they are all so bad as to
require extraction; and if they are, don't blame the poor soul for it!
Don't tell us, as some old dentists used to, that everybody not only
always has every tooth in his head good for nothing, but that he ought to
have his head cut off as a punishment for that misfortune! No, I can't
sign Number One. Give us Number Two.
II. We hold that no man can be well who does not agree with our views of
the efficacy of calomel, and who does not take the doses of it prescribed
in our tables, as there directed.
To which I demur, questioning why it should be so, and get for answer the
two following:
III. Every man who does not take our prepared calomel, as prescribed by
us in our Constitution and By-Laws, is and must be a mass of disease from
head to foot; it being self-evident that he is simultaneously affected
with Apoplexy, Arthritis, Ascites, Asphyxia, and Atrophy; with
Borborygmus, Bronchitis, and Bulimia; with Cachexia, Carcinoma, and
Cretinismus; and so on through the alphabet, to Xerophthahnia and Zona,
with all possible and incompatible diseases which are necessary to make
up a totally morbid state; and he will certainly die, if he does not take
freely of our prepared calomel, to be obtained only of one of our
authorized agents.
IV. No man shall be allowed to take our prepared calomel who does not
give in his solemn adhesion to each and all of the above-named and the
following propositions (from ten to a hundred) and show his mouth to
certain of our apothecaries, who have not studied dentistry, to examine
whether all his teeth have been extracted and a new set inserted
according to our regulations.
Of course, the doctors have a right to say we sha'n't have any rhubarb,
if we don't sign their articles, and that, if, after signing them, we
express doubts (in public), about any of them, they will cut us off from
our jalap and squills,--but then to ask a fellow not to discuss the
propositions before he signs them is what I should call boiling it down a
little too strong!
If we understand them, why can't we discuss them? If we can't understand
them, because we have n't taken a medical degree, what the Father of Lies
do they ask us to sign them for?
Just so with the graver profession. Every now and then some of its
members seem to lose common sense and common humanity. The laymen have
to keep setting the divines right constantly. Science, for instance,--in
other words, knowledge,--is not the enemy of religion; for, if so, then
religion would mean ignorance: But it is often the antagonist of
school-divinity.
Everybody knows the story of early astronomy and the school-divines. Come
down a little later, Archbishop Usher, a very learned Protestant prelate,
tells us that the world was created on Sunday, the twenty-third of
October, four thousand and four years before the birth of Christ.
Deluge, December 7th, two thousand three hundred and forty-eight years B.
C. Yes, and the earth stands on an elephant, and the elephant on a
tortoise. One statement is as near the truth as the other.
Again, there is nothing so brutalizing to some natures as moral surgery.
I have often wondered that Hogarth did not add one more picture to his
four stages of Cruelty. Those wretched fools, reverend divines and
others, who were strangling men and women for imaginary crimes a little
more than a century ago among us, were set right by a layman, and very
angry it made them to have him meddle.
The good people of Northampton had a very remarkable man for their
clergyman,--a man with a brain as nicely adjusted for certain mechanical
processes as Babbage's calculating machine. The commentary of the laymen
on the preaching and practising of Jonathan Edwards was, that, after
twenty-three years of endurance, they turned him out by a vote of twenty
to one, and passed a resolve that he should never preach for them again.
A man's logical and analytical adjustments are of little consequence,
compared to his primary relations with Nature and truth: and people have
sense enough to find it out in the long ran; they know what "logic" is
worth.
In that miserable delusion referred to above, the reverend Aztecs and
Fijians argued rightly enough from their premises, no doubt, for many men
can do this. But common sense and common humanity were unfortunately
left out from their premises, and a layman had to supply them. A hundred
more years and many of the barbarisms still lingering among us will, of
course, have disappeared like witch-hanging. But people are sensitive
now, as they were then. You will see by this extract that the Rev.
Cotton Mather did not like intermeddling with his business very well.
"Let the Levites of the Lord keep close to their Instructions," he says,
"and God will smite thro' the loins of those that rise up against them.
I will report unto you a Thing which many Hundreds among us know to be
true. The Godly Minister of a certain Town in Connecticut, when he had
occasion to be absent on a Lord's Day from his Flock, employ'd an honest
Neighbour of some small Talents for a Mechanick, to read a Sermon out of
some good Book unto 'em. This Honest, whom they ever counted also a
Pious Man, had so much conceit of his Talents, that instead of Reading a
Sermon appointed, he to the Surprize of the People, fell to preaching one
of his own. For his Text he took these Words, 'Despise not
Prophecyings'; and in his Preachment he betook himself to bewail the Envy
of the Clergy in the Land, in that they did not wish all the Lord's
People to be Prophets, and call forth Private Brethren publickly to
prophesie. While he was thus in the midst of his Exercise, God smote him
with horrible Madness; he was taken ravingly distracted; the People were
forc'd with violent Hands to carry him home. I will not mention his
Name: He was reputed a Pious Man."--This is one of Cotton Mather's
"Remarkable Judgments of God, on Several Sorts of Offenders,"--and the
next cases referred to are the Judgments on the "Abominable Sacrilege" of
not paying the Ministers' Salaries.
This sort of thing does n't do here and now, you see, my young friend!
We talk about our free institutions;--they are nothing but a coarse
outside machinery to secure the freedom of individual thought. The
President of the United States is only the engine driver of our
broad-gauge mail-train; and every honest, independent thinker has a seat
in the first-class cars behind him.
--There is something in what you say,--replied the divinity-student;
--and yet it seems to me there are places and times where disputed
doctrines of religion should not be introduced. You would not attack a
church dogma--say Total Depravity--in a lyceum-lecture, for instance?
Certainly not; I should choose another place,--I answered.--But, mind
you, at this table I think it is very different. I shall express my
ideas on any subject I like. The laws of the lecture-room, to which my
friends and myself are always amenable, do not hold here. I shall not
often give arguments, but frequently opinions,--I trust with courtesy and
propriety, but, at any rate, with such natural forms of expression as it
has pleased the Almighty to bestow upon me.
A man's opinions, look you, are generally of much more value than his
arguments. These last are made by his brain, and perhaps he does not
believe the proposition they tend to prove,--as is often the case with
paid lawyers; but opinions are formed by our whole nature,--brain,
heart, instinct, brute life, everything all our experience has shaped for
us by contact with the whole circle of our being.
--There is one thing more,--said the divinity-student,--that I wished to
speak of; I mean that idea of yours, expressed some time since, of
depolarizing the text of sacred books in order to judge them fairly. May
I ask why you do not try the experiment yourself?
Certainly,--I replied,--if it gives you any pleasure to ask foolish
questions. I think the ocean telegraph-wire ought to be laid and will be
laid, but I don't know that you have any right to ask me to go and lay
it. But, for that matter, I have heard a good deal of Scripture
depolarized in and out of the pulpit. I heard the Rev. Mr. F. once
depolarize the story of the Prodigal Son in Park-Street Church. Many
years afterwards, I heard him repeat the same or a similar depolarized
version in Rome, New York. I heard an admirable depolarization of the
story of the young man who "had great possessions" from the Rev. Mr. H.
in another pulpit, and felt that I had never half understood it before.
All paraphrases are more or less perfect depolarizations. But I tell you
this: the faith of our Christian community is not robust enough to bear
the turning of our most sacred language into its depolarized equivalents.
You have only to look back to Dr. Channing's famous Baltimore discourse
and remember the shrieks of blasphemy with which it was greeted, to
satisfy yourself on this point. Time, time only, can gradually wean us
from our Epeolatry, or word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the
thing signified. Man is an idolater or symbol-worshipper by nature,
which, of course, is no fault of his; but sooner or later all his local
and temporary symbols must be ground to powder, like the golden
calf,--word-images as well as metal and wooden ones. Rough work,
iconoclasm,--but the only way to get at truth. It is, indeed, as that
quaint and rare old discourse, "A Summons for Sleepers," hath it, "no
doubt a thankless office, and a verie unthriftie occupation; veritas
odium parit, truth never goeth without a scratcht face; he that will be
busie with voe vobis, let him looke shortly for coram nobas."
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think
what we like and say what we think.
--Think what we like!--said the divinity-student;--think what we like!
What! against all human and divine authority?
Against all human versions of its own or any other authority. At our own
peril always, if we do not like the right,--but not at the risk of being
hanged and quartered for political heresy, or broiled on green fagots for
ecclesiastical treason! Nay, we have got so far, that the very word
heresy has fallen into comparative disuse among us.
And now, my young friend, let-us shake hands and stop our discussion,
which we will not make a quarrel. I trust you know, or will learn, a
great many things in your profession which we common scholars do not
know; but mark this: when the common people of New England stop talking
politics and theology, it will be because they have got an Emperor to
teach them the one, and a Pope to teach them the other!
That was the end of my long conference with the divinity-student. The
next morning we got talking a little on the same subject, very
good-naturedly, as people return to a matter they have talked out.
You must look to yourself,--said the divinity-student,--if your
democratic notions get into print. You will be fired into from all
quarters.
If it were only a bullet, with the marksman's name on it!--I said.--I
can't stop to pick out the peep-shot of the anonymous scribblers.
Right, Sir! right!--said the Little Gentleman. The scamps! I know the
fellows. They can't give fifty cents to one of the Antipodes, but they
must have it jingled along through everybody's palms all the way, till it
reaches him,--and forty cents of it gets spilt, like the water out of the
fire-buckets passed along a "lane" at a fire;--but when it comes to
anonymous defamation, putting lies into people's mouths, and then
advertising those people through the country as the authors of them,--oh,
then it is that they let not their left hand know what their right hand
doeth!
I don't like Ehud's style of doing business, Sir. He comes along with a
very sanctimonious look, Sir, with his "secret errand unto thee," and his
"message from God unto thee," and then pulls out his hidden knife with
that unsuspected hand of his,---(the Little Gentleman lifted his clenched
left hand with the blood-red jewel on the ring-finger,)--and runs it,
blade and haft, into a man's stomach! Don't meddle with these fellows,
Sir. They are read mostly by persons whom you would not reach, if you
were to write ever so much. Let 'em alone. A man whose opinions are not
attacked is beneath contempt.
I hope so,--I said.--I got three pamphlets and innumerable squibs flung
at my head for attacking one of the pseudo-sciences, in former years.
When, by the permission of Providence, I held up to the professional
public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison from
one young mother's chamber to another's,--for doing which humble office I
desire to be thankful that I have lived, though nothing else good should
ever come of my life,--I had to bear the sneers of those whose position I
had assailed, and, as I believe, have at last demolished, so that nothing
but the ghosts of dead women stir among the ruins.--What would you do, if
the folks without names kept at you, trying to get a San Benito on to
your shoulders that would fit you?--Would you stand still in fly-time, or
would you give a kick now and then?
Let 'em bite!--said the Little Gentleman,--let 'em bite! It makes 'em
hungry to shake 'em off, and they settle down again as thick as ever and
twice as savage. Do you know what meddling with the folks without names,
as you call 'em, is like?--It is like riding at the quintaan. You run
full tilt at the board, but the board is on a pivot, with a bag of sand
on an arm that balances it. The board gives way as soon as you touch it;
and before you have got by, the bag of sand comes round whack on the back
of your neck. "Ananias," for instance, pitches into your lecture, we
will say, in some paper taken by the people in your kitchen. Your
servants get saucy and negligent. If their newspaper calls you names,
they need not be so particular about shutting doors softly or boiling
potatoes. So you lose your temper, and come out in an article which you
think is going to finish "Ananias," proving him a booby who doesn't know
enough to understand even a lyceum-lecture, or else a person that tells
lies. Now you think you 've got him! Not so fast. "Ananias" keeps still
and winks to "Shimei," and "Shimei" comes out in the paper which they
take in your neighbor's kitchen, ten times worse than t'other fellow. If
you meddle with "Shimei," he steps out, and next week appears
"Rab-shakeh," an unsavory wretch; and now, at any rate, you find out what
good sense there was in Hezekiah's "Answer him not."--No, no,--keep your
temper.--So saying, the Little Gentleman doubled his left fist and looked
at it as if he should like to hit something or somebody a most pernicious
punch with it.
Good!--said I.--Now let me give you some axioms I have arrived at, after
seeing something of a great many kinds of good folks.
--Of a hundred people of each of the different leading religious sects,
about the same proportion will be safe and pleasant persons to deal and
to live with.
--There are, at least, three real saints among the women to one among the
men, in every denomination.
--The spiritual standard of different classes I would reckon thus:
1. The comfortably rich.
2. The decently comfortable.
3. The very rich, who are apt to be irreligious.
4. The very poor, who are apt to be immoral.
--The cut nails of machine-divinity may be driven in, but they won't
clinch.
--The arguments which the greatest of our schoolmen could not refute were
two: the blood in men's veins, and the milk in women's breasts.
--Humility is the first of the virtues--for other people.
--Faith always implies the disbelief of a lesser fact in favor of a
greater. A little mind often sees the unbelief, without seeing the
belief of a large one.
The Poor Relation had been fidgeting about and working her mouth while
all this was going on. She broke out in speech at this point.
I hate to hear folks talk so. I don't see that you are any better than a
heathen.
I wish I were half as good as many heathens have been,--I said.--Dying
for a principle seems to me a higher degree of virtue than scolding for
it; and the history of heathen races is full of instances where men have
laid down their lives for the love of their kind, of their country, of
truth, nay, even for simple manhood's sake, or to show their obedience or
fidelity. What would not such beings have done for the souls of men, for
the Christian commonwealth, for the King of Kings, if they had lived in
days of larger light? Which seems to you nearest heaven, Socrates
drinking his hemlock, Regulus going back to the enemy's camp, or that old
New England divine sitting comfortably in his study and chuckling over
his conceit of certain poor women, who had been burned to death in his
own town, going "roaring out of one fire into another"?
I don't believe he said any such thing,--replied the Poor Relation.
It is hard to believe,--said I,--but it is true for all that. In another
hundred years it will be as incredible that men talked as we sometimes
hear them now.
Pectus est quod facit theologum. The heart makes the theologian. Every
race, every civilization, either has a new revelation of its own or a new
interpretation of an old one. Democratic America, has a different
humanity from feudal Europe, and so must have a new divinity. See, for
one moment, how intelligence reacts on our faiths. The Bible was a
divining-book to our ancestors, and is so still in the hands of some of
the vulgar. The Puritans went to the Old Testament for their laws; the
Mormons go to it for their patriarchal institution. Every generation
dissolves something new and precipitates something once held in solution
from that great storehouse of temporary and permanent truths.
You may observe this: that the conversation of intelligent men of the
stricter sects is strangely in advance of the formula that belong to
their organizations. So true is this, that I have doubts whether a large
proportion of them would not have been rather pleased than offended, if
they could have overheard our, talk. For, look you, I think there is
hardly a professional teacher who will not in private conversation allow
a large part of what we have said, though it may frighten him in print;
and I know well what an under-current of secret sympathy gives vitality
to those poor words of mine which sometimes get a hearing.
I don't mind the exclamation of any old stager who drinks Madeira worth
from two to six Bibles a bottle, and burns, according to his own
premises, a dozen souls a year in the cigars with which he muddles his
brains. But as for the good and true and intelligent men whom we see all
around us, laborious, self-denying, hopeful, helpful,--men who know that
the active mind of the century is tending more and more to the two poles,
Rome and Reason, the sovereign church or the free soul, authority or
personality, God in us or God in our masters, and that, though a man may
by accident stand half-way between these two points, he must look one way
or the other,--I don't believe they would take offence at anything I have
reported of our late conversation.
But supposing any one do take offence at first sight, let him look over
these notes again, and see whether he is quite sure he does not agree
with most of these things that were said amongst us. If he agrees with
most of them, let him be patient with an opinion he does not accept, or
an expression or illustration a little too vivacious. I don't know that I
shall report any more conversations on these topics; but I do insist on
the right to express a civil opinion on this class of subjects without
giving offence, just when and where I please,---unless, as in the
lecture-room, there is an implied contract to keep clear of doubtful
matters. You did n't think a man could sit at a breakfast-table doing
nothing but making puns every morning for a year or two, and never give a
thought to the two thousand of his fellow-creatures who are passing into
another state during every hour that he sits talking and laughing. Of
course, the one matter that a real human being cares for is what is going
to become of them and of him. And the plain truth is, that a good many
people are saying one thing about it and believing another.
--How do I know that? Why, I have known and loved to talk with good
people, all the way from Rome to Geneva in doctrine, as long as I can
remember. Besides, the real religion of the world comes from women much
more than from men,--from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our
souls in their bosoms. It is in their hearts that the "sentimental"
religion some people are so fond of sneering at has its source. The
sentiment of love, the sentiment of maternity, the sentiment of the
paramount obligation of the parent to the child as having called it into
existence, enhanced just in proportion to the power and knowledge of the
one and the weakness and ignorance of the other,--these are the
"sentiments" that have kept our soulless systems from driving men off to
die in holes like those that riddle the sides of the hill opposite the
Monastery of St. Saba, where the miserable victims of a
falsely-interpreted religion starved and withered in their delusion.
I have looked on the face of a saintly woman this very day, whose creed
many dread and hate, but whose life is lovely and noble beyond all
praise. When I remember the bitter words I have heard spoken against her
faith, by men who have an Inquisition which excommunicates those who ask
to leave their communion in peace, and an Index Expurgatorius on which
this article may possibly have the honor of figuring,--and, far worse
than these, the reluctant, pharisaical confession, that it might perhaps
be possible that one who so believed should be accepted of the
Creator,--and then recall the sweet peace and love that show through all
her looks, the price of untold sacrifices and labors, and again recollect
how thousands of women, filled with the same spirit, die, without a
murmur, to earthly life, die to their own names even, that they may know
nothing but their holy duties,--while men are torturing and denouncing
their fellows, and while we can hear day and night the clinking of the
hammers that are trying, like the brute forces in the "Prometheus," to
rivet their adamantine wedges right through the breast of human
nature,--I have been ready to believe that we have even now a new
revelation, and the name of its Messiah is WOMAN!
--I should be sorry,--I remarked, a day or two afterwards, to the
divinity-student,--if anything I said tended in any way to foster any
jealousy between the professions, or to throw disrespect upon that one on
whose counsel and sympathies almost all of us lean in our moments of
trial. But we are false to our new conditions of life, if we do not
resolutely maintain our religious as well as our political freedom, in
the face of any and all supposed monopolies. Certain men will, of
course, say two things, if we do not take their views: first, that we
don't know anything about these matters; and, secondly, that we are not
so good as they are. They have a polarized phraseology for saying these
things, but it comes to precisely that. To which it may be answered, in
the first place, that we have good authority for saying that even babes
and sucklings know something; and, in the second, that, if there is a
mote or so to be removed from our premises, the courts and councils of
the last few years have found beams enough in some other quarters to
build a church that would hold all the good people in Boston and have
sticks enough left to make a bonfire for all the heretics.
As to that terrible depolarizing process of mine, of which we were
talking the other day, I will give you a specimen of one way of managing
it, if you like. I don't believe it will hurt you or anybody. Besides,
I had a great deal rather finish our talk with pleasant images and gentle
words than with sharp sayings, which will only afford a text, if anybody
repeats them, for endless relays of attacks from Messrs. Ananias,
Shimei, and Rabshakeh.
[I must leave such gentry, if any of them show themselves, in the hands
of my clerical friends, many of whom are ready to stand up for the rights
of the laity,--and to those blessed souls, the good women, to whom this
version of the story of a mother's hidden hopes and tender anxieties is
dedicated by their peaceful and loving servant.]
A MOTHER'S SECRET.
How sweet the sacred legend--if unblamed
In my slight verse such holy things are named
--Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy,
Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy!
Ave, Maria! Pardon, if I wrong
Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song!
The choral host had closed the angel's strain
Sung to the midnight watch on Bethlehem's plain;
And now the shepherds, hastening on their way,
Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay.
They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled O'er,
They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor
Where Moab's daughter, homeless and forlorn,
Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn;
And some remembered how the holy scribe,
Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe,
Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son
To that fair alien, bravely wooed and won.
So fared they on to seek the promised sign
That marked the anointed heir of David's line.
At last, by forms of earthly semblance led,
They found the crowded inn, the oxen's shed.
No pomp was there, no glory shone around
On the coarse straw that strewed the reeking ground;
One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed,
In that poor cell the Lord of Life was laid!
The wondering shepherds told their breathless tale
Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale;
Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed;
Told how the shining multitude proclaimed
"Joy, joy to earth! Behold the hallowed morn!
In David's city Christ the Lord is born!
'Glory to God!' let angels shout on high,
'Good-will to men!' the listening Earth reply!"
They spoke with hurried words and accents wild;
Calm in his cradle slept the heavenly child.
No trembling word the mother's joy revealed,
One sigh of rapture, and her lips were sealed;
Unmoved she saw the rustic train depart,
But kept their words to ponder in her heart.
Twelve years had passed; the boy was fair and tall,
Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all.
The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill
Their balanced urns beside the mountain-rill,
The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun,
Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son.
No voice had reached the Galilean vale
Of star-led kings or awe-struck shepherds' tale;
In the meek, studious child they only saw
The future Rabbi, learned in Israel's law.
So grew the boy; and now the feast was near,
When at the holy place the tribes appear.
Scarce had the home-bred child of Nazareth seen
Beyond the hills that girt the village-green,
Save when at midnight, o'er the star-lit sands,
Snatched from the steel of Herod's murdering bands,
A babe, close-folded to his mother's breast,
Through Edom's wilds he sought the sheltering West.
Then Joseph spake: "Thy boy hath largely grown;
Weave him fine raiment, fitting to be shown;
Fair robes beseem the pilgrim, as the priest
Goes he not with us to the holy feast?"
And Mary culled the flaxen fibres white;
Till eve she spun; she spun till morning light.
The thread was twined; its parting meshes through
From hand to hand her restless shuttle flew,
Till the full web was wound upon the beam,
Love's curious toil,--a vest without a seam!
They reach the holy place, fulfil the days
To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise.
At last they turn, and far Moriah's height
Melts in the southern sky and fades from sight.
All day the dusky caravan has flowed
In devious trails along the winding road,
(For many a step their homeward path attends,
And all the sons of Abraham are as friends.)
Evening has come,--the hour of rest and joy;
Hush! hush!--that whisper,-"Where is Mary's boy?"
O weary hour! O aching days that passed
Filled with strange fears, each wilder than the last:
The soldier's lance,--the fierce centurion's sword,
The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord,
The midnight crypt that suck's the captive's breath,
The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death!
Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light,
Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night,
Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth,
Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth.
At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more
The Temple's porches, searched in vain before;
They found him seated with the ancient men,
The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen,
Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near;
Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear,
Lost in half-envious wonder and surprise
That lips so fresh should utter words so wise.
And Mary said,--as one who, tried too long,
Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong,
"What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done?
Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son!"
Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone,
Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown;
Then turned with them and left the holy hill,
To all their mild commands obedient still.
The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men,
And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again;
The maids retold it at the fountain's side;
The youthful shepherds doubted or denied;
It passed around among the listening friends,
With all that fancy adds and fiction fends,
Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown
Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbis down.
But Mary, faithful to its lightest word,
Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard,
Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil,
And shuddering Earth confirmed the wondrous tale.
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother's secret hope outlives them all.
VI
You don't look so dreadful poor in the face as you did a while back.
Bloated some, I expect.
This was the cheerful and encouraging and elegant remark with which the
Poor Relation greeted the divinity-student one morning.
Of course every good man considers it a great sacrifice on his part to
continue living in this transitory, unsatisfactory, and particularly
unpleasant world. This is so much a matter of course, that I was
surprised to see the divinity-student change color. He took a look at a
small and uncertain-minded glass which hung slanting forward over the
chapped sideboard. The image it returned to him had the color of a very
young pea somewhat overboiled. The scenery of a long tragic drama
flashed through his mind as the lightning-express-train whishes by a
station: the gradual dismantling process of disease; friends looking on,
sympathetic, but secretly chuckling over their own stomachs of iron and
lungs of caoutchouc; nurses attentive, but calculating their crop, and
thinking how soon it will be ripe, so that they can go to your neighbor,
who is good for a year or so longer; doctors assiduous, but giving
themselves a mental shake, as they go out of your door, which throws off
your particular grief as a duck sheds a raindrop from his oily feathers;
undertakers solemn, but happy; then the great subsoil cultivator, who
plants, but never looks for fruit in his garden; then the stone-cutter,
who puts your name on the slab which has been waiting for you ever since
the birds or beasts made their tracks on the new red sandstone; then the
grass and the dandelions and the buttercups,----Earth saying to the
mortal body, with her sweet symbolism, "You have scarred my bosom, but
you are forgiven"; then a glimpse of the soul as a floating consciousness
without very definite form or place, but dimly conceived of as an upright
column of vapor or mist several times larger than life-size, so far as it
could be said to have any size at all, wandering about and living a thin
and half-awake life for want of good old-fashioned solid matter to come
down upon with foot and fist,--in fact, having neither foot nor fist, nor
conveniences for taking the sitting posture.
And yet the divinity-student was a good Christian, and those heathen
images which remind one of the childlike fancies of the dying Adrian were
only the efforts of his imagination to give shape to the formless and
position to the placeless. Neither did his thoughts spread themselves
out and link themselves as I have displayed them. They came confusedly
into his mind like a heap of broken mosaics,--sometimes a part of the
picture complete in itself, sometimes connected fragments, and sometimes
only single severed stones.
They did not diffuse a light of celestial joy over his countenance. On
the contrary, the Poor Relation's remark turned him pale, as I have said;
and when the terrible wrinkled and jaundiced looking-glass turned him
green in addition, and he saw himself in it, it seemed to him as if it
were all settled, and his book of life were to be shut not yet half-read,
and go back to the dust of the under-ground archives. He coughed a mild
short cough, as if to point the direction in which his downward path was
tending. It was an honest little cough enough, so far as appearances
went. But coughs are ungrateful things. You find one out in the cold,
take it up and nurse it and make everything of it, dress it up warm, give
it all sorts of balsams and other food it likes, and carry it round in
your bosom as if it were a miniature lapdog. And by-and-by its little
bark grows sharp and savage, and--confound the thing!--you find it is a
wolf's whelp that you have got there, and he is gnawing in the breast
where he has been nestling so long.--The Poor Relation said that
somebody's surrup was good for folks that were gettin' into a bad
way.--The landlady had heard of desperate cases cured by
cherry-pictorial.
Whiskey's the fellah,--said the young man John.--Make it into punch, cold
at dinner-time 'n' hot at bed-time. I'll come up 'n' show you how to mix
it. Have n't any of you seen the wonderful fat man exhibitin' down in
Hanover Street?
Master Benjamin Franklin rushed into the dialogue with a breezy
exclamation, that he had seen a great picter outside of the place where
the fat man was exhibitin'. Tried to get in at half-price, but the man
at the door looked at his teeth and said he was more'n ten year old.
It is n't two years,--said the young man John, since that fat fellah was
exhibitin' here as the Livin' Skeleton. Whiskey--that's what did
it,--real Burbon's the stuff. Hot water, sugar, 'n' jest a little
shavin' of lemon-skin in it,--skin, mind you, none o' your juice; take it
off thin,--shape of one of them flat curls the factory-girls wear on the
sides of their foreheads.
But I am a teetotaller,--said the divinity-student in a subdued
tone;--not noticing the enormous length of the bow-string the young
fellow had just drawn.
He took up his hat and went out.
I think you have worried that young man more than you meant,--I said.--I
don't believe he will jump off one of the bridges, for he has too much
principle; but I mean to follow him and see where he goes, for he looks
as if his mind were made up to something.
I followed him at a reasonable distance. He walked doggedly along,
looking neither to the right nor the left, turned into State Street, and
made for a well-known Life-Insurance Office. Luckily, the doctor was
there and overhauled him on the spot. There was nothing the matter with
him, he said, and he could have his life insured as a sound one. He came
out in good spirits, and told me this soon after.
This led me to make some remarks the next morning on the manners of
well-bred and ill-bred people.
I began,--The whole essence of true gentle-breeding (one does not like to
say gentility) lies in the wish and the art to be agreeable.
Good-breeding is surface-Christianity. Every look, movement, tone,
expression, subject of discourse, that may give pain to another is
habitually excluded from conversational intercourse. This is the reason
why rich people are apt to be so much more agreeable than others.
--I thought you were a great champion of equality,--said the discreet and
severe lady who had accompanied our young friend, the Latin Tutor's
daughter.
I go politically for equality,--I said,--and socially for the quality.
Who are the "quality,"--said the Model, etc., in a community like ours?
I confess I find this question a little difficult to answer,--I said.
--Nothing is better known than the distinction of social ranks which
exists in every community, and nothing is harder to define. The great
gentlemen and ladies of a place are its real lords and masters and
mistresses; they are the quality, whether in a monarchy or a republic;
mayors and governors and generals and senators and ex-presidents are
nothing to them. How well we know this, and how seldom it finds a
distinct expression! Now I tell you truly, I believe in man as man, and
I disbelieve in all distinctions except such as follow the natural lines
of cleavage in a society which has crystallized according to its own true
laws. But the essence of equality is to be able to say the truth; and
there is nothing more curious than these truths relating to the
stratification of society.
Of all the facts in this world that do not take hold of immortality,
there is not one so intensely real, permanent, and engrossing as this of
social position,--as you see by the circumstances that the core of all
the great social orders the world has seen has been, and is still, for
the most part, a privileged class of gentlemen and ladies arranged in a
regular scale of precedence among themselves, but superior as a body to
all else.
Nothing but an ideal Christian equality, which we have been getting
farther away from since the days of the Primitive Church, can prevent
this subdivision of society into classes from taking place
everywhere,--in the great centres of our republic as much as in old
European monarchies. Only there position is more absolutely
hereditary,--here it is more completely elective.
--Where is the election held? and what are the qualifications? and who
are the electors?--said the Model.
Nobody ever sees when the vote is taken; there never is a formal vote.
The women settle it mostly; and they know wonderfully well what is
presentable, and what can't stand the blaze of the chandeliers and the
critical eye and ear of people trained to know a staring shade in a
ribbon, a false light in a jewel, an ill-bred tone, an angular movement,
everything that betrays a coarse fibre and cheap training. As a general
thing, you do not get elegance short of two or three removes from the
soil, out of which our best blood doubtless comes,--quite as good, no
doubt, as if it came from those old prize-fighters with iron pots on
their heads, to whom some great people are so fond of tracing their
descent through a line of small artisans and petty shopkeepers whose
veins have held "base" fluid enough to fill the Cloaca Maxima!
Does not money go everywhere?--said the Model.
Almost. And with good reason. For though there are numerous exceptions,
rich people are, as I said, commonly altogether the most agreeable
companions. The influence of a fine house, graceful furniture, good
libraries, well-ordered tables, trim servants, and, above all, a position
so secure that one becomes unconscious of it, gives a harmony and
refinement to the character and manners which we feel, if we cannot
explain their charm. Yet we can get at the reason of it by thinking a
little.
All these appliances are to shield the sensibility from disagreeable
contacts, and to soothe it by varied natural and artificial influences.
In this way the mind, the taste, the feelings, grow delicate, just as the
hands grow white and soft when saved from toil and incased in soft
gloves. The whole nature becomes subdued into suavity. I confess I like
the quality ladies better than the common kind even of literary ones.
They have n't read the last book, perhaps, but they attend better to you
when you are talking to them. If they are never learned, they make up for
it in tact and elegance. Besides, I think, on the whole, there is less
self-assertion in diamonds than in dogmas. I don't know where you will
find a sweeter portrait of humility than in Esther, the poor play-girl of
King Ahasuerus; yet Esther put on her royal apparel when she went before
her lord. I have no doubt she was a more gracious and agreeable person
than Deborah, who judged the people and wrote the story of Sisera. The
wisest woman you talk with is ignorant of something that you know, but an
elegant woman never forgets her elegance.
Dowdyism is clearly an expression of imperfect vitality. The highest
fashion is intensely alive,--not alive necessarily to the truest and best
things, but with its blood tingling, as it were, in all its extremities
and to the farthest point of its surface, so that the feather in its
bonnet is as fresh as the crest of a fighting-cock, and the rosette on
its slipper as clean-cut and pimpant (pronounce it English fashion,--it
is a good word) as a dahlia. As a general rule, that society where
flattery is acted is much more agreeable than that where it is spoken.
Don't you see why? Attention and deference don't require you to make
fine speeches expressing your sense of unworthiness (lies) and returning
all the compliments paid you. This is one reason.
--A woman of sense ought to be above flattering any man,--said the Model.
[My reflection. Oh! oh! no wonder you did n't get married. Served you
right.] My remark. Surely, Madam,--if you mean by flattery telling
people boldly to their faces that they are this or that, which they are
not. But a woman who does not carry about with her wherever she goes a
halo of good feeling and desire to make everybody contented,--an
atmosphere of grace, mercy, and peace, of at least six feet radius, which
wraps every human being upon whom she voluntarily bestows her presence,
and so flatters him with the comfortable thought that she is rather glad
he is alive than otherwise, isn't worth the trouble of talking to, as a
woman; she may do well enough to hold discussions with.
--I don't think the Model exactly liked this. She said,--a little
spitefully, I thought,--that a sensible man might stand a little praise,
but would of course soon get sick of it, if he were in the habit of
getting much.
Oh, yes,--I replied,--just as men get sick of tobacco. It is notorious
how apt they are to get tired of that vegetable.
--That 's so!--said the young fellow John,--I've got tired of my cigars
and burnt 'em all up.
I am heartily glad to hear it,--said the Model,--I wish they were all
disposed of in the same way.
So do I,--said the young fellow John.
Can't you get your friends to unite with you in committing those odious
instruments of debauchery to the flames in which you have consumed your
own?
I wish I could,--said the young fellow John.
It would be a noble sacrifice,--said the Model, and every American woman
would be grateful to you. Let us burn them all in a heap out in the
yard.
That a'n't my way,--said the young fellow John;--I burn 'em one 't'
time,--little end in my mouth and big end outside.
--I watched for the effect of this sudden change of programme, when it
should reach the calm stillness of the Model's interior apprehension, as
a boy watches for the splash of a stone which he has dropped into a well.
But before it had fairly reached the water, poor Iris, who had followed
the conversation with a certain interest until it turned this sharp
corner, (for she seems rather to fancy the young fellow John,) laughed
out such a clear, loud laugh, that it started us all off, as the
locust-cry of some full-throated soprano drags a multitudinous chorus
after it. It was plain that some dam or other had broken in the soul of
this young girl, and she was squaring up old scores of laughter, out of
which she had been cheated, with a grand flood of merriment that swept
all before it. So we had a great laugh all round, in which the
Model--who, if she had as many virtues as there are spokes to a wheel,
all compacted with a personality as round and complete as its tire, yet
wanted that one little addition of grace, which seems so small, and is as
important as the linchpin in trundling over the rough ways of life--had
not the tact to join. She seemed to be "stuffy" about it, as the young
fellow John said. In fact, I was afraid the joke would have cost us both
our new lady-boarders. It had no effect, however, except, perhaps, to
hasten the departure of the elder of the two, who could, on the whole, be
spared.
--I had meant to make this note of our conversation a text for a few
axioms on the matter of breeding. But it so happened, that, exactly at
this point of my record, a very distinguished philosopher, whom several
of our boarders and myself go to hear, and whom no doubt many of my
readers follow habitually, treated this matter of manners. Up to this
point, if I have been so fortunate as to coincide with him in opinion,
and so unfortunate as to try to express what he has more felicitously
said, nobody is to blame; for what has been given thus far was all
written before the lecture was delivered. But what shall I do now? He
told us it was childish to lay down rules for deportment,--but he could
not help laying down a few.
Thus,--Nothing so vulgar as to be in a hurry. True, but hard of
application. People with short legs step quickly, because legs are
pendulums, and swing more times in a minute the shorter they are.
Generally a natural rhythm runs through the whole organization: quick
pulse, fast breathing, hasty speech, rapid trains of thought, excitable
temper. Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks
of good-breeding. Vulgar persons can't sit still, or, at least, they
must work their limbs or features.
Talking of one's own ails and grievances.--Bad enough, but not so bad as
insulting the person you talk with by remarking on his ill-looks, or
appealing to notice any of his personal peculiarities.
Apologizing.--A very desperate habit,--one that is rarely cured. Apology
is only egotism wrong side out. Nine times out of ten, the first thing a
man's companion knows of his shortcoming is from his apology. It is
mighty presumptuous on your part to suppose your small failures of so
much consequence that you must make a talk about them.
Good dressing, quiet ways, low tones of voice, lips that can wait, and
eyes that do not wander,--shyness of personalities, except in certain
intimate communions,--to be light in hand in conversation, to have ideas,
but to be able to make talk, if necessary, without them,--to belong to
the company you are in, and not to yourself,--to have nothing in your
dress or furniture so fine that you cannot afford to spoil it and get
another like it, yet to preserve the harmonies, throughout your person
and--dwelling: I should say that this was a fair capital of manners to
begin with.
Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an
overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our
generic humanity. It is just here that the very highest society asserts
its superior breeding. Among truly elegant people of the highest ton,
you will find more real equality in social intercourse than in a country
village. As nuns drop their birth-names and become Sister Margaret and
Sister Mary, so high-bred people drop their personal distinctions and
become brothers and sisters of conversational charity. Nor are
fashionable people without their heroism. I believe there are men who
have shown as much self-devotion in carrying a lone wall-flower down to
the supper-table as ever saint or martyr in the act that has canonized
his name. There are Florence Nightingales of the ballroom, whom nothing
can hold back from their errands of mercy. They find out the red-handed,
gloveless undergraduate of bucolic antecedents, as he squirms in his
corner, and distill their soft words upon him like dew upon the green
herb. They reach even the poor relation, whose dreary apparition saddens
the perfumed atmosphere of the sumptuous drawing-room. I have known one
of these angels ask, of her own accord, that a desolate middle-aged man,
whom nobody seemed to know, should be presented to her by the hostess.
He wore no shirt-collar,--he had on black gloves,--and was flourishing a
red bandanna handkerchief! Match me this, ye proud children of poverty,
who boast of your paltry sacrifices for each other! Virtue in humble
life! What is that to the glorious self-renunciation of a martyr in
pearls and diamonds? As I saw this noble woman bending gracefully before
the social mendicant,--the white billows of her beauty heaving under the
foam of the traitorous laces that half revealed them,--I should have wept
with sympathetic emotion, but that tears, except as a private
demonstration, are an ill-disguised expression of self-consciousness and
vanity, which is inadmissible in good society.
I have sometimes thought, with a pang, of the position in which political
chance or contrivance might hereafter place some one of our
fellow-citizens. It has happened hitherto, so far as my limited
knowledge goes, that the President of the United States has always been
what might be called in general terms a gentleman. But what if at some
future time the choice of the people should fall upon one on whom that
lofty title could not, by any stretch of charity, be bestowed? This may
happen,--how soon the future only knows. Think of this miserable man of
coming political possibilities,--an unpresentable boor sucked into office
by one of those eddies in the flow of popular sentiment which carry
straws and chips into the public harbor, while the prostrate trunks of
the monarchs of the forest hurry down on the senseless stream to the gulf
of political oblivion! Think of him, I say, and of the concentrated gaze
of good society through its thousand eyes, all confluent, as it were, in
one great burning-glass of ice that shrivels its wretched object in fiery
torture, itself cold as the glacier of an unsunned cavern! No,--there
will be angels of good-breeding then as now, to shield the victim of free
institutions from himself and from his torturers. I can fancy a lovely
woman playfully withdrawing the knife which he would abuse by making it
an instrument for the conveyance of food,--or, failing in this kind
artifice, sacrificing herself by imitating his use of that implement; how
much harder than to plunge it into her bosom, like Lucretia! I can see
her studying in his provincial dialect until she becomes the Champollion
of New England or Western or Southern barbarisms. She has learned that
haow means what; that think-in' is the same thing as thinking, or she has
found out the meaning of that extraordinary mono syllable, which no
single-tongued phonographer can make legible, prevailing on the banks of
the Hudson and at its embouchure, and elsewhere,--what they say when they
think they say first, (fe-eest,--fe as in the French le),--or that cheer
means chair,--or that urritation means irritation,--and so of other
enormities. Nothing surprises her. The highest breeding, you know,
comes round to the Indian standard,--to take everything coolly,--nil
admirari,--if you happen to be learned and like the Roman phrase for the
same thing.
If you like the company of people that stare at you from head to foot to
see if there is a hole in your coat, or if you have not grown a little
older, or if your eyes are not yellow with jaundice, or if your
complexion is not a little faded, and so on, and then convey the fact to
you, in the style in which the Poor Relation addressed the
divinity-student,--go with them as much as you like. I hate the sight of
the wretches. Don't for mercy's sake think I hate them; the distinction
is one my friend or I drew long ago. No matter where you find such
people; they are clowns.
The rich woman who looks and talks in this way is not half so much a lady
as her Irish servant, whose pretty "saving your presence," when she has
to say something which offends her natural sense of good manners, has a
hint in it of the breeding of courts, and the blood of old Milesian
kings, which very likely runs in her veins,--thinned by two hundred years
of potato, which, being an underground fruit, tends to drag down the
generations that are made of it to the earth from which it came, and,
filling their veins with starch, turn them into a kind of human
vegetable.
I say, if you like such people, go with them. But I am going to make a
practical application of the example at the beginning of this particular
record, which some young people who are going to choose professional
advisers by-and-by may remember and thank me for. If you are making
choice of a physician, be sure you get one, if possible, with a cheerful
and serene countenance. A physician is not--at least, ought not to
be--an executioner; and a sentence of death on his face is as bad as a
warrant for execution signed by the Governor. As a general rule, no man
has a right to tell another by word or look that he is going to die. It
may be necessary in some extreme cases; but as a rule, it is the last
extreme of impertinence which one human being can offer to another. "You
have killed me," said a patient once to a physician who had rashly told
him he was incurable. He ought to have lived six months, but he was dead
in six' weeks. If we will only let Nature and the God of Nature alone,
persons will commonly learn their condition as early as they ought to
know it, and not be cheated out of their natural birthright of hope of
recovery, which is intended to accompany sick people as long as life is
comfortable, and is graciously replaced by the hope of heaven, or at
least of rest, when life has become a burden which the bearer is ready to
let fall.
Underbred people tease their sick and dying friends to death. The chance
of a gentleman or lady with a given mortal ailment to live a certain time
is as good again as that of the common sort of coarse people. As you go
down the social scale, you reach a point at length where the common talk
in sick rooms is of churchyards and sepulchres, and a kind of perpetual
vivisection is forever carried on, upon the person of the miserable
sufferer.
And so, in choosing your clergyman, other things being equal, prefer the
one of a wholesome and cheerful habit of mind and body. If you can get
along with people who carry a certificate in their faces that their
goodness is so great as to make them very miserable, your children
cannot. And whatever offends one of these little ones cannot be right in
the eyes of Him who loved them so well.
After all, as you are a gentleman or a lady, you will probably select
gentlemen for your bodily and spiritual advisers, and then all will be
right.
This repetition of the above words,--gentleman and lady,--which could not
be conveniently avoided, reminds me what strange uses are made of them by
those who ought to know what they mean. Thus, at a marriage ceremony,
once, of two very excellent persons who had been at service, instead of,
Do you take this man, etc.? and, Do you take this woman? how do you think
the officiating clergyman put the questions? It was, Do you, Miss So and
So, take this GENTLEMAN? and, Do you, Mr. This or That, take this LADY?!
What would any English duchess, ay, or the Queen of England herself, have
thought, if the Archbishop of Canterbury had called her and her
bridegroom anything but plain woman and man at such a time?
I don't doubt the Poor Relation thought it was all very fine, if she
happened to be in the church; but if the worthy man who uttered these
monstrous words--monstrous in such a connection--had known the ludicrous
surprise, the convulsion of inward disgust and contempt, that seized upon
many of the persons who were present,--had guessed what a sudden flash of
light it threw on the Dutch gilding, the pinchbeck, the shabby, perking
pretension belonging to certain social layers,--so inherent in their
whole mode of being, that the holiest offices of religion cannot exclude
its impertinences,--the good man would have given his marriage-fee twice
over to recall that superb and full-blown vulgarism. Any persons whom it
could please could have no better notion of what the words referred to
signify than of the meaning of apsides and asymptotes.
MAN! Sir! WOMAN! Sir! Gentility is a fine thing, not to be
undervalued, as I have been trying to explain; but humanity comes before
that.
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
The beauty of that plainness of speech and manners which comes from the
finest training is not to be understood by those whose habitat is below a
certain level. Just as the exquisite sea-anemones and all the graceful
ocean-flowers die out at some fathoms below the surface, the elegances
and suavities of life die out one by one as we sink through the social
scale. Fortunately, the virtues are more tenacious of life, and last
pretty well until we get down to the mud of absolute pauperism, where
they do not flourish greatly.
--I had almost forgotten about our boarders. As the Model of all the
Virtues is about to leave us, I find myself wondering what is the reason
we are not all very sorry. Surely we all like good persons. She is a
good person. Therefore we like her.--Only we don't.
This brief syllogism, and its briefer negative, involving the principle
which some English conveyancer borrowed from a French wit and embodied in
the lines by which Dr. Fell is made unamiably immortal, this syllogism, I
say, is one that most persons have had occasion to construct and
demolish, respecting somebody or other, as I have done for the Model.
"Pious and painefull." Why has that excellent old phrase gone out of
use? Simply because these good painefull or painstaking persons proved
to be such nuisances in the long run, that the word "painefull" came,
before people thought of it, to mean pain-giving instead of painstaking.
--So, the old fellah's off to-morrah,--said the young man John.
Old fellow?--said I,--whom do you mean?
Why, the one that came with our little beauty, the old fellah in
petticoats.
--Now that means something,--said I to myself.--These rough young rascals
very often hit the nail on the head, if they do strike with their eyes
shut. A real woman does a great many things without knowing why she does
them; but these pattern machines mix up their intellects with everything
they do, just like men. They can't help it, no doubt; but we can't help
getting sick of them, either. Intellect is to a woman's nature what her
watch-spring skirt is to her dress; it ought to underlie her silks and
embroideries, but not to show itself too staringly on the outside.---You
don't know, perhaps, but I will tell you; the brain is the palest of all
the internal organs, and the heart the reddest. Whatever comes from the
brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from
the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace.
The young man John did not hear my soliloquy, of course, but sent up one
more bubble from our sinking conversation, in the form of a statement,
that she was at liberty to go to a personage who receives no visits, as
is commonly supposed, from virtuous people.
Why, I ask again, (of my reader,) should a person who never did anybody
any wrong, but, on the contrary, is an estimable and intelligent, nay, a
particularly enlightened and exemplary member of society, fail to inspire
interest, love, and devotion? Because of the reversed current in the
flow of thought and emotion. The red heart sends all its instincts up to
the white brain to be analyzed, chilled, blanched, and so become pure
reason, which is just exactly what we do not want of woman as woman. The
current should run the other-way. The nice, calm, cold thought, which in
women shapes itself so rapidly that they hardly know it as thought,
should always travel to the lips via the heart. It does so in those
women whom all love and admire. It travels the wrong way in the Model.
That is the reason why the Little Gentleman said "I hate her, I hate
her." That is the reason why the young man John called her the "old
fellah," and banished her to the company of the great Unpresentable. That
is the reason why I, the Professor, am picking her to pieces with scalpel
and forceps. That is the reason why the young girl whom she has
befriended repays her kindness with gratitude and respect, rather than
with the devotion and passionate fondness which lie sleeping beneath the
calmness of her amber eyes. I can see her, as she sits between this
estimable and most correct of personages and the misshapen, crotchety,
often violent and explosive little man on the other side of her, leaning
and swaying towards him as she speaks, and looking into his sad eyes as
if she found some fountain in them at which her soul could quiet its
thirst.
Women like the Model are a natural product of a chilly climate and high
culture. It is not
"The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr with Aurora playing,"
when the two meet
"---on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,"
that claim such women as their offspring. It is rather the east wind, as
it blows out of the fogs of Newfoundland, and clasps a clear-eyed wintry
noon on the chill bridal couch of a New England ice-quarry.--Don't throw
up your cap now, and hurrah as if this were giving up everything, and
turning against the best growth of our latitudes,--the daughters of the
soil. The brain-women never interest us like the heart women; white
roses please less than red. But our Northern seasons have a narrow green
streak of spring, as well as a broad white zone of winter,--they have a
glowing band of summer and a golden stripe of autumn in their
many-colored wardrobe; and women are born to us that wear all these hues
of earth and heaven in their souls. Our ice-eyed brain-women are really
admirable, if we only ask of them just what they can give, and no more.
Only compare them, talking or writing, with one of those babbling,
chattering dolls, of warmer latitudes, who do not know enough even to
keep out of print, and who are interesting to us only as specimens of
arrest of development for our psychological cabinets.
Good-bye, Model of all the Virtues! We can spare you now. A little
clear perfection, undiluted with human weakness, goes a great way. Go! be
useful, be honorable and honored, be just, be charitable, talk pure
reason, and help to disenchant the world by the light of an achromatic
understanding. Goodbye! Where is my Beranger? I must read a verse or
two of "Fretillon."
Fair play for all. But don't claim incompatible qualities for anybody.
Justice is a very rare virtue in our community. Everything that public
sentiment cares about is put into a Papin's digester, and boiled under
high pressure till all is turned into one homogeneous pulp, and the very
bones give up their jelly. What are all the strongest epithets of our
dictionary to us now? The critics and politicians, and especially the
philanthropists, have chewed them, till they are mere wads of
syllable-fibre, without a suggestion of their old pungency and power.
Justice! A good man respects the rights even of brute matter and
arbitrary symbols. If he writes the same word twice in succession, by
accident, he always erases the one that stands second; has not the
first-comer the prior right? This act of abstract justice, which I trust
many of my readers, like myself, have often performed, is a curious
anti-illustration, by the way, of the absolute wickedness of human
dispositions. Why doesn't a man always strike out the first of the two
words, to gratify his diabolical love of injustice?
So, I say, we owe a genuine, substantial tribute of respect to these
filtered intellects which have left their womanhood on the strainer. They
are so clear that it is a pleasure at times to look at the world of
thought through them. But the rose and purple tints of richer natures
they cannot give us, and it is not just to them to ask it.
Fashionable society gets at these rich natures very often in a way one
would hardly at first think of. It loves vitality above all things,
sometimes disguised by affected languor, always well kept under by the
laws of good-breeding,--but still it loves abundant life, opulent and
showy organizations,--the spherical rather than the plane trigonometry of
female architecture,--plenty of red blood, flashing eyes, tropical
voices, and forms that bear the splendors of dress without growing pale
beneath their lustre. Among these you will find the most delicious women
you will ever meet,--women whom dress and flattery and the round of city
gayeties cannot spoil,--talking with whom, you forget their diamonds and
laces,--and around whom all the nice details of elegance, which the
cold-blooded beauty next them is scanning so nicely, blend in one
harmonious whole, too perfect to be disturbed by the petulant sparkle of
a jewel, or the yellow glare of a bangle, or the gay toss of a feather.
There are many things that I, personally, love better than fashion or
wealth. Not to speak of those highest objects of our love and loyalty, I
think I love ease and independence better than the golden slavery of
perpetual matinees and soirees, or the pleasures of accumulation.
But fashion and wealth are two very solemn realities, which the frivolous
class of moralists have talked a great deal of silly stuff about.
Fashion is only the attempt to realize Art in living forms and social
intercourse. What business has a man who knows nothing about the
beautiful, and cannot pronounce the word view, to talk about fashion to a
set of people who, if one of the quality left a card at their doors,
would contrive to keep it on the very top of their heap of the names of
their two-story acquaintances, till it was as yellow as the Codex
Vaticanus?
Wealth, too,--what an endless repetition of the same foolish trivialities
about it! Take the single fact of its alleged uncertain tenure and
transitory character. In old times, when men were all the time fighting
and robbing each other,--in those tropical countries where the Sabeans
and the Chaldeans stole all a man's cattle and camels, and there were
frightful tornadoes and rains of fire from heaven, it was true enough
that riches took wings to themselves not unfrequently in a very
unexpected way. But, with common prudence in investments, it is not so
now. In fact, there is nothing earthly that lasts so well, on the whole,
as money. A man's learning dies with him; even his virtues fade out of
remembrance, but the dividends on the stocks he bequeaths to his children
live and keep his memory green.
I do not think there is much courage or originality in giving utterance
to truths that everybody knows, but which get overlaid by conventional
trumpery. The only distinction which it is necessary to point out to
feeble-minded folk is this: that, in asserting the breadth and depth of
that significance which gives to fashion and fortune their tremendous
power, we do not indorse the extravagances which often disgrace the one,
nor the meanness which often degrades the other.
A remark which seems to contradict a universally current opinion is not
generally to be taken "neat," but watered with the ideas of common-sense
and commonplace people. So, if any of my young friends should be tempted
to waste their substance on white kids and "all-rounds," or to insist on
becoming millionaires at once, by anything I have said, I will give them
references to some of the class referred to, well known to the public as
providers of literary diluents, who will weaken any truth so that there
is not an old woman in the land who cannot take it with perfect impunity.
I am afraid some of the blessed saints in diamonds will think I mean to
flatter them. I hope not;--if I do, set it down as a weakness. But there
is so much foolish talk about wealth and fashion, (which, of course, draw
a good many heartless and essentially vulgar people into the glare of
their candelabra, but which have a real respectability and meaning, if we
will only look at them stereoscopically, with both eyes instead of one,)
that I thought it a duty to speak a few words for them. Why can't
somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says,
and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?
Lest my parish should suppose we have forgotten graver matters in
these lesser topics, I beg them to drop these trifles and read the
following lesson for the day.
THE TWO STREAMS.
Behold the rocky wall
That down its sloping sides
Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall,
In rushing river-tides!
Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebble's edge,
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.
The slender rill had strayed,
But for the slanting stone,
To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid
Of foam-flecked Oregon.
So from the heights of Will
Life's parting stream descends,
And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bends,
From the same cradle's side,
From the same mother's knee,
--One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the Peaceful Sea!
VII
Our landlady's daughter is a young lady of some pretensions to gentility.
She wears her bonnet well back on her head, which is known by all to be a
mark of high breeding. She wears her trains very long, as the great
ladies do in Europe. To be sure, their dresses are so made only to sweep
the tapestried floors of chateaux and palaces; as those odious
aristocrats of the other side do not go draggling through the mud in
silks and satins, but, forsooth, must ride in coaches when they are in
full dress. It is true, that, considering various habits of the American
people, also the little accidents which the best-kept sidewalks are
liable to, a lady who has swept a mile of them is not exactly in such a
condition that one would care to be her neighbor. But then there is no
need of being so hard on these slight weaknesses of the poor, dear women
as our little deformed gentleman was the other day.
--There are no such women as the Boston women, Sir,--he said. Forty-two
degrees, north latitude, Rome, Sir, Boston, Sir! They had grand women in
old Rome, Sir,--and the women bore such men--children as never the world
saw before. And so it was here, Sir. I tell you, the revolution the
Boston boys started had to run in woman's milk before it ran in man's
blood, Sir!
But confound the make-believe women we have turned loose in our
streets!--where do they come from? Not out of Boston parlors, I trust.
Why, there is n't a beast or a bird that would drag its tail through the
dirt in the way these creatures do their dresses. Because a queen or a
duchess wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of-all-work or a
factory-girl thinks she must make herself a nuisance by trailing through
the street, picking up and carrying about with her pah!--that's what I
call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow. Making believe be
what you are not is the essence of vulgarity. Show over dirt is the one
attribute of vulgar people. If any man can walk behind one of these women
and see what she rakes up as she goes, and not feel squeamish, he has got
a tough stomach. I wouldn't let one of 'em into my room without serving
'em as David served Saul at the cave in the wilderness,--cut off his
skirts, Sir! cut off his skirts!
I suggested, that I had seen some pretty stylish ladies who offended in
the way he condemned.
Stylish women, I don't doubt,--said the Little Gentleman.--Don't tell me
that a true lady ever sacrifices the duty of keeping all about her sweet
and clean to the wish of making a vulgar show. I won't believe it of a
lady. There are some things that no fashion has any right to touch, and
cleanliness is one of those things. If a woman wishes to show that her
husband or her father has got money, which she wants and means to spend,
but doesn't know how, let her buy a yard or two of silk and pin it to her
dress when she goes out to walk, but let her unpin it before she goes
into the house;--there may be poor women that will think it worth
disinfecting. It is an insult to a respectable laundress to carry such
things into a house for her to deal with. I don't like the Bloomers any
too well,--in fact, I never saw but one, and she--or he, or it--had a mob
of boys after her, or whatever you call the creature, as if she had been
a-----
The Little Gentleman stopped short,--flushed somewhat, and looked round
with that involuntary, suspicious glance which the subjects of any bodily
misfortune are very apt to cast round them. His eye wandered over the
company, none of whom, excepting myself and one other, had, probably,
noticed the movement. They fell at last on Iris,--his next neighbor, you
remember.
--We know in a moment, on looking suddenly at a person, if that person's
eyes have been fixed on us.
Sometimes we are conscious of it before we turn so as to see the person.
Strange secrets of curiosity, of impertinence, of malice, of love, leak
out in this way. There is no need of Mrs. Felix Lorraine's reflection in
the mirror, to tell us that she is plotting evil for us behind our backs.
We know it, as we know by the ominous stillness of a child that some
mischief or other is going-on. A young girl betrays, in a moment, that
her eyes have been feeding on the face where you find them fixed, and
not merely brushing over it with their pencils of blue or brown light.
A certain involuntary adjustment assimilates us, you may also observe, to
that upon which we look. Roses redden the cheeks of her who stoops to
gather them, and buttercups turn little people's chins yellow. When we
look at a vast landscape, our chests expand as if we would enlarge to
fill it. When we examine a minute object, we naturally contract, not
only our foreheads, but all our dimensions. If I see two men wrestling, I
wrestle too, with my limbs and features. When a country-fellow comes
upon the stage, you will see twenty faces in the boxes putting on the
bumpkin expression. There is no need of multiplying instances to reach
this generalization; every person and thing we look upon puts its special
mark upon us. If this is repeated often enough, we get a permanent
resemblance to it, or, at least, a fixed aspect which we took from it.
Husband and wife come to look alike at last, as has often been noticed.
It is a common saying of a jockey, that he is "all horse"; and I have
often fancied that milkmen get a stiff, upright carriage, and an angular
movement of the arm, that remind one of a pump and the working of its
handle.
All this came in by accident, just because I happened to mention that the
Little Gentleman found that Iris had been looking at him with her soul in
her eyes, when his glance rested on her after wandering round the
company. What he thought, it is hard to say; but the shadow of suspicion
faded off from his face, and he looked calmly into the amber eyes,
resting his cheek upon the hand that wore the red jewel.
--If it were a possible thing,--women are such strange creatures! Is
there any trick that love and their own fancies do not play them? Just
see how they marry! A woman that gets hold of a bit of manhood is like
one of those Chinese wood-carvers who work on any odd, fantastic root
that comes to hand, and, if it is only bulbous above and bifurcated
below, will always contrive to make a man--such as he is--out of it. I
should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a Gorilla,
that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.
--A child,--yes, if you choose to call her so, but such a child! Do you
know how Art brings all ages together? There is no age to the angels and
ideal human forms among which the artist lives, and he shares their youth
until his hand trembles and his eye grows dim. The youthful painter talks
of white-bearded Leonardo as if he were a brother, and the veteran
forgets that Raphael died at an age to which his own is of patriarchal
antiquity.
But why this lover of the beautiful should be so drawn to one whom Nature
has wronged so deeply seems hard to explain. Pity, I suppose. They say
that leads to love.
--I thought this matter over until I became excited and curious, and
determined to set myself more seriously at work to find out what was
going on in these wild hearts and where their passionate lives were
drifting. I say wild hearts and passionate lives, because I think I can
look through this seeming calmness of youth and this apparent feebleness
of organization, and see that Nature, whom it is very hard to cheat, is
only waiting as the sapper waits in his mine, knowing that all is in
readiness and the slow-match burning quietly down to the powder. He will
leave it by-and-by, and then it will take care of itself.
One need not wait to see the smoke coming through the roof of a house and
the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is on
fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud, but
very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible.
There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting
shingles. Also a sharp pyroligneous-acid pungency in the air that stings
one's eyes. Let us get up and see what is going on.--Oh,--oh,--oh! do
you know what has got hold of you? It is the great red dragon that is
born of the little red eggs we call sparks, with his hundred blowing red
manes, and his thousand lashing red tails, and his multitudinous red eyes
glaring at every crack and key-hole, and his countless red tongues
lapping the beams he is going to crunch presently, and his hot breath
warping the panels and cracking the glass and making old timber sweat
that had forgotten it was ever alive with sap. Run for your life! leap!
or you will be a cinder in five minutes, that nothing but a coroner would
take for the wreck of a human being!
If any gentleman will have the kindness to stop this run-away comparison,
I shall be much obliged to him. All I intended to say was, that we need
not wait for hearts to break out in flames to know that they are full of
combustibles and that a spark has got among them. I don't pretend to say
or know what it is that brings these two persons together;--and when I
say together, I only mean that there is an evident affinity of some kind
or other which makes their commonest intercourse strangely significant,
as that each seems to understand a look or a word of the other. When the
young girl laid her hand on the Little Gentleman's arm,--which so greatly
shocked the Model, you may remember,--I saw that she had learned the
lion-tamer's secret. She masters him, and yet I can see she has a kind
of awe of him, as the man who goes into the cage has of the monster that
he makes a baby of.
One of two things must happen. The first is love, downright love, on the
part of this young girl, for the poor little misshapen man. You may
laugh, if you like. But women are apt to love the men who they think
have the largest capacity of loving;--and who can love like one that has
thirsted all his life long for the smile of youth and beauty, and seen it
fly his presence as the wave ebbed from the parched lips of him whose
fabled punishment is the perpetual type of human longing and
disappointment? What would become of him, if this fresh soul should
stoop upon him in her first young passion, as the flamingo drops out of
the sky upon some lonely and dark lagoon in the marshes of Cagliari, with
a flutter of scarlet feathers and a kindling of strange fires in the
shadowy waters that hold her burning image?
--Marry her, of course?--Why, no, not of course. I should think the
chance less, on the whole, that he would be willing to marry her than she
to marry him.
There is one other thing that might happen. If the interest he awakes in
her gets to be a deep one, and yet has nothing of love in it, she will
glance off from him into some great passion or other. All excitements run
to love in women of a certain--let us not say age, but youth. An
electrical current passing through a coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar
of iron lying within it, but not touching it. So a woman is turned into
a love-magnet by a tingling current of life running round her. I should
like to see one of them balanced on a pivot properly adjusted, and watch
if she did not turn so as to point north and south,--as she would, if the
love-currents are like those of the earth our mother.
Pray, do you happen to remember Wordsworth's "Boy of Windermere"? This
boy used to put his hands to his mouth, and shout aloud, mimicking the
hooting of the owls, who would answer him
"with quivering peals,
And long halloos and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled."
When they failed to answer him, and he hung listening intently for their
voices, he would sometimes catch the faint sound of far distant
waterfalls, or the whole scene around him would imprint itself with new
force upon his perceptions.--Read the sonnet, if you please;--it is
Wordsworth all over,--trivial in subject, solemn in style, vivid in
description, prolix in detail, true metaphysically, but immensely
suggestive of "imagination," to use a mild term, when related as an
actual fact of a sprightly youngster. All I want of it is to enforce the
principle, that, when the door of the soul is once opened to a guest,
there is no knowing who will come in next.
--Our young girl keeps up her early habit of sketching heads and
characters. Nobody is, I should think, more faithful and exact in the
drawing of the academical figures given her as lessons, but there is a
perpetual arabesque of fancies that runs round the margin of her
drawings, and there is one book which I know she keeps to run riot in,
where, if anywhere, a shrewd eye would be most likely to read her
thoughts. This book of hers I mean to see, if I can get at it honorably.
I have never yet crossed the threshold of the Little Gentleman's chamber.
How he lives, when he once gets within it, I can only guess. His hours
are late, as I have said; often, on waking late in the night, I see the
light through cracks in his window-shutters on the wall of the house
opposite. If the times of witchcraft were not over, I should be afraid
to be so close a neighbor to a place from which there come such strange
noises. Sometimes it is the dragging of something heavy over the floor,
that makes me shiver to hear it,--it sounds so like what people that
kill other people have to do now and then. Occasionally I hear very
sweet strains of music,--whether of a wind or stringed instrument, or a
human voice, strange as it may seem, I have often tried to find out, but
through the partition I could not be quite sure. If I have not heard a
woman cry and moan, and then again laugh as though she would die
laughing, I have heard sounds so like them that--I am a fool to confess
it--I have covered my head with the bedclothes; for I have had a fancy in
my dreams, that I could hardly shake off when I woke up, about that
so-called witch that was his great-grandmother, or whatever it was,--a
sort of fancy that she visited the Little Gentleman,--a young woman in
old-fashioned dress, with a red ring round her white neck,--not a
neck-lace, but a dull-stain.
Of course you don't suppose that I have any foolish superstitions about
the matter,--I, the Professor, who have seen enough to take all that
nonsense out of any man's head! It is not our beliefs that frighten us
half so much as our fancies. A man not only believes, but knows he runs
a risk, whenever he steps into a railroad car; but it does n't worry him
much. On the other hand, carry that man across a pasture a little way
from some dreary country-village, and show him an old house where there
were strange deaths a good many years ago, and there are rumors of ugly
spots on the walls,--the old man hung himself in the garret, that is
certain, and ever since the country-people have called it "the haunted
house,"--the owners have n't been able to let it since the last tenants
left on account of the noises,--so it has fallen into sad decay, and the
moss grows on the rotten shingles of the roof, and the clapboards have
turned black, and the windows rattle like teeth that chatter with fear,
and the walls of the house begin to lean as if its knees were shaking,
--take the man who did n't mind the real risk of the cars to that old
house, on some dreary November evening, and ask him to sleep there
alone,--how do you think he will like it? He doesn't believe one word of
ghosts,--but then he knows, that, whether waking or sleeping, his
imagination will people the haunted chambers with ghostly images. It is
not what we believe, as I said before, that frightens us commonly, but
what we conceive. A principle that reaches a good way if I am not
mistaken. I say, then, that, if these odd sounds coming from the Little
Gentleman's chamber sometimes make me nervous, so that I cannot get to
sleep, it is not because I suppose he is engaged in any unlawful or
mysterious way. The only wicked suggestion that ever came into my head
was one that was founded on the landlady's story of his having a pile of
gold; it was a ridiculous fancy; besides, I suspect the story of sweating
gold was only one of the many fables got up to make the Jews odious and
afford a pretext for plundering them. As for the sound like a woman
laughing and crying, I never said it was a woman's voice; for, in the
first place, I could only hear indistinctly; and, secondly, he may have
an organ, or some queer instrument or other, with what they call the vox
humana stop. If he moves his bed round to get away from the window, or
for any such reason, there is nothing very frightful in that simple
operation. Most of our foolish conceits explain themselves in some such
simple way. And, yet, for all that, I confess, that, when I woke up the
other evening, and heard, first a sweet complaining cry, and then
footsteps, and then the dragging sound,--nothing but his bed, I am quite
sure,--I felt a stirring in the roots of my hair as the feasters did in
Keats's terrible poem of "Lamia."
There is nothing very odd in my feeling nervous when I happen to lie
awake and get listening for sounds. Just keep your ears open any time
after midnight, when you are lying in bed in a lone attic of a dark
night. What horrid, strange, suggestive, unaccountable noises you will
hear! The stillness of night is a vulgar error. All the dead things
seem to be alive. Crack! That is the old chest of drawers; you never
hear it crack in the daytime. Creak! There's a door ajar; you know you
shut them all.
Where can that latch be that rattles so? Is anybody trying it softly?
or, worse than any body, is----? (Cold shiver.) Then a sudden gust that
jars all the windows;--very strange!--there does not seem to be any wind
about that it belongs to. When it stops, you hear the worms boring in
the powdery beams overhead. Then steps outside,--a stray animal, no
doubt. All right,--but a gentle moisture breaks out all over you; and
then something like a whistle or a cry,--another gust of wind, perhaps;
that accounts for the rustling that just made your heart roll over and
tumble about, so that it felt more like a live rat under your ribs than a
part of your own body; then a crash of something that has fallen,--blown
over, very likely----Pater noster, qui es in coelis! for you are damp and
cold, and sitting bolt upright, and the bed trembling so that the
death-watch is frightened and has stopped ticking!
No,--night is an awful time for strange noises and secret doings. Who
ever dreamed, till one of our sleepless neighbors told us of it, of that
Walpurgis gathering of birds and beasts of prey,--foxes, and owls, and
crows, and eagles, that come from all the country round on moonshiny
nights to crunch the clams and muscles, and pick out the eyes of dead
fishes that the storm has thrown on Chelsea Beach? Our old mother Nature
has pleasant and cheery tones enough for us when she comes in her dress
of blue and gold over the eastern hill-tops; but when she follows us
up-stairs to our beds in her suit of black velvet and diamonds, every
creak of her sandals and every whisper of her lips is full of mystery and
fear.
You understand, then, distinctly, that I do not believe there is anything
about this singular little neighbor of mine which is as it should not be.
Probably a visit to his room would clear up all that has puzzled me, and
make me laugh at the notions which began, I suppose, in nightmares, and
ended by keeping my imagination at work so as almost to make me
uncomfortable at times. But it is not so easy to visit him as some of
our other boarders, for various reasons which I will not stop to mention.
I think some of them are rather pleased to get "the Professor" under
their ceilings.
The young man John, for instance, asked me to come up one day and try
some "old Burbon," which he said was A 1. On asking him what was the
number of his room, he answered, that it was forty-'leven, sky-parlor
floor, but that I shouldn't find it, if he did n't go ahead to show me
the way. I followed him to his habitat, being very willing to see in
what kind of warren he burrowed, and thinking I might pick up something
about the boarders who had excited my curiosity.
Mighty close quarters they were where the young man John bestowed himself
and his furniture; this last consisting of a bed, a chair, a bureau, a
trunk, and numerous pegs with coats and "pants" and "vests,"--as he was
in the habit of calling waist-coats and pantaloons or trousers,--hanging
up as if the owner had melted out of them. Several prints were pinned up
unframed,--among them that grand national portrait-piece, "Barnum
presenting Ossian E. Dodge to Jenny Lind," and a picture of a famous
trot, in which I admired anew the cabalistic air of that imposing array
of expressions, and especially the Italicized word, "Dan Mace names b. h.
Major Slocum," and "Hiram Woodruff names g. m. Lady Smith." "Best three
in five. Time: 2.40, 2.46, 2.50."
That set me thinking how very odd this matter of trotting horses is, as
an index of the mathematical exactness of the laws of living mechanism.
I saw Lady Suffolk trot a mile in 2.26. Flora Temple has trotted close
down to 2.20; and Ethan Allen in 2.25, or less. Many horses have trotted
their mile under 2.30; none that I remember in public as low down as
2.20. From five to ten seconds, then, in about a hundred and sixty is
the whole range of the maxima of the present race of trotting horses.
The same thing is seen in the running of men. Many can run a mile in
five minutes; but when one comes to the fractions below, they taper down
until somewhere about 4.30 the maximum is reached. Averages of masses
have been studied more than averages of maxima and minima. We know from
the Registrar-General's Reports, that a certain number of children--say
from one to two dozen--die every year in England from drinking hot water
out of spouts of teakettles. We know, that, among suicides, women and
men past a certain age almost never use fire-arms. A woman who has made
up her mind to die is still afraid of a pistol or a gun. Or is it that
the explosion would derange her costume?
I say, averages of masses we have, but our tables of maxima we owe to the
sporting men more than to the philosophers. The lesson their experience
teaches is, that Nature makes no leaps,--does nothing per saltum. The
greatest brain that ever lived, no doubt, was only a small fraction of an
idea ahead of the second best. Just look at the chess-players. Leaving
out the phenomenal exceptions, the nice shades that separate the skilful
ones show how closely their brains approximate,--almost as closely as
chronometers. Such a person is a "knight-player,"--he must have that
piece given him. Another must have two pawns. Another, "pawn and two,"
or one pawn and two moves. Then we find one who claims "pawn and move,"
holding himself, with this fractional advantage, a match for one who
would be pretty sure to beat him playing even.--So much are minds alike;
and you and I think we are "peculiar,"--that Nature broke her jelly-mould
after shaping our cerebral convolutions. So I reflected, standing and
looking at the picture.
--I say, Governor,--broke in the young man John,--them bosses '11 stay
jest as well, if you'll only set down. I've had 'em this year, and they
haven't stirred.--He spoke, and handed the chair towards me,--seating
himself, at the same time, on the end of the bed.
You have lived in this house some time?--I said,--with a note of
interrogation at the end of the statement.
Do I look as if I'd lost much flesh--said he, answering my question by
another.
No,--said I;--for that matter, I think you do credit to "the bountifully
furnished table of the excellent lady who provides so liberally for the
company that meets around her hospitable board."
[The sentence in quotation-marks was from one of those disinterested
editorials in small type, which I suspect to have been furnished by a
friend of the landlady's, and paid for as an advertisement. This
impartial testimony to the superior qualities of the establishment and
its head attracted a number of applicants for admission, and a couple of
new boarders made a brief appearance at the table. One of them was of
the class of people who grumble if they don't get canvas-backs and
woodcocks every day, for three-fifty per week. The other was subject to
somnambulism, or walking in the night, when he ought to have been asleep
in his bed. In this state he walked into several of the boarders'
chambers, his eyes wide open, as is usual with somnambulists, and, from
some odd instinct or other, wishing to know what the hour was, got
together a number of their watches, for the purpose of comparing them, as
it would seem. Among them was a repeater, belonging to our young
Marylander. He happened to wake up while the somnambulist was in his
chamber, and, not knowing his infirmity, caught hold of him and gave him
a dreadful shaking, after which he tied his hands and feet, and so left
him till morning, when he introduced him to a gentleman used to taking
care of such cases of somnambulism.]
If you, my reader, will please to skip backward, over this parenthesis,
you will come to our conversation, which it has interrupted.
It a'n't the feed,--said the young man John,--it's the old woman's looks
when a fellah lays it in too strong. The feed's well enough. After geese
have got tough, 'n' turkeys have got strong, 'n' lamb's got old, 'n'
veal's pretty nigh beef, 'n' sparragrass 's growin' tall 'n' slim 'n'
scattery about the head, 'n' green peas are gettin' so big 'n' hard
they'd be dangerous if you fired 'em out of a revolver, we get hold of
all them delicacies of the season. But it's too much like feedin' on
live folks and devourin' widdah's substance, to lay yourself out in the
eatin' way, when a fellah 's as hungry as the chap that said a turkey was
too much for one 'n' not enough for two. I can't help lookin' at the old
woman. Corned-beef-days she's tolerable calm. Roastin'-days she worries
some, 'n' keeps a sharp eye on the chap that carves. But when there's
anything in the poultry line, it seems to hurt her feelin's so to see the
knife goin' into the breast and joints comin' to pieces, that there's no
comfort in eatin'. When I cut up an old fowl and help the boarders, I
always feel as if I ought to say, Won't you have a slice of
widdah?--instead of chicken.
The young man John fell into a train of reflections which ended in his
producing a Bologna sausage, a plate of "crackers," as we Boston folks
call certain biscuits, and the bottle of whiskey described as being A 1.
Under the influence of the crackers and sausage, he grew cordial and
communicative.
It was time, I thought, to sound him as to those of our boarders who had
excited my curiosity.
What do you think of our young Iris?--I began.
Fust-rate little filly;-he said.--Pootiest and nicest little chap I've
seen since the schoolma'am left. Schoolma'am was a brown-haired
one,--eyes coffee-color. This one has got wine-colored eyes,--'n' that
's the reason they turn a fellah's head, I suppose.
This is a splendid blonde,--I said,--the other was a brunette. Which
style do you like best?
Which do I like best, boiled mutton or roast mutton?--said the young man
John. Like 'em both,--it a'n't the color of 'em makes the goodness. I
've been kind of lonely since schoolma'am went away. Used to like to look
at her. I never said anything particular to her, that I remember, but--
I don't know whether it was the cracker and sausage, or that the young
fellow's feet were treading on the hot ashes of some longing that had not
had time to cool, but his eye glistened as he stopped.
I suppose she wouldn't have looked at a fellah like me,--he said,--but I
come pretty near tryin'. If she had said, Yes, though, I shouldn't have
known what to have done with her. Can't marry a woman now-a-days till
you're so deaf you have to cock your head like a parrot to hear what she
says, and so longsighted you can't see what she looks like nearer than
arm's-length.
Here is another chance for you,--I said.--What do you want nicer than
such a young lady as Iris?
It's no use,--he answered.--I look at them girls and feel as the fellah
did when he missed catchin' the trout.--'To'od 'a' cost more butter to
cook him 'n' he's worth,--says the fellah.--Takes a whole piece o' goods
to cover a girl up now-a-days. I'd as lief undertake to keep a span of
elephants,--and take an ostrich to board, too,--as to marry one of 'em.
What's the use? Clerks and counter-jumpers ain't anything. Sparragrass
and green peas a'n't for them,--not while they're young and tender.
Hossback-ridin' a'n't for them,--except once a year, on Fast-day. And
marryin' a'n't for them. Sometimes a fellah feels lonely, and would like
to have a nice young woman, to tell her how lonely he feels. And
sometimes a fellah,--here the young man John looked very confidential,
and, perhaps, as if a little ashamed of his weakness,--sometimes a fellah
would like to have one o' them small young ones to trot on his knee and
push about in a little wagon,--a kind of a little Johnny, you know;--it's
odd enough, but, it seems to me, nobody can afford them little articles,
except the folks that are so rich they can buy everything, and the folks
that are so poor they don't want anything. It makes nice boys of us
young fellahs, no doubt! And it's pleasant to see fine young girls
sittin', like shopkeepers behind their goods, waitin', and waitin', and
waitin', 'n' no customers,--and the men lingerin' round and lookin' at
the goods, like folks that want to be customers, but have n't the money!
Do you think the deformed gentleman means to make love to Iris?--I said.
What! Little Boston ask that girl to marry him! Well, now, that's
cumin' of it a little too strong. Yes, I guess she will marry him and
carry him round in a basket, like a lame bantam: Look here!--he said,
mysteriously;--one of the boarders swears there's a woman comes to see
him, and that he has heard her singin' and screechin'. I should like to
know what he's about in that den of his. He lays low 'n' keeps
dark,--and, I tell you, there's a good many of the boarders would like to
get into his chamber, but he don't seem to want 'em. Biddy could tell
somethin' about what she's seen when she 's been to put his room to
rights. She's a Paddy 'n' a fool, but she knows enough to keep her
tongue still. All I know is, I saw her crossin' herself one day when she
came out of that room. She looked pale enough, 'n' I heard her mutterin'
somethin' or other about the Blessed Virgin. If it had n't been for the
double doors to that chamber of his, I'd have had a squint inside before
this; but, somehow or other, it never seems to happen that they're both
open at once.
What do you think he employs himself about? said I.
The young man John winked.
I waited patiently for the thought, of which this wink was the blossom,
to come to fruit in words.
I don't believe in witches,--said the young man John.
Nor I.
We were both silent for a few minutes.
--Did you ever see the young girl's drawing-books,--I said, presently.
All but one,--he answered;--she keeps a lock on that, and won't show it.
Ma'am Allen, (the young rogue sticks to that name, in speaking of the
gentleman with the diamond,) Ma'am Allen tried to peek into it one day
when she left it on the sideboard. "If you please," says she,--'n' took
it from him, 'n' gave him a look that made him curl up like a caterpillar
on a hot shovel. I only wished he had n't, and had jest given her a
little sass, for I've been takin' boxin'-lessons, 'n' I 've got a new way
of counterin' I want to try on to somebody.
--The end of all this was, that I came away from the young fellow's room,
feeling that there were two principal things that I had to live for, for
the next six weeks or six months, if it should take so long. These were,
to get a sight of the young girl's drawing-book, which I suspected had
her heart shut up in it, and to get a look into the Little Gentleman's
room.
I don't doubt you think it rather absurd that I should trouble myself
about these matters. You tell me, with some show of reason, that all I
shall find in the young girl's--book will be some outlines of angels with
immense eyes, traceries of flowers, rural sketches, and caricatures,
among which I shall probably have the pleasure of seeing my own features
figuring. Very likely. But I'll tell you what I think I shall find. If
this child has idealized the strange little bit of humanity over which
she seems to have spread her wings like a brooding dove,--if, in one of
those wild vagaries that passionate natures are so liable to, she has
fairly sprung upon him with her clasping nature, as the sea-flowers fold
about the first stray shell-fish that brushes their outspread tentacles,
depend upon it, I shall find the marks of it in this drawing-book of
hers,--if I can ever get a look at it,--fairly, of course, for I would
not play tricks to satisfy my curiosity.
Then, if I can get into this Little Gentleman's room under any fair
pretext, I shall, no doubt, satisfy myself in five minutes that he is
just like other people, and that there is no particular mystery about
him.
The night after my visit to the young man John, I made all these and many
more reflections. It was about two o'clock in the morning,--bright
starlight,--so light that I could make out the time on my
alarm-clock,--when I woke up trembling and very moist. It was the heavy
dragging sound, as I had often heard it before that waked me. Presently a
window was softly closed. I had just begun to get over the agitation
with which we always awake from nightmare dreams, when I heard the sound
which seemed to me as of a woman's voice,--the clearest, purest soprano
which one could well conceive of. It was not loud, and I could not
distinguish a word, if it was a woman's voice; but there were recurring
phrases of sound and snatches of rhythm that reached me, which suggested
the idea of complaint, and sometimes, I thought, of passionate grief and
despair. It died away at last,--and then I heard the opening of a door,
followed by a low, monotonous sound, as of one talking,--and then the
closing of a door,--and presently the light on the opposite wall
disappeared and all was still for the night.
By George! this gets interesting,--I said, as I got out of bed for a
change of night-clothes.
I had this in my pocket the other day, but thought I would n't read
it at our celebration. So I read it to the boarders instead, and
print it to finish off this record with.
ROBINSON OF LEYDEN.
He sleeps not here; in hope and prayer
His wandering flock had gone before,
But he, the shepherd, might not share
Their sorrows on the wintry shore.
Before the Speedwell's anchor swung,
Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread,
While round his feet the Pilgrims clung,
The pastor spake, and thus he said:--
"Men, brethren, sisters, children dear!
God calls you hence from over sea;
Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer,
Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee.
"Ye go to bear the saving word
To tribes unnamed and shores untrod:
Heed well the lessons ye have heard
From those old teachers taught of God.
"Yet think not unto them was lent
All light for all the coming days,
And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent
In making straight the ancient ways.
"The living fountain overflows
For every flock, for every lamb,
Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose
With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam."
He spake; with lingering, long embrace,
With tears of love and partings fond,
They floated down the creeping Maas,
Along the isle of Ysselmond.
They passed the frowning towers of Briel,
The "Hook of Holland's" shelf of sand,
And grated soon with lifting keel
The sullen shores of Fatherland.
No home for these!--too well they knew
The mitred king behind the throne;
The sails were set, the pennons flew,
And westward ho! for worlds unknown.
--And these were they who gave us birth,
The Pilgrims of the sunset wave,
Who won for us this virgin earth,
And freedom with the soil they gave.
The pastor slumbers by the Rhine,
--In alien earth the exiles lie,
--Their nameless graves our holiest shrine,
His words our noblest battle-cry!
Still cry them, and the world shall hear,
Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea!
Ye have not built by Haerlem Meer,
Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee!
VIII
There has been a sort of stillness in the atmosphere of our
boarding-house since my last record, as if something or other were going
on. There is no particular change that I can think of in the aspect of
things; yet I have a feeling as if some game of life were quietly playing
and strange forces were at work, underneath this smooth surface of
every-day boardinghouse life, which would show themselves some fine
morning or other in events, if not in catastrophes. I have been
watchful, as I said I should be, but have little to tell as yet. You may
laugh at me, and very likely think me foolishly fanciful to trouble
myself about what is going on in a middling-class household like ours.
Do as you like. But here is that terrible fact to begin with,--a
beautiful young girl, with the blood and the nerve-fibre that belong to
Nature's women, turned loose among live men.
-Terrible fact?
Very terrible. Nothing more so. Do you forget the angels who lost
heaven for the daughters of men? Do you forget Helen, and the fair women
who made mischief and set nations by the ears before Helen was born? If
jealousies that gnaw men's hearts out of their bodies,--if pangs that
waste men to shadows and drive them into raving madness or moping
melancholy,--if assassination and suicide are dreadful possibilities,
then there is always something frightful about a lovely young woman.--I
love to look at this "Rainbow," as her father used sometimes to call her,
of ours. Handsome creature that she is in forms and colors,--the very
picture, as it seems to me, of that "golden blonde" my friend whose book
you read last year fell in love with when he was a boy, (as you remember,
no doubt,)--handsome as she is, fit for a sea-king's bride, it is not her
beauty alone that holds my eyes upon her. Let me tell you one of my
fancies, and then you will understand the strange sort of fascination she
has for me.
It is in the hearts of many men and women--let me add children--that
there is a Great Secret waiting for them,--a secret of which they get
hints now and then, perhaps oftener in early than in later years. These
hints come sometimes in dreams, sometimes in sudden startling
flashes,--second wakings, as it were,--a waking out of the waking state,
which last is very apt to be a half-sleep. I have many times stopped
short and held my breath, and felt the blood leaving my cheeks, in one of
these sudden clairvoyant flashes. Of course I cannot tell what kind of a
secret this is, but I think of it as a disclosure of certain relations of
our personal being to time and space, to other intelligences, to the
procession of events, and to their First Great Cause. This secret seems
to be broken up, as it were, into fragments, so that we find here a word
and there a syllable, and then again only a letter of it; but it never is
written out for most of us as a complete sentence, in this life. I do
not think it could be; for I am disposed to consider our beliefs about
such a possible disclosure rather as a kind of premonition of an
enlargement of our faculties in some future state than as an expectation
to be fulfilled for most of us in this life. Persons, however, have
fallen into trances,--as did the Reverend William Tennent, among many
others,--and learned some things which they could not tell in our human
words.
Now among the visible objects which hint to us fragments of this infinite
secret for which our souls are waiting, the faces of women are those that
carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the great mystery. There are
women's faces, some real, some ideal, which contain something in them
that becomes a positive element in our creed, so direct and palpable a
revelation is it of the infinite purity and love. I remember two faces
of women with wings, such as they call angels, of Fra Angelico,--and I
just now came across a print of Raphael's Santa Apollina, with something
of the same quality,--which I was sure had their prototypes in the world
above ours. No wonder the Catholics pay their vows to the Queen of
Heaven! The unpoetical side of Protestantism is, that it has no women to
be worshipped.
But mind you, it is not every beautiful face that hints the Great Secret
to us, nor is it only in beautiful faces that we find traces of it.
Sometimes it looks out from a sweet sad eye, the only beauty of a plain
countenance; sometimes there is so much meaning in the lips of a woman,
not otherwise fascinating, that we know they have a message for us, and
wait almost with awe to hear their accents. But this young girl has at
once the beauty of feature and the unspoken mystery of expression. Can
she tell me anything?
Is her life a complement of mine, with the missing element in it which I
have been groping after through so many friendships that I have tired of,
and through--Hush! Is the door fast? Talking loud is a bad trick in
these curious boarding-houses.
You must have sometimes noted this fact that I am going to remind you of
and to use for a special illustration. Riding along over a rocky road,
suddenly the slow monotonous grinding of the crushing gravel changes to a
deep heavy rumble. There is a great hollow under your feet,--a huge
unsunned cavern. Deep, deep beneath you in the core of the living rock,
it arches its awful vault, and far away it stretches its winding
galleries, their roofs dripping into streams where fishes have been
swimming and spawning in the dark until their scales are white as milk
and their eyes have withered out, obsolete and useless.
So it is in life. We jog quietly along, meeting the same faces, grinding
over the same thoughts, the gravel of the soul's highway,--now and then
jarred against an obstacle we cannot crush, but must ride over or round
as we best may, sometimes bringing short up against a disappointment, but
still working along with the creaking and rattling and grating and
jerking that belong to the journey of life, even in the smoothest-rolling
vehicle. Suddenly we hear the deep underground reverberation that
reveals the unsuspected depth of some abyss of thought or passion beneath
us.
I wish the girl would go. I don't like to look at her so much, and yet I
cannot help it. Always that same expression of something that I ought to
know,--something that she was made to tell and I to hear,--lying there
ready to fall off from her lips, ready to leap out of her eyes and make a
saint of me, or a devil or a lunatic, or perhaps a prophet to tell the
truth and be hated of men, or a poet whose words shall flash upon the dry
stubble-field of worn-out thoughts and burn over an age of lies in an
hour of passion.
It suddenly occurs to me that I may have put you on the wrong track. The
Great Secret that I refer to has nothing to do with the Three Words. Set
your mind at ease about that,--there are reasons I could give you which
settle all that matter. I don't wonder, however, that you confounded the
Great Secret with the Three Words.
I LOVE YOU is all the secret that many, nay, most women have to tell.
When that is said, they are like China-crackers on the morning of the
fifth of July. And just as that little patriotic implement is made with
a slender train which leads to the magazine in its interior, so a sharp
eye can almost always see the train leading from a young girl's eye or
lip to the "I love you" in her heart. But the Three Words are not the
Great Secret I mean. No, women's faces are only one of the tablets on
which that is written in its partial, fragmentary symbols. It lies
deeper than Love, though very probably Love is a part of it. Some, I
think,--Wordsworth might be one of them,--spell out a portion of it from
certain beautiful natural objects, landscapes, flowers, and others. I can
mention several poems of his that have shadowy hints which seem to me to
come near the region where I think it lies. I have known two persons who
pursued it with the passion of the old alchemists,--all wrong evidently,
but infatuated, and never giving up the daily search for it until they
got tremulous and feeble, and their dreams changed to visions of things
that ran and crawled about their floor and ceilings, and so they died.
The vulgar called them drunkards.
I told you that I would let you know the mystery of the effect this young
girl's face produces on me. It is akin to those influences a friend of
mine has described, you may remember, as coming from certain voices. I
cannot translate it into words,--only into feelings; and these I have
attempted to shadow by showing that her face hinted that revelation of
something we are close to knowing, which all imaginative persons are
looking for either in this world or on the very threshold of the next.
You shake your head at the vagueness and fanciful incomprehensibleness of
my description of the expression in a young girl's face. You forget what
a miserable surface-matter this language is in which we try to reproduce
our interior state of being. Articulation is a shallow trick. From the
light Poh! which we toss off from our lips as we fling a nameless
scribbler's impertinence into our waste-baskets, to the gravest
utterances which comes from our throats in our moments of deepest need,
is only a space of some three or four inches. Words, which are a set of
clickings, hissings, lispings, and so on, mean very little, compared to
tones and expression of the features. I give it up; I thought I could
shadow forth in some feeble way, by their aid, the effect this young
girl's face produces on my imagination; but it is of no use. No doubt
your head aches, trying to make something of my description. If there is
here and there one that can make anything intelligible out of my talk
about the Great Secret, and who has spelt out a syllable or two of it on
some woman's face, dead or living, that is all I can expect. One should
see the person with whom he converses about such matters. There are
dreamy-eyed people to whom I should say all these things with a certainty
of being understood;--
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me
To him my tale I teach.
--I am afraid some of them have not got a spare quarter of a dollar for
this August number, so that they will never see it.
--Let us start again, just as if we had not made this ambitious attempt,
which may go for nothing, and you can have your money refunded, if you
will make the change.
This young girl, about whom I have talked so unintelligibly, is the
unconscious centre of attraction to the whole solar system of our
breakfast-table. The Little Gentleman leans towards her, and she again
seems to be swayed as by some invisible gentle force towards him. That
slight inclination of two persons with a strong affinity towards each
other, throwing them a little out of plumb when they sit side by side, is
a physical fact I have often noticed. Then there is a tendency in all
the men's eyes to converge on her; and I do firmly believe, that, if all
their chairs were examined, they would be found a little obliquely
placed, so as to favor the direction in which their occupants love to
look.
That bland, quiet old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting
opposite to me, is no exception to the rule. She brought down some
mignonette one morning, which she had grown in her chamber. She gave a
sprig to her little neighbor, and one to the landlady, and sent another
by the hand of Bridget to this old gentleman.
--Sarvant, Ma'am I Much obleeged,--he said, and put it gallantly in his
button-hole.--After breakfast he must see some of her drawings. Very fine
performances,--very fine!--truly elegant productions, truly elegant!--Had
seen Miss Linwood's needlework in London, in the year (eighteen hundred
and little or nothing, I think he said,)--patronized by the nobility and
gentry, and Her Majesty,--elegant, truly elegant productions, very fine
performances; these drawings reminded him of them;--wonderful resemblance
to Nature; an extraordinary art, painting; Mr. Copley made some very fine
pictures that he remembered seeing when he was a boy. Used to remember
some lines about a portrait Written by Mr. Cowper, beginning,
"Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last."
And with this the old gentleman fell to thinking about a dead mother of
his that he remembered ever so much younger than he now was, and looking,
not as his mother, but as his daughter should look. The dead young
mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look at him
so many, many years ago. He stood still as if in a waking dream, his
eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and they
ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the
glimmering light through which he saw them.--What is there quite so
profoundly human as an old man's memory of a mother who died in his
earlier years? Mother she remains till manhood, and by-and-by she grows
to be as a sister; and at last, when, wrinkled and bowed and broken, he
looks back upon her in her fair youth, he sees in the sweet image he
caresses, not his parent, but, as it were, his child.
If I had not seen all this in the old gentleman's face, the words with
which he broke his silence would have betrayed his train of thought.
--If they had only taken pictures then as they do now!--he said.--All
gone! all gone! nothing but her face as she leaned on the arms of her
great chair; and I would give a hundred pound for the poorest little
picture of her, such as you can buy for a shilling of anybody that you
don't want to see.--The old gentleman put his hand to his forehead so as
to shade his eyes. I saw he was looking at the dim photograph of memory,
and turned from him to Iris.
How many drawing-books have you filled,--I said,--since you began to take
lessons?--This was the first,--she answered,--since she was here; and it
was not full, but there were many separate sheets of large size she had
covered with drawings.
I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies,
principally of the human figure. Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so
forth. Limbs from statues. Hands and feet from Nature. What a superb
drawing of an arm! I don't remember it among the figures from Michel
Angelo, which seem to have been her patterns mainly. From Nature, I
think, or after a cast from Nature.--Oh!
--Your smaller studies are in this, I suppose,--I said, taking up the
drawing-book with a lock on it,--Yes,--she said.--I should like to see
her style of working on a small scale.--There was nothing in it worth
showing,--she said; and presently I saw her try the lock, which proved to
be fast. We are all caricatured in it, I haven't the least doubt. I
think, though, I could tell by her way of dealing with us what her
fancies were about us boarders. Some of them act as if they were
bewitched with her, but she does not seem to notice it much. Her
thoughts seem to be on her little neighbor more than on anybody else.
The young fellow John appears to stand second in her good graces. I
think he has once or twice sent her what the landlady's daughter calls
bo-kays of flowers,--somebody has, at any rate.--I saw a book she had,
which must have come from the divinity-student. It had a dreary
title-page, which she had enlivened with a fancy portrait of the
author,--a face from memory, apparently,--one of those faces that small
children loathe without knowing why, and which give them that inward
disgust for heaven so many of the little wretches betray, when they hear
that these are "good men," and that heaven is full of such.--The
gentleman with the diamond--the Koh-i-noor, so called by us--was not
encouraged, I think, by the reception of his packet of perfumed soap. He
pulls his purple moustache and looks appreciatingly at Iris, who never
sees him, as it should seem. The young Marylander, who I thought would
have been in love with her before this time, sometimes looks from his
corner across the long diagonal of the table, as much as to say, I wish
you were up here by me, or I were down there by you,--which would,
perhaps, be a more natural arrangement than the present one. But nothing
comes of all this,--and nothing has come of my sagacious idea of finding
out the girl's fancies by looking into her locked drawing-book.
Not to give up all the questions I was determined to solve, I made an
attempt also to work into the Little Gentleman's chamber. For this
purpose, I kept him in conversation, one morning, until he was just ready
to go up-stairs, and then, as if to continue the talk, followed him as he
toiled back to his room. He rested on the landing and faced round toward
me. There was something in his eye which said, Stop there! So we
finished our conversation on the landing. The next day, I mustered
assurance enough to knock at his door, having a pretext ready.--No
answer.--Knock again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was shut softly and
locked, and presently I heard the peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled,
misshapen boots. The bolts and the lock of the inner door were
unfastened,--with unnecessary noise, I thought,--and he came into the
passage. He pulled the inner door after him and opened the outer one at
which I stood. He had on a flowered silk dressing-gown, such as "Mr.
Copley" used to paint his old-fashioned merchant-princes in; and a
quaint-looking key in his hand. Our conversation was short, but long
enough to convince me that the Little Gentleman did not want my company
in his chamber, and did not mean to have it.
I have been making a great fuss about what is no mystery at all,--a
schoolgirl's secrets and a whimsical man's habits. I mean to give up
such nonsense and mind my own business.--Hark! What the deuse is that
odd noise in his chamber?
--I think I am a little superstitious. There were two things, when I was
a boy, that diabolized my imagination,--I mean, that gave me a distinct
apprehension of a formidable bodily shape which prowled round the
neighborhood where I was born and bred. The first was a series of marks
called the "Devil's footsteps." These were patches of sand in the
pastures, where no grass grew, where the low-bush blackberry, the
"dewberry," as our Southern neighbors call it, in prettier and more
Shakspearian language, did not spread its clinging creepers,--where even
the pale, dry, sadly-sweet "everlasting" could not grow, but all was bare
and blasted. The second was a mark in one of the public buildings near
my home,--the college dormitory named after a Colonial Governor. I do
not think many persons are aware of the existence of this mark,--little
having been said about the story in print, as it was considered very
desirable, for the sake of the Institution, to hush it up. In the
northwest corner, and on the level of the third or fourth story, there
are signs of a breach in the walls, mended pretty well, but not to be
mistaken. A considerable portion of that corner must have been carried
away, from within outward. It was an unpleasant affair; and I do not
care to repeat the particulars; but some young men had been using sacred
things in a profane and unlawful way, when the occurrence, which was
variously explained, took place. The story of the Appearance in the
chamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to the
building there could be no question; and the zig-zag line, where the
mortar is a little thicker than before, is still distinctly visible. The
queer burnt spots, called the "Devil's footsteps," had never attracted
attention before this time, though there is no evidence that they had not
existed previously, except that of the late Miss M., a "Goody," so
called, or sweeper, who was positive on the subject, but had a strange
horror of referring to an affair of which she was thought to know
something.--I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy of
impressible nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel-roofed house, with
untenanted, locked upper-chambers, and a most ghostly garret,--with the
"Devil's footsteps" in the fields behind the house and in front of it the
patched dormitory where the unexplained occurrence had taken place which
startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one of
them was epileptic from that day forward, and another, after a dreadful
season of mental conflict, took holy orders and became renowned for his
ascetic sanctity.
There were other circumstances that kept up the impression produced by
these two singular facts I have just mentioned. There was a dark
storeroom, on looking through the key-hole of which, I could dimly see a
heap of chairs and tables, and other four-footed things, which seemed to
me to have rushed in there, frightened, and in their fright to have
huddled together and climbed up on each other's backs,--as the people did
in that awful crush where so many were killed, at the execution of
Holloway and Haggerty. Then the Lady's portrait, up-stairs, with the
sword-thrusts through it,--marks of the British officers' rapiers,--and
the tall mirror in which they used to look at their red coats,--confound
them for smashing its mate?--and the deep, cunningly wrought arm-chair in
which Lord Percy used to sit while his hair was dressing;--he was a
gentleman, and always had it covered with a large peignoir, to save the
silk covering my grandmother embroidered. Then the little room
downstairs from which went the orders to throw up a bank of earth on the
hill yonder, where you may now observe a granite obelisk,--"the study" in
my father's time, but in those days the council-chamber of armed
men,--sometimes filled with soldiers; come with me, and I will show you
the "dents" left by the butts of their muskets all over the floor. With
all these suggestive objects round me, aided by the wild stories those
awful country-boys that came to live in our service brought with
them;--of contracts written in blood and left out over night, not to be
found the next morning, (removed by the Evil One, who takes his nightly
round among our dwellings, and filed away for future use,)--of dreams
coming true,--of death-signs,--of apparitions, no wonder that my
imagination got excited, and I was liable to superstitious fancies.
Jeremy Bentham's logic, by which he proved that he couldn't possibly see
a ghost is all very well-in the day-time. All the reason in the world
will never get those impressions of childhood, created by just such
circumstances as I have been telling, out of a man's head. That is the
only excuse I have to give for the nervous kind of curiosity with which I
watch my little neighbor, and the obstinacy with which I lie awake
whenever I hear anything going on in his chamber after midnight.
But whatever further observations I may have made must be deferred for
the present. You will see in what way it happened that my thoughts were
turned from spiritual matters to bodily ones, and how I got my fancy full
of material images,--faces, heads, figures, muscles, and so forth,--in
such a way that I should have no chance in this number to gratify any
curiosity you may feel, if I had the means of so doing.
Indeed, I have come pretty near omitting my periodical record this time.
It was all the work of a friend of mine, who would have it that I should
sit to him for my portrait. When a soul draws a body in the great
lottery of life, where every one is sure of a prize, such as it is, the
said soul inspects the said body with the same curious interest with
which one who has ventured into a "gift enterprise" examines the "massive
silver pencil-case" with the coppery smell and impressible tube, or the
"splendid gold ring" with the questionable specific gravity, which it has
been his fortune to obtain in addition to his purchase.
The soul, having studied the article of which it finds itself proprietor,
thinks, after a time, it knows it pretty well. But there is this
difference between its view and that of a person looking at us:--we look
from within, and see nothing but the mould formed by the elements in
which we are incased; other observers look from without, and see us as
living statues. To be sure, by the aid of mirrors, we get a few glimpses
of our outside aspect; but this occasional impression is always modified
by that look of the soul from within outward which none but ourselves can
take. A portrait is apt, therefore, to be a surprise to us. The artist
looks only from without. He sees us, too, with a hundred aspects on our
faces we are never likely to see. No genuine expression can be studied
by the subject of it in the looking-glass.
More than this; he sees us in a way in which many of our friends or
acquaintances never see us. Without wearing any mask we are conscious
of, we have a special face for each friend. For, in the first place,
each puts a special reflection of himself upon us, on the principle of
assimilation you found referred to in my last record, if you happened to
read that document. And secondly, each of our friends is capable of
seeing just so far, and no farther, into our face, and each sees in it
the particular thing that he looks for. Now the artist, if he is truly
an artist, does not take any one of these special views. Suppose he
should copy you as you appear to the man who wants your name to a
subscription-list, you could hardly expect a friend who entertains you to
recognize the likeness to the smiling face which sheds its radiance at
his board. Even within your own family, I am afraid there is a face which
the rich uncle knows, that is not so familiar to the poor relation. The
artist must take one or the other, or something compounded of the two, or
something different from either. What the daguerreotype and photograph
do is to give the features and one particular look, the very look which
kills all expression, that of self-consciousness. The artist throws you
off your guard, watches you in movement and in repose, puts your face
through its exercises, observes its transitions, and so gets the whole
range of its expression. Out of all this he forms an ideal portrait,
which is not a copy of your exact look at any one time or to any
particular person. Such a portrait cannot be to everybody what the
ungloved call "as nat'ral as life." Every good picture, therefore, must
be considered wanting in resemblance by many persons.
There is one strange revelation which comes out, as the artist shapes
your features from his outline. It is that you resemble so many
relatives to whom you yourself never had noticed any particular likeness
in your countenance.
He is at work at me now, when I catch some of these resemblances, thus:
There! that is just the look my father used to have sometimes; I never
thought I had a sign of it. The mother's eyebrow and grayish-blue eye,
those I knew I had. But there is a something which recalls a smile that
faded away from my sister's lips--how many years ago! I thought it so
pleasant in her, that I love myself better for having a trace of it.
Are we not young? Are we not fresh and blooming? Wait, a bit. The
artist takes a mean little brush and draws three fine lines, diverging
outwards from the eye over the temple. Five years.--The artist draws one
tolerably distinct and two faint lines, perpendicularly between the
eyebrows. Ten years.--The artist breaks up the contours round the mouth,
so that they look a little as a hat does that has been sat upon and
recovered itself, ready, as one would say, to crumple up again in the
same creases, on smiling or other change of feature.--Hold on! Stop
that! Give a young fellow a chance! Are we not whole years short of
that interesting period of life when Mr. Balzac says that a man, etc.,
etc., etc.?
There now! That is ourself, as we look after finishing an article,
getting a three-mile pull with the ten-foot sculls, redressing the wrongs
of the toilet, and standing with the light of hope in our eye and the
reflection of a red curtain on our cheek. Is he not a POET that painted
us?
"Blest be the art that can immortalize!"
COWPER.
--Young folks look on a face as a unit; children who go to school with
any given little John Smith see in his name a distinctive appellation,
and in his features as special and definite an expression of his sole
individuality as if he were the first created of his race: As soon as we
are old enough to get the range of three or four generations well in
hand, and to take in large family histories, we never see an individual
in a face of any stock we know, but a mosaic copy of a pattern, with
fragmentary tints from this and that ancestor. The analysis of a face
into its ancestral elements requires that it should be examined in the
very earliest infancy, before it has lost that ancient and solemn look it
brings with it out of the past eternity; and again in that brief space
when Life, the mighty sculptor, has done his work, and Death, his silent
servant, lifts the veil and lets us look at the marble lines he has
wrought so faithfully; and lastly, while a painter who can seize all the
traits of a countenance is building it up, feature after feature, from
the slight outline to the finished portrait.
--I am satisfied, that, as we grow older, we learn to look upon our
bodies more and more as a temporary possession and less and less as
identified with ourselves. In early years, while the child "feels its
life in every limb," it lives in the body and for the body to a very
great extent. It ought to be so. There have been many very interesting
children who have shown a wonderful indifference to the things of earth
and an extraordinary development of the spiritual nature. There is a
perfect literature of their biographies, all alike in their essentials;
the same "disinclination to the usual amusements of childhood "; the same
remarkable sensibility; the same docility; the same conscientiousness; in
short, an almost uniform character, marked by beautiful traits, which we
look at with a painful admiration. It will be found that most of these
children are the subjects of some constitutional unfitness for living,
the most frequent of which I need not mention. They are like the
beautiful, blushing, half-grown fruit that falls before its time because
its core is gnawed out. They have their meaning,--they do not-live in
vain,--but they are windfalls. I am convinced that many healthy children
are injured morally by being forced to read too much about these little
meek sufferers and their spiritual exercises. Here is a boy that loves
to run, swim, kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish,
tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, blow squash "tooters," cut
his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat
the widest-angled slices of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts
with his back teeth and bite out the better part of another boy's apple
with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick" knives, call names, throw
stones, knock off hats, set mousetraps, chalk doorsteps, "cut behind"
anything on wheels or runners, whistle through his teeth, "holler" Fire!
on slight evidence, run after soldiers, patronize an engine-company, or,
in his own words, "blow for tub No. 11," or whatever it may be;--isn't
that a pretty nice sort of a boy, though he has not got anything the
matter with him that takes the taste of this world out? Now, when you
put into such a hot-blooded, hard-fisted, round-cheeked little rogue's
hand a sad-looking volume or pamphlet, with the portrait of a thin,
white-faced child, whose life is really as much a training for death as
the last month of a condemned criminal's existence, what does he find in
common between his own overflowing and exulting sense of vitality and the
experiences of the doomed offspring of invalid parents? The time comes
when we have learned to understand the music of sorrow, the beauty of
resigned suffering, the holy light that plays over the pillow of those
who die before their time, in humble hope and trust. But it is not until
he has worked his way through the period of honest hearty animal
existence, which every robust child should make the most of,--not until
he has learned the use of his various faculties, which is his first
duty,--that a boy of courage and animal vigor is in a proper state to
read these tearful records of premature decay. I have no doubt that
disgust is implanted in the minds of many healthy children by early
surfeits of pathological piety. I do verily believe that He who took
children in His arms and blessed them loved the healthiest and most
playful of them just as well as those who were richest in the tuberculous
virtues. I know what I am talking about, and there are more parents in
this country who will be willing to listen to what I say than there are
fools to pick a quarrel with me. In the sensibility and the sanctity
which often accompany premature decay I see one of the most beautiful
instances of the principle of compensation which marks the Divine
benevolence. But to get the spiritual hygiene of robust natures out of
the exceptional regimen of invalids is just simply what we Professors
call "bad practice"; and I know by experience that there are worthy
people who not only try it on their own children, but actually force it
on those of their neighbors.
--Having been photographed, and stereographed, and chromatographed, or
done in colors, it only remained to be phrenologized. A polite note from
Messrs. Bumpus and Crane, requesting our attendance at their
Physiological Emporium, was too tempting to be resisted. We repaired to
that scientific Golgotha.
Messrs. Bumpus and Crane are arranged on the plan of the man and the
woman in the toy called a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm
suspended on a pivot,--so that when one comes to the door, the other
retires backwards, and vice versa. The more particular speciality of one
is to lubricate your entrance and exit,--that of the other to polish you
off phrenologically in the recesses of the establishment. Suppose
yourself in a room full of casts and pictures, before a counterful of
books with taking titles. I wonder if the picture of the brain is there,
"approved" by a noted Phrenologist, which was copied from my, the
Professor's, folio plate, in the work of Gall and Spurzheim. An extra
convolution, No. 9, Destructiveness, according to the list beneath, which
was not to be seen in the plate, itself a copy of Nature, was very
liberally supplied by the artist, to meet the wants of the catalogue of
"organs." Professor Bumpus is seated in front of a row of women,
--horn-combers and gold-beaders, or somewhere about that range of
life,--looking so credulous, that, if any Second-Advent Miller or Joe
Smith should come along, he could string the whole lot of them on his
cheapest lie, as a boy strings a dozen "shiners" on a stripped twig of
willow.
The Professor (meaning ourselves) is in a hurry, as usual; let the
horn-combers wait,--he shall be bumped without inspecting the
antechamber.
Tape round the head,--22 inches. (Come on, old 23 inches, if you think
you are the better man!)
Feels thorax and arm, and nuzzles round among muscles as those horrid old
women poke their fingers into the salt-meat on the provision-stalls at
the Quincy Market. Vitality, No. 5 or 6, or something or other.
Victuality, (organ at epigastrium,) some other number equally
significant.
Mild champooing of head now commences. 'Extraordinary revelations!
Cupidiphilous, 6! Hymeniphilous, 6 +! Paediphilous, 5! Deipniphilous,
6! Gelasmiphilous, 6! Musikiphilous, 5! Uraniphilous, 5!
Glossiphilous, 8!! and so on. Meant for a linguist.--Invaluable
information. Will invest in grammars and dictionaries immediately.--I
have nothing against the grand total of my phrenological endowments.
I never set great store by my head, and did not think Messrs. Bumpus and
Crane would give me so good a lot of organs as they did, especially
considering that I was a dead-head on that occasion. Much obliged to them
for their politeness. They have been useful in their way by calling
attention to important physiological facts. (This concession is due to
our immense bump of Candor.)
A short Lecture on Phrenology, read to the Boarders at our
Breakfast-Table.
I shall begin, my friends, with the definition of a Pseudo-science. A
Pseudo-science consists of a nomenclature, with a self-adjusting
arrangement, by which all positive evidence, or such as favors its
doctrines, is admitted, and all negative evidence, or such as tells
against it, is excluded. It is invariably connected with some lucrative
practical application. Its professors and practitioners are usually
shrewd people; they are very serious with the public, but wink and laugh
a good deal among themselves. The believing multitude consists of women
of both sexes, feeble minded inquirers, poetical optimists, people who
always get cheated in buying horses, philanthropists who insist on
hurrying up the millennium, and others of this class, with here and there
a clergyman, less frequently a lawyer, very rarely a physician, and
almost never a horse-jockey or a member of the detective police.--I do
not say that Phrenology was one of the Pseudo-sciences.
A Pseudo-science does not necessarily consist wholly of lies. It may
contain many truths, and even valuable ones. The rottenest bank starts
with a little specie. It puts out a thousand promises to pay on the
strength of a single dollar, but the dollar is very commonly a good one.
The practitioners of the Pseudo-sciences know that common minds, after
they have been baited with a real fact or two, will jump at the merest
rag of a lie, or even at the bare hook. When we have one fact found us,
we are very apt to supply the next out of our own imagination. (How many
persons can read Judges xv. 16 correctly the first time?) The
Pseudo-sciences take advantage of this.--I did not say that it was so
with Phrenology.
I have rarely met a sensible man who would not allow that there was
something in Phrenology. A broad, high forehead, it is commonly agreed,
promises intellect; one that is "villanous low" and has a huge hind-head
back of it, is wont to mark an animal nature. I have as rarely met an
unbiassed and sensible man who really believed in the bumps. It is
observed, however, that persons with what the Phrenologists call "good
heads" are more prone than others toward plenary belief in the doctrine.
It is so hard to prove a negative, that, if a man should assert that the
moon was in truth a green cheese, formed by the coagulable substance of
the Milky Way, and challenge me to prove the contrary, I might be
puzzled. But if he offer to sell me a ton of this lunar cheese, I call
on him to prove the truth of the Gaseous nature of our satellite, before
I purchase.
It is not necessary to prove the falsity of the phrenological statement.
It is only necessary to show that its truth is not proved, and cannot be,
by the common course of argument. The walls of the head are double, with
a great air-chamber between them, over the smallest and most closely
crowded "organs." Can you tell how much money there is in a safe, which
also has thick double walls, by kneading its knobs with your fingers? So
when a man fumbles about my forehead, and talks about the organs of
Individuality, Size, etc., I trust him as much as I should if he felt of
the outside of my strong-box and told me that there was a five-dollar or
a ten-dollar-bill under this or that particular rivet. Perhaps there is;
only he does n't know anything about at. But this is a point that I, the
Professor, understand, my friends, or ought to, certainly, better than
you do. The next argument you will all appreciate.
I proceed, therefore, to explain the self-adjusting mechanism of
Phrenology, which is very similar to that of the Pseudo-sciences. An
example will show it most conveniently.
A. is a notorious thief. Messrs. Bumpus and Crane examine him and find a
good-sized organ of Acquisitiveness. Positive fact for Phrenology.
Casts and drawings of A. are multiplied, and the bump does not lose in
the act of copying.--I did not say it gained.--What do you look so for?
(to the boarders.)
Presently B. turns up, a bigger thief than A. But B. has no bump at all
over Acquisitiveness. Negative fact; goes against Phrenology.--Not a
bit of it. Don't you see how small Conscientiousness is? That's the
reason B. stole.
And then comes C., ten times as much a thief as either A. or B.,--used
to steal before he was weaned, and would pick one of his own pockets and
put its contents in another, if he could find no other way of committing
petty larceny. Unfortunately, C. has a hollow, instead of a bump, over
Acquisitiveness. Ah, but just look and see what a bump of
Alimentiveness! Did not C. buy nuts and gingerbread, when a boy, with
the money he stole? Of course you see why he is a thief, and how his
example confirms our noble science.
At last comes along a case which is apparently a settler, for there is a
little brain with vast and varied powers,--a case like that of Byron, for
instance. Then comes out the grand reserve-reason which covers
everything and renders it simply impossible ever to corner a
Phrenologist. "It is not the size alone, but the quality of an organ,
which determines its degree of power."
Oh! oh! I see.--The argument may be briefly stated thus by the
Phrenologist: "Heads I win, tails you lose." Well, that's convenient.
It must be confessed that Phrenology has a certain resemblance to the
Pseudo-sciences. I did not say it was a Pseudo-science.
I have often met persons who have been altogether struck up and amazed at
the accuracy with which some wandering Professor of Phrenology had read
their characters written upon their skulls. Of course the Professor
acquires his information solely through his cranial inspections and
manipulations.--What are you laughing at? (to the boarders.)--But let us
just suppose, for a moment, that a tolerably cunning fellow, who did not
know or care anything about Phrenology, should open a shop and undertake
to read off people's characters at fifty cents or a dollar apiece. Let
us see how well he could get along without the "organs."
I will suppose myself to set up such a shop. I would invest one hundred
dollars, more or less, in casts of brains, skulls, charts, and other
matters that would make the most show for the money. That would do to
begin with. I would then advertise myself as the celebrated Professor
Brainey, or whatever name I might choose, and wait for my first customer.
My first customer is a middle-aged man. I look at him,--ask him a
question or two, so as to hear him talk. When I have got the hang of him,
I ask him to sit down, and proceed to fumble his skull, dictating as
follows: SCALE FROM 1 TO 10.
LIST OF FACULTIES FOR PRIVATE NOTES FOR MY PUPIL.
CUSTOMER.
Each to be accompanied with a wink.
Amativeness, 7. Most men love the conflicting sex, and all
men love to be told they do.
Alimentiveness, 8. Don't you see that he has burst off his
lowest waistcoat-button with feeding,--hey
Acquisitiveness, 8. Of course. A middle-aged Yankee.
Approbativeness 7+. Hat well brushed. Hair ditto. Mark the
effect of that plus sign.
Self-Esteem 6. His face shows that.
Benevolence 9. That'll please him.
Conscientiousness 8 1/2 That fraction looks first-rate.
Mirthfulness 7 Has laughed twice since he came in.
Ideality 9 That sounds well.
Form, Size, Weight, 4 to 6. Average everything that Color, Locality,
cannot be guessed. Eventuality, etc. etc.
And so of the other faculties.
Of course, you know, that isn't the way the Phrenologists do. They go
only by the bumps.--What do you keep laughing so for? (to the boarders.)
I only said that is the way I should practise "Phrenology" for a living.
End of my Lecture.
--The Reformers have good heads, generally. Their faces are commonly
serene enough, and they are lambs in private intercourse, even though
their voices may be like
The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore,
when heard from the platform. Their greatest spiritual danger is from
the perpetual flattery of abuse to which they are exposed. These lines
are meant to caution them.
SAINT ANTHONY THE REFORMER.
HIS TEMPTATION.
No fear lest praise should make us proud!
We know how cheaply that is won;
The idle homage of the crowd
Is proof of tasks as idly done.
A surface-smile may pay the toil
That follows still the conquering Right,
With soft, white hands to dress the spoil
That sunbrowned valor clutched in fight.
Sing the sweet song of other days,
Serenely placid, safely true,
And o'er the present's parching ways
Thy verse distils like evening dew.
But speak in words of living power,
--They fall like drops of scalding rain
That plashed before the burning shower
Swept o'er the cities of the plain!
Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale,
--Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring,
And, smitten through their leprous mail,
Strike right and left in hope to sting.
If thou, unmoved by poisoning wrath,
Thy feet on earth, thy heart above,
Canst walk in peace thy kingly path,
Unchanged in trust, unchilled in love,--
Too kind for bitter words to grieve,
Too firm for clamor to dismay,
When Faith forbids thee to believe,
And Meekness calls to disobey,--
Ah, then beware of mortal pride!
The smiling pride that calmly scorns
Those foolish fingers, crimson dyed
In laboring on thy crown of thorns!
IX
One of our boarders--perhaps more than one was concerned in it--sent in
some questions to me, the other day, which, trivial as some of them are,
I felt bound to answer.
1.--Whether a lady was ever known to write a letter covering only a
single page?
To this I answered, that there was a case on record where a lady had but
half a sheet of paper and no envelope; and being obliged to send through
the post-office, she covered only one side of the paper (crosswise,
lengthwise, and diagonally).
2.--What constitutes a man a gentleman?
To this I gave several answers, adapted to particular classes of
questioners.
a. Not trying to be a gentleman.
b. Self-respect underlying courtesy.
c. Knowledge and observance of the fitness of things in social
intercourse.
d. f. s. d. (as many suppose.)
3.--Whether face or figure is most attractive in the female sex?
Answered in the following epigram, by a young man about town:
Quoth Tom, "Though fair her features be,
It is her figure pleases me."
"What may her figure be?" I cried.
"One hundred thousand!" he replied.
When this was read to the boarders, the young man John said he should
like a chance to "step up" to a figger of that kind, if the girl was one
of the right sort.
The landlady said them that merried for money didn't deserve the blessin'
of a good wife. Money was a great thing when them that had it made a
good use of it. She had seen better days herself, and knew what it was
never to want for anything. One of her cousins merried a very rich old
gentleman, and she had heerd that he said he lived ten year longer than
if he'd staid by himself without anybody to take care of him. There was
nothin' like a wife for nussin' sick folks and them that couldn't take
care of themselves.
The young man John got off a little wink, and pointed slyly with his
thumb in the direction of our diminutive friend, for whom he seemed to
think this speech was intended.
If it was meant for him, he did n't appear to know that it was. Indeed,
he seems somewhat listless of late, except when the conversation falls
upon one of those larger topics that specially interest him, and then he
grows excited, speaks loud and fast, sometimes almost savagely,--and, I
have noticed once or twice, presses his left hand to his right side, as
if there were something that ached, or weighed, or throbbed in that
region.
While he speaks in this way, the general conversation is interrupted, and
we all listen to him. Iris looks steadily in his face, and then he will
turn as if magnetized and meet the amber eyes with his own melancholy
gaze. I do believe that they have some kind of understanding together,
that they meet elsewhere than at our table, and that there is a mystery,
which is going to break upon us all of a sudden, involving the relations
of these two persons. From the very first, they have taken to each
other. The one thing they have in common is the heroic will. In him, it
shows itself in thinking his way straightforward, in doing battle for
"free trade and no right of search" on the high seas of religious
controversy, and especially in fighting the battles of his crooked old
city. In her, it is standing up for her little friend with the most
queenly disregard of the code of boarding-house etiquette. People may
say or look what they like,--she will have her way about this sentiment
of hers.
The Poor Relation is in a dreadful fidget whenever the Little Gentleman
says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems to
think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the
toothache,--and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the wind blows
from, she will catch her "death o' cold."
The landlady herself came to him one day, as I have found out, and tried
to persuade him to hold his tongue.--The boarders was gettin'
uneasy,--she said,--and some of 'em would go, she mistrusted, if he
talked any more about things that belonged to the ministers to settle.
She was a poor woman, that had known better days, but all her livin'
depended on her boarders, and she was sure there was n't any of 'em she
set so much by as she did by him; but there was them that never liked to
hear about sech things, except on Sundays.
The Little Gentleman looked very smiling at the landlady, who smiled even
more cordially in return, and adjusted her cap-ribbon with an unconscious
movement,--a reminiscence of the long-past pairing-time, when she had
smoothed her locks and softened her voice, and won her mate by these and
other bird-like graces.--My dear Madam,--he said,--I will remember your
interests, and speak only of matters to which I am totally
indifferent.--I don't doubt he meant this; but a day or two after,
something stirred him up, and I heard his voice uttering itself aloud,
thus:
-It must be done, Sir!--he was saying,--it must be done! Our religion
has been Judaized, it has been Romanized, it has been Orientalized, it
has been Anglicized, and the time is at hand when it must be
AMERICANIZED! Now, Sir, you see what Americanizing is in politics;--it
means that a man shall have a vote because he is a man,--and shall vote
for whom he pleases, without his neighbor's interference. If he chooses
to vote for the Devil, that is his lookout;--perhaps he thinks the Devil
is better than the other candidates; and I don't doubt he's often right,
Sir. Just so a man's soul has a vote in the spiritual community; and it
doesn't do, Sir, or it won't do long, to call him "schismatic" and
"heretic" and those other wicked names that the old murderous Inquisitors
have left us to help along "peace and goodwill to men"!
As long as you could catch a man and drop him into an oubliette, or pull
him out a few inches longer by machinery, or put a hot iron through his
tongue, or make him climb up a ladder and sit on a board at the top of a
stake so that he should be slowly broiled by the fire kindled round it,
there was some sense in these words; they led to something. But since we
have done with those tools, we had better give up those words. I should
like to see a Yankee advertisement like this!--(the Little Gentleman
laughed fiercely as he uttered the words,--)
--Patent thumb-screws,--will crush the bone in three turns.
--The cast-iron boot, with wedge and mallet, only five dollars!
--The celebrated extension-rack, warranted to stretch a man six inches in
twenty minutes,--money returned, if it proves unsatisfactory.
I should like to see such an advertisement, I say, Sir! Now, what's the
use of using the words that belonged with the thumb-screws, and the
Blessed Virgin with the knives under her petticoats and sleeves and
bodice, and the dry pan and gradual fire, if we can't have the things
themselves, Sir? What's the use of painting the fire round a poor
fellow, when you think it won't do to kindle one under him,--as they did
at Valencia or Valladolid, or wherever it was?
--What story is that?--I said.
Why,--he answered,--at the last auto-da-fe, in 1824 or '5, or somewhere
there,--it's a traveller's story, but a mighty knowing traveller he
is,--they had a "heretic" to use up according to the statutes provided
for the crime of private opinion. They could n't quite make up their
minds to burn him, so they only hung him in a hogshead painted all over
with flames!
No, Sir! when a man calls you names because you go to the ballot-box and
vote for your candidate, or because you say this or that is your opinion,
he forgets in which half of the world he was born, Sir! It won't be
long, Sir, before we have Americanized religion as we have Americanized
government; and then, Sir, every soul God sends into the world will be
good in the face of all men for just so much of His "inspiration" as
"giveth him understanding"!--None of my words, Sir! none of my words!
--If Iris does not love this Little Gentleman, what does love look like
when one sees it? She follows him with her eyes, she leans over toward
him when he speaks, her face changes with the changes of his speech, so
that one might think it was with her as with Christabel,--
That all her features were resigned
To this sole image in her mind.
But she never looks at him with such intensity of devotion as when he
says anything about the soul and the soul's atmosphere, religion.
Women are twice as religious as men;--all the world knows that. Whether
they are any better, in the eyes of Absolute Justice, might be
questioned; for the additional religious element supplied by sex hardly
seems to be a matter of praise or blame. But in all common aspects they
are so much above us that we get most of our religion from them,--from
their teachings, from their example,--above all, from their pure
affections.
Now this poor little Iris had been talked to strangely in her childhood.
Especially she had been told that she hated all good things,--which every
sensible parent knows well enough is not true of a great many children,
to say the least. I have sometimes questioned whether many libels on
human nature had not been a natural consequence of the celibacy of the
clergy, which was enforced for so long a period.
The child had met this and some other equally encouraging statements as
to her spiritual conditions, early in life, and fought the battle of
spiritual independence prematurely, as many children do. If all she did
was hateful to God, what was the meaning of the approving or else the
disapproving conscience, when she had done "right" or "wrong"? No
"shoulder-striker" hits out straighter than a child with its logic. Why,
I can remember lying in my bed in the nursery and settling questions
which all that I have heard since and got out of books has never been
able to raise again. If a child does not assert itself in this way in
good season, it becomes just what its parents or teachers were, and is no
better than a plastic image.--How old was I at the time?--I suppose
about 5823 years old,--that is, counting from Archbishop Usher's date of
the Creation, and adding the life of the race, whose accumulated
intelligence is a part of my inheritance, to my own. A good deal older
than Plato, you see, and much more experienced than my Lord Bacon and
most of the world's teachers.--Old books, as you well know, are books of
the world's youth, and new books are fruits of its age. How many of all
these ancient folios round me are like so many old cupels! The gold has
passed out of them long ago, but their pores are full of the dross with
which it was mingled.
And so Iris--having thrown off that first lasso which not only fetters,
but chokes those whom it can hold, so that they give themselves up
trembling and breathless to the great soul-subduer, who has them by the
windpipe had settled a brief creed for herself, in which love of the
neighbor, whom we have seen, was the first article, and love of the
Creator, whom we have not seen, grew out of this as its natural
development, being necessarily second in order of time to the first
unselfish emotions which we feel for the fellow-creatures who surround us
in our early years.
The child must have some place of worship. What would a young girl be
who never mingled her voice with the songs and prayers that rose all
around her with every returning day of rest? And Iris was free to
choose. Sometimes one and sometimes another would offer to carry her to
this or that place of worship; and when the doors were hospitably opened,
she would often go meekly in by herself. It was a curious fact, that two
churches as remote from each other in doctrine as could well be divided
her affections.
The Church of Saint Polycarp had very much the look of a Roman Catholic
chapel. I do not wish to run the risk of giving names to the
ecclesiastical furniture which gave it such a Romish aspect; but there
were pictures, and inscriptions in antiquated characters, and there were
reading-stands, and flowers on the altar, and other elegant arrangements.
Then there were boys to sing alternately in choirs responsive to each
other, and there was much bowing, with very loud responding, and a long
service and a short sermon, and a bag, such as Judas used to hold in the
old pictures, was carried round to receive contributions. Everything was
done not only "decently and in order," but, perhaps one might say, with a
certain air of magnifying their office on the part of the dignified
clergymen, often two or three in number. The music and the free welcome
were grateful to Iris, and she forgot her prejudices at the door of the
chapel. For this was a church with open doors, with seats for all
classes and all colors alike,--a church of zealous worshippers after
their faith, of charitable and serviceable men and women, one that took
care of its children and never forgot its poor, and whose people were
much more occupied in looking out for their own souls than in attacking
the faith of their neighbors. In its mode of worship there was a union
of two qualities,--the taste and refinement, which the educated require
just as much in their churches as elsewhere, and the air of stateliness,
almost of pomp, which impresses the common worshipper, and is often not
without its effect upon those who think they hold outward forms as of
little value. Under the half-Romish aspect of the Church of Saint
Polycarp, the young girl found a devout and loving and singularly
cheerful religious spirit. The artistic sense, which betrayed itself in
the dramatic proprieties of its ritual, harmonized with her taste. The
mingled murmur of the loud responses, in those rhythmic phrases, so
simple, yet so fervent, almost as if every tenth heart-beat, instead of
its dull tic-tac, articulated itself as "Good Lord, deliver us! "--the
sweet alternation of the two choirs, as their holy song floated from side
to side, the keen young voices rising like a flight of singing-birds that
passes from one grove to another, carrying its music with it back and
forward,--why should she not love these gracious outward signs of those
inner harmonies which none could deny made beautiful the lives of many of
her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant Chapel of Saint
Polycarp?
The young Marylander, who was born and bred to that mode of worship, had
introduced her to the chapel, for which he did the honors for such of our
boarders as were not otherwise provided for. I saw them looking over the
same prayer-book one Sunday, and I could not help thinking that two such
young and handsome persons could hardly worship together in safety for a
great while. But they seemed to mind nothing but their prayer-book.
By-and-by the silken bag was handed round.--I don't believe she will; so
awkward, you know;--besides, she only came by invitation. There she is,
with her hand in her pocket, though,--and sure enough, her little bit of
silver tinkled as it struck the coin beneath. God bless her! she has n't
much to give; but her eye glistens when she gives it, and that is all
Heaven asks.--That was the first time I noticed these young people
together, and I am sure they behaved with the most charming
propriety,--in fact, there was one of our silent lady-boarders with them,
whose eyes would have kept Cupid and Psyche to their good behavior. A
day or two after this I noticed that the young gentleman had left his
seat, which you may remember was at the corner diagonal to that of Iris,
so that they have been as far removed from each other as they could be at
the table. His new seat is three or four places farther down the table.
Of course I made a romance out of this, at once. So stupid not to see
it! How could it be otherwise?--Did you speak, Madam? I beg your
pardon. (To my lady-reader.)
I never saw anything like the tenderness with which this young girl
treats her little deformed neighbor. If he were in the way of going to
church, I know she would follow him. But his worship, if any, is not
with the throng of men and women and staring children.
I, the Professor, on the other hand, am a regular church-goer. I should
go for various reasons if I did not love it; but I am happy enough to
find great pleasure in the midst of devout multitudes, whether I can
accept all their creeds or not. One place of worship comes nearer than
the rest to my ideal standard, and to this it was that I carried our
young girl.
The Church of the Galileans, as it is called, is even humbler in outside
pretensions than the Church of Saint Polycarp. Like that, it is open to
all comers. The stranger who approaches it looks down a quiet street and
sees the plainest of chapels,--a kind of wooden tent, that owes whatever
grace it has to its pointed windows and the high, sharp roofs--traces,
both, of that upward movement of ecclesiastical architecture which soared
aloft in cathedral-spires, shooting into the sky as the spike of a
flowering aloe from the cluster of broad, sharp-wedged leaves below.
This suggestion of medieval symbolism, aided by a minute turret in which
a hand-bell might have hung and found just room enough to turn over, was
all of outward show the small edifice could boast. Within there was very
little that pretended to be attractive. A small organ at one side, and a
plain pulpit, showed that the building was a church; but it was a church
reduced to its simplest expression:
Yet when the great and wise monarch of the East sat upon his throne, in
all the golden blaze of the spoils of Ophir and the freights of the navy
of Tarshish, his glory was not like that of this simple chapel in its
Sunday garniture. For the lilies of the field, in their season, and the
fairest flowers of the year, in due succession, were clustered every
Sunday morning over the preacher's desk. Slight, thin-tissued blossoms
of pink and blue and virgin white in early spring, then the full-breasted
and deep-hearted roses of summer, then the velvet-robed crimson and
yellow flowers of autumn, and in the winter delicate exotics that grew
under skies of glass in the false summers of our crystal palaces without
knowing that it was the dreadful winter of New England which was rattling
the doors and frosting the panes,--in their language the whole year told
its history of life and growth and beauty from that simple desk. There
was always at least one good sermon,--this floral homily. There was at
least one good prayer,--that brief space when all were silent, after the
manner of the Friends at their devotions.
Here, too, Iris found an atmosphere of peace and love. The same gentle,
thoughtful faces, the same cheerful but reverential spirit, the same
quiet, the same life of active benevolence. But in all else how
different from the Church of Saint Polycarp! No clerical costume, no
ceremonial forms, no carefully trained choirs. A liturgy they have, to
be sure, which does not scruple to borrow from the time-honored manuals
of devotion, but also does not hesitate to change its expressions to its
own liking.
Perhaps the good people seem a little easy with each other;--they are apt
to nod familiarly, and have even been known to whisper before the
minister came in. But it is a relief to get rid of that old
Sunday--no,--Sabbath face, which suggests the idea that the first day of
the week is commemorative of some most mournful event. The truth is,
these brethren and sisters meet very much as a family does for its
devotions, not putting off their humanity in the least, considering it on
the whole quite a delightful matter to come together for prayer and song
and good counsel from kind and wise lips. And if they are freer in their
demeanor than some very precise congregations, they have not the air of a
worldly set of people. Clearly they have not come to advertise their
tailors and milliners, nor for the sake of exchanging criticisms on the
literary character of the sermon they may hear. There is no
restlessness and no restraint among these quiet, cheerful worshippers.
One thing that keeps them calm and happy during the season so evidently
trying to many congregations is, that they join very generally in the
singing. In this way they get rid of that accumulated nervous force
which escapes in all sorts of fidgety movements, so that a minister
trying to keep his congregation still reminds one of a boy with his hand
over the nose of a pump which another boy is working,--this spirting
impatience of the people is so like the jets that find their way through
his fingers, and the grand rush out at the final Amen! has such a
wonderful likeness to the gush that takes place when the boy pulls his
hand away, with immense relief, as it seems, to both the pump and the
officiating youngster.
How sweet is this blending of all voices and all hearts in one common
song of praise! Some will sing a little loud, perhaps,--and now and then
an impatient chorister will get a syllable or two in advance, or an
enchanted singer so lose all thought of time and place in the luxury of a
closing cadence that he holds on to the last semi-breve upon his private
responsibility; but how much more of the spirit of the old Psalmist in
the music of these imperfectly trained voices than in the academic
niceties of the paid performers who take our musical worship out of our
hands!
I am of the opinion that the creed of the Church of the Galileans is not
laid down in as many details as that of the Church of Saint Polycarp.
Yet I suspect, if one of the good people from each of those churches had
met over the bed of a suffering fellow-creature, or for the promotion of
any charitable object, they would have found they had more in common than
all the special beliefs or want of beliefs that separated them would
amount to. There are always many who believe that the fruits of a tree
afford a better test of its condition than a statement of the composts
with which it is dressed, though the last has its meaning and importance,
no doubt.
Between these two churches, then, our young Iris divides her affections.
But I doubt if she listens to the preacher at either with more devotion
than she does to her little neighbor when he talks of these matters.
What does he believe? In the first place, there is some deep-rooted
disquiet lying at the bottom of his soul, which makes him very bitter
against all kinds of usurpation over the right of private judgment. Over
this seems to lie a certain tenderness for humanity in general, bred out
of life-long trial, I should say, but sharply streaked with fiery lines
of wrath at various individual acts of wrong, especially if they come in
an ecclesiastical shape, and recall to him the days when his mother's
great-grandmother was strangled on Witch Hill, with a text from the Old
Testament for her halter. With all this, he has a boundless belief in
the future of this experimental hemisphere, and especially in the destiny
of the free thought of its northeastern metropolis.
--A man can see further, Sir,--he said one day,--from the top of Boston
State House, and see more that is worth seeing, than from all the
pyramids and turrets and steeples in all the places in the world! No
smoke, Sir; no fog, Sir; and a clean sweep from the Outer Light and the
sea beyond it to the New Hampshire mountains! Yes, Sir,--and there are
great truths that are higher than mountains and broader than seas, that
people are looking for from the tops of these hills of ours;--such as the
world never saw, though it might have seen them at Jerusalem, if its eyes
had been open!--Where do they have most crazy people? Tell me that, Sir!
I answered, that I had heard it said there were more in New England than
in most countries, perhaps more than in any part of the world.
Very good, Sir,--he answered.--When have there been most people killed
and wounded in the course of this century?
During the wars of the French Empire, no doubt,--I said.
That's it! that's it!--said the Little Gentleman;--where the battle of
intelligence is fought, there are most minds bruised and broken! We're
battling for a faith here, Sir.
The divinity-student remarked, that it was rather late in the world's
history for men to be looking out for a new faith.
I did n't say a new faith,--said the Little Gentleman;--old or new, it
can't help being different here in this American mind of ours from
anything that ever was before; the people are new, Sir, and that makes
the difference. One load of corn goes to the sty, and makes the fat of
swine,--another goes to the farm-house, and becomes the muscle that
clothes the right arms of heroes. It is n't where a pawn stands on the
board that makes the difference, but what the game round it is when it is
on this or that square.
Can any man look round and see what Christian countries are now doing,
and how they are governed, and what is the general condition of society,
without seeing that Christianity is the flag under which the world sails,
and not the rudder that steers its course? No, Sir! There was a great
raft built about two thousand years ago,--call it an ark, rather,--the
world's great ark! big enough to hold all mankind, and made to be
launched right out into the open waves of life,--and here it has been
lying, one end on the shore and one end bobbing up and down in the water,
men fighting all the time as to who should be captain and who should have
the state-rooms, and throwing each other over the side because they could
not agree about the points of compass, but the great vessel never getting
afloat with its freight of nations and their rulers;--and now, Sir, there
is and has been for this long time a fleet of "heretic" lighters sailing
out of Boston Bay, and they have been saying, and they say now, and they
mean to keep saying, "Pump out your bilge-water, shovel over your loads
of idle ballast, get out your old rotten cargo, and we will carry it out
into deep waters and sink it where it will never be seen again; so shall
the ark of the world's hope float on the ocean, instead of sticking in
the dock-mud where it is lying!"
It's a slow business, this of getting the ark launched. The Jordan was
n't deep enough, and the Tiber was n't deep enough, and the Rhone was n't
deep enough, and the Thames was n't deep enough, and perhaps the Charles
is n't deep enough; but I don't feel sure of that, Sir, and I love to
hear the workmen knocking at the old blocks of tradition and making the
ways smooth with the oil of the Good Samaritan. I don't know, Sir,--but
I do think she stirs a little,--I do believe she slides;--and when I
think of what a work that is for the dear old three-breasted mother of
American liberty, I would not take all the glory of all the greatest
cities in the world for my birthright in the soil of little Boston!
--Some of us could not help smiling at this burst of local patriotism,
especially when it finished with the last two words.
And Iris smiled, too. But it was the radiant smile of pleasure which
always lights up her face when her little neighbor gets excited on the
great topics of progress in freedom and religion, and especially on the
part which, as he pleases himself with believing, his own city is to take
in that consummation of human development to which he looks forward.
Presently she looked into his face with a changed expression,--the
anxiety of a mother that sees her child suffering.
You are not well,--she said.
I am never well,--he answered.--His eyes fell mechanically on the
death's-head ring he wore on his right hand. She took his hand as if it
had been a baby's, and turned the grim device so that it should be out of
sight. One slight, sad, slow movement of the head seemed to say, "The
death-symbol is still there!"
A very odd personage, to be sure! Seems to know what is going on,
--reads books, old and new,--has many recent publications sent him, they
tell me, but, what is more curious, keeps up with the everyday affairs of
the world, too. Whether he hears everything that is said with
preternatural acuteness, or whether some confidential friend visits him
in a quiet way, is more than I can tell. I can make nothing more of the
noises I hear in his room than my old conjectures. The movements I
mention are less frequent, but I often hear the plaintive cry,--I observe
that it is rarely laughing of late;--I never have detected one articulate
word, but I never heard such tones from anything but a human voice.
There has been, of late, a deference approaching to tenderness, on the
part of the boarders generally so far as he is concerned. This is
doubtless owing to the air of suffering which seems to have saddened his
look of late. Either some passion is gnawing at him inwardly, or some
hidden disease is at work upon him.
--What 's the matter with Little Boston?--said the young man John to me
one day.--There a'n't much of him, anyhow; but 't seems to me he looks
peakeder than ever. The old woman says he's in a bad way, 'n' wants a
puss to take care of him. Them pusses that take care of old rich folks
marry 'em sometimes,--'n' they don't commonly live a great while after
that. No, Sir! I don't see what he wants to die for, after he's taken
so much trouble to live in such poor accommodations as that crooked body
of his. I should like to know how his soul crawled into it, 'n' how it's
goin' to get out. What business has he to die, I should like to know?
Let Ma'am Allen (the gentleman with the diamond) die, if he likes, and be
(this is a family-magazine); but we a'n't goin' to have him dyin'. Not
by a great sight. Can't do without him anyhow. A'n't it fun to hear him
blow off his steam?
I believe the young fellow would take it as a personal insult, if the
Little Gentleman should show any symptoms of quitting our table for a
better world.
--In the mean time, what with going to church in company with our young
lady, and taking every chance I could get to talk with her, I have found
myself becoming, I will not say intimate, but well acquainted with Miss
Iris. There is a certain frankness and directness about her that perhaps
belong to her artist nature. For, you see, the one thing that marks the
true artist is a clear perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction
from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the
feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or
in stone. A true artist, therefore, can hardly fail to have a sharp,
well-defined mental physiognomy. Besides this, many young girls have a
strange audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy. Even in
physical daring many of them are a match for boys; whereas you will find
few among mature women, and especially if they are mothers, who do not
confess, and not unfrequently proclaim, their timidity. One of these
young girls, as many of us hereabouts remember, climbed to the top of a
jagged, slippery rock lying out in the waves,--an ugly height to get up,
and a worse one to get down, even for a bold young fellow of sixteen.
Another was in the way of climbing tall trees for crows' nests,--and
crows generally know about how far boys can "shin up," and set their
household establishments above that high-water mark. Still another of
these young ladies I saw for the first time in an open boat, tossing on
the ocean ground-swell, a mile or two from shore, off a lonely island.
She lost all her daring, after she had some girls of her own to look out
for.
Many blondes are very gentle, yielding in character, impressible,
unelastic. But the positive blondes, with the golden tint running
through them, are often full of character. They come, probably enough,
from those deep-bosomed German women that Tacitus portrayed in such
strong colors. The negative blondes, or those women whose tints have
faded out as their line of descent has become impoverished, are of
various blood, and in them the soul has often become pale with that
blanching of the hair and loss of color in the eyes which makes them
approach the character of Albinesses.
I see in this young girl that union of strength and sensibility which,
when directed and impelled by the strong instinct so apt to accompany
this combination of active and passive capacity, we call genius. She is
not an accomplished artist, certainly, as yet; but there is always an air
in every careless figure she draws, as it were of upward aspiration,--the
elan of John of Bologna's Mercury,--a lift to them, as if they had on
winged sandals, like the herald of the Gods. I hear her singing
sometimes; and though she evidently is not trained, yet is there a wild
sweetness in her fitful and sometimes fantastic melodies,--such as can
come only from the inspiration of the moment,--strangely enough,
reminding me of those long passages I have heard from my little
neighbor's room, yet of different tone, and by no means to be mistaken
for those weird harmonies.
I cannot pretend to deny that I am interested in the girl. Alone,
unprotected, as I have seen so many young girls left in boarding-houses,
the centre of all the men's eyes that surround the table, watched with
jealous sharpness by every woman, most of all by that poor relation of
our landlady, who belongs to the class of women that like to catch others
in mischief when they themselves are too mature for indiscretions, (as
one sees old rogues turn to thief-catchers,) one of Nature's gendarmerie,
clad in a complete suit of wrinkles, the cheapest coat-of-mail against
the shafts of the great little enemy,--so surrounded, Iris spans this
commonplace household-life of ours with her arch of beauty, as the
rainbow, whose name she borrows, looks down on a dreary pasture with its
feeding flocks and herds of indifferent animals.
These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much as they
will. The female gendarmes are off guard occasionally. The sitting-room
has its solitary moments, when any two boarders who wish to meet may come
together accidentally, (accidentally, I said, Madam, and I had not the
slightest intention of Italicizing the word,) and discuss the social or
political questions of the day, or any other subject that may prove
interesting. Many charming conversations take place at the foot of the
stairs, or while one of the parties is holding the latch of a door,--in
the shadow of porticoes, and especially on those outside balconies which
some of our Southern neighbors call "stoops," the most charming places in
the world when the moon is just right and the roses and honeysuckles are
in full blow,--as we used to think in eighteen hundred and never mention
it.
On such a balcony or "stoop," one evening, I walked with Iris. We were
on pretty good terms now, and I had coaxed her arm under mine,--my left
arm, of course. That leaves one's right arm free to defend the lovely
creature, if the rival--odious wretch! attempt, to ravish her from your
side. Likewise if one's heart should happen to beat a little, its mute
language will not be without its meaning, as you will perceive when the
arm you hold begins to tremble, a circumstance like to occur, if you
happen to be a good-looking young fellow, and you two have the "stoop" to
yourselves.
We had it to ourselves that evening. The Koh-inoor, as we called him,
was in a corner with our landlady's daughter. The young fellow John was
smoking out in the yard. The gendarme was afraid of the evening air, and
kept inside, The young Marylander came to the door, looked out and saw us
walking together, gave his hat a pull over his forehead and stalked off.
I felt a slight spasm, as it were, in the arm I held, and saw the girl's
head turn over her shoulder for a second. What a kind creature this is!
She has no special interest in this youth, but she does not like to see a
young fellow going off because he feels as if he were not wanted.
She had her locked drawing-book under her arm.--Let me take it,--I said.
She gave it to me to carry.
This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am sure,--said I.
She laughed, and said,--No,--not all of you.
I was there, of course?
Why, no,--she had never taken so much pains with me.
Then she would let me see the inside of it?
She would think of it.
Just as we parted, she took a little key from her pocket and handed it to
me. This unlocks my naughty book,--she said,--you shall see it. I am
not afraid of you.
I don't know whether the last words exactly pleased me. At any rate, I
took the book and hurried with it to my room. I opened it, and saw, in a
few glances, that I held the heart of Iris in my hand.
--I have no verses for you this month, except these few lines suggested
by the season.
MIDSUMMER.
Here! sweep these foolish leaves away,
I will not crush my brains to-day!
Look! are the southern curtains drawn?
Fetch me a fan, and so begone!
Not that,--the palm-tree's rustling leaf
Brought from a parching coral-reef!
Its breath is heated;--I would swing
The broad gray plumes,--the eagle's wing.
I hate these roses' feverish blood!
Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud,
A long-stemmed lily from the lake,
Cold as a coiling water-snake.
Rain me sweet odors on the air,
And wheel me up my Indian chair,
And spread some book not overwise
Flat out before my sleepy eyes.
--Who knows it not,--this dead recoil
Of weary fibres stretched with toil,
The pulse that flutters faint and low
When Summer's seething breezes blow?
O Nature! bare thy loving breast
And give thy child one hour of rest,
One little hour to lie unseen
Beneath thy scarf of leafy green!
So, curtained by a singing pine,
Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine,
Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay
In sweeter music dies away.
X
IRIS, HER BOOK
I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,
By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee,
Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!
For Iris had no mother to infold her,
Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder,
Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.
She had not learned the mystery of awaking
Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching,
Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.
Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token!
Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,
Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?
She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,
Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,
And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.
Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,
Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,
Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.
Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?
What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?
Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.
And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,
Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,
Save me! oh, save me! Shall I die forgiven?
And then--Ah, God! But nay, it little matters
Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters,
The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!
If she had--Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore
Had the world nothing she might live to care for?
No second self to say her evening prayer for?
She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,
Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming
Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.
Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.
What if a lonely and unsistered creature
Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,
Saying, unsaddened,--This shall soon be faded,
And double-hued the shining tresses braided,
And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?
--This her poor book is full of saddest follies,
Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,
With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.
In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,
Somewhere, beneath some maiden's tear-dimmed glances
May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.
Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,
Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,
Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.
Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,
Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.
No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.
These verses were written in the first leaves of the locked volume. As I
turned the pages, I hesitated for a moment. Is it quite fair to take
advantage of a generous, trusting impulse to read the unsunned depths of
a young girl's nature, which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers
tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent
waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might
strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trusted me with such artless
confessions,--self-revelations, which might be whispered by trembling
lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but which I
cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling of wronging a sacred
confidence?
To all this the answer seemed plain enough after a little thought. She
did not know how fearfully she had disclosed herself; she was too
profoundly innocent. Her soul was no more ashamed than the fair shapes
that walked in Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness. Having
nobody to tell her story to,--having, as she said in her verses, no
musical instrument to laugh and cry with her,--nothing, in short, but the
language of pen and pencil,--all the veinings of her nature were
impressed on these pages as those of a fresh leaf are transferred to the
blank sheets which inclose it. It was the same thing which I remember
seeing beautifully shown in a child of some four or five years we had one
day at our boarding-house. The child was a deaf mute. But its soul had
the inner sense that answers to hearing, and the shaping capacity which
through natural organs realizes itself in words. Only it had to talk
with its face alone; and such speaking eyes, such rapid alternations of
feeling and shifting expressions of thought as flitted over its face, I
have never seen in any other human countenance.
I wonder if something of spiritual transparency is not typified in the
golden-blonde organization. There are a great many little
creatures,--many small fishes, for instance,--which are literally
transparent, with the exception of some of the internal organs. The
heart can be seen beating as if in a case of clouded crystal. The
central nervous column with its sheath runs as a dark stripe through the
whole length of the diaphanous muscles of the body. Other little
creatures are so darkened with pigment that we can see only their
surface. Conspirators and poisoners are painted with black, beady-eyes
and swarthy hue; Judas, in Leonardo's picture, is the model of them all.
However this may be, I should say there never had been a book like this
of Iris,--so full of the heart's silent language, so transparent that the
heart itself could be seen beating through it. I should say there never
could have been such a book, but for one recollection, which is not
peculiar to myself, but is shared by a certain number of my former
townsmen. If you think I over-color this matter of the young girl's
book, hear this, which there are others, as I just said, besides myself,
will tell you is strictly true.
THE BOOK OF THE THREE MAIDEN SISTERS.
In the town called Cantabridge, now a city, water-veined and gas
windpiped, in the street running down to the Bridge, beyond which dwelt
Sally, told of in a book of a friend of mine, was of old a house
inhabited by three maidens. They left no near kinsfolk, I believe;
whether they did or not, I have no ill to speak of them; for they lived
and died in all good report and maidenly credit. The house they lived in
was of the small, gambrel-roofed cottage pattern, after the shape of
Esquires' houses, but after the size of the dwellings of handicraftsmen.
The lower story was fitted up as a shop. Specially was it provided with
one of those half-doors now so rarely met with, which are to whole doors
as spencers worn by old folk are to coats. They speak of limited
commerce united with a social or observing disposition--on the part of
the shopkeeper,--allowing, as they do, talk with passers-by, yet keeping
off such as have not the excuse of business to cross the threshold. On
the door-posts, at either side, above the half-door, hung certain
perennial articles of merchandise, of which my memory still has hanging
among its faded photographs a kind of netted scarf and some pairs of
thick woollen stockings. More articles, but not very many, were stored
inside; and there was one drawer, containing children's books, out of
which I once was treated to a minute quarto ornamented with handsome
cuts. This was the only purchase I ever knew to be made at the shop kept
by the three maiden ladies, though it is probable there were others. So
long as I remember the shop, the same scarf and, I should say, the same
stockings hung on the door-posts.--You think I am exaggerating again, and
that shopkeepers would not keep the same article exposed for years. Come
to me, the Professor, and I will take you in five minutes to a shop in
this city where I will show you an article hanging now in the very place
where more than thirty years ago I myself inquired the price of it of the
present head of the establishment. [ This was a glass alembic, which hung
up in Daniel Henchman's apothecary shop, corner of Cambridge and Chambers
streets.]
The three maidens were of comely presence, and one of them had had claims
to be considered a Beauty. When I saw them in the old meeting-house on
Sundays, as they rustled in through the aisles in silks and satins, not
gay, but more than decent, as I remember them, I thought of My Lady
Bountiful in the history of "Little King Pippin," and of the Madam Blaize
of Goldsmith (who, by the way, must have taken the hint of it from a
pleasant poem, "Monsieur de la Palisse," attributed to De la Monnoye, in
the collection of French songs before me). There was some story of an
old romance in which the Beauty had played her part. Perhaps they all
had had lovers; for, as I said, they were shapely and seemly personages,
as I remember them; but their lives were out of the flower and in the
berry at the time of my first recollections.
One after another they all three dropped away, objects of kindly
attention to the good people round, leaving little or almost nothing, and
nobody to inherit it. Not absolutely nothing, of course. There must
have been a few old dresses--perhaps some bits of furniture, a Bible, and
the spectacles the good old souls read it through, and little keepsakes,
such as make us cry to look at, when we find them in old drawers;--such
relics there must have been. But there was more. There was a manuscript
of some hundred pages, closely written, in which the poor things had
chronicled for many years the incidents of their daily life. After their
death it was passed round somewhat freely, and fell into my hands. How I
have cried and laughed and colored over it! There was nothing in it to
be ashamed of, perhaps there was nothing in it to laugh at, but such a
picture of the mode of being of poor simple good old women I do believe
was never drawn before. And there were all the smallest incidents
recorded, such as do really make up humble life, but which die out of all
mere literary memoirs, as the houses where the Egyptians or the Athenians
lived crumble and leave only their temples standing. I know, for
instance, that on a given day of a certain year, a kindly woman, herself
a poor widow, now, I trust, not without special mercies in heaven for her
good deeds,--for I read her name on a proper tablet in the churchyard a
week ago,--sent a fractional pudding from her own table to the Maiden
Sisters, who, I fear, from the warmth and detail of their description,
were fasting, or at least on short allowance, about that time. I know
who sent them the segment of melon, which in her riotous fancy one of
them compared to those huge barges to which we give the ungracious name
of mudscows. But why should I illustrate further what it seems almost a
breach of confidence to speak of? Some kind friend, who could challenge
a nearer interest than the curious strangers into whose hands the book
might fall, at last claimed it, and I was glad that it should be
henceforth sealed to common eyes. I learned from it that every good and,
alas! every evil act we do may slumber unforgotten even in some earthly
record. I got a new lesson in that humanity which our sharp race finds
it so hard to learn. The poor widow, fighting hard to feed and clothe
and educate her children, had not forgotten the poorer ancient maidens. I
remembered it the other day, as I stood by her place of rest, and I felt
sure that it was remembered elsewhere. I know there are prettier words
than pudding, but I can't help it,--the pudding went upon the record, I
feel sure, with the mite which was cast into the treasury by that other
poor widow whose deed the world shall remember forever, and with the
coats and garments which the good women cried over, when Tabitha, called
by interpretation Dorcas, lay dead in the upper chamber, with her
charitable needlework strewed around her.
--Such was the Book of the Maiden Sisters. You will believe me more
readily now when I tell you that I found the soul of Iris in the one that
lay open before me. Sometimes it was a poem that held it, sometimes a
drawing, angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic symbol of
which I could make nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I remember,
with a streak of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as naturally
as a crack runs through a China bowl. On the next page a dead
bird,--some little favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a
special love, and I saw on the leaf that sign with which once or twice in
my life I have had a letter sealed,--a round spot where the paper is
slightly corrugated, and, if there is writing there, the letters are
somewhat faint and blurred. Most of the pages were surrounded with
emblematic traceries. It was strange to me at first to see how often she
introduced those homelier wild-flowers which we call weeds,--for it
seemed there was none of them too humble for her to love, and none too
little cared for by Nature to be without its beauty for her artist eye
and pencil. By the side of the garden-flowers,--of Spring's curled
darlings, the hyacinths, of rosebuds, dear to sketching maidens, of
flower-de-luces and morning-glories, nay, oftener than these, and more
tenderly caressed by the colored brush that rendered them,--were those
common growths which fling themselves to be crushed under our feet and
our wheels, making themselves so cheap in this perpetual martyrdom that
we forget each of them is a ray of the Divine beauty.
Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions,--just as we see
them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling
sun of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which whitens the fields, to
the great disgust of liberal shepherds, yet seems fair to loving eyes,
with its button-like mound of gold set round with milk-white rays; the
tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame, one after
another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra of
decaying palaces where the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out; the
red and white clovers, the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,--"the
white man's foot," as the Indians called it,--the wiry, jointed stems of
that iron creeping plant which we call "knot-grass," and which loves its
life so dearly that it is next to impossible to murder it with a hoe, as
it clings to the cracks of the pavement;--all these plants, and many
more, she wove into her fanciful garlands and borders.--On one of the
pages were some musical notes. I touched them from curiosity on a piano
belonging to one of our boarders. Strange! There are passages that I
have heard before, plaintive, full of some hidden meaning, as if they
were gasping for words to interpret them. She must have heard the
strains that have so excited my curiosity, coming from my neighbor's
chamber. The illuminated border she had traced round the page that held
these notes took the place of the words they seemed to be aching for.
Above, a long monotonous sweep of waves, leaden-hued, anxious and jaded
and sullen, if you can imagine such an expression in water. On one side
an Alpine needle, as it were, of black basalt, girdled with snow. On the
other a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in the drops
had a strange look,--one would say the cliff was bleeding;--perhaps she
did not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and a solitary bird of prey,
with his wings spread over some unseen object.--And on the very next page
a procession wound along, after the fashion of that on the title-page of
Fuller's "Holy War," in which I recognized without difficulty every
boarder at our table in all the glory of the most resplendent
caricature--three only excepted,--the Little Gentleman, myself, and one
other.
I confess I did expect to see something that would remind me of the
girl's little deformed neighbor, if not portraits of him.--There is a
left arm again, though;--no,--that is from the "Fighting Gladiator," the
"Jeune Heros combattant" of the Louvre;--there is the broad ring of the
shield. From a cast, doubtless. [The separate casts of the
"Gladiator's" arm look immense; but in its place the limb looks light,
almost slender,--such is the perfection of that miraculous marble. I
never felt as if I touched the life of the old Greeks until I looked on
that statue.]--Here is something very odd, to be sure. An Eden of all
the humped and crooked creatures! What could have been in her head when
she worked out such a fantasy? She has contrived to give them all beauty
or dignity or melancholy grace. A Bactrian camel lying under a palm. A
dromedary flashing up the sands,--spray of the dry ocean sailed by the
"ship of the desert." A herd of buffaloes, uncouth, shaggy-maned, heavy
in the forehand, light in the hind-quarter. [The buffalo is the lion of
the ruminants.] And there is a Norman horse, with his huge, rough collar,
echoing, as it were, the natural form of the other beast. And here are
twisted serpents; and stately swans, with answering curves in their bowed
necks, as if they had snake's blood under their white feathers; and
grave, high-shouldered herons standing on one foot like cripples, and
looking at life round them with the cold stare of monumental effigies.--A
very odd page indeed! Not a creature in it without a curve or a twist,
and not one of them a mean figure to look at. You can make your own
comment; I am fanciful, you know. I believe she is trying to idealize
what we vulgarly call deformity, which she strives to look at in the
light of one of Nature's eccentric curves, belonging to her system of
beauty, as the hyperbola, and parabola belong to the conic sections,
though we cannot see them as symmetrical and entire figures, like the
circle and ellipse. At any rate, I cannot help referring this paradise
of twisted spines to some idea floating in her head connected with her
friend whom Nature has warped in the moulding.--That is nothing to
another transcendental fancy of mine. I believe her soul thinks itself
in his little crooked body at times,--if it does not really get freed or
half freed from her own. Did you ever see a case of catalepsy? You know
what I mean,--transient loss of sense, will, and motion; body and limbs
taking any position in which they are put, as if they belonged to a
lay-figure. She had been talking with him and listening to him one day
when the boarders moved from the table nearly all at once. But she sat
as before, her cheek resting on her hand, her amber eyes wide open and
still. I went to her, she was breathing as usual, and her heart was
beating naturally enough,--but she did not answer. I bent her arm; it
was as plastic as softened wax, and kept the place I gave it.--This will
never do, though, and I sprinkled a few drops of water on her forehead.
She started and looked round.--I have been in a dream,--she said;--I
feel as if all my strength were in this arm;--give me your hand!--She
took my right hand in her left, which looked soft and white enough,
but--Good Heaven! I believe she will crack my bones! All the nervous
power in her body must have flashed through those muscles; as when a
crazy lady snaps her iron window-bars,--she who could hardly glove
herself when in her common health. Iris turned pale, and the tears came
to her eyes;--she saw she had given pain. Then she trembled, and might
have fallen but for me;--the poor little soul had been in one of those
trances that belong to the spiritual pathology of higher natures, mostly
those of women.
To come back to this wondrous book of Iris. Two pages faced each other
which I took for symbolical expressions of two states of mind. On the
left hand, a bright blue sky washed over the page, specked with a single
bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to be
soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons such
as Piranesi alone of all men has pictured. I am sure she must have seen
those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got his
nightmare vision, described by another as "cemeteries of departed
greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining
their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and
mutilated inscriptions." Such a black dungeon faced the page that held
the blue sky and the single bird; at the bottom of it something was
coiled,--what, and whether meant for dead or alive, my eyes could not
make out.
I told you the young girl's soul was in this book. As I turned over the
last leaves I could not help starting. There were all sorts of faces
among the arabesques which laughed and scowled in the borders that ran
round the pages. They had mostly the outline of childish or womanly or
manly beauty, without very distinct individuality. But at last it seemed
to me that some of them were taking on a look not wholly unfamiliar to
me; there were features that did not seem new.--Can it be so? Was there
ever such innocence in a creature so full of life? She tells her heart's
secrets as a three-years-old child betrays itself without need of being
questioned! This was no common miss, such as are turned out in scores
from the young-lady-factories, with parchments warranting them
accomplished and virtuous,--in case anybody should question the fact. I
began to understand her;--and what is so charming as to read the secret
of a real femme incomprise?--for such there are, though they are not the
ones who think themselves uncomprehended women.
Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the
far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for
scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A moment's
insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. I have frequently seen
children, long exercised by pain and exhaustion, whose features had a
strange look of advanced age. Too often one meets such in our charitable
institutions. Their faces are saddened and wrinkled, as if their few
summers were threescore years and ten.
And so, many youthful poets have written as if their hearts were old
before their time; their pensive morning twilight has been as cool and
saddening as that of evening in more common lives. The profound
melancholy of those lines of Shelley,
"I could lie down like a tired child
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear."
came from a heart, as he says, "too soon grown old,"--at twenty-six
years, as dull people count time, even when they talk of poets.
I know enough to be prepared for an exceptional nature,--only this gift
of the hand in rendering every thought in form and color, as well as in
words, gives a richness to this young girl's alphabet of feeling and
imagery that takes me by surprise. And then besides, and most of all, I
am puzzled at her sudden and seemingly easy confidence in me. Perhaps I
owe it to my--Well, no matter! How one must love the editor who first
calls him the venerable So-and-So!
--I locked the book and sighed as I laid it down. The world is always
ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what
to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head meekly
while the world slips the collar over it. It backs into the shafts like
a lamb. It draws its load cheerfully, and is patient of the bit and of
the whip. But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood
makes it hard to train.
Talent seems, at first, in one sense, higher than genius,--namely, that
it is more uniformly and absolutely submitted to the will, and therefore
more distinctly human in its character. Genius, on the other hand, is
much more like those instincts which govern the admirable movements of
the lower creatures, and therefore seems to have something of the lower
or animal character. A goose flies by a chart which the Royal
Geographical Society could not mend. A poet, like the goose, sails
without visible landmarks to unexplored regions of truth, which
philosophy has yet to lay down on its atlas. The philosopher gets his
track by observation; the poet trusts to his inner sense, and makes the
straighter and swifter line.
And yet, to look at it in another light, is not even the lowest instinct
more truly divine than any voluntary human act done by the suggestion of
reason? What is a bee's architecture but an unobstructed divine
thought?--what is a builder's approximative rule but an obstructed
thought of the Creator, a mutilated and imperfect copy of some absolute
rule Divine Wisdom has established, transmitted through a human soul as
an image through clouded glass?
Talent is a very common family-trait; genius belongs rather to
individuals;--just as you find one giant or one dwarf in a family, but
rarely a whole brood of either. Talent is often to be envied, and genius
very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of
dying in hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute. It is a perpetual
insult to mediocrity; its every word is a trespass against somebody's
vested ideas,--blasphemy against somebody's O'm, or intangible private
truth.
--What is the use of my weighing out antitheses in this way, like a
rhetorical grocer?--You know twenty men of talent, who are making their
way in the world; you may, perhaps, know one man of genius, and very
likely do not want to know any more. For a divine instinct, such as
drives the goose southward and the poet heavenward, is a hard thing to
manage, and proves too strong for many whom it possesses. It must have
been a terrible thing to have a friend like Chatterton or Burns. And
here is a being who certainly has more than talent, at once poet and
artist in tendency, if not yet fairly developed,--a woman, too;--and
genius grafted on womanhood is like to overgrow it and break its stem, as
you may see a grafted fruit-tree spreading over the stock which cannot
keep pace with its evolution.
I think now you know something of this young person. She wants nothing
but an atmosphere to expand in. Now and then one meets with a nature for
which our hard, practical New England life is obviously utterly
incompetent. It comes up, as a Southern seed, dropped by accident in one
of our gardens, finds itself trying to grow and blow into flower among
the homely roots and the hardy shrubs that surround it. There is no
question that certain persons who are born among us find themselves many
degrees too far north. Tropical by organization, they cannot fight for
life with our eastern and northwestern breezes without losing the color
and fragrance into which their lives would have blossomed in the latitude
of myrtles and oranges. Strange effects are produced by suffering any
living thing to be developed under conditions such as Nature had not
intended for it. A French physiologist confined some tadpoles under
water in the dark. Removed from the natural stimulus of light, they did
not develop legs and arms at the proper period of their growth, and so
become frogs; they swelled and spread into gigantic tadpoles. I have seen
a hundred colossal human tadpoles, overgrown Zarvce or embryos; nay, I am
afraid we Protestants should look on a considerable proportion of the
Holy Father's one hundred and thirty-nine millions as spiritual larvae,
sculling about in the dark by the aid of their caudal extremities,
instead of standing on their legs, and breathing by gills, instead of
taking the free air of heaven into the lungs made to receive it. Of
course we never try to keep young souls in the tadpole state, for fear
they should get a pair or two of legs by-and-by and jump out of the pool
where they have been bred and fed! Never! Never. Never?
Now to go back to our plant. You may know, that, for the earlier stages
of development of almost any vegetable, you only want air, water, light,
and warmth. But by-and-by, if it is to have special complex principles
as a part of its organization, they must be supplied by the soil;--your
pears will crack, if the root of the tree gets no iron,--your
asparagus-bed wants salt as much as you do. Just at the period of
adolescence, the mind often suddenly begins to come into flower and to
set its fruit. Then it is that many young natures, having exhausted the
spiritual soil round them of all it contains of the elements they demand,
wither away, undeveloped and uncolored, unless they are transplanted.
Pray for these dear young souls! This is the second natural birth;--for
I do not speak of those peculiar religious experiences which form the
point of transition in many lives between the consciousness of a general
relation to the Divine nature and a special personal relation. The
litany should count a prayer for them in the list of its supplications;
masses should be said for them as for souls in purgatory; all good
Christians should remember them as they remember those in peril through
travel or sickness or in warfare.
I would transport this child to Rome at once, if I had my will. She
should ripen under an Italian sun. She should walk under the frescoed
vaults of palaces, until her colors deepened to those of Venetian
beauties, and her forms were perfected into rivalry with the Greek
marbles, and the east wind was out of her soil. Has she not exhausted
this lean soil of the elements her growing nature requires?
I do not know. The magnolia grows and comes into full flower on Cape
Ann, many degrees out of its proper region. I was riding once along that
delicious road between the hills and the sea, when we passed a thicket
where there seemed to be a chance of finding it. In five minutes I had
fallen on the trees in full blossom, and filled my arms with the sweet,
resplendent flowers. I could not believe I was in our cold, northern
Essex, which, in the dreary season when I pass its slate-colored,
unpainted farm-houses, and huge, square, windy, 'squire-built "mansions,"
looks as brown and unvegetating as an old rug with its patterns all
trodden out and the colored fringe worn from all its border.
If the magnolia can bloom in northern New England, why should not a poet
or a painter come to his full growth here just as well? Yes, but if the
gorgeous tree-flower is rare, and only as if by a freak of Nature springs
up in a single spot among the beeches and alders, is there not as much
reason to think the perfumed flower of imaginative genius will find it
hard to be born and harder to spread its leaves in the clear, cold
atmosphere of our ultra-temperate zone of humanity?
Take the poet. On the one hand, I believe that a person with the
poetical faculty finds material everywhere. The grandest objects of
sense and thought are common to all climates and civilizations. The sky,
the woods, the waters, the storms, life, death love, the hope and vision
of eternity,--these are images that write themselves in poetry in every
soul which has anything of the divine gift.
On the other hand, there is such a thing as a lean, impoverished life, in
distinction from a rich and suggestive one. Which our common New England
life might be considered, I will not decide. But there are some things I
think the poet misses in our western Eden. I trust it is not unpatriotic
to mention them in this point of view as they come before us in so many
other aspects.
There is no sufficient flavor of humanity in the soil out of which we
grow. At Cantabridge, near the sea, I have once or twice picked up an
Indian arrowhead in a fresh furrow. At Canoe Meadow, in the Berkshire
Mountains, I have found Indian arrowheads. So everywhere Indian
arrowheads. Whether a hundred or a thousand years old, who knows? who
cares? There is no history to the red race,--there is hardly an
individual in it;--a few instincts on legs and holding a tomahawk--there
is the Indian of all time. The story of one red ant is the story of all
red ants. So, the poet, in trying to wing his way back through the life
that has kindled, flitted, and faded along our watercourses and on our
southern hillsides for unknown generations, finds nothing to breathe or
fly in; he meets
"A vast vacuity! all unawares,
Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathom deep."
But think of the Old World,--that part of it which is the seat of ancient
civilization! The stakes of the Britons' stockades are still standing in
the bed of the Thames. The ploughman turns up an old Saxon's bones, and
beneath them is a tessellated pavement of the time of the Caesars. In
Italy, the works of mediaeval Art seem to be of yesterday,--Rome, under
her kings, is but an intruding newcomer, as we contemplate her in the
shadow of the Cyclopean walls of Fiesole or Volterra. It makes a man
human to live on these old humanized soils. He cannot help marching in
step with his kind in the rear of such a procession. They say a dead
man's hand cures swellings, if laid on them. There is nothing like the
dead cold hand of the Past to take down our tumid egotism and lead us
into the solemn flow of the life of our race. Rousseau came out of one
of his sad self-torturing fits, as he cast his eye on the arches of the
old Roman aqueduct, the Pont du Gard.
I am far from denying that there is an attraction in a thriving railroad
village. The new "depot," the smartly-painted pine houses, the spacious
brick hotel, the white meeting-house, and the row of youthful and leggy
trees before it, are exhilarating. They speak of progress, and the time
when there shall be a city, with a His Honor the Mayor, in the place of
their trim but transient architectural growths. Pardon me, if I prefer
the pyramids. They seem to me crystals formed from a stronger solution
of humanity than the steeple of the new meeting-house. I may be wrong,
but the Tiber has a voice for me, as it whispers to the piers of the Pons
Alius, even more full of meaning than my well-beloved Charles eddying
round the piles of West Boston Bridge.
Then, again, we Yankees are a kind of gypsies,--a mechanical and
migratory race. A poet wants a home. He can dispense with an
apple-parer and a reaping-machine. I feel this more for others than for
myself, for the home of my birth and childhood has been as yet exempted
from the change which has invaded almost everything around it.
--Pardon me a short digression. To what small things our memory and our
affections attach themselves! I remember, when I was a child, that one
of the girls planted some Star-of-Bethlehem bulbs in the southwest corner
of our front-yard. Well, I left the paternal roof and wandered in other
lands, and learned to think in the words of strange people. But after
many years, as I looked on the little front-yard again, it occurred to me
that there used to be some Star-of-Bethlehems in the southwest corner.
The grass was tall there, and the blade of the plant is very much like
grass, only thicker and glossier. Even as Tully parted the briers and
brambles when he hunted for the sphere-containing cylinder that marked
the grave of Archimedes, so did I comb the grass with my fingers for my
monumental memorial-flower. Nature had stored my keepsake tenderly in
her bosom; the glossy, faintly streaked blades were there; they are there
still, though they never flower, darkened as they are by the shade of the
elms and rooted in the matted turf.
Our hearts are held down to our homes by innumerable fibres, trivial as
that I have just recalled; but Gulliver was fixed to the soil, you
remember, by pinning his head a hair at a time. Even a stone with a
whitish band crossing it, belonging to the pavement of the back-yard,
insisted on becoming one of the talismans of memory. This intussusception
of the ideas of inanimate objects, and their faithful storing away among
the sentiments, are curiously prefigured in the material structure of the
thinking centre itself. In the very core of the brain, in the part where
Des Cartes placed the soul, is a small mineral deposit, consisting, as I
have seen it in the microscope, of grape-like masses of crystalline
matter.
But the plants that come up every year in the same place, like the
Star-of-Bethlehems, of all the lesser objects, give me the liveliest
home-feeling. Close to our ancient gambrel-roofed house is the dwelling
of pleasant old Neighbor Walrus. I remember the sweet honeysuckle that I
saw in flower against the wall of his house a few months ago, as long as
I remember the sky and stars. That clump of peonies, butting their
purple heads through the soil every spring in just the same circle, and
by-and-by unpacking their hard balls of buds in flowers big enough to
make a double handful of leaves, has come up in just that place, Neighbor
Walrus tells me, for more years than I have passed on this planet. It is
a rare privilege in our nomadic state to find the home of one's childhood
and its immediate neighborhood thus unchanged. Many born poets, I am
afraid, flower poorly in song, or not at all, because they have been too
often transplanted.
Then a good many of our race are very hard and unimaginative;--their
voices have nothing caressing; their movements are as of machinery
without elasticity or oil. I wish it were fair to print a letter a young
girl, about the age of our Iris, wrote a short time since. "I am *** ***
***," she says, and tells her whole name outright. Ah!--said I, when I
read that first frank declaration,--you are one of the right sort!--She
was. A winged creature among close-clipped barn door fowl. How tired
the poor girl was of the dull life about her,--the old woman's "skeleton
hand" at the window opposite, drawing her curtains,--"Ma'am shooing away
the hens,"--the vacuous country eyes staring at her as only country eyes
can stare,--a routine of mechanical duties, and the soul's
half-articulated cry for sympathy, without an answer! Yes,--pray for
her, and for all such! Faith often cures their longings; but it is so
hard to give a soul to heaven that has not first been trained in the
fullest and sweetest human affections! Too often they fling their hearts
away on unworthy objects. Too often they pine in a secret discontent,
which spreads its leaden cloud over the morning of their youth. The
immeasurable distance between one of these delicate natures and the
average youths among whom is like to be her only choice makes one's heart
ache. How many women are born too finely organized in sense and soul for
the highway they must walk with feet unshod! Life is adjusted to the
wants of the stronger sex. There are plenty of torrents to be crossed in
its journey; but their stepping-stones are measured by the stride of man,
and not of woman.
Women are more subject than men to atrophy of the heart. So says the
great medical authority, Laennec. Incurable cases of this kind used to
find their hospitals in convents. We have the disease in New
England,--but not the hospitals. I don't like to think of it. I will not
believe our young Iris is going to die out in this way. Providence will
find her some great happiness, or affliction, or duty,--and which would
be best for her, I cannot tell. One thing is sure: the interest she
takes in her little neighbor is getting to be more engrossing than ever.
Something is the matter with him, and she knows it, and I think worries
herself about it.
I wonder sometimes how so fragile and distorted a frame has kept the
fiery spirit that inhabits it so long its tenant. He accounts for it in
his own way.
The air of the Old World is good for nothing, he said, one day.--Used
up, Sir,--breathed over and over again. You must come to this side, Sir,
for an atmosphere fit to breathe nowadays. Did not worthy Mr. Higginson
say that a breath of New England's air is better than a sup of Old
England's ale? I ought to have died when I was a boy, Sir; but I could
n't die in this Boston air,--and I think I shall have to go to New York
one of these days, when it's time for me to drop this bundle,--or to New
Orleans, where they have the yellow fever,--or to Philadelphia, where
they have so many doctors.
This was some time ago; but of late he has seemed, as I have before said,
to be ailing. An experienced eye, such as I think I may call mine, can
tell commonly whether a man is going to die, or not, long before he or
his friends are alarmed about him. I don't like it.
Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second-sight runs in her
family, and that she is afraid she has it. Those who are so endowed look
upon a well man and see a shroud wrapt about him. According to the
degree to which it covers him, his death will be near or more remote. It
is an awful faculty; but science gives one too much like it. Luckily for
our friends, most of us who have the scientific second-sight school
ourselves not to betray our knowledge by word or look.
Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to the table, it seems to me
that the shadow of some approaching change falls darker and darker over
his countenance. Nature is struggling with something, and I am afraid
she is under in the wrestling-match. You do not care much, perhaps, for
my particular conjectures as to the nature of his difficulty. I should
say, however, from the sudden flushes to which he is subject, and certain
other marks which, as an expert, I know how to interpret, that his heart
was in trouble; but then he presses his hand to the right side, as if
there were the centre of his uneasiness.
When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not mean any of those
sentimental maladies of that organ which figure more largely in romances
than on the returns which furnish our Bills of Mortality. I mean some
actual change in the organ itself, which may carry him off by slow and
painful degrees, or strike him down with one huge pang and only time for
a single shriek,--as when the shot broke through the brave Captain
Nolan's breast, at the head of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, and with a
loud cry he dropped dead from his saddle.
I thought it only fair to say something of what I apprehended to some who
were entitled to be warned. The landlady's face fell when I mentioned my
fears.
Poor man!--she said.--And will leave the best room empty! Has n't he got
any sisters or nieces or anybody to see to his things, if he should be
took away? Such a sight of cases, full of everything! Never thought of
his failin' so suddin. A complication of diseases, she expected.
Liver-complaint one of 'em?
After this first involuntary expression of the too natural selfish
feelings, (which we must not judge very harshly, unless we happen to be
poor widows ourselves, with children to keep filled, covered, and
taught,--rents high,--beef eighteen to twenty cents per pound,)--after
this first squeak of selfishness, followed by a brief movement of
curiosity, so invariable in mature females, as to the nature of the
complaint which threatens the life of a friend or any person who may
happen to be mentioned as ill,--the worthy soul's better feelings
struggled up to the surface, and she grieved for the doomed invalid,
until a tear or two came forth and found their way down a channel worn
for them since the early days of her widowhood.
Oh, this dreadful, dreadful business of being the prophet of evil! Of all
the trials which those who take charge of others' health and lives have
to undergo, this is the most painful. It is all so plain to the
practised eye!--and there is the poor wife, the doting mother, who has
never suspected anything, or at least has clung always to the hope which
you are just going to wrench away from her!--I must tell Iris that I
think her poor friend is in a precarious state. She seems nearer to him
than anybody.
I did tell her. Whatever emotion it produced, she kept a still face,
except, perhaps, a little trembling of the lip.--Could I be certain that
there was any mortal complaint?--Why, no, I could not be certain; but it
looked alarming to me.--He shall have some of my life,--she said.
I suppose this to have been a fancy of hers, or a kind of magnetic power
she could give out;--at any rate, I cannot help thinking she wills her
strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that
day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may
have been a whim, very probably.
One day she came suddenly to me, looking deadly pale. Her lips moved, as
if she were speaking; but I could not at first hear a word. Her hair
looked strangely, as if lifting itself, and her eyes were full of wild
light. She sunk upon a chair, and I thought was falling into one of her
trances. Something had frozen her blood with fear; I thought, from what
she said, half audibly, that she believed she had seen a shrouded figure.
That night, at about eleven o'clock, I was sent for to see the Little
Gentleman, who was taken suddenly ill. Bridget, the servant, went before
me with a light. The doors were both unfastened, and I found myself
ushered, without hindrance, into the dim light of the mysterious
apartment I had so longed to enter.
I found these stanzas in the young girl's book among many others. I give
them as characterizing the tone of her sadder moments.
UNDER THE VIOLETS.
Her hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.
But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.
And gray old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling shadows round
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness from the ground,
And drop their dead leaves on her mound.
When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.
For her the morning choir shall sing
Its matins from the branches high,
And every minstrel voice of spring,
That trills beneath the April sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest cry.
When, turning round their dial-track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
Her little mourners, clad in black,
The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.
At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies,
And bear the buried dust they seize
In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that warmed it rise!
If any, born of kindlier blood,
Should ask, What maiden lies below?
Say only this: A tender bud,
That tried to blossom in the snow,
Lies withered where the violets blow.
XI
You will know, perhaps, in the course of half an hour's reading, what has
been haunting my hours of sleep and waking for months. I cannot tell, of
course, whether you are a nervous person or not. If, however, you are
such a person,--if it is late at night,--if all the rest of the household
have gone off to bed,--if the wind is shaking your windows as if a human
hand were rattling the sashes,--if your candle or lamp is low and will
soon burn out,--let me advise you to take up some good quiet sleepy
volume, or attack the "Critical Notices" of the last Quarterly and leave
this to be read by daylight, with cheerful voices round, and people near
by who would hear you, if you slid from your chair and came down in a
lump on the floor.
I do not say that your heart will beat as mine did, I am willing to
confess, when I entered the dim chamber. Did I not tell you that I was
sensitive and imaginative, and that I had lain awake with thinking what
were the strange movements and sounds which I heard late at night in my
little neighbor's apartment? It had come to that pass that I was truly
unable to separate what I had really heard from what I had dreamed in
those nightmares to which I have been subject, as before mentioned. So,
when I walked into the room, and Bridget, turning back, closed the door
and left me alone with its tenant, I do believe you could have grated a
nutmeg on my skin, such a "goose-flesh" shiver ran over it. It was not
fear, but what I call nervousness,--unreasoning, but irresistible; as
when, for instance, one looking at the sun going down says, "I will count
fifty before it disappears"; and as he goes on and it becomes doubtful
whether he will reach the number, he gets strangely flurried, and his
imagination pictures life and death and heaven and hell as the issues
depending on the completion or non-completion of the fifty he is
counting. Extreme curiosity will excite some people as much as fear, or
what resembles fear, acts on some other less impressible natures.
I may find myself in the midst of strange facts in this little conjurer's
room. Or, again, there may be nothing in this poor invalid's chamber but
some old furniture, such as they say came over in the Mayflower. All
this is just what I mean to, find out while I am looking at the Little
Gentleman, who has suddenly become my patient. The simplest things turn
out to be unfathomable mysteries; the most mysterious appearances prove
to be the most commonplace objects in disguise.
I wonder whether the boys who live in Roxbury and Dorchester are ever
moved to tears or filled with silent awe as they look upon the rocks and
fragments of "puddingstone" abounding in those localities. I have my
suspicions that those boys "heave a stone" or "fire a brickbat," composed
of the conglomerate just mentioned, without any more tearful or
philosophical contemplations than boys of less favored regions expend on
the same performance. Yet a lump of puddingstone is a thing to look at,
to think about, to study over, to dream upon, to go crazy with, to beat
one's brains out against. Look at that pebble in it. From what cliff was
it broken? On what beach rolled by the waves of what ocean? How and
when imbedded in soft ooze, which itself became stone, and by-and-by was
lifted into bald summits and steep cliffs, such as you may see on
Meetinghouse-Hill any day--yes, and mark the scratches on their faces
left when the boulder-carrying glaciers planed the surface of the
continent with such rough tools that the storms have not worn the marks
out of it with all the polishing of ever so many thousand years?
Or as you pass a roadside ditch or pool in springtime, take from it any
bit of stick or straw which has lain undisturbed for a time. Some little
worm-shaped masses of clear jelly containing specks are fastened to the
stick: eggs of a small snail-like shell-fish. One of these specks
magnified proves to be a crystalline sphere with an opaque mass in its
centre. And while you are looking, the opaque mass begins to stir, and
by-and-by slowly to turn upon its axis like a forming planet,--life
beginning in the microcosm, as in the great worlds of the firmament, with
the revolution that turns the surface in ceaseless round to the source of
life and light.
A pebble and the spawn of a mollusk! Before you have solved their
mysteries, this earth where you first saw them may be a vitrified slag,
or a vapor diffused through the planetary spaces. Mysteries are common
enough, at any rate, whatever the boys in Roxbury and Dorchester think of
"brickbats" and the spawn of creatures that live in roadside puddles.
But then a great many seeming mysteries are relatively perfectly plain,
when we can get at them so as to turn them over. How many ghosts that
"thick men's blood with cold" prove to be shirts hung out to dry! How
many mermaids have been made out of seals! How many times have
horse-mackerels been taken for the sea-serpent!
--Let me take the whole matter coolly, while I see what is the matter
with the patient. That is what I say to myself, as I draw a chair to the
bedside. The bed is an old-fashioned, dark mahogany four-poster. It was
never that which made the noise of something moving. It is too heavy to
be pushed about the room.--The Little Gentleman was sitting, bolstered up
by pillows, with his hands clasped and their united palms resting on the
back of the head, one of the three or four positions specially affected
by persons whose breathing is difficult from disease of the heart or
other causes.
Sit down, Sir,--he said,--sit down! I have come to the hill Difficulty,
Sir, and am fighting my way up.--His speech was laborious and
interrupted.
Don't talk,--I said,--except to answer my questions.--And I proceeded to
"prospect" for the marks of some local mischief, which you know is at the
bottom of all these attacks, though we do not always find it. I suppose
I go to work pretty much like other professional folks of my temperament.
Thus:
Wrist, if you please.--I was on his right side, but he presented his left
wrist, crossing it over the other.--I begin to count, holding watch in
left hand. One, two, three, four,--What a handsome hand! wonder if that
splendid stone is a carbuncle.--One, two, three, four, five, six,
seven,--Can't see much, it is so dark, except one white object.--One,
two, three, four,--Hang it! eighty or ninety in the minute, I
guess.--Tongue, if you please.--Tongue is put out. Forget to look at it,
or, rather, to take any particular notice of it;--but what is that white
object, with the long arm stretching up as if pointing to the sky, just
as Vesalius and Spigelius and those old fellows used to put their
skeletons? I don't think anything of such objects, you know; but what
should he have it in his chamber for? As I had found his pulse irregular
and intermittent, I took out a stethoscope, which is a pocket-spyglass
for looking into people's chests with your ears, and laid it over the
place where the heart beats. I missed the usual beat of the organ.--How
is this?--I said,--where is your heart gone to?--He took the stethoscope
and shifted it across to the right side; there was a displacement of the
organ.--I am ill-packed,--he said;--there was no room for my heart in its
place as it is with other men.--God help him!
It is hard to draw the line between scientific curiosity and the desire
for the patient's sake to learn all the details of his condition. I must
look at this patient's chest, and thump it and listen to it. For this is
a case of ectopia cordis, my boy,--displacement of the heart; and it is
n't every day you get a chance to overhaul such an interesting
malformation. And so I managed to do my duty and satisfy my curiosity at
the same time. The torso was slight and deformed; the right arm
attenuated,--the left full, round, and of perfect symmetry. It had run
away with the life of the other limbs,--a common trick enough of
Nature's, as I told you before. If you see a man with legs withered from
childhood, keep out of the way of his arms, if you have a quarrel with
him. He has the strength of four limbs in two; and if he strikes you, it
is an arm-blow plus a kick administered from the shoulder instead of the
haunch, where it should have started from.
Still examining him as a patient, I kept my eyes about me to search all
parts of the chamber and went on with the double process, as
before.--Heart hits as hard as a fist,--bellows-sound over mitral valves
(professional terms you need not attend to).--What the deuse is that long
case for? Got his witch grandmother mummied in it? And three big
mahogany presses,--hey?--A diabolical suspicion came over me which I had
had once before,--that he might be one of our modern alchemists,--you
understand, make gold, you know, or what looks like it, sometimes with
the head of a king or queen or of Liberty to embellish one side of the
piece.--Don't I remember hearing him shut a door and lock it once? What
do you think was kept under that lock? Let's have another look at his
hand, to see if there are any calluses.
One can tell a man's business, if it is a handicraft, very often by just
taking a look at his open hand. Ah! Four calluses at the end of the
fingers of the right hand. None on those of the left. Ah, ha! What do
those mean?
All this seems longer in the telling, of course, than it was in fact.
While I was making these observations of the objects around me, I was
also forming my opinion as to the kind of case with which I had to deal.
There are three wicks, you know, to the lamp of a man's life: brain,
blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out,
followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute and out go all
three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the
fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon
stagnation, cold, and darkness. The "tripod of life" a French
physiologist called these three organs. It is all clear enough which leg
of the tripod is going to break down here. I could tell you exactly what
the difficulty is;--which would be as intelligible and amusing as a
watchmaker's description of a diseased timekeeper to a ploughman. It is
enough to say, that I found just what I expected to, and that I think
this attack is only the prelude of more serious consequences,--which
expression means you very well know what.
And now the secrets of this life hanging on a thread must surely come
out. If I have made a mystery where there was none, my suspicions will
be shamed, as they have often been before. If there is anything strange,
my visits will clear it up.
I sat an hour or two by the side of the Little Gentleman's bed, after
giving him some henbane to quiet his brain, and some foxglove, which an
imaginative French professor has called the "Opium of the Heart." Under
their influence he gradually fell into an uneasy, half-waking slumber,
the body fighting hard for every breath, and the mind wandering off in
strange fancies and old recollections, which escaped from his lips in
broken sentences.
--The last of 'em,--he said,--the last of 'em all,--thank God! And the
grave he lies in will look just as well as if he had been straight. Dig
it deep, old Martin, dig it deep,--and let it be as long as other folks'
graves. And mind you get the sods flat, old man,--flat as ever a
straight-backed young fellow was laid under. And then, with a good tall
slab at the head, and a foot-stone six foot away from it, it'll look just
as if there was a man underneath.
A man! Who said he was a man? No more men of that pattern to bear his
name!--Used to be a good-looking set enough.--Where 's all the manhood
and womanhood gone to since his great-grandfather was the strongest man
that sailed out of the town of Boston, and poor Leah there the handsomest
woman in Essex, if she was a witch?
--Give me some light,--he said,--more light. I want to see the picture.
He had started either from a dream or a wandering reverie. I was not
unwilling to have more light in the apartment, and presently had lighted
an astral lamp that stood on a table.--He pointed to a portrait hanging
against the wall.--Look at her,--he said,--look at her! Wasn't that a
pretty neck to slip a hangman's noose over?
The portrait was of a young woman, something more than twenty years old,
perhaps. There were few pictures of any merit painted in New England
before the time of Smibert, and I am at a loss to know what artist could
have taken this half-length, which was evidently from life. It was
somewhat stiff and flat, but the grace of the figure and the sweetness of
the expression reminded me of the angels of the early Florentine
painters. She must have been of some consideration, for she was dressed
in paduasoy and lace with hanging sleeves, and the old carved frame
showed how the picture had been prized by its former owners. A proud eye
she had, with all her sweetness.--I think it was that which hanged her,
as his strong arm hanged Minister George Burroughs;--but it may have been
a little mole on one cheek, which the artist had just hinted as a beauty
rather than a deformity. You know, I suppose, that nursling imps addict
themselves, after the fashion of young opossums, to these little
excrescences. "Witch-marks" were good evidence that a young woman was
one of the Devil's wet-nurses;--I should like to have seen you make fun
of them in those days!--Then she had a brooch in her bodice, that might
have been taken for some devilish amulet or other; and she wore a ring
upon one of her fingers, with a red stone in it, that flamed as if the
painter had dipped his pencil in fire;--who knows but that it was given
her by a midnight suitor fresh from that fierce element, and licensed for
a season to leave his couch of flame to tempt the unsanctified hearts of
earthly maidens and brand their cheeks with the print of his scorching
kisses?
She and I,--he said, as he looked steadfastly at the canvas,--she and I
are the last of 'em.--She will stay, and I shall go. They never painted
me,--except when the boys used to make pictures of me with chalk on the
board-fences. They said the doctors would want my skeleton when I was
dead.--You are my friend, if you are a doctor,--a'n't you?
I just gave him my hand. I had not the heart to speak.
I want to lie still,--he said,--after I am put to bed upon the hill
yonder. Can't you have a great stone laid over me, as they did over the
first settlers in the old burying-ground at Dorchester, so as to keep the
wolves from digging them up? I never slept easy over the sod;--I should
like to lie quiet under it. And besides,--he said, in a kind of scared
whisper,--I don't want to have my bones stared at, as my body has been.
I don't doubt I was a remarkable case; but, for God's sake, oh, for God's
sake, don't let 'em make a show of the cage I have been shut up in and
looked through the bars of for so many years.
I have heard it said that the art of healing makes men hard-hearted and
indifferent to human suffering. I am willing to own that there is often
a professional hardness in surgeons, just as there is in
theologians,--only much less in degree than in these last. It does not
commonly improve the sympathies of a man to be in the habit of thrusting
knives into his fellow-creatures and burning them with red-hot irons, any
more than it improves them to hold the blinding-white cantery of Gehenna
by its cool handle and score and crisp young souls with it until they are
scorched into the belief of--Transubstantiation or the Immaculate
Conception. And, to say the plain truth, I think there are a good many
coarse people in both callings. A delicate nature will not commonly
choose a pursuit which implies the habitual infliction of suffering, so
readily as some gentler office. Yet, while I am writing this paragraph,
there passes by my window, on his daily errand of duty, not seeing me,
though I catch a glimpse of his manly features through the oval glass of
his chaise, as he drives by, a surgeon of skill and standing, so
friendly, so modest, so tenderhearted in all his ways, that, if he had
not approved himself at once adroit and firm, one would have said he was
of too kindly a mould to be the minister of pain, even if he were saving
pain.
You may be sure that some men, even among those who have chosen the task
of pruning their fellow-creatures, grow more and more thoughtful and
truly compassionate in the midst of their cruel experience. They become
less nervous, but more sympathetic. They have a truer sensibility for
others' pain, the more they study pain and disease in the light of
science. I have said this without claiming any special growth in
humanity for myself, though I do hope I grow tenderer in my feelings as I
grow older. At any rate, this was not a time in which professional
habits could keep down certain instincts of older date than these.
This poor little man's appeal to my humanity against the supposed
rapacity of Science, which he feared would have her "specimen," if his
ghost should walk restlessly a thousand years, waiting for his bones to
be laid in the dust, touched my heart. But I felt bound to speak
cheerily.
--We won't die yet awhile, if we can help it,--I said,--and I trust we
can help it. But don't be afraid; if I live longest, I will see that
your resting place is kept sacred till the dandelions and buttercups blow
over you.
He seemed to have got his wits together by this time, and to have a vague
consciousness that he might have been saying more than he meant for
anybody's ears.--I have been talking a little wild, Sir, eh? he
said.--There is a great buzzing in my head with those drops of yours, and
I doubt if my tongue has not been a little looser than I would have it,
Sir. But I don't much want to live, Sir; that's the truth of the matter,
and it does rather please me to think that fifty years from now nobody
will know that the place where I lie does n't hold as stout and straight
a man as the best of 'em that stretch out as if they were proud of the
room they take. You may get me well, if you can, Sir, if you think it
worth while to try; but I tell you there has been no time for this many a
year when the smell of fresh earth was not sweeter to me than all the
flowers that grow out of it. There's no anodyne like your good clean
gravel, Sir. But if you can keep me about awhile, and it amuses you to
try, you may show your skill upon me, if you like. There is a pleasure
or two that I love the daylight for, and I think the night is not far
off, at best.--I believe I shall sleep now; you may leave me, and come,
if you like, in the morning.
Before I passed out, I took one more glance round the apartment. The
beautiful face of the portrait looked at me, as portraits often do, with
a frightful kind of intelligence in its eyes. The drapery fluttered on
the still outstretched arm of the tall object near the window;--a crack
of this was open, no doubt, and some breath of wind stirred the hanging
folds. In my excited state, I seemed to see something ominous in that
arm pointing to the heavens. I thought of the figures in the Dance of
Death at Basle, and that other on the panels of the covered Bridge at
Lucerne, and it seemed to me that the grim mask who mingles with every
crowd and glides over every threshold was pointing the sick man to his
far home, and would soon stretch out his bony hand and lead him or drag
him on the unmeasured journey towards it.
The fancy had possession of me, and I shivered again as when I first
entered the chamber. The picture and the shrouded shape; I saw only
these two objects. They were enough. The house was deadly still, and
the night-wind, blowing through an open window, struck me as from a field
of ice, at the moment I passed into the creaking corridor. As I turned
into the common passage, a white figure, holding a lamp, stood full
before me. I thought at first it was one of those images made to stand
in niches and hold a light in their hands. But the illusion was
momentary, and my eyes speedily recovered from the shock of the bright
flame and snowy drapery to see that the figure was a breathing one. It
was Iris, in one of her statue-trances. She had come down, whether
sleeping or waking, I knew not at first, led by an instinct that told her
she was wanted,--or, possibly, having overheard and interpreted the
sound of our movements,--or, it may be, having learned from the servant
that there was trouble which might ask for a woman's hand. I sometimes
think women have a sixth sense, which tells them that others, whom they
cannot see or hear, are in suffering. How surely we find them at the
bedside of the dying! How strongly does Nature plead for them, that we
should draw our first breath in their arms, as we sigh away our last upon
their faithful breasts!
With white, bare feet, her hair loosely knotted, clad as the starlight
knew her, and the morning when she rose from slumber, save that she had
twisted a scarf round her long dress, she stood still as a stone before
me, holding in one hand a lighted coil of waxtaper, and in the other a
silver goblet. I held my own lamp close to her, as if she had been a
figure of marble, and she did not stir. There was no breach of propriety
then, to scare the Poor Relation with and breed scandal out of. She had
been "warned in a dream," doubtless suggested by her waking knowledge and
the sounds which had reached her exalted sense. There was nothing more
natural than that she should have risen and girdled her waist, and
lighted her taper, and found the silver goblet with "Ex dono pupillorum"
on it, from which she had taken her milk and possets through all her
childish years, and so gone blindly out to find her place at the
bedside,--a Sister of Charity without the cap and rosary; nay, unknowing
whither her feet were leading her, and with wide blank eyes seeing
nothing but the vision that beckoned her along.--Well, I must wake her
from her slumber or trance.--I called her name, but she did not heed my
voice.
The Devil put it into my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl
before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I
should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose
perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord Lovers, in memory
of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance? and would
she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and despise me
ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected, and always from
that time say to myself, when I looked upon her in the glory of youth and
the splendor of beauty, "My lips have touched those roses and made their
sweetness mine forever"? You think my cheek was flushed, perhaps, and my
eyes were glittering with this midnight flash of opportunity. On the
contrary, I believe I was pale, very pale, and I know that I trembled.
Ah, it is the pale passions that are the fiercest,--it is the violence of
the chill that gives the measure of the fever! The fighting-boy of our
school always turned white when he went out to a pitched battle with the
bully of some neighboring village; but we knew what his bloodless cheeks
meant,--the blood was all in his stout heart,--he was a slight boy, and
there was not enough to redden his face and fill his heart both at once.
Perhaps it is making a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the internal
conflicts in the heart of a quiet person something more than juvenile and
something less than senile, as to whether he should be guilty of an
impropriety, and, if he were, whether he would get caught in his
indiscretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that Margaret of Scotland
gave to Alain Chartier has lasted four hundred years, and put it into the
head of many an ill-favored poet, whether Victoria, or Eugenie, would do
as much by him, if she happened to pass him when he was asleep. And have
we ever forgotten that the fresh cheek of the young John Milton tingled
under the lips of some high-born Italian beauty, who, I believe, did not
think to leave her card by the side of the slumbering youth, but has
bequeathed the memory of her pretty deed to all coming time? The sound
of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a deal
longer.
There is one disadvantage which the man of philosophical habits of mind
suffers, as compared with the man of action. While he is taking an
enlarged and rational view of the matter before him, he lets his chance
slip through his fingers. Iris woke up, of her own accord, before I had
made up my mind what I was going to do about it.
When I remember how charmingly she looked, I don't blame myself at all
for being tempted; but if I had been fool enough to yield to the impulse,
I should certainly have been ashamed to tell of it. She did not know
what to make of it, finding herself there alone, in such guise, and me
staring at her. She looked down at her white robe and bare feet, and
colored,--then at the goblet she held in her hand, then at the taper; and
at last her thoughts seemed to clear up.
I know it all,--she said.--He is going to die, and I must go and sit by
him. Nobody will care for him as I shall, and I have nobody else to care
for.
I assured her that nothing was needed for him that night but rest, and
persuaded her that the excitement of her presence could only do harm.
Let him sleep, and he would very probably awake better in the morning.
There was nothing to be said, for I spoke with authority; and the young
girl glided away with noiseless step and sought her own chamber.
The tremor passed away from my limbs, and the blood began to burn in my
cheeks. The beautiful image which had so bewitched me faded gradually
from my imagination, and I returned to the still perplexing mysteries of
my little neighbor's chamber.
All was still there now. No plaintive sounds, no monotonous murmurs, no
shutting of windows and doors at strange hours, as if something or
somebody were coming in or going out, or there was something to be hidden
in those dark mahogany presses. Is there an inner apartment that I have
not seen? The way in which the house is built might admit of it. As I
thought it over, I at once imagined a Bluebeard's chamber. Suppose, for
instance, that the narrow bookshelves to the right are really only a
masked door, such as we remember leading to the private study of one of
our most distinguished townsmen, who loved to steal away from his stately
library to that little silent cell. If this were lighted from above, a
person or persons might pass their days there without attracting
attention from the household, and wander where they pleased at night,--to
Copp's-Hill burial-ground, if they liked,--I said to myself, laughing,
and pulling the bed-clothes over my head. There is no logic in
superstitious-fancies any more than in dreams. A she-ghost wouldn't want
an inner chamber to herself. A live woman, with a valuable soprano
voice, wouldn't start off at night to sprain her ankles over the old
graves of the North-End cemetery.
It is all very easy for you, middle-aged reader, sitting over this page
in the broad daylight, to call me by all manner of asinine and anserine
unchristian names, because I had these fancies running through my head.
I don't care much for your abuse. The question is not, what it is
reasonable for a man to think about, but what he actually does think
about, in the dark, and when he is alone, and his whole body seems but
one great nerve of hearing, and he sees the phosphorescent flashes of his
own eyeballs as they turn suddenly in the direction of the last strange
noise,--what he actually does think about, as he lies and recalls all the
wild stories his head is full of, his fancy hinting the most alarming
conjectures to account for the simplest facts about him, his common-sense
laughing them to scorn the next minute, but his mind still returning to
them, under one shape or another, until he gets very nervous and foolish,
and remembers how pleasant it used to be to have his mother come and tuck
him up and go and sit within call, so that she could hear him at any
minute, if he got very much scared and wanted her. Old babies that we
are!
Daylight will clear up all that lamp-light has left doubtful. I longed
for the morning to come, for I was more curious than ever. So, between my
fancies and anticipations, I had but a poor night of it, and came down
tired to the breakfast-table. My visit was not to be made until after
this morning hour; there was nothing urgent, so the servant was ordered
to tell me.
It was the first breakfast at which the high chair at the side of Iris
had been unoccupied.--You might jest as well take away that chair,--said
our landlady,--he'll never want it again. He acts like a man that 's
struck with death, 'n' I don't believe he 'll ever come out of his
chamber till he 's laid out and brought down a corpse.--These good women
do put things so plainly! There were two or three words in her short
remark that always sober people, and suggest silence or brief moral
reflections.
--Life is dreadful uncerting,--said the Poor Relation,--and pulled in her
social tentacles to concentrate her thoughts on this fact of human
history.
--If there was anything a fellah could do,--said the young man John, so
called,--a fellah 'd like the chance o' helpin' a little cripple like
that. He looks as if he couldn't turn over any handier than a turtle
that's laid on his back; and I guess there a'n't many people that know
how to lift better than I do. Ask him if he don't want any watchers. I
don't mind settin' up any more 'n a cat-owl. I was up all night twice
last month.
[My private opinion is, that there was no small amount of punch absorbed
on those two occasions, which I think I heard of at the time];--but the
offer is a kind one, and it is n't fair to question how he would like
sitting up without the punch and the company and the songs and smoking.
He means what he says, and it would be a more considerable achievement
for him to sit quietly all night by a sick man than for a good many other
people. I tell you this odd thing: there are a good many persons, who,
through the habit of making other folks uncomfortable, by finding fault
with all their cheerful enjoyments, at last get up a kind of hostility to
comfort in general, even in their own persons. The correlative to loving
our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.
Look at old misers; first they starve their dependants, and then
themselves. So I think it more for a lively young fellow to be ready to
play nurse than for one of those useful but forlorn martyrs who have
taken a spite against themselves and love to gratify it by fasting and
watching.
--The time came at last for me to make my visit. I found Iris sitting by
the Little Gentleman's pillow. To my disappointment, the room was
darkened. He did not like the light, and would have the shutters kept
nearly closed. It was good enough for me; what business had I to be
indulging my curiosity, when I had nothing to do but to exercise such
skill as I possessed for the benefit of my patient? There was not much
to be said or done in such a case; but I spoke as encouragingly as I
could, as I think we are always bound to do. He did not seem to pay any
very anxious attention, but the poor girl listened as if her own life and
more than her own life were depending on the words I uttered. She
followed me out of the room, when I had got through my visit.
How long?--she said.
Uncertain. Any time; to-day,--next week, next month,--I answered.--One
of those cases where the issue is not doubtful, but may be sudden or
slow.
The women of the house were kind, as women always are in trouble. But
Iris pretended that nobody could spare the time as well as she, and kept
her place, hour after hour, until the landlady insisted that she'd be
killin' herself, if she begun at that rate, 'n' haf to give up, if she
didn't want to be clean beat out in less 'n a week.
At the table we were graver than common. The high chair was set back
against the wall, and a gap left between that of the young girl and her
nearest neighbor's on the right. But the next morning, to our great
surprise, that good-looking young Marylander had very quietly moved his
own chair to the vacant place. I thought he was creeping down that way,
but I was not prepared for a leap spanning such a tremendous parenthesis
of boarders as this change of position included. There was no denying
that the youth and maiden were a handsome pair, as they sat side by side.
But whatever the young girl may have thought of her new neighbor she
never seemed for a moment to forget the poor little friend who had been
taken from her side. There are women, and even girls, with whom it is of
no use to talk. One might as well reason with a bee as to the form of
his cell, or with an oriole as to the construction of his swinging nest,
as try to stir these creatures from their own way of doing their own
work. It was not a question with Iris, whether she was entitled by any
special relation or by the fitness of things to play the part of a nurse.
She was a wilful creature that must have her way in this matter. And it
so proved that it called for much patience and long endurance to carry
through the duties, say rather the kind offices, the painful pleasures,
which she had chosen as her share in the household where accident had
thrown her. She had that genius of ministration which is the special
province of certain women, marked even among their helpful sisters by a
soft, low voice, a quiet footfall, a light hand, a cheering smile, and a
ready self-surrender to the objects of their care, which such trifles as
their own food, sleep, or habits of any kind never presume to interfere
with. Day after day, and too often through the long watches of the night,
she kept her place by the pillow.
That girl will kill herself over me, Sir,--said the poor Little Gentleman
to me, one day,--she will kill herself, Sir, if you don't call in all the
resources of your art to get me off as soon as may be. I shall wear her
out, Sir, with sitting in this close chamber and watching when she ought
to be sleeping, if you leave me to the care of Nature without dosing me.
This was rather strange pleasantry, under the circumstances. But there
are certain persons whose existence is so out of parallel with the larger
laws in the midst of which it is moving, that life becomes to them as
death and death as life.--How am I getting along?--he said, another
morning. He lifted his shrivelled hand, with the death's-head ring on
it, and looked at it with a sad sort of complacency. By this one
movement, which I have seen repeatedly of late, I know that his thoughts
have gone before to another condition, and that he is, as it were,
looking back on the infirmities of the body as accidents of the past.
For, when he was well, one might see him often looking at the handsome
hand with the flaming jewel on one of its fingers. The single
well-shaped limb was the source of that pleasure which in some form or
other Nature almost always grants to her least richly endowed children.
Handsome hair, eyes, complexion, feature, form, hand, foot, pleasant
voice, strength, grace, agility, intelligence,--how few there are that
have not just enough of one at least of these gifts to show them that the
good Mother, busy with her millions of children, has not quite forgotten
them! But now he was thinking of that other state, where, free from all
mortal impediments, the memory of his sorrowful burden should be only as
that of the case he has shed to the insect whose "deep-damasked wings"
beat off the golden dust of the lily-anthers, as he flutters in the
ecstasy of his new life over their full-blown summer glories.
No human being can rest for any time in a state of equilibrium, where the
desire to live and that to depart just balance each other. If one has a
house, which he has lived and always means to live in, he pleases himself
with the thought of all the conveniences it offers him, and thinks little
of its wants and imperfections. But once having made up his mind to move
to a better, every incommodity starts out upon him, until the very
ground-plan of it seems to have changed in his mind, and his thoughts and
affections, each one of them packing up its little bundle of
circumstances, have quitted their several chambers and nooks and migrated
to the new home, long before its apartments are ready to receive their
coming tenant. It is so with the body. Most persons have died before
they expire,--died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is
only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted
mansion. The fact of the tranquillity with which the great majority of
dying persons await this locking of those gates of life through which its
airy angels have been going and coming, from the moment of the first cry,
is familiar to those who have been often called upon to witness the last
period of life. Almost always there is a preparation made by Nature for
unearthing a soul, just as on the smaller scale there is for the removal
of a milktooth. The roots which hold human life to earth are absorbed
before it is lifted from its place. Some of the dying are weary and want
rest, the idea of which is almost inseparable in the universal mind from
death. Some are in pain, and want to be rid of it, even though the
anodyne be dropped, as in the legend, from the sword of the Death-Angel.
Some are stupid, mercifully narcotized that they may go to sleep without
long tossing about. And some are strong in faith and hope, so that, as
they draw near the next world, they would fair hurry toward it, as the
caravan moves faster over the sands when the foremost travellers send
word along the file that water is in sight. Though each little party
that follows in a foot-track of its own will have it that the water to
which others think they are hastening is a mirage, not the less has it
been true in all ages and for human beings of every creed which
recognized a future, that those who have fallen worn out by their march
through the Desert have dreamed at least of a River of Life, and thought
they heard its murmurs as they lay dying.
The change from the clinging to the present to the welcoming of the
future comes very soon, for the most part, after all hope of life is
extinguished, provided this be left in good degree to Nature, and not
insolently and cruelly forced upon those who are attacked by illness, on
the strength of that odious foreknowledge often imparted by science,
before the white fruit whose core is ashes, and which we call death, has
set beneath the pallid and drooping flower of sickness. There is a
singular sagacity very often shown in a patient's estimate of his own
vital force. His physician knows the state of his material frame well
enough, perhaps,--that this or that organ is more or less impaired or
disintegrated; but the patient has a sense that he can hold out so much
longer,--sometimes that he must and will live for a while, though by the
logic of disease he ought to die without any delay.
The Little Gentleman continued to fail, until it became plain that his
remaining days were few. I told the household what to expect. There was
a good deal of kind feeling expressed among the boarders, in various
modes, according to their characters and style of sympathy. The landlady
was urgent that he should try a certain nostrum which had saved
somebody's life in jest sech a case. The Poor Relation wanted me to
carry, as from her, a copy of "Allein's Alarm," etc. I objected to the
title, reminding her that it offended people of old, so that more than
twice as many of the book were sold when they changed the name to "A Sure
Guide to Heaven." The good old gentleman whom I have mentioned before has
come to the time of life when many old men cry easily, and forget their
tears as children do.--He was a worthy gentleman,--he said,--a very
worthy gentleman, but unfortunate,--very unfortunate. Sadly deformed
about the spine and the feet. Had an impression that the late Lord Byron
had some malformation of this kind. Had heerd there was something the
matter with the ankle-j'ints of that nobleman, but he was a man of
talents. This gentleman seemed to be a man of talents. Could not always
agree with his statements,--thought he was a little over-partial to this
city, and had some free opinions; but was sorry to lose him,--and
if--there was anything--he--could--. In the midst of these kind
expressions, the gentleman with the diamond, the Koh-i-noor, as we called
him, asked, in a very unpleasant sort of way, how the old boy was likely
to cut up,--meaning what money our friend was going to leave behind.
The young fellow John spoke up, to the effect that this was a diabolish
snobby question, when a man was dying and not dead.--To this the
Koh-i-noor replied, by asking if the other meant to insult him. Whereto
the young man John rejoined that he had no particul'r intentions one way
or t'other.-The Kohi-noor then suggested the young man's stepping out
into the yard, that he, the speaker, might "slap his chops."--Let 'em
alone, said young Maryland,--it 'll soon be over, and they won't hurt
each other much.--So they went out.
The Koh-i-noor entertained the very common idea, that, when one quarrels
with another, the simple thing to do is to knock the man down, and there
is the end of it. Now those who have watched such encounters are aware
of two things: first, that it is not so easy to knock a man down as it is
to talk about it; secondly, that, if you do happen to knock a man down,
there is a very good chance that he will be angry, and get up and give
you a thrashing.
So the Koh-i-noor thought he would begin, as soon as they got into the
yard, by knocking his man down, and with this intention swung his arm
round after the fashion of rustics and those unskilled in the noble art,
expecting the young fellow John to drop when his fist, having completed a
quarter of a circle, should come in contact with the side of that young
man's head. Unfortunately for this theory, it happens that a blow struck
out straight is as much shorter, and therefore as much quicker than the
rustic's swinging blow, as the radius is shorter than the quarter of a
circle. The mathematical and mechanical corollary was, that the
Koh-i-noor felt something hard bring up suddenly against his right eye,
which something he could have sworn was a paving-stone, judging by his
sensations; and as this threw his person somewhat backwards, and the
young man John jerked his own head back a little, the swinging blow had
nothing to stop it; and as the Jewel staggered between the hit he got and
the blow he missed, he tripped and "went to grass," so far as the
back-yard of our boardinghouse was provided with that vegetable. It was
a signal illustration of that fatal mistake, so frequent in young and
ardent natures with inconspicuous calves and negative pectorals, that
they can settle most little quarrels on the spot by "knocking the man
down."
We are in the habit of handling our faces so carefully, that a heavy
blow, taking effect on that portion of the surface, produces a most
unpleasant surprise, which is accompanied with odd sensations, as of
seeing sparks, and a kind of electrical or ozone-like odor,
half-sulphurous in character, and which has given rise to a very vulgar
and profane threat sometimes heard from the lips of bullies. A person
not used to pugilistic gestures does not instantly recover from this
surprise. The Koh-i-noor exasperated by his failure, and still a little
confused by the smart hit he had received, but furious, and confident of
victory over a young fellow a good deal lighter than himself, made a
desperate rush to bear down all before him and finish the contest at
once. That is the way all angry greenhorns and incompetent persons
attempt to settle matters. It does n't do, if the other fellow is only
cool, moderately quick, and has a very little science. It didn't do this
time; for, as the assailant rushed in with his arms flying everywhere,
like the vans of a windmill, he ran a prominent feature of his face
against a fist which was travelling in the other direction, and
immediately after struck the knuckles of the young man's other fist a
severe blow with the part of his person known as the epigastrium to one
branch of science and the bread-basket to another. This second round
closed the battle. The Koh-i-noor had got enough, which in such cases is
more than as good as a feast. The young fellow asked him if he was
satisfied, and held out his hand. But the other sulked, and muttered
something about revenge.--Jest as ye like,--said the young man
John.--Clap a slice o' raw beefsteak on to that mouse o' yours 'n' 't'll
take down the swellin'. (Mouse is a technical term for a bluish, oblong,
rounded elevation occasioned by running one's forehead or eyebrow against
another's knuckles.) The young fellow was particularly pleased that he
had had an opportunity of trying his proficiency in the art of
self-defence without the gloves. The Koh-i-noor did not favor us with
his company for a day or two, being confined to his chamber, it was said,
by a slight feverish, attack. He was chop-fallen always after this, and
got negligent in his person. The impression must have been a deep one;
for it was observed, that, when he came down again, his moustache and
whiskers had turned visibly white about the roots. In short, it
disgraced him, and rendered still more conspicuous a tendency to
drinking, of which he had been for some time suspected. This, and the
disgust which a young lady naturally feels at hearing that her lover has
been "licked by a fellah not half his size," induced the landlady's
daughter to take that decided step which produced a change in the
programme of her career I may hereafter allude to.
I never thought he would come to good, when I heard him attempting to
sneer at an unoffending city so respectable as Boston. After a man
begins to attack the State-House, when he gets bitter about the
Frog-Pond, you may be sure there is not much left of him. Poor Edgar Poe
died in the hospital soon after he got into this way of talking; and so
sure as you find an unfortunate fellow reduced to this pass, you had
better begin praying for him, and stop lending him money, for he is on
his last legs. Remember poor Edgar! He is dead and gone; but the
State-House has its cupola fresh-gilded, and the Frog-Pond has got a
fountain that squirts up a hundred feet into the air and glorifies that
humble sheet with a fine display of provincial rainbows.
--I cannot fulfil my promise in this number. I expected to gratify your
curiosity, if you have become at all interested in these puzzles, doubts,
fancies, whims, or whatever you choose to call them, of mine. Next month
you shall hear all about it.
--It was evening, and I was going to the sick-chamber. As I paused
at the door before entering, I heard a sweet voice singing. It was
not the wild melody I had sometimes heard at midnight:--no, this was
the voice of Iris, and I could distinguish every word. I had seen
the verses in her book; the melody was new to me. Let me finish my
page with them.
HYMN OF TRUST.
O Love Divine, that stooped to share
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear,
On Thee we cast each earthborn care,
We smile at pain while Thou art near!
Though long the weary way we tread,
And sorrow crown each lingering year,
No path we shun, no darkness dread,
Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near!
When drooping pleasure turns to grief,
And trembling faith is changed to fear,
The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf
Shall softly tell us, Thou art near!
On Thee we fling our burdening woe,
O Love Divine, forever dear,
Content to suffer, while we know,
Living and dying, Thou art near!
XII
A young fellow, born of good stock, in one of the more thoroughly
civilized portions of these United States of America, bred in good
principles, inheriting a social position which makes him at his ease
everywhere, means sufficient to educate him thoroughly without taking
away the stimulus to vigorous exertion, and with a good opening in some
honorable path of labor, is the finest sight our private satellite has
had the opportunity of inspecting on the planet to which she belongs. In
some respects it was better to be a young Greek. If we may trust the old
marbles, my friend with his arm stretched over my head, above there, (in
plaster of Paris,) or the discobolus, whom one may see at the principal
sculpture gallery of this metropolis,--those Greek young men were of
supreme beauty. Their close curls, their elegantly set heads, column-like
necks, straight noses, short, curled lips, firm chins, deep chests, light
flanks, large muscles, small joints, were finer than anything we ever
see. It may well be questioned whether the human shape will ever present
itself again in a race of such perfect symmetry. But the life of the
youthful Greek was local, not planetary, like that of the young American.
He had a string of legends, in place of our Gospels. He had no printed
books, no newspaper, no steam caravans, no forks, no soap, none of the
thousand cheap conveniences which have become matters of necessity to our
modern civilization. Above all things, if he aspired to know as well as
to enjoy, he found knowledge not diffused everywhere about him, so that a
day's labor would buy him more wisdom than a year could master, but held
in private hands, hoarded in precious manuscripts, to be sought for only
as gold is sought in narrow fissures, and in the beds of brawling
streams. Never, since man came into this atmosphere of oxygen and azote,
was there anything like the condition of the young American of the
nineteenth century. Having in possession or in prospect the best part of
half a world, with all its climates and soils to choose from; equipped
with wings of fire and smoke than fly with him day and night, so that he
counts his journey not in miles, but in degrees, and sees the seasons
change as the wild fowl sees them in his annual flights; with huge
leviathans always ready to take him on their broad backs and push behind
them with their pectoral or caudal fins the waters that seam the
continent or separate the hemispheres; heir of all old civilizations,
founder of that new one which, if all the prophecies of the human heart
are not lies, is to be the noblest, as it is the last; isolated in space
from the races that are governed by dynasties whose divine right grows
out of human wrong, yet knit into the most absolute solidarity with
mankind of all times and places by the one great thought he inherits as
his national birthright; free to form and express his opinions on almost
every subject, and assured that he will soon acquire the last franchise
which men withhold from man,--that of stating the laws of his spiritual
being and the beliefs he accepts without hindrance except from clearer
views of truth,--he seems to want nothing for a large, wholesome, noble,
beneficent life. In fact, the chief danger is that he will think the
whole planet is made for him, and forget that there are some
possibilities left in the debris of the old-world civilization which
deserve a certain respectful consideration at his hands.
The combing and clipping of this shaggy wild continent are in some
measure done for him by those who have gone before. Society has
subdivided itself enough to have a place for every form of talent. Thus,
if a man show the least sign of ability as a sculptor or a painter, for
instance, he finds the means of education and a demand for his services.
Even a man who knows nothing but science will be provided for, if he does
not think it necessary to hang about his birthplace all his days,--which
is a most unAmerican weakness. The apron-strings of an American mother
are made of India-rubber. Her boy belongs where he is wanted; and that
young Marylander of ours spoke for all our young men, when he said that
his home was wherever the stars and stripes blew over his head.
And that leads me to say a few words of this young gentleman, who made
that audacious movement lately which I chronicled in my last
record,--jumping over the seats of I don't know how many boarders to put
himself in the place which the Little Gentleman's absence had left vacant
at the side of Iris. When a young man is found habitually at the side of
any one given young lady,--when he lingers where she stays, and hastens
when she leaves,--when his eyes follow her as she moves and rest upon her
when she is still,--when he begins to grow a little timid, he who was so
bold, and a little pensive, he who was so gay, whenever accident finds
them alone,--when he thinks very often of the given young lady, and
names her very seldom,--
What do you say about it, my charming young expert in that sweet science
in which, perhaps, a long experience is not the first of qualifications?
--But we don't know anything about this young man, except that he is
good-looking, and somewhat high-spirited, and strong-limbed, and has a
generous style of nature,--all very promising, but by no means proving
that he is a proper lover for Iris, whose heart we turned inside out when
we opened that sealed book of hers.
Ah, my dear young friend! When your mamma then, if you will believe it,
a very slight young lady, with very pretty hair and figure--came and told
her mamma that your papa had--had--asked No, no, no! she could n't say
it; but her mother--oh the depth of maternal sagacity!--guessed it all
without another word!--When your mother, I say, came and told her mother
she was engaged, and your grandmother told your grandfather, how much did
they know of the intimate nature of the young gentleman to whom she had
pledged her existence? I will not be so hard as to ask how much your
respected mamma knew at that time of the intimate nature of your
respected papa, though, if we should compare a young girl's
man-as-she-thinks-him with a forty-summered matron's man-as-she-finds-him,
I have my doubts as to whether the second would be a facsimile of the
first in most cases.
The idea that in this world each young person is to wait until he or she
finds that precise counterpart who alone of all creation was meant for
him or her, and then fall instantly in love with it, is pretty enough,
only it is not Nature's way. It is not at all essential that all pairs
of human beings should be, as we sometimes say of particular couples,
"born for each other." Sometimes a man or a woman is made a great deal
better and happier in the end for having had to conquer the faults of the
one beloved, and make the fitness not found at first, by gradual
assimilation. There is a class of good women who have no right to marry
perfectly good men, because they have the power of saving those who would
go to ruin but for the guiding providence of a good wife. I have known
many such cases. It is the most momentous question a woman is ever
called upon to decide, whether the faults of the man she loves are beyond
remedy and will drag her down, or whether she is competent to be his
earthly redeemer and lift him to her own level.
A person of genius should marry a person of character. Genius does not
herd with genius. The musk-deer and the civet-cat are never found in
company. They don't care for strange scents,--they like plain animals
better than perfumed ones. Nay, if you will have the kindness to notice,
Nature has not gifted my lady musk-deer with the personal peculiarity by
which her lord is so widely known.
Now when genius allies itself with character, the world is very apt to
think character has the best of the bargain. A brilliant woman marries a
plain, manly fellow, with a simple intellectual mechanism;--we have all
seen such cases. The world often stares a good deal and wonders. She
should have taken that other, with a far more complex mental machinery.
She might have had a watch with the philosophical compensation-balance,
with the metaphysical index which can split a second into tenths, with
the musical chime which can turn every quarter of an hour into melody.
She has chosen a plain one, that keeps good time, and that is all.
Let her alone! She knows what she is about. Genius has an infinitely
deeper reverence for character than character can have for genius. To be
sure, genius gets the world's praise, because its work is a tangible
product, to be bought, or had for nothing. It bribes the common voice to
praise it by presents of speeches, poems, statues, pictures, or whatever
it can please with. Character evolves its best products for home
consumption; but, mind you, it takes a deal more to feed a family for
thirty years than to make a holiday feast for our neighbors once or twice
in our lives. You talk of the fire of genius. Many a blessed woman, who
dies unsung and unremembered, has given out more of the real vital heat
that keeps the life in human souls, without a spark flitting through her
humble chimney to tell the world about it, than would set a dozen
theories smoking, or a hundred odes simmering, in the brains of so many
men of genius. It is in latent caloric, if I may borrow a philosophical
expression, that many of the noblest hearts give out the life that warms
them. Cornelia's lips grow white, and her pulse hardly warms her thin
fingers,--but she has melted all the ice out of the hearts of those young
Gracchi, and her lost heat is in the blood of her youthful heroes. We
are always valuing the soul's temperature by the thermometer of public
deed or word. Yet the great sun himself, when he pours his noonday beams
upon some vast hyaline boulder, rent from the eternal ice-quarries, and
floating toward the tropics, never warms it a fraction above the
thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit that marked the moment when the first
drop trickled down its side.
How we all like the spirting up of a fountain, seemingly against the law
that makes water everywhere slide, roll, leap, tumble headlong, to get as
low as the earth will let it! That is genius. But what is this
transient upward movement, which gives us the glitter and the rainbow, to
that unsleeping, all-present force of gravity, the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever, (if the universe be eternal,)--the great outspread
hand of God himself, forcing all things down into their places, and
keeping them there? Such, in smaller proportion, is the force of
character to the fitful movements of genius, as they are or have been
linked to each other in many a household, where one name was historic,
and the other, let me say the nobler, unknown, save by some faint
reflected ray, borrowed from its lustrous companion.
Oftentimes, as I have lain swinging on the water, in the swell of the
Chelsea ferry-boats, in that long, sharp-pointed, black cradle in which I
love to let the great mother rock me, I have seen a tall ship glide by
against the tide, as if drawn by some invisible towline, with a hundred
strong arms pulling it. Her sails hung unfilled, her streamers were
drooping, she had neither side-wheel nor stern-wheel; still she moved on,
stately, in serene triumph, as if with her own life. But I knew that on
the other side of the ship, hidden beneath the great hulk that swam so
majestically, there was a little toiling steam-tug, with heart of fire
and arms of iron, that was hugging it close and dragging it bravely on;
and I knew, that, if the little steam-tug untwined her arms and left the
tall ship, it would wallow and roll about, and drift hither and thither,
and go off with the refluent tide, no man knows whither. And so I have
known more than one genius, high-decked, full-freighted, wide-sailed,
gay-pennoned, that, but for the bare toiling arms, and brave, warm,
beating heart of the faithful little wife, that nestled close in his
shadow, and clung to him, so that no wind or wave could part them, and
dragged him on against all the tide of circumstance, would soon have gone
down the stream and been heard of no more.--No, I am too much a lover of
genius, I sometimes think, and too often get impatient with dull people,
so that, in their weak talk, where nothing is taken for granted, I look
forward to some future possible state of development, when a gesture
passing between a beatified human soul and an archangel shall signify as
much as the complete history of a planet, from the time when it curdled
to the time when its sun was burned out. And yet, when a strong brain is
weighed with a true heart, it seems to me like balancing a bubble against
a wedge of gold.
--It takes a very true man to be a fitting companion for a woman of
genius, but not a very great one. I am not sure that she will not
embroider her ideal better on a plain ground than on one with a brilliant
pattern already worked in its texture. But as the very essence of genius
is truthfulness, contact with realities, (which are always ideas behind
shows of form or language,) nothing is so contemptible as falsehood and
pretence in its eyes. Now it is not easy to find a perfectly true woman,
and it is very hard to find a perfectly true man. And a woman of genius,
who has the sagacity to choose such a one as her companion, shows more of
the divine gift in so doing than in her finest talk or her most brilliant
work of letters or of art.
I have been a good while coming at a secret, for which I wished to
prepare you before telling it. I think there is a kindly feeling growing
up between Iris and our young Marylander. Not that I suppose there is
any distinct understanding between them, but that the affinity which has
drawn him from the remote corner where he sat to the side of the young
girl is quietly bringing their two natures together. Just now she is all
given up to another; but when he no longer calls upon her daily thoughts
and cares, I warn you not to be surprised, if this bud of friendship open
like the evening primrose, with a sound as of a sudden stolen kiss, and
lo! the flower of full-blown love lies unfolded before you.
And now the days had come for our little friend, whose whims and
weaknesses had interested us, perhaps, as much as his better traits, to
make ready for that long journey which is easier to the cripple than to
the strong man, and on which none enters so willingly as he who has borne
the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage. At this
point, under most circumstances, I would close the doors and draw the
veil of privacy before the chamber where the birth which we call death,
out of life into the unknown world, is working its mystery. But this
friend of ours stood alone in the world, and, as the last act of his life
was mainly in harmony with the rest of its drama, I do not here feel the
force of the objection commonly lying against that death-bed literature
which forms the staple of a certain portion of the press. Let me explain
what I mean, so that my readers may think for themselves a little, before
they accuse me of hasty expressions.
The Roman Catholic Church has certain formulas for its dying children, to
which almost all of them attach the greatest importance. There is hardly
a criminal so abandoned that he is not anxious to receive the
"consolations of religion" in his last hours. Even if he be senseless,
but still living, I think that the form is gone through with, just as
baptism is administered to the unconscious new-born child. Now we do not
quarrel with these forms. We look with reverence and affection upon all
symbols which give peace and comfort to our fellow-creatures. But the
value of the new-born child's passive consent to the ceremony is null, as
testimony to the truth of a doctrine. The automatic closing of a dying
man's lips on the consecrated wafer proves nothing in favor of the Real
Presence, or any other dogma. And, speaking generally, the evidence of
dying men in favor of any belief is to be received with great caution.
They commonly tell the truth about their present feelings, no doubt. A
dying man's deposition about anything he knows is good evidence. But it
is of much less consequence what a man thinks and says when he is changed
by pain, weakness, apprehension, than what he thinks when he is truly and
wholly himself. Most murderers die in a very pious frame of mind,
expecting to go to glory at once; yet no man believes he shall meet a
larger average of pirates and cut-throats in the streets of the New
Jerusalem than of honest folks that died in their beds.
Unfortunately, there has been a very great tendency to make capital of
various kinds out of dying men's speeches. The lies that have been put
into their mouths for this purpose are endless. The prime minister,
whose last breath was spent in scolding his nurse, dies with a
magnificent apothegm on his lips, manufactured by a reporter. Addison
gets up a tableau and utters an admirable sentiment,--or somebody makes
the posthumous dying epigram for him. The incoherent babble of green
fields is translated into the language of stately sentiment. One would
think, all that dying men had to do was to say the prettiest thing they
could,--to make their rhetorical point,--and then bow themselves
politely out of the world.
Worse than this is the torturing of dying people to get their evidence in
favor of this or that favorite belief. The camp-followers of proselyting
sects have come in at the close of every life where they could get in, to
strip the languishing soul of its thoughts, and carry them off as spoils.
The Roman Catholic or other priest who insists on the reception of his
formula means kindly, we trust, and very commonly succeeds in getting the
acquiescence of the subject of his spiritual surgery, but do not let us
take the testimony of people who are in the worst condition to form
opinions as evidence of the truth or falsehood of that which they accept.
A lame man's opinion of dancing is not good for much. A poor fellow who
can neither eat nor drink, who is sleepless and full of pains, whose
flesh has wasted from him, whose blood is like water, who is gasping for
breath, is not in a condition to judge fairly of human life, which in all
its main adjustments is intended for men in a normal, healthy condition.
It is a remark I have heard from the wise Patriarch of the Medical
Profession among us, that the moral condition of patients with disease
above the great breathing-muscle, the diaphragm, is much more hopeful
than that of patients with disease below it, in the digestive organs.
Many an honest ignorant man has given us pathology when he thought he was
giving us psychology. With this preliminary caution I shall proceed to
the story of the Little Gentleman's leaving us.
When the divinity-student found that our fellow-boarder was not likely to
remain long with us, he, being a young man of tender conscience and
kindly nature, was not a little exercised on his behalf. It was
undeniable that on several occasions the Little Gentleman had expressed
himself with a good deal of freedom on a class of subjects which,
according to the divinity-student, he had no right to form an opinion
upon. He therefore considered his future welfare in jeopardy.
The Muggletonian sect have a very odd way of dealing with people. If I,
the Professor, will only give in to the Muggletonian doctrine, there
shall be no question through all that persuasion that I am competent to
judge of that doctrine; nay, I shall be quoted as evidence of its truth,
while I live, and cited, after I am dead, as testimony in its behalf.
But if I utter any ever so slight Anti-Muggletonian sentiment, then I
become incompetent to form any opinion on the matter. This, you cannot
fail to observe, is exactly the way the pseudo-sciences go to work, as
explained in my Lecture on Phrenology. Now I hold that he whose
testimony would be accepted in behalf of the Muggletonian doctrine has a
right to be heard against it. Whoso offers me any article of belief for
my signature implies that I am competent to form an opinion upon it; and
if my positive testimony in its favor is of any value, then my negative
testimony against it is also of value.
I thought my young friend's attitude was a little too much like that of
the Muggletonians. I also remarked a singular timidity on his part lest
somebody should "unsettle" somebody's faith,--as if faith did not require
exercise as much as any other living thing, and were not all the better
for a shaking up now and then. I don't mean that it would be fair to
bother Bridget, the wild Irish girl, or Joice Heth, the centenarian, or
any other intellectual non-combatant; but all persons who proclaim a
belief which passes judgment on their neighbors must be ready to have it
"unsettled," that is, questioned, at all times and by anybody,--just as
those who set up bars across a thoroughfare must expect to have them
taken down by every one who wants to pass, if he is strong enough.
Besides, to think of trying to water-proof the American mind against the
questions that Heaven rains down upon it shows a misapprehension of our
new conditions. If to question everything be unlawful and dangerous, we
had better undeclare our independence at once; for what the Declaration
means is the right to question everything, even the truth of its own
fundamental proposition.
The old-world order of things is an arrangement of locks and canals,
where everything depends on keeping the gates shut, and so holding the
upper waters at their level; but the system under which the young
republican American is born trusts the whole unimpeded tide of life to
the great elemental influences, as the vast rivers of the continent
settle their own level in obedience to the laws that govern the planet
and the spheres that surround it.
The divinity-student was not quite up to the idea of the commonwealth, as
our young friend the Marylander, for instance, understood it. He could
not get rid of that notion of private property in truth, with the right
to fence it in, and put up a sign-board, thus:
ALL TRESPASSERS ARE WARNED OFF THESE
GROUNDS!
He took the young Marylander to task for going to the Church of the
Galileans, where he had several times accompanied Iris of late.
I am a Churchman,--the young man said,--by education and habit. I love
my old Church for many reasons, but most of all because I think it has
educated me out of its own forms into the spirit of its highest
teachings. I think I belong to the "Broad Church," if any of you can
tell what that means.
I had the rashness to attempt to answer the question myself.--Some say
the Broad Church means the collective mass of good people of all
denominations. Others say that such a definition is nonsense; that a
church is an organization, and the scattered good folks are no
organization at all. They think that men will eventually come together
on the basis of one or two or more common articles of belief, and form a
great unity. Do they see what this amounts to? It means an equal
division of intellect! It is mental agrarianism! a thing that never was
and never will be until national and individual idiosyncrasies have
ceased to exist. The man of thirty-nine beliefs holds the man of one
belief a pauper; he is not going to give up thirty-eight of them for the
sake of fraternizing with the other in the temple which bears on its
front, "Deo erexit Voltaire." A church is a garden, I have heard it
said, and the illustration was neatly handled. Yes, and there is no such
thing as a broad garden. It must be fenced in, and whatever is fenced in
is narrow. You cannot have arctic and tropical plants growing together
in it, except by the forcing system, which is a mighty narrow piece of
business. You can't make a village or a parish or a family think alike,
yet you suppose that you can make a world pinch its beliefs or pad them
to a single pattern! Why, the very life of an ecclesiastical
organization is a life of induction, a state of perpetually disturbed
equilibrium kept up by another charged body in the neighborhood. If the
two bodies touch and share their respective charges, down goes the index
of the electrometer!
Do you know that every man has a religious belief peculiar to himself?
Smith is always a Smithite. He takes in exactly Smith's-worth of
knowledge, Smith's-worth of truth, of beauty, of divinity. And Brown has
from time immemorial been trying to burn him, to excommunicate him, to
anonymous-article him, because he did not take in Brown's-worth of
knowledge, truth, beauty, divinity. He cannot do it, any more than a
pint-pot can hold a quart, or a quart-pot be filled by a pint. Iron is
essentially the same everywhere and always; but the sulphate of iron is
never the same as the carbonate of iron. Truth is invariable; but the
Smithate of truth must always differ from the Brownate of truth.
The wider the intellect, the larger and simpler the expressions in which
its knowledge is embodied. The inferior race, the degraded and enslaved
people, the small-minded individual, live in the details which to larger
minds and more advanced tribes of men reduce themselves to axioms and
laws. As races and individual minds must always differ just as sulphates
and carbonates do, I cannot see ground for expecting the Broad Church to
be founded on any fusion of intellectual beliefs, which of course implies
that those who hold the larger number of doctrines as essential shall
come down to those who hold the smaller number. These doctrines are to
the negative aristocracy what the quarterings of their coats are to the
positive orders of nobility.
The Broad Church, I think, will never be based on anything that requires
the use of language. Freemasonry gives an idea of such a church, and a
brother is known and cared for in a strange land where no word of his can
be understood. The apostle of this church may be a deaf mute carrying a
cup of cold water to a thirsting fellow-creature. The cup of cold water
does not require to be translated for a foreigner to understand it. I am
afraid the only Broad Church possible is one that has its creed in the
heart, and not in the head,--that we shall know its members by their
fruits, and not by their words. If you say this communion of well-doers
is no church, I can only answer, that all organized bodies have their
limits of size, and that when we find a man a hundred feet high and
thirty feet broad across the shoulders, we will look out for an
organization that shall include all Christendom.
Some of us do practically recognize a Broad Church and a Narrow Church,
however. The Narrow Church may be seen in the ship's boats of humanity,
in the long boat, in the jolly boat, in the captain's gig, lying off the
poor old vessel, thanking God that they are safe, and reckoning how soon
the hulk containing the mass of their fellow-creatures will go down. The
Broad Church is on board, working hard at the pumps, and very slow to
believe that the ship will be swallowed up with so many poor people in
it, fastened down under the hatches ever since it floated.
--All this, of course, was nothing but my poor notion about these
matters. I am simply an "outsider," you know; only it doesn't do very
well for a nest of Hingham boxes to talk too much about outsiders and
insiders!
After this talk of ours, I think these two young people went pretty
regularly to the Church of the Galileans. Still they could not keep away
from the sweet harmonies and rhythmic litanies of Saint Polycarp on the
great Church festival-days; so that, between the two, they were so much
together, that the boarders began to make remarks, and our landlady said
to me, one day, that, though it was noon of her business, them that had
eyes couldn't help seein' that there was somethin' goin', on between them
two young people; she thought the young man was a very likely young man,
though jest what his prospecs was was unbeknown to her; but she thought
he must be doing well, and rather guessed he would be able to take care
of a femily, if he didn't go to takin' a house; for a gentleman and his
wife could board a great deal cheaper than they could keep house;--but
then that girl was nothin' but a child, and wouldn't think of bein'
married this five year. They was good boarders, both of 'em, paid
regular, and was as pooty a couple as she ever laid eyes on.
--To come back to what I began to speak of before,--the divinity-student
was exercised in his mind about the Little Gentleman, and, in the
kindness of his heart,--for he was a good young man,--and in the strength
of his convictions,--for he took it for granted that he and his crowd
were right, and other folks and their crowd were wrong,--he determined to
bring the Little Gentleman round to his faith before he died, if he
could. So he sent word to the sick man, that he should be pleased to
visit him and have some conversation with him; and received for answer
that he would be welcome.
The divinity-student made him a visit, therefore and had a somewhat
remarkable interview with him, which I shall briefly relate, without
attempting to justify the positions taken by the Little Gentleman. He
found him weak, but calm. Iris sat silent by his pillow.
After the usual preliminaries, the divinity-student said; in a kind way,
that he was sorry to find him in failing health, that he felt concerned
for his soul, and was anxious to assist him in making preparations for
the great change awaiting him.
I thank you, Sir,--said the Little Gentleman, permit me to ask you, what
makes you think I am not ready for it, Sir, and that you can do anything
to help me, Sir?
I address you only as a fellow-man,--said the divinity-student,--and
therefore a fellow-sinner.
I am not a man, Sir!--said the Little Gentleman.--I was born into this
world the wreck of a man, and I shall not be judged with a race to which
I do not belong. Look at this!--he said, and held up his withered
arm.--See there!--and he pointed to his misshapen extremities.--Lay your
hand here!--and he laid his own on the region of his misplaced heart.--I
have known nothing of the life of your race. When I first came to my
consciousness, I found myself an object of pity, or a sight to show. The
first strange child I ever remember hid its face and would not come near
me. I was a broken-hearted as well as broken-bodied boy. I grew into
the emotions of ripening youth, and all that I could have loved shrank
from my presence. I became a man in years, and had nothing in common
with manhood but its longings. My life is the dying pang of a worn-out
race, and I shall go down alone into the dust, out of this world of men
and women, without ever knowing the fellowship of the one or the love of
the other. I will not die with a lie rattling in my throat. If another
state of being has anything worse in store for me, I have had a long
apprenticeship to give me strength that I may bear it. I don't believe
it, Sir! I have too much faith for that. God has not left me wholly
without comfort, even here. I love this old place where I was born;--the
heart of the world beats under the three hills of Boston, Sir! I love
this great land, with so many tall men in it, and so many good, noble
women.--His eyes turned to the silent figure by his pillow.--I have
learned to accept meekly what has been allotted to me, but I cannot
honestly say that I think my sin has been greater than my suffering. I
bear the ignorance and the evil-doing of whole generations in my single
person. I never drew a breath of air nor took a step that was not a
punishment for another's fault. I may have had many wrong thoughts, but
I cannot have done many wrong deeds,--for my cage has been a narrow one,
and I have paced it alone. I have looked through the bars and seen the
great world of men busy and happy, but I had no part in their doings. I
have known what it was to dream of the great passions; but since my
mother kissed me before she died, no woman's lips have pressed my
cheek,--nor ever will.
--The young girl's eyes glittered with a sudden film, and almost without
a thought, but with a warm human instinct that rushed up into her face
with her heart's blood, she bent over and kissed him. It was the
sacrament that washed out the memory of long years of bitterness, and I
should hold it an unworthy thought to defend her. The Little Gentleman
repaid her with the only tear any of us ever saw him shed.
The divinity-student rose from his place, and, turning away from the sick
man, walked to the other side of the room, where he bowed his head and
was still. All the questions he had meant to ask had faded from his
memory. The tests he had prepared by which to judge of his
fellow-creature's fitness for heaven seemed to have lost their virtue.
He could trust the crippled child of sorrow to the Infinite Parent. The
kiss of the fair-haired girl had been like a sign from heaven, that
angels watched over him whom he was presuming but a moment before to
summon before the tribunal of his private judgment. Shall I pray with
you?--he said, after a pause. A little before he would have said, Shall
I pray for you?--The Christian religion, as taught by its Founder, is
full of sentiment. So we must not blame the divinity-student, if he was
overcome by those yearnings of human sympathy which predominate so much
more in the sermons of the Master than in the writings of his successors,
and which have made the parable of the Prodigal Son the consolation of
mankind, as it has been the stumbling-block of all exclusive doctrines.
Pray!--said the Little Gentleman.
The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones,
Iris and the Little Gentleman that God would look on his servant lying
helpless at the feet of his mercy; that He would remember his long years
of bondage in the flesh; that He would deal gently with the bruised reed.
Thou hast visited the sins of the fathers upon this their child. Oh,
turn away from him the penalties of his own transgressions! Thou hast
laid upon him, from infancy, the cross which thy stronger children are
called upon to take up; and now that he is fainting under it, be Thou his
stay, and do Thou succor him that is tempted! Let his manifold
infirmities come between him and Thy judgment; in wrath remember mercy!
If his eyes are not opened to all Thy truth, let Thy compassion lighten
the darkness that rests upon him, even as it came through the word of thy
Son to blind Bartimeus, who sat by the wayside, begging!
Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone of
tenderness. In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the
fast-darkening shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his Christian
humanity, and cared more about consoling his fellow-man than making a
proselyte of him.
This was the last prayer to which the Little Gentleman ever listened.
Some change was rapidly coming over him during this last hour of which I
have been speaking. The excitement of pleading his cause before his
self-elected spiritual adviser,--the emotion which overcame him, when the
young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed her lips
to his cheek,--the thoughts that mastered him while the divinity-student
poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well hurry on the inevitable
moment. When the divinity-student had uttered his last petition,
commending him to the Father through his Son's intercession, he turned to
look upon him before leaving his chamber. His face was changed.--There
is a language of the human countenance which we all understand without an
interpreter, though the lineaments belong to the rudest savage that ever
stammered in an unknown barbaric dialect. By the stillness of the
sharpened features, by the blankness of the tearless eyes, by the
fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening tints, by the
contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we know that the soul is soon
to leave its mortal tenement, and is already closing up its windows and
putting out its fires.--Such was the aspect of the face upon which the
divinity-student looked, after the brief silence which followed his
prayer. The change had been rapid, though not that abrupt one which is
liable to happen at any moment in these cases.--The sick man looked
towards him.--Farewell,--he said,--I thank you. Leave me alone with her.
When the divinity-student had gone, and the Little Gentleman found
himself alone with Iris, he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from
it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looking key,--the
same key I had once seen him holding. He gave this to her, and pointed
to a carved cabinet opposite his bed, one of those that had so attracted
my curious eyes and set me wondering as to what it might contain.
Open it,--he said,--and light the lamp.--The young girl walked to the
cabinet and unlocked the door. A deep recess appeared, lined with black
velvet, against which stood in white relief an ivory crucifix. A silver
lamp hung over it. She lighted the lamp and came back to the bedside.
The dying man fixed his eyes upon the figure of the dying Saviour.--Give
me your hand, he said; and Iris placed her right hand in his left. So
they remained, until presently his eyes lost their meaning, though they
still remained vacantly fixed upon the white image. Yet he held the
young girl's hand firmly, as if it were leading him through some
deep-shadowed valley and it was all he could cling to. But presently an
involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, and his terrible dying
grasp held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an engine of torture.
She pressed her lips together and sat still. The inexorable hand held
her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her own slender fingers
would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the tortures of the
Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir from her place.
Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes upon that dying
figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet and side and
lacerated forehead, she felt that she also must suffer uncomplaining. In
the moment of her sharpest pain she did not forget the duties of her
under office, but dried the dying man's moist forehead with her
handkerchief, even while the dews of agony were glistening on her own.
How long this lasted she never could tell. Time and thirst are two
things you and I talk about; but the victims whom holy men and righteous
judges used to stretch on their engines knew better what they meant than
you or I!--What is that great bucket of water for? said the Marchioness
de Brinvilliers, before she was placed on the rack.--For you to
drink,--said the torturer to the little woman.--She could not think that
it would take such a flood to quench the fire in her and so keep her
alive for her confession. The torturer knew better than she.
After a time not to be counted in minutes, as the clock measures,
--without any warning,--there came a swift change of his features; his
face turned white, as the waters whiten when a sudden breath passes over
their still surface; the muscles instantly relaxed, and Iris, released at
once from her care for the sufferer and from his unconscious grasp, fell
senseless, with a feeble cry,--the only utterance of her long agony.
Perhaps you sometimes wander in through the iron gates of the Copp's Hill
burial-ground. You love to stroll round among the graves that crowd each
other in the thickly peopled soil of that breezy summit. You love to lean
on the freestone slab which lies over the bones of the Mathers,--to read
the epitaph of stout William Clark, "Despiser of Sorry Persons and little
Actions,"--to stand by the stone grave of sturdy Daniel Malcolm and look
upon the splintered slab that tells the old rebel's story,--to kneel by
the triple stone that says how the three Worthylakes, father, mother, and
young daughter, died on the same day and lie buried there; a mystery; the
subject of a moving ballad, by the late BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, as may be seen
in his autobiography, which will explain the secret of the triple
gravestone; though the old philosopher has made a mistake, unless the
stone is wrong.
Not very far from that you will find a fair mound, of dimensions fit to
hold a well-grown man. I will not tell you the inscription upon the
stone which stands at its head; for I do not wish you to be sure of the
resting-place of one who could not bear to think that he should be known
as a cripple among the dead, after being pointed at so long among the
living. There is one sign, it is true, by which, if you have been a
sagacious reader of these papers, you will at once know it; but I fear
you read carelessly, and must study them more diligently before you will
detect the hint to which I allude.
The Little Gentleman lies where he longed to lie, among the old names and
the old bones of the old Boston people. At the foot of his resting-place
is the river, alive with the wings and antennae of its colossal
water-insects; over opposite are the great war-ships, and the heavy guns,
which, when they roar, shake the soil in which he lies; and in the
steeple of Christ Church, hard by, are the sweet chimes which are the
Boston boy's Ranz des Vaches, whose echoes follow him all the world over.
In Pace!
I, told you a good while ago that the Little Gentleman could not do a
better thing than to leave all his money, whatever it might be, to the
young girl who has since that established such a claim upon him. He did
not, however. A considerable bequest to one of our public institutions
keeps his name in grateful remembrance. The telescope through which he
was fond of watching the heavenly bodies, and the movements of which had
been the source of such odd fancies on my part, is now the property of a
Western College. You smile as you think of my taking it for a fleshless
human figure, when I saw its tube pointing to the sky, and thought it was
an arm, under the white drapery thrown over it for protection. So do I
smile now; I belong to the numerous class who are prophets after the
fact, and hold my nightmares very cheap by daylight.
I have received many letters of inquiry as to the sound resembling a
woman's voice, which occasioned me so many perplexities. Some thought
there was no question that he had a second apartment, in which he had
made an asylum for a deranged female relative. Others were of opinion
that he was, as I once suggested, a "Bluebeard" with patriarchal
tendencies, and I have even been censured for introducing so Oriental an
element into my record of boarding-house experience.
Come in and see me, the Professor, some evening when I have nothing else
to do, and ask me to play you Tartini's Devil's Sonata on that
extraordinary instrument in my possession, well known to amateurs as one
of the masterpieces of Joseph Guarnerius. The vox humana of the great
Haerlem organ is very lifelike, and the same stop in the organ of the
Cambridge chapel might be mistaken in some of its tones for a human
voice; but I think you never heard anything come so near the cry of a
prima donna as the A string and the E string of this instrument. A
single fact will illustrate the resemblance. I was executing some tours
de force upon it one evening, when the policeman of our district rang the
bell sharply, and asked what was the matter in the house. He had heard a
woman's screams,--he was sure of it. I had to make the instrument sing
before his eyes before he could be satisfied that he had not heard the
cries of a woman. The instrument was bequeathed to me by the Little
Gentleman. Whether it had anything to do with the sounds I heard coming
from his chamber, you can form your own opinion;--I have no other
conjecture to offer. It is not true that a second apartment with a
secret entrance was found; and the story of the veiled lady is the
invention of one of the Reporters.
Bridget, the housemaid, always insisted that he died a Catholic. She had
seen the crucifix, and believed that he prayed on his knees before it.
The last circumstance is very probably true; indeed, there was a spot
worn on the carpet just before this cabinet which might be thus accounted
for. Why he, whose whole life was a crucifixion, should not love to look
on that divine image of blameless suffering, I cannot see; on the
contrary, it seems to me the most natural thing in the world that he
should. But there are those who want to make private property of
everything, and can't make up their minds that people who don't think as
they do should claim any interest in that infinite compassion expressed
in the central figure of the Christendom which includes us all.
The divinity-student expressed a hope before the boarders that he should
meet him in heaven.--The question is, whether he'll meet you,--said the
young fellow John, rather smartly. The divinity-student had n't thought
of that.
However, he is a worthy young man, and I trust I have shown him in a
kindly and respectful light. He will get a parish by-and-by; and, as he
is about to marry the sister of an old friend,--the Schoolmistress, whom
some of us remember,--and as all sorts of expensive accidents happen to
young married ministers, he will be under bonds to the amount of his
salary, which means starvation, if they are forfeited, to think all his
days as he thought when he was settled,--unless the majority of his
people change with him or in advance of him. A hard ease, to which
nothing could reconcile a man, except that the faithful discharge of
daily duties in his personal relations with his parishioners will make
him useful enough in his way, though as a thinker he may cease to exist
before he has reached middle age.
--Iris went into mourning for the Little Gentleman. Although, as I have
said, he left the bulk of his property, by will, to a public institution,
he added a codicil, by which he disposed of various pieces of property as
tokens of kind remembrance. It was in this way I became the possessor of
the wonderful instrument I have spoken of, which had been purchased for
him out of an Italian convent. The landlady was comforted with a small
legacy. The following extract relates to Iris: "in consideration of her
manifold acts of kindness, but only in token of grateful remembrance, and
by no means as a reward for services which cannot be compensated, a
certain messuage, with all the land thereto appertaining, situated in
______ Street, at the North End, so called, of Boston, aforesaid, the
same being the house in which I was born, but now inhabited by several
families, and known as 'The Rookery.'" Iris had also the crucifix, the
portrait, and the red-jewelled ring. The funeral or death's-head ring
was buried with him.
It was a good while, after the Little Gentleman was gone, before our
boarding-house recovered its wonted cheerfulness. There was a flavor in
his whims and local prejudices that we liked, even while we smiled at
them. It was hard to see the tall chair thrust away among useless
lumber, to dismantle his room, to take down the picture of Leah, the
handsome Witch of Essex, to move away the massive shelves that held the
books he loved, to pack up the tube through which he used to study the
silent stars, looking down at him like the eyes of dumb creatures, with a
kind of stupid half-consciousness that did not worry him as did the eyes
of men and women,--and hardest of all to displace that sacred figure to
which his heart had always turned and found refuge, in the feelings it
inspired, from all the perplexities of his busy brain. It was hard, but
it had to be done.
And by-and-by we grew cheerful again, and the breakfast-table wore
something of its old look. The Koh-i-noor, as we named the gentleman
with the diamond, left us, however, soon after that "little mill," as the
young fellow John called it, where he came off second best. His
departure was no doubt hastened by a note from the landlady's daughter,
inclosing a lock of purple hair which she "had valued as a pledge of
affection, ere she knew the hollowness of the vows he had breathed,"
speedily followed by another, inclosing the landlady's bill. The next
morning he was missing, as were his limited wardrobe and the trunk that
held it. Three empty bottles of Mrs. Allen's celebrated preparation,
each of them asserting, on its word of honor as a bottle, that its former
contents were "not a dye," were all that was left to us of the
Koh-i-noor.
From this time forward, the landlady's daughter manifested a decided
improvement in her style of carrying herself before the boarders. She
abolished the odious little flat, gummy side-curl. She left off various
articles of "jewelry." She began to help her mother in some of her
household duties. She became a regular attendant on the ministrations of
a very worthy clergyman, having been attracted to his meetin' by
witnessing a marriage ceremony in which he called a man and a woman a
"gentleman" and a "lady,"--a stroke of gentility which quite overcame
her. She even took a part in what she called a Sabbath school, though it
was held on Sunday, and by no means on Saturday, as the name she intended
to utter implied. All this, which was very sincere, as I believe, on her
part, and attended with a great improvement in her character, ended in
her bringing home a young man, with straight, sandy hair, brushed so as
to stand up steeply above his forehead, wearing a pair of green
spectacles, and dressed in black broadcloth. His personal aspect, and a
certain solemnity of countenance, led me to think he must be a clergyman;
and as Master Benjamin Franklin blurted out before several of us
boarders, one day, that "Sis had got a beau," I was pleased at the
prospect of her becoming a minister's wife. On inquiry, however, I found
that the somewhat solemn look which I had noticed was indeed a
professional one, but not clerical. He was a young undertaker, who had
just succeeded to a thriving business. Things, I believe, are going on
well at this time of writing, and I am glad for the landlady's daughter
and her mother. Sextons and undertakers are the cheerfullest people in
the world at home, as comedians and circus-clowns are the most melancholy
in their domestic circle.
As our old boarding-house is still in existence, I do not feel at liberty
to give too minute a statement of the present condition of each and all
of its inmates. I am happy to say, however, that they are all alive and
well, up to this time. That amiable old gentleman who sat opposite to me
is growing older, as old men will, but still smiles benignantly on all
the boarders, and has come to be a kind of father to all of them,--so
that on his birthday there is always something like a family festival.
The Poor Relation, even, has warmed into a filial feeling towards him,
and on his last birthday made him a beautiful present, namely, a very
handsomely bound copy of Blair's celebrated poem, "The Grave."
The young man John is still, as he says, "in fustrate fettle." I saw him
spar, not long since, at a private exhibition, and do himself great
credit in a set-to with Henry Finnegass, Esq., a professional gentleman
of celebrity. I am pleased to say that he has been promoted to an upper
clerkship, and, in consequence of his rise in office, has taken an
apartment somewhat lower down than number "forty-'leven," as he
facetiously called his attic. Whether there is any truth, or not, in the
story of his attachment to, and favorable reception by, the daughter of
the head of an extensive wholesale grocer's establishment, I will not
venture an opinion; I may say, however, that I have met him repeatedly in
company with a very well-nourished and high-colored young lady, who, I
understand, is the daughter of the house in question.
Some of the boarders were of opinion that Iris did not return the
undisguised attentions of the handsome young Marylander. Instead of
fixing her eyes steadily on him, as she used to look upon the Little
Gentleman, she would turn them away, as if to avoid his own. They often
went to church together, it is true; but nobody, of course, supposes
there is any relation between religious sympathy and those wretched
"sentimental" movements of the human heart upon which it is commonly
agreed that nothing better is based than society, civilization,
friendship, the relation of husband and wife, and of parent and child,
and which many people must think were singularly overrated by the Teacher
of Nazareth, whose whole life, as I said before, was full of sentiment,
loving this or that young man, pardoning this or that sinner, weeping
over the dead, mourning for the doomed city, blessing, and perhaps
kissing, the little children, so that the Gospels are still cried over
almost as often as the last work of fiction!
But one fine June morning there rumbled up to the door of our
boarding-house a hack containing a lady inside and a trunk on the
outside. It was our friend the lady-patroness of Miss Iris, the same who
had been called by her admiring pastor "The Model of all the Virtues."
Once a week she had written a letter, in a rather formal hand, but full
of good advice, to her young charge. And now she had come to carry her
away, thinking that she had learned all she was likely to learn under her
present course of teaching. The Model, however, was to stay awhile,--a
week, or more,--before they should leave together.
Iris was obedient, as she was bound to be. She was respectful, grateful,
as a child is with a just, but not tender parent. Yet something was
wrong. She had one of her trances, and became statue-like, as before,
only the day after the Model's arrival. She was wan and silent, tasted
nothing at table, smiled as if by a forced effort, and often looked
vaguely away from those who were looking at her, her eyes just glazed
with the shining moisture of a tear that must not be allowed to gather
and fall. Was it grief at parting from the place where her strange
friendship had grown up with the Little Gentleman? Yet she seemed to
have become reconciled to his loss, and rather to have a deep feeling of
gratitude that she had been permitted to care for him in his last weary
days.
The Sunday after the Model's arrival, that lady had an attack of
headache, and was obliged to shut herself up in a darkened room alone.
Our two young friends took the opportunity to go together to the Church
of the Galileans. They said but little going,--"collecting their
thoughts" for the service, I devoutly hope. My kind good friend the
pastor preached that day one of his sermons that make us all feel like
brothers and sisters, and his text was that affectionate one from John,
"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in
deed and in truth." When Iris and her friend came out of church, they
were both pale, and walked a space without speaking.
At last the young man said,--You and I are not little children, Iris!
She looked in his face an instant, as if startled, for there was
something strange in the tone of his voice. She smiled faintly, but
spoke never a word.
In deed and in truth, Iris,----
What shall a poor girl say or do, when a strong man falters in his speech
before her, and can do nothing better than hold out his hand to finish
his broken sentence?
The poor girl said nothing, but quietly laid her ungloved hand in
his,--the little soft white hand which had ministered so tenderly and
suffered so patiently.
The blood came back to the young man's cheeks, as he lifted it to his
lips, even as they walked there in the street, touched it gently with
them, and said, "It is mine!"
Iris did not contradict him.
The seasons pass by so rapidly, that I am startled to think how much has
happened since these events I was describing. Those two young people
would insist on having their own way about their own affairs,
notwithstanding the good lady, so justly called the Model, insisted that
the age of twenty-five years was as early as any discreet young lady
should think of incurring the responsibilities, etc., etc. Long before
Iris had reached that age, she was the wife of a young Maryland engineer,
directing some of the vast constructions of his native State,--where he
was growing rich fast enough to be able to decline that famous Russian
offer which would have made him a kind of nabob in a few years. Iris
does not write verse often, nowadays, but she sometimes draws. The last
sketch of hers I have seen in my Southern visits was of two children, a
boy and girl, the youngest holding a silver goblet, like the one she held
that evening when I--I was so struck with her statue-like beauty. If in
the later, summer months you find the grass marked with footsteps around
that grave on Copp's Hill I told you of, and flowers scattered over it,
you may be sure that Iris is here on her annual visit to the home of her
childhood and that excellent lady whose only fault was, that Nature had
written out her list of virtues an ruled paper, and forgotten to rub out
the lines.
One thing more I must mention. Being on the Common, last Sunday, I was
attracted by the cheerful spectacle of a well-dressed and somewhat
youthful papa wheeling a very elegant little carriage containing a stout
baby. A buxom young lady watched them from one of the stone seats, with
an interest which could be nothing less than maternal. I at once
recognized my old friend, the young fellow whom we called John. He was
delighted to see me, introduced me to "Madam," and would have the lusty
infant out of the carriage, and hold him up for me to look at.
Now, then,--he said to the two-year-old,--show the gentleman how you hit
from the shoulder. Whereupon the little imp pushed his fat fist straight
into my eye, to his father's intense satisfaction.
Fust-rate little chap,--said the papa.--Chip of the old block. Regl'r
little Johnny, you know.
I was so much pleased to find the young fellow settled in life, and
pushing about one of "them little articles" he had seemed to want so
much, that I took my "punishment" at the hands of the infant pugilist
with great equanimity.--And how is the old boarding-house?--I asked.
A 1,--he answered.--Painted and papered as good as new. Gabs in all the
rooms up to the skyparlors. Old woman's layin' up money, they say.
Means to send Ben Franklin to college. Just then the first bell rang for
church, and my friend, who, I understand, has become a most exemplary
member of society, said he must be off to get ready for meetin', and told
the young one to "shake dada," which he did with his closed fist, in a
somewhat menacing manner. And so the young man John, as we used to call
him, took the pole of the miniature carriage, and pushed the small
pugilist before him homewards, followed, in a somewhat leisurely way, by
his pleasant-looking lady-companion, and I sent a sigh and a smile after
him.
That evening, as soon as it was dark, I could not help going round by the
old boarding-house. The "gahs" was lighted, but the curtains, or more
properly, the painted shades; were not down. And so I stood there and
looked in along the table where the boarders sat at the evening
meal,--our old breakfast-table, which some of us feel as if we knew so
well. There were new faces at it, but also old and familiar ones.--The
landlady, in a wonderfully smart cap, looking young, comparatively
speaking, and as if half the wrinkles had been ironed out of her
forehead.--Her daughter, in rather dressy half-mourning, with a vast
brooch of jet, got up, apparently, to match the gentleman next her, who
was in black costume and sandy hair,--the last rising straight from his
forehead, like the marble flame one sometimes sees at the top of a
funeral urn.--The Poor Relation, not in absolute black, but in a stuff
with specks of white; as much as to say, that, if there were any more
Hirams left to sigh for her, there were pin-holes in the night of her
despair, through which a ray of hope might find its way to an adorer.
--Master Benjamin Franklin, grown taller of late, was in the act of
splitting his face open with a wedge of pie, so that his features were
seen to disadvantage for the moment.--The good old gentleman was sitting
still and thoughtful. All at once he turned his face toward the window
where I stood, and, just as if he had seen me, smiled his benignant
smile. It was a recollection of some past pleasant moment; but it fell
upon me like the blessing of a father.
I kissed my hand to them all, unseen as I stood in the outer darkness;
and as I turned and went my way, the table and all around it faded into
the realm of twilight shadows and of midnight dreams.
---------------------
And so my year's record is finished. The Professor has talked less than
his predecessor, but he has heard and seen more. Thanks to all those
friends who from time to time have sent their messages of kindly
recognition and fellow-feeling! Peace to all such as may have been vexed
in spirit by any utterance these pages have repeated! They will,
doubtless, forget for the moment the difference in the hues of truth we
look at through our human prisms, and join in singing (inwardly) this
hymn to the Source of the light we all need to lead us, and the warmth
which alone can make us all brothers.
A SUN-DAY HYMN.
Lord of all being! throned afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star,
Centre and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near!
Sun of our life, thy quickening ray
Sheds on our path the glow of day;
Star of our hope, thy softened light
Cheers the long watches of the night.
Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn;
Our noontide is thy gracious dawn;
Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign;
All, save the clouds of sin, are thine!
Lord of all life, below, above,
Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love,
Before thy ever-blazing throne
We ask no lustre of our own.
Grant us thy truth to make us free,
And kindling hearts that burn for thee,
Till all thy living altars claim
One holy light, one heavenly flame.
One holy light, one heavenly flame.
THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
PREFACE.
In this, the third series of Breakfast-Table conversations, a slight
dramatic background shows off a few talkers and writers, aided by certain
silent supernumeraries. The machinery is much like that of the two
preceding series. Some of the characters must seem like old
acquaintances to those who have read the former papers. As I read these
over for the first time for a number of years, I notice one character;
presenting a class of beings who have greatly multiplied during the
interval which separates the earlier and later Breakfast-Table papers,--I
mean the scientific specialists. The entomologist, who confines himself
rigidly to the study of the coleoptera, is intended to typify this class.
The subdivision of labor, which, as we used to be told, required fourteen
different workmen to make a single pin, has reached all branches of
knowledge. We find new terms in all the Professions, implying that
special provinces have been marked off, each having its own school of
students. In theology we have many curious subdivisions; among the rest
eschatology, that is to say, the geography, geology, etc., of the
"undiscovered country;" in medicine, if the surgeon who deals with
dislocations of the right shoulder declines to meddle with a displacement
on the other side, we are not surprised, but ring the bell of the
practitioner who devotes himself to injuries of the left shoulder.
On the other hand, we have had or have the encyclopaedic intelligences
like Cuvier, Buckle, and more emphatically Herbert Spencer, who take all
knowledge, or large fields of it, to be their province. The author of
"Thoughts on the Universe" has something in common with these, but he
appears also to have a good deal about him of what we call the humorist;
that is, an individual with a somewhat heterogeneous personality, in
which various distinctly human elements are mixed together, so as to form
a kind of coherent and sometimes pleasing whole, which is to a
symmetrical character as a breccia is to a mosaic.
As for the Young Astronomer, his rhythmical discourse may be taken as
expressing the reaction of what some would call "the natural man" against
the unnatural beliefs which he found in that lower world to which he
descended by day from his midnight home in the firmament.
I have endeavored to give fair play to the protest of gentle and
reverential conservatism in the letter of the Lady, which was not copied
from, but suggested by, one which I received long ago from a lady bearing
an honored name, and which I read thoughtfully and with profound respect.
December, 1882.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
It is now nearly twenty years since this book was published. Being the
third of the Breakfast-Table series, it could hardly be expected to
attract so much attention as the earlier volumes. Still, I had no reason
to be disappointed with its reception. It took its place with the
others, and was in some points a clearer exposition of my views and
feelings than either of the other books, its predecessors. The poems
"Homesick in Heaven" and the longer group of passages coming from the
midnight reveries of the Young Astronomer have thoughts in them not so
fully expressed elsewhere in my writings.
The first of these two poems is at war with our common modes of thought.
In looking forward to rejoining in a future state those whom we have
loved on earth,--as most of us hope and many of us believe we shall,--we
are apt to forget that the same individuality is remembered by one
relative as a babe, by another as an adult in the strength of maturity,
and by a third as a wreck with little left except its infirmities and its
affections. The main thought of this poem is a painful one to some
persons. They have so closely associated life with its accidents that
they expect to see their departed friends in the costume of the time in
which they best remember them, and feel as if they should meet the spirit
of their grandfather with his wig and cane, as they habitually recall him
to memory.
The process of scientific specialization referred to and illustrated in
this record has been going on more actively than ever during these last
twenty years. We have only to look over the lists of the Faculties and
teachers of our Universities to see the subdivision of labor carried out
as never before. The movement is irresistible; it brings with it
exactness, exhaustive knowledge, a narrow but complete self-satisfaction,
with such accompanying faults as pedantry, triviality, and the kind of
partial blindness which belong to intellectual myopia. The specialist is
idealized almost into sublimity in Browning's "Burial of the Grammarian."
We never need fear that he will undervalue himself. To be the supreme
authority on anything is a satisfaction to self-love next door to the
precious delusions of dementia. I have never pictured a character more
contented with himself than the "Scarabee" of this story.
BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 1, 1891.
O. W. H.
THE POET
AT THE
BREAKFAST-TABLE.
I
The idea of a man's "interviewing" himself is rather odd, to be sure. But
then that is what we are all of us doing every day. I talk half the time
to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out
to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal
property he had forgotten in his inventory.
--You don't know what your thoughts are going to be beforehand? said the
"Member of the Haouse," as he calls himself.
--Why, of course I don't. Bless your honest legislative soul, I suppose
I have as many bound volumes of notions of one kind and another in my
head as you have in your Representatives' library up there at the State
House. I have to tumble them over and over, and open them in a hundred
places, and sometimes cut the leaves here and there, to find what I think
about this and that. And a good many people who flatter themselves they
are talking wisdom to me, are only helping me to get at the shelf and the
book and the page where I shall find my own opinion about the matter in
question.
--The Member's eyes began to look heavy.
--It 's a very queer place, that receptacle a man fetches his talk out
of. The library comparison does n't exactly hit it. You stow away some
idea and don't want it, say for ten years. When it turns up at last it
has got so jammed and crushed out of shape by the other ideas packed with
it, that it is no more like what it was than a raisin is like a grape on
the vine, or a fig from a drum like one hanging on the tree. Then,
again, some kinds of thoughts breed in the dark of one's mind like the
blind fishes in the Mammoth Cave. We can't see them and they can't see
us; but sooner or later the daylight gets in and we find that some cold,
fishy little negative has been spawning all over our beliefs, and the
brood of blind questions it has given birth to are burrowing round and
under and butting their blunt noses against the pillars of faith we
thought the whole world might lean on. And then, again, some of our old
beliefs are dying out every year, and others feed on them and grow fat,
or get poisoned as the case may be. And so, you see, you can't tell what
the thoughts are that you have got salted down, as one may say, till you
run a streak of talk through them, as the market people run a butterscoop
through a firkin.
Don't talk, thinking you are going to find out your neighbor, for you
won't do it, but talk to find out yourself. There is more of you--and
less of you, in spots, very likely--than you know.
--The Member gave a slight but unequivocal start just here. It does seem
as if perpetual somnolence was the price of listening to other people's
wisdom. This was one of those transient nightmares that one may have in
a doze of twenty seconds. He thought a certain imaginary Committee of
Safety of a certain imaginary Legislature was proceeding to burn down his
haystack, in accordance with an Act, entitled an Act to make the Poor
Richer by making the Rich Poorer. And the chairman of the committee was
instituting a forcible exchange of hats with him, to his manifest
disadvantage, for he had just bought him a new beaver. He told this
dream afterwards to one of the boarders.
There was nothing very surprising, therefore, in his asking a question
not very closely related to what had gone before.
--Do you think they mean business?
--I beg your pardon, but it would be of material assistance to me in
answering your question if I knew who "they" might happen to be.
--Why, those chaps that are setting folks on to burn us all up in our
beds. Political firebugs we call 'em up our way. Want to substitoot the
match-box for the ballot-box. Scare all our old women half to death.
--Oh--ah--yes--to be sure. I don't believe they say what the papers put
in their mouths any more than that a friend of mine wrote the letter
about Worcester's and Webster's Dictionaries, that he had to disown the
other day. These newspaper fellows are half asleep when they make up
their reports at two or three o'clock in the morning, and fill out the
speeches to suit themselves. I do remember some things that sounded
pretty bad,--about as bad as nitro-glycerine, for that matter. But I
don't believe they ever said 'em, when they spoke their pieces, or if
they said 'em I know they did n't mean 'em. Something like this, wasn't
it? If the majority didn't do something the minority wanted 'em to, then
the people were to burn up our cities, and knock us down and jump on our
stomachs. That was about the kind of talk, as the papers had it; I don't
wonder it scared the old women.
--The Member was wide awake by this time.
--I don't seem to remember of them partickler phrases, he said.
--Dear me, no; only levelling everything smack, and trampling us under
foot, as the reporters made it out. That means FIRE, I take it, and
knocking you down and stamping on you, whichever side of your person
happens to be uppermost. Sounded like a threat; meant, of course, for a
warning. But I don't believe it was in the piece as they spoke
it,--could n't have been. Then, again, Paris wasn't to blame,--as much
as to say--so the old women thought--that New York or Boston would n't be
to blame if it did the same thing. I've heard of political gatherings
where they barbecued an ox, but I can't think there 's a party in this
country that wants to barbecue a city. But it is n't quite fair to
frighten the old women. I don't doubt there are a great many people
wiser than I am that would n't be hurt by a hint I am going to give them.
It's no matter what you say when you talk to yourself, but when you talk
to other people, your business is to use words with reference to the way
in which those other people are like to understand them. These pretended
inflammatory speeches, so reported as to seem full of combustibles, even
if they were as threatening as they have been represented, would do no
harm if read or declaimed in a man's study to his books, or by the
sea-shore to the waves. But they are not so wholesome moral
entertainment for the dangerous classes. Boys must not touch off their
squibs and crackers too near the powder-magazine. This kind of speech
does n't help on the millennium much.
--It ain't jest the thing to grease your ex with ile o' vitrul, said the
Member.
--No, the wheel of progress will soon stick fast if you do. You can't
keep a dead level long, if you burn everything down flat to make it.
Why, bless your soul, if all the cities of the world were reduced ashes,
you'd have a new set of millionnaires in a couple of years or so, out of
the trade in potash. In the mean time, what is the use of setting the
man with the silver watch against the man with the gold watch, and the
man without any watch against them both?
--You can't go agin human natur', said the Member
--You speak truly. Here we are travelling through desert together like
the children of Israel. Some pick up more manna and catch more quails
than others and ought to help their hungry neighbors more than they do;
that will always be so until we come back to primitive Christianity, the
road to which does not seem to be via Paris, just now; but we don't want
the incendiary's pillar of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night
to lead us in the march to civilization, and we don't want a Moses who
will smite rock, not to bring out water for our thirst, but petroleum to
burn us all up with.
--It is n't quite fair to run an opposition to the other funny speaker,
Rev. Petroleum V. What 's-his-name,--spoke up an anonymous boarder.
--You may have been thinking, perhaps, that it was I,--I, the Poet, who
was the chief talker in the one-sided dialogue to which you have been
listening. If so, you were mistaken. It was the old man in the
spectacles with large round glasses and the iron-gray hair. He does a
good deal of the talking at our table, and, to tell the truth, I rather
like to hear him. He stirs me up, and finds me occupation in various
ways, and especially, because he has good solid prejudices, that one can
rub against, and so get up and let off a superficial intellectual
irritation, just as the cattle rub their backs against a rail (you
remember Sydney Smith's contrivance in his pasture) or their sides
against an apple-tree (I don't know why they take to these so
particularly, but you will often find the trunk of an apple-tree as brown
and smooth as an old saddle at the height of a cow's ribs). I think they
begin rubbing in cold blood, and then, you know, l'appetit vient en
mangeant, the more they rub the more they want to. That is the way to use
your friend's prejudices. This is a sturdy-looking personage of a good
deal more than middle age, his face marked with strong manly furrows,
records of hard thinking and square stand-up fights with life and all its
devils. There is a slight touch of satire in his discourse now and then,
and an odd way of answering one that makes it hard to guess how much more
or less he means than he seems to say. But he is honest, and always has
a twinkle in his eye to put you on your guard when he does not mean to be
taken quite literally. I think old Ben Franklin had just that look. I
know his great-grandson (in pace!) had it, and I don't doubt he took it
in the straight line of descent, as he did his grand intellect.
The Member of the Haouse evidently comes from one of the lesser inland
centres of civilization, where the flora is rich in checkerberries and
similar bounties of nature, and the fauna lively with squirrels,
wood-chucks, and the like; where the leading sportsmen snare patridges,
as they are called, and "hunt" foxes with guns; where rabbits are
entrapped in "figgery fours," and trout captured with the unpretentious
earth-worm, instead of the gorgeous fly; where they bet prizes for butter
and cheese, and rag-carpets executed by ladies more than seventy years of
age; where whey wear dress-coats before dinner, and cock their hats on
one side when they feel conspicuous and distinshed; where they say--Sir
to you in their common talk and have other Arcadian and bucolic ways
which are highly unobjectionable, but are not so much admired in cities,
where the people are said to be not half so virtuous.
There is with us a boy of modest dimensions, not otherwise especially
entitled to the epithet, who ought be six or seven years old, to judge by
the gap left by his front milk teeth, these having resigned in favor of
their successors, who have not yet presented their credentials. He is
rather old for an enfant terrible, and quite too young to have grown into
the bashfulness of adolescence; but he has some of the qualities of both
these engaging periods of development, The member of the Haouse calls him
"Bub," invariably, such term I take to be an abbreviation of "Beelzeb,"
as "bus" is the short form of "omnibus." Many eminently genteel persons,
whose manners make them at home anywhere, being evidently unaware of true
derivation of this word, are in the habit of addressing all unknown
children by one of the two terms, "bub" and "sis," which they consider
endears them greatly to the young people, and recommends them to the
acquaintance of their honored parents, if these happen to accompany them.
The other boarders commonly call our diminutive companion That Boy. He
is a sort of expletive at the table, serving to stop gaps, taking the
same place a washer does that makes a loose screw fit, and contriving to
get driven in like a wedge between any two chairs where there is a
crevice. I shall not call that boy by the monosyllable referred to,
because, though he has many impish traits at present, he may become
civilized and humanized by being in good company. Besides, it is a term
which I understand is considered vulgar by the nobility and gentry of the
Mother Country, and it is not to be found in Mr. Worcester's Dictionary,
on which, as is well known, the literary men of this metropolis are by
special statute allowed to be sworn in place of the Bible. I know one,
certainly, who never takes his oath on any other dictionary, any
advertising fiction to the contrary, notwithstanding.
I wanted to write out my account of some of the other boarders, but a
domestic occurrence--a somewhat prolonged visit from the landlady, who is
rather too anxious that I should be comfortable broke in upon the
continuity of my thoughts, and occasioned--in short, I gave up writing
for that day.
--I wonder if anything like this ever happened. Author writing, jacks?"
"To be, or not to be: that is the question
Whether 't is nobl--"
--"William, shall we have pudding to-day, or flapjacks?"
--"Flapjacks, an' it please thee, Anne, or a pudding, for that matter; or
what thou wilt, good woman, so thou come not betwixt me and my thought."
--Exit Mistress Anne, with strongly accented closing of the door and
murmurs to the effect: "Ay, marry, 't is well for thee to talk as if thou
hadst no stomach to fill. We poor wives must swink for our masters,
while they sit in their arm-chairs growing as great in the girth through
laziness as that ill-mannered fat man William hath writ of in his books
of players' stuff. One had as well meddle with a porkpen, which hath
thorns all over him, as try to deal with William when his eyes be rolling
in that mad way."
William--writing once more--after an exclamation in strong English of the
older pattern,--
"Whether 't is nobler--nobler--nobler--"
To do what? O these women! these women! to have puddings or flapjacks!
Oh!--
"Whether 't is nobler--in the mind--to suffer
The slings--and arrows--of--"
Oh! Oh! these women! I will e'en step over to the parson's and have a
cup of sack with His Reverence for methinks Master Hamlet hath forgot
that which was just now on his lips to speak.
So I shall have to put off making my friends acquainted with the other
boarders, some of whom seem to me worth studying and describing. I have
something else of a graver character for my readers. I am talking, you
know, as a poet; I do not say I deserve the name, but I have taken it,
and if you consider me at all it must be in that aspect. You will,
therefore, be willing to run your eyes over a few pages read, of course
by request, to a select party of the boarders.
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE AND ITS OUTLOOK.
A PANORAMA, WITH SIDE-SHOWS.
My birthplace, the home of my childhood and earlier and later boyhood,
has within a few months passed out of the ownership of my family into the
hands of that venerable Alma Mater who seems to have renewed her youth,
and has certainly repainted her dormitories. In truth, when I last
revisited that familiar scene and looked upon the flammantia mania of the
old halls, "Massachusetts" with the dummy clock-dial, "Harvard" with the
garrulous belfry, little "Holden" with the sculptured unpunishable cherub
over its portal, and the rest of my early brick-and-mortar acquaintances,
I could not help saying to myself that I had lived to see the peaceable
establishment of the Red Republic of Letters.
Many of the things I shall put down I have no doubt told before in a
fragmentary way, how many I cannot be quite sure, as I do not very often
read my own prose works. But when a man dies a great deal is said of him
which has often been said in other forms, and now this dear old house is
dead to me in one sense, and I want to gather up my recollections and
wind a string of narrative round them, tying them up like a nosegay for
the last tribute: the same blossoms in it I have often laid on its
threshold while it was still living for me.
We Americans are all cuckoos,--we make our homes in the nests of other
birds. I have read somewhere that the lineal descendants of the man who
carted off the body of William Rufus, with Walter Tyrrel's arrow sticking
in it, have driven a cart (not absolutely the same one, I suppose) in the
New Forest, from that day to this. I don't quite understand Mr. Ruskin's
saying (if he said it) that he couldn't get along in a country where
there were no castles, but I do think we lose a great deal in living
where there are so few permanent homes. You will see how much I parted
with which was not reckoned in the price paid for the old homestead.
I shall say many things which an uncharitable reader might find fault
with as personal. I should not dare to call myself a poet if I did not;
for if there is anything that gives one a title to that name, it is that
his inner nature is naked and is not ashamed. But there are many such
things I shall put in words, not because they are personal, but because
they are human, and are born of just such experiences as those who hear
or read what I say are like to have had in greater or less measure. I
find myself so much like other people that I often wonder at the
coincidence. It was only the other day that I sent out a copy of verses
about my great-grandmother's picture, and I was surprised to find how
many other people had portraits of their great-grandmothers or other
progenitors, about which they felt as I did about mine, and for whom I
had spoken, thinking I was speaking for myself only. And so I am not
afraid to talk very freely with you, my precious reader or listener. You
too, Beloved, were born somewhere and remember your birthplace or your
early home; for you some house is haunted by recollections; to some roof
you have bid farewell. Your hand is upon mine, then, as I guide my pen.
Your heart frames the responses to the litany of my remembrance. For
myself it is a tribute of affection I am rendering, and I should put it
on record for my own satisfaction, were there none to read or to listen.
I hope you will not say that I have built a pillared portico of
introduction to a humble structure of narrative. For when you look at
the old gambrel-roofed house, you will see an unpretending mansion, such
as very possibly you were born in yourself, or at any rate such a place
of residence as your minister or some of your well-to-do country cousins
find good enough, but not at all too grand for them. We have stately old
Colonial palaces in our ancient village, now a city, and a thriving
one,--square-fronted edifices that stand back from the vulgar highway,
with folded arms, as it were; social fortresses of the time when the
twilight lustre of the throne reached as far as our half-cleared
settlement, with a glacis before them in the shape of a long broad
gravel-walk, so that in King George's time they looked as formidably to
any but the silk-stocking gentry as Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein to a
visitor without the password. We forget all this in the kindly welcome
they give us to-day; for some of them are still standing and doubly
famous, as we all know. But the gambrel-roofed house, though stately
enough for college dignitaries and scholarly clergymen, was not one of
those old Tory, Episcopal-church-goer's strongholds. One of its doors
opens directly upon the green, always called the Common; the other,
facing the south, a few steps from it, over a paved foot-walk, on the
other side of which is the miniature front yard, bordered with lilacs and
syringas. The honest mansion makes no pretensions. Accessible,
companionable, holding its hand out to all, comfortable, respectable, and
even in its way dignified, but not imposing, not a house for his
Majesty's Counsellor, or the Right Reverend successor of Him who had not
where to lay his head, for something like a hundred and fifty years it
has stood in its lot, and seen the generations of men come and go like
the leaves of the forest. I passed some pleasant hours, a few years
since, in the Registry of Deeds and the Town Records, looking up the
history of the old house. How those dear friends of mine, the
antiquarians, for whose grave councils I compose my features on the too
rare Thursdays when I am at liberty to meet them, in whose human
herbarium the leaves and blossoms of past generations are so carefully
spread out and pressed and laid away, would listen to an expansion of the
following brief details into an Historical Memoir!
The estate was the third lot of the eighth "Squadron" (whatever that
might be), and in the year 1707 was allotted in the distribution of
undivided lands to "Mr. ffox," the Reverend Jabez Fox of Woburn, it may
be supposed, as it passed from his heirs to the first Jonathan Hastings;
from him to his son, the long remembered College Steward; from him in the
year 1792 to the Reverend Eliphalet Pearson, Professor of Hebrew and
other Oriental languages in Harvard College, whose large personality swam
into my ken when I was looking forward to my teens; from him the
progenitors of my unborn self.
I wonder if there are any such beings nowadays as the great Eliphalet,
with his large features and conversational basso profundo, seemed to me.
His very name had something elephantine about it, and it seemed to me
that the house shook from cellar to garret at his footfall. Some have
pretended that he had Olympian aspirations, and wanted to sit in the seat
of Jove and bear the academic thunderbolt and the aegis inscribed Christo
et Ecclesiae. It is a common weakness enough to wish to find one's self
in an empty saddle; Cotton Mather was miserable all his days, I am
afraid, after that entry in his Diary: "This Day Dr. Sewall was chosen
President, for his Piety."
There is no doubt that the men of the older generation look bigger and
more formidable to the boys whose eyes are turned up at their venerable
countenances than the race which succeeds them, to the same boys grown
older. Everything is twice as large, measured on a three-year-olds
three-foot scale as on a thirty-year-olds six-foot scale; but age
magnifies and aggravates persons out of due proportion. Old people are a
kind of monsters to little folks; mild manifestations of the terrible, it
may be, but still, with their white locks and ridged and grooved
features, which those horrid little eyes exhaust of their details, like
so many microscopes not exactly what human beings ought to be. The
middle-aged and young men have left comparatively faint impressions in my
memory, but how grandly the procession of the old clergymen who filled
our pulpit from time to time, and passed the day under our roof, marches
before my closed eyes! At their head the most venerable David Osgood,
the majestic minister of Medford, with massive front and shaggy
over-shadowing eyebrows; following in the train, mild-eyed John Foster of
Brighton, with the lambent aurora of a smile about his pleasant mouth,
which not even the "Sabbath" could subdue to the true Levitical aspect;
and bulky Charles Steams of Lincoln, author of "The Ladies' Philosophy of
Love. A Poem. 1797" (how I stared at him! he was the first living
person ever pointed out to me as a poet); and Thaddeus Mason Harris of
Dorchester (the same who, a poor youth, trudging along, staff in hand,
being then in a stress of sore need, found all at once that somewhat was
adhering to the end of his stick, which somewhat proved to be a gold ring
of price, bearing the words, "God speed thee, Friend!"), already in
decadence as I remember him, with head slanting forward and downward as
if looking for a place to rest in after his learned labors; and that
other Thaddeus, the old man of West Cambridge, who outwatched the rest so
long after they had gone to sleep in their own churchyards, that it
almost seemed as if he meant to sit up until the morning of the
resurrection; and bringing up the rear, attenuated but vivacious little
Jonathan Homer of Newton, who was, to look upon, a kind of expurgated,
reduced and Americanized copy of Voltaire, but very unlike him in
wickedness or wit. The good-humored junior member of our family always
loved to make him happy by setting him chirruping about Miles Coverdale's
Version, and the Bishop's Bible, and how he wrote to his friend Sir Isaac
(Coffin) about something or other, and how Sir Isaac wrote back that he
was very much pleased with the contents of his letter, and so on about
Sir Isaac, ad libitum,--for the admiral was his old friend, and he was
proud of him. The kindly little old gentleman was a collector of Bibles,
and made himself believe he thought he should publish a learned
Commentary some day or other; but his friends looked for it only in the
Greek Calends,--say on the 31st of April, when that should come round, if
you would modernize the phrase. I recall also one or two exceptional and
infrequent visitors with perfect distinctness: cheerful Elijah Kellogg, a
lively missionary from the region of the Quoddy Indians, with much
hopeful talk about Sock Bason and his tribe; also poor old
Poor-house-Parson Isaac Smith, his head going like a China mandarin, as
he discussed the possibilities of the escape of that distinguished
captive whom he spoke of under the name, if I can reproduce phonetically
its vibrating nasalities of "General Mmbongaparty,"--a name suggestive to
my young imagination of a dangerous, loose-jointed skeleton, threatening
us all like the armed figure of Death in my little New England Primer.
I have mentioned only the names of those whose images come up pleasantly
before me, and I do not mean to say anything which any descendant might
not read smilingly. But there were some of the black-coated gentry whose
aspect was not so agreeable to me. It is very curious to me to look back
on my early likes and dislikes, and see how as a child I was attracted or
repelled by such and such ministers, a good deal, as I found out long
afterwards, according to their theological beliefs. On the whole, I
think the old-fashioned New England divine softening down into
Arminianism was about as agreeable as any of them. And here I may
remark, that a mellowing rigorist is always a much pleasanter object to
contemplate than a tightening liberal, as a cold day warming up to 32
Fahrenheit is much more agreeable than a warm one chilling down to the
same temperature. The least pleasing change is that kind of mental
hemiplegia which now and then attacks the rational side of a man at about
the same period of life when one side of the body is liable to be
palsied, and in fact is, very probably, the same thing as palsy, in
another form. The worst of it is that the subjects of it never seem to
suspect that they are intellectual invalids, stammerers and cripples at
best, but are all the time hitting out at their old friends with the well
arm, and calling them hard names out of their twisted mouths.
It was a real delight to have one of those good, hearty, happy, benignant
old clergymen pass the Sunday, with us, and I can remember some whose
advent made the day feel almost like "Thanksgiving." But now and then
would come along a clerical visitor with a sad face and a wailing voice,
which sounded exactly as if somebody must be lying dead up stairs, who
took no interest in us children, except a painful one, as being in a bad
way with our cheery looks, and did more to unchristianize us with his
woebegone ways than all his sermons were like to accomplish in the other
direction. I remember one in particular, who twitted me so with my
blessings as a Christian child, and whined so to me about the naked black
children who, like the "Little Vulgar Boy," "had n't got no supper and
hadn't got no ma," and hadn't got no Catechism, (how I wished for the
moment I was a little black boy!) that he did more in that one day to
make me a heathen than he had ever done in a month to make a Christian
out of an infant Hottentot. What a debt we owe to our friends of the
left centre, the Brooklyn and the Park Street and the Summer street
ministers; good, wholesome, sound-bodied, one-minded, cheerful-spirited
men, who have taken the place of those wailing poitrinaires with the
bandanna handkerchiefs round their meagre throats and a funeral service
in their forlorn physiognomies! I might have been a minister myself, for
aught I know, if this clergyman had not looked and talked so like an
undertaker.
All this belongs to one of the side-shows, to which I promised those who
would take tickets to the main exhibition should have entrance gratis.
If I were writing a poem you would expect, as a matter of course, that
there would be a digression now and then.
To come back to the old house and its former tenant, the Professor of
Hebrew and other Oriental languages. Fifteen years he lived with his
family under its roof. I never found the slightest trace of him
until a few years ago, when I cleaned and brightened with pious hands
the brass lock of "the study," which had for many years been covered
with a thick coat of paint. On that I found scratched; as with a
nail or fork, the following inscription:
E PE
Only that and nothing more, but the story told itself. Master Edward
Pearson, then about as high as the lock, was disposed to immortalize
himself in monumental brass, and had got so far towards it, when a sudden
interruption, probably a smart box on the ear, cheated him of his fame,
except so far as this poor record may rescue it. Dead long ago. I
remember him well, a grown man, as a visitor at a later period; and, for
some reason, I recall him in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes,
standing full before a generous wood-fire, not facing it, but quite the
contrary, a perfect picture of the content afforded by a blazing hearth
contemplated from that point of view, and, as the heat stole through his
person and kindled his emphatic features, seeming to me a pattern of
manly beauty. What a statue gallery of posturing friends we all have in
our memory! The old Professor himself sometimes visited the house after
it had changed hands. Of course, my recollections are not to be wholly
trusted, but I always think I see his likeness in a profile face to be
found among the illustrations of Rees's Cyclopaedia. (See Plates, Vol.
IV., Plate 2, Painting, Diversities of the Human Face, Fig. 4.)
And now let us return to our chief picture. In the days of my earliest
remembrance, a row of tall Lombardy poplars mounted guard on the western
side of the old mansion. Whether, like the cypress, these trees suggest
the idea of the funeral torch or the monumental spire, whether their
tremulous leaves make wits afraid by sympathy with their nervous thrills,
whether the faint balsamic smell of their foliage and their closely
swathed limbs have in them vague hints of dead Pharaohs stiffened in
their cerements, I will guess; but they always seemed to me to give an of
sepulchral sadness to the house before which stood sentries. Not so with
the row of elms which you may see leading up towards the western
entrance. I think the patriarch of them all went over in the great gale
of 1815; I know I used to shake the youngest of them with my hands, stout
as it is now, with a trunk that would defy the bully of Crotona, or the
strong man whose liaison with the Lady Delilah proved so disastrous.
The College plain would be nothing without its elms. As the long hair of
a woman is a glory to her, are these green tresses that bank themselves
against sky in thick clustered masses the ornament and the pride of the
classic green. You know the "Washington elm," or if you do not, you had
better rekindle our patriotism by reading the inscription, which tells
you that under its shadow the great leader first drew his sword at the
head of an American army. In a line with that you may see two others:
the coral fan, as I always called it from its resemblance in form to that
beautiful marine growth, and a third a little farther along. I have
heard it said that all three were planted at the same time, and that the
difference of their growth is due to the slope of the ground,--the
Washington elm being lower than either of the others. There is a row of
elms just in front of the old house on the south. When I was a child the
one at the southwest corner was struck by lightning, and one of its limbs
and a long ribbon of bark torn away. The tree never fully recovered its
symmetry and vigor, and forty years and more afterwards a second
thunderbolt crashed upon it and set its heart on fire, like those of the
lost souls in the Hall of Eblis. Heaven had twice blasted it, and the
axe finished what the lightning had begun.
The soil of the University town is divided into patches of sandy and of
clayey ground. The Common and the College green, near which the old
house stands, are on one of the sandy patches. Four curses are the local
inheritance: droughts, dust, mud, and canker-worms. I cannot but think
that all the characters of a region help to modify the children born in
it. I am fond of making apologies for human nature, and I think I could
find an excuse for myself if I, too, were dry and barren and muddy-witted
and "cantankerous,"--disposed to get my back up, like those other natives
of the soil.
I know this, that the way Mother Earth treats a boy shapes out a kind of
natural theology for him. I fell into Manichean ways of thinking from
the teaching of my garden experiences. Like other boys in the country, I
had my patch of ground, to which, in the spring-time, I entrusted the
seeds furnished me, with a confident trust in their resurrection and
glorification in the better world of summer. But I soon found that my
lines had fallen in a place where a vegetable growth had to run the
gauntlet of as many foes and dials as a Christian pilgrim. Flowers would
not Blow; daffodils perished like criminals in their cone demned caps,
without their petals ever seeing daylight; roses were disfigured with
monstrous protrusions through their very centres,--something that looked
like a second bud pushing through the middle of the corolla; lettuces and
cabbages would not head; radishes knotted themselves until they looked
like centenerians' fingers; and on every stem, on every leaf, and both
sides of it, and at the root of everything that dew, was a professional
specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert,
whose business it was to devour that particular part, and help order the
whole attempt at vegetation. Such experiences must influence a child
born to them. A sandy soil, where nothing flourishes but weeds and evil
beasts of small dimensions, must breed different qualities in its human
offspring from one of those fat and fertile spots which the wit whom I
have once before noted described so happily that, if I quoted the
passage, its brilliancy would spoil one of my pages, as a diamond
breastpin sometimes kills the social effect of the wearer, who might have
passed for a gentleman without it. Your arid patch of earth should seem
to the natural birthplace of the leaner virtues and the abler vices,--of
temperance and the domestic proprieties on the one hand, with a tendency
to light weights in groceries and provisions, and to clandestine
abstraction from the person on the other, as opposed to the free
hospitality, the broadly planned burglaries, and the largely conceived
homicides of our rich Western alluvial regions. Yet Nature is never
wholly unkind. Economical as she was in my unparadised Eden, hard as it
was to make some of my floral houris unveil, still the damask roses
sweetened the June breezes, the bladed and plumed flower-de-luces
unfolded their close-wrapped cones, and larkspurs and lupins, lady's
delights,--plebeian manifestations of the pansy,--self-sowing marigolds,
hollyhocks, the forest flowers of two seasons, and the perennial lilacs
and syringas,--all whispered to' the winds blowing over them that some
caressing presence was around me.
Beyond the garden was "the field," a vast domain of four acres or
thereabout, by the measurement of after years, bordered to the north by a
fathomless chasm,--the ditch the base-ball players of the present era
jump over; on the east by unexplored territory; on the south by a barren
enclosure, where the red sorrel proclaimed liberty and equality under its
drapeau rouge, and succeeded in establishing a vegetable commune where
all were alike, poor, mean, sour, and uninteresting; and on the west by
the Common, not then disgraced by jealous enclosures, which make it look
like a cattle-market. Beyond, as I looked round, were the Colleges, the
meeting-house, the little square market-house, long vanished; the
burial-ground where the dead Presidents stretched their weary bones under
epitaphs stretched out at as full length as their subjects; the pretty
church where the gouty Tories used to kneel on their hassocks; the
district schoolhouse, and hard by it Ma'am Hancock's cottage, never so
called in those days, but rather "tenfooter"; then houses scattered near
and far, open spaces, the shadowy elms, round hilltops in the distance,
and over all the great bowl of the sky. Mind you, this was the WORLD, as
I first knew it; terra veteribus cognita, as Mr. Arrowsmith would have
called it, if he had mapped the universe of my infancy:
But I am forgetting the old house again in the landscape. The worst of a
modern stylish mansion is, that it has no place for ghosts. I watched
one building not long since. It had no proper garret, to begin with,
only a sealed interval between the roof and attics, where a spirit could
not be accommodated, unless it were flattened out like Ravel, Brother,
after the millstone had fallen on him. There was not a nook or a corner
in the whole horse fit to lodge any respectable ghost, for every part was
as open to observation as a literary man's character and condition, his
figure and estate, his coat and his countenance, are to his (or her)
Bohemian Majesty on a tour of inspection through his (or her) subjects'
keyholes.
Now the old house had wainscots, behind which the mice were always
scampering and squeaking and rattling down the plaster, and enacting
family scenes and parlor theatricals. It had a cellar where the cold
slug clung to the walls, and the misanthropic spider withdrew from the
garish day; where the green mould loved to grow, and the long white
potato-shoots went feeling along the floor, if haply they might find the
daylight; it had great brick pillars, always in a cold sweat with holding
up the burden they had been aching under day and night far a century and
more; it had sepulchral arches closed by rough doors that hung on hinges
rotten with rust, behind which doors, if there was not a heap of bones
connected with a mysterious disappearance of long ago, there well might
have been, for it was just the place to look for them. It had a garret;
very nearly such a one as it seems to me one of us has described in one
of his books; but let us look at this one as I can reproduce it from
memory. It has a flooring of laths with ridges of mortar squeezed up
between them, which if you tread on you will go to--the Lord have mercy
on you! where will you go to?--the same being crossed by narrow bridges
of boards, on which you may put your feet, but with fear and trembling.
Above you and around you are beams and joists, on some of which you may
see, when the light is let in, the marks of the conchoidal clippings of
the broadaxe, showing the rude way in which the timber was shaped as it
came, full of sap, from the neighboring forest. It is a realm of
darkness and thick dust, and shroud-like cobwebs and dead things they
wrap in their gray folds. For a garret is like a seashore, where wrecks
are thrown up and slowly go to pieces. There is the cradle which the old
man you just remember was rocked in; there is the ruin of the bedstead he
died on; that ugly slanting contrivance used to be put under his pillow
in the days when his breath came hard; there is his old chair with both
arms gone, symbol of the desolate time when he had nothing earthly left
to lean on; there is the large wooden reel which the blear-eyed old
deacon sent the minister's lady, who thanked him graciously, and twirled
it smilingly, and in fitting season bowed it out decently to the limbo of
troublesome conveniences. And there are old leather portmanteaus, like
stranded porpoises, their mouths gaping in gaunt hunger for the food with
which they used to be gorged to bulging repletion; and old brass
andirons, waiting until time shall revenge them on their paltry
substitutes, and they shall have their own again, and bring with them the
fore-stick and the back-log of ancient days; and the empty churn, with
its idle dasher, which the Nancys and Phoebes, who have left their
comfortable places to the Bridgets and Norahs, used to handle to good
purpose; and the brown, shaky old spinning-wheel, which was running, it
may be, in the days when they were hinging the Salem witches.
Under the dark and haunted garret were attic chambers which themselves
had histories. On a pane in the northeastern chamber may be read these
names:
"John Tracy," "Robert Roberts," "Thomas Prince;" "Stultus" another hand
had added. When I found these names a few years ago (wrong side up, for
the window had been reversed), I looked at once in the Triennial to find
them, for the epithet showed that they were probably students. I found
them all under the years 1771 and 1773. Does it please their thin ghosts
thus to be dragged to the light of day? Has "Stultus" forgiven the
indignity of being thus characterized?
The southeast chamber was the Library Hospital. Every scholar should
have a book infirmary attached his library. There should find a
peaceable refuge the many books, invalids from their birth, which are
sent "with the best regards of the Author"; the respected, but
unpresentable cripples which have lost cover; the odd volumes of honored
sets which go mourning all their days for their lost brother; the
school-books which have been so often the subjects of assault and
battery, that they look as if the police must know them by heart; these
and still more the pictured story-books, beginning with Mother Goose
(which a dear old friend of mine has just been amusing his philosophic
leisure with turning most ingeniously and happily into the tongues of
Virgil and Homer), will be precious mementos by and by, when children and
grandchildren come along. What would I not give for that dear little
paper-bound quarto, in large and most legible type, on certain pages of
which the tender hand that was the shield of my infancy had crossed out
with deep black marks something awful, probably about BEARS, such as once
tare two-and-forty of us little folks for making faces, and the very name
of which made us hide our heads under the bedclothes.
I made strange acquaintances in that book infirmary up in the southeast
attic. The "Negro Plot" at New York helped to implant a feeling in me
which it took Mr. Garrison a good many years to root out. "Thinks I to
Myself," an old novel, which has been attributed to a famous statesman,
introduced me to a world of fiction which was not represented on the
shelves of the library proper, unless perhaps by Coelebs in Search of a
Wife, or allegories of the bitter tonic class, as the young doctor that
sits on the other side of the table would probably call them. I always,
from an early age, had a keen eye for a story with a moral sticking out
of it, and gave it a wide berth, though in my later years I have myself
written a couple of "medicated novels," as one of my dearest and
pleasantest old friends wickedly called them, when somebody asked her if
she had read the last of my printed performances. I forgave the satire
for the charming esprit of the epithet. Besides the works I have
mentioned, there was an old, old Latin alchemy book, with the manuscript
annotations of some ancient Rosicrucian, in the pages of which I had a
vague notion that I might find the mighty secret of the Lapis
Philosophorum, otherwise called Chaos, the Dragon, the Green Lion, the
Quinta Essentia, the Soap of Sages, the Vinegar of Philosophers, the Dew
of Heavenly Grace, the Egg, the Old Man, the Sun, the Moon, and by all
manner of odd aliases, as I am assured by the plethoric little book
before me, in parchment covers browned like a meerschaum with the smoke
of furnaces and the thumbing of dead gold seekers, and the fingering of
bony-handed book-misers, and the long intervals of dusty slumber on the
shelves of the bouquiniste; for next year it will be three centuries old,
and it had already seen nine generations of men when I caught its eye
(Alchemiae Doctrina) and recognized it at pistol-shot distance as a
prize, among the breviaries and Heures and trumpery volumes of the old
open-air dealer who exposed his treasures under the shadow of St.
Sulpice. I have never lost my taste for alchemy since I first got hold
of the Palladium Spagyricum of Peter John Faber, and sought--in vain, it
is true--through its pages for a clear, intelligible, and practical
statement of how I could turn my lead sinkers and the weights of tall
kitchen clock into good yellow gold, specific gravity 19.2, and
exchangeable for whatever I then wanted, and for many more things than I
was then aware of. One of the greatest pleasures of childhood found in
the mysteries which it hides from the skepticism of the elders, and works
up into small mythologies of its own. I have seen all this played over
again in adult life,--the same delightful bewilderment semi-emotional
belief in listening to the gaseous praises of this or that fantastic
system, that I found in the pleasing mirages conjured up for me by the
ragged old volume I used to pore over in the southeast attic-chamber.
The rooms of the second story, the chambers of birth and death, are
sacred to silent memories.
Let us go down to the ground-floor. I should have begun with this, but
that the historical reminiscences of the old house have been recently
told in a most interesting memoir by a distinguished student of our local
history. I retain my doubts about those "dents" on the floor of the
right-hand room, "the study" of successive occupants, said to have been
made by the butts of the Continental militia's firelocks, but this was
the cause to which the story told me in childhood laid them. That
military consultations were held in that room when the house was General
Ward's headquarters, that the Provincial generals and colonels and other
men of war there planned the movement which ended in the fortifying of
Bunker's Hill, that Warren slept in the house the night before the
battle, that President Langdon went forth from the western door and
prayed for God's blessing on the men just setting forth on their bloody
expedition,--all these things have been told, and perhaps none of them
need be doubted.
But now for fifty years and more that room has been a meeting-ground for
the platoons and companies which range themselves at the scholar's word
of command. Pleasant it is to think that the retreating host of books is
to give place to a still larger army of volumes, which have seen service
under the eye of a great commander. For here the noble collection of him
so freshly remembered as our silver-tongued orator, our erudite scholar,
our honored College President, our accomplished statesman, our courtly
ambassador, are to be reverently gathered by the heir of his name,
himself not unworthy to be surrounded by that august assembly of the wise
of all ages and of various lands and languages.
Could such a many-chambered edifice have stood a century and a half and
not have had its passages of romance to bequeath their lingering legends
to the after-time? There are other names on some of the small
window-panes, which must have had young flesh-and-blood owners, and there
is one of early date which elderly persons have whispered was borne by a
fair woman, whose graces made the house beautiful in the eyes of the
youth of that time. One especially--you will find the name of Fortescue
Vernon, of the class of 1780, in the Triennial Catalogue--was a favored
visitor to the old mansion; but he went over seas, I think they told me,
and died still young, and the name of the maiden which is scratched on
the windowpane was never changed. I am telling the story honestly, as I
remember it, but I may have colored it unconsciously, and the legendary
pane may be broken before this for aught I know. At least, I have named
no names except the beautiful one of the supposed hero of the romantic
story.
It was a great happiness to have been born in an old house haunted by
such recollections, with harmless ghosts walking its corridors, with
fields of waving grass and trees and singing birds, and that vast
territory of four or five acres around it to give a child the sense that
he was born to a noble principality. It has been a great pleasure to
retain a certain hold upon it for so many years; and since in the natural
course of things it must at length pass into other hands, it is a
gratification to see the old place making itself tidy for a new tenant,
like some venerable dame who is getting ready to entertain a neighbor of
condition. Not long since a new cap of shingles adorned this ancient
mother among the village--now city--mansions. She has dressed herself
in brighter colors than she has hitherto worn, so they tell me, within
the last few days. She has modernized her aspects in several ways; she
has rubbed bright the glasses through which she looks at the Common and
the Colleges; and as the sunsets shine upon her through the flickering
leaves or the wiry spray of the elms I remember from my childhood, they
will glorify her into the aspect she wore when President Holyoke, father
of our long since dead centenarian, looked upon her in her youthful
comeliness.
The quiet corner formed by this and the neighboring residences has
changed less than any place I can remember. Our kindly, polite, shrewd,
and humorous old neighbor, who in former days has served the town as
constable and auctioneer, and who bids fair to become the oldest
inhabitant of the city, was there when I was born, and is living there
to-day. By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant
itself on this whole territory, and the private recollections which clung
so tenaciously and fondly to the place and its habitations will have died
with those who cherished them.
Shall they ever live again in the memory of those who loved them here
below? What is this life without the poor accidents which made it our
own, and by which we identify ourselves? Ah me! I might like to be a
winged chorister, but still it seems to me I should hardly be quite happy
if I could not recall at will the Old House with the Long Entry, and the
White Chamber (where I wrote the first verses that made me known, with a
pencil, stans pede in uno, pretty, nearly), and the Little Parlor, and
the Study, and the old books in uniforms as varied as those of the
Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company used to be, if my memory serves
me right, and the front yard with the Star-of-Bethlehems growing,
flowerless, among the grass, and the dear faces to be seen no more there
or anywhere on this earthly place of farewells.
I have told my story. I do not know what special gifts have been granted
or denied me; but this I know, that I am like so many others of my
fellow-creatures, that when I smile, I feel as if they must; when I cry,
I think their eyes fill; and it always seems to me that when I am most
truly myself I come nearest to them and am surest of being listened to by
the brothers and sisters of the larger family into which I was born so
long ago. I have often feared they might be tired of me and what I tell
them. But then, perhaps, would come a letter from some quiet body in
some out-of-the-way place, which showed me that I had said something
which another had often felt but never said, or told the secret of
another's heart in unburdening my own. Such evidences that one is in the
highway of human experience and feeling lighten the footsteps
wonderfully. So it is that one is encouraged to go on writing as long as
the world has anything that interests him, for he never knows how many of
his fellow-beings he may please or profit, and in how many places his
name will be spoken as that of a friend.
In the mood suggested by my story I have ventured on the poem that
follows. Most people love this world more than they are willing to
confess, and it is hard to conceive ourselves weaned from it so as to
feel no emotion at the thought of its most sacred recollections, even
after a sojourn of years, as we should count the lapse of earthly
time,--in the realm where, sooner or later, all tears shall be wiped
away. I hope, therefore, the title of my lines will not frighten those
who are little accustomed to think of men and women as human beings in
any state but the present.
HOMESICK IN HEAVEN.
THE DIVINE VOICE.
Go seek thine earth-born sisters,--thus the Voice
That all obey,--the sad and silent three;
These only, while the hosts of heaven rejoice,
Smile never: ask them what their sorrows be:
And when the secret of their griefs they tell,
Look on them with thy mild, half-human eyes;
Say what thou wast on earth; thou knowest well;
So shall they cease from unavailing sighs.
THE ANGEL.
--Why thus, apart,--the swift-winged herald spake,
--Sit ye with silent lips and unstrung lyres
While the trisagion's blending chords awake
In shouts of joy from all the heavenly choirs?
THE FIRST SPIRIT.
--Chide not thy sisters,--thus the answer came;
--Children of earth, our half-weaned nature clings
To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name
Untunes our quivering lips, our saddened strings;
For there we loved, and where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts,
Though o'er us shine the jasper-lighted dome:--
The chain may lengthen, but it never parts!
Sometimes a sunlit sphere comes rolling by,
And then we softly whisper,--can it be?
And leaning toward the silvery orb, we try
To hear the music of its murmuring sea;
To catch, perchance, some flashing glimpse of green,
Or breathe some wild-wood fragrance, wafted through
The opening gates of pearl, that fold between
The blinding splendors and the changeless blue.
THE ANGEL.
--Nay, sister, nay! a single healing leaf
Plucked from the bough of yon twelve-fruited tree,
Would soothe such anguish,--deeper stabbing grief
Has pierced thy throbbing heart--
THE FIRST SPIRIT.
---Ah, woe is me!
I from my clinging babe was rudely torn;
His tender lips a loveless bosom pressed
Can I forget him in my life new born?
O that my darling lay upon my breast!
THE ANGEL.
--And thou?
THE SECOND SPIRIT.
I was a fair and youthful bride,
The kiss of love still burns upon my cheek,
He whom I worshipped, ever at my side,
--Him through the spirit realm in vain I seek.
Sweet faces turn their beaming eyes on mine;
Ah! not in these the wished-for look I read;
Still for that one dear human smile I pine;
Thou and none other!--is the lover's creed.
THE ANGEL.
--And whence thy sadness in a world of bliss
Where never parting comes, nor mourner's tear?
Art thou, too, dreaming of a mortal's kiss
Amid the seraphs of the heavenly sphere?
THE THIRD SPIRIT.
--Nay, tax not me with passion's wasting fire;
When the swift message set my spirit free,
Blind, helpless, lone, I left my gray-haired sire;
My friends were many, he had none save me.
I left him, orphaned, in the starless night;
Alas, for him no cheerful morning's dawn!
I wear the ransomed spirit's robe of white,
Yet still I hear him moaning, She is gone!
THE ANGEL.
--Ye know me not, sweet sisters?--All in vain
Ye seek your lost ones in the shapes they wore;
The flower once opened may not bud again,
The fruit once fallen finds the stem no more.
Child, lover, sire,--yea, all things loved below,
Fair pictures damasked on a vapor's fold,
Fade like the roseate flush, the golden glow,
When the bright curtain of the day is rolled.
I was the babe that slumbered on thy breast.
--And, sister, mine the lips that called thee bride.
--Mine were the silvered locks thy hand caressed,
That faithful hand, my faltering footstep's guide!
Each changing form, frail vesture of decay,
The soul unclad forgets it once hath worn,
Stained with the travel of the weary day,
And shamed with rents from every wayside thorn.
To lie, an infant, in thy fond embrace,
To come with love's warm kisses back to thee,
To show thine eyes thy gray-haired father's face,
Not Heaven itself could grant; this may not be!
Then spread your folded wings, and leave to earth
The dust once breathing ye have mourned so long,
Till Love, new risen, owns his heavenly birth,
And sorrow's discords sweeten into song!
II
I am going to take it for granted now and henceforth, in my report of
what was said and what was to be seen at our table, that I have secured
one good, faithful, loving reader, who never finds fault, who never gets
sleepy over my pages, whom no critic can bully out of a liking for me,
and to whom I am always safe in addressing myself. My one elect may be
man or woman, old or young, gentle or simple, living in the next block or
on a slope of Nevada, my fellow-countryman or an alien; but one such
reader I shall assume to exist and have always in my thought when I am
writing.
A writer is so like a lover! And a talk with the right listener is so
like an arm-in-arm walk in the moonlight with the soft heartbeat just
felt through the folds of muslin and broadcloth! But it takes very
little to spoil everything for writer, talker, lover. There are a great
many cruel things besides poverty that freeze the genial current of the
soul, as the poet of the Elegy calls it. Fire can stand any wind, but is
easily blown out, and then come smouldering and smoke, and profitless,
slow combustion without the cheerful blaze which sheds light all round
it. The one Reader's hand may shelter the flame; the one blessed
ministering spirit with the vessel of oil may keep it bright in spite of
the stream of cold water on the other side doing its best to put it out.
I suppose, if any writer, of any distinguishable individuality, could
look into the hearts of all his readers, he might very probably find one
in his parish of a thousand or a million who honestly preferred him to
any other of his kind. I have no doubt we have each one of us,
somewhere, our exact facsimile, so like us in all things except the
accidents of condition, that we should love each other like a pair of
twins, if our natures could once fairly meet. I know I have my
counterpart in some State of this Union. I feel sure that there is an
Englishman somewhere precisely like myself. (I hope he does not drop his
h's, for it does not seem to me possible that the Royal Dane could have
remained faithful to his love for Ophelia, if she had addressed him as
'Amlet.) There is also a certain Monsieur, to me at this moment unknown,
and likewise a Herr Von Something, each of whom is essentially my double.
An Arab is at this moment eating dates, a mandarin is just sipping his
tea, and a South-Sea-Islander (with undeveloped possibilities) drinking
the milk of a cocoa-nut, each one of whom, if he had been born in the
gambrel-roofed house, and cultivated my little sand-patch, and grown up
in "the study" from the height of Walton's Polyglot Bible to that of the
shelf which held the Elzevir Tacitus and Casaubon's Polybius, with all
the complex influences about him that surrounded me, would have been so
nearly what I am that I should have loved him like a brother,--always
provided that I did not hate him for his resemblance to me, on the same
principle as that which makes bodies in the same electric condition repel
each other.
For, perhaps after all, my One Reader is quite as likely to be not the
person most resembling myself, but the one to whom my nature is
complementary. Just as a particular soil wants some one element to
fertilize it, just as the body in some conditions has a kind of
famine--for one special food, so the mind has its wants, which do not
always call for what is best, but which know themselves and are as
peremptory as the salt-sick sailor's call for a lemon or a raw potato,
or, if you will, as those capricious "longings," which have a certain
meaning, we may suppose, and which at any rate we think it reasonable to
satisfy if we can.
I was going to say something about our boarders the other day when I got
run away with by my local reminiscences. I wish you to understand that
we have a rather select company at the table of our boarding-house.
Our Landlady is a most respectable person, who has seen better days, of
course,--all landladies have,--but has also, I feel sure, seen a good
deal worse ones. For she wears a very handsome silk dress on state
occasions, with a breastpin set, as I honestly believe, with genuine
pearls, and appears habitually with a very smart cap, from under which
her gray curls come out with an unmistakable expression, conveyed in the
hieratic language of the feminine priesthood, to the effect that while
there is life there is hope. And when I come to reflect on the many
circumstances which go to the making of matrimonial happiness, I cannot
help thinking that a personage of her present able exterior, thoroughly
experienced in all the domestic arts which render life comfortable, might
make the later years of some hitherto companionless bachelor very
endurable, not to say pleasant.
The condition of the Landlady's family is, from what I learn, such as to
make the connection I have alluded to, I hope with delicacy, desirable
for incidental as well as direct reasons, provided a fitting match could
be found. I was startled at hearing her address by the familiar name of
Benjamin the young physician I have referred to, until I found on
inquiry, what I might have guessed by the size of his slices of pie and
other little marks of favoritism, that he was her son. He has recently
come back from Europe, where he has topped off his home training with a
first-class foreign finish. As the Landlady could never have educated
him in this way out of the profits of keeping boarders, I was not
surprised when I was told that she had received a pretty little property
in the form of a bequest from a former boarder, a very kind-hearted,
worthy old gentleman who had been long with her and seen how hard she
worked for food and clothes for herself and this son of hers, Benjamin
Franklin by his baptismal name. Her daughter had also married well, to a
member of what we may call the post-medical profession, that, namely,
which deals with the mortal frame after the practitioners of the healing
art have done with it and taken their leave. So thriving had this
son-in-law of hers been in his business, that his wife drove about in her
own carriage, drawn by a pair of jet-black horses of most dignified
demeanor, whose only fault was a tendency to relapse at once into a walk
after every application of a stimulus that quickened their pace to a
trot; which application always caused them to look round upon the driver
with a surprised and offended air, as if he had been guilty of a grave
indecorum.
The Landlady's daughter had been blessed with a number of children, of
great sobriety of outward aspect, but remarkably cheerful in their inward
habit of mind, more especially on the occasion of the death of a doll,
which was an almost daily occurrence, and gave them immense delight in
getting up a funeral, for which they had a complete miniature outfit.
How happy they were under their solemn aspect! For the head mourner, a
child of remarkable gifts, could actually make the tears run down her
cheeks,--as real ones as if she had been a grown person following a rich
relative, who had not forgotten his connections, to his last unfurnished
lodgings.
So this was a most desirable family connection for the right man to step
into,--a thriving, thrifty mother-in-law, who knew what was good for the
sustenance of the body, and had no doubt taught it to her daughter; a
medical artist at hand in case the luxuries of the table should happen to
disturb the physiological harmonies; and in the worst event, a sweet
consciousness that the last sad offices would be attended to with
affectionate zeal, and probably a large discount from the usual charges.
It seems as if I could hardly be at this table for a year, if I should
stay so long, without seeing some romance or other work itself out under
my eyes; and I cannot help thinking that the Landlady is to be the
heroine of the love-history like to unfold itself. I think I see the
little cloud in the horizon, with a silvery lining to it, which may end
in a rain of cards tied round with white ribbons. Extremes meet, and who
so like to be the other party as the elderly gentleman at the other end
of the table, as far from her now as the length of the board permits? I
may be mistaken, but I think this is to be the romantic episode of the
year before me. Only it seems so natural it is improbable, for you never
find your dropped money just where you look for it, and so it is with
these a priori matches.
This gentleman is a tight, tidy, wiry little man, with a small, brisk
head, close-cropped white hair, a good wholesome complexion, a quiet,
rather kindly face, quick in his movements, neat in his dress, but fond
of wearing a short jacket over his coat, which gives him the look of a
pickled or preserved schoolboy. He has retired, they say, from a
thriving business, with a snug property, suspected by some to be rather
more than snug, and entitling him to be called a capitalist, except that
this word seems to be equivalent to highway robber in the new gospel of
Saint Petroleum. That he is economical in his habits cannot be denied,
for he saws and splits his own wood, for exercise, he says,--and makes
his own fires, brushes his own shoes, and, it is whispered, darns a hole
in a stocking now and then,--all for exercise, I suppose. Every summer
he goes out of town for a few weeks. On a given day of the month a wagon
stops at the door and takes up, not his trunks, for he does not indulge
in any such extravagance, but the stout brown linen bags in which he
packs the few conveniences he carries with him.
I do not think this worthy and economical personage will have much to do
or to say, unless he marries the Landlady. If he does that, he will play
a part of some importance,--but I don't feel sure at all. His talk is
little in amount, and generally ends in some compact formula condensing
much wisdom in few words, as that a man, should not put all his eggs in
one basket; that there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of
it; and one in particular, which he surprised me by saying in pretty good
French one day, to the effect that the inheritance of the world belongs
to the phlegmatic people, which seems to me to have a good deal of truth
in it.
The other elderly personage, the old man with iron-gray hair and large
round spectacles, sits at my right at table. He is a retired college
officer, a man of books and observation, and himself an author. Magister
Artium is one of his titles on the College Catalogue, and I like best to
speak of him as the Master, because he has a certain air of authority
which none of us feel inclined to dispute. He has given me a copy of a
work of his which seems to me not wanting in suggestiveness, and which I
hope I shall be able to make some use of in my records by and by. I said
the other day that he had good solid prejudices, which is true, and I
like him none the worse for it; but he has also opinions more or less
original, valuable, probable, fanciful; fantastic, or whimsical, perhaps,
now and then; which he promulgates at table somewhat in the tone of
imperial edicts. Another thing I like about him is, that he takes a
certain intelligent interest in pretty much everything that interests
other people. I asked him the other day what he thought most about in
his wide range of studies.
--Sir,--said he,--I take stock in everything that concerns anybody.
Humani nihil,--you know the rest. But if you ask me what is my
specialty, I should say, I applied myself more particularly to the
contemplation of the Order of Things.
--A pretty wide subject,--I ventured to suggest.
--Not wide enough, sir,--not wide enough to satisfy the desire of a mind
which wants to get at absolute truth, without reference to the empirical
arrangements of our particular planet and its environments. I want to
subject the formal conditions of space and time to a new analysis, and
project a possible universe outside of the Order of Things. But I have
narrowed myself by studying the actual facts of being. By and by--by and
by--perhaps--perhaps. I hope to do some sound thinking in heaven--if I
ever get there,--he said seriously, and it seemed to me not irreverently.
--I rather like that,--I said. I think your telescopic people are, on
the whole, more satisfactory than your microscopic ones.
--My left-hand neighbor fidgeted about a little in his chair as I said
this. But the young man sitting not far from the Landlady, to whom my
attention had been attracted by the expression of his eyes, which seemed
as if they saw nothing before him, but looked beyond everything, smiled a
sort of faint starlight smile, that touched me strangely; for until that
moment he had appeared as if his thoughts were far away, and I had been
questioning whether he had lost friends lately, or perhaps had never had
them, he seemed so remote from our boarding-house life. I will inquire
about him, for he interests me, and I thought he seemed interested as I
went on talking.
--No,--I continued,--I don't want to have the territory of a man's mind
fenced in. I don't want to shut out the mystery of the stars and the
awful hollow that holds them. We have done with those hypaethral
temples, that were open above to the heavens, but we can have attics and
skylights to them. Minds with skylights,--yes,--stop, let us see if we
can't get something out of that.
One-story intellects, two--story intellects, three story intellects with
skylights. All fact--collectors, who have no aim beyond their facts, are
one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason, generalize, using the
labors of the fact-collectors as well as their own. Three-story men
idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above,
through the skylight. There are minds with large ground floors, that can
store an infinite amount of knowledge; some librarians, for instance, who
know enough of books to help other people, without being able to make
much other use of their knowledge, have intellects of this class. Your
great working lawyer has two spacious stories; his mind is clear, because
his mental floors are large, and he has room to arrange his thoughts so
that he can get at them,--facts below, principles above, and all in
ordered series; poets are often narrow below, incapable of clear
statement, and with small power of consecutive reasoning, but full of
light, if sometimes rather bare of furniture, in the attics.
--The old Master smiled. I think he suspects himself of a three-story
intellect, and I don't feel sure that he is n't right.
--Is it dark meat or white meat you will be helped to?--said the
Landlady, addressing the Master.
--Dark meat for me, always,--he answered. Then turning to me, he began
one of those monologues of his, such as that which put the Member of the
Haouse asleep the other day.
--It 's pretty much the same in men and women and in books and
everything, that it is in turkeys and chickens. Why, take your poets,
now, say Browning and Tennyson. Don't you think you can say which is the
dark-meat and which is the white-meat poet? And so of the people you
know; can't you pick out the full-flavored, coarse-fibred characters from
the delicate, fine-fibred ones? And in the same person, don't you know
the same two shades in different parts of the character that you find in
the wing and thigh of a partridge? I suppose you poets may like white
meat best, very probably; you had rather have a wing than a drumstick, I
dare say.
--Why, yes,--said I,--I suppose some of us do. Perhaps it is because a
bird flies with his white-fleshed limbs and walks with the dark-fleshed
ones. Besides, the wing-muscles are nearer the heart than the
leg-muscles.
I thought that sounded mighty pretty, and paused a moment to pat myself
on the back, as is my wont when I say something that I think of superior
quality. So I lost my innings; for the Master is apt to strike in at the
end of a bar, instead of waiting for a rest, if I may borrow a musical
phrase. No matter, just at this moment, what he said; but he talked the
Member of the Haouse asleep again.
They have a new term nowadays (I am speaking to you, the Reader) for
people that do a good deal of talking; they call them "conversationists,"
or "conversationalists "; talkists, I suppose, would do just as well. It
is rather dangerous to get the name of being one of these phenomenal
manifestations, as one is expected to say something remarkable every time
one opens one's mouth in company. It seems hard not to be able to ask for
a piece of bread or a tumbler of water, without a sensation running round
the table, as if one were an electric eel or a torpedo, and couldn't be
touched without giving a shock. A fellow is n't all battery, is he? The
idea that a Gymnotus can't swallow his worm without a coruscation of
animal lightning is hard on that brilliant but sensational being. Good
talk is not a matter of will at all; it depends--you know we are all
half-materialists nowadays--on a certain amount of active congestion of
the brain, and that comes when it is ready, and not before. I saw a man
get up the other day in a pleasant company, and talk away for about five
minutes, evidently by a pure effort of will. His person was good, his
voice was pleasant, but anybody could see that it was all mechanical
labor; he was sparring for wind, as the Hon. John Morrissey, M. C., would
express himself. Presently,--
Do you,--Beloved, I am afraid you are not old enough,--but do you
remember the days of the tin tinder-box, the flint, and steel? Click!
click! click!--Al-h-h! knuckles that time! click! click! CLICK! a spark
has taken, and is eating into the black tinder, as a six-year-old eats
into a sheet of gingerbread.
Presently, after hammering away for his five minutes with mere words, the
spark of a happy expression took somewhere among the mental combustibles,
and then for ten minutes we had a pretty, wandering, scintillating play
of eloquent thought, that enlivened, if it did not kindle, all around it.
If you want the real philosophy of it, I will give it to you. The chance
thought or expression struck the nervous centre of consciousness, as the
rowel of a spur stings the flank of a racer. Away through all the
telegraphic radiations of the nervous cords flashed the intelligence that
the brain was kindling, and must be fed with something or other, or it
would burn itself to ashes.
And all the great hydraulic engines poured in their scarlet blood, and
the fire kindled, and the flame rose; for the blood is a stream that,
like burning rock-oil, at once kindles, and is itself the fuel. You can't
order these organic processes, any more than a milliner can make a rose.
She can make something that looks like a rose, more or less, but it takes
all the forces of the universe to finish and sweeten that blossom in your
button-hole; and you may be sure that when the orator's brain is in a
flame, when the poet's heart is in a tumult, it is something mightier
than he and his will that is dealing with him! As I have looked from one
of the northern windows of the street which commands our noble
estuary,--the view through which is a picture on an illimitable canvas
and a poem in innumerable cantos,--I have sometimes seen a pleasure-boat
drifting along, her sail flapping, and she seeming as if she had neither
will nor aim. At her stern a man was laboring to bring her head round
with an oar, to little purpose, as it seemed to those who watched him
pulling and tugging. But all at once the wind of heaven, which had
wandered all the way from Florida or from Labrador, it may be, struck
full upon the sail, and it swelled and rounded itself, like a white bosom
that had burst its bodice, and--
--You are right; it is too true! but how I love these pretty phrases! I
am afraid I am becoming an epicure in words, which is a bad thing to be,
unless it is dominated by something infinitely better than itself. But
there is a fascination in the mere sound of articulated breath; of
consonants that resist with the firmness of a maid of honor, or half or
wholly yield to the wooing lips; of vowels that flow and murmur, each
after its kind; the peremptory b and p, the brittle k, the vibrating r,
the insinuating s, the feathery f, the velvety v, the bell-voiced m, the
tranquil broad a, the penetrating e, the cooing u, the emotional o, and
the beautiful combinations of alternate rock and stream, as it were, that
they give to the rippling flow of speech,--there is a fascination in the
skilful handling of these, which the great poets and even prose-writers
have not disdained to acknowledge and use to recommend their thought.
What do you say to this line of Homer as a piece of poetical full-band
music? I know you read the Greek characters with perfect ease, but
permit me, just for my own satisfaction, to put it into English
letters:--
Aigle pamphanoosa di' aitheros ouranon ike!
as if he should have spoken in our poorer phrase of
Splendor far shining through ether to heaven ascending.
That Greek line, which I do not remember having heard mention of as
remarkable, has nearly every consonantal and vowel sound in the language.
Try it by the Greek and by the English alphabet; it is a curiosity. Tell
me that old Homer did not roll his sightless eyeballs about with delight,
as he thundered out these ringing syllables! It seems hard to think of
his going round like a hand-organ man, with such music and such thought
as his to earn his bread with. One can't help wishing that Mr. Pugh
could have got at him for a single lecture, at least, of the "Star
Course," or that he could have appeared in the Music Hall, "for this
night only."
--I know I have rambled, but I hope you see that this is a delicate way
of letting you into the nature of the individual who is, officially, the
principal personage at our table. It would hardly do to describe him
directly, you know. But you must not think, because the lightning
zigzags, it does not know where to strike.
I shall try to go through the rest of my description of our boarders with
as little of digression as is consistent with my nature. I think we have
a somewhat exceptional company. Since our Landlady has got up in the
world, her board has been decidedly a favorite with persons a little
above the average in point of intelligence and education. In fact, ever
since a boarder of hers, not wholly unknown to the reading public,
brought her establishment into notice, it has attracted a considerable
number of literary and scientific people, and now and then a politician,
like the Member of the House of Representatives, otherwise called the
Great and General Court of the State of Massachusetts. The consequence
is, that there is more individuality of character than in a good many
similar boardinghouses, where all are business-men, engrossed in the same
pursuit of money-making, or all are engaged in politics, and so deeply
occupied with the welfare of the community that they can think and talk
of little else.
At my left hand sits as singular-looking a human being as I remember
seeing outside of a regular museum or tent-show. His black coat shines
as if it had been polished; and it has been polished on the wearer's
back, no doubt, for the arms and other points of maximum attrition are
particularly smooth and bright. Round shoulders,--stooping over some
minute labor, I suppose. Very slender limbs, with bends like a
grasshopper's; sits a great deal, I presume; looks as if he might
straighten them out all of a sudden, and jump instead of walking. Wears
goggles very commonly; says it rests his eyes, which he strains in
looking at very small objects. Voice has a dry creak, as if made by some
small piece of mechanism that wanted oiling. I don't think he is a
botanist, for he does not smell of dried herbs, but carries a camphorated
atmosphere about with him, as if to keep the moths from attacking him. I
must find out what is his particular interest. One ought to know
something about his immediate neighbors at the table. This is what I
said to myself, before opening a conversation with him. Everybody in our
ward of the city was in a great stir about a certain election, and I
thought I might as well begin with that as anything.
--How do you think the vote is likely to go tomorrow?--I said.
--It isn't to-morrow,--he answered,--it 's next month.
--Next month!--said I.---Why, what election do you mean?
--I mean the election to the Presidency of the Entomological Society,
sir,--he creaked, with an air of surprise, as if nobody could by any
possibility have been thinking of any other. Great competition, sir,
between the dipterists and the lepidopterists as to which shall get in
their candidate. Several close ballotings already; adjourned for a
fortnight. Poor concerns, both of 'em. Wait till our turn comes.
--I suppose you are an entomologist?--I said with a note of
interrogation.
-Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on
the individual entitled to that name! A society may call itself an
Entomological Society, but the man who arrogates such a broad title as
that to himself, in the present state of science, is a pretender, sir, a
dilettante, an impostor! No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.
--May I venture to ask,--I said, a little awed by his statement and
manner,--what is your special province of study?
I am often spoken of as a Coleopterist,--he said,--but I have no right to
so comprehensive a name. The genus Scarabaeus is what I have chiefly
confined myself to, and ought to have studied exclusively. The beetles
proper are quite enough for the labor of one man's life. Call me a
Scarabaeist if you will; if I can prove myself worthy of that name, my
highest ambition will be more than satisfied.
I think, by way of compromise and convenience, I shall call him the
Scarabee. He has come to look wonderfully like those creatures,--the
beetles, I mean,---by being so much among them. His room is hung round
with cases of them, each impaled on a pin driven through him, something
as they used to bury suicides. These cases take the place for him of
pictures and all other ornaments. That Boy steals into his room
sometimes, and stares at them with great admiration, and has himself
undertaken to form a rival cabinet, chiefly consisting of flies, so far,
arranged in ranks superintended by an occasional spider.
The old Master, who is a bachelor, has a kindly feeling for this little
monkey, and those of his kind.
--I like children,--he said to me one day at table,--I like 'em, and I
respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the
world is done by them. Do you know they play the part in the household
which the king's jester, who very often had a mighty long head under his
cap and bells, used to play for a monarch? There 's no radical club like
a nest of little folks in a nursery. Did you ever watch a baby's
fingers? I have, often enough, though I never knew what it was to own
one.---The Master paused half a minute or so,--sighed,--perhaps at
thinking what he had missed in life,--looked up at me a little vacantly.
I saw what was the matter; he had lost the thread of his talk.
--Baby's fingers,--I intercalated.
-Yes, yes; did you ever see how they will poke those wonderful little
fingers of theirs into every fold and crack and crevice they can get at?
That is their first education, feeling their way into the solid facts of
the material world. When they begin to talk it is the same thing over
again in another shape. If there is a crack or a flaw in your answer to
their confounded shoulder-hitting questions, they will poke and poke
until they have got it gaping just as the baby's fingers have made a rent
out of that atom of a hole in his pinafore that your old eyes never took
notice of. Then they make such fools of us by copying on a small scale
what we do in the grand manner. I wonder if it ever occurs to our
dried-up neighbor there to ask himself whether That Boy's collection of
flies is n't about as significant in the Order of Things as his own
Museum of Beetles?
--I couldn't help thinking that perhaps That Boy's questions about the
simpler mysteries of life might have a good deal of the same kind of
significance as the Master's inquiries into the Order of Things.
--On my left, beyond my next neighbor the Scarabee, at the end of the
table, sits a person of whom we know little, except that he carries about
him more palpable reminiscences of tobacco and the allied sources of
comfort than a very sensitive organization might find acceptable. The
Master does not seem to like him much, for some reason or other,--perhaps
he has a special aversion to the odor of tobacco. As his forefinger
shows a little too distinctly that he uses a pen, I shall compliment him
by calling him the Man of Letters, until I find out more about him.
--The Young Girl who sits on my right, next beyond the Master, can hardly
be more than nineteen or twenty years old. I wish I could paint her so
as to interest others as much as she does me. But she has not a
profusion of sunny tresses wreathing a neck of alabaster, and a cheek
where the rose and the lily are trying to settle their old quarrel with
alternating victory. Her hair is brown, her cheek is delicately pallid,
her forehead is too ample for a ball-room beauty's. A single faint line
between the eyebrows is the record of long--continued anxious efforts to
please in the task she has chosen, or rather which has been forced upon
her. It is the same line of anxious and conscientious effort which I saw
not long since on the forehead of one of the sweetest and truest singers
who has visited us; the same which is so striking on the masks of singing
women painted upon the facade of our Great Organ,--that Himalayan home of
harmony which you are to see and then die, if you don't live where you
can see and hear it often. Many deaths have happened in a neighboring
large city from that well-known complaint, Icterus Invidiosorum, after
returning from a visit to the Music Hall. The invariable symptom of a
fatal attack is the Risus Sardonicus.--But the Young Girl. She gets her
living by writing stories for a newspaper. Every week she furnishes a
new story. If her head aches or her heart is heavy, so that she does not
come to time with her story, she falls behindhand and has to live on
credit. It sounds well enough to say that "she supports herself by her
pen," but her lot is a trying one; it repeats the doom of the Danaides.
The "Weekly Bucket" has no bottom, and it is her business to help fill
it. Imagine for one moment what it is to tell a tale that must flow on,
flow ever, without pausing; the lover miserable and happy this week, to
begin miserable again next week and end as before; the villain scowling,
plotting, punished; to scowl, plot, and get punished again in our next;
an endless series of woes and busses, into each paragraph of which the
forlorn artist has to throw all the liveliness, all the emotion, all the
graces of style she is mistress of, for the wages of a maid of all work,
and no more recognition or thanks from anybody than the apprentice who
sets the types for the paper that prints her ever-ending and
ever-beginning stories. And yet she has a pretty talent, sensibility, a
natural way of writing, an ear for the music of verse, in which she
sometimes indulges to vary the dead monotony of everlasting narrative,
and a sufficient amount of invention to make her stories readable. I
have found my eyes dimmed over them oftener than once, more with thinking
about her, perhaps, than about her heroes and heroines. Poor little
body! Poor little mind! Poor little soul! She is one of that great
company of delicate, intelligent, emotional young creatures, who are
waiting, like that sail I spoke of, for some breath of heaven to fill
their white bosoms,--love, the right of every woman; religious emotion,
sister of love, with the same passionate eyes, but cold, thin, bloodless
hands,--some enthusiasm of humanity or divinity; and find that life
offers them, instead, a seat on a wooden bench, a chain to fasten them to
it, and a heavy oar to pull day and night. We read the Arabian tales and
pity the doomed lady who must amuse her lord and master from day to day
or have her head cut off; how much better is a mouth without bread to
fill it than no mouth at all to fill, because no head? We have all round
us a weary-eyed company of Scheherezades! This is one of them, and I may
call her by that name when it pleases me to do so.
The next boarder I have to mention is the one who sits between the Young
Girl and the Landlady. In a little chamber into which a small thread of
sunshine finds its way for half an hour or so every day during a month or
six weeks of the spring or autumn, at all other times obliged to content
itself with ungilded daylight, lives this boarder, whom, without wronging
any others of our company, I may call, as she is very generally called in
the household, The Lady. In giving her this name it is not meant that
there are no other ladies at our table, or that the handmaids who serve
us are not ladies, or to deny the general proposition that everybody who
wears the unbifurcated garment is entitled to that appellation. Only
this lady has a look and manner which there is no mistaking as belonging
to a person always accustomed to refined and elegant society. Her style
is perhaps a little more courtly and gracious than some would like. The
language and manner which betray the habitual desire of pleasing, and
which add a charm to intercourse in the higher social circles, are liable
to be construed by sensitive beings unused to such amenities as an odious
condescension when addressed to persons of less consideration than the
accused, and as a still more odious--you know the word--when directed to
those who are esteemed by the world as considerable person ages. But of
all this the accused are fortunately wholly unconscious, for there is
nothing so entirely natural and unaffected as the highest breeding.
From an aspect of dignified but undisguised economy which showed itself
in her dress as well as in her limited quarters, I suspected a story of
shipwrecked fortune, and determined to question our Landlady. That
worthy woman was delighted to tell the history of her most distinguished
boarder. She was, as I had supposed, a gentlewoman whom a change of
circumstances had brought down from her high estate.
--Did I know the Goldenrod family?--Of course I did.---Well, the Lady,
was first cousin to Mrs. Midas Goldenrod. She had been here in her
carriage to call upon her,--not very often.---Were her rich relations
kind and helpful to her?--Well, yes; at least they made her presents now
and then. Three or four years ago they sent her a silver waiter, and
every Christmas they sent her a boquet,--it must cost as much as five
dollars, the Landlady thought.
--And how did the Lady receive these valuable and useful gifts?
--Every Christmas she got out the silver waiter and borrowed a glass
tumbler and filled it with water, and put the boquet in it and set it on
the waiter. It smelt sweet enough and looked pretty for a day or two,
but the Landlady thought it wouldn't have hurt 'em if they'd sent a piece
of goods for a dress, or at least a pocket-handkercher or two, or
something or other that she could 'a' made some kind of use of; but
beggars must n't be choosers; not that she was a beggar, for she'd sooner
die than do that if she was in want of a meal of victuals. There was a
lady I remember, and she had a little boy and she was a widow, and after
she'd buried her husband she was dreadful poor, and she was ashamed to
let her little boy go out in his old shoes, and copper-toed shoes they
was too, because his poor little ten--toes--was a coming out of 'em; and
what do you think my husband's rich uncle,--well, there now, it was me
and my little Benjamin, as he was then, there's no use in hiding of
it,--and what do you think my husband's uncle sent me but a plaster of
Paris image of a young woman, that was,--well, her appearance wasn't
respectable, and I had to take and wrap her up in a towel and poke her
right into my closet, and there she stayed till she got her head broke
and served her right, for she was n't fit to show folks. You need n't
say anything about what I told you, but the fact is I was desperate poor
before I began to support myself taking boarders, and a lone woman
without her--her--
The sentence plunged into the gulf of her great remembered sorrow, and
was lost to the records of humanity.
--Presently she continued in answer to my questions: The Lady was not
very sociable; kept mostly to herself. The Young Girl (our Scheherezade)
used to visit her sometimes, and they seemed to like each other, but the
Young Girl had not many spare hours for visiting. The Lady never found
fault, but she was very nice in her tastes, and kept everything about her
looking as neat and pleasant as she could.
---What did she do?--Why, she read, and she drew pictures, and she did
needlework patterns, and played on an old harp she had; the gilt was
mostly off, but it sounded very sweet, and she sung to it sometimes,
those old songs that used to be in fashion twenty or thirty years ago,
with words to 'em that folks could understand.
Did she do anything to help support herself?--The Landlady couldn't say
she did, but she thought there was rich people enough that ought to buy
the flowers and things she worked and painted.
All this points to the fact that she was bred to be an ornamental rather
than what is called a useful member of society. This is all very well so
long as fortune favors those who are chosen to be the ornamental
personages; but if the golden tide recedes and leaves them stranded, they
are more to be pitied than almost any other class. "I cannot dig, to beg
I am ashamed."
I think it is unpopular in this country to talk much about gentlemen and
gentlewomen. People are touchy about social distinctions, which no doubt
are often invidious and quite arbitrary and accidental, but which it is
impossible to avoid recognizing as facts of natural history. Society
stratifies itself everywhere, and the stratum which is generally
recognized as the uppermost will be apt to have the advantage in easy
grace of manner and in unassuming confidence, and consequently be more
agreeable in the superficial relations of life. To compare these
advantages with the virtues and utilities would be foolish. Much of the
noblest work in life is done by ill-dressed, awkward, ungainly persons;
but that is no more reason for undervaluing good manners and what we call
high-breeding, than the fact that the best part of the sturdy labor of
the world is done by men with exceptionable hands is to be urged against
the use of Brown Windsor as a preliminary to appearance in cultivated
society.
I mean to stand up for this poor lady, whose usefulness in the world is
apparently problematical. She seems to me like a picture which has
fallen from its gilded frame and lies, face downward, on the dusty floor.
The picture never was as needful as a window or a door, but it was
pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be pleasant to see it there
again, and I, for one, should be thankful to have the Lady restored by
some turn of fortune to the position from which she has been so cruelly
cast down.
--I have asked the Landlady about the young man sitting near her, the
same who attracted my attention the other day while I was talking, as I
mentioned. He passes most of his time in a private observatory, it
appears; a watcher of the stars. That I suppose gives the peculiar look
to his lustrous eyes. The Master knows him and was pleased to tell me
something about him.
You call yourself a Poet,--he said,--and we call you so, too, and so you
are; I read your verses and like 'em. But that young man lives in a
world beyond the imagination of poets, let me tell you. The daily home
of his thought is in illimitable space, hovering between the two
eternities. In his contemplations the divisions of time run together, as
in the thought of his Maker. With him also,--I say it not
profanely,--one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one
day.
This account of his occupation increased the interest his look had
excited in me, and I have observed him more particularly and found out
more about him. Sometimes, after a long night's watching, he looks so
pale and worn, that one would think the cold moonlight had stricken him
with some malign effluence such as it is fabled to send upon those who
sleep in it. At such times he seems more like one who has come from a
planet farther away from the sun than our earth, than like one of us
terrestrial creatures. His home is truly in the heavens, and he
practises an asceticism in the cause of science almost comparable to that
of Saint Simeon Stylites. Yet they tell me he might live in luxury if he
spent on himself what he spends on science. His knowledge is of that
strange, remote character, that it seems sometimes almost superhuman. He
knows the ridges and chasms of the moon as a surveyor knows a garden-plot
he has measured. He watches the snows that gather around the poles of
Mars; he is on the lookout for the expected comet at the moment when its
faint stain of diffused light first shows itself; he analyzes the ray
that comes from the sun's photosphere; he measures the rings of Saturn;
he counts his asteroids to see that none are missing, as the shepherd
counts the sheep in his flock. A strange unearthly being; lonely,
dwelling far apart from the thoughts and cares of the planet on which he
lives,--an enthusiast who gives his life to knowledge; a student of
antiquity, to whom the records of the geologist are modern pages in the
great volume of being, and the pyramids a memorandum of yesterday, as the
eclipse or occultation that is to take place thousands of years hence is
an event of to-morrow in the diary without beginning and without end
where he enters the aspect of the passing moment as it is read on the
celestial dial.
In very marked contrast with this young man is the something more than
middle-aged Register of Deeds, a rusty, sallow, smoke-dried looking
personage, who belongs to this earth as exclusively as the other belongs
to the firmament. His movements are as mechanical as those of a
pendulum,--to the office, where he changes his coat and plunges into
messuages and building-lots; then, after changing his coat again, back to
our table, and so, day by day, the dust of years gradually gathering
around him as it does on the old folios that fill the shelves all round
the great cemetery of past transactions of which he is the sexton.
Of the Salesman who sits next him, nothing need be said except that he is
good-looking, rosy, well-dressed, and of very polite manners, only a
little more brisk than the approved style of carriage permits, as one in
the habit of springing with a certain alacrity at the call of a customer.
You would like to see, I don't doubt, how we sit at the table, and I will
help you by means of a diagram which shows the present arrangement of our
seats.
4 3 2 1 14 13
----------------------------------
| O O O O O O |
| |
5 | O Breakfast-Table O |12
| |
| O O O O O O |
----------------------------------
6 7 8 9 10 11
1. The Poet.
2. The Master Of Arts.
3. The Young Girl (Scheherezade).
4. The Lady.
5. The Landlady.
6. Dr. B. Franklin.
7. That Boy.
8. The Astronomer.
9. The Member of the Haouse.
10. The Register of Deeds.
11. The Salesman.
12. The Capitalist.
13. The Man of Letters(?).
14. The Scarabee.
Our young Scheherezade varies her prose stories now and then, as I told
you, with compositions in verse, one or two of which she has let me look
over. Here is one of them, which she allowed me to copy. It is from a
story of hers, "The Sun-Worshipper's Daughter," which you may find in the
periodical before mentioned, to which she is a contributor, if your can
lay your hand upon a file of it. I think our Scheherezade has never had
a lover in human shape, or she would not play so lightly with the
firebrands of the great passion.
FANTASIA.
Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous Morn,
Blushing into life new-born!
Lend me violets for my hair,
And thy russet robe to wear,
And thy ring of rosiest hue
Set in drops of diamond dew!
Kiss my cheek, thou noontide ray,
From my Love so far away!
Let thy splendor streaming down
Turn its pallid lilies brown,
Till its darkening shades reveal
Where his passion pressed its seal!
Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light,
Kiss my lips a soft good night!
Westward sinks thy golden car;
Leave me but the evening star,
And my solace that shall be,
Borrowing all its light from thee!
III
The old Master was talking about a concert he had been to hear.--I don't
like your chopped music anyway. That woman--she had more sense in her
little finger than forty medical societies--Florence Nightingale--says
that the music you pour out is good for sick folks, and the music you
pound out isn't. Not that exactly, but something like it. I have been
to hear some music-pounding. It was a young woman, with as many white
muslin flounces round her as the planet Saturn has rings, that did it.
She--gave the music-stool a twirl or two and fluffed down on to it like a
whirl of soap-suds in a hand-basin. Then she pushed up her cuffs as if
she was going to fight for the champion's belt. Then she worked her
wrists and her hands, to limber 'em, I suppose, and spread out her
fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the
key-board, from the growling end to the little squeaky one. Then those
two hands of hers made a jump at the keys as if they were a couple of
tigers coming down on a flock of black and white sheep, and the piano
gave a great howl as if its tail had been trod on. Dead stop,--so still
you could hear your hair growing. Then another jump, and another howl,
as if the piano had two tails and you had trod on both of 'em at once,
and, then a grand clatter and scramble and string of jumps, up and down,
back and forward, one hand over the other, like a stampede of rats and
mice more than like anything I call music. I like to hear a woman sing,
and I like to hear a fiddle sing, but these noises they hammer out of
their wood and ivory anvils--don't talk to me, I know the difference
between a bullfrog and a woodthrush and--
Pop! went a small piece of artillery such as is made of a stick of elder
and carries a pellet of very moderate consistency. That Boy was in his
seat and looking demure enough, but there could be no question that he
was the artillery-man who had discharged the missile. The aim was not a
bad one, for it took the Master full in the forehead, and had the effect
of checking the flow of his eloquence. How the little monkey had learned
to time his interruptions I do not know, but I have observed more than
once before this, that the popgun would go off just at the moment when
some one of the company was getting too energetic or prolix. The Boy
isn't old enough to judge for himself when to intervene to change the
order of conversation; no, of course he isn't. Somebody must give him a
hint. Somebody.--Who is it? I suspect Dr. B. Franklin. He looks too
knowing. There is certainly a trick somewhere. Why, a day or two ago I
was myself discoursing, with considerable effect, as I thought, on some
of the new aspects of humanity, when I was struck full on the cheek by
one of these little pellets, and there was such a confounded laugh that I
had to wind up and leave off with a preposition instead of a good
mouthful of polysyllables. I have watched our young Doctor, however, and
have been entirely unable to detect any signs of communication between
him and this audacious child, who is like to become a power among us, for
that popgun is fatal to any talker who is hit by its pellet. I have
suspected a foot under the table as the prompter, but I have been unable
to detect the slightest movement or look as if he were making one, on the
part of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. I cannot help thinking of the flappers in
Swift's Laputa, only they gave one a hint when to speak and another a
hint to listen, whereas the popgun says unmistakably, "Shut up!"
--I should be sorry to lose my confidence in Dr. B. Franklin, who seems
very much devoted to his business, and whom I mean to consult about some
small symptoms I have had lately. Perhaps it is coming to a new
boarding-house. The young people who come into Paris from the provinces
are very apt--so I have been told by one that knows--to have an attack of
typhoid fever a few weeks or months after their arrival. I have not been
long enough at this table to get well acclimated; perhaps that is it.
Boarding-House Fever. Something like horse-ail, very likely,--horses get
it, you know, when they are brought to city stables. A little "off my
feed," as Hiram Woodruff would say. A queer discoloration about my
forehead. Query, a bump? Cannot remember any. Might have got it against
bedpost or something while asleep. Very unpleasant to look so. I wonder
how my portrait would look, if anybody should take it now! I hope not
quite so badly as one I saw the other day, which I took for the end man
of the Ethiopian Serenaders, or some traveller who had been exploring the
sources of the Niger, until I read the name at the bottom and found it
was a face I knew as well as my own.
I must consult somebody, and it is nothing more than fair to give our
young Doctor a chance. Here goes for Dr. Benjamin Franklin.
The young Doctor has a very small office and a very large sign, with a
transparency at night big enough for an oyster-shop. These young doctors
are particularly strong, as I understand, on what they call
diagnosis,--an excellent branch of the healing art, full of satisfaction
to the curious practitioner, who likes to give the right Latin name to
one's complaint; not quite so satisfactory to the patient, as it is not
so very much pleasanter to be bitten by a dog with a collar round his
neck telling you that he is called Snap or Teaser, than by a dog without
a collar. Sometimes, in fact, one would a little rather not know the
exact name of his complaint, as if he does he is pretty sure to look it
out in a medical dictionary, and then if he reads, This terrible disease
is attended with vast suffering and is inevitably mortal, or any such
statement, it is apt to affect him unpleasantly.
I confess to a little shakiness when I knocked at Dr. Benjamin's office
door. "Come in!" exclaimed Dr. B. F. in tones that sounded ominous and
sepulchral. And I went in.
I don't believe the chambers of the Inquisition ever presented a more
alarming array of implements for extracting a confession, than our young
Doctor's office did of instruments to make nature tell what was the
matter with a poor body.
There were Ophthalmoscopes and Rhinoscopes and Otoscopes and
Laryngoscopes and Stethoscopes; and Thermometers and Spirometers and
Dynamometers and Sphygmometers and Pleximeters; and Probes and Probangs
and all sorts of frightful inquisitive exploring contrivances; and scales
to weigh you in, and tests and balances and pumps and electro-magnets and
magneto-electric machines; in short, apparatus for doing everything but
turn you inside out.
Dr. Benjamin set me down before his one window and began looking at me
with such a superhuman air of sagacity, that I felt like one of those
open-breasted clocks which make no secret of their inside arrangements,
and almost thought he could see through me as one sees through a shrimp
or a jelly-fish. First he looked at the place inculpated, which had a
sort of greenish-brown color, with his naked eyes, with much corrugation
of forehead and fearful concentration of attention; then through a
pocket-glass which he carried. Then he drew back a space, for a
perspective view. Then he made me put out my tongue and laid a slip of
blue paper on it, which turned red and scared me a little. Next he took
my wrist; but instead of counting my pulse in the old-fashioned way, he
fastened a machine to it that marked all the beats on a sheet of
paper,--for all the world like a scale of the heights of mountains, say
from Mount Tom up to Chimborazo and then down again, and up again, and so
on. In the mean time he asked me all sorts of questions about myself and
all my relatives, whether we had been subject to this and that malady,
until I felt as if we must some of us have had more or less of them, and
could not feel quite sure whether Elephantiasis and Beriberi and
Progressive Locomotor Ataxy did not run in the family.
After all this overhauling of myself and my history, he paused and looked
puzzled. Something was suggested about what he called an "exploratory
puncture." This I at once declined, with thanks. Suddenly a thought
struck him. He looked still more closely at the discoloration I have
spoken of.
--Looks like--I declare it reminds me of--very rare! very curious! It
would be strange if my first case--of this kind--should be one of our
boarders!
What kind of a case do you call it?--I said, with a sort of feeling that
he could inflict a severe or a light malady on me, as if he were a judge
passing sentence.
--The color reminds me,--said Dr. B. Franklin,--of what I have seen in a
case of Addison's Disease, Morbus Addisonii.
--But my habits are quite regular,--I said; for I remembered that the
distinguished essayist was too fond of his brandy and water, and I
confess that the thought was not pleasant to me of following Dr.
Johnson's advice, with the slight variation of giving my days and my
nights to trying on the favorite maladies of Addison.
--Temperance people are subject to it!--exclaimed Dr. Benjamin, almost
exultingly, I thought.
--But I had the impression that the author of the Spectator was afflicted
with a dropsy, or some such inflated malady, to which persons of
sedentary and bibacious habits are liable. [A literary swell,--I thought
to myself, but I did not say it. I felt too serious.]
--The author of the Spectator!--cried out Dr. Benjamin,--I mean the
celebrated Dr. Addison, inventor, I would say discoverer, of the
wonderful new disease called after him.
---And what may this valuable invention or discovery consist in?--I
asked, for I was curious to know the nature of the gift which this
benefactor of the race had bestowed upon us.
--A most interesting affection, and rare, too. Allow me to look closely
at that discoloration once more for a moment. Cutis cenea, bronze skin,
they call it sometimes--extraordinary pigmentation--a little more to the
light, if you please--ah! now I get the bronze coloring admirably,
beautifully! Would you have any objection to showing your case to the
Societies of Medical Improvement and Medical Observation?
[--My case! O dear!] May I ask if any vital organ is commonly involved
in this interesting complaint?--I said, faintly.
--Well, sir,--the young Doctor replied,--there is an organ which is
--sometimes--a little touched, I may say; a very curious and ingenious
little organ or pair of organs. Did you ever hear of the Capsulae,
Suprarenales?
--No,--said I,--is it a mortal complaint?--I ought to have known better
than to ask such a question, but I was getting nervous and thinking about
all sorts of horrid maladies people are liable to, with horrid names to
match.
--It is n't a complaint,--I mean they are not a complaint,--they are two
small organs, as I said, inside of you, and nobody knows what is the use
of them. The most curious thing is that when anything is the matter with
them you turn of the color of bronze. After all, I didn't mean to say I
believed it was Morbus Addisonii; I only thought of that when I saw the
discoloration.
So he gave me a recipe, which I took care to put where it could do no
hurt to anybody, and I paid him his fee (which he took with the air of a
man in the receipt of a great income) and said Good-morning.
--What in the name of a thousand diablos is the reason these confounded
doctors will mention their guesses about "a case," as they call it, and
all its conceivable possibilities, out loud before their patients? I
don't suppose there is anything in all this nonsense about "Addison's
Disease," but I wish he hadn't spoken of that very interesting ailment,
and I should feel a little easier if that discoloration would leave my
forehead. I will ask the Landlady about it,--these old women often know
more than the young doctors just come home with long names for everything
they don't know how to cure. But the name of this complaint sets me
thinking. Bronzed skin! What an odd idea! Wonder if it spreads all
over one. That would be picturesque and pleasant, now, wouldn't it? To
be made a living statue of,--nothing to do but strike an attitude. Arm
up--so--like the one in the Garden. John of Bologna's Mercury--thus on
one foot. Needy knife-grinder in the Tribune at Florence. No, not
"needy," come to think of it. Marcus Aurelius on horseback. Query. Are
horses subject to the Morbus Addisonii? Advertise for a bronzed living
horse--Lyceum invitations and engagements--bronze versus brass.---What 's
the use in being frightened? Bet it was a bump. Pretty certain I bumped
my forehead against something. Never heard of a bronzed man before.
Have seen white men, black men, red men, yellow men, two or three blue
men, stained with doctor's stuff; some green ones, from the country; but
never a bronzed man. Poh, poh! Sure it was a bump. Ask Landlady to look
at it.
--Landlady did look at it. Said it was a bump, and no mistake.
Recommended a piece of brown paper dipped in vinegar. Made the house
smell as if it were in quarantine for the plague from Smyrna, but
discoloration soon disappeared,--so I did not become a bronzed man after
all,--hope I never shall while I am alive. Should n't mind being done in
bronze after I was dead. On second thoughts not so clear about it,
remembering how some of them look that we have got stuck up in public;
think I had rather go down to posterity in an Ethiopian Minstrel
portrait, like our friend's the other day.
--You were kind enough to say, I remarked to the Master, that you read my
poems and liked them. Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me what
it is you like about them?
The Master harpooned a breakfast-roll and held it up before me.--Will you
tell me,--he said,--why you like that breakfast-roll?--I suppose he
thought that would stop my mouth in two senses. But he was mistaken.
--To be sure I will,--said I.---First, I like its mechanical consistency;
brittle externally,--that is for the teeth, which want resistance to be
overcome; soft, spongy, well tempered and flavored internally, that is
for the organ of taste; wholesome, nutritious,--that is for the internal
surfaces and the system generally.
--Good,--said the Master, and laughed a hearty terrestrial laugh.
I hope he will carry that faculty of an honest laugh with him wherever he
goes,--why shouldn't he? The "order of things," as he calls it, from
which hilarity was excluded, would be crippled and one-sided enough. I
don't believe the human gamut will be cheated of a single note after men
have done breathing this fatal atmospheric mixture and die into the ether
of immortality!
I did n't say all that; if I had said it, it would have brought a pellet
from the popgun, I feel quite certain.
The Master went on after he had had out his laugh.--There is one thing I
am His Imperial Majesty about, and that is my likes and dislikes. What
if I do like your verses,--you can't help yourself. I don't doubt
somebody or other hates 'em and hates you and everything you do, or ever
did, or ever can do. He is all right; there is nothing you or I like
that somebody does n't hate. Was there ever anything wholesome that was
not poison to somebody? If you hate honey or cheese, or the products of
the dairy,--I know a family a good many of whose members can't touch
milk, butter, cheese, and the like, why, say so, but don't find fault
with the bees and the cows. Some are afraid of roses, and I have known
those who thought a pond-lily a disagreeable neighbor. That Boy will
give you the metaphysics of likes and dislikes. Look here,--you young
philosopher over there,--do you like candy?
That Boy.---You bet! Give me a stick and see if I don't.
And can you tell me why you like candy?
That Boy.--Because I do.
--There, now, that is the whole matter in a nutshell. Why do your teeth
like crackling crust, and your organs of taste like spongy crumb, and
your digestive contrivances take kindly to bread rather than toadstools--
That Boy (thinking he was still being catechised).--Because they do.
Whereupon the Landlady said, Sh! and the Young Girl laughed, and the Lady
smiled; and Dr. Ben Franklin kicked him, moderately, under the table, and
the Astronomer looked up at the ceiling to see what had happened, and the
Member of the Haouse cried, Order! Order! and the Salesman said, Shut
up, cash-boy! and the rest of the boarders kept on feeding; except the
Master, who looked very hard but half approvingly at the small intruder,
who had come about as nearly right as most professors would have done.
--You poets,--the Master said after this excitement had calmed down,
--you poets have one thing about you that is odd. You talk about
everything as if you knew more about it than the people whose business it
is to know all about it. I suppose you do a little of what we teachers
used to call "cramming" now and then?
--If you like your breakfast you must n't ask the cook too many
questions,--I answered.
--Oh, come now, don't be afraid of letting out your secrets. I have a
notion I can tell a poet that gets himself up just as I can tell a
make-believe old man on the stage by the line where the gray skullcap
joins the smooth forehead of the young fellow of seventy. You'll confess
to a rhyming dictionary anyhow, won't you?
--I would as lief use that as any other dictionary, but I don't want it.
When a word comes up fit to end a line with I can feel all the rhymes in
the language that are fit to go with it without naming them. I have
tried them all so many times, I know all the polygamous words and all the
monogamous ones, and all the unmarrying ones,--the whole lot that have no
mates,--as soon as I hear their names called. Sometimes I run over a
string of rhymes, but generally speaking it is strange what a short list
it is of those that are good for anything. That is the pitiful side of
all rhymed verse. Take two such words as home and world. What can you
do with chrome or loam or gnome or tome? You have dome, foam, and roam,
and not much more to use in your pome, as some of our fellow-countrymen
call it. As for world, you know that in all human probability somebody
or something will be hurled into it or out of it; its clouds may be
furled or its grass impearled; possibly something may be whirled, or
curled, or have swirled, one of Leigh Hunt's words, which with lush, one
of Keats's, is an important part of the stock in trade of some dealers in
rhyme.
--And how much do you versifiers know of all those arts and sciences you
refer to as if you were as familiar with them as a cobbler is with his
wax and lapstone?
--Enough not to make too many mistakes. The best way is to ask some
expert before one risks himself very far in illustrations from a branch
he does not know much about. Suppose, for instance, I wanted to use the
double star to illustrate anything, say the relation of two human souls
to each other, what would I--do? Why, I would ask our young friend there
to let me look at one of those loving celestial pairs through his
telescope, and I don't doubt he'd let me do so, and tell me their names
and all I wanted to know about them.
--I should be most happy to show any of the double stars or whatever else
there might be to see in the heavens to any of our friends at this
table,--the young man said, so cordially and kindly that it was a real
invitation.
--Show us the man in the moon,--said That Boy.---I should so like to see
a double star!--said Scheherezade, with a very pretty air of smiling
modesty.
--Will you go, if we make up a party?--I asked the Master.
--A cold in the head lasts me from three to five days,--answered the
Master.--I am not so very fond of being out in the dew like
Nebuchadnezzar: that will do for you young folks.
--I suppose I must be one of the young folks, not so young as our
Scheherezade, nor so old as the Capitalist,--young enough at any rate to
want to be of the party. So we agreed that on some fair night when the
Astronomer should tell us that there was to be a fine show in the skies,
we would make up a party and go to the Observatory. I asked the Scarabee
whether he would not like to make one of us.
--Out of the question, sir, out of the question. I am altogether too
much occupied with an important scientific investigation to devote any
considerable part of an evening to star-gazing.
--Oh, indeed,--said I,--and may I venture to ask on what particular point
you are engaged just at present?
-Certainly, sir, you may. It is, I suppose, as difficult and important a
matter to be investigated as often comes before a student of natural
history. I wish to settle the point once for all whether the Pediculus
Mellitae is or is not the larva of Meloe.
[--Now is n't this the drollest world to live in that one could imagine,
short of being in a fit of delirium tremens? Here is a fellow-creature
of mine and yours who is asked to see all the glories of the firmament
brought close to him, and he is too busy with a little unmentionable
parasite that infests the bristly surface of a bee to spare an hour or
two of a single evening for the splendors of the universe! I must get a
peep through that microscope of his and see the pediculus which occupies
a larger space in his mental vision than the midnight march of the solar
systems.---The creature, the human one, I mean, interests me.]
--I am very curious,--I said,--about that pediculus melittae,--(just as
if I knew a good deal about the little wretch and wanted to know more,
whereas I had never heard him spoken of before, to my knowledge,)--could
you let me have a sight of him in your microscope?
--You ought to have seen the way in which the poor dried-up little
Scarabee turned towards me. His eyes took on a really human look, and I
almost thought those antennae-like arms of his would have stretched
themselves out and embraced me. I don't believe any of the boarders had
ever shown any interest in--him, except the little monkey of a Boy, since
he had been in the house. It is not strange; he had not seemed to me
much like a human being, until all at once I touched the one point where
his vitality had concentrated itself, and he stood revealed a man and a
brother.
--Come in,--said he,--come in, right after breakfast, and you shall see
the animal that has convulsed the entomological world with questions as
to his nature and origin.
--So I went into the Scarabee's parlor, lodging-room, study, laboratory,
and museum,--a--single apartment applied to these various uses, you
understand.
--I wish I had time to have you show me all your treasures,--I said,
--but I am afraid I shall hardly be able to do more than look at the
bee-parasite. But what a superb butterfly you have in that case!
--Oh, yes, yes, well enough,--came from South America with the beetle
there; look at him! These Lepidoptera are for children to play with,
pretty to look at, so some think. Give me the Coleoptera, and the kings
of the Coleoptera are the beetles! Lepidoptera and Neuroptera for little
folks; Coleopteras for men, sir!
--The particular beetle he showed me in the case with the magnificent
butterfly was an odious black wretch that one would say, Ugh! at, and
kick out of his path, if he did not serve him worse than that. But he
looked at it as a coin-collector would look at a Pescennius Niger, if the
coins of that Emperor are as scarce as they used to be when I was
collecting half-penny tokens and pine-tree shillings and battered bits of
Roman brass with the head of Gallienus or some such old fellow on them.
--A beauty!--he exclaimed,--and the only specimen of the kind in this
country, to the best of my belief. A unique, sir, and there is a
pleasure in exclusive possession. Not another beetle like that short of
South America, sir.
--I was glad to hear that there were no more like it in this
neighborhood, the present supply of cockroaches answering every purpose,
so far as I am concerned, that such an animal as this would be likely to
serve.
--Here are my bee-parasites,--said the Scarabee, showing me a box full of
glass slides, each with a specimen ready mounted for the microscope. I
was most struck with one little beast flattened out like a turtle,
semi-transparent, six-legged, as I remember him, and every leg terminated
by a single claw hooked like a lion's and as formidable for the size of
the creature as that of the royal beast.
--Lives on a bumblebee, does he?--I said. That's the way I call it.
Bumblebee or bumblybee and huckleberry. Humblebee and whortleberry for
people that say Woos-ses-ter and Nor-wich.
--The Scarabee did not smile; he took no interest in trivial matters like
this.
--Lives on a bumblebee. When you come to think of it, he must lead a
pleasant kind of life. Sails through the air without the trouble of
flying. Free pass everywhere that the bee goes. No fear of being
dislodged; look at those six grappling-hooks. Helps himself to such
juices of the bee as he likes best; the bee feeds on the choicest
vegetable nectars, and he feeds on the bee. Lives either in the air or
in the perfumed pavilion of the fairest and sweetest flowers. Think what
tents the hollyhocks and the great lilies spread for him! And wherever he
travels a band of music goes with him, for this hum which wanders by us
is doubtless to him a vast and inspiring strain of melody.--I thought all
this, while the Scarabee supposed I was studying the minute characters of
the enigmatical specimen.
--I know what I consider your pediculus melittae, I said at length.
Do you think it really the larva of meloe?
--Oh, I don't know much about that, but I think he is the best cared for,
on the whole, of any animal that I know of; and if I wasn't a man I
believe I had rather be that little sybarite than anything that feasts at
the board of nature.
--The question is, whether he is the larva of meloe,--the Scarabee said,
as if he had not heard a word of what I had just been saying.----If I
live a few years longer it shall be settled, sir; and if my epitaph can
say honestly that I settled it, I shall be willing to trust my posthumous
fame to that achievement.
I said good morning to the specialist, and went off feeling not only
kindly, but respectfully towards him. He is an enthusiast, at any rate,
as "earnest" a man as any philanthropic reformer who, having passed his
life in worrying people out of their misdoings into good behavior, comes
at last to a state in which he is never contented except when he is
making somebody uncomfortable. He does certainly know one thing well,
very likely better than anybody in the world.
I find myself somewhat singularly placed at our table between a minute
philosopher who has concentrated all his faculties on a single subject,
and my friend who finds the present universe too restricted for his
intelligence. I would not give much to hear what the Scarabee says about
the old Master, for he does not pretend to form a judgment of anything
but beetles, but I should like to hear what the Master has to say about
the Scarabee. I waited after breakfast until he had gone, and then asked
the Master what he could make of our dried-up friend.
--Well,--he said,--I am hospitable enough in my feelings to him and all
his tribe. These specialists are the coral-insects that build up a reef.
By and by it will be an island, and for aught we know may grow into a
continent. But I don't want to be a coral-insect myself. I had rather be
a voyager that visits all the reefs and islands the creatures build, and
sails over the seas where they have as yet built up nothing. I am a
little afraid that science is breeding us down too fast into
coral-insects. A man like Newton or Leibnitz or Haller used to paint a
picture of outward or inward nature with a free hand, and stand back and
look at it as a whole and feel like an archangel; but nowadays you have a
Society, and they come together and make a great mosaic, each man
bringing his little bit and sticking it in its place, but so taken up
with his petty fragment that he never thinks of looking at the picture
the little bits make when they are put together. You can't get any talk
out of these specialists away from their own subjects, any more than you
can get help from a policeman outside of his own beat.
--Yes,--said I,--but why should n't we always set a man talking about the
thing he knows best?
--No doubt, no doubt, if you meet him once; but what are you going to do
with him if you meet him every day? I travel with a man and we want to
make change very often in paying bills. But every time I ask him to
change a pistareen, or give me two fo'pencehappennies for a ninepence, or
help me to make out two and thrippence (mark the old Master's archaisms
about the currency), what does the fellow do but put his hand in his
pocket and pull out an old Roman coin; I have no change, says he, but
this assarion of Diocletian. Mighty deal of good that'll do me!
--It isn't quite so handy as a few specimens of the modern currency would
be, but you can pump him on numismatics.
--To be sure, to be sure. I've pumped a thousand men of all they could
teach me, or at least all I could learn from 'em; and if it comes to
that, I never saw the man that couldn't teach me something. I can get
along with everybody in his place, though I think the place of some of my
friends is over there among the feeble-minded pupils, and I don't believe
there's one of them, I couldn't go to school to for half an hour and be
the wiser for it. But people you talk with every day have got to have
feeders for their minds, as much as the stream that turns a millwheel
has. It isn't one little rill that's going to keep the float-boards
turning round. Take a dozen of the brightest men you can find in the
brightest city, wherever that may be,--perhaps you and I think we
know,--and let 'em come together once a month, and you'll find out in the
course of a year or two the ones that have feeders from all the
hillsides. Your common talkers, that exchange the gossip of the day,
have no wheel in particular to turn, and the wash of the rain as it runs
down the street is enough for them.
--Do you mean you can always see the sources from which a man fills his
mind,--his feeders, as you call them?
-I don't go quite so far as that,--the Master said.---I've seen men whose
minds were always overflowing, and yet they did n't read much nor go much
into the world. Sometimes you'll find a bit of a pond-hole in a pasture,
and you'll plunge your walking-stick into it and think you are going to
touch bottom. But you find you are mistaken. Some of these little
stagnant pond-holes are a good deal deeper than you think; you may tie a
stone to a bed-cord and not get soundings in some of 'em. The country
boys will tell you they have no bottom, but that only means that they are
mighty deep; and so a good many stagnant, stupid-seeming people are a
great deal deeper than the length of your intellectual walking-stick, I
can tell you. There are hidden springs that keep the little pond-holes
full when the mountain brooks are all dried up. You poets ought to know
that.
--I can't help thinking you are more tolerant towards the specialists
than I thought at first, by the way you seemed to look at our dried-up
neighbor and his small pursuits.
--I don't like the word tolerant,--the Master said.---As long as the Lord
can tolerate me I think I can stand my fellow-creatures. Philosophically,
I love 'em all; empirically, I don't think I am very fond of all of 'em.
It depends on how you look at a man or a woman. Come here, Youngster,
will you? he said to That Boy.
The Boy was trying to catch a blue-bottle to add to his collection, and
was indisposed to give up the chase; but he presently saw that the Master
had taken out a small coin and laid it on the table, and felt himself
drawn in that direction.
Read that,--said the Master.
U-n-i-ni United States of America 5 cents.
The Master turned the coin over. Now read that.
In God is our t-r-u-s-t--trust. 1869.
--Is that the same piece of money as the other one?
--There ain't any other one,--said the Boy, there ain't but one, but it's
got two sides to it with different reading.
--That 's it, that 's it,--said the Master,--two sides to everybody, as
there are to that piece of money. I've seen an old woman that wouldn't
fetch five cents if you should put her up for sale at public auction; and
yet come to read the other side of her, she had a trust in God Almighty
that was like the bow anchor of a three-decker. It's faith in something
and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at. I don't
think your ant-eating specialist, with his sharp nose and pin-head eyes,
is the best every-day companion; but any man who knows one thing well is
worth listening to for once; and if you are of the large-brained variety
of the race, and want to fill out your programme of the Order of Things
in a systematic and exhaustive way, and get all the half-notes and flats
and sharps of humanity into your scale, you'd a great deal better shut
your front door and open your two side ones when you come across a fellow
that has made a real business of doing anything.
--That Boy stood all this time looking hard at the five-cent piece.
--Take it,--said the Master, with a good-natured smile.
--The Boy made a snatch at it and was off for the purpose of investing
it.
--A child naturally snaps at a thing as a dog does at his meat,--said the
Master.---If you think of it, we've all been quadrupeds. A child that
can only crawl has all the instincts of a four-footed beast. It carries
things in its mouth just as cats and dogs do. I've seen the little
brutes do it over and over again. I suppose a good many children would
stay quadrupeds all their lives, if they didn't learn the trick of
walking on their hind legs from seeing all the grown people walking in
that way.
--Do you accept Mr. Darwin's notions about the origin of the race?--said
I.
The Master looked at me with that twinkle in his eye which means that he
is going to parry a question.
--Better stick to Blair's Chronology; that settles it. Adam and Eve,
created Friday, October 28th, B. C. 4004. You've been in a ship for a
good while, and here comes Mr. Darwin on deck with an armful of sticks
and says, "Let's build a raft, and trust ourselves to that."
If your ship springs a leak, what would you do?
He looked me straight in the eyes for about half a minute.---If I heard
the pumps going, I'd look and see whether they were gaining on the leak
or not. If they were gaining I'd stay where I was.---Go and find out
what's the matter with that young woman.
I had noticed that the Young Girl--the storywriter, our Scheherezade, as
I called her--looked as if she had been crying or lying awake half the
night. I found on asking her,--for she is an honest little body and is
disposed to be confidential with me for some reason or other,--that she
had been doing both.
--And what was the matter now, I questioned her in a semi-paternal kind
of way, as soon as I got a chance for a few quiet words with her.
She was engaged to write a serial story, it seems, and had only got as
far as the second number, and some critic had been jumping upon it, she
said, and grinding his heel into it, till she couldn't bear to look at
it. He said she did not write half so well as half a dozen other young
women. She did n't write half so well as she used to write herself. She
hadn't any characters and she had n't any incidents. Then he went to
work to show how her story was coming out, trying to anticipate
everything she could make of it, so that her readers should have nothing
to look forward to, and he should have credit for his sagacity in
guessing, which was nothing so very wonderful, she seemed to think.
Things she had merely hinted and left the reader to infer, he told right
out in the bluntest and coarsest way. It had taken all the life out of
her, she said. It was just as if at a dinner-party one of the guests
should take a spoonful of soup and get up and say to the company, "Poor
stuff, poor stuff; you won't get anything better; let's go somewhere else
where things are fit to eat."
What do you read such things for, my dear? said I.
The film glistened in her eyes at the strange sound of those two soft
words; she had not heard such very often, I am afraid.
--I know I am a foolish creature to read them, she answered,--but I can't
help it; somebody always sends me everything that will make me wretched
to read, and so I sit down and read it, and ache all over for my pains,
and lie awake all night.
--She smiled faintly as she said this, for she saw the sub-ridiculous
side of it, but the film glittered still in her eyes. There are a good
many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are
the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples. "Somebody always sends
her everything that will make her wretched." Who can those creatures be
who cut out the offensive paragraph and send it anonymously to us, who
mail the newspaper which has the article we had much better not have
seen, who take care that we shall know everything which can, by any
possibility, help to make us discontented with ourselves and a little
less light-hearted than we were before we had been fools enough to open
their incendiary packages? I don't like to say it to myself, but I
cannot help suspecting, in this instance, the doubtful-looking personage
who sits on my left, beyond the Scarabee. I have some reason to think
that he has made advances to the Young Girl which were not favorably
received, to state the case in moderate terms, and it may be that he is
taking his revenge in cutting up the poor girl's story. I know this very
well, that some personal pique or favoritism is at the bottom of half the
praise and dispraise which pretend to be so very ingenuous and
discriminating. (Of course I have been thinking all this time and
telling you what I thought.)
--What you want is encouragement, my dear, said I,--I know that as well,
as you. I don't think the fellows that write such criticisms as you tell
me of want to correct your faults. I don't mean to say that you can
learn nothing from them, because they are not all fools by any means, and
they will often pick out your weak points with a malignant sagacity, as a
pettifogging lawyer will frequently find a real flaw in trying to get at
everything he can quibble about. But is there nobody who will praise you
generously when you do well,--nobody that will lend you a hand now while
you want it,--or must they all wait until you have made yourself a name
among strangers, and then all at once find out that you have something in
you? Oh,--said the girl, and the bright film gathered too fast for her
young eyes to hold much longer,--I ought not to be ungrateful! I have
found the kindest friend in the world. Have you ever heard the Lady--the
one that I sit next to at the table--say anything about me?
I have not really made her acquaintance, I said. She seems to me a
little distant in her manners and I have respected her pretty evident
liking for keeping mostly to herself.
--Oh, but when you once do know her! I don't believe I could write
stories all the time as I do, if she didn't ask me up to her chamber, and
let me read them to her. Do you know, I can make her laugh and cry,
reading my poor stories? And sometimes, when I feel as if I had written
out all there is in me, and want to lie down and go to sleep and never
wake up except in a world where there are no weekly papers,--when
everything goes wrong, like a car off the track,--she takes hold and sets
me on the rails again all right.
--How does she go to work to help you?
--Why, she listens to my stories, to begin with, as if she really liked
to hear them. And then you know I am dreadfully troubled now and then
with some of my characters, and can't think how to get rid of them. And
she'll say, perhaps, Don't shoot your villain this time, you've shot
three or four already in the last six weeks; let his mare stumble and
throw him and break his neck. Or she'll give me a hint about some new
way for my lover to make a declaration. She must have had a good many
offers, it's my belief, for she has told me a dozen different ways for me
to use in my stories. And whenever I read a story to her, she always
laughs and cries in the right places; and that's such a comfort, for
there are some people that think everything pitiable is so funny, and
will burst out laughing when poor Rip Van Winkle--you've seen Mr.
Jefferson, haven't you?--is breaking your heart for you if you have one.
Sometimes she takes a poem I have written and reads it to me so
beautifully, that I fall in love with it, and sometimes she sets my
verses to music and sings them to me.
--You have a laugh together sometimes, do you?
--Indeed we do. I write for what they call the "Comic Department" of the
paper now and then. If I did not get so tired of story-telling, I
suppose I should be gayer than I am; but as it is, we two get a little
fun out of my comic pieces. I begin them half-crying sometimes, but
after they are done they amuse me. I don't suppose my comic pieces are
very laughable; at any rate the man who makes a business of writing me
down says the last one I wrote is very melancholy reading, and that if it
was only a little better perhaps some bereaved person might pick out a
line or two that would do to put on a gravestone.
--Well, that is hard, I must confess. Do let me see those lines which
excite such sad emotions.
--Will you read them very good-naturedly? If you will, I will get the
paper that has "Aunt Tabitha." That is the one the fault-finder said
produced such deep depression of feeling. It was written for the "Comic
Department." Perhaps it will make you cry, but it was n't meant to.
--I will finish my report this time with our Scheherezade's poem, hoping
that--any critic who deals with it will treat it with the courtesy due to
all a young lady's literary efforts.
AUNT TABITHA.
Whatever I do, and whatever I say,
Aunt Tabitha tells me that isn't the way;
When she was a girl (forty summers ago)
Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so.
Dear aunt! If I only would take her advice!
But I like my own way, and I find it so nice!
And besides, I forget half the things I am told;
But they all will come back to me--when I am old.
If a youth passes by, it may happen, no doubt,
He may chance to look in as I chance to look out;
She would never endure an impertinent stare,
It is horrid, she says, and I mustn't sit there.
A walk in the moonlight has pleasures, I own,
But it is n't quite safe to be walking alone;
So I take a lad's arm,--just for safety, you know,
But Aunt Tabitha tells me they didn't do so.
How wicked we are, and how good they were then!
They kept at arm's length those detestable men;
What an era of virtue she lived in!--But stay
Were the men all such rogues in Aunt Tabitha's day?
If the men were so wicked, I'll ask my papa
How he dared to propose to my darling mamma;
Was he like the rest of them? Goodness! Who knows
And what shall I say if a wretch should propose?
I am thinking if aunt knew so little of sin,
What a wonder Aunt Tabitha's aunt must have been!
And her grand-aunt--it scares me--how shockingly sad.
That we girls of to-day are so frightfully bad!
A martyr will save us, and nothing else can;
Let me perish--to rescue some wretched young man!
Though when to the altar a victim I go,
Aunt Tabitha'll tell me she never did so!
IV
The old Master has developed one quality of late for which I am afraid I
hardly gave him credit. He has turned out to be an excellent listener.
--I love to talk,--he said,--as a goose loves to swim. Sometimes I think
it is because I am a goose. For I never talked much at any one time in
my life without saying something or other I was sorry for.
--You too!--said I--Now that is very odd, for it is an experience I have
habitually. I thought you were rather too much of a philosopher to
trouble yourself about such small matters as to whether you had said just
what you meant to or not; especially as you know that the person you talk
to does not remember a word of what you said the next morning, but is
thinking, it is much more likely, of what she said, or how her new dress
looked, or some other body's new dress which made--hers look as if it had
been patched together from the leaves of last November. That's what
she's probably thinking about.
--She!--said the Master, with a look which it would take at least half a
page to explain to the entire satisfaction of thoughtful readers of both
sexes.
--I paid the respect due to that most significant monosyllable, which, as
the old Rabbi spoke it, with its targum of tone and expression, was not
to be answered flippantly, but soberly, advisedly, and after a pause long
enough for it to unfold its meaning in the listener's mind. For there
are short single words (all the world remembers Rachel's Helas!) which
are like those Japanese toys that look like nothing of any significance
as you throw them on the water, but which after a little time open out
into various strange and unexpected figures, and then you find that each
little shred had a complicated story to tell of itself.
-Yes,--said I, at the close of this silent interval, during which the
monosyllable had been opening out its meanings,--She. When I think of
talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an
inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness;
and where will you find this but in woman?
The Master laughed a pleasant little laugh,--not a harsh, sarcastic one,
but playful, and tempered by so kind a look that it seemed as if every
wrinkled line about his old eyes repeated, "God bless you," as the
tracings on the walls of the Alhambra repeat a sentence of the Koran.
I said nothing, but looked the question, What are you laughing at?
--Why, I laughed because I couldn't help saying to myself that a woman
whose mind was taken up with thinking how she looked, and how her pretty
neighbor looked, wouldn't have a great deal of thought to spare for all
your fine discourse.
--Come, now,--said I,--a man who contradicts himself in the course of two
minutes must have a screw loose in his mental machinery. I never feel
afraid that such a thing can happen to me, though it happens often enough
when I turn a thought over suddenly, as you did that five-cent piece the
other day, that it reads differently on its two sides. What I meant to
say is something like this. A woman, notwithstanding she is the best of
listeners, knows her business, and it is a woman's business to please. I
don't say that it is not her business to vote, but I do say that a woman
who does not please is a false note in the harmonies of nature. She may
not have youth, or beauty, or even manner; but she must have something in
her voice or expression, or both, which it makes you feel better disposed
towards your race to look at or listen to. She knows that as well as we
do; and her first question after you have been talking your soul into her
consciousness is, Did I please? A woman never forgets her sex. She
would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.
--This frightful speech of mine reached the ear of our Scheherezade, who
said that it was perfectly shocking and that I deserved to be shown up as
the outlaw in one of her bandit stories.
Hush, my dear,--said the Lady,--you will have to bring John Milton into
your story with our friend there, if you punish everybody who says
naughty things like that. Send the little boy up to my chamber for
Paradise Lost, if you please. He will find it lying on my table. The
little old volume,--he can't mistake it.
So the girl called That Boy round and gave him the message; I don't know
why she should give it, but she did, and the Lady helped her out with a
word or two.
The little volume--its cover protected with soft white leather from a
long kid glove, evidently suggesting the brilliant assemblies of the days
when friends and fortune smiled-came presently and the Lady opened
it.---You may read that, if you like, she said,--it may show you that our
friend is to be pilloried in good company.
The Young Girl ran her eye along the passage the Lady pointed out,
blushed, laughed, and slapped the book down as though she would have
liked to box the ears of Mr. John Milton, if he had been a contemporary
and fellow-contributor to the "Weekly Bucket."--I won't touch the
thing,--she said.---He was a horrid man to talk so: and he had as many
wives as Blue-Beard.
--Fair play,--said the Master.---Bring me the book, my little fractional
superfluity,--I mean you, my nursling,--my boy, if that suits your small
Highness better.
The Boy brought the book.
The old Master, not unfamiliar with the great epic opened pretty nearly
to the place, and very soon found the passage: He read, aloud with grand
scholastic intonation and in a deep voice that silenced the table as if a
prophet had just uttered Thus saith the Lord:--
"So spake our sire, and by his countenance seemed
Entering on studious thoughts abstruse; which Eve
Perceiving--"
went to water her geraniums, to make a short story of it, and left the
two "conversationists," to wit, the angel Raphael and the
gentleman,--there was but one gentleman in society then, you know,--to
talk it out.
"Yet went she not, as not with such discourse
Delighted, or not capable her ear
Of what was high; such pleasure she reserved,
Adam relating, she sole auditress;
Her husband the relater she preferred
Before the angel, and of him to ask
Chose rather; he she knew would intermix
Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute
With conjugal caresses: from his lips
Not words alone pleased her."
Everybody laughed, except the Capitalist, who was a little hard of
hearing, and the Scarabee, whose life was too earnest for demonstrations
of that kind. He had his eyes fixed on the volume, however, with eager
interest.
--The p'int 's carried,--said the Member of the Haouse.
Will you let me look at that book a single minute?--said the Scarabee. I
passed it to him, wondering what in the world he wanted of Paradise Lost.
Dermestes lardarius,--he said, pointing to a place where the edge of one
side of the outer cover had been slightly tasted by some insect.--Very
fond of leather while they 're in the larva state.
--Damage the goods as bad as mice,--said the Salesman.
--Eat half the binding off Folio 67,--said the Register of Deeds.
Something did, anyhow, and it was n't mice. Found the shelf covered with
little hairy cases belonging to something or other that had no business
there.
Skins of the Dermestes lardaraus,--said the Scarabee,--you can always
tell them by those brown hairy coats. That 's the name to give them.
--What good does it do to give 'em a name after they 've eat the binding
off my folios?--asked the Register of Deeds.
The Scarabee had too much respect for science to answer such a question
as that; and the book, having served its purposes, was passed back to the
Lady.
I return to the previous question,--said I,--if our friend the Member of
the House of Representatives will allow me to borrow the phrase. Womanly
women are very kindly critics, except to themselves and now and then to
their own sex. The less there is of sex about a woman, the more she is
to be dreaded. But take a real woman at her best moment,--well dressed
enough to be pleased with herself, not so resplendent as to be a show and
a sensation, with those varied outside influences which set vibrating the
harmonic notes of her nature stirring in the air about her, and what has
social life to compare with one of those vital interchanges of thought
and feeling with her that make an hour memorable? What can equal her
tact, her delicacy, her subtlety of apprehension, her quickness to feel
the changes of temperature as the warm and cool currents of talk blow by
turns? At one moment she is microscopically intellectual, critical,
scrupulous in judgment as an analyst's balance, and the next as
sympathetic as the open rose that sweetens the wind from whatever quarter
it finds its way to her bosom. It is in the hospitable soul of a woman
that a man forgets he is a stranger, and so becomes natural and truthful,
at the same time that he is mesmerized by all those divine differences
which make her a mystery and a bewilderment to--
If you fire your popgun at me, you little chimpanzee, I will stick a pin
right through the middle of you and put you into one of this gentleman's
beetle-cases!
I caught the imp that time, but what started him was more than I could
guess. It is rather hard that this spoiled child should spoil such a
sentence as that was going to be; but the wind shifted all at once, and
the talk had to come round on another tack, or at least fall off a point
or two from its course.
--I'll tell you who I think are the best talkers in all probability,
--said I to the Master, who, as I mentioned, was developing interesting
talent as a listener,--poets who never write verses. And there are a
good many more of these than it would seem at first sight. I think you
may say every young lover is a poet, to begin with. I don't mean either
that all young lovers are good talkers,--they have an eloquence all
their own when they are with the beloved object, no doubt, emphasized
after the fashion the solemn bard of Paradise refers to with such
delicious humor in the passage we just heard,--but a little talk goes a
good way in most of these cooing matches, and it wouldn't do to report
them too literally. What I mean is, that a man with the gift of musical
and impassioned phrase (and love often deeds that to a young person for a
while), who "wreaks" it, to borrow Byron's word, on conversation as the
natural outlet of his sensibilities and spiritual activities, is likely
to talk better than the poet, who plays on the instrument of verse. A
great pianist or violinist is rarely a great singer. To write a poem is
to expend the vital force which would have made one brilliant for an hour
or two, and to expend it on an instrument with more pipes, reeds, keys,
stops, and pedals than the Great Organ that shakes New England every time
it is played in full blast.
Do you mean that it is hard work to write a poem?--said the old
Master.---I had an idea that a poem wrote itself, as it were, very often;
that it came by influx, without voluntary effort; indeed, you have spoken
of it as an inspiration rather than a result of volition.
--Did you ever see a great ballet-dancer?--I asked him.
--I have seen Taglioni,--he answered.---She used to take her steps rather
prettily. I have seen the woman that danced the capstone on to Bunker
Hill Monument, as Orpheus moved the rocks by music, the Elssler
woman,--Fanny Elssler. She would dance you a rigadoon or cut a pigeon's
wing for you very respectably.
(Confound this old college book-worm,----he has seen everything!)
Well, did these two ladies dance as if it was hard work to them?
--Why no, I should say they danced as if they liked it and couldn't help
dancing; they looked as if they felt so "corky" it was hard to keep them
down.
--And yet they had been through such work to get their limbs strong and
flexible and obedient, that a cart-horse lives an easy life compared to
theirs while they were in training.
--The Master cut in just here--I had sprung the trap of a reminiscence.
--When I was a boy,--he said,--some of the mothers in our small town, who
meant that their children should know what was what as well as other
people's children, laid their heads together and got a dancing-master to
come out from the city and give instruction at a few dollars a quarter to
the young folks of condition in the village. Some of their husbands were
ministers and some were deacons, but the mothers knew what they were
about, and they did n't see any reason why ministers' and deacons' wives'
children shouldn't have as easy manners as the sons and daughters of
Belial. So, as I tell you, they got a dancing-master to come out to our
place,--a man of good repute, a most respectable man,--madam (to the
Landlady), you must remember the worthy old citizen, in his advanced age,
going about the streets, a most gentlemanly bundle of infirmities,--only
he always cocked his hat a little too much on one side, as they do here
and there along the Connecticut River, and sometimes on our city
sidewalks, when they've got a new beaver; they got him, I say, to give us
boys and girls lessons in dancing and deportment. He was as gray and as
lively as a squirrel, as I remember him, and used to spring up in the air
and "cross his feet," as we called it, three times before he came down.
Well, at the end of each term there was what they called an "exhibition
ball," in which the scholars danced cotillons and country-dances; also
something called a "gavotte," and I think one or more walked a minuet.
But all this is not what--I wanted to say. At this exhibition ball he
used to bring out a number of hoops wreathed with roses, of the perennial
kind, by the aid of which a number of amazingly complicated and startling
evolutions were exhibited; and also his two daughters, who figured
largely in these evolutions, and whose wonderful performances to us, who
had not seen Miss Taglioni or Miss Elssler, were something quite
bewildering, in fact, surpassing the natural possibilities of human
beings. Their extraordinary powers were, however, accounted for by the
following explanation, which was accepted in the school as entirely
satisfactory. A certain little bone in the ankles of each of these young
girls had been broken intentionally, secundum artem, at a very early age,
and thus they had been fitted to accomplish these surprising feats which
threw the achievements of the children who were left in the condition of
the natural man into ignominious shadow.
--Thank you,--said I,--you have helped out my illustration so as to make
it better than I expected. Let me begin again. Every poem that is
worthy of the name, no matter how easily it seems to be written,
represents a great amount of vital force expended at some time or other.
When you find a beach strewed with the shells and other spoils that
belonged once to the deep sea, you know the tide has been there, and that
the winds and waves have wrestled over its naked sands. And so, if I
find a poem stranded in my soul and have nothing to do but seize it as a
wrecker carries off the treasure he finds cast ashore, I know I have paid
at some time for that poem with some inward commotion, were it only an
excess of enjoyment, which has used up just so much of my vital capital.
But besides all the impressions that furnished the stuff of the poem,
there has been hard work to get the management of that wonderful
instrument I spoke of,---the great organ, language. An artist who works
in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe, but the man
who moulds his thought in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by
everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling. I don't know that you
must break any bones in a poet's mechanism before his thought can dance
in rhythm, but read your Milton and see what training, what patient
labor, it took before he could shape our common speech into his majestic
harmonies.
It is rather singular, but the same kind of thing has happened to me not
very rarely before, as I suppose it has to most persons, that just when I
happened to be thinking about poets and their conditions, this very
morning, I saw a paragraph or two from a foreign paper which is apt to be
sharp, if not cynical, relating to the same matter. I can't help it; I
want to have my talk about it, and if I say the same things that writer
did, somebody else can have the satisfaction of saying I stole them all.
[I thought the person whom I have called hypothetically the Man of
Letters changed color a little and betrayed a certain awkward
consciousness that some of us were looking at him or thinking of him; but
I am a little suspicious about him and may do him wrong.]
That poets are treated as privileged persons by their admirers and the
educated public can hardly be disputed. That they consider themselves so
there is no doubt whatever. On the whole, I do not know so easy a way of
shirking all the civic and social and domestic duties, as to settle it in
one's mind that one is a poet. I have, therefore, taken great pains to
advise other persons laboring under the impression that they were gifted
beings, destined to soar in the atmosphere of song above the vulgar
realities of earth, not to neglect any homely duty under the influence of
that impression. The number of these persons is so great that if they
were suffered to indulge their prejudice against every-day duties and
labors, it would be a serious loss to the productive industry of the
country. My skirts are clear (so far as other people are concerned) of
countenancing that form of intellectual opium-eating in which rhyme takes
the place of the narcotic. But what are you going to do when you find
John Keats an apprentice to a surgeon or apothecary? Is n't it rather
better to get another boy to sweep out the shop and shake out the powders
and stir up the mixtures, and leave him undisturbed to write his Ode on a
Grecian Urn or to a Nightingale? Oh yes, the critic I have referred to
would say, if he is John Keats; but not if he is of a much lower grade,
even though he be genuine, what there is of him. But the trouble is, the
sensitive persons who belong to the lower grades of the poetical
hierarchy do not--know their own poetical limitations, while they do feel
a natural unfitness and disinclination for many pursuits which young
persons of the average balance of faculties take to pleasantly enough.
What is forgotten is this, that every real poet, even of the humblest
grade, is an artist. Now I venture to say that any painter or sculptor of
real genius, though he may do nothing more than paint flowers and fruit,
or carve cameos, is considered a privileged person. It is recognized
perfectly that to get his best work he must be insured the freedom from
disturbances which the creative power absolutely demands, more absolutely
perhaps in these slighter artists than in the great masters. His nerves
must be steady for him to finish a rose-leaf or the fold of a nymph's
drapery in his best manner; and they will be unsteadied if he has to
perform the honest drudgery which another can do for him quite as well.
And it is just so with the poet, though he were only finishing an
epigram; you must no more meddle roughly with him than you would shake a
bottle of Chambertin and expect the "sunset glow" to redden your glass
unclouded. On the other hand, it may be said that poetry is not an
article of prime necessity, and potatoes are. There is a disposition in
many persons just now to deny the poet his benefit of clergy, and to hold
him no better than other people. Perhaps he is not, perhaps he is not so
good, half the time; but he is a luxury, and if you want him you must pay
for him, by not trying to make a drudge of him while he is all his
lifetime struggling with the chills and heats of his artistic
intermittent fever.
There may have been some lesser interruptions during the talk I have
reported as if it was a set speech, but this was the drift of what I said
and should have said if the other man, in the Review I referred to, had
not seen fit to meddle with the subject, as some fellow always does, just
about the time when I am going to say something about it. The old Master
listened beautifully, except for cutting in once, as I told you he did.
But now he had held in as long as it was in his nature to contain
himself, and must have his say or go off in an apoplexy, or explode in
some way.--I think you're right about the poets,--he said.--They are to
common folks what repeaters are to ordinary watches. They carry music in
their inside arrangements, but they want to be handled carefully or you
put them out of order. And perhaps you must n't expect them to be quite
as good timekeepers as the professional chronometer watches that make a
specialty of being exact within a few seconds a month. They think too
much of themselves. So does everybody that considers himself as having a
right to fall back on what he calls his idiosyncrasy. Yet a man has such
a right, and it is no easy thing to adjust the private claim to the fair
public demand on him. Suppose you are subject to tic douloureux, for
instance. Every now and then a tiger that nobody can see catches one
side of your face between his jaws and holds on till he is tired and lets
go. Some concession must be made to you on that score, as everybody can
see. It is fair to give you a seat that is not in the draught, and your
friends ought not to find fault with you if you do not care to join a
party that is going on a sleigh-ride. Now take a poet like Cowper. He
had a mental neuralgia, a great deal worse in many respects than tic
douloureux confined to the face. It was well that he was sheltered and
relieved, by the cares of kind friends, especially those good women, from
as many of the burdens of life as they could lift off from him. I am
fair to the poets,--don't you agree that I am?
Why, yes,--I said,--you have stated the case fairly enough, a good deal
as I should have put it myself.
Now, then,--the Master continued,--I 'll tell you what is necessary to
all these artistic idiosyncrasies to bring them into good square human
relations outside of the special province where their ways differ from
those of other people. I am going to illustrate what I mean by a
comparison. I don't know, by the way, but you would be disposed to think
and perhaps call me a wine-bibber on the strength of the freedom with
which I deal with that fluid for the purposes of illustration. But I
make mighty little use of it, except as it furnishes me an image now and
then, as it did, for that matter, to the Disciples and their Master. In
my younger days they used to bring up the famous old wines, the
White-top, the Juno, the Eclipse, the Essex Junior, and the rest, in
their old cobwebbed, dusty bottles. The resurrection of one of these old
sepulchred dignitaries had something of solemnity about it; it was like
the disinterment of a king; the bringing to light of the Royal Martyr
King Charles I., for instance, that Sir Henry Halford gave such an
interesting account of. And the bottle seemed to inspire a personal
respect; it was wrapped in a napkin and borne tenderly and reverently
round to the guests, and sometimes a dead silence went before the first
gush of its amber flood, and
"The boldest held his breath
For a time."
But nowadays the precious juice of a long-dead vintage is transferred
carefully into a cut-glass decanter, and stands side by side with the
sherry from a corner grocery, which looks just as bright and apparently
thinks just as well of itself. The old historic Madeiras, which have
warmed the periods of our famous rhetoricians of the past and burned in
the impassioned eloquence of our earlier political demigods, have nothing
to mark them externally but a bit of thread, it may be, round the neck of
the decanter, or a slip of ribbon, pink on one of them and blue on
another.
Go to a London club,--perhaps I might find something nearer home that
would serve my turn,--but go to a London club, and there you will see the
celebrities all looking alike modern, all decanted off from their
historic antecedents and their costume of circumstance into the every-day
aspect of the gentleman of common cultivated society. That is Sir Coeur
de Lion Plantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit;
there is the Laureate in a frockcoat like your own, and the leader of the
House of Commons in a necktie you do not envy. That is the kind of thing
you want to take the nonsense out of you. If you are not decanted off
from yourself every few days or weeks, you will think it sacrilege to
brush a cobweb from your cork by and by. O little fool, that has
published a little book full of little poems or other sputtering tokens
of an uneasy condition, how I love you for the one soft nerve of special
sensibility that runs through your exiguous organism, and the one
phosphorescent particle in your unilluminated intelligence! But if you
don't leave your spun-sugar confectionery business once in a while, and
come out among lusty men,--the bristly, pachydermatous fellows that hew
out the highways for the material progress of society, and the
broad-shouldered, out-of-door men that fight for the great prizes of
life,--you will come to think that the spun-sugar business is the chief
end of man, and begin to feel and look as if you believed yourself as
much above common people as that personage of whom Tourgueneff says that
"he had the air of his own statue erected by national subscription."
--The Master paused and fell into a deep thinking fit, as he does
sometimes. He had had his own say, it is true, but he had established
his character as a listener to my own perfect satisfaction, for I, too,
was conscious of having preached with a certain prolixity.
--I am always troubled when I think of my very limited mathematical
capacities. It seems as if every well-organized mind should be able to
handle numbers and quantities through their symbols to an indefinite
extent; and yet, I am puzzled by what seems to a clever boy with a turn
for calculation as plain as counting his fingers. I don't think any man
feels well grounded in knowledge unless he has a good basis of
mathematical certainties, and knows how to deal with them and apply them
to every branch of knowledge where they can come in to advantage.
Our Young Astronomer is known for his mathematical ability, and I asked
him what he thought was the difficulty in the minds that are weak in that
particular direction, while they may be of remarkable force in other
provinces of thought, as is notoriously the case with some men of great
distinction in science.
The young man smiled and wrote a few letters and symbols on a piece of
paper.---Can you see through that at once?--he said.
I puzzled over it for some minutes and gave it up.
--He said, as I returned it to him, You have heard military men say that
such a person had an eye for country, have n't you? One man will note
all the landmarks, keep the points of compass in his head, observe how
the streams run, in short, carry a map in his brain of any region that he
has marched or galloped through. Another man takes no note of any of
these things; always follows somebody else's lead when he can, and gets
lost if he is left to himself; a mere owl in daylight. Just so some men
have an eye for an equation, and would read at sight the one that you
puzzled over. It is told of Sir Isaac Newton that he required no
demonstration of the propositions in Euclid's Geometry, but as soon as he
had read the enunciation the solution or answer was plain at once. The
power may be cultivated, but I think it is to a great degree a natural
gift, as is the eye for color, as is the ear for music.
--I think I could read equations readily enough,--I said,--if I could
only keep my attention fixed on them; and I think I could keep my
attention on them if I were imprisoned in a thinking-cell, such as the
Creative Intelligence shapes for its studio when at its divinest work.
The young man's lustrous eyes opened very widely as he asked me to
explain what I meant.
--What is the Creator's divinest work?--I asked.
--Is there anything more divine than the sun; than a sun with its planets
revolving about it, warming them, lighting them, and giving conscious
life to the beings that move on them?
--You agree, then, that conscious life is the grand aim and end of all
this vast mechanism. Without life that could feel and enjoy, the
splendors and creative energy would all be thrown away. You know
Harvey's saying, omnia animalia ex ovo,--all animals come from an egg.
You ought to know it, for the great controversy going on about
spontaneous generation has brought it into special prominence lately.
Well, then, the ovum, the egg, is, to speak in human phrase, the
Creator's more private and sacred studio, for his magnum opus. Now, look
at a hen's egg, which is a convenient one to study, because it is large
enough and built solidly enough to look at and handle easily. That would
be the form I would choose for my thinking-cell. Build me an oval with
smooth, translucent walls, and put me in the centre of it with Newton's
"Principia" or Kant's "Kritik," and I think I shall develop "an eye for
an equation," as you call it, and a capacity for an abstraction.
But do tell me,--said the Astronomer, a little incredulously,--what there
is in that particular form which is going to help you to be a
mathematician or a metaphysician?
--It is n't help I want, it is removing hindrances. I don't want to see
anything to draw off my attention. I don't want a cornice, or an angle,
or anything but a containing curve. I want diffused light and no single
luminous centre to fix my eye, and so distract my mind from its one
object of contemplation. The metaphysics of attention have hardly been
sounded to their depths. The mere fixing the look on any single object
for a long time may produce very strange effects. Gibbon's well-known
story of the monks of Mount Athos and their contemplative practice is
often laughed over, but it has a meaning. They were to shut the door of
the cell, recline the beard and chin on the breast, and contemplate the
abdominal centre.
"At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and
night, you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul
discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and
ethereal light." And Mr. Braid produces absolute anaesthesia, so that
surgical operations can be performed without suffering to the patient,
only by making him fix his eyes and his mind on a single object; and
Newton is said to have said, as you remember, "I keep the subject
constantly before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly by
little and little into a full and clear light." These are different, but
certainly very wonderful, instances of what can be done by attention.
But now suppose that your mind is in its nature discursive, erratic,
subject to electric attractions and repulsions, volage; it may be
impossible for you to compel your attention except by taking away all
external disturbances. I think the poets have an advantage and a
disadvantage as compared with the steadier-going people. Life is so
vivid to the poet, that he is too eager to seize and exhaust its
multitudinous impressions. Like Sindbad in the valley of precious
stones, he wants to fill his pockets with diamonds, but, lo! there is a
great ruby like a setting sun in its glory, and a sapphire that, like
Bryant's blue gentian, seems to have dropped from the cerulean walls of
heaven, and a nest of pearls that look as if they might be unhatched
angel's eggs, and so he hardly knows what to seize, and tries for too
many, and comes out of the enchanted valley with more gems than he can
carry, and those that he lets fall by the wayside we call his poems. You
may change the image a thousand ways to show you how hard it is to make a
mathematician or a logician out of a poet. He carries the tropics with
him wherever he goes; he is in the true sense felius naturae, and Nature
tempts him, as she tempts a child walking through a garden where all the
finest fruits are hanging over him and dropping round him, where
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon (his) mouth do crush their wine,
The nectarine and curious peach,
Into (his) hands themselves do reach;
and he takes a bite out of the sunny side of this and the other, and,
ever stimulated and never satisfied, is hurried through the garden, and,
before he knows it, finds himself at an iron gate which opens outward,
and leaves the place he knows and loves--
--For one he will perhaps soon learn to love and know better,--said the
Master.---But I can help you out with another comparison, not quite so
poetical as yours. Why did not you think of a railway-station, where the
cars stop five minutes for refreshments? Is n't that a picture of the
poet's hungry and hurried feast at the banquet of life? The traveller
flings himself on the bewildering miscellany of delicacies spread before
him, the various tempting forms of ambrosia and seducing draughts of
nectar, with the same eager hurry and restless ardor that you describe in
the poet. Dear me! If it wasn't for All aboard! that summons of the
deaf conductor which tears one away from his half-finished sponge-cake
and coffee, how I, who do not call myself a poet, but only a questioner,
should have enjoyed a good long stop--say a couple of thousand years--at
this way-station on the great railroad leading to the unknown terminus!
--You say you are not a poet,--I said, after a little pause, in which I
suppose both of us were thinking where the great railroad would land us
after carrying us into the dark tunnel, the farther end of which no man
has seen and taken a return train to bring us news about it,--you say you
are not a poet, and yet it seems to me you have some of the elements
which go to make one.
--I don't think you mean to flatter me,--the Master answered,--and, what
is more, for I am not afraid to be honest with you, I don't think you do
flatter me. I have taken the inventory of my faculties as calmly as if I
were an appraiser. I have some of the qualities, perhaps I may say many
of the qualities, that make a man a poet, and yet I am not one. And in
the course of a pretty wide experience of men--and women--(the Master
sighed, I thought, but perhaps I was mistaken)--I have met a good many
poets who were not rhymesters and a good many rhymesters who were not
poets. So I am only one of the Voiceless, that I remember one of you
singers had some verses about. I think there is a little music in me, but
it has not found a voice, and it never will. If I should confess the
truth, there is no mere earthly immortality that I envy so much as the
poet's. If your name is to live at all, it is so much more to have it
live in people's hearts than only in their brains! I don't know that
one's eyes fill with tears when he thinks of the famous inventor of
logarithms, but song of Burns's or a hymn of Charles Wesley's goes
straight to your heart, and you can't help loving both of them, the
sinner as well as the saint. The works of other men live, but their
personality dies out of their labors; the poet, who reproduces himself in
his creation, as no other artist does or can, goes down to posterity with
all his personality blended with whatever is imperishable in his song.
We see nothing of the bees that built the honeycomb and stored it with
its sweets, but we can trace the veining in the wings of insects that
flitted through the forests which are now coal-beds, kept unchanging in
the amber that holds them; and so the passion of Sappho, the tenderness
of Simonides, the purity of holy George Herbert, the lofty
contemplativeness of James Shirley, are before us to-day as if they were
living, in a few tears of amber verse. It seems, when one reads,
"Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright,"
or,
"The glories of our birth and state,"
as if it were not a very difficult matter to gain immortality,--such an
immortality at least as a perishable language can give. A single lyric
is enough, if one can only find in his soul and finish in his intellect
one of those jewels fit to sparkle "on the stretched forefinger of all
time." A coin, a ring, a string of verses. These last, and hardly
anything else does. Every century is an overloaded ship that must sink
at last with most of its cargo. The small portion of its crew that get
on board the new vessel which takes them off don't pretend to save a
great many of the bulky articles. But they must not and will not leave
behind the hereditary jewels of the race; and if you have found and cut a
diamond, were it only a spark with a single polished facet, it will stand
a better chance of being saved from the wreck than anything, no matter
what, that wants much room for stowage.
The pyramids last, it is true, but most of them have forgotten their
builders' names. But the ring of Thothmes III., who reigned some
fourteen hundred years before our era, before Homer sang, before the
Argonauts sailed, before Troy was built, is in the possession of Lord
Ashburnham, and proclaims the name of the monarch who wore it more than
three thousand years ago. The gold coins with the head of Alexander the
Great are some of them so fresh one might think they were newer than much
of the silver currency we were lately handling. As we have been quoting
from the poets this morning, I will follow the precedent, and give some
lines from an epistle of Pope to Addison after the latter had written,
but not yet published, his Dialogue on Medals. Some of these lines have
been lingering in my memory for a great many years, but I looked at the
original the other day and was so pleased with them that I got them by
heart. I think you will say they are singularly pointed and elegant.
"Ambition sighed; she found it vain to trust
The faithless column and the crumbling bust;
Huge moles, whose shadows stretched from shore to shore,
Their ruins perished, and their place no more!
Convinced, she now contracts her vast design,
And all her triumphs shrink into a coin.
A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps,
Beneath her palm here sad Judaea weeps;
Now scantier limits the proud arch confine,
And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine;
A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled,
And little eagles wave their wings in gold."
It is the same thing in literature. Write half a dozen folios full of
other people's ideas (as all folios are pretty sure to be), and you serve
as ballast to the lower shelves of a library, about as like to be
disturbed as the kentledge in the hold of a ship. Write a story, or a
dozen stories, and your book will be in demand like an oyster while it is
freshly opened, and after tha--. The highways of literature are spread
over with the shells of dead novels, each of which has been swallowed at
a mouthful by the public, and is done with. But write a volume of poems.
No matter if they are all bad but one, if that one is very good. It will
carry your name down to posterity like the ring of Thothmes, like the
coin of Alexander. I don't suppose one would care a great deal about it
a hundred or a thousand years after he is dead, but I don't feel quite
sure. It seems as if, even in heaven, King David might remember "The
Lord is my Shepherd" with a certain twinge of earthly pleasure. But we
don't know, we don't know.
--What in the world can have become of That Boy and his popgun while all
this somewhat extended sermonizing was going on? I don't wonder you ask,
beloved Reader, and I suppose I must tell you how we got on so long
without interruption. Well, the plain truth is, the youngster was
contemplating his gastric centre, like the monks of Mount Athos, but in a
less happy state of mind than those tranquil recluses, in consequence of
indulgence in the heterogeneous assortment of luxuries procured with the
five-cent piece given him by the kind-hearted old Master. But you need
not think I am going to tell you every time his popgun goes off, making a
Selah of him whenever I want to change the subject. Occasionally he was
ill-timed in his artillery practice and ignominiously rebuked, sometimes
he was harmlessly playful and nobody minded him, but every now and then
he came in so apropos that I am morally certain he gets a hint from
somebody who watches the course of the conversation, and means through
him to have a hand in it and stop any of us when we are getting prosy.
But in consequence of That Boy's indiscretion, we were without a check
upon our expansiveness, and ran on in the way you have observed and may
be disposed to find fault with.
One other thing the Master said before we left the table, after our long
talk of that day.
--I have been tempted sometimes,--said he, to envy the immediate triumphs
of the singer. He enjoys all that praise can do for him and at the very
moment of exerting his talent. And the singing women! Once in a while,
in the course of my life, I have found myself in the midst of a tulip-bed
of full-dressed, handsome women in all their glory, and when some one
among them has shaken her gauzy wings, and sat down before the piano, and
then, only giving the keys a soft touch now and then to support her
voice, has warbled some sweet, sad melody intertwined with the longings
or regrets of some tender-hearted poet, it has seemed to me that so to
hush the rustling of the silks and silence the babble of the buds, as
they call the chicks of a new season, and light up the flame of romance
in cold hearts, in desolate ones, in old burnt-out ones,--like mine, I
was going to say, but I won't, for it isn't so, and you may laugh to hear
me say it isn't so, if you like,--was perhaps better than to be
remembered a few hundred years by a few perfect stanzas, when your
gravestone is standing aslant, and your name is covered over with a
lichen as big as a militia colonel's cockade, and nobody knows or cares
enough about you to scrape it off and set the tipsy old slate-stone
upright again.
--I said nothing in reply to this, for I was thinking of a sweet singer
to whose voice I had listened in its first freshness, and which is now
only an echo in my memory. If any reader of the periodical in which
these conversations are recorded can remember so far back as the first
year of its publication, he will find among the papers contributed by a
friend not yet wholly forgotten a few verses, lively enough in their way,
headed "The Boys." The sweet singer was one of this company of college
classmates, the constancy of whose friendship deserves a better tribute
than the annual offerings, kindly meant, as they are, which for many
years have not been wanting at their social gatherings. The small
company counts many noted personages on its list, as is well known to
those who are interested in such local matters, but it is not known that
every fifth man of the whole number now living is more or less of a
poet,--using that word with a generous breadth of significance. But it
should seem that the divine gift it implies is more freely dispensed than
some others, for while there are (or were, for one has taken his Last
Degree) eight musical quills, there was but one pair of lips which could
claim any special consecration to vocal melody. Not that one that should
undervalue the half-recitative of doubtful barytones, or the brilliant
escapades of slightly unmanageable falsettos, or the concentrated efforts
of the proprietors of two or three effective notes, who may be observed
lying in wait for them, and coming down on them with all their might, and
the look on their countenances of "I too am a singer." But the voice
that led all, and that all loved to listen to, the voice that was at once
full, rich, sweet, penetrating, expressive, whose ample overflow drowned
all the imperfections and made up for all the shortcomings of the others,
is silent henceforth forevermore for all earthly listeners.
And these were the lines that one of "The Boys," as they have always
called themselves for ever so many years, read at the first meeting after
the voice which had never failed them was hushed in the stillness of
death.
J. A.
1871.
One memory trembles on our lips
It throbs in every breast;
In tear-dimmed eyes, in mirth's eclipse,
The shadow stands confessed.
O silent voice, that cheered so long
Our manhood's marching day,
Without thy breath of heavenly song,
How weary seems the way!
Vain every pictured phrase to tell
Our sorrowing hearts' desire;
The shattered harp, the broken shell,
The silent unstrung lyre;
For youth was round us while he sang;
It glowed in every tone;
With bridal chimes the echoes rang,
And made the past our own.
O blissful dream! Our nursery joys
We know must have an end,
But love and friendships broken toys
May God's good angels mend!
The cheering smile, the voice of mirth
And laughter's gay surprise
That please the children born of earth,
Why deem that Heaven denies?
Methinks in that refulgent sphere
That knows not sun or moon,
An earth-born saint might long to hear
One verse of "Bonny Doon";
Or walking through the streets of gold
In Heaven's unclouded light,
His lips recall the song of old
And hum "The sky is bright."
And can we smile when thou art dead?
Ah, brothers, even so!
The rose of summer will be red,
In spite of winter's snow.
Thou wouldst not leave us all in gloom
Because thy song is still,
Nor blight the banquet-garland's bloom
With grief's untimely chill.
The sighing wintry winds complain,
The singing bird has flown,
--Hark! heard I not that ringing strain,
That clear celestial tone?
How poor these pallid phrases seem,
How weak this tinkling line,
As warbles through my waking dream
That angel voice of thine!
Thy requiem asks a sweeter lay;
It falters on my tongue;
For all we vainly strive to say,
Thou shouldst thyself have sung!
V
I fear that I have done injustice in my conversation and my report of it
to a most worthy and promising young man whom I should be very sorry to
injure in any way. Dr. Benjamin Franklin got hold of my account of my
visit to him, and complained that I had made too much of the expression
he used. He did not mean to say that he thought I was suffering from the
rare disease he mentioned, but only that the color reminded him of it.
It was true that he had shown me various instruments, among them one for
exploring the state of a part by means of a puncture, but he did not
propose to make use of it upon my person. In short, I had colored the
story so as to make him look ridiculous.
--I am afraid I did,--I said,--but was n't I colored myself so as to look
ridiculous? I've heard it said that people with the jaundice see
everything yellow; perhaps I saw things looking a little queerly, with
that black and blue spot I could n't account for threatening to make a
colored man and brother of me. But I am sorry if I have done you any
wrong. I hope you won't lose any patients by my making a little fun of
your meters and scopes and contrivances. They seem so odd to us outside
people. Then the idea of being bronzed all over was such an alarming
suggestion. But I did not mean to damage your business, which I trust is
now considerable, and I shall certainly come to you again if I have need
of the services of a physician. Only don't mention the names of any
diseases in English or Latin before me next time. I dreamed about cutis
oenea half the night after I came to see you.
Dr. Benjamin took my apology very pleasantly. He did not want to be
touchy about it, he said, but he had his way to make in the world, and
found it a little hard at first, as most young men did. People were
afraid to trust them, no matter how much they knew. One of the old
doctors asked him to come in and examine a patient's heart for him the
other day. He went with him accordingly, and when they stood by the
bedside, he offered his stethoscope to the old doctor. The old doctor
took it and put the wrong end to his ear and the other to the patient's
chest, and kept it there about two minutes, looking all the time as wise
as an old owl. Then he, Dr. Benjamin, took it and applied it properly,
and made out where the trouble was in no time at all. But what was the
use of a young man's pretending to know anything in the presence of an
old owl? I saw by their looks, he said, that they all thought I used
the, stethoscope wrong end up, and was nothing but a 'prentice hand to
the old doctor.
--I am much pleased to say that since Dr. Benjamin has had charge of a
dispensary district, and been visiting forty or fifty patients a day, I
have reason to think he has grown a great deal more practical than when I
made my visit to his office. I think I was probably one of his first
patients, and that he naturally made the most of me. But my second trial
was much more satisfactory. I got an ugly cut from the carving-knife in
an affair with a goose of iron constitution in which I came off second
best. I at once adjourned with Dr. Benjamin to his small office, and put
myself in his hands. It was astonishing to see what a little experience
of miscellaneous practice had done for him. He did not ask me anymore
questions about my hereditary predispositions on the paternal and
maternal sides. He did not examine me with the stethoscope or the
laryngoscope. He only strapped up my cut, and informed me that it would
speedily get well by the "first intention,"--an odd phrase enough, but
sounding much less formidable than cutis oenea.
I am afraid I have had something of the French prejudice which embodies
itself in the maxim "young surgeon, old physician." But a young
physician who has been taught by great masters of the profession, in
ample hospitals, starts in his profession knowing more than some old
doctors have learned in a lifetime. Give him a little time to get the
use of his wits in emergencies, and to know the little arts that do so
much for a patient's comfort,--just as you give a young sailor time to
get his sea-legs on and teach his stomach to behave itself,--and he will
do well enough.
The old Master knows ten times more about this matter and about all the
professions, as he does about everything else, than I do. My opinion is
that he has studied two, if not three, of these professions in a regular
course. I don't know that he has ever preached, except as Charles Lamb
said Coleridge always did, for when he gets the bit in his teeth he runs
away with the conversation, and if he only took a text his talk would be
a sermon; but if he has not preached, he has made a study of theology, as
many laymen do. I know he has some shelves of medical books in his
library, and has ideas on the subject of the healing art. He confesses
to having attended law lectures and having had much intercourse with
lawyers. So he has something to say on almost any subject that happens
to come up. I told him my story about my visit to the young doctor, and
asked him what he thought of youthful practitioners in general and of Dr.
Benjamin in particular.
I 'll tell you what,--the Master said,--I know something about these
young fellows that come home with their heads full of "science," as they
call it, and stick up their signs to tell people they know how to cure
their headaches and stomach-aches. Science is a first-rate piece of
furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the
ground-floor. But if a man has n't got plenty of good common sense, the
more science he has the worse for his patient.
--I don't know that I see exactly how it is worse for the patient,--I
said.
--Well, I'll tell you, and you'll find it's a mighty simple matter. When
a person is sick, there is always something to be done for him, and done
at once. If it is only to open or shut a window, if it is only to tell
him to keep on doing just what he is doing already, it wants a man to
bring his mind right down to the fact of the present case and its
immediate needs. Now the present case, as the doctor sees it, is just
exactly such a collection of paltry individual facts as never was
before,--a snarl and tangle of special conditions which it is his
business to wind as much thread out of as he can. It is a good deal as
when a painter goes to take the portrait of any sitter who happens to
send for him. He has seen just such noses and just such eyes and just
such mouths, but he never saw exactly such a face before, and his
business is with that and no other person's,--with the features of the
worthy father of a family before him, and not with the portraits he has
seen in galleries or books, or Mr. Copley's grand pictures of the fine
old Tories, or the Apollos and Jupiters of Greek sculpture. It is the
same thing with the patient. His disease has features of its own; there
never was and never will be another case in all respects exactly like it.
If a doctor has science without common sense, he treats a fever, but not
this man's fever. If he has common sense without science, he treats this
man's fever without knowing the general laws that govern all fevers and
all vital movements. I 'll tell you what saves these last fellows. They
go for weakness whenever they see it, with stimulants and strengtheners,
and they go for overaction, heat, and high pulse, and the rest, with
cooling and reducing remedies. That is three quarters of medical
practice. The other quarter wants science and common sense too. But the
men that have science only, begin too far back, and, before they get as
far as the case in hand, the patient has very likely gone to visit his
deceased relatives. You remember Thomas Prince's "Chronological History
of New England," I suppose? He begins, you recollect, with Adam, and has
to work down five thousand six hundred and twenty-four years before he
gets to the Pilgrim fathers and the Mayflower. It was all very well,
only it did n't belong there, but got in the way of something else. So
it is with "science" out of place. By far the larger part of the facts
of structure and function you find in the books of anatomy and physiology
have no immediate application to the daily duties of the practitioner.
You must learn systematically, for all that; it is the easiest way and
the only way that takes hold of the memory, except mere empirical
repetition, like that of the handicraftsman. Did you ever see one of
those Japanese figures with the points for acupuncture marked upon it?
--I had to own that my schooling had left out that piece of information.
Well, I 'll tell you about it. You see they have a way of pushing long,
slender needles into you for the cure of rheumatism and other complaints,
and it seems there is a choice of spots for the operation, though it is
very strange how little mischief it does in a good many places one would
think unsafe to meddle with. So they had a doll made, and marked the
spots where they had put in needles without doing any harm. They must
have had accidents from sticking the needles into the wrong places now
and then, but I suppose they did n't say a great deal about those. After
a time, say a few centuries of experience, they had their doll all
spotted over with safe places for sticking in the needles. That is their
way of registering practical knowledge: We, on the other hand, study the
structure of the body as a whole, systematically, and have no difficulty
at all in remembering the track of the great vessels and nerves, and
knowing just what tracks will be safe and what unsafe. It is just the
same thing with the geologists. Here is a man close by us boring for
water through one of our ledges, because somebody else got water
somewhere else in that way; and a person who knows geology or ought to
know it, because he has given his life to it, tells me he might as well
bore there for lager-beer as for water.
--I thought we had had enough of this particular matter, and that I
should like to hear what the Master had to say about the three
professions he knew something about, each compared with the others.
What is your general estimate of doctors, lawyers, and ministers?--said
I.
--Wait a minute, till I have got through with your first question,--said
the Master.---One thing at a time. You asked me about the young doctors,
and about our young doctor. They come home tres biens chausses, as a
Frenchman would say, mighty well shod with professional knowledge. But
when they begin walking round among their poor patients, they don't
commonly start with millionnaires,--they find that their new shoes of
scientific acquirements have got to be broken in just like a pair of
boots or brogans. I don't know that I have put it quite strong enough.
Let me try again. You've seen those fellows at the circus that get up on
horseback so big that you wonder how they could climb into the saddle.
But pretty soon they throw off their outside coat, and the next minute
another one, and then the one under that, and so they keep peeling off
one garment after another till people begin to look queer and think they
are going too far for strict propriety. Well, that is the way a fellow
with a real practical turn serves a good many of his scientific wrappers,
flings 'em off for other people to pick up, and goes right at the work of
curing stomach-aches and all the other little mean unscientific
complaints that make up the larger part of every doctor's business. I
think our Dr. Benjamin is a worthy young man, and if you are in need of a
doctor at any time I hope you will go to him; and if you come off without
harm, I will recommend some other friend to try him.
--I thought he was going to say he would try him in his own person, but
the Master is not fond of committing himself.
Now, I will answer your other question, he said. The lawyers are the
cleverest men, the ministers are the most learned, and the doctors are
the most sensible.
The lawyers are a picked lot, "first scholars" and the like, but their
business is as unsympathetic as Jack Ketch's. There is nothing
humanizing in their relations with their fellow-creatures. They go for
the side that retains them. They defend the man they know to be a rogue,
and not very rarely throw suspicion on the man they know to be innocent.
Mind you, I am not finding fault with them; every side of a case has a
right to the best statement it admits of; but I say it does not tend to
make them sympathetic. Suppose in a case of Fever vs. Patient, the
doctor should side with either party according to whether the old miser
or his expectant heir was his employer. Suppose the minister should side
with the Lord or the Devil, according to the salary offered and other
incidental advantages, where the soul of a sinner was in question. You
can see what a piece of work it would make of their sympathies. But the
lawyers are quicker witted than either of the other professions, and
abler men generally. They are good-natured, or, if they quarrel, their
quarrels are above-board. I don't think they are as accomplished as the
ministers, but they have a way of cramming with special knowledge for a
case which leaves a certain shallow sediment of intelligence in their
memories about a good many things. They are apt to talk law in mixed
company, and they have a way of looking round when they make a point, as
if they were addressing a jury, that is mighty aggravating, as I once had
occasion to see when one of 'em, and a pretty famous one, put me on the
witness-stand at a dinner-party once.
The ministers come next in point of talent. They are far more curious
and widely interested outside of their own calling than either of the
other professions. I like to talk with 'em. They are interesting men,
full of good feelings, hard workers, always foremost in good deeds, and
on the whole the most efficient civilizing class, working downwards from
knowledge to ignorance, that is,--not so much upwards, perhaps,--that we
have. The trouble is, that so many of 'em work in harness, and it is
pretty sure to chafe somewhere. They feed us on canned meats mostly.
They cripple our instincts and reason, and give us a crutch of doctrine.
I have talked with a great many of 'em of all sorts of belief, and I
don't think they are quite so easy in their minds, the greater number of
them; nor so clear in their convictions, as one would think to hear 'em
lay down the law in the pulpit. They used to lead the intelligence of
their parishes; now they do pretty well if they keep up with it, and they
are very apt to lag behind it. Then they must have a colleague. The old
minister thinks he can hold to his old course, sailing right into the
wind's eye of human nature, as straight as that famous old skipper John
Bunyan; the young minister falls off three or four points and catches the
breeze that left the old man's sails all shivering. By and by the
congregation will get ahead of him, and then it must, have another new
skipper. The priest holds his own pretty well; the minister is coming
down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful
citizen,--no oracle at all, but a man of more than average moral
instincts, who, if he knows anything, knows how little he knows. The
ministers are good talkers, only the struggle between nature and grace
makes some of 'em a little awkward occasionally. The women do their best
to spoil 'em, as they do the poets; you find it very pleasant to be
spoiled, no doubt; so do they. Now and then one of 'em goes over the dam;
no wonder, they're always in the rapids.
By this time our three ladies had their faces all turned toward the
speaker, like the weathercocks in a northeaster, and I thought it best to
switch off the talk on to another rail.
How about the doctors?--I said.
--Theirs is the least learned of the professions, in this country at
least. They have not half the general culture of the lawyers, nor a
quarter of that of the ministers. I rather think, though, they are more
agreeable to the common run of people than the men with black coats or
the men with green bags. People can swear before 'em if they want to,
and they can't very well before ministers. I don't care whether they
want to swear or not, they don't want to be on their good behavior.
Besides, the minister has a little smack of the sexton about him; he
comes when people are in extremis, but they don't send for him every time
they make a slight moral slip, tell a lie for instance, or smuggle a silk
dress through the customhouse; but they call in the doctor when a child
is cutting a tooth or gets a splinter in its finger. So it does n't mean
much to send for him, only a pleasant chat about the news of the day; for
putting the baby to rights does n't take long. Besides, everybody does
n't like to talk about the next world; people are modest in their
desires, and find this world as good as they deserve; but everybody loves
to talk physic. Everybody loves to hear of strange cases; people are
eager to tell the doctor of the wonderful cures they have heard of; they
want to know what is the matter with somebody or other who is said to be
suffering from "a complication of diseases," and above all to get a hard
name, Greek or Latin, for some complaint which sounds altogether too
commonplace in plain English. If you will only call a headache a
Cephalgia, it acquires dignity at once, and a patient becomes rather
proud of it. So I think doctors are generally welcome in most companies.
In old times, when people were more afraid of the Devil and of witches
than they are now, they liked to have a priest or a minister somewhere
near to scare 'em off; but nowadays, if you could find an old woman that
would ride round the room on a broomstick, Barnum would build an
amphitheatre to exhibit her in; and if he could come across a young imp,
with hoofs, tail, and budding horns, a lineal descendant of one of those
"daemons" which the good people of Gloucester fired at, and were fired at
by "for the best part of a month together" in the year 1692, the, great
showman would have him at any cost for his museum or menagerie. Men are
cowards, sir, and are driven by fear as the sovereign motive. Men are
idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw
themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you
don't make it of wood, you must make it of words, which are just as much
used for idols as promissory notes are used for values. The ministers
have a hard time of it without bell and book and holy water; they are
dismounted men in armor since Luther cut their saddle-girths, and you can
see they are quietly taking off one piece of iron after another until
some of the best of 'em are fighting the devil (not the zoological Devil
with the big D) with the sword of the Spirit, and precious little else in
the way of weapons of offence or defence. But we couldn't get on without
the spiritual brotherhood, whatever became of our special creeds. There
is a genius for religion, just as there is for painting or sculpture. It
is half-sister to the genius for music, and has some of the features
which remind us of earthly love. But it lifts us all by its mere
presence. To see a good man and hear his voice once a week would be
reason enough for building churches and pulpits. The Master stopped all
at once, and after about half a minute laughed his pleasant laugh.
What is it?--I asked him.
I was thinking of the great coach and team that is carrying us fast
enough, I don't know but too fast, somewhere or other. The D. D.'s used
to be the leaders, but now they are the wheel-horses. It's pretty hard
to tell how much they pull, but we know they can hold back like the----
--When we're going down hill,--I said, as neatly as if I had been a
High-Church curate trained to snap at the last word of the response, so
that you couldn't wedge in the tail of a comma between the end of the
congregation's closing syllable and the beginning of the next petition.
They do it well, but it always spoils my devotion. To save my life, I
can't help watching them, as I watch to see a duck dive at the flash of a
gun, and that is not what I go to church for. It is a juggler's trick,
and there is no more religion in it than in catching a ball on the fly.
I was looking at our Scheherezade the other day, and thinking what a pity
it was that she had never had fair play in the world. I wish I knew more
of her history. There is one way of learning it,--making love to her. I
wonder whether she would let me and like it. It is an absurd thing, and
I ought not to confess, but I tell you and you only, Beloved, my heart
gave a perceptible jump when it heard the whisper of that possibility
overhead! Every day has its ebb and flow, but such a thought as that is
like one of those tidal waves they talk about, that rolls in like a great
wall and overtops and drowns out all your landmarks, and you, too, if you
don't mind what you are about and stand ready to run or climb or swim.
Not quite so bad as that, though, this time. I take an interest in our
Scheherezade. I am glad she did n't smile on the pipe and the
Bohemian-looking fellow that finds the best part of his life in sucking
at it. A fine thing, isn't it; for a young woman to marry a man who will
hold her
"Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse,"
but not quite so good as his meerschaum? It is n't for me to throw
stones, though, who have been a Nicotian a good deal more than half my
days. Cigar-stump out now, and consequently have become very bitter on
more persevering sinners. I say I take an interest in our Scheherezade,
but I rather think it is more paternal than anything else, though my
heart did give that jump. It has jumped a good many times without
anything very remarkable coming of it.
This visit to the Observatory is going to bring us all, or most of us,
together in a new way, and it wouldn't be very odd if some of us should
become better acquainted than we ever have been. There is a chance for
the elective affinities. What tremendous forces they are, if two
subjects of them come within range! There lies a bit of iron. All the
dynamic agencies of the universe are pledged to hold it just in that
position, and there it will lie until it becomes a heap of red-brown
rust. But see, I hold a magnet to it,--it looks to you like just such a
bit of iron as the other,--and lo! it leaves them all,--the tugging of
the mighty earth; of the ghostly moon that walks in white, trailing the
snaky waves of the ocean after her; of the awful sun, twice as large as a
sphere that the whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle,--it leaves
the wrestling of all their forces, which are at a dead lock with each
other, all fighting for it, and springs straight to the magnet. What a
lucky thing it is for well-conducted persons that the maddening elective
affinities don't come into play in full force very often!
I suppose I am making a good deal more of our prospective visit than it
deserves. It must be because I have got it into my head that we are
bound to have some kind of sentimental outbreak amongst us, and that this
will give a chance for advances on the part of anybody disposed in that
direction. A little change of circumstance often hastens on a movement
that has been long in preparation. A chemist will show you a flask
containing a clear liquid; he will give it a shake or two, and the whole
contents of the flask will become solid in an instant. Or you may lay a
little heap of iron-filings on a sheet of paper with a magnet beneath it,
and they will be quiet enough as they are, but give the paper a slight
jar and the specks of metal will suddenly find their way to the north or
the south pole of the magnet and take a definite shape not unpleasing to
contemplate, and curiously illustrating the laws of attraction,
antagonism, and average, by which the worlds, conscious and unconscious,
are alike governed. So with our little party, with any little party of
persons who have got used to each other; leave them undisturbed and they
might remain in a state of equilibrium forever; but let anything give
them a shake or a jar, and the long-striving but hindered affinities come
all at once into play and finish the work of a year in five minutes.
We were all a good deal excited by the anticipation of this visit. The
Capitalist, who for the most part keeps entirely to himself, seemed to
take an interest in it and joined the group in the parlor who were making
arrangements as to the details of the eventful expedition, which was very
soon to take place. The Young Girl was full of enthusiasm; she is one of
those young persons, I think, who are impressible, and of necessity
depressible when their nervous systems are overtasked, but elastic,
recovering easily from mental worries and fatigues, and only wanting a
little change of their conditions to get back their bloom and
cheerfulness. I could not help being pleased to see how much of the
child was left in her, after all the drudgery she had been through. What
is there that youth will not endure and triumph over? Here she was; her
story for the week was done in good season; she had got rid of her
villain by a new and original catastrophe; she had received a sum of
money for an extra string of verses,--painfully small, it is true, but it
would buy her a certain ribbon she wanted for the great excursion; and
now her eyes sparkled so that I forgot how tired and hollow they
sometimes looked when she had been sitting up half the night over her
endless manuscript.
The morning of the day we had looked forward to--promised as good an
evening as we could wish. The Capitalist, whose courteous and bland
demeanor would never have suggested the thought that he was a robber and
an enemy of his race, who was to be trampled underfoot by the beneficent
regenerators of the social order as preliminary to the universal reign of
peace on earth and good-will to men, astonished us all with a proposal to
escort the three ladies and procure a carriage for their conveyance. The
Lady thanked him in a very cordial way, but said she thought nothing of
the walk. The Landlady looked disappointed at this answer. For her part
she was on her legs all day and should be glad enough to ride, if so be
he was going to have a carriage at any rate. It would be a sight
pleasanter than to trudge afoot, but she would n't have him go to the
expense on her account. Don't mention it, madam,--r--said the
Capitalist, in a generous glow of enthusiasm. As for the Young Girl, she
did not often get a chance for a drive, and liked the idea of it for its
own sake, as children do, and she insisted that the Lady should go in the
carriage with her. So it was settled that the Capitalist should take the
three ladies in a carriage, and the rest of us go on foot.
The evening behaved as it was bound to do on so momentous an occasion.
The Capitalist was dressed with almost suspicious nicety. We pedestrians
could not help waiting to see them off, and I thought he handed the
ladies into the carriage with the air of a French marquis.
I walked with Dr. Benjamin and That Boy, and we had to keep the little
imp on the trot a good deal of the way in order not to be too long behind
the carriage party. The Member of the Haouse walked with our two
dummies,--I beg their pardon, I mean the Register of Deeds and the
Salesman.
The Man of Letters, hypothetically so called, walked by himself, smoking
a short pipe which was very far from suggesting the spicy breezes that
blow soft from Ceylon's isle.
I suppose everybody who reads this paper has visited one or more
observatories, and of course knows all about them. But as it may
hereafter be translated into some foreign tongue and circulated among
barbarous, but rapidly improving people, people who have as yet no
astronomers among them, it may be well to give a little notion of what
kind of place an observatory is.
To begin then: a deep and solid stone foundation is laid in the earth,
and a massive pier of masonry is built up on it. A heavy block of
granite forms the summit of this pier, and on this block rests the
equatorial telescope. Around this structure a circular tower is built,
with two or more floors which come close up to the pier, but do not touch
it at any point. It is crowned with a hemispherical dome, which, I may
remark, half realizes the idea of my egg-shell studio. This dome is
cleft from its base to its summit by a narrow, ribbon-like opening,
through which is seen the naked sky. It revolves on cannon-balls, so
easily that a single hand can move it, and thus the opening may be turned
towards any point of the compass. As the telescope can be raised or
depressed so as to be directed to any elevation from the horizon to the
zenith, and turned around the entire circle with the dome, it can be
pointed to any part of the heavens. But as the star or other celestial
object is always apparently moving, in consequence of the real rotatory
movement of the earth, the telescope is made to follow it automatically
by an ingenious clock-work arrangement. No place, short of the temple of
the living God, can be more solemn. The jars of the restless life around
it do not disturb the serene intelligence of the half-reasoning
apparatus. Nothing can stir the massive pier but the shocks that shake
the solid earth itself. When an earthquake thrills the planet, the
massive turret shudders with the shuddering rocks on which it rests, but
it pays no heed to the wildest tempest, and while the heavens are
convulsed and shut from the eye of the far-seeing instrument it waits
without a tremor for the blue sky to come back. It is the type of the
true and steadfast man of the Roman poet, whose soul remains unmoved
while the firmament cracks and tumbles about him. It is the material
image of the Christian; his heart resting on the Rock of Ages, his eye
fixed on the brighter world above.
I did not say all this while we were looking round among these wonders,
quite new to many of us. People don't talk in straight-off sentences
like that. They stumble and stop, or get interrupted, change a word,
begin again, miss connections of verbs and nouns, and so on, till they
blunder out their meaning. But I did let fall a word or two, showing the
impression the celestial laboratory produced upon me. I rather think I
must own to the "Rock of Ages" comparison. Thereupon the "Man of
Letters," so called, took his pipe from his mouth, and said that he did
n't go in "for sentiment and that sort of thing. Gush was played out."
The Member of the Haouse, who, as I think, is not wanting in that homely
good sense which one often finds in plain people from the huckleberry
districts, but who evidently supposes the last speaker to be what he
calls "a tahlented mahn," looked a little puzzled. My remark seemed
natural and harmless enough to him, I suppose, but I had been distinctly
snubbed, and the Member of the Haouse thought I must defend myself, as is
customary in the deliberative body to which he belongs, when one
gentleman accuses another gentleman of mental weakness or obliquity. I
could not make up my mind to oblige him at that moment by showing fight.
I suppose that would have pleased my assailant, as I don't think he has a
great deal to lose, and might have made a little capital out of me if he
could have got a laugh out of the Member or either of the dummies,--I beg
their pardon again, I mean the two undemonstrative boarders. But I will
tell you, Beloved, just what I think about this matter.
We poets, you know, are much given to indulging in sentiment, which is a
mode of consciousness at a discount just now with the new generation of
analysts who are throwing everything into their crucibles. Now we must
not claim too much for sentiment. It does not go a great way in deciding
questions of arithmetic, or algebra, or geometry. Two and two will
undoubtedly make four, irrespective of the emotions or other
idiosyncrasies of the calculator; and the three angles of a triangle
insist on being equal to two right angles, in the face of the most
impassioned rhetoric or the most inspired verse. But inasmuch as religion
and law and the whole social order of civilized society, to say nothing
of literature and art, are so founded on and pervaded by sentiment that
they would all go to pieces without it, it is a word not to be used too
lightly in passing judgment, as if it were an element to be thrown out or
treated with small consideration. Reason may be the lever, but sentiment
gives you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if you want to move the
world. Even "sentimentality," which is sentiment overdone, is better
than that affectation of superiority to human weakness which is only
tolerable as one of the stage properties of full-blown dandyism, and is,
at best, but half-blown cynicism; which participle and noun you can
translate, if you happen to remember the derivation of the last of them,
by a single familiar word. There is a great deal of false sentiment in
the world, as there is of bad logic and erroneous doctrine; but--it is
very much less disagreeable to hear a young poet overdo his emotions, or
even deceive himself about them, than to hear a caustic-epithet flinger
repeating such words as "sentimentality" and "entusymusy,"--one of the
least admirable of Lord Byron's bequests to our language,--for the
purpose of ridiculing him into silence. An overdressed woman is not so
pleasing as she might be, but at any rate she is better than the oil of
vitriol squirter, whose profession it is to teach young ladies to avoid
vanity by spoiling their showy silks and satins.
The Lady was the first of our party who was invited to look through the
equatorial. Perhaps this world had proved so hard to her that she was
pained to think that other worlds existed, to be homes of suffering and
sorrow. Perhaps she was thinking it would be a happy change when she
should leave this dark planet for one of those brighter spheres. She
sighed, at any rate, but thanked the Young Astronomer for the beautiful
sights he had shown her, and gave way to the next comer, who was That
Boy, now in a state of irrepressible enthusiasm to see the Man in the
Moon. He was greatly disappointed at not making out a colossal human
figure moving round among the shining summits and shadowy ravines of the
"spotty globe."
The Landlady came next and wished to see the moon also, in preference to
any other object. She was astonished at the revelations of the powerful
telescope. Was there any live creatures to be seen on the moon? she
asked. The Young Astronomer shook his head, smiling a little at the
question.--Was there any meet'n'-houses? There was no evidence, he said,
that the moon was inhabited. As there did not seem to be either air or
water on its surface, the inhabitants would have a rather hard time of
it, and if they went to meeting the sermons would be apt to be rather
dry. If there were a building on it as big as York minster, as big as
the Boston Coliseum, the great telescopes like Lord Rosse's would make it
out. But it seemed to be a forlorn place; those who had studied it most
agreed in considering it a "cold, crude, silent, and desolate" ruin of
nature, without the possibility, if life were on it, of articulate
speech, of music, even of sound. Sometimes a greenish tint was seen upon
its surface, which might have been taken for vegetation, but it was
thought not improbably to be a reflection from the vast forests of South
America. The ancients had a fancy, some of them, that the face of the
moon was a mirror in which the seas and shores of the earth were imaged.
Now we know the geography of the side toward us about as well as that of
Asia, better than that of Africa. The Astronomer showed them one of the
common small photographs of the moon. He assured them that he had
received letters inquiring in all seriousness if these alleged lunar
photographs were not really taken from a peeled orange. People had got
angry with him for laughing at them for asking such a question. Then he
gave them an account of the famous moon-hoax which came out, he believed,
in 1835. It was full of the most bare-faced absurdities, yet people
swallowed it all, and even Arago is said to have treated it seriously as
a thing that could not well be true, for Mr. Herschel would have
certainly notified him of these marvellous discoveries. The writer of it
had not troubled himself to invent probabilities, but had borrowed his
scenery from the Arabian Nights and his lunar inhabitants from Peter
Wilkins.
After this lecture the Capitalist stepped forward and applied his eye to
the lens. I suspect it to have been shut most of the time, for I observe
a good many elderly people adjust the organ of vision to any optical
instrument in that way. I suppose it is from the instinct of protection
to the eye, the same instinct as that which makes the raw militia-man
close it when he pulls the, trigger of his musket the first time. He
expressed himself highly gratified, however, with what he saw, and
retired from the instrument to make room for the Young Girl.
She threw her hair back and took her position at the instrument. Saint
Simeon Stylites the Younger explained the wonders of the moon to
her,--Tycho and the grooves radiating from it, Kepler and Copernicus with
their craters and ridges, and all the most brilliant shows of this
wonderful little world. I thought he was more diffuse and more
enthusiastic in his descriptions than he had been with the older members
of the party. I don't doubt the old gentleman who lived so long on the
top of his pillar would have kept a pretty sinner (if he could have had
an elevator to hoist her up to him) longer than he would have kept her
grandmother. These young people are so ignorant, you know. As for our
Scheherezade, her delight was unbounded, and her curiosity insatiable.
If there were any living creatures there, what odd things they must be.
They could n't have any lungs, nor any hearts. What a pity! Did they
ever die? How could they expire if they didn't breathe? Burn up? No
air to burn in. Tumble into some of those horrid pits, perhaps, and
break all to bits. She wondered how the young people there liked it, or
whether there were any young people there; perhaps nobody was young and
nobody was old, but they were like mummies all of them--what an idea
--two mummies making love to each other! So she went on in a rattling,
giddy kind of way, for she was excited by the strange scene in which she
found herself, and quite astonished the Young Astronomer with her
vivacity. All at once she turned to him.
Will you show me the double star you said I should see?
With the greatest pleasure,--he said, and proceeded to wheel the
ponderous dome, and then to adjust the instrument, I think to the one in
Andromeda, or that in Cygnus, but I should not know one of them from the
other.
How beautiful!--she said as she looked at the wonderful object.---One is
orange red and one is emerald green.
The young man made an explanation in which he said something about
complementary colors.
Goodness!--exclaimed the Landlady.---What! complimentary to our party?
Her wits must have been a good deal confused by the strange sights of the
evening. She had seen tickets marked complimentary, she remembered, but
she could not for the life of her understand why our party should be
particularly favored at a celestial exhibition like this. On the whole,
she questioned inwardly whether it might not be some subtle pleasantry,
and smiled, experimentally, with a note of interrogation in the smile,
but, finding no encouragement, allowed her features to subside gradually
as if nothing had happened. I saw all this as plainly as if it had all
been printed in great-primer type, instead of working itself out in her
features. I like to see other people muddled now and then, because my
own occasional dulness is relieved by a good solid background of
stupidity in my neighbors.
--And the two revolve round each other?--said the Young Girl.
--Yes,--he answered,--two suns, a greater and a less, each shining, but
with a different light, for the other.
--How charming! It must be so much pleasanter than to be alone in such a
great empty space! I should think one would hardly care to shine if its
light wasted itself in the monstrous solitude of the sky. Does not a
single star seem very lonely to you up there?
--Not more lonely than I am myself,--answered the Young Astronomer.
--I don't know what there was in those few words, but I noticed that for
a minute or two after they, were uttered I heard the ticking of the
clock-work that moved the telescope as clearly as if we had all been
holding our breath, and listening for the music of the spheres.
The Young Girl kept her eye closely applied to the eye-piece of the
telescope a very long time, it seemed to me. Those double stars
interested her a good deal, no doubt. When she looked off from the glass
I thought both her eyes appeared very much as if they had been a little
strained, for they were suffused and glistening. It may be that she
pitied the lonely young man.
I know nothing in the world tenderer than the pity that a kind-hearted
young girl has for a young man who feels lonely. It is true that these
dear creatures are all compassion for every form of human woe, and
anxious to alleviate all human misfortunes. They will go to
Sunday-schools through storms their brothers are afraid of, to teach the
most unpleasant and intractable classes of little children the age of
Methuselah and the dimensions of Og the King of Bashan's bedstead. They
will stand behind a table at a fair all day until they are ready to drop,
dressed in their prettiest clothes and their sweetest smiles, and lay
hands upon you, like--so many Lady Potiphars,--perfectly correct ones, of
course,--to make you buy what you do not want, at prices which you cannot
afford; all this as cheerfully as if it were not martyrdom to them as
well as to you. Such is their love for all good objects, such their
eagerness to sympathize with all their suffering fellow-creatures! But
there is nothing they pity as they pity a lonely young man.
I am sure, I sympathize with her in this instance. To see a pale student
burning away, like his own midnight lamp, with only dead men's hands to
hold, stretched out to him from the sepulchres of books, and dead men's
souls imploring him from their tablets to warm them over again just for a
little while in a human consciousness, when all this time there are soft,
warm, living hands that would ask nothing better than to bring the blood
back into those cold thin fingers, and gently caressing natures that
would wind all their tendrils about the unawakened heart which knows so
little of itself, is pitiable enough and would be sadder still if we did
not have the feeling that sooner or later the pale student will be pretty
sure to feel the breath of a young girl against his cheek as she looks
over his shoulder; and that he will come all at once to an illuminated
page in his book that never writer traced in characters, and never
printer set up in type, and never binder enclosed within his covers! But
our young man seems farther away from life than any student whose head is
bent downwards over his books. His eyes are turned away from all human
things. How cold the moonlight is that falls upon his forehead, and how
white he looks in it! Will not the rays strike through to his brain at
last, and send him to a narrower cell than this egg-shell dome which is
his workshop and his prison?
I cannot say that the Young Astronomer seemed particularly impressed with
a sense of his miserable condition. He said he was lonely, it is true,
but he said it in a manly tone, and not as if he were repining at the
inevitable condition of his devoting himself to that particular branch of
science. Of course, he is lonely, the most lonely being that lives in
the midst of our breathing world. If he would only stay a little longer
with us when we get talking; but he is busy almost always either in
observation or with his calculations and studies, and when the nights are
fair loses so much sleep that he must make it up by day. He wants
contact with human beings. I wish he would change his seat and come
round and sit by our Scheherezade!
The rest of the visit went off well enough, except that the "Man of
Letters," so called, rather snubbed some of the heavenly bodies as not
quite up to his standard of brilliancy. I thought myself that the
double-star episode was the best part of it.
I have an unexpected revelation to make to the reader. Not long after
our visit to the Observatory, the Young Astronomer put a package into my
hands, a manuscript, evidently, which he said he would like to have me
glance over. I found something in it which interested me, and told him
the next day that I should like to read it with some care. He seemed
rather pleased at this, and said that he wished I would criticise it as
roughly as I liked, and if I saw anything in it which might be dressed to
better advantage to treat it freely, just as if it were my own
production. It had often happened to him, he went on to say, to be
interrupted in his observations by clouds covering the objects he was
examining for a longer or shorter time. In these idle moments he had put
down many thoughts, unskilfully he feared, but just as they came into his
mind. His blank verse he suspected was often faulty. His thoughts he
knew must be crude, many of them. It would please him to have me amuse
myself by putting them into shape. He was kind enough to say that I was
an artist in words, but he held himself as an unskilled apprentice.
I confess I was appalled when I cast my eye upon the title of the
manuscript, "Cirri and Nebulae."
--Oh! oh!--I said,--that will never do. People don't know what Cirri
are, at least not one out of fifty readers. "Wind-Clouds and
Star-Drifts" will do better than that.
--Anything you like,--he answered,--what difference does it make how you
christen a foundling? These are not my legitimate scientific offspring,
and you may consider them left on your doorstep.
--I will not attempt to say just how much of the diction of these lines
belongs to him, and how much to me. He said he would never claim them,
after I read them to him in my version. I, on my part, do not wish to be
held responsible for some of his more daring thoughts, if I should see
fit to reproduce them hereafter. At this time I shall give only the
first part of the series of poetical outbreaks for which the young
devotee of science must claim his share of the responsibility. I may put
some more passages into shape by and by.
WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.
I
Another clouded night; the stars are hid,
The orb that waits my search is hid with them.
Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year,
To plant my ladder and to gain the round
That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame,
Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won?
Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear
That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel
Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust;
But the fair garland whose undying green
Not time can change, nor wrath of gods or men!
With quickened heart-beats I shall hear the tongues
That speak my praise; but better far the sense
That in the unshaped ages, buried deep
In the dark mines of unaccomplished time
Yet to be stamped with morning's royal die
And coined in golden days,--in those dim years
I shall be reckoned with the undying dead,
My name emblazoned on the fiery arch,
Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade.
Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds,
Sages of race unborn in accents new
Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old,
Whose glories kindle through the midnight sky
Here glows the God of Battles; this recalls
The Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphere
The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name
To the dim planet with the wondrous rings;
Here flames the Queen of Beauty's silver lamp,
And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove;
But this, unseen through all earth's aeons past,
A youth who watched beneath the western star
Sought in the darkness, found, and showed to men;
Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore!
So shall that name be syllabled anew
In all the tongues of all the tribes of men:
I that have been through immemorial years
Dust in the dust of my forgotten time
Shall live in accents shaped of blood-warm breath,
Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly born
In shining stone, in undecaying bronze,
And stand on high, and look serenely down
On the new race that calls the earth its own.
Is this a cloud, that, blown athwart my soul,
Wears a false seeming of the pearly stain
Where worlds beyond the world their mingling rays
Blend in soft white,--a cloud that, born of earth,
Would cheat the soul that looks for light from heaven?
Must every coral-insect leave his sign
On each poor grain he lent to build the reef,
As Babel's builders stamped their sunburnt clay,
Or deem his patient service all in vain?
What if another sit beneath the shade
Of the broad elm I planted by the way,
--What if another heed the beacon light
I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel,
Have I not done my task and served my kind?
Nay, rather act thy part, unnamed, unknown,
And let Fame blow her trumpet through the world
With noisy wind to swell a fool's renown,
Joined with some truth be stumbled blindly o'er,
Or coupled with some single shining deed
That in the great account of all his days
Will stand alone upon the bankrupt sheet
His pitying angel shows the clerk of Heaven.
The noblest service comes from nameless hands,
And the best servant does his work unseen.
Who found the seeds of fire and made them shoot,
Fed by his breath, in buds and flowers of flame?
Who forged in roaring flames the ponderous stone,
And shaped the moulded metal to his need?
Who gave the dragging car its rolling wheel,
And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round?
All these have left their work and not their names,
Why should I murmur at a fate like theirs?
This is the heavenly light; the pearly stain
Was but a wind-cloud drifting oer the stars!
VI
I find I have so many things in common with the old Master of Arts, that
I do not always know whether a thought was originally his or mine. That
is what always happens where two persons of a similar cast of mind talk
much together. And both of them often gain by the interchange. Many
ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one
where they sprang up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes
a flower in the other. A flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to
a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by
falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one
mind unfold as a morning-glory in the other.
--I thank God,--the Master said,--that a great many people believe a
great deal more than I do. I think, when it comes to serious matters, I
like those who believe more than I do better than those who believe less.
--Why,--said I,--you have got hold of one of my own working axioms. I
should like to hear you develop it.
The Member of the Haouse said he should be glad to listen to the debate.
The gentleman had the floor. The Scarabee rose from his chair and
departed;--I thought his joints creaked as he straightened himself.
The Young Girl made a slight movement; it was a purely accidental
coincidence, no doubt, but I saw That Boy put his hand in his pocket and
pull out his popgun, and begin loading it. It cannot be that our
Scheherezade, who looks so quiet and proper at the table, can make use of
That Boy and his catapult to control the course of conversation and
change it to suit herself! She certainly looks innocent enough; but what
does a blush prove, and what does its absence prove, on one of these
innocent faces? There is nothing in all this world that can lie and
cheat like the face and the tongue of a young girl. Just give her a
little touch of hysteria,--I don't mean enough of it to make her friends
call the doctor in, but a slight hint of it in the nervous system,--and
"Machiavel the waiting-maid" might take lessons of her. But I cannot
think our Scheherezade is one of that kind, and I am ashamed of myself
for noting such a trifling coincidence as that which excited my
suspicion.
--I say,--the Master continued,--that I had rather be in the company of
those who believe more than I do, in spiritual matters at least, than of
those who doubt what I accept as a part of my belief.
--To tell the truth,--said I,--I find that difficulty sometimes in
talking with you. You have not quite so many hesitations as I have in
following out your logical conclusions. I suppose you would bring some
things out into daylight questioning that I had rather leave in that
twilight of half-belief peopled with shadows--if they are only
shadows--more sacred to me than many realities.
There is nothing I do not question,--said the Master;--I not only begin
with the precept of Descartes, but I hold all my opinions involving any
chain of reasoning always open to revision.
--I confess that I smiled internally to hear him say that. The old
Master thinks he is open to conviction on all subjects; but if you meddle
with some of his notions and don't get tossed on his horns as if a bull
had hold of you, I should call you lucky.
--You don't mean you doubt everything?--I said.
--What do you think I question everything for, the Master replied,--if I
never get any answers? You've seen a blind man with a stick, feeling his
way along? Well, I am a blind man with a stick, and I find the world
pretty full of men just as blind as I am, but without any stick. I try
the ground to find out whether it is firm or not before I rest my weight
on it; but after it has borne my weight, that question at least is
answered. It very certainly was strong enough once; the presumption is
that it is strong enough now. Still the soil may have been undermined,
or I may have grown heavier. Make as much of that as you will. I say I
question everything; but if I find Bunker Hill Monument standing as
straight as when I leaned against it a year or ten years ago, I am not
very much afraid that Bunker Hill will cave in if I trust myself again on
the soil of it.
I glanced off, as one often does in talk.
The Monument is an awful place to visit,--I said.---The waves of time are
like the waves of the ocean; the only thing they beat against without
destroying it is a rock; and they destroy that at last. But it takes a
good while. There is a stone now standing in very good order that was as
old as a monument of Louis XIV. and Queen Anne's day is now when Joseph
went down into Egypt. Think of the shaft on Bunker Hill standing in the
sunshine on the morning of January 1st in the year 5872!
It won't be standing,--the Master said.---We are poor bunglers compared
to those old Egyptians. There are no joints in one of their obelisks.
They are our masters in more ways than we know of, and in more ways than
some of us are willing to know. That old Lawgiver wasn't learned in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians for nothing. It scared people well a couple
of hundred years ago when Sir John Marsham and Dr. John Spencer ventured
to tell their stories about the sacred ceremonies of the Egyptian
priesthood. People are beginning to find out now that you can't study
any religion by itself to any good purpose. You must have comparative
theology as you have comparative anatomy. What would you make of a cat's
foolish little good-for-nothing collar-bone, if you did not know how the
same bone means a good deal in other creatures,--in yourself, for
instance, as you 'll find out if you break it? You can't know too much
of your race and its beliefs, if you want to know anything about your
Maker. I never found but one sect large enough to hold the whole of me.
--And may I ask what that was?--I said.
--The Human sect,--the Master answered. That has about room enough for
me,--at present, I mean to say.
--Including cannibals and all?--said I.
-Oh, as to that, the eating of one's kind is a matter of taste, but the
roasting of them has been rather more a specialty of our own particular
belief than of any other I am acquainted with. If you broil a saint, I
don't see why, if you have a mind, you shouldn't serve him up at your--
Pop! went the little piece of artillery. Don't tell me it was accident.
I know better. You can't suppose for one minute that a boy like that one
would time his interruptions so cleverly. Now it so happened that at
that particular moment Dr. B. Franklin was not at the table. You may
draw your own conclusions. I say nothing, but I think a good deal.
--I came back to the Bunker Hill Monument.---I often think--I said--of
the dynasty which is to reign in its shadow for some thousands of years,
it may be.
The "Man of Letters," so called, asked me, in a tone I did not exactly
like, whether I expected to live long enough to see a monarchy take the
place of a republic in this country.
--No,--said I,--I was thinking of something very different. I was
indulging a fancy of mine about the Man who is to sit at the foot of the
monument for one, or it may be two or three thousand years. As long as
the monument stands and there is a city near it, there will always be a
man to take the names of visitors and extract some small tribute from
their pockets, I suppose. I sometimes get thinking of the long, unbroken
succession of these men, until they come to look like one Man; continuous
in being, unchanging as the stone he watches, looking upon the successive
generations of human beings as they come and go, and outliving all the
dynasties of the world in all probability. It has come to such a pass
that I never speak to the Man of the Monument without wanting to take my
hat off and feeling as if I were looking down a vista of twenty or thirty
centuries.
The "Man of Letters," so called, said, in a rather contemptuous way, I
thought, that he had n't got so far as that. He was n't quite up to
moral reflections on toll-men and ticket-takers. Sentiment was n't his
tap.
He looked round triumphantly for a response: but the Capitalist was a
little hard of hearing just then; the Register of Deeds was browsing on
his food in the calm bovine abstraction of a quadruped, and paid no
attention; the Salesman had bolted his breakfast, and whisked himself
away with that peculiar alacrity which belongs to the retail dealer's
assistant; and the Member of the Haouse, who had sometimes seemed to be
impressed with his "tahlented mahn's" air of superiority to the rest of
us, looked as if he thought the speaker was not exactly parliamentary.
So he failed to make his point, and reddened a little, and was not in the
best humor, I thought, when he left the table. I hope he will not let
off any of his irritation on our poor little Scheherezade; but the truth
is, the first person a man of this sort (if he is what I think him)
meets, when he is out of humor, has to be made a victim of, and I only
hope our Young Girl will not have to play Jephthah's daughter.
And that leads me to say, I cannot help thinking that the kind of
criticism to which this Young Girl has been subjected from some person or
other, who is willing to be smart at her expense, is hurtful and not
wholesome. The question is a delicate one. So many foolish persons are
rushing into print, that it requires a kind of literary police to hold
them back and keep them in order. Where there are mice there must be
cats, and where there are rats we may think it worth our while to keep a
terrier, who will give them a shake and let them drop, with all the
mischief taken out of them. But the process is a rude and cruel one at
best, and it too often breeds a love of destructiveness for its own sake
in those who get their living by it. A poor poem or essay does not do
much harm after all; nobody reads it who is like to be seriously hurt by
it. But a sharp criticism with a drop of witty venom in it stings a
young author almost to death, and makes an old one uncomfortable to no
purpose. If it were my business to sit in judgment on my neighbors, I
would try to be courteous, at least, to those who had done any good
service, but, above all, I would handle tenderly those young authors who
are coming before the public in the flutter of their first or early
appearance, and are in the trembling delirium of stage-fright already.
Before you write that brilliant notice of some alliterative Angelina's
book of verses, I wish you would try this experiment.
Take half a sheet of paper and copy upon it any of Angelina's
stanzas,--the ones you were going to make fun of, if you will. Now go to
your window, if it is a still day, open it, and let the half-sheet of
paper drop on the outside. How gently it falls through the soft air,
always tending downwards, but sliding softly, from side to side,
wavering, hesitating, balancing, until it settles as noiselessly as a
snow-flake upon the all-receiving bosom of the earth! Just such would
have been the fate of poor Angelina's fluttering effort, if you had left
it to itself. It would have slanted downward into oblivion so sweetly
and softly that she would have never known when it reached that harmless
consummation.
Our epizoic literature is becoming so extensive that nobody is safe from
its ad infinitum progeny. A man writes a book of criticisms. A
Quarterly Review criticises the critic. A Monthly Magazine takes up the
critic's critic. A Weekly Journal criticises the critic of the critic's
critic, and a daily paper favors us with some critical remarks on the
performance of the writer in the Weekly, who has criticised the critical
notice in the Monthly of the critical essay in the Quarterly on the
critical work we started with. And thus we see that as each flea "has
smaller fleas that on him prey," even the critic himself cannot escape
the common lot of being bitten. Whether all this is a blessing or a
curse, like that one which made Pharaoh and all his household run to
their toilet-tables, is a question about which opinions might differ.
The physiologists of the time of Moses--if there were vivisectors other
than priests in those days--would probably have considered that other
plague, of the frogs, as a fortunate opportunity for science, as this
poor little beast has been the souffre-douleur of experimenters and
schoolboys from time immemorial.
But there is a form of criticism to which none will object. It is
impossible to come before a public so alive with sensibilities as this we
live in, with the smallest evidence of a sympathetic disposition, without
making friends in a very unexpected way. Everywhere there are minds
tossing on the unquiet waves of doubt. If you confess to the same
perplexities and uncertainties that torture them, they are grateful for
your companionship. If you have groped your way out of the wilderness in
which you were once wandering with them, they will follow your footsteps,
it may be, and bless you as their deliverer. So, all at once, a writer
finds he has a parish of devout listeners, scattered, it is true, beyond
the reach of any summons but that of a trumpet like the archangel's, to
whom his slight discourse may be of more value than the exhortations they
hear from the pulpit, if these last do not happen to suit their special
needs. Young men with more ambition and intelligence than force of
character, who have missed their first steps in life and are stumbling
irresolute amidst vague aims and changing purposes, hold out their hands,
imploring to be led into, or at least pointed towards, some path where
they can find a firm foothold. Young women born into a chilling
atmosphere of circumstance which keeps all the buds of their nature
unopened and always striving to get to a ray of sunshine, if one finds
its way to their neighborhood, tell their stories, sometimes simply and
touchingly, sometimes in a more or less affected and rhetorical way, but
still stories of defeated and disappointed instincts which ought to make
any moderately impressible person feel very tenderly toward them.
In speaking privately to these young persons, many of whom have literary
aspirations, one should be very considerate of their human feelings. But
addressing them collectively a few plain truths will not give any one of
them much pain. Indeed, almost every individual among them will feel
sure that he or she is an exception to those generalities which apply so
well to the rest.
If I were a literary Pope sending out an Encyclical, I would tell these
inexperienced persons that nothing is so frequent as to mistake an
ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowment. The
mechanism of breathing and that of swallowing are very wonderful, and if
one had seen and studied them in his own person only, he might well think
himself a prodigy. Everybody knows these and other bodily faculties are
common gifts; but nobody except editors and school-teachers and here and
there a literary than knows how common is the capacity of rhyming and
prattling in readable prose, especially among young women of a certain
degree of education. In my character of Pontiff, I should tell these
young persons that most of them labored under a delusion. It is very
hard to believe it; one feels so full of intelligence and so decidedly
superior to one's dull relations and schoolmates; one writes so easily
and the lines sound so prettily to one's self; there are such felicities
of expression, just like those we hear quoted from the great poets; and
besides one has been told by so many friends that all one had to do was
to print and be famous! Delusion, my poor dear, delusion at least
nineteen times out of twenty, yes, ninety-nine times in a hundred.
But as private father confessor, I always allow as much as I can for the
one chance in the hundred. I try not to take away all hope, unless the
case is clearly desperate, and then to direct the activities into some
other channel.
Using kind language, I can talk pretty freely. I have counselled more
than one aspirant after literary fame to go back to his tailor's board or
his lapstone. I have advised the dilettanti, whose foolish friends
praised their verses or their stories, to give up all their deceptive
dreams of making a name by their genius, and go to work in the study of a
profession which asked only for the diligent use of average; ordinary
talents. It is a very grave responsibility which these unknown
correspondents throw upon their chosen counsellors. One whom you have
never seen, who lives in a community of which you know nothing, sends you
specimens more or less painfully voluminous of his writings, which he
asks you to read over, think over, and pray over, and send back an answer
informing him whether fame and fortune are awaiting him as the possessor
of the wonderful gifts his writings manifest, and whether you advise him
to leave all,--the shop he sweeps out every morning, the ledger he posts,
the mortar in which he pounds, the bench at which he urges the reluctant
plane,--and follow his genius whithersoever it may lead him. The next
correspondent wants you to mark out a whole course of life for him, and
the means of judgment he gives you are about as adequate as the brick
which the simpleton of old carried round as an advertisement of the house
he had to sell. My advice to all the young men that write to me depends
somewhat on the handwriting and spelling. If these are of a certain
character, and they have reached a mature age, I recommend some honest
manual calling, such as they have very probably been bred to, and which
will, at least, give them a chance of becoming President of the United
States by and by, if that is any object to them. What would you have
done with the young person who called on me a good many years ago, so
many that he has probably forgotten his literary effort,--and read as
specimens of his literary workmanship lines like those which I will favor
you with presently? He was an able-bodied, grown-up young person, whose
ingenuousness interested me; and I am sure if I thought he would ever be
pained to see his maiden effort in print, I would deny myself the
pleasure of submitting it to the reader. The following is an exact
transcript of the lines he showed me, and which I took down on the spot:
"Are you in the vein for cider?
Are you in the tune for pork?
Hist! for Betty's cleared the larder
And turned the pork to soap."
Do not judge too hastily this sincere effort of a maiden muse. Here was
a sense of rhythm, and an effort in the direction of rhyme; here was an
honest transcript of an occurrence of daily life, told with a certain
idealizing expression, recognizing the existence of impulses, mysterious
instincts, impelling us even in the selection of our bodily sustenance.
But I had to tell him that it wanted dignity of incident and grace of
narrative, that there was no atmosphere to it, nothing of the light that
never was and so forth. I did not say this in these very words, but I
gave him to understand, without being too hard upon him, that he had
better not desert his honest toil in pursuit of the poet's bays. This,
it must be confessed, was a rather discouraging case. A young person
like this may pierce, as the Frenchmen say, by and by, but the chances
are all the other way.
I advise aimless young men to choose some profession without needless
delay, and so get into a good strong current of human affairs, and find
themselves bound up in interests with a compact body of their fellow-men.
I advise young women who write to me for counsel,--perhaps I do not
advise them at all, only sympathize a little with them, and listen to
what they have to say (eight closely written pages on the average, which
I always read from beginning to end, thinking of the widow's cruse and
myself in the character of Elijah) and--and--come now, I don't believe
Methuselah would tell you what he said in his letters to young ladies,
written when he was in his nine hundred and sixty-ninth year.
But, dear me! how much work all this private criticism involves! An
editor has only to say "respectfully declined," and there is the end of
it. But the confidential adviser is expected to give the reasons of his
likes and dislikes in detail, and sometimes to enter into an argument for
their support. That is more than any martyr can stand, but what trials
he must go through, as it is! Great bundles of manuscripts, verse or
prose, which the recipient is expected to read, perhaps to recommend to a
publisher, at any rate to express a well-digested and agreeably flavored
opinion about; which opinion, nine times out of ten, disguise it as we
may, has to be a bitter draught; every form of egotism, conceit, false
sentiment, hunger for notoriety, and eagerness for display of anserine
plumage before the admiring public;--all these come in by mail or
express, covered with postage-stamps of so much more cost than the value
of the waste words they overlie, that one comes at last to groan and
change color at the very sight of a package, and to dread the postman's
knock as if it were that of the other visitor whose naked knuckles rap at
every door.
Still there are experiences which go far towards repaying all these
inflictions. My last young man's case looked desperate enough; some of
his sails had blown from the rigging, some were backing in the wind, and
some were flapping and shivering, but I told him which way to head, and
to my surprise he promised to do just as I directed, and I do not doubt
is under full sail at this moment.
What if I should tell my last, my very recent experience with the other
sex? I received a paper containing the inner history of a young woman's
life, the evolution of her consciousness from its earliest record of
itself, written so thoughtfully, so sincerely, with so much firmness and
yet so much delicacy, with such truth of detail and such grace in the
manner of telling, that I finished the long manuscript almost at a
sitting, with a pleasure rarely, almost never experienced in voluminous
communications which one has to spell out of handwriting. This was from
a correspondent who made my acquaintance by letter when she was little
more than a child, some years ago. How easy at that early period to have
silenced her by indifference, to have wounded her by a careless epithet,
perhaps even to have crushed her as one puts his heel on a weed! A very
little encouragement kept her from despondency, and brought back one of
those overflows of gratitude which make one more ashamed of himself for
being so overpaid than he would be for having committed any of the lesser
sins. But what pleased me most in the paper lately received was to see
how far the writer had outgrown the need of any encouragement of mine;
that she had strengthened out of her tremulous questionings into a
self-reliance and self-poise which I had hardly dared to anticipate for
her. Some of my readers who are also writers have very probably had more
numerous experiences of this kind than I can lay claim to;
self-revelations from unknown and sometimes nameless friends, who write
from strange corners where the winds have wafted some stray words of
theirs which have lighted in the minds and reached the hearts of those to
whom they were as the angel that stirred the pool of Bethesda. Perhaps
this is the best reward authorship brings; it may not imply much talent
or literary excellence, but it means that your way of thinking and
feeling is just what some one of your fellow-creatures needed.
--I have been putting into shape, according to his request, some further
passages from the Young Astronomer's manuscript, some of which the reader
will have a chance to read if he is so disposed. The conflict in the
young man's mind between the desire for fame and the sense of its
emptiness as compared with nobler aims has set me thinking about the
subject from a somewhat humbler point of view. As I am in the habit of
telling you, Beloved, many of my thoughts, as well as of repeating what
was said at our table, you may read what follows as if it were addressed
to you in the course of an ordinary conversation, where I claimed rather
more than my share, as I am afraid I am a little in the habit of doing.
I suppose we all, those of us who write in verse or prose, have the
habitual feeling that we should like to be remembered. It is to be awake
when all of those who were round us have been long wrapped in slumber.
It is a pleasant thought enough that the name by which we have been
called shall be familiar on the lips of those who come after us, and the
thoughts that wrought themselves out in our intelligence, the emotions
that trembled through our frames, shall live themselves over again in the
minds and hearts of others.
But is there not something of rest, of calm, in the thought of gently and
gradually fading away out of human remembrance? What line have we
written that was on a level with our conceptions? What page of ours that
does not betray some weakness we would fain have left unrecorded? To
become a classic and share the life of a language is to be ever open to
criticisms, to comparisons, to the caprices of successive generations, to
be called into court and stand a trial before a new jury, once or more
than once in every century. To be forgotten is to sleep in peace with
the undisturbed myriads, no longer subject to the chills and heats, the
blasts, the sleet, the dust, which assail in endless succession that
shadow of a man which we call his reputation. The line which dying we
could wish to blot has been blotted out for us by a hand so tender, so
patient, so used to its kindly task, that the page looks as fair as if it
had never borne the record of our infirmity or our transgression. And
then so few would be wholly content with their legacy of fame. You
remember poor Monsieur Jacques's complaint of the favoritism shown to
Monsieur Berthier,--it is in that exquisite "Week in a French
Country-House." "Have you seen his room? Have you seen how large it is?
Twice as large as mine! He has two jugs, a large one and a little one.
I have only one small one. And a tea-service and a gilt Cupid on the top
of his looking-glass." The famous survivor of himself has had his
features preserved in a medallion, and the slice of his countenance seems
clouded with the thought that it does not belong to a bust; the bust
ought to look happy in its niche, but the statue opposite makes it feel
as if it had been cheated out of half its personality, and the statue
looks uneasy because another stands on a loftier pedestal. But "Ignotus"
and "Miserrimus" are of the great majority in that vast assembly, that
House of Commons whose members are all peers, where to be forgotten is
the standing rule. The dignity of a silent memory is not to be
undervalued. Fame is after all a kind of rude handling, and a name that
is often on vulgar lips seems to borrow something not to be desired, as
the paper money that passes from hand to hand gains somewhat which is a
loss thereby. O sweet, tranquil refuge of oblivion, so far as earth is
concerned, for us poor blundering, stammering, misbehaving creatures who
cannot turn over a leaf of our life's diary without feeling thankful that
its failure can no longer stare us in the face! Not unwelcome shall be
the baptism of dust which hides forever the name that was given in the
baptism of water! We shall have good company whose names are left
unspoken by posterity. "Who knows whether the best of men be known, or
whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand
remembered in the known account of time? The greater part must be
content to be as though they had not been; to be found in the register of
God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first
story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one
living century."
I have my moods about such things as the Young Astronomer has, as we all
have. There are times when the thought of becoming utterly nothing to
the world we knew so well and loved so much is painful and oppressive; we
gasp as if in a vacuum, missing the atmosphere of life we have so long
been in the habit of breathing. Not the less are there moments when the
aching need of repose comes over us and the requiescat in pace, heathen
benediction as it is, sounds more sweetly in our ears than all the
promises that Fame can hold out to us.
I wonder whether it ever occurred to you to reflect upon another horror
there must be in leaving a name behind you. Think what a horrid piece of
work the biographers make of a man's private history! Just imagine the
subject of one of those extraordinary fictions called biographies coming
back and reading the life of himself, written very probably by somebody
or other who thought he could turn a penny by doing it, and having the
pleasure of seeing
"His little bark attendant sail,
Pursue the triumph and partake the gale."
The ghost of the person condemned to walk the earth in a biography glides
into a public library, and goes to the shelf where his mummied life lies
in its paper cerements. I can see the pale shadow glancing through the
pages and hear the comments that shape themselves in the bodiless
intelligence as if they were made vocal by living lips.
"Born in July, 1776!" And my honored father killed at the battle of
Bunker Hill! Atrocious libeller! to slander one's family at the start
after such a fashion!
"The death of his parents left him in charge of his Aunt Nancy, whose
tender care took the place of those parental attentions which should have
guided and protected his infant years, and consoled him for the severity
of another relative."
--Aunt Nancy! It was Aunt Betsey, you fool! Aunt Nancy used to--she has
been dead these eighty years, so there is no use in mincing matters--she
used to keep a bottle and a stick, and when she had been tasting a drop
out of the bottle the stick used to come off the shelf and I had to taste
that. And here she is made a saint of, and poor Aunt Betsey, that did
everything for me, is slandered by implication as a horrid tyrant.
"The subject of this commemorative history was remarkable for a
precocious development of intelligence. An old nurse who saw him at the
very earliest period of his existence is said to have spoken of him as
one of the most promising infants she had seen in her long experience.
At school he was equally remarkable, and at a tender age he received a
paper adorned with a cut, inscribed REWARD OF MERIT."
--I don't doubt the nurse said that,--there were several promising
children born about that time. As for cuts, I got more from the
schoolmaster's rattan than in any other shape. Didn't one of my teachers
split a Gunter's scale into three pieces over the palm of my hand? And
didn't I grin when I saw the pieces fly? No humbug, now, about my
boyhood!
"His personal appearance was not singularly prepossessing. Inconspicuous
in stature and unattractive in features"
--You misbegotten son of an ourang and grandson of an ascidian (ghosts
keep up with science, you observe), what business have you to be holding
up my person to the contempt of my posterity? Haven't I been sleeping
for this many a year in quiet, and don't the dandelions and buttercups
look as yellow over me as over the best-looking neighbor I have in the
dormitory? Why do you want to people the minds of everybody that reads
your good-for-nothing libel which you call a "biography" with your
impudent caricatures of a man who was a better-looking fellow than
yourself, I 'll bet you ten to one, a man whom his Latin tutor called
fommosus puer when he was only a freshman? If that's what it means to
make a reputation,--to leave your character and your person, and the good
name of your sainted relatives, and all you were, and all you had and
thought and felt, so far as can be gathered by digging you out of your
most private records, to be manipulated and bandied about and cheapened
in the literary market as a chicken or a turkey or a goose is handled and
bargained over at a provision stall, is n't it better to be content with
the honest blue slate-stone and its inscription informing posterity that
you were a worthy citizen and a respected father of a family?
--I should like to see any man's biography with corrections and
emendations by his ghost. We don't know each other's secrets quite so
well as we flatter ourselves we do. We don't always know our own secrets
as well as we might. You have seen a tree with different grafts upon it,
an apple or a pear tree we will say. In the late summer months the fruit
on one bough will ripen; I remember just such a tree, and the early
ripening fruit was the Jargonelle. By and by the fruit of another bough
will begin to come into condition; the lovely Saint Michael, as I
remember, grew on the same stock as the Jargonelle in the tree I am
thinking of; and then, when these have all fallen or been gathered,
another, we will say the Winter Nelis, has its turn, and so out of the
same juices have come in succession fruits of the most varied aspects and
flavors. It is the same thing with ourselves, but it takes us a long
while to find it out. The various inherited instincts ripen in
succession. You may be nine tenths paternal at one period of your life,
and nine tenths maternal at another. All at once the traits of some
immediate ancestor may come to maturity unexpectedly on one of the
branches of your character, just as your features at different periods of
your life betray different resemblances to your nearer or more remote
relatives.
But I want you to let me go back to the Bunker Hill Monument and the
dynasty of twenty or thirty centuries whose successive representatives
are to sit in the gate, like the Jewish monarchs, while the people shall
come by hundreds and by thousands to visit the memorial shaft until the
story of Bunker's Hill is as old as that of Marathon.
Would not one like to attend twenty consecutive soirees, at each one of
which the lion of the party should be the Man of the Monument, at the
beginning of each century, all the way, we will say, from Anno Domini
2000 to Ann. Dom. 4000,--or, if you think the style of dating will be
changed, say to Ann. Darwinii (we can keep A. D. you see) 1872? Will
the Man be of the Indian type, as President Samuel Stanhope Smith and
others have supposed the transplanted European will become by and by?
Will he have shortened down to four feet and a little more, like the
Esquimaux, or will he have been bred up to seven feet by the use of new
chemical diets, ozonized and otherwise improved atmospheres, and animal
fertilizers? Let us summon him in imagination and ask him a few
questions.
Is n't it like splitting a toad out of a rock to think of this man of
nineteen or twenty centuries hence coming out from his stony
dwelling-place and speaking with us? What are the questions we should
ask him? He has but a few minutes to stay. Make out your own list; I
will set down a few that come up to me as I write.
--What is the prevalent religious creed of civilization?
--Has the planet met with any accident of importance?
--How general is the republican form of government?
--Do men fly yet?
--Has the universal language come into use?
--Is there a new fuel since the English coal-mines have given out?
--Is the euthanasia a recognized branch of medical science?
--Is the oldest inhabitant still living?
--Is the Daily Advertiser still published?
--And the Evening Transcript?
--Is there much inquiry for the works of a writer of the nineteenth
century (Old Style) by--the name of--of--
My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. I cannot imagine the putting
of that question without feeling the tremors which shake a wooer as he
falters out the words the answer to which will make him happy or
wretched.
Whose works was I going to question him about, do you ask me? Oh, the
writings of a friend of mine, much esteemed by his relatives and others.
But it's of no consequence, after all; I think he says he does not care
much for posthumous reputation.
I find something of the same interest in thinking about one of the
boarders at our table that I find in my waking dreams concerning the Man
of the Monument. This personage is the Register of Deeds. He is an
unemotional character, living in his business almost as exclusively as
the Scarabee, but without any of that eagerness and enthusiasm which
belong to our scientific specialist. His work is largely, principally, I
may say, mechanical. He has developed, however, a certain amount of
taste for the antiquities of his department, and once in a while brings
out some curious result of his investigations into ancient documents. He
too belongs to a dynasty which will last as long as there is such a thing
as property in land and dwellings. When that is done away with, and we
return to the state of villanage, holding our tenement-houses, all to be
of the same pattern, of the State, that is to say, of the Tammany Ring
which is to take the place of the feudal lord,--the office of Register of
Deeds will, I presume, become useless, and the dynasty will be deposed.
As we grow older we think more and more of old persons and of old things
and places. As to old persons, it seems as if we never know how much
they have to tell until we are old ourselves and they have been gone
twenty or thirty years. Once in a while we come upon some survivor of
his or her generation that we have overlooked, and feel as if we had
recovered one of the lost books of Livy or fished up the golden
candlestick from the ooze of the Tiber. So it was the other day after my
reminiscences of the old gambrel-roofed house and its visitors. They
found an echo in the recollections of one of the brightest and liveliest
of my suburban friends, whose memory is exact about everything except her
own age, which, there can be no doubt, she makes out a score or two of
years more than it really is. Still she was old enough to touch some
lights--and a shadow or two--into the portraits I had drawn, which made
me wish that she and not I had been the artist who sketched the pictures.
Among the lesser regrets that mingle with graver sorrows for the friends
of an earlier generation we have lost, are our omissions to ask them so
many questions they could have answered easily enough, and would have
been pleased to be asked. There! I say to myself sometimes, in an
absent mood, I must ask her about that. But she of whom I am now
thinking has long been beyond the reach of any earthly questioning, and I
sigh to think how easily I could have learned some fact which I should
have been happy to have transmitted with pious care to those who are to
come after me. How many times I have heard her quote the line about
blessings brightening as they take their flight, and how true it proves
in many little ways that one never thinks of until it is too late.
The Register of Deeds is not himself advanced in years. But he borrows
an air of antiquity from the ancient records which are stored in his
sepulchral archives. I love to go to his ossuary of dead transactions,
as I would visit the catacombs of Rome or Paris. It is like wandering up
the Nile to stray among the shelves of his monumental folios. Here
stands a series of volumes, extending over a considerable number of
years, all of which volumes are in his handwriting. But as you go
backward there is a break, and you come upon the writing of another
person, who was getting old apparently, for it is beginning to be a
little shaky, and then you know that you have gone back as far as the
last days of his predecessor. Thirty or forty years more carry you to
the time when this incumbent began the duties of his office; his hand was
steady then; and the next volume beyond it in date betrays the work of a
still different writer. All this interests me, but I do not see how it
is going to interest my reader. I do not feel very happy about the
Register of Deeds. What can I do with him? Of what use is he going to
be in my record of what I have seen and heard at the breakfast-table?
The fact of his being one of the boarders was not so important that I was
obliged to speak of him, and I might just as well have drawn on my
imagination and not allowed this dummy to take up the room which another
guest might have profitably filled at our breakfast-table.
I suppose he will prove a superfluity, but I have got him on my hands,
and I mean that he shall be as little in the way as possible. One always
comes across people in actual life who have no particular business to be
where we find them, and whose right to be at all is somewhat
questionable.
I am not going to get rid of the Register of Deeds by putting him out of
the way; but I confess I do not see of what service he is going to be to
me in my record. I have often found, however, that the Disposer of men
and things understands much better than we do how to place his pawns and
other pieces on the chess-board of life. A fish more or less in the
ocean does not seem to amount to much. It is not extravagant to say that
any one fish may be considered a supernumerary. But when Captain Coram's
ship sprung a leak and the carpenter could not stop it, and the
passengers had made up their minds that it was all over with them, all at
once, without any apparent reason, the pumps began gaining on the leak,
and the sinking ship to lift herself out of the abyss which was
swallowing her up. And what do you think it was that saved the ship, and
Captain Coram, and so in due time gave to London that Foundling Hospital
which he endowed, and under the floor of which he lies buried? Why, it
was that very supernumerary fish, which we held of so little account, but
which had wedged itself into the rent of the yawning planks, and served
to keep out the water until the leak was finally stopped.
I am very sure it was Captain Coram, but I almost hope it was somebody
else, in order to give some poor fellow who is lying in wait for the
periodicals a chance to correct me. That will make him happy for a
month, and besides, he will not want to pick a quarrel about anything
else if he has that splendid triumph. You remember Alcibiades and his
dog's tail.
Here you have the extracts I spoke of from the manuscript placed in my
hands for revision and emendation. I can understand these alternations
of feeling in a young person who has been long absorbed in a single
pursuit, and in whom the human instincts which have been long silent are
now beginning to find expression. I know well what he wants; a great
deal better, I think, than he knows himself.
WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.
II
Brief glimpses of the bright celestial spheres,
False lights, false shadows, vague, uncertain gleams,
Pale vaporous mists, wan streaks of lurid flame,
The climbing of the upward-sailing cloud,
The sinking of the downward-falling star,
All these are pictures of the changing moods
Borne through the midnight stillness of my soul.
Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock,
Prey to the vulture of a vast desire
That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands
And steal a moment's freedom from the beak,
The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes;
Then comes the false enchantress, with her song;
"Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust
Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies!
Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee,
Unchanging as the belt Orion wears,
Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown,
The spangled stream of Berenice's hair!"
And so she twines the fetters with the flowers
Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird
Stoops to his quarry,--then to feed his rage
Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood
And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night
Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek,
And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes.
All for a line in some unheeded scroll;
All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns,
"Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clod
Where squats the jealous nightmare men call Fame!"
I marvel not at him who scorns his kind
And thinks not sadly of the time foretold
When the old hulk we tread shall be a wreck,
A slag, a cinder drifting through the sky
Without its crew of fools! We live too long
And even so are not content to die,
But load the mould that covers up our bones
With stones that stand like beggars by the road
And show death's grievous wound and ask for tears;
Write our great books to teach men who we are,
Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase
The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray
For alms of memory with the after time,
Those few swift seasons while the earth shall wear
Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold
And the moist life of all that breathes shall die;
Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise,
Would have us deem, before its growing mass,
Pelted with stardust, atoned with meteor-balls,
Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man
and his works and all that stirred itself
Of its own motion, in the fiery glow
Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb
Shines a new sun for earths that shall be born.
I am as old as Egypt to myself,
Brother to them that squared the pyramids
By the same stars I watch. I read the page
Where every letter is a glittering world,
With them who looked from Shinar's clay-built towers,
Ere yet the wanderer of the Midland sea
Had missed the fallen sister of the seven.
I dwell in spaces vague, remote, unknown,
Save to the silent few, who, leaving earth,
Quit all communion with their living time.
I lose myself in that ethereal void,
Till I have tired my wings and long to fill
My breast with denser air, to stand, to walk
With eyes not raised above my fellow-men.
Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm,
I ask to change the myriad lifeless worlds
I visit as mine own for one poor patch
Of this dull spheroid and a little breath
To shape in word or deed to serve my kind.
Was ever giant's dungeon dug so deep,
Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong,
Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught
The false wife mingles for the trusting fool,
As he whose willing victim is himself,
Digs, forges, mingles, for his captive soul?
VII
I was very sure that the old Master was hard at work about something,--he
is always very busy with something,--but I mean something particular.
Whether it was a question of history or of cosmogony, or whether he was
handling a test-tube or a blow-pipe; what he was about I did not feel
sure; but I took it for granted that it was some crucial question or
other he was at work on, some point bearing on the thought of the time.
For the Master, I have observed, is pretty sagacious in striking for the
points where his work will be like to tell. We all know that class of
scientific laborers to whom all facts are alike nourishing mental food,
and who seem to exercise no choice whatever, provided only they can get
hold of these same indiscriminate facts in quantity sufficient. They
browse on them, as the animal to which they would not like to be compared
browses on his thistles. But the Master knows the movement of the age he
belongs to; and if he seems to be busy with what looks like a small piece
of trivial experimenting, one may feel pretty sure that he knows what he
is about, and that his minute operations are looking to a result that
will help him towards attaining his great end in life,--an insight, so
far as his faculties and opportunities will allow, into that order of
things which he believes he can study with some prospect of taking in its
significance.
I became so anxious to know what particular matter he was busy with, that
I had to call upon him to satisfy my curiosity. It was with a little
trepidation that I knocked at his door. I felt a good deal as one might
have felt on disturbing an alchemist at his work, at the very moment, it
might be, when he was about to make projection.
--Come in!--said the Master in his grave, massive tones.
I passed through the library with him into a little room evidently
devoted to his experiments.
--You have come just at the right moment,--he said.--Your eyes are better
than mine. I have been looking at this flask, and I should like to have
you look at it.
It was a small matrass, as one of the elder chemists would have called
it, containing a fluid, and hermetically sealed. He held it up at the
window; perhaps you remember the physician holding a flask to the light
in Gerard Douw's "Femme hydropique"; I thought of that fine figure as I
looked at him. Look!--said he,--is it clear or cloudy?
--You need not ask me that,--I answered. It is very plainly turbid. I
should think that some sediment had been shaken up in it. What is it,
Elixir Vitae or Aurum potabile?
--Something that means more than alchemy ever did! Boiled just three
hours, and as clear as a bell until within the last few days; since then
has been clouding up.
--I began to form a pretty shrewd guess at the meaning of all this, and
to think I knew very nearly what was coming next. I was right in my
conjecture. The Master broke off the sealed end of his little flask,
took out a small portion of the fluid on a glass rod, and placed it on a
slip of glass in the usual way for a microscopic examination.
--One thousand diameters,--he said, as he placed it on the stage of the
microscope.---We shall find signs of life, of course.--He bent over the
instrument and looked but an instant.
--There they are!--he exclaimed,--look in.
I looked in and saw some objects:
The straight linear bodies were darting backward and forward in every
direction. The wavy ones were wriggling about like eels or water-snakes.
The round ones were spinning on their axes and rolling in every
direction. All of them were in a state of incessant activity, as if
perpetually seeking something and never finding it.
They are tough, the germs of these little bodies, said the Master.
---Three hours' boiling has n't killed 'em. Now, then, let us see what
has been the effect of six hours' boiling.
He took up another flask just like the first, containing fluid and
hermetically sealed in the same way.
--Boiled just three hours longer than the other, he said,--six hours in
all. This is the experimentum crucis. Do you see any cloudiness in it?
--Not a sign of it; it is as clear as crystal, except that there may be a
little sediment at the bottom.
--That is nothing. The liquid is clear. We shall find no signs of
life.---He put a minute drop of the liquid under the microscope as
before. Nothing stirred. Nothing to be seen but a clear circle of
light. We looked at it again and again, but with the same result.
--Six hours kill 'em all, according to this experiment,--said the
Master.---Good as far as it goes. One more negative result. Do you know
what would have happened if that liquid had been clouded, and we had
found life in the sealed flask? Sir, if that liquid had held life in it
the Vatican would have trembled to hear it, and there would have been
anxious questionings and ominous whisperings in the halls of Lambeth
palace! The accepted cosmogonies on trial, sir!
Traditions, sanctities, creeds, ecclesiastical establishments, all
shaking to know whether my little sixpenny flask of fluid looks muddy or
not! I don't know whether to laugh or shudder. The thought of an
oecumenical council having its leading feature dislocated by my trifling
experiment! The thought, again, of the mighty revolution in human
beliefs and affairs that might grow out of the same insignificant little
phenomenon. A wine-glassful of clear liquid growing muddy. If we had
found a wriggle, or a zigzag, or a shoot from one side to the other, in
this last flask, what a scare there would have been, to be sure, in the
schools of the prophets! Talk about your megatherium and your
megalosaurus,--what are these to the bacterium and the vibrio? These are
the dreadful monsters of today. If they show themselves where they have
no business, the little rascals frighten honest folks worse than ever
people were frightened by the Dragon of Rhodes!
The Master gets going sometimes, there is no denying it, until his
imagination runs away with him. He had been trying, as the reader sees,
one of those curious experiments in spontaneous generation, as it is
called, which have been so often instituted of late years, and by none
more thoroughly than by that eminent American student of nature
(Professor Jeffries Wyman) whose process he had imitated with a result
like his.
We got talking over these matters among us the next morning at the
breakfast-table.
We must agree they couldn't stand six hours' boiling,--I said.
--Good for the Pope of Rome!--exclaimed the Master.
--The Landlady drew back with a certain expression of dismay in her
countenance. She hoped he did n't want the Pope to make any more
converts in this country. She had heard a sermon only last Sabbath, and
the minister had made it out, she thought, as plain as could be, that the
Pope was the Man of Sin and that the Church of Rome was--Well, there was
very strong names applied to her in Scripture.
What was good for the Pope was good for your minister, too, my dear
madam,--said the Master. Good for everybody that is afraid of what
people call "science." If it should prove that dead things come to life
of themselves, it would be awkward, you know, because then somebody will
get up and say if one dead thing made itself alive another might, and so
perhaps the earth peopled itself without any help. Possibly the
difficulty wouldn't be so great as many people suppose. We might perhaps
find room for a Creator after all, as we do now, though we see a little
brown seed grow till it sucks up the juices of half an acre of ground,
apparently all by its own inherent power. That does not stagger us; I am
not sure that it would if Mr. Crosses or Mr. Weekes's acarus should show
himself all of a sudden, as they said he did, in certain mineral mixtures
acted on by electricity.
The Landlady was off soundings, and looking vacant enough by this time.
The Master turned to me.---Don't think too much of the result of our one
experiment. It means something, because it confirms those other
experiments of which it was a copy; but we must remember that a hundred
negatives don't settle such a question. Life does get into the world
somehow. You don't suppose Adam had the cutaneous unpleasantness
politely called psora, do you?
--Hardly,--I answered.---He must have been a walking hospital if he
carried all the maladies about him which have plagued his descendants.
--Well, then, how did the little beast which is peculiar to that special
complaint intrude himself into the Order of Things? You don't suppose
there was a special act of creation for the express purpose of bestowing
that little wretch on humanity, do you?
I thought, on the whole, I would n't answer that question.
--You and I are at work on the same problem, said the Young Astronomer to
the Master.---I have looked into a microscope now and then, and I have
seen that perpetual dancing about of minute atoms in a fluid, which you
call molecular motion. Just so, when I look through my telescope I see
the star-dust whirling about in the infinite expanse of ether; or if I do
not see its motion, I know that it is only on account of its immeasurable
distance. Matter and motion everywhere; void and rest nowhere. You ask
why your restless microscopic atoms may not come together and become
self-conscious and self-moving organisms. I ask why my telescopic
star-dust may not come together and grow and organize into habitable
worlds,--the ripened fruit on the branches of the tree Yggdrasil, if I
may borrow from our friend the Poet's province. It frightens people,
though, to hear the suggestion that worlds shape themselves from
star-mist. It does not trouble them at all to see the watery spheres
that round themselves into being out of the vapors floating over us; they
are nothing but raindrops. But if a planet can grow as a rain-drop
grows, why then--It was a great comfort to these timid folk when Lord
Rosse's telescope resolved certain nebula into star-clusters. Sir John
Herschel would have told them that this made little difference in
accounting for the formation of worlds by aggregation, but at any rate it
was a comfort to them.
--These people have always been afraid of the astronomers,--said the
Master.--They were shy, you know, of the Copernican system, for a long
while; well they might be with an oubliette waiting for them if they
ventured to think that the earth moved round the sun. Science settled
that point finally for them, at length, and then it was all right,--when
there was no use in disputing the fact any longer. By and by geology
began turning up fossils that told extraordinary stories about the
duration of life upon our planet. What subterfuges were not used to get
rid of their evidence! Think of a man seeing the fossilized skeleton of
an animal split out of a quarry, his teeth worn down by mastication, and
the remains of food still visible in his interior, and, in order to get
rid of a piece of evidence contrary to the traditions he holds to,
seriously maintaining that this skeleton never belonged to a living
creature, but was created with just these appearances; a make-believe, a
sham, a Barnum's-mermaid contrivance to amuse its Creator and impose upon
his intelligent children! And now people talk about geological epochs
and hundreds of millions of years in the planet's history as calmly as if
they were discussing the age of their deceased great-grandmothers. Ten
or a dozen years ago people said Sh! Sh! if you ventured to meddle with
any question supposed to involve a doubt of the generally accepted Hebrew
traditions. To-day such questions are recognized as perfectly fair
subjects for general conversation; not in the basement story, perhaps, or
among the rank and file of the curbstone congregations, but among
intelligent and educated persons. You may preach about them in your
pulpit, you may lecture about them, you may talk about them with the
first sensible-looking person you happen to meet, you may write magazine
articles about them, and the editor need not expect to receive
remonstrances from angry subscribers and withdrawals of subscriptions, as
he would have been sure to not a great many years ago. Why, you may go
to a tea-party where the clergyman's wife shows her best cap and his
daughters display their shining ringlets, and you will hear the company
discussing the Darwinian theory of the origin of the human race as if it
were as harmless a question as that of the lineage of a spinster's
lapdog. You may see a fine lady who is as particular in her
genuflections as any Buddhist or Mahometan saint in his manifestations of
reverence, who will talk over the anthropoid ape, the supposed founder of
the family to which we belong, and even go back with you to the
acephalous mollusk, first cousin to the clams and mussels, whose
rudimental spine was the hinted prophecy of humanity; all this time never
dreaming, apparently, that what she takes for a matter of curious
speculation involves the whole future of human progress and destiny.
I can't help thinking that if we had talked as freely as we can and do
now in the days of the first boarder at this table,--I mean the one who
introduced it to the public,--it would have sounded a good deal more
aggressively than it does now.--The old Master got rather warm in
talking; perhaps the consciousness of having a number of listeners had
something to do with it.
--This whole business is an open question,--he said,--and there is no use
in saying, "Hush! don't talk about such things!" People do talk about
'em everywhere; and if they don't talk about 'em they think about 'em,
and that is worse,--if there is anything bad about such questions, that
is. If for the Fall of man, science comes to substitute the RISE of man,
sir, it means the utter disintegration of all the spiritual pessimisms
which have been like a spasm in the heart and a cramp in the intellect of
men for so many centuries. And yet who dares to say that it is not a
perfectly legitimate and proper question to be discussed, without the
slightest regard to the fears or the threats of Pope or prelate?
Sir, I believe,--the Master rose from his chair as he spoke, and said in
a deep and solemn tone, but without any declamatory vehemence,--sir, I
believe that we are at this moment in what will be recognized not many
centuries hence as one of the late watches in the night of the dark ages.
There is a twilight ray, beyond question. We know something of the
universe, a very little, and, strangely enough, we know most of what is
farthest from us. We have weighed the planets and analyzed the flames of
the--sun and stars. We predict their movements as if they were machines
we ourselves had made and regulated. We know a good deal about the earth
on which we live. But the study of man has been so completely subjected
to our preconceived opinions, that we have got to begin all over again.
We have studied anthropology through theology; we have now to begin the
study of theology through anthropology. Until we have exhausted the
human element in every form of belief, and that can only be done by what
we may call comparative spiritual anatomy, we cannot begin to deal with
the alleged extra-human elements without blundering into all imaginable
puerilities. If you think for one moment that there is not a single
religion in the world which does not come to us through the medium of a
preexisting language; and if you remember that this language embodies
absolutely nothing but human conceptions and human passions, you will see
at once that every religion presupposes its own elements as already
existing in those to whom it is addressed. I once went to a church in
London and heard the famous Edward Irving preach, and heard some of his
congregation speak in the strange words characteristic of their
miraculous gift of tongues. I had a respect for the logical basis of
this singular phenomenon. I have always thought it was natural that any
celestial message should demand a language of its own, only to be
understood by divine illumination. All human words tend, of course, to
stop short in human meaning. And the more I hear the most sacred terms
employed, the more I am satisfied that they have entirely and radically
different meanings in the minds of those who use them. Yet they deal
with them as if they were as definite as mathematical quantities or
geometrical figures. What would become of arithmetic if the figure 2
meant three for one man and five for another and twenty for a third, and
all the other numerals were in the same way variable quantities? Mighty
intelligent correspondence business men would have with each other! But
how is this any worse than the difference of opinion which led a famous
clergyman to say to a brother theologian, "Oh, I see, my dear sir, your
God is my Devil."
Man has been studied proudly, contemptuously, rather, from the point of
view supposed to be authoritatively settled. The self-sufficiency of
egotistic natures was never more fully shown than in the expositions of
the worthlessness and wretchedness of their fellow-creatures given by the
dogmatists who have "gone back," as the vulgar phrase is, on their race,
their own flesh and blood. Did you ever read what Mr. Bancroft says
about Calvin in his article on Jonathan Edwards?--and mighty well said it
is too, in my judgment. Let me remind you of it, whether you have read
it or not. "Setting himself up over against the privileged classes, he,
with a loftier pride than theirs, revealed the power of a yet higher
order of nobility, not of a registered ancestry of fifteen generations,
but one absolutely spotless in its escutcheon, preordained in the council
chamber of eternity." I think you'll find I have got that sentence
right, word for word, and there 's a great deal more in it than many good
folks who call themselves after the reformer seem to be aware of. The
Pope put his foot on the neck of kings, but Calvin and his cohort crushed
the whole human race under their heels in the name of the Lord of Hosts.
Now, you see, the point that people don't understand is the absolute and
utter humility of science, in opposition to this doctrinal
self-sufficiency. I don't doubt this may sound a little paradoxical at
first, but I think you will find it is all right. You remember the
courtier and the monarch,--Louis the Fourteenth, wasn't it?--never mind,
give the poor fellows that live by setting you right a chance. "What
o'clock is it?" says the king. "Just whatever o'clock your Majesty
pleases," says the courtier. I venture to say the monarch was a great
deal more humble than the follower, who pretended that his master was
superior to such trifling facts as the revolution of the planet. It was
the same thing, you remember, with King Canute and the tide on the
sea-shore. The king accepted the scientific fact of the tide's rising.
The loyal hangers-on, who believed in divine right, were too proud of the
company they found themselves in to make any such humiliating admission.
But there are people, and plenty of them, to-day, who will dispute facts
just as clear to those who have taken the pains to learn what is known
about them, as that of the tide's rising. They don't like to admit these
facts, because they throw doubt upon some of their cherished opinions.
We are getting on towards the last part of this nineteenth century. What
we have gained is not so much in positive knowledge, though that is a
good deal, as it is in the freedom of discussion of every subject that
comes within the range of observation and inference. How long is it
since Mrs. Piozzi wrote,--"Let me hope that you will not pursue geology
till it leads you into doubts destructive of all comfort in this world
and all happiness in the next"?
The Master paused and I remained silent, for I was thinking things I
could not say.
--It is well always to have a woman near by when one is talking on this
class of subjects. Whether there will be three or four women to one man
in heaven is a question which I must leave to those who talk as if they
knew all about the future condition of the race to answer. But very
certainly there is much more of hearty faith, much more of spiritual
life, among women than among men, in this world. They need faith to
support them more than men do, for they have a great deal less to call
them out of themselves, and it comes easier to them, for their habitual
state of dependence teaches them to trust in others. When they become
voters, if they ever do, it may be feared that the pews will lose what
the ward-rooms gain. Relax a woman's hold on man, and her knee-joints
will soon begin to stiffen. Self-assertion brings out many fine
qualities, but it does not promote devotional habits.
I remember some such thoughts as this were passing through my mind while
the Master was talking. I noticed that the Lady was listening to the
conversation with a look of more than usual interest. We men have the
talk mostly to ourselves at this table; the Master, as you have found
out, is fond of monologues, and I myself--well, I suppose I must own to a
certain love for the reverberated music of my own accents; at any rate,
the Master and I do most of the talking. But others help us do the
listening. I think I can show that they listen to some purpose. I am
going to surprise my reader with a letter which I received very shortly
after the conversation took place which I have just reported. It is of
course by a special license, such as belongs to the supreme prerogative
of an author, that I am enabled to present it to him. He need ask no
questions: it is not his affair how I obtained the right to give
publicity to a private communication. I have become somewhat more
intimately acquainted with the writer of it than in the earlier period of
my connection with this establishment, and I think I may say have gained
her confidence to a very considerable degree.
MY DEAR SIR: The conversations I have had with you, limited as they have
been, have convinced me that I am quite safe in addressing you with
freedom on a subject which interests me, and others more than myself. We
at our end of the table have been listening, more or less intelligently,
to the discussions going on between two or three of you gentlemen on
matters of solemn import to us all. This is nothing very new to me. I
have been used, from an early period of my life, to hear the discussion
of grave questions, both in politics and religion. I have seen gentlemen
at my father's table get as warm over a theological point of dispute as
in talking over their political differences. I rather think it has
always been very much so, in bad as well as in good company; for you
remember how Milton's fallen angels amused themselves with disputing on
"providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate," and it was the same thing in
that club Goldsmith writes so pleasantly about. Indeed, why should not
people very often come, in the course of conversation, to the one subject
which lies beneath all else about which our thoughts are occupied? And
what more natural than that one should be inquiring about what another
has accepted and ceased to have any doubts concerning? It seems to me
all right that at the proper time, in the proper place, those who are
less easily convinced than their neighbors should have the fullest
liberty of calling to account all the opinions which others receive
without question. Somebody must stand sentry at the outposts of belief,
and it is a sentry's business, I believe, to challenge every one who
comes near him, friend or foe.
I want you to understand fully that I am not one of those poor nervous
creatures who are frightened out of their wits when any question is
started that implies the disturbance of their old beliefs. I manage to
see some of the periodicals, and now and then dip a little way into a new
book which deals with these curious questions you were talking about, and
others like them. You know they find their way almost everywhere. They
do not worry me in the least. When I was a little girl, they used to say
that if you put a horsehair into a tub of water it would turn into a
snake in the course of a few days. That did not seem to me so very much
stranger than it was that an egg should turn into a chicken. What can I
say to that? Only that it is the Lord's doings, and marvellous in my
eyes; and if our philosophical friend should find some little live
creatures, or what seem to be live creatures, in any of his messes, I
should say as much, and no more. You do not think I would shut up my
Bible and Prayer-Book because there is one more thing I do not understand
in a world where I understand so very little of all the wonders that
surround me?
It may be very wrong to pay any attention to those speculations about the
origin of mankind which seem to conflict with the Sacred Record. But
perhaps there is some way of reconciling them, as there is of making the
seven days of creation harmonize with modern geology. At least, these
speculations are curious enough in themselves; and I have seen so many
good and handsome children come of parents who were anything but virtuous
and comely, that I can believe in almost any amount of improvement taking
place in a tribe of living beings, if time and opportunity favor it. I
have read in books of natural history that dogs came originally from
wolves. When I remember my little Flora, who, as I used to think, could
do everything but talk, it does not seem to me that she was much nearer
her savage ancestors than some of the horrid cannibal wretches are to
their neighbors the great apes.
You see that I am tolerably liberal in my habit of looking at all these
questions. We women drift along with the current of the times,
listening, in our quiet way, to the discussions going on round us in
books and in conversation, and shift the phrases in which we think and
talk with something of the same ease as that with which we change our
style of dress from year to year. I doubt if you of the other sex know
what an effect this habit of accommodating our tastes to changing
standards has upon us. Nothing is fixed in them, as you know; the very
law of fashion is change. I suspect we learn from our dressmakers to
shift the costume of our minds, and slip on the new fashions of thinking
all the more easily because we have been accustomed to new styles of
dressing every season.
It frightens me to see how much I have written without having yet said a
word of what I began this letter on purpose to say. I have taken so much
space in "defining my position," to borrow the politicians' phrase, that
I begin to fear you will be out of patience before you come to the part
of my letter I care most about your reading.
What I want to say is this. When these matters are talked about before
persons of different ages and various shades of intelligence, I think one
ought to be very careful that his use of language does not injure the
sensibilities, perhaps blunt the reverential feelings, of those who are
listening to him. You of the sterner sex say that we women have
intuitions, but not logic, as our birthright. I shall not commit my sex
by conceding this to be true as a whole, but I will accept the first half
of it, and I will go so far as to say that we do not always care to
follow out a train of thought until it ends in a blind cul de sac, as
some of what are called the logical people are fond of doing.
Now I want to remind you that religion is not a matter of intellectual
luxury to those of us who are interested in it, but something very
different. It is our life, and more than our life; for that is measured
by pulse-beats, but our religious consciousness partakes of the Infinite,
towards which it is constantly yearning. It is very possible that a
hundred or five hundred years from now the forms of religious belief may
be so altered that we should hardly know them. But the sense of
dependence on Divine influence and the need of communion with the unseen
and eternal will be then just what they are now. It is not the
geologist's hammer, or the astronomer's telescope, or the naturalist's
microscope, that is going to take away the need of the human soul for
that Rock to rest upon which is higher than itself, that Star which never
sets, that all-pervading Presence which gives life to all the least
moving atoms of the immeasurable universe.
I have no fears for myself, and listen very quietly to all your debates.
I go from your philosophical discussions to the reading of Jeremy
Taylor's "Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying" without feeling that I have
unfitted myself in the least degree for its solemn reflections. And, as
I have mentioned his name, I cannot help saying that I do not believe
that good man himself would have ever shown the bitterness to those who
seem to be at variance with the received doctrines which one may see in
some of the newspapers that call themselves "religious." I have kept a
few old books from my honored father's library, and among them is another
of his which I always thought had more true Christianity in its title
than there is in a good many whole volumes. I am going to take the book
down, or up,--for it is not a little one,--and write out the title,
which, I dare say, you remember, and very likely you have the book.
"Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying, showing the Unreasonableness of
prescribing to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of persecuting
Different Opinions."
Now, my dear sir, I am sure you believe that I want to be liberal and
reasonable, and not to act like those weak alarmists who, whenever the
silly sheep begin to skip as if something was after them, and huddle
together in their fright, are sure there must be a bear or a lion coming
to eat them up. But for all that, I want to beg you to handle some of
these points, which are so involved in the creed of a good many
well-intentioned persons that you cannot separate them from it without
picking their whole belief to pieces, with more thought for them than you
might think at first they were entitled to. I have no doubt you
gentlemen are as wise as serpents, and I want you to be as harmless as
doves.
The Young Girl who sits by me has, I know, strong religious instincts.
Instead of setting her out to ask all sorts of questions, I would rather,
if I had my way, encourage her to form a habit of attending to religious
duties, and make the most of the simple faith in which she was bred. I
think there are a good many questions young persons may safely postpone
to a more convenient season; and as this young creature is overworked, I
hate to have her excited by the fever of doubt which it cannot be denied
is largely prevailing in our time.
I know you must have looked on our other young friend, who has devoted
himself to the sublimest of the sciences, with as much interest as I do.
When I was a little girl I used to write out a line of Young's as a copy
in my writing-book,
"An undevout astronomer is mad";
but I do not now feel quite so sure that the contemplation of all the
multitude of remote worlds does not tend to weaken the idea of a personal
Deity. It is not so much that nebular theory which worries me, when I
think about this subject, as a kind of bewilderment when I try to
conceive of a consciousness filling all those frightful blanks of space
they talk about. I sometimes doubt whether that young man worships
anything but the stars. They tell me that many young students of science
like him never see the inside of a church. I cannot help wishing they
did. It humanizes people, quite apart from any higher influence it
exerts upon them. One reason, perhaps, why they do not care to go to
places of worship is that they are liable to hear the questions they know
something about handled in sermons by those who know very much less about
them. And so they lose a great deal. Almost every human being, however
vague his notions of the Power addressed, is capable of being lifted and
solemnized by the exercise of public prayer. When I was a young girl we
travelled in Europe, and I visited Ferney with my parents; and I remember
we all stopped before a chapel, and I read upon its front, I knew Latin
enough to understand it, I am pleased to say,--Deo erexit Voltaire. I
never forgot it; and knowing what a sad scoffer he was at most sacred
things, I could not but be impressed with the fact that even he was not
satisfied with himself, until he had shown his devotion in a public and
lasting form.
We all want religion sooner or later. I am afraid there are some who
have no natural turn for it, as there are persons without an ear for
music, to which, if I remember right, I heard one of you comparing what
you called religious genius. But sorrow and misery bring even these to
know what it means, in a great many instances. May I not say to you, my
friend, that I am one who has learned the secret of the inner life by the
discipline of trials in the life of outward circumstance? I can remember
the time when I thought more about the shade of color in a ribbon,
whether it matched my complexion or not, than I did about my spiritual
interests in this world or the next. It was needful that I should learn
the meaning of that text, "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth."
Since I have been taught in the school of trial I have felt, as I never
could before, how precious an inheritance is the smallest patrimony of
faith. When everything seemed gone from me, I found I had still one
possession. The bruised reed that I had never leaned on became my staff.
The smoking flax which had been a worry to my eyes burst into flame, and
I lighted the taper at it which has since guided all my footsteps. And I
am but one of the thousands who have had the same experience. They have
been through the depths of affliction, and know the needs of the human
soul. It will find its God in the unseen,--Father, Saviour, Divine
Spirit, Virgin Mother, it must and will breathe its longings and its
griefs into the heart of a Being capable of understanding all its
necessities and sympathizing with all its woes.
I am jealous, yes, I own I am jealous of any word, spoken or written,
that would tend to impair that birthright of reverence which becomes for
so many in after years the basis of a deeper religious sentiment. And
yet, as I have said, I cannot and will not shut my eyes to the problems
which may seriously affect our modes of conceiving the eternal truths on
which, and by which, our souls must live. What a fearful time is this
into which we poor sensitive and timid creatures are born! I suppose the
life of every century has more or less special resemblance to that of
some particular Apostle. I cannot help thinking this century has Thomas
for its model. How do you suppose the other Apostles felt when that
experimental philosopher explored the wounds of the Being who to them was
divine with his inquisitive forefinger? In our time that finger has
multiplied itself into ten thousand thousand implements of research,
challenging all mysteries, weighing the world as in a balance, and
sifting through its prisms and spectroscopes the light that comes from
the throne of the Eternal.
Pity us, dear Lord, pity us! The peace in believing which belonged to
other ages is not for us. Again Thy wounds are opened that we may know
whether it is the blood of one like ourselves which flows from them, or
whether it is a Divinity that is bleeding for His creatures. Wilt Thou
not take the doubt of Thy children whom the time commands to try all
things in the place of the unquestioning faith of earlier and
simpler-hearted generations? We too have need of Thee. Thy martyrs in
other ages were cast into the flames, but no fire could touch their
immortal and indestructible faith. We sit in safety and in peace, so far
as these poor bodies are concerned; but our cherished beliefs, the hopes,
the trust that stayed the hearts of those we loved who have gone before
us, are cast into the fiery furnace of an age which is fast turning to
dross the certainties and the sanctities once prized as our most precious
inheritance. You will understand me, my dear sir, and all my solicitudes
and apprehensions. Had I never been assailed by the questions that meet
all thinking persons in our time, I might not have thought so anxiously
about the risk of perplexing others. I know as well as you must that
there are many articles of belief clinging to the skirts of our time
which are the bequests of the ages of ignorance that God winked at. But
for all that I would train a child in the nurture and admonition of the
Lord, according to the simplest and best creed I could disentangle from
those barbarisms, and I would in every way try to keep up in young
persons that standard of reverence for all sacred subjects which may,
without any violent transition, grow and ripen into the devotion of later
years. Believe me,
Very sincerely yours,
I have thought a good deal about this letter and the writer of it lately.
She seemed at first removed to a distance from all of us, but here I find
myself in somewhat near relations with her. What has surprised me more
than that, however, is to find that she is becoming so much acquainted
with the Register of Deeds. Of all persons in the world, I should least
have thought of him as like to be interested in her, and still less, if
possible, of her fancying him. I can only say they have been in pretty
close conversation several times of late, and, if I dared to think it of
so very calm and dignified a personage, I should say that her color was a
little heightened after one or more of these interviews. No! that would
be too absurd! But I begin to think nothing is absurd in the matter of
the relations of the two sexes; and if this high-bred woman fancies the
attentions of a piece of human machinery like this elderly individual, it
is none of my business.
I have been at work on some more of the Young Astronomer's lines. I find
less occasion for meddling with them as he grows more used to
versification. I think I could analyze the processes going on in his
mind, and the conflict of instincts which he cannot in the nature of
things understand. But it is as well to give the reader a chance to find
out for himself what is going on in the young man's heart and intellect.
WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.
III
The snows that glittered on the disk of Mars
Have melted, and the planet's fiery orb
Rolls in the crimson summer of its year;
But what to me the summer or the snow
Of worlds that throb with life in forms unknown,
If life indeed be theirs; I heed not these.
My heart is simply human; all my care
For them whose dust is fashioned like mine own;
These ache with cold and hunger, live in pain,
And shake with fear of worlds more full of woe;
There may be others worthier of my love,
But such I know not save through these I know.
There are two veils of language, hid beneath
Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves;
And not that other self which nods and smiles
And babbles in our name; the one is Prayer,
Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue
That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven;
The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web
Around our naked speech and makes it bold.
I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb
In the great temple where I nightly serve
Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim
The poet's franchise, though I may not hope
To wear his garland; hear me while I tell
My story in such form as poets use,
But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind
Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again.
Thou Vision, floating in the breathless air
Between me and the fairest of the stars,
I tell my lonely thoughts as unto thee.
Look not for marvels of the scholar's pen
In my rude measure; I can only show
A slender-margined, unillumined page,
And trust its meaning to the flattering eye
That reads it in the gracious light of love.
Ah, wouldst thou clothe thyself in breathing shape
And nestle at my side, my voice should lend
Whate'er my verse may lack of tender rhythm
To make thee listen.
I have stood entranced
When, with her fingers wandering o'er the keys,
The white enchantress with the golden hair
Breathed all her soul through some unvalued rhyme;
Some flower of song that long had lost its bloom;
Lo! its dead summer kindled as she sang!
The sweet contralto, like the ringdove's coo,
Thrilled it with brooding, fond, caressing tones,
And the pale minstrel's passion lived again,
Tearful and trembling as a dewy rose
The wind has shaken till it fills the air
With light and fragrance. Such the wondrous charm
A song can borrow when the bosom throbs
That lends it breath.
So from the poet's lips
His verse sounds doubly sweet, for none like him
Feels every cadence of its wave-like flow;
He lives the passion over, while he reads,
That shook him as he sang his lofty strain,
And pours his life through each resounding line,
As ocean, when the stormy winds are hushed,
Still rolls and thunders through his billowy caves.
Let me retrace the record of the years
That made me what I am. A man most wise,
But overworn with toil and bent with age,
Sought me to be his scholar,--me, run wild
From books and teachers,--kindled in my soul
The love of knowledge; led me to his tower,
Showed me the wonders of the midnight realm
His hollow sceptre ruled, or seemed to rule,
Taught me the mighty secrets of the spheres,
Trained me to find the glimmering specks of light
Beyond the unaided sense, and on my chart
To string them one by one, in order due,
As on a rosary a saint his beads.
I was his only scholar; I became
The echo to his thought; whate'er he knew
Was mine for asking; so from year to year
We wrought together, till there came a time
When I, the learner, was the master half
Of the twinned being in the dome-crowned tower.
Minds roll in paths like planets; they revolve
This in a larger, that a narrower ring,
But round they come at last to that same phase,
That self-same light and shade they showed before.
I learned his annual and his monthly tale,
His weekly axiom and his daily phrase,
I felt them coming in the laden air,
And watched them laboring up to vocal breath,
Even as the first-born at his father's board
Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest
Is on its way, by some mysterious sign
Forewarned, the click before the striking bell.
He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves,
Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care;
He lived for me in what he once had been,
But I for him, a shadow, a defence,
The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff,
Leaned on so long he fell if left alone.
I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand,
Love was my spur and longing after fame,
But his the goading thorn of sleepless age
That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades,
That clutches what it may with eager grasp,
And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands.
All this he dreamed not. He would sit him down
Thinking to work his problems as of old,
And find the star he thought so plain a blur,
The columned figures labyrinthine wilds
Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls
That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive
And struggle for a while, and then his eye
Would lose its light, and over all his mind
The cold gray mist would settle; and erelong
The darkness fell, and I was left alone.
Alone! no climber of an Alpine cliff,
No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea,
Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills
The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth
To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky.
Alone! And as the shepherd leaves his flock
To feed upon the hillside, he meanwhile
Finds converse in the warblings of the pipe
Himself has fashioned for his vacant hour,
So have I grown companion to myself,
And to the wandering spirits of the air
That smile and whisper round us in our dreams.
Thus have I learned to search if I may know
The whence and why of all beneath the stars
And all beyond them, and to weigh my life
As in a balance, poising good and ill
Against each other,-asking of the Power
That flung me forth among the whirling worlds,
If I am heir to any inborn right,
Or only as an atom of the dust
That every wind may blow where'er it will.
I am not humble; I was shown my place,
Clad in such robes as Nature had at hand;
Took what she gave, not chose; I know no shame,
No fear for being simply what I am.
I am not proud, I hold my every breath
At Nature's mercy. I am as a babe
Borne in a giant's arms, he knows not where;
Each several heart-beat, counted like the coin
A miser reckons, is a special gift
As from an unseen hand; if that withhold
Its bounty for a moment, I am left
A clod upon the earth to which I fall.
Something I find in me that well might claim
The love of beings in a sphere above
This doubtful twilight world of right and wrong;
Something that shows me of the self-same clay
That creeps or swims or flies in humblest form.
Had I been asked, before I left my bed
Of shapeless dust, what clothing I would wear,
I would have said, More angel and less worm;
But for their sake who are even such as I,
Of the same mingled blood, I would not choose
To hate that meaner portion of myself
Which makes me brother to the least of men.
I dare not be a coward with my lips
Who dare to question all things in my soul;
Some men may find their wisdom on their knees,
Some prone and grovelling in the dust like slaves;
Let the meek glow-worm glisten in the dew;
I ask to lift my taper to the sky
As they who hold their lamps above their heads,
Trusting the larger currents up aloft,
Rather than crossing eddies round their breast,
Threatening with every puff the flickering blaze.
My life shall be a challenge, not a truce!
This is my homage to the mightier powers,
To ask my boldest question, undismayed
By muttered threats that some hysteric sense
Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne
Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err,
They all must err who have to feel their way
As bats that fly at noon; for what are we
But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day,
Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps
Spell out their paths in syllables of pain?
Thou wilt not hold in scorn the child who dares
Look up to Thee, the Father,--dares to ask
More than Thy wisdom answers. From Thy hand
The worlds were cast; yet every leaflet claims
From that same hand its little shining sphere
Of star-lit dew; thine image, the great sun,
Girt with his mantle of tempestuous flame,
Glares in mid-heaven; but to his noontide blaze
The slender violet lifts its lidless eye,
And from his splendor steals its fairest hue,
Its sweetest perfume from his scorching fire.
I may just as well stop here as anywhere, for there is more of the
manuscript to come, and I can only give it in instalments.
The Young Astronomer had told me I might read any portions of his
manuscript I saw fit to certain friends. I tried this last extract on
the old Master.
It's the same story we all have to tell,--said he, when I had done
reading.---We are all asking questions nowadays. I should like to hear
him read some of his verses himself, and I think some of the other
boarders would like to. I wonder if he wouldn't do it, if we asked him!
Poets read their own compositions in a singsong sort of way; but they do
seem to love 'em so, that I always enjoy it. It makes me laugh a little
inwardly to see how they dandle their poetical babies, but I don't let
them know it. We must get up a select party of the boarders to hear him
read. We'll send him a regular invitation. I will put my name at the
head of it, and you shall write it.
--That was neatly done. How I hate writing such things! But I suppose I
must do it.
VIII
The Master and I had been thinking for some time of trying to get the
Young Astronomer round to our side of the table. There are many subjects
on which both of us like to talk with him, and it would be convenient to
have him nearer to us. How to manage it was not quite so clear as it
might have been. The Scarabee wanted to sit with his back to the light,
as it was in his present position. He used his eyes so much in studying
minute objects, that he wished to spare them all fatigue, and did not
like facing a window. Neither of us cared to ask the Man of Letters, so
called, to change his place, and of course we could not think of making
such a request of the Young Girl or the Lady. So we were at a stand with
reference to this project of ours.
But while we were proposing, Fate or Providence disposed everything for
us. The Man of Letters, so called, was missing one morning, having
folded his tent--that is, packed his carpet-bag--with the silence of the
Arabs, and encamped--that is, taken lodgings--in some locality which he
had forgotten to indicate.
The Landlady bore this sudden bereavement remarkably well. Her remarks
and reflections; though borrowing the aid of homely imagery and doing
occasional violence to the nicer usages of speech, were not without
philosophical discrimination.
--I like a gentleman that is a gentleman. But there's a difference in
what folks call gentlemen as there is in what you put on table. There is
cabbages and there is cauliflowers. There is clams and there is oysters.
There is mackerel and there is salmon. And there is some that knows the
difference and some that doos n't. I had a little account with that
boarder that he forgot to settle before he went off, so all of a suddin.
I sha'n't say anything about it. I've seen the time when I should have
felt bad about losing what he owed me, but it was no great matter; and if
he 'll only stay away now he 's gone, I can stand losing it, and not cry
my eyes out nor lay awake all night neither. I never had ought to have
took him. Where he come from and where he's gone to is unbeknown to me.
If he'd only smoked good tobacco, I wouldn't have said a word; but it was
such dreadful stuff, it 'll take a week to get his chamber sweet enough
to show them that asks for rooms. It doos smell like all possest.
--Left any goods?--asked the Salesman.
--Or dockermunts?--added the Member of the Haouse.
The Landlady answered with a faded smile, which implied that there was no
hope in that direction. Dr. Benjamin, with a sudden recurrence of
youthful feeling, made a fan with the fingers of his right hand, the
second phalanx of the thumb resting on the tip of the nose, and the
remaining digits diverging from each other, in the plane of the median
line of the face,--I suppose this is the way he would have described the
gesture, which is almost a specialty of the Parisian gamin. That Boy
immediately copied it, and added greatly to its effect by extending the
fingers of the other hand in a line with those of the first, and
vigorously agitating those of the two hands,--a gesture which acts like
a puncture on the distended self-esteem of one to whom it is addressed,
and cheapens the memory of the absent to a very low figure.
I wish the reader to observe that I treasure up with interest all the
words uttered by the Salesman. It must have been noticed that he very
rarely speaks. Perhaps he has an inner life, with its own deep
emotional, and lofty contemplative elements, but as we see him, he is the
boarder reduced to the simplest expression of that term. Yet, like most
human creatures, he has generic and specific characters not unworthy of
being studied. I notice particularly a certain electrical briskness of
movement, such as one may see in a squirrel, which clearly belongs to his
calling. The dry-goodsman's life behind his counter is a succession of
sudden, snappy perceptions and brief series of coordinate spasms; as
thus:
"Purple calico, three quarters wide, six yards."
Up goes the arm; bang! tumbles out the flat roll and turns half a dozen
somersets, as if for the fun of the thing; the six yards of calico hurry
over the measuring nails, hunching their backs up, like six cankerworms;
out jump the scissors; snip, clip, rip; the stuff is wisped up,
brown--papered, tied, labelled, delivered, and the man is himself again,
like a child just come out of a convulsion-fit. Think of a man's having
some hundreds of these semi-epileptic seizures every day, and you need
not wonder that he does not say much; these fits take the talk all out of
him.
But because he, or any other man, does not say much, it does not follow
that he may not have, as I have said, an exalted and intense inner life.
I have known a number of cases where a man who seemed thoroughly
commonplace and unemotional has all at once surprised everybody by
telling the story of his hidden life far more pointedly and dramatically
than any playwright or novelist or poet could have told it for him. I
will not insult your intelligence, Beloved, by saying how he has told it.
--We had been talking over the subjects touched upon in the Lady's
letter.
--I suppose one man in a dozen--said the Master--ought to be born a
skeptic. That was the proportion among the Apostles, at any rate.
--So there was one Judas among them,--I remarked.
--Well,--said the Master,--they 've been whitewashing Judas of late. But
never mind him. I did not say there was not one rogue on the average
among a dozen men. I don't see how that would interfere with my
proposition. If I say that among a dozen men you ought to find one that
weighs over a hundred and fifty pounds, and you tell me that there were
twelve men in your club, and one of 'em had red hair, I don't see that
you have materially damaged my statement.
--I thought it best to let the old Master have his easy victory, which
was more apparent than real, very evidently, and he went on.
--When the Lord sends out a batch of human beings, say a hundred--Did you
ever read my book, the new edition of it, I mean?
It is rather awkward to answer such a question in the negative, but I
said, with the best grace I could, "No, not the last edition."
--Well, I must give you a copy of it. My book and I are pretty much the
same thing. Sometimes I steal from my book in my talk without mentioning
it, and then I say to myself, "Oh, that won't do; everybody has read my
book and knows it by heart." And then the other I says,--you know there
are two of us, right and left, like a pair of shoes,--the other I says,
"You're a--something or other--fool. They have n't read your confounded
old book; besides, if they have, they have forgotten all about it."
Another time, I say, thinking I will be very honest, "I have said
something about that in my book"; and then the other I says, "What a
Balaam's quadruped you are to tell 'em it's in your book; they don't care
whether it is or not, if it's anything worth saying; and if it isn't
worth saying, what are you braying for?" That is a rather sensible
fellow, that other chap we talk with, but an impudent whelp. I never got
such abuse from any blackguard in my life as I have from that No. 2 of
me, the one that answers the other's questions and makes the comments,
and does what in demotic phrase is called the "sarsing."
--I laughed at that. I have just such a fellow always with me, as wise
as Solomon, if I would only heed him; but as insolent as Shimei, cursing,
and throwing stones and dirt, and behaving as if he had the traditions of
the "ape-like human being" born with him rather than civilized instincts.
One does not have to be a king to know what it is to keep a king's
jester.
--I mentioned my book,--the Master said, because I have something in it
on the subject we were talking about. I should like to read you a
passage here and there out of it, where I have expressed myself a little
more freely on some of those matters we handle in conversation. If you
don't quarrel with it, I must give you a copy of the book. It's a rather
serious thing to get a copy of a book from the writer of it. It has made
my adjectives sweat pretty hard, I know, to put together an answer
returning thanks and not lying beyond the twilight of veracity, if one
may use a figure. Let me try a little of my book on you, in divided
doses, as my friends the doctors say.
-Fiat experimentum in corpore vili,--I said, laughing at my own expense.
I don't doubt the medicament is quite as good as the patient deserves,
and probably a great deal better,--I added, reinforcing my feeble
compliment.
[When you pay a compliment to an author, don't qualify it in the next
sentence so as to take all the goodness out of it. Now I am thinking of
it, I will give you one or two pieces of advice. Be careful to assure
yourself that the person you are talking with wrote the article or book
you praise. It is not very pleasant to be told, "Well, there, now! I
always liked your writings, but you never did anything half so good as
this last piece," and then to have to tell the blunderer that this last
piece is n't yours, but t' other man's. Take care that the phrase or
sentence you commend is not one that is in quotation-marks. "The best
thing in your piece, I think, is a line I do not remember meeting before;
it struck me as very true and well expressed:
"'An honest man's the noblest work of God.'
"But, my dear lady, that line is one which is to be found in a writer of
the last century, and not original with me." One ought not to have
undeceived her, perhaps, but one is naturally honest, and cannot bear to
be credited with what is not his own. The lady blushes, of course, and
says she has not read much ancient literature, or some such thing. The
pearl upon the Ethiop's arm is very pretty in verse, but one does not
care to furnish the dark background for other persons' jewelry.]
I adjourned from the table in company with the old Master to his
apartments. He was evidently in easy circumstances, for he had the best
accommodations the house afforded. We passed through a reception room to
his library, where everything showed that he had ample means for
indulging the modest tastes of a scholar.
--The first thing, naturally, when one enters a scholar's study or
library, is to look at his books. One gets a notion very speedily of his
tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his bookshelves.
Of course, you know there are many fine houses where the library is a
part of the upholstery, so to speak. Books in handsome binding kept
locked under plate-glass in showy dwarf bookcases are as important to
stylish establishments as servants in livery; who sit with folded arms,
are to stylish equipages. I suppose those wonderful statues with the
folded arms do sometimes change their attitude, and I suppose those books
with the gilded backs do sometimes get opened, but it is nobody's
business whether they do or not, and it is not best to ask too many
questions.
This sort of thing is common enough, but there is another case that may
prove deceptive if you undertake to judge from appearances. Once in a
while you will come on a house where you will find a family of readers
and almost no library. Some of the most indefatigable devourers of
literature have very few books. They belong to book clubs, they haunt
the public libraries, they borrow of friends, and somehow or other get
hold of everything they want, scoop out all it holds for them, and have
done with it. When I want a book, it is as a tiger wants a sheep. I
must have it with one spring, and, if I miss it, go away defeated and
hungry. And my experience with public libraries is that the first volume
of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second,
when that is out.
--I was pretty well prepared to understand the Master's library and his
account of it. We seated ourselves in two very comfortable chairs, and I
began the conversation.
-I see you have a large and rather miscellaneous collection of books. Did
you get them together by accident or according to some preconceived plan?
--Both, sir, both,--the Master answered. When Providence throws a good
book in my way, I bow to its decree and purchase it as an act of piety,
if it is reasonably or unreasonably cheap. I adopt a certain number of
books every year, out of a love for the foundlings and stray children of
other people's brains that nobody seems to care for. Look here.
He took down a Greek Lexicon finely bound in calf, and spread it open.
Do you see that Hedericus? I had Greek dictionaries enough and to spare,
but I saw that noble quarto lying in the midst of an ignoble crowd of
cheap books, and marked with a price which I felt to be an insult to
scholarship, to the memory of Homer, sir, and the awful shade of
AEschylus. I paid the mean price asked for it, and I wanted to double
it, but I suppose it would have been a foolish sacrifice of coin to
sentiment: I love that book for its looks and behavior. None of your
"half-calf" economies in that volume, sir! And see how it lies open
anywhere! There is n't a book in my library that has such a generous way
of laying its treasures before you. From Alpha to Omega, calm, assured
rest at any page that your choice or accident may light on. No lifting
of a rebellious leaf like an upstart servant that does not know his place
and can never be taught manners, but tranquil, well-bred repose. A book
may be a perfect gentleman in its aspect and demeanor, and this book
would be good company for personages like Roger Ascham and his pupils the
Lady Elizabeth and the Lady Jane Grey.
The Master was evidently riding a hobby, and what I wanted to know was
the plan on which he had formed his library. So I brought him back to
the point by asking him the question in so many words.
Yes,--he said,--I have a kind of notion of the way in which a library
ought to be put together--no, I don't mean that, I mean ought to grow. I
don't pretend to say that mine is a model, but it serves my turn well
enough, and it represents me pretty accurately. A scholar must shape his
own shell, secrete it one might almost say, for secretion is only
separation, you know, of certain elements derived from the materials of
the world about us. And a scholar's study, with the books lining its
walls, is his shell. It is n't a mollusk's shell, either; it 's a
caddice-worm's shell. You know about the caddice-worm?
--More or less; less rather than more,--was my humble reply.
Well, sir, the caddice-worm is the larva of a fly, and he makes a case
for himself out of all sorts of bits of everything that happen to suit
his particular fancy, dead or alive, sticks and stones and small shells
with their owners in 'em, living as comfortable as ever. Every one of
these caddice-worms has his special fancy as to what he will pick up and
glue together, with a kind of natural cement he provides himself, to make
his case out of. In it he lives, sticking his head and shoulders out
once in a while, that is all. Don't you see that a student in his
library is a caddice-worm in his case? I've told you that I take an
interest in pretty much everything, and don't mean to fence out any human
interests from the private grounds of my intelligence. Then, again,
there is a subject, perhaps I may say there is more than one, that I want
to exhaust, to know to the very bottom. And besides, of course I must
have my literary harem, my pare aux cerfs, where my favorites await my
moments of leisure and pleasure,--my scarce and precious editions, my
luxurious typographical masterpieces; my Delilahs, that take my head in
their lap: the pleasant story-tellers and the like; the books I love
because they are fair to look upon, prized by collectors, endeared by old
associations, secret treasures that nobody else knows anything about;
books, in short, that I like for insufficient reasons it may be, but
peremptorily, and mean to like and to love and to cherish till death us
do part.
Don't you see I have given you a key to the way my library is made up, so
that you can apriorize the plan according to which I have filled my
bookcases? I will tell you how it is carried out.
In the first place, you see, I have four extensive cyclopaedias. Out of
these I can get information enough to serve my immediate purpose on
almost any subject. These, of course, are supplemented by geographical,
biographical, bibliographical, and other dictionaries, including of
course lexicons to all the languages I ever meddle with. Next to these
come the works relating to my one or two specialties, and these
collections I make as perfect as I can. Every library should try to be
complete on something, if it were only on the history of pin-heads. I
don't mean that I buy all the trashy compilations on my special subjects,
but I try to have all the works of any real importance relating to them,
old as well as new. In the following compartment you will find the great
authors in all the languages I have mastered, from Homer and Hesiod
downward to the last great English name.
This division, you see, you can make almost as extensive or as limited as
you choose. You can crowd the great representative writers into a small
compass; or you can make a library consisting only of the different
editions of Horace, if you have space and money enough. Then comes the
Harem, the shelf or the bookcase of Delilahs, that you have paid wicked
prices for, that you love without pretending to be reasonable about it,
and would bag in case of fire before all the rest, just as Mr. Townley
took the Clytie to his carriage when the anti-Catholic mob threatened his
house in 1780. As for the foundlings like my Hedericus, they go among
their peers; it is a pleasure to take them, from the dusty stall where
they were elbowed by plebeian school-books and battered odd volumes, and
give them Alduses and Elzevirs for companions.
Nothing remains but the Infirmary. The most painful subjects are the
unfortunates that have lost a cover. Bound a hundred years ago, perhaps,
and one of the rich old browned covers gone--what a pity! Do you know
what to do about it? I 'll tell you,--no, I 'll show you. Look at this
volume. M. T. Ciceronis Opera,--a dozen of 'em,--one of 'em minus half
his cover, a poor one-legged cripple, six months ago,--now see him.
--He looked very respectably indeed, both covers dark, ancient, very
decently matched; one would hardly notice the fact that they were not
twins.
-I 'll tell you what I did. You poor devil, said I, you are a disgrace
to your family. We must send you to a surgeon and have some kind of a
Taliacotian operation performed on you. (You remember the operation as
described in Hudibras, of course.) The first thing was to find a subject
of similar age and aspect ready to part with one of his members. So I
went to Quidlibet's,--you know Quidlibet and that hieroglyphic sign of
his with the omniscient-looking eye as its most prominent feature,--and
laid my case before him. I want you, said I, to look up an old book of
mighty little value,--one of your ten-cent vagabonds would be the sort of
thing,--but an old beggar, with a cover like this, and lay it by for me.
And Quidlibet, who is a pleasant body to deal with,--only he has insulted
one or two gentlemanly books by selling them to me at very low-bred and
shamefully insufficient prices,--Quidlibet, I say, laid by three old
books for me to help myself from, and did n't take the trouble even to
make me pay the thirty cents for 'em. Well, said I to myself, let us
look at our three books that have undergone the last insult short of the
trunkmaker's or the paper-mills, and see what they are. There may be
something worth looking at in one or the other of 'em.
Now do you know it was with a kind of a tremor that I untied the package
and looked at these three unfortunates, too humble for the companionable
dime to recognize as its equal in value. The same sort of feeling you
know if you ever tried the Bible-and-key, or the Sortes Virgiliance. I
think you will like to know what the three books were which had been
bestowed upon me gratis, that I might tear away one of the covers of the
one that best matched my Cicero, and give it to the binder to cobble my
crippled volume with.
The Master took the three books from a cupboard and continued.
No. I. An odd volume of The Adventurer. It has many interesting things
enough, but is made precious by containing Simon Browne's famous
Dedication to the Queen of his Answer to Tindal's "Christianity as old as
the Creation." Simon Browne was the Man without a Soul. An excellent
person, a most worthy dissenting minister, but lying under a strange
delusion.
Here is a paragraph from his Dedication:
"He was once a man; and of some little name; but of no worth, as his
present unparalleled case makes but too manifest; for by the immediate
hand of an avenging GOD, his very thinking substance has, for more than
seven years, been continually wasting away, till it is wholly perished
out of him, if it be not utterly come to nothing. None, no, not the least
remembrance of its very ruins, remains, not the shadow of an idea is
left, nor any sense that so much as one single one, perfect or imperfect,
whole or diminished, ever did appear to a mind within him, or was
perceived by it."
Think of this as the Dedication of a book "universally allowed to be the
best which that controversy produced," and what a flood of light it pours
on the insanities of those self-analyzing diarists whose morbid reveries
have been so often mistaken for piety! No. I. had something for me,
then, besides the cover, which was all it claimed to have worth offering.
No. II. was "A View of Society and Manners in Italy." Vol. III. By John
Moore, M. D. (Zeluco Moore.) You know his pleasant book. In this
particular volume what interested me most, perhaps, was the very spirited
and intelligent account of the miracle of the liquefaction of the blood
of Saint Januarius, but it gave me an hour's mighty agreeable reading.
So much for Number Two.
No. III. was "An ESSAY On the Great EFFECTS of Even Languid and Unheeded
LOCAL MOTION." By the Hon. Robert Boyle. Published in 1685, and, as
appears from other sources, "received with great and general applause."
I confess I was a little startled to find how near this earlier
philosopher had come to the modern doctrines, such as are illustrated in
Tyndall's "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion." He speaks of "Us, who
endeavor to resolve the Phenomena of Nature into Matter and Local
motion." That sounds like the nineteenth century, but what shall we say
to this? "As when a bar of iron or silver, having been well hammered, is
newly taken off of the anvil; though the eye can discern no motion in it,
yet the touch will readily perceive it to be very hot, and if you spit
upon it, the brisk agitation of the insensible parts will become visible
in that which they will produce in the liquor." He takes a bar of tin,
and tries whether by bending it to and fro two or three times he cannot
"procure a considerable internal commotion among the parts "; and having
by this means broken or cracked it in the middle, finds, as he expected,
that the middle parts had considerably heated each other. There are many
other curious and interesting observations in the volume which I should
like to tell you of, but these will serve my purpose.
--Which book furnished you the old cover you wanted?--said I.
--Did he kill the owl?--said the Master, laughing. [I suppose you, the
reader, know the owl story.]--It was Number Two that lent me one of his
covers. Poor wretch! He was one of three, and had lost his two
brothers. From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.
The Scripture had to be fulfilled in his case. But I couldn't help
saying to myself, What do you keep writing books for, when the stalls are
covered all over with 'em, good books, too, that nobody will give ten
cents apiece for, lying there like so many dead beasts of burden, of no
account except to strip off their hides? What is the use, I say? I have
made a book or two in my time, and I am making another that perhaps will
see the light one of these days. But if I had my life to live over again,
I think I should go in for silence, and get as near to Nirvana as I
could. This language is such a paltry tool! The handle of it cuts and
the blade doesn't. You muddle yourself by not knowing what you mean by a
word, and send out your unanswered riddles and rebuses to clear up other
people's difficulties. It always seems to me that talk is a ripple and
thought is a ground swell. A string of words, that mean pretty much
anything, helps you in a certain sense to get hold of a thought, just as
a string of syllables that mean nothing helps you to a word; but it's a
poor business, it's a poor business, and the more you study definition
the more you find out how poor it is. Do you know I sometimes think our
little entomological neighbor is doing a sounder business than we people
that make books about ourselves and our slippery abstractions? A man can
see the spots on a bug and count 'em, and tell what their color is, and
put another bug alongside of him and see whether the two are alike or
different. And when he uses a word he knows just what he means. There
is no mistake as to the meaning and identity of pulex irritans, confound
him!
--What if we should look in, some day, on the Scarabeeist, as he calls
himself?--said I.---The fact is the Master had got agoing at such a rate
that I was willing to give a little turn to the conversation.
--Oh, very well,--said the Master,--I had some more things to say, but I
don't doubt they'll keep. And besides, I take an interest in entomology,
and have my own opinion on the meloe question.
--You don't mean to say you have studied insects as well as solar systems
and the order of things generally?
--He looked pleased. All philosophers look pleased when people say to
them virtually, "Ye are gods." The Master says he is vain
constitutionally, and thanks God that he is. I don't think he has enough
vanity to make a fool of himself with it, but the simple truth is he
cannot help knowing that he has a wide and lively intelligence, and it
pleases him to know it, and to be reminded of it, especially in an
oblique and tangential sort of way, so as not to look like downright
flattery.
Yes, yes, I have amused a summer or two with insects, among other things.
I described a new tabanus,--horsefly, you know,--which, I think, had
escaped notice. I felt as grand when I showed up my new discovery as if
I had created the beast. I don't doubt Herschel felt as if he had made a
planet when he first showed the astronomers Georgium Sidus, as he called
it. And that reminds me of something. I was riding on the outside of a
stagecoach from London to Windsor in the year--never mind the year, but
it must have been in June, I suppose, for I bought some strawberries.
England owes me a sixpence with interest from date, for I gave the woman
a shilling, and the coach contrived to start or the woman timed it so
that I just missed getting my change. What an odd thing memory is, to be
sure, to have kept such a triviality, and have lost so much that was
invaluable! She is a crazy wench, that Mnemosyne; she throws her jewels
out of the window and locks up straws and old rags in her strong box.
[De profundis! said I to myself, the bottom of the bushel has dropped
out! Sancta--Maria, ora pro nobis!]
--But as I was saying, I was riding on the outside of a stage-coach from
London to Windsor, when all at once a picture familiar to me from my New
England village childhood came upon me like a reminiscence rather than a
revelation. It was a mighty bewilderment of slanted masts and spars and
ladders and ropes, from the midst of which a vast tube, looking as if it
might be a piece of ordnance such as the revolted angels battered the
walls of Heaven with, according to Milton, lifted its muzzle defiantly
towards the sky. Why, you blessed old rattletrap, said I to myself, I
know you as well as I know my father's spectacles and snuff-box! And
that same crazy witch of a Memory, so divinely wise and foolish, travels
thirty-five hundred miles or so in a single pulse-beat, makes straight
for an old house and an old library and an old corner of it, and whisks
out a volume of an old cyclopaedia, and there is the picture of which
this is the original. Sir William Herschel's great telescope! It was
just about as big, as it stood there by the roadside, as it was in the
picture, not much different any way. Why should it be? The pupil of
your eye is only a gimlet-hole, not so very much bigger than the eye of a
sail-needle, and a camel has to go through it before you can see him.
You look into a stereoscope and think you see a miniature of a building
or a mountain; you don't, you 're made a fool of by your lying
intelligence, as you call it; you see the building and the mountain just
as large as with your naked eye looking straight at the real objects.
Doubt it, do you? Perhaps you'd like to doubt it to the music of a
couple of gold five-dollar pieces. If you would, say the word, and man
and money, as Messrs. Heenan and Morrissey have it, shall be forthcoming;
for I will make you look at a real landscape with your right eye, and a
stereoscopic view of it with your left eye, both at once, and you can
slide one over the other by a little management and see how exactly the
picture overlies the true landscape. We won't try it now, because I want
to read you something out of my book.
--I have noticed that the Master very rarely fails to come back to his
original proposition, though he, like myself, is fond of zigzagging in
order to reach it. Men's minds are like the pieces on a chess-board in
their way of moving. One mind creeps from the square it is on to the
next, straight forward, like the pawns. Another sticks close to its own
line of thought and follows it as far as it goes, with no heed for
others' opinions, as the bishop sweeps the board in the line of his own
color. And another class of minds break through everything that lies
before them, ride over argument and opposition, and go to the end of the
board, like the castle. But there is still another sort of intellect
which is very apt to jump over the thought that stands next and come down
in the unexpected way of the knight. But that same knight, as the chess
manuals will show you, will contrive to get on to every square of the
board in a pretty series of moves that looks like a pattern of
embroidery, and so these zigzagging minds like the Master's, and I
suppose my own is something like it, will sooner or later get back to the
square next the one they started from.
The Master took down a volume from one of the shelves. I could not help
noticing that it was a shelf near his hand as he sat, and that the volume
looked as if he had made frequent use of it. I saw, too, that he handled
it in a loving sort of way; the tenderness he would have bestowed on a
wife and children had to find a channel somewhere, and what more natural
than that he should look fondly on the volume which held the thoughts
that had rolled themselves smooth and round in his mind like pebbles on a
beach, the dreams which, under cover of the simple artifices such as all
writers use, told the little world of readers his secret hopes and
aspirations, the fancies which had pleased him and which he could not
bear to let die without trying to please others with them? I have a
great sympathy with authors, most of all with unsuccessful ones. If one
had a dozen lives or so, it would all be very well, but to have only a
single ticket in the great lottery, and have that drawn a blank, is a
rather sad sort of thing. So I was pleased to see the affectionate kind
of pride with which the Master handled his book; it was a success, in its
way, and he looked on it with a cheerful sense that he had a right to be
proud of it. The Master opened the volume, and, putting on his large
round glasses, began reading, as authors love to read that love their
books.
--The only good reason for believing in the stability of the moral order
of things is to be found in the tolerable steadiness of human averages.
Out of a hundred human beings fifty-one will be found in the long run on
the side of the right, so far as they know it, and against the wrong.
They will be organizers rather than disorganizers, helpers and not
hinderers in the upward movement of the race. This is the main fact we
have to depend on. The right hand of the great organism is a little
stronger than the left, that is all.
Now and then we come across a left-handed man. So now and then we find a
tribe or a generation, the subject of what we may call moral
left-handedness, but that need not trouble us about our formula. All we
have to do is to spread the average over a wider territory or a longer
period of time. Any race or period that insists on being left-handed
must go under if it comes in contact with a right-handed one. If there
were, as a general rule, fifty-one rogues in the hundred instead of
forty-nine, all other qualities of mind and body being equally
distributed between the two sections, the order of things would sooner or
later end in universal disorder. It is the question between the leak and
the pumps.
It does not seem very likely that the Creator of all things is taken by
surprise at witnessing anything any of his creatures do or think. Men
have sought out many inventions, but they can have contrived nothing
which did not exist as an idea in the omniscient consciousness to which
past, present, and future are alike Now.
We read what travellers tell us about the King of Dahomey, or the Fejee
Island people, or the short and simple annals of the celebrities recorded
in the Newgate Calendar, and do not know just what to make of these
brothers and sisters of the race; but I do not suppose an intelligence
even as high as the angelic beings, to stop short there, would see
anything very peculiar or wonderful about them, except as everything is
wonderful and unlike everything else.
It is very curious to see how science, that is, looking at and arranging
the facts of a case with our own eyes and our own intelligence, without
minding what somebody else has said, or how some old majority vote went
in a pack of intriguing ecclesiastics,--I say it is very curious to see
how science is catching up with one superstition after another.
There is a recognized branch of science familiar to all those who know
anything of the studies relating to life, under the name of Teratology.
It deals with all sorts of monstrosities which are to be met with in
living beings, and more especially in animals. It is found that what
used to be called lusus naturae, or freaks of nature, are just as much
subject to laws as the naturally developed forms of living creatures.
The rustic looks at the Siamese twins, and thinks he is contemplating an
unheard-of anomaly; but there are plenty of cases like theirs in the
books of scholars, and though they are not quite so common as double
cherries, the mechanism of their formation is not a whit more mysterious
than that of the twinned fruits. Such cases do not disturb the average
arrangement; we have Changs and Engs at one pole, and Cains and Abels at
the other. One child is born with six fingers on each hand, and another
falls short by one or more fingers of his due allowance; but the glover
puts his faith in the great law of averages, and makes his gloves with
five fingers apiece, trusting nature for their counterparts.
Thinking people are not going to be scared out of explaining or at least
trying to explain things by the shrieks of persons whose beliefs are
disturbed thereby. Comets were portents to Increase Mather, President of
Harvard College; "preachers of Divine wrath, heralds and messengers of
evil tidings to the world." It is not so very long since Professor
Winthrop was teaching at the same institution. I can remember two of his
boys very well, old boys, it is true, they were, and one of them wore a
three-cornered cocked hat; but the father of these boys, whom, as I say,
I can remember, had to defend himself against the minister of the Old
South Church for the impiety of trying to account for earthquakes on
natural principles. And his ancestor, Governor Winthrop, would probably
have shaken his head over his descendant's dangerous audacity, if one may
judge by the solemn way in which he mentions poor Mrs. Hutchinson's
unpleasant experience, which so grievously disappointed her maternal
expectations. But people used always to be terribly frightened by those
irregular vital products which we now call "interesting specimens" and
carefully preserve in jars of alcohol. It took next to nothing to make a
panic; a child was born a few centuries ago with six teeth in its head,
and about that time the Turks began gaining great advantages over the
Christians. Of course there was an intimate connection between the
prodigy and the calamity. So said the wise men of that day.
--All these out-of-the-way cases are studied connectedly now, and are
found to obey very exact rules. With a little management one can even
manufacture living monstrosities. Malformed salmon and other fish can be
supplied in quantity, if anybody happens to want them. Now, what all I
have said is tending to is exactly this, namely, that just as the
celestial movements are regulated by fixed laws, just as bodily
monstrosities are produced according to rule, and with as good reason as
normal shapes, so obliquities of character are to be accounted for on
perfectly natural principles; they are just as capable of classification
as the bodily ones, and they all diverge from a certain average or middle
term which is the type of its kind. If life had been a little longer I
would have written a number of essays for which, as it is, I cannot
expect to have time. I have set down the titles of a hundred or more,
and I have often been tempted to publish these, for according to my idea,
the title of a book very often renders the rest of it unnecessary.
"Moral Teratology," for instance, which is marked No. 67 on my list of
"Essays Potential, not Actual," suggests sufficiently well what I should
be like to say in the pages it would preface. People hold up their hands
at a moral monster as if there was no reason for his existence but his
own choice. That was a fine specimen we read of in the papers a few
years ago, the Frenchman, it may be remembered, who used to waylay and
murder young women, and after appropriating their effects, bury their
bodies in a private cemetery he kept for that purpose. It is very
natural, and I do not say it is not very proper, to hang such eccentric
persons as this; but it is not clear whether his vagaries produce any
more sensation at Headquarters than the meek enterprises of the mildest
of city missionaries. For the study of Moral Teratology will teach you
that you do not get such a malformed character as that without a long
chain of causes to account for it; and if you only knew those causes, you
would know perfectly well what to expect.
You may feel pretty sure that our friend of the private cemetery was not
the child of pious and intelligent parents; that he was not nurtured by
the best of mothers, and educated by the most judicious teachers; and
that he did not come of a lineage long known and honored for its
intellectual and moral qualities. Suppose that one should go to the
worst quarter of the city and pick out the worst-looking child of the
worst couple he could find, and then train him up successively at the
School for Infant Rogues, the Academy for Young Scamps, and the College
for Complete Criminal Education, would it be reasonable to expect a
Francois Xavier or a Henry Martyn to be the result of such a training?
The traditionists, in whose presumptuous hands the science of
anthropology has been trusted from time immemorial, have insisted on
eliminating cause and effect from the domain of morals. When they have
come across a moral monster they have seemed to think that he put himself
together, having a free choice of all the constituents which make up
manhood, and that consequently no punishment could be too bad for him.
I say, hang him and welcome, if that is the best thing for society; hate
him, in a certain sense, as you hate a rattlesnake, but, if you pretend
to be a philosopher, recognize the fact that what you hate in him is
chiefly misfortune, and that if you had been born with his villanous low
forehead and poisoned instincts, and bred among creatures of the Races
Maudites whose natural history has to be studied like that of beasts of
prey and vermin, you would not have been sitting there in your gold-bowed
spectacles and passing judgment on the peccadilloes of your
fellow-creatures.
I have seen men and women so disinterested and noble, and devoted to the
best works, that it appeared to me if any good and faithful servant was
entitled to enter into the joys of his Lord, such as these might be. But
I do not know that I ever met with a human being who seemed to me to have
a stronger claim on the pitying consideration and kindness of his Maker
than a wretched, puny, crippled, stunted child that I saw in Newgate, who
was pointed out as one of the most notorious and inveterate little
thieves in London. I have no doubt that some of those who were looking
at this pitiable morbid secretion of the diseased social organism thought
they were very virtuous for hating him so heartily.
It is natural, and in one sense is all right enough. I want to catch a
thief and put the extinguisher on an incendiary as much as my neighbors
do; but I have two sides to my consciousness as I have two sides to my
heart, one carrying dark, impure blood, and the other the bright stream
which has been purified and vivified by the great source of life and
death,--the oxygen of the air which gives all things their vital heat,
and burns all things at last to ashes.
One side of me loves and hates; the other side of me judges, say rather
pleads and suspends judgment. I think, if I were left to myself, I
should hang a rogue and then write his apology and subscribe to a neat
monument, commemorating, not his virtues, but his misfortunes. I should,
perhaps, adorn the marble with emblems, as is the custom with regard to
the more regular and normally constituted members of society. It would
not be proper to put the image of a lamb upon the stone which marked the
resting-place of him of the private cemetery. But I would not hesitate
to place the effigy of a wolf or a hyena upon the monument. I do not
judge these animals, I only kill them or shut them up. I presume they
stand just as well with their Maker as lambs and kids, and the existence
of such beings is a perpetual plea for God Almighty's poor, yelling,
scalping Indians, his weasand-stopping Thugs, his despised felons, his
murdering miscreants, and all the unfortunates whom we, picked
individuals of a picked class of a picked race, scrubbed, combed, and
catechized from our cradles upward, undertake to find accommodations for
in another state of being where it is to be hoped they will have a better
chance than they had in this.
The Master paused, and took off his great round spectacles. I could not
help thinking that he looked benevolent enough to pardon Judas Iscariot
just at that moment, though his features can knot themselves up pretty,
formidably on occasion.
--You are somewhat of a phrenologist, I judge, by the way you talk of
instinctive and inherited tendencies--I said.
--They tell me I ought to be,--he answered, parrying my question, as I
thought.---I have had a famous chart made out of my cerebral organs,
according to which I ought to have been--something more than a poor
Magister Artaum.
--I thought a shade of regret deepened the lines on his broad,
antique-looking forehead, and I began talking about all the sights I had
seen in the way of monstrosities, of which I had a considerable list, as
you will see when I tell you my weakness in that direction. This, you
understand, Beloved, is private and confidential.
I pay my quarter of a dollar and go into all the side-shows that follow
the caravans and circuses round the country. I have made friends of all
the giants and all the dwarfs. I became acquainted with Monsieur Bihin,
le plus bel homme du monde, and one of the biggest, a great many years
ago, and have kept up my agreeable relations with him ever since. He is
a most interesting giant, with a softness of voice and tenderness of
feeling which I find very engaging. I was on friendly terms with Mr.
Charles Freeman, a very superior giant of American birth, seven feet
four, I think, in height, "double-jointed," of mylodon muscularity, the
same who in a British prize-ring tossed the Tipton Slasher from one side
of the rope to the other, and now lies stretched, poor fellow! in a
mighty grave in the same soil which holds the sacred ashes of Cribb, and
the honored dust of Burke,--not the one "commonly called the sublime,"
but that other Burke to whom Nature had denied the sense of hearing lest
he should be spoiled by listening to the praises of the admiring circles
which looked on his dear-bought triumphs. Nor have I despised those
little ones whom that devout worshipper of Nature in her exceptional
forms, the distinguished Barnum, has introduced to the notice of mankind.
The General touches his chapeau to me, and the Commodore gives me a
sailor's greeting. I have had confidential interviews with the
double-headed daughter of Africa,--so far, at least, as her twofold
personality admitted of private confidences. I have listened to the
touching experiences of the Bearded Lady, whose rough cheeks belie her
susceptible heart. Miss Jane Campbell has allowed me to question her on
the delicate subject of avoirdupois equivalents; and the armless fair
one, whose embrace no monarch could hope to win, has wrought me a
watch-paper with those despised digits which have been degraded from
gloves to boots in our evolution from the condition of quadrumana.
I hope you have read my experiences as good-naturedly as the old Master
listened to them. He seemed to be pleased with my whim, and promised to
go with me to see all the side-shows of the next caravan. Before I left
him he wrote my name in a copy of the new edition of his book, telling me
that it would not all be new to me by a great deal, for he often talked
what he had printed to make up for having printed a good deal of what he
had talked.
Here is the passage of his Poem the Young Astronomer read to us.
WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.
IV
From my lone turret as I look around
O'er the green meadows to the ring of blue,
From slope, from summit, and from half-hid vale
The sky is stabbed with dagger-pointed spires,
Their gilded symbols whirling in the wind,
Their brazen tongues proclaiming to the world,
Here truth is sold, the only genuine ware;
See that it has our trade-mark!
You will buy Poison instead of food across the way,
The lies of--this or that, each several name
The standard's blazon and the battle-cry
Of some true-gospel faction, and again
The token of the Beast to all beside.
And grouped round each I see a huddling crowd
Alike in all things save the words they use;
In love, in longing, hate and fear the same.
Whom do we trust and serve? We speak of one
And bow to many; Athens still would find
The shrines of all she worshipped safe within
Our tall barbarian temples, and the thrones
That crowned Olympus mighty as of old.
The god of music rules the Sabbath choir;
The lyric muse must leave the sacred nine
To help us please the dilettante's ear;
Plutus limps homeward with us, as we leave
The portals of the temple where we knelt
And listened while the god of eloquence
(Hermes of ancient days, but now disguised
In sable vestments) with that other god
Somnus, the son of Erebus and Nog,
Fights in unequal contest for our souls;
The dreadful sovereign of the under world
Still shakes his sceptre at us, and we hear
The baying of the triple-throated hound;
Eros-is young as ever, and as fair
The lovely Goddess born of ocean's foam.
These be thy gods, O Israel! Who is he,
The one ye name and tell us that ye serve,
Whom ye would call me from my lonely tower
To worship with the many-headed throng?
Is it the God that walked in Eden's grove
In the cool hour to seek our guilty sire?
The God who dealt with Abraham as the sons
Of that old patriarch deal with other men?
The jealous God of Moses, one who feels
An image as an insult, and is wroth
With him who made it and his child unborn?
The God who plagued his people for the sin
Of their adulterous king, beloved of him,
The same who offers to a chosen few
The right to praise him in eternal song
While a vast shrieking world of endless woe
Blends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn?
Is this the God ye mean, or is it he
Who heeds the sparrow's fall, whose loving heart
Is as the pitying father's to his child,
Whose lesson to his children is, "Forgive,"
Whose plea for all, "They know not what they do"
I claim the right of knowing whom I serve,
Else is my service idle; He that asks
My homage asks it from a reasoning soul.
To crawl is not to worship; we have learned
A drill of eyelids, bended neck and knee,
Hanging our prayers on binges, till we ape
The flexures of the many-jointed worm.
Asia has taught her Aliabs and salaams
To the world's children,--we have grown to men!
We who have rolled the sphere beneath our feet
To find a virgin forest, as we lay
The beams of our rude temple, first of all
Must frame its doorway high enough for man
To pass unstooping; knowing as we do
That He who shaped us last of living forms
Has long enough been served by creeping things,
Reptiles that left their foot-prints in the sand
Of old sea-margins that have turned to stone,
And men who learned their ritual; we demand
To know him first, then trust him and then love
When we have found him worthy of our love,
Tried by our own poor hearts and not before;
He must be truer than the truest friend,
He must be tenderer than a woman's love,
A father better than the best of sires;
Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin
Oftener than did the brother we are told,
We-poor ill-tempered mortals-must forgive,
Though seven times sinning threescore times and ten.
This is the new world's gospel: Be ye men!
Try well the legends of the children's time;
Ye are the chosen people, God has led
Your steps across the desert of the deep
As now across the desert of the shore;
Mountains are cleft before you as the sea
Before the wandering tribe of Israel's sons;
Still onward rolls the thunderous caravan,
Its coming printed on the western sky,
A cloud by day, by night a pillared flame;
Your prophets are a hundred unto one
Of them of old who cried, "Thus saith the Lord";
They told of cities that should fall in heaps,
But yours of mightier cities that shall rise
Where yet the lonely fishers spread their nets,
Where hides the fox and hoots the midnight owl;
The tree of knowledge in your garden grows
Not single, but at every humble door;
Its branches lend you their immortal food,
That fills you with the sense of what ye are,
No servants of an altar hewed and carved
From senseless stone by craft of human hands,
Rabbi, or dervish, Brahmin, bishop, bonze,
But masters of the charm with which they work
To keep your hands from that forbidden tree!
Ye that have tasted that divinest fruit,
Look on this world of yours with opened eyes!
Ye are as gods! Nay, makers of your gods,
Each day ye break an image in your shrine
And plant a fairer image where it stood
Where is the Moloch of your fathers' creed,
Whose fires of torment burned for span-long babes?
Fit object for a tender mother's love!
Why not? It was a bargain duly made
For these same infants through the surety's act
Intrusted with their all for earth and heaven,
By Him who chose their guardian, knowing well
His fitness for the task,--this, even this,
Was the true doctrine only yesterday
As thoughts are reckoned,--and to-day you hear
In words that sound as if from human tongues
Those monstrous, uncouth horrors of the past
That blot the blue of heaven and shame the earth
As would the saurians of the age of slime,
Awaking from their stony sepulchres
And wallowing hateful in the eye of day!
Four of us listened to these lines as the young man read them,--the
Master and myself and our two ladies. This was the little party we got
up to hear him read. I do not think much of it was very new to the
Master or myself. At any rate, he said to me when we were alone, That is
the kind of talk the "natural man," as the theologians call him, is apt
to fall into.
--I thought it was the Apostle Paul, and not the theologians, that used
the term "natural man", I ventured to suggest.
--I should like to know where the Apostle Paul learned English?--said the
Master, with the look of one who does not mean to be tripped up if he can
help himself.---But at any rate,--he continued,--the "natural man," so
called, is worth listening to now and then, for he didn't make his
nature, and the Devil did n't make it; and if the Almighty made it, I
never saw or heard of anything he made that wasn't worth attending to.
The young man begged the Lady to pardon anything that might sound harshly
in these crude thoughts of his. He had been taught strange things, he
said, from old theologies, when he was a child, and had thought his way
out of many of his early superstitions. As for the Young Girl, our
Scheherezade, he said to her that she must have got dreadfully tired (at
which she colored up and said it was no such thing), and he promised
that, to pay for her goodness in listening, he would give her a lesson in
astronomy the next fair evening, if she would be his scholar, at which
she blushed deeper than before, and said something which certainly was
not No.
IX
There was no sooner a vacancy on our side of the table, than the Master
proposed a change of seats which would bring the Young Astronomer into
our immediate neighborhood. The Scarabee was to move into the place of
our late unlamented associate, the Man of Letters, so called. I was to
take his place, the Master to take mine, and the young man that which had
been occupied by the Master. The advantages of this change were obvious.
The old Master likes an audience, plainly enough; and with myself on one
side of him, and the young student of science, whose speculative turn is
sufficiently shown in the passages from his poem, on the other side, he
may feel quite sure of being listened to. There is only one trouble in
the arrangement, and that is that it brings this young man not only close
to us, but also next to our Scheherezade.
I am obliged to confess that he has shown occasional marks of inattention
even while the Master was discoursing in a way that I found agreeable
enough. I am quite sure it is no intentional disrespect to the old
Master. It seems to me rather that he has become interested in the
astronomical lessons he has been giving the Young Girl. He has studied
so much alone, that it is naturally a pleasure to him to impart some of
his knowledge. As for his young pupil, she has often thought of being a
teacher herself, so that she is of course very glad to acquire any
accomplishment that may be useful to her in that capacity. I do not see
any reason why some of the boarders should have made such remarks as they
have done. One cannot teach astronomy to advantage, without going out of
doors, though I confess that when two young people go out by daylight to
study the stars, as these young folks have done once or twice, I do not
so much wonder at a remark or suggestion from those who have nothing
better to do than study their neighbors.
I ought to have told the reader before this that I found, as I suspected,
that our innocent-looking Scheherezade was at the bottom of the popgun
business. I watched her very closely, and one day, when the little
monkey made us all laugh by stopping the Member of the Haouse in the
middle of a speech he was repeating to us,--it was his great effort of
the season on a bill for the protection of horn-pout in Little Muddy
River,--I caught her making the signs that set him going. At a slight
tap of her knife against her plate, he got all ready, and presently I saw
her cross her knife and fork upon her plate, and as she did so, pop! went
the small piece of artillery. The Member of the Haouse was just saying
that this bill hit his constitooents in their most vital--when a pellet
hit him in the feature of his countenance most exposed to aggressions and
least tolerant of liberties. The Member resented this unparliamentary
treatment by jumping up from his chair and giving the small aggressor a
good shaking, at the same time seizing the implement which had caused his
wrath and breaking it into splinters. The Boy blubbered, the Young Girl
changed color, and looked as if she would cry, and that was the last of
these interruptions.
I must own that I have sometimes wished we had the popgun back, for it
answered all the purpose of "the previous question" in a deliberative
assembly. No doubt the Young Girl was capricious in setting the little
engine at work, but she cut short a good many disquisitions that
threatened to be tedious. I find myself often wishing for her and her
small fellow-conspirator's intervention, in company where I am supposed
to be enjoying myself. When my friend the politician gets too far into
the personal details of the quorum pars magna fui, I find myself all at
once exclaiming in mental articulation, Popgun! When my friend the
story-teller begins that protracted narrative which has often emptied me
of all my voluntary laughter for the evening, he has got but a very
little way when I say to myself, What wouldn't I give for a pellet from
that popgun! In short, so useful has that trivial implement proved as a
jaw-stopper and a boricide, that I never go to a club or a dinner-party,
without wishing the company included our Scheherezade and That Boy with
his popgun.
How clearly I see now into the mechanism of the Young Girl's audacious
contrivance for regulating our table-talk! Her brain is tired half the
time, and she is too nervous to listen patiently to what a quieter person
would like well enough, or at least would not be annoyed by. It amused
her to invent a scheme for managing the headstrong talkers, and also let
off a certain spirit of mischief which in some of these nervous girls
shows itself in much more questionable forms. How cunning these
half-hysteric young persons are, to be sure! I had to watch a long time
before I detected the telegraphic communication between the two
conspirators. I have no doubt she had sedulously schooled the little
monkey to his business, and found great delight in the task of
instruction.
But now that our Scheherezade has become a scholar instead of a teacher,
she seems to be undergoing a remarkable transformation. Astronomy is
indeed a noble science. It may well kindle the enthusiasm of a youthful
nature. I fancy at times that I see something of that starry light which
I noticed in the young man's eyes gradually kindling in hers. But can it
be astronomy alone that does it? Her color comes and goes more readily
than when the old Master sat next her on the left. It is having this
young man at her side, I suppose. Of course it is. I watch her with
great, I may say tender interest. If he would only fall in love with
her, seize upon her wandering affections and fancies as the Romans seized
the Sabine virgins, lift her out of herself and her listless and weary
drudgeries, stop the outflow of this young life which is draining itself
away in forced literary labor--dear me, dear me--if, if, if--
"If I were God
An' ye were Martin Elginbrod!"
I am afraid all this may never be. I fear that he is too much given to
lonely study, to self-companionship, to all sorts of questionings, to
looking at life as at a solemn show where he is only a spectator. I dare
not build up a romance on what I have yet seen. My reader may, but I
will answer for nothing. I shall wait and see.
The old Master and I have at last made that visit to the Scarabee which
we had so long promised ourselves.
When we knocked at his door he came and opened it, instead of saying,
Come in. He was surprised, I have no doubt, at the sound of our
footsteps; for he rarely has a visitor, except the little monkey of a
boy, and he may have thought a troop of marauders were coming to rob him
of his treasures. Collectors feel so rich in the possession of their
rarer specimens, that they forget how cheap their precious things seem to
common eyes, and are as afraid of being robbed as if they were dealers in
diamonds. They have the name of stealing from each other now and then,
it is true, but many of their priceless possessions would hardly tempt a
beggar. Values are artificial: you will not be able to get ten cents of
the year 1799 for a dime.
The Scarabee was reassured as soon as he saw our faces, and he welcomed
us not ungraciously into his small apartment. It was hard to find a
place to sit down, for all the chairs were already occupied by cases and
boxes full of his favorites. I began, therefore, looking round the room.
Bugs of every size and aspect met my eyes wherever they turned. I felt
for the moment as I suppose a man may feel in a fit of delirium tremens.
Presently my attention was drawn towards a very odd-looking insect on the
mantelpiece. This animal was incessantly raising its arms as if towards
heaven and clasping them together, as though it were wrestling in prayer.
Do look at this creature,--I said to the Master, he seems to be very hard
at work at his devotions.
Mantas religiosa,--said the Master,--I know the praying rogue. Mighty
devout and mighty cruel; crushes everything he can master, or impales it
on his spiny shanks and feeds upon it, like a gluttonous wretch as he is.
I have seen the Mantis religiosa on a larger scale than this, now and
then. A sacred insect, sir,--sacred to many tribes of men; to the
Hottentots, to the Turks, yes, sir, and to the Frenchmen, who call the
rascal prie dieu, and believe him to have special charge of children that
have lost their way.
Doesn't it seem as if there was a vein of satire as well as of fun that
ran through the solemn manifestations of creative wisdom? And of
deception too--do you see how nearly those dried leaves resemble an
insect?
They do, indeed,--I answered,--but not so closely as to deceive me. They
remind me of an insect, but I could not mistake them for one.
--Oh, you couldn't mistake those dried leaves for an insect, hey? Well,
how can you mistake that insect for dried leaves? That is the question;
for insect it is,--phyllum siccifolium, the "walking leaf," as some have
called it.--The Master had a hearty laugh at my expense.
The Scarabee did not seem to be amused at the Master's remarks or at my
blunder. Science is always perfectly serious to him; and he would no
more laugh over anything connected with his study, than a clergyman would
laugh at a funeral.
They send me all sorts of trumpery,--he said, Orthoptera and Lepidoptera;
as if a coleopterist--a scarabeeist--cared for such things. This
business is no boy's play to me. The insect population of the world is
not even catalogued yet, and a lifetime given to the scarabees is a small
contribution enough to their study. I like your men of general
intelligence well enough,--your Linnwuses and your Buffons and your
Cuviers; but Cuvier had to go to Latreille for his insects, and if
Latreille had been able to consult me,--yes, me, gentlemen!--he would n't
have made the blunders he did about some of the coleoptera.
The old Master, as I think you must have found out by this time,--you,
Beloved, I mean, who read every word,--has a reasonably good opinion, as
perhaps he has a right to have, of his own intelligence and acquirements.
The Scarabee's exultation and glow as he spoke of the errors of the great
entomologist which he himself could have corrected, had the effect on the
old Master which a lusty crow has upon the feathered champion of the
neighboring barnyard. He too knew something about insects. Had he not
discovered a, new tabanus? Had he not made preparations of the very
coleoptera the Scarabee studied so exclusively,--preparations which the
illustrious Swammerdam would not have been ashamed of, and dissected a
melolontha as exquisitely as Strauss Durckheim himself ever did it? So
the Master, recalling these studies of his and certain difficult and
disputed points at which he had labored in one of his entomological
paroxysms, put a question which there can be little doubt was intended to
puzzle the Scarabee, and perhaps,--for the best of us is human (I am
beginning to love the old Master, but he has his little weaknesses, thank
Heaven, like the rest of us),--I say perhaps, was meant to show that some
folks knew as much about some things as some other folks.
The little dried-up specialist did not dilate into fighting dimensions
as--perhaps, again--the Master may have thought he would. He looked a
mild surprise, but remained as quiet as one of his own beetles when you
touch him and he makes believe he is dead. The blank silence became
oppressive. Was the Scarabee crushed, as so many of his namesakes are
crushed, under the heel of this trampling omniscient?
At last the Scarabee creaked out very slowly, "Did I understand you to
ask the following question, to wit?" and so forth; for I was quite out of
my depth, and only know that he repeated the Master's somewhat complex
inquiry, word for word.
--That was exactly my question,--said the Master,--and I hope it is not
uncivil to ask one which seems to me to be a puzzler.
Not uncivil in the least,--said the Scarabee, with something as much like
a look of triumph as his dry face permitted,--not uncivil at all, but a
rather extraordinary question to ask at this date of entomological
history. I settled that question some years ago, by a series of
dissections, six-and-thirty in number, reported in an essay I can show
you and would give you a copy of, but that I am a little restricted in my
revenue, and our Society has to be economical, so I have but this one.
You see, sir,--and he went on with elytra and antennae and tarsi and
metatarsi and tracheae and stomata and wing-muscles and leg-muscles and
ganglions,--all plain enough, I do not doubt, to those accustomed to
handling dor-bugs and squash-bugs and such undesirable objects of
affection to all but naturalists.
He paused when he got through, not for an answer, for there evidently was
none, but to see how the Master would take it. The Scarabee had had it
all his own way.
The Master was loyal to his own generous nature. He felt as a peaceful
citizen might feel who had squared off at a stranger for some supposed
wrong, and suddenly discovered that he was undertaking to chastise Mr.
Dick Curtis, "the pet of the Fancy," or Mr. Joshua Hudson; "the John Bull
fighter."
He felt the absurdity of his discomfiture, for he turned to me
good-naturedly, and said,
"Poor Johnny Raw! What madness could impel
So rum a flat to face so prime a swell?"
To tell the truth, I rather think the Master enjoyed his own defeat. The
Scarabee had a right to his victory; a man does not give his life to the
study of a single limited subject for nothing, and the moment we come
across a first-class expert we begin to take a pride in his superiority.
It cannot offend us, who have no right at all to be his match on his own
ground. Besides, there is a very curious sense of satisfaction in
getting a fair chance to sneer at ourselves and scoff at our own
pretensions. The first person of our dual consciousness has been
smirking and rubbing his hands and felicitating himself on his
innumerable superiorities, until we have grown a little tired of him.
Then, when the other fellow, the critic, the cynic, the Shimei, who has
been quiet, letting self-love and self-glorification have their perfect
work, opens fire upon the first half of our personality and overwhelms it
with that wonderful vocabulary of abuse of which he is the unrivalled
master, there is no denying that he enjoys it immensely; and as he is
ourself for the moment, or at least the chief portion of ourself (the
other half-self retiring into a dim corner of semiconsciousness and
cowering under the storm of sneers and contumely,--you follow me
perfectly, Beloved,--the way is as plain as the path of the babe to the
maternal fount), as, I say, the abusive fellow is the chief part of us
for the time, and he likes to exercise his slanderous vocabulary, we on
the whole enjoy a brief season of self-depreciation and self-scolding
very heartily.
It is quite certain that both of us, the Master and myself, conceived on
the instant a respect for the Scarabee which we had not before felt. He
had grappled with one difficulty at any rate and mastered it. He had
settled one thing, at least, so it appeared, in such a way that it was
not to be brought up again. And now he was determined, if it cost him
the effort of all his remaining days, to close another discussion and put
forever to rest the anxious doubts about the larva of meloe.
--Your thirty-six dissections must have cost you a deal of time and
labor,--the Master said.
--What have I to do with time, but to fill it up with labor?--answered
the Scarabee.---It is my meat and drink to work over my beetles. My
holidays are when I get a rare specimen. My rest is to watch the habits
of insects, those that I do not pretend to study. Here is my muscarium,
my home for house-flies; very interesting creatures; here they breed and
buzz and feed and enjoy themselves, and die in a good old age of a few
months. My favorite insect lives in this other case; she is at home, but
in her private-chamber; you shall see her.
He tapped on the glass lightly, and a large, gray, hairy spider came
forth from the hollow of a funnel-like web.
--And this is all the friend you have to love? said the Master, with a
tenderness in his voice which made the question very significant.
--Nothing else loves me better than she does, that I know of,--he
answered.
--To think of it! Not even a dog to lick his hand, or a cat to purr and
rub her fur against him! Oh, these boarding-houses, these
boarding-houses! What forlorn people one sees stranded on their desolate
shores! Decayed gentlewomen with the poor wrecks of what once made their
households beautiful, disposed around them in narrow chambers as they
best may be, coming down day after day, poor souls! to sit at the board
with strangers; their hearts full of sad memories which have no language
but a sigh, no record but the lines of sorrow on their features; orphans,
creatures with growing tendrils and nothing to cling to; lonely rich men,
casting about them what to do with the wealth they never knew how to
enjoy, when they shall no longer worry over keeping and increasing it;
young men and young women, left to their instincts, unguarded, unwatched,
save by malicious eyes, which are sure to be found and to find occupation
in these miscellaneous collections of human beings; and now and then a
shred of humanity like this little adust specialist, with just the
resources needed to keep the "radical moisture" from entirely exhaling
from his attenuated organism, and busying himself over a point of
science, or compiling a hymn-book, or editing a grammar or a
dictionary;--such are the tenants of boarding-houses whom we cannot think
of without feeling how sad it is when the wind is not tempered to the
shorn lamb; when the solitary, whose hearts are shrivelling, are not set
in families!
The Master was greatly interested in the Scarabee's Muscarium.
--I don't remember,--he said,--that I have heard of such a thing as that
before. Mighty curious creatures, these same house-flies! Talk about
miracles! Was there ever anything more miraculous, so far as our common
observation goes, than the coming and the going of these creatures? Why
didn't Job ask where the flies come from and where they go to? I did not
say that you and I don't know, but how many people do know anything about
it? Where are the cradles of the young flies? Where are the cemeteries
of the dead ones, or do they die at all except when we kill them? You
think all the flies of the year are dead and gone, and there comes a warm
day and all at once there is a general resurrection of 'em; they had been
taking a nap, that is all.
--I suppose you do not trust your spider in the Muscarium?--said I,
addressing the Scarabee.
--Not exactly,--he answered,--she is a terrible creature. She loves me,
I think, but she is a killer and a cannibal among other insects. I wanted
to pair her with a male spider, but it wouldn't do.
-Wouldn't do?--said I,--why not? Don't spiders have their mates as well
as other folks?
-Oh yes, sometimes; but the females are apt to be particular, and if they
don't like the mate you offer them they fall upon him and kill him and
eat him up. You see they are a great deal bigger and stronger than the
males, and they are always hungry and not always particularly anxious to
have one of the other sex bothering round.
--Woman's rights!--said I,--there you have it! Why don't those talking
ladies take a spider as their emblem? Let them form arachnoid
associations, spinsters and spiders would be a good motto.
--The Master smiled. I think it was an eleemosynary smile, for my
pleasantry seems to me a particularly basso rilievo, as I look upon it in
cold blood. But conversation at the best is only a thin sprinkling of
occasional felicities set in platitudes and commonplaces. I never heard
people talk like the characters in the "School for Scandal,"--I should
very much like to.---I say the Master smiled. But the Scarabee did not
relax a muscle of his countenance.
--There are persons whom the very mildest of faecetiae sets off into such
convulsions of laughter, that one is afraid lest they should injure
themselves. Even when a jest misses fire completely, so that it is no
jest at all, but only a jocular intention, they laugh just as heartily.
Leave out the point of your story, get the word wrong on the duplicity of
which the pun that was to excite hilarity depended, and they still honor
your abortive attempt with the most lusty and vociferous merriment.
There is a very opposite class of persons whom anything in the nature of
a joke perplexes, troubles, and even sometimes irritates, seeming to make
them think they are trifled with, if not insulted. If you are fortunate
enough to set the whole table laughing, one of this class of persons will
look inquiringly round, as if something had happened, and, seeing
everybody apparently amused but himself, feel as if he was being laughed
at, or at any rate as if something had been said which he was not to
hear. Often, however, it does not go so far as this, and there is
nothing more than mere insensibility to the cause of other people's
laughter, a sort of joke-blindness, comparable to the well-known
color-blindness with which many persons are afflicted as a congenital
incapacity.
I have never seen the Scarabee smile. I have seen him take off his
goggles,--he breakfasts in these occasionally,--I suppose when he has
been tiring his poor old eyes out over night gazing through his
microscope,--I have seen him take his goggles off, I say, and stare about
him, when the rest of us were laughing at something which amused us, but
his features betrayed nothing more than a certain bewilderment, as if we
had been foreigners talking in an unknown tongue. I do not think it was
a mere fancy of mine that he bears a kind of resemblance to the tribe of
insects he gives his life to studying. His shiny black coat; his rounded
back, convex with years of stooping over his minute work; his angular
movements, made natural to him by his habitual style of manipulation; the
aridity of his organism, with which his voice is in perfect keeping;--all
these marks of his special sedentary occupation are so nearly what might
be expected, and indeed so much, in accordance with the more general fact
that a man's aspect is subdued to the look of what he works in, that I do
not feel disposed to accuse myself of exaggeration in my account of the
Scarabee's appearance. But I think he has learned something else of his
coleopterous friends. The beetles never smile. Their physiognomy is not
adapted to the display of the emotions; the lateral movement of their
jaws being effective for alimentary purposes, but very limited in its
gamut of expression. It is with these unemotional beings that the
Scarabee passes his life. He has but one object, and that is perfectly
serious, to his mind, in fact, of absorbing interest and importance. In
one aspect of the matter he is quite right, for if the Creator has taken
the trouble to make one of His creatures in just such a way and not
otherwise, from the beginning of its existence on our planet in ages of
unknown remoteness to the present time, the man who first explains His
idea to us is charged with a revelation. It is by no means impossible
that there may be angels in the celestial hierarchy to whom it would be
new and interesting. I have often thought that spirits of a higher order
than man might be willing to learn something from a human mind like that
of Newton, and I see no reason why an angelic being might not be glad to
hear a lecture from Mr. Huxley, or Mr. Tyndall, or one of our friends at
Cambridge.
I have been sinuous as the Links of Forth seen from Stirling Castle, or
as that other river which threads the Berkshire valley and runs, a
perennial stream, through my memory,--from which I please myself with
thinking that I have learned to wind without fretting against the shore,
or forgetting cohere I am flowing,--sinuous, I say, but not jerky,--no,
not jerky nor hard to follow for a reader of the right sort, in the prime
of life and full possession of his or her faculties.
--All this last page or so, you readily understand, has been my private
talk with you, the Reader. The cue of the conversation which I
interrupted by this digression is to be found in the words "a good
motto;" from which I begin my account of the visit again.
--Do you receive many visitors,--I mean vertebrates, not articulates?
--said the Master.
I thought this question might perhaps bring il disiato riso, the
long-wished-for smile, but the Scarabee interpreted it in the simplest
zoological sense, and neglected its hint of playfulness with the most
absolute unconsciousness, apparently, of anything not entirely serious
and literal.
--You mean friends, I suppose,--he answered.--I have correspondents, but
I have no friends except this spider. I live alone, except when I go to
my subsection meetings; I get a box of insects now and then, and send a
few beetles to coleopterists in other entomological districts; but
science is exacting, and a man that wants to leave his record has not
much time for friendship. There is no great chance either for making
friends among naturalists. People that are at work on different things
do not care a great deal for each other's specialties, and people that
work on the same thing are always afraid lest one should get ahead of the
other, or steal some of his ideas before he has made them public. There
are none too many people you can trust in your laboratory. I thought I
had a friend once, but he watched me at work and stole the discovery of a
new species from me, and, what is more, had it named after himself.
Since that time I have liked spiders better than men. They are hungry
and savage, but at any rate they spin their own webs out of their own
insides. I like very well to talk with gentlemen that play with my
branch of entomology; I do not doubt it amused you, and if you want to
see anything I can show you, I shall have no scruple in letting you see
it. I have never had any complaint to make of amatoors.
--Upon my honor,--I would hold my right hand up and take my Bible-oath,
if it was not busy with the pen at this moment,--I do not believe the
Scarabee had the least idea in the world of the satire on the student of
the Order of Things implied in his invitation to the "amatoor." As for
the Master, he stood fire perfectly, as he always does; but the idea that
he, who had worked a considerable part of several seasons at examining
and preparing insects, who believed himself to have given a new tabanus
to the catalogue of native diptera, the idea that he was playing with
science, and might be trusted anywhere as a harmless amateur, from whom
no expert could possibly fear any anticipation of his unpublished
discoveries, went beyond anything set down in that book of his which
contained so much of the strainings of his wisdom.
The poor little Scarabee began fidgeting round about this time, and
uttering some half-audible words, apologetical, partly, and involving an
allusion to refreshments. As he spoke, he opened a small cupboard, and
as he did so out bolted an uninvited tenant of the same, long in person,
sable in hue, and swift of movement, on seeing which the Scarabee simply
said, without emotion, blatta, but I, forgetting what was due to good
manners, exclaimed cockroach!
We could not make up our minds to tax the Scarabee's hospitality, already
levied upon by the voracious articulate. So we both alleged a state of
utter repletion, and did not solve the mystery of the contents of the
cupboard,--not too luxurious, it may be conjectured, and yet kindly
offered, so that we felt there was a moist filament of the social
instinct running like a nerve through that exsiccated and almost
anhydrous organism.
We left him with professions of esteem and respect which were real. We
had gone, not to scoff, but very probably to smile, and I will not say we
did not. But the Master was more thoughtful than usual.
--If I had not solemnly dedicated myself to the study of the Order of
Things,--he said,--I do verily believe I would give what remains to me of
life to the investigation of some single point I could utterly eviscerate
and leave finally settled for the instruction and, it may be, the
admiration of all coming time. The keel ploughs ten thousand leagues of
ocean and leaves no trace of its deep-graven furrows. The chisel scars
only a few inches on the face of a rock, but the story it has traced is
read by a hundred generations. The eagle leaves no track of his path, no
memory of the place where he built his nest; but a patient mollusk has
bored a little hole in a marble column of the temple of Serapis, and the
monument of his labor outlasts the altar and the statue of the divinity.
--Whew!--said I to myself,--that sounds a little like what we college
boys used to call a "squirt."--The Master guessed my thought and said,
smiling,
--That is from one of my old lectures. A man's tongue wags along quietly
enough, but his pen begins prancing as soon as it touches paper. I know
what you are thinking--you're thinking this is a squirt. That word has
taken the nonsense out of a good many high-stepping fellows. But it did
a good deal of harm too, and it was a vulgar lot that applied it
oftenest.
I am at last perfectly satisfied that our Landlady has no designs on the
Capitalist, and as well convinced that any fancy of mine that he was like
to make love to her was a mistake. The good woman is too much absorbed
in her children, and more especially in "the Doctor," as she delights to
call her son, to be the prey of any foolish desire of changing her
condition. She is doing very well as it is, and if the young man
succeeds, as I have little question that he will, I think it probable
enough that she will retire from her position as the head of a
boarding-house. We have all liked the good woman who have lived with
her,--I mean we three friends who have put ourselves on record. Her
talk, I must confess, is a little diffuse and not always absolutely
correct, according to the standard of the great Worcester; she is subject
to lachrymose cataclysms and semiconvulsive upheavals when she reverts in
memory to her past trials, and especially when she recalls the virtues of
her deceased spouse, who was, I suspect, an adjunct such as one finds not
rarely annexed to a capable matron in charge of an establishment like
hers; that is to say, an easy-going, harmless, fetch-and-carry,
carve-and-help, get-out-of-the-way kind of neuter, who comes up three
times (as they say drowning people do) every day, namely, at breakfast,
dinner, and tea, and disappears, submerged beneath the waves of life,
during the intervals of these events.
It is a source of genuine delight to me, who am of a kindly nature
enough, according to my own reckoning, to watch the good woman, and see
what looks of pride and affection she bestows upon her Benjamin, and how,
in spite of herself, the maternal feeling betrays its influence in her
dispensations of those delicacies which are the exceptional element in
our entertainments. I will not say that Benjamin's mess, like his
Scripture namesake's, is five times as large as that of any of the
others, for this would imply either an economical distribution to the
guests in general or heaping the poor young man's plate in a way that
would spoil the appetite of an Esquimau, but you may be sure he fares
well if anybody does; and I would have you understand that our Landlady
knows what is what as well as who is who.
I begin really to entertain very sanguine expectations of young Doctor
Benjamin Franklin. He has lately been treating a patient of whose
good-will may prove of great importance to him. The Capitalist hurt one
of his fingers somehow or other, and requested our young doctor to take a
look at it. The young doctor asked nothing better than to take charge of
the case, which proved more serious than might have been at first
expected, and kept him in attendance more than a week. There was one
very odd thing about it. The Capitalist seemed to have an idea that he
was like to be ruined in the matter of bandages,--small strips of worn
linen which any old woman could have spared him from her rag-bag, but
which, with that strange perversity which long habits of economy give to
a good many elderly people, he seemed to think were as precious as if
they had been turned into paper and stamped with promises to pay in
thousands, from the national treasury. It was impossible to get this
whim out of him, and the young doctor had tact enough to humor him in it.
All this did not look very promising for the state of mind in which the
patient was like to receive his bill for attendance when that should be
presented. Doctor Benjamin was man enough, however, to come up to the
mark, and sent him in such an account as it was becoming to send a man of
ample means who had been diligently and skilfully cared for. He looked
forward with some uncertainty as to how it would be received. Perhaps
his patient would try to beat him down, and Doctor Benjamin made up his
mind to have the whole or nothing. Perhaps he would pay the whole
amount, but with a look, and possibly a word, that would make every
dollar of it burn like a blister.
Doctor Benjamin's conjectures were not unnatural, but quite remote from
the actual fact. As soon as his patient had got entirely well, the young
physician sent in his bill. The Capitalist requested him to step into
his room with him, and paid the full charge in the handsomest and most
gratifying way, thanking him for his skill and attention, and assuring
him that he had had great satisfaction in submitting himself to such
competent hands, and should certainly apply to him again in case he
should have any occasion for a medical adviser. We must not be too
sagacious in judging people by the little excrescences of their
character. Ex pede Herculem may often prove safe enough, but ex verruca
Tullium is liable to mislead a hasty judge of his fellow-men.
I have studied the people called misers and thought a good deal about
them. In former years I used to keep a little gold by me in order to
ascertain for myself exactly the amount of pleasure to be got out of
handling it; this being the traditional delight of the old-fashioned
miser. It is by no means to be despised. Three or four hundred dollars
in double-eagles will do very well to experiment on. There is something
very agreeable in the yellow gleam, very musical in the metallic clink,
very satisfying in the singular weight, and very stimulating in the
feeling that all the world over these same yellow disks are the
master-keys that let one in wherever he wants to go, the servants that
bring him pretty nearly everything he wants, except virtue,--and a good
deal of what passes for that. I confess, then, to an honest liking for
the splendors and the specific gravity and the manifold potentiality of
the royal metal, and I understand, after a certain imperfect fashion, the
delight that an old ragged wretch, starving himself in a crazy hovel,
takes in stuffing guineas into old stockings and filling earthen pots
with sovereigns, and every now and then visiting his hoards and fingering
the fat pieces, and thinking ever all that they represent of earthly and
angelic and diabolic energy. A miser pouring out his guineas into his
palm and bathing his shrivelled and trembling hands in the yellow heaps
before him, is not the prosaic being we are in the habit of thinking him.
He is a dreamer, almost a poet. You and I read a novel or a poem to help
our imaginations to build up palaces, and transport us into the emotional
states and the felicitous conditions of the ideal characters pictured in
the book we are reading. But think of him and the significance of the
symbols he is handling as compared with the empty syllables and words we
are using to build our aerial edifices with! In this hand he holds the
smile of beauty and in that the dagger of revenge. The contents of that
old glove will buy him the willing service of many an adroit sinner, and
with what that coarse sack contains he can purchase the prayers of holy
men for all succeeding time. In this chest is a castle in Spain, a real
one, and not only in Spain, but anywhere he will choose to have it. If
he would know what is the liberality of judgment of any of the straiter
sects, he has only to hand over that box of rouleaux to the trustees of
one of its educational institutions for the endowment of two or three
professorships. If he would dream of being remembered by coming
generations, what monument so enduring as a college building that shall
bear his name, and even when its solid masonry shall crumble give place
to another still charged with the same sacred duty of perpetuating his
remembrance. Who was Sir Matthew Holworthy, that his name is a household
word on the lips of thousands of scholars, and will be centuries hence,
as that of Walter de Merton, dead six hundred years ago, is to-day at
Oxford? Who was Mistress Holden, that she should be blessed among women
by having her name spoken gratefully and the little edifice she caused to
be erected preserved as her monument from generation to generation? All
these possibilities, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the
pride of life; the tears of grateful orphans by the gallon; the prayers
of Westminster Assembly's Catechism divines by the thousand; the masses
of priests by the century;--all these things, and more if more there be
that the imagination of a lover of gold is likely to range over, the
miser hears and sees and feels and hugs and enjoys as he paddles with his
lean hands among the sliding, shining, ringing, innocent-looking bits of
yellow metal, toying with them as the lion-tamer handles the great
carnivorous monster, whose might and whose terrors are child's play to
the latent forces and power of harm-doing of the glittering counters
played with in the great game between angels and devils.
I have seen a good deal of misers, and I think I understand them as well
as most persons do. But the Capitalist's economy in rags and his
liberality to the young doctor are very oddly contrasted with each other.
I should not be surprised at any time to hear that he had endowed a
scholarship or professorship or built a college dormitory, in spite of
his curious parsimony in old linen.
I do not know where our Young Astronomer got the notions that he
expresses so freely in the lines that follow. I think the statement is
true, however, which I see in one of the most popular Cyclopaedias, that
"the non-clerical mind in all ages is disposed to look favorably upon the
doctrine of the universal restoration to holiness and happiness of all
fallen intelligences, whether human or angelic." Certainly, most of the
poets who have reached the heart of men, since Burns dropped the tear for
poor "auld Nickie-ben" that softened the stony-hearted theology of
Scotland, have had "non-clerical" minds, and I suppose our young friend
is in his humble way an optimist like them. What he says in verse is
very much the same thing as what is said in prose in all companies, and
thought by a great many who are thankful to anybody that will say it for
them,--not a few clerical as wall as "non-clerical" persons among them.
WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.
V
What am I but the creature Thou hast made?
What have I save the blessings Thou hast lent?
What hope I but Thy mercy and Thy love?
Who but myself shall cloud my soul with fear?
Whose hand protect me from myself but Thine?
I claim the rights of weakness, I, the babe,
Call on my sire to shield me from the ills
That still beset my path, not trying me
With snares beyond my wisdom or my strength,
He knowing I shall use them to my harm,
And find a tenfold misery in the sense
That in my childlike folly I have sprung
The trap upon myself as vermin use
Drawn by the cunning bait to certain doom.
Who wrought the wondrous charm that leads us on
To sweet perdition, but the self-same power
That set the fearful engine to destroy
His wretched offspring (as the Rabbis tell),
And hid its yawning jaws and treacherous springs
In such a show of innocent sweet flowers
It lured the sinless angels and they fell?
Ah! He who prayed the prayer of all mankind
Summed in those few brief words the mightiest plea
For erring souls before the courts of heaven,
Save us from being tempted,--lest we fall!
If we are only as the potter's clay
Made to be fashioned as the artist wills,
And broken into shards if we offend
The eye of Him who made us, it is well;
Such love as the insensate lump of clay
That spins upon the swift-revolving wheel
Bears to the hand that shapes its growing form,
--Such love, no more, will be our hearts' return
To the great Master-workman for his care,
Or would be, save that this, our breathing clay,
Is intertwined with fine innumerous threads
That make it conscious in its framer's hand;
And this He must remember who has filled
These vessels with the deadly draught of life,
Life, that means death to all it claims. Our love
Must kindle in the ray that streams from heaven,
A faint reflection of the light divine;
The sun must warm the earth before the rose
Can show her inmost heart-leaves to the sun.
He yields some fraction of the Maker's right
Who gives the quivering nerve its sense of pain;
Is there not something in the pleading eye
Of the poor brute that suffers, which arraigns
The law that bids it suffer? Has it not
A claim for some remembrance in the book
That fills its pages with the idle words
Spoken of men? Or is it only clay,
Bleeding and aching in the potter's hand,
Yet all his own to treat it as he will
And when he will to cast it at his feet,
Shattered, dishonored, lost forevermore?
My dog loves me, but could he look beyond
His earthly master, would his love extend
To Him who--Hush! I will not doubt that He
Is better than our fears, and will not wrong
The least, the meanest of created things!
He would not trust me with the smallest orb
That circles through the sky; he would not give
A meteor to my guidance; would not leave
The coloring of a cloudlet to my hand;
He locks my beating heart beneath its bars
And keeps the key himself; he measures out
The draughts of vital breath that warm my blood,
Winds up the springs of instinct which uncoil,
Each in its season; ties me to my home,
My race, my time, my nation, and my creed
So closely that if I but slip my wrist
Out of the band that cuts it to the bone,
Men say, "He hath a devil"; he has lent
All that I hold in trust, as unto one
By reason of his weakness and his years
Not fit to hold the smallest shred in fee
Of those most common things he calls his own
And yet--my Rabbi tells me--he has left
The care of that to which a million worlds.
Filled with unconscious life were less than naught,
Has left that mighty universe, the Soul,
To the weak guidance of our baby hands,
Turned us adrift with our immortal charge,
Let the foul fiends have access at their will,
Taking the shape of angels, to our hearts,
Our hearts already poisoned through and through
With the fierce virus of ancestral sin.
If what my Rabbi tells me is the truth,
Why did the choir of angels sing for joy?
Heaven must be compassed in a narrow space,
And offer more than room enough for all
That pass its portals; but the underworld,
The godless realm, the place where demons forge
Their fiery darts and adamantine chains,
Must swarm with ghosts that for a little while
Had worn the garb of flesh, and being heirs
Of all the dulness of their stolid sires,
And all the erring instincts of their tribe,
Nature's own teaching, rudiments of "sin,"
Fell headlong in the snare that could not fail
To trap the wretched creatures shaped of clay
And cursed with sense enough to lose their souls!
Brother, thy heart is troubled at my word;
Sister, I see the cloud is on thy brow.
He will not blame me, He who sends not peace,
But sends a sword, and bids us strike amain
At Error's gilded crest, where in the van
Of earth's great army, mingling with the best
And bravest of its leaders, shouting loud
The battle-cries that yesterday have led
The host of Truth to victory, but to-day
Are watchwords of the laggard and the slave,
He leads his dazzled cohorts. God has made
This world a strife of atoms and of spheres;
With every breath I sigh myself away
And take my tribute from the wandering wind
To fan the flame of life's consuming fire;
So, while my thought has life, it needs must burn,
And burning, set the stubble-fields ablaze,
Where all the harvest long ago was reaped
And safely garnered in the ancient barns,
But still the gleaners, groping for their food,
Go blindly feeling through the close-shorn straw,
While the young reapers flash their glittering steel
Where later suns have ripened nobler grain!
We listened to these lines in silence. They were evidently written
honestly, and with feeling, and no doubt meant to be reverential. I
thought, however, the Lady looked rather serious as he finished reading.
The Young Girl's cheeks were flushed, but she was not in the mood for
criticism.
As we came away the Master said to me--The stubble-fields are mighty slow
to take fire. These young fellows catch up with the world's ideas one
after another,--they have been tamed a long while, but they find them
running loose in their minds, and think they are ferae naturae. They
remind me of young sportsmen who fire at the first feathers they see, and
bring down a barnyard fowl. But the chicken may be worth bagging for all
that, he said, good-humoredly.
X
Caveat Lector. Let the reader look out for himself. The old Master,
whose words I have so frequently quoted and shall quote more of, is a
dogmatist who lays down the law, ex cathedra, from the chair of his own
personality. I do not deny that he has the ambition of knowing something
about a greater number of subjects than any one man ought to meddle with,
except in a very humble and modest way. And that is not his way. There
was no doubt something of, humorous bravado in his saying that the actual
"order of things" did not offer a field sufficiently ample for his
intelligence. But if I found fault with him, which would be easy enough,
I should say that he holds and expresses definite opinions about matters
that he could afford to leave open questions, or ask the judgment of
others about. But I do not want to find fault with him. If he does not
settle all the points he speaks of so authoritatively, he sets me
thinking about them, and I like a man as a companion who is not afraid of
a half-truth. I know he says some things peremptorily that he may
inwardly debate with himself. There are two ways of dealing with
assertions of this kind. One may attack them on the false side and
perhaps gain a conversational victory. But I like better to take them up
on the true side and see how much can be made of that aspect of the
dogmatic assertion. It is the only comfortable way of dealing with
persons like the old Master.
There have been three famous talkers in Great Britain, either of whom
would illustrate what I say about dogmatists well enough for my purpose.
You cannot doubt to what three I refer: Samuel the First, Samuel the
Second, and Thomas, last of the Dynasty. (I mean the living Thomas and
not Thomas B.)
I say the last of the Dynasty, for the conversational dogmatist on the
imperial scale becomes every year more and more an impossibility. If he
is in intelligent company he will be almost sure to find some one who
knows more about some of the subjects he generalizes upon than any
wholesale thinker who handles knowledge by the cargo is like to know. I
find myself, at certain intervals, in the society of a number of experts
in science, literature, and art, who cover a pretty wide range, taking
them all together, of human knowledge. I have not the least doubt that
if the great Dr. Samuel Johnson should come in and sit with this company
at one of their Saturday dinners, he would be listened to, as he always
was, with respect and attention. But there are subjects upon which the
great talker could speak magisterially in his time and at his club, upon
which so wise a man would express himself guardedly at the meeting where
I have supposed him a guest. We have a scientific man or two among us,
for instance, who would be entitled to smile at the good Doctor's
estimate of their labors, as I give it here:
"Of those that spin out life in trifles and die without a memorial, many
flatter themselves with high opinion of their own importance and imagine
that they are every day adding some improvement to human life."--"Some
turn the wheel of electricity, some suspend rings to a loadstone, and
find that what they did yesterday they can do again to-day. Some
register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the wind
is changeable.
"There are men yet more profound, who have heard that two colorless
liquors may produce a color by union, and that two cold bodies will grow
hot if they are mingled; they mingle them, and produce the effect
expected, say it is strange, and mingle them again."
I cannot transcribe this extract without an intense inward delight in its
wit and a full recognition of its thorough half-truthfulness. Yet if
while the great moralist is indulging in these vivacities, he can be
imagined as receiving a message from Mr. Boswell or Mrs. Thrale flashed
through the depths of the ocean, we can suppose he might be tempted to
indulge in another oracular utterance, something like this:----A wise
man recognizes the convenience of a general statement, but he bows to the
authority of a particular fact. He who would bound the possibilities of
human knowledge by the limitations of present acquirements would take the
dimensions of the infant in ordering the habiliments of the adult. It is
the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to
listen. Will the Professor have the kindness to inform me by what steps
of gradual development the ring and the loadstone, which were but
yesterday the toys of children and idlers, have become the means of
approximating the intelligences of remote continents, and wafting
emotions unchilled through the abysses of the no longer unfathomable
deep?
--This, you understand, Beloved, is only a conventional imitation of the
Doctor's style of talking. He wrote in grand balanced phrases, but his
conversation was good, lusty, off-hand familiar talk. He used very often
to have it all his own way. If he came back to us we must remember that
to treat him fairly we must suppose him on a level with the knowledge of
our own time. But that knowledge is more specialized, a great deal, than
knowledge was in his day. Men cannot talk about things they have seen
from the outside with the same magisterial authority the talking dynasty
pretended to. The sturdy old moralist felt grand enough, no doubt, when
he said, "He that is growing great and happy by electrifying a bottle
wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war or
peace." Benjamin Franklin was one of these idlers who were electrifying
bottles, but he also found time to engage in the trifling prattle about
war and peace going on in those times. The talking Doctor hits him very
hard in "Taxation no Tyranny": "Those who wrote the Address (of the
American Congress in 1775), though they have shown no great extent or
profundity of mind, are yet probably wiser than to believe it: but they
have been taught by some master of mischief how to put in motion the
engine of political electricity; to attract by the sounds of Liberty and
Property, to repel by those of Popery and Slavery; and to give the great
stroke by the name of Boston." The talking dynasty has always been hard
upon us Americans. King Samuel II. says: "It is, I believe, a fact
verified beyond doubt, that some years ago it was impossible to obtain a
copy of the Newgate Calendar, as they had all been bought up by the
Americans, whether to suppress the blazon of their forefathers or to
assist in their genealogical researches I could never learn
satisfactorily." As for King Thomas, the last of the monological
succession, he made such a piece of work with his prophecies and his
sarcasms about our little trouble with some of the Southern States, that
we came rather to pity him for his whims and crotchets than to get angry
with him for calling us bores and other unamiable names.
I do not think we believe things because considerable people say them, on
personal authority, that is, as intelligent listeners very commonly did a
century ago. The newspapers have lied that belief out of us. Any man
who has a pretty gift of talk may hold his company a little while when
there is nothing better stirring. Every now and then a man who may be
dull enough prevailingly has a passion of talk come over him which makes
him eloquent and silences the rest. I have a great respect for these
divine paroxysms, these half-inspired moments of influx when they seize
one whom we had not counted among the luminaries of the social sphere.
But the man who can--give us a fresh experience on anything that
interests us overrides everybody else. A great peril escaped makes a
great story-teller of a common person enough. I remember when a certain
vessel was wrecked long ago, that one of the survivors told the story as
well as Defoe could have told it. Never a word from him before; never a
word from him since. But when it comes to talking one's common
thoughts,--those that come and go as the breath does; those that tread
the mental areas and corridors with steady, even foot-fall, an
interminable procession of every hue and garb,--there are few, indeed,
that can dare to lift the curtain which hangs before the window in the
breast and throw open the window, and let us look and listen. We are all
loyal enough to our sovereign when he shows himself, but sovereigns are
scarce. I never saw the absolute homage of listeners but once, that I
remember, to a man's common talk, and that was to the conversation of an
old man, illustrious by his lineage and the exalted honors he had won,
whose experience had lessons for the wisest, and whose eloquence had made
the boldest tremble.
All this because I told you to look out for yourselves and not take for
absolute truth everything the old Master of our table, or anybody else at
it sees fit to utter. At the same time I do not think that he, or any of
us whose conversation I think worth reporting, says anything for the mere
sake of saying it and without thinking that it holds some truth, even if
it is not unqualifiedly true.
I suppose a certain number of my readers wish very heartily that the
Young Astronomer whose poetical speculations I am recording would stop
trying by searching to find out the Almighty, and sign the thirty-nine
articles, or the Westminster Confession of Faith, at any rate slip his
neck into some collar or other, and pull quietly in the harness, whether
it galled him or not. I say, rather, let him have his talk out; if
nobody else asks the questions he asks, some will be glad to hear them,
but if you, the reader, find the same questions in your own mind, you
need not be afraid to see how they shape themselves in another's
intelligence. Do you recognize the fact that we are living in a new
time? Knowledge--it excites prejudices to call it science--is advancing
as irresistibly, as majestically, as remorselessly as the ocean moves in
upon the shore. The courtiers of King Canute (I am not afraid of the old
comparison), represented by the adherents of the traditional beliefs of
the period, move his chair back an inch at a time, but not until his feet
are pretty damp, not to say wet. The rock on which he sat securely
awhile ago is completely under water. And now people are walking up and
down the beach and judging for themselves how far inland the chair of
King Canute is like to be moved while they and their children are looking
on, at the rate in which it is edging backward. And it is quite too late
to go into hysterics about it.
The shore, solid, substantial, a great deal more than eighteen hundred
years old, is natural humanity. The beach which the ocean of
knowledge--you may call it science if you like--is flowing over, is
theological humanity. Somewhere between the Sermon on the Mount and the
teachings of Saint Augustine sin was made a transferable chattel. (I
leave the interval wide for others to make narrow.)
The doctrine of heritable guilt, with its mechanical consequences, has
done for our moral nature what the doctrine of demoniac possession has
done in barbarous times and still does among barbarous tribes for
disease. Out of that black cloud came the lightning which struck the
compass of humanity. Conscience, which from the dawn of moral being had
pointed to the poles of right and wrong only as the great current of will
flowed through the soul, was demagnetized, paralyzed, and knew henceforth
no fixed meridian, but stayed where the priest or the council placed it.
There is nothing to be done but to polarize the needle over again. And
for this purpose we must study the lines of direction of all the forces
which traverse our human nature.
We must study man as we have studied stars and rocks. We need not go, we
are told, to our sacred books for astronomy or geology or other
scientific knowledge. Do not stop there! Pull Canute's chair back fifty
rods at once, and do not wait until he is wet to the knees! Say now,
bravely, as you will sooner or later have to say, that we need not go to
any ancient records for our anthropology. Do we not all hold, at least,
that the doctrine of man's being a blighted abortion, a miserable
disappointment to his Creator, and hostile and hateful to him from his
birth, may give way to the belief that he is the latest terrestrial
manifestation of an ever upward-striving movement of divine power? If
there lives a man who does not want to disbelieve the popular notions
about the condition and destiny of the bulk of his race, I should like to
have him look me in the face and tell me so.
I am not writing for the basement story or the nursery, and I do not
pretend to be, but I say nothing in these pages which would not be said
without fear of offence in any intelligent circle, such as clergymen of
the higher castes are in the habit of frequenting. There are teachers in
type for our grandmothers and our grandchildren who vaccinate the two
childhoods with wholesome doctrine, transmitted harmlessly from one
infant to another. But we three men at our table have taken the disease
of thinking in the natural way. It is an epidemic in these times, and
those who are afraid of it must shut themselves up close or they will
catch it.
I hope none of us are wanting in reverence. One at least of us is a
regular church-goer, and believes a man may be devout and yet very free
in the expression of his opinions on the gravest subjects. There may be
some good people who think that our young friend who puts his thoughts in
verse is going sounding over perilous depths, and are frightened every
time he throws the lead. There is nothing to be frightened at. This is
a manly world we live in. Our reverence is good for nothing if it does
not begin with self-respect. Occidental manhood springs from that as its
basis; Oriental manhood finds the greatest satisfaction in
self-abasement. There is no use in trying to graft the tropical palm
upon the Northern pine. The same divine forces underlie the growth of
both, but leaf and flower and fruit must follow the law of race, of soil,
of climate. Whether the questions which assail my young friend have
risen in my reader's mind or not, he knows perfectly well that nobody can
keep such questions from springing up in every young mind of any force or
honesty. As for the excellent little wretches who grow up in what they
are taught, with never a scruple or a query, Protestant or Catholic, Jew
or Mormon, Mahometan or Buddhist, they signify nothing in the
intellectual life of the race. If the world had been wholly peopled with
such half-vitalized mental negatives, there never would have been a creed
like that of Christendom.
I entirely agree with the spirit of the verses I have looked over, in
this point at least, that a true man's allegiance is given to that which
is highest in his own nature. He reverences truth, he loves kindness, he
respects justice. The two first qualities he understands well enough.
But the last, justice, at least as between the Infinite and the finite,
has been so utterly dehumanized, disintegrated, decomposed, and
diabolized in passing through the minds of the half-civilized banditti
who have peopled and unpeopled the world for some scores of generations,
that it has become a mere algebraic x, and has no fixed value whatever as
a human conception.
As for power, we are outgrowing all superstition about that. We have not
the slightest respect for it as such, and it is just as well to remember
this in all our spiritual adjustments. We fear power when we cannot
master it; but just as far as we can master it, we make a slave and a
beast of burden of it without hesitation. We cannot change the ebb and
flow of the tides, or the course of the seasons, but we come as near it
as we can. We dam out the ocean, we make roses bloom in winter and water
freeze in summer. We have no more reverence for the sun than we have for
a fish-tail gas-burner; we stare into his face with telescopes as at a
ballet-dancer with opera-glasses; we pick his rays to pieces with prisms
as if they were so many skeins of colored yarn; we tell him we do not
want his company and shut him out like a troublesome vagrant. The gods
of the old heathen are the servants of to-day. Neptune, Vulcan, Aolus,
and the bearer of the thunderbolt himself have stepped down from their
pedestals and put on our livery. We cannot always master them, neither
can we always master our servant, the horse, but we have put a bridle on
the wildest natural agencies. The mob of elemental forces is as noisy
and turbulent as ever, but the standing army of civilization keeps it
well under, except for an occasional outbreak.
When I read the Lady's letter printed some time since, I could not help
honoring the feeling which prompted her in writing it. But while I
respect the innocent incapacity of tender age and the limitations of the
comparatively uninstructed classes, it is quite out of the question to
act as if matters of common intelligence and universal interest were the
private property of a secret society, only to be meddled with by those
who know the grip and the password.
We must get over the habit of transferring the limitations of the nervous
temperament and of hectic constitutions to the great Source of all the
mighty forces of nature, animate and inanimate. We may confidently trust
that we have over us a Being thoroughly robust and grandly magnanimous,
in distinction from the Infinite Invalid bred in the studies of sickly
monomaniacs, who corresponds to a very common human type, but makes us
blush for him when we contrast him with a truly noble man, such as most
of us have had the privilege of knowing both in public and in private
life.
I was not a little pleased to find that the Lady, in spite of her letter,
sat through the young man's reading of portions of his poem with a good
deal of complacency. I think I can guess what is in her mind. She
believes, as so many women do, in that great remedy for discontent, and
doubts about humanity, and questionings of Providence, and all sorts of
youthful vagaries,--I mean the love-cure. And she thinks, not without
some reason, that these astronomical lessons, and these readings of
poetry and daily proximity at the table, and the need of two young hearts
that have been long feeling lonely, and youth and nature and "all
impulses of soul and sense," as Coleridge has it, will bring these two
young people into closer relations than they perhaps have yet thought of;
and so that sweet lesson of loving the neighbor whom he has seen may lead
him into deeper and more trusting communion with the Friend and Father
whom he has not seen.
The Young Girl evidently did not intend that her accomplice should be a
loser by the summary act of the Member of the Haouse: I took occasion to
ask That Boy what had become of all the popguns. He gave me to
understand that popguns were played out, but that he had got a squirt and
a whip, and considered himself better off than before.
This great world is full of mysteries. I can comprehend the pleasure to
be got out of the hydraulic engine; but what can be the fascination of a
whip, when one has nothing to flagellate but the calves of his own legs,
I could never understand. Yet a small riding-whip is the most popular
article with the miscellaneous New-Englander at all great
gatherings,--cattle-shows and Fourth-of-July celebrations. If Democritus
and Heraclitus could walk arm in arm through one of these crowds, the
first would be in a broad laugh to see the multitude of young persons who
were rejoicing in the possession of one of these useless and worthless
little commodities; happy himself to see how easily others could purchase
happiness. But the second would weep bitter tears to think what a
rayless and barren life that must be which could extract enjoyment from
the miserable flimsy wand that has such magic attraction for sauntering
youths and simpering maidens. What a dynamometer of happiness are these
paltry toys, and what a rudimentary vertebrate must be the freckled
adolescent whose yearning for the infinite can be stayed even for a
single hour by so trifling a boon from the venal hands of the finite!
Pardon these polysyllabic reflections, Beloved, but I never contemplate
these dear fellow-creatures of ours without a delicious sense of
superiority to them and to all arrested embryos of intelligence, in which
I have no doubt you heartily sympathize with me. It is not merely when I
look at the vacuous countenances of the mastigophori, the whip-holders,
that I enjoy this luxury (though I would not miss that holiday spectacle
for a pretty sum of money, and advise you by all means to make sure of it
next Fourth of July, if you missed it this), but I get the same pleasure
from many similar manifestations.
I delight in Regalia, so called, of the kind not worn by kings, nor
obtaining their diamonds from the mines of Golconda. I have a passion
for those resplendent titles which are not conferred by a sovereign and
would not be the open sesame to the courts of royalty, yet which are as
opulent in impressive adjectives as any Knight of the Garter's list of
dignities. When I have recognized in the every-day name of His Very
Worthy High Eminence of some cabalistic association, the inconspicuous
individual whose trifling indebtedness to me for value received remains
in a quiescent state and is likely long to continue so, I confess to
having experienced a thrill of pleasure. I have smiled to think how
grand his magnificent titular appendages sounded in his own ears and what
a feeble tintinnabulation they made in mine. The crimson sash, the broad
diagonal belt of the mounted marshal of a great procession, so cheap in
themselves, yet so entirely satisfactory to the wearer, tickle my heart's
root.
Perhaps I should have enjoyed all these weaknesses of my infantile
fellow-creatures without an afterthought, except that on a certain
literary anniversary when I tie the narrow blue and pink ribbons in my
button-hole and show my decorated bosom to the admiring public, I am
conscious of a certain sense of distinction and superiority in virtue of
that trifling addition to my personal adornments which reminds me that I
too have some embryonic fibres in my tolerably well-matured organism.
I hope I have not hurt your feelings, if you happen to be a High and
Mighty Grand Functionary in any illustrious Fraternity. When I tell you
that a bit of ribbon in my button-hole sets my vanity prancing, I think
you cannot be grievously offended that I smile at the resonant titles
which make you something more than human in your own eyes. I would not
for the world be mistaken for one of those literary roughs whose brass
knuckles leave their mark on the foreheads of so many inoffensive people.
There is a human sub-species characterized by the coarseness of its fibre
and the acrid nature of its intellectual secretions. It is to a certain
extent penetrative, as all creatures are which are provided with stings.
It has an instinct which guides it to the vulnerable parts of the victim
on which it fastens. These two qualities give it a certain degree of
power which is not to be despised. It might perhaps be less mischievous,
but for the fact that the wound where it leaves its poison opens the
fountain from which it draws its nourishment.
Beings of this kind can be useful if they will only find their
appropriate sphere, which is not literature, but that circle of
rough-and-tumble political life where the fine-fibred men are at a
discount, where epithets find their subjects poison-proof, and the sting
which would be fatal to a literary debutant only wakes the eloquence of
the pachydermatous ward-room politician to a fiercer shriek of
declamation.
The Master got talking the other day about the difference between races
and families. I am reminded of what he said by what I have just been
saying myself about coarse-fibred and fine-fibred people.
--We talk about a Yankee, a New-Englander,---he said,-as if all of 'em
were just the same kind of animal. "There is knowledge and knowledge,"
said John Bunyan. There are Yankees and Yankees. Do you know two native
trees called pitch pine and white pine respectively? Of course you know
'em. Well, there are pitch-pine Yankees and white-pine Yankees. We
don't talk about the inherited differences of men quite as freely,
perhaps, as they do in the Old World, but republicanism doesn't alter the
laws of physiology. We have a native aristocracy, a superior race, just
as plainly marked by nature as of a higher and finer grade than the
common run of people as the white pine is marked in its form, its
stature, its bark, its delicate foliage, as belonging to the nobility of
the forest; and the pitch pine, stubbed, rough, coarse-haired, as of the
plebeian order. Only the strange thing is to see in what a capricious
way our natural nobility is distributed. The last born nobleman I have
seen, I saw this morning; he was pulling a rope that was fastened to a
Maine schooner loaded with lumber. I should say he was about twenty
years old, as fine a figure of a young man as you would ask to see, and
with a regular Greek outline of countenance, waving hair, that fell as if
a sculptor had massed it to copy, and a complexion as rich as a red
sunset. I have a notion that the State of Maine breeds the natural
nobility in a larger proportion than some other States, but they spring
up in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. The young fellow I saw this
morning had on an old flannel shirt, a pair of trowsers that meant hard
work, and a cheap cloth cap pushed back on his head so as to let the
large waves of hair straggle out over his forehead; he was tugging at his
rope with the other sailors, but upon my word I don't think I have seen a
young English nobleman of all those whom I have looked upon that answered
to the notion of "blood" so well as this young fellow did. I suppose if
I made such a levelling confession as this in public, people would think
I was looking towards being the labor-reform candidate for President.
But I should go on and spoil my prospects by saying that I don't think
the white-pine Yankee is the more generally prevailing growth, but rather
the pitch-pine Yankee.
--The Member of the Haouse seemed to have been getting a dim idea that
all this was not exactly flattering to the huckleberry districts. His
features betrayed the growth of this suspicion so clearly that the Master
replied to his look as if it had been a remark. [I need hardly say that
this particular member of the General Court was a pitch-pine Yankee of
the most thoroughly characterized aspect and flavor.]
--Yes, Sir,--the Master continued,--Sir being anybody that listened,
--there is neither flattery nor offence in the views which a
physiological observer takes of the forms of life around him. It won't
do to draw individual portraits, but the differences of natural groups of
human beings are as proper subjects of remark as those of different
breeds of horses, and if horses were Houyhnhnms I don't think they would
quarrel with us because we made a distinction between a "Morgan" and a
"Messenger." The truth is, Sir, the lean sandy soil and the droughts and
the long winters and the east-winds and the cold storms, and all sorts of
unknown local influences that we can't make out quite so plainly as
these, have a tendency to roughen the human organization and make it
coarse, something as it is with the tree I mentioned. Some spots and
some strains of blood fight against these influences, but if I should say
right out what I think, it would be that the finest human fruit, on the
whole; and especially the finest women that we get in New England are
raised under glass.
--Good gracious!--exclaimed the Landlady, under glass!
--Give me cowcumbers raised in the open air, said the Capitalist, who was
a little hard of hearing.
--Perhaps,--I remarked,--it might be as well if you would explain this
last expression of yours. Raising human beings under glass I take to be
a metaphorical rather than a literal statement of your meaning.
--No, Sir!--replied the Master, with energy,--I mean just what I say,
Sir. Under glass, and with a south exposure. During the hard season, of
course,--for in the heats of summer the tenderest hot-house plants are
not afraid of the open air. Protection is what the transplanted Aryan
requires in this New England climate. Keep him, and especially keep her,
in a wide street of a well-built city eight months of the year; good
solid brick walls behind her, good sheets of plate-glass, with the sun
shining warm through them, in front of her, and you have put her in the
condition of the pine-apple, from the land of which, and not from that of
the other kind of pine, her race started on its travels. People don't
know what a gain there is to health by living in cities, the best parts
of them of course, for we know too well what the worst parts are. In the
first place you get rid of the noxious emanations which poison so many
country localities with typhoid fever and dysentery, not wholly rid of
them, of course, but to a surprising degree. Let me tell you a doctor's
story. I was visiting a Western city a good many years ago; it was in
the autumn, the time when all sorts of malarious diseases are about. The
doctor I was speaking of took me to see the cemetery just outside the
town, I don't know how much he had done to fill it, for he didn't tell
me, but I'll tell you what he did say.
"Look round," said the doctor. "There isn't a house in all the ten-mile
circuit of country you can see over, where there isn't one person, at
least, shaking with fever and ague. And yet you need n't be afraid of
carrying it away with you, for as long as your home is on a paved street
you are safe."
--I think it likely--the Master went on to say--that my friend the doctor
put it pretty strongly, but there is no doubt at all that while all the
country round was suffering from intermittent fever, the paved part of
the city was comparatively exempted. What do you do when you build a
house on a damp soil, and there are damp soils pretty much everywhere?
Why you floor the cellar with cement, don't you? Well, the soil of a
city is cemented all over, one may say, with certain qualifications of
course. A first-rate city house is a regular sanatorium. The only
trouble is, that the little good-for-nothings that come of utterly
used-up and worn-out stock, and ought to die, can't die, to save their
lives. So they grow up to dilute the vigor of the race with skim-milk
vitality. They would have died, like good children, in most average
country places; but eight months of shelter in a regulated temperature,
in a well-sunned house, in a duly moistened air, with good sidewalks to
go about on in all weather, and four months of the cream of summer and
the fresh milk of Jersey cows, make the little sham organizations--the
worm-eaten wind-falls, for that 's what they look like--hang on to the
boughs of life like "froze-n-thaws"; regular struldbrugs they come to be,
a good many of 'em.
--The Scarabee's ear was caught by that queer word of Swift's, and he
asked very innocently what kind of bugs he was speaking of, whereupon
That Boy shouted out, Straddlebugs! to his own immense amusement and the
great bewilderment of the Scarabee, who only saw that there was one of
those unintelligible breaks in the conversation which made other people
laugh, and drew back his antennae as usual, perplexed, but not amused.
I do not believe the Master had said all he was going to say on this
subject, and of course all these statements of his are more or less
one-sided. But that some invalids do much better in cities than in the
country is indisputable, and that the frightful dysenteries and fevers
which have raged like pestilences in many of our country towns are almost
unknown in the better built sections of some of our large cities is
getting to be more generally understood since our well-to-do people have
annually emigrated in such numbers from the cemented surface of the city
to the steaming soil of some of the dangerous rural districts. If one
should contrast the healthiest country residences with the worst city
ones the result would be all the other way, of course, so that there are
two sides to the question, which we must let the doctors pound in their
great mortar, infuse and strain, hoping that they will present us with
the clear solution when they have got through these processes. One of
our chief wants is a complete sanitary map of every State in the Union.
The balance of our table, as the reader has no doubt observed, has been
deranged by the withdrawal of the Man of Letters, so called, and only the
side of the deficiency changed by the removal of the Young Astronomer
into our neighborhood. The fact that there was a vacant chair on the
side opposite us had by no means escaped the notice of That Boy. He had
taken advantage of his opportunity and invited in a schoolmate whom he
evidently looked upon as a great personage. This boy or youth was a good
deal older than himself and stood to him apparently in the light of a
patron and instructor in the ways of life. A very jaunty, knowing young
gentleman he was, good-looking, smartly dressed, smooth-checked as yet,
curly-haired, with a roguish eye, a sagacious wink, a ready tongue, as I
soon found out; and as I learned could catch a ball on the fly with any
boy of his age; not quarrelsome, but, if he had to strike, hit from the
shoulder; the pride of his father (who was a man of property and a civic
dignitary), and answering to the name of Johnny.
I was a little surprised at the liberty That Boy had taken in introducing
an extra peptic element at our table, reflecting as I did that a certain
number of avoirdupois ounces of nutriment which the visitor would dispose
of corresponded to a very appreciable pecuniary amount, so that he was
levying a contribution upon our Landlady which she might be inclined to
complain of. For the Caput mortuum (or deadhead, in vulgar phrase) is
apt to be furnished with a Venter vivus, or, as we may say, a lively
appetite. But the Landlady welcomed the new-comer very heartily.
--Why! how--do--you--do Johnny?! with the notes of interrogation and of
admiration both together, as here represented.
Johnny signified that he was doing about as well as could be expected
under the circumstances, having just had a little difference with a young
person whom he spoke of as "Pewter-jaw" (I suppose he had worn a
dentist's tooth-straightening contrivance during his second dentition),
which youth he had finished off, as he said, in good shape, but at the
expense of a slight epistaxis, we will translate his vernacular
expression.
--The three ladies all looked sympathetic, but there did not seem to be
any great occasion for it, as the boy had come out all right, and seemed
to be in the best of spirits.
-And how is your father and your mother? asked the Landlady.
-Oh, the Governor and the Head Centre? A 1, both of 'em. Prime order
for shipping,--warranted to stand any climate. The Governor says he
weighs a hunderd and seventy-five pounds. Got a chin-tuft just like
Ed'in Forrest. D'd y' ever see Ed'in Forrest play Metamora? Bully, I
tell you! My old gentleman means to be Mayor or Governor or President or
something or other before he goes off the handle, you'd better b'lieve.
He's smart,--and I've heard folks say I take after him.
--Somehow or other I felt as if I had seen this boy before, or known
something about him. Where did he get those expressions "A 1" and
"prime" and so on? They must have come from somebody who has been in the
retail dry-goods business, or something of that nature. I have certain
vague reminiscences that carry me back to the early times of this
boardinghouse.---Johnny.---Landlady knows his father well.
---Boarded with her, no doubt.---There was somebody by the name of John,
I remember perfectly well, lived with her. I remember both my friends
mentioned him, one of them very often. I wonder if this boy isn't a son
of his! I asked the Landlady after breakfast whether this was not, as I
had suspected, the son of that former boarder.
--To be sure he is,--she answered,--and jest such a good-natur'd sort of
creatur' as his father was. I always liked John, as we used to call his
father. He did love fun, but he was a good soul, and stood by me when I
was in trouble, always. He went into business on his own account after a
while, and got merried, and settled down into a family man. They tell me
he is an amazing smart business man,--grown wealthy, and his wife's
father left her money. But I can't help calling him John,--law, we never
thought of calling him anything else, and he always laughs and says,
"That's right." This is his oldest son, and everybody calls him Johnny.
That Boy of ours goes to the same school with his boy, and thinks there
never was anybody like him,--you see there was a boy undertook to impose
on our boy, and Johnny gave the other boy a good licking, and ever since
that he is always wanting to have Johnny round with him and bring him
here with him,--and when those two boys get together, there never was
boys that was so chock full of fun and sometimes mischief, but not very
bad mischief, as those two boys be. But I like to have him come once in
a while when there is room at the table, as there is now, for it puts me
in mind of the old times, when my old boarders was all round me, that I
used to think so much of,--not that my boarders that I have now a'nt very
nice people, but I did think a dreadful sight of the gentleman that made
that first book; it helped me on in the world more than ever he knew
of,--for it was as good as one of them Brandreth's pills advertisements,
and did n't cost me a cent, and that young lady he merried too, she was
nothing but a poor young schoolma'am when she come to my house, and
now--and she deserved it all too; for she was always just the same, rich
or poor, and she is n't a bit prouder now she wears a camel's-hair shawl,
than she was when I used to lend her a woollen one to keep her poor dear
little shoulders warm when she had to go out and it was storming,--and
then there was that old gentleman,--I can't speak about him, for I never
knew how good he was till his will was opened, and then it was too late
to thank him....
I respected the feeling which caused the interval of silence, and found
my own eyes moistened as I remembered how long it was since that friend
of ours was sitting in the chair where I now sit, and what a tidal wave
of change has swept over the world and more especially over this great
land of ours, since he opened his lips and found so many kind listeners.
The Young Astronomer has read us another extract from his manuscript. I
ran my eye over it, and so far as I have noticed it is correct enough in
its versification. I suppose we are getting gradually over our
hemispherical provincialism, which allowed a set of monks to pull their
hoods over our eyes and tell us there was no meaning in any religious
symbolism but our own. If I am mistaken about this advance I am very
glad to print the young man's somewhat outspoken lines to help us in that
direction.
WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.
VI
The time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour
Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth new-born
Looks a misshapen and untimely growth,
The terror of the household and its shame,
A monster coiling in its nurse's lap
That some would strangle, some would only starve;
But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand,
And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts,
Comes slowly to its stature and its form,
Calms the rough ridges of its dragon-scales,
Changes to shining locks its snaky hair,
And moves transfigured into angel guise,
Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth,
And folded in the same encircling arms
That cast it like a serpent from their hold!
If thou wouldst live in honor, die in peace,
Have the fine words the marble-workers learn
To carve so well, upon thy funeral-stone,
And earn a fair obituary, dressed
In all the many-colored robes of praise,
Be deafer than the adder to the cry
Of that same foundling truth, until it grows
To seemly favor, and at length has won
The smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-upped dames,
Then snatch it from its meagre nurse's breast,
Fold it in silk and give it food from gold;
So shalt thou share its glory when at last
It drops its mortal vesture, and revealed
In all the splendor of its heavenly form,
Spreads on the startled air its mighty wings!
Alas! how much that seemed immortal truth
That heroes fought for, martyrs died to save,
Reveals its earth-born lineage, growing old
And limping in its march, its wings unplumed,
Its heavenly semblance faded like a dream!
Here in this painted casket, just unsealed,
Lies what was once a breathing shape like thine,
Once loved as thou art loved; there beamed the eyes
That looked on Memphis in its hour of pride,
That saw the walls of hundred-gated Thebes,
And all the mirrored glories of the Nile.
See how they toiled that all-consuming time
Might leave the frame immortal in its tomb;
Filled it with fragrant balms and odorous gums
That still diffuse their sweetness through the air,
And wound and wound with patient fold on fold
The flaxen bands thy hand has rudely torn!
Perchance thou yet canst see the faded stain
Of the sad mourner's tear.
But what is this?
The sacred beetle, bound upon the breast
Of the blind heathen! Snatch the curious prize,
Give it a place among thy treasured spoils
Fossil and relic,--corals, encrinites,
The fly in amber and the fish in stone,
The twisted circlet of Etruscan gold,
Medal, intaglio, poniard, poison-ring,
--Place for the Memphian beetle with thine hoard!
Ah! longer than thy creed has blest the world
This toy, thus ravished from thy brother's breast,
Was to the heart of Mizraim as divine,
As holy, as the symbol that we lay
On the still bosom of our white-robed dead,
And raise above their dust that all may know
Here sleeps an heir of glory. Loving friends,
With tears of trembling faith and choking sobs,
And prayers to those who judge of mortal deeds,
Wrapped this poor image in the cerement's fold
That Isis and Osiris, friends of man,
Might know their own and claim the ransomed soul
An idol? Man was born to worship such!
An idol is an image of his thought;
Sometimes he carves it out of gleaming stone,
And sometimes moulds it out of glittering gold,
Or rounds it in a mighty frescoed dome,
Or lifts it heavenward in a lofty spire,
Or shapes it in a cunning frame of words,
Or pays his priest to make it day by day;
For sense must have its god as well as soul;
A new-born Dian calls for silver shrines,
And Egypt's holiest symbol is our own,
The sign we worship as did they of old
When Isis and Osiris ruled the world.
Let us be true to our most subtle selves,
We long to have our idols like the rest.
Think! when the men of Israel had their God
Encamped among them, talking with their chief,
Leading them in the pillar of the cloud
And watching o'er them in the shaft of fire,
They still must have an image; still they longed
For somewhat of substantial, solid form
Whereon to hang their garlands, and to fix
Their wandering thoughts, and gain a stronger hold
For their uncertain faith, not yet assured
If those same meteors of the day and night
Were not mere exhalations of the soil.
Are we less earthly than the chosen race?
Are we more neighbors of the living God
Than they who gathered manna every morn,
Reaping where none had sown, and heard the voice
Of him who met the Highest in the mount,
And brought them tables, graven with His hand?
Yet these must have their idol, brought their gold,
That star-browed Apis might be god again;
Yea, from their ears the women brake the rings
That lent such splendors to the gypsy brown
Of sunburnt cheeks,--what more could woman do
To show her pious zeal? They went astray,
But nature led them as it leads us all.
We too, who mock at Israel's golden calf
And scoff at Egypt's sacred scarabee,
Would have our amulets to clasp and kiss,
And flood with rapturous tears, and bear with us
To be our dear companions in the dust,
Such magic works an image in our souls!
Man is an embryo; see at twenty years
His bones, the columns that uphold his frame
Not yet cemented, shaft and capital,
Mere fragments of the temple incomplete.
At twoscore, threescore, is he then full grown?
Nay, still a child, and as the little maids
Dress and undress their puppets, so he tries
To dress a lifeless creed, as if it lived,
And change its raiment when the world cries shame!
We smile to see our little ones at play
So grave, so thoughtful, with maternal care
Nursing the wisps of rags they call their babes;
Does He not smile who sees us with the toys
We call by sacred names, and idly feign
To be what we have called them?
He is still The Father of this helpless nursery-brood,
Whose second childhood joins so close its first,
That in the crowding, hurrying years between
We scarce have trained our senses to their task
Before the gathering mist has dimmed our eyes,
And with our hollowed palm we help our ear,
And trace with trembling hand our wrinkled names,
And then begin to tell our stories o'er,
And see--not hear-the whispering lips that say,
"You know--? Your father knew him.--This is he,
Tottering and leaning on the hireling's arm,--"
And so, at length, disrobed of all that clad
The simple life we share with weed and worm,
Go to our cradles, naked as we came.
XI
I suppose there would have been even more remarks upon the growing
intimacy of the Young Astronomer and his pupil, if the curiosity of the
boarders had not in the mean time been so much excited at the apparently
close relation which had sprung up between the Register of Deeds and the
Lady. It was really hard to tell what to make of it. The Register
appeared at the table in a new coat. Suspicious. The Lady was evidently
deeply interested in him, if we could judge by the frequency and the
length of their interviews. On at least one occasion he has brought a
lawyer with him, which naturally suggested the idea that there were some
property arrangements to be attended to, in case, as seems probable
against all reasons to the contrary, these two estimable persons, so
utterly unfitted, as one would say, to each other, contemplated an
alliance. It is no pleasure to me to record an arrangement of this kind.
I frankly confess I do not know what to make of it. With her tastes and
breeding, it is the last thing that I should have thought of,--her
uniting herself with this most commonplace and mechanical person, who
cannot even offer her the elegances and luxuries to which she might seem
entitled on changing her condition.
While I was thus interested and puzzled I received an unexpected visit
from our Landlady. She was evidently excited, and by some event which
was of a happy nature, for her countenance was beaming and she seemed
impatient to communicate what she had to tell. Impatient or not, she must
wait a moment, while I say a word about her. Our Landlady is as good a
creature as ever lived. She is a little negligent of grammar at times,
and will get a wrong word now and then; she is garrulous, circumstantial,
associates facts by their accidental cohesion rather than by their vital
affinities, is given to choking and tears on slight occasions, but she
has a warm heart, and feels to her boarders as if they were her
blood-relations. She began her conversation abruptly.--I expect I'm a
going to lose one of my boarders,--she said.
--You don't seem very unhappy about it, madam,--I answered.---We all took
it easily when the person who sat on our side of the table quitted us in
such a hurry, but I do not think there is anybody left that either you or
the boarders want to get rid of--unless it is myself,--I added modestly.
--You! said the Landlady--you! No indeed. When I have a quiet boarder
that 's a small eater, I don't want to lose him. You don't make trouble,
you don't find fault with your vit--[Dr. Benjamin had schooled his parent
on this point and she altered the word] with your food, and you know when
you 've had enough.
--I really felt proud of this eulogy, which embraces the most desirable
excellences of a human being in the capacity of boarder.
The Landlady began again.--I'm going to lose--at least, I suppose I
shall--one of the best boarders I ever had,--that Lady that's been with
me so long.
--I thought there was something going on between her and the Register,--I
said.
--Something! I should think there was! About three months ago he began
making her acquaintance. I thought there was something particular. I
did n't quite like to watch 'em very close; but I could n't help
overbearing some of the things he said to her, for, you see, he used to
follow her up into the parlor, they talked pretty low, but I could catch
a word now and then. I heard him say something to her one day about
"bettering her condition," and she seemed to be thinking very hard about
it, and turning of it over in her mind, and I said to myself, She does
n't want to take up with him, but she feels dreadful poor, and perhaps he
has been saving and has got money in the bank, and she does n't want to
throw away a chance of bettering herself without thinking it over. But
dear me,--says I to myself,--to think of her walking up the broad aisle
into meeting alongside of such a homely, rusty-looking creatur' as that!
But there 's no telling what folks will do when poverty has got hold of
'em.
--Well, so I thought she was waiting to make up her mind, and he was
hanging on in hopes she'd come round at last, as women do half the time,
for they don't know their own minds and the wind blows both ways at once
with 'em as the smoke blows out of the tall chimlies,--east out of this
one and west out of that,--so it's no use looking at 'em to know what the
weather is.
--But yesterday she comes up to me after breakfast, and asks me to go up
with her into her little room. Now, says I to myself, I shall hear all
about it. I saw she looked as if she'd got some of her trouble off her
mind, and I guessed that it was settled, and so, says I to myself, I must
wish her joy and hope it's all for the best, whatever I think about it.
--Well, she asked me to set down, and then she begun. She said that she
was expecting to have a change in her condition of life, and had asked me
up so that I might' have the first news of it. I am sure--says I--I
wish you both joy. Merriage is a blessed thing when folks is well
sorted, and it is an honorable thing, and the first meracle was at the
merriage in Canaan. It brings a great sight of happiness with it, as
I've had a chance of knowing, for my hus--
The Landlady showed her usual tendency to "break" from the conversational
pace just at this point, but managed to rein in the rebellious diaphragm,
and resumed her narrative.
--Merriage!--says she,--pray who has said anything about merriage?--I
beg your pardon, ma'am,--says I,--I thought you had spoke of changing
your condition and I--She looked so I stopped right short.
-Don't say another word, says she, but jest listen to what I am going to
tell you.
--My friend, says she, that you have seen with me so often lately, was
hunting among his old Record books, when all at once he come across an
old deed that was made by somebody that had my family name. He took it
into his head to read it over, and he found there was some kind of a
condition that if it was n't kept, the property would all go back to them
that was the heirs of the one that gave the deed, and that he found out
was me. Something or other put it into his head, says she, that the
company that owned the property--it was ever so rich a company and owned
land all round everywhere--hadn't kept to the conditions. So he went to
work, says she, and hunted through his books and he inquired all round,
and he found out pretty much all about it, and at last he come to me--it
's my boarder, you know, that says all this--and says he, Ma'am, says he,
if you have any kind of fancy for being a rich woman you've only got to
say so. I didn't know what he meant, and I began to think, says she, he
must be crazy. But he explained it all to me, how I'd nothing to do but
go to court and I could get a sight of property back. Well, so she went
on telling me--there was ever so much more that I suppose was all plain
enough, but I don't remember it all--only I know my boarder was a good
deal worried at first at the thought of taking money that other people
thought was theirs, and the Register he had to talk to her, and he
brought a lawyer and he talked to her, and her friends they talked to
her, and the upshot of it all was that the company agreed to settle the
business by paying her, well, I don't know just how much, but enough to
make her one of the rich folks again.
I may as well add here that, as I have since learned, this is one of the
most important cases of releasing right of reentry for condition broken
which has been settled by arbitration for a considerable period. If I am
not mistaken the Register of Deeds will get something more than a new
coat out of this business, for the Lady very justly attributes her change
of fortunes to his sagacity and his activity in following up the hint he
had come across by mere accident.
So my supernumerary fellow-boarder, whom I would have dispensed with as a
cumberer of the table, has proved a ministering angel to one of the
personages whom I most cared for.
One would have thought that the most scrupulous person need not have
hesitated in asserting an unquestioned legal and equitable claim simply
because it had lain a certain number of years in abeyance. But before the
Lady could make up her mind to accept her good fortune she had been kept
awake many nights in doubt and inward debate whether she should avail
herself of her rights. If it had been private property, so that another
person must be made poor that she should become rich, she would have
lived and died in want rather than claim her own. I do not think any of
us would like to turn out the possessor of a fine estate enjoyed for two
or three generations on the faith of unquestioned ownership by making use
of some old forgotten instrument, which accident had thrown in our way.
But it was all nonsense to indulge in any sentiment in a case like this,
where it was not only a right, but a duty which she owed herself and
others in relation with her, to accept what Providence, as it appeared,
had thrust upon her, and when no suffering would be occasioned to
anybody. Common sense told her not to refuse it. So did several of her
rich friends, who remembered about this time that they had not called
upon her for a good while, and among them Mrs. Midas Goldenrod.
Never had that lady's carriage stood before the door of our
boarding-house so long, never had it stopped so often, as since the
revelation which had come from the Registry of Deeds. Mrs. Midas
Goldenrod was not a bad woman, but she loved and hated in too exclusive
and fastidious a way to allow us to consider her as representing the
highest ideal of womanhood. She hated narrow ill-ventilated courts,
where there was nothing to see if one looked out of the window but old
men in dressing-gowns and old women in caps; she hated little dark rooms
with air-tight stoves in them; she hated rusty bombazine gowns and last
year's bonnets; she hated gloves that were not as fresh as new-laid eggs,
and shoes that had grown bulgy and wrinkled in service; she hated common
crockeryware and teaspoons of slight constitution; she hated second
appearances on the dinner-table; she hated coarse napkins and
table-cloths; she hated to ride in the horsecars; she hated to walk
except for short distances, when she was tired of sitting in her
carriage. She loved with sincere and undisguised affection a spacious
city mansion and a charming country villa, with a seaside cottage for a
couple of months or so; she loved a perfectly appointed household, a cook
who was up to all kinds of salmis and vol-au-vents, a French maid, and a
stylish-looking coachman, and the rest of the people necessary to help
one live in a decent manner; she loved pictures that other people said
were first-rate, and which had at least cost first-rate prices; she loved
books with handsome backs, in showy cases; she loved heavy and richly
wought plate; fine linen and plenty of it; dresses from Paris frequently,
and as many as could be got in without troubling the customhouse; Russia
sables and Venetian point-lace; diamonds, and good big ones; and,
speaking generally, she loved dear things in distinction from cheap ones,
the real article and not the economical substitute.
For the life of me I cannot see anything Satanic in all this. Tell me,
Beloved, only between ourselves, if some of these things are not
desirable enough in their way, and if you and I could not make up our
minds to put up with some of the least objectionable of them without any
great inward struggle? Even in the matter of ornaments there is
something to be said. Why should we be told that the New Jerusalem is
paved with gold, and that its twelve gates are each of them a pearl, and
that its foundations are garnished with sapphires and emeralds and all
manner of precious stones, if these are not among the most desirable of
objects? And is there anything very strange in the fact that many a
daughter of earth finds it a sweet foretaste of heaven to wear about her
frail earthly tabernacle these glittering reminders of the celestial
city?
Mrs. Midas Goldenrod was not so entirely peculiar and anomalous in her
likes and dislikes; the only trouble was that she mixed up these
accidents of life too much with life itself, which is so often serenely
or actively noble and happy without reference to them. She valued
persons chiefly according to their external conditions, and of course the
very moment her relative, the Lady of our breakfast-table, began to find
herself in a streak of sunshine she came forward with a lighted candle to
show her which way her path lay before her.
The Lady saw all this, how plainly, how painfully! yet she exercised a
true charity for the weakness of her relative. Sensible people have as
much consideration for the frailties of the rich as for those of the
poor. There is a good deal of excuse for them. Even you and I,
philosophers and philanthropists as we may think ourselves, have a
dislike for the enforced economies, proper and honorable though they
certainly are, of those who are two or three degrees below us in the
scale of agreeable living.
--These are very worthy persons you have been living with, my dear,
--said Mrs. Midas--[the "My dear" was an expression which had flowered
out more luxuriantly than ever before in the new streak of sunshine]
--eminently respectable parties, I have no question, but then we shall
want you to move as soon as possible to our quarter of the town, where we
can see more of you than we have been able to in this queer place.
It was not very pleasant to listen to this kind of talk, but the Lady
remembered her annual bouquet, and her occasional visits from the rich
lady, and restrained the inclination to remind her of the humble sphere
from which she herself, the rich and patronizing personage, had worked
her way up (if it was up) into that world which she seemed to think was
the only one where a human being could find life worth having. Her cheek
flushed a little, however, as she said to Mrs. Midas that she felt
attached to the place where she had been living so long. She doubted,
she was pleased to say, whether she should find better company in any
circle she was like to move in than she left behind her at our
boarding-house. I give the old Master the credit of this compliment. If
one does not agree with half of what he says, at any rate he always has
something to say, and entertains and lets out opinions and whims and
notions of one kind and another that one can quarrel with if he is out of
humor, or carry away to think about if he happens to be in the receptive
mood.
But the Lady expressed still more strongly the regret she should feel at
leaving her young friend, our Scheherezade. I cannot wonder at this.
The Young Girl has lost what little playfulness she had in the earlier
months of my acquaintance with her. I often read her stories partly from
my interest in her, and partly because I find merit enough in them to
deserve something, better than the rough handling they got from her
coarse-fibred critic, whoever he was. I see evidence that her thoughts
are wandering from her task, that she has fits of melancholy, and bursts
of tremulous excitement, and that she has as much as she can do to keep
herself at all to her stated, inevitable, and sometimes almost despairing
literary labor. I have had some acquaintance with vital phenomena of
this kind, and know something of the nervous nature of young women and
its "magnetic storms," if I may borrow an expression from the physicists,
to indicate the perturbations to which they are liable. She is more in
need of friendship and counsel now than ever before, it seems to me, and
I cannot bear to think that the Lady, who has become like a mother to
her, is to leave her to her own guidance.
It is plain enough what is at the bottom of this disturbance. The
astronomical lessons she has been taking have become interesting enough
to absorb too much of her thoughts, and she finds them wandering to the
stars or elsewhere, when they should be working quietly in the editor's
harness.
The Landlady has her own views on this matter which she communicated to
me something as follows:
--I don't quite like to tell folks what a lucky place my boarding-house
is, for fear I should have all sorts of people crowding in to be my
boarders for the sake of their chances. Folks come here poor and they go
away rich. Young women come here without a friend in the world, and the
next thing that happens is a gentleman steps up to 'em and says, "If
you'll take me for your pardner for life, I'll give you a good home and
love you ever so much besides"; and off goes my young lady-boarder into a
fine three-story house, as grand as the governor's wife, with everything
to make her comfortable, and a husband to care for her into the bargain.
That's the way it is with the young ladies that comes to board with me,
ever since the gentleman that wrote the first book that advertised my
establishment (and never charged me a cent for it neither) merried the
Schoolma'am. And I think but that's between you and me--that it 's going
to be the same thing right over again between that young gentleman and
this young girl here--if she doos n't kill herself with writing for them
news papers,--it 's too bad they don't pay her more for writing her
stories, for I read one of 'em that made me cry so the Doctor--my Doctor
Benjamin--said, "Ma, what makes your eyes look so?" and wanted to rig a
machine up and look at 'em, but I told him what the matter was, and that
he needn't fix up his peeking contrivances on my account,--anyhow she's a
nice young woman as ever lived, and as industrious with that pen of hers
as if she was at work with a sewing-machine,--and there ain't much
difference, for that matter, between sewing on shirts and writing on
stories,--one way you work with your foot, and the other way you work
with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the
stories than there is in the stitches, because you don't have to think
quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at
work, scratch, scratch, scratch, scribble, scribble, scribble.
It occurred to me that this last suggestion of the Landlady was worth
considering by the soft-handed, broadcloth-clad spouters to the laboring
classes,--so called in distinction from the idle people who only contrive
the machinery and discover the processes and lay out the work and draw
the charts and organize the various movements which keep the world going
and make it tolerable. The organ-blower works harder with his muscles,
for that matter, than the organ player, and may perhaps be exasperated
into thinking himself a downtrodden martyr because he does not receive
the same pay for his services.
I will not pretend that it needed the Landlady's sagacious guess about
the Young Astronomer and his pupil to open my eyes to certain
possibilities, if not probabilities, in that direction. Our Scheherezade
kept on writing her stories according to agreement, so many pages for so
many dollars, but some of her readers began to complain that they could
not always follow her quite so well as in her earlier efforts. It seemed
as if she must have fits of absence. In one instance her heroine began as
a blonde and finished as a brunette; not in consequence of the use of any
cosmetic, but through simple inadvertence. At last it happened in one of
her stories that a prominent character who had been killed in an early
page, not equivocally, but mortally, definitively killed, done for, and
disposed of, reappeared as if nothing had happened towards the close of
her narrative. Her mind was on something else, and she had got two
stories mixed up and sent her manuscript without having looked it over.
She told this mishap to the Lady, as something she was dreadfully ashamed
of and could not possibly account for. It had cost her a sharp note from
the publisher, and would be as good as a dinner to some half-starved
Bohemian of the critical press.
The Lady listened to all this very thoughtfully, looking at her with
great tenderness, and said, "My poor child!" Not another word then, but
her silence meant a good deal.
When a man holds his tongue it does not signify much. But when a woman
dispenses with the office of that mighty member, when she sheathes her
natural weapon at a trying moment, it means that she trusts to still more
formidable enginery; to tears it may be, a solvent more powerful than
that with which Hannibal softened the Alpine rocks, or to the heaving
bosom, the sight of which has subdued so many stout natures, or, it may
be, to a sympathizing, quieting look which says "Peace, be still!" to the
winds and waves of the little inland ocean, in a language that means more
than speech.
While these matters were going on the Master and I had many talks on many
subjects. He had found me a pretty good listener, for I had learned that
the best way of getting at what was worth having from him was to wind him
up with a question and let him run down all of himself. It is easy to
turn a good talker into an insufferable bore by contradicting him, and
putting questions for him to stumble over,--that is, if he is not a bore
already, as "good talkers" are apt to be, except now and then.
We had been discussing some knotty points one morning when he said all at
once:
--Come into my library with me. I want to read you some new passages
from an interleaved copy of my book. You haven't read the printed part
yet. I gave you a copy of it, but nobody reads a book that is given to
him. Of course not. Nobody but a fool expects him to. He reads a
little in it here and there, perhaps, and he cuts all the leaves if he
cares enough about the writer, who will be sure to call on him some day,
and if he is left alone in his library for five minutes will have hunted
every corner of it until he has found the book he sent,--if it is to be
found at all, which does n't always happen, if there's a penal colony
anywhere in a garret or closet for typographical offenders and vagrants.
--What do you do when you receive a book you don't want, from the
author?--said I.
--Give him a good-natured adjective or two if I can, and thank him, and
tell him I am lying under a sense of obligation to him.
--That is as good an excuse for lying as almost any,--I said.
--Yes, but look out for the fellows that send you a copy of their book to
trap you into writing a bookseller's advertisement for it. I got caught
so once, and never heard the end of it and never shall hear it.---He took
down an elegantly bound volume, on opening which appeared a flourishing
and eminently flattering dedication to himself.---There,--said he, what
could I do less than acknowledge such a compliment in polite terms, and
hope and expect the book would prove successful, and so forth and so
forth? Well, I get a letter every few months from some new locality
where the man that made that book is covering the fences with his
placards, asking me whether I wrote that letter which he keeps in
stereotype and has kept so any time these dozen or fifteen years. Animus
tuus oculus, as the freshmen used to say. If her Majesty, the Queen of
England, sends you a copy of her "Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in
the Highlands," be sure you mark your letter of thanks for it Private!
We had got comfortably seated in his library in the mean time, and the
Master had taken up his book. I noticed that every other page was left
blank, and that he had written in a good deal of new matter.
--I tell you what,--he said,--there 's so much intelligence about
nowadays in books and newspapers and talk that it's mighty hard to write
without getting something or other worth listening to into your essay or
your volume. The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of
wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow. Every now and then I find
something in my book that seems so good to me, I can't help thinking it
must have leaked in. I suppose other people discover that it came
through a leak, full as soon as I do. You must write a book or two to
find out how much and how little you know and have to say. Then you must
read some notices of it by somebody that loves you and one or two by
somebody that hates you. You 'll find yourself a very odd piece of
property after you 've been through these experiences. They 're trying
to the constitution; I'm always glad to hear that a friend is as well as
can be expected after he 's had a book.
You must n't think there are no better things in these pages of mine than
the ones I'm going to read you, but you may come across something here
that I forgot to say when we were talking over these matters.
He began, reading from the manuscript portion of his book:
--We find it hard to get and to keep any private property in thought.
Other people are all the time saying the same things we are hoarding to
say when we get ready. [He looked up from his book just here and said,
"Don't be afraid, I am not going to quote Pereant."] One of our old
boarders--the one that called himself "The Professor" I think it
was--said some pretty audacious things about what he called "pathological
piety," as I remember, in one of his papers. And here comes along Mr.
Galton, and shows in detail from religious biographies that "there is a
frequent correlation between an unusually devout disposition and a weak
constitution." Neither of them appeared to know that John Bunyan had got
at the same fact long before them. He tells us, "The more healthy the
lusty man is, the more prone he is unto evil." If the converse is true,
no wonder that good people, according to Bunyan, are always in trouble
and terror, for he says,
"A Christian man is never long at ease;
When one fright is gone, another doth him seize."
If invalidism and the nervous timidity which is apt to go with it are
elements of spiritual superiority, it follows that pathology and
toxicology should form a most important part of a theological education,
so that a divine might know how to keep a parish in a state of chronic
bad health in order that it might be virtuous.
It is a great mistake to think that a man's religion is going to rid him
of his natural qualities. "Bishop Hall" (as you may remember to have
seen quoted elsewhere) "prefers Nature before Grace in the Election of a
wife, because, saith he, it will be a hard Task, where the Nature is
peevish and froward, for Grace to make an entire conquest while Life
lasteth."
"Nature" and "Grace" have been contrasted with each other in a way not
very respectful to the Divine omnipotence. Kings and queens reign "by
the Grace of God," but a sweet, docile, pious disposition, such as is
born in some children and grows up with them,--that congenital gift which
good Bishop Hall would look for in a wife,--is attributed to "Nature."
In fact "Nature" and "Grace," as handled by the scholastics, are nothing
more nor less than two hostile Divinities in the Pantheon of
post-classical polytheism.
What is the secret of the profound interest which "Darwinism" has excited
in the minds and hearts of more persons than dare to confess their doubts
and hopes? It is because it restores "Nature" to its place as a true
divine manifestation. It is that it removes the traditional curse from
that helpless infant lying in its mother's arms. It is that it lifts
from the shoulders of man the responsibility for the fact of death. It
is that, if it is true, woman can no longer be taunted with having
brought down on herself the pangs which make her sex a martyrdom. If
development upward is the general law of the race; if we have grown by
natural evolution out of the cave-man, and even less human forms of life,
we have everything to hope from the future. That the question can be
discussed without offence shows that we are entering on a new era, a
Revival greater than that of Letters, the Revival of Humanity.
The prevalent view of "Nature" has been akin to that which long reigned
with reference to disease. This used to be considered as a distinct
entity apart from the processes of life, of which it is one of the
manifestations. It was a kind of demon to be attacked with things of
odious taste and smell; to be fumigated out of the system as the evil
spirit was driven from the bridal-chamber in the story of Tobit. The
Doctor of earlier days, even as I can remember him, used to exorcise the
demon of disease with recipes of odor as potent as that of the angel's
diabolifuge,--the smoke from a fish's heart and liver, duly burned,--"the
which smell when the evil spirit had smelled he fled into the uttermost
parts of Egypt." The very moment that disease passes into the category
of vital processes, and is recognized as an occurrence absolutely
necessary, inevitable, and as one may say, normal under certain given
conditions of constitution and circumstance, the medicine-man loses his
half-miraculous endowments. The mythical serpent is untwined from the
staff of Esculapius, which thenceforth becomes a useful walking-stick,
and does not pretend to be anything more.
Sin, like disease, is a vital process. It is a function, and not an
entity. It must be studied as a section of anthropology. No
preconceived idea must be allowed to interfere with our investigation of
the deranged spiritual function, any more than the old ideas of
demoniacal possession must be allowed to interfere with our study of
epilepsy. Spiritual pathology is a proper subject for direct observation
and analysis, like any other subject involving a series of living
actions.
In these living actions everything is progressive. There are sudden
changes of character in what is called "conversion" which, at first,
hardly seem to come into line with the common laws of evolution. But
these changes have been long preparing, and it is just as much in the
order of nature that certain characters should burst all at once from the
rule of evil propensities, as it is that the evening primrose should
explode, as it were, into bloom with audible sound, as you may read in
Keats's Endymion, or observe in your own garden.
There is a continual tendency in men to fence in themselves and a few of
their neighbors who agree with them in their ideas, as if they were an
exception to their race. We must not allow any creed or religion
whatsoever to confiscate to its own private use and benefit the virtues
which belong to our common humanity. The Good Samaritan helped his
wounded neighbor simply because he was a suffering fellow-creature. Do
you think your charitable act is more acceptable than the Good
Samaritan's, because you do it in the name of Him who made the memory of
that kind man immortal? Do you mean that you would not give the cup of
cold water for the sake simply and solely of the poor, suffering
fellow-mortal, as willingly as you now do, professing to give it for the
sake of Him who is not thirsty or in need of any help of yours? We must
ask questions like this, if we are to claim for our common nature what
belongs to it.
The scientific study of man is the most difficult of all branches of
knowledge. It requires, in the first place, an entire new terminology to
get rid of that enormous load of prejudices with which every term applied
to the malformations, the functional disturbances, and the organic
diseases of the moral nature is at present burdened. Take that one word
Sin, for instance: all those who have studied the subject from nature and
not from books know perfectly well that a certain fraction of what is so
called is nothing more or less than a symptom of hysteria; that another
fraction is the index of a limited degree of insanity; that still another
is the result of a congenital tendency which removes the act we sit in
judgment upon from the sphere of self-determination, if not entirely, at
least to such an extent that the subject of the tendency cannot be judged
by any normal standard.
To study nature without fear is possible, but without reproach,
impossible. The man who worships in the temple of knowledge must carry
his arms with him as our Puritan fathers had to do when they gathered in
their first rude meeting-houses. It is a fearful thing to meddle with
the ark which holds the mysteries of creation. I remember that when I
was a child the tradition was whispered round among us little folks that
if we tried to count the stars we should drop down dead. Nevertheless,
the stars have been counted and the astronomer has survived. This
nursery legend is the child's version of those superstitions which would
have strangled in their cradles the young sciences now adolescent and
able to take care of themselves, and which, no longer daring to attack
these, are watching with hostile aspect the rapid growth of the
comparatively new science of man.
The real difficulty of the student of nature at this time is to reconcile
absolute freedom and perfect fearlessness with that respect for the past,
that reverence, for the spirit of reverence wherever we find it, that
tenderness for the weakest fibres by which the hearts of our
fellow-creatures hold to their religious convictions, which will make the
transition from old belief to a larger light and liberty an interstitial
change and not a violent mutilation.
I remember once going into a little church in a small village some miles
from a great European capital. The special object of adoration in this
humblest of places of worship was a bambino, a holy infant, done in wax,
and covered with cheap ornaments such as a little girl would like to
beautify her doll with. Many a good Protestant of the old Puritan type
would have felt a strong impulse to seize this "idolatrous" figure and
dash it to pieces on the stone floor of the little church. But one must
have lived awhile among simple-minded pious Catholics to know what this
poor waxen image and the whole baby-house of bambinos mean for a humble,
unlettered, unimaginative peasantry. He will find that the true office
of this eidolon is to fix the mind of the worshipper, and that in virtue
of the devotional thoughts it has called forth so often for so many years
in the mind of that poor old woman who is kneeling before it, it is no
longer a wax doll for her, but has undergone a transubstantiation quite
as real as that of the Eucharist. The moral is that we must not roughly
smash other people's idols because we know, or think we know, that they
are of cheap human manufacture.
--Do you think cheap manufactures encourage idleness?--said I.
The Master stared. Well he might, for I had been getting a little
drowsy, and wishing to show that I had been awake and attentive, asked a
question suggested by some words I had caught, but which showed that I
had not been taking the slightest idea from what he was reading me. He
stared, shook his head slowly, smiled good-humoredly, took off his great
round spectacles, and shut up his book.
--Sat prates biberunt,--he said. A sick man that gets talking about
himself, a woman that gets talking about her baby, and an author that
begins reading out of his own book, never know when to stop. You'll
think of some of these things you've been getting half asleep over by and
by. I don't want you to believe anything I say; I only want you to try
to see what makes me believe it.
My young friend, the Astronomer, has, I suspect, been making some
addition to his manuscript. At any rate some of the lines he read us in
the afternoon of this same day had never enjoyed the benefit of my
revision, and I think they had but just been written. I noticed that his
manner was somewhat more excited than usual, and his voice just towards
the close a little tremulous. Perhaps I may attribute his improvement to
the effect of my criticisms, but whatever the reason, I think these lines
are very nearly as correct as they would have been if I had looked them
over.
WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.
VII
What if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved
While yet on earth and was beloved in turn,
And still remembered every look and tone
Of that dear earthly sister who was left
Among the unwise virgins at the gate,
Itself admitted with the bridegroom's train,
What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host
Of chanting angels, in some transient lull
Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry
Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour
Some wilder pulse of nature led astray
And left an outcast in a world of fire,
Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends,
Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill
To wring the maddest ecstasies of pain
From worn-out souls that only ask to die,
Would it not long to leave the bliss of Heaven,
Bearing a little water in its hand
To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain
With Him we call our Father? Or is all
So changed in such as taste celestial joy
They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe,
The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed
Her cradled slumbers; she who once had held
A babe upon her bosom from its voice
Hoarse with its cry of anguish, yet the same?
No! not in ages when the Dreadful Bird
Stamped his huge footprints, and the Fearful Beast
Strode with the flesh about those fossil bones
We build to mimic life with pygmy hands,
Not in those earliest days when men ran wild
And gashed each other with their knives of stone,
When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows
And their flat hands were callous in the palm
With walking in the fashion of their sires,
Grope as they might to find a cruel god
To work their will on such as human wrath
Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left
With rage unsated, white and stark and cold,
Could hate have shaped a demon more malign
Than him the dead men mummied in their creed
And taught their trembling children to adore!
Made in his image! Sweet and gracious souls
Dear to my heart by nature's fondest names,
Is not your memory still the precious mould
That lends its form to Him who hears my prayer?
Thus only I behold him, like to them,
Long-suffering, gentle, ever slow to wrath,
If wrath it be that only wounds to heal,
Ready to meet the wanderer ere he reach
The door he seeks, forgetful of his sin,
Longing to clasp him in a father's arms,
And seal his pardon with a pitying tear!
Four gospels tell their story to mankind,
And none so full of soft, caressing words
That bring the Maid of Bethlehem and her Babe
Before our tear-dimmed eyes, as his who learned
In the meek service of his gracious art
The tones which like the medicinal balms
That calm the sufferer's anguish, soothe our souls.
--Oh that the loving woman, she who sat
So long a listener at her Master's feet,
Had left us Mary's Gospel,--all she heard
Too sweet, too subtle for the ear of man!
Mark how the tender-hearted mothers read
The messages of love between the lines
Of the same page that loads the bitter tongue
Of him who deals in terror as his trade
With threatening words of wrath that scorch like flame!
They tell of angels whispering round the bed
Of the sweet infant smiling in its dream,
Of lambs enfolded in the Shepherd's arms,
Of Him who blessed the children; of the land
Where crystal rivers feed unfading flowers,
Of cities golden-paved with streets of pearl,
Of the white robes the winged creatures wear,
The crowns and harps from whose melodious strings
One long, sweet anthem flows forevermore!
--We too bad human mothers, even as Thou,
Whom we have learned to worship as remote
From mortal kindred, wast a cradled babe.
The milk of woman filled our branching veins,
She lulled us with her tender nursery-song,
And folded round us her untiring arms,
While the first unremembered twilight year
Shaped us to conscious being; still we feel
Her pulses in our own,--too faintly feel;
Would that the heart of woman warmed our creeds!
Not from the sad-eyed hermit's lonely cell,
Not from the conclave where the holy men
Glare on each other, as with angry eyes
They battle for God's glory and their own,
Till, sick of wordy strife, a show of hands
Fixes the faith of ages yet unborn,
Ah, not from these the listening soul can hear
The Father's voice that speaks itself divine!
Love must be still our Master; till we learn
What he can teach us of a woman's heart,
We know not His, whose love embraces all.
There are certain nervous conditions peculiar to women in which the
common effects of poetry and of music upon their sensibilities are
strangely exaggerated. It was not perhaps to be wondered at that Octavia
fainted when Virgil in reading from his great poem came to the line
beginning Tu Marcellus eris: It is not hard to believe the story told of
one of the two Davidson sisters, that the singing of some of Moore's
plaintive melodies would so impress her as almost to take away the
faculties of sense and motion. But there must have been some special
cause for the singular nervous state into which this reading threw the
young girl, our Scheherezade. She was doubtless tired with overwork and
troubled with the thought that she was not doing herself justice, and
that she was doomed to be the helpless prey of some of those corbies who
not only pick out corbies' eyes, but find no other diet so nutritious and
agreeable.
Whatever the cause may have been, her heart heaved tumultuously, her
color came and went, and though she managed to avoid a scene by the
exercise of all her self-control, I watched her very anxiously, for I was
afraid she would have had a hysteric turn, or in one of her pallid
moments that she would have fainted and fallen like one dead before us.
I was very glad, therefore, when evening came, to find that she was going
out for a lesson on the stars. I knew the open air was what she needed,
and I thought the walk would do her good, whether she made any new
astronomical acquisitions or not.
It was now late in the autumn, and the trees were pretty nearly stripped
of their leaves.--There was no place so favorable as the Common for the
study of the heavens. The skies were brilliant with stars, and the air
was just keen enough to remind our young friends that the cold season was
at hand. They wandered round for a while, and at last found themselves
under the Great Elm, drawn thither, no doubt, by the magnetism it is so
well known to exert over the natives of its own soil and those who have
often been under the shadow of its outstretched arms. The venerable
survivor of its contemporaries that flourished in the days when
Blackstone rode beneath it on his bull was now a good deal broken by age,
yet not without marks of lusty vitality. It had been wrenched and
twisted and battered by so many scores of winters that some of its limbs
were crippled and many of its joints were shaky, and but for the support
of the iron braces that lent their strong sinews to its more infirm
members it would have gone to pieces in the first strenuous northeaster
or the first sudden and violent gale from the southwest. But there it
stood, and there it stands as yet,--though its obituary was long ago
written after one of the terrible storms that tore its branches,--leafing
out hopefully in April as if it were trying in its dumb language to lisp
"Our Father," and dropping its slender burden of foliage in October as
softly as if it were whispering Amen!
Not far from the ancient and monumental tree lay a small sheet of water,
once agile with life and vocal with evening melodies, but now stirred
only by the swallow as he dips his wing, or by the morning bath of the
English sparrows, those high-headed, thick-bodied, full-feeding,
hot-tempered little John Bulls that keep up such a swashing and swabbing
and spattering round all the water basins, one might think from the fuss
they make about it that a bird never took a bath here before, and that
they were the missionaries of ablution to the unwashed Western world.
There are those who speak lightly of this small aqueous expanse, the eye
of the sacred enclosure, which has looked unwinking on the happy faces of
so many natives and the curious features of so many strangers. The music
of its twilight minstrels has long ceased, but their memory lingers like
an echo in the name it bears. Cherish it, inhabitants of the two-hilled
city, once three-hilled; ye who have said to the mountain, "Remove
hence," and turned the sea into dry land! May no contractor fill his
pockets by undertaking to fill thee, thou granite girdled lakelet, or
drain the civic purse by drawing off thy waters! For art thou not the
Palladium of our Troy? Didst thou not, like the Divine image which was
the safeguard of Ilium, fall from the skies, and if the Trojan could look
with pride upon the heaven-descended form of the Goddess of Wisdom,
cannot he who dwells by thy shining oval look in that mirror and
contemplate Himself,--the Native of Boston.
There must be some fatality which carries our young men and maidens in
the direction of the Common when they have anything very particular to
exchange their views about. At any rate I remember two of our young
friends brought up here a good many years ago, and I understand that
there is one path across the enclosure which a young man must not ask a
young woman to take with him unless he means business, for an action will
hold--for breach of promise, if she consents to accompany him, and he
chooses to forget his obligations:
Our two young people stood at the western edge of the little pool,
studying astronomy in the reflected firmament. The Pleiades were
trembling in the wave before them, and the three great stars of
Orion,--for these constellations were both glittering in the eastern sky.
"There is no place too humble for the glories of heaven to shine in," she
said.
"And their splendor makes even this little pool beautiful and noble," he
answered. "Where is the light to come from that is to do as much for our
poor human lives?"
A simple question enough, but the young girl felt her color change as she
answered, "From friendship, I think."
--Grazing only as-yet,--not striking full, hardly hitting at all,--but
there are questions and answers that come so very near, the wind of them
alone almost takes the breath away.
There was an interval of silence. Two young persons can stand looking at
water for a long time without feeling the necessity of speaking.
Especially when the water is alive with stars and the young persons are
thoughtful and impressible. The water seems to do half the thinking
while one is looking at it; its movements are felt in the brain very much
like thought. When I was in full training as a flaneur, I could stand on
the Pont Neuf with the other experts in the great science of passive
cerebration and look at the river for half an hour with so little mental
articulation that when I moved on it seemed as if my thinking-marrow had
been asleep and was just waking up refreshed after its nap.
So the reader can easily account for the interval of silence. It is hard
to tell how long it would have lasted, but just then a lubberly intrusive
boy threw a great stone, which convulsed the firmament, the one at their
feet, I mean. The six Pleiads disappeared as if in search of their lost
sister; the belt of Orion was broken asunder, and a hundred worlds
dissolved back into chaos. They turned away and strayed off into one of
the more open paths, where the view of the sky over them was
unobstructed. For some reason or other the astronomical lesson did not
get on very fast this evening.
Presently the young man asked his pupil:
--Do you know what the constellation directly over our heads is?
--Is it not Cassiopea?--she asked a little hesitatingly.
--No, it is Andromeda. You ought not to have forgotten her, for I
remember showing you a double star, the one in her right foot, through
the equatorial telescope. You have not forgotten the double star,--the
two that shone for each other and made a little world by themselves?
--No, indeed,--she answered, and blushed, and felt ashamed because she
had said indeed, as if it had been an emotional recollection.
The double-star allusion struck another dead silence. She would have
given a week's pay to any invisible attendant that would have cut her
stay-lace.
At last: Do you know the story of Andromeda? he said.
--Perhaps I did once, but suppose I don't remember it.
He told her the story of the unfortunate maiden chained to a rock and
waiting for a sea-beast that was coming to devour her, and how Perseus
came and set her free, and won her love with her life. And then he began
something about a young man chained to his rock, which was a star-gazer's
tower, a prey by turns to ambition, and lonely self-contempt and
unwholesome scorn of the life he looked down upon after the serenity of
the firmament, and endless questionings that led him nowhere,--and now he
had only one more question to ask. He loved her. Would she break his
chain?--He held both his hands out towards her, the palms together, as if
they were fettered at the wrists. She took hold of them very gently;
parted them a little; then wider--wider--and found herself all at once
folded, unresisting, in her lover's arms.
So there was a new double-star in the living firmament. The
constellations seemed to kindle with new splendors as the student and the
story-teller walked homeward in their light; Alioth and Algol looked down
on them as on the first pair of lovers they shone over, and the autumn
air seemed full of harmonies as when the morning stars sang together.
XII
The old Master had asked us, the Young Astronomer and myself, into his
library, to hear him read some passages from his interleaved book. We
three had formed a kind of little club without knowing it from the time
when the young man began reading those extracts from his poetical
reveries which I have reproduced in these pages. Perhaps we agreed in too
many things,--I suppose if we could have had a good hard-headed,
old-fashioned New England divine to meet with us it might have acted as a
wholesome corrective. For we had it all our own way; the Lady's kindly
remonstrance was taken in good part, but did not keep us from talking
pretty freely, and as for the Young Girl, she listened with the
tranquillity and fearlessness which a very simple trusting creed
naturally gives those who hold it. The fewer outworks to the citadel of
belief, the fewer points there are to be threatened and endangered.
The reader must not suppose that I even attempt to reproduce everything
exactly as it took place in our conversations, or when we met to listen
to the Master's prose or to the Young Astronomer's verse. I do not
pretend to give all the pauses and interruptions by question or
otherwise. I could not always do it if I tried, but I do not want to,
for oftentimes it is better to let the speaker or reader go on
continuously, although there may have been many breaks in the course of
the conversation or reading. When, for instance, I by and by reproduce
what the Landlady said to us, I shall give it almost without any hint
that it was arrested in its flow from time to time by various expressions
on the part of the hearers.
I can hardly say what the reason of it was, but it is very certain that I
had a vague sense of some impending event as we took our seats in the
Master's library. He seemed particularly anxious that we should be
comfortably seated, and shook up the cushions of the arm-chairs himself,
and got them into the right places.
Now go to sleep--he said--or listen,--just which you like best. But I am
going to begin by telling you both a secret.
Liberavi animam meam. That is the meaning of my book and of my literary
life, if I may give such a name to that party-colored shred of human
existence. I have unburdened myself in this book, and in some other
pages, of what I was born to say. Many things that I have said in my
ripe days have been aching in my soul since I was a mere child. I say
aching, because they conflicted with many of my inherited beliefs, or
rather traditions. I did not know then that two strains of blood were
striving in me for the mastery,--two! twenty, perhaps,--twenty thousand,
for aught I know,--but represented to me by two,--paternal and maternal.
Blind forces in themselves; shaping thoughts as they shaped features and
battled for the moulding of constitution and the mingling of temperament.
Philosophy and poetry came--to me before I knew their names.
Je fis mes premiers vers, sans savoir les ecrire.
Not verses so much as the stuff that verses are made of. I don't suppose
that the thoughts which came up of themselves in my mind were so mighty
different from what come up in the minds of other young folks. And that
's the best reason I could give for telling 'em. I don't believe
anything I've written is as good as it seemed to me when I wrote it,--he
stopped, for he was afraid he was lying,--not much that I 've written, at
any rate,--he said--with a smile at the honesty which made him qualify
his statement. But I do know this: I have struck a good many chords,
first and last, in the consciousness of other people. I confess to a
tender feeling for my little brood of thoughts. When they have been
welcomed and praised it has pleased me, and if at any time they have been
rudely handled and despitefully entreated it has cost me a little worry.
I don't despise reputation, and I should like to be remembered as having
said something worth lasting well enough to last.
But all that is nothing to the main comfort I feel as a writer. I have
got rid of something my mind could not keep to itself and rise as it was
meant to into higher regions. I saw the aeronauts the other day emptying
from the bags some of the sand that served as ballast. It glistened a
moment in the sunlight as a slender shower, and then was lost and seen no
more as it scattered itself unnoticed. But the airship rose higher as the
sand was poured out, and so it seems to me I have felt myself getting
above the mists and clouds whenever I have lightened myself of some
portion of the mental ballast I have carried with me. Why should I hope
or fear when I send out my book? I have had my reward, for I have
wrought out my thought, I have said my say, I have freed my soul. I can
afford to be forgotten.
Look here!--he said. I keep oblivion always before me.---He pointed to a
singularly perfect and beautiful trilobite which was lying on a pile of
manuscripts.---Each time I fill a sheet of paper with what I am writing,
I lay it beneath this relic of a dead world, and project my thought
forward into eternity as far as this extinct crustacean carries it
backward. When my heart beats too lustily with vain hopes of being
remembered, I press the cold fossil against it and it grows calm. I
touch my forehead with it, and its anxious furrows grow smooth. Our
world, too, with all its breathing life, is but a leaf to be folded with
the other strata, and if I am only patient, by and by I shall be just as
famous as imperious Caesar himself, embedded with me in a conglomerate.
He began reading:--"There is no new thing under the sun," said the
Preacher. He would not say so now, if he should come to life for a
little while, and have his photograph taken, and go up in a balloon, and
take a trip by railroad and a voyage by steamship, and get a message from
General Grant by the cable, and see a man's leg cut off without its
hurting him. If it did not take his breath away and lay him out as flat
as the Queen of Sheba was knocked over by the splendors of his court, he
must have rivalled our Indians in the nil admarari line.
For all that, it is a strange thing to see what numbers of new things are
really old. There are many modern contrivances that are of as early date
as the first man, if not thousands of centuries older. Everybody knows
how all the arrangements of our telescopes and microscopes are
anticipated in the eye, and how our best musical instruments are
surpassed by the larynx. But there are some very odd things any
anatomist can tell, showing how our recent contrivances are anticipated
in the human body. In the alimentary canal are certain pointed eminences
called villi, and certain ridges called valvuloe conniventes. The makers
of heating apparatus have exactly reproduced the first in the "pot" of
their furnaces, and the second in many of the radiators to be seen in our
public buildings. The object in the body and the heating apparatus is
the same; to increase the extent of surface.--We mix hair with plaster
(as the Egyptians mixed straw with clay to make bricks) so that it shall
hold more firmly. But before man had any artificial dwelling the same
contrivance of mixing fibrous threads with a cohesive substance had been
employed in the jointed fabric of his own spinal column. India-rubber is
modern, but the yellow animal substance which is elastic like that, and
serves the same purpose in the animal economy which that serves in our
mechanical contrivances, is as old as the mammalia. The dome, the round
and the Gothic arch, the groined roof, the flying buttress, are all
familiar to those who have studied the bony frame of man. All forms of
the lever and all the principal kinds of hinges are to be met with in our
own frames. The valvular arrangements of the blood-vessels are
unapproached by any artificial apparatus, and the arrangements for
preventing friction are so perfect that two surfaces will play on each
other for fourscore years or more and never once trouble their owner by
catching or rubbing so as to be felt or heard.
But stranger than these repetitions are the coincidences one finds in the
manners and speech of antiquity and our own time. In the days when Flood
Ireson was drawn in the cart by the Maenads of Marblehead, that fishing
town had the name of nurturing a young population not over fond of
strangers. It used to be said that if an unknown landsman showed himself
in the streets, the boys would follow after him, crying, "Rock him! Rock
him! He's got a long-tailed coat on!"
Now if one opens the Odyssey, he will find that the Phaeacians, three
thousand years ago, were wonderfully like these youthful Marbleheaders.
The blue-eyed Goddess who convoys Ulysses, under the disguise of a young
maiden of the place, gives him some excellent advice. "Hold your
tongue," she says, "and don't look at anybody or ask any questions, for
these are seafaring people, and don't like to have strangers round or
anybody that does not belong here."
Who would have thought that the saucy question, "Does your mother know
you're out?" was the very same that Horace addressed to the bore who
attacked him in the Via Sacra?
Interpellandi locus hic erat; Est tibi mater?
Cognati, queis te salvo est opus?
And think of the London cockney's prefix of the letter h to innocent
words beginning with a vowel having its prototype in the speech of the
vulgar Roman, as may be seen in the verses of Catullus:
Chommoda dicebat, siquando commoda vellet
Dicere, et hinsidias Arrius insidias.
Et tum mirifice sperabat se esse locutum,
Cum quantum poterat, dixerat hinsidias...
Hoc misso in Syriam, requierant omnibus aures...
Cum subito affertur nuncius horribilis;
Ionios fluctus, postquam illue Arrius isset,
Jam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios.
--Our neighbors of Manhattan have an excellent jest about our crooked
streets which, if they were a little more familiar with a native author
of unquestionable veracity, they would strike out from the letter of "Our
Boston Correspondent," where it is a source of perennial hilarity. It is
worth while to reprint, for the benefit of whom it may concern, a
paragraph from the authentic history of the venerable Diedrich
Knickerbocker:
"The sage council, as has been mentioned in a preceding chapter, not
being able to determine upon any plan for the building of their
city,--the cows, in a laudable fit of patriotism, took it under their
peculiar charge, and as they went to and from pasture, established paths
through the bushes, on each side of which the good folks built their
houses; which is one cause of the rambling and picturesque turns and
labyrinths, which distinguish certain streets of New York at this very
day."
--When I was a little boy there came to stay with us for a while a young
lady with a singularly white complexion. Now I had often seen the masons
slacking lime, and I thought it was the whitest thing I had ever looked
upon. So I always called this fair visitor of ours Slacked Lime. I
think she is still living in a neighboring State, and I am sure she has
never forgotten the fanciful name I gave her. But within ten or a dozen
years I have seen this very same comparison going the round of the
papers, and credited to a Welsh poet, David Ap Gwyllym, or something like
that, by name.
--I turned a pretty sentence enough in one of my lectures about finding
poppies springing up amidst the corn; as if it had been foreseen by
nature that wherever there should be hunger that asked for food, there
would be pain that needed relief,--and many years afterwards. I had the
pleasure of finding that Mistress Piozzi had been beforehand with me in
suggesting the same moral reflection.
--I should like to carry some of my friends to see a giant bee-hive I
have discovered. Its hum can be heard half a mile, and the great white
swarm counts its tens of thousands. They pretend to call it a
planing-mill, but if it is not a bee-hive it is so like one that if a
hundred people have not said so before me, it is very singular that they
have not. If I wrote verses I would try to bring it in, and I suppose
people would start up in a dozen places, and say, "Oh, that bee-hive
simile is mine,--and besides, did not Mr. Bayard Taylor call the
snowflakes 'white bees'?"
I think the old Master had chosen these trivialities on purpose to amuse
the Young Astronomer and myself, if possible, and so make sure of our
keeping awake while he went on reading, as follows:
--How the sweet souls of all time strike the same note, the same because
it is in unison with the divine voice that sings to them! I read in the
Zend Avesta, "No earthly man with a hundred-fold strength speaks so much
evil as Mithra with heavenly strength speaks good. No earthly man with a
hundred-fold strength does so much evil as Mithra with heavenly strength
does good."
And now leave Persia and Zoroaster, and come down with me to our own New
England and one of our old Puritan preachers. It was in the dreadful
days of the Salem Witchcraft delusion that one Jonathan Singletary, being
then in the prison at Ipswich, gave his testimony as to certain fearful
occurrences,--a great noise, as of many cats climbing, skipping, and
jumping, of throwing about of furniture, and of men walking in the
chambers, with crackling and shaking as if the house would fall upon him.
"I was at present," he says, "something affrighted; yet considering what
I had lately heard made out by Mr. Mitchel at Cambridge, that there is
more good in God than there is evil in sin, and that although God is the
greatest good and sin the greatest evil, yet the first Being of evil
cannot weave the scales or overpower the first Being of good: so
considering that the authour of good was of greater power than the
authour of evil, God was pleased of his goodness to keep me from being
out of measure frighted."
I shall always bless the memory of this poor, timid creature for saving
that dear remembrance of "Matchless Mitchel." How many, like him, have
thought they were preaching a new gospel, when they were only reaffirming
the principles which underlie the Magna Charta of humanity, and are
common to the noblest utterances of all the nobler creeds! But spoken by
those solemn lips to those stern, simpleminded hearers, the words I have
cited seem to me to have a fragrance like the precious ointment of
spikenard with which Mary anointed her Master's feet. I can see the
little bare meeting-house, with the godly deacons, and the grave matrons,
and the comely maidens, and the sober manhood of the village, with the
small group of college students sitting by themselves under the shadow of
the awful Presidential Presence, all listening to that preaching, which
was, as Cotton Mather says, "as a very lovely song of one that hath a
pleasant voice"; and as the holy pastor utters those blessed words, which
are not of any one church or age, but of all time, the humble place of
worship is filled with their perfume, as the house where Mary knelt was
filled with the odor of the precious ointment.
--The Master rose, as he finished reading this sentence, and, walking to
the window, adjusted a curtain which he seemed to find a good deal of
trouble in getting to hang just as he wanted it.
He came back to his arm-chair, and began reading again
--If men would only open their eyes to the fact which stares them in the
face from history, and is made clear enough by the slightest glance at
the condition of mankind, that humanity is of immeasurably greater
importance than their own or any other particular belief, they would no
more attempt to make private property of the grace of God than to fence
in the sunshine for their own special use and enjoyment.
We are all tattoed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the
record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a
man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in
his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he
will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas,
mais je les crains,--"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them,
nevertheless."
--As people grow older they come at length to live so much in memory that
they often think with a kind of pleasure of losing their dearest
blessings. Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem
when remembered. The friend we love best may sometimes weary us by his
presence or vex us by his infirmities. How sweet to think of him as he
will be to us after we have outlived him ten or a dozen years! Then we
can recall him in his best moments, bid him stay with us as long as we
want his company, and send him away when we wish to be alone again. One
might alter Shenstone's well-known epitaph to suit such a case:--
Hen! quanto minus est cum to vivo versari
Quam erit (vel esset) tui mortui reminisse!
"Alas! how much less the delight of thy living presence
Than will (or would) be that of remembering thee when thou hast
left us!"
I want to stop here--I the Poet--and put in a few reflections of my own,
suggested by what I have been giving the reader from the Master's Book,
and in a similar vein.
--How few things there are that do not change their whole aspect in the
course of a single generation! The landscape around us is wholly
different. Even the outlines of the hills that surround us are changed
by the creeping of the villages with their spires and school-houses up
their sides. The sky remains the same, and the ocean. A few old
churchyards look very much as they used to, except, of course, in Boston,
where the gravestones have been rooted up and planted in rows with walks
between them, to the utter disgrace and ruin of our most venerated
cemeteries. The Registry of Deeds and the Probate Office show us the
same old folios, where we can read our grandfather's title to his estate
(if we had a grandfather and he happened to own anything) and see how
many pots and kettles there were in his kitchen by the inventory of his
personal property.
Among living people none remain so long unchanged as the actors. I can
see the same Othello to-day, if I choose, that when I was a boy I saw
smothering Mrs. Duff-Desdemona with the pillow, under the instigations of
Mr. Cooper-Iago. A few stone heavier than he was then, no doubt, but the
same truculent blackamoor that took by the thr-r-r-oat the circumcised
dog in Aleppo, and told us about it in the old Boston Theatre. In the
course of a fortnight, if I care to cross the water, I can see
Mademoiselle Dejazet in the same parts I saw her in under Louis Philippe,
and be charmed by the same grace and vivacity which delighted my
grandmother (if she was in Paris, and went to see her in the part of
Fanchon toute seule at the Theatre des Capucines) in the days when the
great Napoleon was still only First Consul.
The graveyard and the stage are pretty much the only places where you can
expect to find your friends--as you left them, five and twenty or fifty
years ago. I have noticed, I may add, that old theatre-goers bring back
the past with their stories more vividly than men with any other
experiences. There were two old New-Yorkers that I used to love to sit
talking with about the stage. One was a scholar and a writer of note; a
pleasant old gentleman, with the fresh cheek of an octogenarian Cupid.
The other not less noted in his way, deep in local lore, large-brained,
full-blooded, of somewhat perturbing and tumultuous presence. It was
good to hear them talk of George Frederic Cooke, of Kean, and the lesser
stars of those earlier constellations. Better still to breakfast with
old Samuel Rogers, as some of my readers have done more than once, and
hear him answer to the question who was the best actor he remembered, "I
think, on the whole, Garrick."
If we did but know how to question these charming old people before it is
too late! About ten years, more or less, after the generation in advance
of our own has all died off, it occurs to us all at once, "There! I can
ask my old friend what he knows of that picture, which must be a Copley;
of that house and its legends about which there is such a mystery. He
(or she) must know all about that." Too late! Too late!
Still, now and then one saves a reminiscence that means a good deal by
means of a casual question. I asked the first of those two old
New-Yorkers the following question: "Who, on the whole, seemed to you the
most considerable person you ever met?"
Now it must be remembered that this was a man who had lived in a city
that calls itself the metropolis, one who had been a member of the State
and the National Legislature, who had come in contact with men of
letters and men of business, with politicians and members of all the
professions, during a long and distinguished public career. I paused for
his answer with no little curiosity. Would it be one of the great
Ex-Presidents whose names were known to, all the world? Would it be the
silver-tongued orator of Kentucky or the "God-like" champion of the
Constitution, our New-England Jupiter Capitolinus? Who would it be?
"Take it altogether," he answered, very deliberately, "I should say
Colonel Elisha Williams was the most notable personage that I have met
with."
--Colonel Elisha Williams! And who might he be, forsooth? A gentleman
of singular distinction, you may be well assured, even though you are not
familiar with his name; but as I am not writing a biographical
dictionary, I shall leave it to my reader to find out who and what he
was.
--One would like to live long enough to witness certain things which will
no doubt come to pass by and by. I remember that when one of our good
kindhearted old millionnaires was growing very infirm, his limbs failing
him, and his trunk getting packed with the infirmities which mean that
one is bound on a long journey, he said very simply and sweetly, "I don't
care about living a great deal longer, but I should like to live long
enough to find out how much old (a many-millioned fellow-citizen) is
worth." And without committing myself on the longevity-question, I
confess I should like to live long enough to see a few things happen that
are like to come, sooner or later.
I want to hold the skull of Abraham in my hand. They will go through the
cave of Machpelah at Hebron, I feel sure, in the course of a few
generations at the furthest, and as Dr. Robinson knows of nothing which
should lead us to question the correctness of the tradition which regards
this as the place of sepulture of Abraham and the other patriarchs, there
is no reason why we may not find his mummied body in perfect
preservation, if he was embalmed after the Egyptian fashion. I suppose
the tomb of David will be explored by a commission in due time, and I
should like to see the phrenological developments of that great king and
divine singer and warm-blooded man. If, as seems probable, the
anthropological section of society manages to get round the curse that
protects the bones of Shakespeare, I should like to see the dome which
rounded itself over his imperial brain. Not that I am what is called a
phrenologist, but I am curious as to the physical developments of these
fellow-mortals of mine, and a little in want of a sensation.
I should like to live long enough to see the course of the Tiber turned,
and the bottom of the river thoroughly dredged. I wonder if they would
find the seven-branched golden candlestick brought from Jerusalem by
Titus, and said to have been dropped from the Milvian bridge. I have
often thought of going fishing for it some year when I wanted a vacation,
as some of my friends used to go to Ireland to fish for salmon. There
was an attempt of that kind, I think, a few years ago.
We all know how it looks well enough, from the figure of it on the Arch
of Titus, but I should like to "heft" it in my own hand, and carry it
home and shine it up (excuse my colloquialisms), and sit down and look at
it, and think and think and think until the Temple of Solomon built up
its walls of hewn stone and its roofs of cedar around me as noiselessly
as when it rose, and "there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of
iron heard in the house while it was in building."
All this, you will remember, Beloved, is a digression on my own account,
and I return to the old Master whom I left smiling at his own alteration
of Shenstone's celebrated inscription. He now begin reading again:
--I want it to be understood that I consider that a certain number of
persons are at liberty to dislike me peremptorily, without showing cause,
and that they give no offence whatever in so doing.
If I did not cheerfully acquiesce in this sentiment towards myself on the
part of others, I should not feel at liberty to indulge my own aversions.
I try to cultivate a Christian feeling to all my fellow-creatures, but
inasmuch as I must also respect truth and honesty, I confess to myself a
certain number of inalienable dislikes and prejudices, some of which may
possibly be shared by others. Some of these are purely instinctive, for
others I can assign a reason. Our likes and dislikes play so important a
part in the Order of Things that it is well to see on what they are
founded.
There are persons I meet occasionally who are too intelligent by half for
my liking. They know my thoughts beforehand, and tell me what I was
going to say. Of course they are masters of all my knowledge, and a good
deal besides; have read all the books I have read, and in later editions;
have had all the experiences I have been through, and more-too. In my
private opinion every mother's son of them will lie at any time rather
than confess ignorance.
--I have a kind of dread, rather than hatred, of persons with a large
excess of vitality; great feeders, great laughers, great story-tellers,
who come sweeping over their company with a huge tidal wave of animal
spirits and boisterous merriment. I have pretty good spirits myself, and
enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but I am oppressed and extinguished by
these great lusty, noisy creatures,--and feel as if I were a mute at a
funeral when they get into full blast.
--I cannot get along much better with those drooping, languid people,
whose vitality falls short as much as that of the others is in excess. I
have not life enough for two; I wish I had. It is not very enlivening to
meet a fellow-creature whose expression and accents say, "You are the
hair that breaks the camel's back of my endurance, you are the last drop
that makes my cup of woe run over"; persons whose heads drop on one side
like those of toothless infants, whose voices recall the tones in which
our old snuffling choir used to wail out the verses of:
"Life is the time to serve the Lord."
--There is another style which does not captivate me. I recognize an
attempt at the grand manner now and then, in persons who are well enough
in their way, but of no particular importance, socially or otherwise.
Some family tradition of wealth or distinction is apt to be at the bottom
of it, and it survives all the advantages that used to set it off. I
like family pride as well as my neighbors, and respect the high-born
fellow-citizen whose progenitors have not worked in their shirt-sleeves
for the last two generations full as much as I ought to. But grand pere
oblige; a person with a known grandfather is too distinguished to find it
necessary to put on airs. The few Royal Princes I have happened to know
were very easy people to get along with, and had not half the social
knee-action I have often seen in the collapsed dowagers who lifted their
eyebrows at me in my earlier years.
--My heart does not warm as it should do towards the persons, not
intimates, who are always too glad to see me when we meet by accident,
and discover all at once that they have a vast deal to unbosom themselves
of to me.
--There is one blameless person whom I cannot love and have no excuse for
hating. It is the innocent fellow-creature, otherwise inoffensive to me,
whom I find I have involuntarily joined on turning a corner. I suppose
the Mississippi, which was flowing quietly along, minding its own
business, hates the Missouri for coming into it all at once with its
muddy stream. I suppose the Missouri in like manner hates the
Mississippi for diluting with its limpid, but insipid current the rich
reminiscences of the varied soils through which its own stream has
wandered. I will not compare myself, to the clear or the turbid current,
but I will own that my heart sinks when I find all of a sudden I am in
for a corner confluence, and I cease loving my neighbor as myself until I
can get away from him.
--These antipathies are at least weaknesses; they may be sins in the eye
of the Recording Angel. I often reproach myself with my wrong-doings. I
should like sometimes to thank Heaven for saving me from some kinds of
transgression, and even for granting me some qualities that if I dared I
should be disposed to call virtues. I should do so, I suppose, if I did
not remember the story of the Pharisee. That ought not to hinder me.
The parable was told to illustrate a single virtue, humility, and the
most unwarranted inferences have been drawn from it as to the whole
character of the two parties. It seems not at all unlikely, but rather
probable, that the Pharisee was a fairer dealer, a better husband, and a
more charitable person than the Publican, whose name has come down to us
"linked with one virtue," but who may have been guilty, for aught that
appears to the contrary, of "a thousand crimes." Remember how we limit
the application of other parables. The lord, it will be recollected,
commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely. His shrewdness
was held up as an example, but after all he was a miserable swindler, and
deserved the state-prison as much as many of our financial operators. The
parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is a perpetual warning against
spiritual pride. But it must not frighten any one of us out of being
thankful that he is not, like this or that neighbor, under bondage to
strong drink or opium, that he is not an Erie-Railroad Manager, and that
his head rests in virtuous calm on his own pillow. If he prays in the
morning to be kept out of temptation as well as for his daily bread,
shall he not return thanks at night that he has not fallen into sin as
well as that his stomach has been filled? I do not think the poor
Pharisee has ever had fair play, and I am afraid a good many people sin
with the comforting, half-latent intention of smiting their breasts
afterwards and repeating the prayer of the Publican.
(Sensation.)
This little movement which I have thus indicated seemed to give the
Master new confidence in his audience. He turned over several pages
until he came to a part of the interleaved volume where we could all see
he had written in a passage of new matter in red ink as of special
interest.
--I told you, he said, in Latin, and I repeat it in English, that I have
freed my soul in these pages,--I have spoken my mind. I have read you a
few extracts, most of them of rather slight texture, and some of them,
you perhaps thought, whimsical. But I meant, if I thought you were in
the right mood for listening to it, to read you some paragraphs which
give in small compass the pith, the marrow, of all that my experience has
taught me. Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.
I took it early, as we all do, and have treated it all along with the
best palliatives I could get hold of, inasmuch as I could find no radical
cure for its evils, and have so far managed to keep pretty comfortable
under it.
It is a great thing for a man to put the whole meaning of his life into a
few paragraphs, if he does it so that others can make anything out of it.
If he conveys his wisdom after the fashion of the old alchemists, he may
as well let it alone. He must talk in very plain words, and that is what
I have done. You want to know what a certain number of scores of years
have taught me that I think best worth telling. If I had half a dozen
square inches of paper, and one penful of ink, and five minutes to use
them in for the instruction of those who come after me, what should I put
down in writing? That is the question.
Perhaps I should be wiser if I refused to attempt any such brief
statement of the most valuable lesson that life has taught me. I am by
no means sure that I had not better draw my pen through the page that
holds the quintessence of my vital experiences, and leave those who wish
to know what it is to distil to themselves from my many printed pages.
But I have excited your curiosity, and I see that you are impatient to
hear what the wisdom, or the folly, it may be, of a life shows for, when
it is crowded into a few lines as the fragrance of a gardenful of roses
is concentrated in a few drops of perfume.
--By this time I confess I was myself a little excited. What was he
going to tell us? The Young Astronomer looked upon him with an eye as
clear and steady and brilliant as the evening star, but I could see that
he too was a little nervous, wondering what would come next.
The old Master adjusted his large round spectacles, and began:
--It has cost me fifty years to find my place in the Order of Things. I
had explored all the sciences; I had studied the literature of all ages;
I had travelled in many lands; I had learned how to follow the working of
thought in men and of sentiment and instinct in women. I had examined
for myself all the religions that could make out any claim for
themselves. I had fasted and prayed with the monks of a lonely convent;
I had mingled with the crowds that shouted glory at camp-meetings; I had
listened to the threats of Calvinists and the promises of Universalists;
I had been a devout attendant on a Jewish Synagogue; I was in
correspondence with an intelligent Buddhist; and I met frequently with
the inner circle of Rationalists, who believed in the persistence of
Force, and the identity of alimentary substances with virtue, and were
reconstructing the universe on this basis, with absolute exclusion of all
Supernumeraries. In these pursuits I had passed the larger part of my
half-century of existence, as yet with little satisfaction. It was on
the morning of my fiftieth birthday that the solution of the great
problem I had sought so long came to me as a simple formula, with a few
grand but obvious inferences. I will repeat the substance of this final
intuition:
The one central fact an the Order of Things which solves all questions
is:
At this moment we were interrupted by a knock at the Master's door. It
was most inopportune, for he was on the point of the great disclosure,
but common politeness compelled him to answer it, and as the step which
we had heard was that of one of the softer-footed sex, he chose to rise
from his chair and admit his visitor.
This visitor was our Landlady. She was dressed with more than usual
nicety, and her countenance showed clearly that she came charged with an
important communication.
--I did n't low there was company with you, said the Landlady,--but it's
jest as well. I've got something to tell my boarders that I don't want
to tell them, and if I must do it, I may as well tell you all at once as
one to a time. I 'm agoing to give up keeping boarders at the end of
this year,--I mean come the end of December.
She took out a white handkerchief, at hand in expectation of what was to
happen, and pressed it to her eyes. There was an interval of silence.
The Master closed his book and laid it on the table. The Young
Astronomer did not look as much surprised as I should have expected. I
was completely taken aback,--I had not thought of such a sudden breaking
up of our little circle.
When the Landlady had recovered her composure, she began again:
The Lady that's been so long with me is going to a house of her own,
--one she has bought back again, for it used to belong to her folks. It's
a beautiful house, and the sun shines in at the front windows all day
long. She's going to be wealthy again, but it doos n't make any
difference in her ways. I've had boarders complain when I was doing as
well as I knowed how for them, but I never heerd a word from her that
wasn't as pleasant as if she'd been talking to the Governor's lady. I've
knowed what it was to have women-boarders that find fault,--there's some
of 'em would quarrel with me and everybody at my table; they would
quarrel with the Angel Gabriel if he lived in the house with 'em, and
scold at him and tell him he was always dropping his feathers round, if
they could n't find anything else to bring up against him.
Two other boarders of mine has given me notice that they was expecting to
leave come the first of January. I could fill up their places easy
enough, for ever since that first book was wrote that called people's
attention to my boarding-house, I've had more wanting to come than I
wanted to keep.
But I'm getting along in life, and I ain't quite so rugged as I used to
be. My daughter is well settled and my son is making his own living.
I've done a good deal of hard work in my time, and I feel as if I had a
right to a little rest. There's nobody knows what a woman that has the
charge of a family goes through, but God Almighty that made her. I've
done my best for them that I loved, and for them that was under my roof.
My husband and my children was well cared for when they lived, and he and
them little ones that I buried has white marble head-stones and
foot-stones, and an iron fence round the lot, and a place left for me
betwixt him and the....
Some has always been good to me,--some has made it a little of a strain
to me to get along. When a woman's back aches with overworking herself
to keep her house in shape, and a dozen mouths are opening at her three
times a day, like them little young birds that split their heads open so
you can a'most see into their empty stomachs, and one wants this and
another wants that, and provisions is dear and rent is high, and nobody
to look to,--then a sharp word cuts, I tell you, and a hard look goes
right to your heart. I've seen a boarder make a face at what I set
before him, when I had tried to suit him jest as well as I knew how, and
I haven't cared to eat a thing myself all the rest of that day, and I've
laid awake without a wink of sleep all night. And then when you come
down the next morning all the boarders stare at you and wonder what makes
you so low-spirited, and why you don't look as happy and talk as cheerful
as one of them rich ladies that has dinner-parties, where they've nothing
to do but give a few orders, and somebody comes and cooks their dinner,
and somebody else comes and puts flowers on the table, and a lot of men
dressed up like ministers come and wait on everybody, as attentive as
undertakers at a funeral.
And that reminds me to tell you that I'm agoing to live with my daughter.
Her husband's a very nice man, and when he isn't following a corpse, he's
as good company as if he was a member of the city council. My son, he's
agoing into business with the old Doctor he studied with, and he's agoing
to board with me at my daughter's for a while,--I suppose he'll be
getting a wife before long. [This with a pointed look at our young
friend, the Astronomer.]
It is n't but a little while longer that we are going to be together, and
I want to say to you gentlemen, as I mean to say to the others and as I
have said to our two ladies, that I feel more obligated to, you for the
way you 've treated me than I know very well how to put into words.
Boarders sometimes expect too much of the ladies that provides for them.
Some days the meals are better than other days; it can't help being so.
Sometimes the provision-market is n't well supplied, sometimes the fire
in the cooking-stove does n't burn so well as it does other days;
sometimes the cook is n't so lucky as she might be. And there is
boarders who is always laying in wait for the days when the meals is not
quite so good as they commonly be, to pick a quarrel with the one that is
trying to serve them so as that they shall be satisfied. But you've all
been good and kind to me. I suppose I'm not quite so spry and
quick-sighted as I was a dozen years ago, when my boarder wrote that
first book so many have asked me about. But--now I'm going to stop
taking boarders. I don't believe you'll think much about what I did n't
do,--because I couldn't,--but remember that at any rate I tried honestly
to serve you. I hope God will bless all that set at my table, old and
young, rich and poor, merried and single, and single that hopes soon to
be merried. My husband that's dead and gone always believed that we all
get to heaven sooner or later,--and sence I've grown older and buried so
many that I've loved I've come to feel that perhaps I should meet all of
them that I've known here--or at least as many of 'em as I wanted to--in
a better world. And though I don't calculate there is any
boarding-houses in heaven, I hope I shall some time or other meet them
that has set round my table one year after another, all together, where
there is no fault-finding with the food and no occasion for it,--and if I
do meet them and you there--or anywhere,--if there is anything I can do
for you....
....Poor dear soul! Her ideas had got a little mixed, and her heart was
overflowing, and the white handkerchief closed the scene with its timely
and greatly needed service.
--What a pity, I have often thought, that she came in just at that
precise moment! For the old Master was on the point of telling us, and
through one of us the reading world,--I mean that fraction of it which
has reached this point of the record,--at any rate, of telling you,
Beloved, through my pen, his solution of a great problem we all have to
deal with. We were some weeks longer together, but he never offered to
continue his reading. At length I ventured to give him a hint that our
young friend and myself would both of us be greatly gratified if he would
begin reading from his unpublished page where he had left off.
--No, sir,--he said,--better not, better not. That which means so much
to me, the writer, might be a disappointment, or at least a puzzle, to
you, the listener. Besides, if you'll take my printed book and be at the
trouble of thinking over what it says, and put that with what you've
heard me say, and then make those comments and reflections which will be
suggested to a mind in so many respects like mine as is your own,--excuse
my good opinion of myself,
(It is a high compliment to me, I replied) you will perhaps find you have
the elements of the formula and its consequences which I was about to
read you. It's quite as well to crack your own filberts as to borrow the
use of other people's teeth. I think we will wait awhile before we pour
out the Elixir Vitae.
--To tell the honest truth, I suspect the Master has found out that his
formula does not hold water quite so perfectly as he was thinking, so
long as he kept it to himself, and never thought of imparting it to
anybody else. The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it
seems to shrink towards mediocrity, as. I have noticed that a great
pumpkin, the wonder of a village, seemed to lose at least a third of its
dimensions between the field where it grew and the cattle-show
fair-table, where it took its place with other enormous pumpkins from
other wondering villages. But however that maybe, I shall always regret
that I had not the opportunity of judging for myself how completely the
Master's formula, which, for him, at least, seemed to have solved the
great problem, would have accomplished that desirable end for me.
The Landlady's announcement of her intention to give up keeping boarders
was heard with regret by all who met around her table. The Member of the
Haouse inquired of me whether I could tell him if the Lamb Tahvern was
kept well abaout these times. He knew that members from his place used
to stop there, but he hadn't heerd much abaout it of late years. I had
to inform him that that fold of rural innocence had long ceased offering
its hospitalities to the legislative, flock. He found refuge at last, I
have learned, in a great public house in the northern section of the
city, where, as he said, the folks all went up stairs in a rat-trap, and
the last I heard of him was looking out of his somewhat elevated
attic-window in a northwesterly direction in hopes that he might perhaps
get a sight of the Grand Monadnock, a mountain in New Hampshire which I
have myself seen from the top of Bunker Hill Monument.
The Member of the Haouse seems to have been more in a hurry to find a new
resting-place than the other boarders. By the first of January, however,
our whole company was scattered, never to meet again around the board
where we had been so long together.
The Lady moved to the house where she had passed many of her prosperous
years. It had been occupied by a rich family who had taken it nearly as
it stood, and as the pictures had been dusted regularly, and the books
had never been handled, she found everything in many respects as she had
left it, and in some points improved, for the rich people did not know
what else to do, and so they spent money without stint on their house and
its adornments, by all of which she could not help profiting. I do not
choose to give the street and number of the house where she lives, but
a-great many poor people know very well where it is, and as a matter of
course the rich ones roll up to her door in their carriages by the dozen
every fine Monday while anybody is in town.
It is whispered that our two young folks are to be married before another
season, and that the Lady has asked them to come and stay with her for a
while. Our Scheherezade is to write no more stories. It is astonishing
to see what a change for the better in her aspect a few weeks of
brain-rest and heart's ease have wrought in her. I doubt very much
whether she ever returns to literary labor. The work itself was almost
heart-breaking, but the effect upon her of the sneers and cynical
insolences of the literary rough who came at her in mask and brass
knuckles was to give her what I fear will be a lifelong disgust against
any writing for the public, especially in any of the periodicals. I am
not sorry that she should stop writing, but I am sorry that she should
have been silenced in such a rude way. I doubt, too, whether the Young
Astronomer will pass the rest of his life in hunting for comets and
planets. I think he has found an attraction that will call him down from
the celestial luminaries to a light not less pure and far less remote.
And I am inclined to believe that the best answer to many of those
questions which have haunted him and found expression in his verse will
be reached by a very different channel from that of lonely contemplation,
the duties, the cares, the responsible realities of a life drawn out of
itself by the power of newly awakened instincts and affections. The
double star was prophetic,--I thought it would be.
The Register of Deeds is understood to have been very handsomely treated
by the boarder who owes her good fortune to his sagacity and activity.
He has engaged apartments at a very genteel boarding-house not far from
the one where we have all been living. The Salesman found it a simple
matter to transfer himself to an establishment over the way; he had very
little to move, and required very small accommodations.
The Capitalist, however, seems to have felt it impossible to move without
ridding himself of a part at--least of his encumbrances. The community
was startled by the announcement that a citizen who did not wish his name
to be known had made a free gift of a large sum of money--it was in tens
of thousands--to an institution of long standing and high character in
the city of which he was a quiet resident. The source of such a gift
could not long be kept secret. It, was our economical, not to say
parsimonious Capitalist who had done this noble act, and the poor man had
to skulk through back streets and keep out of sight, as if he were a show
character in a travelling caravan, to avoid the acknowledgments of his
liberality, which met him on every hand and put him fairly out of
countenance.
That Boy has gone, in virtue of a special invitation, to make a visit of
indefinite length at the house of the father of the older boy, whom we
know by the name of Johnny. Of course he is having a good time, for
Johnny's father is full of fun, and tells first-rate stories, and if
neither of the boys gets his brains kicked out by the pony, or blows
himself up with gunpowder, or breaks through the ice and gets drowned,
they will have a fine time of it this winter.
The Scarabee could not bear to remove his collections, and the old Master
was equally unwilling to disturb his books. It was arranged, therefore,
that they should keep their apartments until the new tenant should come
into the house, when, if they were satisfied with her management, they
would continue as her boarders.
The last time I saw the Scarabee he was still at work on the meloe
question. He expressed himself very pleasantly towards all of us, his
fellow-boarders, and spoke of the kindness and consideration with which
the Landlady had treated him when he had been straitened at times for
want of means. Especially he seemed to be interested in our young couple
who were soon to be united. His tired old eyes glistened as he asked
about them,--could it be that their little romance recalled some early
vision of his own? However that may be, he got up presently and went to
a little box in which, as he said, he kept some choice specimens. He
brought to me in his hand something which glittered. It was an exquisite
diamond beetle.
--If you could get that to her,--he said,--they tell me that ladies
sometimes wear them in their hair. If they are out of fashion, she can
keep it till after they're married, and then perhaps after a while there
may be--you know--you know what I mean--there may be larvae, that 's what
I 'm thinking there may be, and they 'll like to look at it.
--As he got out the word larvae, a faint sense of the ridiculous seemed
to take hold of the Scarabee, and for the first and only time during my
acquaintance with him a slight attempt at a smile showed itself on his
features. It was barely perceptible and gone almost as soon as seen, yet
I am pleased to put it on record that on one occasion at least in his
life the Scarabee smiled.
The old Master keeps adding notes and reflections and new suggestions to
his interleaved volume, but I doubt if he ever gives them to the public.
The study he has proposed to himself does not grow easier the longer it
is pursued. The whole Order of Things can hardly be completely
unravelled in any single person's lifetime, and I suspect he will have to
adjourn the final stage of his investigations to that more luminous realm
where the Landlady hopes to rejoin the company of boarders who are
nevermore to meet around her cheerful and well-ordered table.
The curtain has now fallen, and I show myself a moment before it to thank
my audience and say farewell. The second comer is commonly less welcome
than the first, and the third makes but a rash venture. I hope I have not
wholly disappointed those who have been so kind to my predecessors.
To you, Beloved, who have never failed to cut the leaves which hold my
record, who have never nodded over its pages, who have never hesitated in
your allegiance, who have greeted me with unfailing smiles and part from
me with unfeigned regrets, to you I look my last adieu as I bow myself
out of sight, trusting my poor efforts to your always kind remembrance.
EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES
AUTOCRAT--PROFESSOR--POET.
AT A BOOKSTORE.
Anno Domini 1972.
A crazy bookcase, placed before
A low-price dealer's open door;
Therein arrayed in broken rows
A ragged crew of rhyme and prose,
The homeless vagrants, waifs and strays
Whose low estate this line betrays
(Set forth the lesser birds to lime)
YOUR CHOICE AMONG THESE BOOKS, 1 DIME!
Ho! dealer; for its motto's sake
This scarecrow from the shelf I take;
Three starveling volumes bound in one,
Its covers warping in the sun.
Methinks it hath a musty smell,
I like its flavor none too well,
But Yorick's brain was far from dull,
Though Hamlet pah!'d, and dropped his skull.
Why, here comes rain! The sky grows dark,
--Was that the roll of thunder? Hark!
The shop affords a safe retreat,
A chair extends its welcome seat,
The tradesman has a civil look
(I've paid, impromptu, for my book),
The clouds portend a sudden shower,
I'll read my purchase for an hour.
..............
What have I rescued from the shelf?
A Boswell, writing out himself!
For though he changes dress and name,
The man beneath is still the same,
Laughing or sad, by fits and starts,
One actor in a dozen parts,
And whatsoe'er the mask may be,
The voice assures us, This is he.
I say not this to cry him clown;
I find my Shakespeare in his clown,
His rogues the self-same parent own;
Nay! Satan talks in Milton's tone!
Where'er the ocean inlet strays,
The salt sea wave its source betrays,
Where'er the queen of summer blows,
She tells the zephyr, "I'm the rose!"
And his is not the playwright's page;
His table does not ape the stage;
What matter if the figures seen
Are only shadows on a screen,
He finds in them his lurking thought,
And on their lips the words he sought,
Like one who sits before the keys
And plays a tune himself to please.
And was he noted in his day?
Read, flattered, honored? Who shall say?
Poor wreck of time the wave has cast
To find a peaceful shore at last,
Once glorying in thy gilded name
And freighted deep with hopes of fame,
Thy leaf is moistened with a tear,
The first for many a long, long year!
For be it more or less of art
That veils the lowliest human heart
Where passion throbs, where friendship glows,
Where pity's tender tribute flows,
Where love has lit its fragrant fire,
And sorrow quenched its vain desire,
For me the altar is divine,
Its flame, its ashes,--all are mine!
And thou, my brother, as I look
And see thee pictured in thy book,
Thy years on every page confessed
In shadows lengthening from the west,
Thy glance that wanders, as it sought
Some freshly opening flower of thought,
Thy hopeful nature, light and free,
I start to find myself in thee!
Come, vagrant, outcast, wretch forlorn
In leather jerkin stained and torn,
Whose talk has filled my idle hour
And made me half forget the shower,
I'll do at least as much for you,
Your coat I'll patch, your gilt renew,
Read you,--perhaps,--some other time.
Not bad, my bargain! Price one dime!
Not bad, my bargain! Price one dime!
OVER THE TEACUPS
by Oliver W. Holmes
PREFACE.
The kind way in which this series of papers has been received has been a
pleasure greater than I dared to anticipate. I felt that I was a late
comer in the midst of a crowd of ardent and eager candidates for public
attention, that I had already had my day, and that if, like the
unfortunate Frenchman we used read about, I had "come again," I ought not
to surprised if I received the welcome of "Monsieur Tonson."
It has not proved so. My old readers have come forward in the
pleasantest possible way and assured me that they were glad to see me
again. There is no need, therefore, of apologies or explanations. I
thought I had something left to say and I have found listeners. In
writing these papers I have had occupation and kept myself in relation
with my fellow-beings. New sympathies, new sources of encouragement, if
not of inspiration, have opened themselves before me and cheated the
least promising season of life of much that seemed to render it dreary
and depressing. What particularly pleased me has been the freedom of
criticisms which I have seen from disadvantageous comparisons of my later
with my earlier writings.
I should like a little rest from literary work before the requiescat
ensures my repose from earthly labors, but I will not be rash enough to
promise that I will not even once again greet my old and new readers if
the impulse becomes irresistible to renew a companionship which has been
to me such a source of happiness.
BEVERLY FARM, Mass., August, 1891.
O. W. H.
OVER THE TEACUPS.
I
INTRODUCTION.
This series of papers was begun in March, 1888. A single number was
printed, when it was interrupted the course of events, and not resumed
until nearly years later, in January, 1890. The plan of the series was
not formed in my mind when I wrote the number. In returning to my task I
found that my original plan had shaped itself in the underground
laboratory of my thought so that some changes had to be made in what I
had written. As I proceeded, the slight story which formed a part of my
programme eloped itself without any need of much contrivance on my, part.
Given certain characters in a writer's conception, if they are real to
him, as they ought to be they will act in such or such a way, according
to the law of their nature. It was pretty safe to assume that intimate
relations would spring up between some members of our mixed company; and
it was not rash conjecture that some of these intimacies might end in
such attachment as would furnish us hints, at least, of a love-story.
As to the course of the conversations which would take place, very little
could be guessed beforehand. Various subjects of interest would be
likely to present themselves, without definite order, oftentimes abruptly
and, as it would seem, capriciously. Conversation in such a mixed company
as that of "The Teacups" is likely to be suggestive rather than
exhaustive. Continuous discourse is better adapted to the lecture-room
than to the tea-table. There is quite enough of it, I fear too much,--in
these pages. But the reader must take the reports of our talks as they
were jotted down. A patchwork quilt is not like a piece of Gobelin
tapestry; but it has its place and its use.
Some will feel a temptation to compare these conversations with those
earlier ones, and remark unamiably upon their difference. This is hardly
fair, and is certainly not wise. They are produced under very different
conditions, and betray that fact in every line. It is better to take
them by themselves; and, if my reader finds anything to please or profit
from, I shall be contented, and he, I feel sure, will not be ungrateful.
The readers who take up this volume may recollect a series of
conversations held many years ago over the breakfast-table, and reported
for their more or less profitable entertainment. Those were not very
early breakfasts at which the talks took place, but at any rate the sun
was rising, and the guests had not as yet tired themselves with the
labors of the day. The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about
it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea
cannot be expected to reproduce. The toils of the forenoon, the heats of
midday, in the warm season, the slanting light of the descending sun, or
the sobered translucency of twilight have subdued the vivacity of the
early day. Yet under the influence of the benign stimulant many trains
of thought which will bear recalling, may suggest themselves to some of
our quiet circle and prove not uninteresting to a certain number of
readers.
How early many of my old breakfast companions went off to bed! I am
thinking not merely of those who sat round our table, but of that larger
company of friends who listened to our conversations as reported. Dear
girl with the silken ringlets, dear boy with the down-shadowed cheek,
your grandfather, your grandmother, turned over the freshly printed
leaves that told the story of those earlier meetings around the plain
board where so many things were said and sung, not all of which have
quite faded from memory of this overburdened and forgetful time. Your
father, your mother, found the scattered leaves gathered in a volume, and
smiled upon them as not uncompanionable acquaintances. My tea-table
makes no promises. There is no programme of exercises to studied
beforehand. What if I should content myself with a single report of what
was said and done over our teacups? Perhaps my young reader would be
glad to let me off, for there are talkers enough who have not yet left
their breakfast-tables; and nobody can blame the young people for
preferring the thoughts and the language of their own generation, with
all its future before it, to those of their grandfathers contemporaries.
My reader, young or old, will please to observe that I have left myself
entire freedom as to the sources of what may be said over the teacups. I
have not told how many cups are commonly on the board, but by using the
plural I have implied that there is at least one other talker or listener
beside myself, and for all that appears there may be a dozen. There will
be no regulation length to my reports,--no attempt to make out a certain
number of pages. I have no contract to fill so many columns, no pledge
to contribute so many numbers. I can stop on this first page if I do not
care to say anything more, and let this article stand by itself if so
minded. What a sense of freedom it gives not to write by the yard or the
column!
When one writes for an English review or magazine at so many guineas a
sheet, the temptation is very great to make one's contribution cover as
many sheets as possible. We all know the metallic taste of articles
written under this powerful stimulus. If Bacon's Essays had been
furnished by a modern hand to the "Quarterly Review" at fifty guineas a
sheet, what a great book it would have taken to hold them!
The first thing which suggests itself to me, as I contemplate my slight
project, is the liability of repeating in the evening what I may have
said in the morning in one form or another, and printed in these or other
pages. When it suddenly flashes into the consciousness of a writer who
had been long before the public, "Why, I have said all that once or
oftener in my books or essays, and here it is again; the same old
thought, the same old image, the same old story!" it irritates him, and
is likely to stir up the monosyllables of his unsanctified vocabulary.
He sees in imagination a thousand readers, smiling or yawning as they say
to themselves, "We have had all that before," and turn to another
writer's performance for something not quite so stale and superfluous.
This is what the writer says to himself about the reader.
The idiot! Does the simpleton really think that everybody has read all
he has written? Does he really believe that everybody remembers all of
his, writer's, words he may happen to have read? At one of those famous
dinners of the Phi Beta Kappa Society; where no reporter was ever
admitted, and which nothing ever leaks out about what is said and done,
Mr. Edward Everett, in his after-dinner speech, quoted these lines from
the AEneid, giving a liberal English version of them, which he applied to
the Oration just delivered by Mr. Emerson:
Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosae
Addiderant, rutili tres ignis, et alitis Austri.
His nephew, the ingenious, inventive, and inexhaustible. Edward Everett
Hale, tells the story of this quotation, and of the various uses to which
it might plied in after-dinner speeches. How often he ventured to repeat
it at the Phi Beta Kappa dinners I am not sure; but as he reproduced it
with his lively embellishments and fresh versions and artful
circumlocutions, not one person in ten remembered that he had listened to
those same words in those same accents only a twelvemonth ago. The poor
deluded creatures who take it for granted that all the world remembers
what they have said, and laugh at them when they say it over again, may
profit by this recollection. But what if one does say the same
things,--of course in a little different form each time,--over her? If
he has anything to say worth saying, that is just what he ought to do.
Whether he ought to or not, it is very certain that this is what all who
write much or speak much necessarily must and will do. Think of the
clergyman who preaches fifty or a hundred or more sermons every year for
fifty years! Think of the stump speaker who shouts before a hundred
audiences during the same political campaign, always using the same
arguments, illustrations, and catchwords! Think of the editor, as
Carlyle has pictured him, threshing the same straw every morning, until
we know what is coming when we see the first line, as we do when we read
the large capitals at the head of a thrilling story, which ends in an
advertisement of an all-cleansing soap or an all-curing remedy!
The latch-key which opens into the inner chambers of my consciousness
fits, as I have sufficient reason to believe, the private apartments of a
good many other people's thoughts. The longer we live, the more we find
we are like other persons. When I meet with any facts in my own mental
experience, I feel almost sure that I shall find them repeated or
anticipated in the writings or the conversation of others. This feeling
gives one a freedom in telling his own personal history he could not have
enjoyed without it. My story belongs to you as much as to me. De te
fabula narratur. Change the personal pronoun,--that is all. It gives
many readers a singular pleasure to find a writer telling them something
they have long known or felt, but which they have never before found any
one to put in words for them. An author does not always know when he is
doing the service of the angel who stirred the waters of the pool of
Bethesda. Many a reader is delighted to find his solitary thought has a
companion, and is grateful to the benefactor who has strengthened him.
This is the advantage of the humble reader over the ambitious and
self-worshipping writer. It is not with him pereant illi, but beati sunt
illi qui pro nobis nostra dixerunt,-Blessed are those who have said our
good things for us.
What I have been saying of repetitions leads me into a train of
reflections like which I think many readers will find something in their
own mental history. The area of consciousness is covered by layers of
habitual thoughts, as a sea-beach is covered with wave-worn, rounded
pebbles, shaped, smoothed, and polished by long attrition against each
other. These thoughts remain very much the same from day to day, from
week to week; and as we grow older, from month to month, and from year to
year. The tides of wakening consciousness roll in upon them daily as we
unclose our eyelids, and keep up the gentle movement and murmur of
ordinary mental respiration until we close them again in slumber. When
we think we are thinking, we are for the most part only listening to
sound of attrition between these inert elements of intelligence. They
shift their places a little, they change their relations to each other,
they roll over and turn up new surfaces. Now and then a new fragment is
cast in among them, to be worn and rounded and takes its place with the
others, but the pebbled floor of consciousness is almost as stationary as
the pavement of a city thoroughfare.
It so happens that at this particular tine I have something to tell which
I am quite sure is not one of rolled pebbles which my reader has seen
before in any of my pages, or, as I feel confident, in those of any other
writer.
If my reader asks why I do not send the statement I am going to make to
some one of the special periodicals that deal with such subjects, my
answer is, that I like to tell my own stories at my own time, in own
chosen columns, where they will be read by a class of readers with whom I
like to talk.
All men of letters or of science, all writers well known to the public,
are constantly tampered with, in these days, by a class of predaceous and
hungry fellow-laborers who may be collectively spoken of as the
brain-tappers. They want an author's ideas on the subjects which
interest them, the inquirers, from the gravest religious and moral
questions to the most trivial matters of his habits and his whims and
fancies. Some of their questions he cannot answer; some he does not
choose to answer; some he is not yet ready to answer, and when he is
ready he prefers to select his own organ of publication. I do not find
fault with all the brain-tappers. Some of them are doing excellent
service by accumulating facts which could not otherwise be attained. Rut
one gets tired of the strings of questions sent him, to which he is
expected to return an answer, plucked, ripe or unripe, from his private
tree of knowledge. The brain-tappers are like the owner of the goose that
laid the golden eggs. They would have the embryos and germs of one's
thoughts out of the mental oviducts, and cannot wait for their
spontaneous evolution and extrusion.
The story I have promised is, on the whole, the most remarkable of a
series which I may have told in part at some previous date, but which, if
I have not told, may be worth recalling at a future time.
Some few of my readers may remember that in a former paper I suggested
the possibility of the existence of an idiotic area in the human mind,
corresponding to the blind spot in the human retina. I trust that I
shall not be thought to have let my wits go wandering in that region of
my own intellectual domain, when I relate a singular coincidence which
very lately occurred in my experience, and add a few remarks made by one
of our company on the delicate and difficult but fascinating subject
which it forces upon our attention. I will first copy the memorandum
made at the time:
"Remarkable coincidence. On Monday, April 18th, being at table from 6.30
P. M. to 7.30, with ________and ________ the two ladies of my
household, I told them of the case of 'trial by battel' offered by
Abraham Thornton in 1817. I mentioned his throwing down his glove, which
was not taken up by the brother of his victim, and so he had to be let
off, for the old law was still in force. I mentioned that Abraham
Thornton was said to have come to this country, 'and [I added] he may be
living near us, for aught that I know." I rose from the table, and found
an English letter waiting for me, left while I sat at dinner. A copy the
first portion of this letter:
'20 ALFRED PLACE, West (near Museum) South Kensington, LONDON, S. W.
April 7, 1887.
DR. O. W. HOLMES:
DEAR SIR,--In travelling, the other day, I met with a reprint of the very
interesting case of Thornton for murder, 1817. The prisoner pleaded
successfully the old Wager of Battel. I thought you would like to read
the account, and send it with this....
Yours faithfully,
FRED. RATHBONE.'
Mr. Rathbone is a well-known dealer in old Wedgwood and
eighteenth-century art. As a friend of my hospitable entertainer, Mr.
Willett, he had shown me many attentions in England, but I was not
expecting any communication from him; and when, fresh from my
conversation, I found this letter just arrived by mail, and left while I
was at table, and on breaking the seal read what I had a few moments
before been; telling, I was greatly surprised, and immediately made a
note of the occurrence, as given above.
I had long been familiar with all the details of this celebrated case,
but had not referred to it, so far as I can remember, for months or
years. I know of no train of thought which led me to speak of it on that
particular day. I had never alluded to it before in that company, nor
had I ever spoken of it with Mr. Rathbone.
I told this story over our teacups. Among the company at the table is a
young English girl. She seemed to be amused by the story. "Fancy!" she
said,--"how very very odd!" "It was a striking and curious coincidence,"
said the professor who was with us at the table. "As remarkable as two
teaspoons in one saucer," was the comment of a college youth who happened
to be one of the company. But the member of our circle whom the reader
will hereafter know as Number Seven, began stirring his tea in a nervous
sort of way, and I knew that he was getting ready to say something about
the case. An ingenious man he is, with a brain like a tinder-box, its
contents catching at any spark that is flying about. I always like to
hear what he says when his tinder brain has a spark fall into it. It
does not follow that because he is often wrong he may not sometimes be
right, for he is no fool. He treated my narrative very seriously.
The reader need not be startled at the new terms he introduces. Indeed, I
am not quite sure that some thinking people will not adopt his view of
the matter, which seems to have a degree of plausibility as he states and
illustrates it.
"The impulse which led you to tell that story passed directly from the
letter, which came charged from the cells of the cerebral battery of your
correspondent. The distance at which the action took place [the letter
was left on a shelf twenty-four feet from the place where I was sitting]
shows this charge to have been of notable intensity.
"Brain action through space without material symbolism, such as speech,
expression, etc., is analogous to electrical induction. Charge the prime
conductor of an electrical machine, and a gold-leaf electrometer, far off
from it, will at once be disturbed. Electricity, as we all know, can be
stored and transported as if it were a measurable fluid.
"Your incident is a typical example of cerebral induction from a source
containing stored cerebricity. I use this word, not to be found in my
dictionaries, as expressing the brain-cell power corresponding to
electricity. Think how long it was before we had attained any real
conception of the laws that govern the wonderful agent, which now works
in harness with the other trained and subdued forces! It is natural that
cerebricity should be the last of the unweighable agencies to be
understood. The human eye had seen heaven and earth and all that in them
is before it saw itself as our instruments enable us to see it. This
fact of yours, which seems so strange to you, belongs to a great series
of similar facts familiarly known now to many persons, and before long to
be recognized as generally as those relating to the electric telegraph
and the slaving `dynamo.'
"What! you cannot conceive of a charge of cerebricity fastening itself on
a letter-sheet and clinging to it for weeks, while it was shuffling about
in mail-bags, rolling over the ocean, and shaken up in railroad cars?
And yet the odor of a grain of musk will hang round a note or a dress for
a lifetime. Do you not remember what Professor Silliman says, in that
pleasant journal of his, about the little ebony cabinet which Mary, Queen
of Scots, brought with her from France,--how 'its drawers still exhale
the sweetest perfumes'? If they could hold their sweetness for more than
two hundred years, why should not a written page retain for a week or a
month the equally mysterious effluence poured over it from the thinking
marrow, and diffuse its vibrations to another excitable nervous centre?"
I have said that although our imaginative friend is given to wild
speculations, he is not always necessarily wrong. We know too little
about the laws of brain-force to be dogmatic with reference to it. I am,
myself, therefore, fully in sympathy with the psychological
investigators. When it comes to the various pretended sciences by which
men and women make large profits, attempts at investigation are very apt
to be used as lucrative advertisements for the charlatans. But a series
of investigations of the significance of certain popular beliefs and
superstitions, a careful study of the relations of certain facts to each
other,--whether that of cause and effect, or merely of coincidence,--is a
task not unworthy of sober-minded and well-trained students of nature.
Such a series of investigations has been recently instituted, and was
reported at a late meeting held in the rooms of the Boston Natural
History Society. The results were, mostly negative, and in one sense a
disappointment. A single case, related by Professor Royce, attracted a
good deal of attention. It was reported in the next morning's
newspapers, and will be given at full length, doubtless, in the next
number of the Psychological Journal. The leading facts were, briefly,
these: A lady in Hamburg, Germany, wrote, on the 22d of June last, that
she had what she supposed to be nightmare on the night of the 17th, five
days before. "It seemed," she wrote, "to belong to you; to be a horrid
pain in your head, as if it were being forcibly jammed into an iron
casque, or some such pleasant instrument of torture." It proved that on
that same 17th of June her sister was undergoing a painful operation at
the hands of a dentist. "No single case," adds Professor Royce, "proves,
or even makes probable, the existence of telepathic toothaches; but if
there are any more cases of this sort, we want to hear of them, and that
all the more because no folk-lore and no supernatural horrors have as yet
mingled with the natural and well-known impressions that people associate
with the dentist's chair."
The case I have given is, I am confident, absolutely free from every
source of error. I do not remember that Mr. Rathbone had communicated
with me since he sent me a plentiful supply of mistletoe a year ago last
Christmas. The account I received from him was cut out of "The Sporting
Times" of March 5, 1887. My own knowledge of the case came from "Kirby's
Wonderful Museum," a work presented to me at least thirty years ago. I
had not looked at the account, spoken of it, nor thought of it for a long
time, when it came to me by a kind of spontaneous generation, as it
seemed, having no connection with any previous train of thought that I
was aware of. I consider the evidence of entire independence, apart from
possible "telepathic" causation, completely water-proof, airtight,
incombustible, and unassailable.
I referred, when first reporting this curious case of coincidence, with
suggestive circumstances, to two others, one of which I said was the most
picturesque and the other the most unlikely, as it would seem, to happen.
This is the first of those two cases:--
Grenville Tudor Phillips was a younger brother of George Phillips, my
college classmate, and of Wendell Phillips, the great orator. He lived
in Europe a large part of his life, but at last returned, and, in the
year 1863, died at the house of his brother George. I read his death in
the paper; but, having seen and heard very little of him during his life,
should not have been much impressed by the fact, but for the following
occurrence: between the time of Grenville Phillips's death and his
burial, I was looking in upon my brother, then living in the house in
which we were both born. Some books which had been my father's were
stored in shelves in the room I used to occupy when at Cambridge.
Passing my eye over them, an old dark quarto attracted my attention. It
must be a Bible, I said to myself, perhaps a rare one,--the "Breeches"
Bible or some other interesting specimen. I took it from the shelves,
and, as I did so, an old slip of paper fell out and fluttered to the
floor. On lifting it I read these words:
The name is Grenville Tudor.
What was the meaning of this slip of paper coming to light at this time,
after reposing undisturbed so long? There was only one way of explaining
its presence in my father's old Bible;--a copy of the Scriptures which I
did not remember ever having handled or looked into before. In
christening a child the minister is liable to forget the name, just at
the moment when he ought to remember it. My father preached occasionally
at the Brattle Street Church. I take this for granted, for I remember
going with him on one occasion when he did so. Nothing was more likely
than that he should be asked to officiate at the baptism of the younger
son of his wife's first cousin, Judge Phillips. This slip was handed him
to remind him of the name: He brought it home, put it in that old Bible,
and there it lay quietly for nearly half a century, when, as if it had
just heard of Mr. Phillips's decease, it flew from its hiding-place and
startled the eyes of those who had just read his name in the daily column
of deaths. It would be hard to find anything more than a mere
coincidence here; but it seems curious enough to be worth telling.
The second of these two last stories must be told in prosaic detail to
show its whole value as a coincidence.
One evening while I was living in Charles Street, I received a call from
Dr. S., a well-known and highly respected Boston physician, a particular
friend of the late Alexander H. Stephens, vice-president of the Southern
Confederacy. It was with reference to a work which Mr. Stephens was
about to publish that Dr. S. called upon me. After talking that matter
over we got conversing on other subjects, among the rest a family
relationship existing between us,--not a very near one, but one which I
think I had seen mentioned in genealogical accounts. Mary S. (the last
name being the same as that of my visitant), it appeared, was the
great-great-grandmother of Mrs. H. and myself. After cordially
recognizing our forgotten relationship, now for the first time called to
mind, we parted, my guest leaving me for his own home. We had been
sitting in my library on the lower floor. On going up-stairs where Mrs.
H. was sitting alone, just as I entered the room she pushed a paper
across the table towards me, saying that perhaps it might interest me.
It was one of a number of old family papers which she had brought from
the house of her mother, recently deceased.
I opened the paper, which was an old-looking document, and found that it
was a copy, perhaps made in this century, of the will of that same Mary
S. about whom we had been talking down-stairs.
If there is such a thing as a purely accidental coincidence this must be
considered an instance of it.
All one can say about it is that it seems very unlikely that such a
coincidence should occur, but it did.
I have not tried to keep my own personality out of these stories. But
after all, how little difference it makes whether or not a writer appears
with a mask on which everybody can take off,--whether he bolts his door
or not, when everybody can look in at his windows, and all his entrances
are at the mercy of the critic's skeleton key and the jimmy of any
ill-disposed assailant!
The company have been silent listeners for the most part; but the reader
will have a chance to become better acquainted with some cf them by and
by.
II
TO THE READER.
I know that it is a hazardous experiment to address myself again to a
public which in days long past has given me a generous welcome. But my
readers have been, and are, a very faithful constituency. I think there
are many among them who would rather listen to an old voice they are used
to than to a new one of better quality, even if the "childish treble"
should betray itself now and then in the tones of the overtired organ.
But there must be others,--I am afraid many others,--who will exclaim:
"He has had his day, and why can't he be content? We don't want literary
revenants, superfluous veterans, writers who have worn out their welcome
and still insist on being attended to. Give us something fresh,
something that belongs to our day and generation. Your morning draught
was well enough, but we don't care for your evening slip-slop. You are
not in relation with us, with our time, our ideas, our aims, our
aspirations."
Alas, alas! my friend,--my young friend, for your hair is not yet
whitened,--I am afraid you are too nearly right. No doubt,--no doubt.
Teacups are not coffee-cups. They do not hold so much. Their pallid
infusion is but a feeble stimulant compared with the black decoction
served at the morning board. And so, perhaps, if wisdom like yours were
compatible with years like mine, I should drop my pen and make no further
attempts upon your patience.
But suppose that a writer who has reached and passed the natural limit of
serviceable years feels that he has some things which he would like to
say, and which may have an interest for a limited class of readers,--is
he not right in trying his powers and calmly taking the risk of failure?
Does it not seem rather lazy and cowardly, because he cannot "beat his
record," or even come up to the level of what he has done in his prime,
to shrink from exerting his talent, such as it is, now that he has
outlived the period of his greatest vigor? A singer who is no longer
equal to the trials of opera on the stage may yet please at a chamber
concert or in the drawing-room. There is one gratification an old author
can afford a certain class of critics: that, namely, of comparing him as
he is with what he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity to have its
superiors brought within range, so to speak; and if the ablest of them
will only live long enough, and keep on writing, there is no pop-gun that
cannot reach him. But I fear that this is an unamiable reflection, and I
am at this time in a very amiable mood.
I confess that there is something agreeable to me in renewing my
relations with the reading public. Were it but a single appearance, it
would give me a pleasant glimpse of the time when I was known as a
frequent literary visitor. Many of my readers--if I can lure any from
the pages of younger writers will prove to be the children, or the
grandchildren, of those whose acquaintance I made something more than a
whole generation ago. I could depend on a kind welcome from my
contemporaries,--my coevals. But where are those contemporaries? Ay de
mi! as Carlyle used to exclaim,--Ah, dear me! as our old women say,--I
look round for them, and see only their vacant places. The old vine
cannot unwind its tendrils. The branch falls with the decay of its
support, and must cling to the new growths around it, if it would not lie
helpless in the dust. This paper is a new tendril, feeling its way, as
it best may, to whatever it can wind around. The thought of finding here
and there an old friend, and making, it may be, once in a while a new
one, is very grateful to me. The chief drawback to the pleasure is the
feeling that I am submitting to that inevitable exposure which is the
penalty of authorship in every form. A writer must make up his mind to
the possible rough treatment of the critics, who swarm like bacteria
whenever there is any literary material on which they can feed. I have
had as little to complain of as most writers, yet I think it is always
with reluctance that one encounters the promiscuous handling which the
products of the mind have to put up with, as much as the fruit and
provisions in the market-stalls. I had rather be criticised, however,
than criticise; that is, express my opinions in the public prints of
other writers' work, if they are living, and can suffer, as I should
often have to make them. There are enough, thank Heaven, without me. We
are literary cannibals, and our writers live on each other and each
other's productions to a fearful extent. What the mulberry leaf is to
the silk-worm, the author's book, treatise, essay, poem, is to the
critical larva; that feed upon it. It furnishes them with food and
clothing. The process may not be agreeable to the mulberry leaf or to
the printed page; but without it the leaf would not have become the silk
that covers the empress's shoulders, and but for the critic the author's
book might never have reached the scholar's table. Scribblers will feed
on each other, and if we insist on being scribblers we must consent to be
fed on. We must try to endure philosophically what we cannot help, and
ought not, I suppose, to wish to help.
It is the custom at our table to vary the usual talk, by the reading of
short papers, in prose or verse, by one or more of The Teacups, as we are
in the habit of calling those who make up our company. Thirty years ago,
one of our present circle--"Teacup Number Two," The Professor,--read a
paper on Old Age, at a certain Breakfast-table, where he was in the habit
of appearing. That paper was published at the time, and has since seen
the light in other forms. He did not know so much about old age then as
he does now, and would doubtless write somewhat differently if he took
the subject up again. But I found that it was the general wish that
another of our company should let us hear what he had to say about it. I
received a polite note, requesting me to discourse about old age,
inasmuch as I was particularly well qualified by my experience to write
in an authoritative way concerning it. The fact is that I,--for it is
myself who am speaking,--have recently arrived at the age of threescore
years and twenty,--fourscore years we may otherwise call it. In the
arrangement of our table, I am Teacup Number One, and I may as well say
that I am often spoken of as The Dictator. There is nothing invidious in
this, as I am the oldest of the company, and no claim is less likely to
excite jealousy than that of priority of birth.
I received congratulations on reaching my eightieth birthday, not only
from our circle of Teacups, but from friends, near and distant, in large
numbers. I tried to acknowledge these kindly missives with the aid of a
most intelligent secretary; but I fear that there were gifts not thanked
for, and tokens of good-will not recognized. Let any neglected
correspondent be assured that it was not intentionally that he or she was
slighted. I was grateful for every such mark of esteem; even for the
telegram from an unknown friend in a distant land, for which I cheerfully
paid the considerable charge which the sender doubtless knew it would
give me pleasure to disburse for such an expression of friendly feeling.
I will not detain the reader any longer from the essay I have promised.
This is the paper read to The Teacups.
It is in A Song of Moses that we find the words, made very familiar to us
by the Episcopal Burial Service, which place the natural limit on life at
threescore years and ten, with an extra ten years for some of a stronger
constitution than the average. Yet we are told that Moses himself lived
to be a hundred and twenty years old, and that his eye was not dim nor
his natural strength abated. This is hard to accept literally, but we
need not doubt that he was very old, and in remarkably good condition for
a man of his age. Among his followers was a stout old captain, Caleb,
the son of Jephunneh. This ancient warrior speaks of himself in these
brave terms: "Lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet, I
am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me; as my
strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out
and to come in." It is not likely that anybody believed his brag about
his being as good a man for active service at eighty-five as he was at
forty, when Moses sent him out to spy the land of Canaan. But he was, no
doubt, lusty and vigorous for his years, and ready to smite the
Canaanites hip and thigh, and drive them out, and take possession of
their land, as he did forthwith, when Moses gave him leave.
Grand old men there were, three thousand years ago! But not all
octogenarians were like Caleb, the son of Jephunneh. Listen to poor old
Barzillai, and hear him piping: "I am this day fourscore years old; and
can I discern between good and evil? Can thy servant taste what I eat or
what I drink? Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing
women? Wherefore, then, should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord
the king?" And poor King David was worse off than this, as you all
remember, at the early age of seventy.
Thirty centuries do not seem to have made any very great difference in
the extreme limits of life. Without pretending to rival the alleged
cases of life prolonged beyond the middle of its second century, such as
those of Henry Jenkins and Thomas Parr, we can make a good showing of
centenarians and nonagenarians. I myself remember Dr. Holyoke, of Salem,
son of a president of Harvard College, who answered a toast proposed in
his honor at a dinner given to him on his hundredth birthday.
"Father Cleveland," our venerated city missionary, was born June 21,
1772, and died June 5, 1872, within a little more than a fortnight of his
hundredth birthday. Colonel Perkins, of Connecticut, died recently after
celebrating his centennial anniversary.
Among nonagenarians, three whose names are well known to Bostonians, Lord
Lyndhurst, Josiah Quincy, and Sidney Bartlett, were remarkable for
retaining their faculties in their extreme age. That patriarch of our
American literature, the illustrious historian of his country, is still
with us, his birth dating in 1800.
Ranke, the great German historian, died at the age of ninety-one, and
Chevreul, the eminent chemist, at that of a hundred and two.
Some English sporting characters have furnished striking examples of
robust longevity. In Gilpin's "Forest Scenery" there is the story of one
of these horseback heroes. Henry Hastings was the name of this old
gentleman, who lived in the time of Charles the First. It would be hard
to find a better portrait of a hunting squire than that which the Earl of
Shaftesbury has the credit of having drawn of this very peculiar
personage. His description ends by saying, "He lived to be an hundred,
and never lost his eyesight nor used spectacles. He got on horseback
without help, and rode to the death of the stag till he was past
fourscore."
Everything depends on habit. Old people can do, of course, more or less
well, what they have been doing all their lives; but try to teach them
any new tricks, and the truth of the old adage will very soon show
itself. Mr. Henry Hastings had done nothing but hunt all his days, and
his record would seem to have been a good deal like that of Philippus
Zaehdarm in that untranslatable epitaph which may be found in "Sartor
Resartus." Judged by its products, it was a very short life of a hundred
useless twelve months.
It is something to have climbed the white summit, the Mont Blanc of
fourscore. A small number only of mankind ever see their eightieth
anniversary. I might go to the statistical tables of the annuity and
life insurance offices for extended and exact information, but I prefer
to take the facts which have impressed themselves upon me in my own
career.
The class of 1829 at Harvard College, of which I am a member, graduated,
according to the triennial, fifty-nine in number. It is sixty years,
then, since that time; and as they were, on an average, about twenty
years old, those who survive must have reached fourscore years. Of the
fifty-nine graduates ten only are living, or were at the last accounts;
one in six, very nearly. In the first ten years after graduation, our
third decade, when we were between twenty and thirty years old, we lost
three members,--about one in twenty; between the ages of thirty and
forty, eight died,--one in seven of those the decade began with; from
forty to fifty, only two,--or one in twenty-four; from fifty to sixty,
eight,--or one in six; from sixty to seventy, fifteen,--or two out of
every five; from seventy to eighty, twelve,--or one in two. The greatly
increased mortality which began with our seventh decade went on steadily
increasing. At sixty we come "within range of the rifle-pits," to borrow
an expression from my friend Weir Mitchell.
Our eminent classmate, the late Professor Benjamin Peirce, showed by
numerical comparison that the men of superior ability outlasted the
average of their fellow-graduates. He himself lived a little beyond his
threescore and ten years. James Freeman Clarke almost reached the age of
eighty. The eighth decade brought the fatal year for Benjamin Robbins
Curtis, the great lawyer, who was one of the judges of the Supreme Court
of the United States; for the very able chief justice of Massachusetts,
George Tyler Bigelow; and for that famous wit and electric centre of
social life, George T. Davis. At the last annual dinner every effort was
made to bring all the survivors of the class together. Six of the ten
living members were there, six old men in the place of the thirty or
forty classmates who surrounded the long, oval table in 1859, when I
asked, "Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys?"--11 boys whose
tongues were as the vibrating leaves of the forest; whose talk was like
the voice of many waters; whose laugh was as the breaking of mighty waves
upon the seashore. Among the six at our late dinner was our first
scholar, the thorough-bred and accomplished engineer who held the city of
Lawrence in his brain before it spread itself out along the banks of the
Merrimac. There, too, was the poet whose National Hymn, "My Country, 't
is of thee," is known to more millions, and dearer to many of them, than
all the other songs written since the Psalms of David. Four of our six
were clergymen; the engineer and the present writer completed the list.
Were we melancholy? Did we talk of graveyards and epitaphs? No,--we
remembered our dead tenderly, serenely, feeling deeply what we had lost
in those who but a little while ago were with us. How could we forget
James Freeman Clarke, that man of noble thought and vigorous action, who
pervaded this community with his spirit, and was felt through all its
channels as are the light and the strength that radiate through the wires
which stretch above us? It was a pride and a happiness to have such
classmates as he was to remember. We were not the moping, complaining
graybeards that many might suppose we must have been. We had been
favored with the blessing of long life. We had seen the drama well into
its fifth act. The sun still warmed us, the air was still grateful and
life-giving. But there was another underlying source of our cheerful
equanimity, which we could not conceal from ourselves if we had wished to
do it. Nature's kindly anodyne is telling upon us more and more with
every year. Our old doctors used to give an opiate which they called
"the black drop." It was stronger than laudanum, and, in fact, a
dangerously powerful narcotic. Something like this is that potent drug
in Nature's pharmacopoeia which she reserves for the time of need,--the
later stages of life. She commonly begins administering it at about the
time of the "grand climacteric," the ninth septennial period, the
sixty-third year. More and more freely she gives it, as the years go on,
to her grey-haired children, until, if they last long enough, every
faculty is benumbed, and they drop off quietly into sleep under its
benign influence.
Do you say that old age is unfeeling? It has not vital energy enough to
supply the waste of the more exhausting emotions. Old Men's Tears, which
furnished the mournful title to Joshua Scottow's Lamentations, do not
suggest the deepest grief conceivable. A little breath of wind brings
down the raindrops which have gathered on the leaves of the tremulous
poplars. A very slight suggestion brings the tears from Marlborough's
eyes, but they are soon over, and he is smiling again as an allusion
carries him back to the days of Blenheim and Malplaquet. Envy not the
old man the tranquillity of his existence, nor yet blame him if it
sometimes looks like apathy. Time, the inexorable, does not threaten him
with the scythe so often as with the sand-bag. He does not cut, but he
stuns and stupefies. One's fellow-mortals can afford to be as considerate
and tender with him as Time and Nature.
There was not much boasting among us of our present or our past, as we
sat together in the little room at the great hotel. A certain amount of
self-deception is quite possible at threescore years and ten, but at
three score years and twenty Nature has shown most of those who live to
that age that she is earnest, and means to dismantle and have done with
them in a very little while. As for boasting of our past, the laudator
temporis acti makes but a poor figure in our time. Old people used to
talk of their youth as if there were giants in those days. We knew some
tall men when we were young, but we can see a man taller than any one
among them at the nearest dime museum. We had handsome women among us,
of high local reputation, but nowadays we have professional beauties who
challenge the world to criticise them as boldly as Phryne ever challenged
her Athenian admirers. We had fast horses,--did not "Old Blue" trot a
mile in three minutes? True, but there is a three-year-old colt just put
on the track who has done it in a little more than two thirds of that
time. It seems as if the material world had been made over again since
we were boys. It is but a short time since we were counting up the
miracles we had lived to witness. The list is familiar enough: the
railroad, the ocean steamer, photography, the spectroscope, the
telegraph, telephone, phonograph, anesthetics, electric
illumination,--with such lesser wonders as the friction match, the sewing
machine, and the bicycle. And now, we said, we must have come to the end
of these unparalleled developments of the forces of nature. We must rest
on our achievements. The nineteenth century is not likely to add to
them; we must wait for the twentieth century. Many of us, perhaps most
of us, felt in that way. We had seen our planet furnished by the art of
man with a complete nervous system: a spinal cord beneath the ocean,
secondary centres,--ganglions,--in all the chief places where men are
gathered together, and ramifications extending throughout civilization.
All at once, by the side of this talking and light-giving apparatus, we
see another wire stretched over our heads, carrying force to a vast
metallic muscular system,--a slender cord conveying the strength of a
hundred men, of a score of horses, of a team of elephants. The lightning
is tamed and harnessed, the thunderbolt has become a common carrier. No
more surprises in this century! A voice whispers, What next?
It will not do for us to boast about our young days and what they had to
show. It is a great deal better to boast of what they could not show,
and, strange as it may seem, there is a certain satisfaction in it. In
these days of electric lighting, when you have only to touch a button and
your parlor or bedroom is instantly flooded with light, it is a pleasure
to revert to the era of the tinder-box, the flint and steel, and the
brimstone match. It gives me an almost proud satisfaction to tell how we
used, when those implements were not at hand or not employed, to light
our whale-oil lamp by blowing a live coal held against the wick, often
swelling our cheeks and reddening our faces until we were on the verge of
apoplexy. I love to tell of our stage-coach experiences, of our
sailing-packet voyages, of the semi-barbarous destitution of all modern
comforts and conveniences through which we bravely lived and came out the
estimable personages you find us.
Think of it! All my boyish shooting was done with a flint-lock gun; the
percussion lock came to me as one of those new-fangled notions people had
just got hold of. We ancients can make a grand display of minus
quantities in our reminiscences, and the figures look almost as well as
if they had the plus sign before them.
I am afraid that old people found life rather a dull business in the time
of King David and his rich old subject and friend, Barzillai, who, poor
man, could not have read a wicked novel, nor enjoyed a symphony concert,
if they had had those luxuries in his day. There were no pleasant
firesides, for there were no chimneys. There were no daily newspapers
for the old man to read, and he could not read them if there were, with
his dimmed eyes, nor hear them read, very probably, with his dulled ears.
There was no tobacco, a soothing drug, which in its various forms is a
great solace to many old men and to some old women, Carlyle and his
mother used to smoke their pipes together, you remember.
Old age is infinitely more cheerful, for intelligent people at least,
than it was two or three thousand years ago. It is our duty, so far as
we can, to keep it so. There will always be enough about it that is
solemn, and more than enough, alas! that is saddening. But how much
there is in our times to lighten its burdens! If they that look out at
the windows be darkened, the optician is happy to supply them with
eye-glasses for use before the public, and spectacles for their hours of
privacy. If the grinders cease because they are few, they can be made
many again by a third dentition, which brings no toothache in its train.
By temperance and good Habits of life, proper clothing, well-warmed,
well-drained, and well-ventilated dwellings, and sufficient, not too much
exercise, the old man of our time may keep his muscular strength in very
good condition. I doubt if Mr. Gladstone, who is fast nearing his
eightieth birthday, would boast, in the style of Caleb, that he was as
good a man with his axe as he was when he was forty, but I would back
him,--if the match were possible, for a hundred shekels, against that
over-confident old Israelite, to cut down and chop up a cedar of Lebanon.
I know a most excellent clergyman, not far from my own time of life, whom
I would pit against any old Hebrew rabbi or Greek philosopher of his
years and weight, if they could return to the flesh, to run a quarter of
a mile on a good, level track.
We must not make too much of such exceptional cases of prolonged
activity. I often reproached my dear friend and classmate, Tames Freeman
Clarke, that his ceaseless labors made it impossible for his coevals to
enjoy the luxury of that repose which their years demanded. A wise old
man, the late Dr. James Walker, president of Harvard University, said
that the great privilege of old age was the getting rid of
responsibilities. These hard-working veterans will not let one get rid
of them until he drops in his harness, and so gets rid of them and his
life together. How often has many a tired old man envied the
superannuated family cat, stretched upon the rug before the fire, letting
the genial warmth tranquilly diffuse itself through all her internal
arrangements! No more watching for mice in dark, damp cellars, no more
awaiting the savage gray rat at the mouth of his den, no more scurrying
up trees and lamp-posts to avoid the neighbor's cur who wishes to make
her acquaintance! It is very grand to "die in harness," but it is very
pleasant to have the tight straps unbuckled and the heavy collar lifted
from the neck and shoulders.
It is natural enough to cling to life. We are used to atmospheric
existence, and can hardly conceive of ourselves except as breathing
creatures. We have never tried any other mode of being, or, if we have,
we have forgotten all about it, whatever Wordsworth's grand ode may tell
us we remember. Heaven itself must be an experiment to every human soul
which shall find itself there. It may take time for an earthborn saint
to become acclimated to the celestial ether,--that is, if time can be
said to exist for a disembodied spirit. We are all sentenced to capital
punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our
earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have
adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the
little while we are to be confined in it. The prisoner of Chillon
"regained [his] freedom with a sigh,"
and a tender-hearted mortal might be pardoned for looking back, like the
poor lady who was driven from her dwelling-place by fire and brimstone,
at the home he was leaving for the "undiscovered country."
On the other hand, a good many persons, not suicidal in their tendencies,
get more of life than they want. One of our wealthy citizens said, on
hearing that a friend had dropped off from apoplexy, that it made his
mouth water to hear of such a case. It was an odd expression, but I have
no doubt that the fine old gentleman to whom it was attributed made use
of it. He had had enough of his gout and other infirmities. Swift's
account of the Struldbrugs is not very amusing reading for old people,
but some may find it a consolation to reflect on the probable miseries
they escape in not being doomed to an undying earthly existence.
There are strange diversities in the way in which different old persons
look upon their prospects. A millionaire whom I well remember confessed
that he should like to live long enough to learn how much a certain
fellow-citizen, a multimillionaire, was worth. One of the, three
nonagenarians before referred to expressed himself as having a great
curiosity about the new sphere of existence to which he was looking
forward.
The feeling must of necessity come to many aged persons that they have
outlived their usefulness; that they are no longer wanted, but rather in
the way, drags on the wheels rather than helping them forward. But let
them remember the often-quoted line of Milton,
"They also serve who only stand and wait."
This is peculiarly true of them. They are helping others without always
being aware of it. They are the shields, the breakwaters, of those who
come after them. Every decade is a defence of the one next behind it.
At thirty the youth has sobered into manhood, but the strong men of forty
rise in almost unbroken rank between him and the approaches of old age as
they show in the men of fifty. At forty he looks with a sense of
security at the strong men of fifty, and sees behind them the row of
sturdy sexagenarians. When fifty is reached, somehow sixty does not look
so old as it once used to, and seventy is still afar off. After sixty
the stern sentence of the burial service seems to have a meaning that one
did not notice in former years. There begins to be something personal
about it. But if one lives to seventy he soon gets used to the text with
the threescore years and ten in it, and begins to count himself among
those who by reason of strength are destined to reach fourscore, of whom
he can see a number still in reasonably good condition. The octogenarian
loves to read about people of ninety and over. He peers among the
asterisks of the triennial catalogue of the University for the names of
graduates who have been seventy years out of college and remain still
unstarred. He is curious about the biographies of centenarians. Such
escapades as those of that terrible old sinner and ancestor of great men,
the Reverend Stephen Bachelder, interest him as they never did before.
But he cannot deceive himself much longer. See him walking on a level
surface, and he steps off almost as well as ever; but watch him coming
down a flight of stairs, and the family record could not tell his years
more faithfully. He cut you dead, you say? Did it occur to you that he
could not see you clearly enough to know you from any other son or
daughter of Adam? He said he was very glad to hear it, did he, when you
told him that your beloved grandmother had just deceased? Did you happen
to remember that though he does not allow that he is deaf, he will not
deny that he does not hear quite so well as he used to? No matter about
his failings; the longer he holds on to life, the longer he makes life
seem to all the living who follow him, and thus he is their constant
benefactor.
Every stage of existence has its special trials and its special
consolations. Habits are the crutches of old age; by the aid of these we
manage to hobble along after the mental joints are stiff and the muscles
rheumatic, to speak metaphorically,--that is to say, when every act of
self-determination costs an effort and a pang. We become more and more
automatic as we grow older, and if we lived long enough we should come to
be pieces of creaking machinery like Maelzel's chess player,--or what
that seemed to be.
Emerson was sixty-three years old, the year I have referred to as that of
the grand climacteric, when he read to his son the poem he called
"Terminus," beginning:
"It is time to be old,
To take in sail.
The God of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds
And said, 'No more!'"
It was early in life to feel that the productive stage was over, but he
had received warning from within, and did not wish to wait for outside
advices. There is all the difference in the world in the mental as in
the bodily constitution of different individuals. Some must "take in
sail" sooner, some later. We can get a useful lesson from the American
and the English elms on our Common. The American elms are quite bare,
and have been so for weeks. They know very well that they are going to
have storms to wrestle with; they have not forgotten the gales of
September and the tempests of the late autumn and early winter. It is a
hard fight they are going to have, and they strip their coats off and
roll up their shirt-sleeves, and show themselves bare-armed and ready for
the contest. The English elms are of a more robust build, and stand
defiant, with all their summer clothing about their sturdy frames. They
may yet have to learn a lesson of their American cousins, for
notwithstanding their compact and solid structure they go to pieces in
the great winds just as ours do. We must drop much of our foliage before
winter is upon us. We must take in sail and throw over cargo, if that is
necessary, to keep us afloat. We have to decide between our duties and
our instinctive demand of rest. I can believe that some have welcomed
the decay of their active powers because it furnished them with
peremptory reasons for sparing themselves during the few years that were
left them.
Age brings other obvious changes besides the loss of active power. The
sensibilities are less keen, the intelligence is less lively, as we might
expect under the influence of that narcotic which Nature administers.
But there is another effect of her "black drop" which is not so commonly
recognized. Old age is like an opium-dream. Nothing seems real except
what is unreal. I am sure that the pictures painted by the
imagination,--the faded frescos on the walls of memory,--come out in
clearer and brighter colors than belonged to them many years earlier.
Nature has her special favors for her children of every age, and this is
one which she reserves for our second childhood.
No man can reach an advanced age without thinking of that great change to
which, in the course of nature, he must be so near. It has been remarked
that the sterner beliefs of rigid theologians are apt to soften in their
later years. All reflecting persons, even those whose minds have been
half palsied by the deadly dogmas which have done all they could to
disorganize their thinking powers,--all reflecting persons, I say, must
recognize, in looking back over a long life, how largely their creeds,
their course of life, their wisdom and unwisdom, their whole characters,
were shaped by the conditions which surrounded them. Little children
they came from the hands of the Father of all; little children in their
helplessness, their ignorance, they are going back to Him. They cannot
help feeling that they are to be transferred from the rude embrace of the
boisterous elements to arms that will receive them tenderly. Poor
planetary foundlings, they have known hard treatment at the hands of the
brute forces of nature, from the control of which they are soon to be set
free. There are some old pessimists, it is true, who believe that they
and a few others are on a raft, and that the ship which they have
quitted, holding the rest of mankind, is going down with all on board.
It is no wonder that there should be such when we remember what have been
the teachings of the priesthood through long series of ignorant
centuries. Every age has to shape the Divine image it worships over
again,--the present age and our own country are busily engaged in the
task at this time. We unmake Presidents and make new ones. This is an
apprenticeship for a higher task. Our doctrinal teachers are unmaking
the Deity of the Westminster Catechism and trying to model a new one,
with more of modern humanity and less of ancient barbarism in his
composition. If Jonathan Edwards had lived long enough, I have no doubt
his creed would have softened into a kindly, humanized belief.
Some twenty or thirty years ago, I said to Longfellow that certain
statistical tables I had seen went to show that poets were not a
long-lived race. He doubted whether there was anything to prove they
were particularly short-lived. Soon after this, he handed me a list he
had drawn up. I cannot lay my hand upon it at this moment, but I
remember that Metastasio was the oldest of them all. He died at the age
of eighty-four. I have had some tables made out, which I have every
reason to believe are correct so far as they go. From these, it appears
that twenty English poets lived to the average age of fifty-six years and
a little over. The eight American poets on the list averaged
seventy-three and a half, nearly, and they are not all dead yet. The
list including Greek, Latin, Italian, and German poets, with American and
English, gave an average of a little over sixty-two years. Our young
poets need not be alarmed. They can remember that Bryant lived to be
eighty-three years old, that Longfellow reached seventy-five and Halleck
seventy-seven, while Whittier is living at the age of nearly eighty-two.
Tennyson is still writing at eighty, and Browning reached the age of
seventy-seven.
Shall a man who in his younger days has written poetry, or what passed
for it, continue to attempt it in his later years? Certainly, if it
amuses or interests him, no one would object to his writing in verse as
much as he likes. Whether he should continue to write for the public is
another question. Poetry is a good deal a matter of heart-beats, and the
circulation is more languid in the later period of life. The joints are
less supple; the arteries are more or less "ossified." Something like
these changes has taken place in the mind. It has lost the flexibility,
the plastic docility, which it had in youth and early manhood, when the
gristle had but just become hardened into bone. It is the nature of
poetry to writhe itself along through the tangled growths of the
vocabulary, as a snake winds through the grass, in sinuous, complex, and
unexpected curves, which crack every joint that is not supple as
india-rubber.
I had a poem that I wanted to print just here. But after what I have
this moment said, I hesitated, thinking that I might provoke the obvious
remark that I exemplified the unfitness of which I had been speaking. I
remembered the advice I had given to a poetical aspirant not long since,
which I think deserves a paragraph to itself.
My friend, I said, I hope you will not write in verse. When you write in
prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you
must.
Should I send this poem to the publishers, or not?
"Some said, 'John, print it;' others said, 'Not so.'"
I did not ask "some" or "others." Perhaps I should have thought it best
to keep my poem to myself and the few friends for whom it was written.
All at once, my daimon--that other Me over whom I button my waistcoat
when I button it over my own person--put it into my head to look up the
story of Madame Saqui. She was a famous danseuse, who danced Napoleon in
and out, and several other dynasties besides. Her last appearance was at
the age of seventy-six, which is rather late in life for the tight rope,
one of her specialties. Jules Janin mummified her when she died in 1866,
at the age of eighty. He spiced her up in his eulogy as if she had been
the queen of a modern Pharaoh. His foamy and flowery rhetoric put me
into such a state of good-nature that I said, I will print my poem, and
let the critical Gil Blas handle it as he did the archbishop's sermon, or
would have done, if he had been a writer for the "Salamanca Weekly."
It must be premised that a very beautiful loving cup was presented to me
on my recent birthday, by eleven ladies of my acquaintance. This was the
most costly and notable of all the many tributes I received, and for
which in different forms I expressed my gratitude.
TO THE ELEVEN LADIES
WHO PRESENTED ME WITH A SILVER LOVING CUP ON THE
TWENTY-NINTH OF AUGUST, M DCCC LXXXIX.
"Who gave this cup?" The secret thou wouldst steal
Its brimming flood forbids it to reveal:
No mortal's eye shall read it till he first
Cool the red throat of thirst.
If on the golden floor one draught remain,
Trust me, thy careful search will be in vain;
Not till the bowl is emptied shalt thou know
The names enrolled below.
Deeper than Truth lies buried in her well
Those modest names the graven letters spell
Hide from the sight; but, wait, and thou shalt see
Who the good angels be
Whose bounty glistens in the beauteous gift
That friendly hands to loving lips shall lift:
Turn the fair goblet when its floor is dry,
Their names shall meet thine eye.
Count thou their number on the beads of Heaven,
Alas! the clustered Pleiads are but seven;
Nay, the nine sister Muses are too few,
--The Graces must add two.
"For whom this gift?" For one who all too long
Clings to his bough among the groves of song;
Autumn's last leaf, that spreads its faded wing
To greet a second spring.
Dear friends, kind friends, whate'er the cup may hold,
Bathing its burnished depths, will change to gold
Its last bright drop let thirsty Maenads drain,
Its fragrance will remain.
Better love's perfume in the empty bowl
Than wine's nepenthe for the aching soul
Sweeter than song that ever poet sung,
It makes an old heart young!
III
After the reading of the paper which was reported in the preceding number
of this record, the company fell into talk upon the subject with which it
dealt.
The Mistress. "I could have wished you had said more about the religious
attitude of old age as such. Surely the thoughts of aged persons must be
very much taken up with the question of what is to become of them. I
should like to have The Dictator explain himself a little more fully on
this point."
My dear madam, I said, it is a delicate matter to talk about. You
remember Mr. Calhoun's response to the advances of an over-zealous
young clergyman who wished to examine him as to his outfit for the
long journey. I think the relations between man and his Maker grow
more intimate, more confidential, if I may say so, with advancing
years. The old man is less disposed to argue about special matters
of belief, and more ready to sympathize with spiritually minded
persons without anxious questioning as to the fold to which they
belong. That kindly judgment which he exercises with regard to
others he will, naturally enough, apply to himself. The caressing
tone in which the Emperor Hadrian addresses his soul is very much
like that of an old person talking with a grandchild or some other
pet:
"Animula, vagula, blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis."
"Dear little, flitting, pleasing sprite,
The body's comrade and its guest."
How like the language of Catullus to Lesbia's sparrow!
More and more the old man finds his pleasures in memory, as the present
becomes unreal and dreamlike, and the vista of his earthly future narrows
and closes in upon him. At last, if he live long enough, life comes to
be little more than a gentle and peaceful delirium of pleasing
recollections. To say, as Dante says, that there is no greater grief
than to remember past happiness in the hour of misery is not giving the
whole truth. In the midst of the misery, as many would call it, of
extreme old age, there is often a divine consolation in recalling the
happy moments and days and years of times long past. So beautiful are
the visions of bygone delight that one could hardly wish them to become
real, lest they should lose their ineffable charm. I can almost conceive
of a dozing and dreamy centenarian saying to one he loves, "Go, darling,
go! Spread your wings and leave me. So shall you enter that world of
memory where all is lovely. I shall not hear the sound of your footsteps
any more, but you will float before me, an aerial presence. I shall not
hear any word from your lips, but I shall have a deeper sense of your
nearness to me than speech can give. I shall feel, in my still solitude,
as the Ancient Mariner felt when the seraph band gathered before him:
"'No voice did they impart
No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.'"
I said that the lenient way in which the old look at the failings of
others naturally leads them to judge themselves more charitably. They
find an apology for their short-comings and wrong-doings in another
consideration. They know very well that they are not the same persons as
the middle-aged individuals, the young men, the boys, the children, that
bore their names, and whose lives were continuous with theirs. Here is
an old man who can remember the first time he was allowed to go shooting.
What a remorseless young destroyer he was, to be sure! Wherever he saw a
feather, wherever a poor little squirrel showed his bushy tail, bang!
went the old "king's arm," and the feathers or the fur were set flying
like so much chaff. Now that same old man,--the mortal that was called
by his name and has passed for the same person for some scores of
years,--is considered absurdly sentimental by kind-hearted women, because
he opens the fly-trap and sets all its captives free,--out-of-doors, of
course, but the dear souls all insisting, meanwhile, that the flies will,
every one of them, be back again in the house before the day is over. Do
you suppose that venerable sinner expects to be rigorously called to
account for the want of feeling he showed in those early years, when the
instinct of destruction, derived from his forest-roaming ancestors, led
him to acts which he now looks upon with pain and aversion?
"Senex" has seen three generations grow up, the son repeating the virtues
and the failings of the father, the grandson showing the same
characteristics as the father and grandfather. He knows that if such or
such a young fellow had lived to the next stage of life he would very
probably have caught up with his mother's virtues, which, like a graft of
a late fruit on an early apple or pear tree, do not ripen in her children
until late in the season. He has seen the successive ripening of one
quality after another on the boughs of his own life, and he finds it hard
to condemn himself for faults which only needed time to fall off and be
succeeded by better fruitage. I cannot help thinking that the recording
angel not only drops a tear upon many a human failing, which blots it out
forever, but that he hands many an old record-book to the imp that does
his bidding, and orders him to throw that into the fire instead of the
sinner for whom the little wretch had kindled it.
"And pitched him in after it, I hope," said Number Seven, who is in some
points as much of an optimist as any one among us, in spite of the squint
in his brain,--or in virtue of it, if you choose to have it so.
"I like Wordsworth's 'Matthew,'" said Number Five, "as well as any
picture of old age I remember."
"Can you repeat it to us?" asked one of The Teacups.
"I can recall two verses of it," said Number Five, and she recited the
two following ones. Number Five has a very sweet voice. The moment she
speaks all the faces turn toward her. I don't know what its secret is,
but it is a voice that makes friends of everybody.
"'The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs
Of one tired out with fun and madness;
The tears which came to Matthew's eyes
Were tears of light, the dew of gladness.
"'Yet, sometimes, when the secret cup
Of still and serious thought went round,
It seemed as if he drank it up,
He felt with spirit so profound:'
"This was the way in which Wordsworth paid his tribute to a
"'Soul of God's best earthly mould.'"
The sweet voice left a trance-like silence after it, which may have
lasted twenty heart-beats. Then I said, We all thank you for your
charming quotation. How much more wholesome a picture of humanity than
such stuff as the author of the "Night Thoughts" has left us:
"Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings but Himself
That hideous sight, a naked human heart."
Or the author of "Don Juan," telling us to look into
"Man's heart, and view the hell that's there!"
I hope I am quoting correctly, but I am more of a scholar in Wordsworth
than in Byron. Was Parson Young's own heart such a hideous spectacle to
himself?
If it was, he had better have stripped off his surplice. No,--it was
nothing but the cant of his calling. In Byron it was a mood, and he
might have said just the opposite thing the next day, as he did in his
two descriptions of the Venus de' Medici. That picture of old Matthew
abides in the memory, and makes one think better of his kind. What nobler
tasks has the poet than to exalt the idea of manhood, and to make the
world we live in more beautiful?
We have two or three young people with us who stand a fair chance of
furnishing us the element without which life and tea-tables alike are
wanting in interest. We are all, of course, watching them, and curious
to know whether we are to have a romance or not. Here is one of them;
others will show themselves presently.
I cannot say just how old the Tutor is, but I do not detect a gray hair
in his head. My sight is not so good as it was, however, and he may have
turned the sharp corner of thirty, and even have left it a year or two
behind him. More probably he is still in the twenties,--say twenty-eight
or twenty-nine. He seems young, at any rate, excitable, enthusiastic,
imaginative, but at the same time reserved. I am afraid that he is a
poet. When I say "I am afraid," you wonder what I mean by the
expression. I may take another opportunity to explain and justify it; I
will only say now that I consider the Muse the most dangerous of sirens
to a young man who has his way to make in the world. Now this young man,
the Tutor, has, I believe, a future before him. He was born for a
philosopher,--so I read his horoscope,--but he has a great liking for
poetry and can write well in verse. We have had a number of poems
offered for our entertainment, which I have commonly been requested to
read. There has been some little mystery about their authorship, but it
is evident that they are not all from the same hand. Poetry is as
contagious as measles, and if a single case of it break out in any social
circle, or in a school, there are certain to be a number of similar
cases, some slight, some serious, and now and then one so malignant that
the subject of it should be put on a spare diet of stationery, say from
two to three penfuls of ink and a half sheet of notepaper per diem. If
any of our poetical contributions are presentable, the reader shall have
a chance to see them.
It must be understood that our company is not invariably made up of the
same persons. The Mistress, as we call her, is expected to be always in
her place. I make it a rule to be present. The Professor is almost as
sure to be at the table as I am. We should hardly know what to do
without Number Five. It takes a good deal of tact to handle such a
little assembly as ours, which is a republic on a small scale, for all
that they give me the title of Dictator, and Number Five is a great help
in every social emergency. She sees when a discussion tends to become
personal, and heads off the threatening antagonists. She knows when a
subject has been knocking about long enough and dexterously shifts the
talk to another track. It is true that I am the one most frequently
appealed to as the highest tribunal in doubtful cases, but I often care
more for Number Five's opinion than I do for my own. Who is this Number
Five, so fascinating, so wise, so full of knowledge, and so ready to
learn? She is suspected of being the anonymous author of a book which
produced a sensation when published, not very long ago, and which those
who read are very apt to read a second time, and to leave on their tables
for frequent reference. But we have never asked her. I do not think she
wants to be famous. How she comes to be unmarried is a mystery to me; it
must be that she has found nobody worth caring enough for. I wish she
would furnish us with the romance which, as I said, our tea-table needs
to make it interesting. Perhaps the new-comer will make love to her,--I
should think it possible she might fancy him.
And who is the new-comer? He is a Counsellor and a Politician. Has a
good war record. Is about forty-five years old, I conjecture. Is
engaged in a great law case just now. Said to be very eloquent. Has an
intellectual head, and the bearing of one who has commanded a regiment or
perhaps a brigade. Altogether an attractive person, scholarly, refined
has some accomplishments not so common as they might be in the class we
call gentlemen, with an accent on the word.
There is also a young Doctor, waiting for his bald spot to come, so that
he may get into practice.
We have two young ladies at the table,--the English girl referred to in a
former number, and an American girl of about her own age. Both of them
are students in one of those institutions--I am not sure whether they
call it an "annex" or not; but at any rate one of those schools where
they teach the incomprehensible sort of mathematics and other bewildering
branches of knowledge above the common level of high-school education.
They seem to be good friends, and form a very pleasing pair when they
walk in arm in arm; nearly enough alike to seem to belong together,
different enough to form an agreeable contrast.
Of course we were bound to have a Musician at our table, and we have one
who sings admirably, and accompanies himself, or one or more of our
ladies, very frequently.
Such is our company when the table is full. But sometimes only half a
dozen, or it may be only three or four, are present. At other times we
have a visitor or two, either in the place of one of our habitual number,
or in addition to it. We have the elements, we think, of a pleasant
social gathering,--different sexes, ages, pursuits, and tastes,--all that
is required for a "symphony concert" of conversation. One of the curious
questions which might well be asked by those who had been with us on
different occasions would be, "How many poets are there among you?"
Nobody can answer this question. It is a point of etiquette with us not
to press our inquiries about these anonymous poems too sharply,
especially if any of them betray sentiments which would not bear rough
handling.
I don't doubt that the different personalities at our table will get
mixed up in the reader's mind if he is not particularly clear-headed.
That happens very often, much oftener than all would be willing to
confess, in reading novels and plays. I am afraid we should get a good
deal confused even in reading our Shakespeare if we did not look back now
and then at the dramatis personae. I am sure that I am very apt to
confound the characters in a moderately interesting novel; indeed, I
suspect that the writer is often no better off than the reader in the
dreary middle of the story, when his characters have all made their
appearance, and before they have reached near enough to the denoument to
have fixed their individuality by the position they have arrived at in
the chain of the narrative.
My reader might be a little puzzled when he read that Number Five did or
said such or such a thing, and ask, "Whom do you mean by that title? I
am not quite sure that I remember." Just associate her with that line of
Emerson,
"Why nature loves the number five,"
and that will remind you that she is the favorite of our table.
You cannot forget who Number Seven is if I inform you that he specially
prides himself on being a seventh son of a seventh son. The fact of such
a descent is supposed to carry wonderful endowments with it. Number
Seven passes for a natural healer. He is looked upon as a kind of
wizard, and is lucky in living in the nineteenth century instead of the
sixteenth or earlier. How much confidence he feels in himself as the
possessor of half-supernatural gifts I cannot say. I think his peculiar
birthright gives him a certain confidence in his whims and fancies which
but for that he would hardly feel. After this explanation, when I speak
of Number Five or Number Seven, you will know to whom I refer.
The company are very frank in their criticisms of each other. "I did not
like that expression of yours, planetary foundlings," said the Mistress.
"It seems to me that it is too like atheism for a good Christian like you
to use."
Ah, my dear madam, I answered, I was thinking of the elements and the
natural forces to which man was born an almost helpless subject in the
rudimentary stages of his existence, and from which he has only partially
got free after ages upon ages of warfare with their tyranny. Think what
hunger forced the caveman to do! Think of the surly indifference of the
storms that swept the forest and the waters, the earthquake chasms that
engulfed him, the inundations that drowned him out of his miserable
hiding-places, the pestilences that lay in wait for him, the unequal
strife with ferocious animals! I need not sum up all the wretchedness
that goes to constitute the "martyrdom of man." When our forefathers
came to this wilderness as it then was, and found everywhere the bones of
the poor natives who had perished in the great plague (which our Doctor
there thinks was probably the small-pox), they considered this
destructive malady as a special mark of providential favor for them. How
about the miserable Indians? Were they anything but planetary
foundlings? No! Civilization is a great foundling hospital, and
fortunate are all those who get safely into the creche before the frost
or the malaria has killed them, the wild beasts or the venomous reptiles
worked out their deadly appetites and instincts upon them. The very idea
of humanity seems to be that it shall take care of itself and develop its
powers in the "struggle for life." Whether we approve it or not, if we
can judge by the material record, man was born a foundling, and fought
his way as he best might to that kind of existence which we call
civilized,--one which a considerable part of the inhabitants of our
planet have reached.
If you do not like the expression planetary foundlings, I have no
objection to your considering the race as put out to nurse. And what a
nurse Nature is! She gives her charge a hole in the rocks to live in,
ice for his pillow and snow for his blanket, in one part of the world;
the jungle for his bedroom in another, with the tiger for his watch-dog,
and the cobra as his playfellow.
Well, I said, there may be other parts of the universe where there are no
tigers and no cobras. It is not quite certain that such realms of
creation are better off, on the whole, than this earthly residence of
ours, which has fought its way up to the development of such centres of
civilization as Athens and Rome, to such personalities as Socrates, as
Washington.
"One of our company has been on an excursion among the celestial bodies
of our system, I understand," said the Professor.
Number Five colored. "Nothing but a dream," she said. "The truth is, I
had taken ether in the evening for a touch of neuralgia, and it set my
imagination at work in a way quite unusual with me. I had been reading a
number of books about an ideal condition of society,--Sir Thomas Mores
'Utopia,' Lord Bacon's 'New Atlantis,' and another of more recent date.
I went to bed with my brain a good deal excited, and fell into a deep
slumber, in which I passed through some experiences so singular that, on
awaking, I put them down on paper. I don't know that there is anything
very original about the experiences I have recorded, but I thought them
worth preserving. Perhaps you would not agree with me in that belief."
"If Number Five will give us a chance to form our own judgment about her
dream or vision, I think we shall enjoy it," said the Mistress. "She
knows what will please The Teacups in the way of reading as well as I do
how many lumps of sugar the Professor wants in his tea and how many I
want in mine."
The company was so urgent that Number Five sent up-stairs for her paper.
Number Five reads the story of her dream.
It cost me a great effort to set down the words of the manuscript from
which I am reading. My dreams for the most part fade away so soon after
their occurrence that I cannot recall them at all. But in this case my
ideas held together with remarkable tenacity. By keeping my mind
steadily upon the work, I gradually unfolded the narrative which follows,
as the famous Italian antiquary opened one of those fragile carbonized
manuscripts found in the ruins of Herculaneum or Pompeii.
The first thing I remember about it is that I was floating upward,
without any sense of effort on my part. The feeling was that of flying,
which I have often had in dreams, as have many other persons. It was the
most natural thing in the world,--a semi-materialized volition, if I may
use such an expression.
At the first moment of my new consciousness,--for I seemed to have just
emerged from a deep slumber, I was aware that there was a companion at my
side. Nothing could be more gracious than the way in which this being
accosted me. I will speak of it as she, because there was a delicacy, a
sweetness, a divine purity, about its aspect that recalled my ideal of
the loveliest womanhood.
"I am your companion and your guide," this being made me understand, as
she looked at me. Some faculty of which I had never before been
conscious had awakened in me, and I needed no interpreter to explain the
unspoken language of my celestial attendant.
"You are not yet outside of space and time," she said, "and I am going
with you through some parts of the phenomenal or apparent universe,--what
you call the material world. We have plenty of what you call time before
us, and we will take our voyage leisurely, looking at such objects of
interest as may attract our attention as we pass. The first thing you
will naturally wish to look at will be the earth you have just left.
This is about the right distance," she said, and we paused in our flight.
The great globe we had left was rolling beneath us. No eye of one in the
flesh could see it as I saw or seemed to see it. No ear of any mortal
being could bear the sounds that came from it as I heard or seemed to
hear them. The broad oceans unrolled themselves before me. I could
recognize the calm Pacific and the stormy Atlantic,--the ships that
dotted them, the white lines where the waves broke on the shore,--frills
on the robes of the continents,--so they looked to my woman's perception;
the--vast South American forests; the glittering icebergs about the
poles; the snowy mountain ranges, here and there a summit sending up fire
and smoke; mighty rivers, dividing provinces within sight of each other,
and making neighbors of realms thousands of miles apart; cities;
light-houses to insure the safety of sea-going vessels, and war-ships to
knock them to pieces and sink them. All this, and infinitely more,
showed itself to me during a single revolution of the sphere: twenty-four
hours it would have been, if reckoned by earthly measurements of time. I
have not spoken of the sounds I heard while the earth was revolving under
us. The howl of storms, the roar and clash of waves, the crack and crash
of the falling thunderbolt,--these of course made themselves heard as
they do to mortal ears. But there were other sounds which enchained my
attention more than these voices of nature. As the skilled leader of an
orchestra hears every single sound from each member of the mob of
stringed and wind instruments, and above all the screech of the straining
soprano, so my sharpened perceptions made what would have been for common
mortals a confused murmur audible to me as compounded of innumerable
easily distinguished sounds. Above them all arose one continued,
unbroken, agonizing cry. It was the voice of suffering womanhood, a
sound that goes up day and night, one long chorus of tortured victims.
"Let us get out of reach of this," I said; and we left our planet, with
its blank, desolate moon staring at it, as if it had turned pale at the
sights and sounds it had to witness.
Presently the gilded dome of the State House, which marked our
starting-point, came into view for the second time, and I knew that this
side-show was over. I bade farewell to the Common with its Cogswell
fountain, and the Garden with its last awe-inspiring monument.
"Oh, if I could sometimes revisit these beloved scenes!" I exclaimed.
"There is nothing to hinder that I know of," said my companion. "Memory
and imagination as you know them in the flesh are two winged creatures
with strings tied to their legs, and anchored to a bodily weight of a
hundred and fifty pounds, more or less. When the string is cut you can
be where you wish to be,--not merely a part of you, leaving the rest
behind, but the whole of you. Why shouldn't you want to revisit your old
home sometimes?"
I was astonished at the human way in which my guide conversed with me.
It was always on the basis of my earthly habits, experiences, and
limitations. "Your solar system," she said, "is a very small part of the
universe, but you naturally feel a curiosity about the bodies which
constitute it and about their inhabitants. There is your moon: a bare
and desolate-looking place it is, and well it may be, for it has no
respirable atmosphere, and no occasion for one. The Lunites do not
breathe; they live without waste and without supply. You look as if you
do not understand this. Yet your people have, as you well know, what
they call incandescent lights everywhere. You would have said there can
be no lamp without oil or gas, or other combustible substance, to feed
it; and yet you see a filament which sheds a light like that of noon all
around it, and does not waste at all. So the Lunites live by influx of
divine energy, just as the incandescent lamp glows,--glows, and is not
consumed; receiving its life, if we may call it so, from the central
power, which wears the unpleasant name of 'dynamo.'"
The Lunites appeared to me as pale phosphorescent figures of ill-defined
outline, lost in their own halos, as it were. I could not help thinking
of Shelley's
"maiden
With white fire laden."
But as the Lunites were after all but provincials, as are the tenants of
all the satellites, I did not care to contemplate them for any great
length of time.
I do not remember much about the two planets that came next to our own,
except the beautiful rosy atmosphere of one and the huge bulk of the
other. Presently, we found ourselves within hailing distance of another
celestial body, which I recognized at once, by the rings which girdled
it, as the planet Saturn. A dingy, dull-looking sphere it was in its
appearance. "We will tie up here for a while," said my attendant. The
easy, familiar way in which she spoke surprised and pleased me.
Why, said I,--The Dictator,--what is there to prevent beings of another
order from being as cheerful, as social, as good companions, as the very
liveliest of God's creatures whom we have known in the flesh? Is it
impossible for an archangel to smile? Is such a phenomenon as a laugh
never heard except in our little sinful corner of the universe? Do you
suppose, that when the disciples heard from the lips of their Master the
play of words on the name of Peter, there was no smile of appreciation on
the bearded faces of those holy men? From any other lips we should have
called this pleasantry a--
Number Five shook her head very slightly, and gave me a look that seemed
to say, "Don't frighten the other Teacups. We don't call things by the
names that belong to them when we deal with celestial subjects."
We tied up, as my attendant playfully called our resting, so near the
planet that I could know--I will not say see and hear, but apprehend--all
that was going on in that remote sphere; remote, as we who live in what
we have been used to consider the centre of the rational universe regard
it. What struck me at once was the deadness of everything I looked upon.
Dead, uniform color of surface and surrounding atmosphere. Dead
complexion of all the inhabitants. Dead-looking trees, dead-looking
grass, no flowers to be seen anywhere.
"What is the meaning of all this?" I said to my guide.
She smiled good-naturedly, and replied, "It is a forlorn home for
anything above a lichen or a toadstool; but that is no wonder, when you
know what the air is which they breathe. It is pure nitrogen."
The Professor spoke up. "That can't be, madam," he said. "The
spectroscope shows the atmosphere of Saturn to be--no matter, I have
forgotten what; but it was not pure nitrogen, at any rate."
Number Five is never disconcerted. "Will you tell me," she said, "where
you have found any account of the bands and lines in the spectrum of
dream-nitrogen? I should be so pleased to become acquainted with them."
The Professor winced a little, and asked Delilah, the handmaiden, to pass
a plate of muffins to him. The dream had carried him away, and he
thought for the moment that he was listening to a scientific paper.
Of course, my companion went on to say, the bodily constitution of the
Saturnians is wholly different from that of air-breathing, that is
oxygen-breathing, human beings. They are the dullest, slowest, most
torpid of mortal creatures.
All this is not to be wondered at when you remember the inert
characteristics of nitrogen. There are in some localities natural
springs which give out slender streams of oxygen. You will learn by and
by what use the Saturnians make of this dangerous gas, which, as you
recollect, constitutes about one fifth of your own atmosphere. Saturn has
large lead mines, but no other metal is found on this planet. The
inhabitants have nothing else to make tools of, except stones and shells.
The mechanical arts have therefore made no great progress among them.
Chopping down a tree with a leaden axe is necessarily a slow process.
So far as the Saturnians can be said to have any pride in anything, it is
in the absolute level which characterizes their political and social
order. They profess to be the only true republicans in the solar system.
The fundamental articles of their Constitution are these:
All Saturnians are born equal, live equal, and die equal.
All Saturnians are born free,--free, that is, to obey the rules laid down
for the regulation of their conduct, pursuits, and opinions, free to be
married to the person selected for them by the physiological section of
the government, and free to die at such proper period of life as may best
suit the convenience and general welfare of the community.
The one great industrial product of Saturn is the bread-root. The
Saturnians find this wholesome and palatable enough; and it is well they
do, as they have no other vegetable. It is what I should call a most
uninteresting kind of eatable, but it serves as food and drink, having
juice enough, so that they get along without water. They have a tough,
dry grass, which, matted together, furnishes them with clothes
sufficiently warm for their cold-blooded constitutions, and more than
sufficiently ugly.
A piece of ground large enough to furnish bread-root for ten persons is
allotted to each head of a household, allowance being made for the
possible increase of families. This, however, is not a very important
consideration, as the Saturnians are not a prolific race. The great
object of life being the product of the largest possible quantity of
bread-roots, and women not being so capable in the fields as the stronger
sex, females are considered an undesirable addition to society. The one
thing the Saturnians dread and abhor is inequality. The whole object of
their laws and customs is to maintain the strictest equality in
everything,--social relations, property, so far as they can be said to
have anything which can be so called, mode of living, dress, and all
other matters. It is their boast that nobody ever starved under their
government. Nobody goes in rags, for the coarse-fibred grass from which
they fabricate their clothes is very durable. (I confess I wondered how
a woman could live in Saturn. They have no looking-glasses. There is no
such article as a ribbon known among them. All their clothes are of one
pattern. I noticed that there were no pockets in any of their garments,
and learned that a pocket would be considered prima facie evidence of
theft, as no honest person would have use for such a secret receptacle.)
Before the revolution which established the great law of absolute and
lifelong equality, the inhabitants used to feed at their own private
tables. Since the regeneration of society all meals are taken in common.
The last relic of barbarism was the use of plates,--one or even more to
each individual. This "odious relic of an effete civilization," as they
called it, has long been superseded by oblong hollow receptacles, one of
which is allotted to each twelve persons. A great riot took place when
an attempt was made by some fastidious and exclusive egotists to
introduce partitions which should partially divide one portion of these
receptacles into individual compartments. The Saturnians boast that they
have no paupers, no thieves, none of those fictitious values called
money,--all which things, they hear, are known in that small Saturn
nearer the sun than the great planet which is their dwelling-place.
"I suppose that now they have levelled everything they are quiet and
contented. Have they any of those uneasy people called reformers?"
"Indeed they have," said my attendant. "There are the Orthobrachians,
who declaim against the shameful abuse of the left arm and hand, and
insist on restoring their perfect equality with the right. Then there
are Isopodic societies, which insist on bringing back the original
equality of the upper and lower limbs. If you can believe it, they
actually practise going on all fours,--generally in a private way, a few
of them together, but hoping to bring the world round to them in the near
future."
Here I had to stop and laugh.
"I should think life might be a little dull in Saturn," I said.
"It is liable to that accusation," she answered. "Do you notice how many
people you meet with their mouths stretched wide open?"
"Yes," I said, "and I do not know what to make of it. I should think
every fourth or fifth person had his mouth open in that way."
"They are suffering from the endemic disease of their planet, prolonged
and inveterate gaping or yawning, which has ended in dislocation of the
lower jaw. After a time this becomes fixed, and requires a difficult
surgical operation to restore it to its place."
It struck me that, in spite of their boast that they have no paupers, no
thieves, no money, they were a melancholy-looking set of beings.
"What are their amusements?" I asked.
"Intoxication and suicide are their chief recreations. They have a way
of mixing the oxygen which issues in small jets from certain natural
springs with their atmospheric nitrogen in the proportion of about twenty
per cent, which makes very nearly the same thing as the air of your
planet. But to the Saturnians the mixture is highly intoxicating, and is
therefore a relief to the monotony of their every-day life. This mixture
is greatly sought after, but hard to obtain, as the sources of oxygen are
few and scanty. It shortens the lives of those who have recourse to it;
but if it takes too long, they have other ways of escaping from a life
which cuts and dries everything for its miserable subjects, defeats all
the natural instincts, confounds all individual characteristics, and
makes existence such a colossal bore, as your worldly people say, that
self-destruction becomes a luxury."
Number Five stopped here.
Your imaginary wholesale Shakerdom is all very fine, said I. Your
Utopia, your New Atlantis, and the rest are pretty to look at. But your
philosophers are treating the world of living souls as if they were, each
of them, playing a game of solitaire,--all the pegs and all the holes
alike. Life is a very different sort of game. It is a game of chess,
and not of solitaire, nor even of checkers. The men are not all pawns,
but you have your knights, bishops, rooks,--yes, your king and queen,--to
be provided for. Not with these names, of course, but all looking for
their proper places, and having their own laws and modes of action. You
can play solitaire with the members of your own family for pegs, if you
like, and if none of them rebel. You can play checkers with a little
community of meek, like-minded people. But when it comes to the handling
of a great state, you will find that nature has emptied a box of chessmen
before you, and you must play with them so as to give each its proper
move, or sweep them off the board, and come back to the homely game such
as I used to see played with beans and kernels of corn on squares marked
upon the back of the kitchen bellows.
It was curious to see how differently Number Five's narrative was
received by the different listeners in our circle. Number Five herself
said she supposed she ought to be ashamed of its absurdities, but she did
not know that it was much sillier than dreams often are, and she thought
it might amuse the company. She was herself always interested by these
ideal pictures of society. But it seemed to her that life must be dull
in any of them, and with that idea in her head her dreaming fancy had
drawn these pictures.
The Professor was interested in her conception of the existence of the
Lunites without waste, and the death in life of the nitrogen-breathing
Saturnians. Dream-chemistry was a new subject to him. Perhaps Number
Five would give him some lessons in it.
At this she smiled, and said she was afraid she could not teach him
anything, but if he would answer a few questions in matter-of-fact
chemistry which had puzzled her she would be vastly obliged to him.
"You must come to my laboratory," said the Professor.
"I will come to-morrow," said Number Five.
Oh, yes! Much laboratory work they will do! Play of mutual affinities.
Amalgamates. No freezing mixtures, I'll warrant!
Why shouldn't we get a romance out of all this, hey?
But Number Five looks as innocent as a lamb, and as brave as a lion. She
does not care a copper for the looks that are going round The Teacups.
Our Doctor was curious about those cases of anchylosis, as he called it,
of the lower jaw. He thought it a quite possible occurrence. Both the
young girls thought the dream gave a very hard view of the optimists, who
look forward to a reorganization of society which shall rid mankind of
the terrible evils of over-crowding and competition.
Number Seven was quite excited about the matter. He had himself drawn up
a plan for a new social arrangement. He had shown it to the legal
gentleman who has lately joined us. This gentleman thought it
well-intended, but that it would take one constable to every three
inhabitants to enforce its provisions.
I said the dream could do no harm; it was too outrageously improbable to
come home to anybody's feelings. Dreams were like broken mosaics,--the
separated stones might here and there make parts of pictures. If one
found a caricature of himself made out of the pieces which had
accidentally come together, he would smile at it, knowing that it was an
accidental effect with no malice in it. If any of you really believe in
a working Utopia, why not join the Shakers, and convert the world to this
mode of life? Celibacy alone would cure a great many of the evils you
complain of.
I thought this suggestion seemed to act rather unfavorably upon the
ladies of our circle. The two Annexes looked inquiringly at each other.
Number Five looked smilingly at them. She evidently thought it was time
to change the subject of conversation, for she turned to me and said,
"You promised to read us the poem you read before your old classmates the
other evening."
I will fulfill my promise, I said. We felt that this might probably be
our last meeting as a Class. The personal reference is to our greatly
beloved and honored classmate, James Freeman Clarke.
AFTER THE CURFEW.
The Play is over. While the light
Yet lingers in the darkening hall,
I come to say a last Good-night
Before the final Exeunt all.
We gathered once, a joyous throng:
The jovial toasts went gayly round;
With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song
we made the floors and walls resound.
We come with feeble steps and slow,
A little band of four or five,
Left from the wrecks of long ago,
Still pleased to find ourselves alive.
Alive! How living, too, are they
whose memories it is ours to share!
Spread the long table's full array,
There sits a ghost in every chair!
One breathing form no more, alas!
Amid our slender group we see;
With him we still remained "The Class,"
without his presence what are we?
The hand we ever loved to clasp,
That tireless hand which knew no rest,
Loosed from affection's clinging grasp,
Lies nerveless on the peaceful breast.
The beaming eye, the cheering voice,
That lent to life a generous glow,
whose every meaning said "Rejoice,"
we see, we hear, no more below.
The air seems darkened by his loss,
Earth's shadowed features look less fair,
And heavier weighs the daily cross
His willing shoulders helped as bear.
Why mourn that we, the favored few
Whom grasping Time so long has spared
Life's sweet illusions to pursue,
The common lot of age have shared?
In every pulse of Friendship's heart
There breeds unfelt a throb of pain,
One hour must rend its links apart,
Though years on years have forged the chain.
So ends "The Boys,"--a lifelong play.
We too must hear the Prompter's call
To fairer scenes and brighter day
Farewell! I let the curtain fall.
IV
If the reader thinks that all these talking Teacups came together by mere
accident, as people meet at a boarding-house, I may as well tell him at
once that he is mistaken. If he thinks I am going to explain how it is
that he finds them thus brought together, whether they form a secret
association, whether they are the editors of this or that periodical,
whether they are connected with some institution, and so on,--I must
disappoint him. It is enough that he finds them in each other's company,
a very mixed assembly, of different sexes, ages, and pursuits; and if
there is a certain mystery surrounds their meetings, he must not be
surprised. Does he suppose we want to be known and talked about in
public as "Teacups"? No; so far as we give to the community some records
of the talks at our table our thoughts become public property, but the
sacred personality of every Teacup must be properly respected. If any
wonder at the presence of one of our number, whose eccentricities might
seem to render him an undesirable associate of the company, he should
remember that some people may have relatives whom they feel bound to keep
their eye on; besides the cracked Teacup brings out the ring of the sound
ones as nothing else does. Remember also that soundest teacup does not
always hold the best tea, or the cracked teacup the worst.
This is a hint to the reader, who is not expected to be too curious about
the individual Teacups constituting our unorganized association.
The Dictator Discourses.
I have been reading Balzac's Peau de Chagrin. You have all read the
story, I hope, for it is the first of his wonderful romances which fixed
the eyes of the reading world upon him, and is a most fascinating if
somewhat fantastic tale. A young man becomes the possessor of a certain
magic skin, the peculiarity of which is that, while it gratifies every
wish formed by its possessor, it shrinks in all its dimensions each time
that a wish is gratified. The young man makes every effort to ascertain
the cause of its shrinking; invokes the aid of the physicist, the
chemist, the student of natural history, but all in vain. He draws a red
line around it. That same day he indulges a longing for a certain
object. The next morning there is a little interval between the red line
and the skin, close to which it was traced. So always, so inevitably.
As he lives on, satisfying one desire, one passion, after another, the
process of shrinking continues. A mortal disease sets in, which keeps
pace with the shrinking skin, and his life and his talisman come to an
end together.
One would say that such a piece of integument was hardly a desirable
possession. And yet, how many of us have at this very moment a peau de
chagrin of our own, diminishing with every costly wish indulged, and
incapable, like the magical one of the story, of being arrested in its
progress.
Need I say that I refer to those coupon bonds, issued in the days of
eight and ten per cent interest, and gradually narrowing as they drop
their semiannual slips of paper, which represent wishes to be realized,
as the roses let fall their leaves in July, as the icicles melt away in
the thaw of January?
How beautiful was the coupon bond, arrayed in its golden raiment of
promises to pay at certain stated intervals, for a goodly number of
coming years! What annual the horticulturist can show will bear
comparison with this product of auricultural industry, which has flowered
in midsummer and midwinter for twenty successive seasons? And now the
last of its blossoms is to be plucked, and the bare stem, stripped of its
ever maturing and always welcome appendages, is reduced to the narrowest
conditions of reproductive existence. Such is the fate of the financial
peau de chagrin. Pity the poor fractional capitalist, who has just
managed to live on the eight per cent of his coupon bonds. The shears of
Atropos were not more fatal to human life than the long scissors which
cut the last coupon to the lean proprietor, whose slice of dry toast it
served to flatter with oleomargarine. Do you wonder that my thoughts
took the poetical form, in the contemplation of these changes and their
melancholy consequences? If the entire poem, of several hundred lines,
was "declined with thanks" by an unfeeling editor, that is no reason why
you should not hear a verse or two of it.
THE PEAU DE CHAGRIN OF STATE STREET.
How beauteous is the bond
In the manifold array
Of its promises to pay,
While the eight per cent it gives
And the rate at which one lives
Correspond!
But at last the bough is bare
Where the coupons one by one
Through their ripening days have run,
And the bond, a beggar now,
Seeks investment anyhow,
Anywhere!
The Mistress commonly contents herself with the general supervision of
the company, only now and then taking an active part in the conversation.
She started a question the other evening which set some of us thinking.
"Why is it," she said, "that there is so common and so intense a desire
for poetical reputation? It seems to me that, if I were a man, I had
rather have done something worth telling of than make verses about what
other people had done."
"You agree with Alexander the Great," said the Professor. "You would
prefer the fame of Achilles to that of Homer, who told the story of his
wrath and its direful consequences. I am afraid that I should hardly
agree with you. Achilles was little better than a Choctaw brave. I
won't quote Horace's line which characterizes him so admirably, for I
will take it for granted that you all know it. He was a gentleman,--so
is a first-class Indian,--a very noble gentleman in point of courage,
lofty bearing, courtesy, but an unsoaped, ill-clad, turbulent,
high-tempered young fellow, looked up to by his crowd very much as the
champion of the heavy weights is looked up to by his gang of blackguards.
Alexander himself was not much better,--a foolish, fiery young madcap.
How often is he mentioned except as a warning? His best record is that
he served to point a moral as 'Macedonian's madman.' He made a figure,
it is true, in Dryden's great Ode, but what kind of a figure? He got
drunk,--in very bad company, too,--and then turned fire-bug. He had one
redeeming point,--he did value his Homer, and slept with the Iliad under
his pillow. A poet like Homer seems to me worth a dozen such fellows as
Achilles and Alexander."
"Homer is all very well far those that can read him," said Number Seven,
"but the fellows that tag verses together nowadays are mostly fools.
That's my opinion. I wrote some verses once myself, but I had been sick
and was very weak; hadn't strength enough to write in prose, I suppose."
This aggressive remark caused a little stir at our tea-table. For you
must know, if I have not told you already, there are suspicions that we
have more than one "poet" at our table. I have already confessed that I
do myself indulge in verse now and then, and have given my readers a
specimen of my work in that line. But there is so much difference of
character in the verses which are produced at our table, without any
signature, that I feel quite sure there are at least two or three other
contributors besides myself. There is a tall, old-fashioned silver urn,
a sugar-bowl of the period of the Empire, in which the poems sent to be
read are placed by unseen hands. When the proper moment arrives, I lift
the cover of the urn and take out any manuscript it may contain. If
conversation is going on and the company are in a talking mood, I replace
the manuscript or manuscripts, clap on the cover, and wait until there is
a moment's quiet before taking it off again. I might guess the writers
sometimes by the handwriting, but there is more trouble taken to disguise
the chirography than I choose to take to identify it as that of any
particular member of our company.
The turn the conversation took, especially the slashing onslaught of
Number Seven on the writers of verse, set me thinking and talking about
the matter. Number Five turned on the stream of my discourse by a
question.
"You receive a good many volumes of verse, do you not?" she said, with a
look which implied that she knew I did.
I certainly do, I answered. My table aches with them. My shelves groan
with them. Think of what a fuss Pope made about his trials, when he
complained that
"All Bedlam or Parnassus is let out"!
What were the numbers of the
"Mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease"
to that great multitude of contributors to our magazines, and authors of
little volumes--sometimes, alas! big ones--of verse, which pour out of
the press, not weekly, but daily, and at such a rate of increase that it
seems as if before long every hour would bring a book, or at least an
article which is to grow into a book by and by?
I thanked Heaven, the other day, that I was not a critic. These
attenuated volumes of poetry in fancy bindings open their covers at one
like so many little unfledged birds, and one does so long to drop a worm
in,--a worm in the shape of a kind word for the poor fledgling! But what
a desperate business it is to deal with this army of candidates for
immortality! I have often had something to say about them, and I may be
saying over the same things; but if I do not remember what I have said,
it is not very likely that my reader will; if he does, he will find, I am
very sure, that I say it a little differently.
What astonishes me is that this enormous mass of commonplace verse, which
burdens the postman who brings it, which it is a serious task only to get
out of its wrappers and open in two or three places, is on the whole of
so good an average quality. The dead level of mediocrity is in these
days a table-land, a good deal above the old sea-level of laboring
incapacity. Sixty years ago verses made a local reputation, which
verses, if offered today to any of our first-class magazines, would go
straight into the waste-basket. To write "poetry" was an art and mystery
in which only a few noted men and a woman or two were experts.
When "Potter the ventriloquist," the predecessor of the well-remembered
Signor Blitz, went round giving his entertainments, there was something
unexplained, uncanny, almost awful, and beyond dispute marvellous, in his
performances. Those watches that disappeared and came back to their
owners, those endless supplies of treasures from empty hats, and
especially those crawling eggs that travelled all over the magician's
person, sent many a child home thinking that Mr. Potter must have ghostly
assistants, and raised grave doubts in the minds of "professors," that is
members of the church, whether they had not compromised their characters
by being seen at such an unhallowed exhibition. Nowadays, a clever boy
who has made a study of parlor magic can do many of those tricks almost
as well as the great sorcerer himself. How simple it all seems when we
have seen the mechanism of the deception!
It is just so with writing in verse. It was not understood that
everybody can learn to make poetry, just as they can learn the more
difficult tricks of juggling. M. Jourdain's discovery that he had been
speaking and writing prose all his life is nothing to that of the man who
finds out in middle life, or even later, that he might have been writing
poetry all his days, if he had only known how perfectly easy and simple
it is. Not everybody, it is true, has a sufficiently good ear, a
sufficient knowledge of rhymes and capacity for handling them, to be what
is called a poet. I doubt whether more than nine out of ten, in the
average, have that combination of gifts required for the writing of
readable verse.
This last expression of opinion created a sensation among The Teacups.
They looked puzzled for a minute. One whispered to the next Teacup,
"More than nine out of ten! I should think that was a pretty liberal
allowance."
Yes, I continued; perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred would come nearer to
the mark. I have sometimes thought I might consider it worth while to
set up a school for instruction in the art. "Poetry taught in twelve
lessons." Congenital idiocy is no disqualification. Anybody can write
"poetry." It is a most unenviable distinction to leave published a thin
volume of verse, which nobody wanted, nobody buys, nobody reads, nobody
cares for except the author, who cries over its pathos, poor fellow, and
revels in its beauties, which he has all to himself. Come! who will be
my pupils in a Course,--Poetry taught in twelve lessons? That made a
laugh, in which most of The Teacups, myself included, joined heartily.
Through it all I heard the sweet tones of Number Five's caressing voice;
not because it was more penetrating or louder than the others, for it was
low and soft, but it was so different from the others, there was so much
more life,--the life of sweet womanhood,--dissolved in it.
(Of course he will fall in love with her. "He? Who?" Why, the
newcomer, the Counsellor. Did I not see his eyes turn toward her as the
silvery notes rippled from her throat? Did they not follow her in her
movements, as she turned her tread this or that way?
--What nonsense for me to be arranging matters between two people
strangers to each other before to-day!)
"A fellow writes in verse when he has nothing to say, and feels too dull
and silly to say it in prose," said Number Seven.
This made us laugh again, good-naturedly. I was pleased with a kind of
truth which it seemed to me to wrap up in its rather startling
affirmation. I gave a piece of advice the other day which I said I
thought deserved a paragraph to itself. It was from a letter I wrote not
long ago to an unknown young correspondent, who had a longing for seeing
himself in verse but was not hopelessly infatuated with the idea that he
was born a "poet." "When you write in prose," I said, "you say what you
mean. When you write in verse you say what you must." I was thinking
more especially of rhymed verse. Rhythm alone is a tether, and not a
very long one. But rhymes are iron fetters; it is dragging a chain and
ball to march under their incumbrance; it is a clog-dance you are
figuring in, when you execute your metrical pas seul. Consider under
what a disadvantage your thinking powers are laboring when you are
handicapped by the inexorable demands of our scanty English rhyming
vocabulary! You want to say something about the heavenly bodies, and you
have a beautiful line ending with the word stars. Were you writing in
prose, your imagination, your fancy, your rhetoric, your musical ear for
the harmonies of language, would all have full play. But there is your
rhyme fastening you by the leg, and you must either reject the line which
pleases you, or you must whip your hobbling fancy and all your limping
thoughts into the traces which are hitched to one of three or four or
half a dozen serviceable words. You cannot make any use of cars, I will
suppose; you have no occasion to talk about scars; "the red planet Mars"
has been used already; Dibdin has said enough about the gallant tars;
what is there left for you but bars? So you give up your trains of
thought, capitulate to necessity, and manage to lug in some kind of
allusion, in place or out of place, which will allow you to make use of
bars. Can there be imagined a more certain process for breaking up all
continuity of thought, for taking out all the vigor, all the virility,
which belongs to natural prose as the vehicle of strong, graceful,
spontaneous thought, than this miserable subjugation of intellect to
the-clink of well or ill matched syllables? I think you will smile if I
tell you of an idea I have had about teaching the art of writing "poems"
to the half-witted children at the Idiot Asylum. The trick of rhyming
cannot be more usefully employed than in furnishing a pleasant amusement
to the poor feeble-minded children. I should feel that I was well
employed in getting up a Primer for the pupils of the Asylum, and other
young persons who are incapable of serious thought and connected
expression. I would start in the simplest way; thus:--
When darkness veils the evening....
I love to close my weary....
The pupil begins by supplying the missing words, which most children who
are able to keep out of fire and water can accomplish after a certain
number of trials. When the poet that is to be has got so as to perform
this task easily, a skeleton verse, in which two or three words of each
line are omitted, is given the child to fill up. By and by the more
difficult forms of metre are outlined, until at length a feebleminded
child can make out a sonnet, completely equipped with its four pairs of
rhymes in the first section and its three pairs in the second part.
Number Seven interrupted my discourse somewhat abruptly, as is his wont;
for we grant him a license, in virtue of his eccentricity, which we
should hardly expect to be claimed by a perfectly sound Teacup.
"That's the way,--that 's the way!" exclaimed he. "It's just the same
thing as my plan for teaching drawing."
Some curiosity was shown among The Teacups to know what the queer
creature had got into his mind, and Number Five asked him, in her
irresistible tones, if he wouldn't oblige us by telling us all about it.
He looked at her a moment without speaking. I suppose he has often been
made fun of,--slighted in conversation, taken as a butt for people who
thought themselves witty, made to feel as we may suppose a cracked piece
of china-ware feels when it is clinked in the company of sound bits of
porcelain. I never saw him when he was carelessly dealt with in
conversation,--for it would sometimes happen, even at our table,--without
recalling some lines of Emerson which always struck me as of wonderful
force and almost terrible truthfulness:--
"Alas! that one is born in blight,
Victim of perpetual slight
When thou lookest in his face
Thy heart saith, 'Brother, go thy ways
None shall ask thee what thou doest,
Or care a rush for what thou knowest,
Or listen when thou repliest,
Or remember where thou liest,
Or how thy supper is sodden;'
And another is born
To make the sun forgotten."
Poor fellow! Number Seven has to bear a good deal in the way of neglect
and ridicule, I do not doubt. Happily, he is protected by an amount of
belief in himself which shields him from many assailants who would
torture a more sensitive nature. But the sweet voice of Number Five and
her sincere way of addressing him seemed to touch his feelings. That was
the meaning of his momentary silence, in which I saw that his eyes
glistened and a faint flush rose on his cheeks. In a moment, however, as
soon as he was on his hobby, he was all right, and explained his new and
ingenious system as follows:
"A man at a certain distance appears as a dark spot,--nothing more. Good.
Anybody, man, woman, or child, can make a dot, say a period, such as we
use in writing. Lesson No. 1. Make a dot; that is, draw your man, a
mile off, if that is far enough. Now make him come a little nearer, a
few rods, say. The dot is an oblong figure now. Good. Let your scholar
draw the oblong figure. It is as easy as it is to make a note of
admiration. Your man comes nearer, and now some hint of a bulbous
enlargement at one end, and perhaps of lateral appendages and a
bifurcation, begins to show itself. The pupil sets down with his pencil
just what he sees,--no more. So by degrees the man who serves as model
approaches. A bright pupil will learn to get the outline of a human
figure in ten lessons, the model coming five hundred feet nearer each
time. A dull one may require fifty, the model beginning a mile off, or
more, and coming a hundred feet nearer at each move."
The company were amused by all this, but could not help seeing that there
was a certain practical possibility about the scheme. Our two Annexes,
as we call then, appeared to be interested in the project, or fancy, or
whim, or whatever the older heads might consider it. "I guess I'll try
it," said the American Annex. "Quite so," answered the English Annex.
Why the first girl "guessed" about her own intentions it is hard to say.
What "quite so" referred to it would not be easy to determine. But these
two expressions would decide the nationality of our two young ladies if
we met them on the top of the great Pyramid.
I was very glad that Number Seven had interrupted me. In fact, it is a
good thing once in a while to break in upon the monotony of a steady
talker at a dinner-table, tea-table, or any other place of social
converse. The best talker is liable to become the most formidable of
bores. It is a peculiarity of the bore that he is the last person to
find himself out. Many a terebrant I have known who, in that capacity,
to borrow a line from Coleridge,
"Was great, nor knew how great he was."
A line, by the way, which, as I have remarked, has in it a germ like that
famous "He builded better than he knew" of Emerson.
There was a slight lull in the conversation. The Mistress, who keeps an
eye on the course of things, and feared that one of those panic silences
was impending, in which everybody wants to say something and does not
know just what to say, begged me to go on with my remarks about the
"manufacture" of "poetry."
You use the right term, madam, I said. The manufacture of that article
has become an extensive and therefore an important branch of industry.
One must be an editor, which I am not, or a literary confidant of a wide
circle of correspondents, which I am, to have any idea of the enormous
output of verse which is characteristic of our time. There are many
curious facts connected with this phenomenon. Educated people--yes, and
many who are not educated--have discovered that rhymes are not the
private property of a few noted writers who, having squatted on that part
of the literary domain some twenty or forty or sixty years ago, have, as
it were, fenced it in with their touchy, barbed-wire reputations, and
have come to regard it and cause it to be regarded as their private
property. The discovery having been made that rhyme is not a paddock for
this or that race-horse, but a common, where every colt, pony, and donkey
can range at will; a vast irruption into that once-privileged inclosure
has taken place. The study of the great invasion is interesting.
Poetry is commonly thought to be the language of emotion. On the
contrary, most of what is so called proves the absence of all passionate
excitement. It is a cold-blooded, haggard, anxious, worrying hunt after
rhymes which can be made serviceable, after images which will be
effective, after phrases which are sonorous; all this under limitations
which restrict the natural movements of fancy and imagination. There is
a secondary excitement in overcoming the difficulties of rhythm and
rhyme, no doubt, but this is not the emotional heat excited by the
subject of the "poet's" treatment. True poetry, the best of it, is but
the ashes of a burnt-out passion. The flame was in the eye and in the
cheek, the coals may be still burning in the heart, but when we come to
the words it leaves behind it, a little warmth, a cinder or two just
glimmering under the dead gray ashes,--that is all we can look for. When
it comes to the manufactured article, one is surprised to find how well
the metrical artisans have learned to imitate the real thing. They catch
all the phrases of the true poet. They imitate his metrical forms as a
mimic copies the gait of the person he is representing.
Now I am not going to abuse "these same metre ballad-mongers," for the
obvious reason that, as all The Teacups know, I myself belong to the
fraternity. I don't think that this reason should hinder my having my
say about the ballad-mongering business. For the last thirty years I
have been in the habit of receiving a volume of poems or a poem, printed
or manuscript--I will not say daily, though I sometimes receive more than
one in a day, but at very short intervals. I have been consulted by
hundreds of writers of verse as to the merit of their performances, and
have often advised the writers to the best of my ability. Of late I have
found it impossible to attempt to read critically all the literary
productions, in verse and in prose, which have heaped themselves on every
exposed surface of my library, like snowdrifts along the railroad
tracks,--blocking my literary pathway, so that I can hardly find my daily
papers.
What is the meaning of this rush into rhyming of such a multitude of
people, of all ages, from the infant phenomenon to the oldest inhabitant?
Many of my young correspondents have told me in so many words, "I want to
be famous." Now it is true that of all the short cuts to fame, in time
of peace, there is none shorter than the road paved with rhymes. Byron
woke up one morning and found himself famous. Still more notably did
Rouget de l'Isle fill the air of France, nay, the whole atmosphere of
freedom all the world over, with his name wafted on the wings of the
Marseillaise, the work of a single night. But if by fame the aspirant
means having his name brought before and kept before the public, there is
a much cheaper way of acquiring that kind of notoriety. Have your
portrait taken as a "Wonderful Cure of a Desperate Disease given up by
all the Doctors." You will get a fair likeness of yourself and a partial
biographical notice, and have the satisfaction, if not of promoting the
welfare of the community, at least that of advancing the financial
interests of the benefactor whose enterprise has given you your coveted
notoriety. If a man wants to be famous, he had much better try the
advertising doctor than the terrible editor, whose waste-basket is a maw
which is as insatiable as the temporary stomach of Jack the Giant-killer.
"You must not talk so," said Number Five. "I know you don't mean any
wrong to the true poets, but you might be thought to hold them cheap,
whereas you value the gift in others,--in yourself too, I rather think.
There are a great many women,--and some men,--who write in verse from a
natural instinct which leads them to that form of expression. If you
could peep into the portfolio of all the cultivated women among your
acquaintances, you would be surprised, I believe, to see how many of them
trust their thoughts and feelings to verse which they never think of
publishing, and much of which never meets any eyes but their own. Don't
be cruel to the sensitive natures who find a music in the harmonies of
rhythm and rhyme which soothes their own souls, if it reaches no
farther."
I was glad that Number Five spoke up as she did. Her generous instinct
came to the rescue of the poor poets just at the right moment. Not that
I meant to deal roughly with them, but the "poets" I have been forced
into relation with have impressed me with certain convictions which are
not flattering to the fraternity, and if my judgments are not accompanied
by my own qualifications, distinctions, and exceptions, they may seem
harsh to many readers.
Let me draw a picture which many a young man and woman, and some no
longer young, will recognize as the story of their own experiences.
--He is sitting alone with his own thoughts and memories. What is that
book he is holding? Something precious, evidently, for it is bound in
"tree calf," and there is gilding enough about it for a birthday present.
The reader seems to be deeply absorbed in its contents, and at times
greatly excited by what he reads; for his face is flushed, his eyes
glitter, and--there rolls a large tear down his cheek. Listen to him; he
is reading aloud in impassioned tones:
And have I coined my soul in words for naught?
And must I, with the dim, forgotten throng
Of silent ghosts that left no earthly trace
To show they once had breathed this vital air,
Die out, of mortal memories?
His voice is choked by his emotion. "How is it possible," he says to
himself, "that any one can read my 'Gaspings for Immortality' without
being impressed by their freshness, their passion, their beauty, their
originality?" Tears come to his relief freely,--so freely that he has
to push the precious volume out of the range of their blistering shower.
Six years ago "Gaspings for Immortality" was published, advertised,
praised by the professionals whose business it is to boost their
publishers' authors. A week and more it was seen on the counters of the
booksellers and at the stalls in the railroad stations. Then it
disappeared from public view. A few copies still kept their place on the
shelves of friends,--presentation copies, of course, as there is no
evidence that any were disposed of by sale; and now, one might as well
ask for the lost books of Livy as inquire at a bookstore for "Gaspings
for Immortality."
The authors of these poems are all round us, men and women, and no one
with a fair amount of human sympathy in his disposition would treat them
otherwise than tenderly. Perhaps they do not need tender treatment. How
do you know that posterity may not resuscitate these seemingly dead
poems, and give their author the immortality for which he longed and
labored? It is not every poet who is at once appreciated. Some will
tell you that the best poets never are. Who can say that you, dear
unappreciated brother or sister, are not one of those whom it is left for
after times to discover among the wrecks of the past, and hold up to the
admiration of the world?
I have not thought it necessary to put in all the interpellations, as the
French call them, which broke the course of this somewhat extended series
of remarks; but the comments of some of The Teacups helped me to shape
certain additional observations, and may seem to the reader as of more
significance than what I had been saying.
Number Seven saw nothing but the folly and weakness of the "rhyming
cranks," as he called them. He thought the fellow that I had described
as blubbering over his still-born poems would have been better occupied
in earning his living in some honest way or other. He knew one chap that
published a volume of verses, and let his wife bring up the wood for the
fire by which he was writing. A fellow says, "I am a poet!" and he
thinks himself different from common folks. He ought to be excused from
military service. He might be killed, and the world would lose the
inestimable products of his genius. "I believe some of 'em think," said
Number Seven, "that they ought not to be called upon to pay their taxes
and their bills for household expenses, like the rest of us."
"If they would only study and take to heart Horace's 'Ars Poetica,'" said
the Professor, "it would be a great benefit to them and to the world at
large. I would not advise you to follow him too literally, of course,
for, as you will see, the changes that have taken place since his time
would make some of his precepts useless and some dangerous, but the
spirit of them is always instructive. This is the way, somewhat
modernized and accompanied by my running commentary, in which he counsels
a young poet:
"'Don't try to write poetry, my boy, when you are not in the mood for
doing it,--when it goes against the grain. You are a fellow of
sense,--you understand all that.
"'If you have written anything which you think well of, show it to
Mr.______ , the well-known critic; to "the governor," as you call
him,--your honored father; and to me, your friend.'
"To the critic is well enough, if you like to be overhauled and put out
of conceit with yourself,--it may do you good; but I wouldn't go to 'the
governor' with my verses, if I were you. For either he will think what
you have written is something wonderful, almost as good as he could have
written himself,--in fact, he always did believe in hereditary
genius,--or he will pooh-pooh the whole rhyming nonsense, and tell you
that you had a great deal better stick to your business, and leave all
the word-jingling to Mother Goose and her followers.
"'Show me your verses,' says Horace. Very good it was in him, and mighty
encouraging the first counsel he gives! 'Keep your poem to yourself for
some eight or ten years; you will have time to look it over, to correct
it and make it fit to present to the public.'
"'Much obliged for your advice,' says the poor poet, thirsting for a
draught of fame, and offered a handful of dust. And off he hurries to
the printer, to be sure that his poem comes out in the next number of the
magazine he writes for."
"Is not poetry the natural language of lovers?"
It was the Tutor who asked this question, and I thought he looked in the
direction of Number Five, as if she might answer his question. But Number
Five stirred her tea devotedly; there was a lump of sugar, I suppose,
that acted like a piece of marble. So there was a silence while the lump
was slowly dissolving, and it was anybody's chance who saw fit to take up
the conversation.
The voice that broke the silence was not the sweet, winsome one we were
listening for, but it instantly arrested the attention of the company.
It was the grave, manly voice of one used to speaking, and accustomed to
be listened to with deference. This was the first time that the company
as a whole had heard it, for the speaker was the new-comer who has been
repeatedly alluded to,--the one of whom I spoke as "the Counsellor."
"I think I can tell you something about that," said the Counsellor. "I
suppose you will wonder how a man of my profession can know or interest
himself about a question so remote from his arid pursuits. And yet there
is hardly one man in a thousand who knows from actual experience a
fraction of what I have learned of the lovers' vocabulary in my
professional experience. I have, I am sorry to say, had to take an
important part in a great number of divorce cases. These have brought
before me scores and hundreds of letters, in which every shade of the
great passion has been represented. What has most struck me in these
amatory correspondences has been their remarkable sameness. It seems as
if writing love-letters reduced all sorts of people to the same level. I
don't remember whether Lord Bacon has left us anything in that
line,--unless, indeed, he wrote Romeo and Juliet' and the 'Sonnets;' but
if he has, I don't believe they differ so very much from those of his
valet or his groom to their respective lady-loves. It is always, My
darling! my darling! The words of endearment are the only ones the lover
wants to employ, and he finds the vocabulary too limited for his vast
desires. So his letters are apt to be rather tedious except to the
personage to whom they are addressed. As to poetry, it is very common to
find it in love-letters, especially in those that have no love in them.
The letters of bigamists and polygamists are rich in poetical extracts.
Occasionally, an original spurt in rhyme adds variety to an otherwise
monotonous performance. I don't think there is much passion in men's
poetry addressed to women. I agree with The Dictator that poetry is
little more than the ashes of passion; still it may show that the flame
has had its sweep where you find it, unless, indeed, it is shoveled in
from another man's fireplace."
"What do you say to the love poetry of women?" asked the Professor. "Did
ever passion heat words to incandescence as it did those of Sappho?"
The Counsellor turned,--not to Number Five, as he ought to have done,
according to my programme, but to the Mistress.
"Madam," he said, "your sex is adorable in many ways, but in the abandon
of a genuine love-letter it is incomparable. I have seen a string of
women's love-letters, in which the creature enlaced herself about the
object of her worship as that South American parasite which clasps the
tree to which it has attached itself, begins with a slender succulent
network, feeds on the trunk, spreads its fingers out to hold firmly to
one branch after another, thickens, hardens, stretches in every
direction, following the boughs,--and at length gets strong enough to
hold in its murderous arms, high up in air, the stump and shaft of the
once sturdy growth that was its support and subsistence."
The Counsellor did not say all this quite so formally as I have set it
down here, but in a much easier way. In fact, it is impossible to smooth
out a conversation from memory without stiffening it; you can't have a
dress shirt look quite right without starching the bosom.
Some of us would have liked to hear more about those letters in the
divorce cases, but the Counsellor had to leave the table. He promised to
show us some pictures he has of the South American parasite. I have seen
them, and I can assure you they are very curious.
The following verses were found in the urn, or sugar-bowl.
CACOETHES SCRIBENDI.
If all the trees in all the woods were men,
And each and every blade of grass a pen;
If every leaf on every shrub and tree
Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea
Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes
Had nothing else to do but act as scribes,
And for ten thousand ages, day and night,
The human race should write, and write, and write,
Till all the pens and paper were used up,
And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,
Still would the scribblers clustered round its brim
Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.
V
"Dolce, ma non troppo dolce," said the Professor to the Mistress, who was
sweetening his tea. She always sweetens his and mine for us. He has
been attending a series of concerts, and borrowed the form of the
directions to the orchestra. "Sweet, but not too sweet," he said,
translating the Italian for the benefit of any of the company who might
not be linguists or musical experts.
"Do you go to those musical hullabaloos?" called out Number Seven. There
was something very much like rudeness in this question and the tone in
which it was asked. But we are used to the outbursts, and extravagances,
and oddities of Number Seven, and do not take offence at his rough
speeches as we should if any other of the company uttered them.
"If you mean the concerts that have been going on this season, yes, I
do," said the Professor, in a bland, good-humored way.
"And do you take real pleasure in the din of all those screeching and
banging and growling instruments?"
"Yes," he answered, modestly, "I enjoy the brouhaha, if you choose to
consider it such, of all this quarrelsome menagerie of noise-making
machines, brought into order and harmony by the presiding genius, the
leader, who has made a happy family of these snarling stringed
instruments and whining wind instruments, so that although
"Linguae centum sent, oraque centum,
"notwithstanding there are a hundred vibrating tongues and a hundred
bellowing mouths, their one grand blended and harmonized uproar sets all
my fibres tingling with a not unpleasing tremor."
"Do you understand it? Do you take any idea from it? Do you know what
it all means?" said Number Seven.
The Professor was long-suffering under this series of somewhat peremptory
questions. He replied very placidly, "I am afraid I have but a
superficial outside acquaintance with the secrets, the unfathomable
mysteries, of music. I can no more conceive of the working conditions of
the great composer,
"'Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony,'
"than a child of three years can follow the reasonings of Newton's
'Principia.' I do not even pretend that I can appreciate the work of a
great master as a born and trained musician does. Still, I do love a
great crash of harmonies, and the oftener I listen to these musical
tempests the higher my soul seems to ride upon them, as the wild fowl I
see through my window soar more freely and fearlessly the fiercer the
storm with which they battle."
"That's all very well," said Number Seven, "but I wish we could get the
old-time music back again. You ought to have heard,--no, I won't mention
her, dead, poor girl,--dead and singing with the saints in heaven,--but
the S_____ girls. If you could have heard them as I did when I was a
boy, you would have cried, as we all used to. Do you cry at those great
musical smashes? How can you cry when you don't know what it is all
about? We used to think the words meant something,--we fancied that
Burns and Moore said some things very prettily. I suppose you've
outgrown all that."
No one can handle Number Seven in one of his tantrums half so well as
Number Five can do it. She can pick out what threads of sense may be
wound off from the tangle of his ideas when they are crowded and
confused, as they are apt to be at times. She can soften the occasional
expression of half-concealed ridicule with which the poor old fellow's
sallies are liable to be welcomed--or unwelcomed. She knows that the
edge of a broken teacup may be sharper, very possibly, than that of a
philosopher's jackknife. A mind a little off its balance, one which has
a slightly squinting brain as its organ; will often prove fertile in
suggestions. Vulgar, cynical, contemptuous listeners fly at all its
weaknesses, and please themselves with making light of its often futile
ingenuities, when a wiser audience would gladly accept a hint which
perhaps could be developed in some profitable direction, or so interpret
an erratic thought that it should prove good sense in disguise. That is
the way Number Five was in the habit of dealing with the explosions of
Number Seven. Do you think she did not see the ridiculous element in a
silly speech, or the absurdity of an outrageously extravagant assertion?
Then you never heard her laugh when she could give way to her sense of
the ludicrous without wounding the feelings of any other person. But her
kind heart never would forget itself, and so Number Seven had a champion
who was always ready to see that his flashes of intelligence, fitful as
they were, and liable to be streaked with half-crazy fancies, always
found one willing recipient of what light there was in them.
Number Five, I have found, is a true lover of music, and has a right to
claim a real knowledge of its higher and deeper mysteries. But she
accepted very cordially what our light-headed companion said about the
songs he used to listen to.
"There is no doubt," she remarked, "that the tears which used to be shed
over 'Oft in the sully night,' or 'Auld Robin Gray,' or 'A place in thy
memory, dearest,' were honest tears, coming from the true sources of
emotion. There was no affectation about them; those songs came home to
the sensibilities of young people,--of all who had any sensibilities to
be acted upon. And on the other hand, there is a great amount of
affectation in the apparent enthusiasm of many persons in admiring and
applauding music of which they have not the least real appreciation.
They do not know whether it is good or bad, the work of a first-rate or a
fifth-rate composer; whether there are coherent elements in it, or
whether it is nothing more than 'a concourse of sweet sounds' with no
organic connections. One must be educated, no doubt, to understand the
more complex and difficult kinds of musical composition. Go to the great
concerts where you know that the music is good, and that you ought to
like it whether you do or not. Take a music-bath once or twice a week
for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the
water-bath is to the body. I wouldn't trouble myself about the
affectations of people who go to this or that series of concerts chiefly
because it is fashionable. Some of these people whom we think so silly
and hold so cheap will perhaps find, sooner or later, that they have a
dormant faculty which is at last waking up,--and that they who came
because others came, and began by staring at the audience, are listening
with a newly found delight. Every one of us has a harp under bodice or
waistcoat, and if it can only once get properly strung and tuned it will
respond to all outside harmonies."
The Professor has some ideas about music, which I believe he has given to
the world in one form or another; but the world is growing old and
forgetful, and needs to be reminded now and then of what one has formerly
told it.
"I have had glimpses," the Professor said, "of the conditions into which
music is capable of bringing a sensitive nature. Glimpses, I say,
because I cannot pretend that I am capable of sounding all the depths or
reaching all the heights to which music may transport our mortal
consciousness. Let me remind you of a curious fact with reference to the
seat of the musical sense. Far down below the great masses of thinking
marrow and its secondary agents, just as the brain is about to merge in
the spinal cord, the roots of the nerve of hearing spread their white
filaments out into the sentient matter, where they report what the
external organs of hearing tell them. This sentient matter is in remote
connection only with the mental organs, far more remote than the centres
of the sense of vision and that of smell. In a word, the musical faculty
might be said to have a little brain of its own. It has a special world
and a private language all to itself. How can one explain its
significance to those whose musical faculties are in a rudimentary state
of development, or who have never had them trained? Can you describe in
intelligible language the smell of a rose as compared with that of a
violet? No,--music can be translated only by music. Just so far as it
suggests worded thought, it falls short of its highest office. Pure
emotional movements of the spiritual nature,--that is what I ask of
music. Music will be the universal language,--the Volapuk of spiritual
being."
"Angels sit down with their harps and play at each other, I suppose,"
said Number Seven. "Must have an atmosphere up there if they have harps,
or they wouldn't get any music. Wonder if angels breathe like mortals?
If they do, they must have lungs and air passages, of course. Think of
an angel with the influenza, and nothing but a cloud for a handkerchief!"
--This is a good instance of the way in which Number Seven's squinting
brain works. You will now and then meet just such brains in heads you
know very well. Their owners are much given to asking unanswerable
questions. A physicist may settle it for us whether there is an
atmosphere about a planet or not, but it takes a brain with an extra
fissure in it to ask these unexpected questions,--questions which the
natural philosopher cannot answer, and which the theologian never thinks
of asking.
The company at our table do not keep always in the same places. The
first thing I noticed, the other evening, was that the Tutor was sitting
between the two Annexes, and the Counsellor was next to Number Five.
Something ought to come of this arrangement. One of those two young
ladies must certainly captivate and perhaps capture the Tutor. They are
just the age to be falling in love and to be fallen in love with. The
Tutor is good looking, intellectual, suspected of writing poetry, but a
little shy, it appears to me. I am glad to see him between the two girls.
If there were only one, she might be shy too, and then there would be
less chance for a romance such as I am on the lookout for; but these
young persons lend courage to each other, and between them, if he does
not wake up like Cymon at the sight of Iphigenia, I shall be
disappointed. As for the Counsellor and Number Five, they will soon find
each other out. Yes, it is all pretty clear in my mind,--except that
there is always an x in a problem where sentiments are involved. No, not
so clear about the Tutor. Predestined, I venture my guess, to one or the
other, but to which? I will suspend my opinion for the present.
I have found out that the Counsellor is a childless widower. I am told
that the Tutor is unmarried, and so far as known not engaged. There is no
use in denying it,--a company without the possibility of a love-match
between two of its circle is like a champagne bottle with the cork out
for some hours as compared to one with its pop yet in reserve. However,
if there should be any love-making, it need not break up our
conversations. Most of it will be carried on away from our tea-table.
Some of us have been attending certain lectures on Egypt and its
antiquities. I have never been on the Nile. If in any future state
there shall be vacations in which we may have liberty to revisit our old
home, equipped with a complete brand-new set of mortal senses as our
travelling outfit, I think one of the first places I should go to, after
my birthplace, the old gambrel-roofed house,--the place where it stood,
rather,--would be that mighty, awe-inspiring river. I do not suppose we
shall ever know half of what we owe to the wise and wonderful people who
confront us with the overpowering monuments of a past which flows out of
the unfathomable darkness as the great river streams from sources even as
yet but imperfectly explored.
I have thought a good deal about Egypt, lately, with reference to our
historical monuments. How did the great unknown mastery who fixed the
two leading forms of their monumental records arrive at those admirable
and eternal types, the pyramid and the obelisk? How did they get their
model of the pyramid?
Here is an hour-glass, not inappropriately filled with sand from the
great Egyptian desert. I turn it, and watch the sand as it accumulates
in the lower half of the glass. How symmetrically, how beautifully, how
inevitably, the little particles pile up the cone, which is ever building
and unbuilding itself, always aiming at the stability which is found only
at a certain fixed angle! The Egyptian children playing in the sand must
have noticed this as they let the grains fall from their hands, and the
sloping sides of the miniature pyramid must have been among the familiar
sights to the little boys and girls for whom the sand furnished their
earliest playthings. Nature taught her children through the working of
the laws of gravitation how to build so that her forces should act in
harmony with art, to preserve the integrity of a structure meant to reach
a far-off posterity. The pyramid is only the cone in which Nature
arranges her heaped and sliding fragments; the cone with flattened
Surfaces, as it is prefigured in certain well-known crystalline forms.
The obelisk is from another of Nature's patterns; it is only a gigantic
acicular crystal.
The Egyptians knew what a monument should be, simple, noble, durable. It
seems to me that we Americans might take a lesson from those early
architects. Our cemeteries are crowded with monuments which are very far
from simple, anything but noble, and stand a small chance of being
permanent. The pyramid is rarely seen, perhaps because it takes up so
much room; and when built on a small scale seems insignificant as we
think of it, dwarfed by the vast structures of antiquity. The obelisk is
very common, and when in just proportions and of respectable dimensions
is unobjectionable.
But the gigantic obelisks like that on Bunker Hill, and especially the
Washington monument at the national capital, are open to critical
animadversion. Let us contrast the last mentioned of these great piles
with the obelisk as the Egyptian conceived and executed it. The new
Pharaoh ordered a memorial of some important personage or event. In the
first place, a mighty stone was dislodged from its connections, and
lifted, unbroken, from the quarry. This was a feat from which our modern
stone-workers shrink dismayed. The Egyptians appear to have handled
these huge monoliths as our artisans handle hearthstones and doorsteps,
for the land actually bristled with such giant columns. They were shaped
and finished as nicely as if they were breastpins for the Titans to wear,
and on their polished surfaces were engraved in imperishable characters
the records they were erected to preserve.
Europe and America borrow these noble productions of African art and
power, and find them hard enough to handle after they have succeeded in
transporting them to Rome, or London, or New York. Their simplicity,
grandeur, imperishability, speaking symbolism, shame all the pretentious
and fragile works of human art around them. The obelisk has no joints
for the destructive agencies of nature to attack; the pyramid has no
masses hanging in unstable equilibrium, and threatening to fall by their
own weight in the course of a thousand or two years.
America says the Father of his Country must have a monument worthy of his
exalted place in history. What shall it be? A temple such as Athens
might have been proud to rear upon her Acropolis? An obelisk such as
Thebes might have pointed out with pride to the strangers who found
admission through her hundred gates? After long meditation and the
rejection of the hybrid monstrosities with which the nation was menaced,
an obelisk is at last decided upon. How can it be made grand and
dignified enough to be equal to the office assigned it? We dare not
attempt to carve a single stone from the living rock,--all our modern
appliances fail to make the task as easy to us as it seems to have been
to the early Egyptians. No artistic skill is required in giving a
four-square tapering figure to a stone column. If we cannot shape a
solid obelisk of the proper dimensions, we can build one of separate
blocks. How can we give it the distinction we demand for it? The nation
which can brag that it has "the biggest show on earth" cannot boast a
great deal in the way of architecture, but it can do one thing,--it can
build an obelisk that shall be taller than any structure now standing
which the hand of man has raised. Build an obelisk! How different the
idea of such a structure from that of the unbroken, unjointed prismatic
shaft, one perfect whole, as complete in itself, as fitly shaped and
consolidated to defy the elements, as the towering palm or the tapering
pine! Well, we had the satisfaction for a time of claiming the tallest
structure in the world; and now that the new Tower of Babel which has
sprung up in Paris has killed that pretention, I think we shall feel and
speak more modestly about our stone hyperbole, our materialization of the
American love of the superlative. We have the higher civilization among
us, and we must try to keep down the forth-putting instincts of the
lower. We do not want to see our national monument placarded as "the
greatest show on earth,"--perhaps it is well that it is taken down from
that bad eminence.
I do not think that this speech of mine was very well received. It
appeared to jar somewhat on the nerves of the American Annex. There was
a smile on the lips of the other Annex,--the English girl,--which she
tried to keep quiet, but it was too plain that she enjoyed my diatribe.
It must be remembered that I and the other Teacups, in common with the
rest of our fellow-citizens, have had our sensibilities greatly worked
upon, our patriotism chilled, our local pride outraged, by the
monstrosities which have been allowed to deform our beautiful public
grounds. We have to be very careful in conducting a visitor, say from
his marble-fronted hotel to the City Hall.--Keep pretty straight along
after entering the Garden,--you will not care to inspect the little
figure of the military gentleman to your right.--Yes, the Cochituate
water is drinkable, but I think I would not turn aside to visit that
small fabric which makes believe it is a temple, and is a weak-eyed
fountain feebly weeping over its own insignificance. About that other
stone misfortune, cruelly reminding us of the "Boston Massacre," we will
not discourse; it is not imposing, and is rarely spoken of.
What a mortification to the inhabitants of a city with some hereditary
and contemporary claims to cultivation; which has noble edifices, grand
libraries, educational institutions of the highest grade, an art-gallery
filled with the finest models and rich in paintings and statuary,--a
stately city that stretches both arms across the Charles to clasp the
hands of Harvard, her twin-sister, each lending lustre to the other like
double stars,--what a pity that she should be so disfigured by crude
attempts to adorn her and commemorate her past that her most loving
children blush for her artificial deformities amidst the wealth of her
natural beauties! One hardly knows which to groan over most sadly,--the
tearing down of old monuments, the shelling of the Parthenon, the
overthrow of the pillared temples of Rome, and in a humbler way the
destruction of the old Hancock house, or the erection of monuments which
are to be a perpetual eyesore to ourselves and our descendants.
We got talking on the subject of realism, of which so much has been said
of late.
It seems to me, I said, that the great additions which have been made by
realism to the territory of literature consist largely in swampy,
malarious, ill-smelling patches of soil which had previously been left to
reptiles and vermin. It is perfectly easy to be original by violating
the laws of decency and the canons of good taste. The general consent of
civilized people was supposed to have banished certain subjects from the
conversation of well-bred people and the pages of respectable literature.
There is no subject, or hardly any, which may not be treated of at the
proper time, in the proper place, by the fitting person, for the right
kind of listener or reader. But when the poet or the story-teller
invades the province of the man of science, he is on dangerous ground. I
need say nothing of the blunders he is pretty sure to make. The
imaginative writer is after effects. The scientific man is after truth.
Science is decent, modest; does not try to startle, but to instruct. The
same scenes and objects which outrage every sense of delicacy in the
story teller's highly colored paragraphs can be read without giving
offence in the chaste language of the physiologist or the physician.
There is a very celebrated novel, "Madame Bovary," the work of M.
Flaubert, which is noted for having been the subject of prosecution as an
immoral work. That it has a serious lesson there is no doubt, if one
will drink down to the bottom of the cup. But the honey of sensuous
description is spread so deeply over the surface of the goblet that a
large proportion of its readers never think of its holding anything else.
All the phases of unhallowed passion are described in full detail. That
is what the book is bought and read for, by the great majority of its
purchasers, as all but simpletons very well know. That is what makes it
sell and brought it into the courts of justice. This book is famous for
its realism; in fact, it is recognized as one of the earliest and most
brilliant examples of that modern style of novel which, beginning where
Balzac left off, attempted to do for literature what the photograph has
done for art. For those who take the trouble to drink out of the cup
below the rim of honey, there is a scene where realism is carried to its
extreme,--surpassed in horror by no writer, unless it be the one whose
name must be looked for at the bottom of the alphabet, as if its natural
place were as low down in the dregs of realism as it could find itself.
This is the death-bed scene, where Madame Bovary expires in convulsions.
The author must have visited the hospitals for the purpose of watching
the terrible agonies he was to depict, tramping from one bed to another
until he reached the one where the cries and contortions were the most
frightful. Such a scene he has reproduced. No hospital physician would
have pictured the straggle in such colors. In the same way, that other
realist, M. Zola, has painted a patient suffering from delirium tremens,
the disease known to common speech as "the horrors." In describing this
case he does all that language can do to make it more horrible than the
reality. He gives us, not realism, but super-realism, if such a term
does not contradict itself.
In this matter of the literal reproduction of sights and scenes which our
natural instinct and our better informed taste and judgment teach us to
avoid, art has been far in advance of literature. It is three hundred
years since Joseph Ribera, more commonly known as Spagnoletto, was born
in the province Valencia, in Spain. We had the misfortune of seeing a
painting of his in a collection belonging to one of the French princes,
and exhibited at the Art Museum. It was that of a man performing upon
himself the operation known to the Japanese as hararkiri. Many persons
who looked upon this revolting picture will never get rid of its
remembrance, and will regret the day when their eyes fell upon it. I
should share the offence of the painter if I ventured to describe it.
Ribera was fond of depicting just such odious and frightful subjects.
"Saint Lawrence writhing on his gridiron, Saint Sebastian full of arrows,
were equally a source of delight to him. Even in subjects which had no
such elements of horror he finds the materials for the delectation of his
ferocious pencil; he makes up for the defect by rendering with a brutal
realism deformity and ugliness."
The first great mistake made by the ultra-realists; like Flaubert and
Zola, is, as I have said, their ignoring the line of distinction between
imaginative art and science. We can find realism enough in books of
anatomy, surgery, and medicine. In studying the human figure, we want to
see it clothed with its natural integuments. It is well for the artist
to study the ecorche in the dissecting-room, but we do not want the
Apollo or the Venus to leave their skins behind them when they go into
the gallery for exhibition. Lancisi's figures show us how the great
statues look when divested of their natural covering. It is instructive,
but useful chiefly as a means to aid in the true artistic reproduction of
nature. When the, hospitals are invaded by the novelist, he should learn
something from the physician as well as from the patients. Science
delineates in monochrome. She never uses high tints and strontian lights
to astonish lookers-on. Such scenes as Flaubert and Zola describe would
be reproduced in their essential characters, but not dressed up in
picturesque phrases. That is the first stumbling-block in the way of the
reader of such realistic stories as those to which I have referred.
There are subjects which must be investigated by scientific men which
most educated persons would be glad to know nothing about. When a
realistic writer like Zola surprises his reader into a kind of knowledge
he never thought of wishing for, he sometimes harms him more than he has
any idea of doing. He wants to produce a sensation, and he leaves a
permanent disgust not to be got rid of. Who does not remember odious
images that can never be washed out from the consciousness which they
have stained? A man's vocabulary is terribly retentive of evil words,
and the images they present cling to his memory and will not loose their
hold. One who has had the mischance to soil his mind by reading certain
poems of Swift will never cleanse it to its original whiteness.
Expressions and thoughts of a certain character stain the fibre of the
thinking organ, and in some degree affect the hue of every idea that
passes through the discolored tissues.
This is the gravest accusation to bring against realism, old or recent,
whether in the brutal paintings of Spagnoletto or in the unclean
revelations of Zola. Leave the description of the drains and cesspools
to the hygienic specialist, the painful facts of disease to the
physician, the details of the laundry to the washerwoman. If we are to
have realism in its tedious descriptions of unimportant particulars, let
it be of particulars which do not excite disgust. Such is the description
of the vegetables in Zola's "Ventre de Paris," where, if one wishes to
see the apotheosis of turnips, beets, and cabbages, he can find them
glorified as supremely as if they had been symbols of so many deities;
their forms, their colors, their expression, worked upon until they seem
as if they were made to be looked at and worshipped rather than to be
boiled and eaten.
I am pleased to find a French critic of M. Flaubert expressing ideas with
which many of my own entirely coincide. "The great mistake of the
realists," he says, "is that they profess to tell the truth because they
tell everything. This puerile hunting after details, this cold and
cynical inventory of all the wretched conditions in the midst of which
poor humanity vegetates, not only do not help us to understand it better,
but, on the contrary, the effect on the spectators is a kind of dazzled
confusion mingled with fatigue and disgust. The material truthfulness to
which the school of M. Flaubert more especially pretends misses its aim
in going beyond it. Truth is lost in its own excess."
I return to my thoughts on the relations of imaginative art in all its
forms with science. The subject which in the hands of the scientific
student is handled decorously,--reverently, we might almost say,--becomes
repulsive, shameful, and debasing in the unscrupulous manipulations of
the low-bred man of letters.
I confess that I am a little jealous of certain tendencies in our own
American literature, which led one of the severest and most outspoken of
our satirical fellow-countrymen, no longer living to be called to account
for it, to say; in a moment of bitterness, that the mission of America
was to vulgarize mankind. I myself have sometimes wondered at the
pleasure some Old World critics have professed to find in the most
lawless freaks of New World literature. I have questioned whether their
delight was not like that of the Spartans in the drunken antics of their
Helots. But I suppose I belong to another age, and must not attempt to
judge the present by my old-fashioned standards.
The company listened very civilly to these remarks, whether they agreed
with them or not. I am not sure that I want all the young people to
think just as I do in matters of critical judgment. New wine does not go
well into old bottles, but if an old cask has held good wine, it may
improve a crude juice to stand awhile upon the lees of that which once
filled it.
I thought the company had had about enough of this disquisition. They
listened very decorously, and the Professor, who agrees very well with
me, as I happen to know, in my views on this business of realism, thanked
me for giving them the benefit of my opinion.
The silence that followed was broken by Number Seven's suddenly
exclaiming,--
"I should like to boss creation for a week!"
This expression was an outbreak suggested by some train of thought which
Number Seven had been following while I was discoursing. I do not think
one of the company looked as if he or she were shocked by it as an
irreligious or even profane speech. It is a better way always, in
dealing with one of those squinting brains, to let it follow out its own
thought. It will keep to it for a while; then it will quit the rail, so
to speak, and run to any side-track which may present itself.
"What is the first thing you would do?" asked Number Five in a pleasant,
easy way.
"The first thing? Pick out a few thousand of the best specimens of the
best races, and drown the rest like so many blind puppies."
"Why," said she, "that was tried once, and does not seem to have worked
very well."
"Very likely. You mean Noah's flood, I suppose. More people nowadays,
and a better lot to pick from than Noah had."
"Do tell us whom you would take with you," said Number Five.
"You, if you would go," he answered, and I thought I saw a slight flush
on his cheek. "But I didn't say that I should go aboard the new ark
myself. I am not sure that I should. No, I am pretty sure that I
shouldn't. I don't believe, on the whole, it would pay me to save
myself. I ain't of much account. But I could pick out some that were."
And just now he was saying that he should like to boss the universe! All
this has nothing very wonderful about it. Every one of us is subject to
alternations of overvaluation and undervaluation of ourselves. Do you
not remember soliloquies something like this? "Was there ever such a
senseless, stupid creature as I am? How have I managed to keep so long
out of the idiot asylum? Undertook to write a poem, and stuck fast at
the first verse. Had a call from a friend who had just been round the
world. Did n't ask him one word about what he had seen or heard, but
gave him full details of my private history, I having never been off my
own hearth-rug for more than an hour or two at a time, while he was
circumnavigating and circumrailroading the globe. Yes, if anybody can
claim the title, I am certainly the prize idiot." I am afraid that we
all say such things as this to ourselves at times. Do we not use more
emphatic words than these in our self-depreciation? I cannot say how it
is with others, but my vocabulary of self-reproach and humiliation is so
rich in energetic expressions that I should be sorry to have an
interviewer present at an outburst of one of its raging geysers, its
savage soliloquies. A man is a kind of inverted thermometer, the bulb
uppermost, and the column of self-valuation is all the time going up and
down. Number Seven is very much like other people in this respect,--very
much like you and me.
This train of reflections must not carry me away from Number Seven.
"If I can't get a chance to boss this planet for a week or so," he began
again, "I think I could write its history,--yes, the history of the
world, in less compass than any one who has tried it so far."
"You know Sir Walter Raleigh's 'History of the World,' of course?" said
the Professor.
"More or less,--more or less," said Number Seven prudently. "But I don't
care who has written it before me. I will agree to write the story of
two worlds, this and the next, in such a compact way that you can commit
them both to memory in less time than you can learn the answer to the
first question in the Catechism."
What he had got into his head we could not guess, but there was no little
curiosity to discover the particular bee which was buzzing in his bonnet.
He evidently enjoyed our curiosity, and meant to keep us waiting awhile
before revealing the great secret.
"How many words do you think I shall want?"
It is a formula, I suppose, I said, and I will grant you a hundred words.
"Twenty," said the Professor. "That was more than the wise men of Greece
wanted for their grand utterances."
The two Annexes whispered together, and the American Annex gave their
joint result. One thousand was the number they had fixed on. They were
used to hearing lectures, and could hardly conceive that any subject
could be treated without taking up a good part of an hour.
"Less than ten," said Number Five. "If there are to be more than ten, I
don't believe that Number Seven would think the surprise would be up to
our expectations."
"Guess as much as you like," said Number Seven.
"The answer will keep. I don't mean to say what it is until we are ready
to leave the table." He took a blank card from his pocket-book, wrote
something on it, or appeared, at any rate, to write, and handed it, face
down, to the Mistress. What was on the card will be found near the end
of this paper. I wonder if anybody will be curious enough to look
further along to find out what it was before she reads the next
paragraph?
In the mean time there is a train of thought suggested by Number Seven
and his whims. If you want to know how to account for yourself, study
the characters of your relations. All of our brains squint more or less.
There is not one in a hundred, certainly, that does not sometimes see
things distorted by double refraction, out of plumb or out of focus, or
with colors which do not belong to it, or in some way betraying that the
two halves of the brain are not acting in harmony with each other. You
wonder at the eccentricities of this or that connection of your own.
Watch yourself, and you will find impulses which, but for the restraints
you put upon them, would make you do the same foolish things which you
laugh at in that cousin of yours. I once lived in the same house with
the near relative of a very distinguished person, whose name is still
honored and revered among us. His brain was an active one, like that of
his famous relative, but it was full of random ideas, unconnected trains
of thought, whims, crotchets, erratic suggestions. Knowing him, I could
interpret the mental characteristics of the whole family connection in
the light of its exaggerated peculiarities as exhibited in my odd
fellow-boarder. Squinting brains are a great deal more common than we
should at first sight believe. Here is a great book, a solid octavo of
five hundred pages, full of the vagaries of this class of organizations.
I hope to refer to this work hereafter, but just now I will only say
that, after reading till one is tired the strange fancies of the squarers
of the circle, the inventors of perpetual motion, and the rest of the
moonstruck dreamers, most persons will confess to themselves that they
have had notions as wild, conceptions as extravagant, theories as
baseless, as the least rational of those which are here recorded.
Some day I want to talk about my library. It is such a curious
collection of old and new books, such a mosaic of learning and fancies
and follies, that a glance over it would interest the company. Perhaps I
may hereafter give you a talk abut books, but while I am saying a few
passing words upon the subject the greatest bibliographical event that
ever happened in the book-market of the New World is taking place under
our eyes. Here is Mr. Bernard Quaritch just come from his well-known
habitat, No. 15 Piccadilly, with such a collection of rare, beautiful,
and somewhat expensive volumes as the Western Continent never saw before
on the shelves of a bibliopole.
We bookworms are all of us now and then betrayed into an extravagance.
The keen tradesmen who tempt us are like the fishermen who dangle a
minnow, a frog, or a worm before the perch or pickerel who may be on the
lookout for his breakfast. But Mr. Quaritch comes among us like that
formidable angler of whom it is said,
His hook he baited with a dragon's tail,
And sat upon a rock and bobbed for whale.
The two catalogues which herald his coming are themselves interesting
literary documents. One can go out with a few shillings in his pocket,
and venture among the books of the first of these catalogues without
being ashamed to show himself with no larger furnishing of the means for
indulging his tastes,--he will find books enough at comparatively modest
prices. But if one feels very rich, so rich that it requires a good deal
to frighten him, let him take the other catalogue and see how many books
he proposes to add to his library at the prices affixed. Here is a Latin
Psalter with the Canticles, from the press of Fust and Schoeffer, the
second book issued from their press, the second book printed with a date,
that date being 1459. There are only eight copies of this work known to
exist; you can have one of them, if so disposed, and if you have change
enough in your pocket. Twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars
will make you the happy owner of this precious volume. If this is more
than you want to pay, you can have the Gold Gospels of Henry VIII., on
purple vellum, for about half the money. There are pages on pages of
titles of works any one of which would be a snug little property if
turned into money at its catalogue price.
Why will not our multimillionaires look over this catalogue of Mr.
Quaritch, and detain some of its treasures on this side of the Atlantic
for some of our public libraries? We decant the choicest wines of Europe
into our cellars; we ought to be always decanting the precious treasures
of her libraries and galleries into our own, as we have opportunity and
means. As to the means, there are so many rich people who hardly know
what to do with their money that it is well to suggest to them any new
useful end to which their superfluity may contribute. I am not in
alliance with Mr. Quaritch; in fact, I am afraid of him, for if I stayed
a single hour in his library, where I never was but once, and then for
fifteen minutes only, I should leave it so much poorer than I entered it
that I should be reminded of the picture in the titlepage of Fuller's
'Historie of the Holy Warre,' "We went out full. We returned empty."
--After the teacups were all emptied, the card containing Number Seven's
abridged history of two worlds, this and the next, was handed round.
This was all it held:
After all had looked at it, it was passed back to me. "Let The Dictator
interpret it," they all said.
This is what I announced as my interpretation:
Two worlds, the higher and the lower, separated by the thinnest of
partitions. The lower world is that of questions; the upper world is
that of answers. Endless doubt and unrest here below; wondering,
admiring, adoring certainty above.--Am I not right?
"You are right," answered Number Seven solemnly. "That is my
revelation."
The following poem was found in the sugar-bowl.
I read it to the company. There was much whispering and there were many
conjectures as to its authorship, but every Teacup looked innocent, and
we separated each with his or her private conviction. I had mine, but I
will not mention it.
THE ROSE AND THE FERN.
Lady, life's sweetest lesson wouldst thou learn,
Come thou with me to Love's enchanted bower:
High overhead the trellised roses burn;
Beneath thy feet behold the feathery fern,
A leaf without a flower.
What though the rose leaves fall? They still are sweet,
And have been lovely in their beauteous prime,
While the bare frond seems ever to repeat,
"For us no bud, no blossom, wakes to greet
The joyous flowering time!"
Heed thou the lesson. Life has leaves to tread
And flowers to cherish; summer round thee glows;
Wait not till autumn's fading robes are shed,
But while its petals still are burning red
Gather life's full-blown rose!
VI
Of course the reading of the poem at the end of the last paper has left a
deep impression. I strongly suspect that something very much like
love-making is going on at our table. A peep under the lid of the
sugar-bowl has shown me that there is another poem ready for the company.
That receptacle is looked upon with an almost tremulous excitement by
more than one of The Teacups. The two Annexes turn towards the mystic
urn as if the lots which were to determine their destiny were shut up in
it. Number Five, quieter, and not betraying more curiosity than belongs
to the sex at all ages, glances at the sugarbowl now and then; looking so
like a clairvoyant, that sometimes I cannot help thinking she must be
one. There is a sly look about that young Doctor's eyes, which might
imply that he knows something about what the silver vessel holds, or is
going to hold. The Tutor naturally falls under suspicion, as he is known
to have written and published poems. I suppose the Professor and myself
have hardly been suspected of writing love-poems; but there is no
telling,--there is no telling. Why may not some one of the lady Teacups
have played the part of a masculine lover? George Sand, George Eliot,
Charles Egbert Craddock, made pretty good men in print. The authoress of
"Jane Eyre" was taken for a man by many persons. Can Number Five be
masquerading in verse? Or is one of the two Annexes the make believe
lover? Or did these girls lay their heads together, and send the poem we
had at our last sitting to puzzle the company? It is certain that the
Mistress did not write the poem. It is evident that Number Seven, who is
so severe in his talk about rhymesters, would not, if he could, make such
a fool of himself as to set up for a "poet." Why should not the
Counsellor fall in love and write verses? A good many lawyers have been
"poets."
Perhaps the next poem, which may be looked for in its proper place, may
help us to form a judgment. We may have several verse-writers among us,
and if so there will be a good opportunity for the exercise of judgment
in distributing their productions among the legitimate claimants. In the
mean time, we must not let the love-making and the song-writing interfere
with the more serious matters which these papers are expected to contain.
Number Seven's compendious and comprehensive symbolism proved suggestive,
as his whimsical notions often do. It always pleases me to take some
hint from anything he says when I can, and carry it out in a direction
not unlike that of his own remark. I reminded the company of his
enigmatical symbol.
You can divide mankind in the same way, I said. Two words, each of two
letters, will serve to distinguish two classes of human beings who
constitute the principal divisions of mankind. Can any of you tell what
those two words are?
"Give me five letters," cried Number Seven, "and I can solve your
problem! F-o-o-l-s,--those five letters will give you the first and
largest half. For the other fraction"--
Oh, but, said I, I restrict you absolutely to two letters. If you are
going to take five, you may as well take twenty or a hundred.
After a few attempts, the company gave it up. The nearest approach to
the correct answer was Number Five's guess of Oh and Ah: Oh signifying
eternal striving after an ideal, which belongs to one kind of nature; and
Ah the satisfaction of the other kind of nature, which rests at ease in
what it has attained.
Good! I said to Number Five, but not the answer I am after. The great
division between human beings is into the Ifs and the Ases.
"Is the last word to be spelt with one or two s's?" asked the young
Doctor.
The company laughed feebly at this question. I answered it soberly. With
one s. There are more foolish people among the Ifs than there are among
the Ases.
The company looked puzzled, and asked for an explanation.
This is the meaning of those two words as I interpret them: If it
were,--if it might be,--if it could be,--if it had been. One portion of
mankind go through life always regretting, always whining, always
imagining. These are the people whose backbones remain cartilaginous all
their lives long, as do those of certain other vertebrate animals,--the
sturgeons, for instance. A good many poets must be classed with this
group of vertebrates.
As it is,--this is the way in which the other class of people look at the
conditions in which they find themselves. They may be optimists or
pessimists, they are very largely optimists,--but, taking things just as
they find them, they adjust the facts to their wishes if they can; and if
they cannot, then they adjust themselves to the facts. I venture to say
that if one should count the Ifs and the Ases in the conversation of his
acquaintances, he would find the more able and important persons among
them--statesmen, generals, men of business--among the Ases, and the
majority of the conspicuous failures among the Ifs. I don't know but
this would be as good a test as that of Gideon,--lapping the water or
taking it up in the hand. I have a poetical friend whose conversation is
starred as thick with ifs as a boiled ham is with cloves. But another
friend of mine, a business man, whom I trust in making my investments,
would not let me meddle with a certain stock which I fancied, because, as
he said, "there are too many ifs in it. As it looks now, I would n't
touch it."
I noticed, the other evening, that some private conversation was going on
between the Counsellor and the two Annexes. There was a mischievous look
about the little group, and I thought they were hatching some plot among
them. I did not hear what the English Annex said, but the American
girl's voice was sharper, and I overheard what sounded to me like, "It is
time to stir up that young Doctor." The Counsellor looked very knowing,
and said that he would find a chance before long. I was rather amused to
see how readily he entered into the project of the young people. The
fact is, the Counsellor is young for his time of life; for he already
betrays some signs of the change referred to in that once familiar street
song, which my friend, the great American surgeon, inquired for at the
music-shops under the title, as he got it from the Italian minstrel,
"Silva tredi mondi goo."
I saw, soon after this, that the Counsellor was watching his chance to
"stir up the young Doctor."
It does not follow, because our young Doctor's bald spot is slower in
coming than he could have wished, that he has not had time to form many
sound conclusions in the calling to which he has devoted himself
Vesalius, the father of modern descriptive anatomy, published his great
work on that subject before he was thirty. Bichat, the great anatomist
and physiologist, who died near the beginning of this century, published
his treatise, which made a revolution in anatomy and pathology, at about
the same age; dying soon after he had reached the age of thirty. So,
possibly the Counsellor may find that he has "stirred up" a young man
who, can take care of his own head, in case of aggressive movements in
its direction.
"Well, Doctor," the Counsellor began, "how are stocks in the measles
market about these times? Any corner in bronchitis? Any syndicate in
the vaccination business?" All this playfully.
"I can't say how it is with other people's patients; most of my families
are doing very well without my help, at this time."
"Do tell me, Doctor, how many families you own. I have heard it said
that some of our fellow-citizens have two distinct families, but you
speak as if you had a dozen."
"I have, but not so large a number as I should like. I could take care
of fifteen or twenty more without: having to work too hard."
"Why, Doctor, you are as bad as a Mormon. What do you mean by calling
certain families yours?"
"Don't you speak about my client? Don't your clients call you their
lawyer? Does n't your baker, does n't your butcher, speak of the
families he supplies as his families?"
To be sure, yes, of course they do; but I had a notion that a man had as
many doctors as he had organs to be doctored."
"Well, there is some truth in that; but did you think the old-fashioned
family doctor was extinct, a fossil like the megatherium?"
"Why, yes, after the recent experience of a friend of mine, I did begin
to think that there would soon be no such personage left as that same
old-fashioned family doctor. Shall I tell you what that experience was?"
The young Doctor said he should be mightily pleased to hear it. He was
going to be one of those old-fogy practitioners himself.
"I don't know," the Counsellor said, "whether my friend got all the
professional terms of his story correctly, nor whether I have got them
from him without making any mistakes; but if I do make blunders in some
of the queer names, you can correct me. This is my friend's story:
"My family doctor," he said, "was a very sensible man, educated at a
school where they professed to teach all the specialties, but not
confining himself to any one branch of medical practice. Surgical
practice he did not profess to meddle with, and there were some classes
of patients whom he was willing to leave to the female physician. But
throughout the range of diseases not requiring exceptionally skilled
manual interference, his education had authorized him to consider
himself, and he did consider himself, qualified to undertake the
treatment of all ordinary cases--It so happened that my young wife was
one of those uneasy persons who are never long contented with their
habitual comforts and blessings, but always trying to find something a
little better, something newer, at any rate. I was getting to be near
fifty years old, and it happened to me, as it not rarely does to people
at about that time of life, that my hair began to fall out. I spoke of
it to my doctor, who smiled, said it was a part of the process of
reversed evolution, but might be retarded a little, and gave me a
prescription. I did not find any great effect from it, and my wife would
have me go to a noted dermatologist. The distinguished specialist
examined my denuded scalp with great care. He looked at it through a
strong magnifier. He examined the bulb of a fallen hair in a powerful
microscope. He deliberated for a while, and then said, "This is a case
of alopecia. It may perhaps be partially remedied. I will give you a
prescription." Which he did, and told me to call again in a fortnight.
At the end of three months I had called six times, and each time got a
new recipe, and detected no difference in the course of my "alopecia."
After I had got through my treatment, I showed my recipes to my family
physician; and we found that three of them were the same he had used,
familiar, old-fashioned remedies, and the others were taken from a list
of new and little-tried prescriptions mentioned in one of the last
medical journals, which was lying on the old doctor's table. I might as
well have got no better under his charge, and should have got off much
cheaper.
"The next trouble I had was a little redness of the eyes, for which my
doctor gave me a wash; but my wife would have it that I must see an
oculist. So I made four visits to an oculist, and at the last visit the
redness was nearly gone,--as it ought to have been by that time. The
specialist called my complaint conjunctivitis, but that did not make it
feel any better nor get well any quicker. If I had had a cataract or any
grave disease of the eye, requiring a nice operation on that delicate
organ, of course I should have properly sought the aid of an expert,
whose eye, hand, and judgment were trained to that special business; but
in this case I don't doubt that my family doctor would have done just as
well as the expert. However, I had to obey orders, and my wife would have
it that I should entrust my precious person only to the most skilful
specialist in each department of medical practice.
"In the course of the year I experienced a variety of slight
indispositions. For these I was auriscoped by an aurist, laryngoscoped
by a laryngologist, ausculted by a stethoscopist, and so on, until a
complete inventory of my organs was made out, and I found that if I
believed all these searching inquirers professed to have detected in my
unfortunate person, I could repeat with too literal truth the words of
the General Confession, "And there is no health in us." I never heard so
many hard names in all my life. I proved to be the subject of a long
catalogue of diseases, and what maladies I was not manifestly guilty of I
was at least suspected of harboring. I was handed along all the way from
alopecia, which used to be called baldness, to zoster, which used to be
known as shingles. I was the patient of more than a dozen specialists.
Very pleasant persons, many of them, but what a fuss they made about my
trifling incommodities! 'Please look at that photograph. See if there is
a minute elevation under one eye.'
"'On which side?' I asked him, for I could not be sure there was anything
different on one side from what I saw on the other.
"'Under the left eye. I called it a pimple; the specialist called it
acne. Now look at this photograph. It was taken after my acne had been
three months under treatment. It shows a little more distinctly than in
the first photograph, does n't it?'
"'I think it does,' I answered. 'It does n't seem to me that you gained
a great deal by leaving your customary adviser for the specialist.'
"'Well,' my friend continued, 'following my wife's urgent counsel, I kept
on, as I told you, for a whole year with my specialists, going from head
to foot, and tapering off with a chiropodist. I got a deal of amusement
out of their contrivances and experiments. Some of them lighted up my
internal surfaces with electrical or other illuminating apparatus.
Thermometers, dynamometers, exploring-tubes, little mirrors that went
half-way down to my stomach, tuning-forks, ophthalmoscopes,
percussion-hammers, single and double stethoscopes, speculums,
sphygmometers,--such a battery of detective instruments I had never
imagined. All useful, I don't doubt; but at the end of the year I began
to question whether I should n't have done about as well to stick to my
long tried practitioner. When the bills for "professional services" came
in, and the new carpet had to be given up, and the old bonnet trimmed
over again, and the sealskin sack remained a vision, we both agreed, my
wife and I, that we would try to get along without consulting
specialists, except in such cases as our family physician considered to
be beyond his skill.'"
The Counsellor's story of his friend's experiences seemed to please the
young Doctor very much. It "stirred him up," but in an agreeable way;
for, as he said, he meant to devote himself to family practice, and not
to adopt any limited class of cases as a specialty. I liked his views so
well that I should have been ready to adopt them as my own, if they had
been challenged.
The young Doctor discourses.
"I am very glad," he said, "that we have a number of practitioners among
us who confine themselves to the care of single organs and their
functions. I want to be able to consult an oculist who has done nothing
but attend to eyes long enough to know all that is known about their
diseases and their treatment,--skilful enough to be trusted with the
manipulation of that delicate and most precious organ. I want an aurist
who knows all about the ear and what can be done for its disorders. The
maladies of the larynx are very ticklish things to handle, and nobody
should be trusted to go behind the epiglottis who has not the tactus
eruditus. And so of certain other particular classes of complaints. A
great city must have a limited number of experts, each a final authority,
to be appealed to in cases where the family physician finds himself in
doubt. There are operations which no surgeon should be willing to
undertake unless he has paid a particular, if not an exclusive, attention
to the cases demanding such operations. All this I willingly grant.
"But it must not be supposed that we can return to the methods of the old
Egyptians--who, if my memory serves me correctly, had a special physician
for every part of the body--without falling into certain errors and
incurring certain liabilities.
"The specialist is much like other people engaged in lucrative business.
He is apt to magnify his calling, to make much of any symptom which will
bring a patient within range of his battery of remedies. I found a case
in one of our medical journals, a couple of years ago, which illustrates
what I mean. Dr. ___________ of Philadelphia, had a female patient with
a crooked nose,--deviated septum, if our young scholars like that better.
She was suffering from what the doctor called reflex headache. She had
been to an oculist, who found that the trouble was in her eyes. She went
from him to a gynecologist, who considered her headache as owing to
causes for which his specialty had the remedies. How many more
specialists would have appropriated her, if she had gone the rounds of
them all, I dare not guess; but you remember the old story of the siege,
in which each artisan proposed means of defence which he himself was
ready to furnish. Then a shoemaker said, 'Hang your walls with new
boots.'
"Human nature is the same with medical specialists as it was with ancient
cordwainers, and it is too possible that a hungry practitioner may be
warped by his interest in fastening on a patient who, as he persuades
himself, comes under his medical jurisdiction. The specialist has but one
fang with which to seize and bold his prey, but that fang is a fearfully
long and sharp canine. Being confined to a narrow field of observation
and practice, he is apt to give much of his time to curious study, which
may be magnifique, but is not exactly la guerre against the patient's
malady. He divides and subdivides, and gets many varieties of diseases,
in most respects similar. These he equips with new names, and thus we
have those terrific nomenclatures which are enough to frighten the
medical student, to say nothing of the sufferers staggering under this
long catalogue of local infirmities. The 'old-fogy' doctor, who knows
the family tendencies of his patient, who 'understands his constitution,'
will often treat him better than the famous specialist, who sees him for
the first time, and has to guess at many things 'the old doctor' knows
from his previous experience with the same patient and the family to
which he belongs.
"It is a great luxury to practise as a specialist in almost any class of
diseases. The special practitioner has his own hours, hardly needs a
night-bell, can have his residence out of the town in which he exercises
his calling, in short, lives like a gentleman; while the hard-worked
general practitioner submits to a servitude more exacting than that of
the man who is employed in his stable or in his kitchen. That is the kind
of life I have made up my mind to."
The teaspoons tinkled all round the table. This was the usual sign of
approbation, instead of the clapping of hands.
The young Doctor paused, and looked round among The Teacups. "I beg your
pardon," he said, "for taking up so much of your time with medicine. It
is a subject that a good many persons, especially ladies, take an
interest in and have a curiosity about, but I have no right to turn this
tea-table into a lecture platform."
"We should like to hear you talk longer about it," said the English
Annex. "One of us has thought of devoting herself to the practice of
medicine. Would you lecture to us; if you were a professor in one of the
great medical schools?"
"Lecture to students of your sex? Why not, I should like to know? I
don't think it is the calling for which the average woman is especially
adapted, but my teacher got a part of his medical education from a lady,
Madame Lachapelle; and I don't see why, if one can learn from a woman, he
may not teach a woman, if he knows enough."
"We all like a little medical talk now and then," said Number Five, "and
we are much obliged to you for your discourse. You are specialist enough
to take care of a sprained ankle, I suppose, are you not?"
"I hope I should be equal to that emergency," answered the young Doctor;
"but I trust you are not suffering from any such accident?"
"No," said Number Five, "but there is no telling what may happen. I
might slip, and get a sprain or break a sinew, or something, and I should
like to know that there is a practitioner at hand to take care of my
injury. I think I would risk myself in your bands, although you are not
a specialist. Would you venture to take charge of the case?"
"Ah, my dear lady," he answered gallantly, "the risk would be in the
other direction. I am afraid it would be safer for your doctor if he
were an older man than I am."
This is the first clearly, indisputably sentimental outbreak which has
happened in conversation at our table. I tremble to think what will come
of it; for we have several inflammable elements in our circle, and a
spark like this is liable to light on any one or two of them.
I was not sorry that this medical episode came in to vary the usual
course of talk at our table. I like to have one--of an intelligent
company, who knows anything thoroughly, hold the floor for a time, and
discourse upon the subject which chiefly engages his daily thoughts and
furnishes his habitual occupation. It is a privilege to meet such a
person now and then, and let him have his full swing. But because there
are "professionals" to whom we are willing to listen as oracles, I do not
want to see everybody who is not a "professional" silenced or snubbed, if
he ventures into any field of knowledge which he has not made especially
his own. I like to read Montaigne's remarks about doctors, though he
never took a medical degree. I can even enjoy the truth in the sharp
satire of Voltaire on the medical profession. I frequently prefer the
remarks I hear from the pew after the sermon to those I have just been
hearing from the pulpit. There are a great many things which I never
expect to comprehend, but which I desire very much to apprehend. Suppose
that our circle of Teacups were made up of specialists,--experts in
various departments. I should be very willing that each one should have
his innings at the proper time, when the company were ready for him. But
the time is coming when everybody will know something about every thing.
How can one have the illustrated magazines, the "Popular Science
Monthly," the Psychological journals, the theological periodicals, books
on all subjects, forced on his attention, in their own persons, so to
speak, or in the reviews which analyze and pass judgment upon them,
without getting some ideas which belong to many provinces of human
intelligence? The air we breathe is made up of four elements, at least:
oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid gas, and knowledge. There is something
quite delightful to witness in the absorption and devotion of a genuine
specialist. There is a certain sublimity in that picture of the dying
scholar in Browning's "A Grammarian's Funeral:"--
"So with the throttling hands of death at strife,
Ground he at grammar;
Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife;
While he could stammer
He settled Hoti's business--let it be--
Properly based Oun
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,
Dead from the waist down."
A genuine enthusiasm, which will never be satisfied until it has pumped
the well dry at the bottom of which truth is lying, always excites our
interest, if not our admiration.
One of the pleasantest of our American writers, whom we all remember as
Ik Marvel, and greet in his more recent appearance as Donald Grant
Mitchell, speaks of the awkwardness which he feels in offering to the
public a "panoramic view of British writers in these days of
specialists,--when students devote half a lifetime to the analysis of the
works of a single author, and to the proper study of a single period."
He need not have feared that his connected sketches of "English Lands,
Letters and Kings" would be any less welcome because they do not pretend
to fill up all the details or cover all the incidents they hint in vivid
outline. How many of us ever read or ever will read Drayton's
"Poly-Olbion?" Twenty thousand long Alexandrines are filled with
admirable descriptions of scenery, natural productions, and historical
events, but how many of us in these days have time to read and inwardly
digest twenty thousand Alexandrine verses? I fear that the specialist is
apt to hold his intelligent reader or hearer too cheap. So far as I have
observed in medical specialties, what he knows in addition to the
knowledge of the well-taught general practitioner is very largely curious
rather than important. Having exhausted all that is practical, the
specialist is naturally tempted to amuse himself with the natural history
of the organ or function he deals with; to feel as a writing-master does
when he sets a copy,--not content to shape the letters properly, but he
must add flourishes and fancy figures, to let off his spare energy.
I am beginning to be frightened. When I began these papers, my idea was
a very simple and innocent one. Here was a mixed company, of various
conditions, as I have already told my readers, who came together
regularly, and before they were aware of it formed something like a club
or association. As I was the patriarch among them, they gave me the name
some of you may need to be reminded of; for as these reports are
published at intervals, you may not remember the fact that I am what The
Teacups have seen fit to call The Dictator.
Now, what did I expect when I began these papers, and what is it that has
begun to frighten me?
I expected to report grave conversations and light colloquial passages of
arms among the members of the circle. I expected to hear, perhaps to
read, a paper now and then. I expected to have, from time to time, a
poem from some one of The Teacups, for I felt sure there must be among
them one or more poets,--Teacups of the finer and rarer translucent kind
of porcelain, to speak metaphorically.
Out of these conversations and written contributions I thought I might
make up a readable series of papers; a not wholly unwelcome string of
recollections, anticipations, suggestions, too often perhaps repetitions,
that would be to the twilight what my earlier series had been to the
morning.
I hoped also that I should come into personal relations with my old
constituency, if I may call my nearer friends, and those more distant
ones who belong to my reading parish, by that name. It is time that I
should. I received this blessed morning--I am telling the literal
truth--a highly flattering obituary of myself in the shape of an extract
from "Le National" of the 10th of February last. This is a bi-weekly
newspaper, published in French, in the city of Plattsburg, Clinton
County, New York. I am occasionally reminded by my unknown friends that
I must hurry up their autograph, or make haste to copy that poem they
wish to have in the author's own handwriting, or it will be too late; but
I have never before been huddled out of the world in this way. I take
this rather premature obituary as a hint that, unless I come to some
arrangement with my well-meaning but insatiable correspondents, it would
be as well to leave it in type, for I cannot bear much longer the load
they lay upon me. I will explain myself on this point after I have told
my readers what has frightened me.
I am beginning to think this room where we take our tea is more like a
tinder-box than a quiet and safe place for "a party in a parlor." It is
true that there are at least two or three incombustibles at our table,
but it looks to me as if the company might pair off before the season is
over, like the crew of Her Majesty's ship the Mantelpiece,--three or four
weddings clear our whole table of all but one or two of the impregnables.
The poem we found in the sugar-bowl last week first opened my eyes to the
probable state of things. Now, the idea of having to tell a
love-story,--perhaps two or three love-stories,--when I set out with the
intention of repeating instructive, useful, or entertaining discussions,
naturally alarms me. It is quite true that many things which look to me
suspicious may be simply playful. Young people (and we have several such
among The Teacups) are fond of make-believe courting when they cannot
have the real thing,--"flirting," as it used to be practised in the days
of Arcadian innocence, not the more modern and more questionable
recreation which has reached us from the home of the cicisbeo. Whatever
comes of it, I shall tell what I see, and take the consequences.
But I am at this moment going to talk in my own proper person to my own
particular public, which, as I find by my correspondence, is a very
considerable one, and with which I consider myself in exceptionally
pleasant relations.
I have read recently that Mr. Gladstone receives six hundred letters a
day. Perhaps he does not receive six hundred letters every day, but if
he gets anything like half that number daily, what can he do with them?
There was a time when he was said to answer all his correspondents. It
is understood, I think, that he has given up doing so in these later
days.
I do not pretend that I receive six hundred or even sixty letters a day,
but I do receive a good many, and have told the public of the fact from
time to time, under the pressure of their constantly increasing
exertions. As it is extremely onerous, and is soon going to be
impossible, for me to keep up the wide range of correspondence which has
become a large part of my occupation, and tends to absorb all the vital
force which is left me, I wish to enter into a final explanation with the
well-meaning but merciless taskmasters who have now for many years been
levying their daily tax upon me. I have preserved thousands of their
letters, and destroyed a very large number, after answering most of them.
A few interesting chapters might be made out of the letters I have
kept,--not only such as are signed by the names of well-known personages,
but many from unknown friends, of whom I had never heard before and have
never heard since. A great deal of the best writing the languages of the
world have ever known has been committed to leaves that withered out of
sight before a second sunlight had fallen upon them. I have had many
letters I should have liked to give the public, had their nature admitted
of their being offered to the world. What straggles of young ambition,
finding no place for its energies, or feeling its incapacity to reach the
ideal towards which it was striving! What longings of disappointed,
defeated fellow-mortals, trying to find a new home for themselves in the
heart of one whom they have amiably idealized! And oh, what hopeless
efforts of mediocrities and inferiorities, believing in themselves as
superiorities, and stumbling on through limping disappointments to
prostrate failure! Poverty comes pleading, not for charity, for the most
part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares.
The unreadable author particularly requests us to make a critical
examination of his book, and report to him whatever may be our
verdict,--as if he wanted anything but our praise, and that very often to
be used in his publisher's advertisements.
But what does not one have to submit to who has become the martyr--the
Saint Sebastian--of a literary correspondence! I will not dwell on the
possible impression produced on a sensitive nature by reading one's own
premature obituary, as I have told you has been my recent experience. I
will not stop to think whether the urgent request for an autograph by
return post, in view of the possible contingencies which might render it
the last one was ever to write, is pleasing or not. At threescore and
twenty one must expect such hints of what is like to happen before long.
I suppose, if some near friend were to watch one who was looking over
such a pressing letter, he might possibly see a slight shadow flit over
the reader's features, and some such dialogue might follow as that
between Othello and Iago, after "this honest creature" has been giving
breath to his suspicions about Desdemona:
"I see this hath a little dash'd your spirits.
Not a jot, not a jot.
.............
"My lord, I see you're moved."
And a little later the reader might, like Othello, complain,
"I have a pain upon my forehead here."
Nothing more likely. But, for myself, I have grown callous to all such
allusions. The repetition of the Scriptural phrase for the natural term
of life is so frequent that it wears out one's sensibilities.
But how many charming and refreshing letters I have received! How often
I have felt their encouragement in moments of doubt and depression, such
as the happiest temperaments must sometimes experience!
If the time comes when to answer all my kind unknown friends, even by
dictation, is impossible, or more than I feel equal to, I wish to refer
any of those who may feel disappointed at not receiving an answer to the
following general acknowledgments:
I. I am always grateful for any attention which shows me that I am
kindly remembered.--II. Your pleasant message has been read to me, and
has been thankfully listened to.--III. Your book (your essay) (your
poem) has reached me safely, and has received all the respectful
attention to which it seemed entitled. It would take more than all the
time I have at my disposal to read all the printed matter and all the
manuscripts which are sent to me, and you would not ask me to attempt the
impossible. You will not, therefore, expect me to express a critical
opinion of your work.--IV. I am deeply sensible to your expressions of
personal attachment to me as the author of certain writings which have
brought me very near to you, in virtue of some affinity in our ways of
thought and moods of feeling. Although I cannot keep up correspondences
with many of my readers who seem to be thoroughly congenial with myself,
let them be assured that their letters have been read or heard with
peculiar gratification, and are preserved as precious treasures.
I trust that after this notice no correspondent will be surprised to find
his or her letter thus answered by anticipation; and that if one of the
above formulae is the only answer he receives, the unknown friend will
remember that he or she is one of a great many whose incessant demands
have entirely outrun my power of answering them as fully as the
applicants might wish and perhaps expect.
I could make a very interesting volume of the letters I have received
from correspondents unknown to the world of authorship, but writing from
an instinctive impulse, which many of them say they have long felt and
resisted. One must not allow himself to be flattered into an
overestimate of his powers because he gets many letters expressing a
peculiar attraction towards his books, and a preference of them to those
with which he would not have dared to compare his own. Still, if the
homo unius libri--the man of one book--choose to select one of our own
writing as his favorite volume, it means something,--not much, perhaps;
but if one has unlocked the door to the secret entrance of one heart, it
is not unlikely that his key may fit the locks of others. What if nature
has lent him a master key? He has found the wards and slid back the bolt
of one lock; perhaps he may have learned the secret of others. One
success is an encouragement to try again. Let the writer of a truly
loving letter, such as greets one from time to time, remember that,
though he never hears a word from it, it may prove one of the best
rewards of an anxious and laborious past, and the stimulus of a still
aspiring future.
Among the letters I have recently received, none is more interesting than
the following. The story of Helen Keller, who wrote it, is told in the
well-known illustrated magazine called "The Wide Awake," in the number
for July, 1888. For the account of this little girl, now between nine
and ten years old, and other letters of her writing, I must refer to the
article I have mentioned. It is enough to say that she is deaf and dumb
and totally blind. She was seven years old when her teacher, Miss
Sullivan, under the direction of Mr. Anagnos, at the Blind Asylum at
South Boston, began her education. A child fuller of life and happiness
it would be hard to find. It seems as if her soul was flooded with light
and filled with music that had found entrance to it through avenues
closed to other mortals. It is hard to understand how she has learned to
deal with abstract ideas, and so far to supplement the blanks left by the
senses of sight and hearing that one would hardly think of her as wanting
in any human faculty. Remember Milton's pathetic picture of himself,
suffering from only one of poor little Helen's deprivations:
"Not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."
Surely for this loving and lovely child does
"the celestial Light
Shine inward."
Anthropologist, metaphysician, most of all theologian, here is a lesson
which can teach you much that you will not find in your primers and
catechisms. Why should I call her "poor little Helen"? Where can you
find a happier child?
SOUTH BOSTON, MASS., March 1, 1890.
DEAR KIND POET,--I have thought of you many times since that bright
Sunday when I bade you goodbye, and I am going to write you a letter
because I love you. I am sorry that you have no little children to play
with sometimes, but I think you are very happy with your books, and your
many, many friends. On Washington's Birthday a great many people came
here to see the little blind children, and I read for them from your
poems, and showed them some beautiful shells which came from a little
island near Palos. I am reading a very sad story called "Little Jakey."
Jakey was the sweetest little fellow you can imagine, but he was poor and
blind. I used to think, when I was small and before I could read, that
everybody was always happy, and at first it made me very sad to know
about pain and great sorrow; but now I know that we could never learn to
be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world. I am studying
about insects in Zoology, and I have learned many things about
butterflies. They do not make honey for us, like the bees, but many of
them are as beautiful as the flowers they light upon, and they always
delight the hearts of little children. They live a gay life, flitting
from flower to flower, sipping the drops of honey-dew, without a thought
for the morrow. They are just like little boys and girls when they
forget books and studies, and run away to the woods and the fields to
gather wild-flowers, or wade in the ponds for fragrant lilies, happy in
the bright sunshine. If my little sister comes to Boston next June, will
you let me bring her to see you? She is a lovely baby and I am sure you
will love [her]. Now I must tell my gentle poet good-bye, for I have a
letter to write home before I go to bed. From your loving little friend,
HELEN A. KELLER.
The reading of this letter made many eyes glisten, and a dead silence
hushed the whole circle. All at once Delilah, our pretty table-maid,
forgot her place,--what business had she to be listening to our
conversation and reading?--and began sobbing, just as if she had been a
lady. She could n't help it, she explained afterwards,--she had a little
blind sister at the asylum, who had told her about Helen's reading to the
children.
It was very awkward, this breaking-down of our pretty Delilah, for one
girl crying will sometimes set off a whole row of others,--it is as
hazardous as lighting one cracker in a bunch. The two Annexes hurried
out their pocket-handkerchiefs, and I almost expected a semi-hysteric
cataclysm. At this critical moment Number Five called Delilah to her,
looked into her face with those calm eyes of hers, and spoke a few soft
words. Was Number Five forgetful, too? Did she not remember the
difference of their position? I suppose so. But she quieted the poor
handmaiden as simply and easily as a nursing mother quiets her unweaned
baby. Why are we not all in love with Number Five? Perhaps we are. At
any rate, I suspect the Professor. When we all get quiet, I will touch
him up about that visit she promised to make to his laboratory.
I got a chance at last to speak privately with him.
"Did Number Five go to meet you in your laboratory, as she talked of
doing?"
"Oh, yes, of course she did,--why, she said she would!"
"Oh, to be sure. Do tell me what she wanted in your laboratory."
"She wanted me to burn a diamond for her."
"Burn a diamond! What was that for? Because Cleopatra swallowed a
pearl?"
"No, nothing of that kind. It was a small stone, and had a flaw in it.
Number Five said she did n't want a diamond with a flaw in it, and that
she did want to see how a diamond would burn."
"Was that all that happened?"
"That was all. She brought the two Annexes with her, and I gave my three
visitors a lecture on carbon, which they seemed to enjoy very much."
I looked steadily in the Professor's face during the reading of the
following poem. I saw no questionable look upon it,--but he has a
remarkable command of his features. Number Five read it with a certain
archness of expression, as if she saw all its meaning, which I think some
of the company did not quite take in. They said they must read it slowly
and carefully. Somehow, "I like you" and "I love you" got a little
mixed, as they heard it. It was not Number Five's fault, for she read it
beautifully, as we all agreed, and as I knew she would when I handed it
to her.
I LIKE YOU AND I LOVE YOU.
I LIKE YOU met I LOVE YOU, face to face;
The path was narrow, and they could not pass.
I LIKE YOU smiled; I LOVE YOU cried, Alas!
And so they halted for a little space.
"Turn thou and go before," I LOVE YOU said,
"Down the green pathway, bright with many a flower
Deep in the valley, lo! my bridal bower
Awaits thee." But I LIKE YOU shook his head.
Then while they lingered on the span-wide shelf
That shaped a pathway round the rocky ledge,
I LIKE YOU bared his icy dagger's edge,
And first he slew I LOVE YOU,--then himself.
VII
There is no use in burdening my table with those letters of inquiry as to
where our meetings are held, and what are the names of the persons
designated by numbers, or spoken of under the titles of the Professor,
the Tutor, and so forth. It is enough that you are aware who I am, and
that I am known at the tea-table as The Dictator. Theatrical "asides" are
apt to be whispered in a pretty loud voice, and the persons who ought not
to have any idea of what is said are expected to be reasonably hard of
bearing. If I named all The Teacups, some of them might be offended. If
any of my readers happen to be able to identify any one Teacup by some
accidental circumstance,--say, for instance, Number Five, by the incident
of her burning the diamond,--I hope they will keep quiet about it.
Number Five does n't want to be pointed out in the street as the
extravagant person who makes use of such expensive fuel, for the story
would soon grow to a statement that she always uses diamonds, instead of
cheaper forms of carbon, to heat her coffee with. So with other members
of the circle. The "Cracked Teacup," Number Seven, would not, perhaps,
be pleased to recognize himself under that title. I repeat it,
therefore, Do not try to identify the individual Teacups. You will not
get them right; or, if you do, you may too probably make trouble. How is
it possible that I can keep up my freedom of intercourse with you all if
you insist on bellowing my "asides" through a speaking-trumpet? Besides,
you cannot have failed to see that there are strong symptoms of the
springing up of delicate relations between some of our number. I told
you how it would be. It did not require a prophet to foresee that the
saucy intruder who, as Mr. Willis wrote, and the dear dead girls used to
sing, in our young days,
"Taketh every form of air,
And every shape of earth,
And comes unbidden everywhere,
Like thought's mysterious birth,"
would pop his little curly head up between one or more pairs of Teacups.
If you will stop these questions, then, I will go on with my reports of
what was said and done at our meetings over the teacups.
Of all things beautiful in this fair world, there is nothing so
enchanting to look upon, to dream about, as the first opening of the
flower of young love. How closely the calyx has hidden the glowing
leaves in its quiet green mantle! Side by side, two buds have been
tossing jauntily in the breeze, often brought very near to each other,
sometimes touching for a moment, with a secret thrill in their
close-folded heart-leaves, it may be, but still the cool green sepals
shutting tight over the burning secret within. All at once a morning ray
touches one of the two buds, and the point of a blushing petal betrays
the imprisoned and swelling blossom.
--Oh, no, I did not promise a love-story. There may be a little
sentiment now and then, but these papers are devoted chiefly to the
opinions, prejudices, fancies, whims, of myself, The Dictator, and others
of The Teacups who have talked or written for the general benefit of the
company.
Here are some of the remarks I made the other evening on the subject of
Intellectual Over-Feeding and its consequence, Mental Dyspepsia. There is
something positively appalling in the amount of printed matter yearly,
monthly, weekly, daily, secreted by that great gland of the civilized
organism, the press. I need not dilate upon this point, for it is
brought home to every one of you who ever looks into a bookstore or a
public library. So large is the variety of literary products continually
coming forward, forced upon the attention of the reader by stimulating
and suggestive titles, commended to his notice by famous names, recasting
old subjects and developing and illustrating new ones, that the mind is
liable to be urged into a kind of unnatural hunger, leading to a
repletion which is often followed by disgust and disturbed nervous
conditions as its natural consequence.
It has long been a favorite rule with me, a rule which I have never lost
sight of, however imperfectly I have carried it out: Try to know enough
of a wide range of subjects to profit by the conversation of intelligent
persons of different callings and various intellectual gifts and
acquisitions. The cynic will paraphrase this into a shorter formula: Get
a smattering in every sort of knowledge. I must therefore add a second
piece of advice: Learn to hold as of small account the comments of the
cynic. He is often amusing, sometimes really witty, occasionally,
without meaning it, instructive; but his talk is to profitable
conversation what the stone is to the pulp of the peach, what the cob is
to the kernels on an ear of Indian corn. Once more: Do not be bullied out
of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant, with
all his knowledge and valuable qualities, and will "cavil on the ninth
part of a hair," if it will give him a chance to show off his idle
erudition.
I saw attributed to me, the other day, the saying, "Know something about
everything, and everything about something." I am afraid it does not
belong to me, but I will treat it as I used to treat a stray boat which
came through my meadow, floating down the Housatonic,--get hold of it and
draw it ashore, and hold on to it until the owner turns up. If this
precept is used discreetly, it is very serviceable; but it is as well to
recognize the fact that you cannot know something about everything in
days like these of intellectual activity, of literary and scientific
production. We all feel this. It makes us nervous to see the shelves of
new books, many of which we feel as if we ought to read, and some among
them to study. We must adopt some principle of selection among the books
outside of any particular branch which we may have selected for study. I
have often been asked what books I would recommend for a course of
reading. I have always answered that I had a great deal rather take
advice than give it. Fortunately, a number of scholars have furnished
lists of books to which the inquirer may be directed. But the worst of
it is that each student is in need of a little library specially adapted
to his wants. Here is a young man writing to me from a Western college,
and wants me to send him a list of the books which I think would be most
useful to him. He does not send me his intellectual measurements, and he
might as well have sent to a Boston tailor for a coat, without any hint
of his dimensions in length, breadth, and thickness.
But instead of laying down rules for reading, and furnishing lists of the
books which should be read in order, I will undertake the much humbler
task of giving a little quasi-medical advice to persons, young or old,
suffering from book-hunger, book-surfeit, book-nervousness,
book-indigestion, book-nausea, and all other maladies which, directly or
indirectly, may be traced to books, and to which I could give Greek or
Latin names if I thought it worth while.
I have a picture hanging in my library, a lithograph, of which many of my
readers may have seen copies. It represents a gray-haired old book-lover
at the top of a long flight of steps. He finds himself in clover, so to
speak, among rare old editions, books he has longed to look upon and
never seen before, rarities, precious old volumes, incunabula,
cradle-books, printed while the art was in its infancy,--its glorious
infancy, for it was born a giant. The old bookworm is so intoxicated
with the sight and handling of the priceless treasures that he cannot
bear to put one of the volumes back after he has taken it from the shelf.
So there he stands,--one book open in his hands, a volume under each arm,
and one or more between his legs,--loaded with as many as he can possibly
hold at the same time.
Now, that is just the way in which the extreme form of book-hunger shows
itself in the reader whose appetite has become over-developed. He wants
to read so many books that he over-crams himself with the crude materials
of knowledge, which become knowledge only when the mental digestion has
time to assimilate them. I never can go into that famous "Corner
Bookstore" and look over the new books in the row before me, as I enter
the door, without seeing half a dozen which I want to read, or at least
to know something about. I cannot empty my purse of its contents, and
crowd my bookshelves with all those volumes. The titles of many of them
interest me. I look into one or two, perhaps. I have sometimes picked
up a line or a sentence, in these momentary glances between the uncut
leaves of a new book, which I have never forgotten. As a trivial but
bona fide example, one day I opened a book on duelling. I remember only
these words: "Conservons-la, cette noble institution." I had never
before seen duelling called a noble institution, and I wish I had taken
the name of the book. Book-tasting is not necessarily profitless, but it
is very stimulating, and makes one hungry for more than he needs for the
nourishment of his thinking-marrow. To feed this insatiable hunger, the
abstracts, the reviews, do their best. But these, again, have grown so
numerous and so crowded with matter that it is hard to find time to
master their contents. We are accustomed, therefore, to look for
analyses of these periodicals, and at last we have placed before us a
formidable-looking monthly, "The Review of Reviews." After the analyses
comes the newspaper notice; and there is still room for the epigram,
which sometimes makes short work with all that has gone before on the
same subject.
It is just as well to recognize the fact that if one should read day and
night, confining himself to his own language, he could not pretend to
keep up with the press. He might as well try to race with a locomotive.
The first discipline, therefore, is that of despair. If you could stick
to your reading day and night for fifty years, what a learned idiot you
would become long before the half-century was over! Well, then, there is
no use in gorging one's self with knowledge, and no need of self-reproach
because one is content to remain more or less ignorant of many things
which interest his fellow-creatures. We gain a good deal of knowledge
through the atmosphere; we learn a great deal by accidental hearsay,
provided we have the mordant in our own consciousness which makes the
wise remark, the significant fact, the instructive incident, take hold
upon it. After the stage of despair comes the period of consolation. We
soon find that we are not so much worse off than most of our neighbors as
we supposed. The fractional value of the wisest shows a small numerator
divided by an infinite denominator of knowledge.
I made some explanations to The Teacups, the other evening, which they
received very intelligently and graciously, as I have no doubt the
readers of these reports of mine will receive them. If the reader will
turn back to the end of the fourth number of these papers, he will find
certain lines entitled, "Cacoethes Scribendi." They were said to have
been taken from the usual receptacle of the verses which are contributed
by The Teacups, and, though the fact was not mentioned, were of my own
composition. I found them in manuscript in my drawer, and as my subject
had naturally suggested the train of thought they carried out into
extravagance, I printed them. At the same time they sounded very
natural, as we say, and I felt as if I had published them somewhere or
other before; but I could find no evidence of it, and so I ventured to
have them put in type.
And here I wish to take breath for a short, separate paragraph. I have
often felt, after writing a line which pleased me more than common, that
it was not new, and perhaps was not my own. I have very rarely, however,
found such a coincidence in ideas or expression as would be enough to
justify an accusation of unconscious plagiarism,--conscious plagiarism is
not my particular failing. I therefore say my say, set down my thought,
print my line, and do not heed the suspicion that I may not be as
original as I supposed, in the passage I have been writing. My
experience may be worth something to a modest young writer, and so I have
interrupted what I was about to say by intercalating this paragraph.
In this instance my telltale suspicion had not been at fault. I had
printed those same lines, years ago, in "The Contributors' Club," to
which I have rarely sent any of my prose or verse. Nobody but the editor
has noticed the fact, so far as I know. This is consoling, or
mortifying, I hardly know which. I suppose one has a right to plagiarize
from himself, but he does not want to present his work as fresh from the
workshop when it has been long standing in his neighbor's shop-window.
But I have just received a letter from a brother of the late Henry Howard
Brownell, the poet of the Bay Fight and the River Fight, in which he
quotes a passage from an old book, "A Heroine, Adventures of Cherubina,"
which might well have suggested my own lines, if I had ever seen it. I
have not the slightest recollection of the book or the passage. I think
its liveliness and "local color" will make it please the reader, as it
pleases me, more than my own more prosaic extravagances:
LINES TO A PRETTY LITTLE MAID OF MAMMA'S.
"If Black Sea, Red Sea, White Sea, ran
One tide of ink to Ispahan,
If all the geese in Lincoln fens
Produced spontaneous well-made pens,
If Holland old and Holland new
One wondrous sheet of paper grew,
And could I sing but half the grace
Of half a freckle in thy face,
Each syllable I wrote would reach
From Inverness to Bognor's beach,
Each hair-stroke be a river Rhine,
Each verse an equinoctial line!"
"The immediate dismissal of the 'little maid' was the consequence."
I may as well say that our Delilah was not in the room when the last
sentence was read.
Readers must be either very good-natured or very careless. I have laid
myself open to criticism by more than one piece of negligence, which has
been passed over without invidious comment by the readers of my papers.
How could I, for instance, have written in my original "copy" for the
printer about the fisherman baiting his hook with a giant's tail instead
of a dragon's? It is the automatic fellow,--Me--Number-Two of our dual
personality,--who does these things, who forgets the message
Me--Number--One sends down to him from the cerebral convolutions, and
substitutes a wrong word for the right one. I suppose Me--Number--Two
will "sass back," and swear that "giant's" was the message which came
down from headquarters. He is always doing the wrong thing and excusing
himself. Who blows out the gas instead of shutting it off? Who puts the
key in the desk and fastens it tight with the spring lock? Do you mean
to say that the upper Me, the Me of the true thinking-marrow, the
convolutions of the brain, does not know better? Of course he does, and
Me-Number-Two is a careless servant, who remembers some old direction,
and follows that instead of the one just given.
Number Seven demurred to this, and I am not sure that he is wrong in so
doing. He maintains that the automatic fellow always does just what he
is told to do. Number Five is disposed to agree with him. We will talk
over the question.
But come, now, why should not a giant have a tail as well as a dragon?
Linnaeus admitted the homo caudatus into his anthropological catalogue.
The human embryo has a very well marked caudal appendage; that is, the
vertebral column appears prolonged, just as it is in a young quadruped.
During the late session of the Medical Congress at Washington, my friend
Dr. Priestley, a distinguished London physician, of the highest character
and standing, showed me the photograph of a small boy, some three or four
years old, who had a very respectable little tail, which would have
passed muster on a pig, and would have made a frog or a toad ashamed of
himself. I have never heard what became of the little boy, nor have I
looked in the books or journals to find out if there are similar cases on
record, but I have no doubt that there are others. And if boys may have
this additional ornament to their vertebral columns, why not men? And if
men, why not giants? So I may not have made a very bad blunder, after
all, and my reader has learned something about the homo caudatus as
spoken of by Linnxus, and as shown me in photograph by Dr. Priestley.
This child is a candidate for the vacant place of Missing Link.
In accounting for the blunders, and even gross blunders, which, sooner or
later, one who writes much is pretty sure to commit, I must not forget
the part played by the blind spot or idiotic area in the brain, which I
have already described.
The most knowing persons we meet with are sometimes at fault. Nova
onania possumus omnes is not a new nor profound axiom, but it is well to
remember it as a counterpoise to that other truly American saying of the
late Mr. Samuel Patch, "Some things can be done as well as others." Yes,
some things, but not all things. We all know men and women who hate to
admit their ignorance of anything. Like Talkative in "Pilgrim's
Progress," they are ready to converse of "things heavenly or things
earthly; things moral or things evangelical; things sacred or things
profane; things past or things to come; things foreign or things at home;
things more essential or things circumstantial."
Talkative is apt to be a shallow fellow, and to say foolish things about
matters he only half understands, and yet he has his place in society.
The specialists would grow to be intolerable, were they not counterpoised
to some degree by the people of general intelligence. The man who knows
too much about one particular subject is liable to become a terrible
social infliction. Some of the worst bores (to use plain language) we
ever meet with are recognized as experts of high grade in their
respective departments. Beware of making so much as a pinhole in the dam
that holds back their knowledge. They ride their hobbies without bit or
bridle. A poet on Pegasus, reciting his own verses, is hardly more to be
dreaded than a mounted specialist.
One of the best offices which women perform for men is that of tasting
books for them. They may or may not be profound students,--some of them
are; but we do not expect to meet women like Mrs. Somerville, or Caroline
Herschel, or Maria Mitchell at every dinner-table or afternoon tea. But
give your elect lady a pile of books to look over for you, and she will
tell you what they have for her and for you in less time than you would
have wasted in stupefying yourself over a single volume.
One of the encouraging signs of the times is the condensed and
abbreviated form in which knowledge is presented to the general reader.
The short biographies of historic personages, of which within the past
few years many have been published, have been a great relief to the large
class of readers who want to know something, but not too much, about
them.
What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling
that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only
long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred? Many readers remember
what old Rogers, the poet, said:
"When I hear a new book talked about or have it pressed upon me, I read
an old one."
Happy the man who finds his rest in the pages of some favorite classic!
I know no reader more to be envied than that friend of mine who for many
years has given his days and nights to the loving study of Horace. After
a certain period in life, it is always with an effort that we admit a new
author into the inner circle of our intimates. The Parisian omnibuses,
as I remember them half a century ago,--they may still keep to the same
habit, for aught that I know,--used to put up the sign "Complet" as soon
as they were full. Our public conveyances are never full until the
natural atmospheric pressure of sixteen pounds to the square inch is
doubled, in the close packing of the human sardines that fill the
all-accommodating vehicles. A new-comer, however well mannered and well
dressed, is not very welcome under these circumstances. In the same way,
our tables are full of books half-read and books we feel that we must
read. And here come in two thick volumes, with uncut leaves, in small
type, with many pages, and many lines to a page,--a book that must be
read and ought to be read at once. What a relief to hand it over to the
lovely keeper of your literary conscience, who will tell you all that you
will most care to know about it, and leave you free to plunge into your
beloved volume, in which you are ever finding new beauties, and from
which you rise refreshed, as if you had just come from the cool waters of
Hippocrene! The stream of modern literature represented by the books and
periodicals on the crowded counters is a turbulent and clamorous torrent,
dashing along among the rocks of criticism, over the pebbles of the
world's daily events; trying to make itself seen and heard amidst the
hoarse cries of the politicians and the rumbling wheels of traffic. The
classic is a still lakelet, a mountain tarn, fed by springs that never
fail, its surface never ruffled by storms,--always the same, always
smiling a welcome to its visitor. Such is Horace to my friend. To his
eye "Lydia, dic per omnes" is as familiar as "Pater noster qui es in
caelis" to that of a pious Catholic. "Integer vitae," which he has put
into manly English, his Horace opens to as Watt's hymn-book opens to
"From all that dwell below the skies." The more he reads, the more he
studies his author, the richer are the treasures he finds. And what
Horace is to him, Homer, or Virgil, or Dante is to many a quiet reader,
sick to death of the unending train of bookmakers.
I have some curious books in my library, a few of which I should like to
say something about to The Teacups, when they have no more immediately
pressing subjects before them. A library of a few thousand volumes ought
always to have some books in it which the owner almost never opens, yet
with whose backs he is so well acquainted that he feels as if he knew
something of their contents. They are like those persons whom we meet in
our daily walks, with whose faces and figures, whose summer and winter
garments, whose walking-sticks and umbrellas even, we feel acquainted,
and yet whose names, whose business, whose residences, we know nothing
about. Some of these books are so formidable in their dimensions, so
rusty and crabbed in their aspect, that it takes a considerable amount of
courage to attack them.
I will ask Delilah to bring down from my library a very thick, stout
volume, bound in parchment, and standing on the lower shelf, next the
fireplace. The pretty handmaid knows my books almost as if she were my
librarian, and I don't doubt she would have found it if I had given only
the name on the back.
Delilah returned presently, with the heavy quarto in her arms. It was a
pleasing sight,--the old book in the embrace of the fresh young damsel.
I felt, on looking at them, as I did when I followed the slip of a girl
who conducted us in the Temple, that ancient building in the heart of
London. The long-enduring monuments of the dead do so mock the fleeting
presence of the living!
Is n't this book enough to scare any of you? I said, as Delilah dumped
it down upon the table. The teacups jumped from their saucers as it
thumped on the board. Danielis Georgii Morhofii Polyhistor, Literarius,
Philosophicus et Poeticus. Lubecae MDCCXXXIII. Perhaps I should not
have ventured to ask you to look at this old volume, if it had not been
for the fact that Dr. Johnson mentions Morohof as the author to whom he
was specially indebted.--more, I think, than to any other. It is a grand
old encyclopaedic summary of all the author knew about pretty nearly
everything, full of curious interest, but so strangely mediaeval, so
utterly antiquated in most departments of knowledge, that it is hard to
believe the volume came from the press at a time when persons whom I well
remember were living. Is it possible that the books which have been for
me what Morhof was for Dr. Johnson can look like that to the student of
the year 1990?
Morhof was a believer in magic and the transmutation of metals. There was
always something fascinating to me in the old books of alchemy. I have
felt that the poetry of science lost its wings when the last powder of
projection had been cast into the crucible, and the fire of the last
transmutation furnace went out. Perhaps I am wrong in implying that
alchemy is an extinct folly. It existed in New England's early days, as
we learn from the Winthrop papers, and I see no reason why gold-making
should not have its votaries as well as other popular delusions.
Among the essays of Morhof is one on the "Paradoxes of the Senses." That
title brought to mind the recollection of another work I have been
meaning to say something about, at some time when you were in the
listening mood. The book I refer to is "A Budget of Paradoxes," by
Augustus De Morgan. De Morgan is well remembered as a very distinguished
mathematician, whose works have kept his name in high honor to the
present time. The book I am speaking of was published by his widow, and
is largely made up of letters received by him and his comments upon them.
Few persons ever read it through. Few intelligent readers ever took it
up and laid it down without taking a long draught of its singular and
interesting contents. The letters are mostly from that class of persons
whom we call "cranks," in our familiar language.
At this point Number Seven interrupted me by calling out, "Give us some
of those cranks' letters. A crank is a man who does his own thinking. I
had a relation who was called a crank. I believe I have been spoken of
as one myself. That is what you have to expect if you invent anything
that puts an old machine out of fashion, or solve a problem that has
puzzled all the world up to your time. There never was a religion
founded but its Messiah was called a crank. There never was an idea
started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its
originator was spoken of as a crank. Do you want to know why that name
is given to the men who do most for the world's progress? I will tell
you. It is because cranks make all the wheels in all the machinery of
the world go round. What would a steam-engine be without a crank? I
suppose the first fool that looked on the first crank that was ever made
asked what that crooked, queer-looking thing was good for. When the
wheels got moving he found out. Tell us something about that book which
has so much to say concerning cranks."
Hereupon I requested Delilah to carry back Morhof, and replace him in the
wide gap he had left in the bookshelf. She was then to find and bring
down the volume I had been speaking of.
Delilah took the wisdom of the seventeenth century in her arms, and
departed on her errand. The book she brought down was given me some
years ago by a gentleman who had sagaciously foreseen that it was just
one of those works which I might hesitate about buying, but should be
well pleased to own. He guessed well; the book has been a great source
of instruction and entertainment to me. I wonder that so much time and
cost should have been expended upon a work which might have borne a title
like the Encomium Moriae of Erasmus; and yet it is such a wonderful
museum of the productions of the squinting brains belonging to the class
of persons commonly known as cranks that we could hardly spare one of its
five hundred octavo pages.
Those of us who are in the habit of receiving letters from all sorts of
would-be-literary people--letters of inquiry, many of them with reference
to matters we are supposed to understand--can readily see how it was that
Mr. De Morgan, never too busy to be good-natured with the people who
pestered--or amused-him with their queer fancies, received such a number
of letters from persons who thought they had made great discoveries, from
those who felt that they and their inventions and contrivances had been
overlooked, and who sought in his large charity of disposition and great
receptiveness a balm for their wounded feelings and a ray of hope for
their darkened prospects.
The book before us is made up from papers published in "The Athenaeum,"
with additions by the author. Soon after opening it we come to names
with which we are familiar, the first of these, that of Cornelius
Agrippa, being connected with the occult and mystic doctrines dealt with
by many of De Morgan's correspondents. But the name most likely to
arrest us is that of Giordano Bruno, the same philosopher, heretic, and
martyr whose statue has recently been erected in Rome, to the great
horror of the Pope and his prelates in the Old World and in the New. De
Morgan's pithy account of him will interest the company: "Giordano Bruno
was all paradox. He was, as has been said, a vorticist before Descartes,
an optimist before Leibnitz, a Copernican before Galileo. It would be
easy to collect a hundred strange opinions of his. He was born about
1550, and was roasted alive at Rome, February 17, 1600, for the
maintenance and defence of the Holy Church, and the rights and liberties
of the same."
Number Seven could not contain himself when the reading had reached this
point. He rose from his chair, and tinkled his spoon against the side of
his teacup. It may have been a fancy, but I thought it returned a sound
which Mr. Richard Briggs would have recognized as implying an organic
defect. But Number Seven did not seem to notice it, or, if he did, to
mind it.
"Why did n't we all have a chance to help erect that statue?" he cried.
"A murdered heretic at the beginning of the seventeenth century, a hero
of knowledge in the nineteenth,--I drink to the memory of the roasted
crank, Giordano Bruno!"
Number Seven lifted his teacup to his lips, and most of us followed his
example.
After this outburst of emotion and eloquence had subsided, and the
teaspoons lay quietly in their saucers, I went on with my extract from
the book I had in hand.
I think, I said, that the passage which follows will be new and
instructive to most of the company. De Morgan's interpretation of the
cabalistic sentence, made up as you will find it, is about as ingenious a
piece of fanciful exposition as you will be likely to meet with anywhere
in any book, new or old. I am the more willing to mention it as it
suggests a puzzle which some of the company may like to work upon.
Observe the character and position of the two distinguished philosophers
who did not think their time thrown away in laboring at this seemingly
puerile task.
"There is a kind of Cabbala Alphabetica which the investigators of the
numerals in words would do well to take up; it is the formation of
sentences which contain all the letters of the alphabet, and each only
once. No one has done it with v and j treated as consonants; but you and
I can do it. Dr. Whewell and I amused ourselves some years ago with
attempts. He could not make sense, though he joined words he gave me
Phiz, styx, wrong, buck, flame, quiz.
"I gave him the following, which he agreed was 'admirable sense,'--I
certainly think the words would never have come together except in this
way: I quartz pyx who fling muck beds. I long thought that no human
being could say this under any circumstances. At last I happened to be
reading a religious writer,--as he thought himself,--who threw aspersions
on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday came into my head; this
fellow flings muck beds; he must be a quartz pyx. And then I remembered
that a pyx is a sacred vessel, and quartz is a hard stone, as hard as the
heart of a religious foe-curser. So that the line is the motto of the
ferocious sectarian who turns his religious vessels into mud-holders, for
the benefit of those who will not see what he sees."
"There are several other sentences given, in which all the letters
(except v and j as consonants) are employed, of which the following is
the best: Get nymph; quiz sad brow; fix luck,--which in more sober
English would be, Marry; be cheerful; watch your business. There is more
edification, more religion, in this than in all the 666 interpretations
put together."
There is something very pleasant in the thought of these two sages
playing at jackstraws with the letters of the alphabet. The task which
De Morgan and Dr. Whewell, "the omniscient," set themselves would not be
unworthy of our own ingenious scholars, and it might be worth while for
some one of our popular periodicals to offer a prize for the best
sentence using up the whole alphabet, under the same conditions as those
submitted to by our two philosophers.
This whole book of De Morgan's seems to me full of instruction. There is
too much of it, no doubt; yet one can put up with the redundancy for the
sake of the multiplicity of shades of credulity and self-deception it
displays in broad daylight. I suspect many of us are conscious of a
second personality in our complex nature, which has many traits
resembling those found in the writers of the letters addressed to Mr. De
Horgan.
I have not ventured very often nor very deeply into the field of
metaphysics, but if I were disposed to make any claim in that direction,
it would be the recognition of the squinting brain, the introduction of
the term "cerebricity" corresponding to electricity, the idiotic area in
the brain or thinking-marrow, and my studies of the second member in the
partnership of I-My-Self & Co. I add the Co. with especial reference to
a very interesting article in a late Scribner, by my friend Mr. William
James. In this article the reader will find a full exposition of the
doctrine of plural personality illustrated by striking cases. I have
long ago noticed and referred to the fact of the stratification of the
currents of thought in three layers, one over the other. I have
recognized that where there are two individuals talking together there
are really six personalities engaged in the conversation. But the
distinct, separable, independent individualities, taking up conscious
life one after the other, are brought out by Mr. James and the
authorities to which he refers as I have not elsewhere seen them
developed.
Whether we shall ever find the exact position of the idiotic centre or
area in the brain (if such a spot exists) is uncertain. We know exactly
where the blind spot of the eye is situated, and can demonstrate it
anatomically and physiologically. But we have only analogy to lead us to
infer the possible or even probable existence of an insensible spot in
the thinking-centre. If there is a focal point where consciousness is at
its highest development, it would not be strange if near by there should
prove to be an anaesthetic district or limited space where no report from
the senses was intelligently interpreted. But all this is mere
hypothesis.
Notwithstanding the fact that I am nominally the head personage of the
circle of Teacups, I do not pretend or wish to deny that we all look to
Number Five as our chief adviser in all the literary questions that come
before us. She reads more and better than any of us. She is always
ready to welcome the first sign of genius, or of talent which approaches
genius. She makes short work with all the pretenders whose only excuse
for appealing to the public is that they "want to be famous." She is one
of the very few persons to whom I am willing to read any one of my own
productions while it is yet in manuscript, unpublished. I know she is
disposed to make more of it than it deserves; but, on the other hand,
there are degrees in her scale of judgment, and I can distinguish very
easily what delights her from what pleases only, or is, except for her
kindly feeling to the writer, indifferent, or open to severe comment.
What is curious is that she seems to have no literary aspirations, no
desire to be known as a writer. Yet Number Five has more esprit, more
sparkle, more sense in her talk, than many a famous authoress from whom
we should expect brilliant conversation.
There are mysteries about Number Five. I am not going to describe her
personally. Whether she belongs naturally among the bright young people,
or in the company of the maturer persons, who have had a good deal of
experience of the world, and have reached the wisdom of the riper decades
without losing the graces of the earlier ones, it would be hard to say.
The men and women, young and old, who throng about her forget their own
ages. "There is no such thing as time in her presence," said the
Professor, the other day, in speaking of her. Whether the Professor is in
love with her or not is more than I can say, but I am sure that he goes
to her for literary sympathy and counsel, just as I do. The reader may
remember what Number Five said about the possibility of her getting a
sprained ankle, and her asking the young Doctor whether he felt equal to
taking charge of her if she did. I would not for the world insinuate
that he wishes she would slip and twist her foot a little,--just a
little, you know, but so that it would have to be laid on a pillow in a
chair, and inspected, and bandaged, and delicately manipulated. There
was a banana-skin which she might naturally have trodden on, in her way
to the tea-table. Nobody can suppose that it was there except by the
most innocent of accidents. There are people who will suspect everybody.
The idea of the Doctor's putting that banana-skin there! People love to
talk in that silly way about doctors.
Number Five had promised to read us a narrative which she thought would
interest some of the company. Who wrote it she did not tell us, but I
inferred from various circumstances that she had known the writer. She
read the story most effectively in her rich, musical voice. I noticed
that when it came to the sounds of the striking clock, the ringing of the
notes was so like that which reaches us from some far-off cathedral tower
that we wanted to bow our heads, as if we had just heard a summons to the
Angelus. This was the short story that Number Five read to The
Teacups:--
I have somewhere read this anecdote. Louis the Fourteenth was looking
out, one day, from, a window of his palace of Saint-Germain. It was a
beautiful landscape which spread out before him, and the monarch,
exulting in health, strength, and the splendors of his exalted position,
felt his bosom swell with emotions of pride and happiness: Presently he
noticed the towers of a church in the distance, above the treetops.
"What building is that?" he asked. "May it please your Majesty, that is
the Church of St. Denis, where your royal ancestors have been buried for
many generations." The answer did not "please his Royal Majesty."
There, then, was the place where he too was to lie and moulder in the
dust. He turned, sick at heart, from the window, and was uneasy until he
had built him another palace, from which he could never be appalled by
that fatal prospect.
Something like the experience of Louis the Fourteenth was that of the
owner of
THE TERRIBLE CLOCK.
I give the story as transcribed from the original manuscript:--
The clock was bequeathed to me by an old friend who had recently died.
His mind had been a good deal disordered in the later period of his life.
This clock, I am told; seemed to have a strange fascination for him. His
eyes were fastened on it during the last hours of his life. He died just
at midnight. The clock struck twelve, the nurse told me, as he drew his
last breath, and then, without any known cause, stopped, with both hands
upon the hour.
It is a complex and costly piece of mechanism. The escapement is in
front, so that every tooth is seen as it frees itself. It shows the
phases of the moon, the month of the year, the day of the month, and the
day of the week, as well as the hour and minute of the day.
I had not owned it a week before I began to perceive the same kind of
fascination as that which its former owner had experienced. This
gradually grew upon me, and presently led to trains of thought which
became at first unwelcome, then worrying, and at last unendurable. I
began by taking offence at the moon. I did not like to see that
"something large and smooth and round," so like the skull which little
Peterkin picked up on the field of Blenheim. "How many times," I kept
saying to myself, "is that wicked old moon coming up to stare at me?" I
could not stand it. I stopped a part of the machinery, and the moon went
into permanent eclipse. By and by the sounds of the infernal machine
began to trouble and pursue me. They talked to me; more and more their
language became that of articulately speaking men. They twitted me with
the rapid flight of time. They hurried me, as if I had not a moment to
lose. Quick! Quick! Quick! as each tooth released itself from the
escapement. And as I looked and listened there could not be any mistake
about it. I heard Quick! Quick! Quick! as plainly, at least, as I ever
heard a word from the phonograph. I stood watching the dial one day,--it
was near one o'clock,--and a strange attraction held me fastened to the
spot. Presently something appeared to trip or stumble inside of the
infernal mechanism. I waited for the sound I knew was to follow. How
nervous I got! It seemed to me that it would never strike. At last the
minute-hand reached the highest point of the dial. Then there was a
little stir among the works, as there is in a congregation as it rises to
receive the benediction. It was no form of blessing which rung out those
deep, almost sepulchral tones. But the word they uttered could not be
mistaken. I can hear its prolonged, solemn vibrations as if I were
standing before the clock at this moment.
Gone! Yes, I said to myself, gone,--its record made up to be opened in
eternity.
I stood still, staring vaguely at the dial as in a trance. And as the
next hour creeps stealthily up, it starts all at once, and cries aloud,
Gone!--Gone! The sun sinks lower, the hour-hand creeps downward with it,
until I hear the thrice-repeated monosyllable, Gone!--Gone!--Gone! Soon
through the darkening hours, until at the dead of night the long roll is
called, and with the last Gone! the latest of the long procession that
filled the day follows its ghostly companions into the stillness and
darkness of the past.
I silenced the striking part of the works. Still, the escapement kept
repeating, Quick! Quick! Quick! Still the long minute-hand, like the
dart in the grasp of Death, as we see it in Roubiliac's monument to Mrs.
Nightingale, among the tombs of Westminster Abbey, stretched itself out,
ready to transfix each hour as it passed, and make it my last. I sat by
the clock to watch the leap from one day of the week to the next. Then
would come, in natural order, the long stride from one month to the
following one.
I could endure it no longer. "Take that clock away!" I said. They took
it away. They took me away, too,--they thought I needed country air.
The sounds and motions still pursued me in imagination. I was very
nervous when I came here. The walks are pleasant, but the walls seem to
me unnecessarily high. The boarders are numerous; a little
miscellaneous, I think. But we have the Queen, and the President of the
United States, and several other distinguished persons, if we may trust
what they tell about themselves.
After we had listened to Number Five's story, I was requested to read a
couple of verses written by me when the guest of my friends, whose name
is hinted by the title prefixed to my lines.
LA MAISON D'OR.
BAR HARBOR.
From this fair home behold on either side
The restful mountains or the restless sea:
So the warm sheltering walls of life divide
Time and its tides from still eternity.
Look on the waves: their stormy voices teach
That not on earth may toil and struggle cease.
Look on the mountains: better far than speech
Their silent promise of eternal peace.
VIII.
I had intended to devote this particular report to an account of my
replies to certain questions which have been addressed to me,--questions
which I have a right to suppose interest the public, and which,
therefore, I was justified in bringing before The Teacups, and presenting
to the readers of these articles.
Some may care for one of these questions, and some for another. A good
many young people think nothing about life as it presents itself in the
far horizon, bounded by the snowy ridges of threescore and the dim peaks
beyond that remote barrier. Again, there are numbers of persons who know
nothing at all about the Jews; while, on the other hand, there are those
who can, or think they can, detect the Israelitish blood in many of their
acquaintances who believe themselves of the purest Japhetic origin, and
are full of prejudices about the Semitic race.
I do not mean to be cheated out of my intentions. I propose to answer my
questioners on the two points just referred to, but I find myself so much
interested in the personal affairs of The Teacups that I must deal with
them before attacking those less exciting subjects. There is no use, let
me say here, in addressing to me letters marked "personal," "private,"
"confidential," and so forth, asking me how I came to know what happened
in certain conversations of which I shall give a partial account. If
there is a very sensitive phonograph lying about here and there in
unsuspected corners, that might account for some part of my revelations.
If Delilah, whose hearing is of almost supernatural delicacy, reports to
me what she overhears, it might explain a part of the mystery. I do not
want to accuse Delilah, but a young person who assures me she can hear my
watch ticking in my pocket, when I am in the next room, might undoubtedly
tell many secrets, if so disposed. Number Five is pretty nearly
omniscient, and she and I are on the best terms with each other. These
are all the hints I shall give you at present.
The Teacups of whom the least has been heard at our table are the Tutor
and the Musician. The Tutor is a modest young man, kept down a little, I
think, by the presence of older persons, like the Professor and myself.
I have met him several times, of late, walking with different lady
Teacups: once with the American Annex; twice with the English Annex; once
with the two Annexes together; once with Number Five.
I have mentioned the fact that the Tutor is a poet as among his claims to
our attention. I must add that I do not think any the worse of him for
expressing his emotions and experiences in verse. For though rhyming is
often a bad sign in a young man, especially if he is already out of his
teens, there are those to whom it is as natural, one might almost say as
necessary, as it is to a young bird to fly. One does not care to see
barnyard fowls tumbling about in trying to use their wings. They have a
pair of good, stout drumsticks, and had better keep to them, for the most
part. But that feeling does not apply to young eagles, or even to young
swallows and sparrows. The Tutor is by no means one of those ignorant,
silly, conceited phrase-tinklers, who live on the music of their own
jingling syllables and the flattery of their foolish friends. I think
Number Five must appreciate him. He is sincere, warmhearted,--his poetry
shows that,--not in haste to be famous, and he looks to me as if he only
wanted love to steady him. With one of those two young girls he ought
certainly to be captivated, if he is not already. Twice walking with the
English Annex, I met him, and they were so deeply absorbed in
conversation they hardly noticed me. He has been talking over the matter
with Number Five, who is just the kind of person for a confidante.
"I know I feel very lonely," he was saying, "and I only wish I felt sure
that I could make another person happy. My life would be transfigured if
I could find such a one, whom I could love well enough to give my life to
her,--for her, if that were needful, and who felt an affinity for me, if
any one could."
"And why not your English maiden?" said Number Five.
"What makes you think I care more for her than for her American friend?"
said the Tutor.
"Why, have n't I met you walking with her, and did n't you both seem
greatly interested in the subject you were discussing? I thought, of
course, it was something more or less sentimental that you were talking
about."
"I was explaining that 'enclitic de' in Browning's Grammarian's Funeral.
I don't think there was anything very sentimental about that. She is an
inquisitive creature, that English girl. She is very fond of asking me
questions,--in fact, both of them are. There is one curious difference
between them: the English girl settles down into her answers and is
quiet; the American girl is never satisfied with yesterday's conclusions;
she is always reopening old questions in the light of some new fact or
some novel idea. I suppose that people bred from childhood to lean their
backs against the wall of the Creed and the church catechism find it hard
to sit up straight on the republican stool, which obliges them to stiffen
their own backs. Which of these two girls would be the safest choice for
a young man? I should really like to hear what answer you would make if I
consulted you seriously, with a view to my own choice,--on the
supposition that there was a fair chance that either of them might be
won."
"The one you are in love with," answered Number Five.
"But what if it were a case of 'How happy could I be with either'? Which
offers the best chance of happiness,--a marriage between two persons of
the same country, or a marriage where one of the parties is of foreign
birth? Everything else being equal, which is best for an American to
marry, an American or an English girl? We need not confine the question
to those two young persons, but put it more generally."
"There are reasons on both sides," answered Number Five. "I have often
talked this matter over with The Dictator. This is the way he speaks
about it. English blood is apt to tell well on the stock upon which it
is engrafted. Over and over again he has noticed finely grown specimens
of human beings, and on inquiry has found that one or both of the parents
or grandparents were of British origin. The chances are that the
descendants of the imported stock will be of a richer organization, more
florid, more muscular, with mellower voices, than the native whose blood
has been unmingled with that of new emigrants since the earlier colonial
times.--So talks The Dictator.--I myself think the American will find his
English wife concentrates herself more readily and more exclusively on
her husband,--for the obvious reason that she is obliged to live mainly
in him. I remember hearing an old friend of my early days say, 'A woman
does not bear transplanting.' It does not do to trust these old sayings,
and yet they almost always have some foundation in the experience of
mankind, which has repeated them from generation to generation. Happy is
the married woman of foreign birth who can say to her husband, as
Andromache said to Hector, after enumerating all the dear relatives she
had lost,
"'Yet while my hector still survives,
I see My father, mother, brethren, all in thee!'
"How many a sorrowing wife, exiled from her native country, dreams of the
mother she shall see no more! How many a widow, in a strange land,
wishes that her poor, worn-out body could be laid among her kinsfolk, in
the little churchyard where she used to gather daisies in her childhood!
It takes a great deal of love to keep down the 'climbing sorrow' that
swells up in a woman's throat when such memories seize upon her, in her
moments of desolation. But if a foreign-born woman does willingly give
up all for a man, and never looks backward, like Lot's wife, she is a
prize that it is worth running a risk to gain,--that is, if she has the
making of a good woman in her; and a few years will go far towards
naturalizing her."
The Tutor listened to Number Five with much apparent interest. "And
now," he said, "what do you think of her companion?"
"A charming girl for a man of a quiet, easy temperament. The great
trouble is with her voice. It is pitched a full note too high. It is
aggressive, disturbing, and would wear out a nervous man without his ever
knowing what was the matter with him. A good many crazy Northern people
would recover their reason if they could live for a year or two among the
blacks of the Southern States. But the penetrating, perturbing quality
of the voices of many of our Northern women has a great deal to answer
for in the way of determining love and friendship. You remember that
dear friend of ours who left us not long since? If there were more
voices like hers, the world would be a different place to live in. I do
not believe any man or woman ever came within the range of those sweet,
tranquil tones without being hushed, captivated, entranced I might almost
say, by their calming, soothing influence. Can you not imagine the tones
in which those words, 'Peace, be still,' were spoken? Such was the
effect of the voice to which but a few weeks ago we were listening. It
is hard to believe that it has died out of human consciousness. Can such
a voice be spared from that world of happiness to which we fondly look
forward, where we love to dream, if we do not believe with assured
conviction, that whatever is loveliest in this our mortal condition shall
be with us again as an undying possession? Your English friend has a
very agreeable voice, round, mellow, cheery, and her articulation is
charming. Other things being equal, I think you, who are, perhaps,
oversensitive, would live from two to three years longer with her than
with the other. I suppose a man who lived within hearing of a murmuring
brook would find his life shortened if a sawmill were set up within
earshot of his dwelling."
"And so you advise me to make love to the English girl, do you?" asked
the Tutor.
Number Five laughed. It was not a loud laugh, she never laughed noisily;
it was not a very hearty laugh; the idea did not seem to amuse her much.
"No," she said, "I won't take the responsibility. Perhaps this is a case
in which the true reading of Gay's line would be--
"How happy could I be with neither.
"There are several young women in the world besides our two Annexes."
I question whether the Tutor had asked those questions very seriously,
and I doubt if Number Five thought he was very much in earnest.
One of The Teacups reminded me that I had promised to say something of my
answers to certain questions. So I began at once:
I have given the name of brain-tappers to the literary operatives who
address persons whose names are well known to the public, asking their
opinions or their experiences on subjects which are at the time of
general interest. They expect a literary man or a scientific expert to
furnish them materials for symposia and similar articles, to be used by
them for their own special purposes. Sometimes they expect to pay for
the information furnished them; at other times, the honor of being
included in a list of noted personages who have received similar requests
is thought sufficient compensation. The object with which the
brain-tapper puts his questions may be a purely benevolent and entirely
disinterested one. Such was the object of some of those questions which
I have received and answered. There are other cases, in which the
brain-tapper is acting much as those persons do who stop a physician in
the street to talk with him about their livers or stomachs, or other
internal arrangements, instead of going to his office and consulting him,
expecting to pay for his advice. Others are more like those busy women
who, having the generous intention of making a handsome present to their
pastor, at as little expense as may be, send to all their neighbors and
acquaintances for scraps of various materials, out of which the imposing
"bedspread" or counterpane is to be elaborated.
That is all very well so long as old pieces of stuff are all they call
for, but it is a different matter to ask for clippings out of new and
uncut rolls of cloth. So it is one thing to ask an author for liberty to
use extracts from his published writings, and it is a very different
thing to expect him to write expressly for the editor's or compiler's
piece of literary patchwork.
I have received many questions within the last year or two, some of which
I am willing to answer, but prefer to answer at my own time, in my own
way, through my customary channel of communication with the public. I
hope I shall not be misunderstood as implying any reproach against the
inquirers who, in order to get at facts which ought to be known, apply to
all whom they can reach for information. Their inquisitiveness is not
always agreeable or welcome, but we ought to be glad that there are
mousing fact-hunters to worry us with queries to which, for the sake of
the public, we are bound to give our attention. Let me begin with my
brain-tappers.
And first, as the papers have given publicity to the fact that I, The
Dictator of this tea-table, have reached the age of threescore years and
twenty, I am requested to give information as to how I managed to do it,
and to explain just how they can go and do likewise. I think I can lay
down a few rules that will help them to the desired result. There is no
certainty in these biological problems, but there are reasonable
probabilities upon which it is safe to act.
The first thing to be done is, some years before birth, to advertise for
a couple of parents both belonging to long-lived families. Especially let
the mother come of a race in which octogenarians and nonagenarians are
very common phenomena. There are practical difficulties in following out
this suggestion, but possibly the forethought of your progenitors, or
that concurrence of circumstances which we call accident, may have
arranged this for you.
Do not think that a robust organization is any warrant of long life, nor
that a frail and slight bodily constitution necessarily means scanty
length of days. Many a strong-limbed young man and many a blooming young
woman have I seen failing and dropping away in or before middle life, and
many a delicate and slightly constituted person outliving the athletes
and the beauties of their generation. Whether the excessive development
of the muscular system is compatible with the best condition of general
health is, I think, more than doubtful. The muscles are great sponges
that suck up and make use of large quantities of blood, and the other
organs must be liable to suffer for want of their share.
One of the Seven Wise Men of Greece boiled his wisdom down into two
words,--NOTHING TOO MUCH. It is a rule which will apply to food,
exercise, labor, sleep, and, in short, to every part of life. This is
not so very difficult a matter if one begins in good season and forms
regular habits. But what if I should lay down the rule, Be cheerful;
take all the troubles and trials of life with perfect equanimity and a
smiling countenance? Admirable directions! Your friend, the
curly-haired blonde, with florid complexion, round cheeks, the best
possible digestion and respiration, the stomach of an ostrich and the
lungs of a pearl-diver, finds it perfectly easy to carry them into
practice. You, of leaden complexion, with black and lank hair, lean,
hollow-eyed, dyspeptic, nervous, find it not so easy to be always
hilarious and happy. The truth is that the persons of that buoyant
disposition which comes always heralded by a smile, as a yacht driven by
a favoring breeze carries a wreath of sparkling foam before her, are born
with their happiness ready made. They cannot help being cheerful any
more than their saturnine fellow-mortal can help seeing everything
through the cloud he carries with him. I give you the precept, then, Be
cheerful, for just what it is worth, as I would recommend to you to be
six feet, or at least five feet ten, in stature. You cannot settle that
matter for yourself, but you can stand up straight, and give your five
feet five its--full value. You can help along a little by wearing
high-heeled shoes. So you can do something to encourage yourself in
serenity of aspect and demeanor, keeping your infirmities and troubles in
the background instead of making them the staple of your conversation.
This piece of advice, if followed, may be worth from three to five years
of the fourscore which you hope to attain.
If, on the other hand, instead of going about cheerily in society, making
the best of everything and as far as possible forgetting your troubles,
you can make up your mind to economize all your stores of vital energy,
to hoard your life as a miser hoards his money, you will stand a fair
chance of living until you are tired of life,--fortunate if everybody is
not tired of you.
One of my prescriptions for longevity may startle you somewhat. It is
this: Become the subject of a mortal disease. Let half a dozen doctors
thump you, and knead you, and test you in every possible way, and render
their verdict that you have an internal complaint; they don't know
exactly what it is, but it will certainly kill you by and by. Then bid
farewell to the world and shut yourself up for an invalid. If you are
threescore years old when you begin this mode of life, you may very
probably last twenty years, and there you are,--an octogenarian. In the
mean time, your friends outside have been dropping off, one after
another, until you find yourself almost alone, nursing your mortal
complaint as if it were your baby, hugging it and kept alive by it,--if
to exist is to live. Who has not seen cases like this,--a man or a woman
shutting himself or herself up, visited by a doctor or a succession of
doctors (I remember that once, in my earlier experience, I was the
twenty-seventh physician who had been consulted), always taking medicine,
until everybody was reminded of that impatient speech of a relative of
one of these invalid vampires who live on the blood of tired-out
attendants, "I do wish she would get well--or something"? Persons who
are shut up in that way, confined to their chambers, sometimes to their
beds, have a very small amount of vital expenditure, and wear out very
little of their living substance. They are like lamps with half their
wicks picked down, and will continue to burn when other lamps have used
up all their oil. An insurance office might make money by taking no
risks except on lives of persons suffering from mortal disease. It is on
this principle of economizing the powers of life that a very eminent
American physician,--Dr. Weir Mitchell, a man of genius,--has founded his
treatment of certain cases of nervous exhaustion.
What have I got to say about temperance, the use of animal food, and so
forth? These are questions asked me. Nature has proved a wise teacher,
as I think, in my own case. The older I grow, the less use I make of
alcoholic stimulants. In fact, I hardly meddle with them at all, except
a glass or two of champagne occasionally. I find that by far the best
borne of all drinks containing alcohol. I do not suppose my experience
can be the foundation of a universal rule. Dr. Holyoke, who lived to be
a hundred, used habitually, in moderate quantities, a mixture of cider,
water, and rum. I think, as one grows older, less food, especially less
animal food, is required. But old people have a right to be epicures, if
they can afford it. The pleasures of the palate are among the last
gratifications of the senses allowed them. We begin life as little
cannibals,--feeding on the flesh and blood of our mothers. We range
through all the vegetable and animal products, of nature, and I suppose,
if the second childhood could return to the food of the first, it might
prove a wholesome diet.
What do I say to smoking? I cannot grudge an old man his pipe, but I
think tobacco often does a good deal of harm to the health,--to the eyes
especially, to the nervous system generally, producing headache,
palpitation, and trembling. I myself gave it up many years ago.
Philosophically speaking, I think self-narcotization and
self-alcoholization are rather ignoble substitutes for undisturbed
self-consciousness and unfettered self-control.
Here is another of those brain-tapping letters, of similar character,
which I have no objection to answering at my own time and in the place
which best suits me. As the questions must be supposed to be asked with
a purely scientific and philanthropic purpose, it can make little
difference when and where they are answered. For myself, I prefer our
own tea-table to the symposia to which I am often invited. I do not
quarrel with those who invite their friends to a banquet to which many
strangers are expected to contribute. It is a very easy and pleasant way
of giving an entertainment at little cost and with no responsibility.
Somebody has been writing to me about "Oatmeal and Literature," and
somebody else wants to know whether I have found character influenced by
diet; also whether, in my opinion, oatmeal is preferable to pie as an
American national food.
In answer to these questions, I should say that I have my beliefs and
prejudices; but if I were pressed hard for my proofs of their
correctness, I should make but a poor show in the witness-box. Most
assuredly I do believe that body and mind are much influenced by the kind
of food habitually depended upon. I am persuaded that a too exclusively
porcine diet gives a bristly character to the beard and hair, which is
borrowed from the animal whose tissues these stiff-bearded compatriots of
ours have too largely assimilated. I can never stray among the village
people of our windy capes without now and then coming upon a human being
who looks as if he had been split, salted, and dried, like the salt-fish
which has built up his arid organism. If the body is modified by the
food which nourishes it, the mind and character very certainly will be
modified by it also. We know enough of their close connection with each
other to be sure of that, without any statistical observations to prove
it.
Do you really want to know "whether oatmeal is preferable to pie as an
American national food"? I suppose the best answer I can give to your
question is to tell you what is my own practice. Oatmeal in the morning,
as an architect lays a bed of concrete to form a base for his
superstructure. Pie when I can get it; that is, of the genuine sort, for
I am not patriotic enough to think very highly of the article named after
the Father of his Country, who was first in war, first in peace,--not
first in pies, according to my standard.
There is a very odd prejudice against pie as an article of diet. It is
common to hear every form of bodily degeneracy and infirmity attributed
to this particular favorite food. I see no reason or sense in it. Mr.
Emerson believed in pie, and was almost indignant when a fellow-traveller
refused the slice he offered him. "Why, Mr.________," said be, "what is
pie made for!" If every Green Mountain boy has not eaten a thousand
times his weight in apple, pumpkin, squash, and mince pie, call me a
dumpling. And Colonel Ethan Allen was one of them,--Ethan Allen, who, as
they used to say, could wrench off the head of a wrought nail with his
teeth.
If you mean to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your
health the better. You know enough not to eat or drink what you have
found does not agree with you. You ought to know enough not to expose
yourself needlessly to draughts. If you take a "constitutional," walk
with the wind when you can, and take a closed car against it if you can
get one. Walking against the wind is one of the most dangerous kinds of
exposure, if you are sensitive to cold. But except a few simple rules
such as I have just given, let your health take care of itself so long as
it behaves decently. If you want to be sure not to reach threescore and
twenty, get a little box of homoeopathic pellets and a little book of
homeopathic prescriptions. I had a poor friend who fell into that way,
and became at last a regular Hahnemaniac. He left a box of his little
jokers, which at last came into my hands. The poor fellow had cultivated
symptoms as other people cultivate roses or chrysanthemums. What a
luxury of choice his imagination presented to him! When one watches for
symptoms, every organ in the body is ready to put in its claim. By and
by a real illness attacked him, and the box of little pellets was shut
up, to minister to his fancied evils no longer.
Let me tell you one thing. I think if patients and physicians were in
the habit of recognizing the fact I am going to mention, both would be
gainers. The law I refer to must be familiar to all observing
physicians, and to all intelligent persons who have observed their own
bodily and mental conditions. This is the curve of health. It is a
mistake to suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a
straight horizontal line. Independently of the well-known causes which
raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be,--I think I
may venture to say there is,--a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the
vital force. The "dynamo" which furnishes the working powers of
consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves,
even its momentary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are
greater and lesser curves in the movement of every day's life,--a series
of ascending and descending movements, a periodicity depending on the
very nature of the force at work in the living organism. Thus we have
our good seasons and our bad seasons, our good days and our bad days,
life climbing and descending in long or short undulations, which I have
called the curve of health.
From this fact spring a great proportion of the errors of medical
practice. On it are based the delusions of the various shadowy systems
which impose themselves on the ignorant and half-learned public as
branches or "schools" of science. A remedy taken at the time of the
ascent in the curve of health is found successful. The same remedy taken
while the curve is in its downward movement proves a failure.
So long as this biological law exists, so long the charlatan will keep
his hold on the ignorant public. So long as it exists, the wisest
practitioner will be liable to deceive himself about the effect of what
he calls and loves to think are his remedies. Long-continued and
sagacious observation will to some extent undeceive him; but were it not
for the happy illusion that his useless or even deleterious drugs were
doing good service, many a practitioner would give up his calling for one
in which he could be more certain that he was really being useful to the
subjects of his professional dealings. For myself, I should prefer a
physician of a sanguine temperament, who had a firm belief in himself and
his methods. I do not wonder at all that the public support a whole
community of pretenders who show the portraits of the patients they have
"cured." The best physicians will tell you that, though many patients
get well under their treatment, they rarely cure anybody. If you are
told also that the best physician has many more patients die on his hands
than the worst of his fellow-practitioners, you may add these two
statements to your bundle of paradoxes, and if they puzzle you I will
explain them at some future time.
[I take this opportunity of correcting a statement now going the rounds
of the medical and probably other periodicals. In "The Journal of the
American Medical Association," dated April 26,1890, published at Chicago,
I am reported, in quotation marks, as saying, "Give me opium, wine, and
milk, and I will cure all diseases to which flesh is heir."
In the first place, I never said I will cure, or can cure, or would or
could cure, or had cured any disease. My venerated instructor, Dr. James
Jackson, taught me never to use that expression. Curo means, I take care
of, he used to say, and in that sense, if you mean nothing more, it is
properly employed. So, in the amphitheatre of the Ecole de Medecine, I
used to read the words of Ambroise Pare, "Je le pansay, Dieu le guarist."
(I dressed his wound, and God cured him.) Next, I am not in the habit of
talking about "the diseases to which flesh is heir." The expression has
become rather too familiar for repetition, and belongs to the rhetoric of
other latitudes. And, lastly, I have said some plain things, perhaps
some sharp ones, about the abuse of drugs and the limited number of
vitally important remedies, but I am not so ignorantly presumptuous as to
make the foolish statement falsely attributed to me.]
I paused a minute or two, and as no one spoke out; I put a question to
the Counsellor.
Are you quite sure that you wish to live to be threescore and twenty
years old?
"Most certainly I do. Don't they say that Theophrastus lived to his
hundred and seventh year, and did n't he complain of the shortness of
life? At eighty a man has had just about time to get warmly settled in
his nest. Do you suppose he doesn't enjoy the quiet of that
resting-place? No more haggard responsibility to keep him awake
nights,--unless he prefers to retain his hold on offices and duties from
which he can be excused if he chooses. No more goading ambitions,--he
knows he has done his best. No more jealousies, if he were weak enough
to feel such ignoble stirrings in his more active season. An
octogenarian with a good record, and free from annoying or distressing
infirmities, ought to be the happiest of men. Everybody treats him with
deference. Everybody wants to help him. He is the ward of the
generations that have grown up since he was in the vigor of maturity.
Yes, let me live to be fourscore years, and then I will tell you whether
I should like a few more years or not."
You carry the feelings of middle age, I said, in imagination, over into
the period of senility, and then reason and dream about it as if its
whole mode of being were like that of the earlier period of life. But how
many things there are in old age which you must live into if you would
expect to have any "realizing sense" of their significance! In the first
place, you have no coevals, or next to none. At fifty, your vessel is
stanch, and you are on deck with the rest, in all weathers. At sixty,
the vessel still floats, and you are in the cabin. At seventy, you, with
a few fellow-passengers, are on a raft. At eighty, you are on a spars to
which, possibly, one, or two, or three friends of about your own age are
still clinging. After that, you must expect soon to find yourself alone,
if you are still floating, with only a life-preserver to keep your old
white-bearded chin above the water.
Kindness? Yes, pitying kindness, which is a bitter sweet in which the
amiable ingredient can hardly be said to predominate. How pleasant do
you think it is to have an arm offered to you when you are walking on a
level surface, where there is no chance to trip? How agreeable do you
suppose it is to have your well-meaning friends shout and screech at you,
as if you were deaf as an adder, instead of only being, as you insist,
somewhat hard of hearing? I was a little over twenty years old when I
wrote the lines which some of you may have met with, for they have been
often reprinted:
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
The world was a garden to me then; it is a churchyard now.
"I thought you were one of those who looked upon old age cheerfully, and
welcomed it as a season of peace and contented enjoyment."
I am one of those who so regard it. Those are not bitter or scalding
tears that fall from my eyes upon "the mossy marbles." The young who
left my side early in my life's journey are still with me in the
unchanged freshness and beauty of youth. Those who have long kept
company with me live on after their seeming departure, were it only by
the mere force of habit; their images are all around me, as if every
surface had been a sensitive film that photographed them; their voices
echo about me, as if they had been recorded on those unforgetting
cylinders which bring back to us the tones and accents that have
imprinted them, as the hardened sands show us the tracks of extinct
animals. The melancholy of old age has a divine tenderness in it, which
only the sad experiences of life can lend a human soul. But there is a
lower level,--that of tranquil contentment and easy acquiescence in the
conditions in which we find ourselves; a lower level, in which old age
trudges patiently when it is not using its wings. I say its wings, for
no period of life is so imaginative as that which looks to younger people
the most prosaic. The atmosphere of memory is one in which imagination
flies more easily and feels itself more at home than in the thinner ether
of youthful anticipation. I have told you some of the drawbacks of age;
I would not have you forget its privileges. When it comes down from its
aerial excursions, it has much left to enjoy on the humble plane of
being. And so you think you would like to become an octogenarian? "I
should," said the Counsellor, now a man in the high noon of bodily and
mental vigor. "Four more--yes, five more--decades would not be too much,
I think. And how much I should live to see in that time! I am glad you
have laid down some rules by which a man may reasonably expect to leap
the eight barred gate. I won't promise to obey them all, though."
Among the questions addressed to me, as to a large number of other
persons, are the following. I take them from "The American Hebrew" of
April 4, 1890. I cannot pretend to answer them all, but I can say
something about one or two of them.
"I. Can you, of your own personal experience, find any justification
whatever for the entertainment of prejudice towards individuals solely
because they are Jews?
"II. Is this prejudice not due largely to the religious instruction that
is given by the church acid Sunday-school? For instance, the teachings
that the Jews crucified Jesus; that they rejected him, and can only
secure salvation by belief in him, and similar matters that are
calculated to excite in the impressionable mind of the child an aversion,
if not a loathing, for members of 'the despised race.'
"III. Have you observed in the social or business life of the Jew, so
far as your personal experience has gone, any different standard of
conduct than prevails among Christians of the same social status?
"IV. Can you suggest what should be done to dispel the existing
prejudice?"
As to the first question, I have had very slight acquaintance with the
children of Israel. I shared more or less the prevailing prejudices
against the persecuted race. I used to read in my hymn-book,--I hope I
quote correctly,--
"See what a living stone
The builders did refuse!
Yet God has built his church thereon,
In spite of envious Jews."
I grew up inheriting the traditional idea that they were a race lying
under a curse for their obstinacy in refusing the gospel. Like other
children of New England birth, I walked in the narrow path of Puritan
exclusiveness. The great historical church of Christendom was presented
to me as Bunyan depicted it: one of the two giants sitting at the door of
their caves, with the bones, of pilgrims scattered about them, and
grinning at the travellers whom they could no longer devour. In the
nurseries of old-fashioned Orthodoxy there was one religion in the
world,--one religion, and a multitude of detestable, literally damnable
impositions, believed in by uncounted millions, who were doomed to
perdition for so believing. The Jews were the believers in one of these
false religions. It had been true once, but was now a pernicious and
abominable lie. The principal use of the Jews seemed to be to lend
money, and to fulfil the predictions of the old prophets of their race.
No doubt the individual sons of Abraham whom we found in our ill-favored
and ill-flavored streets were apt to be unpleasing specimens of the race.
It was against the most adverse influences of legislation, of religious
feeling, of social repugnance, that the great names of Jewish origin made
themselves illustrious; that the philosophers, the musicians, the
financiers, the statesmen, of the last centuries forced the world to
recognize and accept them. Benjamin, the son of Isaac, a son of Israel,
as his family name makes obvious, has shown how largely Jewish blood has
been represented in the great men and women of modern days.
There are two virtues which Christians have found it very hard to
exemplify in practice. These are modesty and civility. The Founder of
the Christian religion appeared among a people accustomed to look for a
Messiah, a special ambassador from heaven, with an authoritative message.
They were intimately acquainted with every expression having reference to
this divine messenger. They had a religion of their own, about which
Christianity agrees with Judaism in asserting that it was of divine
origin. It is a serious fact, to which we do not give all the attention
it deserves, that this divinely instructed people were not satisfied with
the evidence that the young Rabbi who came to overthrow their ancient
church and found a new one was a supernatural being. "We think he was a
great Doctor," said a Jewish companion with whom I was conversing. He
meant a great Teacher, I presume, though healing the sick was one of his
special offices. Instead of remembering that they were entitled to form
their own judgment of the new Teacher, as they had judged of Hillel and
other great instructors, Christians, as they called themselves, have
insulted, calumniated, oppressed, abased, outraged, "the chosen race"
during the long succession of centuries since the Jewish contemporaries
of the Founder of Christianity made up their minds that he did not meet
the conditions required by the subject of the predictions of their
Scriptures. The course of the argument against them is very briefly and
effectively stated by Mr. Emerson:
"This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you if you say he
was a man."
It seems as if there should be certain laws of etiquette regulating the
relation of different religions to each other. It is not civil for a
follower of Mahomet to call his neighbor of another creed a "Christian
dog." Still more, there should be something like politeness in the
bearing of Christian sects toward each other, and of believers in the new
dispensation toward those who still adhere to the old. We are in the
habit of allowing a certain arrogant assumption to our Roman Catholic
brethren. We have got used to their pretensions. They may call us
"heretics," if they like. They may speak of us as "infidels," if they
choose, especially if they say it in Latin. So long as there is no
inquisition, so long as there is no auto da fe, we do not mind the hard
words much; and we have as good phrases to give them back: the Man of Sin
and the Scarlet Woman will serve for examples. But it is better to be
civil to each other all round. I doubt if a convert to the religion of
Mahomet was ever made by calling a man a Christian dog. I doubt if a
Hebrew ever became a good Christian if the baptismal rite was performed
by spitting on his Jewish gabardine. I have often thought of the advance
in comity and true charity shown in the title of my late honored friend
James Freeman Clarke's book, "The Ten Great Religions." If the creeds of
mankind try to understand each other before attempting mutual
extermination, they will be sure to find a meaning in beliefs which are
different from their own. The old Calvinistic spirit was almost savagely
exclusive. While the author of the "Ten Great Religions" was growing up
in Boston under the benignant, large-minded teachings of the Rev. James
Freeman, the famous Dr. John M. Mason, at New York, was fiercely
attacking the noble humanity of "The Universal Prayer." "In preaching,"
says his biographer, "he once quoted Pope's lines as to God's being
adored alike 'by saint, by savage, and by sage,' and pronounced it (in
his deepest guttural) 'the most damnable lie.'"
What could the Hebrew expect when a Christian preacher could use such
language about a petition breathing the very soul of humanity? Happily,
the true human spirit is encroaching on that arrogant and narrow-minded
form of selfishness which called itself Christianity.
The golden rule should govern us in dealing with those whom we call
unbelievers, with heathen, and with all who do not accept our religious
views. The Jews are with us as a perpetual lesson to teach us modesty
and civility. The religion we profess is not self-evident. It did not
convince the people to whom it was sent. We have no claim to take it for
granted that we are all right, and they are all wrong. And, therefore,
in the midst of all the triumphs of Christianity, it is well that the
stately synagogue should lift its walls by the side of the aspiring
cathedral, a perpetual reminder that there are many mansions in the
Father's earthly house as well as in the heavenly one; that civilized
humanity, longer in time and broader in space than any historical form of
belief, is mightier than any one institution or organization it includes.
Many years ago I argued with myself the proposition which my Hebrew
correspondent has suggested. Recognizing the fact that I was born to a
birthright of national and social prejudices against "the chosen
people,"--chosen as the object of contumely and abuse by the rest of the
world,--I pictured my own inherited feelings of aversion in all their
intensity, and the strain of thought under the influence of which those
prejudices gave way to a more human, a more truly Christian feeling of
brotherhood. I must ask your indulgence while I quote a few verses from
a poem of my own, printed long ago under the title "At the Pantomime."
I was crowded between two children of Israel, and gave free inward
expression to my feelings. All at once I happened to look more closely
at one of my neighbors, and saw that the youth was the very ideal of the
Son of Mary.
A fresh young cheek whose olive hue
The mantling blood shows faintly through;
Locks dark as midnight, that divide
And shade the neck on either side;
Soft, gentle, loving eyes that gleam
Clear as a starlit mountain stream;
So looked that other child of Shem,
The Maiden's Boy of Bethlehem!
--And thou couldst scorn the peerless blood
That flows unmingled from the Flood,
Thy scutcheon spotted with the stains
Of Norman thieves and pirate Danes!
The New World's foundling, in thy pride
Scowl on the Hebrew at thy side,
And lo! the very semblance there
The Lord of Glory deigned to wear!
I see that radiant image rise,
The flowing hair, the pitying eyes,
The faintly crimsoned cheek that shows
The blush of Sharon's opening rose,
Thy hands would clasp his hallowed feet
Whose brethren soil thy Christian seat,
Thy lips would press his garment's hem
That curl in wrathful scorn for them!
A sudden mist, a watery screen,
Dropped like a veil before the scene;
The shadow floated from my soul,
And to my lips a whisper stole:
--Thy prophets caught the Spirit's flame,
From thee the Son of Mary came,
With thee the Father deigned to dwell,
Peace be upon thee, Israel!
It is not to be expected that intimate relations will be established
between Jewish and Christian communities until both become so far
rationalized and humanized that their differences are comparatively
unimportant. But already there is an evident approximation in the
extreme left of what is called liberal Christianity and the
representatives of modern Judaism. The life of a man like the late Sir
Moses Montefiore reads a lesson from the Old Testament which might well
have been inspired by the noblest teachings of the Christian Gospels.
Delilah, and how she got her name.
Est-elle bien gentille, cette petite? I said one day to Number Five, as
our pretty Delilah put her arm between us with a bunch of those tender
early radishes that so recall the rosy-fingered morning of Homer. The
little hand which held the radishes would not have shamed Aurora. That
hand has never known drudgery, I feel sure.
When I spoke those French words our little Delilah gave a slight,
seemingly involuntary start, and her cheeks grew of as bright a red as
her radishes. Ah, said I to myself; does that young girl understand
French? It may be worth while to be careful what one says before her.
There is a mystery about this girl. She seems to know her place
perfectly,--except, perhaps, when she burst out crying, the other day,
which was against all the rules of table-maiden's etiquette,--and yet she
looks as if she had been born to be waited on, and not to perform that
humble service for others. We know that once in a while girls with
education and well connected take it into their heads to go into service
for a few weeks or months. Sometimes it is from economic motives,--to
procure means for their education, or to help members of their families
who need assistance. At any rate, they undertake the lighter menial
duties of some household where they are not known, and, having
stooped--if stooping it is to be considered--to lowly offices, no born
and bred servants are more faithful to all their obligations. You must
not suppose she was christened Delilah. Any of our ministers would
hesitate to give such a heathen name to a Christian child.
The way she came to get it was this: The Professor was going to give a
lecture before an occasional audience, one evening. When he took his
seat with the other Teacups, the American Annex whispered to the other
Annex, "His hair wants cutting,--it looks like fury." "Quite so," said
the English Annex. "I wish you would tell him so,--I do, awfully."
"I'll fix it," said the American girl. So, after the teacups were
emptied and the company had left the table, she went up to the Professor.
"You read this lecture, don't you, Professor?" she said. "I do," he
answered. "I should think that lock of hair which falls down over your
forehead would trouble you," she said. "It does sometimes," replied the
Professor. "Let our little maid trim it for you. You're equal to that,
aren't you?" turning to the handmaiden. "I always used to cut my father's
hair," she answered. She brought a pair of glittering shears, and before
she would let the Professor go she had trimmed his hair and beard as they
had not been dealt with for many a day. Everybody said the Professor
looked ten years younger. After that our little handmaiden was always
called Delilah, among the talking Teacups.
The Mistress keeps a watchful eye on this young girl. I should not be
surprised to find that she was carrying out some ideal, some fancy or
whim,--possibly nothing more, but springing from some generous, youthful
impulse. Perhaps she is working for that little sister at the Blind
Asylum. Where did she learn French? She did certainly blush, and
betrayed every sign of understanding the words spoken about her in that
language. Sometimes she sings while at her work, and we have all been
struck with the pure, musical character of her voice. It is just such a
voice as ought to come from that round white throat. We made a discovery
about it the other evening.
The Mistress keeps a piano in her room, and we have sometimes had music
in the evening. One of The Teacups, to whom I have slightly referred, is
an accomplished pianist, and the two Annexes sing very sweetly
together,--the American girl having a clear soprano voice, the English
girl a mellow contralto. They had sung several tunes, when the Mistress
rang for Avis,--for that is our Delilah's real name. She whispered to
the young girl, who blushed and trembled. "Don't be frightened," said the
Mistress encouragingly. "I have heard you singing 'Too Young for Love,'
and I will get our pianist to play it. The young ladies both know it,
and you must join in."
The two voices, with the accompaniment, had hardly finished the first
line when a pure, ringing, almost childlike voice joined the vocal duet.
The sound of her own voice seemed to make her forget her fears, and she
warbled as naturally and freely as any young bird of a May morning.
Number Five came in while she was singing, and when she got through
caught her in her arms and kissed her, as if she were her sister, and not
Delilah, our table-maid. Number Five is apt to forget herself and those
social differences to which some of us attach so much importance. This
is the song in which the little maid took part:
TOO YOUNG FOR LOVE.
Too young for love?
Ah, say not so!
Tell reddening rose-buds not to blow!
Wait not for spring to pass away,
--Love's summer months begin with May!
Too young for love?
Ah, say not so!
Too young? Too young?
Ah, no! no! no!
Too young for love?
Ah, say not so,
While daisies bloom and tulips glow!
June soon will come with lengthened day
To practise all love learned in May.
Too young for love?
Ah, say not so!
Too young? Too young?
Ah, no! no! no!
IX
I often wish that our Number Seven could have known and corresponded with
the author of "The Budget of Paradoxes." I think Mr. De Morgan would
have found some of his vagaries and fancies not undeserving of a place in
his wonderful collection of eccentricities, absurdities,
ingenuities,--mental freaks of all sorts. But I think he would have now
and then recognized a sound idea, a just comparison, a suggestive hint, a
practical notion, which redeemed a page of extravagances and crotchety
whims. I confess that I am often pleased with fancies of his, and should
be willing to adopt them as my own. I think he has, in the midst of his
erratic and tangled conceptions, some perfectly clear and consistent
trains of thought.
So when Number Seven spoke of sending us a paper, I welcomed the
suggestion. I asked him whether he had any objection to my looking it
over before he read it. My proposal rather pleased him, I thought, for,
as was observed on a former occasion, he has in connection with a belief
in himself another side,--a curious self-distrust. I have no question
that he has an obscure sense of some mental deficiency. Thus you may
expect from him first a dogma, and presently a doubt. If you fight his
dogma, he will do battle for it stoutly; if you let him alone, he will
very probably explain its extravagances, if it has any, and tame it into
reasonable limits. Sometimes he is in one mood, sometimes in another.
The first portion of what we listened to shows him at his best; in the
latter part I am afraid you will think he gets a little wild.
I proceed to lay before you the paper which Number Seven read to The
Teacups. There was something very pleasing in the deference which was
shown him. We all feel that there is a crack in the teacup, and are
disposed to handle it carefully. I have left out a few things which he
said, feeling that they might give offence to some of the company. There
were sentences so involved and obscure that I was sure they would not be
understood, if indeed he understood them himself. But there are other
passages so entirely sane, and as it seems to me so just, that if any
reader attributes them to me I shall not think myself wronged by the
supposition. You must remember that Number Seven has had a fair
education, that he has been a wide reader in many directions, and that he
belongs to a family of remarkable intellectual gifts. So it was not
surprising that he said some things which pleased the company, as in fact
they did. The reader will not be startled to see a certain abruptness in
the transition from one subject to another,--it is a characteristic of
the squinting brain wherever you find it. Another curious mark rarely
wanting in the subjects of mental strabismus is an irregular and often
sprawling and deformed handwriting. Many and many a time I have said,
after glancing at the back of a letter, "This comes from an insane
asylum, or from an eccentric who might well be a candidate for such an
institution." Number Seven's manuscript, which showed marks of my
corrections here and there, furnished good examples of the chirography of
persons with ill-mated cerebral hemispheres. But the earlier portions of
the manuscript are of perfectly normal appearance.
Conticuere omnes, as Virgil says. We were all silent as Number Seven
began the reading of his paper.
Number Seven reads.
I am the seventh son of a seventh son, as I suppose you all know. It is
commonly believed that some extraordinary gifts belong to the fortunate
individuals born under these exceptional conditions. However this may be,
a peculiar virtue was supposed to dwell in me from my earliest years. My
touch was believed to have the influence formerly attributed to that of
the kings and queens of England. You may remember that the great Dr.
Samuel Johnson, when a child, was carried to be touched by her Majesty
Queen Anne for the "king's evil," as scrofula used to be called. Our
honored friend The Dictator will tell you that the brother of one of his
Andover schoolmates was taken to one of these gifted persons, who touched
him, and hung a small bright silver coin, either a "fourpence ha'penny"
or a "ninepence," about his neck, which, strange to say, after being worn
a certain time, became tarnished, and finally black,--a proof of the
poisonous matters which had become eliminated from the system and
gathered upon the coin. I remember that at one time I used to carry
fourpence ha'pennies with holes bored through them, which I furnished to
children or to their mothers, under pledges of secrecy,--receiving a
piece of silver of larger dimensions in exchange. I never felt quite
sure about any extraordinary endowment being a part of my inheritance in
virtue of my special conditions of birth. A phrenologist, who examined
my head when I was a boy, said the two sides were unlike. My hatter's
measurement told me the same thing; but in looking over more than a
bushel of the small cardboard hat-patterns which give the exact shape of
the head, I have found this is not uncommon. The phrenologist made all
sorts of predictions of what I should be and do, which proved about as
near the truth as those recorded in Miss Edith Thomas's charming little
poem, "Augury," which some of us were reading the other day.
I have never been through college, but I had a relative who was famous as
a teacher of rhetoric in one of our universities, and especially for
taking the nonsense out of sophomorical young fellows who could not say
anything without rigging it up in showy and sounding phrases. I think I
learned from him to express myself in good old-fashioned English, and
without making as much fuss about it as our Fourth of July orators and
political haranguers were in the habit of making.
I read a good many stories during my boyhood, one of which left a lasting
impression upon me, and which I have always commended to young people.
It is too late, generally, to try to teach old people, yet one may profit
by it at any period of life before the sight has become too dim to be of
any use. The story I refer to is in "Evenings at Home," and is called
"Eyes and No Eyes." I ought to have it by me, but it is constantly
happening that the best old things get overlaid by the newest trash; and
though I have never seen anything of the kind half so good, my table and
shelves are cracking with the weight of involuntary accessions to my
library.
This is the story as I remember it: Two children walk out, and are
questioned when they come home. One has found nothing to observe,
nothing to admire, nothing to describe, nothing to ask questions about.
The other has found everywhere objects of curiosity and interest. I
advise you, if you are a child anywhere under forty-five, and do not yet
wear glasses, to send at once for "Evenings at Home" and read that story.
For myself, I am always grateful to the writer of it for calling my
attention to common things. How many people have been waked to a quicker
consciousness of life by Wordsworth's simple lines about the daffodils,
and what he says of the thoughts suggested to him by "the meanest flower
that blows"!
I was driving with a friend, the other day, through a somewhat dreary
stretch of country, where there seemed to be very little to attract
notice or deserve remark. Still, the old spirit infused by "Eyes and No
Eyes" was upon me, and I looked for something to fasten my thought upon,
and treat as an artist treats a study for a picture. The first object to
which my eyes were drawn was an old-fashioned well-sweep. It did not take
much imaginative sensibility to be stirred by the sight of this most
useful, most ancient, most picturesque, of domestic conveniences. I know
something of the shadoof of Egypt,--the same arrangement by which the
sacred waters of the Nile have been lifted, from the days of the Pharaohs
to those of the Khedives. That long forefinger pointing to heaven was a
symbol which spoke to the Puritan exile as it spoke of old to the
enslaved Israelite. Was there ever any such water as that which we used
to draw from the deep, cold well, in "the old oaken bucket"? What
memories gather about the well in all ages! What love-matches have been
made at its margin, from the times of Jacob and, Rachel downward! What
fairy legends hover over it, what fearful mysteries has it hidden! The
beautiful well-sweep! It is too rarely that we see it, and as it dies
out and gives place to the odiously convenient pump, with the last patent
on its cast-iron uninterestingness, does it not seem as if the farmyard
aspect had lost half its attraction? So long as the dairy farm exists,
doubtless there must be every facility for getting water in abundance;
but the loss of the well-sweep cannot be made up to us even if our milk
were diluted to twice its present attenuation.
The well-sweep had served its turn, and my companion and I relapsed into
silence. After a while we passed another farmyard, with nothing which
seemed deserving of remark except the wreck of an old wagon.
"Look," I said, "if you want to see one of the greatest of all the
triumphs of human ingenuity, one of the most beautiful, as it is one of
the most useful, of all the mechanisms which the intelligence of
successive ages has called into being."
"I see nothing," my companion answered, "but an old broken-down wagon.
Why they leave such a piece of lumbering trash about their place, where
people can see it as they pass, is more than I can account for."
"And yet," said I, "there is one of the most extraordinary products of
human genius and skill,--an object which combines the useful and the
beautiful to an extent which hardly any simple form of mechanism can
pretend to rival. Do you notice how, while everything else has gone to
smash, that wheel remains sound and fit for service? Look at it merely
for its beauty.
"See the perfect circles, the outer and the inner. A circle is in itself
a consummate wonder of geometrical symmetry. It is the line in which the
omnipotent energy delights to move. There is no fault in it to be
amended. The first drawn circle and the last both embody the same
complete fulfillment of a perfect design. Then look at the rays which
pass from the inner to the outer circle. How beautifully they bring the
greater and lesser circles into connection with each other! The flowers
know that secret,--the marguerite in the meadow displays it as clearly as
the great sun in heaven. How beautiful is this flower of wood and iron,
which we were ready to pass by without wasting a look upon it! But its
beauty is only the beginning of its wonderful claim upon us for our
admiration. Look at that field of flowering grass, the triticum
vulgare,--see how its waves follow the breeze in satiny alternations of
light and shadow. You admire it for its lovely aspect; but when you
remember that this flowering grass is wheat, the finest food of the
highest human races, it gains a dignity, a glory, that its beauty alone
could not give it.
"Now look at that exquisite structure lying neglected and disgraced, but
essentially unchanged in its perfection, before you. That slight and
delicate-looking fabric has stood such a trial as hardly any slender
contrivance, excepting always the valves of the heart, was ever subjected
to. It has rattled for years over the cobble-stones of a rough city
pavement. It has climbed over all the accidental obstructions it met in
the highway, and dropped into all the holes and deep ruts that made the
heavy farmer sitting over it use his Sunday vocabulary in a week-day form
of speech. At one time or another, almost every part of that old wagon
has given way. It has had two new pairs of shafts. Twice the axle has
broken off close to the hub, or nave. The seat broke when Zekle and
Huldy were having what they called 'a ride' together. The front was
kicked in by a vicious mare. The springs gave way and the floor bumped
on the axle. Every portion of the wagon became a prey of its special
accident, except that most fragile looking of all its parts, the wheel.
Who can help admiring the exact distribution of the power of resistance
at the least possible expenditure of material which is manifested in this
wondrous triumph of human genius and skill? The spokes are planted in
the solid hub as strongly as the jaw-teeth of a lion in their deep-sunken
sockets. Each spoke has its own territory in the circumference, for
which it is responsible. According to the load the vehicle is expected
to carry, they are few or many, stout or slender, but they share their
joint labor with absolute justice,--not one does more, not one does less,
than its just proportion. The outer end of the spokes is received into
the deep mortise of the wooden fellies, and the structure appears to be
complete. But how long would it take to turn that circle into a polygon,
unless some mighty counteracting force should prevent it? See the iron
tire brought hot from the furnace and laid around the smoking
circumference. Once in place, the workman cools the hot iron; and as it
shrinks with a force that seems like a hand-grasp of the Omnipotent, it
clasps the fitted fragments of the structure, and compresses them into a
single inseparable whole.
"Was it not worth our while to stop a moment before passing that old
broken wagon, and see whether we could not find as much in it as Swift
found in his 'Meditations on a Broomstick'? I have been laughed at for
making so much of such a common thing as a wheel. Idiots! Solomon's
court fool would have scoffed at the thought of the young Galilean who
dared compare the lilies of the field to his august master. Nil admirari
is very well for a North American Indian and his degenerate successor,
who has grown too grand to admire anything but himself, and takes a
cynical pride in his stolid indifference to everything worth reverencing
or honoring."
After calling my companion's attention to the wheel, and discoursing upon
it until I thought he was getting sleepy, we jogged along until we came
to a running stream. It was crossed by a stone bridge of a single arch.
There are very few stone arches over the streams in New England country
towns, and I always delighted in this one. It was built in the last
century, amidst the doubting predictions of staring rustics, and stands
to-day as strong as ever, and seemingly good for centuries to come.
"See there!" said I,--"there is another of my 'Eyes and No Eyes' subjects
to meditate upon. Next to the wheel, the arch is the noblest of those
elementary mechanical composites, corresponding to the proximate
principles of chemistry. The beauty of the arch consists first in its
curve, commonly a part of the circle, of the perfection of which I have
spoken. But the mind derives another distinct pleasure from the
admirable manner in which the several parts, each different from all the
others, contribute to a single harmonious effect. It is a typical
example of the piu nel uno. An arch cut out or a single stone would not
be so beautiful as one of which each individual stone was shaped for its
exact position. Its completion by the locking of the keystone is a
delight to witness and to contemplate. And how the arch endures, when
its lateral thrust is met by solid masses of resistance! In one of the
great temples of Baalbec a keystone has slipped, but how rare is that
occurrence! One will hardly find another such example among all the
ruins of antiquity. Yes, I never get tired of arches. They are noble
when shaped of solid marble blocks, each carefully beveled for its
position. They are beautiful when constructed with the large thin tiles
the Romans were so fond of using. I noticed some arches built in this
way in the wall of one of the grand houses just going up on the bank of
the river. They were over the capstones of the windows,--to take off the
pressure from them, no doubt, for now and then a capstone will crack
under the weight of the superincumbent mass. How close they fit, and how
striking the effect of their long radiations!"
The company listened very well up to this point. When he began the
strain of thoughts which follows, a curious look went round The Teacups.
What a strange underground life is that which is led by the organisms we
call trees! These great fluttering masses of leaves, stems, boughs,
trunks, are not the real trees. They live underground, and what we see
are nothing more nor less than their tails.
The Mistress dropped her teaspoon. Number Five looked at the Doctor,
whose face was very still and sober. The two Annexes giggled, or came
very near it.
Yes, a tree is an underground creature, with its tail in the air. All its
intelligence is in its roots. All the senses it has are in its roots.
Think what sagacity it shows in its search after food and drink! Somehow
or other, the rootlets, which are its tentacles, find out that there is a
brook at a moderate distance from the trunk of the tree, and they make
for it with all their might. They find every crack in the rocks where
there are a few grains of the nourishing substance they care for, and
insinuate themselves into its deepest recesses. When spring and summer
come, they let their tails grow, and delight in whisking them about in
the wind, or letting them be whisked about by it; for these tails are
poor passive things, with very little will of their own, and bend in
whatever direction the wind chooses to make them. The leaves make a deal
of noise whispering. I have sometimes thought I could understand them,
as they talk with each other, and that they seemed to think they made the
wind as they wagged forward and back. Remember what I say. The next
time you see a tree waving in the wind, recollect that it is the tail of
a great underground, many-armed, polypus-like creature, which is as proud
of its caudal appendage, especially in summer-time, as a peacock of his
gorgeous expanse of plumage.
Do you think there is anything so very odd about this idea? Once get it
well into your heads, and you will find it renders the landscape
wonderfully interesting. There are as many kinds of tree-tails as there
are of tails to dogs and other quadrupeds. Study them as Daddy Gilpin
studied them in his "Forest Scenery," but don't forget that they are only
the appendage of the underground vegetable polypus, the true organism to
which they belong.
He paused at this point, and we all drew long breaths, wondering what was
coming next. There was no denying it, the "cracked Teacup" was clinking
a little false,--so it seemed to the company. Yet, after all, the fancy
was not delirious,--the mind could follow it well enough; let him go on.
What do you say to this? You have heard all sorts of things said in
prose and verse about Niagara. Ask our young Doctor there what it
reminds him of. Is n't it a giant putting his tongue out? How can you
fail to see the resemblance? The continent is a great giant, and the
northern half holds the head and shoulders. You can count the pulse of
the giant wherever the tide runs up a creek; but if you want to look at
the giant's tongue, you must go to Niagara. If there were such a thing
as a cosmic physician, I believe he could tell the state of the country's
health, and the prospects of the mortality for the coming season, by
careful inspection of the great tongue, which Niagara is putting out for
him, and has been showing to mankind ever since the first flint-shapers
chipped their arrow-heads. You don't think the idea adds to the
sublimity and associations of the cataract? I am sorry for that, but I
can't help the suggestion. It is just as manifestly a tongue put out for
inspection as if it had Nature's own label to that effect hung over it.
I don't know whether you can see these things as clearly as I do. There
are some people that never see anything, if it is as plain as a hole in a
grindstone, until it is pointed out to them; and some that can't see it
then, and won't believe there is any hole till they've poked their finger
through it. I've got a great many things to thank God for, but perhaps
most of all that I can find something to admire, to wonder at, to set my
fancy going, and to wind up my enthusiasm pretty much everywhere.
Look here! There are crowds of people whirled through our streets on
these new-fashioned cars, with their witch-broomsticks overhead,--if they
don't come from Salem, they ought to,--and not more than one in a dozen
of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks or cares a nickel's worth about the
miracle which is wrought for their convenience. They know that without
hands or feet, without horses, without steam, so far as they can see,
they are transported from place to place, and that there is nothing to
account for it except the witch-broomstick and the iron or copper cobweb
which they see stretched above them. What do they know or care about
this last revelation of the omnipresent spirit of the material universe?
We ought to go down on our knees when one of these mighty caravans, car
after car, spins by us, under the mystic impulse which seems to know not
whether its train is loaded or empty. We are used to force in the
muscles of horses, in the expansive potency of steam, but here we have
force stripped stark naked,--nothing but a filament to cover its
nudity,--and yet showing its might in efforts that would task the
working-beam of a ponderous steam-engine. I am thankful that in an age
of cynicism I have not lost my reverence. Perhaps you would wonder to
see how some very common sights impress me. I always take off my hat if
I stop to speak to a stone-cutter at his work. "Why?" do you ask me?
Because I know that his is the only labor that is likely to endure. A
score of centuries has not effaced the marks of the Greek's or the
Roman's chisel on his block of marble. And now, before this new
manifestation of that form of cosmic vitality which we call electricity,
I feel like taking the posture of the peasants listening to the Angelus.
How near the mystic effluence of mechanical energy brings us to the
divine source of all power and motion! In the old mythology, the right
hand of Jove held and sent forth the lightning. So, in the record of the
Hebrew prophets, did the right hand of Jehovah cast forth and direct it.
Was Nahum thinking of our far-off time when he wrote, "The chariots shall
rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad
ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings"?
Number Seven had finished reading his paper. Two bright spots in his
cheeks showed that he had felt a good deal in writing it, and the flush
returned as he listened to his own thoughts. Poor old fellow! The
"cracked Teacup" of our younger wits,--not yet come to their full human
sensibilities,--the "crank" of vulgar tongues, the eccentric, the seventh
son of a seventh son, too often made the butt of thoughtless pleasantry,
was, after all, a fellow-creature, with flesh and blood like the rest of
us. The wild freaks of his fancy did not hurt us, nor did they prevent
him from seeing many things justly, and perhaps sometimes more vividly
and acutely than if he were as sound as the dullest of us.
The teaspoons tinkled loudly all round the table, as he finished reading.
The Mistress caught her breath. I was afraid she was going to sob, but
she took it out in vigorous stirring of her tea. Will you believe that I
saw Number Five, with a sweet, approving smile on her face all the time,
brush her cheek with her hand-kerchief? There must have been a tear
stealing from beneath its eyelid. I hope Number Seven saw it. He is one
of the two men at our table who most need the tender looks and tones of a
woman. The Professor and I are hors de combat; the Counsellor is busy
with his cases and his ambitions; the Doctor is probably in love with a
microscope, and flirting with pathological specimens; but Number Seven
and the Tutor are, I fear, both suffering from that worst of all famines,
heart-hunger.
Do you remember that Number Seven said he never wrote a line of "poetry"
in his life, except once when he was suffering from temporary weakness of
body and mind? That is because he is a poet. If he had not been one, he
would very certainly have taken to tinkling rhymes. What should you
think of the probable musical genius of a young man who was particularly
fond of jingling a set of sleigh-bells? Should you expect him to turn
out a Mozart or a Beethoven? Now, I think I recognize the poetical
instinct in Number Seven, however imperfect may be its expression, and
however he may be run away with at times by fantastic notions that come
into his head. If fate had allotted him a helpful companion in the shape
of a loving and intelligent wife, he might have been half cured of his
eccentricities, and we should not have had to say, in speaking of him,
"Poor fellow!" But since this cannot be, I am pleased that he should
have been so kindly treated on the occasion of the reading of his paper.
If he saw Number Five's tear, he will certainly fall in love with her.
No matter if he does Number Five is a kind of Circe who does not turn the
victims of her enchantment into swine, but into lambs. I want to see
Number Seven one of her little flock. I say "little." I suspect it is
larger than most of us know. Anyhow, she can spare him sympathy and
kindness and encouragement enough to keep him contented with himself and
with her, and never miss the pulses of her loving life she lends him. It
seems to be the errand of some women to give many people as much
happiness as they have any right to in this world. If they concentrated
their affection on one, they would give him more than any mortal could
claim as his share. I saw Number Five watering her flowers, the other
day. The watering-pot had one of those perforated heads, through which
the water runs in many small streams. Every plant got its share: the
proudest lily bent beneath the gentle shower; the lowliest daisy held its
little face up for baptism. All were refreshed, none was flooded.
Presently she took the perforated head, or "rose," from the neck of the
watering-pot, and the full stream poured out in a round, solid column.
It was almost too much for the poor geranium on which it fell, and it
looked at one minute as if the roots would be laid bare, and perhaps the
whole plant be washed out of the soil in which it was planted. What if
Number Five should take off the "rose" that sprinkles her affections on
so many, and pour them all on one? Can that ever be? If it can, life is
worth living for him on whom her love may be lavished.
One of my neighbors, a thorough American, is much concerned about the
growth of what he calls the "hard-handed aristocracy." He tells the
following story:--
"I was putting up a fence about my yard, and employed a man of whom I
knew something,--that he was industrious, temperate, and that he had a
wife and children to support,--a worthy man, a native New Englander. I
engaged him, I say, to dig some post-holes. My employee bought a new
spade and scoop on purpose, and came to my place at the appointed time,
and began digging. While he was at work, two men came over from a
drinking-saloon, to which my residence is nearer than I could desire.
One of them I had known as Mike Fagan, the other as Hans Schleimer. They
looked at Hiram, my New Hampshire man, in a contemptuous and threatening
way for a minute or so, when Fagan addressed him:
"'And how much does the man pay yez by the hour?'
"'The gentleman does n't pay me by the hour,' said Hiram.
"'How mosh does he bay you by der veeks?' said Hans.
"'I don' know as that's any of your business,' answered Hiram.
"'Faith, we'll make it our business,' said Mike Fagan. 'We're Knoights
of Labor, we'd have yez to know, and ye can't make yer bargains jist as
ye loikes. We manes to know how mony hours ye worrks, and how much ye
gets for it.'
"'Knights of Labor!' said I. 'Why, that is a kind of title of nobility,
is n't it? I thought the laws of our country did n't allow titles of
that kind. But if you have a right to be called knights, I suppose I
ought to address you as such. Sir Michael, I congratulate you on the
dignity you have attained. I hope Lady Fagan is getting on well with my
shirts. Sir Hans, I pay my respects to your title. I trust that Lady
Schleixner has got through that little difficulty between her ladyship
and yourself in which the police court thought it necessary to
intervene.'
"The two men looked at me. I weigh about a hundred and eighty pounds,
and am well put together. Hiram was noted in his village as a
'rahstler.' But my face is rather pallid and peaked, and Hiram had
something of the greenhorn look. The two men, who had been drinking,
hardly knew what ground to take. They rather liked the sound of Sir
Michael and, Sir Hans. They did not know very well what to make of their
wives as 'ladies.' They looked doubtful whether to take what had been
said as a casus belli or not, but they wanted a pretext of some kind or
other. Presently one of them saw a label on the scoop, or longhandled,
spoon-like shovel, with which Hiram had been working.
"'Arrah, be jabers!' exclaimed Mike Fagan, 'but has n't he been a-tradin'
wid Brown, the hardware fellah, that we boycotted! Grab it, Hans, and
we'll carry it off and show it to the brotherhood.'
"The men made a move toward the implement.
"'You let that are scoop-shovel alone,' said Hiram.
"I stepped to his side. The Knights were combative, as their noble
predecessors with the same title always were, and it was necessary to
come to a voie de fait. My straight blow from the shoulder did for Sir
Michael. Hiram treated Sir Hans to what is technically known as a
cross-buttock.
"'Naow, Dutchman,' said Hiram, 'if you don't want to be planted in that
are post-hole, y'd better take y'rself out o' this here piece of private
property. "Dangerous passin," as the sign-posts say, abaout these
times.'
"Sir Michael went down half stunned by my expressive gesture; Sir Hans
did not know whether his hip was out of joint or he had got a bad sprain;
but they were both out of condition for further hostilities. Perhaps it
was hardly fair to take advantage of their misfortunes to inflict a
discourse upon them, but they had brought it on themselves, and we each
of us gave them a piece of our mind.
"'I tell you what it is,' said Hiram, 'I'm a free and independent
American citizen, and I an't a-gon' to hev no man tyrannize over me, if
he doos call himself by one o' them noblemen's titles. Ef I can't work
jes' as I choose, fur folks that wants me to work fur 'em and that I want
to work fur, I might jes' as well go to Sibery and done with it. My
gran'f'ther fit in Bunker Hill battle. I guess if our folks in them days
did n't care no great abaout Lord Percy and Sir William Haowe, we an't
a-gon' to be scart by Sir Michael Fagan and Sir Hans What 's-his-name,
nor no other fellahs that undertakes to be noblemen, and tells us common
folks what we shall dew an' what we sha'n't. No, sir!'
"I took the opportunity to explain to Sir Michael and Sir Hans what it
was our fathers fought for, and what is the meaning of liberty. If these
noblemen did not like the country, they could go elsewhere. If they did
n't like the laws, they had the ballot-box, and could choose new
legislators. But as long as the laws existed they must obey them. I
could not admit that, because they called themselves by the titles the
Old World nobility thought so much of, they had a right to interfere in
the agreements I entered into with my neighbor. I told Sir Michael that
if he would go home and help Lady Fagan to saw and split the wood for her
fire, he would be better employed than in meddling with my domestic
arrangements. I advised Sir Hans to ask Lady Schleimer for her bottle of
spirits to use as an embrocation for his lame hip. And so my two
visitors with the aristocratic titles staggered off, and left us plain,
untitled citizens, Hiram and myself, to set our posts, and consider the
question whether we lived in a free country or under the authority of a
self-constituted order of quasi-nobility."
It is a very curious fact that, with all our boasted "free and equal"
superiority over the communities of the Old World, our people have the
most enormous appetite for Old World titles of distinction. Sir Michael
and Sir Hans belong to one of the most extended of the aristocratic
orders. But we have also "Knights and Ladies of Honor," and, what is
still grander, "Royal Conclave of Knights and Ladies," "Royal Arcanum,"
and "Royal Society of Good Fellows," "Supreme Council," "Imperial
Court," "Grand Protector," and "Grand Dictator," and so on. Nothing
less than "Grand" and "Supreme" is good enough for the dignitaries of our
associations of citizens. Where does all this ambition for names without
realities come from? Because a Knight of the Garter wears a golden star,
why does the worthy cordwainer, who mends the shoes of his
fellow-citizens, want to wear a tin star, and take a name that had a
meaning as used by the representatives of ancient families, or the men
who had made themselves illustrious by their achievements?
It appears to be a peculiarly American weakness. The French republicans
of the earlier period thought the term citizen was good enough for
anybody. At a later period, "Roi Citoyen"--the citizen king was a common
title given to Louis Philippe. But nothing is too grand for the
American, in the way of titles. The proudest of them all signify
absolutely nothing. They do not stand for ability, for public service,
for social importance, for large possessions; but, on the contrary, are
oftenest found in connection with personalities to which they are
supremely inapplicable. We can hardly afford to quarrel with a national
habit which, if lightly handled, may involve us in serious domestic
difficulties. The "Right Worshipful" functionary whose equipage stops at
my back gate, and whose services are indispensable to the health and
comfort of my household, is a dignitary whom I must not offend. I must
speak with proper deference to the lady who is scrubbing my floors, when
I remember that her husband, who saws my wood, carries a string of
high-sounding titles which would satisfy a Spanish nobleman.
After all, every people must have its own forms of ostentation, pretence,
and vulgarity. The ancient Romans had theirs, the English and the French
have theirs as well,--why should not we Americans have ours? Educated
and refined persons must recognize frequent internal conflicts between
the "Homo sum" of Terence and the "Odi profanum vulgus" of Horace. The
nobler sentiment should be that of every true American, and it is in that
direction that our best civilization is constantly tending.
We were waited on by a new girl, the other evening. Our pretty maiden
had left us for a visit to some relative,--so the Mistress said. I do
sincerely hope she will soon come back, for we all like to see her
flitting round the table.
I don't know what to make of it. I had it all laid out in my mind. With
such a company there must be a love-story. Perhaps there will be, but
there may be new combinations of the elements which are to make it up,
and here is a bud among the full-blown flowers to which I must devote a
little space.
Delilah.
I must call her by the name we gave her after she had trimmed the Samson
locks of our Professor. Delilah is a puzzle to most of us. A pretty
creature, dangerously pretty to be in a station not guarded by all the
protective arrangements which surround the maidens of a higher social
order. It takes a strong cage to keep in a tiger or a grizzly bear, but
what iron bars, what barbed wires, can keep out the smooth and subtle
enemy that finds out the cage where beauty is imprisoned? Our young
Doctor is evidently attracted by the charming maiden who serves him and
us so modestly and so gracefully. Fortunately, the Mistress never loses
sight of her. If she were her own daughter, she could not be more
watchful of all her movements. And yet I do not believe that Delilah
needs all this overlooking. If I am not mistaken, she knows how to take
care of herself, and could be trusted anywhere, in any company, without a
duenna. She has a history,--I feel sure of it. She has been trained and
taught as young persons of higher position in life are brought up, and
does not belong in the humble station in which we find her. But inasmuch
as the Mistress says nothing about her antecedents, we do not like to be
too inquisitive. The two Annexes are, it is plain, very curious about
her. I cannot wonder. They are both good-looking girls, but Delilah is
prettier than either of them. My sight is not so good as it was, but I
can see the way in which the eyes of the young people follow each other
about plainly enough to set me thinking as to what is going on in the
thinking marrow behind them. The young Doctor's follow Delilah as she
glides round the table,--they look into hers whenever they get a chance;
but the girl's never betray any consciousness of it, so far as I can see.
There is no mistaking the interest with which the two, Annexes watch all
this. Why shouldn't they, I should like to know? The Doctor is a bright
young fellow, and wants nothing but a bald spot and a wife to find
himself in a comfortable family practice. One of the Annexes, as I have
said, has had thoughts of becoming a doctress. I don't think the Doctor
would want his wife to practise medicine, for reasons which I will not
stop to mention. Such a partnership sometimes works wonderfully well, as
in one well-known instance where husband and wife are both eminent in the
profession; but our young Doctor has said to me that he had rather see
his wife,--if he ever should have one,--at the piano than at the
dissecting-table. Of course the Annexes know nothing about this, and
they may think, as he professed himself willing to lecture on medicine to
women, he might like to take one of his pupils as a helpmeet.
If it were not for our Delilah's humble position, I don't see why she
would not be a good match for any young man. But then it is so hard to
take a young woman from so very lowly a condition as that of a "waitress"
that it would require a deal of courage to venture on such a step. If we
could only find out that she is a princess in disguise, so to
speak,--that is, a young person of presentable connections as well as
pleasing looks and manners; that she has had an education of some kind,
as we suspected when she blushed on hearing herself spoken of as a
"gentille petite," why, then everything would be all right, the young
Doctor would have plain sailing,--that is, if he is in love with her, and
if she fancies him,--and I should find my love-story,--the one I
expected, but not between the parties I had thought would be mating with
each other.
Dear little Delilah! Lily of the valley, growing in the shade
now,--perhaps better there until her petals drop; and yet if she is all I
often fancy she is, how her youthful presence would illuminate and
sweeten a household! There is not one of us who does not feel interested
in her,--not one of us who would not be delighted at some Cinderella
transformation which would show her in the setting Nature meant for her
favorite.
The fancy of Number Seven about the witches' broomsticks suggested to one
of us the following poem:
THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN;
OR, THE RETURN OF THE WITCHES.
Lookout! Look out, boys! Clear the track!
The witches are here! They've all come back!
They hanged them high,--No use! No use!
What cares a witch for a hangman's noose?
They buried them deep, but they would n't lie, still,
For cats and witches are hard to kill;
They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die,
Books said they did, but they lie! they lie!
--A couple of hundred years, or so,
They had knocked about in the world below,
When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call,
And a homesick feeling seized them all;
For he came from a place they knew full well,
And many a tale he had to tell.
They long to visit the haunts of men,
To see the old dwellings they knew again,
And ride on their broomsticks all around
Their wide domain of unhallowed ground.
In Essex county there's many a roof
Well known to him of the cloven hoof;
The small square windows are full in view
Which the midnight hags went sailing through,
On their well-trained broomsticks mounted high,
Seen like shadows against the sky;
Crossing the track of owls and bats,
Hugging before them their coal-black cats.
Well did they know, those gray old wives,
The sights we see in our daily drives
Shimmer of lake and shine of sea,
Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree,
(It wasn't then as we see it now,
With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;)
Dusky nooks in the Essex woods,
Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes,
Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake
Glide through his forests of fern and brake;
Ipswich River; its old stone bridge;
Far off Andover's Indian Ridge,
And many a scene where history tells
Some shadow of bygone terror dwells,
Of "Norman's Woe" with its tale of dread,
Of the Screeching Woman of Marblehead,
(The fearful story that turns men pale
Don't bid me tell it,--my speech would fail.)
Who would not, will not, if he can,
Bathe in the breezes of fair Cape Ann,
Rest in the bowers her bays enfold,
Loved by the sachems and squaws of old?
Home where the white magnolias bloom,
Sweet with the bayberry's chaste perfume,
Hugged by the woods and kissed by the seal
Where is the Eden like to thee?
For that "couple of hundred years, or so,"
There had been no peace in the world below;
The witches still grumbling, "It is n't fair;
Come, give us a taste of the upper air!
We've had enough of your sulphur springs,
And the evil odor that round them clings;
We long for a drink that is cool and nice,
Great buckets of water with Wenham ice;
We've served you well up-stairs, you know;
You're a good old-fellow--come, let us go!"
I don't feel sure of his being good,
But he happened to be in a pleasant mood,
As fiends with their skins full sometimes are,
(He'd been drinking with "roughs" at a Boston bar.)
So what does he do but up and shout
To a graybeard turnkey, "Let 'em out!"
To mind his orders was all he knew;
The gates swung open, and out they flew.
"Where are our broomsticks?" the beldams cried.
"Here are your broomsticks," an imp replied.
"They've been in--the place you know--so long
They smell of brimstone uncommon strong;
But they've gained by being left alone,
Just look, and you'll see how tall they've grown."
--And where is my cat? "a vixen squalled.
Yes, where are our cats?" the witches bawled,
And began to call them all by name:
As fast as they called the cats, they came
There was bob-tailed Tommy and long-tailed Tim,
And wall-eyed Jacky and green-eyed Jim,
And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged Beau,
And Skinny and Squally, and Jerry and Joe,
And many another that came at call,
It would take too long to count them all.
All black,--one could hardly tell which was which,
But every cat knew his own old witch;
And she knew hers as hers knew her,
Ah, did n't they curl their tails and purr!
No sooner the withered hags were free
Than out they swarmed for a midnight spree;
I could n't tell all they did in rhymes,
But the Essex people had dreadful times.
The Swampscott fishermen still relate
How a strange sea-monster stole thair bait;
How their nets were tangled in loops and knots,
And they found dead crabs in their lobster-pots.
Poor Danvers grieved for her blasted crops,
And Wilmington mourned over mildewed hops.
A blight played havoc with Beverly beans,
It was all the work of those hateful queans!
A dreadful panic began at "Pride's,"
Where the witches stopped in their midnight rides,
And there rose strange rumors and vague alarms
'Mid the peaceful dwellers at Beverly Farms.
Now when the Boss of the Beldams found
That without his leave they were ramping round,
He called,--they could hear him twenty miles,
From Chelsea beach to the Misery Isles;
The deafest old granny knew his tone
Without the trick of the telephone.
"Come here, you witches! Come here!" says he,
--"At your games of old, without asking me
I'll give you a little job to do
That will keep you stirring, you godless crew!"
They came, of course, at their master's call,
The witches, the broomsticks, the cats, and all;
He led the hags to a railway train
The horses were trying to drag in vain.
"Now, then," says he, "you've had your fun,
And here are the cars you've got to run.
"The driver may just unhitch his team,
We don't want horses, we don't want steam;
You may keep your old black cats to hug,
But the loaded train you've got to lug."
Since then on many a car you'll see
A broomstick plain as plain can be;
On every stick there's a witch astride,
The string you see to her leg is tied.
She will do a mischief if she can,
But the string is held by a careful man,
And whenever the evil-minded witch
Would cut come caper, he gives a twitch.
As for the hag, you can't see her,
But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr,
And now and then, as a car goes by,
You may catch a gleam from her wicked eye.
Often you've looked on a rushing train,
But just what moved it was not so plain.
It couldn't be those wires above,
For they could neither pull nor shove;
Where was the motor that made it go
You couldn't guess, but now you know.
Remember my rhymes when you ride again
On the rattling rail by the broomstick train!
X
In my last report of our talks over the teacups I had something to say of
the fondness of our people for titles. Where did the anti-republican,
anti-democratic passion for swelling names come from, and how long has it
been naturalized among us?
A striking instance of it occurred at about the end of the last century.
It was at that time there appeared among us one of the most original and
singular personages to whom America has given birth. Many of our
company,--many of my readers,--all well acquainted with his name, and not
wholly ignorant of his history. They will not object to my giving some
particulars relating to him, which, if not new to them, will be new to
others into whose hands these pages may fall.
Timothy Dexter, the first claimant of a title of nobility among the
people of the United States of America, was born in the town of Malden,
near Boston. He served an apprenticeship as a leather-dresser, saved
some money, got some more with his wife, began trading and speculating,
and became at last rich, for those days. His most famous business
enterprise was that of sending an invoice of warming-pans to the West
Indies. A few tons of ice would have seemed to promise a better return;
but in point of fact, he tells us, the warming-pans were found useful in
the manufacture of sugar, and brought him in a handsome profit. His
ambition rose with his fortune. He purchased a large and stately house
in Newburyport, and proceeded to embellish and furnish it according to
the dictates of his taste and fancy. In the grounds about his house, he
caused to be erected between forty and fifty wooden statues of great men
and allegorical figures, together with four lions and one lamb. Among
these images were two statues of Dexter himself, one of which held a
label with a characteristic inscription. His house was ornamented with
minarets, adorned with golden balls, and surmounted by a large gilt
eagle. He equipped it with costly furniture, with paintings, and a
library. He went so far as to procure the services of a poet laureate,
whose business it seems to have been to sing his praises. Surrounded with
splendors like these, the plain title of "Mr." Dexter would have been
infinitely too mean and common. He therefore boldly took the step of
self-ennobling, and gave himself forth--as he said, obeying "the voice of
the people at large"--as "Lord Timothy Dexter," by which appellation he
has ever since been known to the American public.
If to be the pioneer in the introduction of Old World titles into
republican America can confer a claim to be remembered by posterity, Lord
Timothy Dexter has a right to historic immortality. If the true American
spirit shows itself most clearly in boundless self-assertion, Timothy
Dexter is the great original American egotist. If to throw off the
shackles of Old World pedantry, and defy the paltry rules and examples of
grammarians and rhetoricians, is the special province and the chartered
privilege of the American writer, Timothy Dexter is the founder of a new
school, which tramples under foot the conventionalities that hampered and
subjugated the faculties of the poets, the dramatists, the historians,
essayists, story-tellers, orators, of the worn-out races which have
preceded the great American people.
The material traces of the first American nobleman's existence have
nearly disappeared. The house is still standing, but the statues, the
minarets, the arches, and the memory of the great Lord Timothy Dexter
live chiefly in tradition, and in the work which he bequeathed to
posterity, and of which I shall say a few words. It is unquestionably a
thoroughly original production, and I fear that some readers may think I
am trifling with them when I am quoting it literally. I am going to make
a strong claim for Lord Timothy as against other candidates for a certain
elevated position.
Thomas Jefferson is commonly recognized as the first to proclaim before
the world the political independence of America. It is not so generally
agreed upon as to who was the first to announce the literary emancipation
of our country.
One of Mr. Emerson's biographers has claimed that his Phi Beta Kappa
Oration was our Declaration of Literary Independence. But Mr. Emerson
did not cut himself loose from all the traditions of Old World
scholarship. He spelled his words correctly, he constructed his
sentences grammatically. He adhered to the slavish rules of propriety,
and observed the reticences which a traditional delicacy has considered
inviolable in decent society, European and Oriental alike. When he wrote
poetry, he commonly selected subjects which seemed adapted to poetical
treatment,--apparently thinking that all things were not equally
calculated to inspire the true poet's genius. Once, indeed, he ventured
to refer to "the meal in the firkin, the milk in the pan," but he chiefly
restricted himself to subjects such as a fastidious conventionalism would
approve as having a certain fitness for poetical treatment. He was not
always so careful as he might have been in the rhythm and rhyme of his
verse, but in the main he recognized the old established laws which have
been accepted as regulating both. In short, with all his originality, he
worked in Old World harness, and cannot be considered as the creator of a
truly American, self-governed, self-centred, absolutely independent style
of thinking and writing, knowing no law but its own sovereign will and
pleasure.
A stronger claim might be urged for Mr. Whitman. He takes into his
hospitable vocabulary words which no English dictionary recognizes as
belonging to the language,--words which will be looked for in vain
outside of his own pages. He accepts as poetical subjects all things
alike, common and unclean, without discrimination, miscellaneous as the
contents of the great sheet which Peter saw let down from heaven. He
carries the principle of republicanism through the whole world of created
objects. He will "thread a thread through [his] poems," he tells us,
"that no one thing in the universe is inferior to another thing." No man
has ever asserted the surpassing dignity and importance of the American
citizen so boldly and freely as Mr. Whitman. He calls himself "teacher
of the unquenchable creed, namely, egotism." He begins one of his
chants, "I celebrate myself," but he takes us all in as partners in his
self-glorification. He believes in America as the new Eden.
"A world primal again,--vistas of glory incessant and branching, A new
race dominating previous ones and grander far, New politics--new
literature and religions--new inventions and arts."
Of the new literature be himself has furnished specimens which certainly
have all the originality he can claim for them. So far as egotism is
concerned, he was clearly anticipated by the titled personage to whom I
have referred, who says of himself, "I am the first in the East, the
first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western world."
But while Mr. Whitman divests himself of a part of his baptismal name,
the distinguished New Englander thus announces his proud position: "Ime
the first Lord in the younited States of A mercary Now of Newburyport.
it is the voice of the peopel and I cant Help it." This extract is from
his famous little book called "A Pickle for the Knowing Ones." As an
inventor of a new American style he goes far beyond Mr. Whitman, who, to
be sure, cares little for the dictionary, and makes his own rules of
rhythm, so far as there is any rhythm in his sentences. But Lord Timothy
spells to suit himself, and in place of employing punctuation as it is
commonly used, prints a separate page of periods, colons, semicolons,
commas, notes of interrogation and of admiration, with which the reader
is requested to "peper and soolt" the book as he pleases.
I am afraid that Mr. Emerson and Mr. Whitman must yield the claim of
declaring American literary independence to Lord Timothy Dexter, who not
only taught his countrymen that they need not go to the Heralds' College
to authenticate their titles of nobility, but also that they were at
perfect liberty to spell just as they liked, and to write without
troubling themselves about stops of any kind. In writing what I suppose
he intended for poetry, he did not even take the pains to break up his
lines into lengths to make them look like verse, as may be seen by the
following specimen:
WONDER OF WONDERS!
How great the soul is! Do not you all wonder and admire to see and
behold and hear? Can you all believe half the truth, and admire to hear
the wonders how great the soul is--only behold--past finding out! Only
see how large the soul is! that if a man is drowned in the sea what a
great bubble comes up out of the top of the water... The bubble is the
soul.
I confess that I am not in sympathy with some of the movements that
accompany the manifestations of American social and literary
independence. I do not like the assumption of titles of Lords and
Knights by plain citizens of a country which prides itself on recognizing
simple manhood and womanhood as sufficiently entitled to respect without
these unnecessary additions. I do not like any better the familiar, and
as it seems to me rude, way of speaking of our fellow-citizens who are
entitled to the common courtesies of civilized society. I never thought
it dignified or even proper for a President of the United States to call
himself, or to be called by others, "Frank" Pierce. In the first place I
had to look in a biographical dictionary to find out whether his
baptismal name was Franklin, or Francis, or simply Frank, for I think
children are sometimes christened with this abbreviated name. But it is
too much in the style of Cowper's unpleasant acquaintance:
"The man who hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves by thumping on your back
How he esteems your merit."
I should not like to hear our past chief magistrates spoken of as Jack
Adams or Jim Madison, and it would have been only as a political partisan
that I should have reconciled myself to "Tom" Jefferson. So, in spite of
"Ben" Jonson, "Tom" Moore, and "Jack" Sheppard, I prefer to speak of a
fellow-citizen already venerable by his years, entitled to respect by
useful services to his country, and recognized by many as the prophet of
a new poetical dispensation, with the customary title of adults rather
than by the free and easy school-boy abbreviation with which he
introduced himself many years ago to the public. As for his rhapsodies,
Number Seven, our "cracked Teacup," says they sound to him like "fugues
played on a big organ which has been struck by lightning." So far as
concerns literary independence, if we understand by that term the getting
rid of our subjection to British criticism, such as it was in the days
when the question was asked, "Who reads an American book?" we may
consider it pretty well established. If it means dispensing with
punctuation, coining words at will, self-revelation unrestrained by a
sense of what is decorous, declamations in which everything is glorified
without being idealized, "poetry" in which the reader must make the
rhythms which the poet has not made for him, then I think we had better
continue literary colonists. I shrink from a lawless independence to
which all the virile energy and trampling audacity of Mr. Whitman fail to
reconcile me. But there is room for everybody and everything in our huge
hemisphere. Young America is like a three-year-old colt with his saddle
and bridle just taken off. The first thing he wants to do is to roll.
He is a droll object, sprawling in the grass with his four hoofs in the
air; but he likes it, and it won't harm us. So let him roll,--let him
roll.
Of all The Teacups around our table, Number Five is the one who is the
object of the greatest interest. Everybody wants to be her friend, and
she has room enough in her hospitable nature to find a place for every
one who is worthy of the privilege. The difficulty is that it is so hard
to be her friend without becoming her lover. I have said before that she
turns the subjects of her Circe-like enchantment, not into swine, but
into lambs. The Professor and I move round among her lambs, the docile
and amiable flock that come and go at her bidding, that follow her
footsteps, and are content to live in the sunshine of her smile and
within reach of the music of her voice. I like to get her away from
their amiable bleatings; I love to talk with her about life, of which she
has seen a great deal, for she knows what it is to be an idol in society
and the centre of her social circle. It might be a question whether
women or men most admire and love her. With her own sex she is always
helpful, sympathizing, tender, charitable, sharing their griefs as well
as taking part in their pleasures. With men it has seemed to make little
difference whether they were young or old: all have found her the same
sweet, generous, unaffected companion; fresh enough in feeling for the
youngest, deep enough in the wisdom of the heart for the oldest. She
does not pretend to be youthful, nor does she trouble herself that she
has seen the roses of more Junes than many of--the younger women who
gather round her. She has not had to say,
Comme je regrette
Mon bras si dodu,
for her arm has never lost its roundness, and her face is one of those
that cannot be cheated of their charm even if they live long enough to
look upon the grown up grandchildren of their coevals.
It is a wonder how Number Five can find the time to be so much to so many
friends of both sexes, in spite of the fact that she is one of the most
insatiable of readers. She not only reads, but she remembers; she not
only remembers, but she records, for her own use and pleasure, and for
the delight and profit of those who are privileged to look over her
note-books. Number Five, as I think I have said before, has not the
ambition to figure as an authoress. That she could write most agreeably
is certain. I have seen letters of hers to friends which prove that
clearly enough. Whether she would find prose or verse the most natural
mode of expression I cannot say, but I know she is passionately fond of
poetry, and I should not be surprised if, laid away among the pressed
pansies and roses of past summers, there were poems, songs, perhaps, of
her own, which she sings to herself with her fingers touching the piano;
for to that she tells her secrets in tones sweet as the ring-dove's call
to her mate.
I am afraid it may be suggested that I am drawing Number Five's portrait
too nearly after some model who is unconsciously sitting for it; but have
n't I told you that you must not look for flesh and blood personalities
behind or beneath my Teacups? I am not going to make these so lifelike
that you will be saying, This is Mr. or Miss, or Mrs. So-and-So. My
readers must remember that there are very many pretty, sweet, amiable
girls and women sitting at their pianos, and finding chords to the music
of their heart-strings. If I have pictured Number Five as one of her
lambs might do it, I have succeeded in what I wanted to accomplish. Why
don't I describe her person? If I do, some gossip or other will be sure
to say, "Oh, he means her, of course," and find a name to match the
pronoun.
It is strange to see how we are all coming to depend upon the friendly
aid of Number Five in our various perplexities. The Counsellor asked her
opinion in one of those cases where a divorce was too probable, but a
reconciliation was possible. It takes a woman to sound a woman's heart,
and she found there was still love enough under the ruffled waters to
warrant the hope of peace and tranquillity. The young Doctor went to her
for counsel in the case of a hysteric girl possessed with the idea that
she was a born poetess, and covering whole pages of foolscap with
senseless outbursts, which she wrote in paroxysms of wild excitement, and
read with a rapture of self-admiration which there was nothing in her
verses to justify or account for. How sweetly Number Five dealt with
that poor deluded sister in her talk with the Doctor! "Yes," she said to
him, "nothing can be fuller of vanity, self-worship, and self-deception.
But we must be very gentle with her. I knew a young girl tormented with
aspirations, and possessed by a belief that she was meant for a higher
place than that which fate had assigned her, who needed wholesome advice,
just as this poor young thing does. She did not ask for it, and it was
not offered. Alas, alas! 'no man cared for her soul,'--no man nor woman
either. She was in her early teens, and the thought of her earthly
future, as it stretched out before her, was more than she could bear, and
she sought the presence of her Maker to ask the meaning of her abortive
existence.--We will talk it over. I will help you take care of this
child."
The Doctor was thankful to have her assistance in a case with which he
would have found it difficult to deal if he had been left to, his unaided
judgment, and between them the young girl was safely piloted through the
perilous straits in which she came near shipwreck.
I know that it is commonly said of her that every male friend of hers
must become her lover unless he is already lassoed by another. Il fait
passer par l'a. The young Doctor is, I think, safe, for I am convinced
that he is bewitched with Delilah. Since she has left us, he has seemed
rather dejected; I feel sure that he misses her. We all do, but he more
seriously than the rest of us. I have said that I cannot tell whether
the Counsellor is to be counted as one of Number Five's lambs or not, but
he evidently admires her, and if he is not fascinated, looks as if he
were very near that condition.
It was a more delicate matter about which the Tutor talked with her.
Something which she had pleasantly said to him about the two Annexes led
him to ask her, more or less seriously, it may be remembered, about the
fitness of either of them to be the wife of a young man in his position.
She talked so sensibly, as it seemed to him, about it that he continued
the conversation, and, shy as he was, became quite easy and confidential
in her company. The Tutor is not only a poet, but is a great reader of
the poetry of many languages. It so happened that Number Five was
puzzled, one day, in reading a sonnet of Petrarch, and had recourse to
the Tutor to explain the difficult passage. She found him so thoroughly
instructed, so clear, so much interested, so ready to impart knowledge,
and so happy in his way of doing it, that she asked him if he would not
allow her the privilege of reading an Italian author under his guidance,
now and then.
The Tutor found Number Five an apt scholar, and something more than that;
for while, as a linguist, he was, of course, her master, her intelligent
comments brought out the beauties of an author in a way to make the text
seem like a different version. They did not always confine themselves to
the book they were reading. Number Five showed some curiosity about the
Tutor's relations with the two Annexes. She suggested whether it would
not be well to ask one or both of them in to take part in their readings.
The Tutor blushed and hesitated. "Perhaps you would like to ask one of
them," said Number Five. "Which one shall it be?" "It makes no
difference to me which," he answered, "but I do not see that we need
either." Number Five did not press the matter further. So the young
Tutor and Number Five read together pretty regularly, and came to depend
upon their meeting over a book as one of their stated seasons of
enjoyment. He is so many years younger than she is that I do not suppose
he will have to pass par la, as most of her male friends have done. I
tell her sometimes that she reminds me of my Alma Mater, always young,
always fresh in her attractions, with her scholars all round her, many of
them graduates, or to graduate sooner or later.
What do I mean by graduates? Why, that they have made love to her, and
would be entitled to her diploma, if she gave a parchment to each one of
them who had had the courage to face the inevitable. About the
Counsellor I am, as I have said, in doubt. Who wrote that "I Like You
and I Love You," which we found in the sugar-bowl the other day? Was it
a graduate who had felt the "icy dagger," or only a candidate for
graduation who was afraid of it? So completely does she subjugate those
who come under her influence that I believe she looks upon it as a matter
of course that the fateful question will certainly come, often after a
brief acquaintance. She confessed as much to me, who am in her
confidence, and not a candidate for graduation from her academy. Her
graduates--her lambs I called them--are commonly faithful to her, and
though now and then one may have gone off and sulked in solitude, most of
them feel kindly to her, and to those who have shared the common fate of
her suitors. I do really believe that some of them would be glad to see
her captured by any one, if such there can be, who is worthy of her. She
is the best of friends, they say, but can she love anybody, as so many
other women do, or seem to? Why shouldn't our Musician, who is evidently
fond of her company, and sings and plays duets with her, steal her heart
as Piozzi stole that of the pretty and bright Mrs. Thrale, as so many
music-teachers have run away with their pupils' hearts? At present she
seems to be getting along very placidly and contentedly with her young
friend the Tutor. There is something quite charming in their relations
with each other. He knows many things she does not, for he is reckoned
one of the most learned in his literary specialty of all the young men of
his time; and it can be a question of only a few years when some
first-class professorship will be offered him. She, on the other hand,
has so much more experience, so much more practical wisdom, than he has
that he consults her on many every-day questions, as he did, or made
believe do, about that of making love to one of the two Annexes. I had
thought, when we first sat round the tea-table, that she was good for the
bit of romance I wanted; but since she has undertaken to be a kind of
half-maternal friend to the young Tutor, I am afraid I shall have to give
her up as the heroine of a romantic episode. It would be a pity if there
were nothing to commend these papers to those who take up this periodical
but essays, more or less significant, on subjects more or less
interesting to the jaded and impatient readers of the numberless stories
and entertaining articles which crowd the magazines of this prolific
period. A whole year of a tea-table as large as ours without a single
love passage in it would be discreditable to the company. We must find
one, or make one, before the tea-things are taken away and the table is
no longer spread.
The Dictator turns preacher.
We have so many light and playful talks over the teacups that some
readers may be surprised to find us taking up the most serious and solemn
subject which can occupy a human intelligence. The sudden appearance
among our New England Protestants of the doctrine of purgatory as a
possibility, or even probability, has startled the descendants of the
Puritans. It has naturally led to a reconsideration of the doctrine of
eternal punishment. It is on that subject that Number Five and I have
talked together. I love to listen to her, for she talks from the
promptings of a true woman's heart. I love to talk to her, for I learn
my own thoughts better in that way than in any other "L'appetit vient en
mangeant," the French saying has it. "L'esprit vient en causant;" that
is, if one can find the right persons to talk with.
The subject which has specially interested Number Five and myself, of
late, was suggested to me in the following way.
Some two years ago I received a letter from a clergyman who bears by
inheritance one of the most distinguished names which has done honor to
the American "Orthodox" pulpit. This letter requested of me "a
contribution to a proposed work which was to present in their own
language the views of 'many men of many minds' on the subject of future
punishment. It was in my mind to let the public hear not only from
professional theologians, but from other professions, as from jurists on
the alleged but disputed value of the hangman's whip overhanging the
witness-box, and from physicians on the working of beliefs about the
future life in the minds of the dangerously sick. And I could not help
thinking what a good thing it would be to draw out the present writer
upon his favorite borderland between the spiritual and the material."
The communication came to me, as the writer reminds me in a recent
letter, at a "painfully inopportune time," and though it was courteously
answered, was not made the subject of a special reply.
This request confers upon me a certain right to express my opinion on
this weighty subject without fear and without reproach even from those
who might be ready to take offence at one of the laity for meddling with
pulpit questions. It shows also that this is not a dead issue in our
community, as some of the younger generation seem to think. There are
some, there may be many, who would like to hear what impressions one has
received on the subject referred to, after a long life in which he has
heard and read a great deal about the matter. There is a certain gravity
in the position of one who is, in the order of nature very near the
undiscovered country. A man who has passed his eighth decade feels as if
he were already in the antechamber of the apartments which he may be
called to occupy in the house of many mansions. His convictions
regarding the future of our race are likely to be serious, and his
expressions not lightly uttered. The question my correspondent suggests
is a tremendous one. No other interest compares for one moment with that
belonging to it. It is not only ourselves that it concerns, but all whom
we love or ever have loved, all our human brotherhood, as well as our
whole idea of the Being who made us and the relation in which He stands
to his creatures. In attempting to answer my correspondent's question, I
shall no doubt repeat many things I have said before in different forms,
on different occasions. This is no more than every clergyman does
habitually, and it would be hard if I could not have the same license
which the professional preacher enjoys so fully.
Number Five and I have occasionally talked on religious questions, and
discovered many points of agreement in our views. Both of us grew up
under the old "Orthodox" or Calvinistic system of belief. Both of us
accepted it in our early years as a part of our education. Our experience
is a common one. William Cullen Bryant says of himself, "The Calvinistic
system of divinity I adopted of course, as I heard nothing else taught
from the pulpit, and supposed it to be the accepted belief of the
religious world." But it was not the "five points" which remained in the
young poet's memory and shaped his higher life. It was the influence of
his mother that left its permanent impression after the questions and
answers of the Assembly's Catechism had faded out, or remained in memory
only as fossil survivors of an extinct or fast-disappearing theological
formation. The important point for him, as for so many other children of
Puritan descent, was not his father's creed, but his mother's character,
precepts, and example. "She was a person," he says, "of excellent
practical sense, of a quick and sensitive moral judgment, and had no
patience with any form of deceit or duplicity. Her prompt condemnation of
injustice, even in those instances in which it is tolerated by the world,
made a strong impression upon me in early life; and if, in the discussion
of public questions, I have in my riper age endeavored to keep in view
the great rule of right without much regard to persons, it has been owing
in a great degree to the force of her example, which taught me never to
countenance a wrong because others did."
I have quoted this passage because it was an experience not wholly unlike
my own, and in certain respects like that of Number Five. To grow up in
a narrow creed and to grow out of it is a tremendous trial of one's
nature. There is always a bond of fellowship between those who have been
through such an ordeal.
The experiences we have had in common naturally lead us to talk over the
theological questions which at this time are constantly presenting
themselves to the public, not only in the books and papers expressly
devoted to that class of subjects, but in many of the newspapers and
popular periodicals, from the weeklies to the quarterlies. The pulpit
used to lay down the law to the pews; at the present time, it is of more
consequence what the pews think than what the minister does, for the
obvious reason that the pews can change their minister, and often do,
whereas the minister cannot change the pews, or can do so only to a very
limited extent. The preacher's garment is cut according to the pattern
of that of the hearers, for the most part. Thirty years ago, when I was
writing on theological subjects, I came in for a very pretty share of
abuse, such as it was the fashion of that day, at least in certain
quarters, to bestow upon those who were outside of the high-walled
enclosures in which many persons; not naturally unamiable or exclusive,
found themselves imprisoned. Since that time what changes have taken
place! Who will believe that a well-behaved and reputable citizen could
have been denounced as a "moral parricide," because he attacked some of
the doctrines in which he was supposed to have been brought up? A single
thought should have prevented the masked theologian who abused his
incognito from using such libellous language.
Much, and in many families most, of the religious teaching of children is
committed to the mother. The experience of William Cullen Bryant, which
I have related in his own words, is that of many New England children.
Now, the sternest dogmas that ever came from a soul cramped or palsied by
an obsolete creed become wonderfully softened in passing between the lips
of a mother. The cruel doctrine at which all but case-hardened
"professionals" shudder cones out, as she teaches and illustrates it, as
unlike its original as the milk which a peasant mother gives her babe is
unlike the coarse food which furnishes her nourishment. The virus of a
cursing creed is rendered comparatively harmless by the time it reaches
the young sinner in the nursery. Its effects fall as far short of what
might have been expected from its virulence as the pearly vaccine vesicle
falls short of the terrors of the confluent small-pox. Controversialists
should therefore be careful (for their own sakes, for they hurt nobody so
much as themselves) how they use such terms as "parricide" as
characterizing those who do not agree in all points with the fathers whom
or whose memory they honor and venerate. They might with as much
propriety call them matricides, if they did not agree with the milder
teachings of their mothers. I can imagine Jonathan Edwards in the
nursery with his three-year-old child upon his knee. The child looks up
to his face and says to him,--"Papa, nurse tells me that you say God
hates me worse than He hates one of those horrid ugly snakes that crawl
all round. Does God hate me so?"
"Alas! my child, it is but too true. So long as you are out of Christ
you are as a viper, and worse than a viper, in his sight."
By and by, Mrs. Edwards, one of the loveliest of women and sweetest of
mothers, comes into the nursery. The child is crying.
"What is the matter, my darling?"
"Papa has been telling me that God hates me worse than a snake."
Poor, gentle, poetical, sensitive, spiritual, almost celestial Mrs.
Jonathan Edwards! On the one hand the terrible sentence conceived,
written down, given to the press, by the child's father; on the other
side the trusting child looking up at her, and all the mother pleading in
her heart against the frightful dogma of her revered husband. Do you
suppose she left that poison to rankle in the tender soul of her darling?
Would it have been moral parricide for a son of the great divine to have
repudiated the doctrine which degraded his blameless infancy to the
condition and below the condition of the reptile? Was it parricide in
the second or third degree when his descendant struck out that venomous
sentence from the page in which it stood as a monument to what depth
Christian heathenism could sink under the teaching of the great master of
logic and spiritual inhumanity? It is too late to be angry about the
abuse a well--meaning writer received thirty years ago. The whole
atmosphere has changed since then. It is mere childishness to expect men
to believe as their fathers did; that is, if they have any minds of their
own. The world is a whole generation older and wiser than when the father
was of his son's age.
So far as I have observed persons nearing the end of life, the Roman
Catholics understand the business of dying better than Protestants. They
have an expert by them, armed with spiritual specifics, in which they
both, patient and priestly ministrant, place implicit trust. Confession,
the Eucharist, Extreme Unction,--these all inspire a confidence which
without this symbolism is too apt to be wanting in over-sensitive
natures. They have been peopled in earlier years with ghastly spectres
of avenging fiends, moving in a sleepless world of devouring flames and
smothering exhalations; where nothing lives but the sinner, the fiends,
and the reptiles who help to make life an unending torture. It is no
wonder that these images sometimes return to the enfeebled intelligence.
To exorcise them, the old Church of Christendom has her mystic formulae,
of which no rationalistic prescription can take the place. If Cowper had
been a good Roman Catholic, instead of having his conscience handled by a
Protestant like John Newton, he would not have died despairing, looking
upon himself as a castaway. I have seen a good many Roman Catholics on
their dying beds, and it always appeared to me that they accepted the
inevitable with a composure which showed that their belief, whether or
not the best to live by, was a better one to die by than most of the
harder creeds which have replaced it.
In the more intelligent circles of American society one may question
anything and everything, if he will only do it civilly. We may talk
about eschatology, the science of last things,--or, if you will, the
natural history of the undiscovered country, without offence before
anybody except young children and very old women of both sexes. In our
New England the great Andover discussion and the heretical missionary
question have benumbed all sensibility on this subject as entirely, as
completely, as the new local anaesthetic, cocaine, deadens the
sensibility of the part to which it is applied, so that the eye may have
its mote or beam plucked out without feeling it,--as the novels of Zola
and Maupassant have hardened the delicate nerve-centres of the women who
have fed their imaginations on the food they have furnished.
The generally professed belief of the Protestant world as embodied in
their published creeds is that the great mass of mankind are destined to
an eternity of suffering. That this eternity is to be one of bodily
pain--of "torment "--is the literal teaching of Scripture, which has been
literally interpreted by the theologians, the poets, and the artists of
many long ages which followed the acceptance of the recorded legends of
the church as infallible. The doctrine has always been recognized, as it
is now, as a very terrible one. It has found a support in the story of
the fall of man, and the view taken of the relation of man to his Maker
since that event. The hatred of God to mankind in virtue of their "first
disobedience" and inherited depravity is at the bottom of it. The extent
to which that idea was carried is well shown in the expressions I have
borrowed from Jonathan Edwards. According to his teaching,--and he was a
reasoner who knew what he was talking about, what was involved in the
premises of the faith he accepted,--man inherits the curse of God as his
principal birthright.
What shall we say to the doctrine of the fall of man as the ground of
inflicting endless misery on the human race? A man to be punished for
what he could not help! He was expected to be called to account for
Adam's sin. It is singular to notice that the reasoning of the wolf with
the lamb should be transferred to the dealings of the Creator with his
creatures. "You stirred the brook up and made my drinking-place muddy."
"But, please your wolfship, I couldn't do that, for I stirred the water
far down the stream,--below your drinking-place." "Well, anyhow, your
father troubled it a year or two ago, and that is the same thing." So
the wolf falls upon the lamb and makes a meal of him. That is wolf
logic,--and theological reasoning.
How shall we characterize the doctrine of endless torture as the destiny
of most of those who have lived, and are living, on this planet? I
prefer to let another writer speak of it. Mr. John Morley uses the
following words: "The horrors of what is perhaps the most frightful idea
that has ever corroded human character,--the idea of eternal punishment."
Sismondi, the great historian, heard a sermon on eternal punishment, and
vowed never again to enter another church holding the same creed.
Romanism he considered a religion of mercy and peace by the side of what
the English call the Reformation.--I mention these protests because I
happen to find them among my notes, but it would be easy to accumulate
examples of the same kind. When Cowper, at about the end of the last
century, said satirically of the minister he was attacking,
"He never mentioned hell to ears polite,"
he was giving unconscious evidence that the sense of the barbarism of the
idea was finding its way into the pulpit. When Burns, in the midst of
the sulphurous orthodoxy of Scotland, dared to say,
"The fear o' hell 's a hangman's whip
To haud the wretch in order,"
he was only appealing to the common sense and common humanity of his
fellow-countrymen.
All the reasoning in the world, all the proof-texts in old manuscripts,
cannot reconcile this supposition of a world of sleepless and endless
torment with the declaration that "God is love."
Where did this "frightful idea" come from? We are surprised, as we grow
older, to find that the legendary hell of the church is nothing more nor
less than the Tartarus of the old heathen world. It has every mark of
coming from the cruel heart of a barbarous despot. Some malignant and
vindictive Sheik, some brutal Mezentius, must have sat for many pictures
of the Divinity. It was not enough to kill his captive enemy, after
torturing him as much as ingenuity could contrive to do it. He escaped
at last by death, but his conqueror could not give him up so easily, and
so his vengeance followed him into the unseen and unknown world. How the
doctrine got in among, the legends of the church we are no more bound to
show than we are to account for the intercalation of the "three
witnesses" text, or the false insertion, or false omission, whichever it
may be, of the last twelve verses of the Gospel of St Mark. We do not
hang our grandmothers now, as our ancestors did theirs, on the strength
of the positive command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
The simple truth is that civilization has outgrown witchcraft, and is
outgrowing the Christian Tartarus. The pulpit no longer troubles itself
about witches and their evil doings. All the legends in the world could
not arrest the decay of that superstition and all the edicts that grew
out of it. All the stories that can be found in old manuscripts will
never prevent the going out of the fires of the legendary Inferno. It is
not much talked about nowadays to ears polite or impolite. Humanity is
shocked and repelled by it. The heart of woman is in unconquerable
rebellion against it. The more humane sects tear it from their "Bodies
of Divinity" as if it were the flaming shirt of Nessus. A few doctrines
with which it was bound up have dropped or are dropping away from it: the
primal curse; consequential damages to give infinite extension to every
transgression of the law of God; inverting the natural order of relative
obligations; stretching the smallest of finite offenses to the
proportions of the infinite; making the babe in arms the responsible
being, and not the parent who gave it birth and determined its conditions
of existence.
After a doctrine like "the hangman's whip" has served its purpose,--if it
ever had any useful purpose,--after a doctrine like that of witchcraft
has hanged old women enough, civilization contrives to get rid of it.
When we say that civilization crowds out the old superstitious legends,
we recognize two chief causes. The first is the naked individual
protest; the voice of the inspiration which giveth man understanding.
This shows itself conspicuously in the modern poets. Burns in Scotland,
Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, in America, preached a new gospel to the
successors of men like Thomas Boston and Jonathan Edwards. In due
season, the growth of knowledge, chiefly under the form of that part of
knowledge called science, so changes the views of the universe that many
of its long-unchallenged legends become no more than nursery tales. The
text-books of astronomy and geology work their way in between the
questions and answers of the time-honored catechisms. The doctrine of
evolution, so far as it is accepted, changes the whole relations of man
to the creative power. It substitutes infinite hope in the place of
infinite despair for the vast majority of mankind. Instead of a
shipwreck, from which a few cabin passengers and others are to be saved
in the long-boat, it gives mankind a vessel built to endure the tempests,
and at last to reach a port where at the worst the passengers can find
rest, and where they may hope for a home better than any which they ever
had in their old country. It is all very well to say that men and women
had their choice whether they would reach the safe harbor or not.
"Go to it grandam, child;
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry and a fig."
We know what the child will take. So which course we shall take depends
very much on the way the choice is presented to us, and on what the
chooser is by nature. What he is by nature is not determined by himself,
but by his parentage. "They know not what they do." In one sense this
is true of every human being. The agent does not know, never can know,
what makes him that which he is. What we most want to ask of our Maker
is an unfolding of the divine purpose in putting human beings into
conditions in which such numbers of them would be sure to go wrong. We
want an advocate of helpless humanity whose task it shall be, in the
words of Milton,
"To justify the ways of God to man."
We have heard Milton's argument, but for the realization of his vision of
the time
"When Hell itself shall pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day,"
our suffering race must wait in patience.
The greater part of the discourse the reader has had before him was
delivered over the teacups one Sunday afternoon. The Mistress looked
rather grave, as if doubtful whether she ought not to signify her
disapprobation of what seemed to her dangerous doctrine.
However, as she knew that I was a good church-goer and was on the best
terms with her minister, she said nothing to show that she had taken the
alarm. Number Five listened approvingly. We had talked the question
over well, and were perfectly agreed on the main point. How could it be
otherwise? Do you suppose that any intellectual, spiritual woman, with a
heart under her bodice, can for a moment seriously believe that the
greater number of the high-minded men, the noble and lovely women, the
ingenuous and affectionate children, whom she knows and honors or loves,
are to be handed over to the experts in a great torture-chamber, in
company with the vilest creatures that have once worn human shape?
"If there is such a world as used to be talked about from the pulpit, you
may depend upon it," she said to me once, "there will soon be organized a
Humane Society in heaven, and a mission established among 'the spirits in
prison.'"
Number Five is a regular church-goer, as I am. I do not believe either
of us would darken the doors of a church if we were likely to hear any of
the "old-fashioned" sermons, such as I used to listen to in former years
from a noted clergyman, whose specialty was the doctrine of eternal
punishment. But you may go to the churches of almost any of our
Protestant denominations, and hear sermons by which you can profit,
because the ministers are generally good men, whose moral and spiritual
natures are above the average, and who know that the harsh preaching of
two or three generations ago would offend and alienate a large part of
their audience. So neither Number Five nor I are hypocrites in attending
church or "going to meeting." I am afraid it does not make a great deal
of difference to either of us what may be the established creed of the
worshipping assembly. That is a matter of great interest, perhaps of
great importance, to them, but of much less, comparatively, to us.
Companionship in worship, and sitting quiet for an hour while a trained
speaker, presumably somewhat better than we are, stirs up our spiritual
nature,--these are reasons enough to Number Five, as to me, for regular
attendance on divine worship.
Number Seven is of a different way of thinking and feeling. He insists
upon it that the churches keep in their confessions of faith statements
which they do not believe, and that it is notorious that they are afraid
to meddle with them. The Anglo-American church has dropped the
Athanasian Creed from its service; the English mother church is afraid
to. There are plenty of Universalists, Number Seven says, in the
Episcopalian and other Protestant churches, but they do not avow their
belief in any frank and candid fashion. The churches know very well, he
maintains, that the fear of everlasting punishment more than any or all
other motives is the source of their power and the support of their
organizations. Not only are the fears of mankind the whip to scourge and
the bridle to restrain them, but they are the basis of an almost
incalculable material interest. "Talk about giving up the doctrine of
endless punishment by fire!" exclaimed Number Seven; "there is more
capital embarked in the subterranean fire-chambers than in all the
iron-furnaces on the face of the earth. To think what an army of
clerical beggars would be turned loose on the world, if once those raging
flames were allowed to go out or to calm down! Who can wonder that the
old conservatives draw back startled and almost frightened at the thought
that there may be a possible escape for some victims whom the Devil was
thought to have secured? How many more generations will pass before
Milton's alarming prophecy will find itself realized in the belief of
civilized mankind?"
Remember that Number Seven is called a "crank" by many persons, and take
his remarks for just what they are worth, and no more.
Out of the preceding conversation must have originated the following
poem, which was found in the common receptacle of these versified
contributions:
TARTARUS.
While in my simple gospel creed
That "God is Love" so plain I read,
Shall dreams of heathen birth affright
My pathway through the coming night?
Ah, Lord of life, though spectres pale
Fill with their threats the shadowy vale,
With Thee my faltering steps to aid,
How can I dare to be afraid?
Shall mouldering page or fading scroll
Outface the charter of the soul?
Shall priesthood's palsied arm protect
The wrong our human hearts reject,
And smite the lips whose shuddering cry
Proclaims a cruel creed a lie?
The wizard's rope we disallow
Was justice once,--is murder now!
Is there a world of blank despair,
And dwells the Omnipresent there?
Does He behold with smile serene
The shows of that unending scene,
Where sleepless, hopeless anguish lies,
And, ever dying, never dies?
Say, does He hear the sufferer's groan,
And is that child of wrath his own?
O mortal, wavering in thy trust,
Lift thy pale forehead from the dust
The mists that cloud thy darkened eyes
Fade ere they reach the o'erarching skies!
When the blind heralds of despair
Would bid thee doubt a Father's care,
Look up from earth, and read above
On heaven's blue tablet, GOD IS LOVE!
XI
The tea is sweetened.
We have been going on very pleasantly of late, each of us pretty well
occupied with his or her special business. The Counsellor has been
pleading in a great case, and several of The Teacups were in the
court-room. I thought, but I will not be certain, that some of his
arguments were addressed to Number Five rather than to the jury,--the
more eloquent passages especially.
Our young Doctor seems to me to be gradually getting known in the
neighborhood and beyond it. A member of one of the more influential
families, whose regular physician has gone to Europe, has sent for him to
come and see her, and as the patient is a nervous lady, who has nothing
in particular the matter with her, he is probably in for a good many
visits and a long bill by and by. He has even had a call at a distance
of some miles from home,--at least he has had to hire a conveyance
frequently of late, for he has not yet set up his own horse and chaise.
We do not like to ask him about who his patient may be, but he or she is
probably a person of some consequence, as he is absent several hours on
these out-of-town visits. He may get a good practice before his bald
spot makes its appearance, for I have looked for it many times without as
yet seeing a sign of it. I am sure he must feel encouraged, for he has
been very bright and cheerful of late; and if he sometimes looks at our
new handmaid as if he wished she were Delilah, I do not think he is
breaking his heart about her absence. Perhaps he finds consolation in
the company of the two Annexes, or one of them,--but which, I cannot make
out. He is in consultations occasionally with Number Five, too, but
whether professionally or not I have no means of knowing. I cannot for
the life of me see what Number Five wants of a doctor for herself, so
perhaps it is another difficult case in which her womanly sagacity is
called upon to help him.
In the mean time she and the Tutor continue their readings. In fact, it
seems as if these readings were growing more frequent, and lasted longer
than they did at first. There is a little arbor in the grounds connected
with our place of meeting, and sometimes they have gone there for their
readings. Some of The Teacups have listened outside once in a while, for
the Tutor reads well, and his clear voice must be heard in the more
emphatic passages, whether one is expressly listening or not. But
besides the reading there is now and then some talking, and persons
talking in an arbor do not always remember that latticework, no matter
how closely the vines cover it, is not impenetrable to the sound of the
human voice. There was a listener one day,--it was not one of The
Teacups, I am happy to say,--who heard and reported some fragments of a
conversation which reached his ear. Nothing but the profound intimacy
which exists between myself and the individual reader whose eyes are on
this page would induce me to reveal what I was told of this conversation.
The first words seem to have been in reply to some question.
"Why, my dear friend, how can you think of such a thing? Do you know--I
am--old enough to be your--[I think she must have been on the point of
saying mother, but that was more than any woman could be expected to
say]--old enough to be your aunt?"
"To be sure you are," answered the Tutor, "and what of it? I have two
aunts, both younger than I am. Your years may be more than mine, but
your life is fuller of youthful vitality than mine is. I never feel so
young as when I have been with you. I don't believe in settling
affinities by the almanac. You know what I have told you more than once;
you have n't 'bared the ice-cold dagger's edge' upon me yet; may I not
cherish the"....
What a pity that the listener did not hear the rest of the sentence and
the reply to it, if there was one! The readings went on the same as
before, but I thought that Number Five was rather more silent and more
pensive than she had been.
I was much pleased when the American Annex came to me one day and told me
that she and the English Annex were meditating an expedition, in which
they wanted the other Teacups to join. About a dozen miles from us is an
educational institution of the higher grade, where a large number of
young ladies are trained in literature, art, and science, very much as
their brothers are trained in the colleges. Our two young ladies have
already been through courses of this kind in different schools, and are
now busy with those more advanced studies which are ventured upon by only
a limited number of "graduates." They have heard a good deal about this
institution, but have never visited it.
Every year, as the successive classes finish their course, there is a
grand reunion of the former students, with an "exhibition," as it is
called, in which the graduates of the year have an opportunity of showing
their proficiency in the various branches taught. On that occasion
prizes are awarded for excellence in different departments. It would be
hard to find a more interesting ceremony. These girls, now recognized as
young ladies, are going forth as missionaries of civilization among our
busy people. They are many of them to be teachers, and those who have
seen what opportunities they have to learn will understand their fitness
for that exalted office. Many are to be the wives and mothers of the
generation next coming upon the stage. Young and beautiful, "youth is
always beautiful," said old Samuel Rogers,--their countenances radiant
with developed intelligence, their complexions, their figures, their
movements, all showing that they have had plenty of outdoor as well as
indoor exercise, and have lived well in all respects, one would like to
read on the wall of the hall where they are assembled,--
Siste, viator!
Si uxorem requiris, circumspice!
This proposed expedition was a great event in our comparatively quiet
circle. The Mistress, who was interested in the school, undertook to be
the matron of the party. The young Doctor, who knew the roads better
than any of us, was to be our pilot. He arranged it so that he should
have the two Annexes under his more immediate charge. We were all on the
lookout to see which of the two was to be the favored one, for it was
pretty well settled among The Teacups that a wife he must have, whether
the bald spot came or not; he was getting into business, and he could not
achieve a complete success as a bachelor.
Number Five and the Tutor seemed to come together as a matter of course.
I confess that I could not help regretting that our pretty Delilah was
not to be one of the party. She always looked so young, so fresh,--she
would have enjoyed the excursion so much, that if she had been still with
us I would have told the Mistress that she must put on her best dress;
and if she had n't one nice enough, I would give her one myself. I
thought, too, that our young Doctor would have liked to have her with us;
but he appeared to be getting along very well with the Annexes, one of
whom it seems likely that he will annex to himself and his fortunes, if
she fancies him, which is not improbable.
The organizing of this expedition was naturally a cause of great
excitement among The Teacups. The party had to be arranged in such a way
as to suit all concerned, which was a delicate matter. It was finally
managed in this way: The Mistress was to go with a bodyguard, consisting
of myself, the Professor, and Number Seven, who was good company, with
all his oddities. The young Doctor was to take the two Annexes in a
wagon, and the Tutor was to drive Number Five in a good old-fashioned
chaise drawn by a well-conducted family horse. As for the Musician, he
had gone over early, by special invitation, to take a part in certain
musical exercises which were to have a place in the exhibition. This
arrangement appeared to be in every respect satisfactory. The Doctor was
in high spirits, apparently delighted, and devoting himself with great
gallantry to his two fair companions. The only question which intruded
itself was, whether he might not have preferred the company of one to
that of two. But both looked very attractive in their best dresses: the
English Annex, the rosier and heartier of the two; the American girl,
more delicate in features, more mobile and excitable, but suggesting the
thought that she would tire out before the other. Which of these did he
most favor? It was hard to say. He seemed to look most at the English
girl, and yet he talked more with the American girl. In short, he
behaved particularly well, and neither of the young ladies could complain
that she was not attended to. As to the Tutor and Number Five, their
going together caused no special comment. Their intimacy was accepted as
an established fact, and nothing but the difference in their ages
prevented the conclusion that it was love, and not mere friendship, which
brought them together. There was, no doubt, a strong feeling among many
people that Number Five's affections were a kind of Gibraltar or
Ehrenbreitstein, say rather a high table-land in the region of perpetual,
unmelting snow. It was hard for these people to believe that any man of
mortal mould could find a foothold in that impregnable fortress,--could
climb to that height and find the flower of love among its glaciers. The
Tutor and Number Five were both quiet, thoughtful: he, evidently
captivated; she, what was the meaning of her manner to him? Say that she
seemed fond of him, as she might be were he her nephew,--one for whom she
had a special liking. If she had a warmer feeling than this, she could
hardly know how to manage it; for she was so used to having love made to
her without returning it that she would naturally be awkward in dealing
with the new experience.
The Doctor drove a lively five-year-old horse, and took the lead. The
Tutor followed with a quiet, steady-going nag; if he had driven the
five-year-old, I would not have answered for the necks of the pair in the
chaise, for he was too much taken up with the subject they were talking
of, to be very careful about his driving. The Mistress and her escort
brought up the rear,--I holding the reins, the Professor at my side, and
Number Seven sitting with the Mistress.
We arrived at the institution a little later than we had expected to, and
the students were flocking into the hall, where the Commencement
exercises were to take place, and the medal-scholars were to receive the
tokens of their excellence in the various departments. From our seats we
could see the greater part of the assembly,--not quite all, however of
the pupils. A pleasing sight it was to look upon, this array of young
ladies dressed in white, with their class badges, and with the ribbon of
the shade of blue affected by the scholars of the institution. If
Solomon in all his glory was not to be compared to a lily, a whole bed of
lilies could not be compared to this garden-bed of youthful womanhood.
The performances were very much the same as most of us have seen at the
academies and collegiate schools. Some of the graduating class read
their "compositions," one of which was a poem,--an echo of the prevailing
American echoes, of course, but prettily worded and intelligently read.
Then there was a song sung by a choir of the pupils, led by their
instructor, who was assisted by the Musician whom we count among The
Teacups.--There was something in one of the voices that reminded me of
one I had heard before. Where could it have been? I am sure I cannot
remember. There are some good voices in our village choir, but none so
pure and bird-like as this. A sudden thought came into my head, but I
kept it to myself. I heard a tremulous catching of the breath, something
like a sob, close by me. It was the Mistress,--she was crying. What was
she crying for? It was impressive, certainly, to listen to these young
voices, many of them blending for the last time,--for the scholars were
soon to be scattered all over the country, and some of them beyond its
boundaries,--but why the Mistress was so carried away, I did not know.
She must be more impressible than most of us; yet I thought Number Five
also looked as if she were having a struggle with herself to keep down
some rebellious signs of emotion.
The exercises went on very pleasingly until they came to the awarding of
the gold medal of the year and the valedictory, which was to be delivered
by the young lady to whom it was to be presented. The name was called;
it was one not unfamiliar to our ears, and the bearer of it--the Delilah
of our tea-table, Avis as she was known in the school and elsewhere--rose
in her place and came forward, so that for the first time on that day, we
looked upon her. It was a sensation for The Teacups. Our modest, quiet
waiting-girl was the best scholar of her year. We had talked French
before her, and we learned that she was the best French scholar the
teacher had ever had in the school. We had never thought of her except as
a pleasing and well-trained handmaiden, and here she was an accomplished
young lady.
Avis went through her part very naturally and gracefully, and when it was
finished, and she stood before us with the medal glittering on her
breast, we did not know whether to smile or to cry,--some of us did one,
and some the other.--We all had an opportunity to see her and
congratulate her before we left the institution. The mystery of her six
weeks' serving at our table was easily solved. She had been studying too
hard and too long, and required some change of scene and occupation. She
had a fancy for trying to see if she could support herself as so many
young women are obliged to, and found a place with us, the Mistress only
knowing her secret.
"She is to be our young Doctor's wife!" the Mistress whispered to me, and
did some more crying, not for grief, certainly.
Whether our young Doctor's long visits to a neighboring town had anything
to do with the fact that Avis was at that institution, whether she was
the patient he visited or not, may be left in doubt. At all events, he
had always driven off in the direction which would carry him to the place
where she was at school.
I have attended a large number of celebrations, commencements, banquets,
soirees, and so forth, and done my best to help on a good many of them.
In fact, I have become rather too well known in connection with
"occasions," and it has cost me no little trouble. I believe there is no
kind of occurrence for which I have not been requested to contribute
something in prose or verse. It is sometimes very hard to say no to the
requests. If one is in the right mood when he or she writes an
occasional poem, it seems as if nothing could have been easier. "Why,
that piece run off jest like ile. I don't bullieve," the unlettered
applicant says to himself, "I don't bullieve it took him ten minutes to
write them verses." The good people have no suspicion of how much a
single line, a single expression, may cost its author. The wits used to
say that Ropers,--the poet once before referred to, old Samuel Ropers,
author of the Pleasures of Memory and giver of famous breakfasts,--was
accustomed to have straw laid before the house whenever he had just given
birth to a couplet. It is not quite so bad as that with most of us who
are called upon to furnish a poem, a song, a hymn, an ode for some grand
meeting, but it is safe to say that many a trifling performance has had
more good honest work put into it than the minister's sermon of that week
had cost him. If a vessel glides off the ways smoothly and easily at her
launching, it does not mean that no great pains have been taken to secure
the result. Because a poem is an "occasional" one, it does not follow
that it has not taken as much time and skill as if it had been written
without immediate, accidental, temporary motive. Pindar's great odes
were occasional poems, just as much as our Commencement and Phi Beta
Kappa poems are, and yet they have come down among the most precious
bequests of antiquity to modern times.
The mystery of the young Doctor's long visits to the neighboring town was
satisfactorily explained by what we saw and heard of his relations with
our charming "Delilah,"--for Delilah we could hardly help calling her.
Our little handmaid, the Cinderella of the teacups, now the princess, or,
what was better, the pride of the school to which she had belonged, fit
for any position to which she might be called, was to be the wife of our
young Doctor. It would not have been the right thing to proclaim the
fact while she was a pupil, but now that she had finished her course of
instruction there was no need of making a secret of the engagement.
So we have got our romance, our love-story out of our Teacups, as I hoped
and expected that we should, but not exactly in the quarter where it
might have been looked for.
What did our two Annexes say to this unexpected turn of events? They
were good-hearted girls as ever lived, but they were human, like the rest
of us, and women, like some of the rest of us. They behaved perfectly.
They congratulated the Doctor, and hoped he would bring the young lady to
the tea-table where she had played her part so becomingly. It is safe to
say that each of the Annexes world have liked to be asked the lover's
last question by the very nice young man who had been a pleasant
companion at the table and elsewhere to each of them. That same question
is the highest compliment a man can pay a woman, and a woman does not
mind having a dozen or more such compliments to string on the rosary of
her remembrances. Whether either of them was glad, on the whole, that he
had not offered himself to the other in preference to herself would be a
mean, shabby question, and I think altogether too well of you who are
reading this paper to suppose that you would entertain the idea of asking
it.
It was a very pleasant occasion when the Doctor brought Avis over to sit
with us at the table where she used to stand and wait upon us. We
wondered how we could for a moment have questioned that she was one to be
waited upon, and not made for the humble office which nevertheless she
performed so cheerfully and so well.
Commencements and other Celebrations, American and English.
The social habits of our people have undergone an immense change within
the past half century, largely in consequence of the vast development of
the means of intercourse between different neighborhoods.
Commencements, college gatherings of all kinds, church assemblages,
school anniversaries, town centennials,--all possible occasions for
getting crowds together are made the most of. "'T is sixty years
since,"--and a good many years over,--the time to which my memory
extends. The great days of the year were, Election,--General Election on
Wednesday, and Artillery Election on the Monday following, at which time
lilacs were in bloom and 'lection buns were in order; Fourth of July,
when strawberries were just going out; and Commencement, a grand time of
feasting, fiddling, dancing, jollity, not to mention drunkenness and
fighting, on the classic green of Cambridge. This was the season of
melons and peaches. That is the way our boyhood chronicles events. It
was odd that the literary festival should be turned into a Donnybrook
fair, but so it was when I was a boy, and the tents and the shows and the
crowds on the Common were to the promiscuous many the essential parts of
the great occasion. They had been so for generations, and it was only
gradually that the Cambridge Saturnalia were replaced by the decencies
and solemnities of the present sober anniversary.
Nowadays our celebrations smack of the Sunday-school more than of the
dancing-hall. The aroma of the punch-bowl has given way to the milder
flavor of lemonade and the cooling virtues of ice-cream. A strawberry
festival is about as far as the dissipation of our social gatherings
ventures. There was much that was objectionable in those swearing,
drinking, fighting times, but they had a certain excitement for us boys
of the years when the century was in its teens, which comes back to us
not without its fascinations. The days of total abstinence are a great
improvement over those of unlicensed license, but there was a picturesque
element about the rowdyism of our old Commencement days, which had a
charm for the eye of boyhood. My dear old friend,--book-friend, I
mean,--whom I always called Daddy Gilpin (as I find Fitzgerald called
Wordsworth, Daddy Wordsworth),--my old friend Gilpin, I say, considered
the donkey more picturesque in a landscape than the horse. So a village
fete as depicted by Teniers is more picturesque than a teetotal picnic or
a Sabbath-school strawberry festival. Let us be thankful that the
vicious picturesque is only a remembrance, and the virtuous commonplace a
reality of to-day.
What put all this into my head is something which the English Annex has
been showing me. Most of my readers are somewhat acquainted with our own
church and village celebrations. They know how they are organized; the
women always being the chief motors, and the machinery very much the same
in one case as in another. Perhaps they would like to hear how such
things are managed in England; and that is just what they may learn from
the pamphlet which was shown me by the English Annex, and of which I will
give them a brief account.
Some of us remember the Rev. Mr. Haweis, his lectures and his violin,
which interested and amused us here in Boston a few years ago. Now Mr.
Haweis, assisted by his intelligent and spirited wife, has charge of the
parish of St. James, Westmoreland Street, Marylebone, London. On entering
upon the twenty-fifth year of his incumbency in Marylebone, and the
twenty-eighth of his ministry in the diocese of London, it was thought a
good idea to have an "Evening Conversazione and Fete." We can imagine
just how such a meeting would be organized in one of our towns.
Ministers, deacons, perhaps a member of Congress, possibly a Senator, and
even, conceivably, his Excellency the Governor, and a long list of ladies
lend their names to give lustre to the occasion. It is all very
pleasant, unpretending, unceremonious, cheerful, well ordered,
commendable, but not imposing.
Now look at our Marylebone parish celebration, and hold your breath while
the procession of great names passes before you. You learn at the outset
that it is held UNDER ROYAL PATRONAGE, and read the names of two royal
highnesses, one highness, a prince, and a princess. Then comes a list
before which if you do not turn pale, you must certainly be in the habit
of rouging: three earls, seven lords, three bishops, two generals (one of
them Lord Wolseley), one admiral, four baronets, nine knights, a crowd of
right honorable and honorable ladies (many of them peeresses), and a mob
of other personages, among whom I find Mr. Howells, Bret Harte, and
myself.
Perhaps we are disposed to smile at seeing so much made of titles; but
after what we have learned of Lord Timothy Dexter and the high-sounding
names appropriated by many of our own compatriots, who have no more claim
to them than we plain Misters and Misseses, we may feel to them something
as our late friend Mr. Appleton felt to the real green turtle soup set
before him, when he said that it was almost as good as mock.
The entertainment on this occasion was of the most varied character. The
programme makes the following announcement:
Friday, 4 July, 18-.
At 8 P. M. the Doors will Open.
Mr. Haweis will receive his Friends.
The Royal Handbell Ringers will Ring.
The Fish-pond will be Fished.
The Stalls will be Visited.
The Phonograph will Utter.
Refreshments will be called for, and they will come,--Tea, Coffee, and
Cooling Drinks. Spirits will not be called for, from the Vasty Deep or
anywhere else,--nor would they come if they were.
At 9.30 Mrs. Haweis will join the assembly.
I am particularly delighted with this last feature in the preliminary
announcement. It is a proof of the high regard in which the estimable
and gifted lady who shares her husband's labors is held by the people of
their congregation, and the friends who share in their feelings. It is
such a master stroke of policy, too, to keep back the principal
attraction until the guests must have grown eager for her appearance: I
can well imagine how great a saving it must have been to the good lady's
nerves, which were probably pretty well tried already by the fatigues and
responsibilities of the busy evening. I have a right to say this, for I
myself had the honor of attending a meeting at Mr. Haweis's house, where
I was a principal guest, as I suppose, from the fact of the great number
of persons who were presented to me. The minister must be very popular,
for the meeting was a regular jam,--not quite so tremendous as that
greater one, where but for the aid of Mr. Smalley, who kept open a
breathing-space round us, my companion and myself thought we should have
been asphyxiated.
The company was interested, as some of my readers maybe, to know what
were the attractions offered to the visitors besides that of meeting the
courteous entertainers and their distinguished guests. I cannot give
these at length, for each part of the show is introduced in the programme
with apt quotations and pleasantries, which enlivened the catalogue.
There were eleven stalls, "conducted on the cooperative principle of
division of profits and interest; they retain the profits, and you take a
good deal of interest, we hope, in their success."
Stall No. 1. Edisoniana, or the Phonograph. Alluded to by the Roman
Poet as Vox, et praeterea nihil.
Stall No. 2. Money-changing.
Stall No. 3. Programmes and General Enquiries.
Stall No. 4. Roses.
A rose by any other name, etc. Get one. You can't expect to smell one
without buying it, but you may buy one without smelling it.
Stall No. 5. Lasenby Liberty Stall. (I cannot explain this. Probably
articles from Liberty's famous establishment.)
Stall No. 6. Historical Costumes and Ceramics.
Stall No. 7. The Fish-pond.
Stall No. 8. Varieties.
Stall No. 9. Bookstall. (Books) "highly recommended for insomnia;
friends we never speak to, and always cut if we want to know them well."
Stall No. 10. Icelandic.
Stall No. 11. Call Office. "Mrs. Magnusson, who is devoted to the North
Pole and all its works, will thaw your sympathies, enlighten your minds,"
etc., etc.
All you buy may be left at the stalls, ticketed. A duplicate ticket will
be handed to you on leaving. Present your duplicate at the Call Office.
At 9.45, First Concert.
At 10.45, An Address of Welcome by Rev. H. R. Haweis.
At 11 P. M., Bird-warbling Interlude by Miss Mabel Stephenson, U. S. A.
At 11.20, Second Concert.
NOTICE!
Three Great Pictures.
LORD TENNYSON. G. F. Watts, R. A. JOHN STUART MILL G. F. Watts, R. A.
JOSEPH GARIBALDI Sig. Rondi.
NOTICE!
A Famous Violin.
A world-famed Stradivarius Violin, for which Mr. Hill, of Bond Street,
gave L 1000, etc., etc.
REFRESHMENTS.
Tickets for Tea, Coffee, Sandwiches, Iced Drinks, or Ices, Sixpence each,
etc., etc.
I hope my American reader is pleased and interested by this glimpse of
the way in which they do these things in London.
There is something very pleasant about all this, but what specially
strikes me is a curious flavor of city provincialism. There are little
centres in the heart of great cities, just as there are small fresh-water
ponds in great islands with the salt sea roaring all round them, and bays
and creeks penetrating them as briny as the ocean itself. Irving has
given a charming picture of such a quasi-provincial centre in one of his
papers in the Sketch-Book,--the one with the title "Little Britain."
London is a nation of itself, and contains provinces, districts, foreign
communities, villages, parishes,--innumerable lesser centres, with their
own distinguishing characteristics, habits, pursuit, languages, social
laws, as much isolated from each other as if "mountains interposed" made
the separation between them. One of these lesser centres is that over
which my friend Mr. Haweis presides as spiritual director. Chelsea has
been made famous as the home of many authors and artists,--above all, as
the residence of Carlyle during the greater part of his life. Its
population, like that of most respectable suburbs, must belong mainly to
the kind of citizens which resembles in many ways the better class,--as
we sometimes dare to call it,--of one of our thriving New England towns.
How many John Gilpins there must be in this population,--citizens of
"famous London town," but living with the simplicity of the inhabitants
of our inland villages! In the mighty metropolis where the wealth of the
world displays itself they practise their snug economies, enjoy their
simple pleasures, and look upon ice-cream as a luxury, just as if they
were living on the banks of the Connecticut or the Housatonic, in regions
where the summer locusts of the great cities have not yet settled on the
verdure of the native inhabitants. It is delightful to realize the fact
that while the West End of London is flaunting its splendors and the East
End in struggling with its miseries, these great middle-class communities
are living as comfortable, unpretending lives as if they were in one of
our thriving townships in the huckleberry-districts. Human beings are
wonderfully alike when they are placed in similar conditions.
We were sitting together in a very quiet way over our teacups. The young
Doctor, who was in the best of spirits, had been laughing and chatting
with the two Annexes. The Tutor, who always sits next to Number Five of
late, had been conversing with her in rather low tones. The rest of us
had been soberly sipping our tea, and when the Doctor and the Annexes
stopped talking there was one of those dead silences which are sometimes
so hard to break in upon, and so awkward while they last. All at once
Number Seven exploded in a loud laugh, which startled everybody at the
table.
What is it that sets you laughing so? said I.
"I was thinking," Number Seven replied, "of what you said the other day
of poetry being only the ashes of emotion. I believe that some people
are disposed to dispute the proposition. I have been putting your
doctrine to the test. In doing it I made some rhymes,--the first and
only ones I ever made. I will suppose a case of very exciting emotion,
and see whether it would probably take the form of poetry or prose. You
are suddenly informed that your house is on fire, and have to scramble
out of it, without stopping to tie your neck-cloth neatly or to put a
flower in your buttonhole. Do you think a poet turning out in his
night-dress, and looking on while the flames were swallowing his home and
all its contents, would express himself in this style?
"My house is on fire!
Bring me my lyre!
Like the flames that rise heavenward my song shall aspire!
"He would n't do any such thing, and you know he wouldn't. He would yell
Fire! Fire! with all his might. Not much rhyming for him just yet!
Wait until the fire is put out, and he has had time to look at the
charred timbers and the ashes of his home, and in the course of a week he
may possibly spin a few rhymes about it. Or suppose he was making an
offer of his hand and heart, do you think he would declaim a versified
proposal to his Amanda, or perhaps write an impromptu on the back of his
hat while he knelt before her?
"My beloved, to you
I will always be true.
Oh, pray make me happy, my love, do! do! do!
"What would Amanda think of a suitor who courted her with a rhyming
dictionary in his pocket to help him make love?"
You are right, said I,--there's nothing in the world like rhymes to cool
off a man's passion. You look at a blacksmith working on a bit of iron
or steel. Bright enough it looked while it was on the hearth, in the
midst of the sea-coal, the great bellows blowing away, and the rod or the
horse-shoe as red or as white as the burning coals. How it fizzes as it
goes into the trough of water, and how suddenly all the glow is gone! It
looks black and cold enough now. Just so with your passionate
incandescence. It is all well while it burns and scintillates in your
emotional centres, without articulate and connected expression; but the
minute you plunge it into the rhyme-trough it cools down, and becomes as
dead and dull as the cold horse-shoe. It is true that if you lay it cold
on the anvil and hammer away on it for a while it warms up somewhat.
Just so with the rhyming fellow,--he pounds away on his verses and they
warm up a little. But don't let him think that this afterglow of
composition is the same thing as the original passion. That found
expression in a few oh, oh's, eheu's, helas, helas's, and when the
passion had burned itself out you got the rhymed verses, which, as I have
said, are its ashes.
I thanked Number Seven for his poetical illustration of my thesis. There
is great good to be got out of a squinting brain, if one only knows how
to profit by it. We see only one side of the moon, you know, but a
fellow with a squinting brain seems now and then to get a peep at the
other side. I speak metaphorically. He takes new and startling views of
things we have always looked at in one particular aspect. There is a
rule invariably to be observed with one of this class of intelligences:
Never contradict a man with a squinting brain. I say a man, because I do
not think that squinting brains are nearly so common in women as they are
in men. The "eccentrics" are, I think, for the most part of the male
sex.
That leads me to say that persons with a strong instinctive tendency to
contradiction are apt to become unprofitable companions. Our thoughts
are plants that never flourish in inhospitable soils or chilling
atmospheres. They are all started under glass, so to speak; that is,
sheltered and fostered in our own warm and sunny consciousness. They
must expect some rough treatment when we lift the sash from the frame and
let the outside elements in upon them. They can bear the rain and the
breezes, and be all the better for them; but perpetual contradiction is a
pelting hailstorm, which spoils their growth and tends to kill them out
altogether.
Now stop and consider a moment. Are not almost all brains a little
wanting in bilateral symmetry? Do you not find in persons whom you love,
whom you esteem, and even admire, some marks of obliquity in mental
vision? Are there not some subjects in looking at which it seems to you
impossible that they should ever see straight? Are there not moods in
which it seems to you that they are disposed to see all things out of
plumb and in false relations with each other? If you answer these
questions in the affirmative, then you will be glad of a hint as to the
method of dealing with your friends who have a touch of cerebral
strabismus, or are liable to occasional paroxysms of perversity. Let
them have their head. Get them talking on subjects that interest them.
As a rule, nothing is more likely to serve this purpose than letting them
talk about themselves; if authors, about their writings; if artists,
about their pictures or statues; and generally on whatever they have most
pride in and think most of their own relations with.
Perhaps you will not at first sight agree with me in thinking that slight
mental obliquity is as common as I suppose. An analogy may have some
influence on your belief in this matter. Will you take the trouble to
ask your tailor how many persons have their two shoulders of the same
height? I think he will tell you that the majority of his customers show
a distinct difference of height on the two sides. Will you ask a
portrait-painter how many of those who sit to hint have both sides of
their faces exactly alike? I believe he will tell you that one side is
always a little better than the other. What will your hatter say about
the two sides of the head? Do you see equally well with both eyes, and
hear equally well with both ears? Few persons past middle age will
pretend that they do. Why should the two halves of a brain not show a
natural difference, leading to confusion of thought, and very possibly to
that instinct of contradiction of which I was speaking? A great deal of
time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good deal of ill temper
frequently caused, by not considering these organic and practically
insuperable conditions. In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best
of palliations and silence the sovereign specific.
I have been the reporter, as you have seen, of my own conversation and
that of the other Teacups. I have told some of the circumstances of
their personal history, and interested, as I hope, here and there a
reader in the fate of different members of our company. Here are our
pretty Delilah and our Doctor provided for. We may take it for granted
that it will not be very long that the young couple will have to wait;
for, as I have told you all, the Doctor is certainly getting into
business, and bids fair to have a thriving practice before he saddles his
nose with an eyeglass and begins to think of a pair of spectacles. So
that part of our little domestic drama is over, and we can only wish the
pair that is to be all manner of blessings consistent with a reasonable
amount of health in the community on whose ailings must depend their
prosperity.
All our thoughts are now concentrated on the relation existing between
Number Five and the Tutor. That there is some profound instinctive
impulse which is drawing them closer together no one who watches them can
for a moment doubt. There are two principles of attraction which bring
different natures together: that in which the two natures closely
resemble each other, and that in which one is complementary of the other.
In the first case, they coalesce, as do two drops of water or of mercury,
and become intimately blended as soon as they touch; in the other, they
rush together as an acid and an alkali unite, predestined from eternity
to find all they most needed in each other. What is the condition of
things in the growing intimacy of Number Five and the Tutor? He is many
years her junior, as we know. Both of them look that fact squarely in the
face. The presumption is against the union of two persons under these
circumstances. Presumptions are strong obstacles against any result we
wish to attain, but half our work in life is to overcome them. A great
many results look in the distance like six-foot walls, and when we get
nearer prove to be only five-foot hurdles, to be leaped over or knocked
down. Twenty years from now she may be a vigorous and active old woman,
and he a middle-aged, half-worn-out invalid, like so many overworked
scholars. Everything depends on the number of drops of the elixir vitae
which Nature mingled in the nourishment she administered to the embryo
before it tasted its mother's milk. Think of Cleopatra, the bewitching
old mischief-maker; think of Ninon de L'Enclos, whose own son fell
desperately in love with her, not knowing the relation in which she stood
to him; think of Dr. Johnson's friend, Mrs. Thrale, afterward Mrs.
Piozzi, who at the age of eighty was full enough of life to be making
love ardently and persistently to Conway, the handsome young actor. I
can readily believe that Number Five will outlive the Tutor, even if he
is fortunate enough rather in winning his way into the fortress through
gates that open to him of their own accord. If he fails in his siege, I
do really believe he will die early; not of a broken heart, exactly, but
of a heart starved, with the food it was craving close to it, but
unattainable. I have, therefore, a deep interest in knowing how Number
Five and the Tutor are getting along together. Is there any danger of
one or the other growing tired of the intimacy, and becoming willing to
get rid of it, like a garment which has shrunk and grown too tight? Is
it likely that some other attraction may come into disturb the existing
relation? The problem is to my mind not only interesting, but
exceptionally curious. You remember the story of Cymon and Iphigenia as
Dryden tells it. The poor youth has the capacity of loving, but it lies
hidden in his undeveloped nature. All at once he comes upon the sleeping
beauty, and is awakened by her charms to a hitherto unfelt consciousness.
With the advent of the new passion all his dormant faculties start into
life, and the seeming simpleton becomes the bright and intelligent lover.
The case of Number Five is as different from that of Cymon as it could
well be. All her faculties are wide awake, but one emotional side of her
nature has never been called into active exercise. Why has she never
been in love with any one of her suitors? Because she liked too many of
them. Do you happen to remember a poem printed among these papers,
entitled "I Like You and I Love You"
No one of the poems which have been placed in the urn,--that is, in the
silver sugar-bowl,--has had any name attached to it; but you could guess
pretty nearly who was the author of some of them, certainly of the one
just, referred to. Number Five was attracted to the Tutor from the first
time he spoke to her. She dreamed about him that night, and nothing
idealizes and renders fascinating one in whom we have already an interest
like dreaming of him or of her. Many a calm suitor has been made
passionate by a dream; many a passionate lover has been made wild and
half beside himself by a dream; and now and then an infatuated but
hapless lover, waking from a dream of bliss to a cold reality of
wretchedness, has helped himself to eternity before he was summoned to
the table.
Since Number Five had dreamed about the Tutor, he had been more in her
waking thoughts than she was willing to acknowledge. These thoughts were
vague, it is true,--emotions, perhaps, rather than worded trains of
ideas; but she was conscious of a pleasing excitement as his name or his
image floated across her consciousness; she sometimes sighed as she
looked over the last passage they had read from the same book, and
sometimes when they were together they were silent too long,--too long!
What were they thinking of?
And so it was all as plain sailing for Number Five and the young Tutor as
it had been for Delilah and the young Doctor, was it? Do you think so?
Then you do not understand Number Five. Many a woman has as many
atmospheric rings about her as the planet Saturn. Three are easily to be
recognized. First, there is the wide ring of attraction which draws into
itself all that once cross its outer border. These revolve about her
without ever coming any nearer. Next is the inner ring of attraction.
Those who come within its irresistible influence are drawn so close that
it seems as if they must become one with her sooner or later. But within
this ring is another,--an atmospheric girdle, one of repulsion, which
love, no matter how enterprising, no matter how prevailing or how
insinuating, has never passed, and, if we judge of what is to be by what
has been, never will. Perhaps Nature loved Number Five so well that she
grudged her to any mortal man, and gave her this inner girdle of
repulsion to guard her from all who would know her too nearly and love
her too well. Sometimes two vessels at sea keep each other company for a
long distance, it may be daring a whole voyage. Very pleasant it is to
each to have a companion to exchange signals with from time to time; to
came near enough, when the winds are light, to hold converse in ordinary
tones from deck to deck; to know that, in case of need, there's help at
hand. It is good for them to be near each other, but not good to be too
near. Woe is to them if they touch! The wreck of one or both is likely
to be the consequence. And so two well-equipped and heavily freighted
natures may be the best of companions to each other, and yet must never
attempt to come into closer union. Is this the condition of affairs
between Number Five and the Tutor? I hope not, for I want them to be
joined together in that dearest of intimacies, which, if founded in true
affinity, is the nearest approach to happiness to be looked for in our
mortal, experience. We mast wait. The Teacups will meet once more
before the circle is broken, and we may, perhaps, find the solution of
the question we have raised.
In the mean time, our young Doctor is playing truant oftener than ever.
He has brought Avis,--if we must call her so, and not Delilah,--several
times to take tea with us. It means something, in these days, to
graduate from one of our first-class academies or collegiate schools. I
shall never forget my first visit to one of these institutions. How much
its pupils know, I said, which I was never taught, and have never
learned! I was fairly frightened to see what a teaching apparatus was
provided for them. I should think the first thing to be done with most
of the husbands, they are likely to get would be to put them through a
course of instruction. The young wives must find their lords wofully
ignorant, in a large proportion of cases. When the wife has educated the
husband to such a point that she can invite him to work out a problem in
the higher mathematics or to perform a difficult chemical analysis with
her as his collaborator, as less instructed dames ask their husbands to
play a game of checkers or backgammon, they can have delightful and
instructive evenings together. I hope our young Doctor will take kindly
to his wife's (that is to be) teachings.
When the following verses were taken out of the urn, the Mistress asked
me to hand the manuscript to the young Doctor to read. I noticed that he
did not keep his eyes very closely fixed on the paper. It seemed as if
he could have recited the lines without referring to the manuscript at
all.
AT THE TURN OF THE ROAD.
The glory has passed from the goldenrod's plume,
The purple-hued asters still linger in bloom;
The birch is bright yellow, the sumachs are red,
The maples like torches aflame overhead.
But what if the joy of the summer is past,
And winter's wild herald is blowing his blast?
For me dull November is sweeter than May,
For my love is its sunshine,--she meets me to-day!
Will she come? Will the ring-dove return to her nest?
Will the needle swing back from the east or the west?
At the stroke of the hour she will be at her gate;
A friend may prove laggard,--love never comes late.
Do I see her afar in the distance? Not yet.
Too early! Too early! She could not forget!
When I cross the old bridge where the brook overflowed,
She will flash full in sight at the turn of the road.
I pass the low wall where the ivy entwines;
I tread the brown pathway that leads through the pines;
I haste by the boulder that lies in the field,
Where her promise at parting was lovingly sealed.
Will she come by the hillside or round through the wood?
Will she wear her brown dress or her mantle and hood?
The minute draws near,--but her watch may go wrong;
My heart will be asking, What keeps her so long?
Why doubt for a moment? More shame if I do!
Why question? Why tremble? Are angels more true?
She would come to the lover who calls her his own
Though she trod in the track of a whirling cyclone!
--I crossed the old bridge ere the minute had passed.
I looked: lo! my Love stood before me at last.
Her eyes, how they sparkled, her cheeks, how they glowed,
As we met, face to face, at the turn of the road!
XII
There was a great tinkling of teaspoons the other evening, when I took my
seat at the table, where all The Teacups were gathered before my
entrance. The whole company arose, and the Mistress, speaking for them,
expressed the usual sentiment appropriate to such occasions. "Many happy
returns" is the customary formula. No matter if the object of this kind
wish is a centenarian, it is quite safe to assume that he is ready and
very willing to accept as many more years as the disposing powers may see
fit to allow him.
The meaning of it all was that this was my birthday. My friends, near
and distant, had seen fit to remember it, and to let me know in various
pleasant ways that they had not forgotten it. The tables were adorned
with flowers. Gifts of pretty and pleasing objects were displayed on a
side table. A great green wreath, which must have cost the parent oak a
large fraction of its foliage, was an object of special admiration.
Baskets of flowers which had half unpeopled greenhouses, large bouquets
of roses, fragrant bunches of pinks, and many beautiful blossoms I am not
botanist enough to name had been coming in upon me all day long. Many of
these offerings were brought by the givers in person; many came with
notes as fragrant with good wishes as the flowers they accompanied with
their natural perfumes.
How old was I, The Dictator, once known by another equally audacious
title,--I, the recipient of all these favors and honors? I had cleared
the eight-barred gate, which few come in sight of, and fewer, far fewer,
go over, a year before. I was a trespasser on the domain belonging to
another generation. The children of my coevals were fast getting gray
and bald, and their children beginning to look upon the world as
belonging to them, and not to their sires and grandsires. After that
leap over the tall barrier, it looks like a kind of impropriety to keep
on as if one were still of a reasonable age. Sometimes it seems to me
almost of the nature of a misdemeanor to be wandering about in the
preserve which the fleshless gamekeeper guards so jealously. But, on the
other hand, I remember that men of science have maintained that the
natural life of man is nearer fivescore than threescore years and ten. I
always think of a familiar experience which I bring from the French
cafes, well known to me in my early manhood. One of the illustrated
papers of my Parisian days tells it pleasantly enough.
A guest of the establishment is sitting at his little table. He has just
had his coffee, and the waiter is serving him with his petit verre. Most
of my readers know very well what a petit verre is, but there may be here
and there a virtuous abstainer from alcoholic fluids, living among the
bayberries and the sweet ferns, who is not aware that the words, as
commonly used, signify a small glass--a very small glass--of spirit,
commonly brandy, taken as a chasse-cafe, or coffee-chaser. This drinking
of brandy, "neat," I may remark by the way, is not quite so bad as it
looks. Whiskey or rum taken unmixed from a tumbler is a knock-down blow
to temperance, but the little thimbleful of brandy, or Chartreuse, or
Maraschino, is only, as it were, tweaking the nose of teetotalism.
Well,--to go back behind our brackets,--the guest is calling to the
waiter, "Garcon! et le bain de pieds!" Waiter! and the foot-bath!--The
little glass stands in a small tin saucer or shallow dish, and the custom
is to more than fill the glass, so that some extra brandy rung over into
this tin saucer or cup-plate, to the manifest gain of the consumer.
Life is a petit verre of a very peculiar kind of spirit. At seventy
years it used to be said that the little glass was full. We should be
more apt to put it at eighty in our day, while Gladstone and Tennyson and
our own Whittier are breathing, moving, thinking, writing, speaking, in
the green preserve belonging to their children and grandchildren, and
Bancroft is keeping watch of the gamekeeper in the distance. But,
returning resolutely to the petit verre, I am willing to concede that all
after fourscore is the bain de pieds,--the slopping over, so to speak, of
the full measure of life. I remember that one who was very near and dear
to me, and who lived to a great age, so that the ten-barred gate of the
century did not look very far off, would sometimes apologize in a very
sweet, natural way for lingering so long to be a care and perhaps a
burden to her children, themselves getting well into years. It is not
hard to understand the feeling, never less called for than it was in the
case of that beloved nonagenarian. I have known few persons, young or
old, more sincerely and justly regretted than the gentle lady whose
memory comes up before me as I write.
Oh, if we could all go out of flower as gracefully, as pleasingly, as we
come into blossom! I always think of the morning-glory as the loveliest
example of a graceful yielding to the inevitable. It is beautiful before
its twisted corolla opens; it is comely as it folds its petals inward,
when its brief hours of perfection are over. Women find it easier than
men to grow old in a becoming way. A very old lady who has kept
something, it may be a great deal, of her youthful feelings, who is
daintily cared for, who is grateful for the attentions bestowed upon her,
and enters into the spirit of the young lives that surround her, is as
precious to those who love her as a gem in an antique setting, the
fashion of which has long gone by, but which leaves the jewel the color
and brightness which are its inalienable qualities. With old men it is
too often different. They do not belong so much indoors as women do.
They have no pretty little manual occupations. The old lady knits or
stitches so long as her eyes and fingers will let her. The old man
smokes his pipe, but does not know what to do with his fingers, unless he
plays upon some instrument, or has a mechanical turn which finds business
for them.
But the old writer, I said to The Teacups, as I say to you, my readers,
labors under one special difficulty, which I am thinking of and
exemplifying at this moment. He is constantly tending to reflect upon
and discourse about his own particular stage of life. He feels that he
must apologize for his intrusion upon the time and thoughts of a
generation which he naturally supposes must be tired of him, if they ever
had any considerable regard for him. Now, if the world of readers hates
anything it sees in print, it is apology. If what one has to say is
worth saying, he need not beg pardon fur saying it. If it is not worth
saying I will not finish the sentence. But it is so hard to resist the
temptation, notwithstanding that the terrible line beginning "Superfluous
lags the veteran" is always repeating itself in his dull ear!
What kind of audience or reading parish is a man who secured his
constituency in middle life, or before that period, to expect when he has
reached the age of threescore and twenty? His coevals have dropped away
by scores and tens, and he sees only a few units scattered about here and
there, like the few beads above the water after a ship has gone to
pieces. Does he write and publish for those of his own time of life? He
need not print a large edition. Does he hope to secure a hearing from
those who have come into the reading world since his coevals? They have
found fresher fields and greener pastures. Their interests are in the
out-door, active world. Some of them are circumnavigating the planet
while he is hitching his rocking chair about his hearth-rug. Some are
gazing upon the pyramids while he is staring at his andirons. Some are
settling the tariff and fixing the laws of suffrage and taxation while he
is dozing over the weather bulletin, and going to sleep over the
obituaries in his morning or evening paper.
Nature is wiser than we give her credit for being; never wiser than in
her dealings with the old. She has no idea of mortifying them by sudden
and wholly unexpected failure of the chief servants of consciousness.
The sight, for instance, begins to lose something of its perfection long
before its deficiency calls the owner's special attention to it. Very
probably, the first hint we have of the change is that a friend makes the
pleasing remark that we are "playing the trombone," as he calls it; that
is, moving a book we are holding backward and forward, to get the right
focal distance. Or it may be we find fault with the lamp or the
gas-burner for not giving so much light as it used to. At last,
somewhere between forty and fifty, we begin to dangle a jaunty pair of
eye-glasses, half plaything and half necessity. In due time a pair of
sober, business-like spectacles bestrides the nose. Old age leaps upon
it as his saddle, and rides triumphant, unchallenged, until the darkness
comes which no glasses can penetrate. Nature is pitiless in carrying out
the universal sentence, but very pitiful in her mode of dealing with the
condemned on his way to the final scene. The man who is to be hanged
always has a good breakfast provided for him.
Do not think that the old look upon themselves as the helpless, hopeless,
forlorn creatures which they seem to young people. Do these young folks
suppose that all vanity dies out of the natures of old men and old women?
A dentist of olden time told me that a good-looking young man once said
to him, "Keep that incisor presentable, if you can, till I am fifty, and
then I sha'n't care how I look." I venture to say that that gentleman
was as particular about his personal appearance and as proud of his good
looks at fifty, and many years after fifty, as he was in the twenties,
when he made that speech to the dentist.
My dear friends around the teacups, and at that wider board where I am
now entertaining, or trying to entertain, my company, is it not as plain
to you as it is to me that I had better leave such tasks as that which I
am just finishing to those who live in a more interesting period of life
than one which, in the order of nature, is next door to decrepitude?
Ought I not to regret having undertaken to report the doings and sayings
of the members of the circle which you have known as The Teacups?
Dear, faithful reader, whose patient eyes have followed my reports
through these long months, you and I are about parting company. Perhaps
you are one of those who have known me under another name, in those
far-off days separated from these by the red sea of the great national
conflict. When you first heard the tinkle of the teaspoons, as the table
was being made ready for its guests, you trembled for me, in the kindness
of your hearts. I do not wonder that you did,--I trembled for myself.
But I remembered the story of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who was seen all of
a tremor just as he was going into action. "How is this?" said a brother
officer to him. "Surely you are not afraid?" "No," he answered, "but my
flesh trembles at the thought of the dangers into which my intrepid
spirit will carry me." I knew the risk of undertaking to carry through a
series of connected papers. And yet I thought it was better to run that
risk, more manly, more sensible, than to give way to the fears which made
my flesh tremble as did Sir Cloudesley Shovel's. For myself the labor
has been a distraction, and one which came at a time when it was needed.
Sometimes, as in one of those poems recently published,--the reader will
easily guess which,--the youthful spirit has come over me with such a
rush that it made me feel just as I did when I wrote the history of the
"One-hoss Shay" thirty years ago. To repeat one of my comparisons, it
was as if an early fruit had ripened on a graft upon an old, steady-going
tree, to the astonishment of all its later-maturing products. I should
hardly dare to say so much as this if I had not heard a similar opinion
expressed by others.
Once committed to my undertaking, there was no turning back. It is true
that I had said I might stop at any moment, but after one or two numbers
it seemed as if there were an informal pledge to carry the series on, as
in former cases, until I had completed my dozen instalments.
Writers and speakers have their idiosyncrasies, their habits, their
tricks, if you had rather call them so, as to their ways of writing and
speaking. There is a very old and familiar story, accompanied by a
feeble jest, which most of my readers may probably enough have met with
in Joe Miller or elsewhere. It is that of a lawyer who could never make
an argument without having a piece of thread to work upon with his
fingers while he was pleading. Some one stole it from him one day, and
he could not get on at all with his speech,--he had lost the thread of
his discourse, as the story had it. Now this is what I myself once saw.
It was at a meeting where certain grave matters were debated in an
assembly of professional men. A speaker, whom I never heard before or
since, got up and made a long and forcible argument. I do not think he
was a lawyer, but he spoke as if he had been trained to talk to juries.
He held a long string in one hand, which he drew through the other band
incessantly, as he spoke, just as a shoe maker performs the motion of
waxing his thread. He appeared to be dependent on this motion. The
physiological significance of the fact I suppose to be that the flow of
what we call the nervous current from the thinking centre to the organs
of speech was rendered freer and easier by the establishment of a
simultaneous collateral nervous current to the set of muscles concerned
in the action I have described.
I do not use a string to help me write or speak, but I must have its
equivalent. I must have my paper and pen or pencil before me to set my
thoughts flowing in such form that they can be written continuously.
There have been lawyers who could think out their whole argument in
connected order without a single note. There are authors,--and I think
there are many,--who can compose and finish off a poem or a story without
writing a word of it until, when the proper time comes, they copy what
they carry in their heads. I have been told that Sir Edwin Arnold
thought out his beautiful "Light of Asia" in this way.
I find the great charm of writing consists in its surprises. When one is
in the receptive attitude of mind, the thoughts which are sprung upon
him, the images which flash through his--consciousness, are a delight and
an excitement. I am impatient of every hindrance in setting down my
thoughts,--of a pen that will not write, of ink that will not flow, of
paper that will not receive the ink. And here let me pay the tribute
which I owe to one of the humblest but most serviceable of my assistants,
especially in poetical composition. Nothing seems more prosaic than the
stylographic pen. It deprives the handwriting of its beauty, and to some
extent of its individual character. The brutal communism of the letters
it forms covers the page it fills with the most uniformly uninteresting
characters. But, abuse it as much as you choose, there is nothing like
it for the poet, for the imaginative writer. Many a fine flow of thought
has been checked, perhaps arrested, by the ill behavior of a goose-quill.
Many an idea has escaped while the author was dipping his pen in the
inkstand. But with the stylographic pen, in the hands of one who knows
how to care for it and how to use it, unbroken rhythms and harmonious
cadences are the natural products of the unimpeded flow of the fluid
which is the vehicle of the author's thoughts and fancies. So much for my
debt of gratitude to the humble stylographic pen. It does not furnish
the proper medium for the correspondence of intimates, who wish to see as
much of their friends' personality as their handwriting can hold,--still
less for the impassioned interchange of sentiments between lovers; but in
writing for the press its use is open to no objection. Its movement over
the paper is like the flight of a swallow, while the quill pen and the
steel pen and the gold pen are all taking short, laborious journeys, and
stopping to drink every few minutes.
A chief pleasure which the author of novels and stories experiences is
that of becoming acquainted with the characters be draws. It is
perfectly true that his characters must, in the nature of things, have
more or less of himself in their composition. If I should seek an
exemplification of this in the person of any of my Teacups, I should find
it most readily in the one whom I have called Number Seven, the one with
the squinting brain. I think that not only I, the writer, but many of my
readers, recognize in our own mental constitution an occasional obliquity
of perception, not always detected at the time, but plain enough when
looked back upon. What extravagant fancies you and I have seriously
entertained at one time or another! What superstitious notions have got
into our heads and taken possession of its empty chambers,--or, in the
language of science, seized on the groups of nerve-cells in some of the
idle cerebral convolutions!
The writer, I say, becomes acquainted with his characters as he goes on.
They are at first mere embryos, outlines of distinct personalities. By
and by, if they have any organic cohesion, they begin to assert
themselves. They can say and do such and such things; such and such
other things they cannot and must not say or do. The story-writer's and
play-writer's danger is that they will get their characters mixed, and
make A say what B ought to have said. The stronger his imaginative
faculty, the less liable will the writer be to this fault; but not even
Shakespeare's power of throwing himself into his characters prevents many
of his different personages from talking philosophy in the same strain
and in a style common to them all.
You will often observe that authors fall in love with the imaginary
persons they describe, and that they bestow affectionate epithets upon
them which it may happen the reader does not consider in any way called
for. This is a pleasure to which they have a right. Every author of a
story is surrounded by a little family of ideal children, as dear to him,
it may be, as are flesh-and-blood children to their parents. You may
forget all about the circle of Teacups to which I have introduced
you,--on the supposition that you have followed me with some degree of
interest; but do you suppose that Number Five does not continue as a
presence with me, and that my pretty Delilah has left me forever because
she is going to be married?
No, my dear friend, our circle will break apart, and its different
members will soon be to you as if they had never been. But do you think
that I can forget them? Do you suppose that I shall cease to follow the
love (or the loves; which do you think is the true word, the singular or
the plural?) of Number Five and the young Tutor who is so constantly
found in her company? Do you suppose that I do not continue my relations
with the "Cracked Teacup,"--the poor old fellow with whom I have so much
in common, whose counterpart, perhaps, you may find in your own complex
personality?
I take from the top shelf of the hospital department of my library--the
section devoted to literary cripples, imbeciles, failures, foolish
rhymesters, and silly eccentrics--one of the least conspicuous and most
hopelessly feeble of the weak-minded population of that intellectual
almshouse. I open it and look through its pages. It is a story. I have
looked into it once before,--on its first reception as a gift from the
author. I try to recall some of the names I see there: they mean nothing
to me, but I venture to say the author cherishes them all, and cries over
them as he did when he was writing their history. I put the book back
among its dusty companions, and, sitting down in my reflective
rocking-chair, think how others must forget, and how I shall remember,
the company that gathered about this table.
Shall I ever meet any one of them again, in these pages or in any other?
Will the cracked Teacup hold together, or will he go to pieces, and find
himself in that retreat where the owner of the terrible clock which drove
him crazy is walking under the shelter of the high walls? Has the young
Doctor's crown yet received the seal which is Nature's warrant of wisdom
and proof of professional competency? And Number Five and her young
friend the Tutor,--have they kept on in their dangerous intimacy? Did
they get through the tutto tremante passage, reading from the same old
large edition of Dante which the Tutor recommended as the best, and in
reading from which their heads were necessarily brought perilously near
to each other?
It would be very pleasant if I could, consistently with the present state
of affairs, bring these two young people together. I say two young
people, for the one who counts most years seems to me to be really the
younger of the pair. That Number Five foresaw from the first that any
tenderer feeling than that of friendship would intrude itself between
them I do not believe. As for the Tutor, he soon found where he was
drifting. It was his first experience in matters concerning the heart,
and absorbed his whole nature as a thing of course. Did he tell her he
loved her? Perhaps he did, fifty times; perhaps he never had the courage
to say so outright. But sometimes they looked each other straight in the
eyes, and strange messages seemed to pass from one consciousness to the
other. Will the Tutor ask Number Five to be his wife; and if he does,
will she yield to the dictates of nature, and lower the flag of that
fortress so long thought impregnable? Will he go on writing such poems
to her as "The Rose and the Fern" or "I Like You and I Love You," and be
content with the pursuit of that which he never can attain? That is all
very well, on the "Grecian Urn" of Keats,--beautiful, but not love such
as mortals demand. Still, that may be all, for aught that we have yet
seen.
"Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal,--yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
.........................
"More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting and forever young!"
And so, good-bye, young people, whom we part with here. Shadows you have
been and are to my readers; very real you have been and are to me,--as
real as the memories of many friends whom I shall see no more.
As I am not in the habit of indulging in late suppers, the reader need
not think that I shall spread another board and invite him to listen to
the conversations which take place around it. If, from time to time, he
finds a slight refection awaiting him on the sideboard, I hope he may
welcome it as pleasantly as he has accepted what I have offered him from
the board now just being cleared.
..........................
It is a good rule for the actor who manages the popular street drama of
Punch not to let the audience or spectators see his legs. It is very
hard for the writer of papers like these, which are now coming to their
conclusion, to keep his personality from showing itself too conspicuously
through the thin disguises of his various characters. As the show is now
over, as the curtain has fallen, I appear before it in my proper person,
to address a few words to the friends who have assisted, as the French
say, by their presence, and as we use the word, by the kind way in which
they have received my attempts at their entertainment.
This series of papers is the fourth of its kind which I have offered to
my readers. I may be allowed to look back upon the succession of serial
articles which was commenced more than thirty years ago, in 1857. "The
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" was the first of the series. It was
begun without the least idea what was to be its course and its outcome.
Its characters shaped themselves gradually as the manuscript grew under
my hand. I jotted down on the sheet of blotting paper before me the
thoughts and fancies which came into my head. A very odd-looking object
was this page of memoranda. Many of the hints were worked up into formal
shape, many were rejected. Sometimes I recorded a story, a jest, or a pun
for consideration, and made use of it or let it alone as my second
thought decided. I remember a curious coincidence, which, if I have ever
told in print,--I am not sure whether I have or not,--I will tell over
again. I mention it, not for the pun, which I rejected as not very
edifying and perhaps not new, though I did not recollect having seen it.
Mulier, Latin for woman; why apply that name to one of the gentle but
occasionally obstinate sex? The answer was that a woman is (sometimes)
more mulish than a mule. Please observe that I did not like the poor pun
very well, and thought it rather rude and inelegant. So I left it on the
blotter, where it was standing when one of the next numbers of "Punch"
came out and contained that very same pun, which must have been hit upon
by some English contributor at just about the same time I fell upon it on
this side of the Atlantic. This fact may be added to the chapter of
coincidences which belongs to the first number of this series of papers.
The "Autocrat" had the attraction of novelty, which of course was wanting
in the succeeding papers of similar character. The criticisms upon the
successive numbers as they came out were various, but generally
encouraging. Some were more than encouraging; very high-colored in their
phrases of commendation. When the papers were brought together in a
volume their success was beyond my expectations. Up to the present time
the "Autocrat" has maintained its position. An immortality of a whole
generation is more than most writers are entitled to expect. I venture
to think, from the letters I receive from the children and grandchildren
of my first set of readers, that for some little time longer, at least,
it will continue to be read, and even to be a favorite with some of its
readers. Non omnis moriar is a pleasant thought to one who has loved his
poor little planet, and will, I trust, retain kindly recollections of it
through whatever wilderness of worlds he may be called to wander in his
future pilgrimages. I say "poor little planet." Ever since I had a ten
cent look at the transit of Venus, a few years ago, through the telescope
in the Mall, the earth has been wholly different to me from what it used
to be. I knew from books what a speck it is in the universe, but nothing
ever brought the fact home like the sight of the sister planet sailing
across the sun's disk, about large enough for a buckshot, not large
enough for a full-sized bullet. Yes, I love the little globule where I
have spent more than fourscore years, and I like to think that some of my
thoughts and some of my emotions may live themselves over again when I am
sleeping. I cannot thank all the kind readers of the "Autocrat" who are
constantly sending me their acknowledgments. If they see this printed
page, let them be assured that a writer is always rendered happier by
being told that he has made a fellow-being wiser or better, or even
contributed to his harmless entertainment. This a correspondent may take
for granted, even if his letter of grateful recognition receives no
reply. It becomes more and more difficult for me to keep up with my
correspondents, and I must soon give it up as impossible.
"The Professor at the Breakfast Table" followed immediately on the heels
of the "Autocrat." The Professor was the alter ego of the first
personage. In the earlier series he had played a secondary part, and in
this second series no great effort was made to create a character wholly
unlike the first. The Professor was more outspoken, however, on
religious subjects, and brought down a good deal of hard language on
himself and the author to whom he owed his existence. I suppose he may
have used some irritating expressions, unconsciously, but not
unconscientiously, I am sure. There is nothing harder to forgive than
the sting of an epigram. Some of the old doctors, I fear, never pardoned
me for saying that if a ship, loaded with an assorted cargo of the drugs
which used to be considered the natural food of sick people, went to the
bottom of the sea, it would be "all the better for mankind and all the
worse for the fishes." If I had not put that snapper on the end of my
whip-lash, I might have got off without the ill temper which my
antithesis provoked. Thirty years set that all right, and the same
thirty years have so changed the theological atmosphere that such abusive
words as "heretic" and "infidel," applied to persons who differ from the
old standards of faith, are chiefly interesting as a test of breeding,
being seldom used by any people above the social half-caste line. I am
speaking of Protestants; how it may be among Roman Catholics I do not
know, but I suspect that with them also it is a good deal a matter of
breeding. There were not wanting some who liked the Professor better
than the Autocrat. I confess that I prefer my champagne in its first
burst of gaseous enthusiasm; but if my guest likes it better after it has
stood awhile, I am pleased to accommodate him. The first of my series
came from my mind almost with an explosion, like the champagne cork; it
startled me a little to see what I had written, and to hear what people
said about it. After that first explosion the flow was more sober, and I
looked upon the product of my wine-press more coolly. Continuations
almost always sag a little. I will not say that of my own second effort,
but if others said it, I should not be disposed to wonder at or to
dispute them.
"The Poet at the Breakfast Table" came some years later. This series of
papers was not so much a continuation as a resurrection. It was a doubly
hazardous attempt, made without any extravagant expectations, and was
received as well as I had any right to anticipate. It differed from the
other two series in containing a poem of considerable length, published
in successive portions. This poem holds a good deal of self-communing,
and gave me the opportunity of expressing some thoughts and feelings not
to be found elsewhere in my writings. I had occasion to read the whole
volume, not long since, in preparation for a new edition, and was rather
more pleased with it than I had expected to be. An old author is
constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions
of his earlier years. It is a long time since I have read the
"Autocrat," but I take it up now and then and read in it for a few
minutes, not always without some degree of edification.
These three series of papers, "Autocrat," "Professor," "Poet," are all
studies of life from somewhat different points of view. They are largely
made up of sober reflections, and appeared to me to require some lively
human interest to save them from wearisome didactic dulness. What could
be more natural than that love should find its way among the young people
who helped to make up the circle gathered around the table? Nothing is
older than the story of young love. Nothing is newer than that same old
story. A bit of gilding here and there has a wonderful effect in
enlivening a landscape or an apartment. Napoleon consoled the Parisians
in their year of defeat by gilding the dome of the Invalides. Boston has
glorified her State House and herself at the expense of a few sheets of
gold leaf laid on the dome, which shines like a sun in the eyes of her
citizens, and like a star in those of the approaching traveller. I think
the gilding of a love-story helped all three of these earlier papers. The
same need I felt in the series of papers just closed. The slight
incident of Delilah's appearance and disappearance served my purpose to
some extent. But what should I do with Number Five? The reader must
follow out her career for himself. For myself, I think that she and the
Tutor have both utterly forgotten the difference of their years in the
fascination of intimate intercourse. I do not believe that a nature so
large, so rich in affection, as Number Five's is going to fall defeated
of its best inheritance of life, like a vine which finds no support for
its tendrils to twine around, and so creeps along the ground from which
nature meant that love should lift it. I feel as if I ought to follow
these two personages of my sermonizing story until they come together or
separate, to fade, to wither,--perhaps to die, at last, of something like
what the doctors call heart-failure, but which might more truly be called
heart-starvation. When I say die, I do not mean necessarily the death
that goes into the obituary column. It may come to that, in one or both;
but I think that, if they are never united, Number Five will outlive the
Tutor, who will fall into melancholy ways, and pine and waste, while she
lives along, feeling all the time that she has cheated herself of
happiness. I hope that is not going to be their fortune, or misfortune.
Vieille fille fait jeune mariee. What a youthful bride Number Five would
be, if she could only make up her mind to matrimony! In the mean time
she must be left with her lambs all around her. May heaven temper the
winds to them, for they have been shorn very close, every one of them, of
their golden fleece of aspirations and anticipations.
I must avail myself of this opportunity to say a few words to my distant
friends who take interest enough in my writings, early or recent, to wish
to enter into communication with me by letter, or to keep up a
communication already begun. I have given notice in print that the
letters, books, and manuscripts which I receive by mail are so numerous
that if I undertook to read and answer them all I should have little time
for anything else. I have for some years depended on the assistance of a
secretary, but our joint efforts have proved unable, of late, to keep
down the accumulations which come in with every mail. So many of the
letters I receive are of a pleasant character that it is hard to let them
go unacknowledged. The extreme friendliness which pervades many of them
gives them a value which I rate very highly. When large numbers of
strangers insist on claiming one as a friend, on the strength of what he
has written, it tends to make him think of himself somewhat indulgently.
It is the most natural thing in the world to want to give expression to
the feeling the loving messages from far-off unknown friends must excite.
Many a day has had its best working hours broken into, spoiled for all
literary work, by the labor of answering correspondents whose good
opinion it is gratifying to have called forth, but who were unconsciously
laying a new burden on shoulders already aching. I know too well that
what I say will not reach the eyes of many who might possibly take a hint
from it. Still I must keep repeating it before breaking off suddenly and
leaving whole piles of letters unanswered. I have been very heavily
handicapped for many years. It is partly my own fault. From what my
correspondents tell me, I must infer that I have established a dangerous
reputation for willingness to answer all sorts of letters. They come
with such insinuating humility,--they cannot bear to intrude upon my
time, they know that I have a great many calls upon it,--and
incontinently proceed to lay their additional weight on the load which is
breaking my back.
The hypocrisy of kind-hearted people is one of the most painful
exhibitions of human weakness. It has occurred to me that it might be
profitable to reproduce some of my unwritten answers to correspondents.
If those which were actually written and sent were to be printed in
parallel columns with those mentally formed but not written out responses
and comments, the reader would get some idea of the internal conflicts an
honest and not unamiable person has to go through, when he finds himself
driven to the wall by a correspondence which is draining his vocabulary
to find expressions that sound as agreeably, and signify as little, as
the phrases used by a diplomatist in closing an official communication.
No. 1. Want my autograph, do you? And don't know how to spell my name.
An a for an e in my middle name. Leave out the l in my last name. Do
you know how people hate to have their names misspelled? What do you
suppose are the sentiments entertained by the Thompsons with a p towards
those who address them in writing as Thomson?
No. 2. Think the lines you mention are by far the best I ever wrote,
hey? Well, I didn't write those lines. What is more, I think they are
as detestable a string of rhymes as I could wish my worst enemy had
written. A very pleasant frame of mind I am in for writing a letter,
after reading yours!
No. 3. I am glad to hear that my namesake, whom I never saw and never
expect to see, has cut another tooth; but why write four pages on the
strength of that domestic occurrence?
No. 4. You wish to correct an error in my Broomstick poem, do you? You
give me to understand that Wilmington is not in Essex County, but in
Middlesex. Very well; but are they separated by running water? Because
if they are not, what could hinder a witch from crossing the line that
separates Wilmington from Andover, I should like to know? I never meant
to imply that the witches made no excursions beyond the district which
was more especially their seat of operations.
As I come towards the end of this task which I had set myself, I wish, of
course, that I could have performed it more to my own satisfaction and
that of my readers. This is a feeling which almost every one must have
at the conclusion of any work he has undertaken. A common and very simple
reason for this disappointment is that most of us overrate our capacity.
We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to, in virtue of our
endowments. The figurative descriptions of the last Grand Assize must no
more be taken literally than the golden crowns, which we do not expect or
want to wear on our heads, or the golden harps, which we do not want or
expect to hold in our hands. Is it not too true that many religious
sectaries think of the last tribunal complacently, as the scene in which
they are to have the satisfaction of saying to the believers of a creed
different from their own, "I told you so"? Are not others oppressed with
the thought of the great returns which will be expected of them as the
product of their great gifts, the very limited amount of which they do
not suspect, and will be very glad to learn, even at the expense of their
self-love, when they are called to their account? If the ways of the
Supreme Being are ever really to be "justified to men," to use Milton's
expression, every human being may expect an exhaustive explanation of
himself. No man is capable of being his own counsel, and I cannot help
hoping that the ablest of the, archangels will be retained for the
defence of the worst of sinners. He himself is unconscious of the
agencies which made him what he is. Self-determining he may be, if you
will, but who determines the self which is the proximate source of the
determination? Why was the A self like his good uncle in bodily aspect
and mental and moral qualities, and the B self like the bad uncle in look
and character? Has not a man a right to ask this question in the here or
in the hereafter,--in this world or in any world in which he may find
himself? If the All-wise wishes to satisfy his reasonable and reasoning
creatures, it will not be by a display of elemental convulsions, but by
the still small voice, which treats with him as a dependent entitled to
know the meaning of his existence, and if there was anything wrong in his
adjustment to the moral and spiritual conditions of the world around him
to have full allowance made for it. No melodramatic display of warring
elements, such as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the
need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified
and impressed the more timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious
caravan which the great leader was conducting, but a far nobler
manifestation of divinity was that when "the Lord spake unto Moses face
to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."
I find the burden and restrictions of rhyme more and more troublesome as
I grow older. There are times when it seems natural enough to employ
that form of expression, but it is only occasionally; and the use of it
as the vehicle of the commonplace is so prevalent that one is not much
tempted to select it as the medium for his thoughts and emotions. The
art of rhyming has almost become a part of a high-school education, and
its practice is far from being an evidence of intellectual distinction.
Mediocrity is as much forbidden to the poet in our days as it was in
those of Horace, and the immense majority of the verses written are
stamped with hopeless mediocrity.
When one of the ancient poets found he was trying to grind out verses
which came unwillingly, he said he was writing--
INVITA MINERVA.
Vex not the Muse with idle prayers,
--She will not hear thy call;
She steals upon thee unawares,
Or seeks thee not at all.
Soft as the moonbeams when they sought
Endymion's fragrant bower,
She parts the whispering leaves of thought
To show her full-blown flower.
For thee her wooing hour has passed,
The singing birds have flown,
And winter comes with icy blast
To chill thy buds unblown.
Yet, though the woods no longer thrill
As once their arches rung,
Sweet echoes hover round thee still
Of songs thy summer sung.
Live in thy past; await no more
The rush of heaven-sent wings;
Earth still has music left in store
While Memory sighs and sings.
I hope my special Minerva may not always be unwilling, but she must not
be called upon as she has been in times past. Now that the teacups have
left the table, an occasional evening call is all that my readers must
look for. Thanking them for their kind companionship, and hoping that I
may yet meet them in the now and then in the future, I bid them goodbye
for the immediate present, then in the future, I bid them goodbye for the
immediate present.
ELSIE VENNER
By Oliver Wendell Holmes
PREFACE.
This tale was published in successive parts in the "Atlantic Monthly,"
under the name of "The Professor's Story," the first number having
appeared in the third week of December, 1859. The critic who is curious
in coincidences must refer to the Magazine for the date of publication of
the chapter he is examining.
In calling this narrative a "romance," the Author wishes to make sure of
being indulged in the common privileges of the poetic license. Through
all the disguise of fiction a grave scientific doctrine may be detected
lying beneath some of the delineations of character. He has used this
doctrine as a part of the machinery of his story without pledging his
absolute belief in it to the extent to which it is asserted or implied.
It was adopted as a convenient medium of truth rather than as an accepted
scientific conclusion. The reader must judge for himself what is the
value of various stories cited from old authors. He must decide how much
of what has been told he can accept either as having actually happened,
or as possible and more or less probable. The Author must be permitted,
however, to say here, in his personal character, and as responsible to
the students of the human mind and body, that since this story has been
in progress he has received the most startling confirmation of the
possibility of the existence of a character like that which he had drawn
as a purely imaginary conception in Elsie Venner.
BOSTON, January, 1861.
A SECOND PREFACE.
This is the story which a dear old lady, my very good friend, spoke of as
"a medicated novel," and quite properly refused to read. I was always
pleased with her discriminating criticism. It is a medicated novel, and
if she wished to read for mere amusement and helpful recreation there was
no need of troubling herself with a story written with a different end in
view.
This story has called forth so many curious inquiries that it seems worth
while to answer the more important questions which have occurred to its
readers.
In the first place, it is not based on any well-ascertained physiological
fact. There are old fables about patients who have barked like dogs or
crowed like cocks, after being bitten or wounded by those animals. There
is nothing impossible in the idea that Romulus and Remus may have imbibed
wolfish traits of character from the wet nurse the legend assigned them,
but the legend is not sound history, and the supposition is nothing more
than a speculative fancy. Still, there is a limbo of curious evidence
bearing on the subject of pre-natal influences sufficient to form the
starting-point of an imaginative composition.
The real aim, of the story was to test the doctrine of "original sin" and
human responsibility for the disordered volition coming under that
technical denomination. Was Elsie Venner, poisoned by the venom of a
crotalus before she was born, morally responsible for the "volitional"
aberrations, which translated into acts become what is known as sin, and,
it may be, what is punished as crime? If, on presentation of the
evidence, she becomes by the verdict of the human conscience a proper
object of divine pity and not of divine wrath, as a subject of moral
poisoning, wherein lies the difference between her position at the bar of
judgment, human or divine, and that of the unfortunate victim who
received a moral poison from a remote ancestor before he drew his first
breath?
It might be supposed that the character of Elsie Veneer was suggested by
some of the fabulous personages of classical or mediaeval story. I
remember that a French critic spoke of her as cette pauvre Melusine. I
ought to have been ashamed, perhaps, but I had, not the slightest idea
who Melusina was until I hunted up the story, and found that she was a
fairy, who for some offence was changed every Saturday to a serpent from
her waist downward. I was of course familiar with Keats's Lamia, another
imaginary being, the subject of magical transformation into a serpent.
My story was well advanced before Hawthorne's wonderful "Marble Faun,"
which might be thought to have furnished me with the hint of a mixed
nature,--human, with an alien element,--was published or known to me. So
that my poor heroine found her origin, not in fable or romance, but in a
physiological conception fertilized by a theological dogma.
I had the dissatisfaction of enjoying from a quiet corner a well-meant
effort to dramatize "Elsie Veneer." Unfortunately, a physiological
romance, as I knew beforehand, is hardly adapted for the melodramatic
efforts of stage representation. I can therefore say, with perfect
truth, that I was not disappointed. It is to the mind, and not to the
senses, that such a story must appeal, and all attempts to render the
character and events objective on the stage, or to make them real by
artistic illustrations, are almost of necessity failures. The story has
won the attention and enjoyed the favor of a limited class of readers,
and if it still continues to interest others of the same tastes and
habits of thought I can ask nothing more of it.
January 23, 1883.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
I have nothing of importance to add to the two preceding Prefaces. The
continued call for this story, which was not written for popularity, but
with a very serious purpose, has somewhat surprised and, I need not add,
gratified me. I can only restate the motive idea of the tale in a little
different language. Believing, as I do, that our prevailing theologies
are founded upon an utterly false view of the relation of man to his
Creator, I attempted to illustrate the doctrine of inherited moral
responsibility for other people's misbehavior. I tried to make out a
case for my poor Elsie, whom the most hardened theologian would find it
hard to blame for her inherited ophidian tastes and tendencies. How,
then, is he to blame mankind for inheriting "sinfulness" from their first
parents? May not the serpent have bitten Eve before the birth of Cain,
her first-born? That would have made an excuse for Cain's children, as
Elsie's ante-natal misfortune made an excuse for her. But what
difference does it make in the child's responsibility whether his
inherited tendencies come from a snake-bite or some other source which he
knew nothing about and could not have prevented from acting? All this is
plain enough, and the only use of the story is to bring the dogma of
inherited guilt and its consequences into a clearer point of view.
But, after all, the tale must have proved readable as a story to account
for the large number of editions which it has reached.
Some readers have been curious about the locality the writer was thought
to have in view. No particular place was intended. Some of the
characters may have been thought to have been drawn from life; but the
personages mentioned are mostly composites, like Mr. Galton's compound
photographic likenesses, and are not calculated to provoke scandal or
suits for libel.
O. W. H.
BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 3, 1891.
ELSIE VENNER.
CHAPTER I.
THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND.
There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal
aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it be owing to the stock from
which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions,
or to the abrogation of the technical "law of honor," which draws a sharp
line between the personally responsible class of "gentlemen" and the
unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives for
an abstraction,--whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy here
as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle Ages.
What we mean by "aristocracy" is merely the richer part of the community,
that live in the tallest houses, drive real carriages, (not "kerridges,")
kidglove their hands, and French-bonnet their ladies' heads, give parties
where the persons who call them by the above title are not invited, and
have a provokingly easy way of dressing, walking, talking, and nodding to
people, as if they felt entirely at home, and would not be embarrassed in
the least, if they met the Governor, or even the President of the United
States, face to face. Some of these great folks are really well-bred,
some of them are only purse-proud and assuming,--but they form a class,
and are named as above in the common speech.
It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, when
subdivided and distributed. A million is the unit of wealth, now and
here in America. It splits into four handsome properties; each of these
into four good inheritances; these, again, into scanty competences for
four ancient maidens,--with whom it is best the family should die out,
unless it can begin again as its great-grandfather did. Now a million is
a kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious form the
summer's growth of a fat meadow of craft or commerce; and as this kind of
meadow rarely bears more than one crop, it is pretty certain that sons
and grandsons will not get another golden cheese out of it, whether they
milk the same cows or turn in new ones. In other words, the
millionocracy, considered in a large way, is not at all an affair of
persons and families, but a perpetual fact of money with a variable human
element, which a philosopher might leave out of consideration without
falling into serious error. Of course, this trivial and, fugitive fact
of personal wealth does not create a permanent class, unless some special
means are taken to arrest the process of disintegration in the third
generation. This is so rarely done, at least successfully, that one need
not live a very long life to see most of the rich families he knew in
childhood more or less reduced, and the millions shifted into the hands
of the country-boys who were sweeping stores and carrying parcels when
the now decayed gentry were driving their chariots, eating their venison
over silver chafing-dishes, drinking Madeira chilled in embossed coolers,
wearing their hair in powder, and casing their legs in long boots with
silken tassels.
There is, however, in New England, an aristocracy, if you choose to call
it so, which has a far greater character of permanence. It has grown to
be a caste,--not in any odious sense;--but, by the repetition of the same
influences, generation after generation, it has acquired a distinct
organization and physiognomy, which not to recognize is mere stupidity,
and not to be willing to describe would show a distrust of the
good-nature and intelligence of our readers, who like to have us see all
we can and tell all we see.
If you will look carefully at any class of students in one of our
colleges, you will have no difficulty in selecting specimens of two
different aspects of youthful manhood. Of course I shall choose extreme
cases to illustrate the contrast between them. In the first, the figure
is perhaps robust, but often otherwise,--inelegant, partly from careless
attitudes, partly from ill-dressing,--the face is uncouth in feature, or
at least common,--the mouth coarse and unformed,--the eye unsympathetic,
even if bright,--the movements of the face are clumsy, like those of the
limbs,--the voice is unmusical,--and the enunciation as if the words were
coarse castings, instead of fine carvings. The youth of the other aspect
is commonly slender, his face is smooth, and apt to be pallid,--his
features are regular and of a certain delicacy,--his eye is bright and
quick,--his lips play over the thought he utters as a pianist's fingers
dance over their music, and his whole air, though it may be timid, and
even awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a teacher, you know what
to expect from each of these young men. With equal willingness, the
first will be slow at learning; the second will take to his books as a
pointer or a setter to his field-work.
The first youth is the common country-boy, whose race has been bred to
bodily labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of
life it has lived. The hands and feet by constant use have got more than
their share of development,--the organs of thought and expression less
than their share. The finer instincts are latent and must be developed.
A youth of this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration.
You must not expect too much of any such. Many of them have force of will
and character, and become distinguished in practical life; but very few
of them ever become great scholars. A scholar is, in a large proportion
of cases, the son of scholars or scholarly persons.
That is exactly what the other young man is. He comes of the Brahmin
caste of New England. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled
aristocracy referred to, and which many readers will at once acknowledge.
There are races of scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning, and
all these marks of it I have spoken of, are congenital and hereditary.
Their names are always on some college catalogue or other. They break
out every generation or two in some learned labor which calls them up
after they seem to have died out. At last some newer name takes their
place, it maybe,--but you inquire a little and you find it is the blood
of the Edwardses or the Chauncys or the Ellerys or some of the old
historic scholars, disguised under the altered name of a female
descendant.
There probably is not an experienced instructor anywhere in our Northern
States who will not recognize at once the truth of this general
distinction. But the reader who has never been a teacher will very
probably object, that some of our most illustrious public men have come
direct from the homespun-clad class of the people,--and he may, perhaps,
even find a noted scholar or two whose parents were masters of the
English alphabet, but of no other.
It is not fair to pit a few chosen families against the great multitude
of those who are continually working their way up into the intellectual
classes. The results which are habitually reached by hereditary training
are occasionally brought about without it. There are natural filters as
well as artificial ones; and though the great rivers are commonly more or
less turbid, if you will look long enough, you may find a spring that
sparkles as no water does which drips through your apparatus of sands and
sponges. So there are families which refine themselves into intellectual
aptitude without having had much opportunity for intellectual
acquirements. A series of felicitous crosses develops an improved strain
of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection at last in the large
uncombed youth who goes to college and startles the hereditary
class-leaders by striding past them all. That is Nature's republicanism;
thank God for it, but do not let it make you illogical. The race of the
hereditary scholar has exchanged a certain portion of its animal vigor
for its new instincts, and it is hard to lead men without a good deal of
animal vigor. The scholar who comes by Nature's special grace from an
unworn stock of broad-chested sires and deep-bosomed mothers must always
overmatch an equal intelligence with a compromised and lowered vitality.
A man's breathing and digestive apparatus (one is tempted to add
muscular) are just as important to him on the floor of the Senate as his
thinking organs. You broke down in your great speech, did you? Yes,
your grandfather had an attack of dyspepsia in '82, after working too
hard on his famous Election Sermon. All this does not touch the main
fact: our scholars come chiefly from a privileged order, just as our best
fruits come from well-known grafts, though now and then a seedling apple,
like the Northern Spy, or a seedling pear, like the Seckel, springs from
a nameless ancestry and grows to be the pride of all the gardens in the
land.
Let me introduce you to a young man who belongs to the Brahmin caste of
New England.
CHAPTER II.
THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE.
Bernard C. Langdon, a young man attending Medical Lectures at the school
connected with one of our principal colleges, remained after the Lecture
one day and wished to speak with the Professor. He was a student of
mark,--first favorite of his year, as they say of the Derby colts. There
are in every class half a dozen bright faces to which the teacher
naturally, directs his discourse, and by the intermediation of whose
attention he seems to hold that of the mass of listeners. Among these
some one is pretty sure to take the lead, by virtue of a personal
magnetism, or some peculiarity of expression, which places the face in
quick sympathetic relations with the lecturer. This was a young man with
such a face; and I found,--for you have guessed that I was the
"Professor" above-mentioned,--that, when there was anything difficult to
be explained, or when I was bringing out some favorite illustration of a
nice point, (as, for instance; when I compared the cell-growth, by which
Nature builds up a plant or an animal, to the glassblower's similar mode
of beginning,--always with a hollow sphere, or vesicle, whatever he is
going to make,) I naturally looked in his face and gauged my success by
its expression.
It was a handsome face,--a little too pale, perhaps, and would have borne
something more of fulness without becoming heavy. I put the organization
to which it belongs in Section B of Class 1 of my Anglo-American
Anthropology (unpublished). The jaw in this section is but slightly
narrowed,--just enough to make the width of the forehead tell more
decidedly. The moustache often grows vigorously, but the whiskers are
thin. The skin is like that of Jacob, rather than like Esau's. One
string of the animal nature has been taken away, but this gives only a
greater predominance to the intellectual chords. To see just how the
vital energy has been toned down, you must contrast one of this section
with a specimen of Section A of the same class,--say, for instance, one
of the old-fashioned, full-whiskered, red-faced, roaring, big Commodores
of the last generation, whom you remember, at least by their portraits,
in ruffled shirts, looking as hearty as butchers and as plucky as
bull-terriers, with their hair combed straight up from their foreheads,
which were not commonly very high or broad. The special form of physical
life I have been describing gives you a right to expect more delicate
perceptions and a more reflective, nature than you commonly find in
shaggy-throated men, clad in heavy suits of muscles.
The student lingered in the lecture-room, looking all the time as if he
wanted to say something in private, and waiting for two or three others,
who were still hanging about, to be gone.
Something is wrong!--I said to myself, when I noticed his
expression.--Well, Mr. Langdon,--I said to him, when we were alone,--can
I do anything for you to-day?
You can, Sir,--he said.--I am going to leave the class, for the present,
and keep school.
Why, that 's a pity, and you so near graduating! You'd better stay and
finish this course and take your degree in the spring, rather than break
up your whole plan of study.
I can't help myself, Sir,--the young man answered.--There 's trouble at
home, and they cannot keep me here as they have done. So I must look out
for myself for a while. It's what I've done before, and am ready to do
again. I came to ask you for a certificate of my fitness to teach a
common school, or a high school, if you think I am up to that. Are you
willing to give it to me?
Willing? Yes, to be sure,--but I don't want you to go. Stay; we'll make
it easy for you. There's a fund will do something for you, perhaps.
Then you can take both the annual prizes, if you like,--and claim them in
money, if you want that more than medals.
I have thought it all over,--he answered,--and have pretty much made up
my mind to go.
A perfectly gentlemanly young man, of courteous address and mild
utterance, but means at least as much as he says. There are some people
whose rhetoric consists of a slight habitual under-statement. I often
tell Mrs. Professor that one of her "I think it's sos" is worth the
Bible-oath of all the rest of the household that they "know it's so."
When you find a person a little better than his word, a little more
liberal than his promise, a little more than borne out in his statement
by his facts, a little larger in deed than in speech, you recognize a
kind of eloquence in that person's utterance not laid down in Blair or
Campbell.
This was a proud fellow, self-trusting, sensitive, with
family-recollections that made him unwilling to accept the kind of aid
which many students would have thankfully welcomed. I knew him too well
to urge him, after the few words which implied that he was determined to
go. Besides, I have great confidence in young men who believe in
themselves, and are accustomed to rely on their own resources from an
early period. When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully,
the World, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to
find it come off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away
timid adventurers. I have seen young men more than once, who came to a
great city without a single friend, support themselves and pay for their
education, lay up money in a few years, grow rich enough to travel, and
establish themselves in life, without ever asking a dollar of any person
which they had not earned. But these are exceptional cases. There are
horse-tamers, born so,--as we all know; there are woman-tamers, who
bewitch the sex as the pied piper bedeviled the children of Hamelin; and
there are world-tamers, who can make any community, even a Yankee one,
get down and let them jump on its back as easily as Mr. Rarey saddled
Cruiser.
Whether Langdon was of this sort or not I could not say positively; but
he had spirit, and, as I have said, a family-pride which would not let
him be dependent. The New England Brahmin caste often gets blended with
connections of political influence or commercial distinction. It is a
charming thing for the scholar, when his fortune carries him in this way
into some of the "old families" who have fine old houses, and city-lots
that have risen in the market, and names written in all the stock-books
of all the dividend-paying companies. His narrow study expands into a
stately library, his books are counted by thousands instead of hundreds,
and his favorites are dressed in gilded calf in place of plebeian
sheepskin or its pauper substitutes of cloth and paper.
The Reverend Jedediah Langdon, grandfather of our young gentleman, had
made an advantageous alliance of this kind. Miss Dorothea Wentworth had
read one of his sermons which had been printed "by request," and became
deeply interested in the young author, whom she had never seen. Out of
this circumstance grew a correspondence, an interview, a declaration, a
matrimonial alliance, and a family of half a dozen children. Wentworth
Langdon, Esquire, was the oldest of these, and lived in the old
family-mansion. Unfortunately, that principle of the diminution of
estates by division, to which I have referred, rendered it somewhat
difficult to maintain the establishment upon the fractional income which
the proprietor received from his share of the property. Wentworth
Langdon, Esq., represented a certain intermediate condition of life not
at all infrequent in our old families. He was the connecting link
between the generation which lived in ease, and even a kind of state,
upon its own resources, and the new brood, which must live mainly by its
wits or industry, and make itself rich, or shabbily subside into that
lower stratum known to social geologists by a deposit of Kidderminster
carpets and the peculiar aspect of the fossils constituting the family
furniture and wardrobe. This slack-water period of a race, which comes
before the rapid ebb of its prosperity, is familiar to all who live in
cities. There are no more quiet, inoffensive people than these children
of rich families, just above the necessity of active employment, yet not
in a condition to place their own children advantageously, if they happen
to have families. Many of them are content to live unmarried. Some mend
their broken fortunes by prudent alliances, and some leave a numerous
progeny to pass into the obscurity from which their ancestors emerged; so
that you may see on handcarts and cobblers' stalls names which, a few
generations back, were upon parchments with broad seals, and tombstones
with armorial bearings.
In a large city, this class of citizens is familiar to us in the streets.
They are very courteous in their salutations; they have time enough to
bow and take their hats off,--which, of course, no businessman can afford
to do. Their beavers are smoothly brushed, and their boots well
polished; all their appointments are tidy; they look the respectable
walking gentleman to perfection. They are prone to habits,--they
frequent reading-rooms,--insurance-offices,--they walk the same streets
at the same hours,--so that one becomes familiar with their faces and
persons, as a part of the street-furniture.
There is one curious circumstance, that all city-people must have
noticed, which is often illustrated in our experience of the slack-water
gentry. We shall know a certain person by his looks, familiarly, for
years, but never have learned his name. About this person we shall have
accumulated no little circumstantial knowledge;--thus, his face, figure,
gait, his mode of dressing, of saluting, perhaps even of speaking, may be
familiar to us; yet who he is we know not. In another department of our
consciousness, there is a very familiar name, which we have never found
the person to match. We have heard it so often, that it has idealized
itself, and become one of that multitude of permanent shapes which walk
the chambers of the brain in velvet slippers in the company of Falstaff
and Hamlet and General Washington and Mr. Pickwick. Sometimes the person
dies, but the name lives on indefinitely. But now and then it happens,
perhaps after years of this independent existence of the name and its
shadowy image in the brain, on the one part, and the person and all its
real attributes, as we see them daily, on the other, that some accident
reveals their relation, and we find the name we have carried so long in
our memory belongs to the person we have known so long as a
fellow-citizen. Now the slack--water gentry are among the persons most
likely to be the subjects of this curious divorce of title and
reality,--for the reason, that, playing no important part in the
community, there is nothing to tie the floating name to the actual
individual, as is the case with the men who belong in any way to the
public, while yet their names have a certain historical currency, and we
cannot help meeting them, either in their haunts, or going to and from
them.
To this class belonged Wentworth Langdon, Esq. He had been "dead-headed"
into the world some fifty years ago, and had sat with his hands in his
pockets staring at the show ever since. I shall not tell you, for
reasons before hinted, the whole name of the place in which he lived. I
will only point you in the right direction, by saying that there are
three towns lying in a line with each other, as you go "down East," each
of them with a Port in its name, and each of them having a peculiar
interest which gives it individuality, in addition to the Oriental
character they have in common. I need not tell you that these towns are
Newburyport, Portsmouth, and Portland. The Oriental character they have
in common consists in their large, square, palatial mansions, with sunny
gardens round them. The two first have seen better days. They are in
perfect harmony with the condition of weakened, but not impoverished,
gentility. Each of them is a "paradise of demi-fortunes." Each of them
is of that intermediate size between a village and a city which any place
has outgrown when the presence of a well-dressed stranger walking up and
down the main street ceases to be a matter of public curiosity and
private speculation, as frequently happens, during the busier months of
the year, in considerable commercial centres like Salem. They both have
grand old recollections to fall back upon,--times when they looked
forward to commercial greatness, and when the portly gentlemen in cocked
hats, who built their now decaying wharves and sent out their ships all
over the world, dreamed that their fast-growing port was to be the Tyre
or the Carthage of the rich British Colony. Great houses, like that once
lived in by Lord Timothy Dexter, in Newburyport, remain as evidence of
the fortunes amassed in these places of old. Other mansions--like the
Rockingham House in Portsmouth (look at the white horse's tail before you
mount the broad staircase)--show that there was not only wealth, but
style and state, in these quiet old towns during the last century. It is
not with any thought of pity or depreciation that we speak of them as in
a certain sense decayed towns; they did not fulfil their early promise of
expansion, but they remain incomparably the most interesting places of
their size in any of the three northernmost New England States. They have
even now prosperity enough to keep them in good condition, and offer the
most attractive residences for quiet families, which, if they had been
English, would have lived in a palazzo at Genoa or Pisa, or some other
Continental Newburyport or Portsmouth.
As for the last of the three Ports, or Portland, it is getting too
prosperous to be as attractive as its less northerly neighbors. Meant for
a fine old town, to ripen like a Cheshire cheese within its walls of
ancient rind, burrowed by crooked alleys and mottled with venerable
mould, it seems likely to sacrifice its mellow future to a vulgar
material prosperity. Still it remains invested with many of its old
charms, as yet, and will forfeit its place among this admirable trio only
when it gets a hotel with unequivocal marks of having been built and
organized in the present century.
--It was one of the old square palaces of the North, in which Bernard
Langdon, the son of Wentworth, was born. If he had had the luck to be an
only child, he might have lived as his father had done, letting his
meagre competence smoulder on almost without consuming, like the fuel in
an air-tight stove. But after Master Bernard came Miss Dorothea
Elizabeth Wentworth Langdon, and then Master William Pepperell Langdon,
and others, equally well named,--a string of them, looking, when they
stood in a row in prayer-time, as if they would fit a set of Pandean
pipes, of from three feet upward in dimensions. The door of the air-tight
stove has to be opened, under such circumstances, you may well suppose!
So it happened that our young man had been obliged, from an early period,
to do something to support himself, and found himself stopped short in
his studies by the inability of the good people at home to furnish him
the present means of support as a student.
You will understand now why the young man wanted me to give him a
certificate of his fitness to teach, and why I did not choose to urge him
to accept the aid which a meek country-boy from a family without
ante-Revolutionary recollections would have thankfully received. Go he
must,--that was plain enough. He would not be content otherwise. He was
not, however, to give up his studies; and as it is customary to allow
half-time to students engaged in school-keeping,--that is, to count a
year, so employed, if the student also keep on with his professional
studies, as equal to six months of the three years he is expected to be
under an instructor before applying for his degree,--he would not
necessarily lose more than a few months of time. He had a small library
of professional books, which he could take with him.
So he left my teaching and that of my estimable colleagues, carrying with
him my certificate, that Mr. Bernard C. Langdon was a young gentleman of
excellent moral character, of high intelligence and good education, and
that his services would be of great value in any school, academy, or
other institution, where young persons of-either sex were to be
instructed.
I confess, that expression, "either sex," ran a little thick, as I may
say, from my pen. For, although the young man bore a very fair
character, and there was no special cause for doubting his discretion, I
considered him altogether too good-looking, in the first place, to be let
loose in a roomful of young girls. I didn't want him to fall in love
just then--and if half a dozen girls fell in love with him, as they most
assuredly would, if brought into too near relations with him, why, there
was no telling what gratitude and natural sensibility might bring about.
Certificates are, for the most part, like ostrich-eggs; the giver never
knows what is hatched out of them. But once in a thousand times they act
as curses are said to,--come home to roost. Give them often enough,
until it gets to be a mechanical business, and, some day or other, you
will get caught warranting somebody's ice not to melt in any climate, or
somebody's razors to be safe in the hands of the youngest children.
I had an uneasy feeling, after giving this certificate. It might be all
right enough; but if it happened to end badly, I should always reproach
myself. There was a chance, certainly, that it would lead him or others
into danger or wretchedness. Any one who looked at this young man could
not fail to see that he was capable of fascinating and being fascinated.
Those large, dark eyes of his would sink into the white soul of a young
girl as the black cloth sunk into the snow in Franklin's famous
experiment. Or, on the other hand, if the rays of a passionate nature
should ever be concentrated on them, they would be absorbed into the very
depths of his nature, and then his blood would turn to flame and burn his
life out of him, until his cheeks grew as white as the ashes that cover a
burning coal.
I wish I had not said either sex in my certificate. An academy for young
gentlemen, now; that sounds cool and unimaginative. A boys' school, that
would be a very good place for him;--some of them are pretty rough, but
there is nerve enough in that old Wentworth strain of blood; he can give
any country fellow, of the common stock, twenty pounds, and hit him out
of time in ten minutes. But to send such a young fellow as that out a
girl's-nesting! to give this falcon a free pass into all the dove-cotes!
I was a fool,--that's all.
I brooded over the mischief which might come out of these two words until
it seemed to me that they were charged with destiny. I could hardly
sleep for thinking what a train I might have been laying, which might
take a spark any day, and blow up nobody knows whose peace or prospects.
What I dreaded most was one of those miserable matrimonial misalliances
where a young fellow who does not know himself as yet flings his
magnificent future into the checked apron-lap of some fresh-faced,
half-bred country-girl, no more fit to be mated with him than her
father's horse to go in double harness with Flora Temple. To think of
the eagle's wings, being clipped so that he shall never lift himself over
the farm-yard fence! Such things happen, and always must,--because, as
one of us said awhile ago, a man always loves, a woman, and a woman a
man, unless some good reason exists to the contrary. You think yourself
a very fastidious young man, my friend; but there are probably at least
five-thousand young women in these United States, any one of whom you
would certainly marry, if you were thrown much into her company, and
nobody more attractive were near, and she had no objection. And you, my
dear young lady, justly pride yourself on your discerning delicacy; but
if I should say that there are twenty thousand young men, any one of
whom, if he offered his hand and heart under favorable circumstances, you
would
"First endure, then pity, then embrace,"
I should be much more imprudent than I mean to be, and you would, no
doubt, throw down a story in which I hope to interest you.
I had settled it in my mind that this young fellow had a career marked
out for him. He should begin in the natural way, by taking care of poor
patients in one of the public charities, and work his way up to a better
kind of practice,--better, that is, in the vulgar, worldly sense. The
great and good Boerhaave used to say, as I remember very well, that the
poor were his best patients; for God was their paymaster. But everybody
is not as patient as Boerhaave, nor as deserving; so that the rich,
though not, perhaps, the best patients, are good enough for common
practitioners. I suppose Boerhaave put up with them when he could not
get poor ones, as he left his daughter two millions of florins when he
died.
Now if this young man once got into the wide streets, he would sweep them
clear of his rivals of the same standing; and as I was getting
indifferent to business, and old Dr. Kilham was growing careless, and had
once or twice prescribed morphine when he meant quinine, there would soon
be an opening into the Doctor's Paradise,--the streets with only one side
to them. Then I would have him strike a bold stroke,--set up a nice
little coach, and be driven round like a first-class London doctor,
instead of coasting about in a shabby one-horse concern and casting
anchor opposite his patients' doors like a Cape Ann fishing-smack. By
the time he was thirty, he would have knocked the social pawns out of his
way, and be ready to challenge a wife from the row of great pieces in the
background. I would not have a man marry above his level, so as to
become the appendage of a powerful family-connection; but I would not
have him marry until he knew his level,--that is, again, looking at the
matter in a purely worldly point of view, and not taking the sentiments
at all into consideration. But remember, that a young man, using large
endowments wisely and fortunately, may put himself on a level with the
highest in the land in ten brilliant years of spirited, unflagging labor.
And to stand at the very top of your calling in a great city is something
in itself,--that is, if you like money, and influence, and a seat on the
platform at public lectures, and gratuitous tickets to all sorts of
places where you don't want to go, and, what is a good deal better than
any of these things, a sense of power, limited, it may be, but absolute
in its range, so that all the Caesars and Napoleons would have to stand
aside, if they came between you and the exercise of your special
vocation.
That is what I thought this young fellow might have come to; and now I
have let him go off into the country with my certificate, that he is fit
to teach in a school for either sex! Ten to one he will run like a moth
into a candle, right into one of those girls'-nests, and get tangled up
in some sentimental folly or other, and there will be the end of him.
Oh, yes! country doctor,--half a dollar a visit,--drive, drive, drive
all day,--get up at night and harness your own horse,--drive again ten
miles in a snow-storm, shake powders out of two phials, (pulv.
glycyrrhiz., pulv. gum. acac. as partes equates,)--drive back again,
if you don't happen to get stuck in a drift, no home, no peace, no
continuous meals, no unbroken sleep, no Sunday, no holiday, no social
intercourse, but one eternal jog, jog, jog, in a sulky, until you feel
like the mummy of an Indian who had been buried in the sitting posture,
and was dug up a hundred years afterwards! Why did n't I warn him about
love and all that nonsense? Why didn't I tell him he had nothing to do
with it, yet awhile? Why did n't I hold up to him those awful examples I
could have cited, where poor young fellows who could just keep themselves
afloat have hung a matrimonial millstone round their necks, taking it for
a life-preserver? All this of two words in a certificate!
CHAPTER III.
MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND.
Whether the Student advertised for a school, or whether he fell in with
the advertisement of a school-committee, is not certain. At any rate, it
was not long before he found himself the head of a large district, or, as
it was called by the inhabitants, "deestric" school, in the flourishing
inland village of Pequawkett, or, as it is commonly spelt, Pigwacket
Centre. The natives of this place would be surprised, if they should
hear that any of the readers of a work published in Boston were
unacquainted with so remarkable a locality. As, however, some copies of
it may be read at a distance from this distinguished metropolis, it may
be well to give a few particulars respecting the place, taken from the
Universal Gazetteer.
"PIGWACKET, sometimes spelt Pequawkett. A post-village and township in
_________ Co., State of _________,situated in a fine agricultural region,
2 thriving villages, Pigwacket Centre and Smithville, 3 churches, several
school houses, and many handsome private residences. Mink River runs
through the town, navigable for small boats after heavy rains. Muddy
Pond at N. E. section, well stocked with horn pouts, eels, and shiners.
Products, beef, pork, butter, cheese. Manufactures, shoe-pegs,
clothes-pins, and tin-ware. Pop. 1373."
The reader may think there is nothing very remarkable implied in this
description. If, however he had read the town-history, by the Rev. Jabez
Grubb, he would have learned, that, like the celebrated Little
Pedlington, it was distinguished by many very remarkable advantages.
Thus:
"The situation of Pigwacket is eminently beautiful, looking down the
lovely valley of Mink River, a tributary of the Musquash. The air is
salubrious, and many of the inhabitants have attained great age, several
having passed the allotted period of 'three-score years and ten' before
succumbing to any of the various 'ills that flesh is heir to.' Widow
Comfort Leevins died in 1836 AEt. LXXXVII. years. Venus, an African,
died in 1841, supposed to be C. years old. The people are distinguished
for intelligence, as has been frequently remarked by eminent
lyceum-lecturers, who have invariably spoken in the highest terms of a
Pigwacket audience. There is a public library, containing nearly a
hundred volumes, free to all subscribers. The preached word is well
attended, there is a flourishing temperance society, and the schools are
excellent. It is a residence admirably adapted to refined families who
relish the beauties of Nature and the charms of society. The Honorable
John Smith, formerly a member of the State Senate, was a native of this
town."
That is the way they all talk. After all, it is probably pretty much
like other inland New England towns in point of "salubrity,"--that is,
gives people their choice of dysentery or fever every autumn, with a
season-ticket for consumption, good all the year round. And so of the
other pretences. "Pigwacket audience," forsooth! Was there ever an
audience anywhere, though there wasn't a pair of eyes in it brighter than
pickled oysters, that did n't think it was "distinguished for
intelligence"?--"The preached word"! That means the Rev. Jabez Grubb's
sermons. "Temperance society"! "Excellent schools"! Ah, that is just
what we were talking about.
The truth was, that District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, had had a good deal
of trouble of late with its schoolmasters. The committee had done their
best, but there were a number of well-grown and pretty rough young
fellows who had got the upper-hand of the masters, and meant to keep it.
Two dynasties had fallen before the uprising of this fierce democracy.
This was a thing that used to be not very uncommon; but in so
"intelligent" a community as that of Pigwacket Centre, in an era of
public libraries and lyceum-lectures, it was portentous and alarming.
The rebellion began under the ferule of Master Weeks, a slender youth
from a country college, underfed, thin-blooded, sloping-shouldered,
knock-kneed, straight-haired, weak-bearded, pale-eyed, wide-pupilled,
half-colored; a common type enough in in-door races, not rich enough to
pick and choose in their alliances. Nature kills off a good many of this
sort in the first teething-time, a few in later childhood, a good many
again in early adolescence; but every now and then one runs the gauntlet
of her various diseases, or rather forms of one disease, and grows up, as
Master Weeks had done.
It was a very foolish thing for him to try to inflict personal punishment
on such a lusty young fellow as Abner Briggs, Junior, one of the "hardest
customers" in the way of a rough-and-tumble fight that there were
anywhere round. No doubt he had been insolent, but it would have been
better to overlook it. It pains me to report the events which took place
when the master made his rash attempt to maintain his authority. Abner
Briggs, Junior, was a great, hulking fellow, who had been bred to
butchering, but urged by his parents to attend school, in order to learn
the elegant accomplishments of reading and writing, in which he was sadly
deficient. He was in the habit of talking and laughing pretty loud in
school-hours, of throwing wads of paper reduced to a pulp by a natural
and easy process, of occasional insolence and general negligence. One of
the soft, but unpleasant missiles just alluded to flew by the master's
head one morning, and flattened itself against the wall, where it adhered
in the form of a convex mass in alto rilievo. The master looked round
and saw the young butcher's arm in an attitude which pointed to it
unequivocally as the source from which the projectile had taken its
flight.
Master Weeks turned pale. He must "lick" Abner Briggs, Junior, or
abdicate. So he determined to lick Abner Briggs, Junior.
"Come here, Sir!" he said; "you have insulted me and outraged the decency
of the schoolroom often enough! Hold out your hand!"
The young fellow grinned and held it out. The master struck at it with
his black ruler, with a will in the blow and a snapping of the eyes, as
much as to say that he meant to make him smart this time. The young
fellow pulled his hand back as the ruler came down, and the master hit
himself a vicious blow with it on the right knee. There are things no
man can stand. The master caught the refractory youth by the collar and
began shaking him, or rather shaking himself against him.
"Le' go o' that are coat, naow," said the fellow, "or I 'll make ye! 'T
'll take tew on yet' handle me, I tell ye, 'n' then ye caant dew
it!"--and the young pupil returned the master's attention by catching
hold of his collar.
When it comes to that, the best man, not exactly in the moral sense, but
rather in the material, and more especially the muscular point of view,
is very apt to have the best of it, irrespectively of the merits of the
case. So it happened now. The unfortunate schoolmaster found himself
taking the measure of the sanded floor, amidst the general uproar of the
school. From that moment his ferule was broken, and the school-committee
very soon had a vacancy to fill.
Master Pigeon, the successor of Master Weeks, was of better stature, but
loosely put together, and slender-limbed. A dreadfully nervous kind of
man he was, walked on tiptoe, started at sudden noises, was distressed
when he heard a whisper, had a quick, suspicious look, and was always
saying, "Hush?" and putting his hands to his ears. The boys were not
long in finding out this nervous weakness, of course. In less than a week
a regular system of torments was inaugurated, full of the most diabolical
malice and ingenuity. The exercises of the conspirators varied from day
to day, but consisted mainly of foot-scraping, solos on the slate-pencil,
(making it screech on the slate,) falling of heavy books, attacks of
coughing, banging of desk-lids, boot-creaking, with sounds as of drawing
a cork from time to time, followed by suppressed chuckles.
Master Pigeon grew worse and worse under these inflictions. The rascally
boys always had an excuse for any one trick they were caught at. "Could
n' help coughin', Sir." "Slipped out o' m' han', Sir." "Did n' go to,
Sir." "Did n' dew't o' purpose, Sir." And so on,--always the best of
reasons for the most outrageous of behavior. The master weighed himself
at the grocer's on a platform balance, some ten days after he began
keeping the school. At the end of a week he weighed himself again. He
had lost two pounds. At the end of another week he had lost five. He
made a little calculation, based on these data, from which he learned
that in a certain number of months, going on at this rate, he should come
to weigh precisely nothing at all; and as this was a sum in subtraction
he did not care to work out in practice, Master Pigeon took to himself
wings and left the school-committee in possession of a letter of
resignation and a vacant place to fill once more.
This was the school to which Mr. Bernard Langdon found himself appointed
as master. He accepted the place conditionally, with the understanding
that he should leave it at the end of a month, if he were tired of it.
The advent of Master Langdon to Pigwacket Centre created a much more
lively sensation than had attended that of either of his predecessors.
Looks go a good way all the world over, and though there were several
good-looking people in the place, and Major Bush was what the natives of
the town called a "hahnsome mahn," that is, big, fat, and red, yet the
sight of a really elegant young fellow, with the natural air which grows
up with carefully-bred young persons, was a novelty. The Brahmin blood
which came from his grandfather as well as from his mother, a direct
descendant of the old Flynt family, well known by the famous tutor, Henry
Flynt, (see Cat. Harv. Anno 1693,) had been enlivened and enriched by
that of the Wentworths, which had had a good deal of ripe old Madeira and
other generous elements mingled with it, so that it ran to gout sometimes
in the old folks and to high spirit, warm complexion, and curly hair in
some of the younger ones. The soft curling hair Mr. Bernard had
inherited,--something, perhaps, of the high spirit; but that we shall
have a chance of finding out by and by. But the long sermons and the
frugal board of his Brahmin ancestry, with his own habits of study, had
told upon his color, which was subdued to something more of delicacy than
one would care to see in a young fellow with rough work before him.
This, however, made him look more interesting, or, as the young ladies at
Major Bush's said, "interestin'."
When Mr. Bernard showed himself at meeting, on the first Sunday after his
arrival, it may be supposed that a good many eyes were turned upon the
young schoolmaster. There was something heroic in his coming forward so
readily to take a place which called for a strong hand, and a prompt,
steady will to guide it. In fact, his position was that of a military
chieftain on the eve of a battle. Everybody knew everything in Pigwacket
Centre; and it was an understood thing that the young rebels meant to put
down the new master, if they could. It was natural that the two
prettiest girls in the village, called in the local dialect, as nearly as
our limited alphabet will represent it, Alminy Cutterr, and Arvilly
Braowne, should feel and express an interest in the good-looking
stranger, and that, when their flattering comments were repeated in the
hearing of their indigenous admirers, among whom were some of the older
"boys" of the school, it should not add to the amiable dispositions of
the turbulent youth.
Monday came, and the new schoolmaster was in his chair at the upper end
of the schoolhouse, on the raised platform. The rustics looked at his
handsome face, thoughtful, peaceful, pleasant, cheerful, but sharply cut
round the lips and proudly lighted about the eyes. The ringleader of the
mischief-makers, the young butcher who has before figured in this
narrative, looked at him stealthily, whenever he got a chance to study
him unobserved; for the truth was, he felt uncomfortable, whenever he
found the large, dark eyes fixed on his own little, sharp, deep-set, gray
ones. But he managed to study him pretty well,--first his face, then his
neck and shoulders, the set of his arms, the narrowing at the loins, the
make of his legs, and the way he moved. In short, he examined him as he
would have examined a steer, to see what he could do and how he would cut
up. If he could only have gone to him and felt of his muscles, he would
have been entirely satisfied. He was not a very wise youth, but he did
know well enough, that, though big arms and legs are very good things,
there is something besides size that goes to make a man; and he had heard
stories of a fighting-man, called "The Spider," from his attenuated
proportions, who was yet a terrible hitter in the ring, and had whipped
many a big-limbed fellow, in and out of the roped arena.
Nothing could be smoother than the way in which everything went on for
the first day or two. The new master was so kind and courteous, he
seemed to take everything in such a natural, easy way, that there was no
chance to pick a quarrel with him. He in the mean time thought it best
to watch the boys and young men for a day or two with as little show of
authority as possible. It was easy enough to see that he would have
occasion for it before long.
The schoolhouse was a grim, old, red, one-story building, perched on a
bare rock at the top of a hill,--partly because this was a conspicuous
site for the temple of learning, and partly because land is cheap where
there is no chance even for rye or buckwheat, and the very sheep find
nothing to nibble. About the little porch were carved initials and
dates, at various heights, from the stature of nine to that of eighteen.
Inside were old unpainted desks,--unpainted, but browned with the umber
of human contact,--and hacked by innumerable jack-knives. It was long
since the walls had been whitewashed, as might be conjectured by the
various traces left upon them, wherever idle hands or sleepy heads could
reach them. A curious appearance was noticeable on various higher parts
of the wall: namely, a wart-like eruption, as one would be tempted to
call it, being in reality a crop of the soft missiles before mentioned,
which, adhering in considerable numbers, and hardening after the usual
fashion of papier-mache, formed at last permanent ornaments of the
edifice.
The young master's quick eye soon noticed that a particular part of the
wall was most favored with these ornamental appendages. Their position
pointed sufficiently clearly to the part of the room they came from. In
fact, there was a nest of young mutineers just there, which must be
broken up by a coup d'etat. This was easily effected by redistributing
the seats and arranging the scholars according to classes, so that a
mischievous fellow, charged full of the rebellious imponderable, should
find himself between two non-conductors, in the shape of small boys of
studious habits. It was managed quietly enough, in such a plausible sort
of way that its motive was not thought of. But its effects were soon
felt; and then began a system of correspondence by signs, and the
throwing of little scrawls done up in pellets, and announced by
preliminary a'h'ms! to call the attention of the distant youth addressed.
Some of these were incendiary documents, devoting the schoolmaster to the
lower divinities, as "a stuck-up dandy," as "a purse-proud aristocrat,"
as "a sight too big for his, etc.," and holding him up in a variety of
equally forcible phrases to the indignation of the youthful community of
School District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre.
Presently the draughtsman of the school set a caricature in circulation,
labelled, to prevent mistakes, with the schoolmaster's name. An immense
bell-crowned hat, and a long, pointed, swallow-tailed coat showed that
the artist had in his mind the conventional dandy, as shown in prints of
thirty or forty years ago, rather than any actual human aspect of the
time. But it was passed round among the boys and made its laugh, helping
of course to undermine the master's authority, as "Punch" or the
"Charivari" takes the dignity out of an obnoxious minister. One morning,
on going to the schoolroom, Master Langdon found an enlarged copy of this
sketch, with its label, pinned on the door. He took it down, smiled a
little, put it into his pocket, and entered the schoolroom. An insidious
silence prevailed, which looked as if some plot were brewing. The boys
were ripe for mischief, but afraid. They had really no fault to find
with the master, except that he was dressed like a gentleman, which a
certain class of fellows always consider a personal insult to themselves.
But the older ones were evidently plotting, and more than once the
warning a'h'm! was heard, and a dirty little scrap of paper rolled into a
wad shot from one seat to another. One of these happened to strike the
stove-funnel, and lodged on the master's desk. He was cool enough not to
seem to notice it. He secured it, however, and found an opportunity to
look at it, without being observed by the boys. It required no immediate
notice.
He who should have enjoyed the privilege of looking upon Mr. Bernard
Langdon the next morning, when his toilet was about half finished, would
have had a very pleasant gratuitous exhibition. First he buckled the
strap of his trousers pretty tightly. Then he took up a pair of heavy
dumb-bells, and swung them for a few minutes; then two great "Indian
clubs," with which he enacted all sorts of impossible-looking feats. His
limbs were not very large, nor his shoulders remarkably broad; but if you
knew as much of the muscles as all persons who look at statues and
pictures with a critical eye ought to have learned,--if you knew the
trapezius, lying diamond-shaped over the back and shoulders like a monk's
cowl,--or the deltoid, which caps the shoulder like an epaulette,--or the
triceps, which furnishes the calf of the upper arm,--or the hard-knotted
biceps,--any of the great sculptural landmarks, in fact,--you would have
said there was a pretty show of them, beneath the white satiny skin of
Mr. Bernard Langdon. And if you had seen him, when he had laid down the
Indian clubs, catch hold of a leather strap that hung from the beam of
the old-fashioned ceiling,--and lift and lower himself over and over
again by his left hand alone, you might have thought it a very simple and
easy thing to do, until you tried to do it yourself. Mr. Bernard looked
at himself with the eye of an expert. "Pretty well!" he said;--"not so
much fallen off as I expected." Then he set up his bolster in a very
knowing sort of way, and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers
and swift as winks. "That will do," he said. Then, as if determined to
make a certainty of his condition, he took a dynamometer from one of the
drawers in his old veneered bureau. First he squeezed it with his two
hands. Then he placed it on the floor and lifted, steadily, strongly.
The springs creaked and cracked; the index swept with a great stride far
up into the high figures of the scale; it was a good lift. He was
satisfied. He sat down on the edge of his bed and looked at his
cleanly-shaped arms. "If I strike one of those boobies, I am afraid I
shall spoil him," he said. Yet this young man, when weighed with his
class at the college, could barely turn one hundred and forty-two pounds
in the scale,--not a heavy weight, surely; but some of the middle
weights, as the present English champion, for instance, seem to be of a
far finer quality of muscle than the bulkier fellows.
The master took his breakfast with a good appetite that morning, but was
perhaps rather more quiet than usual. After breakfast he went up-stairs
and put, on a light loose frock, instead of that which he commonly wore,
which was a close-fitting and rather stylish one. On his way to school
he met Alminy Cutterr, who happened to be walking in the other direction.
"Good-morning, Miss Cutter," he said; for she and another young lady had
been introduced to him, on a former occasion, in the usual phrase of
polite society in presenting ladies to gentlemen,--"Mr. Langdon, let me
make y' acquainted with Miss Cutterr;--let me make y' acquainted with
Miss Braowne." So he said, "Good-morning"; to which she replied,
"Good-mornin', Mr. Langdon. Haow's your haalth?" The answer to this
question ought naturally to have been the end of the talk; but Alminy
Cutterr lingered and looked as if she had something more on her mind.
A young fellow does not require a great experience to read a simple
country-girl's face as if it were a sign-board. Alminy was a good soul,
with red cheeks and bright eyes, kind-hearted as she could be, and it was
out of the question for her to hide her thoughts or feelings like a fine
lady. Her bright eyes were moist and her red cheeks paler than their
wont, as she said, with her lips quivering, "Oh, Mr. Langdon, them boys
'll be the death of ye, if ye don't take caar!"
"Why, what's the matter, my dear?" said Mr. Bernard.--Don't think there
was anything very odd in that "my dear," at the second interview with a
village belle;--some of these woman-tamers call a girl "My dear," after
five minutes' acquaintance, and it sounds all right as they say it. But
you had better not try it at a venture.
It sounded all right to Alminy, as Mr. Bernard said it.--"I 'll tell ye
what's the mahtterr," she said, in a frightened voice. "Ahbner 's go'n'
to car' his dog, 'n' he'll set him on ye'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive. 'T's
the same cretur that haaf eat up Eben Squires's little Jo, a year come
nex' Faast day."
Now this last statement was undoubtedly overcolored; as little Jo Squires
was running about the village,--with an ugly scar on his arm, it is true,
where the beast had caught him with his teeth, on the occasion of the
child's taking liberties with him, as he had been accustomed to do with a
good-tempered Newfoundland dog, who seemed to like being pulled and
hauled round by children. After this the creature was commonly muzzled,
and, as he was fed on raw meat chiefly, was always ready for a fight,
which he was occasionally indulged in, when anything stout enough to
match him could be found in any of the neighboring villages.
Tiger, or, more briefly, Tige, the property of Abner Briggs, Junior,
belonged to a species not distinctly named in scientific books, but well
known to our country-folks under the name "Yallah dog." They do not use
this expression as they would say black dog or white dog, but with almost
as definite a meaning as when they speak of a terrier or a spaniel. A
"yallah dog" is a large canine brute, of a dingy old-flannel color, of no
particular breed except his own, who hangs round a tavern or a butcher's
shop, or trots alongside of a team, looking as if he were disgusted with
the world, and the world with him. Our inland population, while they
tolerate him, speak of him with contempt. Old ______, of Meredith
Bridge, used to twit the sun for not shining on cloudy days, swearing,
that, if he hung up his "yallah dog," he would make a better show of
daylight. A country fellow, abusing a horse of his neighbor's, vowed,
that, "if he had such a hoss, he'd swap him for a `yallah dog,'--and then
shoot the dog."
Tige was an ill-conditioned brute by nature, and art had not improved him
by cropping his ears and tail and investing him with a spiked collar. He
bore on his person, also, various not ornamental scars, marks of old
battles; for Tige had fight in him, as was said before, and as might be
guessed by a certain bluntness about the muzzle, with a projection of the
lower jaw, which looked as if there might be a bull-dog stripe among the
numerous bar-sinisters of his lineage.
It was hardly fair, however, to leave Alminy Cutterr waiting while this
piece of natural history was telling.--As she spoke of little Jo, who had
been "haaf eat up" by Tige, she could not contain her sympathies, and
began to cry.
"Why, my dear little soul," said Mr. Bernard, "what are you worried
about? I used to play with a bear when I was a boy; and the bear used to
hug me, and I used to kiss him,--so!"
It was too bad of Mr. Bernard, only the second time he had seen Alminy;
but her kind feelings had touched him, and that seemed the most natural
way of expressing his gratitude. Ahniny looked round to see if anybody
was near; she saw nobody, so of course it would do no good to "holler."
She saw nobody; but a stout young fellow, leading a yellow dog, muzzled,
saw her through a crack in a picket fence, not a great way off the road.
Many a year he had been "hangin' 'raoun'" Alminy, and never did he see
any encouraging look, or hear any "Behave, naow!" or "Come, naow, a'n't
ye 'shamed?" or other forbidding phrase of acquiescence, such as village
belles under stand as well as ever did the nymph who fled to the willows
in the eclogue we all remember.
No wonder he was furious, when he saw the school master, who had never
seen the girl until within a week, touching with his lips those rosy
cheeks which he had never dared to approach. But that was all; it was a
sudden impulse; and the master turned away from the young girl, laughing,
and telling her not to fret herself about him,--he would take care of
himself.
So Master Langdon walked on toward his school-house, not displeased,
perhaps, with his little adventure, nor immensely elated by it; for he
was one of the natural class of the sex-subduers, and had had many a
smile without asking, which had been denied to the feeble youth who try
to win favor by pleading their passion in rhyme, and even to the more
formidable approaches of young officers in volunteer companies,
considered by many to be quite irresistible to the fair who have once
beheld them from their windows in the epaulettes and plumes and sashes of
the "Pigwacket Invincibles," or the "Hackmatack Rangers."
Master Langdon took his seat and began the exercises of his school. The
smaller boys recited their lessons well enough, but some of the larger
ones were negligent and surly. He noticed one or two of them looking
toward the door, as if expecting somebody or something in that direction.
At half past nine o'clock, Abner Briggs, Junior, who had not yet shown
himself, made his appearance. He was followed by his "yallah dog,"
without his muzzle, who squatted down very grimly near the door, and gave
a wolfish look round the room, as if he were considering which was the
plumpest boy to begin with. The young butcher, meanwhile, went to his
seat, looking somewhat flushed, except round the lips, which were hardly
as red as common, and set pretty sharply.
"Put out that dog, Abner Briggs!"--The master spoke as the captain speaks
to the helmsman, when there are rocks foaming at the lips, right under
his lee.
Abner Briggs answered as the helmsman answers, when he knows he has a
mutinous crew round him that mean to run the ship on the reef, and is one
of the mutineers himself. "Put him aout y'rself, 'f ye a'n't afeard on
him!"
The master stepped into the aisle: The great cur showed his teeth,--and
the devilish instincts of his old wolf-ancestry looked out of his eyes,
and flashed from his sharp tusks, and yawned in his wide mouth and deep
red gullet.
The movements of animals are so much quicker than those of human beings
commonly are, that they avoid blows as easily as one of us steps out of
the way of an ox-cart. It must be a very stupid dog that lets himself be
run over by a fast driver in his gig; he can jump out of the wheel's way
after the tire has already touched him. So, while one is lifting a stick
to strike or drawing back his foot to kick, the beast makes his spring,
and the blow or the kick comes too late.
It was not so this time. The master was a fencer, and something of a
boxer; he had played at singlestick, and was used to watching an
adversary's eye and coming down on him without any of those premonitory
symptoms by which unpractised persons show long beforehand what mischief
they meditate.
"Out with you!" he said, fiercely,--and explained what he meant by a
sudden flash of his foot that clashed the yellow dog's white teeth
together like the springing of a bear-trap. The cur knew he had found
his master at the first word and glance, as low animals on four legs, or
a smaller number, always do; and the blow took him so by surprise, that
it curled him up in an instant, and he went bundling out of the open
schoolhouse-door with a most pitiable yelp, and his stump of a tail shut
down as close as his owner ever shut the short, stubbed blade of his
jack-knife.
It was time for the other cur to find who his master.
"Follow your dog, Abner Briggs!" said Master Langdon.
The stout butcher-youth looked round, but the rebels were all cowed and
sat still.
"I'll go when I'm ready," he said,--"'n' I guess I won't go afore I'm
ready."
"You're ready now," said Master Langdon, turning up his cuffs so that the
little boys noticed the yellow gleam of a pair of gold sleeve-buttons,
once worn by Colonel Percy Wentworth, famous in the Old French War.
Abner Briggs, Junior, did not apparently think he was ready, at any rate;
for he rose up in his place, and stood with clenched fists, defiant, as
the master strode towards him. The master knew the fellow was really
frightened, for all his looks, and that he must have no time to rally.
So he caught him suddenly by the collar, and, with one great pull, had
him out over his desk and on the open floor. He gave him a sharp fling
backwards and stood looking at him.
The rough-and-tumble fighters all clinch, as everybody knows; and Abner
Briggs, Junior, was one of that kind. He remembered how he had floored
Master Weeks, and he had just "spunk" enough left in him to try to repeat
his former successful experiment an the new master. He sprang at him,
open-handed, to clutch him. So the master had to strike,--once, but very
hard, and just in the place to tell. No doubt, the authority that doth
hedge a schoolmaster added to the effect of the blow; but the blow was
itself a neat one, and did not require to be repeated.
"Now go home," said the master, "and don't let me see you or your dog
here again." And he turned his cuffs down over the gold sleeve-buttons.
This finished the great Pigwacket Centre School rebellion. What could be
done with a master who was so pleasant as long as the boys behaved
decently, and such a terrible fellow when he got "riled," as they called
it? In a week's time everything was reduced to order, and the
school-committee were delighted. The master, however, had received a
proposition so much more agreeable and advantageous, that he informed the
committee he should leave at the end of his month, having in his eye a
sensible and energetic young college-graduate who would be willing and
fully competent to take his place.
So, at the expiration of the appointed time, Bernard Langdon, late master
of the School District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, took his departure from
that place for another locality, whither we shall follow him, carrying
with him the regrets of the committee, of most of the scholars, and of
several young ladies; also two locks of hair, sent unbeknown to payrents,
one dark and one warmish auburn, inscribed with the respective initials
of Alminy Cutterr and Arvilly Braowne.
CHAPTER IV
THE MOTH FLIES INTO THE CANDLE.
The invitation which Mr. Bernard Langdon had accepted came from the Board
of Trustees of the "Apollinean Female Institute," a school for the
education of young ladies, situated in the flourishing town of Rockland.
This was an establishment on a considerable scale, in which a hundred
scholars or thereabouts were taught the ordinary English branches,
several of the modern languages, something of Latin, if desired, with a
little natural philosophy, metaphysics, and rhetoric, to finish off with
in the last year, and music at any time when they would pay for it. At
the close of their career in the Institute, they were submitted to a
grand public examination, and received diplomas tied in blue ribbons,
which proclaimed them with a great flourish of capitals to be graduates
of the Apollinean Female Institute.
Rockland was a town of no inconsiderable pretensions. It was ennobled by
lying at the foot of a mountain,--called by the working-folks of the
place "the Maounting,"--which sufficiently showed that it was the
principal high land of the district in which it was situated. It lay to
the south of this, and basked in the sunshine as Italy stretches herself
before the Alps. To pass from the town of Tamarack on the north of the
mountain to Rockland on the south was like crossing from Coire to
Chiavenna.
There is nothing gives glory and grandeur and romance and mystery to a
place like the impending presence of a high mountain. Our beautiful
Northampton with its fair meadows and noble stream is lovely enough, but
owes its surpassing attraction to those twin summits which brood over it
like living presences, looking down into its streets as if they were its
tutelary divinities, dressing and undressing their green shrines, robing
themselves in jubilant sunshine or in sorrowing clouds, and doing penance
in the snowy shroud of winter, as if they had living hearts under their
rocky ribs and changed their mood like the children of the soil at their
feet, who grow up under their almost parental smiles and frowns. Happy
is the child whose first dreams of heaven are blended with the evening
glories of Mount Holyoke, when the sun is firing its treetops, and
gilding the white walls that mark its one human dwelling! If the other
and the wilder of the two summits has a scowl of terror in its
overhanging brows, yet is it a pleasing fear to look upon its savage
solitudes through the barred nursery-windows in the heart of the sweet,
companionable village.--And how the mountains love their children! The
sea is of a facile virtue, and will run to kiss the first comer in any
port he visits; but the chaste mountains sit apart, and show their faces
only in the midst of their own families.
The Mountain which kept watch to the north of Rockland lay waste and
almost inviolate through much of its domain. The catamount still glared
from the branches of its old hemlocks on the lesser beasts that strayed
beneath him. It was not long since a wolf had wandered down, famished in
the winter's dearth, and left a few bones and some tufts of wool of what
had been a lamb in the morning. Nay, there were broad-footed tracks in
the snow only two years previously, which could not be mistaken;--the
black bear alone could have set that plantigrade seal, and little
children must come home early from school and play, for he is an
indiscriminate feeder when he is hungry, and a little child would not
come amiss when other game was wanting.
But these occasional visitors may have been mere wanderers, which,
straying along in the woods by day, and perhaps stalking through the
streets of still villages by night, had worked their way along down from
the ragged mountain-spurs of higher latitudes. The one feature of The
Mountain that shed the brownest horror on its woods was the existence of
the terrible region known as Rattlesnake Ledge, and still tenanted by
those damnable reptiles, which distil a fiercer venom under our cold
northern sky than the cobra himself in the land of tropical spices and
poisons.
From the earliest settlement of the place, this fact had been, next to
the Indians, the reigning nightmare of the inhabitants. It was easy
enough, after a time, to drive away the savages; for "a screeching Indian
Divell," as our fathers called him, could not crawl into the crack of a
rock to escape from his pursuers. But the venomous population of
Rattlesnake Ledge had a Gibraltar for their fortress that might have
defied the siege-train dragged to the walls of Sebastopol. In its deep
embrasures and its impregnable easemates they reared their families, they
met in love or wrath, they twined together in family knots, they hissed
defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hibernated, and in due time
died in peace. Many a foray had the towns-people made, and many a
stuffed skin was shown as a trophy,--nay, there were families where the
children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that once
vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes one of
them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the hillside
into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,--worse than this, into
the long grass, where the barefooted mowers would soon pass with their
swinging scythes,--more rarely into houses, and on one memorable
occasion, early in the last century, into the meeting-house, where he
took a position on the pulpit-stairs,--as is narrated in the "Account of
Some Remarkable Providences," etc., where it is suggested that a strong
tendency of the Rev. Didymus Bean, the Minister at that time, towards the
Arminian Heresy may have had something to do with it, and that the
Serpent supposed to have been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs was a false
show of the Daemon's Contrivance, he having come in to listen to a
Discourse which was a sweet Savour in his Nostrils, and, of course, not
being capable of being killed Himself. Others said, however, that,
though there was good Reason to think it was a Damon, yet he did come
with Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant,--etc.
One Gilson is said to have died of the bite of a rattlesnake in this town
early in the present century. After this there was a great snake-hunt,
in which very many of these venomous beasts were killed,--one in
particular, said to have been as big round as a stout man's arm, and to
have had no less than forty joints to his rattle,--indicating, according
to some, that he had lived forty years, but, if we might put any faith in
the Indian tradition, that he had killed forty human beings,--an idle
fancy, clearly. This hunt, however, had no permanent effect in keeping
down the serpent population. Viviparous, creatures are a kind of
specie-paying lot, but oviparous ones only give their notes, as it were,
for a future brood,--an egg being, so to speak, a promise to pay a young
one by and by, if nothing happen. Now the domestic habits of the
rattlesnake are not studied very closely, for obvious reasons; but it is,
no doubt, to all intents and purposes oviparous. Consequently it has
large families, and is not easy to kill out.
In the year 184-, a melancholy proof was afforded to the inhabitants of
Rockland, that the brood which infested The Mountain was not extirpated.
A very interesting young married woman, detained at home at the time by
the state of her health, was bitten in the entry of her own house by a
rattlesnake which had found its way down from The Mountain. Owing to the
almost instant employment of powerful remedies, the bite did not prove
immediately fatal; but she died within a few months of the time when she
was bitten.
All this seemed to throw a lurid kind of shadow over The Mountain. Yet,
as many years passed without any accident, people grew comparatively
careless, and it might rather be said to add a fearful kind of interest
to the romantic hillside, that the banded reptiles, which had been the
terror of the red men for nobody knows how many thousand years, were
there still, with the same poison-bags and spring-teeth at the white
men's service, if they meddled with them.
The other natural features of Rockland were such as many of our pleasant
country-towns can boast of. A brook came tumbling down the mountain-side
and skirted the most thickly settled portion of the village. In the
parts of its course where it ran through the woods, the water looked
almost as brown as coffee flowing from its urn,--to say like smoky quartz
would perhaps give a better idea,--but in the open plain it sparkled over
the pebbles white as a queen's diamonds. There were huckleberry-pastures
on the lower flanks of The Mountain, with plenty of the sweet-scented
bayberry mingled with the other bushes. In other fields grew great store
of high-bush blackberries. Along the roadside were bayberry-bushes, hung
all over with bright red coral pendants in autumn and far into the
winter. Then there were swamps set thick with dingy alders, where the
three-leaved arum and the skunk's-cabbage grew broad and succulent,
shelving down into black boggy pools here and there at the edge of which
the green frog, stupidest of his tribe, sat waiting to be victimized by
boy or snapping-turtle long after the shy and agile leopard-frog had
taken the six-foot spring that plumped him into the middle of the pool.
And on the neighboring banks the maiden-hair spread its flat disk of
embroidered fronds on the wire-like stem that glistened polished and
brown as the darkest tortoise-shell, and pale violets, cheated by the
cold skies of their hues and perfume, sunned themselves like
white-cheeked invalids. Over these rose the old forest-trees,--the
maple, scarred with the wounds which had drained away its sweet
life-blood,--the beech, its smooth gray bark mottled so as to look like
the body of one of those great snakes of old that used to frighten
armies, always the mark of lovers' knives, as in the days of Musidora and
her swain,--the yellow birch, rough as the breast of Silenus in old
marbles,--the wild cherry, its little bitter fruit lying unheeded at its
foot,--and, soaring over all, the huge, coarse-barked, splintery-limbed,
dark-mantled hemlock, in the depth of whose aerial solitudes the crow
brooded on her nest unscared, and the gray squirrel lived unharmed till
his incisors grew to look like ram's-horns.
Rockland would have been but half a town without its pond; Guinnepeg Pond
was the name of it, but the young ladies of the Apollinean Institute were
very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that
the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too,
those queer, old, rum-scented good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling,
half-vagabonds, who sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and
then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish
through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young
people were drowned, a few summers ago, by the upsetting of a sail-boat
in a sudden flaw of wind. There is not one of these smiling ponds which
has not devoured more youths and maidens than any of those monsters the
ancients used to tell such lies about. But it was a pretty pond, and
never looked more innocent--so the native "bard" of Rockland said in his
elegy--than on the morning when they found Sarah Jane and Ellen Maria
floating among the lily-pads.
The Apollinean Institute, or Institoot, as it was more commonly called,
was, in the language of its Prospectus, a "first-class Educational
Establishment." It employed a considerable corps of instructors to rough
out and finish the hundred young lady scholars it sheltered beneath its
roof. First, Mr. and Mrs. Peckham, the Principal and the Matron of the
school. Silas Peckham was a thorough Yankee, born on a windy part of the
coast, and reared chiefly on salt-fish. Everybody knows the type of
Yankee produced by this climate and diet: thin, as if he had been split
and dried; with an ashen kind of complexion, like the tint of the food he
is made of; and about as sharp, tough, juiceless, and biting to deal with
as the other is to the taste. Silas Peckham kept a young ladies' school
exactly as he would have kept a hundred head of cattle,--for the simple,
unadorned purpose of making just as much money in just as few years as
could be safely done. Mr. Peckham gave very little personal attention to
the department of instruction, but was always busy with contracts for
flour and potatoes, beef and pork, and other nutritive staples, the
amount of which required for such an establishment was enough to frighten
a quartermaster. Mrs. Peckham was from the West, raised on Indian corn
and pork, which give a fuller outline and a more humid temperament, but
may perhaps be thought to render people a little coarse-fibred. Her
specialty was to look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising,
and general behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman,
she could not have passed an examination in the youngest class. So this
distinguished institution was under the charge of a commissary and a
housekeeper, and its real business was making money by taking young girls
in as boarders.
Connected with this, however, was the incidental fact, which the public
took for the principal one, namely, the business of instruction. Mr.
Peckham knew well enough that it was just as well to have good
instructors as bad ones, so far as cost was concerned, and a great deal
better for the reputation of his feeding-establishment. He tried to get
the best he could without paying too much, and, having got them, to screw
all the work out of them that could possibly be extracted.
There was a master for the English branches, with a young lady assistant.
There was another young lady who taught French, of the ahvaung and
baundahng style, which does not exactly smack of the asphalt of the
Boulevards. There was also a German teacher of music, who sometimes
helped in French of the ahfaung and bauntaung style,--so that, between
the two, the young ladies could hardly have been mistaken for Parisians,
by a Committee of the French Academy. The German teacher also taught a
Latin class after his fashion,--benna, a ben, gahboot, ahead, and so
forth.
The master for the English branches had lately left the school for
private reasons, which need not be here mentioned,--but he had gone, at
any rate, and it was his place which had been offered to Mr. Bernard
Langdon. The offer came just in season,--as, for various causes, he was
willing to leave the place where he had begun his new experience.
It was on a fine morning that Mr. Bernard, ushered in by Mr. Peckham,
made his appearance in the great schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute.
A general rustle ran all round the seats when the handsome young man was
introduced. The principal carried him to the desk of the young lady
English assistant, Miss Darley by name, and introduced him to her.
There was not a great deal of study done that day. The young lady
assistant had to point out to the new master the whole routine in which
the classes were engaged when their late teacher left, and which had gone
on as well as it could since. Then Master Langdon had a great many
questions to ask, some relating to his new duties, and some, perhaps,
implying a degree of curiosity not very unnatural under the
circumstances. The truth is, the general effect of the schoolroom, with
its scores of young girls, all their eyes naturally centring on him with
fixed or furtive glances, was enough to bewilder and confuse a young man
like Master Langdon, though he was not destitute of self-possession, as
we have already seen.
You cannot get together a hundred girls, taking them as they come, from
the comfortable and affluent classes, probably anywhere, certainly not in
New England, without seeing a good deal of beauty. In fact, we very
commonly mean by beauty the way young girls look when there is nothing to
hinder their looking as Nature meant them to. And the great schoolroom
of the Apollinean Institute did really make so pretty a show on the
morning when Master Langdon entered it, that he might be pardoned for
asking Miss Darley more questions about his scholars than about their
lessons.
There were girls of all ages: little creatures, some pallid and
delicate-looking, the offspring of invalid parents,--much given to books,
not much to mischief, commonly spoken of as particularly good children,
and contrasted with another sort, girls of more vigorous organization,
who were disposed to laughing and play, and required a strong hand to
manage them; then young growing misses of every shade of Saxon
complexion, and here and there one of more Southern hue: blondes, some of
them so translucent-looking that it seemed as if you could see the souls
in their bodies, like bubbles in glass, if souls were objects of sight;
brunettes, some with rose-red colors, and some with that swarthy hue
which often carries with it a heavily-shaded lip, and which, with pure
outlines and outspoken reliefs, gives us some of our handsomest
women,--the women whom ornaments of plain gold adorn more than any other
parures; and again, but only here and there, one with dark hair and gray
or blue eyes, a Celtic type, perhaps, but found in our native stock
occasionally; rarest of all, a light-haired girl with dark eyes, hazel,
brown, or of the color of that mountain-brook spoken of in this chapter,
where it ran through shadowy woodlands. With these were to be seen at
intervals some of maturer years, full-blown flowers among the opening
buds, with that conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear
during the period when they never meet a single man without having his
monosyllable ready for him,--tied as they are, poor things! on the rock
of expectation, each of them an Andromeda waiting for her Perseus.
"Who is that girl in ringlets,--the fourth in the third row on the
right?" said Master Langdon.
"Charlotte Ann Wood," said Miss Darley; "writes very pretty poems."
"Oh!--And the pink one, three seats from her? Looks bright; anything in
her?"
"Emma Dean,--day-scholar,--Squire Dean's daughter,--nice girl,--second
medal last year."
The master asked these two questions in a careless kind of way, and did
not seem to pay any too much attention to the answers.
"And who and what is that," he said,--"sitting a little apart
there,--that strange, wild-looking girl?"
This time he put the real question he wanted answered;--the other two
were asked at random, as masks for the third.
The lady-teacher's face changed;--one would have said she was frightened
or troubled. She looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear the
master's question and its answer. But the girl did not look up;--she was
winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if in a
kind of reverie.
Miss Darley drew close to the master and placed her hand so as to hide
her lips. "Don't look at her as if we were talking about her," she
whispered softly; "that is Elsie Venner."
CHAPTER V.
AN OLD-FASHIONED DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTER.
It was a comfort to get to a place with something like society, with
residences which had pretensions to elegance, with people of some
breeding, with a newspaper, and "stores" to advertise in it, and with two
or three churches to keep each other alive by wholesome agitation.
Rockland was such a place.
Some of the natural features of the town have been described already. The
Mountain, of course, was what gave it its character, and redeemed it from
wearing the commonplace expression which belongs to ordinary
country-villages. Beautiful, wild, invested with the mystery which
belongs to untrodden spaces, and with enough of terror to give it
dignity, it had yet closer relations with the town over which it brooded
than the passing stranger knew of. Thus, it made a local climate by
cutting off the northern winds and holding the sun's heat like a
garden-wall. Peachtrees, which, on the northern side of the mountain,
hardly ever came to fruit, ripened abundant crops in Rockland.
But there was still another relation between the mountain and the town at
its foot, which strangers were not likely to hear alluded to, and which
was oftener thought of than spoken of by its inhabitants. Those
high-impending forests,--"hangers," as White of Selborne would have
called them,--sloping far upward and backward into the distance, had
always an air of menace blended with their wild beauty. It seemed as if
some heaven-scaling Titan had thrown his shaggy robe over the bare,
precipitous flanks of the rocky summit, and it might at any moment slide
like a garment flung carelessly on the nearest chance-support, and, so
sliding, crush the village out of being, as the Rossberg when it tumbled
over on the valley of Goldau.
Persons have been known to remove from the place, after a short residence
in it, because they were haunted day and night by the thought of this
awful green wall, piled up into the air over their heads. They would lie
awake of nights, thinking they heard the muffed snapping of roots, as if
a thousand acres of the mountain-side were tugging to break away, like
the snow from a house-roof, and a hundred thousand trees were clinging
with all their fibres to hold back the soil just ready to peel away and
crash down with all its rocks and forest-growths. And yet, by one of
those strange contradictions we are constantly finding in human nature,
there were natives of the town who would come back thirty or forty years
after leaving it, just to nestle under this same threatening
mountainside, as old men sun themselves against southward-facing walls.
The old dreams and legends of danger added to the attraction. If the
mountain should ever slide, they had a kind of feeling as if they ought
to be there. It was a fascination like that which the rattlesnake is
said to exert.
This comparison naturally suggests the recollection of that other source
of danger which was an element in the every-day life of the Rockland
people. The folks in some of the neighboring towns had a joke against
them, that a Rocklander could n't hear a beanpod rattle without saying,
"The Lord have mercy on us!" It is very true, that many a nervous old
lady has had a terrible start, caused by some mischievous young rogue's
giving a sudden shake to one of these noisy vegetable products in her
immediate vicinity. Yet, strangely enough, many persons missed the
excitement of the possibility of a fatal bite in other regions, where
there were nothing but black and green and striped snakes, mean
ophidians, having the spite of the nobler serpent without his
venom,--poor crawling creatures, whom Nature would not trust with a
poison-bag. Many natives of Rockland did unquestionably experience a
certain gratification in this infinitesimal sense of danger. It was
noted that the old people retained their hearing longer than in other
places. Some said it was the softened climate, but others believed it
was owing to the habit of keeping their ears open whenever they were
walking through the grass or in the woods. At any rate, a slight sense
of danger is often an agreeable stimulus. People sip their creme de
noyau with a peculiar tremulous pleasure, because there is a bare
possibility that it may contain prussic acid enough to knock them over;
in which case they will lie as dead as if a thunder-cloud had emptied
itself into the earth through their brain and marrow.
But Rockland had other features which helped to give it a special
character. First of all, there was one grand street which was its chief
glory. Elm Street it was called, naturally enough, for its elms made a
long, pointed-arched gallery of it through most of its extent. No
natural Gothic arch compares, for a moment, with that formed by two
American elms, where their lofty jets of foliage shoot across each
other's ascending curves, to intermingle their showery flakes of green.
When one looks through a long double row of these, as in that lovely
avenue which the poets of Yale remember so well,
"Oh, could the vista of my life but now as bright appear
As when I first through Temple Street looked down thine espalier!"
he beholds a temple not built with hands, fairer than any minster, with
all its clustered stems and flowering capitals, that ever grew in stone.
Nobody knows New England who is not on terms of intimacy with one of its
elms. The elm comes nearer to having a soul than any other vegetable
creature among us. It loves man as man loves it. It is modest and
patient. It has a small flake of a seed which blows in everywhere and
makes arrangements for coming up by and by. So, in spring, one finds a
crop of baby-elms among his carrots and parsnips, very weak and small
compared to those succulent vegetables. The baby-elms die, most of them,
slain, unrecognized or unheeded, by hand or hoe, as meekly as Herod's
innocents. One of them gets overlooked, perhaps, until it has
established a kind of right to stay. Three generations of carrot and
parsnip consumers have passed away, yourself among them, and now let your
great-grandson look for the baby-elm. Twenty-two feet of clean girth,
three hundred and sixty feet in the line that bounds its leafy circle, it
covers the boy with such a canopy as neither glossy-leafed oak nor
insect-haunted linden ever lifted into the summer skies.
Elm Street was the pride of Rockland, but not only on account of its
Gothic-arched vista. In this street were most of the great houses, or
"mansion-houses," as it was usual to call them. Along this street, also,
the more nicely kept and neatly painted dwellings were chiefly
congregated. It was the correct thing for a Rockland dignitary to have a
house in Elm Street. A New England "mansion-house" is naturally square,
with dormer windows projecting from the roof, which has a balustrade with
turned posts round it. It shows a good breadth of front-yard before its
door, as its owner shows a respectable expanse of a clean shirt-front.
It has a lateral margin beyond its stables and offices, as its master
wears his white wrist bands showing beyond his coat-cuffs. It may not
have what can properly be called grounds, but it must have elbow-room, at
any rate. Without it, it is like a man who is always tight-buttoned for
want of any linen to show. The mansion-house which has had to "button
itself up tight in fences, for want of green or gravel margin," will be
advertising for boarders presently. The old English pattern of the New
England mansion-house, only on a somewhat grander scale, is Sir Thomas
Abney's place, where dear, good Dr. Watts said prayers for the family,
and wrote those blessed hymns of his that sing us into consciousness in
our cradles, and come back to us in sweet, single verses, between the
moments of wandering and of stupor, when we lie dying, and sound over us
when we can no longer hear them, bringing grateful tears to the hot,
aching eyes beneath the thick, black veils, and carrying the holy calm
with them which filled the good man's heart, as he prayed and sung under
the shelter of the old English mansion-house. Next to the
mansion-houses, came the two-story trim, white-painted, "genteel" houses,
which, being more gossipy and less nicely bred, crowded close up to the
street, instead of standing back from it with arms akimbo, like the
mansion-houses. Their little front-yards were very commonly full of lilac
and syringa and other bushes, which were allowed to smother the lower
story almost to the exclusion of light and airy so that, what with small
windows and small windowpanes, and the darkness made by these choking
growths of shrubbery, the front parlors of some of these houses were the
most tomb-like, melancholy places that could be found anywhere among the
abodes of the living. Their garnishing was apt to assist this
impression. Large-patterned carpets, which always look discontented in
little rooms, haircloth furniture, black and shiny as beetles' wing
cases, and centre-tables, with a sullen oil-lamp of the kind called
astral by our imaginative ancestors, in the centre,--these things were
inevitable. In set piles round the lamp was ranged the current
literature of the day, in the form of Temperance Documents, unbound
numbers of one of the Unknown Public's Magazines with worn-out steel
engravings and high-colored fashion-plates, the Poems of a distinguished
British author whom it is unnecessary to mention, a volume of sermons, or
a novel or two, or both, according to the tastes of the family, and the
Good Book, which is always Itself in the cheapest and commonest company.
The father of the family with his hand in the breast of his coat, the
mother of the same in a wide-bordered cap, sometimes a print of the Last
Supper, by no means Morghen's, or the Father of his Country, or the old
General, or the Defender of the Constitution, or an unknown clergyman
with an open book before him,--these were the usual ornaments of the
walls, the first two a matter of rigor, the others according to politics
and other tendencies.
This intermediate class of houses, wherever one finds them in New England
towns, are very apt to be cheerless and unsatisfactory. They have
neither the luxury of the mansion-house nor the comfort of the
farm-house. They are rarely kept at an agreeable temperature. The
mansion-house has large fireplaces and generous chimneys, and is open to
the sunshine. The farm-house makes no pretensions, but it has a good
warm kitchen, at any rate, and one can be comfortable there with the rest
of the family, without fear and without reproach. These lesser
country-houses of genteel aspirations are much given to patent
subterfuges of one kind and another to get heat without combustion. The
chilly parlor and the slippery hair-cloth seat take the life out of the
warmest welcome. If one would make these places wholesome, happy, and
cheerful, the first precept would be,--The dearest fuel, plenty of it,
and let half the heat go up the chimney. If you can't afford this, don't
try to live in a "genteel" fashion, but stick to the ways of the honest
farm-house.
There were a good many comfortable farm-houses scattered about Rockland.
The best of them were something of the following pattern, which is too
often superseded of late by a more pretentious, but infinitely less
pleasing kind of rustic architecture. A little back from the road,
seated directly on the green sod, rose a plain wooden building, two
stories in front, with a long roof sloping backwards to within a few feet
of the ground. This, like the "mansion-house," is copied from an old
English pattern. Cottages of this model may be seen in Lancashire, for
instance, always with the same honest, homely look, as if their roofs
acknowledged their relationship to the soil out of which they sprung.
The walls were unpainted, but turned by the slow action of sun and air
and rain to a quiet dove or slate color. An old broken millstone at the
door,--a well-sweep pointing like a finger to the heavens, which the
shining round of water beneath looked up at like a dark unsleeping
eye,--a single large elm a little at one side,--a barn twice as big as
the house,--a cattle-yard, with
"The white horns tossing above the wall,"--
some fields, in pasture or in crops, with low stone walls round them,--a
row of beehives,--a garden-patch, with roots, and currant-bushes, and
many-hued hollyhocks, and swollen-stemmed, globe-headed, seedling onions,
and marigolds and flower-de-luces, and lady's-delights, and peonies,
crowding in together, with southernwood in the borders, and woodbine and
hops and morning-glories climbing as they got a chance,--these were the
features by which the Rockland-born children remembered the farm-house,
when they had grown to be men. Such are the recollections that come over
poor sailor-boys crawling out on reeling yards to reef topsails as their
vessels stagger round the stormy Cape; and such are the flitting images
that make the eyes of old country-born merchants look dim and dreamy, as
they sit in their city palaces, warm with the after-dinner flush of the
red wave out of which Memory arises, as Aphrodite arose from the green
waves of the ocean.
Two meeting-houses stood on two eminences, facing each other, and looking
like a couple of fighting-cocks with their necks straight up in the
air,--as if they would flap their roofs, the next thing, and crow out of
their upstretched steeples, and peck at each other's glass eyes with
their sharp-pointed weathercocks.
The first was a good pattern of the real old-fashioned New England
meeting-house. It was a large barn with windows, fronted by a square
tower crowned with a kind of wooden bell inverted and raised on legs, out
of which rose a slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercock at its
summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery
running round three sides of the building. On the fourth side the
pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hanging over it. Here preached
the Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D. D., successor, after a number of
generations, to the office and the parsonage of the Reverend Didymus
Bean, before mentioned, but not suspected of any of his alleged heresies.
He held to the old faith of the Puritans, and occasionally delivered a
discourse which was considered by the hard-headed theologians of his
parish to have settled the whole matter fully and finally, so that now
there was a good logical basis laid down for the Millennium, which might
begin at once upon the platform of his demonstrations. Yet the Reverend
Dr. Honeywood was fonder of preaching plain, practical sermons about the
duties of life, and showing his Christianity in abundant good works among
his people. It was noticed by some few of his flock, not without
comment, that the great majority of his texts came from the Gospels, and
this more and more as he became interested in various benevolent
enterprises which brought him into relations with-ministers and
kindhearted laymen of other denominations. He was in fact a man of a
very warm, open, and exceedingly human disposition, and, although bred by
a clerical father, whose motto was "Sit anima mea cum Puritanis," he
exercised his human faculties in the harness of his ancient faith with
such freedom that the straps of it got so loose they did not interfere
greatly with the circulation of the warm blood through his system. Once
in a while he seemed to think it necessary to come out with a grand
doctrinal sermon, and them he would lapse away for a while into preaching
on men's duties to each other and to society, and hit hard, perhaps, at
some of the actual vices of the time and place, and insist with such
tenderness and eloquence on the great depth and breadth of true Christian
love and charity, that his oldest deacon shook his head, and wished he
had shown as much interest when he was preaching, three Sabbaths back, on
Predestination, or in his discourse against the Sabellians. But he was
sound in the faith; no doubt of that. Did he not preside at the council
held in the town of Tamarack, on the other side of the mountain, which
expelled its clergyman for maintaining heretical doctrines? As presiding
officer, he did not vote, of course, but there was no doubt that he was
all right; he had some of the Edwards blood in him, and that couldn't
very well let him go wrong.
The meeting-house on the other and opposite summit was of a more modern
style, considered by many a great improvement on the old New England
model, so that it is not uncommon for a country parish to pull down its
old meeting-house, which has been preached in for a hundred years or so,
and put up one of these more elegant edifices. The new building was in
what may be called the florid shingle-Gothic manner. Its pinnacles and
crockets and other ornaments were, like the body of the building, all of
pine wood,--an admirable material, as it is very soft and easily worked,
and can be painted of any color desired. Inside, the walls were stuccoed
in imitation of stone,--first a dark brown square, then two light brown
squares, then another dark brown square, and so on, to represent the
accidental differences of shade always noticeable in the real stones of
which walls are built. To be sure, the architect could not help getting
his party-colored squares in almost as regular rhythmical order as those
of a chess-board; but nobody can avoid doing things in a systematic and
serial way; indeed, people who wish to plant trees in natural chimps know
very well that they cannot keep from making regular lines and symmetrical
figures, unless by some trick or other, as that one of throwing a peck of
potatoes up into the air and sticking in a tree wherever a potato happens
to fall. The pews of this meeting-house were the usual oblong ones,
where people sit close together, with a ledge before them to support
their hymn-books, liable only to occasional contact with the back of the
next pew's heads or bonnets, and a place running under the seat of that
pew where hats could be deposited,--always at the risk of the owner, in
case of injury by boots or crickets.
In this meeting-house preached the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather, a divine
of the "Liberal" school, as it is commonly called, bred at that famous
college which used to be thought, twenty or thirty years ago, to have the
monopoly of training young men in the milder forms of heresy. His
ministrations were attended with decency, but not followed with
enthusiasm. "The beauty of virtue" got to be an old story at last. "The
moral dignity of human nature" ceased to excite a thrill of satisfaction,
after some hundred repetitions. It grew to be a dull business, this
preaching against stealing and intemperance, while he knew very well that
the thieves were prowling round orchards and empty houses, instead of
being there to hear the sermon, and that the drunkards, being rarely
church-goers, get little good by the statistics and eloquent appeals of
the preacher. Every now and then, however, the Reverend Mr. Fairweather
let off a polemic discourse against his neighbor opposite, which waked
his people up a little; but it was a languid congregation, at best,--very
apt to stay away from meeting in the afternoon, and not at all given to
extra evening services. The minister, unlike his rival of the other side
of the way, was a down-hearted and timid kind of man. He went on
preaching as he had been taught to preach, but he had misgivings at
times. There was a little Roman Catholic church at the foot of the hill
where his own was placed, which he always had to pass on Sundays. He
could never look on the thronging multitudes that crowded its pews and
aisles or knelt bare-headed on its steps, without a longing to get in
among them and go down on his knees and enjoy that luxury of devotional
contact which makes a worshipping throng as different from the same
numbers praying apart as a bed of coals is from a trail of scattered
cinders.
"Oh, if I could but huddle in with those poor laborers and working-women!"
he would say to himself. "If I could but breathe that atmosphere,
stifling though it be, yet made holy by ancient litanies, and cloudy with
the smoke of hallowed incense, for one hour, instead of droning over
these moral precepts to my half-sleeping congregation!" The intellectual
isolation of his sect preyed upon him; for, of all terrible things to
natures like his, the most terrible is to belong to a minority. No
person that looked at his thin and sallow cheek, his sunken and sad eye,
his tremulous lip, his contracted forehead, or who heard his querulous,
though not unmusical voice, could fail to see that his life was an uneasy
one, that he was engaged in some inward conflict. His dark, melancholic
aspect contrasted with his seemingly cheerful creed, and was all the more
striking, as the worthy Dr. Honeywood, professing a belief which made him
a passenger on board a shipwrecked planet, was yet a most good-humored
and companionable gentleman, whose laugh on week-days did one as much
good to listen to as the best sermon he ever delivered on a Sunday.
A mile or two from the centre of Rockland was a pretty little Episcopal
church, with a roof like a wedge of cheese, a square tower, a stained
window, and a trained rector, who read the service with such ventral
depth of utterance and rrreduplication of the rrresonant letter, that his
own mother would not have known him for her son, if the good woman had
not ironed his surplice and put it on with her own hands.
There were two public-houses in the place: one dignified with the name of
the Mountain House, somewhat frequented by city people in the summer
months, large-fronted, three-storied, balconied, boasting a distinct
ladies'-drawing-room, and spreading a table d'hote of some pretensions;
the other, "Pollard's Tahvern," in the common speech,--a two-story
building, with a bar-room, once famous, where there was a great smell of
hay and boots and pipes and all other bucolic-flavored elements,--where
games of checkers were played on the back of the bellows with red and
white kernels of corn, or with beans and coffee, where a man slept in a
box-settle at night, to wake up early passengers,--where teamsters came
in, with wooden-handled whips and coarse frocks, reinforcing the bucolic
flavor of the atmosphere, and middle-aged male gossips, sometimes
including the squire of the neighboring law-office, gathered to exchange
a question or two about the news, and then fall into that solemn state of
suspended animation which the temperance bar-rooms of modern days produce
in human beings, as the Grotta del Cane does in dogs in the well-known
experiments related by travellers. This bar-room used to be famous for
drinking and storytelling, and sometimes fighting, in old times. That was
when there were rows of decanters on the shelf behind the bar, and a
hissing vessel of hot water ready, to make punch, and three or four
loggerheads (long irons clubbed at the end) were always lying in the fire
in the cold season, waiting to be plunged into sputtering and foaming
mugs of flip,--a goodly compound; speaking according to the flesh, made
with beer and sugar, and a certain suspicion of strong waters, over which
a little nutmeg being grated, and in it the hot iron being then allowed
to sizzle, there results a peculiar singed aroma, which the wise regard
as a warning to remove themselves at once out of the reach of temptation.
But the bar of Pollard's Tahvern no longer presented its old attractions,
and the loggerheads had long disappeared from the fire. In place of the
decanters, were boxes containing "lozengers," as they were commonly
called, sticks of candy in jars, cigars in tumblers, a few lemons, grown
hard-skinned and marvellously shrunken by long exposure, but still feebly
suggestive of possible lemonade,--the whole ornamented by festoons of
yellow and blue cut flypaper. On the front shelf of the bar stood a
large German-silver pitcher of water, and scattered about were
ill-conditioned lamps, with wicks that always wanted picking, which
burned red and smoked a good deal, and were apt to go out without any
obvious cause, leaving strong reminiscences of the whale-fishery in the
circumambient air.
The common schoolhouses of Rockland were dwarfed by the grandeur of the
Apollinean Institute. The master passed one of them, in a walk he was
taking, soon after his arrival at Rockland. He looked in at the rows of
desks, and recalled his late experiences. He could not help laughing, as
he thought how neatly he had knocked the young butcher off his pins.
"A little science is a dangerous thing, 'as well as a little 'learning,'"
he said to himself; "only it's dangerous to the fellow you' try it on."
And he cut him a good stick, and began climbing the side of The Mountain
to get a look at that famous Rattlesnake Ledge.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SUNBEAM AND THE SHADOW.
The virtue of the world is not mainly in its leaders. In the midst of
the multitude which follows there is often something better than in the
one that goes before. Old generals wanted to take Toulon, but one of
their young colonels showed them how. The junior counsel has been known
not unfrequently to make a better argument than his senior fellow,--if,
indeed, he did not make both their arguments. Good ministers will tell
you they have parishioners who beat them in the practice of the virtues.
A great establishment, got up on commercial principles, like the
Apollinean Institute, might yet be well carried on, if it happened to get
good teachers. And when Master Langdon came to see its management, he
recognized that there must be fidelity and intelligence somewhere among
the instructors. It was only necessary to look for a moment at the fair,
open forehead, the still, tranquil eye of gentle, habitual authority, the
sweet gravity that lay upon the lips, to hear the clear answers to the
pupils' questions, to notice how every request had the force without the
form of a command, and the young man could not doubt that the good genius
of the school stood before him in the person of Helen barley.
It was the old story. A poor country-clergyman dies, and leaves a widow
and a daughter. In Old England the daughter would have eaten the bitter
bread of a governess in some rich family. In New England she must keep a
school. So, rising from one sphere to another, she at length finds
herself the prima donna in the department of instruction in Mr. Silas
Peckham's educational establishment.
What a miserable thing it is to be poor. She was dependent, frail,
sensitive, conscientious. She was in the power of a hard, grasping,
thin-blooded, tough-fibred, trading educator, who neither knew nor cared
for a tender woman's sensibilities, but who paid her and meant to have
his money's worth out of her brains, and as much more than his money's
worth as he could get. She was consequently, in plain English,
overworked, and an overworked woman is always a sad sight,--sadder a
great deal than an overworked man, because she is so much more fertile in
capacities of suffering than a man. She has so many varieties of
headache,--sometimes as if Jael were driving the nail that killed Sisera
into her temples,--sometimes letting her work with half her brain while
the other half throbs as if it would go to pieces,--sometimes tightening
round the brows as if her cap-band were a ring of iron,--and then her
neuralgias, and her backaches, and her fits of depression, in which she
thinks she is nothing and less than nothing, and those paroxysms which
men speak slightingly of as hysterical,--convulsions, that is all, only
not commonly fatal ones,--so many trials which belong to her fine and
mobile structure,--that she is always entitled to pity, when she is
placed in conditions which develop her nervous tendencies.
The poor young lady's work had, of course, been doubled since the
departure of Master Langdon's predecessor. Nobody knows what the
weariness of instruction is, as soon as the teacher's faculties begin to
be overtasked, but those who have tried it. The relays of fresh pupils,
each new set with its exhausting powers in full action, coming one after
another, take out all the reserved forces and faculties of resistance
from the subject of their draining process.
The day's work was over, and it was late in the evening, when she sat
down, tired and faint, with a great bundle of girls' themes or
compositions to read over before she could rest her weary head on the
pillow of her narrow trundle-bed, and forget for a while the treadmill
stair of labor she was daily climbing.
How she dreaded this most forlorn of all a teacher's tasks! She was
conscientious in her duties, and would insist on reading every
sentence,--there was no saying where she might find faults of grammar or
bad spelling. There might have been twenty or thirty of these themes in
the bundle before her. Of course she knew pretty well the leading
sentiments they could contain: that beauty was subject to the accidents
of time; that wealth was inconstant, and existence uncertain; that virtue
was its own reward; that youth exhaled, like the dewdrop from the flower,
ere the sun had reached its meridian; that life was o'ershadowed with
trials; that the lessons of virtue instilled by our beloved teachers were
to be our guides through all our future career. The imagery employed
consisted principally of roses, lilies, birds, clouds, and brooks, with
the celebrated comparison of wayward genius to meteor. Who does not know
the small, slanted, Italian hand of these girls'-compositions, their
stringing together of the good old traditional copy-book phrases; their
occasional gushes of sentiment, their profound estimates of the world,
sounding to the old folks that read them as the experience of a bantam
pullet's last-hatched young one with the chips of its shell on its head
would sound to a Mother Cary's chicken, who knew the great ocean with all
its typhoons and tornadoes? Yet every now and then one is liable to be
surprised with strange clairvoyant flashes, that can hardly be explained,
except by the mysterious inspiration which every now and then seizes a
young girl and exalts her intelligence, just as hysteria in other
instances exalts the sensibility,--a little something of that which made
Joan of Arc, and the Burney girl who prophesied "Evelina," and the
Davidson sisters. In the midst of these commonplace exercises which Miss
Darley read over so carefully were two or three that had something of
individual flavor about them, and here and there there was an image or an
epithet which showed the footprint of a passionate nature, as a fallen
scarlet feather marks the path the wild flamingo has trodden.
The young lady-teacher read them with a certain indifference of manner,
as one reads proofs--noting defects of detail, but not commonly arrested
by the matters treated of. Even Miss Charlotte Ann Wood's poem,
beginning--
"How sweet at evening's balmy hour,"
did not excite her. She marked the inevitable false rhyme of Cockney and
Yankee beginners, morn and dawn, and tossed the verses on the pile of
papers she had finished. She was looking over some of the last of them
in a rather listless way,--for the poor thing was getting sleepy in spite
of herself,--when she came to one which seemed to rouse her attention,
and lifted her drooping lids. She looked at it a moment before she would
touch it. Then she took hold of it by one corner and slid it off from
the rest. One would have said she was afraid of it, or had some
undefined antipathy which made it hateful to her. Such odd fancies are
common enough in young persons in her nervous state. Many of these young
people will jump up twenty times a day and run to dabble the tips of
their fingers in water, after touching the most inoffensive objects.
This composition was written in a singular, sharp-pointed, long, slender
hand, on a kind of wavy, ribbed paper. There was something strangely
suggestive about the look of it, but exactly of what, Miss barley either
could not or did not try to think. The subject of the paper was The
Mountain,--the composition being a sort of descriptive rhapsody. It
showed a startling familiarity with some of the savage scenery of the
region. One would have said that the writer must have threaded its
wildest solitudes by the light of the moon and stars as well as by day.
As the teacher read on, her color changed, and a kind of tremulous
agitation came over her. There were hints in this strange paper she did
not know what to make of. There was something in its descriptions and
imagery that recalled,--Miss Darley could not say what,--but it made her
frightfully nervous. Still she could not help reading, till she came to
one passage which so agitated her, that the tired and over-wearied girl's
self-control left her entirely. She sobbed once or twice, then laughed
convulsively; and flung herself on the bed, where she worked out a set
hysteric spasm as she best might, without anybody to rub her hands and
see that she did not hurt herself.
By and by she got quiet, rose and went to her bookcase, took down a
volume of Coleridge, and read a short time, and so to bed, to sleep and
wake from time to time with a sudden start out of uneasy dreams.
Perhaps it is of no great consequence what it was in the composition
which set her off into this nervous paroxysm. She was in such a state
that almost any slight agitation would have brought on the attack, and it
was the accident of her transient excitability, very probably, which made
a trifling cause the seeming occasion of so much disturbance. The theme
was signed, in the same peculiar, sharp, slender hand, E. Venner, and
was, of course, written by that wild-looking girl who had excited the
master's curiosity and prompted his question, as before mentioned. The
next morning the lady-teacher looked pale and wearied, naturally enough,
but she was in her place at the usual hour, and Master Langdon in his
own.
The girls had not yet entered the school room.
"You have been ill, I am afraid," said Mr. Bernard.
"I was not well yesterday," she, answered. "I had a worry and a kind of
fright. It is so dreadful to have the charge of all these young souls
and bodies. Every young girl ought to walk locked close, arm in arm,
between two guardian angels. Sometimes I faint almost with the thought
of all that I ought to do, and of my own weakness and wants.--Tell me,
are there not natures born so out of parallel with the lines of natural
law that nothing short of a miracle can bring them right?"
Mr. Bernard had speculated somewhat, as all thoughtful persons of his
profession are forced to do, on the innate organic tendencies with which
individuals, families, and races are born. He replied, therefore, with a
smile, as one to whom the question suggested a very familiar class of
facts.
"Why, of course. Each of us is only the footing-up of a double column of
figures that goes back to the first pair. Every unit tells,--and some of
them are plus, and some minus. If the columns don't add up right, it is
commonly because we can't make out all the figures. I don't mean to say
that something may not be added by Nature to make up for losses and keep
the race to its average, but we are mainly nothing but the answer to a
long sum in addition and subtraction. No doubt there are people born
with impulses at every possible angle to the parallels of Nature, as you
call them. If they happen to cut these at right angles, of course they
are beyond the reach of common influences. Slight obliquities are what
we have most to do with in education. Penitentiaries and insane asylums
take care of most of the right-angle cases.--I am afraid I have put it
too much like a professor, and I am only a student, you know. Pray, what
set you to asking me this? Any strange cases among the scholars?"
The meek teacher's blue eyes met the luminous glance that came with the
question. She, too, was of gentle blood,--not meaning by that that she
was of any noted lineage, but that she came of a cultivated stock, never
rich, but long trained to intellectual callings. A thousand decencies,
amenities, reticences, graces, which no one thinks of until he misses
them, are the traditional right of those who spring from such families.
And when two persons of this exceptional breeding meet in the midst of
the common multitude, they seek each other's company at once by the
natural law of elective affinity. It is wonderful how men and women know
their peers. If two stranger queens, sole survivors of two shipwrecked
vessels, were cast, half-naked, on a rock together, each would at once
address the other as "Our Royal Sister."
Helen Darley looked into the dark eyes of Bernard Langdon glittering with
the light which flashed from them with his question. Not as those
foolish, innocent country-girls of the small village did she look into
them, to be fascinated and bewildered, but to sound them with a calm,
steadfast purpose. "A gentleman," she said to herself, as she read his
expression and his features with a woman's rapid, but exhausting glance.
"A lady," he said to himself, as he met her questioning look,--so brief,
so quiet, yet so assured, as of one whom necessity had taught to read
faces quickly without offence, as children read the faces of parents, as
wives read the faces of hard-souled husbands. All this was but a few
seconds' work, and yet the main point was settled. If there had been any
vulgar curiosity or coarseness of any kind lurking in his expression, she
would have detected it. If she had not lifted her eyes to his face so
softly and kept them there so calmly and withdrawn them so quietly, he
would not have said to himself, "She is a LADY," for that word meant a
good deal to the descendant of the courtly Wentworths and the scholarly
Langdons.
"There are strange people everywhere, Mr. Langdon," she said, "and I
don't think our schoolroom is an exception. I am glad you believe in the
force of transmitted tendencies. It would break my heart, if I did not
think that there are faults beyond the reach of everything but God's
special grace. I should die, if I thought that my negligence or
incapacity was alone responsible for the errors and sins of those I have
charge of. Yet there are mysteries I do not know how to account for."
She looked all round the schoolroom, and then said, in a whisper, "Mr.
Langdon, we had a girl that stole, in the school, not long ago. Worse
than that, we had a girl who tried to set us on fire. Children of good
people, both of them. And we have a girl now that frightens me so"--
The door opened, and three misses came in to take their seats: three
types, as it happened, of certain classes, into which it would not have
been difficult to distribute the greater number of the girls in the
school.--Hannah Martin. Fourteen years and three months old.
Short-necked, thick-waisted, round-cheeked, smooth, vacant forehead,
large, dull eyes. Looks good-natured, with little other expression.
Three buns in her bag, and a large apple. Has a habit of attacking her
provisions in school-hours.--Rosa Milburn. Sixteen. Brunette, with a
rare-ripe flush in her cheeks. Color comes and goes easily. Eyes
wandering, apt to be downcast. Moody at times. Said to be passionate,
if irritated. Finished in high relief. Carries shoulders well back and
walks well, as if proud of her woman's life, with a slight rocking
movement, being one of the wide-flanged pattern, but seems restless,--a
hard girl to look after. Has a romance in her pocket, which she means to
read in school-time.--Charlotte Ann Wood. Fifteen. The poetess before
mentioned. Long, light ringlets, pallid complexion, blue eyes. Delicate
child, half unfolded. Gentle, but languid and despondent. Does not go
much with the other girls, but reads a good deal, especially poetry,
underscoring favorite passages. Writes a great many verses, very fast,
not very correctly; full of the usual human sentiments, expressed in the
accustomed phrases. Under-vitalized. Sensibilities not covered with
their normal integuments. A negative condition, often confounded with
genius, and sometimes running into it. Young people who fall out of line
through weakness of the active faculties are often confounded with those
who step out of it through strength of the intellectual ones.
The girls kept coming in, one after another, or in pairs or groups, until
the schoolroom was nearly full. Then there was a little pause, and a
light step was heard in the passage. The lady-teacher's eyes turned to
the door, and the master's followed them in the same direction.
A girl of about seventeen entered. She was tall and slender, but
rounded, with a peculiar undulation of movement, such as one sometimes
sees in perfectly untutored country-girls, whom Nature, the queen of
graces, has taken in hand, but more commonly in connection with the very
highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained society. She was a
splendid scowling beauty, black-browed, with a flash of white teeth which
was always like a surprise when her lips parted. She wore a checkered
dress, of a curious pattern, and a camel's-hair scarf twisted a little
fantastically about her. She went to her seat, which she had moved a
short distance apart from the rest, and, sitting down, began playing
listlessly with her gold chain, as was a common habit with her, coiling
it and uncoiling it about her slender wrist, and braiding it in with her
long, delicate fingers. Presently she looked up. Black, piercing eyes,
not large,--a low forehead, as low as that of Clytie in the Townley
bust,--black hair, twisted in heavy braids,--a face that one could not
help looking at for its beauty, yet that one wanted to look away from for
something in its expression, and could not for those diamond eyes. They
were fixed on the lady-teacher now. The latter turned her own away, and
let them wander over the other scholars. But they could not help coming
back again for a single glance at the wild beauty. The diamond eyes were
on her still. She turned the leaves of several of her books, as if in
search of some passage, and, when she thought she had waited long enough
to be safe, once more stole a quick look at the dark girl. The diamond
eyes were still upon her. She put her kerchief to her forehead, which
had grown slightly moist; she sighed once, almost shivered, for she felt
cold; then, following some ill-defined impulse, which she could not
resist, she left her place and went to the young girl's desk.
"What do you want of me, Elsie Venner?" It was a strange question to
put, for the girl had not signified that she wished the teacher to come
to her.
"Nothing," she said. "I thought I could make you come." The girl spoke
in a low tone, a kind of half-whisper. She did not lisp, yet her
articulation of one or two consonants was not absolutely perfect.
"Where did you get that flower, Elsie?" said Miss Darley. It was a rare
alpine flower, which was found only in one spot among the rocks of The
Mountain.
"Where it grew," said Elsie Veneer. "Take it." The teacher could not
refuse her. The girl's finger tips touched hers as she took it. How
cold they were for a girl of such an organization!
The teacher went back to her seat. She made an excuse for quitting the
schoolroom soon afterwards. The first thing she did was to fling the
flower into her fireplace and rake the ashes over it. The second was to
wash the tips of her fingers, as if she had been another Lady Macbeth. A
poor, over-tasked, nervous creature,--we must not think too much of her
fancies.
After school was done, she finished the talk with the master which had
been so suddenly interrupted. There were things spoken of which may
prove interesting by and by, but there are other matters we must first
attend to.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EVENT OF THE SEASON.
"Mr. and Mrs. Colonel Sprowle's compliments to Mr. Langdon and requests
the pleasure of his company at a social entertainment on Wednesday
evening next.
"Elm St. Monday."
On paper of a pinkish color and musky smell, with a large "S" at the top,
and an embossed border. Envelop adherent, not sealed. Addressed
LANGDON ESQ.
Present.
Brought by H. Frederic Sprowle, youngest son of the Colonel,--the H. of
course standing for the paternal Hezekiah, put in to please the father,
and reduced to its initial to please the mother, she having a marked
preference for Frederic. Boy directed to wait for an answer.
"Mr. Langdon has the pleasure of accepting Mr. and Mrs. Colonel Sprowle's
polite invitation for Wednesday evening."
On plain paper, sealed with an initial.
In walking along the main street, Mr. Bernard had noticed a large house
of some pretensions to architectural display, namely, unnecessarily
projecting eaves, giving it a mushroomy aspect, wooden mouldings at
various available points, and a grandiose arched portico. It looked a
little swaggering by the side of one or two of the mansion-houses that
were not far from it, was painted too bright for Mr. Bernard's taste, had
rather too fanciful a fence before it, and had some fruit-trees planted
in the front-yard, which to this fastidious young gentleman implied a
defective sense of the fitness of things, not promising in people who
lived in so large a house, with a mushroom roof and a triumphal arch for
its entrance.
This place was known as "Colonel Sprowle's villa," (genteel friends,)--as
"the elegant residence of our distinguished fellow-citizen, Colonel
Sprowle," (Rockland Weekly Universe,)--as "the neew haouse," (old
settlers,)--as "Spraowle's Folly," (disaffected and possibly envious
neighbors,)--and in common discourse, as "the Colonel's."
Hezekiah Sprowle, Esquire, Colonel Sprowle of the Commonwealth's Militia,
was a retired "merchant." An India merchant he might, perhaps, have been
properly called; for he used to deal in West India goods, such as coffee,
sugar, and molasses, not to speak of rum,--also in tea, salt fish,
butter and cheese, oil and candles, dried fruit, agricultural "p'doose"
generally, industrial products, such as boots and shoes, and various
kinds of iron and wooden ware, and at one end of the establishment in
calicoes and other stuffs,--to say nothing of miscellaneous objects of
the most varied nature, from sticks of candy, which tempted in the
smaller youth with coppers in their fists, up to ornamental articles of
apparel, pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged Bibles, stationery, in
short, everything which was like to prove seductive to the rural
population. The Colonel had made money in trade, and also by matrimony.
He had married Sarah, daughter and heiress of the late Tekel Jordan,
Esq., an old miser, who gave the town-clock, which carries his name to
posterity in large gilt letters as a generous benefactor of his native
place. In due time the Colonel reaped the reward of well-placed
affections. When his wife's inheritance fell in, he thought he had money
enough to give up trade, and therefore sold out his "store," called in
some dialects of the English language shop, and his business.
Life became pretty hard work to him, of course, as soon as he had nothing
particular to do. Country people with money enough not to have to work
are in much more danger than city people in the same condition. They get
a specific look and character, which are the same in all the villages
where one studies them. They very commonly fall into a routine, the
basis of which is going to some lounging-place or other, a bar-room, a
reading-room, or something of the kind. They grow slovenly in dress, and
wear the same hat forever. They have a feeble curiosity for news
perhaps, which they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall
silent and think they are thinking. But the mind goes out under this
regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if
the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water,
which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments,
and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed
future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and
though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at
night with a curious tendency to say the same thing twice and even three
times over, it had always been in very cold weather,--and everybody knows
that no one is safe to drink a couple of glasses of wine in a warm room
and go suddenly out into the cold air.
Miss Matilda Sprowle, sole daughter of the house, had reached the age at
which young ladies are supposed in technical language to have come out,
and thereafter are considered to be in company.
"There's one piece o' goods," said the Colonel to his wife, "that we
ha'n't disposed of, nor got a customer for yet. That 's Matildy. I
don't mean to set HER up at vaandoo. I guess she can have her pick of a
dozen."
"She 's never seen anybody yet," said Mrs. Sprowle, who had had a certain
project for some time, but had kept quiet about it. "Let's have a party,
and give her a chance to show herself and see some of the young folks."
The Colonel was not very clear-headed, and he thought, naturally enough,
that the party was his own suggestion, because his remark led to the
first starting of the idea. He entered into the plan, therefore, with a
feeling of pride as well as pleasure, and the great project was resolved
upon in a family council without a dissentient voice. This was the
party, then, to which Mr. Bernard was going. The town had been full of it
for a week. "Everybody was asked." So everybody said that was invited.
But how in respect of those who were not asked? If it had been one of
the old mansion-houses that was giving a party, the boundary between the
favored and the slighted families would have been known pretty well
beforehand, and there would have been no great amount of grumbling. But
the Colonel, for all his title, had a forest of poor relations and a
brushwood swamp of shabby friends, for he had scrambled up to fortune,
and now the time was come when he must define his new social position.
This is always an awkward business in town or country. An exclusive
alliance between two powers is often the same thing as a declaration of
war against a third. Rockland was soon split into a triumphant minority,
invited to Mrs. Sprowle's party, and a great majority, uninvited, of
which the fraction just on the border line between recognized "gentility"
and the level of the ungloved masses was in an active state of excitement
and indignation.
"Who is she, I should like to know?" said Mrs. Saymore, the tailor's
wife. "There was plenty of folks in Rockland as good as ever Sally
Jordan was, if she had managed to pick up a merchant. Other folks could
have married merchants, if their families was n't as wealthy as them old
skinflints that willed her their money," etc., etc. Mrs. Saymore
expressed the feeling of many beside herself. She had, however, a
special right to be proud of the name she bore. Her husband was own
cousin to the Saymores of Freestone Avenue (who write the name Seymour,
and claim to be of the Duke of Somerset's family, showing a clear descent
from the Protector to Edward Seymour, (1630,)--then a jump that would
break a herald's neck to one Seth Saymore,(1783,)--from whom to the head
of the present family the line is clear again). Mrs. Saymore, the
tailor's wife, was not invited, because her husband mended clothes. If
he had confined himself strictly to making them, it would have put a
different face upon the matter.
The landlord of the Mountain House and his lady were invited to Mrs.
Sprowle's party. Not so the landlord of Pollard's Tahvern and his lady.
Whereupon the latter vowed that they would have a party at their house
too, and made arrangements for a dance of twenty or thirty couples, to be
followed by an entertainment. Tickets to this "Social Ball" were soon
circulated, and, being accessible to all at a moderate price, admission
to the "Elegant Supper" included, this second festival promised to be as
merry, if not as select, as the great party.
Wednesday came. Such doings had never been heard of in Rockland as went
on that day at the "villa." The carpet had been taken up in the long
room, so that the young folks might have a dance. Miss Matilda's piano
had been moved in, and two fiddlers and a clarionet-player engaged to
make music. All kinds of lamps had been put in requisition, and even
colored wax-candles figured on the mantel-pieces. The costumes of the
family had been tried on the day before: the Colonel's black suit fitted
exceedingly well; his lady's velvet dress displayed her contours to
advantage; Miss Matilda's flowered silk was considered superb; the eldest
son of the family, Mr. T. Jordan Sprowle, called affectionately and
elegantly "Geordie," voted himself "stunnin'"; and even the small youth
who had borne Mr. Bernard's invitation was effective in a new jacket and
trousers, buttony in front, and baggy in the reverse aspect, as is wont
to be the case with the home-made garments of inland youngsters.
Great preparations had been made for the refection which was to be part
of the entertainment. There was much clinking of borrowed spoons, which
were to be carefully counted, and much clicking of borrowed china, which
was to be tenderly handled, for nobody in the country keeps those vast
closets full of such things which one may see in rich city-houses. Not a
great deal could be done in the way of flowers, for there were no
greenhouses, and few plants were out as yet; but there were paper
ornaments for the candlesticks, and colored mats for the lamps, and all
the tassels of the curtains and bells were taken out of those brown linen
bags, in which, for reasons hitherto undiscovered, they are habitually
concealed in some households. In the remoter apartments every imaginable
operation was going on at once,--roasting, boiling, baking, beating,
rolling, pounding in mortars, frying, freezing; for there was to be
ice-cream to-night of domestic manufacture;--and in the midst of all
these labors, Mrs. Sprowle and Miss Matilda were moving about, directing
and helping as they best might, all day long. When the evening came, it
might be feared they would not be in just the state of mind and body to
entertain company.
--One would like to give a party now and then, if one could be a
billionnaire.--"Antoine, I am going to have twenty people to dine
to-day." "Biens, Madame." Not a word or thought more about it, but get
home in season to dress, and come down to your own table, one of your own
guests.--"Giuseppe, we are to have a party a week from to-night,--five
hundred invitations--there is the list." The day comes. "Madam, do you
remember you have your party tonight?" "Why, so I have! Everything
right? supper and all?" "All as it should be, Madam."
"Send up Victorine." "Victorine, full toilet for this evening,--pink,
diamonds, and emeralds. Coiffeur at seven. Allez."--Billionism, or
even millionism, must be a blessed kind of state, with health and clear
conscience and youth and good looks,--but most blessed is this, that it
takes off all the mean cares which give people the three wrinkles between
the eyebrows, and leaves them free to have a good time and make others
have a good time, all the way along from the charity that tips up
unexpected loads of wood before widows' houses, and leaves foundling
turkeys upon poor men's door-steps, and sets lean clergymen crying at the
sight of anonymous fifty-dollar bills, to the taste which orders a
perfect banquet in such sweet accord with every sense that everybody's
nature flowers out full--blown in its golden--glowing, fragrant
atmosphere.
--A great party given by the smaller gentry of the interior is a kind of
solemnity, so to speak. It involves so much labor and anxiety,--its
spasmodic splendors are so violently contrasted with the homeliness of
every-day family-life,--it is such a formidable matter to break in the
raw subordinates to the manege of the cloak-room and the table,--there is
such a terrible uncertainty in the results of unfamiliar culinary
operations,--so many feuds are involved in drawing that fatal line which
divides the invited from the uninvited fraction of the local
universe,--that, if the notes requested the pleasure of the guests'
company on "this solemn occasion," they would pretty nearly express the
true state of things.
The Colonel himself had been pressed into the service. He had pounded
something in the great mortar. He had agitated a quantity of sweetened
and thickened milk in what was called a cream-freezer. At eleven
o'clock, A. M., he retired for a space. On returning, his color was
noted to be somewhat heightened, and he showed a disposition to be
jocular with the female help,--which tendency, displaying itself in
livelier demonstrations than were approved at head-quarters, led to his
being detailed to out-of-door duties, such as raking gravel, arranging
places for horses to be hitched to, and assisting in the construction of
an arch of wintergreen at the porch of the mansion.
A whiff from Mr. Geordie's cigar refreshed the toiling females from time
to time; for the windows had to be opened occasionally, while all these
operations were going on, and the youth amused himself with inspecting
the interior, encouraging the operatives now and then in the phrases
commonly employed by genteel young men,--for he had perused an odd volume
of "Verdant Green," and was acquainted with a Sophomore from one of the
fresh-water colleges. "Go it on the feed!" exclaimed this spirited young
man. "Nothin' like a good spread. Grub enough and good liquor, that's
the ticket. Guv'nor'll do the heavy polite, and let me alone for
polishin' off the young charmers." And Mr. Geordie looked expressively at
a handmaid who was rolling gingerbread, as if he were rehearsing for "Don
Giovanni."
Evening came at last, and the ladies were forced to leave the scene of
their labors to array themselves for the coming festivities. The tables
had been set in a back room, the meats were ready, the pickles were
displayed, the cake was baked, the blanc-mange had stiffened, and the
ice-cream had frozen.
At half past seven o'clock, the Colonel, in costume, came into the front
parlor, and proceeded to light the lamps. Some were good-humored enough
and took the hint of a lighted match at once. Others were as vicious as
they could be,--would not light on any terms, any more than if they were
filled with water, or lighted and smoked one side of the chimney, or
spattered a few sparks and sulked themselves out, or kept up a faint show
of burning, so that their ground glasses looked as feebly phosphorescent
as so many invalid fireflies. With much coaxing and screwing and
pricking, a tolerable illumination was at last achieved. At eight there
was a grand rustling of silks, and Mrs. and Miss Sprowle descended from
their respective bowers or boudoirs. Of course they were pretty well
tired by this time, and very glad to sit down,--having the prospect
before them of being obliged to stand for hours. The Colonel walked
about the parlor, inspecting his regiment of lamps. By and by Mr.
Geordie entered.
"Mph! mph!" he sniffed, as he came in. "You smell of lamp-smoke here."
That always galls people,--to have a new-comer accuse them of smoke or
close air, which they have got used to and do not perceive. The Colonel
raged at the thought of his lamps' smoking, and tongued a few anathemas
inside of his shut teeth, but turned down two or three wicks that burned
higher than the rest.
Master H. Frederic next made his appearance, with questionable marks upon
his fingers and countenance. Had been tampering with something brown and
sticky. His elder brother grew playful, and caught him by the baggy
reverse of his more essential garment.
"Hush!" said Mrs. Sprowle,--"there 's the bell!"
Everybody took position at once, and began to look very smiling and
altogether at ease.--False alarm. Only a parcel of spoons,--"loaned,"
as the inland folks say when they mean lent, by a neighbor.
"Better late than never!" said the Colonel, "let me heft them spoons."
Mrs. Sprowle came down into her chair again as if all her bones had been
bewitched out of her.
"I'm pretty nigh beat out a'ready," said she, "before any of the folks
has come."
They sat silent awhile, waiting for the first arrival. How nervous they
got! and how their senses were sharpened!
"Hark!" said Miss Matilda,--"what 's that rumblin'?"
It was a cart going over a bridge more than a mile off, which at any
other time they would not have heard. After this there was a lull, and
poor Mrs. Sprowle's head nodded once or twice. Presently a crackling and
grinding of gravel;--how much that means, when we are waiting for those
whom we long or dread to see! Then a change in the tone of the
gravel-crackling.
"Yes, they have turned in at our gate. They're comin'! Mother! mother!"
Everybody in position, smiling and at ease. Bell rings. Enter the first
set of visitors. The Event of the Season has begun.
"Law! it's nothin' but the Cranes' folks! I do believe Mahala 's come in
that old green de-laine she wore at the Surprise Party!"
Miss Matilda had peeped through a crack of the door and made this
observation and the remark founded thereon. Continuing her attitude of
attention, she overheard Mrs. Crane and her two daughters conversing in
the attiring-room, up one flight.
"How fine everything is in the great house!" said Mrs. Crane,--"jest
look at the picters!"
"Matildy Sprowle's drawin's," said Ada Azuba, the eldest daughter.
"I should think so," said Mahala Crane, her younger sister,--a wide-awake
girl, who had n't been to school for nothing, and performed a little on
the lead pencil herself. "I should like to know whether that's a
hay-cock or a mountain!"
Miss Matilda winced; for this must refer to her favorite monochrome,
executed by laying on heavy shadows and stumping them down into mellow
harmony,--the style of drawing which is taught in six lessons, and the
kind of specimen which is executed in something less than one hour.
Parents and other very near relatives are sometimes gratified with these
productions, and cause them to be framed and hung up, as in the present
instance.
"I guess we won't go down jest yet," said Mrs. Crane, "as folks don't
seem to have come."
So she began a systematic inspection of the dressing-room and its
conveniences.
"Mahogany four-poster;--come from the Jordans', I cal'la,te. Marseilles
quilt. Ruffles all round the piller. Chintz curtings,--jest put
up,--o' purpose for the party, I'll lay ye a dollar.--What a nice
washbowl!" (Taps it with a white knuckle belonging to a red finger.)
"Stone chaney.--Here's a bran'-new brush and comb,--and here's a
scent-bottle. Come here, girls, and fix yourselves in the glass, and
scent your pocket-handkerchers."
And Mrs. Crane bedewed her own kerchief with some of the eau de Cologne
of native manufacture,--said on its label to be much superior to the
German article.
It was a relief to Mrs. and the Miss Cranes when the bell rang and the
next guests were admitted. Deacon and Mrs. Soper,--Deacon Soper of the
Rev. Mr. Fairweather's church, and his lady. Mrs. Deacon Soper was
directed, of course, to the ladies' dressing-room, and her husband to the
other apartment, where gentlemen were to leave their outside coats and
hats. Then came Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, and then the three Miss Spinneys,
then Silas Peckham, Head of the Apollinean Institute, and Mrs. Peckham,
and more after them, until at last the ladies' dressing-room got so full
that one might have thought it was a trap none of them could get out of.
In truth, they all felt a little awkwardly. Nobody wanted to be first to
venture down-stairs. At last Mr. Silas Peckham thought it was time to
make a move for the parlor, and for this purpose presented himself at the
door of the ladies' dressing-room.
"Lorindy, my dear!" he exclaimed to Mrs. Peckham,--"I think there can be
no impropriety in our joining the family down-stairs."
Mrs. Peckham laid her large, flaccid arm in the sharp angle made by the
black sleeve which held the bony limb her husband offered, and the two
took the stair and struck out for the parlor. The ice was broken, and
the dressing-room began to empty itself into the spacious, lighted
apartments below.
Mr. Silas Peckham slid into the room with Mrs. Peckham alongside, like a
shad convoying a jelly-fish.
"Good-evenin', Mrs. Sprowle! I hope I see you well this evenin'. How 's
your haalth, Colonel Sprowle?"
"Very well, much obleeged to you. Hope you and your good lady are well.
Much pleased to see you. Hope you'll enjoy yourselves. We've laid out
to have everything in good shape,--spared no trouble nor ex"--
"pence,"--said Silas Peckham.
Mrs. Colonel Sprowle, who, you remember, was a Jordan, had nipped the
Colonel's statement in the middle of the word Mr. Peckham finished, with
a look that jerked him like one of those sharp twitches women keep giving
a horse when they get a chance to drive one.
Mr. and Mrs. Crane, Miss Ada Azuba, and Miss Mahala Crane made their
entrance. There had been a discussion about the necessity and propriety
of inviting this family, the head of which kept a small shop for hats and
boots and shoes. The Colonel's casting vote had carried it in the
affirmative.--How terribly the poor old green de-laine did cut up in the
blaze of so many lamps and candles.
--Deluded little wretch, male or female, in town or country, going to
your first great party, how little you know the nature of the ceremony in
which you are to bear the part of victim! What! are not these garlands
and gauzy mists and many-colored streamers which adorn you, is not this
music which welcomes you, this radiance that glows about you, meant
solely for your enjoyment, young miss of seventeen or eighteen summers,
now for the first time swimming unto the frothy, chatoyant, sparkling,
undulating sea of laces and silks and satins, and white-armed,
flower-crowned maidens struggling in their waves beneath the lustres that
make the false summer of the drawing-room?
Stop at the threshold! This is a hall of judgment you are entering; the
court is in session; and if you move five steps forward, you will be at
its bar.
There was a tribunal once in France, as you may remember, called the
Chambre Ardente, the Burning Chamber. It was hung all round with lamps,
and hence its name. The burning chamber for the trial of young maidens
is the blazing ball-room. What have they full-dressed you, or rather
half-dressed you for, do you think? To make you look pretty, of course!
Why have they hung a chandelier above you, flickering all over with
flames, so that it searches you like the noonday sun, and your deepest
dimple cannot hold a shadow? To give brilliancy to the gay scene, no
doubt!--No, my clear! Society is inspecting you, and it finds
undisguised surfaces and strong lights a convenience in the process. The
dance answers the purpose of the revolving pedestal upon which the "White
Captive" turns, to show us the soft, kneaded marble, which looks as if it
had never been hard, in all its manifold aspects of living loveliness.
No mercy for you, my love! Justice, strict justice, you shall certainly
have,--neither more nor less. For, look you, there are dozens, scores,
hundreds, with whom you must be weighed in the balance; and you have got
to learn that the "struggle for life" Mr. Charles Darwin talks about
reaches to vertebrates clad in crinoline, as well as to mollusks in
shells, or articulates in jointed scales, or anything that fights for
breathing-room and food and love in any coat of fur or feather! Happy
they who can flash defiance from bright eyes and snowy shoulders back
into the pendants of the insolent lustres!
--Miss Mahala Crane did not have these reflections; and no young girl
ever did, or ever will, thank Heaven! Her keen eyes sparkled under her
plainly parted hair and the green de-laine moulded itself in those
unmistakable lines of natural symmetry in which Nature indulges a small
shopkeeper's daughter occasionally as well as a wholesale dealer's young
ladies. She would have liked a new dress as much as any other girl, but
she meant to go and have a good time at any rate.
The guests were now arriving in the drawing-room pretty fast, and the
Colonel's hand began to burn a good deal with the sharp squeezes which
many of the visitors gave it. Conversation, which had begun like a
summer-shower, in scattering drops, was fast becoming continuous, and
occasionally rising into gusty swells, with now and then a broad-chested
laugh from some Captain or Major or other military personage,--for it may
be noted that all large and loud men in the unpaved districts bear
military titles.
Deacon Soper came up presently, and entered into conversation with
Colonel Sprowle.
"I hope to see our pastor present this evenin'," said the Deacon.
"I don't feel quite sure," the Colonel answered. "His dyspepsy has been
bad on him lately. He wrote to say, that, Providence permittin', it
would be agreeable to him to take a part in the exercises of the evenin';
but I mistrusted he did n't mean to come. To tell the truth, Deacon
Soper, I rather guess he don't like the idee of dancin', and some of the
other little arrangements."
"Well," said the Deacon, "I know there's some condemns dancin'. I've
heerd a good deal of talk about it among the folks round. Some have it
that it never brings a blessin' on a house to have dancin' in it. Judge
Tileston died, you remember, within a month after he had his great ball,
twelve year ago, and some thought it was in the natur' of a judgment. I
don't believe in any of them notions. If a man happened to be struck
dead the night after he'd been givin' a ball," (the Colonel loosened his
black stock a little, and winked and swallowed two or three times,) "I
should n't call it a judgment,--I should call it a coincidence. But I 'm
a little afraid our pastor won't come. Somethin' or other's the matter
with Mr. Fairweather. I should sooner expect to see the old Doctor come
over out of the Orthodox parsonage-house."
"I've asked him," said the Colonel.
"Well?" said Deacon Soper.
"He said he should like to come, but he did n't know what his people
would say. For his part, he loved to see young folks havin' their sports
together, and very often felt as if he should like to be one of 'em
himself. 'But,' says I, 'Doctor, I don't say there won't be a little
dancin'.' 'Don't!' says he, 'for I want Letty to go,' (she's his
granddaughter that's been stayin' with him,) 'and Letty 's mighty fond of
dancin'. You know,' says the Doctor, 'it is n't my business to settle
whether other people's children should dance or not.' And the Doctor
looked as if he should like to rigadoon and sashy across as well as the
young one he was talkin' about. He 's got blood in him, the old Doctor
has. I wish our little man and him would swop pulpits."
Deacon Soper started and looked up into the Colonel's face, as if to see
whether he was in earnest.
Mr. Silas Peckham and his lady joined the group.
"Is this to be a Temperance Celebration, Mrs. Sprowle?" asked Mr. Silas
Peckham.
Mrs. Sprowle replied, "that there would be lemonade and srub for those
that preferred such drinks, but that the Colonel had given folks to
understand that he did n't mean to set in judgment on the marriage in
Canaan, and that those that didn't like srub and such things would find
somethin' that would suit them better."
Deacon Soper's countenance assumed a certain air of restrained
cheerfulness. The conversation rose into one of its gusty paroxysms just
then. Master H. Frederic got behind a door and began performing the
experiment of stopping and unstopping his ears in rapid alternation,
greatly rejoicing in the singular effect of mixed conversation chopped
very small, like the contents of a mince-pie, or meat-pie, as it is more
forcibly called in the deep-rutted villages lying along the unsalted
streams. All at once it grew silent just round the door, where it had
been loudest,--and the silence spread itself like a stain, till it hushed
everything but a few corner-duets. A dark, sad-looking, middle-aged
gentleman entered the parlor, with a young lady on his arm,--his
daughter, as it seemed, for she was not wholly unlike him in feature, and
of the same dark complexion.
"Dudley Venner," exclaimed a dozen people, in startled, but
half-suppressed tones.
"What can have brought Dudley out to-night?" said Jefferson Buck, a young
fellow, who had been interrupted in one of the corner-duets which he was
executing in concert with Miss Susy Pettingill.
"How do I know, Jeff?" was Miss Susy's answer. Then, after a
pause,--"Elsie made him come, I guess. Go ask Dr. Kittredge; he knows
all about 'em both, they say."
Dr. Kittredge, the leading physician of Rockland, was a shrewd old man,
who looked pretty keenly into his patients through his spectacles, and
pretty widely at men, women, and things in general over them.
Sixty-three years old,--just the year of the grand climacteric. A bald
crown, as every doctor should have. A consulting practitioner's mouth;
that is, movable round the corners while the case is under examination,
but both corners well drawn down and kept so when the final opinion is
made up. In fact, the Doctor was often sent for to act as "caounsel,"
all over the county, and beyond it. He kept three or four horses,
sometimes riding in the saddle, commonly driving in a sulky, pretty fast,
and looking straight before him, so that people got out of the way of
bowing to him as he passed on the road. There was some talk about his
not being so long-sighted as other folks, but his old patients laughed
and looked knowing when this was spoken of.
The Doctor knew a good many things besides how to drop tinctures and
shake out powders. Thus, he knew a horse, and, what is harder to
understand, a horse-dealer, and was a match for him. He knew what a
nervous woman is, and how to manage her. He could tell at a glance when
she is in that condition of unstable equilibrium in which a rough word is
like a blow to her, and the touch of unmagnetized fingers reverses all
her nervous currents. It is not everybody that enters into the soul of
Mozart's or Beethoven's harmonies; and there are vital symphonies in B
flat, and other low, sad keys, which a doctor may know as little of as a
hurdy-gurdy player of the essence of those divine musical mysteries. The
Doctor knew the difference between what men say and what they mean as
well as most people. When he was listening to common talk, he was in the
habit of looking over his spectacles; if he lifted his head so as to look
through them at the person talking, he was busier with that person's
thoughts than with his words.
Jefferson Buck was not bold enough to confront the Doctor with Miss
Susy's question, for he did not look as if he were in the mood to answer
queries put by curious young people. His eyes were fixed steadily on the
dark girl, every movement of whom he seemed to follow.
She was, indeed, an apparition of wild beauty, so unlike the girls about
her that it seemed nothing more than natural, that, when she moved, the
groups should part to let her pass through them, and that she should
carry the centre of all looks and thoughts with her. She was dressed to
please her own fancy, evidently, with small regard to the modes declared
correct by the Rockland milliners and mantua-makers. Her heavy black
hair lay in a braided coil, with a long gold pin shat through it like a
javelin. Round her neck was a golden torque, a round, cord-like chain,
such as the Gaols used to wear; the "Dying Gladiator" has it. Her dress
was a grayish watered silk; her collar was pinned with a flashing diamond
brooch, the stones looking as fresh as morning dew-drops, but the silver
setting of the past generation; her arms were bare, round, but slender
rather than large, in keeping with her lithe round figure. On her wrists
she wore bracelets: one was a circlet of enamelled scales; the other
looked as if it might have been Cleopatra's asp, with its body turned to
gold and its, eyes to emeralds.
Her father--for Dudley Venner was her father--looked like a man of
culture and breeding, but melancholy and with a distracted air, as one
whose life had met some fatal cross or blight. He saluted hardly anybody
except his entertainers and the Doctor. One would have said, to look at
him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural enough to
think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak of the dark
girl's which brought him there, for he had the air of a shy and
sad-hearted recluse.
It was hard to say what could have brought Elsie Venner to the party.
Hardly anybody seemed to know her, and she seemed not at all disposed to
make acquaintances. Here and there was one of the older girls from the
Institute, but she appeared to have nothing in common with them. Even in
the schoolroom, it may be remembered, she sat apart by her own choice,
and now in the midst of the crowd she made a circle of isolation round
herself. Drawing her arm out of her father's, she stood against the
wall, and looked, with a strange, cold glitter in her eyes, at the crowd
which moved and babbled before her.
The old Doctor came up to her by and by.
"Well, Elsie, I am quite surprised to find you here. Do tell me how you
happened to do such a good-natured thing as to let us see you at such a
great party."
"It's been dull at the mansion-house," she said, "and I wanted to get out
of it. It's too lonely there,--there's nobody to hate since Dick's
gone."
The Doctor laughed good-naturedly, as if this were an amusing bit of
pleasantry,--but he lifted his head and dropped his eyes a little, so as
to see her through his spectacles. She narrowed her lids slightly, as
one often sees a sleepy cat narrow hers,--somewhat as you may remember
our famous Margaret used to, if you remember her at all,--so that her
eyes looked very small, but bright as the diamonds on her breast. The
old Doctor felt very oddly as she looked at him; be did not like the
feeling, so he dropped his head and lifted his eyes and looked at her
over his spectacles again.
"And how have you all been at the mansion house?" said the Doctor.
"Oh, well enough. But Dick's gone, and there's nobody left but Dudley
and I and the people. I'm tired of it. What kills anybody quickest,
Doctor?" Then, in a whisper, "I ran away again the other day, you know."
"Where did you go?" The Doctor spoke in a low, serious tone.
"Oh, to the old place. Here, I brought this for you."
The Doctor started as she handed him a flower of the Atragene Americana,
for he knew that there was only one spot where it grew, and that not one
where any rash foot, least of all a thin-shod woman's foot, should
venture.
"How long were you gone?" said the Doctor.
"Only one night. You should have heard the horns blowing and the guns
firing. Dudley was frightened out of his wits. Old Sophy told him she'd
had a dream, and that I should be found in Dead-Man's Hollow, with a
great rock lying on me. They hunted all over it, but they did n't find
me,--I was farther up."
Doctor Kittredge looked cloudy and worried while she was speaking, but
forced a pleasant professional smile, as he said cheerily, and as if
wishing to change the subject,
"Have a good dance this evening, Elsie. The fiddlers are tuning up.
Where 's the young master? has he come yet? or is he going to be late,
with the other great folks?"
The girl turned away without answering, and looked toward the door.
The "great folks," meaning the mansion-house gentry, were just beginning
to come; Dudley Venner and his daughter had been the first of them.
Judge Thornton, white-headed, fresh-faced, as good at sixty as he was at
forty, with a youngish second wife, and one noble daughter, Arabella,
who, they said, knew as much law as her father, a stately, Portia like
girl, fit for a premier's wife, not like to find her match even in the
great cities she sometimes visited; the Trecothicks, the family of a
merchant, (in the larger sense,) who, having made himself rich enough by
the time he had reached middle life, threw down his ledger as Sylla did
his dagger, and retired to make a little paradise around him in one of
the stateliest residences of the town, a family inheritance; the
Vaughans, an old Rockland race, descended from its first settlers,
Toryish in tendency in Revolutionary times, and barely escaping
confiscation or worse; the Dunhams, a new family, dating its gentility
only as far back as the Honorable Washington Dunham, M. C., but turning
out a clever boy or two that went to college; and some showy girls with
white necks and fat arms who had picked up professional husbands: these
were the principal mansion-house people. All of them had made it a point
to come; and as each of them entered, it seemed to Colonel and Mrs.
Sprowle that the lamps burned up with a more cheerful light, and that the
fiddles which sounded from the uncarpeted room were all half a tone
higher and half a beat quicker.
Mr. Bernard came in later than any of them; he had been busy with his new
duties. He looked well and that is saying a good deal; for nothing but a
gentleman is endurable in full dress. Hair that masses well, a head set
on with an air, a neckerchief tied cleverly by an easy, practised hand,
close-fitting gloves, feet well shaped and well covered,--these
advantages can make us forgive the odious sable broadcloth suit, which
appears to have been adopted by society on the same principle that
condemned all the Venetian gondolas to perpetual and uniform blackness.
Mr. Bernard, introduced by Mr. Geordie, made his bow to the Colonel and
his lady and to Miss Matilda, from whom he got a particularly gracious
curtsy, and then began looking about him for acquaintances. He found two
or three faces he knew,--many more strangers. There was Silas
Peckham,--there was no mistaking him; there was the inelastic amplitude
of Mrs. Peckham; few of the Apollinean girls, of course, they not being
recognized members of society,--but there is one with the flame in her
cheeks and the fire in her eyes, the girl of vigorous tints and emphatic
outlines, whom we saw entering the schoolroom the other day. Old Judge
Thornton has his eyes on her, and the Colonel steals a look every now and
then at the red brooch which lifts itself so superbly into the light, as
if he thought it a wonderfully becoming ornament. Mr. Bernard himself
was not displeased with the general effect of the rich-blooded
schoolgirl, as she stood under the bright lamps, fanning herself in the
warm, languid air, fixed in a kind of passionate surprise at the new life
which seemed to be flowering out in her consciousness. Perhaps he looked
at her somewhat steadily, as some others had done; at any rate, she
seemed to feel that she was looked at, as people often do, and, turning
her eyes suddenly on him, caught his own on her face, gave him a
half-bashful smile, and threw in a blush involuntarily which made it more
charming.
"What can I do better," he said to himself, "than have a dance with Rosa
Milburn?" So he carried his handsome pupil into the next room and took
his place with her in a cotillon. Whether the breath of the Goddess of
Love could intoxicate like the cup of Circe,--whether a woman is ever
phosphorescent with the luminous vapor of life that she exhales,--these
and other questions which relate to occult influences exercised by
certain women we will not now discuss. It is enough that Mr. Bernard was
sensible of a strange fascination, not wholly new to him, nor
unprecedented in the history of human experience, but always a revelation
when it comes over us for the first or the hundredth time, so pale is the
most recent memory by the side of the passing moment with the flush of
any new-born passion on its cheek. Remember that Nature makes every man
love all women, and trusts the trivial matter of special choice to the
commonest accident.
If Mr. Bernard had had nothing to distract his attention, he might have
thought too much about his handsome partner, and then gone home and
dreamed about her, which is always dangerous, and waked up thinking of
her still, and then begun to be deeply interested in her studies, and so
on, through the whole syllogism which ends in Nature's supreme quod erat
demonstrandum. What was there to distract him or disturb him? He did
not know,--but there was something. This sumptuous creature, this Eve
just within the gate of an untried Paradise, untutored in the ways of the
world, but on tiptoe to reach the fruit of the tree of knowledge,--alive
to the moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitating with voices and
music, as the flower of some dioecious plant which has grown in a lone
corner and suddenly unfolding its corolla on some hot-breathing June
evening, feels that the air is perfumed with strange odors and loaded
with golden dust wafted from those other blossoms with which its double
life is shared,--this almost over-womanized woman might well have
bewitched him, but that he had a vague sense of a counter-charm. It was,
perhaps, only the same consciousness that some one was looking at him
which he himself had just given occasion to in his partner. Presently, in
one of the turns of the dance, he felt his eyes drawn to a figure he had
not distinctly recognized, though he had dimly felt its presence, and saw
that Elsie Venner was looking at him as if she saw nothing else but him.
He was not a nervous person, like the poor lady-teacher, yet the glitter
of the diamond eyes affected him strangely. It seemed to disenchant the
air, so full a moment before of strange attractions. He became silent,
and dreamy, as it were. The round-limbed beauty at his side crushed her
gauzy draperies against him, as they trod the figure of the dance
together, but it was no more to him than if an old nurse had laid her
hand on his sleeve. The young girl chafed at his seeming neglect, and
her imperious blood mounted into her cheeks; but he appeared unconscious
of it.
"There is one of our young ladies I must speak to," he said,--and was
just leaving his partner's side.
"Four hands all round?" shouted the first violin,--and Mr. Bernard found
himself seized and whirled in a circle out of which he could not escape,
and then forced to "cross over," and then to "dozy do," as the maestro
had it,--and when, on getting back to his place, he looked for Elsie
Venner, she was gone.
The dancing went on briskly. Some of the old folks looked on, others
conversed in groups and pairs, and so the evening wore along, until a
little after ten o'clock. About this time there was noticed an increased
bustle in the passages, with a considerable opening and shutting of
doors. Presently it began to be whispered about that they were going to
have supper. Many, who had never been to any large party before, held
their breath for a moment at this announcement. It was rather with a
tremulous interest than with open hilarity that the rumor was generally
received.
One point the Colonel had entirely forgotten to settle. It was a point
involving not merely propriety, but perhaps principle also, or at least
the good report of the house,--and he had never thought to arrange it.
He took Judge Thornton aside and whispered the important question to
him,--in his distress of mind, mistaking pockets and taking out his
bandanna instead of his white handkerchief to wipe his forehead.
"Judge," he said, "do you think, that, before we commence refreshing
ourselves at the tables, it would be the proper thing to--crave a--to
request Deacon Soper or some other elderly person--to ask a blessing?"
The Judge looked as grave as if he were about giving the opinion of the
Court in the great India-rubber case.
"On the whole," he answered, after a pause, "I should think it might,
perhaps, be dispensed with on this occasion. Young folks are noisy, and
it is awkward to have talking and laughing going on while blessing is
being asked. Unless a clergyman is present and makes a point of it, I
think it will hardly be expected."
The Colonel was infinitely relieved. "Judge, will you take Mrs. Sprowle
in to supper?" And the Colonel returned the compliment by offering his
arm to Mrs. Judge Thornton.
The door of the supper-room was now open, and the company, following the
lead of the host and hostess, began to stream into it, until it was
pretty well filled.
There was an awful kind of pause. Many were beginning to drop their
heads and shut their eyes, in anticipation of the usual petition before a
meal; some expected the music to strike up,--others, that an oration
would now be delivered by the Colonel.
"Make yourselves at home, ladies and gentlemen," said the Colonel; "good
things were made to eat, and you're welcome to all you see before you."
So saying he attacked a huge turkey which stood at the head of the table;
and his example being followed first by the bold, then by the doubtful,
and lastly by the timid, the clatter soon made the circuit of the tables.
Some were shocked, however, as the Colonel had feared they would be, at
the want of the customary invocation. Widow Leech, a kind of relation,
who had to be invited, and who came with her old, back-country-looking
string of gold beads round her neck, seemed to feel very serious about
it.
"If she'd ha' known that folks would begrutch cravin' a blessin' over
sech a heap o' provisions, she'd rather ha' staid t' home. It was a bad
sign, when folks was n't grateful for the baounties of Providence."
The elder Miss Spinney, to whom she made this remark, assented to it, at
the same time ogling a piece of frosted cake, which she presently
appropriated with great refinement of manner,--taking it between her
thumb and forefinger, keeping the others well spread and the little
finger in extreme divergence, with a graceful undulation of the neck, and
a queer little sound in her throat, as of an M that wanted to get out and
perished in the attempt.
The tables now presented an animated spectacle. Young fellows of the
more dashing sort, with high stand-up collars and voluminous bows to
their neckerchiefs, distinguished themselves by cutting up fowls and
offering portions thereof to the buxom girls these knowing ones had
commonly selected.
"A bit of the wing, Roxy, or of the--under limb?"
The first laugh broke out at this, but it was premature, a sporadic
laugh, as Dr. Kittredge would have said, which did not become epidemic.
People were very solemn as yet, many of them being new to such splendid
scenes, and crushed, as it were, in the presence of so much crockery and
so many silver spoons, and such a variety of unusual viands and
beverages. When the laugh rose around Roxy and her saucy beau, several
looked in that direction with an anxious expression, as if something had
happened, a lady fainted, for instance, or a couple of lively fellows
come to high words.
"Young folks will be young folks," said Deacon Soper. "No harm done.
Least said soonest mended."
"Have some of these shell-oysters?" said the Colonel to Mrs. Trecothick.
A delicate emphasis on the word shell implied that the Colonel knew what
was what. To the New England inland native, beyond the reach of the east
winds, the oyster unconditioned, the oyster absolute, without a
qualifying adjective, is the pickled oyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew
very well that an oyster long out of his shell (as is apt to be the case
with the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his sprightliness,
replied, with the pleasantest smile in the world, that the chicken she
had been helped to was too delicate to be given up even for the greater
rarity. But the word "shell-oysters" had been overheard; and there was a
perceptible crowding movement towards their newly discovered habitat, a
large soup-tureen.
Silas Peckham had meantime fallen upon another locality of these recent
mollusks. He said nothing, but helped himself freely, and made a sign to
Mrs. Peckham.
"Lorindy," he whispered, "shell-oysters"
And ladled them out to her largely, without betraying any emotion, just
as if they had been the natural inland or pickled article.
After the more solid portion of the banquet had been duly honored, the
cakes and sweet preparations of various kinds began to get their share of
attention. There were great cakes and little cakes, cakes with raisins
in them, cakes with currants, and cakes without either; there were brown
cakes and yellow cakes, frosted cakes, glazed cakes, hearts and rounds,
and jumbles, which playful youth slip over the forefinger before spoiling
their annular outline. There were mounds of blo'monje, of the arrowroot
variety,--that being undistinguishable from such as is made with Russia
isinglass. There were jellies, which had been shaking, all the time the
young folks were dancing in the next room, as if they were balancing to
partners. There were built-up fabrics, called Charlottes, caky
externally, pulpy within; there were also marangs, and likewise
custards,--some of the indolent-fluid sort, others firm, in which every
stroke of the teaspoon left a smooth, conchoidal surface like the
fracture of chalcedony, with here and there a little eye like what one
sees in cheeses. Nor was that most wonderful object of domestic art
called trifle wanting, with its charming confusion of cream and cake and
almonds and jam and jelly and wine and cinnamon and froth; nor yet the
marvellous floating-island,--name suggestive of all that is romantic in
the imaginations of youthful palates.
"It must have cost you a sight of work, to say nothin' of money, to get
all this beautiful confectionery made for the party," said Mrs. Crane to
Mrs. Sprowle.
"Well, it cost some consid'able labor, no doubt," said Mrs. Sprowle.
"Matilda and our girls and I made 'most all the cake with our own hands,
and we all feel some tired; but if folks get what suits 'em, we don't
begrudge the time nor the work. But I do feel thirsty," said the poor
lady, "and I think a glass of srub would do my throat good; it's dreadful
dry. Mr. Peckham, would you be so polite as to pass me a glass of srub?"
Silas Peckham bowed with great alacrity, and took from the table a small
glass cup, containing a fluid reddish in hue and subacid in taste. This
was srub, a beverage in local repute, of questionable nature, but
suspected of owing its tint and sharpness to some kind of syrup derived
from the maroon-colored fruit of the sumac. There were similar small
cups on the table filled with lemonade, and here and there a decanter of
Madeira wine, of the Marsala kind, which some prefer to, and many more
cannot distinguish from, that which comes from the Atlantic island.
"Take a glass of wine, Judge," said, the Colonel; "here is an article
that I rather think 'll suit you."
The Judge knew something of wines, and could tell all the famous old
Madeiras from each other, "Eclipse," "Juno," the almost fabulously scarce
and precious "White-top," and the rest. He struck the nativity of the
Mediterranean Madeira before it had fairly moistened his lip.
"A sound wine, Colonel, and I should think of a genuine vintage. Your
very good health."
"Deacon Soper," said the Colonel, "here is some Madary Judge Thornton
recommends. Let me fill you a glass of it."
The Deacon's eyes glistened. He was one of those consistent Christians
who stick firmly by the first miracle and Paul's advice to Timothy.
"A little good wine won't hurt anybody," said the Deacon. "Plenty,
--plenty,--plenty. There!" He had not withdrawn his glass, while the
Colonel was pouring, for fear it should spill, and now it was running
over.
--It is very odd how all a man's philosophy and theology are at the mercy
of a few drops of a fluid which the chemists say consists of nothing but
C4, O2, H6. The Deacon's theology fell off several points towards
latitudinarianism in the course of the next ten minutes. He had a deep
inward sense that everything was as it should be, human nature included.
The little accidents of humanity, known collectively to moralists as sin,
looked very venial to his growing sense of universal brotherhood and
benevolence.
"It will all come right," the Deacon said to himself,--"I feel a joyful
conviction that everything is for the best. I am favored with a blessed
peace of mind, and a very precious season of good feelin' toward my
fellow-creturs."
A lusty young fellow happened to make a quick step backward just at that
instant, and put his heel, with his weight on top of it, upon the
Deacon's toes.
"Aigh! What the d' d' didos are y' abaout with them great huffs o'
yourn?" said the Deacon, with an expression upon his features not exactly
that of peace and good-will to men. The lusty young fellow apologized;
but the Deacon's face did not come right, and his theology backed round
several points in the direction of total depravity.
Some of the dashing young men in stand-up collars and extensive neckties,
encouraged by Mr. Geordie, made quite free with the "Ma,dary," and even
induced some of the more stylish girls--not of the mansion-house set, but
of the tip-top two-story families--to taste a little. Most of these
young ladies made faces at it, and declared it was "perfectly horrid,"
with that aspect of veracity peculiar to their age and sex.
About this time a movement was made on the part of some of the
mansion-house people to leave the supper-table. Miss Jane Trecothick had
quietly hinted to her mother that she had had enough of it. Miss
Arabella Thornton had whispered to her father that he had better adjourn
this court to the next room. There were signs of migration,--a
loosening of people in their places,--a looking about for arms to hitch
on to.
"Stop!" said the Colonel. "There's something coming yet.--Ice-cream!"
The great folks saw that the play was not over yet, and that it was only
polite to stay and see it out. The word "ice-cream" was no sooner
whispered than it passed from one to another all down the tables. The
effect was what might have been anticipated. Many of the guests had
never seen this celebrated product of human skill, and to all the
two-story population of Rockland it was the last expression of the art of
pleasing and astonishing the human palate. Its appearance had been
deferred for several reasons: first, because everybody would have
attacked it, if it had come in with the other luxuries; secondly, because
undue apprehensions were entertained (owing to want of experience) of its
tendency to deliquesce and resolve itself with alarming rapidity into
puddles of creamy fluid; and, thirdly, because the surprise would make a
grand climax to finish off the banquet.
There is something so audacious in the conception of ice-cream, that it
is not strange that a population undebauched by the luxury of great
cities looks upon it with a kind of awe and speaks of it with a certain
emotion. This defiance of the seasons, forcing Nature to do her work of
congelation in the face of her sultriest noon, might well inspire a timid
mind with fear lest human art were revolting against the Higher Powers,
and raise the same scruples which resisted the use of ether and
chloroform in certain contingencies. Whatever may be the cause, it is
well known that the announcement at any private rural entertainment that
there is to be ice-cream produces an immediate and profound impression.
It may be remarked, as aiding this impression, that exaggerated ideas are
entertained as to the dangerous effects this congealed food may produce
on persons not in the most robust health.
There was silence as the pyramids of ice were placed on the table,
everybody looking on in admiration. The Colonel took a knife and
assailed the one at the head of the table. When he tried to cut off a
slice, it didn't seem to understand it, however, and only tipped, as if
it wanted to upset. The Colonel attacked it on the other side, and it
tipped just as badly the other way. It was awkward for the Colonel.
"Permit me," said the Judge,--and he took the knife and struck a sharp
slanting stroke which sliced off a piece just of the right size, and
offered it to Mrs. Sprowle. This act of dexterity was much admired by
the company.
The tables were all alive again.
"Lorindy, here's a plate of ice-cream," said Silas Peckham.
"Come, Mahaly," said a fresh-looking young-fellow with a saucerful in
each hand, "here's your ice-cream;--let's go in the corner and have a
celebration, us two." And the old green de-lame, with the young curves
under it to make it sit well, moved off as pleased apparently as if it
had been silk velvet with thousand-dollar laces over it.
"Oh, now, Miss Green! do you think it's safe to put that cold stuff into
your stomick?" said the Widow Leech to a young married lady, who, finding
the air rather warm, thought a little ice would cool her down very
nicely. "It's jest like eatin' snowballs. You don't look very rugged;
and I should be dreadful afeard, if I was you."
"Carrie," said old Dr. Kittredge, who had overheard this,--"how well
you're looking this evening! But you must be tired and heated;--sit down
here, and let me give you a good slice of ice-cream. How you young folks
do grow up, to be sure! I don't feel quite certain whether it's you or
your older sister, but I know it 's somebody I call Carrie, and that I
've known ever since."
A sound something between a howl and an oath startled the company and
broke off the Doctor's sentence. Everybody's eyes turned in the
direction from which it came. A group instantly gathered round the
person who had uttered it, who was no other than Deacon Soper.
"He's chokin'! he's chokin'!" was the first exclamation,--"slap him on
the back!"
Several heavy fists beat such a tattoo on his spine that the Deacon felt
as if at least one of his vertebrae would come up.
"He's black in the face," said Widow Leech, "he 's swallered somethin'
the wrong way. Where's the Doctor?--let the Doctor get to him, can't
ye?"
"If you will move, my good lady, perhaps I can," said Doctor Kittredge,
in a calm tone of voice. "He's not choking, my friends," the Doctor
added immediately, when he got sight of him.
"It 's apoplexy,--I told you so,--don't you see how red he is in the
face?" said old Mrs. Peake, a famous woman for "nussin" sick folks,
--determined to be a little ahead of the Doctor.
"It's not apoplexy," said Dr. Kittredge.
"What is it, Doctor? what is it? Will he die? Is he dead?--Here's his
poor wife, the Widow Soper that is to be, if she a'n't a'ready"
"Do be quiet, my good woman," said Dr. Kittredge.--"Nothing serious, I
think, Mrs. Soper. Deacon!"
The sudden attack of Deacon Soper had begun with the extraordinary sound
mentioned above. His features had immediately assumed an expression of
intense pain, his eyes staring wildly, and, clapping his hands to his
face, he had rocked his head backward and forward in speechless agony.
At the Doctor's sharp appeal the Deacon lifted his head.
"It's all right," said the Doctor, as soon as he saw his face. "The
Deacon had a smart attack of neuralgic pain. That 's all. Very severe,
but not at all dangerous."
The Doctor kept his countenance, but his diaphragm was shaking the change
in iris waistcoat-pockets with subterranean laughter. He had looked
through his spectacles and seen at once what had happened. The Deacon,
not being in the habit of taking his nourishment in the congealed state,
had treated the ice-cream as a pudding of a rare species, and, to make
sure of doing himself justice in its distribution, had taken a large
mouthful of it without the least precaution. The consequence was a
sensation as if a dentist were killing the nerves of twenty-five teeth at
once with hot irons, or cold ones, which would hurt rather worse.
The Deacon swallowed something with a spasmodic effort, and recovered
pretty soon and received the congratulations of his friends. There were
different versions of the expressions he had used at the onset of his
complaint,--some of the reported exclamations involving a breach of
propriety, to say the least,--but it was agreed that a man in an attack
of neuralgy wasn't to be judged of by the rules that applied to other
folks.
The company soon after this retired from the supper-room. The
mansion-house gentry took their leave, and the two-story people soon
followed. Mr. Bernard had stayed an hour or two, and left soon after he
found that Elsie Venner and her father had disappeared. As he passed by
the dormitory of the Institute, he saw a light glimmering from one of its
upper rooms, where the lady-teacher was still waking. His heart ached,
when he remembered, that, through all these hours of gayety, or what was
meant for it, the patient girl had been at work in her little chamber;
and he looked up at the silent stars, as if to see that they were
watching over her. The planet Mars was burning like a red coal; the
northern constellation was slanting downward about its central point of
flame; and while he looked, a falling star slid from the zenith and was
lost.
He reached his chamber and was soon dreaming over the Event of the
Season.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MORNING AFTER.
Colonel Sprowle's family arose late the next morning. The fatigues and
excitements of the evening and the preparation for it were followed by a
natural collapse, of which somnolence was a leading symptom. The sun
shone into the window at a pretty well opened angle when the Colonel
first found himself sufficiently awake to address his yet slumbering
spouse.
"Sally!" said the Colonel, in a voice that was a little husky,--for he
had finished off the evening with an extra glass or two of "Madary," and
had a somewhat rusty and headachy sense of renewed existence, on greeting
the rather advanced dawn,--"Sally!"
"Take care o' them custard-cups! There they go!"
Poor Mrs. Sprowle was fighting the party over in her dream; and as the
visionary custard-cups crashed down through one lobe of her brain into
another, she gave a start as if an inch of lightning from a quart Leyden
jar had jumped into one of her knuckles with its sudden and lively poonk!
"Sally!" said the Colonel,--"wake up, wake up. What 'r' y' dreamin'
abaout?"
Mrs. Sprowle raised herself, by a sort of spasm, sur son seant, as they
say in France,--up on end, as we have it in New England. She looked
first to the left, then to the right, then straight before her,
apparently without seeing anything, and at last slowly settled down, with
her two eyes, blank of any particular meaning, directed upon the Colonel.
"What time is 't?" she said.
"Ten o'clock. What y' been dreamin' abaout? Y' giv a jump like a
hopper-grass. Wake up, wake UP! Th' party 's over, and y' been asleep
all the mornin'. The party's over, I tell ye! Wake up!"
"Over!" said Mrs. Sprowle, who began to define her position at
last,--"over! I should think 't was time 't was over! It's lasted a
hundud year. I've been workin' for that party longer 'n Methuselah's
lifetime, sence I been asleep. The pies would n' bake, and the blo'monje
would n' set, and the ice-cream would n' freeze, and all the folks kep'
comin' 'n' comin' 'n' comin',--everybody I ever knew in all my
life,--some of 'em 's been dead this twenty year 'n' more,--'n' nothin'
for 'em to eat nor drink. The fire would n' burn to cook anything, all
we could do. We blowed with the belluses, 'n' we stuffed in paper 'n'
pitch-pine kindlin's, but nothin' could make that fire burn; 'n' all the
time the folks kep' comin', as if they'd never stop,--'n' nothin' for 'em
but empty dishes, 'n' all the borrowed chaney slippin' round on the
waiters 'n' chippin' 'n' crackin',--I would n' go through what I been
through t'-night for all th' money in th' Bank,--I do believe it's harder
t' have a party than t'"--
Mrs. Sprowle stated the case strongly.
The Colonel said he did n't know how that might be. She was a better
judge than he was. It was bother enough, anyhow, and he was glad that it
was over. After this, the worthy pair commenced preparations for
rejoining the waking world, and in due time proceeded downstairs.
Everybody was late that morning, and nothing had got put to rights. The
house looked as if a small army had been quartered in it over night. The
tables were of course in huge disorder, after the protracted assault they
had undergone. There had been a great battle evidently, and it had gone
against the provisions. Some points had been stormed, and all their
defences annihilated, but here and there were centres of resistance which
had held out against all attacks,--large rounds of beef, and solid
loaves of cake, against which the inexperienced had wasted their energies
in the enthusiasm of youth or uninformed maturity, while the
longer-headed guests were making discoveries of "shell-oysters" and
"patridges" and similar delicacies.
The breakfast was naturally of a somewhat fragmentary character. A
chicken that had lost his legs in the service of the preceding campaign
was once more put on duty. A great ham stuck with cloves, as Saint
Sebastian was with arrows, was again offered for martyrdom. It would have
been a pleasant sight for a medical man of a speculative turn to have
seen the prospect before the Colonel's family of the next week's
breakfasts, dinners, and suppers. The trail that one of these great
rural parties leaves after it is one of its most formidable
considerations. Every door-handle in the house is suggestive of
sweetmeats for the next week, at least. The most unnatural articles of
diet displace the frugal but nutritious food of unconvulsed periods of
existence. If there is a walking infant about the house, it will
certainly have a more or less fatal fit from overmuch of some
indigestible delicacy. Before the week is out, everybody will be tired
to death of sugary forms of nourishment and long to see the last of the
remnants of the festival.
The family had not yet arrived at this condition. On the contrary, the
first inspection of the tables suggested the prospect of days of
unstinted luxury; and the younger portion of the household, especially,
were in a state of great excitement as the account of stock was taken
with reference to future internal investments. Some curious facts came
to light during these researches.
"Where's all the oranges gone to?" said Mrs. Sprowle. "I expected
there'd be ever so many of 'em left. I did n't see many of the folks
eatin' oranges. Where's the skins of 'em? There ought to be six dozen
orange-skins round on the plates, and there a'n't one dozen. And all the
small cakes, too, and all the sugar things that was stuck on the big
cakes. Has anybody counted the spoons? Some of 'em got swallered,
perhaps. I hope they was plated ones, if they did!"
The failure of the morning's orange-crop and the deficit in other
expected residual delicacies were not very difficult to account for. In
many of the two-story Rockland families, and in those favored households
of the neighboring villages whose members had been invited to the great
party, there was a very general excitement among the younger people on
the morning after the great event. "Did y' bring home somethin' from the
party? What is it? What is it? Is it frut-cake? Is it nuts and
oranges and apples? Give me some! Give me some!" Such a concert of
treble voices uttering accents like these had not been heard since the
great Temperance Festival with the celebrated "colation" in the open air
under the trees of the Parnassian Grove,--as the place was christened by
the young ladies of the Institute. The cry of the children was not in
vain. From the pockets of demure fathers, from the bags of sharp-eyed
spinsters, from the folded handkerchiefs of light-fingered sisters, from
the tall hats of sly-winking brothers, there was a resurrection of the
missing oranges and cakes and sugar-things in many a rejoicing
family-circle, enough to astonish the most hardened "caterer" that ever
contracted to feed a thousand people under canvas.
The tender recollections of those dear little ones whom extreme youth or
other pressing considerations detain from scenes of festivity--a trait of
affection by no means uncommon among our thoughtful people--dignifies
those social meetings where it is manifested, and sheds a ray of sunshine
on our common nature. It is "an oasis in the desert,"--to use the
striking expression of the last year's "Valedictorian" of the Apollinean
Institute. In the midst of so much that is purely selfish, it is
delightful to meet such disinterested care for others. When a large
family of children are expecting a parent's return from an entertainment,
it will often require great exertions on his part to freight himself so
as to meet their reasonable expectations. A few rules are worth
remembering by all who attend anniversary dinners in Faneuil Hall or
elsewhere. Thus: Lobsters' claws are always acceptable to children of
all ages. Oranges and apples are to be taken one at a time, until the
coat-pockets begin to become inconveniently heavy. Cakes are injured by
sitting upon them; it is, therefore, well to carry a stout tin box of a
size to hold as many pieces as there are children in the domestic circle.
A very pleasant amusement, at the close of one of these banquets, is
grabbing for the flowers with which the table is embellished. These will
please the ladies at home very greatly, and, if the children are at the
same time abundantly supplied with fruits, nuts, cakes, and any little
ornamental articles of confectionery which are of a nature to be
unostentatiously removed, the kind-hearted parent will make a whole
household happy, without any additional expense beyond the outlay for his
ticket.
There were fragmentary delicacies enough left, of one kind and another,
at any rate, to make all the Colonel's family uncomfortable for the next
week. It bid fair to take as long to get rid of the remains of the great
party as it had taken to make ready for it.
In the mean time Mr. Bernard had been dreaming, as young men dream, of
gliding shapes with bright eyes and burning cheeks, strangely blended
with red planets and hissing meteors, and, shining over all, the white,
un-wandering star of the North, girt with its tethered constellations.
After breakfast he walked into the parlor, where he found Miss Darley.
She was alone, and, holding a school-book in her hand, was at work with
one of the morning's lessons. She hardly noticed him as he entered,
being very busy with her book,--and he paused a moment before speaking,
and looked at her with a kind of reverence. It would not have been
strictly true to call her beautiful. For years,--since her earliest
womanhood,--those slender hands had taken the bread which repaid the toil
of heart and brain from the coarse palms which offered it in the world's
rude market. It was not for herself alone that she had bartered away the
life of her youth, that she had breathed the hot air of schoolrooms, that
she had forced her intelligence to posture before her will, as the
exigencies of her place required,--waking to mental labor,--sleeping to
dream of problems,--rolling up the stone of education for an endless
twelvemonth's term, to find it at the bottom of the hill again when
another year called her to its renewed duties, schooling her temper in
unending inward and outward conflicts, until neither dulness nor
obstinacy nor ingratitude nor insolence could reach her serene
self-possession. Not for herself alone. Poorly as her prodigal labors
were repaid in proportion to the waste of life they cost, her value was
too well established to leave her without what, under other
circumstances, would have been a more than sufficient compensation. But
there were others who looked to her in their need, and so the modest
fountain which might have been filled to its brim was continually drained
through silent-flowing, hidden sluices.
Out of such a life, inherited from a race which had lived in conditions
not unlike her own, beauty, in the common sense of the term, could hardly
find leisure to develop and shape itself. For it must be remembered,
that symmetry and elegance of features and figure, like perfectly formed
crystals in the mineral world, are reached only by insuring a certain
necessary repose to individuals and to generations. Human beauty is an
agricultural product in the country, growing up in men and women as in
corn and cattle, where the soil is good. It is a luxury almost
monopolized by the rich in cities, bred under glass like their forced
pine-apples and peaches. Both in city and country, the evolution of the
physical harmonies which make music to our eyes requires a combination of
favorable circumstances, of which alternations of unburdened tranquillity
with intervals of varied excitement of mind and body are among the most
important. Where sufficient excitement is wanting, as often happens in
the country, the features, however rich in red and white, get heavy, and
the movements sluggish; where excitement is furnished in excess, as is
frequently the case in cities, the contours and colors are impoverished,
and the nerves begin to make their existence known to the consciousness,
as the face very soon informs us.
Helen Darley could not, in the nature of things, have possessed the kind
of beauty which pleases the common taste. Her eye was calm, sad-looking,
her features very still, except when her pleasant smile changed them for
a moment, all her outlines were delicate, her voice was very gentle, but
somewhat subdued by years of thoughtful labor, and on her smooth forehead
one little hinted line whispered already that Care was beginning to mark
the trace which Time sooner or later would make a furrow. She could not
be a beauty; if she had been, it would have been much harder for many
persons to be interested in her. For, although in the abstract we all
love beauty, and although, if we were sent naked souls into some
ultramundane warehouse of soulless bodies and told to select one to our
liking, we should each choose a handsome one, and never think of the
consequences,--it is quite certain that beauty carries an atmosphere of
repulsion as well as of attraction with it, alike in both sexes. We may
be well assured that there are many persons who no more think of
specializing their love of the other sex upon one endowed with signal
beauty, than they think of wanting great diamonds or thousand-dollar
horses. No man or woman can appropriate beauty without paying for
it,--in endowments, in fortune, in position, in self-surrender, or other
valuable stock; and there are a great many who are too poor, too
ordinary, too humble, too busy, too proud, to pay any of these prices for
it. So the unbeautiful get many more lovers than the beauties; only, as
there are more of them, their lovers are spread thinner and do not make
so much show.
The young master stood looking at Helen Darley with a kind of tender
admiration. She was such a picture of the martyr by the slow social
combustive process, that it almost seemed to him he could see a pale
lambent nimbus round her head.
"I did not see you at the great party last evening," he said, presently.
She looked up and answered, "No. I have not much taste for such large
companies. Besides, I do not feel as if my time belonged to me after it
has been paid for. There is always something to do, some lesson or
exercise,--and it so happened, I was very busy last night with the new
problems in geometry. I hope you had a good time."
"Very. Two or three of our girls were there. Rosa Milburn. What a
beauty she is! I wonder what she feeds on! Wine and musk and chloroform
and coals of fire, I believe; I didn't think there was such color and
flavor in a woman outside the tropics."
Miss Darley smiled rather faintly; the imagery was not just to her taste:
femineity often finds it very hard to accept the fact of muliebrity.
"Was"--?
She stopped short; but her question had asked itself.
"Elsie there? She was, for an hour or so. She looked frightfully
handsome. I meant to have spoken to her, but she slipped away before I
knew it."
"I thought she meant to go to the party," said Miss Darley. "Did she
look at you?"
"She did. Why?"
"And you did not speak to her?"
"No. I should have spoken to her, but she was gone when I looked for
her. A strange creature! Is n't there an odd sort of fascination about
her? You have not explained all the mystery about the girl. What does
she come to this school for? She seems to do pretty much as she likes
about studying."
Miss Darley answered in very low tones. "It was a fancy of hers to come,
and they let her have her way. I don't know what there is about her,
except that she seems to take my life out of me when she looks at me. I
don't like to ask other people about our girls. She says very little to
anybody, and studies, or makes believe to study, almost what she likes.
I don't know what she is," (Miss Darley laid her hand, trembling, on the
young master's sleeve,) "but I can tell when she is in the room without
seeing or hearing her. Oh, Mr. Langdon, I am weak and nervous, and no
doubt foolish,--but--if there were women now, as in the days of our
Saviour, possessed of devils, I should think there was something not
human looking out of Elsie Venner's eyes!"
The poor girl's breast rose and fell tumultuously as she spoke, and her
voice labored, as if some obstruction were rising in her throat.
A scene might possibly have come of it, but the door opened. Mr. Silas
Peckham. Miss Darley got away as soon as she well could.
"Why did not Miss Darley go to the party last evening?" said Mr. Bernard.
"Well, the fact is," answered Mr. Silas Peckham, "Miss Darley, she's
pooty much took up with the school. She's an industris young.
woman,--yis, she is industris,--but perhaps she a'n't quite so spry a
worker as some. Maybe, considerin' she's paid for her time, she is n't
fur out o' the way in occoopyin' herself evenin's,--that--is, if so be
she a'n't smart enough to finish up all her work in the daytime.
Edoocation is the great business of the Institoot. Amoosements are
objec's of a secondary natur', accordin' to my v'oo." [The unspellable
pronunciation of this word is the touchstone of New England Brahminism.]
Mr. Bernard drew a deep breath, his thin nostrils dilating, as if the air
did not rush in fast enough to cool his blood, while Silas Peckham was
speaking. The Head of the Apollinean Institute delivered himself of
these judicious sentiments in that peculiar acid, penetrating tone,
thickened with a nasal twang, which not rarely becomes hereditary after
three or four generations raised upon east winds, salt fish, and large,
white-bellied, pickled cucumbers. He spoke deliberately, as if weighing
his words well, so that, during his few remarks, Mr. Bernard had time for
a mental accompaniment with variations, accented by certain bodily
changes, which escaped Mr. Peckham's observation. First there was a
feeling of disgust and shame at hearing Helen Darley spoken of like a
dumb working animal. That sent the blood up into his cheeks. Then the
slur upon her probable want of force--her incapacity, who made the
character of the school and left this man to pocket its profits--sent a
thrill of the old Wentworth fire through him, so that his muscles
hardened, his hands closed, and he took the measure of Mr. Silas Peckham,
to see if his head would strike the wall in case he went over backwards
all of a sudden. This would not do, of course, and so the thrill passed
off and the muscles softened again. Then came that state of tenderness
in the heart, overlying wrath in the stomach, in which the eyes grow
moist like a woman's, and there is also a great boiling-up of
objectionable terms out of the deep-water vocabulary, so that Prudence
and Propriety and all the other pious P's have to jump upon the lid of
speech to keep them from boiling over into fierce articulation. All this
was internal, chiefly, and of course not recognized by Mr. Silas Peckham.
The idea, that any full-grown, sensible man should have any other notion
than that of getting the most work for the least money out of his
assistants, had never suggested itself to him.
Mr. Bernard had gone through this paroxysm, and cooled down, in the
period while Mr. Peckham was uttering these words in his thin, shallow
whine, twanging up into the frontal sinuses. What was the use of losing
his temper and throwing away his place, and so, among the consequences
which would necessarily follow, leaving the poor lady-teacher without a
friend to stand by her ready to lay his hand on the grand-inquisitor
before the windlass of his rack had taken one turn too many?
"No doubt, Mr. Peckham," he said, in a grave, calm voice, "there is a
great deal of work to be done in the school; but perhaps we can
distribute the duties a little more evenly after a time. I shall look
over the girls' themes myself, after this week. Perhaps there will be
some other parts of her labor that I can take on myself. We can arrange
a new programme of studies and recitations."
"We can do that," said Mr. Silas Peckham. "But I don't propose mater'lly
alterin' Miss Darley's dooties. I don't think she works to hurt herself.
Some of the Trustees have proposed interdoosin' new branches of study,
and I expect you will be pooty much occoopied with the dooties that
belong to your place. On the Sahbath you will be able to attend divine
service three times, which is expected of our teachers. I shall continoo
myself to give Sahbath Scriptur' readin's to the young ladies. That is a
solemn dooty I can't make up my mind to commit to other people. My
teachers enjoy the Lord's day as a day of rest. In it they do no manner
of work, except in cases of necessity or mercy, such as fillin' out
diplomas, or when we git crowded jest at the end of a term, or when there
is an extry number of p'oopils, or other Providential call to dispense
with the ordinance."
Mr. Bernard had a fine glow in his cheeks by this time,--doubtless
kindled by the thought of the kind consideration Mr. Peckham showed for
his subordinates in allowing them the between meeting-time on Sundays
except for some special reason. But the morning was wearing away; so he
went to the schoolroom, taking leave very properly of his respected
principal, who soon took his hat and departed.
Mr. Peckham visited certain "stores" or shops, where he made inquiries
after various articles in the provision-line, and effected a purchase or
two. Two or three barrels of potatoes, which had sprouted in a promising
way, he secured at a bargain. A side of feminine beef was also obtained
at a low figure. He was entirely satisfied with a couple of barrels of
flour, which, being invoiced "slightly damaged," were to be had at a
reasonable price.
After this, Silas Peckham felt in good spirits. He had done a pretty
stroke of business. It came into his head whether he might not follow it
up with a still more brilliant speculation. So he turned his steps in
the direction of Colonel Sprowle's.
It was now eleven o'clock, and the battle-field of last evening was as we
left it. Mr. Peckham's visit was unexpected, perhaps not very well
timed, but the Colonel received him civilly.
"Beautifully lighted,--these rooms last night!" said Mr. Peckham.
"Winter-strained?"
The Colonel nodded.
"How much do you pay for your winter-strained?"
The Colonel told him the price.
"Very hahnsome supper,--very hahnsome. Nothin' ever seen like it in
Rockland. Must have been a great heap of things leftover."
The compliment was not ungrateful, and the Colonel acknowledged it by
smiling and saying, "I should think the' was a trifle? Come and look."
When Silas Peckham saw how many delicacies had survived the evening's
conflict, his commercial spirit rose at once to the point of a proposal.
"Colonel Sprowle," said he, "there's 'meat and cakes and pies and pickles
enough on that table to spread a hahnsome colation. If you'd like to
trade reasonable, I think perhaps I should be willin' to take 'em off
your hands. There's been a talk about our havin' a celebration in the
Parnassian Grove, and I think I could work in what your folks don't want
and make myself whole by chargin' a small sum for tickets. Broken meats,
of course, a'n't of the same valoo as fresh provisions; so I think you
might be willin' to trade reasonable."
Mr. Peckham paused and rested on his proposal. It would not, perhaps,
have been very extraordinary, if Colonel Sprowle had entertained the
proposition. There is no telling beforehand how such things will strike
people. It didn't happen to strike the Colonel favorably. He had a
little red-blooded manhood in him.
"Sell you them things to make a colation out of?" the Colonel replied.
"Walk up to that table, Mr. Peckham, and help yourself! Fill your
pockets; Mr. Peckham! Fetch a basket, and our hired folks shall fill it
full for ye! Send a cart, if y' like, 'n' carry off them leavin's to
make a celebration for your pupils with! Only let me tell ye this:--as
sure 's my name's Hezekiah Spraowle, you 'll be known through the taown
'n' through the caounty, from that day forrard, as the Principal of the
Broken-Victuals Institoot!"
Even provincial human-nature sometimes has a touch of sublimity about it.
Mr. Silas Peckham had gone a little deeper than he meant, and come upon
the "hard pan," as the well-diggers call it, of the Colonel's character,
before he thought of it. A militia-colonel standing on his sentiments is
not to be despised. That was shown pretty well in New England two or
three generations ago. There were a good many plain officers that talked
about their "rigiment" and their "caounty" who knew very well how to say
"Make ready!" "Take aim!" "Fire!"--in the face of a line of grenadiers
with bullets in their guns and bayonets on them. And though a rustic
uniform is not always unexceptionable in its cut and trimmings, yet there
was many an ill-made coat in those old times that was good enough to be
shown to the enemy's front rank too often to be left on the field with a
round hole in its left lapel that matched another going right through the
brave heart of the plain country captain or major or colonel who was
buried in it under the crimson turf.
Mr. Silas Peckham said little or nothing. His sensibilities were not
acute, but he perceived that he had made a miscalculation. He hoped that
there was no offence,--thought it might have been mutooally agreeable,
conclooded he would give up the idee of a colation, and backed himself
out as if unwilling to expose the less guarded aspect of his person to
the risk of accelerating impulses.
The Colonel shut the door,--cast his eye on the toe of his right boot, as
if it had had a strong temptation,--looked at his watch, then round the
room, and, going to a cupboard, swallowed a glass of deep-red brandy and
water to compose his feelings.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY. (With a Digression on "Hired Help.")
"ABEL! Slip Cassia into the new sulky, and fetch her round."
Abel was Dr. Kittredge's hired man. He was born in New Hampshire, a
queer sort of State, with fat streaks of soil and population where they
breed giants in mind and body, and lean streaks which export imperfectly
nourished young men with promising but neglected appetites, who may be
found in great numbers in all the large towns, or could be until of late
years, when they have been half driven out of their favorite
basement-stories by foreigners, and half coaxed away from them by
California. New Hampshire is in more than one sense the Switzerland of
New England. The "Granite State" being naturally enough deficient in
pudding-stone, its children are apt to wander southward in search of that
deposit,--in the unpetrified condition.
Abel Stebbins was a good specimen of that extraordinary hybrid or mule
between democracy and chrysocracy, a native-born New-England serving-man.
The Old World has nothing at all like him. He is at once an emperor and
a subordinate. In one hand he holds one five-millionth part (be the same
more or less) of the power that sways the destinies of the Great
Republic. His other hand is in your boot, which he is about to polish.
It is impossible to turn a fellow citizen whose vote may make his
master--say, rather, employer--Governor or President, or who may be one
or both himself, into a flunky. That article must be imported ready-made
from other centres of civilization. When a New Englander has lost his
self-respect as a citizen and as a man, he is demoralized, and cannot be
trusted with the money to pay for a dinner.
It may be supposed, therefore, that this fractional emperor, this
continent-shaper, finds his position awkward when he goes into service,
and that his employer is apt to find it still more embarrassing. It is
always under protest that the hired man does his duty. Every act of
service is subject to the drawback, "I am as good as you are." This is
so common, at least, as almost to be the rule, and partly accounts for
the rapid disappearance of the indigenous "domestic" from the basements
above mentioned. Paleontologists will by and by be examining the floors
of our kitchens for tracks of the extinct native species of serving-man.
The female of the same race is fast dying out; indeed, the time is not
far distant when all the varieties of young woman will have vanished from
New England, as the dodo has perished in the Mauritius. The young lady
is all that we shall have left, and the mop and duster of the last Ahnira
or Loizy will be stared at by generations of Bridgets and Noras as that
famous head and foot of the lost bird are stared at in the Ashmolean
Museum.
Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man, took the true American view of his
difficult position. He sold his time to the Doctor, and, having sold it,
he took care to fulfil his half of the bargain. The Doctor, on his part,
treated him, not like a gentleman, because one does not order a gentleman
to bring up his horse or run his errands, but he treated him like a man.
Every order was given in courteous terms. His reasonable privileges were
respected as much as if they had been guaranteed under hand and seal.
The Doctor lent him books from his own library, and gave him all friendly
counsel, as if he were a son or a younger brother.
Abel had Revolutionary blood in his veins, and though he saw fit to "hire
out," he could never stand the word "servant," or consider himself the
inferior one of the two high contracting parties. When he came to live
with the Doctor, he made up his mind he would dismiss the old gentleman,
if he did not behave according to his notions of propriety. But he soon
found that the Doctor was one of the right sort, and so determined to
keep him. The Doctor soon found, on his side, that he had a trustworthy,
intelligent fellow, who would be invaluable to him, if he only let him
have his own way of doing what was to be done.
The Doctor's hired man had not the manners of a French valet. He was
grave and taciturn for the most part, he never bowed and rarely smiled,
but was always at work in the daytime, and always reading in the evening.
He was hostler, and did all the housework that a man could properly do,
would go to the door or "tend table," bought the provisions for the
family,--in short, did almost everything for them but get their clothing.
There was no office in a perfectly appointed household, from that of
steward down to that of stable-boy, which he did not cheerfully assume.
His round of work not consuming all his energies, he must needs cultivate
the Doctor's garden, which he kept in one perpetual bloom, from the
blowing of the first crocus to the fading of the last dahlia.
This garden was Abel's poem. Its half-dozen beds were so many cantos.
Nature crowded them for him with imagery such as no Laureate could copy
in the cold mosaic of language. The rhythm of alternating dawn and
sunset, the strophe and antistrophe still perceptible through all the
sudden shifts of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in corresponding
floral harmonies, made melody in the soul of Abel, the plain serving-man.
It softened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He worshipped God according
to the strict way of his fathers; but a florist's Puritanism is always
colored by the petals of his flowers,--and Nature never shows him a
black corolla.
He may or may not figure again in this narrative; but as there must be
some who confound the New England hired man, native-born, with the
servant of foreign birth, and as there is the difference of two
continents and two civilizations between them, it did not seem fair to
let Abel bring round the Doctor's mare and sulky without touching his
features in half-shadow into our background.
The Doctor's mare, Cassia, was so called by her master from her cinnamon
color, cassia being one of the professional names for that spice or drug.
She was of the shade we call sorrel, or, as an Englishman would perhaps
say, chestnut,--a genuine "Morgan" mare, with a low forehand, as is
common in this breed, but with strong quarters and flat hocks, well
ribbed up, with a good eye and a pair of lively ears,--a first-rate
doctor's beast, would stand until her harness dropped off her back at the
door of a tedious case, and trot over hill and dale thirty miles in three
hours, if there was a child in the next county with a bean in its
windpipe and the Doctor gave her a hint of the fact. Cassia was not
large, but she had a good deal of action, and was the Doctor's
show-horse. There were two other animals in his stable: Quassia or
Quashy, the black horse, and Caustic, the old bay, with whom he jogged
round the village.
"A long ride to-day?" said Abel, as he brought up the equipage.
"Just out of the village,--that 's all.--There 's a kink in her
mane,--pull it out, will you?"
"Goin' to visit some of the great folks," Abel said to himself. "Wonder
who it is."--Then to the Doctor,--"Anybody get sick at Sprowles's? They
say Deacon Soper had a fit, after eatin' some o' their frozen victuals."
The Doctor smiled. He guessed the Deacon would do well enough. He was
only going to ride over to the Dudley mansion-house.
CHAPTER X.
THE DOCTOR CALLS ON ELSIE VENNER.
If that primitive physician, Chiron, M. D., appears as a Centaur, as we
look at him through the lapse of thirty centuries, the modern
country-doctor, if he could be seen about thirty miles off, could not be
distinguished from a wheel-animalcule. He inhabits a wheel-carriage. He
thinks of stationary dwellings as Long Tom Coffin did of land in general;
a house may be well enough for incidental purposes, but for a "stiddy"
residence give him a "kerridge." If he is classified in the Linnaean
scale, he must be set down thus: Genus Homo; Species Rotifer infusorius,
the wheel-animal of infusions.
The Dudley mansion was not a mile from the Doctor's; but it never
occurred to him to think of walking to see any of his patients' families,
if he had any professional object in his visit. Whenever the narrow
sulky turned in at a gate, the rustic who was digging potatoes, or hoeing
corn, or swishing through the grass with his scythe, in wave-like
crescents, or stepping short behind a loaded wheelbarrow, or trudging
lazily by the side of the swinging, loose-throated, short-legged oxen,
rocking along the road as if they had just been landed after a
three-months' voyage, the toiling native, whatever he was doing, stopped
and looked up at the house the Doctor was visiting.
"Somebody sick over there t' Haynes's. Guess th' old man's ailin' ag'in.
Winder's half-way open in the chamber,--should n' wonder 'f he was dead
and laid aout. Docterin' a'n't no use, when y' see th' winders open like
that. Wahl, money a'n't much to speak of to th' old man naow! He don'
want but tew cents,--'n' old Widah Peake, she knows what he wants them
for!"
Or again,--
"Measles raound pooty thick. Briggs's folks buried two children with 'em
lass' week. Th' of Doctor, he'd h' ker'd 'em threugh. Struck in 'n'
p'dooced mo't'f'cation,--so they say."
This is only meant as a sample of the kind of way they used to think or
talk, when the narrow sulky turned in at the gate of some house where
there was a visit to be made.
Oh, that narrow sulky! What hopes, what fears, what comfort, what
anguish, what despair, in the roll of its coming or its parting wheels!
In the spring, when the old people get the coughs which give them a few
shakes and their lives drop in pieces like the ashes of a burned thread
which have kept the threadlike shape until they were stirred,--in the hot
summer noons, when the strong man comes in from the fields, like the son
of the Shunamite, crying, "My head, my head,"--in the dying autumn days,
when youth and maiden lie fever-stricken in many a household,
still-faced, dull-eyed, dark-flushed, dry-lipped, low-muttering in their
daylight dreams, their fingers moving singly like those of slumbering
harpers,--in the dead winter, when the white plague of the North has
caged its wasted victims, shuddering as they think of the frozen soil
which must be quarried like rock to receive them, if their perpetual
convalescence should happen to be interfered with by any untoward
accident,--at every season, the narrow sulky rolled round freighted with
unmeasured burdens of joy and woe.
The Doctor drove along the southern foot of The Mountain. The "Dudley
Mansion" was near the eastern edge of this declivity, where it rose
steepest, with baldest cliffs and densest patches of overhanging wood.
It seemed almost too steep to climb, but a practised eye could see from a
distance the zigzag lines of the sheep-paths which scaled it like
miniature Alpine roads. A few hundred feet up The Mountain's side was a
dark deep dell, unwooded, save for a few spindling, crazy-looking
hackmatacks or native larches, with pallid green tufts sticking out
fantastically all over them. It shelved so deeply, that, while the
hemlock-tassels were swinging on the trees around its border, all would
be still at its springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would
wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre with a twist as of a
feathered oar,--and this when not a breath could be felt, and every other
stem and blade were motionless. There was an old story of one having
perished here in the winter of '86, and his body having been found in the
spring,--whence its common name of "Dead-Man's Hollow." Higher up there
were huge cliffs with chasms, and, it was thought, concealed caves, where
in old times they said that Tories lay hid,--some hinted not without
occasional aid and comfort from the Dudleys then living in the
mansion-house. Still higher and farther west lay the accursed
ledge,--shunned by all, unless it were now and then a daring youth, or a
wandering naturalist who ventured to its edge in the hope of securing
some infantile Crotalus durissus, who had not yet cut his poison teeth.
Long, long ago, in old Colonial times, the Honorable Thomas Dudley,
Esquire, a man of note and name and great resources, allied by descent to
the family of "Tom Dudley," as the early Governor is sometimes
irreverently called by our most venerable, but still youthful
antiquary,--and to the other public Dudleys, of course,--of all of whom
he made small account, as being himself an English gentleman, with little
taste for the splendors of provincial office, early in the last century,
Thomas Dudley had built this mansion. For several generations it had
been dwelt in by descendants of the same name, but soon after the
Revolution it passed by marriage into the hands of the Venners, by whom
it had ever since been held and tenanted.
As the doctor turned an angle in the road, all at once the stately old
house rose before him. It was a skilfully managed effect, as it well
might be, for it was no vulgar English architect who had planned the
mansion and arranged its position and approach. The old house rose
before the Doctor, crowning a terraced garden, flanked at the left by an
avenue of tall elms. The flower-beds were edged with box, which diffused
around it that dreamy balsamic odor, full of ante-natal reminiscences of
a lost Paradise, dimly fragrant as might be the bdellium of ancient
Havilah, the land compassed by the river Pison that went out of Eden.
The garden was somewhat neglected, but not in disgrace,--and in the time
of tulips and hyacinths, of roses, of "snowballs," of honeysuckles, of
lilacs, of syringas, it was rich with blossoms.
From the front-windows of the mansion the eye reached a far blue
mountain-summit,--no rounded heap, such as often shuts in a
village-landscape, but a sharp peak, clean-angled as Ascutney from the
Dartmouth green. A wide gap through miles of woods had opened this
distant view, and showed more, perhaps, than all the labors of the
architect and the landscape-gardener the large style of the early
Dudleys.
The great stone-chimney of the mansion-house was the centre from which
all the artificial features of the scene appeared to flow. The roofs,
the gables, the dormer-windows, the porches, the clustered offices in the
rear, all seemed to crowd about the great chimney. To this central
pillar the paths all converged. The single poplar behind the
house,--Nature is jealous of proud chimneys, and always loves to put a
poplar near one, so that it may fling a leaf or two down its black throat
every autumn,--the one tall poplar behind the house seemed to nod and
whisper to the grave square column, the elms to sway their branches
towards it. And when the blue smoke rose from its summit, it seemed to
be wafted away to join the azure haze which hung around the peak in the
far distance, so that both should bathe in a common atmosphere.
Behind the house were clumps of lilacs with a century's growth upon them,
and looking more like trees than like shrubs. Shaded by a group of these
was the ancient well, of huge circuit, and with a low arch opening out of
its wall about ten feet below the surface,--whether the door of a crypt
for the concealment of treasure, or of a subterranean passage, or merely
of a vault for keeping provisions cool in hot weather, opinions differed.
On looking at the house, it was plain that it was built with Old-World
notions of strength and durability, and, so far as might be, with
Old-World materials. The hinges of the doors stretched out like arms,
instead of like hands, as we make them. The bolts were massive enough
for a donjon-keep. The small window-panes were actually inclosed in the
wood of the sashes instead of being stuck to them with putty, as in our
modern windows. The broad staircase was of easy ascent, and was guarded
by quaintly turned and twisted balusters. The ceilings of the two rooms
of state were moulded with medallion-portraits and rustic figures, such
as may have been seen by many readers in the famous old Philipse
house,--Washington's head-quarters,--in the town of Yorkers. The
fire-places, worthy of the wide-throated central chimney, were bordered
by pictured tiles, some of them with Scripture stories, some with
Watteau-like figures,--tall damsels in slim waists and with spread enough
of skirt for a modern ballroom, with bowing, reclining, or musical swains
of what everybody calls the "conventional" sort,--that is, the swain
adapted to genteel society rather than to a literal sheep-compelling
existence.
The house was furnished, soon after it was completed, with many heavy
articles made in London from a rare wood just then come into fashion, not
so rare now, and commonly known as mahogany. Time had turned it very
dark, and the stately bedsteads and tall cabinets and claw-footed chairs
and tables were in keeping with the sober dignity of the ancient mansion.
The old "hangings" were yet preserved in the chambers, faded, but still
showing their rich patterns,--properly entitled to their name, for they
were literally hung upon flat wooden frames like trellis-work, which
again were secured to the naked partitions.
There were portraits of different date on the walls of the various
apartments, old painted coats-of-arms, bevel-edged mirrors, and in one
sleeping-room a glass case of wax-work flowers and spangly symbols, with
a legend signifying that E. M. (supposed to be Elizabeth Mascarene)
wished not to be "forgot"
"When I am dead and lay'd in dust
And all my bones are"--
Poor E. M.! Poor everybody that sighs for earthly remembrance in a
planet with a core of fire and a crust of fossils!
Such was the Dudley mansion-house,--for it kept its ancient name in spite
of the change in the line of descent. Its spacious apartments looked
dreary and desolate; for here Dudley Venner and his daughter dwelt by
themselves, with such servants only as their quiet mode of life required.
He almost lived in his library, the western room on the ground-floor.
Its window looked upon a small plat of green, in the midst of which was a
single grave marked by a plain marble slab. Except this room, and the
chamber where he slept, and the servants' wing, the rest of the house was
all Elsie's. She was always a restless, wandering child from her early
years, and would have her little bed moved from one chamber to
another,--flitting round as the fancy took her. Sometimes she would drag
a mat and a pillow into one of the great empty rooms, and, wrapping
herself in a shawl, coil up and go to sleep in a corner. Nothing
frightened her; the "haunted" chamber, with the torn hangings that
flapped like wings when there was air stirring, was one of her favorite
retreats. She had been a very hard creature to manage. Her father could
influence, but not govern her. Old Sophy, born of a slave mother in the
house, could do more with her than anybody, knowing her by long
instinctive study. The other servants were afraid of her. Her father had
sent for governesses, but none of them ever stayed long. She made them
nervous; one of them had a strange fit of sickness; not one of them ever
came back to the house to see her. A young Spanish woman who taught her
dancing succeeded best with her, for she had a passion for that exercise,
and had mastered some of the most difficult dances. Long before this
period, she had manifested some most extraordinary singularities of taste
or instinct. The extreme sensitiveness of her father on this point
prevented any allusion to them; but there were stories floating round,
some of them even getting into the papers,--without her name, of
course,--which were of a kind to excite intense curiosity, if not more
anxious feelings. This thing was certain, that at the age of twelve she
was missed one night, and was found sleeping in the open air under a
tree, like a wild creature. Very often she would wander off by day,
always without a companion, bringing home with her a nest, a flower, or
even a more questionable trophy of her ramble, such as showed that there
was no place where she was afraid to venture. Once in a while she had
stayed out over night, in which case the alarm was spread, and men went
in search of her, but never successfully,--so--that some said she hid
herself in trees, and others that she had found one of the old Tory
caves.
Some, of course, said she was a crazy girl, and ought to be sent to an
Asylum. But old Dr. Kittredge had shaken his head, and told them to bear
with her, and let her have her way as much as they could, but watch her,
as far as possible, without making her suspicious of them. He visited her
now and then, under the pretext of seeing her father on business, or of
only making a friendly call.
The Doctor fastened his horse outside the gate, and walked up the
garden-alley. He stopped suddenly with a start. A strange sound had
jarred upon his ear. It was a sharp prolonged rattle, continuous, but
rising and falling as if in rhythmical cadence. He moved softly towards
the open window from which the sound seemed to proceed.
Elsie was alone in the room, dancing one of those wild Moorish fandangos,
such as a matador hot from the Plaza de Toros of Seville or Madrid might
love to lie and gaze at. She was a figure to look upon in silence. The
dancing frenzy must have seized upon her while she was dressing; for she
was in her bodice, bare-armed, her hair floating unbound far below the
waist of her barred or banded skirt. She had caught up her castanets, and
rattled them as she danced with a kind of passionate fierceness, her
lithe body undulating with flexuous grace, her diamond eyes glittering,
her round arms wreathing and unwinding, alive and vibrant to the tips of
the slender fingers. Some passion seemed to exhaust itself in this
dancing paroxysm; for all at once she reeled from the middle of the
floor, and flung herself, as it were in a careless coil, upon a great
tiger's-skin which was spread out in one corner of the apartment.
The old Doctor stood motionless, looking at her as she lay panting on the
tawny, black-lined robe of the dead monster which stretched out beneath
her, its rude flattened outline recalling the Terror of the Jungle as he
crouched for his fatal spring. In a few moments her head drooped upon
her arm, and her glittering eyes closed,--she was sleeping. He stood
looking at her still, steadily, thoughtfully, tenderly. Presently he
lifted his hand to his forehead, as if recalling some fading remembrance
of other years.
"Poor Catalina!"
This was all he said. He shook his head,--implying that his visit would
be in vain to-day,--returned to his sulky, and rode away, as if in a
dream.
CHAPTER XI.
COUSIN RICHARD'S VISIT.
The Doctor was roused from his revery by the clatter of approaching
hoofs. He looked forward and saw a young fellow galloping rapidly
towards him.
A common New-England rider with his toes turned out, his elbows jerking
and the daylight showing under him at every step, bestriding a cantering
beast of the plebeian breed, thick at every point where he should be
thin, and thin at every point where he should be thick, is not one of
those noble objects that bewitch the world. The best horsemen outside of
the cities are the unshod countryboys, who ride "bareback," with only a
halter round the horse's neck, digging their brown heels into his ribs,
and slanting over backwards, but sticking on like leeches, and taking the
hardest trot as if they loved it.--This was a different sight on which
the Doctor was looking. The streaming mane and tail of the unshorn,
savage-looking, black horse, the dashing grace with which the young
fellow in the shadowy sombrero, and armed with the huge spurs, sat in his
high-peaked saddle, could belong only to the mustang of the Pampas and
his master. This bold rider was a young man whose sudden apparition in
the quiet inland town had reminded some of the good people of a bright,
curly-haired boy they had known some eight or ten years before as little
Dick Venner.
This boy had passed several of his early years at the Dudley mansion, the
playmate of Elsie, being her cousin, two or three years older than
herself, the son of Captain Richard Venner, a South American trader, who,
as he changed his residence often, was glad to leave the boy in his
brother's charge. The Captain's wife, this boy's mother, was a lady of
Buenos Ayres, of Spanish descent, and had died while the child was in his
cradle. These two motherless children were as strange a pair as one roof
could well cover. Both handsome, wild, impetuous, unmanageable, they
played and fought together like two young leopards, beautiful, but
dangerous, their lawless instincts showing through all their graceful
movements.
The boy was little else than a young Gaucho when he first came to
Rockland; for he had learned to ride almost as soon as to walk, and could
jump on his pony and trip up a runaway pig with the bolas or noose him
with his miniature lasso at an age when some city-children would hardly
be trusted out of sight of a nursery-maid. It makes men imperious to sit
a horse; no man governs his fellows so well as from this living throne.
And so, from Marcus Aurelius in Roman bronze, down to the "man on
horseback" in General Cushing's prophetic speech, the saddle has always
been the true seat of empire. The absolute tyranny of the human will
over a noble and powerful beast develops the instinct of personal
prevalence and dominion; so that horse-subduer and hero were almost
synonymous in simpler times, and are closely related still. An ancestry
of wild riders naturally enough bequeaths also those other tendencies
which we see in the Tartars, the Cossacks, and our own Indian Centaurs,
and as well, perhaps, in the old-fashioned fox-hunting squire as in any
of these. Sharp alternations of violent action and self-indulgent
repose; a hard run, and a long revel after it; this is what over-much
horse tends to animalize a man into. Such antecedents may have helped to
make little Dick Venner a self-willed, capricious boy, and a rough
playmate for Elsie.
Elsie was the wilder of the two. Old Sophy, who used to watch them with
those quick, animal-looking eyes of hers,--she was said to be the
granddaughter of a cannibal chief, and inherited the keen senses
belonging to all creatures which are hunted as game, Old Sophy, who
watched them in their play and their quarrels, always seemed to be more
afraid for the boy than the girl. "Masse Dick! Masse Dick! don' you be
too rough wi' dat gal! She scratch you las' week, 'n' some day she bite
you; 'n' if she bite you, Masse Dick!" Old Sophy nodded her head
ominously, as if she could say a great deal more; while, in grateful
acknowledgment of her caution, Master Dick put his two little fingers in
the angles of his mouth, and his forefingers on his lower eyelids,
drawing upon these features until his expression reminded her of
something she vaguely recollected in her infancy,--the face of a
favorite deity executed in wood by an African artist for her grandfather,
brought over by her mother, and burned when she became a Christian.
These two wild children had much in common. They loved to ramble
together, to build huts, to climb trees for nests, to ride the colts, to
dance, to race, and to play at boys' rude games as if both were boys.
But wherever two natures have a great deal in common, the conditions of a
first-rate quarrel are furnished ready-made. Relations are very apt to
hate each other just because they are too much alike. It is so frightful
to be in an atmosphere of family idiosyncrasies; to see all the
hereditary uncomeliness or infirmity of body, all the defects of speech,
all the failings of temper, intensified by concentration, so that every
fault of our own finds itself multiplied by reflections, like our images
in a saloon lined with mirrors! Nature knows what she is about. The
centrifugal principle which grows out of the antipathy of like to like is
only the repetition in character of the arrangement we see expressed
materially in certain seed-capsules, which burst and throw the seed to
all points of the compass. A house is a large pod with a human germ or
two in each of its cells or chambers; it opens by dehiscence of the
front-door by and by, and projects one of its germs to Kansas, another to
San Francisco, another to Chicago, and so on; and this that Smith may not
be Smithed to death and Brown may not be Browned into a mad-house, but
mix in with the world again and struggle back to average humanity.
Elsie's father, whose fault was to indulge her in everything, found that
it would never do to let these children grow up together. They would
either love each other as they got older, and pair like wild creatures,
or take some fierce antipathy, which might end nobody could tell where.
It was not safe to try. The boy must be sent away. A sharper quarrel
than common decided this point. Master Dick forgot Old Sophy's caution,
and vexed the girl into a paroxysm of wrath, in which she sprang at him
and bit his arm. Perhaps they made too much of it; for they sent for the
old Doctor, who came at once when he heard what had happened. He had a
good deal to say about the danger there was from the teeth of animals or
human beings when enraged; and as he emphasized his remarks by the
application of a pencil of lunar caustic to each of the marks left by the
sharp white teeth, they were like to be remembered by at least one of his
hearers.
So Master Dick went off on his travels, which led him into strange places
and stranger company. Elsie was half pleased and half sorry to have him
go; the children had a kind of mingled liking and hate for each other,
just such as is very common among relations. Whether the girl had most
satisfaction in the plays they shared, or in teasing him, or taking her
small revenge upon him for teasing her, it would have been hard to say.
At any rate, she was lonely without him. She had more fondness for the
old black woman than anybody; but Sophy could not follow her far beyond
her own old rocking-chair. As for her father, she had made him afraid of
her, not for his sake, but for her own. Sometimes she would seem to be
fond of him, and the parent's heart would yearn within him as she twined
her supple arms about him; and then some look she gave him, some
half-articulated expression, would turn his cheek pale and almost make
him shiver, and he would say kindly, "Now go, Elsie, dear," and smile
upon her as she went, and close and lock the door softly after her. Then
his forehead would knot and furrow itself, and the drops of anguish stand
thick upon it. He would go to the western window of his study and look
at the solitary mound with the marble slab for its head-stone. After his
grief had had its way, he would kneel down and pray for his child as one
who has no hope save in that special grace which can bring the most
rebellious spirit into sweet subjection. All this might seem like
weakness in a parent having the charge of one sole daughter of his house
and heart; but he had tried authority and tenderness by turns so long
without any good effect, that he had become sore perplexed, and,
surrounding her with cautious watchfulness as he best might, left her in
the main to her own guidance and the merciful influences which Heaven
might send down to direct her footsteps.
Meantime the boy grew up to youth and early manhood through a strange
succession of adventures. He had been at school at Buenos Ayres,--had
quarrelled with his mother's relatives,--had run off to the Pampas, and
lived with the Gauchos;--had made friends with the Indians, and ridden
with them, it was rumored, in some of their savage forays,--had returned
and made up his quarrel,--had got money by inheritance or otherwise,--had
troubled the peace of certain magistrates,--had found it convenient to
leave the City of Wholesome Breezes for a time, and had galloped off on a
fast horse of his, (so it was said,) with some officers riding after him,
who took good care (but this was only the popular story) not to catch
him. A few days after this he was taking his ice on the Alameda of
Mendoza, and a week or two later sailed from Valparaiso for New York,
carrying with him the horse with which he had scampered over the Plains,
a trunk or two with his newly purchased outfit of, clothing and other
conveniences, and a belt heavy with gold and with a few Brazilian
diamonds sewed in it, enough in value to serve him for a long journey.
Dick Venner had seen life enough to wear out the earlier sensibilities of
adolescence. He was tired of worshipping or tyrannizing over the bistred
or umbered beauties of mingled blood among whom he had been living. Even
that piquant exhibition which the Rio de Mendoza presents to the amateur
of breathing sculpture failed to interest him. He was thinking of a
far-off village on the other side of the equator, and of the wild girl
with whom he used to play and quarrel, a creature of a different race
from these degenerate mongrels.
"A game little devil she was, sure enough!"--And as Dick spoke, he bared
his wrist to look for the marks she had left on it: two small white
scars, where the two small sharp upper teeth had struck when she flashed
at him with her eyes sparkling as bright as those glittering stones sewed
up in the belt he wore. "That's a filly worth noosing!" said Dick to
himself, as he looked in admiration at the sign of her spirit and
passion. "I wonder if she will bite at eighteen as she did at eight!
She shall have a chance to try, at any rate!"
Such was the self-sacrificing disposition with which Richard Venner,
Esq., a passenger by the Condor from Valparaiso, set foot upon his native
shore, and turned his face in the direction of Rockland, The Mountain,
and the mansion-house. He had heard something, from time to time, of his
New-England relatives, and knew that they were living together as he left
them. And so he heralded himself to "My dear Uncle" by a letter signed
"Your loving nephew, Richard Venner," in which letter he told a very
frank story of travel and mercantile adventure, expressed much gratitude
for the excellent counsel and example which had helped to form his
character and preserve him in the midst of temptation, inquired
affectionately after his uncle's health, was much interested to know
whether his lively cousin who used to be his playmate had grown up as
handsome as she promised to be, and announced his intention of paying his
respects to them both at Rockland. Not long after this came the trunks
marked R. V. which he had sent before him, forerunners of his advent: he
was not going to wait for a reply or an invitation.
What a sound that is,--the banging down of the preliminary trunk, without
its claimant to give it the life which is borrowed by all personal
appendages, so long as the owner's hand or eye is on them! If it announce
the coming of one loved and longed for, how we delight to look at it, to
sit down on it, to caress it in our fancies, as a lone exile walking out
on a windy pier yearns towards the merchantman lying alongside, with the
colors of his own native land at her peak, and the name of the port he
sailed from long ago upon her stern! But if it tell the near approach of
the undesired, inevitable guest, what sound short of the muffled noises
made by the undertakers as they turn the corners in the dim-lighted
house, with low shuffle of feet and whispered cautions, carries such a
sense of knocking-kneed collapse with it as the thumping down in the
front entry of the heavy portmanteau, rammed with the changes of
uncounted coming weeks?
Whether the R. V. portmanteaus brought one or the other of these emotions
to the tenants of the Dudley mansion, it might not be easy to settle.
Elsie professed to be pleased with the thought of having an adventurous
young stranger, with stories to tell, an inmate of their quiet, not to
say dull, family. Under almost any other circumstances, her father would
have been unwilling to take a young fellow of whom he knew so little
under his roof; but this was his nephew, and anything that seemed like to
amuse or please Elsie was agreeable to him. He had grown almost
desperate, and felt as if any change in the current of her life and
feelings might save her from some strange paroxysm of dangerous mental
exaltation or sullen perversion of disposition, from which some fearful
calamity might come to herself or others.
Dick had been several weeks at the Dudley mansion. A few days before, he
had made a sudden dash for the nearest large city,--and when the Doctor
met him, he was just returning from his visit.
It had been a curious meeting between the two young persons, who had
parted so young and after such strange relations with each other. When
Dick first presented himself at the mansion, not one in the house would
have known him for the boy who had left them all so suddenly years ago.
He was so dark, partly from his descent, partly from long habits of
exposure, that Elsie looked almost fair beside him. He had something of
the family beauty which belonged to his cousin, but his eye had a fierce
passion in it, very unlike the cold glitter of Elsie's. Like many people
of strong and imperious temper, he was soft-voiced and very gentle in his
address, when he had no special reason for being otherwise. He soon
found reasons enough to be as amiable as he could force himself to be
with his uncle and his cousin. Elsie was to his fancy. She had a
strange attraction for him, quite unlike anything he had ever known in
other women. There was something, too, in early associations: when those
who parted as children meet as man and woman, there is always a renewal
of that early experience which followed the taste of the forbidden
fruit,--a natural blush of consciousness, not without its charm.
Nothing could be more becoming than the behavior of "Richard Venner,
Esquire, the guest of Dudley Venner, Esquire, at his noble mansion," as
he was announced in the Court column of the "Rockland Weekly Universe."
He was pleased to find himself treated with kindness and attention as a
relative. He made himself very agreeable by abundant details concerning
the religious, political, social, commercial, and educational progress of
the South American cities and states. He was himself much interested in
everything that was going on about the Dudley mansion, walked all over
it, noticed its valuable wood-lots with special approbation, was
delighted with the grand old house and its furniture, and would not be
easy until he had seen all the family silver and heard its history. In
return, he had much to tell of his father, now dead,--the only one of the
Venners, beside themselves, in whose fate his uncle was interested. With
Elsie, he was subdued and almost tender in his manner; with the few
visitors whom they saw, shy and silent,--perhaps a little watchful, if
any young man happened to be among them.
Young fellows placed on their good behavior are apt to get restless and
nervous, all ready to fly off into some mischief or other. Dick Venner
had his half-tamed horse with him to work off his suppressed life with.
When the savage passion of his young blood came over him, he would fetch
out the mustang, screaming and kicking as these amiable beasts are wont
to do, strap the Spanish saddle tight to his back, vault into it, and,
after getting away from the village, strike the long spurs into his sides
and whirl away in a wild gallop, until the black horse was flecked with
white foam, and the cruel steel points were red with his blood. When
horse and rider were alike fired, he would fling the bridle on his neck
and saunter homeward, always contriving to get to the stable in a quiet
way, and coming into the house as calm as a bishop after a sober trot on
his steady-going cob.
After a few weeks of this kind of life, he began to want some more fierce
excitement. He had tried making downright love to Elsie, with no great
success as yet, in his own opinion. The girl was capricious in her
treatment of him, sometimes scowling and repellent, sometimes familiar,
very often, as she used to be of old, teasing and malicious. All this,
perhaps, made her more interesting to a young man who was tired of easy
conquests. There was a strange fascination in her eyes, too, which at
times was quite irresistible, so that he would feel himself drawn to her
by a power which seemed to take away his will for the moment. It may
have been nothing but the common charm of bright eyes; but he had never
before experienced the same kind of attraction.
Perhaps she was not so very different from what she had been as a child,
after all. At any rate, so it seemed to Dick Venner, who, as was said
before, had tried making love to her. They were sitting alone in the
study one day; Elsie had round her neck that somewhat peculiar ornament,
the golden torque, which she had worn to the great party. Youth is
adventurous and very curious about necklaces, brooches, chains, and other
such adornments, so long as they are worn by young persons of the female
sex. Dick was seized with a great passion for examining this curious
chain, and, after some preliminary questions, was rash enough to lean
towards her and put out his hand toward the neck that lay in the golden
coil.
She threw her head back, her eyes narrowing and her forehead drawing down
so that Dick thought her head actually flattened itself. He started
involuntarily; for she looked so like the little girl who had struck him
with those sharp flashing teeth, that the whole scene came back, and he
felt the stroke again as if it had just been given, and the two white
scars began to sting as they did after the old Doctor had burned them
with that stick of gray caustic, which looked so like a slate pencil, and
felt so much like the end of a red-hot poker.
It took something more than a gallop to set him right after this. The
next day he mentioned having received a letter from a mercantile agent
with whom he had dealings. What his business was is, perhaps, none of
our business. At any rate, it required him to go at once to the city
where his correspondent resided.
Independently of this "business" which called him, there may have been
other motives, such as have been hinted at. People who have been living
for a long time in dreary country-places, without any emotion beyond such
as are occasioned by a trivial pleasure or annoyance, often get crazy at
last for a vital paroxysm of some kind or other. In this state they rush
to the great cities for a plunge into their turbid life-baths, with a
frantic thirst for every exciting pleasure, which makes them the willing
and easy victims of all those who sell the Devil's wares on commission.
The less intelligent and instructed class of unfortunates, who venture
with their ignorance and their instincts into what is sometimes called
the "life" of great cities, are put through a rapid course of instruction
which entitles them very commonly to a diploma from the police court. But
they only illustrate the working of the same tendency in mankind at large
which has been occasionally noticed in the sons of ministers and other
eminently worthy people, by many ascribed to that intense congenital
hatred for goodness which distinguishes human nature from that of the
brute, but perhaps as readily accounted for by considering it as the
yawning and stretching of a young soul cramped too long in one moral
posture.
Richard Veneer was a young man of remarkable experience for his years.
He ran less risk, therefore, in exposing himself to the temptations and
dangers of a great city than many older men, who, seeking the livelier
scenes of excitement to be found in large towns as a relaxation after the
monotonous routine of family life, are too often taken advantage of and
made the victims of their sentiments or their generous confidence in
their fellow-creatures. Such was not his destiny. There was something
about him which looked as if he would not take bullying kindly. He had
also the advantage of being acquainted with most of those ingenious
devices by which the proverbial inconstancy of fortune is steadied to
something more nearly approaching fixed laws, and the dangerous risks
which have so often led young men to ruin and suicide are practically
reduced to somewhat less than nothing. So that Mr. Richard Veneer worked
off his nervous energies without any troublesome adventure, and was ready
to return to Rockland in less than a week, without having lightened the
money-belt he wore round his body, or tarnished the long glittering knife
he carried in his boot.
Dick had sent his trunk to the nearest town through which the railroad
leading to the city passed. He rode off on his black horse and left him
at the place where he took the cars. On arriving at the city station, he
took a coach and drove to one of the great hotels. Thither drove also a
sagacious-looking, middle-aged man, who entered his name as "W. Thompson"
in the book at the office immediately after that of "R. Venner." Mr.
"Thompson" kept a carelessly observant eye upon Mr. Venner during his
stay at the hotel, and followed him to the cars when he left, looking
over his shoulder when he bought his ticket at the station, and seeing
him fairly off without obtruding himself in any offensive way upon his
attention. Mr. Thompson, known in other quarters as Detective Policeman
Terry, got very little by his trouble. Richard Venner did not turn out
to be the wife-poisoner, the defaulting cashier, the river-pirate, or the
great counterfeiter. He paid his hotel-bill as a gentleman should always
do, if he has the money and can spare it. The detective had probably
overrated his own sagacity when he ventured to suspect Mr. Venner. He
reported to his chief that there was a knowing-looking fellow he had been
round after, but he rather guessed he was nothing more than "one o' them
Southern sportsmen."
The poor fellows at the stable where Dick had left his horse had had
trouble enough with him. One of the ostlers was limping about with a
lame leg, and another had lost a mouthful of his coat, which came very
near carrying a piece of his shoulder with it. When Mr. Venner came back
for his beast, he was as wild as if he had just been lassoed, screaming,
kicking, rolling over to get rid of his saddle, and when his rider was at
last mounted, jumping about in a way to dislodge any common horseman. To
all this Dick replied by sticking his long spurs deeper and deeper into
his flanks, until the creature found he was mastered, and dashed off as
if all the thistles of the Pampas were pricking him.
"One more gallop, Juan?" This was in the last mile of the road before he
came to the town which brought him in sight of the mansion-house. It was
in this last gallop that the fiery mustang and his rider flashed by the
old Doctor. Cassia pointed her sharp ears and shied to let them pass.
The Doctor turned and looked through the little round glass in the back
of his sulky.
"Dick Turpin, there, will find more than his match!" said the Doctor.
CHAPTER XII.
THE APOLLINEAN INSTITUTE. (With Extracts from the "Report of the
committee.")
The readers of this narrative will hardly expect any elaborate details of
the educational management of the Apollinean Institute. They cannot be
supposed to take the same interest in its affairs as was shown by the
Annual Committees who reported upon its condition and prospects. As
these Committees were, however, an important part of the mechanism of the
establishment, some general account of their organization and a few
extracts from the Report of the one last appointed may not be out of
place.
Whether Mr. Silas Peckham had some contrivance for packing his
Committees, whether they happened always to be made up of optimists by
nature, whether they were cajoled into good-humor by polite attentions,
or whether they were always really delighted with the wonderful
acquirements of the pupils and the admirable order of the school, it is
certain that their Annual Reports were couched in language which might
warm the heart of the most cold-blooded and calculating father that ever
had a family of daughters to educate. In fact, these Annual Reports were
considered by Mr. Peckham as his most effective advertisements.
The first thing, therefore, was to see that the Committee was made up of
persons known to the public.
Some worn-out politician, in that leisurely and amiable transition-state
which comes between official extinction and the paralysis which will
finish him as soon as his brain gets a little softer, made an admirable
Chairman for Mr. Peckham, when he had the luck to pick up such an
article. Old reputations, like old fashions, are more prized in the
grassy than in the stony districts. An effete celebrity, who would never
be heard of again in the great places until the funeral sermon waked up
his memory for one parting spasm, finds himself in full flavor of renown
a little farther back from the changing winds of the sea-coast. If such
a public character was not to be had, so that there was no chance of
heading the Report with the name of the Honorable Mr. Somebody, the next
best thing was to get the Reverend Dr. Somebody to take that conspicuous
position. Then would follow two or three local worthies with Esquire
after their names. If any stray literary personage from one of the great
cities happened to be within reach, he was pounced upon by Mr. Silas
Peckham. It was a hard case for the poor man, who had travelled a
hundred miles or two to the outside suburbs after peace and unwatered
milk, to be pumped for a speech in this unexpected way. It was harder
still, if he had been induced to venture a few tremulous remarks, to be
obliged to write them out for the "Rockland Weekly Universe," with the
chance of seeing them used as an advertising certificate as long as he
lived, if he lived as long as the late Dr. Waterhouse did after giving
his certificate in favor of Whitwell's celebrated Cephalic Snuff.
The Report of the last Committee had been signed by the Honorable,
___________late __________ of ____________, as Chairman. (It is with
reluctance that the name and titles are left in blank; but our public
characters are so familiarly known to the whole community that this
reserve becomes necessary.) The other members of the Committee were the
Reverend Mr. Butters, of a neighboring town, who was to make the prayer
before the Exercises of the Exhibition, and two or three notabilities of
Rockland, with geoponic eyes, and glabrous, bumpless foreheads. A few
extracts from the Report are subjoined:
"The Committee have great pleasure in recording their unanimous opinion,
that the Institution was never in so flourishing a condition....
"The health of the pupils is excellent; the admirable quality of food
supplied shows itself in their appearance; their blooming aspect excited
the admiration of the Committee, and bears testimony to the assiduity of
the excellent Matron.
"......moral and religious condition most encouraging, which they cannot
but attribute to the personal efforts and instruction of the faithful
Principal, who considers religious instruction a solemn duty which he
cannot commit to other people.
"......great progress in their studies, under the intelligent
superintendence of the accomplished Principal, assisted by Mr. Badger,
[Mr. Langdon's predecessor,] Miss Darley, the lady who superintends the
English branches, Miss Crabs, her assistant and teacher of Modern
Languages, and Mr. Schneider, teacher of French, German, Latin, and
Music....
"Education is the great business of the Institute. Amusements are
objects of a secondary nature; but these are by no means neglected....
"......English compositions of great originality and beauty, creditable
alike to the head and heart of their accomplished authors.... several
poems of a very high order of merit, which would do honor to the
literature of any age or country.... life-like drawings, showing great
proficiency.... Many converse fluently in various modern languages....
perform the most difficult airs with the skill of professional
musicians....
"......advantages unsurpassed, if equalled by those of any Institution in
the country, and reflecting the highest honor on the distinguished Head
of the Establishment, SILAS PECKHAM, Esquire, and his admirable Lady, the
MATRON, with their worthy assistants...."
The perusal of this Report did Mr. Bernard more good than a week's
vacation would have done: It gave him such a laugh as he had not had for
a month. The way in which Silas Peckham had made his Committee say what
he wanted them to--for he recognized a number of expressions in the
Report as coming directly from the lips of his principal, and could not
help thinking how cleverly he had forced his phrases, as jugglers do the
particular card they wish their dupe to take--struck him as particularly
neat and pleasing.
He had passed through the sympathetic and emotional stages in his new
experience, and had arrived at the philosophical and practical state,
which takes things coolly, and goes to work to set them right. He had
breadth enough of view to see that there was nothing so very exceptional
in this educational trader's dealings with his subordinates, but he had
also manly feeling enough to attack the particular individual instance of
wrong before him. There are plenty of dealer's in morals, as in ordinary
traffic, who confine themselves to wholesale business. They leave the
small necessity of their next-door neighbor to the retailers, who are
poorer in statistics and general facts, but richer in the every-day
charities. Mr. Bernard felt, at first, as one does who sees a gray rat
steal out of a drain and begin gnawing at the bark of some tree loaded
with fruit or blossoms, which he will soon girdle, if he is let alone.
The first impulse is to murder him with the nearest ragged stone. Then
one remembers that he is a rodent, acting after the law of his kind, and
cools down and is contented to drive him off and guard the tree against
his teeth for the future. As soon as this is done, one can watch his
attempts at mischief with a certain amusement.
This was the kind of process Mr. Bernard had gone through. First, the
indignant surprise of a generous nature, when it comes unexpectedly into
relations with a mean one. Then the impulse of extermination,--a divine
instinct, intended to keep down vermin of all classes to their working
averages in the economy of Nature. Then a return of cheerful
tolerance,--a feeling, that, if the Deity could bear with rats and
sharpers, he could; with a confident trust, that, in the long run,
terriers and honest men would have the upperhand, and a grateful
consciousness that he had been sent just at the right time to come
between a patient victim and the master who held her in peonage.
Having once made up his mind what to do, Mr. Bernard was as good-natured
and hopeful as ever. He had the great advantage, from his professional
training, of knowing how to recognize and deal with the nervous
disturbances to which overtasked women are so liable. He saw well enough
that Helen Darley would certainly kill herself or lose her wits, if he
could not lighten her labors and lift off a large part of her weight of
cares. The worst of it was, that she was one of those women who
naturally overwork themselves, like those horses who will go at the top
of their pace until they drop. Such women are dreadfully unmanageable.
It is as hard reasoning with them as it would have been reasoning with
Io, when she was flying over land and sea, driven by the sting of the
never-sleeping gadfly.
This was a delicate, interesting game that he played. Under one innocent
pretext or another, he invaded this or that special province she had made
her own. He would collect the themes and have them all read and marked,
answer all the puzzling questions in mathematics, make the other teachers
come to him for directions, and in this way gradually took upon himself
not only all the general superintendence that belonged to his office, but
stole away so many of the special duties which might fairly have belonged
to his assistant, that, before she knew it, she was looking better and
feeling more cheerful than for many and many a month before.
When the nervous energy is depressed by any bodily cause, or exhausted by
overworking, there follow effects which have often been misinterpreted by
moralists, and especially by theologians. The conscience itself becomes
neuralgic, sometimes actually inflamed, so that the least touch is agony.
Of all liars and false accusers, a sick conscience is the most inventive
and indefatigable. The devoted daughter, wife, mother, whose life has
been given to unselfish labors, who has filled a place which it seems to
others only an angel would make good, reproaches herself with
incompetence and neglect of duty. The humble Christian, who has been a
model to others, calls himself a worm of the dust on one page of his
diary, and arraigns himself on the next for coming short of the
perfection of an archangel.
Conscience itself requires a conscience, or nothing can be more
unscrupulous. It told Saul that he did well in persecuting the
Christians. It has goaded countless multitudes of various creeds to
endless forms of self-torture. The cities of India are full of cripples
it has made. The hill-sides of Syria are riddled with holes, where
miserable hermits, whose lives it had palsied, lived and died like the
vermin they harbored. Our libraries are crammed with books written by
spiritual hypochondriacs, who inspected all their moral secretions a
dozen times a day. They are full of interest, but they should be
transferred from the shelf of the theologian to that of the medical man
who makes a study of insanity.
This was the state into which too much work and too much responsibility
were bringing Helen Darley, when the new master came and lifted so much
of the burden that was crushing her as must be removed before she could
have a chance to recover her natural elasticity and buoyancy. Many of
the noblest women, suffering like her, but less fortunate in being
relieved at the right moment, die worried out of life by the perpetual
teasing of this inflamed, neuralgic conscience. So subtile is the line
which separates the true and almost angelic sensibility of a healthy, but
exalted nature, from the soreness of a soul which is sympathizing with a
morbid state of the body that it is no wonder they are often confounded.
And thus many good women are suffered to perish by that form of
spontaneous combustion in which the victim goes on toiling day and night
with the hidden fire consuming her, until all at once her cheek whitens,
and, as we look upon her, she drops away, a heap of ashes. The more they
overwork themselves, the more exacting becomes the sense of duty,--as the
draught of the locomotive's furnace blows stronger and makes the fire
burn more fiercely, the faster it spins along the track.
It is not very likely, as was said at the beginning of this chapter, that
we shall trouble ourselves a great deal about the internal affairs of the
Apollinean Institute. These schools are, in the nature of things, not so
very unlike each other as to require a minute description for each
particular one among them. They have all very much the same general
features, pleasing and displeasing. All feeding-establishments have
something odious about them,--from the wretched country-houses where
paupers are farmed out to the lowest bidder, up to the commons-tables at
colleges and even the fashionable boarding-house. A person's appetite
should be at war with no other purse than his own. Young people,
especially, who have a bone-factory at work in them, and have to feed the
living looms of innumerable growing tissues, should be provided for, if
possible, by those who love them like their own flesh and blood.
Elsewhere their appetites will be sure to make them enemies, or, what are
almost as bad, friends whose interests are at variance with the claims of
their exacting necessities and demands.
Besides, all commercial transactions in regard to the most sacred
interests of life are hateful even to those who profit by them. The
clergyman, the physician, the teacher, must be paid; but each of them, if
his duty be performed in the true spirit, can hardly help a shiver of
disgust when money is counted out to him for administering the
consolations of religion, for saving some precious life, for sowing the
seeds of Christian civilization in young ingenuous souls.
And yet all these schools, with their provincial French and their
mechanical accomplishments, with their cheap parade of diplomas and
commencements and other public honors, have an ever fresh interest to all
who see the task they are performing in our new social order. These girls
are not being educated for governesses, or to be exported, with other
manufactured articles, to colonies where there happens to be a surplus of
males. Most of them will be wives, and every American-born husband is a
possible President of these United States. Any one of these girls may be
a four-years' queen. There is no sphere of human activity so exalted
that she may not be called upon to fill it.
But there is another consideration of far higher interest. The education
of our community to all that is beautiful is flowing in mainly through
its women, and that to a considerable extent by the aid of these large
establishments, the least perfect of which do something to stimulate the
higher tastes and partially instruct them. Sometimes there is, perhaps,
reason to fear that girls will be too highly educated for their own
happiness, if they are lifted by their culture out of the range of the
practical and every-day working youth by whom they are surrounded. But
this is a risk we must take. Our young men come into active life so
early, that, if our girls were not educated to something beyond mere
practical duties, our material prosperity would outstrip our culture; as
it often does in large places where money is made too rapidly. This is
the meaning, therefore, of that somewhat ambitious programme common to
most of these large institutions, at which we sometimes smile, perhaps
unwisely or uncharitably.
We shall take it for granted that the routine of instruction went on at
the Apollinean Institute much as it does in other schools of the same
class. People, young or old, are wonderfully different, if we contrast
extremes in pairs. They approach much nearer, if we take them in groups
of twenty. Take two separate hundreds as they come, without choosing,
and you get the gamut of human character in both so completely that you
can strike many chords in each which shall be in perfect unison with
corresponding ones in the other. If we go a step farther, and compare
the population of two villages of the same race and region, there is such
a regularly graduated distribution and parallelism of character, that it
seems as if Nature must turn out human beings in sets like chessmen.
It must be confessed that the position in which Mr. Bernard now found
himself had a pleasing danger about it which might well justify all the
fears entertained on his account by more experienced friends, when they
learned that he was engaged in a Young Ladies' Seminary. The school never
went on more smoothly than during the first period of his administration,
after he had arranged its duties, and taken his share, and even more than
his share, upon himself. But human nature does not wait for the diploma
of the Apollinean Institute to claim the exercise of it, instincts and
faculties. These young girls saw but little of the youth of the
neighborhood. The mansion-house young men were off at college or in the
cities, or making love to each other's sisters, or at any rate
unavailable for some reason or other. There were a few "clerks,"--that
is, young men who attended shops, commonly called "stores,"--who were
fond of walking by the Institute, when they were off duty, for the sake
of exchanging a word or a glance with any one of the young ladies they
might happen to know, if any such were stirring abroad: crude young men,
mostly, with a great many "Sirs" and "Ma'ams" in their speech, and with
that style of address sometimes acquired in the retail business, as if
the salesman were recommending himself to a customer, "First-rate family
article, Ma'am; warranted to wear a lifetime; just one yard and three
quarters in this pattern, Ma'am; sha'n't I have the pleasure?" and so
forth. If there had been ever so many of them, and if they had been ever
so fascinating, the quarantine of the Institute was too rigorous to allow
any romantic infection to be introduced from without.
Anybody might see what would happen, with a good-looking, well-dressed,
well-bred young man, who had the authority of a master, it is true, but
the manners of a friend and equal, moving about among these young girls
day after day, his eyes meeting theirs, his breath mingling with theirs,
his voice growing familiar to them, never in any harsh tones, often
soothing, encouraging, always sympathetic, with its male depth and
breadth of sound among the chorus of trebles, as if it were a river in
which a hundred of these little piping streamlets-might lose themselves;
anybody might see what would happen. Young girls wrote home to their
parents that they enjoyed themselves much, this term, at the Institute,
and thought they were making rapid progress in their studies. There was
a great enthusiasm for the young master's reading-classes in English
poetry. Some of the poor little things began to adorn themselves with an
extra ribbon, or a bit of such jewelry as they had before kept for great
occasions. Dear souls! they only half knew what they were doing it for.
Does the bird know why its feathers grow more brilliant and its voice
becomes musical in the pairing season?
And so, in the midst of this quiet inland town, where a mere accident had
placed Mr. Bernard Langdon, there was a concentration of explosive
materials which might at any time change its Arcadian and academic repose
into a scene of dangerous commotion. What said Helen Darley, when she
saw with her woman's glance that more than one girl, when she should be
looking at her book, was looking over it toward the master's desk? Was
her own heart warmed by any livelier feeling than gratitude, as its life
began to flow with fuller pulses, and the morning sky again looked bright
and the flowers recovered their lost fragrance? Was there any strange,
mysterious affinity between the master and the dark girl who sat by
herself? Could she call him at will by looking at him? Could it be
that--? It made her shiver to think of it.--And who was that strange
horseman who passed Mr. Bernard at dusk the other evening, looking so
like Mephistopheles galloping hard to be in season at the witches'
Sabbath-gathering? That must be the cousin of Elsie's who wants to marry
her, they say. A dangerous-looking fellow for a rival, if one took a
fancy to the dark girl! And who is she, and what?--by what demon is she
haunted, by what taint is she blighted, by what curse is she followed, by
what destiny is she marked, that her strange beauty has such a terror in
it, and that hardly one shall dare to love her, and her eye glitters
always, but warms for none?
Some of these questions are ours. Some were Helen Darley's. Some of
them mingled with the dreams of Bernard Langdon, as he slept the night
after meeting the strange horseman. In the morning he happened to be a
little late in entering the schoolroom. There was something between the
leaves of the Virgil which lay upon his desk. He opened it and saw a
freshly gathered mountain-flower. He looked at Elsie, instinctively,
involuntarily. She had another such flower on her breast.
A young girl's graceful compliment,--that is all,--no doubt,--no doubt.
It was odd that the flower should have happened to be laid between the
leaves of the Fourth Book of the "AEneid," and at this line,
"Incipit effari, mediaque in voce resistit."
A remembrance of an ancient superstition flashed through the master's
mind, and he determined to try the Sortes Virgilianae. He shut the
volume, and opened it again at a venture.--The story of Laocoon!
He read with a strange feeling of unwilling fascination, from "Horresco
referees" to "Bis medium amplexi," and flung the book from him, as if its
leaves had been steeped in the subtle poisons that princes die of.
CHAPTER XIII.
CURIOSITY.
People will talk. 'Ciascun lo dice' is a tune that is played oftener
than the national air of this country or any other.
"That 's what they say. Means to marry her, if she is his cousin. Got
money himself,--that 's the story,--but wants to come and live in the old
place, and get the Dudley property by and by." "Mother's folks was
wealthy."--"Twenty-three to twenty-five year old."--"He a'n't more 'n
twenty, or twenty-one at the outside."--"Looks as if he knew too much to
be only twenty year old."--"Guess he's been through the mill,--don't look
so green, anyhow, hey? Did y' ever mind that cut over his left eyebrow?"
So they gossiped in Rockland. The young fellows could make nothing of
Dick Venner. He was shy and proud with the few who made advances to him.
The young ladies called him handsome and romantic, but he looked at them
like a many-tailed pacha who was in the habit of, ordering his wives by
the dozen.
"What do you think of the young man over there at the Veneers'?" said
Miss Arabella Thornton to her father.
"Handsome," said the Judge, "but dangerous-looking. His face is
indictable at common law. Do you know, my dear, I think there is a blank
at the Sheriff's office, with a place for his name in it?"
The Judge paused and looked grave, as if he had just listened to the
verdict of the jury and was going to pronounce sentence.
"Have you heard anything against him?" said the Judge's daughter.
"Nothing. But I don't like these mixed bloods and half-told stories.
Besides, I have seen a good many desperate fellows at the bar, and I have
a fancy they all have a look belonging to them. The worst one I ever
sentenced looked a good deal like this fellow. A wicked mouth. All our
other features are made for us; but a man makes his own mouth."
"Who was the person you sentenced?"
"He was a young fellow that undertook to garrote a man who had won his
money at cards. The same slender shape, the same cunning, fierce look,
smoothed over with a plausible air. Depend upon it, there is an
expression in all the sort of people who live by their wits when they
can, and by worse weapons when their wits fail them, that we old
law-doctors know just as well as the medical counsellors know the marks
of disease in a man's face. Dr. Kittredge looks at a man and says he is
going to die; I look at another man and say he is going to be hanged, if
nothing happens. I don't say so of this one, but I don't like his looks.
I wonder Dudley Veneer takes to him so kindly."
"It's all for Elsie's sake," said Miss Thornton. "I feel quite sure of
that. He never does anything that is not meant for her in some way. I
suppose it amuses her to have her cousin about the house. She rides a
good deal since he has been here. Have you seen them galloping about
together? He looks like my idea of a Spanish bandit on that wild horse
of his."
"Possibly he has been one,--or is one," said the Judge,--smiling as men
smile whose lips have often been freighted with the life and death of
their fellow-creatures. "I met them riding the other day. Perhaps Dudley
is right, if it pleases her to have a companion. What will happen,
though, if he makes love to her? Will Elsie be easily taken with such a
fellow? You young folks are supposed to know more about these matters
than we middle-aged people."
"Nobody can tell. Elsie is not like anybody else. The girls who have
seen most of her think she hates men, all but 'Dudley,' as she calls her
father. Some of them doubt whether she loves him. They doubt whether
she can love anything human, except perhaps the old black woman who has
taken care of her since she was a baby. The village people have the
strangest stories about her; you know what they call her?"
She whispered three words in her father's ear. The Judge changed color
as she spoke, sighed deeply, and was silent as if lost in thought for a
moment.
"I remember her mother," he said, "so well! A sweeter creature never
lived. Elsie has something of her in her look, but those are not her
mother's eyes. They were dark, but soft, as in all I ever saw of her
race. Her father's are dark too, but mild, and even tender, I should
say. I don't know what there is about Elsie's,--but do you know, my
dear, I find myself curiously influenced by them? I have had to face a
good many sharp eyes and hard ones,--murderers' eyes and pirates',--men
who had to be watched in the bar, where they stood on trial, for fear
they should spring on the prosecuting officers like tigers,--but I never
saw such eyes as Elsie's; and yet they have a kind of drawing virtue or
power about them,--I don't know what else to call it: have you never
observed this?"
His daughter smiled in her turn.
"Never observed it? Why, of course, nobody could be with Elsie Venner
and not observe it. There are a good many other strange things about
her: did you ever notice how she dresses?"
"Why, handsomely enough, I should think," the Judge answered. "I suppose
she dresses as she likes, and sends to the city for what she wants. What
do you mean in particular? We men notice effects in dress, but not much
in detail."
"You never noticed the colors and patterns of her dresses? You never
remarked anything curious about her ornaments? Well! I don't believe
you men know, half the time, whether a lady wears a nine-penny collar or
a thread-lace cape worth a thousand dollars. I don't believe you know a
silk dress from a bombazine one. I don't believe you can tell whether a
woman is in black or in colors, unless you happen to know she is a widow.
Elsie Venner has a strange taste in dress, let me tell you. She sends
for the oddest patterns of stuffs, and picks out the most curious things
at the jeweller's, whenever she goes to town with her father. They say
the old Doctor tells him to let her have her way about such matters.
Afraid of her mind, if she is contradicted, I suppose. You've heard
about her going to school at that place,--the 'Institoot,' as those
people call it? They say she's bright enough in her way,--has studied at
home, you know, with her father a good deal, knows some modern languages
and Latin, I believe: at any rate, she would have it so,--she must go to
the 'Institoot.' They have a very good female teacher there, I hear; and
the new master, that young Mr. Langdon, looks and talks like a
well-educated young man. I wonder what they 'll make of Elsie, between
them!"
So they talked at the Judge's, in the calm, judicial-looking
mansion-house, in the grave, still library, with the troops of wan-hued
law-books staring blindly out of their titles at them as they talked,
like the ghosts of dead attorneys fixed motionless and speechless, each
with a thin, golden film over his unwinking eyes.
In the mean time, everything went on quietly enough after Cousin
Richard's return. A man of sense,--that is, a man who knows perfectly
well that a cool head is worth a dozen warm hearts in carrying the
fortress of a woman's affections, (not yours, "Astarte," nor yours,
"Viola,")--who knows that men are rejected by women every day because
they, the men, love them, and are accepted every day because they do not,
and therefore can study the arts of pleasing,--a man of sense, when he
finds he has established his second parallel too soon, retires quietly to
his first, and begins working on his covered ways again. The whole art
of love may be read in any Encyclopaedia under the title Fortification,
where the terms just used are explained. After the little adventure of
the necklace, Dick retreated at once to his first parallel. Elsie loved
riding,--and would go off with him on a gallop now and then. He was a
master of all those strange Indian horseback-feats which shame the tricks
of the circus-riders, and used to astonish and almost amuse her sometimes
by disappearing from his saddle, like a phantom horseman lying flat
against the side of the bounding creature that bore him, as if he were a
hunting leopard with his claws in the horse's flank and flattening
himself out against his heaving ribs. Elsie knew a little Spanish too,
which she had learned from the young person who had taught her dancing,
and Dick enlarged her vocabulary with a few soft phrases, and would sing
her a song sometimes, touching the air upon an ancient-looking guitar
they had found with the ghostly things in the garret,--a quaint old
instrument, marked E. M. on the back, and supposed to have belonged to a
certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in connection with a work
of art,--a fair, dowerless lady, who smiled and sung and faded away,
unwedded, a hundred years ago, as dowerless ladies, not a few, are
smiling and singing and fading now,--God grant each of them His
love,--and one human heart as its interpreter!
As for school, Elsie went or stayed away as she liked. Sometimes, when
they thought she was at her desk in the great schoolroom, she would be on
The Mountain,--alone always. Dick wanted to go with her, but she would
never let him. Once, when she had followed the zigzag path a little way
up, she looked back and caught a glimpse of him following her. She
turned and passed him without a word, but giving him a look which seemed
to make the scars on his wrist tingle, went to her room, where she locked
herself up, and did not come out again till evening, Old Sophy having
brought her food, and set it down, not speaking, but looking into her
eyes inquiringly, like a dumb beast trying to feel out his master's will
in his face. The evening was clear and the moon shining. As Dick sat at
his chamber-window, looking at the mountain-side, he saw a gray-dressed
figure flit between the trees and steal along the narrow path which led
upward. Elsie's pillow was unpressed that night, but she had not been
missed by the household,--for Dick knew enough to keep his own counsel.
The next morning she avoided him and went off early to school. It was
the same morning that the young master found the flower between the
leaves of his Virgil.
The girl got over her angry fit, and was pleasant enough with her cousin
for a few days after this; but she shunned rather than sought him. She
had taken a new interest in her books, and especially in certain poetical
readings which the master conducted with the elder scholars. This gave
Master Langdon a good chance to study her ways when her eye was on her
book, to notice the inflections of her voice, to watch for any expression
of her sentiments; for, to tell the truth, he had a kind of fear that the
girl had taken a fancy to him, and, though she interested him, he did not
wish to study her heart from the inside.
The more he saw her, the more the sadness of her beauty wrought upon him.
She looked as if she might hate, but could not love. She hardly smiled
at anything, spoke rarely, but seemed to feel that her natural power of
expression lay all in her bright eyes, the force of which so many had
felt, but none perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. A person
accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing in body or mind,
and to search in every line and tint for some underlying source of
disorder, could hardly help analyzing the impression such a face produced
upon him. The light of those beautiful eyes was like the lustre of ice;
in all her features there was nothing of that human warmth which shows
that sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask of flesh it wears.
The look was that of remoteness, of utter isolation. There was in its
stony apathy, it seemed to him, the pathos which we find in the blind who
show no film or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature had meant her
to be lovely, and left out nothing but love. And yet the master could
not help feeling that some instinct was working in this girl which was in
some way leading her to seek his presence. She did not lift her
glittering eyes upon him as at first. It seemed strange that she did
not, for they were surely her natural weapons of conquest. Her color did
not come and go like that of young girls under excitement. She had a
clear brunette complexion, a little sun-touched, it may be,--for the
master noticed once, when her necklace was slightly displaced, that a
faint ring or band of a little lighter shade than the rest of the surface
encircled her neck. What was the slight peculiarity of her enunciation,
when she read? Not a lisp, certainly, but the least possible
imperfection in articulating some of the lingual sounds,--just enough to
be noticed at first, and quite forgotten after being a few times heard.
Not a word about the flower on either side. It was not uncommon for the
schoolgirls to leave a rose or pink or wild flower on the teacher's desk.
Finding it in the Virgil was nothing, after all; it was a little delicate
flower, which looked as if it were made to press, and it was probably
shut in by accident at the particular place where he found it. He took
it into his head to examine it in a botanical point of view. He found it
was not common,--that it grew only in certain localities,--and that one
of these was among the rocks of the eastern spur of The Mountain.
It happened to come into his head how the Swiss youth climb the sides of
the Alps to find the flower called the Edelweiss for the maidens whom
they wish to please. It is a pretty fancy, that of scaling some
dangerous height before the dawn, so as to gather the flower in its
freshness, that the favored maiden may wear it to church on Sunday
morning, a proof at once of her lover's devotion and his courage. Mr.
Bernard determined to explore the region where this flower was said to
grow, that he might see where the wild girl sought the blossoms of which
Nature was so jealous.
It was on a warm, fair Saturday afternoon that he undertook his
land-voyage of discovery. He had more curiosity, it may be, than he
would have owned; for he had heard of the girl's wandering habits, and
the guesses about her sylvan haunts, and was thinking what the chances
were that he should meet her in some strange place, or come upon traces
of her which would tell secrets she would not care to have known.
The woods are all alive to one who walks through them with his mind in an
excited state, and his eyes and ears wide open. The trees are always
talking, not merely whispering with their leaves, (for every tree talks
to itself in that way, even when it stands alone in the middle of a
pasture,) but grating their boughs against each other, as old horn-handed
farmers press their dry, rustling palms together, dropping a nut or a
leaf or a twig, clicking to the tap of a woodpecker, or rustling as a
squirrel flashes along a branch. It was now the season of singing-birds,
and the woods were haunted with mysterious, tender music. The voices of
the birds which love the deeper shades of the forest are sadder than
those of the open fields: these are the nuns who have taken the veil, the
hermits that have hidden themselves away from the world and tell their
griefs to the infinite listening Silences of the wilderness,--for the one
deep inner silence that Nature breaks with her fitful superficial sounds
becomes multiplied as the image of a star in ruffled waters. Strange!
The woods at first convey the impression of profound repose, and yet, if
you watch their ways with open ear, you find the life which is in them is
restless and nervous as that of a woman: the little twigs are crossing
and twining and separating like slender fingers that cannot be still; the
stray leaf is to be flattened into its place like a truant curl; the
limbs sway and twist, impatient of their constrained attitude; and the
rounded masses of foliage swell upward and subside from time to time with
long soft sighs, and, it may be, the falling of a few rain-drops which
had lain hidden among the deeper shadows. I pray you, notice, in the
sweet summer days which will soon see you among the mountains, this
inward tranquillity that belongs to the heart of the woodland, with this
nervousness, for I do not know what else to call it, of outer movement.
One would say, that Nature, like untrained persons, could not sit still
without nestling about or doing something with her limbs or features, and
that high breeding was only to be looked for in trim gardens, where the
soul of the trees is ill at ease perhaps, but their manners are
unexceptionable, and a rustling branch or leaf falling out of season is
an indecorum. The real forest is hardly still except in the Indian
summer; then there is death in the house, and they are waiting for the
sharp shrunken months to come with white raiment for the summer's burial.
There were many hemlocks in this neighborhood, the grandest and most
solemn of all the forest-trees in the mountain regions. Up to a certain
period of growth they are eminently beautiful, their boughs disposed in
the most graceful pagoda-like series of close terraces, thick and dark
with green crystalline leaflets. In spring the tender shoots come out of
a paler green, finger-like, as if they were pointing to the violets at
their feet. But when the trees have grown old, and their rough boles
measure a yard and more through their diameter, they are no longer
beautiful, but they have a sad solemnity all their own, too full of
meaning to require the heart's comment to be framed in words. Below, all
their earthward-looking branches are sapless and shattered, splintered by
the weight of many winters' snows; above, they are still green and full
of life, but their summits overtop all the deciduous trees around them,
and in their companionship with heaven they are alone. On these the
lightning loves to fall. One such Mr. Bernard saw,--or rather, what had
been one such; for the bolt had torn the tree like an explosion from
within, and the ground was strewed all around the broken stump with
flakes of rough bark and strips and chips of shivered wood, into which
the old tree had been rent by the bursting rocket from the thunder-cloud.
--The master had struck up The Mountain obliquely from the western side
of the Dudley mansion-house. In this way he ascended until he reached a
point many hundred feet above the level of the plain, and commanding all
the country beneath and around. Almost at his feet he saw the
mansion-house, the chimney standing out of the middle of the roof, or
rather, like a black square hole in it,--the trees almost directly over
their stems, the fences as lines, the whole nearly as an architect would
draw a ground-plan of the house and the inclosures round it. It
frightened him to see how the huge masses of rock and old forest-growths
hung over the home below. As he descended a little and drew near the
ledge of evil name, he was struck with the appearance of a long narrow
fissure that ran parallel with it and above it for many rods, not
seemingly of very old standing,--for there were many fibres of roots
which had evidently been snapped asunder when the rent took place, and
some of which were still succulent in both separated portions.
Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, when he set forth, not to come back
before he had examined the dreaded ledge. He had half persuaded himself
that it was scientific curiosity. He wished to examine the rocks, to see
what flowers grew there, and perhaps to pick up an adventure in the
zoological line; for he had on a pair of high, stout boots, and he
carried a stick in his hand, which was forked at one extremity, so as to
be very convenient to hold down a crotalus with, if he should happen to
encounter one. He knew the aspect of the ledge from a distance; for its
bald and leprous-looking declivities stood out in their nakedness from
the wooded sides of The Mountain, when this was viewed from certain
points of the village. But the nearer aspect of the blasted region had
something frightful in it. The cliffs were water-worn, as if they had
been gnawed for thousands of years by hungry waves. In some places they
overhung their base so as to look like leaning towers which might topple
over at any minute. In other parts they were scooped into niches or
caverns. Here and there they were cracked in deep fissures, some of them
of such width that one might enter them, if he cared to run the risk of
meeting the regular tenants, who might treat him as an intruder.
Parts of the ledge were cloven perpendicularly, with nothing but cracks
or slightly projecting edges in which or on which a foot could find hold.
High up on one of these precipitous walls of rock he saw some tufts of
flowers, and knew them at once for the same that he had found between the
leaves of his Virgil. Not there, surely! No woman would have clung
against that steep, rough parapet to gather an idle blossom. And yet the
master looked round everywhere, and even up the side of that rock, to see
if there were no signs of a woman's footstep. He peered about curiously,
as if his eye might fall on some of those fragments of dress which women
leave after them, whenever they run against each other or against
anything else,--in crowded ballrooms, in the brushwood after picnics, on
the fences after rambles, scattered round over every place which has
witnessed an act of violence, where rude hands have been laid upon them.
Nothing--Stop, though, one moment. That stone is smooth and polished,
as if it had been somewhat worn by the pressure of human feet. There is
one twig broken among the stems of that clump of shrubs. He put his foot
upon the stone and took hold of the close-clinging shrub. In this way he
turned a sharp angle of the rock and found himself on a natural platform,
which lay in front of one of the wider fissures,--whether the mouth of a
cavern or not he could not yet tell. A flat stone made an easy seat,
upon which he sat down, as he was very glad to do, and looked
mechanically about him. A small fragment splintered from the rock was at
his feet. He took it and threw it down the declivity a little below
where he sat. He looked about for a stem or a straw of some kind to bite
upon,--a country-instinct,--relic, no doubt, of the old
vegetable-feeding habits of Eden. Is that a stem or a straw? He picked
it up. It was a hair-pin.
To say that Mr. Langdon had a strange sort of thrill shoot through him at
the sight of this harmless little implement would be a statement not at
variance with the fact of the case. That smooth stone had been often
trodden, and by what foot he could not doubt. He rose up from his seat to
look round for other signs of a woman's visits. What if there is a
cavern here, where she has a retreat, fitted up, perhaps, as anchorites
fitted their cells,--nay, it may be, carpeted and mirrored, and with one
of those tiger-skins for a couch, such as they, say the girl loves to lie
on? Let us look, at any rate.
Mr. Bernard walked to the mouth of the cavern or fissure and looked into
it. His look was met by the glitter of two diamond eyes, small, sharp,
cold, shining out of the darkness, but gliding with a smooth, steady
motion towards the light, and himself. He stood fixed, struck dumb,
staring back into them with dilating pupils and sudden numbness of fear
that cannot move, as in the terror of dreams. The two sparks of light
came forward until they grew to circles of flame, and all at once lifted
themselves up as if in angry surprise. Then for the first time thrilled
in Mr. Bernard's ears the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes, be
it man or brute, can hear unmoved,--the long, loud, stinging whirr, as
the huge, thick bodied reptile shook his many-jointed rattle and adjusted
his loops for the fatal stroke. His eyes were drawn as with magnets
toward the circles of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the
swooning dream of chloroform. Nature was before man with her
anaesthetics: the cat's first shake stupefies the mouse; the lion's first
shake deadens the man's fear and feeling; and the crotalus paralyzes
before he strikes. He waited as in a trance,--waited as one that longs
to have the blow fall, and all over, as the man who shall be in two
pieces in a second waits for the axe to drop. But while he looked
straight into the flaming eyes, it seemed to him that they were losing
their light and terror, that they were growing tame and dull; the charm
was dissolving, the numbness was passing away, he could move once more.
He heard a light breathing close to his ear, and, half turning, saw the
face of Elsie Venner, looking motionless into the reptile's eyes, which
had shrunk and faded under the stronger enchantment of her own.
CHAPTER XIV.
FAMILY SECRETS.
It was commonly understood in the town of Rockland that Dudley Venner had
had a great deal of trouble with that daughter of his, so handsome, yet
so peculiar, about whom there were so many strange stories. There was no
end to the tales which were told of her extraordinary doings. Yet her
name was never coupled with that of any youth or man, until this cousin
had provoked remark by his visit; and even then it was oftener in the
shape of wondering conjectures whether he would dare to make love to her,
than in any pretended knowledge of their relations to each other, that
the public tongue exercised its village-prerogative of tattle.
The more common version of the trouble at the mansion-house was this:
Elsie was not exactly in her right mind. Her temper was singular, her
tastes were anomalous, her habits were lawless, her antipathies were many
and intense, and she was liable to explosions of ungovernable anger.
Some said that was not the worst of it. At nearly fifteen years old,
when she was growing fast, and in an irritable state of mind and body,
she had had a governess placed over her for whom she had conceived an
aversion. It was whispered among a few who knew more of the family
secrets than others, that, worried and exasperated by the presence and
jealous oversight of this person, Elsie had attempted to get finally rid
of her by unlawful means, such as young girls have been known to employ
in their straits, and to which the sex at all ages has a certain
instinctive tendency, in preference to more palpable instruments for the
righting of its wrongs. At any rate, this governess had been taken
suddenly ill, and the Doctor had been sent for at midnight. Old Sophy
had taken her master into a room apart, and said a few words to him which
turned him as white as a sheet. As soon as he recovered himself, he sent
Sophy out, called in the old Doctor, and gave him some few hints, on
which he acted at once, and had the satisfaction of seeing his patient
out of danger before he left in the morning. It is proper to say, that,
during the following days, the most thorough search was made in every
nook and cranny of those parts of the house which Elsie chiefly haunted,
but nothing was found which might be accused of having been the
intentional cause of the probably accidental sudden illness of the
governess. From this time forward her father was never easy. Should he
keep her apart, or shut her up, for fear of risk to others, and so lose
every chance of restoring her mind to its healthy tone by kindly
influences and intercourse with wholesome natures? There was no proof,
only presumption, as to the agency of Elsie in the matter referred to.
But the doubt was worse, perhaps, than certainty would have been,--for
then he would have known what to do.
He took the old Doctor as his adviser. The shrewd old man listened to
the father's story, his explanations of possibilities, of probabilities,
of dangers, of hopes. When he had got through, the Doctor looked him in
the face steadily, as if he were saying, Is that all?
The father's eyes fell. This was not all. There was something at the
bottom of his soul which he could not bear to speak of,--nay, which, as
often as it reared itself through the dark waves of unworded
consciousness into the breathing air of thought, he trod down as the
ruined angels tread down a lost soul, trying to come up out of the
seething sea of torture. Only this one daughter! No! God never would
have ordained such a thing. There was nothing ever heard of like it; it
could not be; she was ill,--she would outgrow all these singularities; he
had had an aunt who was peculiar; he had heard that hysteric girls showed
the strangest forms of moral obliquity for a time, but came right at
last. She would change all at once, when her health got more firmly
settled in the course of her growth. Are there not rough buds that open
into sweet flowers? Are there not fruits, which, while unripe, are not
to be tasted or endured, which mature into the richest taste and
fragrance? In God's good time she would come to her true nature; her
eyes would lose that frightful, cold glitter; her lips would not feel so
cold when she pressed them against his cheek; and that faint birth-mark,
her mother swooned when she first saw, would fade wholly out,--it was
less marked, surely, now than it used to be!
So Dudley Venner felt, and would have thought, if he had let his thoughts
breathe the air of his soul. But the Doctor read through words and
thoughts and all into the father's consciousness. There are states of
mind which may be shared by two persons in presence of each other, which
remain not only unworded, but unthoughted, if such a word may be coined
for our special need. Such a mutually interpenetrative consciousness
there was between the father and the old physician. By a common impulse,
both of them rose in a mechanical way and went to the western window,
where each started, as he saw the other's look directed towards the white
stone which stood in the midst of the small plot of green turf.
The Doctor had, for a moment, forgotten himself but he looked up at the
clouds, which were angry, and said, as if speaking of the weather, "It is
dark now, but we hope it will clear up by and by. There are a great many
more clouds than rains, and more rains than strokes of lightning, and
more strokes of lightning than there are people killed. We must let this
girl of ours have her way, as far as it is safe. Send away this woman
she hates, quietly. Get her a foreigner for a governess, if you
can,--one that can dance and sing and will teach her. In the house old
Sophy will watch her best. Out of it you must trust her, I am
afraid,--for she will not be followed round, and she is in less danger
than you think. If she wanders at night, find her, if you can; the woods
are not absolutely safe. If she will be friendly with any young people,
have them to see her,--young men especially. She will not love any one
easily, perhaps not at all; yet love would be more like to bring her
right than anything else. If any young person seems in danger of falling
in love with her, send him to me for counsel."
Dry, hard advice, but given from a kind hewn, with a moist eye, and in
tones which tried to be cheerful and were full of sympathy. This advice
was the key to the more than indulgent treatment which, as we have seen,
the girl had received from her father and all about her. The old Doctor
often came in, in the kindest, most natural sort of way, got into
pleasant relations with Elsie by always treating her in the same easy
manner as at the great party, encouraging all her harmless fancies, and
rarely reminding her that he was a professional adviser, except when she
came out of her own accord, as in the talk they had at the party, telling
him of some wild trick she had been playing.
"Let her go to the girls' school, by all means," said the Doctor, when
she had begun to talk about it. "Possibly she may take to some of the
girls or of the teachers. Anything to interest her. Friendship, love,
religion, whatever will set her nature at work. We must have headway on,
or there will be no piloting her. Action first of all, and then we will
see what to do with it."
So, when Cousin Richard came along, the Doctor, though he did not like
his looks any too well, told her father to encourage his staying for a
time. If she liked him, it was good; if she only tolerated him, it was
better than nothing.
"You know something about that nephew of yours, during these last years,
I suppose?" the Doctor said. "Looks as if he had seen life. Has a scar
that was made by a sword-cut, and a white spot on the side of his neck
that looks like a bullet-mark. I think he has been what folks call a
'hard customer.'"
Dudley Venner owned that he had heard little or nothing of him of late
years. He had invited himself, and of course it would not be decent not
to receive him as a relative. He thought Elsie rather liked having him
about the house for a while. She was very capricious,--acted as if she
fancied him one day and disliked him the next. He did not know,--but
sometimes thought that this nephew of his might take a serious liking to
Elsie. What should he do about it, if it turned out so?
The Doctor lifted his eyebrows a little. He thought there was no fear.
Elsie was naturally what they call a man-hater, and there was very little
danger of any sudden passion springing up between two such young persons.
Let him stay awhile; it gives her something to think about. So he stayed
awhile, as we have seen.
The more Mr. Richard became acquainted with the family,--that is, with
the two persons of whom it consisted,--the more favorably the idea of a
permanent residence in the mansion-house seemed to impress him. The
estate was large,--hundreds of acres, with woodlands and meadows of great
value. The father and daughter had been living quietly, and there could
not be a doubt that the property which came through the Dudleys must have
largely increased of late years. It was evident enough that they had an
abundant income, from the way in which Elsie's caprices were indulged.
She had horses and carriages to suit herself; she sent to the great city
for everything she wanted in the way of dress. Even her diamonds--and
the young man knew something about these gems--must be of considerable
value; and yet she wore them carelessly, as it pleased her fancy. She
had precious old laces, too, almost worth their weight in diamonds; laces
which had been snatched from altars in ancient Spanish cathedrals during
the wars, and which it would not be safe to leave a duchess alone with
for ten minutes. The old house was fat with the deposits of rich
generations which had gone before. The famous "golden" fire-set was a
purchase of one of the family who had been in France during the
Revolution, and must have come from a princely palace, if not from one of
the royal residences. As for silver, the iron closet which had been made
in the dining-room wall was running over with it: tea-kettles,
coffee-pots, heavy-lidded tankards, chafing-dishes, punch-bowls, all that
all the Dudleys had ever used, from the caudle-cup which used to be
handed round the young mother's chamber, and the porringer from which
children scooped their bread-and-milk with spoons as solid as ingots, to
that ominous vessel, on the upper shelf, far back in the dark, with a
spout like a slender italic S, out of which the sick and dying, all along
the last century, and since, had taken the last drops that passed their
lips. Without being much of a scholar, Dick could see well enough, too,
that the books in the library had been ordered from the great London
houses, whose imprint they bore, by persons who knew what was best and
meant to have it. A man does not require much learning to feel pretty
sure, when he takes one of those solid, smooth, velvet-leaved quartos,
say a Baskerville Addison, for instance, bound in red morocco, with a
margin of gold as rich as the embroidery of a prince's collar, as Vandyck
drew it,--he need not know much to feel pretty sure that a score or two
of shelves full of such books mean that it took a long purse, as well as
a literary taste, to bring them together.
To all these attractions the mind of this thoughtful young gentleman may
be said to have been fully open. He did not disguise from himself,
however, that there were a number of drawbacks in the way of his becoming
established as the heir of the Dudley mansion-house and fortune. In the
first place, Cousin Elsie was, unquestionably, very piquant, very
handsome, game as a hawk, and hard to please, which made her worth trying
for. But then there was something about Cousin Elsie,--(the small, white
scars began stinging, as he said this to himself, and he pushed his
sleeve up to look at them)--there was something about Cousin Elsie he
couldn't make out. What was the matter with her eyes, that they sucked
your life out of you in that strange way? What did she always wear a
necklace for? Had she some such love-token on her neck as the old Don's
revolver had left on his? How safe would anybody feel to live with her?
Besides, her father would last forever, if he was left to himself. And
he may take it into his head to marry again. That would be pleasant!
So talked Cousin Richard to himself, in the calm of the night and in the
tranquillity of his own soul. There was much to be said on both sides.
It was a balance to be struck after the two columns were added up. He
struck the balance, and came to the conclusion that he would fall in love
with Elsie Venner.
The intelligent reader will not confound this matured and serious
intention of falling in love with the young lady with that mere impulse
of the moment before mentioned as an instance of making love. On the
contrary, the moment Mr. Richard had made up his mind that he should fall
in love with Elsie, he began to be more reserved with her, and to try to
make friends in other quarters. Sensible men, you know, care very little
what a girl's present fancy is. The question is: Who manages her, and
how can you get at that person or those persons? Her foolish little
sentiments are all very well in their way; but business is business, and
we can't stop for such trifles. The old political wire-pullers never go
near the man they want to gain, if they can help it; they find out who
his intimates and managers are, and work through them. Always handle any
positively electrical body, whether it is charged with passion or power,
with some non-conductor between you and it, not with your naked hands.
--The above were some of the young gentleman's working axioms; and he
proceeded to act in accordance with them.
He began by paying his court more assiduously to his uncle. It was not
very hard to ingratiate himself in that quarter; for his manners were
insinuating, and his precocious experience of life made him entertaining.
The old neglected billiard--room was soon put in order, and Dick, who was
a magnificent player, had a series of games with his uncle, in which,
singularly enough, he was beaten, though his antagonist had been out of
play for years. He evinced a profound interest in the family history,
insisted on having the details of its early alliances, and professed a
great pride in it, which he had inherited from his father, who, though he
had allied himself with the daughter of an alien race, had yet chosen one
with the real azure blood in her veins, as proud as if she had Castile
and Aragon for her dower and the Cid for her grand-papa. He also asked a
great deal of advice, such as inexperienced young persons are in need of,
and listened to it with due reverence.
It is not very strange that uncle Dudley took a kinder view of his nephew
than the Judge, who thought he could read a questionable history in his
face,--or the old Doctor, who knew men's temperaments and organizations
pretty well, and had his prejudices about races, and could tell an old
sword-cut and a ballet-mark in two seconds from a scar got by falling
against the fender, or a mark left by king's evil. He could not be
expected to share our own prejudices; for he had heard nothing of the
wild youth's adventures, or his scamper over the Pampas at short notice.
So, then, "Richard Venner, Esquire, guest of Dudley Venner, Esquire, at
his elegant mansion," prolonged his visit until his presence became
something like a matter of habit, and the neighbors began to think that
the fine old house would be illuminated before long for a grand marriage.
He had done pretty well with the father: the next thing was to gain over
the nurse. Old Sophy was as cunning as a red fox or a gray woodchuck.
She had nothing in the world to do but to watch Elsie; she had nothing to
care for but this girl and her father. She had never liked Dick too
well; for he used to make faces at her and tease her when he was a boy,
and now he was a man there was something about him--she could not tell
what--that made her suspicious of him. It was no small matter to get her
over to his side.
The jet-black Africans know that gold never looks so well as on the foil
of their dark skins. Dick found in his trunk a string of gold beads,
such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he had brought from
the gold region of Chili,--so he said,--for the express purpose of giving
them to old Sophy. These Africans, too, have a perfect passion for
gay-colored clothing; being condemned by Nature, as it were, to a
perpetual mourning-suit, they love to enliven it with all sorts of
variegated stuffs of sprightly patterns, aflame with red and yellow. The
considerate young man had remembered this, too, and brought home for
Sophy some handkerchiefs of rainbow hues, which had been strangely
overlooked till now, at the bottom of one of his trunks. Old Sophy took
his gifts, but kept her black eyes open and watched every movement of the
young people all the more closely. It was through her that the father had
always known most of the actions and tendencies of his daughter.
In the mean time the strange adventure on The Mountain had brought the
young master into new relations with Elsie. She had led him out of,
danger; perhaps saved him from death by the strange power she exerted.
He was grateful, and yet shuddered at the recollection of the whole
scene. In his dreams he was pursued by the glare of cold glittering
eyes, whether they were in the head of a woman or of a reptile he could
not always tell, the images had so run together. But he could not help
seeing that the eyes of the young girl had been often, very often, turned
upon him when he had been looking away, and fell as his own glance met
them. Helen Darley told him very plainly that this girl was thinking
about him more than about her book. Dick Venner found she was getting
more constant in her attendance at school. He learned, on inquiry, that
there was a new master, a handsome young man. The handsome young man
would not have liked the look that, came over Dick's face when he heard
this fact mentioned.
In short, everything was getting tangled up together, and there would be
no chance of disentangling the threads in this chapter.
CHAPTER XV.
PHYSIOLOGICAL.
If Master Bernard felt a natural gratitude to his young pupil for saving
him from an imminent peril, he was in a state of infinite perplexity to
know why he should have needed such aid. He, an active, muscular,
courageous, adventurous young fellow, with--a stick in his hand, ready to
hold down the Old Serpent himself, if he had come in his way, to stand
still, staring into those two eyes, until they came up close to him, and
the strange, terrible sound seemed to freeze him stiff where he
stood,--what was the meaning of it? Again, what was the influence this
girl had seemingly exerted, under which the venomous creature had
collapsed in such a sudden way? Whether he had been awake or dreaming he
did not feel quite sure. He knew he had gone up The Mountain, at any
rate; he knew he had come down The Mountain with the girl walking just
before him;--there was no forgetting her figure, as she walked on in
silence, her braided locks falling a little, for want of the lost
hairpin, perhaps, and looking like a wreathing coil of--Shame on such
fancies!--to wrong that supreme crowning gift of abounding Nature, a rush
of shining black hair, which, shaken loose, would cloud her all round,
like Godiva, from brow to instep! He was sure he had sat down before the
fissure or cave. He was sure that he was led softly away from the place,
and that it was Elsie who had led him. There was the hair-pin to show
that so far it was not a dream. But between these recollections came a
strange confusion; and the more the master thought, the more he was
perplexed to know whether she had waked him, sleeping, as he sat on the
stone, from some frightful dream, such as may come in a very brief
slumber, or whether she had bewitched him into a trance with those
strange eyes of hers, or whether it was all true, and he must solve its
problem as he best might.
There was another recollection connected with this mountain adventure.
As they approached the mansion-house, they met a young man, whom Mr.
Bernard remembered having seen once at least before, and whom he had
heard of as a cousin of the young girl. As Cousin Richard Venner, the
person in question, passed them, he took the measure, so to speak, of Mr.
Bernard, with a look so piercing, so exhausting, so practised, so
profoundly suspicious, that the young master felt in an instant that he
had an enemy in this handsome youth,--an enemy, too, who was like to be
subtle and dangerous.
Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, that, come what might, enemy or no
enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner or
later. He was not a man to be frightened out of his resolution by a
scowl, or a stiletto, or any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole
armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given him.
Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm in
feeling that there might be some dangers in the way of his
investigations. Some rumors which had reached him about the supposed
suitor of Elsie Venner, who was thought to be a desperate kind of fellow,
and whom some believed to be an unscrupulous adventurer, added a curious,
romantic kind of interest to the course of physiological and
psychological inquiries he was about instituting.
The afternoon on The Mountain was still upper-most in his mind. Of
course he knew the common stories--about fascination. He had once been
himself an eyewitness of the charming of a small bird by one of our
common harmless serpents. Whether a human being could be reached by this
subtile agency, he had been skeptical, notwithstanding the mysterious
relation generally felt to exist between man and this creature, "cursed
above all cattle and above every beast of the field,"--a relation which
some interpret as the fruit of the curse, and others hold to be so
instinctive that this animal has been for that reason adopted as the
natural symbol of evil. There was another solution, however, supplied
him by his professional reading. The curious work of Mr. Braid of
Manchester had made him familiar with the phenomena of a state allied to
that produced by animal magnetism, and called by that writer by the name
of hypnotism. He found, by referring to his note-book, the statement
was, that, by fixing the eyes on a bright object so placed as to produce
a strain upon the eyes and eyelids, and to maintain a steady fixed stare,
there comes on in a few seconds a very singular condition, characterized
by muscular rigidity and inability to move, with a strange exaltation of
most of the senses, and generally a closure of the eyelids,--this
condition being followed by torpor.
Now this statement of Mr. Braid's, well known to the scientific world,
and the truth of which had been confirmed by Mr. Bernard in certain
experiments he had instituted, as it has been by many other
experimenters, went far to explain the strange impressions, of which,
waking or dreaming, he had certainly been the subject. His nervous
system had been in a high state of exaltation at the time. He remembered
how the little noises that made rings of sound in the silence of the
woods, like pebbles dropped in still waters, had reached his inner
consciousness. He remembered that singular sensation in the roots of the
hair, when he came on the traces of the girl's presence, reminding him of
a line in a certain poem which he had read lately with a new and peculiar
interest. He even recalled a curious evidence of exalted sensibility and
irritability, in the twitching of the minute muscles of the internal ear
at every unexpected sound, producing an odd little snap in the middle of
the head, which proved to him that he was getting very nervous.
The next thing was to find out whether it were possible that the venomous
creature's eyes should have served the purpose of Mr. Braid's "bright
object" held very close to the person experimented on, or whether they
had any special power which could be made the subject of exact
observation.
For this purpose Mr. Bernard considered it necessary to get a live
crotalus or two into his possession, if this were possible. On inquiry,
he found that there was a certain family living far up the mountainside,
not a mile from the ledge, the members of which were said to have taken
these creatures occasionally, and not to be in any danger, or at least in
any fear, of being injured by them. He applied to these people, and
offered a reward sufficient to set them at work to capture some of these
animals, if such a thing were possible.
A few days after this, a dark, gypsy-looking woman presented herself at
his door. She held up her apron as if it contained something precious in
the bag she made with it.
"Y' wanted some rattlers," said the woman. "Here they be."
She opened her apron and showed a coil of rattlesnakes lying very
peaceably in its fold. They lifted their heads up, as if they wanted to
see what was going on, but showed no sign of anger.
"Are you crazy?" said Mr. Bernard. "You're dead in an hour, if one of
those creatures strikes you!"
He drew back a little, as he spoke; it might be simple disgust; it might
be fear; it might be what we call antipathy, which is different from
either, and which will sometimes show itself in paleness, and even
faintness, produced by objects perfectly harmless and not in themselves
offensive to any sense.
"Lord bless you," said the woman, "rattlers never touches our folks. I'd
jest 'z lieves handle them creaturs as so many striped snakes."
So saying, she put their heads down with her hand, and packed them
together in her apron as if they had been bits of cart-rope.
Mr. Bernard had never heard of the power, or, at least, the belief in the
possession of a power by certain persons, which enables them to handle
these frightful reptiles with perfect impunity. The fact, however, is
well known to others, and more especially to a very distinguished
Professor in one of the leading institutions of the great city of the
land, whose experiences in the neighborhood of Graylock, as he will
doubtless inform the curious, were very much like those of the young
master.
Mr. Bernard had a wired cage ready for his formidable captives, and
studied their habits and expression with a strange sort of interest. What
did the Creator mean to signify, when he made such shapes of horror, and,
as if he had doubly cursed this envenomed wretch, had set a mark upon him
and sent him forth the Cain of the brotherhood of serpents? It was a
very curious fact that the first train of thoughts Mr. Bernard's small
menagerie suggested to him was the grave, though somewhat worn, subject
of the origin of evil. There is now to be seen in a tall glass jar, in
the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Cantabridge in the territory of the
Massachusetts, a huge crotalus, of a species which grows to more
frightful dimensions than our own, under the hotter skies of South
America. Look at it, ye who would know what is the tolerance, the
freedom from prejudice, which can suffer such an incarnation of all that
is devilish to lie unharmed in the cradle of Nature! Learn, too, that
there are many things in this world which we are warned to shun, and are
even suffered to slay, if need be, but which we must not hate, unless we
would hate what God loves and cares for.
Whatever fascination the creature might exercise in his native haunts,
Mr. Bernard found himself not in the least nervous or affected in any way
while looking at his caged reptiles. When their cage was shaken, they
would lift their heads and spring their rattles; but the sound was by no
means so formidable to listen to as when it reverberated among the chasms
of the echoing rocks. The expression of the creatures was watchful,
still, grave, passionless, fate-like, suggesting a cold malignity which
seemed to be waiting for its opportunity. Their awful, deep-cut mouths
were sternly closed over the long hollow fangs which rested their roots
against the swollen poison-gland, where the venom had been hoarding up
ever since the last stroke had emptied it. They never winked, for
ophidians have no movable eyelids, but kept up that awful fixed stare
which made the two unwinking gladiators the survivors of twenty pairs
matched by one of the Roman Emperors, as Pliny tells us, in his "Natural
History." Their eyes did not flash, but shone with a cold still light.
They were of a pale-golden or straw color, horrible to look into, with
their stony calmness, their pitiless indifference, hardly enlivened by
the almost imperceptible vertical slit of the pupil, through which Death
seemed to be looking out like the archer behind the long narrow loop-hole
in a blank turret-wall. On the whole, the caged reptiles, horrid as they
were, hardly matched his recollections of what he had seen or dreamed he
save at the cavern. These looked dangerous enough, but yet quiet. A
treacherous stillness, however,--as the unfortunate New York physician
found, when he put his foot out to wake up the torpid creature, and
instantly the fang flashed through his boot, carrying the poison into his
blood, and death with it.
Mr. Bernard kept these strange creatures, and watched all their habits
with a natural curiosity. In any collection of animals the venomous
beasts are looked at with the greatest interest, just as the greatest
villains are most run after by the unknown public. Nobody troubles
himself for a common striped snake or a petty thief, but a cobra or a
wife-killer is a centre of attraction to all eyes. These captives did
very little to earn their living, but, on the other hand, their living
was not expensive, their diet being nothing but air, au naturel. Months
and months these creatures will live and seem to thrive well enough, as
any showman who has then in his menagerie will testify, though they never
touch anything to eat or drink.
In the mean time Mr. Bernard had become very curious about a class of
subjects not treated of in any detail in those text-books accessible in
most country-towns, to the exclusion of the more special treatises, and
especially of the rare and ancient works found on the shelves of the
larger city-libraries. He was on a visit to old Dr. Kittredge one day,
having been asked by him to call in for a few moments as soon as
convenient. The Doctor smiled good-humoredly when he asked him if he had
an extensive collection of medical works.
"Why, no," said the old Doctor, "I haven't got a great many printed
books; and what I have I don't read quite as often as I might, I'm
afraid. I read and studied in the time of it, when I was in the midst of
the young men who were all at work with their books; but it's a mighty
hard matter, when you go off alone into the country, to keep up with all
that's going on in the Societies and the Colleges. I'll tell you, though,
Mr. Langdon, when a man that's once started right lives among sick folks
for five-and-thirty years, as I've done, if he has n't got a library of
five-and-thirty volumes bound up in his head at the end of that time,
he'd better stop driving round and sell his horse and sulky. I know the
bigger part of the families within a dozen miles' ride. I know the
families that have a way of living through everything, and I know the
other set that have the trick of dying without any kind of reason for it.
I know the years when the fevers and dysenteries are in earnest, and when
they're only making believe. I know the folks that think they're dying
as soon as they're sick, and the folks that never find out they 're sick
till they're dead. I don't want to undervalue your science, Mr. Langdon.
There are things I never learned, because they came in after my day, and
I am very glad to send my patients to those that do know them, when I am
at fault; but I know these people about here, fathers and mothers, and
children and grandchildren, so as all the science in the world can't know
them, without it takes time about it, and sees them grow up and grow old,
and how the wear and tear of life comes to them. You can't tell a horse
by driving him once, Mr. Langdon, nor a patient by talking half an hour
with him."
"Do you know much about the Veneer family?" said Mr. Bernard, in a
natural way enough, the Doctor's talk having suggested the question.
The Doctor lifted his head with his accustomed movement, so as to command
the young man through his spectacles.
"I know all the families of this place and its neighborhood," he
answered.
"We have the young lady studying with us at the Institute," said Mr.
Bernard.
"I know it," the Doctor answered. "Is she a good scholar?"
All this time the Doctor's eyes were fixed steadily on Mr. Bernard,
looking through the glasses.
"She is a good scholar enough, but I don't know what to make of her.
Sometimes I think she is a little out of her head. Her father, I
believe, is sensible enough;--what sort of a woman was her mother,
Doctor?--I suppose, of course, you remember all about her?"
"Yes, I knew her mother. She was a very lovely young woman."--The Doctor
put his hand to his forehead and drew a long breath.--"What is there you
notice out of the way about Elsie Venner?"
"A good many things," the master answered. "She shuns all the other
girls. She is getting a strange influence over my fellow-teacher, a
young lady,--you know Miss Helen Darley, perhaps? I am afraid this girl
will kill her. I never saw or heard of anything like it, in prose at
least;--do you remember much of Coleridge's Poems, Doctor?"
The good old Doctor had to plead a negative.
"Well, no matter. Elsie would have been burned for a witch in old times.
I have seen the girl look at Miss Darley when she had not the least idea
of it, and all at once I would see her grow pale and moist, and sigh, and
move round uneasily, and turn towards Elsie, and perhaps get up and go to
her, or else have slight spasmodic movements that looked like
hysterics;--do you believe in the evil eye, Doctor?"
"Mr. Langdon," the Doctor said, solemnly, "there are strange things about
Elsie Veneer,--very strange things. This was what I wanted to speak to
you about. Let me advise you all to be very patient with the girl, but
also very careful. Her love is not to be desired, and "--he spoke in a
lower tone--"her hate is to be dreaded. Do you think she has any special
fancy for anybody else in the school besides Miss Darley?"
Mr. Bernard could not stand the old Doctor's spectacled eyes without
betraying a little of the feeling natural to a young man to whom a home
question involving a possible sentiment is put suddenly.
"I have suspected," he said,--"I have had a kind of feeling--that
she--Well, come, Doctor,--I don't know that there 's any use in
disguising the matter,--I have thought Elsie Veneer had rather a fancy
for somebody else,--I mean myself."
There was something so becoming in the blush with which the young man
made this confession, and so manly, too, in the tone with which he spoke,
so remote from any shallow vanity, such as young men who are incapable of
love are apt to feel, when some loose tendril of a woman's fancy which a
chance wind has blown against them twines about them for the want of
anything better, that the old Doctor looked at him admiringly, and could
not help thinking that it was no wonder any young girl should be pleased
with him.
"You are a man of nerve, Mr. Langdon?" said the Doctor.
"I thought so till very lately," he replied. "I am not easily
frightened, but I don't know but I might be bewitched or magnetized, or
whatever it is when one is tied up and cannot move. I think I can find
nerve enough, however, if there is any special use you want to put it
to."
"Let me ask you one more question, Mr. Langdon. Do you find yourself
disposed to take a special interest in Elsie,--to fall in love with her,
in a word? Pardon me, for I do not ask from curiosity, but a much more
serious motive."
"Elsie interests me," said the young man, "interests me strangely. She
has a wild flavor in her character which is wholly different from that of
any human creature I ever saw. She has marks of genius, poetic or
dramatic,--I hardly know which. She read a passage from Keats's 'Lamia'
the other day, in the schoolroom, in such a way that I declare to you I
thought some of the girls would faint or go into fits. Miss Darley got
up and left the room, trembling all over. Then, I pity her, she is so
lonely. The girls are afraid of her, and she seems to have either a
dislike or a fear of them. They have all sorts of painful stories about
her. They give her a name which no human creature ought to bear. They
say she hides a mark on her neck by always wearing a necklace. She is
very graceful, you know, and they will have it that she can twist herself
into all sorts of shapes, or tie herself in a knot, if she wants to.
There is not one of them that will look her in the eyes. I pity the poor
girl; but, Doctor, I do not love her. I would risk my life for her, if
it would do her any good, but it would be in cold blood. If her hand
touches mine, it is not a thrill of passion I feel running through me,
but a very different emotion. Oh, Doctor! there must be something in
that creature's blood which has killed the humanity in her. God only
knows the cause that has blighted such a soul in so beautiful a body! No,
Doctor, I do not love the girl."
"Mr. Langdon," said the Doctor, "you are young, and I am old. Let me
talk to you with an old man's privilege, as an adviser. You have come to
this country-town without suspicion, and you are moving in the midst of
perils. There are things which I must not tell you now; but I may warn
you. Keep your eyes open and your heart shut. If, through pitying that
girl, you ever come to love her, you are lost. If you deal carelessly
with her, beware! This is not all. There are other eyes on you beside
Elsie Venner's. Do you go armed?"
"I do!" said Mr. Bernard,--and he "put his hands up" in the shape of
fists, in such a way as to show that he was master of the natural weapons
at any rate.
The Doctor could not help smiling. But his face fell in an instant.
"You may want something more than those tools to work with. Come with me
into my sanctum."
The Doctor led Mr. Bernard into a small room opening out of the study.
It was a place such as anybody but a medical man would shiver to enter.
There was the usual tall box with its bleached, rattling tenant; there
were jars in rows where "interesting cases" outlived the grief of widows
and heirs in alcoholic immortality,--for your "preparation-jar" is the
true "monumentum aere perennius;" there were various semi-possibilities
of minute dimensions and unpromising developments; there were shining
instruments of evil aspect, and grim plates on the walls, and on one
shelf by itself, accursed and apart, coiled in a long cylinder of spirit,
a huge crotalus, rough-scaled, flatheaded, variegated with dull bands,
one of which partially encircled the neck like a collar,--an awful wretch
to look upon, with murder written all over him in horrid hieroglyphics.
Mr. Bernard's look was riveted on this creature,--not fascinated
certainly, for its eyes looked like white beads, being clouded by the
action of the spirits in which it had been long kept,--but fixed by some
indefinite sense of the renewal of a previous impression;--everybody
knows the feeling, with its suggestion of some past state of existence.
There was a scrap of paper on the jar, with something written on it. He
was reaching up to read it when the Doctor touched him lightly.
"Look here, Mr. Langdon!" he said, with a certain vivacity of manner, as
if wishing to call away his attention,--"this is my armory."
The Doctor threw open the door of a small cabinet, where were disposed in
artistic patterns various weapons of offence and defence,--for he was a
virtuoso in his way, and by the side of the implements of the art of
healing had pleased himself with displaying a collection of those other
instruments, the use of which renders the first necessary.
"See which of these weapons you would like best to carry about you," said
the Doctor.
Mr. Bernard laughed, and looked at the Doctor as if he half doubted
whether he was in earnest.
"This looks dangerous enough," he said,--"for the man who carries it, at
least."
He took down one of the prohibited Spanish daggers or knives which a
traveller may, occasionally get hold of and smuggle out of the country.
The blade was broad, trowel-like, but the point drawn out several inches,
so as to look like a skewer.
"This must be a jealous bull-fighter's weapon," he said, and put it back
in its place.
Then he took down an ancient-looking broad-bladed dagger, with a complex
aspect about it, as if it had some kind of mechanism connected with it.
"Take care!" said the Doctor; "there is a trick to that dagger."
He took it and touched a spring. The dagger split suddenly into three
blades, as when one separates the forefinger and the ring-finger from the
middle one. The outside blades were sharp on their outer edge. The stab
was to be made with the dagger shut, then the spring touched and the
split blades withdrawn.
Mr. Bernard replaced it, saying, that it would have served for sidearm to
old Suwarrow, who told his men to work their bayonets back and forward
when they pinned a Turk, but to wriggle them about in the wound when they
stabbed a Frenchman.
"Here," said the Doctor, "this is the thing you want."
He took down a much more modern and familiar implement,--a small,
beautifully finished revolver.
"I want you to carry this," he said; "and more than that, I want you to
practise with it often, as for amusement, but so that it maybe seen and
understood that you are apt to have a pistol about you. Pistol-shooting
is pleasant sport enough, and there is no reason why you should not
practise it like other young fellows. And now," the Doctor said, "I have
one other, weapon to give you."
He took a small piece of parchment and shook a white powder into it from
one of his medicine-jars. The jar was marked with the name of a mineral
salt, of a nature to have been serviceable in case of sudden illness in
the time of the Borgias. The Doctor folded the parchment carefully, and
marked the Latin name of the powder upon it.
"Here," he said, handing it to Mr. Bernard, "you see what it is, and you
know what service it can render. Keep these two protectors about your
person day and night; they will not harm you, and you may want one or the
other or both before you think of it."
Mr. Bernard thought it was very odd, and not very old-gentlemanlike, to
be fitting him out for treason, stratagem, and spoils, in this way.
There was no harm, however, in carrying a doctor's powder in his pocket,
or in amusing himself with shooting at a mark, as he had often done
before. If the old gentleman had these fancies, it was as well to humor
him.
So he thanked old Doctor Kittredge, and shook his hand warmly as he left
him.
"The fellow's hand did not tremble, nor his color change," the Doctor
said, as he watched him walking away. "He is one of the right sort."
CHAPTER XVI
EPISTOLARY.
Mr. Langdon to the Professor.
MY DEAR PROFESSOR, You were kind enough to promise me that you would
assist me in any professional or scientific investigations in which I
might become engaged. I have of late become deeply interested in a class
of subjects which present peculiar difficulty, and I must exercise the
privilege of questioning you on some points upon which I desire
information I cannot otherwise obtain. I would not trouble you, if I
could find any person or books competent to enlighten me on some of these
singular matters which have so excited me. The leading doctor here is a
shrewd, sensible man, but not versed in the curiosities of medical
literature.
I proceed, with your leave, to ask a considerable number of
questions,--hoping to get answers to some of them, at least.
Is there any evidence that human beings can be infected or wrought upon
by poisons, or otherwise, so that they shall manifest any of the
peculiarities belonging to beings of a lower nature? Can such
peculiarities--be transmitted by inheritance? Is there anything to
countenance the stories, long and widely current, about the "evil eye"?
or is it a mere fancy that such a power belongs to any human being? Have
you any personal experience as to the power of fascination said to be
exercised by certain animals? What can you make of those circumstantial
statements we have seen in the papers, of children forming mysterious
friendships with ophidians of different species, sharing their food with
them, and seeming to be under some subtile influence exercised by those
creatures? Have you read, critically, Coleridge's poem of "Christabel,"
and Keats's "Lamia"?--If so, can you understand them, or find any
physiological foundation for the story of either?
There is another set of questions of a different nature I should like to
ask, but it is hardly fair to put so many on a single sheet. There is
one, however, you must answer. Do you think there may be
predispositions, inherited or ingrafted, but at any rate constitutional,
which shall take out certain apparently voluntary determinations from the
control of the will, and leave them as free from moral responsibility as
the instincts of the lower animals? Do you not think there may be a
crime which is not a sin?
Pardon me, my dear Sir, for troubling you with such a list of notes of
interrogation. There are some very strange things going on here in this
place, country-town as it is. Country-life is apt to be dull; but when
it once gets going, it beats the city hollow, because it gives its whole
mind to what it is about. These rural sinners make terrible work with
the middle of the Decalogue, when they get started. However, I hope I
shall live through my year's school-keeping without catastrophes, though
there are queer doings about me which puzzle me and might scare some
people. If anything should happen, you will be one of the first to hear
of it, no doubt. But I trust not to help out the editors of the
"Rockland Weekly Universe" with an obituary of the late lamented, who
signed himself in life--
Your friend and pupil,
BERNARD C. LANGDON.
The Professor to Mr. Langdon.
MY DEAR MR. LANGDON, I do not wonder that you find no answer from your
country friends to the curious questions you put. They belong to that
middle region between science and poetry which sensible men, as they are
called, are very shy of meddling with. Some people think that truth and
gold are always to be washed for; but the wiser sort are of opinion,
that, unless there are so many grains to the peck of sand or nonsense
respectively, it does not pay to wash for either, so long as one can find
anything else to do. I don't doubt there is some truth in the phenomena
of animal magnetism, for instance; but when you ask me to cradle for it,
I tell you that the hysteric girls cheat so, and the professionals are
such a set of pickpockets, that I can do something better than hunt for
the grains of truth among their tricks and lies. Do you remember what I
used to say in my lectures?--or were you asleep just then, or cutting
your initials on the rail? (You see I can ask questions, my young
friend.) Leverage is everything,--was what I used to say;--don't begin to
pry till you have got the long arm on your side.
To please you, and satisfy your doubts as far as possible, I have looked
into the old books,--into Schenckius and Turner and Kenelm. Digby and the
rest, where I have found plenty of curious stories which you must take
for what they are worth.
Your first question I can answer in the affirmative upon pretty good
authority. Mizaldus tells, in his "Memorabilia," the well-known story of
the girl fed on poisons, who was sent by the king of the Indies to
Alexander the Great. "When Aristotle saw her eyes sparkling and snapping
like those of serpents, he said, 'Look out for yourself, Alexander! this
is a dangerous companion for you!'"--and sure enough, the young lady
proved to be a very unsafe person to her friends. Cardanus gets a story
from Avicenna, of a certain man bit by a serpent, who recovered of his
bite, the snake dying therefrom. This man afterwards had a daughter whom
venomous serpents could not harm, though she had a fatal power over them.
I suppose you may remember the statements of old authors about
Zycanthropy, the disease in which men took on the nature and aspect of
wolves. Actius and Paulus, both men of authority, describe it. Altomaris
gives a horrid case; and Fincelius mentions one occurring as late as
1541, the subject of which was captured, still insisting that he was a
wolf, only that the hair of his hide was turned in! Versipelles, it may
be remembered, was the Latin name for these "were-wolves."
As for the cases where rabid persons have barked and bit like dogs, there
are plenty of such on record.
More singular, or at least more rare, is the account given by Andreas
Baccius, of a man who was struck in the hand by a cock, with his beak,
and who died on the third day thereafter, looking for all the world like
a fighting-cock, to the great horror of the spectators.
As to impressions transmitted at a very early period of existence, every
one knows the story of King James's fear of a naked sword, and the way it
is accounted for. Sir Kenelm Digby says,--"I remember when he dubbed me
Knight, in the ceremony of putting the point of a naked sword upon my
shoulder, he could not endure to look upon it, but turned his face
another way, insomuch, that, in lieu of touching my shoulder, he had
almost thrust the point into my eyes, had not the Duke of Buckingham
guided his hand aright." It is he, too, who tells the story of the
mulberry mark upon the neck of a certain lady of high condition, which
"every year, to mulberry season, did swell, grow big, and itch." And
Gaffarel mentions the case of a girl born with the figure of a fish on
one of her limbs, of which the wonder was, that, when the girl did eat
fish, this mark put her to sensible pain. But there is no end to cases
of this kind, and I could give some of recent date, if necessary, lending
a certain plausibility at least to the doctrine of transmitted
impressions.
I never saw a distinct case of evil eye, though I have seen eyes so bad
that they might produce strange effects on very sensitive natures. But
the belief in it under various names, fascination, jettcztura, etc., is
so permanent and universal, from Egypt to Italy, and from the days of
Solomon to those of Ferdinand of Naples, that there must be some
peculiarity, to say the least, on which the opinion is based. There is
very strong evidence that some such power is exercised by certain of the
lower animals. Thus, it is stated on good authority that "almost every
animal becomes panic-struck at the sight of the rattlesnake, and seems at
once deprived of the power of motion, or the exercise of its usual
instinct of self-preservation." Other serpents seem to share this power
of fascination, as the Cobra and the Buccephalus Capensis.
Some think that it is nothing but fright; others attribute it to the
"strange powers that lie
Within the magic circle of the eye,"--
as Churchill said, speaking of Garrick.
You ask me about those mysterious and frightful intimacies between
children and serpents, of which so many instances have been recorded. I
am sure I cannot tell what to make of them. I have seen several such
accounts in recent papers, but here is one published in the seventeenth
century, which is as striking as any of the more modern ones:
"Mr. Herbert Tones of Monmouth, when he was a little Boy, was used to eat
his Milk in a Garden in the Morning, and was no sooner there, but a large
Snake always came, and eat out of the Dish with him, and did so for a
considerable time, till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the Head,
it hissed at him. Upon which he told his Mother that the Baby (for so he
call'd it) cry'd Hiss at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which occasioned
him a great Fit of Sickness, and 'twas thought would have dy'd, but did
recover."
There was likewise one "William Writtle, condemned at Maidston Assizes
for a double murder, told a Minister that was with him after he was
condemned, that his mother told him, that when he was a Child, there
crept always to him a Snake, wherever she laid him. Sometimes she would
convey him up Stairs, and leave him never so little, she should be sure
to find a Snake in the Cradle with him, but never perceived it did him
any harm."
One of the most striking alleged facts connected with the mysterious
relation existing between the serpent and-the human species is the
influence which the poison of the Crotulus, taken internally, seemed to
produce over the moral faculties, in the experiments instituted by Dr.
Hering at Surinam. There is something frightful in the disposition of
certain ophidians, as the whipsnake, which darts at the eyes of cattle
without any apparent provocation or other motive. It is natural enough
that the evil principle should have been represented in the form of a
serpent, but it is strange to think of introducing it into a human being
like cow-pox by vaccination.
You know all about the Psylli, or ancient serpent tamers, I suppose.
Savary gives an account of the modern serpent-tamers in his "Letters on
Egypt." These modern jugglers are in the habit of making the venomous
Naja counterfeit death, lying out straight and stiff, changing it into a
rod, as the ancient magicians did with their serpents, (probably the same
animal,) in the time of Moses.
I am afraid I cannot throw much light on "Christabel" or "Lamia" by any
criticism I can offer. Geraldine, in the former, seems to be simply a
malignant witch-woman with the evil eye, but with no absolute ophidian
relationship. Lamia is a serpent transformed by magic into a woman. The
idea of both is mythological, and not in any sense physiological. Some
women unquestionably suggest the image of serpents; men rarely or never.
I have been struck, like many others, with the ophidian head and eye of
the famous Rachel.
Your question about inherited predispositions, as limiting the sphere of
the will, and, consequently, of moral accountability, opens a very wide
range of speculation. I can give you only a brief abstract of my own
opinions on this delicate and difficult subject. Crime and sin, being
the preserves of two great organized interests, have been guarded against
all reforming poachers with as great jealousy as the Royal Forests. It
is so easy to hang a troublesome fellow! It is so much simpler to
consign a soul to perdition, or say masses, for money, to save it, than
to take the blame on ourselves for letting it grow up in neglect and run
to ruin for want of humanizing influences! They hung poor, crazy
Bellingham for shooting Mr. Perceval. The ordinary of Newgate preached
to women who were to swing at Tyburn for a petty theft as if they were
worse than other people,--just as though he would not have been a
pickpocket or shoplifter, himself, if he had been born in a den of
thieves and bred up to steal or starve! The English law never began to
get hold of the idea that a crime was not necessarily a sin, till
Hadfield, who thought he was the Saviour of mankind, was tried for
shooting at George the Third;--lucky for him that he did not hit his
Majesty!
It is very singular that we recognize all the bodily defects that unfit a
man for military service, and all the intellectual ones that limit his
range of thought, but always talk at him as if all his moral powers were
perfect. I suppose we must punish evil-doers as we extirpate vermin; but
I don't know that we have any more right to judge them than we have to
judge rats and mice, which are just as good as cats and weasels, though
we think it necessary to treat them as criminals.
The limitations of human responsibility have never been properly studied,
unless it be by the phrenologists. You know from my lectures that I
consider phrenology, as taught, a pseudo-science, and not a branch of
positive knowledge; but, for all that, we owe it an immense debt. It has
melted the world's conscience in its crucible, and cast it in a new
mould, with features less like those of Moloch and more like those of
humanity. If it has failed to demonstrate its system of special
correspondences, it has proved that there are fixed relations between
organization and mind and character. It has brought out that great
doctrine of moral insanity, which has done more to make men charitable
and soften legal and theological barbarism than any one doctrine that I
can think of since the message of peace and good-will to men.
Automatic action in the moral world; the reflex movement which seems to
be self-determination, and has been hanged and howled at as such
(metaphorically) for nobody knows how many centuries: until somebody
shall study this as Marshall Hall has studied reflex nervous action in
the bodily system, I would not give much for men's judgments of each
others' characters. Shut up the robber and the defaulter, we must. But
what if your oldest boy had been stolen from his cradle and bred in a
North-Street cellar? What if you are drinking a little too much wine and
smoking a little too much tobacco, and your son takes after you, and so
your poor grandson's brain being a little injured in physical texture, he
loses the fine moral sense on which you pride yourself, and doesn't see
the difference between signing another man's name to a draft and his own?
I suppose the study of automatic action in the moral world (you see what
I mean through the apparent contradiction of terms) may be a dangerous
one in the view of many people. It is liable to abuse, no doubt. People
are always glad to, get hold of anything which limits their
responsibility. But remember that our moral estimates come down to us
from ancestors who hanged children for stealing forty shillings' worth,
and sent their souls to perdition for the sin of being born,--who
punished the unfortunate families of suicides, and in their eagerness for
justice executed one innocent person every three years, on the average,
as Sir James Mackintosh tells us.
I do not know in what shape the practical question may present itself to
you; but I will tell you my rule in life, and I think you will find it a
good one. Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane. They are
in-sane, out of health, morally. Reason, which is food to sound minds,
is not tolerated, still less assimilated, unless administered with the
greatest caution; perhaps, not at all. Avoid collision with them, so far
as you honorably can; keep your temper, if you can,--for one angry man is
as good as another; restrain them from violence, promptly, completely,
and with the least possible injury, just as in the case of maniacs,--and
when you have got rid of them, or got them tied hand and foot so that
they can do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them charitably,
remembering that nine tenths of their' perversity comes from outside
influences, drunken ancestors, abuse in childhood, bad company, from
which you have happily been preserved, and for some of which you, as a
member of society, may be fractionally responsible. I think also that
there are special influences which work in the brood lake ferments, and I
have a suspicion that some of those curious old stories I cited may have
more recent parallels. Have you ever met with any cases which admitted
of a solution like that which I have mentioned?
Yours very truly,
_____________ _____________
Bernard Langdon to Philip Staples.
MY DEAR PHILIP,--
I have been for some months established in this place, turning the main
crank of the machinery for the manufactory of accomplishments
superintended by, or rather worked to the profit of, a certain Mr. Silas
Peckham. He is a poor wretch, with a little thin fishy blood in his
body, lean and flat, long-armed and large-handed, thick-jointed and
thin-muscled,--you know those unwholesome, weak-eyed, half-fed creatures,
that look not fit to be round among live folks, and yet not quite dead
enough to bury. If you ever hear of my being in court to answer to a
charge of assault and battery, you may guess that I have been giving him
a thrashing to settle off old scores; for he is a tyrant, and has come
pretty near killing his principal lady-assistant with overworking her and
keeping her out of all decent privileges.
Helen Darley is this lady's name,--twenty two or three years old, I
should think,--a very sweet, pale woman,--daughter of the usual
country-clergyman,--thrown on her own resources from an early age, and
the rest: a common story, but an uncommon person,--very. All conscience
and sensibility, I should say,--a cruel worker,--no kind of regard for
herself, seems as fragile and supple as a young willow-shoot, but try her
and you find she has the spring in her of a steel cross-bow. I am glad I
happened to come to this place, if it were only for her sake. I have
saved that girl's life; I am as sure of it as if I had pulled her out of
the fire or water.
Of course I'm in love with her, you say,--we always love those whom we
have benefited; "saved her life,--her love was the reward of his
devotion," etc., etc., as in a regular set novel. In love, Philip? Well,
about that,--I love Helen Darley--very much: there is hardly anybody I
love so well. What a noble creature she is! One of those that just go
right on, do their own work and everybody else's, killing themselves inch
by inch without ever thinking about it,--singing and dancing at their
toil when they begin, worn and saddened after a while, but pressing
steadily on, tottering by and by, and catching at the rail by the
way-side to help them lift one foot before the other, and at last
falling, face down, arms stretched forward.
Philip, my boy, do you know I am the sort of man that locks his door
sometimes and cries his heart out of his eyes,--that can sob like a woman
and not be ashamed of it? I come of fighting-blood on one side, you
know; I think I could be savage on occasion. But I am tender,--more and
more tender as I come into my fulness of manhood. I don't like to strike
a man, (laugh, if you like,--I know I hit hard when I do strike,)--but
what I can't stand is the sight of these poor, patient, toiling women,
who never find out in this life how good they are, and never know what it
is to be told they are angels while they still wear the pleasing
incumbrances of humanity. I don't know what to make of these cases. To
think that a woman is never to be a woman again, whatever she may come to
as an unsexed angel,--and that she should die unloved! Why does not
somebody come and carry off this noble woman, waiting here all ready to
make a man happy? Philip, do you know the pathos there is in the eyes of
unsought women, oppressed with the burden of an inner life unshared? I
can see into them now as I could not in those 'earlier days. I sometimes
think their pupils dilate on purpose to let my consciousness glide
through them; indeed, I dread them, I come so close to the nerve of the
soul itself in these momentary intimacies. You used to tell me I was a
Turk,--that my heart was full of pigeon-holes, with accommodations inside
for a whole flock of doves. I don't know but I am still as Youngish as
ever in my ways,--Brigham-Youngish, I mean; at any rate, T. always want
to give a little love to all the poor things that cannot have a whole man
to themselves. If they would only be contented with a little!
Here now are two girls in this school where I am teaching. One of them,
Rosa M., is not more than sixteen years old, I think they say; but Nature
has forced her into a tropical luxuriance of beauty, as if it were July
with her, instead of May. I suppose it is all natural enough that this
girl should like a young man's attention, even if he were a grave
schoolmaster; but the eloquence of this young thing's look is
unmistakable,--and yet she does not know the language it is
talking,--they none of them do; and there is where a good many poor
creatures of our good-for-nothing sex are mistaken. There is no danger
of my being rash, but I think this girl will cost somebody his life yet.
She is one of those women men make a quarrel about and fight to the death
for,--the old feral instinct, you know.
Pray, don't think I am lost in conceit, but there is another girl here
who I begin to think looks with a certain kindness on me. Her name is
Elsie V., and she is the only daughter and heiress of an old family in
this place. She is a portentous and almost fearful creature. If I
should tell you all I know and half of what I fancy about her, you would
tell me to get my life insured at once. Yet she is the most painfully
interesting being,--so handsome! so lonely!--for she has no friends
among the girls, and sits apart from them,--with black hair like the
flow of a mountain-brook after a thaw, with a low-browed, scowling beauty
of face, and such eyes as were never seen before, I really believe, in
any human creature.
Philip, I don't know what to say about this Elsie. There is something
about her I have not fathomed. I have conjectures which I could not
utter to any living soul. I dare not even hint the possibilities which
have suggested themselves to me. This I will say, that I do take the
most intense interest in this young person, an interest much more like
pity than love in its common sense. If what I guess at is true, of all
the tragedies of existence I ever knew this is the saddest, and yet so
full of meaning! Do not ask me any questions,--I have said more than I
meant to already; but I am involved in strange doubts and
perplexities,--in dangers too, very possibly,--and it is a relief just to
speak ever so guardedly of them to an early and faithful friend.
Yours ever, BERNARD.
P. S. I remember you had a copy of Fortunius Licetus' "De Monstris"
among your old books. Can't you lend it to me for a while? I am
curious, and it will amuse me.
CHAPTER XVII.
OLD SOPHY CALLS ON THE REVEREND DOCTOR.
The two meeting-houses which faced each other like a pair of
fighting-cocks had not flapped their wings or crowed at each other for a
considerable time. The Reverend Mr. Fairweather had been dyspeptic and
low-spirited of late, and was too languid for controversy. The Reverend
Doctor Honeywood had been very busy with his benevolent associations, and
had discoursed chiefly on practical matters, to the neglect of special
doctrinal subjects. His senior deacon ventured to say to him that some
of his people required to be reminded of the great fundamental doctrine
of the worthlessness of all human efforts and motives. Some of them were
altogether too much pleased with the success of the Temperance Society
and the Association for the Relief of the Poor. There was a pestilent
heresy about, concerning the satisfaction to be derived from a good
conscience, as if, anybody ever did anything which was not to be hated,
loathed, despised, and condemned.
The old minister listened gravely, with an inward smile, and told his
deacon that he would attend to his suggestion. After the deacon had
gone, he tumbled over his manuscripts, until at length he came upon his
first-rate old sermon on "Human Nature." He had read a great deal of
hard theology, and had at last reached that curious state which is so
common in good ministers,--that, namely, in which they contrive to switch
off their logical faculties on the narrow sidetrack of their technical
dogmas, while the great freight-train of their substantial human
qualities keeps in the main highway of common-sense, in which kindly
souls are always found by all who approach them by their human side.
The Doctor read his sermon with a pleasant, paternal interest: it was
well argued from his premises. Here and there he dashed his pen through
a harsh expression. Now and then he added an explanation or qualified
abroad statement. But his mind was on the logical side-track, and he
followed the chain of reasoning without fairly perceiving where it would
lead him, if he carried it into real life.
He was just touching up the final proposition, when his granddaughter,
Letty, once before referred to, came into the room with her smiling face
and lively movement. Miss Letty or Letitia Forrester was a city-bred
girl of some fifteen or sixteen years old, who was passing the summer
with her grandfather for the sake of country air and quiet. It was a
sensible arrangement; for, having the promise of figuring as a belle by
and by, and being a little given to dancing, and having a voice which
drew a pretty dense circle around the piano when she sat down to play and
sing, it was hard to keep her from being carried into society before her
time, by the mere force of mutual attraction. Fortunately, she had some
quiet as well as some social tastes, and was willing enough to pass two
or three of the summer months in the country, where she was much better
bestowed than she would have been at one of those watering-places where
so many half-formed girls get prematurely hardened in the vice of
self-consciousness.
Miss Letty was altogether too wholesome, hearty, and high-strung a young
girl to be a model, according to the flat-chested and cachectic pattern
which is the classical type of certain excellent young females, often the
subjects of biographical memoirs. But the old minister was proud of his
granddaughter for all that. She was so full of life, so graceful, so
generous, so vivacious, so ready always to do all she could for him and
for everybody, so perfectly frank in her avowed delight in the pleasures
which this miserable world offered her in the shape of natural beauty, of
poetry, of music, of companionship, of books, of cheerful cooperation in
the tasks of those about her, that the Reverend Doctor could not find it
in his heart to condemn her because she was deficient in those particular
graces and that signal other-worldliness he had sometimes noticed in
feeble young persons suffering from various chronic diseases which
impaired their vivacity and removed them from the range of temptation.
When Letty, therefore, came bounding into the old minister's study, he
glanced up from his manuscript, and, as his eye fell upon her, it flashed
across him that there was nothing so very monstrous and unnatural about
the specimen of congenital perversion he was looking at, with his
features opening into their pleasantest sunshine. Technically, according
to the fifth proposition of the sermon on Human Nature, very bad, no
doubt. Practically, according to the fact before him, a very pretty
piece of the Creator's handiwork, body and soul. Was it not a
conceivable thing that the divine grace might show itself in different
forms in a fresh young girl like Letitia, and in that poor thing he had
visited yesterday, half-grown, half-colored, in bed for the last year
with hip-disease?
Was it to be supposed that this healthy young girl, with life throbbing
all over her, could, without a miracle, be good according to the invalid
pattern and formula?
And yet there were mysteries in human nature which pointed to some
tremendous perversion of its tendencies,--to some profound, radical vice
of moral constitution, native or transmitted, as you will have it, but
positive, at any rate, as the leprosy, breaking out in the blood of
races, guard them ever so carefully. Did he not know the case of a young
lady in Rockland, daughter of one of the first families in the place, a
very beautiful and noble creature to look at, for whose bringing up
nothing had been spared,--a girl who had had governesses to teach her at
the house, who had been indulged almost too kindly,--a girl whose father
had given himself, up to her, he being himself a pure and high-souled
man?--and yet this girl was accused in whispers of having been on the
very verge of committing a fatal crime; she was an object of fear to all
who knew the dark hints which had been let fall about her, and there were
some that believed--Why, what was this but an instance of the total
obliquity and degeneration of the moral principle? and to what could it
be owing, but to an innate organic tendency?
"Busy, grandpapa?" said Letty, and without waiting for an answer kissed
his cheek with a pair of lips made on purpose for that little
function,--fine, but richly turned out, the corners tucked in with a
finish of pretty dimples, the rose-bud lips of girlhood's June.
The old gentleman looked at his granddaughter. Nature swelled up from
his heart in a wave that sent a glow to his cheek and a sparkle to his
eye. But it is very hard to be interrupted just as we are winding up a
string of propositions with the grand conclusion which is the statement
in brief of all that has gone before: our own starting-point, into which
we have been trying to back our reader or listener as one backs a, horse
into the shafts.
"Video meliora, proboque,--I see the better, and approve it; deteriora
sequor, I follow after the worse; 't is that natural dislike to what is
good, pure, holy, and true, that inrooted selfishness, totally insensible
to the claims of"--
Here the worthy man was interrupted by Miss Letty.
"Do come, if you can, grandpapa," said the young girl; "here is a poor
old black woman wants to see you so much!"
The good minister was as kind-hearted as if he had never groped in the
dust and ashes of those cruel old abstractions which have killed out so
much of the world's life and happiness. "With the heart man believeth
unto righteousness;" a man's love is the measure of his fitness for good
or bad company here or elsewhere. Men are tattooed with their special
beliefs like so many South-Sea Islanders; but a real human heart, with
Divine love in it, beats with the same glow under all, the patterns of
all earth's thousand tribes!
The Doctor sighed, and folded the sermon, and laid the Quarto Cruden on
it. He rose from his desk, and, looking once more at the young girl's
face, forgot his logical conclusions, and said to himself that she was a
little angel,--which was in violent contradiction to the leading doctrine
of his sermon on Human Nature. And so he followed her out of the study
into the wide entry of the old-fashioned country-house.
An old black woman sat on the plain oaken settle which humble visitors
waiting to see the minister were wont to occupy. She was old, but how
old it would be very hard to guess. She might be seventy. She might be
ninety. One could not swear she was not a hundred. Black women remain
at a stationary age (to the eyes of white people, at least) for thirty
years. They do not appear to change during this period any more than so
many Trenton trilobites. Bent up, wrinkled, yellow-eyed, with long
upper-lip, projecting jaws, retreating chin, still meek features, long
arms, large flat hands with uncolored palms and slightly webbed fingers,
it was impossible not to see in this old creature a hint of the
gradations by which life climbs up through the lower natures to the
highest human developments. We cannot tell such old women's ages because
we do not understand the physiognomy of a race so unlike our own. No
doubt they see a great deal in each other's faces that we
cannot,--changes of color and expression as real as our own, blushes and
sudden betrayals of feeling,--just as these two canaries know what their
single notes and short sentences and full song with this or that
variation mean, though it is a mystery to us unplumed mortals.
This particular old black woman was a striking specimen of her class. Old
as she looked, her eye was bright and knowing. She wore a red-and-yellow
turban, which set off her complexion well, and hoops of gold in her ears,
and beads of gold about her neck, and an old funeral ring upon her
finger. She had that touching stillness about her which belongs to
animals that wait to be spoken to and then look up with a kind of sad
humility.
"Why, Sophy!" said the good minister, "is this you?"
She looked up with the still expression on her face. "It's ol' Sophy,"
she said.
"Why," said the Doctor, "I did not believe you could walk so far as this
to save the Union. Bring Sophy a glass of wine, Letty. Wine's good for
old folks like Sophy and me, after walking a good way, or preaching a
good while."
The young girl stepped into the back-parlor, where she found the great
pewter flagon in which the wine that was left after each
communion-service was brought to the minister's house. With much toil
she managed to tip it so as to get a couple of glasses filled. The
minister tasted his, and made old Sophy finish hers.
"I wan' to see you 'n' talk wi' you all alone," she said presently.
The minister got up and led the way towards his study. "To be sure," he
said; he had only waited for her to rest a moment before he asked her
into the library. The young girl took her gently by the arm, and helped
her feeble steps along the passage. When they reached the study, she
smoothed the cushion of a rocking-chair, and made the old woman sit down
in it. Then she tripped lightly away, and left her alone with the
minister.
Old Sophy was a member of the Reverend Doctor Honeywood's church. She had
been put through the necessary confessions in a tolerably satisfactory
manner. To be sure, as her grandfather had been a cannibal chief,
according to the common story, and, at any rate, a terrible wild savage,
and as her mother retained to the last some of the prejudices of her
early education, there was a heathen flavor in her Christianity which had
often scandalized the elder of the minister's two deacons. But, the good
minister had smoothed matters over: had explained that allowances were to
be made for those who had been long sitting without the gate of
Zion,--that, no doubt, a part of the curse which descended to the
children of Ham consisted in "having the understanding darkened," as well
as the skin,--and so had brought his suspicious senior deacon to tolerate
old Sophy as one of the communion of fellow-sinners.
--Poor things! How little we know the simple notions with which these
rudiments of souls are nourished by the Divine Goodness! Did not Mrs.
Professor come home this very blessed morning with a story of one of her
old black women?
"And how do you feel to-day, Mrs. Robinson?"
"Oh, my dear, I have this singing in my head all the time." (What
doctors call tinnitus aurium.)
"She 's got a cold in the head," said old Mrs. Rider.
"Oh, no, my dear! Whatever I'm thinking about, it's all this singing,
this music. When I'm thinking of the dear Redeemer, it all turns into
this singing and music. When the clark came to see me, I asked him if he
couldn't cure me, and he said, No,--it was the Holy Spirit in me, singing
to me; and all the time I hear this beautiful music, and it's the Holy
Spirit a-singing to me."
The good man waited for Sophy to speak; but she did not open her lips as
yet.
"I hope you are not troubled in mind or body," he said to her at length,
finding she did not speak.
The poor old woman took out a white handkerchief, and lifted it--to her
black face. She could not say a word for her tears and sobs.
The minister would have consoled her; he was used to tears, and could in
most cases withstand their contagion manfully; but something choked his
voice suddenly, and when he called upon it, he got no answer, but a
tremulous movement of the muscles, which was worse than silence.
At last she spoke.
"Oh, no, no, no! It's my poor girl, my darling, my beauty, my baby, that
's grown up to be a woman; she will come to a bad end; she will do
something that will make them kill her or shut her up all her life. Or,
Doctor, Doctor, save her, pray for her! It a'n't her fault. It a'n't
her fault. If they knew all that I know, they would n' blame that poor
child. I must tell you, Doctor: if I should die, perhaps nobody else
would tell you. Massa Veneer can't talk about it. Doctor Kittredge
won't talk about it. Nobody but old Sophy to tell you, Doctor; and old
Sophy can't die without telling you."
The kind minister soothed the poor old soul with those gentle, quieting
tones which had carried peace and comfort to so many chambers of sickness
and sorrow, to so many hearts overburdened by the trials laid upon them.
Old Sophy became quiet in a few minutes, and proceeded to tell her story.
She told it in the low half-whisper which is the natural voice of lips
oppressed wish grief and fears; with quick glances around the apartment
from time to time, as if she dreaded lest the dim portraits on the walls
and the dark folios on the shelves might overhear her words.
It was not one of those conversations which a third person can report
minutely, unless by that miracle of clairvoyance known to the readers of
stories made out of authors' brains. Yet its main character can be
imparted in a much briefer space than the old black woman took to give
all its details.
She went far back to the time when Dudley Venner was born,--she being
then a middle-aged woman. The heir and hope of a family which had been
narrowing down as if doomed to extinction, he had been surrounded with
every care and trained by the best education he could have in New
England. He had left college, and was studying the profession which
gentlemen of leisure most affect, when he fell in love with a young girl
left in the world almost alone, as he was. The old woman told the story
of his young love and his joyous bridal with a tenderness which had
something more, even, than her family sympathies to account for it. Had
she not hanging over her bed a paper-cutting of a profile,--jet black,
but not blacker than the face it represented--of one who would have been
her own husband in the small years of this century, if the vessel in
which he went to sea, like Jamie in the ballad, had not sailed away and
never come back to land? Had she not her bits of furniture stowed away
which had been got ready for her own wedding,--two rocking-chairs, one
worn with long use, one kept for him so long that it had grown a
superstition with her never to sit in it,--and might he not come back
yet, after all? Had she not her chest of linen ready for her humble
house-keeping with store of serviceable huckaback and piles of neatly
folded kerchiefs, wherefrom this one that showed so white against her
black face was taken, for that she knew her eyes would betray her in "the
presence"?
All the first part of the story the old woman told tenderly, and yet
dwelling upon every incident with a loving pleasure. How happy this
young couple had been, what plans and projects of improvement they had
formed, how they lived in each other, always together, so young and fresh
and beautiful as she remembered them in that one early summer when they
walked arm in arm through the wilderness of roses that ran riot in the
garden,--she told of this as loath to leave it and come to the woe that
lay beneath.
She told the whole story;-shall I repeat it? Not now. If, in the course
of relating the incidents I have undertaken to report, it tells itself,
perhaps this will be better than to run the risk of producing a painful
impression on some of those susceptible readers whom it would be
ill-advised to disturb or excite, when they rather require to be amused
and soothed. In our pictures of life, we must show the flowering-out of
terrible growths which have their roots deep, deep underground. Just how
far we shall lay bare the unseemly roots themselves is a matter of
discretion and taste, and which none of us are infallible.
The old woman told the whole story of Elsie, of her birth, of her
peculiarities of person and disposition, of the passionate fears and
hopes with which her father had watched the course of her development.
She recounted all her strange ways, from the hour when she first tried to
crawl across the carpet, and her father's look as she worked her way
towards him. With the memory of Juliet's nurse she told the story of her
teething, and how, the woman to whose breast she had clung dying suddenly
about that time, they had to struggle hard with the child before she
would learn the accomplishment of feeding with a spoon. And so of her
fierce plays and fiercer disputes with that boy who had been her
companion, and the whole scene of the quarrel when she struck him with
those sharp white teeth, frightening her, old Sophy, almost to death;
for, as she said, the boy would have died, if it hadn't been for the old
Doctor's galloping over as fast as he could gallop and burning the places
right out of his arm. Then came the story of that other incident,
sufficiently alluded to already, which had produced such an ecstasy of
fright and left such a nightmare of apprehension in the household. And so
the old woman came down to this present time. That boy she never loved
nor trusted was grown to a dark, dangerous-looking man, and he was under
their roof. He wanted to marry our poor Elsie, and Elsie hated him, and
sometimes she would look at him over her shoulder just as she used to
look at that woman she hated; and she, old Sophy, couldn't sleep for
thinking she should hear a scream from the white chamber some night and
find him in spasms such as that woman came so near dying with. And then
there was something about Elsie she did not know what to make of: she
would sit and hang her head sometimes, and look as if she were dreaming;
and she brought home books they said a young gentleman up at the great
school lent her; and once she heard her whisper in her sleep, and she
talked as young girls do to themselves when they're thinking about
somebody they have a liking for and think nobody knows it.
She finished her long story at last. The minister had listened to it in
perfect silence. He sat still even when she had done speaking,--still,
and lost in thought. It was a very awkward matter for him to have a hand
in. Old Sophy was his parishioner, but the Veneers had a pew in the
Reverend Mr. Fairweather's meeting-house. It would seem that he, Mr.
Fairweather, was the natural adviser of the parties most interested. Had
he sense and spirit enough to deal with such people? Was there enough
capital of humanity in his somewhat limited nature to furnish sympathy
and unshrinking service for his friends in an emergency? or was he too
busy with his own attacks of spiritual neuralgia, and too much occupied
with taking account of stock of his own thin-blooded offences, to forget
himself and his personal interests on the small scale and the large, and
run a risk of his life, if need were, at any rate give himself up without
reserve to the dangerous task of guiding and counselling these distressed
and imperilled fellow-creatures?
The good minister thought the best thing to do would be to call and talk
over some of these matters with Brother Fairweather,--for so he would
call him at times, especially if his senior deacon were not within
earshot. Having settled this point, he comforted Sophy with a few words
of counsel and a promise of coming to see her very soon. He then called
his man to put the old white horse into the chaise and drive Sophy back
to the mansion-house.
When the Doctor sat down to his sermon again, it looked very differently
from the way it had looked at the moment he left it. When he came to
think of it, he did not feel quite so sure practically about that matter
of the utter natural selfishness of everybody. There was Letty, now,
seemed to take a very unselfish interest in that old black woman, and
indeed in poor people generally; perhaps it would not be too much to say
that she was always thinking of other people. He thought he had seen
other young persons naturally unselfish, thoughtful for others; it seemed
to be a family trait in some he had known.
But most of all he was exercised about this poor girl whose story Sophy
had been telling. If what the old woman believed was true,--and it had
too much semblance of probability,--what became of his theory of
ingrained moral obliquity applied to such a case? If by the visitation
of God a person receives any injury which impairs the intellect or the
moral perceptions, is it not monstrous to judge such a person by our
common working standards of right and wrong? Certainly, everybody will
answer, in cases where there is a palpable organic change brought about,
as when a blow on the head produces insanity. Fools! How long will it
be before we shall learn that for every wound which betrays itself to the
sight by a scar, there are a thousand unseen mutilations that cripple,
each of them, some one or more of our highest faculties? If what Sophy
told and believed was the real truth, what prayers could be agonizing
enough, what tenderness could be deep enough, for this poor, lost,
blighted, hapless, blameless child of misfortune, struck by such a doom
as perhaps no living creature in all the sisterhood of humanity shared
with her?
The minister thought these matters over until his mind was bewildered
with doubts and tossed to and fro on that stormy deep of thought heaving
forever beneath the conflict of windy dogmas. He laid by his old sermon.
He put back a pile of old commentators with their eyes and mouths and
hearts full of the dust of the schools. Then he opened the book of
Genesis at the eighteenth chapter and read that remarkable argument of
Abraham's with his Maker in which he boldly appeals to first principles.
He took as his text, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" and
began to write his sermon, afterwards so famous, "On the Obligations of
an Infinite Creator to a Finite Creature."
It astonished the good people, who had been accustomed so long to repeat
mechanically their Oriental hyperboles of self-abasement, to hear their
worthy minister maintaining that the dignified attitude of the old
Patriarch, insisting on what was reasonable and fair with reference to
his fellow-creatures, was really much more respectful to his Maker, and a
great deal manlier and more to his credit, than if he had yielded the
whole matter, and pretended that men had not rights as well as duties.
The same logic which had carried him to certain conclusions with
reference to human nature, this same irresistible logic carried him
straight on from his text until he arrived at those other results, which
not only astonished his people, as was said, but surprised himself. He
went so far in defence of the rights of man, that he put his foot into
several heresies, for which men had been burned so often, it was time, if
ever it could be, to acknowledge the demonstration of the argumentum ad
ignem. He did not believe in the responsibility of idiots. He did not
believe a new-born infant was morally answerable for other people's acts.
He thought a man with a crooked spine would never be called to account
for not walking erect. He thought if the crook was in his brain, instead
of his back, he could not fairly be blamed for any consequence of this
natural defect, whatever lawyers or divines might call it. He argued,
that, if a person inherited a perfect mind, body, and disposition, and
had perfect teaching from infancy, that person could do nothing more than
keep the moral law perfectly. But supposing that the Creator allows a
person to be born with an hereditary or ingrafted organic tendency, and
then puts this person into the hands of teachers incompetent or
positively bad, is not what is called sin or transgression of the law
necessarily involved in the premises? Is not a Creator bound to guard
his children against the ruin which inherited ignorance might entail on
them? Would it be fair for a parent to put into a child's hands the
title-deeds to all its future possessions, and a bunch of matches? And
are not men children, nay, babes, in the eye of Omniscience?--The
minister grew bold in his questions. Had not he as good right to ask
questions as Abraham?
This was the dangerous vein of speculation in which the Reverend Doctor
Honeywood found himself involved, as a consequence of the suggestions
forced upon him by old Sophy's communication. The truth was, the good
man had got so humanized by mixing up with other people in various
benevolent schemes, that, the very moment he could escape from his old
scholastic abstractions, he took the side of humanity instinctively, just
as the Father of the Faithful did,--all honor be to the noble old
Patriarch for insisting on the worth of an honest man, and making the
best terms he could for a very ill-conditioned metropolis, which might
possibly, however, have contained ten righteous people, for whose sake it
should be spared!
The consequence of all this was, that he was in a singular and seemingly
self-contradictory state of mind when he took his hat and cane and went
forth to call on his heretical brother. The old minister took it for
granted that the Reverend Mr. Fairweather knew the private history of his
parishioner's family. He did not reflect that there are griefs men never
put into words,--that there are fears which must not be spoken,--intimate
matters of consciousness which must be carried, as bullets which have
been driven deep into the living tissues are sometimes carried, for a
whole lifetime,--encysted griefs, if we may borrow the chirurgeon's term,
never to be reached, never to be seen, never to be thrown out, but to go
into the dust with the frame that bore them about with it, during long
years of anguish, known only to the sufferer and his Maker. Dudley
Venner had talked with his minister about this child of his. But he had
talked cautiously, feeling his way for sympathy, looking out for those
indications of tact and judgment which would warrant him in some partial
communication, at least, of the origin of his doubts and fears, and never
finding them.
There was something about the Reverend Mr. Fairweather which repressed
all attempts at confidential intercourse. What this something was,
Dudley Venner could hardly say; but he felt it distinctly, and it sealed
his lips. He never got beyond certain generalities connected with
education and religious instruction. The minister could not help
discovering, however, that there were difficulties connected with this
girl's management, and he heard enough outside of the family to convince
him that she had manifested tendencies, from an early age, at variance
with the theoretical opinions he was in the habit of preaching, and in a
dim way of holding for truth, as to the natural dispositions of the human
being.
About this terrible fact of congenital obliquity his new beliefs began to
cluster as a centre, and to take form as a crystal around its nucleus.
Still, he might perhaps have struggled against them, had it not been for
the little Roman Catholic chapel he passed every Sunday, on his way to
the meeting-house. Such a crowd of worshippers, swarming into the pews
like bees, filling all the aisles, running over at the door like berries
heaped too full in the measure,--some kneeling on the steps, some
standing on the sidewalk, hats off, heads down, lips moving, some looking
on devoutly from the other side of the street! Oh, could he have
followed his own Bridget, maid of all work, into the heart of that
steaming throng, and bowed his head while the priests intoned their Latin
prayers! could he have snuffed up the cloud of frankincense, and felt
that he was in the great ark which holds the better half of the Christian
world, while all around it are wretched creatures, some struggling
against the waves in leaky boats, and some on ill-connected rafts, and
some with their heads just above water, thinking to ride out the flood
which is to sweep the earth clean of sinners, upon their own private,
individual life-preservers!
Such was the present state of mind of the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather,
when his clerical brother called upon him to talk over the questions to
which old Sophy had called his attention.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE REVEREND DOCTOR CALLS ON BROTHER FAIRWEATHER.
For the last few months, while all these various matters were going on in
Rockland, the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had been busy with the records
of ancient councils and the writings of the early fathers. The more he
read, the more discontented he became with the platform upon which he and
his people were standing. They and he were clearly in a minority, and
his deep inward longing to be with the majority was growing into an
engrossing passion. He yearned especially towards the good old
unquestioning, authoritative Mother Church, with her articles of faith
which took away the necessity for private judgment, with her traditional
forms and ceremonies, and her whole apparatus of stimulants and anodynes.
About this time he procured a breviary and kept it in his desk under the
loose papers. He sent to a Catholic bookstore and obtained a small
crucifix suspended from a string of beads. He ordered his new coat to be
cut very narrow in the collar and to be made single-breasted. He began
an informal series of religious conversations with Miss O'Brien, the
young person of Irish extraction already referred to as Bridget, maid of
all work. These not proving very satisfactory, he managed to fall in
with Father McShane, the Catholic priest of the Rockland church.
Father McShane encouraged his nibble very scientifically. It would be
such a fine thing to bring over one of those Protestant heretics, and a
"liberal" one too!--not that there was any real difference between them,
but it sounded better, to say that one of these rationalizing
free-and-equal religionists had been made a convert than any of those
half-way Protestants who were the slaves of catechisms instead of
councils, and of commentators instead of popes. The subtle priest played
his disciple with his finest tackle. It was hardly necessary: when
anything or anybody wishes to be caught, a bare hook and a coarse line
are all that is needed.
If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty,
if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him. And
the temptation is to some natures a very great one. Liberty is often a
heavy burden on a man. It involves that necessity for perpetual choice
which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. In common life we
shirk it by forming habits, which take the place of self-determination.
In politics party-organization saves us the pains of much thinking before
deciding how to cast our vote. In religious matters there are great
multitudes watching us perpetually, each propagandist ready with his
bundle of finalities, which having accepted we may be at peace. The more
absolute the submission demanded, the stronger the temptation becomes to
those who have been long tossed among doubts and conflicts.
So it is that in all the quiet bays which indent the shores of the great
ocean of thought, at every sinking wharf, we see moored the hulks and the
razees of enslaved or half-enslaved intelligences. They rock peacefully
as children in their cradles on the subdued swell which comes feebly in
over the bar at the harbor's mouth, slowly crusting with barnacles,
pulling at their iron cables as if they really wanted to be free; but
better contented to remain bound as they are. For these no more the
round unwalled horizon of the open sea, the joyous breeze aloft, the
furrow, the foam, the sparkle, that track the rushing keel! They have
escaped the dangers of the wave, and lie still henceforth, evermore.
Happiest of souls, if lethargy is bliss, and palsy the chief beatitude!
America owes its political freedom to religious Protestantism. But
political freedom is reacting on religious prescription with still
mightier force. We wonder, therefore, when we find a soul which was born
to a full sense of individual liberty, an unchallenged right of
self-determination on every new alleged truth offered to its
intelligence, voluntarily surrendering any portion of its liberty to a
spiritual dictatorship which always proves to rest, in the last analysis,
on a majority vote, nothing more nor less, commonly an old one, passed in
those barbarous times when men cursed and murdered each other for
differences of opinion, and of course were not in a condition to settle
the beliefs of a comparatively civilized community.
In our disgust, we are liable to be intolerant. We forget that weakness
is not in itself a sin. We forget that even cowardice may call for our
most lenient judgment, if it spring from innate infirmity, Who of us does
not look with great tenderness on the young chieftain in the "Fair Maid
of Perth," when he confesses his want of courage? All of us love
companionship and sympathy; some of us may love them too much. All of us
are more or less imaginative in our theology.
Some of us may find the aid of material symbols a comfort, if not a
necessity. The boldest thinker may have his moments of languor and
discouragement, when he feels as if he could willingly exchange faiths
with the old beldame crossing herself at the cathedral-door,--nay, that,
if he could drop all coherent thought, and lie in the flowery meadow with
the brown-eyed solemnly unthinking cattle, looking up to the sky, and all
their simple consciousness staining itself blue, then down to the grass,
and life turning to a mere greenness, blended with confused scents of
herbs,--no individual mind-movement such as men are teased with, but the
great calm cattle-sense of all time and all places that know the milky
smell of herds,--if he could be like these, he would be content to be
driven home by the cow-boy, and share the grassy banquet of the king of
ancient Babylon. Let us be very generous, then, in our judgment of those
who leave the front ranks of thought for the company of the meek
non-combatants who follow with the baggage and provisions. Age, illness,
too much wear and tear, a half-formed paralysis, may bring any of us to
this pass. But while we can think and maintain the rights of our own
individuality against every human combination, let us not forget to
caution all who are disposed to waver that there is a cowardice which is
criminal, and a longing for rest which it is baseness to indulge. God
help him, over whose dead soul in his living body must be uttered the sad
supplication, Requiescat in pace!
A knock at the Reverend Mr. Fairweather's study door called his eyes from
the book on which they were intent. He looked up, as if expecting a
welcome guest.
The Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D. D., entered the study of the
Reverend Chauncy Fairweather. He was not the expected guest. Mr.
Fairweather slipped the book he was reading into a half-open drawer, and
pushed in the drawer. He slid something which rattled under a paper
lying on the table. He rose with a slight change of color, and welcomed,
a little awkwardly, his unusual visitor.
"Good-evening, Brother Fairweather!" said the Reverend Doctor, in a very
cordial, good-humored way. "I hope I am not spoiling one of those
eloquent sermons I never have a chance to hear."
"Not at all, not at all," the younger clergyman answered, in a languid
tone, with a kind of habitual half-querulousness which belonged to
it,--the vocal expression which we meet with now and then, and which says
as plainly as so many words could say it, "I am a suffering individual.
I am persistently undervalued, wronged, and imposed upon by mankind and
the powers of the universe generally. But I endure all. I endure you.
Speak. I listen. It is a burden to me, but I even approve. I sacrifice
myself. Behold this movement of my lips! It is a smile."
The Reverend Doctor knew this forlorn way of Mr. Fairweather's, and was
not troubled by it. He proceeded to relate the circumstances of his
visit from the old black woman, and the fear she was in about the young
girl, who being a parishioner of Mr. Fairweather's, he had thought it
best to come over and speak to him about old Sophy's fears and fancies.
In telling the old woman's story, he alluded only vaguely to those
peculiar circumstances to which she had attributed so much importance,
taking it for granted that the other minister must be familiar with the
whole series of incidents she had related. The old minister was
mistaken, as we have before seen. Mr. Fairweather had been settled in
the place only about ten years, and, if he had heard a strange hint now
and then about Elsie, had never considered it as anything more than idle
and ignorant, if not malicious, village-gossip. All that he fully
understood was that this had been a perverse and unmanageable child, and
that the extraordinary care which had been bestowed on her had been so
far thrown away that she was a dangerous, self-willed girl, whom all
feared and almost all shunned, as if she carried with her some malignant
influence.
He replied, therefore, after hearing the story, that Elsie had always
given trouble. There seemed to be a kind of natural obliquity about her.
Perfectly unaccountable. A very dark case. Never amenable to good
influences. Had sent her good books from the Sunday-school library.
Remembered that she tore out the frontispiece of one of them, and kept
it, and flung the book out of the window. It was a picture of Eve's
temptation; and he recollected her saying that Eve was a good woman,--and
she'd have done just so, if she'd been there. A very sad child, very sad;
bad from infancy. He had talked himself bold, and said all at once,
"Doctor, do you know I am almost ready to accept your doctrine of the
congenital sinfulness of human nature? I am afraid that is the only thing
which goes to the bottom of the difficulty."
The old minister's face did not open so approvingly as Mr. Fairweather
had expected.
"Why, yes,--well,--many find comfort in it,--I believe;--there is much to
be said,--there are many bad people,--and bad children,--I can't be so
sure about bad babies,--though they cry very malignantly at
times,--especially if they have the stomach-ache. But I really don't know
how to condemn this poor Elsie; she may have impulses that act in her
like instincts in the lower animals, and so not come under the bearing of
our ordinary rules of judgment."
"But this depraved tendency, Doctor,--this unaccountable perverseness.
My dear Sir, I am afraid your school is in the right about human nature.
Oh, those words of the Psalmist, 'shapen in iniquity,' and the rest!
What are we to do with them,--we who teach that the soul of a child is an
unstained white tablet?"
"King David was very subject to fits of humility, and much given to
self-reproaches," said the Doctor, in a rather dry way. "We owe you and
your friends a good deal for calling attention to the natural graces,
which, after all, may, perhaps, be considered as another form of
manifestation of the divine influence. Some of our writers have pressed
rather too hard on the tendencies of the human soul toward evil as such.
It maybe questioned whether these views have not interfered with the
sound training of certain young persons, sons of clergymen and others. I
am nearer of your mind about the possibility of educating children so
that they shall become good Christians without any violent transition.
That is what I should hope for from bringing them up 'in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord.'"
The younger minister looked puzzled, but presently answered, "Possibly we
may have called attention to some neglected truths; but, after all, I
fear we must go to the old school, if we want to get at the root of the
matter. I know there is an outward amiability about many young persons,
some young girls especially, that seems like genuine goodness; but I have
been disposed of late to lean toward your view, that these human
affections, as we see them in our children,--ours, I say, though I have
not the fearful responsibility of training any of my own,--are only a
kind of disguised and sinful selfishness."
The old minister groaned in spirit. His heart had been softened by the
sweet influences of children and grandchildren. He thought of a
half-sized grave in the burial-ground, and the fine, brave, noble-hearted
boy he laid in it thirty years before,--the sweet, cheerful child who had
made his home all sunshine until the day when he was brought into it, his
long curls dripping, his fresh lips purpled in death,--foolish dear
little blessed creature to throw himself into the deep water to save the
drowning boy, who clung about him and carried him under! Disguised
selfishness! And his granddaughter too, whose disguised selfishness was
the light of his household!
"Don't call it my view!" he said. "Abstractly, perhaps, all natures may
be considered vitiated; but practically, as I see it in life, the divine
grace keeps pace with the perverted instincts from infancy in many
natures. Besides, this perversion itself may often be disease, bad
habits transmitted, like drunkenness, or some hereditary misfortune, as
with this Elsie we were talking about."
The younger minister was completely mystified. At every step he made
towards the Doctor's recognized theological position, the Doctor took
just one step towards his. They would cross each other soon at this
rate, and might as well exchange pulpits,--as Colonel Sprowle once wished
they would, it may be remembered.
The Doctor, though a much clearer-headed man, was almost equally puzzled.
He turned the conversation again upon Elsie, and endeavored to make her
minister feel the importance of bringing every friendly influence to bear
upon her at this critical period of her life. His sympathies did not
seem so lively as the Doctor could have wished. Perhaps he had vastly
more important objects of solicitude in his own spiritual interests.
A knock at the door interrupted them. The Reverend Mr. Fairweather rose
and went towards it. As he passed the table, his coat caught something,
which came rattling to the floor. It was a crucifix with a string of
beads attached. As he opened the door, the Milesian features of Father
McShane presented themselves, and from their centre proceeded the
clerical benediction in Irish-sounding Latin, Pax vobiscum!
The Reverend Doctor Honeywood rose and left the priest and his disciple
together.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SPIDER ON HIS THREAD.
There was nobody, then, to counsel poor Elsie, except her father, who had
learned to let her have her own way so as not to disturb such relations
as they had together, and the old black woman, who had a real, though
limited influence over the girl. Perhaps she did not need counsel. To
look upon her, one might well suppose that she was competent to defend
herself against any enemy she was like to have. That glittering, piercing
eye was not to be softened by a few smooth words spoken in low tones,
charged with the common sentiments which win their way to maidens'
hearts. That round, lithe, sinuous figure was as full of dangerous life
as ever lay under the slender flanks and clean-shaped limbs of a panther.
There were particular times when Elsie was in such a mood that it must
have been a bold person who would have intruded upon her with reproof or
counsel. "This is one of her days," old Sophy would say quietly to her
father, and he would, as far as possible, leave her to herself. These
days were more frequent, as old Sophy's keen, concentrated watchfulness
had taught her, at certain periods of the year. It was in the heats of
summer that they were most common and most strongly characterized. In
winter, on the other hand, she was less excitable, and even at times
heavy and as if chilled and dulled in her sensibilities. It was a
strange, paroxysmal kind of life that belonged to her. It seemed to come
and go with the sunlight. All winter long she would be comparatively
quiet, easy to manage, listless, slow in her motions; her eye would lose
something of its strange lustre; and the old nurse would feel so little
anxiety, that her whole expression and aspect would show the change, and
people would say to her, "Why, Sophy, how young you're looking!"
As the spring came on, Elsie would leave the fireside, have her
tiger-skin spread in the empty southern chamber next the wall, and lie
there basking for whole hours in the sunshine. As the season warmed, the
light would kindle afresh in her eyes, and the old woman's sleep would
grow restless again,--for she knew, that, so long as the glitter was
fierce in the girl's eyes, there was no trusting her impulses or
movements.
At last, when the veins of the summer were hot and swollen, and the
juices of all the poison-plants and the blood of all the creatures that
feed upon them had grown thick and strong,--about the time when the
second mowing was in hand, and the brown, wet-faced men were following up
the scythes as they chased the falling waves of grass, (falling as the
waves fall on sickle-curved beaches; the foam-flowers dropping as the
grass-flowers drop,--with sharp semivowel consonantal sounds,--frsh,--for
that is the way the sea talks, and leaves all pure vowel-sounds for the
winds to breathe over it, and all mutes to the unyielding earth,)--about
this time of over-ripe midsummer, the life of Elsie seemed fullest of its
malign and restless instincts. This was the period of the year when the
Rockland people were most cautious of wandering in the leafier coverts
which skirted the base of The Mountain, and the farmers liked to wear
thick, long boots, whenever they went into the bushes. But Elsie was
never so much given to roaming over The Mountain as at this season; and
as she had grown more absolute and uncontrollable, she was as like to
take the night as the day for her rambles.
At this season, too, all her peculiar tastes in dress and ornament came
out in a more striking way than at other times. She was never so superb
as then, and never so threatening in her scowling beauty. The barred
skirts she always fancied showed sharply beneath her diaphanous muslins;
the diamonds often glittered on her breast as if for her own pleasure
rather than to dazzle others; the asp-like bracelet hardly left her arm.
She was never seen without some necklace,--either the golden cord she
wore at the great party, or a chain of mosaics, or simply a ring of
golden scales. Some said that Elsie always slept in a necklace, and that
when she died she was to be buried in one. It was a fancy of hers,--but
many thought there was a reason for it.
Nobody watched Elsie with a more searching eye than her cousin, Dick
Venner. He had kept more out of her way of late, it is true, but there
was not a movement she made which he did not carefully observe just so
far as he could without exciting her suspicion. It was plain enough to
him that the road to fortune was before him, and that the first thing was
to marry Elsie. What course he should take with her, or with others
interested, after marrying her, need not be decided in a hurry.
He had now done all he could expect to do at present in the way of
conciliating the other members of the household. The girl's father
tolerated him, if he did not even like him. Whether he suspected his
project or not Dick did not feel sure; but it was something to have got a
foothold in the house, and to have overcome any prepossession against him
which his uncle might have entertained. To be a good listener and a bad
billiard-player was not a very great sacrifice to effect this object.
Then old Sophy could hardly help feeling well-disposed towards him, after
the gifts he had bestowed on her and the court he had paid her. These
were the only persons on the place of much importance to gain over. The
people employed about the house and farm-lands had little to do with
Elsie, except to obey her without questioning her commands.
Mr. Richard began to think of reopening his second parallel. But he had
lost something of the coolness with which he had begun his system of
operations. The more he had reflected upon the matter, the more he had
convinced himself that this was his one great chance in life. If he
suffered this girl to escape him, such an opportunity could hardly, in
the nature of things, present itself a second time. Only one life
between Elsie and her fortune,--and lives are so uncertain! The girl
might not suit him as a wife. Possibly. Time enough to find out after
he had got her. In short, he must have the property, and Elsie Venner,
as she was to go with it,--and then, if he found it convenient and
agreeable to, lead a virtuous life, he would settle down and raise
children and vegetables; but if he found it inconvenient and
disagreeable, so much the worse for those who made it so. Like many
other persons, he was not principled against virtue, provided virtue were
a better investment than its opposite; but he knew that there might be
contingencies in which the property would be better without its
incumbrances, and he contemplated this conceivable problem in the light
of all its possible solutions.
One thing Mr. Richard could not conceal from himself: Elsie had some new
cause of indifference, at least, if not of aversion to him. With the
acuteness which persons who make a sole business of their own interest
gain by practice, so that fortune-hunters are often shrewd where real
lovers are terribly simple, he fixed at once on the young man up at the
school where the girl had been going of late, as probably at the bottom
of it.
"Cousin Elsie in love!" so he communed with himself upon his lonely
pillow. "In love with a Yankee schoolmaster! What else can it be? Let
him look out for himself! He'll stand but a bad chance between us. What
makes you think she's in love with him? Met her walking with him. Don't
like her looks and ways;--she's thinking about something, anyhow. Where
does she get those books she is reading so often? Not out of our
library, that 's certain. If I could have ten minutes' peep into her
chamber now, I would find out where she got them, and what mischief she
was up to."
At that instant, as if some tributary demon had heard his wish, a shape
which could be none but Elsie's flitted through a gleam of moonlight into
the shadow of the trees. She was setting out on one of her midnight
rambles.
Dick felt his heart stir in its place, and presently his cheeks flushed
with the old longing for an adventure. It was not much to invade a young
girl's deserted chamber, but it would amuse a wakeful hour, and tell him
some little matters he wanted to know. The chamber he slept in was over
the room which Elsie chiefly occupied at this season. There was no great
risk of his being seen or heard, if he ventured down-stairs to her
apartment.
Mr. Richard Venner, in the pursuit of his interesting project, arose and
lighted a lamp. He wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and thrust his
feet into a pair of cloth slippers. He stole carefully down the stair,
and arrived safely at the door of Elsie's room.
The young lady had taken the natural precaution to leave it fastened,
carrying the key with her, no doubt,--unless; indeed, she had got out by
the window, which was not far from the ground. Dick could get in at this
window easily enough, but he did not like the idea of leaving his
footprints in the flower-bed just under it. He returned to his own
chamber, and held a council of war with himself.
He put his head out of his own window and looked at that beneath. It was
open. He then went to one of his trunks, which he unlocked, and began
carefully removing its contents. What these were we need not stop to
mention,--only remarking that there were dresses of various patterns,
which might afford an agreeable series of changes, and in certain
contingencies prove eminently useful. After removing a few of these, he
thrust his hand to the very bottom of the remaining pile and drew out a
coiled strip of leather many yards in length, ending in a noose,--a
tough, well-seasoned lasso, looking as if it had seen service and was
none the worse for it. He uncoiled a few yards of this and fastened it
to the knob of a door. Then he threw the loose end out of the window so
that it should hang by the open casement of Elsie's room. By this he let
himself down opposite her window, and with a slight effort swung himself
inside the room. He lighted a match, found a candle, and, having lighted
that, looked curiously about him, as Clodius might have done when he
smuggled himself in among the Vestals.
Elsie's room was almost as peculiar as her dress and ornaments. It was a
kind of museum of objects, such as the woods are full of to those who
have eyes to see them, but many of them such as only few could hope to
reach, even if they knew where to look for them. Crows' nests, which are
never found but in the tall trees, commonly enough in the forks of
ancient hemlocks, eggs of rare birds, which must have taken a quick eye
and a hard climb to find and get hold of, mosses and ferns of unusual
aspect, and quaint monstrosities of vegetable growth, such as Nature
delights in, showed that Elsie had her tastes and fancies like any
naturalist or poet.
Nature, when left to her own freaks in the forest, is grotesque and
fanciful to the verge of license, and beyond it. The foliage of trees
does not always require clipping to make it look like an image of life.
From those windows at Canoe Meadow, among the mountains, we could see all
summer long a lion rampant, a Shanghai chicken, and General Jackson on
horseback, done by Nature in green leaves, each with a single tree. But
to Nature's tricks with boughs and roots and smaller vegetable growths
there is no end. Her fancy is infinite, and her humor not always
refined. There is a perpetual reminiscence of animal life in her rude
caricatures, which sometimes actually reach the point of imitating the
complete human figure, as in that extraordinary specimen which nobody
will believe to be genuine, except the men of science, and of which the
discreet reader may have a glimpse by application in the proper quarter.
Elsie had gathered so many of these sculpture-like monstrosities, that
one might have thought she had robbed old Sophy's grandfather of his
fetishes. They helped to give her room a kind of enchanted look, as if a
witch had her home in it. Over the fireplace was a long, staff-like
branch, strangled in the spiral coils of one of those vines which strain
the smaller trees in their clinging embraces, sinking into the bark until
the parasite becomes almost identified with its support. With these
sylvan curiosities were blended objects of art, some of them not less
singular, but others showing a love for the beautiful in form and color,
such as a girl of fine organization and nice culture might naturally be
expected to feel and to indulge, in adorning her apartment.
All these objects, pictures, bronzes, vases, and the rest, did not detain
Mr. Richard Veneer very long, whatever may have been his sensibilities to
art. He was more curious about books and papers. A copy of Keats lay on
the table. He opened it and read the name of Bernard C. Langdon on the
blank leaf. An envelope was on the table with Elsie's name written in a
similar hand; but the envelope was empty, and he could not find the note
it contained. Her desk was locked, and it would not be safe to tamper
with it. He had seen enough; the girl received books and notes from this
fellow up at the school, this usher, this Yankee quill-driver;--he was
aspiring to become the lord of the Dudley domain, then, was he?
Elsie had been reasonably careful. She had locked up her papers,
whatever they might be. There was little else that promised to reward
his curiosity, but he cast his eye on everything. There was a
clasp-Bible among her books. Dick wondered if she ever unclasped it.
There was a book of hymns; it had her name in it, and looked as if it
might have been often read;--what the diablo had Elsie to do with hymns?
Mr. Richard Venner was in an observing and analytical state of mind, it
will be noticed, or he might perhaps have been touched with the innocent
betrayals of the poor girl's chamber. Had she, after all, some human
tenderness in her heart? That was not the way he put the question,--but
whether she would take seriously to this schoolmaster, and if she did,
what would be the neatest and surest and quickest way of putting a stop
to all that nonsense. All this, however, he could think over more safely
in his own quarters. So he stole softly to the window, and, catching the
end of the leathern thong, regained his own chamber and drew in the
lasso.
It needs only a little jealousy to set a man on who is doubtful in love
or wooing, or to make him take hold of his courting in earnest. As soon
as Dick had satisfied himself that the young schoolmaster was his rival
in Elsie's good graces, his whole thoughts concentrated themselves more
than ever on accomplishing his great design of securing her for himself.
There was no time to be lost. He must come into closer relations with
her, so as to withdraw her thoughts from this fellow, and to find out
more exactly what was the state of her affections, if she had any. So he
began to court her company again, to propose riding with her, to sing to
her, to join her whenever she was strolling about the grounds, to make
himself agreeable, according to the ordinary understanding of that
phrase, in every way which seemed to promise a chance for succeeding in
that amiable effort.
The girl treated him more capriciously than ever. She would be sullen
and silent, or she would draw back fiercely at some harmless word or
gesture, or she would look at him with her eyes narrowed in such a
strange way and with such a wicked light in them that Dick swore to
himself they were too much for him, and would leave her for the moment.
Yet she tolerated him, almost as a matter of necessity, and sometimes
seemed to take a kind of pleasure in trying her power upon him. This he
soon found out, and humored her in the fancy that she could exercise a
kind of fascination over him, though there were times in which he
actually felt an influence he could not understand, an effect of some
peculiar expression about her, perhaps, but still centring in those
diamond eyes of hers which it made one feel so curiously to look into.
Whether Elsie saw into his object or not was more than he could tell. His
idea was, after having conciliated the good-will of all about her as far
as possible, to make himself first a habit and then a necessity with the
girl,--not to spring any trap of a declaration upon her until tolerance
had grown into such a degree of inclination as her nature was like to
admit. He had succeeded in the first part of his plan. He was at
liberty to prolong his visit at his own pleasure. This was not strange;
these three persons, Dudley Venner, his daughter, and his nephew,
represented all that remained of an old and honorable family. Had Elsie
been like other girls, her father might have been less willing to
entertain a young fellow like Dick as an inmate; but he had long outgrown
all the slighter apprehensions which he might have had in common with all
parents, and followed rather than led the imperious instincts of his
daughter. It was not a question of sentiment, but of life and death, or
more than that,--some dark ending, perhaps, which would close the
history of his race with disaster and evil report upon the lips of all
coming generations.
As to the thought of his nephew's making love to his daughter, it had
almost passed from his mind. He had been so long in the habit of looking
at Elsie as outside of all common influences and exceptional in the law
of her nature, that it was difficult for him to think of her as a girl to
be fallen in love with. Many persons are surprised, when others court
their female relatives; they know them as good young or old women
enough,--aunts, sisters, nieces, daughters, whatever they may be,--but
never think of anybody's falling in love with them, any more than of
their being struck by lightning. But in this case there were special
reasons, in addition to the common family delusion,--reasons which seemed
to make it impossible that she should attract a suitor. Who would dare
to marry Elsie? No, let her have the pleasure, if it was one, at any
rate the wholesome excitement, of companionship; it might save her from
lapsing into melancholy or a worse form of madness. Dudley Venner had a
kind of superstition, too, that, if Elsie could only outlive three
septenaries, twenty-one years, so that, according to the prevalent idea,
her whole frame would have been thrice made over, counting from her
birth, she would revert to the natural standard of health of mind and
feelings from which she had been so long perverted. The thought of any
other motive than love being sufficient to induce Richard to become her
suitor had not occurred to him. He had married early, at that happy
period when interested motives are least apt to influence the choice; and
his single idea of marriage was, that it was the union of persons
naturally drawn towards each other by some mutual attraction. Very
simple, perhaps; but he had lived lonely for many years since his wife's
death, and judged the hearts of others, most of all of his brother's son,
by his own. He had often thought whether, in case of Elsie's dying or
being necessarily doomed to seclusion, he might not adopt this nephew and
make him his heir; but it had not occurred to him that Richard might wish
to become his son-in-law for the sake of his property.
It is very easy to criticise other people's modes of dealing with their
children. Outside observers see results; parents see processes. They
notice the trivial movements and accents which betray the blood of this
or that ancestor; they can detect the irrepressible movement of
hereditary impulse in looks and acts which mean nothing to the common
observer. To be a parent is almost to be a fatalist. This boy sits with
legs crossed, just as his uncle used to whom he never saw; his
grandfathers both died before he was born, but he has the movement of the
eyebrows which we remember in one of them, and the gusty temper of three
different generations, can tell pretty nearly the range of possibilities
and the limitations of a child, actual or potential, of a given
stock,--errors excepted always, because children of the same stock are
not bred just alike, because the traits of some less known ancestor are
liable to break out at any time, and because each human being has, after
all, a small fraction of individuality about him which gives him a
flavor, so that he is distinguishable from others by his friends or in a
court of justice, and which occasionally makes a genius or a saint or a
criminal of him. It is well that young persons cannot read these fatal
oracles of Nature. Blind impulse is her highest wisdom, after all. We
make our great jump, and then she takes the bandage off our eyes. That
is the way the broad sea-level of average is maintained, and the
physiological democracy is enabled to fight against the principle of
selection which would disinherit all the weaker children. The
magnificent constituency of mediocrities of which the world is made
up,--the people without biographies, whose lives have made a clear
solution in the fluid menstruum of time, instead of being precipitated in
the opaque sediment of history--
But this is a narrative, and not a disquisition.
CHAPTER XX.
FROM WITHOUT AND FROM WITHIN.
There were not wanting people who accused Dudley VENNER of weakness and
bad judgment in his treatment of his daughter. Some were of opinion that
the great mistake was in not "breaking her will" when she was a little
child. There was nothing the matter with her, they said, but that she
had been spoiled by indulgence. If they had had the charge of her,
they'd have brought her down. She'd got the upperhand of her father now;
but if he'd only taken hold of her in season! There are people who think
that everything may be done, if the doer, be he educator or physician, be
only called "in season." No doubt,--but in season would often be a
hundred or two years before the child was born; and people never send so
early as that.
The father of Elsie Veneer knew his duties and his difficulties too well
to trouble himself about anything others might think or say. So soon as
he found that he could not govern his child, he gave his life up to
following her and protecting her as far as he could. It was a stern and
terrible trial for a man of acute sensibility, and not without force of
intellect and will, and the manly ambition for himself and his
family-name which belonged to his endowments and his position. Passive
endurance is the hardest trial to persons of such a nature.
What made it still more a long martyrdom was the necessity for bearing
his cross in utter loneliness. He could not tell his griefs. He could
not talk of them even with those who knew their secret spring. His
minister had the unsympathetic nature which is common in the meaner sort
of devotees,--persons who mistake spiritual selfishness for sanctity, and
grab at the infinite prize of the great Future and Elsewhere with the
egotism they excommunicate in its hardly more odious forms of avarice and
self-indulgence. How could he speak with the old physician and the old
black woman about a sorrow and a terror which but to name was to strike
dumb the lips of Consolation?
In the dawn of his manhood he had found that second consciousness for
which young men and young women go about looking into each other's faces,
with their sweet, artless aim playing in every feature, and making them
beautiful to each other, as to all of us. He had found his other self
early, before he had grown weary in the search and wasted his freshness
in vain longings: the lot of many, perhaps we may say of most, who
infringe the patent of our social order by intruding themselves into a
life already upon half allowance of the necessary luxuries of existence.
The life he had led for a brief space was not only beautiful in outward
circumstance, as old Sophy had described it to the Reverend Doctor. It
was that delicious process of the tuning of two souls to each other,
string by string, not without little half-pleasing discords now and then
when some chord in one or the other proves to be overstrained or
over-lax, but always approaching nearer and nearer to harmony, until they
become at last as two instruments with a single voice. Something more
than a year of this blissful doubled consciousness had passed over him
when he found himself once more alone,--alone, save for the little
diamond-eyed child lying in the old black woman's arms, with the coral
necklace round--her throat and the rattle in her hand.
He would not die by his own act. It was not the way in his family. There
may have been other, perhaps better reasons, but this was enough; he did
not come of suicidal stock. He must live for this child's sake, at any
rate; and yet,--oh, yet, who could tell with what thoughts he looked upon
her? Sometimes her little features would look placid, and something like
a smile would steal over them; then all his tender feelings would rush
up, into his eyes, and he would put his arms out to take her from the old
woman,--but all at once her eyes would narrow and she would throw her
head back, and a shudder would seize him as he stooped over his
child,--he could not look upon her,--he could not touch his lips to her
cheek; nay, there would sometimes come into his soul such frightful
suggestions that he would hurry from the room lest the hinted thought
should become a momentary madness and he should lift his hand against the
hapless infant which owed him life.
In those miserable days he used to wander all over The Mountain in his
restless endeavor to seek some relief for inward suffering in outward
action. He had no thought of throwing himself from the summit of any of
the broken cliffs, but he clambered over them recklessly, as having no
particular care for his life. Sometimes he would go into the accursed
district where the venomous reptiles were always to be dreaded, and court
their worst haunts, and kill all he could come near with a kind of blind
fury which was strange in a person of his gentle nature.
One overhanging cliff was a favorite haunt of his. It frowned upon his
home beneath in a very menacing way; he noticed slight seams and fissures
that looked ominous;--what would happen, if it broke off some time or
other and came crashing down on the fields and roofs below? He thought
of such a possible catastrophe with a singular indifference, in fact with
a feeling almost like pleasure. It would be such a swift and thorough
solution of this great problem of life he was working out in
ever-recurring daily anguish! The remote possibility of such a
catastrophe had frightened some timid dwellers beneath The Mountain to
other places of residence; here the danger was most imminent, and yet he
loved to dwell upon the chances of its occurrence. Danger is often the
best counterirritant in cases of mental suffering; he found a solace in
careless exposure of his life, and learned to endure the trials of each
day better by dwelling in imagination on the possibility that it might be
the last for him and the home that was his.
Time, the great consoler, helped these influences, and he gradually fell
into more easy and less dangerous habits of life. He ceased from his
more perilous rambles. He thought less of the danger from the great
overhanging rocks and forests; they had hung there for centuries; it was
not very likely they would crash or slide in his time. He became
accustomed to all Elsie's strange looks and ways. Old Sophy dressed her
with ruffles round her neck, and hunted up the red coral branch with
silver bells which the little toothless Dudleys had bitten upon for a
hundred years. By an infinite effort, her father forced himself to
become the companion of this child, for whom he had such a mingled
feeling, but whose presence was always a trial to him, and often a
terror.
At a cost which no human being could estimate, he had done his duty, and
in some degree reaped his reward. Elsie grew up with a kind of filial
feeling for him, such as her nature was capable of. She never would obey
him; that was not to be looked for. Commands, threats, punishments, were
out of the question with her; the mere physical effects of crossing her
will betrayed themselves in such changes of expression and manner that it
would have been senseless to attempt to govern her in any such way.
Leaving her mainly to herself, she could be to some extent indirectly
influenced,--not otherwise. She called her father "Dudley," as if he had
been her brother. She ordered everybody and would be ordered by none.
Who could know all these things, except the few people of the household?
What wonder, therefore, that ignorant and shallow persons laid the blame
on her father of those peculiarities which were freely talked about,--of
those darker tendencies which were hinted of in whispers? To all this
talk, so far as it reached him, he was supremely indifferent, not only
with the indifference which all gentlemen feel to the gossip of their
inferiors, but with a charitable calmness which did not wonder or blame.
He knew that his position was not simply a difficult, but an impossible
one, and schooled himself to bear his destiny as well as he might, and
report himself only at Headquarters.
He had grown gentle under this discipline. His hair was just beginning
to be touched with silver, and his expression was that of habitual
sadness and anxiety. He had no counsellor, as we have seen, to turn to,
who did not know either too much or too little. He had no heart to rest
upon and into which he might unburden himself of the secrets and the
sorrows that were aching in his own breast. Yet he had not allowed
himself to run to waste in the long time since he was left alone to his
trials and fears. He had resisted the seductions which always beset
solitary men with restless brains overwrought by depressing agencies. He
disguised no misery to himself with the lying delusion of wine. He
sought no sleep from narcotics, though he lay with throbbing, wide-open
eyes through all the weary hours of the night.
It was understood between Dudley Veneer and old Doctor Kittredge that
Elsie was a subject of occasional medical observation, on account of
certain mental peculiarities which might end in a permanent affection of
her reason. Beyond this nothing was said, whatever may have been in the
mind of either. But Dudley Veneer had studied Elsie's case in the light
of all the books he could find which might do anything towards explaining
it. As in all cases where men meddle with medical science for a special
purpose, having no previous acquaintance with it, his imagination found
what it wanted in the books he read, and adjusted it to the facts before
him. So it was he came to cherish those two fancies before alluded to
that the ominous birthmark she had carried from infancy might fade and
become obliterated, and that the age of complete maturity might be
signalized by an entire change in her physical and mental state. He held
these vague hopes as all of us nurse our only half-believed illusions.
Not for the world would he have questioned his sagacious old medical
friend as to the probability or possibility of their being true. We are
very shy of asking questions of those who know enough to destroy with one
word the hopes we live on.
In this life of comparative seclusion to which the father had doomed
himself for the sake of his child, he had found time for large and varied
reading. The learned Judge Thornton confessed himself surprised at the
extent of Dudley Veneer's information. Doctor Kittredge found that he
was in advance of him in the knowledge of recent physiological
discoveries. He had taken pains to become acquainted with agricultural
chemistry; and the neighboring farmers owed him some useful hints about
the management of their land. He renewed his old acquaintance with the
classic authors. He loved to warm his pulses with Homer and calm them
down with Horace. He received all manner of new books and periodicals,
and gradually gained an interest in the events of the passing time. Yet
he remained almost a hermit, not absolutely refusing to see his
neighbors, nor even churlish towards them, but on the other hand not
cultivating any intimate relations with them.
He had retired from the world a young man, little more than a youth,
indeed, with sentiments and aspirations all of them suddenly
extinguished. The first had bequeathed him a single huge sorrow, the
second a single trying duty. In due time the anguish had lost something
of its poignancy, the light of earlier and happier memories had begun to
struggle with and to soften its thick darkness, and even that duty which
he had confronted with such an effort had become an endurable habit.
At a period of life when many have been living on the capital of their
acquired knowledge and their youthful stock of sensibilities until their
intellects are really shallower and their hearts emptier than they were
at twenty, Dudley Veneer was stronger in thought and tenderer in soul
than in the first freshness of his youth, when he counted but half his
present years. He had entered that period which marks the decline of men
who have ceased growing in knowledge and strength: from forty to fifty a
man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life
will carry him rapidly downward. At this time his inward: nature was
richer and deeper than in any earlier period of his life. If he could
only be summoned to action, he was capable of noble service. If his
sympathies could only find an outlet, he was never so capable of love as
now; for his natural affections had been gathering in the course of all
these years, and the traces of that ineffaceable calamity of his life
were softened and partially hidden by new growths of thought and feeling,
as the wreck left by a mountainslide is covered over by the gentle
intrusion of the soft-stemmed herbs which will prepare it for the
stronger vegetation that will bring it once more into harmony with the
peaceful slopes around it.
Perhaps Dudley Veneer had not gained so much in worldly wisdom as if he
had been more in society and less in his study. The indulgence with
which he treated his nephew was, no doubt, imprudent. A man more in the
habit of dealing with men would have been more guarded with a person with
Dick's questionable story and unquestionable physiognomy. But he was
singularly unsuspicious, and his natural kindness was an additional
motive to the wish for introducing some variety into the routine of
Elsie's life.
If Dudley Veneer did not know just what he wanted at this period of his
life, there were a great many people in the town of Rockland who thought
they did know. He had been a widower long enough, "--nigh twenty year,
wa'n't it? He'd been aout to Spraowles's party,--there wa'n't anything
to hender him why he shouldn't stir raound l'k other folks. What was the
reason he did n't go abaout to taown-meetin's 'n' Sahbath-meetin's, 'n'
lyceums, 'n' school 'xaminations, 'n' s'prise-parties, 'n' funerals,--and
other entertainments where the still-faced two-story folks were in the
habit of looking round to see if any of the mansion-house gentry were
present?--Fac' was, he was livin' too lonesome daown there at the
mansion-haouse. Why shouldn't he make up to the Jedge's daughter? She
was genteel enough for him, and--let's see, haow old was she?
Seven-'n'itwenty,--no, six-'n'-twenty,--born the same year we buried our
little Anny Marl".
There was no possible objection to this arrangement, if the parties
interested had seen fit to make it or even to think of it. But "Portia,"
as some of the mansion-house people called her, did not happen to awaken
the elective affinities of the lonely widower. He met her once in a
while, and said to himself that she was a good specimen of the grand
style of woman; and then the image came back to him of a woman not quite
so large, not quite so imperial in her port, not quite so incisive in her
speech, not quite so judicial in her opinions, but with two or three more
joints in her frame, and two or three soft inflections in her voice,
which for some absurd reason or other drew him to her side and so
bewitched him that he told her half his secrets and looked into her eyes
all that he could not tell, in less time than it would have takes him to
discuss the champion paper of the last Quarterly with the admirable
"Portia." Heu, quanto minus! How much more was that lost image to him
than all it left on earth!
The study of love is very much like that of meteorology. We know that
just about so much rain will fall in a season; but on what particular day
it will shower is more than we can tell. We know that just about so much
love will be made every year in a given population; but who will rain his
young affections upon the heart of whom is not known except to the
astrologers and fortune-tellers. And why rain falls as it does and why
love is made just as it is are equally puzzling questions.
The woman a man loves is always his own daughter, far more his daughter
than the female children born to him by the common law of life. It is
not the outside woman, who takes his name, that he loves: before her
image has reached the centre of his consciousness, it has passed through
fifty many-layered nerve-strainers, been churned over by ten thousand
pulse-beats, and reacted upon by millions of lateral impulses which bandy
it about through the mental spaces as a reflection is sent back and
forward in a saloon lined with mirrors. With this altered image of the
woman before him, his preexisting ideal becomes blended. The object of
his love is in part the offspring of her legal parents, but more of her
lover's brain. The difference between the real and the ideal objects of
love must not exceed a fixed maximum. The heart's vision cannot unite
them stereoscopically into a single image, if the divergence passes
certain limits. A formidable analogy, much in the nature of a proof,
with very serious consequences, which moralists and match-makers would do
well to remember! Double vision with the eyes of the heart is a
dangerous physiological state, and may lead to missteps and serious
falls.
Whether Dudley Veneer would ever find a breathing image near enough to
his ideal one, to fill the desolate chamber of his heart, or not, was
very doubtful. Some gracious and gentle woman, whose influence would
steal upon him as the first low words of prayer after that interval of
silent mental supplication known to one of our simpler forms of public
worship, gliding into his consciousness without hurting its old griefs,
herself knowing the chastening of sorrow, and subdued into sweet
acquiescence with the Divine will,--some such woman as this, if Heaven
should send him such, might call him back to the world of happiness, from
which he seemed forever exiled. He could never again be the young lover
who walked through the garden-alleys all red with roses in the old dead
and buried June of long ago. He could never forget the bride of his
youth, whose image, growing phantomlike with the lapse of years, hovered
over him like a dream while waking and like a reality in dreams. But if
it might be in God's good providence that this desolate life should come
under the influence of human affections once more, what an ecstasy of
renewed existence was in store for him! His life had not all been buried
under that narrow ridge of turf with the white stone at its head. It
seemed so for a while; but it was not and could not and ought not to be
so. His first passion had been a true and pure one; there was no spot or
stain upon it. With all his grief there blended no cruel recollection of
any word or look he would have wished to forget. All those little
differences, such as young married people with any individual flavor in
their characters must have, if they are tolerably mated, had only added
to the music of existence, as the lesser discords admitted into some
perfect symphony, fitly resolved, add richness and strength to the whole
harmonious movement. It was a deep wound that Fate had inflicted on him;
nay, it seemed like a mortal one; but the weapon was clean, and its edge
was smooth. Such wounds must heal with time in healthy natures, whatever
a false sentiment may say, by the wise and beneficent law of our being.
The recollection of a deep and true affection is rather a divine
nourishment for a life to grow strong upon than a poison to destroy it.
Dudley Venner's habitual sadness could not be laid wholly to his early
bereavement. It was partly the result of the long struggle between
natural affection and duty, on one side, and the involuntary tendencies
these had to overcome, on the other,--between hope and fear, so long in
conflict that despair itself would have been like an anodyne, and he
would have slept upon some final catastrophe with the heavy sleep of a
bankrupt after his failure is proclaimed. Alas! some new affection might
perhaps rekindle the fires of youth in his heart; but what power could
calm that haggard terror of the parent which rose with every morning's
sun and watched with every evening star,--what power save alone that of
him who comes bearing the inverted torch, and leaving after him only the
ashes printed with his footsteps?
CHAPTER XXI.
THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY.
There was a good deal of interest felt, as has been said, in the lonely
condition of Dudley Venner in that fine mansion-house of his, and with
that strange daughter, who would never be married, as many people
thought, in spite of all the stories. The feelings expressed by the good
folks who dated from the time when they "buried aour little Anny Mari',"
and others of that homespun stripe, were founded in reason, after all.
And so it was natural enough that they should be shared by various
ladies, who, having conjugated the verb to live as far as the
preterpluperfect tense, were ready to change one of its vowels and begin
with it in the present indicative. Unfortunately, there was very little
chance of showing sympathy in its active form for a gentleman who kept
himself so much out of the way as the master of the Dudley Mansion.
Various attempts had been made, from time to time, of late years, to get
him out of his study, which had, for the most part, proved failures. It
was a surprise, therefore, when he was seen at the Great Party at the
Colonel's. But it was an encouragement to try him again, and the
consequence had been that he had received a number of notes inviting him
to various smaller entertainments, which, as neither he nor Elsie had any
fancy for them, he had politely declined.
Such was the state of things when he received an invitation to take tea
sociably, with a few friends, at Hyacinth Cottage, the residence of the
Widow Rowens, relict of the late Beeri Rowens, Esquire, better known as
Major Rowens. Major Rowens was at the time of his decease a promising
officer in the militia, in the direct line of promotion, as his waistband
was getting tighter every year; and, as all the world knows, the
militia-officer who splits off most buttons and fills the largest
sword-belt stands the best chance of rising, or, perhaps we might say,
spreading, to be General.
Major Rowens united in his person certain other traits which help a man
to eminence in the branch of public service referred to. He ran to high
colors, to wide whiskers, to open pores; he had the saddle-leather skin
common in Englishmen, rarer in Americans,--never found in the Brahmin
caste, oftener in the military and the commodores: observing people know
what is meant; blow the seed-arrows from the white-kid-looking button
which holds them on a dandelion-stalk, and the pricked-pincushion surface
shows you what to look for. He had the loud gruff voice which implies
the right to command. He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers, with
bristled pads between their joints, square, broad thumb-nails, and sturdy
limbs, which mark a constitution made to use in rough out-door work. He
had the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed horses that
step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to do something
fearful the next minute, in the face of awed and admiring multitudes
gathered at mighty musters or imposing cattle-shows. He had no
objection, either, to holding the reins in a wagon behind another kind of
horse,--a slouching, listless beast, with a strong slant to his shoulder;
and a notable depth to his quarter and an emphatic angle at the hock, who
commonly walked or lounged along in a lazy trot of five or six miles an
hour; but, if a lively colt happened to come rattling up alongside, or a
brandy-faced old horse-jockey took the road to show off a fast nag, and
threw his dust into the Major's face, would pick his legs up all at once,
and straighten his body out, and swing off into a three-minute gait, in a
way that "Old Blue" himself need not have been ashamed of.
For some reason which must be left to the next generation of professors
to find out, the men who are knowing in horse-flesh have an eye also for,
let a long dash separate the brute creation from the angelic being now to
be named,--for lovely woman. Of this fact there can be no possible
doubt; and therefore you shall notice, that, if a fast horse trots before
two, one of the twain is apt to be a pretty bit of muliebrity, with
shapes to her, and eyes flying about in all directions.
Major Rowens, at that time Lieutenant of the Rockland Fusileers, had
driven and "traded" horses not a few before he turned his acquired skill
as a judge of physical advantages in another direction. He knew a neat,
snug hoof, a delicate pastern, a broad haunch, a deep chest, a close
ribbed-up barrel, as well as any other man in the town. He was not to be
taken in by your thick-jointed, heavy-headed cattle, without any go to
them, that suit a country-parson, nor yet by the "gaanted-up,"
long-legged animals, with all their constitutions bred out of them, such
as rich greenhorns buy and cover up with their plated trappings.
Whether his equine experience was of any use to him in the selection of
the mate with whom he was to go in double harness so long as they both
should live, we need not stop to question. At any rate, nobody could
find fault with the points of Miss Marilla Van Deusen, to whom he offered
the privilege of becoming Mrs. Rowens. The Van must have been crossed
out of her blood, for she was an out-and-out brunette, with hair and eyes
black enough for a Mohawk's daughter. A fine style of woman, with very
striking tints and outlines,--an excellent match for the Lieutenant,
except for one thing. She was marked by Nature for a widow. She was
evidently got up for mourning, and never looked so well as in deep black,
with jet ornaments.
The man who should dare to marry her would doom himself; for how could
she become the widow she was bound to be, unless he could retire and give
her a chance? The Lieutenant lived, however, as we have seen, to become
Captain and then Major, with prospects of further advancement. But Mrs.
Rowens often said she should never look well in colors. At last her
destiny fulfilled itself, and the justice of Nature was vindicated.
Major Rowens got overheated galloping about the field on the day of the
Great Muster, and had a rush of blood to the head, according to the
common report,--at any rate, something which stopped him short in his
career of expansion and promotion, and established Mrs. Rowens in her
normal condition of widowhood.
The Widow Rowens was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very
shallow crape bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the parted raven
hair to show its glossy smoothness. A jet pin heaved upon her bosom with
every sigh of memory, or emotion of unknown origin. Jet bracelets shone
with every movement of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black
gloves. Her sable dress was ridged with manifold flounces, from beneath
which a small foot showed itself from time to time, clad in the same hue
of mourning. Everything about her was dark, except the whites of her
eyes and the enamel of her teeth. The effect was complete. Gray's Elegy
was not a more perfect composition.
Much as the Widow was pleased with the costume belonging to her
condition, she did not disguise from herself that under certain
circumstances she might be willing to change her name again. Thus, for
instance, if a gentleman not too far gone in maturity, of dignified
exterior, with an ample fortune, and of unexceptionable character, should
happen to set his heart upon her, and the only way to make him happy was
to give up her weeds and go into those unbecoming colors again for his
sake,--why, she felt that it was in her nature to make the sacrifice. By
a singular coincidence it happened that a gentleman was now living in
Rockland who united in himself all these advantages. Who he was, the
sagacious reader may very probably have divined. Just to see how it
looked, one day, having bolted her door, and drawn the curtains close,
and glanced under the sofa, and listened at the keyhole to be sure there
was nobody in the entry,--just to see how it looked, she had taken out an
envelope and written on the back of it Mrs. Manilla Veneer. It made her
head swim and her knees tremble. What if she should faint, or die, or
have a stroke of palsy, and they should break into the room and find that
name written! How she caught it up and tore it into little shreds, and
then could not be easy until she had burned the small heap of pieces--
But these are things which every honorable reader will consider imparted
in strict confidence.
The Widow Rowens, though not of the mansion house set, was among the most
genteel of the two-story circle, and was in the habit of visiting some of
the great people. In one of these visits she met a dashing young fellow
with an olive complexion at the house of a professional gentleman who had
married one of the white necks and pairs of fat arms from a distinguished
family before referred to. The professional gentleman himself was out,
but the lady introduced the olive-complexioned young man as Mr. Richard
Venner.
The Widow was particularly pleased with this accidental meeting. Had
heard Mr. Venner's name frequently mentioned. Hoped his uncle was well,
and his charming cousin,--was she as original as ever? Had often admired
that charming creature he rode: we had had some fine horses. Had never
got over her taste for riding, but could find nobody that liked a good
long gallop since--well--she could n't help wishing she was alongside of
him, the other day, when she saw him dashing by, just at twilight.
The Widow paused; lifted a flimsy handkerchief with a very deep black
border so as to play the jet bracelet; pushed the tip of her slender foot
beyond the lowest of her black flounces; looked up; looked down; looked
at Mr. Richard, the very picture of artless simplicity,--as represented
in well-played genteel comedy.
"A good bit of stuff," Dick said to himself, "and something of it left
yet; caramba!" The Major had not studied points for nothing, and the
Widow was one of the right sort. The young man had been a little
restless of late, and was willing to vary his routine by picking up an
acquaintance here and there. So he took the Widow's hint. He should
like to have a scamper of half a dozen miles with her some fine morning.
The Widow was infinitely obliged; was not sure that she could find any
horse in the village to suit her; but it was so kind in him! Would he not
call at Hyacinth Cottage, and let her thank him again there?
Thus began an acquaintance which the Widow made the most of, and on the
strength of which she determined to give a tea-party and invite a number
of persons of whom we know something already. She took a half-sheet of
note-paper and made out her list as carefully as a country "merchant's
clerk" adds up two and threepence (New-England nomenclature) and twelve
and a half cents, figure by figure, and fraction by fraction, before he
can be sure they will make half a dollar, without cheating somebody.
After much consideration the list reduced itself to the following names:
Mr. Richard Venner and Mrs. Blanche Creamer, the lady at whose house she
had met him,--mansion-house breed,--but will come,--soft on Dick; Dudley
Venner,--take care of him herself; Elsie,--Dick will see to her,--won't
it fidget the Creamer woman to see him round her? the old Doctor,--he 's
always handy; and there's that young master there, up at the
school,--know him well enough to ask him,--oh, yes, he'll come. One,
two, three, four, five, six,--seven; not room enough, without the leaf in
the table; one place empty, if the leaf's in. Let's see,--Helen Darley,
--she 'll do well enough to fill it up,--why, yes, just the thing,
--light brown hair, blue eyes,--won't my pattern show off well against
her? Put her down,--she 's worth her tea and toast ten times over,
--nobody knows what a "thunder-and-lightning woman," as poor Major used
to have it, is, till she gets alongside of one of those old-maidish
girls, with hair the color of brown sugar, and eyes like the blue of a
teacup.
The Widow smiled with a feeling of triumph at having overcome her
difficulties and arranged her party,--arose and stood before her glass,
three-quarters front, one-quarter profile, so as to show the whites of
the eyes and the down of the upper lip. "Splendid!" said the Widow--and
to tell the truth, she was not far out of the way, and with Helen Darley
as a foil anybody would know she must be foudroyant and pyramidal,--if
these French adjectives may be naturalized for this one particular
exigency.
So the Widow sent out her notes. The black grief which had filled her
heart and had overflowed in surges of crape around her person had left a
deposit half an inch wide at the margin of her note-paper. Her seal was a
small youth with an inverted torch, the same on which Mrs. Blanche
Creamer made her spiteful remark, that she expected to see that boy of
the Widow's standing on his head yet; meaning, as Dick supposed, that she
would get the torch right-side up as soon as she had a chance. That was
after Dick had made the Widow's acquaintance, and Mrs. Creamer had got it
into her foolish head that she would marry that young fellow, if she
could catch him. How could he ever come to fancy such a quadroon-looking
thing as that, she should like to know?
It is easy enough to ask seven people to a party; but whether they will
come or not is an open question, as it was in the case of the spirits of
the vasty deep. If the note issues from a three-story mansion-house, and
goes to two-story acquaintances, they will all be in an excellent state
of health, and have much pleasure in accepting this very polite
invitation. If the note is from the lady of a two-story family to
three-story ones, the former highly respectable person will very probably
find that an endemic complaint is prevalent, not represented in the
weekly bills of mortality, which occasions numerous regrets in the bosoms
of eminently desirable parties that they cannot have the pleasure of
and-so-forthing.
In this case there was room for doubt,--mainly as to whether Elsie would
take a fancy to come or not. If she should come, her father would
certainly be with her. Dick had promised, and thought he could bring
Elsie. Of course the young schoolmaster will come, and that poor
tired-out looking Helen, if only to get out of sight of those horrid
Peckham wretches. They don't get such invitations every day. The others
she felt sure of,--all but the old Doctor,--he might have some horrid
patient or other to visit; tell him Elsie Venner's going to be there,--he
always likes to have an eye on her, they say,--oh, he'd come fast enough,
without any more coaxing.
She wanted the Doctor, particularly. It was odd, but she was afraid of
Elsie. She felt as if she should be safe enough, if the old Doctor were
there to see to the girl; and then she should have leisure to devote
herself more freely to the young lady's father, for whom all her
sympathies were in a state of lively excitement.
It was a long time since the Widow had seen so many persons round her
table as she had now invited. Better have the plates set and see how
they will fill it up with the leaf in.--A little too scattering with only
eight plates set: if she could find two more people, now, that would
bring the chairs a little closer,--snug, you know,--which makes the
company sociable. The Widow thought over her acquaintances. Why how
stupid! there was her good minister, the same who had married her, and
might--might--bury her for aught she anew, and his granddaughter staying
with him,--nice little girl, pretty, and not old enough to be
dangerous;--for the Widow had no notion of making a tea-party and asking
people to it that would be like to stand between her and any little
project she might happen to have on anybody's heart,--not she! It was
all right now; Blanche was married and so forth; Letty was a child; Elsie
was his daughter; Helen Darley was a nice, worthy drudge,--poor
thing!--faded, faded,--colors wouldn't wash, just what she wanted to show
off against. Now, if the Dudley mansion-house people would only
come,--that was the great point.
"Here's a note for us, Elsie," said her father, as they sat round the
breakfast-table. "Mrs. Rowens wants us all to come to tea."
It was one of "Elsie's days," as old Sophy called them. The light in her
eyes was still, but very bright. She looked up so full of perverse and
wilful impulses, that Dick knew he could make her go with him and her
father. He had his own motives for bringing her to this
determination,--and his own way of setting about it.
"I don't want to go," he said. "What do you say, uncle?"
"To tell the truth, Richard, I don't mach fancy the Major's widow. I
don't like to see her weeds flowering out quite so strong. I suppose you
don't care about going, Elsie?"
Elsie looked up in her father's face with an expression which he knew but
too well. She was just in the state which the plain sort of people call
"contrary," when they have to deal with it in animals. She would insist
on going to that tea-party; he knew it just as well before she spoke as
after she had spoken. If Dick had said he wanted to go and her father
had seconded his wishes, she would have insisted on staying at home. It
was no great matter, her father said to himself, after all; very likely
it would amuse her; the Widow was a lively woman enough,--perhaps a
little comme il ne faut pas socially, compared with the Thorntons and
some other families; but what did he care for these petty village
distinctions?
Elsie spoke.
"I mean to go. You must go with me, Dudley. You may do as you like,
Dick."
That settled the Dudley-mansion business, of course. They all three
accepted, as fortunately did all the others who had been invited.
Hyacinth Cottage was a pretty place enough, a little too much choked
round with bushes, and too much overrun with climbing-roses, which, in
the season of slugs and rose-bugs, were apt to show so brown about the
leaves and so coleopterous about the flowers, that it might be questioned
whether their buds and blossoms made up for these unpleasant animal
combinations,--especially as the smell of whale-oil soap was very
commonly in the ascendant over that of the roses. It had its patch of
grass called "the lawn," and its glazed closet known as "the
conservatory," according to that system of harmless fictions
characteristic of the rural imagination and shown in the names applied to
many familiar objects. The interior of the cottage was more tasteful and
ambitious than that of the ordinary two-story dwellings. In place of the
prevailing hair-cloth covered furniture, the visitor had the satisfaction
of seating himself upon a chair covered with some of the Widow's
embroidery, or a sofa luxurious with soft caressing plush. The sporting
tastes of the late Major showed in various prints on the wall: Herring's
"Plenipotentiary," the "red bullock" of the '34 Derby; "Cadland" and "The
Colonel;" "Crucifix;" "West-Australian," fastest of modern racers; and
among native celebrities, ugly, game old "Boston," with his straight neck
and ragged hips; and gray "Lady Suffolk," queen, in her day, not of the
turf but of the track, "extending" herself till she measured a rod, more
or less, skimming along within a yard of the ground, her legs opening and
shutting under her with a snap, like the four blades of a compound
jack-knife.
These pictures were much more refreshing than those dreary fancy
death-bed scenes, common in two-story country-houses, in which Washington
and other distinguished personages are represented as obligingly devoting
their last moments to taking a prominent part in a tableau, in which
weeping relatives, attached servants, professional assistants, and
celebrated personages who might by a stretch of imagination be supposed
present, are grouped in the most approved style of arrangement about the
chief actor's pillow.
A single glazed bookcase held the family library, which was hidden from
vulgar eyes by green silk curtains behind the glass. It would have been
instructive to get a look at it, as it always is to peep into one's
neighbor's book-shelves. From other sources and opportunities a partial
idea of it has been obtained. The Widow had inherited some books from
her mother, who was something of a reader: Young's "Night-Thoughts;" "The
Preceptor;" "The Task, a Poem," by William Cowper; Hervey's
"Meditations;" "Alonzo and Melissa;" "Buccaneers of America;" "The
Triumphs of Temper;" "La Belle Assemblee;" Thomson's "Seasons;" and a few
others. The Major had brought in "Tom Jones" and "Peregrine Pickle;"
various works by Mr. Pierce Egan; "Boxiana," "The Racing Calendar;" and a
"Book of Lively Songs and Jests." The Widow had added the Poems of Lord
Byron and T. Moore; "Eugene Aram;" "The Tower of London," by Harrison
Ainsworth; some of Scott's Novels; "The Pickwick Papers;" a volume of
Plays, by W. Shakespeare; "Proverbial Philosophy;" "Pilgrim's Progress;"
"The Whole Duty of Man" (a present when she was married); with two
celebrated religious works, one by William Law and the other by Philip
Doddridge, which were sent her after her husband's death, and which she
had tried to read, but found that they did not agree with her. Of course
the bookcase held a few school manuals and compendiums, and one of Mr.
Webster's Dictionaries. But the gilt-edged Bible always lay on the
centre-table, next to the magazine with the fashion-plates and the
scrap-book with pictures from old annuals and illustrated papers.
The reader need not apprehend the recital, at full length, of such
formidable preparations for the Widow's tea-party as were required in the
case of Colonel Sprowle's Social Entertainment. A tea-party, even in the
country, is a comparatively simple and economical piece of business. As
soon as the Widow found that all her company were coming, she set to
work, with the aid of her "smart" maid-servant and a daughter of her own,
who was beginning to stretch and spread at a fearful rate, but whom she
treated as a small child, to make the necessary preparations. The silver
had to be rubbed; also the grand plated urn,--her mother's before
hers,--style of the Empire,--looking as if it might have been made to
hold the Major's ashes. Then came the making and baking of cake and
gingerbread, the smell whereof reached even as far as the sidewalk in
front of the cottage, so that small boys returning from school snuffed it
in the breeze, and discoursed with each other on its suggestions; so that
the Widow Leech, who happened to pass, remembered she had n't called on
Marilly Raowens for a consid'ble spell, and turned in at the gate and
rang three times with long intervals,--but all in vain, the inside Widow
having "spotted" the outside one through the blinds, and whispered to her
aides-de-camp to let the old thing ring away till she pulled the bell out
by the roots, but not to stir to open the door.
Widow Rowens was what they called a real smart, capable woman, not very
great on books, perhaps, but knew what was what and who was who as well
as another,--knew how to make the little cottage look pretty, how to set
out a tea-table, and, what a good many women never can find out, knew her
own style and "got herself up tip-top," as our young friend Master
Geordie, Colonel Sprowle's heir-apparent, remarked to his friend from one
of the fresh-water colleges. Flowers were abundant now, and she had
dressed her rooms tastefully with them. The centre-table had two or
three gilt-edged books lying carelessly about on it, and some prints and
a stereoscope with stereographs to match, chiefly groups of picnics,
weddings, etc., in which the same somewhat fatigued looking ladies of
fashion and brides received the attentions of the same unpleasant-looking
young men, easily identified under their different disguises, consisting
of fashionable raiment such as gentlemen are supposed to wear habitually.
With these, however, were some pretty English scenes,--pretty except for
the old fellow with the hanging under-lip who infests every one of that
interesting series; and a statue or two, especially that famous one
commonly called the Lahcoon, so as to rhyme with moon and spoon, and
representing an old man with his two sons in the embraces of two
monstrous serpents.
There is no denying that it was a very dashing achievement of the Widow's
to bring together so considerable a number of desirable guests. She felt
proud of her feat; but as to the triumph of getting Dudley Venner to come
out for a visit to Hyacinth Cottage, she was surprised and almost
frightened at her own success. So much might depend on the impressions
of that evening!
The next thing was to be sure that everybody should be in the right place
at the tea-table, and this the Widow thought she could manage by a few
words to the older guests and a little shuffling about and shifting when
they got to the table. To settle everything the Widow made out a
diagram, which the reader should have a chance of inspecting in an
authentic copy, if these pages were allowed under any circumstances to be
the vehicle of illustrations. If, however, he or she really wishes to
see the way the pieces stood as they were placed at the beginning of the
game, (the Widow's gambit,) he or she had better at once take a sheet of
paper, draw an oval, and arrange the characters according to the
following schedule.
At the head of the table, the Hostess, Widow Marilla Rowens. Opposite
her, at the other end, Rev. Dr. Honeywood. At the right of the Hostess,
Dudley Veneer, next him Helen Darley, next her Dr. Kittredge, next him
Mrs. Blanche Creamer, then the Reverend Doctor. At the left of the
Hostess, Bernard Langdon, next him Letty Forrester, next Letty Mr.
Richard Veneer, next him Elsie, and so to the Reverend Doctor again.
The company came together a little before the early hour at which it was
customary to take tea in Rockland. The Widow knew everybody, of course:
who was there in Rockland she did not know? But some of them had to be
introduced: Mr. Richard Veneer to Mr. Bernard, Mr. Bernard to Miss Letty,
Dudley Veneer to Miss Helen Darley, and so on. The two young men looked
each other straight in the eyes, both full of youthful life, but one of
frank and fearless aspect, the other with a dangerous feline beauty alien
to the New England half of his blood.
The guests talked, turned over the prints, looked at the flowers, opened
the "Proverbial Philosophy" with gilt edges, and the volume of Plays by
W. Shakespeare, examined the horse-pictures on the walls, and so passed
away the time until tea was announced, when they paired off for the room
where it was in readiness. The Widow had managed it well; everything was
just as she wanted it. Dudley Veneer was between herself and the poor
tired-looking schoolmistress with her faded colors. Blanche Creamer, a
lax, tumble-to-pieces, Greuze-ish looking blonde, whom the Widow hated
because the men took to her, was purgatoried between the two old Doctors,
and could see all the looks that passed between Dick Venner and his
cousin. The young schoolmaster could talk to Miss Letty: it was his
business to know how to talk to schoolgirls. Dick would amuse himself
with his cousin Elsie. The old Doctors only wanted to be well fed and
they would do well enough.
It would be very pleasant to describe the tea-table; but in reality, it
did not pretend to offer a plethoric banquet to the guests. The Widow
had not visited the mansion-houses for nothing, and she had learned there
that an overloaded tea-table may do well enough for farm-hands when they
come in at evening from their work and sit down unwashed in their
shirtsleeves, but that for decently bred people such an insult to the
memory of a dinner not yet half-assimilated is wholly inadmissible.
Everything was delicate, and almost everything of fair complexion: white
bread and biscuits, frosted and sponge cake, cream, honey, straw-colored
butter; only a shadow here and there, where the fire had crisped and
browned the surfaces of a stack of dry toast, or where a preserve had
brought away some of the red sunshine of the last year's summer. The
Widow shall have the credit of her well-ordered tea-table, also of her
bountiful cream-pitchers; for it is well known that city-people find
cream a very scarce luxury in a good many country-houses of more
pretensions than Hyacinth Cottage. There are no better maims for ladies
who give tea-parties than these:
Cream is thicker than water. Large heart never loved little cream pot.
There is a common feeling in genteel families that the third meal of the
day is not so essential a part of the daily bread as to require any
especial acknowledgment to the Providence which bestows it. Very devout
people, who would never sit down to a breakfast or a dinner without the
grace before meat which honors the Giver of it, feel as if they thanked
Heaven enough for their tea and toast by partaking of them cheerfully
without audible petition or ascription. But the Widow was not exactly
mansion-house-bred, and so thought it necessary to give the Reverend
Doctor a peculiar look which he understood at once as inviting his
professional services. He, therefore, uttered a few simple words of
gratitude, very quietly,--much to the satisfaction of some of the guests,
who had expected one of those elaborate effusions, with rolling up of the
eyes and rhetorical accents, so frequent with eloquent divines when they
address their Maker in genteel company.
Everybody began talking with the person sitting next at hand. Mr.
Bernard naturally enough turned his attention first to the Widow; but
somehow or other the right side of the Widow seemed to be more wide awake
than the left side, next him, and he resigned her to the courtesies of
Mr. Dudley Venner, directing himself, not very unwillingly, to the young
girl next him on the other side. Miss Letty Forrester, the granddaughter
of the Reverend Doctor, was city-bred, as anybody might see, and
city-dressed, as any woman would know at sight; a man might only feel the
general effect of clear, well-matched colors, of harmonious proportions,
of the cut which makes everything cling like a bather's sleeve where a
natural outline is to be kept, and ruffle itself up like the hackle of a
pitted fighting-cock where art has a right to luxuriate in silken
exuberance. How this citybred and city-dressed girl came to be in
Rockland Mr. Bernard did not know, but he knew at any rate that she was
his next neighbor and entitled to his courtesies. She was handsome, too,
when he came to look, very handsome when he came to look again,--endowed
with that city beauty which is like the beauty of wall-fruit, something
finer in certain respects than can be reared off the pavement.
The miserable routinists who keep repeating invidiously Cowper's
"God made the country and man made the town,"
as if the town were a place to kill out the race in, do not know what
they are talking about. Where could they raise such Saint-Michael pears,
such Saint-Germains, such Brown-Beurres, as we had until within a few
years growing within the walls of our old city-gardens? Is the dark and
damp cavern where a ragged beggar hides himself better than a
town-mansion which fronts the sunshine and backs on its own cool shadow,
with gas and water and all appliances to suit all needs? God made the
cavern and man made the house! What then?
There is no doubt that the pavement keeps a deal of mischief from coming
up out of the earth, and, with a dash off of it in summer, just to cool
the soles of the feet when it gets too hot, is the best place for many
constitutions, as some few practical people have already discovered. And
just so these beauties that grow and ripen against the city-walls, these
young fellows with cheeks like peaches and young girls with cheeks like
nectarines, show that the most perfect forms of artificial life can do as
much for the human product as garden-culture for strawberries and
blackberries.
If Mr. Bernard had philosophized or prosed in this way, with so pretty,
nay, so lovely a neighbor as Miss Letty Forrester waiting for him to
speak to her, he would have to be dropped from this narrative as a person
unworthy of his good-fortune, and not deserving the kind reader's further
notice. On the contrary, he no sooner set his eyes fairly on her than he
said to himself that she was charming, and that he wished she were one of
his scholars at the Institute. So he began talking with her in an easy
way; for he knew something of young girls by this time, and, of course,
could adapt himself to a young lady who looked as if she might be not
more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and therefore could hardly be a
match in intellectual resources for the seventeen and eighteen year-old
first-class scholars of the Apollinean Institute. But city-wall-fruit
ripens early, and he soon found that this girl's training had so
sharpened her wits and stored her memory, that he need not be at the
trouble to stoop painfully in order to come down to her level.
The beauty of good-breeding is that it adjusts itself to all relations
without effort, true to itself always however the manners of those around
it may change. Self-respect and respect for others,--the sensitive
consciousness poises itself in these as the compass in the ship's
binnacle balances itself and maintains its true level within the two
concentric rings which suspend it on their pivots. This thorough-bred
school-girl quite enchanted Mr. Bernard. He could not understand where
she got her style, her way of dress, her enunciation, her easy manners.
The minister was a most worthy gentleman, but this was not the Rockland
native-born manner; some new element had come in between the good, plain,
worthy man and this young girl, fit to be a Crown Prince's partner where
there were a thousand to choose from.
He looked across to Helen Darley, for he knew she would understand the
glance of admiration with which he called her attention to the young
beauty at his side; and Helen knew what a young girl could be, as
compared with what too many a one is, as well as anybody.
This poor, dear Helen of ours! How admirable the contrast between her
and the Widow on the other side of Dudley Venner! But, what was very
odd, that gentleman apparently thought the contrast was to the advantage
of this poor, dear Helen. At any rate, instead of devoting himself
solely to the Widow, he happened to be just at that moment talking in a
very interested and, apparently, not uninteresting way to his right-hand
neighbor, who, on her part, never looked more charmingly,--as Mr. Bernard
could not help saying to himself,--but, to be sure, he had just been
looking at the young girl next him, so that his eyes were brimful of
beauty, and may have spilled some of it on the first comer: for you know
M. Becquerel has been showing us lately how everything is phosphorescent;
that it soaks itself with light in an instant's exposure, so that it is
wet with liquid sunbeams, or, if you will, tremulous with luminous
vibrations, when first plunged into the negative bath of darkness, and
betrays itself by the light which escapes from its surface.
Whatever were the reason, this poor, dear Helen never looked so sweetly.
Her plainly parted brown hair, her meek, blue eyes, her cheek just a
little tinged with color, the almost sad simplicity of her dress, and
that look he knew so well,--so full of cheerful patience, so sincere,
that he had trusted her from the first moment as the believers of the
larger half of Christendom trust the Blessed Virgin,--Mr. Bernard took
this all in at a glance, and felt as pleased as if it had been his own
sister Dorothea Elizabeth that he was looking at. As for Dudley Veneer,
Mr. Bernard could not help being struck by the animated expression of his
countenance. It certainly showed great kindness, on his part, to pay so
much attention to this quiet girl, when he had the thunder-and-lightning
Widow on the other side of him.
Mrs. Marilla Rowens did not know what to make of it. She had made her
tea-party expressly for Mr. Dudley Veneer. She had placed him just as
she wanted, between herself and a meek, delicate woman who dressed in
gray, wore a plain breastpin with hair in it, who taught a pack of girls
up there at the school, and looked as if she were born for a
teacher,--the very best foil that she could have chosen; and here was
this man, polite enough to herself, to be sure, but turning round to that
very undistinguished young person as if he rather preferred her
conversation of the two!
The truth was that Dudley Veneer and Helen Darley met as two travellers
might meet in the desert, wearied, both of them, with their long journey,
one having food, but no water, the other water, but no food. Each saw
that the other had been in long conflict with some trial; for their
voices were low and tender, as patiently borne sorrow and humbly uttered
prayers make every human voice. Through these tones, more than by what
they said, they came into natural sympathetic relations with each other.
Nothing could be more unstudied. As for Dudley Venner, no beauty in all
the world could have so soothed and magnetized him as the very repose and
subdued gentleness which the Widow had thought would make the best
possible background for her own more salient and effective attractions.
No doubt, Helen, on her side, was almost too readily pleased with the
confidence this new acquaintance she was making seemed to show her from
the very first. She knew so few men of any condition! Mr. Silas
Peckham: he was her employer, and she ought to think of him as well as
she could; but every time she thought of him it was with a shiver of
disgust. Mr. Bernard Langdon: a noble young man, a true friend, like a
brother to her,--God bless him, and send him some young heart as fresh as
his own! But this gentleman produced a new impression upon her, quite
different from any to which she was accustomed. His rich, low tones had
the strangest significance to her; she felt sure he must have lived
through long experiences, sorrowful like her own. Elsie's father! She
looked into his dark eyes, as she listened to him, to see if they had any
glimmer of that peculiar light, diamond-bright, but cold and still, which
she knew so well in Elsie's. Anything but that! Never was there more
tenderness, it seemed to her, than in the whole look and expression of
Elsie's father. She must have been a great trial to him; yet his face
was that of one who had been saddened, not soured, by his discipline.
Knowing what Elsie must be to him, how hard she must make any parent's
life, Helen could not but be struck with the interest Mr. Dudley Venner
showed in her as his daughter's instructress. He was too kind to her;
again and again she meekly turned from him, so as to leave him free to
talk to the showy lady at his other side, who was looking all the while
"like the night
Of cloudless realms and starry skies;"
but still Mr. Dudley Venner, after a few courteous words, came back to
the blue eyes and brown hair; still he kept his look fixed upon her, and
his tones grew sweeter and lower as he became more interested in talk,
until this poor, dear Helen, what with surprise, and the bashfulness
natural to one who had seen little of the gay world, and the stirring of
deep, confused sympathies with this suffering father, whose heart seemed
so full of kindness, felt her cheeks glowing with unwonted flame, and
betrayed the pleasing trouble of her situation by looking so sweetly as
to arrest Mr. Bernard's eye for a moment, when he looked away from the
young beauty sitting next him.
Elsie meantime had been silent, with that singular, still, watchful look
which those who knew her well had learned to fear. Her head just a
little inclined on one side, perfectly motionless for whole minutes, her
eyes seeming to, grow small and bright, as always when she was under her
evil influence, she was looking obliquely at the young girl on the other
side of her cousin Dick and next to Bernard Langdon. As for Dick
himself, she seemed to be paying very little attention to him. Sometimes
her eyes would wander off to Mr. Bernard, and their expression, as old
Dr. Kittredge, who watched her for a while pretty keenly, noticed, would
change perceptibly. One would have said that she looked with a kind of
dull hatred at the girl, but with a half-relenting reproachful anger at
Mr. Bernard.
Miss Letty Forrester, at whom Elsie had been looking from time to time in
this fixed way, was conscious meanwhile of some unusual influence. First
it was a feeling of constraint,--then, as it were, a diminished power
over the muscles, as if an invisible elastic cobweb were spinning round
her,--then a tendency to turn away from Mr. Bernard, who was making
himself very agreeable, and look straight into those eyes which would not
leave her, and which seemed to be drawing her towards them, while at the
same time they chilled the blood in all her veins.
Mr. Bernard saw this influence coming over her. All at once he noticed
that she sighed, and that some little points of moisture began to glisten
on her forehead. But she did not grow pale perceptibly; she had no
involuntary or hysteric movements; she still listened to him and smiled
naturally enough. Perhaps she was only nervous at being stared at. At
any rate, she was coming under some unpleasant influence or other, and
Mr. Bernard had seen enough of the strange impression Elsie sometimes
produced to wish this young girl to be relieved from it, whatever it was.
He turned toward Elsie and looked at her in such a way as to draw her
eyes upon him. Then he looked steadily and calmly into them. It was a
great effort, for some perfectly inexplicable reason. At one instant he
thought he could not sit where he was; he must go and speak to Elsie.
Then he wanted to take his eyes away from hers; there was something
intolerable in the light that came from them. But he was determined to
look her down, and he believed he could do it, for he had seen her
countenance change more than once when he had caught her gaze steadily
fixed on him. All this took not minutes, but seconds. Presently she
changed color slightly,--lifted her head, which was inclined a little to
one side,--shut and opened her eyes two or three times, as if they had
been pained or wearied,--and turned away baffled, and shamed, as it would
seem, and shorn for the time of her singular and formidable or at least
evil-natured power of swaying the impulses of those around her.
It takes too long to describe these scenes where a good deal of life is
concentrated into a few silent seconds. Mr. Richard Veneer had sat
quietly through it all, although this short pantomime had taken place
literally before his face. He saw what was going on well enough, and
understood it all perfectly well. Of course the schoolmaster had been
trying to make Elsie jealous, and had succeeded. The little schoolgirl
was a decoy-duck,--that was all. Estates like the Dudley property were
not to be had every day, and no doubt the Yankee usher was willing to
take some pains to make sure of Elsie. Does n't Elsie look savage? Dick
involuntarily moved his chair a little away from her, and thought he felt
a pricking in the small white scars on his wrist. A dare-devil fellow,
but somehow or other this girl had taken strange hold of his imagination,
and he often swore to himself, that, when he married her, he would carry
a loaded revolver with him to his bridal chamber.
Mrs. Blanche Creamer raged inwardly at first to find herself between the
two old gentlemen of the party. It very soon gave her great comfort,
however, to see that Marilla, Rowens had just missed it in her
calculations, and she chuckled immensely to find Dudley Veneer devoting
himself chiefly to Helen Darley. If the Rowens woman should hook Dudley,
she felt as if she should gnaw all her nails off for spite. To think of
seeing her barouching about Rockland behind a pair of long-tailed bays
and a coachman with a band on his hat, while she, Blanche Creamer, was
driving herself about in a one-horse "carriage"! Recovering her spirits
by degrees, she began playing her surfaces off at the two old Doctors,
just by way of practice. First she heaved up a glaring white shoulder,
the right one, so that the Reverend Doctor should be stunned by it, if
such a thing might be. The Reverend Doctor was human, as the Apostle was
not ashamed to confess himself. Half-devoutly and half-mischievously he
repeated inwardly, "Resist the Devil and he will flee from you." As the
Reverend Doctor did not show any lively susceptibility, she thought she
would try the left shoulder on old Dr. Kittredge. That worthy and
experienced student of science was not at all displeased with the
manoeuvre, and lifted his head so as to command the exhibition through
his glasses. "Blanche is good for half a dozen years or so, if she is
careful," the Doctor said to himself, "and then she must take to her
prayer-book." After this spasmodic failure of Mrs. Blanche Creamer's to
stir up the old Doctors, she returned again to the pleasing task of
watching the Widow in her evident discomfiture. But dark as the Widow
looked in her half-concealed pet, she was but as a pale shadow, compared
to Elsie in her silent concentration of shame and anger.
"Well, there is one good thing," said Mrs. Blanche Creamer; "Dick doesn't
get much out of that cousin of his this evening! Does n't he look
handsome, though?"
So Mrs. Blanche, being now a good deal taken up with her observations of
those friends of hers and ours, began to be rather careless of her two
old Doctors, who naturally enough fell into conversation with each other
across the white surfaces of that lady, perhaps not very politely, but,
under the, circumstances, almost as a matter of necessity.
When a minister and a doctor get talking together, they always have a
great deal to say; and so it happened that the company left the table
just as the two Doctors were beginning to get at each other's ideas about
various interesting matters. If we follow them into the other parlor, we
can, perhaps, pick up something of their conversation.
CHAPTER XXII.
WHY DOCTORS DIFFER.
The company rearranged itself with some changes after leaving the
tea-table. Dudley Veneer was very polite to the Widow; but that lady
having been called off for a few moments for some domestic arrangement,
he slid back to the side of Helen Darley, his daughter's faithful
teacher. Elsie had got away by herself, and was taken up in studying the
stereoscopic Laocoon. Dick, being thus set free, had been seized upon by
Mrs. Blanche Creamer, who had diffused herself over three-quarters of a
sofa and beckoned him to the remaining fourth. Mr. Bernard and Miss
Letty were having a snug fete-'a-fete in the recess of a bay-window. The
two Doctors had taken two arm-chairs and sat squared off against each
other. Their conversation is perhaps as well worth reporting as that of
the rest of the company, and, as it was carried on in a louder tone, was
of course more easy to gather and put on record.
It was a curious sight enough to see those two representatives of two
great professions brought face to face to talk over the subjects they had
been looking at all their lives from such different points of view. Both
were old; old enough to have been moulded by their habits of thought and
life; old enough to have all their beliefs "fretted in," as vintners
say,--thoroughly worked up with their characters. Each of them looked his
calling. The Reverend Doctor had lived a good deal among books in his
study; the Doctor, as we will call the medical gentleman, had been riding
about the country for between thirty and forty years. His face looked
tough and weather-worn; while the Reverend Doctor's, hearty as it
appeared, was of finer texture. The Doctor's was the graver of the two;
there was something of grimness about it, partly owing to the
northeasters he had faced for so many years, partly to long companionship
with that stern personage who never deals in sentiment or pleasantry.
His speech was apt to be brief and peremptory; it was a way he had got by
ordering patients; but he could discourse somewhat, on occasion, as the
reader may find out. The Reverend Doctor had an open, smiling
expression, a cheery voice, a hearty laugh, and a cordial way with him
which some thought too lively for his cloth, but which children, who are
good judges of such matters, delighted in, so that he was the favorite of
all the little rogues about town. But he had the clerical art of
sobering down in a moment, when asked to say grace while somebody was in
the middle of some particularly funny story; and though his voice was so
cheery in common talk, in the pulpit, like almost all preachers, he had a
wholly different and peculiar way of speaking, supposed to be more
acceptable to the Creator than the natural manner. In point of fact,
most of our anti-papal and anti-prelatical clergymen do really intone
their prayers, without suspecting in the least that they have fallen into
such a Romish practice.
This is the way the conversation between the Doctor of Divinity and the
Doctor of Medicine was going on at the point where these notes take it
up.
"Obi tres medici, duo athei, you know, Doctor. Your profession has
always had the credit of being lax in doctrine,--though pretty stringent
in practice, ha! ha!"
"Some priest said that," the Doctor answered, dryly. "They always talked
Latin when they had a bigger lie than common to get rid of."
"Good!" said the Reverend Doctor; "I'm afraid they would lie a little
sometimes. But isn't there some truth in it, Doctor? Don't you think
your profession is apt to see 'Nature' in the place of the God of
Nature,--to lose sight of the great First Cause in their daily study of
secondary causes?"
"I've thought about that," the Doctor answered, "and I've talked about it
and read about it, and I've come to the conclusion that nobody believes
in God and trusts in God quite so much as the doctors; only it is n't
just the sort of Deity that some of your profession have wanted them to
take up with. There was a student of mine wrote a dissertation on the
Natural Theology of Health and Disease, and took that old lying proverb
for his motto. He knew a good deal more about books than ever I did, and
had studied in other countries. I'll tell you what he said about it. He
said the old Heathen Doctor, Galen, praised God for his handiwork in the
human body, just as if he had been a Christian, or the Psalmist himself.
He said they had this sentence set up in large letters in the great
lecture-room in Paris where he attended: I dressed his wound and God
healed him. That was an old surgeon's saying. And he gave a long list
of doctors who were not only Christians, but famous ones. I grant you,
though, ministers and doctors are very apt to see differently in
spiritual matters."
"That's it," said the Reverend Doctor; "you are apt to see 'Nature' where
we see God, and appeal to 'Science' where we are contented with
Revelation."
"We don't separate God and Nature, perhaps, as you do," the Doctor
answered. "When we say that God is omnipresent and omnipotent and
omniscient, we are a little more apt to mean it than your folks are. We
think, when a wound heals, that God's presence and power and knowledge
are there, healing it, just as that old surgeon did. We think a good
many theologians, working among their books, don't see the facts of the
world they live in. When we tell 'em of these facts, they are apt to
call us materialists and atheists and infidels, and all that. We can't
help seeing the facts, and we don't think it's wicked to mention 'em."
"Do tell me," the Reverend Doctor said, "some of these facts we are in
the habit of overlooking, and which your profession thinks it can see and
understand."
"That's very easy," the Doctor replied. "For instance: you don't
understand or don't allow for idiosyncrasies as we learn to. We know
that food and physic act differently with different people; but you think
the same kind of truth is going to suit, or ought to suit, all minds. We
don't fight with a patient because he can't take magnesia or opium; but
you are all the time quarrelling over your beliefs, as if belief did not
depend very much on race and constitution, to say nothing of early
training."
"Do you mean to say that every man is not absolutely free to choose his
beliefs?"
"The men you write about in your studies are, but not the men we see in
the real world. There is some apparently congenital defect in the
Indians, for instance, that keeps them from choosing civilization and
Christianity. So with the Gypsies, very likely. Everybody knows that
Catholicism or Protestantism is a good deal a matter of race.
Constitution has more to do with belief than people think for. I went to
a Universalist church, when I was in the city one day, to hear a famous
man whom all the world knows, and I never saw such pews-full of broad
shoulders and florid faces, and substantial, wholesome-looking persons,
male and female, in all my life. Why, it was astonishing. Either their
creed made them healthy, or they chose it because they were healthy.
Your folks have never got the hang of human nature."
"I am afraid this would be considered a degrading and dangerous view of
human beliefs and responsibility for them," the Reverend Doctor replied.
"Prove to a man that his will is governed by something outside of
himself, and you have lost all hold on his moral and religious nature.
There is nothing bad men want to believe so much as that they are
governed by necessity. Now that which is at once degrading and dangerous
cannot be true."
"No doubt," the Doctor replied, "all large views of mankind limit our
estimate of the absolute freedom of the will. But I don't think it
degrades or endangers us, for this reason, that, while it makes us
charitable to the rest of mankind, our own sense of freedom, whatever it
is, is never affected by argument. Conscience won't be reasoned with.
We feel that we can practically do this of that, and if we choose the
wrong, we know we are responsible; but observation teaches us that this
or that other race or individual has not the same practical freedom of
choice. I don't see how we can avoid this conclusion in the instance of
the American Indians. The science of Ethnology has upset a good many
theoretical notions about human nature."
"Science!" said the Reverend Doctor, "science! that was a word the
Apostle Paul did not seem to think much of, if we may judge by the
Epistle to Timothy: 'Oppositions of science falsely so called.' I own
that I am jealous of that word and the pretensions that go with it.
Science has seemed to me to be very often only the handmaid of
skepticism."
"Doctor!" the physician said, emphatically, "science is knowledge.
Nothing that is not known properly belongs to science. Whenever
knowledge obliges us to doubt, we are always safe in doubting.
Astronomers foretell eclipses, say how long comets are to stay with us,
point out where a new planet is to be found. We see they know what they
assert, and the poor old Roman Catholic Church has at last to knock
under. So Geology proves a certain succession of events, and the best
Christian in the world must make the earth's history square with it.
Besides, I don't think you remember what great revelations of himself the
Creator has made in the minds of the men who have built up science. You
seem to me to hold his human masterpieces very cheap. Don't you think
the 'inspiration of the Almighty' gave Newton and Cuvier
'understanding'?"
The Reverend Doctor was not arguing for victory. In fact, what he wanted
was to call out the opinions of the old physician by a show of
opposition, being already predisposed to agree with many of them. He was
rather trying the common arguments, as one tries tricks of fence merely
to learn the way of parrying. But just here he saw a tempting opening,
and could not resist giving a home-thrust.
"Yes; but you surely would not consider it inspiration of the same kind
as that of the writers of the Old Testament?"
That cornered the Doctor, and he paused a moment before he replied. Then
he raised his head, so as to command the Reverend Doctor's face through
his spectacles, and said,
"I did not say that. You are clear, I suppose, that the Omniscient spoke
through Solomon, but that Shakespeare wrote without his help?"
The Reverend Doctor looked very grave. It was a bold, blunt way of
putting the question. He turned it aside with the remark, that
Shakespeare seemed to him at times to come as near inspiration as any
human being not included among the sacred writers.
"Doctor," the physician began, as from a sudden suggestion, "you won't
quarrel with me, if I tell you some of my real thoughts, will you?"
"Say on, my dear Sir, say on," the minister answered, with his most
genial smile; "your real thoughts are just what I want to get at. A
man's real thoughts are a great rarity. If I don't agree with you, I
shall like to hear you."
The Doctor began; and in order to give his thoughts more connectedly, we
will omit the conversational breaks, the questions and comments of the
clergyman, and all accidental interruptions.
"When the old ecclesiastics said that where there were three doctors
there were two atheists, they lied, of course. They called everybody who
differed from them atheists, until they found out that not believing in
God was n't nearly so ugly a crime as not believing in some particular
dogma; then they called them heretics, until so many good people had been
burned under that name that it began to smell too strong of roasting
flesh,--and after that infidels, which properly means people without
faith, of whom there are not a great many in any place or time. But
then, of course, there was some reason why doctors shouldn't think about
religion exactly as ministers did, or they never would have made that
proverb. It 's very likely that something of the same kind is true now;
whether it is so or not, I am going to tell you the reasons why it would
not be strange, if doctors should take rather different views from
clergymen about some matters of belief. I don't, of course, mean all
doctors nor all clergymen. Some doctors go as far as any old New England
divine, and some clergymen agree very well with the doctors that think
least according to rule.
"To begin with their ideas of the Creator himself. They always see him
trying to help his creatures out of their troubles. A man no sooner gets
a cut, than the Great Physician, whose agency we often call Nature, goes
to work, first to stop the blood, and then to heal the wound, and then to
make the scar as small as possible. If a man's pain exceeds a certain
amount, he faints, and so gets relief. If it lasts too long, habit comes
in to make it tolerable. If it is altogether too bad, he dies. That is
the best thing to be done under the circumstances. So you see, the
doctor is constantly in presence of a benevolent agency working against a
settled order of things, of which pain and disease are the accidents, so
to speak. Well, no doubt they find it harder than clergymen to believe
that there can be any world or state from which this benevolent agency is
wholly excluded. This may be very wrong; but it is not unnatural.
"They can hardly conceive of a permanent state of being in which cuts
would never try to heal, nor habit render suffering endurable. This is
one effect of their training.
"Then, again, their attention is very much called to human limitations.
Ministers work out the machinery of responsibility in an abstract kind of
way; they have a sort of algebra of human nature, in which friction and
strength (or weakness) of material are left out. You see, a doctor is in
the way of studying children from the moment of birth upwards. For the
first year or so he sees that they are just as much pupils of their Maker
as the young of any other animals. Well, their Maker trains them to pure
selfishness. Why? In order that they may be sure to take care of
themselves. So you see, when a child comes to be, we will say a year and
a day old, and makes his first choice between right and wrong, he is at a
disadvantage; for he, has that vis a tergo, as we doctors call it, that
force from behind, of a whole year's life of selfishness, for which he is
no more to blame than a calf is to blame for having lived in the same
way, purely to gratify his natural appetites. Then we see that baby grow
up to a child, and, if he is fat and stout and red and lively, we expect
to find him troublesome and noisy, and, perhaps, sometimes disobedient
more or less; that's the way each new generation breaks its egg-shell;
but if he is very weak and thin, and is one of the kind that may be
expected to die early, he will very likely sit in the house all day and
read good books about other little sharp-faced children just like
himself, who died early, having always been perfectly indifferent to all
the out-door amusements of the wicked little red-cheeked children.
"Some of the little folks we watch grow up to be young women, and
occasionally one of them gets nervous, what we call hysterical, and then
that girl will begin to play all sorts of pranks,--to lie and cheat,
perhaps, in the most unaccountable way, so that she might seem to a
minister a good example of total depravity. We don't see her in that
light. We give her iron and valerian, and get her on horseback, if we
can, and so expect to make her will come all right again. By and by we
are called in to see an old baby, threescore years and ten or more old.
We find this old baby has never got rid of that first year's teaching
which led him to fill his stomach with all he could pump into it, and
his hands with everything he could grab. People call him a miser. We
are sorry for him; but we can't help remembering his first year's
training, and the natural effect of money on the great majority of those
that have it. So while the ministers say he 'shall hardly enter into the
kingdom of heaven,' we like to remind them that 'with God all things are
possible.'
"Once more, we see all kinds of monomania and insanity. We learn from
them to recognize all sorts of queer tendencies in minds supposed to be
sane, so that we have nothing but compassion for a large class of persons
condemned as sinners by theologians, but considered by us as invalids.
We have constant reasons for noticing the transmission of qualities from
parents to offspring, and we find it hard to hold a child accountable in
any moral point of view for inherited bad temper or tendency to
drunkenness,--as hard as we should to blame him for inheriting gout or
asthma. I suppose we are more lenient with human nature than theologians
generally are. We know that the spirits of men and their views of the
present and the future go up and down with the barometer, and that a
permanent depression of one inch in the mercurial column would affect the
whole theology of Christendom.
"Ministers talk about the human will as if it stood on a high look-out,
with plenty of light, and elbowroom reaching to the horizon. Doctors are
constantly noticing how it is tied up and darkened by inferior
organization, by disease, and all sorts of crowding interferences, until
they get to look upon Hottentots and Indians--and a good many of their
own race as a kind of self-conscious blood-clocks with very limited power
of self-determination. That's the tendency, I say, of a doctor's
experience. But the people to whom they address their statements of the
results of their observation belong to the thinking class of the highest
races, and they are conscious of a great deal of liberty of will. So in
the face of the fact that civilization with all it offers has proved a
dead failure with the aboriginal races of this country,--on the whole, I
say, a dead failure,--they talk as if they knew from their own will all
about that of a Digger Indian! We are more apt to go by observation of
the facts in the case. We are constantly seeing weakness where you see
depravity. I don't say we're right; I only tell what you must often find
to be the fact, right or wrong, in talking with doctors. You see, too,
our notions of bodily and moral disease, or sin, are apt to go together.
We used to be as hard on sickness as you were on sin. We know better
now. We don't look at sickness as we used to, and try to poison it with
everything that is offensive, burnt toads and earth-worms and
viper-broth, and worse things than these. We know that disease has
something back of it which the body isn't to blame for, at least in most
cases, and which very often it is trying to get rid of. Just so with
sin. I will agree to take a hundred new-born babes of a certain stock
and return seventy-five of them in a dozen years true and honest, if not
'pious' children. And I will take another hundred, of a different stock,
and put them in the hands of certain Ann-Street or Five-Points teachers,
and seventy-five of them will be thieves and liars at the end of the same
dozen years. I have heard of an old character, Colonel Jaques, I believe
it was, a famous cattle-breeder, who used to say he could breed to pretty
much any pattern he wanted to. Well, we doctors see so much of families,
how the tricks of the blood keep breaking out, just as much in character
as they do in looks, that we can't help feeling as if a great many people
hadn't a fair chance to be what is called 'good,' and that there isn't a
text in the Bible better worth keeping always in mind than that one,
'Judge not, that ye be not judged.'
"As for our getting any quarter at the hands of theologians, we don't
expect it, and have no right to. You don't give each other any quarter.
I have had two religious books sent me by friends within a week or two.
One is Mr. Brownson's; he is as fair and square as Euclid; a real honest,
strong thinker, and one that knows what he is talking about,--for he has
tried all sorts of religions, pretty much. He tells us that the Roman
Catholic Church is the one 'through which alone we can hope for heaven.'
The other is by a worthy Episcopal rector, who appears to write as if he
were in earnest, and he calls the Papacy the 'Devil's Masterpiece,' and
talks about the 'Satanic scheme' of that very Church 'through which
alone,' as Mr. Brownson tells us, 'we can hope for heaven'
"What's the use in our caring about hard words after this,--'atheists,'
heretics, infidels, and the like? They're, after all, only the cinders
picked up out of those heaps of ashes round the stumps of the old stakes
where they used to burn men, women, and children for not thinking just
like other folks. They 'll 'crock' your fingers, but they can't burn us.
"Doctors are the best-natured people in the world, except when they get
fighting with each other. And they have some advantages over you. You
inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no
children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of them.
It did n't seem much to them to condemn a few thousand millions of people
to purgatory or worse for a mistake of judgment. They didn't know what
it was to have a child look up in their faces and say 'Father!' It will
take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized, after so
many centuries of de-humanizing celibacy.
"Besides, though our libraries are, perhaps, not commonly quite so big as
yours, God opens one book to physicians that a good many of you don't
know much about,--the Book of Life. That is none of your dusty folios
with black letters between pasteboard and leather, but it is printed in
bright red type, and the binding of it is warm and tender to every touch.
They reverence that book as one of the Almighty's infallible revelations.
They will insist on reading you lessons out of it, whether you call them
names or not. These will always be lessons of charity. No doubt,
nothing can be more provoking to listen to. But do beg your folks to
remember that the Smithfield fires are all out, and that the cinders are
very dirty and not in the least dangerous. They'd a great deal better be
civil, and not be throwing old proverbs in the doctors' faces, when they
say that the man of the old monkish notions is one thing and the man they
watch from his cradle to his coffin is something very different."
It has cost a good deal of trouble to work the Doctor's talk up into this
formal shape. Some of his sentences have been rounded off for him, and
the whole brought into a more rhetorical form than it could have
pretended to, if taken as it fell from his lips. But the exact course of
his remarks has been followed, and as far as possible his expressions
have been retained. Though given in the form of a discourse, it must be
remembered that this was a conversation, much more fragmentary and
colloquial than it seems as just read.
The Reverend Doctor was very far from taking offence at the old
physician's freedom of speech. He knew him to be honest, kind,
charitable, self-denying, wherever any sorrow was to be alleviated,
always reverential, with a cheerful trust in the great Father of all
mankind. To be sure, his senior deacon, old Deacon Shearer,--who seemed
to have got his Scripture-teachings out of the "Vinegar Bible," (the one
where Vineyard is misprinted Vinegar; which a good many people seem to
have adopted as the true reading,)--his senior deacon had called Dr.
Kittredge an "infidel." But the Reverend Doctor could not help feeling,
that, unless the text, "By their fruits ye shall know them," were an
interpolation, the Doctor was the better Christian of the two. Whatever
his senior deacon might think about it, he said to himself that he
shouldn't be surprised if he met the Doctor in heaven yet, inquiring
anxiously after old Deacon Shearer.
He was on the point of expressing himself very frankly to the Doctor,
with that benevolent smile on his face which had sometimes come near
giving offence to the readers of the "Vinegar" edition, but he saw that
the physician's attention had been arrested by Elsie. He looked in the
same direction himself, and could not help being struck by her attitude
and expression. There was something singularly graceful in the curves of
her neck and the rest of her figure, but she was so perfectly still that
it seemed as if she were hardly breathing. Her eyes were fixed on the
young girl with whom Mr. Bernard was talking. He had often noticed their
brilliancy, but now it seemed to him that they appeared dull, and the
look on her features was as of some passion which had missed its stroke.
Mr. Bernard's companion seemed unconscious that she was the object of
this attention, and was listening to the young master as if he had
succeeded in making himself very agreeable.
Of course Dick Veneer had not mistaken the game that was going on. The
schoolmaster meant to make Elsie jealous,--and he had done it. That 's
it: get her savage first, and then come wheedling round her,--a sure
trick, if he isn't headed off somehow. But Dick saw well enough that he
had better let Elsie alone just now, and thought the best way of killing
the evening would be to amuse himself in a little lively talk with Mrs.
Blanche Creamer, and incidentally to show Elsie that he could make
himself acceptable to other women, if not to herself.
The Doctor presently went up to Elsie, determined to engage her in
conversation and get her out of her thoughts, which he saw, by her look,
were dangerous. Her father had been on the point of leaving Helen Darley
to go to her, but felt easy enough when he saw the old Doctor at her
side, and so went on talking. The Reverend Doctor, being now left alone,
engaged the Widow Rowens, who put the best face on her vexation she
could, but was devoting herself to all the underground deities for having
been such a fool as to ask that pale-faced thing from the Institute to
fill up her party.
There is no space left to report the rest of the conversation. If there
was anything of any significance in it, it will turn up by and by, no
doubt. At ten o'clock the Reverend Doctor called Miss Letty, who had no
idea it was so late; Mr. Bernard gave his arm to Helen; Mr. Richard saw
to Mrs. Blanche Creamer; the Doctor gave Elsie a cautioning look, and
went off alone, thoughtful; Dudley Venner and his daughter got into their
carriage and were whirled away. The Widow's gambit was played, and she
had not won the game.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE WILD HUNTSMAN.
The young master had not forgotten the old Doctor's cautions. Without
attributing any great importance to the warning he had given him, Mr.
Bernard had so far complied with his advice that he was becoming a pretty
good shot with the pistol. It was an amusement as good as many others to
practise, and he had taken a fancy to it after the first few days.
The popping of a pistol at odd hours in the backyard of the Institute was
a phenomenon more than sufficiently remarkable to be talked about in
Rockland. The viscous intelligence of a country-village is not easily
stirred by the winds which ripple the fluent thought of great cities, but
it holds every straw and entangles every insect that lights upon it. It
soon became rumored in the town that the young master was a wonderful
shot with the pistol. Some said he could hit a fo'pence-ha'penny at
three rod; some, that he had shot a swallow, flying, with a single ball;
some, that he snuffed a candle five times out of six at ten paces, and
that he could hit any button in a man's coat he wanted to. In other
words, as in all such cases, all the common feats were ascribed to him,
as the current jokes of the day are laid at the door of any noted wit,
however innocent he may be of them.
In the natural course of things, Mr. Richard Venner, who had by this time
made some acquaintances, as we have seen, among that class of the
population least likely to allow a live cinder of gossip to go out for
want of air, had heard incidentally that the master up there at the
Institute was all the time practising with a pistol, that they say he can
snuff a candle at ten rods, (that was Mrs. Blanche Creamer's version,)
and that he could hit anybody he wanted to right in the eye, as far as he
could see the white of it.
Dick did not like the sound of all this any too well. Without believing
more than half of it, there was enough to make the Yankee schoolmaster
too unsafe to be trifled with. However, shooting at a mark was pleasant
work enough; he had no particular objection to it himself. Only he did
not care so much for those little popgun affairs that a man carries in
his pocket, and with which you could n't shoot a fellow,--a robber,
say,--without getting the muzzle under his nose. Pistols for boys;
long-range rifles for men. There was such a gun lying in a closet with
the fowling-pieces. He would go out into the fields and see what he
could do as a marksman.
The nature of the mark which Dick chose for experimenting upon was
singular. He had found some panes of glass which had been removed from
an old sash, and he placed these successively before his target,
arranging them at different angles. He found that a bullet would go
through the glass without glancing or having its force materially abated.
It was an interesting fact in physics, and might prove of some practical
significance hereafter. Nobody knows what may turn up to render these
out-of-the-way facts useful. All this was done in a quiet way in one of
the bare spots high up the side of The Mountain. He was very thoughtful
in taking the precaution to get so far away; rifle-bullets are apt to
glance and come whizzing about people's ears, if they are fired in the
neighborhood of houses. Dick satisfied himself that he could be
tolerably sure of hitting a pane of glass at a distance of thirty rods,
more or less, and that, if there happened to be anything behind it, the
glass would not materially alter the force or direction of the bullet.
About this time it occurred to him also that there was an old
accomplishment of his which he would be in danger of losing for want of
practice, if he did not take some opportunity to try his hand and regain
its cunning, if it had begun to be diminished by disuse. For his first
trial, he chose an evening when the moon was shining, and after the hour
when the Rockland people were like to be stirring abroad. He was so far
established now that he could do much as he pleased without exciting
remark.
The prairie horse he rode, the mustang of the Pampas, wild as he was, had
been trained to take part in at least one exercise. This was the
accomplishment in which Mr. Richard now proposed to try himself. For
this purpose he sought the implement of which, as it may be remembered,
he had once made an incidental use,--the lasso, or long strip of hide
with a slip-noose at the end of it. He had been accustomed to playing
with such a thong from his boyhood, and had become expert in its use in
capturing wild cattle in the course of his adventures. Unfortunately,
there were no wild bulls likely to be met with in the neighborhood, to
become the subjects of his skill. A stray cow in the road, an ox or a
horse in a pasture, must serve his turn,--dull beasts, but moving marks
to aim at, at any rate.
Never, since he had galloped in the chase over the Pampas, had Dick
Venner felt such a sense of life and power as when he struck the long
spurs into his wild horse's flanks, and dashed along the road with the
lasso lying like a coiled snake at the saddle-bow. In skilful hands, the
silent, bloodless noose, flying like an arrow, but not like that leaving
a wound behind it,--sudden as a pistol-shot, but without the telltale
explosion,--is one of the most fearful and mysterious weapons that arm
the hand of man. The old Romans knew how formidable, even in contest
with a gladiator equipped with sword, helmet, and shield, was the almost
naked retiarius, with his net in one hand and his three-pronged javelin
in the other. Once get a net over a man's head, or a cord round his
neck, or, what is more frequently done nowadays, bonnet him by knocking
his hat down over his eyes, and he is at the mercy of his opponent. Our
soldiers who served against the Mexicans found this out too well. Many a
poor fellow has been lassoed by the fierce riders from the plains, and
fallen an easy victim to the captor who had snared him in the fatal
noose.
But, imposing as the sight of the wild huntsmen of the Pampas might have
been, Dick could not help laughing at the mock sublimity of his
situation, as he tried his first experiment on an unhappy milky mother
who had strayed from her herd and was wandering disconsolately along the
road, laying the dust, as slue went, with thready streams from her
swollen, swinging udders. "Here goes the Don at the windmill!" said
Dick, and tilted full speed at her, whirling the lasso round his head as
he rode. The creature swerved to one side of the way, as the wild horse
and his rider came rushing down upon her, and presently turned and ran,
as only cows and it would n't be safe to say it--can run. Just before he
passed,--at twenty or thirty feet from her,--the lasso shot from his
hand, uncoiling as it flew, and in an instant its loop was round her
horns. "Well cast!" said Dick, as he galloped up to her side and
dexterously disengaged the lasso. "Now for a horse on the run!"
He had the good luck to find one, presently, grazing in a pasture at the
road-side. Taking down the rails of the fence at one point, he drove the
horse into the road and gave chase. It was a lively young animal enough,
and was easily roused to a pretty fast pace. As his gallop grew more and
more rapid, Dick gave the reins to the mustang, until the two horses
stretched themselves out in their longest strides. If the first feat
looked like play, the one he was now to attempt had a good deal the
appearance of real work. He touched the mustang with the spur, and in a
few fierce leaps found himself nearly abreast of the frightened animal he
was chasing. Once more he whirled the lasso round and round over his
head, and then shot it forth, as the rattlesnake shoots his head from the
loops against which it rests. The noose was round the horse's neck, and
in another instant was tightened so as almost to stop his breath. The
prairie horse knew the trick of the cord, and leaned away from the
captive, so as to keep the thong tensely stretched between his neck and
the peak of the saddle to which it was fastened. Struggling was of no
use with a halter round his windpipe, and he very soon began to tremble
and stagger,--blind, no doubt, and with a roaring in his ears as of a
thousand battle-trumpets,--at any rate, subdued and helpless. That was
enough. Dick loosened his lasso, wound it up again, laid it like a pet
snake in a coil at his saddle-bow, turned his horse, and rode slowly
along towards the mansion-house.
The place had never looked more stately and beautiful to him than as he
now saw it in the moonlight. The undulations of the land,--the grand
mountain screen which sheltered the mansion from the northern blasts,
rising with all its hanging forests and parapets of naked rock high
towards the heavens,--the ancient mansion, with its square chimneys, and
bodyguard of old trees, and cincture of low walls with marble-pillared
gateways,--the fields, with their various coverings,--the beds of
flowers,--the plots of turf, one with a gray column in its centre bearing
a sundial on which the rays of the moon were idly shining, another with a
white stone and a narrow ridge of turf,--over all these objects,
harmonized with all their infinite details into one fair whole by the
moonlight, the prospective heir, as he deemed himself, looked with
admiring eyes.
But while he looked, the thought rose up in his mind like waters from a
poisoned fountain, that there was a deep plot laid to cheat him of the
inheritance which by a double claim he meant to call his own. Every day
this ice-cold beauty, this dangerous, handsome cousin of his, went up to
that place,--that usher's girl-trap. Everyday,--regularly now,--it used
to be different. Did she go only to get out of his, her cousin's, reach?
Was she not rather becoming more and more involved in the toils of this
plotting Yankee?
If Mr. Bernard had shown himself at that moment a few rods in advance,
the chances are that in less than one minute he would have found himself
with a noose round his neck, at the heels of a mounted horseman.
Providence spared him for the present. Mr. Richard rode his horse
quietly round to the stable, put him up, and proceeded towards the house.
He got to his bed without disturbing the family, but could not sleep.
The idea had fully taken possession of his mind that a deep intrigue was
going on which would end by bringing Elsie and the schoolmaster into
relations fatal to all his own hopes. With that ingenuity which always
accompanies jealousy, he tortured every circumstance of the last few
weeks so as to make it square with this belief. From this vein of
thought he naturally passed to a consideration of every possible method
by which the issue he feared might be avoided.
Mr. Richard talked very plain language with himself in all these inward
colloquies. Supposing it came to the worst, what could be done then?
First, an accident might happen to the schoolmaster which should put a
complete and final check upon his projects and contrivances. The
particular accident which might interrupt his career must, evidently, be
determined by circumstances; but it must be of a nature to explain itself
without the necessity of any particular person's becoming involved in the
matter. It would be unpleasant to go into particulars; but everybody
knows well enough that men sometimes get in the way of a stray bullet,
and that young persons occasionally do violence to themselves in various
modes,--by firearms, suspension, and other means,--in consequence of
disappointment in love, perhaps, oftener than from other motives. There
was still another kind of accident which might serve his purpose. If
anything should happen to Elsie, it would be the most natural thing in
the world that his uncle should adopt him, his nephew and only near
relation, as his heir. Unless, indeed, uncle Dudley should take it into
his head to marry again. In that case, where would he, Dick, be? This
was the most detestable complication which he could conceive of. And yet
he had noticed--he could not help noticing--that his uncle had been very
attentive to, and, as it seemed, very much pleased with, that young woman
from the school. What did that mean? Was it possible that he was going
to take a fancy to her?
It made him wild to think of all the several contingencies which might
defraud him of that good-fortune which seemed but just now within his
grasp. He glared in the darkness at imaginary faces: sometimes at that
of the handsome, treacherous schoolmaster; sometimes at that of the
meek-looking, but no doubt, scheming, lady-teacher; sometimes at that of
the dark girl whom he was ready to make his wife; sometimes at that of
his much respected uncle, who, of course, could not be allowed to peril
the fortunes of his relatives by forming a new connection. It was a
frightful perplexity in which he found himself, because there was no one
single life an accident to which would be sufficient to insure the
fitting and natural course of descent to the great Dudley property. If
it had been a simple question of helping forward a casualty to any one
person, there was nothing in Dick's habits of thought and living to make
that a serious difficulty. He had been so much with lawless people, that
a life between his wish and his object seemed only as an obstacle to be
removed, provided the object were worth the risk and trouble. But if
there were two or three lives in the way, manifestly that altered the
case.
His Southern blood was getting impatient. There was enough of the
New-Englander about him to make him calculate his chances before he
struck; but his plans were liable to be defeated at any moment by a
passionate impulse such as the dark-hued races of Southern Europe and
their descendants are liable to. He lay in his bed, sometimes arranging
plans to meet the various difficulties already mentioned, sometimes
getting into a paroxysm of blind rage in the perplexity of considering
what object he should select as the one most clearly in his way. On the
whole, there could be no doubt where the most threatening of all his
embarrassments lay. It was in the probable growing relation between
Elsie and the schoolmaster. If it should prove, as it seemed likely,
that there was springing up a serious attachment tending to a union
between them, he knew what he should do, if he was not quite so sure how
he should do it.
There was one thing at least which might favor his projects, and which,
at any rate, would serve to amuse him. He could, by a little quiet
observation, find out what were the schoolmaster's habits of life:
whether he had any routine which could be calculated upon; and under what
circumstances a strictly private interview of a few minutes with him
might be reckoned on, in case it should be desirable. He could also very
probably learn some facts about Elsie. whether the young man was in the
habit of attending her on her way home from school; whether she stayed
about the schoolroom after the other girls had gone; and any incidental
matters of interest which might present themselves.
He was getting more and more restless for want of some excitement. A mad
gallop, a visit to Mrs. Blanche Creamer, who had taken such a fancy to
him, or a chat with the Widow Rowens, who was very lively in her talk,
for all her sombre colors, and reminded him a good deal of same of his
earlier friends, the senoritas,--all these were distractions, to be sure,
but not enough to keep his fiery spirit from fretting itself in longings
for more dangerous excitements. The thought of getting a knowledge of
all Mr. Bernard's ways, so that he would be in his power at any moment,
was a happy one.
For some days after this he followed Elsie at a long distance behind, to
watch her until she got to the schoolhouse. One day he saw Mr. Bernard
join her: a mere accident, very probably, for it was only once this
happened. She came on her homeward way alone,--quite apart from the
groups of girls who strolled out of the schoolhouse yard in company.
Sometimes she was behind them all,--which was suggestive. Could she have
stayed to meet the schoolmaster?
If he could have smuggled himself into the school, he would have liked to
watch her there, and see if there was not some understanding between her
and the master which betrayed itself by look or word. But this was beyond
the limits of his audacity, and he had to content himself with such
cautious observations as could be made at a distance. With the aid of a
pocket-glass he could make out persons without the risk of being observed
himself.
Mr. Silos Peckham's corps of instructors was not expected to be off duty
or to stand at ease for any considerable length of time. Sometimes Mr.
Bernard, who had more freedom than the rest, would go out for a ramble in
the daytime, but more frequently it would be in the evening, after the
hour of "retiring," as bedtime was elegantly termed by the young ladies
of the Apollinean Institute. He would then not unfrequently walk out
alone in the common roads, or climb up the sides of The Mountain, which
seemed to be one of his favorite resorts. Here, of course, it was
impossible to follow him with the eye at a distance. Dick had a hideous,
gnawing suspicion that somewhere in these deep shades the schoolmaster
might meet Elsie, whose evening wanderings he knew so well. But of this
he was not able to assure himself. Secrecy was necessary to his present
plans, and he could not compromise himself by over-eager curiosity. One
thing he learned with certainty. The master returned, after his walk one
evening, and entered the building where his room was situated. Presently
a light betrayed the window of his apartment. From a wooded bank, some
thirty or forty rods from this building, Dick Venner could see the
interior of the chamber, and watch the master as he sat at his desk, the
light falling strongly upon his face, intent upon the book or manuscript
before him. Dick contemplated him very long in this attitude. The sense
of watching his every motion, himself meanwhile utterly unseen, was
delicious. How little the master was thinking what eyes were on him!
Well,--there were two things quite certain. One was, that, if he chose,
he could meet the schoolmaster alone, either in the road or in a more
solitary place, if he preferred to watch his chance for an evening or
two. The other was, that he commanded his position, as he sat at his
desk in the evening, in such a way that there would be very little
difficulty,--so far as that went; of course, however, silence is always
preferable to noise, and there is a great difference in the marks left by
different casualties. Very likely nothing would come of all this
espionage; but, at any rate, the first thing to be done with a man you
want to have in your power is to learn his habits.
Since the tea-party at the Widow Rowens's, Elsie had been more fitful and
moody than ever. Dick understood all this well enough, you know. It was
the working of her jealousy against that young schoolgirl to whom the
master had devoted himself for the sake of piquing the heiress of the
Dudley mansion. Was it possible, in any way, to exasperate her irritable
nature against him, and in this way to render her more accessible to his
own advances? It was difficult to influence her at all. She endured his
company without seeming to enjoy it. She watched him with that strange
look of hers, sometimes as if she were on her guard against him,
sometimes as if she would like to strike at him as in that fit of
childish passion. She ordered him about with a haughty indifference
which reminded him of his own way with the dark-eyed women whom he had
known so well of old. All this added a secret pleasure to the other
motives he had for worrying her with jealous suspicions. He knew she
brooded silently on any grief that poisoned her comfort,--that she fed on
it, as it were, until it ran with every drop of blood in her veins,--and
that, except in some paroxysm of rage, of which he himself was not likely
the second time to be the object, or in some deadly vengeance wrought
secretly, against which he would keep a sharp lookout, so far as he was
concerned, she had no outlet for her dangerous, smouldering passions.
Beware of the woman who cannot find free utterance for all her stormy
inner life either in words or song! So long as a woman can talk, there
is nothing she cannot bear. If she cannot have a companion to listen to
her woes, and has no musical utterance, vocal or instrumental,--then, if
she is of the real woman sort, and has a few heartfuls of wild blood in
her, and you have done her a wrong,--double-bolt the door which she may
enter on noiseless slipper at midnight,--look twice before you taste of
any cup whose draught the shadow of her hand may have darkened!
But let her talk, and, above all, cry, or, if she is one of the
coarser-grained tribe, give her the run of all the red-hot expletives in
the language, and let her blister her lips with them until she is tired,
she will sleep like a lamb after it, and you may take a cup of coffee
from her without stirring it up to look for its sediment.
So, if she can sing, or play on any musical instrument, all her
wickedness will run off through her throat or the tips of her fingers.
How many tragedies find their peaceful catastrophe in fierce roulades and
strenuous bravuras! How many murders are executed in double-quick time
upon the keys which stab the air with their dagger-strokes of sound!
What would our civilization be without the piano? Are not Erard and
Broadwood and Chickering the true humanizers of our time? Therefore do I
love to hear the all-pervading tum tum jarring the walls of little
parlors in houses with double door-plates on their portals, looking out
on streets and courts which to know is to be unknown, and where to exist
is not to live, according to any true definition of living. Therefore
complain I not of modern degeneracy, when, even from the open window of
the small unlovely farmhouse, tenanted by the hard-handed man of bovine
flavors and the flat-patterned woman of broken-down countenance, issue
the same familiar sounds. For who knows that Almira, but for these keys,
which throb away her wild impulses in harmless discords would not have
been floating, dead, in the brown stream which slides through the meadows
by her father's door,--or living, with that other current which runs
beneath the gas-lights over the slimy pavement, choking with wretched
weeds that were once in spotless flower?
Poor Elsie! She never sang nor played. She never shaped her inner life
in words: such utterance was as much denied to her nature as common
articulate speech to the deaf mute. Her only language must be in action.
Watch her well by day and by night, old Sophy! watch her well! or the
long line of her honored name may close in shame, and the stately mansion
of the Dudleys remain a hissing and a reproach till its roof is buried in
its cellar!
CHAPTER XXIV.
ON HIS TRACKS.
"Able!" said the old Doctor, one morning, "after you've harnessed
Caustic, come into the study a few minutes, will you?"
Abel nodded. He was a man of few words, and he knew that the "will you"
did not require an answer, being the true New-England way of rounding the
corners of an employer's order,--a tribute to the personal independence
of an American citizen.
The hired man came into the study in the course of a few minutes. His
face was perfectly still, and he waited to be spoken to; but the Doctor's
eye detected a certain meaning in his expression, which looked as if he
had something to communicate.
"Well?" said the Doctor.
"He's up to mischief o' some kind, I guess," said Abel. "I jest happened
daown by the mansion-haouse last night, 'n' he come aout o' the gate on
that queer-lookin' creator' o' his. I watched him, 'n' he rid, very
slow, all raoun' by the Institoot, 'n' acted as ef he was spyin' abaout.
He looks to me like a man that's calc'latin' to do some kind of ill-turn
to somebody. I should n't like to have him raoun' me, 'f there wa'n't a
pitchfork or an eel-spear or some sech weep'n within reach. He may be
all right; but I don't like his looks, 'n' I don't see what he's lurkin'
raoun' the Institoot for, after folks is abed."
"Have you watched him pretty close for the last few days?" said the
Doctor.
"W'll, yes,--I've had my eye on him consid'ble o' the time. I haf to be
pooty shy abaout it, or he'll find aout th't I'm on his tracks. I don'
want him to get a spite ag'inst me, 'f I c'n help it; he looks to me like
one o' them kind that kerries what they call slung-shot, 'n' hits ye on
the side o' th' head with 'em so suddin y' never know what hurts ye."
"Why," said the Doctor, sharply,--"have you ever seen him with any such
weapon about him?"
"W'll, no,--I caan't say that I hev," Abel answered. "On'y he looks kin'
o' dangerous. Maybe he's all jest 'z he ought to be,--I caan't say that
he a'n't,--but he's aout late nights, 'n' lurkin' raonn' jest 'z ef he
was spyin' somebody, 'n' somehaow I caan't help mistrustin' them
Portagee-lookin' fellahs. I caan't keep the run o' this chap all the
time; but I've a notion that old black woman daown 't the mansion-haouse
knows 'z much abaout him 'z anybody."
The Doctor paused a moment, after hearing this report from his private
detective, and then got into his chaise, and turned Caustic's head in the
direction of the Dudley mansion. He had been suspicious of Dick from the
first. He did not like his mixed blood, nor his looks, nor his ways. He
had formed a conjecture about his projects early. He had made a shrewd
guess as to the probable jealousy Dick would feel of the schoolmaster,
had found out something of his movements, and had cautioned Mr.
Bernard,--as we have seen. He felt an interest in the young man,--a
student of his own profession, an intelligent and ingenuously
unsuspecting young fellow, who had been thrown by accident into the
companionship or the neighborhood of two persons, one of whom he knew to
be dangerous, and the other he believed instinctively might be capable of
crime.
The Doctor rode down to the Dudley mansion solely for the sake of seeing
old Sophy. He was lucky enough to find her alone in her kitchen. He
began taking with her as a physician; he wanted to know how her
rheumatism had been. The shrewd old woman saw through all that with her
little beady black eyes. It was something quite different he had come
for, and old Sophy answered very briefly for her aches and ails.
"Old folks' bones a'n't like young folks'," she said. "It's the Lord's
doin's, 'n' 't a'n't much matter. I sha'n' be long roan' this kitchen.
It's the young Missis, Doctor,--it 's our Elsie,--it 's the baby, as we
use' t' call her,--don' you remember, Doctor? Seventeen year ago, 'n'
her poor mother cryin' for her,--'Where is she? where is she? Let me see
her! '--'n' how I run up-stairs,--I could run then,--'n' got the coral
necklace 'n' put it round her little neck, 'n' then showed her to her
mother,--'n' how her mother looked at her, 'n' looked, 'n' then put out
her poor thin fingers 'n' lifted the necklace,--'n' fell right back on
her piller, as white as though she was laid out to bury?"
The Doctor answered her by silence and a look of grave assent. He had
never chosen to let old Sophy dwell upon these matters, for obvious
reasons. The girl must not grow up haunted by perpetual fears and
prophecies, if it were possible to prevent it.
"Well, how has Elsie seemed of late?" he said, after this brief pause.
The old woman shook her head. Then she looked up at the Doctor so
steadily and searchingly that the diamond eyes of Elsie herself could
hardly have pierced more deeply.
The Doctor raised his head, by his habitual movement, and met the old
woman's look with his own calm and scrutinizing gaze, sharpened by the
glasses through which he now saw her.
Sophy spoke presently in an awed tone, as if telling a vision.
"We shall be havin' trouble before long. The' 's somethin' comin' from
the Lord. I've had dreams, Doctor. It's many a year I've been
a-dreamin', but now they're comin' over 'n' over the same thing. Three
times I've dreamed one thing, Doctor,--one thing!"
"And what was that?" the Doctor said, with that shade of curiosity in his
tone which a metaphysician would probably say is an index of a certain
tendency to belief in the superstition to which the question refers.
"I ca'n' jestly tell y' what it was, Doctor," the old woman answered, as
if bewildered and trying to clear up her recollections; "but it was
somethin' fearful, with a great noise 'n' a great cryin' o' people,--like
the Las' Day, Doctor! The Lord have mercy on my poor chil', 'n' take
care of her, if anything happens! But I's feared she'll never live to
see the Las' Day, 'f 't don' come pooty quick."
Poor Sophy, only the third generation from cannibalism, was, not
unnaturally, somewhat confused in her theological notions. Some of the
Second-Advent preachers had been about, and circulated their predictions
among the kitchen--population of Rockland. This was the way in which it
happened that she mingled her fears in such a strange manner with their
doctrines.
The Doctor answered solemnly, that of the day and hour we knew not, but
it became us to be always ready.--"Is there anything going on in the
household different from common?"
Old Sophy's wrinkled face looked as full of life and intelligence, when
she turned it full upon the Doctor, as if she had slipped off her
infirmities and years like an outer garment. All those fine instincts of
observation which came straight to her from her savage grandfather looked
out of her little eyes. She had a kind of faith that the Doctor was a
mighty conjurer, who, if he would, could bewitch any of them. She had
relieved her feelings by her long talk with the minister, but the Doctor
was the immediate adviser of the family, and had watched them through all
their troubles. Perhaps he could tell them what to do. She had but one
real object of affection in the world,--this child that she had tended
from infancy to womanhood. Troubles were gathering thick round her; how
soon they would break upon her, and blight or destroy her, no one could
tell; but there was nothing in all the catalogue of terrors which might
not come upon the household at any moment. Her own wits had sharpened
themselves in keeping watch by day and night, and her face had forgotten
its age in the excitement which gave life to its features.
"Doctor," old Sophy said, "there's strange things goin' on here by night
and by day. I don' like that man,--that Dick,--I never liked him. He
giv' me some o' these things I' got on; I take 'em 'cos I know it make
him mad, if I no take 'em; I wear 'em, so that he need n' feel as if I
did n' like him; but, Doctor, I hate him,--jes' as much as a member of
the church has the Lord's leave to hate anybody."
Her eyes sparkled with the old savage light, as if her ill-will to Mr.
Richard Veneer might perhaps go a little farther than the Christian limit
she had assigned. But remember that her grandfather was in the habit of
inviting his friends to dine with him upon the last enemy he had bagged,
and that her grandmother's teeth were filed down to points, so that they
were as sharp as a shark's.
"What is that you have seen about Mr. Richard Veneer that gives you such
a spite against him, Sophy?" asked the Doctor.
"What I' seen 'bout Dick Veneer?" she replied, fiercely. "I'll tell y'
what I' seen. Dick wan's to marry our Elsie,--that 's what he wan's; 'n'
he don' love her, Doctor,--he hates her, Doctor, as bad as I hate him!
He wan's to marry our Elsie, In' live here in the big house, 'n' have
nothin' to do but jes' lay still 'n' watch Massa Venner 'n' see how
long 't Ill take him to die, 'n' 'f he don' die fas' 'puff, help him some
way t' die fasser!--Come close up t' me, Doctor! I wan' t' tell you
somethin' I tol' th' minister t' other day. Th' minister, he come down
'n' prayed 'n' talked good,--he's a good man, that Doctor Honeywood, 'n'
I tol' him all 'bout our Elsie, but he did n' tell nobody what to do to
stop all what I' been dreamin' about happenin'. Come close up to me,
Doctor!"
The Doctor drew his chair close up to that of the old woman.
"Doctor, nobody mus'n' never marry our Elsie 's longs she lives! Nobody
mus' n' never live with Elsie but ol Sophy; 'n' ol Sophy won't never die
's long 's Elsie 's alive to be took care of. But I's feared, Doctor,
I's greatly feared Elsie wan' to marry somebody. The' 's a young
gen'l'm'n up at that school where she go,--so some of 'em tells me, 'n'
she loves t' see him 'n' talk wi' him, 'n' she talks about him when she
's asleep sometimes. She mus 'n' never marry nobody, Doctor! If she do,
he die, certain!"
"If she has a fancy for the young man up at the school there," the Doctor
said, "I shouldn't think there would be much danger from Dick."
"Doctor, nobody know nothin' 'bout Elsie but of Sophy. She no like any
other creator' th't ever drawed the bref o' life. If she ca'n' marry one
man 'cos she love him, she marry another man 'cos she hate him."
"Marry a man because she hates him, Sophy? No woman ever did such a
thing as that, or ever will do it."
"Who tol' you Elsie was a woman, Doctor?" said old Sophy, with a flash
of strange intelligence in her eyes.
The Doctor's face showed that he was startled. The old woman could not
know much about Elsie that he did not know; but what strange superstition
had got into her head, he was puzzled to guess. He had better follow
Sophy's lead and find out what she meant.
"I should call Elsie a woman, and a very handsome one," he said. "You
don't mean that she has any mark about her, except--you know--under the
necklace?"
The old woman resented the thought of any deformity about her darling.
"I did n' say she had nothin'--but jes' that--you know. My beauty have
anything ugly? She's the beautifullest-shaped lady that ever had a
shinin' silk gown drawed over her shoulders. On'y she a'n't like no
other woman in none of her ways. She don't cry 'n' laugh like other
women. An' she ha'n' got the same kind o' feelin's as other women.--Do
you know that young gen'l'm'n up at the school, Doctor?"
"Yes, Sophy, I've met him sometimes. He's a very nice sort of young man,
handsome, too, and I don't much wonder Elsie takes to him. Tell me,
Sophy, what do you think would happen, if he should chance to fall in
love with Elsie, and she with him, and he should marry her?"
"Put your ear close to my lips, Doctor, dear!" She whispered a little to
the Doctor, then added aloud, "He die,--that's all."
"But surely, Sophy, you a'n't afraid to have Dick marry her, if she would
have him for any reason, are you? He can take care of himself, if
anybody can."
"Doctor!" Sophy answered, "nobody can take care of hisself that live wi'
Elsie! Nobody never in all this worl' mus' live wi' Elsie but of Sophy,
I tell you. You don' think I care for Dick? What do I care, if Dick
Venner die? He wan's to marry our Elsie so 's to live in the big house
'n' get all the money 'n' all the silver things 'n' all the chists full
o' linen 'n' beautiful clothes. That's what Dick wan's. An' he hates
Elsie 'cos she don' like him. But if he marry Elsie, she 'll make him
die some wrong way or other, 'n' they'll take her 'n' hang her, or he'll
get mad with her 'n' choke her.--Oh, I know his chokin' tricks!--he don'
leave his keys roun' for nothin'"
"What's that you say, Sophy? Tell me what you mean by all that."
So poor Sophy had to explain certain facts not in all respects to her
credit. She had taken the opportunity of his absence to look about his
chamber, and, having found a key in one of his drawers, had applied it to
a trunk, and, finding that it opened the trunk, had made a kind of
inspection for contraband articles, and, seeing the end of a leather
thong, had followed it up until she saw that it finished with a noose,
which, from certain appearances, she inferred to have seen service of at
least doubtful nature. An unauthorized search; but old Sophy considered
that a game of life and death was going on in the household, and that she
was bound to look out for her darling.
The Doctor paused a moment to think over this odd piece of information.
Without sharing Sophy's belief as to the kind of use this
mischievous-looking piece of property had been put to, it was certainly
very odd that Dick should have such a thing at the bottom of his trunk.
The Doctor remembered reading or hearing something about the lasso and
the lariat and the bolas, and had an indistinct idea that they had been
sometimes used as weapons of warfare or private revenge; but they were
essentially a huntsman's implements, after all, and it was not very
strange that this young man had brought one of them with him. Not
strange, perhaps, but worth noting.
"Do you really think Dick means mischief to anybody, that he has such
dangerous-looking things?" the Doctor said, presently.
"I tell you, Doctor. Dick means to have Elsie. If he ca'n' get her, he
never let nobody else have her! Oh, Dick 's a dark man, Doctor! I know
him! I 'member him when he was little boy,--he always cunin'. I think he
mean mischief to somebody. He come home late nights,--come in
softly,--oh, I hear him! I lay awake, 'n' got sharp ears,--I hear the
cats walkin' over the roofs,--'n' I hear Dick Veneer, when he comes up in
his stockin'-feet as still as a cat. I think he mean' mischief to
somebody. I no like his looks these las' days.--Is that a very pooty
gen'l'm'n up at the schoolhouse, Doctor?"
"I told you he was good-looking. What if he is?"
"I should like to see him, Doctor,--I should like to see the pooty
gen'l'm'n that my poor Elsie loves. She mus 'n' never marry nobody,
--but, oh, Doctor, I should like to see him, 'n' jes' think a little how
it would ha' been, if the Lord had n' been so hard on Elsie."
She wept and wrung her hands. The kind Doctor was touched, and left her
a moment to her thoughts.
"And how does Mr. Dudley Veneer take all this?" he said, by way of
changing the subject a little.
"Oh, Massa Veneer, he good man, but he don' know nothin' 'bout Elsie, as
of Sophy do. I keep close by her; I help her when she go to bed, 'n' set
by her sometime when she--'sleep; I come to her in th' mornin' 'n' help
her put on her things."--Then, in a whisper;--"Doctor, Elsie lets of
Sophy take off that necklace for her. What you think she do, 'f anybody
else tech it?"
"I don't know, I'm sure, Sophy,--strike the person, perhaps."
"Oh, yes, strike 'em! but not with her han's, Doctor!"--The old woman's
significant pantomime must be guessed at.
"But you haven't told me, Sophy, what Mr. Dudley Veneer thinks of his
nephew, nor whether he has any notion that Dick wants to marry Elsie."
"I tell you. Massa Venner, he good man, but he no see nothin' 'bout what
goes on here in the house. He sort o' broken-hearted, you know,--sort o'
giv up,--don' know what to do wi' Elsie, 'xcep' say 'Yes, yes.' Dick
always look smilin' 'n' behave well before him. One time I thought Massa
Veneer b'lieve Dick was goin' to take to Elsie; but now he don' seem to
take much notice,--he kin' o' stupid-' like 'bout sech things. It's
trouble, Doctor; 'cos Massa Veneer bright man naterally,--'n' he's got a
great heap o' books. I don' think Massa Veneer never been jes' heself
sence Elsie 's born. He done all he know how,--but, Doctor, that wa'n' a
great deal. You men-folks don' know nothin' 'bout these young gals; 'n'
'f you knowed all the young gals that ever lived, y' would n' know
nothin' 'bout our Elsie."
"No,--but, Sophy, what I want to know is, whether you think Mr. Veneer
has any kind of suspicion about his nephew,--whether he has any notion
that he's a dangerous sort of fellow,--or whether he feels safe to have
him about, or has even taken a sort of fancy to him."
"Lar' bless you, Doctor, Massa Veneer no more idee 'f any mischief 'bout
Dick than he has 'bout you or me. Y' see, he very fond o' the
Cap'n,--that Dick's father,--'n' he live so long alone here, 'long wi'
us, that he kin' o' like to see mos' anybody 't 's got any o' th' of
family-blood in 'em. He ha'n't got no more suspicions 'n a baby,--y'
never see sech a man 'n y'r life. I kin' o' think he don' care for
nothin' in this world 'xcep' jes' t' do what Elsie wan's him to. The fus'
year after young Madam die he do nothin' but jes' set at the window 'n'
look out at her grave, 'n' then come up 'n' look at the baby's neck 'n'
say, 'It's fadin', Sophy, a'n't it? 'n' then go down in the study 'n'
walk 'n' walk, 'n' them kneel down 'n' pray. Doctor, there was two places
in the old carpet that was all threadbare, where his knees had worn 'em.
An' sometimes, you remember 'bout all that,--he'd go off up into The
Mountain, 'n' be gone all day, 'n' kill all the Ugly Things he could find
up there.--Oh, Doctor, I don' like to think o' them days!--An' by 'n'
by he grew kin' o' still, 'n' begun to read a little, 'n' 't las' he got
's quiet's a lamb, 'n' that's the way he is now. I think he's got
religion, Doctor; but he a'n't so bright about what's goin' on, 'n' I
don' believe he never suspec' nothin' till somethin' happens; for the' 's
somethin' goin' to happen, Doctor, if the Las' Day does n' come to stop
it; 'n' you mus' tell us what to do, 'n' save my poor Elsie, my baby that
the Lord has n' took care of like all his other childer."
The Doctor assured the old woman that he was thinking a great deal about
them all, and that there were other eyes on Dick besides her own. Let
her watch him closely about the house, and he would keep a look-out
elsewhere. If there was anything new, she must let him know at once.
Send up one of the menservants, and he would come down at a moment's
warning.
There was really nothing definite against this young man; but the Doctor
was sure that he was meditating some evil design or other. He rode
straight up to the Institute. There he saw Mr. Bernard, and had a brief
conversation with him, principally on matters relating to his personal
interests.
That evening, for some unknown reason, Mr. Bernard changed the place of
his desk and drew down the shades of his windows. Late that night Mr.
Richard Venner drew the charge of a rifle, and put the gun back among the
fowling-pieces, swearing that a leather halter was worth a dozen of it.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE PERILOUS HOUR.
Up to this time Dick Venner had not decided on the particular mode and
the precise period of relieving himself from the unwarrantable
interference which threatened to defeat his plans. The luxury of feeling
that he had his man in his power was its own reward. One who watches in
the dark, outside, while his enemy, in utter unconsciousness, is
illuminating his apartment and himself so that every movement of his head
and every button on his coat can be seen and counted, experiences a
peculiar kind of pleasure, if he holds a loaded rifle in his hand, which
he naturally hates to bring to its climax by testing his skill as a
marksman upon the object of his attention.
Besides, Dick had two sides in his nature, almost as distinct as we
sometimes observe in those persons who are the subjects of the condition
known as double consciousness. On his New England side he was cunning
and calculating, always cautious, measuring his distance before he risked
his stroke, as nicely as if he were throwing his lasso. But he was
liable to intercurrent fits of jealousy and rage, such as the light-hued
races are hardly capable of conceiving, blinding paroxysms of passion,
which for the time overmastered him, and which, if they found no ready
outlet, transformed themselves into the more dangerous forces that worked
through the instrumentality of his cool craftiness.
He had failed as yet in getting any positive evidence that there was any
relation between Elsie and the schoolmaster other than such as might
exist unsuspected and unblamed between a teacher and his pupil. A book,
or a note, even, did not prove the existence of any sentiment. At one
time he would be devoured by suspicions, at another he would try to laugh
himself out of them. And in the mean while he followed Elsie's tastes as
closely as he could, determined to make some impression upon her,--to
become a habit, a convenience, a necessity,--whatever might aid him in
the attainment of the one end which was now the aim of his life.
It was to humor one of her tastes already known to the reader, that he
said to her one morning,--"Come, Elsie, take your castanets, and let us
have a dance."
He had struck the right vein in the girl's fancy, for she was in the mood
for this exercise, and very willingly led the way into one of the more
empty apartments. What there was in this particular kind of dance which
excited her it might not be easy to guess; but those who looked in with
the old Doctor, on a former occasion, and saw her, will remember that she
was strangely carried away by it, and became almost fearful in the
vehemence of her passion. The sound of the castanets seemed to make her
alive all over. Dick knew well enough what the exhibition would be, and
was almost afraid of her at these moments; for it was like the dancing
mania of Eastern devotees, more than the ordinary light amusement of
joyous youth,--a convulsion of the body and the mind, rather than a
series of voluntary modulated motions.
Elsie rattled out the triple measure of a saraband. Her eyes began to
glitter more brilliantly, and her shape to undulate in freer curves.
Presently she noticed that Dick's look was fixed upon her necklace. His
face betrayed his curiosity; he was intent on solving the question, why
she always wore something about her neck. The chain of mosaics she had
on at that moment displaced itself at every step, and he was peering with
malignant, searching eagerness to see if an unsunned ring of fairer hue
than the rest of the surface, or any less easily explained peculiarity,
were hidden by her ornaments.
She stopped suddenly, caught the chain of mosaics and settled it hastily
in its place, flung down her castanets, drew herself back, and stood
looking at him, with her head a little on one side, and her eyes
narrowing in the way he had known so long and well.
"What is the matter, Cousin Elsie? What do you stop for?" he said.
Elsie did not answer, but kept her eyes on him, full of malicious light.
The jealousy which lay covered up under his surface-thoughts took this
opportunity to break out.
"You would n't act so, if you were dancing with Mr. Langdon,--would you,
Elsie?" he asked.
It was with some effort that he looked steadily at her to see the effect
of his question.
Elsie colored,--not much, but still perceptibly. Dick could not remember
that he had ever seen her show this mark of emotion before, in all his
experience of her fitful changes of mood. It had a singular depth of
significance, therefore, for him; he knew how hardly her color came.
Blushing means nothing, in some persons; in others, it betrays a profound
inward agitation,--a perturbation of the feelings far more trying than
the passions which with many easily moved persons break forth in tears.
All who have observed much are aware that some men, who have seen a good
deal of life in its less chastened aspects and are anything but modest,
will blush often and easily, while there are delicate and sensitive women
who can faint, or go into fits, if necessary, but are very rarely seen to
betray their feelings in their cheeks, even when their expression shows
that their inmost soul is blushing scarlet. Presently she answered,
abruptly and scornfully, "Mr. Langdon is a gentleman, and would not vex
me as you do."
"A gentleman!" Dick answered, with the most insulting accent,--"a
gentleman! Come, Elsie, you 've got the Dudley blood in your veins, and
it does n't do for you to call this poor, sneaking schoolmaster a
gentleman!"
He stopped short. Elsie's bosom was heaving, the faint flush on her
cheek was becoming a vivid glow. Whether it were shame or wrath, he saw
that he had reached some deep-lying centre of emotion. There was no
longer any doubt in his mind. With another girl these signs of confusion
might mean little or nothing; with her they were decisive and final.
Elsie Venner loved Bernard Langdon.
The sudden conviction, absolute, overwhelming, which rushed upon him, had
well-nigh led to an explosion of wrath, and perhaps some terrible scene
which might have fulfilled some of old Sophy's predictions. This,
however, would never do. Dick's face whitened with his thoughts, but he
kept still until he could speak calmly.
"I've nothing against the young fellow," he said; "only I don't think
there's anything quite good enough to keep the company of people that
have the Dudley blood in them. You a'n't as proud as I am. I can't
quite make up my mind to call a schoolmaster a gentleman, though this one
may be well enough. I 've nothing against him, at any rate."
Elsie made no answer, but glided out of the room and slid away to her own
apartment. She bolted the door and drew her curtains close. Then she
threw herself on the floor, and fell into a dull, slow ache of passion,
without tears, without words, almost without thoughts. So she remained,
perhaps, for a half-hour, at the end of which time it seemed that her
passion had become a sullen purpose. She arose, and, looking cautiously
round, went to the hearth, which was ornamented with curious old Dutch
tiles, with pictures of Scripture subjects. One of these represented the
lifting of the brazen serpent. She took a hair-pin from one of her
braids, and, insinuating its points under the edge of the tile, raised it
from its place. A small leaden box lay under the tile, which she opened,
and, taking from it a little white powder, which she folded in a scrap of
paper, replaced the box and the tile over it.
Whether Dick had by any means got a knowledge of this proceeding, or
whether he only suspected some unmentionable design on her part, there is
no sufficient means of determining. At any rate, when they met, an hour
or two after these occurrences, he could not help noticing how easily she
seemed to have got over her excitement. She was very pleasant with
him,--too pleasant, Dick thought. It was not Elsie's way to come out of
a fit of anger so easily as that. She had contrived some way of letting
off her spite; that was certain. Dick was pretty cunning, as old Sophy
had said, and, whether or not he had any means of knowing Elsie's private
intentions, watched her closely, and was on his guard against accidents.
For the first time, he took certain precautions with reference to his
diet, such as were quite alien to his common habits. On coming to the
dinner-table, that day, he complained of headache, took but little food,
and refused the cup of coffee which Elsie offered him, saying that it did
not agree with him when he had these attacks.
Here was a new complication. Obviously enough, he could not live in this
way, suspecting everything but plain bread and water, and hardly feeling
safe in meddling with them. Not only had this school-keeping wretch come
between him and the scheme by which he was to secure his future fortune,
but his image had so infected his cousin's mind that she was ready to try
on him some of those tricks which, as he had heard hinted in the village,
she had once before put in practice upon a person who had become odious
to her.
Something must be done, and at once, to meet the double necessities of
this case. Every day, while the young girl was in these relations with
the young man, was only making matters worse. They could exchange words
and looks, they could arrange private interviews, they would be stooping
together over the same book, her hair touching his cheek, her breath
mingling with his, all the magnetic attractions drawing them together
with strange, invisible effluences. As her passion for the schoolmaster
increased, her dislike to him, her cousin, would grow with it, and all
his dangers would be multiplied. It was a fearful point he had, reached.
He was tempted at one moment to give up all his plans and to disappear
suddenly from the place, leaving with the schoolmaster, who had come
between him and his object, an anonymous token of his personal sentiments
which would be remembered a good while in the history of the town of
Rockland. This was but a momentary thought; the great Dudley property
could not be given up in that way.
Something must happen at once to break up all this order of things. He
could think of but one Providential event adequate to the emergency,--an
event foreshadowed by various recent circumstances, but hitherto floating
in his mind only as a possibility. Its occurrence would at once change
the course of Elsie's feelings, providing her with something to think of
besides mischief, and remove the accursed obstacle which was thwarting
all his own projects. Every possible motive, then,--his interest, his
jealousy, his longing for revenge, and now his fears for his own
safety,--urged him to regard the happening of a certain casualty as a
matter of simple necessity. This was the self-destruction of Mr. Bernard
Langdon.
Such an event, though it might be surprising to many people, would not be
incredible, nor without many parallel cases. He was poor, a miserable
fag, under the control of that mean wretch up there at the school, who
looked as if he had sour buttermilk in his veins instead of blood. He
was in love with a girl above his station, rich, and of old family, but
strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he should become
suddenly jealous of her. Or she might have frightened him with some
display of her peculiarities which had filled him with a sudden
repugnance in the place of love. Any of these things were credible, and
would make a probable story enough,--so thought Dick over to himself
with the New-England half of his mind.
Unfortunately, men will not always take themselves out of the way when,
so far as their neighbors are concerned, it would be altogether the most
appropriate and graceful and acceptable service they could render. There
was at this particular moment no special reason for believing that the
schoolmaster meditated any violence to his own person. On the contrary,
there was good evidence that he was taking some care of himself. He was
looking well and in good spirits, and in the habit of amusing himself and
exercising, as if to keep up his standard of health, especially of taking
certain evening-walks, before referred to, at an hour when most of the
Rockland people had "retired," or, in vulgar language, "gone to bed."
Dick Veneer settled it, however, in his own mind, that Mr. Bernard
Langdon must lay violent hands upon himself. He even went so far as to
determine the precise hour, and the method in which the "rash act," as it
would undoubtedly be called in the next issue of "The Rockland Weekly
Universe," should be committed. Time,--this evening. Method, asphyxia,
by suspension. It was, unquestionably, taking a great liberty with a man
to decide that he should become felo de se without his own consent.
Such, however, was the decision of Mr. Richard Veneer with regard to Mr.
Bernard Langdon.
If everything went right, then, there would be a coroner's inquest
to-morrow upon what remained of that gentleman, found suspended to the
branch of a tree somewhere within a mile of the Apollinean Institute.
The "Weekly Universe" would have a startling paragraph announcing a "SAD
EVENT!!!" which had "thrown the town into an intense state of excitement.
Mr. Barnard Langden, a well-known teacher at the Appolinian Institute,
was found, etc., etc. The vital spark was extinct. The motive to the
rash act can only be conjectured, but is supposed to be disappointed
affection. The name of an accomplished young lady of the highest
respectability and great beauty is mentioned in connection with this
melancholy occurrence."
Dick Venner was at the tea-table that evening, as usual.--No, he would
take green tea, if she pleased,--the same that her father drank. It
would suit his headache better.--Nothing,--he was much obliged to her.
He would help himself,--which he did in a little different way from
common, naturally enough, on account of his headache. He noticed that
Elsie seemed a little nervous while she was rinsing some of the teacups
before their removal.
"There's something going on in that witch's head," he said to himself.
"I know her,--she 'd be savage now, if she had n't got some trick in
hand. Let 's see how she looks to-morrow!"
Dick announced that he should go to bed early that evening, on account of
this confounded headache which had been troubling him so much. In fact,
he went up early, and locked his door after him, with as much noise as he
could make. He then changed some part of his dress, so that it should be
dark throughout, slipped off his boots, drew the lasso out from the
bottom of the contents of his trunk, and, carrying that and his boots in
his hand, opened his door softly, locked it after him, and stole down the
back-stairs, so as to get out of the house unnoticed. He went straight
to the stable and saddled the mustang. He took a rope from the stable
with him, mounted his horse, and set forth in the direction of the
Institute.
Mr. Bernard, as we have seen, had not been very profoundly impressed by
the old Doctor's cautions,--enough, however, to follow out some of his
hints which were not troublesome to attend to. He laughed at the idea of
carrying a loaded pistol about with him; but still it seemed only fair,
as the old Doctor thought so much of the matter, to humor him about it.
As for not going about when and where he liked, for fear he might have
some lurking enemy, that was a thing not to be listened to nor thought
of. There was nothing to be ashamed of or troubled about in any of his
relations with the school-girls. Elsie, no doubt, showed a kind of
attraction towards him, as did perhaps some others; but he had been
perfectly discreet, and no father or brother or lover had any just cause
of quarrel with him. To be sure, that dark young man at the Dudley
mansion-house looked as if he were his enemy, when he had met him; but
certainly there was nothing in their relations to each other, or in his
own to Elsie, that would be like to stir such malice in his mind as would
lead him to play any of his wild Southern tricks at his, Mr. Bernard's,
expense. Yet he had a vague feeling that this young man was dangerous,
and he had been given to understand that one of the risks he ran was from
that quarter.
On this particular evening, he had a strange, unusual sense of some
impending peril. His recent interview with the Doctor, certain remarks
which had been dropped in his hearing, but above all an unaccountable
impression upon his spirits, all combined to fill his mind with a
foreboding conviction that he was very near some overshadowing danger.
It was as the chill of the ice-mountain toward which the ship is steering
under full sail. He felt a strong impulse to see Helen Darley and talk
with her. She was in the common parlor, and, fortunately, alone.
"Helen," he said,--for they were almost like brother and sister now,--"I
have been thinking what you would do, if I should have to leave the
school at short notice, or be taken away suddenly by any accident."
"Do?" she said, her cheek growing paler than its natural delicate
hue,--"why, I do not know how I could possibly consent to live here, if
you left us. Since you came, my life has been almost easy; before, it
was getting intolerable. You must not talk about going, my dear friend;
you have spoiled me for my place. Who is there here that I can have any
true society with, but you? You would not leave us for another school,
would you?"
"No, no, my dear Helen," Mr. Bernard said, "if it depends on myself, I
shall stay out my full time, and enjoy your company and friendship. But
everything is uncertain in this world. I have been thinking that I might
be wanted elsewhere, and called when I did not think of it;--it was a
fancy, perhaps,--but I can't keep it out of my mind this evening. If any
of my fancies should come true, Helen, there are two or three messages I
want to leave with you. I have marked a book or two with a cross in
pencil on the fly-leaf;--these are for you. There is a little hymn-book I
should like to have you give to Elsie from me;--it may be a kind of
comfort to the poor girl."
Helen's eyes glistened as she interrupted him,--
"What do you mean? You must not talk so, Mr. Langdon. Why, you never
looked better in your life. Tell me now, you are not in earnest, are
you, but only trying a little sentiment on me?"
Mr. Bernard smiled, but rather sadly.
"About half in earnest," he said. "I have had some fancies in my
head,--superstitions, I suppose,--at any rate, it does no harm to tell
you what I should like to have done, if anything should happen,--very
likely nothing ever will. Send the rest of the books home, if you
please, and write a letter to my mother. And, Helen, you will find one
small volume in my desk enveloped and directed, you will see to
whom;--give this with your own hands; it is a keepsake."
The tears gathered in her eyes; she could not speak at first. Presently,
"Why, Bernard, my dear friend, my brother, it cannot be that you are in
danger? Tell me what it is, and, if I can share it with you, or counsel
you in any way, it will only be paying back the great debt I owe you.
No, no,--it can't be true,--you are tired and worried, and your spirits
have got depressed. I know what that is;--I was sure, one winter, that
I should die before spring; but I lived to see the dandelions and
buttercups go to seed. Come, tell me it was nothing but your
imagination."
She felt a tear upon her cheek, but would not turn her face away from
him; it was the tear of a sister.
"I am really in earnest, Helen," he said. "I don't know that there is
the least reason in the world for these fancies. If they all go off and
nothing comes of them, you may laugh at me, if you like. But if there
should be any occasion, remember my requests. You don't believe in
presentiments, do you?"
"Oh, don't ask-me, I beg you," Helen answered. "I have had a good many
frights for every one real misfortune I have suffered. Sometimes I have
thought I was warned beforehand of coming trouble, just as many people
are of changes in the weather, by some unaccountable feeling,--but not
often, and I don't like to talk about such things. I wouldn't think
about these fancies of yours. I don't believe you have exercised
enough;--don't you think it's confinement in the school has made you
nervous?"
"Perhaps it has; but it happens that I have thought more of exercise
lately, and have taken regular evening walks, besides playing my old
gymnastic tricks every day."
They talked on many subjects, but through all he said Helen perceived a
pervading tone of sadness, and an expression as of a dreamy foreboding of
unknown evil. They parted at the usual hour, and went to their several
rooms. The sadness of Mr. Bernard had sunk into the heart of Helen, and
she mingled many tears with her prayers that evening, earnestly
entreating that he might be comforted in his days of trial and protected
in his hour of danger.
Mr. Bernard stayed in his room a short time before setting out for his
evening walk. His eye fell upon the Bible his mother had given him when
he left home, and he opened it in the New Testament at a venture. It
happened that the first words he read were these,--"Lest, coming
suddenly, he find you sleeping." In the state of mind in which he was at
the moment, the text startled him. It was like a supernatural warning.
He was not going to expose himself to any particular danger this evening;
a walk in a quiet village was as free from risk as Helen Darley or his
own mother could ask; yet he had an unaccountable feeling of
apprehension, without any definite object. At this moment he remembered
the old Doctor's counsel, which he had sometimes neglected, and, blushing
at the feeling which led him to do it, he took the pistol his suspicious
old friend had forced upon him, which he had put away loaded, and,
thrusting it into his pocket, set out upon his walk.
The moon was shining at intervals, for the night was partially clouded.
There seemed to be nobody stirring, though his attention was unusually
awake, and he could hear the whirr of the bats overhead, and the
pulsating croak of the frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently
he detected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking forward,
saw a horseman coming in his direction. The moon was under a cloud at
the moment, and he could only observe that the horse and his rider looked
like a single dark object, and that they were moving along at an easy
pace. Mr. Bernard was really ashamed of himself, when he found his hand
on the butt of his pistol. When the horseman was within a hundred and
fifty yards of him, the moon shone out suddenly and revealed each of them
to the other. The rider paused for a moment, as if carefully surveying
the pedestrian, then suddenly put his horse to the full gallop, and
dashed towards him, rising at the same instant in his stirrups and
swinging something round his head, what, Mr. Bernard could not make out.
It was a strange manoeuvre,--so strange and threatening in aspect that
the young man forgot his nervousness in an instant, cocked his pistol,
and waited to see what mischief all this meant. He did not wait long. As
the rider came rushing towards him, he made a rapid motion and something
leaped five-and-twenty feet through the air, in Mr. Bernard's direction.
In an instant he felt a ring, as of a rope or thong, settle upon his
shoulders. There was no time to think, he would be lost in another
second. He raised his pistol and fired,--not at the rider, but at the
horse. His aim was true; the mustang gave one bound and fell lifeless,
shot through the head. The lasso was fastened to his saddle, and his
last bound threw Mr. Bernard violently to the earth, where he lay
motionless, as if stunned.
In the mean time, Dick Venner, who had been dashed down with his horse,
was trying to extricate himself,--one of his legs being held fast under
the animal, the long spur on his boot having caught in the saddle-cloth.
He found, however, that he could do nothing with his right arm, his
shoulder having been in some way injured in his fall. But his Southern
blood was up, and, as he saw Mr. Bernard move as if he were coming to his
senses, he struggled violently to free himself.
"I 'll have the dog, yet," he said,--"only let me get at him with the
knife!"
He had just succeeded in extricating his imprisoned leg, and was ready to
spring to his feet, when he was caught firmly by the throat, and looking
up, saw a clumsy barbed weapon, commonly known as a hay fork, within an
inch of his breast.
"Hold on there! What 'n thunder 'r' y' abaout, y' darned Portagee?" said
a voice, with a decided nasal tone in it, but sharp and resolute.
Dick looked from the weapon to the person who held it, and saw a sturdy,
plain man standing over him, with his teeth clinched, and his aspect that
of one all ready for mischief.
"Lay still, naow!" said Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man; "'f y' don't,
I'll stick ye, 'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive! I been arfter ye f'r a week, 'n'
I got y' naow! I knowed I'd ketch ye at some darned trick or 'nother
'fore I'd done 'ith ye!"
Dick lay perfectly still, feeling that he was crippled and helpless,
thinking all the time with the Yankee half of his mind what to do about
it. He saw Mr. Bernard lift his head and look around him. He would get
his senses again in a few minutes, very probably, and then he, Mr.
Richard Venner, would be done for.
"Let me up! let me up!" he cried, in a low, hurried voice,--"I 'll give
you a hundred dollars in gold to let me go. The man a'n't hurt,--don't
you see him stirring? He'll come to himself in two minutes. Let me up!
I'll give you a hundred and fifty dollars in gold, now, here on the
spot,--and the watch out of my pocket; take it yourself, with your own
hands!"
"I'll see y' darned fust! Ketch me lett'n' go!" was Abel's emphatic
answer. "Yeou lay still, 'n' wait t'll that man comes tew."
He kept the hay-fork ready for action at the slightest sign of
resistance.
Mr. Bernard, in the mean time, had been getting, first his senses, and
then some few of his scattered wits, a little together.
"What is it?"--he said. "Who'shurt? What's happened?"
"Come along here 'z quick 'z y' ken," Abel answered, "'n' haalp me fix
this fellah. Y' been hurt, y'rself, 'n' the' 's murder come pooty nigh
happenin'."
Mr. Bernard heard the answer, but presently stared about and asked again,
"Who's hurt? What's happened?"
"Y' 'r' hurt, y'rself, I tell ye," said Abel; "'n' the' 's been a murder,
pooty nigh."
Mr. Bernard felt something about his neck, and, putting his hands up,
found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, but did not think to slip
over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It was a
wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as to
slacken it.
By this time he was getting some notion of what he was about, and
presently began looking round for his pistol, which had fallen. He found
it lying near him, cocked it mechanically, and walked, somewhat
unsteadily, towards the two men, who were keeping their position as still
as if they were performing in a tableau.
"Quick, naow!" said Abel, who had heard the click of cocking the pistol,
and saw that he held it in his hand, as he came towards him. "Gi' me that
pistil, and yeou fetch that 'ere rope layin' there. I 'll have this here
fella,h fixed 'n less 'n two minutes."
Mr. Bernard did as Abel said,--stupidly and mechanically, for he was but
half right as yet. Abel pointed the pistol at Dick's head.
"Naow hold up y'r hands, yeou fellah," he said, "'n' keep 'em up, while
this man puts the rope mound y'r wrists."
Dick felt himself helpless, and, rather than have his disabled arm
roughly dealt with, held up his hands. Mr. Bernard did as Abel said; he
was in a purely passive state, and obeyed orders like a child. Abel then
secured the rope in a most thorough and satisfactory complication of
twists and knots.
"Naow get up, will ye?" he said; and the unfortunate Dick rose to his
feet.
"Who's hurt? What's happened?" asked poor Mr. Bernard again, his memory
having been completely jarred out of him for the time.
"Come, look here naow, yeou, don' Stan' askin' questions over 'n'
over;--'t beats all! ha'n't I tol' y' a dozen times?"
As Abel spoke, he turned and looked at Mr. Bernard.
"Hullo! What 'n thunder's that 'ere raoun' y'r neck? Ketched ye 'ith a
slippernoose, hey? Wal, if that a'n't the craowner! Hol' on a minute,
Cap'n, 'n' I'll show ye what that 'ere halter's good for."
Abel slipped the noose over Mr. Bernard's head, and put it round the neck
of the miserable Dick Veneer, who made no sign of resistance,--whether
on account of the pain he was in, or from mere helplessness, or because
he was waiting for some unguarded moment to escape,--since resistance
seemed of no use.
"I 'm go'n' to kerry y' home," said Abel; "'T' th' ol Doctor, he's got a
gre't cur'osity t' see ye. Jes' step along naow,--off that way, will
ye?--'n' I Ill hol' on t' th' bridle, f' fear y' sh'd run away."
He took hold of the leather thong, but found that it was fastened at the
other end to the saddle. This was too much for Abel.
"Wal, naow, yeou be a pooty chap to hev raound! A fellah's neck in a
slippernoose at one eend of a halter, 'n' a hors on th' full spring at t'
other eend!"
He looked at him from' head to foot as a naturalist inspects a new
specimen. His clothes had suffered in his fall, especially on the leg
which had been caught under the horse.
"Hullo! look o' there, naow! What's that 'ere stickin' aout o' y'r
boot?"
It was nothing but the handle of an ugly knife, which Abel instantly
relieved him of.
The party now took up the line of march for old Doctor Kittredge's house,
Abel carrying the pistol and knife, and Mr. Bernard walking in silence,
still half-stunned, holding the hay-fork, which Abel had thrust into his
hand. It was all a dream to him as yet. He remembered the horseman
riding at him, and his firing the pistol; but whether he was alive, and
these walls around him belonged to the village of Rockland, or whether he
had passed the dark river, and was in a suburb of the New Jerusalem, he
could not as yet have told.
They were in the street where the Doctor's house was situated.
"I guess I'll fire off one o' these here berrils," said Abel.
He fired.
Presently there was a noise of opening windows, and the nocturnal
head-dresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments
of the Nightblooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna
handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point
was that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always waked easily,
from long habit, and was the first among those who looked out to see what
had happened.
"Why, Abel!" he called out, "what have you got there? and what 's all
this noise about?"
"We've ketched the Portagee!" Abel answered, as laconically as the hero
of Lake Erie, in his famous dispatch. "Go in there, you fellah!"
The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, who had
bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would have been miraculous
in anybody but a physician, was down in presentable form as soon as if it
had been a child in a fit that he was sent for.
"Richard Veneer!" the Doctor exclaimed. "What is the meaning of all
this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened to you?"
Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head.
"My mind is confused," he said. "I've had a fall.--Oh, yes!--wait a
minute and it will all come back to me."
"Sit down, sit down," the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it.
Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or
two,--will come right by to-morrow."
"Been stunded," Abel said. "He can't tell nothin'."
Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the recent combat of
cavalry and infantry and its results,--none slain, one captured.
The Doctor looked at the prisoner through his spectacles.
"What 's the matter with your shoulder, Venner?"
Dick answered sullenly, that he didn't know, fell on it when his horse
came down. The Doctor examined it as carefully as he could through his
clothes.
"Out of joint. Untie his hands, Abel"
By this time a small alarm had spread among the neighbors, and there was
a circle around Dick, who glared about on the assembled honest people
like a hawk with a broken wing.
When the Doctor said, "Untie his hands," the circle widened perceptibly.
"Isn't it a leetle rash to give him the use of his hands? I see there's
females and children standin' near."
This was the remark of our old friend, Deacon Soper, who retired from the
front row, as he spoke, behind a respectable-looking, but somewhat
hastily dressed person of the defenceless sex, the female help of a
neighboring household, accompanied by a boy, whose unsmoothed shock of
hair looked like a last year's crow's-nest.
But Abel untied his hands, in spite of the Deacon's considerate
remonstrance.
"Now," said the Doctor, "the first thing is to put the joint back."
"Stop," said Deacon Soper,--"stop a minute. Don't you think it will be
safer--for the women-folks--jest to wait till mornin', afore you put that
j'int into the socket?"
Colonel Sprowle, who had been called by a special messenger, spoke up at
this moment.
"Let the women-folks and the deacons go home, if they're scared, and put
the fellah's j'int in as quick as you like. I 'll resk him, j'int in or
out."
"I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Venner's with a
message," the Doctor said. "I will have the young man's shoulder in
quick enough."
"Don't send that message!" said Dick, in a hoarse voice;--"do what you
like with my arm, but don't send that message! Let me go,--I can walk,
and I'll be off from this place. There's nobody hurt but myself. Damn
the shoulder!--let me go! You shall never hear of me again!"
Mr. Bernard came forward.
"My friends," he said, "I am not injured,--seriously, at least. Nobody
need complain against this man, if I don't. The Doctor will treat him
like a human being, at any rate; and then, if he will go, let him. There
are too many witnesses against him here for him to want to stay."
The Doctor, in the mean time, without saying a word to all this, had got
a towel round the shoulder and chest and another round the arm, and had
the bone replaced in a very few minutes.
"Abel, put Cassia into the new chaise," he said, quietly. "My friends
and neighbors, leave this young man to me."
"Colonel Sprowle, you're a justice of the peace," said Deacon Soper, "and
you know what the law says in cases like this. It a'n't so clear that it
won't have to come afore the Grand Jury, whether we will or no."
"I guess we'll set that j'int to-morrow mornin'," said Colonel
Sprowle,--which made a laugh at the Deacon's expense, and virtually
settled the question.
"Now trust this young man in my care," said the old Doctor, "and go home
and finish your naps. I knew him when he was a boy and I'll answer for
it, he won't trouble you any more. The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I
can tell you, whatever else they are."
The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor that they left
the prisoner with him.
Presently, Cassia, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the front-door, with
the wheels of the new, light chaise flashing behind her in the moonlight.
The Doctor drove Dick forty miles at a stretch that night, out of the
limits of the State.
"Do you want money?" he said, before he left him.
Dick told him the secret of his golden belt.
"Where shall I send your trunk after you from your uncle's?"
Dick gave him a direction to a seaport town to which he himself was
going, to take passage for a port in South America.
"Good-bye, Richard," said the Doctor. "Try to learn something from
to-night's lesson."
The Southern impulses in Dick's wild blood overcame him, and he kissed
the old Doctor on both cheeks, crying as only the children of the sun can
cry, after the first hours in the dewy morning of life. So Dick Venner
disappears from this story. An hour after dawn, Cassia pointed her fine
ears homeward, and struck into her square, honest trot, as if she had not
been doing anything more than her duty during her four hours' stretch of
the last night.
Abel was not in the habit of questioning the Doctor's decisions.
"It's all right," he said to Mr. Bernard. "The fellah 's Squire Venner's
relation, anyhaow. Don't you want to wait here, jest a little while,
till I come back? The's a consid'able nice saddle 'n' bridle on a dead
boss that's layin' daown there in the road 'n' I guess the' a'n't no use
in lettin' on 'em spite,--so I'll jest step aout 'n' fetch 'em along. I
kind o' calc'late 't won't pay to take the cretur's shoes 'n' hide off
to-night,--'n' the' won't be much iron on that hose's huffs an haour
after daylight, I'll bate ye a quarter."
"I'll walk along with you," said Mr. Bernard; "I feel as if I could get
along well enough now."
So they set off together. There was a little crowd round the dead
mustang already, principally consisting of neighbors who had adjourned
from the Doctor's house to see the scene of the late adventure. In
addition to these, however, the assembly was honored by the presence of
Mr. Principal Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by a
message that Master Langdon was shot through the head by a
highway-robber, but had learned a true version of the story by this time.
His voice was at that moment heard above the rest,--sharp, but thin, like
bad cider-vinegar.
"I take charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon 's actin' under
my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that's on him. Hiram! jest slip
off that saddle and bridle, and carry 'em up to the Institoot, and bring
down a pair of pinchers and a file,--and--stop--fetch a pair of shears,
too; there's hosshair enough in that mane and tail to stuff a bolster
with."
"You let that hoss alone!" spoke up Colonel Sprowle. "When a fellah goes
out huntin' and shoots a squirrel, do you think he's go'n' to let another
fellah pick him up and kerry him off? Not if he's got a double-berril
gun, and t'other berril ha'n't been fired off yet! I should like to see
the mahn that'll take off that seddle 'n' bridle, excep' the one th't hez
a fair right to the whole concern!"
Hiram was from one of the lean streaks in New Hampshire, and, not being
overfed in Mr. Silas Peckham's kitchen, was somewhat wanting in stamina,
as well as in stomach, for so doubtful an enterprise, as undertaking to
carry out his employer's orders in the face of the Colonel's defiance.
Just then Mr. Bernard and Abel came up together. "Here they be," said
the Colonel. "Stan' beck, gentlemen!"
Mr. Bernard, who was pale and still a little confused, but gradually
becoming more like himself, stood and looked in silence for a moment.
All his thoughts seemed to be clearing themselves in this interval. He
took in the whole series of incidents: his own frightful risk; the
strange, instinctive, nay, Providential impulse, which had led him so
suddenly to do the one only thing which could possibly have saved him;
the sudden appearance of the Doctor's man, but for which he might yet
have been lost; and the discomfiture and capture of his dangerous enemy.
It was all past now, and a feeling of pity rose in Mr. Bernard's heart.
"He loved that horse, no doubt," he said,--"and no wonder. A beautiful,
wild--looking creature! Take off those things that are on him, Abel, and
have them carried to Mr. Dudley Veneer's. If he does not want them, you
may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I
hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate
him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel,
bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place.
You'll see to it,--won't you, Abel?"
Abel nodded assent, and Mr. Bernard returned to the Institute, threw
himself in his clothes on the bed, and slept like one who is heavy with
wine.
Following Mr. Bernard's wishes, Abel at once took off the high-peaked
saddle and the richly ornamented bridle from the mustang. Then, with the
aid of two or three others, he removed him to the place indicated.
Spades and shovels were soon procured, and before the moon had set, the
wild horse of the Pampas was at rest under the turf at the wayside, in
the far village among the hills of New England.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE NEWS REACHES THE DUDLEY MANSION.
Early the next morning Abel Stebbins made his appearance at Dudley
Veneer's, and requested to see the maan o' the haouse abaout somethin' o'
consequence. Mr. Veneer sent word that the messenger should wait below,
and presently appeared in the study, where Abel was making himself at
home, as is the wont of the republican citizen, when he hides the purple
of empire beneath the apron of domestic service.
"Good mornin', Squire!" said Abel, as Mr. Venner entered. "My name's
Stebbins, 'n' I'm stoppin' f'r a spell 'ith of Doctor Kittredge."
"Well, Stebbins," said Mr. Dudley Veneer, "have you brought any special
message from the Doctor?"
"Y' ha'n't heerd nothin' abaout it, Squire, d' ye mean t' say?" said
Abel,--beginning to suspect that he was the first to bring the news of
last evening's events.
"About what?" asked Mr. Veneer, with some interest.
"Dew tell, naow! Waal, that beats all! Why, that 'ere Portagee relation
o' yourn 'z been tryin' t' ketch a fellah 'n a slippernoose, 'n' got
ketched himself,--that's all. Y' ha'n't heerd noth'n' abaout it?"
"Sit down," said Mr. Dudley Veneer, calmly, "and tell me all you have to
say."
So Abel sat down and gave him an account of the events of the last
evening. It was a strange and terrible surprise to Dudley Veneer to find
that his nephew, who had been an inmate of his house and the companion of
his daughter, was to all intents and purposes guilty of the gravest of
crimes. But the first shock was no sooner over than he began to think
what effect the news would have on Elsie. He imagined that there was a
kind of friendly feeling between them, and he feared some crisis would be
provoked in his daughter's mental condition by the discovery. He would
wait, however, until she came from her chamber, before disturbing her
with the evil tidings.
Abel did not forget his message with reference to the equipments of the
dead mustang.
"The' was some things on the hoss, Squire, that the man he ketched said
he did n' care no gre't abaout; but perhaps you'd like to have 'em
fetched to the mansion-haouse. Ef y' did n' care abaout 'em, though, I
should n' min' keepin' on 'em; they might come handy some time or
'nother; they say, holt on t' anything for ten year 'n' there 'll be some
kin' o' use for 't."
"Keep everything," said Dudley Veneer. "I don't want to see anything
belonging to that young man."
So Abel nodded to Mr. Veneer, and left the study to find some of the men
about the stable to tell and talk over with them the events of the last
evening. He presently came upon Elbridge, chief of the equine
department, and driver of the family-coach.
"Good mornin', Abe," said Elbridge. "What's fetched y' daown here so
all-fired airly?"
"You're a darned pooty lot daown here, you be!"
Abel answered. "Better keep your Portagees t' home nex' time, ketchin'
folks 'ith slippernooses raoun' their necks, 'n' kerryin' knives 'n their
boots!"
"What 'r' you jawin' abaout?" Elbridge said, looking up to see if he was
in earnest, and what he meant.
"Jawin' abaout? You'll find aout'z soon 'z y' go into that 'ere stable
o' yourn! Y' won't curry that 'ere long-tailed black hoss no more; 'n'
y' won't set y'r eyes on the fellah that rid him, ag'in, in a hurry!"
Elbridge walked straight to the stable, without saying a word, found the
door unlocked, and went in.
"Th' critter's gone, sure enough!" he said. "Glad on 't! The darndest,
kickin'est, bitin'est beast th't ever I see, 'r ever wan' t' see ag'in!
Good reddance! Don' wan' no snappin'-turkles in my stable! Whar's the
man gone th't brought the critter?"
"Whar he's gone? Guess y' better go 'n ask my ol man; he kerried him off
lass' night; 'n' when he comes back, mebbe he 'll tell ye whar he's gone
tew!"
By this time Elbridge had found out that Abel was in earnest, and had
something to tell. He looked at the litter in the mustang's stall, then
at the crib.
"Ha'n't eat b't haalf his feed. Ha'n't been daown on his straw. Must ha'
been took aout somewhere abaout ten 'r 'levee o'clock. I know that 'ere
critter's ways. The fellah's had him aout nights afore; b't I never
thought nothin' o' no mischief. He 's a kin' o' haalf Injin. What is 't
the chap's been a-doin' on? Tell 's all abaout it."
Abel sat down on a meal-chest, picked up a straw and put it into his
mouth. Elbridge sat down at the other end, pulled out his jack-knife,
opened the penknife-blade, and began sticking it into the lid of the
meal-chest. The Doctor's man had a story to tell, and he meant to get
all the enjoyment out of it. So he told it with every luxury of
circumstance. Mr. Veneer's man heard it all with open mouth. No
listener in the gardens of Stamboul could have found more rapture in a
tale heard amidst the perfume of roses and the voices of birds and
tinkling of fountains than Elbridge in following Abel's narrative, as
they sat there in the aromatic ammoniacal atmosphere of the stable, the
grinding of the horses' jaws keeping evenly on through it all, with now
and then the interruption of a stamping hoof, and at intervals a ringing
crow from the barn-yard.
Elbridge stopped a minute to think, after Abel had finished.
"Who's took care o' them things that was on the hoss?" he said, gravely.
"Waal, Langden, he seemed to kin 'o' think I'd ought to have 'em,--'n'
the Squire; he did n' seem to have no 'bjection; 'n' so,--waal, I
calc'late I sh'll jes' holt on to 'em myself; they a'n't good f 'r much,
but they're cur'ous t' keep t' look at."
Mr. Veneer's man did not appear much gratified by this arrangement,
especially as he had a shrewd suspicion that some of the ornaments of the
bridle were of precious metal, having made occasional examinations of
them with the edge of a file. But he did not see exactly what to do
about it, except to get them from Abel in the way of bargain.
"Waal, no,--they a'n't good for much 'xcep' to look at. 'F y' ever rid
on that seddle once, y' would n' try it ag'in, very spry,--not 'f y' c'd
haalp y'rsaalf.
"I tried it,--darned 'f I sot daown f'r th' nex' week,--eat all my
victuals stan'in'. I sh'd like t' hev them things wal enough to heng up
'n the stable; 'f y' want t' trade some day, fetch 'em along daown."
Abel rather expected that Elbridge would have laid claim to the saddle
and bridle on the strength of some promise or other presumptive title,
and thought himself lucky to get off with only offering to think abaout
tradin'.
When Elbridge returned to the house, he found the family in a state of
great excitement. Mr. Venner had told Old Sophy, and she had informed
the other servants. Everybody knew what had happened, excepting Elsie.
Her father had charged them all to say nothing about it to her; he would
tell her, when she came down.
He heard her step at last,--alight, gliding step,--so light that her
coming was often unheard, except by those who perceived the faint rustle
that went with it. She was paler than common this morning, as she came
into her father's study.
After a few words of salutation, he said quietly, "Elsie, my dear, your
cousin Richard has left us."
She grew still paler, as she asked,
"Is he dead?"
Dudley Venner started to see the expression with which Elsie put this
question.
"He is living,--but dead to us from this day forward," said her father.
He proceeded to tell her, in a general way, the story he had just heard
from Abel. There could be no doubting it;--he remembered him as the
Doctor's man; and as Abel had seen all with his own eyes, as Dick's
chamber, when unlocked with a spare key, was found empty, and his bed had
not been slept in, he accepted the whole account as true.
When he told of Dick's attempt on the young schoolmaster, ("You know Mr.
Langdon very well, Elsie,--a perfectly inoffensive young man, as I
understand,") Elsie turned her face away and slid along by the wall to
the window which looked out oh the little grass-plot with the white stone
standing in it. Her father could not see her face, but he knew by her
movements that her dangerous mood was on her. When she heard the sequel
of the story, the discomfiture and capture of Dick, she turned round for
an instant, with a look of contempt and of something like triumph upon
her face. Her father saw that her cousin had become odious to her: He
knew well, by every change of her countenance, by her movements, by every
varying curve of her graceful figure, the transitions front passion to
repose, from fierce excitement to the dull languor which often succeeded
her threatening paroxysms.
She remained looking out at the window. A group of white fan-tailed
pigeons had lighted on the green plot before it and clustered about one
of their companions who lay on his back, fluttering in a strange way,
with outspread wings and twitching feet. Elsie uttered a faint cry;
these were her special favorites and often fed from her hand. She threw
open the long window, sprang out, caught up the white fantail, and held
it to her bosom. The bird stretched himself out, and then lay still,
with open eyes, lifeless. She looked at him a moment, and, sliding in
through the open window and through the study, sought her own apartment,
where she locked herself in, and began to sob and moan like those that
weep. But the gracious solace of tears seemed to be denied her, and her
grief, like her anger, was a dull ache, longing, like that, to finish
itself with a fierce paroxysm, but wanting its natural outlet.
This seemingly trifling incident of the death of her favorite appeared to
change all the current of her thought. Whether it were the sight of the
dying bird, or the thought that her own agency might have beep concerned
in it, or some deeper grief, which took this occasion to declare
itself,--some dark remorse or hopeless longing,--whatever it might be,
there was an unwonted tumult in her soul. To whom should she go in her
vague misery? Only to Him who knows all His creatures' sorrows, and
listens to the faintest human cry. She knelt, as she had been taught to
kneel from her childhood, and tried to pray. But her thoughts refused to
flow in the language of supplication. She could not plead for herself as
other women plead in their hours of anguish. She rose like one who
should stoop to drink, and find dust in the place of water. Partly from
restlessness, partly from an attraction she hardly avowed to herself, she
followed her usual habit and strolled listlessly along to the school.
Of course everybody at the Institute was full of the terrible adventure
of the preceding evening. Mr. Bernard felt poorly enough; but he had
made it a point to show himself the next morning, as if nothing had
happened. Helen Darley knew nothing of it all until she hard risen, when
the gossipy matron of the establishment made her acquainted with all its
details, embellished with such additional ornamental appendages as it had
caught up in transmission from lip to lip. She did not love to betray
her sensibilities, but she was pale and tremulous and very nearly tearful
when Mr. Bernard entered the sitting-room, showing on his features traces
of the violent shock he had received and the heavy slumber from which he
had risen with throbbing brows. What the poor girl's impulse was, on
seeing him, we need not inquire too curiously. If he had been her own
brother, she would have kissed him and cried on his neck; but something
held her back. There is no galvanism in kiss-your-brother; it is copper
against copper: but alien bloods develop strange currents, when they flow
close to each other, with only the films that cover lip and cheek between
them. Mr. Bernard, as some of us may remember, violated the proprieties
and laid himself open to reproach by his enterprise with a bouncing
village-girl, to whose rosy cheek an honest smack was not probably an
absolute novelty. He made it all up by his discretion and good behavior
now. He saw by Helen's moist eye and trembling lip that her woman's
heart was off its guard, and he knew, by the infallible instinct of sex,
that he should be forgiven, if he thanked her for her sisterly sympathies
in the most natural way,--expressive, and at the same time economical of
breath and utterance. He would not give a false look to their friendship
by any such demonstration. Helen was a little older than himself, but
the aureole of young womanhood had not yet begun to fade from around her.
She was surrounded by that enchanted atmosphere into which the girl walks
with dreamy eyes, and out of which the woman passes with a story written
on her forehead. Some people think very little of these refinements;
they have not studied magnetism and the law of the square of the
distance.
So Mr. Bernard thanked Helen for her interest without the aid of the
twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet,--the love labial,--the limping
consonant which it takes two to speak plain. Indeed, he scarcely let her
say a word, at first; for he saw that it was hard for her to conceal her
emotion. No wonder; he had come within a hair's-breadth of losing his
life, and he had been a very kind friend and a very dear companion to
her.
There were some curious spiritual experiences connected with his last
evening's adventure which were working very strongly in his mind. It was
borne in upon him irresistibly that he had been dead since he had seen
Helen,--as dead as the son of the Widow of Nain before the bier was
touched and he sat up and began to speak. There was an interval between
two conscious moments which appeared to him like a temporary
annihilation, and the thoughts it suggested were worrying him with
strange perplexities.
He remembered seeing the dark figure on horseback rise in the saddle and
something leap from its hand. He remembered the thrill he felt as the
coil settled on his shoulders, and the sudden impulse which led him to
fire as he did. With the report of the pistol all became blank, until he
found himself in a strange, bewildered state, groping about for the
weapon, which he had a vague consciousness of having dropped. But,
according to Abel's account, there must have been an interval of some
minutes between these recollections, and he could not help asking, Where
was the mind, the soul, the thinking principle, all this time?
A man is stunned by a blow with a stick on the head. He becomes
unconscious. Another man gets a harder blow on the head from a bigger
stick, and it kills him. Does he become unconscious, too? If so, when
does he come to his consciousness? The man who has had a slight or
moderate blow comes to himself when the immediate shock passes off and
the organs begin to work again, or when a bit of the skull is pried up,
if that happens to be broken. Suppose the blow is hard enough to spoil
the brain and stop the play of the organs, what happens them?
A British captain was struck by a cannon-ball on the head, just as he was
giving an order, at the Battle of the Nile. Fifteen months afterwards he
was trephined at Greenwich Hospital, having been insensible all that
time. Immediately after the operation his consciousness returned, and he
at once began carrying out the order he was giving when the shot struck
him. Suppose he had never been trephined, when would his consciousness
have returned? When his breath ceased and his heart stopped beating?
When Mr. Bernard said to Helen, "I have been dead since I saw you," it
startled her not a little; for his expression was that of perfect good
faith, and she feared that his mind was disordered. When he explained,
not as has been done just now, at length, but in a hurried, imperfect
way, the meaning of his strange assertion, and the fearful Sadduceeisms
which it had suggested to his mind, she looked troubled at first, and
then thoughtful. She did not feel able to answer all the difficulties he
raised, but she met them with that faith which is the strength as well as
the weakness of women,--which makes them weak in the hands of man, but
strong in the presence of the Unseen.
"It is a strange experience," she said; "but I once had something like
it. I fainted, and lost some five or ten minutes out of my life, as much
as if I had been dead. But when I came to myself, I was the same person
every way, in my recollections and character. So I suppose that loss of
consciousness is not death. And if I was born out of unconsciousness
into infancy with many family-traits of mind and body, I can believe,
from my own reason, even without help from Revelation, that I shall be
born again out of the unconsciousness of death with my individual traits
of mind and body. If death is, as it should seem to be, a loss of
consciousness, that does not shake my faith; for I have been put into a
body once already to fit me for living here, and I hope to be in some way
fitted after this life to enjoy a better one. But it is all trust in God
and in his Word. These are enough for me; I hope they are for you."
Helen was a minister's daughter, and familiar from her childhood with
this class of questions, especially with all the doubts and perplexities
which are sure to assail every thinking child bred in any inorganic or
not thoroughly vitalized faith,--as is too often the case with the
children of professional theologians. The kind of discipline they are
subjected to is like that of the Flat-Head Indian pappooses. At five or
ten or fifteen years old they put their hands up to their foreheads and
ask, What are they strapping down my brains in this way for? So they
tear off the sacred bandages of the great Flat-Head tribe, and there
follows a mighty rush of blood to the long-compressed region. This
accounts, in the most lucid manner, for those sudden freaks with which
certain children of this class astonish their worthy parents at the
period of life when they are growing fast, and, the frontal pressure
beginning to be felt as something intolerable, they tear off the holy
compresses.
The hour for school came, and they went to the great hall for study. It
would not have occurred to Mr. Silas Peckham to ask his assistant whether
he felt well enough to attend to his duties; and Mr. Bernard chose to be
at his post. A little headache and confusion were all that remained of
his symptoms.
Later, in the course of the forenoon, Elsie Venner came and took her
place. The girls all stared at her--naturally enough; for it was hardly
to have been expected that she would show herself, after such an event in
the household to which she belonged. Her expression was somewhat
peculiar, and, of course, was attributed to the shock her feelings had
undergone on hearing of the crime attempted by her cousin and daily
companion. When she was looking on her book, or on any indifferent
object, her countenance betrayed some inward disturbance, which knitted
her dark brows, and seemed to throw a deeper shadow over her features.
But, from time to time, she would lift her eyes toward Mr. Bernard, and
let them rest upon him, without a thought, seemingly, that she herself
was the subject of observation or remark. Then they seemed to lose their
cold glitter, and soften into a strange, dreamy tenderness. The deep
instincts of womanhood were striving to grope their way to the surface of
her being through all the alien influences which overlaid them. She
could be secret and cunning in working out any of her dangerous impulses,
but she did not know how to mask the unwonted feeling which fixed her
eyes and her thoughts upon the only person who had ever reached the
spring of her hidden sympathies.
The girls all looked at Elsie, whenever they could steal a glance
unperceived, and many of them were struck with this singular expression
her features wore. They had long whispered it around among each other
that she had a liking for the master; but there were too many of them of
whom something like this could be said, to make it very remarkable. Now,
however, when so many little hearts were fluttering at the thought of the
peril through which the handsome young master had so recently passed,
they were more alive than ever to the supposed relation between him and
the dark school-girl. Some had supposed there was a mutual attachment
between them; there was a story that they were secretly betrothed, in
accordance with the rumor which had been current in the village. At any
rate, some conflict was going on in that still, remote, clouded soul, and
all the girls who looked upon her face were impressed and awed as they
had never been before by the shadows that passed over it.
One of these girls was more strongly arrested by Elsie's look than the
others. This was a delicate, pallid creature, with a high forehead, and
wide-open pupils, which looked as if they could take in all the shapes
that flit in what, to common eyes, is darkness,--a girl said to be
clairvoyant under certain influences. In the recess, as it was called,
or interval of suspended studies in the middle of the forenoon, this girl
carried her autograph-book,--for she had one of those indispensable
appendages of the boarding-school miss of every degree,--and asked Elsie
to write her name in it. She had an irresistible feeling, that, sooner
or later, and perhaps very soon, there would attach an unusual interest
to this autograph. Elsie took the pen and wrote, in her sharp Italian
hand,
Elsie Venner, Infelix.
It was a remembrance, doubtless, of the forlorn queen of the "AEneid";
but its coming to her thought in this way confirmed the sensitive
school-girl in her fears for Elsie, and she let fall a tear upon the page
before she closed it.
Of course, the keen and practised observation of Helen Darley could not
fail to notice the change of Elsie's manner and expression. She had long
seen that she was attracted to the young master, and had thought, as the
old Doctor did, that any impression which acted upon her affections might
be the means of awakening a new life in her singularly isolated nature.
Now, however, the concentration of the poor girl's thoughts upon the one
object which had had power to reach her deeper sensibilities was so
painfully revealed in her features, that Helen began to fear once more,
lest Mr. Bernard, in escaping the treacherous violence of an assassin,
had been left to the equally dangerous consequences of a violent,
engrossing passion in the breast of a young creature whose love it would
be ruin to admit and might be deadly to reject. She knew her own heart
too well to fear that any jealousy might mingle with her new
apprehensions. It was understood between Bernard and Helen that they
were too good friends to tamper with the silences and edging proximities
of lovemaking. She knew, too, the simply human, not masculine, interest
which Mr. Bernard took in Elsie; he had been frank with Helen, and more
than satisfied her that with all the pity and sympathy which overflowed
his soul, when he thought of the stricken girl, there mingled not one
drop of such love as a youth may feel for a maiden.
It may help the reader to gain some understanding of the anomalous nature
of Elsie Veneer, if we look with Helen into Mr. Bernard's opinions and
feelings with reference to her, as they had shaped themselves in his
consciousness at the period of which we are speaking.
At first he had been impressed by her wild beauty, and the contrast of
all her looks and ways with those of the girls around her. Presently a
sense of some ill-defined personal element, which half-attracted and
half-repelled those who looked upon her, and especially those on whom she
looked, began to make itself obvious to him, as he soon found it was
painfully sensible to his more susceptible companion, the lady-teacher.
It was not merely in the cold light of her diamond eyes, but in all her
movements, in her graceful postures as she sat, in her costume, and, he
sometimes thought, even in her speech, that this obscure and exceptional
character betrayed itself. When Helen had said, that, if they were living
in times when human beings were subject to possession, she should have
thought there was something not human about Elsie, it struck an
unsuspected vein of thought in his own mind, which he hated to put in
words, but which was continually trying to articulate itself among the
dumb thoughts which lie under the perpetual stream of mental whispers.
Mr. Bernard's professional training had made him slow to accept
marvellous stories and many forms of superstition. Yet, as a man of
science, he well knew that just on the verge of the demonstrable facts of
physics and physiology there is a nebulous border-land which what is
called "common sense" perhaps does wisely not to enter, but which
uncommon sense, or the fine apprehension of privileged intelligences, may
cautiously explore, and in so doing find itself behind the scenes which
make up for the gazing world the show which is called Nature.
It was with something of this finer perception, perhaps with some degree
of imaginative exaltation, that he set himself to solving the problem of
Elsie's influence to attract and repel those around her. His letter
already submitted to the reader hints in what direction his thoughts were
disposed to turn. Here was a magnificent organization, superb in
vigorous womanhood, with a beauty such as never comes but after
generations of culture; yet through all this rich nature there ran some
alien current of influence, sinuous and dark, as when a clouded streak
seams the white marble of a perfect statue.
It would be needless to repeat the particular suggestions which had come
into his mind, as they must probably have come into that of the reader
who has noted the singularities of Elsie's tastes and personal traits.
The images which certain poets had dreamed of seemed to have become a
reality before his own eyes. Then came that unexplained adventure of The
Mountain,--almost like a dream in recollection, yet assuredly real in
some of its main incidents,--with all that it revealed or hinted. This
girl did not fear to visit the dreaded region, where danger lurked in
every nook and beneath every tuft of leaves. Did the tenants of the
fatal ledge recognize some mysterious affinity which made them tributary
to the cold glitter of her diamond eyes? Was she from her birth one of
those frightful children, such as he had read about, and the Professor
had told him of, who form unnatural friendships with cold, writhing
ophidians? There was no need of so unwelcome a thought as this; she had
drawn him away from the dark opening in the rock at the moment when he
seemed to be threatened by one of its malignant denizens; that was all he
could be sure of; the counter-fascination might have been a dream, a
fancy, a coincidence. All wonderful things soon grow doubtful in our own
minds, as do even common events, if great interests prove suddenly to
attach to their truth or falsehood.
--I, who am telling of these occurrences, saw a friend in the great city,
on the morning of a most memorable disaster, hours after the time when
the train which carried its victims to their doom had left. I talked with
him, and was for some minutes, at least, in his company. When I reached
home, I found that the story had gone before that he was among the lost,
and I alone could contradict it to his weeping friends and relatives. I
did contradict it; but, alas! I began soon to doubt myself, penetrated
by the contagion of their solicitude; my recollection began to question
itself; the order of events became dislocated; and when I heard that he
had reached home in safety, the relief was almost as great to me as to
those who had expected to see their own brother's face no more.
Mr. Bernard was disposed, then, not to accept the thought of any odious
personal relationship of the kind which had suggested itself to him when
he wrote the letter referred to. That the girl had something of the
feral nature, her wild, lawless rambles in forbidden and blasted regions
of The Mountain at all hours, her familiarity with the lonely haunts
where any other human foot was so rarely seen, proved clearly enough.
But the more he thought of all her strange instincts and modes of being,
the more he became convinced that whatever alien impulse swayed her will
and modulated or diverted or displaced her affections came from some
impression that reached far back into the past, before the days when the
faithful Old Sophy had rocked her in the cradle. He believed that she
had brought her ruling tendency, whatever it was, into the world with
her.
When the school was over and the girls had all gone, Helen lingered in
the schoolroom to speak with Mr. Bernard.
"Did you remark Elsie's ways this forenoon?" she said.
"No, not particularly; I have not noticed anything as sharply as I
commonly do; my head has been a little queer, and I have been thinking
over what we were talking about, and how near I came to solving the great
problem which every day makes clear to such multitudes of people. What
about Elsie?"
"Bernard, her liking for you is growing into a passion. I have studied
girls for a long while, and I know the difference between their passing
fancies and their real emotions. I told you, you remember, that Rosa
would have to leave us; we barely missed a scene, I think, if not a whole
tragedy, by her going at the right moment. But Elsie is infinitely more
dangerous to herself and others. Women's love is fierce enough, if it
once gets the mastery of them, always; but this poor girl does not know
what to do with a passion."
Mr. Bernard had never told Helen the story of the flower in his Virgil,
or that other adventure--which he would have felt awkwardly to refer to;
but it had been perfectly understood between them that Elsie showed in
her own singular way a well-marked partiality for the young master.
"Why don't they take her away from the school, if she is in such a
strange, excitable state?" said Mr. Bernard.
"I believe they are afraid of her," Helen answered. "It is just one of
those cases that are ten thousand thousand times worse than insanity. I
don't think from what I hear, that her father has ever given up hoping
that she will outgrow her peculiarities. Oh, these peculiar children for
whom parents go on hoping every morning and despairing every night! If I
could tell you half that mothers have told me, you would feel that the
worst of all diseases of the moral sense and the will are those which all
the Bedlams turn away from their doors as not being cases of insanity!"
"Do you think her father has treated her judiciously?" said Mr. Bernard.
"I think," said Helen, with a little hesitation, which Mr. Bernard did
not happen to notice,--"I think he has been very kind and indulgent, and
I do not know that he could have treated her otherwise with a better
chance of success."
"He must of course be fond of her," Mr. Bernard said; "there is nothing
else in the world for him to love."
Helen dropped a book she held in her hand, and, stooping to pick it up,
the blood rushed into her cheeks.
"It is getting late," she said; "you must not stay any longer in this
close schoolroom. Pray, go and get a little fresh air before
dinner-time."
CHAPTER XXVII.
A SOUL IN DISTRESS.
The events told in the last two chapters had taken place toward the close
of the week. On Saturday evening the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather
received a note which was left at his door by an unknown person who
departed without saying a word. Its words were these: "One who is in
distress of mind requests the prayers of this congregation that God would
be pleased to look in mercy upon the soul that he has afflicted."
There was nothing to show from whom the note came, or the sex or age or
special source of spiritual discomfort or anxiety of the writer. The
handwriting was delicate and might well be a woman's. The clergyman was
not aware of any particular affliction among his parishioners which was
likely to be made the subject of a request of this kind. Surely neither
of the Venners would advertise the attempted crime of their relative in
this way. But who else was there? The more he thought about it, the
more it puzzled him, and as he did not like to pray in the dark, without
knowing for whom he was praying, he could think of nothing better than to
step into old Doctor Kittredge's and see what he had to say about it.
The old Doctor was sitting alone in his study when the Reverend Mr.
Fairweather was ushered in. He received his visitor very pleasantly,
expecting, as a matter of course, that he would begin with some new
grievance, dyspeptic, neuralgic, bronchitic, or other. The minister,
however, began with questioning the old Doctor about the sequel of the
other night's adventure; for he was already getting a little Jesuitical,
and kept back the object of his visit until it should come up as if
accidentally in the course of conversation.
"It was a pretty bold thing to go off alone with that reprobate, as you
did," said the minister.
"I don't know what there was bold about it," the Doctor answered. "All he
wanted was to get away. He was not quite a reprobate, you see; he didn't
like the thought of disgracing his family or facing his uncle. I think
he was ashamed to see his cousin, too, after what he had done."
"Did he talk with you on the way?"
"Not much. For half an hour or so he did n't speak a word. Then he
asked where I was driving him. I told him, and he seemed to be surprised
into a sort of grateful feeling. Bad enough, no doubt, but might be
worse. Has some humanity left in him yet. Let him go. God can judge
him,--I can't."
"You are too charitable, Doctor," the minister said. "I condemn him just
as if he had carried out his project, which, they say, was to make it
appear as if the schoolmaster had committed suicide. That's what people
think the rope found by him was for. He has saved his neck,--but his
soul is a lost one, I am afraid, beyond question."
"I can't judge men's souls," the Doctor said. "I can judge their acts,
and hold them responsible for those,--but I don't know much about their
souls. If you or I had found our soul in a half-breed body; and been
turned loose to run among the Indians, we might have been playing just
such tricks as this fellow has been trying. What if you or I had
inherited all the tendencies that were born with his cousin Elsie?"
"Oh, that reminds me,"--the minister said, in a sudden way,--"I have
received a note, which I am requested to read from the pulpit tomorrow.
I wish you would just have the kindness to look at it and see where you
think it came from."
The Doctor examined it carefully. It was a woman's or girl's note, he
thought. Might come from one of the school-girls who was anxious about
her spiritual condition. Handwriting was disguised; looked a little like
Elsie Veneer's, but not characteristic enough to make it certain. It
would be a new thing, if she had asked public prayers for herself, and a
very favorable indication of a change in her singular moral nature. It
was just possible Elsie might have sent that note. Nobody could foretell
her actions. It would be well to see the girl and find out whether any
unusual impression had been produced on her mind by the recent occurrence
or by any other cause.
The Reverend Mr. Fairweather folded the note and put it into his pocket.
"I have been a good deal exercised in mind lately, myself," he said.
The old Doctor looked at him through his spectacles, and said, in his
usual professional tone,
"Put out your tongue."
The minister obeyed him in that feeble way common with persons of weak
character,--for people differ as much in their mode of performing this
trifling act as Gideon's soldiers in their way of drinking at the brook.
The Doctor took his hand and placed a finger mechanically on his wrist.
"It is more spiritual, I think, than bodily," said the Reverend Mr.
Fairweather.
"Is your appetite as good as usual?" the Doctor asked.
"Pretty good," the minister answered; "but my sleep, my sleep, Doctor,--I
am greatly troubled at night with lying awake and thinking of my future,
I am not at ease in mind."
He looked round at all the doors, to be sure they were shut, and moved
his chair up close to the Doctor's.
"You do not know the mental trials I have been going through for the last
few months."
"I think I do," the old Doctor said. "You want to get out of the new
church into the old one, don't you?"
The minister blushed deeply; he thought he had been going on in a very
quiet way, and that nobody suspected his secret. As the old Doctor was
his counsellor in sickness, and almost everybody's confidant in trouble,
he had intended to impart cautiously to him some hints of the change of
sentiments through which he had been passing. He was too late with his
information, it appeared, and there was nothing to be done but to throw
himself on the Doctor's good sense and kindness, which everybody knew,
and get what hints he could from him as to the practical course he should
pursue. He began, after an awkward pause,
"You would not have me stay in a communion which I feel to be alien to
the true church, would you?"
"Have you stay, my friend?" said the Doctor, with a pleasant, friendly
look,--"have you stay? Not a month, nor a week, nor a day, if I could
help it. You have got into the wrong pulpit, and I have known it from
the first. The sooner you go where you belong, the better. And I'm very
glad you don't mean to stop half-way. Don't you know you've always come
to me when you've been dyspeptic or sick anyhow, and wanted to put
yourself wholly into my hands, so that I might order you like a child
just what to do and what to take? That 's exactly what you want in
religion. I don't blame you for it. You never liked to take the
responsibility of your own body; I don't see why you should want to have
the charge of your own soul. But I'm glad you're going to the Old Mother
of all. You wouldn't have been contented short of that."
The Reverend Mr. Fairweather breathed with more freedom. The Doctor saw
into his soul through those awful spectacles of his,--into it and beyond
it, as one sees through a thin fog. But it was with a real human
kindness, after all. He felt like a child before a strong man; but the
strong man looked on him with a father's indulgence. Many and many a
time, when he had come desponding and bemoaning himself on account of
some contemptible bodily infirmity, the old Doctor had looked at him
through his spectacles, listened patiently while he told his ailments,
and then, in his large parental way, given him a few words of wholesome
advice, and cheered him up so that he went off with a light heart,
thinking that the heaven he was so much afraid of was not so very near,
after all. It was the same thing now. He felt, as feeble natures always
do in the presence of strong ones, overmastered, circumscribed, shut in,
humbled; but yet it seemed as if the old Doctor did not despise him any
more for what he considered weakness of mind than he used to despise him
when he complained of his nerves or his digestion.
Men who see into their neighbors are very apt to be contemptuous; but men
who see through them find something lying behind every human soul which
it is not for them to sit in judgment on, or to attempt to sneer out of
the order of God's manifold universe.
Little as the Doctor had said out of which comfort could be extracted,
his genial manner had something grateful in it. A film of gratitude came
over the poor man's cloudy, uncertain eye, and a look of tremulous relief
and satisfaction played about his weak mouth. He was gravitating to the
majority, where he hoped to find "rest"; but he was dreadfully sensitive
to the opinions of the minority he was on the point of leaving.
The old Doctor saw plainly enough what was going on in his mind.
"I sha'n't quarrel with you," he said,--"you know that very well; but you
mustn't quarrel with me, if I talk honestly with you; it isn't everybody
that will take the trouble. You flatter yourself that you will make a
good many enemies by leaving your old communion. Not so many as you
think. This is the way the common sort of people will talk:--'You have
got your ticket to the feast of life, as much as any other man that ever
lived. Protestantism says,--"Help yourself; here's a clean plate, and a
knife and fork of your own, and plenty of fresh dishes to choose from."
The Old Mother says,--"Give me your ticket, my dear, and I'll feed you
with my gold spoon off these beautiful old wooden trenchers. Such nice
bits as those good old gentlemen have left for you!" There is no
quarrelling with a man who prefers broken victuals. That's what the
rougher sort will say; and then, where one scolds, ten will laugh. But,
mind you, I don't either scold or laugh. I don't feel sure that you
could very well have helped doing what you will soon do. You know you
were never easy without some medicine to take when you felt ill in body.
I'm afraid I've given you trashy stuff sometimes, just to keep you quiet.
Now, let me tell you, there is just the same difference in spiritual
patients that there is in bodily ones. One set believes in wholesome
ways of living, and another must have a great list of specifics for all
the soul's complaints. You belong with the last, and got accidentally
shuffled in with the others."
The minister smiled faintly, but did not reply. Of course, he considered
that way of talking as the result of the Doctor's professional training.
It would not have been worth while to take offence at his plain speech,
if he had been so disposed; for he might wish to consult him the next day
as to "what he should take" for his dyspepsia or his neuralgia.
He left the Doctor with a hollow feeling at the bottom of his soul, as if
a good piece of his manhood had been scooped out of him. His hollow
aching did not explain itself in words, but it grumbled and worried down
among the unshaped thoughts which lie beneath them. He knew that he had
been trying to reason himself out of his birthright of reason. He knew
that the inspiration which gave him understanding was losing its throne
in his intelligence, and the almighty Majority-Vote was proclaiming
itself in its stead. He knew that the great primal truths, which each
successive revelation only confirmed, were fast becoming hidden beneath
the mechanical forms of thought, which, as with all new converts,
engrossed so large a share of his attention. The "peace," the "rest,"
which he had purchased were dearly bought to one who had been trained to
the arms of thought, and whose noble privilege it might have been to live
in perpetual warfare for the advancing truth which the next generation
will claim as the legacy of the present.
The Reverend Mr. Fairweather was getting careless about his sermons. He
must wait the fitting moment to declare himself; and in the mean time he
was preaching to heretics. It did not matter much what he preached,
under such circumstances. He pulled out two old yellow sermons from a
heap of such, and began looking over that for the forenoon. Naturally
enough, he fell asleep over it, and, sleeping, he began to dream.
He dreamed that he was under the high arches of an old cathedral, amidst
a throng of worshippers. The light streamed in through vast windows,
dark with the purple robes of royal saints, or blazing with yellow
glories around the heads of earthly martyrs and heavenly messengers. The
billows of the great organ roared among the clustered columns, as the sea
breaks amidst the basaltic pillars which crowd the stormy cavern of the
Hebrides. The voice of the alternate choirs of singing boys swung back
and forward, as the silver censer swung in the hands of the white-robed
children. The sweet cloud of incense rose in soft, fleecy mists, full of
penetrating suggestions of the East and its perfumed altars. The knees
of twenty generations had worn the pavement; their feet had hollowed the
steps; their shoulders had smoothed the columns. Dead bishops and abbots
lay under the marble of the floor in their crumbled vestments; dead
warriors, in rusted armor, were stretched beneath their sculptured
effigies. And all at once all the buried multitudes who had ever
worshipped there came thronging in through the aisles. They choked every
space, they swarmed into all the chapels, they hung in clusters over the
parapets of the galleries, they clung to the images in every niche, and
still the vast throng kept flowing and flowing in, until the living were
lost in the rush of the returning dead who had reclaimed their own.
Then, as his dream became more fantastic, the huge cathedral itself
seemed to change into the wreck of some mighty antediluvian vertebrate;
its flying-buttresses arched round like ribs, its piers shaped themselves
into limbs, and the sound of the organ-blast changed to the wind
whistling through its thousand-jointed skeleton.
And presently the sound lulled, and softened and softened, until it was
as the murmur of a distant swarm of bees. A procession of monks wound
along through an old street, chanting, as they walked. In his dream he
glided in among them and bore his part in the burden of their song. He
entered with the long train under a low arch, and presently he was
kneeling in a narrow cell before an image of the Blessed Maiden holding
the Divine Child in her arms, and his lips seemed to whisper,
Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis!
He turned to the crucifix, and, prostrating himself before the spare,
agonizing shape of the Holy Sufferer, fell into a long passion of tears
and broken prayers. He rose and flung himself, worn-out, upon his hard
pallet, and, seeming to slumber, dreamed again within his dream. Once
more in the vast cathedral, with throngs of the living choking its
aisles, amidst jubilant peals from the cavernous depths of the great
organ, and choral melodies ringing from the fluty throats of the singing
boys. A day of great rejoicings,--for a prelate was to be consecrated,
and the bones of the mighty skeleton-minster were shaking with anthems,
as if there were life of its own within its buttressed ribs. He looked
down at his feet; the folds of the sacred robe were flowing about them:
he put his hand to his head; it was crowned with the holy mitre. A long
sigh, as of perfect content in the consummation of all his earthly hopes,
breathed through the dreamer's lips, and shaped itself, as it escaped,
into the blissful murmur,
Ego sum Episcopus!
One grinning gargoyle looked in from beneath the roof through an opening
in a stained window. It was the face of a mocking fiend, such as the old
builders loved to place under the eaves to spout the rain through their
open mouths. It looked at him, as he sat in his mitred chair, with its
hideous grin growing broader and broader, until it laughed out aloud,
such a hard, stony, mocking laugh, that he awoke out of his second dream
through his first into his common consciousness, and shivered, as he
turned to the two yellow sermons which he was to pick over and weed of
the little thought they might contain, for the next day's service.
The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather was too much taken up with his own
bodily and spiritual condition to be deeply mindful of others. He
carried the note requesting the prayers of the congregation in his pocket
all day; and the soul in distress, which a single tender petition might
have soothed, and perhaps have saved from despair or fatal error, found
no voice in the temple to plead for it before the Throne of Mercy!
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE SECRET IS WHISPERED.
The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather's congregation was not large, but
select. The lines of social cleavage run through religious creeds as if
they were of a piece with position and fortune. It is expected of
persons of a certain breeding, in some parts of New England, that they
shall be either Episcopalians or Unitarians. The mansion-house gentry of
Rockland were pretty fairly divided between the little chapel, with the
stained window and the trained rector, and the meeting-house where the
Reverend Mr. Fairweather officiated.
It was in the latter that Dudley Venner worshipped, when he attended
service anywhere,--which depended very much on the caprice of Elsie. He
saw plainly enough that a generous and liberally cultivated nature might
find a refuge and congenial souls in either of these two persuasions, but
he objected to some points of the formal creed of the older church, and
especially to the mechanism which renders it hard to get free from its
outworn and offensive formulae,--remembering how Archbishop Tillotson
wished in vain that it could be "well rid of" the Athanasian Creed.
This, and the fact that the meeting-house was nearer than the chapel,
determined him, when the new rector, who was not quite up to his mark in
education, was appointed, to take a pew in the "liberal" worshippers'
edifice.
Elsie was very uncertain in her feeling about going to church. In
summer, she loved rather to stroll over The Mountain, on Sundays. There
was even a story, that she had one of the caves before mentioned fitted
up as an oratory, and that she had her own wild way of worshipping the
God whom she sought in the dark chasms of the dreaded cliffs. Mere
fables, doubtless; but they showed the common belief, that Elsie, with
all her strange and dangerous elements of character, had yet strong
religious feeling mingled with them. The hymn-book which Dick had found,
in his midnight invasion of her chamber, opened to favorite hymns,
especially some of the Methodist and Quietist character. Many had
noticed, that certain tunes, as sung by the choir, seemed to impress her
deeply; and some said, that at such times her whole expression would
change, and her stormy look would soften so as to remind them of her
poor, sweet mother.
On the Sunday morning after the talk recorded in the last chapter, Elsie
made herself ready to go to meeting. She was dressed much as usual,
excepting that she wore a thick veil, turned aside, but ready to conceal
her features. It was natural enough that she should not wish to be
looked in the face by curious persons who would be staring to see what
effect the occurrence of the past week had had on her spirits. Her
father attended her willingly; and they took their seats in the pew,
somewhat to the surprise of many, who had hardly expected to see them,
after so humiliating a family development as the attempted crime of their
kinsman had just been furnishing for the astonishment of the public.
The Reverend Mr. Fairweather was now in his coldest mood. He had passed
through the period of feverish excitement which marks a change of
religious opinion. At first, when he had began to doubt his own
theological positions, he had defended them against himself with more
ingenuity and interest, perhaps, than he could have done against another;
because men rarely take the trouble to understand anybody's difficulties
in a question but their own. After this, as he began to draw off from
different points of his old belief, the cautious disentangling of himself
from one mesh after another gave sharpness to his intellect, and the
tremulous eagerness with which he seized upon the doctrine which, piece
by piece, under various pretexts and with various disguises, he was
appropriating, gave interest and something like passion to his words.
But when he had gradually accustomed his people to his new phraseology,
and was really adjusting his sermons and his service to disguise his
thoughts, he lost at once all his intellectual acuteness and all his
spiritual fervor.
Elsie sat quietly through the first part of the service, which was
conducted in the cold, mechanical way to be expected. Her face was
hidden by her veil; but her father knew her state of feeling, as well by
her movements and attitudes as by the expression of her features. The
hymn had been sung, the short prayer offered, the Bible read, and the
long prayer was about to begin. This was the time at which the "notes"
of any who were in affliction from loss of friends, the sick who were
doubtful of recovery, those who had cause to be grateful for preservation
of life or other signal blessing, were wont to be read.
Just then it was that Dudley Veneer noticed that his daughter was
trembling,--a thing so rare, so unaccountable, indeed, under the
circumstances, that he watched her closely, and began to fear that some
nervous paroxysm, or other malady, might have just begun to show itself
in this way upon her.
The minister had in his pocket two notes. One, in the handwriting of
Deacon Soper, was from a member of this congregation, returning thanks
for his preservation through a season of great peril, supposed to be the
exposure which he had shared with others, when standing in the circle
around Dick Veneer. The other was the anonymous one, in a female hand,
which he had received the evening before. He forgot them both. His
thoughts were altogether too much taken up with more important matters.
He prayed through all the frozen petitions of his expurgated form of
supplication, and not a single heart was soothed or lifted, or reminded
that its sorrows were struggling their way up to heaven, borne on the
breath from a human soul that was warm with love.
The people sat down as if relieved when the dreary prayer was finished.
Elsie alone remained standing until her father touched her. Then she sat
down, lifted her veil, and looked at him with a blank, sad look, as if
she had suffered some pain or wrong, but could not give any name or
expression to her vague trouble. She did not tremble any longer, but
remained ominously still, as if she had been frozen where she sat.
--Can a man love his own soul too well? Who, on the whole, constitute
the nobler class of human beings? those who have lived mainly to make
sure of their own personal welfare in another and future condition of
existence, or they who have worked with all their might for their race,
for their country, for the advancement of the kingdom of God, and left
all personal arrangements concerning themselves to the sole charge of Him
who made them and is responsible to himself for their safe-keeping? Is
an anchorite who has worn the stone floor of his cell into basins with
his knees bent in prayer, more acceptable than the soldier who gives his
life for the maintenance of any sacred right or truth, without thinking
what will specially become of him in a world where there are two or three
million colonists a month, from this one planet, to be cared for? These
are grave questions, which must suggest themselves to those who know that
there are many profoundly selfish persons who are sincerely devout and
perpetually occupied with their own future, while there are others who
are perfectly ready to sacrifice themselves for any worthy object in this
world, but are really too little occupied with their exclusive
personality to think so much as many do about what is to become of them
in another.
The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather did not, most certainly, belong to this
latter class. There are several kinds of believers, whose history we
find among the early converts to Christianity.
There was the magistrate, whose social position was such that he
preferred a private interview in the evening with the Teacher to
following him--with the street-crowd. He had seen extraordinary facts
which had satisfied him that the young Galilean had a divine commission.
But still he cross-questioned the Teacher himself. He was not ready to
accept statements without explanation. That was the right kind of man.
See how he stood up for the legal rights of his Master, when the people
were for laying hands on him!
And again, there was the government official, intrusted with public
money, which, in those days, implied that he was supposed to be honest.
A single look of that heavenly countenance, and two words of gentle
command, were enough for him. Neither of these men, the early disciple,
nor the evangelist, seems to have been thinking primarily about his own
personal safety.
But now look at the poor, miserable turnkey, whose occupation shows what
he was like to be, and who had just been thrusting two respectable
strangers, taken from the hands of a mob, covered with stripes and
stripped of clothing, into the inner prison, and making their feet fast
in the stocks. His thought, in the moment of terror, is for himself:
first, suicide; then, what he shall do,--not to save his household,--not
to fulfil his duty to his office,--not to repair the outrage he has been
committing,--but to secure his own personal safety. Truly, character
shows itself as much in a man's way of becoming a Christian as in any
other!
--Elsie sat, statue-like, through the sermon. It would not be fair to
the reader to give an abstract of that. When a man who has been bred to
free thought and free speech suddenly finds himself stepping about, like
a dancer amidst his eggs, among the old addled majority-votes which he
must not tread upon, he is a spectacle for men and angels. Submission to
intellectual precedent and authority does very well for those who have
been bred to it; we know that the underground courses of their minds are
laid in the Roman cement of tradition, and that stately and splendid
structures may be reared on such a foundation. But to see one laying a
platform over heretical quicksands, thirty or forty or fifty years deep,
and then beginning to build upon it, is a sorry sight. A new convert
from the reformed to the ancient faith may be very strong in the arms,
but he will always have weak legs and shaky knees. He may use his hands
well, and hit hard with his fists, but he will never stand on his legs in
the way the man does who inherits his belief.
The services were over at last, and Dudley Venner and his daughter walked
home together in silence. He always respected her moods, and saw clearly
enough that some inward trouble was weighing upon her. There was nothing
to be said in such cases, for Elsie could never talk of her griefs. An
hour, or a day, or a week of brooding, with perhaps a sudden flash of
violence: this was the way in which the impressions which make other
women weep, and tell their griefs by word or letter, showed their effects
in her mind and acts.
She wandered off up into the remoter parts of The Mountain, that day,
after their return. No one saw just where she went,--indeed, no one knew
its forest-recesses and rocky fastnesses as she did. She was gone until
late at night; and when Old Sophy, who had watched for her, bound up her
long hair for her sleep, it was damp with the cold dews.
The old black woman looked at her without speaking, but questioning her
with every feature as to the sorrow that was weighing on her.
Suddenly she turned to Old Sophy.
"You want to know what there is troubling me;" she said. "Nobody loves
me. I cannot love anybody. What is love, Sophy?"
"It's what poor Ol' Sophy's got for her Elsie," the old woman answered.
"Tell me, darlin',--don' you love somebody?--don' you love? you
know,--oh, tell me, darlin', don' you love to see the gen'l'man that
keeps up at the school where you go? They say he's the pootiest
gen'l'man that was ever in the town here. Don' be 'fraid of poor Ol'
Sophy, darlin',--she loved a man once,--see here! Oh, I've showed you
this often enough!"
She took from her pocket a half of one of the old Spanish silver coins,
such as were current in the earlier part of this century. The other half
of it had been lying in the deep sea-sand for more than fifty years.
Elsie looked her in the face, but did not answer in words. What strange
intelligence was that which passed between them through the diamond eyes
and the little beady black ones?--what subtile intercommunication,
penetrating so much deeper than articulate speech? This was the nearest
approach to sympathetic relations that Elsie ever had: a kind of dumb
intercourse of feeling, such as one sees in the eyes of brute mothers
looking on their young. But, subtile as it was, it was narrow and
individual; whereas an emotion which can shape itself in language opens
the gate for itself into the great community of human affections; for
every word we speak is the medal of a dead thought or feeling, struck in
the die of some human experience, worn smooth by innumerable contacts,
and always transferred warm from one to another. By words we share the
common consciousness of the race, which has shaped itself in these
symbols. By music we reach those special states of consciousness which,
being without form, cannot be shaped with the mosaics of the vocabulary.
The language of the eyes runs deeper into the personal nature, but it is
purely individual, and perishes in the expression.
If we consider them all as growing out of the consciousness as their
root, language is the leaf, music is the flower; but when the eyes meet
and search each other, it is the uncovering of the blanched stem through
which the whole life runs, but which has never taken color or form from
the sunlight.
For three days Elsie did not return to the school. Much of the time she
was among the woods and rocks. The season was now beginning to wane, and
the forest to put on its autumnal glory. The dreamy haze was beginning
to soften the landscape, and the mast delicious days of the year were
lending their attraction to the scenery of The Mountain. It was not very
singular that Elsie should be lingering in her old haunts, from which the
change of season must soon drive her. But Old Sophy saw clearly enough
that some internal conflict was going on, and knew very well that it must
have its own way and work itself out as it best could. As much as looks
could tell Elsie had told her. She had said in words, to be sure, that
she could not love. Something warped and thwarted the emotion which
would have been love in another, no doubt; but that such an emotion was
striving with her against all malign influences which interfered with it
the old woman had a perfect certainty in her own mind.
Everybody who has observed the working of emotions in persons of various
temperaments knows well enough that they have periods of incubation,
which differ with the individual, and with the particular cause and
degree of excitement, yet evidently go through a strictly self-limited
series of evolutions, at the end of which, their result--an act of
violence, a paroxysm of tears, a gradual subsidence into repose, or
whatever it may be--declares itself, like the last stage of an attack of
fever and ague. No one can observe children without noticing that there
is a personal equation, to use the astronomer's language, in their
tempers, so that one sulks an hour over an offence which makes another a
fury for five minutes, and leaves him or her an angel when it is over.
At the end of three days, Elsie braided her long, glossy, black hair, and
shot a golden arrow through it. She dressed herself with more than usual
care, and came down in the morning superb in her stormy beauty. The
brooding paroxysm was over, or at least her passion had changed its
phase. Her father saw it with great relief; he had always many fears for
her in her hours and days of gloom, but, for reasons before assigned, had
felt that she must be trusted to herself, without appealing to actual
restraint, or any other supervision than such as Old Sophy could exercise
without offence.
She went off at the accustomed hour to the school. All the girls had
their eyes on her. None so keen as these young misses to know an inward
movement by an outward sign of adornment: if they have not as many
signals as the ships that sail the great seas, there is not an end of
ribbon or a turn of a ringlet which is not a hieroglyphic with a hidden
meaning to these little cruisers over the ocean of sentiment.
The girls all looked at Elsie with a new thought; for she was more
sumptuously arrayed than perhaps ever before at the school; and they said
to themselves that she had come meaning to draw the young master's eyes
upon her. That was it; what else could it be? The beautiful cold girl
with the diamond eyes meant to dazzle the handsome young gentleman. He
would be afraid to love her; it couldn't be true, that which some people
had said in the village; she was n't the kind of young lady to make Mr.
Langdon happy. Those dark people are never safe: so one of the young
blondes said to herself. Elsie was not literary enough for such a
scholar: so thought Miss Charlotte Ann Wood, the young poetess. She
couldn't have a good temper, with those scowling eyebrows: this was the
opinion of several broad-faced, smiling girls, who thought, each in her
own snug little mental sanctum, that, if, etc., etc., she could make him
so happy!
Elsie had none of the still, wicked light in her eyes, that morning. She
looked gentle, but dreamy; played with her books; did not trouble herself
with any of the exercises,--which in itself was not very remarkable, as
she was always allowed, under some pretext or other, to have her own way.
The school-hours were over at length. The girls went out, but she
lingered to the last. She then came up to Mr. Bernard, with a book in
her hand, as if to ask a question.
"Will you walk towards my home with me today?" she said, in a very low
voice, little more than a whisper.
Mr. Bernard was startled by the request, put in such a way. He had a
presentiment of some painful scene or other. But there was nothing to be
done but to assure her that it would give him great pleasure.
So they walked along together on their way toward the Dudley mansion.
"I have no friend," Elsie said, all at once. "Nothing loves me but one
old woman. I cannot love anybody. They tell me there is something in my
eyes that draws people to me and makes them faint: Look into them, will
you?"
She turned her face toward him. It was very pale, and the diamond eyes
were glittering with a film, such as beneath other lids would have
rounded into a tear.
"Beautiful eyes, Elsie," he said,--"sometimes very piercing,--but soft
now, and looking as if there were something beneath them that friendship
might draw out. I am your friend, Elsie. Tell me what I can do to
render your life happier."
"Love me!" said Elsie Venner.
What shall a man do, when a woman makes such a demand, involving such an
avowal? It was the tenderest, cruellest, humblest moment of Mr.
Bernard's life. He turned pale, he trembled almost, as if he had been a
woman listening to her lover's declaration.
"Elsie," he said, presently, "I so long to be of some use to you, to have
your confidence and sympathy, that I must not let you say or do anything
to put us in false relations. I do love you, Elsie, as a suffering
sister with sorrows of her own,--as one whom I would save at the risk of
my happiness and life,--as one who needs a true friend more than--any of
all the young girls I have known. More than this you would not ask me to
say. You have been through excitement and trouble lately, and it has
made you feel such a need more than ever. Give me your hand, dear Elsie,
and trust me that I will be as true a friend to you as if we were
children of the same mother."
Elsie gave him her hand mechanically. It seemed to him that a cold aura
shot from it along his arm and chilled the blood running through his
heart. He pressed it gently, looked at her with a face full of grave
kindness and sad interest, then softly relinquished it.
It was all over with poor Elsie. They walked almost in silence the rest
of the way. Mr. Bernard left her at the gate of the mansion-house, and
returned with sad forebodings. Elsie went at once to her own room, and
did not come from it at the usual hours. At last Old Sophy began to be
alarmed about her, went to her apartment, and, finding the door unlocked,
entered cautiously. She found Elsie lying on her bed, her brows strongly
contracted, her eyes dull, her whole look that of great suffering. Her
first thought was that she had been doing herself a harm by some deadly
means or other. But Elsie, saw her fear, and reassured her.
"No," she said, "there is nothing wrong, such as you are thinking of; I
am not dying. You may send for the Doctor; perhaps he can take the pain
from my head. That is all I want him to do. There is no use in the
pain, that I know of; if he can stop it, let him."
So they sent for the old Doctor. It was not long before the solid trot
of Caustic, the old bay horse, and the crashing of the gravel under the
wheels, gave notice that the physician was driving up the avenue.
The old Doctor was a model for visiting practitioners. He always came
into the sick-room with a quiet, cheerful look, as if he had a
consciousness that he was bringing some sure relief with him. The way a
patient snatches his first look at his doctor's face, to see whether he
is doomed, whether he is reprieved, whether he is unconditionally
pardoned, has really something terrible about it. It is only to be met
by an imperturbable mask of serenity, proof against anything and
everything in a patient's aspect. The physician whose face reflects his
patient's condition like a mirror may do well enough to examine people
for a life-insurance office, but does not belong to the sickroom. The
old Doctor did not keep people waiting in dread suspense, while he stayed
talking about the case,--the patient all the time thinking that he and
the friends are discussing some alarming symptom or formidable operation
which he himself is by-and-by--to hear of.
He was in Elsie's room almost before she knew he was in the house. He
came to her bedside in such a natural, quiet way, that it seemed as if he
were only a friend who had dropped in for a moment to say a pleasant
word. Yet he was very uneasy about Elsie until he had seen her; he never
knew what might happen to her or those about her, and came prepared for
the worst.
"Sick, my child?" he said, in a very soft, low voice.
Elsie nodded, without speaking.
The Doctor took her hand,--whether with professional views, or only in a
friendly way, it would have been hard to tell. So he sat a few minutes,
looking at her all the time with a kind of fatherly interest, but with it
all noting how she lay, how she breathed, her color, her expression, all
that teaches the practised eye so much without a single question being
asked. He saw she was in suffering, and said presently,
"You have pain somewhere; where is it?"
She put her hand to her head.
As she was not disposed to talk, he watched her for a while, questioned
Old Sophy shrewdly a few minutes, and so made up his mind as to the
probable cause of disturbance and the proper remedies to be used.
Some very silly people thought the old Doctor did not believe in
medicine, because he gave less than certain poor half-taught creatures in
the smaller neighboring towns, who took advantage of people's sickness to
disgust and disturb them with all manner of ill-smelling and ill-behaving
drugs. In truth, he hated to give anything noxious or loathsome to those
who were uncomfortable enough already, unless he was very sure it would
do good,--in which case, he never played with drugs, but gave good,
honest, efficient doses. Sometimes he lost a family of the more boorish
sort, because they did not think they got their money's worth out of him,
unless they had something more than a taste of everything he carried in
his saddlebags.
He ordered some remedies which he thought would relieve Elsie, and left
her, saying he would call the next day, hoping to find her better. But
the next day came, and the next, and still Elsie was on her bed,
feverish, restless, wakeful, silent. At night she tossed about and
wandered, and it became at length apparent that there was a settled
attack, something like what they called, formerly, a "nervous fever."
On the fourth day she was more restless than common. One of the women of
the house came in to help to take care of her; but she showed an aversion
to her presence.
"Send me Helen Darley," she said, at last.
The old Doctor told them, that, if possible, they must indulge this fancy
of hers. The caprices of sick people were never to be despised, least of
all of such persons as Elsie, when rendered irritable and exacting by
pain and weakness.
So a message was sent to Mr. Silas Peckham at the Apollinean Institute,
to know if he could not spare Miss Helen Darley for a few days, if
required, to give her attention to a young lady who attended his school
and who was now lying ill,--no other person than the daughter of Dudley
Venner.
A mean man never agrees to anything without deliberately turning it over,
so that he may see its dirty side, and, if he can, sweating the coin he
pays for it. If an archangel should offer to save his soul for sixpence,
he would try to find a sixpence with a hole in it. A gentleman says yes
to a great many things without stopping to think: a shabby fellow is
known by his caution in answering questions, for fear of, compromising
his pocket or himself.
Mr. Silas Peckham looked very grave at the request. The dooties of Miss
Darley at the Institoot were important, very important. He paid her
large sums of money for her time,--more than she could expect to get in
any other institootion for the edoocation of female youth. A deduction
from her selary would be necessary, in case she should retire from the
sphere of her dooties for a season. He should be put to extry expense,
and have to perform additional labors himself. He would consider of the
matter. If any arrangement could be made, he would send word to Squire
Venner's folks.
"Miss Darley," said Silas Peckham, "the' 's a message from Squire
Venner's that his daughter wants you down at the mansion-house to see
her. She's got a fever, so they inform me. If it's any kind of ketchin'
fever, of course you won't think of goin' near the mansion-house. If
Doctor Kittredge says it's safe, perfec'ly safe, I can't object to your
goin', on sech conditions as seem to be fair to all' concerned. You will
give up your pay for the whole time you are absent,--portions of days to
be caounted as whole days. You will be charged with board the same as if
you eat your victuals with the household. The victuals are of no use
after they're cooked but to be eat, and your bein' away is no savin' to
our folks. I shall charge you a reasonable compensation for the demage
to the school by the absence of a teacher. If Miss Crabs undertakes any
dooties belongin' to your department of instruction, she will look to you
for sech pecooniary considerations as you may agree upon between you. On
these conditions I am willin' to give my consent to your temporary
absence from the post of dooty. I will step down to Doctor Kittredge's
myself, and make inquiries as to the natur' of the complaint."
Mr. Peckham took up a rusty and very narrow-brimmed hat, which he cocked
upon one side of his head, with an air peculiar to the rural gentry. It
was the hour when the Doctor expected to be in his office, unless he had
some special call which kept him from home.
He found the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather just taking leave of the
Doctor. His hand was on the pit of his stomach, and his countenance was
expressive of inward uneasiness.
"Shake it before using," said the Doctor; "and the sooner you make up
your mind to speak right out, the better it will be for your digestion."
"Oh, Mr. Peckham! Walk in, Mr. Peckham! Nobody sick up at the school, I
hope?"
"The haalth of the school is fust-rate," replied Mr. Peckham. "The
sitooation is uncommonly favorable to saloobrity." (These last words
were from the Annual Report of the past year.) "Providence has spared our
female youth in a remarkable measure. I've come with reference to
another consideration. Dr. Kittredge, is there any ketchin' complaint
goin' about in the village?"
"Well, yes," said the Doctor, "I should say there was something of that
sort. Measles. Mumps. And Sin,--that's always catching."
The old Doctor's eye twinkled; once in a while he had his little touch of
humor.
Silas Peckham slanted his eye up suspiciously at the Doctor, as if he was
getting some kind of advantage over him. That is the way people of his
constitution are apt to take a bit of pleasantry.
"I don't mean sech things, Doctor; I mean fevers. Is there any ketchin'
fevers--bilious, or nervous, or typus, or whatever you call 'em--now
goin' round this village? That's what I want to ascertain, if there's no
impropriety."
The old Doctor looked at Silas through his spectacles.
"Hard and sour as a green cider-apple," he thought to himself. "No,"; he
said,--"I don't know any such cases."
"What's the matter with Elsie Venner?" asked Silas, sharply, as if he
expected to have him this time.
"A mild feverish attack, I should call it in anybody else; but she has a
peculiar constitution, and I never feel so safe about her as I should
about most people."
"Anything ketchin' about it?" Silas asked, cunningly.
"No, indeed!" said the Doctor,--"catching? no,--what put that into your
head, Mr. Peckham?"
"Well, Doctor," the conscientious Principal answered, "I naterally feel a
graat responsibility, a very graaat responsibility, for the noomerous and
lovely young ladies committed to my charge. It has been a question,
whether one of my assistants should go, accordin' to request, to stop
with Miss Venner for a season. Nothin' restrains my givin' my full and
free consent to her goin' but the fear lest contagious maladies should be
introdooced among those lovely female youth. I shall abide by your
opinion,--I understan' you to say distinc'ly, her complaint is not
ketchin'?--and urge upon Miss Darley to fulfil her dooties to a
sufferin' fellow-creature at any cost to myself and my establishment. We
shall miss her very much; but it is a good cause, and she shall go,--and
I shall trust that Providence will enable us to spare her without
permanent demage to the interests of the Institootion."
Saying this, the excellent Principal departed, with his rusty
narrow-brimmed hat leaning over, as if it had a six-knot breeze abeam,
and its gunwale (so to speak) was dipping into his coat-collar. He
announced the result of his inquiries to Helen, who had received a brief
note in the mean time from a poor relation of Elsie's mother, then at the
mansion-house, informing her of the critical situation of Elsie and of
her urgent desire that Helen should be with her. She could not hesitate.
She blushed as she thought of the comments that might be made; but what
were such considerations in a matter of life and death? She could not
stop to make terms with Silas Peckham. She must go. He might fleece
her, if he would; she would not complain,--not even to Bernard, who, she
knew, would bring the Principal to terms, if she gave the least hint of
his intended extortions.
So Helen made up her bundle of clothes to be sent after her, took a book
or two with her to help her pass the time, and departed for the Dudley
mansion. It was with a great inward effort that she undertook the
sisterly task which was thus forced upon her. She had a kind of terror
of Elsie; and the thought of having charge of her, of being alone with
her, of coming under the full influence of those diamond eyes,--if,
indeed, their light were not dimmed by suffering and weariness,--was one
she shrank from. But what could she do? It might be a turning-point in
the life of the poor girl; and she must overcome all her fears, all her
repugnance, and go to her rescue.
"Is Helen come?" said Elsie, when she heard, with her fine sense
quickened by the irritability of sickness, a light footfall on the stair,
with a cadence unlike that of any inmate of the house.
"It's a strange woman's step," said Old Sophy, who, with her exclusive
love for Elsie, was naturally disposed to jealousy of a new-comer. "Let
Ol' Sophy set at 'th' foot o' th' bed, if th' young missis sets by th'
piller,--won' y', darlin'? The' 's nobody that's white can love y' as
th' of black woman does;--don' sen' her away, now, there 's a dear soul!"
Elsie motioned her to sit in the place she had pointed to, and Helen at
that moment entered the room. Dudley Venner followed her.
"She is your patient," he said, "except while the Doctor is here. She has
been longing to have you with her, and we shall expect you to make her
well in a few days."
So Helen Darley found herself established in the most unexpected manner
as an inmate of the Dudley mansion. She sat with Elsie most of the time,
by day and by night, soothing her, and trying to enter into her
confidence and affections, if it should prove that this strange creature
was really capable of truly sympathetic emotions.
What was this unexplained something which came between her soul and that
of every other human being with whom she was in relations? Helen
perceived, or rather felt, that she had, folded up in the depths of her
being, a true womanly nature. Through the cloud that darkened her
aspect, now and then a ray would steal forth, which, like the smile of
stern and solemn people, was all the more impressive from its contrast
with the expression she wore habitually. It might well be that pain and
fatigue had changed her aspect; but, at any rate, Helen looked into her
eyes without that nervous agitation which their cold glitter had produced
on her when they were full of their natural light. She felt sure that
her mother must have been a lovely, gentle woman. There were gleams of a
beautiful nature shining through some ill-defined medium which disturbed
and made them flicker and waver, as distant images do when seen through
the rippling upward currents of heated air. She loved, in her own way,
the old black woman, and seemed to keep up a kind of silent communication
with her, as if they did not require the use of speech. She appeared to
be tranquillized by the presence of Helen, and loved to have her seated
at the bedside. Yet something, whatever it was, prevented her from
opening her heart to her kind companion; and even now there were times
when she would lie looking at her, with such a still, watchful, almost
dangerous expression, that Helen would sigh, and change her place, as
persons do whose breath some cunning orator had been sucking out of them
with his spongy eloquence, so that, when he stops, they must get some air
and stir about, or they feel as if they should be half smothered and
palsied.
It was too much to keep guessing what was the meaning of all this. Helen
determined to ask Old Sophy some questions which might probably throw
light upon her doubts. She took the opportunity one evening when Elsie
was lying asleep and they were both sitting at some distance from her
bed.
"Tell me, Sophy," she said, "was Elsie always as shy as she seems to be
now, in talking with those to whom she is friendly?"
"Alway jes' so, Miss Darlin', ever sense she was little chil'. When she
was five, six year old, she lisp some,--call me Thophy; that make her
kin' o' 'shamed, perhaps: after she grow up, she never lisp, but she kin'
o' got the way o' not talkin' much. Fac' is, she don' like talkin' as
common gals do, 'xcep' jes' once in a while wi' some partic'lar
folks,--'n' then not much."
"How old is Elsie?"
"Eighteen year this las' September."
"How long ago did her mother die?" Helen asked, with a little trembling
in her voice.
"Eighteen year ago this October," said Old Sophy.
Helen was silent for a moment. Then she whispered, almost
inaudibly,--for her voice appeared to fail her,
"What did her mother die of, Sophy?"
The old woman's small eyes dilated until a ring of white showed round
their beady centres. She caught Helen by the hand and clung to it, as if
in fear. She looked round at Elsie, who lay sleeping, as of she might be
listening. Then she drew Helen towards her and led her softly out of the
room.
"'Sh!--'sh!" she said, as soon as they were outside the door. "Don'
never speak in this house 'bout what Elsie's mother died of!" she said.
"Nobody never says nothin' 'bout it. Oh, God has made Ugly Things wi'
death in their mouths, Miss Darlin', an' He knows what they're for; but
my poor Elsie!--to have her blood changed in her before--It was in July
Mistress got her death, but she liv' till three week after my poor Elsie
was born."
She could speak no more. She had said enough. Helen remembered the
stories she had heard on coming to the village, and among them one
referred to in an early chapter of this narrative. All the unaccountable
looks and tastes and ways of Elsie came back to her in the light of an
ante-natal impression which had mingled an alien element in her nature.
She knew the secret of the fascination which looked out of her cold,
glittering eyes. She knew the significance of the strange repulsion
which she felt in her own intimate consciousness underlying the
inexplicable attraction which drew her towards the young girl in spite of
this repugnance. She began to look with new feelings on the
contradictions in her moral nature,--the longing for sympathy, as shown
by her wishing for Helen's company, and the impossibility of passing
beyond the cold circle of isolation within which she had her being. The
fearful truth of that instinctive feeling of hers, that there was
something not human looking out of Elsie's eyes, came upon her with a
sudden flash of penetrating conviction. There were two warring
principles in that superb organization and proud soul. One made her a
woman, with all a woman's powers and longings. The other chilled all the
currents of outlet for her emotions. It made her tearless and mute, when
another woman would have wept and pleaded. And it infused into her soul
something--it was cruel now to call it malice--which was still and
watchful and dangerous, which waited its opportunity, and then shot like
an arrow from its bow out of the coil of brooding premeditation. Even
those who had never seen the white scars on Dick Venner's wrist, or heard
the half-told story of her supposed attempt to do a graver mischief, knew
well enough by looking at her that she was one of the creatures not to be
tampered with,--silent in anger and swift in vengeance.
Helen could not return to the bedside at once after this communication.
It was with altered eyes that she must look on the poor girl, the victim
of such an unheard-of fatality. All was explained to her now. But it
opened such depths of solemn thought in her awakened consciousness, that
it seemed as if the whole mystery of human life were coming up again
before her for trial and judgment. "Oh," she thought, "if, while the will
lies sealed in its fountain, it may be poisoned at its very source, so
that it shall flow dark and deadly through its whole course, who are we
that we should judge our fellow-creatures by ourselves?" Then came the
terrible question, how far the elements themselves are capable of
perverting the moral nature: if valor, and justice, and truth, the
strength of man and the virtue of woman, may not be poisoned out of a
race by the food of the Australian in his forest, by the foul air and
darkness of the Christians cooped up in the "tenement-houses" close by
those who live in the palaces of the great cities?
She walked out into the garden, lost in thought upon these dark and deep
matters. Presently she heard a step behind her, and Elsie's father came
up and joined her. Since his introduction to Helen at the distinguished
tea-party given by the Widow Rowens, and before her coming to sit with
Elsie, Mr. Dudley Venner had in the most accidental way in the world met
her on several occasions: once after church, when she happened to be
caught in a slight shower and he insisted on holding his umbrella over
her on her way home;--once at a small party at one of the mansion-houses,
where the quick-eyed lady of the house had a wonderful knack of bringing
people together who liked to see each other;--perhaps at other times and
places; but of this there is no certain evidence.
They naturally spoke of Elsie, her illness, and the aspect it had taken.
But Helen noticed in all that Dudley Venner said about his daughter a
morbid sensitiveness, as it seemed to her, an aversion to saying much
about her physical condition or her peculiarities,--a wish to feel and
speak as a parent should, and yet a shrinking, as if there were something
about Elsie which he could not bear to dwell upon. She thought she saw
through all this, and she could interpret it all charitably. There were
circumstances about his daughter which recalled the great sorrow of his
life; it was not strange that this perpetual reminder should in some
degree have modified his feelings as a father. But what a life he must
have been leading for so many years, with this perpetual source of
distress which he could not name! Helen knew well enough, now, the
meaning of the sadness which had left such traces in his features and
tones, and it made her feel very kindly and compassionate towards him.
So they walked over the crackling leaves in the garden, between the lines
of box breathing its fragrance of eternity;--for this is one of the odors
which carry us out of time into the abysses of the unbeginning past; if
we ever lived on another ball of stone than this, it must be that there
was box growing on it. So they walked, finding their way softly to each
other's sorrows and sympathies, each matching some counterpart to the
other's experience of life, and startled to see how the different, yet
parallel, lessons they had been taught by suffering had led them step by
step to the same serene acquiescence in the orderings of that Supreme
Wisdom which they both devoutly recognized.
Old Sophy was at the window and saw them walking up and down the
garden-alleys. She watched them as her grandfather the savage watched
the figures that moved among the trees when a hostile tribe was lurking
about his mountain.
"There'll be a weddin' in the ol house," she said, "before there's roses
on them bushes ag'in. But it won' be my poor Elsie's weddin', 'n' ol'
Sophy won' be there."
When Helen prayed in the silence of her soul that evening, it was not
that Elsie's life might be spared. She dared not ask that as a favor of
Heaven. What could life be to her but a perpetual anguish, and to those
about her but an ever-present terror? Might she but be so influenced by
divine grace, that what in her was most truly human, most purely
woman-like, should overcome the dark, cold, unmentionable instinct which
had pervaded her being like a subtile poison that was all she could ask,
and the rest she left to a higher wisdom and tenderer love than her own.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE WHITE ASH.
When Helen returned to Elsie's bedside, it was with a new and still
deeper feeling of sympathy, such as the story told by Old Sophy might
well awaken. She understood, as never before, the singular fascination
and as singular repulsion which she had long felt in Elsie's presence.
It had not been without a great effort that she had forced herself to
become the almost constant attendant of the sick girl; and now she was
learning, but not for the first time, the blessed truth which so many
good women have found out for themselves, that the hardest duty bravely
performed soon becomes a habit, and tends in due time to transform itself
into a pleasure.
The old Doctor was beginning to look graver, in spite of himself. The
fever, if such it was, went gently forward, wasting the young girl's
powers of resistance from day to day; yet she showed no disposition to
take nourishment, and seemed literally to be living on air. It was
remarkable that with all this her look was almost natural, and her
features were hardly sharpened so as to suggest that her life was burning
away. He did not like this, nor various other unobtrusive signs of
danger which his practised eye detected. A very small matter might turn
the balance which held life and death poised against each other. He
surrounded her with precautions, that Nature might have every opportunity
of cunningly shifting the weights from the scale of death to the scale of
life, as she will often do if not rudely disturbed or interfered with.
Little tokens of good-will and kind remembrance were constantly coming to
her from the girls in the school and the good people in the village. Some
of the mansion-house people obtained rare flowers which they sent her,
and her table was covered with fruits which tempted her in vain. Several
of the school-girls wished to make her a basket of their own handiwork,
and, filling it with autumnal flowers, to send it as a joint offering.
Mr. Bernard found out their project accidentally, and, wishing to have
his share in it, brought home from one of his long walks some boughs full
of variously tinted leaves, such as were still clinging to the stricken
trees. With these he brought also some of the already fallen leaflets of
the white ash, remarkable for their rich olive-purple color, forming a
beautiful contrast with some of the lighter-hued leaves. It so happened
that this particular tree, the white ash, did not grow upon The Mountain,
and the leaflets were more welcome for their comparative rarity. So the
girls made their basket, and the floor of it they covered with the rich
olive-purple leaflets. Such late flowers as they could lay their hands
upon served to fill it, and with many kindly messages they sent it to
Miss Elsie Venner at the Dudley mansion-house.
Elsie was sitting up in her bed when it came, languid, but tranquil, and
Helen was by her, as usual, holding her hand, which was strangely cold,
Helen thought, for one who was said to have some kind of fever. The
school-girls' basket was brought in with its messages of love and hopes
for speedy recovery. Old Sophy was delighted to see that it pleased
Elsie, and laid it on the bed before her. Elsie began looking at the
flowers, and taking them from the basket, that she might see the leaves.
All at once she appeared to be agitated; she looked at the basket, then
around, as if there were some fearful presence about her which she was
searching for with her eager glances. She took out the flowers, one by
one, her breathing growing hurried, her eyes staring, her hands
trembling,--till, as she came near the bottom of the basket, she flung
out all the rest with a hasty movement, looked upon the olive-purple
leaflets as if paralyzed for a moment, shrunk up, as it were, into
herself in a curdling terror, dashed the basket from her, and fell back
senseless, with a faint cry which chilled the blood of the startled
listeners at her bedside.
"Take it away!--take it away!--quick!" said Old Sophy, as she hastened
to her mistress's pillow. "It 's the leaves of the tree that was always
death to her,--take it away! She can't live wi' it in the room!"
The poor old woman began chafing Elsie's hands, and Helen to try to rouse
her with hartshorn, while a third frightened attendant gathered up the
flowers and the basket and carried them out of the apartment, She came to
herself after a time, but exhausted and then wandering. In her delirium
she talked constantly as if she were in a cave, with such exactness of
circumstance that Helen could not doubt at all that she had some such
retreat among the rocks of The Mountain, probably fitted up in her own
fantastic way, where she sometimes hid herself from all human eyes, and
of the entrance to which she alone possessed the secret.
All this passed away, and left her, of course, weaker than before. But
this was not the only influence the unexplained paroxysm had left behind
it. From this time forward there was a change in her whole expression
and her manner. The shadows ceased flitting over her features, and the
old woman, who watched her from day to day and from hour to hour as a
mother watches her child, saw the likeness she bore to her mother coming
forth more and more, as the cold glitter died out of the diamond eyes,
and the stormy scowl disappeared from the dark brows and low forehead.
With all the kindness and indulgence her father had bestowed upon her,
Elsie had never felt that he loved her. The reader knows well enough
what fatal recollections and associations had frozen up the springs of
natural affection in his breast. There was nothing in the world he would
not do for Elsie. He had sacrificed his whole life to her. His very
seeming carelessness about restraining her was all calculated; he knew
that restraint would produce nothing but utter alienation. Just so far
as she allowed him, he shared her studies, her few pleasures, her
thoughts; but she was essentially solitary and uncommunicative. No
person, as was said long ago, could judge him, because his task was not
merely difficult, but simply impracticable to human powers. A nature
like Elsie's had necessarily to be studied by itself, and to be followed
in its laws where it could not be led.
Every day, at different hours, during the whole of his daughter's
illness, Dudley Venner had sat by her, doing all he could to soothe and
please her. Always the same thin film of some emotional non-conductor
between them; always that kind of habitual regard and family-interest,
mingled with the deepest pity on one side and a sort of respect on the
other, which never warmed into outward evidences of affection.
It was after this occasion, when she had been so profoundly agitated by a
seemingly insignificant cause, that her father and Old Sophy were
sitting, one at one side of her bed and one at the other. She had fallen
into a light slumber. As they were looking at her, the same thought came
into both their minds at the same moment. Old Sophy spoke for both, as
she said, in a low voice,
"It 's her mother's look,--it 's her mother's own face right over
again,--she never look' so before, the Lord's hand is on her! His will
be done!"
When Elsie woke and lifted her languid eyes upon her father's face, she
saw in it a tenderness, a depth of affection, such as she remembered at
rare moments of her childhood, when she had won him to her by some
unusual gleam of sunshine in her fitful temper.
"Elsie, dear," he said, "we were thinking how much your expression was
sometimes like that of your sweet mother. If you could but have seen
her, so as to remember her!"
The tender look and tone, the yearning of the daughter's heart for the
mother she had never seen, save only with the unfixed, undistinguishing
eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps the under-thought that she might soon
rejoin her in another state of being,--all came upon her with a sudden
overflow of feeling which broke through all the barriers between her
heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept. It seemed to her father as if the
malign influence--evil spirit it might almost be called--which had
pervaded her being, had at last been driven forth or exorcised, and that
these tears were at once the sign and the pledge of her redeemed nature.
But now she was to be soothed, and not excited. After her tears she
slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as never before.
Old Sophy met the Doctor at the door and told him all the circumstances
connected with the extraordinary attack from which Elsie had suffered.
It was the purple leaves, she said. She remembered that Dick once
brought home a branch of a tree with some of the same leaves on it, and
Elsie screamed and almost fainted then. She, Sophy, had asked her, after
she had got quiet, what it was in the leaves that made her feel so bad.
Elsie could n't tell her,--did n't like to speak about it,--shuddered
whenever Sophy mentioned it.
This did not sound so strangely to the old Doctor as it does to some who
listen to his narrative. He had known some curious examples of
antipathies, and remembered reading of others still more singular. He had
known those who could not bear the presence of a cat, and recollected the
story, often told, of a person's hiding one in a chest when one of these
sensitive individuals came into the room, so as not to disturb him; but
he presently began to sweat and turn pale, and cried out that there must
be a cat hid somewhere. He knew people who were poisoned by
strawberries, by honey, by different meats, many who could not endure
cheese,--some who could not bear the smell of roses. If he had known all
the stories in the old books, he would have found that some have swooned
and become as dead men at the smell of a rose,--that a stout soldier has
been known to turn and run at the sight or smell of rue,--that cassia and
even olive-oil have produced deadly faintings in certain.
individuals,--in short, that almost everything has seemed to be a poison
to somebody.
"Bring me that basket, Sophy," said the old Doctor, "if you can find it."
Sophy brought it to him,--for he had not yet entered Elsie's apartment.
"These purple leaves are from the white ash," he said. "You don't know
the notion that people commonly have about that tree, Sophy?"
"I know they say the Ugly Things never go where the white ash grows,"
Sophy answered. "Oh, Doctor dear, what I'm thinkin' of a'n't true, is
it?"
The Doctor smiled sadly, but did not answer. He went directly to Elsie's
room. Nobody would have known by his manner that he saw any special
change in his patient. He spoke with her as usual, made some slight
alteration in his prescriptions, and left the room with a kind, cheerful
look. He met her father on the stairs.
"Is it as I thought?" said Dudley Veneer.
"There is everything to fear," the Doctor said, "and not much, I am
afraid, to hope. Does not her face recall to you one that you remember,
as never before?"
"Yes," her father answered,--"oh, yes! What is the meaning of this
change which has come over her features, and her voice, her temper, her
whole being? Tell me, oh, tell me, what is it? Can it be that the curse
is passing away, and my daughter is to be restored to me,--such as her
mother would have had her,--such as her mother was?"
"Walk out with me into the garden," the Doctor said, "and I will tell you
all I know and all I think about this great mystery of Elsie's life."
They walked out together, and the Doctor began: "She has lived a double
being, as it were,--the consequence of the blight which fell upon her in
the dim period before consciousness. You can see what she might have
been but for this. You know that for these eighteen years her whole
existence has taken its character from that influence which we need not
name. But you will remember that few of the lower forms of life last as
human beings do; and thus it might have been hoped and trusted with some
show of reason, as I have always suspected you hoped and trusted, perhaps
more confidently than myself, that the lower nature which had become
engrafted on the higher would die out and leave the real woman's life she
inherited to outlive this accidental principle which had so poisoned her
childhood and youth. I believe it is so dying out; but I am
afraid,--yes, I must say it, I fear it has involved the centres of life
in its own decay. There is hardly any pulse at Elsie's wrist; no
stimulants seem to rouse her; and it looks as if life were slowly
retreating inwards, so that by-and-by she will sleep as those who lie
down in the cold and never wake."
Strange as it may seem, her father heard all this not without deep
sorrow, and such marks of it as his thoughtful and tranquil nature, long
schooled by suffering, claimed or permitted, but with a resignation
itself the measure of his past trials. Dear as his daughter might become
to him, all he dared to ask of Heaven was that she might be restored to
that truer self which lay beneath her false and adventitious being. If
he could once see that the icy lustre in her eyes had become a soft, calm
light,--that her soul was at peace with all about her and with Him;
above,--this crumb from the children's table was enough for him, as it
was for the Syro-Phoenician woman who asked that the dark spirit might go
out from her daughter.
There was little change the next day, until all at once she said in a
clear voice that she should like to see her master at the school, Mr.
Langdon. He came accordingly, and took the place of Helen at her
bedside. It seemed as if Elsie had forgotten the last scene with him.
Might it be that pride had come in, and she had sent for him only to show
how superior she had grown to the weakness which had betrayed her into
that extraordinary request, so contrary to the instincts and usages of
her sex? Or was it that the singular change which had come over her had
involved her passionate fancy for him and swept it away with her other
habits of thought and feeling? Or could it be that she felt that all
earthly interests were becoming of little account to her, and wished to
place herself right with one to whom she had displayed a wayward movement
of her unbalanced imagination? She welcomed Mr. Bernard as quietly as
she had received Helen Darley. He colored at the recollection of that
last scene, when he came into her presence; but she smiled with perfect
tranquillity. She did not speak to him of any apprehension; but he saw
that she looked upon herself as doomed. So friendly, yet so calm did she
seem through all their interview, that Mr. Bernard could only look back
upon her manifestation of feeling towards him on their walk from the
school as a vagary of a mind laboring under some unnatural excitement,
and wholly at variance with the true character of Elsie Venner as he saw
her before him in her subdued, yet singular beauty. He looked with almost
scientific closeness of observation into the diamond eyes; but that
peculiar light which he knew so well was not there. She was the same in
one sense as on that first day when he had seen her coiling and uncoiling
her golden chain; yet how different in every aspect which revealed her
state of mind and emotion! Something of tenderness there was, perhaps,
in her tone towards him; she would not have sent for him, had she not
felt more than an ordinary interest in him. But through the whole of his
visit she never lost her gracious self-possession. The Dudley race might
well be proud of the last of its daughters, as she lay dying, but
unconquered by the feeling of the present or the fear of the future.
As for Mr. Bernard, he found it very hard to look upon her, and listen to
her unmoved. There was nothing that reminded him of the stormy--browed,
almost savage girl he remembered in her fierce loveliness,--nothing of
all her singularities of air and of costume. Nothing? Yes, one thing.
Weak and suffering as she was, she had never parted with one particular
ornament, such as a sick person would naturally, as it might be supposed,
get rid of at once. The golden cord which she wore round her neck at the
great party was still there. A bracelet was lying by her pillow; she had
unclasped it from her wrist.
Before Mr. Bernard left her, she said,
"I shall never see you again. Some time or other, perhaps, you will
mention my name to one whom you love. Give her this from your scholar
and friend Elsie."
He took the bracelet, raised her hand to his lips, then turned his face
away; in that moment he was the weaker of the two.
"Good-bye," she said; "thank you for coming."
His voice died away in his throat, as he tried to answer her. She
followed him with her eyes as he passed from her sight through the door,
and when it closed after him sobbed tremulously once or twice, but
stilled herself, and met Helen, as she entered, with a composed
countenance.
"I have had a very pleasant visit from Mr. Langdon," Elsie said. "Sit by
me, Helen, awhile without speaking; I should like to sleep, if I
can,--and to dream."
CHAPTER XXX.
THE GOLDEN CORD IS LOOSED.
The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather, hearing that his parishioner's
daughter, Elsie, was very ill, could do nothing less than come to the
mansion-house and tender such consolations as he was master of. It was
rather remarkable that the old Doctor did not exactly approve of his
visit. He thought that company of every sort might be injurious in her
weak state. He was of opinion that Mr. Fairweather, though greatly
interested in religious matters, was not the most sympathetic person that
could be found; in fact, the old Doctor thought he was too much taken up
with his own interests for eternity to give himself quite 'so heartily to
the need of other people as some persons got up on a rather more generous
scale (our good neighbor Dr. Honeywood, for instance) could do. However,
all these things had better be arranged to suit her wants; if she would
like to talk with a clergyman, she had a great deal better see one as
often as she liked, and run the risk of the excitement, than have a
hidden wish for such a visit and perhaps find herself too weak to see him
by-and-by.
The old Doctor knew by sad experience that dreadful mistake against which
all medical practitioners should be warned. His experience may well be a
guide for others. Do not overlook the desire for spiritual advice and
consolation which patients sometimes feel, and, with the frightful
mauvaise honte peculiar to Protestantism, alone among all human beliefs,
are ashamed to tell. As a part of medical treatment, it is the
physician's business to detect the hidden longing for the food of the
soul, as much as for any form of bodily nourishment. Especially in the
higher walks of society, where this unutterably miserable false shame of
Protestantism acts in proportion to the general acuteness of the
cultivated sensibilities, let no unwillingness to suggest the sick
person's real need suffer him to languish between his want and his morbid
sensitiveness. What an infinite advantage the Mussulmans and the
Catholics have over many of our more exclusively spiritual sects in the
way they keep their religion always by them and never blush for it! And
besides this spiritual longing, we should never forget that
"On some fond breast the parting soul relies,"
and the minister of religion, in addition to the sympathetic nature which
we have a right to demand in him, has trained himself to the art of
entering into the feelings of others.
The reader must pardon this digression, which introduces the visit of the
Reverend Chauncy Fairweather to Elsie Veneer. It was mentioned to her
that he would like to call and see how she was, and she consented,--not
with much apparent interest, for she had reasons of her own for not
feeling any very deep conviction of his sympathy for persons in sorrow.
But he came, and worked the conversation round to religion, and confused
her with his hybrid notions, half made up of what he had been believing
and teaching all his life, and half of the new doctrines which he had
veneered upon the surface of his old belief. He got so far as to make a
prayer with her,--a cool, well-guarded prayer, which compromised his
faith as little as possible, and which, if devotion were a game played
against Providence, might have been considered a cautious and sagacious
move.
When he had gone, Elsie called Old Sophy to her.
"Sophy," she said, "don't let them send that cold hearted man to me any
more. If your old minister comes--to see you, I should like to hear him
talk. He looks as if he cared for everybody, and would care for me.
And, Sophy, if I should die one of these days, I should like to have that
old minister come and say whatever is to be said over me. It would
comfort Dudley more, I know, than to have that hard man here, when you're
in trouble, for some of you will be sorry when I'm gone,--won't you,
Sophy?"
The poor old black woman could not stand this question. The cold
minister had frozen Elsie until she felt as if nobody cared for her or
would regret her,--and her question had betrayed this momentary feeling.
"Don' talk so! don' talk so, darlin'!" she cried, passionately. "When you
go, Ol' Sophy'll go; 'n' where you go, Ol' Sophy'll go: 'n' we'll both go
t' th' place where th' Lord takes care of all his children, whether their
faces are white or black. Oh, darlin', darlin'! if th' Lord should let
me die firs', you shall fin' all ready for you when you come after me.
On'y don' go 'n' leave poor Ol' Sophy all 'lone in th' world!"
Helen came in at this moment and quieted the old woman with a look. Such
scenes were just what were most dangerous, in the state in which Elsie
was lying: but that is one of the ways in which an affectionate friend
sometimes unconsciously wears out the life which a hired nurse, thinking
of nothing but her regular duties and her wages, would have spared from
all emotional fatigue.
The change which had come over Elsie's disposition was itself the cause
of new excitements. How was it possible that her father could keep away
from her, now that she was coming back to the nature and the very look of
her mother, the bride of his youth? How was it possible to refuse her,
when she said to Old Sophy, that she should like to have her minister
come in and sit by her, even though his presence might perhaps prove a
new source of excitement?
But the Reverend Doctor did come and sit by her, and spoke such soothing
words to her, words of such peace and consolation, that from that hour
she was tranquil as never before. All true hearts are alike in the hour
of need; the Catholic has a reserved fund of faith for his
fellow-creature's trying moment, and the Calvinist reveals those springs
of human brotherhood and charity in his soul which are only covered over
by the iron tables inscribed with the harder dogmas of his creed. It was
enough that the Reverend Doctor knew all Elsie's history. He could not
judge her by any formula, like those which have been moulded by past ages
out of their ignorance. He did not talk with her as if she were an
outside sinner worse than himself. He found a bruised and languishing
soul, and bound up its wounds. A blessed office,--one which is confined
to no sect or creed, but which good men in all times, under various names
and with varying ministries, to suit the need of each age, of each race,
of each individual soul, have come forward to discharge for their
suffering fellow-creatures.
After this there was little change in Elsie, except that her heart beat
more feebly every day,--so that the old Doctor himself, with all his
experience, could see nothing to account for the gradual failing of the
powers of life, and yet could find no remedy which seemed to arrest its
progress in the smallest degree.
"Be very careful," he said, "that she is not allowed to make any muscular
exertion. Any such effort, when a person is so enfeebled, may stop the
heart in a moment; and if it stops, it will never move again."
Helen enforced this rule with the greatest care. Elsie was hardly
allowed to move her hand or to speak above a whisper. It seemed to be
mainly the question now, whether this trembling flame of life would be
blown out by some light breath of air, or whether it could be so nursed
and sheltered by the hollow of these watchful hands that it would have a
chance to kindle to its natural brightness.
--Her father came in to sit with her in the evening. He had never talked
so freely with her as during the hour he had passed at her bedside,
telling her little circumstances of her mother's life, living over with
her all that was pleasant in the past, and trying to encourage her with
some cheerful gleams of hope for the future. A faint smile played over
her face, but she did not answer his encouraging suggestions. The hour
came for him to leave her with those who watched by her.
"Good-night, my dear child," he said, and stooping down, kissed her
cheek.
Elsie rose by a sudden effort, threw her arms round his neck, kissed him,
and said, "Good-night, my dear father!"
The suddenness of her movement had taken him by surprise, or he would
have checked so dangerous an effort. It was too late now. Her arms slid
away from him like lifeless weights,--her head fell back upon her
pillow,--along sigh breathed through her lips.
"She is faint," said Helen, doubtfully; "bring me the hartshorn, Sophy."
The old woman had started from her place, and was now leaning over her,
looking in her face, and listening for the sound of her breathing.
"She 's dead! Elsie 's dead! My darlin 's dead!" she cried aloud,
filling the room with her utterance of anguish.
Dudley Venner drew her away and silenced her with a voice of authority,
while Helen and an assistant plied their restoratives. It was all in
vain.
The solemn tidings passed from the chamber of death through the family.
The daughter, the hope of that old and honored house, was dead in the
freshness of her youth, and the home of its solitary representative was
hereafter doubly desolate.
A messenger rode hastily out of the avenue. A little after this the
people of the village and the outlying farm-houses were startled by the
sound of a bell.
One,--two,--three,--four,
They stopped in every house, as far as the wavering vibrations reached,
and listened--
five,--six,--seven,--
It was not the little child which had been lying so long at the point of
death; that could not be more than three or four years old--
eight,--nine,--ten,--and so on to fifteen, sixteen,--seventeen,
--eighteen--
The pulsations seemed to keep on,--but it was the brain, and not the
bell, that was throbbing now.
"Elsie 's dead!" was the exclamation at a hundred firesides.
"Eighteen year old," said old Widow Peake, rising from her chair.
"Eighteen year ago I laid two gold eagles on her mother's eyes,--he
wouldn't have anything but gold touch her eyelids,--and now Elsie's to be
straightened,--the Lord have mercy on her poor sinful soul!"
Dudley Venner prayed that night that he might be forgiven, if he had
failed in any act of duty or kindness to this unfortunate child of his,
now freed from all the woes born with her and so long poisoning her soul.
He thanked God for the brief interval of peace which had been granted
her, for the sweet communion they had enjoyed in these last days, and for
the hope of meeting her with that other lost friend in a better world.
Helen mingled a few broken thanks and petitions with her tears: thanks
that she had been permitted to share the last days and hours of this poor
sister in sorrow; petitions that the grief of bereavement might be
lightened to the lonely parent and the faithful old servant.
Old Sophy said almost nothing, but sat day and night by her dead darling.
But sometimes her anguish would find an outlet in strange sounds,
something between a cry and a musical note,--such as noise had ever heard
her utter before. These were old remembrances surging up from her
childish days, coming through her mother from the cannibal chief, her
grandfather,--death-wails, such as they sing in the mountains of Western
Africa, when they see the fires on distant hill-sides and know that their
own wives and children are undergoing the fate of captives.
The time came when Elsie was to be laid by her mother in the small square
marked by the white stone.
It was not unwillingly that the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had
relinquished the duty of conducting the service to the Reverend Doctor
Honeywood, in accordance with Elsie's request. He could not, by any
reasoning, reconcile his present way of thinking with a hope for the
future of his unfortunate parishioner. Any good old Roman Catholic
priest, born and bred to his faith and his business, would have found a
loophole into some kind of heaven for her, by virtue of his doctrine of
"invincible ignorance," or other special proviso; but a recent convert
cannot enter into the working conditions of his new creed. Beliefs must
be lived in for a good while, before they accommodate themselves to the
soul's wants, and wear loose enough to be comfortable.
The Reverend Doctor had no such scruples. Like thousands of those who
are classed nominally with the despairing believers, he had never prayed
over a departed brother or sister without feeling and expressing a
guarded hope that there was mercy in store for the poor sinner, whom
parents, wives, children, brothers and sisters could not bear to give up
to utter ruin without a word,--and would not, as he knew full well, in
virtue of that human love and sympathy which nothing can ever extinguish.
And in this poor Elsie's history he could read nothing which the tears of
the recording angel might not wash away. As the good physician of the
place knew the diseases that assailed the bodies of men and women, so he
had learned the mysteries of the sickness of the soul.
So many wished to look upon Elsie's face once more, that her father would
not deny them; nay, he was pleased that those who remembered her living
should see her in the still beauty of death. Helen and those with her
arrayed her for this farewell-view. All was ready for the sad or curious
eyes which were to look upon her. There 'was no painful change to be
concealed by any artifice. Even her round neck was left uncovered, that
she might be more like one who slept. Only the golden cord was left in
its place: some searching eye might detect a trace of that birthmark
which it was whispered she had always worn a necklace to conceal.
At the last moment, when all the preparations were completed, Old Sophy
stooped over her, and, with trembling hand, loosed the golden cord. She
looked intently; for some little space: there was no shade nor blemish
where the ring of gold had encircled her throat. She took it gently away
and laid it in the casket which held her ornaments.
"The Lord be praised!" the old woman cried, aloud. "He has taken away
the mark that was on her; she's fit to meet his holy angels now!"
So Elsie lay for hours in the great room, in a kind of state, with
flowers all about her,--her black hair braided as in life,--her brows
smooth, as if they had never known the scowl of passion,--and on her lips
the faint smile with which she had uttered her last "Good--night." The
young girls from the school looked at her, one after another, and passed
on, sobbing, carrying in their hearts the picture that would be with them
all their days. The great people of the place were all there with their
silent sympathy. The lesser kind of gentry, and many of the plainer folk
of the village, half-pleased to find themselves passing beneath the
stately portico of the ancient mansion-house, crowded in, until the ample
rooms were overflowing. All the friends whose acquaintance we have made
were there, and many from remoter villages and towns.
There was a deep silence at last. The hour had come for the parting
words to be spoken over the dead. The good old minister's voice rose out
of the stillness, subdued and tremulous at first, but growing firmer and
clearer as he went on, until it reached the ears of the visitors who were
in the far, desolate chambers, looking at the pictured hangings and the
old dusty portraits. He did not tell her story in his prayer. He only
spoke of our dear departed sister as one of many whom Providence in its
wisdom has seen fit to bring under bondage from their cradles. It was
not for us to judge them by any standard of our own. He who made the
heart alone knew the infirmities it inherited or acquired. For all that
our dear sister had presented that was interesting and attractive in her
character we were to be grateful; for whatever was dark or inexplicable
we must trust that the deep shadow which rested on the twilight dawn of
her being might render a reason before the bar of Omniscience; for the
grace which had lightened her last days we should pour out our hearts in
thankful acknowledgment. From the life and the death of this our dear
sister we should learn a lesson of patience with our fellow-creatures in
their inborn peculiarities, of charity in judging what seem to us wilful
faults of character, of hope and trust, that, by sickness or affliction,
or such inevitable discipline as life must always bring with it, if by no
gentler means, the soul which had been left by Nature to wander into the
path of error and of suffering might be reclaimed and restored to its
true aim, and so led on by divine grace to its eternal welfare. He
closed his prayer by commending each member of the afflicted family to
the divine blessing.
Then all at once rose the clear sound of the girls' voices, in the sweet,
sad melody of a funeral hymn,--one of those which Elsie had marked, as if
prophetically, among her own favorites.
And so they laid her in the earth, and showered down flowers upon her,
and filled her grave, and covered it with green sods. By the side of it
was another oblong ridge, with a white stone standing at its head. Mr.
Bernard looked upon it, as he came close to the place where Elsie was
laid, and read the inscription,
CATALINA
WIFE TO DUDLEY VENNER
DIED
OCTOBER 13TH 1840
AGED XX YEARS
A gentle rain fell on the turf after it was laid. This was the beginning
of a long and dreary autumnal storm, a deferred "equinoctial," as many
considered it. The mountain streams were all swollen and turbulent, and
the steep declivities were furrowed in every direction by new channels.
It made the house seem doubly desolate to hear the wind howling and the
rain beating upon the roofs. The poor relation who was staying at the
house would insist on Helen's remaining a few days: Old Sophy was in such
a condition, that it kept her in continual anxiety, and there were many
cares which Helen could take off from her.
The old black woman's life was buried in her darling's grave. She did
nothing but moan and lament for her. At night she was restless, and
would get up and wander to Elsie's apartment and look for her and call
her by name. At other times she would lie awake and listen to the wind
and the rain,--sometimes with such a wild look upon her face, and with
such sudden starts and exclamations, that it seemed as if she heard
spirit-voices and were answering the whispers of unseen visitants. With
all this were mingled hints of her old superstition,--forebodings of
something fearful about to happen,--perhaps the great final catastrophe
of all things, according to the prediction current in the kitchens of
Rockland.
"Hark!" Old Sophy would say,--"don' you hear th' crackin' 'n' th'
snappin' up in Th' Mountain, 'n' th' rollin' o' th' big stones? The' 's
somethin' stirrin' among th' rocks; I hear th' soun' of it in th' night,
when th' wind has stopped blowin'. Oh, stay by me a little while, Miss
Darlin'! stay by me! for it's th' Las' Day, maybe, that's close on us,
'n' I feel as if I could n' meet th' Lord all alone!"
It was curious,--but Helen did certainly recognize sounds, during the
lull of the storm, which were not of falling rain or running
streams,--short snapping sounds, as of tense cords breaking,--long uneven
sounds, as of masses rolling down steep declivities. But the morning
came as usual; and as the others said nothing of these singular noises,
Helen did not think it necessary to speak of them. All day long she and
the humble relative of Elsie's mother, who had appeared as poor relations
are wont to in the great prises of life, were busy in arranging the
disordered house, and looking over the various objects which Elsie's
singular tastes had brought together, to dispose of them as her father
might direct. They all met together at the usual hour for tea. One of
the servants came in, looking very blank, and said to the poor relation,
"The well is gone dry; we have nothing but rainwater."
Dudley Venner's countenance changed; he sprang to, his feet and went
to--assure himself of the fact, and, if he could, of the reason of it.
For a well to dry up during such a rain-storm was extraordinary,--it was
ominous.
He came back, looking very anxious.
"Did any of you notice any remarkable sounds last night," he said,--"or
this morning? Hark! do you hear anything now?"
They listened in perfect silence for a few moments. Then there came a
short cracking sound, and two or three snaps, as of parting cords.
Dudley Venner called all his household together.
"We are in danger here, as I think, to-night," he said,--"not very great
danger, perhaps, but it is a risk I do not wish you to run. These heavy
rains have loosed some of the rocks above, and they may come down and
endanger the house. Harness the horses, Elbridge, and take all the
family away. Miss Darley will go to the Institute; the others will pass
the night at the Mountain House. I shall stay here, myself: it is not at
all likely that anything will come of these warnings; but if there
should, I choose to be there and take my chance."
It needs little, generally, to frighten servants, and they were all ready
enough to go. The poor relation was one of the timid sort, and was
terribly uneasy to be got out of the house. This left no alternative, of
course, for Helen, but to go also. They all urged upon Dudley Veneer to
go with them: if there was danger, why should he remain to risk it, when
he sent away the others?
Old Sophy said nothing until the time came for her to go with the second
of Elbridge's carriage-loads.
"Come, Sophy," said Dudley Veneer, "get your things and go. They will
take good care of you at the Mountain House; and when we have made sure
that there is no real danger, you shall come back at once."
"No, Masse!" Sophy answered. "I've seen Elsie into th' ground, 'n' I
a'n't goin' away to come back 'n' fin' Masse Veneer buried under th'
rocks. My darlin' 's gone; 'n' now, if Masse goes, 'n' th' of place
goes, it's time for Ol' Sophy to go, too. No, Masse Veneer, we'll both
stay in th' of mansion 'n' wait for th' Lord!"
Nothing could change the old woman's determination; and her master, who
only feared, but did not really expect the long-deferred catastrophe, was
obliged to consent to her staying. The sudden drying of the well at such
a time was the most alarming sign; for he remembered that the same thing
had been observed just before great mountain-slides. This long rain,
too, was just the kind of cause which was likely to loosen the strata of
rock piled up in the ledges; if the dreaded event should ever come to
pass, it would be at such a time.
He paced his chamber uneasily until long past midnight. If the morning
came without accident, he meant to have a careful examination made of all
the rents and fissures above, of their direction and extent, and
especially whether, in case of a mountain-slide, the huge masses would be
like to reach so far to the east and so low down the declivity as the
mansion.
At two o'clock in the morning he was dozing in his chair. Old Sophy had
lain down on her bed, and was muttering in troubled dreams.
All at once a loud crash seemed to rend the very heavens above them: a
crack as of the thunder that follows close upon the bolt,--a rending and
crashing as of a forest snapped through all its stems, torn, twisted,
splintered, dragged with all its ragged boughs into one chaotic ruin.
The ground trembled under them as in an earthquake; the old mansion
shuddered so that all its windows chattered in their casements; the great
chimney shook off its heavy cap-stones, which came down on the roof with
resounding concussions; and the echoes of The Mountain roared and
bellowed in long reduplication, as if its whole foundations were rent,
and this were the terrible voice of its dissolution.
Dudley Venner rose from his chair, folded his arms, and awaited his fate.
There was no knowing where to look for safety; and he remembered too well
the story of the family that was lost by rushing out of the house, and so
hurrying into the very jaws of death.
He had stood thus but for a moment, when he heard the voice of Old Sophy
in a wild cry of terror:
"It's th' Las' Day! It's th' Las' Day! The Lord is comin' to take us
all!"
"Sophy!" he called; but she did not hear him or heed him, and rushed out
of the house.
The worst danger was over. If they were to be destroyed, it would
necessarily be in a few seconds from the first thrill of the terrible
convulsion. He waited in awful suspense, but calm. Not more than one or
two minutes could have passed before the frightful tumult and all its
sounding echoes had ceased. He called Old Sophy; but she did not answer.
He went to the western window and looked forth into the darkness. He
could not distinguish the outlines of the landscape, but the white stone
was clearly visible, and by its side the new-made mound. Nay, what was
that which obscured its outline, in shape like a human figure? He flung
open the window and sprang through. It was all that there was left of
poor Old Sophy, stretched out lifeless, upon her darling's grave.
He had scarcely composed her limbs and drawn the sheet over her, when the
neighbors began to arrive from all directions. Each was expecting to
hear of houses overwhelmed and families destroyed; but each came with the
story that his own household was safe. It was not until the morning
dawned that the true nature and extent of the sudden movement was
ascertained. A great seam had opened above the long cliff, and the
terrible Rattlesnake Ledge, with all its envenomed reptiles, its dark
fissures and black caverns, was buried forever beneath a mighty incumbent
mass of ruin.
CHAPTER XXXI.
MR. SILAS PECKHAM RENDERS HIS ACCOUNT.
The morning rose clear and bright. The long storm was over, and the calm
autumnal sunshine was now to return, with all its infinite repose and
sweetness. With the earliest dawn exploring parties were out in every
direction along the southern slope of The Mountain, tracing the ravages
of the great slide and the track it had followed. It proved to be not so
much a slide as the breaking off and falling of a vast line of cliff,
including the dreaded Ledge. It had folded over like the leaves of a
half-opened book when they close, crushing the trees below, piling its
ruins in a glacis at the foot of what had been the overhanging wall of
the cliff, and filling up that deep cavity above the mansion-house which
bore the ill-omened name of Dead Man's Hollow. This it was which had
saved the Dudley mansion. The falling masses, or huge fragments breaking
off from them, would have swept the house and all around it to
destruction but for this deep shelving dell, into which the stream of
ruin was happily directed. It was, indeed, one of Nature's conservative
revolutions; for the fallen masses made a kind oz shelf, which interposed
a level break between the inclined planes above and below it, so that the
nightmare-fancies of the dwellers in the Dudley mansion, and in many
other residences under the shadow of The Mountain, need not keep them
lying awake hereafter to listen for the snapping of roots and the
splitting of the rocks above them.
Twenty-four hours after the falling of the cliff, it seemed as if it had
happened ages ago. The new fact had fitted itself in with all the old
predictions, forebodings, fears, and acquired the solidarity belonging to
all events which have slipped out of the fingers of Time and dissolved in
the antecedent eternity.
Old Sophy was lying dead in the Dudley mansion. If there were tears shed
for her, they could not be bitter ones; for she had lived out her full
measure of days, and gone--who could help fondly believing it?--to rejoin
her beloved mistress. They made a place for her at the foot of the two
mounds. It was thus she would have chosen to sleep, and not to have
wronged her humble devotion in life by asking to lie at the side of those
whom she had served so long and faithfully. There were very few present
at the simple ceremony. Helen Darley was one of these few. The old black
woman had been her companion in all the kind offices of which she had
been the ministering angel to Elsie.
After it was all over, Helen was leaving with the rest, when Dudley
Veneer begged her to stay a little, and he would send her back: it was a
long walk; besides, he wished to say some things to her, which he had not
had the opportunity of speaking. Of course Helen could not refuse him;
there must be many thoughts coming into his mind which he would wish to
share with her who had known his daughter so long and been with filer in
her last days.
She returned into the great parlor with the wrought cornices and the
medallion-portraits on the ceiling.
"I am now alone in the world," Dudley Veneer said.
Helen must have known that before he spoke. But the tone in which he
said it had so much meaning, that she could not find a word to answer him
with. They sat in silence, which the old tall clock counted out in long
seconds; but it was silence which meant more than any words they had ever
spoken.
"Alone in the world. Helen, the freshness of my life is gone, and there
is little left of the few graces which in my younger days might have
fitted me to win the love of women. Listen to me,--kindly, if you can;
forgive me, at least. Half my life has been passed in constant fear and
anguish, without any near friend to share my trials. My task is done
now; my fears have ceased to prey upon me; the sharpness of early sorrows
has yielded something of its edge to time. You have bound me to you by
gratitude in the tender care you have taken of my poor child. More than
this. I must tell you all now, out of the depth of this trouble through
which I am passing. I have loved you from the moment we first met; and
if my life has anything left worth accepting, it is yours. Will you take
the offered gift?"
Helen looked in his face, surprised, bewildered.
"This is not for me,--not for me," she said. "I am but a poor faded
flower, not worth the gathering, of such a one as you. No, no,--I have
been bred to humble toil all my days, and I could not be to you what you
ought to ask. I am accustomed to a kind of loneliness and
self-dependence. I have seen nothing, almost, of the world, such as you
were born to move in. Leave me to my obscure place and duties; I shall
at least have peace;--and you--you will surely find in due time some one
better fitted by Nature and training to make you happy."
"No, Miss Darley!" Dudley Venner said, almost sternly. "You must not
speak to a man, who has lived through my experiences, of looking about
for a new choice after his heart has once chosen. Say that you can never
love me; say that I have lived too long to share your young life; say
that sorrow has left nothing in me for Love to find his pleasure in; but
do not mock me with the hope of a new affection for some unknown object.
The first look of yours brought me to your side. The first tone of your
voice sunk into my heart. From this moment my life must wither out or
bloom anew. My home is desolate. Come under my roof and make it bright
once more,--share my life with me,--or I shall give the halls of the old
mansion to the bats and the owls, and wander forth alone without a hope
or a friend!"
To find herself with a man's future at the disposal of a single word of
hers!--a man like this, too, with a fascination for her against which
she had tried to shut her heart, feeling that he lived in another sphere
than hers, working as she was for her bread a poor operative in the
factory of a hard master and jealous overseer, the salaried drudge of Mr.
Silas Peckham! Why, she had thought he was grateful to her as a friend
of his daughter; she had even pleased herself with the feeling that he
liked her, in her humble place, as a woman of some cultivation and many
sympathetic points of relation with himself; but that he loved her,--that
this deep, fine nature, in a man so far removed from her in outward
circumstance, should have found its counterpart in one whom life had
treated so coldly as herself,--that Dudley Venner should stake his
happiness on a breath of hers,--poor Helen Darley's,--it was all a
surprise, a confusion, a kind of fear not wholly fearful. Ah, me! women
know what it is, that mist over the eyes, that trembling in the limbs,
that faltering of the voice, that sweet, shame-faced, unspoken confession
of weakness which does not wish to be strong, that sudden overflow in the
soul where thoughts loose their hold on each other and swim single and
helpless in the flood of emotion,--women know what it is!
No doubt she was a little frightened and a good deal bewildered, and that
her sympathies were warmly excited for a friend to whom she had been
brought so near, and whose loneliness she saw and pitied. She lost that
calm self-possession she had hoped to maintain.
"If I thought that I could make you happy,--if I should speak from my
heart, and not my reason,--I am but a weak woman,--yet if I can be to
you--What can I say?"
What more could this poor, dear Helen say?
"Elbridge, harness the horses and take Miss Darley back to the school."
What conversation had taken place since Helen's rhetorical failure is not
recorded in the minutes from which this narrative is constructed. But
when the man who had been summoned had gone to get the carriage ready,
Helen resumed something she had been speaking of.
"Not for the world. Everything must go on just as it has gone on, for
the present. There are proprieties to be consulted. I cannot be hard
with you, that out of your very affliction has sprung this--this
well--you must name it for me,--but the world will never listen to
explanations. I am to be Helen Darley, lady assistant in Mr. Silas
Peckham's school, as long as I see fit to hold my office. And I mean to
attend to my scholars just as before; so that I shall have very little
time for visiting or seeing company. I believe, though, you are one of
the Trustees and a Member of the Examining Committee; so that, if you
should happen to visit the school, I shall try to be civil to you."
Every lady sees, of course, that Helen was quite right; but perhaps here
and there one will think that Dudley Venner was all wrong,--that he was
too hasty,--that he should have been too full of his recent grief for
such a confession as he has just made, and the passion from which it
sprung. Perhaps they do not understand the sudden recoil of a strong
nature long compressed. Perhaps they have not studied the mystery of
allotropism in the emotions of the human heart. Go to the nearest
chemist and ask him to show you some of the dark-red phosphorus which
will not burn without fierce heating, but at 500 deg. Fahrenheit, changes
back again to the inflammable substance we know so well. Grief seems
more like ashes than like fire; but as grief has been love once, so it
may become love again. This is emotional allotropism.
Helen rode back to the Institute and inquired for Mr. Peckham. She had
not seen him during the brief interval between her departure from the
mansion-house and her return to Old Sophy's funeral. There were various
questions about the school she wished to ask.
"Oh, how's your haalth, Miss Darley?" Silas began. "We've missed you
consid'able. Glad to see you back at the post of dooty. Hope the Squire
treated you hahnsomely,--liberal pecooniary compensation,--hey? A'n't
much of a loser, I guess, by acceptin' his propositions?"
Helen blushed at this last question, as if Silas had meant something by
it beyond asking what money she had received; but his own double-meaning
expression and her blush were too nice points for him to have taken
cognizance of. He was engaged in a mental calculation as to the amount
of the deduction he should make under the head of "demage to the
institootion,"--this depending somewhat on that of the "pecooniary
compensation" she might have received for her services as the friend of
Elsie Venner.
So Helen slid back at once into her routine, the same faithful, patient
creature she had always been. But what was this new light which seemed
to have kindled in her eyes? What was this look of peace, which nothing
could disturb, which smiled serenely through all the little meannesses
with which the daily life of the educational factory surrounded her,
which not only made her seem resigned, but overflowed all her features
with a thoughtful, subdued happiness? Mr. Bernard did not know,--perhaps
he did not guess. The inmates of the Dudley mansion were not scandalized
by any mysterious visits of a veiled or unveiled lady. The vibrating
tongues of the "female youth" of the Institute were not set in motion by
the standing of an equipage at the gate, waiting for their lady-teacher.
The servants at the mansion did not convey numerous letters with
superscriptions in a bold, manly hand, sealed with the arms of a
well-known house, and directed to Miss Helen Darley; nor, on the other
hand, did Hiram, the man from the lean streak in New Hampshire, carry
sweet-smelling, rose-hued, many-layered, criss-crossed,
fine-stitch-lettered packages of note-paper directed to Dudley Venner,
Esq., and all too scanty to hold that incredible expansion of the famous
three words which a woman was born to say,--that perpetual miracle which
astonishes all the go-betweens who wear their shoes out in carrying a
woman's infinite variations on the theme--
"I love you."
But the reader must remember that there are walks in country-towns where
people are liable to meet by accident, and that the hollow of an old tree
has served the purpose of a post-office sometimes; so that he has her
choice (to divide the pronouns impartially) of various hypotheses to
account for the new glory of happiness which seemed to have irradiated
our poor Helen's features, as if her dreary life were awakening in the
dawn of a blessed future.
With all the alleviations which have been hinted at, Mr. Dudley Venner
thought that the days and the weeks had never moved so slowly as through
the last period of the autumn that was passing. Elsie had been a
perpetual source of anxiety to him, but still she had been a companion.
He could not mourn for her; for he felt that she was safer with her
mother, in that world where there are no more sorrows and dangers, than
she could have been with him. But as he sat at his window and looked at
the three mounds, the loneliness of the great house made it seem more
like the sepulchre than these narrow dwellings where his beloved and her
daughter lay close to each other, side by side,--Catalina, the bride of
his youth, and Elsie, the child whom he had nurtured, with poor Old
Sophy, who had followed them like a black shadow, at their feet, under
the same soft turf, sprinkled with the brown autumnal leaves. It was not
good for him to be thus alone. How should he ever live through the long
months of November and December?
The months of November and December did, in some way or other, get rid of
themselves at last, bringing with them the usual events of village-life
and a few unusual ones. Some of the geologists had been up to look at
the great slide, of which they gave those prolix accounts which everybody
remembers who read the scientific journals of the time. The engineers
reported that there was little probability of any further convulsion
along the line of rocks which overhung the more thickly settled part of
the town. The naturalists drew up a paper on the "Probable Extinction
of the Crotalus Durissus in the Township of Rockland." The engagement
of the Widow Rowens to a Little Millionville merchant was
announced,--"Sudding 'n' onexpected," Widow Leech said,--"waalthy, or she
wouldn't ha' looked at him,--fifty year old, if he is a day, 'n' hu'n't
got a white hair in his head." The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had
publicly announced that he was going to join the Roman Catholic
communion,--not so much to the surprise or consternation of the
religious world as he had supposed. Several old ladies forthwith
proclaimed their intention of following him; but, as one or two of them
were deaf, and another had been threatened with an attack of that mild,
but obstinate complaint, dementia senilis, many thought it was not so
much the force of his arguments as a kind of tendency to jump as the
bellwether jumps, well known in flocks not included in the Christian
fold. His bereaved congregation immediately began pulling candidates on
and off, like new boots, on trial. Some pinched in tender places; some
were too loose; some were too square-toed; some were too coarse, and did
n't please; some were too thin, and would n't last;--in short, they could
n't possibly find a fit. At last, people began to drop in to hear old
Doctor Honeywood. They were quite surprised to find what a human old
gentleman he was, and went back and told the others, that, instead of
being a case of confluent sectarianism, as they supposed, the good old
minister had been so well vaccinated with charitable virus that he was
now a true, open-souled Christian of the mildest type. The end of all
which was, that the liberal people went over to the old minister almost
in a body, just at the time that Deacon Shearer and the "Vinegar-Bible"
party split off, and that not long afterwards they sold their own
meeting-house to the malecontents, so that Deacon Soper used often to
remind Colonel Sprowle of his wish that "our little man and him [the
Reverend Doctor] would swop pulpits," and tell him it had "pooty nigh
come trew."--But this is anticipating the course of events, which were
much longer in coming about; for we have but just got through that
terrible long month, as Mr. Dudley Venner found it, of December.
On the first of January, Mr. Silas Peckham was in the habit of settling
his quarterly accounts, and making such new arrangements as his
convenience or interest dictated. New Year was a holiday at the
Institute. No doubt this accounted for Helen's being dressed so
charmingly,--always, to be sure in, her own simple way, but yet with such
a true lady's air, that she looked fit to be the mistress of any mansion
in the land.
She was in the parlor alone, a little before noon, when Mr. Peckham came
in.
"I'm ready to settle my accaount with you now, Miss Darley," said Silas.
"As you please, Mr. Peckham," Helen answered, very graciously.
"Before payin' you your selary," the Principal continued, "I wish to come
to an understandin' as to the futur'. I consider that I've been payin'
high, very high, for the work you do. Women's wages can't be expected to
do more than feed and clothe 'em, as a gineral thing, with a little
savin', in case of sickness, and to bury 'em, if they break daown, as all
of 'em are liable to do at any time. If I a'n't misinformed, you not
only support yourself out of my establishment, but likewise relatives of
yours, who I don't know that I'm called upon to feed and clothe. There
is a young woman, not burdened with destitute relatives, has signified
that she would be glad to take your dooties for less pecooniary
compensation, by a consid'able amaount, than you now receive. I shall be
willin', however, to retain your services at sech redooced rate as we
shall fix upon,--provided sech redooced rate be as low or lower than the
same services can be obtained elsewhere."
"As you please, Mr. Peckham," Helen answered, with a smile so sweet that
the Principal (who of course had trumped up this opposition-teacher for
the occasion) said to himself she would stand being cut down a quarter,
perhaps a half, of her salary.
"Here is your accaount, Miss Darley, and the balance doo you," said Silas
Peckham, handing her a paper and a small roll of infectious-flavored
bills wrapping six poisonous coppers of the old coinage.
She took the paper and began looking at it. She could not quite make up
her mind to touch the feverish bills with the cankering coppers in them,
and left them airing themselves on the table.
The document she held ran as follows:
Silas Peckham, Esq., Principal of the Apollinean Institute, In Account
with Helen Darley, Assist. Teacher.
Dr. Cr.
To salary for quarter By Deduction for absence
ending Jan 1st @ $75 per 1 week 3 days ...........$10.00
quarter ................ $75.00
"Board, lodging, etc for
10 days @ 75 cts per day.. 7.50
"Damage to Institution by
absence of teacher from
duties, say ............. 25.00
"Stationary furnished ..... .43
"Postage-stamp ............ .01
"Balance due Helen Darley. 32.06
------ --------
$75.00 $75.00
ROCKLAND, Jan. 1st, 1859.
Now Helen had her own private reasons for wishing to receive the small
sum which was due her at this time without any unfair deduction,--reasons
which we need not inquire into too particularly, as we may be very sure
that they were right and womanly. So, when she looked over this account
of Mr. Silas Peckham's, and saw that he had contrived to pare down her
salary to something less than half its stipulated amount, the look which
her countenance wore was as near to that of righteous indignation as her
gentle features and soft blue eyes would admit of its being.
"Why, Mr. Peckham," she said, "do you mean this? If I am of so much
value to you that you must take off twenty-five dollars for ten days'
absence, how is it that my salary is to be cut down to less than
seventy-five dollars a quarter, if I remain here?"
"I gave you fair notice," said Silas. "I have a minute of it I took down
immed'ately after the intervoo."
He lugged out his large pocket-book with the strap going all round it,
and took from it a slip of paper which confirmed his statement.
"Besides," he added, slyly, "I presoom you have received a liberal
pecooniary compensation from Squire Venner for nussin' his daughter."
Helen was looking over the bill while he was speaking.
"Board and lodging for ten days, Mr. Peckham,--whose board and lodging,
pray?"
The door opened before Silas Peckham could answer, and Mr. Bernard walked
into the parlor. Helen was holding the bill in her hand, looking as any
woman ought to look who has been at once wronged and insulted.
"The last turn of the thumbscrew!" said Mr. Bernard to himself.
"What is it, Helen? You look troubled."
She handed him the account.
He looked at the footing of it. Then he looked at the items. Then he
looked at Silas Peckham.
At this moment Silas was sublime. He was so transcendently unconscious
of the emotions going on in Mr. Bernard's mind at the moment, that he had
only a single thought.
"The accaount's correc'ly cast, I presoom;--if the' 's any mistake of
figgers or addin' 'em up, it'll be made all right. Everything's
accordin' to agreement. The minute written immed'ately after the
intervoo is here in my possession."
Mr. Bernard looked at Helen. Just what would have happened to Silas
Peckham, as he stood then and there, but for the interposition of a
merciful Providence, nobody knows or ever will know; for at that moment
steps were heard upon the stairs, and Hiram threw open the parlor-door
for Mr. Dudley Venner to enter.
He saluted them all gracefully with the good-wishes of the season, and
each of them returned his compliment,--Helen blushing fearfully, of
course, but not particularly noticed in her embarrassment by more than
one.
Silas Peckham reckoned with perfect confidence on his Trustees, who had
always said what he told them to, and done what he wanted. It was a good
chance now to show off his power, and, by letting his instructors know
the unstable tenure of their offices, make it easier to settle his
accounts and arrange his salaries. There was nothing very strange in Mr.
Venner's calling; he was one of the Trustees, and this was New Year's
Day. But he had called just at the lucky moment for Mr. Peckham's
object.
"I have thought some of makin' changes in the department of instruction,"
he began. "Several accomplished teachers have applied to me, who would
be glad of sitooations. I understand that there never have been so many
fust-rate teachers, male and female, out of employment as doorin' the
present season. If I can make sahtisfahctory arrangements with my
present corpse of teachers, I shall be glad to do so; otherwise I shell,
with the permission of the Trustees, make sech noo arrangements as
circumstahnces compel."
"You may make arrangements for a new assistant in my department, Mr.
Peckham," said Mr. Bernard, "at once,--this day,--this hour. I am not
safe to be trusted with your person five minutes out of this lady's
presence,--of whom I beg pardon for this strong language. Mr. Venner, I
must beg you, as one of the Trustees of this Institution, to look at the
manner in which its Principal has attempted to swindle this faithful
teacher whose toils and sacrifices and self-devotion to the school have
made it all that it is, in spite of this miserable trader's incompetence.
Will you look at the paper I hold?"
Dudley Venner took the account and read it through, without changing a
feature. Then he turned to Silas Peckham.
"You may make arrangements for a new assistant in the branches this lady
has taught. Miss Helen Darley is to be my wife. I had hoped to have
announced this news in a less abrupt and ungraceful manner. But I came
to tell you with my own lips what you would have learned before evening
from my friends in the village."
Mr. Bernard went to Helen, who stood silent, with downcast eyes, and took
her hand warmly, hoping she might find all the happiness she deserved.
Then he turned to Dudley Venner, and said, "She is a queen, but has never
found it out. The world has nothing nobler than this dear woman, whom
you have discovered in the disguise of a teacher. God bless her and
you!"
Dudley Venner returned his friendly grasp, without answering a word in
articulate speech.
Silas remained dumb and aghast for a brief space. Coming to himself a
little, he thought there might have been some mistake about the
items,--would like to have Miss barley's bill returned,--would make it
all right,--had no idee that Squire Venner had a special int'rest in Miss
barley,--was sorry he had given offence,--if he might take that bill and
look it over--
"No. Mr. Peckham," said Mr. Dudley Venner, "there will be a full meeting
of the Board next week, and the bill, and such evidence with reference to
the management of the Institution and the treatment of its instructors as
Mr. Langdon sees fit to bring forward will be laid before them."
Miss Helen Darley became that very day the guest of Miss Arabella
Thornton, the Judge's daughter. Mr. Bernard made his appearance a week
or two later at the Lectures, where the Professor first introduced him to
the reader.
He stayed after the class had left the room.
"Ah, Mr. Langdon! how do you do? Very glad to see you back again. How
have you been since our correspondence on Fascination and other curious
scientific questions?"
It was the Professor who spoke,--whom the reader will recognize as
myself, the teller of this story.
"I have been well," Mr. Bernard answered, with a serious look which
invited a further question.
"I hope you have had none of those painful or dangerous experiences you
seemed to be thinking of when you wrote; at any rate, you have escaped
having your obituary written."
"I have seen some things worth remembering. Shall I call on you this
evening and tell you about them?"
"I shall be most happy to see you."
This was the way in which I, the Professor, became acquainted with some
of the leading events of this story. They interested me sufficiently to
lead me to avail myself of all those other extraordinary methods of
obtaining information well known to writers of narrative.
Mr. Langdon seemed to me to have gained in seriousness and strength of
character by his late experiences. He threw his whole energies into his
studies with an effect which distanced all his previous efforts.
Remembering my former hint, he employed his spare hours in writing for
the annual prizes, both of which he took by a unanimous vote of the
judges. Those who heard him read his Thesis at the Medical Commencement
will not soon forget the impression made by his fine personal appearance
and manners, nor the universal interest excited in the audience, as he
read, with his beautiful enunciation, that striking paper entitled
"Unresolved Nebulae in Vital Science." It was a general remark of the
Faculty,--and old Doctor Kittredge, who had come down on purpose to hear
Mr. Langdon, heartily agreed to it,--that there had never been a diploma
filled up, since the institution which conferred upon him the degree of
Doctor Medicdnce was founded, which carried with it more of promise to
the profession than that which bore the name of
BERNARDUS CARYL LANGDON
CHAPTER XXXII.
CONCLUSION.
Mr. Bernard Langdon had no sooner taken his degree, than, in accordance
with the advice of one of his teachers whom he frequently consulted, he
took an office in the heart of the city where he had studied. He had
thought of beginning in a suburb or some remoter district of the city
proper.
"No," said his teacher,--to wit, myself,--"don't do any such thing. You
are made for the best kind of practice; don't hamper yourself with an
outside constituency, such as belongs to a practitioner of the second
class. When a fellow like you chooses his beat, he must look ahead a
little. Take care of all the poor that apply to you, but leave the
half-pay classes to a different style of doctor,--the people who spend
one half their time in taking care of their patients, and the other half
in squeezing out their money. Go for the swell-fronts and south-exposure
houses; the folks inside are just as good as other people, and the
pleasantest, on the whole, to take care of. They must have somebody, and
they like a gentleman best. Don't throw yourself away. You have a good
presence and pleasing manners. You wear white linen by inherited
instinct. You can pronounce the word view. You have all the elements of
success; go and take it. Be polite and generous, but don't undervalue
yourself. You will be useful, at any rate; you may just as well be happy,
while you are about it. The highest social class furnishes incomparably
the best patients, taking them by and large. Besides, when they won't
get well and bore you to death, you can send 'em off to travel. Mind me
now, and take the tops of your sparrowgrass. Somebody must have
'em,--why shouldn't you? If you don't take your chance, you'll get the
butt-ends as a matter of course."
Mr. Bernard talked like a young man full of noble sentiments. He wanted
to be useful to his fellow-beings. Their social differences were nothing
to him. He would never court the rich,--he would go where he was called.
He would rather save the life of a poor mother of a family than that of
half a dozen old gouty millionnaires whose heirs had been yawning and
stretching these ten years to get rid of them.
"Generous emotions!" I exclaimed. "Cherish 'em; cling to 'em till you
are fifty, till you are seventy, till you are ninety! But do as I tell
you,--strike for the best circle of practice, and you 'll be sure to get
it!"
Mr. Langdon did as I told him,--took a genteel office, furnished it
neatly, dressed with a certain elegance, soon made a pleasant circle of
acquaintances, and began to work his way into the right kind of business.
I missed him, however, for some days, not long after he had opened his
office. On his return, he told me he had been up at Rockland, by special
invitation, to attend the wedding of Mr. Dudley Venner and Miss Helen
Darley. He gave me a full account of the ceremony, which I regret that I
cannot relate in full. "Helen looked like an angel,"--that, I am sure,
was one of his expressions. As for her dress, I should like to give the
details, but am afraid of committing blunders, as men always do, when
they undertake to describe such matters. White dress, anyhow,--that I am
sure of,--with orange-flowers, and the most wonderful lace veil that was
ever seen or heard of. The Reverend Doctor Honeywood performed the
ceremony, of course. The good people seemed to have forgotten they ever
had had any other minister, except Deacon Shearer and his set of
malcontents, who were doing a dull business in the meeting-house lately
occupied by the Reverend Mr. Fairweather.
"Who was at the wedding?"
"Everybody, pretty much. They wanted to keep it quiet, but it was of no
use. Married at church. Front pews, old Dr. Kittredge and all the
mansionhouse people and distinguished strangers,--Colonel Sprowle and
family, including Matilda's young gentleman, a graduate of one of the
fresh-water colleges,--Mrs. Pickins (late Widow Rowens) and
husband,--Deacon Soper and numerous parishioners. A little nearer the
door, Abel, the Doctor's man, and Elbridge, who drove them to church in
the family-coach. Father Fairweather, as they all call him now, came in
late with Father McShane."
"And Silas Peckham?"
"Oh, Silas had left The School and Rockland. Cut up altogether too badly
in the examination instituted by the Trustees. Had removed over to
Tamarack, and thought of renting a large house and 'farming' the
town-poor."
Some time after this, as I was walking with a young friend along by the
swell-fronts and south-exposures, whom should I see but Mr. Bernard
Langdon, looking remarkably happy, and keeping step by the side of a very
handsome and singularly well-dressed young lady? He bowed and lifted his
hat as we passed.
"Who is that pretty girl my young doctor has got there?" I said to my
companion.
"Who is that?" he answered. "You don't know? Why, that is neither more
nor less than Miss Letitia Forrester, daughter of--of--why, the great
banking firm, you know, Bilyuns Brothers & Forrester. Got acquainted
with her in the country, they say. There 's a story that they're
engaged, or like to be, if the firm consents."
"Oh" I said.
I did not like the look of it in the least. Too young,--too young. Has
not taken any position yet. No right to ask for the hand of Bilyuns
Brothers & Co.'s daughter. Besides, it will spoil him for practice, if
he marries a rich girl before he has formed habits of work.
I looked in at his office the other day. A box of white kids was lying
open on the table. A three-cornered note, directed in a very delicate
lady's-hand, was distinguishable among a heap of papers. I was just
going to call him to account for his proceedings, when he pushed the
three-cornered note aside and took up a letter with a great
corporation-seal upon it. He had received the offer of a professor's
chair in an ancient and distinguished institution.
"Pretty well for three-and-twenty, my boy," I said. "I suppose you'll
think you must be married one of these days, if you accept this office."
Mr. Langdon blushed.--There had been stories about him, he knew. His name
had been mentioned in connection with that of a very charming young lady.
The current reports were not true. He had met this young lady, and been
much pleased with her, in the country, at the house of her grandfather,
the Reverend Doctor Honeywood,--you remember Miss Letitia Forrester, whom
I have mentioned repeatedly? On coming to town, he found his
country-acquaintance in a social position which seemed to discourage his
continued intimacy. He had discovered, however; that he was a not
unwelcome visitor, and had kept up friendly relations with her. But
there was no truth in the current reports,--none at all.'
Some months had passed, after this visit, when I happened one evening to
stroll into a box in one of the principal theatres of the city. A small
party sat on the seats before me: a middle-aged gentleman and his lady,
in front, and directly behind them my young doctor and the same very
handsome young lady I had seen him walking with on the sidewalk before
the swell-fronts and south-exposures. As Professor Langdon seemed to be
very much taken up with his companion, and both of them looked as if they
were enjoying themselves, I determined not to make my presence known to
my young friend, and to withdraw quietly after feasting my eyes with the
sight of them for a few minutes.
"It looks as if something might come of it," I said to myself. At that
moment the young lady lifted her arm accidentally in such a way that the
light fell upon the clasp of a chain which encircled her wrist. My eyes
filled with tears as I read upon the clasp, in sharp-cut Italic letters,
E. Y. They were tears at once of sad remembrance and of joyous
anticipation; for the ornament on which I looked was the double pledge of
a dead sorrow and a living affection. It was the golden bracelet,--the
parting-gift of Elsie Venner. the golden bracelet,--the parting-gift of
Elsie Venner.
THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
TO MY READERS.
"A new Preface" is, I find, promised with my story. If there are any
among my readers who loved Aesop's Fables chiefly on account of the Moral
appended, they will perhaps be pleased to turn backward and learn what I
have to say here.
This tale forms a natural sequence to a former one, which some may
remember, entitled "Elsie Venner." Like that,--it is intended for two
classes of readers, of which the smaller one includes the readers of the
"Morals" in Aesop and of this Preface.
The first of the two stories based itself upon an experiment which some
thought cruel, even on paper. It imagined an alien element introduced
into the blood of a human being before that being saw the light. It
showed a human nature developing itself in conflict with the ophidian
characteristics and instincts impressed upon it during the pre-natal
period. Whether anything like this ever happened, or was possible,
mattered little: it enabled me, at any rate, to suggest the limitations
of human responsibility in a simple and effective way.
The story which follows comes more nearly within the range of common
experience. The successive development of inherited bodily aspects and
habitudes is well known to all who have lived long enough to see families
grow up under their own eyes. The same thing happens, but less obviously
to common observation, in the mental and moral nature. There is something
frightful in the way in which not only characteristic qualities, but
particular manifestations of them, are repeated from generation to
generation. Jonathan Edwards the younger tells the story of a brutal
wretch in New Haven who was abusing his father, when the old man cried
out, "Don't drag me any further, for I did n't drag my father beyond this
tree." [The original version of this often-repeated story may be found
in Aristotle's Ethics, Book 7th, Chapter 7th.] I have attempted to show
the successive evolution of some inherited qualities in the character of
Myrtle Hazard, not so obtrusively as to disturb the narrative, but
plainly enough to be kept in sight by the small class of preface-readers.
If I called these two stories Studies of the Reflex Function in its
higher sphere, I should frighten away all but the professors and the
learned ladies. If I should proclaim that they were protests against the
scholastic tendency to shift the total responsibility of all human action
from the Infinite to the finite, I might alarm the jealousy of the
cabinet-keepers of our doctrinal museums. By saying nothing about it,
the large majority of those whom my book reaches, not being
preface-readers, will never suspect anything to harm them beyond the
simple facts of the narrative.
Should any professional alarmist choose to confound the doctrine of
limited responsibility with that which denies the existence of any
self-determining power, he may be presumed to belong to the class of
intellectual half-breeds, of which we have many representatives in our
new country, wearing the garb of civilization, and even the gown of
scholarship. If we cannot follow the automatic machinery of nature into
the mental and moral world, where it plays its part as much as in the
bodily functions, without being accused of laying "all that we are evil
in to a divine thrusting on," we had better return at once to our old
demonology, and reinstate the Leader of the Lower House in his
time-honored prerogatives.
As fiction sometimes seems stranger than truth, a few words may be needed
here to make some of my characters and statements appear probable. The
long-pending question involving a property which had become in the mean
time of immense value finds its parallel in the great De Haro land-case,
decided in the Supreme Court while this story was in progress (May 14th,
1867). The experiment of breaking the child's will by imprisonment and
fasting is borrowed from a famous incident, happening long before the
case lately before one of the courts of a neighboring Commonwealth, where
a little girl was beaten to death because she would not say her prayers.
The mental state involving utter confusion of different generations in a
person yet capable of forming a correct judgment on other matters, is
almost a direct transcript from nature. I should not have ventured to
repeat the questions of the daughters of the millionaires to Myrtle
Hazard about her family conditions, and their comments, had not a lady of
fortune and position mentioned to me a similar circumstance in the school
history of one of her own children. Perhaps I should have hesitated in
reproducing Myrtle Hazard's "Vision," but for a singular experience of
his own related to me by the late Mr. Forceythe Willson.
Gifted Hopkins (under various alliasis) has been a frequent correspondent
of mine. I have also received a good many communications, signed with
various names, which must have been from near female relatives of that
young gentleman. I once sent a kind of encyclical letter to the whole
family connection; but as the delusion under which they labor is still
common, and often leads to the wasting of time, the contempt of honest
study or humble labor, and the misapplication of intelligence not so far
below mediocrity as to be incapable of affording a respectable return
when employed in the proper direction, I thought this picture from life
might also be of service. When I say that no genuine young poet will
apply it to himself, I think I have so far removed the sting that few or
none will complain of being wounded.
It is lamentable to be forced to add that the Reverend Joseph Bellamy
Stoker is only a softened copy of too many originals to whom, as a
regular attendant upon divine worship from my childhood to the present
time, I have respectfully listened, while they dealt with me and mine and
the bulk of their fellow-creatures after the manner of their sect. If,
in the interval between his first showing himself in my story and its
publication in a separate volume, anything had occurred to make me
question the justice or expediency of drawing and exhibiting such a
portrait, I should have reconsidered it, with the view of retouching its
sharper features. But its essential truthfulness has been illustrated
every month or two, since my story has been in the course of publication,
by a fresh example from real life, stamped in darker colors than any with
which I should have thought of staining my pages.
There are a great many good clergymen to one bad one, but a writer finds
it hard to keep to the true proportion of good and bad persons in telling
a story. The three or four good ministers I have introduced in this
narrative must stand for many whom I have known and loved, and some of
whom I count to-day among my most valued friends. I hope the best and
wisest of them will like this story and approve it. If they cannot all
do this, I know they will recognize it as having been written with a
right and honest purpose.
BOSTON, 1867.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
It is a quarter of a century since the foregoing Preface was written, and
that is long enough to allow a story to be forgotten by the public, and
very possibly by the writer of it also. I will not pretend that I have
forgotten all about "The Guardian Angel," but it is long since I have
read it, and many of its characters and incidents are far from being
distinct in my memory. There are, however, a few points which hold their
place among my recollections. The revolt of Myrtle Hazard from the
tyranny of that dogmatic dynasty now breaking up in all directions has
found new illustrations since this tale was written. I need only refer
to two instances of many. The first is from real life. Mr. Robert C.
Adams's work, "Travels in Faith from Tradition to Reason," is the outcome
of the teachings of one of the most intransigeant of our New England
Calvinists, the late Reverend Nehemiah Adams. For an example in
fiction,--fiction which bears all the marks of being copied from real
life,--I will refer to "The Story of an African Farm." The boy's honest,
but terrible outburst, "I hate God," was, I doubt not, more acceptable in
the view of his Maker than the lying praise of many a hypocrite who,
having enthroned a demon as Lord of the Universe, thinks to conciliate
his favor by using the phrases which the slaves of Eastern despots are in
the habit of addressing to their masters. I have had many private
letters showing the same revolt of reasoning natures against doctrines
which shock the more highly civilized part of mankind in this nineteenth
century and are leading to those dissensions which have long shown as
cracks, and are fast becoming lines of cleavage in some of the largest
communions of Protestantism.
The principle of heredity has been largely studied since this story was
written. This tale, like "Elsie Venner," depends for its deeper
significance on the ante-natal history of its subject. But the story was
meant to be readable for those who did not care for its underlying
philosophy. If it fails to interest the reader who ventures upon it, it
may find a place on an unfrequented bookshelf in common with other
"medicated novels."
Perhaps I have been too hard with Gifted Hopkins and the tribe of
rhymesters to which he belongs. I ought not to forget that I too
introduced myself to the reading world in a thin volume of verses; many
of which had better not have been written, and would not be reprinted
now, but for the fact that they have established a right to a place among
my poems in virtue of long occupancy. Besides, although the writing of
verses is often a mark of mental weakness, I cannot forget that Joseph
Story and George Bancroft each published his little book, of rhymes, and
that John Quincy Adams has left many poems on record, the writing of
which did not interfere with the vast and important labors of his
illustrious career.
BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 7, 1891.
O. W. H.
THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
CHAPTER I.
AN ADVERTISEMENT.
On Saturday, the 18th day of June, 1859, the "State Banner and Delphian
Oracle," published weekly at Oxbow Village, one of the principal centres
in a thriving river-town of New England, contained an advertisement which
involved the story of a young life, and stained the emotions of a small
community. Such faces of dismay, such shaking of heads, such gatherings
at corners, such halts of complaining, rheumatic wagons, and dried-up,
chirruping chaises, for colloquy of their still-faced tenants, had not
been known since the rainy November Friday, when old Malachi Withers was
found hanging in his garret up there at the lonely house behind the
poplars.
The number of the "Banner and Oracle" which contained this advertisement
was a fair specimen enough of the kind of newspaper to which it belonged.
Some extracts from a stray copy of the issue of the date referred to will
show the reader what kind of entertainment the paper was accustomed to
furnish its patrons, and also serve some incidental purposes of the
writer in bringing into notice a few personages who are to figure in this
narrative.
The copy in question was addressed to one of its regular
subscribers,--"B. Gridley, Esq." The sarcastic annotations at various
points, enclosed in brackets and italicised that they may be
distinguished from any other comments, were taken from the pencilled
remarks of that gentleman, intended for the improvement of a member of
the family in which he resided, and are by no means to be attributed to
the harmless pen which reproduces them.
Byles Gridley, A. M., as he would have been styled by persons acquainted
with scholarly dignities, was a bachelor, who had been a schoolmaster, a
college tutor, and afterwards for many years professor,--a man of
learning, of habits, of whims and crotchets, such as are hardly to be
found, except in old, unmarried students,--the double flowers of college
culture, their stamina all turned to petals, their stock in the life of
the race all funded in the individual. Being a man of letters, Byles
Gridley naturally rather undervalued the literary acquirements of the
good people of the rural district where he resided, and, having known
much of college and something of city life, was apt to smile at the
importance they attached to their little local concerns. He was, of
course, quite as much an object of rough satire to the natural observers
and humorists, who are never wanting in a New England village,--perhaps
not in any village where a score or two of families are brought
together,--enough of them, at any rate, to furnish the ordinary
characters of a real-life stock company.
The old Master of Arts was a permanent boarder in the house of a very
worthy woman, relict of the late Ammi Hopkins, by courtesy Esquire, whose
handsome monument--in a finished and carefully colored lithograph,
representing a finely shaped urn under a very nicely groomed willow--hung
in her small, well-darkened, and, as it were, monumental parlor. Her
household consisted of herself, her son, nineteen years of age, of whom
more hereafter, and of two small children, twins, left upon her doorstep
when little more than mere marsupial possibilities, taken in for the
night, kept for a week, and always thereafter cherished by the good soul
as her own; also of Miss Susan Posey, aged eighteen, at school at the
"Academy" in another part of the same town, a distant relative, boarding
with her.
What the old scholar took the village paper for it would be hard to
guess, unless for a reason like that which carried him very regularly to
hear the preaching of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker, colleague of the
old minister of the village parish; namely, because he did not believe a
word of his favorite doctrines, and liked to go there so as to growl to
himself through the sermon, and go home scolding all the way about it.
The leading article of the "Banner and Oracle" for June 18th must have
been of superior excellence, for, as Mr. Gridley remarked, several of the
"metropolitan" journals of the date of June 15th and thereabout had
evidently conversed with the writer and borrowed some of his ideas before
he gave them to the public. The Foreign News by the Europa at Halifax,
15th, was spread out in the amplest dimensions the type of the office
could supply. More battles! The Allies victorious! The King and
General Cialdini beat the Austrians at Palestro! 400 Austrians drowned
in a canal! Anti-French feeling in Germany! Allgermine Zeiturg talks of
conquest of Allsatia and Loraine and the occupation of Paris! [Vicious
digs with a pencil through the above proper names.] Race for the Derby
won by Sir Joseph Hawley's Musjid! [That's what England cares for!
Hooray for the Darby! Italy be deedeed!] Visit of Prince Alfred to the
Holy Land. Letter from our, own Correspondent. [Oh! Oh! A West
Minkville?] Cotton advanced. Breadstuffs declining.--Deacon Rumrill's
barn burned down on Saturday night. A pig missing; supposed to have
"fallen a prey to the devouring element." [Got roasted.] A yellow
mineral had been discovered on the Doolittle farm, which, by the report
of those who had seen it, bore a strong resemblance to California gold
ore. Much excitement in the neighborhood in consequence [Idiots! Iron
pyrites!] A hen at Four Corners had just laid an egg measuring 7 by 8
inches. Fetch on your biddies! [Editorial wit!] A man had shot an eagle
measuring six feet and a half from tip to tip of his wings.--Crops
suffering for want of rain [Always just so. "Dry times, Father Noah!"]
The editors had received a liberal portion of cake from the happy couple
whose matrimonial union was recorded in the column dedicated to Hymen.
Also a superior article of [article of! bah!] steel pen from the
enterprising merchant [shopkeeper] whose advertisement was to be found on
the third page of this paper.--An interesting Surprise Party [cheap
theatricals] had transpired [bah!] on Thursday evening last at the house
of the Rev. Mr. Stoker. The parishioners had donated [donated! GIVE is
a good word enough for the Lord's Prayer. DONATE our daily bread!] a bag
of meal, a bushel of beans, a keg of pickles, and a quintal of salt-fish.
The worthy pastor was much affected, etc., etc. [Of course. Call'em.
SENSATION parties and done with it!] The Rev. Dr. Pemberton and the
venerable Dr. Hurlbut honored the occasion with their presence.--We learn
that the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth, rector of St. Bartholomew's Chapel, has
returned from his journey, and will officiate to-morrow.
Then came strings of advertisements, with a luxuriant vegetation of
capitals and notes of admiration. More of those PRIME GOODS! Full
Assortments of every Article in our line! [Except the one thing you
want!] Auction Sale. Old furniture, feather-beds, bed-spreads [spreads!
ugh!], setts [setts!] crockery-ware, odd vols., ullage bbls. of this and
that, with other household goods, etc., etc., etc.,--the etceteras
meaning all sorts of insane movables, such as come out of their
bedlam-holes when an antiquated domestic establishment disintegrates
itself at a country "vandoo."--Several announcements of "Feed," whatever
that may be,--not restaurant dinners, anyhow,--also of "Shorts,"--terms
mysterious to city ears as jute and cudbear and gunnybags to such as
drive oxen in the remote interior districts.--Then the marriage column
above alluded to, by the fortunate recipients of the cake. Right
opposite, as if for matrimonial ground-bait, a Notice that Whereas my
wife, Lucretia Babb, has left my bed and board, I will not be
responsible, etc., etc., from this date.--Jacob Penhallow (of the late
firm Wibird and Penhallow) had taken Mr. William Murray Bradshaw into
partnership, and the business of the office would be carried on as usual
under the title Penhallow and Bradshaw, Attorneys at Law. Then came the
standing professional card of Dr. Lemuel Hurlbut and Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut,
the medical patriarch of the town and his son. Following this, hideous
quack advertisements, some of them with the certificates of Honorables,
Esquires, and Clergymen.--Then a cow, strayed or stolen from the
subscriber.--Then the advertisement referred to in our first paragraph:
MYRTLE HAZARD has been missing from her home in this place since Thursday
morning, June 16th. She is fifteen years old, tall and womanly for her
age, has dark hair and eyes, fresh complexion, regular features, pleasant
smile and voice, but shy with strangers. Her common dress was a black and
white gingham check, straw hat, trimmed with green ribbon. It is feared
she may have come to harm in some way, or be wandering at large in a
state of temporary mental alienation. Any information relating to the
missing child will be gratefully received and properly rewarded by her
afflicted aunt,
MISS SILENCE WITHERS, Residing at the Withers Homestead, otherwise known
as "The Poplars," in this village.
CHAPTER II.
GREAT EXCITEMENT
The publication of the advertisement in the paper brought the village
fever of the last two days to its height. Myrtle Hazard's disappearance
had been pretty well talked round through the immediate neighborhood, but
now that forty-eight hours of search and inquiry had not found her, and
the alarm was so great that the young girl's friends were willing to
advertise her in a public journal, it was clear that the gravest
apprehensions were felt and justified. The paper carried the tidings to
many who had not heard it. Some of the farmers who had been busy all the
week with their fields came into the village in their wagons on Saturday,
and there first learned the news, and saw the paper, and the placards
which were posted up, and listened, open-mouthed, to the whole story.
Saturday was therefore a day of much agitation in Oxbow Village, and some
stir in the neighboring settlements. Of course there was a great variety
of comment, its character depending very much on the sense, knowledge,
and disposition of the citizens, gossips, and young people who talked
over the painful and mysterious occurrence.
The Withers Homestead was naturally the chief centre of interest. Nurse
Byloe, an ancient and voluminous woman, who had known the girl when she
was a little bright-eyed child, handed over "the baby" she was holding to
another attendant, and got on her things to go straight up to The
Poplars. She had been holding "the baby" these forty years and more, but
somehow it never got to be more than a month or six weeks old. She
reached The Poplars after much toil and travail. Mistress Fagan, Irish,
house-servant, opened the door, at which Nurse Byloe knocked softly, as
she was in the habit of doing at the doors of those who sent for her.
"Have you heerd anything yet, Kitty Fagan?" asked Nurse Byloe.
"Niver a blissed word," said she. "Miss Withers is upstairs with Miss
Bathsheby, a cryin' and a lamentin'. Miss Badlam's in the parlor. The
men has been draggin' the pond. They have n't found not one thing, but
only jest two, and that was the old coffeepot and the gray cat,--it's
them nigger boys hanged her with a string they tied round her neck and
then drownded her." [P. Fagan, Jr., Aet. 14, had a snarl of similar
string in his pocket.]
Mistress Fagan opened the door of the best parlor. A woman was sitting
there alone, rocking back and forward, and fanning herself with the
blackest of black fans.
"Nuss Byloe, is that you? Well, to be sure, I'm glad to see you, though
we 're all in trouble. Set right down, Nuss, do. Oh, it's dreadful
times!"
A handkerchief which was in readiness for any emotional overflow was here
called on for its function.
Nurse Byloe let herself drop into a flaccid squab chair with one of those
soft cushions, filled with slippery feathers, which feel so fearfully
like a very young infant, or a nest of little kittens, as they flatten
under the subsiding person.
The woman in the rocking-chair was Miss Cynthia Badlam, second-cousin of
Miss Silence Withers, with whom she had been living as a companion at
intervals for some years. She appeared to be thirty-five years old, more
or less, and looked not badly for that stage of youth, though of course
she might have been handsomer at twenty, as is often the case with women.
She wore a not unbecoming cap; frequent headaches had thinned her locks
somewhat of late years. Features a little too sharp, a keen, gray eye, a
quick and restless glance, which rather avoided being met, gave the
impression that she was a wide-awake, cautious, suspicious, and, very
possibly, crafty person.
"I could n't help comin'," said Nurse Byloe, "we do so love our
babies,--how can we help it, Miss Badlam?"
The spinster colored up at the nurse's odd way of using the possessive
pronoun, and dropped her eyes, as was natural on hearing such a speech.
"I never tended children as you have, Nuss," she said. "But I 've known
Myrtle Hazard ever since she was three years old, and to think she should
have come to such an end,--'The heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked,'"--and she wept.
"Why, Cynthy Badlam, what do y' mean?" said Nurse Byloe. "Y' don't think
anything dreadful has come o' that child's wild nater, do ye?"
"Child!" said Cynthia Badlam,--"child enough to wear this very gown I
have got on and not find it too big for her neither." [It would have
pinched Myrtle here and there pretty shrewdly.]
The two women looked each other in the eyes with subtle interchange of
intelligence, such as belongs to their sex in virtue of its specialty.
Talk without words is half their conversation, just as it is all the
conversation of the lower animals. Only the dull senses of men are dead
to it as to the music of the spheres.
Their minds travelled along, as if they had been yoked together, through
whole fields of suggestive speculation, until the dumb growths of thought
ripened in both their souls into articulate speech, consentingly, as the
movement comes after the long stillness of a Quaker meeting.
Their lips opened at the same moment. "You don't mean"--began Nurse
Byloe, but stopped as she heard Miss Badlam also speaking.
"They need n't drag the pond," she said. "They need n't go beating the
woods as if they were hunting a patridge,--though for that matter Myrtle
Hazard was always more like a patridge than she was like a pullet.
Nothing ever took hold of that girl,--not catechising, nor advising, nor
punishing. It's that dreadful will of hers never was broke. I've always
been afraid that she would turn out a child of wrath. Did y' ever watch
her at meetin' playing with posies and looking round all the time of the
long prayer? That's what I've seen her do many and many a time. I'm
afraid--Oh dear! Miss Byloe, I'm afraid to say--what I'm afraid of. Men
are so wicked, and young girls are full of deceit and so ready to listen
to all sorts of artful creturs that take advantage of their ignorance and
tender years." She wept once more, this time with sobs that seemed
irrepressible.
"Dear suz!" said the nurse, "I won't believe no sech thing as wickedness
about Myrtle Hazard. You mean she's gone an' run off with some
good-for-nothin' man or other? If that ain't what y' mean, what do y'
mean? It can't be so, Miss Badlam: she's one o' my babies. At any rate,
I handled her when she fust come to this village,--and none o' my babies
never did sech a thing. Fifteen year old, and be bringin' a whole family
into disgrace! If she was thirty year old, or five-an'-thirty or more,
and never'd had a chance to be married, and if one o' them artful creturs
you was talkin' of got hold of her, then, to be sure,--why, dear
me!--law! I never thought, Miss Badlam!--but then of course you could
have had your pickin' and choosin' in the time of it; and I don't mean to
say it's too late now if you felt called that way, for you're better
lookin' now than some that's younger, and there's no accountin' for
tastes."
A sort of hysteric twitching that went through the frame of Cynthia
Badlam dimly suggested to the old nurse that she was not making her
slightly indiscreet personality much better by her explanations. She
stopped short, and surveyed the not uncomely person of the maiden lady
sitting before her with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, and one
hand clenching the arm of the reeking-chair, as if some spasm had clamped
it there. The nurse looked at her with a certain growing interest she
had never felt before. It was the first time for some years that she had
had such a chance, partly because Miss Cynthia had often been away for
long periods,--partly because she herself had been busy professionally.
There was no occasion for her services, of course, in the family at The
Poplars; and she was always following round from place to place after
that everlasting migratory six-weeks or less old baby.
There was not a more knowing pair of eyes, in their way, in a circle of
fifty miles, than those kindly tranquil orbs that Nurse Byloe fixed on
Cynthia Badlam. The silver threads in the side fold of hair, the
delicate lines at the corner of the eye, the slight drawing down at the
angle of the mouth,--almost imperceptible, but the nurse dwelt upon
it,--a certain moulding of the features as of an artist's clay model
worked by delicate touches with the fingers, showing that time or pain or
grief had had a hand in shaping them, the contours, the adjustment of
every fold of the dress, the attitude, the very way of breathing, were
all passed through the searching inspection of the ancient expert,
trained to know all the changes wrought by time and circumstance. It
took not so long as it takes to describe it, but it was an analysis of
imponderables, equal to any of Bunsen's with the spectroscope.
Miss Badlam removed her handkerchief and looked in a furtive, questioning
way, in her turn, upon the nurse.
"It's dreadful close here,--I'm 'most smothered," Nurse Byloe said; and,
putting her hand to her throat, unclasped the catch of the necklace of
gold beads she had worn since she was a baby,--a bead having been added
from time to time as she thickened. It lay in a deep groove of her large
neck, and had not troubled her in breathing before, since the day when
her husband was run over by an ox-team.
At this moment Miss Silence Withers entered, followed by Bathsheba
Stoker, daughter of Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker.
She was the friend of Myrtle, and had come to comfort Miss Silence, and
consult with her as to what further search they should institute. The
two, Myrtle's aunt and her friend, were as unlike as they could well be.
Silence Withers was something more than forty years old, a shadowy,
pinched, sallow, dispirited, bloodless woman, with the habitual look of
the people in the funeral carriage which follows next to the hearse, and
the tone in speaking that may be noticed in a household where one of its
members is lying white and still in a cool, darkened chamber overhead.
Bathsheba Stoker was not called handsome; but she had her mother's
youthful smile, which was so fresh and full of sweetness that she seemed
like a beauty while she was speaking or listening; and she could never be
plain so long as any expression gave life to her features. In perfect
repose, her face, a little prematurely touched by sad experiences,--for
she was but seventeen years old,--had the character and decision stamped
in its outlines which any young man who wanted a companion to warn, to
comfort, and command him, might have depended on as warranting the
courage, the sympathy, and the sense demanded for such a responsibility.
She had been trying her powers of consolation on Miss Silence. It was a
sudden freak of Myrtle's. She had gone off on some foolish but innocent
excursion. Besides, she was a girl that would take care of herself; for
she was afraid of nothing, and nimbler than any boy of her age, and
almost as strong as any. As for thinking any bad thoughts about her,
that was a shame; she cared for none of the young fellows that were round
her. Cyprian Eveleth was the one she thought most of; but Cyprian was as
true as his sister Olive, and who else was there?
To all this Miss Silence answered only by sighing and moaning, For two
whole days she had been kept in constant fear and worry, afraid every
minute of some tragical message, perplexed by the conflicting advice of
all manner of officious friends, sleepless of course through the two
nights, and now utterly broken down and collapsed.
Bathsheba had said all she could in the way of consolation, and hastened
back to her mother's bedside, which she hardly left, except for the
briefest of visits.
"It's a great trial, Miss Withers, that's laid on you," said Nurse Byloe.
"If I only knew that she was dead, and had died in the Lord," Miss
Silence answered,--"if I only knew that but if she is living in sin, or
dead in wrong--doing, what is to become of me?--Oh, what is to become of
me when 'He maketh inquisition far blood'?"
"Cousin Silence," said Miss Cynthia, "it is n't your fault, if that young
girl has taken to evil ways. If going to meeting three times every
Sabbath day, and knowing the catechism by heart, and reading of good
books, and the best of daily advice, and all needful discipline, could
have corrected her sinful nature, she would never have run away from a
home where she enjoyed all these privileges. It's that Indian blood,
Cousin Silence. It's a great mercy you and I have n't got any of it in
our veins! What can you expect of children that come from heathens and
savages? You can't lay it to yourself, Cousin Silence, if Myrtle Hazard
goes wrong"--
"The Lord will lay it to me,--the Lord will lay it to me," she moaned.
"Did n't he say to Cain, 'Where is Abel, thy brother?'"
Nurse Byloe was getting very red in the face. She had had about enough
of this talk between the two women. "I hope the Lard 'll take care of
Myrtle Hazard fust, if she's in trouble, 'n' wants help," she said; "'n'
then look out for them that comes next. Y' 're too suspicious, Miss
Badlam; y' 're too easy to believe stories. Myrtle Hazard was as pretty
a child and as good a child as ever I see, if you did n't rile her; 'n'
d' d y' ever see one o' them hearty lively children, that had n't a
sperrit of its own? For my part, I'd rather handle one of 'em than a
dozen o' them little waxy, weak-eyed, slim-necked creturs that always do
what they tell 'em to, and die afore they're a dozen year old; and never
was the time when I've seen Myrtle Hazard, sence she was my baby, but
what it's always been, 'Good mornin', Miss Byloe,' and 'How do you do,
Miss Byloe? I'm so glad to see you.' The handsomest young woman, too,
as all the old folks will agree in tellin' you, s'ence the time o' Judith
Pride that was,--the Pride of the County they used to call her, for her
beauty. Her great-grandma, y' know, Miss Cynthy, married old King David
Withers. What I want to know is, whether anything has been heerd, and
jest what's been done about findin' the poor thing. How d' ye know she
has n't fell into the river? Have they fired cannon? They say that
busts the gall of drownded folks, and makes the corpse rise. Have they
looked in the woods everywhere? Don't believe no wrong of nobody, not
till y' must,--least of all of them that come o' the same folks, partly,
and has lived with yo all their days. I tell y', Myrtle Hazard's jest as
innocent of all what y' 've been thinkin' about,--bless the poor child;
she's got a soul that's as clean and sweet-well, as a pond-lily when it
fust opens of a mornin', without a speck on it no more than on the fust
pond-lily God Almighty ever made!"
That gave a turn to the two women's thoughts, and their handkerchiefs
went up to their faces. Nurse Byloe turned her eyes quickly on Cynthia
Badlam, and repeated her close inspection of every outline and every
light and shadow in her figure. She did not announce any opinion as to
the age or good looks or general aspect or special points of Miss
Cynthia; but she made a sound which the books write humph! but which real
folks make with closed lips, thus: m'!--a sort of half-suppressed
labio-palato-nasal utterance, implying that there is a good deal which
might be said, and all the vocal organs want to have a chance at it, if
there is to be any talking.
Friends and neighbors were coming in and out; and the next person that
came was the old minister, of whom, and of his colleague, the Rev. Joseph
Bellamy Stoker, some account may here be introduced.
The Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton Father Pemberton as brother ministers called
him, Priest Pemberton as he was commonly styled by the country
people--would have seemed very old, if the medical patriarch of the
village had not been so much older. A man over ninety is a great comfort
to all his elderly neighbors: he is a picket-guard at the extreme
outpost; and the young folks of sixty and seventy feel that the enemy
must get by him before he can come near their camp. Dr. Hurlbut, at
ninety-two, made Priest Pemberton seem comparatively little advanced; but
the college catalogue showed that he must be seventy-five years old, if,
as we may suppose, he was twenty at the time of his graduation.
He was a man of noble presence always, and now, in the grandeur of his
flowing silver hair and with the gray shaggy brows overhanging his serene
and solemn eyes, with the slow gravity of motion and the measured dignity
of speech which gave him the air of an old pontiff, he was an imposing
personage to look upon, and could be awful, if the occasion demanded it.
His creed was of the sternest: he was looked up to as a bulwark against
all the laxities which threatened New England theology. But it was a
creed rather of the study and of the pulpit than of every-day application
among his neighbors. He dealt too much in the lofty abstractions which
had always such fascinations for the higher class of New England divines,
to busy himself as much as he might have done with the spiritual
condition of individuals. He had also a good deal in him of what he used
to call the Old Man, which, as he confessed, he had never succeeded in
putting off,--meaning thereby certain qualities belonging to humanity, as
much as the natural gifts of the dumb creatures belong to them, and
tending to make a man beloved by his weak and erring fellow-mortals.
In the olden time he would have lived and died king of his parish,
monarch, by Divine right, as the noblest, grandest, wisest of all that
made up the little nation within hearing of his meeting-house bell. But
Young Calvinism has less reverence and more love of novelty than its
forefathers. It wants change, and it loves young blood. Polyandry is
getting to be the normal condition of the Church; and about the time a
man is becoming a little overripe for the livelier human sentiments, he
may be pretty sure the women are looking round to find him a colleague.
In this way it was that the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker became the
colleague of the Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton.
If one could have dived deep below all the Christian graces--the charity,
the sweetness of disposition, the humility--of Father Pemberton, he would
have found a small remnant of the "Old Man," as the good clergyman would
have called it, which was never in harmony with the Rev. Mr. Stoker. The
younger divine felt his importance, and made his venerable colleague feel
that he felt it. Father Pemberton had a fair chance at rainy Sundays and
hot summer-afternoon services; but the junior pushed him aside without
ceremony whenever he thought there was like to be a good show in the
pews. As for those courtesies which the old need, to soften the sense of
declining faculties and failing attractions, the younger pastor bestowed
them in public, but was negligent of them, to say the least, when not on
exhibition.
Good old Father Pemberton could not love this man, but he would not hate
him, and he never complained to him or of him. It would have been of no
use if he had: the women of the parish had taken up the Rev. Mr. Stoker;
and when the women run after a minister or a doctor, what do the men
signify?
Why the women ran after him, some thought it was not hard to guess. He
was not ill-looking, according to the village standard, parted his hair
smoothly, tied his white cravat carefully, was fluent, plausible, had a
gift in prayer, was considered eloquent, was fond of listening to their
spiritual experiences, and had a sickly wife. This is what Byles Gridley
said; but he was apt to be caustic at times.
Father Pemberton visited his people but rarely. Like Jonathan Edwards,
like David Osgood, he felt his call to be to study-work, and was
impatient of the egotisms and spiritual megrims, in listening to which,
especially from the younger females of his flock, his colleague had won
the hearts of so many of his parishioners. His presence had a wonderful
effect in restoring the despondent Miss Silence to her equanimity; for
not all the hard divinity he had preached for half a century had spoiled
his kindly nature; and not the gentle Melanchthon himself, ready to
welcome death as a refuge from the rage and bitterness of theologians,
was more in contrast with the disputants with whom he mingled, than the
old minister, in the hour of trial, with the stern dogmatist in his
study, forging thunderbolts to smite down sinners.
It was well that there were no tithing-men about on that next day,
Sunday; for it shone no Sabbath day for the young men within half a dozen
miles of the village. They were out on Bear Hill the whole day, beating
up the bushes as if for game, scaring old crows out of their ragged
nests, and in one dark glen startling a fierce-eyed, growling, bobtailed
catamount, who sat spitting and looking all ready to spring at them, on
the tall tree where he clung with his claws unsheathed, until a young
fellow came up with a gun and shot him dead. They went through and
through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than a
wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and
alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near
enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End
there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making
baskets, the miracle of which was that they were so clean. They had seen
a young lady answering the description, about a week ago. She had bought
a basket. Asked them if they had a canoe they wanted to sell.--Eyes like
hers (pointing to a squaw with a man's hat on).
At Pocasset the young men explored all the thick woods,--some who ought
to have known better taking their guns, which made a talk, as one might
well suppose it would. Hunting on a Sabbath day! They did n't mean to
shoot Myrtle Hazard, did they? it was keenly asked. A good many said it
was all nonsense, and a mere excuse to get away from meeting and have a
sort of frolic on pretence that it was a work of necessity and mercy, one
or both.
While they were scattering themselves about in this way, some in earnest,
some rejoicing in the unwonted license, lifting off for a little while
that enormous Sabbath-day pressure which weighs like forty atmospheres on
every true-born Puritan, two young men had been since Friday in search of
the lost girl, each following a clue of his own, and determined to find
her if she was among the living.
Cyprian Eveleth made for the village of Mapleton, where his sister Olive
was staying, trusting that, with her aid, he might get a clue to the
mystery of Myrtle's disappearance.
William Murray Bradshaw struck for a railroad train going to the great
seaport, at a station where it stops for wood and water.
In the mean time, a third young man, Gifted Hopkins by name, son of the
good woman already mentioned, sat down, with tears in his eyes, and wrote
those touching stanzas, "The Lost Myrtle," which were printed in the next
"Banner and Oracle," and much admired by many who read them.
CHAPTER III.
ANTECEDENTS.
The Withers Homestead was the oldest mansion in town. It was built on
the east bank of the river, a little above the curve which gave the name
to Oxbow Village. It stood on an elevation, its west gable close to the
river's edge, an old orchard and a small pond at the foot of the slope
behind it, woods at the east, open to the south, with a great row of
Lombardy poplars standing guard in front of the house. The Hon. Selah
Withers, Esq., a descendant of one of the first colonists, built it for
his own residence, in the early part of the last century. Deeply
impressed with his importance in the order of things, he had chosen to
place it a little removed from the cluster of smaller dwellings about the
Oxbow; and with some vague fancy in his mind of the castles that overlook
the Rhine and the Danube, he had selected this eminence on which to place
his substantial gambrel roofed dwelling-house. Long afterwards a
bay-window, almost a little room of itself, had been thrown out of the
second story on the west side, so that it looked directly down on the
river running beneath it. The chamber, thus half suspended in the air,
had been for years the special apartment of Myrtle Hazard; and as the
boys paddling about on the river would often catch glimpses, through the
window, of the little girl dressed in the scarlet jacket she fancied in
those days, one of them, Cyprian Eveleth had given it a name which became
current among the young people, and indeed furnished to Gifted Hopkins
the subject of one of his earliest poems, to wit, "The Fire-hang-bird's
Nest."
If we would know anything about the persons now living at the Withers
Homestead, or The Poplars, as it was more commonly called of late years,
we must take a brief inventory of some of their vital antecedents. It is
by no means certain that our individual personality is the single
inhabitant of these our corporeal frames. Nay, there is recorded an
experience of one of the living persons mentioned in this narrative,--to
be given in full in its proper place, which, so far as it is received in
evidence, tends to show that some, at least, who have long been dead, may
enjoy a kind of secondary and imperfect, yet self-conscious life, in
these bodily tenements which we are in the habit of considering
exclusively our own. There are many circumstances, familiar to common
observers, which favor this belief to a certain extent. Thus, at one
moment we detect the look, at another the tone of voice, at another some
characteristic movement of this or that ancestor, in our relations or
others. There are times when our friends do not act like themselves, but
apparently in obedience to some other law than that of their own proper
nature. We all do things both awake and asleep which surprise us.
Perhaps we have cotenants in this house we live in. No less than eight
distinct personalities are said to have coexisted in a single female
mentioned by an ancient physician of unimpeachable authority. In this
light we may perhaps see the meaning of a sentence, from a work which
will be repeatedly referred to in this narrative, viz.: "This body in
which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans is not a
private carriage, but an omnibus."
The ancestry of the Withers family had counted a martyr to their faith
before they were known as Puritans. The record was obscure in some
points; but the portrait, marked "Ann Holyoake, burned by ye bloudy
Papists, ano 15.." (figures illegible), was still hanging against the
panel over the fireplace in the west parlor at The Poplars. The
following words were yet legible on the canvas: "Thou hast made a
covenant O Lord with mee and my Children forever."
The story had come down, that Ann Holyoake spoke these words in a prayer
she offered up at the stake, after the fagots were kindled. There had
always been a secret feeling in the family, that none of her descendants
could finally fall from grace, in virtue of this solemn "covenant."
There had been also a legend in the family, that the martyred woman's
spirit exercised a kind of supervision over her descendants; that she
either manifested herself to them, or in some way impressed them, from
time to time; as in the case of the first pilgrim before he cast his lot
with the emigrants,--of one Mrs. Winslow, a descendant in the third
generation, when the Indians were about to attack the settlement where
she lived,--and of another, just before he was killed at Quebec.
There was a remarkable resemblance between the features of Ann Holyoake,
as shown in the portrait, and the miniature likeness of Myrtle's mother.
Myrtle adopted the nearly obsolete superstition more readily on this
account, and loved to cherish the fancy that the guardian spirit which
had watched over her ancestors was often near her, and would be with her
in her time of need.
The wife of Selah Withers was accused of sorcery in the evil days of that
delusion. A careless expression in one of her letters, that "ye Parson
was as lyke to bee in league with ye Divell as anie of em," had got
abroad, and given great offence to godly people. There was no doubt that
some odd "manifestations," as they would be called nowadays, had taken
place in the household when she was a girl, and that she presented many
of the conditions belonging to what are at the present day called
mediums.
Major Gideon Withers, her son, was of the very common type of hearty,
loud, portly men, who like to show themselves at militia trainings, and
to hear themselves shout orders at musters, or declaim patriotic
sentiments at town-meetings and in the General Court. He loved to wear a
crimson sash and a military cap with a large red feather, in which the
village folk used to say he looked as "hahnsome as a piny,"--meaning a
favorite flower of his, which is better spelt peony, and to which it was
not unnatural that his admirers should compare him.
If he had married a wife like himself, there might probably enough have
sprung from the alliance a family of moon-faced children, who would have
dropped into their places like posts into their holes, asking no
questions of life, contented, like so many other honest folks, with the
part of supernumeraries in the drama of being, their wardrobe of flesh
and bones being furnished them gratis, and nothing to do but to walk
across the stage wearing it. But Major Gideon Withers, for some reason
or other, married a slender, sensitive, nervous, romantic woman, which
accounted for the fact that his son David, "King David," as he was called
in his time, had a very different set of tastes from his father, showing
a turn for literature and sentiment in his youth, reading Young's "Night
Thoughts," and Thomson's "Seasons," and sometimes in those early days
writing verses himself to Celia or to Chloe, which sounded just as fine
to him as Effie and Minnie sound to young people now, as Musidora, as
Saccharissa, as Lesbia, as Helena, as Adah and Zillah, have all sounded
to young people in their time,--ashes of roses as they are to us now, and
as our endearing Scotch diminutives will be to others by and by.
King David Withers, who got his royal prefix partly because he was rich,
and partly because he wrote hymns occasionally, when he grew too old to
write love-poems, married the famous beauty before mentioned, Miss Judith
Pride, and the race came up again in vigor. Their son, Jeremy, took for
his first wife a delicate, melancholic girl, who matured into a sad-eyed
woman, and bore him two children, Malachi and Silence.
When she died, he mourned for her bitterly almost a year, and then put on
a ruffled shirt and went across the river to tell his grief to Miss
Virginia Wild, there residing. This lady was said to have a few drops of
genuine aboriginal blood in her veins; and it is certain that her cheek
had a little of the russet tinge which a Seckel pear shows on its warmest
cheek when it blushes.--Love shuts itself up in sympathy like a
knife-blade in its handle, and opens as easily. All the rest followed in
due order according to Nature's kindly programme.
Captain Charles Hazard, of the ship Orient Pearl, fell desperately in
love with the daughter of this second wife, married her, and carried her
to India, where their first and only child was born, and received the
name of Myrtle, as fitting her cradle in the tropics. So her earliest
impressions,--it would not be exact to call them recollections,--besides
the smiles of her father and mother, were of dusky faces, of loose white
raiment, of waving fans, of breezes perfumed with the sweet exhalations
of sandal-wood, of gorgeous flowers and glowing fruit, of shady verandas,
of gliding palanquins, and all the languid luxury of the South. The
pestilence which has its natural home in India, but has journeyed so far
from its birth place in these later years, took her father and mother
away, suddenly, in the very freshness of their early maturity. A
relation of Myrtle's father, wife of another captain, was returning to
America on a visit, and the child was sent back, under her care, while
still a mere infant, to her relatives at the old homestead. During the
long voyage, the strange mystery of the ocean was wrought into her
consciousness so deeply, that it seemed to have become a part of her
being. The waves rocked her, as if the sea had been her mother; and,
looking over the vessel's side from the arms that held her with tender
care, she used to watch the play of the waters, until the rhythm of their
movement became a part of her, almost as much as her own pulse and
breath.
The instincts and qualities belonging to the ancestral traits which
predominated in the conflict of mingled lives lay in this child in
embryo, waiting to come to maturity. It was as when several grafts,
bearing fruit that ripens at different times, are growing upon the same
stock. Her earlier impulses may have been derived directly from her
father and mother, but all the ancestors who have been mentioned, and
more or less obscurely many others, came uppermost in their time, before
the absolute and total result of their several forces had found its
equilibrium in the character by which she was to be known as an
individual. These inherited impulses were therefore many, conflicting,
some of them dangerous. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil held
mortgages on her life before its deed was put in her hands; but sweet and
gracious influences were also born with her; and the battle of life was
to be fought between them, God helping her in her need, and her own free
choice siding with one or the other. The formal statement of this
succession of ripening characteristics need not be repeated, but the fact
must be borne in mind.
This was the child who was delivered into the hands of Miss Silence
Withers, her mother's half--sister, keeping house with her brother
Malachi, a bachelor, already called Old Malachi, though hardly entitled
by his years to such a venerable prefix. Both these persons had
inherited the predominant traits of their sad-eyed mother. Malachi, the
chief heir of the family property, was rich, but felt very poor. He
owned this fine old estate of some hundreds of acres. He had moneys in
the bank, shares in various companies, wood-lots in the town; and a large
tract of Western land, the subject of a lawsuit which seemed as if it
would never be settled, and kept him always uneasy.
Some said he hoarded gold somewhere about the old house, but nobody knew
this for a certainty. In spite of his abundant means, he talked much of
poverty, and kept the household on the narrowest footing of economy. One
Irishwoman, with a little aid from her husband now and then, did all
their work; and the only company they saw was Miss Cynthia Badlam, who,
as a relative, claimed a home with them whenever she was so disposed.
The "little Indian," as Malachi called her, was an awkward accession to
the family. Silence Withers knew no more about children and their ways
and wants than if she had been a female ostrich. Thus it was that she
found it necessary to send for a woman well known in the place as the
first friend whose acquaintance many of the little people of the town had
made in this vale of tears.
Thirty years of practice had taught Nurse Byloe the art of handling the
young of her species with the soft firmness which one may notice in cats
with their kittens,--more grandly in a tawny lioness mouthing her cubs.
Myrtle did not know she was held; she only felt she was lifted, and borne
up, as a cherub may feel upon a white-woolly cloud, and smiled
accordingly at the nurse, as if quite at home in her arms.
"As fine a child as ever breathed the breath of life. But where did them
black eyes come from? Born in Injy,--that 's it, ain't it? No, it's her
poor mother's eyes to be sure. Does n't it seem as if there was a kind
of Injin look to 'em? She'll be a lively one to manage, if I know
anything about childun. See her clinchin' them little fists!"
This was when Miss Silence came near her and brought her rather severe
countenance close to the child for inspection of its features. The
ungracious aspect of the woman and the defiant attitude of the child
prefigured in one brief instant the history of many long coming years.
It was not a great while before the two parties in that wearing conflict
of alien lives, which is often called education, began to measure their
strength against each other. The child was bright, observing, of
restless activity, inquisitively curious, very hard to frighten, and with
a will which seemed made for mastery, not submission.
The stern spinster to whose care this vigorous life was committed was
disposed to discharge her duty to the girl faithfully and
conscientiously; but there were two points in her character and belief
which had a most important bearing on the manner in which she carried out
her laudable intentions. First, she was one of that class of human
beings whose one single engrossing thought is their own welfare,--in the
next world, it is true, but still their own personal welfare. The Roman
Church recognizes this class, and provides every form of specific to meet
their spiritual condition. But in so far as Protestantism has thrown out
works as a means of insuring future safety, these unfortunates are as
badly off as nervous patients who have no drops, pills, potions, no
doctors' rules, to follow. Only tell a poor creature what to do, and he
or she will do it, and be made easy, were it a pilgrimage of a thousand
miles, with shoes full of split peas instead of boiled ones; but if once
assured that doing does no good, the drooping Little-faiths are left at
leisure to worry about their souls, as the other class of weaklings worry
about their bodies. The effect on character does not seem to be very
different in the two classes. Metaphysicians may discuss the nature of
selfishness at their leisure; if to have all her thoughts centring on the
one point of her own well-being by and by was selfishness, then Silence
Withers was supremely selfish; and if we are offended with that form of
egotism, it is no more than ten of the twelve Apostles were, as the
reader may see by turning to the Gospel of St. Matthew, the twentieth
chapter and the twenty-fourth verse.
The next practical difficulty was, that she attempted to carry out a
theory which, whatever might be its success in other cases, did not work
kindly in the case of Myrtle Hazard, but, on the contrary, developed a
mighty spirit of antagonism in her nature, which threatened to end in
utter lawlessness. Miss Silence started from the approved doctrine, that
all children are radically and utterly wrong in all their motives,
feelings, thoughts, and deeds, so long as they remain subject to their
natural instincts. It was by the eradication, and not the education, of
these instincts, that the character of the human being she was moulding
was to be determined. The first great preliminary process, so soon as the
child manifested any evidence of intelligent and persistent
self-determination, was to break her will.
There is no doubt that this was a legitimate conclusion from the teaching
of Priest Pemberton, but it required a colder and harder nature than his
own to carry out many of his dogmas to their practical application. He
wrought in the pure mathematics, so to speak, of theology, and left the
working rules to the good sense and good feeling of his people.
Miss Silence had been waiting for her opportunity to apply the great
doctrine, and it came at last in a very trivial way.
"Myrtle does n't want brown bread. Myrtle won't have brown bread. Myrtle
will have white bread."
"Myrtle is a wicked child. She will have what Aunt Silence says she
shall have. She won't have anything but brown bread."
Thereupon the bright red lip protruded, the hot blood mounted to her
face, the child untied her little "tire," got down from the table, took
up her one forlorn, featureless doll, and went to bed without her supper.
The next morning the worthy woman thought that hunger and reflection
would have subdued the rebellious spirit. So there stood yesterday's
untouched supper waiting for her breakfast. She would not taste it, and
it became necessary to enforce that extreme penalty of the law which had
been threatened, but never yet put in execution. Miss Silence, in
obedience to what she felt to be a painful duty, without any passion, but
filled with high, inexorable purpose, carried the child up to the garret,
and, fastening her so that she could not wander about and hurt herself,
left her to her repentant thoughts, awaiting the moment when a plaintive
entreaty for liberty and food should announce that the evil nature had
yielded and the obdurate will was broken.
The garret was an awful place. All the skeleton-like ribs of the roof
showed in the dim light, naked overhead, and the only floor to be trusted
consisted of the few boards which bridged the lath and plaster. A great,
mysterious brick tower climbed up through it,--it was the chimney, but it
looked like a horrible cell to put criminals into. The whole place was
festooned with cobwebs,--not light films, such as the housewife's broom
sweeps away before they have become a permanent residence, but vast gray
draperies, loaded with dust, sprinkled with yellow powder from the beams
where the worms were gnawing day and night, the home of old, hairy
spiders who had, lived there since they were eggs and would leave it for
unborn spiders who would grow old and huge like themselves in it, long
after the human tenants had left the mansion for a narrower home. Here
this little criminal was imprisoned, six, twelve,--tell it not to
mothers,--eighteen dreadful hours, hungry until she was ready to gnaw her
hands, a prey to all childish imaginations; and here at her stern
guardian's last visit she sat, pallid, chilled, almost fainting, but
sullen and unsubdued. The Irishwoman, poor stupid Kitty Fagan, who had
no theory of human nature, saw her over the lean shoulders of the
spinster, and, forgetting all differences of condition and questions of
authority, rushed to her with a cry of maternal tenderness, and, with a
tempest of passionate tears and kisses, bore her off to her own humble
realm, where the little victorious martyr was fed from the best stores of
the house, until there was as much danger from repletion as there had
been from famine. How the experiment might have ended but for this
empirical and most unphilosophical interference, there is no saying; but
it settled the point that the rebellious nature was not to be subjugated
in a brief conflict.
The untamed disposition manifested itself in greater enormities as she
grew older. At the age of four years she was detected in making a
cat's-cradle at meeting, during sermon-time, and, on being reprimanded
for so doing, laughed out loud, so as to be heard by Father Pemberton,
who thereupon bent his threatening, shaggy brows upon the child, and, to
his shame be it spoken, had such a sudden uprising of weak, foolish,
grandfatherly feelings, that a mist came over his eyes, and he left out
his "ninthly" altogether, thereby spoiling the logical sequence of
propositions which had kept his large forehead knotty for a week.
At eight years old she fell in love with the high-colored picture of
Major Gideon Withers in the crimson sash and the red feather of his
exalted military office. It was then for the first time that her aunt
Silence remarked a shade of resemblance between the child and the
portrait. She had always, up to this time, been dressed in sad colors,
as was fitting, doubtless, for a forlorn orphan; but happening one day to
see a small negro girl peacocking round in a flaming scarlet petticoat,
she struck for bright colors in her own apparel, and carried her point at
last. It was as if a ground-sparrow had changed her gray feathers for
the burning plumage of some tropical wanderer; and it was natural enough
that Cyprian Eveleth should have called her the fire-hang-bird, and her
little chamber the fire-hang-bird's nest,--using the country boy's
synonyme for the Baltimore oriole.
At ten years old she had one of those great experiences which give new
meaning to the life of a child.
Her uncle Malachi had seemed to have a strong liking for her at one time,
but of late years his delusions had gained upon him, and under their
influence he seemed to regard her as an encumbrance and an extravagance.
He was growing more and more solitary in his habits, more and more
negligent of his appearance. He was up late at night, wandering about
the house from the cellar to the garret, so that, his light being seen
flitting from window to window, the story got about that the old house
was haunted.
One dreary, rainy Friday in November, Myrtle was left alone in the house.
Her uncle had been gone since the day before. The two women were both
away at the village. At such times the child took a strange delight in
exploring all the hiding-places of the old mansion. She had the
mysterious dwelling-place of so many of the dead and the living all to
herself. What a fearful kind of pleasure in its silence and loneliness!
The old clock that Marmaduke Storr made in London more than a hundred
years ago was clicking the steady pulse-beats of its second century. The
featured moon on its dial had lifted one eye, as if to watch the child,
as it had watched so many generations of children, while the swinging
pendulum ticked them along into youth, maturity, gray hairs,
deathbeds,--ticking through the prayer at the funeral, ticking without
grief through all the still or noisy woe of mourning,--ticking without
joy when the smiles and gayety of comforted heirs had come back again.
She looked at herself in the tall, bevelled mirror in the best chamber.
She pulled aside the curtains of the stately bedstead whereon the heads
of the house had slept until they died and were stretched out upon it,
and the sheet shaped itself to them in vague, awful breadth of outline,
like a block of monumental marble the sculptor leaves just hinted by the
chisel.
She groped her way up to the dim garret, the scene of her memorable
punishment. A rusty hook projected from one of the joists a little
higher than a man's head. Something was hanging from it,--an old
garment, was it? She went bravely up and touched--a cold hand. She did
what most children of that age would do,--uttered a cry and ran
downstairs with all her might. She rushed out of the door and called to
the man Patrick, who was doing some work about the place. What could be
done was done, but it was too late.
Uncle Malachi had made away with himself. That was plain on the face of
thing. In due time the coroner's verdict settled it. It was not so
strange as it seemed; but it made a great talk in the village and all the
country round about. Everybody knew he had money enough, and yet he had
hanged himself for fear of starving to death.
For all that, he was found to have left a will, dated some years before,
leaving his property to his sister Silence, with the exception of a
certain moderate legacy to be paid in money to Myrtle Hazard when she
should arrive at the age of twenty years.
The household seemed more chilly than ever after this tragical event. Its
depressing influence followed the child to school, where she learned the
common branches of knowledge. It followed her to the Sabbath-day
catechisings, where she repeated the answers about the federal headship
of Adam, and her consequent personal responsibilities, and other
technicalities which are hardly milk for babes, perhaps as well as other
children, but without any very profound remorse for what she could not
help, so far as she understood the matter, any more than her sex or
stature, and with no very clear comprehension of the phrases which the
New England followers of the Westminster divines made a part of the
elementary instruction of young people.
At twelve years old she had grown tall and womanly enough to attract the
eyes of the youth and older boys, several of whom made advances towards
her acquaintance. But the dreary discipline of the household had sunk
into her soul, and she had been shaping an internal life for herself,
which it was hard for friendship to penetrate. Bathsheba Stoker was
chained to the bedside of an invalid mother. Olive Eveleth, a kind,
true-hearted girl, belonged to another religious communion; and this
tended to render their meetings less frequent, though Olive was still her
nearest friend. Cyprian was himself a little shy, and rather held to
Myrtle through his sister than by any true intimacy directly with
herself. Of the other young men of the village Gifted Hopkins was
perhaps the most fervent of her admirers, as he had repeatedly shown by
effusions in verse, of which, under the thinnest of disguises, she was
the object.
William Murray Bradshaw, ten years older than herself, a young man of
striking aspect and claims to exceptional ability, had kept his eye on
her of late; but it was generally supposed that he would find a wife in
the city, where he was in the habit of going to visit a fashionable
relative, Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place. She, at any rate,
understood very well that he meant, to use his own phrase, "to go in for
a corner lot,"--understanding thereby a young lady with possessions and
without encumbrances. If the old man had only given his money to Myrtle,
William Murray Bradshaw would have made sure of her; but she was not
likely ever to get much of it. Miss Silence Withers, it was understood,
would probably leave her money as the Rev. Mr. Stoker, her spiritual
director, should indicate, and it seemed likely that most of it would go
to a rising educational institution where certain given doctrines were to
be taught through all time, whether disproved or not, and whether those
who taught them believed them or not, provided only they would say they
believed them.
Nobody had promised to say masses for her soul if she made this
disposition of her property, or pledged the word of the Church that she
should have plenary absolution. But she felt that she would be making
friends in Influential Quarters by thus laying up her treasure, and that
she would be safe if she had the good-will of the ministers of her sect.
Myrtle Hazard had nearly reached the age of fourteen, and, though not
like to inherit much of the family property, was fast growing into a
large dower of hereditary beauty. Always handsome, her features shaped
themselves in a finer symmetry, her color grew richer, her figure
promised a perfect womanly development, and her movements had the grace
which high-breeding gives the daughter of a queen, and which Nature now
and then teaches the humblest of village maidens. She could not long
escape the notice of the lovers and flatterers of beauty, and the time of
danger was drawing near.
At this period of her life she made two discoveries which changed the
whole course of her thoughts, and opened for her a new world of ideas and
possibilities.
Ever since the dreadful event of November, 1854, the garret had been a
fearful place to think of, and still more to visit. The stories that the
house was haunted gained in frequency of repetition and detail of
circumstance. But Myrtle was bold and inquisitive, and explored its
recesses at such times as she could creep among them undisturbed. Hid
away close under the eaves she found an old trunk covered with dust and
cobwebs. The mice had gnawed through its leather hinges, and, as it had
been hastily stuffed full, the cover had risen, and two or three volumes
had fallen to the floor. This trunk held the papers and books which her
great-grandmother, the famous beauty, had left behind her, records of the
romantic days when she was the belle of the county,--storybooks, memoirs,
novels, and poems, and not a few love-letters,--a strange collection,
which, as so often happens with such deposits in old families, nobody had
cared to meddle with, and nobody had been willing to destroy, until at
last they had passed out of mind, and waited for a new generation to
bring them into light again.
The other discovery was of a small hoard of coin. Under one of the
boards which formed the imperfect flooring of the garret was hidden an
old leather mitten. Instead of a hand, it had a fat fist of silver
dollars, and a thumb of gold half-eagles.
Thus knowledge and power found their way to the simple and secluded
maiden. The books were hers to read as much as any other's; the gold and
silver were only a part of that small provision which would be hers by
and by, and if she borrowed it, it was borrowing of herself. The tree of
the knowledge of good and evil had shaken its fruit into her lap, and,
without any serpent to tempt her, she took thereof and did eat.
CHAPTER IV.
BYLES GRIDLEY, A. M.
The old Master of Arts was as notable a man in his outside presentment as
one will find among five hundred college alumni as they file in
procession. His strong, squared features, his formidable scowl, his
solid-looking head, his iron-gray hair, his positive and as it were
categorical stride, his slow, precise way of putting a statement, the
strange union of trampling radicalism in some directions and
high-stepping conservatism in others, which made it impossible to
calculate on his unexpressed opinions, his testy ways and his generous
impulses, his hard judgments and kindly actions, were characteristics
that gave him a very decided individuality.
He had all the aspects of a man of books. His study, which was the best
room in Mrs. Hopkins's house, was filled with a miscellaneous-looking
collection of volumes, which his curious literary taste had got together
from the shelves of all the libraries that had been broken up during his
long life as a scholar. Classics, theology, especially of the
controversial sort, statistics, politics, law, medicine, science, occult
and overt, general literature,--almost every branch of knowledge was
represented. His learning was very various, and of course mixed up,
useful and useless, new and ancient, dogmatic and rational,--like his
library, in short; for a library gathered like his is a looking-glass in
which the owner's mind is reflected.
The common people about the village did not know what to make of such a
phenomenon. He did not preach, marry, christen, or bury, like the
ministers, nor jog around with medicines for sick folks, nor carry cases
into court for quarrelsome neighbors. What was he good for? Not a great
deal, some of the wiseacres thought,--had "all sorts of sense but common
sense,"--"smart mahn, but not prahctical." There were others who read
him more shrewdly. He knowed more, they said, than all the ministers put
together, and if he'd stan' for Ripresentative they 'd like to vote for
him,--they hed n't hed a smart mahn in the Gineral Court sence Squire
Wibird was thar.
They may have overdone the matter in comparing his knowledge with that of
all the ministers together, for Priest Pemberton was a real scholar in
his special line of study,--as all D. D.'s are supposed to be, or they
would not have been honored with that distinguished title. But Mr. Byles
Gridley not only had more learning than the deep-sea line of the bucolic
intelligence could fathom; he had more wisdom also than they gave him
credit for, even those among them who thought most of his abilities.
In his capacity of schoolmaster he had sharpened his wits against those
of the lively city boys he had in charge, and made such a reputation as
"Master" Gridley, that he kept that title even after he had become a
college tutor and professor. As a tutor he had to deal with many of
these same boys, and others like them, in the still more vivacious period
of their early college life. He got rid of his police duties when he
became a professor, but he still studied the pupils as carefully as he
used once to watch them, and learned to read character with a skill which
might have fitted him for governing men instead of adolescents. But he
loved quiet and he dreaded mingling with the brawlers of the
market-place, whose stock in trade is a voice and a vocabulary. So it
was that he had passed his life in the patient mechanical labor of
instruction, leaving too many of his instincts and faculties in abeyance.
The alluvium of all this experience bore a nearer resemblance to worldly
wisdom than might have been conjectured; much nearer, indeed, than it
does in many old instructors, whose eyes get fish-like as their blood
grows cold, and who are not fit to be trusted with anything more
practical than a gerund or a cosine. Master Gridley not only knew a good
deal of human nature, but he knew how to keep his knowledge to himself
upon occasion. He understood singularly well the ways and tendencies of
young people. He was shrewd in the detection of trickery, and very
confident in those who had once passed the ordeal of his well-schooled
observing powers. He had no particular tendency to meddle with the
personal relations of those about him; but if they were forced upon him
in any way, he was like to see into them at least as quickly as any of
his neighbors who thought themselves most endowed with practical skill.
In leaving the duties of his office he considered himself, as he said a
little despondently, like an old horse unharnessed and turned out to
pasture. He felt that he had separated himself from human interests, and
was henceforth to live in his books with the dead, until he should be
numbered with them himself. He had chosen this quiet village as a place
where he might pass his days undisturbed, and find a peaceful
resting-place in its churchyard, where the gravel was dry, and the sun
lay warm, and the glowing woods of autumn would spread their many-colored
counterpane over the bed where he would be taking his rest. It sometimes
came over him painfully that he was never more to be of any importance to
his fellow-creatures. There was nobody living to whom he was connected
by any very near ties. He felt kindly enough to the good woman in whose
house he lived; he sometimes gave a few words of counsel to her son; he
was not unamiable with the few people he met; he bowed with great
consideration to the Rev. Dr. Pemberton; and he studied with no small
interest the physiognomy of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker, to whose
sermons he listened, with a black scowl now and then, and a nostril
dilating with ominous intensity of meaning. But he said sadly to
himself, that his life had been a failure,--that he had nothing to show
for it, and his one talent was ready in its napkin to give back to his
Lord.
He owed something of this sadness, perhaps, to a cause which many would
hold of small significance. Though he had mourned for no lost love, at
least so far as was known, though he had never suffered the pang of
parting with a child, though he seemed isolated from those joys and
griefs which come with the ties of family, he too had his private urn
filled with the ashes of extinguished hopes. He was the father of a dead
book.
Why "Thoughts on the Universe, by Byles Gridley, A. M.," had not met with
an eager welcome and a permanent demand from the discriminating public,
it would take us too long to inquire in detail. Indeed; he himself was
never able to account satisfactorily for the state of things which his
bookseller's account made evident to him. He had read and re-read his
work; and the more familiar he became with it, the less was he able to
understand the singular want of popular appreciation of what he could not
help recognizing as its excellences. He had a special copy of his work,
printed on large paper and sumptuously bound. He loved to read in this,
as people read over the letters of friends who have long been dead; and
it might have awakened a feeling of something far removed from the
ludicrous, if his comments on his own production could have been heard.
"That's a thought, now, for you!--See Mr. Thomas Babington Macaulay's
Essay printed six years after thus book." "A felicitous image! and so
everybody would have said if only Mr. Thomas Carlyle had hit upon it."
"If this is not genuine pathos, where will you find it, I should like to
know? And nobody to open the book where it stands written but one poor
old man--in this generation, at least--in this generation!" It may be
doubted whether he would ever have loved his book with such jealous
fondness if it had gone through a dozen editions, and everybody was
quoting it to his face. But now it lived only for him; and to him it was
wife and child, parent, friend, all in one, as Hector was all in all to
his spouse. He never tired of it, and in his more sanguine moods he
looked forward to the time when the world would acknowledge its merits,
and his genius would find full recognition. Perhaps he was right: more
than one book which seemed dead and was dead for contemporary readers has
had a resurrection when the rivals who triumphed over it lived only in
the tombstone memory of antiquaries. Comfort for some of us, dear
fellow-writer.
It followed from the way in which he lived that he must have some means
of support upon which he could depend. He was economical, if not over
frugal in some of his habits; but he bought books, and took newspapers
and reviews, and had money when money was needed; the fact being, though
it was not generally known, that a distant relative had not long before
died, leaving him a very comfortable property.
His money matters had led him to have occasional dealings with the late
legal firm of Wibird and Penhallow, which had naturally passed into the
hands of the new partnership, Penhallow and Bradshaw. He had entire
confidence in the senior partner, but not so much in the young man who
had been recently associated in the business.
Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, commonly called by his last two names, was
the son of a lawyer of some note for his acuteness, who marked out his
calling for him in having him named after the great Lord Mansfield.
Murray Bradshaw was about twenty-five years old, by common consent
good-looking, with a finely formed head, a searching eye, and a sharp-cut
mouth, which smiled at his bidding without the slightest reference to the
real condition of his feeling at the moment. This was a great
convenience; for it gave him an appearance of good-nature at the small
expense of a slight muscular movement which was as easy as winking, and
deceived everybody but those who had studied him long and carefully
enough to find that this play of his features was what a watch maker
would call a detached movement.
He had been a good scholar in college, not so much by hard study as by
skilful veneering, and had taken great pains to stand well with the
Faculty, at least one of whom, Byles Gridley, A. M., had watched him with
no little interest as a man with a promising future, provided he were not
so astute as to outwit and overreach himself in his excess of
contrivance. His classmates could not help liking him; as to loving him,
none of them would have thought of that. He was so shrewd, so keen, so
full of practical sense, and so good-humored as long as things went on to
his liking, that few could resist his fascination. He had a way of
talking with people about what they were interested in, as if it were the
one matter in the world nearest to his heart. But he was commonly trying
to find out something, or to produce some impression, as a juggler is
working at his miracle while he keeps people's attention by his voluble
discourse and make-believe movements. In his lightest talk he was almost
always edging towards a practical object, and it was an interesting and
instructive amusement to watch for the moment at which he would ship the
belt of his colloquial machinery on to the tight pulley. It was done so
easily and naturally that there was hardly a sign of it. Master Gridley
could usually detect the shifting action, but the young man's features
and voice never betrayed him.
He was a favorite with the other sex, who love poetry and romance, as he
well knew, for which reason he often used the phrases of both, and in
such a way as to answer his purpose with most of those whom he wished to
please. He had one great advantage in the sweepstakes of life: he was
not handicapped with any burdensome ideals. He took everything at its
marked value. He accepted the standard of the street as a final fact for
to-day, like the broker's list of prices.
His whole plan of life was laid out. He knew that law was the best
introduction to political life, and he meant to use it for this end. He
chose to begin his career in the country, so as to feel his way more
surely and gradually to its ultimate aim; but he had no intention of
burning his shining talents in a grazing district, however tall its grass
might grow. His business was not with these stiff-jointed, slow-witted
graziers, but with the supple, dangerous, far-seeing men who sit scheming
by the gas-light in the great cities, after all the lamps and candles are
out from the Merrimac to the Housatonic. Every strong and every weak
point of those who might probably be his rivals were laid down on his
charts, as winds and currents and rocks are marked on those of a
navigator. All the young girls in the country, and not a few in the
city, with which, as mentioned, he had frequent relations, were on his
list of possible availabilities in the matrimonial line of speculation,
provided always that their position and prospects were such as would make
them proper matches for so considerable a person as the future Hon.
William Murray Bradshaw.
Master Gridley had made a careful study of his old pupil since they had
resided in the same village. The old professor could not help admiring
him, notwithstanding certain suspicious elements in his character; for
after muddy village talk, a clear stream of intelligent conversation was
a great luxury to the hard-headed scholar. The more he saw of him, the
more he learned to watch his movements, and to be on his guard in talking
with him. The old man could be crafty, with all his simplicity, and he
had found out that under his good-natured manner there often lurked some
design more or less worth noting, and which might involve other interests
deserving protection.
For some reason or other the old Master of Arts had of late experienced a
certain degree of relenting with regard to himself, probably brought
about by the expressions of gratitude from worthy Mrs. Hopkins for acts
of kindness to which he himself attached no great value. He had been
kind to her son Gifted; he had been fatherly with Susan Posey, her
relative and boarder; and he had shown himself singularly and
unexpectedly amiable with the little twins who had been adopted by the
good woman into her household. In fact, ever since these little
creatures had begun to toddle about and explode their first consonants,
he had looked through his great round spectacles upon them with a decided
interest; and from that time it seemed as if some of the human and social
sentiments which had never leafed or flowered in him, for want of their
natural sunshine, had begun growing up from roots which had never lost
their life. His liking for the twins may have been an illustration of
that singular law which old Dr. Hurlbut used to lay down, namely, that at
a certain period of life, say from fifty to sixty and upward, the
grand-paternal instinct awakens in bachelors, the rhythms of Nature
reaching them in spite of her defeated intentions; so that when men marry
late they love their autumn child with a twofold affection,--father's and
grandfather's both in one.
However this may be, there is no doubt that Mr. Byles Gridley was
beginning to take a part in his neighbors' welfare and misfortunes, such
as could hardly have been expected of a man so long lost in his books and
his scholastic duties. And among others, Myrtle Hazard had come in for a
share of his interest. He had met her now and then in her walks to and
from school and meeting, and had been taken with her beauty and her
apparent unconsciousness of it, which he attributed to the forlorn kind
of household in which she had grown up. He had got so far as to talk
with her now and then, and found himself puzzled, as well he might be, in
talking with a girl who had been growing into her early maturity in
antagonism with every influence that surrounded her.
"Love will reach her by and by," he said, "in spite of the dragons up at
the den yonder.
"'Centum fronte oculos, centum cervice gerebat
Argus, et hos unus saepe fefellit amor.'"
But there was something about Myrtle,--he hardly knew whether to call it
dignity, or pride, or reserve, or the mere habit of holding back brought
about by the system of repression under which she had been
educated,--which kept even the old Master of Arts at his distance. Yet he
was strongly drawn to her, and had a sort of presentiment that he might
be able to help her some day, and that very probably she would want his
help; for she was alone in the world, except for the dragons, and sure to
be assailed by foes from without and from within.
He noticed that her name was apt to come up in his conversations with
Murray Bradshaw; and, as he himself never introduced it, of course the
young man must have forced it, as conjurers force a card, and with some
special object. This set him thinking hard; and, as a result of it, he
determined the next time Mr. Bradshaw brought her name up to set him
talking.
So he talked, not suspecting how carefully the old man listened.
"It was a demonish hard case," he said, "that old Malachi had left his
money as he did. Myrtle Hazard was going to be the handsomest girl
about, when she came to her beauty, and she was coming to it mighty fast.
If they could only break that will, but it was no use trying. The
doctors said he was of sound mind for at least two years after making it.
If Silence Withers got the land claim, there'd be a pile, sure enough.
Myrtle Hazard ought to have it. If the girl had only inherited that
property--whew? She'd have been a match for any fellow. That old
Silence Withers would do just as her minister told her,--even chance
whether she gives it to the Parson-factory, or marries Bellamy Stoker,
and gives it to him after his wife's dead. He'd take it if he had to take
her with it. Earn his money, hey, Master Gridley?"
"Why, you don't seem to think very well of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy
Stoker?" said Mr. Gridley, smiling.
"Think well of him? Too fond of using the Devil's pitchfork for my
fancy! Forks over pretty much all the world but himself and his lot
into--the bad place, you know; and toasts his own cheese with it with
very much the same kind of comfort that other folks seem to take in that
business. Besides, he has a weakness for pretty saints--and sinners.
That's an odd name he has. More belle amie than Joseph about him, I
rather guess!"
The old professor smiled again. "So you don't think he believes all the
mediaeval doctrines he is in the habit of preaching, Mr. Bradshaw?"
"No, sir; I think he belongs to the class I have seen described
somewhere. 'There are those who hold the opinion that truth is only safe
when diluted,--about one fifth to four fifths lies,--as the oxygen of the
air is with its nitrogen. Else it would burn us all up.'"
Byles Gridley colored and started a little. This was one of his own
sayings in "Thoughts on the Universe." But the young man quoted it
without seeming to suspect its authorship.
"Where did you pick up that saying, Mr. Bradshaw?"
"I don't remember. Some paper, I rather think. It's one of those good
things that get about without anybody's knowing who says 'em. Sounds like
Coleridge."
"That's what I call a compliment worth having," said Byles Gridley to
himself, when he got home. "Let me look at that passage."
He took down "Thoughts on the Universe," and got so much interested,
reading on page after page, that he did not hear the little tea-bell, and
Susan Posey volunteered to run up to his study and call him down to tea.
CHAPTER V
THE TWINS.
Miss Suzan Posey knocked timidly at his door and informed him that tea
was waiting. He rather liked Susan Posey. She was a pretty creature,
slight, blonde, a little too light, a village beauty of the second or
third grade, effective at picnics and by moonlight,--the kind of girl
that very young men are apt to remember as their first love. She had a
taste for poetry, and an admiration of poets; but, what was better, she
was modest and simple, and a perfect sister and mother and grandmother to
the two little forlorn twins who had been stranded on the Widow Hopkins's
doorstep.
These little twins, a boy and girl, were now between two and three years
old. A few words will make us acquainted with them. Nothing had ever
been known of their origin. The sharp eyes of all the spinsters had been
through every household in the village and neighborhood, and not a
suspicion fixed itself on any one. It was a dark night when they were
left; and it was probable that they had been brought from another town,
as the sound of wheels had been heard close to the door where they were
found, had stopped for a moment, then been heard again, and lost in the
distance.
How the good woman of the house took them in and kept them has been
briefly mentioned. At first nobody thought they would live a day, such
little absurd attempts at humanity did they seem. But the young doctor
came and the old doctor came, and the infants were laid in cotton-wool,
and the room heated up to keep them warm, and baby-teaspoonfuls of milk
given them, and after being kept alive in this way, like the young of
opossums and kangaroos, they came to a conclusion about which they did
not seem to have made up their thinking-pulps for some weeks, namely, to
go on trying to cross the sea of life by tugging at the four-and-twenty
oars which must be pulled day and night until the unknown shore is
reached, and the oars lie at rest under the folded hands.
As it was not very likely that the parents who left their offspring round
on doorsteps were of saintly life, they were not presented for baptism
like the children of church-members. Still, they must have names to be
known by, and Mrs. Hopkins was much exercised in the matter. Like many
New England parents, she had a decided taste for names that were
significant and sonorous. That which she had chosen for her oldest
child, the young poet, was either a remarkable prophecy, or it had
brought with it the endowments it promised. She had lost, or, in her own
more pictorial language, she had buried, a daughter to whom she had given
the names, at once of cheerful omen and melodious effect, Wealthy
Amadora.
As for them poor little creturs, she said, she believed they was rained
down out o' the skies, jest as they say toads and tadpoles come. She
meant to be a mother to 'em for all that, and give 'em jest as good names
as if they was the governor's children, or the minister's. If Mr.
Gridley would be so good as to find her some kind of a real handsome
Chris'n name for 'em, she'd provide 'em with the other one. Hopkinses
they shall be bred and taught, and Hopkinses they shall be called. Ef
their father and mother was ashamed to own 'em, she was n't. Couldn't
Mr. Gridley pick out some pooty sounding names from some of them great
books of his. It's jest as well to have 'em pooty as long as they don't
cost any more than if they was Tom and Sally.
A grim smile passed over the rugged features of Byles Gridley. "Nothing
is easier than that, Mrs. Hopkins," he said. "I will give you two very
pretty names that I think will please you and other folks. They're new
names, too. If they shouldn't like to keep them, they can change them
before they're christened, if they ever are. Isosceles will be just the
name for the boy, and I'm sure you won't find a prettier name for the
girl in a hurry than Helminthia."
Mrs. Hopkins was delighted with the dignity and novelty of these two
names, which were forthwith adopted. As they were rather long for common
use in the family, they were shortened into the easier forms of Sossy and
Minthy, under which designation the babes began very soon to thrive
mightily, turning bread and milk into the substance of little sinners at
a great rate, and growing as if they were put out at compound interest.
This short episode shows us the family conditions surrounding Byles
Gridley, who, as we were saying, had just been called down to tea by Miss
Susan Posey.
"I am coming, my dear," he said,--which expression quite touched Miss
Susan, who did not know that it was a kind of transferred caress from the
delicious page he was reading. It was not the living child that was
kissed, but the dead one lying under the snow, if we may make a trivial
use of a very sweet and tender thought we all remember.
Not long after this, happening to call in at the lawyer's office, his eye
was caught by the corner of a book lying covered up by a pile of papers.
Somehow or other it seemed to look very natural to him. Could that be a
copy of "Thoughts on the Universe"? He watched his opportunity, and got
a hurried sight of the volume. His own treatise, sure enough! Leaves
Uncut. Opened of itself to the one hundred and twentieth page. The
axiom Murray Bradshaw had quoted--he did not remember from
what,--"sounded like Coleridge"--was staring him in the face from that
very page. When he remembered how he had pleased himself with that
compliment the other day, he blushed like a school-girl; and then,
thinking out the whole trick,--to hunt up his forgotten book, pick out a
phrase or two from it, and play on his weakness with it, to win his good
opinion,--for what purpose he did not know, but doubtless to use him in
some way,--he grinned with a contempt about equally divided between
himself and the young schemer.
"Ah ha!" he muttered scornfully. "Sounds like Coleridge, hey? Niccolo
Macchiavelli Bradshaw!"
From this day forward he looked on all the young lawyer's doings with
even more suspicion than before. Yet he would not forego his company and
conversation; for he was very agreeable and amusing to study; and this
trick he had played him was, after all, only a diplomatist's way of
flattering his brother plenipotentiary. Who could say? Some time or
other he might cajole England or France or Russia into a treaty with just
such a trick. Shallower men than he had gone out as ministers of the
great Republic. At any rate, the fellow was worth watching.
CHAPTER VI.
THE USE OF SPECTACLES.
The old Master of Arts had a great reputation in the house where he lived
for knowing everything that was going on. He rather enjoyed it; and
sometimes amused himself with surprising his simple-hearted landlady and
her boarders with the unaccountable results of his sagacity. One thing
was quite beyond her comprehension. She was perfectly sure that Mr.
Gridley could see out of the back of his head, just as other people see
with their natural organs. Time and again he had told her what she was
doing when his back was turned to her, just as if he had been sitting
squarely in front of her. Some laughed at this foolish notion; but
others, who knew more of the nebulous sciences, told her it was like's
not jes' so. Folks had read letters laid ag'in' the pits o' their
stomachs, 'n' why should n't they see out o' the backs o' their heads?
Now there was a certain fact at the bottom of this belief of Mrs.
Hopkins; and as it world be a very small thing to make a mystery of so
simple a matter, the reader shall have the whole benefit of knowing all
there is in it,--not quite yet, however, of knowing all that came of it.
It was not the mirror trick, of course, which Mrs. Felix Lorraine and
other dangerous historical personages have so long made use of. It was
nothing but this: Mr. Byles Gridley wore a pair of formidable spectacles
with large round glasses. He had often noticed the reflection of objects
behind him when they caught their images at certain angles, and had got
the habit of very often looking at the reflecting surface of one or the
other of the glasses, when he seemed to be looking through them. It put
a singular power into his possession, which might possibly hereafter lead
to something more significant than the mystification of the Widow
Hopkins.
A short time before Myrtle Hazard's disappearance, Mr. Byles Gridley had
occasion to call again at the office of Penhallow and Bradshaw on some
small matter of business of his own. There were papers to look over, and
he put on his great round-glassed spectacles. He and Mr. Penhallow sat
down at the table, and Mr. Bradshaw was at a desk behind them. After
sitting for a while, Mr. Penhallow seemed to remember something he had
meant to attend to, for he said all at once: "Excuse me, Mr. Gridley.
Mr. Bradshaw, if you are not busy, I wish you would look over this bundle
of papers. They look like old receipted bills and memoranda of no
particular use; but they came from the garret of the Withers place, and
might possibly have something that would be of value. Look them over,
will you, and see whether there is anything there worth saving."
The young man took the papers, and Mr. Penhallow sat down again at the
table with Mr. Byles Gridley.
This last-named gentleman felt just then a strong impulse to observe the
operations of Murray Bradshaw. He could not have given any very good
reason for it, any more than any of us can for half of what we do.
"I should like to examine that conveyance we were speaking of once more,"
said he. "Please to look at this one in the mean time, will you, Mr.
Penhallow?"
Master Gridley held the document up before him. He did not seem to find
it quite legible, and adjusted his spectacles carefully, until they were
just as he wanted them. When he had got them to suit himself, sitting
there with his back to Murray Bradshaw, he could see him and all his
movements, the desk at which he was standing, and the books in the
shelves before him,--all this time appearing as if he were intent upon
his own reading.
The young man began in a rather indifferent way to look over the papers.
He loosened the band round them, and took them up one by one, gave a
careless glance at them, and laid them together to tie up again when he
had gone through them. Master Gridley saw all this process, thinking
what a fool he was all the time to be watching such a simple proceeding.
Presently he noticed a more sudden movement: the young man had found
something which arrested his attention, and turned his head to see if he
was observed. The senior partner and his client were both apparently
deep in their own affairs. In his hand Mr. Bradshaw held a paper folded
like the others, the back of which he read, holding it in such a way that
Master Gridley saw very distinctly three large spots of ink upon it, and
noticed their position. Murray Bradshaw took another hurried glance at
the two gentlemen, and then quickly opened the paper. He ran it over
with a flash of his eye, folded it again, and laid it by itself. With
another quick turn of his head, as if to see whether he were observed or
like to be, he reached his hand out and took a volume down from the
shelves. In this volume he shut the document, whatever it was, which he
had just taken out of the bundle, and placed the book in a very silent
and as it were stealthy way back in its place. He then gave a look at
each of the other papers, and said to his partner: "Old bills, old
leases, and insurance policies that have run out. Malachi seems to have
kept every scrap of paper that had a signature to it."
"That 's the way with the old misers, always," said Mr. Penhallow.
Byles Gridley had got through reading the document he held,--or
pretending to read it. He took off his spectacles.
"We all grow timid and cautious as we get old, Mr. Penhallow." Then
turning round to the young man, he slowly repeated the lines,
"'Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, vel quod
Quaerit et inventis miser abstinet, ac timet uti;
Vel quod res omnes timide, gelideque ministrat'
"You remember the passage, Mr. Bradshaw?"
While he was reciting these words from Horace, which he spoke slowly as
if he relished every syllable, he kept his eyes on the young man
steadily, but with out betraying any suspicion. His old habits as a
teacher made that easy.
Murray Bradshaw's face was calm as usual, but there was a flush on his
cheek, and Master Gridley saw the slight but unequivocal signs of
excitement.
"Something is going on inside there," the old man said to himself. He
waited patiently, on the pretext of business, until Mr. Bradshaw got up
and left the office. As soon as he and the senior partner were alone,
Master Gridley took a lazy look at some of the books in his library.
There stood in the book-shelves a copy of the Corpus Juris Civilis,--the
fine Elzevir edition of 1664. It was bound in parchment, and thus
readily distinguishable at a glance from all the books round it. Now Mr.
Penhallow was not much of a Latin scholar, and knew and cared very little
about the civil law. He had fallen in with this book at an auction, and
bought it to place in his shelves with the other "properties" of the
office, because it would look respectable. Anything shut up in one of
those two octavos might stay there a lifetime without Mr. Penhallow's
disturbing it; that Master Gridley knew, and of course the young man knew
it too.
We often move to the objects of supreme curiosity or desire, not in the
lines of castle or bishop on the chess-board, but with the knight's
zigzag, at first in the wrong direction, making believe to ourselves we
are not after the thing coveted. Put a lump of sugar in a canary-bird's
cage, and the small creature will illustrate the instinct for the benefit
of inquirers or sceptics. Byles Gridley went to the other side of the
room and took a volume of Reports from the shelves. He put it back and
took a copy of "Fearne on Contingent Remainders," and looked at that for
a moment in an idling way, as if from a sense of having nothing to do.
Then he drew the back of his forefinger along the books on the shelf, as
if nothing interested him in them, and strolled to the shelf in front of
the desk at which Murray Bradshaw had stood. He took down the second
volume of the Corpus Juris Civilis, turned the leaves over mechanically,
as if in search of some title, and replaced it.
He looked round for a moment. Mr. Penhallow was writing hard at his
table, not thinking of him, it was plain enough. He laid his hand on the
FIRST volume of the Corpus Juris Civilis. There was a document shut up
in it. His hand was on the book, whether taking it out or putting it
back was not evident, when the door opened and Mr. William Murray
Bradshaw entered.
"Ah, Mr. Gridley," he said, "you are not studying the civil law, are
you?" He strode towards him as he spoke, his face white, his eyes fixed
fiercely on him.
"It always interests me, Mr. Bradshaw," he answered, "and this is a fine
edition of it. One may find a great many valuable things in the Corpus
Juris Civilis."
He looked impenetrable, and whether or not he had seen more than Mr.
Bradshaw wished him to see, that gentleman could not tell. But there
stood the two books in their place, and when, after Master Gridley had
gone, he looked in the first volume, there was the document he had shut
up in it.
CHAPTER VII.
MYRTLE'S LETTER--THE YOUNG MEN'S PURSUIT.
"You know all about it, Olive?" Cyprian Eveleth said to his sister, after
a brief word of greeting.
"Know of what, Cyprian?"
"Why, sister, don't you know that Myrtle Hazard is missing,--gone!--gone
nobody knows where, and that we are looking in all directions to find
her?"
Olive turned very pale and was silent for a moment. At the end of that
moment the story seemed almost old to her. It was a natural ending of
the prison-life which had been round Myrtle since her earliest years.
When she got large and strong enough, she broke out of jail,--that was
all. The nursery-bar is always climbed sooner or later, whether it is a
wooden or an iron one. Olive felt as if she had dimly foreseen just such
a finishing to the tragedy of the poor girl's home bringing-up. Why
could not she have done something to prevent it? Well,--what shall we do
now, and as it is?--that is the question.
"Has she left no letter,--no explanation of her leaving in this way?"
"Not a word, so far as anybody in the village knows."
"Come over to the post-office with me; perhaps we may find a letter. I
think we shall."
Olive's sagacity and knowledge of her friend's character had not misled
her. She found a letter from Myrtle to herself, which she opened and
read as here follows:
MY DEAREST OLIVE:--Think no evil of me for what I have done. The
fire-hang-bird's nest, as Cyprian called it, is empty, and the poor bird
is flown.
I can live as I have lived no longer. This place is chilling all the
life out of me, and I must find another home. It is far, far away, and
you will not hear from me again until I am there. Then I will write to
you.
You know where I was born,--under a hot sun and in the midst of strange,
lovely scenes that I seem still to remember. I must visit them again: my
heart always yearns for them. And I must cross the sea to get
there,--the beautiful great sea that I have always longed for and that my
river has been whispering about to me ever so many years. My life is
pinched and starved here. I feel as old as aunt Silence, and I am only
fifteen,--a child she has called me within a few days. If this is to be
a child, what is it to be a woman?
I love you dearly,--and your brother is almost to me as if he were mine.
I love our sweet, patient Bathsheba,--yes, and the old man that has
spoken so kindly with me, good Master Gridley; I hate to give you
pain,--to leave you all,--but my way of life is killing me, and I am too
young to die. I cannot take the comfort with you, my dear friends, that
I would; for it seems as if I carried a lump of ice in my heart, and all
the warmth I find in you cannot thaw it out.
I have had a strange warning to leave this place, Olive. Do you remember
how the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and told him to flee into
Egypt? I have had a dream like that, Olive. There is an old belief in
our family that the spirit of one who died many generations ago watches
over some of her descendants. They say it led our first ancestor to come
over here when it was a wilderness. I believe it has appeared to others
of the family in times of trouble. I have had a strange dream at any
rate, and the one I saw, or thought I saw, told me to leave this place.
Perhaps I should have stayed if it had not been for that, but it seemed
like an angel's warning.
Nobody will know how I have gone, or which way I have taken. On Monday,
you may show this letter to my friends, not before. I do not think they
will be in danger of breaking their hearts for me at our house. Aunt
Silence cares for nothing but her own soul, and the other woman hates me,
I always thought. Kitty Fagan will cry hard. Tell her perhaps I shall
come back by and by. There is a little box in my room, with some
keepsakes marked,--one is for poor Kitty. You can give them to the right
ones. Yours is with them.
Good-by, dearest. Keep my secret, as I told you, till Monday. And if
you never see me again, remember how much I loved you. Never think
hardly of me, for you have grown up in a happy home, and do not know how
much misery can be crowded into fifteen years of a young girl's life.
God be with you!
MYRTLE HAZARD.
Olive could not restrain her tears, as she handed the letter to Cyprian.
"Her secret is as safe with you as with me," she said. "But this is
madness, Cyprian, and we must keep her from doing herself a wrong.
"What she means to do, is to get to Boston, in some way or other, and
sail for India. It is strange that they have not tracked her. There is
no time to be lost. She shall not go out into the world in this way,
child that she is. No; she shall come back, and make her home with us,
if she cannot be happy with these people. Ours is a happy and a cheerful
home, and she shall be to me as a younger sister, and your sister too,
Cyprian. But you must see her; you must leave this very hour; and you
may find her. Go to your cousin Edward, in Boston, at once; tell him
your errand, and get him to help you find our poor dear sister. Then
give her the note I will write, and say I know your heart, Cyprian, and I
can trust that to tell you what to say."
In a very short time Cyprian Eveleth was on his way to Boston. But
another, keener even in pursuit than he, was there before him.
Ever since the day when Master Gridley had made that over-curious
observation of the young lawyer's proceedings at the office, Murray
Bradshaw had shown a far livelier interest than before in the conditions
and feelings of Myrtle Hazard. He had called frequently at The Poplars
to talk over business matters, which seemed of late to require a deal of
talking. He had been very deferential to Miss Silence, and had wound
himself into the confidence of Miss Badlam. He found it harder to
establish any very near relations with Myrtle, who had never seemed to
care much for any young man but Cyprian Eveleth, and to care for him
quite as much as Olive's brother as for any personal reason. But he
carefully studied Myrtle's tastes and ways of thinking and of life, so
that, by and by, when she should look upon herself as a young woman, and
not as a girl, he would have a great advantage in making her more
intimate acquaintance.
Thus, she corresponded with a friend of her mother's in India. She
talked at times as if it were her ideal home, and showed many tastes
which might well be vestiges of early Oriental impressions. She made
herself a rude hammock,--such as are often used in hot climates,--and
swung it between two elms. Here she would lie in the hot summer days,
and fan herself with the sandal-wood fan her friend in India had sent
her,--the perfume of which, the women said, seemed to throw her into
day-dreams, which were almost like trances.
These circumstances gave a general direction to his ideas, which were
presently fixed more exactly by two circumstances which he learned for
himself and kept to himself; for he had no idea of making a hue and cry,
and yet he did not mean that Myrtle Hazard should get away if he could
help it.
The first fact was this. He found among the copies of the city newspaper
they took at The Poplars a recent number from which a square had been cut
out. He procured another copy of this paper of the same date, and found
that the piece cut out was an advertisement to the effect that the A 1
Ship Swordfish, Captain Hawkins, was to sail from Boston for Calcutta, on
the 20th of June.
The second fact was the following. On the window-sill of her little
hanging chamber, which the women allowed him to inspect, he found some
threads of long, black, glossy hair caught by a splinter in the wood.
They were Myrtle's of course. A simpleton might have constructed a
tragedy out of this trivial circumstance,--how she had cast herself from
the window into the waters beneath it,--how she had been thrust out after
a struggle, of which this shred from her tresses was the dreadful
witness,--and so on. Murray Bradshaw did not stop to guess and wonder.
He said nothing about it, but wound the shining threads on his finger,
and, as soon as he got home, examined them with a magnifier. They had
been cut off smoothly, as with a pair of scissors. This was part of a
mass of hair, then, which had been shorn and thrown from the window.
Nobody would do that but she herself. What would she do it for? To
disguise her sex, of course. The other inferences were plain enough.
The wily young man put all these facts and hints together, and concluded
that he would let the rustics drag the ponds and the river, and scour the
woods and swamps, while he himself went to the seaport town from which
she would without doubt sail if she had formed the project he thought on
the whole most probable.
Thus it was that we found him hurrying to the nearest station to catch
the train to Boston, while they were all looking for traces of the
missing girl nearer home. In the cars he made the most suggestive
inquiries he could frame, to stir up the gentlemanly conductor's memory.
Had any young fellow been on the train within a day or two, who had
attracted his notice? Smooth, handsome face, black eyes, short black
hair, new clothes, not fitting very well, looked away when he paid his
fare, had a soft voice like a woman's,--had he seen anybody answering to
some such description as this? The gentlemanly conductor had not
noticed,--was always taking up and setting down way-passengers,--might
have had such a young man aboard,--there was two or three students one
day in the car singing college songs,--he did n't care how folks looked
if they had their tickets ready,--and minded their own business,--and, so
saying, he poked a young man upon whose shoulder a ringleted head was
reclining with that delightful abandon which the railroad train seems to
provoke in lovely woman,--"Fare!"
It is a fine thing to be set down in a great, overcrowded hotel, where
they do not know you, looking dusty, and for the moment shabby, with
nothing but a carpet-bag in your hand, feeling tired, and anything but
clean, and hungry, and worried, and every way miserable and mean, and to
undergo the appraising process of the gentleman in the office, who, while
he shoves the book round to you for your name, is making a hasty
calculation as to how high up he can venture to doom you. But Murray
Bradshaw's plain dress and carpet-bag were more than made up for by the
air and tone which imply the habit of being attended to. The clerk saw
that in a glance, and, as he looked at the name and address in the book,
spoke sharply in the explosive dialect of his tribe,--
"Jun! ta'tha'genlm'n'scarpetbag'n'showhimupt'thirtyone!"
When Cyprian Eveleth reached the same hotel late at night, he appeared in
his best clothes and with a new valise; but his amiable countenance and
gentle voice and modest manner sent him up two stories higher, where he
found himself in a room not much better than a garret, feeling lonely
enough, for he did not know he had an acquaintance in the same house.
The two young men were in and out so irregularly that it was not very
strange that they did not happen to meet each other.
The young lawyer was far more likely to find Myrtle if she were in the
city than the other, even with the help of his cousin Edward. He was not
only older, but sharper, better acquainted with the city and its ways,
and, whatever might be the strength of Cyprian's motives, his own were of
such intensity that he thought of nothing else by day, and dreamed of
nothing else by night. He went to work, therefore, in the most
systematic manner. He first visited the ship Swordfish, lying at her
wharf, saw her captain, and satisfied himself that as yet nobody at all
corresponding to the description of Myrtle Hazard had been seen by any
person on board. He visited all the wharves, inquiring on every vessel
where it seemed possible she might have been looking about. Hotels,
thoroughfares, every place where he might hear of her or meet her, were
all searched. He took some of the police into his confidence, and had
half a dozen pairs of eyes besides his own opened pretty widely, to
discover the lost girl.
On Sunday, the 19th, he got the first hint which encouraged him to think
he was on the trail of his fugitive. He had gone down again to the wharf
where the Swordfish, advertised to sail the next day, was lying. The
captain was not on board, but one of the mates was there, and he
addressed his questions to him, not with any great hope of hearing
anything important, but determined to lose no chance, however small. He
was startled with a piece of information which gave him such an exquisite
pang of delight that he could hardly keep the usual quiet of his
demeanor. A youth corresponding to his description of Myrtle Hazard in
her probable disguise had been that morning on board the Swordfish,
making many inquires as to the hour at which she was to sail, and who
were to be the passengers, and remained some time on board, going all
over the vessel, examining her cabin accommodations, and saying he should
return to-morrow before she sailed,--doubtless intending to take passage
in her, as there was plenty of room on board. There could be little
question, from the description, who this young person was. It was a
rather delicate--looking, dark--haired youth, smooth-faced, somewhat shy
and bashful in his ways, and evidently excited and nervous. He had
apparently been to look about him, and would come back at the last
moment, just as the vessel was ready to sail, and in an hour or two be
beyond the reach of inquiry.
Murray Bradshaw returned to his hotel, and, going to his chamber,
summoned all his faculties in state council to determine what course he
should follow, now that he had the object of his search certainly within
reaching distance. There was no danger now of her eluding him; but the
grave question arose, what was he to do when he stood face to face with
her. She must not go,--that was fixed. If she once got off in that
ship, she might be safe enough; but what would become of certain projects
in which he was interested,--that was the question. But again, she was
no child, to be turned away from her adventure by cajolery, or by any
such threats as common truants would find sufficient to scare them back
to their duty. He could tell the facts of her disguise and the manner of
her leaving home to the captain of the vessel, and induce him to send her
ashore as a stray girl, to be returned to her relatives. But this would
only make her furious with him; and he must not alienate her from
himself, at any rate. He might plead with her in the name of duty, for
the sake of her friends, for the good name of the family. She had
thought all these things over before she ran away. What if he should
address her as a lover, throw himself at her feet, implore her to pity
him and give up her rash scheme, and, if things came to the very worst,
offer to follow her wherever she went, if she would accept him in the
only relation that would render it possible. Fifteen years old,--he
nearly ten years older,--but such things had happened before, and this
was no time to stand on trifles.
He worked out the hypothesis of the matrimonial offer as he would have
reasoned out the probabilities in a law case he was undertaking.
1. He would rather risk that than lose all hold upon her. The girl was
handsome enough for his ambitious future, wherever it might carry him.
She came of an honorable family, and had the great advantage of being
free from a tribe of disagreeable relatives, which is such a drawback on
many otherwise eligible parties. To these considerations were to be
joined other circumstances which we need not here mention, of a nature to
add greatly to their force, and which would go far of themselves to
determine his action.
2. How was it likely she would look on such an extraordinary
proposition? At first, no doubt, as Lady Anne looked upon the advances
of Richard. She would be startled, perhaps shocked. What then? She
could not help feeling flattered at such an offer from him,--him, William
Murray Bradshaw, the rising young man of his county, at her feet, his
eyes melting with the love he would throw into them, his tones subdued to
their most sympathetic quality, and all those phrases on his lips which
every day beguile women older and more discreet than this romantic,
long-imprisoned girl, whose rash and adventurous enterprise was an
assertion of her womanhood and her right to dispose of herself as she
chose. He had not lived to be twenty-five years old without knowing his
power with women. He believed in himself so thoroughly, that his very
confidence was a strong promise of success.
3. In case all his entreaties, arguments, and offers made no impression,
should he make use of that supreme resource, not to be employed save in
extreme need, but which was of a nature, in his opinion, to shake a
resolution stronger than this young girl was like to oppose to it? That
would be like Christian's coming to his weapon called All-prayer, he said
to himself, with a smile that his early readings of Bunyan should have
furnished him an image for so different an occasion. The question was
one he could not settle till the time came,--he must leave it to the
instinct of the moment.
The next morning found him early waking after a night of feverish dreams.
He dressed himself with more than usual care, and walked down to the
wharf where the Swordfish was moored. The ship had left the wharf, and
was lying out in the stream: A small boat had just reached her, and a
slender youth, as he appeared at that distance, climbed, not
over-adroitly, up the vessel's side.
Murray Bradshaw called to a boatman near by and ordered the man to row
him over as fast as he could to the vessel lying in the stream. He had no
sooner reached the deck of the Swordfish than he asked for the young
person who had just been put on board.
"He is in the cabin, sir, just gone down with the captain," was the
reply.
His heart beat, in spite of his cool temperament, as he went down the
steps leading to the cabin. The young person was talking earnestly with
the captain, and, on his turning round, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had
the pleasure of recognizing his young friend, Mr. Cyprian Eveleth.
CHAPTER VIII.
DOWN THE RIVER.
Look at the flower of a morning-glory the evening before the dawn which
is to see it unfold. The delicate petals are twisted into a spiral,
which at the appointed hour, when the sunlight touches the hidden springs
of its life, will uncoil itself and let the day into the chamber of its
virgin heart. But the spiral must unwind by its own law, and the hand
that shall try to hasten the process will only spoil the blossom which
would have expanded in symmetrical beauty under the rosy fingers of
morning.
We may take a hint from Nature's handling of the flower in dealing with
young souls, and especially with the souls of young girls, which, from
their organization and conditions, require more careful treatment than
those of their tougher-fibred brothers. Many parents reproach themselves
for not having enforced their own convictions on their children in the
face of every inborn antagonism they encountered. Let them not be too
severe in their self-condemnation. A want of judgment in this matter has
sent many a young person to Bedlam, whose nature would have opened kindly
enough if it had only been trusted to the sweet influences of morning
sunshine. In such cases it may be that the state we call insanity is not
always an unalloyed evil. It may take the place of something worse, the
wretchedness of a mind not yet dethroned, but subject to the perpetual
interferences of another mind governed by laws alien and hostile to its
own. Insanity may perhaps be the only palliative left to Nature in this
extremity. But before she comes to that, she has many expedients. The
mind does not know what diet it can feed on until it has been brought to
the starvation point. Its experience is like that of those who have been
long drifting about on rafts or in long-boats. There is nothing out of
which it will not contrive to get some sustenance. A person of note,
long held captive for a political offence, is said to have owed the
preservation of his reason to a pin, out of which he contrived to get
exercise and excitement by throwing it down carelessly on the dark floor
of his dungeon, and then hunting for it in a series of systematic
explorations until he had found it.
Perhaps the most natural thing Myrtle Hazard could have done would have
been to go crazy, and be sent to the nearest asylum, if Providence, which
in its wisdom makes use of the most unexpected agencies, had not made a
special provision for her mental welfare. She was in that arid household
as the prophet in the land where there was no dew nor rain for these long
years. But as he had the brook Cherith, and the bread and flesh in the
morning and the bread and flesh in the evening which the ravens brought
him, so she had the river and her secret store of books.
The river was light and life and music and companionship to her. She
learned to row herself about upon it, to swim boldly in it, for it had
sheltered nooks but a little way above The Poplars. But there was more
than that in it,--it was infinitely sympathetic. A river is strangely
like a human soul. It has its dark and bright days, its troubles from
within, and its disturbances from without. It often runs over ragged
rocks with a smooth surface, and is vexed with ripples as it slides over
sands that are level as a floor. It betrays its various moods by aspects
which are the commonplaces of poetry, as smiles and dimples and wrinkles
and frowns. Its face is full of winking eyes, when the scattering
rain-drops first fall upon it, and it scowls back at the storm-cloud, as
with knitted brows, when the winds are let loose. It talks, too, in its
own simple dialect, murmuring, as it were, with busy lips all the way to
the ocean, as children seeking the mother's breast and impatient of
delay. Prisoners who know what a flower or an insect has been to them in
their solitary cell, invalids who have employed their vacant minds in
studying the patterns of paper-hangings on the walls of their
sick-chambers, can tell what the river was to the lonely, imaginative
creature who used to sit looking into its depths, hour after hour, from
the airy height of the Fire-hang-bird's Nest.
Of late a thought had mingled with her fancies which had given to the
river the aspect of something more than a friend and a companion. It
appeared all at once as a Deliverer. Did not its waters lead, after long
wanderings, to the great highway of the world, and open to her the gates
of those cities from which she could take her departure unchallenged
towards the lands of the morning or of the sunset? Often, after a
freshet, she had seen a child's miniature boat floating down on its side
past her window, and traced it in imagination back to some crystal brook
flowing by the door of a cottage far up a blue mountain in the distance.
So she now began to follow down the stream the airy shallop that held her
bright fancies. These dreams of hers were colored by the rainbows of an
enchanted fountain,--the books of adventure, the romances, the stories
which fortune had placed in her hands,--the same over which the heart of
the Pride of the County had throbbed in the last century, and on the
pages of some of which the traces of her tears might still be seen.
The literature which was furnished for Myrtle's improvement was chiefly
of a religious character, and, however interesting and valuable to those
to whom it was adapted, had not been chosen with any wise regard to its
fitness for her special conditions. Of what use was it to offer books
like the "Saint's Rest" to a child whose idea of happiness was in
perpetual activity? She read "Pilgrim's Progress," it is true, with
great delight. She liked the idea of travelling with a pack on one's
back, the odd shows at the House of the interpreter, the fighting, the
adventures, the pleasing young ladies at the palace the name of which was
Beautiful, and their very interesting museum of curiosities. As for the
allegorical meaning, it went through her consciousness like a peck of
wheat through a bushel measure with the bottom out, without touching.
But the very first book she got hold of out of the hidden treasury threw
the "Pilgrim's Progress" quite into the shade. It was the story of a
youth who ran away and lived on an island,--one Crusoe,--a homely
narrative, but evidently true, though full of remarkable adventures.
There too was the history, coming much nearer home, of Deborah Sampson,
the young woman who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, with a
portrait of her in man's attire, looking intrepid rather than lovely. A
virtuous young female she was, and married well, as she deserved to, and
raised a family with as good a name as wife and mother as the best of
them. But perhaps not one of these books and stories took such hold of
her imagination as the tale of Rasselas, which most young persons find
less entertaining than the "Vicar of Wakefield," with which it is
nowadays so commonly bound up. It was the prince's discontent in the
Happy Valley, the iron gate opening to the sound of music, and closing
forever on those it admitted, the rocky boundaries of the imprisoning
valley, the visions of the world beyond, the projects of escape, and the
long toil which ended in their accomplishment, which haunted her sleeping
and waking. She too was a prisoner, but it was not in the Happy Valley.
Of the romances and the love-letters we must take it for granted that she
selected wisely, and read discreetly; at least we know nothing to the
contrary.
There were mysterious reminiscences and hints of her past coming over her
constantly. It was in the course of the long, weary spring before her
disappearance, that a dangerous chord was struck which added to her
growing restlessness. In an old closet were some seashells and
coral-fans, and dried star-fishes and sea, horses, and a natural mummy of
a rough-skinned dogfish. She had not thought of them for years, but now
she felt impelled to look after them. The dim sea odors which still
clung to them penetrated to the very inmost haunts of memory, and called
up that longing for the ocean breeze which those who have once breathed
and salted their blood with it never get over, and which makes the
sweetest inland airs seem to them at last tame and tasteless. She held a
tigershell to her ear, and listened to that low, sleepy murmur, whether
in the sense or in the soul we hardly know, like that which had so often
been her lullaby,--a memory of the sea, as Landor and Wordsworth have
sung.
"You are getting to look like your father," Aunt Silence said one day; "I
never saw it before. I always thought you took after old Major Gideon
Withers. Well, I hope you won't come to an early grave like poor
Charles,--or at any rate, that you may be prepared."
It did not seem very likely that the girl was going out of the world at
present, but she looked Miss Silence in the face very seriously, and
said, "Why not an early grave, Aunt, if this world is such a bad place as
you say it is?"
"I'm afraid you are not fit for a better."
She wondered if Silence Withers and Cynthia Badlam were just ripe for
heaven.
For some months Miss Cynthia Badlam, who, as was said, had been an
habitual visitor at The Poplars, had lived there as a permanent resident.
Between her and Silence Withers, Myrtle Hazard found no rest for her
soul. Each of them was for untwisting the morning-glory without waiting
for the sunshine to do it. Each had her own wrenches and pincers to use
for that purpose. All this promised little for the nurture and
admonition of the young girl, who, if her will could not be broken by
imprisonment and starvation at three years old, was not likely to be
over-tractable to any but gentle and reasonable treatment at fifteen.
Aunt Silence's engine was responsibility,--her own responsibility, and
the dreadful consequences which would follow to her, Silence, if Myrtle
should in any way go wrong. Ever since her failure in that moral coup
d'etat by which the sinful dynasty of the natural self-determining power
was to be dethroned, her attempts in the way of education had been a
series of feeble efforts followed by plaintive wails over their utter
want of success. The face she turned upon the young girl in her solemn
expostulations looked as if it were inscribed with the epitaphs of hope
and virtue. Her utterances were pitched in such a forlorn tone, that the
little bird in his cage, who always began twittering at the sound of
Myrtle's voice, would stop in his song, and cock his head with a look of
inquiry full of pathos, as if he wanted to know what was the matter, and
whether he could do anything to help.
The specialty of Cynthia Badlam was to point out all the dangerous and
unpardonable trangressions into which young people generally, and this
young person in particular, were likely to run, to hold up examples of
those who had fallen into evil ways and come to an evil end, to present
the most exalted standard of ascetic virtue to the lively girl's
apprehension, leading her naturally to the conclusion that a bright
example of excellence stood before her in the irreproachable relative who
addressed her. Especially with regard to the allurements which the world
offers to the young and inexperienced female, Miss Cynthia Badlam was
severe and eloquent. Sometimes poor Myrtle would stare, not seeing the
meaning of her wise caution, sometimes look at Miss Cynthia with a
feeling that there was something about her that was false and forced,
that she had nothing in common with young people, that she had no pity
for them, only hatred of their sins, whatever these might be,--a hatred
which seemed to extend to those sources of frequent temptation, youth and
beauty, as if they were in themselves objectionable.
Both the lone women at The Poplars were gifted with a thin vein of music.
They gave it expression in psalmody, of course, in which Myrtle, who was
a natural singer, was expected to bear her part. This would have been
pleasantry if the airs most frequently selected had been cheerful or
soothing, and if the favorite hymns had been of a sort to inspire a love
for what was lovely in this life, and to give some faint foretaste of the
harmonies of a better world to come. But there is a fondness for minor
keys and wailing cadences common to the monotonous chants of cannibals
and savages generally, to such war-songs as the wild, implacable
"Marseillaise," and to the favorite tunes of low--spirited Christian
pessimists. That mournful "China," which one of our most agreeable
story-tellers has justly singled out as the cry of despair itself, was
often sung at The Poplars, sending such a sense of utter misery through
the house, that poor Kitty Fagan would cross herself, and wring her
hands, and think of funerals, and wonder who was going to die,--for she
fancied she heard the Banshee's warning in those most dismal ululations.
On the first Saturday of June, a fortnight before her disappearance,
Myrtle strolled off by the river shore, along its lonely banks, and came
dome with her hands full of leaves and blossoms. Silence Withers looked
at them as if they were a kind of melancholy manifestation of frivolity
on the part of the wicked old earth. Not that she did not inhale their
faint fragrance with a certain pleasure, and feel their beauty as none
whose souls are not wholly shriveled and hardened can help doing, but the
world was, in her estimate, a vale of tears, and it was only by a
momentary forgetfulness that she could be moved to smile at anything.
Miss Cynthia, a sharper-edged woman, had formed the habit of crushing
everything for its moral, until it lost its sweetness and grew almost
odious, as flower-de-luces do when handled roughly. "There's a worm in
that leaf, Myrtle. He has rolled it all round him, and hidden himself
from sight; but there is a horrid worm in it, for all it is so young and
fresh. There is a worm in every young soul, Myrtle."
"But there is not a worm in every leaf, Miss Cynthia. Look," she said,"
all these are open, and you can see all over and under them, and there is
nothing there. Are there never any worms in the leaves after they get
old and yellow, Miss Cynthia?"
That was a pretty fair hit for a simple creature of fifteen, but perhaps
she was not so absolutely simple as one might have thought.
It was on the evening of this same day that they were sitting together.
The sweet season was opening, and it seemed as if the whispering of the
leaves, the voices of the birds, the softness of the air, the young life
stirring in everything, called on all creatures to join the universal
chorus of praise that was going up around them.
"What shall we sing this evening?" said Miss Silence.
"Give me one of the books, if you please, Cousin Silence," said Miss
Cynthia. "It is Saturday evening. Holy time has begun. Let us prepare
our minds for the solemnities of the Sabbath."
She took the book, one well known to the schools and churches of this
nineteenth century.
"Book Second. Hymn 44. Long metre. I guess 'Putney' will be as good a
tune as any to sing it to."
The trio began,--
"With holy fear, and humble song,"
and got through the first verse together pretty well. Then came the
second verse:
"Far in the deep where darkness dwells,
The land of horror and despair,
Justice has built a dismal hell,
And laid her stores of vengeance there."
Myrtle's voice trembled a little in singing this verse, and she hardly
kept up her part with proper spirit.
"Sing out, Myrtle," said Miss Cynthia, and she struck up the third verse:
"Eternal plagues and heavy chains,
Tormenting racks and fiery coals,
And darts t' inflict immortal pains,
Dyed in the blood of damned souls."
This last verse was a duet, and not a trio. Myrtle closed her lips while
it was singing, and when it was done threw down the book with a look of
anger and disgust. The hunted soul was at bay.
"I won't sing such words," she said, "and I won't stay here to hear them
sung. The boys in the streets say just such words as that, and I am not
going to sing them. You can't scare me into being good with your cruel
hymn-book!"
She could not swear: she was not a boy. She would not cry: she felt
proud, obdurate, scornful, outraged. All these images, borrowed from the
holy Inquisition, were meant to frighten her--and had simply irritated
her. The blow of a weapon that glances off, stinging, but not
penetrating, only enrages. It was a moment of fearful danger to her
character, to her life itself.
Without heeding the cries of the two women, she sprang up-stairs to her
hanging chamber. She threw open the window and looked down into the
stream. For one moment her head swam with the sudden, overwhelming,
almost maddening thought that came over her,--the impulse to fling
herself headlong into those running waters and dare the worst these
dreadful women had threatened her with. Something she often thought
afterwards it was an invisible hand held her back during that brief
moment, and the paroxysm--just such a paroxysm as throws many a young
girl into the Thames or the Seine--passed away. She remained looking, in
a misty dream, into the water far below. Its murmur recalled the whisper
of the ocean waves. And through the depths it seemed as if she saw into
that strange, half--remembered world of palm-trees and white robes and
dusky faces, and amidst them, looking upon her with ineffable love and
tenderness, until all else faded from her sight, the face of a fair
woman,--was it hers, so long, long dead, or that dear young mother's who
was to her less a recollection than a dream?
Could it have been this vision that soothed her, so that she unclasped
her hands and lifted her bowed head as if she had heard a voice
whispering to her from that unknown world where she felt there was a
spirit watching over her? At any rate, her face was never more serene
than when she went to meeting with the two maiden ladies on the following
day, Sunday, and heard the Rev. Mr. Stoker preach a sermon from Luke vii.
48, which made both the women shed tears, but especially so excited Miss
Cynthia that she was in a kind of half-hysteric condition all the rest of
the day.
After that Myrtle was quieter and more docile than ever before. Could it
be, Miss Silence thought, that the Rev. Mr. Stoker's sermon had touched
her hard heart? However that was, she did not once wear the stormy look
with which she had often met the complaining remonstrances Miss Silence
constantly directed against all the spontaneous movements of the youthful
and naturally vivacious subject of her discipline.
June is an uncertain month, as everybody knows, and there were frosts in
many parts of New England in the June of 1859. But there were also
beautiful days and nights, and the sun was warm enough to be fast
ripening the strawberries,--also certain plans which had been in flower
some little time. Some preparations had been going on in a quiet way, so
that at the right moment a decisive movement could be made. Myrtle knew
how to use her needle, and always had a dexterous way of shaping any
article of dress or ornament,--a natural gift not very rare, but
sometimes very needful, as it was now.
On the morning of the 15th of June she was wandering by the shores of the
river, some distance above The Poplars, when a boat came drifting along
by her, evidently broken loose from its fastenings farther up the stream.
It was common for such waifs to show themselves after heavy rains had
swollen the river. They might have run the gauntlet of nobody could tell
how many farms, and perhaps passed by half a dozen towns and villages in
the night, so that, if of common, cheap make, they were retained without
scruple, by any who might find them, until the owner called for them, if
he cared to take the trouble.
Myrtle took a knife from her pocket, cut down a long, slender sapling,
and coaxed the boat to the side of the bank. A pair of old oars lay in
the bottom of the boat; she took one of these and paddled it into a
little cove, where it could lie hid among the thick alders. Then she went
home and busied herself about various little matters more interesting to
her than to us.
She was never more amiable and gracious than on this day. But she looked
often at the clock, as they remembered afterwards, and studied over a
copy of the Farmer's Almanac which was lying in the kitchen, with a
somewhat singular interest. The days were nearly at their longest, the
weather was mild, the night promised to be clear and bright.
The household was, to all appearance, asleep at the usual early hour.
When all seemed quiet, Myrtle lighted her lamp, stood before her mirror,
and untied the string that bound her long and beautiful dark hair, which
fell in its abundance over her shoulders and below her girdle.
She lifted its heavy masses with one hand, and severed it with a strong
pair of scissors, with remorseless exaction of every wandering curl,
until she stood so changed by the loss of that outward glory of her
womanhood, that she felt as if she had lost herself and found a brother
she had never seen before.
"Good-by, Myrtle!" she said, and, opening her window very gently, she
flung the shining tresses upon the running water, and watched them for a
few moments as they floated down the stream. Then she dressed herself in
the character of her imaginary brother, took up the carpet-bag in which
she had placed what she chose to carry with her, stole softly
down-stairs, and let herself out of a window on the lower floor, shutting
it very carefully so as to be sure that nobody should be disturbed.
She glided along, looking all about her, fearing she might be seen by
some curious wanderer, and reached the cove where the boat she had
concealed was lying. She got into it, and, taking the rude oars, pulled
herself into the middle of the swollen stream. Her heart beat so that it
seemed to her as if she could hear it between the strokes of the oar.
The lights were not all out in the village, and she trembled lest she
should see the figure of some watcher looking from the windows in sight
of which she would have to pass, and that a glimpse of this boat stealing
along at so late an hour might give the clue to the secret of her
disappearance, with which the whole region was to be busied in the course
of the next day.
Presently she came abreast of The Poplars. The house lay so still, so
peaceful,--it would wake to such dismay! The boat slid along beneath her
own overhanging chamber.
"No song to-morrow from the Fire-hang-bird's Nest!" she said. So she
floated by the slumbering village, the flow of the river carrying her
steadily on, and the careful strokes of the oars adding swiftness to her
flight.
At last she came to the "Broad Meadows," and knew that she was alone, and
felt confident that she had got away unseen. There was nothing,
absolutely nothing, to point out which way she had gone. Her boat came
from nobody knew where, her disguise had been got together at different
times in such a manner as to lead to no suspicion, and not a human being
ever had the slightest hint that she had planned and meant to carry out
the enterprise which she had now so fortunately begun.
Not till the last straggling house had been long past, not till the
meadows were stretched out behind her as well as before her, spreading
far off into the distance on each side, did she give way to the sense of
wild exultation which was coming fast over her. But then, at last, she
drew a long, long breath, and, standing up in the boat, looked all around
her. The stars were shining over her head and deep down beneath her.
The cool wind came fresh upon her cheek over the long grassy reaches. No
living thing moved in all the wide level circle which lay about her. She
had passed the Red Sea, and was alone in the Desert.
She threw down her oars, lifted her hands like a priestess, and her
strong, sweet voice burst into song,--the song of the Jewish maiden when
she went out before the chorus of, women and sang that grand solo, which
we all remember in its ancient words, and in their modern paraphrase,
"Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free!"
The poor child's repertory was limited to songs of the religious sort
mainly, but there was a choice among these. Her aunt's favorites, beside
"China," already mentioned, were "Bangor," which the worthy old New
England clergyman so admired that he actually had the down-east city
called after it, and "Windsor," and "Funeral Hymn." But Myrtle was in no
mood for these. She let off her ecstasy in "Balerma," and "Arlington,"
and "Silver Street," and at last in that most riotous of devotional
hymns, which sounds as if it had been composed by a saint who had a
cellar under his chapel,--"Jordan." So she let her wild spirits run
loose; and then a tenderer feeling stole over her, and she sang herself
into a more tranquil mood with the gentle music of "Dundee." And again
she pulled quietly and steadily at her oars, until she reached the wooded
region through which the river winds after leaving the "Broad Meadows."
The tumult in her blood was calmed, yet every sense and faculty was awake
to the manifold delicious, mysterious impressions of that wonderful June
night, The stars were shining between the tall trees, as if all the
jewels of heaven had been set in one belt of midnight sky. The voices of
the wind, as they sighed through the pines, seemed like the breath of a
sleeping child, and then, as they lisped from the soft, tender leaves of
beeches and maples, like the half-articulate whisper of the mother
hushing all the intrusive sounds that might awaken it. Then came the
pulsating monotone of the frogs from a far-off pool, the harsh cry of an
owl from an old tree that overhung it, the splash of a mink or musquash,
and nearer by, the light step of a woodchuck, as he cantered off in his
quiet way to his hole in the nearest bank. The laurels were just coming
into bloom,--the yellow lilies, earlier than their fairer sisters,
pushing their golden cups through the water, not content, like those, to
float on the surface of the stream that fed them, emblems of showy
wealth, and, like that, drawing all manner of insects to feed upon them.
The miniature forests of ferns came down to the edge of the stream, their
tall, bending plumes swaying in the night breeze. Sweet odors from
oozing pines, from dewy flowers, from spicy leaves, stole out of the
tangled thickets, and made the whole scene more dream-like with their
faint, mingled suggestions.
By and by the banks of the river grew lower and marshy, and in place of
the larger forest-trees which had covered them stood slender tamaracks,
sickly, mossy, looking as if they had been moon-struck and were out of
their wits, their tufts of leaves staring off every way from their
spindling branches. The winds came cool and damp out of the
hiding-places among their dark recesses. The country people about here
called this region the "Witches' Hollow," and had many stories about the
strange things that happened there. The Indians used to hold their
"powwows," or magical incantations, upon a broad mound which rose out of
the common level, and where some old hemlocks and beeches formed a dark
grove, which served them as a temple for their demon-worship. There were
many legends of more recent date connected with this spot, some of them
hard to account for, and no superstitious or highly imaginative person
would have cared to pass through it alone in the dead of the night, as
this young girl was doing.
She knew nothing of all these fables and fancies. Her own singular
experiences in this enchanted region were certainly not suggested by
anything she had heard, and may be considered psychologically curious by
those who would not think of attributing any mystical meaning to them.
We are at liberty to report many things without attempting to explain
them, or committing ourselves to anything beyond the fact that so they
were told us. The reader will find Myrtle's "Vision," as written out at
a later period from her recollections, at the end of this chapter.
The night was passing, and she meant to be as far away as possible from
the village she had left, before morning. But the boat, like all craft
on country rivers, was leaky, and she had to work until tired, bailing it
out, before she was ready for another long effort. The old tin measure,
which was all she had to bail with, leaked as badly as the boat, and her
task was a tedious one. At last she got it in good trim, and sat down to
her oars with the determination to pull steadily as long as her strength
would hold out.
Hour after hour she kept at her work, sweeping round the long bends where
the river was hollowing out one bank and building new shore on the
opposite one, so as gradually to shift its channel; by clipper-shaped
islands, sharp at the bows looking up stream, sharp too at the stern,
looking down,--their shape solving the navigator's problem of least
resistance, as a certain young artist had pointed out; by slumbering
villages; by outlying farm-houses; between cornfields where the young
plants were springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of
stumps where the forest had just been felled; through patches, where the
fire of the last great autumnal drought had turned all the green beauty
of the woods into brown desolation; and again amidst broad expanses of
open meadow stretching as far as the eye could reach in the uncertain
light. A faint yellow tinge was beginning to stain the eastern horizon.
Her boat was floating quietly along, for she had at last taken in her
oars, and she was now almost tired out with toil and excitement. She
rested her head upon her hands, and felt her eyelids closing in spite of
herself. And now there stole upon her ear a low, gentle, distant murmur,
so soft that it seemed almost to mingle with the sound of her own
breathing, but so steady, so uniform, that it soothed her to sleep, as if
it were the old cradle-song the ocean used to sing to her, or the lullaby
of her fair young mother.
So she glided along, slowly, slowly, down the course of the winding
river, and the flushing dawn kindled around her as she slumbered, and the
low, gentle murmur grew louder and louder, but still she slept, dreaming
of the murmuring ocean.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII.
MYRTLE HAZARD'S STATEMENT.
"A Vision seen by me, Myrtle Hazard, aged fifteen, on the night of June
15, 1859. Written out at the request of a friend from my recollections.
"The place where I saw these sights is called, as I have been told since,
Witches' Hollow. I had never been there before, and did not know that it
was called so, or anything about it.
"The first strange thing that I noticed was on coming near a kind of hill
or mound that rose out of the low meadows. I saw a burning cross lying
on the slope of that mound. It burned with a pale greenish light, and
did not waste, though I watched it for a long time, as the boat I was in
moved slowly with the current and I had stopped rowing.
"I know that my eyes were open, and I was awake while I was looking at
this cross. I think my eyes were open when I saw these other
appearances, but I felt just as if I were dreaming while awake.
"I heard a faint rustling sound, and on looking up I saw many figures
moving around me, and I seemed to see myself among them as if I were
outside of myself.
"The figures did not walk, but slid or glided with an even movement, as
if without any effort. They made many gestures, and seemed to speak, but
I cannot tell whether I heard what they said, or knew its meaning in some
other way.
"I knew the faces of some of these figures. They were the same I have
seen in portraits, as long as I can remember, at the old house where I
was brought up, called The Poplars. I saw my father and my mother as
they look in the two small pictures; also my grandmother, and her father
and mother and grandfather, and one other person, who lived a great while
ago. All of these have been long dead, and the longer they had been dead
the less like substance they looked and the more like shadows, so that
the oldest was like one's breath of a frosty morning, but shaped like the
living figure.
"There was no motion of their breasts, and their lips seemed to be moving
as if they were saying, Breath! Breath! Breath! I thought they wanted
to breathe the air of this world again in my shape, which I seemed to see
as it were empty of myself and of these other selves, like a sponge that
has water pressed out of it.
"Presently it seemed to me that I returned to myself, and then those
others became part of me by being taken up, one by one, and so lost in my
own life.
"My father and mother came up, hand in hand, looking more real than any
of the rest. Their figures vanished, and they seemed to have become a
part of me; for I felt all at once the longing to live over the life they
had led, on the sea and in strange countries.
"Another figure was just like the one we called the Major, who was a very
strong, hearty-looking man, and who is said to have drank hard sometimes,
though there is nothing about it on his tombstone, which I used to read
in the graveyard. It seemed to me that there was something about his
life that I did not want to make a part of mine, but that there was some
right he had in me through my being of his blood, and so his health and
his strength went all through me, and I was always to have what was left
of his life in that shadow-like shape, forming a portion of mine.
"So in the same way with the shape answering to the portrait of that
famous beauty who was the wife of my great-grandfather, and used to be
called the Pride of the County.
"And so too with another figure which had the face of that portrait
marked on the back, Ruth Bradford, who married one of my ancestors, and
was before the court, as I have heard, in the time of the witchcraft
trials.
"There was with the rest a dark, wild-looking woman, with a head-dress of
feathers. She kept as it were in shadow, but I saw something of my own
features in her face.
"It was on my mind very strongly that the shape of that woman of our
blood who was burned long ago by the Papists came very close to me, and
was in some way made one with mine, and that I feel her presence with me
since, as if she lived again in me; but not always,--only at times,--and
then I feel borne up as if I could do anything in the world. I had a
feeling as if she were my guardian and protector.
"It seems to me that these, and more, whom I have not mentioned, do
really live over some part of their past lives in my life. I do not
understand it all, and perhaps it can be accounted for in some way I have
not thought of. I write it down as nearly as I can give it from memory,
by request, and if it is printed at this time had rather have all the
real names withheld.
"MYRTLE HAZARD."
NOTE BY THE FRIEND.
"This statement must be accounted for in some way, or pass into the
category of the supernatural. Probably it was one of those intuitions,
with objective projection, which sometimes come to imaginative young
persons, especially girls, in certain exalted nervous conditions. The
study of the portraits, with the knowledge of some parts of the history
of the persons they represented, and the consciousness of instincts
inherited in all probability from these same ancestors, formed the basis
of Myrtle's 'Vision.' The lives of our progenitors are, as we know,
reproduced in different proportions in ourselves. Whether they as
individuals have any consciousness of it, is another matter. It is
possible that they do get a second as it were fractional life in us. It
might seem that many of those whose blood flows in our veins struggle for
the mastery, and by and by one or more get the predominance, so that we
grow to be like father, or mother, or remoter ancestor, or two or more
are blended in us, not to the exclusion, however, it must be understood,
of a special personality of our own, about which these others are
grouped. Independently of any possible scientific value, this 'Vision'
serves to illustrate the above-mentioned fact of common experience, which
is not sufficiently weighed by most moralists.
"How much it may be granted to certain young persons to see, not in
virtue of their intellectual gifts, but through those direct channels
which worldly wisdom may possibly close to the luminous influx, each
reader must determine for himself by his own standards of faith and
evidence.
"One statement of the narrative admits of a simple natural explanation,
which does not allow the lovers of the marvellous to class it with the
quasi-miraculous appearance seen by Colonel Gardiner, and given in full
by Dr. Doddridge in his Life of that remarkable Christian soldier.
Decaying wood is often phosphorescent, as many readers must have seen for
themselves. The country people are familiar with the sight of it in wild
timber-land, and have given it the name of 'Fox-fire.' Two trunks of
trees in this state, lying across each other, will account for the fact
observed, and vindicate the truth of the young girl's story without
requiring us to suppose any exceptional occurrence outside of natural
laws."
CHAPTER IX.
MR. CLEMENT LINDSAY RECEIVES A LETTER, AND BEGINS HIS ANSWER.
It was already morning when a young man living in the town of Alderbank,
after lying awake for an hour thinking the unutterable thoughts that
nineteen years of life bring to the sleeping and waking dreams of young
people, rose from his bed, and, half dressing himself, sat down at his
desk, from which he took a letter, which he opened and read. It was
written in a delicate, though hardly formed female hand, and crossed like
a checker-board, as is usual with these redundant manuscripts. The
letter was as follows:
OXBOW VILLAGE, June 13, 1859.
MY DEAREST CLEMENT,--You was so good to write me such a sweet little bit
of a letter,--only, dear, you never seem to be in quite so good spirits
as you used to be. I wish your Susie was with you to cheer you up; but
no, she must be patient, and you must be patient too, for you are so
ambitious! I have heard you say so many times that nobody could be a
great artist without passing years and years at work, and growing pale
and lean with thinking so hard. You won't grow pale and lean, I hope;
for I do so love to see that pretty color in your cheeks you have always
had ever since I have known you; and besides, I do not believe you will
have to work so very hard to do something great,--you have so much
genius, and people of genius do such beautiful things with so little
trouble. You remember those beautiful lines out of our newspaper I sent
you? Well, Mr. Hopkins told me he wrote those lines in one evening
without stopping! I wish you could see Mr. Hopkins,--he is a very
talented person. I cut out this little piece about him from the paper on
purpose to show you,--for genius loves genius,--and you would like to
hear him read his own poetry,--he reads it beautifully. Please send this
piece from the paper back, as I want to put it in my scrapbook, under his
autograph:--
"Our young townsman, Mr. Gifted Hopkins, has proved himself worthy of the
name he bears. His poetical effusions are equally creditable to his head
and his heart, displaying the highest order of genius and powers of
imagination and fancy hardly second to any writer of the age. He is
destined to make a great sensation in the world of letters."
Mrs. Hopkins is the same good soul she always was. She is very proud of
her son, as is natural, and keeps a copy of everything he writes. I
believe she cries over them every time she reads them. You don't know
how I take to little Sossy and Minthy, those two twins I have written to
you about before. Poor little creatures,--what a cruel thing it was in
their father and mother not to take care of them! What do you think? Old
bachelor Gridley lets them come up into his room, and builds forts and
castles for them with his big books! "The world's coming to an end,"
Mrs. Hopkins said the first time he did so. He looks so savage with that
scowl of his, and talks so gruff when he is scolding at things in
general, that nobody would have believed he would have let such little
things come anywhere near him. But he seems to be growing kind to all of
us and everybody. I saw him talking to the Fire-hang-bird the other day.
You know who the Fire-hang-bird is, don't you? Myrtle Hazard her name
is. I wish you could see her. I don't know as I do, though. You would
want to make a statue of her, or a painting, I know. She is so handsome
that all the young men stand round to see her come out of meeting. Some
say that Lawyer Bradshaw is after her; but my! he is ten years older than
she is. She is nothing but a girl, though she looks as if she was
eighteen. She lives up at a place called The Poplars, with an old woman
that is her aunt or something, and nobody seems to be much acquainted
with her except Olive Eveleth, who is the minister's daughter at Saint
Bartholomew's Church. She never has beauxs round her, as some young
girls do--they say that she is not happy with her aunt and another woman
that stays with her, and that is the reason she keeps so much to herself.
The minister came to see me the other day,--Mr. Stoker his name is. I
was all alone, and it frightened me, for he looks, oh, so solemn on
Sundays! But he called me "My dear," and did n't say anything horrid,
you know, about my being such a dreadful, dreadful sinner, as I have
heard of his saying to some people,--but he looked very kindly at me, and
took my hand, and laid his hand on my shoulder like a brother, and hoped
I would come and see him in his study. I suppose I must go, but I don't
want to. I don't seem to like him exactly.
I hope you love me as well as ever you did. I can't help feeling
sometimes as if you was growing away from me,--you know what I
mean,--getting to be too great a person for such a small person as I am.
I know I can't always understand you when you talk about art, and that
you know a great deal too much for such a simple girl as I am. Oh, if I
thought I could never make you happy!... There, now! I am almost
ashamed to send this paper so spotted. Gifted Hopkins wrote some
beautiful verses one day on "A Maiden Weeping." He compared the tears
falling from her eyes to the drops of dew which one often sees upon the
flowers in the morning. Is n't it a pretty thought?
I wish I loved art as well as I do poetry; but I am afraid I have not so
much taste as some girls have. You remember how I liked that picture in
the illustrated magazine, and you said it was horrid. I have been afraid
since to like almost anything, for fear you should tell me some time or
other it was horrid. Don't you think I shall ever learn to know what is
nice from what is n't?
Oh, dear Clement, I wish you would do one thing to please me. Don't say
no, for you can do everything you try to,--I am sure you can. I want you
to write me some poetry,--just three or four little verses TO SUZIE. Oh,
I should feel so proud to have some lines written all on purpose for me.
Mr. Hopkins wrote some the other day, and printed them in the paper, "To
M---e." I believe he meant them for Myrtle,--the first and last letter
of her name, you see, "M" and "e."
Your letter was a dear one, only so short! I wish you would tell me all
about what you are doing at Alderbank. Have you made that model of
Innocence that is to have my forehead, and hair parted like mine! Make it
pretty, do, that is a darling.
Now don't make a face at my letter. It is n't a very good one, I know;
but your poor little Susie does the best she can, and she loves you so
much!
Now do be nice and write me one little bit of a mite of a poem,--it will
make me just as happy!
I am very well, and as happy as I can be when you are away.
Your affectionate SUSIE.
(Directed to Mr. Clement Lindsay, Alderbank.)
The envelope of this letter was unbroken, as was before said, when the
young man took it from his desk. He did not tear it with the hot
impatience of some lovers, but cut it open neatly, slowly, one would say
sadly. He read it with an air of singular effort, and yet with a certain
tenderness. When he had finished it, the drops were thick on his
forehead; he groaned and put his hands to his face, which was burning
red.
This was what the impulse of boyhood, years ago, had brought him to! He
was a stately youth, of noble bearing, of high purpose, of fastidious
taste; and, if his broad forehead, his clear, large blue eyes, his
commanding features, his lips, firm, yet plastic to every change of
thought and feeling, were not an empty mask, might not improbably claim
that Promethean quality of which the girl's letter had spoken,--the
strange, divine, dread gift of genius.
This poor, simple, innocent, trusting creature, so utterly incapable of
coming into any true relation with his aspiring mind, his large and
strong emotions,--this mere child, all simplicity and goodness, but
trivial and shallow as the little babbling brooklet that ran by his
window to the river, to lose its insignificant being in the swift torrent
he heard rushing over the rocks,--this pretty idol for a weak and kindly
and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the queen of his
affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors! The boy, led
by the commonest instinct, the mere attraction of biped to its female,
which accident had favored, had thrown away the dearest possession of
manhood,--liberty,--and this bauble was to be his lifelong reward! And
yet not a bauble either, for a pleasing person and a gentle and sweet
nature, which had once made her seem to him the very paragon of
loveliness, were still hers. Alas! her simple words were true,--he had
grown away from her. Her only fault was that she had not grown with him,
and surely he could not reproach her with that.
"No," he said to himself, "I will never leave her so long as her heart
clings to me. I have been rash, but she shall not pay the forfeit. And
if I may think of myself, my life need not be wretched because she cannot
share all my being with me. The common human qualities are more than all
exceptional gifts. She has a woman's heart; and what talent of mine is
to be named by the love a true woman can offer in exchange for these
divided and cold affections? If it had pleased God to mate me with one
more equal in other ways, who could share my thoughts, who could kindle
my inspiration, who had wings to rise into the air with me as well as
feet to creep by my side upon the earth,--what cannot such a woman do for
a man!
"What! cast away the flower I took in the bud because it does not show as
I hoped it would when it opened? I will stand by my word; I will be all
as a man that I promised as a boy. Thank God, she is true and pure and
sweet. My nest will be a peaceful one; but I must take wing
alone,--alone."
He drew one long sigh, and the cloud passed from his countenance. He
must answer that letter now, at once. There were reasons, he thought,
which made it important. And so, with the cheerfulness which it was kind
and becoming to show, so far as possible, and yet with a little
excitement on one particular point, which was the cause of his writing so
promptly, he began his answer.
ALDERBANK, Thursday morning, June 16, 1859.
MY DEAR SUSIE,--I have just been reading your pleasant letter; and if I
do not send you the poem you ask for so eloquently, I will give you a
little bit of advice, which will do just as well,--won't it, my dear? I
was interested in your account of various things going on at Oxbow
Village. I am very glad you find young Mr. Hopkins so agreeable a
friend. His poetry is better than some which I see printed in the
village papers, and seems generally unexceptionable in its subjects and
tone. I do not believe he is a dangerous companion, though the habit of
writing verse does not always improve the character. I think I have seen
it make more than one of my acquaintances idle, conceited, sentimental,
and frivolous,--perhaps it found them so already. Don't make too much of
his talent, and particularly don't let him think that because he can
write verses he has nothing else to do in this world. That is for his
benefit, dear, and you must skilfully apply it.
Now about yourself. My dear Susie, there was something in your letter
that did not please me. You speak of a visit from the Rev. Mr. Stoker,
and of his kind, brotherly treatment, his cordiality of behavior, and his
asking you to visit him in his study. I am very glad to hear you say
that you "don't seem to like him." He is very familiar, it seems to me,
for so new an acquaintance. What business had he to be laying his hand
on your shoulder? I should like to see him try these free-and-easy ways
in my presence! He would not have taken that liberty, my dear! No, he
was alone with you, and thought it safe to be disrespectfully familiar.
I want you to maintain your dignity always with such persons, and I beg
you not to go to the study of this clergyman, unless some older friend
goes with you on every occasion, and sits through the visit. I must
speak plainly to you, my dear, as I have a right to. If the minister has
anything of importance to say, let it come through the lips of some
mature person. It may lose something of the fervor with which it would
have been delivered at first hand, but the great rules of Christian life
are not so dependent on the particular individual who speaks them, that
you must go to this or that young man to find out what they are. If to
any man, I should prefer the old gentleman whom you have mentioned in
your letters, Father Pemberton. You understand me, my dear girl, and the
subject is not grateful. You know how truly I am interested in all that
relates to you,--that I regard you with an affection which--
HELP! HELP! HELP!
A cry as of a young person's voice was heard faintly, coming from the
direction of the river. Something in the tone of it struck to his heart,
and he sprang as if he had been stabbed. He flung open his chamber
window and leaped from it to the ground. He ran straight to the bank of
the river by the side of which the village of Alderbank was built, a
little farther down the stream than the house in which he was living.
Everybody that travels in that region knows the beautiful falls which
break the course of the river just above the village; narrow and swift,
and surrounded by rocks of such picturesque forms that they are sought
and admired by tourists. The stream was now swollen, and rushed in a
deep and rapid current over the ledges, through the rocky straits,
plunging at last in tumult and foam, with loud, continuous roar, into the
depths below the cliff from which it tumbled.
A short distance above the fall there projected from the water a rock
which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded
a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support
a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it,
but a few slender twigs were seen above their surface.
A skiff was lying close to this rock, between it and the brink of the
fall, which was but a few rods farther down. In the skiff was a youth of
fourteen or fifteen years, holding by the slender twigs, the boat
dragging at them all the time, and threatening to tear them away and go
over the fall. It was not likely that the boy would come to shore alive
if it did. There were stories, it is true, that the Indians used to
shoot the fall in their canoes with safety; but everybody knew that at
least three persons had been lost by going over it since the town was
settled; and more than one dead body had been found floating far down the
river, with bruises and fractured bones, as if it had taken the same
fatal plunge.
There was no time to lose. Clement ran a little way up the river-bank,
flung off his shoes, and sprang from the bank as far as he could leap
into the water. The current swept him toward the fall, but he worked
nearer and nearer the middle of the stream. He was making for the rock,
thinking he could plant his feet upon it and at the worst hold the boat
until he could summon other help by shouting. He had barely got his feet
upon the rock, when the twigs by which the boy was holding gave way. He
seized the boat, but it dragged him from his uncertain footing, and with
a desperate effort he clambered over its side and found himself its
second doomed passenger.
There was but an instant for thought.
"Sit still," he said, "and, just as we go over, put your arms round me
under mine, and don't let go for your life!"
He caught up the single oar, and with a few sharp paddle-strokes brought
the skiff into the blackest centre of the current, where it was deepest,
and would plunge them into the deepest pool.
"Hold your breath! God save us! Now!"
They rose, as if with one will, and stood for an instant, the arms of the
younger closely embracing the other as he had directed.
A sliding away from beneath them of the floor on which they stood, as the
drop fails under the feet of a felon. A great rush of air, and a mighty,
awful, stunning roar,--an involuntary gasp, a choking flood of water that
came bellowing after them, and hammered them down into the black depths
so far that the young man, though used to diving and swimming long
distances underwater, had well-nigh yielded to the fearful need of air,
and sucked in his death in so doing.
The boat came up to the surface, broken in twain, splintered, a load of
firewood for those who raked the river lower down. It had turned
crosswise, and struck the rocks. A cap rose to the surface, such a one
as boys wear,--the same that boy had on. And then--after how many
seconds by the watch cannot be known, but after a time long enough, as
the young man remembered it, to live his whole life over in
memory--Clement Lindsay felt the blessed air against his face, and,
taking a great breath, came to his full consciousness. The arms of the
boy were still locked around him as in the embrace of death. A few
strokes brought him to the shore, dragging his senseless burden with him.
He unclasped the arms that held him so closely encircled, and laid the
slender form of the youth he had almost died to save gently upon the
grass. It was as if dead. He loosed the ribbon that was round the neck,
he tore open the checked shirt--
The story of Myrtle Hazard's sex was told; but she was deaf to his cry of
surprise, and no blush came to her cold cheek. Not too late, perhaps, to
save her,--not too late to try to save her, at least!
He placed his lips to hers, and filled her breast with the air from his
own panting chest. Again and again he renewed these efforts, hoping,
doubting, despairing,--once more hoping, and at last, when he had almost
ceased to hope, she gasped, she breathed, she moaned, and rolled her eyes
wildly round her, she was born again into this mortal life.
He caught her up in his arms, bore her to the house, laid her on a sofa,
and, having spent his strength in this last effort, reeled and fell, and
lay as one over whom have just been whispered the words,
"He is gone."
CHAPTER X.
MR. CLEMENT LINDSAY FINISHES HIS LETTER--WHAT CAME OF IT.
The first thing Clement Lindsay did, when he was fairly himself again,
was to finish his letter to Susan Posey. He took it up where it left
off, "with an affection which----" and drew a long dash, as above. It was
with great effort he wrote the lines which follow, for he had got an ugly
blow on the forehead, and his eyes were "in mourning," as the gentlemen
of the ring say, with unbecoming levity.
"An adventure! Just as I was writing these last words, I heard the cry
of a young person, as it sounded, for help. I ran to the river and
jumped in, and had the pleasure of saving a life. I got some bruises
which have laid me up for a day or two; but I am getting over them very
well now, and you need not worry about me at all. I will write again
soon; so pray do not fret yourself, for I have had no hurt that will
trouble me for any time."
Of course, poor Susan Posey burst out crying, and cried as if her heart
would break. Oh dear! Oh dear! what should she do! He was almost
killed, she knew he was, or he had broken some of his bones. Oh dear! Oh
dear! She would go and see him, there!--she must and would. He would
die, she knew he would,--and so on.
It was a singular testimony to the evident presence of a human element in
Mr. Bytes Gridley that the poor girl, on her extreme trouble, should
think of him as a counsellor. But the wonderful relenting kind of look
on his grave features as he watched the little twins tumbling about his
great books, and certain marks of real sympathy he had sometimes shown
for her in her lesser woes, encouraged her, and she went straight to his
study, letter in hand. She gave a timid knock at the door of that awful
sanctuary.
"Come in, Susan Posey," was its answer, in a pleasant tone. The old
master knew her light step and the maidenly touch of her small hand on
the panel.
What a sight! 'there were Sossy and Minthy intrenched in a Sebastopol
which must have cost a good half-hour's engineering, and the terrible
Bytes Gridley besieging the fortress with hostile manifestations of the
most singular character. He was actually discharging a large sugar-plum
at the postern gate, which having been left unclosed, the missile would
certainly have reached one of the garrison, when he paused as the door
opened, and the great round spectacles and four wide, staring infants'
eyes were levelled at Miss Susan Posey.
She almost forgot her errand, grave as it was, in astonishment at this
manifestation. The old man had emptied his shelves of half their folios
to build up the fort, in the midst of which he had seated the two
delighted and uproarious babes. There was his Cave's "Historia
Literaria," and Sir Walter Raleigh's "History of the World," and a whole
array of Christian Fathers, and Plato, and Aristotle, and Stanley's book
of Philosophers, with Effigies, and the Junta Galen, and the Hippocrates
of Foesius, and Walton's Polyglot, supported by Father Sanchez on one
side and Fox's "Acts and Monuments" on the other,--an odd collection, as
folios from lower shelves are apt to be.
The besieger discharged his sugar-plum, which was so well aimed that it
fell directly into the lap of Minthy, who acted with it as if the
garrison had been on short rations for some time.
He saw at once, on looking up, that there was trouble. "What now, Susan
Posey, my dear?"
"O Mr. Gridley, I am in such trouble! What shall I do? What shall I
do?"
She turned back the name and the bottom of the letter in such a way that
Mr. Gridley could read nothing but the few lines relating their
adventure.
"So Mr. Clement Lindsay has been saving a life, has he, and got some hard
knocks doing it, hey, Susan Posey? Well, well, Clement Lindsay is a
brave fellow, and there is no need of hiding his name, my child. Let me
take the letter again a moment, Susan Posey. What is the date of it?
June 16th. Yes,--yes,--yes!"
He read the paragraph over again, and the signature too, if he wanted to;
for poor Susan had found that her secret was hardly opaque to those round
spectacles and the eyes behind them, and, with a not unbecoming blush,
opened the fold of the letter before she handed it back.
"No, no, Susan Posey. He will come all right. His writing is steady,
and if he had broken any bones he would have mentioned it. It's a thing
his wife will be proud of, if he is ever married, Susan Posey,"
(blushes,) "and his children too," (more blushes running up to her back
hair,) "and there 's nothing to be worried about. But I'll tell you
what, my dear, I've got a little business that calls me down the river
tomorrow, and I shouldn't mind stopping an hour at Alderbank and seeing
how our young friend Clement Lindsay is; and then, if he was going to
have a long time of it, why we could manage it somehow that any friend
who had any special interest in him could visit him, just to while away
the tiresomeness of being sick. That's it, exactly. I'll stop at
Alderbank, Susan Posey. Just clear up these two children for me, will
you, my dear? Isosceles, come now,--that 's a good child. Helminthia,
carry these sugar-plums down--stairs for me, and take good care of them,
mind!"
It was a case of gross bribery and corruption, for the fortress was
immediately, evacuated on the receipt of a large paper of red and white
comfits, and the garrison marched down--stairs much like conquerors,
under the lead of the young lady, who was greatly eased in mind by the
kind words and the promise of Mr. Byles Gridley.
But he, in the mean time, was busy with thoughts she did not suspect. "A
young person," he said to himself,--"why a young person? Why not say a
boy, if it was a boy? What if this should be our handsome truant?--'June
16th, Thursday morning!'--About time to get to Alderbank by the river, I
should think. None of the boats missing? What then? She may have made a
raft, or picked up some stray skiff. Who knows? And then got
shipwrecked, very likely. There are rapids and falls farther along the
river. It will do no harm to go down there and look about, at any rate."
On Saturday morning, therefore, Mr. Byles Gridley set forth to procure a
conveyance to make a visit, as he said, dawn the river, and perhaps be
gone a day or two. He went to a stable in the village, and asked if they
could let him have a horse.
The man looked at him with that air of native superiority which the
companionship of the generous steed confers on all his associates, down
to the lightest weight among the jockeys.
"Wal, I hain't got nothin' in the shape of a h'oss, Mr. Gridley. I've got
a mare I s'pose I could let y' have."
"Oh, very well," said the old master, with a twinkle in his eye as sly as
the other's wink,--he had parried a few jokes in his time,--"they charge
half-price for mares always, I believe."
That was a new view of the subject. It rather took the wind out of the
stable-keeper, and set a most ammoniacal fellow, who stood playing with a
currycomb, grinning at his expense. But he rallied presently.
"Wal, I b'lieve they do for some mares, when they let 'em to some folks;
but this here ain't one o' them mares, and you ain't one o' them folks.
All my cattle's out but this critter, 'n' I don't jestly want to have
nobody drive her that ain't pretty car'ful,--she's faast, I tell
ye,--don't want no whip.--How fur d' d y' want t' go?"
Mr. Gridley was quite serious now, and let the man know that he wanted
the mare and a light covered wagon, at once, to be gone for one or two
days, and would waive the question of sex in the matter of payment.
Alderbank was about twenty miles down the river by the road. On arriving
there, he inquired for the house where a Mr. Lindsay lived. There was
only one Lindsay family in town,--he must mean Dr. William Lindsay. His
house was up there a little way above the village, lying a few rods back
from the river.
He found the house without difficulty, and knocked at the door. A
motherly-looking woman opened it immediately, and held her hand up as if
to ask him to speak and move softly.
"Does Mr. Clement Lindsay live here?"
"He is staying here for the present. He is a nephew of ours. He is in
his bed from an injury."
"Nothing very serious, I hope?"
"A bruise on his head,--not very bad, but the doctor was afraid of
erysipelas. Seems to be doing well enough now."
"Is there a young person here, a stranger?"
"There is such a young person here. Do you come with any authority to
make inquiries?"
"I do. A young friend of mine is missing, and I thought it possible I
might learn something here about it. Can I see this young person?"
The matron came nearer to Byles Gridley, and said: "This person is a
young woman disguised as a boy. She was rescued by my nephew at the risk
of his life, and she has been delirious ever since she has recovered her
consciousness. She was almost too far gone to be resuscitated, but
Clement put his mouth to hers and kept her breathing until her own breath
returned and she gradually came to."
"Is she violent in her delirium?"
"Not now. No; she is quiet enough, but wandering,--wants to know where
she is, and whose the strange faces are,--mine and my husband's,--that 's
Dr. Lindsay,--and one of my daughters, who has watched with her."
"If that is so, I think I had better see her. If she is the person I
suspect her to be, she will know me; and a familiar face may bring back
her recollections and put a stop to her wanderings. If she does not know
me, I will not stay talking with her. I think she will, if she is the
one I am seeking after. There is no harm in trying."
Mrs. Lindsay took a good long look at the old man. There was no
mistaking his grave, honest, sturdy, wrinkled, scholarly face. His voice
was assured and sincere in its tones. His decent black coat was just
what a scholar's should be,--old, not untidy, a little shiny at the
elbows with much leaning on his study-table, but neatly bound at the
cuffs, where worthy Mrs. Hopkins had detected signs of fatigue and come
to the rescue. His very hat looked honest as it lay on the table. It
had moulded itself to a broad, noble head, that held nothing but what was
true and fair, with a few harmless crotchets just to fill in with, and it
seemed to know it.
The good woman gave him her confidence at once. "Is the person you are
seeking a niece or other relative of yours?"
(Why did not she ask if the girl was his daughter? What is that look of
paternity and of maternity which observing and experienced mothers and
old nurses know so well in men and in women?)
"No, she is not a relative. But I am acting for those who are."
"Wait a moment and I will go and see that the room is all right."
She returned presently. "Follow me softly, if you please. She is
asleep,--so beautiful,--so innocent!"
Byles Gridley, Master of Arts, retired professor, more than sixty years
old, childless, loveless, stranded in a lonely study strewed with wrecks
of the world's thought, his work in life finished, his one literary
venture gone down with all it held, with nobody to care for him but
accidental acquaintances, moved gently to the side of the bed and looked
upon the pallid, still features of Myrtle Hazard. He strove hard against
a strange feeling that was taking hold of him, that was making his face
act rebelliously, and troubling his eyes with sudden films. He made a
brief stand against this invasion. "A weakness,--a weakness!" he said to
himself. "What does all this mean? Never such a thing for these twenty
years! Poor child! poor child!--Excuse me, madam," he said, after a
little interval, but for what offence he did not mention. A great deal
might be forgiven, even to a man as old as Byles Gridley, looking upon
such a face,--so lovely, yet so marked with the traces of recent
suffering, and even now showing by its changes that she was struggling in
some fearful dream. Her forehead contracted, she started with a slight
convulsive movement, and then her lips parted, and the cry escaped from
them,--how heart-breaking when there is none to answer it,--"Mother!"
Gone back again through all the weary, chilling years of her girlhood to
that hardly remembered morning of her life when the cry she uttered was
answered by the light of loving eyes, the kiss of clinging lips, the
embrace of caressing arms!
"It is better to wake her," Mrs. Lindsay said; "she is having a troubled
dream. Wake up, my child, here is a friend waiting to see you."
She laid her hand very gently on Myrtle's forehead. Myrtle opened her
eyes, but they were vacant as yet.
"Are we dead?" she said. "Where am I? This is n't heaven--there are no
angels--Oh, no, no, no! don't send me to the other place--fifteen
years,--only fifteen years old--no father, no mother--nobody loved me.
Was it wicked in me to live?" Her whole theological training was
condensed in that last brief question.
The, old man took her hand and looked her in the face, with a wonderful
tenderness in his squared features. "Wicked to live, my dear? No
indeed! Here! look at me, my child; don't you know your old friend Byles
Gridley?"
She was awake now. The sight of a familiar countenance brought back a
natural train of thought. But her recollection passed over everything
that had happened since Thursday morning.
"Where is the boat I was in?" she said. "I have just been in the water,
and I was dreaming that I was drowned. Oh! Mr. Gridley, is that you?
Did you pull me out of the water?"
"No, my dear, but you are out of it, and safe and sound: that is the main
point. How do you feel now you are awake?"
She yawned, and stretched her arms and looked round, but did not answer
at first. This was all natural, and a sign that she was coming right.
She looked down at her dress. It was not inappropriate to her sex, being
a loose gown that belonged to one of the girls in the house.
"I feel pretty well," she answered, "but a little confused. My boat will
be gone, if you don't run and stop it now. How did you get me into dry
clothes so quick?"
Master Byles Gridley found himself suddenly possessed by a large and
luminous idea of the state of things, and made up his mind in a moment as
to what he must do. There was no time to be lost. Every day, every
hour, of Myrtle's absence was not only a source of anxiety and a cause of
useless searching but it gave room for inventive fancies to imagine evil.
It was better to run some risk of injury to health, than to have her
absence prolonged another day.
"Has this adventure been told about in the village, Mrs. Lindsay?"
"No, we thought it best to wait until she could tell her own story,
expecting her return to consciousness every hour, and thinking there
might be some reason for her disguise which it would be kinder to keep
quiet about."
"You know nothing about her, then?"
"Not a word. It was a great question whether to tell the story and make
inquiries; but she was safe, and could hardly bear disturbance, and, my
dear sir, it seemed too probable that there was some sad story behind
this escape in disguise, and that the poor child might need shelter and
retirement. We meant to do as well as we could for her."
"All right, Mrs. Lindsay. You do not know who she is, then?"
"No, sir, and perhaps it is as well that I should not know. Then I shall
not have to answer any questions about it."
"Very good, madam,--just as it should be. And your family, are they as
discreet as yourself?"
"Not one word of the whole story has been or will be told by any one of
us. That was agreed upon among us."
"Now then, madam. My name, as you heard me say, is Byles Gridley. Your
husband will know it, perhaps; at any rate I will wait until he comes
back. This child is of good family and of good name. I know her well,
and mean, with your kind help, to save her from the consequences which
her foolish adventure might have brought upon her. Before the bells ring
for meeting to-morrow morning this girl must be in her bed at her home,
at Oxbow Village, and we must keep her story to ourselves as far as may
be. It will all blow over, if we do. The gossips will only know that
she was upset in the river and cared for by some good people,--good
people and sensible people too, Mrs. Lindsay. And now I want to see the
young man that rescued my friend here,--Clement Lindsay, I have heard his
name before."
Clement was not a beauty for the moment, but Master Gridley saw well
enough that he was a young man of the right kind. He knew them at sight,
fellows with lime enough in their bones and iron enough in their blood to
begin with,--shapely, large-nerved, firm-fibred and fine-fibred, with
well-spread bases to their heads for the ground-floor of the faculties,
and well-vaulted arches for the upper range of apprehensions and
combinations. "Plenty of basements," he used to say, "without attics and
skylights. Plenty of skylights without rooms enough and space enough
below." But here was "a three-story brain," he said to himself as he
looked at it, and this was the youth who was to find his complement in
our pretty little Susan Posey! His judgment may seem to have been hasty,
but he took the measure of young men of twenty at sight from long and
sagacious observation, as Nurse Byloe knew the "heft" of a baby the
moment she fixed her old eyes on it.
Clement was well acquainted with Byles Gridley, though he had never seen
him, for Susan's letters had had a good deal to say about him of late.
It was agreed between them that the story should be kept as quiet as
possible, and that the young girl should not know the name of her
deliverer,--it might save awkward complications. It was not likely that
she would be disposed to talk of her adventure, which had ended so
disastrously, and thus the whole story would soon die out.
The effect of the violent shock she had experienced was to change the
whole nature of Myrtle for the time. Her mind was unsettled: she could
hardly recall anything except the plunge over the fall. She was
perfectly docile and plastic,--was ready to go anywhere Mr. Gridley
wanted her to go, without any sign of reluctance. And so it was agreed
that he should carry her back in his covered wagon that very night. All
possible arrangements were made to render her journey comfortable. The
fast mare had to trot very gently, and the old master would stop and
adjust the pillows from time to time, and administer the restoratives
which the physician had got ready, all as naturally and easily as if he
had been bred a nurse, vastly to his own surprise, and with not a little
gain to his self-appreciation. He was a serviceable kind of body on
occasion, after all, was he not, hey, Mr. Byles Gridley? he said to
himself.
At half past four o'clock on Sunday morning the shepherd brought the
stray lamb into the paved yard at The Poplars, and roused the slumbering
household to receive back the wanderer.
It was the Irishwoman, Kitty Fagan, huddled together in such amorphous
guise, that she looked as if she had been fitted in a tempest of
petticoats and a whirlwind of old shawls, who presented herself at the
door.
But there was a very warm heart somewhere in that queer-looking bundle of
clothes, and it was not one of those that can throb or break in silence.
When she saw the long covered wagon, and the grave face of the old
master, she thought it was all over with the poor girl she loved, and
that this was the undertaker's wagon bringing back only what had once
been Myrtle Hazard. She screamed aloud,--so wildly that Myrtle lifted
her head from the pillow against which she had rested it, and started
forward.
The Irishwoman looked at her for a moment to assure herself that it was
the girl she loved, and not her ghost. Then it all came over her,--she
had been stolen by thieves, who had carried her off by night, and been
rescued by the brave old man who had brought her back. What crying and
kisses and prayers and blessings were poured forth, in a confusion of
which her bodily costume was a fitting type, those who know the
vocabulary and the enthusiasm of her eloquent race may imagine better
than we could describe it.
The welcome of the two other women was far less demonstrative. There
were awful questions to be answered before the kind of reception she was
to have could be settled. What they were, it is needless to suggest; but
while Miss Silence was weeping, first with joy that her "responsibility"
was removed, then with a fair share of pity and kindness, and other
lukewarm emotions,--while Miss Badlam waited for an explanation before
giving way to her feelings,--Mr. Gridley put the essential facts before
them in a few words. She had gone down the river some miles in her boat,
which was upset by a rush of the current, and she had come very near
being drowned. She was got out, however, by a person living near by, and
cared for by some kind women in a house near the river, where he had been
fortunate enough to discover her.--Who cut her hair off? Perhaps those
good people,--she had been out of her head. She was alive and unharmed,
at any rate, wanting only a few days' rest. They might be very thankful
to get her back, and leave her to tell the rest of her story when she had
got her strength and memory, for she was not quite herself yet, and might
not be for some days.
And so there she was at last laid in her own bed, listening again to the
ripple of the waters beneath her, Miss Silence sitting on one side
looking as sympathetic as her insufficient nature allowed her to look;
the Irishwoman uncertain between delight at Myrtle's return and sorrow
for her condition; and Miss Cynthia Badlam occupying herself about
house-matters, not unwilling to avoid the necessity of displaying her
conflicting emotions.
Before he left the house, Mr. Gridley repeated the statement is the most
precise manner,--some miles down the river--upset and nearly
drowned--rescued almost dead--brought to and cared for by kind women in
the house where he, Byles Gridley, found her. These were the facts, and
nothing more than this was to be told at present. They had better be
made known at once, and the shortest and best way would be to have it
announced by the minister at meeting that forenoon. With their
permission, he would himself write the note for Mr. Stoker to read, and
tell the other ministers that they might announce it to their people.
The bells rang for meeting, but the little household at The Poplars did
not add to the congregation that day. In the mean time Kitty Fagan had
gone down with Mr. Byles Gridley's note, to carry it to the Rev. Mr.
Stoker. But, on her way, she stopped at the house of one Mrs. Finnegan,
a particular friend of hers; and the great event of the morning
furnishing matter for large discourse, and various social allurements
adding to the fascination of having a story to tell, Kitty Fagan forgot
her note until meeting had begun and the minister had read the text of
his sermon. "Bless my soul! and sure I 've forgot ahl about the letter!"
she cried all at once, and away she tramped for the meeting-house. The
sexton took the note, which was folded, and said he would hand it up to
the pulpit after the sermon,--it would not do to interrupt the preacher.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker had, as was said, a somewhat remarkable gift in
prayer,--an endowment by no means confined to profoundly spiritual
persons,--in fact, not rarely owing much of its force to a strong animal
nature underlying the higher attributes. The sweet singer of Israel
would never have written such petitions and such hymns if his manhood had
been less complete; the flavor of remembered frailties could not help
giving a character to his most devout exercises, or they would not have
come quite home to our common humanity. But there is no gift more
dangerous to the humility and sincerity of a minister. While his spirit
ought to be on its knees before the throne of grace, it is too apt to be
on tiptoe, following with admiring look the flight of its own rhetoric.
The essentially intellectual character of an extemporaneous composition
spoken to the Creator with the consciousness that many of his creatures
are listening to criticise or to admire, is the great argument for set
forms of prayer.
The congregation on this particular Sunday was made up chiefly of women
and old men. The young men were hunting after Myrtle Hazard. Mr. Byles
Gridley was in his place, wondering why the minister did not read his
notice before the prayer. This prayer, was never reported, as is the
questionable custom with regard to some of these performances, but it was
wrought up with a good deal of rasping force and broad pathos. When he
came to pray for "our youthful sister, missing from her pious home,
perhaps nevermore to return to her afflicted relatives," and the women
and old men began crying, Byles Gridley was on the very point of getting
up and cutting short the whole matter by stating the simple fact that she
had got back, all right, and suggesting that he had better pray for some
of the older and tougher sinners before him. But on the whole it would
be more decorous to wait, and perhaps he was willing to hear what the
object of his favorite antipathy had to say about it. So he waited
through the prayer. He waited through the hymn, "Life is the time"--He
waited to hear the sermon.
The minister gave out his text from the Book of Esther, second chapter,
seventh verse: "For she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was
fair and beautiful." It was to be expected that the reverend gentleman,
who loved to produce a sensation, would avail himself of the excitable
state of his audience to sweep the key-board of their emotions, while, as
we may, say, all the stops were drawn out. His sermon was from notes;
for, though absolutely extemporaneous composition may be acceptable to
one's Maker, it is not considered quite the thing in speaking to one's
fellow-mortals. He discoursed for a time on the loss of parents, and on
the dangers to which the unfortunate orphan is exposed. Then he spoke of
the peculiar risks of the tender female child, left without its natural
guardians. Warming with his subject, he dilated with wonderful unction
on the temptations springing from personal attractions. He pictured the
"fair and beautiful" women of Holy Writ, lingering over their names with
lover-like devotion. He brought Esther before his audience, bathed and
perfumed for the royal presence of Ahasuerus. He showed them the sweet
young Ruth, lying down in her innocence at the feet of the lord of the
manor. He dwelt with special luxury on the charms which seduced the
royal psalmist,--the soldier's wife for whom he broke the commands of the
decalogue, and the maiden for whose attentions, in his cooler years, he
violated the dictates of prudence and propriety. All this time Byles
Gridley had his stern eyes on him. And while he kindled into passionate
eloquence on these inspiring themes, poor Bathsheba, whom her mother had
sent to church that she might get a little respite from her home duties,
felt her blood growing cold in her veins, as the pallid image of the
invalid wife, lying on her bed of suffering, rose in the midst of the
glowing pictures which borrowed such warmth from her husband's
imagination.
The sermon, with its hinted application to the event of the past week,
was over at last. The shoulders of the nervous women were twitching with
sobs. The old men were crying in their vacant way. But all the while the
face of Byles Gridley, firm as a rock in the midst of this lachrymal
inundation, was kept steadily on the preacher, who had often felt the
look that came through the two round glasses searching into the very
marrow of his bones.
As the sermon was finished, the sexton marched up through the broad aisle
and handed the note over the door of the pulpit to the clergyman, who was
wiping his face after the exertion of delivering his discourse. Mr.
Stoker looked at it, started, changed color,--his vision of "The Dangers
of Beauty, a Sermon printed by Request," had vanished,--and passed the
note to Father Pemberton, who sat by him in the pulpit. With much pains
he deciphered its contents, for his eyes were dim with years, and, having
read it, bowed his head upon his hands in silent thanksgiving. Then he
rose in the beauty of his tranquil and noble old age, so touched with the
message he had to proclaim to his people, that the three deep furrows on
his forehead, which some said he owed to the three dogmas of original
sin, predestination, and endless torment, seemed smoothed for the moment,
and his face was as that of an angel while he spoke.
"Sisters and Brethren,--Rejoice with us, for we have found our lamb which
had strayed from the fold. This our daughter was dead and is alive
again; she was lost and is found. Myrtle Hazard, rescued from great
peril of the waters, and cared for by good Samaritans, is now in her
home. Thou, O Lord, who didst let the water-flood overflow her, didst
not let the deep swallow her up, nor the pit shut its mouth upon her.
Let us return our thanks to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God
of Jacob, who is our God and Father, and who hath wrought this great
deliverance."
After his prayer, which it tried him sorely to utter in unbroken tones,
he gave out the hymn,
"Lord, thou hast heard thy servant cry,
And rescued from the grave;"
but it was hardly begun when the leading female voice trembled and
stopped,--and another,--and then a third,--and Father Pemberton, seeing
that they were all overcome, arose and stretched out his arms, and
breathed over them his holy benediction.
The village was soon alive with the news. The sexton forgot the
solemnity of the Sabbath, and the bell acted as if it was crazy, tumbling
heels over head at such a rate, and with such a clamor, that a good many
thought there was a fire, and, rushing out from every quarter, instantly
caught the great news with which the air was ablaze.
A few of the young men who had come back went even further in their
demonstrations. They got a small cannon in readiness, and without
waiting for the going down of the sun, began firing rapidly, upon which
the Rev. Mr. Stoker sallied forth to put a stop to this violation of the
Sabbath. But in the mean time it was heard on all the hills, far and
near. Some said they were firing in the hope of raising the corpse; but
many who heard the bells ringing their crazy peals guessed what had
happened. Before night the parties were all in, one detachment bearing
the body of the bob-tailed catamount swung over a pole, like the mighty
cluster of grapes from Eshcol, and another conveying with wise precaution
that monstrous snapping-turtle which those of our friends who wish to see
will find among the specimens marked Chelydra, Serpentine in the great
collection at Cantabridge.
CHAPTER XI.
VEXED WITH A DEVIL.
It was necessary at once to summon a physician to advise as to the
treatment of Myrtle, who had received a shock, bodily and mental, not
lightly to be got rid of, and very probably to be followed by serious and
varied disturbances. Her very tranquillity was suspicious, for there
must be something of exhaustion in it, and the reaction must come sooner
or later.
Old Dr. Lemuel Hurlbut, at the age of ninety-two, very deaf, very nearly
blind, very feeble, liable to odd lapses of memory, was yet a wise
counsellor in doubtful and difficult cases, and on rare occasions was
still called upon to exercise his ancient skill. Here was a case in
which a few words from him might soothe the patient and give confidence
to all who were interested in her. Miss Silence Withers went herself to
see him.
"Miss Withers, father, wants to talk with you about her niece, Miss
Hazard," said Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut.
"Miss Withers, Miss Withers?--Oh, Silence Withers,--lives up at The
Poplars. How's the Deacon, Miss Withers?" [Ob. 1810.]
"My grandfather is not living, Dr. Hurlbut," she screamed into his ear.
"Dead, is he? Well, it isn't long since he was with us; and they come
and go,--they come and go. I remember his father, Major Gideon Withers.
He had a great red feather on training-days,--that was what made me
remember him. Who did you say was sick and wanted to see me, Fordyce?"
"Myrtle Hazard, father,--she has had a narrow escape from drowning, and
it has left her in a rather nervous state. They would like to have you
go up to The Poplars and take a look at her. You remember Myrtle Hazard?
She is the great-granddaughter of your old friend the Deacon."
He had to wait a minute before his thoughts would come to order; with a
little time, the proper answer would be evolved by the slow automatic
movement of the rusted mental machinery.
After the silent moment: "Myrtle Hazard, Myrtle Hazard,--yes, yes, to be
sure! The old Withers stock,--good constitutions,--a little apt to be
nervous, one or two of 'em. I've given 'em a good deal of valerian and
assafoetida,--not quite so much since the new blood came in. There is
n't the change in folks people think,--same thing over and over again.
I've seen six fingers on a child that had a six-fingered great-uncle, and
I've seen that child's grandchild born with six fingers. Does this girl
like to have her own way pretty well, like the rest of the family?"
"A little too well, I suspect, father. You will remember all about her
when you come to see her and talk with her. She would like to talk with
you, and her aunt wants to see you too; they think there's nobody like
the 'old Doctor'."
He was not too old to be pleased with this preference, and said he was
willing to go when they were ready. With no small labor of preparation
he was at last got to the house, and crept with his son's aid up to the
little room over the water, where his patient was still lying.
There was a little too much color in Myrtle's cheeks and a glistening
lustre in her eyes that told of unnatural excitement. It gave a strange
brilliancy to her beauty, and might have deceived an unpractised
observer. The old man looked at her long and curiously, his imperfect
sight excusing the closeness of his scrutiny.
He laid his trembling hand upon her forehead, and then felt her pulse
with his shriveled fingers. He asked her various questions about
herself, which she answered with a tone not quite so calm as natural, but
willingly and intelligently. They thought she seemed to the old Doctor
to be doing very well, for he spoke cheerfully to her, and treated her in
such a way that neither she nor any of those around her could be alarmed.
The younger physician was disposed to think she was only suffering from
temporary excitement, and that it would soon pass off.
They left the room to talk it over.
"It does not amount to much, I suppose, father," said Dr. Fordyce
Hurlbut. "You made the pulse about ninety,--a little hard,--did n't you;
as I did? Rest, and low diet for a day or two, and all will be right,
won't it?"
Was it the feeling of sympathy, or was it the pride of superior sagacity,
that changed the look of the old man's wrinkled features? "Not so
fast,--not so fast, Fordyce," he said. "I've seen that look on another
face of the same blood,--it 's a great many years ago, and she was dead
before you were born, my boy,--but I've seen that look, and it meant
trouble then, and I'm afraid it means trouble now. I see some danger of
a brain fever. And if she doesn't have that, then look out for some
hysteric fits that will make mischief. Take that handkerchief off of her
head, and cut her hair close, and keep her temples cool, and put some
drawing plasters to the soles of her feet, and give her some of my
pilulae compositae, and follow them with some doses of sal polychrest.
I've been through it all before--in that same house. Live folks are only
dead folks warmed over. I can see 'em all in that girl's face, Handsome
Judith, to begin with. And that queer woman, the Deacon's mother,--there
's where she gets that hystericky look. Yes, and the black-eyed woman
with the Indian blood in her,--look out for that,--look out for that.
And--and--my son, do you remember Major Gideon Withers?" [Ob. 1780.]
"Why no, father, I can't say that I remember the Major; but I know the
picture very well. Does she remind you of him?"
He paused again, until the thoughts came slowly straggling, up to the
point where the question left him. He shook his head solemnly, and
turned his dim eyes on his son's face.
Four generations--four generations; man and wife,--yes, five generations,
for old Selah Withers took me in his arms when I was a child, and called
me 'little gal,' for I was in girl's clothes,--five generations before
this Hazard child I 've looked on with these old eyes. And it seems to
me that I can see something of almost every one of 'em in this child's
face, it's the forehead of this one, and it's the eyes of that one, and
it's that other's mouth, and the look that I remember in another, and
when she speaks, why, I've heard that same voice before--yes, yes as long
ago as when I was first married; for I remember Rachel used to think I
praised Handsome Judith's voice more than it deserved,--and her face too,
for that matter. You remember Rachel, my first wife,--don't you,
Fordyce?"
"No, father, I don't remember her, but I know her portrait." (As he was
the son of the old Doctor's second wife, he could hardly be expected to
remember her predecessor.)
The old Doctor's sagacity was not in fault about the somewhat threatening
aspect of Myrtle's condition. His directions were followed implicitly;
for with the exception of the fact of sluggishness rather than loss of
memory, and of that confusion of dates which in slighter degrees is often
felt as early as middle-life, and increases in most persons from year to
year, his mind was still penetrating, and his advice almost as
trustworthy, as in his best days.
It was very fortunate that the old Doctor ordered Myrtle's hair to be
cut, and Miss Silence took the scissors and trimmed it at once. So,
whenever she got well and was seen about, there would be no mystery about
the loss of her locks,--the Doctor had been afraid of brain fever, and
ordered them to cut her hair.
Many things are uncertain in this world, and among them the effect of a
large proportion of the remedies prescribed by physicians. Whether it
was by the use of the means ordered by the old Doctor, or by the efforts
of nature, or by both together, at any rate the first danger was averted,
and the immediate risk from brain fever soon passed over. But the
impression upon her mind and body had been too profound to be dissipated
by a few days' rest. The hysteric stage which the wise old man had
apprehended began to manifest itself by its usual signs, if anything can
be called usual in a condition the natural order of which is disorder and
anomaly.
And now the reader, if such there be, who believes in the absolute
independence and self-determination of the will, and the consequent total
responsibility of every human being for every irregular nervous action
and ill-governed muscular contraction, may as well lay down this
narrative, or he may lose all faith in poor Myrtle Hazard, and all
patience with the writer who tells her story.
The mental excitement so long sustained, followed by a violent shock to
the system, coming just at the period of rapid development, gave rise to
that morbid condition, accompanied with a series of mental and moral
perversions, which in ignorant ages and communities is attributed to the
influence of evil spirits, but for the better-instructed is the malady
which they call hysteria. Few households have ripened a growth of
womanhood without witnessing some of its manifestations, and its
phenomena are largely traded in by scientific pretenders and religious
fanatics. Into this cloud, with all its risks and all its humiliations,
Myrtle Hazard is about to enter. Will she pass through it unharmed, or
wander from her path, and fall over one of those fearful precipices which
lie before her?
After the ancient physician had settled the general plan of treatment,
its details and practical application were left to the care of his son.
Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut was a widower, not yet forty years old, a man of a
fine masculine aspect and a vigorous nature. He was a favorite with his
female patients,--perhaps many of them would have said because he was
good-looking and pleasant in his manners, but some thought in virtue of a
special magnetic power to which certain temperaments were impressible,
though there was no explaining it. But he himself never claimed any such
personal gift, and never attempted any of the exploits which some thought
were in his power if he chose to exercise his faculty in that direction.
This girl was, as it were, a child to him, for he had seen her grow up
from infancy, and had often held her on his knee in her early years. The
first thing he did was to get her a nurse, for he saw that neither of the
two women about her exercised a quieting influence upon her nerves. So
he got her old friend, Nurse Byloe, to come and take care of her.
The old nurse looked calm enough at one or two of his first visits, but
the next morning her face showed that something had been going wrong.
"Well, what has been the trouble, Nurse?" the Doctor said, as soon as he
could get her out of the room.
"She's been attackted, Doctor, sence you been here, dreadful. It's them
high stirricks, Doctor, 'n' I never see 'em higher, nor more of 'em.
Laughin' as ef she would bust. Cryin' as ef she'd lost all her friends,
'n' was a follerin' their corpse to their graves. And spassums,--sech
spassums! And ketchin' at her throat, 'n' sayin' there was a great ball
a risin' into it from her stommick. One time she had a kind o' lockjaw
like. And one time she stretched herself out 'n' laid jest as stiff as
ef she was dead. And she says now that her head feels as ef a nail had
been driv' into it,--into the left temple, she says, and that's what
makes her look so distressed now."
The Doctor came once more to her bedside. He saw that her forehead was
contracted, and that she was evidently suffering from severe pain
somewhere.
"Where is your uneasiness, Myrtle?" he asked.
She moved her hand very slowly, and pressed it on her left temple. He
laid his hand upon the same spot, kept it there a moment, and then
removed it. She took it gently with her own, and placed it on her temple
again. As he sat watching her, he saw that her features were growing
easier, and in a short time her deep, even breathing showed that she was
asleep.
"It beats all," the old nurse said. "Why, she's been a complainin' ever
sence daylight, and she hain't slep' not a wink afore, sence twelve
o'clock las' night! It's j es' like them magnetizers,--I never heerd you
was one o' them kind, Dr. Hurlbut."
"I can't say how it is, Nurse,--I have heard people say my hand was
magnetic, but I never thought of its quieting her so quickly. No sleep
since twelve o'clock last night, you say?"
"Not a wink, 'n' actin' as ef she was possessed a good deal o' the time.
You read your Bible, Doctor, don't you? You're pious? Do you remember
about that woman in Scriptur' out of whom the Lord cast seven devils?
Well, I should ha' thought there was seventy devils in that gal last
night, from the way she carr'd on. And now she lays there jest as
peaceful as a new-born babe,--that is, accordin' to the sayin' about 'em;
for as to peaceful new-born babes, I never see one that come t' anything,
that did n't screech as ef the haouse was afire 'n' it wanted to call all
the fire-ingines within ten mild."
The Doctor smiled, but he became thoughtful in a moment. Did he possess
a hitherto unexercised personal power, which put the key of this young
girl's nervous system into his hands? The remarkable tranquillizing
effect of the contact of his hand with her forehead looked like an
immediate physical action.
It might have been a mere coincidence, however. He would not form an
opinion until his next visit.
At that next visit it did seem as if some of Nurse Byloe's seventy devils
had possession of the girl. All the strange spasmodic movements, the
chokings, the odd sounds, the wild talk, the laughing and crying, were in
full blast. All the remedies which had been ordered seemed to have been
of no avail. The Doctor could hardly refuse trying his quasi magnetic
influence, and placed the tips of his fingers on her forehead. The
result was the same that had followed the similar proceeding the day
before,--the storm was soon calmed, and after a little time she fell into
a quiet sleep, as in the first instance.
Here was an awkward affair for the physician, to be sure! He held this
power in his hands, which no remedy and no other person seemed to
possess. How long would he be chained to her; and she to him, and what
would be the consequence of the mysterious relation which must
necessarily spring up between a man like him, in the plenitude of vital
force, of strongly attractive personality, and a young girl organized for
victory over the calmest blood and the steadiest resistance?
Every day after this made matters worse. There was something almost
partaking of the miraculous in the influence he was acquiring over her.
His "Peace, be still!" was obeyed by the stormy elements of this young
soul, as if it had been a supernatural command. How could he resist the
dictate of humanity which called him to make his visits more frequent,
that her intervals of rest might be more numerous? How could he refuse to
sit at her bedside for a while in the evening, that she might be quieted,
instead of beginning the night sleepless and agitated?
The Doctor was a man of refined feeling as well as of principle, and he
had besides a sacred memory in the deepest heart of his affections. It
was the common belief in the village that he would never marry again, but
that his first and only love was buried in the grave of the wife of his
youth. It did not easily occur to him to suspect himself of any weakness
with regard to this patient of his, little more than a child in years.
It did not at once suggest itself to him that she, in her strange,
excited condition, might fasten her wandering thoughts upon him, too far
removed by his age, as it seemed, to strike the fancy of a young girl
under almost any conceivable conditions.
Thus it was that many of those beautiful summer evenings found him
sitting by his patient, the river rippling and singing beneath them, the
moon shining over them, sweet odors from the thickets on the banks of the
stream stealing in on the soft air that came through the open window, and
every time they were thus together, the subtile influence which bound
them to each other bringing them more and more into inexplicable
harmonies and almost spiritual identity.
But all this did not hinder the development of new and strange conditions
in Myrtle Hazard. Her will was losing its power. "I cannot help
it"--the hysteric motto--was her constant reply. It is not pleasant to
confess the truth, but she was rapidly undergoing a singular change of
her moral nature. She had been a truthful child. If she had kept her
secret about what she had found in the garret, she thought she was
exercising her rights, and she had never been obliged to tell any lies
about it.
But now she seemed to have lost the healthy instincts for veracity and
honesty. She feigned all sorts of odd symptoms, and showed a wonderful
degree of cunning in giving an appearance of truth to them. It became
next to impossible to tell what was real and what was simulated. At one
time she could not be touched ever so lightly without shrinking and
crying out. At another time she would squint, and again she would be
half paralyzed for a time. She would pretend to fast for days, living on
food she had concealed and took secretly in the night.
The nurse was getting worn out. Kitty Fagan would have had the priest
come to the house and sprinkle it with holy water. The two women were
beginning to get nervous themselves. The Rev. Mr. Stoker said in
confidence to Miss Silence, that there was reason to fear she might have
been given over for a time to the buffetings of Satan, and that perhaps
his (Mr. Stoker's) personal attentions might be useful in that case. And
so it appeared that the "young doctor" was the only being left with whom
she had any complete relations and absolute sympathy. She had become so
passive in his hands that it seemed as if her only healthy life was, as
it were, transmitted through him, and that she depended on the transfer
of his nervous power, as the plant upon the light for its essential
living processes.
The two young men who had met in so unexpected a manner on board the ship
Swordfish had been reasonably discreet in relating their adventures.
Myrtle Hazard may or may not have had the plan they attributed to her;
however that was, they had looked rather foolish when they met, and had
not thought it worth while to be very communicative about the matter when
they returned. It had at least given them a chance to become a little
better acquainted with each other, and it was an opportunity which the
elder and more artful of the two meant to turn to advantage.
Of all Myrtle's few friends only one was in the habit of seeing her often
during this period, namely, Olive Eveleth, a girl so quiet and sensible
that she, if anybody, could be trusted with her. But Myrtle's whole
character seemed to have changed, and Olive soon found that she was in
some mystic way absorbed into another nature. Except when the
physician's will was exerted upon her, she was drifting without any
self-directing power, and then any one of those manifold impulses which
would in some former ages have been counted as separate manifestations on
the part of distinct demoniacal beings might take possession of her.
Olive did little, therefore, but visit Myrtle from time to time to learn
if any change had occurred in her condition. All this she reported to
Cyprian, and all this was got out of him by Mr. William Murray Bradshaw.
That gentleman was far from being pleased with the look of things as they
were represented. What if the Doctor, who was after all in the prime of
life and younger-looking than some who were born half a dozen years after
him, should get a hold on this young woman,--girl now, if you will, but
in a very few years certain to come within possible, nay, not very
improbable, matrimonial range of him? That would be pleasant, wouldn't
it? It had happened sometimes, as he knew, that these magnetizing tricks
had led to infatuation on the part of the subjects of the wonderful
influence. So he concluded to be ill and consult the younger Dr.
Hurlbut, and incidentally find out how the land lay.
The next question was, what to be ill with. Some not ungentlemanly
malady, not hereditary, not incurable, not requiring any obvious change
in habits of life. Dyspepsia would answer the purpose well enough: so
Mr. Murray Bradshaw picked up a medical book and read ten minutes or more
for that complaint. At the end of this time he was an accomplished
dyspeptic; for lawyers half learn a thing quicker than the members of any
other profession.
He presented himself with a somewhat forlorn countenance to Dr. Fordyce
Hurlbut, as suffering from some of the less formidable symptoms of that
affection. He got into a very interesting conversation with him,
especially about some nervous feelings which had accompanied his attack
of indigestion. Thence to nervous complaints in general. Thence to the
case of the young lady at The Poplars whom he was attending. The Doctor
talked with a certain reserve, as became his professional relations with
his patient; but it was plain enough that, if this kind of intercourse
went on much longer, it would be liable to end in some emotional
explosion or other, and there was no saying how it would at last turn
out.
Murray Bradshaw was afraid to meddle directly. He knew something more
about the history of Myrtle's adventure than any of his neighbors, and,
among other things, that it had given Mr. Byles Gridley a peculiar
interest in her, of which he could take advantage. He therefore artfully
hinted his fears to the old man, and left his hint to work itself out.
However suspicious Master Gridley was of him and his motives, he thought
it worth while to call up at The Poplars and inquire for himself of the
nurse what was this new relation growing up between the physician and his
young patient.
She imparted her opinion to him in a private conversation with great
freedom. "Sech doin's! sech doin's! The gal's jest as much bewitched as
ever any gal was sence them that was possessed in Scriptur'. And every
day it 's wus and wus. Ef that Doctor don't stop comin', she won't
breathe without his helpin' her to before long. And, Mr. Gridley, I
don't like to say so,--but I can't help thinkin' he's gettin' a little
bewitched too. I don't believe he means to take no kind of advantage of
her; but, Mr. Gridley, you've seen them millers fly round and round a
candle, and you know how it ginerally comes out. Men is men and gals is
gals. I would n't trust no man, not ef he was much under a hundred year
old,--and as for a gal--!"
"Mulieri ne mortuae quidem credendum est," said Mr. Gridley. "You
wouldn't trust a woman even if she was dead, hey, Nurse?"
"Not till she was buried, 'n' the grass growin' a foot high over her,"
said Nurse Byloe, "unless I'd know'd her sence she was a baby. I've
know'd this one sence she was two or three year old; but this gal ain't
Myrtle Hazard no longer,--she's bewitched into somethin' different. I'll
tell ye what, Mr. Gridley; you get old Dr. Hurlbut to come and see her
once a day for a week, and get the young doctor to stay away. I'll resk
it. She 'll have some dreadful tantrums at fust, but she'll come to it
in two or three, days."
Master Byles Gridley groaned in spirit. He had come to this village to
end his days in peace, and here he was just going to make a martyr of
himself for the sake of a young person to whom he was under no
obligation, except that he had saved her from the consequences of her own
foolish act, at the expense of a great overturn of all his domestic
habits. There was no help for it. The nurse was right, and he must
perform the disagreeable duty of letting the Doctor know that he was
getting into a track which might very probably lead to mischief, and that
he must back out as fast as he could.
At 2 P. M. Gifted Hopkins presented the following note at the Doctor's
door:
"Mr. Byles Gridley would be much obliged to Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut if he
would call at his study this evening."
"Odd, is n't it, father, the old man's asking me to come and see him?
Those old stub-twist constitutions never want patching."
"Old man! old man! Who's that you call old,--not Byles Gridley, hey?
Old! old! Sixty year, more or less! How old was Floyer when he died,
Fordyce? Ninety-odd, was n't it? Had the asthma though, or he'd have
lived to be as old as Dr. Holyoke,--a hundred year and over. That's old.
But men live to be a good deal more than that sometimes. What does Byles
Gridley want of you, did you say?"
"I'm sure I can't tell, father; I'll go and find out." So he went over
to Mrs. Hopkins's in the evening, and was shown up into the study.
Master Gridley treated the Doctor to a cup of such tea as bachelors
sometimes keep hid away in mysterious caddies. He presently began asking
certain questions about the grand climacteric, which eventful period of
life he was fast approaching. Then he discoursed of medicine, ancient
and modern, tasking the Doctor's knowledge not a little, and evincing a
good deal of acquaintance with old doctrines and authors.
He had a few curious old medical books in his library, which he said he
should like to show Dr. Hurlbut.
"There, now! What do you say to this copy of Joannes de Ketam, Venice,
1522? Look at these woodcuts,--the first anatomical pictures ever
printed, Doctor, unless these others of Jacobus Berengarius are older!
See this scene of the plague-patient, the doctor smelling at his
pouncet-box, the old nurse standing square at the bedside, the young
nurse with the bowl, holding back and turning her head away, and the old
burial-hag behind her, shoving her forward, a very curious book, Doctor,
and has the first phrenological picture in it ever made. Take a look,
too, at my Vesalius,--not the Leyden edition, Doctor, but the one with
the grand old original figures,--so good that they laid them to Titian.
And look here, Doctor, I could n't help getting this great folio Albinus,
1747,--and the nineteenth century can't touch it, Doctor,--can't touch it
for completeness and magnificence, so all the learned professors tell me!
Brave old fellows, Doctor, and put their lives into their books as you
gentlemen don't pretend to do nowadays. And good old fellows,
Doctor,--high-minded, scrupulous, conscientious, punctilious,--remembered
their duties to man and to woman, and felt all the responsibilities of
their confidential relation to families. Did you ever read the oldest of
medical documents,--the Oath of Hippocrates?"
The Doctor thought he had read it, but did not remember much about it.
"It 's worth reading, Doctor,--it's worth remembering; and, old as it is,
it is just as good to-day as it was when it was laid down as a rule of
conduct four hundred years before the Sermon on the Mount was delivered.
Let me read it to you, Dr. Hurlbut."
There was something in Master Gridley's look that made the Doctor feel a
little nervous; he did not know just what was coming.
Master Gridley took out his great Hippocrates, the edition of Foesius,
and opened to the place. He turned so as to face the Doctor, and read
the famous Oath aloud, Englishing it as he went along. When he came to
these words which follow, he pronounced them very slowly and with special
emphasis.
"My life shall be pure and holy."
"Into whatever house I enter, I will go for the good of the patient:
"I will abstain from inflicting any voluntary injury, and from leading
away any, whether man or woman, bond or free."
The Doctor changed color as he listened, and the moisture broke out on
his forehead.
Master Gridley saw it, and followed up his advantage. "Dr. Fordyce
Hurlbut, are you not in danger of violating the sanctities of your
honorable calling, and leading astray a young person committed to your
sacred keeping?"
While saying these words, Master Gridley looked full upon him, with a
face so charged with grave meaning, so impressed with the gravity of his
warning accents, that the Doctor felt as if he were before some dread
tribunal, and remained silent. He was a member of the Rev. Mr. Stoker's
church, and the words he had just listened to were those of a sinful old
heathen who had never heard a sermon in his life; but they stung him, for
all that, as the parable of the prophet stung the royal transgressor.
He spoke at length, for the plain honest words had touched the right
spring of consciousness at the right moment; not too early, for he now
saw whither he was tending,--not too late, for he was not yet in the
inner spirals of the passion which whirls men and women to their doom in
ever-narrowing coils, that will not unwind at the command of God or man.
He spoke as one who is humbled by self-accusation, yet in a manly way, as
became his honorable and truthful character.
"Master Gridley," he said, "I stand convicted before you. I know too
well what you are thinking of. It is true, I cannot continue my
attendance on Myrtle--on Miss Hazard, for you mean her--without peril to
both of us. She is not herself. God forbid that I should cease to be
myself! I have been thinking of a summer tour, and I will at once set
out upon it, and leave this patient in my father's hands. I think he
will find strength to visit her under the circumstances."
The Doctor went off the next morning without saying a word to Myrtle
Hazard, and his father made the customary visit in his place.
That night the spirit tare her, as may well be supposed, and so the
second night. But there was no help for it: her doctor was gone, and the
old physician, with great effort, came instead, sat by her, spoke kindly
to her, left wise directions to her attendants, and above all assured
them that, if they would have a little patience, they would see all this
storm blow over.
On the third night after his visit, the spirit rent her sore, and came
out of her, or, in the phrase of to-day, she had a fierce paroxysm, after
which the violence of the conflict ceased, and she might be called
convalescent so far as that was concerned.
But all this series of nervous disturbances left her in a very
impressible and excitable condition. This was just the state to invite
the spiritual manipulations of one of those theological practitioners who
consider that the treatment of all morbid states of mind short of raving
madness belongs to them and not to the doctors. This same condition was
equally favorable for the operations of any professional experimenter who
would use the flame of religious excitement to light the torch of an
earthly passion. So many fingers that begin on the black keys stray to
the white ones before the tune is played out!
If Myrtle Hazard was in charge of any angelic guardian, the time was at
hand when she would need all celestial influences; for the Rev. Joseph
Bellamy Stoker was about to take a deep interest in her spiritual
welfare.'
CHAPTER XII.
SKIRMISHING.
"So the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker has called upon you, Susan Posey, has
he? And wants you to come and talk religion with him in his study, Susan
Posey, does he? Religion is a good thing, my dear, the best thing in the
world, and never better than when we are young, and no young people need
it more than young girls. There are temptations to all, and to them as
often as to any, Susan Posey. And temptations come to them in places
where they don't look for them, and from persons they never thought of as
tempters. So I am very glad to have your thoughts called to the subject
of religion. 'Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.'
"But Susan Posey, my dear, I think you hard better not break in upon the
pious meditations of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker in his private study.
A monk's cell and a minister's library are hardly the places for young
ladies. They distract the attention of these good men from their
devotions and their sermons. If you think you must go, you had better
take Mrs. Hopkins with you. She likes religious conversation, and it
will do her good too, and save a great deal of time for the minister,
conversing with two at once. She is of discreet age, and will tell you
when it is time to come away,--you might stay too long, you know. I've
known young persons stay a good deal too long at these interviews,--a
great deal too long, Susan Posey!"
Such was the fatherly counsel of Master Byles Gridley.
Susan was not very quick of apprehension, but she could not help seeing
the justice of Master Gridley's remark, that for a young person to go and
break in on the hours that a minister requires for his studies, without
being accompanied by a mature friend who would remind her when it was
time to go, would be taking an unfair advantage of his kindness in asking
her to call upon him. She promised, therefore, that she would never go
without having Mrs. Hopkins as her companion, and with this assurance her
old friend rested satisfied.
It is altogether likely that he had some deeper reason for his advice
than those with which he satisfied the simple nature of Susan Posey. Of
that it will be easier to judge after a glance at the conditions and
character of the minister and his household.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker had, in addition to the personal advantages already
alluded to, some other qualities which might prove attractive to many
women. He had, in particular, that art of sliding into easy intimacy
with them which implies some knowledge of the female nature, and, above
all, confidence in one's powers. There was little doubt, the gossips
maintained, that many of the younger women of his parish would have been
willing, in certain contingencies, to lift for him that other end of his
yoke under which poor Mrs. Stoker was fainting, unequal to the burden.
That lady must have been some years older than her husband,--how many we
need not inquire too curiously,--but in vitality she had long passed the
prime in which he was still flourishing. She had borne him five
children, and cried her eyes hollow over the graves of three of them.
Household cares had dragged upon her; the routine of village life wearied
her; the parishioners expected too much of her as the minister's wife;
she had wanted more fresh air and more cheerful companionship; and her
thoughts had fed too much on death and sin,--good bitter tonics to
increase the appetite for virtue, but not good as food and drink for the
spirit.
But there was another grief which lay hidden far beneath these obvious
depressing influences. She felt that she was no longer to her husband
what she had been to him, and felt it with something of
self-reproach,--which was a wrong to herself, for she had been a true and
tender wife. Deeper than all the rest was still another feeling, which
had hardly risen into the region of inwardly articulated thought, but lay
unshaped beneath all the syllabled trains of sleeping or waking
consciousness.
The minister was often consulted by his parishioners upon spiritual
matters, and was in the habit of receiving in his study visitors who came
with such intent. Sometimes it was old weak-eyed Deacon Rumrill, in
great iron-bowed spectacles, with hanging nether lip and tremulous voice,
who had got his brain onto a muddle about the beast with two horns, or
the woman that fled into the wilderness, or other points not settled to
his mind in Scott's Commentary. The minister was always very busy at
such times, and made short work of his deacon's doubts. Or it might be
that an ancient woman, a mother or a grandmother in Israel, came with her
questions and her perplexities to her pastor; and it was pretty certain
that just at that moment he was very deep in his next sermon, or had a
pressing visit to make.
But it would also happen occasionally that one of the tenderer ewe-lambs
of the flock needed comfort from the presence of the shepherd. Poor Mrs.
Stoker noticed, or thought she noticed, that the good man had more
leisure for the youthful and blooming sister than for the more discreet
and venerable matron or spinster. The sitting was apt to be longer; and
the worthy pastor would often linger awhile about the door, to speed the
parting guest, perhaps, but a little too much after the fashion of young
people who are not displeased with each other, and who often find it as
hard to cross a threshold single as a witch finds it to get over a
running stream. More than once, the pallid, faded wife had made an
errand to the study, and, after a keen look at the bright young cheeks,
flushed with the excitement of intimate spiritual communion, had gone
back to her chamber with her hand pressed against her heart, and the
bitterness of death in her soul.
The end of all these bodily and mental trials was, that the minister's
wife had fallen into a state of habitual invalidism, such as only women,
who feel all the nerves which in men are as insensible as
telegraph-wires, can experience.
The doctor did not know what to make of her case,--whether she would live
or die,--whether she would languish for years, or, all at once, roused by
some strong impression, or in obedience to some unexplained movement of
the vital forces, take up her bed and walk. For her bed had become her
home, where she lived as if it belonged to her organism. There she lay,
a not unpleasing invalid to contemplate, always looking resigned,
patient, serene, except when the one deeper grief was stirred, always
arrayed with simple neatness, and surrounded with little tokens that
showed the constant presence with her of tasteful and thoughtful
affection. She did not know, nobody could know, how steadily, how
silently all this artificial life was draining the veins and blanching
the cheek of her daughter Bathsheba, one of the everyday, air-breathing
angels without nimbus or aureole who belong to every story which lets us
into a few households, as much as the stars and the flowers belong to
everybody's verses.
Bathsheba's devotion to her mother brought its own reward, but it was not
in the shape of outward commendation. Some of the more censorious
members of her father's congregation were severe in their remarks upon
her absorption in the supreme object of her care. It seems that this had
prevented her from attending to other duties which they considered more
imperative. They did n't see why she shouldn't keep a Sabbath-school as
well as the rest, and as to her not comin' to meetin' three times on
Sabbath day like other folks, they couldn't account for it, except
because she calculated that she could get along without the means of
grace, bein' a minister's daughter. Some went so far as to doubt if she
had ever experienced religion, for all she was a professor. There was a
good many indulged a false hope. To this, others objected her life of
utter self-denial and entire surrender to her duties towards her mother
as some evidence of Christian character. But old Deacon Rumrill put down
that heresy by showing conclusively from Scott's Commentary on Romans xi.
1-6, that this was altogether against her chance of being called, and
that the better her disposition to perform good works, the more unlikely
she was to be the subject of saving grace. Some of these severe critics
were good people enough themselves, but they loved active work and
stirring companionship, and would have found their real cross if they had
been called to sit at an invalid's bedside.
As for the Rev. Mr. Stoker, his duties did not allow him to give so much
time to his suffering wife as his feelings would undoubtedly have
prompted. He therefore relinquished the care of her (with great
reluctance we may naturally suppose) to Bathsheba, who had inherited not
only her mother's youthful smile, but that self-forgetfulness which, born
with some of God's creatures, is, if not "grace," at least a
manifestation of native depravity which might well be mistaken for it.
The intimacy of mother and daughter was complete, except on a single
point. There was one subject on which no word ever passed between them.
The excuse of duties to others was by a tacit understanding a mantle to
cover all short-comings in the way of attention from the husband and
father, and no word ever passed between them implying a suspicion of the
loyalty of his affections. Bathsheba came at last so to fill with her
tenderness the space left empty in the neglected heart, that her mother
only spoke her habitual feeling when she said, "I should think you were
in love with me, my darling, if you were not my daughter."
This was a dangerous state of things for the minister. Strange
suggestions and unsafe speculations began to mingle with his dreams and
reveries. The thought once admitted that another's life is becoming
superfluous and a burden, feeds like a ravenous vulture on the soul. Woe
to the man or woman whose days are passed in watching the hour-glass
through which the sands run too slowly for longings that are like a
skulking procession of bloodless murders! Without affirming such horrors
of the Rev. Mr. Stoker, it would not be libellous to say that his fancy
was tampering with future possibilities, as it constantly happens with
those who are getting themselves into training for some act of folly, or
some crime, it may be, which will in its own time evolve itself as an
idea in the consciousness, and by and by ripen into fact.
It must not be taken for granted that he was actually on the road to some
fearful deed, or that he was an utterly lost soul. He was ready to yield
to temptation if it came in his way; he would even court it, but he did
not shape out any plan very definitely in his mind, as a more desperate
sinner would have done. He liked the pleasurable excitement of emotional
relations with his pretty lambs, and enjoyed it under the name of
religious communion. There is a border land where one can stand on the
territory of legitimate instincts and affections, and yet be so near, the
pleasant garden of the Adversary, that his dangerous fruits and flowers
are within easy reach. Once tasted, the next step is like to be the
scaling of the wall. The Rev. Mr. Stoker was very fond of this border
land. His imagination was wandering over it too often when his pen was
travelling almost of itself along the weary parallels of the page before
him. All at once a blinding flash would come over him the lines of his
sermon would run together, the fresh manuscript would shrivel like a dead
leaf, and the rows of hard-hearted theology on the shelves before him,
and the broken-backed Concordance, and the Holy Book itself, would fade
away as he gave himself up to the enchantment of his delirious dream.
The reader will probably consider it a discreet arrangement that pretty
Susan Posey should seek her pastor in grave company. Mrs. Hopkins
willingly consented to the arrangement which had been proposed, and
agreed to go with the young lady on her visit to the Rev. Mr. Stoker's
study. They were both arrayed in their field-day splendors on this
occasion. Susan was lovely in her light curls and blue ribbons, and the
becoming dress which could not help betraying the modestly emphasized
crescendos and gently graded diminuendos of her figure. She was as round
as if she had been turned in a lathe, and as delicately finished as if
she had been modelled for a Flora. She had naturally an airy toss of the
head and a springy movement of the joints, such as some girls study in
the glass (and make dreadful work of it), so that she danced all over
without knowing it, like a little lively bobolink on a bulrush. In
short, she looked fit to spoil a homily for Saint Anthony himself.
Mrs. Hopkins was not less perfect in her somewhat different style. She
might be called impressive and imposing in her grand-costume, which she
wore for this visit. It was a black silk dress, with a crape shawl, a
firmly defensive bonnet, and an alpaca umbrella with a stern-looking and
decided knob presiding as its handle. The dried-leaf rustle of her silk
dress was suggestive of the ripe autumn of life, bringing with it those
golden fruits of wisdom and experience which the grave teachers of
mankind so justly prefer to the idle blossoms of adolescence.
It is needless to say that the visit was conducted with the most perfect
propriety in all respects. Mrs. Hopkins was disposed to take upon
herself a large share of the conversation. The minister, on the other
hand, would have devoted himself more particularly to Miss Susan, but,
with a very natural make-believe obtuseness, the good woman drew his fire
so constantly that few of his remarks, and hardly any of his insinuating
looks, reached the tender object at which they were aimed. It is
probable that his features or tones betrayed some impatience at having
thus been foiled of his purpose, for Mrs. Hopkins thought he looked all
the time as if he wanted to get rid of her. The three parted, therefore,
not in the best humor all round. Mrs. Hopkins declared she'd see the
minister in Jericho before she'd fix herself up as if she was goin' to a
weddin' to go and see him again. Why, he did n't make any more of her
than if she'd been a tabby-cat. She believed some of these ministers
thought women's souls dried up like peas in a pod by the time they was
forty year old; anyhow, they did n't seem to care any great about 'em,
except while they was green and tender. It was all Miss Se-usan, Miss
Se-usan, Miss Se-usan, my dear! but as for her, she might jest as well
have gone with her apron on, for any notice he took of her. She did n't
care, she was n't goin' to be left out when there was talkin' goin' on,
anyhow.
Susan Posey, on her part, said she did n't like him a bit. He looked so
sweet at her, and held his head on one side,--law! just as if he had been
a young beau! And,--don't tell,--but he whispered that he wished the
next time I came I wouldn't bring that Hopkins woman!
It would not be fair to repeat what the minister said to himself; but we
may own as much as this, that, if worthy Mrs. Hopkins had heard it, she
would have treated him to a string of adjectives which would have greatly
enlarged his conceptions of the female vocabulary.
CHAPTER XIII.
BATTLE.
In tracing the history of a human soul through its commonplace nervous
perturbations, still more through its spiritual humiliations, there is
danger that we shall feel a certain contempt for the subject of such
weakness. It is easy to laugh at the erring impulses of a young girl;
but you who remember when_______ _________, only fifteen years old,
untouched by passion, unsullied in name, was found in the shallow brook
where she had sternly and surely sought her death,--(too true! too
true!--ejus animae Jesu miserere!--but a generation has passed since
then,)--will not smile so scornfully.
Myrtle Hazard no longer required the physician's visits, but her mind was
very far from being poised in the just balance of its faculties. She was
of a good natural constitution and a fine temperament; but she had been
overwrought by all that she had passed through, and, though happening to
have been born in another land, she was of American descent. Now, it has
long been noticed that there is something in the influences, climatic or
other, here prevailing, which predisposes to morbid religious excitement.
The graver reader will not object to seeing the exact statement of a
competent witness belonging to a by-gone century, confirmed as it is by
all that we see about us.
"There is no Experienced Minister of the Gospel who hath not in the Cases
of Tempted Souls often had this Experience, that the ill Cases of their
distempered Bodies are the frequent Occasion and Original of their
Temptations." "The Vitiated Humours in many Persons, yield the Steams
whereinto Satan does insinuate himself, till he has gained a sort of
Possession in them, or at least an Opportunity to shoot into the Mind as
many Fiery Darts as may cause a sad Life unto them; yea, 't is well if
Self-Murder be not the sad end into which these hurried. People are
thus precipitated. New England, a country where Splenetic Maladies are
prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded
Numberless Instances, of even pious People, who have contracted these
Melancholy Indispositions which have unhinged them from all Service or
Comfort; yea, not a few Persons have been hurried thereby to lay Violent
Hands upon themselves at the last. These are among the unsearchable
Judgments of God!"
Such are the words of the Rev. Cotton Mather.
The minister had hardly recovered from his vexatious defeat in the
skirmish where the Widow Hopkins was his principal opponent, when he
received a note from Miss Silence Withers, which promised another and
more important field of conflict. It contained a request that he would
visit Myrtle Hazard, who seemed to be in a very excitable and impressible
condition, and who might perhaps be easily brought under those influences
which she had resisted from her early years, through inborn perversity of
character.
When the Rev. Mr. Stoker received this note, he turned very pale,--which
was a bad sign. Then he drew a long breath or two, and presently a flush
tingled up to his cheek, where it remained a fixed burning glow. This
may have been from the deep interest he felt in Myrtle's spiritual
welfare; but he had often been sent for by aged sinners in more immediate
peril, apparently, without any such disturbance of the circulation.
To know whether a minister, young or still in flower; is in safe or
dangerous paths, there are two psychometers, a comparison between which
will give as infallible a return as the dry and wet bulbs of the
ingenious "Hygrodeik." The first is the black broadcloth forming the
knees of his pantaloons; the second, the patch of carpet before his
mirror. If the first is unworn and the second is frayed and threadbare,
pray for him. If the first is worn and shiny, while the second keeps its
pattern and texture, get him to pray for you.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker should have gone down on his knees then and there,
and sought fervently for the grace which he was like to need in the
dangerous path just opening before him. He did not do this; but he stood
up before his looking-glass and parted his hair as carefully as if he had
been separating the saints of his congregation from the sinners, to send
the list to the statistical columns of a religious newspaper. He
selected a professional neckcloth, as spotlessly pure as if it had been
washed in innocency, and adjusted it in a tie which was like the white
rose of Sharon. Myrtle Hazard was, he thought, on the whole, the
handsomest girl he had ever seen; Susan Posey was to her as a buttercup
from the meadow is to a tiger-lily. He, knew the nature of the nervous
disturbances through which she had been passing, and that she must be in
a singularly impressible condition. He felt sure that he could establish
intimate spiritual relations with her by drawing out her repressed
sympathies, by feeding the fires of her religious imagination, by
exercising all those lesser arts of fascination which are so familiar to
the Don Giovannis, and not always unknown to the San Giovannis.
As for the hard doctrines which he used to produce sensations with in the
pulpit, it would have been a great pity to worry so lovely a girl, in
such a nervous state, with them. He remembered a savory text about being
made all things to all men, which would bear application particularly
well to the case of this young woman. He knew how to weaken his
divinity, on occasion, as well as an old housewife to weaken her tea,
lest it should keep people awake.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker was a man of emotions. He loved to feel his heart
beat; he loved all the forms of non-alcoholic drunkenness, which are so
much better than the vinous, because they taste themselves so keenly,
whereas the other (according to the statement of experts who are familiar
with its curious phenomena) has a certain sense of unreality connected
with it. He delighted in the reflex stimulus of the excitement he
produced in others by working on their feelings. A powerful preacher is
open to the same sense of enjoyment--an awful, tremulous, goose-flesh
sort of state, but still enjoyment--that a great tragedian feels when he
curdles the blood of his audience.
Mr. Stoker was noted for the vividness of his descriptions of the future
which was in store for the great bulk of his fellow-townsmen and
fellow-worlds-men. He had three sermons on this subject, known to all
the country round as the sweating sermon, the fainting sermon, and the
convulsion-fit sermon, from the various effects said to have been
produced by them when delivered before large audiences. It might be
supposed that his reputation as a terrorist would have interfered with
his attempts to ingratiate himself with his young favorites. But the
tragedian who is fearful as Richard or as Iago finds that no hindrance to
his success in the part of Romeo. Indeed, women rather take to terrible
people; prize-fighters, pirates, highwaymen, rebel generals, Grand Turks,
and Bluebeards generally have a fascination for the sex; your virgin has
a natural instinct to saddle your lion. The fact, therefore, that the
young girl had sat under his tremendous pulpitings, through the sweating
sermon, the fainting sermon, and the convulsion-fit sermon, did not
secure her against the influence of his milder approaches.
Myrtle was naturally surprised at receiving a visit from him; but she was
in just that unbalanced state in which almost any impression is welcome.
He showed so much interest, first in her health, then in her thoughts and
feelings, always following her lead in the conversation, that before he
left her she felt as if she had made a great discovery; namely, that this
man, so formidable behind the guns of his wooden bastion, was a most
tenderhearted and sympathizing person when he came out of it unarmed.
How delightful he was as he sat talking in the twilight in low and tender
tones, with respectful pauses of listening, in which he looked as if he
too had just made a discovery,--of an angel, to wit, to whom he could not
help unbosoming his tenderest emotions, as to a being from another
sphere!
It was a new experience to Myrtle. She was all ready for the spiritual
manipulations of an expert. The excitability which had been showing
itself in spasms and strange paroxysms had been transferred to those
nervous centres, whatever they may be, cerebral or ganglionic, which are
concerned in the emotional movements of the religious nature. It was
taking her at an unfair disadvantage, no doubt. In the old communion,
some priest might have wrought upon her while in this condition, and we
might have had at this very moment among us another Saint Theresa or
Jacqueline Pascal. She found but a dangerous substitute in the spiritual
companionship of a saint like the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker.
People think the confessional is unknown in our Protestant churches. It
is a great mistake. The principal change is, that there is no screen
between the penitent and the father confessor. The minister knew his
rights, and very soon asserted them. He gave aunt Silence to understand
that he could talk more at ease if he and his young disciple were left
alone together. Cynthia Badlam did not like this arrangement. She was
afraid to speak about it; but she glared at them aslant, with the look of
a biting horse when his eyes follow one sideways until they are all white
but one little vicious spark of pupil.
It was not very long before the Rev. Mr. Stoker had established pretty
intimate relations with the household at The Poplars. He had reason to
think, he assured Miss Silence, that Myrtle was in a state of mind which
promised a complete transformation of her character. He used the phrases
of his sect, of course, in talking with the elderly lady; but the
language which he employed with the young girl was free from those
mechanical expressions which would have been like to offend or disgust
her.
As to his rougher formulae, he knew better than to apply them to a
creature of her fine texture. If he had been disposed to do so, her
simple questions and answers to his inquiries would have made it
difficult. But it was in her bright and beautiful eyes, in her handsome
features, and her winning voice, that he found his chief obstacle. How
could he look upon her face in its loveliness, and talk to her as if she
must be under the wrath and curse of God for the mere fact of her
existence? It seemed more natural and it certainly was more
entertaining, to question her in such a way as to find out what kind of
theology had grown up in her mind as the result of her training in the
complex scheme of his doctrinal school. And as he knew that the merest
child, so soon as it begins to think at all, works out for itself
something like a theory of human nature, he pretty soon began sounding
Myrtle's thoughts on this matter.
What was her own idea; he would be pleased to know, about her natural
condition as one born of a sinful race, and her inherited liabilities on
that account?
Myrtle smiled like a little heathen, as she was, according to the
standard of her earlier teachings. That kind of talk used to worry her
when she was a child, sometimes. Yes, she remembered its coming back to
her in a dream she had, when--when--(She did not finish her sentence.)
Did he think she hated every kind of goodness and loved every kind of
evil? Did he think she was hateful to the Being who made her?
The minister looked straight into the bright, brave, tender eyes, and
answered, "Nothing in heaven or on earth could help loving you, Myrtle!"
Pretty well for a beginning!
Myrtle saw nothing but pious fervor in this florid sentiment. But as she
was honest and clear-sighted, she could not accept a statement which
seemed so plainly in contradiction with his common teachings, without
bringing his flattering assertion to the test of another question.
Did he suppose, she asked, that any persons could be Christians, who
could not tell the day or the year of their change from children of
darkness to children of light.
The shrewd clergyman, whose creed could be lax enough on occasion, had
provided himself with authorities of all kinds to meet these awkward
questions in casuistical divinity. He had hunted up recipes for
spiritual neuralgia, spasms, indigestion, psora, hypochondriasis, just as
doctors do for their bodily counterparts.
To be sure they could. Why, what did the great Richard Baxter say in his
book on Infant Baptism? That at a meeting of many eminent Christians,
some of them very famous ministers, when it was desired that every one
should give an account of the time and manner of his conversion, there
was but one of them all could do it. And as for himself, Mr. Baxter
said, he could not remember the day or the year when he began to be
sincere, as he called it. Why, did n't President Wheelock say to a young
man who consulted him, that some persons might be true Christians without
suspecting it?
All this was so very different from the uncompromising way in which
religious doctrines used to be presented to the young girl from the
pulpit, that it naturally opened her heart and warmed her affections.
Remember, if she needs excuse, that the defeated instincts of a strong
nature were rushing in upon her, clamorous for their rights, and that she
was not yet mature enough to understand and manage them. The paths of
love and religion are at the fork of a road which every maiden travels.
If some young hand does not open the turnpike gate of the first, she is
pretty sure to try the other, which has no toll-bar. It is also very
commonly noticed that these two paths, after diverging awhile, run into
each other. True love leads many wandering souls into the better way.
Nor is it rare to see those who started in company for the gates of pearl
seated together on the banks that border the avenue to that other portal,
gathering the roses for which it is so famous.
It was with the most curious interest that the minister listened to the
various heresies into which her reflections had led her. Somehow or
other they did not sound so dangerous coming from her lips as when they
were uttered by the coarser people of the less rigorous denominations, or
preached in the sermons of heretical clergymen. He found it impossible
to think of her in connection with those denunciations of sinners for
which his discourses had been noted. Some of the sharp old church-members
began to complain that his exhortations were losing their pungency. The
truth was, he was preaching for Myrtle Hazard. He was getting bewitched
and driven beside himself by the intoxication of his relations with her.
All this time she was utterly unconscious of any charm that she was
exercising, or of being herself subject to any personal fascination. She
loved to read the books of ecstatic contemplation which he furnished her.
She loved to sing the languishing hymns which he selected for her. She
loved to listen to his devotional rhapsodies, hardly knowing sometimes
whether she were in the body, or out of the body, while he lifted her
upon the wings of his passion-kindled rhetoric. The time came when she
had learned to listen for his step, when her eyes glistened at meeting
him, when the words he uttered were treasured as from something more than
a common mortal, and the book he had touched was like a saintly relic.
It never suggested itself to her for an instant that this was anything
more than such a friendship as Mercy might have cultivated with
Great-Heart. She gave her confidence simply because she was very young
and innocent. The green tendrils of the growing vine must wind round
something.
The seasons had been changing their scenery while the events we have told
were occurring, and the loveliest days of autumn were now shining. To
those who know the "Indian summer" of our Northern States, it is needless
to describe the influence it exerts on the senses and the soul. The
stillness of the landscape in that beautiful time is as if the planet
were sleeping, like a top, before it begins to rock with the storms of
autumn. All natures seem to find themselves more truly in its light;
love grows more tender, religion more spiritual, memory sees farther back
into the past, grief revisits its mossy marbles, the poet harvests the
ripe thoughts which he will tie in sheaves of verses by his winter
fireside.
The minister had got into the way of taking frequent walks with Myrtle,
whose health had seemed to require the open air, and who was fast
regaining her natural look. Under the canopy of the scarlet, orange, and
crimson leaved maples, of the purple and violet clad oaks, of the birches
in their robes of sunshine, and the beeches in their clinging drapery of
sober brown, they walked together while he discoursed of the joys of
heaven, the sweet communion of kindred souls, the ineffable bliss of a
world where love would be immortal and beauty should never know decay.
And while she listened, the strange light of the leaves irradiated the
youthful figure of Myrtle, as when the stained window let in its colors
on Madeline, the rose-bloom and the amethyst and the glory.
"Yes! we shall be angels together," exclaimed the Rev. Mr. Stoker. "Our
souls were made for immortal union. I know it; I feel it in every throb
of my heart. Even in this world you are as an angel to me, lifting me
into the heaven where I shall meet you again, or it will not be heaven.
Oh, if on earth our communion could have been such as it must be
hereafter! O Myrtle, Myrtle!"
He stretched out his hands as if to clasp hers between them in the
rapture of his devotion. Was it the light reflected from the glossy
leaves of the poison sumach which overhung the path that made his cheek
look so pale? Was he going to kneel to her?
Myrtle turned her dark eyes on him with a simple wonder that saw an
excess of saintly ardor in these demonstrations, and drew back from it.
"I think of heaven always as the place where I shall meet my mother," she
said calmly.
These words recalled the man to himself for a moment and he was silent.
Presently he seated himself on a stone. His lips were tremulous as he
said, in a low tone, "Sit down by me, Myrtle."
"No," she answered, with something which chilled him in her voice, "we
will not stay here any longer; it is time to go home."
"Full time!" muttered Cynthia Badlam, whose watchful eyes had been upon
them, peering through a screen of yellow leaves, that turned her face
pace as if with deadly passion.
CHAPTER XIV.
FLANK MOVEMENT.
Miss Cynthia Badlam was in the habit of occasionally visiting the Widow
Hopkins. Some said but then people will talk, especially in the country,
where they have not much else to do, except in haying-time. She had
always known the widow, long before Mr. Gridley came there to board, or
any other special event happened in her family. No matter what people
said.
Miss Badlam called to see Mrs. Hopkins, then, and the two had a long talk
together, of which only a portion is on record. Here are such fragments
as have been preserved.
"What would I do about it? Why, I'd put a stop to such carry'n's on,
mighty quick, if I had to tie the girl to the bedpost, and have a bulldog
that world take the seat out of any pair of black pantaloons that come
within forty rod of her,--that's what I'd do about it! He undertook to
be mighty sweet with our Susan one while, but ever sence he's been
talkin' religion with Myrtle Hazard he's let us alone. Do as I did when
he asked our Susan to come to his study,--stick close to your girl and
you 'll put a stop to all this business. He won't make love to two at
once, unless they 're both pretty young, I 'll warrant. Follow her
round, Miss Cynthy, and keep your eyes on her."
"I have watched her like a cat, Mrs. Hopkins, but I can't follow her
everywhere,--she won't stand what Susan Posey 'll stand. There's no use
our talking to her,--we 've done with that at our house. You never know
what that Indian blood of hers will make her do. She's too high-strung
for us to bit and bridle. I don't want to see her name in the paper
again, alongside of that" (She did not finish the sentence.) "I'd rather
have her fished dead out of the river, or find her where she found her
uncle Malachi!"
"You don't think, Miss Cynthy, that the man means to inveigle the girl
with the notion of marryin' her by and by, after poor Mrs. Stoker's dead
and gone?"
"The Lord in heaven forbid!" exclaimed Miss Cynthia, throwing up her
hands. "A child of fifteen years old, if she is a woman to look at!"
"It's too bad,--it's too bad to think of, Miss Cynthy; and there's that
poor woman dyin' by inches, and Miss Bathsheby settin' with her day and
night, she has n't got a bit of her father in her, it's all her
mother,--and that man, instead of bein' with her to comfort her as any
man ought to be with his wife, in sickness and in health, that's what he
promised. I 'm sure when my poor husband was sick.... To think of that
man goin' about to talk religion to all the prettiest girls he can find
in the parish, and his wife at home like to leave him so soon,--it's a
shame,--so it is, come now! Miss Cynthy, there's one of the best men and
one of the learnedest men that ever lived that's a real friend of Myrtle
Hazard, and a better friend to her than she knows of,--for ever sence he
brought her home, he feels jest like a father to her,--and that man is
Mr. Gridley, that lives in this house. It's him I 'll speak to about the
minister's carry'in's on. He knows about his talking sweet to our Susan,
and he'll put things to rights! He's a master hand when he does once
take hold of anything, I tell you that! Jest get him to shet up them
books of his, and take hold of anybody's troubles, and you'll see how he
'll straighten 'em out."
There was a pattering of little feet on the stairs, and the two small
twins, "Sossy" and "Minthy," in the home dialect, came hand in hand into
the room, Miss Susan leaving them at the threshold, not wishing to
interrupt the two ladies, and being much interested also in listening to
Mr. Gifted Hopkins, who was reading some of his last poems to her, with
great delight to both of them.
The good woman rose to take them from Susan, and guide their uncertain
steps. "My babies, I call 'em, Miss Cynthy. Ain't they nice children?
Come to go to bed, little dears? Only a few minutes, Miss Cynthy."
She took them into the bedroom on the same floor, where they slept, and,
leaving the door open, began undressing them. Cynthia turned her
rocking-chair round so as to face the open door. She looked on while the
little creatures were being undressed; she heard the few words they
lisped as their infant prayer, she saw them laid in their beds, and heard
their pretty good-night.
A lone woman to whom all the sweet cares of maternity have been denied
cannot look upon a sight like this without feeling the void in her own
heart where a mother's affection should have nestled. Cynthia sat
perfectly still, without rocking, and watched kind Mrs. Hopkins at her
quasi parental task. A tear stole down her rigid face as she saw the
rounded limbs of the children bared in their white beauty, and their
little heads laid on the pillow. They were sleeping quietly when Mrs.
Hopkins left the room for a moment on some errand of her own. Cynthia
rose softly from her chair, stole swiftly to the bedside, and printed a
long, burning kiss on each of their foreheads.
When Mrs. Hopkins came back, she found the maiden lady sitting in her
place just as she left her, but rocking in her chair and sobbing as one
in sudden pangs of grief.
"It is a great trouble, Miss Cynthy," she said,--"a great trouble to have
such a child as Myrtle to think of and to care for. If she was like our
Susan Posey, now!--but we must do the best we can; and if Mr. Gridley
once sets himself to it, you may depend upon it he 'll make it all come
right. I wouldn't take on about it if I was you. You let me speak to our
Mr. Gridley. We all have our troubles. It is n't everybody that can
ride to heaven in a C-spring shay, as my poor husband used to say; and
life 's a road that 's got a good many thank-you-ma'ams to go bumpin'
over, says he."
Miss Badlam acquiesced in the philosophical reflections of the late Mr.
Ammi Hopkins, and left it to his widow to carry out her own suggestion in
reference to consulting Master Gridley. The good woman took the first
opportunity she had to introduce the matter, a little diffusely, as is
often the way of widows who keep boarders.
"There's something going on I don't like, Mr. Gridley. They tell me that
Minister Stoker is following round after Myrtle Hazard, talking religion
at her jest about the same way he'd have liked to with our Susan, I
calculate. If he wants to talk religion to me or Silence Withers,--well,
no, I don't feel sure about Silence,--she ain't as young as she used to
be, but then ag'in she ain't so fur gone as some, and she's got
money,--but if he wants to talk religion with me, he may come and
welcome. But as for Myrtle Hazard, she's been sick, and it's left her a
little flighty by what they say, and to have a minister round her all the
time ravin' about the next world as if he had a latch-key to the front
door of it, is no way to make her come to herself again. I 've seen more
than one young girl sent off to the asylum by that sort of work, when, if
I'd only had 'em, I'd have made 'em sweep the stairs, and mix the
puddin's, and tend the babies, and milk the cow, and keep 'em too busy
all day to be thinkin' about themselves, and have 'em dress up nice
evenin's and see some young folks and have a good time, and go to meetin'
Sundays, and then have done with the minister, unless it was old Father
Pemberton. He knows forty times as much about heaven as that Stoker man
does, or ever 's like to,--why don't they run after him, I should like to
know? Ministers are men, come now; and I don't want to say anything
against women, Mr. Gridley, but women are women, that's the fact of it,
and half of 'em are hystericky when they're young; and I've heard old Dr.
Hurlbut say many a time that he had to lay in an extra stock of valerian
and assafaetida whenever there was a young minister round,--for there's
plenty of religious ravin', says he, that's nothin' but hysterics."
[Mr. Fronde thinks that was the trouble with Bloody Queen Mary, but the
old physician did not get the idea from him.]
"Well, and what do you propose to do about the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker
and his young proselyte, Miss Myrtle Hazard?" said Mr. Gridley, when Mrs.
Hopkins at last gave him a chance to speak.
"Mr. Gridley,"--Mrs. Hopkins looked full upon him as she spoke,--"people
used to say that you was a good man and a great man and one of the
learnedest men alive, but that you didn't know much nor care for much
except books. I know you used to live pretty much to yourself when you
first came to board in this house. But you've been very good to my son;
...and if Gifted lives till you ...till you are in ...your grave, ...he
will write a poem--I know he will--that will tell your goodness to babes
unborn."
[Here Master Gridley groaned, and repeated to himself silently,
"Scindentur vestes gemmae frangentur et aurum,
Carmina quam tribuent fama perennis erit."
All this inwardly, and without interrupting the worthy woman's talk.]
"And if ever Gifted makes a book,--don't say anything about it, Mr.
Gridley, for goodness' sake, for he wouldn't have anybody know it, only I
can't help thinking that some time or other he will print a book,--and if
he does, I know whose name he'll put at the head of it,--'Dedicated to B.
G., with the gratitude and respect--' There, now, I had n't any business
to say a word about it, and it's only jest in case he does, you know.
I'm sure you deserve it all. You've helped him with the best of advice.
And you've been kind to me when I was in trouble. And you've been like a
grandfather" [Master Gridley winced,--why could n't the woman have said
father?--that grand struck his ear like a spade going into the gravel]
"to those babes, poor little souls! left on my door-step like a couple of
breakfast rolls,--only you know it's the baker left then. I believe in
you, Mr. Gridley, as I believe in my Maker and in Father Pemberton,--but,
poor man, he's old, and you won't be old these twenty years yet."
[Master Gridley shook his head as if to say that was n't so, but felt
comforted and refreshed.]
"You've got to help Myrtle Hazard again. You brought her home when she
come so nigh drowning. You got the old doctor to go and see her when she
come so nigh being bewitched with the magnetism and nonsense, whatever
they call it, and the young doctor was so nigh bein' crazy, too. I know,
for Nurse Byloe told me all about it. And now Myrtle's gettin' run away
with by that pesky Minister Stoker. Cynthy Badlam was here yesterday
crying and sobbing as if her heart would break about it. For my part, I
did n't think Cynthy cared so much for the girl as all that, but I saw
her takin' on dreadfully with my own eyes. That man's like a hen-hawk
among the chickens, first he picks up one, and then he picks up another.
I should like to know if nobody but young folks has souls to be saved,
and specially young women!"
"Tell me all you know about Myrtle Hazard and Joseph Bellamy Stoker,"
said Master Gridley.
Thereupon that good lady related all that Miss Badlam had imparted to
her, of which the reader knows the worst, being the interview of which
the keen spinster had been a witness, having followed them for the
express purpose of knowing, in her own phrase, what the minister was up
to.
It is not to be supposed that Myrtle had forgotten the discreet kindness
of Master Gridley in bringing her back and making the best of her
adventure. He, on his part, had acquired a kind of right to consider
himself her adviser, and had begun to take a pleasure in the thought that
he, the worn-out and useless old pedant, as he had been in the way of
considering himself, might perhaps do something even more important than
his previous achievement to save this young girl from the dangers that
surrounded her. He loved his classics and his old books; he took an
interest, too, in the newspapers and periodicals that brought the
fermenting thought and the electric life of the great world into his
lonely study; but these things just about him were getting strong hold on
him, and most of all the fortunes of this beautiful young woman. How
strange! For a whole generation he had lived in no nearer relation to
his fellow-creatures than that of a half-fossilized teacher; and all at
once he found himself face to face with the very most intense form of
life, the counsellor of threatened innocence, the champion of imperilled
loveliness. What business was it of his? growled the lower nature, of
which he had said in "Thoughts on the Universe,"--"Every man leads or is
led by something that goes on four legs."
Then he remembered the grand line of the African freedman, that makes all
human interests everybody's business, and had a sudden sense of
dilatation and evolution, as it were, in all his dimensions, as if he
were a head taller, and a foot bigger round the chest, and took in an
extra gallon of air at every breath, Then--you who have written a book
that holds your heart-leaves between its pages will understand the
movement--he took down "Thoughts on the Universe" for a refreshing
draught from his own wellspring. He opened as chance ordered it, and his
eyes fell on the following passage:
"The true American formula was well phrased by the late Samuel Patch, the
Western Empedocles, 'Some things can be done as well as others.' A homely
utterance, but it has virtue to overthrow all dynasties and hierarchies.
These were all built up on the Old-World dogma that some things can NOT
be done as well as others."
"There, now!" he said, talking to himself in his usual way, "is n't that
good? It always seems to me that I find something to the point when I
open that book. 'Some things can be done as well as others,' can they?
Suppose I should try what I can do by visiting Miss Myrtle Hazard? I
think I may say I am old and incombustible enough to be trusted. She
does not seem to be a safe neighbor to very inflammable bodies?"
Myrtle was sitting in the room long known as the Study, or the Library,
when Master Byles Gridley called at The Poplars to see her. Miss Cynthia,
who received him, led him to this apartment and left him alone with
Myrtle. She welcomed him very cordially, but colored as she did so,--his
visit was a surprise. She was at work on a piece of embroidery. Her
first instinctive movement was to thrust it out of sight with the thought
of concealment; but she checked this, and before the blush of detection
had reached her cheek, the blush of ingenuous shame for her weakness had
caught and passed it, and was in full possession. She sat with her
worsted pattern held bravely in sight, and her cheek as bright as its
liveliest crimson.
"Miss Cynthia has let me in upon you," he said, "or I should not have
ventured to disturb you in this way. A work of art, is it, Miss Myrtle
Hazard?"
"Only a pair of slippers, Mr. Gridley,--for my pastor."
"Oh! oh! That is well. A good old man. I have a great regard for the
Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton. I wish all ministers were as good and simple
and pure-hearted as the Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton. And I wish all the
young people thought as much about their elders as you do, Miss Myrtle
Hazard. We that are old love little acts of kindness. You gave me more
pleasure than you knew of, my dear, when you worked that handsome cushion
for me. The old minister will be greatly pleased,--poor old man!"
"But, Mr. Gridley, I must not let you think these are for Father
Pemberton. They are for--Mr. Stoker."
"The Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker! He is not an old man, the Rev. Joseph
Bellamy Stoker. He may perhaps be a widower before a great while.--Does
he know that you are working those slippers for him?"
"Dear me! no, Mr. Gridley. I meant them for a surprise to him. He has
been so kind to me, and understands me so much better than I thought
anybody did. He is so different from what I thought; he makes religion
so perfectly simple, it seems as if everybody would agree with him, if
they could only hear him talk."
"Greatly interested in the souls of his people, is n't he?"
"Too much, almost, I am afraid. He says he has been too hard in his
sermons sometimes, but it was for fear he should not impress his hearers
enough."
"Don't you think he worries himself about the souls of young women rather
more than for those of old ones, Myrtle?"
There was something in the tone of this question that helped its slightly
sarcastic expression. Myrtle's jealousy for her minister's sincerity was
roused.
"How can you ask that, Mr. Gridley? I am sure I wish you or anybody
could have heard him talk as I have. There is no age in souls, he says;
and I am sure that it would do anybody good to hear him, old or young."
"No age in souls,--no age in souls. Souls of forty as young as souls of
fifteen; that 's it." Master Gridley did not say this loud. But he did
speak as follows: "I am glad to hear what you say of the Rev. Joseph
Bellamy Stoker's love of being useful to people of all ages. You have had
comfort in his companionship, and there are others who might be very glad
to profit by it. I know a very excellent person who has had trials, and
is greatly interested in religious conversation. Do you think he would
be willing to let this friend of mine share in the privileges of
spiritual intercourse which you enjoy?"
There was but one answer possible. Of course he would.
"I hope it is so, my dear young lady. But listen to me one moment. I
love you, my dear child, do you know, as if I were your
own--grandfather." (There was moral heroism in that word.) "I love you
as if you were of my own blood; and so long as you trust me, and suffer
me, I mean to keep watch against all dangers that threaten you in mind,
body, or estate. You may wonder at me, you may sometimes doubt me; but
until you say you distrust me, when any trouble comes near you, you will
find me there. Now, my dear child, you ought to know that the Rev.
Joseph Bellamy Stoker has the reputation of being too fond of prosecuting
religious inquiries with young and handsome women."
Myrtle's eyes fell,--a new suspicion seemed to have suggested itself.
"He wanted to get up a spiritual intimacy with our Susan Posey,--a very
pretty girl, as you know."
Myrtle tossed her head almost imperceptibly, and bit her lip.
"I suppose there are a dozen young people that have been talked about
with him. He preaches cruel sermons in his pulpit, cruel as death, and
cold-blooded enough to freeze any mother's blood if nature did not tell
her he lied, and then smooths it all over with the first good-looking
young woman he can get to listen to him."
Myrtle had dropped the slipper she was working on.
"Tell me, my dear, would you be willing to give up meeting this man
alone, and gratify my friend, and avoid all occasion of reproach?"
"Of course I would," said Myrtle, her eyes flashing, for her doubts, her
shame, her pride, were all excited. "Who is your friend, Mr. Gridley?"
"An excellent woman,--Mrs. Hopkins. You know her, Gifted Hopkins's
mother, with whom I am residing. Shall the minister be given to
understand that you will see him hereafter in her company?"
Myrtle came pretty near a turn of her old nervous perturbations. "As you
say," she answered. "Is there nobody that I can trust, or is everybody
hunting me like a bird?" She hid her face in her hands.
"You can trust me, my dear," said Byles Gridley. "Take your needle, my
child, and work at your pattern,--it will come out a rose by and by.
Life is like that, Myrtle, one stitch at a time, taken patiently, and the
pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. You can trust me.
Good-by, my dear."
"Let her finish the slippers," the old man said to himself as he trudged
home, "and make 'em big enough for Father Pemberton. He shall have his
feet in 'em yet, or my name is n't Byles Gridley!"
CHAPTER XV.
ARRIVAL OF REINFORCEMENTS.
Myrtle Hazard waited until the steps of Master Byles Gridley had ceased
to be heard, as he walked in his emphatic way through the long entry of
the old mansion. Then she went to her little chamber and sat down in a
sort of revery. She could not doubt his sincerity, and there was
something in her own consciousness which responded to the suspicions he
had expressed with regard to the questionable impulses of the Rev. Joseph
Bellamy Stoker.
It is not in the words that others say to us, but in those other words
which these make us say to ourselves, that we find our gravest lessons
and our sharpest rebukes. The hint another gives us finds whole trains
of thought which have been getting themselves ready to be shaped in
inwardly articulated words, and only awaited the touch of a burning
syllable, as the mottoes of a pyrotechnist only wait for a spark to
become letters of fire.
The artist who takes your photograph must carry you with him into his
"developing" room, and he will give you a more exact illustration of the
truth just mentioned. There is nothing to be seen on the glass just
taken from the camera. But there is a potential, though invisible,
picture hid in the creamy film which covers it. Watch him as he pours a
wash over it, and you will see that miracle wrought which is at once a
surprise and a charm,--the sudden appearance of your own features where a
moment before was a blank without a vestige of intelligence or beauty.
In some such way the grave warnings of Master Byles Gridley had called up
a fully shaped, but hitherto unworded, train of thought in the
consciousness of Myrtle Hazard. It was not merely their significance, it
was mainly because they were spoken at the fitting time. If they had
been uttered a few weeks earlier, when Myrtle was taking the first stitch
on the embroidered slippers, they would have been as useless as the
artist's developing solution on a plate which had never been exposed in
the camera. But she had been of late in training for her lesson in ways
that neither she nor anybody else dreamed of. The reader who has
shrugged his (or her) shoulders over the last illustration will perhaps
hear this one which follows more cheerfully. The physician in the
Arabian Nights made his patient play at ball with a bat, the hollow
handle of which contained drugs of marvellous efficacy. Whether it was
the drugs that made the sick man get well, or the exercise, is not of so
much consequence as the fact that he did at any rate get well.
These walks which Myrtle had taken with her reverend counsellor had given
her a new taste for the open air, which was what she needed just now more
than confessions of faith or spiritual paroxysms. And so it happened
that, while he had been stimulating all those imaginative and emotional
elements of her nature which responded to the keys he loved to play upon,
the restoring influences of the sweet autumnal air, the mellow sunshine,
the soothing aspects of the woods and fields and sky, had been quietly
doing their work. The color was fast returning to her cheek, and the
discords of her feelings and her thoughts gradually resolving themselves
into the harmonious and cheerful rhythms of bodily and mental health. It
needed but the timely word from the fitting lips to change the whole
programme of her daily mode of being. The word had been spoken. She saw
its truth; but how hard it is to tear away a cherished illusion, to cast
out an unworthy intimate! How hard for any!--but for a girl so young,
and who had as yet found so little to love and trust, how cruelly hard!
She sat, still and stony, like an Egyptian statue. Her eyes were fixed
on a vacant chair opposite the one on which she was sitting. It was a
very singular and fantastic old chair, said to have been brought over by
the first emigrant of her race. The legs and arms were curiously turned
in spirals, the suggestions of which were half pleasing and half
repulsive. Instead of the claw-feet common in furniture of a later date,
each of its legs rested on a misshapen reptile, which it seemed to
flatten by its weight, as if it were squeezing the breath out of the ugly
creature. Over this chair hung the portrait of her beautiful ancestress,
her neck and arms, the specialty of her beauty, bare, except for a
bracelet on the left wrist, and her shapely figure set off by the ample
folds of a rich crimson brocade. Over Myrtle's bed hung that other
portrait, which was to her almost as the pictures of the Mater Dolorosa
to trustful souls of the Roman faith. She had longed for these pictures
while she was in her strange hysteric condition, and they had been hung
up in her chamber.
The night was far gone, as she knew by the declining of the
constellations which she bad seen shining brightly almost overhead in the
early evening, when she awoke, and found herself still sitting in the
very attitude in which she was sitting hours before. Her lamp had burned
out, and the starlight but dimly illuminated her chamber. She started to
find herself sitting there, chilled and stiffened by long remaining in
one posture; and as her consciousness returned, a great fear seized her,
and she sprang for a match. It broke with the quick movement she made to
kindle it, and she snatched another as if a fiend were after her. It
flashed and went out. Oh the terror, the terror! The darkness seemed
alive with fearful presences. The lurid glare of her own eyeballs
flashed backwards into her brain. She tried one more match; it kindled
as it should, and she lighted another lamp. Her first impulse was to
assure herself that nothing was changed in the familiar objects around
her. She held the lamp up to the picture of Judith Pride. The beauty
looked at her, it seemed as if with a kind of lofty recognition in her
eyes; but there she was, as always. She turned the light upon the pale
face of the martyr-portrait. It looked troubled and faded, as it seemed
to Myrtle, but still it was the same face she remembered from her
childhood. Then she threw the light on the old chair, and, shuddering,
caught up a shawl and flung it over the spiral-wound arms and legs, and
the flattened reptiles on which it stood.
In those dead hours of the night which had passed over her sitting there,
still and stony, as it should seem, she had had strange visitors. Two
women had been with her, as real as any that breathed the breath of
life,--so it appeared to her,--yet both had long been what is called, in
our poor language, dead. One came in all the glory of her ripened
beauty, bare-necked, bare-armed, full dressed by nature in that splendid
animal equipment which in its day had captivated the eyes of all the
lusty lovers of complete muliebrity. The other,--how delicate, how
translucent, how aerial she seemed! yet real and true to the lineaments
of her whom the young girl looked upon as her hereditary protector.
The beautiful woman turned, and, with a face full of loathing and scorn,
pointed to one of the reptiles beneath the feet of the chair. And while
Myrtle's eyes followed hers, the flattened and half-crushed creature
seemed to swell and spread like his relative in the old fable, like the
black dog in Faust, until he became of tenfold size, and at last of
colossal proportions. And, fearful to relate, the batrachian features
humanized themselves as the monster grew, and, shaping themselves more
and more into a remembered similitude, Myrtle saw in them a hideous
likeness of--No! no! it was too horrible, was that the face which had
been so close to hers but yesterday? were those the lips, the breath from
which had stirred her growing curls as he leaned over her while they read
together some passionate stanza from a hymn that was as much like a
love-song as it dared to be in godly company? A shadow of disgust--the
natural repugnance of loveliness for deformity-ran all through her, and
she shrieked, as she thought, and threw herself at the feet of that other
figure. She felt herself lifted from the floor, and then a cold thin
hand seemed to take hers. The warm life went out of her, and she was to
herself as a dimly conscious shadow that glided with passive acquiescence
wherever it was led. Presently she found herself in a half-lighted
apartment, where there were books on the shelves around, and a desk with
loose manuscripts lying on it, and a little mirror with a worn bit of
carpet before it. And while she looked, a great serpent writhed in
through the half-open door, and made the circuit of the room, laying one
huge ring all round it, and then, going round again, laid another ring
over the first, and so on until he was wound all round the room like the
spiral of a mighty cable, leaving a hollow in the centre; and then the
serpent seemed to arch his neck in the air, and bring his head close down
to Myrtle's face; and the features were not those of a serpent, but of a
man, and it hissed out the words she had read that very day in a little
note which said, "Come to my study to-morrow, and we will read hymns
together."
Again she was back in her little chamber, she did not know how, and the
two women were looking into her eyes with strange meaning in their own.
Something in them seemed to plead with her to yield to their influence,
and her choice wavered which of them to follow, for each would have led
her her own way,--whither she knew not. It was the strife of her
"Vision," only in another form,--the contest of two lives her blood
inherited for the mastery of her soul. The might of beauty conquered.
Myrtle resigned herself to the guidance of the lovely phantom, which
seemed so much fuller of the unextinguished fire of life, and so like
herself as she would grow to be when noon should have ripened her into
maturity.
Doors opened softly before them; they climbed stairs, and threaded
corridors, and penetrated crypts, strange yet familiar to her eyes, which
seemed to her as if they could see, as it were, in darkness. Then came a
confused sense of eager search for something that she knew was hidden,
whether in the cleft of a rock, or under the boards of a floor, or in
some hiding-place among the skeleton rafters, or in a forgotten drawer,
or in a heap of rubbish, she could not tell; but somewhere there was
something which she was to find, and which, once found, was to be her
talisman. She was in the midst of this eager search when she awoke.
The impression was left so strongly on her mind that with all her fears
she could not resist the desire to make an effort to find what meaning
there was in this frightfully real dream. Her courage came back as her
senses assured her that all around her was natural, as when she left it.
She determined to follow the lead of the strange hint her nightmare had
given her.
In one of the upper chambers of the old mansion there stood a tall,
upright desk of the ancient pattern, with folding doors above and large
drawers below. "That desk is yours, Myrtle," her uncle Malachi had once
said to her; "and there is a trick or two about it that it will pay you
to study." Many a time Myrtle had puzzled herself about the mystery of
the old desk. All the little drawers, of which there were a considerable
number, she had pulled out, and every crevice, as she thought, she had
carefully examined. She determined to make one more trial. It was the
dead of the night, and this was a fearful old place to be wandering
about; but she was possessed with an urgent feeling which would not let
her wait until daylight.
She stole like a ghost from her chamber. She glided along the narrow
entries as she had seemed to move in her dream. She opened the folding
doors of the great upright desk. She had always before examined it by
daylight, and though she had so often pulled all the little drawers out,
she had never thoroughly explored the recesses which received them. But
in her new-born passion of search, she held her light so as to illuminate
all these deeper spaces. At once she thought she saw the marks of
pressure with a finger. She pressed her own finger on this place, and,
as it yielded with a slight click, a small mahogany pilaster sprang
forward, revealing its well-kept secret that it was the mask of a tall,
deep, very narrow drawer. There was something heavy in it, and, as Myrtle
turned it over, a golden bracelet fell into her hand. She recognized it
at once as that which had been long ago the ornament of the fair woman
whose portrait hung in her chamber. She clasped it upon her wrist, and
from that moment she felt as if she were the captive of the lovely
phantom who had been with her in her dream.
"The old man walked last night, God save us!" said Kitty Fagan to Biddy
Finnegan, the day after Myrtle's nightmare and her curious discovery.
CHAPTER XVI.
VICTORY.
It seems probable enough that Myrtle's whole spiritual adventure was an
unconscious dramatization of a few simple facts which her imagination
tangled together into a kind of vital coherence. The philosopher who
goes to the bottom of things will remark that all the elements of her
fantastic melodrama had been furnished her while waking. Master Byles
Gridley's penetrating and stinging caution was the text, and the
grotesque carvings and the portraits furnished the "properties" with
which her own mind had wrought up this scenic show.
The philosopher who goes to the bottom of things might not find it so
easy to account for the change which came over Myrtle Hazard from the
hour when she clasped the bracelet of Judith Pride upon her wrist. She
felt a sudden loathing of the man whom she had idealized as a saint. A
young girl's caprice? Possibly. A return of the natural instincts of
girlhood with returning health? Perhaps so. An impression produced by
her dream? An effect of an influx from another sphere of being? The
working of Master Byles Gridley's emphatic warning? The magic of her new
talisman?
We may safely leave these questions for the present. As we have to tell,
not what Myrtle Hazard ought to have done, and why she should have done
it, but what she did do, our task is a simpler one than it would be to
lay bare all the springs of her action. Until this period, she had
hardly thought of herself as a born beauty. The flatteries she had
received from time to time were like the chips and splinters under the
green wood, when the chill women pretended to make a fire in the best
parlor at The Poplars, which had a way of burning themselves out, hardly
warming, much less kindling, the fore-stick and the back-log.
Myrtle had a tinge of what some call superstition, and she began to look
upon her strange acquisition as a kind of amulet. Its suggestions
betrayed themselves in one of her first movements. Nothing could be
soberer than the cut of the dresses which the propriety of the severe
household had established as the rule of her costume. But the girl was
no sooner out of bed than a passion came over her to see herself in that
less jealous arrangement of drapery which the Beauty of the last century
had insisted on as presenting her most fittingly to the artist. She
rolled up the sleeves of her dress, she turned down its prim collar and
neck, and glanced from her glass to the portrait, from the portrait back
to the glass. Myrtle was not blind nor dull, though young, and in many
things untaught. She did not say in so many words, "I too am a beauty,"
but she could mot help seeing that she had many of the attractions of
feature and form which had made the original of the picture before her
famous. The same stately carriage of the head, the same full-rounded
neck, the same more than hinted outlines of figure, the same finely
shaped arms and hands, and something very like the same features startled
her by their identity in the permanent image of the canvas and the
fleeting one of the mirror.
The world was hers then,--for she had not read romances and love-letters
without finding that beauty governs it in all times and places. Who was
this middle-aged minister that had been hanging round her and talking to
her about heaven, when there was not a single joy of earth that she had
as yet tasted? A man that had been saying all his fine things to Miss
Susan Posey, too, had he, before he had bestowed his attentions on her?
And to a dozen other girls, too, nobody knows who!
The revulsion was a very sadden one. Such changes of feeling are apt to
be sudden in young people whose nerves have been tampered with, and
Myrtle was not of a temperament or an age to act with much deliberation
where a pique came in to the aid of a resolve. Master Gridley guessed
sagaciously what would be the effect of his revelation, when he told her
of the particular attentions the minister had paid to pretty Susan Posey
and various other young women.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker had parted his hair wonderfully that morning, and
made himself as captivating as his professional costume allowed. He had
drawn down the shades of his windows so as to let in that subdued light
which is merciful to crow's-feet and similar embellishments, and wheeled
up his sofa so that two could sit at the table and read from the same
book.
At eleven o'clock he was pacing the room with a certain feverish
impatience, casting a glance now and then at the mirror as he passed it.
At last the bell rang, and he himself went to answer it, his heart
throbbing with expectation of meeting his lovely visitor.
Myrtle Hazard appeared by an envoy extraordinary, the bearer of sealed
despatches. Mistress Kitty Fagan was the young lady's substitute, and
she delivered into the hand of the astonished clergyman the following
missive:
TO THE REV. MR. STOKER.
Reverend Sir,--I shall not come to your study this day. I do not feel
that I have any more need of religious counsel at this time, and I am
told by a friend that there are others who will be glad to hear you talk
on this subject. I hear that Mrs. Hopkins is interested in religious
subjects, and would have been glad to see you in my company. As I cannot
go with her, perhaps Miss Susan Posey will take my place. I thank you
for all the good things you have said to me, and that you have given me
so much of your company. I hope we shall sing hymns together in heaven
some time, if we are good enough, but I want to wait for that awhile, for
I do not feel quite ready. I am not going to see you any more alone,
reverend sir. I think this is best, and I have good advice. I want to
see more of young people of my own age, and I have a friend, Mr. Gridley,
who I think is older than you are, that takes an interest in me; and as
you have many others that you must be interested in, he can take the
place of a father better than you can do. I return to you the hymn-book,
I read one of those you marked, and do not care to read any more.
Respectfully yours,
MYRTLE HAZARD.
The Rev. Mr. Stoker uttered a cry of rage as he finished this awkwardly
written, but tolerably intelligible letter. What could he do about it?
It would hardly do to stab Myrtle Hazard, and shoot Byles Gridley, and
strangle Mrs. Hopkins, every one of which homicides he felt at the moment
that he could have committed. And here he was in a frantic paroxysm, and
the next day was Sunday, and his morning's discourse was unwritten. His
savage mediaeval theology came to his relief, and he clutched out of a
heap of yellow manuscripts his well-worn "convulsion-fit" sermon. He
preached it the next day as if it did his heart good, but Myrtle Hazard
did not hear it, for she had gone to St. Bartholomew's with Olive
Eveleth.
CHAPTER XVII.
SAINT AND SINNER
It happened a little after this time that the minister's invalid wife
improved--somewhat unexpectedly in health, and, as Bathsheba was
beginning to suffer from imprisonment in her sick-chamber, the physician
advised very strongly that she should vary the monotony of her life by
going out of the house daily for fresh air and cheerful companionship.
She was therefore frequently at the house of Olive Eveleth; and as Myrtle
wanted to see young people, and had her own way now as never before, the
three girls often met at the parsonage. Thus they became more and more
intimate, and grew more and more into each other's affections.
These girls presented three types of spiritual character which are to be
found in all our towns and villages. Olive had been carefully trained,
and at the proper age confirmed. Bathsheba had been prayed for, and in
due time startled and converted. Myrtle was a simple daughter of Eve,
with many impulses like those of the other two girls, and some that
required more watching. She was not so safe, perhaps, as either of the
other girls, for this world or the next; but she was on some accounts
more interesting, as being a more genuine representative of that
inexperienced and too easily deluded, yet always cherished, mother of our
race, whom we must after all accept as embodying the creative idea of
woman, and who might have been alive and happy now (though at a great
age) but for a single fatal error.
The Rev. Ambrose Eveleth, Rector of Saint Bartholomew's, Olive's father,
was one of a class numerous in the Anglican Church, a cultivated man,
with pure tastes, with simple habits, a good reader, a neat writer, a
safe thinker, with a snug and well-fenced mental pasturage, which his
sermons kept cropped moderately close without any exhausting demand upon
the soil. Olive had grown insensibly into her religious maturity, as
into her bodily and intellectual developments, which one might suppose
was the natural order of things in a well-regulated Christian--household,
where the children are brought up in the nurture and admonition of the
Lord.
Bathsheba had been worried over and perplexed and depressed with vague
apprehensions about her condition, conveyed in mysterious phrases and
graveyard expressions of countenance, until about the age of fourteen
years, when she had one of those emotional paroxysms very commonly
considered in some Protestant sects as essential to the formation of
religious character. It began with a shivering sense of enormous guilt,
inherited and practised from her earliest infancy. Just as every breath
she ever drew had been malignantly poisoning the air with carbonic acid,
so her every thought and feeling had been tainting the universe with sin.
This spiritual chill or rigor had in due order been followed by the
fever-flush of hope, and that in its turn had ushered in the last stage,
the free opening of all the spiritual pores in the peaceful relaxation of
self-surrender.
Good Christians are made by many very different processes. Bathsheba had
taken her religion after the fashion of her sect; but it was genuine, in
spite of the cavils of the formalists, who could not understand that the
spirit which kept her at her mother's bedside was the same as that which
poured the tears of Mary of Magdala on the feet of her Lord, and led her
forth at early dawn with the other Mary to visit his sepulchre.
Myrtle was a child of nature, and of course, according to the out-worn
formulae which still shame the distorted religion of humanity, hateful to
the Father in Heaven who made her. She had grown up in antagonism with
all that surrounded her. She had been talked to about her corrupt nature
and her sinful heart, until the words had become an offence and an
insult. Bathsheba knew her father's fondness for young company too well
to suppose that his intercourse with Myrtle had gone beyond the
sentimental and poetical stage, and was not displeased when she found
that there was some breach between them. Myrtle herself did not profess
to have passed through the technical stages of the customary spiritual
paroxysm. Still, the gentle daughter of the terrible preacher loved her
and judged her kindly. She was modest enough to think that perhaps the
natural state of some girls might be at least as good as her own after
the spiritual change of which she had been the subject. A manifest
heresy, but not new, nor unamiable, nor inexplicable.
The excellent Bishop Joseph Hall, a painful preacher and solid divine of
Puritan tendencies, declares that he prefers good-nature before grace in
the election of a wife; because, saith he, "it will be a hard Task, where
the Nature is peevish and froward, for Grace to make an entire Conquest
whilst Life lasteth." An opinion apparently entertained by many modern
ecclesiastics, and one which may be considered very encouraging to those
young ladies of the politer circles who have a fancy for marrying bishops
and other fashionable clergymen. Not of course that "grace" is so rare a
gift among the young ladies of the upper social sphere; but they are in
the habit of using the word with a somewhat different meaning from that
which the good Bishop attached to it.
CHAPTER XVIII.
VILLAGE POET.
It was impossible for Myrtle to be frequently at Olive's without often
meeting Olive's brother, and her reappearance with the bloom on her cheek
was a signal which her other admirers were not likely to overlook as a
hint to recommence their flattering demonstrations; and so it was that
she found herself all at once the centre of attraction to three young men
with whom we have made some acquaintance, namely, Cyprian Eveleth, Gifted
Hopkins, and Murray Bradshaw.
When the three girls were together at the house of Olive, it gave Cyprian
a chance to see something of Myrtle in the most natural way. Indeed, they
all became used to meeting him in a brotherly sort of relation; only, as
he was not the brother of two of them, it gave him the inside track, as
the sporting men say, with reference to any rivals for the good-will of
either of these. Of course neither Bathsheba nor Myrtle thought of him
in any other light than as Olive's brother, and would have been surprised
with the manifestation on his part of any other feeling, if it existed.
So he became very nearly as intimate with them as Olive was, and hardly
thought of his intimacy as anything more than friendship, until one day
Myrtle sang some hymns so sweetly that Cyprian dreamed about her that
night; and what young person does not know that the woman or the man once
idealized and glorified in the exalted state of the imagination belonging
to sleep becomes dangerous to the sensibilities in the waking hours that
follow? Yet something drew Cyprian to the gentler and more subdued
nature of Bathsheba, so that he often thought, like a gayer personage
than himself, whose divided affections are famous in song, that he could
have been blessed to share her faithful heart, if Myrtle had not
bewitched him with her unconscious and innocent sorceries. As for poor,
modest Bathsheba, she thought nothing of herself, but was almost as much
fascinated by Myrtle as if she had been one of the sex she was born to
make in love with her.
The first rival Cyprian was to encounter in his admiration of Myrtle
Hazard was Mr. Gifted Hopkins. This young gentleman had the enormous
advantage of that all-subduing accomplishment, the poetical endowment.
No woman, it is pretty generally understood, can resist the youth or man
who addresses her in verse. The thought that she is the object of a
poet's love is one which fills a woman's ambition more completely than
all that wealth or office or social eminence can offer. Do the young
millionnaires and the members of the General Court get letters from
unknown ladies, every day, asking for their autographs and photographs?
Well, then!
Mr. Gifted Hopkins, being a poet, felt that it was so, to the very depth
of his soul. Could he not confer that immortality so dear to the human
heart? Not quite yet, perhaps,--though the "Banner and Oracle" gave him
already "an elevated niche in the Temple of Fame," to quote its own
words,--but in that glorious summer of his genius, of which these spring
blossoms were the promise. It was a most formidable battery, then, which
Cyprian's first rival opened upon the fortress of Myrtle's affections.
His second rival, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, had made a half-playful
bet with his fair relative, Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, that he would bag a girl
within twelve months of date who should unite three desirable qualities,
specified in the bet, in a higher degree than any one of the five who
were on the matrimonial programme which she had laid out for him,--and
Myrtle was the girl with whom he meant to win the bet. When a young
fellow like him, cool and clever, makes up his mind to bring down his
bird, it is no joke, but a very serious and a tolerably certain piece of
business. Not being made a fool of by any boyish nonsense,--passion and
all that,--he has a great advantage. Many a woman rejects a man because
he is in love with her, and accepts another because he is not. The first
is thinking too much of himself and his emotions,--the other makes a
study of her and her friends, and learns what ropes to pull. But then it
must be remembered that Murray Bradshaw had a poet for his rival, to say
nothing of the brother of a bosom friend.
The qualities of a young poet are so exceptional, and such interesting
objects of study, that a narrative like this can well afford to linger
awhile in the delineation of this most envied of all the forms of genius.
And by contrasting the powers and limitations of two such young persons
as Gifted Hopkins and Cyprian Eveleth, we may better appreciate the
nature of that divine inspiration which gives to poetry the superiority
it claims over every other form of human expression.
Gifted Hopkins had shown an ear for rhythm, and for the simpler forms of
music, from his earliest childhood. He began beating with his heels the
accents of the psalm tunes sung at meeting at a very tender age,--a
habit, indeed, of which he had afterwards to correct himself, as, though
it shows a sensibility to rhythmical impulses like that which is
beautifully illustrated when a circle join hands and emphasize by
vigorous downward movements the leading syllables in the tune of Auld
Lang Syne, yet it is apt to be too expressive when a large number of
boots join in the performance. He showed a remarkable talent for playing
on one of the less complex musical instruments, too limited in compass to
satisfy exacting ears, but affording excellent discipline to those who
wish to write in the simpler metrical forms,--the same which summons the
hero from his repose and stirs his blood in battle.
By the time he was twelve years old he was struck with the pleasing
resemblance of certain vocal sounds which, without being the same, yet
had a curious relation which made them agree marvellously well in
couples; as eyes with skies; as heart with art, also with part and smart;
and so of numerous others, twenty or thirty pairs, perhaps, which number
he considerably increased as he grew older, until he may have had fifty
or more such pairs at his command.
The union of so extensive a catalogue of words which matched each other,
and of an ear so nice that it could tell if there were nine or eleven
syllables in an heroic line, instead of the legitimate ten, constituted a
rare combination of talents in the opinion of those upon whose judgment
he relied. He was naturally led to try his powers in the expression of
some just thought or natural sentiment in the shape of verse, that
wonderful medium of imparting thought and feeling to his fellow-creatures
which a bountiful Providence had made his rare and inestimable endowment.
It was at about this period of his life, that is to say, when he was of
the age of thirteen, or we may perhaps say fourteen years, for we do not
wish to overstate his precocity, that he experienced a sensation so
entirely novel, that, to the best of his belief, it was such as no other
young person had ever known, at least in anything like the same degree.
This extraordinary emotion was brought on by the sight of Myrtle Hazard,
with whom he had never before had any near relations, as they had been at
different schools, and Myrtle was too reserved to be very generally known
among the young people of his age.
Then it was that he broke forth in his virgin effort, "Lines to M----e,"
which were published in the village paper, and were claimed by all
possible girls but the right one; namely, by two Mary Annes, one Minnie,
one Mehitable, and one Marthie, as she saw fit to spell the name borrowed
from her who was troubled about many things.
The success of these lines, which were in that form of verse known to the
hymn-books as "common metre," was such as to convince the youth that,
whatever occupation he might be compelled to follow for a time to obtain
a livelihood or to assist his worthy parent, his true destiny was the
glorious career of a poet. It was a most pleasing circumstance, that his
mother, while she fully recognized the propriety of his being diligent in
the prosaic line of business to which circumstances had called him, was
yet as much convinced as he himself that he was destined to achieve
literary fame. She had read Watts and Select Hymns all through, she
said, and she did n't see but what Gifted could make the verses come out
jest as slick, and the sound of the rhymes jest as pooty, as Izik Watts
or the Selectmen, whoever they was,--she was sure they couldn't be the
selectmen of this town, wherever they belonged. It is pleasant to say
that the young man, though favored by nature with this rarest of talents,
did not forget the humbler duties that Heaven, which dresses few
singing-birds in the golden plumes of fortune, had laid upon him. After
having received a moderate amount of instruction at one of the less
ambitious educational institutions of the town, supplemented, it is true,
by the judicious and gratuitous hints of Master Gridley, the young poet,
in obedience to a feeling which did him the highest credit, relinquished,
at least for the time, the Groves of Academus, and offered his youth at
the shrine of Plutus, that is, left off studying and took to business.
He became what they call a "clerk" in what they call a "store" up in the
huckleberry districts, and kept such accounts as were required by the
business of the establishment. His principal occupation was, however, to
attend to the details of commerce as it was transacted over the counter.
This industry enabled him, to his great praise be it spoken, to assist
his excellent parent, to clothe himself in a becoming manner, so that he
made a really handsome figure on Sundays and was always of presentable
aspect, likewise to purchase a book now and then, and to subscribe for
that leading periodical which furnishes the best models to the youth of
the country in the various modes of composition.
Though Master Gridley was very kind to the young man, he was rather
disposed to check the exuberance of his poetical aspirations. The truth
was, that the old classical scholar did not care a great deal for modern
English poetry. Give him an Ode of Horace, or a scrap from the Greek
Anthology, and he would recite it with great inflation of spirits; but he
did not think very much of "your Keatses, and your Tennysons, and the
whole Hasheesh crazy lot," as he called the dreamily sensuous idealists
who belong to the same century that brought in ether and chloroform. He
rather shook his head at Gifted Hopkins for indulging so largely in
metrical composition.
"Better stick to your ciphering, my young friend," he said to him, one
day. "Figures of speech are all very well, in their way; but if you
undertake to deal much in them, you'll figure down your prospects into a
mighty small sum. There's some danger that it will take all the sense
out of you, if you keep writing verses at this rate. You young
scribblers think any kind of nonsense will do for the public, if it only
has a string of rhymes tacked to it. Cut off the bobs of your kite,
Gifted Hopkins, and see if it does n't pitch, and stagger, and come down
head-foremost. Don't write any stuff with rhyming tails to it that won't
make a decent show for itself after you've chopped all the rhyming tails
off. That's my advice, Gifted Hopkins. Is there any book you would like
to have out of my library? Have you ever read Spenser's Faery Queen?"
He had tried, the young man answered, on the recommendation of Cyprian
Eveleth, but had found it rather hard reading.
Master Gridley lifted his eyebrows very slightly, remembering that some
had called Spenser the poet's poet. "What a pity," he said to himself,
"that this Gifted Hopkins has n't got the brains of that William Murray
Bradshaw! What's the reason, I wonder, that all the little earthen pots
blow their covers off and froth over in rhymes at such a great rate,
while the big iron pots keep their lids on, and do all their simmering
inside?"
That is the way these old pedants will talk, after all their youth and
all their poetry, if they ever had any, are gone. The smiles of woman,
in the mean time, encouraged the young poet to smite the lyre. Fame
beckoned him upward from her templed steep. The rhymes which rose before
him unbidden were as the rounds of Jacob's ladder, on which he would
climb to a heaven of-glory.
Master Gridley threw cold water on the young man's too sanguine
anticipations of success. "All up with the boy, if he's going to take to
rhyming when he ought to be doing up papers of brown sugar and weighing
out pounds of tea. Poor-house,--that 's what it'll end in. Poets, to be
sure! Sausage-makers! Empty skins of old phrases,--stuff 'em with odds
and ends of old thoughts that never were good for anything,--cut 'em up
in lengths and sell'em to fools!
"And if they ain't big fools enough to buy 'em, give'em away; and if you
can't do that, pay folks to take'em. Bah! what a fine style of genius
common-sense is! There's a passage in the book that would fit half these
addle-headed rhymesters. What is that saying of mine about I squinting
brains?"
He took down "Thoughts on the Universe," and read:--
"Of Squinting Brains.
"Where there is one man who squints with his eyes, there are a dozen who
squint with their brains. It is an infirmity in one of the eyes, making
the two unequal in power, that makes men squint. Just so it is an
inequality in the two halves of the brain that makes some men idiots and
others rascals. I knows a fellow whose right half is a genius, but his
other hemisphere belongs to a fool; and I had a friend perfectly honest
on one side, but who was sent to jail because the other had an inveterate
tendency in the direction of picking pockets and appropriating aes
alienum."
All this, talking and reading to himself in his usual fashion.
The poetical faculty which was so freely developed in Gifted Hopkins had
never manifested itself in Cyprian Eveleth, whose look and voice might,
to a stranger, have seemed more likely to imply an imaginative nature.
Cyprian was dark, slender, sensitive, contemplative, a lover of lonely
walks,--one who listened for the whispers of Nature and watched her
shadows, and was alive to the symbolisms she writes over everything. But
Cyprian had never shown the talent or the inclination for writing in
verse.
He was on the pleasantest terms with the young poet, and being somewhat
older, and having had the advantage of academic and college culture,
often gave him useful hints as to the cultivation of his powers, such as
genius frequently requires at the hands of humbler intelligences.
Cyprian was incapable of jealousy; and although the name of Gifted
Hopkins was getting to be known beyond the immediate neighborhood, and
his autograph had been requested by more than one young lady living in
another county, he never thought of envying the young poet's spreading
popularity.
That the poet himself was flattered by these marks of public favor may be
inferred from the growing confidence with which he expressed himself in
his conversations with Cyprian, more especially in one which was held at
the "store" where he officiated as "clerk."
"I become more and more assured, Cyprian," he said, leaning over the
counter, "that I was born to be a poet. I feel it in my marrow. I must
succeed. I must win the laurel of fame. I must taste the sweets of"--
"Molasses," said a bareheaded girl of ten who entered at that moment,
bearing in her hand a cracked pitcher, "ma wants three gills of
molasses."
Gifted Hopkins dropped his subject and took up a tin measure. He served
the little maid with a benignity quite charming to witness, made an entry
on a slate of .08, and resumed the conversation.
"Yes, I am sure of it, Cyprian. The very last piece I wrote was copied
in two papers. It was 'Contemplations in Autumn,' and--don't think I am
too vain--one young lady has told me that it reminded her of Pollok. You
never wrote in verse, did you, Cyprian?"
"I never wrote at all, Gifted, except school and college exercises, and a
letter now and then. Do you find it an easy and pleasant exercise to
make rhymes?"
Pleasant! Poetry is to me a delight and a passion. I never know what I
am going to write when I sit down. And presently the rhymes begin
pounding in my brain,--it seems as if there were a hundred couples of
them, paired like so many dancers,--and then these rhymes seem to take
possession of me, like a surprise party, and bring in all sorts of
beautiful thoughts, and I write and write, and the verses run measuring
themselves out like"--
"Ribbins,--any narrer blue ribbins, Mr. Hopkins? Five eighths of a yard,
if you please, Mr. Hopkins. How's your folks?" Then, in a lower tone,
"Those last verses of yours in the Bannernoracle were sweet pooty."
Gifted Hopkins meted out the five eighths of blue ribbon by the aid of
certain brass nails on the counter. He gave good measure, not prodigal,
for he was loyal to his employer, but putting a very moderate strain on
the ribbon, and letting the thumb-nail slide with a contempt of
infinitesimals which betokened a large soul in its genial mood.
The young lady departed, after casting upon him one of those bewitching
glances which the young poet--let us rather say the poet, without making
odious distinctions--is in the confirmed habit of receiving from dear
woman.
Mr. Gifted Hopkins resumed: "I do not know where this talent, as my
friends call it, of mine, comes from. My father used to carry a chain
for a surveyor sometimes, and there is a ten-foot pole in the house he
used to measure land with. I don't see why that should make me a poet.
My mother was always fond of Dr. Watts's hymns; but so are other young
men's mothers, and yet they don't show poetical genius. But wherever I
got it, it comes as easy to me to write in verse as to write in prose,
almost. Don't you ever feel a longing to send your thoughts forth in
verse, Cyprian?"
"I wish I had a greater facility of expression very often," Cyprian
answered; "but when I have my best thoughts I do not find that I have
words that seem fitting to clothe them. I have imagined a great many
poems, Gifted, but I never wrote a rhyming verse, or verse of any kind.
Did you ever hear Olive play 'Songs without Words'? If you have ever
heard her, you will know what I mean by unrhymed and unversed poetry."
"I am sure I don't know what you mean, Cyprian, by poetry without rhyme
or verse, any more than I should if you talked about pictures that were
painted on nothing, or statues that were made out of nothing. How can
you tell that anything is poetry, I should like to know, if there is
neither a regular line with just so many syllables, nor a rhyme? Of
course you can't. I never have any thoughts too beautiful to put in
verse: nothing can be too beautiful for it."
Cyprian left the conversation at this point. It was getting more
suggestive than interpenetrating, and he thought he might talk the matter
over better with Olive. Just then a little boy came in, and bargained
with Gifted for a Jews-harp, which, having obtained, he placed against
his teeth, and began playing upon it with a pleasure almost equal to that
of the young poet reciting his own verses.
"A little too much like my friend Gifted Hopkins's poetry," Cyprian said,
as he left the "store." "All in one note, pretty much. Not a great many
tunes, 'Hi Betty Martin,' 'Yankee Doodle,' and one or two more like them.
But many people seem to like them, and I don't doubt it is as exciting to
Gifted to write them as it is to a great genius to express itself in a
poem."
Cyprian was, perhaps, too exacting. He loved too well the sweet
intricacies of Spenser, the majestic and subtly interwoven harmonies of
Milton. These made him impatient of the simpler strains of Gifted
Hopkins.
Though he himself never wrote verses, he had some qualities which his
friend the poet may have undervalued in comparison with the talent of
modelling the symmetries of verse and adjusting the correspondences of
rhyme. He had kept in a singular degree all the sensibilities of
childhood, its simplicity, its reverence. It seemed as if nothing of all
that he met in his daily life was common or unclean to him, for there was
no mordant in his nature for what was coarse or vile, and all else he
could not help idealizing into its own conception of itself, so to speak.
He loved the leaf after its kind as well as the flower, and the root as
well as the leaf, and did not exhaust his capacity of affection or
admiration on the blossom or bud upon which his friend the poet lavished
the wealth of his verse. Thus Nature took him into her confidence. She
loves the men of science well, and tells them all her family
secrets,--who is the father of this or that member of the group, who is
brother, sister, cousin, and so on, through all the circle of
relationship. But there are others to whom she tells her dreams; not
what species or genus her lily belongs to, but what vague thought it has
when it dresses in white, or what memory of its birthplace that is which
we call its fragrance. Cyprian was one of these. Yet he was not a
complete nature. He required another and a wholly different one to be
the complement of his own. Olive came as near it as a sister could,
but--we must borrow an old image--moonlight is no more than a cold and
vacant glimmer on the sun-dial, which only answers to the great flaming
orb of day. If Cyprian could but find some true, sweet-tempered,
well-balanced woman, richer in feeling than in those special imaginative
gifts which made the outward world at times unreal to him in the intense
reality of his own inner life, how he could enrich and adorn her
existence,--how she could direct and chasten and elevate the character of
all his thoughts and actions!
"Bathsheba," said Olive, "it seems to me that Cyprian is getting more and
more fascinated with Myrtle Hazard. He has never got over the fancy he
took to her when he first saw her in her red jacket, and called her the
fire-hang-bird. Wouldn't they suit each other by and by, after Myrtle
has come to herself and grown into a beautiful and noble woman, as I feel
sure she will in due time?"
"Myrtle is very lovely," Bathsheba answered, "but is n't she a little
too--flighty--for one like your brother? Cyprian isn't more like other
young men than Myrtle is like other young girls. I have thought
sometimes--I wondered whether out-of-the-way people and common ones do
not get along best together. Does n't Cyprian want some more every-day
kind of girl to keep him straight? Myrtle is beautiful,
beautiful,--fascinates everybody. Has Mr. Bradshaw been following after
her lately? He is taken with her too. Didn't you ever think she would
have to give in to Murray Bradshaw at last? He looks to me like a man
that would hold on desperately as a lover."
If Myrtle Hazard, instead of being a half-finished school-girl, hardly
sixteen years old, had been a young woman of eighteen or nineteen, it
would have been plain sailing enough for Murray Bradshaw. But he knew
what a distance their ages seemed just now to put between them,--a
distance which would grow practically less and less with every year, and
he did not wish to risk anything so long as there was no danger of
interference. He rather encouraged Gifted Hopkins to write poetry to
Myrtle. "Go in, Gifted," he said, "there's no telling what may come of
it," and Gifted did go in at a great rate.
Murray Bradshaw did not write poetry himself, but he read poetry with a
good deal of effect, and he would sometimes take a hint from one of
Gifted Hopkins's last productions to recite a passionate lyric of Byron
or Moore, into which he would artfully throw so much meaning that Myrtle
was almost as much puzzled, in her simplicity, to know what it meant, as
she had been by the religious fervors of the Rev. Mr. Stoker.
He spoke well of Cyprian Eveleth. A good young man,--limited, but
exemplary. Would succeed well as rector of a small parish. That
required little talent, but a good deal of the humbler sort of virtue.
As for himself, he confessed to ambition,--yes, a great deal of ambition.
A failing, he supposed, but not the worst of failings. He felt the
instinct to handle the larger interests of society. The village would
perhaps lose sight of him for a time; but he meant to emerge sooner or
later in the higher spheres of government or diplomacy. Myrtle must keep
his secret. Nobody else knew it. He could not help making a confidant
of her,--a thing he had never done before with any other person as to his
plans in life. Perhaps she might watch his career with more interest
from her acquaintance with him. He loved to think that there was one
woman at least who would be pleased to hear of his success if he
succeeded, as with life and health he would,--who would share his
disappointment if fate should not favor him.--So he wound and wreathed
himself into her thoughts.
It was not very long before Myrtle began to accept the idea that she was
the one person in the world whose peculiar duty it was to sympathize with
the aspiring young man whose humble beginnings she had the honor of
witnessing. And it is not very far from being the solitary confidant,
and the single source of inspiration, to the growth of a livelier
interest, where a young man and a young woman are in question.
Myrtle was at this time her own mistress as never before. The three
young men had access to her as she walked to and from meeting and in her
frequent rambles, besides the opportunities Cyprian had of meeting her in
his sister's company, and the convenient visits which, in connection with
the great lawsuit, Murray Bradshaw could make, without question, at The
Poplars.
It was not long before Cyprian perceived that he could never pass a
certain boundary of intimacy with Myrtle. Very pleasant and sisterly
always she was with him; but she never looked as if she might mean more
than she said, and cherished a little spark of sensibility which might be
fanned into the flame of love. Cyprian felt this so certainly that he
was on the point of telling his grief to Bathsheba, who looked to him as
if she would sympathize as heartily with him as his own sister, and whose
sympathy would have a certain flavor in it,--something which one cannot
find in the heart of the dearest sister that ever lived. But Bathsheba
was herself sensitive, and changed color when Cyprian ventured a hint or
two in the direction of his thought, so that he never got so fax as to
unburden his heart to her about Myrtle, whom she admired so sincerely
that she could not have helped feeling a great interest in his passion
towards her.
As for Gifted Hopkins, the roses that were beginning to bloom fresher and
fresher every day in Myrtle's cheeks unfolded themselves more and more
freely, to speak metaphorically, in his song. Every week she would
receive a delicately tinted note with lines to "Myrtle awaking," or to
"Myrtle retiring," (one string of verses a little too Musidora-ish, and
which soon found itself in the condition of a cinder, perhaps reduced to
that state by spontaneous combustion,) or to "The Flower of the Tropics,"
or to the "Nymph of the River-side," or other poetical alias, such as
bards affect in their sieges of the female heart.
Gifted Hopkins was of a sanguine temperament. As he read and re-read his
verses it certainly seemed to him that they must reach the heart of the
angelic being to whom they were addressed. That she was slow in
confessing the impression they made upon her, was a favorable sign; so
many girls called his poems "sweet pooty," that those charming words,
though soothing, no longer stirred him deeply. Myrtle's silence showed
that the impression his verses had made was deep. Time would develop her
sentiments; they were both young; his position was humble as yet; but
when he had become famous through the land-oh blissful thought!--the bard
of Oxbow Village would bear a name that any woman would be proud to
assume, and the M. H. which her delicate hands had wrought on the
kerchiefs she wore would yet perhaps be read, not Myrtle Hazard, but
Myrtle Hopkins.
CHAPTER XIX.
SUSAN'S YOUNG MAN.
There seems no reasonable doubt that Myrtle Hazard might have made a
safe thing of it with Gifted Hopkins, (if so inclined,) provided that she
had only been secured against interference. But the constant habit of
reading his verses to Susan Posey was not without its risk to so
excitable a nature as that of the young poet. Poets were always capable
of divided affections, and Cowley's "Chronicle" is a confession that
would fit the whole tribe of them. It is true that Gifted had no right
to regard Susan's heart as open to the wiles of any new-comer. He knew
that she considered herself, and was considered by another, as pledged
and plighted. Yet she was such a devoted listener, her sympathies were
so easily roused, her blue eyes glistened so tenderly at the least
poetical hint, such as "Never, oh never," "My aching heart," "Go, let me
weep,"--any of those touching phrases out of the long catalogue which
readily suggests itself, that her influence was getting to be such that
Myrtle (if really anxious to secure him) might look upon it with
apprehension, and the owner of Susan's heart (if of a jealous
disposition) might have thought it worth while to make a visit to Oxbow
Village to see after his property.
It may seem not impossible that some friend had suggested as much as this
to the young lady's lover.
The caution would have been unnecessary, or at least premature. Susan was
loyal as ever to her absent friend. Gifted Hopkins had never yet
presumed upon the familiar relations existing between them to attempt to
shake her allegiance. It is quite as likely, after all, that the young
gentleman about to make his appearance in Oxbow Village visited the place
of his own accord, without a hint from anybody. But the fact concerns us
more than the reason of it, just now.
"Who do you think is coming, Mr. Gridley? Who do you think is coming?"
said Susan Posey, her face covered with a carnation such as the first
season may see in a city belle, but not the second.
"Well, Susan Posey, I suppose I must guess, though I am rather slow at
that business. Perhaps the Governor. No, I don't think it can be the
Governor, for you would n't look so happy if it was only his Excellency.
It must be the President, Susan Posey,--President James Buchanan. Have
n't I guessed right, now, tell me, my dear?"
"O Mr. Gridley, you are too bad,--what do I care for governors and
presidents? I know somebody that's worth fifty million thousand
presidents,--and he 's coming,--my Clement is coming," said Susan, who
had by this time learned to consider the awful Byles Gridley as her next
friend and faithful counsellor.
Susan could not stay long in the house after she got her note informing
her that her friend was soon to be with her. Everybody told everything
to Olive Eveleth, and Susan must run over to the parsonage to tell her
that there was a young gentleman coming to Oxbow Village; upon which
Olive asked who it was, exactly as if she did not know; whereupon Susan
dropped her eyes and said, "Clement,--I mean Mr. Lindsay."
That was a fair piece of news now, and Olive had her bonnet on five
minutes after Susan was gone, and was on her way to Bathsheba's,--it was
too bad that the poor girl who lived so out of the world shouldn't know
anything of what was going on in it. Bathsheba had been in all the
morning, and the Doctor had said she must take the air every day; so
Bathsheba had on her bonnet a little after Olive had gone, and walked
straight up to The Poplars to tell Myrtle Hazard that a certain young
gentleman, Clement Lindsay, was coming to Oxbow Village.
It was perhaps fortunate that there was no special significance to Myrtle
in the name of Clement Lindsay. Since the adventure which had brought
these two young persons together, and, after coming so near a disaster,
had ended in a mere humiliation and disappointment, and but for Master
Gridley's discreet kindness might have led to foolish scandal, Myrtle had
never referred to it in any way. Nobody really knew what her plans had
been except Olive and Cyprian, who had observed a very kind silence about
the whole matter. The common version of the story was harmless, and near
enough to the truth,--down the river,--boat upset,--pulled out,--taken
care of by some women in a house farther down,--sick, brain
fever,--pretty near it, anyhow,--old Dr. Hurlbut called in,--had her hair
cut,--hystericky, etc., etc.
Myrtle was contented with this statement, and asked no questions, and it
was a perfectly understood thing that nobody alluded to the subject in
her presence. It followed from all this that the name of Clement Lindsay
had no peculiar meaning for her. Nor was she like to recognize him as
the youth in whose company she had gone through her mortal peril, for all
her recollections were confused and dreamlike from the moment when she
awoke and found herself in the foaming rapids just above the fall, until
that when her senses returned, and she saw Master Byles Gridley standing
over her with that look of tenderness in his square features which had
lingered in her recollection, and made her feel towards him as if she
were his daughter.
Now this had its advantage; for as Clement was Susan's young man, and had
been so for two or three years, it would have been a great pity to have
any such curious relations established between him and Myrtle Hazard as a
consciousness on both sides of what had happened would naturally suggest.
"Who is this Clement Lindsay, Bathsheba?" Myrtle asked.
Why, Myrtle, don't you remember about Susan Posey's is-to-be,--the young
man that has been well, I don't know, but I suppose engaged to her ever
since they were children almost?"
"Yes, yes, I remember now. Oh dear! I have forgotten so many things, I
should think I had been dead and was coming back to life again. Do you
know anything about him, Bathsheba? Did n't somebody say he was very
handsome? I wonder if he is really in love with Susan Posey. Such a
simple thing? I want to see him. I have seen so few young men."
As Myrtle said these words, she lifted the sleeve a little on her left
arm, by a half-instinctive and half-voluntary movement. The glimmering
gold of Judith Pride's bracelet flashed out the yellow gleam which has
been the reddening of so many hands and the blackening of so, many souls
since that innocent sin-breeder was first picked up in the land of
Havilah. There came a sudden light into her eye, such as Bathsheba had
never seen there before. It looked to her as if Myrtle were saying
unconsciously to herself that she had the power of beauty, and would like
to try its influence on the handsome young man whom she was soon to meet,
even at the risk of unseating poor little Susan in his affections. This
pained the gentle and humble-minded girl, who, without having tasted the
world's pleasures, had meekly consecrated herself to the lowly duties
which lay nearest to her. For Bathsheba's phrasing of life was in the
monosyllables of a rigid faith. Her conceptions of the human soul were
all simplicity and purity, but elementary. She could not conceive the
vast license the creative energy allows itself in mingling the instincts
which, after long conflict, may come into harmonious adjustment. The
flash which Myrtle's eye had caught from the gleam of the golden bracelet
filled Bathsheba with a sudden fear that she was like to be led away by
the vanities of that world lying in wickedness of which the minister's
daughter had heard so much and seen so little.
Not that Bathsheba made any fine moral speeches, to herself. She only
felt a slight shock, such as a word or a look from one we love too often
gives us,--such as a child's trivial gesture or movement makes a parent
feel,--that impalpable something which in the slightest possible
inflection of a syllable or gradation of a tone will sometimes leave a
sting behind it, even in a trusting heart. This was all. But it was true
that what she saw meant a great deal. It meant the dawning in Myrtle
Hazard of one of her as yet unlived secondary lives. Bathsheba's virgin
perceptions had caught a faint early ray of its glimmering twilight.
She answered, after a very slight pause, which this explanation has made
seem so long, that she had never seen the young gentleman, and that she
did not know about Susan's sentiments. Only, as they had kept so long to
each other, she supposed there must be love between them.
Myrtle fell into a revery, with certain tableaux glowing along its
perspectives which poor little Susan Posey would have shivered to look
upon, if they could have been transferred from the purple clouds of
Myrtle's imagination to the pale silvery mists of Susan's pretty fancies.
She sat in her day-dream long after Bathsheba had left her, her eyes
fixed, not on the faded portrait of her beatified ancestress, but on that
other canvas where the dead Beauty seemed to live in all the splendors of
her full-blown womanhood.
The young man whose name had set her thoughts roving was handsome, as the
glance at him already given might have foreshadowed. But his features
had a graver impress than his age seemed to account for, and the sober
tone of his letter to Susan implied that something had given him a
maturity beyond his years. The story was not an uncommon one. At
sixteen he had dreamed-and told his dream. At eighteen he had awoke, and
found, as he believed, that a young heart had grown to his so that its
life was dependent on his own. Whether it would have perished if its
filaments had been gently disentangled from the object to which they had
attached themselves, experienced judges of such matters may perhaps
question. To justify Clement in his estimate of the danger of such an
experiment, we must remember that to young people in their teens a first
passion is a portentous and unprecedented phenomenon. The young man may
have been mistaken in thinking that Susan would die if he left her, and
may have done more than his duty in sacrificing himself; but if so, it
was the mistake of a generous youth, who estimated the depth of another's
feelings by his own. He measured the depth of his own rather by what he
felt they might be, than by that of any abysses they had yet sounded.
Clement was called a "genius" by those who knew him, and was consequently
in danger of being spoiled early. The risk is great enough anywhere, but
greatest in a new country, where there is an almost universal want of
fixed standards of excellence.
He was by nature an artist; a shaper with the pencil or the chisel, a
planner, a contriver capable of turning his hand to almost any work of
eye and hand. It would not have been strange if he thought he could do
everything, having gifts which were capable of various application,--and
being an American citizen. But though he was a good draughtsman, and had
made some reliefs and modelled some figures, he called himself only an
architect. He had given himself up to his art, not merely from a love
of it and talent for it, but with a kind of heroic devotion, because he
thought his country wanted a race of builders to clothe the new forms of
religious, social, and national life afresh from the forest, the quarry,
and the mine. Some thought he would succeed, others that he would be a
brilliant failure.
"Grand notions,--grand notions," the master with whom he studied said.
"Large ground plan of life,--splendid elevation. A little wild in some
of his fancies, perhaps, but he's only a boy, and he's the kind of boy
that sometimes grows to be a pretty big man. Wait and see,--wait and
see. He works days, and we can let him dream nights. There's a good
deal of him, anyhow." His fellow-students were puzzled. Those who
thought of their calling as a trade, and looked forward to the time when
they should be embodying the ideals of municipal authorities in brick and
stone, or making contracts with wealthy citizens, doubted whether Clement
would have a sharp eye enough for business. "Too many whims, you know.
All sorts of queer ideas in his head,--as if a boy like him were going to
make things all over again!".
No doubt there was something of youthful extravagance in his plans and
expectations. But it was the untamed enthusiasm which is the source of
all great thoughts and deeds,--a beautiful delirium which age commonly
tames down, and for which the cold shower-bath the world furnishes gratis
proves a pretty certain cure.
Creation is always preceded by chaos. The youthful architect's mind was
confused by the multitude of suggestions which were crowding in upon it,
and which he had not yet had time or developed mature strength sufficient
to reduce to order. The young American of any freshness of intellect is
stimulated to dangerous excess by the conditions of life into which he is
born. There is a double proportion of oxygen in the New World air. The
chemists have not found it out yet, but human brains and breathing-organs
have long since made the discovery.
Clement knew that his hasty entanglement had limited his possibilities of
happiness in one direction, and he felt that there was a certain grandeur
in the recompense of working out his defeated instincts through the
ambitious medium of his noble art. Had not Pharaohs chosen it to
proclaim their longings for immortality, Caesars their passion for pomp
and luxury, and priests to symbolize their conceptions of the heavenly
mansions? His dreams were on a grand scale; such, after all, are the
best possessions of youth. Had he but been free, or mated with a nature
akin to his own, he would have felt himself as truly the heir of creation
as any young man that lived. But his lot was cast, and his youth had all
the serious aspect to himself of thoughtful manhood. In the region of
his art alone he hoped always to find freedom and a companionship which
his home life could never give him.
Clement meant to have visited his beloved before he left Alderbank,
but was called unexpectedly back to the city. Happily Susan was not
exacting; she looked up to him with too great a feeling of distance
between them to dare to question his actions. Perhaps she found a
partial consolation in the company of Mr. Gifted Hopkins, who tried
his new poems on her, which was the next best thing to addressing
them to her. "Would that you were with us at this delightful
season," she wrote in the autumn; "but no, your Susan must not
repine. Yet, in the beautiful words of our native poet,
"Oh would, oh would that thou wast here,
For absence makes thee doubly dear;
Ah! what is life while thou 'rt away?
'T is night without the orb of day!'"
The poet referred to, it need hardly be said, was our young and promising
friend G. H., as he sometimes modestly signed himself. The letter, it is
unnecessary to state, was voluminous,--for a woman can tell her love, or
other matter of interest, over and over again in as many forms as another
poet, not G. H., found for his grief in ringing the musical changes of
"In Memoriam."
The answers to Susan's letters were kind, but not very long. They
convinced her that it was a simple impossibility that Clement could come
to Oxbow Village, on account of the great pressure of the work he had to
keep him in the city, and the plans he must finish at any rate. But at
last the work was partially got rid of, and Clement was coming; yes, it
was so nice, and, oh dear! should n't she be real happy to see him?
To Susan he appeared as a kind of divinity, almost too grand for human
nature's daily food. Yet, if the simple-hearted girl could have told
herself the whole truth in plain words, she would have confessed to
certain doubts which from time to time, and oftener of late, cast a
shadow on her seemingly bright future. With all the pleasure that the
thought of meeting Clement gave her, she felt a little tremor, a certain
degree of awe, in contemplating his visit. If she could have clothed her
self-humiliation in the gold and purple of the "Portuguese Sonnets," it
would have been another matter; but the trouble with the most common
sources of disquiet is that they have no wardrobe of flaming phraseology
to air themselves in; the inward burning goes on without the relief and
gratifying display of the crater.
"A friend of mine is coming to the village," she said to Mr. Gifted
Hopkins. "I want you to see him. He is a genius,--as some other young
men are." (This was obviously personal, and the youthful poet blushed
with ingenuous delight.) "I have known him for ever so many years. He
and I are very good friends." The poet knew that this meant an exclusive
relation between them; and though the fact was no surprise to him, his
countenance fell a little. The truth was, that his admiration was
divided between Myrtle, who seemed to him divine and adorable, but
distant, and Susan, who listened to his frequent poems, whom he was in
the habit of seeing in artless domestic costumes, and whose attractions
had been gaining upon him of late in the enforced absence of his
divinity.
He retired pensive from this interview, and, flinging himself at his
desk, attempted wreaking his thoughts upon expression, to borrow the
language of one of his brother bards, in a passionate lyric which he
began thus--
"ANOTHER'S!
"Another's! Oh the pang, the smart!
Fate owes to Love a deathless grudge,
--The barbed fang has rent a heart
Which--which
"judge--judge,--no, not judge. Budge, drudge, fudge--What a disgusting
language English is! Nothing fit to couple with such a word as grudge!
And the gush of an impassioned moment arrested in full flow, stopped
short, corked up, for want of a paltry rhyme!
Judge,--budge,--drudge,--nudge, oh!--smudge,--misery!--fudge. In
vain,--futile,--no use,--all up for to-night!"
While the poet, headed off in this way by the poverty of his native
tongue, sought inspiration by retiring into the world of dreams,--went to
bed, in short, his more fortunate rival was just entering the village,
where he was to make his brief residence at the house of Deacon Rumrill,
who, having been a loser by the devouring element, was glad to receive a
stray boarder when any such were looking about for quarters.
For some reason or other he was restless that evening, and took out a
volume he had brought with him to beguile the earlier hours of the night.
It was too late when he arrived to disturb the quiet of Mrs. Hopkins's
household, and whatever may have been Clement's impatience, he held it in
check, and sat tranquilly until midnight over the pages of the book with
which he had prudently provided himself.
"Hope you slept well last night," said the old Deacon, when Mr. Clement
came down to breakfast the next morning.
"Very well, thank you,--that is, after I got to bed. But I sat up pretty
late reading my favorite Scott. I am apt to forget how the hours pass
when I have one of his books in my hand."
The worthy Deacon looked at Mr. Clement with a sudden accession of
interest.
"You couldn't find better reading, young man. Scott is my favorite
author. A great man. I have got his likeness in a gilt-frame hanging up
in the other room. I have read him all through three times."
The young man's countenance brightened. He had not expected to find so
much taste for elegant literature in an old village deacon.
"What are your favorites among his writings, Deacon? I suppose you have
your particular likings, as the rest of us have."
The Deacon was flattered by the question. "Well," he answered, "I can
hardly tell you. I like pretty much everything Scott ever wrote.
Sometimes I think it is one thing, and sometimes another. Great on
Paul's Epistles,--don't you think so?"
The honest fact was, that Clement remembered very little about "Paul's
Letters to his Kinsfolk,"--a book of Sir Walter's less famous than many
of his others; but he signified his polite assent to the Deacon's
statement, rather wondering at his choice of a favorite, and smiling at
his queer way of talking about the Letters as Epistles.
"I am afraid Scott is not so much read now-a-days as he once was, and as
he ought to be," said Mr. Clement: "Such character, such nature and so
much grace."
"That's it,--that's it, young man," the Deacon broke in,--"Natur' and
Grace,--Natur' and Grace. Nobody ever knew better what those two words
meant than Scott did, and I'm very glad to see--you've chosen such good
wholesome reading. You can't set up too late, young man, to read Scott.
If I had twenty children, they should all begin reading Scott as soon as
they were old enough to spell sin,--and that's the first word my little
ones learned, next to 'pa' and I 'ma.' Nothing like beginning the lessons
of life in good season."
"What a grim old satirist!" Clement said to himself. "I wonder if the
old man reads other novelists.--Do tell me, Deacon, if you have read
Thackeray's last story? "
"Thackeray's story? Published by the American Tract Society?"
"Not exactly," Clement answered, smiling, and quite delighted to find
such an unexpected vein of grave pleasantry about the demure-looking
church-dignitary; for the Deacon asked his question without moving a
muscle, and took no cognizance whatever of the young man's tone and
smile. First-class humorists are, as is well known, remarkable for the
immovable solemnity of their features. Clement promised himself not a
little amusement from the curiously sedate drollery of the venerable
Deacon, who, it was plain from his conversation, had cultivated a
literary taste which would make him a more agreeable companion than the
common ecclesiastics of his grade in country villages.
After breakfast, Mr. Clement walked forth in the direction of Mrs.
Hopkins's house, thinking as he went of the pleasant surprise his visit
would bring to his longing and doubtless pensive Susan; for though she
knew he was coming, she did not know that he was at that moment in Oxbow
Village.
As he drew near the house, the first thing he saw was Susan Posey, almost
running against her just as he turned a corner. She looked wonderfully
lively and rosy, for the weather was getting keen and the frosts had
begun to bite. A young gentleman was walking at her side, and reading to
her from a paper he held in his hand. Both looked deeply interested,--so
much so that Clement felt half ashamed of himself for intruding upon them
so abruptly.
But lovers are lovers, and Clement could not help joining them. The
first thing, of course, was the utterance of two simultaneous
exclamations, "Why, Clement!" "Why, Susan!" What might have come next
in the programme, but for the presence of a third party, is matter of
conjecture; but what did come next was a mighty awkward look on the part
of Susan Posey, and the following short speech: "Mr. Lindsay, let me
introduce Mr. Hopkins, my friend, the poet I 've written to you about.
He was just reading two of his poems to me. Some other time, Gifted--Mr.
Hopkins."
"Oh no, Mr. Hopkins,--pray go on," said Clement. "I 'm very fond of
poetry."
The poet did not require much urging, and began at once reciting over
again the stanzas which were afterwards so much admired in the "Banner
and Oracle,"--the first verse being, as the readers of that paper will
remember,
"She moves in splendor, like the ray
That flashes from unclouded skies,
And all the charms of night and day
Are mingled in her hair and eyes."
Clement, who must have been in an agony of impatience to be alone with
his beloved, commanded his feelings admirably. He signified his
approbation of the poem by saying that the lines were smooth and the
rhymes absolutely without blemish. The stanzas reminded him forcibly of
one of the greatest poets of the century.
Gifted flushed hot with pleasure. He had tasted the blood of his own
rhymes; and when a poet gets as far as that, it is like wringing the bag
of exhilarating gas from the lips of a fellow sucking at it, to drag his
piece away from him.
"Perhaps you will like these lines still better," he said; "the style is
more modern:--
"'O daughter of the spiced South,
Her bubbly grapes have spilled the wine
That staineth with its hue divine
The red flower of thy perfect mouth.'"
And so on, through a series of stanzas like these, with the pulp of two
rhymes between the upper and lower crust of two others.
Clement was cornered. It was necessary to say something for the poet's
sake,--perhaps for Susan's; for she was in a certain sense responsible
for the poems of a youth of genius, of whom she had spoken so often and
so enthusiastically.
"Very good, Mr. Hopkins, and a form of verse little used, I should think,
until of late years. You modelled this piece on the style of a famous
living English poet, did you not?"
"Indeed I did not, Mr. Lindsay,--I never imitate. Originality is, if I
may be allowed to say so much for myself, my peculiar forte. Why, the
critics allow as much as that. See here, Mr. Lindsay."
Mr. Gifted Hopkins pulled out his pocket-book, and, taking therefrom a
cutting from a newspaper,--which dropped helplessly open of itself, as if
tired of the process, being very tender in the joints or creases, by
reason of having been often folded and unfolded read aloud as follows:
"The bard of Oxbow Pillage--our valued correspondent who writes over the
signature of G. H.--is, in our opinion, more remarkable for his
originality than for any other of his numerous gifts."
Clement was apparently silenced by this, and the poet a little elated
with a sense of triumph. Susan could not help sharing his feeling of
satisfaction, and without meaning it in the least, nay, without knowing
it, for she was as simple and pure as new milk, edged a little bit--the
merest infinitesimal atom--nearer to Gifted Hopkins, who was on one side
of her, while Clement walked on the other. Women love the conquering
party,--it is the way of their sex. And poets, as we have seen, are
well-nigh irresistible when they exert their dangerous power of
fascination upon the female heart. But Clement was above jealousy; and,
if he perceived anything of this movement, took no notice of it.
He saw a good deal of his pretty Susan that day. She was tender in her
expressions and manners as usual, but there was a little something in her
looks and language from time to time that Clement did not know exactly
what to make of. She colored once or twice when the young poet's name
was mentioned. She was not so full of her little plans for the future as
she had sometimes been, "everything was so uncertain," she said. Clement
asked himself whether she felt quite as sure that her attachment would
last as she once did. But there were no reproaches, not even any
explanations, which are about as bad between lovers. There was nothing
but an undefined feeling on his side that she did not cling quite so
closely to him, perhaps, as he had once thought, and that, if he had
happened to have been drowned that day when he went down with the
beautiful young woman, it was just conceivable that Susan, who would have
cried dreadfully, no doubt, would in time have listened to consolation
from some other young man,--possibly from the young poet whose verses he
had been admiring. Easy-crying widows take new husbands soonest; there
is nothing like wet weather for transplanting, as Master Gridley used to
say. Susan had a fluent natural gift for tears, as Clement well knew,
after the exercise of which she used to brighten up like the rose which
had been washed, just washed in a shower, mentioned by Cowper.
As for the poet, he learned more of his own sentiments during this visit
of Clement's than he had ever before known. He wandered about with a
dreadfully disconsolate look upon his countenance. He showed a
falling-off in his appetite at tea-time, which surprised and disturbed
his mother, for she had filled the house with fragrant suggestions of
good things coming, in honor of Mr. Lindsay, who was to be her guest at
tea. And chiefly the genteel form of doughnut called in the native
dialect cymbal (Qu. Symbol? B. G.) which graced the board with its
plastic forms, suggestive of the most pleasing objects,--the spiral
ringlets pendent from the brow of beauty; the magic circlet, which is the
pledge of plighted affection,--the indissoluble knot, which typifies the
union of hearts, which organs were also largely represented; this
exceptional delicacy would at any other time have claimed his special
notice. But his mother remarked that he paid little attention to these,
and his, "No, I thank you," when it came to the preserved "damsels," as
some call them, carried a pang with it to the maternal bosom. The most
touching evidence of his unhappiness--whether intentional or the result
of accident was not evident was a broken heart, which he left upon his
plate, the meaning of which was as plain as anything in the language of
flowers. His thoughts were gloomy during that day, running a good deal
on the more picturesque and impressive methods of bidding a voluntary
farewell to a world which had allured him with visions of beauty only to
snatch them from his impassioned gaze. His mother saw something of this,
and got from him a few disjointed words, which led her to lock up the
clothes-line and hide her late husband's razors,--an affectionate, yet
perhaps unnecessary precaution, for self-elimination contemplated from
this point of view by those who have the natural outlet of verse to
relieve them is rarely followed by a casualty. It may rather be
considered as implying a more than average chance for longevity; as those
who meditate an--imposing finish naturally save themselves for it, and
are therefore careful of their health until the time comes, and this is
apt to be indefinitely postponed so long as there is a poem to write or a
proof to be corrected.
CHAPTER XX.
THE SECOND MEETING.
Miss Eveleth requests the pleasure of Mr. Lindsay's company to meet a few
friends on the evening of the Feast of St. Ambrose, December 7th,
Wednesday.
THE PARSONAGE, December 6th.
It was the luckiest thing in the world. They always made a little
festival of that evening at the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth's, in honor of his
canonized namesake, and because they liked to have a good time. It came
this year just at the right moment, for here was a distinguished stranger
visiting in the place. Oxbow Village seemed to be running over with its
one extra young man,--as may be seen sometimes in larger villages, and
even in cities of moderate dimensions.
Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had called on Clement the day after his
arrival. He had already met the Deacon in the street, and asked some
questions about his transient boarder.
A very interesting young man, the Deacon said, much given to the reading
of pious books. Up late at night after he came, reading Scott's
Commentary. Appeared to be as fond of serious works as other young folks
were of their novels and romances and other immoral publications. He,
the Deacon, thought of having a few religious friends to meet the young
gentleman, if he felt so disposed; and should like to have him, Mr.
Bradshaw, come in and take a part in the exercises.--Mr. Bradshaw was
unfortunately engaged. He thought the young gentleman could hardly find
time for such a meeting during his brief visit.
Mr. Bradshaw expected naturally to see a youth of imperfect constitution,
and cachectic or dyspeptic tendencies, who was in training to furnish one
of those biographies beginning with the statement that, from his infancy,
the subject of it showed no inclination for boyish amusements, and so on,
until he dies out, for the simple reason that there was not enough of him
to live. Very interesting, no doubt, Master Byles Gridley would have
said, but had no more to do with good, hearty, sound life than the
history of those very little people to be seen in museums preserved in
jars of alcohol, like brandy peaches.
When Mr. Clement Lindsay presented himself, Mr. Bradshaw was a good deal
surprised to see a young fellow of such a mould. He pleased himself with
the idea that he knew a man of mark at sight, and he set down Clement in
that category at his first glance. The young man met his penetrating and
questioning look with a frank, ingenuous, open aspect, before which he
felt himself disarmed, as it were, and thrown upon other means of
analysis. He would try him a little in talk.
"I hope you like these people you are with. What sort of a man do you
find my old friend the Deacon?"
Clement laughed. "A very queer old character. Loves his joke as well,
and is as sly in making it, as if he had studied Joe Miller instead of
the Catechism."
Mr. Bradshaw looked at the young man to know what he meant. Mr. Lindsay
talked in a very easy way for a serious young person. He was puzzled.
He did not see to the bottom of this description of the Deacon. With a
lawyer's instinct, he kept his doubts to himself and tried his witness
with a new question.
"Did you talk about books at all with the old man?"
"To be sure I did. Would you believe it,--that aged saint is a great
novel-reader. So he tells me. What is more, he brings up his children
to that sort of reading, from the time when they first begin to spell.
If anybody else had told me such a story about an old country deacon, I
wouldn't have believed it; but he said so himself, to me, at breakfast
this morning."
Mr. Bradshaw felt as if either he or Mr. Lindsay must certainly be in the
first stage of mild insanity, and he did not think that he himself could
be out of his wits. He must try one more question. He had become so
mystified that he forgot himself, and began putting his interrogation in
legal form.
"Will you state, if you please--I beg your pardon--may I ask who is your
own favorite author?"
"I think just now I like to read Scott better than almost anybody."
"Do you mean the Rev. Thomas Scott, author of the Commentary?"
Clement stared at Mr. Bradshaw, and wondered whether he was trying to
make a fool of him. The young lawyer hardly looked as if he could be a
fool himself.
"I mean Sir Walter Scott," he said, dryly.
"Oh!" said Mr. Bradshaw. He saw that there had been a slight
misunderstanding between the young man and his worthy host, but it was
none of his business, and there were other subjects of interest to talk
about.
"You know one of our charming young ladies very well, I believe, Mr.
Lindsay. I think you are an old acquaintance of Miss Posey, whom we all
consider so pretty."
Poor Clement! The question pierced to the very marrow of his soul, but
it was put with the utmost suavity and courtesy, and honeyed with a
compliment to the young lady, too, so that there was no avoiding a direct
and pleasant answer to it.
"Yes," he said, "I have known the young lady you speak of for a long
time, and very well,--in fact, as you must have heard, we are something
more than friends. My visit here is principally on her account."
"You must give the rest of us a chance to see something of you during
your visit, Mr. Lindsay. I hope you are invited to Miss Eveleth's
to-morrow evening?"
"Yes, I got a note this morning. Tell me, Mr. Bradshaw, who is there
that I shall meet if I go? I have no doubt there are girls here in the
village I should like to see, and perhaps some young fellows that I
should like to talk with. You know all that's prettiest and pleasantest,
of course."
"Oh, we're a little place, Mr. Lindsay. A few nice people, the rest
comme Va, you know. High-bush blackberries and low-bush
black-berries,--you understand,--just so everywhere,--high-bush here and
there, low-bush plenty. You must see the two parsons' daughters,--Saint
Ambrose's and Saint Joseph's,--and another girl I want particularly to
introduce you to. You shall form your own opinion of her. I call her
handsome and stylish, but you have got spoiled, you know. Our young
poet, too, one we raised in this place, Mr. Lindsay, and a superior
article of poet, as we think,--that is, some of us, for the rest of us
are jealous of him, because the girls are all dying for him and want his
autograph. And Cyp,--yes, you must talk to Cyp,--he has ideas. But
don't forget to get hold of old Byles Master Gridley I mean--before you
go. Big head. Brains enough for a cabinet minister, and fit out a
college faculty with what was left over. Be sure you see old Byles. Set
him talking about his book, 'Thoughts on the Universe.' Did n't sell
much, but has got knowing things in it. I'll show you a copy, and then
you can tell him you know it, and he will take to you. Come in and get
your dinner with me to-morrow. We will dine late, as the city folks do,
and after that we will go over to the Rector's. I should like to show
you some of our village people."
Mr. Bradshaw liked the thought of showing the young man to some of his
friends there. As Clement was already "done for," or "bowled out," as
the young lawyer would have expressed the fact of his being pledged in
the matrimonial direction, there was nothing to be apprehended on the
score of rivalry. And although Clement was particularly good-looking,
and would have been called a distinguishable youth anywhere, Mr. Bradshaw
considered himself far more than his match, in all probability, in social
accomplishments. He expected, therefore, a certain amount of reflex
credit for bringing such a fine young fellow in his company, and a second
instalment of reputation from outshining him in conversation. This was
rather nice calculating, but Murray Bradshaw always calculated. With most
men life is like backgammon, half skill, and half luck, but with him it
was like chess. He never pushed a pawn without reckoning the cost, and
when his mind was least busy it was sure to be half a dozen moves ahead
of the game as it was standing.
Mr. Bradshaw gave Clement a pretty dinner enough for such a place as
Oxbow Village. He offered him some good wine, and would have made him
talk so as to show his lining, to use one of his own expressions, but
Clement had apparently been through that trifling experience, and could
not be coaxed into saying more than he meant to say. Murray Bradshaw was
very curious to find out how it was that he had become the victim of such
a rudimentary miss as Susan Posey. Could she be an heiress in disguise?
Why no, of course not; had not he made all proper inquiries about that
when Susan came to town? A small inheritance from an aunt or uncle, or
some such relative, enough to make her a desirable party in the eyes of
certain villagers perhaps, but nothing to allure a man like this, whose
face and figure as marketable possessions were worth say a hundred
thousand in the girl's own right, as Mr. Bradshaw put it roughly, with
another hundred thousand if his talent is what some say, and if his
connection is a desirable one, a fancy price,--anything he would fetch.
Of course not. Must have got caught when he was a child. Why the diavolo
didn't he break it off, then?
There was no fault to find with the modest entertainment at the
Parsonage. A splendid banquet in a great house is an admirable thing,
provided always its getting up did not cost the entertainer an inward
conflict, nor its recollection a twinge of economical regret, nor its
bills a cramp of anxiety. A simple evening party in the smallest village
is just as admirable in its degree, when the parlor is cheerfully
lighted, and the board prettily spread, and the guests are made to feel
comfortable without being reminded that anybody is making a painful
effort.
We know several of the young people who were there, and need not trouble
ourselves for the others. Myrtle Hazard had promised to come. She had
her own way of late as never before; in fact, the women were afraid of
her. Miss Silence felt that she could not be responsible for her any
longer. She had hopes for a time that Myrtle would go through the
customary spiritual paroxysm under the influence of the Rev. Mr. Stoker's
assiduous exhortations; but since she had broken off with him, Miss
Silence had looked upon her as little better than a backslider. And now
that the girl was beginning to show the tendencies which seemed to come
straight down to her from the belle of the last century, (whose rich
physical developments seemed to the under-vitalized spinster as in
themselves a kind of offence against propriety,) the forlorn woman folded
her thin hands and looked on hopelessly, hardly venturing a remonstrance
for fear of some new explosion. As for Cynthia, she was comparatively
easy since she had, through Mr. Byles Gridley, upset the minister's
questionable arrangement of religious intimacy. She had, in fact, in a
quiet way, given Mr. Bradshaw to understand that he would probably meet
Myrtle at the Parsonage if he dropped in at their small gathering.
Clement walked over to Mrs. Hopkins's after his dinner with the young
lawyer, and asked if Susan was ready to go with him. At the sound of his
voice, Gifted Hopkins smote his forehead, and called himself, in subdued
tones, a miserable being. His imagination wavered uncertain for a while
between pictures of various modes of ridding himself of existence, and
fearful deeds involving the life of others. He had no fell purpose of
actually doing either, but there was a gloomy pleasure in contemplating
them as possibilities, and in mentally sketching the "Lines written in
Despair" which would be found in what was but an hour before the pocket
of the youthful bard, G. H., victim of a hopeless passion. All this
emotion was in the nature of a surprise to the young man. He had fully
believed himself desperately in love with Myrtle Hazard; and it was not
until Clement came into the family circle with the right of eminent
domain over the realm of Susan's affections, that this unfortunate
discovered that Susan's pretty ways and morning dress and love of poetry
and liking for his company had been too much for him, and that he was
henceforth to be wretched during the remainder of his natural life,
except so far as he could unburden himself in song.
Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had asked the privilege of waiting upon
Myrtle to the little party at the Eveleths. Myrtle was not insensible to
the attractions of the young lawyer, though she had never thought of
herself except as a child in her relations with any of these older
persons. But she was not the same girl that she had been but a few
months before. She had achieved her independence by her audacious and
most dangerous enterprise. She had gone through strange nervous trials
and spiritual experiences which had matured her more rapidly than years
of common life would have done. She had got back her health, bringing
with it a riper wealth of womanhood. She had found her destiny in the
consciousness that she inherited the beauty belonging to her blood, and
which, after sleeping for a generation or two as if to rest from the
glare of the pageant that follows beauty through its long career of
triumph, had come to the light again in her life, and was to repeat the
legends of the olden time in her own history.
Myrtle's wardrobe had very little of ornament, such as the modistes of
the town would have thought essential to render a young girl like her
presentable. There were a few heirlooms of old date, however, which she
had kept as curiosities until now, and which she looked over until she
found some lace and other convertible material, with which she enlivened
her costume a little for the evening. As she clasped the antique
bracelet around her wrist, she felt as if it were an amulet that gave her
the power of charming which had been so long obsolete in her lineage. At
the bottom of her heart she cherished a secret longing to try her
fascinations on the young lawyer. Who could blame her? It was not an
inwardly expressed intention,--it was the simple instinctive movement to
subjugate the strongest of the other sex who had come in her way, which,
as already said, is as natural to a woman as it is to a man to be
captivated by the loveliest of those to whom he dares to aspire.
Before William Murray Bradshaw and Myrtle Hazard had reached the
Parsonage, the girl's cheeks were flushed and her dark eyes were flashing
with a new excitement. The young man had not made love to her directly,
but he had interested her in herself by a delicate and tender flattery of
manner, and so set her fancies working that she was taken with him as
never before, and wishing that the Parsonage had been a mile farther from
The Poplars. It was impossible for a young girl like Myrtle to conceal
the pleasure she received from listening to her seductive admirer, who
was trying all his trained skill upon his artless companion. Murray
Bradshaw felt sure that the game was in his hands if he played it with
only common prudence. There was no need of hurrying this child,--it might
startle her to make downright love abruptly; and now that he had an ally
in her own household, and was to have access to her with a freedom he had
never before enjoyed, there was a refined pleasure in playing his
fish,--this gamest of golden-scaled creatures,--which had risen to his
fly, and which he wished to hook, but not to land, until he was sure it
would be worth his while.
They entered the little parlor at the Parsonage looking so beaming, that
Olive and Bathsheba exchanged glances which implied so much that it would
take a full page to tell it with all the potentialities involved.
"How magnificent Myrtle is this evening, Bathsheba!" said Cyprian
Eveleth, pensively.
"What a handsome pair they are, Cyprian!" said Bathsheba cheerfully.
Cyprian sighed. "She always fascinates me whenever I look upon her. Is
n't she the very picture of what a poet's love should be,--a poem
herself,--a glorious lyric,--all light and music! See what a smile the
creature has! And her voice! When did you ever hear such tones? And
when was it ever so full of life before."
Bathsheba sighed. "I do not know any poets but Gifted Hopkins. Does not
Myrtle look more in her place by the side of Murray Bradshaw than she
would with Gifted hitched on her arm?"
Just then the poet made his appearance. He looked depressed, as if it
had cost him an effort to come. He was, however, charged with a message
which he must deliver to the hostess of the evening.
"They 're coming presently," he said. "That young man and Susan. Wants
you to introduce him, Mr. Bradshaw."
The bell rang presently, and Murray Bradshaw slipped out into the entry
to meet the two lovers.
"How are you, my fortunate friend?" he said, as he met them at the door.
"Of course you're well and happy as mortal man can be in this vale of
tears. Charming, ravishing, quite delicious, that way of dressing your
hair, Miss Posey! Nice girls here this evening, Mr. Lindsay. Looked
lovely when I came out of the parlor. Can't say how they will show after
this young lady puts in an appearance." In reply to which florid
speeches Susan blushed, not knowing what else to do, and Clement smiled
as naturally as if he had been sitting for his photograph.
He felt, in a vague way, that he and Susan were being patronized, which
is not a pleasant feeling to persons with a certain pride of character.
There was no expression of contempt about Mr. Bradshaw's manner or
language at which he could take offence. Only he had the air of a man
who praises his neighbor without stint, with a calm consciousness that he
himself is out of reach of comparison in the possessions or qualities
which he is admiring in the other. Clement was right in his obscure
perception of Mr. Bradshaw's feeling while he was making his phrases.
That gentleman was, in another moment, to have the tingling delight of
showing the grand creature he had just begun to tame. He was going to
extinguish the pallid light of Susan's prettiness in the brightness of
Myrtle's beauty. He would bring this young man, neutralized and rendered
entirely harmless by his irrevocable pledge to a slight girl, face to
face with a masterpiece of young womanhood, and say to him, not in words,
but as plainly as speech could have told him, "Behold my captive!"
It was a proud moment for Murray Bradshaw. He had seen, or thought that
he had seen, the assured evidence of a speedy triumph over all the
obstacles of Myrtle's youth and his own present seeming slight excess of
maturity. Unless he were very greatly mistaken, he could now walk the
course; the plate was his, no matter what might be the entries. And this
youth, this handsome, spirited-looking, noble-aired young fellow, whose
artist-eye could not miss a line of Myrtle's proud and almost defiant
beauty, was to be the witness of his power, and to look in admiration
upon his prize! He introduced him to the others, reserving her for the
last. She was at that moment talking with the worthy Rector, and turned
when Mr. Bradshaw spoke to her.
"Miss Hazard, will you allow me to present to you my friend, Mr. Clement
Lindsay?"
They looked full upon each other, and spoke the common words of
salutation. It was a strange meeting; but we who profess to tell the
truth must tell strange things, or we shall be liars.
In poor little Susan's letter there was some allusion to a bust of
Innocence which the young artist had begun, but of which he had said
nothing in his answer to her. He had roughed out a block of marble for
that impersonation; sculpture was a delight to him, though secondary to
his main pursuit. After his memorable adventure, the image of the girl
he had rescued so haunted him that the pale ideal which was to work
itself out in the bust faded away in its perpetual presence, and--alas,
poor Susan! in obedience to the impulse that he could not control, he
left Innocence sleeping in the marble, and began modelling a figure of
proud and noble and imperious beauty, to which he gave the name of
Liberty.
The original which had inspired his conception was before him. These
were the lips to which his own had clung when he brought her back from
the land of shadows. The hyacinthine curl of her lengthening locks had
added something to her beauty; but it was the same face which had haunted
him. This was the form he had borne seemingly lifeless in his arms, and
the bosom which heaved so visibly before him was that which his eyes they
were the calm eyes of a sculptor, but of a sculptor hardly twenty years
old.
Yes,--her bosom was heaving. She had an unexplained feeling of
suffocation, and drew great breaths,--she could not have said why,--but
she could not help it; and presently she became giddy, and had a great
noise in her ears, and rolled her eyes about, and was on the point of
going into an hysteric spasm. They called Dr. Hurlbut, who was making
himself agreeable to Olive just then, to come and see what was the matter
with Myrtle.
"A little nervous turn,--that is all," he said.
"Open the window. Loose the ribbon round her neck. Rub her hands.
Sprinkle some water on her forehead.
"A few drops of cologne. Room too warm for her,--that 's all, I think."
Myrtle came to herself after a time without anything like a regular
paroxysm. But she was excitable, and whatever the cause of the
disturbance may have been, it seemed prudent that she should go home
early; and the excellent Rector insisted on caring for her, much to the
discontent of Mr. William Murray Bradshaw.
"Demonish odd," said this gentleman, "was n't it, Mr. Lindsay, that Miss
Hazard should go off in that way. Did you ever see her before?"
"I--I--have seen that young lady before," Clement answered.
"Where did you meet her?" Mr. Bradshaw asked, with eager interest.
"I met her in the Valley of the Shadow of Death," Clement answered, very
solemnly.--"I leave this place to-morrow morning. Have you any commands
for the city?"
"Knows how to shut a fellow up pretty well for a young one, doesn't he?"
Mr. Bradshaw thought to himself.
"Thank you, no," he answered, recovering himself. "Rather a melancholy
place to make acquaintance in, I should think, that Valley you spoke of.
I should like to know about it."
Mr. Clement had the power of looking steadily into another person's eyes
in a way that was by no means encouraging to curiosity or favorable to
the process of cross-examination. Mr. Bradshaw was not disposed to press
his question in the face of the calm, repressive look the young man gave
him.
"If he was n't bagged, I shouldn't like the shape of things any too
well," he said to himself.
The conversation between Mr. Clement Lindsay and Miss Susan Posey, as
they walked home together, was not very brilliant. "I am going to-morrow
morning," he said, "and I must bid you good-by tonight." Perhaps it is as
well to leave two lovers to themselves, under these circumstances.
Before he went he spoke to his worthy host, whose moderate demands he had
to satisfy, and with whom he wished to exchange a few words.
"And by the way, Deacon, I have no use for this book, and as it is in a
good type, perhaps you would like it. Your favorite, Scott, and one of
his greatest works. I have another edition of it at home, and don't care
for this volume."
"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Lindsay, much obleeged. I shall read that
copy for your sake, the best of books next to the Bible itself."
After Mr. Lindsay had gone, the Deacon looked at the back of the book.
"Scott's Works, Vol. IX." He opened it at hazard, and happened to fall
on a well-known page, from which he began reading aloud, slowly,
"When Izrul, of the Lord beloved,
Out of the land of bondage came."
The whole hymn pleased the grave Deacon. He had never seen this work of
the author of the Commentary. No matter; anything that such a good man
wrote must be good reading, and he would save it up for Sunday. The
consequence of this was, that, when the Rev. Mr. Stoker stopped in on his
way to meeting on the "Sabbath," he turned white with horror at the
spectacle of the senior Deacon of his church sitting, open-mouthed and
wide-eyed, absorbed in the pages of "Ivanhoe," which he found enormously
interesting; but, so far as he had yet read, not occupied with religious
matters so much as he had expected.
Myrtle had no explanation to give of her nervous attack. Mr. Bradshaw
called the day after the party, but did not see her. He met her walking,
and thought she seemed a little more distant than common. That would
never do. He called again at The Poplars a few days afterwards, and was
met in the entry by Miss Cynthia, with whom he had a long conversation on
matters involving Myrtle's interests and their own.
CHAPTER XXI.
MADNESS?
Mr. Clement Lindsay returned to the city and his usual labors in a state
of strange mental agitation. He had received an impression for which he
was unprepared. He had seen for the second time a young girl whom, for
the peace of his own mind, and for the happiness of others, he should
never again have looked upon until Time had taught their young hearts the
lesson which all hearts must learn, sooner or later.
What shall the unfortunate person do who has met with one of those
disappointments, or been betrayed into one of those positions, which do
violence to all the tenderest feelings, blighting the happiness of youth,
and the prospects of after years?
If the person is a young man, he has various resources. He can take to
the philosophic meerschaum, and nicotine himself at brief intervals into
a kind of buzzing and blurry insensibility, until he begins to "color" at
last like the bowl of his own pipe, and even his mind gets the tobacco
flavor. Or he can have recourse to the more suggestive stimulants, which
will dress his future up for him in shining possibilities that glitter
like Masonic regalia, until the morning light and the waking headache
reveal his illusion. Some kind of spiritual anaesthetic he must have, if
he holds his grief fast tied to his heartstrings. But as grief must be
fed with thought, or starve to death, it is the best plan to keep the
mind so busy in other ways that it has no time to attend to the wants of
that ravening passion. To sit down and passively endure it, is apt to
end in putting all the mental machinery into disorder.
Clement Lindsay had thought that his battle of life was already fought,
and that he had conquered. He believed that he had subdued himself
completely, and that he was ready, without betraying a shadow of
disappointment, to take the insufficient nature which destiny had
assigned him in his companion, and share with it all of his own larger
being it was capable, not of comprehending, but of apprehending.
He had deceived himself. The battle was not fought and won. There had
been a struggle, and what seemed to be a victory, but the
enemy--intrenched in the very citadel of life--had rallied, and would
make another desperate attempt to retrieve his defeat.
The haste with which the young man had quitted the village was only a
proof that he felt his danger. He believed that, if he came into the
presence of Myrtle Hazard for the third time, he should be no longer
master of his feelings. Some explanation must take place between them,
and how was it possible that it should be without emotion? and in what do
all emotions shared by a young man with such a young girl as this tend to
find their last expression?
Clement determined to stun his sensibilities by work. He would give
himself no leisure to indulge in idle dreams of what might have been. His
plans were never so carefully finished, and his studies were never so
continuous as now. But the passion still wrought within him, and, if he
drove it from his waking thoughts, haunted his sleep until he could
endure it no longer, and must give it some manifestation. He had covered
up the bust of Liberty so closely, that not an outline betrayed itself
through the heavy folds of drapery in which it was wrapped. His thoughts
recurred to his unfinished marble, as offering the one mode in which he
could find a silent outlet to the feelings and thoughts which it was
torture to keep imprisoned in his soul. The cold stone would tell them,
but without passion; and having got the image which possessed him out of
himself into a lifeless form, it seemed as if he might be delivered from
a presence which, lovely as it was, stood between him and all that made
him seem honorable and worthy to himself.
He uncovered the bust which he had but half shaped, and struck the first
flake from the glittering marble. The toil, once begun, fascinated him
strangely, and after the day's work was done, and at every interval he
could snatch from his duties, he wrought at his secret task.
"Clement is graver than ever," the young men said at the office. "What's
the matter, do you suppose? Turned off by the girl they say he means to
marry by and by? How pale he looks too! Must have something worrying
him: he used to look as fresh as a clove pink."
The master with whom he studied saw that he was losing color, and looking
very much worn; and determined to find out, if he could, whether he was
not overworking himself. He soon discovered that his light was seen
burning late into the night, that he was neglecting his natural rest, and
always busy with some unknown task, not called for in his routine of duty
or legitimate study.
"Something is wearing on you, Clement," he said. "You are killing
yourself with undertaking too much. Will you let me know what keeps you
so busy when you ought to be asleep, or taking your ease and comfort in
some way or other?"
Nobody but himself had ever seen his marble or its model. He had now
almost finished it, laboring at it with such sleepless devotion, and he
was willing to let his master have a sight of his first effort of the
kind,--for he was not a sculptor, it must be remembered, though he had
modelled in clay, not without some success, from time to time.
"Come with me," he said.
The master climbed the stairs with him up to his modest chamber. A
closely shrouded bust stood on its pedestal in the light of the solitary
window.
"That is my ideal personage," Clement said. "Wait one moment, and you
shall see how far I have caught the character of our uncrowned queen."
The master expected, very naturally, to see the conventional young woman
with classical wreath or feather headdress, whom we have placed upon our
smallest coin, so that our children may all grow up loving Liberty.
As Clement withdrew the drapery that covered his work, the master stared
at it in amazement. He looked at it long and earnestly, and at length
turned his eyes, a little moistened by some feeling which thus betrayed
itself, upon his scholar.
"This is no ideal, Clement. It is the portrait of a very young but very
beautiful woman. No common feeling could have guided your hand in
shaping such a portrait from memory. This must be that friend of yours
of whom I have often heard as an amiable young person. Pardon me, for
you know that nobody cares more for you than I do,--I hope that you are
happy in all your relations with this young friend of yours. How could
one be otherwise?"
It was hard to bear, very hard. He forced a smile. "You are partly
right," he said. "There is a resemblance, I trust, to a living person,
for I had one in my mind."
"Did n't you tell me once, Clement, that you were attempting a bust of
Innocence? I do not see any block in your room but this. Is that done?"
"Done with!" Clement answered; and, as he said it, the thought stung
through him that this was the very stone which was to have worn the
pleasant blandness of pretty Susan's guileless countenance. How the new
features had effaced the recollection of the others!
In a few days more Clement had finished his bust. His hours were again
vacant to his thick-coming fancies. While he had been busy with his
marble, his hands had required his attention, and he must think closely
of every detail upon which he was at work. But at length his task was
done, and he could contemplate what he had made of it. It was a triumph
for one so little exercised in sculpture. The master had told him so, and
his own eye could not deceive him. He might never succeed in any
repetition of his effort, but this once he most certainly had succeeded.
He could not disguise from himself the source of this extraordinary good
fortune in so doubtful and difficult an attempt. Nor could he resist the
desire of contemplating the portrait bust, which--it was foolish to talk
about ideals--was not Liberty, but Myrtle Hazard.
It was too nearly like the story of the ancient sculptor; his own work
was an over-match for its artist. Clement had made a mistake in
supposing that by giving his dream a material form he should drive it
from the possession of his mind. The image in which he had fixed his
recollection of its original served only to keep her living presence
before him. He thought of her as she clasped her arms around him, and
they were swallowed up in the rushing waters, coming so near to passing
into the unknown world together. He thought of her as he stretched her
lifeless form upon the bank, and looked for one brief moment on her
unsunned loveliness,--"a sight to dream of, not to tell." He thought of
her as his last fleeting glimpse had shown her, beautiful, not with the
blossomy prettiness that passes away with the spring sunshine, but with a
rich vitality of which noble outlines and winning expression were only
the natural accidents. And that singular impression which the sight of
him had produced upon her,--how strange! How could she but have listened
to him,--to him, who was, as it were, a second creator to her, for he had
bought her back from the gates of the unseen realm,--if he had recalled
to her the dread moments they had passed in each other's arms, with
death, not love, in all their thoughts. And if then he had told her how
her image had remained with him, how it had colored all his visions, and
mingled with all his conceptions, would not those dark eyes have melted
as they were turned upon him? Nay, how could he keep the thought away,
that she would not have been insensible to his passion, if he could have
suffered its flame to kindle in his heart? Did it not seem as if Death
had spared them for Love, and that Love should lead them together through
life's long journey to the gates of Death?
Never! never! never! Their fates were fixed. For him, poor insect as he
was, a solitary flight by day, and a return at evening to his wingless
mate! For her--he thought he saw her doom.
Could he give her up to the cold embraces of that passionless egotist,
who, as he perceived plainly enough, was casting his shining net all
around her? Clement read Murray Bradshaw correctly. He could not
perhaps have spread his character out in set words, as we must do for
him, for it takes a long apprenticeship to learn to describe analytically
what we know as soon as we see it; but he felt in his inner consciousness
all that we must tell for him. Fascinating, agreeable, artful, knowing,
capable of winning a woman infinitely above himself, incapable of
understanding her,--oh, if he could but touch him with the angel's spear,
and bid him take his true shape before her whom he was gradually
enveloping in the silken meshes of his subtle web! He would make a place
for her in the world,--oh yes, doubtless. He would be proud of her in
company, would dress her handsomely, and show her off in the best lights.
But from the very hour that he felt his power over her firmly
established, he would begin to remodel her after his own worldly pattern.
He would dismantle her of her womanly ideals, and give her in their place
his table of market-values. He would teach her to submit her
sensibilities to her selfish interest, and her tastes to the fashion of
the moment, no matter which world or half-world it came from. "As the
husband is, the wife is,"--he would subdue her to what he worked in.
All this Clement saw, as in apocalyptic vision, stored up for the wife of
Murray Bradshaw, if he read him rightly, as he felt sure he did, from the
few times he had seen him. He would be rich by and by, very probably.
He looked like one of those young men who are sharp, and hard enough to
come to fortune. Then she would have to take her place in the great
social exhibition where the gilded cages are daily opened that the
animals may be seen, feeding on the sight of stereotyped toilets and the
sound of impoverished tattle. O misery of semi-provincial fashionable
life, where wealth is at its wit's end to avoid being tired of an
existence which has all the labor of keeping up appearances, without the
piquant profligacy which saves it at least from being utterly vapid! How
many fashionable women at the end of a long season would be ready to
welcome heaven itself as a relief from the desperate monotony of
dressing, dawdling, and driving!
This could not go on so forever. Clement had placed a red curtain so as
to throw a rose-bloom on his marble, and give it an aspect which his
fancy turned to the semblance of life. He would sit and look at the
features his own hand had so faithfully wrought, until it seemed as if
the lips moved, sometimes as if they were smiling, sometimes as if they
were ready to speak to him. His companions began to whisper strange
things of him in the studio,--that his eye was getting an unnatural
light,--that he talked as if to imaginary listeners,--in short, that
there was a look as if something were going wrong with his brain, which
it might be feared would spoil his fine intelligence. It was the
undecided battle, and the enemy, as in his noblest moments he had
considered the growing passion, was getting the better of him.
He was sitting one afternoon before the fatal bust which had smiled and
whispered away his peace, when the post-man brought him a letter. It was
from the simple girl to whom he had given his promise. We know how she
used to prattle in her harmless way about her innocent feelings, and the
trifling matters that were going on in her little village world. But now
she wrote in sadness. Something, she did not too clearly explain what,
had grieved her, and she gave free expression to her feelings. "I have
no one that loves me but you," she said; "and if you leave me I must
droop and die. Are you true to me, dearest Clement,--true as when we
promised each other that we would love while life lasted? Or have you
forgotten one who will never cease to remember that she was once your own
Susan?"
Clement dropped the letter from his hand, and sat a long hour looking at
the exquisitely wrought features of her who had come between him and
honor and his plighted word.
At length he arose, and, lifting the bust tenderly from its pedestal,
laid it upon the cloth with which it had been covered. He wrapped it
closely, fold upon fold, as the mother whom man condemns and God pities
wraps the child she loves before she lifts her hand against its life.
Then he took a heavy hammer and shattered his lovely idol into shapeless
fragments. The strife was over.
CHAPTER XXII.
A CHANGE OF PROGRAMME.
Mr. William Murray Bradshaw was in pretty intimate relations with Miss
Cynthia Badlam. It was well understood between them that it might be of
very great advantage to both of them if he should in due time become the
accepted lover of Myrtle Hazard. So long as he could be reasonably
secure against interference, he did not wish to hurry her in making her
decision. Two things he did wish to be sure of, if possible, before
asking her the great question;--first, that she would answer it in the
affirmative; and secondly, that certain contingencies, the turning of
which was not as yet absolutely capable of being predicted, should happen
as he expected. Cynthia had the power of furthering his wishes in many
direct and indirect ways, and he felt sure of her cooperation. She had
some reason to fear his enmity if she displeased him, and he had taken
good care to make her understand that her interests would be greatly
promoted by the success of the plan which he had formed, and which was
confided to her alone.
He kept the most careful eye on every possible source of disturbance to
this quietly maturing plan. He had no objection to have Gifted Hopkins
about Myrtle as much as she would endure to have him. The youthful bard
entertained her very innocently with his bursts of poetry, but she was in
no danger from a young person so intimately associated with the
yard-stick, the blunt scissors, and the brown-paper parcel. There was
Cyprian too, about whom he did not feel any very particular solicitude.
Myrtle had evidently found out that she was handsome and stylish and all
that, and it was not very likely she would take up with such a bashful,
humble, country youth as this. He could expect nothing beyond a possible
rectorate in the remote distance, with one of those little pony chapels
to preach in, which, if it were set up on a stout pole, would pass for a
good-sized martin-house. Cyprian might do to practise on, but there was
no danger of her looking at him in a serious way. As for that youth,
Clement Lindsay, if he had not taken himself off as he did, Murray
Bradshaw confessed to himself that he should have felt uneasy. He was
too good-looking, and too clever a young fellow to have knocking about
among fragile susceptibilities. But on reflection he saw there could be
no danger.
"All up with him,--poor diavolo! Can't understand it--such a little
sixpenny miss--pretty enough boiled parsnip blonde, if one likes that
sort of thing--pleases some of the old boys, apparently. Look out, Mr.
L. remember Susanna and the Elders. Good!
"Safe enough if something new doesn't turn up. Youngish. Sixteen's a
little early. Seventeen will do. Marry a girl while she's in the
gristle, and you can shape her bones for her. Splendid creature without
her trimmings. Wants training. Must learn to dance, and sing something
besides psalm-tunes."
Mr. Bradshaw began humming the hymn, "When I can read my title clear,"
adding some variations of his own. "That 's the solo for my prima
donna!"
In the mean time Myrtle seemed to be showing some new developments. One
would have said that the instincts of the coquette, or at least of the
city belle, were coming uppermost in her nature. Her little nervous
attack passed away, and she gained strength and beauty every day. She
was becoming conscious of her gifts of fascination, and seemed to please
herself with the homage of her rustic admirers. Why was it that no one
of them had the look and bearing of that young man she had seen but a
moment the other evening? To think that he should have taken up with
such a weakling as Susan Posey! She sighed, and not so much thought as
felt how kind it would have been in Heaven to have made her such a man.
But the image of the delicate blonde stood between her and all serious
thought of Clement Lindsay. She saw the wedding in the distance, and
very foolishly thought to herself that she could not and would not go to
it.
But Clement Lindsay was gone, and she must content herself with such
worshippers as the village afforded. Murray Bradshaw was surprised and
confounded at the easy way in which she received his compliments, and
played with his advances, after the fashion of the trained ball-room
belles, who know how to be almost caressing in manner, and yet are really
as far off from the deluded victim of their suavities as the topmost
statue of the Milan cathedral from the peasant that kneels on its floor.
He admired her all the more for this, and yet he saw that she would be a
harder prize to win than he had once thought. If he made up his mind
that he would have her, he must go armed with all implements, from the
red hackle to the harpoon.
The change which surprised Murray Bradshaw could not fail to be noticed
by all those about her. Miss Silence had long ago come to pantomime,
rolling up of eyes, clasping of hands, making of sad mouths, and the
rest,--but left her to her own way, as already the property of that great
firm of World & Co. which drives such sharp bargains for young souls with
the better angels. Cynthia studied her for her own purposes, but had
never gained her confidence. The Irish servant saw that some change had
come over her, and thought of the great ladies she had sometimes looked
upon in the old country. They all had a kind of superstitious feeling
about Myrtle's bracelet, of which she had told them the story, but which
Kitty half believed was put in the drawer by the fairies, who brought her
ribbons and partridge feathers, and other slight adornments with which
she contrived to set off her simple costume, so as to produce those
effects which an eye for color and cunning fingers can bring out of
almost nothing.
Gifted Hopkins was now in a sad, vacillating condition, between the two
great attractions to which he was exposed. Myrtle looked so immensely
handsome ere Sunday when he saw her going to church, not to meeting, for
she world not go, except when she knew Father Pemberton was going to be
the preacher, that the young poet was on the point of going down on his
knees to her, and telling her that his heart was hers and hers alone.
But he suddenly remembered that he had on his best trousers, and the idea
of carrying the marks of his devotion in the shape of two dusty
impressions on his most valued article of apparel turned the scale
against the demonstration. It happened the next morning, that Susan
Posey wore the most becoming ribbon she had displayed for a long time,
and Gifted was so taken with her pretty looks that he might very probably
have made the same speech to her that he had been on the point of making
to Myrtle the day before, but that he remembered her plighted affections,
and thought what he should have to say for himself when Clement Lindsay,
in a frenzy of rage and jealousy, stood before him, probably armed with
as many deadly instruments as a lawyer mentions by name in an indictment
for murder.
Cyprian Eveleth looked very differently on the new manifestations Myrtle
was making of her tastes and inclinations. He had always felt dazzled,
as well as attracted, by her; but now there was something in her
expression and manner which made him feel still more strongly that they
were intended for different spheres of life. He could not but own that
she was born for a brilliant destiny,--that no ball-room would throw a
light from its chandeliers too strong for her,--that no circle would be
too brilliant for her to illuminate by her presence. Love does not
thrive without hope, and Cyprian was beginning to see that it was idle in
him to think of folding these wide wings of Myrtle's so that they would
be shut up in any cage he could ever offer her. He began to doubt
whether, after all, he might not find a meeker and humbler nature better
adapted to his own. And so it happened that one evening after the three
girls, Olive, Myrtle, and Bathsheba, had been together at the Parsonage,
and Cyprian, availing himself of a brother's privilege, had joined them,
he found he had been talking most of the evening with the gentle girl
whose voice had grown so soft and sweet, during her long ministry in the
sick-chamber, that it seemed to him more like music than speech. It
would not be fair to say that Myrtle was piqued to see that Cyprian was
devoting himself to Bathsheba. Her ambition was already reaching beyond
her little village circle, and she had an inward sense that Cyprian found
a form of sympathy in the minister's simple-minded daughter which he
could not ask from a young woman of her own aspirations.
Such was the state of affairs when Master Byles Gridley was one morning
surprised by an early call from Myrtle. He had a volume of Walton's
Polyglot open before him, and was reading Job in the original, when she
entered.
"Why, bless me, is that my young friend Miss Myrtle Hazard?" he
exclaimed. "I might call you Keren-Happuch, which is Hebrew for Child of
Beauty, and not be very far out of the way, Job's youngest daughter, my
dear. And what brings my young friend out in such good season this
morning? Nothing going wrong up at our ancient mansion, The Poplars, I
trust?"
"I want to talk with you, dear Master Gridley," she answered. She looked
as if she did not know just how to begin.
"Anything that interests you, Myrtle, interests me. I think you have
some project in that young head of yours, my child. Let us have it, in
all its dimensions, length, breadth, and thickness. I think I can guess,
Myrtle, that we have a little plan of some kind or other. We don't visit
Papa Job quite so early as this without some special cause,--do we, Miss
Keren-Happuch?"
"I want to go to the city--to school," Myrtle said, with the directness
which belonged to her nature.
"That is precisely what I want you to do myself, Miss Myrtle Hazard. I
don't like to lose you from the village, but I think we must spare you
for a while."
"You're the best and dearest man that ever lived. What could have made
you think of such a thing for me, Mr. Gridley?"
"Because you are ignorant, my child,--partly I want to see you fitted to
take a look at the world without feeling like a little country miss. Has
your aunt Silence promised to bear your expenses while you are in the
city? It will cost a good deal of money."
"I have not said a word to her about it. I am sure I don't know what she
would say. But I have some money, Mr. Gridley."
She showed him a purse with gold, telling him how she came by it. "There
is some silver besides. Will it be enough?"
"No, no, my child, we must not meddle with that. Your aunt will let me
put it in the bank for you, I think, where it will be safe. But that
shall not make any difference. I have got a little money lying idle,
which you may just as well have the use of as not. You can pay it back
perhaps some time or other; if you did not, it would not make much
difference. I am pretty much alone in the world, and except a book now
and then--Aut liberos aut libros, as our valiant heretic has it,--you
ought to know a little Latin, Myrtle, but never mind--I have not much
occasion for money. You shall go to the best school that any of our
cities can offer, Myrtle, and you shall stay there until we agree that
you are fitted to come back to us an ornament to Oxbow Village, and to
larger places than this if you are called there. We have had some talk
about it, your aunt Silence and I, and it is all settled. Your aunt does
not feel very rich just now, or perhaps she would do more for you. She
has many pious and poor friends, and it keeps her funds low. Never mind,
my child, we will have it all arranged for you, and you shall begin the
year 1860 in Madam Delacoste's institution for young ladies. Too many
rich girls and fashionable ones there, I fear, but you must see some of
all kinds, and there are very good instructors in the school,--I know
one,--he was a college boy with me,--and you will find pleasant and good
companions there, so he tells me; only don't be in a hurry to choose your
friends, for the least desirable young persons are very apt to cluster
about a new-comer."
Myrtle was bewildered with the suddenness of the prospect thus held out
to her. It is a wonder that she did not bestow an embrace upon the
worthy old master. Perhaps she had too much tact. It is a pretty way
enough of telling one that he belongs to a past generation, but it does
tell him that not over-pleasing fact. Like the title of Emeritus
Professor, it is a tribute to be accepted, hardly to be longed for.
When the curtain rises again, it will show Miss Hazard in a new
character, and surrounded by a new world.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MYRTLE HAZARD AT THE CITY SCHOOL.
Mr. Bradshaw was obliged to leave town for a week or two on business
connected with the great land-claim. On his return, feeling in pretty
good spirits, as the prospects looked favorable, he went to make a call
at The Poplars. He asked first for Miss Hazard.
"Bliss your soul, Mr. Bridshaw," answered Mistress Kitty Fagan, "she's
been gahn nigh a wake. It's to the city, to the big school, they've sint
her."
This announcement seemed to make a deep impression on Murray Bradshaw,
for his feelings found utterance in one of the most energetic forms of
language to which ears polite or impolite are accustomed. He next asked
for Miss Silence, who soon presented herself. Mr. Bradshaw asked, in a
rather excited way, "Is it possible, Miss Withers, that your niece has
quitted you to go to a city school?"
Miss Silence answered, with her chief--mourner expression, and her
death-chamber tone: "Yes, she has left us for a season. I trust it may
not be her destruction. I had hoped in former years that she would
become a missionary, but I have given up all expectation of that now.
Two whole years, from the age of four to that of six, I had prevailed
upon her to give up sugar,--the money so saved to go to a graduate of our
institution--who was afterwards----he labored among the
cannibal-islanders. I thought she seemed to take pleasure in this small
act of self-denial, but I have since suspected that Kitty gave her secret
lumps. It was by Mr. Gridley's advice that she went, and by his
pecuniary assistance. What could I do? She was bent on going, and I was
afraid she would have fits, or do something dreadful, if I did not let
her have her way. I am afraid she will come back to us spoiled. She has
seemed so fond of dress lately, and once she spoke of learning--yes, Mr.
Bradshaw, of learning to--dance! I wept when I heard of it. Yes, I
wept."
That was such a tremendous thing to think of, and especially to speak of
in Mr. Bradshaw's presence, for the most pathetic image in the world to
many women is that of themselves in tears,--that it brought a return of
the same overflow, which served as a substitute for conversation until
Miss Badlam entered the apartment.
Miss Cynthia followed the same general course of remark. They could not
help Myrtle's going if they tried. She had always maintained that, if
they had only once broke her will when she was little, they would have
kept the upper hand of her; but her will never was broke. They came
pretty near it once, but the child would n't give in.
Miss Cynthia went to the door with Mr. Bradshaw, and the conversation
immediately became short and informal.
"Demonish pretty business! All up for a year or more,--hey?"
Don't blame me,--I couldn't stop her."
"Give me her address,--I 'll write to her. Any young men teach in the
school?"
"Can't tell you. She'll write to Olive and Bathsheba, and I'll find out
all about it."
Murray Bradshaw went home and wrote a long letter to Mrs. Clymer Ketchum,
of 24 Carat Place, containing many interesting remarks and inquiries,
some of the latter relating to Madam Delacoste's institution for the
education of young ladies.
While this was going on at Oxbow Village, Myrtle was establishing herself
at the rather fashionable school to which Mr. Gridley had recommended
her. Mrs. or Madam Delacoste's boarding-school had a name which on the
whole it deserved pretty well. She had some very good instructors for
girls who wished to get up useful knowledge in case they might marry
professors or ministers. They had a chance to learn music, dancing,
drawing, and the way of behaving in company. There was a chance, too, to
pick up available acquaintances, for many rich people sent their
daughters to the school, and it was something to have been bred in their
company.
There was the usual division of the scholars into a first and second set,
according to the social position, mainly depending upon the fortune, of
the families to which they belonged. The wholesale dealer's daughter
very naturally considered herself as belonging to a different order from
the retail dealer's daughter. The keeper of a great hotel and the editor
of a widely circulated newspaper were considered as ranking with the
wholesale dealers, and their daughters belonged also to the untitled
nobility which has the dollar for its armorial bearing. The second set
had most of the good scholars, and some of the prettiest girls; but
nobody knew anything about their families, who lived off the great
streets and avenues, or vegetated in country towns.
Myrtle Hazard's advent made something like a sensation. They did not
know exactly what to make of her. Hazard? Hazard? No great firm of
that name. No leading hotel kept by any Hazard, was there? No newspaper
of note edited by anybody called Hazard, was there? Came from where?
Oxbow Village. Oh, rural district. Yes.--Still they could not help
owning that she was handsome, a concession which of course had to be made
with reservations.
"Don't you think she's vuiry good-lookin'?" said a Boston girl to a New
York girl. "I think she's real pooty."
"I dew, indeed. I didn't think she was haaf so handsome the feeest time
I saw her," answered the New York girl.
"What a pity she had n't been bawn in Bawston!"
"Yes, and moved very young to Ne Yock!"
"And married a sarsaparilla man, and lived in Fiff Avenoo, and moved in
the fust society."
"Better dew that than be strong-mainded, and dew your own cook'n, and
live in your own kitch'n."
"Don't forgit to send your card when you are Mrs. Old Dr. Jacob!"
"Indeed I shaan't. What's the name of the alley, and which bell?" The
New York girl took out a memorandum-book as if to put it down.
"Had n't you better let me write it for you, dear?" said the Boston girl.
"It is as well to have it legible, you know."
"Take it," said the New York girl. "There 's tew York shill'ns in it
when I hand it to you."
"Your whole quarter's allowance, I bullieve,--ain't it?" said the Boston
girl.
"Elegant manners, correct deportment, and propriety of language will be
strictly attended to in this institution. The most correct standards of
pronunciation will be inculcated by precept and example. It will be the
special aim of the teachers to educate their pupils out of all
provincialisms, so that they may be recognized as well-bred English
scholars wherever the language is spoken in its purity."--Extract from
the Prospectus of Madam Delacoste's Boarding-school.
Myrtle Hazard was a puzzle to all the girls. Striking, they all agreed,
but then the criticisms began. Many of the girls chattered a little
broken French, and one of them, Miss Euphrosyne De Lacy, had been half
educated in Paris, so that she had all the phrases which are to social
operators what his cutting instruments are to the surgeon. Her face she
allowed was handsome; but her style, according to this oracle, was a
little bourgeoise, and her air not exactly comme il faut. More
specifically, she was guilty of contours fortement prononces,--corsage de
paysanne,--quelque chose de sauvage, etc., etc. This girl prided herself
on her figure.
Miss Bella Pool, (La Belle Poule as the demi-Parisian girl had christened
her,) the beauty of the school, did not think so much of Myrtle's face,
but considered her figure as better than the De Lacy girl's.
The two sets, first and second, fought over her as the Greeks and Trojans
over a dead hero, or the Yale College societies over a live freshman.
She was nobody by her connections, it is true, so far as they could find
out, but then, on the other hand, she had the walk of a queen, and she
looked as if a few stylish dresses and a season or two would make her a
belle of the first water. She had that air of indifference to their
little looks and whispered comments which is surest to disarm all the
critics of a small tattling community. On the other hand, she came to
this school to learn, and not to play; and the modest and more plainly
dressed girls, whose fathers did not sell by the cargo, or keep
victualling establishments for some hundreds of people, considered her as
rather in sympathy with them than with the daughters of the
rough-and-tumble millionnaires who were grappling and rolling over each
other in the golden dust of the great city markets.
She did not mean to belong exclusively to either of their sets. She came
with that sense of manifold deficiencies, and eager ambition to supply
them, which carries any learner upward, as if on wings, over the heads of
the mechanical plodders and the indifferent routinists. She learned,
therefore, in a way to surprise the experienced instructors. Her
somewhat rude sketching soon began to show something of the artist's
touch. Her voice, which had only been taught to warble the simplest
melodies, after a little training began to show its force and sweetness
and flexibility in the airs that enchant drawing-room audiences. She
caught with great readiness the manner of the easiest girls,
unconsciously, for she inherited old social instincts which became nature
with the briefest exercise. Not much license of dress was allowed in the
educational establishment of Madam Delacoste, but every girl had an
opportunity to show her taste within the conventional limits prescribed.
And Myrtle soon began to challenge remark by a certain air she contrived
to give her dresses, and the skill with which she blended their colors.
"Tell you what, girls," said Miss Berengaria Topping, female
representative of the great dynasty that ruled over the world-famous
Planet Hotel, "she's got style, lots of it. I call her perfectly
splendid, when she's got up in her swell clothes. That oriole's wing she
wears in her bonnet makes her look gorgeous, she'll be a stunning
Pocahontas for the next tableau."
Miss Rose Bugbee, whose family opulence grew out of the only merchantable
article a Hebrew is never known to seek profit from, thought she could be
made presentable in the first circles if taken in hand in good season.
So it came about that, before many weeks had passed over her as a scholar
in the great educational establishment, she might be considered as on the
whole the most popular girl in the whole bevy of them. The studious ones
admired her for her facility of learning, and her extraordinary appetite
for every form of instruction, and the showy girls, who were only
enduring school as the purgatory that opened into the celestial world of
society, recognized in her a very handsome young person, who would be
like to make a sensation sooner or later.
There were, however, it must be confessed, a few who considered
themselves the thickest of the cream of the school-girls, who submitted
her to a more trying ordeal than any she had yet passed.
"How many horses does your papa keep?" asked Miss Florence Smythe. "We
keep nine, and a pony for Edgar."
Myrtle had to explain that she had no papa, and that they did not keep
any horses. Thereupon Miss Florence Smythe lost her desire to form an
acquaintance, and wrote home to her mother (who was an ex-bonnet-maker)
that the school was getting common, she was afraid,--they were letting in
persons one knew nothing about.
Miss Clare Browne had a similar curiosity about the amount of plate used
in the household from which Myrtle came. Her father had just bought a
complete silver service. Myrtle had to own that they used a good deal of
china at her own home,--old china, which had been a hundred years in the
family, some of it.
"A hundred years old!" exclaimed Miss Clare Browne. "What queer-looking
stuff it must be! Why, everything in our house is just as new and
bright! Papaa had all our pictures painted on purpose for us. Have you
got any handsome pictures in your house?"
"We have a good many portraits of members of the family," she said, "some
of them older than the china."
"How very very odd! What do the dear old things look like?"
"One was a great beauty in her time."
"How jolly!"
"Another was a young woman who was put to death for her religion,--burned
to ashes at the stake in Queen Mary's time."
"How very very wicked! It was n't nice a bit, was it? Ain't you telling
me stories? Was that a hundred years ago?--But you 've got some new
pictures and things, have n't you? Who furnished your parlors?"
"My great-grandfather, or his father, I believe."
"Stuff and nonsense. I don't believe it. What color are your
carriage-horses?"
"Our woman, Kitty Fagan, told somebody once we didn't keep any horse but
a cow."
"Not keep any horses! Do for pity's sake let me look at your feet."
Myrtle put out as neat a little foot as a shoemaker ever fitted with a
pair of number two. What she would have been tempted to do with it, if
she had been a boy, we will not stop to guess. After all, the questions
amused her quite as much as the answers instructed Miss Clara Browne. Of
that young lady's ancestral claims to distinction there is no need of
discoursing. Her "papaa" commonly said sir in talking with a gentleman,
and her "mammaa" would once in a while forget, and go down the area steps
instead of entering at the proper door; but they lived behind a brown
stone front, which veneers everybody's antecedents with a facing of
respectability.
Miss Clara Browne wrote home to her mother in the same terms as Miss
Florence Smythe,--that the school was getting dreadful common, and they
were letting in very queer folks.
Still another trial awaited Myrtle, and one which not one girl in a
thousand would have been so unprepared to meet. She knew absolutely
nothing of certain things with which the vast majority of young persons
were quite familiar.
There were literary young ladies, who had read everything of Dickens and
Thackeray, and something at least of Sir Walter, and occasionally,
perhaps, a French novel, which they had better have let alone. One of
the talking young ladies of this set began upon Myrtle one day.
"Oh, is n't 'Pickwick' nice?" she asked.
"I don't know," Myrtle replied; "I never tasted any."
The girl stared at her as if she were a crazy creature. "Tasted any!
Why, I mean the 'Pickwick Papers,' Dickens's story. Don't you think
they're nice."
Poor Myrtle had to confess that she had never read them, and did n't know
anything about them.
"What! did you never read any novels?" said the young lady.
"Oh, to be sure I have," said Myrtle, blushing as she thought of the
great trunk and its contents. "I have read 'Caleb Williams,' and
'Evelina,' and 'Tristram Shandy'" (naughty girl!), "and the 'Castle of
Otranto,' and the 'Mysteries of Udolpho,' and the 'Vicar of Wakefield,'
and 'Don Quixote'--"
The young lady burst out laughing. "Stop! stop! for mercy's sake," she
cried. "You must be somebody that's been dead and buried and come back
to life again. Why you're Rip Van Winkle in a petticoat! You ought to
powder your hair and wear patches."
"We've got the oddest girl here," this young lady wrote home. "She has
n't read any book that is n't a thousand years old. One of the girls
says she wears a trilobite for a breastpin; some horrid old stone, I
believe that is, that was a bug ever so long ago. Her name, she says, is
Myrtle Hazard, but I call her Rip Van Myrtle."
Notwithstanding the quiet life which these young girls were compelled to
lead, they did once in a while have their gatherings, at which a few
young gentlemen were admitted. One of these took place about a month
after Myrtle had joined the school. The girls were all in their best,
and by and by they were to have a tableau. Myrtle came out in all her
force. She dressed herself as nearly as she dared like the handsome
woman of the past generation whom she resembled. The very spirit of the
dead beauty seemed to animate every feature and every movement of the
young girl whose position in the school was assured from that moment.
She had a good solid foundation to build upon in the jealousy of two or
three of the leading girls of the style of pretensions illustrated by
some of their talk which has been given. There is no possible success
without some opposition as a fulcrum: force is always aggressive, and
crowds something or other, if it does not hit or trample on it.
The cruelest cut of all was the remark attributed to Mr. Livingston
Jerkins, who was what the opposition girls just referred to called the
great "swell" among the privileged young gentlemen who were present at
the gathering.
"Rip Van Myrtle, you call that handsome girl, do you, Miss Clara? By
Jove, she's the stylishest of the whole lot, to say nothing of being a
first-class beauty. Of course you know I except one, Miss Clara. If a
girl can go to sleep and wake up after twenty years looking like that, I
know a good many who had better begin their nap without waiting. If I
were Florence Smythe, I'd try it, and begin now,--eh, Clara?"
Miss Browne felt the praise of Myrtle to be slightly alleviated by the
depreciation of Miss Smythe, who had long been a rival of her own. A
little later in the evening Miss Smythe enjoyed almost precisely the same
sensation, produced in a very economical way by Mr. Livingston Jenkins's
repeating pretty nearly the same sentiments to her, only with a change in
the arrangement of the proper names. The two young ladies were left
feeling comparatively comfortable with regard to each other, each
intending to repeat Mr. Livingston Jenkins's remark about her friend to
such of her other friends as enjoyed clever sayings, but not at all
comfortable with reference to Myrtle Hazard, who was evidently considered
by the leading "swell" of their circle as the most noticeable personage
of the assembly. The individual exception in each case did very well as
a matter of politeness, but they knew well enough what he meant.
It seemed to Myrtle Hazard, that evening, that she felt the bracelet on
her wrist glow with a strange, unaccustomed warmth. It was as if it had
just been unclasped from the arm of a yohng woman full of red blood and
tingling all over with swift nerve-currents. Life had never looked to
her as it did that evening. It was the swan's first breasting the
water,--bred on the desert sand, with vague dreams of lake and river, and
strange longings as the mirage came and dissolved, and at length afloat
upon the sparkling wave. She felt as if she had for the first time found
her destiny. It was to please, and so to command, to rule with gentle
sway in virtue of the royal gift of beauty,--to enchant with the
commonest exercise of speech, through the rare quality of a voice which
could not help being always gracious and winning, of a manner which came
to her as an inheritance of which she had just found the title. She read
in the eyes of all that she was more than any other the centre of
admiration. Blame her who may, the world was a very splendid vision as
it opened before her eyes in its long vista of pleasures and of triumphs.
How different the light of these bright saloons from the glimmer of the
dim chamber at The Poplars! Silence Withers was at that very moment
looking at the portraits of Anne Holyoake and of Judith Pride. "The old
picture seems to me to be fading faster than ever," she was thinking.
But when she held her lamp before the other, it seemed to her that the
picture never was so fresh before, and that the proud smile upon its lips
was more full of conscious triumph than she remembered it. A reflex,
doubtless, of her own thoughts, for she believed that the martyr was
weeping even in heaven over her lost descendant, and that the beauty,
changed to the nature of the malignant spiritual company with which she
had long consorted in the under-world, was pleasing herself with the
thought that Myrtle was in due time to bring her news from the Satanic
province overhead, where she herself had so long indulged in the
profligacy of embonpoint and loveliness.
The evening at the school-party was to terminate with some tableaux. The
girl who had suggested that Myrtle would look "stunning" or "gorgeous" or
"jolly," or whatever the expression was, as Pocahontas, was not far out
of the way, and it was so evident to the managing heads that she would
make a fine appearance in that character, that the "Rescue of Captain
John Smith" was specially got up to show her off.
Myrtle had sufficient reason to believe that there was a hint of Indian
blood in her veins. It was one of those family legends which some of the
members are a little proud of, and others are willing to leave
uninvestigated. But with Myrtle it was a fixed belief that she felt
perfectly distinct currents of her ancestral blood at intervals, and she
had sometimes thought there were instincts and vague recollections which
must have come from the old warriors and hunters and their dusky brides.
The Indians who visited the neighborhood recognized something of their
own race in her dark eyes, as the reader may remember they told the
persons who were searching after her. It had almost frightened her
sometimes to find how like a wild creature she felt when alone in the
woods. Her senses had much of that delicacy for which the red people are
noted, and she often thought she could follow the trail of an enemy, if
she wished to track one through the forest, as unerringly as if she were
a Pequot or a Mohegan.
It was a strange feeling that came over Myrtle, as they dressed her for
the part she was to take. Had she never worn that painted robe before?
Was it the first time that these strings of wampum had ever rattled upon
her neck and arms? And could it be that the plume of eagle's feathers
with which they crowned her dark, fast-lengthening locks had never
shadowed her forehead until now? She felt herself carried back into the
dim ages when the wilderness was yet untrodden save by the feet of its
native lords. Think of her wild fancy as we may, she felt as if that
dusky woman of her midnight vision on the river were breathing for one
hour through her lips. If this belief had lasted, it is plain enough
where it would have carried her. But it came into her imagination and
vivifying consciousness with the putting on of her unwonted costume, and
might well leave her when she put it off. It is not for us, who tell
only what happened, to solve these mysteries of the seeming admission of
unhoused souls into the fleshly tenements belonging to air-breathing
personalities. A very little more, and from that evening forward the
question would have been treated in full in all the works on medical
jurisprudence published throughout the limits of Christendom. The story
must be told or we should not be honest with the reader.
TABLEAU 1. Captain John Smith (Miss Euphrosyne de Lacy) was to be
represented prostrate and bound, ready for execution; Powhatan (Miss
Florence Smythe) sitting upon a log; savages with clubs (Misses Clara
Browne, A. Van Boodle, E. Van Boodle, Heister, Booster, etc., etc.)
standing around; Pocahontas holding the knife in her hand, ready to cut
the cords with which Captain John Smith is bound.--Curtain.
TABLEAU 2. Captain John Smith released and kneeling before Pocahontas,
whose hand is extended in the act of raising him and presenting him to
her father. Savages in various attitudes of surprise. Clubs fallen from
their hands. Strontian flame to be kindled.--Curtain.
This was a portion of the programme for the evening, as arranged behind
the scenes. The first part went off with wonderful eclat, and at its
close there were loud cries for Pocahontas. She appeared for a moment.
Bouquets were flung to her; and a wreath, which one of the young ladies
had expected for herself in another part, was tossed upon the stage, and
laid at her feet. The curtain fell.
"Put the wreath on her for the next tableau," some of them whispered,
just as the curtain was going to rise, and one of the girls hastened to
place it upon her head.
The disappointed young lady could not endure it, and, in a spasm of
jealous passion, sprang at Myrtle, snatched it from her head, and
trampled it under her feet at the very instant the curtain was rising.
With a cry which some said had the blood-chilling tone of an Indian's
battle-shriek, Myrtle caught the knife up, and raised her arm against the
girl who had thus rudely assailed her. The girl sank to the ground,
covering her eyes in her terror. Myrtle, with her arm still lifted, and
the blade glistening in her hand, stood over her, rigid as if she had
been suddenly changed to stone. Many of those looking on thought all
this was a part of the show, and were thrilled with the wonderful acting.
Before those immediately around her had had time to recover from the
palsy of their fright Myrtle had flung the knife away from her, and was
kneeling, her head bowed and her hands crossed upon her breast. The
audience went into a rapture of applause as the curtain came suddenly
down; but Myrtle had forgotten all but the dread peril she had just
passed, and was thanking God that his angel--her own protecting spirit,
as it seemed to her had stayed the arm which a passion such as her nature
had never known, such as she believed was alien to her truest self, had
lifted with deadliest purpose. She alone knew how extreme the danger had
been. "She meant to scare her,--that 's all," they said. But Myrtle tore
the eagle's feathers from her hair, and stripped off her colored beads,
and threw off her painted robe. The metempsychosis was far too real for
her to let her wear the semblance of the savage from whom, as she
believed, had come the lawless impulse at the thought of which her soul
recoiled in horror.
"Pocahontas has got a horrid headache," the managing young ladies gave it
out, "and can't come to time for the last tableau." So this all passed
over, not only without loss of credit to Myrtle, but with no small
addition to her local fame,--for it must have been acting; "and was n't
it stunning to see her with that knife, looking as if she was going to
stab Bells, or to scalp her, or something?"
As Master Gridley had predicted, and as is the case commonly with
new-comers at colleges and schools, Myrtle had come first in contact with
those who were least agreeable to meet. The low-bred youth who amuse
themselves with scurvy tricks on freshmen, and the vulgar girls who try
to show off their gentility to those whom they think less important than
themselves, are exceptions in every institution; but they make themselves
odiously prominent before the quiet and modest young people have had time
to gain the new scholar's confidence. Myrtle found friends in due time,
some of them daughters of rich people, some poor girls, who came with the
same sincerity of purpose as herself. But not one was her match in the
facility of acquiring knowledge. Not one promised to make such a mark in
society, if she found an opening into its loftier circles. She was by no
means ignorant of her natural gifts, and she cultivated them with the
ambition which would not let her rest.
During her stay at the great school, she made but one visit to Oxbow
Village. She did not try to startle the good people with her
accomplishments, but they were surprised at the change which had taken
place in her. Her dress was hardly more showy, for she was but a
school-girl, but it fitted her more gracefully. She had gained a
softness of expression, and an ease in conversation, which produced their
effect on all with whom she came in contact. Her aunt's voice lost
something of its plaintiveness in talking with her. Miss Cynthia
listened with involuntary interest to her stories of school and
school-mates. Master Byles Gridley accepted her as the great success of
his life, and determined to make her his chief heiress, if there was any
occasion for so doing. Cyprian told Bathsheba that Myrtle must come to
be a great lady. Gifted Hopkins confessed to Susan Posey that he was
afraid of her, since she had been to the great city school. She knew too
much and looked too much like a queen, for a village boy to talk with.
Mr. William Murray Bradshaw tried all his fascinations upon her, but she
parried compliments so well, and put off all his nearer advances so
dexterously, that he could not advance beyond the region of florid
courtesy, and never got a chance, if so disposed, to risk a question
which he would not ask rashly, believing that, if Myrtle once said No,
there would be little chance of her ever saying Yes.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MUSTERING OF FORCES.
Not long after the tableau performance had made Myrtle Hazard's name
famous in the school and among the friends of the scholars, she received
the very flattering attention of a call from Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24
Carat Place. This was in consequence of a suggestion from Mr. Livingston
Jenkins, a particular friend of the family.
"They've got a demonish splendid school-girl over there," he said to that
lady, "made the stunningest looking Pocahontas at the show there the
other day. Demonish plucky looking filly as ever you saw. Had a row with
another girl,--gave the war-whoop, and went at her with a knife.
Festive,--hey? Say she only meant to scare her,--looked as if she meant
to stick her, anyhow. Splendid style. Why can't you go over to the shop
and make 'em trot her out?"
The lady promised Mr. Livingston Jenkins that she certainly would, just
as soon as she could find a moment's leisure,--which, as she had nothing
in the world to do, was not likely to be very soon. Myrtle in the mean
time was busy with her studies, little dreaming what an extraordinary
honor was awaiting her.
That rare accident in the lives of people who have nothing to do, a
leisure morning, did at last occur. An elegant carriage, with a coachman
in a wonderful cape, seated on a box lofty as a throne, and wearing a
hat-band as brilliant as a coronet, stopped at the portal of Madam
Delacoste's establishment. A card was sent in bearing the open sesame
of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, the great lady of 24 Carat Place. Miss Myrtle
Hazard was summoned as a matter of course, and the fashionable woman and
the young girl sat half an hour together in lively conversation.
Myrtle was fascinated by her visitor, who had that flattering manner
which, to those not experienced in the world's ways, seems to imply
unfathomable depths of disinterested devotion. Then it was so delightful
to look upon a perfectly appointed woman,--one who was as artistically
composed as a poem or an opera,--in whose costume a kind of various
rhythm undulated in one fluent harmony, from the spray that nodded on her
bonnet to the rosette that blossomed on her sandal. As for the lady, she
was captivated with Myrtle. There is nothing that your fashionable
woman, who has ground and polished her own spark of life into as many and
as glittering social facets as it will bear, has a greater passion for
than a large rough diamond, which knows nothing of the sea of light it
imprisons, and which it will be her pride to have cut into a brilliant
under her own eye, and to show the world for its admiration and her own
reflected glory. Mrs. Clymer Ketchum had taken the entire inventory of
Myrtle's natural endowments before the interview was over. She had no
marriageable children, and she was thinking what a killing bait Myrtle
would be at one of her stylish parties.
She soon got another letter from Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, which
explained the interest he had taken in Madam Delacoste's school,--all
which she knew pretty nearly beforehand, for she had found out a good
part of Myrtle's history in the half-hour they had spent in company.
"I had a particular reason for my inquiries about the school," he wrote.
"There is a young girl there I take an interest in. She is handsome and
interesting; and--though it is a shame to mention such a thing has
possibilities in the way of fortune not to be undervalued. Why can't you
make her acquaintance and be civil to her? A country girl, but fine old
stock, and will make a figure some time or other, I tell you. Myrtle
Hazard,--that's her name. A mere schoolgirl. Don't be malicious and
badger me about her, but be polite to her. Some of these country girls
have got 'blue blood' in them, let me tell you, and show it plain
enough."
("In huckleberry season!") said Mrs. Ciymer Ketchum, in a
parenthesis,--and went on reading.
"Don't think I'm one of your love-in-a-cottage sort, to have my head
turned by a village beauty. I've got a career before me, Mrs. K., and I
know it. But this is one of my pets, and I want you to keep an eye on
her. Perhaps when she leaves school you wouldn't mind asking her to come
and stay with you a little while. Possibly I may come and see how she is
getting on if you do,--won't that tempt you, Mrs. C. K.?"
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum wrote back to her relative how she had already made
the young lady's acquaintance.
"Livingston Jerkins (you remember him) picked her out of the whole lot of
girls as the 'prettiest filly in the stable.' That's his horrid way of
talking. But your young milkmaid is really charming, and will come into
form like a Derby three-year-old. There, now, I've caught that odious
creature's horse-talk, myself. You're dead in love with this girl,
Murray, you know you are.
"After all, I don't know but you're right. You would make a good country
lawyer enough, I don't doubt. I used to think you had your ambitions,
but never mind. If you choose to risk yourself on 'possibilities,' it is
not my affair, and she's a beauty, there's no mistake about that.
"There are some desirable partis at the school with your dulcinea. There
's Rose Bugbee. That last name is a good one to be married from. Rose
is a nice girl,--there are only two of them. The estate will cut up like
one of the animals it was made out of, you know,--the sandwich-quadruped.
Then there 's Berengaria. Old Topping owns the Planet Hotel among other
things,--so big, they say, there's always a bell ringing from somebody's
room day and night the year round. Only child--unit and six
ciphers carries diamonds loose in her pocket--that's the story
--good-looking--lively--a little slangy called Livingston Jerkins
'Living Jingo' to his face one day. I want you to see my lot before you
do anything serious. You owe something to the family, Mr. William Murray
Bradshaw! But you must suit yourself, after all: if you are contented
with a humble position in life, it is nobody's business that I know of.
Only I know what life is, Murray B. Getting married is jumping
overboard, any way you look at it, and if you must save some woman from
drowning an old maid, try to find one with a cork jacket, or she 'll
carry you down with her."
Murray Bradshaw was calculating enough, but he shook his head over this
letter. It was too demonish cold-blooded for him, he said to himself.
(Men cannot pardon women for saying aloud what they do not hesitate to
think in silence themselves.) Never mind,--he must have Mrs. Clymer
Ketchum's house and influence for his own purposes. Myrtle Hazard must
become her guest, and then if circumstances were favorable, he was
certain obtaining her aid in his project.
The opportunity to invite Myrtle to the great mansion presented itself
unexpectedly. Early in the spring of 1861 there were some cases of
sickness in Madam Delacoste's establishment, which led to closing the
school for a while. Mrs. Clymer Ketchum took advantage of the dispersion
of the scholars to ask Myrtle to come and spend some weeks with her.
There were reasons why this was more agreeable to the young girl than
returning to Oxbow Village, and she very gladly accepted the invitation.
It was very remarkable that a man living as Master Byles Gridley had
lived for so long a time should all at once display such liberality as he
showed to a young woman who had no claim upon him, except that he had
rescued her from the consequences of her own imprudence and warned her
against impending dangers. Perhaps he cared more for her than if the
obligation had been the other way,--students of human nature say it is
commonly so. At any rate, either he had ampler resources than it was
commonly supposed, or he was imprudently giving way to his generous
impulses, or he thought he was making advances which would in due time be
returned to him. Whatever the reason was, he furnished her with means,
not only for her necessary expenses, but sufficient to afford her many of
the elegances which she would be like to want in the fashionable society
with which she was for a short time to mingle.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was so well pleased with the young lady she was
entertaining, that she thought it worth while to give a party while
Myrtle was staying with her. She had her jealousies and rivalries, as
women of the world will, sometimes, and these may have had their share in
leading her to take the trouble a large party involved. She was tired of
the airs of Mrs. Pinnikle, who was of the great Apex family, and her
terribly accomplished daughter Rhadamartha, and wanted to crush the young
lady, and jaundice her mother, with a girl twice as brilliant and ten
times handsomer. She was very willing, also, to take the nonsense out of
the Capsheaf girls, who thought themselves the most stylish personages of
their city world, and would bite their lips well to see themselves
distanced by a country miss.
In the mean time circumstances were promising to bring into Myrtle's
neighborhood several of her old friends and admirers. Mrs. Clymer
Ketchum had written to Murray Bradshaw that she had asked his pretty
milkmaid to come and stay awhile with her, but he had been away on
business, and only arrived in the city a day or two before the party. But
other young fellows had found out the attractions of the girl who was
"hanging out at the Clymer Ketchum concern," and callers were plenty,
reducing tete-a-tetes in a corresponding ratio. He did get one
opportunity, however, and used it well. They had so many things to talk
about in common, that she could not help finding him good company. She
might well be pleased, for he was an adept in the curious art of being
agreeable, as other people are in chess or billiards, and had made a
special study of her tastes, as a physician studies a patient's
constitution. What he wanted was to get her thoroughly interested in
himself, and to maintain her in a receptive condition until such time as
he should be ready for a final move. Any day might furnish the decisive
motive; in the mean time he wished only to hold her as against all
others.
It was well for her, perhaps, that others had flattered her into a
certain consciousness of her own value. She felt her veins full of the
same rich blood as that which had flushed the cheeks of handsome Judith
in the long summer of her triumph. Whether it was vanity, or pride, or
only the instinctive sense of inherited force and attraction, it was the
best of defences. The golden bracelet on her wrist seemed to have
brought as much protection with it as if it had been a shield over her
heart.
But far away in Oxbow Village other events were in preparation. The
"fugitive pieces" of Mr. Gifted Hopkins had now reached a number so
considerable, that, if collected and printed in large type, with plenty
of what the unpleasant printers call "fat,"--meaning thereby blank
spaces,--upon a good, substantial, not to say thick paper, they might
perhaps make a volume which would have substance enough to bear the
title, printed lengthwise along the back, "Hopkins's Poems." Such a
volume that author had in contemplation. It was to be the literary event
of the year 1861.
He could not mature such a project, one which he had been for some time
contemplating, without consulting Mr. Byles Gridley, who, though he had
not unfrequently repressed the young poet's too ardent ambition, had yet
always been kind and helpful.
Mr. Gridley was seated in his large arm-chair, indulging himself in the
perusal of a page or two of his own work before repeatedly referred to.
His eye was glistening, for it had dust rested on the following passage:
"There is infinite pathos in unsuccessful authorship. The book that
perishes unread is the deaf mute of literature. The great asylum of
Oblivion is full of such, making inaudible signs to each other in leaky
garrets and unattainable dusty upper shelves."
He shut the book, for the page grew a little dim as he finished this
elegiac sentence, and sighed to think how much more keenly he felt its
truth than when it was written,--than on that memorable morning when he
saw the advertisement in all the papers, "This day published, 'Thoughts
on the Universe.' By Byles Gridley, A. M."
At that moment he heard a knock at his door. He closed his eyelids
forcibly for ten seconds, opened them, and said cheerfully, "Come in!"
Gifted Hopkins entered. He had a collection of manuscripts in his hands
which it seemed to him would fill a vast number of pages. He did not
know that manuscript is to type what fresh dandelions are to the dish of
greens that comes to table, of which last Nurse Byloe, who considered
them very wholesome spring grazing for her patients, used to say that
they "biled down dreadful."
"I have brought the autographs of my poems, Master Gridley, to consult
you about making arrangements for publication. They have been so well
received by the public and the leading critics of this part of the State,
that I think of having them printed in a volume. I am going to the city
for that purpose. My mother has given her consent. I wish to ask you
several business questions. Shall I part with the copyright for a
downright sum of money, which I understand some prefer doing, or publish
on shares, or take a percentage on the sales? These, I believe, are the
different ways taken by authors."
Mr. Gridley was altogether too considerate to reply with the words which
would most naturally have come to his lips. He waited as if he were
gravely pondering the important questions just put to him, all the while
looking at Gifted with a tenderness which no one who had not buried one
of his soul's children could have felt for a young author trying to get
clothing for his new-born intellectual offspring.
"I think," he said presently, "you had better talk with an intelligent
and liberal publisher, and be guided by his advice. I can put you in
correspondence with such a person, and you had better trust him than me a
great deal. Why don't you send your manuscript by mail?"
"What, Mr. Gridley? Trust my poems, some of which are unpublished, to
the post-office? No, sir, I could never make up my mind to such a risk.
I mean to go to the city myself, and read them to some of the leading
publishers. I don't want to pledge myself to any one of them. I should
like to set them bidding against each other for the copyright, if I sell
it at all."
Mr. Gridley gazed upon the innocent youth with a sweet wonder in his eyes
that made him look like an angel, a little damaged in the features by
time, but full of celestial feelings.
"It will cost you something to make this trip, Gifted. Have you the
means to pay for your journey and your stay at a city hotel?"
Gifted blushed. "My mother has laid by a small sum for me," he said.
"She knows some of my poems by heart, and she wants to see them all in
print."
Master Gridley closed his eyes very firmly again, as if thinking, and
opened them as soon as the foolish film had left them. He had read many
a page of "Thoughts on the Universe" to his own old mother, long, long
years ago, and she had often listened with tears of modest pride that
Heaven had favored her with a son so full of genius.
"I 'll tell you what, Gifted," he said. "I have been thinking for a good
while that I would make a visit to the city, and if you have made up your
mind to try what you can do with the publishers, I will take you with me
as a companion. It will be a saving to you and your good mother, for I
shall bear the expenses of the expedition."
Gifted Hopkins came very near going down on his knees. He was so
overcome with gratitude that it seemed as if his very coattails wagged
with his emotion.
"Take it quietly," said Master Gridley. "Don't make a fool of yourself.
Tell your mother to have some clean shirts and things ready for you, and
we will be off day after to-morrow morning."
Gifted hastened to impart the joyful news to his mother, and to break the
fact to Susan Posey that he was about to leave them for a while, and rush
into the deliriums and dangers of the great city.
Susan smiled. Gifted hardly knew whether to be pleased with her
sympathy, or vexed that she did not take his leaving more to heart. The
smile held out bravely for about a quarter of a minute. Then there came
on a little twitching at the corners of the mouth. Then. the blue eyes
began to shine with a kind of veiled glimmer. Then the blood came up
into her cheeks with a great rush, as if the heart had sent up a herald
with a red flag from the citadel to know what was going on at the
outworks. The message that went back was of discomfiture and
capitulation. Poor Susan was overcome, and gave herself up to weeping
and sobbing.
The sight was too much for the young poet. In a wild burst of passion he
seized her hand, and pressed it to his lips, exclaiming, "Would that you
could be mine forever!" and Susan forgot all that she ought to have
remembered, and, looking half reproachfully but half tenderly through her
tears, said, in tones of infinite sweetness, "O Gifted!"
CHAPTER XXV.
THE POET AND THE PUBLISHER.
It was settled that Master Byles Gridley and Mr. Gifted Hopkins should
leave early in the morning of the day appointed, to take the nearest
train to the city. Mrs. Hopkins labored hard to get them ready, so that
they might make a genteel appearance among the great people whom they
would meet in society. She brushed up Mr. Gridley's best black suit, and
bound the cuffs of his dress-coat, which were getting a little worried.
She held his honest-looking hat to the fire, and smoothed it while it was
warm, until one would have thought it had just been ironed by the hatter
himself. She had his boots and shoes brought into a more brilliant
condition than they had ever known: if Gifted helped, it was to his
credit as much as if he had shown his gratitude by polishing off a copy
of verses in praise of his benefactor.
When she had got Mr. Gridley's encumbrances in readiness for the journey,
she devoted herself to fitting out her son Gifted. First, she had down
from the garret a capacious trunk, of solid wood, but covered with
leather, and adorned with brass-headed nails, by the cunning disposition
of which, also, the paternal initials stood out on the rounded lid, in
the most conspicuous manner. It was his father's trunk, and the first
thing that went into it, as the widow lifted the cover, and the
smothering shut-up smell struck an old chord of associations, was a
single tear-drop. How well she remembered the time when she first
unpacked it for her young husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed
their snowy plaits! O dear, dear!
But women decant their affection, sweet and sound, out of the old bottles
into the new ones,--off from the lees of the past generation, clear and
bright, into the clean vessels just made ready to receive it. Gifted
Hopkins was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She had not only the
common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she felt
that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and thought
proudly of the time when some future biographer would mention her own
humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the mother of
Hopkins.
So she took great pains to equip this brilliant but inexperienced young
man with everything he could by any possibility need during his absence.
The great trunk filled itself until it bulged with its contents like a
boa-constrictor who has swallowed his blanket. Best clothes and common
clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes, flannels and linens, socks and
collars, with handkerchiefs enough to keep the pickpockets busy for a
week, with a paper of gingerbread and some lozenges for gastralgia, and
"hot drops," and ruled paper to write letters on, and a little Bible, and
a phial with hiera picra, and another with paregoric, and another with
"camphire" for sprains and bruises,
--Gifted went forth equipped for every climate from the tropic to the
pole, and armed against every malady from Ague to Zoster. He carried
also the paternal watch, a solid silver bull's-eye, and a large
pocketbook, tied round with a long tape, and, by way of precaution,
pinned into his breast-pocket. He talked about having a pistol, in case
he were attacked by any of the ruffians who are so numerous in the city,
but Mr. Gridley told him, No! he would certainly shoot himself, and he
shouldn't think of letting him take a pistol.
They went forth, Mentor and Telemachus, at the appointed time, to dare
the perils of the railroad and the snares of the city. Mrs. Hopkins was
firm up to near the last moment, when a little quiver in her voice set
her eyes off, and her face broke up all at once, so that she had to hide
it behind her handkerchief. Susan Posey showed the truthfulness of her
character in her words to Gifted at parting. "Farewell," she said, "and
think of me sometimes while absent. My heart is another's, but my
friendship, Gifted--my friendship--"
Both were deeply affected. He took her hand and would have raised it to
his lips; but she did not forget herself, and gently withdrew it,
exclaiming, "O Gifted!" this time with a tone of tender reproach which
made him feel like a profligate. He tore himself away, and when at a
safe distance flung her a kiss, which she rewarded with a tearful smile.
Master Byles Gridley must have had some good dividends from some of his
property of late. There is no other way of accounting for the handsome
style in which he did things on their arrival in the city. He went to a
tailor's and ordered a new suit to be sent home as soon as possible, for
he knew his wardrobe was a little rusty. He looked Gifted over from head
to foot, and suggested such improvements as would recommend him to the
fastidious eyes of the selecter sort of people, and put him in his own
tailor's hands, at the same time saying that all bills were to be sent to
him, B. Gridley, Esq., parlor No. 6, at the Planet Hotel. Thus it came
to pass that in three days from their arrival they were both in an
eminently presentable condition. In the mean time the prudent Mr.
Gridley had been keeping the young man busy, and amusing himself by
showing him such of the sights of the city and its suburbs as he thought
would combine instruction with entertainment.
When they were both properly equipped and ready for the best company, Mr.
Gridley said to the young poet, who had found it very hard to contain his
impatience, that they would now call together on the publisher to whom he
wished to introduce him, and they set out accordingly.
"My name is Gridley," he said with modest gravity, as he entered the
publisher's private room. "I have a note of introduction here from one
of your authors, as I think he called himself, a very popular writer for
whom you publish."
The publisher rose and came forward in the most cordial and respectful
manner. "Mr. Gridley? Professor Byles Gridley,--author of 'Thoughts on
the Universe'?"
The brave-hearted old man colored as if he had been a young girl. His
dead book rose before him like an apparition. He groped in modest
confusion for an answer. "A child I buried long ago, my dear sir," he
said. "Its title-page was its tombstone. I have brought this young
friend with me,--this is Mr. Gifted Hopkins of Oxbow Village,--who wishes
to converse with you about--"
"I have come, sir--" the young poet began, interrupting him.
"Let me look at your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Popkins," said the
publisher, interrupting in his turn.
"Hopkins, if you please, sir," Gifted suggested mildly, proceeding to
extract the manuscript, which had got wedged into his pocket, and seemed
to be holding on with all its might. He was wondering all the time over
the extraordinary clairvoyance of the publisher, who had looked through
so many thick folds, broadcloth, lining, brown paper, and seen his poems
lying hidden in his breast-pocket. The idea that a young person coming
on such an errand should have to explain his intentions would have seemed
very odd to the publisher. He knew the look which belongs to this class
of enthusiasts just as a horse-dealer knows the look of a green purchaser
with the equine fever raging in his veins. If a young author had come to
him with a scrap of manuscript hidden in his boots, like Major Andre's
papers, the publisher would have taken one glance at him and said, "Out
with it!"
While he was battling for the refractory scroll with his pocket, which
turned half wrong side out, and acted as things always do when people are
nervous and in a hurry, the publisher directed his conversation again to
Master Byles Gridley.
"A remarkable book, that of yours, Mr. Gridley, would have a great run if
it were well handled. Came out twenty years too soon,--that was the
trouble. One of our leading scholars was speaking of it to me the other
day. 'We must have a new edition,' he said; people are just ripe for
that book.' Did you ever think of that? Change the form of it a little,
and give it a new title, and it will be a popular book. Five thousand or
more, very likely."
Mr. Gridley felt as if he had been rapidly struck on the forehead with a
dozen distinct blows from a hammer not quite big enough to stun him. He
sat still without saying a word. He had forgotten for the moment all
about poor Gifted Hopkins, who had got out his manuscript at last, and
was calming the disturbed corners of it. Coming to himself a little, he
took a large and beautiful silk handkerchief, one of his new purchases,
from his pocket, and applied it to his face, for the weather seemed to
have grown very warm all at once. Then he remembered the errand on which
he had come, and thought of this youth, who had got to receive his first
hard lesson in life, and whom he had brought to this kind man that it
should be gently administered.
"You surprise me," he said,--"you surprise me. Dead and buried. Dead and
buried. I had sometimes thought that--at some future period, after I was
gone, it might--but I hardly know what to say about your suggestions.
But here is my young friend, Mr. Hopkins, who would like to talk with
you, and I will leave him in your hands. I am at the Planet Hotel, if you
should care to call upon me. Good morning. Mr. Hopkins will explain
everything to you more at his ease, without me, I am confident."
Master Gridley could not quite make up his mind to stay through the
interview between the young poet and the publisher. The flush of hope
was bright in Gifted's eye and cheek, and the good man knew that young
hearts are apt to be over-sanguine, and that one who enters a shower-bath
often feels very differently from the same person when he has pulled the
string.
"I have brought you my Poems in the original autographs, sir," said Mr.
Gifted Hopkins.
He laid the manuscript on the table, caressing the leaves still with one
hand, as loath to let it go.
"What disposition had you thought of making of them?" the publisher
asked, in a pleasant tone. He was as kind a man as lived, though he
worked the chief engine in a chamber of torture.
"I wish to read you a few specimens of the poems," he said, "with
reference to their proposed publication in a volume."
"By all means," said the kind publisher, who determined to be very
patient with the protege of the hitherto little-known, but remarkable
writer, Professor Gridley. At the same time he extended his foot in an
accidental sort of way, and pressed it on the right hand knob of three
which were arranged in a line beneath the table. A little bell in a
distant apartment--the little bell marked C--gave one slight note; loud
enough to start a small boy up, who looked at the clock, and knew that he
was to go and call the publisher in just twenty-five minutes. "A, five
minutes; B, ten minutes; C, twenty-five minutes ";--that was the
youngster's working formula. Mr. Hopkins was treated to the full
allowance of time, as being introduced by Professor Gridley.
The young man laid open the manuscript so that the title-page, written
out very handsomely in his own hand, should win the eye of the publisher.
BLOSSOMS OF THE SOUL.
A WREATH OF VERSE; Original.
BY GIFTED HOPKINS.
"a youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown."--Gray.
"Shall I read you some of the rhymed pieces first, or some of the
blank-verse poems, sir?" Gifted asked.
"Read what you think is best,--a specimen of your first-class style of
composition."
"I will read you the very last poem I have written," he said, and he
began:
"THE TRIUMPH OF SONG.
"I met that gold-haired maiden, all too dear;
And I to her: Lo! thou art very fair,
Fairer than all the ladies in the world
That fan the sweetened air with scented fans,
And I am scorched with exceeding love,
Yea, crisped till my bones are dry as straw.
Look not away with that high-arched brow,
But turn its whiteness that I may behold,
And lift thy great eyes till they blaze on mine,
And lay thy finger on thy perfect mouth,
And let thy lucent ears of careen pearl
Drink in the murmured music of my soul,
As the lush grass drinks in the globed dew;
For I have many scrolls of sweetest rhyme
I will unroll and make thee glad to hear.
"Then she: O shaper of the marvellous phrase
That openeth woman's heart as Both a key,
I dare not hear thee--lest the bolt should slide
That locks another's heart within my own.
Go, leave me,--and she let her eyelids fall,
And the great tears rolled from her large blue eyes.
"Then I: If thou not hear me, I shall die,
Yea, in my desperate mood may lift my hand
And do myself a hurt no leach can mend;
For poets ever were of dark resolve,
And swift stern deed
"That maiden heard no more,
But spike: Alas! my heart is very weak,
And but for--Stay! And if some dreadful morn,
After great search and shouting thorough the wold,
We found thee missing,--strangled,--drowned i' the mere,
Then should I go distraught and be clean mad!
"O poet, read! read all thy wondrous scrolls.
Yea, read the verse that maketh glad to hear!
Then I began and read two sweet, brief hours,
And she forgot all love save only mine!"
"Is all this from real life?" asked the publisher.
"It--no, sir--not exactly from real life--that is, the leading female
person is not wholly fictitious--and the incident is one which might have
happened. Shall I read you the poems referred to in the one you have
just heard, sir?"
"Allow me, one moment. Two hours' reading, I think, you said. I fear I
shall hardly be able to spare quite time to hear them all. Let me ask
what you intend doing with these productions, Mr.---rr Poplins."
"Hopkins, if you please, sir, not Poplins," said Gifted, plaintively. He
expressed his willingness to dispose of the copyright, to publish on
shares, or perhaps to receive a certain percentage on the profits.
"Suppose we take a glass of wine together, Mr.--Hopkins, before we talk
business," the publisher said, opening a little cupboard and taking
therefrom a decanter and two glasses. He saw the young man was looking
nervous. He waited a few minutes, until the wine had comforted his
epigastrium, and diffused its gentle glow through his unspoiled and
consequently susceptible organisation.
"Come with me," he said.
Gifted followed him into a dingy apartment in the attic, where one sat at
a great table heaped and piled with manuscripts. By him was a huge
basket, ha'f full of manuscripts also. As they entered he dropped
another manuscript into the basket and looked up.
"Tell me," said Gifted, "what are these papers, and who is he that looks
upon them and drops them into the basket?"
"These are the manuscript poems that we receive, and the one sitting at
the table is commonly spoken of among us as 'The Butcher'. The poems he
drops into the basket are those rejected as of no account"
"But does he not read the poems before he rejects them?"
"He tastes them. Do you eat a cheese before you buy it?"
"And what becomes of all those that he drops into the basket?"
"If they are not claimed by their author in proper season, they go to the
devil."
"What!" said Gifted, with his eyes stretched very round.
"To the paper factory, where they have a horrid machine they call the
devil, that tears everything to bits,--as the critics treat our authors,
sometimes, sometimes, Mr. Hopkins."
Gifted devoted a moment to silent reflection.
After this instructive sight they returned together to the publisher's
private room. The wine had now warmed the youthful poet's praecordia, so
that he began to feel a renewed confidence in his genius and his
fortunes.
"I should like to know what that critic of yours would say to my
manuscript," he said boldly.
"You can try it if you want to," the publisher replied, with an ominous
dryness of manner which the sanguine youth did not perceive, or,
perceiving, did not heed.
"How can we manage to get an impartial judgment?"
"Oh, I'll arrange that. He always goes to his luncheon about this time.
Raw meat and vitriol punch,--that 's what the authors say. Wait till we
hear him go, and then I will lay your manuscript so that he will come to
it among the first after he gets back. You shall see with your own eyes
what treatment it gets. I hope it may please him, but you shall see."
They went back to the publisher's private room and talked awhile. Then
the little office-boy came up with some vague message about a
gentleman--business--wants to see you, sir, etc., according to the
established programme; all in a vacant, mechanical sort of way, as if he
were a talking-machine just running down.
The publisher told the boy that he was engaged, and the gentleman must
wait. Very soon they heard The Butcher's heavy footstep as he went out
to get his raw meat and vitriol punch.
"Now, then," said the publisher, and led forth the confiding literary lamb
once more, to enter the fatal door of the critical shambles.
"Hand me your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Hopkins. I will lay it so
that it shall be the third of these that are coming to hand. Our friend
here is a pretty good judge of verse, and knows a merchantable article
about as quick as any man in his line of business. If he forms a
favorable opinion of your poems, we will talk over your propositions."
Gifted was conscious of a very slight tremor as he saw his precious
manuscript deposited on the table, under two others, and over a pile of
similar productions. Still he could not help feeling that the critic
would be struck by his title. The quotation from Gray must touch his
feelings. The very first piece in the collection could not fail to
arrest him. He looked a little excited, but he was in good spirits.
"We will be looking about here when our friend comes back," the publisher
said. " He is a very methodical person, and will sit down and go right to
work just as if we were not here. We can watch him, and if he should
express any particular interest in your poems, I will, if you say so,
carry you up to him and reveal the fact that you are the author of the
works that please him."
They waited patiently until The Butcher returned, apparently refreshed by
his ferocious refection, and sat down at his table. He looked comforted,
and not in ill humor. The publisher and the poet talked in low tones, as
if on business of their own, and watched him as he returned to his labor.
The Butcher took the first manuscript that came to hand, read a stanza
here and there, turned over the leaves, turned back and tried
again,--shook his head--held it for an instant over the basket, as if
doubtful,--and let it softly drop. He took up the second manuscript,
opened it in several places, seemed rather pleased with what he read, and
laid it aside for further examination.
He took up the third. "Blossoms of the Soul," etc. He glared at it in a
dreadfully ogreish way. Both the lockers-on held their breath. Gifted
Hopkins felt as if half a glass more of that warm sherry would not hurt
him. There was a sinking at the pit of his stomach, as if he was in a
swing, as high as he could go, close up to the swallows' nests and
spiders' webs. The Butcher opened the manuscript at random, read ten
seconds, and gave a short low grunt. He opened again, read ten seconds,
and gave another grunt, this time a little longer and louder. He opened
once more, read five seconds, and, with something that sounded like the
snort of a dangerous animal, cast it impatiently into the basket, and
took up the manuscript that came next in order.
Gifted Hopkins stood as if paralyzed for a moment.
"Safe, perfectly safe," the publisher said to him in a whisper. "I'll get
it for you presently. Come in and take another glass of wine," he said,
leading him back to his own office.
"No, I thank you," he said faintly, "I can bear it. But this is
dreadful, sir. Is this the way that genius is welcomed to the world of
letters?"
The publisher explained to him, in the kindest manner, that there was an
enormous over-production of verse, and that it took a great part of one
man's time simply to overhaul the cart-loads of it that were trying to
get themselves into print with the imprimatur of his famous house. "You
are young, Mr. Hopkins. I advise you not to try to force your article of
poetry on the market. The B----, our friend, there, that is, knows a
thing that will sell as soon as he sees it. You are in independent
circumstances, perhaps? If so, you can print--at your own
expense--whatever you choose. May I take the liberty to ask
your--profession?"
Gifted explained that he was "clerk" in a "store," where they sold dry
goods and West India goods, and goods promiscuous.
"Oh, well, then," the publisher said, "you will understand me. Do you
know a good article of brown sagas when you see it?"
Gifted Hopkins rather thought he did. He knew at sight whether it was a
fair, salable article or not.
"Just so. Now our friend, there, knows verses that are salable and
unsalable as well as you do brown sugar.--Keep quiet now, and I will go
and get your manuscript for you.
"There, Mr. Hopkins, take your poems,--they will give you a reputation in
your village, I don't doubt, which, is pleasant, but it will cost you a
good deal of money to print them in a volume. You are very young: you
can afford to wait. Your genius is not ripe yet, I am confident, Mr.
Hopkins. These verses are very well for a beginning, but a man of
promise like you, Mr. Hopkins, must n't throw away his chance by
premature publication! I should like to make you a present of a few of
the books we publish. By and by, perhaps, we can work you into our
series of poets; but the best pears ripen slowly, and so with
genius.--Where shall I send the volumes?"
Gifted answered, to parlor No. 6, Planet Hotel, where he soon presented
himself to Master Gridley, who could guess pretty well what was coming.
But he let him tell his story.
"Shall I try the other publishers?" said the disconsolate youth.
"I would n't, my young friend, I would n't. You have seen the best one
of them--all. He is right about it, quite right: you are young, and had
better wait. Look here, Gifted, here is something to please you. We are
going to visit the gay world together. See what has been left here this
forenoon."
He showed him two elegant notes of invitation requesting the pleasure of
Professor Byles Gridley's and of Mr. Gifted Hopkins's company on Thursday
evening, as the guests of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place.
CHAPTER XXVI.
MRS. CLYMER KETCHUM'S PARTY.
Myrtle Hazard had flowered out as beyond question the handsomest girl of
the season, There were hints from different quarters that she might
possibly be an heiress. Vague stories were about of some contingency
which might possibly throw a fortune into her lap. The young men about
town talked of her at the clubs in their free-and-easy way, but all
agreed that she was the girl of the new crop,--"best filly this grass,"
as Livingston Jenkins put it. The general understanding seemed to be
that the young lawyer who had followed her to the city was going to
capture her. She seemed to favor him certainly as much as anybody. But
Myrtle saw many young men now, and it was not so easy as it would once
have been to make out who was an especial favorite.
There had been times when Murray Bradshaw would have offered his heart
and hand to Myrtle at once, if he had felt sure that she would accept
him. But he preferred playing the safe game now, and only wanted to feel
sure of her. He had done his best to be agreeable, and could hardly
doubt that he had made an impression. He dressed well when in the
city,--even elegantly,--he had many of the lesser social accomplishments,
was a good dancer, and compared favorably in all such matters with the
more dashing young fellows in society. He was a better talker than most
of them, and he knew more about the girl he was dealing with than they
could know. "You have only got to say the word, Murray," Mrs. Clymer
Ketchum said to her relative, "and you can have her. But don't be rash.
I believe you can get Berengaria if you try; and there 's something
better there than possibilities." Murray Bradshaw laughed, and told Mrs.
Clymer Ketchum not to worry about him; he knew what he was doing.
It so happened that Myrtle met Master Byles Gridley walking with Mr.
Gifted Hopkins the day before the party. She longed to have a talk with
her old friend, and was glad to have a chance of pleasing her poetical
admirer. She therefore begged her hostess to invite them both to her
party to please her, which she promised to do at once. Thus the two
elegant notes were accounted for.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, though her acquaintances were chiefly in the world
of fortune and of fashion, had yet a certain weakness for what she called
clever people. She therefore always variegated her parties with a streak
of young artists and writers, and a literary lady or two; and, if she
could lay hands on a first-class celebrity, was as happy as an Amazon who
had captured a Centaur.
"There's a demonish clever young fellow by the name of Lindsay," Mr.
Livingston Jenkins said to her a little before the day of the party.
"Better ask him. They say he 's the rising talent in his line,
architecture mainly, but has done some remarkable things in the way of
sculpture. There's some story about a bust he made that was quite
wonderful. I'll find his address for you." So Mr. Clement Lindsay got
his invitation, and thus Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's party promised to bring
together a number of persons with whom we are acquainted, and who were
acquainted with each other.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum knew how to give a party. Let her only have carte
blanche for flowers, music, and champagne, she used to tell her lord, and
she would see to the rest,--lighting the rooms, tables, and toilet. He
needn't be afraid: all he had to do was to keep out of the way.
Subdivision of labor is one of the triumphs of modern civilization. Labor
was beautifully subdivided in this lady's household. It was old
Ketchum's business to make money, and he understood it. It was Mrs. K.'s
business to spend money, and she knew how to do it. The rooms blazed
with light like a conflagration; the flowers burned like lamps of
many-colored flame; the music throbbed into the hearts of the promenaders
and tingled through all the muscles of the dancers.
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was in her glory. Her point d'Alenyon must have
spoiled ever so many French girls' eyes. Her bosom heaved beneath a kind
of breastplate glittering with a heavy dew of diamonds. She glistened
and sparkled with every movement, so that the admirer forgot to question
too closely whether the eyes matched the brilliants, or the cheeks glowed
like the roses. Not far from the great lady stood Myrtle Hazard. She
was dressed as the fashion of the day demanded, but she had added certain
audacious touches of her own, reminiscences of the time when the dead
beauty had flourished, and which first provoked the question and then the
admiration of the young people who had a natural eye for effect. Over
the long white glove on her left arm was clasped a rich bracelet, of so
quaint an antique pattern that nobody had seen anything like it, and as
some one whispered that it was "the last thing out," it was greatly
admired by the fashion-plate multitude, as well as by the few who had a
taste of their own. If the soul of Judith Pride, long divorced from its
once beautifully moulded dust, ever lived in dim consciousness through
any of those who inherited her blood, it was then and there that she
breathed through the lips of Myrtle Hazard. The young girl almost
trembled with the ecstasy of this new mode of being, soliciting every
sense with light, with perfume, with melody,--all that could make her
feel the wonderful complex music of a fresh life when all its chords
first vibrate together in harmony. Miss Rhadamantha Pinnikle, whose
mother was an Apex (of whose race it was said that they always made an
obeisance when the family name was mentioned, and had all their portraits
painted with halos round their heads), found herself extinguished in this
new radiance. Miss Victoria Capsheaf stuck to the wall as if she had
been a fresco on it. The fifty-year-old dynasties were dismayed and
dismounted. Myrtle fossilized them as suddenly as if she had been a
Gorgon instead of a beauty.
The guests in whom we may have some interest were in the mean time making
ready for the party, which was expected to be a brilliant one; for 24
Carat Place was well known for the handsome style of its entertainments.
Clement Lindsay was a little surprised by his invitation. He had,
however, been made a lion of several times of late, and was very willing
to amuse himself once in a while with a peep into the great world.
It was but an empty show to him at best, for his lot was cast, and he
expected to lead a quiet domestic life after his student days were over.
Master Byles Gridley had known what society was in his earlier time, and
understood very well that all a gentleman of his age had to do was to
dress himself in his usual plain way, only taking a little more care in
his arrangements than was needed in the latitude of Oxbow Village. But
Gifted must be looked after, that he should not provoke the unamiable
comments of the city youth by any defect or extravagance of costume. The
young gentleman had bought a light sky-blue neckerchief, and a very large
breast-pin containing a gem which he was assured by the vender was a
genuine stone. He considered that both these would be eminently
effective articles of dress, and Mr. Gridley had some trouble to convince
him that a white tie and plain shirt-buttons would be more fitted to the
occasion.
On the morning of the day of the great party Mr. William Murray Bradshaw
received a brief telegram, which seemed to cause him great emotion, as he
changed color, uttered a forcible exclamation, and began walking up and
down his room in a very nervous kind of way. It was a foreshadowing of a
certain event now pretty sure to happen. Whatever bearing this telegram
may have had upon his plans, he made up his mind that he would contrive
an opportunity somehow that very evening to propose himself as a suitor
to Myrtle Hazard. He could not say that he felt as absolutely certain of
getting the right answer as he had felt at some previous periods. Myrtle
knew her price, he said to himself, a great deal better than when she was
a simple country girl. The flatteries with which she had been
surrounded, and the effect of all the new appliances of beauty, which had
set her off so that she could not help seeing her own attractions,
rendered her harder to please and to satisfy. A little experience in
society teaches a young girl the arts and the phrases which all the
Lotharios have in common. Murray Bradshaw was ready to land his fish
now, but he was not quite sure that she was yet hooked, and he had a
feeling that by this time she knew every fly in his book. However, as he
had made up his mind not to wait another day, he addressed himself to the
trial before him with a determination to succeed, if any means at his
command would insure success. He arrayed himself with faultless
elegance: nothing must be neglected on such an occasion. He went forth
firm and grave as a general going into a battle where all is to be lost
or won. He entered the blazing saloon with the unfailing smile upon his
lips, to which he set them as he set his watch to a particular hour and
minute.
The rooms were pretty well filled when he arrived and made his bow before
the blazing, rustling, glistening, waving, blushing appearance under
which palpitated, with the pleasing excitement of the magic scene over
which its owner presided, the heart of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum. He turned to
Myrtle Hazard, and if he had ever doubted which way his inclinations led
him, he could doubt no longer. How much dress and how much light can a
woman bear? That is the way to measure her beauty. A plain girl in a
simple dress, if she has only a pleasant voice, may seem almost a beauty
in the rosy twilight. The nearer she comes to being handsome, the more
ornament she will bear, and the more she may defy the sunshine or the
chandelier.
Murray Bradshaw was fairly dazzled with the brilliant effect of Myrtle in
full dress. He did not know before what handsome arms she had,--Judith
Pride's famous arms--which the high-colored young men in top-boots used
to swear were the handsomest pair in New England--right over again. He
did not know before with what defiant effect she would light up, standing
as she did directly under a huge lustre, in full flower of flame, like a
burning azalea. He was not a man who intended to let his sentiments
carry him away from the serious interests of his future, yet, as he
looked upon Myrtle Hazard, his heart gave one throb which made him feel
in every pulse that this way a woman who in her own right, simply as a
woman, could challenge the homage of the proudest young man of her time.
He hardly knew till this moment how much of passion mingled with other
and calmer motives of admiration. He could say I love you as truly as
such a man could ever speak these words, meaning that he admired her,
that he was attracted to her, that he should be proud of her as his wife,
that he should value himself always as the proprietor of so rare a
person, that no appendage to his existence would take so high a place in
his thoughts. This implied also, what is of great consequence to a young
woman's happiness in the married state, that she would be treated with
uniform politeness, with satisfactory evidences of affection, and with a
degree of confidence quite equal to what a reasonable woman should expect
from a very superior man, her husband.
If Myrtle could have looked through the window in the breast against
which only authors are privileged to flatten their features, it is for
the reader to judge how far the programme would have satisfied her.
Less than this, a great deal less, does appear to satisfy many young
women; and it may be that the interior just drawn, fairly judged, belongs
to a model lover and husband. Whether it does or not, Myrtle did not see
this picture. There was a beautifully embroidered shirt-bosom in front
of that window through which we have just looked, that intercepted all
sight of what was going on within. She only saw a man, young, handsome,
courtly, with a winning tongue, with an ambitious spirit, whose every
look and tone implied his admiration of herself, and who was associated
with her past life in such a way that they alone appeared like old
friends in the midst of that cold alien throng. It seemed as if he could
not have chosen a more auspicious hour than this; for she never looked so
captivating, and her presence must inspire his lips with the eloquence of
love. And she--was not this delirious atmosphere of light and music just
the influence to which he would wish to subject her before trying the
last experiment of all which can stir the soul of a woman? He knew the
mechanism of that impressionable state which served Coleridge so
excellently well,--
"All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve
The music, and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve,"--
though he hardly expected such startling results as happened in that
case,--which might be taken as an awful warning not to sing moving
ballads to young ladies of susceptible feelings, unless one is prepared
for very serious consequences. Without expecting that Myrtle would rush
into his arms, he did think that she could not help listening to him in
the intervals of the delicious music, in some recess where the roses and
jasmines and heliotropes made the air heavy with sweetness, and the
crimson curtains drooped in heavy folds that half hid their forms from
the curious eyes all round them. Her heart would swell like Genevieve's
as he told her in simple phrase that she was his life, his love, his
all,--for in some two or three words like these he meant to put his
appeal, and not in fine poetical phrases: that would do for Gifted
Hopkins and rhyming tom-tits of that feather.
Full of his purpose, involving the plans of his whole life, implying, as
he saw clearly, a brilliant future or a disastrous disappointment, with a
great unexploded mine of consequences under his feet, and the spark ready
to fall into it, he walked about the gilded saloon with a smile upon his
lips so perfectly natural and pleasant, that one would have said he was
as vacant of any aim, except a sort of superficial good-matured
disposition to be amused, as the blankest-eyed simpleton who had tied
himself up in a white cravat and come to bore and be bored.
Yet under this pleasant smile his mind was so busy with its thoughts that
he had forgotten all about the guests from Oxbow Village who, as Myrtle
had told him, were to come this evening. His eye was all at once caught
by a familiar figure, and he recognized Master Byles Gridley, accompanied
by Mr. Gifted Hopkins, at the door of the saloon. He stepped forward at
once to meet, and to present them.
Mr. Gridley in evening costume made an eminently dignified and
respectable appearance. There was an unusual lock of benignity upon his
firmly moulded features, and an air of ease which rather surprised Mr.
Bradshaw, who did not know all the social experiences which had formed a
part of the old Master's history. The greeting between them was
courteous, but somewhat formal, as Mr. Bradshaw was acting as one of the
masters of ceremony. He nodded to Gifted in an easy way, and led them
both into the immediate Presence.
"This is my friend Professor Gridley, Mrs. Ketchum, whom I have the honor
of introducing to you,--a very distinguished scholar, as I have no doubt
you are well aware. And this is my friend Mr. Gifted Hopkins, a young
poet of distinction, whose fame will reach you by and by, if it has not
come to your ears already."
The two gentlemen went through the usual forms, the poet a little crushed
by the Presence, but doing his best. While the lady was making polite
speeches to them, Myrtle Hazard came forward. She was greatly delighted
to meet her old friend, and even looked upon the young poet with a degree
of pleasure she would hardly have expected to receive from his company.
They both brought with them so many reminiscences of familiar scenes and
events, that it was like going back for the moment to Oxbow Village. But
Myrtle did not belong to herself that evening, and had no opportunity to
enter into conversation just then with either of them. There was to be
dancing by and by, and the younger people were getting impatient that it
should begin. At last the music sounded the well-known summons, and the
floors began to ring to the tread of the dancers. As usual on such
occasions there were a large number of noncombatants, who stood as
spectators around those who were engaged in the campaign of the evening.
Mr. Byles Gridley looked on gravely, thinking of the minuets and the
gavots of his younger days. Mr. Gifted Hopkins, who had never acquired
the desirable accomplishment of dancing, gazed with dazzled and admiring
eyes at the wonderful evolutions of the graceful performers. The music
stirred him a good deal; he had also been introduced to one or two young
persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and he began to feel a kind of
excitement, such as was often the prelude of a lyric burst from his pen.
Others might have wealth and beauty, he thought to himself, but what were
these to the gift of genius? In fifty years the wealth of these people
would have passed into other hands. In fifty years all these beauties
would be dead, or wrinkled and double-wrinkled great-grandmothers. And
when they were all gone and forgotten, the name of Hopkins would be still
fresh in the world's memory. Inspiring thought! A smile of triumph rose
to his lips; he felt that the village boy who could look forward to fame
as his inheritance was richer than all the millionnaires, and that the
words he should set in verse would have an enduring lustre to which the
whiteness of pearls was cloudy, and the sparkle of diamonds dull.
He raised his eyes, which had been cast down in reflection, to look upon
these less favored children of Fortune, to whom she had given nothing but
perishable inheritances. Two or three pairs of eyes, he observed, were
fastened upon him. His mouth perhaps betrayed a little
self-consciousness, but he tried to show his features in an aspect of
dignified self-possession. There seemed to be remarks and questionings
going on, which he supposed to be something like the following:--
Which is it? Which is it?--Why, that one, there,--that young
fellow,--don't you see?--What young fellow are you two looking at? Who is
he? What is he?--Why, that is Hopkins, the poet.--Hopkins, the poet!
Let me see him! Let me see him! Hopkins? What! Gifted Hopkins? etc.,
etc.
Gifted Hopkins did not hear these words except in fancy, but he did
unquestionably find a considerable number of eyes concentrated upon him,
which he very naturally interpreted as an evidence that he had already
begun to enjoy a foretaste of the fame of which he should hereafter have
his full allowance. Some seemed to be glancing furtively, some appeared
as if they wished to speak, and all the time the number of those looking
at him seemed to be increasing. A vision came through his fancy of
himself as standing on a platform, and having persons who wished to look
upon him and shake hands with him presented, as he had heard was the way
with great people when going about the country. But this was only a
suggestion, and by no means a serious thought, for that would have
implied infatuation.
Gifted Hopkins was quite right in believing that he attracted many eyes.
At last those of Myrtle Hazard were called to him, and she perceived that
an accident was making him unenviably conspicuous. The bow of his rather
large white neck-tie had slid round and got beneath his left ear. A not
very good-natured or well-bred young fellow had pointed out the subject
of this slight misfortune to one or two others of not much better taste
or breeding, and thus the unusual attention the youthful poet was
receiving explained itself. Myrtle no sooner saw the little accident of
which her rural friend was the victim than she left her place in the
dance with a simple courage which did her credit.
"I want to speak to you a minute," she said. "Come into this alcove."
And the courageous young lady not only told Gifted what had happened to
him, but found a pin somehow, as women always do on a pinch, and had him
in presentable condition again almost before the bewildered young man
knew what was the matter. On reflection it occurred to him, as it has to
other provincial young persons going to great cities, that he might
perhaps have been hasty in thinking himself an object of general
curiosity as yet. There had hardly been time for his name to have become
very widely known. Still, the feeling had been pleasant for the moment,
and had given him an idea of what the rapture would be, when, wherever he
went, the monster digit (to hint a classical phrase) of the collective
admiring public would be lifted to point him out, and the whisper would
pass from one to another, "That's him! That's Hopkins!"
Mr. Murray Bradshaw had been watching the opportunity for carrying out
his intentions, with his pleasant smile covering up all that was passing
in his mind, and Master Byles Gridley, looking equally unconcerned, had
been watching him. The young man's time came at last. Some were at the
supper-table, some were promenading, some were talking, when he managed
to get Myrtle a little apart from the rest, and led her towards one of
the recesses in the apartment, where two chairs were invitingly placed.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling,--the influences to
which he had trusted had not been thrown away upon her. He had no idea
of letting his purpose be seen until he was fully ready. It required all
his self-mastery to avoid betraying himself by look or tone, but he was
so natural that Myrtle was thrown wholly off her guard. He meant to make
her pleased with herself at the outset, and that not by point-blank
flattery, of which she had had more than enough of late, but rather by
suggestion and inference, so that she should find herself feeling happy
without knowing how. It would be easy to glide from that to the
impression she had produced upon him, and get the two feelings more or
less mingled in her mind. And so the simple confession he meant to make
would at length evolve itself logically, and hold by a natural connection
to the first agreeable train of thought which he had called up. Not the
way, certainly, that most young men would arrange their great trial
scene; but Murray Bradshaw was a lawyer in love as much as in business,
and considered himself as pleading a cause before a jury of Myrtle
Hazard's conflicting motives. What would any lawyer do in a jury case
but begin by giving the twelve honest men and true to understand, in the
first place, that their intelligence and virtue were conceded by all, and
that he himself had perfect confidence in them, and leave them to shape
their verdict in accordance with these propositions and his own side of
the case?
Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the honeyed
accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact, that
she thought she heard an unconscious echo through his lips of an
admiration which he only shared with all around him. But in him he made
it seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real. This it
evidently was which had led him to trust her with his ambitions and his
plans,--they might be delusions, but he could never keep them from her,
and she was the one woman in the world to whom he thought he could safely
give his confidence.
The dread moment was close at hand. Myrtle was listening with an
instinctive premonition of what was coming,--ten thousand mothers and
grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and so on, had passed through it all
in preceding generations until time reached backwards to the sturdy
savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the primeval
great-grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the rock, or
into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming
question announce itself by stirring in the pulses and thrilling in the
nerves of the descendant of all these grandmothers?
She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by the mere blind
elemental force, as the plummet was attracted to the side of Schehallion.
Her lips were parted, and she breathed a little faster than so healthy a
girl ought to breathe in a state of repose. The steady nerves of William
Murray Bradshaw felt unwonted thrills and tremors tingling through them,
as he came nearer and nearer the few simple words with which he was to
make Myrtle Hazard the mistress of his destiny. His tones were becoming
lower and more serious; there were slight breaks once or twice in the
conversation; Myrtle had cast down her eyes.
"There is but one word more to add," he murmured softly, as he bent
towards her--
A grave voice interrupted him. "Excuse me, Mr. Bradshaw," said Master
Bytes Gridley, "I wish to present a young gentleman to my friend here. I
promised to show him the most charming young person I have the honor to
be acquainted with, and I must redeem my pledge. Miss Hazard, I have the
pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance my distinguished young
friend, Mr. Clement Lindsay."
Once mere, for the third time, these two young persons stood face to
face. Myrtle was no longer liable to those nervous seizures which any
sudden impression was liable to produce when she was in her half-hysteric
state of mind and body. She turned to the new-comer, who found himself
unexpectedly submitted to a test which he would never have risked of his
own will. He must go through it, cruel as it was, with the easy
self-command which belongs to a gentleman in the most trying social
exigencies. He addressed her, therefore, in the usual terms of courtesy,
and then turned and greeted Mr. Bradshaw, whom he had never met since
their coming together at Oxbow Village. Myrtle was conscious, the
instant she looked upon Clement Lindsay, of the existence of some
peculiar relation between them; but what, she could not tell. Whatever
it was, it broke the charm which had been weaving between her and Murray
Bradshaw. He was not foolish enough to make a scene. What fault could
he find with Clement Lindsay, who had only done as any gentleman would do
with a lady to whom he had just been introduced, addressed a few polite
words to her? After saying those words, Clement had turned very
courteously to him, and they had spoken with each other. But Murray
Bradshaw could not help seeing that Myrtle had transferred her attention,
at least for the moment, from him to the new-comer. He folded his arms
and waited,--but he waited in vain. The hidden attraction which drew
Clement to the young girl with whom he had passed into the Valley of the
Shadow of Death overmastered all other feelings, and he gave himself up
to the fascination of her presence.
The inward rage of Murray Bradshaw at being interrupted just at the
moment when he was, as he thought, about to cry checkmate and finish the
first great game he had ever played may well be imagined. But it could
not be helped. Myrtle had exercised the customary privilege of young
ladies at parties, and had turned from talking with one to talking with
another,--that was all. Fortunately, for him the young man who had been
introduced at such a most critical moment was not one from whom he need
apprehend any serious interference. He felt grateful beyond measure to
pretty Susan Posey, who, as he had good reason for believing, retained
her hold upon her early lover, and was looking forward with bashful
interest to the time when she should become Mrs. Lindsay. It was better
to put up quietly with his disappointment; and, if he could get no
favorable opportunity that evening to resume his conversation at the
interesting point where he left it off, he would call the next day and
bring matters to a conclusion.
He called accordingly the next morning, but was disappointed in not
seeing Myrtle. She had hardly slept that night, and was suffering from a
bad headache, which last reason was her excuse for not seeing company.
He called again, the following day, and learned that Miss Hazard had just
left the city, and gone on a visit to Oxbow Village:
CHAPTER XXVII.
MINE AND COUNTERMINE.
What the nature of the telegram was which had produced such an effect on
the feelings and plans of Mr. William Murray Bradshaw nobody especially
interested knew but himself. We may conjecture that it announced some
fact, which had leaked out a little prematurely, relating to the issue of
the great land-case in which the firm was interested. However that might
be, Mr. Bradshaw no sooner heard that Myrtle had suddenly left the city
for Oxbow Village,--for what reason he puzzled himself to guess,--than he
determined to follow her at once, and take up the conversation he had
begun at the party where it left off. And as the young poet had received
his quietus for the present at the publisher's, and as Master Gridley had
nothing specially to detain him, they too returned at about the same
time, and so our old acquaintances were once more together within the
familiar precincts where we have been accustomed to see them.
Master Gridley did not like playing the part of a spy, but it must be
remembered that he was an old college officer, and had something of the
detective's sagacity, and a certain cunning derived from the habit of
keeping an eye on mischievous students. If any underhand contrivance was
at work, involving the welfare of any one in whom he was interested, he
was a dangerous person for the plotters, for he had plenty of time to
attend to them, and would be apt to take a kind of pleasure in matching
his wits against another crafty person's,--such a one, for instance, as
Mr. Macchiavelli Bradshaw.
Perhaps he caught some words of that gentleman's conversation at the
party; at any rate, he could not fail to observe his manner. When he
found that the young man had followed Myrtle back to the village, he
suspected something more than a coincidence. When he learned that he was
assiduously visiting The Poplars, and that he was in close communication
with Miss Cynthia Badlam, he felt sure that he was pressing the siege of
Myrtle's heart. But that there was some difficulty in the way was
equally clear to him, for he ascertained, through channels which the
attentive reader will soon have means of conjecturing, that Myrtle had
seen him but once in the week following his return, and that in the
presence of her dragons. She had various excuses when he
called,--headaches, perhaps, among the rest, as these are staple articles
on such occasions. But Master Gridley knew his man too well to think
that slight obstacles would prevent his going forward to effect his
purpose.
"I think he will get her; if he holds on," the old man said to himself,
"and he won't let go in a hurry, if there were any real love about
it--but surely he is incapable of such a human weakness as the tender
passion. What does all this sudden concentration upon the girl mean? He
knows something about her that we don't know,--that must be it. What did
he hide that paper for, a year ago and more? Could that have anything to
do with his pursuit of Myrtle Hazard today?"
Master Gridley paused as he asked this question of himself, for a
luminous idea had struck him. Consulting daily with Cynthia Badlam, was
he? Could there be a conspiracy between these two persons to conceal
some important fact, or to keep something back until it would be for
their common interest to have it made known?
Now Mistress Kitty Fagan was devoted, heart and soul, to Myrtle Hazard,
and ever since she had received the young girl from Mr. Gridley's hands,
when he brought her back safe and sound after her memorable adventure,
had considered him as Myrtle's best friend and natural protector. These
simple creatures, whose thoughts are not taken up, like those of educated
people, with the care of a great museum of dead phrases, are very quick
to see the live facts which are going on about them. Mr. Gridley had met
her, more or less accidentally, several times of late, and inquired very
particularly about Myrtle, and how she got along at the house since her
return, and whether she was getting over her headaches, and how they
treated her in the family.
"Bliss your heart, Mr. Gridley," Kitty said to him on one of these
occasions, "it's ahltogither changed intirely. Sure Miss Myrtle does
jist iverythin' she likes, an' Miss Withers niver middles with her at
ahl, excip' jist to roll up her eyes an' look as if she was the
hid-moorner at a funeril whiniver Miss Myrtle says she wants to do this
or that, or to go here or there. It's Miss Badlam that's ahlwiz after
her, an' a-watchin' her,--she thinks she's cunnin'er than a cat, but
there 's other folks that's got eyes an' ears as good as hers. It's that
Mr. Bridshaw that's a puttin' his head together with Miss Badlam for
somethin' or other, an' I don't believe there's no good in it, for what
does the fox an' the cat be a whisperin' about, as if they was thaves an'
incind'ries, if there ain't no mischief hatchin'?"
"Why, Kitty," he said, "what mischief do you think is going on, and who
is to be harmed?"
"O Mr. Gridley," she answered, "if there ain't somebody to be chated
somehow, then I don't know an honest man and woman from two rogues. An'
have n't I heard Miss Myrtle's name whispered as if there was somethin'
goin' on agin' her, an' they was afraid the tahk would go out through the
doors, an' up through the chimbley? I don't want to tell no tales, Mr.
Gridley, nor to hurt no honest body, for I'm a poor woman, Mr. Gridley,
but I comes of dacent folks, an' I vallies my repitation an' character as
much as if I was dressed in silks and satins instead of this mane old
gown, savin' your presence, which is the best I 've got, an' niver a
dollar to buy another. But if I iver I hears a word, Mr. Gridley, that
manes any kind of a mischief to Miss Myrtle,--the Lard bliss her soul an'
keep ahl the divils away from her!--I'll be runnin' straight down here to
tell ye ahl about it,--be right sure o' that, Mr. Gridley."
"Nothing must happen to Myrtle," he said, "that we can help. If you see
anything more that looks wrong, you had better come down here at once and
let me know, as you say you will. At once, you understand. And, Kitty, I
am a little particular about the dress of people who come to see me, so
that if you would just take the trouble to get you a tidy pattern of
gingham or calico, or whatever you like of that sort for a gown, you
would please me; and perhaps this little trifle will be a convenience to
you when you come to pay for it."
Kitty thanked him with all the national accompaniments, and trotted off
to the store, where Mr. Gifted Hopkins displayed the native amiability of
his temper by fumbling down everything in the shape of ginghams and
calicoes they had on the shelves, without a murmur at the taste of his
customer, who found it hard to get a pattern sufficiently emphatic for
her taste. She succeeded at last, and laid down a five-dollar bill as if
she were as used to the pleasing figure on its face as to the sight of
her own five digits.
Master Byles Gridley had struck a spade deeper than he knew into his
first countermine, for Kitty had none of those delicate scruples about
the means of obtaining information which might have embarrassed a
diplomatist of higher degree.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MR. BRADSHAW CALLS ON MISS BADLAM
"Is Miss Hazard in, Kitty?"
"Indade she's in, Mr. Bridshaw, but she won't see nobody."
"What's the meaning of that, Kitty? Here is the third time within three
days you've told me I could n't see her. She saw Mr. Gridley yesterday,
I know; why won't she see me to-day?"
"Y' must ask Miss Myrtle what the rason is, it's none o' my business, Mr.
Bridshaw. That's the order she give me."
"Is Miss Badlam in?"
Indade she's in, Mr. Bridshaw, an' I 'll go cahl her."
"Bedad," said Kitty Fagan to herself, "the cat an' the fox is goin' to
have another o' thim big tahks togither, an' sure the old hole for the
stove-pipe has niver been stopped up yet."
Mr. Bradshaw and Miss Cynthia went into the parlor together, and Mistress
Kitty retired to her kitchen. There was a deep closet belonging to this
apartment, separated by a partition from the parlor. There was a round
hole high up in this partition through which a stove-pipe had once
passed. Mistress Kitty placed a stool just under this opening, upon
which, as on a, pedestal, she posed herself with great precaution in the
attitude of the goddess of other people's secrets, that is to say, with
her head a little on one side, so as to bring her liveliest ear close to
the opening. The conversation which took place in the hearing of the
invisible third party began in a singularly free-and-easy manner on Mr.
Bradshaw's part.
"What the d---is the reason I can't see Myrtle, Cynthia?"
"That's more than I can tell you, Mr. Bradshaw. I can watch her goings
on, but I can't account for her tantrums."
"You say she has had some of her old nervous whims,--has the doctor been
to see her?"
"No indeed. She has kept to herself a good deal, but I don't think
there's anything in particular the matter with her. She looks
well enough, only she seems a little queer,--as girls do that
have taken a fancy into their heads that they're in love, you
know,--absent-minded,--does n't seem to be interested in things
as you would expect after being away so long."
Mr. Bradshaw looked as if this did not please him particularly. If he
was the object of her thoughts she would not avoid him, surely.
"Have you kept your eye on her steadily?"
"I don't believe there is an hour we can't account for,--Kitty and I
between us."
"Are you sure you can depend on Kitty?"
["Depind on Kitty, is it? Oh, an' to be sure ye can depind on Kitty to
kape watch at the stove-pipe hole, an' to tell all y'r plottin's an'
contrivin's to them that'll get the cheese out o' y'r mousetrap for ye
before ye catch any poor cratur in it." This was the inaudible comment
of the unseen third party.]
"Of course I can depend on her as far as I trust her. All she knows is
that she must look out for the girl to see that she does not run away or
do herself a mischief. The Biddies don't know much, but they know enough
to keep a watch on the--"
"Chickens." Mr. Bradshaw playfully finished the sentence for Miss
Cynthia.
["An' on the foxes, an' the cats, an' the wazels, an' the hen-hahks, an'
ahl the other bastes," added the invisible witness, in unheard
soliloquy.]
"I ain't sure whether she's quite as stupid as she looks," said the
suspicious young lawyer. "There's a little cunning twinkle in her eye
sometimes that makes me think she might be up to a trick on occasion.
Does she ever listen about to hear what people are saying?"
"Don't trouble yourself about Kitty Fagan,' for pity's sake, Mr.
Bradshaw. The Biddies are all alike, and they're all as stupid as owls,
except when you tell 'em just what to do, and how to do it. A pack of
priest-ridden fools!"
The hot Celtic blood in Kitty Fagan's heart gave a leap. The stout
muscles gave an involuntary jerk. The substantial frame felt the thrill
all through, and the rickety stool on which she was standing creaked
sharply under its burden.
Murray Bradshaw started. He got up and opened softly all the doors
leading from the room, one after another, and looked out.
"I thought I heard a noise as if somebody was moving, Cynthia. It's just
as well to keep our own matters to ourselves."
"If you wait till this old house keeps still, Mr. Bradshaw, you might as
well wait till the river has run by. It's as full of rats and mice as an
old cheese is of mites. There's a hundred old rats in this house, and
that's what you hear."
["An' one old cat; that's what I hear." Third party.]
"I told you, Cynthia, I must be off on this business to-morrow. I want
to know that everything is safe before I go. And, besides, I have got
something to say to you that's important, very important, mind you."
He got up once more and opened every door softly and looked out. He
fixed his eye suspiciously on a large sofa at the other side of the room,
and went, looking half ashamed of his extreme precaution, and peeped
under it, to see if there was any one hidden thereto listen. Then he came
back and drew his chair close up to the table at which Miss Badlam had
seated herself. The conversation which followed was in a low tone, and a
portion of it must be given in another place in the words of the third
party. The beginning of it we are able to supply in this connection.
"Look here, Cynthia; you know what I am going for. It's all right, I
feel sure, for I have had private means of finding out. It's a sure
thing; but I must go once more to see that the other fellows don't try
any trick on us. You understand what is for my advantage is for yours,
and, if I go wrong, you go overboard with me. Now I must leave the--you
know--behind me. I can't leave it in the house or the office: they might
burn up. I won't have it about me when I am travelling. Draw your chair
a little more this way. Now listen."
["Indade I will," said the third party to herself. The reader will find
out in due time whether she listened to any purpose or not.]
In the mean time Myrtle, who for some reason was rather nervous and
restless, had found a pair of half-finished slippers which she had left
behind her. The color came into her cheeks when she remembered the state
of mind she was in when she was working on them for the Rev. Mr. Stoker.
She recollected Master Gridley's mistake about their destination, and
determined to follow the hint he had given. It would please him better if
she sent them to good Father Pemberton, she felt sure, than if he should
get them himself. So she enlarged them somewhat, (for the old man did
not pinch his feet, as the younger clergyman was in the habit of doing,
and was, besides, of portly dimensions, as the old orthodox three-deckers
were apt to be,) and worked E. P. very handsomely into the pattern, and
sent them to him with her love and respect, to his great delight; for old
ministers do not have quite so many tokens of affection from fair hands
as younger ones.
What made Myrtle nervous and restless? Why had she quitted the city so
abruptly, and fled to her old home, leaving all the gayeties behind her
which had so attracted and dazzled her?
She had not betrayed herself at the third meeting with the young man who
stood in such an extraordinary relation to her,--who had actually given
her life from his own breath,--as when she met him for the second time.
Whether his introduction to her at the party, just at the instant when
Murray Bradshaw was about to make a declaration, saved her from being in
another moment the promised bride of that young gentleman, or not, we
will not be so rash as to say. It looked, certainly, as if he was in a
fair way to carry his point; but perhaps she would have hesitated, or
shrunk back, when the great question came to stare her in the face.
She was excited, at any rate, by the conversation, so that, when Clement
was presented to her, her thoughts could not at once be all called away
from her other admirer, and she was saved from all danger of that sudden
disturbance which had followed their second meeting. Whatever impression
he made upon her developed itself gradually,--still, she felt strangely
drawn towards him. It was not simply in his good looks, in his good
manners, in his conversation, that she found this attraction, but there
was a singular fascination which she felt might be dangerous to her
peace, without explaining it to herself in words. She could hardly be in
love with this young artist; she knew that his affections were plighted
to another, a fact which keeps most young women from indulging unruly
fancies; yet her mind was possessed by his image to such an extent that
it left little room for that of Mr. William Murray Bradshaw.
Myrtle Hazard had been just ready to enter on a career of worldly vanity
and ambition. It is hard to blame her, for we know how she came by the
tendency. She had every quality, too, which fitted her to shine in the
gay world; and the general law is, that those who have the power have the
instinct to use it. We do not suppose that the bracelet on her arm was
an amulet, but it was a symbol. It reminded her of her descent; it kept
alive the desire to live over the joys and excitements of a bygone
generation. If she had accepted Murray Bradshaw, she would have pledged
herself to a worldly life. If she had refused him, it would perhaps have
given her a taste of power that might have turned her into a coquette.
This new impression saved her for the time. She had come back to her
nest in the village like a frightened bird; her heart was throbbing, her
nerves were thrilling, her dreams were agitated; she wanted to be quiet,
and could not listen to the flatteries or entreaties of her old lover.
It was a strong will and a subtle intellect that had arrayed their force
and skill against the ill-defended citadel of Myrtle's heart. Murray
Bradshaw was perfectly determined, and not to be kept back by any trivial
hindrances, such as her present unwillingness to accept him, or even her
repugnance to him, if a freak of the moment had carried her so far. It
was a settled thing: Myrtle Hazard must become Mrs. Bradshaw; and nobody
could deny that, if he gave her his name, they had a chance, at least,
for a brilliant future.
CHAPTER XXIX.
MISTRESS KITTY FAGAN CALLS ON MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY.
"I 'd like to go down to the store this mornin', Miss Withers, plase.
Sure I've niver a shoe to my fut, only jist these two that I've got on,
an' one other pair, and thim is so full of holes that whin I 'm standin'
in 'em I'm outside of 'em intirely."
"You can go, Kitty," Miss Silence answered, funereally.
Thereupon Kitty Fagan proceeded to array herself in her most tidy
apparel, including a pair of shoes not exactly answering to her
description, and set out straight for the house of the Widow Hopkins.
Arrived at that respectable mansion, she inquired for Mr. Gridley, and
was informed that he was at home. Had a message for him,--could she see
him in his study? She could if she would wait a little while. Mr.
Gridley was busy just at this minute. Sit down, Kitty, and warm yourself
at the cooking-stove.
Mistress Kitty accepted Mrs. Hopkins's hospitable offer, and presently
began orienting herself, and getting ready to make herself agreeable.
The kindhearted Mrs. Hopkins had gathered about her several other
pensioners besides the twins. These two little people, it may be here
mentioned, were just taking a morning airing in charge of Susan Posey,
who strolled along in company with Gifted Hopkins on his way to the
store.
Mistress Kitty soon began the conversational blandishments so natural to
her good-humored race. "It's a little blarney that'll jist suit th' old
lady," she said to herself, as she made her first conciliatory advance.
"An' sure an' it's a beautiful kitten you've got there, Mrs. Hopkins. An'
it's a splendid mouser she is, I'll be bound. Does n't she look as if
she'd clans the house out o'them little bastes, bad luck to em."
Mrs. Hopkins looked benignantly upon the more than middle-aged tabby,
slumbering as if she had never known an enemy, and turned smiling to
Mistress Kitty. "Why, bless your heart, Kitty, our old puss would n't
know a mouse by sight, if you showed her one. If I was a mouse, I'd as
lieves have a nest in one of that old cat's ears as anywhere else. You
couldn't find a safer place for one."
"Indade, an' to be sure she's too big an' too handsome a pussy to be
after wastin' her time on them little bastes. It's that little tarrier
dog of yours, Mrs. Hopkins, that will be after worryin' the mice an' the
rats, an' the thaves too, I 'll warrant. Is n't he a fust-rate-lookin'
watch-dog, an' a rig'ler rat-hound?"
Mrs. Hopkins looked at the little short-legged and short-winded animal of
miscellaneous extraction with an expression of contempt and affection,
mingled about half and half. "Worry 'em! If they wanted to sleep, I
rather guess he would worry 'em! If barkin' would do their job for 'em,
nary a mouse nor rat would board free gratis in my house as they do now.
Noisy little good-for-nothing tike,--ain't you, Fret?"
Mistress Kitty was put back a little by two such signal failures. There
was another chance, however, to make her point, which she presently
availed herself of,--feeling pretty sure this time that she should effect
a lodgement. Mrs. Hopkins's parrot had been observing Kitty, first with
one eye and then with the other, evidently preparing to make a remark,
but awkward with a stranger. "That 's a beautiful part y 've got there,"
Kitty said, buoyant with the certainty that she was on safe ground this
time; "and tahks like a book, I 'll be bound. Poll! Poll! Poor Poll!"
She put forth her hand to caress the intelligent and affable bird, which,
instead of responding as expected, "squawked," as our phonetic language
has it, and, opening a beak imitated from a tooth-drawing instrument of
the good old days, made a shrewd nip at Kitty's forefinger. She drew it
back with a jerk.
"An' is that the way your part tahks, Mrs. Hopkins?"
"Talks, bless you, Kitty! why, that parrot hasn't said a word this ten
year. He used to say Poor Poll! when we first had him, but he found it
was easier to squawk, and that's all he ever does nowadays,--except bite
once in a while."
"Well, an' to be sure," Kitty answered, radiant as she rose from her
defeats, "if you'll kape a cat that does n't know a mouse when she sees
it, an' a dog that only barks for his livin', and a part that only
squawks an' bites an' niver spakes a word, ye must be the best-hearted
woman that's alive, an' bliss ye, if ye was only a good Catholic, the
Holy Father 'd make a saint of ye in less than no time!"
So Mistress Kitty Fagan got in her bit of Celtic flattery, in spite of
her three successive discomfitures.
"You may come up now, Kitty," said Mr. Gridley over the stairs. He had
just finished and sealed a letter.
"Well, Kitty, how are things going on up at The Poplars? And how does
our young lady seem to be of late?"
"Whisht! whisht! your honor."
Mr. Bradshaw's lessons had not been thrown away on his attentive
listener. She opened every door in the room, "by your lave," as she
said. She looked all over the walls to see if there was any old
stovepipe hole or other avenue to eye or ear. Then she went, in her
excess of caution, to the window. She saw nothing noteworthy except Mr.
Gifted Hopkins and the charge he convoyed, large and small, in the
distance. The whole living fleet was stationary for the moment, he
leaning on the fence with his cheek on his hand, in one of the attitudes
of the late Lord Byron; she, very near him, listening, apparently, in the
pose of Mignon aspirant au ciel, as rendered by Carlo Dolce Scheffer.
Kitty came back, apparently satisfied, and stood close to Mr. Gridley,
who told her to sit down, which she did, first making a catch at her
apron to dust the chair with, and then remembering that she had left that
part of her costume at home.--Automatic movements, curious.
Mistress Kitty began telling in an undertone of the meeting between Mr.
Bradshaw and Miss Badlam, and of the arrangements she made for herself as
the reporter of the occasion. She then repeated to him, in her own way,
that part of the conversation which has been already laid before the
reader. There is no need of going over the whole of this again in
Kitty's version, but we may fit what followed into the joints of what has
been already told.
"He cahled her Cynthy, d' ye see, Mr. Gridley, an' tahked to her jist as
asy as if they was two rogues, and she knowed it as well as he did. An'
so, says he, I'm goin' away, says he, an' I'm goin' to be gahn siveral
days, or perhaps longer, says he, an' you'd better kape it, says he."
"Keep what, Kitty? What was it he wanted her to keep?" said Mr. Gridley,
who no longer doubted that he was on the trail of a plot, and meant to
follow it. He was getting impatient with the "says he's" with which
Kitty double-leaded her discourse.
"An' to be sure ain't I tellin' you, Mr. Gridley, jist as fast as my
breath will let me? An' so, says he, you'd better kape it, says he,
mixed up with your other paupers, says he," (Mr. Gridley started,) "an'
thin we can find it in the garret, says he, whinever we want it, says he.
An' if it all goes right out there, says he, it won't be lahng before we
shall want to find it, says he. And I can dipind on you, says he, for
we're both in the same boat, says he, an' you knows what I knows, says
he, an' I knows what you knows, says be. And thin he taks a stack o'
paupers out of his pocket, an' he pulls out one of 'em, an' he says to
her, says he, that's the pauper, says he, an' if you die, says be, niver
lose sight of that day or night, says he, for it's life an' dith to both
of us, says he. An' thin he asks her if she has n't got one o' them
paupers--what is 't they cahls 'em?--divilops, or some sich kind of a
name--that they wraps up their letters in; an' she says no, she has n't
got none that's big enough to hold it. So he says, give me a shate o'
pauper, says he. An' thin he takes the pauper that she give him, an' he
folds it up like one o' them--divilops, if that's the name of 'em; and
thin he pulls a stick o' salin'-wax out of his pocket, an' a stamp, an'
he takes the pauper an' puts it into th' other pauper, along with the
rest of the paupers, an' thin he folds th' other pauper over the paupers,
and thin he lights a candle, an' he milts the salin'-wax, and he sales up
the pauper that was outside th' other paupers, an' he writes on the back
of the pauper, an' thin he hands it to Miss Badlam."
"Did you see the paper that he showed her before he fastened it up with
the others, Kitty?"
"I did see it, indade, Mr. Gridley, and it's the truth I'm tellin' ye."
"Did you happen to notice anything about it, Kitty?"
"I did, indade, Mr. Gridley. It was a longish kind of a pauper, and
there was some blotches of ink on the back of it,--an' they looked like a
face without any mouth, for, says I, there's two spots for the eyes, says
I, and there's a spot for the nose, says I, and there's niver a spot for
the mouth, says I."
This was the substance of what Master Byles Gridley got out of Kitty
Fagan. It was enough, yes, it was too much. There was some deep-laid
plot between Murray Bradshaw and Cynthia Badlam, involving the interests
of some of the persons connected with the late Malachi Withers; for that
the paper described by Kitty was the same that he had seen the young man
conceal in the Corpus Juris Civilis, it was impossible to doubt. If it
had been a single spot an the back of it, or two, he might have doubted.
But three large spots "blotches" she had called them, disposed thus
*.* --would not have happened to be on two different papers, in all human
probability.
After grave consultation of all his mental faculties in committee of the
whole, he arrived at the following conclusion,--that Miss Cynthia Badlam
was the depositary of a secret involving interests which he felt it his
business to defend, and of a document which was fraudulently withheld and
meant to be used for some unfair purpose. And most assuredly, Master
Gridley said to himself, he held a master-key, which, just so certainly
as he could make up his mind to use it, would open any secret in the
keeping of Miss Cynthia Badlam.
He proceeded, therefore, without delay, to get ready for a visit to that
lady at The Poplars. He meant to go thoroughly armed, for he was a very
provident old gentleman. His weapons were not exactly of the kind which
a housebreaker would provide himself with, but of a somewhat peculiar
nature.
Weapon number one was a slip of paper with a date and a few words written
upon it. "I think this will fetch the document," he said to himself, "if
it comes to the worst. Not if I can help it,--not if I can help it. But
if I cannot get at the heart of this thing otherwise, why, I must come to
this. Poor woman!--Poor woman!"
Weapon number two was a small phial containing spirits of hartshorn, sal
volatile, very strong, that would stab through the nostrils, like a
stiletto, deep into the gray kernels that lie in the core of the brain.
Excellent in cases of sudden syncope or fainting, such as sometimes
require the opening of windows, the dashing on of cold water, the cutting
of stays, perhaps, with a scene of more or less tumultuous perturbation
and afflux of clamorous womanhood.
So armed, Byles Gridley, A. M., champion of unprotected innocence,
grasped his ivory-handled cane and sallied forth on his way to The
Poplars.
CHAPTER XXX.
MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY CALLS ON MISS CYNTHIA BADLAM.
MISS Cynthia Badlam was seated in a small parlor which she was accustomed
to consider her own during her long residences at The Poplars. The entry
stove warmed it but imperfectly, and she looked pinched and cold, for the
evenings were still pretty sharp, and the old house let in the chill
blasts, as old houses are in the habit of doing. She was sitting at her
table, with a little trunk open before her. She had taken some papers
from it, which she was looking over, when a knock at her door announced a
visitor, and Master Byles Gridley entered the parlor.
As he came into the room, she gathered the papers together and replaced
them in the trunk, which she locked, throwing an unfinished piece of
needle-work over it, putting the key in her pocket, and gathering herself
up for company. Something of all this Master Gridley saw through his
round spectacles, but seemed not to see, and took his seat like a visitor
making a call of politeness.
A visitor at such an hour, of the male sex, without special provocation,
without social pretext, was an event in the life of the desolate
spinster. Could it be--No, it could not--and yet--and yet! Miss Cynthia
threw back the rather common-looking but comfortable shawl which covered
her shoulders, and showed her quite presentable figure, arrayed with a
still lingering thought of that remote contingency which might yet offer
itself at some unexpected moment; she adjusted the carefully plaited cap,
which was not yet of the lasciate ogni speranza pattern, and as she
obeyed these instincts of her sex, she smiled a welcome to the
respectable, learned, and independent bachelor. Mr. Gridley had a frosty
but kindly age before him, with a score or so of years to run, which it
was after all not strange to fancy might be rendered more cheerful by the
companionship of a well-conserved and amiably disposed woman, if any such
should happen to fall in his way.
That smile came very near disconcerting the plot of Master Byles Gridley.
He had come on an inquisitor's errand, his heart secure, as he thought,
against all blandishments, his will steeled to break down all resistance.
He had come armed with an instrument of torture worse than the
thumb-screw, worse than the pulleys which attempt the miracle of adding a
cubit to the stature, worse than the brazier of live coals brought close
to the naked soles of the feet,--an instrument which, instead of trifling
with the nerves, would clutch all the nerve-centres and the heart itself
in its gripe, and hold them until it got its answer, if the white lips
had life enough left to shape one. And here was this unfortunate maiden
lady smiling at him, setting her limited attractions in their best light,
pleading with him in that natural language which makes any contumacious
bachelor feel as guilty as Cain before any single woman. If Mr. Gridley
had been alone, he would have taken a good sniff at his own bottle of sal
volatile; for his kind heart sunk within him as he thought of the errand
upon which he had come. It would not do to leave the subject of his
vivisection under any illusion as to the nature of his designs.
"Good evening, Miss Badlam," he said, "I have come to visit you on a
matter of business."
What was the internal panorama which had unrolled itself at the instant
of his entrance, and which rolled up as suddenly at the sound of his
serious voice and the look of his grave features? It cannot be
reproduced, though pages were given to it; for some of the pictures were
near, and some were distant; some were clearly seen, and some were only
hinted; some were not recognized in the intellect at all, and yet they
were implied, as it were, behind the others. Many times we have all found
ourselves glad or sorry, and yet we could not tell what thought it was
that reflected the sunbeam or cast the shadow. Took into Cynthia's
suddenly exalted consciousness and see the picture, actual and potential,
unroll itself in all its details of the natural, the ridiculous, the
selfish, the pitiful, the human. Glimpses, hints, echoes, suggestions,
involving tender sentiments hitherto unknown, we may suppose, to that
unclaimed sister's breast,--pleasant excitement of receiving
congratulations from suddenly cordial friends; the fussy delights of
buying furniture and shopping for new dresses,--(it seemed as if she
could hear herself saying, "Heavy silks,--best goods, if you
please,")--with delectable thumping down of flat-sided pieces of calico,
cambric, "rep," and other stiffs, and rhythmic evolution of measured
yards, followed by sharp snip of scissors, and that cry of rending
tissues dearer to woman's ear than any earthly sound until she hears
the voice of her own first-born,(much of this potentially,
remember,)--thoughts of a comfortable settlement, an imposing social
condition, a cheerful household, and by and by an Indian summer of serene
widowhood,--all these, and infinite other involved possibilities had
mapped themselves in one long swift flash before Cynthia's inward eye,
and all vanished as the old man spoke those few words. The look on his
face, and the tone of his cold speech, had instantly swept them all away,
like a tea-set sliding in a single crash from a slippery tray.
What could be the "business" on which he had come to her with that solemn
face?--she asked herself, as she returned his greeting and offered him a
chair. She was conscious of a slight tremor as she put this question to
her own intelligence.
"Are we like to be alone and undisturbed?" Mr. Gridley asked. It was a
strange question,--men do act strangely sometimes. She hardly knew.
whether to turn red or white.
"Yes, there is nobody like to come in at present," she answered. She did
not know what to make of it. What was coming next,--a declaration, or an
accusation of murder?
"My business," Mr. Gridley said, very gravely, "relates to this. I wish
to inspect papers which I have reason to believe exist, and which have
reference to the affairs of the late Malachi Withers. Can you help me to
get sight of any of these papers not to be found at the Registry of Deeds
or the Probate Office?"
"Excuse me, Mr. Gridley, but may I ask you what particular concern you
have with the affairs of my relative, Cousin Malachi Withers, that's been
dead and buried these half-dozen years?"
"Perhaps it would take some time to answer that question fully, Miss
Badlam. Some of these affairs do concern those I am interested in, if
not myself directly."
"May I ask who the person or persons may be on whose account you wish to
look at papers belonging to my late relative, Malachi Withers?"
"You can ask me almost anything, Miss Badlam, but I should really be very
much obliged if you would answer my question first. Can you help me to
get a sight of any papers relating to the estate of Malachi Withers, not
to be found at the Registry of Deeds or the Probate Office,--any of which
you may happen to have any private and particular knowledge?"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gridley; but I don't understand why you come to
me with such questions. Lawyer Penhallow is the proper person, I should
think, to go to. He and his partner that was--Mr. Wibird, you
know--settled the estate, and he has got the papers, I suppose, if there
are any, that ain't to be found in the offices you mention."
Mr. Gridley moved his chair a little, so as to bring Miss Badlam's face a
little more squarely in view.
"Does Mr. William Murray Bradshaw know anything about any papers, such as
I am referring to, that may have been sent to the office?"
The lady felt a little moisture stealing through all her pores, and at
the same time a certain dryness of the vocal organs, so that her answer
came in a slightly altered tone which neither of them could help
noticing.
"You had better ask Mr. William Murray Bradshaw yourself about that," she
answered. She felt the hook now, and her spines were rising, partly with
apprehension, partly with irritation.
"Has that young gentleman ever delivered into your hands any papers
relating to the affairs of the late Malachi Withers, for your safe
keeping?"
"What do you mean by asking me these questions, Mr. Gridley? I don't
choose to be catechised about Murray Bradshaw's business. Go to him, if
you please, if you want to find out about it."
"Excuse my persistence, Miss Badlam, but I must prevail upon you to
answer my question. Has Mr. William Murray Bradshaw ever delivered into
your hands any papers relating to the affairs of the late Malachi
Withers, for your safe keeping?"
"Do you suppose I am going to answer such questions as you are putting me
because you repeat them over, Mr. Gridley? Indeed I cha'n't. Ask him,
if you please, whatever you wish to know about his doings."
She drew herself up and looked savagely at him. She had talked herself
into her courage. There was a color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her
eye; she looked dangerous as a cobra.
"Miss Cynthia Badlam," Master Gridley said, very deliberately, "I am
afraid we do not entirely understand each other. You must answer my
question precisely, categorically, point-blank, and on the instant. Will
you do this at once, or will you compel me to show you the absolute
necessity of your doing it, at the expense of pain to both of us? Six
words from me will make you answer all my questions."
"You can't say six words, nor sixty, Mr. Gridley, that will make me
answer one question I do not choose to. I defy you!"
"I will not say one, Miss Cynthia Badlam. There are some things one does
not like to speak in words. But I will show you a scrap of paper,
containing just six words and a date; not one word more nor one less.
You shall read them. Then I will burn the paper in the flame of your
lamp. As soon after that as you feel ready, I will ask the same question
again."
Master Gridley took out from his pocket-book a scrap of paper, and handed
it to Cynthia Badlam. Her hand shook as she received it, for she was
frightened as well as enraged, and she saw that Mr. Gridley was in
earnest and knew what he was doing.
She read the six words, he looking at her steadily all the time, and
watching her as if he had just given her a drop of prussic acid.
No cry. No sound from her lips. She stared as if half stunned for one
moment, then turned her head and glared at Mr. Gridley as if she would
have murdered him if she dared. In another instant her face whitened,
the scrap of paper fluttered to the floor, and she would have followed it
but for the support of both Mr. Gridley's arms. He disengaged one of
them presently, and felt in his pocket for the sal volatile. It served
him excellently well, and stung her back again to her senses very
quickly. All her defiant aspect had gone.
"Look!" he said, as he lighted the scrap of paper in the flame. "You
understand me, and you see that I must be answered the next time I ask my
question."
She opened her lips as if to speak. It was as when a bell is rung in a
vacuum,--no words came from them,--only a faint gasping sound, an effort
at speech. She was caught tight in the heart-screw.
"Don't hurry yourself, Miss Cynthia," he said, with a certain relenting
tenderness of manner. "Here, take another sniff of the smelling-salts.
Be calm, be quiet,--I am well disposed towards you,--I don't like to give
you trouble. There, now, I must have the answer to that question; but
take your time, take your time."
"Give me some water,--some water!" she said, in a strange hoarse whisper.
There was a pitcher of water and a tumbler on an old marble sideboard
near by. He filled the tumbler, and Cynthia emptied it as if she had
just been taken from the rack, and could have swallowed a bucketful.
"What do you want to know?" she asked.
"I wish to know all that you can tell me about a certain paper, or
certain papers, which I have reason to believe Mr. William Murray
Bradshaw committed to your keeping."
"There is only one paper of any consequence. Do you want to make him
kill me? or do you want to make me kill myself?"
"Neither, Miss Cynthia, neither. I wish to see that paper, but not for
any bad purpose. Don't you think, on the whole, you have pretty good
reason to trust me? I am a very quiet man, Miss Cynthia. Don't be
afraid of me; only do what I ask,--it will be a great deal better for you
in the end."
She thrust her trembling hand into her pocket, and took out the key of
the little trunk. She drew the trunk towards her, put the key in the
lock, and opened it. It seemed like pressing a knife into her own bosom
and turning the blade. That little trunk held all the records of her
life the forlorn spinster most cherished;--a few letters that came nearer
to love-letters than any others she had ever received; an album, with
flowers of the summers of 1840 and 1841 fading between its leaves; two
papers containing locks of hair, half of a broken ring, and other
insignificant mementos which had their meaning, doubtless, to her,--such
a collection as is often priceless to one human heart, and passed by as
worthless in the auctioneer's inventory. She took the papers out
mechanically, and laid them on the table. Among them was an oblong
packet, sealed with what appeared to be the office seal of Messrs.
Penhallow and Bradshaw.
"Will you allow me to take that envelope containing papers, Miss Badlam?"
Mr. Gridley asked, with a suavity and courtesy in his tone and manner
that showed how he felt for her sex and her helpless position.
She seemed to obey his will as if she had none of her own left. She
passed the envelope to him, and stared at him vacantly while he examined
it. He read on the back of the package: "Withers Estate--old papers--of
no importance apparently. Examine hereafter."
"May I ask when, where, and of whom you obtained these papers, Miss
Badlam?"
"Have pity on me, Mr. Gridley,--have pity on me. I am a lost woman if
you do not. Spare me! for God's sake, spare me! There will no wrong
come of all this, if you will but wait a little while. The paper will
come to light when it is wanted, and all will be right. But do not make
me answer any more questions, and let me keep this paper. O Mr. Gridley!
I am in the power of a dreadful man--"
"You mean Mr. William Murray Bradshaw?"
"I mean him."
"Has there not been some understanding between you that he should become
the approved suitor of Miss Myrtle Hazard?"
Cynthia wrung her hands and rocked herself backward and forward in her
misery, but answered not a word. What could she answer, if she had
plotted with this "dreadful man" against a young and innocent girl, to
deliver her over into his hands, at the risk of all her earthly hopes and
happiness?
Master Gridley waited long and patiently for any answer she might have
the force to make. As she made none, he took upon himself to settle the
whole matter without further torture of his helpless victim.
"This package must go into the hands of the parties who had the
settlement of the estate of the late Malachi Withers. Mr. Penhallow is
the survivor of the two gentlemen to whom that business was intrusted.
How long is Mr. William Murray Bradshaw like to be away?"
"Perhaps a few days,--perhaps weeks,--and then he will come back and kill
me,--or--or--worse! Don't take that paper, Mr. Gridley,--he isn't like
you! you would n't--but he would--he would send me to everlasting misery
to gain his own end, or to save himself. And yet he is n't every way
bad, and if he did marry Myrtle she'd think there never was such a
man,--for he can talk her heart out of her, and the wicked in him lies
very deep and won't ever come out, perhaps, if the world goes right with
him." The last part of this sentence showed how Cynthia talked with her
own conscience; all her mental and moral machinery lay open before the
calm eyes of Master Byles Gridley.
His thoughts wandered a moment from the business before him; he had just
got a new study of human nature, which in spite of himself would be
shaping itself into an axiom for an imagined new edition of "Thoughts on
the Universe," something like this, "The greatest saint may be a sinner
that never got down to "hard pan." It was not the time to be framing
axioms.
"Poh! poh!" he said to himself; "what are you about making phrases, when
you have got a piece of work like this in hand?" Then to Cynthia, with
great gentleness and kindness of manner: "Have no fear about any
consequences to yourself. Mr. Penhallow must see that paper--I mean
those papers. You shall not be a loser nor a sufferer if you do your
duty now in these premises."
Master Gridley, treating her, as far as circumstances permitted, like a
gentleman, had shown no intention of taking the papers either stealthily
or violently. It must be with her consent. He had laid the package down
upon the table, waiting for her to give him leave to take it. But just
as he spoke these last words, Cynthia, whose eye had been glancing
furtively at it while he was thinking out his axiom, and taking her
bearings to it pretty carefully, stretched her hand out, and, seizing the
package, thrust it into the sanctuary of her bosom.
"Mr. Penhallow must see those papers, Miss Cynthia Badlam," Mr. Gridley
repeated calmly. "If he says they or any of them can be returned to your
keeping, well and good. But see them he must, for they have his office
seal and belong in his custody, and, as you see by the writing on the
back, they have not been examined. Now there may be something among them
which is of immediate importance to the relatives of the late deceased
Malachi Withers, and therefore they must be forthwith submitted to the
inspection of the surviving partner of the firm of Wibird and Penhallow.
This I propose to do, with your consent, this evening. It is now
twenty-five minutes past eight by the true time, as my watch has it.
At half past eight exactly I shall have the honor of bidding you good
evening, Miss Cynthia Badlam, whether you give me those papers or not. I
shall go to the office of Jacob Penhallow, Esquire, and there make one of
two communications to him; to wit, these papers and the facts connected
therewith, or another statement, the nature of which you may perhaps
conjecture."
There is no need of our speculating as to what Mr. Byles Gridley, an
honorable and humane man, would have done, or what would have been the
nature of that communication which he offered as an alternative to the
perplexed woman. He had not at any rate miscalculated the strength of
his appeal, which Cynthia interpreted as he expected. She bore the
heart-screw about two minutes. Then she took the package from her bosom,
and gave it with averted face to Master Byles Gridley, who, on receiving
it, made her a formal but not unkindly bow, and bade her good evening.
"One would think it had been lying out in the dew," he said, as he left
the house and walked towards Mr. Penhallow's residence.
CHAPTER XXXI.
MASTER BYLES GRIDLEY CONSULTS WITH JACOB PENHALLOW, ESQUIRE
Lawyer Penhallow was seated in his study, his day's work over, his feet
in slippers, after the comfortable but inelegant fashion which Sir Walter
Scott reprobates, amusing himself with a volume of old Reports. He was a
knowing man enough, a keen country lawyer but honest, and therefore less
ready to suspect the honesty of others. He had a great belief in his
young partner's ability, and, though he knew him to be astute, did not
think him capable of roguery.
It was at his request that Mr. Bradshaw had undertaken his journey,
which, as he believed,--and as Mr. Bradshaw had still stronger evidence
of a strictly confidential nature which led him to feel sure,--would end
in the final settlement of the great land claim in favor of their client.
The case had been dragging along from year to year, like an English
chancery suit; and while courts and lawyers and witnesses had been
sleeping, the property had been steadily growing. A railroad had passed
close to one margin of the township, some mines had been opened in the
county, in which a village calling itself a city had grown big enough to
have a newspaper and Fourth of July orations. It was plain that the
successful issue of the long process would make the heirs of the late
Malachi Withers possessors of an ample fortune, and it was also plain
that the firm of Penhallow and Bradshaw were like to receive, in such
case, the largest fee that had gladdened the professional existence of
its members.
Mr. Penhallow had his book open before him, but his thoughts were
wandering from the page. He was thinking of his absent partner, and the
probable results of his expedition. What would be the consequence if all
this property came into the possession of Silence Withers? Could she
have any liberal intentions with reference to Myrtle Hazard, the young
girl who had grown up with her, or was the common impression true, that
she was bent on endowing an institution, and thus securing for herself a
favorable consideration in the higher courts, where her beneficiaries
would be, it might be supposed, influential advocates? He could not help
thinking that Mr. Bradshaw believed that Myrtle Hazard would eventually
come to apart at least of this inheritance. For the story was, that he
was paying his court to the young lady whenever he got an opportunity,
and that he was cultivating an intimacy with Miss Cynthia Badlam.
"Bradshaw would n'tmake a move in that direction," Mr. Penhallow said to
himself, "until he felt pretty sure that it was going to be a paying
business. If he was only a young minister now, there'd be no difficulty
about it. Let any man, young or old, in a clerical white cravat, step up
to Myrtle Hazard, and ask her to be miserable in his company through this
wretched life, and aunt Silence would very likely give them her blessing,
and add something to it that the man in the white cravat would think
worth even more than that was. But I don't know what she'll say to
Bradshaw. Perhaps he 'd better have a hint to go to meeting a little
more regularly. However, I suppose he knows what he's about."
He was thinking all this over when a visitor was announced, and Mr. Byles
Gridley entered the study.
"Good evening, Mr. Penhallow," Mr. Gridley said, wiping his forehead.
"Quite warm, is n't it, this evening?"
"Warm!" said Mr. Penhallow, "I should think it would freeze pretty thick
to-night. I should have asked you to come up to the fire and warm
yourself. But take off your coat, Mr. Gridley,--very glad to see you.
You don't come to the house half as often as you come to the office. Sit
down, sit down."
Mr. Gridley took off his outside coat and sat down. "He does look warm,
does n't he?" Mr. Penhallow thought. "Wonder what has heated up the old
gentleman so. Find out quick enough, for he always goes straight to
business."
"Mr. Penhallow," Mr. Gridley began at once, "I have come on a very grave
matter, in which you are interested as well as myself, and I wish to lay
the whole of it before you as explicitly as I can, so that we may settle
this night before I go what is to be done. I am afraid the good standing
of your partner, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, is concerned in the matter.
Would it be a surprise to you, if he had carried his acuteness in some
particular case like the one I am to mention beyond the prescribed
limits?"
The question was put so diplomatically that there was no chance for an
indignant denial of the possibility of Mr. Bradshaw's being involved in
any discreditable transaction.
"It is possible," he answered, "that Bradshaw's keen wits may have
betrayed him into sharper practice than I should altogether approve in
any business we carried on together. He is a very knowing young man, but
I can't think he is foolish enough, to say nothing of his honesty, to
make any false step of the kind you seem to hint. I think he might on
occasion go pretty near the line, but I don't believe he would cross it."
"Permit me a few questions, Mr. Penhallow. You settled the estate of the
late Malachi Withers, did you not?"
"Mr. Wibird and myself settled it together."
"Have you received any papers from any of the family since the settlement
of the estate?"
"Let me see. Yes; a roll of old plans of the Withers Place, and so
forth,--not of much use, but labelled and kept. An old trunk with
letters and account-books, some of them in Dutch,--mere curiosities. A
year ago or more, I remember that Silence sent me over some papers she
had found in an odd corner,--the old man hid things like a magpie. I
looked over most of them,--trumpery not worth keeping,--old leases and so
forth."
"Do you recollect giving some of them to Mr. Bradshaw to look over?"
"Now I come to think of it, I believe I did; but he reported to me, if I
remember right, that they amounted to nothing."
"If any of those papers were of importance, should you think your junior
partner ought to keep them from your knowledge?"
"I need not answer that question, Mr. Gridley. Will you be so good as to
come at once to the facts on which you found your suspicions, and which
lead you to put these questions to me?"
Thereupon Mr. Gridley proceeded to state succinctly the singular behavior
of Murray Bradshaw in taking one paper from a number handed to him by Mr.
Penhallow, and concealing it in a volume. He related how he was just on
the point of taking out the volume which contained the paper, when Mr.
Bradshaw entered and disconcerted him. He had, however, noticed three
spots on the paper by which he should know it anywhere. He then repeated
the substance of Kitty Fagan's story, accenting the fact that she too
noticed three remarkable spots on the paper which Mr. Bradshaw had
pointed out to Miss Badlam as the one so important to both of them. Here
he rested the case for the moment.
Mr. Penhallow looked thoughtful. There was something questionable in the
aspect of this business. It did obviously suggest the idea of an
underhand arrangement with Miss Cynthia, possibly involving some very
grave consequences. It would have been most desirable, he said, to have
ascertained what these papers, or rather this particular paper, to which
so much importance was attached, amounted to. Without that knowledge
there was nothing, after all, which it might not be possible to explain.
He might have laid aside the spotted paper to examine for some object of
mere curiosity. It was certainly odd that the one the Fagan woman had
seen should present three spots so like those on the other paper, but
people did sometimes throw treys at backgammon, and that which not rarely
happened with two dice of six faces might happen if they had sixty or six
hundred faces. On the whole, he did not see that there was any ground,
so far, for anything more than a vague suspicion. He thought it not
unlikely that Mr. Bradshaw was a little smitten with the young lady up at
The Poplars, and that he had made some diplomatic overtures to the
duenna, after the approved method of suitors. She was young for
Bradshaw,--very young,--but he knew his own affairs. If he chose to make
love to a child, it was natural enough that he should begin by courting
her nurse.
Master Byles Gridley lost himself for half a minute in a most
discreditable inward discussion as to whether Laura Penhallow was
probably one or two years older than Mr. Bradshaw. That was his way, he
could not help it. He could not think of anything without these mental
parentheses. But he came back to business at the end of his half-minute.
"I can lay the package before you at this moment, Mr. Penhallow. I have
induced that woman in whose charge it was left to intrust it to my
keeping, with the express intention of showing it to you. But it is
protected by a seal, as I have told you, which I should on no account
presume to meddle with."
Mr. Gridley took out the package of papers.
"How damp it is!" Mr. Penhallow said; "must have been lying in some very
moist neighborhood."
"Very," Mr. Gridley answered, with a peculiar expression which said,
"Never mind about that."
"Did the party give you possession of these documents without making any
effort to retain them?" the lawyer asked.
"Not precisely. It cost some effort to induce Miss Badlam to let them go
out of her hands. I hope you think I was justified in making the effort
I did, not without a considerable strain upon my feelings, as well as her
own, to get hold of the papers?"
"That will depend something on what the papers prove to be, Mr. Gridley.
A man takes a certain responsibility in doing just what you have done.
If, for instance, it should prove that this envelope contained matters
relating solely to private transactions between Mr. Bradshaw and Miss
Badlam, concerning no one but themselves,--and if the words on the back
of the envelope and the seal had been put there merely as a protection
for a package containing private papers of a delicate but perfectly
legitimate character--"
The lawyer paused, as careful experts do, after bending the bow of an
hypothesis, before letting the arrow go. Mr. Gridley felt very warm
indeed, uncomfortably so, and applied his handkerchief to his face. Could
n't be anything in such a violent supposition as that, and yet such a
crafty fellow as that Bradshaw,--what trick was he not up to? Absurd!
Cynthia was not acting,--Rachel would n't be equal to such a
performance!--"why then, Mr. Gridley," the lawyer continued, "I don't
see but what my partner would have you at an advantage, and, if disposed
to make you uncomfortable, could do so pretty effectively. But this, you
understand, is only a supposed case, and not a very likely one. I don't
think it would have been prudent in you to meddle with that seal. But
it is a very different matter with regard to myself. It makes no
difference, so far as I am concerned, where this package came from, or
how it was obtained. It is just as absolutely within my control as any
piece of property I call my own. I should not hesitate, if I saw fit, to
break this seal at once, and proceed to the examination of any papers
contained within the envelope. If I found any paper of the slightest
importance relating to the estate, I should act as if it had never been
out of my possession.
"Suppose, however, I chose to know what was in the package, and, having
ascertained, act my judgment about returning it to the party from whom
you obtained it. In such case I might see fit to restore or cause it to
be restored, to the party, without any marks of violence having been used
being apparent. If everything is not right, probably no questions would
be asked by the party having charge of the package. If there is no
underhand work going on, and the papers are what they profess to be,
nobody is compromised but yourself, so far as I can see, and you are
compromised at any rate, Mr. Gridley, at least in the good graces of the
party from whom you obtained the documents. Tell that party that I took
the package without opening it, and shall return it, very likely, without
breaking the seal. Will consider of the matter, say a couple of days.
Then you shall hear from me, and she shall hear from you. So. So. Yes,
that's it. A nice business. A thing to sleep on. You had better leave
the whole matter of dealing with the package to me. If I see fit to send
it back with the seal unbroken, that is my affair. But keep perfectly
quiet, if you please, Mr. Gridley, about the whole matter. Mr. Bradshaw
is off, as you know, and the business on which he is gone is
important,--very important. He can be depended on for that; he has acted
all along as if he had a personal interest in the success of our firm
beyond his legal relation to it."
Mr. Penhallow's light burned very late in the office that night, and the
following one. He looked troubled and absent-minded, and when Miss Laura
ventured to ask him how long Mr. Bradshaw was like to be gone, he
answered her in such a way that the girl who waited at table concluded
that he did n't mean to have Miss Laury keep company with Mr. Bradshaw,
or he'd never have spoke so dreadful hash to her when she asked about
him.
CHAPTER XXXII.
SUSAN POSEY'S TRIAL.
A day or two after Myrtle Hazard returned to the village, Master Byles
Gridley, accompanied by Gifted Hopkins, followed her, as has been already
mentioned, to the same scene of the principal events of this narrative.
The young man had been persuaded that it would be doing injustice to his
talents to crowd their fruit prematurely upon the market. He carried his
manuscript back with him, having relinquished the idea of publishing for
the present. Master Byles Gridley, on the other hand, had in his pocket
a very flattering proposal, from the same publisher to whom he had
introduced the young poet, for a new and revised edition of his work,
"Thoughts on the Universe," which was to be remodelled in some respects,
and to have a new title not quite so formidable to the average reader.
It would be hardly fair to Susan Posey to describe with what delight and
innocent enthusiasm she welcomed back Gifted Hopkins. She had been so
lonely since he was away? She had read such of his poems as she
possessed--duplicates of his printed ones, or autographs which he had
kindly written out for her--over and over again, not without the sweet
tribute of feminine sensibility, which is the most precious of all
testimonials to a poet's power over the heart. True, her love belonged
to another,--but then she was so used to Gifted! She did so love to hear
him read his poems,--and Clement had never written that "little bit of a
poem to Susie," which she had asked him for so long ago! She received
him therefore with open arms,--not literally, of course, which would have
been a breach of duty and propriety, but in a figurative sense, which it
is hoped no reader will interpret to her discredit.
The young poet was in need of consolation. It is true that he had seen
many remarkable sights during his visit to the city; that he had got
"smarted up," as his mother called it, a good deal; that he had been to
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's party, where he had looked upon life in all its
splendors; and that he brought back many interesting experiences, which
would serve to enliven his conversation for a long time. But he had
failed in the great enterprise he had undertaken. He was forced to
confess to his revered parent, and his esteemed friend Susan Posey, that
his genius, which was freely acknowledged, was not thought to be quite
ripe as yet. He told the young lady some particulars of his visit to the
publisher, how he had listened with great interest to one of his poems,
"The Triumph of Song,"--how he had treated him with marked and flattering
attention; but that he advised him not to risk anything prematurely,
giving him the hope that by and by he would be admitted into that series
of illustrious authors which it was the publisher's privilege to present
to the reading public. In short, he was advised not to print. That was
the net total of the matter, and it was a pang to the susceptible heart
of the poet. He had hoped to have come home enriched by the sale of his
copyright, and with the prospect of seeing his name before long on the
back of a handsome volume.
Gifted's mother did all in her power to console him in his
disappointment. There was plenty of jealous people always that wanted to
keep young folks from rising in the world. Never mind, she did n't
believe but what Gifted could make jest as good verses as any of them
that they kept such a talk about. She had a fear that he might pine away
in consequence of the mental excitement he had gone through, and
solicited his appetite with her choicest appliances,--of which he partook
in a measure which showed that there was no immediate cause of alarm.
But Susan Posey was more than a consoler,--she was an angel to him in
this time of his disappointment. "Read me all the poems over again," she
said,--"it is almost the only pleasure I have left, to hear you read your
beautiful verses." Clement Lindsay had not written to Susan quite so
often of late as at some former periods of the history of their love.
Perhaps it was that which had made her look paler than usual for some
little time. Something was evidently preying on her. Her only delight
seemed to be in listening to Gifted as he read, sometimes with fine
declamatory emphasis, sometimes in low, tremulous tones, the various
poems enshrined in his manuscript. At other times she was sad, and more
than once Mrs. Hopkins had seen a tear steal down her innocent cheek,
when there seemed to be no special cause for grief. She ventured to
speak of it to Master Byles Gridley.
"Our Susan's in trouble, Mr. Gridley, for some reason or other that's
unbeknown to me, and I can't help wishing you could jest have a few words
with her. You're a kind of a grandfather, you know, to all the young
folks, and they'd tell you pretty much everything about themselves. I
calc'late she is n't at ease in her mind about somethin' or other, and I
kind o' think, Mr. Gridley, you could coax it out of her."
"Was there ever anything like it?" said Master Byles Gridley to himself.
"I shall have all the young folks in Oxbow Village to take care of at
this rate. Susan Posey in trouble, too! Well, well, well, it's easier
to get a birch-bark canoe off the shallows than a big ship off the rocks.
Susan Posey's trouble will be come at easily enough; but Myrtle Hazard
floats in deeper water. We must make Susan Posey tell her own story, or
let her tell it, for it will all come out of itself."
"I am going to dust the books in the open shelves this morning. I wonder
if Miss Susan Posey would n't like to help for half an hour or so,"
Master Gridley remarked at the breakfast-table.
The amiable girl's very pleasant countenance lighted up at the thought of
obliging the old man who had been so kind to her and so liberal to her
friend, the poet. She would be delighted to help him; she would dust
them all for him, if he wanted her to. No, Master Gridley said, he
always wanted to have a hand in it; and, besides, such a little body as
she was could not lift those great folios out of the lower shelves
without overstraining herself; she might handle the musketry and the
light artillery, but he must deal with the heavy guns himself. "As low
down as the octavos, Susan Posey, you shall govern; below that, the Salic
law."
Susan did not low much about the Salic law; but she knew he meant that he
would dust the big books and she would attend to the little ones.
A very young and a very pretty girl is sometimes quite charming in a
costume which thinks of nothing less than of being attractive. Susan
appeared after breakfast in the study, her head bound with a kerchief of
bright pattern, a little jacket she had outgrown buttoned, in spite of
opposition, close about her up to the throat, round which a white
handkerchief was loosely tied, and a pair of old gauntlets protecting her
hands, so that she suggested something between a gypsy, a jaunty
soubrette, and the fille du regiment.
Master Gridley took out a great volume from the lower shelf,--a folio in
massive oaken covers with clasps Like prison hinges, bearing the stately
colophon, white on a ground of vermilion, of Nicholas Jenson and his
associates. He opened the volume,--paused over its blue, and scarlet
initial letter,--he turned page after page, admiring its brilliant
characters, its broad, white marginal rivers, and the narrower white
creek that separated the black-typed twin-columns, he turned back to the
beginning and read the commendatory paragraph, "Nam ipsorum omnia fidgent
tum correctione dignissima, tum cura imprimendo splendida ac miranda,"
and began reading, "Incipit proemium super apparatum decretalium...."
when it suddenly occurred to him that this was not exactly doing what he
had undertaken to do, and he began whisking an ancient bandanna about the
ears of the venerable volume. All this time Miss Susan Posey was
catching the little books by the small of their backs, pulling them out,
opening them, and clapping them together, 'p-'p-'p! 'p-'p-'p! and
carefully caressing all their edges with a regular professional
dusting-cloth, so persuasively that they yielded up every particle that a
year had drifted upon them, and came forth refreshed and rejuvenated.
This process went on for a while, until Susan had worked down among the
octavos and Master Gridley had worked up among the quartos. He had got
hold of Calmet's Dictionary, and was caught by the article Solomon, so
that he forgot his occupation again. All at once it struck him that
everything was very silent,--the 'p-'p-'p! of clapping the books had
ceased, and the light rustle of Susan's dress was no longer heard. He
looked up and saw her standing perfectly still, with a book in one hand
and her duster in the other. She was lost in thought, and by the shadow
on her face and the glistening of her blue eyes he knew it was her hidden
sorrow that had just come back to her. Master Gridley shut up his book,
leaving Solomon to his fate, like the worthy Benedictine he was reading,
without discussing the question whether he was saved or not.
"Susan Posey, child, what is your trouble?"
Poor Susan was in the state of unstable equilibrium which the least touch
upsets, and fell to crying. It took her some time to get down the waves
of emotion so that speech would live upon them. At last it ventured
out,--showing at intervals, like the boat rising on the billow, sinking
into the hollow, and climbing again into notice.
"O Mr. Grid-ley--I can't--I can't--tell you or--any-body--what 's the
mat-mat-matter. My heart will br-br-break."
"No, no, no, child," said Mr. Gridley, sympathetically stirred a little
himself by the sight of Susan in tears and sobbing and catching her
breath, "that mustn't be, Susan Posey. Come off the steps, Susan Posey,
and stop dusting the books,--I can finish them,--and tell me all abort
your troubles. I will try 'to help you out of them, and I have begun to
think I know how to help young people pretty well. I have had some
experience at it."
But Susan cried and sobbed all the more uncontrollably and convulsively.
Master Gridley thought he had better lead her at once to what he felt
pretty sure was the source of her grief, and that, when she had had her
cry out, she would probably make the hole in the ice he had broken big
enough in a very few minutes.
"I think something has gone wrong between you and your friend, the young
gentleman with whom you are in intimate relations, my child, and I think
you had better talk freely with me, for I can perhaps give you a little
counsel that will be of service."
Susan cried herself quiet at last. "There's nobody in the world like
you, Mr. Gridley," she said, "and I've been wanting to tell you something
ever so long. My friend--Mr. Clem--Clement Lindsay does n't care for me
as he used to,--I know he does n't. He hasn't written to me for--I don't
know but it's a month. And O Mr. Gridley! he's such a great man, and I
am such a simple person,--I can't help thinking--he would be happier with
somebody else than poor little Susan Posey!"
This last touch of self-pity overcame her, as it is so apt to do those
who indulge in that delightful misery, and she broke up badly, as a
horse-fancier would say, so that it was some little time before she
recovered her conversational road-gait.
"O Mr. Gridley," she began again, at length, "if I only dared to tell him
what I think,--that perhaps it would be happier for us both--if we could
forget each other! Ought I not to tell him so? Don't you think he would
find another to make him happy? Wouldn't he forgive me for telling him
he was free? Were we not too young to know each other's hearts when we
promised each other that we would love as long as we lived? Sha'n't I
write him a letter this very day and tell him all? Do you think it would
be wrong in me to do it? O Mr. Gridley, it makes me almost crazy to
think about it. Clement must be free! I cannot, cannot hold him to a
promise he does n't want to keep."
There were so many questions in this eloquent rhapsody of Susan's that
they neutralized each other, as one might say, and Master Gridley had
time for reflection. His thoughts went on something in this way:
"Pretty clear case! Guess Mr. Clement can make up his mind to it. Put it
well, did n't she? Not a word about our little Gifted! That's the
trouble. Poets! how they do bewitch these schoolgirls! And having a
chance every day, too, how could you expect her to stand it?" Then
aloud: "Susan Posey, you are a good, honest little girl as ever was. I
think you and Clement were too hasty in coming together for life before
you knew what life meant. I think if you write Clement a letter, telling
him that you cannot help fearing that you two are not perfectly adapted
to each other, on account of certain differences for which neither of you
is responsible, and that you propose that each should release the other
from the pledge given so long ago,--in that case, I say, I believe he
will think no worse of you for so doing, and may perhaps agree that it is
best for both of you to seek your happiness elsewhere than in each
other."
The book-dusting came to as abrupt a close as the reading of Lancelot.
Susan went straight to her room, dried her tears so as to write in a fair
hand, but had to stop every few lines and take a turn at the
"dust-layers," as Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's friend used to call the fountains
of sensibility. It would seem like betraying Susan's confidence to
reveal the contents of this letter, but the reader may be assured that it
was simple and sincere and very sweetly written, without the slightest
allusion to any other young man, whether of the poetical or cheaper human
varieties.
It was not long before Susan received a reply from Clement Lindsay. It
was as kind and generous and noble as she could have asked. It was
affectionate, as a very amiable brother's letter might be, and candidly
appreciative of the reasons Susan had assigned for her proposal. He gave
her back her freedom, not that he should cease to feel an interest in
her, always. He accepted his own release, not that he would ever think
she could be indifferent to his future fortunes. And within a very brief
period of time after sending his answer to Susan Posey, whether he wished
to see her in person, or whether he had some other motive, he had packed
his trunk, and made his excuses for an absence of uncertain length at the
studio, and was on his way to Oxbow Village.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
JUST AS YOU EXPECTED.
The spring of 1861 had now arrived,--that eventful spring which was to
lift the curtain and show the first scene of the first act in the mighty
drama which fixed the eyes of mankind during four bloody years. The
little schemes of little people were going on in all our cities and
villages without thought of the fearful convulsion which was soon coming
to shatter the hopes and cloud the prospects of millions. Our little
Oxbow Village, which held itself by no means the least of human centres,
was the scene of its own commotions, as intense and exciting to those
concerned as if the destiny of the nation had been involved in them.
Mr. Clement Lindsay appeared suddenly in that important locality, and
repaired to his accustomed quarters at the house of Deacon Rumrill. That
worthy person received him with a certain gravity of manner, caused by
his recollections of the involuntary transgression into which Mr. Lindsay
had led him by his present of "Ivanhoe."--He was, on the whole, glad to
see him, for his finances were not yet wholly recovered from the injury
inflicted on them by the devouring element. But he could not forget that
his boarder had betrayed him into a breach of the fourth commandment, and
that the strict eyes of his clergyman had detected him in the very
commission of the offence. He had no sooner seen Mr. Clement comfortably
installed, therefore, than he presented himself at the door of his
chamber with the book, enveloped in strong paper and very securely tied
round with a stout string.
"Here is your vollum, Mr. Lindsay," the Deacon said. "I understand it is
not the work of that great and good mahn who I thought wrote it. I did
not see anything immoral in it as fur as I read, but it belongs to what I
consider a very dangerous class of publications. These novels and
romances are awfully destructive to our youth. I should recommend you,
as a young man of principle, to burn the vollum. At least I hope you
will not leave it about anywhere unless it is carefully tied up. I have
written upon the paper round it to warn off all the young persons of my
household from meddling with it."
True enough, Mr. Clement saw in strong black letters on the back of the
paper wrapping his unfortunate "Ivanhoe,"--
"DANGEROUS READING FOR CHRISTIAN YOUTH.
"TOUCH NOT THE UNCLEAN THING."
"I thought you said you had Scott's picture hung up in your parlor,
Deacon Rumrill," he said, a little amused with the worthy man's fear and
precautions.
"It is the great Scott's likeness that I have in my parlor," he said; "I
will show it to you if you will come with me."
Mr. Clement followed the Deacon into that sacred apartment.
"That is the portrait of the great Scott," he said, pointing to an
engraving of a heavy-looking person whose phrenological developments were
a somewhat striking contrast to those of the distinguished Sir Walter.
"I will take good care that none of your young people see this volume,"
Mr. Clement said; "I trust you read it yourself, however, and found
something to please you in it. I am sure you are safe from being harmed
by any such book. Did n't you have to finish it, Deacon, after you had
once begun?"
"Well, I--I--perused a consid'able portion of the work," the Deacon
answered, in a way that led Mr. Clement to think he had not stopped much
short of Finis. "Anything new in the city?"
"Nothing except what you've all had,--Confederate States establishing an
army and all that,--not very new either. What has been going on here
lately, Deacon?"--
"Well, Mr. Lindsay, not a great deal. My new barn is pretty nigh done.
I've got as fine a litter of pigs as ever you see. I don't know whether
you're a judge of pigs or no. The Hazard gal's come back, spilt, pooty
much, I guess. Been to one o' them fashionable schools,--I 've heerd
that she 's learnt to dance. I've heerd say that that Hopkins boy's
round the Posey gal, come to think, she's the one you went with some when
you was here,--I 'm gettin' kind o' forgetful. Old Doctor Hurlbut's
pretty low,--ninety-four year old,--born in '67,--folks ain't ginerally
very spry after they're ninety, but he held out wonderful."
"How's Mr. Bradshaw?"
"Well, the young squire, he's off travellin' somewhere in the West, or to
Washin'ton, or somewhere else,--I don't jestly know where. They say that
he's follerin' up the courts in the business about old Malachi's estate.
I don' know much about it."
The news got round Oxbow Village very speedily that Mr. Clement Lindsay,
generally considered the accepted lover of Miss Susan Posey, had arrived
in that place. Now it had come to be the common talk of the village that
young Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey were getting to be mighty thick with
each other, and the prevailing idea was that Clement's visit had
reference to that state of affairs. Some said that Susan had given her
young man the mitten, meaning thereby that she had signified that his
services as a suitor were dispensed with. Others thought there was only a
wavering in her affection for her lover, and that he feared for her
constancy, and had come to vindicate his rights.
Some of the young fellows, who were doubtless envious of Gifted's
popularity with the fair sex, attempted in the most unjustifiable manner
to play upon his susceptible nature. One of them informed him that he
had seen that Lindsay fellah raound taown with the darndest big stick y'
ever did see. Looked kind o' savage and wild like. Another one told him
that perhaps he'd better keep a little shady; that are chap that had got
the mittin was praowlin' abaout--with a pistil,--one o' them
Darringers,--abaout as long as your thumb, an' fire a bullet as big as a
p'tatah-ball,--'a fellah carries one in his breeches-pocket, an' shoots
y' right threugh his own pahnts, withaout ever takin' on it aout of his
pocket. The stable-keeper, who, it may be remembered, once exchanged a
few playful words with Mr. Gridley, got a hint from some of these
unfeeling young men, and offered the resources of his stable to the youth
supposed to be in peril.
"I 've got a faast colt, Mr. Hopkins, that 'll put twenty mild betwixt
you an' this here village, as quick as any four huffs 'll dew it in this
here caounty, if you should want to get away suddin. I've heern tell
there was some lookin' raound here that wouldn't be wholesome to
meet,--jest say the word, Mr. Hopkins, an' I 'll have ye on that are
colt's back in less than no time, an' start ye off full jump. There's a
good many that's kind o' worried for fear something might happen to ye,
Mr. Hopkins,--y' see fellahs don't like to have other chaps cuttin' on
'em aout with their gals."
Gifted Hopkins had become excessively nervous by this time. It is true
that everything in his intimacy with Susan Posey, so far, might come
under the general head of friendship; but he was conscious that something
more was in both their thoughts. Susan had given him mysterious hints
that her relations with Clement had undergone a change, but had never had
quite courage enough, perhaps had too much delicacy, to reveal the whole
truth.
Gifted was walking home, deeply immersed in thoughts excited by the hints
which hail been thus wantonly thrown out to inflame his imagination, when
all at once, on lifting his eyes, he saw Clement Lindsay coming straight
towards him. Gifted was unarmed, except with a pair of blunt scissors,
which he carried habitually in his pocket. What should he do? Should he
fly? But he was never a good runner, being apt to find himself scant o'
breath, like Hamlet, after violent exercise. His demeanor on the
occasion did credit to his sense of his own virtuous conduct and his
self-possession. He put his hand out, while yet at a considerable
distance, and marched up towards Clement, smiling with all the native
amiability which belonged to him.
To his infinite relief, Clement put out his hand to grasp the one offered
him, and greeted the young poet in the most frank and cordial manner.
"And how is Miss Susan Posey, Mr. Hopkins?" asked Clement, in the most
cheerful tone. "It is a long while since I have seen her, and you must
tell her that I hope I shall not leave the village without finding time
to call upon her. She and I are good friends always, Mr. Hopkins, though
perhaps I shall not be quite so often at your mother's as I was during my
last visit to Oxbow Village."
Gifted felt somewhat as the subject of one of those old-fashioned forms
of argument, formerly much employed to convince men of error in matters
of religion, must have felt when the official who superintended the
stretching-machine said, "Slack up!"
He told Mr. Clement all about Susan, and was on the point of saying that
if he, Mr. Clement, did not claim any engrossing interest in her, he,
Gifted, was ready to offer her the devotion of a poet's heart. Mr.
Clement, however, had so many other questions to ask him about everybody
in the village, more particularly concerning certain young persons in
whom he seemed to be specially interested, that there was no chance to
work in his own revelations of sentiment.
Clement Lindsay had come to Oxbow Village with a single purpose. He
could now venture to trust himself in the presence of Myrtle Hazard. He
was free, and he knew nothing to show that she had lost the liberty of
disposing of her heart. But after an experience such as he had gone
through, he was naturally distrustful of himself, and inclined to be
cautious and reserved in yielding to a new passion. Should he tell her
the true relations in which they stood to each other,--that she owed her
life to him, and that he had very nearly sacrificed his own in saving
hers? Why not? He had a claim on her gratitude for what he had done in
her behalf, and out of this gratitude there might naturally spring a
warmer feeling.
No, he could not try to win her affections by showing that he had paid
for them beforehand. She seemed to be utterly unconscious of the fact
that it was he who had been with her in the abyss of waters. If the
thought came to her of itself, and she ever asked him, it would be time
enough to tell her the story. If not, the moment might arrive when he
could reveal to her the truth that he was her deliverer, without accusing
himself of bribing her woman's heart to reward him for his services. He
would wait for that moment.
It was the most natural thing in the world that Mr. Lindsay, a young
gentleman from the city, should call to see Miss Hazard, a young lady
whom he had met recently at a party. To that pleasing duty he addressed
himself the evening after his arrival.
"The young gentleman's goin' a courtin', I calc'late," was the remark of
the Deacon's wife when she saw what a comely figure Mr. Clement showed at
the tea-table.
"A very hahnsome young mahn," the Deacon replied, "and looks as if he
might know consid'able. An architect, you know,--a sort of a builder.
Wonder if he has n't got any good plans for a hahnsome pigsty. I suppose
he 'd charge somethin' for one, but it couldn't be much, an' he could
take it out in board."
"Better ask him," his wife--said; "he looks mighty pleasant; there's
nothin' lost by askin', an' a good deal got sometimes, grandma used to
say."
The Deacon followed her advice. Mr. Clement was perfectly good-natured
about it, asked the Deacon the number of snouts in his menagerie, got an
idea of the accommodations required, and sketched the plaza of a neat,
and appropriate edifice for the Porcellarium, as Master Gridley
afterwards pleasantly christened it, which was carried out by the
carpenter, and stands to this day a monument of his obliging disposition,
and a proof that there is nothing so humble that taste cannot be shown in
it.
"What'll be your charge for the plan of the pigsty, Mr. Lindsay?" the
Deacon inquired with an air of interest,--he might have become involved
more deeply than he had intended. "How much should you call about right
for the picter an' figgerin'?"
"Oh, you're quite welcome to my sketch of a plan, Deacon. I've seen much
showier buildings tenanted by animals not very different from those your
edifice is meant for."
Mr. Clement found the three ladies sitting together in the chill, dim
parlor at The Poplars. They had one of the city papers spread out on the
table, and Myrtle was reading aloud the last news from Charleston Harbor.
She rose as Mr. Clement entered, and stepped forward to meet him. It was
a strange impression this young man produced upon her,--not through the
common channels of the intelligence, not exactly that "magnetic"
influence of which she had had experience at a former time. It did not
over come her as at the moment of their second meeting. But it was
something she must struggle against, and she had force and pride and
training enough now to maintain her usual tranquillity, in spite of a
certain inward commotion which seemed to reach her breathing and her
pulse by some strange, inexplicable mechanism.
Myrtle, it must be remembered, was no longer the simple country girl who
had run away at fifteen, but a young lady of seventeen, who had learned
all that more than a year's diligence at a great school could teach her,
who had been much with girls of taste and of culture, and was familiar
with the style and manners of those who came from what considered itself
the supreme order in the social hierarchy. Her natural love for
picturesque adornment was qualified by a knowledge of the prevailing
modes not usual in so small a place as Oxbow Village. All this had not
failed to produce its impression on those about her. Persons who, like
Miss Silence Withers, believe, not in education, inasmuch as there is no
healthy nature to be educated, but in transformation, worry about their
charges up to a certain period of their lives. Then, if the
transformation does not come, they seem to think their cares and duties
are at an end, and, considering their theories of human destiny, usually
accept the situation with wonderful complacency. This was the stage
which Miss Silence Withers had reached with reference to Myrtle. It made
her infinitely more agreeable, or less disagreeable, as the reader may
choose one or the other statement, than when she was always fretting
about her "responsibility." She even began to take an interest in some
of Myrtle's worldly experiences, and something like a smile would now and
then disarrange the chief-mourner stillness of her features, as Myrtle
would tell some lively story she had brought away from the gay society
she had frequented.
Cynthia Badlam kept her keen eyes on her like a hawk. Murray Bradshaw
was away, and here was this handsome and agreeable youth coming in to
poach on the preserve of which she considered herself the gamekeeper.
What did it mean? She had heard the story about Susan's being off with
her old love and on with a new one. Ah ha! this is the game, is it?
Clement Lindsay passed not so much a pleasant evening, as one of strange,
perplexed, and mingled delight and inward conflict. He had found his
marble once more turned to flesh and blood, and breathing before him.
This was the woman he was born for; her form was fit to model his
proudest ideal from, her eyes melted him when they rested for an instant
on his face,--her voice reached the hidden sensibilities of his inmost
nature; those which never betray their existence until the outward chord
to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them. But
was she not already pledged to that other,--that cold-blooded,
contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the
world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out of ten for
the most romantic devotion?
If he had known the impression he made, he would have felt less anxiety
with reference to this particular possibility. Miss Silence expressed
herself gratified with his appearance, and thought he looked like a good
young man,--he reminded her of a young friend of hers who--[It was the
same who had gone to one of the cannibal islands as a missionary,--and
stayed there.] Myrtle was very quiet. She had nothing to say about
Clement, except that she had met him at a party in the city, and found
him agreeable. Miss Cynthia wrote a letter to Murray Bradshaw that very
evening, telling him that he had better come back to Oxbow Village as
quickly as he could, unless he wished to find his place occupied by an
intruder.
In the mean time, the country was watching the garrison in Charleston
Harbor. All at once the first gun of the four years' cannonade hurled
its ball against the walls of Fort Sumter. There was no hamlet in the
land which the reverberations of that cannon-roar did not reach. There
was no valley so darkened by overshadowing hills that it did not see the
American flag hauled down on the 13th of April. There was no loyal heart
in the North that did not answer to the call of the country to its
defenders which went forth two days later. The great tide of feeling
reached the locality where the lesser events of our narrative were
occurring. A meeting of the citizens was instantly called. The
venerable Father Pemberton opened it with a prayer that filled every soul
with courage and high resolve. The young farmers and mechanics of that
whole region joined the companies to which they belonged, or organized in
squads and marched at once, or got ready to march, to the scene of
conflict.
The contagion of warlike patriotism reached the most peacefully inclined
young persons.
"My country calls me," Gifted Hopkins said to Susan Posey, "and I am
preparing to obey her summons. If I can pass the medical examination,
which it is possible I may, though I fear my constitution may be thought
too weak, and if no obstacle impedes me, I think of marching in the ranks
of the Oxbow Invincibles. If I go, Susan, and I fall, will you not
remember me . . . as one who . . . cherished the tenderest . . .
sentiments . . . towards you . . . and who had looked forward to the
time when . . . when . ."
His eyes told the rest. He loved!
Susan forgot all the rules of reserve to which she had been trained. What
were cold conventionalities at such a moment? "Never! never!" she said,
throwing her arms about his neck and mingling her tears with his, which
were flowing freely. "Your country does not need your sword .... but it
does need . . . your pen. Your poems will inspire . . . our
soldiers. . . . The Oxbow Invincibles will march to victory, singing
your songs . . . . If you go . . . and if you.. . fall . . . O
Gifted! . . . I . . . I . . . . yes, I shall die too!"
His love was returned. He was blest!
"Susan," he said, "my own Susan, I yield to your wishes at every
sacrifice. Henceforth they will be my law. Yes, I will stay and
encourage my brave countrymen to go forward to the bloody field. My
voice shall urge them on to the battle-ground. I will give my dearest
breath to stimulate their ardor.
"O Susan! My own, own Susan!"
While these interesting events had been going on beneath the modest roof
of the Widow Hopkins, affairs had been rapidly hastening to a similar
conclusion under the statelier shadow of The Poplars. Clement Lindsay was
so well received at his first visit that he ventured to repeat it several
times, with so short intervals that it implied something more than a
common interest in one of the members of the household. There was no
room for doubt who this could be, and Myrtle Hazard could not help seeing
that she was the object of his undisguised admiration. The belief was
now general in the village that Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey were
either engaged or on the point of being so; and it was equally understood
that, whatever might be the explanation, she and her former lover had
parted company in an amicable manner.
Love works very strange transformations in young women. Sometimes it
leads them to try every mode of adding to their attractions,--their whole
thought is how to be most lovely in the eyes they would fill so as to
keep out all other images. Poor darlings! We smile at their little
vanities, as if they were very trivial things compared with the last
Congressman's speech or the great Election Sermon; but Nature knows well
what she is about. The maiden's ribbon or ruffle means a great deal more
for her than the judge's wig or the priest's surplice.
It was not in this way that the gentle emotion awaking in the breast of
Myrtle Hazard betrayed itself. As the thought dawned in her
consciousness that she was loved, a change came over her such as the
spirit that protected her, according to the harmless fancy she had
inherited, might have wept for joy to behold, if tears could flow from
angelic eyes. She forgot herself and her ambitions,--the thought of
shining in the great world died out in the presence of new visions of a
future in which she was not to be her own,--of feelings in the depth of
which the shallow vanities which had drawn her young eyes to them for a
while seemed less than nothing. Myrtle had not hitherto said to herself
that Clement was her lover, yet her whole nature was expanding and
deepening in the light of that friendship which any other eye could have
known at a glance for the great passion.
Cynthia Badlam wrote a pressing letter to Murray Bradshaw. "There is no
time to be lost; she is bewitched, and will be gone beyond hope if this
business is not put a stop to."
Love moves in an accelerating ratio; and there comes a time when the
progress of the passion escapes from all human formulae, and brings two
young hearts, which had been gradually drawing nearer and nearer
together, into complete union, with a suddenness that puts an infinity
between the moment when all is told and that which went just before.
They were sitting together by themselves in the dimly lighted parlor.
They had told each other many experiences of their past lives, very
freely, as two intimate friends of different sex might do. Clement had
happened to allude to Susan, speaking very kindly and tenderly of her.
He hoped this youth to whom she was attached would make her life happy.
"You know how simple-hearted and good she is; her image will always be a
pleasant one in my memory,--second to but one other."
Myrtle ought, according to the common rules of conversation, to have
asked, What other? but she did not. She may have looked as if she wanted
to ask,--she may have blushed or turned pale, perhaps she could not trust
her voice; but whatever the reason was, she sat still, with downcast
eyes. Clement waited a reasonable time, but, finding it was of no use,
began again.
"Your image is the one other,--the only one, let me say, for all else
fades in its presence,--your image fills all my thought. Will you trust
your life and happiness with one who can offer you so little beside his
love? You know my whole heart is yours."
Whether Myrtle said anything in reply or not, whether she acted like
Coleridge's Genevieve,--that is, "fled to him and wept," or suffered her
feelings to betray themselves in some less startling confession, we will
leave untold. Her answer, spoken or silent, could not have been a cruel
one, for in another moment Clement was pressing his lips to hers, after
the manner of accepted lovers.
"Our lips have met to-day for the second time," he said, presently.
She looked at him in wonder. What did he mean? The second time! How
assuredly he spoke! She looked him calmly in the face, and awaited his
explanation.
"I have a singular story to tell you. On the morning of the 16th of
June, now nearly two years ago, I was sitting in my room at Alderbank,
some twenty miles down the river, when I heard a cry for help coming from
the river. I ran down to the bank, and there I saw a boy in an old
boat--"
When it came to the "boy" in the old boat, Myrtle's cheeks flamed so that
she could not bear it, and she covered her face with both her hands. But
Clement told his story calmly through to the end, sliding gently over its
later incidents, for Myrtle's heart was throbbing violently, and her
breath a little catching and sighing, as when she had first lived with
the new life his breath had given her.
"Why did you ask me for myself, when you could have claimed me?" she
said.
"I wanted a free gift, Myrtle," Clement answered, "and I have it."
They sat in silence, lost in the sense of that new life which had
suddenly risen on their souls.
The door-bell rang sharply. Kitty Fagan answered its summons, and
presently entered the parlor and announced that Mr. Bradshaw was in the
library, and wished to see the ladies.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MURRAY BRADSHAW PLAYS HIS LAST CARD.
"How can I see that man this evening, Mr. Lindsay?"
"May I not be Clement, dearest? I would not see him at all, Myrtle. I
don't believe you will find much pleasure in listening to his fine
speeches."
"I cannot endure it.--Kitty, tell him I am engaged, and cannot see him
this evening. No, no! don't say engaged, say very much occupied."
Kitty departed, communing with herself in this wise:--"Ockipied, is it?
An' that's what ye cahl it when ye 're kapin' company with one young
gintleman an' don't want another young gintleman to come in an' help the
two of ye? Ye won't get y'r pigs to market to-day, Mr. Bridshaw, no, nor
to-morrow, nayther, Mr. Bridshaw. It's Mrs. Lindsay that Miss Myrtle is
goin' to be,--an' a big cake there'll be at the weddin' frosted all
over,--won't ye be plased with a slice o' that, Mr. Bridshaw?"
With these reflections in her mind, Mistress Kitty delivered her message,
not without a gleam of malicious intelligence in her look that stung Mr.
Bradshaw sharply. He had noticed a hat in the entry, and a little stick
by it which he remembered well as one he had seen carried by Clement
Lindsay. But he was used to concealing his emotions, and he greeted the
two older ladies who presently came into the library so pleasantly, that
no one who had not studied his face long and carefully would have
suspected the bitterness of heart that lay hidden far down beneath his
deceptive smile. He told Miss Silence, with much apparent interest, the
story of his journey. He gave her an account of the progress of the case
in which the estate of which she inherited the principal portion was
interested. He did not tell her that a final decision which would settle
the right to the great claim might be expected at any moment, and he did
not tell her that there was very little doubt that it would be in favor
of the heirs of Malachi Withers. He was very sorry he could not see Miss
Hazard that evening,--hoped he should be more fortunate to-morrow
forenoon, when he intended to call again,--had a message for her from one
of her former school friends, which he was anxious to give her. He
exchanged certain looks and hints with Miss Cynthia, which led her to
withdraw and bring down the papers he had entrusted to her. At the close
of his visit, she followed him into the entry with a lamp, as was her
common custom.
"What's the meaning of all this, Cynthia? Is that fellow making love to
Myrtle?"
"I'm afraid so, Mr. Bradshaw. He's been here several times, and they
seem to be getting intimate. I couldn't do anything to stop it."
"Give me the papers,--quick!"
Cynthia pulled the package from her pocket. Murray Bradshaw looked
sharply at it. A little crumpled,--crowded into her pocket. Seal
unbroken. All safe.
"I shall come again to-morrow forenoon. Another day and it will be all
up. The decision of the court will be known. It won't be my fault if
one visit is not enough.--You don't suppose Myrtle is in love with this
fellow?"
"She acts as--if she might be. You know he's broke with Susan Posey, and
there's nothing to hinder. If you ask my opinion, I think it's your last
chance: she is n't a girl to half do things, and if she has taken to this
man it will be hard to make her change her mind. But she's young, and
she has had a liking for you, and if you manage it well there's no
telling."
Two notes passed between Myrtle Hazard and Master Byles Gridley that
evening. Mistress Kitty Fagan, who had kept her ears pretty wide open,
carried them.
Murray Bradshaw went home in a very desperate state of feeling. He had
laid his plans, as he thought, with perfect skill, and the certainty of
their securing their end. These papers were to have been taken from the
envelope, and found in the garret just at the right moment, either by
Cynthia herself or one of the other members of the family, who was to be
led on, as it were accidentally, to the discovery. The right moment must
be close at hand. He was to offer his hand--and heart, of course--to
Myrtle, and it was to be accepted. As soon as the decision of the land
case was made known, or not long afterwards, there was to be a search in
the garret for papers, and these were to be discovered in a certain dusty
recess, where, of course, they would have been placed by Miss Cynthia.
And now the one condition which gave any value to these arrangements
seemed like to fail. This obscure youth--this poor fool, who had been on
the point of marrying a simpleton to whom he had made a boyish
promise--was coming between him and the object of his long pursuit,--the
woman who had every attraction to draw him to herself. It had been a
matter of pride with Murray Bradshaw that he never lost his temper so as
to interfere with the precise course of action which his cool judgment
approved; but now he was almost beside himself with passion. His labors,
as he believed, had secured the favorable issue of the great case so long
pending. He had followed Myrtle through her whole career, if not as her
avowed lover, at least as one whose friendship promised to flower in love
in due season. The moment had come when the scene and the characters in
this village drama were to undergo a change as sudden and as brilliant as
is seen in those fairy spectacles where the dark background changes to a
golden palace and the sober dresses are replaced by robes of regal
splendor. The change was fast approaching; but he, the enchanter, as he
had thought himself, found his wand broken, and his power given to
another.
He could not sleep during that night. He paced his room, a prey to
jealousy and envy and rage, which his calm temperament had kept him from
feeling in their intensity up to this miserable hour. He thought of all
that a maddened nature can imagine to deaden its own intolerable anguish.
Of revenge. If Myrtle rejected his suit, should he take her life on the
spot, that she might never be another's,--that neither man nor woman
should ever triumph over him,--the proud ambitious man, defeated,
humbled, scorned? No! that was a meanness of egotism which only the most
vulgar souls could be capable of. Should he challenge her lover? It was
not the way of the people and time, and ended in absurd complications, if
anybody was foolish enough to try it. Shoot him? The idea floated
through his mind, for he thought of everything; but he was a lawyer, and
not a fool, and had no idea of figuring in court as a criminal. Besides,
he was not a murderer,--cunning was his natural weapon, not violence. He
had a certain admiration of desperate crime in others, as showing nerve
and force, but he did not feel it to be his own style of doing business.
During the night he made every arrangement for leaving the village the
next day, in case he failed to make any impression on Myrtle Hazard and
found that his chance was gone. He wrote a letter to his partner,
telling him that he had left to join one of the regiments forming in the
city. He adjusted all his business matters so that his partner should
find as little trouble as possible. A little before dawn he threw
himself on the bed, but he could not sleep; and he rose at sunrise, and
finished his preparations for his departure to the city.
The morning dragged along slowly. He could not go to the office, not
wishing to meet his partner again. After breakfast he dressed himself
with great care, for he meant to show himself in the best possible
aspect. Just before he left the house to go to The Poplars, he took the
sealed package from his trunk, broke open the envelope, took from it a
single paper,--it had some spots on it which distinguished it from all
the rest,--put it separately in his pocket, and then the envelope
containing the other papers. The calm smile he wore on his features as
he set forth cost him a greater effort than he had ever made before to
put it on. He was moulding his face to the look with which he meant to
present himself; and the muscles had been sternly fixed so long that it
was a task to bring them to their habitual expression in company,--that
of ingenuous good-nature.
He was shown into the parlor at The Poplars; and Kitty told Myrtle that
he had called and inquired for her and was waiting down stairs.
"Tell him I will be down presently," she said. "And, Kitty, now mind
just what I tell you. Leave your kitchen door open, so that you can hear
anything fall in the parlor. If you hear a book fall,--it will be a
heavy one, and will make some noise,--run straight up here to my little
chamber, and hang this red scarf out of the window. The left-hand
side-sash, mind, so that anybody can see it from the road. If Mr.
Gridley calls, show him into the parlor, no matter who is there."
Kitty Fagan looked amazingly intelligent, and promised that she would do
exactly as she was told. Myrtle followed her down stairs almost
immediately, and went into the parlor, where Mr. Bradshaw was waiting.
Never in his calmest moments had he worn a more insinuating smile on his
features than that with which he now greeted Myrtle. So gentle, so
gracious, so full of trust, such a completely natural expression of a
kind, genial character did it seem, that to any but an expert it would
have appeared impossible that such an effect could be produced by the
skilful balancing of half a dozen pairs of little muscles that manage the
lips and the corners of the mouth. The tones of his voice were subdued
into accord with the look of his features; his whole manner was
fascinating, as far as any conscious effort could make it so. It was
just one of those artificially pleasing effects that so often pass with
such as have little experience of life for the genuine expression of
character and feeling. But Myrtle had learned the look that shapes
itself on the features of one who loves with a love that seeketh not its
own, and she knew the difference between acting and reality. She met his
insinuating approach with a courtesy so carefully ordered that it was of
itself a sentence without appeal. Artful persons often interpret sincere
ones by their own standard. Murray Bradshaw thought little of this
somewhat formal address,--a few minutes would break this thin film to
pieces. He was not only a suitor with a prize to gain, he was a
colloquial artist about to employ all the resources of his specialty.
He introduced the conversation in the most natural and easy way, by
giving her the message from a former school-mate to which he had
referred, coloring it so delicately, as he delivered it, that it became
an innocent-looking flattery. Myrtle found herself in a rose-colored
atmosphere, not from Murray Bradshaw's admiration, as it seemed, but only
reflected by his mind from another source. That was one of his arts,
always, if possible, to associate himself incidentally, as it appeared,
and unavoidably, with an agreeable impression.
So Myrtle was betrayed into smiling and being pleased before he had said
a word about himself or his affairs. Then he told her of the adventures
and labors of his late expedition; of certain evidence which at the very
last moment he had unearthed, and which was very probably the
turning-point in the case. He could not help feeling that she must
eventually reap some benefit from the good fortune with which his efforts
had been attended. The thought that it might yet be so had been a great
source of encouragement to him,--it would always be a great happiness to
him to remember that he had done anything to make her happy.
Myrtle was very glad that he had been so far successful,--she did not
know that it made much difference to her, but she was obliged to him for
the desire of serving her that he had expressed.
"My services are always yours, Miss Hazard. There is no sacrifice I
would not willingly make for your benefit. I have never had but one
feeling toward you. You cannot be ignorant of what that feeling is."
"I know, Mr. Bradshaw, it has been one of kindness. I have to thank you
for many friendly attentions, for which I hope I have never been
ungrateful."
"Kindness is not all that I feel towards you, Miss Hazard. If that were
all, my lips would not tremble as they do now in telling you my
feelings.--I love you."
He sprang the great confession on Myrtle a little sooner than he had
meant. It was so hard to go on making phrases! Myrtle changed color a
little, for she was startled.
The seemingly involuntary movement she made brought her arm against a
large dictionary, which lay very near the edge of the table on which it
was resting. The book fell with a loud noise to the floor.
There it lay. The young man awaited her answer; he did not think of
polite forms at such a moment.
"It cannot be, Mr. Bradshaw,--it must not be. I have known you long, and
I am not ignorant of all your brilliant qualities, but you must not speak
to me of love. Your regard,--your friendly interest, tell me that I
shall always have these, but do not distress me with offering more than
these."
"I do not ask you to give me your love in return; I only ask you not to
bid me despair. Let me believe that the time may come' when you will
listen to me,--no matter how distant. You are young,--you have a tender
heart,--you would not doom one who only lives for you to
wretchedness,--so long that we have known each other. It cannot be that
any other has come between us--"
Myrtle blushed so deeply that there was no need of his finishing his
question.
"Do you mean, Myrtle Hazard, that you have cast me aside for
another?--for this stranger--this artist--who was with you yesterday when
I came, bringing with me the story of all I had done for you, yes, for
you,--and was ignominiously refused the privilege of seeing you?" Rage
and jealousy had got the better of him this time. He rose as he spoke,
and looked upon her with such passion kindling in his eyes that he seemed
ready for any desperate act.
"I have thanked you for any services you may have rendered me, Mr.
Bradshaw," Myrtle answered, very calmly, "and I hope you will add one
more to them by sparing me this rude questioning. I wished to treat you
as a friend; I hope you will not render that impossible."
He had recovered himself for one more last effort. "I was impatient
overlook it, I beg you. I was thinking of all the happiness I have
labored to secure for you, and of the ruin to us both it would be if you
scornfully rejected the love I offer you,--if you refuse to leave me any
hope for the future,--if you insist on throwing yourself away on this
man, so lately pledged to another. I hold the key of all your earthly
fortunes in my hand. My love for you inspired me in all that I have
done, and, now that I come to lay the result of my labors at your feet,
you turn from me, and offer my reward to a stranger. I do not ask you to
say this day that you will be mine,--I would not force your
inclinations,--but I do ask you that you will hold yourself free of all
others, and listen to me as one who may yet be more than a friend. Say
so much as this, Myrtle, and you shall have such a future as you never
dreamed of. Fortune, position, all that this world can give, shall be
yours."
"Never! never! If you could offer me the whole world, or take away from
me all that the world can give, it would make no difference to me. I
cannot tell what power you hold over me, whether of life and death, or of
wealth and poverty; but after talking to me of love, I should not have
thought you would have wronged me by suggesting any meaner motive. It is
only because we have been on friendly terms so long that I have listened
to you as I have done. You have said more than enough, and I beg you
will allow me to put an end to this interview."
She rose to leave the room. But Murray Bradshaw had gone too far to
control himself,--he listened only to the rage which blinded him.
"Not yet!" he said. "Stay one moment, and you shall know what your pride
and self-will have cost you!"
Myrtle stood, arrested, whether by fear, or curiosity, or the passive
subjection of her muscles to his imperious will, it would be hard to say.
Murray Bradshaw took out the spotted paper from his breast-pocket, and
held it up before her. "Look here!" he exclaimed. "This would have made
you rich,--it would have crowned you a queen in society,--it would have
given you all, and more than all, that you ever dreamed of luxury, of
splendor, of enjoyment; and I, who won it for you, would have taught you
how to make life yield every bliss it had in store to your wishes. You
reject my offer unconditionally?"
Myrtle expressed her negative only by a slight contemptuous movement.
Murray Bradshaw walked deliberately to the fireplace, and laid the
spotted paper upon the burning coals. It writhed and curled, blackened,
flamed, and in a moment was a cinder dropping into ashes. He folded his
arms, and stood looking at the wreck of Myrtle's future, the work of his
cruel hand. Strangely enough, Myrtle herself was fascinated, as it were,
by the apparent solemnity of this mysterious sacrifice. She had kept her
eyes steadily on him all the time, and was still gazing at the altar on
which her happiness had been in some way offered up, when the door was
opened by Kitty Fagan, and Master Byles Gridley was ushered into the
parlor.
"Too late, old man! "Murray Bradshaw exclaimed, in a hoarse and savage
voice, as he passed out of the room, and strode through the entry and
down the avenue. It was the last time the old gate of The Poplars was to
open or close for him. The same day he left the village; and the next
time his name was mentioned it was as an officer in one of the regiments
just raised and about marching to the seat of war.
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE SPOTTED PAPER.
What Master Gridley may have said to Myrtle Hazard that served to calm
her after this exciting scene cannot now be recalled. That Murray
Bradshaw thought he was inflicting a deadly injury on her was plain
enough. That Master Gridley did succeed in convincing her that no great
harm had probably been done her is equally certain.
Like all bachelors who have lived a lonely life, Master Byles Gridley had
his habits, which nothing short of some terrestrial convulsion--or
perhaps, in his case, some instinct that drove him forth to help somebody
in trouble--could possibly derange. After his breakfast, he always sat
and read awhile,--the paper, if a new one came to hand, or some pleasant
old author,--if a little neglected by the world of readers, he felt more
at ease with him, and loved him all the better.
But on the morning after his interview with Myrtle Hazard, he had
received a letter which made him forget newspapers, old authors, almost
everything, for the moment. It was from the publisher with whom he had
had a conversation, it may be remembered, when he visited the city, and
was to this effect: That Our Firm propose to print and stereotype the
work originally published under the title of "Thoughts on the Universe";
said work to be remodelled according to the plan suggested by the Author,
with the corrections, alterations, omissions, and additions proposed by
him; said work to be published under the following title, to wit:
________ _________: said work to be printed in 12mo, on paper of good
quality, from new types, etc., etc., and for every copy thereof printed
the author to receive, etc., etc.
Master Gridley sat as in a trance, reading this letter over and over, to
know if it could be really so. So it really was. His book had
disappeared from the market long ago, as the elm seeds that carpet the
ground and never germinate disappear. At last it had got a certain value
as a curiosity for book-hunters. Some one of them, keener-eyed than the
rest, had seen that there was a meaning and virtue in this unsuccessful
book, for which there was a new audience educated since it had tried to
breathe before its time. Out of this had grown at last the publisher's
proposal. It was too much: his heart swelled with joy, and his eyes
filled with tears.
How could he resist the temptation? He took down his own particular copy
of the book, which was yet to do him honor as its parent, and began
reading. As his eye fell on one paragraph after another, he nodded
approval of this sentiment or opinion, he shook his head as if
questioning whether this other were not to be modified or left out, he
condemned a third as being no longer true for him as when it was written,
and he sanctioned a fourth with his hearty approval. The reader may like
a few specimens from this early edition, now a rarity. He shall have
them, with Master Gridley's verbal comments. The book, as its name
implied, contained "Thoughts" rather than consecutive trains of reasoning
or continuous disquisitions. What he read and remarked upon were a few
of the more pointed statements which stood out in the chapters he was
turning over. The worth of the book must not be judged by these almost
random specimens.
"THE BEST THOUGHT, LIKE THE MOST PERFECT DIGESTION, IS DONE
UNCONSCIOUSLY.--Develop that.--Ideas at compound interest in the
mind.--Be aye sticking in an idea,--while you're sleeping it'll be
growing. Seed of a thought to-day,--flower to-morrow--next week--ten
years from now, etc.--Article by and by for the....
"CAN THE INFINITE BE SUPPOSED TO SHIFT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ULTIMATE
DESTINY OF ANY CREATED THING TO THE FINITE? OUR THEOLOGIANS PRETEND THAT
IT CAN. I DOUBT.--Heretical. Stet.
"PROTESTANTISM MEANS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. BUT IT IS AFRAID OF ITS OWN
LOGIC.--Stet. No logical resting-place short of None of your business.
"THE SUPREME SELF-INDULGENCE IS TO SURRENDER THE WILL TO A SPIRITUAL
DIRECTOR.--Protestantism gave up a great luxury.--Did it though?
"ASIATIC MODES OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH DO NOT EXPRESS THE 'RELATIONS IN
WHICH THE AMERICAN FEELS HIM SELF TO STAND TO HIS SUPERIORS IN THIS OR
ANY OTHER SPHERE OF BEING. REPUBLICANISM MUST HAVE ITS OWN RELIGIOUS
PHRASEOLOGY, WHICH IS NOT THAT BORROWED FROM ORIENTAL DESPOTISMS.
"IDOLS AND DOGMAS IN PLACE OF CHARACTER; PILLS AND THEORIES IN PLACE OF
WHOLESOME LIVING. SEE THE HISTORIES OF THEOLOGY AND MEDICINE
PASSIM.--Hits 'em.
"'OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.' DO YOU MEAN TO SAY JEAN CHAUVIN,
THAT
'HEAVEN LIES ABOUT US IN OUR INFANCY'?
"WHY DO YOU COMPLAIN OF YOUR ORGANIZATION? YOUR SOUL WAS IN A HURRY, AND
MADE A RUSH FOR A BODY. THERE ARE PATIENT SPIRITS THAT HAVE WAITED FROM
ETERNITY, AND NEVER FOUND PARENTS FIT TO BE BORN OF.--How do you know
anything about all that? Dele.
"WHAT SWEET, SMOOTH VOICES THE NEGROES HAVE! A HUNDRED GENERATIONS FED
ON BANANAS.--COMPARE THEM WITH OUR APPLE-EATING WHITE FOLKS!--It won't
do. Bananas came from the West Indies.
"TO TELL A MAN'S TEMPERAMENT BY HIS HANDWRITING. SEE IF THE DOTS OF HIS
I'S RUN AHEAD OR NOT, AND IF THEY DO, HOW FAR.--I have tried that--on
myself.
"MARRYING INTO SOME FAMILIES IS THE NEXT THING TO BEING CANONIZED.--Not
so true now as twenty or thirty years ago. As many bladders, but more
pins.
"FISH AND DANDIES ONLY KEEP ON ICE.--Who will take? Explain in note how
all warmth approaching blood heat spoils fops and flounders.
"FLYING IS A LOST ART AMONG MEN AND REPTILES. BATS FLY, AND MEN OUGHT
TO. TRY A LIGHT TURBINE. RISE A MILE STRAIGHT, FALL HALF A MILE
SLANTING,--RISE HALF A MILE STRAIGHT, FALL HALF A MILE SLANTING, AND SO
ON. OR SLANT UP AND SLANT DOWN.--Poh! You ain't such a fool as to think
that is new,--are you?
"Put in my telegraph project. Central station. Cables with insulated
wires running to it from different quarters of the city. These form the
centripetal system. From central station, wires to all the livery
stables, messenger stands, provision shops, etc., etc. These form the
centrifugal system. Any house may have a wire in the nearest cable at
small cost.
"DO YOU WANT TO BE REMEMBERED AFTER THE CONTINENTS HAVE GONE UNDER, AND
COME UP AGAIN, AND DRIED, AND BRED NEW RACES? HAVE YOUR NAME STAMPED ON
ALL YOUR PLATES AND CUPS AND SAUCERS. NOTHING OF YOU OR YOURS WILL LAST
LIKE THOSE. I NEVER SIT DOWN AT MY TABLE WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE CHINA
SERVICE, AND SAYING, 'HERE ARE MY MONUMENTS. THAT BUTTER-DISH IS MY URN.
THIS SOUP-PLATE IS MY MEMORIAL TABLET.' NO NEED OF A SKELETON AT MY
BANQUETS! I FEED FROM MY TOMBSTONE AND READ MY EPITAPH AT THE BOTTOM OF
EVERY TEACUP.--Good."
He fell into a revery as he finished reading this last sentence. He
thought of the dim and dread future,--all the changes that it would bring
to him, to all the living, to the face of the globe, to the order of
earthly things. He saw men of a new race, alien to all that had ever
lived, excavating with strange, vast engines the old ocean-bed now become
habitable land. And as the great scoops turned out the earth they had
fetched up from the unexplored depths, a relic of a former simple
civilization revealed the fact that here a tribe of human beings had
lived and perished.--Only the coffee-cup he had in his hand half an hour
ago.--Where would he be then? and Mrs. Hopkins, and Gifted, and Susan,
and everybody? and President Buchanan? and the Boston State-House? and
Broadway?--O Lord, Lord, Lord! And the sun perceptibly smaller,
according to the astronomers, and the earth cooled down a number of
degrees, and inconceivable arts practised by men of a type yet undreamed
of, and all the fighting creeds merged in one great universal--
A knock at his door interrupted his revery. Miss Susan Posey informed
him that a gentleman was waiting below who wished to see him.
"Show him up to my study, Susan Posey, if you please," said Master
Gridley.
Mr. Penhallow presented himself at Mr. Gridley's door with a countenance
expressive of a very high state of excitement.
"You have heard the news, Mr. Gridley, I suppose?"
"What news, Mr. Penhallow?"
"First, that my partner has left very unexpectedly to enlist in a
regiment just forming. Second, that the great land case is decided in
favor of the heirs of the late Malachi Withers."
"Your partner must have known about it yesterday?"
"He did, even before I knew it. He thought himself possessed of a very
important document, as you know, of which he has made, or means to make,
some use. You are aware of the artifice I employed to prevent any
possible evil consequences from any action of his. I have the genuine
document, of course. I wish you to go over with me to The Poplars, and I
should be glad to have good old Father Pemberton go with us; for it is a
serious matter, and will be a great surprise to more than one of the
family."
They walked together to the old house, where the old clergyman had lived
for more than half a century. He was used to being neglected by the
people who ran after his younger colleague; and the attention paid him in
asking him to be present on an important occasion, as he understood this
to be, pleased him greatly. He smoothed his long white locks, and called
a grand-daughter to help make him look fitly for such an occasion, and,
being at last got into his grandest Sunday aspect, took his faithful
staff, and set out with the two gentlemen for The Poplars. On the way,
Mr. Penhallow explained to him the occasion of their visit, and the
general character of the facts he had to announce. He wished the
venerable minister to prepare Miss Silence Withers for a revelation which
would materially change her future prospects. He thought it might be
well, also, if he would say a few words to Myrtle Hazard, for whom a new
life, with new and untried temptations, was about to open. His business
was, as a lawyer, to make known to these parties the facts just come to
his own knowledge affecting their interests. He had asked Mr. Gridley to
go with him, as having intimate relations with one of the parties
referred to, and as having been the principal agent in securing to that
party the advantages which were to accrue to her from the new turn of
events. "You are a second parent to her, Mr. Gridley," he said. "Your
vigilance, your shrewdness, and your-spectacles have saved her. I hope
she knows the full extent of her obligations to you, and that she will
always look to you for counsel in all her needs. She will want a wise
friend, for she is to begin the world anew."
What had happened, when she saw the three grave gentlemen at the door
early in the forenoon, Mistress Kitty Fagan could not guess. Something
relating to Miss Myrtle, no doubt: she wasn't goin' to be married right
off to Mr. Clement,--was she,--and no church, nor cake, nor anything?
The gentlemen were shown into the parlor. "Ask Miss Withers to go into
the library, Kitty," said Master Gridley. "Dr. Pemberton wishes to speak
with her." The good old man was prepared for a scene with Miss Silence.
He announced to her, in a kind and delicate way, that she must make up
her mind to the disappointment of certain expectations which she had long
entertained, and which, as her lawyer, Mr. Penhallow, had come to inform
her and others, were to be finally relinquished from this hour.
To his great surprise, Miss Silence received this communication almost
cheerfully. It seemed more like a relief to her than anything else. Her
one dread in this world was her "responsibility "; and the thought that
she might have to account for ten talents hereafter, instead of one, had
often of late been a positive distress to her. There was also in her mind
a secret disgust at the thought of the hungry creatures who would swarm
round her if she should ever be in a position to bestow patronage. This
had grown upon her as the habits of lonely life gave her more and more of
that fastidious dislike to males in general, as such, which is not rare
in maidens who have seen the roses of more summers than politeness cares
to mention.
Father Pemberton then asked if he could see Miss Myrtle Hazard a few
moments in the library before they went into the parlor, where they were
to meet Mr. Penhallow and Mr. Gridley, for the purpose of receiving the
lawyer's communication.
What change was this which Myrtle had undergone since love had touched
her heart, and her visions of worldly enjoyment had faded before the
thought of sharing and ennobling the life of one who was worthy of her
best affections,--of living for another, and of finding her own noblest
self in that divine office of woman? She had laid aside the bracelet
which she had so long worn as a kind of charm as well as an ornament.
One would have said her features had lost something of that look of
imperious beauty which had added to her resemblance to the dead woman
whose glowing portrait hung upon her wall. And if it could be that,
after so many generations, the blood of her who had died for her faith
could show in her descendants veins, and the soul of that elect lady of
her race look out from her far-removed offspring's dark eyes, such a
transfusion of the martyr's life and spiritual being might well seem to
manifest itself in Myrtle Hazard.
The large-hearted old man forgot his scholastic theory of human nature as
he looked upon her face. He thought he saw in her the dawning of that
grace which some are born with; which some, like Myrtle, only reach
through many trials and dangers; which some seem to show for a while and
then lose; which too many never reach while they wear the robes of earth,
but which speaks of the kingdom of heaven already begun in the heart of a
child of earth. He told her simply the story of the occurrences which
had brought them together in the old house, with the message the lawyer
was to deliver to its inmates. He wished to prepare her for what might
have been too sudden a surprise.
But Myrtle was not wholly unprepared for some such revelation. There was
little danger that any such announcement would throw her mind from its
balance after the inward conflict through which she had been passing.
For her lover had left her almost as soon as he had told her the story of
his passion, and the relation in which he stood to her. He, too, had
gone to answer his country's call to her children, not driven away by
crime and shame and despair, but quitting all--his new-born happiness,
the art in which he was an enthusiast, his prospects of success and
honor--to obey the higher command of duty. War was to him, as to so many
of the noble youth who went forth, only organized barbarism, hateful but
for the sacred cause which alone redeemed it from the curse that blasted
the first murderer. God only knew the sacrifice such young men as he
made.
How brief Myrtle's dream had been! She almost doubted, at some moments,
whether she would not awake from it, as from her other visions, and find
it all unreal. There was no need of fearing any undue excitement of her
mind after the alternations of feeling she had just experienced. Nothing
seemed of much moment to her which could come from without,--her real
world was within, and the light of its day and the breath of its life
came from her love, made holy by the self-forgetfulness on both sides
which was born with it.
Only one member of the household was in danger of finding the excitement
more than she could bear. Miss Cynthia knew that all Murray Bradshaw's
plans, in which he had taken care that she should have a personal
interest, had utterly failed. What he had done with the means of revenge
in his power,--if, indeed, they were still in his power,--she did not
know. She only knew that there had been a terrible scene, and that he
had gone, leaving it uncertain whether he would ever return. It was with
fear and trembling that she heard the summons which went forth, that the
whole family should meet in the parlor to listen to a statement from Mr.
Penhallow. They all gathered as requested, and sat round the room, with
the exception of Mistress Kitty Fagan, who knew her place too well to be
sittin' down with the likes o' them, and stood with attentive ears in the
doorway.
Mr. Penhallow then read from a printed paper the decision of the Supreme
Court in the land case so long pending, where the estate of the late
Malachi Withers was the claimant, against certain parties pretending to
hold under an ancient grant. The decision was in favor of the estate.
"This gives a great property to the heirs," Mr. Penhallow remarked, "and
the question as to who these heirs are has to be opened. For the will
under which Silence Withers, sister of the deceased, has inherited is
dated some years previous to the decease, and it was not very strange
that a will of later date should be discovered. Such a will has been
discovered. It is the instrument I have here."
Myrtle Hazard opened her eyes very widely, for the paper Mr. Penlallow
held looked exactly like that which Murray Bradshaw had burned, and, what
was curious, had some spots on it just like some she had noticed on that.
"This will," Mr. Penhallow said, "signed by witnesses dead or absent from
this place, makes a disposition of the testator's property in some
respects similar to that of the previous one, but with a single change,
which proves to be of very great importance."
Mr. Penhallow proceeded to read the will. The important change in the
disposition of the property was this: in case the land claim was decided
in favor of the estate, then, in addition to the small provision made for
Myrtle Hazard, the property so coming to the estate should all go to her.
There was no question about the genuineness and the legal sufficiency of
this instrument. Its date was not very long after the preceding one, at
a period when, as was well known, he had almost given up the hope of
gaining his case, and when the property was of little value compared to
that which it had at present.
A long silence followed this reading. Then, to the surprise of all, Miss
Silence Withers rose, and went to Myrtle Hazard, and wished her joy with
every appearance of sincerity. She was relieved of a great
responsibility. Myrtle was young and could bear it better. She hoped
that her young relative would live long to enjoy the blessings Providence
had bestowed upon her, and to use them for the good of the community, and
especially the promotion of the education of deserving youth. If some
fitting person could be found to advise Myrtle, whose affairs would
require much care, it would be a great relief to her.
They all went up to Myrtle and congratulated her on her change of
fortune. Even Cynthia Badlam got out a phrase or two which passed muster
in the midst of the general excitement. As for Kitty Fagan, she could
not say a word, but caught Myrtle's hand and kissed it as if it belonged
to her own saint; and then, suddenly applying her apron to her eyes,
retreated from a scene which was too much for her, in a state of complete
mental beatitude and total bodily discomfiture.
Then Silence asked the old minister to make a prayer, and he stretched
his hands up to Heaven, and called down all the blessings of Providence
upon all the household, and especially upon this young handmaiden, who
was to be tried with prosperity, and would need all aid from above to
keep her from its dangers.
Then Mr. Penhallow asked Myrtle if she had any choice as to the friend
who should have charge of her affairs. Myrtle turned to Master Byles
Gridley, and said, "You have been my friend and protector so far, will
you continue to be so hereafter?"
Master Gridley tried very hard to begin a few words of thanks to her for
her preference, but finding his voice a little uncertain, contented
himself with pressing her hand and saying, "Most willingly, my dear
daughter!"
CHAPTER XXXVI
CONCLUSION.
The same day the great news of Myrtle Hazard's accession to fortune came
out, the secret was told that she had promised herself in marriage to Mr.
Clement Lindsay. But her friends hardly knew how to congratulate her on
this last event. Her lover was gone, to risk his life, not improbably to
lose it, or to come home a wreck, crippled by wounds, or worn out with
disease.
Some of them wondered to see her so cheerful in such a moment of trial.
They could not know how the manly strength of Clement's determination had
nerved her for womanly endurance. They had not learned that a great
cause makes great souls, or reveals them to themselves,--a lesson taught
by so many noble examples in the times that followed. Myrtle's only
desire seemed to be to labor in some way to help the soldiers and their
families. She appeared to have forgotten everything for this duty; she
had no time for regrets, if she were disposed to indulge them, and she
hardly asked a question as to the extent of the fortune which had fallen
to her.
The next number of the "Banner and Oracle" contained two announcements
which she read with some interest when her attention was called to them.
They were as follows:
"A fair and accomplished daughter of this village comes, by the late
decision of the Supreme Court, into possession of a property estimated at
a million of dollars or more. It consists of a large tract of land
purchased many years ago by the late Malachi Withers, now become of
immense value by the growth of a city in its neighborhood, the opening of
mines, etc., etc. It is rumored that the lovely and highly educated
heiress has formed a connection looking towards matrimony with a certain
distinguished artist."
"Our distinguished young townsman, William Murray Bradshaw, Esq., has
been among the first to respond to the call of the country for champions
to defend her from traitors. We understand that he has obtained a
captaincy in the __th regiment, about to march to the threatened seat of
war. May victory perch on his banners!"
The two lovers, parted by their own self-sacrificing choice in the very
hour that promised to bring them so much happiness, labored for the
common cause during all the terrible years of warfare, one in the camp
and the field, the other in the not less needful work which the good
women carried on at home, or wherever their services were needed.
Clement--now Captain Lindsay--returned at the end of his first campaign
charged with a special office. Some months later, after one of the great
battles, he was sent home wounded. He wore the leaf on his shoulder
which entitled him to be called Major Lindsay. He recovered from his
wound only too rapidly, for Myrtle had visited him daily in the military
hospital where he had resided for treatment; and it was bitter parting.
The telegraph wires were thrilling almost hourly with messages of death,
and the long pine boxes came by almost every train,--no need of asking
what they held.
Once more he came, detailed on special duty, and this time with the eagle
on his shoulder,--he was Colonel Lindsay. The lovers could not part
again of their own free will. Some adventurous women had followed their
husbands to the camp, and Myrtle looked as if she could play the part of
the Maid of Saragossa on occasion. So Clement asked her if she would
return with him as his wife; and Myrtle answered, with as much
willingness to submit as a maiden might fairly show under such
circumstances, that she would do his bidding. Thereupon, with the
shortest possible legal notice, Father Pemberton was sent for, and the
ceremony was performed in the presence of a few witnesses in the large
parlor at The Poplars, which was adorned with flowers, and hung round
with all the portraits of the dead members of the family, summoned as
witnesses to the celebration. One witness looked on with unmoved
features, yet Myrtle thought there was a more heavenly smile on her faded
lips than she had ever seen before beaming from the canvas,--it was Ann
Holyoake, the martyr to her faith, the guardian spirit of Myrtle's
visions, who seemed to breathe a holier benediction than any words--even
those of the good old Father Pemberton himself--could convey.
They went back together to the camp. From that period until the end of
the war, Myrtle passed her time between the life of the tent and that of
the hospital. In the offices of mercy which she performed for the sick
and the wounded and the dying, the dross of her nature seemed to be
burned away. The conflict of mingled lives in her blood had ceased. No
lawless impulses usurped the place of that serene resolve which had grown
strong by every exercise of its high prerogative. If she had been called
now to die for any worthy cause, her race would have been ennobled by a
second martyr, true to the blood of her who died under the cruel Queen.
Many sad sights she saw in the great hospital where she passed some
months at intervals,--one never to be forgotten. An officer was brought
into the ward where she was in attendance. "Shot through the
lungs,--pretty nearly gone."
She went softly to his bedside. He was breathing with great difficulty;
his face was almost convulsed with the effort, but she recognized him in
a moment; it was Murray Bradshaw,--Captain Bradshaw, as she knew by the
bars on his coat flung upon the bed where he had just been laid.
She addressed him by name, tenderly as if he had been a dear brother; she
saw on his face that hers were to be the last kind words he would ever
hear.
He turned his glazing eyes upon her. "Who are you?" he said in a feeble
voice.
"An old friend," she answered; "you knew me as Myrtle Hazard."
He started. "You by my bedside! You caring for me!--for me, that burned
the title to your fortune to ashes before your eyes! You can't forgive
that,--I won't believe it! Don't you hate me, dying as I am?"
Myrtle was used to maintaining a perfect calmness of voice and
countenance, and she held her feelings firmly down. "I have nothing to
forgive you, Mr. Bradshaw. You may have meant to do me wrong, but
Providence raised up a protector for me. The paper you burned was not
the original,--it was a copy substituted for it--"
"And did the old man outwit me after all?" he cried out, rising suddenly
in bed, and clasping his hands behind his head to give him a few more
gasps of breath. "I knew he was cunning, but I thought I was his match.
It must have been Byles Gridley,--nobody else. And so the old man beat
me after all, and saved you from ruin! Thank God that it came out so!
Thank God! I can die now. Give me your hand, Myrtle."
She took his hand, and held it until it gently loosed its hold, and he
ceased to breathe. Myrtle's creed was a simple one, with more of trust
and love in it than of systematized articles of belief. She cherished
the fond hope that these last words of one who had erred so miserably
were a token of some blessed change which the influences of the better
world might carry onward until he should have outgrown the sins and the
weaknesses of his earthly career.
Soon after this she rejoined her husband in the camp. From time to time
they received stray copies of the "Banner and Oracle," which, to Myrtle
especially, were full of interest, even to the last advertisement. A few
paragraphs may be reproduced here which relate to persons who have
figured in this narrative.
"TEMPLE OF HYMEN.
"Married, on the 6th instant, Fordyce Hurlbut, M. D., to Olive, only
daughter of the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth. The editor of this paper returns
his acknowledgments for a bountiful slice of the wedding-cake. May their
shadows never be less!"
Not many weeks after this appeared the following:
"Died in this place, on the 28th instant, the venerable Lemuel Hurlbut,
M. D., at the great age of XCVI years.
"'With the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days understanding.'"
Myrtle recalled his kind care of her in her illness, and paid the tribute
of a sigh to his memory,--there was nothing in a death like his to call
for any aching regret.
The usual routine of small occurrences was duly recorded in the village
paper for some weeks longer, when she was startled and shocked by
receiving a number containing the following paragraph:
CALAMITOUS ACCIDENT
"It is known to our readers that the steeple of the old meeting-house was
struck by lightning about a month ago. The frame of the building was a
good deal jarred by the shock, but no danger was apprehended from the
injury it had received. On Sunday last the congregation came together as
usual. The Rev. Mr. Stoker was alone m the pulpit, the Rev. Doctor
Pemberton having been detained by slight indisposition. The sermon was
from the text, "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard
shall lie down with the kid." (Isaiah xi. 6.) The pastor described the
millennium as--the reign of love and peace, in eloquent and impressive
language. He was in the midst of the prayer which follows the sermon,
and had jest put up a petition that the spirit of affection and faith and
trust might grow up and prevail among the flock of which he was the
shepherd, more especially those dear lambs whom he gathered with his arm,
and carried in his bosom, when the old sounding-board, which had hung
safely for nearly a century,--loosened, no doubt by the bolt which had
fallen on the church,--broke from its fastenings, and fell with a loud
crash upon the pulpit, crushing the Rev. Mr. Stoker under its ruins. The
scene that followed beggars description. Cries and shrieks resounded
through the horse. Two or three young women fainted entirely away. Mr.
Penhallow, Deacon Rumrill, Gifted Hopkins, Esq., and others, came forward
immediately, and after much effort succeeded in removing the wreck of the
sounding-board, and extricating their unfortunate pastor. He was not
fatally injured, it is hoped; but, sad to relate, he received such a
violent blow upon the spine of the back, that palsy of the lower
extremities is like to ensue. He is at present lying entirely helpless.
Every attention is paid to him by his affectionately devoted family."
Myrtle had hardly got over the pain which the reading of this unfortunate
occurrence gave her, when her eyes were gladdened by the following
pleasing piece of intelligence, contained in a subsequent number of the
village paper:
IMPOSING CEREMONY.
"The Reverend Doctor Pemberton performed the impressive rite of baptism
upon the first-born child of our distinguished townsman, Gifted Hopkins,
Esq., the Bard of Oxbow Village, and Mrs. Susan P. Hopkins, his amiable
and respected lady. The babe conducted himself with singular propriety
on this occasion. He received the Christian name of Byron Tennyson
Browning. May be prove worthy of his name and his parentage!"
The end of the war came at last, and found Colonel Lindsay among its
unharmed survivors. He returned with Myrtle to her native village, and
they established themselves, at the request of Miss Silence Withers, in
the old family mansion. Miss Cynthia, to whom Myrtle made a generous
allowance, had gone to live in a town not many miles distant, where she
had a kind of home on sufferance, as well as at The Poplars. This was a
convenience just then, because Nurse Byloe was invited to stay with them
for a month or two; and one nurse and two single women under the same
roof keep each other in a stew all the time, as the old dame somewhat
sharply remarked.
Master Byles Gridley had been appointed Myrtle's legal protector, and,
with the assistance of Mr. Penhallow, had brought the property she
inherited into a more manageable and productive form; so that, when
Clement began his fine studio behind the old mansion, he felt that at
least he could pursue his art, or arts, if he chose to give himself to
sculpture, without that dreadful hag, Necessity, standing by him to pinch
the features of all his ideals, and give them something of her own
likeness.
Silence Withers was more cheerful now that she had got rid of her
responsibility. She embellished her spare person a little more than in
former years. These young people looked so happy! Love was not so
unendurable, perhaps, after all. No woman need despair,--especially if
she has a house over her, and a snug little property. A worthy man, a
former missionary, of the best principles, but of a slightly jocose and
good-humored habit, thought that he could piece his widowed years with
the not insignificant, fraction of life left to Miss Silence, to their
mutual advantage. He came to the village, therefore, where Father
Pemberton was very glad to have him supply the pulpit in the place of his
unfortunate disabled colleague. The courtship soon began, and was brisk
enough; for the good man knew there was no time to lose at his period of
life,--or hers either, for that matter. It was a rather odd specimen of
love-making; for he was constantly trying to subdue his features to a
gravity which they were not used to, and she was as constantly
endeavoring to be as lively as possible, with the innocent desire of
pleasing her light-hearted suitor.
"Vieille fille fait jeune mariee." Silence was ten years younger as a
bride than she had seemed as a lone woman. One would have said she had
got out of the coach next to the hearse, and got into one some half a
dozen behind it,--where there is often good and reasonably cheerful
conversation going on about the virtues of the deceased, the probable
amount of his property, or the little slips he may have committed, and
where occasionally a subdued pleasantry at his expense sets the four
waistcoats shaking that were lifting with sighs a half-hour ago in the
house of mourning. But Miss Silence, that was, thought that two
families, with all the possible complications which time might bring,
would be better in separate establishments. She therefore proposed
selling The Poplars to Myrtle and her husband, and removing to a house in
the village, which would be large enough for them, at least for the
present. So the young folks bought the old house, and paid a mighty good
price for it; and enlarged it, and beautified and glorified it, and one
fine morning went together down to the Widow Hopkins's, whose residence
seemed in danger of being a little crowded,--for Gifted lived there with
his Susan,--and what had happened might happen again,--and gave Master
Byles Gridley a formal and most persuasively worded invitation to come up
and make his home with them at The Poplars.
Now Master Gridley has been betrayed into palpable and undisguised
weakness at least once in the presence of this assembly, who are looking
upon him almost for the last time before they part from him, and see his
face no more. Let us not inquire too curiously, then, how he received
this kind proposition. It is enough, that, when he found that a new
study had been built on purpose for him, and a sleeping-room attached to
it so that he could live there without disturbing anybody if he chose, he
consented to remove there for a while, and that he was there established
amidst great rejoicing.
Cynthia Badlam had fallen of late into poor health. She found at last
that she was going; and as she had a little property of her own,--as
almost all poor relations have, only there is not enough of it,--she was
much exercised in her mind as to the final arrangements to be made
respecting its disposition. The Rev. Dr. Pemberton was one day surprised
by a message, that she wished to have an interview with him. He rode
over to the town in which she was residing, and there had a long
conversation with her upon this matter. When this was settled, her mind
seemed too be more at ease. She died with a comfortable assurance that
she was going to a better world, and with a bitter conviction that it
would be hard to find one that would offer her a worse lot than being a
poor relation in this.
Her little property was left to Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton and Jacob
Penhallow, Esq., to be by them employed for such charitable purposes as
they should elect, educational or other. Father Pemberton preached an
admirable funeral sermon, in which he praised her virtues, known to this
people among whom she had long lived, and especially that crowning act by
which she devoted all she had to purposes of charity-and benevolence.
The old clergyman seemed to have renewed his youth since the misfortune
of his colleague had incapacitated him from labor. He generally preached
in the forenoon now, and to the great acceptance of the people,--for the
truth was that the honest minister who had married Miss Silence was not
young enough or good-looking enough to be an object of personal
attentions like the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker, and the old minister
appeared to great advantage contrasted with him in the pulpit. Poor Mr.
Stoker was now helpless, faithfully and tenderly waited upon by his own
wife, who had regained her health and strength,--in no small measure,
perhaps, from the great need of sympathy and active aid which her
unfortunate husband now experienced. It was an astonishment to herself
when she found that she who had so long been served was able to serve
another. Some who knew his errors thought his accident was a judgment;
but others believed that it was only a mercy in disguise,--it snatched
him roughly from his sin, but it opened his heart to gratitude towards
her whom his neglect could not alienate, and through gratitude to
repentance and better thoughts. Bathsheba had long ago promised herself
to Cyprian Eveleth; and, as he was about to become the rector of a parish
in the next town, the marriage was soon to take place.
How beautifully serene Master Byles Gridley's face was growing! Clement
loved to study its grand lines, which had so much strength and fine
humanity blended in them. He was so fascinated by their noble expression
that he sometimes seemed to forget himself, and looked at him more like
an artist taking his portrait than like an admiring friend. He
maintained that Master Gridley had a bigger bump of benevolence and as
large a one of cautiousness as the two people most famous for the size of
these organs on the phrenological chart he showed him, and proved it, or
nearly proved it, by careful measurements of his head. Master Gridley
laughed, and read him a passage on the pseudo-sciences out of his book.
The disposal of Miss Cynthia's bequest was much discussed in the village.
Some wished the trustees would use it to lay the foundations of a public
library. Others thought it should be applied for the relief of the
families of soldiers who had fallen in the war. Still another set would
take it to build a monument to the memory of those heroes. The trustees
listened with the greatest candor to all these gratuitous hints. It was,
however, suggested, in a well-written anonymous article which appeared in
the village paper, that it was desirable to follow the general lead of
the testator's apparent preference. The trustees were at liberty to do
as they saw fit; but, other things being equal, same educational object
should be selected.
If there were any orphan children in the place, it would seem to be very
proper to devote the moderate sum bequeathed to educating them. The
trustees recognized the justice of this suggestion. Why not apply it to
the instruction and maintenance of those two pretty and promising
children, virtually orphans, whom the charitable Mrs. Hopkins had cared
for so long without any recompense, and at a cost which would soon become
beyond her means? The good people of the neighborhood accepted this as
the best solution of the difficulty. It was agreed upon at length by the
trustees, that the Cynthia Badlam Fund for Educational Purposes should be
applied for the benefit of the two foundlings, known as Isosceles and
Helminthia Hopkins.
Master Bytes Gridley was greatly exercised about the two "preposterous
names," as he called them, which in a moment of eccentric impulse he had
given to these children of nature. He ventured to hint as much to Mrs.
Hopkins. The good dame was vastly surprised. She thought they was about
as pooty names as anybody had had given 'em in the village. And they was
so handy, spoke short, Sossy and Minthy,--she never should know how to
call 'em anything else.
"But my dear Mrs. Hopkins," Master Gridley urged, "if you knew the
meaning they have to the ears of scholars, you would see that I did very
wrong to apply such absurd names to my little fellow-creatures, and that
I am bound to rectify my error. More than that, my dear madam, I mean to
consult you as to the new names; and if we can fix upon proper and
pleasing ones, it is my intention to leave a pretty legacy in my will to
these interesting children."
"Mr. Gridley," said Mrs. Hopkins, "you're the best man I ever see, or
ever shall see, . . . except my poor dear Ammi . . . . I 'll do
jest as you say about that, or about anything else in all this livin'
world."
"Well, then, Mrs. Hopkins, what shall be the boy's name?"
"Byles Gridley Hopkins!" she answered instantly.
"Good Lord!" said Mr. Gridley, "think a minute, my dear madam. I will
not say one word,--only think a minute, and mention some name that will
not suggest quite so many winks and whispers."
She did think something less than a minute, and then said aloud, "Abraham
Lincoln Hopkins."
"Fifteen thousand children have been so christened during the past year,
on a moderate computation."
"Do think of some name yourself, Mr. Gridley; I shall like anything that
you like. To think of those dear babes having a fund--if that's the
right name--on purpose for 'em, and a promise of a legacy, I hope they
won't get that till they're a hundred year old!"
"What if we change Isosceles to Theodore, Mrs. Hopkins? That means the
gift of God, and the child has been a gift from Heaven, rather than a
burden."
Mrs. Hopkins seized her apron, and held it to her eyes. She was weeping.
"Theodore!" she said, "Theodore! My little brother's name, that I buried
when I was only eleven year old. Drownded. The dearest little child
that ever you see. I have got his little mug with Theodore on it now.
Kep' o' purpose. Our little Sossy shall have it. Theodore P.
Hopkins,--sha'n't it be, Mr. Gridley?"
"Well, if you say so; but why that P., Mrs. Hopkins? Theodore Parker, is
it?"
"Doesn't P. stand for Pemberton, and isn't Father Pemberton the best man
in the world--next to you, Mr. Gridley?"
"Well, well, Mrs. Hopkins, let it be so, if you are suited, I am. Now
about Helminthia; there can't be any doubt about what we ought to call
her,--surely the friend of orphans should be remembered in naming one of
the objects of her charity."
"Cynthia Badlam Fund Hopkins," said the good woman triumphantly,--"is
that what you mean?"
"Suppose we leave out one of the names,--four are too many. I think the
general opinion will be that Hehninthia should unite the names of her two
benefactresses,--Cynthia Badlam Hopkins."
"Why, law! Mr. Gridley, is n't that nice?--Minthy and Cynthy,--there
ain't but one letter of difference! Poor Cynthy would be pleased if she
could know that one of our babes was to be called after her. She was
dreadful fond of children."
On one of the sweetest Sundays that ever made Oxbow Village lovely, the
Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Pembertan was summoned to officiate at three most
interesting ceremonies,--a wedding and two christenings, one of the
latter a double one.
The first was celebrated at the house of the Rev. Mr. Stoker, between the
Rev. Cyprian Eveleth and Bathsheba, daughter of the first-named
clergyman. He could not be present on account of his great infirmity,
but the door of his chamber was left open that he might hear the marriage
service performed. The old, white-haired minister, assisted, as the
papers said, by the bridegroom's father, conducted the ceremony according
to the Episcopal form. When he came to those solemn words in which the
husband promises fidelity to the wife so long as they both shall live,
the nurse, who was watching, near the poor father, saw him bury his face
in his pillow, and heard him murmur the words, "God be merciful to me a
sinner!"
The christenings were both to take place at the same service, in the old
meeting-house. Colonel Clement Lindsay and Myrtle his wife came in, and
stout Nurse Byloe bore their sturdy infant in her arms. A slip of paper
was handed to the Reverend Doctor on which these words were
written:--"The name is Charles Hazard."
The solemn and touching rite was then performed; and Nurse Byloe
disappeared with the child, its forehead glistening with the dew of its
consecration.
Then, hand in hand, like the babes in the wood, marched up the broad
aisle--marshalled by Mrs. Hopkins in front, and Mrs. Gifted Hopkins
bringing up the rear--the two children hitherto known as Isosceles and
Helminthia. They had been well schooled, and, as the mysterious and to
them incomprehensible ceremony was enacted, maintained the most stoical
aspect of tranquillity. In Mrs. Hopkins's words, "They looked like
picters, and behaved like angels."
That evening, Sunday evening as it was, there was a quiet meeting of some
few friends at The Poplars. It was such a great occasion that the
Sabbatical rules, never strict about Sunday evening,--which was, strictly
speaking, secular time,--were relaxed. Father Pemberton was there, and
Master Byles Gridley, of course, and the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth, with his
son and his daughter-in-law, Bathsheba, and her mother, now in
comfortable health, aunt Silence and her husband, Doctor Hurlbut and his
wife (Olive Eveleth that was), Jacob Penhallow, Esq., Mrs. Hopkins, her
son and his wife (Susan Posey that was), the senior deacon of the old
church (the admirer of the great Scott), the Editor-in-chief of the
"Banner and Oracle," and in the background Nurse Byloe and the privileged
servant, Mistress Kitty Fagan, with a few others whose names we need not
mention.
The evening was made pleasant with sacred music, and the fatigues of two
long services repaired by such simple refections as would not turn the
holy day into a day of labor. A large paper copy of the new edition of
Byles Gridley's remarkable work was lying on the table. He never looked
so happy,--could anything fill his cup fuller? In the course of the
evening Clement spoke of the many trials through which they had passed in
common with vast numbers of their countrymen, and some of those peculiar
dangers which Myrtle had had to encounter in the course of a life more
eventful, and attended with more risks, perhaps, than most of them
imagined. But Myrtle, he said, had always been specially cared for. He
wished them to look upon the semblance of that protecting spirit who had
been faithful to her in her gravest hours of trial and danger. If they
would follow him into one of the lesser apartments up stairs they would
have an opportunity to do so.
Myrtle wondered a little, but followed with the rest. They all ascended
to the little projecting chamber, through the window of which her scarlet
jacket caught the eyes of the boys paddling about on the river in those
early days when Cyprian Eveleth gave it the name of the Fire-hang-bird's
Nest.
The light fell softly but clearly on the dim and faded canvas from which
looked the saintly features of the martyred woman, whose continued
presence with her descendants was the old family legend. But underneath
it Myrtle was surprised to see a small table with some closely covered
object upon it. It was a mysterious arrangement, made without any
knowledge on her part.
"Now, then, Kitty!" Mr. Lindsay said.
Kitty Fagan, who had evidently been taught her part, stepped forward, and
removed the cloth which concealed the unknown object. It was a lifelike
marble bust of Master Byles Gridley.
"And this is what you have been working at so long,--is it, Clement?"
Myrtle said.
"Which is the image of your protector, Myrtle?", he answered, smiling.
Myrtle Hazard Lindsay walked up to the bust and kissed its marble
forehead, saying, "This is the face of my Guardian Angel." forehead,
saying, "This is the face of my Guardian Angel."
A MORTAL ANTIPATHY
By Oliver Wendell Holmes
PREFACE.
"A MORTAL ANTIPATHY" was a truly hazardous experiment. A very wise and
very distinguished physician who is as much at home in literature as he
is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in referring to
this story: "I should have been afraid of my subject." He did not explain
himself, but I can easily understand that he felt the improbability of
the, physiological or pathological occurrence on which the story is
founded to be so great that the narrative could hardly be rendered
plausible. I felt the difficulty for myself as well as for my readers,
and it was only by recalling for our consideration a series of
extraordinary but well-authenticated facts of somewhat similar character
that I could hope to gain any serious attention to so strange a
narrative.
I need not recur to these wonderful stories. There is, however, one, not
to be found on record elsewhere, to which I would especially call the
reader's attention. It is that of the middle-aged man, who assured me
that he could never pass a tall hall clock without an indefinable terror.
While an infant in arms the heavy weight of one of these tall clocks had
fallen with aloud crash and produced an impression on his nervous system
which he had never got over.
The lasting effect of a shock received by the sense of sight or that of
hearing is conceivable enough.
But there is another sense, the nerves of which are in close relation
with the higher organs of consciousness. The strength of the
associations connected with the function of the first pair of nerves, the
olfactory, is familiar to most persons in their own experience and as
related by others. Now we know that every human being, as well as every
other living organism, carries its own distinguishing atmosphere. If a
man's friend does not know it, his dog does, and can track him anywhere
by it. This personal peculiarity varies with the age and conditions of
the individual. It may be agreeable or otherwise, a source of attraction
or repulsion, but its influence is not less real, though far less obvious
and less dominant, than in the lower animals. It was an atmospheric
impression of this nature which associated itself with a terrible shock
experienced by the infant which became the subject of this story. The
impression could not be outgrown, but it might possibly be broken up by
some sudden change in the nervous system effected by a cause as potent as
the one which had produced the disordered condition.
This is the best key that I can furnish to a story which must have
puzzled some, repelled others, and failed to interest many who did not
suspect the true cause of the mysterious antipathy.
BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August, 1891.
O. W. H.
A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
FIRST OPENING OF THE NEW PORTFOLIO.
INTRODUCTION.
"And why the New Portfolio, I would ask?"
Pray, do you remember, when there was an accession to the nursery in
which you have a special interest, whether the new-comer was commonly
spoken of as a baby? Was it not, on the contrary, invariably, under all
conditions, in all companies, by the whole household, spoken of as the
baby? And was the small receptacle provided for it commonly spoken of as
a cradle; or was it not always called the cradle, as if there were no
other in existence?
Now this New Portfolio is the cradle in which I am to rock my new-born
thoughts, and from which I am to lift them carefully and show them to
callers, namely, to the whole family of readers belonging to my list of
intimates, and such other friends as may drop in by accident. And so it
shall have the definite article, and not be lost in the mob of its
fellows as a portfolio.
There are a few personal and incidental matters of which I wish to say
something before reaching the contents of the Portfolio, whatever these
may be. I have had other portfolios before this,--two, more especially,
and the first thing I beg leave to introduce relates to these.
Do not throw this volume down, or turn to another page, when I tell you
that the earliest of them, that of which I now am about to speak, was
opened more than fifty years ago. This is a very dangerous confession,
for fifty years make everything hopelessly old-fashioned, without giving
it the charm of real antiquity. If I could say a hundred years, now, my
readers would accept all I had to tell them with a curious interest; but
fifty years ago,--there are too many talkative old people who know all
about that time, and at best half a century is a half-baked bit of ware.
A coin-fancier would say that your fifty-year-old facts have just enough
of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give them--the
delicate and durable patina which is time's exquisite enamel.
When the first Portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for its
legend,--or might have borne if the more devout hero-worshippers could
have had their way,--Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp. Caesar. Aug.
Div., Max., etc., etc. I never happened to see any gold or silver with
that legend, but the truth is I was not very familiarly acquainted with
the precious metals at that period of my career, and, there might have
been a good deal of such coin in circulation without my handling it, or
knowing much about it.
Permit me to indulge in a few reminiscences of that far-off time.
In those days the Athenaeum Picture Gallery was a principal centre of
attraction to young Boston people and their visitors. Many of us got our
first ideas of art, to say nothing of our first lessons in the
comparatively innocent flirtations of our city's primitive period, in
that agreeable resort of amateurs and artists.
How the pictures on those walls in Pearl Street do keep their places in
the mind's gallery! Trumbull's Sortie of Gibraltar, with red enough in
it for one of our sunset after-glows; and Neagle's full-length portrait
of the blacksmith in his shirt-sleeves; and Copley's long-waistcoated
gentlemen and satin-clad ladies,--they looked like gentlemen and ladies,
too; and Stuart's florid merchants and high-waisted matrons; and
Allston's lovely Italian scenery and dreamy, unimpassioned women,
not forgetting Florimel in full flight on her interminable
rocking-horse,--you may still see her at the Art Museum; and the rival
landscapes of Doughty and Fisher, much talked of and largely praised in
those days; and the Murillo,--not from Marshal Soup's collection; and the
portrait of Annibale Caracci by himself, which cost the Athenaeum a
hundred dollars; and Cole's allegorical pictures, and his immense and
dreary canvas, in which the prostrate shepherds and the angel in Joseph's
coat of many colors look as if they must have been thrown in for nothing;
and West's brawny Lear tearing his clothes to pieces. But why go on with
the catalogue, when most of these pictures can be seen either at the
Athenaeum building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery, and admired or
criticised perhaps more justly, certainly not more generously, than in
those earlier years when we looked at them through the japanned
fish-horns?
If one happened to pass through Atkinson Street on his way to the
Athenaeum, he would notice a large, square, painted, brick house, in
which lived a leading representative of old-fashioned coleopterous
Calvinism, and from which emerged one of the liveliest of literary
butterflies. The father was editor of the "Boston Recorder," a very
respectable, but very far from amusing paper, most largely patronized by
that class of the community which spoke habitually of the first day of
the week as "the Sahbuth." The son was the editor of several different
periodicals in succession, none of them over severe or serious, and of
many pleasant books, filled with lively descriptions of society, which he
studied on the outside with a quick eye for form and color, and with a
certain amount of sentiment, not very deep, but real, though somewhat
frothed over by his worldly experiences.
Nathaniel Parker Willis was in full bloom when I opened my first
Portfolio. He had made himself known by his religious poetry, published
in his father's paper, I think, and signed "Roy." He had started the
"American Magazine," afterwards merged in the "New York Mirror." He had
then left off writing scripture pieces, and taken to lighter forms of
verse. He had just written
"I'm twenty-two, I'm twenty-two,
They idly give me joy,
As if I should be glad to know
That I was less a boy."
He was young, therefore, and already famous. He came very near being
very handsome. He was tall; his hair, of light brown color, waved in
luxuriant abundance; his cheek was as rosy as if it had been painted to
show behind the footlights; he dressed with artistic elegance. He was
something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an anticipation of
Oscar Wilde. There used to be in the gallery of the Luxembourg a picture
of Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful young man, who had
kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked step-mother, always reminded
me of Willis, in spite of the shortcomings of the living face as compared
with the ideal. The painted youth is still blooming on the canvas, but
the fresh-cheecked, jaunty young author of the year 1830 has long faded
out of human sight. I took the leaves which lie before me at this
moment, as I write, from his coffin, as it lay just outside the door of
Saint Paul's Church, on a sad, overclouded winter's day, in the year
1867. At that earlier time, Willis was by far the most prominent young
American author. Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all
done their best work. Longfellow was not yet conspicuous. Lowell was a
school-boy. Emerson was unheard of. Whittier was beginning to make his
way against the writers with better educational advantages whom he was
destined to outdo and to outlive. Not one of the great histories, which
have done honor to our literature, had appeared. Our school-books
depended, so far as American authors were concerned, on extracts from the
orations and speeches of Webster and Everett; on Bryant's Thanatopsis,
his lines To a Waterfowl, and the Death of the Flowers, Halleck's Marco
Bozzaris, Red Jacket, and Burns; on Drake's American Flag, and Percival's
Coral Grove, and his Genius Sleeping and Genius Waking,--and not getting
very wide awake, either. These could be depended upon. A few other
copies of verses might be found, but Dwight's "Columbia, Columbia," and
Pierpont's Airs of Palestine, were already effaced, as many of the
favorites of our own day and generation must soon be, by the great wave
which the near future will pour over the sands in which they still are
legible.
About this time, in the year 1832, came out a small volume entitled
"Truth, a Gift for Scribblers," which made some talk for a while, and is
now chiefly valuable as a kind of literary tombstone on which may be read
the names of many whose renown has been buried with their bones. The
"London Athenaeum" spoke of it as having been described as a "tomahawk
sort of satire." As the author had been a trapper in Missouri, he was
familiarly acquainted with that weapon and the warfare of its owners.
Born in Boston, in 1804, the son of an army officer, educated at West
Point, he came back to his native city about the year 1830. He wrote an
article on Bryant's Poems for the "North American Review," and another on
the famous Indian chief, Black Hawk. In this last-mentioned article he
tells this story as the great warrior told it himself. It was an
incident of a fight with the Osages.
"Standing by my father's side, I saw him kill his antagonist and tear the
scalp from his head. Fired with valor and ambition, I rushed furiously
upon another, smote him to the earth with my tomahawk, ran my lance
through his body, took off his scalp, and returned in triumph to my
father. He said nothing, but looked pleased."
This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of literary
warfare. His handling of his most conspicuous victim, Willis, was very
much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the Osage. He tomahawked him
in heroics, ran him through in prose, and scalped him in barbarous
epigrams. Bryant and Halleck were abundantly praised; hardly any one
else escaped.
If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were floating,
some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago, he will find
in the pages of "Truth" a long catalogue of celebrities he never heard
of. I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned in the
little book, as belonging to persons still living; but as I have not read
the obituaries of all the others, some of them may be still flourishing
in spite of Mr. Spelling's exterminating onslaught. Time dealt as hardly
with poor Spelling, who was not without talent and instruction, as he had
dealt with our authors. I think he found shelter at last under a roof
which held numerous inmates, some of whom had seen better and many of
whom had known worse days than those which they were passing within its
friendly and not exclusive precincts. Such, at least, was the story I
heard after he disappeared from general observation.
That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forget-me-nots, Bijous, and all
that class of showy annuals. Short stories, slender poems, steel
engravings, on a level with the common fashion-plates of advertising
establishments, gilt edges, resplendent binding,--to manifestations of
this sort our lighter literature had very largely run for some years.
The "Scarlet Letter" was an unhinted possibility. The "Voices of the
Night" had not stirred the brooding silence; the Concord seer was still
in the lonely desert; most of the contributors to those yearly volumes,
which took up such pretentious positions on the centre table, have shrunk
into entire oblivion, or, at best, hold their place in literature by a
scrap or two in some omnivorous collection.
What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations, floating
in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream, and mirroring each other
in reciprocal reflections! Violent, abusive as he was, unjust to any
against whom he happened to have a prejudice, his castigation of the
small litterateurs of that day was not harmful, but rather of use. His
attack on Willis very probably did him good; he needed a little
discipline, and though he got it too unsparingly, some cautions came with
it which were worth the stripes he had to smart under. One noble writer
Spelling treated with rudeness, probably from some accidental pique, or
equally insignificant reason. I myself, one of the three survivors
before referred to, escaped with a love-pat, as the youngest son of the
Muse. Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment. Bailey, an
American writer, "who made long since a happy snatch at fame," which must
have been snatched away from him by envious time, for I cannot identify
him; Thatcher, who died early, leaving one poem, The Last Request, not
wholly unremembered; Miss Hannah F. Gould, a very bright and agreeable
writer of light verse,--all these are commended to the keeping of that
venerable public carrier, who finds his scythe and hour-glass such a load
that he generally drops the burdens committed to his charge, after making
a show of paying every possible attention to them so long as he is kept
in sight.
It was a good time to open a portfolio. But my old one had boyhood
written on every page. A single passionate outcry when the old warship I
had read about in the broadsides that were a part of our kitchen
literature, and in the "Naval Monument," was threatened with demolition;
a few verses suggested by the sight of old Major Melville in his cocked
hat and breeches, were the best scraps that came out of that first
Portfolio, which was soon closed that it should not interfere with the
duties of a profession authorized to claim all the time and thought which
would have been otherwise expended in filling it.
During a quarter of a century the first Portfolio remained closed for the
greater part of the time. Only now and then it would be taken up and
opened, and something drawn from it for a special occasion, more
particularly for the annual reunions of a certain class of which I was a
member.
In the year 1857, towards its close, the "Atlantic Monthly," which I had
the honor of naming, was started by the enterprising firm of Phillips &
Sampson, under the editorship of Mr. James Russell Lowell. He thought
that I might bring something out of my old Portfolio which would be not
unacceptable in the new magazine. I looked at the poor old receptacle,
which, partly from use and partly from neglect, had lost its freshness,
and seemed hardly presentable to the new company expected to welcome the
new-comer in the literary world of Boston, the least provincial of
American centres of learning and letters. The gilded covering where the
emblems of hope and aspiration had looked so bright had faded; not
wholly, perhaps, but how was the gold become dim!---how was the most fine
gold changed! Long devotion to other pursuits had left little time for
literature, and the waifs and strays gathered from the old Portfolio had
done little more than keep alive the memory that such a source of supply
was still in existence. I looked at the old Portfolio, and said to
myself, "Too late! too late. This tarnished gold will never brighten,
these battered covers will stand no more wear and tear; close them, and
leave them to the spider and the book-worm."
In the mean time the nebula of the first quarter of the century had
condensed into the constellation of the middle of the same period. When,
a little while after the establishment of the new magazine, the "Saturday
Club" gathered about the long table at "Parker's," such a representation
of all that was best in American literature had never been collected
within so small a compass. Most of the Americans whom educated
foreigners cared to see-leaving out of consideration official
dignitaries, whose temporary importance makes them objects of
curiosity--were seated at that board. But the club did not yet exist,
and the "Atlantic Monthly" was an experiment. There had already been
several monthly periodicals, more or less successful and permanent, among
which "Putnam's Magazine" was conspicuous, owing its success largely to
the contributions of that very accomplished and delightful writer, Mr.
George William Curtis. That magazine, after a somewhat prolonged and
very honorable existence, had gone where all periodicals go when they
die, into the archives of the deaf, dumb, and blind recording angel whose
name is Oblivion. It had so well deserved to live that its death was a
surprise and a source of regret. Could another monthly take its place
and keep it when that, with all its attractions and excellences, had died
out, and left a blank in our periodical literature which it would be very
hard to fill as well as that had filled it?
This was the experiment which the enterprising publishers ventured upon,
and I, who felt myself outside of the charmed circle drawn around the
scholars and poets of Cambridge and Concord, having given myself to other
studies and duties, wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell insisted upon my
becoming a contributor. And so, yielding to a pressure which I could not
understand, and yet found myself unable to resist, I promised to take a
part in the new venture, as an occasional writer in the columns of the
new magazine.
That was the way in which the second Portfolio found its way to my table,
and was there opened in the autumn of the year 1857. I was already at
least
'Nel mezzo del cammin di mia, vita,'
when I risked myself, with many misgivings, in little-tried paths of what
looked at first like a wilderness, a selva oscura, where, if I did not
meet the lion or the wolf, I should be sure to find the critic, the most
dangerous of the carnivores, waiting to welcome me after his own fashion.
The second Portfolio is closed and laid away. Perhaps it was hardly
worth while to provide and open a new one; but here it lies before me,
and I hope I may find something between its covers which will justify me
in coming once more before my old friends. But before I open it I want
to claim a little further indulgence.
There is a subject of profound interest to almost every writer, I might
say to almost every human being. No matter what his culture or
ignorance, no matter what his pursuit, no matter what his character, the
subject I refer to is one of which he rarely ceases to think, and, if
opportunity is offered, to talk. On this he is eloquent, if on nothing
else. The slow of speech becomes fluent; the torpid listener becomes
electric with vivacity, and alive all over with interest.
The sagacious reader knows well what is coming after this prelude. He is
accustomed to the phrases with which the plausible visitor, who has a
subscription book in his pocket, prepares his victim for the depressing
disclosure of his real errand. He is not unacquainted with the
conversational amenities of the cordial and interesting stranger, who,
having had the misfortune of leaving his carpet-bag in the cars, or of
having his pocket picked at the station, finds himself without the means
of reaching that distant home where affluence waits for him with its
luxurious welcome, but to whom for the moment the loan of some five and
twenty dollars would be a convenience and a favor for which his heart
would ache with gratitude during the brief interval between the loan and
its repayment.
I wish to say a few words in my own person relating to some passages in
my own history, and more especially to some of the recent experiences
through which I have been passing.
What can justify one in addressing himself to the general public as if it
were his private correspondent? There are at least three sufficient
reasons: first, if he has a story to tell that everybody wants to
hear,--if he has been shipwrecked, or has been in a battle, or has
witnessed any interesting event, and can tell anything new about it;
secondly, if he can put in fitting words any common experiences not
already well told, so that readers will say, "Why, yes! I have had that
sensation, thought, emotion, a hundred times, but I never heard it spoken
of before, and I never saw any mention of it in print;" and thirdly,
anything one likes, provided he can so tell it as to make it interesting.
I have no story to tell in this Introduction which can of itself claim
any general attention. My first pages relate the effect of a certain
literary experience upon myself,--a series of partial metempsychoses of
which I have been the subject. Next follows a brief tribute to the
memory of a very dear and renowned friend from whom I have recently been
parted. The rest of the Introduction will be consecrated to the memory
of my birthplace.
I have just finished a Memoir, which will appear soon after this page is
written, and will have been the subject of criticism long before it is in
the reader's hands. The experience of thinking another man's thoughts
continuously for a long time; of living one's self into another man's
life for a month, or a year, or more, is a very curious one. No matter
how much superior to the biographer his subject may be, the man who
writes the life feels himself, in a certain sense, on the level of the
person whose life he is writing. One cannot fight over the battles of
Marengo or Austerlitz with Napoleon without feeling as if he himself had
a fractional claim to the victory, so real seems the transfer of his
personality into that of the conqueror while he reads. Still more must
this identification of "subject" and "object" take place when one is
writing of a person whose studies or occupations are not unlike his own.
Here are some of my metempsychoses: Ten years ago I wrote what I called A
Memorial Outline of a remarkable student of nature. He was a born
observer, and such are far from common. He was also a man of great
enthusiasm and unwearying industry. His quick eye detected what others
passed by without notice: the Indian relic, where another would see only
pebbles and fragments; the rare mollusk, or reptile, which his companion
would poke with his cane, never suspecting that there was a prize at the
end of it. Getting his single facts together with marvellous sagacity
and long-breathed patience, he arranged them, classified them, described
them, studied them in their relations, and before those around him were
aware of it the collector was an accomplished naturalist. When--he died
his collections remained, and they still remain, as his record in the
hieratic language of science. In writing this memoir the spirit of his
quiet pursuits, the even temper they bred in him, gained possession of my
own mind, so that I seemed to look at nature through his gold-bowed
spectacles, and to move about his beautifully ordered museum as if I had
myself prepared and arranged its specimens. I felt wise with his wisdom,
fair-minded with his calm impartiality; it seemed as if for the time his
placid, observant, inquiring, keen-sighted nature "slid into my soul,"
and if I had looked at myself in the glass I should almost have expected
to see the image of the Hersey professor whose life and character I was
sketching.
A few years hater I lived over the life of another friend in writing a
Memoir of which he was the subject. I saw him, the beautiful,
bright-eyed boy, with dark, waving hair; the youthful scholar, first at
Harvard, then at Gottingen and Berlin, the friend and companion of
Bismarck; the young author, making a dash for renown as a novelist, and
showing the elements which made his failures the promise of success in a
larger field of literary labor; the delving historian, burying his fresh
young manhood in the dusty alcoves of silent libraries, to come forth in
the face of Europe and America as one of the leading historians of the
time; the diplomatist, accomplished, of captivating presence and manners,
an ardent American, and in the time of trial an impassioned and eloquent
advocate of the cause of freedom; reaching at last the summit of his
ambition as minister at the Court of Saint James. All this I seemed to
share with him as I tracked his career from his birthplace in Dorchester,
and the house in Walnut Street where he passed his boyhood, to the
palaces of Vienna and London. And then the cruel blow which struck him
from the place he adorned; the great sorrow that darkened his later
years; the invasion of illness, a threat that warned of danger, and after
a period of invalidism, during a part of which I shared his most intimate
daily life, the sudden, hardly unwelcome, final summons. Did not my own
consciousness migrate, or seem, at least, to transfer itself into this
brilliant life history, as I traced its glowing record? I, too, seemed
to feel the delight of carrying with me, as if they were my own, the
charms of a presence which made its own welcome everywhere. I shared his
heroic toils, I partook of his literary and social triumphs, I was
honored by the marks of distinction which gathered about him, I was
wronged by the indignity from which he suffered, mourned with him in his
sorrow, and thus, after I had been living for months with his memory, I
felt as if I should carry a part of his being with me so long as my
self-consciousness might remain imprisoned in the ponderable elements.
The years passed away, and the influences derived from the companionships
I have spoken of had blended intimately with my own current of being.
Then there came to me a new experience in my relations with an eminent
member of the medical profession, whom I met habitually for a long
period, and to whose memory I consecrated a few pages as a prelude to a
work of his own, written under very peculiar circumstances. He was the
subject of a slow, torturing, malignant, and almost necessarily fatal
disease. Knowing well that the mind would feed upon itself if it were
not supplied with food from without, he determined to write a treatise on
a subject which had greatly interested him, and which would oblige him to
bestow much of his time and thought upon it, if indeed he could hold out
to finish the work. During the period while he was engaged in writing
it, his wife, who had seemed in perfect health, died suddenly of
pneumonia. Physical suffering, mental distress, the prospect of death at
a near, if uncertain, time always before him, it was hard to conceive a
more terrible strain than that which he had to endure. When, in the hour
of his greatest need, his faithful companion, the wife of many years of
happy union, whose hand had smoothed his pillow, whose voice had consoled
and cheered him, was torn from him after a few days of illness, I felt
that my, friend's trial was such that the cry of the man of many
afflictions and temptations might well have escaped from his lips: "I was
at ease, but he hath broken me asunder; he hath also taken me by my neck
and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark. His archers compass
me round about, he cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; he
poureth out my gall upon the ground."
I had dreaded meeting him for the first time after this crushing blow.
What a lesson he gave me of patience under sufferings which the fearful
description of the Eastern poet does not picture too vividly! We have
been taught to admire the calm philosophy of Haller, watching his
faltering pulse as he lay dying; we have heard the words of pious
resignation said to have been uttered with his last breath by Addison:
but here was a trial, not of hours, or days, or weeks, but of months,
even years, of cruel pain, and in the midst of its thick darkness the
light of love, which had burned steadily at his bedside, was suddenly
extinguished.
There were times in which the thought would force itself upon my
consciousness, How long is the universe to look upon this dreadful
experiment of a malarious planet, with its unmeasurable freight of
suffering, its poisonous atmosphere, so sweet to breathe, so sure to kill
in a few scores of years at farthest, and its heart-breaking woes which
make even that brief space of time an eternity? There can be but one
answer that will meet this terrible question, which must arise in every
thinking nature that would fain "justify the ways of God to men." So
must it be until that
"one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves"
has become a reality, and the anthem in which there is no discordant note
shall be joined by a voice from every life made "perfect through
sufferings."
Such was the lesson into which I lived in those sad yet placid years of
companionship with my suffering and sorrowing friend, in retracing which
I seemed to find another existence mingled with my own.
And now for many months I have been living in daily relations of intimacy
with one who seems nearer to me since he has left us than while he was
here in living form and feature. I did not know how difficult a task I
had undertaken in venturing upon a memoir of a man whom all, or almost
all, agree upon as one of the great lights of the New World, and whom
very many regard as an unpredicted Messiah. Never before was I so
forcibly reminded of Carlyle's description of the work of a newspaper
editor,--that threshing of straw already thrice beaten by the flails of
other laborers in the same field. What could be said that had not been
said of "transcendentalism" and of him who was regarded as its prophet;
of the poet whom some admired without understanding, a few understood, or
thought they did, without admiring, and many both understood and
admired,--among these there being not a small number who went far beyond
admiration, and lost themselves in devout worship? While one exalted him
as "the greatest man that ever lived," another, a friend, famous in the
world of letters, wrote expressly to caution me against the danger of
overrating a writer whom he is content to recognize as an American
Montaigne, and nothing more.
After finishing this Memoir, which has but just left my hands, I would
gladly have let my brain rest for a while. The wide range of thought
which belonged to the subject of the Memoir, the occasional mysticism and
the frequent tendency toward it, the sweep of imagination and the sparkle
of wit which kept his reader's mind on the stretch, the union of
prevailing good sense with exceptional extravagances, the modest audacity
of a nature that showed itself in its naked truthfulness and was not
ashamed, the feeling that I was in the company of a sibylline
intelligence which was discounting the promises of the remote future long
before they were due,--all this made the task a grave one. But when I
found myself amidst the vortices of uncounted, various, bewildering
judgments, Catholic and Protestant, orthodox and liberal, scholarly from
under the tree of knowledge and instinctive from over the potato-hill;
the passionate enthusiasm of young adorers and the cool, if not cynical,
estimate of hardened critics, all intersecting each other as they
whirled, each around its own centre, I felt that it was indeed very
difficult to keep the faculties clear and the judgment unbiassed.
It is a great privilege to have lived so long in the society of such a
man. "He nothing common" said, "or mean." He was always the same pure
and high-souled companion. After being with him virtue seemed as natural
to man as its opposite did according to the old theologies. But how to
let one's self down from the high level of such a character to one's own
poor standard? I trust that the influence of this long intellectual and
spiritual companionship never absolutely leaves one who has lived in it.
It may come to him in the form of self-reproach that he falls so far
short of the superior being who has been so long the object of his
contemplation. But it also carries him at times into the other's
personality, so that he finds himself thinking thoughts that are not his
own, using phrases which he has unconsciously borrowed, writing, it may
be, as nearly like his long-studied original as Julio Romano's painting
was like Raphael's; and all this with the unquestioning conviction that
he is talking from his own consciousness in his own natural way. So far
as tones and expressions and habits which belonged to the idiosyncrasy of
the original are borrowed by the student of his life, it is a misfortune
for the borrower. But to share the inmost consciousness of a noble
thinker, to scan one's self in the white light of a pure and radiant
soul,--this is indeed the highest form of teaching and discipline.
I have written these few memoirs, and I am grateful for all that they
have taught me. But let me write no more. There are but two biographers
who can tell the story of a man's or a woman's life. One is the person
himself or herself; the other is the Recording Angel. The autobiographer
cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth, though he may tell nothing but
the truth, and the Recording Angel never lets his book go out of his own
hands. As for myself, I would say to my friends, in the Oriental phrase,
"Live forever!" Yes, live forever, and I, at least, shall not have to
wrong your memories by my imperfect record and unsatisfying commentary.
In connection with these biographies, or memoirs, more properly, in which
I have written of my departed friends, I hope my readers will indulge me
in another personal reminiscence. I have just lost my dear and honored
contemporary of the last century. A hundred years ago this day, December
13, 1784, died the admirable and ever to be remembered Dr. Samuel
Johnson. The year 1709 was made ponderous and illustrious in English
biography by his birth. My own humble advent to the world of protoplasm
was in the year 1809 of the present century. Summer was just ending when
those four letters, "son b." were written under the date of my birth,
August 29th. Autumn had just begun when my great pre-contemporary
entered this un-Christian universe and was made a member of the Christian
church on the same day, for he was born and baptized on the 18th of
September.
Thus there was established a close bond of relationship between the great
English scholar and writer and myself. Year by year, and almost month by
month, my life has kept pace in this century with his life in the last
century. I had only to open my Boswell at any time, and I knew just what
Johnson at my age, twenty or fifty or seventy, was thinking and doing;
what were his feelings about life; what changes the years had wrought in
his body, his mind, his feelings, his companionships, his reputation. It
was for me a kind of unison between two instruments, both playing that
old familiar air, "Life,"--one a bassoon, if you will, and the other an
oaten pipe, if you care to find an image for it, but still keeping pace
with each other until the players both grew old and gray. At last the
thinner thread of sound is heard by itself, and its deep accompaniment
rolls out its thunder no more.
I feel lonely now that my great companion and friend of so many years has
left me. I felt more intimately acquainted with him than I do with many
of my living friends. I can hardly remember when I did not know him. I
can see him in his bushy wig, exactly like that of the Reverend Dr.
Samuel Cooper (who died in December, 1783) as Copley painted him,--he
hangs there on my wall, over the revolving bookcase. His ample coat, too,
I see, with its broad flaps and many buttons and generous cuffs, and
beneath it the long, still more copiously buttoned waistcoat, arching in
front of the fine crescentic, almost semi-lunar Falstaffian prominence,
involving no less than a dozen of the above-mentioned buttons, and the
strong legs with their sturdy calves, fitting columns of support to the
massive body and solid, capacious brain enthroned over it. I can hear
him with his heavy tread as he comes in to the Club, and a gap is widened
to make room for his portly figure. "A fine day," says Sir Joshua.
"Sir," he answers, "it seems propitious, but the atmosphere is humid and
the skies are nebulous," at which the great painter smiles, shifts his
trumpet, and takes a pinch of snuff.
Dear old massive, deep-voiced dogmatist and hypochondriac of the
eighteenth century, how one would like to sit at some ghastly Club,
between you and the bony, "mighty-mouthed," harsh-toned termagant and
dyspeptic of the nineteenth! The growl of the English mastiff and the
snarl of the Scotch terrier would make a duet which would enliven the
shores of Lethe. I wish I could find our "spiritualist's" paper in the
Portfolio, in which the two are brought together, but I hardly know what
I shall find when it is opened.
Yes, my life is a little less precious to me since I have lost that dear
old friend; and when the funeral train moves to Westminster Abbey next
Saturday, for I feel as if this were 1784, and not 1884,--I seem to find
myself following the hearse, one of the silent mourners.
Among the events which have rendered the past year memorable to me has
been the demolition of that venerable and interesting old dwelling-house,
precious for its intimate association with the earliest stages of the war
of the Revolution, and sacred to me as my birthplace and the home of my
boyhood.
The "Old Gambrel-roofed House" exists no longer. I remember saying
something, in one of a series of papers published long ago, about the
experience of dying out of a house,--of leaving it forever, as the soul
dies out of the body. We may die out of many houses, but the house
itself can die but once; and so real is the life of a house to one who
has dwelt in it, more especially the life of the house which held him in
dreamy infancy, in restless boyhood, in passionate youth,--so real, I
say, is its life, that it seems as if something like a soul of it must
outlast its perishing frame.
The slaughter of the Old Gambrel-roofed House was, I am ready to admit, a
case of justifiable domicide. Not the less was it to be deplored by all
who love the memories of the past. With its destruction are obliterated
some of the footprints of the heroes and martyrs who took the first steps
in the long and bloody march which led us through the wilderness to the
promised land of independent nationality. Personally, I have a right to
mourn for it as a part of my life gone from me. My private grief for its
loss would be a matter for my solitary digestion, were it not that the
experience through which I have just passed is one so familiar to my
fellow-countrymen that, in telling my own reflections and feelings, I am
repeating those of great numbers of men and women who have had the
misfortune to outlive their birthplace.
It is a great blessing to be born surrounded by a natural horizon. The
Old Gambrel-roofed House could not boast an unbroken ring of natural
objects encircling it. Northerly it looked upon its own outbuildings and
some unpretending two-story houses which had been its neighbors for a
century and more. To the south of it the square brick dormitories and
the bellfried hall of the university helped to shut out the distant view.
But the west windows gave a broad outlook across the common, beyond which
the historical "Washington elm" and two companions in line with it,
spread their leaves in summer and their networks in winter. And far away
rose the hills that bounded the view, with the glimmer here and there of
the white walls or the illuminated casements of some embowered,
half-hidden villa. Eastwardly also, the prospect was, in my earlier
remembrance, widely open, and I have frequently seen the sunlit sails
gliding along as if through the level fields, for no water was visible.
So there were broad expanses on two sides at least, for my imagination to
wander over.
I cannot help thinking that we carry our childhood's horizon with us all
our days. Among these western wooded hills my day-dreams built their
fairy palaces, and even now, as I look at them from my library window,
across the estuary of the Charles, I find myself in the familiar home of
my early visions. The "clouds of glory" which we trail with us in after
life need not be traced to a pre-natal state. There is enough to account
for them in that unconsciously remembered period of existence before we
have learned the hard limitations of real life. Those earliest months in
which we lived in sensations without words, and ideas not fettered in
sentences, have all the freshness of proofs of an engraving "before the
letter." I am very thankful that the first part of my life was not
passed shut in between high walls and treading the unimpressible and
unsympathetic pavement.
Our university town was very much like the real country, in those days of
which I am thinking. There were plenty of huckleberries and blueberries
within half a mile of the house. Blackberries ripened in the fields,
acorns and shagbarks dropped from the trees, squirrels ran among the
branches, and not rarely the hen-hawk might be seen circling over the
barnyard. Still another rural element was not wanting, in the form of
that far-diffused, infragrant effluvium, which, diluted by a good half
mile of pure atmosphere, is no longer odious, nay is positively
agreeable, to many who have long known it, though its source and centre
has an unenviable reputation. I need not name the animal whose Parthian
warfare terrifies and puts to flight the mightiest hunter that ever
roused the tiger from his jungle or faced the lion of the desert.
Strange as it may seem, an aerial hint of his personality in the far
distance always awakens in my mind pleasant remembrances and tender
reflections. A whole neighborhood rises up before me: the barn, with its
haymow, where the hens laid their eggs to hatch, and we boys hid our
apples to ripen, both occasionally illustrating the sic vos non vobis;
the shed, where the annual Tragedy of the Pig was acted with a realism
that made Salvini's Othello seem but a pale counterfeit; the rickety old
outhouse, with the "corn-chamber" which the mice knew so well; the paved
yard, with its open gutter,--these and how much else come up at the hint
of my far-off friend, who is my very near enemy. Nothing is more
familiar than the power of smell in reviving old memories. There was that
quite different fragrance of the wood-house, the smell of fresh sawdust.
It comes back to me now, and with it the hiss of the saw; the tumble of
the divorced logs which God put together and man has just put asunder;
the coming down of the axe and the hah! that helped it,--the
straight-grained stick opening at the first appeal of the implement as if
it were a pleasure, and the stick with a knot in the middle of it that
mocked the blows and the hahs! until the beetle and wedge made it listen
to reason,--there are just such straight-grained and just such knotty men
and women. All this passes through my mind while Biddy, whose
parlor-name is Angela, contents herself with exclaiming "egh!*******!"
How different distances were in those young days of which I am thinking!
From the old house to the old yellow meeting-house, where the head of the
family preached and the limbs of the family listened, was not much more
than two or three times the width of Commonwealth Avenue. But of a hot
summer's afternoon, after having already heard one sermon, which could
not in the nature of things have the charm of novelty of presentation to
the members of the home circle, and the theology of which was not too
clear to tender apprehensions; with three hymns more or less lugubrious,
rendered by a village-choir, got into voice by many preliminary snuffles
and other expiratory efforts, and accompanied by the snort of a huge
bassviol which wallowed through the tune like a hippopotamus, with other
exercises of the customary character,--after all this in the forenoon,
the afternoon walk to the meeting-house in the hot sun counted for as
much, in my childish dead-reckoning, as from old Israel Porter's in
Cambridge to the Exchange Coffeehouse in Boston did in after years. It
takes a good while to measure the radius of the circle that is about us,
for the moon seems at first as near as the watchface. Who knows but
that, after a certain number of ages, the planet we live on may seem to
us no bigger than our neighbor Venus appeared when she passed before the
sun a few months ago, looking as if we could take her between our thumb
and finger, like a bullet or a marble? And time, too; how long was it
from the serious sunrise to the joyous "sun-down" of an old-fashioned,
puritanical, judaical first day of the week, which a pious fraud
christened "the Sabbath"? Was it a fortnight, as we now reckon duration,
or only a week? Curious entities, or non-entities, space and tithe?
When you see a metaphysician trying to wash his hands of them and get rid
of these accidents, so as to lay his dry, clean palm on the absolute,
does it not remind you of the hopeless task of changing the color of the
blackamoor by a similar proceeding? For space is the fluid in which he
is washing, and time is the soap which he is using up in the process, and
he cannot get free from them until he can wash himself in a mental
vacuum.
In my reference to the old house in a former paper, published years ago,
I said,
"By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself on
this whole territory, and the private recollections which clung so
tenaciously to the place and its habitations will have died with those
who cherished them."
What strides the great University has taken since those words were
written! During all my early years our old Harvard Alma Mater sat still
and lifeless as the colossi in the Egyptian desert. Then all at once,
like the statue in Don Giovanni, she moved from her pedestal. The fall
of that "stony foot" has effected a miracle like the harp that Orpheus
played, like the teeth which Cadmus sowed. The plain where the moose and
the bear were wandering while Shakespeare was writing Hamlet, where a few
plain dormitories and other needed buildings were scattered about in my
school-boy days, groans under the weight of the massive edifices which
have sprung up all around them, crowned by the tower of that noble
structure which stands in full view before me as I lift my eyes from the
portfolio on the back of which I am now writing.
For I must be permitted to remind you that I have not yet opened it. I
have told you that I have just finished a long memoir, and that it has
cost me no little labor to overcome some of its difficulties,--if I have
overcome them, which others must decide. And I feel exactly as honest
Dobbin feels when his harness is slipped off after a long journey with a
good deal of up-hill work. He wants to rest a little, then to feed a
little; then, if you will turn him loose in the pasture, he wants to
roll. I have left my starry and ethereal companionship,--not for a long
time, I hope, for it has lifted me above my common self, but for a while.
And now I want, so to speak, to roll in the grass and among the
dandelions with the other pachyderms. So I have kept to the outside of
the portfolio as yet, and am disporting myself in reminiscences, and
fancies, and vagaries, and parentheses.
How well I understand the feeling which led the Pisans to load their
vessels with earth from the Holy Land, and fill the area of the Campo
Santo with that sacred soil! The old house stood upon about as perverse
a little patch of the planet as ever harbored a half-starved earth-worm.
It was as sandy as Sahara and as thirsty as Tantalus. The rustic
aid-de-camps of the household used to aver that all fertilizing matters
"leached" through it. I tried to disprove their assertion by gorging it
with the best of terrestrial nourishment, until I became convinced that I
was feeding the tea-plants of China, and then I gave over the attempt.
And yet I did love, and do love, that arid patch of ground. I wonder if
a single flower could not be made to grow in a pot of earth from that
Campo Santo of my childhood! One noble product of nature did not refuse
to flourish there,--the tall, stately, beautiful, soft-haired,
many-jointed, generous maize or Indian corn, which thrives on sand and
defies the blaze of our shrivelling summer. What child but loves to
wander in its forest-like depths, amidst the rustling leaves and with the
lofty tassels tossing their heads high above him! There are two aspects
of the cornfield which always impress my imagination: the first when it
has reached its full growth, and its ordered ranks look like an army on
the march with its plumed and bannered battalions; the second when, after
the battle of the harvest, the girdled stacks stand on the field of
slaughter like so many ragged Niobes,--say rather like the crazy widows
and daughters of the dead soldiery.
Once more let us come back to the old house. It was far along in its
second century when the edict went forth that it must stand no longer.
The natural death of a house is very much like that of one of its human
tenants. The roof is the first part to show the distinct signs of age.
Slates and tiles loosen and at last slide off, and leave bald the boards
that supported them; shingles darken and decay, and soon the garret or
the attic lets in the rain and the snow; by and by the beams sag, the
floors warp, the walls crack, the paper peels away, the ceilings scale
off and fall, the windows are crusted with clinging dust, the doors drop
from their rusted hinges, the winds come in without knocking and howl
their cruel death-songs through the empty rooms and passages, and at last
there comes a crash, a great cloud of dust rises, and the home that had
been the shelter of generation after generation finds its grave in its
own cellar. Only the chimney remains as its monument. Slowly, little by
little, the patient solvents that find nothing too hard for their
chemistry pick out the mortar from between the bricks; at last a mighty
wind roars around it and rushes against it, and the monumental relic
crashes down among the wrecks it has long survived. So dies a human
habitation left to natural decay, all that was seen above the surface of
the soil sinking gradually below it,
Till naught remains the saddening tale to tell
Save home's last wrecks, the cellar and the well.
But if this sight is saddening, what is it to see a human dwelling fall
by the hand of violence! The ripping off of the shelter that has kept
out a thousand storms, the tearing off of the once ornamental woodwork,
the wrench of the inexorable crowbar, the murderous blows of the axe, the
progressive ruin, which ends by rending all the joints asunder and
flinging the tenoned and mortised timbers into heaps that will be sawed
and split to warm some new habitation as firewood,--what a brutal act of
destruction it seems!
Why should I go over the old house again, having already described it
more than ten years ago? Alas! how many remember anything they read but
once, and so long ago as that? How many would find it out if one should
say over in the same words that which he said in the last decade? But
there is really no need of telling the story a second time, for it can be
found by those who are curious enough to look it up in a volume of which
it occupies the opening chapter.
In order, however, to save any inquisitive reader that trouble, let me
remind him that the old house was General Ward's headquarters at the
breaking out of the Revolution; that the plan for fortifying Bunker's
Hill was laid, as commonly believed, in the southeast lower room, the
floor of which was covered with dents, made, it was alleged, by the butts
of the soldiers' muskets. In that house, too, General Warren probably
passed the night before the Bunker Hill battle, and over its threshold
must the stately figure of Washington have often cast its shadow.
But the house in which one drew his first breath, and where he one day
came into the consciousness that he was a personality, an ego, a little
universe with a sky over him all his own, with a persistent identity,
with the terrible responsibility of a separate, independent, inalienable
existence,--that house does not ask for any historical associations to
make it the centre of the earth for him.
If there is any person in the world to be envied, it is the one who is
born to an ancient estate, with a long line of family traditions and the
means in his hands of shaping his mansion and his domain to his own
taste, without losing sight of all the characteristic features which
surrounded his earliest years. The American is, for the most part, a
nomad, who pulls down his house as the Tartar pulls up his tent-poles.
If I had an ideal life to plan for him it would be something like this:
His grandfather should be a wise, scholarly, large-brained, large-hearted
country minister, from whom he should inherit the temperament that
predisposes to cheerfulness and enjoyment, with the finer instincts which
direct life to noble aims and make it rich with the gratification of pure
and elevated tastes and the carrying out of plans for the good of his
neighbors and his fellow-creatures. He should, if possible, have been
born, at any rate have passed some of his early years, or a large part of
them, under the roof of the good old minister. His father should be, we
will say, a business man in one of our great cities,--a generous
manipulator of millions, some of which have adhered to his private
fortunes, in spite of his liberal use of his means. His heir, our
ideally placed American, shall take possession of the old house, the home
of his earliest memories, and preserve it sacredly, not exactly like the
Santa Casa, but, as nearly as may be, just as he remembers it. He can
add as many acres as he will to the narrow house-lot. He can build a
grand mansion for himself, if he chooses, in the not distant
neighborhood. But the old house, and all immediately round it, shall be
as he recollects it when he had to stretch his little arm up to reach the
door-handles. Then, having well provided for his own household, himself
included, let him become the providence of the village or the town where
he finds himself during at least a portion of every year. Its schools,
its library, its poor,--and perhaps the new clergyman who has succeeded
his grandfather's successor may be one of them,--all its interests, he
shall make his own. And from this centre his beneficence shall radiate
so far that all who hear of his wealth shall also hear of him as a friend
to his race.
Is not this a pleasing programme? Wealth is a steep hill, which the
father climbs slowly and the son often tumbles down precipitately; but
there is a table-land on a level with it, which may be found by those who
do not lose their head in looking down from its sharply cloven
summit.---Our dangerously rich men can make themselves hated, held as
enemies of the race, or beloved and recognized as its benefactors. The
clouds of discontent are threatening, but if the gold-pointed
lightning-rods are rightly distributed the destructive element may be
drawn off silently and harmlessly. For it cannot be repeated too often
that the safety of great wealth with us lies in obedience to the new
version of the Old World axiom, RICHESS oblige.
THE NEW PORTFOLIO: FIRST OPENING.
A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
I
GETTING READY.
It is impossible to begin a story which must of necessity tax the powers
of belief of readers unacquainted with the class of facts to which its
central point of interest belongs without some words in the nature of
preparation. Readers of Charles Lamb remember that Sarah Battle insisted
on a clean-swept hearth before sitting down to her favorite game of
whist.
The narrator wishes to sweep the hearth, as it were, in these opening
pages, before sitting down to tell his story. He does not intend to
frighten the reader away by prolix explanation, but he does mean to warn
him against hasty judgments when facts are related which are not within
the range of every-day experience. Did he ever see the Siamese twins, or
any pair like them? Probably not, yet he feels sure that Chang and Eng
really existed; and if he has taken the trouble to inquire, he has
satisfied himself that similar cases have been recorded by credible
witnesses, though at long intervals and in countries far apart from each
other.
This is the first sweep of the brush, to clear the hearth of the
skepticism and incredulity which must be got out of the way before we can
begin to tell and to listen in peace with ourselves and each other.
One more stroke of the brush is needed before the stage will be ready for
the chief characters and the leading circumstances to which the reader's
attention is invited. If the principal personages made their entrance at
once, the reader would have to create for himself the whole scenery of
their surrounding conditions. In point of fact, no matter how a story is
begun, many of its readers have already shaped its chief actors out of
any hint the author may have dropped, and provided from their own
resources a locality and a set of outward conditions to environ these
imagined personalities. These are all to be brushed away, and the actual
surroundings of the subject of the narrative represented as they were, at
the risk of detaining the reader a little while from the events most
likely to interest him. The choicest egg that ever was laid was not so
big as the nest that held it. If a story were so interesting that a
maiden would rather hear it than listen to the praise of her own beauty,
or a poet would rather read it than recite his own verses, still it would
have to be wrapped in some tissue of circumstance, or it would lose half
its effectiveness.
It may not be easy to find the exact locality referred to in this
narrative by looking into the first gazetteer that is at hand. Recent
experiences have shown that it is unsafe to be too exact in designating
places and the people who live in them. There are, it may be added, so
many advertisements disguised under the form of stories and other
literary productions that one naturally desires to avoid the suspicion of
being employed by the enterprising proprietors of this or that celebrated
resort to use his gifts for their especial benefit. There are no doubt
many persons who remember the old sign and the old tavern and its four
chief personages presently to be mentioned. It is to be hoped that they
will not furnish the public with a key to this narrative, and perhaps
bring trouble to the writer of it, as has happened to other authors. If
the real names are a little altered, it need not interfere with the
important facts relating to those who bear them. It might not be safe to
tell a damaging story about John or James Smythe; but if the slight
change is made of spelling the name Smith, the Smythes would never think
of bringing an action, as if the allusion related to any of them. The
same gulf of family distinction separates the Thompsons with a p from the
Thomsons without that letter.
There are few pleasanter places in the Northern States for a summer
residence than that known from the first period of its settlement by the
name of Arrowhead Village. The Indians had found it out, as the relics
they left behind them abundantly testified. The commonest of these were
those chipped stones which are the medals of barbarism, and from Which
the place took its name,--the heads of arrows, of various sizes,
material, and patterns: some small enough for killing fish and little
birds, some large enough for such game as the moose and the bear, to say
nothing of the hostile Indian and the white settler; some of flint, now
and then one of white quartz, and others of variously colored jasper.
The Indians must have lived here for many generations, and it must have
been a kind of factory village of the stone age,--which lasted up to near
the present time, if we may judge from the fact that many of these relics
are met with close to the surface of the ground.
No wonder they found this a pleasant residence, for it is to-day one of
the most attractive of all summer resorts; so inviting, indeed, that
those who know it do not like to say too much about it, lest the swarms
of tourists should make it unendurable to those who love it for itself,
and not as a centre of fashionable display and extramural cockneyism.
There is the lake, in the first place,--Cedar Lake,--about five miles
long, and from half a mile to a mile and a half wide, stretching from
north to south. Near the northern extremity are the buildings of
Stoughton University, a flourishing young college with an ambitious name,
but well equipped and promising, the grounds of which reach the water.
At the southern end of the lake are the edifices of the Corinna
Institute, a favorite school for young ladies, where large numbers of the
daughters of America are fitted, so far as education can do it, for all
stations in life, from camping out with a husband at the mines in Nevada
to acting the part of chief lady of the land in the White House at
Washington.
Midway between the two extremities, on the eastern shore of the lake, is
a valley between two hills, which come down to the very edge of the lake,
leaving only room enough for a road between their base and the water.
This valley, half a mile in width, has been long settled, and here for a
century or more has stood the old Anchor Tavern. A famous place it was
so long as its sign swung at the side of the road: famous for its
landlord, portly, paternal, whose welcome to a guest that looked worthy
of the attention was like that of a parent to a returning prodigal, and
whose parting words were almost as good as a marriage benediction; famous
for its landlady, ample in person, motherly, seeing to the whole
household with her own eyes, mistress of all culinary secrets that
Northern kitchens are most proud of; famous also for its ancient servant,
as city people would call her,--help, as she was called in the tavern
and would have called herself,--the unchanging, seemingly immortal
Miranda, who cared for the guests as if she were their nursing mother,
and pressed the specially favorite delicacies on their attention as a
connoisseur calls the wandering eyes of an amateur to the beauties of a
picture. Who that has ever been at the old Anchor Tavern forgets
Miranda's
"A little of this fricassee?-it is ver-y nice;"
or
"Some of these cakes? You will find them ver-y good."
Nor would it be just to memory to forget that other notable and noted
member of the household,--the unsleeping, unresting, omnipresent Pushee,
ready for everybody and everything, everywhere within the limits of the
establishment at all hours of the day and night. He fed, nobody could
say accurately when or where. There were rumors of a "bunk," in which he
lay down with his clothes on, but he seemed to be always wide awake, and
at the service of as many guest, at once as if there had been half a
dozen of him.
So much for old reminiscences.
The landlord of the Anchor Tavern had taken down his sign. He had had
the house thoroughly renovated and furnished it anew, and kept it open in
summer for a few boarders. It happened more than once that the summer
boarders were so much pleased with the place that they stayed on through
the autumn, and some of them through the winter. The attractions of the
village were really remarkable. Boating in summer, and skating in
winter; ice-boats, too, which the wild ducks could hardly keep up with;
fishing, for which the lake was renowned; varied and beautiful walks
through the valley and up the hillsides; houses sheltered from the north
and northeasterly winds, and refreshed in the hot summer days by the
breeze which came over the water,--all this made the frame for a pleasing
picture of rest and happiness. But there was a great deal more than
this. There was a fine library in the little village, presented and
richly endowed by a wealthy native of the place. There was a small
permanent population of a superior character to that of an everyday
country town; there was a pretty little Episcopal church, with a
good-hearted rector, broad enough for the Bishop of the diocese to be a
little afraid of, and hospitable to all outsiders, of whom, in the summer
season, there were always some who wanted a place of worship to keep
their religion from dying out during the heathen months, while the
shepherds of the flocks to which they belonged were away from their empty
folds.
What most helped to keep the place alive all through the year was the
frequent coming together of the members of a certain literary
association. Some time before the tavern took down its sign the landlord
had built a hall, where many a ball had been held, to which the young
folks of all the country round had resorted. It was still sometimes used
for similar occasions, but it was especially notable as being the place
of meeting of the famous PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
This association, the name of which might be invidiously interpreted as
signifying that its members knew everything, had no such pretensions,
but, as its Constitution said very plainly and modestly, held itself open
to accept knowledge on any and all subjects from such as had knowledge to
impart. Its President was the rector of the little chapel, a man who, in
spite of the Thirty-Nine Articles, could stand fire from the
widest-mouthed heretical blunderbuss without flinching or losing his
temper. The hall of the old Anchor Tavern was a convenient place of
meeting for the students and instructors of the University and the
Institute. Sometimes in boat-loads, sometimes in carriage-loads,
sometimes in processions of skaters, they came to the meetings in
Pansophian Hall, as it was now commonly called.
These meetings had grown to be occasions of great interest. It was
customary to have papers written by members of the Society, for the most
part, but now and then by friends of the members, sometimes by the
students of the College or the Institute, and in rarer instances by
anonymous personages, whose papers, having been looked over and discussed
by the Committee appointed for that purpose, were thought worth listening
to. The variety of topics considered was very great. The young ladies of
the village and the Institute had their favorite subjects, the young
gentlemen a different set of topics, and the occasional outside
contributors their own; so that one who happened to be admitted to a
meeting never knew whether he was going to hear an account of recent
arctic discoveries, or an essay on the freedom of the will, or a
psychological experience, or a story, or even a poem.
Of late there had been a tendency to discuss the questions relating to
the true status and the legitimate social functions of woman. The most
conflicting views were held on the subject. Many of the young ladies and
some of the University students were strong in defence of all the
"woman's rights" doctrines. Some of these young people were extreme in
their views. They had read about Semiramis and Boadicea and Queen
Elizabeth, until they were ready, if they could get the chance, to vote
for a woman as President of the United States or as General of the United
States Army. They were even disposed to assert the physical equality of
woman to man, on the strength of the rather questionable history of the
Amazons, and especially of the story, believed to be authentic, of the
female body-guard of the King of Dahomey,--females frightful enough to
need no other weapon than their looks to scare off an army of Cossacks.
Miss Lurida Vincent, gold medallist of her year at the Corinna Institute,
was the leader of these advocates of virile womanhood. It was rather
singular that she should have elected to be the apostle of this extreme
doctrine, for she was herself far better equipped with brain than
muscles. In fact, she was a large-headed, large-eyed, long-eyelashed,
slender-necked, slightly developed young woman; looking almost like a
child at an age when many of the girls had reached their full stature and
proportions. In her studies she was so far in advance of her different
classes that there was always a wide gap between her and the second
scholar. So fatal to all rivalry had she proved herself that she passed
under the school name of The Terror. She learned so easily that she
undervalued her own extraordinary gifts, and felt the deepest admiration
for those of her friends endowed with faculties of an entirely different
and almost opposite nature. After sitting at her desk until her head was
hot and her feet were like ice, she would go and look at the blooming
young girls exercising in the gymnasium of the school, and feel as if she
would give all her knowledge, all her mathematics and strange tongues and
history, all those accomplishments that made her the encyclopaedia of
every class she belonged to, if she could go through the series of
difficult and graceful exercises in which she saw her schoolmates
delighting.
One among them, especially, was the object of her admiration, as she was
of all who knew her exceptional powers in the line for which nature had
specially organized her. All the physical perfections which Miss Lurida
had missed had been united in Miss Euthymia Tower, whose school name was
The Wonder. Though of full womanly stature, there were several taller
girls of her age. While all her contours and all her movements betrayed
a fine muscular development, there was no lack of proportion, and her
finely shaped hands and feet showed that her organization was one of
those carefully finished masterpieces of nature which sculptors are
always in search of, and find it hard to detect among the imperfect
products of the living laboratory.
This girl of eighteen was more famous than she cared to be for her
performances in the gymnasium. She commonly contented herself with the
same exercises that her companions were accustomed to. Only her
dumb-bells, with which she exercised easily and gracefully, were too
heavy for most of the girls to do more with than lift them from the
floor. She was fond of daring feats on the trapeze, and had to be
checked in her indulgence in them. The Professor of gymnastics at the
University came over to the Institute now and then, and it was a source
of great excitement to watch some of the athletic exercises in which the
young lady showed her remarkable muscular strength and skill in managing
herself in the accomplishment of feats which looked impossible at first
sight. How often The Terror had thought to herself that she would gladly
give up all her knowledge of Greek and the differential and integral
calculus if she could only perform the least of those feats which were
mere play to The Wonder! Miss Euthymia was not behind the rest in her
attainments in classical or mathematical knowledge, and she was one of
the very best students in the out-door branches,--botany, mineralogy,
sketching from nature,--to be found among the scholars of the Institute.
There was an eight-oared boat rowed by a crew of the young ladies, of
which Miss Euthymia was the captain and pulled the bow oar. Poor little
Lurida could not pull an oar, but on great occasions, when there were
many boats out, she was wanted as coxswain, being a mere feather-weight,
and quick-witted enough to serve well in the important office where
brains are more needed than muscle.
There was also an eight-oared boat belonging to the University, and rowed
by a picked crew of stalwart young fellows. The bow oar and captain of
the University crew was a powerful young man, who, like the captain of
the girls' boat, was a noted gymnast. He had had one or two quiet trials
with Miss Euthymia, in which, according to the ultras of the woman's
rights party, he had not vindicated the superiority of his sex in the way
which might have been expected. Indeed, it was claimed that he let a
cannon-ball drop when he ought to have caught it, and it was not disputed
that he had been ingloriously knocked over by a sand-bag projected by the
strong arms of the young maiden. This was of course a story that was
widely told and laughingly listened to, and the captain of the University
crew had become a little sensitive on the subject. When there was a
talk, therefore, about a race between the champion boats of the two
institutions there was immense excitement in both of them, as well as
among the members of the Pansophian Society and all the good people of
the village.
There were many objections to be overcome. Some thought it unladylike
for the young maidens to take part in a competition which must attract
many lookers-on, and which it seemed to them very hoidenish to venture
upon. Some said it was a shame to let a crew of girls try their strength
against an equal number of powerful young men. These objections were
offset by the advocates of the race by the following arguments. They
maintained that it was no more hoidenish to row a boat than it was to
take a part in the calisthenic exercises, and that the girls had nothing
to do with the young men's boat, except to keep as much ahead of it as
possible. As to strength, the woman's righters believed that, weight for
weight, their crew was as strong as the other, and of course due
allowance would be made for the difference of weight and all other
accidental hindrances. It was time to test the boasted superiority of
masculine muscle. Here was a chance. If the girls beat, the whole
country would know it, and after that female suffrage would be only a
question of time. Such was the conclusion, from rather insufficient
premises, it must be confessed; but if nature does nothing per
saltum,--by jumps,--as the old adage has it, youth is very apt to take
long leaps from a fact to a possible sequel or consequence. So it had
come about that a contest between the two boat-crews was looked forward
to with an interest almost equal to that with which the combat between
the Horatii and Curiatii was regarded.
The terms had been at last arranged between the two crews, after cautious
protocols and many diplomatic discussions. It was so novel in its
character that it naturally took a good deal of time to adjust it in such
a way as to be fair to both parties. The course must not be too long for
the lighter and weaker crew, for the staying power of the young persons
who made it up could not be safely reckoned upon. A certain advantage
must be allowed them at the start, and this was a delicate matter to
settle. The weather was another important consideration. June would be
early enough, in all probability, and if the lake should be tolerably
smooth the grand affair might come off some time in that month. Any
roughness of the water would be unfavorable to the weaker crew. The
rowing-course was on the eastern side of the lake, the starting-point
being opposite the Anchor Tavern; from that three quarters of a mile to
the south, where the turning-stake was fixed, so that the whole course of
one mile and a half would bring the boats back to their starting-point.
The race was to be between the Algonquin, eight-oared boat with
outriggers, rowed by young men, students of Stoughton University, and the
Atalanta, also eight-oared and outrigger boat, by young ladies from the
Corinna Institute. Their boat was three inches wider than the other, for
various sufficient reasons, one of which was to make it a little less
likely to go over and throw its crew into the water, which was a sound
precaution, though all the girls could swim, and one at least, the bow
oar, was a famous swimmer, who had pulled a drowning man out of the water
after a hard struggle to keep him from carrying her down with him.
Though the coming trial had not been advertised in the papers, so as to
draw together a rabble of betting men and ill-conditioned lookers-on,
there was a considerable gathering, made up chiefly of the villagers and
the students of the two institutions. Among them were a few who were
disposed to add to their interest in the trial by small wagers. The bets
were rather in favor of the "Quins," as the University boat was commonly
called, except where the natural sympathy of the young ladies or the
gallantry of some of the young men led them to risk their gloves or
cigars, or whatever it might be, on the Atalantas. The elements of
judgment were these: average weight of the Algonquins one hundred and
sixty-five pounds; average weight of the Atalantas, one hundred and
forty-eight pounds; skill in practice about equal; advantage of the
narrow boat equal to three lengths; whole distance allowed the Atalantas
eight lengths,--a long stretch to be made up in a mile and a half.
And so both crews began practising for the grand trial.
II
THE BOAT-RACE.
The 10th of June was a delicious summer day, rather warm, but still and
bright. The water was smooth, and the crews were in the best possible
condition. All was expectation, and for some time nothing but
expectation. No boat-race or regatta ever began at the time appointed
for the start. Somebody breaks an oar, or somebody fails to appear in
season, or something is the matter with a seat or an outrigger; or if
there is no such excuse, the crew of one or both or all the boats to take
part in the race must paddle about to get themselves ready for work, to
the infinite weariness of all the spectators, who naturally ask why all
this getting ready is not attended to beforehand. The Algonquins wore
plain gray flannel suits and white caps. The young ladies were all in
dark blue dresses, touched up with a red ribbon here and there, and wore
light straw hats. The little coxswain of the Atalanta was the last to
step on board. As she took her place she carefully deposited at her feet
a white handkerchief wrapped about something or other, perhaps a sponge,
in case the boat should take in water.
At last the Algonquin shot out from the little nook where she lay,
--long, narrow, shining, swift as a pickerel when he darts from the reedy
shore. It was a beautiful sight to see the eight young fellows in their
close-fitting suits, their brown muscular arms bare, bending their backs
for the stroke and recovering, as if they were parts of a single machine.
"The gals can't stan' it agin them fellers," said the old blacksmith from
the village.
"You wait till the gals get a-goin'," said the carpenter, who had often
worked in the gymnasium of the Corinna Institute, and knew something of
their muscular accomplishments. "Y' ought to see 'em climb ropes, and
swing dumb-bells, and pull in them rowin'-machines. Ask Jake there
whether they can't row a mild in double-quick time,--he knows all abaout
it."
Jake was by profession a fisherman, and a freshwater fisherman in a
country village is inspector-general of all that goes on out-of-doors,
being a lazy, wandering sort of fellow, whose study of the habits and
habitats of fishes gives him a kind of shrewdness of observation, just as
dealing in horses is an education of certain faculties, and breeds a race
of men peculiarly cunning, suspicious, wary, and wide awake, with a
rhetoric of appreciation and depreciation all its own.
Jake made his usual preliminary signal, and delivered himself to the
following effect:
"Wahl, I don' know jest what to say. I've seed 'em both often enough
when they was practisin', an' I tell ye the' wa'n't no slouch abaout
neither on 'em. But them bats is all-fired long, 'n' eight on 'em
stretched in a straight line eendways makes a consid'able piece aout 'f a
mile 'n' a haaf. I'd bate on them gals if it wa'n't that them fellers is
naterally longer winded, as the gals 'll find aout by the time they git
raound the stake 'n' over agin the big ellum. I'll go ye a quarter on
the pahnts agin the petticoats."
The fresh-water fisherman had expressed the prevailing belief that the
young ladies were overmatched. Still there were not wanting those who
thought the advantage allowed the "Lantas," as they called the Corinna
boatcrew, was too great, and that it would be impossible for the "Quins"
to make it up and go by them.
The Algonquins rowed up and down a few times before the spectators. They
appeared in perfect training, neither too fat nor too fine, mettlesome as
colts, steady as draught-horses, deep-breathed as oxen, disciplined to
work together as symmetrically as a single sculler pulls his pair of
oars. The fisherman offered to make his quarter fifty cents. No takers.
Five minutes passed, and all eyes were strained to the south, looking for
the Atalanta. A clump of trees hid the edge of the lake along which the
Corinna's boat was stealing towards the starting-point. Presently the
long shell swept into view, with its blooming rowers, who, with their
ample dresses, seemed to fill it almost as full as Raphael fills his
skiff on the edge of the Lake of Galilee. But how steadily the Atalanta
came on!---no rocking, no splashing, no apparent strain; the bow oar
turning to look ahead every now and then, and watching her course, which
seemed to be straight as an arrow, the beat of the strokes as true and
regular as the pulse of the healthiest rower among them all. And if the
sight of the other boat and its crew was beautiful, how lovely was the
look of this! Eight young girls,--young ladies, for those who prefer that
more dignified and less attractive expression,--all in the flush of
youth, all in vigorous health; every muscle taught its duty; each rower
alert, not to be a tenth of a second out of time, or let her oar dally
with the water so as to lose an ounce of its propelling virtue; every eye
kindling with the hope of victory. Each of the boats was cheered as it
came in sight, but the cheers for the Atalanta were naturally the
loudest, as the gallantry of one sex and the clear, high voices of the
other gave it life and vigor.
"Take your places!" shouted the umpire, five minutes before the half
hour. The two boats felt their way slowly and cautiously to their
positions, which had been determined by careful measurement. After a
little backing and filling they got into line, at the proper distance
from each other, and sat motionless, their bodies bent forward, their
arms outstretched, their oars in the water, waiting for the word.
"Go!" shouted the umpire.
Away sprang the Atalanta, and far behind her leaped the Algonquin, her
oars bending like so many long Indian bows as their blades flashed
through the water.
"A stern chase is a long chase," especially when one craft is a great
distance behind the other. It looked as if it would be impossible for
the rear boat to overcome the odds against it. Of course the Algonquin
kept gaining, but could it possibly gain enough? That was the question.
As the boats got farther and farther away, it became more and more
difficult to determine what change there was in the interval between
them. But when they came to rounding the stake it was easier to guess at
the amount of space which had been gained. It was clear that something
like half the distance, four lengths, as nearly as could be estimated,
had been made up in rowing the first three quarters of a mile. Could the
Algonquins do a little better than this in the second half of the
race-course, they would be sure of winning.
The boats had turned the stake, and were coming in rapidly. Every minute
the University boat was getting nearer the other.
"Go it, Quins!" shouted the students.
"Pull away, Lantas!" screamed the girls, who were crowding down to the
edge of the water.
Nearer,--nearer,--the rear boat is pressing the other more and more
closely,--a few more strokes, and they will be even, for there is but one
length between them, and thirty rods will carry them to the line. It
looks desperate for the Atalantas. The bow oar of the Algonquin turns
his head. He sees the little coxswain leaning forward at every stroke,
as if her trivial weight were of such mighty consequence,--but a few
ounces might turn the scale of victory. As he turned he got a glimpse of
the stroke oar of the Atalanta. What a flash of loveliness it was! Her
face was like the reddest of June roses, with the heat and the strain and
the passion of expected triumph. The upper button of her close-fitting
flannel suit had strangled her as her bosom heaved with exertion, and it
had given way before the fierce clutch she made at it. The bow oar was a
staunch and steady rower, but he was human. The blade of his oar
lingered in the water; a little more and he would have caught a crab, and
perhaps lost the race by his momentary bewilderment.
The boat, which seemed as if it had all the life and nervousness of a
Derby three-year-old, felt the slight check, and all her men bent more
vigorously to their oars. The Atalantas saw the movement, and made a
spurt to keep their lead and gain upon it if they could. It was of no
use. The strong arms of the young men were too much for the young
maidens; only a few lengths remained to be rowed, and they would
certainly pass the Atalanta before she could reach the line.
The little coxswain saw that it was all up with the girls' crew if she
could not save them by some strategic device.
"Dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirat?"
she whispered to herself,--for The Terror remembered her Virgil as she
did everything else she ever studied. As she stooped, she lifted the
handkerchief at her feet, and took from it a flaming bouquet. "Look!" she
cried, and flung it just forward of the track of the Algonquin. The
captain of the University boat turned his head, and there was the lovely
vision which had a moment before bewitched him. The owner of all that
loveliness must, he thought, have flung the bouquet. It was a challenge:
how could he be such a coward as to decline accepting it.
He was sure he could win the race now, and he would sweep past the line
in triumph with the great bunch of flowers at the stem of his boat, proud
as Van Tromp in the British channel with the broom at his mast-head.
He turned the boat's head a little by backing water. He came up with the
floating flowers, and near enough to reach them. He stooped and snatched
them up, with the loss perhaps of a second in all,--no more. He felt sure
of his victory.
How can one tell the story of the finish in cold-blooded preterites? Are
we not there ourselves? Are not our muscles straining with those of
these sixteen young creatures, full of hot, fresh blood, their nerves all
tingling like so many tight-strained harp-strings, all their life
concentrating itself in this passionate moment of supreme effort? No!
We are seeing, not telling about what somebody else once saw!
--The bow of the Algonquin passes the stern of the Atalanta!
--The bow of the Algonquin is on a level with the middle of the Atalanta!
--Three more lengths' rowing and the college crew will pass the girls!
--"Hurrah for the Quins!" The Algonquin ranges up alongside of the
Atalanta!
"Through with her!" shouts the captain of the Algonquin.
"Now, girls!" shrieks the captain of the Atalanta.
They near the line, every rower straining desperately, almost madly.
--Crack goes the oar of the Atalanta's captain, and up flash its
splintered fragments, as the stem of her boat springs past the line,
eighteen inches at least ahead of the Algonquin.
Hooraw for the Lantas! Hooraw for the Girls! Hooraw for the Institoot!
shout a hundred voices.
"Hurrah for woman's rights and female suffrage!" pipes the small voice of
The Terror, and there is loud laughing and cheering all round.
She had not studied her classical dictionary and her mythology for
nothing. "I have paid off one old score," she said. "Set down my damask
roses against the golden apples of Hippomenes!"
It was that one second lost in snatching up the bouquet which gave the
race to the Atalantas.
III
THE WHITE CANOE.
While the two boats were racing, other boats with lookers-on in them were
rowing or sailing in the neighborhood of the race-course. The scene on
the water was a gay one, for the young people in the boats were, many of
them, acquainted with each other. There was a good deal of lively talk
until the race became too exciting. Then many fell silent, until, as the
boats neared the line, and still more as they crossed it, the shouts
burst forth which showed how a cramp of attention finds its natural
relief in a fit of convulsive exclamation.
But far away, on the other side of the lake, a birchbark canoe was to be
seen, in which sat a young man, who paddled it skillfully and swiftly.
It was evident enough that he was watching the race intently, but the
spectators could see little more than that. One of them, however, who
sat upon the stand, had a powerful spy-glass, and could distinguish his
motions very minutely and exactly. It was seen by this curious observer
that the young man had an opera-glass with him, which he used a good deal
at intervals. The spectator thought he kept it directed to the girls'
boat, chiefly, if not exclusively. He thought also that the opera-glass
was more particularly pointed towards the bow of the boat, and came to
the natural conclusion that the bow oar, Miss Euthymia Tower, captain of
the Atalantas, "The Wonder" of the Corinna Institute, was the attraction
which determined the direction of the instrument.
"Who is that in the canoe over there?" asked the owner of the spy-glass.
"That's just what we should like to know," answered the old landlord's
wife. "He and his man boarded with us when they first came, but we could
never find out anything about him only just his name and his ways of
living. His name is Kirkwood, Maurice Kirkwood, Esq., it used to come on
his letters. As for his ways of living, he was the solitariest human
being that I ever came across. His man carried his meals up to him. He
used to stay in his room pretty much all day, but at night he would be
off, walking, or riding on horseback, or paddling about in the lake,
sometimes till nigh morning. There's something very strange about that
Mr. Kirkwood. But there don't seem to be any harm in him. Only nobody
can guess what his business is. They got up a story about him at one
time. What do you think? They said he was a counterfeiter! And so they
went one night to his room, when he was out, and that man of his was away
too, and they carried keys, and opened pretty much everything; and they
found--well, they found just nothing at all except writings and
letters,--letters from places in America and in England, and some with
Italian postmarks: that was all. Since that time the sheriff and his
folks have let him alone and minded their own business. He was a
gentleman,--anybody ought to have known that; and anybody that knew about
his nice ways of living and behaving, and knew the kind of wear he had
for his underclothing, might have known it. I could have told those
officers that they had better not bother him. I know the ways of real
gentlemen and real ladies, and I know those fellows in store clothes that
look a little too fine,--outside. Wait till washing-day comes!"
The good lady had her own standards for testing humanity, and they were
not wholly unworthy of consideration; they were quite as much to be
relied on as the judgments of the travelling phrenologist, who sent his
accomplice on before him to study out the principal personages in the
village, and in the light of these revelations interpreted the bumps,
with very little regard to Gall and Spurzheim, or any other authorities.
Even with the small amount of information obtained by the search among
his papers and effects, the gossips of the village had constructed
several distinct histories for the mysterious stranger. He was an agent
of a great publishing house; a leading contributor to several important
periodicals; the author of that anonymously published novel which had
made so much talk; the poet of a large clothing establishment; a spy of
the Italian, some said the Russian, some said the British, Government; a
proscribed refugee from some country where he had been plotting; a
school-master without a school, a minister without a pulpit, an actor
without an engagement; in short, there was no end to the perfectly
senseless stories that were told about him, from that which made him out
an escaped convict to the whispered suggestion that he was the eccentric
heir to a great English title and estate.
The one unquestionable fact was that of his extraordinary seclusion.
Nobody in the village, no student in the University, knew his history.
No young lady in the Corinna Institute had ever had a word from him.
Sometimes, as the boats of the University or the Institute were returning
at dusk, their rowers would see the canoe stealing into the shadows as
they drew near it. Sometimes on a moonlight night, when a party of the
young ladies were out upon the lake, they would see the white canoe
gliding ghost-like in the distance. And it had happened more than once
that when a boat's crew had been out with singers among them, while they
were in the midst of a song, the white canoe would suddenly appear and
rest upon the water,--not very near them, but within hearing
distance,--and so remain until the singing was over, when it would steal
away and be lost sight of in some inlet or behind some jutting rock.
Naturally enough, there was intense curiosity about this young man. The
landlady had told her story, which explained nothing. There was nobody
to be questioned about him except his servant, an Italian, whose name was
Paolo, but who to the village was known as Mr. Paul.
Mr. Paul would have seemed the easiest person in the world to worm a
secret out of. He was good-natured, child-like as a Heathen Chinee,
talked freely with everybody in such English as he had at command, knew
all the little people of the village, and was followed round by them
partly from his personal attraction for them, and partly because he was
apt to have a stick of candy or a handful of peanuts or other desirable
luxury in his pocket for any of his little friends he met with. He had
that wholesome, happy look, so uncommon in our arid countrymen,--a look
hardly to be found except where figs and oranges ripen in the open air.
A kindly climate to grow up in, a religion which takes your money and
gives you a stamped ticket good at Saint Peter's box office, a roomy
chest and a good pair of lungs in it, an honest digestive apparatus, a
lively temperament, a cheerful acceptance of the place in life assigned
to one by nature and circumstance,--these are conditions under which life
may be quite comfortable to endure, and certainly is very pleasant to
contemplate. All these conditions were united in Paolo. He was the
easiest; pleasantest creature to talk with that one could ask for a
companion. His southern vivacity, his amusing English, his simplicity and
openness, made him friends everywhere.
It seemed as if it would be a very simple matter to get the history of
his master out of this guileless and unsophisticated being. He had been
tried by all the village experts. The rector had put a number of
well-studied careless questions, which failed of their purpose. The old
librarian of the town library had taken note of all the books he carried
to his master, and asked about his studies and pursuits. Paolo found it
hard to understand his English, apparently, and answered in the most
irrelevant way. The leading gossip of the village tried her skill in
pumping him for information. It was all in vain.
His master's way of life was peculiar,--in fact, eccentric. He had hired
rooms in an old-fashioned three-story house. He had two rooms in the
second and third stories of this old wooden building: his study in the
second, his sleeping-room in the one above it. Paolo lived in the
basement, where he had all the conveniences for cooking, and played the
part of chef for his master and himself. This was only a part of his
duty, for he was a man-of-all-work, purveyor, steward, chambermaid,--as
universal in his services for one man as Pushee at the Anchor Tavern used
to be for everybody.
It so happened that Paolo took a severe cold one winter's day, and had
such threatening symptoms that he asked the baker, when he called, to
send the village physician to see him. In the course of his visit the
doctor naturally inquired about the health of Paolo's master.
"Signor Kirkwood well,--molto bene," said Paolo. "Why does he keep out
of sight as he does?" asked the doctor.
"He always so," replied Paolo. "Una antipatia."
Whether Paolo was off his guard with the doctor, whether he revealed it
to him as to a father confessor, or whether he thought it time that the
reason of his master's seclusion should be known, the doctor did not feel
sure. At any rate, Paolo was not disposed to make any further
revelations. Una antipatia,--an antipathy,--that was all the doctor
learned. He thought the matter over, and the more he reflected the more
he was puzzled. What could an antipathy be that made a young man a
recluse! Was it a dread of blue sky and open air, of the smell of
flowers, or some electrical impression to which he was unnaturally
sensitive?
Dr. Butts carried these questions home with him. His wife was a
sensible, discreet woman, whom he could trust with many professional
secrets. He told her of Paolo's revelation, and talked it over with her
in the light of his experience and her own; for she had known some
curious cases of constitutional likes and aversions.
Mrs. Butts buried the information in the grave of her memory, where it
lay for nearly a week. At the end of that time it emerged in a
confidential whisper to her favorite sister-in-law, a perfectly safe
person. Twenty-four hours later the story was all over the village that
Maurice Kirkwood was the subject of a strange, mysterious, unheard-of
antipathy to something, nobody knew what; and the whole neighborhood
naturally resolved itself into an unorganized committee of investigation.
IV
What is a country village without its mysterious personage? Few are now
living who can remember the advent of the handsome young man who was the
mystery of our great university town "sixty years since,"--long enough
ago for a romance to grow out of a narrative, as Waverley may remind us.
The writer of this narrative remembers him well, and is not sure that he
has not told the strange story in some form or other to the last
generation, or to the one before the last. No matter: if he has told it
they have forgotten it,--that is, if they have ever read it; and whether
they have or have not, the story is singular enough to justify running
the risk of repetition.
This young man, with a curious name of Scandinavian origin, appeared
unheralded in the town, as it was then, of Cantabridge. He wanted
employment, and soon found it in the shape of manual labor, which he
undertook and performed cheerfully. But his whole appearance showed
plainly enough that he was bred to occupations of a very different
nature, if, in deed, he had been accustomed to any kind of toil for his
living. His aspect was that of one of gentle birth. His hands were not
those of a laborer, and his features were delicate and refined, as well
as of remarkable beauty. Who he was, where he came from, why he had come
to Cantabridge, was never clearly explained. He was alone, without
friends, except among the acquaintances he had made in his new residence.
If he had any correspondents, they were not known to the neighborhood
where he was living. But if he had neither friends nor correspondents,
there was some reason for believing that he had enemies. Strange
circumstances occurred which connected themselves with him in an ominous
and unaccountable way. A threatening letter was slipped under the door
of a house where he was visiting. He had a sudden attack of illness,
which was thought to look very much like the effect of poison. At one
time he disappeared, and was found wandering, bewildered, in a town many
miles from that where he was residing. When questioned how he came
there; he told a coherent story that he had been got, under some pretext,
or in some not incredible way, into a boat, from which, at a certain
landing-place, he had escaped and fled for his life, which he believed
was in danger from his kidnappers.
Whoever his enemies may have been,--if they really existed,--he did not
fall a victim to their plots, so far as known to or remembered by this
witness.
Various interpretations were put upon his story. Conjectures were as
abundant as they were in the case of Kaspar Hauser. That he was of good
family seemed probable; that he was of distinguished birth, not
impossible; that he was the dangerous rival of a candidate for a greatly
coveted position in one of the northern states of Europe was a favorite
speculation of some of the more romantic young persons. There was no
dramatic ending to this story,--at least none is remembered by the
present writer.
"He left a name," like the royal Swede, of whose lineage he may have been
for aught that the village people knew, but not a name at which anybody
"grew pale;" for he had swindled no one, and broken no woman's heart with
false vows. Possibly some withered cheeks may flush faintly as they
recall the handsome young man who came before the Cantabridge maidens
fully equipped for a hero of romance when the century was in its first
quarter.
The writer has been reminded of the handsome Swede by the incidents
attending the advent of the unknown and interesting stranger who had made
his appearance at Arrowhead Village.
It was a very insufficient and unsatisfactory reason to assign for the
young man's solitary habits that he was the subject of an antipathy. For
what do we understand by that word? When a young lady screams at the
sight of a spider, we accept her explanation that she has a natural
antipathy to the creature. When a person expresses a repugnance to some
wholesome article of food, agreeable to most people, we are satisfied if
he gives the same reason. And so of various odors, which are pleasing to
some persons and repulsive to others. We do not pretend to go behind the
fact. It is an individual, and it may be a family, peculiarity. Even
between different personalities there is an instinctive elective dislike
as well as an elective affinity. We are not bound to give a reason why
Dr. Fell is odious to us any more than the prisoner who peremptorily
challenges a juryman is bound to say why he does it; it is enough that he
"does not like his looks."
There was nothing strange, then, that Maurice Kirkwood should have his
special antipathy; a great many other people have odd likes and dislikes.
But it was a very curious thing that this antipathy should be alleged as
the reason for his singular mode of life. All sorts of explanations were
suggested, not one of them in the least satisfactory, but serving to keep
the curiosity of inquirers active until they were superseded by a new
theory. One story was that Maurice had a great fear of dogs. It grew at
last to a connected narrative, in which a fright in childhood from a
rabid mongrel was said to have given him such a sensitiveness to the near
presence of dogs that he was liable to convulsions if one came close to
him.
This hypothesis had some plausibility. No other creature would be so
likely to trouble a person who had an antipathy to it. Dogs are very apt
to make the acquaintance of strangers, in a free and easy way. They are
met with everywhere,--in one's daily walk, at the thresholds of the doors
one enters, in the gentleman's library, on the rug of my lady's
sitting-room and on the cushion of her carriage. It is true that there
are few persons who have an instinctive repugnance to this "friend of
man." But what if this so-called antipathy were only a fear, a terror,
which borrowed the less unmanly name? It was a fair question, if,
indeed, the curiosity of the public had a right to ask any questions at
all about a harmless individual who gave no offence, and seemed entitled
to the right of choosing his way of living to suit himself, without being
submitted to espionage.
There was no positive evidence bearing on the point as yet. But one of
the village people had a large Newfoundland dog, of a very sociable
disposition, with which he determined to test the question. He watched
for the time when Maurice should leave his house for the woods or the
lake, and started with his dog to meet him. The animal walked up to the
stranger in a very sociable fashion, and began making his acquaintance,
after the usual manner of well-bred dogs; that is, with the courtesies
and blandishments by which the canine Chesterfield is distinguished from
the ill-conditioned cur. Maurice patted him in a friendly way, and spoke
to him as one who was used to the fellowship of such companions. That
idle question and foolish story were disposed of, therefore, and some
other solution must be found, if possible.
A much more common antipathy is that which is entertained with regard to
cats. This has never been explained. It is not mere aversion to the
look of the creature, or to any sensible quality known to the common
observer. The cat is pleasing in aspect, graceful in movement, nice in
personal habits, and of amiable disposition. No cause of offence is
obvious, and yet there are many persons who cannot abide the presence of
the most innocent little kitten. They can tell, in some mysterious way,
that there is a cat in the room when they can neither see nor hear the
creature. Whether it is an electrical or quasi-magnetic phenomenon, or
whatever it may be, of the fact of this strange influence there are too
many well-authenticated instances to allow its being questioned. But
suppose Maurice Kirkwood to be the subject of this antipathy in its
extremest degree, it would in no manner account for the isolation to
which he had condemned himself. He might shun the firesides of the old
women whose tabbies were purring by their footstools, but these worthy
dames do not make up the whole population.
These two antipathies having been disposed of, a new suggestion was
started, and was talked over with a curious sort of half belief, very
much as ghost stories are told in a circle of moderately instructed and
inquiring persons. This was that Maurice was endowed with the unenviable
gift of the evil eye. He was in frequent communication with Italy, as
his letters showed, and had recently been residing in that country, as
was learned from Paolo. Now everybody knows that the evil eye is not
rarely met with in Italy. Everybody who has ever read Mr. Story's "Roba
di Roma" knows what a terrible power it is which the owner of the evil
eye exercises. It can blight and destroy whatever it falls upon. No
person's life or limb is safe if the jettatura, the withering glance of
the deadly organ, falls upon him. It must be observed that this malign
effect may follow a look from the holiest personages, that is, if we may
assume that a monk is such as a matter of course. Certainly we have a
right to take it for granted that the late Pope, Pius Ninth, was an
eminently holy man, and yet he had the name of dispensing the mystic and
dreaded jettatura as well as his blessing. If Maurice Kirkwood carried
that destructive influence, so that his clear blue eyes were more to be
feared than the fascinations of the deadliest serpent, it could easily be
understood why he kept his look away from all around him whom he feared
he might harm.
No sensible person in Arrowhead Village really believed in the evil eye,
but it served the purpose of a temporary hypothesis, as do many
suppositions which we take as a nucleus for our observations without
putting any real confidence in them. It was just suited to the romantic
notions of the more flighty persons in the village, who had meddled more
or less with Spiritualism, and were ready for any new fancy, if it were
only wild enough.
The riddle of the young stranger's peculiarity did not seem likely to
find any very speedy solution. Every new suggestion furnished talk for
the gossips of the village and the babble of the many tongues in the two
educational institutions. Naturally, the discussion was liveliest among
the young ladies. Here is an extract from a letter of one of these young
ladies, who, having received at her birth the ever-pleasing name of Mary,
saw fit to have herself called Mollie in the catalogue and in her
letters. The old postmaster of the town to which her letter was directed
took it up to stamp, and read on the envelope the direction to "Miss Lulu
Pinrow." He brought the stamp down with a vicious emphasis, coming very
near blotting out the nursery name, instead of cancelling the
postage-stamp. "Lulu!" he exclaimed. "I should like to know if that
great strapping girl isn't out of her cradle yet! I suppose Miss Louisa
will think that belongs to her, but I saw her christened and I heard the
name the minister gave her, and it was n't 'Lulu,' or any such baby
nonsense." And so saying, he gave it a fling to the box marked P, as if
it burned his fingers. Why a grown-up young woman allowed herself to be
cheapened in the way so many of them do by the use of names which become
them as well as the frock of a ten-year-old schoolgirl would become a
graduate of the Corinna Institute, the old postmaster could not guess.
He was a queer old man.
The letter thus scornfully treated runs over with a young girl's written
loquacity:
"Oh, Lulu, there is such a sensation as you never saw or heard of 'in all
your born days,' as mamma used to say. He has been at the village for
some time, but lately we have had--oh, the weirdest stories about him!
'The Mysterious Stranger is the name some give him, but we girls call him
the Sachem, because he paddles about in an Indian canoe. If I should
tell you all the things that are said about him I should use up all my
paper ten times over. He has never made a visit to the Institute, and
none of the girls have ever spoken to him, but the people at the village
say he is very, very handsome. We are dying to get a look at him, of
course--though there is a horrid story about him--that he has the evil
eye did you ever hear about the evil eye? If a person who is born with
it looks at you, you die, or something happens--awful--is n't it?
"The rector says he never goes to church, but then you know a good many
of the people that pass the summer at the village never do--they think
their religion must have vacations--that's what I've heard they
say--vacations, just like other hard work--it ought not to be hard work,
I'm sure, but I suppose they feel so about it. Should you feel afraid to
have him look at you? Some of the girls say they would n't have him for
the whole world, but I shouldn't mind it--especially if I had on my
eyeglasses. Do you suppose if there is anything in the evil eye it would
go through glass? I don't believe it. Do you think blue eye-glasses
would be better than common ones? Don't laugh at me--they tell such
weird stories! The Terror--Lurida Vincent, you know-makes fun of all
they say about it, but then she 'knows everything and doesn't believe
anything,' the girls say--Well, I should be awfully scared, I know, if
anybody that had the evil eye should look at me--but--oh, I don't
know--but if it was a young man--and if he was very--very
good-looking--I think--perhaps I would run the risk--but don't tell
anybody I said any such horrid thing--and burn this letter right
up--there 's a dear good girl."
It is to be hoped that no reader will doubt the genuineness of this
letter. There are not quite so many "awfuls" and "awfullys" as one
expects to find in young ladies' letters, but there are two "weirds,"
which may be considered a fair allowance. How it happened that "jolly"
did not show itself can hardly be accounted for; no doubt it turns up two
or three times at least in the postscript.
Here is an extract from another letter. This was from one of the
students of Stoughton University to a friend whose name as it was written
on the envelope was Mr. Frank Mayfield. The old postmaster who found
fault with Miss "Lulu's" designation would probably have quarrelled with
this address, if it had come under his eye. "Frank" is a very pretty,
pleasant-sounding name, and it is not strange that many persons use it in
common conversation all their days when speaking of a friend. Were they
really christened by that name, any of these numerous Franks? Perhaps
they were, and if so there is nothing to be said. But if not, was the
baptismal name Francis or Franklin? The mind is apt to fasten in a very
perverse and unpleasant way upon this question, which too often there is
no possible way of settling. One might hope, if he outlived the bearer
of the appellation, to get at the fact; but since even gravestones have
learned to use the names belonging to childhood and infancy in their
solemn record, the generation which docks its Christian names in such an
un-Christian way will bequeath whole churchyards full of riddles to
posterity. How it will puzzle and distress the historians and
antiquarians of a coming generation to settle what was the real name of
Dan and Bert and Billy, which last is legible on a white marble slab,
raised in memory of a grown person, in a certain burial-ground in a town
in Essex County, Massachusetts!
But in the mean time we are forgetting the letter directed to Mr. Frank
Mayfield.
"DEAR FRANK,--Hooray! Hurrah! Rah!
"I have made the acquaintance of 'The Mysterious Stranger'! It happened
by a queer sort of accident, which came pretty near relieving you of the
duty of replying to this letter. I was out in my little boat, which
carries a sail too big for her, as I know and ought to have remembered.
One of those fitful flaws of wind to which the lake is so liable struck
the sail suddenly, and over went my boat. My feet got tangled in the
sheet somehow, and I could not get free. I had hard work to keep my head
above water, and I struggled desperately to escape from my toils; for if
the boat were to go down I should be dragged down with her. I thought of
a good many things in the course of some four or five minutes, I can tell
you, and I got a lesson about time better than anything Kant and all the
rest of them have to say of it. After I had been there about an ordinary
lifetime, I saw a white canoe making toward me, and I knew that our shy
young gentleman was coming to help me, and that we should become
acquainted without an introduction. So it was, sure enough. He saw what
the trouble was, managed to disentangle my feet without drowning me in
the process or upsetting his little flimsy craft, and, as I was somewhat
tired with my struggle, took me in tow and carried me to the landing
where he kept his canoe. I can't say that there is anything odd about
his manners or his way of talk. I judge him to be a native of one of our
Northern States,--perhaps a New Englander. He has lived abroad during
some parts of his life. He is not an artist, as it was at one time
thought he might be. He is a good-looking fellow, well developed, manly
in appearance, with nothing to excite special remark unless it be a
certain look of anxiety or apprehension which comes over him from time to
time. You remember our old friend Squire B., whose companion was killed
by lightning when he was standing close to him. You know the look he had
whenever anything like a thundercloud came up in the sky. Well, I should
say there was a look like that came over this Maurice Kirkwood's face
every now and then. I noticed that he looked round once or twice as if to
see whether some object or other was in sight. There was a little
rustling in the grass as if of footsteps, and this look came over his
features. A rabbit ran by us, and I watched to see if he showed any sign
of that antipathy we have heard so much of, but he seemed to be pleased
watching the creature.
"If you ask me what my opinion is about this Maurice Kirkwood, I think he
is eccentric in his habit of life, but not what they call a 'crank'
exactly. He talked well enough about such matters as we spoke of,--the
lake, the scenery in general, the climate. I asked him to come over and
take a look at the college. He did n't promise, but I should not be
surprised if I should get him over there some day. I asked him why he
did n't go to the Pansophian meetings. He did n't give any reason, but
he shook his head in a very peculiar way, as much as to say that it was
impossible.
"On the whole, I think it is nothing more than the same feeling of dread
of human society, or dislike for it, which under the name of religion
used to drive men into caves and deserts. What a pity that Protestantism
does not make special provision for all the freaks of individual
character! If we had a little more faith and a few more caverns, or
convenient places for making them, we should have hermits in these holes
as thick as woodchucks or prairie dogs. I should like to know if you
never had the feeling,
"'Oh, that the desert were my dwelling-place!'
"I know what your answer will be, of course. You will say, 'Certainly,
"'With one fair spirit for my minister;'"
"but I mean alone,--all alone. Don't you ever feel as if you should like
to have been a pillar-saint in the days when faith was as strong as lye
(spelt with a y), instead of being as weak as dish-water? (Jerry is
looking over my shoulder, and says this pun is too bad to send, and a
disgrace to the University--but never mind.) I often feel as if I should
like to roost on a pillar a hundred feet high,--yes, and have it soaped
from top to bottom. Wouldn't it be fun to look down at the bores and the
duns? Let us get up a pillar-roosters' association. (Jerry--still
looking over says there is an absurd contradiction in the idea.)
"What a matter-of-fact idiot Jerry is!
"How do you like looking over, Mr. Inspector general?"
The reader will not get much information out of this lively young
fellow's letter, but he may get a little. It is something to know that
the mysterious resident of Arrowhead Village did not look nor talk like a
crazy person; that he was of agreeable aspect and address, helpful when
occasion offered, and had nothing about him, so far as yet appeared, to
prevent his being an acceptable member of society.
Of course the people in the village could never be contented without
learning everything there was to be learned about their visitor. All the
city papers were examined for advertisements. If a cashier had
absconded, if a broker had disappeared, if a railroad president was
missing, some of the old stories would wake up and get a fresh currency,
until some new circumstance gave rise to a new hypothesis. Unconscious of
all these inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood lived on in his
inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed likely to remain an
unsolved enigma. The "Sachem" of the boating girls became the "Sphinx"
of the village ramblers, and it was agreed on all hands that Egypt did
not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make out than the meaning of this
young man's odd way of living.
V
THE ENIGMA STUDIED.
It was a curious, if it was not a suspicious, circumstance that a young
man, seemingly in good health, of comely aspect, looking as if made for
companionship, should keep himself apart from all the world around him in
a place where there was a general feeling of good neighborhood and a
pleasant social atmosphere. The Public Library was a central point which
brought people together. The Pansophian Society did a great deal to make
them acquainted with each other for many of the meetings were open to
outside visitors, and the subjects discussed in the meetings furnished
the material for conversation in their intervals. A card of invitation
had been sent by the Secretary to Maurice, in answer to which Paolo
carried back a polite note of regret. The paper had a narrow rim of
black, implying apparently some loss of relative or friend, but not any
very recent and crushing bereavement. This refusal to come to the
meetings of the society was only what was expected. It was proper to ask
him, but his declining the invitation showed that he did not wish for
attentions or courtesies. There was nothing further to be done to bring
him out of his shell, and seemingly nothing more to be learned about him
at present.
In this state of things it was natural that all which had been previously
gathered by the few who had seen or known anything of him should be
worked over again. When there is no new ore to be dug, the old refuse
heaps are looked over for what may still be found in them. The landlord
of the Anchor Tavern, now the head of the boarding-house, talked about
Maurice, as everybody in the village did at one time or another. He had
not much to say, but he added a fact or two.
The young gentleman was good pay,--so they all said. Sometimes he paid
in gold; sometimes in fresh bills, just out of the bank. He trusted his
man, Mr. Paul, with the money to pay his bills. He knew something about
horses; he showed that by the way he handled that colt,--the one that
threw the hostler and broke his collar-bone. "Mr. Paul come down to the
stable. 'Let me see that cult you all 'fraid of,' says he. 'My master,
he ride any hoss,' says Paul. 'You saddle him,' says be; and so they
did, and Paul, he led that colt--the kickinest and ugliest young beast
you ever see in your life--up to the place where his master, as he calls
him, and he lives. What does that Kirkwood do but clap on a couple of
long spurs and jump on to that colt's back, and off the beast goes, tail
up, heels flying, standing up on end, trying all sorts of capers, and at
last going it full run for a couple of miles, till he'd got about enough
of it. That colt went off as ferce as a wild-cat, and come back as quiet
as a cosset lamb. A man that pays his bills reg'lar, in good money, and
knows how to handle a hoss is three quarters of a gentleman, if he is n't
a whole one,--and most likely he is a whole one."
So spake the patriarch of the Anchor Tavern. His wife had already given
her favorable opinion of her former guest. She now added something to
her description as a sequel to her husband's remarks.
"I call him," she said, "about as likely a young gentleman as ever I
clapped my eyes on. He is rather slighter than I like to see a young man
of his age; if he was my sun, I should like to see him a little more
fleshy. I don't believe he weighs more than a hundred and thirty or
forty pounds. Did y' ever look at those eyes of his, M'randy? Just as
blue as succory flowers. I do like those light-complected young fellows,
with their fresh cheeks and their curly hair; somehow, curly hair doos
set off anybody's face. He is n't any foreigner, for all that he talks
Italian with that Mr. Paul that's his help. He looks just like our kind
of folks, the college kind, that's brought up among books, and is
handling 'em, and reading of 'em, and making of 'em, as like as not, all
their lives. All that you say about his riding the mad colt is just what
I should think he was up to, for he's as spry as a squirrel; you ought to
see him go over that fence, as I did once. I don't believe there's any
harm in that young gentleman,--I don't care what people say. I suppose
he likes this place just as other people like it, and cares more for
walking in the woods and paddling about in the water than he doos for
company; and if he doos, whose business is it, I should like to know?"
The third of the speakers was Miranda, who had her own way of judging
people.
"I never see him but two or three times," Miranda said. "I should like
to have waited on him, and got a chance to look stiddy at him when he was
eatin' his vittles. That 's the time to watch folks, when their jaws get
a-goin' and their eyes are on what's afore 'em. Do you remember that chap
the sheriff come and took away when we kep' tahvern? Eleven year ago it
was, come nex' Thanksgivin' time. A mighty grand gentleman from the City
he set up for. I watched him, and I watched him. Says I, I don't
believe you're no gentleman, says I. He eat with his knife, and that
ain't the way city folks eats. Every time I handed him anything I looked
closeter and closeter. Them whiskers never grooved on them cheeks, says
I to myself. Them 's paper collars, says I. That dimun in your
shirt-front hain't got no life to it, says I. I don't believe it's
nothiri' more 'n a bit o' winderglass. So says I to Pushee, 'You jes'
step out and get the sheriff to come in and take a look at that chap.' I
knowed he was after a fellah. He come right in, an' he goes up to the
chap. 'Why, Bill,' says he, 'I'm mighty glad to see yer. We've had the
hole in the wall you got out of mended, and I want your company to come
and look at the old place,' says he, and he pulls out a couple of
handcuffs and has 'em on his wrists in less than no time, an' off they
goes together! I know one thing about that young gentleman,
anyhow,--there ain't no better judge of what's good eatin' than he is. I
cooked him some maccaroni myself one day, and he sends word to me by that
Mr. Paul, 'Tell Miss Miranda,' says he, I that the Pope o' Rome don't
have no better cooked maccaroni than what she sent up to me yesterday,'
says he. I don' know much about the Pope o' Rome except that he's a
Roman Catholic, and I don' know who cooks for him, whether it's a man or
a woman; but when it comes to a dish o' maccaroni, I ain't afeard of
their shefs, as they call 'em,--them he-cooks that can't serve up a cold
potater without callin' it by some name nobody can say after 'em. But
this gentleman knows good cookin', and that's as good a sign of a
gentleman as I want to tell 'em by."
VI
STILL AT FAULT.
The house in which Maurice Kirkwood had taken up his abode was not a very
inviting one. It was old, and had been left in a somewhat dilapidated
and disorderly condition by the tenants who had lived in the part which
Maurice now occupied. They had piled their packing-boxes in the cellar,
with broken chairs, broken china, and other household wrecks. A cracked
mirror lay on an old straw mattress, the contents of which were airing
themselves through wide rips and rents. A lame clothes-horse was saddled
with an old rug fringed with a ragged border, out of which all the colors
had been completely trodden. No woman would have gone into a house in
such a condition. But the young man did not trouble himself much about
such matters, and was satisfied when the rooms which were to be occupied
by himself and his servant were made decent and tolerably comfortable.
During the fine season all this was not of much consequence, and if
Maurice made up his mind to stay through the winter he would have his
choice among many more eligible places.
The summer vacation of the Corinna Institute had now arrived, and the
young ladies had scattered to their homes. Among the graduates of the
year were Miss Euthymia Tower and Miss Lurida Vincent, who had now
returned to their homes in Arrowhead Village. They were both glad to
rest after the long final examinations and the exercises of the closing
day, in which each of them had borne a conspicuous part. It was a
pleasant life they led in the village, which was lively enough at this
season. Walking, riding, driving, boating, visits to the Library,
meetings of the Pansophian Society, hops, and picnics made the time pass
very cheerfully, and soon showed their restoring influences. The
Terror's large eyes did not wear the dull, glazed look by which they had
too often betrayed the after effects of over-excitement of the strong and
active brain behind them. The Wonder gained a fresher bloom, and looked
full enough of life to radiate vitality into a statue of ice. They had a
boat of their own, in which they passed many delightful hours on the
lake, rowing, drifting, reading, telling of what had been, dreaming of
what might be.
The Library was one of the chief centres of the fixed population, and
visited often by strangers. The old Librarian was a peculiar character,
as these officials are apt to be. They have a curious kind of knowledge,
sometimes immense in its way. They know the backs of books, their
title-pages, their popularity or want of it, the class of readers who
call for particular works, the value of different editions, and a good
deal besides. Their minds catch up hints from all manner of works on all
kinds of subjects. They will give a visitor a fact and a reference which
they are surprised to find they remember and which the visitor might have
hunted for a year. Every good librarian, every private book-owner, who
has grown into his library, finds he has a bunch of nerves going to every
bookcase, a branch to every shelf, and a twig to every book. These
nerves get very sensitive in old librarians, sometimes, and they do not
like to have a volume meddled with any more than they would like to have
their naked eyes handled. They come to feel at last that the books of a
great collection are a part, not merely of their own property, though
they are only the agents for their distribution, but that they are, as it
were, outlying portions of their own organization. The old Librarian was
getting a miserly feeling about his books, as he called them.
Fortunately, he had a young lady for his assistant, who was never so
happy as when she could find the work any visitor wanted and put it in
his hands,--or her hands, for there were more readers among the wives
and--daughters, and especially among the aunts, than there were among
their male relatives. The old Librarian knew the books, but the books
seemed to know the young assistant; so it looked, at least, to the
impatient young people who wanted their services.
Maurice had a good many volumes of his own,--a great many, according to
Paolo's account; but Paolo's ideas were limited, and a few well-filled
shelves seemed a very large collection to him. His master frequently
sent him to the Public Library for books, which somewhat enlarged his
notions; still, the Signor was a very learned man, he was certain, and
some of his white books (bound in vellum and richly gilt) were more
splendid, according to Paolo, than anything in the Library.
There was no little curiosity to know what were the books that Maurice
was in the habit of taking out, and the Librarian's record was carefully
searched by some of the more inquisitive investigators. The list proved
to be a long and varied one. It would imply a considerable knowledge of
modern languages and of the classics; a liking for mathematics and
physics, especially all that related to electricity and magnetism; a
fancy for the occult sciences, if there is any propriety in coupling
these words; and a whim for odd and obsolete literature, like the
Parthenologia of Fortunius Licetus, the quaint treatise 'De
Sternutatione,' books about alchemy, and witchcraft, apparitions, and
modern works relating to Spiritualism. With these were the titles of
novels and now and then of books of poems; but it may be taken for
granted that his own shelves held the works he was most frequently in the
habit of reading or consulting. Not much was to be made out of this
beyond the fact of wide scholarship,--more or less deep it might be, but
at any rate implying no small mental activity; for he appeared to read
very rapidly, at any rate exchanged the books he had taken out for new
ones very frequently. To judge by his reading, he was a man of letters.
But so wide-reading a man of letters must have an object, a literary
purpose in all probability. Why should not he be writing a novel? Not a
novel of society, assuredly, for a hermit is not the person to report the
talk and manners of a world which he has nothing to do with. Novelists
and lawyers understand the art of "cramming" better than any other
persons in the world. Why should not this young man be working up the
picturesque in this romantic region to serve as a background for some
story with magic, perhaps, and mysticism, and hints borrowed from
science, and all sorts of out-of-the-way knowledge which his odd and
miscellaneous selection of books furnished him? That might be, or
possibly he was only reading for amusement. Who could say?
The funds of the Public Library of Arrowhead Village allowed the managers
to purchase many books out of the common range of reading. The two
learned people of the village were the rector and the doctor. These two
worthies kept up the old controversy between the professions, which grows
out of the fact that one studies nature from below upwards, and the other
from above downwards. The rector maintained that physicians contracted a
squint which turns their eyes inwardly, while the muscles which roll
their eyes upward become palsied. The doctor retorted that theological
students developed a third eyelid,--the nictitating membrane, which is so
well known in birds, and which serves to shut out, not all light, but all
the light they do not want. Their little skirmishes did not prevent
their being very good friends, who had a common interest in many things
and many persons. Both were on the committee which had the care of the
Library and attended to the purchase of books. Each was scholar enough
to know the wants of scholars, and disposed to trust the judgment of the
other as to what books should be purchased. Consequently, the clergyman
secured the addition to the Library of a good many old theological works
which the physician would have called brimstone divinity, and held to be
just the thing to kindle fires with,--good books still for those who know
how to use them, oftentimes as awful examples of the extreme of
disorganization the whole moral system may undergo when a barbarous
belief has strangled the natural human instincts. The physician, in the
mean time, acquired for the collection some of those medical works where
one may find recorded various rare and almost incredible cases, which may
not have their like for a whole century, and then repeat themselves, so
as to give a new lease of credibility to stories which had come to be
looked upon as fables.
Both the clergyman and the physician took a very natural interest in the
young man who had come to reside in their neighborhood for the present,
perhaps for a long period. The rector would have been glad to see him at
church. He would have liked more especially to have had him hear his
sermon on the Duties of Young Men to Society. The doctor, meanwhile, was
meditating on the duties of society to young men, and wishing that he
could gain the young man's confidence, so as to help him out of any false
habit of mind or any delusion to which he might be subject, if he had the
power of being useful to him.
Dr. Butts was the leading medical practitioner, not only of Arrowhead
Village, but of all the surrounding region. He was an excellent specimen
of the country doctor, self-reliant, self-sacrificing, working a great
deal harder for his living than most of those who call themselves the
laboring classes,--as if none but those whose hands were hardened by the
use of farming or mechanical implements had any work to do. He had that
sagacity without which learning is a mere incumbrance, and he had also a
fair share of that learning without which sagacity is like a traveller
with a good horse, but who cannot read the directions on the guideboards.
He was not a man to be taken in by names. He well knew that oftentimes
very innocent-sounding words mean very grave disorders; that all, degrees
of disease and disorder are frequently confounded under the same term;
that "run down" may stand for a fatigue of mind or body from which a week
or a month of rest will completely restore the over-worked patient, or an
advanced stage of a mortal illness; that "seedy" may signify the
morning's state of feeling, after an evening's over-indulgence, which
calls for a glass of soda-water and a cup of coffee, or a dangerous
malady which will pack off the subject of it, at the shortest notice, to
the south of France. He knew too well that what is spoken lightly of as
a "nervous disturbance" may imply that the whole machinery of life is in
a deranged condition, and that every individual organ would groan aloud
if it had any other language than the terrible inarticulate one of pain
by which to communicate with the consciousness.
When, therefore, Dr. Butts heard the word antipatia he did not smile, and
say to himself that this was an idle whim, a foolish fancy, which the
young man had got into his head. Neither was he satisfied to set down
everything to the account of insanity, plausible as that supposition
might seem. He was prepared to believe in some exceptional, perhaps
anomalous, form of exaggerated sensibility, relating to what class of
objects he could not at present conjecture, but which was as vital to the
subject of it as the insulating arrangement to a piece of electrical
machinery. With this feeling he began to look into the history of
antipathies as recorded in all the books and journals on which he could
lay his hands.
------------------------------
The holder of the Portfolio asks leave to close it for a brief interval.
He wishes to say a few words to his readers, before offering them some
verses which have no connection with the narrative now in progress.
If one could have before him a set of photographs taken annually,
representing the same person as he or she appeared for thirty or forty or
fifty years, it would be interesting to watch the gradual changes of
aspect from the age of twenty, or even of thirty or forty, to that of
threescore and ten. The face might be an uninteresting one; still, as
sharing the inevitable changes wrought by time, it would be worth looking
at as it passed through the curve of life,--the vital parabola, which
betrays itself in the symbolic changes of the features. An inscription
is the same thing, whether we read it on slate-stone, or granite, or
marble. To watch the lights and shades, the reliefs and hollows, of a
countenance through a lifetime, or a large part of it, by the aid of a
continuous series of photographs would not only be curious; it would
teach us much more about the laws of physiognomy than we could get from
casual and unconnected observations.
The same kind of interest, without any assumption of merit to be found in
them, I would claim for a series of annual poems, beginning in middle
life and continued to what many of my correspondents are pleased to
remind me--as if I required to have the fact brought to my knowledge--is
no longer youth. Here is the latest of a series of annual poems read
during the last thirty-four years. There seems to have been one
interruption, but there may have been other poems not recorded or
remembered. This, the latest poem of the series, was listened to by the
scanty remnant of what was a large and brilliant circle of classmates and
friends when the first of the long series was read before them, then in
the flush of ardent manhood:--
THE OLD SONG.
The minstrel of the classic lay
Of love and wine who sings
Still found the fingers run astray
That touched the rebel strings.
Of Cadmus he would fair have sung,
Of Atreus and his line;
But all the jocund echoes rung
With songs of love and wine.
Ah, brothers! I would fair have caught
Some fresher fancy's gleam;
My truant accents find, unsought,
The old familiar theme.
Love, Love! but not the sportive child
With shaft and twanging bow,
Whose random arrows drove us wild
Some threescore years ago;
Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,
The urchin blind and bare,
But Love, with spectacles and staff,
And scanty, silvered hair.
Our heads with frosted locks are white,
Our roofs are thatched with snow,
But red, in chilling winter's spite,
Our hearts and hearthstones glow.
Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in,
And while the running sands
Their golden thread unheeded spin,
He warms his frozen hands.
Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet,
And waft this message o'er
To all we miss, from all we meet
On life's fast-crumbling shore:
Say that to old affection true
We hug the narrowing chain
That binds our hearts,--alas, how few
The links that yet remain!
The fatal touch awaits them all
That turns the rocks to dust;
From year to year they break and fall,
They break, but never rust.
Say if one note of happier strain
This worn-out harp afford,
--One throb that trembles, not in vain,
Their memory lent its chord.
Say that when Fancy closed her wings
And Passion quenched his fire,
Love, Love, still echoed from the strings
As from Anacreon's lyre!
January 8, 1885.
VII
A RECORD OF ANTIPATHIES
In thinking the whole matter over, Dr. Butts felt convinced that, with
care and patience and watching his opportunity, he should get at the
secret, which so far bad yielded nothing but a single word. It might be
asked why he was so anxious to learn what, from all appearances, the
young stranger was unwilling to explain. He may have been to some extent
infected by the general curiosity of the persons around him, in which
good Mrs. Butts shared, and which she had helped to intensify by
revealing the word dropped by Paolo. But this was not really his chief
motive. He could not look upon this young man, living a life of
unwholesome solitude, without a natural desire to do all that his science
and his knowledge of human nature could help him to do towards bringing
him into healthy relations with the world about him. Still, he would not
intrude upon him in any way. He would only make certain general
investigations, which might prove serviceable in case circumstances
should give him the right to counsel the young man as to his course of
life. The first thing to be done was to study systematically the whole
subject of antipathies. Then, if any further occasion offered itself, he
would be ready to take advantage of it. The resources of the Public
Library of the place and his own private collection were put in
requisition to furnish him the singular and widely scattered facts of
which he was in search.
It is not every reader who will care to follow Dr. Butts in his study of
the natural history of antipathies. The stories told about them are,
however, very curious; and if some of them may be questioned, there is no
doubt that many of the strangest are true, and consequently take away
from the improbability of others which we are disposed to doubt.
But in the first place, what do we mean by an antipathy? It is an
aversion to some object, which may vary in degree from mere dislike to
mortal horror. What the cause of this aversion is we cannot say. It acts
sometimes through the senses, sometimes through the imagination,
sometimes through an unknown channel. The relations which exist between
the human being and all that surrounds him vary in consequence of some
adjustment peculiar to each individual. The brute fact is expressed in
the phrase "One man's meat is another man's poison."
In studying the history of antipathies the doctor began with those
referable to the sense of taste, which are among the most common. In any
collection of a hundred persons there will be found those who cannot make
use of certain articles of food generally acceptable. This may be from
the disgust they occasion or the effects they have been found to produce.
Every one knows individuals who cannot venture on honey, or cheese, or
veal, with impunity. Carlyle, for example, complains of having veal set
before him,--a meat he could not endure. There is a whole family
connection in New England, and that a very famous one, to many of whose
members, in different generations, all the products of the dairy are the
subjects of a congenital antipathy. Montaigne says there are persons who
dread the smell of apples more than they would dread being exposed to a
fire of musketry. The readers of the charming story "A Week in a French
Country-House" will remember poor Monsieur Jacque's piteous cry in the
night: "Ursula, art thou asleep? Oh, Ursula, thou sleepest, but I cannot
close my eyes. Dearest Ursula, there is such a dreadful smell! Oh,
Ursula, it is such a smell! I do so wish thou couldst smell it!
Good-night, my angel!----Dearest! I have found them! They are apples!"
The smell of roses, of peonies, of lilies, has been known to cause
faintness. The sight of various objects has had singular effects on some
persons. A boar's head was a favorite dish at the table of great people
in Marshal d'Albret's time; yet he used to faint at the sight of one. It
is not uncommon to meet with persons who faint at the sight of blood.
One of the most inveterately pugnacious of Dr. Butts's college-mates
confessed that he had this infirmity. Stranger and far more awkward than
this is the case mentioned in an ancient collection, where the subject of
the antipathy fainted at the sight of any object of a red color. There
are sounds, also, which have strange effects on some individuals. Among
the obnoxious noises are the crumpling of silk stuffs, the sound of
sweeping, the croaking of frogs. The effects in different cases have
been spasms, a sense of strangling, profuse sweating,--all showing a
profound disturbance of the nervous system.
All these effects were produced by impressions on the organs of sense,
seemingly by direct agency on certain nerve centres. But there is
another series of cases in which the imagination plays a larger part in
the phenomena. Two notable examples are afforded in the lives of two
very distinguished personages.
Peter the Great was frightened, when an infant, by falling from a bridge
into the water. Long afterward, when he had reached manhood, this hardy
and resolute man was so affected by the sound of wheels rattling over a
bridge that he had to discipline himself by listening to the sound, in
spite of his dread of it, in order to overcome his antipathy. The story
told by Abbe Boileau of Pascal is very similar to that related of Peter.
As he was driving in his coach and four over the bridge at Neuilly, his
horses took fright and ran away, and the leaders broke from their harness
and sprang into the river, leaving the wheel-horses and the carriage on
the bridge. Ever after this fright it is said that Pascal had the
terrifying sense that he was just on the edge of an abyss, ready to fall
over.
What strange early impression was it which led a certain lady always to
shriek aloud if she ventured to enter a church, as it is recorded? The
old and simple way of accounting for it would be the scriptural one, that
it was an unclean spirit who dwelt in her, and who, when she entered the
holy place and brought her spiritual tenant into the presence of the
sacred symbols, "cried with a loud voice, and came out of" her. A very
singular case, the doctor himself had recorded, and which the reader may
accept as authentic, is the following: At the head of the doctor's front
stairs stood, and still stands, a tall clock, of early date and stately
presence. A middle-aged visitor, noticing it as he entered the front
door, remarked that he should feel a great unwillingness to pass that
clock. He could not go near one of those tall timepieces without a
profound agitation, which he dreaded to undergo. This very singular
idiosyncrasy he attributed to a fright when he was an infant in the arms
of his nurse.
She was standing near one of those tall clocks, when the cord which
supported one of its heavy leaden weights broke, and the weight came
crashing down to the bottom of the case. Some effect must have been
produced upon the pulpy nerve centres from which they never recovered.
Why should not this happen, when we know that a sudden mental shock may
be the cause of insanity? The doctor remembered the verse of "The
Ancient Mariner:"
"I moved my lips; the pilot shrieked
And fell down in a fit;
The holy hermit raised his eyes
And prayed where he did sit.
I took the oars; the pilot's boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro."
This is only poetry, it is true, but the poet borrowed the description
from nature, and the records of our asylums could furnish many cases
where insanity was caused by a sudden fright.
More than this, hardly a year passes that we do not read of some person,
a child commonly, killed outright by terror,--scared to death, literally.
Sad cases they often are, in which, nothing but a surprise being
intended, the shock has instantly arrested the movements on which life
depends. If a mere instantaneous impression can produce effects like
these, such an impression might of course be followed by consequences
less fatal or formidable, but yet serious in their nature. If here and
there a person is killed, as if by lightning, by a sudden startling sight
or sound, there must be more numerous cases in which a terrible shock is
produced by similar apparently insignificant causes,--a shock which falls
short of overthrowing the reason and does not destroy life, yet leaves a
lasting effect upon the subject of it.
This point, then, was settled in the mind of Dr. Butts, namely, that, as
a violent emotion caused by a sudden shock can kill or craze a human
being, there is no perversion of the faculties, no prejudice, no change
of taste or temper, no eccentricity, no antipathy, which such a cause may
not rationally account for. He would not be surprised, he said to
himself, to find that some early alarm, like that which was experienced
by Peter the Great or that which happened to Pascal, had broken some
spring in this young man's nature, or so changed its mode of action as to
account for the exceptional remoteness of his way of life. But how could
any conceivable antipathy be so comprehensive as to keep a young man
aloof from all the world, and make a hermit of him? He did not hate the
human race; that was clear enough. He treated Paolo with great kindness,
and the Italian was evidently much attached to him. He had talked
naturally and pleasantly with the young man he had helped out of his
dangerous situation when his boat was upset. Dr. Butts heard that he had
once made a short visit to this young man, at his rooms in the
University. It was not misanthropy, therefore, which kept him solitary.
What could be broad enough to cover the facts of the case? Nothing that
the doctor could think of, unless it were some color, the sight of which
acted on him as it did on the individual before mentioned, who could not
look at anything red without fainting. Suppose this were a case of the
same antipathy. How very careful it would make the subject of it as to
where he went and with whom he consorted! Time and patience would be
pretty sure to bring out new developments, and physicians, of all men in
the world, know how to wait as well as how to labor.
Such were some of the crude facts as Dr. Butts found them in books or
gathered them from his own experience. He soon discovered that the story
had got about the village that Maurice Kirkwood was the victim of an
"antipathy," whatever that word might mean in the vocabulary of the
people of the place. If he suspected the channel through which it had
reached the little community, and, spreading from that centre, the
country round, he did not see fit to make out of his suspicions a
domestic casus belli. Paolo might have mentioned it to others as well as
to himself. Maurice might have told some friend, who had divulged it.
But to accuse Mrs. Butts, good Mrs. Butts, of petit treason in telling
one of her husband's professional secrets was too serious a matter to be
thought of. He would be a little more careful, he promised himself, the
next time, at any rate; for he had to concede, in spite of every wish to
be charitable in his judgment, that it was among the possibilities that
the worthy lady had forgotten the rule that a doctor's patients must put
their tongues out, and a doctor's wife must keep her tongue in.
VIII
THE PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
The Secretary of this association was getting somewhat tired of the
office, and the office was getting somewhat tired of him. It occurred to
the members of the Society that a little fresh blood infused into it
might stir up the general vitality of the organization. The woman
suffragists saw no reason why the place of Secretary need as a matter of
course be filled by a person of the male sex. They agitated, they made
domiciliary visits, they wrote notes to influential citizens, and finally
announced as their candidate the young lady who had won and worn the
school name of "The Terror," who was elected. She was just the person
for the place: wide awake, with all her wits about her, full of every
kind of knowledge, and, above all, strong on points of order and details
of management, so that she could prompt the presiding officer, to do
which is often the most essential duty of a Secretary. The President,
the worthy rector, was good at plain sailing in the track of the common
moralities and proprieties, but was liable to get muddled if anything
came up requiring swift decision and off-hand speech. The Terror had
schooled herself in the debating societies of the Institute, and would
set up the President, when he was floored by an awkward question, as
easily as if he were a ninepin which had been bowled over.
It has been already mentioned that the Pansophian Society received
communications from time to time from writers outside of its own
organization. Of late these had been becoming more frequent. Many of
them were sent in anonymously, and as there were numerous visitors to the
village, and two institutions not far removed from it, both full of
ambitious and intelligent young persons, it was often impossible to trace
the papers to their authors. The new Secretary was alive with curiosity,
and as sagacious a little body as one might find if in want of a
detective. She could make a pretty shrewd guess whether a paper was
written by a young or old person, by one of her own sex or the other, by
an experienced hand or a novice.
Among the anonymous papers she received was one which exercised her
curiosity to an extraordinary degree. She felt a strong suspicion that
"the Sachem," as the boat-crews used to call him, "the Recluse," "the
Night-Hawk," "the Sphinx," as others named him, must be the author of it.
It appeared to her the production of a young person of a reflective,
poetical turn of mind. It was not a woman's way of writing; at least, so
thought the Secretary. The writer had travelled much; had resided in
Italy, among other places. But so had many of the summer visitors and
residents of Arrowhead Village. The handwriting was not decisive; it had
some points of resemblance with the pencilled orders for books which
Maurice sent to the Library, but there were certain differences,
intentional or accidental, which weakened this evidence. There was an
undertone in the essay which was in keeping with the mode of life of the
solitary stranger. It might be disappointment, melancholy, or only the
dreamy sadness of a young person who sees the future he is to climb, not
as a smooth ascent, but as overhanging him like a cliff, ready to crush
him, with all his hopes and prospects. This interpretation may have been
too imaginative, but here is the paper, and the reader can form his own
opinion:
MY THREE COMPANIONS.
"I have been from my youth upwards a wanderer. I do not mean constantly
flitting from one place to another, for my residence has often been fixed
for considerable periods. From time to time I have put down in a
notebook the impressions made upon me by the scenes through which I have
passed. I have long hesitated whether to let any of my notes appear
before the public. My fear has been that they were too subjective, to
use the metaphysician's term,--that I have seen myself reflected in
Nature, and not the true aspects of Nature as she was meant to be
understood. One who should visit the Harz Mountains would see--might
see, rather his own colossal image shape itself on the morning mist. But
if in every mist that rises from the meadows, in every cloud that hangs
upon the mountain, he always finds his own reflection, we cannot accept
him as an interpreter of the landscape.
"There must be many persons present at the meetings of the Society to
which this paper is offered who have had experiences like that of its
author. They have visited the same localities, they have had many of the
same thoughts and feelings. Many, I have no doubt. Not all,--no, not
all. Others have sought the companionship of Nature; I have been driven
to it. Much of my life has been passed in that communion. These pages
record some of the intimacies I have formed with her under some of her
various manifestations.
"I have lived on the shore of the great ocean, where its waves broke
wildest and its voice rose loudest.
"I have passed whole seasons on the banks of mighty and famous rivers.
"I have dwelt on the margin of a tranquil lake, and floated through many
a long, long summer day on its clear waters.
"I have learned the 'various language' of Nature, of which poetry has
spoken,--at least, I have learned some words and phrases of it. I will
translate some of these as I best may into common speech.
"The OCEAN says to the dweller on its shores:--
"You are neither welcome nor unwelcome. I do not trouble myself with the
living tribes that come down to my waters. I have my own people, of an
older race than yours, that grow to mightier dimensions than your
mastodons and elephants; more numerous than all the swarms that fill the
air or move over the thin crust of the earth. Who are you that build
your palaces on my margin? I see your white faces as I saw the dark
faces of the tribes that came before you, as I shall look upon the
unknown family of mankind that will come after you. And what is your
whole human family but a parenthesis in a single page of my history? The
raindrops stereotyped themselves on my beaches before a living creature
left his footprints there. This horseshoe-crab I fling at your feet is
of older lineage than your Adam,--perhaps, indeed, you count your Adam as
one of his descendants. What feeling have I for you? Not scorn, not
hatred,--not love,--not loathing. No!---indifference,--blank
indifference to you and your affairs that is my feeling, say rather
absence of feeling, as regards you.---Oh yes, I will lap your feet, I
will cool you in the hot summer days, I will bear you up in my strong
arms, I will rock you on my rolling undulations, like a babe in his
cradle. Am I not gentle? Am I not kind? Am I not harmless? But hark!
The wind is rising, and the wind and I are rough playmates! What do you
say to my voice now? Do you see my foaming lips? Do you feel the rocks
tremble as my huge billows crash against them? Is not my anger terrible
as I dash your argosy, your thunder-bearing frigate, into fragments, as
you would crack an eggshell?--No, not anger; deaf, blind, unheeding
indifference,--that is all. Out of me all things arose; sooner or later,
into me all things subside. All changes around me; I change not. I look
not at you, vain man, and your frail transitory concerns, save in
momentary glimpses: I look on the white face of my dead mistress, whom I
follow as the bridegroom follows the bier of her who has changed her
nuptial raiment for the shroud.
"Ye whose thoughts are of eternity, come dwell at my side. Continents and
islands grow old, and waste and disappear. The hardest rock crumbles;
vegetable and animal kingdoms come into being, wax great, decline, and
perish, to give way to others, even as human dynasties and nations and
races come and go. Look on me! "Time writes no wrinkle" on my forehead.
Listen to me! All tongues are spoken on my shores, but I have only one
language: the winds taught me their vowels the crags and the sands
schooled me in my rough or smooth consonants. Few words are mine but I
have whispered them and sung them and shouted them to men of all tribes
from the time when the first wild wanderer strayed into my awful
presence. Have you a grief that gnaws at your heart-strings? Come with
it to my shore, as of old the priest of far-darting Apollo carried his
rage and anguish to the margin of the loud-roaring sea. There, if
anywhere you will forget your private and short-lived woe, for my voice
speaks to the infinite and the eternal in your consciousness.
"To him who loves the pages of human history, who listens to the voices
of the world about him, who frequents the market and the thoroughfare,
who lives in the study of time and its accidents rather than in the
deeper emotions, in abstract speculation and spiritual contemplation, the
RIVER addresses itself as his natural companion.
"Come live with me. I am active, cheerful, communicative, a natural
talker and story-teller. I am not noisy, like the ocean, except
occasionally when I am rudely interrupted, or when I stumble and get a
fall. When I am silent you can still have pleasure in watching my
changing features. My idlest babble, when I am toying with the trifles
that fall in my way, if not very full of meaning, is at least musical. I
am not a dangerous friend, like the ocean; no highway is absolutely safe,
but my nature is harmless, and the storms that strew the beaches with
wrecks cast no ruins upon my flowery borders. Abide with me, and you
shall not die of thirst, like the forlorn wretches left to the mercies of
the pitiless salt waves. Trust yourself to me, and I will carry you far
on your journey, if we are travelling to the same point of the compass.
If I sometimes run riot and overflow your meadows, I leave fertility
behind me when I withdraw to my natural channel. Walk by my side toward
the place of my destination. I will keep pace with you, and you shall
feel my presence with you as that of a self-conscious being like
yourself. You will find it hard to be miserable in my company; I drain
you of ill-conditioned thoughts as I carry away the refuse of your
dwelling and its grounds."
But to him whom the ocean chills and crushes with its sullen
indifference, and the river disturbs with its never-pausing and
never-ending story, the silent LAKE shall be a refuge and a place of rest
for his soul.
"'Vex not yourself with thoughts too vast for your limited faculties,' it
says; 'yield not yourself to the babble of the running stream. Leave the
ocean, which cares nothing for you or any living thing that walks the
solid earth; leave the river, too busy with its own errand, too talkative
about its own affairs, and find peace with me, whose smile will cheer
you, whose whisper will soothe you. Come to me when the morning sun
blazes across my bosom like a golden baldric; come to me in the still
midnight, when I hold the inverted firmament like a cup brimming with
jewels, nor spill one star of all the constellations that float in my
ebon goblet. Do you know the charm of melancholy? Where will you find a
sympathy like mine in your hours of sadness? Does the ocean share your
grief? Does the river listen to your sighs? The salt wave, that called
to you from under last month's full moon, to-day is dashing on the rocks
of Labrador; the stream, that ran by you pure and sparkling, has
swallowed the poisonous refuse of a great city, and is creeping to its
grave in the wide cemetery that buries all things in its tomb of liquid
crystal. It is true that my waters exhale and are renewed from one
season to another; but are your features the same, absolutely the same,
from year to year? We both change, but we know each other through all
changes. Am I not mirrored in those eyes of yours? And does not Nature
plant me as an eye to behold her beauties while she is dressed in the
glories of leaf and flower, and draw the icy lid over my shining surface
when she stands naked and ashamed in the poverty of winter?'
"I have had strange experiences and sad thoughts in the course of a life
not very long, but with a record which much longer lives could not match
in incident. Oftentimes the temptation has come over me with dangerous
urgency to try a change of existence, if such change is a part of human
destiny,--to seek rest, if that is what we gain by laying down the burden
of life. I have asked who would be the friend to whom I should appeal
for the last service I should have need of. Ocean was there, all ready,
asking no questions, answering none. What strange voyages, downward
through its glaucous depths, upwards to its boiling and frothing surface,
wafted by tides, driven by tempests, disparted by rude agencies; one
remnant whitening on the sands of a northern beach, one perhaps built
into the circle of a coral reef in the Pacific, one settling to the floor
of the vast laboratory where continents are built, to emerge in far-off
ages! What strange companions for my pall-bearers! Unwieldy
sea-monsters, the stories of which are counted fables by the spectacled
collectors who think their catalogues have exhausted nature; naked-eyed
creatures, staring, glaring, nightmare-like spectres of the ghastly-green
abysses; pulpy islands, with life in gelatinous immensity,--what a
company of hungry heirs at every ocean funeral! No! No! Ocean claims
great multitudes, but does not invite the solitary who would fain be rid
of himself.
"Shall I seek a deeper slumber at the bottom of the lake I love than I
have ever found when drifting idly over its surface? No, again. I do
not want the sweet, clear waters to know me in the disgrace of nature,
when life, the faithful body-servant, has ceased caring for me. That
must not be. The mirror which has pictured me so often shall never know
me as an unwelcome object.
"If I must ask the all-subduing element to be my last friend, and lead me
out of my prison, it shall be the busy, whispering, not unfriendly,
pleasantly companionable river.
"But Ocean and River and Lake have certain relations to the periods of
human life which they who are choosing their places of abode should
consider. Let the child play upon the seashore. The wide horizon gives
his imagination room to grow in, untrammelled. That background of
mystery, without which life is a poor mechanical arrangement, is shaped
and colored, so far as it can have outline, or any hue but shadow, on a
vast canvas, the contemplation of which enlarges and enriches the sphere
of consciousness. The mighty ocean is not too huge to symbolize the
aspirations and ambitions of the yet untried soul of the adolescent.
"The time will come when his indefinite mental horizon has found a solid
limit, which shuts his prospect in narrower bounds than he would have
thought could content him in the years of undefined possibilities. Then
he will find the river a more natural intimate than the ocean. It is
individual, which the ocean, with all its gulfs and inlets and
multitudinous shores, hardly seems to be. It does not love you very
dearly, and will not miss you much when you disappear from its margin;
but it means well to you, bids you good-morning with its coming waves,
and good-evening with those which are leaving. It will lead your
thoughts pleasantly away, upwards to its source, downwards to the stream
to which it is tributary, or the wide waters in which it is to lose
itself. A river, by choice, to live by in middle age.
"In hours of melancholy reflection, in those last years of life which
have little left but tender memories, the still companionship of the
lake, embosomed in woods, sheltered, fed by sweet mountain brooks and
hidden springs, commends itself to the wearied and saddened spirit. I am
not thinking of those great inland seas, which have many of the features
and much of the danger that belong to the ocean, but of those 'ponds,' as
our countrymen used to call them until they were rechristened by summer
visitors; beautiful sheets of water from a hundred to a few thousand
acres in extent, scattered like raindrops over the map of our Northern
sovereignties. The loneliness of contemplative old age finds its natural
home in the near neighborhood of one of these tranquil basins."
Nature does not always plant her poets where they belong, but if we look
carefully their affinities betray themselves. The youth will carry his
Byron to the rock which overlooks the ocean the poet loved so well. The
man of maturer years will remember that the sonorous couplets of Pope
which ring in his ears were written on the banks of the Thames. The old
man, as he nods over the solemn verse of Wordsworth, will recognize the
affinity between the singer and the calm sheet that lay before him as he
wrote,--the stainless and sleepy Windermere.
"The dwellers by Cedar Lake may find it an amusement to compare their own
feelings with those of one who has lived by the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, by the Nile and the Tiber, by Lake Leman and by one of the
fairest sheets of water that our own North America embosoms in its
forests."
Miss Lurida Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, read this
paper, and pondered long upon it. She was thinking very seriously of
studying medicine, and had been for some time in frequent communication
with Dr. Butts, under whose direction she had begun reading certain
treatises, which added to such knowledge of the laws of life in health
and in disease as she had brought with her from the Corinna Institute.
Naturally enough, she carried the anonymous paper to the doctor, to get
his opinion about it, and compare it with her own. They both agreed that
it was probably, they would not say certainly, the work of the solitary
visitor. There was room for doubt, for there were visitors who might
well have travelled to all the places mentioned, and resided long enough
on the shores of the waters the writer spoke of to have had all the
experiences mentioned in the paper. The Terror remembered a young lady,
a former schoolmate, who belonged to one of those nomadic families common
in this generation, the heads of which, especially the female heads, can
never be easy where they are, but keep going between America and Europe,
like so many pith-balls in the electrical experiment, alternately
attracted and repelled, never in contented equilibrium. Every few years
they pull their families up by the roots, and by the time they have begun
to take hold a little with their radicles in the spots to which they have
been successively transplanted up they come again, so that they never get
a tap-root anywhere. The Terror suspected the daughter of one of these
families of sending certain anonymous articles of not dissimilar
character to the one she had just received. But she knew the style of
composition common among the young girls, and she could hardly believe
that it was one of them who had sent this paper. Could a brother of this
young lady have written it? Possibly; she knew nothing more than that
the young lady had a brother, then a student at the University. All the
chances were that Mr. Maurice Kirkwood was the author. So thought
Lurida, and so thought Dr. Butts.
Whatever faults there were in this essay, it interested them both. There
was nothing which gave the least reason to suspect insanity on the part
of the writer, whoever he or she might be. There were references to
suicide, it is true, but they were of a purely speculative nature, and
did not look to any practical purpose in that direction. Besides, if the
stranger were the author of the paper, he certainly would not choose a
sheet of water like Cedar Lake to perform the last offices for him, in
case he seriously meditated taking unceremonious leave of life and its
accidents. He could find a river easily enough, to say nothing of other
methods of effecting his purpose; but he had committed himself as to the
impropriety of selecting a lake, so they need not be anxious about the
white canoe and its occupant, as they watched it skimming the surface of
the deep waters.
The holder of the Portfolio would never have ventured to come before the
public if he had not counted among his resources certain papers belonging
to the records of the Pansophian Society, which he can make free use of,
either for the illustration of the narrative, or for a diversion during
those intervals in which the flow of events is languid, or even ceases
for the time to manifest any progress. The reader can hardly have failed
to notice that the old Anchor Tavern had become the focal point where a
good deal of mental activity converged. There were the village people,
including a number of cultivated families; there were the visitors, among
them many accomplished and widely travelled persons; there was the
University, with its learned teachers and aspiring young men; there was
the Corinna Institute, with its eager, ambitious, hungry-souled young
women, crowding on, class after class coming forward on the broad stream
of liberal culture, and rounding the point which, once passed, the
boundless possibilities of womanhood opened before them. All this
furnished material enough and to spare for the records and the archives
of the society.
The new Secretary infused fresh life into the meetings. It may be
remembered that the girls had said of her, when she was The Terror, that
"she knew everything and didn't believe anything." That was just the
kind of person for a secretary of such an association. Properly
interpreted, the saying meant that she knew a great deal, and wanted to
know a great deal more, and was consequently always on the lookout for
information; that she believed nothing without sufficient proof that it
was true, and therefore was perpetually asking for evidence where, others
took assertions on trust.
It was astonishing to see what one little creature like The Terror could
accomplish in the course of a single season. She found out what each
member could do and wanted to do. She wrote to the outside visitors whom
she suspected of capacity, and urged them to speak at the meetings, or
send written papers to be read. As an official, with the printed title
at the head of her notes, PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY, she was a privileged
personage. She begged the young persons who had travelled to tell
something of their experiences. She had contemplated getting up a
discussion on the woman's rights question, but being a wary little body,
and knowing that the debate would become a dispute and divide the members
into two hostile camps, she deferred this project indefinitely. It would
be time enough after she had her team well in hand, she said to
herself,--had felt their mouths and tried their paces. This expression,
as she used it in her thoughts, seems rather foreign to her habits, but
there was room in her large brain for a wide range of illustrations and
an ample vocabulary. She could not do much with her own muscles, but she
had known the passionate delight of being whirled furiously over the road
behind four scampering horses, in a rocking stage-coach, and thought of
herself in the Secretary's chair as not unlike the driver on his box. A
few weeks of rest had allowed her nervous energy to store itself up, and
the same powers which had distanced competition in the classes of her
school had of necessity to expend themselves in vigorous action in her
new office.
Her appeals had their effect. A number of papers were very soon sent in;
some with names, some anonymously. She looked these papers over, and
marked those which she thought would be worth reading and listening to at
the meetings. One of them has just been presented to the reader. As to
the authorship of the following one there were many conjectures. A
well-known writer, who had spent some weeks at Arrowhead Village, was
generally suspected of being its author. Some, however, questioned
whether it was not the work of a new hand, who wrote, not from
experience, but from his or her ideas of the condition to which a
story-teller, a novelist, must in all probability be sooner or later
reduced. The reader must judge for himself whether this first paper is
the work of an old hand or a novice.
SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NOVELIST.
"I have written a frightful number of stories, forty or more, I think.
Let me see. For twelve years two novels a year regularly: that makes
twenty-four. In three different years I have written three
stories annually: that makes thirty-three. In five years one a
year,--thirty-eight. That is all, is n't it? Yes. Thirty-eight, not
forty. I wish I could make them all into one composite story, as Mr.
Galton does his faces.
"Hero--heroine--mamma--papa--uncle--sister, and so on. Love
--obstacles--misery--tears--despair--glimmer of hope--unexpected solution
of difficulties--happy finale.
"Landscape for background according to season. Plants of each month got
up from botanical calendars.
"I should like much to see the composite novel. Why not apply Mr.
Galton's process, and get thirty-eight stories all in one? All the
Yankees would resolve into one Yankee, all the P----West Britons into one
Patrick, etc., what a saving of time it would be!
"I got along pretty well with my first few stories. I had some
characters around me which, a little disguised, answered well enough.
There was the minister of the parish, and there was an old schoolmaster
either of them served very satisfactorily for grandfathers and old
uncles. All I had to do was to shift some of their leading
peculiarities, keeping the rest. The old minister wore knee-breeches. I
clapped them on to the schoolmaster. The schoolmaster carried a tall
gold-headed cane. I put this in the minister's hands. So with other
things,--I shifted them round, and got a set of characters who, taken
together, reproduced the chief persons of the village where I lived, but
did not copy any individual exactly. Thus it went on for a while; but by
and by my stock company began to be rather too familiarly known, in spite
of their change of costume, and at last some altogether too sagacious
person published what he called a 'key' to several of my earlier stories,
in which I found the names of a number of neighbors attached to aliases
of my own invention. All the 'types,' as he called them, represented by
these personages of my story had come to be recognized, each as standing
for one and the same individual of my acquaintance. It had been of no
use to change the costume. Even changing the sex did no good. I had a
famous old gossip in one of my tales,--a much-babbling Widow Sertingly.
'Sho!' they all said, that 's old Deacon Spinner, the same he told about
in that other story of his,--only the deacon's got on a petticoat and a
mob-cap,--but it's the same old sixpence.' So I said to myself, I must
have some new characters. I had no trouble with young characters; they
are all pretty much alike,--dark-haired or light-haired, with the outfits
belonging to their complexion, respectively. I had an old great-aunt,
who was a tip-top eccentric. I had never seen anything just like her in
books. So I said, I will have you, old lady, in one of my stories; and,
sure enough, I fitted her out with a first-rate odd-sounding name, which
I got from the directory, and sent her forth to the world, disguised, as
I supposed, beyond the possibility of recognition. The book sold well,
and the eccentric personage was voted a novelty. A few weeks after it
was published a lawyer called upon me, as the agent of the person in the
directory, whose family name I had used, as he maintained, to his and all
his relatives' great damage, wrong, loss, grief, shame, and irreparable
injury, for which the sum of blank thousand dollars would be a modest
compensation. The story made the book sell, but not enough to pay blank
thousand dollars. In the mean time a cousin of mine had sniffed out the
resemblance between the character in my book and our great-aunt. We were
rivals in her good graces. 'Cousin Pansie' spoke to her of my book and
the trouble it was bringing on me,--she was so sorry about it! She liked
my story,--only those personalities, you know. 'What personalities?'
says old granny-aunt. 'Why, auntie, dear, they do say that he has
brought in everybody we know,--did n't anybody tell you about--well,--I
suppose you ought to know it,--did n't anybody tell you you were made fun
of in that novel?' Somebody--no matter who--happened to hear all this,
and told me. She said granny-aunt's withered old face had two red spots
come to it, as if she had been painting her cheeks from a pink saucer.
No, she said, not a pink saucer, but as if they were two coals of fire.
She sent out and got the book, and made her (the somebody that I was
speaking of) read it to her. When she had heard as much as she could
stand,--for 'Cousin Pansie' explained passages to her,--explained, you
know,--she sent for her lawyer, and that same somebody had to be a
witness to a new will she had drawn up. It was not to my advantage.
'Cousin Pansie' got the corner lot where the grocery is, and pretty much
everything else. The old woman left me a legacy. What do you think it
was? An old set of my own books, that looked as if it had been bought
out of a bankrupt circulating library.
"After that I grew more careful. I studied my disguises much more
diligently. But after all, what could I do? Here I was, writing stories
for my living and my reputation. I made a pretty sum enough, and worked
hard enough to earn it. No tale, no money. Then every story that went
from my workshop had to come up to the standard of my reputation, and
there was a set of critics,--there is a set of critics now and
everywhere,--that watch as narrowly for the decline of a man's reputation
as ever a village half drowned out by an inundation watched for the
falling of the waters. The fame I had won, such as it was, seemed to
attend me,--not going before me in the shape of a woman with a trumpet,
but rather following me like one of Actaeon's hounds, his throat open,
ready to pull me down and tear me. What a fierce enemy is that which bays
behind us in the voice of our proudest bygone achievement!
"But, as I said above, what could I do? I must write novels, and I must
have characters. 'Then why not invent them?' asks some novice. Oh, yes!
Invent them! You can invent a human being that in certain aspects of
humanity will answer every purpose for which your invention was intended.
A basket of straw, an old coat and pair of breeches, a hat which has been
soaked, sat upon, stuffed a broken window, and had a brood of chickens
raised in it,--these elements, duly adjusted to each other, will
represent humanity so truthfully that the crows will avoid the cornfield
when your scarecrow displays his personality. Do you think you can make
your heroes and heroines,--nay, even your scrappy supernumeraries,--out
of refuse material, as you made your scarecrow? You can't do it. You
must study living people and reproduce them. And whom do you know so
well as your friends? You will show up your friends, then, one after
another. When your friends give out, who is left for you? Why, nobody
but your own family, of course. When you have used up your family, there
is nothing left for you but to write your autobiography.
"After my experience with my grand-aunt, I be came more cautious, very
naturally. I kept traits of character, but I mixed ages as well as
sexes. In this way I continued to use up a large amount of material,
which looked as if it were as dangerous as dynamite to meddle with. Who
would have expected to meet my maternal uncle in the guise of a
schoolboy? Yet I managed to decant his characteristics as nicely as the
old gentleman would have decanted a bottle of Juno Madeira through that
long siphon which he always used when the most sacred vintages were
summoned from their crypts to render an account of themselves on his
hospitable board. It was a nice business, I confess, but I did it, and I
drink cheerfully to that good uncle's memory in a glass of wine from his
own cellar, which, with many other more important tokens of his good
will, I call my own since his lamented demise.
"I succeeded so well with my uncle that I thought I would try a course of
cousins. I had enough of them to furnish out a whole gallery of
portraits. There was cousin 'Creeshy,' as we called her; Lucretia, more
correctly. She was a cripple. Her left lower limb had had something
happen to it, and she walked with a crutch. Her patience under her trial
was very pathetic and picturesque, so to speak,--I mean adapted to the
tender parts of a story; nothing could work up better in a melting
paragraph. But I could not, of course, describe her particular
infirmity; that would point her out at once. I thought of shifting the
lameness to the right lower limb, but even that would be seen through.
So I gave the young woman that stood for her in my story a lame elbow,
and put her arm in a sling, and made her such a model of uncomplaining
endurance that my grandmother cried over her as if her poor old heart
would break. She cried very easily, my grandmother; in fact, she had
such a gift for tears that I availed myself of it, and if you remember
old Judy, in my novel "Honi Soit" (Honey Sweet, the booksellers called
it),--old Judy, the black-nurse,--that was my grandmother. She had
various other peculiarities, which I brought out one by one, and saddled
on to different characters. You see she was a perfect mine of
singularities and idiosyncrasies. After I had used her up pretty well, I
came dawn upon my poor relations. They were perfectly fair game; what
better use could I put them to? I studied them up very carefully, and as
there were a good many of them I helped myself freely. They lasted me,
with occasional intermissions, I should say, three or four years. I had
to be very careful with my poor relations,--they were as touchy as they
could be; and as I felt bound to send a copy of my novel, whatever it
might be, to each one of them,--there were as many as a dozen,--I took
care to mix their characteristic features, so that, though each might
suspect I meant the other, no one should think I meant him or her. I got
through all my relations at last except my father and mother. I had
treated my brothers and sisters pretty fairly, all except Elisha and
Joanna. The truth is they both had lots of odd ways,--family traits, I
suppose, but were just different enough from each other to figure
separately in two different stories. These two novels made me some
little trouble; for Elisha said he felt sure that I meant Joanna in one
of them, and quarrelled with me about it; and Joanna vowed and declared
that Elnathan, in the other, stood for brother 'Lisha, and that it was a
real mean thing to make fun of folks' own flesh and blood, and treated me
to one of her cries. She was n't handsome when she cried, poor, dear
Joanna; in fact, that was one of the personal traits I had made use of in
the story that Elisha found fault with.
"So as there was nobody left but my father and mother, you see for
yourself I had no choice. There was one great advantage in dealing with
them,--I knew them so thoroughly. One naturally feels a certain delicacy
it handling from a purely artistic point of view persons who have been so
near to him. One's mother, for instance: suppose some of her little ways
were so peculiar that the accurate delineation of them would furnish
amusement to great numbers of readers; it would not be without hesitation
that a writer of delicate sensibility would draw her portrait, with all
its whimsicalities, so plainly that it should be generally recognized.
One's father is commonly of tougher fibre than one's mother, and one
would not feel the same scruples, perhaps, in using him professionally as
material in a novel; still, while you are employing him as bait,--you see
I am honest and plain-spoken, for your characters are baits to catch
readers with,--I would follow kind Izaak Walton's humane counsel about
the frog you are fastening to your fish-hook: fix him artistically, as he
directs, but in so doing I use him as though you loved him.'
"I have at length shown up, in one form and another, all my townsmen who
have anything effective in their bodily or mental make-up, all my
friends, all my relatives; that is, all my blood relatives. It has
occurred to me that I might open a new field in the family connection of
my father-in-law and mother-in-law. We have been thinking of paying them
a visit, and I shall have an admirable opportunity of studying them and
their relatives and visitors. I have long wanted a good chance for
getting acquainted with the social sphere several grades below that to
which I am accustomed, and I have no doubt that I shall find matter for
half a dozen new stories among those connections of mine. Besides, they
live in a Western city, and one doesn't mind much how he cuts up the
people of places he does n't himself live in. I suppose there is not
really so much difference in people's feelings, whether they live in
Bangor or Omaha, but one's nerves can't be expected to stretch across the
continent. It is all a matter of greater or less distance. I read this
morning that a Chinese fleet was sunk, but I did n't think half so much
about it as I did about losing my sleeve button, confound it! People
have accused me of want of feeling; they misunderstand the artist-nature,
--that is all. I obey that implicitly; I am sorry if people don't like
my descriptions, but I have done my best. I have pulled to pieces all
the persons I am acquainted with, and put them together again in my
characters. The quills I write with come from live geese, I would have
you know. I expect to get some first-rate pluckings from those people I
was speaking of, and I mean to begin my thirty-ninth novel as soon as I
have got through my visit."
IX
THE SOCIETY AND ITS NEW SECRETARY.
There is no use in trying to hurry the natural course of events, in a
narrative like this. June passed away, and July, and August had come,
and as yet the enigma which had completely puzzled Arrowhead Village and
its visitors remained unsolved. The white canoe still wandered over the
lake, alone, ghostly, always avoiding the near approach of the boats
which seemed to be coming in its direction. Now and then a circumstance
would happen which helped to keep inquiry alive. Good horsemanship was
not so common among the young men of the place and its neighborhood that
Maurice's accomplishment in that way could be overlooked. If there was a
wicked horse or a wild colt whose owner was afraid of him, he would be
commended to Maurice's attention. Paolo would lead him to his master
with all due precaution,--for he had no idea of risking his neck on the
back of any ill-conditioned beast,--and Maurice would fasten on his long
spurs, spring into the saddle, and very speedily teach the creature good
behavior. There soon got about a story that he was what the fresh-water
fisherman called "one o' them whisperers." It is a common legend enough,
coming from the Old World, but known in American horse-talking circles,
that some persons will whisper certain words in a horse's ear which will
tame him if he is as wild and furious as ever Cruiser was. All this
added to the mystery which surrounded the young man. A single improbable
or absurd story amounts to very little, but when half a dozen such
stories are told about the same individual or the same event, they begin
to produce the effect of credible evidence. If the year had been 1692
and the place had been Salem Village, Maurice Kirkwood would have run the
risk of being treated like the Reverend George Burroughs.
Miss Lurida Vincent's curiosity had been intensely excited with reference
to the young man of whom so many stories were told. She had pretty
nearly convinced herself that he was the author of the paper on Ocean,
Lake, and River, which had been read at one of the meetings of the
Pansophian Society. She was very desirous of meeting him, if it were
possible. It seemed as if she might, as Secretary of the Society,
request the cooperation of any of the visitors, without impropriety. So,
after much deliberation, she wrote a careful note, of which the following
is an exact copy. Her hand was bold, almost masculine, a curious
contrast to that of Euthymia, which was delicately feminine.
PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 3, 18-.
MAURICE KIRKWOOD, ESQ.
DEAR SIR,--You have received, I trust, a card of invitation to the
meetings of our Society, but I think we have not yet had the pleasure of
seeing you at any of them. We have supposed that we might be indebted to
you for a paper read at the last meeting, and listened to with much
interest. As it was anonymous, we do not wish to be inquisitive
respecting its authorship; but we desire to say that any papers kindly
sent us by the temporary residents of our village will be welcome, and if
adapted to the wants of our Association will be read at one of its
meetings or printed in its records, or perhaps both read and printed.
May we not hope for your presence at the meeting, which is to take place
next Wednesday evening? Respectfully yours,
LURIDA VINCENT, Secretary of the Pansophian Society.
To this note the Secretary received the following reply:
MISS LURIDA VINCENT,
ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 4, 18-.
Secretary of the Pansophian Society:
DEAR MISS VINCENT,--I have received the ticket you refer to, and desire
to express my acknowledgments for the polite attention. I regret that I
have not been and I fear shall not be able to attend the meetings of the
Society; but if any subject occurs to me on which I feel an inclination
to write, it will give me pleasure to send a paper, to be disposed of as
the Society may see fit.
Very respectfully yours,
MAURICE KIRKWOOD.
"He says nothing about the authorship of the paper that was read the
other evening," the Secretary said to herself. "No matter,--he wrote
it,--there is no mistaking his handwriting. We know something about him,
now, at any rate. But why doesn't he come to our meetings? What has his
antipathy to do with his staying away? I must find out what his secret
is, and I will. I don't believe it's harder than it was to solve that
prize problem which puzzled so many teachers, or than beating Crakowitz,
the great chess-player."
To this enigma, then, The Terror determined to bend all the faculties
which had excited the admiration and sometimes the amazement of those who
knew her in her school-days. It was a very delicate piece of business;
for though Lurida was an intrepid woman's rights advocate, and believed
she was entitled to do almost everything that men dared to, she knew very
well there were certain limits which a young woman like herself must not
pass.
In the mean time Maurice had received a visit from the young student at
the University,--the same whom he had rescued from his dangerous
predicament in the lake. With him had called one of the teachers,--an
instructor in modern languages, a native of Italy. Maurice and the
instructor exchanged a few words in Italian. The young man spoke it with
the ease which implied long familiarity with its use.
After they left, the instructor asked many curious questions about
him,--who he was, how long he had been in the village, whether anything
was known of his history,--all these inquiries with an eagerness which
implied some special and peculiar reason for the interest they evinced.
"I feel satisfied," the instructor said, "that I have met that young man
in my own country. It was a number of years ago, and of course he has
altered in appearance a good deal; but there is a look about him of--what
shall I call it?---apprehension,--as if he were fearing the approach of
something or somebody. I think it is the way a man would look that was
haunted; you know what I mean,--followed by a spirit or ghost. He does
not suggest the idea of a murderer,--very far from it; but if he did, I
should think he was every minute in fear of seeing the murdered man's
spirit."
The student was curious, in his turn, to know all the instructor could
recall. He had seen him in Rome, he thought, at the Fountain of Trevi,
where so many strangers go before leaving the city. The youth was in the
company of a man who looked like a priest. He could not mistake the
peculiar expression of his countenance, but that was all he now
remembered about his appearance. His attention had been called to this
young man by seeing that some of the bystanders were pointing at him, and
noticing that they were whispering with each other as if with reference
to him. He should say that the youth was at that time fifteen or sixteen
years old, and the time was about ten years ago.
After all, this evidence was of little or no value. Suppose the youth
were Maurice; what then? We know that he had been in Italy, and had been
there a good while,--or at least we infer so much from his familiarity
with the language, and are confirmed in the belief by his having an
Italian servant, whom he probably brought from Italy when he returned.
If he wrote the paper which was read the other evening, that settles it,
for the writer says he had lived by the Tiber. We must put this scrap of
evidence furnished by the Professor with the other scraps; it may turn
out of some consequence, sooner or later. It is like a piece of a
dissected map; it means almost nothing by itself, but when we find the
pieces it joins with we may discover a very important meaning in it.
In a small, concentrated community like that which centred in and
immediately around Arrowhead Village, every day must have its local
gossip as well as its general news. The newspaper tells the small
community what is going on in the great world, and the busy tongues of
male and female, especially the latter, fill in with the occurrences and
comments of the ever-stirring microcosm. The fact that the Italian
teacher had, or thought he had, seen Maurice ten years before was
circulated and made the most of,--turned over and over like a cake, until
it was thoroughly done on both sides and all through. It was a very
small cake, but better than nothing. Miss Vincent heard this story, as
others did, and talked about it with her friend, Miss Tower. Here was
one more fact to help along.
The two young ladies who had recently graduated at the Corinna Institute
remained, as they had always been, intimate friends. They were the
natural complements of each other. Euthymia represented a complete,
symmetrical womanhood. Her outward presence was only an index of a
large, wholesome, affluent life. She could not help being courageous,
with such a firm organization. She could not help being generous,
cheerful, active. She had been told often enough that she was fair to
look upon. She knew that she was called The Wonder by the schoolmates
who were dazzled by her singular accomplishments, but she did not
overvalue them. She rather tended to depreciate her own gifts, in
comparison with those of her friend, Miss Lurida Vincent. The two agreed
all the better for differing as they did. The octave makes a perfect
chord, when shorter intervals jar more or less on the ear. Each admired
the other with a heartiness which if they had been less unlike, would
have been impossible.
It was a pleasant thing to observe their dependence on each other. The
Terror of the schoolroom was the oracle in her relations with her friend.
All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her bodily
exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought. She would fling
open a book, and decide in a swift glance whether it had any message for
her. Her teachers had compared her way of reading to the taking of an
instantaneous photograph. When she took up the first book on Physiology
which Dr. Butts handed her, it seemed to him that if she only opened at
any place, and gave one look, her mind drank its meaning up, as a moist
sponge absorbs water. "What can I do with such a creature as this?" he
said to himself. "There is only one way to deal with her, treat her as
one treats a silkworm: give it its mulberry leaf, and it will spin its
own cocoon. Give her the books, and she will spin her own web of
knowledge."
"Do you really think of studying medicine?" said Dr. Butts to her.
"I have n't made up my mind about that," she answered, "but I want to
know a little more about this terrible machinery of life and death we are
all tangled in. I know something about it, but not enough. I find some
very strange beliefs among the women I meet with, and I want to be able
to silence them when they attempt to proselyte me to their whims and
fancies. Besides, I want to know everything."
"They tell me you do, already," said Dr. Butts.
"I am the most ignorant little wretch that draws the breath of life!"
exclaimed The Terror.
The doctor smiled. He knew what it meant. She had reached that stage of
education in which the vast domain of the unknown opens its illimitable
expanse before the eyes of the student. We never know the extent of
darkness until it is partially illuminated.
"You did not leave the Institute with the reputation of being the most
ignorant young lady that ever graduated there," said the doctor. "They
tell me you got the highest marks of any pupil on their record since the
school was founded."
"What a grand thing it was to be the biggest fish in our small aquarium,
to be sure!" answered The Terror. "He was six inches long, the
monster,--a little too big for bait to catch a pickerel with! What did
you hand me that schoolbook for? Did you think I did n't know anything
about the human body?"
"You said you were such an ignorant creature I thought I would try you
with an easy book, by way of introduction."
The Terror was not confused by her apparent self-contradiction.
"I meant what I said, and I mean what I say. When I talk about my
ignorance, I don't measure myself with schoolgirls, doctor. I don't
measure myself with my teachers, either. You must talk to me as if I
were a man, a grown man, if you mean to teach me anything. Where is your
hat, doctor? Let me try it on."
The doctor handed her his wide-awake. The Terror's hair was not
naturally abundant, like Euthymia's, and she kept it cut rather short.
Her head used to get very hot when she studied hard. She tried to put
the hat on.
"Do you see that?" she said. "I could n't wear it--it would squeeze my
eyes out of my head. The books told me that women's brains were smaller
than men's: perhaps they are,--most of them,--I never measured a great
many. But when they try to settle what women are good for, by
phrenology, I like to have them put their tape round my head. I don't
believe in their nonsense, for all that. You might as well tell me that
if one horse weighs more than another horse he is worth more,--a
cart-horse that weighs twelve or fourteen hundred pounds better than
Eclipse, that may have weighed a thousand. Give me a list of the best
books you can think of, and turn me loose in your library. I can find
what I want, if you have it; and what I don't find there I will get at
the Public Library. I shall want to ask you a question now and then."
The doctor looked at her with a kind of admiration, but thoughtfully, as
if he feared she was thinking of a task too formidable for her slight
constitutional resource.
She returned, instinctively, to the apparent contradiction in her
statements about herself.
"I am not a fool, if I am ignorant. Yes, doctor, I sail on a wide sea of
ignorance, but I have taken soundings of some of its shallows and some of
its depths. Your profession deals with the facts of life that interest
me most just now, and I want to know something of it. Perhaps I may find
it a calling such as would suit me."
"Do you seriously think of becoming a practitioner of medicine?" said the
doctor.
"Certainly, I seriously think of it as a possibility, but I want to know
something more about it first. Perhaps I sha'n't believe in medicine
enough to practise it. Perhaps I sha'n't like it well enough. No matter
about that. I wish to study some of your best books on some of the
subjects that most interest me. I know about bones and muscles and all
that, and about digestion and respiration and such things. I want to
study up the nervous system, and learn all about it. I am of the nervous
temperament myself, and perhaps that is the reason. I want to read about
insanity and all that relates to it."
A curious expression flitted across the doctor's features as The Terror
said this.
"Nervous system. Insanity. She has headaches, I know,--all those
large-headed, hard-thinking girls do, as a matter of course; but what has
set her off about insanity and the nervous system? I wonder if any of
her more remote relatives are subject to mental disorder. Bright people
very often have crazy relations. Perhaps some of her friends are in that
way. I wonder whether"--the doctor did not speak any of these thoughts,
and in fact hardly shaped his "whether," for The Terror interrupted his
train of reflection, or rather struck into it in a way which startled
him.
"Where is the first volume of this Medical Cyclopaedia?" she asked,
looking at its empty place on the shelf.
"On my table," the doctor answered. "I have been consulting it."
Lurida flung it open, in her eager way, and turned the pages rapidly
until she came to the one she wanted. The doctor cast his eye on the
beading of the page, and saw the large letters A N T.
"I thought so," he said to himself. "We shall know everything there is
in the books about antipathies now, if we never did before. She has a
special object in studying the nervous system, just as I suspected. I
think she does not care to mention it at this time; but if she finds out
anything of interest she will tell me, if she does anybody. Perhaps she
does not mean to tell anybody. It is a rather delicate business,--a
young girl studying the natural history of a young man. Not quite so
safe as botany or palaeontology!"
Lurida, lately The Terror, now Miss Vincent, had her own plans, and chose
to keep them to herself, for the present, at least. Her hands were full
enough, it might seem, without undertaking the solution of the great
Arrowhead Village enigma. But she was in the most perfect training, so
far as her intelligence was concerned; and the summer rest had restored
her bodily vigor, so that her brain was like an overcharged battery which
will find conductors somewhere to carry off its crowded energy.
At this time Arrowhead Village was enjoying the most successful season it
had ever known. The Pansophian Society flourished to an extraordinary
degree under the fostering care of the new Secretary. The rector was a
good figure-head as President, but the Secretary was the life of the
Society. Communications came in abundantly: some from the village and
its neighborhood, some from the University and the Institute, some from
distant and unknown sources. The new Secretary was very busy with the
work of examining these papers. After a forenoon so employed, the carpet
of her room looked like a barn floor after a husking-match. A glance at
the manuscripts strewed about, or lying in heaps, would have frightened
any young writer away from the thought of authorship as a business. If
the candidate for that fearful calling had seen the process of selection
and elimination, he would have felt still more desperately. A paper of
twenty pages would come in, with an underscored request to please read
through, carefully. That request alone is commonly sufficient to condemn
any paper, and prevent its having any chance of a hearing; but the
Secretary was not hardened enough yet for that kind of martial law in
dealing with manuscripts. The looker-on might have seen her take up the
paper, cast one flashing glance at its title, read the first sentence and
the last, dip at a venture into two or three pages, and decide as swiftly
as the lightning calculator would add up a column of figures what was to
be its destination. If rejected, it went into the heap on the left; if
approved, it was laid apart, to be submitted to the Committee for their
judgment. The foolish writers who insist on one's reading through their
manuscript poems and stories ought to know how fatal the request is to
their prospects. It provokes the reader, to begin with. The reading of
manuscript is frightful work, at the best; the reading of worthless
manuscript--and most of that which one is requested to read through is
worthless--would add to the terrors of Tartarus, if any infernal deity
were ingenious enough to suggest it as a punishment.
If a paper was rejected by the Secretary, it did not come before the
Committee, but was returned to the author, if he sent for it, which he
commonly did. Its natural course was to try for admission into some one
of the popular magazines: into "The Sifter," the most fastidious of them
all; if that declined it, into "The Second Best;" and if that returned
it, into "The Omnivorous." If it was refused admittance at the doors of
all the magazines, it might at length find shelter in the corner of a
newspaper, where a good deal of very readable verse is to be met with
nowadays, some of which has been, no doubt, presented to the Pansophian
Society, but was not considered up to its standard.
X
A NEW ARRIVAL.
There was a recent accession to the transient population of the village
which gave rise to some speculation. The new-comer was a young fellow,
rather careless in his exterior, but apparently as much at home as if he
owned Arrowhead Village and everything in it. He commonly had a cigar in
his mouth, carried a pocket pistol, of the non-explosive sort, and a
stick with a bulldog's bead for its knob; wore a soft bat, a coarse check
suit, a little baggy, and gaiterboots which had been half-soled,--a
Bohemian-looking personage, altogether.
This individual began making explorations in every direction. He was
very curious about the place and all the people in it. He was especially
interested in the Pansophian Society, concerning which he made all sorts
of inquiries. This led him to form a summer acquaintance with the
Secretary, who was pleased to give him whatever information he asked for;
being proud of the Society, as she had a right to be, and knowing more
about it than anybody else.
The visitor could not have been long in the village without hearing
something of Maurice Kirkwood, and the stories, true and false, connected
with his name. He questioned everybody who could tell him anything about
Maurice, and set down the answers in a little note-book he always had
with him.
All this naturally excited the curiosity of the village about this new
visitor. Among the rest, Miss Vincent, not wanting in an attribute
thought to belong more especially to her sex, became somewhat interested
to know more exactly who this inquiring, note-taking personage, who
seemed to be everywhere and to know everybody, might himself be. Meeting
him at the Public Library at a fortunate moment, when there was nobody
but the old Librarian, who was hard of hearing, to interfere with their
conversation, the little Secretary had a chance to try to find out
something about him.
"This is a very remarkable library for a small village to possess," he
remarked to Miss Lurida.
"It is, indeed," she said. "Have you found it well furnished with the
books you most want?"
"Oh, yes,--books enough. I don't care so much for the books as I do for
the Newspapers. I like a Review well enough,--it tells you all there is
in a book; but a good abstract of the Review in a Newspaper saves a
fellow the trouble of reading it."
"You find the papers you want, here, I hope," said the young lady.
"Oh, I get along pretty well. It's my off-time, and I don't do much
reading or writing. Who is the city correspondent of this place?"
"I don't think we have any one who writes regularly. Now and then, there
is a letter, with the gossip of the place in it, or an account of some of
the doings at our Society. The city papers are always glad to get the
reports of our meetings, and to know what is going on in the village."
"I suppose you write about the Society to the papers, as you are the
Secretary."
This was a point-blank shot. She meant to question the young man about
his business, and here she was on the witness-stand. She ducked her
head, and let the question go over her.
"Oh, there are plenty of members who are willing enough to write,
--especially to give an account of their own papers. I think they like
to have me put in the applause, when they get any. I do that sometimes."
(How much more, she did not say.)
"I have seen some very well written articles, which, from what they tell
me of the Secretary, I should have thought she might have written
herself."
He looked her straight in the eyes.
"I have transmitted some good papers," she said, without winking, or
swallowing, or changing color, precious little color she had to change;
her brain wanted all the blood it could borrow or steal, and more too.
"You spoke of Newspapers," she said, without any change of tone or
manner: "do you not frequently write for them yourself?"
"I should think I did," answered the young man. "I am a regular
correspondent of 'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'"
"The regular correspondent from where?"
"Where! Oh, anywhere,--the place does not make much difference. I have
been writing chiefly from Naples and St. Petersburg, and now and then
from Constantinople."
"How long since your return to this country, may I ask?"
"My return? I have never been out of this country. I travel with a
gazetteer and some guide-books. It is the cheapest way, and you can get
the facts much better from them than by trusting your own observation. I
have made the tour of Europe by the help of them and the newspapers. But
of late I have taken to interviewing. I find that a very pleasant
specialty. It is about as good sport as trout-tickling, and much the
same kind of business. I should like to send the Society an account of
one of my interviews. Don't you think they would like to hear it?"
"I have no doubt they would. Send it to me, and I will look it over; and
if the Committee approve it, we will have it at the next meeting. You
know everything has to be examined and voted on by the Committee," said
the cautious Secretary.
"Very well,--I will risk it. After it is read, if it is read, please
send it back to me, as I want to sell it to 'The Sifter,' or 'The Second
Best,' or some of the paying magazines."
This is the paper, which was read at the next meeting of the Pansophian
Society.
"I was ordered by the editor of the newspaper to which I am attached,
'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor,' to make a visit to a
certain well-known writer, and obtain all the particulars I could
concerning him and all that related to him. I have interviewed a good
many politicians, who I thought rather liked the process; but I had never
tried any of these literary people, and I was not quite sure how this one
would feel about it. I said as much to the chief, but he pooh-poohed my
scruples. 'It is n't our business whether they like it or not,' said he;
'the public wants it, and what the public wants it's bound to have, and
we are bound to furnish it. Don't be afraid of your man; he 's used to
it,--he's been pumped often enough to take it easy, and what you've got
to do is to pump him dry. You need n't be modest,--ask him what you
like; he is n't bound to answer, you know.'
"As he lived in a rather nice quarter of the town, I smarted myself up a
little, put on a fresh collar and cuffs, and got a five-cent shine on my
best high-lows. I said to myself, as I was walking towards the house
where he lived, that I would keep very shady for a while and pass for a
visitor from a distance; one of those 'admiring strangers' who call in to
pay their respects, to get an autograph, and go home and say that they
have met the distinguished So and So, which gives them a certain
distinction in the village circle to which they belong.
"My man, the celebrated writer, received me in what was evidently his
reception-room. I observed that he managed to get the light full on my
face, while his own was in the shade. I had meant to have his face in
the light, but he knew the localities, and had arranged things so as to
give him that advantage. It was like two frigates manoeuvring,--each
trying to get to windward of the other. I never take out my note-book
until I and my man have got engaged in artless and earnest
conversation,--always about himself and his works, of course, if he is an
author.
"I began by saying that he must receive a good many callers. Those who
had read his books were naturally curious to see the writer of them.
"He assented, emphatically, to this statement. He had, he said, a great
many callers.
"I remarked that there was a quality in his books which made his readers
feel as if they knew him personally, and caused them to cherish a certain
attachment to him.
"He smiled, as if pleased. He was himself disposed to think so, he said.
In fact, a great many persons, strangers writing to him, had told him so.
"My dear sir, I said, there is nothing wonderful in the fact you mention.
You reach a responsive chord in many human breasts.
'One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.'
"Everybody feels as if he, and especially she (his eyes sparkled), were
your blood relation. Do they not name their children after you very
frequently?
"He blushed perceptibly. 'Sometimes,' he answered. 'I hope they will
all turn out well.'
"I am afraid I am taking up too much of your time, I said.
"No, not at all,' he replied. 'Come up into my library; it is warmer and
pleasanter there.'
"I felt confident that I had him by the right handle then; for an
author's library, which is commonly his working-room, is, like a lady's
boudoir, a sacred apartment.
"So we went upstairs, and again he got me with the daylight on my face,
when I wanted it on has.
"You have a fine library, I remarked. There were books all round the
room, and one of those whirligig square book-cases. I saw in front a
Bible and a Concordance, Shakespeare and Mrs. Cowden Clarke's book, and
other classical works and books of grave aspect. I contrived to give it
a turn, and on the side next the wall I got a glimpse of Barnum's Rhyming
Dictionary, and several Dictionaries of Quotations and cheap compends of
knowledge. Always twirl one of those revolving book-cases when you visit
a scholar's library. That is the way to find out what books he does n't
want you to see, which of course are the ones you particularly wish to
see.
"Some may call all this impertinent and inquisitive. What do you suppose
is an interviewer's business? Did you ever see an oyster opened? Yes?
Well, an interviewer's business is the same thing. His man is his oyster,
which he, not with sword, but with pencil and note-book, must open. Mark
how the oysterman's thin blade insinuates itself,--how gently at first,
how strenuously when once fairly between the shells!
"And here, I said, you write your books,--those books which have carried
your name to all parts of the world, and will convey it down to
posterity! Is this the desk at which you write? And is this the pen you
write with?
"'It is the desk and the very pen,' he replied.
"He was pleased with my questions and my way of putting them. I took up
the pen as reverentially as if it had been made of the feather which the
angel I used to read about in Young's "Night Thoughts" ought to have
dropped, and did n't.
"Would you kindly write your autograph in my note-book, with that pen? I
asked him. Yes, he would, with great pleasure.
"So I got out my note-book.
"It was a spick and span new one, bought on purpose for this interview.
I admire your bookcases, said I. Can you tell me just how high they are?
"'They are about eight feet, with the cornice.'
"I should like to have some like those, if I ever get rich enough, said
I. Eight feet,--eight feet, with the cornice. I must put that down.
"So I got out my pencil.
"I sat there with my pencil and note-book in my hand, all ready, but not
using them as yet.
"I have heard it said, I observed, that you began writing poems at a very
early age. Is it taking too great a liberty to ask how early you began
to write in verse?
"He was getting interested, as people are apt to be when they are
themselves the subjects of conversation.
"'Very early,--I hardly know how early. I can say truly, as Louise Colet
said,
"'Je fis mes premiers vers sans savoir les ecrire.'"
"I am not a very good French scholar, said I; perhaps you will be kind
enough to translate that line for me.
"'Certainly. With pleasure. I made my first verses without knowing how
to write them.'
"How interesting! But I never heard of Louise Colet. Who was she?
"My man was pleased to gi-ve me a piece of literary information.
"'Louise the lioness! Never heard of her? You have heard of Alphonse
Karr?'
"Why,--yes,--more or less. To tell the truth, I am not very well up in
French literature. What had he to do with your lioness?
"'A good deal. He satirized her, and she waited at his door with a
case-knife in her hand, intending to stick him with it. By and by he
came down, smoking a cigarette, and was met by this woman flourishing her
case-knife. He took it from her, after getting a cut in his
dressing-gown, put it in his pocket, and went on with his cigarette. He
keeps it with an inscription:
"Donne a Alphonse Karr
Par Madame Louise Colet....
Dans le dos.
"Lively little female!'
"I could n't help thinking that I should n't have cared to interview the
lively little female. He was evidently tickled with the interest I
appeared to take in the story he told me. That made him feel amiably
disposed toward me.
"I began with very general questions, but by degrees I got at everything
about his family history and the small events of his boyhood. Some of
the points touched upon were delicate, but I put a good bold face on my
most audacious questions, and so I wormed out a great deal that was new
concerning my subject. He had been written about considerably, and the
public wouldn't have been satisfied without some new facts; and these I
meant to have, and I got. No matter about many of them now, but here are
some questions and answers that may be thought worth reading or listening
to:
"How do you enjoy being what they call 'a celebrity,' or a celebrated
man?
"'So far as one's vanity is concerned it is well enough. But self-love
is a cup without any bottom, and you might pour the Great Lakes all
through it, and never fill it up. It breeds an appetite for more of the
same kind. It tends to make the celebrity a mere lump of egotism. It
generates a craving for high-seasoned personalities which is in danger of
becoming slavery, like that following the abuse of alcohol, or opium, or
tobacco. Think of a man's having every day, by every post, letters that
tell him he is this and that and the other, with epithets and
endearments, one tenth part of which would have made him blush red hot
before he began to be what you call a celebrity!'
"Are there not some special inconveniences connected with what is called
celebrity?
"'I should think so! Suppose you were obliged every day of your life to
stand and shake hands, as the President of the United States has to after
his inauguration: how do you think your hand would feel after a few
months' practice of that exercise? Suppose you had given you thirty-five
millions of money a year, in hundred-dollar coupons, on condition that
you cut them all off yourself in the usual manner: how do you think you
should like the look of a pair of scissors at the end of a year, in which
you had worked ten hours a day every day but Sunday, cutting off a
hundred coupons an hour, and found you had not finished your task, after
all? You have addressed me as what you are pleased to call "a literary
celebrity." I won't dispute with you as to whether or not I deserve that
title. I will take it for granted I am what you call me, and give you
some few hints on my experience.
"'You know there was formed a while ago an Association of Authors for
Self-Protection. It meant well, and it was hoped that something would
come of it in the way of relieving that oppressed class, but I am sorry
to say that it has not effected its purpose.'
"I suspected he had a hand in drawing up the Constitution and Laws of
that Association. Yes, I said, an admirable Association it was, and as
much needed as the one for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I am
sorry to hear that it has not proved effectual in putting a stop to the
abuse of a deserving class of men. It ought to have done it; it was well
conceived, and its public manifesto was a masterpiece. (I saw by his
expression that he was its author.)
"'I see I can trust you,' he said. 'I will unbosom myself freely of some
of the grievances attaching to the position of the individual to whom you
have applied the term "Literary Celebrity."
"'He is supposed to be a millionaire, in virtue of the immense sales of
his books, all the money from which, it is taken for granted, goes into
his pocket. Consequently, all subscription papers are handed to him for
his signature, and every needy stranger who has heard his name comes to
him for assistance.
"'He is expected to subscribe for all periodicals, and is goaded by
receiving blank formulae, which, with their promises to pay, he is
expected to fill up.
"'He receives two or three books daily, with requests to read and give
his opinion about each of them, which opinion, if it has a word which can
be used as an advertisement, he will find quoted in all the newspapers.
"'He receives thick masses of manuscript, prose and verse, which he is
called upon to examine and pronounce on their merits; these manuscripts
having almost invariably been rejected by the editors to whom they have
been sent, and having as a rule no literary value whatever.
"'He is expected to sign petitions, to contribute to journals, to write
for fairs, to attend celebrations, to make after-dinner speeches, to send
money for objects he does not believe in to places he never heard of.
"'He is called on to keep up correspondences with unknown admirers, who
begin by saying they have no claim upon his time, and then appropriate it
by writing page after page, if of the male sex; and sheet after sheet, if
of the other.
"'If a poet, it is taken for granted that he can sit down at any moment
and spin off any number of verses on any subject which may be suggested
to him; such as congratulations to the writer's great-grandmother on her
reaching her hundredth year, an elegy on an infant aged six weeks, an ode
for the Fourth of July in a Western township not to be found in
Lippincott's last edition, perhaps a valentine for some bucolic lover who
believes that wooing in rhyme is the way to win the object of his
affections.'
"Is n't it so? I asked the Celebrity.
"'I would bet on the prose lover. She will show the verses to him, and
they will both have a good laugh over them.'
"I have only reported a small part of the conversation I had with the
Literary Celebrity. He was so much taken up with his pleasing
self-contemplation, while I made him air his opinions and feelings and
spread his characteristics as his laundress spreads and airs his linen on
the clothes-line, that I don't believe it ever occurred to him that he
had been in the hands of an interviewer until he found himself exposed to
the wind and sunshine in full dimensions in the columns of The People's
Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'"
After the reading of this paper, much curiosity was shown as to who the
person spoken of as the "Literary Celebrity" might be. Among the various
suppositions the startling idea was suggested that he was neither more
nor less than the unexplained personage known in the village as Maurice
Kirkwood. Why should that be his real name? Why should not he be the
Celebrity, who had taken this name and fled to this retreat to escape
from the persecutions of kind friends, who were pricking him and stabbing
him nigh to death with their daggers of sugar candy?
The Secretary of the Pansophian Society determined to question the
Interviewer the next time she met him at the Library, which happened soon
after the meeting when his paper was read.
"I do not know," she said, in the course of a conversation in which she
had spoken warmly of his contribution to the literary entertainment of
the Society, "that you mentioned the name of the Literary Celebrity whom
you interviewed so successfully."
"I did not mention him, Miss Vincent," he answered, "nor do I think it
worth while to name him. He might not care to have the whole story told
of how he was handled so as to make him communicative. Besides, if I did,
it would bring him a new batch of sympathetic letters, regretting that he
was bothered by those horrid correspondents, full of indignation at the
bores who presumed to intrude upon him with their pages of trash, all the
writers of which would expect answers to their letters of condolence."
The Secretary asked the Interviewer if he knew the young gentleman who
called himself Maurice Kirkwood.
"What," he answered, "the man that paddles a birch canoe, and rides all
the wild horses of the neighborhood? No, I don't know him, but I have
met him once or twice, out walking. A mighty shy fellow, they tell me.
Do you know anything particular about him?"
"Not much. None of us do, but we should like to. The story is that he
has a queer antipathy to something or to somebody, nobody knows what or
whom."
"To newspaper correspondents, perhaps," said the interviewer. "What made
you ask me about him? You did n't think he was my 'Literary Celebrity,'
did you?"
"I did not know. I thought he might be. Why don't you interview this
mysterious personage? He would make a good sensation for your paper, I
should think."
"Why, what is there to be interviewed in him? Is there any story of
crime, or anything else to spice a column or so, or even a few
paragraphs, with? If there is, I am willing to handle him
professionally."
"I told you he has what they call an antipathy. I don't know how much
wiser you are for that piece of information."
"An antipathy! Why, so have I an antipathy. I hate a spider, and as for
a naked caterpillar,--I believe I should go into a fit if I had to touch
one. I know I turn pale at the sight of some of those great green
caterpillars that come down from the elm-trees in August and early
autumn."
"Afraid of them?" asked the young lady.
"Afraid? What should I be afraid of? They can't bite or sting. I can't
give any reason. All I know is that when I come across one of these
creatures in my path I jump to one side, and cry out,--sometimes using
very improper words. The fact is, they make me crazy for the moment."
"I understand what you mean," said Miss Vincent. "I used to have the
same feeling about spiders, but I was ashamed of it, and kept a little
menagerie of spiders until I had got over the feeling; that is, pretty
much got over it, for I don't love the creatures very dearly, though I
don't scream when I see one."
"What did you tell me, Miss Vincent, was this fellow's particular
antipathy?"
That is just the question. I told you that we don't know and we can't
guess what it is. The people here are tired out with trying to discover
some good reason for the young man's keeping out of the way of everybody,
as he does. They say he is odd or crazy, and they don't seem to be able
to tell which. It would make the old ladies of the village sleep a great
deal sounder,--yes, and some of the young ladies, too,--if they could
find out what this Mr. Kirkwood has got into his head, that he never
comes near any of the people here."
"I think I can find out," said the Interviewer, whose professional
ambition was beginning to be excited. "I never came across anybody yet
that I could n't get something out of. I am going to stay here a week or
two, and before I go I will find out the secret, if there is any, of this
Mr. Maurice Kirkwood."
We must leave the Interviewer to his contrivances until they present us
with some kind of result, either in the shape of success or failure.
XI
THE INTERVIEWER ATTACKS THE SPHINX.
When Miss Euthymia Tower sent her oar off in flashing splinters, as she
pulled her last stroke in the boat-race, she did not know what a strain
she was putting upon it. She did know that she was doing her best, but
how great the force of her best was she was not aware until she saw its
effects. Unconsciousness belonged to her robust nature, in all its
manifestations. She did not pride herself on her knowledge, nor reproach
herself for her ignorance. In every way she formed a striking contrast
to her friend, Miss Vincent. Every word they spoke betrayed the
difference between them: the sharp tones of Lurida's head-voice,
penetrative, aggressive, sometimes irritating, revealed the corresponding
traits of mental and moral character; the quiet, conversational contralto
of Euthymia was the index of a nature restful and sympathetic.
The friendships of young girls prefigure the closer relations which will
one day come in and dissolve their earlier intimacies. The dependence of
two young friends may be mutual, but one will always lean more heavily
than the other; the masculine and feminine elements will be as sure to
assert themselves as if the friends were of different sexes.
On all common occasions Euthymia looked up to her friend as her superior.
She fully appreciated all her varied gifts and knowledge, and deferred to
her opinion in every-day matters, not exactly as an oracle, but as wiser
than herself or any of her other companions. It was a different thing,
however, when the graver questions of life came up. Lurida was full of
suggestions, plans, projects, which were too liable to run into whims
before she knew where they were tending. She would lay out her ideas
before Euthymia so fluently and eloquently that she could not help
believing them herself, and feeling as if her friend must accept them
with an enthusiasm like her own. Then Euthymia would take them up with
her sweet, deliberate accents, and bring her calmer judgment to bear on
them.
Lurida was in an excited condition, in the midst of all her new interests
and occupations. She was constantly on the lookout for papers to be read
at the meetings of her Society,--for she made it her own in great
measure, by her zeal and enthusiasm,--and in the mean time she was
reading in various books which Dr. Butts selected for her, all bearing on
the profession to which, at least as a possibility, she was looking
forward. Privately and in a very still way, she was occupying herself
with the problem of the young stranger, the subject of some delusion, or
disease, or obliquity of unknown nature, to which the vague name of
antipathy had been attached. Euthymia kept an eye upon her, partly in
the fear that over-excitement would produce some mental injury, and
partly from anxiety lest she should compromise her womanly dignity in her
desire to get at the truth of a very puzzling question.
"How do you like the books I see you reading?" said Euthymia to Lurida,
one day, as they met at the Library.
"Better than all the novels I ever read," she answered. "I have been
reading about the nervous system, and it seems to me I have come nearer
the springs of life than ever before in all my studies. I feel just as
if I were a telegraph operator. I was sure that I had a battery in my
head, for I know my brain works like one; but I did not know how many
centres of energy there are, and how they are played upon by all sorts of
influences, external and internal. Do you know, I believe I could solve
the riddle of the 'Arrowhead Village Sphinx,' as the paper called him, if
he would only stay here long enough?"
"What paper has had anything about it, Lurida? I have not seen or heard
of its being mentioned in any of the papers."
"You know that rather queer-looking young man who has been about here for
some time,--the same one who gave the account of his interview with a
celebrated author? Well, he has handed me a copy of a paper in which he
writes, 'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.' He talks about
this village in a very free and easy way. He says there is a Sphinx here,
who has mystified us all."
"And you have been chatting with that fellow! Don't you know that he'll
have you and all of us in his paper? Don't you know that nothing is safe
where one of those fellows gets in with his note-book and pencil? Oh,
Lurida, Lurida, do be careful!" What with this mysterious young man and
this very questionable newspaper-paragraph writer, you will be talked
about, if you don't mind, before you know it. You had better let the
riddle of the Sphinx alone. If you must deal with such dangerous people,
the safest way is to set one of them to find out the other.--I wonder if
we can't get this new man to interview the visitor you have so much
curiosity about. That might be managed easily enough without your having
anything to do with it. Let me alone, and I will arrange it. But mind,
now, you must not meddle; if you do, you will spoil everything, and get
your name in the 'Household Inquisitor' in a way you won't like."
"Don't be frightened about me, Euthymia. I don't mean to give him a
chance to work me into his paper, if I can help it. But if you can get
him to try his skill upon this interesting personage and his antipathy,
so much the better. I am very curious about it, and therefore about him.
I want to know what has produced this strange state of feeling in a young
man who ought to have all the common instincts of a social being. I
believe there are unexplained facts in the region of sympathies and
antipathies which will repay study with a deeper insight into the
mysteries of life than we have dreamed of hitherto. I often wonder
whether there are not heart-waves and soul-waves as well as
'brain-waves,' which some have already recognized."
Euthymia wondered, as well she might, to hear this young woman talking
the language of science like an adept. The truth is, Lurida was one of
those persons who never are young, and who, by way of compensation, will
never be old. They are found in both sexes. Two well-known graduates of
one of our great universities are living examples of this precocious but
enduring intellectual development. If the readers of this narrative
cannot pick them out, they need not expect the writer of it to help them.
If they guess rightly who they are, they will recognize the fact that
just such exceptional individuals as the young woman we are dealing with
are met with from time to time in families where intelligence has been
cumulative for two or three generations.
Euthymia was very willing that the questioning and questionable visitor
should learn all that was known in the village about the nebulous
individual whose misty environment all the eyes in the village were
trying to penetrate, but that he should learn it from some other
informant than Lurida.
The next morning, as the Interviewer took his seat on a bench outside his
door, to smoke his after-breakfast cigar, a bright-looking and handsome
youth, whose features recalled those of Euthymia so strikingly that one
might feel pretty sure he was her brother, took a seat by his side.
Presently the two were engaged in conversation. The Interviewer asked all
sorts of questions about everybody in the village. When he came to
inquire about Maurice, the youth showed a remarkable interest regarding
him. The greatest curiosity, he said, existed with reference to this
personage. Everybody was trying to find out what his story was,--for a
story, and a strange one, he must surely have,--and nobody had succeeded.
The Interviewer began to be unusually attentive. The young man told him
the various antipathy stories, about the evil-eye hypothesis, about his
horse-taming exploits, his rescuing the student whose boat was
overturned, and every occurrence he could recall which would help out the
effect of his narrative.
The Interviewer was becoming excited. "Can't find out anything about
him, you said, did n-'t you? How do you know there's anything to find?
Do you want to know what I think he is? I'll tell you. I think he is an
actor,--a fellow from one of the city theatres. Those fellows go off in
their summer vacation, and like to puzzle the country folks. They are
the very same chaps, like as not, the visitors have seen in plays at the
city theatres; but of course they don't know 'em in plain clothes. Kings
and Emperors look pretty shabby off the stage sometimes, I can tell you."
The young man followed the Interviewer's lead. "I shouldn't wonder if
you were right," he said. "I remember seeing a young fellow in Romeo
that looked a good deal like this one. But I never met the Sphinx, as
they call him, face to face. He is as shy as a woodchuck. I believe
there are people here that would give a hundred dollars to find out who
he is, and where he came from, and what he is here for, and why he does
n't act like other folks. I wonder why some of those newspaper men don't
come up here and get hold of this story. It would be just the thing for
a sensational writer."
To all this the Interviewer listened with true professional interest.
Always on the lookout for something to make up a paragraph or a column
about; driven oftentimes to the stalest of repetitions,--to the biggest
pumpkin story, the tall cornstalk, the fat ox, the live frog from the
human stomach story, the third set of teeth and reading without
spectacles at ninety story, and the rest of the marvellous commonplaces
which are kept in type with e o y or e 6 m (every other year or every
six months) at the foot; always in want of a fresh incident, a new story,
an undescribed character, an unexplained mystery, it is no wonder that
the Interviewer fastened eagerly upon this most tempting subject for an
inventive and emotional correspondent.
He had seen Paolo several times, and knew that he was Maurice's
confidential servant, but had never spoken to him. So he said to himself
that he must make Paolo's acquaintance, to begin with. In the summer
season many kinds of small traffic were always carried on in Arrowhead
Village. Among the rest, the sellers of fruits--oranges, bananas, and
others, according to the seasons--did an active business. The
Interviewer watched one of these fruit-sellers, and saw that his
hand-cart stopped opposite the house where, as he knew, Maurice Kirkwood
was living. Presently Paolo came out of the door, and began examining
the contents of the hand-cart. The Interviewer saw his opportunity.
Here was an introduction to the man, and the man must introduce him to
the master.
He knew very well how to ingratiate himself with the man,--there was no
difficulty about that. He had learned his name, and that he was an
Italian whom Maurice had brought to this country with him.
"Good morning, Mr. Paul," he said. "How do you like the look of these
oranges?"
"They pretty fair," said Paolo: "no so good as them las' week; no sweet
as them was."
"Why, how do you know without tasting them?" said the Interviewer.
"I know by his look,--I know by his smell,--he no good yaller,--he no
smell ripe,--I know orange ever since my head no bigger than he is," and
Paolo laughed at his own comparison.
The Interviewer laughed louder than Paolo.
"Good!" said he,--"first-rate! Of course you know all about 'em. Why
can't you pick me out a couple of what you think are the best of 'em? I
shall be greatly obliged to you. I have a sick friend, and I want to get
two nice sweet ones for him."
Paolo was pleased. His skill and judgment were recognized. He felt
grateful to the stranger, who had given him, an opportunity of conferring
a favor. He selected two, after careful examination and grave
deliberation. The Interviewer had sense and tact enough not to offer him
an orange, and so shift the balance of obligation.
"How is Mr. Kirkwood, to-day?" he asked.
"Signor? He very well. He always well. Why you ask? Anybody tell you
he sick?"
"No, nobody said he was sick. I have n't seen him going about for a day
or two, and I thought he might have something the matter with him. Is he
in the house now?"
"No: he off riding. He take long, long rides, sometime gone all day.
Sometime he go on lake, paddle, paddle in the morning, very, very
early,--in night when the moon shine; sometime stay in house, and read,
and study, and write,--he great scholar, Misser Kirkwood."
"A good many books, has n't he?"
"He got whole shelfs full of books. Great books, little books, old
books, new books, all sorts of books. He great scholar, I tell you."
"Has n't he some curiosities,--old figures, old jewelry, old coins, or
things of that sort?"
Paolo looked at the young man cautiously, almost suspiciously. "He don't
keep no jewels nor no money in his chamber. He got some old things,--old
jugs, old brass figgers, old money, such as they used to have in old
times: she don't pass now." Paolo's genders were apt to be somewhat
indiscriminately distributed.
A lucky thought struck the Interviewer. "I wonder if he would examine
some old coins of mine?" said he, in a modestly tentative manner.
"I think he like to see anything curious. When he come home I ask him.
Who will I tell him wants to ask him about old coin?"
"Tell him a gentleman visiting Arrowhead Village would like to call and
show him some old pieces of money, said to be Roman ones."
The Interviewer had just remembered that he had two or three old battered
bits of copper which he had picked up at a tollman's, where they had been
passed off for cents. He had bought them as curiosities. One had the
name of Gallienus upon it, tolerably distinct,--a common little Roman
penny; but it would serve his purpose of asking a question, as would two
or three others with less legible legends. Paolo told him that if he
came the next morning he would stand a fair chance of seeing Mr.
Kirkwood. At any rate, he would speak to his master.
The Interviewer presented himself the next morning, after finishing his
breakfast and his cigar, feeling reasonably sure of finding Mr. Kirkwood
at home, as he proved to be. He had told Paolo to show the stranger up
to his library,--or study, as he modestly called it.
It was a pleasant room enough, with a lookout on the lake in one
direction, and the wooded hill in another. The tenant had fitted it up
in scholarly fashion. The books Paolo spoke of were conspicuous, many of
them, by their white vellum binding and tasteful gilding, showing that
probably they had been bound in Rome, or some other Italian city. With
these were older volumes in their dark original leather, and recent ones
in cloth or paper. As the Interviewer ran his eye over them, he found
that he could make very little out of what their backs taught him. Some
of the paper-covered books, some of the cloth-covered ones, had names
which he knew; but those on the backs of many of the others were strange
to his eyes. The classics of Greek and Latin and Italian literature were
there; and he saw enough to feel convinced that he had better not attempt
to display his erudition in the company of this young scholar.
The first thing the Interviewer had to do was to account for his visiting
a person who had not asked to make his acquaintance, and who was living
as a recluse. He took out his battered coppers, and showed them to
Maurice.
"I understood that you were very skilful in antiquities, and had a good
many yourself. So I took the liberty of calling upon you, hoping that
you could tell me something about some ancient coins I have had for a
good while." So saying, he pointed to the copper with the name of
Gallienus.
"Is this very rare and valuable? I have heard that great prices have
been paid for some of these ancient coins,--ever so many guineas,
sometimes. I suppose this is as much as a thousand years old."
"More than a thousand years old," said Maurice.
"And worth a great deal of money?" asked the Interviewer.
"No, not a great deal of money," answered Maurice.
"How much, should you say?" said the Interviewer.
Maurice smiled. "A little more than the value of its weight in
copper,--I am afraid not much more. There are a good many of these coins
of Gallienus knocking about. The peddlers and the shopkeepers take such
pieces occasionally, and sell them, sometimes for five or ten cents, to
young collectors. No, it is not very precious in money value, but as a
relic any piece of money that was passed from hand to hand a thousand or
fifteen hundred years ago is interesting. The value of such relics is a
good deal a matter of imagination."
"And what do you say to these others?" asked the Interviewer. Poor old
worn-out things they were, with a letter or two only, and some faint
trace of a figure on one or two of them.
"Very interesting, always, if they carry your imagination back to the
times when you may suppose they were current. Perhaps Horace tossed one
of them to a beggar. Perhaps one of these was the coin that was brought
when One said to those about Him, 'Bring me a penny, that I may see it.'
But the market price is a different matter. That depends on the beauty
and preservation, and above all the rarity, of the specimen. Here is a
coin, now,"--he opened a small cabinet, and took one from it. "Here is a
Syracusan decadrachm with the head of Persephone, which is at once rare,
well preserved, and beautiful. I am afraid to tell what I paid for it."
The Interviewer was not an expert in numismatics. He cared very little
more for an old coin than he did for an old button, but he had thought
his purchase at the tollman's might prove a good speculation. No matter
about the battered old pieces: he had found out, at any rate, that
Maurice must have money and could be extravagant, or what he himself
considered so; also that he was familiar with ancient coins. That would
do for a beginning.
"May I ask where you picked up the coin you are showing me?" he said
"That is a question which provokes a negative answer. One does not 'pick
up' first-class coins or paintings, very often, in these times. I bought
this of a great dealer in Rome."
"Lived in Rome once?" said the Interviewer.
"For some years. Perhaps you have been there yourself?"
The Interviewer said he had never been there yet, but he hoped he should
go there, one of these years, "suppose you studied art and antiquities
while you were there?" he continued.
"Everybody who goes to Rome must learn something of art and antiquities.
Before you go there I advise you to review Roman history and the classic
authors. You had better make a study of ancient and modern art, and not
have everything to learn while you are going about among ruins, and
churches, and galleries. You know your Horace and Virgil well, I take it
for granted?"
The Interviewer hesitated. The names sounded as if he had heard them.
"Not so well as I mean to before going to Rome," he answered. "May I ask
how long you lived in Rome?"
"Long enough to know something of what is to be seen in it. No one
should go there without careful preparation beforehand. You are familiar
with Vasari, of course?"
The Interviewer felt a slight moisture on his forehead. He took out his
handkerchief. "It is a warm day," he said. "I have not had time to read
all--the works I mean to. I have had too much writing to do, myself, to
find all the time for reading and study I could have wished."
"In what literary occupation have you been engaged, if you will pardon my
inquiry? said Maurice.
"I am connected with the press. I understood that you were a man of
letters, and I hoped I might have the privilege of hearing from your own
lips some account of your literary experiences."
"Perhaps that might be interesting, but I think I shall reserve it for my
autobiography. You said you were connected with the press. Do I
understand that you are an author?"
By this time the Interviewer had come to the conclusion that it was a
very warm day. He did not seem to be getting hold of his pitcher by the
right handle, somehow. But he could not help answering Maurice's very
simple question.
"If writing for a newspaper gives one a right to be called an author, I
may call myself one. I write for the "People's Perennial and Household
Inquisitor."
"Are you the literary critic of that well-known journal, or do you manage
the political column?"
"I am a correspondent from different places and on various matters of
interest."
"Places you have been to, and people you have known?"
"Well, yes,-generally, that is. Sometimes I have to compile my
articles."
"Did you write the letter from Rome, published a few weeks ago?"
The Interviewer was in what he would call a tight place. However, he had
found that his man was too much for him, and saw that the best thing he
could do was to submit to be interviewed himself. He thought that he
should be able to pick up something or other which he could work into his
report of his visit.
"Well, I--prepared that article for our columns. You know one does not
have to see everything he describes. You found it accurate, I hope, in
its descriptions?"
"Yes, Murray is generally accurate. Sometimes he makes mistakes, but I
can't say how far you have copied them. You got the Ponte Molle--the
old Milvian bridge--a good deal too far down the stream, if I remember.
I happened to notice that, but I did not read the article carefully. May
I ask whether you propose to do me the honor of reporting this visit and
the conversation we have had, for the columns of the newspaper with which
you are connected?"
The Interviewer thought he saw an opening. "If you have no objections,"
he said, "I should like very much to ask a few questions." He was
recovering his professional audacity.
"You can ask as many questions as you consider proper and discreet,
--after you have answered one or two of mine: Who commissioned you to
submit me to examination?"
"The curiosity of the public wishes to be gratified, and I am the humble
agent of its investigations."
"What has the public to do with my private affairs?"
"I suppose it is a question of majority and minority. That settles
everything in this country. You are a minority of one opposed to a large
number of curious people that form a majority against you. That is the
way I've heard the chief put it."
Maurice could not help smiling at the quiet assumption of the American
citizen. The Interviewer smiled, too, and thought he had his man, sure,
at last. Maurice calmly answered, "There is nothing left for minorities,
then, but the right of rebellion. I don't care about being made the
subject of an article for your paper. I am here for my pleasure, minding
my own business, and content with that occupation. I rebel against your
system of forced publicity. Whenever I am ready I shall tell the public
all it has any right to know about me. In the mean time I shall request
to be spared reading my biography while I am living. I wish you a
good-morning."
The Interviewer had not taken out his note-book and pencil. In his next
communication from Arrowhead Village he contented himself with a brief
mention of the distinguished and accomplished gentleman now visiting the
place, whose library and cabinet of coins he had had the privilege of
examining, and whose courtesy was equalled only by the modesty that
shunned the public notoriety which the organs of popular intelligence
would otherwise confer upon him.
The Interviewer had attempted the riddle of the Sphinx, and had failed to
get the first hint of its solution.
The many tongues of the village and its visitors could not remain idle.
The whole subject of antipathies had been talked over, and the various
cases recorded had become more or less familiar to the conversational
circles which met every evening in the different centres of social life.
The prevalent hypothesis for the moment was that Maurice had a congenital
aversion to some color, the effects of which upon him were so painful or
disagreeable that he habitually avoided exposure to it. It was known,
and it has already been mentioned, that such cases were on record. There
had been a great deal of discussion, of late, with reference to a fact
long known to a few individuals, but only recently made a matter of
careful scientific observation and brought to the notice of the public.
This was the now well-known phenomenon of color-blindness. It did not
seem very strange that if one person in every score or two could not tell
red from green there might be other curious individual peculiarities
relating to color. A case has already been referred to where the subject
of observation fainted at the sight of any red object. What if this were
the trouble with Maurice Kirkwood? It will be seen at once how such a
congenital antipathy would tend to isolate the person who was its
unfortunate victim. It was an hypothesis not difficult to test, but it
was a rather delicate business to be experimenting on an inoffensive
stranger. Miss Vincent was thinking it over, but said nothing, even to
Euthymia, of any projects she might entertain.
XII
MISS VINCENT AS A MEDICAL STUDENT.
The young lady whom we have known as The Terror, as Lurida, as Miss
Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, had been reading various
works selected for her by Dr. Butts,--works chiefly relating to the
nervous system and its different affections. She thought it was about
time to talk over the general subject of the medical profession with her
new teacher,--if such a self-directing person as Lurida could be said to
recognize anybody as teacher.
She began at the beginning. "What is the first book you would put in a
student's hands, doctor?" she said to him one day. They were in his
study, and Lurida had just brought back a thick volume on Insanity, one
of Bucknill and Puke's, which she had devoured as if it had been a
pamphlet.
"Not that book, certainly," he said. "I am afraid it will put all sorts
of notions into your head. Who or what set you to reading that, I should
like to know?"
"I found it on one of your shelves, and as I thought I might perhaps be
crazy some time or other, I felt as if I should like to know what kind of
a condition insanity is. I don't believe they were ever very bright,
those insane people, most of them. I hope I am not stupid enough ever to
lose my wits."
"There is no telling, my dear, what may happen if you overwork that busy
brain of yours. But did n't it make you nervous, reading about so many
people possessed with such strange notions?"
"Nervous? Not a bit. I could n't help thinking, though, how many people
I had known that had a little touch of craziness about them. Take that
poor woman that says she is Her Majesty's Person,--not Her Majesty, but
Her Majesty's Person,--a very important distinction, according to her:
how she does remind me of more than one girl I have known! She would let
her skirts down so as to make a kind of train, and pile things on her
head like a sort of crown, fold her arms and throw her head back, and
feel as grand as a queen. I have seen more than one girl act very much
in that way. Are not most of us a little crazy, doctor,--just a little?
I think so. It seems to me I never saw but one girl who was free from
every hint of craziness."
"And who was that, pray?"
"Why, Euthymia,--nobody else, of course. She never loses her head,--I
don't believe she would in an earthquake. Whenever we were at work with
our microscopes at the Institute I always told her that her mind was the
only achromatic one I ever looked into,--I did n't say looked
through.---But I did n't come to talk about that. I read in one of your
books that when Sydenham was asked by a student what books he should
read, the great physician said, 'Read "Don Quixote."' I want you to
explain that to me; and then I want you to tell me what is the first
book, according to your idea, that a student ought to read."
"What do you say to my taking your question as the subject of a paper to
be read before the Society? I think there may be other young ladies at
the meeting, besides yourself, who are thinking of pursuing the study of
medicine. At any rate, there are a good many who are interested in the
subject; in fact, most people listen readily to anything doctors tell
them about their calling."
"I wish you would, doctor. I want Euthymia to hear it, and I don't doubt
there will be others who will be glad to hear everything you have to say
about it. But oh, doctor, if you could only persuade Eutbymia to become
a physician! What a doctor she would make! So strong, so calm, so full
of wisdom! I believe she could take the wheel of a steamboat in a storm,
or the hose of a fire-engine in a conflagration, and handle it as well as
the captain of the boat or of the fire-company."
"Have you ever talked with her about studying medicine?"
"Indeed I have. Oh, if she would only begin with me! What good times we
would have studying together!"
"I don't doubt it. Medicine is a very pleasant study. But how do you
think practice would be? How would you like being called up to ride ten
miles in a midnight snow-storm, just when one of your raging headaches
was racking you?"
"Oh, but we could go into partnership, and Euthymia is n't afraid of
storms or anything else. If she would only study medicine with me!"
"Well, what does she say to it?"
"She does n't like the thought of it. She does n't believe in women
doctors. She thinks that now and then a woman may be fitted for it by
nature, but she does n't think there are many who are. She gives me a
good many reasons against their practising medicine, you know what most
of them are, doctor,--and ends by saying that the same woman who would be
a poor sort of doctor would make a first-rate nurse; and that, she
thinks, is a woman's business, if her instinct carries her to the
hospital or sick-chamber. I can't argue her ideas out of her."
"Neither can I argue you out of your feeling about the matter; but I am
disposed to agree with your friend, that you will often spoil a good
nurse to make a poor doctor. Doctors and side-saddles don't seem to me
to go together. Riding habits would be awkward things for practitioners.
But come, we won't have a controversy just now. I am for giving women
every chance for a good education, and if they think medicine is one of
their proper callings let them try it. I think they will find that they
had better at least limit themselves to certain specialties, and always
have an expert of the other sex to fall back upon. The trouble is that
they are so impressible and imaginative that they are at the mercy of all
sorts of fancy systems. You have only to see what kinds of instruction
they very commonly flock to in order to guess whether they would be
likely to prove sensible practitioners. Charlatanism always hobbles on
two crutches, the tattle of women, and the certificates of clergymen, and
I am afraid that half the women doctors will be too much under both those
influences."
Lurida believed in Dr. Butts, who, to use the common language of the
village, had "carried her through" a fever, brought on by over-excitement
and exhausting study. She took no offence at his reference to nursery
gossip, which she had learned to hold cheap. Nobody so despises the
weaknesses of women as the champion of woman's rights. She accepted the
doctor's concession of a fair field and open trial of the fitness of her
sex for medical practice, and did not trouble herself about his suggested
limitations. As to the imaginative tendencies of women, she knew too
well the truth of the doctor's remark relating to them to wish to
contradict it.
"Be sure you let me have your paper in season for the next meeting,
doctor," she said; and in due season it came, and was of course approved
for reading.
XIII
DR. BUTTS READS A PAPER.
"Next to the interest we take in all that relates to our immortal souls
is that which we feel for our mortal bodies. I am afraid my very first
statement may be open to criticism. The care of the body is the first
thought with a great many,--in fact, with the larger part of the world.
They send for the physician first, and not until he gives them up do they
commonly call in the clergyman. Even the minister himself is not so very
different from other people. We must not blame him if he is not always
impatient to exchange a world of multiplied interests and ever-changing
sources of excitement for that which tradition has delivered to us as one
eminently deficient in the stimulus of variety. Besides, these bodily
frames, even when worn and disfigured by long years of service, hang
about our consciousness like old garments. They are used to us, and we
are used to them. And all the accidents of our lives,--the house we dwell
in, the living people round us, the landscape we look over, all, up to
the sky that covers us like a bell glass,--all these are but looser
outside garments which we have worn until they seem a part of us, and we
do not like the thought of changing them for a new suit which we have
never yet tried on. How well I remember that dear ancient lady, who
lived well into the last decade of her century, as she repeated the verse
which, if I had but one to choose, I would select from that string of
pearls, Gray's 'Elegy'!
"'For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey
This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?'
"Plotinus was ashamed of his body, we are told. Better so, it may be,
than to live solely for it, as so many do. But it may be well doubted if
there is any disciple of Plotinus in this Society. On the contrary,
there are many who think a great deal of their bodies, many who have come
here to regain the health they have lost in the wear and tear of city
life, and very few who have not at some time or other of their lives had
occasion to call in the services of a physician.
"There is, therefore, no impropriety in my offering to the members some
remarks upon the peculiar difficulties which beset the medical
practitioner in the discharge of his laborious and important duties.
"A young friend of mine, who has taken an interest in medical studies,
happened to meet with a very familiar story about one of the greatest and
most celebrated of all English physicians, Thomas Sydenham. The story is
that, when a student asked him what books he should read, the great
doctor told him to read 'Don Quixote.'
"This piece of advice has been used to throw contempt upon the study of
books, and furnishes a convenient shield for ignorant pretenders. But
Sydenham left many writings in which he has recorded his medical
experience, and he surely would not have published them if he had not
thought they would be better reading for the medical student than the
story of Cervantes. His own works are esteemed to this day, and he
certainly could not have supposed that they contained all the wisdom of
all the past. No remedy is good, it was said of old, unless applied at
the right time in the right way. So we may say of all anecdotes, like
this which I have told you about Sydenham and the young man. It is very
likely that he carried him to the bedside of some patients, and talked to
him about the cases he showed him, instead of putting a Latin volume in
his hand. I would as soon begin in that way as any other, with a student
who had already mastered the preliminary branches,--who knew enough about
the structure and functions of the body in health.
"But if you ask me what reading I would commend to the medical student of
a philosophical habit of mind, you may be surprised to hear me say it
would be certain passages in 'Rasselas.' They are the ones where the
astronomer gives an account to Imlac of his management of the elements,
the control of which, as he had persuaded himself, had been committed to
him. Let me read you a few sentences from this story, which is commonly
bound up with the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' like a woollen lining to a silken
mantle, but is full of stately wisdom in processions of paragraphs which
sound as if they ought to have a grammatical drum-major to march before
their tramping platoons.
"The astronomer has taken Imlac into his confidence, and reveals to him
the secret of his wonderful powers:--
"'Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit. I have
possessed for five years the regulation of the weather and the
distribution of the seasons the sun has listened to my dictates, and
passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call,
have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command; I
have restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated the fervors of
the crab. The winds alone, of all the elemental powers, have hitherto
eluded my authority, and multitudes have perished by equinoctial
tempests, which I found myself unable to prohibit or restrain.'
"The reader naturally wishes to know how the astronomer, a sincere,
devoted, and most benevolent man, for forty years a student of the
heavens, came to the strange belief that he possessed these miraculous
powers. This is his account:
"'One day, as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt in
my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern mountains,
and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my imagination I
commanded rain to fall, and by comparing the time of my command with that
of the inundation I found that the clouds had listened to my lips.'
"'Might not some other cause,' said I, 'produce this concurrence? The
Nile does not always rise on the same day.'
"'Do not believe,' said he, with impatience, I that such objections could
escape me: I reasoned long against my own conviction, and labored against
truth with the utmost obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of
madness, and should not have dared to impart this secret but to a man
like you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the impossible and
the incredible from the false.'
"The good old astronomer gives his parting directions to Imlac, whom he
has adopted as his successor in the government of the elements and the
seasons, in these impressive words:
"Do not, in the administration of the year, indulge thy pride by
innovation; do not please thyself with thinking that thou canst make
thyself renowned to all future ages by disordering the seasons. The
memory of mischief is no desirable fame. Much less will it become thee
to let kindness or interest prevail. Never rob other countries of rain
to pour it on thine own. For us the Nile is sufficient.'
"Do you wonder, my friends, why I have chosen these passages, in which
the delusions of an insane astronomer are related with all the pomp of
the Johnsonian vocabulary, as the first lesson for the young person about
to enter on the study of the science and art of healing? Listen to me
while I show you the parallel of the story of the astronomer in the
history of medicine.
"This history is luminous with intelligence, radiant with benevolence,
but all its wisdom and all its virtue have had to struggle with the
ever-rising mists of delusion. The agencies which waste and destroy the
race of mankind are vast and resistless as the elemental forces of
nature; nay, they are themselves elemental forces. They may be to some
extent avoided, to some extent diverted from their aim, to some extent
resisted. So may the changes of the seasons, from cold that freezes to
heats that strike with sudden death, be guarded against. So may the
tides be in some small measure restrained in their inroads. So may the
storms be breasted by walls they cannot shake from their foundations.
But the seasons and the tides and the tempests work their will on the
great scale upon whatever stands in their way; they feed or starve the
tillers of the soil; they spare or drown the dwellers by the shore; they
waft the seaman to his harbor or bury him in the angry billows.
"The art of the physician can do much to remove its subjects from deadly
and dangerous influences, and something to control or arrest the effects
of these influences. But look at the records of the life-insurance
offices, and see how uniform is the action of nature's destroying
agencies. Look at the annual reports of the deaths in any of our great
cities, and see how their regularity approaches the uniformity of the
tides, and their variations keep pace with those of the seasons. The
inundations of the Nile are not more certainly to be predicted than the
vast wave of infantile disease which flows in upon all our great cities
with the growing heats of July,--than the fevers and dysenteries which
visit our rural districts in the months of the falling leaf.
"The physician watches these changes as the astronomer watched the rise
of the great river. He longs to rescue individuals, to protect
communities from the inroads of these destroying agencies. He uses all
the means which experience has approved, tries every rational method
which ingenuity can suggest. Some fortunate recovery leads him to
believe he has hit upon a preventive or a cure for a malady which had
resisted all known remedies. His rescued patient sounds his praises, and
a wide circle of his patient's friends joins in a chorus of eulogies.
Self-love applauds him for his sagacity. Self-interest congratulates him
on his having found the road to fortune; the sense of having proved a
benefactor of his race smooths the pillow on which he lays his head to
dream of the brilliant future opening before him. If a single
coincidence may lead a person of sanguine disposition to believe that he
has mastered a disease which had baffled all who were before his time,
and on which his contemporaries looked in hopeless impotence, what must
be the effect of a series of such coincidences even on a mind of calmer
temper! Such series of coincidences will happen, and they may well
deceive the very elect. Think of Dr. Rush,--you know what a famous man
he was, the very head and front of American medical science in his day,
--and remember how he spoke about yellow fever, which he thought he had
mastered!
"Thus the physician is entangled in the meshes of a wide conspiracy, in
which he and his patient and their friends, and-Nature herself, are
involved. What wonder that the history of Medicine should be to so great
an extent a record of self-delusion!
"If this seems a dangerous concession to the enemies of the true science
and art of healing, I will remind you that it is all implied in the first
aphorism of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine. Do not draw a wrong
inference from the frank statement of the difficulties which beset the
medical practitioner. Think rather, if truth is so hard of attainment,
how precious are the results which the consent of the wisest and most
experienced among the healers of men agrees in accepting. Think what
folly it is to cast them aside in favor of palpable impositions stolen
from the records of forgotten charlatanism, or of fantastic speculations
spun from the squinting brains of theorists as wild as the Egyptian
astronomer.
"Begin your medical studies, then, by reading the fortieth and the
following four chapters of 'Rasselas.' Your first lesson will teach you
modesty and caution in the pursuit of the most deceptive of all practical
branches of knowledge. Faith will come later, when you learn how much
medical science and art have actually achieved for the relief of mankind,
and how great are the promises it holds out of still larger triumphs over
the enemies of human health and happiness."
After the reading of this paper there was a lively discussion, which we
have no room to report here, and the Society adjourned.
XIV
MISS VINCENT'S STARTLING DISCOVERY.
The sober-minded, sensible, well-instructed Dr. Butts was not a little
exercised in mind by the demands made upon his knowledge by his young
friend, and for the time being his pupil, Miss Lurida Vincent.
"I don't wonder they called her The Terror," he said to himself. "She is
enough to frighten anybody. She has taken down old books from my shelves
that I had almost forgotten the backs of, and as to the medical journals,
I believe the girl could index them from memory. She is in pursuit of
some special point of knowledge, I feel sure, and I cannot doubt what
direction she is working in, but her wonderful way of dealing with books
amazes me."
What marvels those "first scholars" in the classes of our great
universities and colleges are, to be sure! They are not, as a rule, the
most distinguished of their class in the long struggle of life. The
chances are that "the field" will beat "the favorite" over the long
race-course. Others will develop a longer stride and more staying power.
But what fine gifts those "first scholars" have received from nature!
How dull we writers, famous or obscure, are in the acquisition of
knowledge as compared with them! To lead their classmates they must have
quick apprehension, fine memories, thorough control of their mental
faculties, strong will, power of concentration, facility of
expression,--a wonderful equipment of mental faculties. I always want to
take my hat off to the first scholar of his year.
Dr. Butts felt somewhat in the same way as he contemplated The Terror.
She surprised him so often with her knowledge that he was ready to
receive her without astonishment when she burst in upon him one allay
with a cry of triumph, "Eureka! Eureka!"
"And what have you found, my dear?" said the doctor.
Lurida was flushed and panting with the excitement of her new discovery.
"I do believe that I have found the secret of our strange visitor's dread
of all human intercourse!"
The seasoned practitioner was not easily thrown off his balance.
"Wait a minute and get your breath," said the doctor. "Are you not a
little overstating his peculiarity? It is not quite so bad as that. He
keeps a man to serve him, he was civil with the people at the Old Tavern,
he was affable enough, I understand, with the young fellow he pulled out
of the water, or rescued somehow,--I don't believe be avoids the whole
human race. He does not look as if he hated them, so far as I have
remarked his expression. I passed a few words with him when his man was
ailing, and found him polite enough. No, I don't believe it is much more
than an extreme case of shyness, connected, perhaps, with some congenital
or other personal repugnance to which has been given the name of an
antipathy."
Lurida could hardly keep still while the doctor was speaking. When he
finished, she began the account of her discovery:
"I do certainly believe I have found an account of his case in an Italian
medical journal of about fourteen years ago. I met with a reference
which led me to look over a file of the Giornale degli Ospitali lying
among the old pamphlets in the medical section of the Library. I have
made a translation of it, which you must read and then tell me if you do
not agree with me in my conclusion."
"Tell me what your conclusion is, and I will read your paper and see for
myself whether I think the evidence justifies the conviction you seem to
have reached."
Lurida's large eyes showed their whole rounds like the two halves of a
map of the world, as she said,
"I believe that Maurice Kirkwood is suffering from the effects of the
bite of a TARANTULA!"
The doctor drew a long breath. He remembered in a vague sort of way the
stories which used to be told of the terrible Apulian spider, but he had
consigned them to the limbo of medical fable where so many fictions have
clothed themselves with a local habitation and a name. He looked into the
round eyes and wide pupils a little anxiously, as if he feared that she
was in a state of undue excitement, but, true to his professional
training, he waited for another symptom, if indeed her mind was in any
measure off its balance.
"I know what you are thinking," Lurida said, "but it is not so. 'I am
not mad, most noble Festus.' You shall see the evidence and judge for
yourself. Read the whole case,--you can read my hand almost as if it
were print, and tell me if you do not agree with me that this young man
is in all probability the same person as the boy described in the Italian
journal,
"One thing you might say is against the supposition. The young patient
is spoken of as Signorino M . . . Ch. . . . But you must remember
that ch is pronounced hard in Italian, like k, which letter is wanting in
the Italian alphabet; and it is natural enough that the initial of the
second name should have got changed in the record to its Italian
equivalent."
Before inviting the reader to follow the details of this extraordinary
case as found in a medical journal, the narrator wishes to be indulged in
a few words of explanation, in order that he may not have to apologize
for allowing the introduction of a subject which may be thought to belong
to the professional student rather than to the readers of this record.
There is a great deal in medical books which it is very unbecoming to
bring before the general public,--a great deal to repel, to disgust, to
alarm, to excite unwholesome curiosity. It is not the men whose duties
have made them familiar with this class of subjects who are most likely
to offend by scenes and descriptions which belong to the physician's
private library, and not to the shelves devoted to polite literature.
Goldsmith and even Smollett, both having studied and practised medicine,
could not by any possibility have outraged all the natural feelings of
delicacy and decency as Swift and Zola have outraged them. But without
handling doubtful subjects, there are many curious medical experiences
which have interest for every one as extreme illustrations of ordinary
conditions with which all are acquainted. No one can study the now
familiar history of clairvoyance profitably who has not learned something
of the vagaries of hysteria. No one can read understandingly the life of
Cowper and that of Carlyle without having some idea of the influence of
hypochondriasis and of dyspepsia upon the disposition and intellect of
the subjects of these maladies. I need not apologize, therefore, for
giving publicity to that part of this narrative which deals with one of
the most singular maladies to be found in the records of bodily and
mental infirmities.
The following is the account of the case as translated by Miss Vincent.
For obvious reasons the whole name was not given in the original paper,
and for similar reasons the date of the event and the birthplace of the
patient are not precisely indicated here.
[Giornale degli Ospitali, Luglio 21, 18-.]
REMARKABLE CASE OF TARANTISM.
"The great interest attaching to the very singular and exceptional
instance of this rare affection induces us to give a full account of the
extraordinary example of its occurrence in a patient who was the subject
of a recent medical consultation in this city.
"Signorino M . . . Ch . . . is the only son of a gentleman
travelling in Italy at this time. He is eleven years of age, of
sanguine-nervous temperament, light hair, blue eyes, intelligent
countenance, well grown, but rather slight in form, to all appearance in
good health, but subject to certain peculiar and anomalous nervous
symptoms, of which his father gives this history.
"Nine years ago, the father informs us, he was travelling in Italy with
his wife, this child, and a nurse. They were passing a few days in a
country village near the city of Bari, capital of the province of the
same name in the division (compartamento) of Apulia. The child was in
perfect health and had never been affected by any serious illness. On
the 10th of July he was playing out in the field near the house where the
family was staying when he was heard to scream suddenly and violently.
The nurse rushing to him found him in great pain, saying that something
had bitten him in one of his feet. A laborer, one Tommaso, ran up at the
moment and perceived in the grass, near where the boy was standing, an
enormous spider, which he at once recognized as a tarantula. He managed
to catch the creature in a large leaf, from which he was afterwards
transferred to a wide-mouthed bottle, where he lived without any food for
a month or more. The creature was covered with short hairs, and had a
pair of nipper-like jaws, with which he could inflict an ugly wound. His
body measured about an inch in length, and from the extremity of one of
the longest limbs to the other was between two and three inches. Such was
the account given by the physician to whom the peasant carried the great
spider.
"The boy who had been bitten continued screaming violently while his
stocking was being removed and the foot examined. The place of the bite
was easily found and the two marks of the claw-like jaws already showed
the effects of the poison, a small livid circle extending around them,
with some puffy swelling. The distinguished Dr. Amadei was immediately
sent for, and applied cups over the wounds in the hope of drawing forth
the poison. In vain all his skill and efforts! Soon, ataxic (irregular)
nervous symptoms declared themselves, and it became plain that the system
had been infected by the poison.
"The symptoms were very much like those of malignant fever, such as
distress about the region of the heart, difficulty of breathing, collapse
of all the vital powers, threatening immediate death. From these first
symptoms the child rallied, but his entire organism had been profoundly
affected by the venom circulating through it. His constitution has never
thrown off the malady resulting from this toxic (poisonous) agent. The
phenomena which have been observed in this young patient correspond so
nearly with those enumerated in the elaborate essay of the celebrated
Baglivi that one might think they had been transcribed from his pages.
"He is very fond of solitude,--of wandering about in churchyards and
other lonely places. He was once found hiding in an empty tomb, which
had been left open. His aversion to certain colors is remarkable.
Generally speaking, he prefers bright tints to darker ones, but his likes
and dislikes are capricious, and with regard to some colors his antipathy
amounts to positive horror. Some shades have such an effect upon him
that he cannot remain in the room with them, and if he meets any one
whose dress has any of that particular color he will turn away or retreat
so as to avoid passing that person. Among these, purple and dark green
are the least endurable. He cannot explain the sensations which these
obnoxious colors produce except by saying that it is like the deadly
feeling from a blow on the epigastrium (pit of the stomach).
"About the same season of the year at which the tarantular poisoning took
place he is liable to certain nervous seizures, not exactly like fainting
or epilepsy, but reminding the physician of those affections. All the
other symptoms are aggravated at this time.
"In other respects than those mentioned the boy is in good health. He is
fond of riding, and has a pony on which he takes a great deal of
exercise, which seems to do him more good than any other remedy.
"The influence of music, to which so much has been attributed by popular
belief and even by the distinguished Professor to whom we shall again
refer, has not as yet furnished any satisfactory results. If the graver
symptoms recur while the patient is under our observation, we propose to
make use of an agency discredited by modern skepticism, but deserving of
a fair trial as an exceptional remedy for an exceptional disease.
"The following extracts from the work of the celebrated Italian physician
of the last century are given by the writer of the paper in the Giornale
in the original Latin, with a translation into Italian, subjoined. Here
are the extracts, or rather here is a selection from them, with a
translation of them into English.
"After mentioning the singular aversion to certain colors shown by the
subject of Tarantism, Baglivi writes as follows: "'Et si astantes
incedant vestibus eo colore difusis, qui Tarantatis ingrates est, necesse
est ut ab illorum aspectu recedant; nam ad intuitum molesti coloris
angore cordis, et symptomatum recrudescantia stating corripiuntur.' (G.
Baglivi, Op. Omnia, page 614. Lugduni, 1745.)
"That is, 'if the persons about the patient wear dresses of the color
which is offensive to him, he must get away from the sight of them, for
on seeing the obnoxious color he is at once seized with distress in the
region of the heart, and a renewal of his symptoms.'
"As to the recurrence of the malady, Baglivi says: "'Dam calor solis
ardentius exurere incip at, quod contingit circa initia Julii et Augusti,
Tarantati lente venientem recrudescentiam veneni percipiunt.' (Ibid.,
page 619.)
"Which I render, 'When the heat of the sun begins to burn more fiercely,
which happens about the beginning of July and August, the subjects of
Tarantism perceive the gradually approaching recrudescence (returning
symptoms) of the poisoning. Among the remedies most valued by this
illustrious physician is that mentioned in the following sentence:
"'Laudo magnopere equitationes in aere rusticano factas singulis diebus,
hord potissimum matutina, quibus equitationibus morbos chronicos pene
incurabiles protanus eliminavi.'
"Or in translation, 'I commend especially riding on horseback in country
air, every day, by preference in the morning hours, by the aid of which
horseback riding I have driven off chronic diseases which were almost
incurable.'"
Miss Vincent read this paper aloud to Dr. Butts, and handed it to him to
examine and consider. He listened with a grave countenance and devout
attention.
As she finished reading her account, she exclaimed in the passionate
tones of the deepest conviction,
"There, doctor! Have n't I found the true story of this strange visitor?
Have n't I solved the riddle of the Sphinx? Who can this man be but the
boy of that story? Look at the date of the journal when he was eleven
years old, it would make him twenty-five now, and that is just about the
age the people here think he must be of. What could account so entirely
for his ways and actions as that strange poisoning which produces the
state they call Tarantism? I am just as sure it must be that as I am
that I am alive. Oh, doctor, doctor, I must be right,--this Signprino M
. . . Ch . . . was the boy Maurice Kirkwood, and the story accounts
for everything,--his solitary habits, his dread of people,--it must be
because they wear the colors he can't bear. His morning rides on
horseback, his coming here just as the season was approaching which would
aggravate all his symptoms, does n't all this prove that I must be right
in my conjecture,--no, my conviction?"
The doctor knew too much to interrupt the young enthusiast, and so he let
her run on until she ran down. He was more used to the rules of evidence
than she was, and could not accept her positive conclusion so readily as
she would have liked to have him. He knew that beginners are very apt to
make what they think are discoveries. But he had been an angler and knew
the meaning of a yielding rod and an easy-running reel. He said quietly,
"You are a most sagacious young lady, and a very pretty prima facie case
it is that you make out. I can see no proof that Mr. Kirkwood is not the
same person as the M . . . Ch . . . of the medical journal,--that
is, if I accept your explanation of the difference in the initials of
these two names. Even if there were a difference, that would not
disprove their identity, for the initials of patients whose cases are
reported by their physicians are often altered for the purpose of
concealment. I do not know, however, that Mr. Kirkwood has shown any
special aversion to any particular color. It might be interesting to
inquire whether it is so, but it is a delicate matter. I don't exactly
see whose business it is to investigate Mr. Maurice Kirkwood's
idiosyncrasies and constitutional history. If he should have occasion to
send for me at any time, he might tell me all about himself, in
confidence, you know. These old accounts from Baglivi are curious and
interesting, but I am cautious about receiving any stories a hundred
years old, if they involve an improbability, as his stories about the
cure of the tarantula bite by music certainly do. I am disposed to wait
for future developments, bearing in mind, of course, the very singular
case you have unearthed. It wouldn't be very strange if our young
gentleman had to send for me before the season is over. He is out a good
deal before the dew is off the grass, which is rather risky in this
neighborhood as autumn comes on. I am somewhat curious, I confess, about
the young man, but I do not meddle where I am not asked for or wanted,
and I have found that eggs hatch just as well if you let them alone in
the nest as if you take them out and shake them every day. This is a
wonderfully interesting supposition of yours, and may prove to be
strictly in accordance with the facts. But I do not think we have all
the facts in this young man's case. If it were proved that he had an
aversion to any color, it would greatly strengthen your case. His
'antipatia,' as his man called it, must be one which covers a wide
ground, to account for his self-isolation,--and the color hypothesis
seems as plausible as any. But, my dear Miss Vincent, I think you had
better leave your singular and striking hypothesis in my keeping for a
while, rather than let it get abroad in a community like this, where so
many tongues are in active exercise. I will carefully study this paper,
if you will leave it with me, and we will talk the whole matter over. It
is a fair subject for speculation, only we must keep quiet about it."
This long speech gave Lurida's perfervid brain time to cool off a little.
She left the paper with the doctor, telling him she would come for it the
next day, and went off to tell the result of this visit to her bosom
friend, Miss Euthymia Tower.
XV
DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA.
The doctor was troubled in thinking over his interview with the young
lady. She was fully possessed with the idea that she had discovered the
secret which had defied the most sagacious heads of the village. It was
of no use to oppose her while her mind was in an excited state. But he
felt it his duty to guard her against any possible results of
indiscretion into which her eagerness and her theory of the equality,
almost the identity, of the sexes might betray her. Too much of the woman
in a daughter of our race leads her to forget danger. Too little of the
woman prompts her to defy it. Fortunately for this last class of women,
they are not quite so likely to be perilously seductive as their more
emphatically feminine sisters.
Dr. Butts had known Lurida and her friend from the days of their infancy.
He had watched the development of Lurida's intelligence from its
precocious nursery-life to the full vigor of its trained faculties. He
had looked with admiration on the childish beauty of Euthymia, and had
seen her grow up to womanhood, every year making her more attractive. He
knew that if anything was to be done with his self-willed young scholar
and friend, it would be more easily effected through the medium of
Euthymia than by direct advice to the young lady herself. So the
thoughtful doctor made up his mind to have a good talk with Euthymia, and
put her on her guard, if Lurida showed any tendency to forget the
conventionalities in her eager pursuit of knowledge.
For the doctor's horse and chaise to stop at the door of Miss Euthymia
Tower's parental home was an event strange enough to set all the tongues
in the village going. This was one of those families where illness was
hardly looked for among the possibilities of life. There were other
families where a call from the doctor was hardly more thought of than a
call from the baker. But here he was a stranger, at least on his
professional rounds, and when he asked for Miss Euthymia the servant, who
knew his face well, stared as if he had held in his hand a warrant for
her apprehension.
Euthymia did not keep the doctor waiting very long while she made ready
to meet him. One look at her glass to make sure that a lock had not run
astray, or a ribbon got out of place, and her toilet for a morning call
was finished. Perhaps if Mr. Maurice Kirkwood had been announced, she
might have taken a second look, but with the good middle-aged, married
doctor one was enough for a young lady who had the gift of making all the
dresses she wore look well, and had no occasion to treat her chamber like
the laboratory where an actress compounds herself.
Euthymia welcomed the doctor very heartily. She could not help
suspecting his errand, and she was very glad to have a chance to talk
over her friend's schemes and fancies with him.
The doctor began without any roundabout prelude.
"I want to confer with you about our friend Lurida. Does she tell you
all her plans and projects?"
"Why, as to that, doctor, I can hardly say, positively, but I do not
believe she keeps back anything of importance from me. I know what she
has been busy with lately, and the queer idea she has got into her head.
What do you think of the Tarantula business? She has shown you the
paper, she has written, I suppose."
"Indeed she has. It is a very curious case she has got hold of, and I do
not wonder at all that she should have felt convinced that she had come
at the true solution of the village riddle. It may be that this young
man is the same person as the boy mentioned in the Italian medical
journal. But it is very far from clear that he is so. You know all her
reasons, of course, as you have read the story. The times seem to agree
well enough. It is easy to conceive that Ch might be substituted for K
in the report. The singular solitary habits of this young man entirely
coincide with the story. If we could only find out whether he has any of
those feelings with reference to certain colors, we might guess with more
chance of guessing right than we have at present. But I don't see
exactly how we are going to submit him to examination on this point. If
he were only a chemical compound, we could analyze him. If he were only
a bird or a quadruped, we could find out his likes and dislikes. But
being, as he is, a young man, with ways of his own, and a will of his
own, which he may not choose to have interfered with, the problem becomes
more complicated. I hear that a newspaper correspondent has visited him
so as to make a report to his paper,--do you know what he found out?"
"Certainly I do, very well. My brother has heard his own story, which
was this: He found out he had got hold of the wrong person to interview.
The young gentleman, he says, interviewed him, so that he did not learn
much about the Sphinx. But the newspaper man told Willy about the
Sphinx's library and a cabinet of coins he had; and said he should make
an article out of him, anyhow. I wish the man would take himself off. I
am afraid Lurida's love of knowledge will get her into trouble!"
"Which of the men do you wish would take himself off?"
"I was thinking of the newspaper man."
She blushed a little as she said, "I can't help feeling a strange sort of
interest about the other, Mr. Kirkwood. Do you know that I met him this
morning, and had a good look at him, full in the face?"
"Well, to be sure! That was an interesting experience. And how did you
like his looks?"
"I thought his face a very remarkable one. But he looked very pale as he
passed me, and I noticed that he put his hand to his left side as if he
had a twinge of pain, or something of that sort,--spasm or neuralgia,--I
don't know what. I wondered whether he had what you call angina
pectoris. It was the same kind of look and movement, I remember, as you
trust, too, in my uncle who died with that complaint."
The doctor was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "Were you dressed as
you are now?"
"Yes, I was, except that I had a thin mantle over my shoulders. I was
out early, and I have always remembered your caution."
"What color was your mantle?"
"It was black. I have been over all this with Lucinda. A black mantle
on a white dress. A straw hat with an old faded ribbon. There can't be
much in those colors to trouble him, I should think, for his man wears a
black coat and white linen,--more or less white, as you must have
noticed, and he must have seen ribbons of all colors often enough. But
Lurida believes it was the ribbon, or something in the combination of
colors. Her head is full of Tarantulas and Tarantism. I fear that she
will never be easy until the question is settled by actual trial. And
will you believe it? the girl is determined in some way to test her
supposition!"
"Believe it, Euthymia? I can believe almost anything of Lurida. She is
the most irrepressible creature I ever knew. You know as well as I do
what a complete possession any ruling idea takes of her whole nature. I
have had some fears lest her zeal might run away with her discretion. It
is a great deal easier to get into a false position than to get out of
it."
"I know it well enough. I want you to tell me what you think about the
whole business. I don't like the look of it at all, and yet I can do
nothing with the girl except let her follow her fancy, until I can show
her plainly that she will get herself into trouble in some way or other.
But she is ingenious,--full of all sorts of devices, innocent enough in
themselves, but liable to be misconstrued. You remember how she won us
the boat-race?"
"To be sure I do. It was rather sharp practice, but she felt she was
paying off an old score. The classical story of Atalanta, told, like
that of Eve, as illustrating the weakness of woman, provoked her to make
trial of the powers of resistance in the other sex. But it was
audacious. I hope her audacity will not go too far. You must watch her.
Keep an eye on her correspondence."
The doctor had great confidence in the good sense of Lurida's friend. He
felt sure that she would not let Lurida commit herself by writing foolish
letters to the subject of her speculations, or similar indiscreet
performances. The boldness of young girls, who think no evil, in opening
correspondence with idealized personages is something quite astonishing
to those who have had an opportunity of knowing the facts. Lurida had
passed the most dangerous age, but her theory of the equality of the
sexes made her indifferent to the by-laws of social usage. She required
watching, and her two guardians were ready to check her, in case of need.
XVI
MISS VINCENT WRITES A LETTER.
Euthymia noticed that her friend had been very much preoccupied for two
or three days. She found her more than once busy at her desk, with a
manuscript before her, which she turned over and placed inside the desk,
as Euthymia entered.
This desire of concealment was not what either of the friends expected to
see in the other. It showed that some project was under way, which, at
least in its present stage, the Machiavellian young lady did not wish to
disclose. It had cost her a good deal of thought and care, apparently,
for her waste-basket was full of scraps of paper, which looked as if they
were the remains of a manuscript like that at which she was at work.
"Copying and recopying, probably," thought Euthymia, but she was willing
to wait to learn what Lurida was busy about, though she had a suspicion
that it was something in which she might feel called upon to interest
herself.
"Do you know what I think?" said Euthymia to the doctor, meeting him as
he left his door. "I believe Lurida is writing to this man, and I don't
like the thought of her doing such a thing. Of course she is not like
other girls in many respects, but other people will judge her by the
common rules of life."
"I am glad that you spoke of it," answered the doctor; "she would write
to him just as quickly as to any woman of his age. Besides, under the
cover of her office, she has got into the way of writing to anybody. I
think she has already written to Mr. Kirkwood, asking him to contribute a
paper for the Society. She can find a pretext easily enough if she has
made up her mind to write. In fact, I doubt if she would trouble herself
for any pretext at all if she decided to write. Watch her well. Don't
let any letter go without seeing it, if you can help it."
Young women are much given to writing letters to persons whom they only
know indirectly, for the most part through their books, and especially to
romancers and poets. Nothing can be more innocent and simple-hearted
than most of these letters. They are the spontaneous outflow of young
hearts easily excited to gratitude for the pleasure which some story or
poem has given them, and recognizing their own thoughts, their own
feelings, in those expressed by the author, as if on purpose for them to
read. Undoubtedly they give great relief to solitary young persons, who
must have some ideal reflection of themselves, and know not where to look
since Protestantism has taken away the crucifix and the Madonna. The
recipient of these letters sometimes wonders, after reading through one
of them, how it is that his young correspondent has managed to fill so
much space with her simple message of admiration or of sympathy.
Lurida did not belong to this particular class of correspondents, but she
could not resist the law of her sex, whose thoughts naturally surround
themselves with superabundant drapery of language, as their persons float
in a wide superfluity of woven tissues. Was she indeed writing to this
unknown gentleman? Euthymia questioned her point-blank.
"Are you going to open a correspondence with Mr. Maurice Kirkwood,
Lurida? You seem to be so busy writing, I can think of nothing else. Or
are you going to write a novel, or a paper for the Society,--do tell me
what you are so much taken up with."
"I will tell you, Euthymia, if you will promise not to find fault with me
for carrying out my plan as I have made up my mind to do. You may read
this letter before I seal it, and if you find anything in it you don't
like you can suggest any change that you think will improve it. I hope
you will see that it explains itself. I don't believe that you will find
anything to frighten you in it."
This is the letter, as submitted to Miss Tower by her friend. The bold
handwriting made it look like a man's letter, and gave it consequently a
less dangerous expression than that which belongs to the tinted and often
fragrant sheet with its delicate thready characters, which slant across
the page like an April shower with a south wind chasing it.
ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August--, 18--.
MY DEAR SIR,--You will doubtless be surprised at the sight of a letter
like this from one whom you only know as the Secretary of the Pansophian
Society. There is a very common feeling that it is unbecoming in one of
my sex to address one of your own with whom she is unacquainted, unless
she has some special claim upon his attention. I am by no means disposed
to concede to the vulgar prejudice on this point. If one human being has
anything to communicate to another,--anything which deserves being
communicated,--I see no occasion for bringing in the question of sex. I
do not think the homo sum of Terence can be claimed for the male sex as
its private property on general any more than on grammatical grounds,
I have sometimes thought of devoting myself to the noble art of healing.
If I did so, it would be with the fixed purpose of giving my whole powers
to the service of humanity. And if I should carry out that idea, should
I refuse my care and skill to a suffering fellow-mortal because that
mortal happened to be a brother, and not a sister? My whole nature
protests against such one-sided humanity! No! I am blind to all
distinctions when my eyes are opened to any form of suffering, to any
spectacle of want.
You may ask me why I address you, whom I know little or nothing of, and
to whom such an advance may seem presumptuous and intrusive. It is
because I was deeply impressed by the paper which I attributed to
you,--that on Ocean, River, and Lake, which was read at one of our
meetings. I say that I was deeply impressed, but I do not mean this as a
compliment to that paper. I am not bandying compliments now, but
thinking of better things than praises or phrases. I was interested in
the paper, partly because I recognized some of the feelings expressed in
it as my own,--partly because there was an undertone of sadness in all
the voices of nature as you echoed them which made me sad to hear, and
which I could not help longing to cheer and enliven. I said to myself, I
should like to hold communion with the writer of that paper. I have had
my lonely hours and days, as he has had. I have had some of his
experiences in my intercourse with nature. And oh! if I could draw him
into those better human relations which await us all, if we come with the
right dispositions, I should blush if I stopped to inquire whether I
violated any conventional rule or not.
You will understand me, I feel sure. You believe, do you not? in the
insignificance of the barrier which divides the sisterhood from the
brotherhood of mankind. You believe, do you not? that they should be
educated side by side, that they should share the same pursuits, due
regard being had to the fitness of the particular individual for hard or
light work, as it must always be, whether we are dealing with the
"stronger" or the "weaker" sex. I mark these words because,
notwithstanding their common use, they involve so much that is not true.
Stronger! Yes, to lift a barrel of flour, or a barrel of cider,--though
there have been women who could do that, and though when John Wesley was
mobbed in Staffordshire a woman knocked down three or four men, one after
another, until she was at last overpowered and nearly murdered. Talk
about the weaker sex! Go and see Miss Euthymia Tower at the gymnasium!
But no matter about which sex has the strongest muscles. Which has most
to suffer, and which has most endurance and vitality? We go through many
ordeals which you are spared, but we outlast you in mind and body. I
have been led away into one of my accustomed trains of thought, but not
so far away from it as you might at first suppose.
My brother! Are you not ready to recognize in me a friend, an equal, a
sister, who can speak to you as if she had been reared under the same
roof? And is not the sky that covers us one roof, which makes us all one
family? You are lonely, you must be longing for some human fellowship.
Take me into your confidence. What is there that you can tell me to
which I cannot respond with sympathy? What saddest note in your
spiritual dirges which will not find its chord in mine?
I long to know what influence has cast its shadow over your existence. I
myself have known what it is to carry a brain that never rests in a body
that is always tired. I have defied its infirmities, and forced it to do
my bidding. You have no such hindrance, if we may judge by your aspect
and habits. You deal with horses like a Homeric hero. No wild Indian
could handle his bark canoe more dexterously or more vigorously than we
have seen you handling yours. There must be some reason for your
seclusion which curiosity has not reached, and into which it is not the
province of curiosity to inquire. But in the irresistible desire which I
have to bring you into kindly relations with those around you, I must run
the risk of giving offence that I may know in what direction to look for
those restorative influences which the sympathy of a friend and sister
can offer to a brother in need of some kindly impulse to change the
course of a life which is not, which cannot be, in accordance with his
true nature.
I have thought that there may be something in the conditions with which
you are here surrounded which is repugnant to your feelings,--something
which can be avoided only by keeping yourself apart from the people whose
acquaintance you would naturally have formed. There can hardly be
anything in the place itself, or you would not have voluntarily sought it
as a residence, even for a single season there might be individuals here
whom you would not care to meet, there must be such, but you cannot have
a personal aversion to everybody. I have heard of cases in which certain
sights and sounds, which have no particular significance for most
persons, produced feelings of distress or aversion that made, them
unbearable to the subjects of the constitutional dislike. It has
occurred to me that possibly you might have some such natural aversion to
the sounds of the street, or such as are heard in most houses, especially
where a piano is kept, as it is in fact in almost all of those in the
village. Or it might be, I imagined, that some color in the dresses of
women or the furniture of our rooms affected you unpleasantly. I know
that instances of such antipathy have been recorded, and they would
account for the seclusion of those who are subject to it.
If there is any removable condition which interferes with your free
entrance into and enjoyment of the social life around you, tell me, I beg
of you, tell me what it is, and it shall be eliminated. Think it not
strange, O my brother, that I thus venture to introduce myself into the
hidden chambers of your life. I will never suffer myself to be
frightened from the carrying out of any thought which promises to be of
use to a fellow-mortal by a fear lest it should be considered
"unfeminine." I can bear to be considered unfeminine, but I cannot
endure to think of myself as inhuman. Can I help you, my brother'?
Believe me your most sincere well-wisher,
LURIDA VINCENT.
Euthymia had carried off this letter and read it by herself. As she
finished it, her feelings found expression in an old phrase of her
grandmother's, which came up of itself, as such survivals of early days
are apt to do, on great occasions.
"Well, I never!"
Then she loosened some button or string that was too tight, and went to
the window for a breath of outdoor air. Then she began at the beginning
and read the whole letter all over again.
What should she do about it? She could not let this young girl send a
letter like that to a stranger of whose character little was known except
by inference,--to a young man, who would consider it a most extraordinary
advance on the part of the sender. She would have liked to tear it into
a thousand pieces, but she had no right to treat it in that way. Lurida
meant to send it the next morning, and in the mean time Euthymia had the
night to think over what she should do about it.
There is nothing like the pillow for an oracle. There is no voice like
that which breaks the silence--of the stagnant hours of the night with
its sudden suggestions and luminous counsels. When Euthymia awoke in the
morning, her course of action was as clear before her as if it bad been
dictated by her guardian angel. She went straight over to the home of
Lurida, who was just dressed for breakfast.
She was naturally a little surprised at this early visit. She was struck
with the excited look of Euthymia, being herself quite calm, and
contemplating her project with entire complacency.
Euthymia began, in tones that expressed deep anxiety.
"I have read your letter, my dear, and admired its spirit and force. It
is a fine letter, and does you great credit as an expression of the
truest human feeling. But it must not be sent to Mr. Kirkwood. If you
were sixty years old, perhaps if you were fifty, it might be admissible
to send it. But if you were forty, I should question its propriety; if
you were thirty, I should veto it, and you are but a little more than
twenty. How do you know that this stranger will not show your letter to
anybody or everybody? How do you know that he will not send it to one of
the gossiping journals like the 'Household Inquisitor'? But supposing he
keeps it to himself, which is more than you have a right to expect, what
opinion is he likely to form of a young lady who invades his privacy with
such freedom? Ten to one he will think curiosity is at the bottom of
it,--and,--come, don't be angry at me for suggesting it,--may there not
be a little of that same motive mingled with the others? No, don't
interrupt me quite yet; you do want to know whether your hypothesis is
correct. You are full of the best and kindest feelings in the world, but
your desire for knowledge is the ferment under them just now, perhaps
more than you know."
Lurida's pale cheeks flushed and whitened more than once while her friend
was speaking. She loved her too sincerely and respected her intelligence
too much to take offence at her advice, but she could not give up her
humane and sisterly intentions merely from the fear of some awkward
consequences to herself. She had persuaded herself that she was playing
the part of a Protestant sister of charity, and that the fact of her not
wearing the costume of these ministering angels made no difference in her
relations to those who needed her aid.
"I cannot see your objections in the light in which they appear to you,"
she said gravely. "It seems to me that I give up everything when I
hesitate to help a fellow-creature because I am a woman. I am not afraid
to send this letter and take all the consequences."
"Will you go with me to the doctor's, and let him read it in our
presence? And will you agree to abide by his opinion, if it coincides
with mine?"
Lurida winced a little at this proposal. "I don't quite like," she said,
"showing this letter to--to" she hesitated, but it had to come out--"to a
man, that is, to another man than the one for whom it was intended."
The neuter gender business had got a pretty damaging side-hit.
"Well, never mind about letting him read the letter. Will you go over to
his house with me at noon, when he comes back after his morning visits,
and have a talk over the whole matter with him? You know I have
sometimes had to say must to you, Lurida, and now I say you must go to
the doctor's with me and carry that letter."
There was no resisting the potent monosyllable as the sweet but firm
voice delivered it. At noon the two maidens rang at the doctor's door.
The servant said he had been at the house after his morning visits, but
found a hasty summons to Mr. Kirkwood, who had been taken suddenly ill
and wished to see him at once. Was the illness dangerous? The
servant-maid did n't know, but thought it was pretty bad, for Mr. Paul
came in as white as a sheet, and talked all sorts of languages which she
couldn't understand, and took on as if he thought Mr. Kirkwood was going
to die right off.
And so the hazardous question about sending the letter was disposed of,
at least for the present.
XVII
Dr. BUTTS'S PATIENT.
The physician found Maurice just regaining his heat after a chill of a
somewhat severe character. He knew too well what this meant, and the
probable series of symptoms of which it was the prelude. His patient was
not the only one in the neighborhood who was attacked in this way. The
autumnal fevers to which our country towns are subject, in the place of
those "agues," or intermittents, so largely prevalent in the South and
West, were already beginning, and Maurice, who had exposed himself in the
early and late hours of the dangerous season, must be expected to go
through the regular stages of this always serious and not rarely fatal
disease.
Paolo, his faithful servant, would fain have taken the sole charge of his
master during his illness. But the doctor insisted that he must have a
nurse to help him in his task, which was likely to be long and
exhausting.
At the mention of the word "nurse" Paolo turned white, and exclaimed in
an agitated and thoroughly frightened way,
"No! no nuss! no woman! She kill him! I stay by him day and night, but
don' let no woman come near him,--if you do, he die!"
The doctor explained that he intended to send a man who was used to
taking care of sick people, and with no little effort at last succeeded
in convincing Paolo that, as he could not be awake day and night for a
fortnight or three weeks, it was absolutely necessary to call in some
assistance from without. And so Mr. Maurice Kirkwood was to play the
leading part in that drama of nature's composing called a typhoid fever,
with its regular bedchamber scenery, its properties of phials and
pill-boxes, its little company of stock actors, its gradual evolution of
a very simple plot, its familiar incidents, its emotional alternations,
and its denouement, sometimes tragic, oftener happy.
It is needless to say that the sympathies of all the good people of the
village, residents and strangers, were actively awakened for the young
man about whom they knew so little and conjectured so much. Tokens of
their kindness came to him daily: flowers from the woods and from the
gardens; choice fruit grown in the open air or under glass, for there
were some fine houses surrounded by well-kept grounds, and greenhouses
and graperies were not unknown in the small but favored settlement.
On all these luxuries Maurice looked with dull and languid eyes. A faint
smile of gratitude sometimes struggled through the stillness of his
features, or a murmured word of thanks found its way through his parched
lips, and he would relapse into the partial stupor or the fitful sleep in
which, with intervals of slight wandering, the slow hours dragged along
the sluggish days one after another. With no violent symptoms, but with
steady persistency, the disease moved on in its accustomed course. It
was at no time immediately threatening, but the experienced physician
knew its uncertainties only too well. He had known fever patients
suddenly seized with violent internal inflammation, and carried off with
frightful rapidity. He remembered the case of a convalescent, a young
woman who had been attacked while in apparently vigorous general health,
who, on being lifted too suddenly to a sitting position, while still
confined to her bed, fainted, and in a few moments ceased to breathe. It
may well be supposed that he took every possible precaution to avert the
accidents which tend to throw from its track a disease the regular course
of which is arranged by nature as carefully as the route of a railroad
from one city to another. The most natural interpretation which the
common observer would put upon the manifestations of one of these
autumnal maladies would be that some noxious combustible element had
found its way into the system which must be burned to ashes before the
heat which pervades the whole body can subside. Sometimes the fire may
smoulder and seem as if it were going out, or were quite extinguished,
and again it will find some new material to seize upon, and flame up as
fiercely as ever. Its coming on most frequently at the season when the
brush fires which are consuming the dead branches, and withered leaves,
and all the refuse of vegetation are sending up their smoke is
suggestive. Sometimes it seems as if the body, relieved of its effete
materials, renewed its youth after one of these quiet, expurgating,
internal fractional cremations. Lean, pallid students have found
themselves plump and blooming, and it has happened that one whose hair
was straight as gnat of an Indian has been startled to behold himself in
his mirror with a fringe of hyacinthine curls about his rejuvenated
countenance.
There was nothing of what medical men call malignity in the case of
Maurice Kirkwood. The most alarming symptom was a profound prostration,
which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly helpless, as
unable to move without aid as the feeblest of paralytics. In this state
he lay for many days, not suffering pain, but with the sense of great
weariness, and the feeling that he should never rise from his bed again.
For the most part his intellect was unclouded when his attention was
aroused. He spoke only in whispers, a few words at a time. The doctor
felt sure, by the expression which passed over his features from time to
time, that something was worrying and oppressing him; something which he
wished to communicate, and had not the force, or the tenacity of purpose,
to make perfectly clear. His eyes often wandered to a certain desk, and
once he had found strength to lift his emaciated arm and point to it. The
doctor went towards it as if to fetch it to him, but he slowly shook his
head. He had not the power to say at that time what he wished. The next
day he felt a little less prostrated; and succeeded in explaining to the
doctor what he wanted. His words, so far as the physician could make
them out, were these which follow. Dr. Butts looked upon them as
possibly expressing wishes which would be his last, and noted them down
carefully immediately after leaving his chamber.
"I commit the secret of my life to your charge. My whole story is told
in a paper locked in that desk. The key is--put your hand under my
pillow. If I die, let the story be known. It will show that I
was--human--and save my memory from reproach."
He was silent for a little time. A single tear stole down his hollow
cheek. The doctor turned his head away, for his own eyes were full. But
he said to himself, "It is a good sign; I begin to feel strong hopes that
he will recover."
Maurice spoke once more. "Doctor, I put full trust in you. You are wise
and kind. Do what you will with this paper, but open it at once and
read. I want you to know the story of my life before it is finished--if
the end is at hand. Take it with you and read it before you sleep." He
was exhausted and presently his eyes closed, but the doctor saw a
tranquil look on his features which added encouragement to his hopes.
XVIII
MAURICE KIRKWOOD'S STORY OF HIS LIFE.
I am an American by birth, but a large part of my life has been passed in
foreign lands. My father was a man of education, possessed of an ample
fortune; my mother was considered, a very accomplished and amiable woman.
I was their first and only child. She died while I was yet an infant.
If I remember her at all it is as a vision, more like a glimpse of a
pre-natal existence than as a part of my earthly life. At the death of
my mother I was left in the charge of the old nurse who had enjoyed her
perfect confidence. She was devoted to me, and I became absolutely
dependent on her, who had for me all the love and all the care of a
mother. I was naturally the object of the attentions and caresses of the
family relatives. I have been told that I was a pleasant, smiling
infant, with nothing to indicate any peculiar nervous susceptibility; not
afraid of strangers, but on the contrary ready to make their
acquaintance. My father was devoted to me and did all in his power to
promote my health and comfort.
I was still a babe, often carried in arms, when the event happened which
changed my whole future and destined me to a strange and lonely
existence. I cannot relate it even now without a sense of terror. I
must force myself to recall the circumstances as told me and vaguely
remembered, for I am not willing that my doomed and wholly exceptional
life should pass away unrecorded, unexplained, unvindicated. My nature
is, I feel sure, a kind and social one, but I have lived apart, as if my
heart were filled with hatred of my fellow-creatures. If there are any
readers who look without pity, without sympathy, upon those who shun the
fellowship of their fellow men and women, who show by their downcast or
averted eyes that they dread companionship and long for solitude, I pray
them, if this paper ever reaches them, to stop at this point. Follow me
no further, for you will not believe my story, nor enter into the
feelings which I am about to reveal. But if there are any to whom all
that is human is of interest, who have felt in their own consciousness
some stirrings of invincible attraction to one individual and equally
invincible repugnance to another, who know by their own experience that
elective affinities have as their necessary counterpart, and, as it were,
their polar opposites, currents not less strong of elective repulsions,
let them read with unquestioning faith the story of a blighted life I am
about to relate, much of it, of course, received from the lips of others.
My cousin Laura, a girl of seventeen, lately returned from Europe, was
considered eminently beautiful. It was in my second summer that she
visited my father's house, where he was living with his servants and my
old nurse, my mother having but recently left him a widower. Laura was
full of vivacity, impulsive, quick in her movements, thoughtless
occasionally, as it is not strange that a young girl of her age should
be. It was a beautiful summer day when she saw me for the first time.
My nurse had me in her arms, walking back and forward on a balcony with a
low railing, upon which opened the windows of the second story of my
father's house. While the nurse was thus carrying me, Laura came
suddenly upon the balcony. She no sooner saw me than with all the
delighted eagerness of her youthful nature she rushed toward me, and,
catching me from the nurse's arms, began tossing me after the fashion of
young girls who have been so lately playing with dolls that they feel as
if babies were very much of the same nature. The abrupt seizure
frightened me; I sprang from her arms in my terror, and fell over the
railing of the balcony. I should probably enough have been killed on the
spot but for the fact that a low thorn-bush grew just beneath the
balcony, into which I fell and thus had the violence of the shock broken.
But the thorns tore my tender flesh, and I bear to this day marks of the
deep wounds they inflicted.
That dreadful experience is burned deep into my memory. The sudden
apparition of the girl; the sense of being torn away from the protecting
arms around me; the frantic effort to escape; the shriek that accompanied
my fall through what must have seemed unmeasurable space; the cruel
lacerations of the piercing and rending thorns,--all these fearful
impressions blended in one paralyzing terror.
When I was taken up I was thought to be dead. I was perfectly white, and
the physician who first saw me said that no pulse was perceptible. But
after a time consciousness returned; the wounds, though painful, were
none of them dangerous, and the most alarming effects of the accident
passed away. My old nurse cared for me tenderly day and night, and my
father, who had been almost distracted in the first hours which followed
the injury, hoped and believed that no permanent evil results would be
found to result from it. My cousin Laura was of course deeply distressed
to feel that her thoughtlessness had been the cause of so grave an
accident. As soon as I had somewhat recovered she came to see me, very
penitent, very anxious to make me forget the alarm she had caused me,
with all its consequences. I was in the nursery sitting up in my bed,
bandaged, but not in any pain, as it seemed, for I was quiet and to all
appearance in a perfectly natural state of feeling. As Laura came near
me I shrieked and instantly changed color. I put my hand upon my heart
as if I had been stabbed, and fell over, unconscious. It was very much
the same state as that in which I was found immediately after my fall.
The cause of this violent and appalling seizure was but too obvious. The
approach of the young girl and the dread that she was about to lay her
hand upon me had called up the same train of effects which the moment of
terror and pain had already occasioned. The old nurse saw this in a
moment. "Go! go!" she cried to Laura, "go, or the child will die!" Her
command did not have to be repeated. After Laura had gone I lay
senseless, white and cold as marble, for some time. The doctor soon
came, and by the use of smart rubbing and stimulants the color came back
slowly to my cheeks and the arrested circulation was again set in motion.
It was hard to believe that this was anything more than a temporary
effect of the accident. There could be little doubt, it was thought by
the doctor and by my father, that after a few days I should recover from
this morbid sensibility and receive my cousin as other infants receive
pleasant-looking young persons. The old nurse shook her head. "The girl
will be the death of the child," she said, "if she touches him or comes
near him. His heart stopped beating just as when the girl snatched him
out of my arms, and he fell over the balcony railing." Once more the
experiment was tried, cautiously, almost insidiously. The same alarming
consequences followed. It was too evident that a chain of nervous
disturbances had been set up in my system which repeated itself whenever
the original impression gave the first impulse. I never saw my cousin
Laura after this last trial. Its result had so distressed her that she
never ventured again to show herself to me.
If the effect of the nervous shock had stopped there, it would have been
a misfortune for my cousin and myself, but hardly a calamity. The world
is wide, and a cousin or two more or less can hardly be considered an
essential of existence. I often heard Laura's name mentioned, but never
by any one who was acquainted with all the circumstances, for it was
noticed that I changed color and caught at my breast as if I wanted to
grasp my heart in my hand whenever that fatal name was mentioned.
Alas! this was not all. While I was suffering from the effects of my
fall among the thorns I was attended by my old nurse, assisted by another
old woman, by a physician, and my father, who would take his share in
caring for me. It was thought best to keep--me perfectly quiet, and
strangers and friends were alike excluded from my nursery, with one
exception, that my old grandmother came in now and then. With her it
seems that I was somewhat timid and shy, following her with rather
anxious eyes, as if not quite certain whether or not she was dangerous.
But one day, when I was far advanced towards recovery, my father brought
in a young lady, a relative of his, who had expressed a great desire to
see me. She was, as I have been told, a very handsome girl, of about the
same age as my cousin Laura, but bearing no personal resemblance to her
in form, features, or complexion. She had no sooner entered the room
than the same sudden changes which had followed my cousin's visit began
to show themselves, and before she had reached my bedside I was in a
state of deadly collapse, as on the occasions already mentioned.
Some time passed before any recurrence of these terrifying seizures. A
little girl of five or six years old was allowed to come into the nursery
one day and bring me some flowers. I took them from her hand, but turned
away and shut my eyes. There was no seizure, but there was a certain
dread and aversion, nothing more than a feeling which it might be hoped
that time would overcome. Those around me were gradually finding out the
circumstances which brought on the deadly attack to which I was subject.
The daughter of one of our near neighbors was considered the prettiest
girl of the village where we were passing the summer. She was very
anxious to see me, and as I was now nearly well it was determined that
she should be permitted to pay me a short visit. I had always delighted
in seeing her and being caressed by her. I was sleeping when she entered
the nursery and came and took a seat at my side in perfect silence.
Presently I became restless, and a moment later I opened my eyes and saw
her stooping over me. My hand went to my left breast,--the color faded
from my cheeks,--I was again the cold marble image so like death that it
had well-nigh been mistaken for it.
Could it be possible that the fright which had chilled my blood had left
me with an unconquerable fear of woman at the period when she is most
attractive not only to adolescents, but to children of tender age, who
feel the fascination of her flowing locks, her bright eyes, her blooming
cheeks, and that mysterious magnetism of sex which draws all life into
its warm and potently vitalized atmosphere? So it did indeed seem. The
dangerous experiment could not be repeated indefinitely. It was not
intentionally tried again, but accident brought about more than one
renewal of it during the following years, until it became fully
recognized that I was the unhappy subject of a mortal dread of
woman,--not absolutely of the human female, for I had no fear of my old
nurse or of my grandmother, or of any old wrinkled face, and I had become
accustomed to the occasional meeting of a little girl or two, whom I
nevertheless regarded with a certain ill-defined feeling that there was
danger in their presence. I was sent to a boys' school very early, and
during the first ten or twelve years of my life I had rarely any occasion
to be reminded of my strange idiosyncrasy.
As I grew out of boyhood into youth, a change came over the feelings
which had so long held complete possession of me. This was what my
father and his advisers had always anticipated, and was the ground of
their confident hope in my return to natural conditions before I should
have grown to mature manhood.
How shall I describe the conflicts of those dreamy, bewildering, dreadful
years? Visions of loveliness haunted me sleeping and waking. Sometimes
a graceful girlish figure would so draw my eyes towards it that I lost
sight of all else, and was ready to forget all my fears and find myself
at her side, like other youths by the side of young maidens,--happy in
their cheerful companionship, while I,--I, under the curse of one
blighting moment, looked on, hopeless. Sometimes the glimpse of a fair
face or the tone of a sweet voice stirred within me all the instincts
that make the morning of life beautiful to adolescence. I reasoned with
myself:
Why should I not have outgrown that idle apprehension which had been the
nightmare of my earlier years? Why should not the rising tide of life
have drowned out the feeble growths that infested the shallows of
childhood? How many children there are who tremble at being left alone
in the dark, but who, a few years later, will smile at their foolish
terrors and brave all the ghosts of a haunted chamber! Why should I any
longer be the slave of a foolish fancy that has grown into a half insane
habit of mind? I was familiarly acquainted with all the stories of the
strange antipathies and invincible repugnances to which others, some of
them famous men, had been subject. I said to myself, Why should not I
overcome this dread of woman as Peter the Great fought down his dread of
wheels rolling over a bridge? Was I, alone of all mankind, to be doomed
to perpetual exclusion from the society which, as it seemed to me, was
all that rendered existence worth the trouble and fatigue of slavery to
the vulgar need of supplying the waste of the system and working at the
task of respiration like the daughters of Danaus,--toiling day and night
as the worn-out sailor labors at the pump of his sinking vessel?
Why did I not brave the risk of meeting squarely, and without regard to
any possible danger, some one of those fair maidens whose far-off smile,
whose graceful movements, at once attracted and agitated me? I can only
answer this question to the satisfaction of any really inquiring reader
by giving him the true interpretation of the singular phenomenon of which
I was the subject. For this I shall have to refer to a paper of which I
have made a copy, and which will be found included with this manuscript.
It is enough to say here, without entering into the explanation of the
fact, which will be found simple enough as seen by the light of modern
physiological science, that the "nervous disturbance" which the presence
of a woman in the flower of her age produced in my system was a sense of
impending death, sudden, overwhelming, unconquerable, appalling. It was
a reversed action of the nervous centres,--the opposite of that which
flushes the young lover's cheek and hurries his bounding pulses as he
comes into the presence of the object of his passion. No one who has
ever felt the sensation can have failed to recognize it as an imperative
summons, which commands instant and terrified submission.
It was at this period of my life that my father determined to try the
effect of travel and residence in different localities upon my bodily and
mental condition. I say bodily as well as mental, for I was too slender
for my height and subject to some nervous symptoms which were a cause of
anxiety. That the mind was largely concerned in these there was no
doubt, but the mutual interactions of mind and body are often too complex
to admit of satisfactory analysis. Each is in part cause and each also
in part effect.
We passed some years in Italy, chiefly in Rome, where I was placed in a
school conducted by priests, and where of course I met only those of my
own sex. There I had the opportunity of seeing the influences under
which certain young Catholics, destined for the priesthood, are led to
separate themselves from all communion with the sex associated in their
minds with the most subtle dangers to which the human soul can be
exposed. I became in some degree reconciled to the thought of exclusion
from the society of women by seeing around me so many who were
self-devoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I
should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem of
existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which
settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the
devotee and the object of his dangerous attraction.
How often I talked this whole matter over with the young priest who was
at once my special instructor and my favorite companion! But accustomed
as I had become to the forms of the Roman Church, and impressed as I was
with the purity and excellence of many of its young members with whom I
was acquainted, my early training rendered it impossible for me to accept
the credentials which it offered me as authoritative. My friend and
instructor had to set me down as a case of "invincible ignorance." This
was the loop-hole through which he crept out of the prison-house of his
creed, and was enabled to look upon me without the feeling of absolute
despair with which his sterner brethren would, I fear, have regarded me.
I have said that accident exposed me at times to the influence which I
had such reasons for dreading. Here is one example of such an
occurrence, which I relate as simply as possible, vividly as it is
impressed upon my memory. A young friend whose acquaintance I had made
in Rome asked me one day to come to his rooms and look at a cabinet of
gems and medals which he had collected. I had been but a short time in
his library when a vague sense of uneasiness came over me. My heart
became restless,--I could feel it stirring irregularly, as if it were
some frightened creature caged in my breast. There was nothing that I
could see to account for it. A door was partly open, but not so that I
could see into the next room. The feeling grew upon me of some influence
which was paralyzing my circulation. I begged my friend to open a
window. As he did so, the door swung in the draught, and I saw a
blooming young woman,--it was my friend's sister, who had been sitting
with a book in her hand, and who rose at the opening of the door.
Something had warned me of the presence of a woman, that occult and
potent aura of individuality, call it personal magnetism, spiritual
effluence, or reduce it to a simpler expression if you will; whatever it
was, it had warned me of the nearness of the dread attraction which
allured at a distance and revealed itself with all the terrors of the
Lorelei if approached too recklessly. A sign from her brother caused her
to withdraw at once, but not before I had felt the impression which
betrayed itself in my change of color, anxiety about the region of the
heart, and sudden failure as if about to fall in a deadly fainting-fit.
Does all this seem strange and incredible to the reader of my manuscript?
Nothing in the history of life is so strange or exceptional as it seems
to those who have not made a long study of its mysteries. I have never
known just such a case as my own, and yet there must have been such, and
if the whole history of mankind were unfolded I cannot doubt that there
have been many like it. Let my reader suspend his judgment until he has
read the paper I have referred to, which was drawn up by a Committee of
the Royal Academy of the Biological Sciences. In this paper the
mechanism of the series of nervous derangements to which I have been
subject since the fatal shock experienced in my infancy is explained in
language not hard to understand. It will be seen that such a change of
polarity in the nervous centres is only a permanent form and an extreme
degree of an emotional disturbance, which as a temporary and
comparatively unimportant personal accident is far from being
uncommon,--is so frequent, in fact, that every one must have known
instances of it, and not a few must have had more or less serious
experiences of it in their own private history.
It must not be supposed that my imagination dealt with me as I am now
dealing with the reader. I was full of strange fancies and wild
superstitions. One of my Catholic friends gave me a silver medal which
had been blessed by the Pope, and which I was to wear next my body. I
was told that this would turn black after a time, in virtue of a power
which it possessed of drawing out original sin, or certain portions of
it, together with the evil and morbid tendencies which had been engrafted
on the corrupt nature. I wore the medal faithfully, as directed, and
watched it carefully. It became tarnished and after a time darkened, but
it wrought no change in my unnatural condition.
There was an old gypsy who had the reputation of knowing more of futurity
than she had any right to know. The story was that she had foretold the
assassination of Count Rossi and the death of Cavour.
However that may have been, I was persuaded to let her try her black art
upon my future. I shall never forget the strange, wild look of the
wrinkled hag as she took my hand and studied its lines and fixed her
wicked old eyes on my young countenance. After this examination she
shook her head and muttered some words, which as nearly as I could get
them would be in English like these:
Fair lady cast a spell on thee,
Fair lady's hand shall set thee free.
Strange as it may seem, these words of a withered old creature, whose
palm had to be crossed with silver to bring forth her oracular response,
have always clung to my memory as if they were destined to fulfilment.
The extraordinary nature of the affliction to which I was subject
disposed me to believe the incredible with reference to all that relates
to it. I have never ceased to have the feeling that, sooner or later, I
should find myself freed from the blight laid upon me in my infancy. It
seems as if it would naturally come through the influence of some young
and fair woman, to whom that merciful errand should be assigned by the
Providence that governs our destiny. With strange hopes, with trembling
fears, with mingled belief and doubt, wherever I have found myself I have
sought with longing yet half-averted eyes for the "elect lady," as I have
learned to call her, who was to lift the curse from my ruined life.
Three times I have been led to the hope, if not the belief, that I had
found the object of my superstitious belief.--Singularly enough it was
always on the water that the phantom of my hope appeared before my
bewildered vision. Once it was an English girl who was a fellow
passenger with me in one of my ocean voyages. I need not say that she
was beautiful, for she was my dream realized. I heard her singing, I saw
her walking the deck on some of the fair days when sea-sickness was
forgotten. The passengers were a social company enough, but I had kept
myself apart, as was my wont. At last the attraction became too strong
to resist any longer. "I will venture into the charmed circle if it
kills me," I said to my father. I did venture, and it did not kill me,
or I should not be telling this story. But there was a repetition of the
old experiences. I need not relate the series of alarming consequences
of my venture. The English girl was very lovely, and I have no doubt has
made some one supremely happy before this, but she was not the "elect
lady" of the prophecy and of my dreams.
A second time I thought myself for a moment in the presence of the
destined deliverer who was to restore me to my natural place among my
fellow men and women. It was on the Tiber that I met the young maiden
who drew me once more into that inner circle which surrounded young
womanhood with deadly peril for me, if I dared to pass its limits. I was
floating with the stream in the little boat in which I passed many long
hours of reverie when I saw another small boat with a boy and a young
girl in it. The boy had been rowing, and one of his oars had slipped
from his grasp. He did not know how to paddle with a single oar, and was
hopelessly rowing round and round, his oar all the time floating farther
away from him. I could not refuse my assistance. I picked up the oar
and brought my skiff alongside of the boat. When I handed the oar to the
boy the young girl lifted her veil and thanked me in the exquisite music
of the language which
'Sounds as if it should be writ on satin.'
She was a type of Italian beauty,--a nocturne in flesh and blood, if I
may borrow a term certain artists are fond of; but it was her voice which
captivated me and for a moment made me believe that I was no longer shut
off from all relations with the social life of my race. An hour later I
was found lying insensible on the floor of my boat, white, cold, almost
pulseless. It cost much patient labor to bring me back to consciousness.
Had not such extreme efforts been made, it seems probable that I should
never have waked from a slumber which was hardly distinguishable from
that of death.
Why should I provoke a catastrophe which appears inevitable if I invite
it by exposing myself to its too well ascertained cause? The habit of
these deadly seizures has become a second nature. The strongest and the
ablest men have found it impossible to resist the impression produced by
the most insignificant object, by the most harmless sight or sound to
which they had a congenital or acquired antipathy. What prospect have I
of ever being rid of this long and deep-seated infirmity? I may well ask
myself these questions, but my answer is that I will never give up the
hope that time will yet bring its remedy. It may be that the wild
prediction which so haunts me shall find itself fulfilled. I have had of
late strange premonitions, to which if I were superstitious I could not
help giving heed. But I have seen too much of the faith that deals in
miracles to accept the supernatural in any shape,--assuredly when it
comes from an old witch-like creature who takes pay for her revelations
of the future. Be it so: though I am not superstitious, I have a right
to be imaginative, and my imagination will hold to those words of the old
zingara with an irresistible feeling that, sooner or later, they will
prove true.
Can it be possible that her prediction is not far from its realization?
I have had both waking and sleeping visions within these last months and
weeks which have taken possession of me and filled my life with new
thoughts, new hopes, new resolves.
Sometimes on the bosom of the lake by which I am dreaming away this
season of bloom and fragrance, sometimes in the fields or woods in a
distant glimpse, once in a nearer glance, which left me pale and
tremulous, yet was followed by a swift reaction, so that my cheeks
flushed and my pulse bounded, I have seen her who--how do I dare to tell
it so that my own eyes can read it?---I cannot help believing is to be my
deliverer, my saviour.
I have been warned in the most solemn and impressive language by the
experts most deeply read in the laws of life and the history of its
disturbing and destroying influences, that it would be at the imminent
risk of my existence if I should expose myself to the repetition of my
former experiences. I was reminded that unexplained sudden deaths were
of constant, of daily occurrence; that any emotion is liable to arrest
the movements of life: terror, joy, good news or bad news,--anything that
reaches the deeper nervous centres. I had already died once, as Sir
Charles Napier said of himself; yes, more than once, died and been
resuscitated. The next time, I might very probably fail to get my return
ticket after my visit to Hades. It was a rather grim stroke of humor,
but I understood its meaning full well, and felt the force of its menace.
After all, what had I to live for if the great primal instinct which
strives to make whole the half life of lonely manhood is defeated,
suppressed, crushed out of existence? Why not as well die in the attempt
to break up a wretched servitude to a perverted nervous movement as in
any other way? I am alone in the world,--alone save for my faithful
servant, through whom I seem to hold to the human race as it were by a
single filament. My father, who was my instructor, my companion, my
dearest and best friend through all my later youth and my earlier
manhood, died three years ago and left me my own master, with the means
of living as might best please my fancy. This season shall decide my
fate. One more experiment, and I shall find myself restored to my place
among my fellow-beings, or, as I devoutly hope, in a sphere where all our
mortal infirmities are past and forgotten.
I have told the story of a blighted life without reserve, so that there
shall not remain any mystery or any dark suspicion connected with my
memory if I should be taken away unexpectedly. It has cost me an effort
to do it, but now that my life is on record I feel more reconciled to my
lot, with all its possibilities, and among these possibilities is a gleam
of a better future. I have been told by my advisers, some of them wise,
deeply instructed, and kind-hearted men, that such a life-destiny should
be related by the subject of it for the instruction of others, and
especially for the light it throws on certain peculiarities of human
character often wrongly interpreted as due to moral perversion, when they
are in reality the results of misdirected or reversed actions in some of
the closely connected nervous centres.
For myself I can truly say that I have very little morbid sensibility
left with reference to the destiny which has been allotted to me. I have
passed through different stages of feeling with reference to it, as I
have developed from infancy to manhood. At first it was mere blind
instinct about which I had no thought, living like other infants the life
of impressions without language to connect them in series. In my boyhood
I began to be deeply conscious of the infirmity which separated me from
those around me. In youth began that conflict of emotions and impulses
with the antagonistic influence of which I have already spoken, a
conflict which has never ceased, but to which I have necessarily become
to a certain degree accustomed; and against the dangers of which I have
learned to guard myself habitually. That is the meaning of my isolation.
You, young man,--if at any time your eyes shall look upon my melancholy
record,--you at least will understand me. Does not your heart throb, in
the presence of budding or blooming womanhood, sometimes as if it "were
ready to crack" with its own excess of strain? What if instead of
throbbing it should falter, flutter, and stop as if never to beat again?
You, young woman, who with ready belief and tender sympathy will look
upon these pages, if they are ever spread before you, know what it is
when your breast heaves with uncontrollable emotion and the grip of the
bodice seems unendurable as the embrace of the iron virgin of the
Inquisition. Think what it would be if the grasp were tightened so that
no breath of air could enter your panting chest!
Does your heart beat in the same way, young man, when your honored
friend, a venerable matron of seventy years, greets you with her kindly
smile as it does in the presence of youthful loveliness? When a pretty
child brings you her doll and looks into your eyes with artless grace and
trustful simplicity, does your pulse quicken, do you tremble, does life
palpitate through your whole being, as when the maiden of seventeen meets
your enamored sight in the glow of her rosebud beauty? Wonder not, then,
if the period of mystic attraction for you should be that of agitation,
terror, danger, to one in whom the natural current of the instincts has
had its course changed as that of a stream is changed by a convulsion of
nature, so that the impression which is new life to you is death to him.
I am now twenty-five years old. I have reached the time of life which I
have dreamed, nay even ventured to hope, might be the limit of the
sentence which was pronounced upon me in my infancy. I can assign no
good reason for this anticipation. But in writing this paper I feel as
if I were preparing to begin a renewed existence. There is nothing for me
to be ashamed of in the story I have told. There is no man living who
would not have yielded to the sense of instantly impending death which
seized upon me under the conditions I have mentioned. Martyrs have gone
singing to their flaming shrouds, but never a man could hold his breath
long enough to kill himself; he must have rope or water, or some
mechanical help, or nature will make him draw in a breath of air, and
would make him do so though he knew the salvation of the human race would
be forfeited by that one gasp.
This paper may never reach the eye of any one afflicted in the same way
that I have been. It probably never will; but for all that, there are
many shy natures which will recognize tendencies in themselves in the
direction of my unhappy susceptibility. Others, to whom such weakness
seems inconceivable, will find their scepticism shaken, if not removed,
by the calm, judicial statement of the Report drawn up for the Royal
Academy. It will make little difference to me whether my story is
accepted unhesitatingly or looked upon as largely a product of the
imagination. I am but a bird of passage that lights on the boughs of
different nationalities. I belong to no flock; my home may be among the
palms of Syria, the olives of Italy, the oaks of England, the elms that
shadow the Hudson or the Connecticut; I build no nest; to-day I am here,
to-morrow on the wing.
If I quit my native land before the trees have dropped their leaves I
shall place this manuscript in the safe hands of one whom I feel sure
that I can trust; to do with it as he shall see fit. If it is only
curious and has no bearing on human welfare, he may think it well to let
it remain unread until I shall have passed away. If in his judgment it
throws any light on one of the deeper mysteries of our nature,--the
repulsions which play such a formidable part in social life, and which
must be recognized as the correlatives of the affinities that distribute
the individuals governed by them in the face of impediments which seem to
be impossibilities,--then it may be freely given to the world.
But if I am here when the leaves are all fallen, the programme of my life
will have changed, and this story of the dead past will be illuminated by
the light of a living present which will irradiate all its saddening
features. Who would not pray that my last gleam of light and hope may be
that of dawn and not of departing day?
The reader who finds it hard to accept the reality of a story so far from
the common range of experience is once more requested to suspend his
judgment until he has read the paper which will next be offered for his
consideration.
XIX.
THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE.
Perhaps it is too much to expect a reader who wishes to be entertained,
excited, amused, and does not want to work his passage through pages
which he cannot understand without some effort of his own, to read the
paper which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon it. If he has no
curiosity in the direction of these chapters, he can afford to leave them
to such as relish a slight flavor of science. But if he does so leave
them he will very probably remain sceptical as to the truth of the story
to which they are meant to furnish him with a key.
Of course the case of Maurice Kirkwood is a remarkable and exceptional
one, and it is hardly probable that any reader's experience will furnish
him with its parallel. But let him look back over all his acquaintances,
if he has reached middle life, and see if he cannot recall more than one
who, for some reason or other, shunned the society of young women, as if
they had a deadly fear of their company. If he remembers any such, he
can understand the simple statements and natural reflections which are
laid before him.
One of the most singular facts connected with the history of Maurice
Kirkwood was the philosophical equanimity with which he submitted to the
fate which had fallen upon him. He did not choose to be pumped by the
Interviewer, who would show him up in the sensational columns of his
prying newspaper. He lived chiefly by himself, as the easiest mode of
avoiding those meetings to which he would be exposed in almost every
society into which he might venture. But he had learned to look upon
himself very much as he would upon an intimate not himself,--upon a
different personality. A young man will naturally enough be ashamed of
his shyness. It is something which others believe, and perhaps he
himself thinks, he might overcome. But in the case of Maurice Kirkwood
there was no room for doubt as to the reality and gravity of the long
enduring effects of his first convulsive terror. He had accepted the
fact as he would have accepted the calamity of losing his sight or his
hearing. When he was questioned by the experts to whom his case was
submitted, he told them all that he knew about it almost without a sign
of emotion. Nature was so peremptory with him,--saying in language that
had no double meaning: "If you violate the condition on which you hold my
gift of existence I slay you on the spot,"--that he became as decisive in
his obedience as she was in her command, and accepted his fate without
repining.
Yet it must not be thought for a moment,--it cannot be supposed,--that
he was insensible because he looked upon himself with the coolness of an
enforced philosophy. He bore his burden manfully, hard as it was to live
under it, for he lived, as we have seen, in hope. The thought of
throwing it off with his life, as too grievous to be borne, was familiar
to his lonely hours, but he rejected it as unworthy of his manhood. How
he had speculated and dreamed about it is plain enough from the paper the
reader may remember on Ocean, River, and Lake.
With these preliminary hints the paper promised is submitted to such as
may find any interest in them.
ACCOUNT OF A CASE OF GYNOPHOBIA.
WITH REMARKS.
Being the Substance of a Report to the Royal Academy of the Biological
Sciences by a Committee of that Institution.
"The singular nature of the case we are about to narrate and comment upon
will, we feel confident, arrest the attention of those who have learned
the great fact that Nature often throws the strongest light upon her laws
by the apparent exceptions and anomalies which from time to time are
observed. We have done with the lusus naturae of earlier generations.
We pay little attention to the stories of 'miracles,' except so far as we
receive them ready-made at the hands of the churches which still hold to
them. Not the less do we meet with strange and surprising facts, which a
century or two ago would have been handled by the clergy and the courts,
but today are calmly recorded and judged by the best light our knowledge
of the laws of life can throw upon them. It must be owned that there are
stories which we can hardly dispute, so clear and full is the evidence in
their support, which do, notwithstanding, tax our faith and sometimes
leave us sceptical in spite of all the testimony which supports them.
"In this category many will be disposed to place the case we commend to
the candid attention of the Academy. If one were told that a young man,
a gentleman by birth and training, well formed, in apparently perfect
health, of agreeable physiognomy and manners, could not endure the
presence of the most attractive young woman, but was seized with deadly
terror and sudden collapse of all the powers of life, if he came into her
immediate presence; if it were added that this same young man did not
shrink from the presence of an old withered crone; that he had a certain
timid liking for little maidens who had not yet outgrown the company of
their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at
the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this must be the
fiction of some fanciful brain, the whim of some romancer, the trick of
some playwright. It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out.
A young man slighting the lovely heroine of the little comedy and making
love to her grandmother! This would, of course, be overstating the truth
of the story, but to such a misinterpretation the plain facts lend
themselves too easily. We will relate the leading circumstances of the
case, as they were told us with perfect simplicity and frankness by the
subject of an affection which, if classified, would come under the
general head of Antipathy, but to which, if we give it a name, we shall
have to apply the term Gynophobia, or Fear of Woman."
Here follows the account furnished to the writer of the paper, which is
in all essentials identical with that already laid before the reader.
"Such is the case offered to our consideration. Assuming its
truthfulness in all its particulars, it remains to see in the first place
whether or not it is as entirely exceptional and anomalous as it seems at
first sight, or whether it is only the last term of a series of cases
which in their less formidable aspect are well known to us in literature,
in the records of science, and even in our common experience.
"To most of those among us the explanations we are now about to give are
entirely superfluous. But there are some whose chief studies have been
in different directions, and who will not complain if certain facts are
mentioned which to the expert will seem rudimentary, and which hardly
require recapitulation to those who are familiarly acquainted with the
common text-books.
"The heart is the centre of every living movement in the higher animals,
and in man, furnishing in varying amount, or withholding to a greater or
less extent, the needful supplies to all parts of the system. If its
action is diminished to a certain degree, faintness is the immediate
consequence; if it is arrested, loss of consciousness; if its action is
not soon restored, death, of which fainting plants the white flag,
remains in possession of the system.
"How closely the heart is under the influence of the emotions we need not
go to science to learn, for all human experience and all literature are
overflowing with evidence that shows the extent of this relation.
Scripture is full of it; the heart in Hebrew poetry represents the entire
life, we might almost say. Not less forcible is the language of
Shakespeare, as for instance, in 'Measure for Measure:'
"'Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
Making it both unable for itself
And dispossessing all my other parts
Of necessary fitness?'
"More especially is the heart associated in every literature with the
passion of love. A famous old story is that of Galen, who was called to
the case of a young lady long ailing, and wasting away from some cause
the physicians who had already seen her were unable to make out. The
shrewd old practitioner suspected that love was at the bottom of the
young lady's malady. Many relatives and friends of both sexes, all of
them ready with their sympathy, came to see her. The physician sat by her
bedside during one of these visits, and in an easy, natural way took her
hand and placed a finger on her pulse. It beat quietly enough until a
certain comely young gentleman entered the apartment, when it suddenly
rose infrequency, and at the same moment her hurried breathing, her
changing color, pale and flushed by turns, betrayed the profound
agitation his presence excited. This was enough for the sagacious Greek;
love was the disease, the cure of which by its like may be claimed as an
anticipation of homoeopathy. In the frontispiece to the fine old 'Junta'
edition of the works of Galen, you may find among the wood-cuts a
representation of the interesting scene, with the title Amantas
Dignotio,--the diagnosis, or recognition, of the lover.
"Love has many languages, but the heart talks through all of them. The
pallid or burning cheek tells of the failing or leaping fountain which
gives it color. The lovers at the 'Brookside' could hear each other's
hearts beating. When Genevieve, in Coleridge's poem, forgot herself, and
was beforehand with her suitor in her sudden embrace,
"'T was partly love and partly fear,
And partly 't was a bashful art,
That I might rather feel than see
The swelling of her heart'
"Always the heart, whether its hurried action is seen, or heard, or felt.
But it is not always in this way that the 'deceitful' organ treats the
lover.
"'Faint heart never won fair lady.'
"This saying was not meant, perhaps, to be taken literally, but it has
its literal truth. Many a lover has found his heart sink within
him,--lose all its force, and leave him weak as a child in his emotion at
the sight of the object of his affections. When Porphyro looked upon
Madeline at her prayers in the chapel, it was too much for him:
"'She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint,
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from earthly taint.'
"And in Balzac's novel, 'Cesar Birotteau,' the hero of the story 'fainted
away for-joy at the moment when, under a linden-tree, at Sceaux,
Constance-Barbe-Josephine accepted him as her future husband.'
"One who faints is dead if he does not I come to,' and nothing is more
likely than that too susceptible lovers have actually gone off in this
way. Everything depends on how the heart behaves itself in these and
similar trying moments. The mechanism of its actions becomes an
interesting subject, therefore, to lovers of both sexes, and to all who
are capable of intense emotions.
"The heart is a great reservoir, which distributes food, drink, air, and
heat to every part of the system, in exchange for its waste material. It
knocks at the gate of every organ seventy or eighty times in a minute,
calling upon it to receive its supplies and unload its refuse. Between
it and the brain there is the closest relation. The emotions, which act
upon it as we have seen, govern it by a mechanism only of late years
thoroughly understood. This mechanism can be made plain enough to the
reader who is not afraid to believe that he can understand it.
"The brain, as all know, is the seat of ideas, emotions, volition. It is
the great central telegraphic station with which many lesser centres are
in close relation, from which they receive, and to which they transmit,
their messages. The heart has its own little brains, so to speak,--small
collections of nervous substance which govern its rhythmical motions
under ordinary conditions. But these lesser nervous centres are to a
large extent dominated by influences transmitted from certain groups of
nerve-cells in the brain and its immediate dependencies.
"There are two among the special groups of nerve-cells which produce
directly opposite effects. One of these has the power of accelerating
the action of the heart, while the other has the power of retarding or
arresting this action. One acts as the spur, the other as the bridle.
According as one or the other predominates, the action of the heart will
be stimulated or restrained. Among the great modern discoveries in
physiology is that of the existence of a distinct centre of inhibition,
as the restraining influence over the heart is called.
"The centre of inhibition plays a terrible part in the history of
cowardice and of unsuccessful love. No man can be brave without blood to
sustain his courage, any more than he can think, as the German
materialist says, not absurdly, without phosphorus. The fainting lover
must recover his circulation, or his lady will lend him her
smelling-salts and take a gallant with blood in his cheeks. Porphyro got
over his faintness before he ran away with Madeline, and Cesar Birotteau
was an accepted lover when he swooned with happiness: but many an officer
has been cashiered, and many a suitor has been rejected, because the
centre of inhibition has got the upper hand of the centre of stimulation.
"In the well-known cases of deadly antipathy which have been recorded,
the most frequent cause has been the disturbed and depressing influence
of the centre of inhibition. Fainting at the sight of blood is one of
the commonest examples of this influence. A single impression, in a very
early period of atmospheric existence,--perhaps, indirectly, before that
period, as was said to have happened in the case of James the First of
England,--may establish a communication between this centre and the heart
which will remain open ever afterwards. How does a footpath across a
field establish itself? Its curves are arbitrary, and what we call
accidental, but one after another follows it as if he were guided by a
chart on which it was laid down. So it is with this dangerous transit
between the centre of inhibition and the great organ of life. If once
the path is opened by the track of some profound impression, that same
impression, if repeated, or a similar one, is likely to find the old
footmarks and follow them. Habit only makes the path easier to traverse,
and thus the unreasoning terror of a child, of an infant, may perpetuate
itself in a timidity which shames the manhood of its subject.
"The case before us is an exceptional and most remarkable example of the
effect of inhibition on the heart.
"We will not say that we believe it to be unique in the history of the
human race; on the contrary, we do not doubt that there have been similar
cases, and that in some rare instances sudden death has been the
consequence of seizures like that of the subject of this Report. The case
most like it is that of Colone Townsend, which is too well known to
require any lengthened description in this paper. It is enough to recall
the main facts. He could by a voluntary effort suspend the action of his
heart for a considerable period, during which he lay like one dead,
pulseless, and without motion. After a time the circulation returned,
and he does not seem to have been the worse for his dangerous, or
seemingly dangerous, experiment. But in his case it was by an act of the
will that the heart's action was suspended. In the case before us it is
an involuntary impulse transmitted from the brain to the inhibiting
centre, which arrests the cardiac movements.
"What is like to be the further history of the case?
"The subject of this anomalous affliction is now more than twenty years
old. The chain of nervous actions has become firmly established. It
might have been hoped that the changes of adolescence would have effected
a transformation of the perverted instinct. On the contrary, the whole
force of this instinct throws itself on the centre of inhibition, instead
of quickening the heart-beats, and sending the rush of youthful blood
with fresh life through the entire system to the throbbing finger-tips.
"Is it probable that time and circumstances will alter a habit of nervous
interactions so long established? We are disposed to think that there is
a chance of its being broken up. And we are not afraid to say that we
suspect the old gypsy woman, whose prophecy took such hold of the
patient's imagination, has hit upon the way in which the 'spell,' as she
called it, is to be dissolved. She must, in all probability, have had a
hint of the 'antipatia' to which the youth before her was a victim, and
its cause, and if so, her guess as to the probable mode in which the
young man would obtain relief from his unfortunate condition was the one
which would naturally suggest itself.
"If once the nervous impression which falls on the centre of inhibition
can be made to change its course, so as to follow its natural channel, it
will probably keep to that channel ever afterwards. And this will, it is
most likely, be effected by some sudden, unexpected impression. If he
were drowning, and a young woman should rescue him, it is by no means
impossible that the change in the nervous current we have referred to
might be brought about as rapidly, as easily, as the reversal of the
poles in a magnet, which is effected in an instant. But he cannot be
expected to throw himself into the water just at the right moment when
the 'fair lady' of the gitana's prophecy is passing on the shore.
Accident may effect the cure which art seems incompetent to perform. It
would not be strange if in some future seizure he should never come back
to consciousness. But it is quite conceivable, on the other hand, that a
happier event may occur, that in a single moment the nervous polarity may
be reversed, the whole course of his life changed, and his past terrible
experiences be to him like a scarce-remembered dream.
"This is one, of those cases in which it is very hard to determine the
wisest course to be pursued. The question is not unlike that which
arises in certain cases of dislocation of the bones of the neck. Shall
the unfortunate sufferer go all his days with his face turned far round
to the right or the left, or shall an attempt be made to replace the
dislocated bones? an attempt which may succeed, or may cause instant
death. The patient must be consulted as to whether he will take the
chance. The practitioner may be unwilling to risk it, if the patient
consents. Each case must be judged on its own special grounds. We
cannot think that this young man is doomed to perpetual separation from
the society of womanhood during the period of its bloom and attraction.
But to provoke another seizure after his past experiences would be too
much like committing suicide. We fear that we must trust to the chapter
of accidents. The strange malady--for such it is--has become a second
nature, and may require as energetic a shock to displace it as it did to
bring it into existence. Time alone can solve this question, on which
depends the well-being and, it may be, the existence of a young man every
way fitted to be happy, and to give happiness, if restored to his true
nature."
XX.
DR. BUTTS REFLECTS.
Dr. Butts sat up late at night reading these papers and reflecting upon
them. He was profoundly impressed and tenderly affected by the entire
frankness, the absence of all attempt at concealment, which Maurice
showed in placing these papers at his disposal. He believed that his
patient would recover from this illness for which he had been taking care
of him. He thought deeply and earnestly of what he could do for him
after he should have regained his health and strength.
There were references, in Maurice's own account of himself, which the
doctor called to mind with great interest after reading his brief
autobiography. Some one person--some young woman, it must be--had
produced a singular impression upon him since those earlier perilous
experiences through which he had passed. The doctor could not help
thinking of that meeting with Euthymia of which she had spoken to him.
Maurice, as she said, turned pale,--he clapped his hand to his breast.
He might have done so if he had met her chambermaid, or any straggling
damsel of the village. But Euthymia was not a young woman to be looked
upon with indifference. She held herself like a queen, and walked like
one, not a stage queen, but one born and bred to self-reliance, and
command of herself as well as others. One could not pass her without
being struck with her noble bearing and spirited features. If she had
known how Maurice trembled as he looked upon her, in that conflict of
attraction and uncontrollable dread,--if she had known it! But what,
even then, could she have done? Nothing but get away from him as fast as
she could. As it was, it was a long time before his agitation subsided,
and his heart beat with its common force and frequency.
Dr. Butts was not a male gossip nor a matchmaking go-between. But he
could not help thinking what a pity it was that these two young persons
could not come together as other young people do in the pairing season,
and find out whether they cared for and were fitted for each other. He
did not pretend to settle this question in his own mind, but the thought
was a natural one. And here was a gulf between them as deep and wide as
that between Lazarus and Dives. Would it ever be bridged over? This
thought took possession of the doctor's mind, and he imagined all sorts
of ways of effecting some experimental approximation between Maurice and
Euthymia. From this delicate subject he glanced off to certain general
considerations suggested by the extraordinary history he had been
reading. He began by speculating as to the possibility of the personal
presence of an individual making itself perceived by some channel other
than any of the five senses. The study of the natural sciences teaches
those who are devoted to them that the most insignificant facts may lead
the way to the discovery of the most important, all-pervading laws of the
universe. From the kick of a frog's hind leg to the amazing triumphs
which began with that seemingly trivial incident is a long, a very long
stride if Madam Galvani had not been in delicate health, which was the
occasion of her having some frog-broth prepared for her, the world of
to-day might not be in possession of the electric telegraph and the light
which blazes like the sun at high noon. A common-looking occurrence, one
seemingly unimportant, which had hitherto passed unnoticed with the
ordinary course of things, was the means of introducing us to a new and
vast realm of closely related phenomena. It was like a key that we might
have picked up, looking so simple that it could hardly fit any lock but
one of like simplicity, but which should all at once throw back the bolts
of the one lock which had defied the most ingenious of our complex
implements and open our way into a hitherto unexplored territory.
It certainly was not through the eye alone that Maurice felt the
paralyzing influence. He could contemplate Euthymia from a distance, as
he did on the day of the boat-race, without any nervous disturbance. A
certain proximity was necessary for the influence to be felt, as in the
case of magnetism and electricity. An atmosphere of danger surrounded
every woman he approached during the period when her sex exercises its
most powerful attractions. How far did that atmosphere extend, and
through what channel did it act?
The key to the phenomena of this case, he believed, was to be found in a
fact as humble as that which gave birth to the science of galvanism and
its practical applications. The circumstances connected with the very
common antipathy to cats were as remarkable in many points of view as the
similar circumstances in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The subjects of
that antipathy could not tell what it was which disturbed their nervous
system. All they knew was that a sense of uneasiness, restlessness,
oppression, came over them in the presence of one of these animals. He
remembered the fact already mentioned, that persons sensitive to this
impression can tell by their feelings if a cat is concealed in the
apartment in which they may happen to be. It may be through some
emanation. It may be through the medium of some electrical disturbance.
What if the nerve-thrills passing through the whole system of the animal
propagate themselves to a certain distance without any more regard to
intervening solids than is shown by magnetism? A sieve lets sand pass
through it; a filter arrests sand, but lets fluids pass, glass holds
fluids, but lets light through; wood shuts out light, but magnetic
attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve. No good
reasons can be given why the presence of a cat should not betray itself
to certain organizations, at a distance, through the walls of a box in
which the animal is shut up. We need not disbelieve the stories which
allege such an occurrence as a fact and a not very infrequent one.
If the presence of a cat can produce its effects under these
circumstances, why should not that of a human being under similar
conditions, acting on certain constitutions, exercise its specific
influence? The doctor recalled a story told him by one of his friends, a
story which the friend himself heard from the lips of the distinguished
actor, the late Mr. Fechter. The actor maintained that Rachel had no
genius as an actress. It was all Samson's training and study, according
to him, which explained the secret of her wonderful effectiveness on the
stage. But magnetism, he said,--magnetism, she was full of. He declared
that he was made aware of her presence on the stage, when he could not
see her or know of her presence otherwise, by this magnetic emanation.
The doctor took the story for what it was worth. There might very
probably be exaggeration, perhaps high imaginative coloring about it, but
it was not a whit more unlikely than the cat-stories, accepted as
authentic. He continued this train of thought into further developments.
Into this series of reflections we will try to follow him.
What is the meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded the
heads of their pictured saints, of the aureoles which wraps them like a
luminous cloud? Is it not a recognition of the fact that these holy
personages diffuse their personality in the form of a visible emanation,
which reminds us of Milton's definition of light:
"Bright effluence of bright essence increate"?
The common use of the term influence would seem to imply the existence of
its correlative, effluence. There is no good reason that I can see, the
doctor said to himself, why among the forces which work upon the nervous
centres there should not be one which acts at various distances from its
source. It may not be visible like the "glory" of the painters, it may
not be appreciable by any one of the five senses, and yet it may be felt
by the person reached by it as much as if it were a palpable
presence,--more powerfully, perhaps, from the mystery which belongs to
its mode of action.
Why should not Maurice have been rendered restless and anxious by the
unseen nearness of a young woman who was in the next room to him, just as
the persons who have the dread of cats are made conscious of their
presence through some unknown channel? Is it anything strange that the
larger and more powerful organism should diffuse a consciousness of its
presence to some distance as well as the slighter and feebler one? Is it
strange that this mysterious influence or effluence should belong
especially or exclusively to the period of complete womanhood in
distinction from that of immaturity or decadence? On the contrary, it
seems to be in accordance with all the analogies of nature,--analogies
too often cruel in the sentence they pass upon the human female.
Among the many curious thoughts which came up in the doctor's mind was
this, which made him smile as if it were a jest, but which he felt very
strongly had its serious side, and was involved with the happiness or
suffering of multitudes of youthful persons who die without telling their
secret:
How many young men have a mortal fear of woman, as woman, which they
never overcome, and in consequence of which the attraction which draws
man towards her, as strong in them as in others,--oftentimes, in virtue
of their peculiarly sensitive organizations, more potent in them than in
others of like age and conditions,--in consequence of which fear, this
attraction is completely neutralized, and all the possibilities of
doubled and indefinitely extended life depending upon it are left
unrealized! Think what numbers of young men in Catholic countries devote
themselves to lives of celibacy. Think how many young men lose all their
confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most
attracted, and at last steal away from a companionship which it is
rapture to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence of the
beloved object paralyze all the powers of expression. Sorcerers have in
all time and countries played on the hopes and terrors of lovers. Once
let loose a strong impulse on the centre of inhibition, and the warrior
who had faced bayonets and batteries becomes a coward whom the
well-dressed hero of the ball-room and leader of the German will put to
ignominious flight in five minutes of easy, audacious familiarity with
his lady-love.
Yes, the doctor went on with his reflections, I do not know that I have
seen the term Gynophobia before I opened this manuscript, but I have seen
the malady many times. Only one word has stood between many a pair of
young people and their lifelong happiness, and that word has got as far
as the lips, but the lips trembled and would not, could not, shape that
little word. All young women are not like Coleridge's Genevieve, who
knew how to help her lover out of his difficulty, and said yes before he
had asked for an answer. So the wave which was to have wafted them on to
the shore of Elysium has just failed of landing them, and back they have
been drawn into the desolate ocean to meet no more on earth.
Love is the master-key, he went on thinking, love is the master-key that
opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of
all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!--not only
the historic wonder of beauty, that "burnt the topless towers of Ilium"
for the smile of Helen, and fired the palaces of Babylon by the hand of
Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places, and
carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any of the
Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and a dragon coiled
around her.
The doctor smiled at his own imposing classical allusions and pictorial
imagery. Drifting along from thought to thought, he reflected on the
probable consequences of the general knowledge of Maurice Kirkwood's
story, if it came before the public.
What a piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the
village, to be sure! What scoffing, what ridicule, what embellishments,
what fables, would follow in the trail of the story! If the Interviewer
got hold of it, how "The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor"
would blaze with capitals in its next issue! The young fellows' of the
place would be disposed to make fun of the whole matter. The young
girls-the doctor hardly dared to think what would happen when the story
got about among them. "The Sachem" of the solitary canoe, the bold
horseman, the handsome hermit,--handsome so far as the glimpses they had
got of him went,--must needs be an object of tender interest among them,
now that he was ailing, suffering, in danger of his life, away from
friends,--poor fellow! Little tokens of their regard had reached his
sick-chamber; bunches of flowers with dainty little notes, some of them
pinkish, some three-cornered, some of them with brief messages, others
"criss-crossed," were growing more frequent as it was understood that the
patient was likely to be convalescent before many days had passed. If it
should come to be understood that there was a deadly obstacle to their
coming into any personal relations with him, the doctor had his doubts
whether there were not those who would subject him to the risk; for there
were coquettes in the village,--strangers, visitors, let us hope,--who
would sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity and love of conquest.
XXI
AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION.
The illness from which Maurice had suffered left him in a state of
profound prostration. The doctor, who remembered the extreme danger of
any overexertion in such cases, hardly allowed him to lift his head from
the pillow. But his mind was gradually recovering its balance, and he
was able to hold some conversation with those about him. His faithful
Paolo had grown so thin in waiting upon him and watching with him that
the village children had to take a second look at his face when they
passed him to make sure that it was indeed their old friend and no other.
But as his master advanced towards convalescence and the doctor assured
him that he was going in all probability to get well, Paolo's face began
to recover something of its old look and expression, and once more his
pockets filled themselves with comfits for his little circle of
worshipping three and four year old followers.
"How is Mr. Kirkwood?" was the question with which he was always greeted.
In the worst periods of the fever be rarely left his master. When he
did, and the question was put to him, he would shake his head sadly,
sometimes without a word, sometimes with tears and sobs and faltering
words,--more like a brokenhearted child than a stalwart man as he was,
such a man as soldiers are made of in the great Continental armies.
"He very bad,--he no eat nothing,--he--no say nothing,--he never be no
better," and all his Southern nature betrayed itself in a passionate
burst of lamentation. But now that he began to feel easy about his
master, his ready optimism declared itself no less transparently.
"He better every day now. He get well in few weeks, sure. You see him
on hoss in little while." The kind-hearted creature's life was bound up
in that of his "master," as he loved to call him, in sovereign disregard
of the comments of the natives, who held themselves too high for any such
recognition of another as their better. They could not understand how
he, so much their superior in bodily presence, in air and manner, could
speak of the man who employed him in any other way than as "Kirkwood,"
without even demeaning himself so far as to prefix a "Mr." to it. But
"my master" Maurice remained for Paolo in spite of the fact that all men
are born free and equal. And never was a servant more devoted to a
master than was Paolo to Maurice during the days of doubt and danger.
Since his improvement Maurice insisted upon his leaving his chamber and
getting out of the house, so as to breathe the fresh air of which he was
in so much need. It worried him to see his servant returning after too
short an absence. The attendant who had helped him in the care of the
patient was within call, and Paolo was almost driven out of the house by
the urgency of his master's command that he should take plenty of
exercise in the open air.
Notwithstanding the fact of Maurice's improved condition, although the
force of the disease had spent itself, the state of weakness to which he
had been reduced was a cause of some anxiety, and required great
precautions to be taken. He lay in bed, wasted, enfeebled to such a
degree that he had to be cared for very much as a child is tended.
Gradually his voice was coming back to him, so that he could hold some
conversation, as was before mentioned, with those about him. The doctor
waited for the right moment to make mention of the manuscript which
Maurice had submitted to him. Up to this time, although it had been
alluded to and the doctor had told him of the intense interest with which
he had read it, he had never ventured to make it the subject of any long
talk, such as would be liable to fatigue his patient. But now he thought
the time had come.
"I have been thinking," the doctor said, "of the singular seizures to
which you are liable, and as it is my business not merely to think about
such cases, but to do what I can to help any who may be capable of
receiving aid from my art, I wish to have some additional facts about
your history. And in the first place, will you allow me to ask what led
you to this particular place? It is so much less known to the public at
large than many other resorts that we naturally ask, What brings this or
that new visitor among us? We have no ill-tasting, natural spring of bad
water to be analyzed by the state chemist and proclaimed as a specific.
We have no great gambling-houses, no racecourse (except that fox boats on
the lake); we have no coaching-club, no great balls, few lions of any
kind, so we ask, What brings this or that stranger here? And I think I
may venture to ask you whether any, special motive brought you among us,
or whether it was accident that determined your coming to this place."
"Certainly, doctor," Maurice answered, "I will tell you with great
pleasure. Last year I passed on the border of a great river. The year
before I lived in a lonely cottage at the side of the ocean. I wanted
this year to be by a lake. You heard the paper read at the meeting of
your society, or at least you heard of it,--for such matters are always
talked over in a village like this. You can judge by that paper, or
could, if it were before you, of the frame of mind in which I came here.
I was tired of the sullen indifference of the ocean and the babbling
egotism of the river, always hurrying along on its own private business.
I wanted the dreamy stillness of a large, tranquil sheet of water that
had nothing in particular to do, and would leave me to myself and my
thoughts. I had read somewhere about the place, and the old Anchor
Tavern, with its paternal landlord and motherly landlady and
old-fashioned household, and that, though it was no longer open as a
tavern, I could find a resting-place there early in the season, at least
for a few days, while I looked about me for a quiet place in which I
might pass my summer. I have found this a pleasant residence. By being
up early and out late I have kept myself mainly in the solitude which has
become my enforced habit of life. The season has gone by too swiftly for
me since my dream has become a vision."
The doctor was sitting with his hand round Maurice's wrist, three fingers
on his pulse. As he spoke these last words he noticed that the pulse
fluttered a little,--beat irregularly a few times; intermitted; became
feeble and thready; while his cheek grew whiter than the pallid
bloodlessness of his long illness had left it.
"No more talk, now," he said. "You are too tired to be using your voice.
I will hear all the rest another time."
The doctor had interrupted Maurice at an interesting point. What did he
mean by saying that his dream had become a vision? This is what the
doctor was naturally curious, and professionally anxious, to know. But
his hand was still on his patient's pulse, which told him unmistakably
that the heart had taken the alarm and was losing its energy under the
depressing nervous influence. Presently, however, it recovered its
natural force and rhythm, and a faint flush came back to the pale cheek.
The doctor remembered the story of Galen, and the young maiden whose
complaint had puzzled the physicians.
The next day his patient was well enough to enter once more into
conversation.
"You said something about a dream of yours which had become a vision,"
said the doctor, with his fingers on his patient's wrist, as before. He
felt the artery leap, under his pressure, falter a little, stop, then
begin again, growing fuller in its beat. The heart had felt the pull of
the bridle, but the spur had roused it to swift reaction.
"You know the story of my past life, doctor," Maurice answered; "and, I
will tell you what is the vision which has taken the place of my dreams.
You remember the boat-race? I watched it from a distance, but I held a
powerful opera-glass in my hand, which brought the whole crew of the
young ladies' boat so close to me that I could see the features, the
figures, the movements, of every one of the rowers. I saw the little
coxswain fling her bouquet in the track of the other boat,--you remember
how the race was lost and won,--but I saw one face among those young
girls which drew me away from all the rest. It was that of the young lady
who pulled the bow oar, the captain of the boat's crew. I have since
learned her name, you know it well,--I need not name her. Since that day
I have had many distant glimpses of her; and once I met her so squarely
that the deadly sensation came over me, and I felt that in another moment
I should fall senseless at her feet. But she passed on her way and I on
mine, and the spasm which had clutched my heart gradually left it, and I
was as well as before. You know that young lady, doctor?"
"I do; and she is a very noble creature. You are not the first young man
who has been fascinated, almost at a glance, by Miss Euthymia Tower. And
she is well worth knowing more intimately."
The doctor gave him a full account of the young lady, of her early days,
her character, her accomplishments. To all this he listened devoutly,
and when the doctor left him he said to himself, "I will see her and
speak with her, if it costs me my life."
XXII
EUTHYMIA.
"The Wonder" of the Corinna Institute had never willingly made a show of
her gymnastic accomplishments. Her feats, which were so much admired,
were only her natural exercise. Gradually the dumb-bells others used
became too light for her, the ropes she climbed too short, the clubs she
exercised with seemed as if they were made of cork instead of being heavy
wood, and all the tests and meters of strength and agility had been
strained beyond the standards which the records of the school had marked
as their historic maxima. It was not her fault that she broke a
dynamometer one day; she apologized for it, but the teacher said he
wished he could have a dozen broken every year in the same way. The
consciousness of her bodily strength had made her very careful in her
movements. The pressure of her hand was never too hard for the tenderest
little maiden whose palm was against her own. So far from priding
herself on her special gifts, she was disposed to be ashamed of them.
There were times and places in which she could give full play to her
muscles without fear or reproach. She had her special costume for the
boat and for the woods. She would climb the rugged old hemlocks now and
then for the sake of a wide outlook, or to peep into the large nest where
a hawk, or it may be an eagle, was raising her little brood of
air-pirates.
There were those who spoke of her wanderings in lonely places as an
unsafe exposure. One sometimes met doubtful characters about the
neighborhood, and stories were--told of occurrences which might well
frighten a young girl, and make her cautious of trusting herself alone in
the wild solitudes which surrounded the little village.. Those who knew
Euthymia thought her quite equal to taking care of herself. Her very
look was enough to ensure the respect of any vagabond who might cross her
path, and if matters came to the worst she would prove as dangerous as a
panther.
But it was a pity to associate this class of thoughts with a noble
specimen of true womanhood. Health, beauty, strength, were fine
qualities, and in all these she was rich. She enjoyed all her natural
gifts, and thought little about them. Unwillingly, but over-persuaded by
some of her friends, she had allowed her arm and hand to be modelled.
The artists who saw the cast wondered if it would be possible to get the
bust of the maiden from whom it was taken. Nobody would have dared to
suggest such an idea to her except Lurida. For Lurida sex was a trifling
accident, to be disregarded not only in the interests of humanity, but
for the sake of art.
"It is a shame," she said to Euthymia, "that you will not let your
exquisitely moulded form be perpetuated in marble. You have no right to
withhold such a model from the contemplation of your fellow-creatures.
Think how rare it is to see a woman who truly represents the divine idea!
You belong to your race, and not to yourself,--at least, your beauty is a
gift not to be considered as a piece of private property. Look at the
so-called Venus of Milo. Do you suppose the noble woman who was the
original of that divinely chaste statue felt any scruple about allowing
the sculptor to reproduce her pure, unblemished perfections?"
Euthymia was always patient with her imaginative friend. She listened to
her eloquent discourse, but she could not help blushing, used as she was
to Lurida's audacities. "The Terror's" brain had run away with a large
share of the blood which ought to have gone to the nourishment of her
general system. She could not help admiring, almost worshipping, a
companion whose being was rich in the womanly developments with which
nature had so economically endowed herself. An impoverished organization
carries with it certain neutral qualities which make its subject appear,
in the presence of complete manhood and womanhood, like a deaf-mute among
speaking persons. The deep blush which crimsoned Euthymia's cheek at
Lurida's suggestion was in a strange contrast to her own undisturbed
expression. There was a range of sensibilities of which Lurida knew far
less than she did of those many and difficult studies which had absorbed
her vital forces. She was startled to see what an effect her proposal
had produced, for Euthymia was not only blushing, but there was a flame
in her eyes which she had hardly ever seen before.
"Is this only your own suggestion?" Euthymia said, "or has some one been
putting the idea into your head?" The truth was that she had happened to
meet the Interviewer at the Library, one day, and she was offended by the
long, searching stare with which that individual had honored her. It
occurred to her that he, or some such visitor to the place, might have
spoken of her to Lurida, or to some other person who had repeated what
was said to Lurida, as a good subject for the art of the sculptor, and
she felt all her maiden sensibilities offended by the proposition.
Lurida could not understand her excitement, but she was startled by it.
Natures which are complementary of each other are liable to these
accidental collisions of feeling. They get along very well together,
none the worse for their differences, until all at once the tender spot
of one or the other is carelessly handled in utter unconsciousness on the
part of the aggressor, and the exclamation, the outcry, or the explosion
explains the situation altogether too emphatically. Such scenes did not
frequently occur between the two friends, and this little flurry was soon
over; but it served to warn Lurida that Miss Euthymia Tower was not of
that class of self-conscious beauties who would be ready to dispute the
empire of the Venus of Milo on her own ground, in defences as scanty and
insufficient as those of the marble divinity.
Euthymia had had admirers enough, at a distance, while at school, and in
the long vacations, near enough to find out that she was anything but
easy to make love to. She fairly frightened more than one rash youth who
was disposed to be too sentimental in her company. They overdid
flattery, which she was used to and tolerated, but which cheapened the
admirer in her estimation, and now and then betrayed her into an
expression which made him aware of the fact, and was a discouragement to
aggressive amiability. The real difficulty was that not one of her
adorers had ever greatly interested her. It could not be that nature had
made her insensible. It must have been because the man who was made for
her had never yet shown himself. She was not easy to please, that was
certain; and she was one of those young women who will not accept as a
lover one who but half pleases them. She could not pick up the first
stick that fell in her way and take it to shape her ideal out of. Many
of the good people of the village doubted whether Euthymia would ever be
married.
"There 's nothing good enough for her in this village," said the old
landlord of what had been the Anchor Tavern.
"She must wait till a prince comes along," the old landlady said in
reply. "She'd make as pretty a queen as any of them that's born to it.
Wouldn't she be splendid with a gold crown on her head, and di'monds a
glitterin' all over her! D' you remember how handsome she looked in the
tableau, when the fair was held for the Dorcas Society? She had on an old
dress of her grandma's,--they don't make anything half so handsome
nowadays,--and she was just as pretty as a pictur'. But what's the use of
good looks if they scare away folks? The young fellows think that such a
handsome girl as that would cost ten times as much to keep as a plain
one. She must be dressed up like an empress,--so they seem to think. It
ain't so with Euthymy: she'd look like a great lady dressed anyhow, and
she has n't got any more notions than the homeliest girl that ever stood
before a glass to look at herself."
In the humbler walks of Arrowhead Village society, similar opinions were
entertained of Miss Euthymia. The fresh-water fisherman represented
pretty well the average estimate of the class to which he belonged. "I
tell ye," said he to another gentleman of leisure, whose chief occupation
was to watch the coming and going of the visitors to Arrowhead
Village,--"I tell ye that girl ain't a gon to put up with any o' them
slab-sided fellahs that you see hangin' raound to look at her every
Sunday when she comes aout o' meetin'. It's one o' them big gents from
Boston or New York that'll step up an' kerry her off."
In the mean time nothing could be further from the thoughts of Euthymia
than the prospect of an ambitious worldly alliance. The ideals of young
women cost them many and great disappointments, but they save them very
often from those lifelong companionships which accident is constantly
trying to force upon them, in spite of their obvious unfitness. The
higher the ideal, the less likely is the commonplace neighbor who has the
great advantage of easy access, or the boarding-house acquaintance who
can profit by those vacant hours when the least interesting of visitors
is better than absolute loneliness,--the less likely are these
undesirable personages to be endured, pitied, and, if not embraced,
accepted, for want of something better. Euthymia found so much pleasure
in the intellectual companionship of Lurida, and felt her own prudence
and reserve so necessary to that independent young lady, that she had
been contented, so far, with friendship, and thought of love only in an
abstract sort of way. Beneath her abstractions there was a capacity of
loving which might have been inferred from the expression of her
features, the light that shone in her eyes, the tones of her voice, all
of which were full of the language which belongs to susceptible natures.
How many women never say to themselves that they were born to love, until
all at once the discovery opens upon them, as the sense that he was born
a painter is said to have dawned suddenly upon Correggio!
Like all the rest of the village and its visitors, she could not help
thinking a good deal about the young man lying ill amongst strangers. She
was not one of those who had sent him the three-cornered notes or even a
bunch of flowers. She knew that he was receiving abounding tokens of
kindness and sympathy from different quarters, and a certain inward
feeling restrained her from joining in these demonstrations. If he had
been suffering from some deadly and contagious malady she would have
risked her life to help him, without a thought that there was any
wonderful heroism in such self-devotion. Her friend Lurida might have
been capable of the same sacrifice, but it would be after reasoning with
herself as to the obligations which her sense of human rights and duties
laid upon her, and fortifying her courage with the memory of noble deeds
recorded of women in ancient and modern history. With Euthymia the
primary human instincts took precedence of all reasoning or reflection
about them. All her sympathies were excited by the thought of this
forlorn stranger in his solitude, but she felt the impossibility of
giving any complete expression to them. She thought of Mungo Park in the
African desert, and she envied the poor negress who not only pitied him,
but had the blessed opportunity of helping and consoling him. How near
were these two human creatures, each needing the other! How near in
bodily presence, how far apart in their lives, with a barrier seemingly
impassable between them!
XXIII
THE MEETING OF MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA.
These autumnal fevers, which carry off a large number of our young people
every year, are treacherous and deceptive diseases. Not only are they
liable, as has been mentioned, to various accidental complications which
may prove suddenly fatal, but too often, after convalescence seems to be
established, relapses occur which are more serious than the disease had
appeared to be in its previous course. One morning Dr. Butts found
Maurice worse instead of better, as he had hoped and expected to find
him. Weak as he was, there was every reason to fear the issue of this
return of his threatening symptoms. There was not much to do besides
keeping up the little strength which still remained. It was all needed.
Does the reader of these pages ever think of the work a sick man as much
as a well one has to perform while he is lying on his back and taking
what we call his "rest"? More than a thousand times an hour, between a
hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand times a week, he has to lift
the bars of the cage in which his breathing organs are confined, to save
himself from asphyxia. Rest! There is no rest until the last long sigh
tells those who look upon the dying that the ceaseless daily task, to
rest from which is death, is at last finished. We are all galley-slaves,
pulling at the levers of respiration,--which, rising and falling like so
many oars, drive us across an unfathomable ocean from one unknown shore
to another. No! Never was a galley-slave so chained as we are to these
four and twenty oars, at which we must tug day and night all our life
long.
The doctor could not find any accidental cause to account for this
relapse. It presently occurred to him that there might be some local
source of infection which had brought on the complaint, and was still
keeping up the symptoms which were the ground of alarm. He determined to
remove Maurice to his own house, where he could be sure of pure air, and
where he himself could give more constant attention to his patient during
this critical period of his disease. It was a risk to take, but he could
be carried on a litter by careful men, and remain wholly passive during
the removal. Maurice signified his assent, as he could hardly help
doing,--for the doctor's suggestion took pretty nearly the form of a
command. He thought it a matter of life and death, and was gently urgent
for his patient's immediate change of residence. The doctor insisted on
having Maurice's books and other movable articles carried to his own
house, so that he should be surrounded by familiar sights, and not worry
himself about what might happen to objects which he valued, if they were
left behind him.
All these dispositions were quickly and quietly made, and everything was
ready for the transfer of the patient to the house of the hospitable
physician. Paolo was at the doctor's, superintending the arrangement of
Maurice's effects and making all ready for his master. The nurse in
attendance, a trustworthy man enough in the main, finding his patient in
a tranquil sleep, left his bedside for a little fresh air. While he was
at the door he heard a shouting which excited his curiosity, and he
followed the sound until he found himself at the border of the lake. It
was nothing very wonderful which had caused the shouting. A Newfoundland
dog had been showing off his accomplishments, and some of the idlers were
betting as to the time it would take him to bring back to his master the
various floating objects which had been thrown as far from the shore as
possible. He watched the dog a few minutes, when his attention was drawn
to a light wherry, pulled by one young lady and steered by another. It
was making for the shore, which it would soon reach. The attendant
remembered all at once, that he had left his charge, and just before the
boat came to land he turned and hurried back to the patient. Exactly how
long he had been absent he could not have said,--perhaps a quarter of an
hour, perhaps longer; the time appeared short to him, wearied with long
sitting and watching.
It had seemed, when he stole away from Maurice's bedside, that he was not
in the least needed. The patient was lying perfectly quiet, and to all
appearance wanted nothing more than letting alone. It was such a comfort
to look at something besides the worn features of a sick man, to hear
something besides his labored breathing and faint, half-whispered words,
that the temptation to indulge in these luxuries for a few minutes had
proved irresistible.
Unfortunately, Maurice's slumbers did not remain tranquil during the
absence of the nurse. He very soon fell into a dream, which began
quietly enough, but in the course of the sudden transitions which dreams
are in the habit of undergoing became successively anxious, distressing,
terrifying. His earlier and later experiences came up before him,
fragmentary, incoherent, chaotic even, but vivid as reality. He was at
the bottom of a coal-mine in one of those long, narrow galleries, or
rather worm-holes, in which human beings pass a large part of their
lives, like so many larvae boring their way into the beams and rafters of
some old building. How close the air was in the stifling passage through
which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery
sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow
niche, his hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him
waiting for his foot to slip or the icicle to break. How thin the air
seemed, how desperately hard to breathe! He was thinking of Mont Blanc,
it may be, and the fearfully rarefied atmosphere which he remembered well
as one of the great trials in his mountain ascents. No, it was not Mont
Blanc,--it was not any one of the frozen Alpine summits; it was Hecla
that he was climbing.
The smoke of the burning mountain was wrapping itself around him; he was
choking with its dense fumes; he heard the flames roaring around him, he
felt the hot lava beneath his feet, he uttered a faint cry, and awoke.
The room was full of smoke. He was gasping for breath, strangling in the
smothering oven which his chamber had become.
The house was on fire!
He tried to call for help, but his voice failed him, and died away in a
whisper. He made a desperate effort, and rose so as to sit up in the bed
for an instant, but the effort was too much for him, and he sank back
upon his pillow, helpless. He felt that his hour had come, for he could
not live in this dreadful atmosphere, and he was left alone. He could
hear the crackle of fire as the flame crept along from one partition to
another. It was a cruel fate to be left to perish in that way,--the fate
that many a martyr had had to face,--to be first strangled and then
burned. Death had not the terror for him that it has for most young
persons. He was accustomed to thinking of it calmly, sometimes
wistfully, even to such a degree that the thought of self-destruction had
come upon him as a temptation. But here was death in an unexpected and
appalling shape. He did not know before how much he cared to live. All
his old recollections came before him as it were in one long, vivid
flash. The closed vista of memory opened to its far horizon-line, and
past and present were pictured in a single instant of clear vision. The
dread moment which had blighted his life returned in all its terror. He
felt the convulsive spring in the form of a faint, impotent spasm,--the
rush of air,--the thorns of the stinging and lacerating cradle into which
he was precipitated. One after another those paralyzing seizures which
had been like deadening blows on the naked heart seemed to repeat
themselves, as real as at the moment of their occurrence. The pictures
passed in succession with such rapidity that they appeared almost as if
simultaneous. The vision of the "inward eye" was so intensified in this
moment of peril that an instant was like an hour of common existence.
Those who have been very near drowning know well what this description
means. The development of a photograph may not explain it, but it
illustrates the curious and familiar fact of the revived recollections of
the drowning man's experience. The sensitive plate has taken one look at
a scene, and remembers it all,
Every little circumstance is there,--the hoof in air, the wing in flight,
the leaf as it falls, the wave as it breaks. All there, but invisible;
potentially present, but impalpable, inappreciable, as if not existing at
all. A wash is poured over it, and the whole scene comes out in all its
perfection of detail. In those supreme moments when death stares a man
suddenly in the face the rush of unwonted emotion floods the undeveloped
pictures of vanished years, stored away in the memory, the vast panorama
of a lifetime, and in one swift instant the past comes out as vividly as
if it were again the present. So it was at this moment with the sick
man, as he lay helpless and felt that he was left to die. For he saw no
hope of relief: the smoke was drifting in clouds into the room; the
flames were very near; if he was not reached and rescued immediately it
was all over with him.
His past life had flashed before him. Then all at once rose the thought
of his future,--of all its possibilities, of the vague hopes which he had
cherished of late that his mysterious doom would be lifted from him.
There was something, then, to be lived for, something! There was a new
life, it might be, in store for him, and such a new life! He thought of
all he was losing. Oh, could he but have lived to know the meaning of
love! And the passionate desire of life came over him,--not the dread of
death, but the longing for what the future might yet have of happiness
for him.
All this took place in the course of a very few moments. Dreams and
visions have little to do with measured time, and ten minutes, possibly
fifteen or twenty, were all that had passed since the beginning of those
nightmare terrors which were evidently suggested by the suffocating air
he was breathing.
What had happened? In the confusion of moving books and other articles
to the doctor's house, doors and windows had been forgotten. Among the
rest a window opening into the cellar, where some old furniture had been
left by a former occupant, had been left unclosed. One of the lazy
natives, who had lounged by the house smoking a bad cigar, had thrown the
burning stump in at this open window. He had no particular intention of
doing mischief, but he had that indifference to consequences which is the
next step above the inclination to crime. The burning stump happened to
fall among the straw of an old mattress which had been ripped open. The
smoker went his way without looking behind him, and it so chanced that no
other person passed the house for some time. Presently the straw was in
a blaze, and from this the fire extended to the furniture, to the
stairway leading up from the cellar, and was working its way along the
entry under the stairs leading up to the apartment where Maurice was
lying.
The blaze was fierce and swift, as it could not help being with such a
mass of combustibles,--loose straw from the mattress, dry old furniture,
and old warped floors which had been parching and shrinking for a score
or two of years. The whole house was, in the common language of the
newspaper reports, "a perfect tinder-box," and would probably be a heap
of ashes in half an hour. And there was this unfortunate deserted sick
man lying between life and death, beyond all help unless some unexpected
assistance should come to his rescue.
As the attendant drew near the house where Maurice was lying, he was
horror-struck to see dense volumes of smoke pouring out of the lower
windows. It was beginning to make its way through the upper windows,
also, and presently a tongue of fire shot out and streamed upward along
the side of the house. The man shrieked Fire! Fire! with all his might,
and rushed to the door of the building to make his way to Maurice's room
and save him. He penetrated but a short distance when, blinded and
choking with the smoke, he rushed headlong down the stairs with a cry of
despair that roused every man, woman, and child within reach of a human
voice. Out they came from their houses in every quarter of the village.
The shout of Fire! Fire! was the chief aid lent by many of the young and
old. Some caught up pails and buckets: the more thoughtful ones filling
them; the hastier snatching them up empty, trusting to find water nearer
the burning building.
Is the sick man moved?
This was the awful question first asked,--for in the little village all
knew that Maurice was about being transferred to the doctor's house. The
attendant, white as death, pointed to the chamber where he had left him,
and gasped out,
"He is there!"
A ladder! A ladder! was the general cry, and men and boys rushed off in
search of one. But a single minute was an age now, and there was no
ladder to be had without a delay of many minutes. The sick man was going
to be swallowed up in the flames before it could possibly arrive. Some
were going for a blanket or a coverlet, in the hope that the young man
might have strength enough to leap from the window and be safely caught
in it. The attendant shook his head, and said faintly,
"He cannot move from his bed."
One of the visitors at the village,--a millionaire, it was said,--a
kind-hearted man, spoke in hoarse, broken tones:
"A thousand dollars to the man that will bring him from his chamber!"
The fresh-water fisherman muttered, "I should like to save the man and to
see the money, but it ain't a thaousan' dollars, nor ten thaousan'
dollars, that'll pay a fellah for burnin' to death,--or even chokin' to
death, anyhaow."
The carpenter, who knew the framework of every house in the village,
recent or old, shook his head.
"The stairs have been shored up," he said, "and when the fists that holds
'em up goes, down they'll come. It ain't safe for no man to go over them
stairs. Hurry along your ladder,--that's your only chance."
All was wild confusion around the burning house. The ladder they had
gone for was missing from its case,--a neighbor had carried it off for
the workmen who were shingling his roof. It would never get there in
time. There was a fire-engine, but it was nearly half a mile from the
lakeside settlement. Some were throwing on water in an aimless, useless
way; one was sending a thin stream through a garden syringe: it seemed
like doing something, at least. But all hope of saving Maurice was fast
giving way, so rapid was the progress of the flames, so thick the cloud
of smoke that filled the house and poured from the windows. Nothing was
heard but confused cries, shrieks of women, all sorts of orders to do
this and that, no one knowing what was to be done. The ladder! The
ladder! Five minutes more and it will be too late!
In the mean time the alarm of fire had reached Paolo, and he had stopped
his work of arranging Maurice's books in the same way as that in which
they had stood in his apartment, and followed in the direction of the
sound, little thinking that his master was lying helpless in the burning
house. "Some chimney afire," he said to himself; but he would go and
take a look, at any rate.
Before Paolo had reached the scene of destruction and impending death,
two young women, in boating dresses of decidedly Bloomerish aspect, had
suddenly joined the throng. "The Wonder" and "The Terror" of their
school-days--Miss Euthymia rower and Miss Lurida Vincent had just come
from the shore, where they had left their wherry. A few hurried words
told them the fearful story. Maurice Kirkwood was lying in the chamber
to which every eye was turned, unable to move, doomed to a dreadful
death. All that could be hoped was that he would perish by suffocation
rather than by the flames, which would soon be upon him. The man who had
attended him had just tried to reach his chamber, but had reeled back out
of the door, almost strangled by the smoke. A thousand dollars had been
offered to any one who would rescue the sick man, but no one had dared to
make the attempt; for the stairs might fall at any moment, if the smoke
did not blind and smother the man who passed them before they fell.
The two young women looked each other in the face for one swift moment.
"How can he be reached?" asked Lurida. "Is there nobody that will
venture his life to save a brother like that?"
"I will venture mine," said Euthymia.
"No! no!" shrieked Lurida,--"not you! not you! It is a man's work, not
yours! You shall not go!" Poor Lurida had forgotten all her theories in
this supreme moment. But Euthymia was not to be held back. Taking a
handkerchief from her neck, she dipped it in a pail of water and bound it
about her head. Then she took several deep breaths of air, and filled
her lungs as full as they would hold. She knew she must not take a
single breath in the choking atmosphere if she could possibly help it,
and Euthymia was noted for her power of staying under water so long that
more than once those who saw her dive thought she would never come up
again. So rapid were her movements that they paralyzed the bystanders,
who would forcibly have prevented her from carrying out her purpose. Her
imperious determination was not to be resisted. And so Euthymia, a
willing martyr, if martyr she was to be, and not saviour, passed within
the veil that hid the sufferer.
Lurida turned deadly pale, and sank fainting to the ground. She was the
first, but not the only one, of her sex that fainted as Euthymia
disappeared in the smoke of the burning building. Even the rector grew
very white in the face,--so white that one of his vestry-men begged him
to sit down at once, and sprinkled a few drops of water on his forehead,
to his great disgust and manifest advantage. The old landlady was crying
and moaning, and her husband was wiping his eyes and shaking his head
sadly.
"She will nevar come out alive," he said solemnly.
"Nor dead, neither," added the carpenter. "Ther' won't be nothing left
of neither of 'em but ashes." And the carpenter hid his face in his
hands.
The fresh-water fisherman had pulled out a rag which he called a
"hangkercher,"--it had served to carry bait that morning,--and was making
use of its best corner to dry the tears which were running down his
cheeks. The whole village was proud of Euthymia, and with these more
quiet signs of grief were mingled loud lamentations, coming alike from
old and young.
All this was not so much like a succession of events as it was like a
tableau. The lookers-on were stunned with its suddenness, and before
they had time to recover their bewildered senses all was lost, or seemed
lost. They felt that they should never look again on either of those
young faces.
The rector, not unfeeling by nature, but inveterately professional by
habit, had already recovered enough to be thinking of a text for the
funeral sermon. The first that occurred to him was this,--vaguely, of
course, in the background of consciousness:
"Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego came forth of the midst of the
fire."
The village undertaker was of naturally sober aspect and reflective
disposition. He had always been opposed to cremation, and here was a
funeral pile blazing before his eyes. He, too, had his human sympathies,
but in the distance his imagination pictured the final ceremony, and how
he himself should figure in a spectacle where the usual centre piece of
attraction would be wanting,--perhaps his own services uncalled for.
Blame him not, you whose garden-patch is not watered with the tears of
mourners. The string of self-interest answers with its chord to every
sound; it vibrates with the funeral-bell, it finds itself trembling to
the wail of the De Profundis. Not always,--not always; let us not be
cynical in our judgments, but common human nature, we may safely say, is
subject to those secondary vibrations under the most solemn and
soul-subduing influences.
It seems as if we were doing great wrong to the scene we are
contemplating in delaying it by the description of little circumstances
and individual thoughts and feelings. But linger as we may, we cannot
compress into a chapter--we could not crowd into a volume--all that
passed through the minds and stirred the emotions of the awe-struck
company which was gathered about the scene of danger and of terror. We
are dealing with an impossibility: consciousness is a surface; narrative
is a line.
Maurice had given himself up for lost. His breathing was becoming every
moment more difficult, and he felt that his strength could hold out but a
few minutes longer.
"Robert!" he called in faint accents. But the attendant was not there to
answer.
"Paolo! Paolo!" But the faithful servant, who would have given his life
for his master, had not yet reached the place where the crowd was
gathered.
"Oh, for a breath of air! Oh, for an arm to lift me from this bed! Too
late! Too late!" he gasped, with what might have seemed his dying
expiration.
"Not too late!" The soft voice reached his obscured consciousness as if
it had come down to him from heaven.
In a single instant he found himself rolled in a blanket and in the arms
of--a woman!
Out of the stifling chamber,--over the burning stairs,--close by the
tongues of fire that were lapping up all they could reach,--out into the
open air, he was borne swiftly and safely,--carried as easily as if he
had been a babe, in the strong arms of "The Wonder" of the gymnasium, the
captain of the Atalanta, who had little dreamed of the use she was to
make of her natural gifts and her school-girl accomplishments.
Such a cry as arose from the crowd of on-lookers! It was a sound that
none of them had ever heard before or could expect ever to hear again,
unless he should be one of the last boat-load rescued from a sinking
vessel. Then, those who had resisted the overflow of their emotion, who
had stood in white despair as they thought of these two young lives soon
to be wrapped in their burning shroud,--those stern men--the old
sea-captain, the hard-faced, moneymaking, cast-iron tradesmen of the city
counting-room--sobbed like hysteric women; it was like a convulsion that
overcame natures unused to those deeper emotions which many who are
capable of experiencing die without ever knowing.
This was the scene upon which the doctor and Paolo suddenly appeared at
the same moment.
As the fresh breeze passed over the face of the rescued patient, his eyes
opened wide, and his consciousness returned in almost supernatural
lucidity. Euthymia had sat down upon a bank, and was still supporting
him. His head was resting on her bosom. Through his awakening senses
stole the murmurs of the living cradle which rocked him with the wavelike
movements of respiration, the soft susurrus of the air that entered with
every breath, the double beat of the heart which throbbed close to his
ear. And every sense, and every instinct, and every reviving pulse told
him in language like a revelation from another world that a woman's arms
were around him, and that it was life, and not death, which her embrace
had brought him.
She would have disengaged him from her protecting hold, but the doctor
made her a peremptory sign, which he followed by a sharp command:--
"Do not move him a hair's breadth," he said. "Wait until the litter
comes. Any sudden movement might be dangerous. Has anybody a brandy
flask about him?"
One or two members of the local temperance society looked rather awkward,
but did not come forward.
The fresh-water fisherman was the first who spoke.
"I han't got no brandy," he said, "but there's a drop or two of old
Medford rum in this here that you're welcome to, if it'll be of any help.
I alliz kerry a little on 't in case o' gettin' wet 'n' chilled."
So saying he held forth a flat bottle with the word Sarsaparilla stamped
on the green glass, but which contained half a pint or more of the
specific on which he relied in those very frequent exposures which happen
to persons of his calling.
The doctor motioned back Paolo, who would have rushed at once to the aid
of Maurice, and who was not wanted at that moment. So poor Paolo, in an
agony of fear for his master, was kept as quiet as possible, and had to
content himself with asking all sorts of questions and repeating all the
prayers he could think of to Our Lady and to his holy namesake the
Apostle.
The doctor wiped the mouth of the fisherman's bottle very carefully.
"Take a few drops of this cordial," he said, as he held it to his
patient's lips. "Hold him just so, Euthymia, without stirring. I will
watch him, and say when he is ready to be moved. The litter is near by,
waiting." Dr. Butts watched Maurice's pulse and color. The "Old
Medford" knew its business. It had knocked over its tens of thousands;
it had its redeeming virtue, and helped to set up a poor fellow now and
then. It did this for Maurice very effectively. When he seemed somewhat
restored, the doctor had the litter brought to his side, and Euthymia
softly resigned her helpless burden, which Paolo and the attendant Robert
lifted with the aid of the doctor, who walked by the patient as he was
borne to the home where Mrs. Butts had made all ready for his reception.
As for poor Lurida, who had thought herself equal to the sanguinary
duties of the surgeon, she was left lying on the grass with an old woman
over her, working hard with fan and smelling-salts to bring her back from
her long fainting fit.
XXIV
THE INEVITABLE.
Why should not human nature be the same in Arrowhead Village as
elsewhere? It could not seem strange to the good people of that place
and their visitors that these two young persons, brought together under
circumstances that stirred up the deepest emotions of which the human
soul is capable, should become attached to each other. But the bond
between them was stronger than any knew, except the good doctor, who had
learned the great secret of Maurice's life. For the first time since his
infancy he had fully felt the charm which the immediate presence of
youthful womanhood carries with it. He could hardly believe the fact when
he found himself no longer the subject of the terrifying seizures of
which he had had many and threatening experiences.
It was the doctor's business to save his patient's life, if he could
possibly do it. Maurice had been reduced to the most perilous state of
debility by the relapse which had interrupted his convalescence. Only by
what seemed almost a miracle had he survived the exposure to suffocation
and the mental anguish through which he had passed. It was perfectly
clear to Dr. Butts that if Maurice could see the young woman to whom he
owed his life, and, as the doctor felt assured, the revolution in his
nervous system which would be the beginning of a new existence, it would
be of far more value as a restorative agency than any or all of the drugs
in the pharmacopoeia. He told this to Euthymia, and explained the matter
to her parents and friends. She must go with him on some of his visits.
Her mother should go with her, or her sister; but this was a case of life
and death, and no maidenly scruples must keep her from doing her duty.
The first of her visits to the sick, perhaps dying, man presented a scene
not unlike the picture before spoken of on the title-page of the old
edition of Galen. The doctor was perhaps the most agitated of the little
group. He went before the others, took his seat by the bedside, and held
the patient's wrist with his finger on the pulse. As Euthymia entered it
gave a single bound, fluttered for an instant as if with a faint memory
of its old habit, then throbbed full and strong, comparatively, as if
under the spur of some powerful stimulus. Euthymia's task was a delicate
one, but she knew how to disguise its difficulty.
"Here is a flower I have brought you, Mr. Kirkwood," she said, and handed
him a white chrysanthemum. He took it from her hand, and before she knew
it he took her hand into his own, and held it with a gentle constraint.
What could she do? Here was the young man whose life she had saved, at
least for the moment, and who was yet in danger from the disease which
had almost worn out his powers of resistance.
"Sit down by Mr. Kirkwood's side," said the doctor. "He wants to thank
you, if he has strength to do it, for saving him from the death which
seemed inevitable."
Not many words could Maurice command. He was weak enough for womanly
tears, but their fountains no longer flowed; it was with him as with the
dying, whose eyes may light up, but rarely shed a tear.
The river which has found a new channel widens and deepens--it; it lets
the old water-course fill up, and never returns to its forsaken bed. The
tyrannous habit was broken. The prophecy of the gitana had verified
itself, and the ill a fair woman had wrought a fairer woman bad conquered
and abolished.
The history of Maurice Kirkwood loses its exceptional character from the
time of his restoration to his natural conditions. His convalescence was
very slow and gradual, but no further accident interrupted its even
progress. The season was over, the summer visitors had left Arrowhead
Village; the chrysanthemums were going out of flower, the frosts had
come, and Maurice was still beneath the roof of the kind physician. The
relation between him and his preserver was so entirely apart from all
common acquaintances and friendships that no ordinary rules could apply
to it. Euthymia visited him often during the period of his extreme
prostration.
"You must come every day," the doctor said. "He gains with every visit
you make him; he pines if you miss him for a single day." So she came
and sat by him, the doctor or good Mrs. Butts keeping her company in his
presence. He grew stronger,--began to sit up in bed; and at last
Euthymia found him dressed as in health, and beginning to walk about the
room. She was startled. She had thought of herself as a kind of nurse,
but the young gentleman could hardly be said to need a nurse any longer.
She had scruples about making any further visits. She asked Lurida what
she thought about it.
"Think about it?" said Lurida. "Why should n't you go to see a brother
as well as a sister, I should like to know? If you are afraid to go to
see Maurice Kirkwood, I am not afraid, at any rate. If you would rather
have me go than go yourself, I will do it, and let people talk just as
much as they want to. Shall I go instead of you?"
Euthymia was not quite sure that this would be the best thing for the
patient. The doctor had told her he thought there were special reasons
for her own course in coming daily to see him. "I am afraid," she said,
"you are too bright to be safe for him in his weak state. Your mind is
such a stimulating one, you know. A dull sort of person like myself is
better for him just now. I will continue visiting him as long as the
doctor says it is important that I should; but you must defend me,
Lurida,--I know you can explain it all so that people will not blame me."
Euthymia knew full well what the effect of Lurida's penetrating
head-voice would be in a convalescent's chamber. She knew how that
active mind of hers would set the young man's thoughts at work, when what
he wanted was rest of every faculty. Were not these good and sufficient
reasons for her decision? What others could there be?
So Euthymia kept on with her visits, until she blushed to see that she
was continuing her charitable office for one who was beginning to look
too well to be called an invalid. It was a dangerous condition of
affairs, and the busy tongues of the village gossips were free in their
comments. Free, but kindly, for the story of the rescue had melted every
heart; and what could be more natural than that these two young people
whom God had brought together in the dread moment of peril should find it
hard to tear themselves asunder after the hour of danger was past? When
gratitude is a bankrupt, love only can pay his debts; and if Maurice gave
his heart to Euthymia, would not she receive it as payment in full?
The change which had taken place in the vital currents of Maurice
Kirkwood's system was as simple and solid a fact as the change in a
magnetic needle when the boreal becomes the austral pole, and the austral
the boreal. It was well, perhaps, that this change took place while he
was enfeebled by the wasting effects of long illness. For all the
long-defeated, disturbed, perverted instincts had found their natural
channel from the centre of consciousness to the organ which throbs in
response to every profound emotion. As his health gradually returned,
Euthymia could not help perceiving a flush in his cheek, a glitter in his
eyes, a something in the tone of his voice, which altogether were a
warning to the young maiden that the highway of friendly intercourse was
fast narrowing to a lane, at the head of which her woman's eye could read
plainly enough, "Dangerous passing."
"You look so much better to-day, Mr. Kirkwood," she said, "that I think I
had better not play Sister of Charity any longer. The next time we meet
I hope you will be strong enough to call on me."
She was frightened to see how pale he turned,--he was weaker than she
thought. There was a silence so profound and so long that Mrs. Butts
looked up from the stocking she was knitting. They had forgotten the
good woman's presence.
Presently Maurice spoke,--very faintly, but Mrs. Butts dropped a stitch
at the first word, and her knitting fell into her lap as she listened to
what followed.
"No! you must not leave me. You must never leave me. You saved my life.
But you have done more than that,--more than you know or can ever know.
To you I owe it that I am living; with you I live henceforth, if I am to
live at all. All I am, all I hope,--will you take this poor offering
from one who owes you everything, whose lips never touched those of woman
or breathed a word of love before you?"
What could Euthymia reply to this question, uttered with all the depth of
a passion which had never before found expression.
Not one syllable of answer did listening Mrs. Butts overhear. But she
told her husband afterwards that there was nothing in the tableaux they
had had in September to compare with what she then saw. It was indeed a
pleasing picture which those two young heads presented as Euthymia gave
her inarticulate but infinitely expressive answer to the question of
Maurice Kirkwood. The good-hearted woman thought it time to leave the
young people. Down went the stocking with the needles in it; out of her
lap tumbled the ball of worsted, rolling along the floor with its yarn
trailing after it, like some village matron who goes about circulating
from hearth to hearth, leaving all along her track the story of the new
engagement or of the arrival of the last "little stranger."
Not many suns had set before it was told all through Arrowhead Village
that Maurice Kirkwood was the accepted lover of Euthymia Tower.
POSTSCRIPT: AFTER-GLIMPSES.
MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD. ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, May 18.
MY DEAREST EUTHYMIA,--Who would have thought, when you broke your oar as
the Atalanta flashed by the Algonquin, last June, that before the roses
came again you would find yourself the wife of a fine scholar and grand
gentleman, and the head of a household such as that of which you are the
mistress? You must not forget your old Arrowhead Village friends. What
am I saying?---you forget them! No, dearest, I know your heart too well
for that! You are not one of those who lay aside their old friendships
as they do last years bonnet when they get a new one. You have told me
all about yourself and your happiness, and now you want me to tell you
about myself and what is going on in our little place.
And first about myself. I have given up the idea of becoming a doctor.
I have studied mathematics so much that I have grown fond of certainties,
of demonstrations, and medicine deals chiefly in probabilities. The
practice of the art is so mixed up with the deepest human interests that
it is hard to pursue it with that even poise of the intellect which is
demanded by science. I want knowledge pure and simple,--I do not fancy
having it mixed. Neither do I like the thought of passing my life in
going from one scene of suffering to another; I am not saintly enough for
such a daily martyrdom, nor callous enough to make it an easy occupation.
I fainted at the first operation I saw, and I have never wanted to see
another. I don't say that I wouldn't marry a physician, if the right one
asked me, but the young doctor is not forthcoming at present. Yes, I
think I might make a pretty good doctor's wife. I could teach him a good
deal about headaches and backaches and all sorts of nervous revolutions,
as the doctor says the French women call their tantrums. I don't know
but I should be willing to let him try his new medicines on me. If he
were a homeopath, I know I should; for if a billionth of a grain of sugar
won't begin to sweeten my tea or coffee, I don't feel afraid that a
billionth of a grain of anything would poison me,--no, not if it were
snake-venom; and if it were not disgusting, I would swallow a handful of
his lachesis globules, to please my husband. But if I ever become a
doctor's wife, my husband will not be one of that kind of practitioners,
you may be sure of that, nor an "eclectic," nor a "faith-cure man." On
the whole, I don't think I want to be married at all. I don't like the
male animal very well (except such noble specimens as your husband).
They are all tyrants,--almost all,--so far as our sex is concerned, and I
often think we could get on better without them.
However, the creatures are useful in the Society. They send us papers,
some of them well worth reading. You have told me so often that you
would like to know how the Society is getting on, and to read some of the
papers sent to it if they happened to be interesting, that I have laid
aside one or two manuscripts expressly for your perusal. You will get
them by and by.
I am delighted to know that you keep Paolo with you. Arrowhead Village
misses him dreadfully, I can tell you. That is the reason people become
so attached to these servants with Southern sunlight in their natures? I
suppose life is not long enough to cool their blood down to our Northern
standard. Then they are so child-like, whereas the native of these
latitudes is never young after he is ten or twelve years old. Mother
says,--you know mother's old-fashioned notions, and how shrewd and
sensible she is in spite of them,--mother says that when she was a girl
families used to import young men and young women from the country towns,
who called themselves "helps," not servants,--no, that was Scriptural;
"but they did n't know everything down in Judee," and it is not good
American language. She says that these people would live in the same
household until they were married, and the women often remain in the same
service until they died or were old and worn out, and then, what with the
money they had saved and the care and assistance they got from their
former employers, would pass a decent and comfortable old age, and be
buried in the family lot. Mother has made up her mind to the change, but
grandmother is bitter about it. She says there never was a country yet
where the population was made up of "ladies" and "gentlemen," and she
does n't believe there can be; nor that putting a spread eagle on a
copper makes a gold dollar of it. She is a pessimist after her own
fashion. She thinks all sentiment is dying out of our people. No
loyalty for the sovereign, the king-post of the political edifice, she
says; no deep attachment between employer and employed; no reverence of
the humbler members of a household for its heads; and to make sure of
continued corruption and misery, what she calls "universal suffrage"
emptying all the sewers into the great aqueduct we all must drink from.
"Universal suffrage!" I suppose we women don't belong to the universe!
Wait until we get a chance at the ballot-box, I tell grandma, and see if
we don't wash out the sewers before they reach the aqueduct! But my pen
has run away with men I was thinking of Paolo, and what a pleasant thing
it is to have one of those child-like, warm-hearted, attachable,
cheerful, contented, humble, faithful, companionable, but never presuming
grownup children of the South waiting on one, as if everything he could
do for one was a pleasure, and carrying a look of content in his face
which makes every one who meets him happier for a glimpse of his
features.
It does seem a shame that the charming relation of master and servant,
intelligent authority and cheerful obedience, mutual interest in each
other's welfare, thankful recognition of all the advantages which belong
to domestic service in the better class of families, should be almost
wholly confined to aliens and their immediate descendants. Why should
Hannah think herself so much better than Bridget? When they meet at the
polls together, as they will before long, they will begin to feel more of
an equality than is recognized at present. The native female turns her
nose up at the idea of "living out;" does she think herself so much
superior to the women of other nationalities? Our women will have to
come to it,--so grandmother says,--in another generation or two, and in a
hundred years, according to her prophecy, there will be a new set of old
"Miss Pollys" and "Miss Betseys" who have lived half a century in the
same families, respectful and respected, cherished, cared for in time of
need (citizens as well as servants, holding a ballot as well as a broom,
I tell her), and bringing back to us the lowly, underfoot virtues of
contentment and humility, which we do so need to carpet the barren and
hungry thoroughfare of our unstratified existence.
There, I have got a-going, and am forgetting all the news I have to tell
you. There is an engagement you will want to know all about. It came to
pass through our famous boat-race, which you and I remember, and shall
never forget as long as we live. It seems that the young fellow who
pulled the bow oar of that men's college boat which we had the pleasure
of beating got some glimpses of Georgina, our handsome stroke oar. I
believe he took it into his head that it was she who threw the bouquet
that won the race for us. He was, as you know, greatly mistaken, and
ought to have made love to me, only he did n't. Well, it seems he came
posting down to the Institute just before the vacation was over, and
there got a sight of Georgina. I wonder whether she told him she didn't
fling the bouquet! Anyhow, the acquaintance began in that way, and now
it seems that this young fellow, good-looking and a bright scholar, but
with a good many months more to pass in college, is her captive. It was
too bad. Just think of my bouquet's going to another girl's credit! No
matter, the old Atalanta story was paid off, at any rate.
You want to know all about dear Dr. Butts. They say he has just been
offered a Professorship in one of the great medical colleges. I asked
him about it, and he did not say that he had or had not. "But," said be,
"suppose that I had been offered such a place; do you think I ought to
accept it and leave Arrowhead Village? Let us talk it over," said he,
"just as if I had had such an offer." I told him he ought to stay.
There are plenty of men that can get into a Professor's chair, I said,
and talk like Solomons to a class of wondering pupils: but once get a
really good doctor in a place, a man who knows all about everybody,
whether they have this or that tendency, whether when they are sick they
have a way of dying or a way of getting well, what medicines agree with
them and what drugs they cannot take, whether they are of the sort that
think nothing is the matter with them until they are dead as smoked
herring, or of the sort that send for the minister if they get a
stomach-ache from eating too many cucumbers,--who knows all about all the
people within half a dozen miles (all the sensible ones, that is, who
employ a regular practitioner),--such a man as that, I say, is not to be
replaced like a missing piece out of a Springfield musket or a Waltham
watch. Don't go! said I. Stay here and save our precious lives, if you
can, or at least put us through in the proper way, so that we needn't be
ashamed of ourselves for dying, if we must die. Well, Dr. Butts is not
going to leave us. I hope you will have no unwelcome occasion for his
services,--you are never ill, you know,--but, anyhow, he is going to be
here, and no matter what happens he will be on hand.
The village news is not of a very exciting character. Item 1. A new
house is put up over the ashes of the one in which your husband lived
while he was here. It was planned by one of the autochthonous
inhabitants with the most ingenious combination of inconveniences that
the natural man could educe from his original perversity of intellect.
To get at any one room you must pass through every other. It is blind, or
nearly so, on the only side which has a good prospect, and commands a
fine view of the barn and pigsty through numerous windows. Item 2. We
have a small fire-engine near the new house which can be worked by a man
or two, and would be equal to the emergency of putting out a bunch of
fire-crackers. Item 3. We have a new ladder, in a bog, close to the new
fire-engine, so if the new house catches fire, like its predecessor, and
there should happen to, be a sick man on an upper floor, he can be got
out without running the risk of going up and down a burning staircase.
What a blessed thing it was that there was no fire-engine near by and no
ladder at hand on the day of the great rescue! If there had been, what a
change in your programme of life! You remember that "cup of tea spilt on
Mrs. Masham's apron," which we used to read of in one of Everett's
Orations, and all its wide-reaching consequences in the affairs of
Europe. I hunted up that cup of tea as diligently as ever a Boston
matron sought for the last leaves in her old caddy after the tea-chests
had been flung overboard at Griffin's wharf,--but no matter about that,
now. That is the way things come about in this world. I must write a
lecture on lucky mishaps, or, more elegantly, fortunate calamities. It
will be just the converse of that odd essay of Swift's we read together,
the awkward and stupid things done with the best intentions. Perhaps I
shall deliver the lecture in your city: you will come and hear it, and
bring him, won't you, dearest? Always, your loving
LURIDA.
MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
It seems forever since you left us, dearest Euthymia! And are you, and
is your husband, and Paolo,--good Paolo,--are you all as well and happy
as you have been and as you ought to be? I suppose our small village
seems a very quiet sort of place to pass the winter in, now that you have
become accustomed to the noise and gayety of a great city. For all that,
it is a pretty busy place this winter, I can tell you. We have sleighing
parties,--I never go to them, myself, because I can't keep warm, and my
mind freezes up when my blood cools down below 95 or 96 deg. Fahrenheit.
I had a great deal rather sit by a good fire and read about Arctic
discoveries. But I like very well to hear the bells' jingling and to see
the young people trying to have a good time as hard as they do at a
picnic. It may be that they do, but to me a picnic is purgatory and a
sleigh-ride that other place, where, as my favorite Milton says, "frost
performs the effect of fire." I believe I have quoted him correctly; I
ought to, for I could repeat half his poems from memory once, if I cannot
now.
You must have plenty of excitement in your city life. I suppose you
recognized yourself in one of the society columns of the "Household
Inquisitor:" "Mrs. E. K., very beautiful, in an elegant," etc., etc,
"with pearls," etc., etc.,--as if you were not the ornament of all that
you wear, no matter what it is!
I am so glad that you have married a scholar! Why should not
Maurice--you both tell me to call him so--take the diplomatic office
which has been offered him? It seems to me that he would find himself in
exactly the right place. He can talk in two or three languages, has good
manners, and a wife who--well, what shall I say of Mrs. Kirkwood but that
"she would be good company for a queen," as our old friend the quondam
landlady of the Anchor Tavern used to say? I should so like to see you
presented at Court! It seems to me that I should be willing to hold your
train for the sake of seeing you in your court feathers and things.
As for myself, I have been thinking of late that I would become either a
professional lecturer or head mistress of a great school or college for
girls. I have tried the first business a little. Last month I delivered
a lecture on Quaternions. I got three for my audience; two came over
from the Institute, and one from that men's college which they try to
make out to be a university, and where no female is admitted unless she
belongs among the quadrupeds. I enjoyed lecturing, but the subject is a
difficult one, and I don't think any one of them had any very clear
notion of what I was talking about, except Rhodora,--and I know she did
n't. To tell the truth, I was lecturing to instruct myself. I mean to
try something easier next time. I have thought of the Basque language
and literature. What do you say to that?
The Society goes on famously. We have had a paper presented and read
lately which has greatly amused some of us and provoked a few of the
weaker sort. The writer is that crabbed old Professor of Belles-Lettres
at that men's college over there. He is dreadfully hard on the poor
"poets," as they call themselves. It seems that a great many young
persons, and more especially a great many young girls, of whom the
Institute has furnished a considerable proportion, have taken to sending
him their rhymed productions to be criticised,--expecting to be praised,
no doubt, every one of them. I must give you one of the sauciest
extracts from his paper in his own words:
"It takes half my time to read the 'poems' sent me by young people of
both sexes. They would be more shy of doing it if they knew that I
recognize a tendency to rhyming as a common form of mental weakness, and
the publication of a thin volume of verse as prima facie evidence of
ambitious mediocrity, if not inferiority. Of course there are exceptions
to this rule of judgment, but I maintain that the presumption is always
against the rhymester as compared with the less pretentious persons about
him or her, busy with some useful calling,--too busy to be tagging
rhymed commonplaces together. Just now there seems to be an epidemic of
rhyming as bad as the dancing mania, or the sweating sickness. After
reading a certain amount of manuscript verse one is disposed to
anathematize the inventor of homophonous syllabification. [This phrase
made a great laugh when it was read.] This, that is rhyming, must have
been found out very early,
"'Where are you, Adam?'
"'Here am I, Madam;'
"but it can never have been habitually practised until after the Fall.
The intrusion of tintinnabulating terminations into the conversational
intercourse of men and angels would have spoiled Paradise itself. Milton
would not have them even in Paradise Lost, you remember. For my own
part, I wish certain rhymes could be declared contraband of written or
printed language. Nothing should be allowed to be hurled at the world or
whirled with it, or furled upon it or curled over it; all eyes should be
kept away from the skies, in spite of os homini sublime dedit; youth
should be coupled with all the virtues except truth; earth should never
be reminded of her birth; death should never be allowed to stop a
mortal's breath, nor the bell to sound his knell, nor flowers from
blossoming bowers to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his
tomb. We have rhyming dictionaries,--let us have one from which all
rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor creature grubbing
for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious,
rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical
operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with
jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel. Work, work of some
kind, is the business of men and women, not the making of jingles!
No,--no,--no! I want to see the young people in our schools and
academies and colleges, and the graduates of these institutions, lifted
up out of the little Dismal Swamp of self-contemplating and
self-indulging and self-commiserating emotionalism which is surfeiting
the land with those literary sandwiches,--thin slices of tinkling
sentimentality between two covers looking like hard-baked gilt
gingerbread. But what faces these young folks make up at my good advice!
They get tipsy on their rhymes. Nothing intoxicates one like his--or
her--own verses, and they hold on to their metre-ballad-mongering as the
fellows that inhale nitrous oxide hold on to the gas-bag."
We laughed over this essay of the old Professor; though it hit us pretty
hard. The best part of the joke is that the old man himself published a
thin volume of poems when he was young, which there is good reason to
think he is not very proud of, as they say he buys up all the copies he
can find in the shops. No matter what they say, I can't help agreeing
with him about this great flood of "poetry," as it calls itself, and
looking at the rhyming mania much as he does.
How I do love real poetry! That is the reason hate rhymes which have not
a particle of it in them. The foolish scribblers that deal in them are
like bad workmen in a carpenter's shop. They not only turn out bad jobs
of work, but they spoil the tools for better workmen. There is hardly a
pair of rhymes in the English language that is not so dulled and hacked
and gapped by these 'prentice hands that a master of the craft hates to
touch them, and yet he cannot very well do without them. I have not been
besieged as the old Professor has been with such multitudes of
would-be-poetical aspirants that he could not even read their
manuscripts, but I have had a good many letters containing verses, and I
have warned the writers of the delusion under which they were laboring.
You may like to know that I have just been translating some extracts from
the Greek Anthology. I send you a few specimens of my work, with a
Dedication to the Shade of Sappho. I hope you will find something of the
Greek rhythm in my versions, and that I have caught a spark of
inspiration from the impassioned Lesbian. I have found great delight in
this work, at any rate, and am never so happy as when I read from my
manuscript or repeat from memory the lines into which I have transferred
the thought of the men and women of two thousand years ago, or given
rhythmical expression to my own rapturous feelings with regard to them.
I must read you my Dedication to the Shade of Sappho. I cannot help
thinking that you will like it better than either of my last two, The
Song of the Roses, or The Wail of the Weeds.
How I do miss you, dearest! I want you: I want you to listen to what I
have written; I want you to hear all about my plans for the future; I
want to look at you, and think how grand it must be to feel one's self to
be such a noble and beautiful-creature; I want to wander in the woods
with you, to float on the lake, to share your life and talk over every
day's doings with you. Alas! I feel that we have parted as two friends
part at a port of embarkation: they embrace, they kiss each other's
cheeks, they cover their faces and weep, they try to speak good-by to
each other, they watch from the pier and from the deck; the two forms
grow less and less, fainter and fainter in the distance, two white
handkerchiefs flutter once and again, and yet once more, and the last
visible link of the chain which binds them has parted. Dear, dear,
dearest Euthymia, my eyes are running over with tears when I think that
we may never, never meet again.
Don't you want some more items of village news? We are threatened with
an influx of stylish people: "Buttons" to answer the door-bell, in place
of the chamber-maid; "butler," in place of the "hired man;" footman in
top-boots and breeches, cockade on hat, arms folded a la Napoleon;
tandems, "drags," dogcarts, and go-carts of all sorts. It is rather
amusing to look at their ambitious displays, but it takes away the good
old country flavor of the place.
I don't believe you mean to try to astonish us when you come back to
spend your summers here. I suppose you must have a large house, and I am
sure you will have a beautiful one. I suppose you will have some fine
horses, and who would n't be glad to? But I do not believe you will try
to make your old Arrowhead Village friends stare their eyes out of their
heads with a display meant to outshine everybody else that comes here.
You can have a yacht on the lake, if you like, but I hope you will pull a
pair of oars in our old boat once in a while, with me to steer you. I
know you will be just the same dear-Euthymia you always were and always
must be. How happy you must make such a man as Maurice Kirkwood! And
how happy you ought to be with him!--a man who knows what is in books,
and who has seen for himself, what is in men. If he has not seen so much
of women, where could he study all that is best in womanhood as he can in
his own wife? Only one thing that dear Euthymia lacks. She is not quite
pronounced enough in her views as to the rights and the wrongs of the
sex. When I visit you, as you say I shall, I mean to indoctrinate
Maurice with sound views on that subject. I have written an essay for
the Society, which I hope will go a good way towards answering all the
objections to female suffrage. I mean to read it to your husband, if you
will let me, as I know you will, and perhaps you would like to hear
it,--only you know my thoughts on the subject pretty well already.
With all sorts of kind messages to your dear husband, and love to your
precious self, I am ever your
LURIDA.
DR. BUTTS TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
MY DEAR EUTHYMIA,--My pen refuses to call you by any other name.
Sweet-souled you are, and your Latinized Greek name is--the one which
truly designates you. I cannot tell you how we have followed you, with
what interest and delight through your travels, as you have told their
story in your letters to your mother. She has let us have the privilege
of reading them, and we have been with you in steamer, yacht, felucca,
gondola, Nile-boat; in all sorts of places, from crowded capitals to
"deserts where no men abide,"--everywhere keeping company with you in
your natural and pleasant descriptions of your experiences. And now that
you have returned to your home in the great city I must write you a few
lines of welcome, if nothing more.
You will find Arrowhead Village a good deal changed since you left it.
We are discovered by some of those over-rich people who make the little
place upon which they swarm a kind of rural city. When this happens the
consequences are striking,--some of them desirable and some far
otherwise. The effect of well-built, well-furnished, well-kept houses
and of handsome grounds always maintained in good order about them shows
itself in a large circuit around the fashionable centre. Houses get on a
new coat of paint, fences are kept in better order, little plots of
flowers show themselves where only ragged weeds had rioted, the
inhabitants present themselves in more comely attire and drive in
handsomer vehicles with more carefully groomed horses. On the other
hand, there is a natural jealousy on the part of the natives of the
region suddenly become fashionable. They have seen the land they sold at
farm prices by the acre coming to be valued by the foot, like the corner
lots in a city. Their simple and humble modes of life look almost
poverty-stricken in the glare of wealth and luxury which so outshines
their plain way of living. It is true that many of them have found them
selves richer than in former days, when the neighborhood lived on its own
resources. They know how to avail themselves of their altered position,
and soon learn to charge city prices for country products; but nothing
can make people feel rich who see themselves surrounded by men whose
yearly income is many times their own whole capital. I think it would be
better if our rich men scattered themselves more than they do,--buying
large country estates, building houses and stables which will make it
easy to entertain their friends, and depending for society on chosen
guests rather than on the mob of millionaires who come together for
social rivalry. But I do not fret myself about it. Society will stratify
itself according to the laws of social gravitation. It will take a
generation or two more, perhaps, to arrange the strata by precipitation
and settlement, but we can always depend on one principle to govern the
arrangement of the layers. People interested in the same things will
naturally come together. The youthful heirs of fortunes who keep splendid
yachts have little to talk about with the oarsman who pulls about on the
lake or the river. What does young Dives, who drives his four-in-hand
and keeps a stable full of horses, care about Lazarus, who feels rich in
the possession of a horse-railroad ticket? You know how we live at our
house, plainly, but with a certain degree of cultivated propriety. We
make no pretensions to what is called "style." We are still in that
social stratum where the article called "a napkin-ring" is recognized as
admissible at the dinner-table. That fact sufficiently defines our
modest pretensions. The napkin-ring is the boundary mark between certain
classes. But one evening Mrs. Butts and I went out to a party given by
the lady of a worthy family, where the napkin itself was a newly
introduced luxury. The conversation of the hostess and her guests turned
upon details of the kitchen and the laundry; upon the best mode of
raising bread, whether with "emptins" (emptyings, yeast) or baking
powder; about "bluing" and starching and crimping, and similar matters.
Poor Mrs. Butts! She knew nothing more about such things than her
hostess did about Shakespeare and the musical glasses. What was the use
of trying to enforce social intercourse under such conditions?
Incompatibility of temper has been considered ground for a divorce;
incompatibility of interests is a sufficient warrant for social
separation. The multimillionaires have so much that is common among
themselves, and so little that they share with us of moderate means, that
they will naturally form a specialized class, and in virtue of their
palaces, their picture-galleries, their equipages, their yachts, their
large hospitality, constitute a kind of exclusive aristocracy. Religion,
which ought to be the great leveller, cannot reduce these elements to the
same grade. You may read in the parable, "Friend, how camest thou in
hither not having a wedding garment?" The modern version would be, "How
came you at Mrs. Billion's ball not having a dress on your back which
came from Paris?"
The little church has got a new stained window, a saint who reminds me of
Hamlet's uncle,--a thing "of shreds and patches," but rather pretty to
look at, with an inscription under it which is supposed to be the name of
the person in whose honor the window was placed in the church. Smith was
a worthy man and a faithful churchwarden, and I hope posterity will be
able to spell out his name on his monumental window; but that old English
lettering would puzzle Mephistopheles himself, if he found himself before
this memorial tribute, on the inside,--you know he goes to church
sometimes, if you remember your Faust.
The rector has come out, in a quiet way, as an evolutionist. He has
always been rather "broad" in his views, but cautious in their
expression. You can tell the three branches of the mother-island church
by the way they carry their heads. The low-church clergy look down, as
if they felt themselves to be worms of the dust; the high-church priest
drops his head on one side, after the pattern of the mediaeval saints;
the broad-church preacher looks forward and round about him, as if he
felt himself the heir of creation. Our rector carries his head in the
broad-church aspect, which I suppose is the least open to the charge of
affectation,--in fact, is the natural and manly way of carrying it.
The Society has justified its name of Pansophian of late as never before.
Lurida has stirred up our little community and its neighbors, so that we
get essays on all sorts of subjects, poems and stories in large numbers.
I know all about it, for she often consults me as to the merits of a
particular contribution.
What is to be the fate of Lurida? I often think, with no little interest
and some degree of anxiety, about her future. Her body is so frail and
her mind so excessively and constantly active that I am afraid one or the
other will give way. I do not suppose she thinks seriously of ever being
married. She grows more and more zealous in behalf of her own sex, and
sterner in her judgment of the other. She declares that she never would
marry any man who was not an advocate of female suffrage, and as these
gentlemen are not very common hereabouts the chance is against her
capturing any one of the hostile sex.
What do you think? I happened, just as I was writing the last sentence,
to look out of my window, and whom should I see but Lurida, with a young
man in tow, listening very eagerly to her conversation, according to all
appearance! I think he must be a friend of the rector, as I have seen a
young man like this one in his company. Who knows?
Affectionately yours, etc.
DR. BUTTS TO MRS. BUTTS.
MY BELOVED WIFE,--This letter will tell you more news than you would have
thought could have been got together in this little village during the
short time you have been staying away from it.
Lurida Vincent is engaged! He is a clergyman with a mathematical turn.
The story is that he put a difficult problem into one of the mathematical
journals, and that Lurida presented such a neat solution that the young
man fell in love with her on the strength of it. I don't think the story
is literally true, nor do I believe that other report that he offered
himself to her in the form of an equation chalked on the blackboard; but
that it was an intellectual rather than a sentimental courtship I do not
doubt. Lurida has given up the idea of becoming a professional
lecturer,--so she tells me,--thinking that her future husband's parish
will find her work enough to do. A certain amount of daily domestic
drudgery and unexciting intercourse with simple-minded people will be the
best thing in the world for that brain of hers, always simmering with
some new project in its least fervid condition.
All our summer visitors have arrived. Euthymia Mrs. Maurice Kirkwood and
her husband and little Maurice are here in their beautiful house looking
out on the lake. They gave a grand party the other evening. You ought
to have been there, but I suppose you could not very well have left your
sister in the middle of your visit: All the grand folks were there, of
course. Lurida and her young man--Gabriel is what she calls him--were
naturally the objects of special attention. Paolo acted as major-domo,
and looked as if he ought to be a major-general. Nothing could be
pleasanter than the way in which Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood received their
plain country neighbors; that is, just as they did the others of more
pretensions, as if they were really glad to see them, as I am sure they
were. The old landlord and his wife had two arm-chairs to themselves,
and I saw Miranda with the servants of the household looking in at the
dancers and out at the little groups in the garden, and evidently
enjoying it as much as her old employers. It was a most charming and
successful party. We had two sensations in the course of the evening.
One was pleasant and somewhat exciting, the other was thrilling and of
strange and startling interest.
You remember how emaciated poor Maurice Kirkwood was left after his
fever, in that first season when he was among us. He was out in a boat
one day, when a ring slipped off his thin finger and sunk in a place
where the water was rather shallow. "Jake"--you know Jake,--everybody
knows Jake--was rowing him. He promised to come to the spot and fish up
the ring if he could possibly find it. He was seen poking about with
fish-hooks at the end of a pole, but nothing was ever heard from him
about the ring. It was an antique intaglio stone in an Etruscan
setting,--a wild goose flying over the Campagna. Mr. Kirkwood valued it
highly, and regretted its loss very much.
While we were in the garden, who should appear at the gate but Jake, with
a great basket, inquiring for Mr. Kirkwood. "Come," said Maurice to me,
"let us see what our old friend the fisherman has brought us. What have
you got there, Jake?"
"What I 've got? Wall, I 'll tell y' what I've got: I 've got the
biggest pickerel that's been ketched in this pond for these ten year. An'
I 've got somethin' else besides the pickerel. When I come to cut him
open, what do you think I faound in his insides but this here ring o'
yourn,"--and he showed the one Maurice had lost so long before. There it
was, as good as new, after having tried Jonah's style of housekeeping for
all that time. There are those who discredit Jake's story about finding
the ring in the fish; anyhow, there was the ring and there was the
pickerel. I need not say that Jake went off well paid for his pickerel
and the precious contents of its stomach. Now comes the chief event of
the evening. I went early by special invitation. Maurice took me into
his library, and we sat down together.
"I have something of great importance," he said, "to say to you. I
learned within a few days that my cousin Laura is staying with a friend
in the next town to this. You know, doctor, that we have never met since
the last, almost fatal, experience of my early years. I have determined
to defy the strength of that deadly chain of associations connected with
her presence, and I have begged her to come this evening with the friends
with whom she is staying. Several letters passed between us, for it was
hard to persuade her that there was no longer any risk in my meeting her.
Her imagination was almost as deeply impressed as mine had been at those
alarming interviews, and I had to explain to her fully that I had become
quite indifferent to the disturbing impressions of former years. So, as
the result of our correspondence, Laura is coming this evening, and I
wish you to be present at our meeting. There is another reason why I
wish you to be here. My little boy is not far from the--age at which I
received my terrifying, almost disorganizing shock. I mean to have
little Maurice brought into the presence of Laura, who is said to be
still a very handsome woman, and see if he betrays any hint of that
peculiar sensitiveness which showed itself in my threatening seizure. It
seemed to me not impossible that he might inherit some tendency of that
nature, and I wanted you to be at hand if any sign of danger should
declare itself. For myself I have no fear. Some radical change has
taken place in my nervous system. I have been born again, as it were, in
my susceptibilities, and am in certain respects a new man. But I must
know how it is with my little Maurice."
Imagine with what interest I looked forward to this experiment; for
experiment it was, and not without its sources of anxiety, as it seemed
to me. The evening wore along; friends and neighbors came in, but no
Laura as yet. At last I heard the sound of wheels, and a carriage
stopped at the door. Two ladies and a gentleman got out, and soon
entered the drawing room.
"My cousin Laura!" whispered Maurice to me, and went forward to meet her.
A very handsome woman, who might well have been in the thirties,--one of
those women so thoroughly constituted that they cannot help being
handsome at every period of life. I watched them both as they approached
each other. Both looked pale at first, but Maurice soon recovered his
usual color, and Laura's natural, rich bloom came back by degrees. Their
emotion at meeting was not to be wondered at, but there was no trace in
it of the paralyzing influence on the great centres of life which had
once acted upon its fated victim like the fabled head which turned the
looker-on into a stone.
"Is the boy still awake?" said Maurice to Paolo, who, as they used to say
of Pushee at the old Anchor Tavern, was everywhere at once on that gay
and busy evening.
"What! Mahser Maurice asleep an' all this racket going on? I hear him
crowing like young cockerel when he fus' smell daylight."
"Tell the nurse to bring him down quietly to the little room that leads
out of the library."
The child was brought down in his night-clothes, wide awake, wondering
apparently at the noise he heard, which he seemed to think was for his
special amusement.
"See if he will go to that lady," said his father. Both of us held our
breath as Laura stretched her arms towards little Maurice.
The child looked for an instant searchingly, but fearlessly, at her
glowing cheeks, her bright eyes, her welcoming smile, and met her embrace
as she clasped him to her bosom as if he had known her all his days.
The mortal antipathy had died out of the soul and the blood of Maurice
Kirkwood at that supreme moment when he found himself snatched from the
grasp of death and cradled in the arms of Euthymia.
--------------------------
In closing the New Portfolio I remember that it began with a prefix which
the reader may by this time have forgotten, namely, the First Opening.
It was perhaps presumptuous to thus imply the probability of a second
opening.
I am reminded from time to time by the correspondents who ask a certain
small favor of me that, as I can only expect to be with my surviving
contemporaries a very little while longer, they would be much obliged if
I would hurry up my answer before it is too late. They are right, these
delicious unknown friends of mine, in reminding me of a fact which I
cannot gainsay and might suffer to pass from my recollection. I thank
them for recalling my attention to a truth which I shall be wiser, if not
more hilarious, for remembering.
No, I had no right to say the First Opening. How do I know that I shall
have a chance to open it again? How do I know that anybody will want it
to be opened a second time? How do I know that I shall feel like opening
it? It is safest neither to promise to open the New Portfolio once more,
nor yet to pledge myself to keep it closed hereafter. There are many
papers potentially existent in it, some of which might interest a reader
here and there. The Records of the Pansophian Society contain a
considerable number of essays, poems, stories, and hints capable of being
expanded into presentable dimensions. In the mean time I will say with
Prospero, addressing my old readers, and my new ones, if such I have,
"If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind."
When it has got quiet I may take up the New Portfolio again, and consider
whether it is worth while to open it consider whether it is worth while
to open it.
PAGES FROM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS
By Oliver Wendell Holmes
CONTENTS:
BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER
MY HUNT AFTER "THE CAPTAIN"
THE INEVITABLE TRIAL
CINDERS FROM ASHES
THE PULPIT AND THE PEW
BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER.
(September, 1861.)
This is the new version of the Panem et Circenses of the Roman populace.
It is our ultimatum, as that was theirs. They must have something to
eat, and the circus-shows to look at. We must have something to eat, and
the papers to read.
Everything else we can give up. If we are rich, we can lay down our
carriages, stay away from Newport or Saratoga, and adjourn the trip to
Europe sine die. If we live in a small way, there are at least new
dresses and bonnets and every-day luxuries which we can dispense with.
If the young Zouave of the family looks smart in his new uniform, its
respectable head is content, though he himself grow seedy as a
caraway-umbel late in the season. He will cheerfully calm the perturbed
nap of his old beaver by patient brushing in place of buying a new one,
if only the Lieutenant's jaunty cap is what it should be. We all take a
pride in sharing the epidemic economy of the time. Only bread and the
newspaper we must have, whatever else we do without.
How this war is simplifying our mode of being! We live on our emotions,
as the sick man is said in the common speech to be nourished by his
fever. Our ordinary mental food has become distasteful, and what would
have been intellectual luxuries at other times, are now absolutely
repulsive.
All this change in our manner of existence implies that we have
experienced some very profound impression, which will sooner or later
betray itself in permanent effects on the minds and bodies of many among
us. We cannot forget Corvisart's observation of the frequency with which
diseases of the heart were noticed as the consequence of the terrible
emotions produced by the scenes of the great French Revolution. Laennec
tells the story of a convent, of which he was the medical director, where
all the nuns were subjected to the severest penances and schooled in the
most painful doctrines. They all became consumptive soon after their
entrance, so that, in the course of his ten years' attendance, all the
inmates died out two or three times, and were replaced by new ones. He
does not hesitate to attribute the disease from which they suffered to
those depressing moral influences to which they were subjected.
So far we have noticed little more than disturbances of the nervous
system as a consequence of the war excitement in non-combatants. Take the
first trifling example which comes to our recollection. A sad disaster
to the Federal army was told the other day in the presence of two
gentlemen and a lady. Both the gentlemen complained of a sudden feeling
at the epigastrium, or, less learnedly, the pit of the stomach, changed
color, and confessed to a slight tremor about the knees. The lady had a
"grande revolution," as French patients say,--went home, and kept her bed
for the rest of the day. Perhaps the reader may smile at the mention of
such trivial indispositions, but in more sensitive natures death itself
follows in some cases from no more serious cause. An old, gentleman fell
senseless in fatal apoplexy, on hearing of Napoleon's return from Elba.
One of our early friends, who recently died of the same complaint, was
thought to have had his attack mainly in consequence of the excitements
of the time.
We all know what the war fever is in our young men,--what a devouring
passion it becomes in those whom it assails. Patriotism is the fire of
it, no doubt, but this is fed with fuel of all sorts. The love of
adventure, the contagion of example, the fear of losing the chance of
participating in the great events of the time, the desire of personal
distinction, all help to produce those singular transformations which we
often witness, turning the most peaceful of our youth into the most
ardent of our soldiers. But something of the same fever in a different
form reaches a good many non-combatants, who have no thought of losing a
drop of precious blood belonging to themselves or their families. Some
of the symptoms we shall mention are almost universal; they are as plain
in the people we meet everywhere as the marks of an influenza, when that
is prevailing.
The first is a nervous restlessness of a very peculiar character. Men
cannot think, or write, or attend to their ordinary business. They stroll
up and down the streets, or saunter out upon the public places. We
confessed to an illustrious author that we laid down the volume of his
work which we were reading when the war broke out. It was as interesting
as a romance, but the romance of the past grew pale before the red light
of the terrible present. Meeting the same author not long afterwards, he
confessed that he had laid down his pen at the same time that we had
closed his book. He could not write about the sixteenth century any more
than we could read about it, while the nineteenth was in the very agony
and bloody sweat of its great sacrifice.
Another most eminent scholar told us in all simplicity that he had fallen
into such a state that he would read the same telegraphic dispatches over
and over again in different papers, as if they were new, until he felt as
if he were an idiot. Who did not do just the same thing, and does not
often do it still, now that the first flush of the fever is over?
Another person always goes through the side streets on his way for the
noon extra,--he is so afraid somebody will meet him and tell the news he
wishes to read, first on the bulletin-board, and then in the great
capitals and leaded type of the newspaper.
When any startling piece of war-news comes, it keeps repeating itself in
our minds in spite of all we can do. The same trains of thought go
tramping round in circle through the brain, like the supernumeraries that
make up the grand army of a stage-show. Now, if a thought goes round
through the brain a thousand times in a day, it will have worn as deep a
track as one which has passed through it once a week for twenty years.
This accounts for the ages we seem to have lived since the twelfth of
April last, and, to state it more generally, for that ex post facto
operation of a great calamity, or any very powerful impression, which we
once illustrated by the image of a stain spreading backwards from the
leaf of life open before as through all those which we have already
turned.
Blessed are those who can sleep quietly in times like these! Yet, not
wholly blessed, either; for what is more painful than the awaking from
peaceful unconsciousness to a sense that there is something wrong, we
cannot at first think what,--and then groping our way about through the
twilight of our thoughts until we come full upon the misery, which, like
some evil bird, seemed to have flown away, but which sits waiting for us
on its perch by our pillow in the gray of the morning?
The converse of this is perhaps still more painful. Many have the
feeling in their waking hours that the trouble they are aching with is,
after all, only a dream,--if they will rub their eyes briskly enough and
shake themselves, they will awake out of it, and find all their supposed
grief is unreal. This attempt to cajole ourselves out of an ugly fact
always reminds us of those unhappy flies who have been indulging in the
dangerous sweets of the paper prepared for their especial use.
Watch one of them. He does not feel quite well,--at least, he suspects
himself of indisposition. Nothing serious,--let us just rub our
fore-feet together, as the enormous creature who provides for us rubs his
hands, and all will be right. He rubs them with that peculiar twisting
movement of his, and pauses for the effect. No! all is not quite right
yet. Ah! it is our head that is not set on just as it ought to be. Let
us settle that where it should be, and then we shall certainly be in good
trim again. So he pulls his head about as an old lady adjusts her cap,
and passes his fore-paw over it like a kitten washing herself. Poor
fellow! It is not a fancy, but a fact, that he has to deal with. If he
could read the letters at the head of the sheet, he would see they were
Fly-Paper.--So with us, when, in our waking misery, we try to think we
dream! Perhaps very young persons may not understand this; as we grow
older, our waking and dreaming life run more and more into each other.
Another symptom of our excited condition is seen in the breaking up of
old habits. The newspaper is as imperious as a Russian Ukase; it will be
had, and it will be read. To this all else must give place. If we must
go out at unusual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of after-dinner
nap or evening somnolence. If it finds us in company, it will not stand
on ceremony, but cuts short the compliment and the story by the divine
right of its telegraphic dispatches.
War is a very old story, but it is a new one to this generation of
Americans. Our own nearest relation in the ascending line remembers the
Revolution well. How should she forget it? Did she not lose her doll,
which was left behind, when she was carried out of Boston, about that
time growing uncomfortable by reason of cannon-balls dropping in from the
neighboring heights at all hours,--in token of which see the tower of
Brattle Street Church at this very day? War in her memory means '76. As
for the brush of 1812, "we did not think much about that"; and everybody
knows that the Mexican business did not concern us much, except in its
political relations. No! war is a new thing to all of us who are not in
the last quarter of their century. We are learning many strange matters
from our fresh experience. And besides, there are new conditions of
existence which make war as it is with us very different from war as it
has been.
The first and obvious difference consists in the fact that the whole
nation is now penetrated by the ramifications of a network of iron nerves
which flash sensation and volition backward and forward to and from towns
and provinces as if they were organs and limbs of a single living body.
The second is the vast system of iron muscles which, as it were, move the
limbs of the mighty organism one upon another. What was the
railroad-force which put the Sixth Regiment in Baltimore on the 19th of
April but a contraction and extension of the arm of Massachusetts with a
clenched fist full of bayonets at the end of it?
This perpetual intercommunication, joined to the power of instantaneous
action, keeps us always alive with excitement. It is not a breathless
courier who comes back with the report from an army we have lost sight of
for a month, nor a single bulletin which tells us all we are to know for
a week of some great engagement, but almost hourly paragraphs, laden with
truth or falsehood as the case may be, making us restless always for the
last fact or rumor they are telling. And so of the movements of our
armies. To-night the stout lumbermen of Maine are encamped under their
own fragrant pines. In a score or two of hours they are among the
tobacco-fields and the slave-pens of Virginia. The war passion burned
like scattered coals of fire in the households of Revolutionary times;
now it rushes all through the land like a flame over the prairie. And
this instant diffusion of every fact and feeling produces another
singular effect in the equalizing and steadying of public opinion. We
may not be able to see a month ahead of us; but as to what has passed a
week afterwards it is as thoroughly talked out and judged as it would
have been in a whole season before our national nervous system was
organized.
"As the wild tempest wakes the slumbering sea,
Thou only teachest all that man can be!"
We indulged in the above apostrophe to War in a Phi Beta Kappa poem of
long ago, which we liked better before we read Mr. Cutler's beautiful
prolonged lyric delivered at the recent anniversary of that Society.
Oftentimes, in paroxysms of peace and good-will towards all mankind, we
have felt twinges of conscience about the passage,--especially when one
of our orators showed us that a ship of war costs as much to build and
keep as a college, and that every port-hole we could stop would give us a
new professor. Now we begin to think that there was some meaning in our
poor couplet. War has taught us, as nothing else could, what we can be
and are. It has exalted our manhood and our womanhood, and driven us all
back upon our substantial human qualities, for a long time more or less
kept out of sight by the spirit of commerce, the love of art, science, or
literature, or other qualities not belonging to all of us as men and
women.
It is at this very moment doing more to melt away the petty social
distinctions which keep generous souls apart from each other, than the
preaching of the Beloved Disciple himself would do. We are finding out
that not only "patriotism is eloquence," but that heroism is gentility.
All ranks are wonderfully equalized under the fire of a masked battery.
The plain artisan or the rough fireman, who faces the lead and iron like
a man, is the truest representative we can show of the heroes of Crecy
and Agincourt. And if one of our fine gentlemen puts off his
straw-colored kids and stands by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or
leads him on to the attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in theirs
as if he were ill-dressed and his hands were soiled with labor.
Even our poor "Brahmins,"--whom a critic in ground-glass spectacles (the
same who grasps his statistics by the blade and strikes at his supposed
antagonist with the handle) oddly confounds with the, "bloated
aristocracy;" whereas they are very commonly pallid, undervitalized, shy,
sensitive creatures, whose only birthright is an aptitude for
learning,--even these poor New England Brahmins of ours, subvirates of an
organizable base as they often are, count as full men, if their courage
is big enough for the uniform which hangs so loosely about their slender
figures.
A young man was drowned not very long ago in the river running under our
windows. A few days afterwards a field piece was dragged to the water's
edge, and fired many times over the river. We asked a bystander, who
looked like a fisherman, what that was for. It was to "break the gall,"
he said, and so bring the drowned person to the surface. A strange
physiological fancy and a very odd non sequitur; but that is not our
present point. A good many extraordinary objects do really come to the
surface when the great guns of war shake the waters, as when they roared
over Charleston harbor.
Treason came up, hideous, fit only to be huddled into its dishonorable
grave. But the wrecks of precious virtues, which had been covered with
the waves of prosperity, came up also. And all sorts of unexpected and
unheard-of things, which had lain unseen during our national life of
fourscore years, came up and are coming up daily, shaken from their bed
by the concussions of the artillery bellowing around us.
It is a shame to own it, but there were persons otherwise respectable not
unwilling to say that they believed the old valor of Revolutionary times
had died out from among us. They talked about our own Northern people as
the English in the last centuries used to talk about the
French,--Goldsmith's old soldier, it may be remembered, called one
Englishman good for five of them. As Napoleon spoke of the English,
again, as a nation of shopkeepers, so these persons affected to consider
the multitude of their countrymen as unwarlike artisans,--forgetting that
Paul Revere taught himself the value of liberty in working upon gold, and
Nathaniel Greene fitted himself to shape armies in the labor of forging
iron. These persons have learned better now. The bravery of our free
working-people was overlaid, but not smothered; sunken, but not drowned.
The hands which had been busy conquering the elements had only to change
their weapons and their adversaries, and they were as ready to conquer
the masses of living force opposed to them as they had been to build
towns, to dam rivers, to hunt whales, to harvest ice, to hammer brute
matter into every shape civilization can ask for.
Another great fact came to the surface, and is coming up every day in new
shapes,--that we are one people. It is easy to say that a man is a man
in Maine or Minnesota, but not so easy to feel it, all through our bones
and marrow. The camp is deprovincializing us very fast. Brave Winthrop,
marching with the city elegants, seems to have been a little startled to
find how wonderfully human were the hard-handed men of the Eighth
Massachusetts. It takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or ought to
do it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is distributed
over its surface. And then, just as we are beginning to think our own
soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up turns a regiment
of gallant Irishmen, like the Sixty-ninth, to show us that continental
provincialism is as bad as that of Coos County, New Hampshire, or of
Broadway, New York.
Here, too, side by side in the same great camp, are half a dozen
chaplains, representing half a dozen modes of religious belief. When the
masked battery opens, does the "Baptist" Lieutenant believe in his heart
that God takes better care of him than of his "Congregationalist"
Colonel? Does any man really suppose, that, of a score of noble young
fellows who have just laid down their lives for their country, the
Homoousians are received to the mansions of bliss, and the Homoousians
translated from the battle-field to the abodes of everlasting woe? War
not only teaches what man can be, but it teaches also what he must not
be. He must not be a bigot and a fool in the presence of that day of
judgment proclaimed by the trumpet which calls to battle, and where a man
should have but two thoughts: to do his duty, and trust his Maker. Let
our brave dead come back from the fields where they have fallen for law
and liberty, and if you will follow them to their graves, you will find
out what the Broad Church means; the narrow church is sparing of its
exclusive formulae over the coffins wrapped in the flag which the fallen
heroes had defended! Very little comparatively do we hear at such times
of the dogmas on which men differ; very much of the faith and trust in
which all sincere Christians can agree. It is a noble lesson, and
nothing less noisy than the voice of cannon can teach it so that it shall
be heard over all the angry cries of theological disputants.
Now, too, we have a chance to test the sagacity of our friends, and to
get at their principles of judgment. Perhaps most, of us, will agree
that our faith in domestic prophets has been diminished by the experience
of the last six months. We had the notable predictions attributed to the
Secretary of State, which so unpleasantly refused to fulfil themselves.
We were infested at one time with a set of ominous-looking seers, who
shook their heads and muttered obscurely about some mighty preparations
that were making to substitute the rule of the minority for that of the
majority. Organizations were darkly hinted at; some thought our armories
would be seized; and there are not wanting ancient women in the
neighboring University town who consider that the country was saved by
the intrepid band of students who stood guard, night after night, over
the G. R. cannon and the pile of balls in the Cambridge Arsenal.
As a general rule, it is safe to say that the best prophecies are those
which the sages remember after the event prophesied of has come to pass,
and remind us that they have made long ago. Those who, are rash enough
to predict publicly beforehand commonly give us what they hope, or what
they fear, or some conclusion from an abstraction of their own, or some
guess founded on private information not half so good as what everybody
gets who reads the papers,--never by any possibility a word that we can
depend on, simply because there are cobwebs of contingency between every
to-day and to-morrow that no field-glass can penetrate when fifty of them
lie woven one over another. Prophesy as much as you like, but always
hedge. Say that you think the rebels are weaker than is commonly
supposed, but, on the other hand, that they may prove to be even stronger
than is anticipated. Say what you like,--only don't be too peremptory
and dogmatic; we know that wiser men than you have been notoriously
deceived in their predictions in this very matter.
Ibis et redibis nunquam in bello peribis.
Let that be your model; and remember, on peril of your reputation as a
prophet, not to put a stop before or after the nunquam.
There are two or three facts connected with time, besides that already
referred to, which strike us very forcibly in their relation to the great
events passing around us. We spoke of the long period seeming to have
elapsed since this war began. The buds were then swelling which held the
leaves that are still green. It seems as old as Time himself. We cannot
fail to observe how the mind brings together the scenes of to-day and
those of the old Revolution. We shut up eighty years into each other
like the joints of a pocket-telescope. When the young men from Middlesex
dropped in Baltimore the other day, it seemed to bring Lexington and the
other Nineteenth of April close to us. War has always been the mint in
which the world's history has been coined, and now every day or week or
month has a new medal for us. It was Warren that the first impression
bore in the last great coinage; if it is Ellsworth now, the new face
hardly seems fresher than the old. All battle-fields are alike in their
main features. The young fellows who fell in our earlier struggle seemed
like old men to us until within these few months; now we remember they
were like these fiery youth we are cheering as they go to the fight; it
seems as if the grass of our bloody hillside was crimsoned but yesterday,
and the cannon-ball imbedded in the church-tower would feel warm, if we
laid our hand upon it.
Nay, in this our quickened life we feel that all the battles from
earliest time to our own day, where Right and Wrong have grappled, are
but one great battle, varied with brief pauses or hasty bivouacs upon the
field of conflict. The issues seem to vary, but it is always a right
against a claim, and, however the struggle of the hour may go, a movement
onward of the campaign, which uses defeat as well as victory to serve its
mighty ends. The very implements of our warfare change less than we
think. Our bullets and cannonballs have lengthened into bolts like those
which whistled out of old arbalests. Our soldiers fight with weapons,
such as are pictured on the walls of Theban tombs, wearing a newly
invented head-gear as old as the days of the Pyramids.
Whatever miseries this war brings upon us, it is making us wiser, and, we
trust, better. Wiser, for we are learning our weakness, our narrowness,
our selfishness, our ignorance, in lessons of sorrow and shame. Better,
because all that is noble in men and women is demanded by the time, and
our people are rising to the standard the time calls for. For this is
the question the hour is putting to each of us: Are you ready, if need
be, to sacrifice all that you have and hope for in this world, that the
generations to follow you may inherit a whole country whose natural
condition shall be peace, and not a broken province which must live under
the perpetual threat, if not in the constant presence, of war and all
that war brings with it? If we are all ready for this sacrifice, battles
may be lost, but the campaign and its grand object must be won.
Heaven is very kind in its way of putting questions to mortals. We are
not abruptly asked to give up all that we most care for, in view of the
momentous issues before us. Perhaps we shall never be asked to give up
all, but we have already been called upon to part with much that is dear
to us, and should be ready to yield the rest as it is called for. The
time may come when even the cheap public print shall be a burden our
means cannot support, and we can only listen in the square that was once
the marketplace to the voices of those who proclaim defeat or victory.
Then there will be only our daily food left. When we have nothing to
read and nothing to eat, it will be a favorable moment to offer a
compromise. At present we have all that nature absolutely demands,--we
can live on bread and the newspaper.
MY HUNT AFTER "THE CAPTAIN."
In the dead of the night which closed upon the bloody field of Antietam,
my household was startled from its slumbers by the loud summons of a
telegraphic messenger. The air had been heavy all day with rumors of
battle, and thousands and tens of thousands had walked the streets with
throbbing hearts, in dread anticipation of the tidings any hour might
bring.
We rose hastily, and presently the messenger was admitted. I took the
envelope from his hand, opened it, and read:
HAGERSTOWN 17th
To__________ H ______
Capt H______ wounded shot through the neck thought not mortal at
Keedysville
WILLIAM G. LEDUC
Through the neck,--no bullet left in wound. Windpipe, food-pipe,
carotid, jugular, half a dozen smaller, but still formidable vessels, a
great braid of nerves, each as big as a lamp-wick, spinal cord,--ought
to kill at once, if at all. Thought not mortal, or not thought
mortal,--which was it? The first; that is better than the second would
be.--"Keedysville, a post-office, Washington Co., Maryland." Leduc?
Leduc? Don't remember that name. The boy is waiting for his money. A
dollar and thirteen cents. Has nobody got thirteen cents? Don't keep
that boy waiting,--how do we know what messages he has got to carry?
The boy had another message to carry. It was to the father of
Lieutenant-Colonel Wilder Dwight, informing him that his son was
grievously wounded in the same battle, and was lying at Boonsborough, a
town a few miles this side of Keedysville. This I learned the next
morning from the civil and attentive officials at the Central Telegraph
Office.
Calling upon this gentleman, I found that he meant to leave in the
quarter past two o'clock train, taking with him Dr. George H. Gay, an
accomplished and energetic surgeon, equal to any difficult question or
pressing emergency. I agreed to accompany them, and we met in the cars.
I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in having companions whose society
would be a pleasure, whose feelings would harmonize with my own, and
whose assistance I might, in case of need, be glad to claim.
It is of the journey which we began together, and which I finished apart,
that I mean to give my "Atlantic" readers an account. They must let me
tell my story in my own way, speaking of many little matters that
interested or amused me, and which a certain leisurely class of elderly
persons, who sit at their firesides and never travel, will, I hope,
follow with a kind of interest. For, besides the main object of my
excursion, I could not help being excited by the incidental sights and
occurrences of a trip which to a commercial traveller or a
newspaper-reporter would seem quite commonplace and undeserving of
record. There are periods in which all places and people seem to be in a
conspiracy to impress us with their individuality, in which every
ordinary locality seems to assume a special significance and to claim a
particular notice, in which every person we meet is either an old
acquaintance or a character; days in which the strangest coincidences are
continually happening, so that they get to be the rule, and not the
exception. Some might naturally think that anxiety and the weariness of
a prolonged search after a near relative would have prevented my taking
any interest in or paying any regard to the little matters around me.
Perhaps it had just the contrary effect, and acted like a diffused
stimulus upon the attention. When all the faculties are wide-awake in
pursuit of a single object, or fixed in the spasm of an absorbing
emotion, they are oftentimes clairvoyant in a marvellous degree in
respect to many collateral things, as Wordsworth has so forcibly
illustrated in his sonnet on the Boy of Windermere, and as Hawthorne has
developed with such metaphysical accuracy in that chapter of his wondrous
story where Hester walks forth to meet her punishment.
Be that as it may,--though I set out with a full and heavy heart, though
many times my blood chilled with what were perhaps needless and unwise
fears, though I broke through all my habits without thinking about them,
which is almost as hard in certain circumstances as for one of our young
fellows to leave his sweetheart and go into a Peninsular campaign, though
I did not always know when I was hungry nor discover that I was
thirsting, though I had a worrying ache and inward tremor underlying all
the outward play of the senses and the mind, yet it is the simple truth
that I did look out of the car-windows with an eye for all that passed,
that I did take cognizance of strange sights and singular people, that I
did act much as persons act from the ordinary promptings of curiosity,
and from time to time even laugh very much as others do who are attacked
with a convulsive sense of the ridiculous, the epilepsy of the diaphragm.
By a mutual compact, we talked little in the cars. A communicative
friend is the greatest nuisance to have at one's side during a railroad
journey, especially if his conversation is stimulating and in itself
agreeable. "A fast train and a 'slow' neighbor," is my motto. Many
times, when I have got upon the cars, expecting to be magnetized into an
hour or two of blissful reverie, my thoughts shaken up by the vibrations
into all sorts of new and pleasing patterns, arranging themselves in
curves and nodal points, like the grains of sand in Chladni's famous
experiment,--fresh ideas coming up to the surface, as the kernels do when
a measure of corn is jolted in a farmer's wagon,--all this without
volition, the mechanical impulse alone keeping the thoughts in motion, as
the mere act of carrying certain watches in the pocket keeps them wound
up,--many times, I say, just as my brain was beginning to creep and hum
with this delicious locomotive intoxication, some dear detestable friend,
cordial, intelligent, social, radiant, has come up and sat down by me and
opened a conversation which has broken my day-dream, unharnessed the
flying horses that were whirling along my fancies and hitched on the old
weary omnibus-team of every-day associations, fatigued my hearing and
attention, exhausted my voice, and milked the breasts of my thought dry
during the hour when they should have been filling themselves full of
fresh juices. My friends spared me this trial.
So, then, I sat by the window and enjoyed the slight tipsiness produced
by short, limited, rapid oscillations, which I take to be the
exhilarating stage of that condition which reaches hopeless inebriety in
what we know as sea-sickness. Where the horizon opened widely, it
pleased me to watch the curious effect of the rapid movement of near
objects contrasted with the slow motion of distant ones. Looking from a
right-hand window, for instance, the fences close by glide swiftly
backward, or to the right, while the distant hills not only do not appear
to move backward, but look by contrast with the fences near at hand as if
they were moving forward, or to the left; and thus the whole landscape
becomes a mighty wheel revolving about an imaginary axis somewhere in the
middle-distance.
My companions proposed to stay at one of the best-known and
longest-established of the New-York caravansaries, and I accompanied
them. We were particularly well lodged, and not uncivilly treated. The
traveller who supposes that he is to repeat the melancholy experience of
Shenstone, and have to sigh over the reflection that he has found "his
warmest welcome at an inn," has something to learn at the offices of the
great city hotels. The unheralded guest who is honored by mere
indifference may think himself blessed with singular good-fortune. If
the despot of the Patent-Annunciator is only mildly contemptuous in his
manner, let the victim look upon it as a personal favor. The coldest
welcome that a threadbare curate ever got at the door of a bishop's
palace, the most icy reception that a country cousin ever received at the
city mansion of a mushroom millionaire, is agreeably tepid, compared to
that which the Rhadamanthus who dooms you to the more or less elevated
circle of his inverted Inferno vouchsafes, as you step up to enter your
name on his dog's-eared register. I have less hesitation in unburdening
myself of this uncomfortable statement, as on this particular trip I met
with more than one exception to the rule. Officials become brutalized, I
suppose, as a matter of course. One cannot expect an office clerk to
embrace tenderly every stranger who comes in with a carpet-bag, or a
telegraph operator to burst into tears over every unpleasant message he
receives for transmission. Still, humanity is not always totally
extinguished in these persons. I discovered a youth in a telegraph
office of the Continental Hotel, in Philadelphia, who was as pleasant in
conversation, and as graciously responsive to inoffensive questions, as
if I had been his childless opulent uncle and my will not made.
On the road again the next morning, over the ferry, into the cars with
sliding panels and fixed windows, so that in summer the whole side of the
car maybe made transparent. New Jersey is, to the apprehension of a
traveller, a double-headed suburb rather than a State. Its dull red dust
looks like the dried and powdered mud of a battle-field. Peach-trees are
common, and champagne-orchards. Canal-boats, drawn by mules, swim by,
feeling their way along like blind men led by dogs. I had a mighty
passion come over me to be the captain of one,--to glide back and forward
upon a sea never roughened by storms,--to float where I could not
sink,--to navigate where there is no shipwreck,--to lie languidly on the
deck and govern the huge craft by a word or the movement of a finger:
there was something of railroad intoxication in the fancy: but who has
not often envied a cobbler in his stall?
The boys cry the "N'-York Heddle," instead of "Herald"; I remember that
years ago in Philadelphia; we must be getting near the farther end of the
dumb-bell suburb. A bridge has been swept away by a rise of the waters,
so we must approach Philadelphia by the river. Her physiognomy is not
distinguished; nez camus, as a Frenchman would say; no illustrious
steeple, no imposing tower; the water-edge of the town looking
bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman's dress that trails
on the sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves,
elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like the
walls of a hock-glass.
I went straight to the house in Walnut Street where the Captain would be
heard of, if anywhere in this region. His lieutenant-colonel was there,
gravely wounded; his college-friend and comrade in arms, a son of the
house, was there, injured in a similar way; another soldier, brother of
the last, was there, prostrate with fever. A fourth bed was waiting
ready for the Captain, but not one word had been heard of him, though
inquiries had been made in the towns from and through which the father
had brought his two sons and the lieutenant-colonel. And so my search is,
like a "Ledger" story, to be continued.
I rejoined my companions in time to take the noon-train for Baltimore.
Our company was gaining in number as it moved onwards. We had found upon
the train from New York a lovely, lonely lady, the wife of one of our
most spirited Massachusetts officers, the brave Colonel of the __th
Regiment, going to seek her wounded husband at Middletown, a place lying
directly in our track. She was the light of our party while we were
together on our pilgrimage, a fair, gracious woman, gentle, but
courageous,
---"ful plesant and amiable of port,
---estatelich of manere,
And to ben holden digne of reverence."
On the road from Philadelphia, I found in the same car with our party Dr.
William Hunt of Philadelphia, who had most kindly and faithfully attended
the Captain, then the Lieutenant, after a wound received at Ball's Bluff,
which came very near being mortal. He was going upon an errand of mercy
to the wounded, and found he had in his memorandum-book the name of our
lady's husband, the Colonel, who had been commended to his particular
attention.
Not long after leaving Philadelphia, we passed a solitary sentry keeping
guard over a short railroad bridge. It was the first evidence that we
were approaching the perilous borders, the marches where the North and
the South mingle their angry hosts, where the extremes of our so-called
civilization meet in conflict, and the fierce slave-driver of the Lower
Mississippi stares into the stern eyes of the forest-feller from the
banks of the Aroostook. All the way along, the bridges were guarded more
or less strongly. In a vast country like ours, communications play a far
more complex part than in Europe, where the whole territory available for
strategic purposes is so comparatively limited. Belgium, for instance,
has long been the bowling-alley where kings roll cannon-balls at each
other's armies; but here we are playing the game of live ninepins without
any alley.
We were obliged to stay in Baltimore over night, as we were too late for
the train to Frederick. At the Eutaw House, where we found both comfort
and courtesy, we met a number of friends, who beguiled the evening hours
for us in the most agreeable manner. We devoted some time to procuring
surgical and other articles, such as might be useful to our friends, or
to others, if our friends should not need them. In the morning, I found
myself seated at the breakfast-table next to General Wool. It did not
surprise me to find the General very far from expansive. With Fort
McHenry on his shoulders and Baltimore in his breeches-pocket, and the
weight of a military department loading down his social safety-valves, I
thought it a great deal for an officer in his trying position to select
so very obliging and affable an aid as the gentleman who relieved him of
the burden of attending to strangers.
We left the Eutaw House, to take the cars for Frederick. As we stood
waiting on the platform, a telegraphic message was handed in silence to
my companion. Sad news: the lifeless body of the son he was hastening to
see was even now on its way to him in Baltimore. It was no time for
empty words of consolation: I knew what he had lost, and that now was not
the time to intrude upon a grief borne as men bear it, felt as women feel
it.
Colonel Wilder Dwight was first made known to me as the friend of a
beloved relative of my own, who was with him during a severe illness in
Switzerland; and for whom while living, and for whose memory when dead,
he retained the warmest affection. Since that the story of his noble
deeds of daring, of his capture and escape, and a brief visit home before
he was able to rejoin his regiment, had made his name familiar to many
among us, myself among the number. His memory has been honored by those
who had the largest opportunity of knowing his rare promise, as a man of
talents and energy of nature. His abounding vitality must have produced
its impression on all who met him; there was a still fire about him which
any one could see would blaze up to melt all difficulties and recast
obstacles into implements in the mould of an heroic will. These elements
of his character many had the chance of knowing; but I shall always
associate him with the memory of that pure and noble friendship which
made me feel that I knew him before I looked upon his face, and added a
personal tenderness to the sense of loss which I share with the whole
community.
Here, then, I parted, sorrowfully, from the companions with whom I set
out on my journey.
In one of the cars, at the same station, we met General Shriver of
Frederick, a most loyal Unionist, whose name is synonymous with a hearty
welcome to all whom he can aid by his counsel and his hospitality. He
took great pains to give us all the information we needed, and expressed
the hope, which was afterwards fulfilled, to the great gratification of
some of us, that we should meet again when he should return to his home.
There was nothing worthy of special note in the trip to Frederick, except
our passing a squad of Rebel prisoners, whom I missed seeing, as they
flashed by, but who were said to be a most forlorn-looking crowd of
scarecrows. Arrived at the Monocacy River, about three miles this side
of Frederick, we came to a halt, for the railroad bridge had been blown
up by the Rebels, and its iron pillars and arches were lying in the bed
of the river. The unfortunate wretch who fired the train was killed by
the explosion, and lay buried hard by, his hands sticking out of the
shallow grave into which he had been huddled. This was the story they
told us, but whether true or not I must leave to the correspondents of
"Notes and Queries" to settle.
There was a great confusion of carriages and wagons at the stopping-place
of the train, so that it was a long time before I could get anything that
would carry us. At last I was lucky enough to light on a sturdy wagon,
drawn by a pair of serviceable bays, and driven by James Grayden, with
whom I was destined to have a somewhat continued acquaintance. We took
up a little girl who had been in Baltimore during the late Rebel inroad.
It made me think of the time when my own mother, at that time six years
old, was hurried off from Boston, then occupied by the British soldiers,
to Newburyport, and heard the people saying that "the redcoats were
coming, killing and murdering everybody as they went along." Frederick
looked cheerful for a place that had so recently been in an enemy's
hands. Here and there a house or shop was shut up, but the national
colors were waving in all directions, and the general aspect was peaceful
and contented. I saw no bullet-marks or other sign of the fighting which
had gone on in the streets. The Colonel's lady was taken in charge by a
daughter of that hospitable family to which we had been commended by its
head, and I proceeded to inquire for wounded officers at the various
temporary hospitals.
At the United States Hotel, where many were lying, I heard mention of an
officer in an upper chamber, and, going there, found Lieutenant Abbott,
of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers, lying ill with what looked
like typhoid fever. While there, who should come in but the almost
ubiquitous Lieutenant Wilkins, of the same Twentieth, whom I had met
repeatedly before on errands of kindness or duty, and who was just from
the battle-ground. He was going to Boston in charge of the body of the
lamented Dr. Revere, the Assistant Surgeon of the regiment, killed on the
field. From his lips I learned something of the mishaps of the regiment.
My Captain's wound he spoke of as less grave than at first thought; but
he mentioned incidentally having heard a story recently that he was
killed,--a fiction, doubtless,--a mistake,--a palpable absurdity,--not to
be remembered or made any account of. Oh no! but what dull ache is this
in that obscurely sensitive region, somewhere below the heart, where the
nervous centre called the semilunar ganglion lies unconscious of itself
until a great grief or a mastering anxiety reaches it through all the
non-conductors which isolate it from ordinary impressions? I talked
awhile with Lieutenant Abbott, who lay prostrate, feeble, but
soldier-like and uncomplaining, carefully waited upon by a most excellent
lady, a captain's wife, New England born, loyal as the Liberty on a
golden ten-dollar piece, and of lofty bearing enough to have sat for that
goddess's portrait. She had stayed in Frederick through the Rebel
inroad, and kept the star-spangled banner where it would be safe, to
unroll it as the last Rebel hoofs clattered off from the pavement of the
town.
Near by Lieutenant Abbott was an unhappy gentleman, occupying a small
chamber, and filling it with his troubles. When he gets well and plump,
I know he will forgive me if I confess that I could not help smiling in
the midst of my sympathy for him. He had been a well-favored man, he
said, sweeping his hand in a semicircle, which implied that his
acute-angled countenance had once filled the goodly curve he described.
He was now a perfect Don Quixote to look upon. Weakness had made him
querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped his grievances to me in a
thin voice, with that finish of detail which chronic invalidism alone can
command. He was starving,--he could not get what he wanted to eat. He
was in need of stimulants, and he held up a pitiful two-ounce phial
containing three thimblefuls--of brandy,--his whole stock of that
encouraging article. Him I consoled to the best of my ability, and
afterwards, in some slight measure, supplied his wants. Feed this poor
gentleman up, as these good people soon will, and I should not know him,
nor he himself. We are all egotists in sickness and debility. An animal
has been defined as "a stomach ministered to by organs;" and the greatest
man comes very near this simple formula after a month or two of fever and
starvation.
James Grayden and his team pleased me well enough, and so I made a
bargain with him to take us, the lady and myself, on our further journey
as far as Middletown. As we were about starting from the front of the
United States Hotel, two gentlemen presented themselves and expressed a
wish to be allowed to share our conveyance. I looked at them and
convinced myself that they were neither Rebels in disguise, nor
deserters, nor camp-followers, nor miscreants, but plain, honest men on a
proper errand. The first of them I will pass over briefly. He was a
young man of mild and modest demeanor, chaplain to a Pennsylvania
regiment, which he was going to rejoin. He belonged to the Moravian
Church, of which I had the misfortune to know little more than what I had
learned from Southey's "Life of Wesley." and from the exquisite hymns we
have borrowed from its rhapsodists. The other stranger was a New
Englander of respectable appearance, with a grave, hard, honest,
hay-bearded face, who had come to serve the sick and wounded on the
battle-field and in its immediate neighborhood. There is no reason why I
should not mention his name, but I shall content myself with calling him
the Philanthropist.
So we set forth, the sturdy wagon, the serviceable bays, with James
Grayden their driver, the gentle lady, whose serene patience bore up
through all delays and discomforts, the Chaplain, the Philanthropist, and
myself, the teller of this story.
And now, as we emerged from Frederick, we struck at once upon the trail
from the great battle-field. The road was filled with straggling and
wounded soldiers. All who could travel on foot,--multitudes with slight
wounds of the upper limbs, the head, or face,--were told to take up
their beds,--alight burden or none at all,--and walk. Just as the
battle-field sucks everything into its red vortex for the conflict, so
does it drive everything off in long, diverging rays after the fierce
centripetal forces have met and neutralized each other. For more than a
week there had been sharp fighting all along this road. Through the
streets of Frederick, through Crampton's Gap, over South Mountain,
sweeping at last the hills and the woods that skirt the windings of the
Antietam, the long battle had travelled, like one of those tornadoes
which tear their path through our fields and villages. The slain of
higher condition, "embalmed" and iron-cased, were sliding off on the
railways to their far homes; the dead of the rank and file were being
gathered up and committed hastily to the earth; the gravely wounded were
cared for hard by the scene of conflict, or pushed a little way along to
the neighboring villages; while those who could walk were meeting us, as
I have said, at every step in the road. It was a pitiable sight, truly
pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief, that many
single sorrows of small dimensions have wrought upon my feelings more
than the sight of this great caravan of maimed pilgrims. The
companionship of so many seemed to make a joint-stock of their suffering;
it was next to impossible to individualize it, and so bring it home, as
one can do with a single broken limb or aching wound. Then they were all
of the male sex, and in the freshness or the prime of their strength.
Though they tramped so wearily along, yet there was rest and kind nursing
in store for them. These wounds they bore would be the medals they would
show their children and grandchildren by and by. Who would not rather
wear his decorations beneath his uniform than on it?
Yet among them were figures which arrested our attention and sympathy.
Delicate boys, with more spirit than strength, flushed with fever or pale
with exhaustion or haggard with suffering, dragged their weary limbs
along as if each step would exhaust their slender store of strength. At
the roadside sat or lay others, quite spent with their journey. Here and
there was a house at which the wayfarers would stop, in the hope, I fear
often vain, of getting refreshment; and in one place was a clear, cool
spring, where the little bands of the long procession halted for a few
moments, as the trains that traverse the desert rest by its fountains.
My companions had brought a few peaches along with them, which the
Philanthropist bestowed upon the tired and thirsty soldiers with a
satisfaction which we all shared. I had with me a small flask of strong
waters, to be used as a medicine in case of inward grief. From this,
also, he dispensed relief, without hesitation, to a poor fellow who
looked as if he needed it. I rather admired the simplicity with which he
applied my limited means of solace to the first-comer who wanted it more
than I; a genuine benevolent impulse does not stand on ceremony, and had
I perished of colic for want of a stimulus that night, I should not have
reproached my friend the Philanthropist, any more than I grudged my other
ardent friend the two dollars and more which it cost me to send the
charitable message he left in my hands.
It was a lovely country through which we were riding. The hillsides
rolled away into the distance, slanting up fair and broad to the sun, as
one sees them in the open parts of the Berkshire Valley, at Lanesborough,
for instance, or in the many-hued mountain chalice at the bottom of which
the Shaker houses of Lebanon have shaped themselves like a sediment of
cubical crystals. The wheat was all garnered, and the land ploughed for
a new crop. There was Indian corn standing, but I saw no pumpkins
warming their yellow carapaces in the sunshine like so many turtles; only
in a single instance did I notice some wretched little miniature
specimens in form and hue not unlike those colossal oranges of our
cornfields. The rail fences were somewhat disturbed, and the cinders of
extinguished fires showed the use to which they had been applied. The
houses along the road were not for the most part neatly kept; the garden
fences were poorly built of laths or long slats, and very rarely of trim
aspect. The men of this region seemed to ride in the saddle very
generally, rather than drive. They looked sober and stern, less curious
and lively than Yankees, and I fancied that a type of features familiar
to us in the countenance of the late John Tyler, our accidental
President, was frequently met with. The women were still more
distinguishable from our New England pattern. Soft, sallow, succulent,
delicately finished about the mouth and firmly shaped about the chin,
dark-eyed, full-throated, they looked as if they had been grown in a land
of olives. There was a little toss in their movement, full of
muliebrity. I fancied there was something more of the duck and less of
the chicken about them, as compared with the daughters of our leaner
soil; but these are mere impressions caught from stray glances, and if
there is any offence in them, my fair readers may consider them all
retracted.
At intervals, a dead horse lay by the roadside, or in the fields,
unburied, not grateful to gods or men. I saw no bird of prey, no
ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place
where it had been held. The vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, the
"twa corbies" of the ghastly ballad, are all from Nature, doubtless; but
no black wing was spread over these animal ruins, and no call to the
banquet pierced through the heavy-laden and sickening air.
Full in the middle of the road, caring little for whom or what they met,
came long strings of army wagons, returning empty from the front after
supplies. James Grayden stated it as his conviction that they had a
little rather run into a fellow than not. I liked the looks of these
equipages and their drivers; they meant business. Drawn by mules mostly,
six, I think, to a wagon, powdered well with dust, wagon, beast, and
driver, they came jogging along the road, turning neither to right nor
left,--some driven by bearded, solemn white men, some by careless,
saucy-looking negroes, of a blackness like that of anthracite or
obsidian. There seemed to be nothing about them, dead or alive, that was
not serviceable. Sometimes a mule would give out on the road; then he
was left where he lay, until by and by he would think better of it, and
get up, when the first public wagon that came along would hitch him on,
and restore him to the sphere of duty.
It was evening when we got to Middletown. The gentle lady who had graced
our homely conveyance with her company here left us. She found her
husband, the gallant Colonel, in very comfortable quarters, well cared
for, very weak from the effects of the fearful operation he had been
compelled to undergo, but showing calm courage to endure as he had shown
manly energy to act. It was a meeting full of heroism and tenderness, of
which I heard more than there is need to tell. Health to the brave
soldier, and peace to the household over which so fair a spirit presides!
Dr. Thompson, the very active and intelligent surgical director of the
hospitals of the place, took me in charge. He carried me to the house of
a worthy and benevolent clergyman of the German Reformed Church, where I
was to take tea and pass the night. What became of the Moravian chaplain
I did not know; but my friend the Philanthropist had evidently made up
his mind to adhere to my fortunes. He followed me, therefore, to the
house of the "Dominie." as a newspaper correspondent calls my kind host,
and partook of the fare there furnished me. He withdrew with me to the
apartment assigned for my slumbers, and slept sweetly on the same pillow
where I waked and tossed. Nay, I do affirm that he did, unconsciously, I
believe, encroach on that moiety of the couch which I had flattered
myself was to be my own through the watches of the night, and that I was
in serious doubt at one time whether I should not be gradually, but
irresistibly, expelled from the bed which I had supposed destined for my
sole possession. As Ruth clave unto Naomi, so my friend the
Philanthropist clave unto me. "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where
thou lodgest, I will lodge." A really kind, good man, full of zeal,
determined to help somebody, and absorbed in his one thought, he doubted
nobody's willingness to serve him, going, as he was, on a purely
benevolent errand. When he reads this, as I hope he will, let him be
assured of my esteem and respect; and if he gained any accommodation from
being in my company, let me tell him that I learned a lesson from his
active benevolence. I could, however, have wished to hear him laugh once
before we parted, perhaps forever. He did not, to the best of my
recollection, even smile during the whole period that we were in company.
I am afraid that a lightsome disposition and a relish for humor are not
so common in those whose benevolence takes an active turn as in people of
sentiment, who are always ready with their tears and abounding in
passionate expressions of sympathy. Working philanthropy is a practical
specialty, requiring not a mere impulse, but a talent, with its peculiar
sagacity for finding its objects, a tact for selecting its agencies, an
organizing and art ranging faculty, a steady set of nerves, and a
constitution such as Sallust describes in Catiline, patient of cold, of
hunger, and of watching. Philanthropists are commonly grave,
occasionally grim, and not very rarely morose. Their expansive social
force is imprisoned as a working power, to show itself only through its
legitimate pistons and cranks. The tighter the boiler, the less it
whistles and sings at its work. When Dr. Waterhouse, in 1780, travelled
with Howard, on his tour among the Dutch prisons and hospitals, he found
his temper and manners very different from what would have been expected.
My benevolent companion having already made a preliminary exploration of
the hospitals of the place, before sharing my bed with him, as above
mentioned, I joined him in a second tour through them. The authorities
of Middletown are evidently leagued with the surgeons of that place, for
such a break-neck succession of pitfalls and chasms I have never seen in
the streets of a civilized town. It was getting late in the evening when
we began our rounds. The principal collections of the wounded were in
the churches. Boards were laid over the tops of the pews, on these some
straw was spread, and on this the wounded lay, with little or no covering
other than such scanty clothes as they had on. There were wounds of all
degrees of severity, but I heard no groans or murmurs. Most of the
sufferers were hurt in the limbs, some had undergone amputation, and all
had, I presume, received such attention as was required. Still, it was
but a rough and dreary kind of comfort that the extemporized hospitals
suggested. I could not help thinking the patients must be cold; but they
were used to camp life, and did not complain. The men who watched were
not of the soft-handed variety of the race. One of them was smoking his
pipe as he went from bed to bed. I saw one poor fellow who had been shot
through the breast; his breathing was labored, and he was tossing,
anxious and restless. The men were debating about the opiate he was to
take, and I was thankful that I happened there at the right moment to see
that he was well narcotized for the night. Was it possible that my
Captain could be lying on the straw in one of these places? Certainly
possible, but not probable; but as the lantern was held over each bed, it
was with a kind of thrill that I looked upon the features it illuminated.
Many times as I went from hospital to hospital in my wanderings, I
started as some faint resemblance,-the shade of a young man's hair, the
outline of his half-turned face,--recalled the presence I was in search
of. The face would turn towards me, and the momentary illusion would
pass away, but still the fancy clung to me. There was no figure huddled
up on its rude couch, none stretched at the roadside, none toiling
languidly along the dusty pike, none passing in car or in ambulance, that
I did not scrutinize, as if it might be that for which I was making my
pilgrimage to the battlefield.
"There are two wounded Secesh," said my companion. I walked to the
bedside of the first, who was an officer, a lieutenant, if I remember
right, from North Carolina. He was of good family, son of a judge in one
of the higher courts of his State, educated, pleasant, gentle,
intelligent. One moment's intercourse with such an enemy, lying helpless
and wounded among strangers, takes away all personal bitterness towards
those with whom we or our children have been but a few hours before in
deadly strife. The basest lie which the murderous contrivers of this
Rebellion have told is that which tries to make out a difference of race
in the men of the North and South. It would be worth a year of battles to
abolish this delusion, though the great sponge of war that wiped it out
were moistened with the best blood of the land. My Rebel was of slight,
scholastic habit, and spoke as one accustomed to tread carefully among
the parts of speech. It made my heart ache to see him, a man finished in
the humanities and Christian culture, whom the sin of his forefathers and
the crime of his rulers had set in barbarous conflict against others of
like training with his own,--a man who, but for the curse which our
generation is called on to expiate, would have taken his part in the
beneficent task of shaping the intelligence and lifting the moral
standard of a peaceful and united people.
On Sunday morning, the twenty-first, having engaged James Grayden and his
team, I set out with the Chaplain and the Philanthropist for Keedysville.
Our track lay through the South Mountain Gap, and led us first to the
town of Boonsborough, where, it will be remembered, Colonel Dwight had
been brought after the battle. We saw the positions occupied in the
battle of South Mountain, and many traces of the conflict. In one
situation a group of young trees was marked with shot, hardly one having
escaped. As we walked by the side of the wagon, the Philanthropist left
us for a while and climbed a hill, where, along the line of a fence, he
found traces of the most desperate fighting. A ride of some three hours
brought us to Boonsborough, where I roused the unfortunate army surgeon
who had charge of the hospitals, and who was trying to get a little sleep
after his fatigues and watchings. He bore this cross very creditably,
and helped me to explore all places where my soldier might be lying among
the crowds of wounded. After the useless search, I resumed my journey,
fortified with a note of introduction to Dr. Letterman; also with a bale
of oakum which I was to carry to that gentleman, this substance being
employed as a substitute for lint. We were obliged also to procure a
pass to Keedysville from the Provost Marshal of Boonsborough. As we came
near the place, we learned that General McClellan's head quarters had
been removed from this village some miles farther to the front.
On entering the small settlement of Keedysville, a familiar face and
figure blocked the way, like one of Bunyan's giants. The tall form and
benevolent countenance, set off by long, flowing hair, belonged to the
excellent Mayor Frank B. Fay of Chelsea, who, like my Philanthropist,
only still more promptly, had come to succor the wounded of the great
battle. It was wonderful to see how his single personality pervaded this
torpid little village; he seemed to be the centre of all its activities.
All my questions he answered clearly and decisively, as one who knew
everything that was going on in the place. But the one question I had
come five hundred miles to ask,--Where is Captain H.?--he could not
answer. There were some thousands of wounded in the place, he told me,
scattered about everywhere. It would be a long job to hunt up my
Captain; the only way would be to go to every house and ask for him.
Just then a medical officer came up.
"Do you know anything of Captain H. of the Massachusetts Twentieth?"
"Oh yes; he is staying in that house. I saw him there, doing very well."
A chorus of hallelujahs arose in my soul, but I kept them to myself. Now,
then, for our twice-wounded volunteer, our young centurion whose
double-barred shoulder-straps we have never yet looked upon. Let us
observe the proprieties, however; no swelling upward of the mother,--no
hysterica passio, we do not like scenes. A calm salutation,--then
swallow and hold hard. That is about the programme.
A cottage of squared logs, filled in with plaster, and whitewashed. A
little yard before it, with a gate swinging. The door of the cottage
ajar,--no one visible as yet. I push open the door and enter. An old
woman, Margaret Kitzmuller her name proves to be, is the first person I
see.
"Captain H. here?"
"Oh no, sir,--left yesterday morning for Hagerstown,--in a milk-cart."
The Kitzmuller is a beady-eyed, cheery-looking ancient woman, answers
questions with a rising inflection, and gives a good account of the
Captain, who got into the vehicle without assistance, and was in
excellent spirits. Of course he had struck for Hagerstown as the
terminus of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, and was on his way to
Philadelphia, via Chambersburg and Harrisburg, if he were not already in
the hospitable home of Walnut Street, where his friends were expecting
him.
I might follow on his track or return upon my own; the distance was the
same to Philadelphia through Harrisburg as through Baltimore. But it was
very difficult, Mr. Fay told me, to procure any kind of conveyance to
Hagerstown; and, on the other hand, I had James Grayden and his wagon to
carry me back to Frederick. It was not likely that I should overtake the
object of my pursuit with nearly thirty-six hours start, even if I could
procure a conveyance that day. In the mean time James was getting
impatient to be on his return, according to the direction of his
employers. So I decided to go back with him.
But there was the great battle-field only about three miles from
Keedysville, and it was impossible to go without seeing that. James
Grayden's directions were peremptory, but it was a case for the higher
law. I must make a good offer for an extra couple of hours, such as
would satisfy the owners of the wagon, and enforce it by a personal
motive. I did this handsomely, and succeeded without difficulty. To add
brilliancy to my enterprise, I invited the Chaplain and the
Philanthropist to take a free passage with me.
We followed the road through the village for a space, then turned off to
the right, and wandered somewhat vaguely, for want of precise directions,
over the hills. Inquiring as we went, we forded a wide creek in which
soldiers were washing their clothes, the name of which we did not then
know, but which must have been the Antietam. At one point we met a
party, women among them, bringing off various trophies they had picked up
on the battlefield. Still wandering along, we were at last pointed to a
hill in the distance, a part of the summit of which was covered with
Indian corn. There, we were told, some of the fiercest fighting of the
day had been done. The fences were taken down so as to make a passage
across the fields, and the tracks worn within the last few days looked
like old roads. We passed a fresh grave under a tree near the road. A
board was nailed to the tree, bearing the name, as well as I could make
it out, of Gardiner, of a New Hampshire regiment.
On coming near the brow of the hill, we met a party carrying picks and
spades. "How many?" "Only one." The dead were nearly all buried, then,
in this region of the field of strife. We stopped the wagon, and,
getting out, began to look around us. Hard by was a large pile of
muskets, scores, if not hundreds, which had been picked up, and were
guarded for the Government. A long ridge of fresh gravel rose before us.
A board stuck up in front of it bore this inscription, the first part of
which was, I believe, not correct: "The Rebel General Anderson and 80
Rebels are buried in this hole." Other smaller ridges were marked with
the number of dead lying under them. The whole ground was strewed with
fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets,
cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat.
I saw two soldiers' caps that looked as though their owners had been shot
through the head. In several places I noticed dark red patches where a
pool of blood had curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured his life
out on the sod. I then wandered about in the cornfield. It surprised me
to notice, that, though there was every mark of hard fighting having
taken place here, the Indian corn was not generally trodden down. One of
our cornfields is a kind of forest, and even when fighting, men avoid the
tall stalks as if they were trees. At the edge of this cornfield lay a
gray horse, said to have belonged to a Rebel colonel, who was killed near
the same place. Not far off were two dead artillery horses in their
harness. Another had been attended to by a burying-party, who had thrown
some earth over him but his last bed-clothes were too short, and his legs
stuck out stark and stiff from beneath the gravel coverlet. It was a
great pity that we had no intelligent guide to explain to us the position
of that portion of the two armies which fought over this ground. There
was a shallow trench before we came to the cornfield, too narrow for a
road, as I should think, too elevated for a water-course, and which
seemed to have been used as a rifle-pit. At any rate, there had been
hard fighting in and about it. This and the cornfield may serve to
identify the part of the ground we visited, if any who fought there
should ever look over this paper. The opposing tides of battle must have
blended their waves at this point, for portions of gray uniform were
mingled with the "garments rolled in blood" torn from our own dead and
wounded soldiers. I picked up a Rebel canteen, and one of our own,--but
there was something repulsive about the trodden and stained relics of the
stale battle-field. It was like the table of some hideous orgy left
uncleared, and one turned away disgusted from its broken fragments and
muddy heeltaps. A bullet or two, a button, a brass plate from a
soldier's belt, served well enough for mementos of my visit, with a
letter which I picked up, directed to Richmond, Virginia, its seal
unbroken. "N. C. Cleveland County. E. Wright to J. Wright." On the
other side, "A few lines from W. L. Vaughn." who has just been writing
for the wife to her husband, and continues on his own account. The
postscript, "tell John that nancy's folks are all well and has a verry
good Little Crop of corn a growing." I wonder, if, by one of those
strange chances of which I have seen so many, this number or leaf of the
"Atlantic" will not sooner or later find its way to Cleveland County,
North Carolina, and E. Wright, widow of James Wright, and Nancy's folks,
get from these sentences the last glimpse of husband and friend as he
threw up his arms and fell in the bloody cornfield of Antietam? I will
keep this stained letter for them until peace comes back, if it comes in
my time, and my pleasant North Carolina Rebel of the Middletown Hospital
will, perhaps look these poor people up, and tell them where to send for
it.
On the battle-field I parted with my two companions, the Chaplain and the
Philanthropist. They were going to the front, the one to find his
regiment, the other to look for those who needed his assistance. We
exchanged cards and farewells, I mounted the wagon, the horses' heads
were turned homewards, my two companions went their way, and I saw them
no more. On my way back, I fell into talk with James Grayden. Born in
England, Lancashire; in this country since he was four years old. Had
nothing to care for but an old mother; didn't know what he should do if
he lost her. Though so long in this country, he had all the simplicity
and childlike lightheartedness which belong to the Old World's people.
He laughed at the smallest pleasantry, and showed his great white English
teeth; he took a joke without retorting by an impertinence; he had a very
limited curiosity about all that was going on; he had small store of
information; he lived chiefly in his horses, it seemed to me. His quiet
animal nature acted as a pleasing anodyne to my recurring fits of
anxiety, and I liked his frequent "'Deed I don't know, sir." better than
I have sometimes relished the large discourse of professors and other
very wise men.
I have not much to say of the road which we were travelling for the
second time. Reaching Middletown, my first call was on the wounded
Colonel and his lady. She gave me a most touching account of all the
suffering he had gone through with his shattered limb before he succeeded
in finding a shelter; showing the terrible want of proper means of
transportation of the wounded after the battle. It occurred to me, while
at this house, that I was more or less famished, and for the first time
in my life I begged for a meal, which the kind family with whom the
Colonel was staying most graciously furnished me.
After tea, there came in a stout army surgeon, a Highlander by birth,
educated in Edinburgh, with whom I had pleasant, not unstimulating talk.
He had been brought very close to that immane and nefandous
Burke-and-Hare business which made the blood of civilization run cold in
the year 1828, and told me, in a very calm way, with an occasional pinch
from the mull, to refresh his memory, some of the details of those
frightful murders, never rivalled in horror until the wretch Dumollard,
who kept a private cemetery for his victims, was dragged into the light
of day. He had a good deal to say, too, about the Royal College of
Surgeons in Edinburgh, and the famous preparations, mercurial and the
rest, which I remember well having seen there,--the "sudabit multum."
and others,--also of our New York Professor Carnochan's handiwork, a
specimen of which I once admired at the New York College. But the doctor
was not in a happy frame of mind, and seemed willing to forget the
present in the past: things went wrong, somehow, and the time was out of
joint with him.
Dr. Thompson, kind, cheerful, companionable, offered me half his own wide
bed, in the house of Dr. Baer, for my second night in Middletown. Here I
lay awake again another night. Close to the house stood an ambulance in
which was a wounded Rebel officer, attended by one of their own surgeons.
He was calling out in a loud voice, all night long, as it seemed to me,
"Doctor! Doctor! Driver! Water!" in loud, complaining tones, I have no
doubt of real suffering, but in strange contrast with the silent patience
which was the almost universal rule.
The courteous Dr. Thompson will let me tell here an odd coincidence,
trivial, but having its interest as one of a series. The Doctor and
myself lay in the bed, and a lieutenant, a friend of his, slept on the
sofa, At night, I placed my match-box, a Scotch one, of the
Macpherson-plaid pattern, which I bought years ago, on the bureau, just
where I could put my hand upon it. I was the last of the three to rise
in the morning, and on looking for my pretty match-box, I found it was
gone. This was rather awkward,--not on account of the loss, but of the
unavoidable fact that one of my fellow-lodgers must have taken it. I
must try to find out what it meant.
"By the way, Doctor, have you seen anything of a little plaid-pattern
match-box?"
The Doctor put his hand to his pocket, and, to his own huge surprise and
my great gratification, pulled out two match-boxes exactly alike, both
printed with the Macpherson plaid. One was his, the other mine, which he
had seen lying round, and naturally took for his own, thrusting it into
his pocket, where it found its twin-brother from the same workshop. In
memory of which event, we exchanged boxes, like two Homeric heroes.
This curious coincidence illustrates well enough some supposed cases of
plagiarism of which I will mention one where my name figured. When a
little poem called "The Two Streams" was first printed, a writer in the
New York "Evening Post" virtually accused the author of it of borrowing
the thought from a baccalaureate sermon of President Hopkins of
Williamstown, and printed a quotation from that discourse, which, as I
thought, a thief or catch-poll might well consider as establishing a fair
presumption that it was so borrowed. I was at the same time wholly
unconscious of ever having met with the discourse or the sentence which
the verses were most like, nor do I believe I ever had seen or heard
either. Some time after this, happening to meet my eloquent cousin,
Wendell Phillips, I mentioned the fact to him, and he told me that he had
once used the special image said to be borrowed, in a discourse delivered
at Williamstown. On relating this to my friend Mr. Buchanan Read, he
informed me that he too, had used the image,--perhaps referring to his
poem called "The Twins." He thought Tennyson had used it also. The
parting of the streams on the Alps is poetically elaborated in a passage
attributed to "M. Loisne," printed in the "Boston Evening Transcript" for
October 23, 1859. Captain, afterwards Sir Francis Head, speaks of the
showers parting on the Cordilleras, one portion going to the Atlantic,
one to the Pacific. I found the image running loose in my mind, without
a halter. It suggested itself as an illustration of the will, and I
worked the poem out by the aid of Mitchell's School Atlas.--The spores of
a great many ideas are floating about in the atmosphere. We no more know
where all the growths of our mind came from, than where the lichens which
eat the names off from the gravestones borrowed the germs that gave them
birth. The two match-boxes were just alike, but neither was a
plagiarism.
In the morning I took to the same wagon once more, but, instead of James
Grayden, I was to have for my driver a young man who spelt his name
"Phillip Ottenheimer" and whose features at once showed him to be an
Israelite. I found him agreeable enough, and disposed to talk. So I
asked him many questions about his religion, and got some answers that
sound strangely in Christian ears. He was from Wittenberg, and had been
educated in strict Jewish fashion. From his childhood he had read
Hebrew, but was not much of a scholar otherwise. A young person of his
race lost caste utterly by marrying a Christian. The Founder of our
religion was considered by the Israelites to have been "a right smart man
and a great doctor." But the horror with which the reading of the New
Testament by any young person of their faith would be regarded was as
great, I judged by his language, as that of one of our straitest
sectaries would be, if he found his son or daughter perusing the "Age of
Reason."
In approaching Frederick, the singular beauty of its clustered spires
struck me very much, so that I was not surprised to find "Fair-View" laid
down about this point on a railroad map. I wish some wandering
photographer would take a picture of the place, a stereoscopic one, if
possible, to show how gracefully, how charmingly, its group of steeples
nestles among the Maryland hills. The town had a poetical look from a
distance, as if seers and dreamers might dwell there. The first sign I
read, on entering its long street, might perhaps be considered as
confirming my remote impression. It bore these words: "Miss Ogle, Past,
Present, and Future." On arriving, I visited Lieutenant Abbott, and the
attenuated unhappy gentleman, his neighbor, sharing between them as my
parting gift what I had left of the balsam known to the Pharmacopoeia as
Spiritus Vini Gallici. I took advantage of General Shriver's always open
door to write a letter home, but had not time to partake of his offered
hospitality. The railroad bridge over the Monocacy had been rebuilt since
I passed through Frederick, and we trundled along over the track toward
Baltimore.
It was a disappointment, on reaching the Eutaw House, where I had ordered
all communications to be addressed, to find no telegraphic message from
Philadelphia or Boston, stating that Captain H. had arrived at the former
place, "wound doing well in good spirits expects to leave soon for
Boston." After all, it was no great matter; the Captain was, no doubt,
snugly lodged before this in the house called Beautiful, at * * * *
Walnut Street, where that "grave and beautiful damsel named Discretion"
had already welcomed him, smiling, though "the water stood in her eyes,"
and had "called out Prudence, Piety, and Charity, who, after a little
more discourse with him, had him into the family."
The friends I had met at the Eutaw House had all gone but one, the lady
of an officer from Boston, who was most amiable and agreeable, and whose
benevolence, as I afterwards learned, soon reached the invalids I had
left suffering at Frederick. General Wool still walked the corridors,
inexpansive, with Fort McHenry on his shoulders, and Baltimore in his
breeches-pocket, and his courteous aid again pressed upon me his kind
offices. About the doors of the hotel the news-boys cried the papers in
plaintive, wailing tones, as different from the sharp accents of their
Boston counterparts as a sigh from the southwest is from a northeastern
breeze. To understand what they said was, of course, impossible to any
but an educated ear, and if I made out "Starr" and "Clipp'rr," it was
because I knew beforehand what must be the burden of their advertising
coranach.
I set out for Philadelphia on the morrow, Tuesday the twenty-third, there
beyond question to meet my Captain, once more united to his brave wounded
companions under that roof which covers a household of as noble hearts as
ever throbbed with human sympathies. Back River, Bush River, Gunpowder
Creek,--lives there the man with soul so dead that his memory has
cerements to wrap up these senseless names in the same envelopes with
their meaningless localities? But the Susquehanna,--the broad, the
beautiful, the historical, the poetical Susquehanna,--the river of
Wyoming and of Gertrude, dividing the shores where
"Aye those sunny mountains half-way down
Would echo flageolet from some romantic town,"--
did not my heart renew its allegiance to the poet who has made it lovely
to the imagination as well as to the eye, and so identified his fame with
the noble stream that it "rolls mingling with his fame forever?" The
prosaic traveller perhaps remembers it better from the fact that a great
sea-monster, in the shape of a steamboat, takes him, sitting in the car,
on its back, and swims across with him like Arion's dolphin,--also that
mercenary men on board offer him canvas-backs in the season, and ducks of
lower degree at other periods.
At Philadelphia again at last! Drive fast, O colored man and brother, to
the house called Beautiful, where my Captain lies sore wounded, waiting
for the sound of the chariot wheels which bring to his bedside the face
and the voice nearer than any save one to his heart in this his hour of
pain and weakness! Up a long street with white shutters and white steps
to all the houses. Off at right angles into another long street with
white shutters and white steps to all the houses. Off again at another
right angle into still another long street with white shutters and white
steps to all the houses. The natives of this city pretend to know one
street from another by some individual differences of aspect; but the
best way for a stranger to distinguish the streets he has been in from
others is to make a cross or other mark on the white shutters.
This corner-house is the one. Ring softly,--for the Lieutenant-Colonel
lies there with a dreadfully wounded arm, and two sons of the family, one
wounded like the Colonel, one fighting with death in the fog of a typhoid
fever, will start with fresh pangs at the least sound you can make. I
entered the house, but no cheerful smile met me. The sufferers were each
of them thought to be in a critical condition. The fourth bed, waiting
its tenant day after day, was still empty. Not a word from my Captain.
Then, foolish, fond body that I was, my heart sank within me. Had he
been taken ill on the road, perhaps been attacked with those formidable
symptoms which sometimes come on suddenly after wounds that seemed to be
doing well enough, and was his life ebbing away in some lonely cottage,
nay, in some cold barn or shed, or at the wayside, unknown, uncared for?
Somewhere between Philadelphia and Hagerstown, if not at the latter town,
he must be, at any rate. I must sweep the hundred and eighty miles
between these places as one would sweep a chamber where a precious pearl
had been dropped. I must have a companion in my search, partly to help
me look about, and partly because I was getting nervous and felt lonely.
Charley said he would go with me,--Charley, my Captain's beloved friend,
gentle, but full of spirit and liveliness, cultivated, social,
affectionate, a good talker, a most agreeable letter-writer, observing,
with large relish of life, and keen sense of humor. He was not well
enough to go, some of the timid ones said; but he answered by packing his
carpet-bag, and in an hour or two we were on the Pennsylvania Central
Railroad in full blast for Harrisburg.
I should have been a forlorn creature but for the presence of my
companion. In his delightful company I half forgot my anxieties, which,
exaggerated as they may seem now, were not unnatural after what I had
seen of the confusion and distress that had followed the great battle,
nay, which seem almost justified by the recent statement that "high
officers" were buried after that battle whose names were never
ascertained. I noticed little matters, as usual. The road was filled in
between the rails with cracked stones, such as are used for macadamizing
streets. They keep the dust down, I suppose, for I could not think of
any other use for them. By and by the glorious valley which stretches
along through Chester and Lancaster Counties opened upon us. Much as I
had heard of the fertile regions of Pennsylvania, the vast scale and the
uniform luxuriance of this region astonished me. The grazing pastures
were so green, the fields were under such perfect culture, the cattle
looked so sleek, the houses were so comfortable, the barns so ample, the
fences so well kept, that I did not wonder, when I was told that this
region was called the England of Pennsylvania. The people whom we saw
were, like the cattle, well nourished; the young women looked round and
wholesome.
"Grass makes girls." I said to my companion, and left him to work out my
Orphic saying, thinking to myself, that as guano makes grass, it was a
legitimate conclusion that Ichaboe must be a nursery of female
loveliness.
As the train stopped at the different stations, I inquired at each if
they had any wounded officers. None as yet; the red rays of the
battle-field had not streamed off so far as this. Evening found us in
the cars; they lighted candles in spring-candle-sticks; odd enough I
thought it in the land of oil-wells and unmeasured floods of kerosene.
Some fellows turned up the back of a seat so as to make it horizontal,
and began gambling, or pretending to gamble; it looked as if they were
trying to pluck a young countryman; but appearances are deceptive, and no
deeper stake than "drinks for the crowd" seemed at last to be involved.
But remembering that murder has tried of late years to establish itself
as an institution in the cars, I was less tolerant of the doings of these
"sportsmen" who tried to turn our public conveyance into a travelling
Frascati. They acted as if they were used to it, and nobody seemed to
pay much attention to their manoeuvres.
We arrived at Harrisburg in the course of the evening, and attempted to
find our way to the Jones House, to which we had been commended. By some
mistake, intentional on the part of somebody, as it may have been, or
purely accidental, we went to the Herr House instead. I entered my name
in the book, with that of my companion. A plain, middle-aged man stepped
up, read it to himself in low tones, and coupled to it a literary title
by which I have been sometimes known. He proved to be a graduate of Brown
University, and had heard a certain Phi Beta Kappa poem delivered there a
good many years ago. I remembered it, too; Professor Goddard, whose
sudden and singular death left such lasting regret, was the Orator. I
recollect that while I was speaking a drum went by the church, and how I
was disgusted to see all the heads near the windows thrust out of them,
as if the building were on fire. Cedat armis toga. The clerk in the
office, a mild, pensive, unassuming young man, was very polite in his
manners, and did all he could to make us comfortable. He was of a
literary turn, and knew one of his guests in his character of author. At
tea, a mild old gentleman, with white hair and beard, sat next us. He,
too, had come hunting after his son, a lieutenant in a Pennsylvania
regiment. Of these, father and son, more presently.
After tea we went to look up Dr. Wilson, chief medical officer of the
hospitals in the place, who was staying at the Brady House. A
magnificent old toddy-mixer, Bardolphian in hue, and stern of aspect, as
all grog-dispensers must be, accustomed as they are to dive through the
features of men to the bottom of their souls and pockets to see whether
they are solvent to the amount of sixpence, answered my question by a
wave of one hand, the other being engaged in carrying a dram to his lips.
His superb indifference gratified my artistic feeling more than it
wounded my personal sensibilities. Anything really superior in its line
claims my homage, and this man was the ideal bartender, above all vulgar
passions, untouched by commonplace sympathies, himself a lover of the
liquid happiness he dispenses, and filled with a fine scorn of all those
lesser felicities conferred by love or fame or wealth or any of the
roundabout agencies for which his fiery elixir is the cheap, all-powerful
substitute.
Dr. Wilson was in bed, though it was early in the evening, not having
slept for I don't know how many nights.
"Take my card up to him, if you please." "This way, sir."
A man who has not slept for a fortnight or so is not expected to be as
affable, when attacked in his bed, as a French Princess of old time at
her morning receptions. Dr. Wilson turned toward me, as I entered,
without effusion, but without rudeness. His thick, dark moustache was
chopped off square at the lower edge of the upper lip, which implied a
decisive, if not a peremptory, style of character.
I am Dr. So-and-So of Hubtown, looking after my wounded son. (I gave my
name and said Boston, of course, in reality.)
Dr. Wilson leaned on his elbow and looked up in my face, his features
growing cordial. Then he put out his hand, and good-humoredly excused
his reception of me. The day before, as he told me, he had dismissed
from the service a medical man hailing from ******, Pennsylvania, bearing
my last name, preceded by the same two initials; and he supposed, when my
card came up, it was this individual who was disturbing his slumbers.
The coincidence was so unlikely a priori, unless some forlorn parent
without antecedents had named, a child after me, that I could not help
cross-questioning the Doctor, who assured me deliberately that the fact
was just as he had said, even to the somewhat unusual initials. Dr.
Wilson very kindly furnished me all the information in his power, gave me
directions for telegraphing to Chambersburg, and showed every disposition
to serve me.
On returning to the Herr House, we found the mild, white-haired old
gentleman in a very happy state. He had just discovered his son, in a
comfortable condition, at the United States Hotel. He thought that he
could probably give us some information which would prove interesting.
To the United States Hotel we repaired, then, in company with our
kind-hearted old friend, who evidently wanted to see me as happy as
himself. He went up-stairs to his son's chamber, and presently came down
to conduct us there.
Lieutenant P________, of the Pennsylvania __th, was a very fresh,
bright-looking young man, lying in bed from the effects of a recent
injury received in action. A grape-shot, after passing through a post
and a board, had struck him in the hip, bruising, but not penetrating or
breaking. He had good news for me.
That very afternoon, a party of wounded officers had passed through
Harrisburg, going East. He had conversed in the bar-room of this hotel
with one of them, who was wounded about the shoulder (it might be the
lower part of the neck), and had his arm in a sling. He belonged to the
Twentieth Massachusetts; the Lieutenant saw that he was a Captain, by the
two bars on his shoulder-strap. His name was my family-name; he was tall
and youthful, like my Captain. At four o'clock he left in the train for
Philadelphia. Closely questioned, the Lieutenant's evidence was as
round, complete, and lucid as a Japanese sphere of rock-crystal.
TE DEUM LAUDAMUS! The Lord's name be praised! The dead pain in the
semilunar ganglion (which I must remind my reader is a kind of stupid,
unreasoning brain, beneath the pit of the stomach, common to man and
beast, which aches in the supreme moments of life, as when the dam loses
her young ones, or the wild horse is lassoed) stopped short. There was a
feeling as if I had slipped off a tight boot, or cut a strangling
garter,--only it was all over my system. What more could I ask to assure
me of the Captain's safety? As soon as the telegraph office opens
tomorrow morning we will send a message to our friends in Philadelphia,
and get a reply, doubtless, which will settle the whole matter.
The hopeful morrow dawned at last, and the message was sent accordingly.
In due time, the following reply was received: "Phil Sept 24 I think the
report you have heard that W [the Captain] has gone East must be an error
we have not seen or heard of him here M L H"
DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI! He could not have passed through Philadelphia
without visiting the house called Beautiful, where he had been so
tenderly cared for after his wound at Ball's Bluff, and where those whom
he loved were lying in grave peril of life or limb. Yet he did pass
through Harrisburg, going East, going to Philadelphia, on his way home.
Ah, this is it! He must have taken the late night-train from
Philadelphia for New York, in his impatience to reach home. There is such
a train, not down in the guide-book, but we were assured of the fact at
the Harrisburg depot. By and by came the reply from Dr. Wilson's
telegraphic message: nothing had been heard of the Captain at
Chambersburg. Still later, another message came from our Philadelphia
friend, saying that he was seen on Friday last at the house of Mrs.
K________, a well-known Union lady in Hagerstown. Now this could not be
true, for he did not leave Keedysville until Saturday; but the name of
the lady furnished a clew by which we could probably track him. A
telegram was at once sent to Mrs. K_______, asking information. It was
transmitted immediately, but when the answer would be received was
uncertain, as the Government almost monopolized the line. I was, on the
whole, so well satisfied that the Captain had gone East, that, unless
something were heard to the contrary, I proposed following him in the
late train leaving a little after midnight for Philadelphia.
This same morning we visited several of the temporary hospitals, churches
and school-houses, where the wounded were lying. In one of these, after
looking round as usual, I asked aloud, "Any Massachusetts men here?" Two
bright faces lifted themselves from their pillows and welcomed me by
name. The one nearest me was private John B. Noyes of Company B,
Massachusetts Thirteenth, son of my old college class-tutor, now the
reverend and learned Professor of Hebrew, etc., in Harvard University.
His neighbor was Corporal Armstrong of the same Company. Both were
slightly wounded, doing well. I learned then and since from Mr. Noyes
that they and their comrades were completely overwhelmed by the
attentions of the good people of Harrisburg,--that the ladies brought
them fruits and flowers, and smiles, better than either,--and that the
little boys of the place were almost fighting for the privilege of doing
their errands. I am afraid there will be a good many hearts pierced in
this war that will have no bulletmark to show.
There were some heavy hours to get rid of, and we thought a visit to Camp
Curtin might lighten some of them. A rickety wagon carried us to the
camp, in company with a young woman from Troy, who had a basket of good
things with her for a sick brother. "Poor boy! he will be sure to die,"
she said. The rustic sentries uncrossed their muskets and let us in.
The camp was on a fair plain, girdled with hills, spacious, well kept
apparently, but did not present any peculiar attraction for us. The
visit would have been a dull one, had we not happened to get sight of a
singular-looking set of human beings in the distance. They were clad in
stuff of different hues, gray and brown being the leading shades, but
both subdued by a neutral tint, such as is wont to harmonize the
variegated apparel of travel-stained vagabonds. They looked slouchy,
listless, torpid,--an ill-conditioned crew, at first sight, made up of
such fellows as an old woman would drive away from her hen-roost with a
broomstick. Yet these were estrays from the fiery army which has given
our generals so much trouble,--"Secesh prisoners," as a bystander told
us. A talk with them might be profitable and entertaining. But they
were tabooed to the common visitor, and it was necessary to get inside of
the line which separated us from them.
A solid, square captain was standing near by, to whom we were referred.
Look a man calmly through the very centre of his pupils and ask him for
anything with a tone implying entire conviction that he will grant it,
and he will very commonly consent to the thing asked, were it to commit
hari-kari. The Captain acceded to my postulate, and accepted my friend
as a corollary. As one string of my own ancestors was of Batavian
origin, I may be permitted to say that my new friend was of the Dutch
type, like the Amsterdam galiots, broad in the beam, capacious in the
hold, and calculated to carry a heavy cargo rather than to make fast
time. He must have been in politics at some time or other, for he made
orations to all the "Secesh," in which he explained to them that the
United States considered and treated them like children, and enforced
upon them the ridiculous impossibility of the Rebels attempting to do
anything against such a power as that of the National Government.
Much as his discourse edified them and enlightened me, it interfered
somewhat with my little plans of entering into frank and friendly talk
with some of these poor fellows, for whom I could not help feeling a kind
of human sympathy, though I am as venomous a hater of the Rebellion as
one is like to find under the stars and stripes. It is fair to take a
man prisoner. It is fair to make speeches to a man. But to take a man
prisoner and then make speeches to him while in durance is not fair.
I began a few pleasant conversations, which would have come to something
but for the reason assigned.
One old fellow had a long beard, a drooping eyelid, and a black clay pipe
in his mouth. He was a Scotchman from Ayr, dour enough, and little
disposed to be communicative, though I tried him with the "Twa Briggs,"
and, like all Scotchmen, he was a reader of "Burrns." He professed to
feel no interest in the cause for which he was fighting, and was in the
army, I judged, only from compulsion. There was a wild-haired, unsoaped
boy, with pretty, foolish features enough, who looked as if he might be
about seventeen, as he said he was. I give my questions and his answers
literally.
"What State do you come from?"
"Georgy."
"What part of Georgia?"
"Midway."
--[How odd that is! My father was settled for seven years as pastor over
the church at Midway, Georgia, and this youth is very probably a grandson
or great grandson of one of his parishioners.]
"Where did you go to church when you were at home?"
"Never went inside 'f a church b't once in m' life."
"What did you do before you became a soldier?"
"Nothin'."
"What do you mean to do when you get back?"
"Nothin'."
Who could have any other feeling than pity for this poor human weed, this
dwarfed and etiolated soul, doomed by neglect to an existence but one
degree above that of the idiot?
With the group was a lieutenant, buttoned close in his gray coat,--one
button gone, perhaps to make a breastpin for some fair traitorous bosom.
A short, stocky man, undistinguishable from one of the "subject race" by
any obvious meanderings of the sangre azul on his exposed surfaces. He
did not say much, possibly because he was convinced by the statements and
arguments of the Dutch captain. He had on strong, iron-heeled shoes, of
English make, which he said cost him seventeen dollars in Richmond.
I put the question, in a quiet, friendly way, to several of the
prisoners, what they were fighting for. One answered, "For our homes."
Two or three others said they did not know, and manifested great
indifference to the whole matter, at which another of their number, a
sturdy fellow, took offence, and muttered opinions strongly derogatory to
those who would not stand up for the cause they had been fighting for. A
feeble; attenuated old man, who wore the Rebel uniform, if such it could
be called, stood by without showing any sign of intelligence. It was
cutting very close to the bone to carve such a shred of humanity from the
body politic to make a soldier of.
We were just leaving, when a face attracted me, and I stopped the party.
"That is the true Southern type," I said to my companion. A young
fellow, a little over twenty, rather tall, slight, with a perfectly
smooth, boyish cheek, delicate, somewhat high features, and a fine,
almost feminine mouth, stood at the opening of his tent, and as we turned
towards him fidgeted a little nervously with one hand at the loose
canvas, while he seemed at the same time not unwilling to talk. He was
from Mississippi, he said, had been at Georgetown College, and was so far
imbued with letters that even the name of the literary humility before
him was not new to his ears. Of course I found it easy to come into
magnetic relation with him, and to ask him without incivility what he was
fighting for. "Because I like the excitement of it," he answered. I
know those fighters with women's mouths and boys' cheeks. One such from
the circle of my own friends, sixteen years old, slipped away from his
nursery, and dashed in under, an assumed name among the red-legged
Zouaves, in whose company he got an ornamental bullet-mark in one of the
earliest conflicts of the war.
"Did you ever see a genuine Yankee?" said my Philadelphia friend to the
young Mississippian.
"I have shot at a good many of them," he replied, modestly, his woman's
mouth stirring a little, with a pleasant, dangerous smile.
The Dutch captain here put his foot into the conversation, as his
ancestors used to put theirs into the scale, when they were buying furs
of the Indians by weight,--so much for the weight of a hand, so much for
the weight of a foot. It deranged the balance of our intercourse; there
was no use in throwing a fly where a paving-stone had just splashed into
the water, and I nodded a good-by to the boy-fighter, thinking how much
pleasanter it was for my friend the Captain to address him with
unanswerable arguments and crushing statements in his own tent than it
would be to meet him upon some remote picket station and offer his fair
proportions to the quick eye of a youngster who would draw a bead on him
before he had time to say dunder and blixum.
We drove back to the town. No message. After dinner still no message.
Dr. Cuyler, Chief Army Hospital Inspector, is in town, they say. Let us
hunt him up,--perhaps he can help us.
We found him at the Jones House. A gentleman of large proportions, but
of lively temperament, his frame knit in the North, I think, but ripened
in Georgia, incisive, prompt but good-humored, wearing his broad-brimmed,
steeple-crowned felt hat with the least possible tilt on one side,--a
sure sign of exuberant vitality in a mature and dignified person like
him, business-like in his ways, and not to be interrupted while occupied
with another, but giving himself up heartily to the claimant who held him
for the time. He was so genial, so cordial, so encouraging, that it
seemed as if the clouds, which had been thick all the morning, broke away
as we came into his presence, and the sunshine of his large nature filled
the air all around us. He took the matter in hand at once, as if it were
his own private affair. In ten minutes he had a second telegraphic
message on its way to Mrs. K at Hagerstown, sent through the Government
channel from the State Capitol,--one so direct and urgent that I should
be sure of an answer to it, whatever became of the one I had sent in the
morning.
While this was going on, we hired a dilapidated barouche, driven by an
odd young native, neither boy nor man, "as a codling when 't is almost an
apple," who said wery for very, simple and sincere, who smiled faintly
at our pleasantries, always with a certain reserve of suspicion, and a
gleam of the shrewdness that all men get who live in the atmosphere of
horses. He drove us round by the Capitol grounds, white with tents,
which were disgraced in my eyes by unsoldierly scrawls in huge letters,
thus: THE SEVEN BLOOMSBURY BROTHERS, DEVIL'S HOLE, and similar
inscriptions. Then to the Beacon Street of Harrisburg, which looks upon
the Susquehanna instead of the Common, and shows a long front of handsome
houses with fair gardens. The river is pretty nearly a mile across here,
but very shallow now. The codling told us that a Rebel spy had been
caught trying its fords a little while ago, and was now at Camp Curtin
with a heavy ball chained to his leg,--a popular story, but a lie, Dr.
Wilson said. A little farther along we came to the barkless stump of the
tree to which Mr. Harris, the Cecrops of the city named after him, was
tied by the Indians for some unpleasant operation of scalping or
roasting, when he was rescued by friendly savages, who paddled across the
stream to save him. Our youngling pointed out a very respectable-looking
stone house as having been "built by the Indians" about those times.
Guides have queer notions occasionally.
I was at Niagara just when Dr. Rae arrived there with his companions and
dogs and things from his Arctic search after the lost navigator.
"Who are those?" I said to my conductor.
"Them?" he answered. "Them's the men that's been out West, out to
Michig'n, aft' Sir Ben Franklin."
Of the other sights of Harrisburg the Brant House or Hotel, or whatever
it is called, seems most worth notice. Its facade is imposing, with a
row of stately columns, high above which a broad sign impends, like a
crag over the brow of a lofty precipice. The lower floor only appeared
to be open to the public. Its tessellated pavement and ample courts
suggested the idea of a temple where great multitudes might kneel
uncrowded at their devotions; but from appearances about the place where
the altar should be, I judged, that, if one asked the officiating priest
for the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, his prayer would not be
unanswered. The edifice recalled to me a similar phenomenon I had once
looked upon,--the famous Caffe Pedrocchi at Padua. It was the same
thing in Italy and America: a rich man builds himself a mausoleum, and
calls it a place of entertainment. The fragrance of innumerable
libations and the smoke of incense-breathing cigars and pipes shall
ascend day and night through the arches of his funereal monument. What
are the poor dips which flare and flicker on the crowns of spikes that
stand at the corners of St. Genevieve's filigree-cased sarcophagus to
this perpetual offering of sacrifice?
Ten o'clock in the evening was approaching. The telegraph office would
presently close, and as yet there were no tidings from Hagerstown. Let
us step over and see for ourselves. A message! A message!
"Captain H. still here leaves seven to-morrow for Harrisburg Penna Is
doing well Mrs HK--."
A note from Dr. Cuyler to the same effect came soon afterwards to the
hotel.
We shall sleep well to-night; but let us sit awhile with nubiferous, or,
if we may coin a word, nepheligenous accompaniment, such as shall gently
narcotize the over-wearied brain and fold its convolutions for slumber
like the leaves of a lily at nightfall. For now the over-tense nerves
are all unstraining themselves, and a buzz, like that which comes over
one who stops after being long jolted upon an uneasy pavement, makes the
whole frame alive with a luxurious languid sense of all its inmost
fibres. Our cheerfulness ran over, and the mild, pensive clerk was so
magnetized by it that he came and sat down with us. He presently
confided to me, with infinite naivete and ingenuousness, that, judging
from my personal appearance, he should not have thought me the writer
that he in his generosity reckoned me to be. His conception, so far as I
could reach it, involved a huge, uplifted forehead, embossed with
protuberant organs of the intellectual faculties, such as all writers are
supposed to possess in abounding measure. While I fell short of his
ideal in this respect, he was pleased to say that he found me by no means
the remote and inaccessible personage he had imagined, and that I had
nothing of the dandy about me, which last compliment I had a modest
consciousness of most abundantly deserving.
Sweet slumbers brought us to the morning of Thursday. The train from
Hagerstown was due at 11.15 A. M: We took another ride behind the
codling, who showed us the sights of yesterday over again. Being in a
gracious mood of mind, I enlarged on the varying aspects of the
town-pumps and other striking objects which we had once inspected, as
seen by the different lights of evening and morning. After this, we
visited the school-house hospital. A fine young fellow, whose arm had
been shattered, was just falling into the spasms of lock-jaw. The beads
of sweat stood large and round on his flushed and contracted features.
He was under the effect of opiates,--why not (if his case was desperate,
as it seemed to be considered) stop his sufferings with chloroform? It
was suggested that it might shorten life. "What then?" I said. "Are a
dozen additional spasms worth living for?"
The time approached for the train to arrive from Hagerstown, and we went
to the station. I was struck, while waiting there, with what seemed to
me a great want of care for the safety of the people standing round.
Just after my companion and myself had stepped off the track, I noticed a
car coming quietly along at a walk, as one may say, without engine,
without visible conductor, without any person heralding its approach, so
silently, so insidiously, that I could not help thinking how very near it
came to flattening out me and my match-box worse than the Ravel
pantomimist and his snuff-box were flattened out in the play. The train
was late,--fifteen minutes, half an hour late, and I began to get
nervous, lest something had happened. While I was looking for it, out
started a freight-train, as if on purpose to meet the cars I was
expecting, for a grand smash-up. I shivered at the thought, and asked an
employee of the road, with whom I had formed an acquaintance a few
minutes old, why there should not be a collision of the expected train
with this which was just going out. He smiled an official smile, and
answered that they arranged to prevent that, or words to that effect.
Twenty-four hours had not passed from that moment when a collision did
occur, just out of the city, where I feared it, by which at least eleven
persons were killed, and from forty to sixty more were maimed and
crippled!
To-day there was the delay spoken of, but nothing worse. The expected
train came in so quietly that I was almost startled to see it on the
track. Let us walk calmly through the cars, and look around us.
In the first car, on the fourth seat to the right, I saw my Captain;
there saw I him, even my first-born, whom I had sought through many
cities.
"How are you, Boy?"
"How are you, Dad?"
Such are the proprieties of life, as they are observed among us
Anglo-Saxons of the nineteenth century, decently disguising those natural
impulses that made Joseph, the Prime Minister of Egypt, weep aloud so
that the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard, nay, which had once
overcome his shaggy old uncle Esau so entirely that he fell on his
brother's neck and cried like a baby in the presence of all the women.
But the hidden cisterns of the soul may be filling fast with sweet tears,
while the windows through which it looks are undimmed by a drop or a film
of moisture.
These are times in which we cannot live solely for selfish joys or
griefs. I had not let fall the hand I held, when a sad, calm voice
addressed me by name. I fear that at the moment I was too much absorbed
in my own feelings; for certainly at any other time. I should have
yielded myself without stint to the sympathy which this meeting might
well call forth.
"You remember my son, Cortland Saunders, whom I brought to see you once
in Boston?"
"I do remember him well."
"He was killed on Monday, at Shepherdstown. I am carrying his body back
with me on this train. He was my only child. If you could come to my
house,--I can hardly call it my home now,--it would be a pleasure to me."
This young man, belonging in Philadelphia, was the author of a "New
System of Latin Paradigms," a work showing extraordinary scholarship and
capacity. It was this book which first made me acquainted with him, and
I kept him in my memory, for there was genius in the youth. Some time
afterwards he came to me with a modest request to be introduced to
President Felton, and one or two others, who would aid him in a course of
independent study he was proposing to himself. I was most happy to
smooth the way for him, and he came repeatedly after this to see me and
express his satisfaction in the opportunities for study he enjoyed at
Cambridge. He was a dark, still, slender person, always with a
trance-like remoteness, a mystic dreaminess of manner, such as I never
saw in any other youth. Whether he heard with difficulty, or whether his
mind reacted slowly on an alien thought, I could not say; but his answer
would often be behind time, and then a vague, sweet smile, or a few words
spoken under his breath, as if he had been trained in sick men's
chambers. For such a young man, seemingly destined for the inner life of
contemplation, to be a soldier seemed almost unnatural. Yet he spoke to
me of his intention to offer himself to his country, and his blood must
now be reckoned among the precious sacrifices which will make her soil
sacred forever. Had he lived, I doubt not that he would have redeemed
the rare promise of his earlier years. He has done better, for he has
died that unborn generations may attain the hopes held out to our nation
and to mankind.
So, then, I had been within ten miles of the place where my wounded
soldier was lying, and then calmly turned my back upon him to come once
more round by a journey of three or four hundred miles to the same region
I had left! No mysterious attraction warned me that the heart warm with
the same blood as mine was throbbing so near my own. I thought of that
lovely, tender passage where Gabriel glides unconsciously by Evangeline
upon the great river. Ah, me! if that railroad crash had been a few
hours earlier, we two should never have met again, after coming so close
to each other!
The source of my repeated disappointments was soon made clear enough. The
Captain had gone to Hagerstown, intending to take the cars at once for
Philadelphia, as his three friends actually did, and as I took it for
granted he certainly would. But as he walked languidly along, some
ladies saw him across the street, and seeing, were moved with pity, and
pitying, spoke such soft words that he was tempted to accept their
invitation and rest awhile beneath their hospitable roof. The mansion
was old, as the dwellings of gentlefolks should be; the ladies were some
of them young, and all were full of kindness; there were gentle cares,
and unasked luxuries, and pleasant talk, and music-sprinklings from the
piano, with a sweet voice to keep them company,--and all this after the
swamps of the Chickahominy, the mud and flies of Harrison's Landing, the
dragging marches, the desperate battles, the fretting wound, the jolting
ambulance, the log-house, and the rickety milk--cart! Thanks, uncounted
thanks to the angelic ladies whose charming attentions detained him from
Saturday to Thursday, to his great advantage and my infinite
bewilderment! As for his wound, how could it do otherwise than well
under such hands? The bullet had gone smoothly through, dodging
everything but a few nervous branches, which would come right in time and
leave him as well as ever.
At ten that evening we were in Philadelphia, the Captain at the house of
the friends so often referred to, and I the guest of Charley, my kind
companion. The Quaker element gives an irresistible attraction to these
benignant Philadelphia households. Many things reminded me that I was no
longer in the land of the Pilgrims. On the table were Kool Slaa and
Schmeer Kase, but the good grandmother who dispensed with such quiet,
simple grace these and more familiar delicacies was literally ignorant of
Baked Beans, and asked if it was the Lima bean which was employed in that
marvellous dish of animalized leguminous farina!
Charley was pleased with my comparing the face of the small Ethiop known
to his household as "Tines" to a huckleberry with features. He also
approved my parallel between a certain German blonde young maiden whom we
passed in the street and the "Morris White" peach. But he was so
good-humored at times, that, if one scratched a lucifer, he accepted it
as an illumination.
A day in Philadelphia left a very agreeable impression of the outside of
that great city, which has endeared itself so much of late to all the
country by its most noble and generous care of our soldiers. Measured by
its sovereign hotel, the Continental, it would stand at the head of our
economic civilization. It provides for the comforts and conveniences,
and many of the elegances of life, more satisfactorily than any American
city, perhaps than any other city anywhere. Many of its characteristics
are accounted for to some extent by its geographical position. It is the
great neutral centre of the Continent, where the fiery enthusiasms of the
South and the keen fanaticisms of the North meet at their outer limits,
and result in a compound which neither turns litmus red nor turmeric
brown. It lives largely on its traditions, of which, leaving out
Franklin and Independence Hall, the most imposing must be considered its
famous water-works. In my younger days I visited Fairmount, and it was
with a pious reverence that I renewed my pilgrimage to that perennial
fountain. Its watery ventricles were throbbing with the same systole and
diastole as when, the blood of twenty years bounding in my own heart, I
looked upon their giant mechanism. But in the place of "Pratt's Garden"
was an open park, and the old house where Robert Morris held his court in
a former generation was changing to a public restaurant. A suspension
bridge cobwebbed itself across the Schuylkill where that audacious arch
used to leap the river at a single bound,--an arch of greater span, as
they loved to tell us, than was ever before constructed. The Upper Ferry
Bridge was to the Schuylkill what the Colossus was to the harbor of
Rhodes. It had an air of dash about it which went far towards redeeming
the dead level of respectable average which flattens the physiognomy of
the rectangular city. Philadelphia will never be herself again until
another Robert Mills and another Lewis Wernwag have shaped her a new
palladium. She must leap the Schuylkill again, or old men will sadly
shake their heads, like the Jews at the sight of the second temple,
remembering the glories of that which it replaced.
There are times when Ethiopian minstrelsy can amuse, if it does not
charm, a weary soul, and such a vacant hour there was on this same Friday
evening. The "opera-house" was spacious and admirably ventilated. As I
was listening to the merriment of the sooty buffoons, I happened to cast
my eyes up to the ceiling, and through an open semicircular window a
bright solitary star looked me calmly in the eyes. It was a strange
intrusion of the vast eternities beckoning from the infinite spaces. I
called the attention of one of my neighbors to it, but "Bones" was
irresistibly droll, and Arcturus, or Aldebaran, or whatever the blazing
luminary may have been, with all his revolving worlds, sailed uncared-for
down the firmament.
On Saturday morning we took up our line of march for New York. Mr.
Felton, President of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad,
had already called upon me, with a benevolent and sagacious look on his
face which implied that he knew how to do me a service and meant to do
it. Sure enough, when we got to the depot, we found a couch spread for
the Captain, and both of us were passed on to New York with no visits,
but those of civility, from the conductor. The best thing I saw on the
route was a rustic fence, near Elizabethtown, I think, but I am not quite
sure. There was more genius in it than in any structure of the kind I
have ever seen,--each length being of a special pattern, ramified,
reticulated, contorted, as the limbs of the trees had grown. I trust
some friend will photograph or stereograph this fence for me, to go with
the view of the spires of Frederick, already referred to, as mementos of
my journey.
I had come to feeling that I knew most of the respectably dressed people
whom I met in the cars, and had been in contact with them at some time or
other. Three or four ladies and gentlemen were near us, forming a group
by themselves. Presently one addressed me by name, and, on inquiry, I
found him to be the gentleman who was with me in the pulpit as Orator on
the occasion of another Phi Beta Kappa poem, one delivered at New Haven.
The party were very courteous and friendly, and contributed in various
ways to our comfort.
It sometimes seems to me as if there were only about a thousand people in
the world, who keep going round and round behind the scenes and then
before them, like the "army" in a beggarly stage-show. Suppose that I
should really wish; some time or other, to get away from this everlasting
circle of revolving supernumeraries, where should I buy a ticket the like
of which was not in some of their pockets, or find a seat to which some
one of them was not a neighbor.
A little less than a year before, after the Ball's Bluff accident, the
Captain, then the Lieutenant, and myself had reposed for a night on our
homeward journey at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where we were lodged on the
ground-floor, and fared sumptuously. We were not so peculiarly fortunate
this time, the house being really very full. Farther from the flowers and
nearer to the stars,--to reach the neighborhood of which last the per
ardua of three or four flights of stairs was formidable for any mortal,
wounded or well.
The "vertical railway" settled that for us, however. It is a giant
corkscrew forever pulling a mammoth cork, which, by some divine judgment,
is no sooner drawn than it is replaced in its position. This ascending
and descending stopper is hollow, carpeted, with cushioned seats, and is
watched over by two condemned souls, called conductors, one of whom is
said to be named Igion, and the other Sisyphus.
I love New York, because, as in Paris, everybody that lives in it feels
that it is his property,--at least, as much as it is anybody's. My
Broadway, in particular, I love almost as I used to love my Boulevards.
I went, therefore, with peculiar interest, on the day that we rested at
our grand hotel, to visit some new pleasure-grounds the citizens had been
arranging for us, and which I had not yet seen. The Central Park is an
expanse of wild country, well crumpled so as to form ridges which will
give views and hollows that will hold water. The hips and elbows and
other bones of Nature stick out here and there in the shape of rocks
which give character to the scenery, and an unchangeable, unpurchasable
look to a landscape that without them would have been in danger of being
fattened by art and money out of all its native features. The roads were
fine, the sheets of water beautiful, the bridges handsome, the swans
elegant in their deportment, the grass green and as short as a fast
horse's winter coat. I could not learn whether it was kept so by
clipping or singeing. I was delighted with my new property,--but it cost
me four dollars to get there, so far was it beyond the Pillars of
Hercules of the fashionable quarter. What it will be by and by depends
on circumstances; but at present it is as much central to New York as
Brookline is central to Boston.
The question is not between Mr. Olmsted's admirably arranged, but remote
pleasure-ground and our Common, with its batrachian pool, but between his
Excentric Park and our finest suburban scenery, between its artificial
reservoirs and the broad natural sheet of Jamaica Pond. I say this not
invidiously, but in justice to the beauties which surround our own
metropolis. To compare the situations of any dwellings in either of the
great cities with those which look upon the Common, the Public Garden,
the waters of the Back Bay, would be to take an unfair advantage of Fifth
Avenue and Walnut Street. St. Botolph's daughter dresses in plainer
clothes than her more stately sisters, but she wears an emerald on her
right hand and a diamond on her left that Cybele herself need not be
ashamed of.
On Monday morning, the twenty-ninth of September, we took the cars for
home. Vacant lots, with Irish and pigs; vegetable-gardens; straggling
houses; the high bridge; villages, not enchanting; then Stamford: then
NORWALK. Here, on the sixth of May, 1853, I passed close on the heels of
the great disaster. But that my lids were heavy on that morning, my
readers would probably have had no further trouble with me. Two of my
friends saw the car in which they rode break in the middle and leave them
hanging over the abyss. From Norwalk to Boston, that day's journey of
two hundred miles was a long funeral procession.
Bridgeport, waiting for Iranistan to rise from its ashes with all its
phoenix-egg domes,--bubbles of wealth that broke, ready to be blown
again; iridescent as ever, which is pleasant, for the world likes
cheerful Mr. Barnum's success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes that
look like monstrous billiard-tables, with hay-cocks lying about for
balls,--romantic with West Rock and its legends,--cursed with a
detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so
murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dare must be the
frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,--with its neat
carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, its
vistas of elms and its dishevelled weeping-willows; Hartford,
substantial, well-bridged, many--steepled city,--every conical spire an
extinguisher of some nineteenth-century heresy; so onward, by and across
the broad, shallow Connecticut,--dull red road and dark river woven in
like warp and woof by the shuttle of the darting engine; then
Springfield, the wide-meadowed, well-feeding, horse-loving, hot-summered,
giant-treed town,--city among villages, village among cities; Worcester,
with its Daedalian labyrinth of crossing railroad-bars, where the
snorting Minotaurs, breathing fire and smoke and hot vapors, are stabled
in their dens; Framingham, fair cup-bearer, leaf-cinctured Hebe of the
deep-bosomed Queen sitting by the seaside on the throne of the Six
Nations. And now I begin to know the road, not by towns, but by single
dwellings; not by miles, but by rods. The poles of the great magnet that
draws in all the iron tracks through the grooves of all the mountains
must be near at hand, for here are crossings, and sudden stops, and
screams of alarmed engines heard all around. The tall granite obelisk
comes into view far away on the left, its bevelled cap-stone sharp
against the sky; the lofty chimneys of Charlestown and East Cambridge
flaunt their smoky banners up in the thin air; and now one fair bosom of
the three-pilled city, with its dome-crowned summit, reveals itself, as
when many-breasted Ephesian Artemis appeared with half-open chlamys
before her worshippers.
Fling open the window-blinds of the chamber that looks out on the waters
and towards the western sun! Let the joyous light shine in upon the
pictures that hang upon its walls and the shelves thick-set with the
names of poets and philosophers and sacred teachers, in whose pages our
boys learn that life is noble only when it is held cheap by the side of
honor and of duty. Lay him in his own bed, and let him sleep off his
aches and weariness. So comes down another night over this household,
unbroken by any messenger of evil tidings,--a night of peaceful rest and
grateful thoughts; for this our son and brother was dead and is alive
again, and was lost and is found.
THE INEVITABLE TRIAL
[An Oration delivered before the City Authorities of Boston, on the 4th
of July, 1863.]
It is our first impulse, upon this returning day of our nation's birth,
to recall whatever is happiest and noblest in our past history, and to
join our voices in celebrating the statesmen and the heroes, the men of
thought and the men of action, to whom that history owes its existence.
In other years this pleasing office may have been all that was required
of the holiday speaker. But to-day, when the very life of the nation is
threatened, when clouds are thick about us, and men's hearts are
throbbing with passion, or failing with fear, it is the living question
of the hour, and not the dead story of the past, which forces itself into
all minds, and will find unrebuked debate in all assemblies.
In periods of disturbance like the present, many persons who sincerely
love their country and mean to do their duty to her disappoint the hopes
and expectations of those who are actively working in her cause. They
seem to have lost whatever moral force they may have once possessed, and
to go drifting about from one profitless discontent to another, at a time
when every citizen is called upon for cheerful, ready service. It is
because their minds are bewildered, and they are no longer truly
themselves. Show them the path of duty, inspire them with hope for the
future, lead them upwards from the turbid stream of events to the bright,
translucent springs of eternal principles, strengthen their trust in
humanity and their faith in God, and you may yet restore them to their
manhood and their country.
At all times, and especially on this anniversary of glorious
recollections and kindly enthusiasms, we should try to judge the weak and
wavering souls of our brothers fairly and generously. The conditions in
which our vast community of peace-loving citizens find themselves are new
and unprovided for. Our quiet burghers and farmers are in the position
of river-boats blown from their moorings out upon a vast ocean, where
such a typhoon is raging as no mariner who sails its waters ever before
looked upon. If their beliefs change with the veering of the blast, if
their trust in their fellow-men, and in the course of Divine Providence,
seems well-nigh shipwrecked, we must remember that they were taken
unawares, and without the preparation which could fit them to struggle
with these tempestuous elements. In times like these the faith is the
man; and they to whom it is given in larger measure owe a special duty to
those who for want of it are faint at heart, uncertain in speech, feeble
in effort, and purposeless in aim.
Assuming without argument a few simple propositions,--that
self-government is the natural condition of an adult society, as
distinguished from the immature state, in which the temporary
arrangements of monarchy and oligarchy are tolerated as conveniences;
that the end of all social compacts is, or ought to be, to give every
child born into the world the fairest chance to make the most and the
best of itself that laws can give it; that Liberty, the one of the two
claimants who swears that her babe shall not be split in halves and
divided between them, is the true mother of this blessed Union; that the
contest in which we are engaged is one of principles overlaid by
circumstances; that the longer we fight, and the more we study the
movements of events and ideas, the more clearly we find the moral nature
of the cause at issue emerging in the field and in the study; that all
honest persons with average natural sensibility, with respectable
understanding, educated in the school of northern teaching, will have
eventually to range themselves in the armed or unarmed host which fights
or pleads for freedom, as against every form of tyranny; if not in the
front rank now, then in the rear rank by and by;--assuming these
propositions, as many, perhaps most of us, are ready to do, and believing
that the more they are debated before the public the more they will gain
converts, we owe it to the timid and the doubting to keep the great
questions of the time in unceasing and untiring agitation. They must be
discussed, in all ways consistent with the public welfare, by different
classes of thinkers; by priests and laymen; by statesmen and simple
voters; by moralists and lawyers; by men of science and uneducated
hand-laborers; by men of facts and figures, and by men of theories and
aspirations; in the abstract and in the concrete; discussed and
rediscussed every month, every week, every day, and almost every hour, as
the telegraph tells us of some new upheaval or subsidence of the rocky
base of our political order.
Such discussions may not be necessary to strengthen the convictions of
the great body of loyal citizens. They may do nothing toward changing
the views of those, if such there be, as some profess to believe, who
follow politics as a trade. They may have no hold upon that class of
persons who are defective in moral sensibility, just as other persons are
wanting in an ear for music. But for the honest, vacillating minds, the
tender consciences supported by the tremulous knees of an infirm
intelligence, the timid compromisers who are always trying to curve the
straight lines and round the sharp angles of eternal law, the continual
debate of these living questions is the one offered means of grace and
hope of earthly redemption. And thus a true, unhesitating patriot may be
willing to listen with patience to arguments which he does not need, to
appeals which have no special significance for him, in the hope that some
less clear in mind or less courageous in temper may profit by them.
As we look at the condition in which we find ourselves on this fourth day
of July, 1863, at the beginning of the Eighty-eighth Year of American
Independence, we may well ask ourselves what right we have to indulge in
public rejoicings. If the war in which we are engaged is an accidental
one, which might have been avoided but for our fault; if it is for any
ambitious or unworthy purpose on our part; if it is hopeless, and we are
madly persisting in it; if it is our duty and in our power to make a safe
and honorable peace, and we refuse to do it; if our free institutions are
in danger of becoming subverted, and giving place to an irresponsible
tyranny; if we are moving in the narrow circles which are to ingulf us in
national ruin,--then we had better sing a dirge, and leave this idle
assemblage, and hush the noisy cannon which are reverberating through the
air, and tear down the scaffolds which are soon to blaze with fiery
symbols; for it is mourning and not joy that should cover the land; there
should be silence, and not the echo of noisy gladness, in our streets;
and the emblems with which we tell our nation's story and prefigure its
future should be traced, not in fire, but in ashes.
If, on the other hand, this war is no accident, but an inevitable result
of long incubating causes; inevitable as the cataclysms that swept away
the monstrous births of primeval nature; if it is for no mean, unworthy
end, but for national life, for liberty everywhere, for humanity, for the
kingdom of God on earth; if it is not hopeless, but only growing to such
dimensions that the world shall remember the final triumph of right
throughout all time; if there is no safe and honorable peace for us but a
peace proclaimed from the capital of every revolted province in the name
of the sacred, inviolable Union; if the fear of tyranny is a phantasm,
conjured up by the imagination of the weak, acted on by the craft of the
cunning; if so far from circling inward to the gulf of our perdition, the
movement of past years is reversed, and every revolution carries us
farther and farther from the centre of the vortex, until, by God's
blessing, we shall soon find ourselves freed from the outermost coil of
the accursed spiral; if all these things are true; if we may hope to make
them seem true, or even probable, to the doubting soul, in an hour's
discourse, then we may join without madness in the day's exultant
festivities; the bells may ring, the cannon may roar, the incense of our
harmless saltpetre fill the air, and the children who are to inherit the
fruit of these toiling, agonizing years, go about unblamed, making day
and night vocal with their jubilant patriotism.
The struggle in which we are engaged was inevitable; it might have come a
little sooner, or a little later, but it must have come. The disease of
the nation was organic, and not functional, and the rough chirurgery of
war was its only remedy.
In opposition to this view, there are many languid thinkers who lapse
into a forlorn belief that if this or that man had never lived, or if
this or that other man had not ceased to live, the country might have
gone on in peace and prosperity, until its felicity merged in the glories
of the millennium. If Mr. Calhoun had never proclaimed his heresies; if
Mr. Garrison had never published his paper; if Mr. Phillips, the
Cassandra in masculine shape of our long prosperous Ilium, had never
uttered his melodious prophecies; if the silver tones of Mr. Clay had
still sounded in the senate-chamber to smooth the billows of contention;
if the Olympian brow of Daniel Webster had been lifted from the dust to
fix its awful frown on the darkening scowl of rebellion,--we might have
been spared this dread season of convulsion. All this is but simple
Martha's faith, without the reason she could have given: "If Thou hadst
been here, my brother had not died."
They little know the tidal movements of national thought and feeling, who
believe that they depend for existence on a few swimmers who ride their
waves. It is not Leviathan that leads the ocean from continent to
continent, but the ocean which bears his mighty bulk as it wafts its own
bubbles. If this is true of all the narrower manifestations of human
progress, how much more must it be true of those broad movements in the
intellectual and spiritual domain which interest all mankind? But in the
more limited ranges referred to, no fact is more familiar than that there
is a simultaneous impulse acting on many individual minds at once, so
that genius comes in clusters, and shines rarely as a single star. You
may trace a common motive and force in the pyramid-builders of the
earliest recorded antiquity, in the evolution of Greek architecture, and
in the sudden springing up of those wondrous cathedrals of the twelfth
and following centuries, growing out of the soil with stem and bud and
blossom, like flowers of stone whose seeds might well have been the
flaming aerolites cast over the battlements of heaven. You may see the
same law showing itself in the brief periods of glory which make the
names of Pericles and Augustus illustrious with reflected splendors; in
the painters, the sculptors, the scholars of "Leo's golden days"; in the
authors of the Elizabethan time; in the poets of the first part of this
century following that dreary period, suffering alike from the silence of
Cowper and the song of Hayley. You may accept the fact as natural, that
Zwingli and Luther, without knowing each other, preached the same
reformed gospel; that Newton, and Hooke, and Halley, and Wren arrived
independently of each other at the great law of the diminution of gravity
with the square of the distance; that Leverrier and Adams felt their
hands meeting, as it were, as they stretched them into the outer darkness
beyond the orbit of Uranus, in search of the dim, unseen Planet; that
Fulton and Bell, that Wheatstone and Morse, that Daguerre and Niepce,
were moving almost simultaneously in parallel paths to the same end. You
see why Patrick Henry, in Richmond, and Samuel Adams, in Boston, were
startling the crown officials with the same accents of liberty, and why
the Mecklenburg Resolutions had the very ring of the Protest of the
Province of Massachusetts. This law of simultaneous intellectual
movement, recognized by all thinkers, expatiated upon by Lord Macaulay
and by Mr. Herbert Spencer among recent writers, is eminently applicable
to that change of thought and feeling which necessarily led to the
present conflict.
The antagonism of the two sections of the Union was not the work of this
or that enthusiast or fanatic. It was the consequence of a movement in
mass of two different forms of civilization in different directions, and
the men to whom it was attributed were only those who represented it most
completely, or who talked longest and loudest about it. Long before the
accents of those famous statesmen referred to ever resounded in the halls
of the Capitol, long before the "Liberator" opened its batteries, the
controversy now working itself out by trial of battle was foreseen and
predicted. Washington warned his countrymen of the danger of sectional
divisions, well knowing the line of cleavage that ran through the
seemingly solid fabric. Jefferson foreshadowed the judgment to fall upon
the land for its sins against a just God. Andrew Jackson announced a
quarter of a century beforehand that the next pretext of revolution would
be slavery. De Tocqueville recognized with that penetrating insight
which analyzed our institutions and conditions so keenly, that the Union
was to be endangered by slavery, not through its interests, but through
the change of character it was bringing about in the people of the two
sections, the same fatal change which George Mason, more than half a
century before, had declared to be the most pernicious effect of the
system, adding the solemn warning, now fearfully justifying itself in the
sight of his descendants, that "by an inevitable chain of causes and
effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities." The
Virginian romancer pictured the far-off scenes of the conflict which he
saw approaching as the prophets of Israel painted the coming woes of
Jerusalem, and the strong iconoclast of Boston announced the very year
when the curtain should rise on the yet unopened drama.
The wise men of the past, and the shrewd men of our own time, who warned
us of the calamities in store for our nation, never doubted what was the
cause which was to produce first alienation and finally rupture. The
descendants of the men "daily exercised in tyranny," the "petty tyrants"
as their own leading statesmen called them long ago, came at length to
love the institution which their fathers had condemned while they
tolerated. It is the fearful realization of that vision of the poet
where the lost angels snuff up with eager nostrils the sulphurous
emanations of the bottomless abyss,--so have their natures become changed
by long breathing the atmosphere of the realm of darkness.
At last, in the fulness of time, the fruits of sin ripened in a sudden
harvest of crime. Violence stalked into the senate-chamber, theft and
perjury wound their way into the cabinet, and, finally, openly organized
conspiracy, with force and arms, made burglarious entrance into a chief
stronghold of the Union. That the principle which underlay these acts of
fraud and violence should be irrevocably recorded with every needed
sanction, it pleased God to select a chief ruler of the false government
to be its Messiah to the listening world. As with Pharaoh, the Lord
hardened his heart, while he opened his mouth, as of old he opened that
of the unwise animal ridden by cursing Balaam. Then spake Mr.
"Vice-President" Stephens those memorable words which fixed forever the
theory of the new social order. He first lifted a degraded barbarism to
the dignity of a philosophic system. He first proclaimed the gospel of
eternal tyranny as the new revelation which Providence had reserved for
the western Palestine. Hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth! The
corner-stone of the new-born dispensation is the recognized inequality of
races; not that the strong may protect the weak, as men protect women and
children, but that the strong may claim the authority of Nature and of
God to buy, to sell, to scourge, to hunt, to cheat out of the reward of
his labor, to keep in perpetual ignorance, to blast with hereditary
curses throughout all time, the bronzed foundling of the New World, upon
whose darkness has dawned the star of the occidental Bethlehem!
After two years of war have consolidated the opinion of the Slave States,
we read in the "Richmond Examiner": "The establishment of the
Confederacy is verily a distinct reaction against the whole course of the
mistaken civilization of the age. For 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,'
we have deliberately substituted Slavery, Subordination, and Government."
A simple diagram, within the reach of all, shows how idle it is to look
for any other cause than slavery as having any material agency in
dividing the country. Match the two broken pieces of the Union, and you
will find the fissure that separates them zigzagging itself half across
the continent like an isothermal line, shooting its splintery
projections, and opening its reentering angles, not merely according to
the limitations of particular States, but as a county or other limited
section of ground belongs to freedom or to slavery. Add to this the
official statement made in 1862, that "there is not one regiment or
battalion, or even company of men, which was organized in or derived from
the Free States or Territories, anywhere, against the Union"; throw in
gratuitously Mr. Stephens's explicit declaration in the speech referred
to, and we will consider the evidence closed for the present on this
count of the indictment.
In the face of these predictions, these declarations, this line of
fracture, this precise statement, testimony from so many sources,
extending through several generations, as to the necessary effect of
slavery, a priori, and its actual influence as shown by the facts, few
will suppose that anything we could have done would have stayed its
course or prevented it from working out its legitimate effects on the
white subjects of its corrupting dominion. Northern acquiescence or even
sympathy may have sometimes helped to make it sit more easily on the
consciences of its supporters. Many profess to think that Northern
fanaticism, as they call it, acted like a mordant in fixing the black dye
of slavery in regions which would but for that have washed themselves
free of its stain in tears of penitence. It is a delusion and a snare to
trust in any such false and flimsy reasons where there is enough and more
than enough in the institution itself to account for its growth. Slavery
gratifies at once the love of power, the love of money, and the love of
ease; it finds a victim for anger who cannot smite back his oppressor;
and it offers to all, without measure, the seductive privileges which the
Mormon gospel reserves for the true believers on earth, and the Bible of
Mahomet only dares promise to the saints in heaven.
Still it is common, common even to vulgarism, to hear the remark that the
same gallows-tree ought to bear as its fruit the arch-traitor and the
leading champion of aggressive liberty. The mob of Jerusalem was not
satisfied with its two crucified thieves; it must have a cross also for
the reforming Galilean, who interfered so rudely with its conservative
traditions! It is asserted that the fault was quite as much on our side
as on the other; that our agitators and abolishers kindled the flame for
which the combustibles were all ready on the other side of the border.
If these men could have been silenced, our brothers had not died.
Who are the persons that use this argument? They are the very ones who
are at the present moment most zealous in maintaining the right of free
discussion. At a time when every power the nation can summon is needed
to ward off the blows aimed at its life, and turn their force upon its
foes,--when a false traitor at home may lose us a battle by a word, and a
lying newspaper may demoralize an army by its daily or weekly
stillicidium of poison, they insist with loud acclaim upon the liberty of
speech and of the press; liberty, nay license, to deal with government,
with leaders, with every measure, however urgent, in any terms they
choose, to traduce the officer before his own soldiers, and assail the
only men who have any claim at all to rule over the country, as the very
ones who are least worthy to be obeyed. If these opposition members of
society are to have their way now, they cannot find fault with those
persons who spoke their minds freely in the past on that great question
which, as we have agreed, underlies all our present dissensions.
It is easy to understand the bitterness which is often shown towards
reformers. They are never general favorites. They are apt to interfere
with vested rights and time-hallowed interests. They often wear an
unlovely, forbidding aspect. Their office corresponds to that of
Nature's sanitary commission for the removal of material nuisances. It
is not the butterfly, but the beetle, which she employs for this duty.
It is not the bird of paradise and the nightingale, but the fowl of dark
plumage and unmelodious voice, to which is entrusted the sacred duty of
eliminating the substances that infect the air. And the force of obvious
analogy teaches us not to expect all the qualities which please the
general taste in those whose instincts lead them to attack the moral
nuisances which poison the atmosphere of society. But whether they
please us in all their aspects or not, is not the question. Like them or
not, they must and will perform their office, and we cannot stop them.
They may be unwise, violent, abusive, extravagant, impracticable, but
they are alive, at any rate, and it is their business to remove abuses as
soon as they are dead, and often to help them to die. To quarrel with
them because they are beetles, and not butterflies, is natural, but far
from profitable. They grow none the less vigorously for being trodden
upon, like those tough weeds that love to nestle between the stones of
court-yard pavements. If you strike at one of their heads with the
bludgeon of the law, or of violence, it flies open like the seedcapsule
of a snap-weed, and fills the whole region with seminal thoughts which
will spring up in a crop just like the original martyr. They chased one
of these enthusiasts, who attacked slavery, from St. Louis, and shot him
at Alton in 1837; and on the 23d of June just passed, the Governor of
Missouri, chairman of the Committee on Emancipation, introduced to the
Convention an Ordinance for the final extinction of Slavery! They hunted
another through the streets of a great Northern city in 1835; and within
a few weeks a regiment of colored soldiers, many of them bearing the
marks of the slave-driver's whip on their backs, marched out before a
vast multitude tremulous with newly-stirred sympathies, through the
streets of the same city, to fight our battles in the name of God and
Liberty!
The same persons who abuse the reformers, and lay all our troubles at
their door, are apt to be severe also on what they contemptuously
emphasize as "sentiments" considered as motives of action. It is
charitable to believe that they do not seriously contemplate or truly
understand the meaning of the words they use, but rather play with them,
as certain so-called "learned" quadrupeds play with the printed
characters set before them. In all questions involving duty, we act from
sentiments. Religion springs from them, the family order rests upon
them, and in every community each act involving a relation between any
two of its members implies the recognition or the denial of a sentiment.
It is true that men often forget them or act against their bidding in the
keen competition of business and politics. But God has not left the hard
intellect of man to work out its devices without the constant presence of
beings with gentler and purer instincts. The breast of woman is the
ever-rocking cradle of the pure and holy sentiments which will sooner or
later steal their way into the mind of her sterner companion; which will
by and by emerge in the thoughts of the world's teachers, and at last
thunder forth in the edicts of its law-givers and masters. Woman herself
borrows half her tenderness from the sweet influences of maternity; and
childhood, that weeps at the story of suffering, that shudders at the
picture of wrong, brings down its inspiration "from God, who is our
home." To quarrel, then, with the class of minds that instinctively
attack abuses, is not only profitless but senseless; to sneer at the
sentiments which are the springs of all just and virtuous actions, is
merely a display of unthinking levity, or of want of the natural
sensibilities.
With the hereditary character of the Southern people moving in one
direction, and the awakened conscience of the North stirring in the
other, the open conflict of opinion was inevitable, and equally
inevitable its appearance in the field of national politics. For what is
meant by self-government is, that a man shall make his convictions of
what is right and expedient regulate the community so far as his
fractional share of the government extends. If one has come to the
conclusion, be it right or wrong, that any particular institution or
statute is a violation of the sovereign law of God, it is to be expected
that he will choose to be represented by those who share his belief, and
who will in their wider sphere do all they legitimately can to get rid of
the wrong in which they find themselves and their constituents involved.
To prevent opinion from organizing itself under political forms may be
very desirable, but it is not according to the theory or practice of
self-government. And if at last organized opinions become arrayed in
hostile shape against each other, we shall find that a just war is only
the last inevitable link in a chain of closely connected impulses of
which the original source is in Him who gave to tender and humble and
uncorrupted souls the sense of right and wrong, which, after passing
through various forms, has found its final expression in the use of
material force. Behind the bayonet is the law-giver's statute, behind the
statute the thinker's argument, behind the argument is the tender
conscientiousness of woman, woman, the wife, the mother,--who looks upon
the face of God himself reflected in the unsullied soul of infancy. "Out
of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because
of thine enemies."
The simplest course for the malcontent is to find fault with the order of
Nature and the Being who established it. Unless the law of moral
progress were changed, or the Governor of the Universe were dethroned, it
would be impossible to prevent a great uprising of the human conscience
against a system, the legislation relating to which, in the words of so
calm an observer as De Tocqueville, the Montesquieu of our laws, presents
"such unparalleled atrocities as to show that the laws of humanity have
been totally perverted." Until the infinite selfishness of the powers
that hate and fear the principles of free government swallowed up their
convenient virtues, that system was hissed at by all the old-world
civilization. While in one section of our land the attempt has been
going on to lift it out of the category of tolerated wrongs into the
sphere of the world's beneficent agencies, it was to be expected that the
protest of Northern manhood and womanhood would grow louder and stronger
until the conflict of principles led to the conflict of forces. The
moral uprising of the North came with the logical precision of destiny;
the rage of the "petty tyrants" was inevitable; the plot to erect a slave
empire followed with fated certainty; and the only question left for us
of the North was, whether we should suffer the cause of the Nation to go
by default, or maintain its existence by the argument of cannon and
musket, of bayonet and sabre.
The war in which we are engaged is for no meanly ambitious or unworthy
purpose. It was primarily, and is to this moment, for the preservation
of our national existence. The first direct movement towards it was a
civil request on the part of certain Southern persons, that the Nation
would commit suicide, without making any unnecessary trouble about it.
It was answered, with sentiments of the highest consideration, that there
were constitutional and other objections to the Nation's laying violent
hands upon itself. It was then requested, in a somewhat peremptory tone,
that the Nation would be so obliging as to abstain from food until the
natural consequences of that proceeding should manifest themselves. All
this was done as between a single State and an isolated fortress; but it
was not South Carolina and Fort Sumter that were talking; it was a vast
conspiracy uttering its menace to a mighty nation; the whole menagerie of
treason was pacing its cages, ready to spring as soon as the doors were
opened; and all that the tigers of rebellion wanted to kindle their wild
natures to frenzy, was the sight of flowing blood.
As if to show how coldly and calmly all this had been calculated
beforehand by the conspirators, to make sure that no absence of malice
aforethought should degrade the grand malignity of settled purpose into
the trivial effervescence of transient passion, the torch which was
literally to launch the first missile, figuratively, to "fire the
southern heart" and light the flame of civil war, was given into the
trembling hand of an old white-headed man, the wretched incendiary whom
history will handcuff in eternal infamy with the temple-burner of ancient
Ephesus. The first gun that spat its iron insult at Fort Sumter, smote
every loyal American full in the face. As when the foul witch used to
torture her miniature image, the person it represented suffered all that
she inflicted on his waxen counterpart, so every buffet that fell on the
smoking fortress was felt by the sovereign nation of which that was the
representative. Robbery could go no farther, for every loyal man of the
North was despoiled in that single act as much as if a footpad had laid
hands upon him to take from him his father's staff and his mother's
Bible. Insult could go no farther, for over those battered walls waved
the precious symbol of all we most value in the past and most hope for in
the future,--the banner under which we became a nation, and which, next
to the cross of the Redeemer, is the dearest object of love and honor to
all who toil or march or sail beneath its waving folds of glory.
Let us pause for a moment to consider what might have been the course of
events if under the influence of fear, or of what some would name
humanity, or of conscientious scruples to enter upon what a few please
themselves and their rebel friends by calling a "wicked war"; if under
any or all these influences we had taken the insult and the violence of
South Carolina without accepting it as the first blow of a mortal combat,
in which we must either die or give the last and finishing stroke.
By the same title which South Carolina asserted to Fort Sumter, Florida
would have challenged as her own the Gibraltar of the Gulf, and Virginia
the Ehrenbreitstein of the Chesapeake. Half our navy would have anchored
under the guns of these suddenly alienated fortresses, with the flag of
the rebellion flying at their peaks. "Old Ironsides" herself would have
perhaps sailed out of Annapolis harbor to have a wooden Jefferson Davis
shaped for her figure-head at Norfolk,--for Andrew Jackson was a hater of
secession, and his was no fitting effigy for the battle-ship of the
red-handed conspiracy. With all the great fortresses, with half the ships
and warlike material, in addition to all that was already stolen, in the
traitors' hands, what chance would the loyal men in the Border States
have stood against the rush of the desperate fanatics of the now
triumphant faction? Where would Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri,
Tennessee,--saved, or looking to be saved, even as it is, as by
fire,--have been in the day of trial? Into whose hands would the
Capital, the archives, the glory, the name, the very life of the nation
as a nation, have fallen, endangered as all of them were, in spite of the
volcanic outburst of the startled North which answered the roar of the
first gun at Sumter? Worse than all, are we permitted to doubt that in
the very bosom of the North itself there was a serpent, coiled but not
sleeping, which only listened for the first word that made it safe to
strike, to bury its fangs in the heart of Freedom, and blend its golden
scales in close embrace with the deadly reptile of the cotton-fields.
Who would not wish that he were wrong in such a suspicion? yet who can
forget the mysterious warnings that the allies of the rebels were to be
found far north of the fatal boundary line; and that it was in their own
streets, against their own brothers, that the champions of liberty were
to defend her sacred heritage?
Not to have fought, then, after the supreme indignity and outrage we had
suffered, would have been to provoke every further wrong, and to furnish
the means for its commission. It would have been to placard ourselves on
the walls of the shattered fort, as the spiritless race the proud
labor-thieves called us. It would have been to die as a nation of
freemen, and to have given all we had left of our rights into the hands
of alien tyrants in league with home-bred traitors.
Not to have fought would have been to be false to liberty everywhere, and
to humanity. You have only to see who are our friends and who are our
enemies in this struggle, to decide for what principles we are combating.
We know too well that the British aristocracy is not with us. We know
what the West End of London wishes may be result of this controversy.
The two halves of this Union are the two blades of the shears,
threatening as those of Atropos herself, which will sooner or later cut
into shreds the old charters of tyranny. How they would exult if they
could but break the rivet that makes of the two blades one resistless
weapon! The man who of all living Americans had the best opportunity of
knowing how the fact stood, wrote these words in March, 1862: "That Great
Britain did, in the most terrible moment of our domestic trial in
struggling with a monstrous social evil she had earnestly professed to
abhor, coldly and at once assume our inability to master it, and then
become the only foreign nation steadily contributing in every indirect
way possible to verify its pre-judgment, will probably be the verdict
made up against her by posterity, on a calm comparison of the evidence."
So speaks the wise, tranquil statesman who represents the nation at the
Court of St. James, in the midst of embarrassments perhaps not less than
those which vexed his illustrious grandfather, when he occupied the same
position as the Envoy of the hated, newborn Republic.
"It cannot be denied,"--says another observer, placed on one of our
national watch-towers in a foreign capital,--"it cannot be denied that
the tendency of European public opinion, as delivered from high places,
is more and more unfriendly to our cause"; "but the people," he adds,
"everywhere sympathize with us, for they know that our cause is that of
free institutions,--that our struggle is that of the people against an
oligarchy." These are the words of the Minister to Austria, whose
generous sympathies with popular liberty no homage paid to his genius by
the class whose admiring welcome is most seductive to scholars has ever
spoiled; our fellow-citizen, the historian of a great Republic which
infused a portion of its life into our own,--John Lothrop Motley.
It is a bitter commentary on the effects of European, and especially of
British institutions, that such men should have to speak in such terms of
the manner in which our struggle has been regarded. We had, no doubt,
very generally reckoned on the sympathy of England, at least, in a strife
which, whatever pretexts were alleged as its cause, arrayed upon one side
the supporters of an institution she was supposed to hate in earnest, and
on the other its assailants. We had forgotten what her own poet, one of
the truest and purest of her children, had said of his countrymen, in
words which might well have been spoken by the British Premier to the
American Ambassador asking for some evidence of kind feeling on the part
of his government:
"Alas I expect it not. We found no bait
To tempt us in thy country. Doing good,
Disinterested good, is not our trade."
We know full well by this time what truth there is in these honest lines.
We have found out, too, who our European enemies are, and why they are
our enemies. Three bending statues bear up that gilded seat, which, in
spite of the time-hallowed usurpations and consecrated wrongs so long
associated with its history, is still venerated as the throne. One of
these supports is the pensioned church; the second is the purchased army;
the third is the long-suffering people. Whenever the third caryatid
comes to life and walks from beneath its burden, the capitals of Europe
will be filled with the broken furniture of palaces. No wonder that our
ministers find the privileged orders willing to see the ominous republic
split into two antagonistic forces, each paralyzing the other, and
standing in their mighty impotence a spectacle to courts and kings; to be
pointed at as helots who drank themselves blind and giddy out of that
broken chalice which held the poisonous draught of liberty!
We know our enemies, and they are the enemies of popular rights. We know
our friends, and they are the foremost champions of political and social
progress. The eloquent voice and the busy pen of John Bright have both
been ours, heartily, nobly, from the first; the man of the people has
been true to the cause of the people. That deep and generous thinker,
who, more than any of her philosophical writers, represents the higher
thought of England, John Stuart Mill, has spoken for us in tones to which
none but her sordid hucksters and her selfish land-graspers can refuse to
listen. Count Gasparin and Laboulaye have sent us back the echo from
liberal France; France, the country of ideas, whose earlier inspirations
embodied themselves for us in the person of the youthful Lafayette.
Italy,--would you know on which side the rights of the people and the
hopes of the future are to be found in this momentous conflict, what
surer test, what ampler demonstration can you ask--than the eager
sympathy of the Italian patriot whose name is the hope of the toiling
many, and the dread of their oppressors, wherever it is spoken, the
heroic Garibaldi?
But even when it is granted that the war was inevitable; when it is
granted that it is for no base end, but first for the life of the nation,
and more and more, as the quarrel deepens, for the welfare of mankind,
for knowledge as against enforced ignorance, for justice as against
oppression, for that kingdom of God on earth which neither the
unrighteous man nor the extortioner can hope to inherit, it may still be
that the strife is hopeless, and must therefore be abandoned. Is it too
much to say that whether the war is hopeless or not for the North depends
chiefly on the answer to the question, whether the North has virtue and
manhood enough to persevere in the contest so long as its resources hold
out? But how much virtue and manhood it has can never be told until they
are tried, and those who are first to doubt the prevailing existence of
these qualities are not commonly themselves patterns of either. We have
a right to trust that this people is virtuous and brave enough not to
give up a just and necessary contest before its end is attained, or shown
to be unattainable for want of material agencies. What was the end to be
attained by accepting the gage of battle? It was to get the better of
our assailants, and, having done so, to take exactly those steps which we
should then consider necessary to our present and future safety. The
more obstinate the resistance, the more completely must it be subdued.
It may not even have been desirable, as Mr. Mill suggested long since,
that the victory over the rebellion should have been easily and speedily
won, and so have failed to develop the true meaning of the conflict, to
bring out the full strength of the revolted section, and to exhaust the
means which would have served it for a still more desperate future
effort. We cannot complain that our task has proved too easy. We give
our Southern army,--for we must remember that it is our army, after all,
only in a state of mutiny,--we give our Southern army credit for
excellent spirit and perseverance in the face of many disadvantages. But
we have a few plain facts which show the probable course of events; the
gradual but sure operation of the blockade; the steady pushing back of
the boundary of rebellion, in spite of resistance at many points, or even
of such aggressive inroads as that which our armies are now meeting with
their long lines of bayonets,--may God grant them victory!--the progress
of our arms down the Mississippi; the relative value of gold and currency
at Richmond and Washington. If the index-hands of force and credit
continue to move in the ratio of the past two years, where will the
Confederacy be in twice or thrice that time?
Either all our statements of the relative numbers, power, and wealth of
the two sections of the country signify nothing, or the resources of our
opponents in men and means must be much nearer exhaustion than our own.
The running sand of the hour-glass gives no warning, but runs as freely
as ever when its last grains are about to fall. The merchant wears as
bold a face the day before he is proclaimed a bankrupt, as he wore at the
height of his fortunes. If Colonel Grierson found the Confederacy "a
mere shell," so far as his equestrian excursion carried him, how can we
say how soon the shell will collapse? It seems impossible that our own
dissensions can produce anything more than local disturbances, like the
Morristown revolt, which Washington put down at once by the aid of his
faithful Massachusetts soldiers. But in a rebellious state dissension is
ruin, and the violence of an explosion in a strict ratio to the pressure
on every inch of the containing surface. Now we know the tremendous
force which has compelled the "unanimity" of the Southern people. There
are men in the ranks of the Southern army, if we can trust the evidence
which reaches us, who have been recruited with packs of blood-hounds, and
drilled, as it were, with halters around their necks. We know what is
the bitterness of those who have escaped this bloody harvest of the
remorseless conspirators; and from that we can judge of the elements of
destruction incorporated with many of the seemingly solid portions of the
fabric of the rebellion. The facts are necessarily few, but we can reason
from the laws of human nature as to what must be the feelings of the
people of the South to their Northern neighbors. It is impossible that
the love of the life which they have had in common, their glorious
recollections, their blended histories, their sympathies as Americans,
their mingled blood, their birthright as born under the same flag and
protected by it the world over, their worship of the same God, under the
same outward form, at least, and in the folds of the same ecclesiastical
organizations, should all be forgotten, and leave nothing but hatred and
eternal alienation. Men do not change in this way, and we may be quite
sure that the pretended unanimity of the South will some day or other
prove to have been a part of the machinery of deception which the
plotters have managed with such consummate skill. It is hardly to be
doubted that in every part of the South, as in New Orleans, in
Charleston, in Richmond, there are multitudes who wait for the day of
deliverance, and for whom the coming of "our good friends, the enemies,"
as Beranger has it, will be like the advent of the angels to the
prison-cells of Paul and Silas. But there is no need of depending on the
aid of our white Southern friends, be they many or be they few; there is
material power enough in the North, if there be the will to use it, to
overrun and by degrees to recolonize the South, and it is far from
impossible that some such process may be a part of the mechanism of its
new birth, spreading from various centres of organization, on the plan
which Nature follows when she would fill a half-finished tissue with
blood-vessels or change a temporary cartilage into bone.
Suppose, however, that the prospects of the war were, we need not say
absolutely hopeless,--because that is the unfounded hypothesis of those
whose wish is father to their thought,--but full of discouragement. Can
we make a safe and honorable peace as the quarrel now stands? As honor
comes before safety, let us look at that first. We have undertaken to
resent a supreme insult, and have had to bear new insults and
aggressions, even to the direct menace of our national capital. The
blood which our best and bravest have shed will never sink into the
ground until our wrongs are righted, or the power to right them is shown
to be insufficient. If we stop now, all the loss of life has been
butchery; if we carry out the intention with which we first resented the
outrage, the earth drinks up the blood of our martyrs, and the rose of
honor blooms forever where it was shed. To accept less than indemnity
for the past, so far as the wretched kingdom of the conspirators can
afford it, and security for the future, would discredit us in our own
eyes and in the eyes of those who hate and long to be able to despise us.
But to reward the insults and the robberies we have suffered, by the
surrender of our fortresses along the coast, in the national gulf, and on
the banks of the national river,--and this and much more would surely be
demanded of us,--would place the United Fraction of America on a level
with the Peruvian guano-islands, whose ignoble but coveted soil is open
to be plundered by all comers!
If we could make a peace without dishonor, could we make one that would
be safe and lasting? We could have an armistice, no doubt, long enough
for the flesh of our wounded men to heal and their broken bones to knit
together. But could we expect a solid, substantial, enduring peace, in
which the grass would have time to grow in the war-paths, and the bruised
arms to rust, as the old G. R. cannon rusted in our State arsenal,
sleeping with their tompions in their mouths, like so many sucking lambs?
It is not the question whether the same set of soldiers would be again
summoned to the field. Let us take it for granted that we have seen
enough of the miseries of warfare to last us for a while, and keep us
contented with militia musters and sham-fights. The question is whether
we could leave our children and our children's children with any secure
trust that they would not have to go through the very trials we are
enduring, probably on a more extended scale and in a more aggravated
form.
It may be well to look at the prospects before us, if a peace is
established on the basis of Southern independence, the only peace
possible, unless we choose to add ourselves to the four millions who
already call the Southern whites their masters. We know what the
prevailing--we do not mean universal--spirit and temper of those people
have been for generations, and what they are like to be after a long and
bitter warfare. We know what their tone is to the people of the North;
if we do not, De Bow and Governor Hammond are schoolmasters who will
teach us to our heart's content. We see how easily their social
organization adapts itself to a state of warfare. They breed a superior
order of men for leaders, an ignorant commonalty ready to follow them as
the vassals of feudal times followed their lords; and a race of bondsmen,
who, unless this war changes them from chattels to human beings, will
continue to add vastly to their military strength in raising their food,
in building their fortifications, in all the mechanical work of war, in
fact, except, it may be, the handling of weapons. The institution
proclaimed as the corner-stone of their government does violence not
merely to the precepts of religion, but to many of the best human
instincts, yet their fanaticism for it is as sincere as any tribe of the
desert ever manifested for the faith of the Prophet of Allah. They call
themselves by the same name as the Christians of the North, yet there is
as much difference between their Christianity and that of Wesley or of
Channing, as between creeds that in past times have vowed mutual
extermination. Still we must not call them barbarians because they
cherish an institution hostile to civilization. Their highest culture
stands out all the more brilliantly from the dark background of ignorance
against which it is seen; but it would be injustice to deny that they
have always shone in political science, or that their military capacity
makes them most formidable antagonists, and that, however inferior they
may be to their Northern fellow-countrymen in most branches of literature
and science, the social elegances and personal graces lend their outward
show to the best circles among their dominant class.
Whom have we then for our neighbors, in case of separation,--our
neighbors along a splintered line of fracture extending for thousands of
miles,--but the Saracens of the Nineteenth Century; a fierce, intolerant,
fanatical people, the males of which will be a perpetual standing army;
hating us worse than the Southern Hamilcar taught his swarthy boy to hate
the Romans; a people whose existence as a hostile nation on our frontier
is incompatible with our peaceful development? Their wealth, the proceeds
of enforced labor, multiplied by the breaking up of new cottonfields, and
in due time by the reopening of the slave-trade, will go to purchase
arms, to construct fortresses, to fit out navies. The old Saracens,
fanatics for a religion which professed to grow by conquest, were a
nation of predatory and migrating warriors. The Southern people,
fanatics for a system essentially aggressive, conquering, wasting, which
cannot remain stationary, but must grow by alternate appropriations of
labor and of land, will come to resemble their earlier prototypes.
Already, even, the insolence of their language to the people of the North
is a close imitation of the style which those proud and arrogant Asiatics
affected toward all the nations of Europe. What the "Christian dogs"
were to the followers of Mahomet, the "accursed Yankees," the "Northern
mud-sills" are to the followers of the Southern Moloch. The
accomplishments which we find in their choicer circles were prefigured in
the court of the chivalric Saladin, and the long train of Painim knights
who rode forth to conquest under the Crescent. In all branches of
culture, their heathen predecessors went far beyond them. The schools of
mediaeval learning were filled with Arabian teachers. The heavens
declare the glory of the Oriental astronomers, as Algorab and Aldebaran
repeat their Arabic names to the students of the starry firmament. The
sumptuous edifice erected by the Art of the nineteenth century, to hold
the treasures of its Industry, could show nothing fairer than the court
which copies the Moorish palace that crowns the summit of Granada. Yet
this was the power which Charles the Hammer, striking for Christianity
and civilization, had to break like a potter's vessel; these were the
people whom Spain had to utterly extirpate from the land where they had
ruled for centuries.
Prepare, then, if you unseal the vase which holds this dangerous Afrit of
Southern nationality, for a power on your borders that will be to you
what the Saracens were to Europe before the son of Pepin shattered their
armies, and flung the shards and shivers of their broken strength upon
the refuse heap of extinguished barbarisms. Prepare for the possible fate
of Christian Spain; for a slave-market in Philadelphia; for the Alhambra
of a Southern caliph on the grounds consecrated by the domestic virtues
of a long line of Presidents and their exemplary families. Remember the
ages of border warfare between England and Scotland, closed at last by
the union of the two kingdoms. Recollect the hunting of the deer on the
Cheviot hills, and all that it led to; then think of the game which the
dogs will follow open-mouthed across our Southern border, and all that is
like to follow which the child may rue that is unborn; think of these
possibilities, or probabilities, if you will, and say whether you are
ready to make a peace which will give you such a neighbor; which may
betray your civilization as that of half the Peninsula was given up to
the Moors; which may leave your fair border provinces to be crushed under
the heel of a tyrant, as Holland was left to be trodden down by the Duke
of Alva!
No! no! fellow-citizens! We must fight in this quarrel until one side or
the other is exhausted. Rather than suffer all that we have poured out
of our blood, all that we have lavished of our substance, to have been
expended in vain, and to bequeath an unsettled question, an unfinished
conflict, an unavenged insult, an unrighted wrong, a stained escutcheon,
a tarnished shield, a dishonored flag, an unheroic memory to the
descendants of those who have always claimed that their fathers were
heroes; rather than do all this, it were hardly an American exaggeration
to say, better that the last man and the last dollar should be followed
by the last woman and the last dime, the last child and the last copper!
There are those who profess to fear that our government is becoming a
mere irresponsible tyranny. If there are any who really believe that our
present Chief Magistrate means to found a dynasty for himself and family,
that a coup d'etat is in preparation by which he is to become ABRAHAM,
DEI GRATIA REX,--they cannot have duly pondered his letter of June 12th,
in which he unbosoms himself with the simplicity of a rustic lover called
upon by an anxious parent to explain his intentions. The force of his
argument is not at all injured by the homeliness of his illustrations.
The American people are not much afraid that their liberties will be
usurped. An army of legislators is not very likely to throw away its
political privileges, and the idea of a despotism resting on an open
ballot-box, is like that of Bunker Hill Monument built on the waves of
Boston Harbor. We know pretty well how much of sincerity there is in the
fears so clamorously expressed, and how far they are found in company
with uncompromising hostility to the armed enemies of the nation. We
have learned to put a true value on the services of the watch-dog who
bays the moon, but does not bite the thief!
The men who are so busy holy-stoning the quarterdeck, while all hands are
wanted to keep the ship afloat, can no doubt show spots upon it that
would be very unsightly in fair weather. No thoroughly loyal man,
however, need suffer from any arbitrary exercise of power, such as
emergencies always give rise to. If any half-loyal man forgets his code
of half-decencies and half-duties so far as to become obnoxious to the
peremptory justice which takes the place of slower forms in all centres
of conflagration, there is no sympathy for him among the soldiers who are
risking their lives for us; perhaps there is even more satisfaction than
when an avowed traitor is caught and punished. For of all men who are
loathed by generous natures, such as fill the ranks of the armies of the
Union, none are so thoroughly loathed as the men who contrive to keep
just within the limits of the law, while their whole conduct provokes
others to break it; whose patriotism consists in stopping an inch short
of treason, and whose political morality has for its safeguard a just
respect for the jailer and the hangman! The simple preventive against
all possible injustice a citizen is like to suffer at the hands of a
government which in its need and haste must of course commit many errors,
is to take care to do nothing that will directly or indirectly help the
enemy, or hinder the government in carrying on the war. When the clamor
against usurpation and tyranny comes from citizens who can claim this
negative merit, it may be listened to. When it comes from those who have
done what they could to serve their country, it will receive the
attention it deserves. Doubtless there may prove to be wrongs which
demand righting, but the pretence of any plan for changing the essential
principle of our self-governing system is a figment which its contrivers
laugh over among themselves. Do the citizens of Harrisburg or of
Philadelphia quarrel to-day about the strict legality of an executive act
meant in good faith for their protection against the invader? We are all
citizens of Harrisburg, all citizens of Philadelphia, in this hour of
their peril, and with the enemy at work in our own harbors, we begin to
understand the difference between a good and bad citizen; the man that
helps and the man that hinders; the man who, while the pirate is in
sight, complains that our anchor is dragging in his mud, and the man who
violates the proprieties, like our brave Portland brothers, when they
jumped on board the first steamer they could reach, cut her cable, and
bore down on the corsair, with a habeas corpus act that lodged twenty
buccaneers in Fort Preble before sunset!
We cannot, then, we cannot be circling inward to be swallowed up in the
whirlpool of national destruction. If our borders are invaded, it is
only as the spur that is driven into the courser's flank to rouse his
slumbering mettle. If our property is taxed, it is only to teach us that
liberty is worth paying for as well as fighting for. We are pouring out
the most generous blood of our youth and manhood; alas! this is always
the price that must be paid for the redemption of a people. What have we
to complain of, whose granaries are choking with plenty, whose streets
are gay with shining robes and glittering equipages, whose industry is
abundant enough to reap all its overflowing harvest, yet sure of
employment and of its just reward, the soil of whose mighty valleys is an
inexhaustible mine of fertility, whose mountains cover up such stores of
heat and power, imprisoned in their coal measures, as would warm all the
inhabitants and work all the machinery of our planet for unnumbered ages,
whose rocks pour out rivers of oil, whose streams run yellow over beds of
golden sand,--what have we to complain of?
Have we degenerated from our English fathers, so that we cannot do and
bear for our national salvation what they have done and borne over and
over again for their form of government? Could England, in her wars with
Napoleon, bear an income-tax of ten per cent., and must we faint under
the burden of an income-tax of three per cent.? Was she content to
negotiate a loan at fifty-three for the hundred, and that paid in
depreciated paper, and can we talk about financial ruin with our national
stocks ranging from one to eight or nine above par, and the "five-twenty"
war loan eagerly taken by our own people to the amount of nearly two
hundred millions, without any check to the flow of the current pressing
inwards against the doors of the Treasury? Except in those portions of
the country which are the immediate seat of war, or liable to be made so,
and which, having the greatest interest not to become the border states
of hostile nations, can best afford to suffer now, the state of
prosperity and comfort is such as to astonish those who visit us from
other countries. What are war taxes to a nation which, as we are assured
on good authority, has more men worth a million now than it had worth ten
thousand dollars at the close of the Revolution,--whose whole property is
a hundred times, and whose commerce, inland and foreign, is five hundred
times, what it was then? But we need not study Mr. Still's pamphlet and
"Thompson's Bank-Note Reporter" to show us what we know well enough,
that, so far from having occasion to tremble in fear of our impending
ruin, we must rather blush for our material prosperity. For the
multitudes who are unfortunate enough to be taxed for a million or more,
of course we must feel deeply, at the same time suggesting that the more
largely they report their incomes to the tax-gatherer, the more
consolation they will find in the feeling that they have served their
country. But,--let us say it plainly,--it will not hurt our people to be
taught that there are other things to be cared for besides money-making
and money-spending; that the time has come when manhood must assert
itself by brave deeds and noble thoughts; when womanhood must assume its
most sacred office, "to warn, to comfort," and, if need be, "to command,"
those whose services their country calls for. This Northern section of
the land has become a great variety shop, of which the Atlantic cities
are the long-extended counter. We have grown rich for what? To put gilt
bands on coachmen's hats? To sweep the foul sidewalks with the heaviest
silks which the toiling artisans of France can send us? To look through
plate-glass windows, and pity the brown soldiers,--or sneer at the black
ones? to reduce the speed of trotting horses a second or two below its
old minimum? to color meerschaums? to flaunt in laces, and sparkle in
diamonds? to dredge our maidens' hair with gold-dust? to float through
life, the passive shuttlecocks of fashion, from the avenues to the
beaches, and back again from the beaches to the avenues? Was it for this
that the broad domain of the Western hemisphere was kept so long
unvisited by civilization?--for this, that Time, the father of empires,
unbound the virgin zone of this youngest of his daughters, and gave her,
beautiful in the long veil of her forests, to the rude embrace of the
adventurous Colonist? All this is what we see around us, now, now while
we are actually fighting this great battle, and supporting this great
load of indebtedness. Wait till the diamonds go back to the Jews of
Amsterdam; till the plate-glass window bears the fatal announcement, For
Sale or to Let; till the voice of our Miriam is obeyed, as she sings,
"Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms!"
till the gold-dust is combed from the golden locks, and hoarded to buy
bread; till the fast-driving youth smokes his clay-pipe on the platform
of the horse-cars; till the music-grinders cease because none will pay
them; till there are no peaches in the windows at twenty-four dollars a
dozen, and no heaps of bananas and pine-apples selling at the
street-corners; till the ten-flounced dress has but three flounces, and
it is felony to drink champagne; wait till these changes show themselves,
the signs of deeper wants, the preludes of exhaustion and bankruptcy;
then let us talk of the Maelstrom;--but till then, let us not be cowards
with our purses, while brave men are emptying their hearts upon the earth
for us; let us not whine over our imaginary ruin, while the reversed
current of circling events is carrying us farther and farther, every
hour, out of the influence of the great failing which was born of our
wealth, and of the deadly sin which was our fatal inheritance!
Let us take a brief general glance at the wide field of discussion we are
just leaving.
On Friday, the twelfth day of the month of April, in the year of our Lord
eighteen hundred and sixty-one, at half-past four of the clock in the
morning, a cannon was aimed and fired by the authority of South Carolina
at the wall of a fortress belonging to the United States. Its ball
carried with it the hatreds, the rages of thirty years, shaped and cooled
in the mould of malignant deliberation. Its wad was the charter of our
national existence. Its muzzle was pointed at the stone which bore the
symbol of our national sovereignty. As the echoes of its thunder died
away, the telegraph clicked one word through every office of the land.
That word was WAR!
War is a child that devours its nurses one after another, until it is
claimed by its true parents. This war has eaten its way backward through
all the technicalities of lawyers learned in the infinitesimals of
ordinances and statutes; through all the casuistries of divines, experts
in the differential calculus of conscience and duty; until it stands
revealed to all men as the natural and inevitable conflict of two
incompatible forms of civilization, one or the other of which must
dominate the central zone of the continent, and eventually claim the
hemisphere for its development.
We have reached the region of those broad principles and large axioms
which the wise Romans, the world's lawgivers, always recognized as above
all special enactments. We have come to that solid substratum
acknowledged by Grotius in his great Treatise: "Necessity itself which
reduces things to the mere right of Nature." The old rules which were
enough for our guidance in quiet times, have become as meaningless "as
moonlight on the dial of the day." We have followed precedents as long
as they could guide us; now we must make precedents for the ages which
are to succeed us.
If we are frightened from our object by the money we have spent, the
current prices of United States stocks show that we value our nationality
at only a small fraction of our wealth. If we feel that we are paying
too dearly for it in the blood of our people, let us recall those grand
words of Samuel Adams:
"I should advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though it were
revealed from heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine were to perish,
and only one of a thousand were to survive and retain his liberty!"
What we want now is a strong purpose; the purpose of Luther, when he
said, in repeating his Pater Noster, fiat voluntas MEA,--let my will be
done; though he considerately added, quia Tua,--because my will is Thine.
We want the virile energy of determination which made the oath of Andrew
Jackson sound so like the devotion of an ardent saint that the recording
angel might have entered it unquestioned among the prayers of the
faithful.
War is a grim business. Two years ago our women's fingers were busy
making "Havelocks." It seemed to us then as if the Havelock made half
the soldier; and now we smile to think of those days of inexperience and
illusion. We know now what War means, and we cannot look its dull, dead
ghastliness in the face unless we feel that there is some great and noble
principle behind it. It makes little difference what we thought we were
fighting for at first; we know what we are fighting for now, and what we
are fighting against.
We are fighting for our existence. We say to those who would take back
their several contributions to that undivided unity which we call the
Nation; the bronze is cast; the statue is on its pedestal; you cannot
reclaim the brass you flung into the crucible! There are rights,
possessions, privileges, policies, relations, duties, acquired, retained,
called into existence in virtue of the principle of absolute
solidarity,--belonging to the United States as an organic whole, which
cannot be divided, which none of its constituent parties can claim as its
own, which perish out of its living frame when the wild forces of
rebellion tear it limb from limb, and which it must defend, or confess
self-government itself a failure.
We are fighting for that Constitution upon which our national existence
reposes, now subjected by those who fired the scroll on which it was
written from the cannon at Fort Sumter, to all those chances which the
necessities of war entail upon every human arrangement, but still the
venerable charter of our wide Republic.
We cannot fight for these objects without attacking the one mother cause
of all the progeny of lesser antagonisms. Whether we know it or not,
whether we mean it or not, we cannot help fighting against the system
that has proved the source of all those miseries which the author of the
Declaration of Independence trembled to anticipate. And this ought to
make us willing to do and to suffer cheerfully. There were Holy Wars of
old, in which it was glory enough to die, wars in which the one aim was
to rescue the sepulchre of Christ from the hands of infidels. The
sepulchre of Christ is not in Palestine! He rose from that burial-place
more than eighteen hundred years ago. He is crucified wherever his
brothers are slain without cause; he lies buried wherever man, made in
his Maker's image, is entombed in ignorance lest he should learn the
rights which his Divine Master gave him! This is our Holy War, and we
must fight it against that great General who will bring to it all the
powers with which he fought against the Almighty before he was cast down
from heaven. He has retained many a cunning advocate to recruit for him;
he has bribed many a smooth-tongued preacher to be his chaplain; he has
engaged the sordid by their avarice, the timid by their fears, the
profligate by their love of adventure, and thousands of nobler natures by
motives which we can all understand; whose delusion we pity as we ought
always to pity the error of those who know not what they do. Against him
or for him we are all called upon to declare ourselves. There is no
neutrality for any single true-born American. If any seek such a
position, the stony finger of Dante's awful muse points them to their
place in the antechamber of the Halls of Despair,--
"--With that ill band
Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved,
Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves
Were only."
"--Fame of them the world hath none
Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both.
Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by."
We must use all the means which God has put into our hands to serve him
against the enemies of civilization. We must make and keep the great
river free, whatever it costs us; it is strapping up the forefoot of the
wild, untamable rebellion. We must not be too nice in the choice of our
agents. Non eget Mauri jaculis,--no African bayonets wanted,--was well
enough while we did not yet know the might of that desperate giant we had
to deal with; but Tros, Tyriusve,--white or black,--is the safer motto
now; for a good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.
The iron-skins, as well as the iron-clads, have already done us noble
service, and many a mother will clasp the returning boy, many a wife will
welcome back the war-worn husband, whose smile would never again have
gladdened his home, but that, cold in the shallow trench of the
battle-field, lies the half-buried form of the unchained bondsman whose
dusky bosom sheathes the bullet which would else have claimed that
darling as his country's sacrifice.
We shall have success if we truly will success, not otherwise. It may be
long in coming,--Heaven only knows through what trials and humblings we
may have to pass before the full strength of the nation is duly arrayed
and led to victory. We must be patient, as our fathers were patient;
even in our worst calamities, we must remember that defeat itself may be
a gain where it costs our enemy more in relation to his strength than it
costs ourselves. But if, in the inscrutable providence of the Almighty,
this generation is disappointed in its lofty aspirations for the race, if
we have not virtue enough to ennoble our whole people, and make it a
nation of sovereigns, we shall at least hold in undying honor those who
vindicated the insulted majesty of the Republic, and struck at her
assailants so long as a drum-beat summoned them to the field of duty.
Citizens of Boston, sons and daughters of New England, men and women of
the North, brothers and sisters in the bond of the American Union, you
have among you the scarred and wasted soldiers who have shed their blood
for your temporal salvation. They bore your nation's emblems bravely
through the fire and smoke of the battle-field; nay, their own bodies are
starred with bullet-wounds and striped with sabre-cuts, as if to mark
them as belonging to their country until their dust becomes a portion of
the soil which they defended. In every Northern graveyard slumber the
victims of this destroying struggle. Many whom you remember playing as
children amidst the clover-blossoms of our Northern fields, sleep under
nameless mounds with strange Southern wild-flowers blooming over them.
By those wounds of living heroes, by those graves of fallen martyrs, by
the hopes of your children, and the claims of your children's children
yet unborn, in the name of outraged honor, in the interest of violated
sovereignty, for the life of an imperilled nation, for the sake of men
everywhere and of our common humanity, for the glory of God and the
advancement of his kingdom on earth, your country calls upon you to stand
by her through good report and through evil report, in triumph and in
defeat, until she emerges from the great war of Western civilization,
Queen of the broad continent, Arbitress in the councils of earth's
emancipated peoples; until the flag that fell from the wall of Fort
Sumter floats again inviolate, supreme, over all her ancient inheritance,
every fortress, every capital, every ship, and this warring land is once
more a, United Nation!
CINDERS FROM THE ASHES.
The personal revelations contained in my report of certain
breakfast-table conversations were so charitably listened to and so
good-naturedly interpreted, that I may be in danger of becoming
over-communicative. Still, I should never have ventured to tell the
trivial experiences here thrown together, were it not that my brief
story is illuminated here and there by a glimpse of some shining
figure that trod the same path with me for a time, or crossed it,
leaving a momentary or lasting brightness in its track. I remember
that, in furnishing a chamber some years ago, I was struck with its
dull aspect as I looked round on the black-walnut chairs and bedstead
and bureau. "Make me a large and handsomely wrought gilded handle to
the key of that dark chest of drawers," I said to the furnisher. It
was done, and that one luminous point redeemed the sombre apartment
as the evening star glorifies the dusky firmament. So, my loving
reader,--and to none other can such table-talk as this be addressed,
--I hope there will be lustre enough in one or other of the names with
which I shall gild my page to redeem the dulness of all that is
merely personal in my recollections.
After leaving the school of Dame Prentiss, best remembered by infantine
loves, those pretty preludes of more serious passions; by the great
forfeit-basket, filled with its miscellaneous waifs and deodauds, and by
the long willow stick by the aid of which the good old body, now stricken
in years and unwieldy in person could stimulate the sluggish faculties or
check the mischievous sallies of the child most distant from his ample
chair,--a school where I think my most noted schoolmate was the present
Bishop of Delaware, became the pupil of Master William Biglow. This
generation is not familiar with his title to renown, although he fills
three columns and a half in Mr. Duyckinck's "Cyclopaedia of American
Literature." He was a humorist hardly robust enough for more than a
brief local immortality. I am afraid we were an undistinguished set, for
I do not remember anybody near a bishop in dignity graduating from our
benches.
At about ten years of age I began going to what we always called the
"Port School," because it was kept at Cambridgeport, a mile from the
College. This suburb was at that time thinly inhabited, and, being much
of it marshy and imperfectly reclaimed, had a dreary look as compared
with the thriving College settlement. The tenants of the many beautiful
mansions that have sprung up along Main Street, Harvard Street, and
Broadway can hardly recall the time when, except the "Dana House" and the
"Opposition House" and the "Clark House," these roads were almost all the
way bordered by pastures until we reached the "stores" of Main Street, or
were abreast of that forlorn "First Row" of Harvard Street. We called
the boys of that locality "Port-chucks." They called us
"Cambridge-chucks," but we got along very well together in the main.
Among my schoolmates at the Port School was a young girl of singular
loveliness. I once before referred to her as "the golden blonde," but did
not trust myself to describe her charms. The day of her appearance in
the school was almost as much a revelation to us boys as the appearance
of Miranda was to Caliban. Her abounding natural curls were so full of
sunshine, her skin was so delicately white, her smile and her voice were
so all-subduing, that half our heads were turned. Her fascinations were
everywhere confessed a few years afterwards; and when I last met her,
though she said she was a grandmother, I questioned her statement, for
her winning looks and ways would still have made her admired in any
company.
Not far from the golden blonde were two small boys, one of them very
small, perhaps the youngest boy in school, both ruddy, sturdy, quiet,
reserved, sticking loyally by each other, the oldest, however, beginning
to enter into social relations with us of somewhat maturer years. One of
these two boys was destined to be widely known, first in literature, as
author of one of the most popular books of its time and which is
freighted for a long voyage; then as an eminent lawyer; a man who, if his
countrymen are wise, will yet be prominent in the national councils.
Richard Henry Dana, Junior, is the name he bore and bears; he found it
famous, and will bequeath it a fresh renown.
Sitting on the girls' benches, conspicuous among the school-girls of
unlettered origin by that look which rarely fails to betray hereditary
and congenital culture, was a young person very nearly of my own age.
She came with the reputation of being "smart," as we should have called
it, clever as we say nowadays. This was Margaret Fuller, the only one
among us who, like "Jean Paul," like "The Duke," like "Bettina," has
slipped the cable of the more distinctive name to which she was anchored,
and floats on the waves of speech as "Margaret." Her air to her
schoolmates was marked by a certain stateliness and distance, as if she
had other thoughts than theirs and was not of them. She was a great
student and a great reader of what she used to call "naw-vels." I
remember her so well as she appeared at school and later, that I regret
that she had not been faithfully given to canvas or marble in the day of
her best looks. None know her aspect who have not seen her living.
Margaret, as I remember her at school and afterwards, was tall, fair
complexioned, with a watery, aqua-marine lustre in her light eyes, which
she used to make small, as one does who looks at the sunshine. A
remarkable point about her was that long, flexile neck, arching and
undulating in strange sinuous movements, which one who loved her would
compare to those of a swan, and one who loved her not to those of the
ophidian who tempted our common mother. Her talk was affluent,
magisterial, de haut en bas, some would say euphuistic, but surpassing
the talk of women in breadth and audacity. Her face kindled and reddened
and dilated in every feature as she spoke, and, as I once saw her in a
fine storm of indignation at the supposed ill-treatment of a relative,
showed itself capable of something resembling what Milton calls the
viraginian aspect.
Little incidents bear telling when they recall anything of such a
celebrity as Margaret. I remember being greatly awed once, in our
school-days, with the maturity of one of her expressions. Some themes
were brought home from the school for examination by my father, among
them one of hers. I took it up with a certain emulous interest (for I
fancied at that day that I too had drawn a prize, say a five-dollar one,
at least, in the great intellectual life-lottery) and read the first
words.
"It is a trite remark," she began.
I stopped. Alas! I did not know what trite meant. How could I ever
judge Margaret fairly after such a crushing discovery of her superiority?
I doubt if I ever did; yet oh, how pleasant it would have been, at about
the age, say, of threescore and ten, to rake over these ashes for cinders
with her,--she in a snowy cap, and I in a decent peruke!
After being five years at the Port School, the time drew near when I was
to enter college. It seemed advisable to give me a year of higher
training, and for that end some public school was thought to offer
advantages. Phillips Academy at Andover was well known to us. We had
been up there, my father and myself, at anniversaries. Some Boston boys
of well-known and distinguished parentage had been scholars there very
lately, Master Edmund Quincy, Master Samuel Hurd Walley, Master Nathaniel
Parker Willis,--all promising youth, who fulfilled their promise.
I do not believe there was any thought of getting a little respite of
quiet by my temporary absence, but I have wondered that there was not.
Exceptional boys of fourteen or fifteen make home a heaven, it is true;
but I have suspected, late in life, that I was not one of the exceptional
kind. I had tendencies in the direction of flageolets and octave flutes.
I had a pistol and a gun, and popped at everything that stirred, pretty
nearly, except the house-cat. Worse than this, I would buy a cigar and
smoke it by instalments, putting it meantime in the barrel of my pistol,
by a stroke of ingenuity which it gives me a grim pleasure to recall; for
no maternal or other female eyes would explore the cavity of that dread
implement in search of contraband commodities.
It was settled, then, that I should go to Phillips Academy, and
preparations were made that I might join the school at the beginning of
the autumn.
In due time I took my departure in the old carriage, a little modernized
from the pattern of my Lady Bountiful's, and we jogged soberly
along,--kind parents and slightly nostalgic boy,--towards the seat of
learning, some twenty miles away. Up the old West Cambridge road, now
North Avenue; past Davenport's tavern, with its sheltering tree and
swinging sign; past the old powder-house, looking like a colossal conical
ball set on end; past the old Tidd House, one of the finest of the
ante-Revolutionary mansions; past Miss Swan's great square
boarding-school, where the music of girlish laughter was ringing through
the windy corridors; so on to Stoneham, town of the bright lake, then
darkened with the recent memory of the barbarous murder done by its
lonely shore; through pleasant Reading, with its oddly named village
centres, "Trapelo," "Read'nwoodeend," as rustic speech had it, and the
rest; through Wilmington, then renowned for its hops; so at last into the
hallowed borders of the academic town.
It was a shallow, two-story white house before which we stopped, just at
the entrance of the central village, the residence of a very worthy
professor in the theological seminary,--learned, amiable, exemplary, but
thought by certain experts to be a little questionable in the matter of
homoousianism, or some such doctrine. There was a great rock that showed
its round back in the narrow front yard. It looked cold and hard; but it
hinted firmness and indifference to the sentiments fast struggling to get
uppermost in my youthful bosom; for I was not too old for
home-sickness,--who is: The carriage and my fond companions had to leave
me at last. I saw it go down the declivity that sloped southward, then
climb the next ascent, then sink gradually until the window in the back
of it disappeared like an eye that shuts, and leaves the world dark to
some widowed heart.
Sea-sickness and home-sickness are hard to deal with by any remedy but
time. Mine was not a bad case, but it excited sympathy. There was an
ancient, faded old lady in the house, very kindly, but very deaf,
rustling about in dark autumnal foliage of silk or other murmurous
fabric, somewhat given to snuff, but a very worthy gentlewoman of the
poor-relation variety. She comforted me, I well remember, but not with
apples, and stayed me, but not with flagons. She went in her benevolence,
and, taking a blue and white soda-powder, mingled the same in water, and
encouraged me to drink the result. It might be a specific for
seasickness, but it was not for home-sickness. The fiz was a mockery,
and the saline refrigerant struck a colder chill to my despondent heart.
I did not disgrace myself, however, and a few days cured me, as a week on
the water often cures seasickness.
There was a sober-faced boy of minute dimensions in the house, who began
to make some advances to me, and who, in spite of all the conditions
surrounding him, turned out, on better acquaintance, to be one of the
most amusing, free-spoken, mocking little imps I ever met in my life. My
room-mate came later. He was the son of a clergyman in a neighboring
town,--in fact I may remark that I knew a good many clergymen's sons at
Andover. He and I went in harness together as well as most boys do, I
suspect; and I have no grudge against him, except that once, when I was
slightly indisposed, he administered to me,--with the best intentions, no
doubt,--a dose of Indian pills, which effectually knocked me out of time,
as Mr. Morrissey would say,--not quite into eternity, but so near it
that I perfectly remember one of the good ladies told me (after I had
come to my senses a little, and was just ready for a sip of cordial and a
word of encouragement), with that delightful plainness of speech which so
brings realities home to the imagination, that "I never should look any
whiter when I was laid out as a corpse." After my room-mate and I had
been separated twenty-five years, fate made us fellow-townsmen and
acquaintances once more in Berkshire, and now again we are close literary
neighbors; for I have just read a very pleasant article, signed by him,
in the last number of the "Galaxy." Does it not sometimes seem as if we
were all marching round and round in a circle, like the supernumeraries
who constitute the "army" of a theatre, and that each of us meets and is
met by the same and only the same people, or their doubles, twice,
thrice, or a little oftener, before the curtain drops and the "army" puts
off its borrowed clothes?
The old Academy building had a dreary look, with its flat face, bare and
uninteresting as our own "University Building" at Cambridge, since the
piazza which relieved its monotony was taken away, and, to balance the
ugliness thus produced, the hideous projection was added to "Harvard
Hall." Two masters sat at the end of the great room,--the principal and
his assistant. Two others presided in separate rooms, one of them the
late Rev. Samuel Horatio Stearns, an excellent and lovable man, who
looked kindly on me, and for whom I always cherished a sincere regard, a
clergyman's son, too, which privilege I did not always find the warrant
of signal virtues; but no matter about that here, and I have promised
myself to be amiable.
On the side of the long room was a large clock-dial, bearing these words:
YOUTH IS THE SEED-TIME OF LIFE.
I had indulged in a prejudice, up to that hour, that youth was the
budding time of life, and this clock-dial, perpetually twitting me with
its seedy moral, always had a forbidding look to my vernal apprehension.
I was put into a seat with an older and much bigger boy, or youth, with a
fuliginous complexion, a dilating and whitening nostril, and a singularly
malignant scowl. Many years afterwards he committed an act of murderous
violence, and ended by going to finish his days in a madhouse. His
delight was to kick my shins with all his might, under the desk, not at
all as an act of hostility, but as a gratifying and harmless pastime.
Finding this, so far as I was concerned, equally devoid of pleasure and
profit, I managed to get a seat by another boy, the son of a very
distinguished divine. He was bright enough, and more select in his
choice of recreations, at least during school hours, than my late
homicidal neighbor. But the principal called me up presently, and
cautioned me against him as a dangerous companion. Could it be so? If
the son of that boy's father could not be trusted, what boy in
Christendom could? It seemed like the story of the youth doomed to be
slain by a lion before reaching a certain age, and whose fate found him
out in the heart of the tower where his father had shut him up for
safety. Here was I, in the very dove's nest of Puritan faith, and out of
one of its eggs a serpent had been hatched and was trying to nestle in my
bosom! I parted from him, however, none the worse for his companionship
so far as I can remember.
Of the boys who were at school with me at Andover one has acquired great
distinction among the scholars of the land. One day I observed a new boy
in a seat not very far from my own. He was a little fellow, as I
recollect him, with black hair and very bright black eyes, when at length
I got a chance to look at them. Of all the new-comers during my whole
year he was the only one whom the first glance fixed in my memory, but
there he is now, at this moment, just as he caught my eye on the morning
of his entrance. His head was between his hands (I wonder if he does not
sometimes study in that same posture nowadays!) and his eyes were
fastened to his book as if he had been reading a will that made him heir
to a million. I feel sure that Professor Horatio Balch Hackett will not
find fault with me for writing his name under this inoffensive portrait.
Thousands of faces and forms that I have known more or less familiarly
have faded from my remembrance, but this presentment of the youthful
student, sitting there entranced over the page of his text-book,--the
child-father of the distinguished scholar that was to be,--is not a
picture framed and hung up in my mind's gallery, but a fresco on its
walls, there to remain so long as they hold together.
My especial intimate was a fine, rosy-faced boy, not quite so free of
speech as myself, perhaps, but with qualities that promised a noble
manhood, and ripened into it in due season. His name was Phinehas
Barnes, and, if he is inquired after in Portland or anywhere in the State
of Maine, something will be heard to his advantage from any honest and
intelligent citizen of that Commonwealth who answers the question. This
was one of two or three friendships that lasted. There were other friends
and classmates, one of them a natural humorist of the liveliest sort, who
would have been quarantined in any Puritan port, his laugh was so
potently contagious.
Of the noted men of Andover the one whom I remember best was Professor
Moses Stuart. His house was nearly opposite the one in which I resided
and I often met him and listened to him in the chapel of the Seminary. I
have seen few more striking figures in my life than his, as I remember
it. Tall, lean, with strong, bold features, a keen, scholarly,
accipitrine nose, thin, expressive lips, great solemnity and
impressiveness of voice and manner, he was my early model of a classic
orator. His air was Roman, his neck long and bare like Cicero's, and his
toga,--that is his broadcloth cloak,--was carried on his arm, whatever
might have been the weather, with such a statue-like rigid grace that he
might have been turned into marble as he stood, and looked noble by the
side of the antiques of the Vatican.
Dr. Porter was an invalid, with the prophetic handkerchief bundling his
throat, and his face "festooned"--as I heard Hillard say once, speaking
of one of our College professors--in folds and wrinkles. Ill health gives
a certain common character to all faces, as Nature has a fixed course
which she follows in dismantling a human countenance: the noblest and the
fairest is but a death's-head decently covered over for the transient
ceremony of life, and the drapery often falls half off before the
procession has passed.
Dr. Woods looked his creed more decidedly, perhaps, than any of the
Professors. He had the firm fibre of a theological athlete, and lived to
be old without ever mellowing, I think, into a kind of half-heterodoxy,
as old ministers of stern creed are said to do now and then,--just as old
doctors grow to be sparing of the more exasperating drugs in their later
days. He had manipulated the mysteries of the Infinite so long and so
exhaustively, that he would have seemed more at home among the mediaeval
schoolmen than amidst the working clergy of our own time.
All schools have their great men, for whose advent into life the world is
waiting in dumb expectancy. In due time the world seizes upon these
wondrous youth, opens the shell of their possibilities like the valves of
an oyster, swallows them at a gulp, and they are for the most part heard
of no more. We had two great men, grown up both of them. Which was the
more awful intellectual power to be launched upon society, we debated.
Time cut the knot in his rude fashion by taking one away early, and
padding the other with prosperity so that his course was comparatively
noiseless and ineffective. We had our societies, too; one in particular,
"The Social Fraternity," the dread secrets of which I am under a lifelong
obligation never to reveal. The fate of William Morgan, which the
community learned not long after this time, reminds me of the danger of
the ground upon which I am treading.
There were various distractions to make the time not passed in study a
season of relief. One good lady, I was told, was in the habit of asking
students to her house on Saturday afternoons and praying with and for
them. Bodily exercise was not, however, entirely superseded by spiritual
exercises, and a rudimentary form of base-ball and the heroic sport of
football were followed with some spirit.
A slight immature boy finds his materials of though and enjoyment in very
shallow and simple sources. Yet a kind of romance gilds for me the sober
tableland of that cold New England hill where I came in contact with a
world so strange to me, and destined to leave such mingled and lasting
impressions. I looked across the valley to the hillside where Methuen
hung suspended, and dreamed of its wooded seclusion as a village
paradise. I tripped lightly down the long northern slope with facilis
descensus on my lips, and toiled up again, repeating sed revocare gradum.
I wandered' in the autumnal woods that crown the "Indian Ridge," much
wondering at that vast embankment, which we young philosophers believed
with the vulgar to be of aboriginal workmanship, not less curious,
perhaps, since we call it an escar, and refer it to alluvial agencies.
The little Shawshine was our swimming-school, and the great Merrimack,
the right arm of four toiling cities, was within reach of a morning
stroll. At home we had the small imp to make us laugh at his enormities,
for he spared nothing in his talk, and was the drollest little living
protest against the prevailing solemnities of the locality. It did not
take much to please us, I suspect, and it is a blessing that this is apt
to be so with young people. What else could have made us think it great
sport to leave our warm beds in the middle of winter and "camp out,"--on
the floor of our room,--with blankets disposed tent-wise, except the fact
that to a boy a new discomfort in place of an old comfort is often a
luxury.
More exciting occupation than any of these was to watch one of the
preceptors to see if he would not drop dead while he was praying. He had
a dream one night that he should, and looked upon it as a warning, and
told it round very seriously, and asked the boys to come and visit him in
turn, as one whom they were soon to lose. More than one boy kept his eye
on him during his public devotions, possessed by the same feeling the man
had who followed Van Amburgh about with the expectation, let us not say
the hope, of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or later.
Let me not forget to recall the interesting visit to Haverhill with my
room-mate, and how he led me to the mighty bridge over the Merrimack
which defied the ice-rafts of the river; and to the old meetinghouse,
where, in its porch, I saw the door of the ancient parsonage, with the
bullet-hole in it through which Benjamin Rolfe, the minister, was shot by
the Indians on the 29th of August, 1708. What a vision it was when I
awoke in the morning to see the fog on the river seeming as if it wrapped
the towers and spires of a great city!--for such was my fancy, and
whether it was a mirage of youth or a fantastic natural effect I hate to
inquire too nicely.
My literary performances at Andover, if any reader who may have survived
so far cares to know, included a translation from Virgil, out of which I
remember this couplet, which had the inevitable cockney rhyme of
beginners:
"Thus by the power of Jove's imperial arm
The boiling ocean trembled into calm."
Also a discussion with Master Phinehas Barnes on the case of Mary, Queen
of Scots, which he treated argumentatively and I rhetorically and
sentimentally. My sentences were praised and his conclusions adopted.
Also an Essay, spoken at the great final exhibition, held in the large
hall up-stairs, which hangs oddly enough from the roof, suspended by iron
rods. Subject, Fancy. Treatment, brief but comprehensive, illustrating
the magic power of that brilliant faculty in charming life into
forgetfulness of all the ills that flesh is heir to,--the gift of Heaven
to every condition and every clime, from the captive in his dungeon to
the monarch on his throne; from the burning sands of the desert to the
frozen icebergs of the poles, from--but I forget myself.
This was the last of my coruscations at Andover. I went from the Academy
to Harvard College, and did not visit the sacred hill again for a long
time.
On the last day of August, 1867, not having been at Andover, for many
years, I took the cars at noon, and in an hour or a little more found
myself at the station,--just at the foot of the hill. My first
pilgrimage was to the old elm, which I remembered so well as standing by
the tavern, and of which they used to tell the story that it held, buried
in it by growth, the iron rings put round it in the old time to keep the
Indians from chopping it with their tomahawks. I then began the once
familiar toil of ascending the long declivity. Academic villages seem to
change very slowly. Once in a hundred years the library burns down with
all its books. A new edifice or two may be put up, and a new library
begun in the course of the same century; but these places are poor, for
the most part, and cannot afford to pull down their old barracks.
These sentimental journeys to old haunts must be made alone. The story
of them must be told succinctly. It is like the opium-smoker's showing
you the pipe from which he has just inhaled elysian bliss, empty of the
precious extract which has given him his dream.
I did not care much for the new Academy building on my right, nor for the
new library building on my left. But for these it was surprising to see
how little the scene I remembered in my boyhood had changed. The
Professors' houses looked just as they used to, and the stage-coach
landed its passengers at the Mansion House as of old. The pale brick
seminary buildings were behind me on the left, looking as if "Hollis" and
"Stoughton" had been transplanted from Cambridge,--carried there in the
night by orthodox angels, perhaps, like the Santa Casa. Away to my left
again, but abreast of me, was the bleak, bare old Academy building; and
in front of me stood unchanged the shallow oblong white house where I
lived a year in the days of James Monroe and of John Quincy Adams.
The ghost of a boy was at my side as I wandered among the places he knew
so well. I went to the front of the house. There was the great rock
showing its broad back in the front yard. I used to crack nuts on that,
whispered the small ghost. I looked in at the upper window in the
farther part of the house. I looked out of that on four long changing
seasons, said the ghost. I should have liked to explore farther, but,
while I was looking, one came into the small garden, or what used to be
the garden, in front of the house, and I desisted from my investigation
and went on my way. The apparition that put me and my little ghost to
flight had a dressing-gown on its person and a gun in its hand. I think
it was the dressing-gown, and not the gun, which drove me off.
And now here is the shop, or store, that used to be Shipman's, after
passing what I think used to be Jonathan Leavitt's bookbindery, and here
is the back road that will lead me round by the old Academy building.
Could I believe my senses when I found that it was turned into a
gymnasium, and heard the low thunder of ninepin balls, and the crash of
tumbling pins from those precincts? The little ghost said, Never! It
cannot be. But it was. "Have they a billiard-room in the upper story?"
I asked myself. "Do the theological professors take a hand at all-fours
or poker on weekdays, now and then, and read the secular columns of the
'Boston Recorder' on Sundays?" I was demoralized for the moment, it is
plain; but now that I have recovered from the shock, I must say that the
fact mentioned seems to show a great advance in common sense from the
notions prevailing in my time.
I sauntered,--we, rather, my ghost and I,--until we came to a broken
field where there was quarrying and digging going on,--our old base-ball
ground, hard by the burial-place. There I paused; and if any thoughtful
boy who loves to tread in the footsteps that another has sown with
memories of the time when he was young shall follow my footsteps, I need
not ask him to rest here awhile, for he will be enchained by the noble
view before him. Far to the north and west the mountains of New
Hampshire lifted their summits in along encircling ridge of pale blue
waves. The day was clear, and every mound and peak traced its outline
with perfect definition against the sky. This was a sight which had more
virtue and refreshment in it than any aspect of nature that I had looked
upon, I am afraid I must say for years. I have been by the seaside now
and then, but the sea is constantly busy with its own affairs, running
here and there, listening to what the winds have to say and getting angry
with them, always indifferent, often insolent, and ready to do a mischief
to those who seek its companionship. But these still, serene, unchanging
mountains,--Monadnock, Kearsarge,--what memories that name recalls!--and
the others, the dateless Pyramids of New England, the eternal monuments
of her ancient race, around which cluster the homes of so many of her
bravest and hardiest children,--I can never look at them without feeling
that, vast and remote and awful as they are, there is a kind of inward
heat and muffled throb in their stony cores, that brings them into a
vague sort of sympathy with human hearts. It is more than a year since I
have looked on those blue mountains, and they "are to me as a feeling"
now, and have been ever since.
I had only to pass a wall and I was in the burial-ground. It was thinly
tenanted as I remember it, but now populous with the silent immigrants of
more than a whole generation. There lay the dead I had left, the two or
three students of the Seminary; the son of the worthy pair in whose house
I lived, for whom in those days hearts were still aching, and by whose
memory the house still seemed haunted. A few upright stones were all
that I recollect. But now, around them were the monuments of many of the
dead whom I remembered as living. I doubt if there has been a more
faithful reader of these graven stones than myself for many a long day.
I listened to more than one brief sermon from preachers whom I had often
heard as they thundered their doctrines down upon me from the throne-like
desk. Now they spoke humbly out of the dust, from a narrower pulpit, from
an older text than any they ever found in Cruden's Concordance, but there
was an eloquence in their voices the listening chapel had never known.
There were stately monuments and studied inscriptions, but none so
beautiful, none so touching, as that which hallows the resting-place of
one of the children of the very learned Professor Robinson: "Is it well
with the child? And she answered, It is well."
While I was musing amidst these scenes in the mood of Hamlet, two old
men, as my little ghost called them, appeared on the scene to answer to
the gravedigger and his companion. They christened a mountain or two for
me, "Kearnsarge" among the rest, and revived some old recollections, of
which the most curious was "Basil's Cave." The story was recent, when I
was there, of one Basil, or Bezill, or Buzzell, or whatever his name
might have been, a member of the Academy, fabulously rich, Orientally
extravagant, and of more or less lawless habits. He had commanded a cave
to be secretly dug, and furnished it sumptuously, and there with his
companions indulged in revelries such as the daylight of that consecrated
locality had never looked upon. How much truth there was in it all I
will not pretend to say, but I seem to remember stamping over every rock
that sounded hollow, to question if it were not the roof of what was once
Basil's Cave.
The sun was getting far past the meridian, and I sought a shelter under
which to partake of the hermit fare I had brought with me. Following the
slope of the hill northward behind the cemetery, I found a pleasant clump
of trees grouped about some rocks, disposed so as to give a seat, a
table, and a shade. I left my benediction on this pretty little natural
caravansera, and a brief record on one of its white birches, hoping to
visit it again on some sweet summer or autumn day.
Two scenes remained to look upon,--the Shawshine River and the Indian
Ridge. The streamlet proved to have about the width with which it flowed
through my memory. The young men and the boys were bathing in its
shallow current, or dressing and undressing upon its banks as in the days
of old; the same river, only the water changed; "The same boys, only the
names and the accidents of local memory different," I whispered to my
little ghost.
The Indian Ridge more than equalled what I expected of it. It is well
worth a long ride to visit. The lofty wooded bank is a mile and a half
in extent, with other ridges in its neighborhood, in general running
nearly parallel with it, one of them still longer. These singular
formations are supposed to have been built up by the eddies of
conflicting currents scattering sand and gravel and stones as they swept
over the continent. But I think they pleased me better when I was taught
that the Indians built them; and while I thank Professor Hitchcock, I
sometimes feel as if I should like to found a chair to teach the
ignorance of what people do not want to know.
"Two tickets to Boston." I said to the man at the station.
But the little ghost whispered, "When you leave this place you leave me
behind you."
"One ticket to Boston, if you please. Good by, little ghost."
I believe the boy-shadow still lingers around the well-remembered scenes
I traversed on that day, and that, whenever I revisit them, I shall find
him again as my companion.
THE PULPIT AND THE PEW.
The priest is dead for the Protestant world. Luther's inkstand did not
kill the devil, but it killed the priest, at least for us: He is a loss
in many respects to be regretted. He kept alive the spirit of reverence.
He was looked up to as possessing qualities superhuman in their nature,
and so was competent to be the stay of the weak and their defence against
the strong. If one end of religion is to make men happier in this world
as well as in the next, mankind lost a great source of happiness when the
priest was reduced to the common level of humanity, and became only a
minister. Priest, which was presbyter, corresponded to senator, and was
a title to respect and honor. Minister is but the diminutive of
magister, and implies an obligation to render service.
It was promised to the first preachers that in proof of their divine
mission they should have the power of casting out devils and talking in
strange tongues; that they should handle serpents and drink poisons with
impunity; that they should lay hands on the sick and they should recover.
The Roman Church claims some of these powers for its clergy and its
sacred objects to this day. Miracles, it is professed, are wrought by
them, or through them, as in the days of the apostles. Protestantism
proclaims that the age of such occurrences as the apostles witnessed is
past. What does it know about miracles? It knows a great many records
of miracles, but this is a different kind of knowledge.
The minister may be revered for his character, followed for his
eloquence, admired for his learning, loved for his amiable qualities, but
he can never be what the priest was in past ages, and is still, in the
Roman Church. Dr. Arnold's definition may be found fault with, but it
has a very real meaning. "The essential point in the notion of a priest
is this: that he is a person made necessary to our intercourse with God,
without being necessary or beneficial to us morally,--an unreasonable,
immoral, spiritual necessity." He did not mean, of course, that the
priest might not have all the qualities which would recommend him as a
teacher or as a man, but that he had a special power, quite independent
of his personal character, which could act, as it were, mechanically;
that out of him went a virtue, as from the hem of his Master's raiment,
to those with whom his sacred office brought him in contact.
It was a great comfort to poor helpless human beings to have a tangible
personality of like nature with themselves as a mediator between them and
the heavenly powers. Sympathy can do much for the sorrowing, the
suffering, the dying, but to hear God himself speaking directly through
human lips, to feel the touch of a hand which is the channel of
communication with the unseen Omnipotent, this was and is the privilege
of those who looked and those who still look up to a priesthood. It has
been said, and many who have walked the hospitals or served in the
dispensaries can bear witness to the truth of the assertion, that the
Roman Catholics know how to die. The same thing is less confidently to
be said of Protestants. How frequently is the story told of the most
exemplary Protestant Christians, nay, how common is it to read in the
lives of the most exemplary Protestant ministers, that they were beset
with doubts and terrors in their last days! The blessing of the viaticum
is unknown to them. Man is essentially an idolater,--that is, in bondage
to his imagination,--for there is no more harm in the Greek word eidolon
than in the Latin word imago. He wants a visible image to fix his
thought, a scarabee or a crux ansata, or the modern symbols which are to
our own time what these were to the ancient Egyptians. He wants a
vicegerent of the Almighty to take his dying hand and bid him godspeed on
his last journey. Who but such an immediate representative of the
Divinity would have dared to say to the monarch just laying his head on
the block, "Fils de Saint Louis, monte au ciel"?
It has been a long and gradual process to thoroughly republicanize the
American Protestant descendant of the ancient priesthood. The history of
the Congregationalists in New England would show us how this change has
gone on, until we have seen the church become a hall open to all sorts of
purposes, the pulpit come down to the level of the rostrum, and the
clergyman take on the character of a popular lecturer who deals with
every kind of subject, including religion.
Whatever fault we may find with many of their beliefs, we have a right to
be proud of our Pilgrim and Puritan fathers among the clergy. They were
ready to do and to suffer anything for their faith, and a faith which
breeds heroes is better than an unbelief which leaves nothing worth being
a hero for. Only let us be fair, and not defend the creed of Mohammed
because it nurtured brave men and enlightened scholars, or refrain from
condemning polygamy in our admiration of the indomitable spirit and
perseverance of the Pilgrim Fathers of Mormonism, or justify an inhuman
belief, or a cruel or foolish superstition, because it was once held or
acquiesced in by men whose nobility of character we heartily recognize.
The New England clergy can look back to a noble record, but the pulpit
has sometimes required a homily from the pew, and may sometimes find it
worth its while to listen to one even in our own days.
From the settlement of the country to the present time, the ministers
have furnished the highest type of character to the people among whom
they have lived. They have lost to a considerable extent the position of
leaders, but if they are in our times rather to be looked upon as
representatives of their congregations, they represent what is best among
those of whom they are the speaking organs. We have a right to expect
them to be models as well as teachers of all that makes the best citizens
for this world and the next, and they have not been, and are not in these
later days unworthy of their high calling. They have worked hard for
small earthly compensation. They have been the most learned men the
country had to show, when learning was a scarce commodity. Called by
their consciences to self-denying labors, living simply, often
half-supported by the toil of their own hands, they have let the light,
such light as shone for them, into the minds of our communities as the
settler's axe let the sunshine into their log-huts and farm-houses.
Their work has not been confined to their professional duties, as a few
instances will illustrate. Often, as was just said, they toiled like
day-laborers, teasing lean harvests out of their small inclosures of
land, for the New England soil is not one that "laughs when tickled with
a hoe," but rather one that sulks when appealed to with that persuasive
implement. The father of the eminent Boston physician whose recent loss
is so deeply regretted, the Reverend Pitt Clarke, forty-two years pastor
of the small fold in the town of Norton, Massachusetts, was a typical
example of this union of the two callings, and it would be hard to find a
story of a more wholesome and useful life, within a limited and isolated
circle, than that which the pious care of one of his children
commemorated. Sometimes the New England minister, like worthy Mr. Ward
of Stratford-on-Avon, in old England, joined the practice of medicine to
the offices of his holy profession. Michael Wigglesworth, the poet of
"The Day of Doom," and Charles Chauncy, the second president of Harvard
College, were instances of this twofold service. In politics their
influence has always been felt, and in many cases their drums
ecclesiastic have beaten the reveille as vigorously, and to as good
purpose, as it ever sounded in the slumbering camp. Samuel Cooper sat in
council with the leaders of the Revolution in Boston. The three
Northampton-born brothers Allen, Thomas, Moses, and Solomon, lifted their
voices, and, when needed, their armed hands, in the cause of liberty. In
later days, Elijah Parish and David Osgood carried politics into their
pulpits as boldly as their antislavery successors have done in times
still more recent.
The learning, the personal character, the sacredness of their office,
tended, to give the New England clergy of past generations a kind of
aristocratic dignity, a personal grandeur, much more felt in the days
when class distinctions were recognized less unwillingly than at present.
Their costume added to the effect of their bodily presence, as the old
portraits illustrate for us, as those of us who remember the last of the
"fair, white, curly" wigs, as it graced the imposing figure of the
Reverend Dr. Marsh of Wethersfield, Connecticut, can testify. They were
not only learned in the history of the past, but they were the
interpreters of the prophecy, and announced coming events with a
confidence equal to that with which the weather-bureau warns us of a
coming storm. The numbers of the book of Daniel and the visions of the
Revelation were not too hard for them. In the commonplace book of the
Reverend Joel Benedict is to be found the following record, made, as it
appears, about the year 1773: "Conversing with Dr. Bellamy upon the
downfall of Antichrist, after many things had been said upon the subject,
the Doctor began to warm, and uttered himself after this manner: 'Tell
your children to tell their children that in the year 1866 something
notable will happen in the church; tell them the old man says so.'"
The "old man" came pretty near hitting the mark, as we shall see if we
consider what took place in the decade from 1860 to 1870. In 1864 the
Pope issued the "Syllabus of Errors," which "must be considered by
Romanists--as an infallible official document, and which arrays the
papacy in open war against modern civilization and civil and religious
freedom." The Vatican Council in 1870 declared the Pope to be the bishop
of bishops, and immediately after this began the decisive movement of the
party known as the "Old Catholics." In the exact year looked forward to
by the New England prophet, 1866, the evacuation of Rome by the French
and the publication of "Ecce Homo" appear to be the most remarkable
events having Special relation to the religious world. Perhaps the
National Council of the Congregationalists, held at Boston in 1865, may
be reckoned as one of the occurrences which the oracle just missed.
The confidence, if not the spirit of prophecy, lasted down to a later
period. "In half a century," said the venerable Dr. Porter of Conway,
New Hampshire, in 1822, "there will be no Pagans, Jews, Mohammedans,
Unitarians, or Methodists." The half-century has more than elapsed, and
the prediction seems to stand in need of an extension, like many other
prophetic utterances.
The story is told of David Osgood, the shaggy-browed old minister of
Medford, that he had expressed his belief that not more than one soul in
two thousand would be saved. Seeing a knot of his parishioners in
debate, he asked them what they were discussing, and was told that they
were questioning which of the Medford people was the elected one, the
population being just two thousand, and that opinion was divided whether
it would be the minister or one of his deacons. The story may or may not
be literally true, but it illustrates the popular belief of those days,
that the clergyman saw a good deal farther into the councils of the
Almighty than his successors could claim the power of doing.
The objects about me, as I am writing, call to mind the varied
accomplishments of some of the New England clergy. The face of the
Revolutionary preacher, Samuel Cooper, as Copley painted it, looks upon
me with the pleasantest of smiles and a liveliness of expression which
makes him seem a contemporary after a hundred years' experience of
eternity. The Plato on this lower shelf bears the inscription: "Ezroe
Stiles, 1766. Olim e libris Rev. Jaredis Eliot de Killingworth." Both
were noted scholars and philosophers. The hand-lens before me was
imported, with other philosophical instruments, by the Reverend John
Prince of Salem, an earlier student of science in the town since
distinguished by the labors of the Essex Institute. Jeremy Belknap holds
an honored place in that unpretending row of local historians. And in
the pages of his "History of New Hampshire" may be found a chapter
contributed in part by the most remarkable man, in many respects, among
all the older clergymen preacher, lawyer, physician, astronomer,
botanist, entomologist, explorer, colonist, legislator in state and
national governments, and only not seated on the bench of the Supreme
Court of a Territory because he declined the office when Washington
offered it to him. This manifold individual was the minister of
Hamilton, a pleasant little town in Essex County, Massachusetts,--the
Reverend Manasseh Cutler. These reminiscences from surrounding objects
came up unexpectedly, of themselves: and have a right here, as showing
how wide is the range of intelligence in the clerical body thus
accidentally represented in a single library making no special
pretensions.
It is not so exalted a claim to make for them, but it may be added that
they were often the wits and humorists of their localities. Mather
Byles's facetie are among the colonial classic reminiscences. But these
were, for the most part, verbal quips and quibbles. True humor is an
outgrowth of character. It is never found in greater perfection than in
old clergymen and old college professors. Dr. Sprague's "Annals of the
American Pulpit" tells many stories of our old ministers as good as Dean
Ramsay's "Scottish Reminiscences." He has not recorded the following,
which is to be found in Miss Larned's excellent and most interesting
History of Windham County, Connecticut. The Reverend Josiah Dwight was
the minister of Woodstock, Connecticut, about the year 1700. He was not
old, it is true, but he must have caught the ways of the old ministers.
The "sensational" pulpit of our own time could hardly surpass him in the
drollery of its expressions. A specimen or two may dispose the reader to
turn over the pages which follow in a good-natured frame of mind. "If
unconverted men ever got to heaven," he said, "they would feel as uneasy
as a shad up the crotch of a white-oak." Some of his ministerial
associates took offence at his eccentricities, and called on a visit of
admonition to the offending clergyman. "Mr. Dwight received their
reproofs with great meekness, frankly acknowledged his faults, and
promised amendment, but, in prayer at parting, after returning thanks for
the brotherly visit and admonition, 'hoped that they might so hitch their
horses on earth that they should never kick in the stables of everlasting
salvation.'"
It is a good thing to have some of the blood of one of these old
ministers in one's veins. An English bishop proclaimed the fact before
an assembly of physicians the other day that he was not ashamed to say
that he had a son who was a doctor. Very kind that was in the bishop,
and very proud his medical audience must have felt. Perhaps he was not
ashamed of the Gospel of Luke, "the beloved physician," or even of the
teachings which came from the lips of one who was a carpenter, and the
son of a carpenter. So a New-Englander, even if he were a bishop, need
not be ashamed to say that he consented to have an ancestor who was a
minister. On the contrary, he has a right to be grateful for a probable
inheritance of good instincts, a good name, and a bringing up in a
library where he bumped about among books from the time when he was
hardly taller than one of his father's or grandfather's folios. What are
the names of ministers' sons which most readily occur to our memory as
illustrating these advantages? Edward Everett, Joseph Stevens
Buckminster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Bancroft, Richard Hildreth,
James Russell Lowell, Francis Parkman, Charles Eliot Norton, were all
ministers' boys. John Lothrop Motley was the grandson of the clergyman
after whom he was named. George Ticknor was next door to such a descent,
for his father was a deacon. This is a group which it did not take a
long or a wide search to bring together.
Men such as the ministers who have been described could not fail to
exercise a good deal of authority in the communities to which they
belonged. The effect of the Revolution must have been to create a
tendency to rebel against spiritual dictation. Republicanism levels in
religion as in everything. It might have been expected, therefore, that
soon after civil liberty had been established there would be conflicts
between the traditional, authority of the minister and the claims of the
now free and independent congregation. So it was, in fact, as for
instance in the case which follows, for which the reader is indebted to
Miss Lamed's book, before cited.
The ministerial veto allowed by the Saybrook Platform gave rise, in the
year 1792, to a fierce conflict in the town of Pomfret, Connecticut.
Zephaniah Swift, a lawyer of Windham, came out in the Windham "Herald,"
in all the vehemence of partisan phraseology, with all the emphasis of
italics and small capitals. Was it not time, he said, for people to look
about them and see whether "such despotism was founded in Scripture, in
reason, in policy, or on the rights of man! A minister, by his vote, by
his single voice, may negative the unanimous vote of the church! Are
ministers composed of finer clay than the rest of mankind, that entitles
them to this preeminence? Does a license to preach transform a man into a
higher order of beings and endow him with a natural quality to govern?
Are the laity an inferior order of beings, fit only to be slaves and to
be governed? Is it good policy for mankind to subject themselves to such
degrading vassalage and abject submission? Reason, common sense, and the
Bible, with united voice, proclaim to all mankind that they are all born
free and equal; that every member of a church or Christian congregation
must be on the same footing in respect of church government, and that the
CONSTITUTION, which delegates to one the power to negative the vote of
all the rest, is SUBVERSIVE OF THE NATURAL RIGHT OF MANKIND AND REPUGNANT
TO THE WORD OF GOD."
The Reverend Mr. Welch replied to the lawyer's attack, pronouncing him
to be "destitute of delicacy, decency, good manners, sound judgment,
honesty, manhood, and humanity; a poltroon, a cat's-paw, the infamous
tool of a party, a partisan, a political weathercock, and a ragamuffin."
No Fourth-of-July orator would in our day rant like the lawyer, and no
clergyman would use such language as that of the Reverend Moses Welch.
The clergy have been pretty well republicanized within that last two or
three generations, and are not likely to provoke quarrels by assertion of
their special dignities or privileges. The public is better bred than to
carry on an ecclesiastical controversy in terms which political brawlers
would hardly think admissible. The minister of religion is generally
treated with something more than respect; he is allowed to say undisputed
what would be sharply controverted in anybody else. Bishop Gilbert
Haven, of happy memory, had been discussing a religious subject with a
friend who was not convinced by his arguments. "Wait till you hear me
from the pulpit," he said; "there you cannot answer me." The
preacher--if I may use an image which would hardly have suggested itself
to him--has his hearer's head in chancery, and can administer punishment
ad libitum. False facts, false reasoning, bad rhetoric, bad grammar,
stale images, borrowed passages, if not borrowed sermons, are listened to
without a word of comment or a look of disapprobation.
One of the ablest and most conscientiously laborious of our clergymen has
lately ventured to question whether all his professional brethren
invariably give utterance to their sincerest beliefs, and has been
sharply criticised for so doing. The layman, who sits silent in his pew,
has his rights when out of it, and among them is the right of questioning
that which has been addressed to him from the privileged eminence of the
pulpit, or in any way sanctioned by his religious teacher. It is nearly
two hundred years since a Boston layman wrote these words: "I am not
ignorant that the pious frauds of the ancient, and the inbred fire (I do
not call it pride) of many of our modern divines, have precipitated them
to propagate and maintain truth as well as falsehoods, in such an unfair
manner as has given advantage to the enemy to suspect the whole doctrine
these men have profest to be nothing but a mere trick."
So wrote Robert Calef, the Boston merchant, whose book the Reverend
Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, burned publicly in the
college yard. But the pity of it is that the layman had not cried out
earlier and louder, and saved the community from the horror of those
judicial murders for witchcraft, the blame of which was so largely
attributable to the clergy.
Perhaps no, laymen have given the clergy more trouble than the doctors.
The old reproach against physicians, that where there were three of them
together there were two atheists, had a real significance, but not that
which was intended by the sharp-tongued ecclesiastic who first uttered
it. Undoubtedly there is a strong tendency in the pursuits of the
medical profession to produce disbelief in that figment of tradition and
diseased human imagination which has been installed in the seat of
divinity by the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is impossible,
or at least very difficult, for a physician who has seen the perpetual
efforts of Nature--whose diary is the book he reads oftenest--to heal
wounds, to expel poisons, to do the best that can be done under the given
conditions,--it is very difficult for him to believe in a world where
wounds cannot heal, where opiates cannot give a respite from pain, where
sleep never comes with its sweet oblivion of suffering, where the art of
torture is the only science cultivated, and the capacity for being
tormented is the only faculty which remains to the children of that same
Father who cares for the falling sparrow. The Deity has often been
pictured as Moloch, and the physician has, no doubt, frequently
repudiated him as a monstrosity.
On the other hand, the physician has often been renowned for piety as
well as for his peculiarly professional virtue of charity,--led upward by
what he sees to the source of all the daily marvels wrought before his
own eyes. So it was that Galen gave utterance to that psalm of praise
which the sweet singer of Israel need not have been ashamed of; and if
this "heathen" could be lifted into such a strain of devotion, we need
not be surprised to find so many devout Christian worshippers among the
crowd of medical "atheists."
No two professions should come into such intimate and cordial relations
as those to which belong the healers of the body and the headers of the
mind. There can be no more fatal mistake than that which brings them
into hostile attitudes with reference to each other, both having in view
the welfare of their fellow-creatures. But there is a territory always
liable to be differed about between them. There are patients who never
tell their physician the grief which lies at the bottom of their
ailments. He goes through his accustomed routine with them, and thinks
he has all the elements needed for his diagnosis. But he has seen no
deeper into the breast than the tongue, and got no nearer the heart than
the wrist. A wise and experienced clergyman, coming to the patient's
bedside,--not with the professional look on his face which suggests the
undertaker and the sexton, but with a serene countenance and a
sympathetic voice, with tact, with patience, waiting for the right
moment,--will surprise the shy spirit into a confession of the doubt, the
sorrow, the shame, the remorse, the terror which underlies all the bodily
symptoms, and the unburdening of which into a loving and pitying soul is
a more potent anodyne than all the drowsy sirups of the world. And, on
the other hand, there are many nervous and over-sensitive natures which
have been wrought up by self-torturing spiritual exercises until their
best confessor would be a sagacious and wholesome-minded physician.
Suppose a person to have become so excited by religious stimulants that
he is subject to what are known to the records of insanity as
hallucinations: that he hears voices whispering blasphemy in his ears,
and sees devils coming to meet him, and thinks he is going to be torn in
pieces, or trodden into the mire. Suppose that his mental conflicts,
after plunging him into the depths of despondency, at last reduce him to
a state of despair, so that he now contemplates taking his own life, and
debates with himself whether it shall be by knife, halter, or poison, and
after much questioning is apparently making up his mind to commit
suicide. Is not this a manifest case of insanity, in the form known as
melancholia? Would not any prudent physician keep such a person under
the eye of constant watchers, as in a dangerous state of, at least,
partial mental alienation? Yet this is an exact transcript of the mental
condition of Christian in "Pilgrim's Progress," and its counterpart has
been found in thousands of wretched lives terminated by the act of
self-destruction, which came so near taking place in the hero of the
allegory. Now the wonderful book from which this example is taken is,
next to the Bible and the Treatise of "De Imitatione Christi," the
best-known religious work of Christendom. If Bunyan and his
contemporary, Sydenham, had met in consultation over the case of
Christian at the time when he was meditating self-murder, it is very
possible that there might have been a difference of judgment. The
physician would have one advantage in such a consultation. He would
pretty certainly have received a Christian education, while the clergyman
would probably know next to nothing of the laws or manifestations of
mental or bodily disease. It does not seem as if any theological student
was really prepared for his practical duties until he had learned
something of the effects of bodily derangements, and, above all, had
become familiar with the gamut of mental discord in the wards of an
insane asylum.
It is a very thoughtless thing to say that the physician stands to the
divine in the same light as the divine stands to the physician, so far as
each may attempt to handle subjects belonging especially to the other's
profession. Many physicians know a great deal more about religious
matters than they do about medicine. They have read the Bible ten times
as much as they ever read any medical author. They have heard scores of
sermons for one medical lecture to which they have listened. They often
hear much better preaching than the average minister, for he hears
himself chiefly, and they hear abler men and a variety of them. They
have now and then been distinguished in theology as well as in their own
profession. The name of Servetus might call up unpleasant recollections,
but that of another medical practitioner may be safely mentioned. "It
was not till the middle of the last century that the question as to the
authorship of the Pentateuch was handled with anything like a discerning
criticism. The first attempt was made by a layman, whose studies we might
have supposed would scarcely have led him to such an investigation."
This layman was "Astruc, doctor and professor of medicine in the Royal
College at Paris, and court physician to Louis XIV." The quotation is
from the article "Pentateuch" in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible,"
which, of course, lies on the table of the least instructed clergyman.
The sacred profession has, it is true, returned the favor by giving the
practitioner of medicine Bishop Berkeley's "Treatise on Tar-water," and
the invaluable prescription of that "aged clergyman whose sands of
life"----but let us be fair, if not generous, and remember that Cotton
Mather shares with Zabdiel Boylston the credit of introducing the
practice of inoculation into America. The professions should be cordial
allies, but the church-going, Bible-reading physician ought to know a
great deal more of the subjects included under the general name of
theology than the clergyman can be expected to know of medicine. To say,
as has been said not long since, that a young divinity student is as
competent to deal with the latter as an old physician is to meddle with
the former, suggests the idea that wisdom is not an heirloom in the
family of the one who says it. What a set of idiots our clerical
teachers must have been and be, if, after a quarter or half a century of
their instruction, a person of fair intelligence is utterly incompetent
to form any opinion about the subjects which they have been teaching, or
trying to teach him, so long!
A minister must find it very hard work to preach to hearers who do not
believe, or only half believe, what he preaches. But pews without heads
in them are a still more depressing spectacle. He may convince the
doubter and reform the profligate. But he cannot produce any change on
pine and mahogany by his discourses, and the more wood he sees as he
looks along his floor and galleries, the less his chance of being useful.
It is natural that in times like the present changes of faith and of
place of worship should be far from infrequent. It is not less natural
that there should be regrets on one side and gratification on the other,
when such changes occur. It even happens occasionally that the regrets
become aggravated into reproaches, rarely from the side which receives
the new accessions, less rarely from the one which is left. It is quite
conceivable that the Roman Church, which considers itself the only true
one, should look on those who leave its communion as guilty of a great
offence. It is equally natural that a church which considers Pope and
Pagan a pair of murderous giants, sitting at the mouths of their caves,
alike in their hatred to true Christians, should regard any of its
members who go over to Romanism as lost in fatal error. But within the
Protestant fold there are many compartments, and it would seem that it is
not a deadly defection to pass from one to another.
So far from such exchanges between sects being wrong, they ought to
happen a great deal oftener than they do. All the larger bodies of
Christians should be constantly exchanging members. All men are born
with conservative or aggressive tendencies: they belong naturally with
the idol-worshippers or the idol-breakers. Some wear their fathers' old
clothes, and some will have a new suit. One class of men must have their
faith hammered in like a nail, by authority; another class must have it
worked in like a screw, by argument. Members of one of these classes
often find themselves fixed by circumstances in the other. The late
Orestes A. Brownson used to preach at one time to a little handful of
persons, in a small upper room, where some of them got from him their
first lesson about the substitution of reverence for idolatry, in dealing
with the books they hold sacred. But after a time Mr. Brownson found he
had mistaken his church, and went over to the Roman Catholic
establishment, of which he became and remained to his dying day one of
the most stalwart champions. Nature is prolific and ambidextrous. While
this strong convert was trying to carry us back to the ancient faith,
another of her sturdy children, Theodore Parker, was trying just as hard
to provide a new church for the future. One was driving the sheep into
the ancient fold, while the other was taking down the bars that kept them
out of the new pasture. Neither of these powerful men could do the
other's work, and each had to find the task for which he was destined.
The "old gospel ship," as the Methodist song calls it, carries many who
would steer by the wake of their vessel. But there are many others who
do not trouble themselves to look over the stern, having their eyes fixed
on the light-house in the distance before them. In less figurative
language, there are multitudes of persons who are perfectly contented
with the old formulae of the church with which they and their fathers
before them have been and are connected, for the simple reason that they
fit, like old shoes, because they have been worn so long, and mingled
with these, in the most conservative religious body, are here and there
those who are restless in the fetters of a confession of faith to which
they have pledged themselves without believing in it. This has been true
of the Athanasian creed, in the Anglican Church, for two centuries more
or less, unless the Archbishop of Canterbury, Tillotson, stood alone in
wishing the church were well rid of it. In fact, it has happened to the
present writer to hear the Thirty-nine Articles summarily disposed of by
one of the most zealous members of the American branch of that communion,
in a verb of one syllable, more familiar to the ears of the forecastle
than to those of the vestry.
But on the other hand, it is far from uncommon to meet with persons among
the so-called "liberal" denominations who are uneasy for want of a more
definite ritual and a more formal organization than they find in their
own body. Now, the rector or the minister must be well aware that there
are such cases, and each of them must be aware that there are individuals
under his guidance whom he cannot satisfy by argument, and who really
belong by all their instincts to another communion. It seems as if a
thoroughly honest, straight-collared clergyman would say frankly to his
restless parishioner: "You do not believe the central doctrines of the
church which you are in the habit of attending. You belong properly to
Brother A.'s or Brother B.'s fold, and it will be more manly and probably
more profitable for you to go there than to stay with us." And, again,
the rolling-collared clergyman might be expected to say to this or that
uneasy listener: "You are longing for a church which will settle your
beliefs for you, and relieve you to a great extent from the task, to
which you seem to be unequal, of working out your own salvation with fear
and trembling. Go over the way to Brother C.'s or Brother D.'s; your
spine is weak, and they will furnish you a back-board which will keep you
straight and make you comfortable." Patients are not the property of
their physicians, nor parishioners of their ministers.
As for the children of clergymen, the presumption is that they will
adhere to the general belief professed by their fathers. But they do not
lose their birthright or their individuality, and have the world all
before them to choose their creed from, like other persons. They are
sometimes called to account for attacking the dogmas they are supposed to
have heard preached from their childhood. They cannot defend themselves,
for various good reasons. If they did, one would have to say he got more
preaching than was good for him, and came at last to feel about sermons
and their doctrines as confectioners' children do about candy. Another
would have to own that he got his religious belief, not from his father,
but from his mother. That would account for a great deal, for the milk
in a woman's veins sweetens, or at least, dilutes an acrid doctrine, as
the blood of the motherly cow softens the virulence of small-pox, so that
its mark survives only as the seal of immunity. Another would plead
atavism, and say he got his religious instincts from his
great-grandfather, as some do their complexion or their temper. Others
would be compelled to confess that the belief of a wife or a sister had
displaced that which they naturally inherited. No man can be expected to
go thus into the details of his family history, and, therefore, it is an
ill-bred and indecent thing to fling a man's father's creed in his face,
as if he had broken the fifth commandment in thinking for himself in the
light of a new generation. Common delicacy would prevent him from saying
that he did not get his faith from his father, but from somebody else,
perhaps from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, like the young
man whom the Apostle cautioned against total abstinence.
It is always the right, and may sometimes be the duty, of the layman to
call the attention of the clergy to the short-comings and errors, not
only of their own time, but also of the preceding generations, of which
they are the intellectual and moral product. This is especially true
when the authority of great names is fallen back upon as a defence of
opinions not in themselves deserving to be upheld. It may be very
important to show that the champions of this or that set of dogmas, some
of which are extinct or obsolete as beliefs, while others retain their
vitality, held certain general notions which vitiated their conclusions.
And in proportion to the eminence of such champions, and the frequency
with which their names are appealed to as a bulwark of any particular
creed or set of doctrines, is it urgent to show into what obliquities or
extravagances or contradictions of thought they have been betrayed.
In summing up the religious history of New England, it would be just and
proper to show the agency of the Mathers, father and son, in the
witchcraft delusion. It would be quite fair to plead in their behalf the
common beliefs of their time. It would be an extenuation of their acts
that, not many years before, the great and good magistrate, Sir Matthew
Hale, had sanctioned the conviction of prisoners accused of witchcraft.
To fall back on the errors of the time is very proper when we are trying
our predecessors in foro conscientace: The houses they dwelt in may have
had some weak or decayed beams and rafters, but they served for their
shelter, at any rate. It is quite another matter when those rotten
timbers are used in holding up the roofs over our own heads. Still more,
if one of our ancestors built on an unsafe or an unwholesome foundation,
the best thing we can do is to leave it and persuade others to leave it
if we can. And if we refer to him as a precedent, it must be as a
warning and not as a guide.
Such was the reason of the present writer's taking up the writings of
Jonathan Edwards for examination in a recent essay. The "Edwardsian"
theology is still recognized as a power in and beyond the denomination to
which he belonged. One or more churches bear his name, and it is thrown
into the scale of theological belief as if it added great strength to the
party which claims him. That he was a man of extraordinary endowments
and deep spiritual nature was not questioned, nor that he was a most
acute reasoner, who could unfold a proposition into its consequences as
patiently, as convincingly, as a palaeontologist extorts its confession
from a fossil fragment. But it was maintained that so many dehumanizing
ideas were mixed up with his conceptions of man, and so many diabolizing
attributes embodied in his imagination of the Deity, that his system of
beliefs was tainted throughout by them, and that the fact of his being so
remarkable a logician recoiled on the premises which pointed his
inexorable syllogisms to such revolting conclusions. When he presents us
a God, in whose sight children, with certain not too frequent exceptions,
"are young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers;" when he
gives the most frightful detailed description of infinite and endless
tortures which it drives men and women mad to think of prepared for "the
bulk of mankind;" when he cruelly pictures a future in which parents are
to sing hallelujahs of praise as they see their children driven into the
furnace, where they are to lie "roasting" forever,--we have a right to
say that the man who held such beliefs and indulged in such imaginations
and expressions is a burden and not a support in reference to the creed
with which his name is associated. What heathenism has ever approached
the horrors of this conception of human destiny? It is not an abuse of
language to apply to such a system of beliefs the name of Christian
pessimism.
If these and similar doctrines are so generally discredited as some
appear to think, we might expect to see the change showing itself in
catechisms and confessions of faith, to hear the joyful news of relief
from its horrors in all our churches, and no longer to read in the
newspapers of ministers rejected or put on trial for heresy because they
could not accept the most dreadful of these doctrines. Whether this be so
or not, it must be owned that the name of Jonathan Edwards does at this
day carry a certain authority with it for many persons, so that anything
he believed gains for them some degree of probability from that
circumstance. It would, therefore, be of much interest to know whether
he was trustworthy in his theological speculations, and whether he ever
changed his belief with reference to any of the great questions above
alluded to.
Some of our readers may remember a story which got abroad many years ago
that a certain M. Babinet, a scientific Frenchman of note, had predicted
a serious accident soon to occur to the planet on which we live by the
collision with it of a great comet then approaching us, or some such
occurrence. There is no doubt that this prediction produced anxiety and
alarm in many timid persons. It became a very interesting question with
them who this M. Babinet might be. Was he a sound observer, who had made
other observations and predictions which had proved accurate? Or was he
one of those men who are always making blunders for other people to
correct? Is he known to have changed his opinion as to the approaching
disastrous event?
So long as there were any persons made anxious by this prediction, so
long as there was even one who believed that he, and his family, and his
nation, and his race, and the home of mankind, with all its monuments,
were very soon to be smitten in mid-heaven and instantly shivered into
fragments, it was very desirable to find any evidence that this prophet
of evil was a man who held many extravagant and even monstrous opinions.
Still more satisfactory would it be if it could be shown that he had
reconsidered his predictions, and declared that he could not abide by his
former alarming conclusions. And we should think very ill of any
astronomer who would not rejoice for the sake of his fellow-creatures, if
not for his own, to find the threatening presage invalidated in either or
both of the ways just mentioned, even though he had committed himself to
M. Babinet's dire belief.
But what is the trivial, temporal accident of the wiping out of a planet
and its inhabitants to the infinite catastrophe which shall establish a
mighty world of eternal despair? And which is it most desirable for
mankind to have disproved or weakened, the grounds of the threat of M.
Babinet, or those of the other infinitely more terrible comminations, so
far as they rest on the authority of Jonathan Edwards?
The writer of this paper had been long engaged in the study of the
writings of Edwards, with reference to the essay he had in contemplation,
when, on speaking of the subject to a very distinguished orthodox divine,
this gentleman mentioned the existence of a manuscript of Edwards which
had been held back from the public on account of some opinions or
tendencies it contained, or was suspected of containing "High Arianism"
was the exact expression he used with reference to it. On relating this
fact to an illustrious man of science, whose name is best known to
botanists, but is justly held in great honor by the orthodox body to
which he belongs, it appeared that he, too, had heard of such a
manuscript, and the questionable doctrine associated with it in his
memory was Sabellianism. It was of course proper in the writer of an
essay on Jonathan Edwards to mention the alleged existence of such a
manuscript, with reference to which the same caution seemed to have been
exercised as that which led, the editor of his collected works to
suppress the language Edwards had used about children.
This mention led to a friendly correspondence between the writer and one
of the professors in the theological school at Andover, and finally to
the publication of a brief essay, which, for some reason, had been
withheld from publication for more than a century. Its title is
"Observations concerning the Scripture OEconomy of the Trinity and
Covenant of Redemption. By Jonathan Edwards." It contains thirty-six
pages and a half, each small page having about two hundred words. The
pages before the reader will be found to average about three hundred and
twenty-five words. An introduction and an appendix by the editor,
Professor Egbert C. Smyth, swell the contents to nearly a hundred pages,
but these additions, and the circumstance that it is bound in boards,
must not lead us to overlook the fact that the little volume is nothing
more than a pamphlet in book's clothing.
A most extraordinary performance it certainly is, dealing with the
arrangements entered into by the three persons of the Trinity, in as bald
and matter-of-fact language and as commercial a spirit as if the author
had been handling the adjustment of a limited partnership between three
retail tradesmen. But, lest a layman's judgment might be considered
insufficient, the treatise was submitted by the writer to one of the most
learned of our theological experts,--the same who once informed a church
dignitary, who had been attempting to define his theological position,
that he was a Eutychian,--a fact which he seems to have been no more
aware of than M. Jourdain was conscious that he had been speaking prose
all his life. The treatise appeared to this professor anti-trinitarian,
not in the direction of Unitarianism, however, but of Tritheism. Its
anthropomorphism affected him like blasphemy, and the paper produced in
him the sense of "great disgust," which its whole character might well
excite in the unlearned reader.
All this is, however, of little importance, for this is not the work of
Edwards referred to by the present writer in his previous essay. The
tract recently printed as a volume may be the one referred to by Dr.
Bushnell, in 1851, but of this reference by him the writer never heard
until after his own essay was already printed. The manuscript of the
"Observations" was received by Professor Smyth, as he tells us in his
introduction, about fifteen years ago, from the late Reverend William T.
Dwight, D. D., to whom it was bequeathed by his brother, the Reverend Dr.
Sereno E. Dwight.
But the reference of the present writer was to another production of the
great logician, thus spoken of in a quotation from "the accomplished
editor of the Hartford 'Courant,'" to be found in Professor Smyth's
introduction:
"It has long been a matter of private information that Professor Edwards
A. Park, of Andover, had in his possession an published manuscript of
Edwards of considerable extent, perhaps two thirds as long as his
treatise on the will. As few have ever seen the manuscript, its contents
are only known by vague reports.... It is said that it contains a
departure from his published views on the Trinity and a modification of
the view of original sin. One account of it says that the manuscript
leans toward Sabellianism, and that it even approaches Pelagianism."
It was to this "suppressed" manuscript the present writer referred, and
not to the slender brochure recently given to the public. He is bound,
therefore, to say plainly that to satisfy inquirers who may be still in
doubt with reference to Edwards's theological views, it would be
necessary to submit this manuscript, and all manuscripts of his which
have been kept private, to their inspection, in print, if possible, so
that all could form their own opinion about it or them.
The whole matter may be briefly stated thus: Edwards believed in an
eternity of unimaginable horrors for "the bulk of mankind." His
authority counts with many in favor of that belief, which affects great
numbers as the idea of ghosts affected Madame de Stall: "Je n'y crois
pas, mais je les crains." This belief is one which it is infinitely
desirable to the human race should be shown to be possibly, probably, or
certainly erroneous. It is, therefore, desirable in the interest of
humanity that any force the argument in its favor may derive from
Edwards's authority should be weakened by showing that he was capable of
writing most unwisely, and if it should be proved that he changed his
opinions, or ran into any "heretical" vagaries, by using these facts
against the validity of his judgment. That he was capable of writing
most unwisely has been sufficiently shown by the recent publication of
his "Observations." Whether he, anywhere contradicted what were generally
accepted as his theological opinions, or how far he may have lapsed into
heresies, the public will never rest satisfied until it sees and
interprets for itself everything that is open to question which may be
contained in his yet unpublished manuscripts. All this is not in the
least a personal affair with the writer, who, in the course of his
studies of Edwards's works, accidentally heard, from the unimpeachable
sources sufficiently indicated, the reports, which it seems must have
been familiar to many, that there was unpublished matter bearing on the
opinions of the author through whose voluminous works he had been
toiling. And if he rejoiced even to hope that so wise a man as Edwards
has been considered, so good a man as he is recognized to have been, had,
possibly in his changes of opinion, ceased to think of children as
vipers, and of parents as shouting hallelujahs while their lost darlings
were being driven into the flames, where is the theologian who would not
rejoice to hope so with him or who would be willing to tell his wife or
his daughter that he did not?
The real, vital division of the religious part of our Protestant
communities is into Christian optimists and Christian pessimists. The
Christian optimist in his fullest development is characterized by a
cheerful countenance, a voice in the major key, an undisguised enjoyment
of earthly comforts, and a short confession of faith. His theory of the
universe is progress; his idea of God is that he is a Father with all the
true paternal attributes, of man that he is destined to come into harmony
with the key-note of divine order, of this earth that it is a training
school for a better sphere of existence. The Christian pessimist in his
most typical manifestation is apt to wear a solemn aspect, to speak,
especially from the pulpit, in the minor key, to undervalue the lesser
enjoyments of life, to insist on a more extended list of articles of
belief. His theory of the universe recognizes this corner of it as a
moral ruin; his idea of the Creator is that of a ruler whose pardoning
power is subject to the veto of what is called "justice;" his notion of
man is that he is born a natural hater of God and goodness, and that his
natural destiny is eternal misery. The line dividing these two great
classes zigzags its way through the religious community, sometimes
following denominational layers and cleavages, sometimes going, like a
geological fracture, through many different strata. The natural
antagonists of the religious pessimists are the men of science,
especially the evolutionists, and the poets. It was but a conditioned
prophecy, yet we cannot doubt what was in Milton's mind when he sang, in
one of the divinest of his strains, that
"Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day."
And Nature, always fair if we will allow her time enough, after giving
mankind the inspired tinker who painted the Christian's life as that of a
hunted animal, "never long at ease," desponding, despairing, on the verge
of self-murder,--painted it with an originality, a vividness, a power and
a sweetness, too, that rank him with the great authors of all time,--kind
Nature, after this gift, sent as his counterpoise the inspired ploughman,
whose songs have done more to humanize the hard theology of Scotland than
all the rationalistic sermons that were ever preached. Our own Whittier
has done and is doing the same thing, in a far holier spirit than Burns,
for the inherited beliefs of New England and the country to which New
England belongs. Let me sweeten these closing paragraphs of an essay not
meaning to hold a word of bitterness with a passage or two from the
lay-preacher who is listened to by a larger congregation than any man who
speaks from the pulpit. Who will not hear his words with comfort and
rejoicing when he speaks of "that larger hope which, secretly cherished
from the times of Origen and Duns Scotus to those of Foster and Maurice,
has found its fitting utterance in the noblest poem of the age?"
It is Tennyson's "In Memoriam" to which he refers, and from which he
quotes four verses, of which this is the last:
"Behold! we know not anything
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last,--far off,--at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring."
If some are disposed to think that the progress of civilization and the
rapidly growing change of opinion renders unnecessary any further effort
to humanize "the Gospel of dread tidings;" if any believe the doctrines
of the Longer and Shorter Catechism of the Westminster divines are so far
obsolete as to require no further handling; if there are any who thank
these subjects have lost their interest for living souls ever since they
themselves have learned to stay at home on Sundays, with their cakes and
ale instead of going to meeting,--not such is Mr. Whittier's opinion,
as we may infer from his recent beautiful poem, "The Minister's
Daughter." It is not science alone that the old Christian pessimism has
got to struggle with, but the instincts of childhood, the affections of
maternity, the intuitions of poets, the contagious humanity of the
philanthropist,--in short, human nature and the advance of civilization.
The pulpit has long helped the world, and is still one of the chief
defences against the dangers that threaten society, and it is worthy now,
as it always has been in its best representation, of all love and honor.
But many of its professed creeds imperatively demand revision, and the
pews which call for it must be listened to, or the preacher will by and
by find himself speaking to a congregation of bodiless echoes by and by
find himself speaking to a congregation of bodiless echoes.
MEDICAL ESSAYS
By Oliver Wendell Holmes
1842-1882
CONTENTS:
I. HOMEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS
II. THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER
III. CURRENTS AND COUNTER-CURRENTS IN MEDICAL SCIENCE
IV. BORDER LINES OF KNOWLEDGE IN SOME PROVINCES OF MEDICAL SCIENCE
V. SCHOLASTIC AND BEDSIDE TEACHING
VI. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IN MASSACHUSETTS
VII. THE YOUNG PRACTITIONER
VIII. MEDICAL LIBRARIES
IX. SOME OF MY EARLY TEACHERS
PREFACE.
The character of the opposition which some of these papers have met with
suggests the inference that they contain really important, but unwelcome
truths. Negatives multiplied into each other change their sign and
become positives. Hostile criticisms meeting together are often
equivalent to praise, and the square of fault-finding turns out to be the
same thing as eulogy.
But a writer has rarely so many enemies as it pleases him to believe.
Self-love leads us to overrate the numbers of our negative constituency.
The larger portion of my limited circle of readers must be quite
indifferent to, if not ignorant of, the adverse opinions which have been
expressed or recorded concerning any of these Addresses or Essays now
submitted to their own judgment. It is proper, however, to inform them,
that some of the positions maintained in these pages have been
unsparingly attacked, with various degrees of ability, scholarship, and
good-breeding. The tone of criticism naturally changes with local
conditions in different parts of a country extended like our own, so that
it is one of the most convenient gauges of the partial movements in the
direction of civilization. It is satisfactory to add, that the views
assailed have also been unflinchingly defended by unsought champions,
among the ablest of whom it is pleasant to mention, at this moment of
political alienation, the Editor of the Charleston Medical Journal.
"Currents and Counter-Currents" was written and delivered as an Oration,
a florid rhetorical composition, expressly intended to secure the
attention of an audience not easy to hold as listeners. It succeeded in
doing this, and also in being as curiously misunderstood and
misrepresented as if it had been a political harangue. This gave it more
local notoriety than it might otherwise have attained, so that, as I
learn, one ingenious person made use of its title as an advertisement to
a production of his own.
The commonest mode of misrepresentation was this: qualified propositions,
the whole meaning of which depended on the qualifications, were stripped
of these and taken as absolute. Thus, the attempt to establish a
presumption against giving poisons to sick persons was considered as
equivalent to condemning the use of these substances. The only important
inference the writer has been able to draw from the greater number of the
refutations of his opinions which have been kindly sent him, is that the
preliminary education of the Medical Profession is not always what it
ought to be.
One concession he is willing to make, whatever sacrifice of pride it may
involve. The story of Massasoit, which has furnished a coral, as it
were, for some teething critics, when subjected to a powerful logical
analysis, though correct in its essentials, proves to have been told with
exceptionable breadth of statement, and therefore (to resume the
metaphor) has been slightly rounded off at its edges, so as to be
smoother for any who may wish to bite upon it hereafter. In other
respects the Discourse has hardly been touched. It is only an
individual's expression, in his own way, of opinions entertained by
hundreds of the Medical Profession in every civilized country, and has
nothing in it which on revision the writer sees cause to retract or
modify. The superstitions it attacks lie at the very foundation of
Homoeopathy, and of almost every form of medical charlatanism. Still the
mere routinists and unthinking artisans in most callings dislike whatever
shakes the dust out of their traditions, and it may be unreasonable to
expect that Medicine will always prove an exception to the rule. One
half the opposition which the numerical system of Louis has met with, as
applied to the results of treatment, has been owing to the fact that it
showed the movements of disease to be far more independent of the kind of
practice pursued than was agreeable to the pride of those whose
self-confidence it abated.
The statement, that medicines are more sparingly used in physicians'
families than in most others, admits of a very natural explanation,
without putting a harsh construction upon it, which it was not intended
to admit. Outside pressure is less felt in the physician's own
household; that is all. If this does not sometimes influence him to give
medicine, or what seems to be medicine, when among those who have more
confidence in drugging than his own family commonly has, the learned
Professor Dunglison is hereby requested to apologize for his definition
of the word Placebo, or to expunge it from his Medical Dictionary.
One thing is certain. A loud outcry on a slight touch reveals the weak
spot in a profession, as well as in a patient. It is a doubtful policy
to oppose the freest speech in those of our own number who are trying to
show us where they honestly believe our weakness lies. Vast as are the
advances of our Science and Art, may it not possibly prove on examination
that we retain other old barbarisms beside the use of the astrological
sign of Jupiter, with which we endeavor to insure good luck to our
prescriptions? Is it the act of a friend or a foe to try to point them
out to our brethren when asked to address them, and is the speaker to
subdue the constitutional habit of his style to a given standard, under
penalty of giving offence to a grave assembly?
"Homoeopathy and its Kindred Delusions" was published nearly twenty years
ago, and has been long out of print, so that the author tried in vain to
procure a copy until the kindness of a friend supplied him with the only
one he has had for years. A foolish story reached his ears that he was
attempting to buy up stray copies for the sake of suppressing it. This
edition was in the press at that very time.
Many of the arguments contained in the Lectures have lost whatever
novelty they may have possessed. All its predictions have been submitted
to the formidable test of time. They appear to have stood it, so far,
about as well as most uninspired prophecies; indeed, some of them require
much less accommodation than certain grave commentators employ in their
readings of the ancient Prophets.
If some statistics recently published are correct, Homoeopathy has made
very slow progress in Europe.
In all England, as it appears, there are hardly a fifth more Homoeopathic
practitioners than there are students attending Lectures at the
Massachusetts Medical College at the present time. In America it has
undoubtedly proved more popular and lucrative, yet how loose a hold it
has on the public confidence is shown by the fact that, when a specially
valued life, which has been played with by one of its agents, is
seriously threatened, the first thing we expect to hear is that a regular
practitioner is by the patient's bed, and the Homoeopathic counsellor
overruled or discarded. Again, how many of the ardent and capricious
persons who embraced Homoeopathy have run the whole round of pretentious
novelties;--have been boarded at water-cure establishments, closeted with
uterine and other specialists, and finally wandered over seas to put
themselves in charge of foreign celebrities, who dosed them as lustily as
they were ever dosed before they took to globules! It will surprise many
to learn to what a shadow of a shade Homoeopathy has dwindled in the
hands of many of its noted practitioners. The itch-doctrine is treated
with contempt. Infinitesimal doses are replaced by full ones whenever
the fancy-practitioner chooses. Good Homoeopathic reasons can be found
for employing anything that anybody wants to employ. Homoeopathy is now
merely a name, an unproved theory, and a box of pellets pretending to be
specifics, which, as all of us know, fail ignominiously in those cases
where we would thankfully sacrifice all our prejudices and give the world
to have them true to their promises.
Homoeopathy has not died out so rapidly as Tractoration. Perhaps it was
well that it should not, for it has taught us a lesson of the healing
faculty of Nature which was needed, and for which many of us have made
proper acknowledgments. But it probably does more harm than good to
medical science at the present time, by keeping up the delusion of
treating everything by specifics,--the old barbarous notion that sick
people should feed on poisons [Lachesis, arrow-poison, obtained from a
serpent (Pulte). Crotalus horridus, rattlesnake's venom (Neidhard). The
less dangerous Pediculus capitis is the favorite remedy of Dr. Mure, the
English "Apostle of Homoeopathy." These are examples of the retrograde
current setting towards barbarism] against which a part of the Discourse
at the beginning of this volume is directed.
The infinitesimal globules have not become a curiosity as yet, like
Perkins's Tractors. But time is a very elastic element in Geology and
Prophecy. If Daniel's seventy weeks mean four hundred and ninety years,
as the learned Prideaux and others have settled it that they do, the "not
many years" of my prediction may be stretched out a generation or two
beyond our time, if necessary, when the prophecy will no doubt prove
true.
It might be fitting to add a few words with regard to the Essay on the
Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever. But the whole question I consider to
be now transferred from the domain of medical inquiry to the
consideration of Life Insurance agencies and Grand Juries. For the
justification of this somewhat sharply accented language I must refer the
reader to the paper itself for details which I regret to have been forced
to place on permanent record.
BOSTON, January, 1861.
A SECOND PREFACE.
These Lectures and Essays are arranged in the order corresponding to the
date of their delivery or publication. They must, of course, be read
with a constant reference to these dates, by such as care to read them.
I have not attempted to modernize their aspect or character in presenting
them, in this somewhat altered connection, to the public. Several of
them were contained in a former volume which received its name from the
Address called "Currents and Counter-Currents." Some of those contained
in the former volume have been replaced by others. The Essay called
"Mechanism of Vital Actions" has been transferred to a distinct
collection of Miscellaneous essays, forming a separate volume.
I had some intention of including with these papers an Essay on
Intermittent Fever in New England, which received one of the Boylston
prizes in 1837, and was published in the following year. But as this was
upon a subject of local interest, chiefly, and would have taken up a good
deal of room, I thought it best to leave it out, trusting that the stray
copies to be met with in musty book-shops would sufficiently supply the
not very extensive or urgent demand for a paper almost half a century
old.
Some of these papers created a little stir when they first fell from the
press into the pool of public consciousness. They will slide in very
quietly now in this new edition, and find out for themselves whether the
waters are those of Lethe, or whether they are to live for a time as not
wholly unvalued reminiscences.
March 21, 1883.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
These Essays are old enough now to go alone without staff or crutch in
the shape of Prefaces. A very few words may be a convenience to the
reader who takes up the book and wishes to know what he is likely to find
in it.
HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS.
Homoeopathy has proved lucrative, and so long as it continues to be so
will surely exist,--as surely as astrology, palmistry, and other methods
of getting a living out of the weakness and credulity of mankind and
womankind. Though it has no pretensions to be considered as belonging
among the sciences, it may be looked upon by a scientific man as a
curious object of study among the vagaries of the human mind. Its
influence for good or the contrary may be made a matter of calm
investigation. I have studied it in the Essay before the reader, under
the aspect of an extravagant and purely imaginative creation of its
founder. Since that first essay was written, nearly half a century ago,
we have all had a chance to witness its practical working. Two opposite
inferences may be drawn from its doctrines and practice. The first is
that which is accepted by its disciples. This is that all diseases are
"cured" by drugs. The opposite conclusion is drawn by a much larger
number of persons. As they see that patients are very commonly getting
well under treatment by infinitesimal drugging, which they consider
equivalent to no medication at all, they come to disbelieve in every form
of drugging and put their whole trust in "nature." Thus experience,
"From seeming evil still educing good,"
has shown that the dealers in this preposterous system of
pseudo-therapeutics have cooperated with the wiser class of practitioners
in breaking up the system of over-dosing and over-drugging which has been
one of the standing reproaches of medical practice. While. keeping up
the miserable delusion that diseases were all to be "cured" by drugging,
Homoeopathy has been unintentionally showing that they would very
generally get well without any drugging at all. In the mean time the
newer doctrines of the "mind cure," the "faith cure," and the rest are
encroaching on the territory so long monopolized by that most ingenious
of the pseudo-sciences. It would not be surprising if its whole ground
should be taken possession of by these new claimants with their
flattering appeals to the imaginative class of persons open to such
attacks. Similia similabus may prove fatally true for once, if
Homoeopathy is killed out by its new-born rivals.
It takes a very moderate amount of erudition to unearth a charlatan like
the supposed father of the infinitesimal dosing system. The real
inventor of that specious trickery was an Irishman by the name of Butler.
The whole story is to be found in the "Ortus Medicinm" of Van Helmont. I
have given some account of his chapter "Butler" in different articles,
but I would refer the students of our Homoeopathic educational
institutions to the original, which they will find very interesting and
curious.
CURRENTS AND COUNTER-CURRENTS
My attack on over-drugging brought out some hostile comments and
treatment. Thirty years ago I expressed myself with more vivacity than I
should show if I were writing on the same subjects today. Some of my more
lively remarks called out very sharp animadversion. Thus my illustration
of prevention as often better than treatment in the mother's words to her
child which had got a poisonous berry in its mouth,--"Spit it out!" gave
mortal offence to a well-known New York practitioner and writer, who
advised the Massachusetts Medical Society to spit out the offending
speaker. Worse than this was my statement of my belief that if a
ship-load of miscellaneous drugs, with certain very important
exceptions,--drugs, many of which were then often given needlessly and in
excess, as then used "could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be
all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes." This was
too bad. The sentence was misquoted, quoted without its qualifying
conditions, and frightened some of my worthy professional brethren as
much as if I had told them to throw all physic to the dogs. But for the
epigrammatic sting the sentiment would have been unnoticed as a harmless
overstatement at the very worst.
Since this lecture was delivered a great and, as I think, beneficial
change has taken place in the practice of medicine. The habit of the
English "general practitioner" of making his profit out of the pills and
potions he administered was ruinous to professional advancement and the
dignity of the physician. When a half-starving medical man felt that he
must give his patient draught and boluses for which he could charge him,
he was in a pitiable position and too likely to persuade himself that his
drugs were useful to his patient because they were profitable to him.
This practice has prevailed a good deal in America, and was doubtless the
source in some measure of the errors I combated.
THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER.
This Essay was read before a small Association called "The Society for
Medical Improvement," and published in a Medical Journal which lasted but
a single year. It naturally attracted less attention than it would have
done if published in such a periodical as the "American Journal of
Medical Sciences." Still it had its effect, as I have every reason to
believe. I cannot doubt that it has saved the lives of many young
mothers by calling attention to the existence and propagation of
"Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence," and laying down rules for
taking the necessary precautions against it. The case has long been
decided in favor of the views I advocated, but, at the time when I wrote
two of the most celebrated professors of Obstetrics in this country
opposed my conclusions with all the weight of their experience and
position.
This paper was written in a great heat and with passionate indignation.
If I touched it at all I might trim its rhetorical exuberance, but I
prefer to leave it all its original strength of expression. I could not,
if I had tried, have disguised the feelings with which I regarded the
attempt to put out of sight the frightful facts which I brought forward
and the necessary conclusions to which they led. Of course the whole
matter has been looked at in a new point of view since the microbe as a
vehicle of contagion has been brought into light, and explained the
mechanism of that which was plain enough as a fact to all who were not
blind or who did not shut their eyes.
O. W. H.
BEVERLY Farms, Mass., August 3, 1891
HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS
[Two lectures delivered before the Boston Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge. 1842.]
[When a physician attempts to convince a person, who has fallen into the
Homoeopathic delusion, of the emptiness of its pretensions, he is often
answered by a statement of cases in which its practitioners are thought
to have effected wonderful cures. The main object of the first of these
Lectures is to show, by abundant facts, that such statements, made by
persons unacquainted with the fluctuations of disease and the fallacies
of observation, are to be considered in general as of little or no value
in establishing the truth of a medical doctrine or the utility of a
method of practice.
Those kind friends who suggest to a person suffering from a tedious
complaint, that he "Had better try Homoeopathy," are apt to enforce their
suggestion by adding, that "at any rate it can do no harm." This may or
may not be true as regards the individual. But it always does very great
harm to the community to encourage ignorance, error, or deception in a
profession which deals with the life and health of our fellow-creatures.
Whether or not those who countenance Homoeopathy are guilty of this
injustice towards others, the second of these Lectures may afford them
some means of determining.
To deny that good effects may happen from the observance of diet and
regimen when prescribed by Homoeopathists as well as by others, would be
very unfair to them. But to suppose that men with minds so constituted
as to accept such statements and embrace such doctrines as make up the
so-called science of Homoeopathy are more competent than others to
regulate the circumstances which influence the human body in health and
disease, would be judging very harshly the average capacity of ordinary
practitioners.
To deny that some patients may have been actually benefited through the
influence exerted upon their imaginations, would be to refuse to
Homoeopathy what all are willing to concede to every one of those
numerous modes of practice known to all intelligent persons by an
opprobrious title.
So long as the body is affected through the mind, no audacious device,
even of the most manifestly dishonest character, can fail of producing
occasional good to those who yield it an implicit or even a partial
faith. The argument founded on this occasional good would be as
applicable in justifying the counterfeiter and giving circulation to his
base coin, on the ground that a spurious dollar had often relieved a poor
man's necessities.
Homoeopathy has come before our public at a period when the growing
spirit of eclecticism has prepared many ingenious and honest minds to
listen to all new doctrines with a candor liable to degenerate into
weakness. It is not impossible that the pretended evolution of great and
mysterious virtues from infinitely attenuated atoms may have enticed a
few over-refining philosophers, who have slid into a vague belief that
matter subdivided grows less material, and approaches nearer to a
spiritual nature as it requires a more powerful microscope for its
detection.
However this may be, some persons seem disposed to take the ground of
Menzel that the Laity must pass formal judgment between the Physician and
the Homoeopathist, as it once did between Luther and the Romanists. The
practitioner and the scholar must not, therefore, smile at the amount of
time and labor expended in these Lectures upon this shadowy system;
which, in the calm and serious judgment of many of the wisest members of
the medical profession, is not entitled by anything it has ever said or
done to the notoriety of a public rebuke, still less to the honors of
critical martyrdom.]
I
I have selected four topics for this lecture, the first three of which I
shall touch but slightly, the last more fully. They are
1. The Royal cure of the King's Evil, or Scrofula.
2. The Weapon Ointment, and its twin absurdity, the Sympathetic Powder.
3. The Tar-water mania of Bishop Berkeley.
4. The History of the Metallic Tractors, or Perkinism.
The first two illustrate the ease with which numerous facts are
accumulated to prove the most fanciful and senseless extravagances.
The third exhibits the entire insufficiency of exalted wisdom, immaculate
honesty, and vast general acquirements to make a good physician of a
great bishop.
The fourth shows us the intimate machinery of an extinct delusion, which
flourished only forty years ago; drawn in all its details, as being a
rich and comparatively recent illustration of the pretensions, the
arguments, the patronage, by means of which windy errors have long been,
and will long continue to be, swollen into transient consequence. All
display in superfluous abundance the boundless credulity and excitability
of mankind upon subjects connected with medicine.
"From the time of Edward the Confessor to Queen Anne, the monarchs of
England were in the habit of touching those who were brought to them
suffering with the scrofula, for the cure of that distemper. William the
Third had good sense enough to discontinue the practice, but Anne resumed
it, and, among her other patients, performed the royal operation upon a
child, who, in spite of his, disease, grew up at last into Samuel
Johnson. After laying his hand upon the sufferers, it was customary for
the monarch to hang a gold piece around the neck of each patient. Very
strict precautions were adopted to prevent those who thought more of the
golden angel hung round the neck by a white ribbon, than of relief of
their bodily infirmities, from making too many calls, as they sometimes
attempted to do. According to the statement of the advocates and
contemporaries of this remedy, none ever failed of receiving benefit
unless their little faith and credulity starved their merits. Some are
said to have been cured immediately on the very touch, others did not so
easily get rid of their swellings, until they were touched a second time.
Several cases are related, of persons who had been blind for several
weeks, and months, and obliged even to be led to Whitehall, yet recovered
their sight immediately upon being touched, so as to walk away without
any guide." So widely, at one period, was the belief diffused, that, in
the course of twelve years, nearly a hundred thousand persons were
touched by Charles the Second. Catholic divines; in disputes upon the
orthodoxy of their church, did not deny that the power had descended to
protestant princes;--Dr. Harpsfield, in his "Ecclesiastical History of
England," admitted it, and in Wiseman's words, "when Bishop Tooker would
make use of this Argument to prove the Truth of our Church, Smitheus doth
not thereupon go about to deny the Matter of fact; nay, both he and Cope
acknowledge it." "I myself," says Wiseman, the best English surgical
writer of his day,[Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. iii. p.
103.]--"I my self have been a frequent Eye-witness of many hundred of
Cures performed by his Majesties Touch alone, without any assistance of
Chirurgery; and those, many of them such as had tired out the endeavours
of able Chirurgeons before they came hither. It were endless to recite
what I myself have seen, and what I have received acknowledgments of by
Letter, not only from the severall parts of this Nation, but also from
Ireland, Scotland, Jersey, Garnsey. It is needless also to remember what
Miracles of this nature were performed by the very Bloud of his late
Majesty of Blessed memory, after whose decollation by the inhuman
Barbarity of the Regicides, the reliques of that were gathered on Chips
and in Handkerchieffs by the pious Devotes, who could not but think so
great a suffering in so honourable and pious a Cause, would be attended
by an extraordinary assistance of God, and some more then ordinary a
miracle: nor did their Faith deceive them in this there point, being so
many hundred that found the benefit of it." [Severall Chirurgicall
Treatises. London.1676. p. 246.]
Obstinate and incredulous men, as he tells us, accounted for these cures
in three ways: by the journey and change of air the patients obtained in
coming to London; by the influence of imagination; and the wearing of
gold.
To these objections he answers, 1st. That many of those cured were
inhabitants of the city. 2d. That the subjects of treatment were
frequently infants. 3d. That sometimes silver was given, and sometimes
nothing, yet the patients were cured.
A superstition resembling this probably exists at the present time in
some ignorant districts of England and this country. A writer in a
Medical Journal in the year 1807, speaks of a farmer in Devonshire, who,
being a ninth son of a ninth son, is thought endowed with healing powers
like those of ancient royalty, and who is accustomed one day in every
week to strike for the evil.
I remember that one of my schoolmates told me, when a boy, of a seventh
son of a seventh son, somewhere in Essex County, who touched for the
scrofula, and who used to hang a silver fourpence halfpenny about the
neck of those who came to him, which fourpence halfpenny it was solemnly
affirmed became of a remarkably black color after having been some time
worn, and that his own brother had been subjected to this extraordinary
treatment; but I must add that my schoolmate drew a bow of remarkable
length, strength, and toughness for his tender years.
One of the most curious examples of the fallacy of popular belief and the
uncertainty of asserted facts in medical experience is to be found in the
history of the UNGUENTUM ARMARIUM, or WEAPON OINTMENT.
Fabricius Hildanus, whose name is familiar to every surgical scholar, and
Lord Bacon, who frequently dipped a little into medicine, are my
principal authorities for the few circumstances I shall mention regarding
it. The Weapon Ointment was a preparation used for the healing of
wounds, but instead of its being applied to them, the injured part was
washed and bandaged, and the weapon with which the wound was inflicted
was carefully anointed with the unguent. Empirics, ignorant barbers, and
men of that sort, are said to have especially employed it. Still there
were not wanting some among the more respectable members of the medical
profession who supported its claims. The composition of this ointment
was complicated, in the different formulae given by different
authorities; but some substances addressed to the imagination, rather
than the wound or weapon, entered into all. Such were portions of mummy,
of human blood, and of moss from the skull of a thief hung in chains.
Hildanus was a wise and learned man, one of the best surgeons of his
time. He was fully aware that a part of the real secret of the Unguentum
Armarium consisted in the washing and bandaging the wound and then
letting it alone. But he could not resist the solemn assertions
respecting its efficacy; he gave way before the outcry of facts, and
therefore, instead of denying all their pretensions, he admitted and
tried to account for them upon supernatural grounds. As the virtue of
those applications, he says, which are made to the weapon cannot reach
the wound, and as they can produce no effect without contact, it follows,
of necessity, that the Devil must have a hand in the business; and as he
is by far the most long headed and experienced of practitioners, he
cannot find this a matter of any great difficulty. Hildanus himself
reports, in detail, the case of a lady who had received a moderate wound,
for which the Unguentum Armarium was employed without the slightest use.
Yet instead of receiving this flat case of failure as any evidence
against the remedy, he accounts for its not succeeding by the devout
character of the lady, and her freedom from that superstitious and
over-imaginative tendency which the Devil requires in those who are to be
benefited by his devices.
Lord Bacon speaks of the Weapon Ointment, in his Natural History, as
having in its favor the testimony of men of credit, though, in his own
language, he himself "as yet is not fully inclined to believe it." His
remarks upon the asserted facts respecting it show a mixture of wise
suspicion and partial belief. He does not like the precise directions
given as to the circumstances under which the animals from which some of
the materials were obtained were to be killed; for he thought it looked
like a provision for an excuse in case of failure, by laying the fault to
the omission of some of these circumstances. But he likes well that
"they do not observe the confecting of the Ointment under any certain
constellation; which is commonly the excuse of magical medicines, when
they fail, that they were not made under a fit figure of heaven." [This
was a mistake, however, since the two recipes given by Hildanus are both
very explicit as to the aspect of the heavens required for different
stages of the process.] "It was pretended that if the offending weapon
could not be had, it would serve the purpose to anoint a wooden one made
like it." "This," says Bacon, "I should doubt to be a device to keep
this strange form of cure in request and use; because many times you
cannot come by the weapon itself." And in closing his remarks on the
statements of the advocates of the ointment, he says, "Lastly, it will
cure a beast as well as a man, which I like best of all the rest, because
it subjecteth the matter to an easy trial." It is worth remembering,
that more than two hundred years ago, when an absurd and fantastic remedy
was asserted to possess wonderful power, and when sensible persons
ascribed its pretended influence to imagination, it was boldly answered
that the cure took place when the wounded party did not know of the
application made to the weapon, and even when a brute animal was the
subject of the experiment, and that this assertion, as we all know it
was, came in such a shape as to shake the incredulity of the keenest
thinker of his time. The very same assertion has been since repeated in
favor of Perkinism, and, since that, of Homoeopathy.
The same essential idea as that of the Weapon Ointment reproduced itself
in the still more famous SYMPATHETIC POWDER. This Powder was said to
have the faculty, if applied to the blood-stained garments of a wounded
person, to cure his injuries, even though he were at a great distance at
the time. A friar, returning from the East, brought the recipe to Europe
somewhat before the middle of the seventeenth century. The Grand Duke of
Florence, in which city the friar was residing, heard of his cures, and
tried, but without success, to obtain his secret. Sir Kenehn Digby, an
Englishman well known to fame, was fortunate enough to do him a favor,
which wrought upon his feelings and induced him to impart to his
benefactor the composition of his extraordinary Powder. This English
knight was at different periods of his life an admiral, a theologian, a
critic, a metaphysician, a politician, and a disciple of Alchemy. As is
not unfrequent with versatile and inflammable people, he caught fire at
the first spark of a new medical discovery, and no sooner got home to
England than he began to spread the conflagration.
An opportunity soon offered itself to try the powers of the famous
powder. Mr. J. Howell, having been wounded in endeavoring to part two of
his friends who were fighting a duel, submitted himself to a trial of the
Sympathetic Powder. Four days after he received his wounds, Sir Kenehn
dipped one of Mr. Howell's gaiters in a solution of the Powder, and
immediately, it is said, the wounds, which were very painful, grew easy,
although the patient, who was conversing in a corner of the chamber, had
not, the least idea of what was doing with his garter. He then returned
home, leaving his garter in the hands of Sir Kenelm, who had hung it up
to dry, when Mr. Howell sent his servant in a great hurry to tell him
that his wounds were paining him horribly; the garter was therefore
replaced in the solution of the Powder, "and the patient got well after
five or six days of its continued immersion."
King James First, his son Charles the First, the Duke of Buckingham, then
prime minister, and all the principal personages of the time, were
cognizant of this fact; and James himself, being curious to know the
secret of this remedy, asked it of Sir Kenelm, who revealed it to him,
and his Majesty had the opportunity of making several trials of its
efficacy, "which all succeeded in a surprising manner." [Dict. des
Sciences Medieales.]
The king's physician, Dr. Mayerne, was made master of the secret, which
he carried to France and communicated to the Duke of Mayenne, who
performed many cures by means of it, and taught it to his surgeon, who,
after the Duke's death, sold it to many distinguished persons, by whose
agency it soon ceased to be a secret. What was this wonderful substance
which so astonished kings, princes, dukes, knights, and doctors? Nothing
but powdered blue vitriol. But it was made to undergo several processes
that conferred on it extraordinary virtues. Twice or thrice it was to be
dissolved, filtered, and crystallized. The crystals were to be laid in
the sun during the months of June, July, and August, taking care to turn
them carefully that all should be exposed. Then they were to be
powdered, triturated, and again exposed to the sun, again reduced to a
very fine powder, and secured in a vessel, while hot, from the sunshine.
If there seem anything remarkable in the fact of such astonishing
properties being developed by this process, it must be from our
short-sightedness, for common salt and charcoal develop powers quite as
marvellous after a certain number of thumps, stirs, and shakes, from the
hands of modern workers of miracles. In fact the Unguentum Armarium and
Sympathetic Powder resemble some more recent prescriptions; the latter
consisting in an infinite dilution of the common dose in which remedies
are given, and the two former in an infinite dilution of the common
distance at which they are applied.
Whether philosophers, and more especially metaphysicians, have any
peculiar tendency to dabble in drugs and dose themselves with physic, is
a question which might suggest itself to the reader of their biographies.
When Bishop Berkeley visited the illustrious Malebranche at Paris, he
found him in his cell, cooking in a small pipkin a medicine for an
inflammation of the lungs, from which he was suffering; and the disease,
being unfortunately aggravated by the vehemence of their discussion, or
the contents of the pipkin, carried him off in the course of a few days.
Berkeley himself afforded a remarkable illustration of a truth which has
long been known to the members of one of the learned professions, namely,
that no amount of talent, or of acquirements in other departments, can
rescue from lamentable folly those who, without something of the
requisite preparation, undertake to experiment with nostrums upon
themselves and their neighbors. The exalted character of Berkeley is
thus drawn by Sir James Mackintosh: Ancient learning, exact science,
polished society, modern literature, and the fine arts, contributed to
adorn and enrich the mind of this accomplished man. All his
contemporaries agreed with the satirist in ascribing
"'To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.'
"Even the discerning, fastidious, and turbulent Atterbury said, after an
interview with him, 'So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much
innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any
but angels, till I saw this gentleman.'"
But among the writings of this great and good man is an Essay of the most
curious character, illustrating his weakness upon the point in question,
and entitled, "Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries
concerning the Virtues of TAR WATER, and divers other Subjects,"--an
essay which begins with a recipe for his favorite fluid, and slides by
gentle gradations into an examination of the sublimest doctrines of
Plato. To show how far a man of honesty and benevolence, and with a mind
of singular acuteness and depth, may be run away with by a favorite
notion on a subject which his habits and education do not fit him to
investigate, I shall give a short account of this Essay, merely stating
that as all the supposed virtues of Tar Water, made public in successive
editions of his treatise by so illustrious an author, have not saved it
from neglect and disgrace, it may be fairly assumed that they were mainly
imaginary.
The bishop, as is usual in such cases, speaks of himself as indispensably
obliged, by the duty he owes to mankind, to make his experience public.
Now this was by no means evident, nor does it follow in general, that
because a man has formed a favorable opinion of a person or a thing he
has not the proper means of thoroughly understanding, he shall be bound
to print it, and thus give currency to his impressions, which may be
erroneous, and therefore injurious. He would have done much better to
have laid his impressions before some experienced physicians and
surgeons, such as Dr. Mead and Mr. Cheselden, to have asked them to try
his experiment over again, and have been guided by their answers. But
the good bishop got excited; he pleased himself with the thought that he
had discovered a great panacea; and having once tasted the bewitching cup
of self-quackery, like many before and since his time, he was so
infatuated with the draught that he would insist on pouring it down the
throats of his neighbors and all mankind.
The precious fluid was made by stirring a gallon of water with a quart of
tar, leaving it forty-eight hours, and pouring off the clear water. Such
was the specific which the great metaphysician recommended for averting
and curing all manner of diseases. It was, if he might be believed, a
preventive of the small-pox, and of great use in the course of the
disease. It was a cure for impurities of the blood, coughs, pleurisy,
peripneumony, erysipelas, asthma, indigestion, carchexia, hysterics,
dropsy, mortification, scurvy, and hypochondria. It was of great use in
gout and fevers, and was an excellent preservative of the teeth and gums;
answered all the purpose of Elixir Proprietatis, Stoughton's drops, diet
drinks, and mineral waters; was particularly to be recommended to
sea-faring persons, ladies, and men of studious and sedentary lives;
could never be taken too long, but, on the contrary, produced advantages
which sometimes did not begin to show themselves for two or three months.
"From my representing Tar Water as good for so many things," says
Berkeley, "some perhaps may conclude it is good for nothing. But charity
obligeth me to say what I know, and what I think, however it may be
taken. Men may censure and object as they please, but I appeal to time
and experiment. Effects misimputed, cases wrong told, circumstances
overlooked, perhaps, too, prejudices and partialities against truth, may
for a time prevail and keep her at the bottom of her well, from whence
nevertheless she emergeth sooner or later, and strikes the eyes of all
who do not keep them shut." I cannot resist the temptation of
illustrating the bishop's belief in the wonderful powers of his remedy,
by a few sentences from different parts of his essay. "The hardness of
stubbed vulgar constitutions renders them insensible of a thousand things
that fret and gall those delicate people, who, as if their skin was
peeled off, feel to the quick everything that touches them. The tender
nerves and low spirits of such poor creatures would be much relieved by
the use of Tar Water, which might prolong and cheer their lives." "It
[the Tar Water] may be made stronger for brute beasts, as horses, in
whose disorders I have found it very useful." "This same water will also
give charitable relief to the ladies, who often want it more than the
parish poor; being many of them never able to make a good meal, and
sitting pale, puny, and forbidden, like ghosts, at their own table,
victims of vapors and indigestion." It does not appear among the virtues
of Tar Water that "children cried for it," as for some of our modern
remedies, but the bishop says, "I have known children take it for above
six months together with great benefit, and without any inconvenience;
and after long and repeated experience I do esteem it a most excellent
diet drink, fitted to all seasons and ages." After mentioning its
usefulness in febrile complaints, he says: "I have had all this confirmed
by my own experience in the late sickly season of the year one thousand
seven hundred and forty-one, having had twenty-five fevers in my own
family cured by this medicinal water, drunk copiously." And to finish
these extracts with a most important suggestion for the improvement of
the British nation: "It is much to be lamented that our Insulars who act
and think so much for themselves, should yet, from grossness of air and
diet, grow stupid or doat sooner than other people, who, by virtue of
elastic air, water-drinking, and light food, preserve their faculties to
extreme old age; an advantage which may perhaps be approached, if not
equaled, even in these regions, by Tar Water, temperance, and early
hours."
Berkeley died at the age of about seventy; he might have lived longer,
but his fatal illness was so sudden that there was not time enough to
stir up a quart of the panacea. He was an illustrious man, but he held
two very odd opinions; that tar water was everything, and that the whole
material universe was nothing.
--------------------------
Most of those present have at some time in their lives heard mention made
of the METALLIC TRACTORS, invented by one Dr. Perkins, an American, and
formerly enjoying great repute for the cure of various diseases. Many
have seen or heard of a satirical poem, written by one of our own
countrymen also, about forty years since, and called "Terrible
Tractoration." The Metallic Tractors are now so utterly abandoned that I
have only by good fortune fallen upon a single one of a pair, to show for
the sake of illustration. For more than thirty years this great
discovery, which was to banish at least half the evils which afflict
humanity, has been sleeping undisturbed in the grave of oblivion. Not a
voice has, for this long period, been raised in its favor; its noble and
learned patrons, its public institutions, its eloquent advocates, its
brilliant promises are all covered with the dust of silent neglect; and
of the generation which has sprung up since the period when it
flourished, very few know anything of its history, and hardly even the
title which in its palmy days it bore of PERKINISM. Taking it as
settled, then, as no one appears to answer for it, that Perkinism is
entirely dead and gone, that both in public and private, officially and
individually, its former adherents even allow it to be absolutely
defunct, I select it for anatomical examination. If this pretended
discovery was made public; if it was long kept before the public; if it
was addressed to the people of different countries; if it was formally
investigated by scientific men, and systematically adopted by benevolent
persons, who did everything in their power to diffuse the knowledge and
practice of it; if various collateral motives, such as interest and
vanity, were embarked in its cause; if, notwithstanding all these things,
it gradually sickened and died, then the conclusion seems a fair one,
that it did not deserve to live. Contrasting its failure with its high
pretensions, it is fair to call it an imposition; whether an expressly
fraudulent contrivance or not, some might be ready to question.
Everything historically shown to have happened concerning the mode of
promulgation, the wide diffusion, the apparent success of this delusion,
the respectability and enthusiasm of its advocates, is of great interest
in showing to what extent and by what means a considerable part of the
community may be led into the belief of that which is to be eventually
considered' as an idle folly. If there is any existing folly, fraudulent
or innocent in its origin, which appeals to certain arguments for its
support; provided that the very same arguments can be shown to have been
used for Perkinism with as good reason, they will at once fall to the
ground. Still more, if it shall appear that the general course of any
existing delusion bears a strong resemblance to that of Perkinism, that
the former is most frequently advocated by the same class of persons who
were conspicuous in behalf of the latter, and treated with contempt or
opposed by the same kind of persons who thus treated Perkinism; if the
facts in favor of both have a similar aspect; if the motives of their
originators and propagators may be presumed to have been similar; then
there is every reason to suppose that the existing folly will follow in
the footsteps of the past, and after displaying a given amount of cunning
and credulity in those deceiving and deceived, will drop from the public
view like a fruit which has ripened into spontaneous rottenness, and be
succeeded by the fresh bloom of some other delusion required by the same
excitable portion of the community.
Dr. Elisha Perkins was born at Norwich, Connecticut, in the year 1740.
He had practised his profession with a good local reputation for many
years, when he fell upon a course of experiments, as it is related, which
led to his great discovery. He conceived the idea that metallic
substances might have the effect of removing diseases, if applied in a
certain manner; a notion probably suggested by the then recent
experiments of Galvani, in which muscular contractions were found to be
produced by the contact of two metals with the living fibre. It was in
1796 that his discovery was promulgated in the shape of the Metallic
Tractors, two pieces of metal, one apparently iron and the other brass,
about three inches long, blunt at one end and pointed at the other.
These instruments were applied for the cure of different complaints, such
as rheumatism, local pains, inflammations, and even tumors, by drawing
them over the affected part very lightly for about twenty minutes. Dr.
Perkins took out a patent for his discovery, and travelled about the
country to diffuse the new practice. He soon found numerous advocates of
his discovery, many of them of high standing and influence. In the year
1798 the tractors had crossed the Atlantic, and were publicly employed in
the Royal Hospital at Copenhagen. About the same time the son of the
inventor, Mr. Benjamin Douglass Perkins, carried them to London, where
they soon attracted attention. The Danish physicians published an
account of their cases, containing numerous instances of alleged success,
in a respectable octavo volume. In the year 1804 an establishment,
honored with the name of the Perkinean Institution, was founded in
London. The transactions of this institution were published in
pamphlets, the Perkinean Society had public dinners at the Crown and
Anchor, and a poet celebrated their medical triumph in strains like
these:
"See, pointed metals, blest with power t' appease
The ruthless rage of merciless disease,
O'er the frail part a subtle fluid pour,
Drenched with invisible Galvanic shower,
Till the arthritic staff and crutch forego,
And leap exulting like the bounding roe!"
While all these things were going on, Mr. Benjamin Douglass Perkins was
calmly pocketing money, so that after some half a dozen years he left the
country with more than ten thousand pounds, which had been paid him by
the believers in Great Britain. But in spite of all this success, and
the number of those interested and committed in its behalf, Perkinism
soon began to decline, and in 1811 the Tractors are spoken of by an
intelligent writer as being almost forgotten. Such was the origin and
duration of this doctrine and practice, into the history of which we will
now look a little more narrowly.
Let us see, then, by whose agency this delusion was established and kept
up; whether it was principally by those who were accustomed to medical
pursuits, or those whose habits and modes of reasoning were different;
whether it was with the approbation of those learned bodies usually
supposed to take an interest in scientific discoveries, or only of
individuals whose claims to distinction were founded upon their position
in society, or political station, or literary eminence; whether the
judicious or excitable classes entered most deeply into it; whether, in
short, the scientific men of that time were deceived, or only intruded
upon, and shouted down for the moment by persons who had no particular
call to invade their precincts.
Not much, perhaps, was to be expected of the Medical Profession in the
way of encouragement. One Dr. Fuller, who wrote in England, himself a
Perkinist, thus expressed his opinion: "It must be an extraordinary
exertion of virtue and humanity for a medical man, whose livelihood
depends either on the sale of drugs, or on receiving a guinea for writing
a prescription, which must relate to those drugs, to say to his patient,
'You had better purchase a set of Tractors to keep in your family; they
will cure you without the expense of my attendance, or the danger of the
common medical practice.' For very obvious reasons medical men must
never be expected to recommend the use of Perkinism. The Tractors must
trust for their patronage to the enlightened and philanthropic out of the
profession, or to medical men retired from practice, and who know of no
other interest than the luxury of relieving the distressed. And I do not
despair of seeing the day when but very few of this description as well
as private families will be without them."
Whether the motives assigned by this medical man to his professional
brethren existed or not, it is true that Dr. Perkins did not gain a great
deal at their hands. The Connecticut Medical Society expelled him in
1797 for violating their law against the use of nostrums, or secret
remedies. The leading English physicians appear to have looked on with
singular apathy or contempt at the miracles which it was pretended were
enacting in the hands of the apostles of the new practice. In looking
over the reviews of the time, I have found little beyond brief occasional
notices of their pretensions; the columns of these journals being
occupied with subjects of more permanent interest. The state of things
in London is best learned, however, from the satirical poem to which I
have already alluded as having been written at the period referred to.
This was entitled, "Terrible Tractoration!! A Poetical Petition against
Galvanizing Trumpery and the Perkinistic Institution. Most respectfully
addressed to the Royal College of Physicians, by Christopher Caustic, M.
D., LL. D., A. S. S., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians,
Aberdeen, and Honorary Member of no less than nineteen very learned
Societies." Two editions of this work were published in London in the
years 1803 and 1804, and one or two have been published in this country.
"Terrible Tractoration" is supposed, by those who never read it, to be a
satire upon the follies of Perkins and his followers. It is, on the
contrary, a most zealous defence of Perkinism, and a fierce attack upon
its opponents, most especially upon such of the medical profession as
treated the subject with neglect or ridicule. The Royal College of
Physicians was the more peculiar object of the attack, but with this
body, the editors of some of the leading periodicals, and several
physicians distinguished at that time, and even now remembered for their
services to science and humanity, were involved in unsparing
denunciations. The work is by no means of the simply humorous character
it might be supposed, but is overloaded with notes of the most seriously
polemical nature. Much of the history of the subject, indeed, is to be
looked for in this volume.
It appears from this work that the principal members of the medical
profession, so far from hailing Mr. Benjamin Douglass Perkins as another
Harvey or Jenner, looked very coldly upon him and his Tractors; and it is
now evident that, though they were much abused for so doing, they knew
very well what they had to deal with, and were altogether in the right.
The delusion at last attracted such an amount of attention as to induce
Dr. Haygarth and some others of respectable standing to institute some
experiments which I shall mention in their proper place, the result of
which might have seemed sufficient to show the emptiness of the whole
contrivance.
The Royal Society, that learned body which for ages has constituted the
best tribunal to which Britain can appeal in questions of science,
accepted Mr. Perkins's Tractors and the book written about them, passed
the customary vote of thanks, and never thought of troubling itself
further in the investigation of pretensions of such an aspect. It is not
to be denied that a considerable number of physicians did avow themselves
advocates of the new practice; but out of the whole catalogue of those
who were publicly proclaimed as such, no one has ever been known, so far
as I am aware, to the scientific world, except in connection with the
short-lived notoriety of Perkinism. Who were the people, then, to whose
activity, influence, or standing with the community was owing all the
temporary excitement produced by the Metallic Tractors?
First, those persons who had been induced to purchase a pair of Tractors.
These little bits of brass and iron, the intrinsic value of which might,
perhaps, amount to ninepence, were sold at five guineas a pair! A man
who has paid twenty-five dollars for his whistle is apt to blow it louder
and longer than other people. So it appeared that when the "Perkinean
Society" applied to the possessors of Tractors in the metropolis to
concur in the establishment of a public institution for the use of these
instruments upon the poor, "it was found that only five out of above a
hundred objected to subscribe, on account of their want of confidence in
the efficacy of the practice; and these," the committee observes, "there
is reason to believe, never gave them a fair trial, probably never used
them in more than one case, and that perhaps a case in which the Tractors
had never been recommended as serviceable." "Purchasers of the
Tractors," said one of their ardent advocates, "would be among the last
to approve of them if they had reason to suppose themselves defrauded of
five guineas." He forgot poor Moses, with his "gross of green
spectacles, with silver rims and shagreen cases." "Dear mother," cried
the boy, "why won't you listen to reason? I had them a dead bargain, or
I should not have bought them. The silver rims alone will sell for
double the money."
But it is an undeniable fact, that many persons of considerable standing,
and in some instances holding the most elevated positions in society,
openly patronized the new practice. In a translation of a work entitled
"Experiments with the Metallic Tractors," originally published in Danish,
thence rendered successively into German and English, Mr. Benjamin
Perkins, who edited the English edition, has given a copious enumeration
of the distinguished individuals, both in America and Europe, whose
patronage he enjoyed. He goes so far as to signify that ROYALTY itself
was to be included among the number. When the Perkinean Institution was
founded, no less a person than Lord Rivers was elected President, and
eleven other individuals of distinction, among them Governor Franklin,
son of Dr. Franklin, figured as Vice-Presidents. Lord Henniker, a member
of the Royal Society, who is spoken of as a man of judgment and talents,
condescended to patronize the astonishing discovery, and at different
times bought three pairs of Tractors. When the Tractors were introduced
into Europe, a large number of testimonials accompanied them from various
distinguished characters in America, the list of whom is given in the
translation of the Danish work referred to as follows:
"Those who have individually stated cases, or who have presented their
names to the public as men who approved of this remedy, and acknowledged
themselves instrumental in circulating the Tractors, are fifty-six in
number; thirty-four of whom are physicians and surgeons, and many of them
of the first eminence, thirteen clergymen, most of whom are doctors of
divinity, and connected with the literary institutions of America; among
the remainder are two members of Congress, one professor of natural
philosophy in a college, etc., etc." It seemed to be taken rather hardly
by Mr. Perkins that the translators of the work which he edited, in
citing the names of the advocates of the Metallic Practice, frequently
omitted the honorary titles which should have been annexed. The
testimonials were obtained by the Danish writer, from a pamphlet
published in America, in which these titles were given in full. Thus one
of these testimonials is from "John Tyler, Esq., a magistrate in the
county of New London, and late Brigadier-General of the militia in that
State." The "omission of the General's title" is the subject of
complaint, as if this title were sufficient evidence of the commanding
powers of one of the patrons of tractoration. A similar complaint is
made when "Calvin Goddard, Esq., of Plainfield, Attorney at Law, and a
member of the Legislature of the State of Connecticut," is mentioned
without his titular honors, and even on account of the omission of the
proper official titles belonging to "Nathan Pierce, Esq., Governor and
Manager of the Almshouse of Newburyport." These instances show the great
importance to be attached to civil and military dignities, in qualifying
their holders to judge of scientific subjects, a truth which has not been
overlooked by the legitimate successors of the Perkinists. In Great
Britain, the Tractors were not less honored than in America, by the
learned and the illustrious. The "Perkinistic Committee" made this
statement in their report: "Mr. Perkins has annually laid before the
public a large collection of new cases communicated to him for that
purpose by disinterested and intelligent characters, from almost every
quarter of Great Britain. In regard to the competency of these vouchers,
it will be sufficient simply to state that, amongst others whose names
have been attached to their communications, are eight professors, in four
different universities, twenty-one regular Physicians, nineteen Surgeons,
thirty Clergymen, twelve of whom are Doctors of Divinity, and numerous
other characters of equal respectability."
It cannot but excite our notice and surprise that the number of clergymen
both in America and Great Britain who thrust forward their evidence on
this medical topic was singularly large in proportion to that of the
members of the medical profession. Whole pages are contributed by such
worthies as the Rev. Dr. Trotter of Hans Place, the Rear. Waring
Willett, Chaplain to the Earl of Dunmore, the Rev. Dr. Clarke, Chaplain
to the Prince of Wales. The style of these theologico-medical
communications may be seen in the following from a divine who was also
professor in one of the colleges of New England. "I have used the
Tractors with success in several other cases in my own family, and
although, like Naaman the Syrian, I cannot tell why the waters of Jordan
should be better than Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus; yet since
experience has proved them so, no reasoning can change the opinion.
Indeed, the causes of all common facts are, we think, perfectly well
known to us; and it is very probable, fifty or a hundred years hence, we
shall as well know why the Metallic Tractors should in a few minutes
remove violent pains, as we now know why cantharides and opium will
produce opposite effects, namely, we shall know very little about either
excepting facts." Fifty or a hundred years hence! if he could have
looked forward forty years, he would have seen the descendants of the
"Perkinistic" philosophers swallowing infinitesimal globules, and knowing
and caring as much about the Tractors as the people at Saratoga Springs
do about the waters of Abana and Pharpar.
I trust it will not be thought in any degree disrespectful to a
profession which we all honor, that I have mentioned the great zeal of
many clergymen in the cause of Perkinism. I hope, too, that I may
without offence suggest the causes which have often led them out of their
own province into one to which their education has no special reference.
The members of that profession ought to be, and commonly are, persons of
benevolent character. Their duties carry them into the midst of
families, and particularly at times when the members of them are
suffering from bodily illness. It is natural enough that a strong desire
should be excited to alleviate sufferings which may have defied the
efforts of professional skill; as natural that any remedy which
recommends itself to the belief or the fancy of the spiritual physician
should be applied with the hope of benefit; and perfectly certain that
the weakness of human nature, from which no profession is exempt, will
lead him to take the most flattering view of its effects upon the
patient; his own sagacity and judgment being staked upon the success of
the trial. The inventor of the Tractors was aware of these truths. He
therefore sent the Tractors gratuitously to many clergymen, accompanied
with a formal certificate that the holder had become entitled to their
possession by the payment of five guineas. This was practised in our own
neighborhood, and I remember finding one of these certificates, so
presented, which proved that amongst the risks of infancy I had to
encounter Perkins's Tractors. Two clergymen of Boston and the vicinity,
both well known to local fame, gave in their testimony to the value of
the instruments thus presented to them; an unusually moderate proportion,
when it is remembered that to the common motives of which I have spoken
was added the seduction of a gift for which the profane public was
expected to pay so largely.
It was remarkable, also, that Perkinism, which had so little success with
the medical and scientific part of the community, found great favor in
the eyes of its more lovely and less obstinate portion. "The lady of
Major Oxholin,"--I quote from Mr. Perkins's volume,--"having been lately
in America, had seen and heard much of the great effects of Perkinism.
Influenced by a most benevolent disposition, she brought these Tractors
and the pamphlet with her to Europe, with a laudable desire of extending
their utility to her suffering countrymen." Such was the channel by
which the Tractors were conveyed to Denmark, where they soon became the
ruling passion. The workmen, says a French writer, could not manufacture
them fast enough. Women carried them about their persons, and delighted
in bringing them into general use. To what extent the Tractors were
favored with the patronage of English and American ladies, it is of
course not easy to say, except on general principles, as their names were
not brought before the public. But one of Dr. Haygarth's stories may
lead us to conjecture that there was a class of female practitioners who
went about doing good with the Tractors in England as well as in Denmark.
A certain lady had the misfortune to have a spot as big as a silver penny
at the corner of her eye, caused by a bruise, or some such injury.
Another lady, who was a friend of hers, and a strong believer in
Perkinism, was very anxious to try the effects of tractoration upon this
unfortunate blemish. The patient consented; the lady "produced the
instruments, and, after drawing them four or five times over the spot,
declared that it changed to a paler color, and on repeating the use of
them a few minutes longer, that it had almost vanished, and was scarcely
visible, and departed in high triumph at her success." The lady who
underwent the operation assured the narrator "that she looked in the
glass immediately after, and that not the least visible alteration had
taken place."
It would be a very interesting question, what was the intellectual
character of those persons most conspicuous in behalf of the Perkinistic
delusion? Such an inquiry might bring to light some principles which we
could hereafter apply to the study of other popular errors. But the
obscurity into which nearly all these enthusiasts have subsided renders
the question easier to ask than to answer. I believe it would have been
found that most of these persons were of ardent temperament and of
considerable imagination, and that their history would show that
Perkinism was not the first nor the last hobby-horse they rode furiously.
Many of them may very probably have been persons of more than common
talent, of active and ingenious minds, of versatile powers and various
acquirements. Such, for instance, was the estimable man to whom I have
repeatedly referred as a warm defender of tractoration, and a bitter
assailant of its enemies. The story tells itself in the biographical
preface to his poem. He went to London with the view of introducing a
hydraulic machine, which he and his Vermont friends regarded as a very
important invention. He found, however, that the machine was already in
common use in that metropolis. A brother Yankee, then in London, had
started the project of a mill, which was to be carried by the water of
the Thames. He was sanguine enough to purchase one fifth of this
concern, which also proved a failure. At about the same period he wrote
the work which proved the great excitement of his mind upon the subject
of the transient folly then before the public. Originally a lawyer, he
was in succession a mechanician, a poet, and an editor, meeting with far
less success in each of these departments than usually attends men of
less varied gifts, but of more tranquil and phlegmatic composition. But
who is ignorant that there is a class of minds characterized by qualities
like those I have mentioned; minds with many bright and even beautiful
traits; but aimless and fickle as the butterfly; that settle upon every
gayly-colored illusion as it opens into flower, and flutter away to
another when the first has dropped its leaves, and stands naked in the
icy air of truth!
Let us now look at the general tenor of the arguments addressed by
believers to sceptics and opponents. Foremost of all, emblazoned at the
head of every column, loudest shouted by every triumphant disputant, held
up as paramount to all other considerations, stretched like an
impenetrable shield to protect the weakest advocate of the great cause
against the weapons of the adversary, was that omnipotent monosyllable
which has been the patrimony of cheats and the currency of dupes from
time immemorial,--Facts! Facts! Facts! First came the published cases
of the American clergymen, brigadier-generals, almshouse governors,
representatives, attorneys, and esquires. Then came the published cases
of the surgeons of Copenhagen. Then followed reports of about one
hundred and fifty cases published in England, "demonstrating the efficacy
of the metallic practice in a variety of complaints both upon the human
body and on horses, etc." But the progress of facts in Great Britain did
not stop here. Let those who rely upon the numbers of their
testimonials, as being alone sufficient to prove the soundness and
stability of a medical novelty, digest the following from the report of
the Perkinistic Committee. "The cases published [in Great Britain]
amounted, in March last, the date of Mr. Perkins's last publication, to
about five thousand. Supposing that not more than one cure in three
hundred which the Tractors have performed has been published, and the
proportion is probably much greater, it will be seen that the number, to
March last, will have exceeded one million five hundred thousand!"
Next in order after the appeal to what were called facts, came a series
of arguments, which have been so long bruised and battered round in the
cause of every doctrine or pretension, new, monstrous, or deliriously
impossible, that each of them is as odiously familiar to the scientific
scholar as the faces of so many old acquaintances, among the less
reputable classes, to the officers of police.
No doubt many of my hearers will recognize, in the following passages,
arguments they may have heard brought forward with triumphant confidence
in behalf of some doctrine not yet extinct. No doubt some may have
honestly thought they proved something; may have used them with the
purpose of convincing their friends, or of silencing the opponents of
their favorite doctrine, whatever that might be. But any train of
arguments which was contrived for Perkinism, which was just as applicable
to it as to any other new doctrine in the same branch of science, and
which was fully employed against its adversaries forty years since,
might, in common charity, be suffered to slumber in the grave of
Perkinism. Whether or not the following sentences, taken literally from
the work of Mr. Perkins, were the originals of some of the idle
propositions we hear bandied about from time to time, let those who
listen judge.
The following is the test assumed for the new practice: "If diseases are
really removed, as those persons who have practised extensively with the
Tractors declare, it should seem there would be but little doubt of their
being generally adopted; but if the numerous reports of their efficacy
which have been published are forgeries, or are unfounded, the practice
ought to be crushed." To this I merely add, it has been crushed.
The following sentence applies to that a priori judging and uncandid
class of individuals who buy their dinners without tasting all the food
there is in the market. "On all discoveries there are persons who,
without descending to any inquiry into the truth, pretend to know, as it
were by intuition, that newly asserted facts are founded in the grossest
errors. These were those who knew that Harvey's report of the
circulation of the blood was a preposterous and ridiculous suggestion,
and in latter later days there were others who knew that Franklin
deserved reproach for declaring that points were preferable to balls for
protecting buildings from lightning."
Again: "This unwarrantable mode of offering assertion for proof, so
unauthorized and even unprecedented except in the condemnation of a
Galileo, the persecution of a Copernicus, and a few other acts of
inquisitorial authority, in the times of ignorance and superstition,
affords but a lamentable instance of one of his remarks, that this is far
from being the Age of Reason."
"The most valuable medicines in the Materia Medica act on principles of
which we are totally ignorant. None have ever yet been able to explain
how opium produces sleep, or how bark cures intermittent fevers; and yet
few, it is hoped, will be so absurd as to desist from the use of these
important articles because they know nothing of the principle of their
operations." Or if the argument is preferred, in the eloquent language
of the Perkinistic poet:
"What though the CAUSES may not be explained,
Since these EFFECTS are duly ascertained,
Let not self-interest, prejudice, or pride,
Induce mankind to set the means aside;
Means which, though simple, are by
Heaven designed to alleviate the woes of human kind."
This course of argument is so often employed, that it deserves to be
expanded a little, so that its length and breadth may be fairly seen. A
series of what are called facts is brought forward to prove some very
improbable doctrine. It is objected by judicious people, or such as have
devoted themselves to analogous subjects, that these assumed facts are in
direct opposition to all that is known of the course of nature, that the
universal experience of the past affords a powerful presumption against
their truth, and that in proportion to the gravity of these objections,
should be the number and competence of the witnesses. The answer is a
ready one. What do we know of the mysteries of Nature? Do we understand
the intricate machinery of the Universe? When to this is added the
never-failing quotation,
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,"--
the question is thought to be finally disposed of.
Take the case of astrology as an example. It is in itself strange and
incredible that the relations of the heavenly bodies to each other at a
given moment of time, perhaps half a century ago, should have anything to
do with my success or misfortune in any undertaking of to-day. But what
right have I to say it cannot be so? Can I bind the sweet influences of
Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? I do not know by what mighty
magic the planets roll in their fluid paths, confined to circles as
unchanging as if they were rings of steel, nor why the great wave of
ocean follows in a sleepless round upon the skirts of moonlight; nor cam
I say from any certain knowledge that the phases of the heavenly bodies,
or even the falling of the leaves of the forest, or the manner in which
the sands lie upon the sea-shore, may not be knit up by invisible threads
with the web of human destiny. There is a class of minds much more ready
to believe that which is at first sight incredible, and because it is
incredible, than what is generally thought reasonable. Credo quia
impossibile est,--"I believe, because it is impossible,"--is an old
paradoxical expression which might be literally applied to this tribe of
persons. And they always succeed in finding something marvellous, to call
out the exercise of their robust faith. The old Cabalistic teachers
maintained that there was not a verse, line, word, or even letter in the
Bible which had not a special efficacy either to defend the person who
rightly employed it, or to injure his enemies; always provided the
original Hebrew was made use of. In the hands of modern Cabalists every
substance, no matter how inert, acquires wonderful medicinal virtues,
provided it be used in a proper state of purity and subdivision.
I have already mentioned the motives attributed by the Perkinists to the
Medical Profession, as preventing its members from receiving the new but
unwelcome truths. This accusation is repeated in different forms and
places, as, for instance, in the following passage: "Will the medical man
who has spent much money and labor in the pursuit of the arcana of
Physic, and on the exercise of which depends his support in life,
proclaim the inefficacy of his art, and recommend a remedy to his patient
which the most unlettered in society can employ as advantageously as
himself? and a remedy, too, which, unlike the drops, the pills, the
powders, etc., of the Materia Medica, is inconsumable, and ever in
readiness to be employed in successive diseases?"
As usual with these people, much indignation was expressed at any
parallel between their particular doctrine and practice and those of
their exploded predecessors. "The motives," says the disinterested Mr.
Perkins, "which must have impelled to this attempt at classing the
METALLIC PRACTICE with the most paltry of empyrical projects, are but too
thinly veiled to escape detection."
To all these arguments was added, as a matter of course, an appeal to the
feelings of the benevolent in behalf of suffering humanity, in the shape
of a notice that the poor would be treated gratis. It is pretty well
understood that this gratuitous treatment of the poor does not
necessarily imply an excess of benevolence, any more than the gratuitous
distribution of a trader's shop-bills is an evidence of remarkable
generosity; in short, that it is one of those things which honest men
often do from the best motives, but which rogues and impostors never fail
to announce as one of their special recommendations. It is astonishing
to see how these things brighten up at the touch of Mr. Perkins's poet:
"Ye worthy, honored, philanthropic few,
The muse shall weave her brightest wreaths for you,
Who in Humanity's bland cause unite,
Nor heed the shaft by interest aimed or spite;
Like the great Pattern of Benevolence,
Hygeia's blessings to the poor dispense;
And though opposed by folly's servile brood,
ENJOY THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD."
Having thus sketched the history of Perkinism in its days of prosperity;
having seen how it sprung into being, and by what means it maintained its
influence, it only remains to tell the brief story of its discomfiture
and final downfall. The vast majority of the sensible part of the
medical profession were contented, so far as we can judge, to let it die
out of itself. It was in vain that the advocates of this invaluable
discovery exclaimed over their perverse and interested obstinacy,--in
vain that they called up the injured ghosts of Harvey, Galileo, and
Copernicus to shame that unbelieving generation; the Baillies and the
Heberdens,--men whose names have come down to us as synonymous with honor
and wisdom,--bore their reproaches in meek silence, and left them
unanswered to their fate. There were some others, however, who, believing
the public to labor under a delusion, thought it worth while to see
whether the charm would be broken by an open trial of its virtue, as
compared with that of some less hallowed formula. It must be remembered
that a peculiar value was attached to the Metallic Tractors, as made and
patented by Mr. Perkins. Dr. Haygarth, of Bath, performed various
experiments upon patients afflicted with different complaints,--the
patients supposing that the real five-guinea Tractors were employed.
Strange to relate, he obtained equally wonderful effects with Tractors of
lead and of wood; with nails, pieces of bone, slate pencil, and
tobacco-pipe. Dr. Alderson employed sham Tractors made of wood, and
produced such effects upon five patients that they returned solemn thanks
in church for their cures. A single specimen of these cases may stand
for all of them. Ann Hill had suffered for some months from pain in the
right arm and shoulder. The Tractors (wooden ones) were applied, and in
the space of five minutes she expressed herself relieved in the following
apostrophe: "Bless me! why, who could have thought it, that them little
things could pull the pain from one. Well, to be sure, the longer one
lives, the more one sees; ah, dear!"
These experiments did not result in the immediate extinction of
Perkinism. Doubtless they were a great comfort to many obstinate
unbelievers, and helped to settle some sceptical minds; but for the real
Perkinistic enthusiasts, it may be questioned whether they would at that
time have changed their opinion though one had risen from the dead to
assure them that it was an error. It perished without violence, by an
easy and natural process. Like the famous toy of Mongolfier, it rose by
means of heated air,--the fevered breath of enthusiastic ignorance,--and
when this grew cool, as it always does in a little while, it collapsed
and fell.
And now, on reviewing the whole subject, how shall we account for the
extraordinary prevalence of the belief in Perkinism among a portion of
what is supposed to be the thinking part of the community?
Could the cures have been real ones, produced by the principle of ANIMAL
MAGNETISM? To this it may be answered that the Perkinists ridiculed the
idea of approximating Mesmer and the founder of their own doctrine, that
nothing like the somnambulic condition seems to have followed the use of
the Tractors, and that neither the exertion of the will nor the powers of
the individual who operated seem to have been considered of any
consequence. Besides, the absolute neglect into which the Tractors soon
declined is good evidence that they were incapable of affording any
considerable and permanent relief in the complaints for the cure of which
they were applied.
Of course a large number of apparent cures were due solely to nature;
which is true under every form of treatment, orthodox or empirical. Of
course many persons experienced at least temporary relief from the strong
impression made upon their minds by this novel and marvellous method of
treatment.
Many, again, influenced by the sanguine hopes of those about them, like
dying people, who often say sincerely, from day to day, that they are
getting better, cheated themselves into a false and short-lived belief
that they were cured; and as happens in such cases, the public never knew
more than the first half of the story.
When it was said to the Perkinists, that whatever effects they produced
were merely through the imagination, they declared (like the advocates of
the ROYAL TOUCH and the UNGUENTUM ARMARIUM) that this explanation was
sufficiently disproved by the fact of numerous and successful cures which
had been witnessed in infants and brute animals. Dr. Haygarth replied to
this, that "in these cases it is not the Patient, but the Observer, who
is deceived by his own imagination," and that such may be the fact, we
have seen in the case of the good lady who thought she had conjured away
the spot from her friend's countenance, when it remained just as before.
As to the motives of the inventor and vender of the Tractors, the facts
must be allowed to speak for themselves. But when two little bits of
brass and iron are patented, as an invention, as the result of numerous
experiments, when people are led, or even allowed, to infer that they are
a peculiar compound, when they are artfully associated with a new and
brilliant discovery (which then happened to be Galvanism), when they are
sold at many hundred times their value, and the seller prints his opinion
that a Hospital will suffer inconvenience, "unless it possesses many sets
of the Tractors, and these placed in the hands of the patients to
practise on each other," one cannot but suspect that they were contrived
in the neighborhood of a wooden nutmeg factory; that legs of ham in that
region are not made of the best mahogany; and that such as buy their
cucumber seed in that vicinity have to wait for the fruit as long as the
Indians for their crop of gunpowder.
--------------------------
The succeeding lecture will be devoted to an examination of the doctrines
of Samuel Hahnemann and his disciples; doctrines which some consider new
and others old; the common title of which is variously known as
Ho-moeopathy, Homoe-op-athy, Homoeo-paith-y, or Hom'pathy, and the claims
of which are considered by some as infinitely important, and by many as
immeasurably ridiculous.
I wish to state, for the sake of any who may be interested in the
subject, that I shall treat it, not by ridicule, but by argument; perhaps
with great freedom, but with good temper and in peaceable language; with
very little hope of reclaiming converts, with no desire of making
enemies, but with a firm belief that its pretensions and assertions
cannot stand before a single hour of calm investigation.
II.
It may be thought that a direct attack upon the pretensions of
HOMOEOPATHY is an uncalled-for aggression upon an unoffending doctrine
and its peaceful advocates.
But a little inquiry will show that it has long assumed so hostile a
position with respect to the Medical Profession, that any trouble I, or
any other member of that profession, may choose to bestow upon it may be
considered merely as a matter of self-defence. It began with an attempt
to show the insignificance of all existing medical knowledge. It not
only laid claim to wonderful powers of its own, but it declared the
common practice to be attended with the most positively injurious
effects, that by it acute diseases are aggravated, and chronic diseases
rendered incurable. It has at various times brought forward collections
of figures having the air of statistical documents, pretending to show a
great proportional mortality among the patients of the Medical
Profession, as compared with those treated according to its own rules.
Not contented with choosing a name of classical origin for itself, it
invented one for the whole community of innocent physicians, assuring
them, to their great surprise, that they were all ALLOPATHISTS, whether
they knew it or not, and including all the illustrious masters of the
past, from Hippocrates down to Hunter, under the same gratuitous title.
The line, then, has been drawn by the champions of the new doctrine; they
have lifted the lance, they have sounded the charge, and are responsible
for any little skirmishing which may happen.
But, independently of any such grounds of active resistance, the subject
involves interests so disproportioned to its intrinsic claims, that it is
no more than an act of humanity to give it a public examination. If the
new doctrine is not truth, it is a dangerous, a deadly error. If it is a
mere illusion, and acquires the same degree of influence that we have
often seen obtained by other illusions, there is not one of my audience
who may not have occasion to deplore the fatal credulity which listened
to its promises.
I shall therefore undertake a sober examination of its principles, its
facts, and some points of its history. The limited time at my disposal
requires me to condense as much as possible what I have to say, but I
shall endeavor to be plain and direct in expressing it. Not one statement
shall be made which cannot be supported by unimpeachable reference: not
one word shall be uttered which I am not as willing to print as to speak.
I have no quibbles to utter, and I shall stoop to answer none; but, with
full faith in the sufficiency of a plain statement of facts and reasons,
I submit the subject to the discernment of my audience.
The question may be asked in the outset,--Have you submitted the
doctrines you are professing to examine to the test of long-repeated and
careful experiment; have you tried to see whether they were true or not?
To this I answer, that it is abundantly evident, from what has often
happened, that it would be of no manner of use for me to allege the
results of any experiments I might have instituted. Again and again have
the most explicit statements been made by the most competent persons of
the utter failure of all their trials, and there were the same abundant
explanations offered as used to be for the Unguentum Armarium and the
Metallic Tractors. I could by no possibility perform any experiments the
result of which could not be easily explained away so as to be of no
conclusive significance. Besides, as arguments in favor of Homoeopathy
are constantly addressed to the public in journals, pamphlets, and even
lectures, by inexperienced dilettanti, the same channel must be open to
all its opponents.
It is necessary, for the sake of those to whom the whole subject may be
new, to give in the smallest possible compass the substance of the
Homoeopathic Doctrine. Samuel Hahnemann, its founder, is a German
physician, now living in Paris, [Hahnemann died in 1843.] at the age of
eighty-seven years. In 1796 he published the first paper containing his
peculiar notions; in 1805 his first work on the subject; in 1810 his
somewhat famous "Organon of the Healing Art;" the next year what he
called the "Pure Materia Medica;" and in 1828 his last work, the
"Treatise on Chronic Diseases." He has therefore been writing at
intervals on his favorite subject for nearly half a century.
The one great doctrine which constitutes the basis of Homoeopathy as a
system is expressed by the Latin aphorism,
"SIMILIA SIBILIBUS CURANTUR,"
or like cures like, that is, diseases are cured by agents capable of
producing symptoms resembling those found in the disease under treatment.
A disease for Hahnemann consists essentially in a group of symptoms. The
proper medicine for any disease is the one which is capable of producing
a similar group of symptoms when given to a healthy person.
It is of course necessary to know what are the trains of symptoms excited
by different substances, when administered to persons in health, if any
such can be shown to exist. Hahnemann and his disciples give catalogues
of the symptoms which they affirm were produced upon themselves or others
by a large number of drugs which they submitted to experiment.
The second great fact which Hahnemann professes to have established is
the efficacy of medicinal substances reduced to a wonderful degree of
minuteness or dilution. The following account of his mode of preparing
his medicines is from his work on Chronic Diseases, which has not, I
believe, yet been translated into English. A grain of the substance, if
it is solid, a drop if it is liquid, is to be added to about a third part
of one hundred grains of sugar of milk in an unglazed porcelain capsule
which has had the polish removed from the lower part of its cavity by
rubbing it with wet sand; they are to be mingled for an instant with a
bone or horn spatula, and then rubbed together for six minutes; then the
mass is to be scraped together from the mortar and pestle, which is to
take four minutes; then to be again rubbed for six minutes. Four minutes
are then to be devoted to scraping the powder into a heap, and the second
third of the hundred grains of sugar of milk to be added. Then they are
to be stirred an instant and rubbed six minutes,--again to be scraped
together four minutes and forcibly rubbed six; once more scraped together
for four minutes, when the last third of the hundred grains of sugar of
milk is to be added and mingled by stirring with the spatula; six minutes
of forcible rubbing, four of scraping together, and six more (positively
the last six) of rubbing, finish this part of the process.
Every grain of this powder contains the hundredth of a grain of the
medicinal substance mingled with the sugar of milk. If, therefore, a
grain of the powder just prepared is mingled with another hundred grains
of sugar of milk, and the process just described repeated, we shall have
a powder of which every grain contains the hundredth of the hundredth, or
the ten thousandth part of a grain of the medicinal substance. Repeat
the same process with the same quantity of fresh sugar of milk, and every
grain of your powder will contain the millionth of a grain of the
medicinal substance. When the powder is of this strength, it is ready to
employ in the further solutions and dilutions to be made use of in
practice.
A grain of the powder is to be taken, a hundred drops of alcohol are to
be poured on it, the vial is to be slowly turned for a few minutes, until
the powder is dissolved, and two shakes are to be given to it. On this
point I will quote Hahnemann's own words. "A long experience and
multiplied observations upon the sick lead me within the last few years
to prefer giving only two shakes to medicinal liquids, whereas I formerly
used to give ten." The process of dilution is carried on in the same way
as the attenuation of the powder was done; each successive dilution with
alcohol reducing the medicine to a hundredth part of the quantity of that
which preceded it. In this way the dilution of the original millionth of
a grain of medicine contained in the grain of powder operated on is
carried successively to the billionth, trillionth, quadrillionth,
quintillionth, and very often much higher fractional divisions. A dose
of any of these medicines is a minute fraction of a drop, obtained by
moistening with them one or more little globules of sugar, of which
Hahnemann says it takes about two hundred to weigh a grain.
As an instance of the strength of the medicines prescribed by Hahnemann,
I will mention carbonate of lime. He does not employ common chalk, but
prefers a little portion of the friable part of an oystershell. Of this
substance, carried to the sextillionth degree, so much as one or two
globules of the size mentioned can convey is a common dose. But for
persons of very delicate nerves it is proper that the dilution should be
carried to the decillionth degree. That is, an important medicinal
effect is to be expected from the two hundredth or hundredth part of the
millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the
millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the
millionth of the millionth of a grain of oyster-shell. This is only the
tenth degree of potency, but some of his disciples profess to have
obtained palpable effects from "much higher dilutions."
The third great doctrine of Hahnemann is the following. Seven eighths at
least of all chronic diseases are produced by the existence in the system
of that infectious disorder known in the language of science by the
appellation of PSORA, but to the less refined portion of the community by
the name of ITCH. In the words of Hahnemann's "Organon," "This Psora is
the sole true and fundamental cause that produces all the other countless
forms of disease, which, under the names of nervous debility, hysteria,
hypochondriasis, insanity, melancholy, idiocy, madness, epilepsy, and
spasms of all kinds, softening of the bones, or rickets, scoliosis and
cyphosis, caries, cancer, fungua haematodes, gout,--yellow jaundice and
cyanosis, dropsy,--"
["The degrees of DILUTION must not be confounded with those of POTENCY.
Their relations may be seen by this table:
lst dilution,--One hundredth of a drop or grain.
2d " One ten thousandth.
3d " One millionth, marked I.
4th " One hundred millionth.
5th " One ten thousand millionth.
6th " One million millionth, or one billionth, marked II.
7th " One hundred billionth.
8th " One ten thousand billionth.
9th " One million billionth, or one trillionth, marked III.
10th " One hundred trillionth.
11th " One ten thousand trillionth.
12th " One million trillionth, or one quadrillionth, marked
IV.,--and so on indefinitely.
The large figures denote the degrees of POTENCY.]
"gastralgia, epistaxis, haemoptysis,--asthma and suppuration of the
lungs,--megrim, deafness, cataract and amaurosis,--paralysis, loss of
sense, pains of every kind, etc., appear in our pathology as so many
peculiar, distinct, and independent diseases."
For the last three centuries, if the same authority may be trusted, under
the influence of the more refined personal habits which have prevailed,
and the application of various external remedies which repel the
affection from the skin; Psora has revealed itself in these numerous
forms of internal disease, instead of appearing, as in former periods,
under the aspect of an external malady.
These are the three cardinal doctrines of Hahnemann, as laid down in
those standard works of Homoeopathy, the "Organon" and the "Treatise on
Chronic Diseases."
Several other principles may be added, upon all of which he insists with
great force, and which are very generally received by his disciples.
1. Very little power is allowed to the curative efforts of nature.
Hahnemann goes so far as to say that no one has ever seen the simple
efforts of nature effect the durable recovery of a patient from a chronic
disease. In general, the Homoeopathist calls every recovery which
happens under his treatment a cure.
2. Every medicinal substance must be administered in a state of the most
perfect purity, and uncombined with any other. The union of several
remedies in a single prescription destroys its utility, and, according to
the "Organon," frequently adds a new disease.
3. A large number of substances commonly thought to be inert develop
great medicinal powers when prepared in the manner already described; and
a great proportion of them are ascertained to have specific antidotes in
case their excessive effects require to be neutralized.
4. Diseases should be recognized, as far as possible, not by any of the
common names imposed upon them, as fever or epilepsy, but as individual
collections of symptoms, each of which differs from every other
collection.
5. The symptoms of any complaint must be described with the most minute
exactness, and so far as possible in the patient's own words. To
illustrate the kind of circumstances the patient is expected to record, I
will mention one or two from the 313th page of the "Treatise on Chronic
Diseases,"--being the first one at which I opened accidentally.
"After dinner, disposition to sleep; the patient winks."
"After dinner, prostration and feeling of weakness (nine days after
taking the remedy)."
This remedy was that same oyster-shell which is to be prescribed
"fractions of the sextillionth or decillionth degree." According to
Hahnemann, the action of a single dose of the size mentioned does not
fully display itself in some cases until twenty-four or even thirty days
after it is taken, and in such instances has not exhausted its good
effects until towards the fortieth or fiftieth day,--before which time it
would be absurd and injurious to administer a new remedy.
So much for the doctrines of Hahnemann, which have been stated without
comment, or exaggeration of any of their features, very much as any
adherent of his opinions might have stated them, if obliged to compress
them into so narrow a space.
Does Hahnemann himself represent Homoeopathy as it now exists? He
certainly ought to be its best representative, after having created it,
and devoted his life to it for half a century. He is spoken of as the
great physician of the time, in most, if not all Homoeopathic works. If
he is not authority on the subject of his own doctrines, who is? So far
as I am aware, not one tangible discovery in the so-called science has
ever been ascribed to any other observer; at least, no general principle
or law, of consequence enough to claim any prominence in Homoeopathic
works, has ever been pretended to have originated with any of his
illustrious disciples. He is one of the only two Homoeopathic writers
with whom, as I shall mention, the Paris publisher will have anything to
do upon his own account. The other is Jahr, whose Manual is little more
than a catalogue of symptoms and remedies. If any persons choose to
reject Hahnemann as not in the main representing Homoeopathy, if they
strike at his authority, if they wink out of sight his deliberate and
formally announced results, it is an act of suicidal rashness; for upon
his sagacity and powers of observation, and experience, as embodied in
his works, and especially in his Materia Medica, repose the foundations
of Homoeopathy as a practical system.
So far as I can learn from the conflicting statements made upon the
subject, the following is the present condition of belief.
1. All of any note agree that the law Similia similibus is the only
fundamental principle in medicine. Of course if any man does not agree
to this the name Homoeopathist can no longer be applied to him with
propriety.
2. The belief in and employment of the infinitesimal doses is general,
and in some places universal, among the advocates of Homoeopathy; but a
distinct movement has been made in Germany to get rid of any restriction
to the use of these doses, and to employ medicines with the same license
as other practitioners.
3. The doctrine of the origin of most chronic diseases in Psora,
notwithstanding Hahnemann says it cost him twelve years of study and
research to establish the fact and its practical consequences, has met
with great neglect and even opposition from very many of his own
disciples.
It is true, notwithstanding, that, throughout most of their writings
which I have seen, there runs a prevailing tone of great deference to
Hahnemann's opinions, a constant reference to his authority, a general
agreement with the minor points of his belief, and a pretence of
harmonious union in a common faith. [Those who will take the trouble to
look over Hull's Translation of Jahr's Manual may observe how little
comparative space is given to remedies resting upon any other authority
than that of Hahnemann.]
Many persons, and most physicians and scientific men, would be satisfied
with the statement of these doctrines, and examine them no further. They
would consider it vastly more probable that any observer in so fallacious
and difficult a field of inquiry as medicine had been led into error, or
walked into it of his own accord, than that such numerous and
extraordinary facts had really just come to light. They would feel a
right to exercise the same obduracy towards them as the French Institute
is in the habit of displaying when memoirs or models are offered to it
relating to the squaring of the circle or perpetual motion; which it is
the rule to pass over without notice. They would feel as astronomers and
natural philosophers must have felt when, some half a dozen years ago, an
unknown man came forward, and asked for an opportunity to demonstrate to
Arago and his colleagues that the moon and planets were at a distance of
a little more than a hundred miles from the earth. And so they would not
even look into Homoeopathy, though all its advocates should exclaim in
the words of Mr. Benjamin Douglass Perkins, vender of the Metallic
Tractors, that "On all discoveries there are persons who, without
descending to any inquiry into the truth, pretend to know, as it were by
intuition, that newly asserted facts are founded in the grossest errors."
And they would lay their heads upon their pillows with a perfectly clear
conscience, although they were assured that they were behaving in the
same way that people of old did towards Harvey, Galileo, and Copernicus,
the identical great names which were invoked by Mr. Benjamin Douglass
Perkins.
But experience has shown that the character of these assertions is not
sufficient to deter many, from examining their claims to belief. I
therefore lean but very slightly on the extravagance and extreme apparent
singularity of their pretensions. I might have omitted them, but on the
whole it seemed more just to the claims of my argument to suggest the
vast complication of improbabilities involved in the statements
enumerated. Every one must of course judge for himself as to the weight
of these objections, which are by no means brought forward as a proof of
the extravagance of Homoeopathy, but simply as entitled to a brief
consideration before the facts of the case are submitted to our scrutiny.
The three great asserted discoveries of Hahnemann are entirely
unconnected with and independent of each other. Were there any natural
relation between them it would seem probable enough that the discovery of
the first would have led to that of the others. But assuming it to be a
fact that diseases are cured by remedies capable of producing symptoms
like their own, no manifest relation exists between this fact and the
next assertion, namely, the power of the infinitesimal doses. And
allowing both these to be true, neither has the remotest affinity to the
third new doctrine, that which declares seven eighths of all chronic
diseases to be owing to Psora.
This want of any obvious relation between Hahnemann's three cardinal
doctrines appears to be self-evident upon inspection. But if, as is
often true with his disciples, they prefer the authority of one of their
own number, I will refer them to Dr. Trinks's paper on the present state
of Homoeopathy in Europe, with which, of course, they are familiar, as
his name is mentioned as one of the most prominent champions of their
faith, in their American official organ. It would be a fact without a
parallel in the history, not merely of medicine, but of science, that
three such unconnected and astonishing discoveries, each of them a
complete revolution of all that ages of the most varied experience had
been taught to believe, should spring full formed from the brain of a
single individual.
Let us look a moment at the first of his doctrines. Improbable though it
may seem to some, there is no essential absurdity involved in the
proposition that diseases yield to remedies capable of producing like
symptoms. There are, on the other hand, some analogies which lend a
degree of plausibility to the statement. There are well-ascertained
facts, known from the earliest periods of medicine, showing that, under
certain circumstances, the very medicine which, from its known effects,
one would expect to aggravate the disease, may contribute to its relief.
I may be permitted to allude, in the most general way, to the case in
which the spontaneous efforts of an overtasked stomach are quieted by the
agency of a drug which that organ refuses to entertain upon any terms.
But that every cure ever performed by medicine should have been founded
upon this principle, although without the knowledge of a physician; that
the Homoeopathic axiom is, as Hahnemann asserts, "the sole law of nature
in therapeutics," a law of which nothing more than a transient glimpse
ever presented itself to the innumerable host of medical observers, is a
dogma of such sweeping extent, and pregnant novelty, that it demands a
corresponding breadth and depth of unquestionable facts to cover its vast
pretensions.
So much ridicule has been thrown upon the pretended powers of the minute
doses that I shall only touch upon this point for the purpose of
conveying, by illustrations, some shadow of ideas far transcending the
powers of the imagination to realize. It must be remembered that these
comparisons are not matters susceptible of dispute, being founded on
simple arithmetical computations, level to the capacity of any
intelligent schoolboy. A person who once wrote a very small pamphlet
made some show of objecting to calculations of thus kind, on the ground
that the highest dilutions could easily be made with a few ounces of
alcohol. But he should have remembered that at every successive dilution
he lays aside or throws away ninety-nine hundredths of the fluid on which
he is operating, and that, although he begins with a drop, he only
prepares a millionth, billionth, trillionth, and similar fractions of it,
all of which, added together, would constitute but a vastly minute
portion of the drop with which he began. But now let us suppose we take
one single drop of the Tincture of Camomile, and that the whole of this
were to be carried through the common series of dilutions.
A calculation nearly like the following was made by Dr. Panvini, and may
be readily followed in its essential particulars by any one who chooses.
For the first dilution it would take 100 drops of alcohol.
For the second dilution it would take 10;000 drops, or about a pint.
For the third dilution it would take 100 pints.
For the fourth dilution it would take 10,000 pints, or more than 1,000
gallons, and so on to the ninth dilution, which would take ten billion
gallons, which he computed would fill the basin of Lake Agnano, a body of
water two miles in circumference. The twelfth dilution would of course
fill a million such lakes. By the time the seventeenth degree of
dilution should be reached, the alcohol required would equal in quantity
the waters of ten thousand Adriatic seas. Trifling errors must be
expected, but they are as likely to be on one side as the other, and any
little matter like Lake Superior or the Caspian would be but a drop in
the bucket.
Swallowers of globules, one of your little pellets, moistened in the
mingled waves of one million lakes of alcohol, each two miles in
circumference, with which had been blended that one drop of Tincture of
Camomile, would be of precisely the strength recommended for that
medicine in your favorite Jahr's Manual, "against the most sudden,
frightful, and fatal diseases!" [In the French edition of 1834, the
proper doses of the medicines are mentioned, and Camomile is marked IV.
Why are the doses omitted in Hull's Translation, except in three
instances out of the whole two hundred remedies, notwithstanding the
promise in the preface that "some remarks upon the doses used may be
found at the head of each medicine"? Possibly because it makes no
difference whether they are employed in one Homoeopathic dose or another;
but then it is very singular that such precise directions were formerly
given in the same work, and that Hahnemann's "experience" should have led
him to draw the nice distinctions we have seen in a former part of this
Lecture (p. 44).]
And proceeding on the common data, I have just made a calculation which
shows that this single drop of Tincture of Camomile, given in the
quantity ordered by Jahr's Manual, would have supplied every individual
of the whole human family, past and present, with more than five billion
doses each, the action of each dose lasting about four days.
Yet this is given only at the quadrillionth, or fourth degree of potency,
and various substances are frequently administered at the decillionth or
tenth degree, and occasionally at still higher attenuations with
professed medicinal results. Is there not in this as great an exception
to all the hitherto received laws of nature as in the miracle of the
loaves and fishes? Ask this question of a Homoeopathist, and he will
answer by referring to the effects produced by a very minute portion of
vaccine matter, or the extraordinary diffusion of odors. But the vaccine
matter is one of those substances called morbid poisons, of which it is a
peculiar character to multiply themselves, when introduced into the
system, as a seed does in the soil. Therefore the hundredth part of a
grain of the vaccine matter, if no more than this is employed, soon
increases in quantity, until, in the course of about a week, it is a
grain or more, and can be removed in considerable drops. And what is a
very curious illustration of Homoeopathy, it does not produce its most.
characteristic effects until it is already in sufficient quantity not
merely to be visible, but to be collected for further use. The
thoughtlessness which can allow an inference to be extended from a
product of disease possessing this susceptibility of multiplication when
conveyed into the living body, to substances of inorganic origin, such as
silex or sulphur, would be capable of arguing that a pebble may produce a
mountain, because an acorn can become a forest.
As to the analogy to be found between the alleged action of the
infinitely attenuated doses, and the effects of some odorous substances
which possess the extraordinary power of diffusing their imponderable
emanations through a very wide space, however it may be abused in
argument, and rapidly as it evaporates on examination, it is not like
that just mentioned, wholly without meaning. The fact of the vast
diffusion of some odors, as that of musk or the rose, for instance, has
long been cited as the most remarkable illustration of the divisibility
of matter, and the nicety of the senses. And if this were compared with
the effects of a very minute dose of morphia on the whole system, or the
sudden and fatal impression of a single drop of prussic acid, or, with
what comes still nearer, the poisonous influence of an atmosphere
impregnated with invisible malaria, we should find in each of these
examples an evidence of the degree to which nature, in some few
instances, concentrates powerful qualities in minute or subtile forms of
matter. But if a man comes to me with a pestle and mortar in his hand,
and tells me that he will take a little speck of some substance which
nobody ever thought to have any smell at all, as, for instance, a grain
of chalk or of charcoal, and that he will, after an hour or two of
rubbing and scraping, develop in a portion of it an odor which, if the
whole grain were used, would be capable of pervading an apartment, a
house, a village, a province, an empire, nay, the entire atmosphere of
this broad planet upon which we tread; and that from each of fifty or
sixty substances he can in this way develop a distinct and hitherto
unknown odor: and if he tries to show that all this is rendered quite
reasonable by the analogy of musk and roses, I shall certainly be
justified in considering him incapable of reasoning, and beyond the reach
of my argument. What if, instead of this, he professes to develop new
and wonderful medicinal powers from the same speck of chalk or charcoal,
in such proportions as would impregnate every pond, lake, river, sea, and
ocean of our globe, and appeals to the same analogy in favor of the
probability of his assertion.
All this may be true, notwithstanding these considerations. But so
extraordinary would be the fact, that a single atom of substances which a
child might swallow without harm by the teaspoonful could, by an easy
mechanical process, be made to develop such inconceivable powers, that
nothing but the strictest agreement of the most cautious experimenters,
secured by every guaranty that they were honest and faithful, appealing
to repeated experiments in public, with every precaution to guard against
error, and with the most plain and peremptory results, should induce us
to lend any credence to such pretensions.
The third doctrine, that Psora, the other name of which you remember, is
the cause of the great majority of chronic diseases, is a startling one,
to say the least. That an affection always recognized as a very
unpleasant personal companion, but generally regarded as a mere temporary
incommodity, readily yielding to treatment in those unfortunate enough to
suffer from it, and hardly known among the better classes of society,
should be all at once found out by a German physician to be the great
scourge of mankind, the cause of their severest bodily and mental
calamities, cancer and consumption, idiocy and madness, must excite our
unqualified surprise. And when the originator of this singular truth
ascribes, as in the page now open before me, the declining health of a
disgraced courtier, the chronic malady of a bereaved mother, even the
melancholy of the love-sick and slighted maiden, to nothing more nor less
than the insignificant, unseemly, and almost unmentionable ITCH, does it
not seem as if the very soil upon which we stand were dissolving into
chaos, over the earthquake-heaving of discovery?
And when one man claims to have established these three independent
truths, which are about as remote from each other as the discovery of the
law of gravitation, the invention of printing, and that of the mariner's
compass, unless the facts in their favor are overwhelming and unanimous,
the question naturally arises, Is not this man deceiving himself, or
trying to deceive others?
I proceed to examine the proofs of the leading ideas of Hahnemann and his
school.
In order to show the axiom, similia similibus curantur (or like is cured
by like), to be the basis of the healing art,--"the sole law of nature in
therapeutics,"--it is necessary,
1. That the symptoms produced by drugs in healthy persons should be
faithfully studied and recorded.
2. That drugs should be shown to be always capable of curing those
diseases most like their own symptoms.
3. That remedies should be shown not to cure diseases when they do not
produce symptoms resembling those presented in these diseases.
1. The effects of drugs upon healthy persons have been studied by
Hahnemann and his associates. Their results were made known in his
Materia Medica, a work in three large volumes in the French translation,
published about eight years ago. The mode of experimentation appears to
have been, to take the substance on trial, either in common or minute
doses, and then to set down every little sensation, every little movement
of mind or body, which occurred within many succeeding hours or days, as
being produced solely by the substance employed. When I have enumerated
some of the symptoms attributed to the power of the drugs taken, you will
be able to judge how much value is to be ascribed to the assertions of
such observers.
The following list was taken literally from the Materia Medica of
Hahnemann, by my friend M. Vernois, for whose accuracy I am willing to
be responsible. He has given seven pages of these symptoms, not
selected, but taken at hazard from the French translation of the work. I
shall be very brief in my citations.
"After stooping some time, sense of painful weight about the head upon
resuming the erect posture."
"An itching, tickling sensation at the outer edge of the palm of the left
hand, which obliges the person to scratch." The medicine was acetate of
lime, and as the action of the globule taken is said to last twenty-eight
days, you may judge how many such symptoms as the last might be supposed
to happen.
Among the symptoms attributed to muriatic acid are these: a catarrh,
sighing, pimples; "after having written a long time with the back a
little bent over, violent pain in the back and shoulder-blades, as if
from a strain,"--"dreams which are not remembered,--disposition to mental
dejection,--wakefulness before and after midnight."
I might extend this catalogue almost indefinitely. I have not cited
these specimens with any view to exciting a sense of the ridiculous,
which many others of those mentioned would not fail to do, but to show
that the common accidents of sensation, the little bodily inconveniences
to which all of us are subject, are seriously and systematically ascribed
to whatever medicine may have been exhibited, even in the minute doses I
have mentioned, whole days or weeks previously.
To these are added all the symptoms ever said by anybody, whether
deserving confidence or not, as I shall hereafter illustrate, to be
produced by the substance in question.
The effects of sixty-four medicinal substances, ascertained by one or
both of these methods, are enumerated in the Materia Medica of Hahnemann,
which may be considered as the basis of practical Homoeopathy. In the
Manual of Jahr, which is the common guide, so far as I know, of those who
practise Homoeopathy in these regions, two hundred remedies are
enumerated, many of which, however, have never been employed in practice.
In at least one edition there were no means of distinguishing those which
had been tried upon the sick from the others. It is true that marks have
been added in the edition employed here, which serve to distinguish them;
but what are we to think of a standard practical author on Materia
Medica, who at one time omits to designate the proper doses of his
remedies, and at another to let us have any means of knowing whether a
remedy has ever been tried or not, while he is recommending its
employment in the most critical and threatening diseases?
I think that, from what I have shown of the character of Hahnemann's
experiments, it would be a satisfaction to any candid inquirer to know
whether other persons, to whose assertions he could look with confidence,
confirm these pretended facts. Now there are many individuals, long and
well known to the scientific world, who have tried these experiments upon
healthy subjects, and utterly deny that their effects have at all
corresponded to Hahnemann's assertions.
I will take, for instance, the statements of Andral (and I am not
referring to his well-known public experiments in his hospital) as to the
result of his own trials. This distinguished physician is Professor of
Medicine in the School of Paris, and one of the most widely known and
valued authors upon practical and theoretical subjects the profession can
claim in any country. He is a man of great kindness of character, a most
liberal eclectic by nature and habit, of unquestioned integrity, and is
called, in the leading article of the first number of the "Homoepathic
Examiner," "an eminent and very enlightened allopathist." Assisted by a
number of other persons in good health, he experimented on the effects of
cinchona, aconite, sulphur, arnica, and the other most highly extolled
remedies. His experiments lasted a year, and he stated publicly to the
Academy of Medicine that they never produced the slightest appearance of
the symptoms attributed to them. The results of a man like this, so
extensively known as one of the most philosophical and candid, as well as
brilliant of instructors, and whose admirable abilities and signal
liberality are generally conceded, ought to be of great weight in
deciding the question.
M. Double, a well-known medical writer and a physician of high standing
in Paris, had occasion so long ago as 1801, before he had heard of
Homoeopathy, to make experiments upon Cinchona, or Peruvian bark. He and
several others took the drug in every kind of dose for four months, and
the fever it is pretended by Hahnemann to excite never was produced.
M. Bonnet, President of the Royal Society of Medicine of Bordeaux, had
occasion to observe many soldiers during the Peninsular War, who made use
of Cinchona as a preservative against different diseases, but he never
found it to produce the pretended paroxysms.
If any objection were made to evidence of this kind, I would refer to the
express experiments on many of the Homoeopathic substances, which were
given to healthy persons with every precaution as to diet and regimen, by
M. Louis Fleury, without being followed by the slightest of the pretended
consequences. And let me mention as a curious fact, that the same
quantity of arsenic given to one animal in the common form of the
unprepared powder, and to another after having been rubbed up into six
hundred globules, offered no particular difference of activity in the two
cases.
This is a strange contradiction to the doctrine of the development of
what they call dynamic power, by means of friction and subdivision.
In 1835 a public challenge was offered to the best known Homoeopathic
physician in Paris to select any ten substances asserted to produce the
most striking effects; to prepare them himself; to choose one by lot
without knowing which of them he had taken, and try it upon himself or
any intelligent and devoted Homoeopathist, and, waiting his own time, to
come forward and tell what substance had been employed. The challenge
was at first accepted, but the acceptance retracted before the time of
trial arrived.
From all this I think it fair to conclude that the catalogues of symptoms
attributed in Homoeopathic works to the influence of various drugs upon
healthy persons are not entitled to any confidence.
2. It is necessary to show, in the next place, that medicinal substances
are always capable of curing diseases most like their own symptoms. For
facts relating to this question we must look to two sources; the recorded
experience of the medical profession in general, and the results of
trials made according to Homoeopathic principles, and capable of testing
the truth of the doctrine.
No person, that I am aware of, has ever denied that in some cases there
exists a resemblance between the effects of a remedy and the symptoms of
diseases in which it is beneficial. This has been recognized, as
Hahnemann himself has shown, from the time of Hippocrates. But according
to the records of the medical profession, as they have been hitherto
interpreted, this is true of only a very small proportion of useful
remedies. Nor has it ever been considered as an established truth that
the efficacy of even these few remedies was in any definite ratio to
their power of producing symptoms more or less like those they cured.
Such was the state of opinion when Hahnemann came forward with the
proposition that all the cases of successful treatment found in the works
of all preceding medical writers were to be ascribed solely to the
operation of the Homoeopathic principle, which had effected the cure,
although without the physician's knowledge that this was the real secret.
And strange as it may seem, he was enabled to give such a degree of
plausibility to this assertion, that any person not acquainted somewhat
with medical literature, not quite familiar, I should rather say, with
the relative value of medical evidence, according to the sources whence
it is derived, would be almost frightened into the belief, at seeing the
pages upon pages of Latin names he has summoned as his witnesses.
It has hitherto been customary, when examining the writings of authors of
preceding ages, upon subjects as to which they were less enlightened than
ourselves, and which they were very liable to misrepresent, to exercise
some little discretion; to discriminate, in some measure, between writers
deserving confidence and those not entitled to it. But there is not the
least appearance of any such delicacy on the part of Hahnemann. A large
majority of the names of old authors he cites are wholly unknown to
science. With some of them I have been long acquainted, and I know that
their accounts of diseases are no more to be trusted than their
contemporary Ambroise Pare's stories of mermen, and similar absurdities.
But if my judgment is rejected, as being a prejudiced one, I can refer to
Cullen, who mentioned three of Hahnemann's authors in one sentence, as
being "not necessarily bad authorities; but certainly such when they
delivered very improbable events;" and as this was said more than half a
century ago, it could not have had any reference to Hahnemann. But
although not the slightest sign of discrimination is visible in his
quotations,--although for him a handful of chaff from Schenck is all the
same thing as a measure of wheat from Morgagni,--there is a formidable
display of authorities, and an abundant proof of ingenious researches to
be found in each of the great works of Hahnemann with which I am
familiar. [Some painful surmises might arise as to the erudition of
Hahnemann's English Translator, who makes two individuals of "Zacutus,
Lucitanus," as well as respecting that of the conductors of an American
Homoeopathic periodical, who suffer the name of the world-renowned
Cardanus to be spelt Cardamus in at least three places, were not this
gross ignorance of course attributable only to the printer.]
It is stated by Dr. Leo-Wolf, that Professor Joerg, of Leipsic, has
proved many of Hahnemann's quotations from old authors to be adulterate
and false. What particular instances he has pointed out I have no means
of learning. And it is probably wholly impossible on this side of the
Atlantic, and even in most of the public libraries of Europe, to find
anything more than a small fraction of the innumerable obscure
publications which the neglect of grocers and trunkmakers has spared to
be ransacked by the all-devouring genius of Homoeopathy. I have
endeavored to verify such passages as my own library afforded me the
means of doing. For some I have looked in vain, for want, as I am
willing to believe, of more exact references. But this I am able to
affirm, that, out of the very small number which I have been able, to
trace back to their original authors, I have found two to be wrongly
quoted, one of them being a gross misrepresentation.
The first is from the ancient Roman author, Caelius Aurelianus; the
second from the venerable folio of Forestus. Hahnemann uses the
following expressions,--if he is not misrepresented in the English
Translation of the 'Organon': "Asclepiades on one occasion cured an
inflammation of the brain by administering a small quantity of wine."
After correcting the erroneous reference of the Translator, I can find no
such case alluded to in the chapter. But Caelius Aurelianus mentions two
modes of treatment employed by Asclepiades, into both of which the use of
wine entered, as being "in the highest degree irrational and dangerous."
[Caelius Aurel. De Morb. Acut. et Chron. lib. I. cap. xv. not xvi.
Amsterdam. Wetstein, 1755.]
In speaking of the oil of anise-seed, Hahnemann says that Forestus
observed violent colic caused by its administration. But, as the author
tells the story, a young man took, by the counsel of a surgeon, an acrid
and virulent medicine, the name of which is not given, which brought on a
most cruel fit of the gripes and colic. After this another surgeon was
called, who gave him oil of anise-seed and wine, "which increased his
suffering." [Observ. et Curat. Med. lib. XXI obs. xiii. Frankfort,
1614.] Now if this was the Homoeopathic remedy, as Hahnemann pretends,
it might be a fair question why the young man was not cured by it. But
it is a much graver question why a man who has shrewdness and learning
enough to go so far after his facts, should think it right to treat them
with such astonishing negligence or such artful unfairness.
Even if every word he had pretended to take from his old authorities were
to be found in them, even if the authority of every one of these authors
were beyond question, the looseness with which they are used to prove
whatever Hahnemann chooses is beyond the bounds of credibility. Let me
give one instance to illustrate the character of this man's mind.
Hahnemann asserts, in a note annexed to the 110th paragraph of the
"Organon," that the smell of the rose will cause certain persons to
faint. And he says in the text that substances which produce peculiar
effects of this nature on particular constitutions cure the same symptoms
in people in general. Then in another note to the same paragraph he
quotes the following fact from one of the last sources one would have
looked to for medical information, the Byzantine Historians.
"It was by these means (i.e. Homoeopathically) that the Princess Eudosia
with rose-water restored a person who had fainted!"
Is it possible that a man who is guilty of such pedantic folly as
this,--a man who can see a confirmation of his doctrine in such a
recovery as this,--a recovery which is happening every day, from a breath
of air, a drop or two of water, untying a bonnet-string, loosening a
stay-lace, and which can hardly help happening, whatever is done,--is it
possible that a man, of whose pages, not here and there one, but hundreds
upon hundreds are loaded with such trivialities, is the Newton, the
Columbus, the Harvey of the nineteenth century!
The whole process of demonstration he employs is this. An experiment is
instituted with some drug upon one or more healthy persons. Everything
that happens for a number of days or weeks is, as we have seen, set down
as an effect of the medicine. Old volumes are then ransacked
promiscuously, and every morbid sensation or change that anybody ever
said was produced by the drug in question is added to the list of
symptoms. By one or both of these methods, each of the sixty-four
substances enumerated by Hahnemann is shown to produce a very large
number of symptoms, the lowest in his scale being ninety-seven, and the
highest fourteen hundred and ninety-one. And having made out this list
respecting any drug, a catalogue which, as you may observe in any
Homoeopathic manual, contains various symptoms belonging to every organ
of the body, what can be easier than to find alleged cures in every
medical author which can at once be attributed to the Homoeopathic
principle; still more if the grave of extinguished credulity is called
upon to give up its dead bones as living witnesses; and worst of all, if
the monuments of the past are to be mutilated in favor of "the sole law
of Nature in therapeutics"?
There are a few familiar facts of which great use has been made as an
entering wedge for the Homoeopathic doctrine. They have been suffered to
pass current so long that it is time they should be nailed to the
counter, a little operation which I undertake, with perfect cheerfulness,
to perform for them.
The first is a supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law found in the
precept given for the treatment of parts which have been frozen, by
friction with snow or similar means. But we deceive ourselves by names,
if we suppose the frozen part to be treated by cold, and not by heat.
The snow may even be actually warmer than the part to which it is
applied. But even if it were at the same temperature when applied, it
never did and never could do the least good to a frozen part, except as a
mode of regulating the application of what? of heat. But the heat must
be applied gradually, just as food must be given a little at a time to
those perishing with hunger. If the patient were brought into a warm
room, heat would be applied very rapidly, were not something interposed
to prevent this, and allow its gradual admission. Snow or iced water is
exactly what is wanted; it is not cold to the part; it is very possibly
warm, on the contrary, for these terms are relative, and if it does not
melt and let the heat in, or is not taken away, the part will remain
frozen up until doomsday. Now the treatment of a frozen limb by heat, in
large or small quantities, is not Homoeopathy.
The next supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law is the alleged
successful management of burns, by holding them to the fire. This is a
popular mode of treating those burns which are of too little consequence
to require any more efficacious remedy, and would inevitably get well of
themselves, without any trouble being bestowed upon them. It produces a
most acute pain in the part, which is followed by some loss of
sensibility, as happens with the eye after exposure to strong light, and
the ear after being subjected to very intense sounds. This is all it is
capable of doing, and all further notions of its efficacy must be
attributed merely to the vulgar love of paradox. If this example affords
any comfort to the Homoeopathist, it seems as cruel to deprive him of it
as it would be to convince the mistress of the smoke-jack or the flatiron
that the fire does not literally "draw the fire out," which is her
hypothesis.
But if it were true that frost-bites were cured by cold and burns by
heat, it would be subversive, so far as it went, of the great principle
of Homoeopathy.
For you will remember that this principle is that Like cures Like, and
not that Same cures Same; that there is resemblance and not identity
between the symptoms of the disease and those produced by the drug which
cures it, and none have been readier to insist upon this distinction than
the Homoeopathists themselves. For if Same cures Same, then every poison
must be its own antidote,--which is neither a part of their theory nor
their so-called experience. They have been asked often enough, why it
was that arsenic could not cure the mischief which arsenic had caused,
and why the infectious cause of small-pox did not remedy the disease it
had produced, and then the; were ready enough to see the distinction I
have pointed out. O no! it was not the hair of the same dog, but only of
one very much like him!
A third instance in proof of the Homoeopathic law is sought for in the
acknowledged efficacy of vaccination. And how does the law apply to
this? It is granted by the advocates of Homoeopathy that there is a
resemblance between the effects of the vaccine virus on a person in
health and the symptoms of small-pox. Therefore, according to the rule,
the vaccine virus will cure the small-pox, which, as everybody knows, is
entirely untrue. But it prevents small-pox, say the Homoeopathists.
Yes, and so does small-pox prevent itself from ever happening again, and
we know just as much of the principle involved in the one case as in the
other. For this is only one of a series of facts which we are wholly
unable to explain. Small-pox, measles, scarlet-fever, hooping-cough,
protect those who have them once from future attacks; but nettle-rash and
catarrh and lung fever, each of which is just as Homoeopathic to itself
as any one of the others, have no such preservative power. We are
obliged to accept the fact, unexplained, and we can do no more for
vaccination than for the rest.
I come now to the most directly practical point connected with the
subject, namely,--
What is the state of the evidence as to the efficacy of the proper
Homoeopathic treatment in the cure of diseases.
As the treatment adopted by the Homoeopathists has been almost
universally by means of the infinitesimal doses, the question of their
efficacy is thrown open, in common with that of the truth of their
fundamental axiom, as both are tested in practice.
We must look for facts as to the actual working of Homoeopathy to three
sources.
1. The statements of the unprofessional public.
2. The assertions of Homoeopathic practitioners.
3. The results of trials by competent and honest physicians, not pledged
to the system.
I think, after what we have seen of medical facts, as they are
represented by incompetent persons, we are disposed to attribute little
value to all statements of wonderful cures, coming from those who have
never been accustomed to watch the caprices of disease, and have not
cooled down their young enthusiasm by the habit of tranquil observation.
Those who know nothing of the natural progress of a malady, of its
ordinary duration, of its various modes of terminating, of its liability
to accidental complications, of the signs which mark its insignificance
or severity, of what is to be expected of it when left to itself, of how
much or how little is to be anticipated from remedies, those who know
nothing or next to nothing of all these things, and who are in a great
state of excitement from benevolence, sympathy, or zeal for a new medical
discovery, can hardly be expected to be sound judges of facts which have
misled so many sagacious men, who have spent their lives in the daily
study and observation of them. I believe that, after having drawn the
portrait of defunct Perkinism, with its five thousand printed cures, and
its million and a half computed ones, its miracles blazoned about through
America, Denmark, and England; after relating that forty years ago women
carried the Tractors about in their pockets, and workmen could not make
them fast enough for the public demand; and then showing you, as a
curiosity, a single one of these instruments, an odd one of a pair, which
I obtained only by a lucky accident, so utterly lost is the memory of all
their wonderful achievements; I believe, after all this, I need not waste
time in showing that medical accuracy is not to be looked for in the
florid reports of benevolent associations, the assertions of illustrious
patrons, the lax effusions of daily journals, or the effervescent gossip
of the tea-table.
Dr. Hering, whose name is somewhat familiar to the champions of
Homoeopathy, has said that "the new healing art is not to be judged by
its success in isolated cases only, but according to its success in
general, its innate truth, and the incontrovertible nature of its innate
principles."
We have seen something of "the incontrovertible nature of its innate
principles," and it seems probable, on the whole, that its success in
general must be made up of its success in isolated cases. Some attempts
have been made, however, to finish the whole matter by sweeping
statistical documents, which are intended to prove its triumphant success
over the common practice.
It is well known to those who have had the good fortune to see the
"Homoeopathic Examiner," that this journal led off, in its first number,
with a grand display of everything the newly imported doctrine had to
show for itself. It is well remarked, on the twenty-third page of this
article, that "the comparison of bills of mortality among an equal number
of sick, treated by divers methods, is a most poor and lame way to get at
conclusions touching principles of the healing art." In confirmation of
which, the author proceeds upon the twenty-fifth page to prove the
superiority of the Homoeopathic treatment of cholera, by precisely these
very bills of mortality. Now, every intelligent physician is aware that
the poison of cholera differed so much in its activity at different times
and, places, that it was next to impossible to form any opinion as to the
results of treatment, unless every precaution was taken to secure the
most perfectly corresponding conditions in the patients treated, and
hardly even then. Of course, then, a Russian Admiral, by the name of
Mordvinov, backed by a number of so-called physicians practising in
Russian villages, is singularly competent to the task of settling the
whole question of the utility of this or that kind of treatment; to prove
that, if not more than eight and a half per cent. of those attacked with
the disease perished, the rest owed their immunity to Hahnemann. I can
remember when more than a hundred patients in a public institution were
attacked with what, I doubt not, many Homoeopathic physicians (to say
nothing of Homoeopathic admirals) would have called cholera, and not one
of them died, though treated in the common way, and it is my firm belief
that, if such a result had followed the administration of the omnipotent
globules, it would have been in the mouth of every adept in Europe, from
Quin of London to Spohr of Gandersheim. No longer ago than yesterday, in
one of the most widely circulated papers of this city, there was
published an assertion that the mortality in several Homoeopathic
Hospitals was not quite five in a hundred, whereas, in what are called by
the writer Allopathic Hospitals, it is said to be eleven in a hundred. An
honest man should be ashamed of such an argumentum ad ignorantiam. The
mortality of a hospital depends not merely on the treatment of the
patients, but on the class of diseases it is in the habit of receiving,
on the place where it is, on the season, and many other circumstances.
For instance, there are many hospitals in the great cities of Europe that
receive few diseases of a nature to endanger life, and, on the other
hand, there are others where dangerous diseases are accumulated out of
the common proportion. Thus, in the wards of Louis, at the Hospital of
La Pitie, a vast number of patients in the last stages of consumption
were constantly entering, to swell the mortality of that hospital. It
was because he was known to pay particular attention to the diseases of
the chest that patients laboring under those fatal affections to an
incurable extent were so constantly coming in upon him. It is always a
miserable appeal to the thoughtlessness of the vulgar, to allege the
naked fact of the less comparative mortality in the practice of one
hospital or of one physician than another, as an evidence of the
superiority of their treatment. Other things being equal, it must always
be expected that those institutions and individuals enjoying to the
highest degree the confidence of the community will lose the largest
proportion of their patients; for the simple reason that they will
naturally be looked to by those suffering from the gravest class of
diseases; that many, who know that they are affected with mortal disease,
will choose to die under their care or shelter, while the subjects of
trifling maladies, and merely troublesome symptoms, amuse themselves to
any extent among the fancy practitioners. When, therefore, Dr.
Mublenbein, as stated in the "Homoeopathic Examiner," and quoted in
yesterday's "Daily Advertiser," asserts that the mortality among his
patients is only one per cent. since he has practised Homoeopathy,
whereas it was six per cent. when he employed the common mode of
practice, I am convinced by this, his own statement, that the citizens of
Brunswick, whenever they are seriously sick, take good care not to send
for Dr. Muhlenbein!
It is evidently impossible that I should attempt, within the compass of a
single lecture, any detailed examination of the very numerous cases
reported in the Homoeopathic Treatises and Journals. Having been in the
habit of receiving the French "Archives of Homoeopathic Medicine" until
the premature decease of that Journal, I have had the opportunity of
becoming acquainted somewhat with the style of these documents, and
experiencing whatever degree of conviction they were calculated to
produce. Although of course I do not wish any value to be assumed for my
opinion, such as it is, I consider that you are entitled to hear it. So
far, then, as I am acquainted with the general character of the cases
reported by the Homoeopathic physicians, they would for the most part be
considered as wholly undeserving a place in any English, French, or
American periodical of high standing, if, instead of favoring the
doctrine they were intended to support, they were brought forward to
prove the efficacy of any common remedy administered by any common
practitioner. There are occasional exceptions to this remark; but the
general truth of it is rendered probable by the fact that these cases are
always, or almost always, written with the single object of showing the
efficacy of the medicine used, or the skill of the practitioner, and it
is recognized as a general rule that such cases deserve very little
confidence. Yet they may sound well enough, one at a time, to those who
are not fully aware of the fallacies of medical evidence. Let me state a
case in illustration. Nobody doubts that some patients recover under
every form of practice. Probably all are willing to allow that a large
majority, for instance, ninety in a hundred, of such cases as a physician
is called to in daily practice, would recover, sooner or later, with more
or less difficulty, provided nothing were done to interfere seriously
with the efforts of nature.
Suppose, then, a physician who has a hundred patients prescribes to each
of them pills made of some entirely inert substance, as starch, for
instance. Ninety of them get well, or if he chooses to use such
language, he cures ninety of them. It is evident, according to the
doctrine of chances, that there must be a considerable number of
coincidences between the relief of the patient and the administration of
the remedy. It is altogether probable that there will happen two or
three very striking coincidences out of the whole ninety cases, in which
it would seem evident that the medicine produced the relief, though it
had, as we assumed, nothing to do with it. Now suppose that the
physician publishes these cases, will they not have a plausible
appearance of proving that which, as we granted at the outset, was
entirely false? Suppose that instead of pills of starch he employs
microscopic sugarplums, with the five' million billion trillionth part of
a suspicion of aconite or pulsatilla, and then publishes his successful
cases, through the leaden lips of the press, or the living ones of his
female acquaintances,--does that make the impression a less erroneous
one? But so it is that in Homoeopathic works and journals and gossip one
can never, or next to never, find anything but successful cases, which
might do very well as a proof of superior skill, did it not prove as much
for the swindling advertisers whose certificates disgrace so many of our
newspapers. How long will it take mankind to learn that while they listen
to "the speaking hundreds and units," who make the world ring with the
pretended triumphs they have witnessed, the "dumb millions" of deluded
and injured victims are paying the daily forfeit of their misplaced
confidence!
I am sorry to see, also, that a degree of ignorance as to the natural
course of diseases is often shown in these published cases, which,
although it may not be detected by the unprofessional reader, conveys an
unpleasant impression to those who are acquainted with the subject. Thus
a young woman affected with jaundice is mentioned in the German "Annals
of Clinical Homoeopathy" as having been cured in twenty-nine days by
pulsatilla and nux vomica. Rummel, a well-known writer of the same
school, speaks of curing a case of jaundice in thirty-four days by
Homoeopathic doses of pulsatilla, aconite, and cinchona. I happened to
have a case in my own household, a few weeks since, which lasted about
ten days, and this was longer than I have repeatedly seen it in hospital
practice, so that it was nothing to boast of.
Dr. Munneche of Lichtenburg in Saxony is called to a patient with
sprained ankle who had been a fortnight under the common treatment. The
patient gets well by the use of arnica in a little more than a month
longer, and this extraordinary fact is published in the French "Archives
of Homoeopathic Medicine."
In the same Journal is recorded the case of a patient who with nothing
more, so far as any proof goes, than inluenza, gets down to her shop upon
the sixth day.
And again, the cool way in which everything favorable in a case is set
down by these people entirely to their treatment, may be seen in a case
of croup reported in the "Homoeopathic Gazette" of Leipsic, in which
leeches, blistering, inhalation of hot vapor, and powerful internal
medicine had been employed, and yet the merit was all attributed to one
drop of some Homoeopathic fluid.
I need not multiply these quotations, which illustrate the grounds of an
opinion which the time does not allow me to justify more at length; other
such cases are lying open before me; there is no end to them if more were
wanted; for nothing is necessary but to look into any of the numerous
broken-down Journals of Homoeopathy, the volumes of which may be found on
the shelves of those curious in such matters.
A number of public trials of Homoeopathy have been made in different
parts of the world. Six of these are mentioned in the Manifesto of the
"Homoeopathic Examiner." Now to suppose that any trial can absolutely
silence people, would be to forget the whole experience of the past. Dr.
Haygarth and Dr. Alderson could not stop the sale of the five-guinea
Tractors, although they proved that they could work the same miracles
with pieces of wood and tobacco-pipe. It takes time for truth to operate
as well as Homoeopathic globules. Many persons thought the results of
these trials were decisive enough of the nullity of the treatment; those
who wish to see the kind of special pleading and evasion by which it is
attempted to cover results which, stated by the "Homoeopathic Examiner"
itself, look exceedingly like a miserable failure, may consult the
opening flourish of that Journal. I had not the intention to speak of
these public trials at all, having abundant other evidence on the point.
But I think it best, on the whole, to mention two of them in a few
words,--that instituted at Naples and that of Andral.
There have been few names in the medical profession, for the last half
century, so widely known throughout the world of science as that of M.
Esquirol, whose life was devoted to the treatment of insanity, and who
was without a rival in that department of practical medicine. It is from
an analysis communicated by him to the "Gazette Medicale de Paris" that I
derive my acquaintance with the account of the trial at Naples by Dr.
Panvini, physician to the Hospital della Pace. This account seems to be
entirely deserving of credit. Ten patients were set apart, and not
allowed to take any medicine at all,--much against the wish of the
Homoeopathic physician. All of them got well, and of course all of them
would have been claimed as triumphs if they had been submitted to the
treatment. Six other slight cases (each of which is specified) got well
under the Homoeopathic treatment, none of its asserted specific effects
being manifested.
All the rest were cases of grave disease; and so far as the trial, which
was interrupted about the fortieth day, extended, the patients grew
worse, or received no benefit. A case is reported on the page before me
of a soldier affected with acute inflammation in the chest, who took
successively aconite, bryonia, nux vomica, and pulsatilla, and after
thirty-eight days of treatment remained without any important change in
his disease. The Homoeopathic physician who treated these patients was
M. de Horatiis, who had the previous year been announcing his wonderful
cures. And M. Esquirol asserted to the Academy of Medicine in 1835, that
this M. de Horatiis, who is one of the prominent personages in the
"Examiner's" Manifesto published in 1840, had subsequently renounced
Homoeopathy. I may remark, by the way, that this same periodical, which
is so very easy in explaining away the results of these trials, makes a
mistake of only six years or a little more as to the time when this at
Naples was instituted.
M. Andral, the "eminent and very enlightened allopathist" of the
"Homoeopathic Examiner," made the following statement in March, 1835, to
the Academy of Medicine: "I have submitted this doctrine to experiment; I
can reckon at this time from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and
forty cases, recorded with perfect fairness, in a great hospital, under
the eye of numerous witnesses; to avoid every objection--I obtained my
remedies of M. Guibourt, who keeps a Homoeopathic pharmacy, and whose
strict exactness is well known; the regimen has been scrupulously
observed, and I obtained from the sisters attached to the hospital a
special regimen, such as Hahnemann orders. I was told, however, some
months since, that I had not been faithful to all the rules of the
doctrine. I therefore took the trouble to begin again; I have studied
the practice of the Parisian Homoeopathists, as I had studied their
books, and I became convinced that they treated their patients as I had
treated mine, and I affirm that I have been as rigorously exact in the
treatment as any other person."
And he expressly asserts the entire nullity of the influence of all the
Homoeopathic remedies tried by him in modifying, so far as he could
observe, the progress or termination of diseases. It deserves notice
that he experimented with the most boasted substances,--cinchona,
aconite, mercury, bryonia, belladonna. Aconite, for instance, he says he
administered in more than forty cases of that collection of feverish
symptoms in which it exerts so much power, according to Hahnemann, and in
not one of them did it have the slightest influence, the pulse and heat
remaining as before.
These statements look pretty honest, and would seem hard to be explained
away, but it is calmly said that he "did not know enough of the method to
select the remedies with any tolerable precision." ["Homoeopathic
Examiner, vol. i. p. 22.]
"Nothing is left to the caprice of the physician." (In a word, instead
of being dependent upon blind chance, that there is an infallible law,
guided by which; the physician MUST select the proper remedies.')
['Ibid.,' in a notice of Menzel's paper.] Who are they that practice
Homoeopathy, and say this of a man with the Materia Medica of Hahnemann
lying before him? Who are they that send these same globules, on which
he experimented, accompanied by a little book, into families, whose
members are thought competent to employ them, when they deny any such
capacity to a man whose life has been passed at the bedside of patients,
the most prominent teacher in the first Medical Faculty in the world, the
consulting physician of the King of France, and one of the most renowned
practical writers, not merely of his nation, but of his age? I leave the
quibbles by which such persons would try to creep out from under the
crushing weight of these conclusions to the unfortunates who suppose that
a reply is equivalent to an answer.
Dr. Baillie, one of the physicians in the great Hotel Dieu of Paris,
invited two Homoeopathic practitioners to experiment in his wards. One of
these was Curie, now of London, whose works are on the counters of some
of our bookstores, and probably in the hands of some of my audience.
This gentleman, whom Dr. Baillie declares to be an enlightened man, and
perfectly sincere in his convictions, brought his own medicines from the
pharmacy which furnished Hahnemann himself, and employed them for four or
five months upon patients in his ward, and with results equally
unsatisfactory, as appears from Dr. Baillie's statement at a meeting of
the Academy of Medicine. And a similar experiment was permitted by the
Clinical Professor of the Hotel Dieu of Lyons, with the same complete
failure.
But these are old and prejudiced practitioners. Very well, then take the
statement of Dr. Fleury, a most intelligent young physician, who treated
homoeopathically more than fifty patients, suffering from diseases which
it was not dangerous to treat in this way, taking every kind of
precaution as to regimen, removal of disturbing influences, and the state
of the atmosphere, insisted upon by the most vigorous partisans of the
doctrine, and found not the slightest effect produced by the medicines.
And more than this, read nine of these cases, which he has published, as
I have just done, and observe the absolute nullity of aconite,
belladonna, and bryonia, against the symptoms over which they are
pretended to exert such palpable, such obvious, such astonishing
influences. In the view of these statements, it is impossible not to
realize the entire futility of attempting to silence this asserted
science by the flattest and most peremptory results of experiment. Were
all the hospital physicians of Europe and America to devote themselves,
for the requisite period, to this sole pursuit, and were their results to
be unanimous as to the total worthlessness of the whole system in
practice, this slippery delusion would slide through their fingers
without the slightest discomposure, when, as they supposed, they had
crushed every joint in its tortuous and trailing body.
3. I have said, that to show the truth of the Homoeopathic doctrine, as
announced by Hahnemann, it would be necessary to show, in the third
place, that remedies never cure diseases when they are not capable of
producing similar symptoms! The burden of this somewhat comprehensive
demonstration lying entirely upon the advocates of this doctrine, it may
be left to their mature reflections.
It entered into my original plan to treat of the doctrine relating to
Psora, or itch,--an almost insane conception, which I am glad to get rid
of, for this is a subject one does not care to handle without gloves. I
am saved this trouble, however, by finding that many of the disciples of
Hahnemann, those disciples the very gospel of whose faith stands upon his
word, make very light of his authority on this point, although he himself
says, "It has cost me twelve years of study and research to trace out the
source of this incredible number of chronic affections, to discover this
great truth, which remained concealed from all my predecessors and
contemporaries, to establish the basis of its demonstration, and find
out, at the same time, the curative medicines that were fit to combat
this hydra in all its different forms."
But, in the face of all this, the following remarks are made by Wolff, of
Dresden, whose essays, according to the editor of the "Homoeopathic
Examiner," "represent the opinions of a large majority of Homoeopathists
in Europe."
"It cannot be unknown to any one at all familiar with Homoeopathic
literature, that Hahnemann's idea of tracing the large majority of
chronic diseases to actual itch has met with the greatest opposition from
Homoeopathic physicians themselves." And again, "If the Psoric theory
has led to no proper schism, the reason is to be found in the fact that
it is almost without any influence in practice."
We are told by Jahr, that Dr. Griesselich, "Surgeon to the Grand Duke of
Baden," and a "distinguished" Homoeopathist, actually asked Hahnemann for
the proof that chronic diseases, such as dropsy, for instance, never
arise from any other cause than itch; and that, according to common
report, the venerable sage was highly incensed (fort courrouce) with Dr.
Hartmann, of Leipsic, another "distinguished" Homoeopathist, for
maintaining that they certainly did arise from other causes.
And Dr. Fielitz, in the "Homoeopathic Gazette" of Leipsic, after saying,
in a good-natured way, that Psora is the Devil in medicine, and that
physicians are divided on this point into diabolists and exorcists,
declares that, according to a remark of Hahnemann, the whole civilized
world is affected with Psora. I must therefore disappoint any advocate
of Hahnemann who may honor me with his presence, by not attacking a
doctrine on which some of the disciples of his creed would be very happy
to have its adversaries waste their time and strength. I will not meddle
with this excrescence, which, though often used in time of peace, would
be dropped, like the limb of a shell-fish, the moment it was assailed;
time is too precious, and the harvest of living extravagances nods too
heavily to my sickle, that I should blunt it upon straw and stubble.
I will close the subject with a brief examination of some of the
statements made in Homoeopathic works, and more particularly in the
brilliant Manifesto of the "Examiner," before referred to. And first, it
is there stated under the head of "Homoeopathic Literature," that "SEVEN
HUNDRED volumes have been issued from the press developing the
peculiarities of the system, and many of them possessed of a scientific
character that savans know well how to respect." If my assertion were
proper evidence in the case, I should declare, that, having seen a good
many of these publications, from the year 1834, when I bought the work of
the Rev. Thomas Everest, [Dr. Curie speaks of this silly pamphlet as
having been published in 1835.] to within a few weeks, when I received my
last importation of Homaeopathic literature, I have found that all, with
a very few exceptions, were stitched pamphlets varying from twenty or
thirty pages to somewhat less than a hundred, and generally resembling
each other as much as so many spelling-books.
But not being evidence in the case, I will give you the testimony of Dr.
Trinks, of Dresden, who flourishes on the fifteenth page of the same
Manifesto as one of the most distinguished among the Homoeopathists of
Europe. I translate the sentence literally from the "Archives de la
Medecine Homoeopathique."
"The literature of Homoeopathy, if that honorable name must be applied to
all kinds of book-making, has been degraded to the condition of the
humblest servitude. Productions without talent, without spirit, without
discrimination, flat and pitiful eulogies, exaggerations surpassing the
limits of the most robust faith, invectives against such as dared to
doubt the dogmas which had been proclaimed, or catalogues of remedies; of
such materials is it composed! From distance to distance only, have
appeared some memoirs useful to science or practice, which appear as so
many green oases in the midst of this literary desert."
It is a very natural as well as a curious question to ask, What has been
the success of Homoeopathy in the different countries of Europe, and what
is its present condition?
The greatest reliance of the advocates of Homoeopathy is of course on
Germany. We know very little of its medical schools, its medical
doctrines, or its medical men, compared with those of England and France.
And, therefore, when an intelligent traveller gives a direct account from
personal inspection of the miserable condition of the Homoeopathic
hospital at Leipsic, the first established in Europe, and the first on
the list of the ever-memorable Manifesto, it is easy enough answer or
elude the fact by citing various hard names of "distinguished"
practitioners, which sound just as well to the uninformed public as if
they were Meckel, or Tiedemann, or Langenbeck. Dr. Leo-Wolf, who, to be
sure, is opposed to Homoeopathy, but who is a scholar, and ought to know
something of his own countrymen, assures us that "Dr. Kopp is the only
German Homoeopathist, if we can call him so, who has been distinguished
as an author and practitioner before he examined this method." And Dr.
Lee, the same gentleman in whose travels the paragraph relating to the
Leipsic Hospital is to be found, says the same thing. And I will
cheerfully expose myself to any impertinent remark which it might
suggest, to assure my audience that I never heard or saw one authentic
Homoeopathic name of any country in Europe, which I had ever heard
mentioned before as connected with medical science by a single word or
deed sufficient to make it in any degree familiar to my ears, unless
Arnold of Heidelberg is the anatomist who discovered a little nervous
centre, called the otic ganglion. But you need ask no better proof of
who and what the German adherents of this doctrine must be, than the
testimony of a German Homoeopathist as to the wretched character of the
works they manufacture to enforce its claims.
As for the act of this or that government tolerating or encouraging
Homoeopathy, every person of common intelligence knows that it is a mere
form granted or denied according to the general principles of policy
adopted in different states, or the degree of influence which some few
persons who have adopted it may happen to have at court. What may be the
value of certain pompous titles with which many of the advocates of
Homoeopathy are honored, it might be disrespectful to question. But in
the mean time the judicious inquirer may ponder over an extract which I
translate from a paper relating to a personage well known to the
community as Williams the Oculist, with whom I had the honor of crossing
the Atlantic some years since, and who himself handed me two copies of
the paper in question.
"To say that he was oculist of Louis XVIII. and of Charles X., and that
he now enjoys the same title with respect to His Majesty, Louis Philippe,
and the King of the Belgians, is unquestionably to say a great deal; and
yet it is one of the least of his titles to public confidence. His
reputation rests upon a basis more substantial even than the numerous
diplomas with which he is provided, than the membership of the different
medical societies which have chosen him as their associate," etc., etc.
And as to one more point, it is time that the public should fully
understand that the common method of supporting barefaced imposture at
the present day, both in Europe and in this country, consists in trumping
up "Dispensaries," "Colleges of Health," and other advertising charitable
clap-traps, which use the poor as decoy-ducks for the rich, and the
proprietors of which have a strong predilection for the title of
"Professor." These names, therefore, have come to be of little or no
value as evidence of the good character, still less of the high
pretensions of those who invoke their authority. Nor does it follow, even
when a chair is founded in connection with a well-known institution, that
it has either a salary or an occupant; so that it may be, and probably
is, a mere harmless piece of toleration on the part of the government if
a Professorship of Homoeopathy is really in existence at Jena or
Heidelberg. And finally, in order to correct the error of any who might
suppose that the whole Medical Profession of Germany has long since
fallen into the delusions of Hahnemann, I will quote two lines which a
celebrated anatomist and surgeon (whose name will occur again in this
lecture in connection with a very pleasing letter) addressed to the
French Academy of Medicine in 1835. "I happened to be in Germany some
months since, at a meeting of nearly six hundred physicians; one of them
wished to bring up the question of Homoeopathy; they would not even
listen to him." This may have been very impolite and bigoted, but that
is not precisely the point in reference to which I mention the
circumstance.
But if we cannot easily get at Germany, we can very easily obtain exact
information from France and England. I took the trouble to write some
months ago to two friends in Paris, in whom I could place confidence, for
information upon the subject. One of them answered briefly to the effect
that nothing was said about it. When the late Curator of the Lowell
Institute, at his request, asked about the works upon the subject, he was
told that they had remained a long time on the shelves quite unsalable,
and never spoken of.
The other gentleman, [Dr. Henry T. Bigelow, now Professor of Surgery in
Harvard University] whose name is well known to my audience, and who
needs no commendation of mine, had the kindness to procure for me many
publications upon the subject, and some information which sets the whole
matter at rest, so far as Paris is concerned. He went directly to the
Baillieres, the principal and almost the only publishers of all the
Homoeopathic books and journals in that city. The following facts were
taken by him from the account-books of this publishing firm. Four
Homoeopathic Journals have been published in Paris; three of them by the
Baillieres.
The reception they met with may be judged of by showing the number of
subscribers to each on the books of the publishing firm.
A Review published by some other house, which lasted one year, and had
about fifty subscribers, appeared in 1834, 1835.
There were only four Journals of Homoeopathy ever published in Paris. The
Baillieres informed my correspondent that the sale of Homoeopathic books
was much less than formerly, and that consequently they should undertake
to publish no new books upon the subject, except those of Jahr or
Hahnemann. "This man," says my correspondent,--referring to one of the
brothers,--"the publisher and headquarters of Homoeopathy in Paris,
informs me that it is going down in England and Germany as well as in
Paris." For all the facts he had stated he pledged himself as
responsible.
Homoeopathy was in its prime in Paris, he said, in 1836 and 1837, and
since then has been going down.
Louis told my correspondent that no person of distinction in Paris had
embraced Homoeopathy, and that it was declining. If you ask who Louis
is, I refer you to the well-known Homoeopathist, Peschier of Geneva, who
says, addressing him, "I respect no one more than yourself; the feeling
which guides your researches, your labors, and your pen, is so honorable
and rare, that I could not but bow down before it; and I own, if there
were any allopathist who inspired me with higher veneration, it would be
him and not yourself whom I should address."
Among the names of "Distinguished Homoeopathists," however, displayed in
imposing columns, in the index of the "Homoeopathic Examiner," are those
of MARJOLIN, AMUSSAT, and BRESCHET, names well known to the world of
science, and the last of them identified with some of the most valuable
contributions which anatomical knowledge has received since the
commencement of the present century. One Dr. Chrysaora, who stands
sponsor for many facts in that Journal, makes the following statement
among the rest: "Professors, who are esteemed among the most
distinguished of the Faculty (Faculty de Medicine), both as to knowledge
and reputation, have openly confessed the power of Homoeopathia in forms
of disease where the ordinary method of practice proved totally
insufficient. It affords me the highest pleasure to select from among
these gentlemen, Marjolin, Amussat, and Breschet."
Here is a literal translation of an original letter, now in my
possession, from one of these Homoeopathists to my correspondent:--
"DEAR SIR, AND RESPECTED PROFESSIONAL BROTHER:
"You have had the kindness to inform me in your letter that a new
American Journal, the 'New World,' has made use of my name in support of
the pretended Homoeopathic doctrines, and that I am represented as one of
the warmest partisans of Homoeopathy in France.
"I am vastly surprised at the reputation manufactured for me upon the new
continent; but I am obliged, in deference to truth, to reject it with my
whole energy. I spurn far from me everything which relates to that
charlatanism called Homoeopathy, for these pretended doctrines cannot
endure the scrutiny of wise and enlightened persons, who are guided by
honorable sentiments in the practice of the noblest of arts.
"PARIS, 3d November, 1841
"I am, etc., etc.,
"G. BRESCHET,
"Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Member of the Institute, Surgeon
of Hotel Dieu, and Consulting Surgeon to the King, etc." [I first saw M.
Breschet's name mentioned in that Journal]
Concerning Amussat, my correspondent writes, that he was informed by
Madame Hahnemann, who converses in French more readily than her husband,
and therefore often speaks for him, that "he was not a physician, neither
Homoeopathist nor Allopathist, but that he was the surgeon of their own
establishment; that is, performed as a surgeon all the operations they
had occasion for in their practice."
I regret not having made any inquiries as to Marjolin, who, I doubt not,
would strike his ponderous snuff-box until it resounded like the Grecian
horse, at hearing such a doctrine associated with his respectable name.
I was not aware, when writing to Paris, that this worthy Professor, whose
lectures I long attended, was included in these audacious claims; but
after the specimens I have given of the accuracy of the foreign
correspondence of the "Homoeopathic Examiner," any further information I
might obtain would seem so superfluous as hardly to be worth the postage.
Homoeopathy may be said, then, to be in a sufficiently miserable
condition in Paris. Yet there lives, and there has lived for years, the
illustrious Samuel Hahnemann, who himself assured my correspondent that
no place offered the advantages of Paris in its investigation, by reason
of the attention there paid to it.
In England, it appears by the statement of Dr. Curie in October, 1839,
about eight years after its introduction into the country, that there
were eighteen Homoeopathic physicians in the United Kingdom, of whom only
three were to be found out of London, and that many of these practised
Homoeopathy in secret.
It will be seen, therefore, that, according to the recent statement of
one of its leading English advocates, Homoeopathy had obtained not quite
half as many practical disciples in England as Perkinism could show for
itself in a somewhat less period from the time of its first promulgation
in that country.
Dr. Curie's letter, dated London, October 30, 1839, says there is "one in
Dublin, Dr. Luther; at Glasgow, Dr. Scott." The "distinguished"
Chrysaora writes from Paris, dating October 20, 1839, "On the other hand,
Homoeopathy is commencing to make an inroad into England by the way of
Ireland. At Dublin, distinguished physicians have already embraced the
new system, and a great part of the nobility and gentry of that city have
emancipated themselves from the English fashion and professional
authority."
But the Marquis of Anglesea and Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer patronize
Homoeopathy; the Queen Dowager Adelaide has been treated by a
Homoeopathic physician. "Jarley is the delight of the nobility and
gentry." "The Royal Family are the patrons of Jarley."
Let me ask if a Marquis and a Knight are better than two Lords, and if
the Dowager of Royalty is better than Royalty itself, all of which
illustrious dignities were claimed in behalf of Benjamin Douglass
Perkins?
But if the balance is thought too evenly suspended in this case, another
instance can be given in which the evidence of British noblemen and their
ladies is shown to be as valuable in establishing the character of a
medical man or doctrine, as would be the testimony of the Marquis of
Waterford concerning the present condition and prospects of missionary
enterprise. I have before me an octavo volume of more than four hundred
pages, in which, among much similar matter, I find highly commendatory
letters from the Marchioness of Ormond, Lady Harriet Kavanagh, the
Countess of Buckinghamshire, the Right Hon. Viscount Ingestre, M. P., and
the Most Noble, the Marquis of Sligo,--all addressed to "John St. John
Long, Esq," a wretched charlatan, twice tried for, and once convicted of,
manslaughter at the Old Bailey.
This poor creature, too, like all of his tribe, speaks of the medical
profession as a great confederation of bigoted monopolists. He, too,
says that "If an innovator should appear, holding out hope to those in
despair, and curing disorders which the faculty have recorded as
irremediable, he is at once, and without inquiry, denounced as an empiric
and an impostor." He, too, cites the inevitable names of Galileo and
Harvey, and refers to the feelings excited by the great discovery of
Jenner. From the treatment of the great astronomer who was visited with
the punishment of other heretics by the ecclesiastical authorities of a
Catholic country some centuries since, there is no very direct inference
to be drawn to the medical profession of the present time. His name
should be babbled no longer, after having been placarded for the
hundredth time in the pages of St. John Long. But if we are doomed to
see constant reference to the names of Harvey and Jenner in every
worthless pamphlet containing the prospectus of some new trick upon the
public, let us, once for all, stare the facts in the face, and see how
the discoveries of these great men were actually received by the medical
profession.
In 1628, Harvey published his first work upon the circulation. His
doctrines were a complete revolution of the prevailing opinions of all
antiquity. They immediately found both champions and opponents; of which
last, one only, Riolanus, seemed to Harvey worthy of an answer, on
account of his "rank, fame, and learning." Controversy in science, as in
religion, was not, in those days, carried on with all the courtesy which
our present habits demand, and it is possible that some hard words may
have been applied to Harvey, as it is very certain that he used the most
contemptuous expressions towards others.
Harvey declares in his second letter to Riolanus, "Since the first
discovery of the circulation, hardly a day, or a moment, has passed
without my hearing it both well and ill spoken of; some attack it with
great hostility, others defend it with high encomiums; one party believe
that I have abundantly proved the truth of the doctrine against all the
weight of opposing arguments, by experiments, observations, and
dissections; others think it not yet sufficiently cleared up, and free
from objections." Two really eminent Professors, Plempius of Louvain,
and Walaeus of Leyden, were among its early advocates.
The opinions sanctioned by the authority of long ages, and the names of
Hippocrates and Galen, dissolved away, gradually, but certainly, before
the demonstrations of Harvey. Twenty-four years after the publication of
his first work, and six years before his death, his bust in marble was
placed in the Hall of the College of Physicians, with a suitable
inscription recording his discoveries.
Two years after this he was unanimously invited to accept the Presidency
of that body; and he lived to see his doctrine established, and all
reputable opposition withdrawn.
There were many circumstances connected with the discovery of Dr. Jenner
which were of a nature to excite repugnance and opposition. The practice
of inoculation for the small-pox had already disarmed that disease of
many of its terrors. The introduction of a contagious disease from a
brute creature into the human system naturally struck the public mind
with a sensation of disgust and apprehension, and a part of the medical
public may have shared these feelings. I find that Jenner's discovery of
vaccination was made public in June, 1798. In July of the same year the
celebrated surgeon, Mr. Cline, vaccinated a child with virus received
from Dr. Jenner, and in communicating the success of this experiment, he
mentions that Dr. Lister, formerly of the Small-Pox Hospital, and
himself, are convinced of the efficacy of the cow-pox. In November of
the same year, Dr. Pearson published his "Inquiry," containing the
testimony of numerous practitioners in different parts of the kingdom, to
the efficacy of the practice. Dr. HAYGARTH, who was so conspicuous in
exposing the follies of Perkinism, was among the very earliest to express
his opinion in favor of vaccination. In 1801, Dr. Lettsom mentions the
circumstance "as being to the honor of the medical professors, that they
have very generally encouraged this salutary practice, although it is
certainly calculated to lessen their pecuniary advantages by its tendency
to extirpate a fertile source of professional practice."
In the same year the Medical Committee of Paris spoke of vaccination in a
public letter, as "the most brilliant and most important discovery of the
eighteenth century." The Directors of a Society for the Extermination of
the Small-Pox, in a Report dated October 1st, 1807, "congratulate the
public on the very favorable opinion which the Royal College of
Physicians of London, after a most minute and laborious investigation
made by the command of his Majesty, have a second time expressed on the
subject of vaccination, in their Report laid before the House of Commons,
in the last session of Parliament; in consequence of which the sum of
twenty thousand pounds was voted to Dr. Jenner, as a remuneration for his
discovery, in addition to ten thousand pounds before granted." (In June,
1802.)
These and similar accusations, so often brought up against the Medical
Profession, are only one mode in which is manifested a spirit of
opposition not merely to medical science, but to all science, and to all
sound knowledge. It is a spirit which neither understands itself nor the
object at which it is aiming. It gropes among the loose records of the
past, and the floating fables of the moment, to glean a few truths or
falsehoods tending to prove, if they prove anything, that the persons who
have passed their lives in the study of a branch of knowledge the very
essence of which must always consist in long and accurate observation,
are less competent to judge of new doctrines in their own department than
the rest of the community. It belongs to the clown in society, the
destructive in politics, and the rogue in practice.
The name of Harvey, whose great discovery was the legitimate result of
his severe training and patient study, should be mentioned only to check
the pretensions of presumptuous ignorance. The example of Jenner, who
gave his inestimable secret, the result of twenty-two years of experiment
and researches, unpurchased, to the public,--when, as was said in
Parliament, he might have made a hundred thousand pounds by it as well as
any smaller sum,--should be referred to only to rebuke the selfish
venders of secret remedies, among whom his early history obliges us
reluctantly to record Samuel Hahnemann. Those who speak of the great body
of physicians as if they were united in a league to support the
superannuated notions of the past against the progress of improvement,
have read the history of medicine to little purpose. The prevalent
failing of this profession has been, on the contrary, to lend a too
credulous ear to ambitious and plausible innovators. If at the present
time ten years of public notoriety have passed over any doctrine
professing to be of importance in medical science, and if it has not
succeeded in raising up a powerful body of able, learned, and ingenious
advocates for its claims, the fault must be in the doctrine and not in
the medical profession.
Homoeopathy has had a still more extended period of trial than this, and
we have seen with what results. It only remains to throw out a few
conjectures as to the particular manner in which it is to break up and
disappear.
1. The confidence of the few believers in this delusion will never
survive the loss of friends who may die of any acute disease, under a
treatment such as that prescribed by Homoeopathy. It is doubtful how far
cases of this kind will be trusted to its tender mercies, but wherever it
acquires any considerable foothold, such cases must come, and with them
the ruin of those who practise it, should any highly valued life be thus
sacrificed.
2. After its novelty has worn out, the ardent and capricious individuals
who constitute the most prominent class of its patrons will return to
visible doses, were it only for the sake of a change.
3. The Semi-Homoeopathic practitioner will gradually withdraw from the
rotten half of his business and try to make the public forget his
connection with it.
4. The ultra Homoeopathist will either recant and try to rejoin the
medical profession; or he will embrace some newer and if possible equally
extravagant doctrine; or he will stick to his colors and go down with his
sinking doctrine. Very few will pursue the course last mentioned.
A single fact may serve to point out in what direction there will
probably be a movement of the dissolving atoms of Homoeopathy. On the
13th page of the too frequently cited Manifesto of the "Examiner" I read
the following stately paragraph:
"Bigelius, M. D., physician to the Emperor of Russia, whose elevated
reputation is well known in Europe, has been an acknowledged advocate of
Hahnemann's doctrines for several years. He abandoned Allopathia for
Homoeopathia." The date of this statement is January, 1840. I find on
looking at the booksellers' catalogues that one Bigel, or Bigelius, to
speak more classically, has been at various times publishing Homoeopathic
books for some years.
Again, on looking into the "Encyclographie des Sciences Medicales" for
April, 1840, I find a work entitled "Manual of HYDROSUDOPATHY, or the
Treatment of Diseases by Cold Water, etc., etc., by Dr. Bigel, Physician
of the School of Strasburg, Member of the Medico-Chirurgical Institute of
Naples, of the Academy of St. Petersburg,--Assessor of the College of
the Empire of Russia, Physician of his late Imperial Highness the Grand
Duke Constantine, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, etc." Hydrosudopathy
or Hydropathy, as it is sometimes called, is a new medical doctrine or
practice which has sprung up in Germany since Homoeopathy, which it bids
fair to drive out of the market, if, as Dr. Bigel says, fourteen
physicians afflicted with diseases which defied themselves and their
colleagues came to Graefenberg, in the year 1836 alone, and were cured.
Now Dr. Bigel, "whose elevated reputation is well known in Europe,"
writes as follows: "The reader will not fail to see in this defence of
the curative method of Graefenberg a profession of medical faith, and he
will be correct in so doing." And his work closes with the following
sentence, worthy of so distinguished an individual: "We believe, with
religion, that the water of baptism purifies the soul from its original
sin; let us believe also, with experience, that it is for our corporeal
sins the redeemer of the human body." If Bigel, Physician to the late
Grand Duke Constantine, is identical with Bigel whom the "Examiner" calls
Physician to the Emperor of Russia, it appears that he is now actively
engaged in throwing cold water at once upon his patients and the future
prospects of Homoeopathy.
If, as must be admitted, no one of Hahnemann's doctrines is received with
tolerable unanimity among his disciples, except the central axiom,
Similia similibus curantur; if this axiom itself relies mainly for its
support upon the folly and trickery of Hahnemann, what can we think of
those who announce themselves ready to relinquish all the accumulated
treasures of our art, to trifle with life upon the strength of these
fantastic theories? What shall we think of professed practitioners of
medicine, if, in the words of Jahr, "from ignorance, for their personal
convenience, or through charlatanism, they treat their patients one day
Homoeopathically and the next Allopathically;" if they parade their
pretended new science before the unguarded portion of the community; if
they suffer their names to be coupled with it wherever it may gain a
credulous patient; and deny all responsibility for its character, refuse
all argument for its doctrines, allege no palliation for the ignorance
and deception interwoven with every thread of its flimsy tissue, when
they are questioned by those competent to judge and entitled to an
answer?
Such is the pretended science of Homoeopathy, to which you are asked to
trust your lives and the lives of those dearest to you. A mingled mass
of perverse ingenuity, of tinsel erudition, of imbecile credulity, and of
artful misrepresentation, too often mingled in practice, if we may trust
the authority of its founder, with heartless and shameless imposition.
Because it is suffered so often to appeal unanswered to the public,
because it has its journals, its patrons, its apostles, some are weak
enough to suppose it can escape the inevitable doom of utter disgrace and
oblivion. Not many years can pass away before the same curiosity excited
by one of Perkins's Tractors will be awakened at the sight of one of the
Infinitesimal Globules. If it should claim a longer existence, it can
only be by falling into the hands of the sordid wretches who wring their
bread from the cold grasp of disease and death in the hovels of ignorant
poverty.
As one humble member of a profession which for more than two thousand
years has devoted itself to the pursuit of the best earthly interests of
mankind, always assailed and insulted from without by such as are
ignorant of its infinite perplexities and labors, always striving in
unequal contest with the hundred-armed giant who walks in the noonday,
and sleeps not in the midnight, yet still toiling, not merely for itself
and the present moment, but for the race and the future, I have lifted my
voice against this lifeless delusion, rolling its shapeless bulk into the
path of a noble science it is too weak to strike, or to injure.
THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER
Printed in 1843; reprinted with additions, 1855.
THE POINT AT ISSUE.
THE AFFIRMATIVE.
"The disease known as Puerperal Fever is so far contagious as to be
frequently carried from patient to patient by physicians and nurses."
O. W. Holmes, 1843.
THE NEGATIVE.
"The result of the whole discussion will, I trust, serve, not only to
exalt your views of the value and dignity of our profession, but to
divest your minds of the overpowering dread that you can ever become,
especially to woman, under the extremely interesting circumstances of
gestation and parturition, the minister of evil; that you can ever
convey, in any possible manner, a horrible virus, so destructive in its
effects, and so mysterious in its operations as that attributed to
puerperal fever."--Professor Hodge, 1852.
"I prefer to attribute them to accident, or Providence, of which I can
form a conception, rather than to a contagion of which I cannot form any
clear idea, at least as to this particular malady."--Professor Meigs,
1852.
" . . . in the propagation of which they have no more to do, than with
the propagation of cholera from Jessore to San Francisco, and from
Mauritius to St. Petersburg."--Professor Meigs, 1854.
---------------------
"I arrived at that certainty in the matter, that I could venture to
foretell what women would be affected with the disease, upon hearing by
what midwife they were to be delivered, or by what nurse they were to be
attended, during their lying-in; and, almost in every instance, my
prediction was verified."--Gordon, 1795.
"A certain number of deaths is caused every year by the contagion of
puerperal fever, communicated by the nurses and medical attendants."
Farr, in Fifth Annual Report of Registrar-General of England, 1843.
". . . boards of health, if such exist, or, without them, the medical
institutions of a country, should have the power of coercing, or of
inflicting some kind of punishment on those who recklessly go from cases
of puerperal fevers to parturient or puerperal females, without using due
precaution; and who, having been shown the risk, criminally encounter it,
and convey pestilence and death to the persons they are employed to aid
in the most interesting and suffering period of female existence."
--Copland's Medical Dictionary, Art. Puerperal States and Diseases, 1852.
"We conceive it unnecessary to go into detail to prove the contagious
nature of this disease, as there are few, if any, American practitioners
who do not believe in this doctrine."--Dr. Lee, in Additions to Article
last cited.
-----------------------
[INTRODUCTORY NOTE.] It happened, some years ago, that a discussion arose
in a Medical Society of which I was a member, involving the subject of a
certain supposed cause of disease, about which something was known, a
good deal suspected, and not a little feared. The discussion was
suggested by a case, reported at the preceding meeting, of a physician
who made an examination of the body of a patient who had died with
puerperal fever, and who himself died in less than a week, apparently in
consequence of a wound received at the examination, having attended
several women in confinement in the mean time, all of whom, as it was
alleged, were attacked with puerperal fever.
Whatever apprehensions and beliefs were entertained, it was plain that a
fuller knowledge of the facts relating to the subject would be acceptable
to all present. I therefore felt that it would be doing a good service
to look into the best records I could find, and inquire of the most
trustworthy practitioners I knew, to learn what experience had to teach
in the matter, and arrived at the results contained in the following
pages.
The Essay was read before the Boston Society for Medical Improvement,
and, at the request of the Society, printed in the "New England Quarterly
Journal of Medicine and Surgery" for April, 1843. As this Journal never
obtained a large circulation, and ceased to be published after a year's
existence, and as the few copies I had struck off separately were soon
lost sight of among the friends to whom they were sent, the Essay can
hardly be said to have been fully brought before the Profession.
The subject of this Paper has the same profound interest for me at the
present moment as it had when I was first collecting the terrible
evidence out of which, as it seems to me, the commonest exercise of
reason could not help shaping the truth it involved. It is not merely on
account of the bearing of the question,--if there is a question,--on all
that is most sacred in human life and happiness, that the subject cannot
lose its interest. It is because it seems evident that a fair statement
of the facts must produce its proper influence on a very large proportion
of well-constituted and unprejudiced minds. Individuals may, here and
there, resist the practical bearing of the evidence on their own feelings
or interests; some may fail to see its meaning, as some persons may be
found who cannot tell red from green; but I cannot doubt that most
readers will be satisfied and convinced, to loathing, long before they
have finished the dark obituary calendar laid before them.
I do not know that I shall ever again have so good an opportunity of
being useful as was granted me by the raising of the question which
produced this Essay. For I have abundant evidence that it has made many
practitioners more cautious in their relations with puerperal females,
and I have no doubt it will do so still, if it has a chance of being
read, though it should call out a hundred counterblasts, proving to the
satisfaction of their authors that it proved nothing. And for my part, I
had rather rescue one mother from being poisoned by her attendant, than
claim to have saved forty out of fifty patients to whom I had carried the
disease. Thus, I am willing to avail myself of any hint coming from
without to offer this paper once more to the press. The occasion has
presented itself, as will be seen, in a convenient if not in a flattering
form.
I send this Essay again to the MEDICAL PROFESSION, without the change of
a word or syllable. I find, on reviewing it, that it anticipates and
eliminates those secondary questions which cannot be entertained for a
moment until the one great point of fact is peremptorily settled. In its
very statement of the doctrine maintained it avoids all discussion of the
nature of the disease "known as puerperal fever," and all the somewhat
stale philology of the word contagion. It mentions, fairly enough, the
names of sceptics, or unbelievers as to the reality of personal
transmission; of Dewees, of Tonnelle, of Duges, of Baudelocque, and
others; of course, not including those whose works were then unwritten or
unpublished; nor enumerating all the Continental writers who, in
ignorance of the great mass of evidence accumulated by British
practitioners, could hardly be called well informed on this subject. It
meets all the array of negative cases,--those in which disease did not
follow exposure,--by the striking example of small-pox, which, although
one of the most contagious of diseases, is subject to the most remarkable
irregularities and seeming caprices in its transmission. It makes full
allowance for other causes besides personal transmission, especially for
epidemic influences. It allows for the possibility of different modes of
conveyance of the destructive principle. It recognizes and supports the
belief that a series of cases may originate from a single primitive
source which affects each new patient in turn; and especially from cases
of Erysipelas. It does not undertake to discuss the theoretical aspect
of the subject; that is a secondary matter of consideration. Where facts
are numerous, and unquestionable, and unequivocal in their significance,
theory must follow them as it best may, keeping time with their step, and
not go before them, marching to the sound of its own drum and trumpet.
Having thus narrowed its area to a limited practical platform of
discussion, a matter of life and death, and not of phrases or theories,
it covers every inch of it with a mass of evidence which I conceive a
Committee of Husbands, who can count coincidences and draw conclusions as
well as a Synod of Accoucheurs, would justly consider as affording ample
reasons for an unceremonious dismissal of a practitioner (if it is
conceivable that such a step could be waited for), after five or six
funerals had marked the path of his daily visits, while other
practitioners were not thus escorted. To the Profession, therefore, I
submit the paper in its original form, and leave it to take care of
itself.
To the MEDICAL STUDENTS, into whose hands this Essay may fall, some words
of introduction may be appropriate, and perhaps, to a small number of
them, necessary. There are some among them who, from youth, or want of
training, are easily bewildered and confused in any conflict of opinions
into which their studies lead them. They are liable to lose sight of the
main question in collateral issues, and to be run away with by suggestive
speculations. They confound belief with evidence, often trusting the
first because it is expressed with energy, and slighting the latter
because it is calm and unimpassioned. They are not satisfied with proof;
they cannot believe a point is settled so long as everybody is not
silenced. They have not learned that error is got out of the minds that
cherish it, as the taenia is removed from the body, one joint, or a few
joints at a time, for the most part, rarely the whole evil at once. They
naturally have faith in their instructors, turning to them for truth, and
taking what they may choose to give them; babes in knowledge, not yet
able to tell the breast from the bottle, pumping away for the milk of
truth at all that offers, were it nothing better than a Professor's
shrivelled forefinger.
In the earliest and embryonic stage of professional development, any
violent impression on the instructor's mind is apt to be followed by some
lasting effect on that of the pupil. No mother's mark is more permanent
than the mental naevi and moles, and excrescences, and mutilations, that
students carry with them out of the lecture-room, if once the teeming
intellect which nourishes theirs has been scared from its propriety by
any misshapen fantasy. Even an impatient or petulant expression, which
to a philosopher would be a mere index of the low state of amiability of
the speaker at the moment of its utterance, may pass into the young mind
as an element of its future constitution, to injure its temper or corrupt
its judgment. It is a duty, therefore, which we owe to this younger
class of students, to clear any important truth which may have been
rendered questionable in their minds by such language, or any
truth-teller against whom they may have been prejudiced by hasty
epithets, from the impressions such words have left. Until this is done,
they are not ready for the question, where there is a question, for them
to decide. Even if we ourselves are the subjects of the prejudice, there
seems to be no impropriety in showing that this prejudice is local or
personal, and not an acknowledged conviction with the public at large.
It may be necessary to break through our usual habits of reserve to do
this, but this is the fault of the position in which others have placed
us.
Two widely-known and highly-esteemed practitioners, Professors in two of
the largest Medical Schools of the Union, teaching the branch of art
which includes the Diseases of Women, and therefore speaking with
authority; addressing in their lectures and printed publications large
numbers of young men, many of them in the tenderest immaturity of
knowledge, have recently taken ground in a formal way against the
doctrine maintained in this paper:
On the Non-Contagious Character of Puerperal Fever: An Introductory
Lecture. By Hugh L. Hodge, M. D., Professor of Obstetrics in the
University of Pennsylvania. Delivered Monday, October 11, 1852.
Philadelphia, 1852.
On the Nature, Signs, and Treatment of Childbed Fevers: in a Series of
Letters addressed to the Students of his Class. By Charles D. Meigs, M.
D., Professor of Midwifery and the Diseases of Women and Children in
Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, etc., etc. Philadelphia, 1854.
Letter VI.
The first of the two publications, Dr. Hodge's Lecture, while its
theoretical considerations and negative experiences do not seem to me to
require any further notice than such as lay ready for them in my Essay
written long before, is, I am pleased to say, unobjectionable in tone and
language, and may be read without offence.
This can hardly be said of the chapter of Dr. Meigs's volume which treats
of Contagion in Childbed Fever. There are expressions used in it which
might well put a stop to all scientific discussions, were they to form
the current coin in our exchange of opinions. I leave the "very young
gentlemen," whose careful expositions of the results of practice in more
than six thousand cases are characterized as "the jejune and fizenless
dreamings of sophomore writers," to the sympathies of those "dear young
friends," and "dear young gentlemen," who will judge how much to value
their instructor's counsel to think for themselves, knowing what they are
to expect if they happen not to think as he does.
One unpalatable expression I suppose the laws of construction oblige me
to appropriate to myself, as my reward for a certain amount of labor
bestowed on the investigation of a very important question of evidence,
and a statement of my own practical conclusions. I take no offence, and
attempt no retort. No man makes a quarrel with me over the counterpane
that covers a mother, with her new-born infant at her breast. There is
no epithet in the vocabulary of slight and sarcasm that can reach my
personal sensibilities in such a controversy. Only just so far as a
disrespectful phrase may turn the student aside from the examination of
the evidence, by discrediting or dishonoring the witness, does it call
for any word of notice.
I appeal from the disparaging language by which the Professor in the
Jefferson School of Philadelphia world dispose of my claims to be
listened to. I appeal, not to the vote of the Society for Medical
Improvement, although this was an unusual evidence of interest in the
paper in question, for it was a vote passed among my own townsmen; nor to
the opinion of any American, for none know better than the Professors in
the great Schools of Philadelphia how cheaply the praise of native
contemporary criticism is obtained. I appeal to the recorded opinions of
those whom I do not know, and who do not know me, nor care for me, except
for the truth that I may have uttered; to Copland, in his "Medical
Dictionary," who has spoken of my Essay in phrases to which the pamphlets
of American "scribblers" are seldom used from European authorities; to
Ramsbotham, whose compendious eulogy is all that self-love could ask; to
the "Fifth Annual Report" of the Registrar-General of England, in which
the second-hand abstract of my Essay figures largely, and not without
favorable comment, in an important appended paper. These testimonies,
half forgotten until this circumstance recalled them, are dragged into
the light, not in a paroxysm of vanity, but to show that there may be
food for thought in the small pamphlet which the Philadelphia Teacher
treats so lightly. They were at least unsought for, and would never have
been proclaimed but for the sake of securing the privilege of a decent
and unprejudiced hearing.
I will take it for granted that they have so far counterpoised the
depreciating language of my fellow-countryman and fellow-teacher as to
gain me a reader here and there among the youthful class of students I am
now addressing. It is only for their sake that I think it necessary to
analyze, or explain, or illustrate, or corroborate any portion of the
following Essay. But I know that nothing can be made too plain for
beginners; and as I do not expect the practitioner, or even the more
mature student, to take the trouble to follow me through an Introduction
which I consider wholly unnecessary and superfluous for them, I shall not
hesitate to stoop to the most elementary simplicity for the benefit of
the younger student. I do this more willingly because it affords a good
opportunity, as it seems to me, of exercising the untrained mind in that
medical logic which does not seem to have been either taught or practised
in our schools of late, to the extent that might be desired.
I will now exhibit, in a series of propositions reduced to their simplest
expression, the same essential statements and conclusions as are
contained in the Essay, with such commentaries and explanations as may be
profitable to the inexperienced class of readers addressed.
I. It has been long believed, by many competent observers, that
Puerperal Fever (so called) is sometimes carried from patient to patient
by medical assistants.
II. The express object of this Essay is to prove that it is so carried.
III. In order to prove this point, it is not necessary to consult any
medical theorist as to whether or not it is consistent with his
preconceived notions that such a mode of transfer should exist.
IV. If the medical theorist insists on being consulted, and we see fit
to indulge him, he cannot be allowed to assume that the alleged laws of
contagion, deduced from observation in other diseases, shall be cited to
disprove the alleged laws deduced from observation in this. Science
would never make progress under such conditions. Neither the long
incubation of hydrophobia, nor the protecting power of vaccination, would
ever have been admitted, if the results of observation in these
affections had been rejected as contradictory to the previously
ascertained laws of contagion.
V. The disease in question is not a common one; producing, on the
average, about three deaths in a thousand births, according to the
English Registration returns which I have examined.
VI. When an unusually large number of cases of this disease occur about
the same time, it is inferred, therefore, that there exists some special
cause for this increased frequency. If the disease prevails extensively
over a wide region of country, it is attributed without dispute to an
epidemic influence. If it prevails in a single locality, as in a
hospital, and not elsewhere, this is considered proof that some local
cause is there active in its production.
VII. When a large number of cases of this disease occur in rapid
succession, in one individual's ordinary practice, and few or none
elsewhere, these cases appearing in scattered localities, in patients of
the same average condition as those who escape under the care of others,
there is the same reason for connecting the cause of the disease with the
person in this instance, as with the place in that last mentioned.
VIII. Many series of cases, answering to these conditions, are given in
this Essay, and many others will be referred to which have occurred since
it was written.
IX. The alleged results of observation may be set aside; first, because
the so-called facts are in their own nature equivocal; secondly, because
they stand on insufficient authority; thirdly, because they are not
sufficiently numerous. But, in this case, the disease is one of striking
and well-marked character; the witnesses are experts, interested in
denying and disbelieving the facts; the number of consecutive cases in
many instances frightful, and the number of series of cases such that I
have no room for many of them except by mere reference.
X. These results of observation, being admitted, may, we will suppose,
be interpreted in different methods. Thus the coincidences may be
considered the effect of chance. I have had the chances calculated by a
competent person, that a given practitioner, A., shall have sixteen fatal
cases in a month, on the following data: A. to average attendance upon
two hundred and fifty births in a year; three deaths in one thousand
births to be assumed as the average from puerperal fever; no epidemic to
be at the time prevailing. It follows, from the answer given me, that if
we suppose every one of the five hundred thousand annual births of
England to have been recorded during the last half-century, there would
not be one chance in a million million million millions that one such
series should be noted. No possible fractional error in this calculation
can render the chance a working probability. Applied to dozens of series
of various lengths, it is obviously an absurdity. Chance, therefore, is
out of the question as an explanation of the admitted coincidences.
XI. There is, therefore, some relation of cause and effect between the
physician's presence and the patient's disease.
XII. Until it is proved to what removable condition attaching to the
attendant the disease is owing, he is bound to stay away from his
patients so soon as he finds himself singled out to be tracked by the
disease. How long, and with what other precautions, I have suggested,
without dictating, at the close of my Essay. If the physician does not
at once act on any reasonable suspicion of his being the medium of
transfer, the families where he is engaged, if they are allowed to know
the facts, should decline his services for the time. His feelings on the
occasion, however interesting to himself, should not be even named in
this connection. A physician who talks about ceremony and gratitude, and
services rendered, and the treatment he got, surely forgets himself; it
is impossible that he should seriously think of these small matters where
there is even a question whether he may not carry disease, and death, and
bereavement into any one of "his families," as they are sometimes called.
I will now point out to the young student the mode in which he may
relieve his mind of any confusion, or possibly, if very young, any doubt,
which the perusal of Dr. Meigs's Sixth Letter may have raised in his
mind.
The most prominent ideas of the Letter are, first, that the transmissible
nature of puerperal fever appears improbable, and, secondly, that it
would be very inconvenient to the writer. Dr. Woodville, Physician to the
Small-Pox and Inoculation Hospital in London, found it improbable, and
exceedingly inconvenient to himself, that cow pox should prevent
small-pox; but Dr. Jenner took the liberty to prove the fact,
notwithstanding.
I will first call the young student's attention to the show of negative
facts (exposure without subsequent disease), of which much seems to be
thought. And I may at the same time refer him to Dr. Hodge's Lecture,
where he will find the same kind of facts and reasoning. Let him now
take up Watson's Lectures, the good sense and spirit of which have made
his book a universal favorite, and open to the chapter on Continued
Fever. He will find a paragraph containing the following sentence: "A
man might say, 'I was in the battle of Waterloo, and saw many men around
me fall down and die, and it was said that they were struck down by
musket-balls; but I know better than that, for I was there all the time,
and so were many of my friends, and we were never hit by any
musket-balls. Musket-balls, therefore, could not have been the cause of
the deaths we witnessed.' And if, like contagion, they were not palpable
to the senses, such a person might go on to affirm that no proof existed
of there being any such thing as musket-balls." Now let the student turn
back to the chapter on Hydrophobia in the same volume. He will find that
John Hunter knew a case in which, of twenty-one persons bitten, only one
died of the disease. He will find that one dog at Charenton was bitten
at different times by thirty different mad dogs, and outlived it all. Is
there no such thing, then, as hydrophobia? Would one take no especial
precautions if his wife, about to become a mother, had been bitten by a
rabid animal, because so many escape? Or let him look at "Underwood on
Diseases of Children," [Philadelphia, 1842, p. 244, note.] and he will
find the case of a young woman who was inoculated eight times in thirty
days, at the same time attending several children with smallpox, and yet
was not infected. But seven weeks afterwards she took the disease and
died.
It would seem as if the force of this argument could hardly fail to be
seen, if it were granted that every one of these series of cases were so
reported as to prove that there could have been no transfer of disease.
There is not one of them so reported, in the Lecture or the Letter, as to
prove that the disease may not have been carried by the practitioner. I
strongly suspect that it was so carried in some of these cases, but from
the character of the very imperfect evidence the question can never be
settled without further disclosures.
Although the Letter is, as I have implied, principally taken up with
secondary and collateral questions, and might therefore be set aside as
in the main irrelevant, I am willing, for the student's sake, to touch
some of these questions briefly, as an illustration of its logical
character.
The first thing to be done, as I thought when I wrote my Essay, was to
throw out all discussions of the word contagion, and this I did
effectually by the careful wording of my statement of the subject to be
discussed. My object was not to settle the etymology or definition of a
word, but to show that women had often died in childbed, poisoned in some
way by their medical attendants. On the other point, I, at least, have
no controversy with anybody, and I think the student will do well to
avoid it in this connection. If I must define my position, however, as
well as the term in question, I am contented with Worcester's definition;
provided always this avowal do not open another side controversy on the
merits of his Dictionary, which Dr. Meigs has not cited, as compared with
Webster's, which he has.
I cannot see the propriety of insisting that all the laws of the eruptive
fevers must necessarily hold true of this peculiar disease of puerperal
women. If there were any such propriety, the laws of the eruptive fevers
must at least be stated correctly. It is not true, for instance, as Dr.
Meigs states, that contagion is "no respecter of persons;" that "it
attacks all individuals alike." To give one example: Dr. Gregory, of the
Small-Pox Hospital, who ought to know, says that persons pass through
life apparently insensible to or unsusceptible of the small-pox virus,
and that the same persons do not take the vaccine disease.
As to the short time of incubation, of which so much is made, we have no
right to decide beforehand whether it shall be long or short, in the
cases we are considering. A dissection wound may produce symptoms of
poisoning in six hours; the bite of a rabid animal may take as many
months.
After the student has read the case in Dr. Meigs's 136th paragraph, and
the following one, in which he exclaims against the idea of contagion,
because the patient, delivered on the 26th of December, was attacked in
twenty-four hours, and died on the third day, let him read what happened
at the "Black Assizes" of 1577 and 1750. In the first case, six hundred
persons sickened the same night of the exposure, and three hundred more
in three days. [Elliotson's Practice, p. 298.] Of those attacked in the
latter year, the exposure being on the 11th of May, Alderman Lambert died
on the 13th, Under-Sheriff Cox on the 14th, and many of note before the
20th. But these are old stories. Let the student listen then to Dr.
Gerhard, whose reputation as a cautious observer he may be supposed to
know. "The nurse was shaving a man, who died in a few hours after his
entrance; he inhaled his breath, which had a nauseous taste, and in an
hour afterwards was taken with nausea, cephalalgia, and singing of the
ears. From that moment the attack began, and assumed a severe character.
The assistant was supporting another patient, who died soon afterwards;
he felt the pungent heat upon his skin, and was taken immediately with
the symptoms of typhus." [Am. Jour. Med. Sciences, Feb. 1837, p. 299.]
It is by notes of cases, rather than notes of admiration, that we must
be guided, when we study the Revised Statutes of Nature, as laid down
from the curule chairs of Medicine.
Let the student read Dr. Meigs's 140th paragraph soberly, and then
remember, that not only does he infer, suspect, and surmise, but he
actually asserts (page 154), "there was poison in the house," because
three out of five patients admitted into a ward had puerperal fever and
died. Have I not as much right to draw a positive inference from "Dr.
A.'s" seventy exclusive cases as he from the three cases in the ward of
the Dublin Hospital? All practical medicine, and all action in common
affairs, is founded on inferences. How does Dr. Meigs know that the
patients he bled in puerperal fever would not have all got well if he had
not bled them?
"You see a man discharge a gun at another; you see the flash, you hear
the report, you see the person fall a lifeless corpse; and you infer,
from all these circumstances, that there was a ball discharged from the
gun, which entered his body and caused his death, because such is the
usual and natural cause of such an effect. But you did not see the ball
leave the gun, pass through the air, and enter the body of the slain; and
your testimony to the fact of killing is, therefore, only
inferential,--in other words, circumstantial. It is possible that no
ball was in the gun; and we infer that there was, only because we cannot
account for death on any other supposition." [Chief Justice Gibson, in
Am. Law Journal, vol. vi. p. 123.]
"The question always comes to this: Is the circumstance of intercourse
with the sick followed by the appearance of the disease in a proportion
of cases so much greater than any other circumstance common to any
portion of the inhabitants of the place under observation, as to make it
inconceivable that the succession of cases occurring in persons having
that intercourse should have been the result of chance? If so, the
inference is unavoidable, that that intercourse must have acted as a
cause of the disease. All observations which do not bear strictly on
that point are irrelevant, and, in the case of an epidemic first
appearing in a town or district, a succession of two cases is sometimes
sufficient to furnish evidence which, on the principle I have stated, is
nearly irresistible."
Possibly an inexperienced youth may be awe-struck by the quotation from
Cuvier. These words, or their equivalent, are certainly to be found in
his Introduction. So are the words "top not come down"! to be found in
the Bible, and they were as much meant for the ladies' head-dresses as
the words of Cuvier were meant to make clinical observation wait for a
permit from anybody to look with its eyes and count on its fingers. Let
the inquiring youth read the whole Introduction, and he will see what
they mean.
I intend no breach of courtesy, but this is a proper place to warn the
student against skimming the prefaces and introductions of works for
mottoes and embellishments to his thesis. He cannot learn anatomy by
thrusting an exploring needle into the body. He will be very liable to
misquote his author's meaning while he is picking off his outside
sentences. He may make as great a blunder as that simple prince who
praised the conductor of his orchestra for the piece just before the
overture; the musician was too good a courtier to tell him that it was
only the tuning of the instruments.
To the six propositions in the 142d paragraph, and the remarks about
"specific" diseases, the answer, if any is necessary, seems very simple.
An inflammation of a serous membrane may give rise to secretions which
act as a poison, whether that be a "specific" poison or not, as Dr. Homer
has told his young readers, and as dissectors know too well; and that
poison may produce its symptoms in a few hours after the system has
received it, as any may see in Druitt's "Surgery," if they care to look.
Puerperal peritonitis may produce such a poison, and puerperal women may
be very sensible to its influences, conveyed by contact or exhalation.
Whether this is so or not, facts alone can determine, and to facts we
have had recourse to settle it.
The following statement is made by Dr. Meigs in his 142d paragraph, and
developed more at length, with rhetorical amplifications, in the 134th.
"No human being, save a pregnant or parturient woman, is susceptible to
the poison." This statement is wholly incorrect, as I am sorry to have
to point out to a Teacher in Dr. Meigs's position. I do not object to the
erudition which quotes Willis and Fernelius, the last of whom was
pleasantly said to have "preserved the dregs of the Arabs in the honey of
his Latinity." But I could wish that more modern authorities had not
been overlooked. On this point, for instance, among the numerous facts
disproving the statement, the "American Journal of Medical Sciences,"
published not far from his lecture-room, would have presented him with a
respectable catalog of such cases. Thus he might refer to Mr. Storrs's
paper "On the Contagious Effects of Puerperal Fever on the Male Subject;
or on Persons not Childbearing" (Jan. 1846), or to Dr. Reid's case
(April, 1846), or to Dr. Barron's statement of the children's dying of
peritonitis in an epidemic of puerperal fever at the Philadelphia
Hospital (Oct. 1842), or to various instances cited in Dr. Kneeland's
article (April, 186). Or, if he would have referred to the "New York
Journal," he might have seen Prof. Austin Flint's cases. Or, if he had
honored my Essay so far, he might have found striking instances of the
same kind in the first of the new series of cases there reported and
elsewhere. I do not see the bearing of his proposition, if it were true.
But it is one of those assertions that fall in a moment before a slight
examination of the facts; and I confess my surprise, that a professor who
lectures on the Diseases of Women should have ventured to make it.
Nearly seven pages are devoted to showing that I was wrong in saying I
would not be "understood to imply that there exists a doubt in the mind
of any well-informed member of the medical profession as to the fact that
puerperal fever is sometimes communicated from one person to another,
both directly and indirectly." I will devote seven lines to these seven
pages, which seven lines, if I may say it without offence, are, as it
seems to me, six more than are strictly necessary.
The following authors are cited as sceptics by Dr. Meigs: Dewees.--I
cited the same passage. Did not know half the facts. Robert
Lee.--Believes the disease is sometimes communicable by contagion.
Tonnelle, Baudelocque. Both cited by me. Jacquemier.--Published three
years after my Essay. Kiwisch. " Behindhand in knowledge of Puerperal
Fever." [B. & F. Med. Rev. Jan. 1842.] Paul Dubois.--Scanzoni.
These Continental writers not well informed on this point.[See Dr.
Simpson's Remarks at Meeting of Edin. Med. Chir. Soc. (Am. Jour.
Oct. 1851.)]
The story of Von Busch is of interest and value, but there is nothing in
it which need perplex the student. It is not pretended that the disease
is always, or even, it may be, in the majority of cases, carried about by
attendants; only that it is so carried in certain cases. That it may
have local and epidemic causes, as well as that depending on personal
transmission, is not disputed. Remember how small-pox often disappears
from a community in spite of its contagious character, and the necessary
exposure of many persons to those suffering from it; in both diseases
contagion is only one of the coefficients of the disease.
I have already spoken of the possibility that Dr. Meigs may have been the
medium of transfer of puerperal fever in some of the cases he has briefly
catalogued. Of Dr. Rutter's cases I do not know how to speak. I only
ask the student to read the facts stated by Dr. Condie, as given in my
Essay, and say whether or not a man should allow his wife to be attended
by a practitioner in whose hands "scarcely a female that has been
delivered for weeks past has escaped an attack," "while no instance of
the disease has occurred in the patients of any other accoucheur
practising in the same district." If I understand Dr. Meigs and Dr.
Hodge, they would not warn the physician or spare the patient under such
circumstances. They would "go on," if I understand them, not to seven,
or seventy, only, but to seventy times seven, if they could find
patients. If this is not what they mean, may we respectfully ask them to
state what they do mean, to their next classes, in the name of humanity,
if not of science!
I might repeat the question asked concerning Dr. Rutter's cases, with
reference to those reported by Dr. Roberton. Perhaps, however, the
student would like to know the opinion of a person in the habit of
working at matters of this kind in a practical point of view. To satisfy
him on this ground, I addressed the following question to the President
of one of our principal Insurance Companies, leaving Dr. Meigs's book and
my Essay in his hands at the same time.
Question. "If such facts as Roberton's cases were before you, and the
attendant had had ten, or even five fatal cases, or three, or two even,
would you, or would you not, if insuring the life of the next patient to
be taken care of by that attendant, expect an extra premium over that of
an average case of childbirth?"
Answer. "Of course I should require a very large extra premium, if I
would take take risk at all."
But I do not choose to add the expressions of indignation which the
examination of the facts before him called out. I was satisfied from the
effect they produced on him, that if all the hideous catalogues of cases
now accumulated were fully brought to the knowledge of the public,
nothing, since the days of Burke and Hare, has raised such a cry of
horror as would be shrieked in the ears of the Profession.
Dr. Meigs has elsewhere invoked "Providence" as the alternative of
accident, to account for the "coincidences." ("Obstetrics," Phil. 1852,
p. 631.) If so, Providence either acts through the agency of secondary
causes, as in other diseases, or not. If through such causes, let us
find out what they are, as we try to do in other cases. It may be true
that offences, or diseases, will come, but "woe unto him through whom
they come," if we catch him in the voluntary or careless act of bringing
them! But if Providence does not act through secondary causes in this
particular sphere of etiology, then why does Dr. Meigs take such pains to
reason so extensively about the laws of contagion, which, on that
supposition, have no more to do with this case than with the plague which
destroyed the people after David had numbered them? Above all, what
becomes of the theological aspect of the question, when he asserts that a
practitioner was "only unlucky in meeting with the epidemic cases?" (Op.
cit. p. 633.) We do not deny that the God of battles decides the fate of
nations; but we like to have the biggest squadrons on our side, and we
are particular that our soldiers should not only say their prayers, but
also keep their powder dry. We do not deny the agency of Providence in
the disaster at Norwalk, but we turn off the engineer, and charge the
Company five thousand dollars apiece for every life that is sacrificed.
Why a grand jury should not bring in a bill against a physician who
switches off a score of women one after the other along his private
track, when he knows that there is a black gulf at the end of it, down
which they are to plunge, while the great highway is clear, is more than
I can answer. It is not by laying the open draw to Providence that he is
to escape the charge of manslaughter.
To finish with all these lesser matters of question, I am unable to see
why a female must necessarily be unattended in her confinement, because
she declines the services of a particular practitioner. In all the
series of cases mentioned, the death-carrying attendant was surrounded by
others not tracked by disease and its consequences. Which, I would ask,
is worse,--to call in another, even a rival practitioner, or to submit an
unsuspecting female to a risk which an Insurance Company would have
nothing to do with?
I do not expect ever to return to this subject. There is a point of
mental saturation, beyond which argument cannot be forced without
breeding impatient, if not harsh, feelings towards those who refuse to be
convinced. If I have so far manifested neither, it is well to stop here,
and leave the rest to those younger friends who may have more stomach for
the dregs of a stale argument.
The extent of my prefatory remarks may lead some to think that I attach
too much importance to my own Essay. Others may wonder that I should
expend so many words upon the two productions referred to, the Letter and
the Lecture. I do consider my Essay of much importance so long as the
doctrine it maintains is treated as a question, and so long as any
important part of the defence of that doctrine is thought to rest on its
evidence or arguments. I cannot treat as insignificant any opinions
bearing on life, and interests dearer than life, proclaimed yearly to
hundreds of young men, who will carry them to their legitimate results in
practice.
The teachings of the two Professors in the great schools of Philadelphia
are sure to be listened to, not only by their immediate pupils, but by
the Profession at large. I am too much in earnest for either humility or
vanity, but I do entreat those who hold the keys of life and death to
listen to me also for this once. I ask no personal favor; but I beg to
be heard in behalf of the women whose lives are at stake, until some
stronger voice shall plead for them.
I trust that I have made the issue perfectly distinct and intelligible.
And let it be remembered that this is no subject to be smoothed over by
nicely adjusted phrases of half-assent and half-censure divided between
the parties. The balance must be struck boldly and the result declared
plainly. If I have been hasty, presumptuous, ill-informed, illogical; if
my array of facts means nothing; if there is no reason for any caution in
the view of these facts; let me be told so on such authority that I must
believe it, and I will be silent henceforth, recognizing that my mind is
in a state of disorganization. If the doctrine I have maintained is a
mournful truth; if to disbelieve it, and to practise on this disbelief,
and to teach others so to disbelieve and practise, is to carry
desolation, and to charter others to carry it, into confiding families,
let it be proclaimed as plainly what is to be thought of the teachings of
those who sneer at the alleged dangers, and scout the very idea of
precaution. Let it be remembered that persons are nothing in this
matter; better that twenty pamphleteers should be silenced, or as many
professors unseated, than that one mother's life should be taken. There
is no quarrel here between men, but there is deadly incompatibility and
exterminating warfare between doctrines. Coincidences meaning nothing,
though a man have a monopoly of the disease for weeks or months; or cause
and effect, the cause being in some way connected with the person; this
is the question. If I am wrong, let me be put down by such a rebuke as
no rash declaimer has received since there has been a public opinion in
the medical profession of America; if I am right, let doctrines which
lead to professional homicide be no longer taught from the chairs of
those two great Institutions. Indifference will not do here; our
Journalists and Committees have no right to take up their pages with
minute anatomy and tediously detailed cases, while it is a question
whether or not the "blackdeath" of child-bed is to be scattered broadcast
by the agency of the mother's friend and adviser. Let the men who mould
opinions look to it; if there is any voluntary blindness, any interested
oversight, any culpable negligence, even, in such a matter, and the facts
shall reach the public ear; the pestilence-carrier of the lying-in
chamber must look to God for pardon, for man will never forgive him.
THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER.
In collecting, enforcing, and adding to the evidence accumulated upon
this most serious subject, I would not be understood to imply that there
exists a doubt in the mind of any well-informed member of the medical
profession as to the fact that puerperal fever is sometimes communicated
from one person to another, both directly and indirectly. In the present
state of our knowledge upon this point I should consider such doubts
merely as a proof that the sceptic had either not examined the evidence,
or, having examined it, refused to accept its plain and unavoidable
consequences. I should be sorry to think, with Dr. Rigby, that it was a
case of "oblique vision;" I should be unwilling to force home the
argumentum ad hominem of Dr. Blundell, but I would not consent to make a
question of a momentous fact which is no longer to be considered as a
subject for trivial discussions, but to be acted upon with silent
promptitude. It signifies nothing that wise and experienced
practitioners have sometimes doubted the reality of the danger in
question; no man has the right to doubt it any longer. No negative
facts, no opposing opinions, be they what they may, or whose they may,
can form any answer to the series of cases now within the reach of all
who choose to explore the records of medical science.
If there are some who conceive that any important end would be answered
by recording such opinions, or by collecting the history of all the cases
they could find in which no evidence of the influence of contagion
existed, I believe they are in error. Suppose a few writers of authority
can be found to profess a disbelief in contagion,--and they are very few
compared with those who think differently,--is it quite clear that they
formed their opinions on a view of all the facts, or is it not apparent
that they relied mostly on their own solitary experience? Still further,
of those whose names are quoted, is it not true that scarcely a single
one could by any possibility have known the half or the tenth of the
facts bearing on the subject which have reached such a frightful amount
within the last few years? Again, as to the utility of negative facts,
as we may briefly call them,--instances, namely, in which exposure has
not been followed by disease,--although, like other truths, they may be
worth knowing, I do not see that they are like to shed any important
light upon the subject before us. Every such instance requires a good
deal of circumstantial explanation before it can be accepted. It is not
enough that a practitioner should have had a single case of puerperal
fever not followed by others. It must be known whether he attended
others while this case was in progress, whether he went directly from one
chamber to others, whether he took any, and what precautions. It is
important to know that several women were exposed to infection derived
from the patient, so that allowance may be made for want of
predisposition. Now if of negative facts so sifted there could be
accumulated a hundred for every one plain instance of communication here
recorded, I trust it need not be said that we are bound to guard and
watch over the hundredth tenant of our fold, though the ninety and nine
may be sure of escaping the wolf at its entrance. If any one is
disposed, then, to take a hundred instances of lives endangered or
sacrificed out of those I have mentioned, and make it reasonably clear
that within a similar time and compass ten thousand escaped the same
exposure, I shall thank him for his industry, but I must be permitted to
hold to my own practical conclusions, and beg him to adopt or at least to
examine them also. Children that walk in calico before open fires are not
always burned to death; the instances to the contrary may be worth
recording; but by no means if they are to be used as arguments against
woollen frocks and high fenders.
I am not sure that this paper will escape another remark which it might
be wished were founded in justice. It may be said that the facts are too
generally known and acknowledged to require any formal argument or
exposition, that there is nothing new in the positions advanced, and no
need of laying additional statements before the Profession. But on
turning to two works, one almost universally, and the other extensively
appealed to as authority in this country, I see ample reason to overlook
this objection. In the last edition of Dewees's Treatise on the
"Diseases of Females," it is expressly said, "In this country, under no
circumstance that puerperal fever has appeared hitherto, does it afford
the slightest ground for the belief that it is contagious." In the
"Philadelphia Practice of Midwifery" not one word can be found in the
chapter devoted to this disease which would lead the reader to suspect
that the idea of contagion had ever been entertained. It seems proper,
therefore, to remind those who are in the habit of referring to these
works for guidance, that there may possibly be some sources of danger
they have slighted or omitted, quite as important as a trifling
irregularity of diet, or a confined state of the bowels, and that
whatever confidence a physician may have in his own mode of treatment,
his services are of questionable value whenever he carries the bane as
well as the antidote about his person.
The practical point to be illustrated is the following:
The disease known as Puerperal Fever is so far contagious as to be
frequently carried from patient to patient by physicians and nurses.
Let me begin by throwing out certain incidental questions, which, without
being absolutely essential, would render the subject more complicated,
and by making such concessions and assumptions as may be fairly supposed
to be without the pale of discussion.
1. It is granted that all the forms of what is called puerperal fever
may not be, and probably are not, equally contagious or infectious. I do
not enter into the distinctions which have been drawn by authors, because
the facts do not appear to me sufficient to establish any absolute line
of demarcation between such forms as may be propagated by contagion and
those which are never so propagated. This general result I shall only
support by the authority of Dr. Ramsbotham, who gives, as the result of
his experience, that the same symptoms belong to what he calls the
infectious and the sporadic forms of the disease, and the opinion of
Armstrong in his original Essay. If others can show any such
distinction, I leave it to them to do it. But there are cases enough
that show the prevalence of the disease among the patients of a single
practitioner when it was in no degree epidemic, in the proper sense of
the term. I may refer to those of Mr. Roberton and of Dr. Peirson,
hereafter to be cited, as examples.
2. I shall not enter into any dispute about the particular mode of
infection, whether it be by the atmosphere the physician carries about
him into the sick-chamber, or by the direct application of the virus to
the absorbing surfaces with which his hand comes in contact. Many facts
and opinions are in favor of each of these modes of transmission. But it
is obvious that in the majority of cases it must be impossible to decide
by which of these channels the disease is conveyed, from the nature of
the intercourse between the physician and the patient.
3. It is not pretended that the contagion of puerperal fever must always
be followed by the disease. It is true of all contagious diseases, that
they frequently spare those who appear to be fully submitted to their
influence. Even the vaccine virus, fresh from the subject, fails every
day to produce its legitimate effect, though every precaution is taken to
insure its action. This is still more remarkably the case with scarlet
fever and some other diseases.
4. It is granted that the disease may be produced and variously modified
by many causes besides contagion, and more especially by epidemic and
endemic influences. But this is not peculiar to the disease in question.
There is no doubt that small-pox is propagated to a great extent by
contagion, yet it goes through the same periods of periodical increase
and diminution which have been remarked in puerperal fever. If the
question is asked how we are to reconcile the great variations in the
mortality of puerperal fever in different seasons and places with the
supposition of contagion, I will answer it by another question from Mr.
Farr's letter to the Registrar-General. He makes the statement that
"five die weekly of small-pox in the metropolis when the disease is not
epidemic,"--and adds, "The problem for solution is,--Why do the five
deaths become 10, 15, 20, 31, 58, 88, weekly, and then progressively fall
through the same measured steps?"
5. I take it for granted, that if it can be shown that great numbers of
lives have been and are sacrificed to ignorance or blindness on this
point, no other error of which physicians or nurses may be occasionally
suspected will be alleged in palliation of this; but that whenever and
wherever they can be shown to carry disease and death instead of health
and safety, the common instincts of humanity will silence every attempt
to explain away their responsibility.
The treatise of Dr. Gordon of Aberdeen was published in the year 1795,
being among the earlier special works upon the disease. Apart of his
testimony has been occasionally copied into other works, but his
expressions are so clear, his experience is given with such manly
distinctness and disinterested honesty, that it may be quoted as a model
which might have been often followed with advantage.
"This disease seized such women only as were visited, or delivered by a
practitioner, or taken care of by a nurse, who had previously attended
patients affected with the disease."
"I had evident proofs of its infectious nature, and that the infection
was as readily communicated as that of the small-pox or measles, and
operated more speedily than any other infection with which I am
acquainted."
"I had evident proofs that every person who had been with a patient in
the puerperal fever became charged with an atmosphere of infection, which
was communicated to every pregnant woman who happened to come within its
sphere. This is not an assertion, but a fact, admitting of
demonstration, as may be seen by a perusal of the foregoing
table,"--referring to a table of seventy-seven cases, in many of which
the channel of propagation was evident.
He adds, "It is a disagreeable declaration for me to mention, that I
myself was the means of carrying the infection to a great number of
women." He then enumerates a number of instances in which the disease
was conveyed by midwives and others to the neighboring villages, and
declares that "these facts fully prove that the cause of the puerperal
fever, of which I treat, was a specific contagion, or infection,
altogether unconnected with a noxious constitution of the atmosphere."
But his most terrible evidence is given in these words: "I ARRIVED AT
THAT CERTAINTY IN THE MATTER, THAT I COULD VENTURE TO FORETELL WHAT WOMEN
WOULD BE AFFECTED WITH THE DISEASE, UPON HEARING BY WHAT MIDWIFE THEY
WERE TO BE DELIVERED, OR BY WHAT NURSE THEY WERE TO BE ATTENDED, DURING
THEIR LYING-IN: AND ALMOST IN EVERY INSTANCE, MY PREDICTION WAS
VERIFIED."
Even previously to Gordon, Mr. White of Manchester had said, "I am
acquainted with two gentlemen in another town, where the whole business
of midwifery is divided betwixt them, and it is very remarkable that one
of them loses several patients every year of the puerperal fever, and the
other never so much as meets with the disorder,"--a difference which he
seems to attribute to their various modes of treatment. [On the
Management of Lying-in Women, p. 120.]
Dr. Armstrong has given a number of instances in his Essay on Puerperal
Fever, of the prevalence of the disease among the patients of a single
practitioner. At Sunderland, "in all, forty-three cases occurred from
the 1st of January to the 1st of October, when the disease ceased; and of
this number forty were witnessed by Mr. Gregson and his assistant, Mr.
Gregory, the remainder having been separately seen by three accoucheurs."
There is appended to the London edition of this Essay, a letter from Mr.
Gregson, in which that gentleman says, in reference to the great number
of cases occurring in his practice, "The cause of this I cannot pretend
fully to explain, but I should be wanting in common liberality if I were
to make any hesitation in asserting, that the disease which appeared in
my practice was highly contagious, and communicable from one puerperal
woman to another." "It is customary among the lower and middle ranks of
people to make frequent personal visits to puerperal women resident in
the same neighborhood, and I have ample evidence for affirming that the
infection of the disease was often carried about in that manner; and,
however painful to my feelings, I must in candor declare, that it is very
probable the contagion was conveyed, in some instances, by myself, though
I took every possible care to prevent such a thing from happening, the
moment that I ascertained that the distemper was infectious." Dr.
Armstrong goes on to mention six other instances within his knowledge, in
which the disease had at different times and places been limited, in the
same singular manner, to the practice of individuals, while it existed
scarcely if at all among the patients of others around them. Two of the
gentlemen became so convinced of their conveying the contagion, that they
withdrew for a time from practice.
I find a brief notice, in an American Journal, of another series of
cases, first mentioned by Mr. Davies, in the "Medical Repository." This
gentleman stated his conviction that the disease is contagious.
"In the autumn of 1822 he met with twelve cases, while his medical
friends in the neighborhood did not meet with any, 'or at least very
few.' He could attribute this circumstance to no other cause than his
having been present at the examination, after death, of two cases, some
time previous, and of his having imparted the disease to his patients,
notwithstanding every precaution."
Dr. Gooch says, "It is not uncommon for the greater number of cases to
occur in the practice of one man, whilst the other practitioners of the
neighborhood, who are not more skilful or more busy, meet with few or
none. A practitioner opened the body of a woman who had died of
puerperal fever, and continued to wear the same clothes. A lady whom he
delivered a few days afterwards was attacked with and died of a similar
disease; two more of his lying-in patients, in rapid succession, met with
the same fate; struck by the thought, that he might have carried
contagion in his clothes, he instantly changed them, and 'met with no
more cases of the kind.' A woman in the country, who was employed as
washerwoman and nurse, washed the linen of one who had died of puerperal
fever; the next lying-in patient she nursed died of the same disease; a
third nursed by her met with the same fate, till the neighborhood,
getting afraid of her, ceased to employ her."
In the winter of the year 1824, "Several instances occurred of its
prevalence among the patients of particular practitioners, whilst others
who were equally busy met with few or none. One instance of this kind
was very remarkable. A general practitioner, in large midwifery
practice, lost so many patients from puerperal fever, that he determined
to deliver no more for some time, but that his partner should attend in
his place. This plan was pursued for one month, during which not a case
of the disease occurred in their practice. The elder practitioner, being
then sufficiently recovered, returned to his practice, but the first
patient he attended was attacked by the disease and died. A physician,
who met him in consultation soon afterwards, about a case of a different
kind, and who knew nothing of his misfortune, asked him whether puerperal
fever was at all prevalent in his neighborhood, on which he burst into
tears, and related the above circumstances.
"Among the cases which I saw this season in consultation, four occurred
in one month in the practice of one medical man, and all of them
terminated fatally." [Lond. Med. Gaz. May 2, 1835.]
Dr. Ramsbotham asserted, in a Lecture at the London Hospital, that he had
known the disease spread through a particular district, or be confined to
the practice of a particular person, almost every patient being attacked
with it, while others had not a single case. It seemed capable, he
thought, of conveyance, not only by common modes; but through the dress
of the attendants upon the patient.
In a letter to be found in the "London Medical Gazette" for January,
1840, Mr. Roberton of Manchester makes the statement which I here give in
a somewhat condensed form.
A midwife delivered a woman on the 4th of December, 1830, who died soon
after with the symptoms of puerperal fever. In one month from this date
the same midwife delivered thirty women, residing in different parts of
an extensive suburb, of which number sixteen caught the disease and all
died. These were the only cases which had occurred for a considerable
time in Manchester. The other midwives connected with the same
charitable institution as the woman already mentioned are twenty-five in
number, and deliver, on an average, ninety women a week, or about three
hundred and eighty a month. None of these women had a case of puerperal
fever. "Yet all this time this woman was crossing the other midwives in
every direction, scores of the patients of the charity being delivered by
them in the very same quarters where her cases of fever were happening."
Mr. Roberton remarks, that little more than half the women she delivered
during this month took the fever; that on some days all escaped, on
others only one or more out of three or four; a circumstance similar to
what is seen in other infectious maladies.
Dr. Blundell says, "Those who have never made the experiment can have but
a faint conception how difficult it is to obtain the exact truth
respecting any occurrence in which feelings and interests are concerned.
Omitting particulars, then, I content myself with remarking, generally,
that from more than one district I have received accounts of the
prevalence of puerperal fever in the practice of some individuals, while
its occurrence in that of others, in the same neighborhood, was not
observed. Some, as I have been told, have lost ten, twelve, or a greater
number of patients, in scarcely broken succession; like their evil
genius, the puerperal fever has seemed to stalk behind them wherever they
went. Some have deemed it prudent to retire for a time from practice.
In fine, that this fever may occur spontaneously, I admit; that its
infectious nature may be plausibly disputed, I do not deny; but I add,
considerately, that in my own family I had rather that those I esteemed
the most should be delivered, unaided, in a stable, by the manger-side,
than that they should receive the best help, in the fairest apartment,
but exposed to the vapors of this pitiless disease. Gossiping friends,
wet-nurses, monthly nurses, the practitioner himself, these are the
channels by which, as I suspect, the infection is principally conveyed."
At a meeting of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, Dr. King
mentioned that some years since a practitioner at Woolwich lost sixteen
patients from puerperal fever in the same year. He was compelled to give
up practice for one or two years, his business being divided among the
neighboring practitioners. No case of puerperal fever occurred
afterwards, neither had any of the neighboring surgeons any cases of this
disease.
At the same meeting Mr. Hutchinson mentioned the occurrence of three
consecutive cases of puerperal fever, followed subsequently by two
others, all in the practice of one accoucheur.[Lancet, May 2, 1840.]
Dr. Lee makes the following statement: "In the last two weeks of
September, 1827, five fatal cases of uterine inflammation came under our
observation. All the individuals so attacked had been attended in labor
by the same midwife, and no example of a febrile or inflammatory disease
of a serious nature occurred during that period among the other patients
of the Westminster General Dispensary, who had been attended by the other
midwives belonging to that institution."
The recurrence of long series of cases like those I have cited, reported
by those most interested to disbelieve in contagion, scattered along
through an interval of half a century, might have been thought sufficient
to satisfy the minds of all inquirers that here was something more than a
singular coincidence. But if, on a more extended observation, it should
be found that the same ominous groups of cases clustering about
individual practitioners were observed in a remote country, at different
times, and in widely separated regions, it would seem incredible that any
should be found too prejudiced or indolent to accept the solemn truth
knelled into their ears by the funeral bells from both sides of the
ocean,--the plain conclusion that the physician and the disease entered,
hand in hand, into the chamber of the unsuspecting patient.
That such series of cases have been observed in this country, and in this
neighborhood, I proceed to show.
In Dr. Francis's "Notes to Denman's Midwifery," a passage is cited from
Dr. Hosack, in which he refers to certain puerperal cases which proved
fatal to several lying-in women, and in some of which the disease was
supposed to be conveyed by the accoucheurs themselves.
A writer in the "New York Medical and Physical Journal" for October,
1829, in speaking of the occurrence of puerperal fever, confined to one
man's practice, remarks, "We have known cases of this kind occur, though
rarely, in New York."
I mention these little hints about the occurrence of such cases, partly
because they are the first I have met with in American medical
literature, but more especially because they serve to remind us that
behind the fearful array of published facts there lies a dark list of
similar events, unwritten in the records of science, but long remembered
by many a desolated fireside.
Certainly nothing can be more open and explicit than the account given by
Dr. Peirson of Salem, of the cases seen by him. In the first nineteen
days of January, 1829, he had five consecutive cases of puerperal fever,
every patient he attended being attacked, and the three first cases
proving fatal. In March of the same year he had two moderate cases, in
June, another case, and in July, another, which proved fatal. "Up to
this period," he remarks, "I am not informed that a single case had
occurred in the practice of any other physician. Since that period I
have had no fatal case in my practice, although I have had several
dangerous cases. I have attended in all twenty cases of this disease, of
which four have been fatal. I am not aware that there has been any other
case in the town of distinct puerperal peritonitis, although I am willing
to admit my information may be very defective on this point. I have been
told of some I 'mixed cases,' and 'morbid affections after delivery.'"
In the "Quarterly Summary of the Transactions of the College of
Physicians of Philadelphia" may be found some most extraordinary
developments respecting a series of cases occurring in the practice of a
member of that body.
Dr. Condie called the attention of the Society to the prevalence, at the
present time, of puerperal fever of a peculiarly insidious and malignant
character. "In the practice of one gentleman extensively engaged as an
obstetrician, nearly every female he has attended in confinement, during
several weeks past, within the above limits" (the southern sections and
neighboring districts), "had been attacked by the fever."
"An important query presents itself, the Doctor observed, in reference to
the particular form of fever now prevalent. Is it, namely, capable of
being propagated by contagion, and is a physician who has been in
attendance upon a case of the disease warranted in continuing, without
interruption, his practice as an obstetrician? Dr. C., although not a
believer in the contagious character of many of those affections
generally supposed to be propagated in this manner, has nevertheless
become convinced by the facts that have fallen under his notice, that the
puerperal fever now prevailing is capable of being communicated by
contagion. How otherwise can be explained the very curious circumstance
of the disease in one district being exclusively confined to the practice
of a single physician, a Fellow of this College, extensively engaged in
obstetrical practice,--while no instance of the disease has occurred in
the patients under the care of any other accoucheur practising within the
same district; scarcely a female that has been delivered for weeks past
has escaped an attack?"
Dr. Rutter, the practitioner referred to, "observed that, after the
occurrence of a number of cases of the disease in his practice, he had
left the city and remained absent for a week, but on returning, no
article of clothing he then wore having been used by him before, one of
the very first cases of parturition he attended was followed by an attack
of the fever, and terminated fatally; he cannot, readily, therefore,
believe in the transmission of the disease from female to female, in the
person or clothes of the physician."
The meeting at which these remarks were made was held on the 3d of May,
1842. In a letter dated December 20, 1842, addressed to Dr. Meigs, and
to be found in the "Medical Examiner," he speaks of "those horrible
cases of puerperal fever, some of which you did me the favor to see with
me during the past summer," and talks of his experience in the disease,
"now numbering nearly seventy cases, all of which have occurred within
less than a twelvemonth past."
And Dr. Meigs asserts, on the same page, "Indeed, I believe that his
practice in that department of the profession was greater than that of
any other gentleman, which was probably the cause of his seeing a greater
number of the cases." This from a professor of midwifery, who some time
ago assured a gentleman whom he met in consultation, that the night on
which they met was the eighteenth in succession that he himself had been
summoned from his repose, seems hardly satisfactory.
I must call the attention of the inquirer most particularly to the
Quarterly Report above referred to, and the letters of Dr. Meigs and Dr.
Rutter, to be found in the "Medical Examiner." Whatever impression they
may produce upon his mind, I trust they will at least convince him that
there is some reason for looking into this apparently uninviting subject.
At a meeting of the College of Physicians just mentioned, Dr. Warrington
stated, that a few days after assisting at an autopsy of puerperal
peritonitis, in which he laded out the contents of the abdominal cavity
with his hands, he was called upon to deliver three women in rapid
succession. All of these women were attacked with different forms of
what is commonly called puerperal fever. Soon after these he saw two
other patients, both on the same day, with the same disease. Of these
five patients two died.
At the same meeting, Dr. West mentioned a fact related to him by Dr.
Samuel Jackson of Northumberland. Seven females, delivered by Dr.
Jackson in rapid succession, while practising in Northumberland County,
were all attacked with puerperal fever, and five of them died. "Women,"
he said, "who had expected me to attend upon them, now becoming alarmed,
removed out of my reach, and others sent for a physician residing several
miles distant. These women, as well as those attended by midwives; all
did well; nor did we hear of any deaths in child-bed within a radius of
fifty miles, excepting two, and these I afterwards ascertained to have
been caused by other diseases." He underwent, as he thought, a thorough
purification, and still his next patient was attacked with the disease
and died. He was led to suspect that the contagion might have been
carried in the gloves which he had worn in attendance upon the previous
cases. Two months or more after this he had two other cases. He could
find nothing to account for these, unless it were the instruments for
giving enemata, which had been used in two of the former cases, and were
employed by these patients. When the first case occurred, he was
attending and dressing a limb extensively mortified from erysipelas, and
went immediately to the accouchement with his clothes and gloves most
thoroughly imbued with its efluvia. And here I may mention, that this
very Dr. Samuel Jackson of Northumberland is one of Dr. Dewees's
authorities against contagion.
The three following statements are now for the first time given to the
public. All of the cases referred to occurred within this State, and two
of the three series in Boston and its immediate vicinity.
I. The first is a series of cases which took place during the last
spring in a town at some distance from this neighborhood. A physician of
that town, Dr. C., had the following consecutive cases.
No. 1, delivered March 20, died March 24.
" 2, " April 9, " April 14.
" 3, " " 10, " " 14.
" 4, " " 11, " " 18.
" 5, " " 27, " May 3.
" 6, " " 28, had some symptoms,(recovered.)
" 7, " May 8, had some symptoms,(also recovered.)
These were the only cases attended by this physician during the period
referred to. "They were all attended by him until their termination,
with the exception of the patient No. 6, who fell into the hands of
another physician on the 2d of May. (Dr. C. left town for a few days at
this time.) Dr. C. attended cases immediately before and after the
above-named periods, none of which, however, presented any peculiar
symptoms of the disease."
About the 1st of July he attended another patient in a neighboring
village, who died two or three days after delivery.
The first patient, it is stated, was delivered on the 20th of March. "On
the 19th, Dr. C. made the autopsy of a man who died suddenly, sick only
forty-eight hours; had oedema of the thigh, and gangrene extending from a
little above the ankle into the cavity of the abdomen." Dr. C. wounded
himself, very slightly, in the right hand during the autopsy. The hand
was quite painful the night following, during his attendance on the
patient No. 1. He did not see this patient after the 20th, being
confined to the house, and very sick from the wound just mentioned, from
this time until the 3d of April.
Several cases of erysipelas occurred in the house where the autopsy
mentioned above took place, soon after the examination. There were also
many cases of erysipelas in town at the time of the fatal puerperal cases
which have been mentioned.
The nurse who laid out the body of the patient No. 3 was taken on the
evening of the same day with sore throat and erysipelas, and died in ten
days from the first attack.
The nurse who laid out the body of the patient No. 4 was taken on the day
following with symptoms like those of this patient, and died in a week,
without any external marks of erysipelas.
"No other cases of similar character with those of Dr. C. occurred in the
practice of any of the physicians in the town or vicinity at the time.
Deaths following confinement have occurred in the practice of other
physicians during the past year, but they were not cases of puerperal
fever. No post-mortem examinations were held in any of these puerperal
cases."
Some additional statements in this letter are deserving of insertion.
"A physician attended a woman in the immediate neighborhood of the cases
numbered 2, 3, and 4. This patient was confined the morning of March
1st, and died on the night of March 7th. It is doubtful whether this
should be considered a case of puerperal fever. She had suffered from
canker, indigestion, and diarrhoea for a year previous to her delivery.
Her complaints were much aggravated for two or three months previous to
delivery; she had become greatly emaciated, and weakened to such an
extent that it had not been expected that she would long survive her
confinement, if indeed she reached that period. Her labor was easy
enough; she flowed a good deal, seemed exceedingly prostrated, had
ringing in the ears, and other symptoms of exhaustion; the pulse was
quick and small. On the second and third day there was some tenderness
and tumefaction of the abdomen, which increased somewhat on the fourth
and fifth. He had cases in midwifery before and after this, which
presented nothing peculiar."
It is also mentioned in the same letter, that another physician had a
case during the last summer and another last fall, both of which
recovered.
Another gentleman reports a case last December, a second case five weeks,
and another three weeks since. All these recovered. A case also
occurred very recently in the practice of a physician in the village
where the eighth patient of Dr. C. resides, which proved fatal. "This
patient had some patches of erysipelas on the legs and arms. The same
physician has delivered three cases since, which have all done well.
There have been no other cases in this town or its vicinity recently.
There have been some few cases of erysipelas." It deserves notice that
the partner of Dr. C., who attended the autopsy of the man above
mentioned and took an active part in it; who also suffered very slightly
from a prick under the thumb-nail received during the examination, had
twelve cases of midwifery between March 26th and April 12th, all of which
did well, and presented no peculiar symptoms. It should also be stated,
that during these seventeen days he was in attendance on all the cases of
erysipelas in the house where the autopsy had been performed.
I owe these facts to the prompt kindness of a gentleman whose
intelligence and character are sufficient guaranty for their accuracy.
The two following letters were addressed to my friend Dr. Scorer, by the
gentleman in whose practice the cases of puerperal fever occurred. His
name renders it unnecessary to refer more particularly to these
gentlemen, who on their part have manifested the most perfect freedom and
courtesy in affording these accounts of their painful experience.
"January 28, 1843.
II. . . . "The time to which you allude was in 1830. The first case
was in February, during a very cold time. She was confined the 4th, and
died the 12th. Between the 10th and 28th of this month, I attended six
women in labor, all of whom did well except the last, as also two who
were confined March 1st and 5th. Mrs. E., confined February 28th,
sickened, and died March 8th. The next day, 9th, I inspected the body,
and the night after attended a lady, Mrs. B., who sickened, and died
16th. The 10th, I attended another, Mrs. G., who sickened, but
recovered. March 16th, I went from Mrs. G.'s room to attend a Mrs. H.,
who sickened, and died 21st. The 17th, I inspected Mrs. B. On the 19th,
I went directly from Mrs. H.'s room to attend another lady, Mrs. G., who
also sickened, and died 22d. While Mrs. B. was sick, on 15th, I went
directly from her room a few rods, and attended another woman, who was
not sick. Up to 20th of this month I wore the same clothes. I now
refused to attend any labor, and did not till April 21st, when, having
thoroughly cleansed myself, I resumed my practice, and had no more
puerperal fever.
"The cases were not confined to a narrow space. The two nearest were
half a mile from each other, and half that distance from my residence.
The others were from two to three miles apart, and nearly that distance
from my residence. There were no other cases in their immediate vicinity
which came to my knowledge. The general health of all the women was
pretty good, and all the labors as good as common, except the first.
This woman, in consequence of my not arriving in season, and the child
being half-born at some time before I arrived, was very much exposed to
the cold at the time of confinement, and afterwards, being confined in a
very open, cold room. Of the six cases you perceive only one recovered.
"In the winter of 1817 two of my patients had puerperal fever, one very
badly, the other not so badly. Both recovered. One other had swelled
leg, or phlegmasia dolens, and one or two others did not recover as well
as usual.
"In the summer of 1835 another disastrous period occurred in my practice.
July 1st, I attended a lady in labor, who was afterwards quite ill and
feverish; but at the time I did not consider her case a decided puerperal
fever. On the 8th, I attended one who did well. On the 12th, one who was
seriously sick. This was also an equivocal case, apparently arising from
constipation and irritation of the rectum. These women were ten miles
apart and five from my residence. On 15th and 20th, two who did well. On
25th, I attended another. This was a severe labor, and followed by
unequivocal puerperal fever, or peritonitis. She recovered. August 2d
and 3d, in about twenty-four hours I attended four persons. Two of them
did very well; one was attacked with some of the common symptoms, which
however subsided in a day or two, and the other had decided puerperal
fever, but recovered. This woman resided five miles from me. Up to this
time I wore the same coat. All my other clothes had frequently been
changed. On 6th, I attended two women, one of whom was not sick at all;
but the other, Mrs. L., was afterwards taken ill. On 10th, I attended a
lady, who did very well. I had previously changed all my clothes, and
had no garment on which had been in a puerperal room. On 12th, I was
called to Mrs. S., in labor. While she was ill, I left her to visit Mrs.
L., one of the ladies who was confined on 6th. Mrs. L. had been more
unwell than usual, but I had not considered her case anything more than
common till this visit. I had on a surtout at this visit, which, on my
return to Mrs. S., I left in another room. Mrs. S. was delivered on
13th with forceps. These women both died of decided puerperal fever.
"While I attended these women in their fevers, I changed my clothes, and
washed my hands in a solution of chloride of lime after each visit. I
attended seven women in labor during this period, all of whom recovered
without sickness.
"In my practice I have had several single cases of puerperal fever, some
of whom have died and some have recovered. Until the year 1830 I had no
suspicion that the disease could be communicated from one patient to
another by a nurse or midwife; but I now think the foregoing facts
strongly favor that idea. I was so much convinced of this fact, that I
adopted the plan before related.
"I believe my own health was as good as usual at each of the above
periods. I have no recollections to the contrary.
"I believe I have answered all your questions. I have been more
particular on some points perhaps than necessary; but I thought you could
form your own opinion better than to take mine. In 1830 I wrote to Dr.
Charming a more particular statement of my cases. If I have not answered
your questions sufficiently, perhaps Dr. C. may have my letter to him,
and you can find your answer there." [In a letter to myself, this
gentleman also stated, "I do not recollect that there was any erysipelas
or any other disease particularly prevalent at the time."]
"BOSTON, February 3, 1843.
III. "MY DEAR SIR,--I received a note from you last evening, requesting
me to answer certain questions therein proposed, touching the cases of
puerperal fever which came under my observation the past summer. It
gives me pleasure to comply with your request, so far as it is in my
power so to do, but, owing to the hurry in preparing for a journey, the
notes of the cases I had then taken were lost or mislaid. The principal
facts, however, are too vivid upon my recollection to be soon forgotten.
I think, therefore, that I shall be able to give you all the information
you may require.
"All the cases that occurred in my practice took place between the 7th of
May and the 17th of June 1842.
"They were not confined to any particular part of the city. The first
two cases were patients residing at the South End, the next was at the
extreme North End, one living in Sea Street and the other in Roxbury.
The following is the order in which they occurred:
"Case 1. Mrs._____ was confined on the 7th of May, at 5 o'clock, P. M.,
after a natural labor of six hours. At 12 o'clock at night, on the 9th
(thirty-one hours after confinement), she was taken with severe chill,
previous to which she was as comfortable as women usually are under the
circumstances. She died on the 10th.
"Case 2. Mrs._____ was confined on the 10th of June (four weeks after
Mrs. C.), at 11 A. M., after a natural, but somewhat severe labor of
five hours. At 7 o'clock, on the morning of the 11th, she had a chill.
Died on the 12th.
"Case 3. Mrs._____ , confined on the 14th of June, was comfortable until
the 18th, when symptoms of puerperal fever were manifest. She died on
the 20th.
"Case 4. Mrs._____ , confined June 17th, at 5 o'clock, A. M., was doing
well until the morning of the 19th. She died on the evening of the 21st.
"Case 5. Mrs._____ was confined with her fifth child on the 17th of
June, at 6 o'clock in the evening. This patient had been attacked with
puerperal fever, at three of her previous confinements, but the disease
yielded to depletion and other remedies without difficulty. This time, I
regret to say, I was not so fortunate. She was not attacked, as were the
other patients, with a chill, but complained of extreme pain in abdomen,
and tenderness on pressure, almost from the moment of her confinement.
In this as in the other cases, the disease resisted all remedies, and she
died in great distress on the 22d of the same month. Owing to the
extreme heat of the season, and my own indisposition, none of the
subjects were examined after death. Dr. Channing, who was in attendance
with me on the three last cases, proposed to have a post-mortem
examination of the subject of case No. 5, but from some cause which I do
not now recollect it was not obtained.
"You wish to know whether I wore the same clothes when attending the
different cases. I cannot positively say, but I should think I did not,
as the weather became warmer after the first two cases; I therefore think
it probable that I made a change of at least a part of my dress. I have
had no other case of puerperal fever in my own practice for three years,
save those above related, and I do not remember to have lost a patient
before with this disease. While absent, last July, I visited two
patients sick with puerperal fever, with a friend of mine in the country.
Both of them recovered.
"The cases that I have recorded were not confined to any particular
constitution or temperament, but it seized upon the strong and the weak,
the old and the young,--one being over forty years, and the youngest
under eighteen years of age . . . . If the disease is of an
erysipelatous nature, as many suppose, contagionists may perhaps find
some ground for their belief in the fact, that, for two weeks previous to
my first case of puerperal fever, I had been attending a severe case of
erysipelas, and the infection may have been conveyed through me to the
patient; but, on the other hand, why is not this the case with other
physicians, or with the same physician at all times, for since my return
from the country I have had a more inveterate case of erysipelas than
ever before, and no difficulty whatever has attended any of my midwifery
cases?"
I am assured, on unquestionable authority, that "About three years since,
a gentleman in extensive midwifery business, in a neighboring State, lost
in the course of a few weeks eight patients in child-bed, seven of them
being undoubted cases of puerperal fever. No other physician of the town
lost a single patient of this disease during the same period." And from
what I have heard in conversation with some of our most experienced
practitioners, I am inclined to think many cases of the kind might be
brought to light by extensive inquiry.
This long catalogue of melancholy histories assumes a still darker aspect
when we remember how kindly nature deals with the parturient female, when
she is not immersed in the virulent atmosphere of an impure lying-in
hospital, or poisoned in her chamber by the unsuspected breath of
contagion. From all causes together, not more than four deaths in a
thousand births and miscarriages happened in England and Wales during the
period embraced by the first "Report of the Registrar-General." In the
second Report the mortality was shown to be about five in one thousand.
In the Dublin Lying-in Hospital, during the seven years of Dr. Collins's
mastership, there was one case of puerperal fever to 178 deliveries, or
less than six to the thousand, and one death from this disease in 278
cases, or between three and four to the thousand a yet during this period
the disease was endemic in the hospital, and might have gone on to rival
the horrors of the pestilence of the Maternite, had not the poison been
destroyed by a thorough purification.
In private practice, leaving out of view the cases that are to be
ascribed to the self-acting system of propagation, it would seem that the
disease must be far from common. Mr. White of Manchester says, "Out of
the whole number of lying-in patients whom I have delivered (and I may
safely call it a great one), I have never lost one, nor to the best of my
recollection has one been greatly endangered, by the puerperal, miliary,
low nervous, putrid malignant, or milk fever." Dr. Joseph Clarke informed
Dr. Collins, that in the course of forty-five years' most extensive
practice he lost but four patients from this disease. One of the most
eminent practitioners of Glasgow, who has been engaged in very extensive
practice for upwards of a quarter of a century, testifies that he never
saw more than twelve cases of real puerperal fever.[Lancet, May 4, 1833]
I have myself been told by two gentlemen practising in this city, and
having for many years a large midwifery business, that they had neither
of them lost a patient from this disease, and by one of them that he had
only seen it in consultation with other physicians. In five hundred
cases of midwifery, of which Dr. Storer has given an abstract in the
first number of this Journal, there was only one instance of fatal
puerperal peritonitis.
In the view of these facts, it does appear a singular coincidence, that
one man or woman should have ten, twenty, thirty, or seventy cases of
this rare disease following his or her footsteps with the keenness of a
beagle, through the streets and lanes of a crowded city, while the scores
that cross the same paths on the same errands know it only by name. It
is a series of similar coincidences which has led us to consider the
dagger, the musket, and certain innocent-looking white powders as having
some little claim to be regarded as dangerous. It is the practical
inattention to similar coincidences which has given rise to the
unpleasant but often necessary documents called indictments, which has
sharpened a form of the cephalotome sometimes employed in the case of
adults, and adjusted that modification of the fillet which delivers the
world of those who happen to be too much in the way while such striking
coincidences are taking place.
I shall now mention a few instances in which the disease appears to have
been conveyed by the process of direct inoculation.
Dr. Campbell of Edinburgh states that in October, 1821, he assisted at
the post-mortem examination of a patient who died with puerperal fever.
He carried the pelvic viscera in his pocket to the class-room. The same
evening he attended a woman in labor without previously changing his
clothes; this patient died. The next morning he delivered a woman with
the forceps; she died also, and of many others who were seized with the
disease within a few weeks, three shared the same fate in succession.
In June, 1823, he assisted some of his pupils at the autopsy of a case of
puerperal fever. He was unable to wash his hands with proper care, for
want of the necessary accommodations. On getting home he found that two
patients required his assistance. He went without further ablution, or
changing his clothes; both these patients died with puerperal fever.
This same Dr. Campbell is one of Dr. Churchill's authorities against
contagion.
Mr. Roberton says that in one instance within his knowledge a
practitioner passed the catheter for a patient with puerperal fever late
in the evening; the same night he attended a lady who had the symptoms of
the disease on the second day. In another instance a surgeon was called
while in the act of inspecting the body of a woman who had died of this
fever, to attend a labor; within forty-eight hours this patient was
seized with the fever.'
On the 16th of March, 1831, a medical practitioner examined the body of a
woman who had died a few days after delivery, from puerperal peritonitis.
On the evening of the 17th he delivered a patient, who was seized with
puerperal fever on the 19th, and died on the 24th. Between this period
and the 6th of April, the same practitioner attended two other patients,
both of whom were attacked with the same disease and died.
In the autumn of 1829 a physician was present at the examination of a
case of puerperal fever, dissected out the organs, and assisted in sewing
up the body. He had scarcely reached home when he was summoned to attend
a young lady in labor. In sixteen hours she was attacked with the
symptoms of puerperal fever, and narrowly escaped with her life.
In December, 1830, a midwife, who had attended two fatal cases of
puerperal fever at the British Lying-in Hospital, examined a patient who
had just been admitted, to ascertain if labor had commenced. This patient
remained two days in the expectation that labor would come on, when she
returned home and was then suddenly taken in labor and delivered before
she could set out for the hospital. She went on favorably for two days,
and was then taken with puerperal fever and died in thirty-six hours.
"A young practitioner, contrary to advice, examined the body of a patient
who had died from puerperal fever; there was no epidemic at the time; the
case appeared to be purely sporadic. He delivered three other women
shortly afterwards; they all died with puerperal fever, the symptoms of
which broke out very soon after labor. The patients of his colleague did
well, except one, where he assisted to remove some coagula from the
uterus; she was attacked in the same manner as those whom he had
attended, and died also." The writer in the "British and Foreign Medical
Review," from whom I quote this statement,--and who is no other than Dr.
Rigby, adds, "We trust that this fact alone will forever silence such
doubts, and stamp the well-merited epithet of 'criminal,' as above
quoted, upon such attempts." [Brit. and For. Medical Review for Jan.
1842, p. 112.]
From the cases given by Mr. Ingleby, I select the following. Two
gentlemen, after having been engaged in conducting the post-mortem
examination of a case of puerperal fever, went in the same dress, each
respectively, to a case of midwifery. "The one patient was seized with
the rigor about thirty hours afterwards. The other patient was seized
with a rigor the third morning after delivery. One recovered, one died."
[Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, April, 1838.]
One of these same gentlemen attended another woman in the same clothes
two days after the autopsy referred to. "The rigor did not take place
until the evening of the fifth day from the first visit. Result fatal."
These cases belonged to a series of seven, the first of which was thought
to have originated in a case of erysipelas. "Several cases of a mild
character followed the foregoing seven, and their nature being now most
unequivocal, my friend declined visiting all midwifery cases for a time,
and there was no recurrence of the disease." These cases occurred in
1833. Five of them proved fatal. Mr. Ingleby gives another series of
seven eases which occurred to a practitioner in 1836, the first of which
was also attributed to his having opened several erysipelatous abscesses
a short time previously.
I need not refer to the case lately read before this Society, in which a
physician went, soon after performing an autopsy of a case of puerperal
fever, to a woman in labor, who was seized with the same disease and
perished. The forfeit of that error has been already paid.
At a meeting of the Medical and Chirurgical Society before referred to,
Dr. Merriman related an instance occurring in his own practice, which
excites a reasonable suspicion that two lives were sacrificed to a still
less dangerous experiment. He was at the examination of a case of
puerperal fever at two o'clock in the afternoon. He took care not to
touch the body. At nine o'clock the same evening he attended a woman in
labor; she was so nearly delivered that he had scarcely anything to do.
The next morning she had severe rigors, and in forty-eight hours she was
a corpse. Her infant had erysipelas and died in two days. [Lancet, May
2, 1840.]
In connection with the facts which have been stated, it seems proper to
allude to the dangerous and often fatal effects which have followed from
wounds received in the post-mortem examination of patients who have died
of puerperal fever. The fact that such wounds are attended with peculiar
risk has been long noticed. I find that Chaussier was in the habit of
cautioning his students against the danger to which they were exposed in
these dissections. [Stein, L'Art d'Accoucher, 1794; Dict. des Sciences
Medicales, art. "Puerperal."] The head pharmacien of the Hotel Dieu, in
his analysis of the fluid effused in puerperal peritonitis, says that
practitioners are convinced of its deleterious qualities, and that it is
very dangerous to apply it to the denuded skin. [Journal de Pharmacie,
January, 1836.] Sir Benjamin Brodie speaks of it as being well known
that the inoculation of lymph or pus from the peritoneum of a puerperal
patient is often attended with dangerous and even fatal symptoms. Three
cases in confirmation of this statement, two of them fatal, have been
reported to this Society within a few months.
Of about fifty cases of injuries of this kind, of various degrees of
severity, which I have collected from different sources, at least twelve
were instances of infection from puerperal peritonitis. Some of the
others are so stated as to render it probable that they may have been of
the same nature. Five other cases were of peritoneal inflammation; three
in males. Three were what was called enteritis, in one instance
complicated with erysipelas; but it is well known that this term has been
often used to signify inflammation of the peritoneum covering the
intestines. On the other hand, no case of typhus or typhoid fever is
mentioned as giving rise to dangerous consequences, with the exception of
the single instance of an undertaker mentioned by Mr. Travers, who seems
to have been poisoned by a fluid which exuded from the body. The other
accidents were produced by dissection, or some other mode of contact with
bodies of patients who had died of various affections. They also
differed much in severity, the cases of puerperal origin being among the
most formidable and fatal. Now a moment's reflection will show that the
number of cases of serious consequences ensuing from the dissection of
the bodies of those who had perished of puerperal fever is so vastly
disproportioned to the relatively small number of autopsies made in this
complaint as compared with typhus or pneumonia (from which last disease
not one case of poisoning happened), and still more from all diseases put
together, that the conclusion is irresistible that a most fearful morbid
poison is often generated in the course of this disease. Whether or not
it is sui generis, confined to this disease, or produced in some others,
as, for instance, erysipelas, I need, not stop to inquire.
In connection with this may be taken the following statement of Dr.
Rigby. "That the discharges from a patient under puerperal fever are in
the highest degree contagious we have abundant evidence in the history of
lying-in hospitals. The puerperal abscesses are also contagious, and may
be communicated to healthy lying-in women by washing with the same
sponge; this fact has been repeatedly proved in the Vienna Hospital; but
they are equally communicable to women not pregnant; on more than one
occasion the women engaged in washing the soiled bed-linen of the General
Lying-in Hospital have been attacked with abscess in the fingers or
hands, attended with rapidly spreading inflammation of the cellular
tissue."
Now add to all this the undisputed fact, that within the walls of
lying-in hospitals there is often generated a miasm, palpable as the
chlorine used to destroy it, tenacious so as in some cases almost to defy
extirpation, deadly in some institutions as the plague; which has killed
women in a private hospital of London so fast that they were buried two
in one coffin to conceal its horrors; which enabled Tonnelle to record
two hundred and twenty-two autopsies at the Maternite of Paris; which has
led Dr. Lee to express his deliberate conviction that the loss of life
occasioned by these institutions completely defeats the objects of their
founders; and out of this train of cumulative evidence, the multiplied
groups of cases clustering about individuals, the deadly results of
autopsies, the inoculation by fluids from the living patient, the
murderous poison of hospitals,--does there not result a conclusion that
laughs all sophistry to scorn, and renders all argument an insult?
I have had occasion to mention some instances in which there was an
apparent relation between puerperal fever and erysipelas. The length to
which this paper has extended does not allow me to enter into the
consideration of this most important subject. I will only say, that the
evidence appears to me altogether satisfactory that some most fatal
series of puerperal fever have been produced by an infection originating
in the matter or effluvia of erysipelas. In evidence of some connection
between the two diseases, I need not go back to the older authors, as
Pouteau or Gordon, but will content myself with giving the following
references, with their dates; from which it will be seen that the
testimony has been constantly coming before the profession for the last
few years.
"London Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine," article Puerperal Fever,
1833.
Mr. Ceeley's Account of the Puerperal Fever at Aylesbury. "Lancet,"
1835.
Dr. Ramsbotham's Lecture. "London Medical Gazette," 1835.
Mr. Yates Ackerly's Letter in the same Journal, 1838.
Mr. Ingleby on Epidemic Puerperal Fever. "Edinburgh Medical and Surgical
Journal," 1838.
Mr. Paley's Letter. "London Medical Gazette," 1839.
Remarks at the Medical and Chirurgical Society. "Lancet," 1840.
Dr. Rigby's "System of Midwifery." 1841.
"Nunneley on Erysipelas,"--a work which contains a large number of
references on the subject. 1841.
"British and Foreign Quarterly Review," 1842.
Dr. S. Jackson of Northumberland, as already quoted from the Summary of
the College of Physicians, 1842.
And lastly, a startling series of cases by Mr. Storrs of Doncaster, to
be, found in the "American Journal of the Medical Sciences" for January,
1843.
The relation of puerperal fever with other continued fevers would seem to
be remote and rarely obvious. Hey refers to two cases of synochus
occurring in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, in women who had attended
upon puerperal patients. Dr. Collins refers to several instances in
which puerperal fever has appeared to originate from a continued
proximity to patients suffering with typhus.
Such occurrences as those just mentioned, though most important to be
remembered and guarded against, hardly attract our notice in the midst of
the gloomy facts by which they are surrounded. Of these facts, at the
risk of fatiguing repetitions, I have summoned a sufficient number, as I
believe, to convince the most incredulous that every attempt to disguise
the truth which underlies them all is useless.
It is true that some of the historians of the disease, especially Hulme,
Hull, and Leake, in England; Tonnelle, Duges, and Baudelocque, in France,
profess not to have found puerperal fever contagious. At the most they
give us mere negative facts, worthless against an extent of evidence
which now overlaps the widest range of doubt, and doubles upon itself in
the redundancy of superfluous demonstration. Examined in detail, this and
much of the show of testimony brought up to stare the daylight of
conviction out of countenance, proves to be in a great measure unmeaning
and inapplicable, as might be easily shown were it necessary. Nor do I
feel the necessity of enforcing the conclusion which arises spontaneously
from the facts which have been enumerated, by formally citing the
opinions of those grave authorities who have for the last half-century
been sounding the unwelcome truth it has cost so many lives to establish.
"It is to the British practitioner," says Dr. Rigby, "that we are
indebted for strongly insisting upon this important and dangerous
character of puerperal fever."
The names of Gordon, John Clarke, Denman, Burns, Young, Hamilton,
Haighton, Good, Waller; Blundell, Gooch, Ramsbotham, Douglas, Lee,
Ingleby, Locock, Abercrombie, Alison; Travers, Rigby, and Watson, many of
whose writings I have already referred to, may have some influence with
those who prefer the weight of authorities to the simple deductions of
their own reason from the facts laid before them. A few Continental
writers have adopted similar conclusions. It gives me pleasure to
remember, that while the doctrine has been unceremoniously discredited in
one of the leading Journals, and made very light of by teachers in two of
the principal Medical Schools, of this country, Dr. Channing has for many
years inculcated, and enforced by examples, the danger to be apprehended
and the precautions to be taken in the disease under consideration.
I have no wish to express any harsh feeling with regard to the painful
subject which has come before us. If there are any so far excited by the
story of these dreadful events that they ask for some word of indignant
remonstrance to show that science does not turn the hearts of its
followers into ice or stone, let me remind them that such words have been
uttered by those who speak with an authority I could not claim. It is as
a lesson rather than as a reproach that I call up the memory of these
irreparable errors and wrongs. No tongue can tell the heart-breaking
calamity they have caused; they have closed the eyes just opened upon a
new world of love and happiness; they have bowed the strength of manhood
into the dust; they have cast the helplessness of infancy into the
stranger's arms, or bequeathed it, with less cruelty, the death of its
dying parent. There is no tone deep enough for regret, and no voice loud
enough for warning. The woman about to become a mother, or with her
new-born infant upon her bosom, should be the object of trembling care
and sympathy wherever she bears her tender burden, or stretches her
aching limbs. The very outcast of the streets has pity upon her sister in
degradation, when the seal of promised maternity is impressed upon her.
The remorseless vengeance of the law, brought down upon its victim by a
machinery as sure as destiny, is arrested in its fall at a word which
reveals her transient claim for mercy. The solemn prayer of the liturgy
singles out her sorrows from the multiplied trials of life, to plead for
her in the hour of peril. God forbid that any member of the profession
to which she trusts her life, doubly precious at that eventful period,
should hazard it negligently, unadvisedly, or selfishly!
There may be some among those whom I address who are disposed to ask the
question, What course are we to follow in relation to this matter? The
facts are before them, and the answer must be left to their own judgment
and conscience. If any should care to know my own conclusions, they are
the following; and in taking the liberty to state them very freely and
broadly, I would ask the inquirer to examine them as freely in the light
of the evidence which has been laid before him.
1. A physician holding himself in readiness to attend cases of midwifery
should never take any active part in the post-mortem examination of cases
of puerperal fever.
2. If a physician is present at such autopsies, he should use thorough
ablution, change every article of dress, and allow twenty-four hours or
more to elapse before attending to any case of midwifery. It may be well
to extend the same caution to cases of simple peritonitis.
3. Similar precautions should be taken after the autopsy or surgical
treatment of cases of erysipelas, if the physician is obliged to unite
such offices with his obstetrical duties, which is in the highest degree
inexpedient.
4. On the occurrence of a single case of puerperal fever in his
practice, the physician is bound to consider the next female he attends
in labor, unless some weeks at least have elapsed, as in danger of being
infected by him, and it is his duty to take every precaution to diminish
her risk of disease and death.
5. If within a short period two cases of puerperal fever happen close to
each other, in the practice of the same physician, the disease not
existing or prevailing in the neighborhood, he would do wisely to
relinquish his obstetrical practice for at least one month, and endeavor
to free himself by every available means from any noxious influence he
may carry about with him.
6. The occurrence of three or more closely connected cases, in the
practice of one individual, no others existing in the neighborhood, and
no other sufficient cause being alleged for the coincidence, is prima
facie evidence that he is the vehicle of contagion.
7. It is the duty of the physician to take every precaution that the
disease shall not be introduced by nurses or other assistants, by making
proper inquiries concerning them, and giving timely warning of every
suspected source of danger.
8. Whatever indulgence may be granted to those who have heretofore been
the ignorant causes of so much misery, the time has come when the
existence of a private pestilence in the sphere of a single physician
should be looked upon, not as a misfortune, but a crime; and in the
knowledge of such occurrences the duties of the practitioner to his
profession should give way to his paramount obligations to society.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES AND CASES.
Fifth Annual Report of the Registrar-General of England.
1843. Appendix. Letter from William Farr, Esq.--Several new series of
cases are given in the Letter of Mr. Stows, contained in the Appendix to
this Report. Mr. Stows suggests precautions similar to those I have laid
down, and these precautions are strongly enforced by Mr. Farr, who is,
therefore, obnoxious to the same criticisms as myself.
Hall and Dexter, in Am. Journal of Med. Sc. for January, 1844.--Cases
of puerperal fever seeming to originate in erysipelas.
Elkington, of Birmingham, in Provincial Med. Journal, cited in Am.
Journ. Med. Se. for April, 1844.--Six cases in less than a fortnight,
seeming to originate in a case of erysipelas.
West's Reports, in Brit. and For. Med. Review for October, 1845, and
January, 1847.--Affection of the arm, resembling malignant pustule, after
removing the placenta of a patient who died from puerperal fever.
Reference to cases at Wurzburg, as proving contagion, and to Keiller's
cases in the Monthly Journal for February, 1846, as showing connection of
puerperal fever and erysipelas.
Kneeland.--Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever. Am. Jour. Med. Se.,
January, 1846. Also, Connection between Puerperal Fever and Epidemic
Erysipelas. Ibid., April, 1846.
Robert Storrs.--Contagious Effects of Puerperal Fever on the Male
Subject; or on Persons not Child-bearing. (From Provincial Med. and
Surg. Journal.) Am. Jour. Med. Sc., January, 184,6. Numerous cases.
See also Dr. Reid's case in same Journal for April, 1846.
Routh's paper in Proc. of Royal Med. Chir. Soc., Am. Jour. Med. Sc.,
April, 1849, also in B. and F. Med. Chir. Review, April, 1850.
Hill, of Leuchars.--A Series of Cases illustrating the Contagious Nature
of Erysipelas and of Puerperal Fever, and their Intimate Pathological
Connection. (From Monthly Journal of Med. Sc.) Am. Jour. Med. Se.,
July, 1850.
Skoda on the Causes of Puerperal Fever. (Peritonitis in rabbits, from
inoculation with different morbid secretions.) Am. Jour. Med. Se.,
October, 1850.
Arneth. Paper read before the National Academy of Medicine. Annales
d'Hygiene, Tome LXV. 2e Partie. (Means of Disinfection proposed by M.
"Semmeliveis" (Semmelweiss.) Lotions of chloride of lime and use of
nail-brush before admission to lying-in wards. Alleged sudden and great
decrease of mortality from puerperal fever. Cause of disease attributed
to inoculation with cadaveric matters.) See also Routh's paper, mentioned
above.
Moir. Remarks at a meeting of the Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society.
Refers to cases of Dr. Kellie, of Leith. Sixteen in succession, all
fatal. Also to several instances of individual pupils having had a
succession of cases in various quarters of the town, while others,
practising as extensively in the same localities, had none. Also to
several special cases not mentioned elsewhere. Am. Jour. Med. Se. for
October, 1851. (From New Monthly Journal of Med. Science.)
Simpson.--Observations at a Meeting of the Edinburgh Obstetrical Society.
(An "eminent gentleman," according to Dr. Meigs, whose "name is as well
known in America as in (his) native land." Obstetrics. Phil. 1852, pp.
368, 375.) The student is referred to this paper for a valuable resume of
many of the facts, and the necessary inferences, relating to this
subject. Also for another series of cases, Mr. Sidey's, five or six in
rapid succession. Dr. Simpson attended the dissection of two of Dr.
Sidey's cases, and freely handled the diseased parts. His next four
child-bed patients were affected with puerperal fever, and it was the
first time he had seen it in practice. As Dr. Simpson is a gentleman
(Dr. Meigs, as above), and as "a gentleman's hands are clean" (Dr. Meigs'
Sixth Letter), it follows that a gentleman with clean hands may carry the
disease. Am. Jour. Med. Sc., October, 1851.
Peddle.--The five or six cases of Dr. Sidey, followed by the four of Dr.
Simpson, did not end the series. A practitioner in Leith having examined
in Dr. Simpson's house, a portion of the uterus obtained from one of the
patients, had immediately afterwards three fatal cases of puerperal
fever. Dr. Veddie referred to two distinct series of consecutive cases
in his own practice. He had since taken precautions, and not met with
any such cases. Am. Jour. Med. Sc., October, 1851.
Copland. Considers it proved that puerperal fever maybe propagated by
the hands and the clothes, or either, of a third person, the bed-clothes
or body-clothes of a patient. Mentions a new series of cases, one of
which he saw, with the practitioner who had attended them. She was the
sixth he had had within a few days. All died. Dr. Copland insisted that
contagion had caused these cases; advised precautionary measures, and the
practitioner had no other cases for a considerable time. Considers it
criminal, after the evidence adduced,--which he could have
quadrupled,--and the weight of authority brought forward, for a
practitioner to be the medium of transmitting contagion and death to his
patients. Dr. Copland lays down rules similar to those suggested by
myself, and is therefore entitled to the same epithet for so doing.
Medical Dictionary, New York, 1852. Article, Puerperal States and
Diseases.
If there is any appetite for facts so craving as to be yet
unappeased,--Lesotho, necdum satiata,--more can be obtained. Dr. Hodge
remarks that "the frequency and importance of this singular circumstance
(that the disease is occasionally more prevalent with one practitioner
than another) has been exceedingly overrated." More than thirty strings
of cases, more than two hundred and fifty sufferers from puerperal fever,
more than one hundred and thirty deaths appear as the results of a
sparing estimate of such among the facts I have gleaned as could be
numerically valued. These facts constitute, we may take it for granted,
but a small fraction of those that have actually occurred. The number of
them might be greater, but "'t is enough, 't will serve," in Mercutio's
modest phrase, so far as frequency is concerned. For a just estimate of
the importance of the singular circumstance, it might be proper to
consult the languid survivors, the widowed husbands, and the motherless
children, as well as "the unfortunate accoucheur."
III
CURRENTS AND COUNTER-CURRENTS IN MEDICAL SCIENCE
An Address delivered before the Massachusetts Medical Society, at the
Annual Meeting, May 30, 1860.
"Facultate magis quam violentia."
HIPPOCRATES.
Our Annual Meeting never fails to teach us at least one lesson. The art
whose province it is to heal and to save cannot protect its own ranks
from the inroads of disease and the waste of the Destroyer.
Seventeen of our associates have been taken from us since our last
Anniversary. Most of them followed their calling in the villages or
towns that lie among the hills or along the inland streams. Only those
who have lived the kindly, mutually dependent life of the country, can
tell how near the physician who is the main reliance in sickness of all
the families throughout a thinly settled region comes to the hearts of
the people among whom he labors, how they value him while living, how
they cherish his memory when dead. For these friends of ours who have
gone before, there is now no more toil; they start from their slumbers no
more at the cry of pain; they sally forth no more into the storms; they
ride no longer over the lonely roads that knew them so well; their wheels
are rusting on their axles or rolling with other burdens; their watchful
eyes are closed to all the sorrows they lived to soothe. Not one of
these was famous in the great world; some were almost unknown beyond
their own immediate circle. But they have left behind them that loving
remembrance which is better than fame, and if their epitaphs are
chiselled briefly in stone, they are written at full length on living
tablets in a thousand homes to which they carried their ever-welcome aid
and sympathy.
One whom we have lost, very widely known and honored, was a leading
practitioner of this city. His image can hardly be dimmed in your
recollection, as he stood before you only three years ago, filling the
same place with which I am now honored. To speak of him at all worthily,
would be to write the history of professional success, won without
special aid at starting, by toil, patience, good sense, pure character,
and pleasing manners; won in a straight uphill ascent, without one
breathing-space until he sat down, not to rest, but to die. If prayers
could have shielded him from the stroke, if love could have drawn forth
the weapon, and skill could have healed the wound, this passing tribute
might have been left to other lips and to another generation.
Let us hope that our dead have at last found that rest which neither
summer nor winter, nor day nor night, had granted to their unending
earthly labors! And let us remember that our duties to our brethren do
not cease when they become unable to share our toils, or leave behind
them in want and woe those whom their labor had supported. It is
honorable to the Profession that it has organized an Association a for
the relief of its suffering members and their families; it owes this
tribute to the ill-rewarded industry and sacrifices of its less fortunate
brothers who wear out health and life in the service of humanity. I have
great pleasure in referring to this excellent movement, which gives our
liberal profession a chance to show its liberality, and serves to unite
us all, the successful and those whom fortune has cast down, in the bonds
of a true brotherhood.
A medical man, as he goes about his daily business after twenty years of
practice, is apt to suppose that he treats his patients according to the
teachings of his experience. No doubt this is true to some extent; to
what extent depending much on the qualities of the individual. But it is
easy to prove that the prescriptions of even wise physicians are very
commonly founded on something quite different from experience.
Experience must be based on the permanent facts of nature. But a glance
at the prevalent modes of treatment of any two successive generations
will show that there is a changeable as well as a permanent element in
the art of healing; not merely changeable as diseases vary, or as new
remedies are introduced, but changeable by the going out of fashion of
special remedies, by the decadence of a popular theory from which their
fitness was deduced, or other cause not more significant. There is no
reason to suppose that the present time is essentially different in this
respect from any other. Much, therefore, which is now very commonly
considered to be the result of experience, will be recognized in the
next, or in some succeeding generation, as no such result at all, but as
a foregone conclusion, based on some prevalent belief or fashion of the
time.
There are, of course, in every calling, those who go about the work of
the day before them, doing it according to the rules of their craft, and
asking no questions of the past or of the future, or of the aim and end
to which their special labor is contributing. These often consider and
call themselves practical men. They pull the oars of society, and have
no leisure to watch the currents running this or that way; let theorists
and philosophers attend to them. In the mean time, however, these
currents are carrying the practical men, too, and all their work may be
thrown away, and worse than thrown away, if they do not take knowledge of
them and get out of the wrong ones and into the right ones as soon as
they may. Sir Edward Parry and his party were going straight towards the
pole in one of their arctic expeditions, travelling at the rate of ten
miles a day. But the ice over which they travelled was drifting straight
towards the equator, at the rate of twelve miles a day, and yet no man
among them would have known that he was travelling two miles a day
backward unless he had lifted his eyes from the track in which he was
plodding. It is not only going backward that the plain practical workman
is liable to, if he will not look up and look around; he may go forward
to ends he little dreams of. It is a simple business for a mason to
build up a niche in a wall; but what if, a hundred years afterwards when
the wall is torn down, the skeleton of a murdered man drop out of the
niche? It was a plain practical piece of carpentry for a Jewish artisan
to fit two pieces of timber together according to the legal pattern in
the time of Pontius Pilate; he asked no questions, perhaps, but we know
what burden the cross bore on the morrow! And so, with subtler tools
than trowels or axes, the statesman who works in policy without
principle, the theologian who works in forms without a soul, the
physician who, calling himself a practical man, refuses to recognize the
larger laws which govern his changing practice, may all find that they
have been building truth into the wall, and hanging humanity upon the
cross.
The truth is, that medicine, professedly founded on observation, is as
sensitive to outside influences, political, religious, philosophical,
imaginative, as is the barometer to the changes of atmospheric density.
Theoretically it ought to go on its own straightforward inductive path,
without regard to changes of government or to fluctuations of public
opinion. But look a moment while I clash a few facts together, and see
if some sparks do not reveal by their light a closer relation between the
Medical Sciences and the conditions of Society and the general thought of
the time, than would at first be suspected.
Observe the coincidences between certain great political and intellectual
periods and the appearance of illustrious medical reformers and teachers.
It was in the age of Pericles, of Socrates, of Plato, of Phidias, that
Hippocrates gave to medical knowledge the form which it retained for
twenty centuries. With the world-conquering Alexander, the
world-embracing Aristotle, appropriating anatomy and physiology, among
his manifold spoils of study, marched abreast of his royal pupil to wider
conquests. Under the same Ptolemies who founded the Alexandrian Library
and Museum, and ordered the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Scriptures,
the infallible Herophilus ["Contradicere Herophilo in anatomicis, est
contradicere evangelium," was a saying of Fallopius.] made those six
hundred dissections of which Tertullian accused him, and the sagacious
Erasistratus introduced his mild antiphlogistic treatment in opposition
to the polypharmacy and antidotal practice of his time. It is significant
that the large-minded Galen should have been the physician and friend of
the imperial philosopher Marcus Aurelius. The Arabs gave laws in various
branches of knowledge to those whom their arms had invaded, or the terror
of their spreading dominion had reached, and the point from which they
started was, as Humboldt acknowledges, "the study of medicine, by which
they long ruled the Christian Schools," and to which they added the
department of chemical pharmacy.
Look at Vesalius, the contemporary of Luther. Who can fail to see one
common spirit in the radical ecclesiastic and the reforming
court-physician? Both still to some extent under the dominion of the
letter: Luther holding to the real presence; Vesalius actually causing to
be drawn and engraved two muscles which he knew were not found in the
human subject, because they had been described by Galen, from dissections
of the lower animals. Both breaking through old traditions in the search
of truth; one, knife in hand, at the risk of life and reputation, the
other at the risk of fire and fagot, with that mightier weapon which all
the devils could not silence, though they had been thicker than the tiles
on the house-tops. How much the physician of the Catholic Charles V. had
in common with the great religious destructive, may be guessed by the
relish with which he tells the story how certain Pavian students exhumed
the body of an "elegans scortum," or lovely dame of ill repute, the
favorite of a monk of the order of St. Anthony, who does not seem to have
resisted temptation so well as the founder of his order. We have always
ranked the physician Rabelais among the early reformers, but I do not
know that Vesalius has ever been thanked for his hit at the morals of the
religious orders, or for turning to the good of science what was intended
for the "benefit of clergy."
Our unfortunate medical brother, Michael Servetus, the spiritual patient
to whom the theological moxa was applied over the entire surface for the
cure of his heresy, came very near anticipating Harvey. The same
quickened thought of the time which led him to dispute the dogma of the
Church, opened his mind to the facts which contradicted the dogmas of the
Faculty.
Harvey himself was but the posthumous child of the great Elizabethan
period. Bacon was at once his teacher and his patient. The founder of
the new inductive philosophy had only been dead two years when the
treatise on the Circulation, the first-fruit of the Restoration of
Science, was given to the world.
And is it to be looked at as a mere accidental coincidence, that while
Napoleon was modernizing the political world, Bichat was revolutionizing
the science of life and the art that is based upon it; that while the
young general was scaling the Alps, the young surgeon was climbing the
steeper summits of unexplored nature; that the same year read the
announcement of those admirable "Researches on Life and Death," and the
bulletins of the battle of Marengo?
If we come to our own country, who can fail to recognize that Benjamin
Rush, the most conspicuous of American physicians, was the intellectual
offspring of the movement which produced the Revolution? "The same hand,"
says one of his biographers, "which subscribed the declaration of the
political independence of these States, accomplished their emancipation
from medical systems formed in foreign countries, and wholly unsuitable
to the state of diseases in America."
Following this general course of remark, I propose to indicate in a few
words the direction of the main intellectual current of the time, and to
point out more particularly some of the eddies which tend to keep the
science and art of medicine from moving with it, or even to carry them
backwards.
The two dominant words of our time are law and average, both pointing to
the uniformity of the order of being in which we live. Statistics have
tabulated everything,--population, growth, wealth, crime, disease. We
have shaded maps showing the geographical distribution of larceny and
suicide. Analysis and classification have been at work upon all tangible
and visible objects. The Positive Philosophy of Comte has only given
expression to the observing and computing mind of the nineteenth century.
In the mean time, the great stronghold of intellectual conservatism,
traditional belief, has been assailed by facts which would have been
indicted as blasphemy but a few generations ago. Those new tables of the
law, placed in the hands of the geologist by the same living God who
spoke from Sinai to the Israelites of old, have remodelled the beliefs of
half the civilized world. The solemn scepticism of science has replaced
the sneering doubts of witty philosophers. The more positive knowledge
we gain, the more we incline to question all that has been received
without absolute proof.
As a matter of course, this movement has its partial reactions. The
province of faith is claimed as a port free of entry to unsupported
individual convictions. The tendency to question is met by the
unanalyzing instinct of reverence. The old church calls back its
frightened truants. Some who have lost their hereditary religious belief
find a resource in the revelations of Spiritualism. By a parallel
movement, some of those who have become medical infidels pass over to the
mystic band of believers in the fancied miracles of Homoeopathy.
Under these influences transmitted to, or at least shared by, the medical
profession, the old question between "Nature," so called, and "Art," or
professional tradition, has reappeared with new interest. I say the old
question, for Hippocrates stated the case on the side of "Nature" more
than two thousand years ago. Miss Florence Nightingale,--and if I name
her next to the august Father of the Healing Art, its noblest daughter
well deserves that place of honor,--Miss Florence Nightingale begins her
late volume with a paraphrase of his statement. But from a very early
time to this there has always been a strong party against "Nature."
Themison called the practice of Hippocrates "a meditation upon death."
Dr. Rush says: "It is impossible to calculate the mischief which
Hippocrates, has done, by first marking Nature with his name and
afterwards letting her loose upon sick people. Millions have perished by
her hands in all ages and countries." Sir John Forbes, whose defence of
"Nature" in disease you all know, and to the testimonial in whose honor
four of your Presidents have contributed, has been recently greeted, on
retiring from the profession, with a wish that his retirement had been
twenty years sooner, and the opinion that no man had done so much to
destroy the confidence of the public in the medical profession.
In this Society we have had the Hippocratic and the Themisonic side
fairly represented. The treatise of one of your early Presidents on the
Mercurial Treatment is familiar to my older listeners. Others who have
held the same office have been noted for the boldness of their practice,
and even for partiality to the use of complex medication.
On the side of "Nature" we have had, first of all, that remarkable
discourse on Self-Limited Diseases, [On Self-Limited Diseases. A
Discourse delivered before the Massachusetts Medical Society, at their
Annual Meeting, May 27, 1835. By Jacob Bigelow, M. D.] which has given
the key-note to the prevailing medical tendency of this neighborhood, at
least, for the quarter of a century since it was delivered. Nor have we
forgotten the address delivered at Springfield twenty years later,
[Search out the Secrets, of Nature. By Augustus A. Gould, M. D. Read
at the Annual Meeting, June 27, 1855.] full of good sense and useful
suggestions, to one of which suggestions we owe the learned, impartial,
judicious, well-written Prize Essay of Dr. Worthington Hooker. [Rational
Therapeutics. A Prize Essay. By Worthington Hooker, M. D., of New
Haven. Boston. 1857.] We should not omit from the list the important
address of another of our colleagues, [On the Treatment of Compound and
Complicated Fractures. By William J. Walker, M. D. Read at the Annual
Meeting, May 29, 1845.] showing by numerous cases the power of Nature in
healing compound fractures to be much greater than is frequently
supposed,--affording, indeed, more striking illustrations than can be
obtained from the history of visceral disease, of the supreme wisdom,
forethought, and adaptive dexterity of that divine Architect, as shown in
repairing the shattered columns which support the living temple of the
body.
We who are on the side of "Nature" please ourselves with the idea that we
are in the great current in which the true intelligence of the time is
moving. We believe that some who oppose, or fear, or denounce our
movement are themselves caught in various eddies that set back against
the truth. And we do most earnestly desire and most actively strive,
that Medicine, which, it is painful to remember, has been spoken of as
"the withered branch of science" at a meeting of the British Association,
shall be at length brought fully to share, if not to lead, the great wave
of knowledge which rolls with the tides that circle the globe.
If there is any State or city which might claim to be the American
headquarters of the nature-trusting heresy, provided it be one, that
State is Massachusetts, and that city is its capital. The effect which
these doctrines have upon the confidence reposed in the profession is a
matter of opinion. For myself, I do not believe this confidence can be
impaired by any investigations which tend to limit the application of
troublesome, painful, uncertain, or dangerous remedies. Nay, I will
venture to say this, that if every specific were to fail utterly, if the
cinchona trees all died out, and the arsenic mines were exhausted, and
the sulphur regions were burned up, if every drug from the vegetable,
animal, and mineral kingdom were to disappear from the market, a body of
enlightened men, organized as a distinct profession, would be required
just as much as now, and respected and trusted as now, whose province
should be to guard against the causes of disease, to eliminate them if
possible when still present, to order all the conditions of the patient
so as to favor the efforts of the system to right itself, and to give
those predictions of the course of disease which only experience can
warrant, and which in so many cases relieve the exaggerated fears of
sufferers and their friends, or warn them in season of impending danger.
Great as the loss would be if certain active remedies could no longer be
obtained, it would leave the medical profession the most essential part
of it's duties, and all, and more than all, its present share of honors;
for it would be the death-blow to charlatanism, which depends for its
success almost entirely on drugs, or at least on a nomenclature that
suggests them.
There is no offence, then, or danger in expressing the opinion, that,
after all which has been said, the community is still overdosed: The best
proof of it is, that "no families take so little medicine as those of
doctors, except those of apothecaries, and that old practitioners are
more sparing of active medicines than younger ones." [Dr. James Jackson
has kindly permitted me to make the following extract from a letter just
received by him from Sir James Clark, and dated May 26, 1860: "As a
physician advances in age, he generally, I think, places less confidence
in the ordinary medical treatment than he did, not only during his early,
but even his middle period of life."] The conclusion from these facts is
one which the least promising of Dr. Howe's pupils in the mental
department could hardly help drawing.
Part of the blame of over-medication must, I fear, rest with the
profession, for yielding to the tendency to self-delusion, which seems
inseparable from the practice of the art of healing. I need only touch
on the common modes of misunderstanding or misapplying the evidence of
nature.
First, there is the natural incapacity for sound observation, which is
like a faulty ear in music. We see this in many persons who know a good
deal about books, but who are not sharp-sighted enough to buy a horse or
deal with human diseases.
Secondly, there is in some persons a singular inability to weigh the
value of testimony; of which, I think, from a pretty careful examination
of his books, Hahnemann affords the best specimen outside the walls of
Bedlam.
The inveterate logical errors to which physicians have always been
subject are chiefly these:
The mode of inference per enumerationem simplicem, in scholastic phrase;
that is, counting only their favorable cases. This is the old trick
illustrated in Lord Bacon's story of the gifts of the shipwrecked people,
hung up in the temple.--Behold! they vowed these gifts to the altar, and
the gods saved them. Ay, said a doubting bystander, but how many made
vows of gifts and were shipwrecked notwithstanding? The numerical system
is the best corrective of this and similar errors. The arguments
commonly brought against its application to all matters of medical
observation, treatment included, seem to apply rather to the tabulation
of facts ill observed, or improperly classified, than to the method
itself.
The post hoc ergo propter hoc error: he got well after taking my
medicine; therefore in consequence of taking it.
The false induction from genuine facts of observation, leading to the
construction of theories which are then deductively applied in the face
of the results of direct observation. The school of Broussais has
furnished us with a good example of this error.
And lastly, the error which Sir Thomas Browne calls giving "a reason of
the golden tooth;" that is, assuming a falsehood as a fact, and giving
reasons for it, commonly fanciful ones, as is constantly done by that
class of incompetent observers who find their "golden tooth" in the
fabulous effects of the homoeopathie materia medica,--which consists of
sugar of milk and a nomenclature.
Another portion of the blame rests with the public itself, which insists
on being poisoned. Somebody buys all the quack medicines that build
palaces for the mushroom, say rather, the toadstool millionaires. Who is
it? These people have a constituency of millions. The popular belief is
all but universal that sick persons should feed on noxious substances.
One of our members was called not long since to a man with a terribly
sore mouth. On inquiry he found that the man had picked up a box of
unknown pills, in Howard Street, and had proceeded to take them, on
general principles, pills being good for people. They happened to
contain mercury, and hence the trouble for which he consulted our
associate.
The outside pressure, therefore, is immense upon the physician, tending
to force him to active treatment of some kind. Certain old
superstitions, still lingering in the mind of the public, and not yet
utterly expelled from that of the profession, are at the bottom of this,
or contribute to it largely. One of the most ancient is, that disease is
a malignant agency, or entity, to be driven out of the body by offensive
substances, as the smoke of the fish's heart and liver drove the devil
out of Tobit's bridal chamber, according to the Apochrypha. Epileptics
used to suck the blood from the wounds of dying gladiators. [Plinii Hist.
Mundi. lib. xxviii. c. 4.] The Hon. Robert Boyle's little book was
published some twenty or thirty years before our late President, Dr.
Holyoke, was born. [A Collection of Choice and Safe Remedies. The Fifth
Edition, corrected. London, 1712. Dr. Holyoke was born in 1728.] In it
he recommends, as internal medicines, most of the substances commonly
used as fertilizers of the soil. His "Album Graecum" is best left
untranslated, and his "Zebethum Occidentale" is still more
transcendentally unmentionable except in a strange dialect. It sounds
odiously to us to hear him recommend for dysentery a powder made from
"the sole of an old shoe worn by some man that walks much." Perhaps
nobody here ever heard of tying a stocking, which had been worn during
the day, round the neck at night for a sore throat. The same idea of
virtue in unlovely secretions! [The idea is very ancient. "Sordes
hominis" "Sudore et oleo medicinam facientibus."--Plin. xxviii. 4.]
Even now the Homoeopathists have been introducing the venom of serpents,
under the learned title of Lachesis, and outraging human nature with
infusions of the pediculus capitis; that is, of course, as we understand
their dilutions, the names of these things; for if a fine-tooth-comb
insect were drowned in Lake Superior, we cannot agree with them in
thinking that every drop of its waters would be impregnated with all the
pedicular virtues they so highly value. They know what they are doing.
They are appealing to the detestable old superstitious presumption in
favor of whatever is nauseous and noxious as being good for the sick.
Again, we all occasionally meet persons stained with nitrate of silver,
given for epilepsy. Read what Dr. Martin says, about the way in which it
came to be used, in his excellent address before the Norfolk County
Medical Society, and the evidence I can show, but have not time for now,
and then say what you think of the practice which on such presumptions
turns a white man as blue as the double-tattooed King of the Cannibal
Islands! [Note A.]
If medical superstitions have fought their way down through all the
rationalism and scepticism of the nineteenth century, of course the
theories of the schools, supported by great names, adopted into the
popular belief and incorporated with the general mass of misapprehension
with reference to disease, must be expected to meet us at every turn in
the shape of bad practice founded on false doctrine. A French patient
complains that his blood heats him, and expects his doctor to bleed him.
An English or American one says he is bilious, and will not be easy
without a dose of calomel. A doctor looks at a patient's tongue, sees it
coated, and says the stomach is foul; his head full of the old saburral
notion which the extreme inflammation-doctrine of Broussais did so much
to root out, but which still leads, probably, to much needless and
injurious wrong of the stomach and bowels by evacuants, when all they
want is to be let alone. It is so hard to get anything out of the dead
hand of medical tradition! The mortmain of theorists extinct in science
clings as close as that of ecclesiastics defunct in law.
One practical hint may not be out of place here. It seems to be
sometimes forgotten, by those who must know the fact, that the tongue is
very different, anatomically and physiologically, from the stomach. Its
condition does not in the least imply a similar one of the stomach, which
is a very different structure, covered with a different kind of
epithelium, and furnished with entirely different secretions. A
silversmith will, for a dollar, make a small hoe, of solid silver, which
will last for centuries, and will give a patient more comfort, used for
the removal of the accumulated epithelium and fungous growths which
constitute the "fur," than many a prescription with a split-footed Rx
before it, addressed to the parts out of reach.
I think more of this little implement on account of its agency in saving
the Colony at Plymouth in the year 1623. Edward Winslow heard that
Massasoit was sick and like to die. He found him with a houseful of
people about him, women rubbing his arms and legs, and friends "making
such a hellish noise" as they probably thought would scare away the devil
of sickness. Winslow gave him some conserve, washed his mouth, scraped
his tongue, which was in a horrid state, got down some drink, made him
some broth, dosed him with an infusion of strawberry leaves and sassafras
root, and had the satisfaction of seeing him rapidly recover. Massasoit,
full of gratitude, revealed the plot which had been formed to destroy the
colonists, whereupon the Governor ordered Captain Miles Standish to see
to them; who thereupon, as everybody remembers, stabbed Pecksuot with his
own knife, broke up the plot, saved the colony, and thus rendered
Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Medical Society a possibility, as
they now are a fact before us. So much for this parenthesis of the
tongue-scraper, which helped to save the young colony from a much more
serious scrape, and may save the Union yet, if a Presidential candidate
should happen to be taken sick as Massasoit was, and his tongue wanted
cleaning,--which process would not hurt a good many politicians, with or
without a typhoid fever.
Again, see how the "bilious" theory works in every-day life here and now,
illustrated by a case from actual life. A youthful practitioner, whose
last molars have not been a great while cut, meets an experienced and
noted physician in consultation. This is the case. A slender, lymphatic
young woman is suckling two lusty twins, the intervals of suction being
occupied on her part with palpitations, headaches, giddiness, throbbing
in the head, and various nervous symptoms, her cheeks meantime getting
bloodless, and her strength running away in company with her milk. The
old experienced physician, seeing the yellowish waxy look which is common
in anaemic patients, considers it a "bilious" case, and is for giving a
rousing emetic. Of course, he has to be wheedled out of this, a recipe
is written for beefsteaks and porter, the twins are ignominiously
expelled from the anaemic bosom, and forced to take prematurely to the
bottle, and this prolific mother is saved for future usefulness in the
line of maternity.
The practice of making a profit on the medicine ordered has been held up
to reprobation by one at least of the orators who have preceded me. That
the effect of this has been ruinous in English practice I cannot doubt,
and that in this country the standard of practice was in former
generations lowered through the same agency is not unlikely. I have seen
an old account-book in which the physician charged an extra price for
gilding his rich patients' pills. If all medicine were very costly, and
the expense of it always came out of the physician's fee, it would really
be a less objectionable arrangement than this other most pernicious one.
He would naturally think twice before he gave an emetic or cathartic
which evacuated his own pocket, and be sparing of the cholagogues that
emptied the biliary ducts of his own wallet, unless he were sure they
were needed. If there is any temptation, it should not be in favor of
giving noxious agents, as it clearly must be in the case of English
druggists and "General Practitioners." The complaint against the other
course is a very old one. Pliny, inspired with as truly Roman horror of
quackery as the elder Cato,--who declared that the Greek doctors had
sworn to exterminate all barbarians, including the Romans, with their
drugs, but is said to have physicked his own wife to death,
notwithstanding,--Pliny says, in so many words, that the cerates and
cataplasms, plasters, collyria, and antidotes, so abundant in his time,
as in more recent days, were mere tricks to make money.
A pretty strong eddy, then, or rather many eddies, setting constantly
back from the current of sober observation of nature, in the direction of
old superstitions and fancies, of exploded theories, of old ways of
making money, which are very slow to pass out of fashion.
But there are other special American influences which we are bound to
take cognizance of. If I wished to show a student the difficulties of
getting at truth from medical experience, I would give him the history of
epilepsy to read. If I wished him to understand the tendencies of the
American medical mind, its sanguine enterprise, its self-confidence, its
audacious handling of Nature, its impatience with her old-fashioned ways
of taking time to get a sick man well, I would make him read the life and
writings of Benjamin Rush. Dr. Rush thought and said that there were
twenty times more intellect and a hundred times more knowledge in the
country in 1799 than before the Revolution. His own mind was in a
perpetual state of exaltation produced by the stirring scenes in which he
had taken a part, and the quickened life of the time in which he lived.
It was not the state to favor sound, calm observation. He was impatient,
and Nature is profoundly imperturbable. We may adjust the beating of our
hearts to her pendulum if we will and can, but we may be very sure that
she will not change the pendulum's rate of going because our hearts are
palpitating. He thought he had mastered yellow-fever. "Thank God," he
said, "out of one hundred patients whom I have visited or prescribed for
this day, I have lost none." Where was all his legacy of knowledge when
Norfolk was decimated? Where was it when the blue flies were buzzing
over the coffins of the unburied dead piled up in the cemetery of New
Orleans, at the edge of the huge trenches yawning to receive them?
One such instance will do as well as twenty. Dr. Rush must have been a
charming teacher, as he was an admirable man. He was observing, rather
than a sound observer; eminently observing, curious, even, about all
manner of things. But he could not help feeling as if Nature had been a
good deal shaken by the Declaration of Independence, and that American
art was getting to be rather too much for her,--especially as illustrated
in his own practice. He taught thousands of American students, he gave a
direction to the medical mind of the country more than any other one man;
perhaps he typifies it better than any other. It has clearly tended to
extravagance in remedies and trust in remedies, as in everything else.
How could a people which has a revolution once in four years, which has
contrived the Bowie-knife and the revolver, which has chewed the juice
out of all the superlatives in the language in Fourth of July orations,
and so used up its epithets in the rhetoric of abuse that it takes two
great quarto dictionaries to supply the demand; which insists in sending
out yachts and horses and boys to out-sail, out-run, out-fight, and
checkmate all the rest of creation; how could such a people be content
with any but "heroic" practice? What wonder that the stars and stripes
wave over doses of ninety grains of sulphate of quinine, [More strictly,
ninety-six grains in two hours. Dunglison's Practice, 1842, vol. ii. p.
520. Eighty grains in one dose. Ibid. p. 536. Ninety-six grains of
sulphate of quinine are equal to eight ounces of good bark.--Wood &
Bache.] and that the American eagle screams with delight to see three
drachms of calomel given at a single mouthful?
Add to this the great number of Medical Journals, all useful, we hope,
most of them necessary, we trust, many of them excellently well
conducted, but which must find something to fill their columns, and so
print all the new plans of treatment and new remedies they can get hold
of, as the newspapers, from a similar necessity, print the shocking
catastrophes and terrible murders.
Besides all this, here are we, the great body of teachers in the
numberless medical schools of the Union, some of us lecturing to crowds
who clap and stamp in the cities, some of us wandering over the country,
like other professional fertilizers, to fecundate the minds of less
demonstrative audiences at various scientific stations; all of us talking
habitually to those supposed to know less than ourselves, and loving to
claim as much for our art as we can, not to say for our own schools, and
possibly indirectly for our own practical skill. Hence that annual crop
of introductory lectures; the useful blossoming into the ornamental, as
the cabbage becomes glorified in the cauliflower; that lecture-room
literature of adjectives, that declamatory exaggeration, that splendid
show of erudition borrowed from D'Israeli, and credited to Lord Bacon and
the rest, which have suggested to our friends of the Medical Journals an
occasional epigram at our expense. Hence the tendency in these
productions, and in medical lectures generally, to overstate the efficacy
of favorite methods of cure, and hence the premium offered for showy
talkers rather than sagacious observers, for the men of adjectives rather
than of nouns substantive in the more ambitious of these institutions.
Such are some of the eddies in which we are liable to become involved and
carried back out of the broad stream of philosophical, or, in other
words, truth-loving, investigations. The causes of disease, in the mean
time, have been less earnestly studied in the eagerness of the search for
remedies. Speak softly! Women have been borne out from an old-world
hospital, two in one coffin, that the horrors of their prison-house might
not be known, while the very men who were discussing the treatment of the
disease were stupidly conveying the infection from bed to bed, as
rat-killers carry their poisons from one household to another. Do not
some of you remember that I have had to fight this private-pestilence
question against a scepticism which sneered in the face of a mass of
evidence such as the calm statisticians of the Insurance office could not
listen to without horror and indignation? ["The Contagiousness of
Puerperal Fever."--N. E. Quar. Jour. of Medicine and Surgery, April,
1843. Reprinted, with Additions. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1855.] Have
we forgotten what is told in one of the books published under our own
sanction, that a simple measure of ventilation, proposed by Dr. John
Clark, had saved more than sixteen thousand children's lives in a single
hospital? How long would it have taken small doses of calomel and
rhubarb to save as many children? These may be useful in prudent hands,
but how insignificant compared to the great hygienic conditions! Causes,
causes, and again causes,--more and more we fall back on these as the
chief objects of our attention. The shortest system of medical practice
that I know of is the oldest, but not the worst. It is older than
Hippocrates, older than Chiron the Centaur. Nature taught it to the first
mother when she saw her first-born child putting some ugly pebble or
lurid berry into its mouth. I know not in what language it was spoken,
but I know that in English it would sound thus: Spit it out!
Art can do something more than say this. It can sometimes reach the
pebble or berry after it has been swallowed. But the great thing is to
keep these things out of children's mouths, and as soon as they are
beyond our reach, to be reasonable and patient with Nature, who means
well, but does not like to hurry, and who took nine calendar months, more
or less, to every mother's son among us, before she thought he was fit to
be shown to the public.
Suffer me now to lay down a few propositions, whether old or new it
matters little, not for your immediate acceptance, nor yet for your hasty
rejection, but for your calm consideration.
But first, there are a number of terms which we are in the habit of using
in a vague though not unintelligible way, and which it is as well now to
define. These terms are the tools with which we are to work, and the
first thing is to sharpen them. It is nothing to us that they have been
sharpened a thousand times before; they always get dull in the using, and
every new workman has a right to carry them to the grindstone and sharpen
them to suit himself.
Nature, in medical language, as opposed to Art, means trust in the
reactions of the living system against, ordinary normal impressions.
Art, in the same language, as opposed to Nature, means an intentional
resort to extraordinary abnormal impressions for the relief of disease.
The reaction of the living system is the essence of both. Food is
nothing, if there is no digestive act to respond to it. We cannot raise
a blister on a dead man, or hope that a carminative forced between his
lips will produce its ordinary happy effect.
Disease, dis-ease,--disturbed quiet, uncomfortableness,--means imperfect
or abnormal reaction of the living system, and its more or less permanent
results.
Food, in its largest sense, is whatever helps to build up the normal
structures, or to maintain their natural actions.
Medicine, in distinction from food, is every unnatural or noxious agent
applied for the relief of disease.
Physic means properly the Natural art, and Physician is only the Greek
synonyme of Naturalist.
With these few explanations I proceed to unfold the propositions I have
mentioned.
Disease and death, if we may judge by the records of creation, are
inherently and essentially necessary in the present order of things. A
perfect intelligence, trained by a perfect education, could do no more
than keep the laws of the physical and spiritual universe. An imperfect
intelligence, imperfectly taught,--and this is the condition of our
finite humanity,--will certainly fail to keep all these laws perfectly.
Disease is one of the penalties of one of the forms of such failure. It
is prefigured in the perturbations of the planets, in the disintegration
of the elemental masses; it has left its traces in the fossil organisms
of extinct creations. [Professor Agassiz has kindly handed me the
following note: "There are abnormal structures in animals of all ages
anterior to the creation of mankind. Malformed specimens of Crinoids are
known from the Triassic and Jurassic deposits. Malformed and diseased
bones of tertiary mammalia have been collected in the caverns of
Gailenreuth with traces of healing."]
But it is especially the prerogative, I had almost said privilege, of
educated and domesticated beings, from man down to the potato, serving to
teach them, and such as train them, the laws of life, and to get rid of
those who will not mind or cannot be kept subject to these laws.
Disease, being always an effect, is always in exact proportion to the sum
of its causes, as much in the case of Spigelius, who dies of a scratch,
as in that of the man who recovers after an iron bar has been shot
through his brain. The one prevalent failing of the medical art is to
neglect the causes and quarrel with the effect.
There are certain general facts which include a good deal of what is
called and treated as disease. Thus, there are two opposite movements of
life to be seen in cities and elsewhere, belonging to races which, from
various persistent causes, are breeding down and tending to run out, and
to races which are breeding up, or accumulating vital capital,--a
descending and an ascending series. Let me give an example of each; and
that I may incidentally remove a common impression about this country as
compared with the Old World, an impression which got tipsy with conceit
and staggered into the attitude of a formal proposition in the work of
Dr. Robert Knox, I will illustrate the downward movement from English
experience, and the upward movement from a family history belonging to
this immediate neighborhood.
Miss Nightingale speaks of "the fact so often seen of a
great-grandmother, who was a tower of physical vigor, descending into a
grandmother perhaps a little less vigorous, but still sound as a bell,
and healthy to the core, into a mother languid and confined to her
carriage and house; and lastly into a daughter sickly and confined to her
bed." So much for the descending English series; now for the ascending
American series.
Something more than one hundred and thirty years ago there graduated at
Harvard College a delicate youth, who lived an invalid life and died at
the age of about fifty. His two children were both of moderate physical
power, and one of them diminutive in stature. The next generation rose
in physical development, and reached eighty years of age and more in some
of its members. The fourth generation was of fair average endowment.
The fifth generation, great-great-grandchildren of the slender invalid,
are several of, them of extraordinary bodily and mental power; large in
stature, formidable alike with their brains and their arms, organized on
a more extensive scale than either of their parents.
This brief account illustrates incidentally the fallacy of the
universal-degeneration theory applied to American life; the same on which
one of our countrymen has lately brought some very forcible facts to bear
in a muscular discussion of which we have heard rather more than is good
for us. But the two series, American and English, ascending and
descending, were adduced with the main purpose of showing the immense
difference of vital endowments in different strains of blood; a
difference to which all ordinary medication is in all probability a
matter of comparatively trivial purport. Many affections which art has
to strive against might be easily shown to be vital to the well-being of
society. Hydrocephalus, tabes mesenterica, and other similar maladies,
are natural agencies which cut off the children of races that are sinking
below the decent minimum which nature has established as the condition of
viability, before they reach the age of reproduction. They are really
not so much diseases, as manifestations of congenital incapacity for
life; the race would be ruined if art could ever learn always to preserve
the individuals subject to them. We must do the best we can for them,
but we ought also to know what these "diseases" mean.
Again, invalidism is the normal state of many organizations. It can be
changed to disease, but never to absolute health by medicinal appliances.
There are many ladies, ancient and recent, who are perpetually taking
remedies for irremediable pains and aches. They ought to have headaches
and back-aches and stomach-aches; they are not well if they do not have
them. To expect them to live without frequent twinges is like expecting
a doctor's old chaise to go without creaking; if it did, we might be sure
the springs were broken. There is no doubt that the constant demand for
medicinal remedies from patients of this class leads to their over-use;
often in the case of cathartics, sometimes in that of opiates. I have
been told by an intelligent practitioner in a Western town, that the
constant prescription of opiates by certain physicians in his vicinity
has rendered the habitual use of that drug in all that region very
prevalent; more common, I should think, than alcoholic drunkenness in the
most intemperate localities of which I have known anything. A frightful
endemic demoralization betrays itself in the frequency with which the
haggard features and drooping shoulders of the opium-drunkards are met
with in the streets.
The next proposition I would ask you to consider is this: The presumption
always is that every noxious agent, including medicines proper, which
hurts a well man, hurts a sick one. [ Note B.]
Let me illustrate this proposition before you decide upon it. If it were
known that a prize-fighter were to have a drastic purgative administered
two or three days before a contest, or a large blister applied to his
back, no one will question that it would affect the betting on his side
unfavorably; we will say to the amount of five per cent. Now the drain
upon the resources of the system produced in such a case must be at its
minimum, for the subject is a powerful man, in the prime of life, and in
admirable condition. If the drug or the blister takes five per cent.
from his force of resistance, it will take at least as large a fraction
from any invalid. But this invalid has to fight a champion who strikes
hard but cannot be hit in return, who will press him sharply for breath,
but will never pant himself while the wind can whistle through his
fleshless ribs. The suffering combatant is liable to want all his
stamina, and five per cent. may lose him the battle.
All noxious agents, all appliances which are not natural food or stimuli,
all medicines proper, cost a patient, on the average, five per cent. of
his vital force, let us say. Twenty times as much waste of force
produced by any of them, that is, would exactly kill him, nothing less
than kill him, and nothing more. If this, or something like this, is
true, then all these medications are, prima facie, injurious.
In the game of Life-or-Death, Rouge et Noir, as played between the Doctor
and the Sexton, this five per cent., this certain small injury entering
into the chances is clearly the sexton's perquisite for keeping the green
table, over which the game is played, and where he hoards up his gains.
Suppose a blister to diminish a man's pain, effusion or dyspnoea to the
saving of twenty per cent. in vital force; his profit from it is fifteen,
in that case, for it always hurts him five to begin with, according to
our previous assumption.
Presumptions are of vast importance in medicine, as in law. A man is
presumed innocent until he is proved guilty. A medicine--that is, a
noxious agent, like a blister, a seton, an emetic, or a cathartic
--should always be presumed to be hurtful. It always is directly
hurtful; it may sometimes be indirectly beneficial. If this presumption
were established, and disease always assumed to be the innocent victim of
circumstances, and not punishable by medicines, that is, noxious agents,
or poisons, until the contrary was shown, we should not so frequently
hear the remark commonly, perhaps erroneously, attributed to Sir Astley
Cooper, but often repeated by sensible persons, that, on the whole, more
harm than good is done by medication. Throw out opium, which the Creator
himself seems to prescribe, for we often see the scarlet poppy growing in
the cornfields, as if it were foreseen that wherever there is hunger to
be fed there must also be pain to be soothed; throw out a few specifics
which our art did not discover, and is hardly needed to apply [ Note C.];
throw out wine, which is a food, and the vapors which produce the miracle
of anaesthesia, and I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica, as
now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the
better for mankind,--and all the worse for the fishes.
But to justify this proposition, I must add that the injuries inflicted
by over-medication are to a great extent masked by disease. Dr. Hooker
believes that the typhus syncopatia of a preceding generation in New
England "was often in fact a brandy and opium disease." How is a
physician to distinguish the irritation produced by his blister from that
caused by the inflammation it was meant to cure? How can he tell the
exhaustion produced by his evacuants from the collapse belonging to the
disease they were meant to remove?
Lastly, medication without insuring favorable hygienic conditions is like
amputation without ligatures. I had a chance to learn this well of old,
when physician to the Broad Street district of the Boston Dispensary.
There, there was no help for the utter want of wholesome conditions, and
if anybody got well under my care, it must have been in virtue of the
rough-and-tumble constitution which emerges from the struggle for life in
the street gutters, rather than by the aid of my prescriptions.
But if the materia medica were lost overboard, how much more pains would
be taken in ordering all the circumstances surrounding the patient (as
can be done everywhere out of the crowded pauper districts), than are
taken now by too many who think they do their duty and earn their money
when they write a recipe for a patient left in an atmosphere of domestic
malaria, or to the most negligent kind of nursing! I confess that I
should think my chance of recovery from illness less with Hippocrates for
my physician and Mrs. Gamp for my nurse, than if I were in the hands of
Hahnemann himself, with Florence Nightingale or good Rebecca Taylor to
care for me.
If I am right in maintaining that the presumption is always against the
use of noxious agents in disease, and if any whom I might influence
should adopt this as a principle of practice, they will often find
themselves embarrassed by the imperative demand of patients and their
friends for such agents where a case is not made out against this
standing presumption. I must be permitted to say, that I think the
French, a not wholly uncivilized people, are in advance of the English
and ourselves in the art of prescribing for the sick without hurting
them. And I do confess that I think their varied ptisans and syrups are
as much preferable to the mineral regimen of bug-poison and ratsbane, so
long in favor on the other side of the Channel, as their art of preparing
food for the table to the rude cookery of those hard-feeding and
much-dosing islanders. We want a reorganized cuisine of invalidism
perhaps as much as the culinary, reform, for which our lyceum lecturers,
and others who live much at hotels and taverns, are so urgent. Will you
think I am disrespectful if I ask whether, even in Massachusetts, a dose
of calomel is not sometimes given by a physician on the same principle as
that upon which a landlord occasionally prescribes bacon and
eggs,--because he cannot think of anything else quite so handy? I leave
my suggestion of borrowing a hint from French practice to your mature
consideration.
I may, however, call your attention, briefly, to the singular fact, that
English and American practitioners are apt to accuse French medical
practice of inertness, and French surgical practice of unnecessary
activity. Thus, Dr. Bostock considers French medical treatment, with
certain exceptions, as "decidedly less effective" than that of his own
country. Mr. S. Cooper, again, defends the simple British practice of
procuring union by the first intention against the attacks of M. Roux and
Baron Larrey. [Cooper's Surg. Diet. art. "Wounds." Yet Mr. John Bell
gives the French surgeons credit for introducing this doctrine of
adhesion, and accuses O'Halloran of "rudeness and ignorance," and "bold,
uncivil language," in disputing their teaching. Princ. of Surgery, vol.
i. p. 42. Mr. Hunter succeeded at last in naturalizing the doctrine and
practice, but even he had to struggle against the perpetual jealousy of
rivals, and died at length assassinated by an insult.] We have often
heard similar opinions maintained by our own countrymen. While
Anglo-American criticism blows hot or cold on the two departments of
French practice, it is not, I hope, indecent to question whether all the
wisdom is necessarily with us in both cases.
Our art has had two or three lessons which have a deep meaning to those
who are willing to read them honestly. The use of water-dressings in
surgery completed the series of reforms by which was abolished the
"coarse and cruel practice" of the older surgeons, who with their
dressings and acrid balsams, their tents and leaden tubes, "absolutely
delayed the cure." The doctrine of Broussais, transient as was its
empire, reversed the practice of half of Christendom for a season, and
taught its hasty disciples to shun their old favorite remedies as mortal
poisons. This was not enough permanently to shift the presumption about
drugs where it belonged, and so at last, just as the sympathetic powder
and the Unguentum Armarium came in a superstitious age to kill out the
abuses of external over-medication, the solemn farce of Homoeopathy was
enacted in the face of our own too credulous civilization, that under
shelter of its pretences the "inward bruises" of over-drugged viscera
might be allowed to heal by the first intention. Its lesson we must
accept, whether we will or not; its follies we are tired of talking
about. The security of the medical profession against this and all
similar fancies is in the average constitution of the human mind with
regard to the laws of evidence.
My friends and brothers in Art! There is nothing to be feared from the
utterance of any seeming heresy to which you may have listened. I cannot
compromise your collective wisdom. If I have strained the truth one
hair's breadth for the sake of an epigram or an antithesis, you are
accustomed to count the normal pulse-beats of sound judgment, and know
full well how to recognize the fever-throbs of conceit and the nervous
palpitations of rhetoric.
The freedom with which each of us speaks his thought in this presence,
belongs in part to the assured position of the Profession in our
Commonwealth, to the attitude of Science, which is always fearless, and
to the genius of the soil on which we stand, from which Nature withheld
the fatal gift of malaria only to fill it with exhalations that breed the
fever of inquiry in our blood and in our brain. But mainly we owe the
large license of speech we enjoy to those influences and privileges
common to us all as self-governing Americans.
This Republic is the chosen home of minorities, of the less power in the
presence of the greater. It is a common error to speak of our
distinction as consisting in the rule of the majority. Majorities, the
greater material powers, have always ruled before. The history of most
countries has been that of majorities, mounted majorities, clad in iron,
armed with death treading down the tenfold more numerous minorities. In
the old civilizations they root themselves like oaks in the soil; men
must live in their shadow or cut them down. With us the majority is only
the flower of the passing noon, and the minority is the bud which may
open in the next morning's sun. We must be tolerant, for the thought
which stammers on a single tongue today may organize itself in the
growing consciousness of the time, and come back to us like the voice of
the multitudinous waves of the ocean on the morrow.
Twenty-five years have passed since one of your honored Presidents spoke
to this Society of certain limitations to the power of our Art, now very
generally conceded. Some were troubled, some were almost angry, thinking
the Profession might suffer from such concessions. It has certainly not
suffered here; if, as some affirm, it has lost respect anywhere, it was
probably for other, and no doubt sufficient reasons.
Since that time the civilization of this planet has changed hands. Strike
out of existence at this moment every person who was breathing on that
day, May 27, 1835, and every institution of society, every art and every
science would remain intact and complete in the living that would be
left. Every idea the world then held has been since dissolved and
recrystallized.
We are repeating the same process. Not to make silver shrines for our
old divinities, even though by this craft we should have our wealth, was
this Society organized and carried on by the good men and true who went
before us. Not for this, but to melt the gold out of the past, though
its dross should fly in dust to all the winds of heaven, to save all our
old treasures of knowledge and mine deeply for new, to cultivate that
mutual respect of which outward courtesy is the sign, to work together,
to feel together, to take counsel together, and to stand together for the
truth, now, always, here, everywhere; for this our fathers instituted,
and we accept, the offices and duties of this time-honored Society.
BORDER LINES OF KNOWLEDGE IN SOME PROVINCES OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
An Introductory Lecture delivered before the Medical Class of Harvard
University, November 6, 1861.
[This Lecture appears as it would have been delivered had the time
allowed been less strictly, limited. Passages necessarily omitted have
been restored, and points briefly touched have been more fully
considered. A few notes have been added for the benefit of that limited
class of students who care to track an author through the highways and
by-ways of his reading. I owe my thanks to several of my professional
brethren who have communicated with me on subjects with which they are
familiar; especially to Dr. John Dean, for the opportunity of profiting
by his unpublished labors, and to Dr. Hasket Derby, for information and
references to recent authorities relating to the anatomy and physiology
of the eye.]
The entrance upon a new course of Lectures is always a period of interest
to instructors and pupils. As the birth of a child to a parent, so is
the advent of a new class to a teacher. As the light of the untried
world to the infant, so is the dawning of the light resting over the
unexplored realms of science to the student. In the name of the Faculty
I welcome you, Gentlemen of the Medical Class, new-born babes of science,
or lustier nurslings, to this morning of your medical life, and to the
arms and the bosom of this ancient University. Fourteen years ago I
stood in this place for the first time to address those who occupied
these benches. As I recall these past seasons of our joint labors, I
feel that they have been on the whole prosperous, and not undeserving of
their prosperity.
For it has been my privilege to be associated with a body of true and
faithful workers; I cannot praise them freely to their faces, or I should
be proud to discourse of the harmonious diligence and the noble spirit in
which they have toiled together, not merely to teach their several
branches, but to elevate the whole standard of teaching.
I may speak with less restraint of those gentlemen who have aided me in
the most laborious part of my daily duties, the Demonstrators, to whom
the successive classes have owed so much of their instruction. They rise
before me, the dead and the living, in the midst of the most grateful
recollections. The fair, manly face and stately figure of my friend, Dr.
Samuel Parkman, himself fit for the highest offices of teaching, yet
willing to be my faithful assistant in the time of need, come back to me
with the long sigh of regret for his early loss to our earthly
companionship. Every year I speak the eulogy of Dr. Ainsworth's patient
toil as I show his elaborate preparations: When I take down my "American
Cyclopaedia" and borrow instruction from the learned articles of Dr.
Kneeland, I cease to regret that his indefatigable and intelligent
industry was turned into a broader channel. And what can I say too
cordial of my long associated companion and friend, Dr. Hodges, whose
admirable skill, working through the swiftest and surest fingers that
ever held a scalpel among us, has delighted class after class, and filled
our Museum with monuments which will convey his name to unborn
generations?
This day belongs, however, not to myself and my recollections, but to all
of us who teach and all of you who listen, whether experts in our
specialties or aliens to their mysteries, or timid neophytes just
entering the portals of the hall of science. Look in with me, then,
while I attempt to throw some rays into its interior, which shall
illuminate a few of its pillars and cornices, and show at the same time
how many niches and alcoves remain in darkness.
SCIENCE is the topography of ignorance. From a few elevated points we
triangulate vast spaces, inclosing infinite unknown details. We cast the
lead, and draw up a little sand from abysses we may never reach with our
dredges.
The best part of our knowledge is that which teaches us where knowledge
leaves off and ignorance begins. Nothing more clearly separates a vulgar
from a superior mind, than the confusion in the first between the little
that it truly knows, on the one hand, and what it half knows and what it
thinks it knows on the other.
That which is true of every subject is especially true of the branch of
knowledge which deals with living beings. Their existence is a perpetual
death and reanimation. Their identity is only an idea, for we put off
our bodies many times during our lives, and dress in new suits of bones
and muscles.
"Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust."
If it is true that we understand ourselves but imperfectly in health,
this truth is more signally manifested in disease, where natural actions
imperfectly understood, disturbed in an obscure way by half-seen causes,
are creeping and winding along in the dark toward their destined issue,
sometimes using our remedies as safe stepping-stones, occasionally, it
may be, stumbling over them as obstacles.
I propose in this lecture to show you some points of contact between our
ignorance and our knowledge in several of the branches upon the study of
which you are entering. I may teach you a very little directly, but I
hope much more from the trains of thought I shall suggest. Do not expect
too much ground to be covered in this rapid survey. Our task is only
that of sending out a few pickets under the starry flag of science to the
edge of that dark domain where the ensigns of the obstinate rebel,
Ignorance, are flying undisputed. We are not making a reconnoissance in
force, still less advancing with the main column. But here are a few
roads along which we have to march together, and we wish to see clearly
how far our lines extend, and where the enemy's outposts begin.
Before touching the branches of knowledge that deal with organization and
vital functions, let us glance at that science which meets you at the
threshold of your study, and prepares you in some measure to deal with
the more complex problems of the living laboratory.
CHEMISTRY. includes the art of separating and combining the elements of
matter, and the study of the changes produced by these operations. We can
hardly say too much of what it has contributed to our knowledge of the
universe and our power of dealing with its materials. It has given us a
catalogue raisonne of the substances found upon our planet, and shown how
everything living and dead is put together from them. It is
accomplishing wonders before us every day, such as Arabian story-tellers
used to string together in their fables. It spreads the, sensitive film
on the artificial retina which looks upon us through the optician's lens
for a few seconds, and fixes an image that will outlive its original. It
questions the light of the sun, and detects the vaporized metals floating
around the great luminary,--iron, sodium, lithium, and the rest,--as if
the chemist of our remote planet could fill his bell-glasses from its
fiery atmosphere. It lends the power which flashes our messages in
thrills that leave the lazy chariot of day behind them. It seals up a
few dark grains in iron vases, and lo! at the touch of a single spark,
rises in smoke and flame a mighty Afrit with a voice like thunder and an
arm that shatters like an earthquake. The dreams of Oriental fancy have
become the sober facts of our every-day life, and the chemist is the
magician to whom we owe them.
To return to the colder scientific aspect of chemistry. It has shown us
how bodies stand affected to each other through an almost boundless range
of combinations. It has given us a most ingenious theory to account for
certain fixed relations in these combinations. It has successfully
eliminated a great number of proximate compounds, more or less stable,
from organic structures. It has invented others which form the basis of
long series of well-known composite substances. In fact, we are perhaps
becoming overburdened with our list of proximate principles, demonstrated
and hypothetical.
How much nearer have we come to the secret of force than Lully and Geber
and the whole crew of juggling alchemists? We have learned a great deal
about the how, what have we learned about the why?
Why does iron rust, while gold remains untarnished, and gold amalgamate,
while iron refuses the alliance of mercury?
The alchemists called gold Sol, the sun, and iron Mars, and pleased
themselves with fancied relations between these substances and the
heavenly bodies, by which they pretended to explain the facts they
observed. Some of their superstitions have lingered in practical
medicine to the present day, but chemistry has grown wise enough to
confess the fact of absolute ignorance.
What is it that makes common salt crystallize in the form of cubes, and
saltpetre in the shape of six-sided prisms? We see no reason why it
should not have been just the other way, salt in prisms and saltpetre in
cubes, or why either should take an exact geometrical outline, any more
than coagulating albumen.
But although we had given up attempting to explain the essential nature
of affinities and of crystalline types, we might have supposed that we
had at least fixed the identity of the substances with which we deal, and
determined the laws of their combination. All at once we find that a
simple substance changes face, puts off its characteristic qualities and
resumes them at will;--not merely when we liquefy or vaporize a solid, or
reverse the process; but that a solid is literally transformed into
another solid under our own eyes. We thought we knew phosphorus. We warm
a portion of it sealed in an empty tube, for about a week. It has become
a brown infusible substance, which does not shine in the dark nor oxidate
in the air. We heat it to 500 F., and it becomes common phosphorus again.
We transmute sulphur in the same singular way. Nature, you know, gives
us carbon in the shape of coal and in that of the diamond. It is easy to
call these changes by the name allotropism, but not the less do they
confound our hasty generalizations.
These facts of allotropism have some corollaries connected with them
rather startling to us of the nineteenth century. There may be other
transmutations possible besides those of phosphorus and sulphur. When Dr.
Prout, in 1840, talked about azote and carbon being "formed" in the
living system, it was looked upon as one of those freaks of fancy to
which philosophers, like other men, are subject. But when Professor
Faraday, in 1851, says, at a meeting of the British Association, that
"his hopes are in the direction of proving that bodies called simple were
really compounds, and may be formed artificially as soon as we are
masters of the laws influencing their combinations,"--when he comes
forward and says that he has tried experiments at transmutation, and
means, if his life is spared, to try them again,--how can we be surprised
at the popular story of 1861, that Louis Napoleon has established a
gold-factory and is glutting the mints of Europe with bullion of his own
making?
And so with reference to the law of combinations. The old maxim was,
Corpora non agunt nisi soluta. If two substances, a and b, are inclosed
in a glass vessel, c, we do not expect the glass to change them, unless a
or b or the compound a b has the power of dissolving the glass. But if
for a I take oxygen, for b hydrogen, and for c a piece of spongy
platinum, I find the first two combine with the common signs of
combustion and form water, the third in the mean time undergoing no
perceptible change. It has played the part of the unwedded priest, who
marries a pair without taking a fee or having any further relation with
the parties. We call this catalysis, catalytic action, the action of
presence, or by what learned name we choose. Give what name to it we
will, it is a manifestation of power which crosses our established laws
of combination at a very open angle of intersection. I think we may find
an analogy for it in electrical induction, the disturbance of the
equilibrium of the electricity of a body by the approach of a charged
body to it, without interchange of electrical conditions between the two
bodies. But an analogy is not an explanation, and why a few drops of
yeast should change a saccharine mixture to carbonic acid and alcohol,--a
little leaven leavening the whole lump,--not by combining with it, but by
setting a movement at work, we not only cannot explain, but the fact is
such an exception to the recognized laws of combination that Liebig is
unwilling to admit the new force at all to which Berzelius had given the
name so generally accepted.
The phenomena of isomerism, or identity of composition and proportions of
constituents with difference of qualities, and of isomorphism, or
identity of form in crystals which have one element substituted for
another, were equally surprises to science; and although the mechanism by
which they are brought about can be to a certain extent explained by a
reference to the hypothetical atoms of which the elements are
constituted, yet this is only turning the difficulty into a fraction with
an infinitesimal denominator and an infinite numerator.
So far we have studied the working of force and its seeming anomalies in
purely chemical phenomena. But we soon find that chemical force is
developed by various other physical agencies,--by heat, by light, by
electricity, by magnetism, by mechanical agencies; and, vice versa, that
chemical action develops heat, light, electricity, magnetism, mechanical
force, as we see in our matches, galvanic batteries, and explosive
compounds. Proceeding with our experiments, we find that every kind of
force is capable of producing all other kinds, or, in Mr. Faraday's
language, that "the various forms under which the forces of matter are
made manifest have a common origin, or, in other words, are so directly
related and mutually dependent that they are convertible one into
another."
Out of this doctrine naturally springs that of the conservation of force,
so ably illustrated by Mr. Grove, Dr. Carpenter, and Mr. Faraday. This
idea is no novelty, though it seems so at first sight. It was maintained
and disputed among the giants of philosophy. Des Cartes and Leibnitz
denied that any new motion originated in nature, or that any ever ceased
to exist; all motion being in a circle, passing from one body to another,
one losing what the other gained. Newton, on the other hand, believed
that new motions were generated and existing ones destroyed. On the
first supposition, there is a fixed amount of force always circulating in
the universe. On the second, the total amount may be increasing or
diminishing. You will find in the "Annual of Scientific Discovery" for
1858 a very interesting lecture by Professor Helmholtz of Bonn, in which
it is maintained that a certain portion of force is lost in every natural
process, being converted into unchangeable heat, so that the universe
will come to a stand-still at last, all force passing into heat, and all
heat into a state of equilibrium.
The doctrines of the convertibility or specific equivalence of the
various forms of force, and of its conservation, which is its logical
consequence, are very generally accepted, as I believe, at the present
time, among physicists. We are naturally led to the question, What is
the nature of force? The three illustrious philosophers just referred to
agree in attributing the general movements of the universe to the
immediate Divine action. The doctrine of "preestablished harmony" was an
especial contrivance of Leibnitz to remove the Creator from unworthy
association with the less divine acts of living beings. Obsolete as this
expression sounds to our ears, the phrase laws of the universe, which we
use so constantly with a wider application, appears to me essentially
identical with it.
Force does not admit of explanation, nor of proper definition, any more
than the hypothetical substratum of matter. If we assume the Infinite as
omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, we cannot suppose Him excluded from
any part of His creation, except from rebellious souls which voluntarily
exclude Him by the exercise of their fatal prerogative of free-will.
Force, then, is the act of immanent Divinity. I find no meaning in
mechanical explanations. Newton's hypothesis of an ether filling the
heavenly spaces does not, I confess, help my conceptions. I will, and
the muscles of my vocal organs shape my speech. God wills, and the
universe articulates His power, wisdom, and goodness. That is all I
know. There is no bridge my mind can throw from the "immaterial" cause
to the "material" effect.
The problem of force meets us everywhere, and I prefer to encounter it in
the world of physical phenomena before reaching that of living actions.
It is only the name for the incomprehensible cause of certain changes
known to our consciousness, and assumed to be outside of it. For me it
is the Deity Himself in action.
I can therefore see a large significance in the somewhat bold language of
Burdach: "There is for me but one miracle, that of infinite existence,
and but one mystery, the manner in which the finite proceeds from the
infinite. So soon as we recognize this incomprehensible act as the
general and primordial miracle, of which our reason perceives the
necessity, but the manner of which our intelligence cannot grasp, so soon
as we contemplate the nature known to us by experience in this light,
there is for us no other impenetrable miracle or mystery."
Let us turn to a branch of knowledge which deals with certainties up to
the limit of the senses, and is involved in no speculations beyond them.
In certain points of view, HUMAN ANATOMY may be considered an almost
exhausted science. From time to time some small organ which had escaped
earlier observers has been pointed out,--such parts as the tensor tarsi,
the otic ganglion, or the Pacinian bodies; but some of our best
anatomical works are those which have been classic for many generations.
The plates of the bones in Vesalius, three centuries old, are still
masterpieces of accuracy, as of art. The magnificent work of Albinus on
the muscles, published in 1747, is still supreme in its department, as
the constant references of the most thorough recent treatise on the
subject, that of Theile, sufficiently show. More has been done in
unravelling the mysteries of the fasciae, but there has been a tendency
to overdo this kind of material analysis. Alexander Thomson split them
up into cobwebs, as you may see in the plates to Velpeau's Surgical
Anatomy. I well remember how he used to shake his head over the coarse
work of Scarpa and Astley Cooper,--as if Denner, who painted the separate
hairs of the beard and pores of the skin in his portraits, had spoken
lightly of the pictures of Rubens and Vandyk.
Not only has little been added to the catalogue of parts, but some things
long known had become half-forgotten. Louis and others confounded the
solitary glands of the lower part of the small intestine with those which
"the great Brunner," as Haller calls him, described in 1687 as being
found in the duodenum. The display of the fibrous structure of the brain
seemed a novelty as shown by Spurzheim. One is startled to find the
method anticipated by Raymond Vieussens nearly two centuries ago. I can
hardly think Gordon had ever looked at his figures, though he names their
author, when he wrote the captious and sneering article which attracted
so much attention in the pages of the "Edinburgh Review."
This is the place, if anywhere, to mention any observations I could
pretend to have made in the course of my teaching the structure of the
human body. I can make no better show than most of my predecessors in
this well-reaped field. The nucleated cells found connected with the
cancellated structure of the bones, which I first pointed out and had
figured in 1847, and have shown yearly from that time to the present, and
the fossa masseterica, a shallow concavity on the ramus of the lower jaw,
for the lodgment of the masseter muscle, which acquires significance when
examined by the side of the deep cavity on the corresponding part in some
carnivora to which it answers, may perhaps be claimed as deserving
attention. I have also pleased myself by making a special group of the
six radiating muscles which diverge from the spine of the axis, or second
cervical vertebra, and by giving to it the name stella musculosa nuchaee.
But this scanty catalogue is only an evidence that one may teach long and
see little that has not been noted by those who have gone before him. Of
course I do not think it necessary to include rare, but already described
anomalies, such as the episternal bones, the rectus sternalis, and other
interesting exceptional formations I have encountered, which have shown a
curious tendency to present themselves several times in the same season,
perhaps because the first specimen found calls our attention to any we
may subsequently meet with.
The anatomy of the scalpel and the amphitheatre was, then, becoming an
exhausted branch of investigation. But during the present century the
study of the human body has changed its old aspect, and become fertile in
new observations. This rejuvenescence was effected by means of two
principal agencies,--new methods and a new instrument.
Descriptive anatomy, as known from an early date, is to the body what
geography is to the planet. Now geography was pretty well known so long
ago as when Arrowsmith, who was born in 1750, published his admirable
maps. But in that same year was born Werner, who taught a new way of
studying the earth, since become familiar to us all under the name of
Geology.
What geology has done for our knowledge of the earth, has been done for
our knowledge of the body by that method of study to which is given the
name of General Anatomy. It studies, not the organs as such, but the
elements out of which the organs are constructed. It is the geology of
the body, as that is the general anatomy of the earth. The extraordinary
genius of Bichat, to whom more than any other we owe this new method of
study, does not require Mr. Buckle's testimony to impress the
practitioner with the importance of its achievements. I have heard a
very wise physician question whether any important result had accrued to
practical medicine from Harvey's discovery of the circulation. But
Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology have received a new light from this
novel method of contemplating the living structures, which has had a vast
influence in enabling the practitioner at least to distinguish and
predict the course of disease. We know as well what differences to
expect in the habits of a mucous and of a serous membrane, as what
mineral substances to look for in the chalk or the coal measures. You
have only to read Cullen's description of inflammation of the lungs or of
the bowels, and compare it with such as you may find in Laennec or
Watson, to see the immense gain which diagnosis and prognosis have
derived from general anatomy.
The second new method of studying the human structure, beginning with the
labors of Scarpa, Burns, and Colles, grew up principally during the first
third of this century. It does not deal with organs, as did the earlier
anatomists, nor with tissues, after the manner of Bichat. It maps the
whole surface of the body into an arbitrary number of regions, and
studies each region successively from the surface to the bone, or beneath
it. This hardly deserves the name of a science, although Velpeau has
dignified it with that title, but it furnishes an admirable practical way
for the surgeon who has to operate on a particular region of the body to
study that region. If we are buying a farm, we are not content with the
State map or a geological chart including the estate in question. We
demand an exact survey of that particular property, so that we may know
what we are dealing with. This is just what regional, or, as it is
sometimes called, surgical anatomy, does for the surgeon with reference
to the part on which his skill is to be exercised. It enables him to see
with the mind's eye through the opaque tissues down to the bone on which
they lie, as if the skin were transparent as the cornea, and the organs
it covers translucent as the gelatinous pulp of a medusa.
It is curious that the Japanese should have anticipated Europe in a kind
of rude regional anatomy. I have seen a manikin of Japanese make traced
all over with lines, and points marking their intersection. By this
their doctors are guided in the performance of acupuncture, marking the
safe places to thrust in needles, as we buoy out our ship-channels, and
doubtless indicating to learned eyes the spots where incautious meddling
had led to those little accidents of shipwreck to which patients are
unfortunately liable.
A change of method, then, has given us General and Regional Anatomy.
These, too, have been worked so thoroughly, that, if not exhausted, they
have at least become to a great extent fixed and positive branches of
knowledge. But the first of them, General Anatomy, would never, have
reached this positive condition but for the introduction of that,
instrument which I have mentioned as the second great aid to modern
progress.
This instrument is the achromatic microscope. For the history of the
successive steps by which it became the effective scientific implement we
now possess, I must refer you to the work of Mr. Quekett, to an excellent
article in the "Penny Cyclopaedia," or to that of Sir David Brewster in
the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." It is a most interesting piece of
scientific history, which shows how the problem which Biot in 1821
pronounced insolvable was in the course of a few years practically
solved, with a success equal to that which Dollond had long before
obtained with the telescope. It is enough for our purpose that we are
now in possession of an instrument freed from all confusions and
illusions, which magnifies a thousand diameters,--a million times in
surface,--without serious distortion or discoloration of its object.
A quarter of a century ago, or a little more, an instructor would not
have hesitated to put John Bell's "Anatomy" and Bostock's "Physiology"
into a student's hands, as good authority on their respective subjects.
Let us not be unjust to either of these authors. John Bell is the
liveliest medical writer that I can remember who has written since the
days of delightful old Ambroise Pare. His picturesque descriptions and
bold figures are as good now as they ever were, and his book can never
become obsolete. But listen to what John Bell says of the microscope:
"Philosophers of the last age had been at infinite pains to find the
ultimate fibre of muscles, thinking to discover its properties in its
form; but they saw just in proportion to the glasses which they used, or
to their practice and skill in that art, which is now almost forsaken."
Dr. Bostock's work, neglected as it is, is one which I value very highly
as a really learned compilation, full of original references. But Dr.
Bostock says: "Much as the naturalist has been indebted to the
microscope, by bringing into view many beings of which he could not
otherwise have ascertained the existence, the physiologist has not yet
derived any great benefit from the instrument."
These are only specimens of the manner in which the microscope and its
results were generally regarded by the generation just preceding our own.
I have referred you to the proper authorities for the account of those
improvements which about the year 1830 rendered the compound microscope
an efficient and trustworthy instrument. It was now for the first time
that a true general anatomy became possible. As early as 1816 Treviranus
had attempted to resolve the tissues, of which Bichat had admitted no
less than twenty-one, into their simple microscopic elements. How could
such an attempt succeed, Henle well asks, at a time when the most
extensively diffused of all the tissues, the areolar, was not at all
understood? All that method could do had been accomplished by Bichat and
his followers. It was for the optician to take the next step. The
future of anatomy and physiology, as an enthusiastic micrologist of the
time said, was in the hands of Messrs. Schieck and Pistor, famous
opticians of Berlin.
In those earlier days of which I am speaking, all the points of minute
anatomy were involved in obscurity. Some found globules everywhere, some
fibres. Students disputed whether the conjunctiva extended over the
cornea or not, and worried themselves over Gaultier de Claubry's
stratified layers of the skin, or Breschet's blennogenous and
chromatogenous organs. The dartos was a puzzle, the central spinal canal
a myth, the decidua clothed in fable as much as the golden fleece. The
structure of bone, now so beautifully made out,--even that of the teeth,
in which old Leeuwenhoek, peeping with his octogenarian eyes through the
minute lenses wrought with his own hands, had long ago seen the "pipes,"
as he called them,--was hardly known at all. The minute structure of the
viscera lay in the mists of an uncertain microscopic vision. The
intimate recesses of the animal system were to the students of anatomy
what the anterior of Africa long was to geographers, and the stories of
microscopic explorers were as much sneered at as those of Bruce or Du
Chailly, and with better reason.
Now what have we come to in our own day? In the first place, the minute
structure of all the organs has been made out in the most satisfactory
way. The special arrangements of the vessels and the ducts of all the
glands, of the air-tubes and vesicles of the lungs, of the parts which
make up the skin and other membranes, all the details of those complex
parenchymatous organs which had confounded investigation so long, have
been lifted out of the invisible into the sight of all observers. It is
fair to mention here, that we owe a great deal to the art of minute
injection, by which we are enabled to trace the smallest vessels in the
midst of the tissues where they are distributed. This is an old artifice
of anatomists. The famous Ruysch, who died a hundred and thirty years
ago, showed that each of the viscera has its terminal vessels arranged in
its own peculiar way; the same fact which you may see illustrated in
Gerber's figures after the minute injections of Berres. I hope to show
you many specimens of this kind in the microscope, the work of English
and American hands. Professor Agassiz allows me also to make use of a
very rich collection of injected preparations sent him by Professor
Hyrtl, formerly of Prague, now of Vienna, for the proper exhibition of
which I had a number of microscopes made expressly, by Mr. Grunow, during
the past season. All this illustrates what has been done for the
elucidation of the intimate details of formation of the organs.
But the great triumph of the microscope as applied to anatomy has been in
the resolution of the organs and the tissues into their simple
constituent anatomical elements. It has taken up general anatomy where
Bichat left it. He had succeeded in reducing the structural language of
nature to syllables, if you will permit me to use so bold an image. The
microscopic observers who have come after him have analyzed these into
letters, as we may call them,--the simple elements by the combination of
which Nature spells out successively tissues, which are her syllables,
organs which are her words, systems which are her chapters, and so goes
on from the simple to the complex, until she binds up in one living whole
that wondrous volume of power and wisdom which we call the human body.
The alphabet of the organization is so short and simple, that I will risk
fatiguing your attention by repeating it, according to the plan I have
long adopted.
A. Cells, either floating, as in the blood, or fixed, like those in the
cancellated structure of bone, already referred to. Very commonly they
have undergone a change of figure, most frequently a flattening which
reduces them to scales, as in the epidermis and the epithelium.
B. Simple, translucent, homogeneous solid, such as is found at the back
of the cornea, or forming the intercellular substance of cartilage.
C. The white fibrous element, consisting of very delicate, tenacious
threads. This is the long staple textile substance of the body. It is
to the organism what cotton is pretended to be to our Southern States.
It pervades the whole animal fabric as areolar tissue, which is the
universal packing and wrapping material. It forms the ligaments which
bind the whole frame-work together. It furnishes the sinews, which are
the channels of power. It enfolds every muscle. It wraps the brain in
its hard, insensible folds, and the heart itself beats in a purse that is
made of it.
D. The yellow elastic, fibrous element, the caoutchouc of the animal
mechanism, which pulls things back into place, as the India-rubber band
shuts the door we have opened.
E. The striped muscular fibre,--the red flesh, which shortens itself in
obedience to the will, and thus produces all voluntary active motion.
F. The unstriped muscular fibre, more properly the fusiform-cell fibre,
which carries on the involuntary internal movements.
G. The nerve-cylinder, a glassy tube, with a pith of some firmness,
which conveys sensation to the brain and the principle which induces
motion from it.
H. The nerve-corpuscle, the centre of nervous power.
I. The mucous tissue, as Virchow calls it, common in embryonic
structures, seen in the vitreous humor of the adult.
To these add X, granules, of indeterminate shape and size, Y, for
inorganic matters, such as the salts of bone and teeth, and Z, to stand
as a symbol of the fluids, and you have the letters of what I have
ventured to call the alphabet of the body.
But just as in language certain diphthongs and syllables are frequently
recurring, so we have in the body certain secondary and tertiary
combinations, which we meet more frequently than the solitary elements of
which they are composed.
Thus A B, or a collection of cells united by simple structureless solid,
is seen to be extensively employed in the body under the name of
cartilage. Out of this the surfaces of the articulations and the springs
of the breathing apparatus are formed. But when Nature came to the
buffers of the spinal column (intervertebral disks) and the washers of
the joints (semilunar fibrocartilages of the knee, etc.), she required
more tenacity than common cartilage possessed. What did she do? What
does man do in a similar case of need? I need hardly tell you. The
mason lays his bricks in simple mortar. But the plasterer works some
hair into the mortar which he is going to lay in large sheets on the
walls. The children of Israel complained that they had no straw to make
their bricks with, though portions of it may still be seen in the
crumbling pyramid of Darshour, which they are said to have built. I
visited the old house on Witch Hill in Salem a year or two ago, and there
I found the walls coated with clay in which straw was abundantly
mingled;--the old Judaizing witch-hangers copied the Israelites in a good
many things. The Chinese and the Corsicans blend the fibres of amianthus
in their pottery to give it tenacity. Now to return to Nature. To make
her buffers and washers hold together in the shocks to which they would
be subjected, she took common cartilage and mingled the white fibrous
tissue with it, to serve the same purpose as the hair in the mortar, the
straw in the bricks and in the plaster of the old wall, and the amianthus
in the earthen vessels. Thus we have the combination A B C, or
fibro-cartilage. Again, the bones were once only gristle or cartilage, A
B. To give them solidity they were infiltrated with stone, in the form
of salts of lime, an inorganic element, so that bone would be spelt out
by the letters A, B, and Y.
If from these organic syllables we proceed to form organic words, we
shall find that Nature employs three principal forms; namely, Vessels,
Membranes, and Parenchyma, or visceral tissue. The most complex of them
can be resolved into a combination of these few simple anatomical
constituents.
Passing for a moment into the domain of PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY, we find the
same elements in morbid growths that we have met with in normal
structures. The pus-corpuscle and the white blood-corpuscle can only be
distinguished by tracing them to their origin. A frequent form of
so-called malignant disease proves to be only a collection of altered
epithelium-cells. Even cancer itself has no specific anatomical element,
and the diagnosis of a cancerous tumor by the microscope, though
tolerably sure under the eye of an expert, is based upon accidental, and
not essential points,--the crowding together of the elements, the size of
the cell-nuclei, and similar variable characters.
Let us turn to PHYSIOLOGY. The microscope, which has made a new science
of the intimate structure of the organs, has at the same time cleared up
many uncertainties concerning the mechanism of the special functions. Up
to the time of the living generation of observers, Nature had kept over
all her inner workshops the forbidding inscription, No Admittance! If
any prying observer ventured to spy through his magnifying tubes into the
mysteries of her glands and canals and fluids, she covered up her work in
blinding mists and bewildering halos, as the deities of old concealed
their favored heroes in the moment of danger.
Science has at length sifted the turbid light of her lenses, and blanched
their delusive rainbows.
Anatomy studies the organism in space. Physiology studies it also in
time. After the study of form and composition follows close that of
action, and this leads us along back to the first moment of the germ, and
forward to the resolution of the living frame into its lifeless elements.
In this way Anatomy, or rather that branch of it which we call Histology,
has become inseparably blended with the study of function. The
connection between the science of life and that of intimate structure on
the one hand, and composition on the other, is illustrated in the titles
of two recent works of remarkable excellence,--"the Physiological
Anatomy" of Todd and Bowman, and the "Physiological Chemistry" of
Lehmann.
Let me briefly recapitulate a few of our acquisitions in Physiology, due
in large measure to our new instruments and methods of research, and at
the same time indicate the limits which form the permanent or the
temporary boundaries of our knowledge. I will begin with the largest
fact and with the most absolute and universally encountered limitation.
The "largest truth in Physiology" Mr. Paget considers to be "the
development of ova through multiplication and division of their cells."
I would state it more broadly as the agency of the cell in all living
processes. It seems at present necessary to abandon the original idea of
Schwann, that we can observe the building up of a cell from the simple
granules of a blastema, or formative fluid. The evidence points rather
towards the axiom, Omnis cellula a cellula; that is, the germ of a new
cell is always derived from a preexisting cell. The doctrine of Schwann,
as I remarked long ago (1844), runs parallel with the nebular theory in
astronomy, and they may yet stand or fall together.
As we have seen Nature anticipating the plasterer in fibro-cartilage, so
we see her beforehand with the glassblower in her dealings with the cell.
The artisan blows his vitreous bubbles, large or small, to be used
afterwards as may be wanted. So Nature shapes her hyaline vesicles and
modifies them to serve the needs of the part where they are found. The
artisan whirls his rod, and his glass bubble becomes a flattened disk,
with its bull's-eye for a nucleus. These lips of ours are all glazed
with microscopic tiles formed of flattened cells, each one of them with
its nucleus still as plain and relatively as prominent, to the eye of the
microscopist, as the bull's-eye in the old-fashioned windowpane.
Everywhere we find cells, modified or unchanged. They roll in
inconceivable multitudes (five millions and more to the cubic millimetre,
according to Vierordt) as blood-disks through our vessels. A
close-fitting mail of flattened cells coats our surface with a panoply of
imbricated scales (more than twelve thousand millions), as Harting has
computed, as true a defence against our enemies as the buckler of the
armadillo or the carapace of the tortoise against theirs. The same
little protecting organs pave all the great highways of the interior
system. Cells, again, preside over the chemical processes which
elaborate the living fluids; they change their form to become the agents
of voluntary and involuntary motion; the soul itself sits on a throne of
nucleated cells, and flashes its mandates through skeins of glassy
filaments which once were simple chains of vesicles. And, as if to
reduce the problem of living force to its simplest expression, we see the
yolk of a transparent egg dividing itself in whole or in part, and again
dividing and subdividing, until it becomes a mass of cells, out of which
the harmonious diversity of the organs arranges itself, worm or man, as
God has willed from the beginning.
This differentiation having been effected, each several part assumes its
special office, having a life of its own adjusted to that of other parts
and the whole. "Just as a tree constitutes a mass arranged in a definite
manner, in which, in every single part, in the leaves as in the root, in
the trunk as in the blossom, cells are discovered to be the ultimate
elements, so is it also with the forms of animal life. Every animal
presents itself as a sum of vital unities, every one of which manifests
all the characteristics of life."
The mechanism is as clear, as unquestionable, as absolutely settled and
universally accepted, as the order of movement of the heavenly bodies,
which we compute backward to the days of the observatories on the plains
of Shinar, and on the faith of which we regulate the movements of war and
trade by the predictions of our ephemeris.
The mechanism, and that is all. We see the workman and the tools, but
the skill that guides the work and the power that performs it are as
invisible as ever. I fear that not every listener took the significance
of those pregnant words in the passage I quoted from John
Bell,--"thinking to discover its properties in its form." We have
discovered the working bee in this great hive of organization. We have
detected the cell in the very act of forming itself from a nucleus, of
transforming itself into various tissues, of selecting the elements of
various secretions. But why one cell becomes nerve and another muscle,
why one selects bile and another fat, we can no more pretend to tell,
than why one grape sucks out of the soil the generous juice which princes
hoard in their cellars, and another the wine which it takes three men to
drink,--one to pour it down, another to swallow it, and a third to hold
him while it is going down. Certain analogies between this selecting
power and the phenomena of endosmosis in the elective affinities of
chemistry we can find, but the problem of force remains here, as
everywhere, unsolved and insolvable.
Do we gain anything by attempting to get rid of the idea of a special
vital force because we find certain mutually convertible relations
between forces in the body and out of it? I think not, any more than we
should gain by getting rid of the idea and expression Magnetism because
of its correlation with electricity. We may concede the unity of all
forms of force, but we cannot overlook the fixed differences of its
manifestations according to the conditions under which it acts. It is a
mistake, however, to think the mystery is greater in an organized body
than in any other. We see a stone fall or a crystal form, and there is
nothing stranger left to wonder at, for we have seen the Infinite in
action.
Just so far as we can recognize the ordinary modes of operation of the
common forces of nature,--gravity, cohesion, elasticity, transudation,
chemical action, and the rest,--we see the so-called vital acts in the
light of a larger range of known facts and familiar analogies.
Matteuecci's well-remembered lectures contain many and striking examples
of the working of physical forces in physiological processes. Wherever
rigid experiment carries us, we are safe in following this lead; but the
moment we begin to theorize beyond our strict observation, we are in
danger of falling into those mechanical follies which true science has
long outgrown.
Recognizing the fact, then, that we have learned nothing but the
machinery of life, and are no nearer to its essence, what is it that we
have gained by this great discovery of the cell formation and function?
It would have been reward enough to learn the method Nature pursues for
its own sake. If the sovereign Artificer lets us into his own
laboratories and workshops, we need not ask more than the privilege of
looking on at his work. We do not know where we now stand in the
hierarchy of created intelligences. We were made a little lower than the
angels. I speak it not irreverently; as the lower animals surpass man in
some of their attributes, so it may be that not every angel's eye can see
as broadly and as deeply into the material works of God as man himself,
looking at the firmament through an equatorial of fifteen inches'
aperture, and searching into the tissues with a twelfth of an inch
objective.
But there are other positive gains of a more practical character. Thus we
are no longer permitted to place the seat of the living actions in the
extreme vessels, which are only the carriers from which each part takes
what it wants by the divine right of the omnipotent nucleated cell. The
organism has become, in the words already borrowed from Virchow, "a sum
of vital unities." The strictum and laxum, the increased and diminished
action of the vessels, out of which medical theories and methods of
treatment have grown up, have yielded to the doctrine of local
cell-communities, belonging to this or that vascular district, from which
they help themselves, as contractors are wont to do from the national
treasury.
I cannot promise to do more than to select a few of the points of contact
between our ignorance and our knowledge which present particular interest
in the existing state of our physiological acquisitions. Some of them
involve the microscopic discoveries of which I have been speaking, some
belong to the domain of chemistry, and some have relations with other
departments of physical science.
If we should begin with the digestive function, we should find that the
long-agitated question of the nature of the acid of the gastric juice is
becoming settled in favor of the lactic. But the whole solvent agency of
the digestive fluid enters into the category of that exceptional mode of
action already familiar to us in chemistry as catalysis. It is therefore
doubly difficult of explanation; first, as being, like all reactions, a
fact not to be accounted for except by the imaginative appeal to
"affinity," and secondly, as being one of those peculiar reactions
provoked by an element which stands outside and looks on without
compromising itself.
The doctrine of Mulder, so widely diffused in popular and scientific
belief, of the existence of a common base of all albuminous substances,
the so-called protein, has not stood the test of rigorous analysis. The
division of food into azotized and non-azotized is no doubt important,
but the attempt to show that the first only is plastic or nutritive,
while the second is simply calorifacient, or heat-producing, fails
entirely in the face of the facts revealed by the study of man in
different climates, and of numerous experiments in the feeding of
animals. I must return to this subject in connection with the
respiratory function.
The sugar-making faculty of the liver is another "catalytic" mystery, as
great as the rest of them, and no greater. Liver-tissue brings sugar out
of the blood, or out of its own substance;--why?
Quia est in eo
Virtus saccharitiva.
Just what becomes of the sugar beyond the fact of its disappearance
before it can get into the general circulation and sweeten our tempers,
it is hard to say.
The pancreatic fluid makes an emulsion of the fat contained in our food,
but just how the fatty particles get into the villi we must leave Brucke
and Kolliker to settle if they can.
No one has shown satisfactorily the process by which the blood-corpuscles
are formed out of the lymph-corpuscles, nor what becomes of them. These
two questions are like those famous household puzzles,--Where do the
flies come from? and, Where do the pins go to?
There is a series of organs in the body which has long puzzled
physiologists,--organs of glandular aspect, but having no ducts,--the
spleen, the thyroid and thymus bodies, and the suprarenal capsules. We
call them vascular glands, and we believe that they elaborate colored and
uncolored blood-cells; but just what changes they effect, and just how
they effect them, it has proved a very difficult matter to determine. So
of the noted glandules which form Peyer's patches, their precise office,
though seemingly like those of the lymphatic glands, cannot be positively
assigned, so far as I know, at the present time. It is of obvious
interest to learn it with reference to the pathology of typhoid fever.
It will be remarked that the coincidence of their changes in this disease
with enlargement of the spleen suggests the idea of a similarity of
function in these two organs.
The theories of the production of animal heat, from the times of Black,
Lavoisier, and Crawford to those of Liebig, are familiar to all who have
paid any attention to physiological studies. The simplicity of Liebig's
views, and the popular form in which they have been presented, have given
them wide currency, and incorporated them in the common belief and
language of our text-books. Direct oxidation or combustion of the carbon
and hydrogen contained in the food, or in the tissues themselves; the
division of alimentary substances into respiratory, or non-azotized, and
azotized,--these doctrines are familiar even to the classes in our
high-schools. But this simple statement is boldly questioned. Nothing
proves that oxygen combines (in the system) with hydrogen and carbon in
particular, rather than with sulphur and azote. Such is the
well-grounded statement of Robin and Verdeil. "It is very probable that
animal heat is entirely produced by the chemical actions which take place
in the organism, but the phenomenon is too complex to admit of our
calculating it according to the quality of oxygen consumed." These last
are the words of Regnault, as cited by Mr. Lewes, whose intelligent
discussion of this and many of the most interesting physiological
problems I strongly recommend to your attention.
This single illustration covers a wider ground than the special function
to which it belongs. We are learning that the chemistry of the body must
be studied, not simply by its ingesta and egesta, but that there is a
long intermediate series of changes which must be investigated in their
own light, under their own special conditions. The expression "sum of
vital unities" applies to the chemical actions, as well as to other
actions localized in special parts; and when the distinguished chemists
whom I have just cited entitle their work a treatise on the immediate
principles of the body, they only indicate the nature of that profound
and subtile analysis which must take the place of all hasty
generalizations founded on a comparison of the food with residual
products.
I will only call your attention to the fact, that the exceptional
phenomenon of the laboratory is the prevailing law of the organism.
Nutrition itself is but one great catalytic process. As the blood
travels its rounds, each part selects its appropriate element and
transforms it to its own likeness. Whether the appropriating agent be
cell or nucleus, or a structureless solid like the intercellular
substance of cartilage, the fact of its presence determines the
separation of its proper constituents from the circulating fluid, so that
even when we are wounded bone is replaced by bone, skin by skin, and
nerve by nerve.
It is hardly without a smile that we resuscitate the old question of the
'vis insita' of the muscular fibre, so famous in the discussions of
Haller and his contemporaries. Speaking generally, I think we may say
that Haller's doctrine is the one now commonly received; namely, that the
muscles contract in virtue of their own inherent endowments. It is true
that Kolliker says no perfectly decisive fact has been brought forward to
prove that the striated muscles contract without having been acted on
by nerves. Yet Mr. Bowman's observations on the contraction of isolated
fibres appear decisive enough (unless we consider them invalidated by Dr.
Lionel Beale's recent researches), tending to show that each elementary
fibre is supplied with nerves; and as to the smooth muscular fibres, we
have Virchow's statement respecting the contractility of those of the
umbilical cord, where there is not a trace of any nerves.
In the investigation of the nervous system, anatomy and physiology have
gone hand in hand. It is very singular that so important, and seemingly
simple, a fact as the connection of the nerve-tubes, at their origin or
in their course, with the nerve-cells, should have so long remained open
to doubt, as you may see that it did by referring to the very complete
work of Sharpey and Quain (edition of 1849), the histological portion of
which is cordially approved by Kolliker himself.
Several most interesting points of the minute anatomy of the nervous
centres have been laboriously and skilfully worked out by a recent
graduate of this Medical School, in a monograph worthy to stand in line
with those of Lockhart Clarke, Stilling, and Schroder van der Kolk. I
have had the privilege of examining and of showing some of you a number
of Dr. Dean's skilful preparations. I have no space to give even an
abstract of his conclusions. I can only refer to his proof of the fact,
that a single cell may send its processes into several different bundles
of nerve-roots, and to his demonstration of the curved ascending and
descending fibres from the posterior nerveroots, to reach what he has
called the longitudinal columns of the cornea. I must also mention Dr.
Dean's exquisite microscopic photographs from sections of the medulla
oblongata, which appear to me to promise a new development, if not a new
epoch, in anatomical art.
It having been settled that the nerve-tubes can very commonly be traced
directly to the nerve-cells, the object of all the observers in this
department of anatomy is to follow these tubes to their origin. We have
an infinite snarl of telegraph wires, and we may be reasonably sure,
that, if we can follow them up, we shall find each of them ends in a
battery somewhere. One of the most interesting problems is to find the
ganglionic origin of the great nerves of the medulla oblongata, and this
is the end to which, by the aid of the most delicate sections, colored so
as to bring out their details, mounted so as to be imperishable,
magnified by the best instruments, and now self-recorded in the light of
the truth-telling sunbeam, our fellow-student is making a steady progress
in a labor which I think bids fair to rank with the most valuable
contributions to histology that we have had from this side of the
Atlantic.
It is interesting to see how old questions are incidentally settled in
the course of these new investigations. Thus, Mr. Clarke's dissections,
confirmed by preparations of Mr. Dean's which I have myself examined,
placed the fact of the decussation of the pyramids--denied by Haller, by
Morgagni, and even by Stilling--beyond doubt. So the spinal canal, the
existence of which, at least in the adult, has been so often disputed,
appears as a coarse and unequivocal anatomical fact in many of the
preparations referred to.
While these studies of the structure of the cord have been going on, the
ingenious and indefatigable Brown-Sequard has been investigating the
functions of its different parts with equal diligence. The microscopic
anatomists had shown that the ganglionic corpuscles of the gray matter of
the cord are connected with each other by their processes, as well as
with the nerve-roots. M. Brown-Sequard has proved by numerous
experiments that the gray substance transmits sensitive impressions and
muscular stimulation. The oblique ascending and descending fibres from
the posterior nerve-roots, joining the "longitudinal columns of the
cornua," account for the results of Brown-Sequard's sections of the
posterior columns. The physiological experimenter has also made it
evident that the decussation of the conductors of sensitive impressions
has its seat in the spinal core, and not in the encephalon, as had been
supposed. Not less remarkable than these results are the facts, which I
with others of my audience have had the opportunity of observing, as
shown by M. Brown-Sequard, of the artificial production of epilepsy in
animals by injuring the spinal cord, and the induction of the paroxysm by
pinching a certain portion of the skin. I would also call the student's
attention to his account of the relations of the nervous centres to
nutrition and secretion, the last of which relations has been made the
subject of an extended essay by our fellow countryman, Dr. H. F. Campbell
of Georgia.
The physiology of the spinal cord seems a simple matter as you study it
in Longet. The experiments of Brown-Sequard have shown the problem to be
a complex one, and raised almost as many doubts as they have solved
questions; at any rate, I believe all lecturers on physiology agree that
there is no part of their task they dread so much as the analysis of the
evidence relating to the special offices of the different portions of the
medulla spinalis. In the brain we are sure that we do not know how to
localize functions; in the spinal cord, we think we do know something;
but there are so many anomalies, and seeming contradictions, and sources
of fallacy, that beyond the facts of crossed paralysis of sensation, and
the conducting agency of the gray substance, I am afraid we retain no
cardinal principles discovered since the development of the reflex
function took its place by Sir Charles Bell's great discovery.
By the manner in which I spoke of the brain, you will see that I am
obliged to leave phrenology sub Jove,--out in the cold,--as not one of
the household of science. I am not one of its haters; on the contrary, I
am grateful for the incidental good it has done. I love to amuse myself
in its plaster Golgothas, and listen to the glib professor, as he
discovers by his manipulations
"All that disgraced my betters met in me."
I loved of old to see square-headed, heavy-jawed Spurzheim make a brain
flower out into a corolla of marrowy filaments, as Vieussens had done
before him, and to hear the dry-fibred but human-hearted George Combe
teach good sense under the disguise of his equivocal system. But the
pseudo-sciences, phrenology and the rest, seem to me only appeals to weak
minds and the weak points of strong ones. There is a pica or false
appetite in many intelligences; they take to odd fancies in place of
wholesome truth, as girls gnaw at chalk and charcoal. Phrenology juggles
with nature. It is so adjusted as to soak up all evidence that helps it,
and shed all that harms it. It crawls forward in all weathers, like
Richard Edgeworth's hygrometer. It does not stand at the boundary of our
ignorance, it seems to me, but is one of the will-o'-the-wisps of its
undisputed central domain of bog and quicksand. Yet I should not have
devoted so many words to it, did I not recognize the light it has thrown
on human actions by its study of congenital organic tendencies. Its maps
of the surface of the head are, I feel sure, founded on a delusion, but
its studies of individual character are always interesting and
instructive.
The "snapping-turtle" strikes after its natural fashion when it first
comes out of the egg. Children betray their tendencies in their way of
dealing with the breasts that nourish them; nay, lean venture to affirm,
that long before they are born they teach their mothers something of
their turbulent or quiet tempers.
"Castor gaudet equis, ovo proanatus eodem
Pugnis."
Strike out the false pretensions of phrenology; call it anthropology; let
it study man the individual in distinction from man the abstraction, the
metaphysical or theological lay-figure; and it becomes "the proper study
of mankind," one of the noblest and most interesting of pursuits.
The whole physiology of the nervous system, from the simplest
manifestation of its power in an insect up to the supreme act of the
human intelligence working through the brain, is full of the most
difficult yet profoundly interesting questions. The singular relations
between electricity and nerve-force, relations which it has been
attempted to interpret as meaning identity, in the face of palpable
differences, require still more extended studies. You may be interested
by Professor Faraday's statement of his opinion on the matter. "Though I
am not satisfied that the nervous fluid is only electricity, still I
think that the agent in the nervous system maybe an inorganic force; and
if there be reason for supposing that magnetism is a higher relation of
force than electricity, so it may well be imagined that the nervous power
may be of a still more exalted character, and yet within the reach of
experiment."
In connection with this statement, it is interesting to refer to the
experiments of Helmholtz on the rapidity of transmission of the nervous
actions. The rate is given differently in Valentin's report of these
experiments and in that found in the "Scientific Annual" for 1858. One
hundred and eighty to three hundred feet per second is the rate of
movement assigned for sensation, but all such results must be very
vaguely approximative. Boxers, fencers, players at the Italian game of
morn, "prestidigitators," and all who depend for their success on
rapidity of motion, know what differences there are in the personal
equation of movement.
Reflex action, the mechanical sympathy, if I may so call it, of distant
parts; Instinct, which is crystallized intelligence,--an absolute law
with its invariable planes and angles introduced into the sphere of
consciousness, as raphides are inclosed in the living cells of plants;
Intellect,--the operation of the thinking principle through material
organs, with an appreciable waste of tissue in every act of thought, so
that our clergymen's blood has more phosphates to get rid of on Monday
than on any other day of the week; Will,--theoretically the absolute
determining power, practically limited in different degrees by the
varying organization of races and individuals, annulled or perverted by
different ill-understood organic changes; on all these subjects our
knowledge is in its infancy, and from the study of some of them the
interdict of the Vatican is hardly yet removed.
I must allude to one or two points in the histology and physiology of the
organs of sense. The anterior continuation of the retina beyond the ora
serrata has been a subject of much discussion. If H. Muller and Kolliker
can be relied upon, this question is settled by recognizing that a layer
of cells, continued from the retina, passes over the surface of the
zonula Zinnii, but that no proper nervous element is so prolonged
forward.
I observe that Kolliker calls the true nervous elements of the retina
"the layer of gray cerebral substance." In fact, the ganglionic
corpuscles of each eye may be considered as constituting a little brain,
connected with the masses behind by the commissure, commonly called the
optic nerve. We are prepared, therefore, to find these two little brains
in the most intimate relations with each other, as we find the cerebral
hemispheres. We know that they are directly connected by fibres that
arch round through the chiasma.
I mention these anatomical facts to introduce a physiological observation
of my own, first announced in one of the lectures before the Medical
Class, subsequently communicated to the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, and printed in its "Transactions" for February 14, 1860. I
refer to the apparent transfer of impressions from one retina to the
other, to which I have given the name reflex vision. The idea was
suggested to me in consequence of certain effects noticed in employing
the stereoscope. Professor William B. Rodgers has since called the
attention of the American Scientific Association to some facts bearing on
the subject, and to a very curious experiment of Leonardo da Vinci's,
which enables the observer to look through the palm of his hand (or seem
to), as if it had a hole bored through it. As he and others hesitated to
accept my explanation, I was not sorry to find recently the following
words in the "Observations on Man" of that acute observer and thinker,
David Hartley. "An impression made on the right eye alone by a single
object may propagate itself into the left, and there raise up an image
almost equal in vividness to itself; and consequently when we see with
one eye only, we may, however, have pictures in both eyes." Hartley, in
1784, had anticipated many of the doctrines which have since been
systematized into the theory of reflex actions, and with which I have
attempted to associate this act of reflex vision. My sixth experiment,
however, in the communication referred to, appears to me to be a crucial
one, proving the correctness of my explanation, and I am not aware that
it has been before instituted.
Another point of great interest connected with the physiology of vision,
and involved for a long time in great obscurity, is that of the
adjustment of the eye to different distances. Dr. Clay Wallace of New
York, who published a very ingenious little book on the eye about twenty
years ago, with vignettes reminding one of Bewick, was among the first,
if not the first, to describe the ciliary muscle, to which the power of
adjustment is generally ascribed. It is ascertained, by exact experiment
with the phacueidoscope, that accommodation depends on change of form of
the crystalline lens. Where the crystalline is wanting, as Mr. Ware long
ago taught, no power of accommodation remains. The ciliary muscle is
generally thought to effect the change of form of the crystalline. The
power of accommodation is lost after the application of atropine, in
consequence, as is supposed, of the paralysis of this muscle. This, I
believe, is the nearest approach to a demonstration we have on this
point.
I have only time briefly to refer to Professor Draper's most ingenious
theory as to the photographic nature of vision, for an account of which I
must refer to his original and interesting Treatise on Physiology.
It were to be wished that the elaborate and very interesting researches
of the Marquis Corti, which have revealed such singular complexity of
structure in the cochlea of the ear, had done more to clear up its
doubtful physiology; but I am afraid we have nothing but hypotheses for
the special part it plays in the act of hearing, and that we must say the
same respecting the office of the semicircular canals.
The microscope has achieved some of its greatest triumphs in teaching us
the changes which occur in the development of the embryo. No more
interesting discovery stands recorded in the voluminous literature of
this subject than the one originally announced by Martin Barry,
afterwards discredited, and still later confirmed by Mr. Newport and
others; namely the fact that the fertilizing filament reaches the
interior of the ovum in various animals;--a striking parallel to the
action of the pollen-tube in the vegetable. But beyond the mechanical
facts all is mystery in the movements of organization, as profound as in
the fall of a stone or the formation of a crystal.
To the chemist and the microscopist the living body presents the same
difficulties, arising from the fact that everything is in perpetual
change in the organism. The fibrine of the blood puzzles the one as much
as its globules puzzle the other. The difference between the branches of
science which deal with space only, and those which deal with space and
time, is this: we have no glasses that can magnify time. The figure I
here show you a was photographed from an object (pleurosigma angulatum)
magnified a thousand diameters, or presenting a million times its natural
surface. This other figure of the same object, enlarged from the one
just shown, is magnified seven thousand diameters, or forty-nine million
times in surface. When we can make the forty-nine millionth of a second
as long as its integer, physiology and chemistry will approach nearer the
completeness of anatomy.
Our reverence becomes more worthy, or, if you will, less unworthy of its
Infinite Object in proportion as our intelligence is lifted and expanded
to a higher and broader understanding of the Divine methods of action.
If Galen called his heathen readers to admire, the power, the wisdom, the
providence, the goodness of the "Framer of the animal body,"--if Mr.
Boyle, the student of nature, as Addison and that friend of his who had
known him for forty years tell us, never uttered the name of the Supreme
Being without making a distinct pause in his speech, in token of his
devout recognition of its awful meaning,--surely we, who inherit the
accumulated wisdom of nearly two hundred years since the time of the
British philosopher, and of almost two thousand since the Greek
physician, may well lift our thoughts from the works we study to their
great Artificer. These wonderful discoveries which we owe to that mighty
little instrument, the telescope of the inner firmament with all its
included worlds; these simple formulae by which we condense the
observations of a generation in a single axiom; these logical analyses by
which we fence out the ignorance we cannot reclaim, and fix the limits of
our knowledge,--all lead us up to the inspiration of the Almighty, which
gives understanding to the world's great teachers. To fear science or
knowledge, lest it disturb our old beliefs, is to fear the influx of the
Divine wisdom into the souls of our fellow-men; for what is science but
the piecemeal revelation,--uncovering,--of the plan of creation, by the
agency of those chosen prophets of nature whom God has illuminated from
the central light of truth for that single purpose?
The studies which we have glanced at are preliminary in your education to
the practical arts which make use of them,--the arts of healing,--surgery
and medicine. The more you examine the structure of the organs and the
laws of life, the more you will find how resolutely each of the
cell-republics which make up the E pluribus unum of the body maintains
its independence. Guard it, feed it, air it, warm it, exercise or rest
it properly, and the working elements will do their best to keep well or
to get well. What do we do with ailing vegetables? Dr. Warren, my
honored predecessor in this chair, bought a country-place, including half
of an old orchard. A few years afterwards I saw the trees on his side of
the fence looking in good health, while those on the other side were
scraggy and miserable. How do you suppose this change was brought about?
By watering them with Fowler's solution? By digging in calomel freely
about their roots? Not at all; but by loosening the soil round them, and
supplying them with the right kind of food in fitting quantities.
Now a man is not a plant, or, at least, he is a very curious one, for he
carries his soil in his stomach, which is a kind--of portable flower-pot,
and he grows round it, instead of out of it. He has, besides, a
singularly complex nutritive apparatus and a nervous system. But
recollect the doctrine already enunciated in the language of Virchow,
that an animal, like a tree, is a sum of vital unities, of which the cell
is the ultimate element. Every healthy cell, whether in a vegetable or
an animal, necessarily performs its function properly so long as it is
supplied with its proper materials and stimuli. A cell may, it is true,
be congenitally defective, in which case disease is, so to speak, its
normal state. But if originally sound and subsequently diseased, there
has certainly been some excess, deficiency, or wrong quality in the
materials or stimuli applied to it. You remove this injurious influence
and substitute a normal one; remove the baked coal-ashes, for instance,
from the roots of a tree, and replace them with loam; take away the salt
meat from the patient's table, and replace it with fresh meat and
vegetables, and the cells of the tree or the man return to their duty.
I do not know that we ever apply to a plant any element which is not a
natural constituent of the vegetable structure, except perhaps
externally, for the accidental purpose of killing parasites. The whole
art of cultivation consists in learning the proper food and conditions of
plants, and supplying them. We give them water, earths, salts of various
kinds such as they are made of, with a chance to help themselves to air
and light. The farmer would be laughed at who undertook to manure his
fields or his trees with a salt of lead or of arsenic. These elements
are not constituents of healthy plants. The gardener uses the waste of
the arsenic furnaces to kill the weeds in his walks.
If the law of the animal cell, and of the animal organism, which is built
up of such cells, is like that of the vegetable, we might expect that we
should treat all morbid conditions of any of the vital unities belonging
to an animal in the same way, by increasing, diminishing, or changing its
natural food or stimuli.
That is an aliment which nourishes; whatever we find in the organism, as
a constant and integral element, either forming part of its structure, or
one of the conditions of vital processes, that and that only deserves the
name of aliment. I see no reason, therefore, why iron, phosphate of
lime, sulphur, should not be considered food for man, as much as guano or
poudrette for vegetables. Whether one or another of them is best in any
given case,--whether they shall be taken alone or in combination, in
large or small quantities, are separate questions. But they are elements
belonging to the body, and even in moderate excess will produce little
disturbance. There is no presumption against any of this class of
substances, any more than against water or salt, provided they are used
in fitting combinations, proportions, and forms.
But when it comes to substances alien to the healthy system, which never
belong to it as normal constituents, the case is very different. There
is a presumption against putting lead or arsenic into the human body, as
against putting them into plants, because they do not belong there, any
more than pounded glass, which, it is said, used to be given as a poison.
The same thing is true of mercury and silver. What becomes of these
alien substances after they get into the system we cannot always tell.
But in the case of silver, from the accident of its changing color under
the influence of light, we do know what happens. It is thrown out, in
part at least, under the epidermis, and there it remains to the patient's
dying day. This is a striking illustration of the difficulty which the
system finds in dealing with non-assimilable elements, and justifies in
some measure the vulgar prejudice against mineral poisons.
I trust the youngest student on these benches will not commit the
childish error of confounding a presumption against a particular class of
agents with a condemnation of them. Mercury, for instance, is alien to
the system, and eminently disturbing in its influence. Yet its efficacy
in certain forms of specific disease is acknowledged by all but the most
sceptical theorists. Even the esprit moqueur of Ricord, the Voltaire of
pelvic literature, submits to the time-honored constitutional authority
of this great panacea in the class of cases to which he has devoted his
brilliant intelligence. Still, there is no telling what evils have
arisen from the abuse of this mineral. Dr. Armstrong long ago pointed
out some of them, and they have become matters of common notoriety. I am
pleased, therefore, when I find so able and experienced a practitioner as
Dr. Williams of this city proving that iritis is best treated without
mercury, and Dr. Vanderpoel showing the same thing to be true for
pericarditis.
Whatever elements nature does not introduce into vegetables, the natural
food of all animal life,--directly of herbivorous, indirectly of
carnivorous animals,--are to be regarded with suspicion. Arsenic-eating
may seem to improve the condition of horses for a time,--and even of
human beings, if Tschudi's stories can be trusted,--but it soon appears
that its alien qualities are at war with the animal organization. So of
copper, antimony, and other non-alimentary simple substances; everyone of
them is an intruder in the living system, as much as a constable would
be, quartered in our household. This does not mean that they may not, any
of them, be called in for a special need, as we send for the constable
when we have good reason to think we have a thief under our roof; but a
man's body is his castle, as well as his house, and the presumption is
that we are to keep our alimentary doors bolted against these perturbing
agents.
Now the feeling is very apt to be just contrary to this. The habit has
been very general with well-taught practitioners, to have recourse to the
introduction of these alien elements into the system on the occasion of
any slight disturbance. The tongue was a little coated, and mercury must
be given; the skin was a little dry, and the patient must take antimony.
It was like sending for the constable and the posse comitatus when there
is only a carpet to shake or a refuse-barrel to empty. [Dr. James Johnson
advises persons not ailing to take five grains of blue pill with one or
two of aloes twice a week for three or four months in the year, with half
a pint of compound decoction of sarsaparilla every day for the same
period, to preserve health and prolong life. Pract. Treatise on Dis.
of Liver, etc. p. 272.] The constitution bears slow poisoning a great
deal better than might be expected; yet the most intelligent men in the
profession have gradually got out of the habit of prescribing these
powerful alien substances in the old routine way. Mr. Metcalf will tell
you how much more sparingly they are given by our practitioners at the
present time, than when he first inaugurated the new era of pharmacy
among us. Still, the presumption in favor of poisoning out every
spontaneous reaction of outraged nature is not extinct in those who are
trusted with the lives of their fellow-citizens. "On examining the file
of prescriptions at the hospital, I discovered that they were rudely
written, and indicated a treatment, as they consisted chiefly of tartar
emetic, ipecacuanha, and epsom salts, hardly favorable to the cure of the
prevailing diarrhoea and dysenteries." In a report of a poisoning case
now on trial, where we are told that arsenic enough was found in the
stomach to produce death in twenty-four hours, the patient is said to
have been treated by arsenic, phosphorus, bryonia, aconite, nux vomica,
and muriatic acid,--by a practitioner of what school it may be imagined.
The traditional idea of always poisoning out disease, as we smoke out
vermin, is now seeking its last refuge behind the wooden cannon and
painted port-holes of that unblushing system of false scientific
pretences which I do not care to name in a discourse addressed to an
audience devoted to the study of the laws of nature in the light of the
laws of evidence. It is extraordinary to observe that the system which,
by its reducing medicine to a name and a farce, has accustomed all who
have sense enough to see through its thin artifices to the idea that
diseases get well without being "cured," should now be the main support
of the tottering poison-cure doctrine. It has unquestionably helped to
teach wise people that nature heals most diseases without help from
pharmaceutic art, but it continues to persuade fools that art can arrest
them all with its specifics.
It is worse than useless to attempt in any way to check the freest
expression of opinion as to the efficacy of any or all of the "heroic"
means of treatment employed by practitioners of different schools and
periods. Medical experience is a great thing, but we must not forget
that there is a higher experience, which tries its results in a court of
a still larger jurisdiction; that, namely, in which the laws of human
belief are summoned to the witness-box, and obliged to testify to the
sources of error which beset the medical practitioner. The verdict is as
old as the father of medicine, who announces it in the words, "judgment
is difficult." Physicians differed so in his time, that some denied that
there was any such thing as an art of medicine.
One man's best remedies were held as mischievous by another. The art of
healing was like soothsaying, so the common people said; "the same bird
was lucky or unlucky, according as he flew to the right or left."
The practice of medicine has undergone great changes within the period of
my own observation. Venesection, for instance, has so far gone out of
fashion, that, as I am told by residents of the New York Bellevue and the
Massachusetts General Hospitals, it is almost obsolete in these
institutions, at least in medical practice. The old Brunonian
stimulating treatment has come into vogue again in the practice of Dr.
Todd and his followers. The compounds of mercury have yielded their
place as drugs of all work, and specifics for that very frequent
subjective complaint, nescio quid faciam,--to compounds of iodine. [Sir
Astley Cooper has the boldness,--or honesty,--to speak of medicines which
"are given as much to assist the medical man as his patient." Lectures
(London, 1832), p. 14.] Opium is believed in, and quinine, and "rum,"
using that expressive monosyllable to mean all alcoholic cordials. If
Moliere were writing now, instead of saignare, purgare, and the other, he
would be more like to say, Stimulare, opium dare et potassio-iodizare.
I have been in relation successively with the English and American
evacuant and alterative practice, in which calomel and antimony figured
so largely that, as you may see in Dr. Jackson's last "Letter," Dr.
Holyoke, a good representative of sterling old-fashioned medical art,
counted them with opium and Peruvian bark as his chief remedies; with the
moderately expectant practice of Louis; the blood-letting "coup sur coup"
of Bouillaud; the contra-stimulant method of Rasori and his followers;
the anti-irritant system of Broussais, with its leeching and gum-water; I
have heard from our own students of the simple opium practice of the
renowned German teacher, Oppolzer; and now I find the medical community
brought round by the revolving cycle of opinion to that same old plan of
treatment which John Brown taught in Edinburgh in the last quarter of the
last century, and Miner and Tully fiercely advocated among ourselves in
the early years of the present. The worthy physicians last mentioned,
and their antagonist Dr. Gallup, used stronger language than we of these
degenerate days permit ourselves. "The lancet is a weapon which annually
slays more than the sword," says Dr. Tully. "It is probable that, for
forty years past, opium and its preparations have done seven times the
injury they have rendered benefit, on the great scale of the world," says
Dr. Gallup.
What is the meaning of these perpetual changes and conflicts of medical
opinion and practice, from an early antiquity to our own time? Simply
this: all "methods" of treatment end in disappointment of those
extravagant expectations which men are wont to entertain of medical art.
The bills of mortality are more obviously affected by drainage, than by
this or that method of practice. The insurance companies do not commonly
charge a different percentage on the lives of the patients of this or
that physician. In the course of a generation, more or less, physicians
themselves are liable to get tired of a practice which has so little
effect upon the average movement of vital decomposition. Then they are
ready for a change, even if it were back again to a method which has
already been tried, and found wanting.
Our practitioners, or many of them, have got back to the ways of old Dr.
Samuel Danforth, who, as it is well known, had strong objections to the
use of the lancet. By and by a new reputation will be made by some
discontented practitioner, who, tired of seeing patients die with their
skins full of whiskey and their brains muddy with opium, returns to a
bold antiphlogistic treatment, and has the luck to see a few patients of
note get well under it. So of the remedies which have gone out of
fashion and been superseded by others. It can hardly be doubted that
they will come into vogue again, more or less extensively, under the
influence of that irresistible demand for change just referred to.
Then will come the usual talk about a change in the character of disease,
which has about as much meaning as that concerning "old-fashioned
snow-storms." "Epidemic constitutions" of disease mean something, no
doubt; a great deal as applied to malarious affections; but that the
whole type of diseases undergoes such changes that the practice must be
reversed from depleting to stimulating, and vice versa, is much less
likely than that methods of treatment go out of fashion and come in
again. If there is any disease which claims its percentage with
reasonable uniformity, it is phthisis. Yet I remember that the reverend
and venerable Dr. Prince of Salem told me one Commencement day, as I was
jogging along towards Cambridge with him, that he recollected the time
when that disease was hardly hardly known; and in confirmation of his
statement mentioned a case in which it was told as a great event, that
somebody down on "the Cape" had died of "a consumption." This story does
not sound probable to myself, as I repeat it, yet I assure you it is
true, and it shows how cautiously we must receive all popular stories of
great changes in the habits of disease.
Is there no progress, then, but do we return to the same beliefs and
practices which our forefathers wore out and threw away? I trust and
believe that there is a real progress. We may, for instance, return in a
measure to the Brunonian stimulating system, but it must be in a modified
way, for we cannot go back to the simple Brunonian pathology, since we
have learned too much of diseased action to accept its convenient
dualism. So of other doctrines, each new Avatar strips them of some of
their old pretensions, until they take their fitting place at last, if
they have any truth in them, or disappear, if they were mere phantasms of
the imagination.
In the mean time, while medical theories are coming in and going out,
there is a set of sensible men who are never run away with by them, but
practise their art sagaciously and faithfully in much the same way from
generation to generation. From the time of Hippocrates to that of our
own medical patriarch, there has been an apostolic succession of wise and
good practitioners. If you will look at the first aphorism of the
ancient Master you will see that before all remedies he places the proper
conduct of the patient and his attendants, and the fit ordering of all
the conditions surrounding him. The class of practitioners I have
referred to have always been the most faithful in attending to these
points. No doubt they have sometimes prescribed unwisely, in compliance
with the prejudices of their time, but they have grown wiser as they have
grown older, and learned to trust more in nature and less in their plans
of interference. I believe common opinion confirms Sir James Clark's
observation to this effect.
The experience of the profession must, I think, run parallel with that of
the wisest of its individual members. Each time a plan of treatment or a
particular remedy comes up for trial, it is submitted to a sharper
scrutiny. When Cullen wrote his Materia Medica, he had seriously to
assail the practice of giving burnt toad, which was still countenanced by
at least one medical authority of note. I have read recently in some
medical journal, that an American practitioner, whose name is known to
the country, is prescribing the hoof of a horse for epilepsy. It was
doubtless suggested by that old fancy of wearing a portion of elk's hoof
hung round the neck or in a ring, for this disease. But it is hard to
persuade reasonable people to swallow the abominations of a former
period. The evidence which satisfied Fernelius will not serve one of our
hospital physicians.
In this way those articles of the Materia Medica which had nothing but
loathsomeness to recommend them have been gradually dropped, and are not
like to obtain any general favor again with civilized communities. The
next culprits to be tried are the poisons. I have never been in the
least sceptical as to the utility of some of them, when properly
employed. Though I believe that at present, taking the world at large,
and leaving out a few powerful agents of such immense value that they
rank next to food in importance, the poisons prescribed for disease do
more hurt than good, I have no doubt, and never professed to have any,
that they do much good in prudent and instructed hands. But I am very
willing to confess a great jealousy of many agents, and I could almost
wish to see the Materia Medica so classed as to call suspicion upon
certain ones among them.
Thus the alien elements, those which do not properly enter into the
composition of any living tissue, are the most to be suspected,
--mercury, lead, antimony, silver, and the rest, for the reasons I have
before mentioned. Even iodine, which, as it is found in certain plants,
seems less remote from the animal tissues, gives unequivocal proofs from
time to time that it is hostile to some portions of the glandular system.
There is, of course, less prima facie objection to those agents which
consist of assimilable elements, such as are found making a part of
healthy tissues. These are divisible into three classes,--foods,
poisons, and inert, mostly because insoluble, substances. The food of
one animal or of one human being is sometimes poison to another, and vice
versa; inert substances may act mechanically, so as to produce the effect
of poisons; but this division holds exactly enough for our purpose.
Strictly speaking, every poison consisting of assimilable elements may be
considered as unwholesome food. It is rejected by the stomach, or it
produces diarrhoea, or it causes vertigo or disturbance of the heart's
action, or some other symptom for which the subject of it would consult
the physician, if it came on from any other cause than taking it under
the name of medicine. Yet portions of this unwholesome food which we
call medicine, we have reason to believe, are assimilated; thus,
castor-oil appears to be partially digested by infants, so that they
require large doses to affect them medicinally. Even that deadliest of
poisons, hydrocyanic acid, is probably assimilated, and helps to make
living tissue, if it do not kill the patient, for the assimilable
elements which it contains, given in the separate forms of amygdalin and
emulsin, produce no disturbance, unless, as in Bernard's experiments,
they are suffered to meet in the digestive organs. A medicine consisting
of assimilable substances being then simply unwholesome food, we
understand what is meant by those cumulative effects of such remedies
often observed, as in the case of digitalis and strychnia. They are
precisely similar to the cumulative effects of a salt diet in producing
scurvy, or of spurred rye in producing dry gangrene. As the effects of
such substances are a violence to the organs, we should exercise the same
caution with regard to their use that we would exercise about any other
kind of poisonous food,--partridges at certain seasons, for instance.
Even where these poisonous kinds of food seem to be useful, we should
still regard them with great jealousy. Digitalis lowers the pulse in
febrile conditions. Veratrum viride does the same thing. How do we know
that a rapid pulse is not a normal adjustment of nature to the condition
it accompanies? Digitalis has gone out of favor; how sure are we that
Veratrum viride will not be found to do more harm than good in a case of
internal inflammation, taking the whole course of the disease into
consideration? Think of the change of opinion with regard to the use of
opium in delirium tremens (which you remember is sometimes called
delirium vigilans), where it seemed so obviously indicated, since the
publication of Dr. Ware's admirable essay. I respect the evidence of my
contemporaries, but I cannot forget the sayings of the Father of
medicine,--Ars longa, judicium diffcile.
I am not presuming to express an opinion concerning Veratrum viride,
which was little heard of when I was still practising medicine. I am
only appealing to that higher court of experience which sits in judgment
on all decisions of the lower medical tribunals, and which requires more
than one generation for its final verdict.
Once change the habit of mind so long prevalent among practitioners of
medicine; once let it be everywhere understood that the presumption is in
favor of food, and not of alien substances, of innocuous, and not of
unwholesome food, for the sick; that this presumption requires very
strong evidence in each particular case to overcome it; but that, when
such evidence is afforded, the alien substance or the unwholesome food
should be given boldly, in sufficient quantities, in the same spirit as
that with which the surgeon lifts his knife against a patient,--that is,
with the same reluctance and the same determination,--and I think we
shall have and hear much less of charlatanism in and out of the
profession. The disgrace of medicine has been that colossal system of
self-deception, in obedience to which mines have been emptied of their
cankering minerals, the vegetable kingdom robbed of all its noxious
growths, the entrails of animals taxed for their impurities, the
poison-bags of reptiles drained of their venom, and all the inconceivable
abominations thus obtained thrust down the throats of human beings
suffering from some fault of organization, nourishment, or vital
stimulation.
Much as we have gained, we have not yet thoroughly shaken off the notion
that poison is the natural food of disease, as wholesome aliment is the
support of health. Cowper's lines, in "The Task," show the
matter-of-course practice of his time:
"He does not scorn it, who has long endured
A fever's agonies, and fed on drugs."
Dr. Kimball of Lowell, who has been in the habit of seeing a great deal
more of typhoid fever than most practitioners, and whose surgical
exploits show him not to be wanting in boldness or enterprise, can tell
you whether he finds it necessary to feed his patients on drugs or not.
His experience is, I believe, that of the most enlightened and advanced
portion of the profession; yet I think that even in typhoid fever, and
certainly in many other complaints, the effects of ancient habits and
prejudices may still be seen in the practice of some educated physicians.
To you, young men, it belongs to judge all that has gone before you. You
come nearer to the great fathers of modern medicine than some of you
imagine. Three of my own instructors attended Dr. Rush's Lectures. The
illustrious Haller mentions Rush's inaugural thesis in his "Bibliotheca
Anatomica;" and this same Haller, brought so close to us, tells us he
remembers Ruysch, then an old man, and used to carry letters between him
and Boerhaave. Look through the history of medicine from Boerhaave to
this present day. You will see at once that medical doctrine and
practice have undergone a long series of changes. You will see that the
doctrine and practice of our own time must probably change in their turn,
and that, if we can trust at all to the indications of their course, it
will be in the direction of an improved hygiene and a simplified
treatment. Especially will the old habit of violating the instincts of
the sick give place to a judicious study of these same instincts. It
will be found that bodily, like mental insanity, is best managed, for the
most part, by natural soothing agencies. Two centuries ago there was a
prescription for scurvy containing "stercoris taurini et anserini par,
quantitas trium magnarum nucum," of the hell-broth containing which
"guoties-cumque sitit oeger, large bibit." When I have recalled the
humane common-sense of Captain Cook in the matter of preventing this
disease; when I have heard my friend, Mr. Dana, describing the avidity
with which the scurvy-stricken sailors snuffed up the earthy fragrance of
fresh raw potatoes, the food which was to supply the elements wanting to
their spongy tissues, I have recognized that the perfection of art is
often a return to nature, and seen in this single instance the germ of
innumerable beneficent future medical reforms.
I cannot help believing that medical curative treatment will by and by
resolve itself in great measure into modifications of the food, swallowed
and breathed, and of the natural stimuli, and that less will be expected
from specifics and noxious disturbing agents, either alien or
assimilable. The noted mineral-waters containing iron, sulphur, carbonic
acid, supply nutritious or stimulating materials to the body as much as
phosphate of lime and ammoniacal compounds do to the cereal plants. The
effects of a milk and vegetable diet, of gluten bread in diabetes, of
cod-liver oil in phthisis, even of such audacious innovations as the
water-cure and the grape-cure, are only hints of what will be
accomplished when we have learned to discover what organic elements are
deficient or in excess in a case of chronic disease, and the best way of
correcting the abnormal condition, just as an agriculturist ascertains
the wants of his crops and modifies the composition of his soil. In
acute febrile diseases we have long ago discovered that far above all
drug-medication is the use of mild liquid diet in the period of
excitement, and of stimulant and nutritious food in that of exhaustion.
Hippocrates himself was as particular about his barley-ptisan as any
Florence Nightingale of our time could be.
The generation to which you, who are just entering the profession,
belong, will make a vast stride forward, as I believe, in the direction
of treatment by natural rather than violent agencies. What is it that
makes the reputation of Sydenham, as the chief of English physicians?
His prescriptions consisted principally of simples. An aperient or an
opiate, a "cardiac" or a tonic, may be commonly found in the midst of a
somewhat fantastic miscellany of garden herbs. It was not by his
pharmaceutic prescriptions that he gained his great name. It was by
daring to order fresh air for small-pox patients, and riding on horseback
for consumptives, in place of the smothering system, and the noxious and
often loathsome rubbish of the established schools. Of course Sydenham
was much abused by his contemporaries, as he frequently takes occasion to
remind his reader. "I must needs conclude," he says, "either that I am
void of merit, or that the candid and ingenuous part of mankind, who are
formed with so excellent a temper of mind as to be no strangers to
gratitude, make a very small part of the whole." If in the fearless
pursuit of truth you should find the world as ungracious in the
nineteenth century as he found it in the seventeenth, you may learn a
lesson of self-reliance from another utterance of the same illustrious
physician: "'T is none of my business to inquire what other persons
think, but to establish my own observations; in order to which, I ask no
favor of the reader but to peruse my writings with temper."
The physician has learned a great deal from the surgeon, who is naturally
in advance of him, because he has a better opportunity of seeing the
effects of his remedies. Let me shorten one of Ambroise Pare's stories
for you. There had been a great victory at the pass of Susa, and they
were riding into the city. The wounded cried out as the horses trampled
them under their hoofs, which caused good Ambroise great pity, and made
him wish himself back in Paris. Going into a stable he saw four dead
soldiers, and three desperately wounded, placed with their backs against
the wall. An old campaigner came up.--"Can these fellows get well?" he
said. "No!" answered the surgeon. Thereupon, the old soldier walked up
to them and cut all their throats, sweetly, and without wrath (doulcement
et sans cholere). Ambroise told him he was a bad man to do such a thing.
"I hope to God;" he said, "somebody will do as much for me if I ever get
into such a scrape" (accoustre de telle facon). "I was not much salted
in those days" (bien doux de sel), says Ambroise, "and little acquainted
with the treatment of wounds." However, as he tells us, he proceeded to
apply boiling oil of Sambuc (elder) after the approved fashion of the
time,--with what torture to the patient may be guessed. At last his
precious oil gave out, and he used instead an insignificant mixture of
his own contrivance. He could not sleep that night for fear his patients
who had not been scalded with the boiling oil would be poisoned by the
gunpowder conveyed into their wounds by the balls. To his surprise, he
found them much better than the others the next morning, and resolved
never again to burn his patients with hot oil for gun-shot wounds.
This was the beginning, as nearly as we can fix it, of that reform which
has introduced plain water-dressings in the place of the farrago of
external applications which had been a source of profit to apothecaries
and disgrace to art from, and before, the time when Pliny complained of
them. A young surgeon who was at Sudley Church, laboring among the
wounded of Bull Run, tells me they had nothing but water for dressing,
and he (being also doux de sel) was astonished to see how well the wounds
did under that simple treatment.
Let me here mention a fact or two which may be of use to some of you who
mean to enter the public service. You will, as it seems, have gun-shot
wounds almost exclusively to deal with. Three different surgeons, the
one just mentioned and two who saw the wounded of Big Bethel, assured me
that they found no sabre-cuts or bayonet wounds. It is the rifle-bullet
from a safe distance which pierces the breasts of our soldiers, and not
the gallant charge of broad platoons and sweeping squadrons, such as we
have been in the habit of considering the chosen mode of warfare of
ancient and modern chivalry. [Sir Charles James Napier had the same
experience in Virginia in 1813. "Potomac. We have nasty sort of fighting
here, amongst creeks and bushes, and lose men without show." "Yankee
never shows himself, he keeps in the thickest wood, fires and runs
off."--"These five thousand in the open field might be attacked, but
behind works it would be throwing away lives." He calls it "an
inglorious warfare,"--says one of the leaders is "a little deficient in
gumption,"--but--still my opinion is, that if we tuck up our sleeves and
lay our ears back we might thrash them; that is, if we caught them out of
their trees, so as to slap at them with the bayonet."--Life, etc. vol.
i. p. 218 et seq.]
Another fact parallels the story of the old campaigner, and may teach
some of you caution in selecting your assistants. A chaplain told it to
two of our officers personally known to myself. He overheard the
examination of a man who wished to drive one of the "avalanche" wagons,
as they call them. The man was asked if he knew how to deal with wounded
men. "Oh yes," he answered; "if they're hit here," pointing to the
abdomen, "knock 'em on the head,--they can't get well."
In art and outside of it you will meet the same barbarisms that Ambroise
Pare met with,--for men differ less from century to century than we are
apt to suppose; you will encounter the same opposition, if you attack any
prevailing opinion, that Sydenham complained of. So far as possible, let
not such experiences breed in you a contempt for those who are the
subjects of folly or prejudice, or foster any love of dispute for its own
sake. Should you become authors, express your opinions freely; defend
them rarely. It is not often that an opinion is worth expressing, which
cannot take care of itself. Opposition is the best mordant to fix the
color of your thought in the general belief.
It is time to bring these crowded remarks to a close. The day has been
when at the beginning of a course of Lectures I should have thought it
fitting to exhort you to diligence and entire devotion to your tasks as
students. It is not so now. The young man who has not heard the
clarion-voices of honor and of duty now sounding throughout the land,
will heed no word of mine. In the camp or the city, in the field or the
hospital, under sheltering roof, or half-protecting canvas, or open sky,
shedding our own blood or stanching that of our wounded defenders,
students or teachers, whatever our calling and our ability, we belong,
not to ourselves, but to our imperilled country, whose danger is our
calamity, whose ruin would be our enslavement, whose rescue shall be our
earthly salvation!
SCHOLASTIC AND BEDSIDE TEACHING.
An Introductory Lecture delivered before the Medical Class of Harvard
University, November 6, 1867.
The idea is entertained by some of our most sincere professional
brethren, that to lengthen and multiply our Winter Lectures will be of
necessity to advance the cause of medical education. It is a fair
subject for consideration whether they do not overrate the relative
importance of that particular mode of instruction which forms the larger
part of these courses.
As this School could only lengthen its lecture term at the expense of its
"Summer Session," in which more direct, personal, and familiar teaching
takes the place of our academic discourses, and in which more time can be
given to hospitals, infirmaries, and practical instruction in various
important specialties, whatever might be gained, a good deal would
certainly be lost in our case by the exchange.
The most essential part of a student's instruction is obtained, as I
believe, not in the lecture-room, but at the bedside. Nothing seen there
is lost; the rhythms of disease are learned by frequent repetition; its
unforeseen occurrences stamp themselves indelibly in the memory. Before
the student is aware of what he has acquired, he has learned the aspects
and course and probable issue of the diseases he has seen with his
teacher, and the proper mode of dealing with them, so far as his master
knows it. On the other hand, our ex cathedra prelections have a strong
tendency to run into details which, however interesting they may be to
ourselves and a few of our more curious listeners, have nothing in them
which will ever be of use to the student as a practitioner. It is a
perfectly fair question whether I and some other American Professors do
not teach quite enough that is useless already. Is it not well to remind
the student from time to time that a physician's business is to avert
disease, to heal the sick, to prolong life, and to diminish suffering?
Is it not true that the young man of average ability will find it as much
as he can do to fit himself for these simple duties? Is it not best to
begin, at any rate, by making sure of such knowledge as he will require
in his daily walk, by no means discouraging him from any study for which
his genius fits him when he once feels that he has become master of his
chosen art.
I know that many branches of science are of the greatest value as feeders
of our medical reservoirs. But the practising physician's office is to
draw the healing waters, and while he gives his time to this labor he can
hardly be expected to explore all the sources that spread themselves over
the wide domain of science. The traveller who would not drink of the
Nile until he had tracked it to its parent lakes, would be like to die of
thirst; and the medical practitioner who would not use the results of
many laborers in other departments without sharing their special toils,
would find life far too short and art immeasurably too long.
We owe much to Chemistry, one of the most captivating as well as
important of studies; but the medical man must as a general rule content
himself with a clear view of its principles and a limited acquaintance
with its facts; such especially as are pertinent to his pursuits. I am
in little danger of underrating Anatomy or Physiology; but as each of
these branches splits up into specialties, any one of which may take up a
scientific life-time, I would have them taught with a certain judgment
and reserve, so that they shall not crowd the more immediately practical
branches. So of all the other ancillary and auxiliary kinds of
knowledge, I would have them strictly subordinated to that particular
kind of knowledge for which the community looks to its medical advisers.
A medical school is not a scientific school, except just so far as
medicine itself is a science. On the natural history side, medicine is a
science; on the curative side, chiefly an art. This is implied in
Hufeland's aphorism: "The physician must generalize the disease and
individualize the patient."
The coordinated and classified results of empirical observation, in
distinction from scientific experiment, have furnished almost all we know
about food, the medicine of health, and medicine, the food of sickness.
We eat the root of the Solanum tuberosum and throw away its fruit; we eat
the fruit of the Solanum Lycopersicum and throw away its root. Nothing
but vulgar experience has taught us to reject the potato ball and cook
the tomato. So of most of our remedies. The subchloride of mercury,
calomel, is the great British specific; the protochloride of mercury,
corrosive sublimate, kills like arsenic, but no chemist could have told
us it would be so.
From observations like these we can obtain certain principles from which
we can argue deductively to facts of a like nature, but the process is
limited, and we are suspicious of all reasoning in that direction applied
to the processes of healthy and diseased life. We are continually
appealing to special facts. We are willing to give Liebig's artificial
milk when we cannot do better, but we watch the child anxiously whose
wet-nurse is a chemist's pipkin. A pair of substantial mammary glands
has the advantage over the two hemispheres of the most learned
Professor's brain, in the art of compounding a nutritious fluid for
infants.
The bedside is always the true centre of medical teaching. Certain
branches must be taught in the lecture-room, and will necessarily involve
a good deal that is not directly useful to the future practitioner. But
the over ambitious and active student must not be led away by the
seduction of knowledge for its own sake from his principal pursuit. The
humble beginner, who is alarmed at the vast fields of knowledge opened to
him, may be encouraged by the assurance that with a very slender
provision of science, in distinction from practical skill, he may be a
useful and acceptable member of the profession to which the health of the
community is intrusted.
To those who are not to engage in practice, the various pursuits of
science hardly require to be commended. Only they must not be
disappointed if they find many subjects treated in our courses as a
medical class requires, rather than as a scientific class would expect,
that is, with special limitations and constant reference to practical
ends. Fortunately they are within easy reach of the highest scientific
instruction. The business of a school like this is to make useful
working physicians, and to succeed in this it is almost as important not
to overcrowd the mind of the pupil with merely curious knowledge as it is
to store it with useful information.
In this direction I have written my lecture, not to undervalue any form
of scientific labor in its place, an unworthy thought from which I hope I
need not defend myself,--but to discourage any undue inflation of the
scholastic programme, which even now asks more of the student than the
teacher is able to obtain from the great majority of those who present
themselves for examination. I wish to take a hint in education from the
Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, who regards the
cultivation of too much land as a great defect in our New England
farming. I hope that our Medical Institutions may never lay themselves
open to the kind of accusation Mr. Lowe brings against the English
Universities, when he says that their education is made up "of words that
few understand and most will shortly forget; of arts that can never be
used, if indeed they can even be learnt; of histories inapplicable to our
times; of languages dead and even mouldy; of grammatical rules that never
had living use and are only post mortem examinations; and of statements
fagoted with utter disregard of their comparative value."
This general thought will be kept in view throughout my somewhat
discursive address, which will begin with an imaginary clinical lesson
from the lips of an historical personage, and close with the portrait
from real life of one who, both as teacher and practitioner, was long
loved and honored among us. If I somewhat overrun my hour, you must
pardon me, for I can say with Pascal that I have not had the time to make
my lecture shorter.
In the year 1647, that good man John Eliot, commonly called the Apostle
Eliot, writing to Mr. Thomas Shepherd, the pious minister of Cambridge,
referring to the great need of medical instruction for the Indians, used
these words:
"I have thought in my heart that it were a singular good work, if the
Lord would stirre up the hearts of some or other of his people in England
to give some maintenance toward some Schoole or Collegiate exercise this
way, wherein there should be Anatomies and other instructions that way,
and where there might be some recompence given to any that should bring
in any vegetable or other thing that is vertuous in the way of Physick.
"There is another reason which moves my thought and desires this way,
namely that our young students in Physick may be trained up better then
they yet bee, who have onely theoreticall knowledge, and are forced to
fall to practise before ever they saw an Anatomy made, or duely trained
up in making experiments, for we never had but one Anatomy in the
countrey, which Mr. Giles Firman [Firmin] now in England, did make and
read upon very well, but no more of that now."
Since the time of the Apostle Eliot the Lord has stirred up the hearts of
our people to the building of many Schools and Colleges where medicine is
taught in all its branches. Mr. Giles Firmin's "Anatomy" may be
considered the first ancestor of a long line of skeletons which have been
dangling and rattling in our lecture-rooms for more than a century.
Teaching in New England in 1647 was a grave but simple matter. A single
person, combining in many cases, as in that of Mr. Giles Firmin, the
offices of physician and preacher, taught what he knew to a few disciples
whom he gathered about him. Of the making of that "Anatomy" on which my
first predecessor in the branch I teach "did read very well" we can know
nothing. The body of some poor wretch who had swung upon the gallows,
was probably conveyed by night to some lonely dwelling at the outskirts
of the village, and there by the light of flaring torches hastily
dissected by hands that trembled over the unwonted task. And ever and
anon the master turned to his book, as he laid bare the mysteries of the
hidden organs; to his precious Vesalius, it might be, or his figures
repeated in the multifarious volume of Ambroise Pare; to the Aldine
octavo in which Fallopius recorded his fresh observations; or that giant
folio of Spigelius just issued from the press of Amsterdam, in which
lovely ladies display their viscera with a coquettish grace implying that
it is rather a pleasure than otherwise to show the lace-like omentum, and
hold up their appendices epiploicae as if they were saying "these are our
jewels."
His teaching of medicine was no doubt chiefly clinical, and received with
the same kind of faith as that which accepted his words from the pulpit.
His notions of disease were based on what he had observed, seen always in
the light of the traditional doctrines in which he was bred. His
discourse savored of the weighty doctrines of Hippocrates, diluted by the
subtle speculations of Galen, reinforced by the curious comments of the
Arabian schoolmen as they were conveyed in the mellifluous language of
Fernelius, blended, it may be, with something of the lofty mysticism of
Van Helmont, and perhaps stealing a flavor of that earlier form of
Homoeopathy which had lately come to light in Sir Kenelm Digby's
"Discourse concerning the Cure of Wounds by the Sympathetic Powder."
His Pathology was mythology. A malformed foetus, as the readers of
Winthrop's Journal may remember, was enough to scare the colonists from
their propriety, and suggest the gravest fears of portended disaster.
The student of the seventeenth century opened his Licetus and saw figures
of a lion with the head of a woman, and a man with the head of an
elephant. He had offered to his gaze, as born of a human mother, the
effigy of a winged cherub, a pterocephalous specimen, which our Professor
of Pathological Anatomy would hardly know whether to treat with the
reverence due to its celestial aspect, or to imprison in one of his
immortalizing jars of alcohol.
His pharmacopoeia consisted mainly of simples, such as the venerable
"Herball" of Gerard describes and figures in abounding affluence. St.
John's wort and Clown's All-heal, with Spurge and Fennel, Saffron and
Parsley, Elder and Snake-root, with opium in some form, and roasted
rhubarb and the Four Great Cold Seeds, and the two Resins, of which it
used to be said that whatever the Tacamahaca has not cured, the Caranna
will, with the more familiar Scammony and Jalap and Black Hellebore, made
up a good part of his probable list of remedies. He would have ordered
Iron now and then, and possibly an occasional dose of Antimony. He would
perhaps have had a rheumatic patient wrapped in the skin of a wolf or a
wild cat, and in case of a malignant fever with "purples" or petechiae,
or of an obstinate king's evil, he might have prescribed a certain black
powder, which had been made by calcining toads in an earthen pot; a
choice remedy, taken internally, or applied to any outward grief.
Except for the toad-powder and the peremptory drastics, one might have
borne up against this herb doctoring as well as against some more modern
styles of medication. Barbeyrac and his scholar Sydenham had not yet
cleansed the Pharmacopoeia of its perilous stuff, but there is no doubt
that the more sensible physicians of that day knew well enough that a
good honest herb-tea which amused the patient and his nurses was all that
was required to carry him through all common disorders.
The student soon learned the physiognomy of disease by going about with
his master; fevers, pleurisies, asthmas, dropsies, fluxes, small-pox,
sore-throats, measles, consumptions. He saw what was done for them. He
put up the medicines, gathered the herbs, and so learned something of
materia medico and botany. He learned these few things easily and well,
for he could give his whole attention to them. Chirurgery was a separate
specialty. Women in child-birth were cared for by midwives. There was
no chemistry deserving the name to require his study. He did not learn a
great deal, perhaps, but what he did learn was his business, namely, how
to take care of sick people.
Let me give you a picture of the old=fashioned way of instruction, by
carrying you with me in imagination in the company of worthy Master Giles
Firmin as he makes his round of visits among the good folk of Ipswich,
followed by his one student, who shall answer to the scriptural name of
Luke. It will not be for entertainment chiefly, but to illustrate the
one mode of teaching which can never be superseded, and which, I venture
to say, is more important than all the rest put together. The student is
a green hand, as you will perceive.
In the first dwelling they come to, a stout fellow is bellowing with
colic.
"He will die, Master, of a surety, methinks," says the timid youth in a
whisper.
"Nay, Luke," the Master answers, "'t is but a dry belly-ache. Didst thou
not mark that he stayed his roaring when I did press hard over the lesser
bowels? Note that he hath not the pulse of them with fevers, and by what
Dorcas telleth me there hath been no long shutting up of the vice
naturales. We will steep certain comforting herbs which I will shew
thee, and put them in a bag and lay them on his belly. Likewise he shall
have my cordial julep with a portion of this confection which we do call
Theriaca Andromachi, which hath juice of poppy in it, and is a great
stayer of anguish. This fellow is at his prayers to-day, but I warrant
thee he shall be swearing with the best of them to-morrow."
They jog along the bridle-path on their horses until they come to another
lowly dwelling. They sit a while with a delicate looking girl in whom
the ingenuous youth naturally takes a special interest. The good
physician talks cheerfully with her, asks her a few questions. Then to
her mother: "Good-wife, Margaret hath somewhat profited, as she telleth,
by the goat's milk she hath taken night and morning. Do thou pluck a
maniple--that is an handful--of the plant called Maidenhair, and make a
syrup therewith as I have shewed thee. Let her take a cup full of the
same, fasting, before she sleepeth, also before she riseth from her bed."
And so they leave the house.
"What thinkest thou, Luke, of the maid we have been visiting?" "She
seemeth not much ailing, Master, according to my poor judgment. For she
did say she was better. And she had a red cheek and a bright eye, and
she spake of being soon able to walk unto the meeting, and did seem
greatly hopeful, but spare of flesh, methought, and her voice something
hoarse, as of one that hath a defluxion, with some small coughing from a
cold, as she did say. Speak I not truly, Master, that she will be well
speedily?"
"Yea, Luke, I do think she shall be well, and mayhap speedily. But it is
not here with us she shall be well. For that redness of the cheek is but
the sign of the fever which, after the Grecians, we do call the hectical;
and that shining of the eyes is but a sickly glazing, and they which do
every day get better and likewise thinner and weaker shall find that way
leadeth to the church-yard gate. This is the malady which the ancients
did call tubes, or the wasting disease, and some do name the consumption.
A disease whereof most that fall ailing do perish. This Margaret is not
long for earth--but she knoweth it not, and still hopeth."
"Why, then, Master, didst thou give her of thy medicine, seeing that her
ail is unto death?"
"Thou shalt learn, boy, that they which are sick must have somewhat
wherewith to busy their thoughts. There be some who do give these tabid
or consumptives a certain posset made with lime-water and anise and
liquorice and raisins of the sun, and there be other some who do give the
juice of craw-fishes boiled in barley-water with chicken-broth, but these
be toys, as I do think, and ye shall find as good virtue, nay better, in
this syrup of the simple called Maidenhair."
Something after this manner might Master Giles Firmin have delivered his
clinical instructions. Somewhat in this way, a century and a half later,
another New England physician, Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, taught a
young man who came to study with him, a very diligent and intelligent
youth, James Jackson by name, the same whose portrait in his advanced
years hangs upon this wall, long the honored Professor of Theory and
Practice in this Institution, of whom I shall say something in this
Lecture. Our venerated Teacher studied assiduously afterwards in the
great London Hospitals, but I think he used to quote his "old Master" ten
times where he quoted Mr. Cline or Dr. Woodville once.
When I compare this direct transfer of the practical experience of a wise
man into the mind of a student,--every fact one that he can use in the
battle of life and death,--with the far off, unserviceable "scientific"
truths that I and some others are in the habit of teaching, I cannot help
asking myself whether, if we concede that our forefathers taught too
little, there is not--a possibility that we may sometimes attempt to
teach too much. I almost blush when I think of myself as describing the
eight several facets on two slender processes of the palate bone, or the
seven little twigs that branch off from the minute tympanic nerve, and I
wonder whether my excellent colleague feels in the same way when he
pictures himself as giving the constitution of neurin, which as he and I
know very well is that of the hydrate of trimethyle-oxethyle-ammonium, or
the formula for the production of alloxan, which, though none but the
Professors and older students can be expected to remember it, is C10 H4
N4 O6+ 2HO, NO5=C8 H4 N2 O10+2CO2+N2+NH4 O, NO5.
I can bear the voice of some rough iconoclast addressing the Anatomist
and the Chemist in tones of contemptuous indignation: "What is this stuff
with which you are cramming the brains of young men who are to hold the
lives of the community in their hands? Here is a man fallen in a fit;
you can tell me all about the eight surfaces of the two processes of the
palate bone, but you have not had the sense to loosen that man's
neck-cloth, and the old women are all calling you a fool? Here is a
fellow that has just swallowed poison. I want something to turn his
stomach inside out at the shortest notice. Oh, you have forgotten the
dose of the sulphate of zinc, but you remember the formula for the
production of alloxan!"
"Look you, Master Doctor,--if I go to a carpenter to come and stop a leak
in my roof that is flooding the house, do you suppose I care whether he
is a botanist or not? Cannot a man work in wood without knowing all
about endogens and exogens, or must he attend Professor Gray's Lectures
before he can be trusted to make a box-trap? If my horse casts a shoe,
do you think I will not trust a blacksmith to shoe him until I have made
sure that he is sound on the distinction between the sesquioxide and the
protosesquioxide of iron?"
--But my scientific labor is to lead to useful results by and by, in the
next generation, or in some possible remote future.--
"Diavolo!" as your Dr. Rabelais has it,--answers the iconoclast,--"what
is that to me and my colic, to me and my strangury? I pay the Captain of
the Cunard steamship to carry me quickly and safely to Liverpool, not to
make a chart of the Atlantic for after voyagers! If Professor Peirce
undertakes to pilot me into Boston Harbor and runs me on Cohasset rocks,
what answer is it to tell me that he is Superintendent of the Coast
Survey? No, Sir! I want a plain man in a pea-jacket and a sou'wester,
who knows the channel of Boston Harbor, and the rocks of Boston Harbor,
and the distinguished Professor is quite of my mind as to the matter, for
I took the pains to ask him before I ventured to use his name in the way
of illustration."
I do not know how the remarks of the image-breaker may strike others, but
I feel that they put me on my defence with regard to much of my teaching.
Some years ago I ventured to show in an introductory Lecture how very
small a proportion of the anatomical facts taught in a regular course, as
delivered by myself and others, had any practical bearing whatever on the
treatment of disease. How can I, how can any medical teacher justify
himself in teaching anything that is not like to be of practical use to a
class of young men who are to hold in their hands the balance in which
life and death, ease and anguish, happiness and wretchedness are to be
daily weighed?
I hope we are not all wrong. Oftentimes in finding how sadly ignorant of
really essential and vital facts and rules were some of those whom we had
been larding with the choicest scraps of science, I have doubted whether
the old one-man system of teaching, when the one man was of the right
sort, did not turn out better working physicians than our more elaborate
method. The best practitioner I ever knew was mainly shaped to
excellence in that way. I can understand perfectly the regrets of my
friend Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, for the good that was lost with the
old apprenticeship system. I understand as well Dr. Latham's fear "that
many men of the best abilities and good education will be deterred from
prosecuting physic as a profession, in consequence of the necessity
indiscriminately laid upon all for impossible attainments."
I feel therefore impelled to say a very few words in defence of that
system of teaching adopted in our Colleges, by which we wish to
supplement and complete the instruction given by private individuals or
by what are often called Summer Schools.
The reason why we teach so much that is not practical and in itself
useful, is because we find that the easiest way of teaching what is
practical and useful. If we could in any way eliminate all that would
help a man to deal successfully with disease, and teach it by itself so
that it should be as tenaciously rooted in the memory, as easily summoned
when wanted, as fertile in suggestion of related facts, as satisfactory
to the peremptory demands of the intelligence as if taught in its
scientific connections, I think it would be our duty so to teach the
momentous truths of medicine, and to regard all useless additions as an
intrusion on the time which should be otherwise occupied.
But we cannot successfully eliminate and teach by itself that which is
purely practical. The easiest and surest why of acquiring facts is to
learn them in groups, in systems, and systematized knowledge is science.
You can very often carry two facts fastened together more easily than one
by itself, as a housemaid can carry two pails of water with a hoop more
easily than one without it. You can remember a man's face, made up of
many features, better than you can his nose or his mouth or his eye-brow.
Scores of proverbs show you that you can remember two lines that rhyme
better than one without the jingle. The ancients, who knew the laws of
memory, grouped the seven cities that contended for the honor of being
Homer's birthplace in a line thus given by Aulus Gellius:
Smurna, Rodos, Colophon, Salamin, Ios, Argos, Athenai.
I remember, in the earlier political days of Martin Van Buren, that
Colonel Stone, of the "New York Commercial," or one of his
correspondents, said that six towns of New York would claim in the same
way to have been the birth-place of the "Little Magician," as he was then
called; and thus he gave their names, any one of which I should long ago
have forgotten, but which as a group have stuck tight in my memory from
that day to this;
Catskill, Saugerties, Redhook, Kinderhook, Scaghticoke, Schodac.
If the memory gains so much by mere rhythmical association, how much more
will it gain when isolated facts are brought together under laws and
principles, when organs are examined in their natural connections, when
structure is coupled with function, and healthy and diseased action are
studied as they pass one into the other! Systematic, or scientific study
is invaluable as supplying a natural kind of mnemonics, if for nothing
else. You cannot properly learn the facts you want from Anatomy and
Chemistry in any way so easily as by taking them in their regular order,
with other allied facts, only there must be common sense exercised in
leaving out a great deal which belongs to each of the two branches as
pure science. The dullest of teachers is the one who does not know what
to omit.
The larger aim of scientific training is to furnish you with principles
to which you will be able to refer isolated facts, and so bring these
within the range of recorded experience. See what the "London Times"
said about the three Germans who cracked open John Bull Chatwood's
strong-box at the Fair the other day, while the three Englishmen hammered
away in vain at Brother Jonathan Herring's. The Englishmen represented
brute force. The Germans had been trained to appreciate principle. The
Englishman "knows his business by rote and rule of thumb"--science, which
would "teach him to do in an hour what has hitherto occupied him two
hours," "is in a manner forbidden to him." To this cause the "Times"
attributes the falling off of English workmen in comparison with those of
the Continent.
Granting all this, we must not expect too much from "science" as
distinguished from common experience. There are ten thousand
experimenters without special apparatus for every one in the laboratory.
Accident is the great chemist and toxicologist. Battle is the great
vivisector. Hunger has instituted researches on food such as no Liebig,
no Academic Commission has ever recorded.
Medicine, sometimes impertinently, often ignorantly, often carelessly
called "allopathy," appropriates everything from every source that can be
of the slightest use to anybody who is ailing in any way, or like to be
ailing from any cause. It learned from a monk how to use antimony, from
a Jesuit how to cure agues, from a friar how to cut for stone, from a
soldier how to treat gout, from a sailor how to keep off scurvy, from a
postmaster how to sound the Eustachian tube, from a dairy-maid how to
prevent small-pox, and from an old market-woman how to catch the
itch-insect. It borrowed acupuncture and the moxa from the Japanese
heathen, and was taught the use of lobelia by the American savage. It
stands ready to-day to accept anything from any theorist, from any
empiric who can make out a good case for his discovery or his remedy.
"Science" is one of its benefactors, but only one, out of many. Ask the
wisest practising physician you know, what branches of science help him
habitually, and what amount of knowledge relating to each branch he
requires for his professional duties. He will tell you that scientific
training has a value independent of all the special knowledge acquired.
He will tell you that many facts are explained by studying them in the
wider range of related facts to which they belong. He will gratefully
recognize that the anatomist has furnished him with indispensable data,
that the physiologist has sometimes put him on the track of new modes of
treatment, that the chemist has isolated the active principles of his
medicines, has taught him how to combine them, has from time to time
offered him new remedial agencies, and so of others of his allies. But he
will also tell you, if I am not mistaken, that his own branch of
knowledge is so extensive and so perplexing that he must accept most of
his facts ready made at their hands. He will own to you that in the
struggle for life which goes on day and night in our thoughts as in the
outside world of nature, much that he learned under the name of science
has died out, and that simple homely experience has largely taken the
place of that scholastic knowledge to which he and perhaps some of his
instructors once attached a paremount importance.
This, then, is my view of scientific training as conducted in courses
such as you are entering on. Up to a certain point I believe in set
Lectures as excellent adjuncts to what is far more important, practical
instruction at the bedside, in the operating room, and under the eye of
the Demonstrator. But I am so far from wishing these courses extended,
that I think some of them--suppose I say my own--would almost bear
curtailing. Do you want me to describe more branches of the sciatic and
crural nerves? I can take Fischer's plates, and lecturing on that scale
fill up my whole course and not finish the nerves alone. We must stop
somewhere, and for my own part I think the scholastic exercises of our
colleges have already claimed their full share of the student's time
without our seeking to extend them.
I trust I have vindicated the apparent inconsequence of teaching young
students a good deal that seems at first sight profitless, but which
helps them to learn and retain what is profitable. But this is an
inquisitive age, and if we insist on piling up beyond a certain height
knowledge which is in itself mere trash and lumber to a man whose life is
to be one long fight with death and disease, there will be some sharp
questions asked by and by, and our quick-witted people will perhaps find
they can get along as well without the professor's cap as without the
bishop's mitre and the monarch's crown.
I myself have nothing to do with clinical teaching. Yet I do not
hesitate to say it is more essential than all the rest put together, so
far as the ordinary practice of medicine is concerned; and this is by far
the most important thing to be learned, because it deals with so many
more lives than any other branch of the profession. So of personal
instruction, such as we give and others give in the interval of lectures,
much of it at the bedside, some of it in the laboratory, some in the
microscope-room, some in the recitation-room, I think it has many
advantages of its own over the winter course, and I do not wish to see it
shortened for the sake of prolonging what seems to me long enough
already.
If I am jealous of the tendency to expand the time given to the
acquisition of curious knowledge, at the expense of the plain
old-fashioned bedside teachings, I only share the feeling which Sydenham
expressed two hundred years ago, using an image I have already borrowed.
"He would be no honest and successful pilot who was to apply himself with
less industry to avoid rocks and sands and bring his vessel safely home,
than to search into the causes of the ebbing and flowing of the sea,
which, though very well for a philosopher, is foreign to him whose
business it is to secure the ship. So neither will a physician, whose
province it is to cure diseases, be able to do so, though he be a person
of great genius, who bestows less time on the hidden and intricate method
of nature, and adapting his means thereto, than on curious and subtle
speculation."
"Medicine is my wife and Science is my mistress," said Dr. Rush. I do
not think that the breach of the seventh commandment can be shown to have
been of advantage to the legitimate owner of his affections. Read what
Dr. Elisha Bartlett says of him as a practitioner, or ask one of our own
honored ex-professors, who studied under him, whether Dr. Rush had ever
learned the meaning of that saying of Lord Bacon, that man is the
minister and interpreter of Nature, or whether he did not speak
habitually of Nature as an intruder in the sick room, from which his art
was to expel her as an incompetent and a meddler.
All a man's powers are not too much for such a profession as Medicine.
"He is a learned man," said old Parson Emmons of Franklin, "who
understands one subject, and he is a very learned man who understands two
subjects." Schonbein says he has been studying oxygen for thirty years.
Mitscherlich said it took fourteen years to establish a new fact in
chemistry. Aubrey says of Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation,
that "though all his profession would allow him to be an excellent
anatomist, I have never heard of any who admired his therapeutic way."
My learned and excellent friend before referred to, Dr. Brown of
Edinburgh, from whose very lively and sensible Essay, "Locke and
Sydenham," I have borrowed several of my citations, contrasts Sir Charles
Bell, the discoverer, the man of science, with Dr. Abercrombie, the
master in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. It is through one of
the rarest of combinations that we have in our Faculty a teacher on whom
the scientific mantle of Bell has fallen, and who yet stands preeminent
in the practical treatment of the class of diseases which his inventive
and ardent experimental genius has illustrated. M. Brown-Sequard's
example is as, eloquent as his teaching in proof of the advantages of
well directed scientific investigation. But those who emulate his
success at once as a discoverer and a practitioner must be content like
him to limit their field of practice. The highest genius cannot afford
in our time to forget the ancient precept, Divide et impera.
"I suppose I must go and earn this guinea," said a medical man who was
sent for while he was dissecting an animal. I should not have cared to
be his patient. His dissection would do me no good, and his thoughts
would be too much upon it. I want a whole man for my doctor, not a half
one. I would have sent for a humbler practitioner, who would have given
himself entirely to me, and told the other--who was no less a man than
John Hunter--to go on and finish the dissection of his tiger.
Sydenham's "Read Don Quixote" should be addressed not to the student, but
to the Professor of today. Aimed at him it means, "Do not be too
learned."
Do not think you are going to lecture to picked young men who are
training themselves to be scientific discoverers. They are of fair
average capacity, and they are going to be working doctors.
These young men are to have some very serious vital facts to deal with.
I will mention a few of them.
Every other resident adult you meet in these streets is or will be more
or less tuberculous. This is not an extravagant estimate, as very nearly
one third of the deaths of adults in Boston last year were from phthisis.
If the relative number is less in our other northern cities, it is
probably in a great measure because they are more unhealthy; that is,
they have as much, or nearly as much, consumption, but they have more
fevers or other fatal diseases.
These heavy-eyed men with the alcoholized brains, these pallid youths
with the nicotized optic ganglia and thinking-marrows brown as their own
meerschaums, of whom you meet too many,--will ask all your wisdom to deal
with their poisoned nerves and their enfeebled wills.
Nearly seventeen hundred children under five years of age died last year
in this city. A poor human article, no doubt, in many cases, still,
worth an attempt to save them, especially when we remember the effect of
Dr. Clarke's suggestion at the Dublin Hospital, by which some twenty-five
or thirty thousand children's lives have probably been saved in a single
city.
Again, the complaint is often heard that the native population is not
increasing so rapidly as in former generations. The breeding and nursing
period of American women is one of peculiar delicacy and frequent
infirmity. Many of them must require a considerable interval between the
reproductive efforts, to repair damages and regain strength. This
matter is not to be decided by an appeal to unschooled nature. It is the
same question as that of the deformed pelvis,--one of degree. The facts
of mal-vitalization are as much to be attended to as those of
mal-formation. If the woman with a twisted pelvis is to be considered an
exempt, the woman with a defective organization should be recognized as
belonging to the invalid corps. We shudder to hear what is alleged as to
the prevalence of criminal practices; if back of these there can be shown
organic incapacity or overtaxing of too limited powers, the facts belong
to the province of the practical physician, as well as of the moralist
and the legislator, and require his gravest consideration.
Take the important question of bleeding. Is venesection done with
forever? Six years ago it was said here in an introductory Lecture that
it would doubtless come back again sooner or later. A fortnight ago I
found myself in the cars with one of the most sensible and esteemed
practitioners in New England. He took out his wallet and showed me two
lancets, which he carried with him; he had never given up their use.
This is a point you will have to consider.
Or, to mention one out of many questionable remedies, shall you give
Veratrum Viride in fevers and inflammations? It makes the pulse slower
in these affections. Then the presumption would naturally be that it
does harm. The caution with reference to it on this ground was long ago
recorded in the Lecture above referred to. See what Dr. John Hughes
Bennett says of it in the recent edition of his work on Medicine.
Nothing but the most careful clinical experience can settle this and such
points of treatment.
These are all practical questions--questions of life and death, and every
day will be full of just such questions. Take the problem of climate. A
patient comes to you with asthma and wants to know where he can breathe;
another comes to you with phthisis and wants to know where he can live.
What boy's play is nine tenths of all that is taught in many a
pretentious course of lectures, compared with what an accurate and
extensive knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of different
residences in these and other complaints would be to a practising
physician.
I saw the other day a gentleman living in Canada, who had spent seven
successive winters in Egypt, with the entire relief of certain obscure
thoracic symptoms which troubled him while at home. I saw, two months
ago, another gentleman from Minnesota, an observer and a man of sense,
who considered that State as the great sanatorium for all pulmonary
complaints. If half our grown population are or will be more or less
tuberculous, the question of colonizing Florida assumes a new aspect.
Even within the borders of our own State, the very interesting researches
of Dr. Bowditch show that there is a great variation in the amount of
tuberculous disease in different towns, apparently connected with local
conditions. The hygienic map of a State is quite as valuable as its
geological map, and it is the business of every practising physician to
know it thoroughly. They understand this in England, and send a patient
with a dry irritating cough to Torquay or Penzance, while they send
another with relaxed bronchial membranes to Clifton or Brighton. Here is
another great field for practical study.
So as to the all-important question of diet. "Of all the means of cure
at our command," says Dr. Bennett, "a regulation of the quantity and
quality of the diet is by far the most powerful." Dr. MacCormac would
perhaps except the air we breathe, for he thinks that impure air,
especially in sleeping rooms, is the great cause of tubercle. It is
sufficiently proved that the American,--the New Englander,--the
Bostonian, can breed strong and sound children, generation after
generation,--nay, I have shown by the record of a particular family that
vital losses may be retrieved, and a feeble race grow to lusty vigor in
this very climate and locality. Is not the question why our young men
and women so often break down, and how they can be kept from breaking
down, far more important for physicians to settle than whether there is
one cranial vertebra, or whether there are four, or none?
--But I have a taste for the homologies, I want to go deeply into the
subject of embryology, I want to analyze the protonihilates precipitated
from pigeon's milk by the action of the lunar spectrum,--shall I not
follow my star,--shall I not obey my instinct,--shall I not give myself
to the lofty pursuits of science for its own sake?
Certainly you may, if you like. But take down your sign, or never put it
up. That is the way Dr. Owen and Dr. Huxley, Dr. Agassiz and Dr.
Jeffries Wyman, Dr. Gray and Dr. Charles T. Jackson settled the
difficulty. We all admire the achievements of this band of distinguished
doctors who do not practise. But we say of their work and of all pure
science, as the French officer said of the charge of the six hundred at
Balaclava, "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre,"--it is very
splendid, but it is not a practising doctor's business. His patient has
a right to the cream of his life and not merely to the thin milk that is
left after "science" has skimmed it off. The best a physician can give
is never too good for the patient.
It is often a disadvantage to a young practitioner to be known for any
accomplishment outside of his profession. Haller lost his election as
Physician to the Hospital in his native city of Berne, principally on the
ground that he was a poet. In his later years the physician may venture
more boldly. Astruc was sixty-nine years old when he published his
"Conjectures," the first attempt, we are told, to decide the authorship
of the Pentateuch showing anything like a discerning criticism. Sir
Benjamin Brodie was seventy years old before he left his physiological
and surgical studies to indulge in psychological speculations. The
period of pupilage will be busy enough in acquiring the knowledge needed,
and the season of active practice will leave little leisure for any but
professional studies.
Dr. Graves of Dublin, one of the first clinical teachers of our time,
always insisted on his students' beginning at once to visit the hospital.
At the bedside the student must learn to treat disease, and just as
certainly as we spin out and multiply our academic prelections we shall
work in more and more stuffing, more and more rubbish, more and more
irrelevant, useless detail which the student will get rid of just as soon
as he leaves us. Then the next thing will be a new organization, with an
examining board of first-rate practical men, who will ask the candidate
questions that mean business,--who will make him operate if he is to be a
surgeon, and try him at the bedside if he is to be a physician,--and not
puzzle him with scientific conundrums which not more than one of the
questioners could answer himself or ever heard of since he graduated.
Or these women who are hammering at the gates on which is written "No
admittance for the mothers of mankind," will by and by organize an
institution, which starting from that skilful kind of nursing which
Florence Nightingale taught so well, will work backwards through
anodynes, palliatives, curatives, preventives, until with little show of
science it imparts most of what is most valuable in those branches of the
healing art it professes to teach. When that time comes, the fitness of
women for certain medical duties, which Hecquet advocated in 1708, which
Douglas maintained in 1736, which Dr. John Ware, long the honored
Professor of Theory and Practice in this Institution, upheld within our
own recollection in the face of his own recorded opinion to the contrary,
will very possibly be recognized.
My advice to every teacher less experienced than myself would be,
therefore: Do not fret over the details you have to omit; you probably
teach altogether too many as it is. Individuals may learn a thing with
once hearing it, but the only way of teaching a whole class is by
enormous repetition, representation, and illustration in all possible
forms. Now and then you will have a young man on your benches like the
late Waldo Burnett,--not very often, if you lecture half a century. You
cannot pretend to lecture chiefly for men like that,--a Mississippi raft
might as well take an ocean-steamer in tow. To meet his wants you would
have to leave the rest of your class behind and that you must not do.
President Allen of Jefferson College says that his instruction has been
successful in proportion as it has been elementary. It may be a
humiliating statement, but it is one which I have found true in my own
experience.
To the student I would say, that however plain and simple may be our
teaching, he must expect to forget much which he follows intelligently in
the lecture-room. But it is not the same as if he had never learned it.
A man must get a thing before he can forget it. There is a great world
of ideas we cannot voluntarily recall,--they are outside the limits of
the will. But they sway our conscious thought as the unseen planets
influence the movements of those within the sphere of vision. No man
knows how much he knows,--how many ideas he has,--any more than he knows
how many blood-globules roll in his veins. Sometimes accident brings
back here and there one, but the mind is full of irrevocable remembrances
and unthinkable thoughts, which take a part in all its judgments as
indestructible forces. Some of you must feel your scientific
deficiencies painfully after your best efforts. But every one can
acquire what is most essential. A man of very moderate ability may be a
good physician, if he devotes himself faithfully to the work. More than
this, a positively dull man, in the ordinary acceptation of the term,
sometimes makes a safer practitioner than one who has, we will say, five
per cent. more brains than his average neighbor, but who thinks it is
fifty per cent. more. Skulls belonging to this last variety of the human
race are more common, I may remark, than specimens like the Neanderthal
cranium, a cast of which you will find on the table in the Museum.
Whether the average talent be high or low, the Colleges of the land must
make the best commodity they can out of such material as the country and
the cities furnish them. The community must have Doctors as it must have
bread. It uses up its Doctors just as it wears out its shoes, and
requires new ones. All the bread need not be French rolls, all the shoes
need not be patent leather ones; but the bread must be something that can
be eaten, and the shoes must be something that can be worn. Life must
somehow find food for the two forces that rub everything to pieces, or
burn it to ashes,--friction and oxygen. Doctors are oxydable products,
and the schools must keep furnishing new ones as the old ones turn into
oxyds; some of first-rate quality that burn with a great light, some of a
lower grade of brilliancy, some honestly, unmistakably, by the grace of
God, of moderate gifts, or in simpler phrase, dull.
The public will give every honest and reasonably competent worker in the
healing art a hearty welcome. It is on the whole very loyal to the
Medical Profession. Three successive years have borne witness to the
feeling with which this Institution, representing it in its educational
aspect, is regarded by those who are themselves most honored and
esteemed. The great Master of Natural Science bade the last year's class
farewell in our behalf, in those accents which delight every audience.
The Head of our ancient University honored us in the same way in the
preceding season. And how can we forget that other occasion when the
Chief Magistrate of the Commonwealth, that noble citizen whom we have
just lost, large-souled, sweet-natured, always ready for every kind
office, came among us at our bidding, and talked to us of our duties in
words as full of wisdom as his heart was of goodness?
You have not much to fear, I think, from the fancy practitioners. The
vulgar quackeries drop off, atrophied, one after another. Homoeopathy has
long been encysted, and is carried on the body medical as quietly as an
old wen. Every year gives you a more reasoning and reasonable people to
deal with. See how it is in Literature. The dynasty of British
dogmatists, after lasting a hundred years and more, is on its last legs.
Thomas Carlyle, third in the line of descent, finds an audience very
different from those which listened to the silver speech of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge and the sonorous phrases of Samuel Johnson. We read him, we
smile at his clotted English, his "swarmery" and other picturesque
expressions, but we lay down his tirade as we do one of Dr. Cumming's
interpretations of prophecy, which tells us that the world is coming to
an end next week or next month, if the weather permits,--not
otherwise,--feeling very sure that the weather will be unfavorable.
It is the same common-sense public you will appeal to. The less
pretension you make, the better they will like you in the long run. I
hope we shall make everything as plain and as simple to you as we can. I
would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the
purpose. I know there are professors in this country who "ligate"
arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just
as well. It is the familiarity and simplicity of bedside instruction
which makes it so pleasant as well as so profitable. A good clinical
teacher is himself a Medical School. We need not wonder that our young
men are beginning to announce themselves not only as graduates of this or
that College, but also as pupils of some one distinguished master.
I wish to close this Lecture, if you will allow me a few moments longer,
with a brief sketch of an instructor and practitioner whose character was
as nearly a model one in both capacities as I can find anywhere recorded.
Dr. JAMES JACKSON, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in
this University from 1812 to 1846, and whose name has been since retained
on our rolls as Professor Emeritus, died on the 27th of August last, in
the ninetieth year of his age. He studied his profession, as I have
already mentioned, with Dr. Holyoke of Salem, one of the few physicians
who have borne witness to their knowledge of the laws of life by living
to complete their hundredth year. I think the student took his Old
Master, as he always loved to call him, as his model; each was worthy of
the other, and both were bright examples to all who come after them.
I remember that in the sermon preached by Dr. Grazer after Dr. Holyoke's
death, one of the points most insisted upon as characteristic of that
wise and good old man was the perfect balance of all his faculties. The
same harmonious adjustment of powers, the same symmetrical arrangement of
life, the same complete fulfilment of every day's duties, without haste
and without needless delay, which characterized the master, equally
distinguished the scholar. A glance at the life of our own Old Master,
if I can do any justice at all to his excellences, will give you
something to carry away from this hour's meeting not unworthy to be
remembered.
From December, 1797, to October, 1799, he remained with Dr. Holyoke as a
student, a period which he has spoken of as a most interesting and most
gratifying part of his life. After this he passed eight months in
London, and on his return, in October, 1800, he began business in Boston.
He had followed Mr. Cline, as I have mentioned, and was competent to
practise Surgery. But he found Dr. John Collins Warren had already
occupied the ground which at that day hardly called for more than one
leading practitioner, and wisely chose the Medical branch of the
profession. He had only himself to rely upon, but he had confidence in
his prospects, conscious, doubtless, of his own powers, knowing his own
industry and determination, and being of an eminently cheerful and
hopeful disposition. No better proof of his spirit can be given than
that, just a year from the time when he began to practise as a physician,
he took that eventful step which in such a man implies that he sees his
way clear to a position; he married a lady blessed with many gifts, but
not bringing him a fortune to paralyze his industry.
He had not miscalculated his chances in life. He very soon rose into a
good practice, and began the founding of that reputation which grew with
his years, until he stood by general consent at the head of his chosen
branch of the profession, to say the least, in this city and in all this
region of country. His skill and wisdom were the last tribunal to which
the sick and suffering could appeal. The community trusted and loved
him, the profession recognized him as the noblest type of the physician.
The young men whom he had taught wandered through foreign hospitals;
where they learned many things that were valuable, and many that were
curious; but as they grew older and began to think more of their ability
to help the sick than their power of talking about phenomena, they began
to look back to the teaching of Dr. Jackson, as he, after his London
experience, looked back to that of Dr. Holyoke. And so it came to be at
last that the bare mention of his name in any of our medical assemblies
would call forth such a tribute of affectionate regard as is only yielded
to age when it brings with it the record of a life spent in well doing.
No accident ever carries a man to eminence such as his in the medical
profession. He who looks for it must want it earnestly and work for it
vigorously; Nature must have qualified him in many ways, and education
must have equipped him with various knowledge, or his reputation will
evaporate before it reaches the noon-day blaze of fame. How did Dr.
Jackson gain the position which all conceded to him? In the answer to
this question some among you may find a key that shall unlock the gate
opening on that fair field of the future of which all dream but which not
all will ever reach.
First of all, he truly loved his profession. He had no intellectual
ambitions outside of it, literary, scientific or political. To him it
was occupation enough to apply at the bedside the best of all that he
knew for the good of his patient; to protect the community against the
inroads of pestilence; to teach the young all that he himself had been
taught, with all that his own experience had added; to leave on record
some of the most important results of his long observation.
With his patients he was so perfect at all points that it is hard to
overpraise him. I have seen many noted British and French and American
practitioners, but I never saw the man so altogether admirable at the
bedside of the sick as Dr. James Jackson. His smile was itself a remedy
better than the potable gold and the dissolved pearls that comforted the
praecordia of mediaeval monarchs. Did a patient, alarmed without cause,
need encouragement, it carried the sunshine of hope into his heart and
put all his whims to flight, as David's harp cleared the haunted chamber
of the sullen king. Had the hour come, not for encouragement, but for
sympathy, his face, his voice, his manner all showed it, because his
heart felt it. So gentle was he, so thoughtful, so calm, so absorbed in
the case before him, not to turn round and look for a tribute to his
sagacity, not to bolster himself in a favorite theory, but to find out
all he could, and to weigh gravely and cautiously all that he found, that
to follow him in his morning visit was not only to take a lesson in the
healing art, it was learning how to learn, how to move, how to look, how
to feel, if that can be learned. To visit with Dr. Jackson was a medical
education.
He was very firm, with all his kindness. He would have the truth about
his patients. The nurses found it out; and the shrewder ones never
ventured to tell him anything but a straight story. A clinical dialogue
between Dr. Jackson and Miss Rebecca Taylor, sometime nurse in the
Massachusetts General Hospital, a mistress in her calling, was as good
questioning and answering as one would be like to hear outside of the
court-room.
Of his practice you can form an opinion from his book called "Letters to
a Young Physician." Like all sensible men from the days of Hippocrates
to the present, he knew that diet and regimen were more important than
any drug or than all drugs put together. Witness his treatment of
phthisis and of epilepsy. He retained, however, more confidence in some
remedial agents than most of the younger generation would concede to
them. Yet his materia medica was a simple one.
"When I first went to live with Dr. Holyoke," he says, "in 1797, showing
me his shop, he said, 'There seems to you to be a great variety of
medicines here, and that it will take you long to get acquainted with
them, but most of them are unimportant. There are four which are equal
to all the rest, namely, Mercury, Antimony, Bark and Opium.'" And Dr.
Jackson adds, "I can only say of his practice, the longer I have lived, I
have thought better and better of it." When he thought it necessary to
give medicine, he gave it in earnest. He hated half-practice--giving a
little of this or that, so as to be able to say that one had done
something, in case a consultation was held, or a still more ominous event
occurred. He would give opium, for instance, as boldly as the late Dr.
Fisher of Beverly, but he followed the aphorism of the Father of
Medicine, and kept extreme remedies for extreme cases.
When it came to the "non-naturals," as he would sometimes call them,
after the old physicians,--namely, air, meat and drink, sleep and
watching, motion and rest, the retentions and excretions, and the
affections of the mind,--he was, as I have said, of the school of
sensible practitioners, in distinction from that vast community of
quacks, with or without the diploma, who think the chief end of man is to
support apothecaries, and are never easy until they can get every patient
upon a regular course of something nasty or noxious. Nobody was so
precise in his directions about diet, air, and exercise, as Dr. Jackson.
He had the same dislike to the a peu pres, the about so much, about so
often, about so long, which I afterwards found among the punctilious
adherents of the numerical system at La Pitie.
He used to insist on one small point with a certain philological
precision, namely, the true meaning of the word "cure." He would have it
that to cure a patient was simply to care for him. I refer to it as
showing what his idea was of the relation of the physician to the
patient. It was indeed to care for him, as if his life were bound up in
him, to watch his incomings and outgoings, to stand guard at every avenue
that disease might enter, to leave nothing to chance; not merely to throw
a few pills and powders into one pan of the scales of Fate, while Death
the skeleton was seated in the other, but to lean with his whole weight
on the side of life, and shift the balance in its favor if it lay in
human power to do it. Such devotion as this is only to be looked for in
the man who gives himself wholly up to the business of healing, who
considers Medicine itself a Science, or if not a science, is willing to
follow it as an art,--the noblest of arts, which the gods and demigods of
ancient religions did not disdain to practise and to teach.
The same zeal made him always ready to listen to any new suggestion which
promised to be useful, at a period of life when many men find it hard to
learn new methods and accept new doctrines. Few of his generation became
so accomplished as he in the arts of direct exploration; coming straight
from the Parisian experts, I have examined many patients with him, and
have had frequent opportunities of observing his skill in percussion and
auscultation.
One element in his success, a trivial one compared with others, but not
to be despised, was his punctuality. He always carried two watches,--I
doubt if he told why, any more than Dr. Johnson told what he did with the
orange-peel,--but probably with reference to this virtue. He was as much
to be depended upon at the appointed time as the solstice or the equinox.
There was another point I have heard him speak of as an important rule
with him; to come at the hour when he was expected; if he had made his
visit for several days successively at ten o'clock, for instance, not to
put it off, if he could possibly help it, until eleven, and so keep a
nervous patient and an anxious family waiting for him through a long,
weary hour.
If I should attempt to characterize his teaching, I should say that while
it conveyed the best results of his sagacious and extended observation,
it was singularly modest, cautious, simple, sincere. Nothing was for
show, for self-love; there was no rhetoric, no declamation, no triumphant
"I told you so," but the plain statement of a clear-headed honest man,
who knows that he is handling one of the gravest subjects that interest
humanity. His positive instructions were full of value, but the spirit
in which he taught inspired that loyal love of truth which lies at the
bottom of all real excellence.
I will not say that, during his long career, Dr. Jackson never made an
enemy. I have heard him tell how, in his very early days, old Dr.
Danforth got into a towering passion with him about some professional
consultation, and exploded a monosyllable or two of the more energetic
kind on the occasion. I remember that that somewhat peculiar personage,
Dr. Waterhouse, took it hardly when Dr. Jackson succeeded to his place as
Professor of Theory and Practice. A young man of Dr. Jackson's talent
and energy could hardly take the position that belonged to him without
crowding somebody in a profession where three in a bed is the common rule
of the household. But he was a peaceful man and a peace-maker all his
days. No man ever did more, if so much, to produce and maintain the
spirit of harmony for which we consider our medical community as somewhat
exceptionally distinguished.
If this harmony should ever be threatened, I could wish that every
impatient and irritable member of the profession would read that
beautiful, that noble Preface to the "Letters," addressed to John Collins
Warren. I know nothing finer in the medical literature of all time than
this Prefatory Introduction. It is a golden prelude, fit to go with the
three great Prefaces which challenge the admiration of scholars,
--Calvin's to his Institutes, De Thou's to his History, and
Casaubon's to his Polybius,--not because of any learning or rhetoric,
though it is charmingly written, but for a spirit flowing through it to
which learning and rhetoric are but as the breath that is wasted on the
air to the Mood that warms the heart.
Of a similar character is this short extract which I am permitted to make
from a private letter of his to a dear young friend. He was eighty-three
years old at the time of writing it.
"I have not loved everybody whom I have known, but I have striven to see
the good points in the characters of all men and women. At first I must
have done this from something in my own nature, for I was not aware of
it, and yet was doing it without any plan, when one day, sixty years ago,
a friend whom I loved and respected said this to me, 'Ah, James, I see
that you are destined to succeed in the world, and to make friends,
because you are so ready to see the good point in the characters of those
you meet.'"
I close this imperfect notice of some features in the character of this
most honored and beloved of physicians by applying to him the words which
were written of William Heberden, whose career was not unlike his own,
and who lived to the same patriarchal age.
"From his early youth he had always entertained a deep sense of religion,
a consummate love of virtue, an ardent thirst after knowledge, and an
earnest desire to promote the welfare and happiness of all mankind. By
these qualities, accompanied with great sweetness of manners, he acquired
the love and esteem of all good men, in a degree which perhaps very few
have experienced; and after passing an active life with the uniform
testimony of a good conscience, he became an eminent example of its
influence, in the cheerfulness and serenity of his latest age."
Such was the man whom I offer to you as a model, young gentlemen, at the
outset of your medical career. I hope that many of you will recognize
some traits of your own special teachers scattered through various parts
of the land in the picture I have drawn. Let me assure you that whatever
you may learn in this or any other course of public lectures,--and I
trust you will learn a great deal,--the daily guidance, counsel, example,
of your medical father, for such the Oath of Hippocrates tells you to
consider your preceptor, will, if he is in any degree like him of whom I
have spoken, be the foundation on which all that we teach is reared, and
perhaps outlive most of our teachings, as in Dr. Jackson's memory the
last lessons that remained with him were those of his Old Master.
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IN MASSACHUSETTS.
A Lecture of a Course by members of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
delivered before the Lowell Institute, January 29, 1869.
The medical history of eight generations, told in an hour, must be in
many parts a mere outline. The details I shall give will relate chiefly
to the first century. I shall only indicate the leading occurrences,
with the more prominent names of the two centuries which follow, and add
some considerations suggested by the facts which have been passed in
review.
A geographer who was asked to describe the tides of Massachusetts Bay,
would have to recognize the circumstance that they are a limited
manifestation of a great oceanic movement. To consider them apart from
this, would be to localize a planetary phenomenon, and to provincialize a
law of the universe. The art of healing in Massachusetts has shared more
or less fully and readily the movement which, with its periods of ebb and
flow, has been raising its level from age to age throughout the better
part of Christendom. Its practitioners brought with them much of the
knowledge and many of the errors of the Old World; they have always been
in communication with its wisdom and its folly; it is not without
interest to see how far the new conditions in which they found themselves
have been favorable or unfavorable to the growth of sound medical
knowledge and practice.
The state of medicine is an index of the civilization of an age and
country,--one of the best, perhaps, by which it can be judged. Surgery
invokes the aid of all the mechanical arts. From the rude violences of
the age of stone,--a relic of which we may find in the practice of
Zipporah, the wife of Moses,--to the delicate operations of to-day upon
patients lulled into temporary insensibility, is a progress which
presupposes a skill in metallurgy and in the labors of the workshop and
the laboratory it has taken uncounted generations to accumulate. Before
the morphia which deadens the pain of neuralgia, or the quinine which
arrests the fit of an ague, can find their place in our pharmacies,
commerce must have perfected its machinery, and science must have refined
its processes, through periods only to be counted by the life of nations.
Before the means which nature and art have put in the hands of the
medical practitioner can be fairly brought into use, the prejudices of
the vulgar must be overcome, the intrusions of false philosophy must be
fenced out, and the partnership with the priesthood dissolved. All this
implies that freedom and activity of thought which belong only to the
most advanced conditions of society; and the progress towards this is by
gradations as significant of wide-spread changes, as are the varying
states of the barometer of far-extended conditions of the atmosphere.
Apart, then, from its special and technical interest, my subject has a
meaning which gives a certain importance, and even dignity, to details in
themselves trivial and almost unworthy of record. A medical entry in
Governor Winthrop's journal may seem at first sight a mere curiosity;
but, rightly interpreted, it is a key to his whole system of belief as to
the order of the universe and the relations between man and his Maker.
Nothing sheds such light on the superstitions of an age as the prevailing
interpretation and treatment of disease. When the touch of a profligate
monarch was a cure for one of the most inveterate of maladies, when the
common symptoms of hysteria were prayed over as marks of demoniacal
possession, we might well expect the spiritual realms of thought to be
peopled with still stranger delusions.
Let us go before the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, and look at the shores on
which they were soon to land. A wasting pestilence had so thinned the
savage tribes that it was sometimes piously interpreted as having
providentially prepared the way for the feeble band of exiles. Cotton
Mather, who, next to the witches, hated the "tawnies," "wild beasts,"
"blood-hounds," "rattlesnakes," "infidels," as in different places he
calls the unhappy Aborigines, describes the condition of things in his
lively way, thus: "The Indians in these Parts had newly, even about a
Year or Two before, been visited with such a prodigious Pestilence; as
carried away not a Tenth, but Nine Parts of Ten (yea't is said Nineteen
of Twenty) among them so that the Woods were almost cleared of those
pernicious Creatures to make Room for a better Growth."
What this pestilence was has been much discussed. It is variously
mentioned by different early writers as "the plague," "a great and
grievous plague," "a sore consumption," as attended with spots which left
unhealed places on those who recovered, as making the "whole surface
yellow as with a garment." Perhaps no disease answers all these
conditions so well as smallpox. We know from different sources what
frightful havoc it made among the Indians in after years,--in 1631, for
instance, when it swept away the aboriginal inhabitants of "whole towns,"
and in 1633. We have seen a whole tribe, the Mandans, extirpated by it
in our own day. The word "plague" was used very vaguely, as in the
description of the "great sickness" found among the Indians by the
expedition of 1622. This same great sickness could hardly have been
yellow fever, as it occurred in the month of November. I cannot think,
therefore, that either the scourge of the East or our Southern malarial
pestilence was the disease that wasted the Indians. As for the
yellowness like a garment, that is too familiar to the eyes of all who
have ever looked on the hideous mask of confluent variola.
Without the presence or the fear of these exotic maladies, the forlorn
voyagers of the Mayflower had sickness enough to contend with. At their
first landing at Cape Cod, gaunt and hungry and longing for fresh food,
they found upon the sandy shore "great mussel's, and very fat and full of
sea-pearl." Sailors and passengers indulged in the treacherous delicacy;
which seems to have been the sea-clam; and found that these mollusks,
like the shell the poet tells of, remembered their august abode, and
treated the way-worn adventurers to a gastric reminiscence of the heaving
billows. In the mean time it blew and snowed and froze. The water turned
to ice on their clothes, and made them many times like coats of iron.
Edward Tilley had like to have "sounded" with cold. The gunner, too, was
sick unto death, but "hope of trucking" kept him on his feet,--a Yankee,
it should seem, when he first touched the shore of New England. Most, if
not all, got colds and coughs, which afterwards turned to scurvy, whereof
many died.
How can we wonder that the crowded and tempest-tossed voyagers, many of
them already suffering, should have fallen before the trials of the first
winter in Plymouth? Their imperfect shelter, their insufficient supply
of bread, their salted food, now in unwholesome condition, account too
well for the diseases and the mortality that marked this first dreadful
season; weakness, swelling of the limbs, and other signs of scurvy,
betrayed the want of proper nourishment and protection from the elements.
In December six of their number died, in January eight, in February,
seventeen, in March thirteen. With the advance of spring the mortality
diminished, the sick and lame began to recover, and the colonists,
saddened but not disheartened, applied themselves to the labors of the
opening year.
One of the most pressing needs of the early colonists must have been that
of physicians and surgeons. In Mr. Savage's remarkable Genealogical
Dictionary of the first settlers who came over before 1692 and their
descendants to the third generation, I find scattered through the four
crowded volumes the names of one hundred and thirty-four medical
practitioners. Of these, twelve, and probably many more, practised
surgery; three were barber-surgeons. A little incident throws a glimmer
from the dark lantern of memory upon William Direly, one of these
practitioners with the razor and the lancet. He was lost between Boston
and Roxbury in a violent tempest of wind and snow; ten days afterwards a
son was born to his widow, and with a touch of homely sentiment, I had
almost said poetry, they called the little creature "Fathergone" Direly.
Six or seven, probably a larger number, were ministers as well as
physicians, one of whom, I am sorry to say, took to drink and tumbled
into the Connecticut River, and so ended. One was not only doctor, but
also schoolmaster and poet. One practised medicine and kept a tavern.
One was a butcher, but calls himself a surgeon in his will, a union of
callings which suggests an obvious pleasantry. One female practitioner,
employed by her own sex,--Ann Moore,--was the precursor of that intrepid
sisterhood whose cause it has long been my pleasure and privilege to
advocate on all fitting occasions.
Outside of this list I must place the name of Thomas Wilkinson, who was
complained of, is 1676, for practising contrary to law.
Many names in the catalogue of these early physicians have been
associated, in later periods, with the practice of the profession,
--among them, Boylston, Clark, Danforth, Homan, Jeffrey, Kittredge,
Oliver, Peaslee, Randall, Shattuck, Thacher, Wellington, Williams,
Woodward. Touton was a Huguenot, Burchsted a German from Silesia,
Lunerus a German or a Pole; "Pighogg Churrergeon," I hope, for the honor
of the profession, was only Peacock disguised under this alias, which
would not, I fear, prove very attractive to patients.
What doctrines and practice were these colonists likely to bring, with
them?
Two principal schools of medical practice prevailed in the Old World
during the greater part of the seventeenth century. The first held to
the old methods of Galen: its theory was that the body, the microcosm,
like the macrocosm, was made up of the four elements--fire, air, water,
earth; having respectively the qualities hot, dry, moist, cold. The body
was to be preserved in health by keeping each of these qualities in its
natural proportion; heat, by the proper temperature; moisture, by the due
amount of fluid; and so as to the rest. Diseases which arose from excess
of heat were to be attacked by cooling remedies; those from excess of
cold, by heating ones; and so of the other derangements of balance. This
was truly the principle of contraries contrariis, which ill-informed
persons have attempted to make out to be the general doctrine of
medicine, whereas there is no general dogma other than this: disease is
to be treated by anything that is proved to cure it. The means the
Galenist employed were chiefly diet and vegetable remedies, with the use
of the lancet and other depleting agents. He attributed the four
fundamental qualities to different vegetables, in four different degrees;
thus chicory was cold in the fourth degree, pepper was hot in the fourth,
endive was cold and dry in the second, and bitter almonds were hot in the
first and dry in the second degree. When we say "cool as a cucumber," we
are talking Galenism. The seeds of that vegetable ranked as one of "the
four greater cold seeds" of this system.
Galenism prevailed mostly in the south of Europe and France. The readers
of Moliere will have no difficulty in recalling some of its favorite
modes of treatment, and the abundant mirth he extracted from them.
These Galenists were what we should call "herb-doctors" to-day. Their
insignificant infusions lost credit after a time; their absurdly
complicated mixtures excited contempt, and their nauseous prescriptions
provoked loathing and disgust. A simpler and bolder practice found
welcome in Germany, depending chiefly on mineral remedies, mercury,
antimony, sulphur, arsenic, and the use, sometimes the secret use, of
opium. Whatever we think of Paracelsus, the chief agent in the
introduction of these remedies, and whatever limits we may assign to the
use of these long-trusted mineral drugs, there can be no doubt that the
chemical school, as it was called, did a great deal towards the
expurgation of the old, overloaded, and repulsive pharmacopoeia. We
shall find evidence in the practice of our New-England physicians of the
first century, that they often employed chemical remedies, and that, by
the early part of the following century, their chief trust was in the few
simple, potent drugs of Paracelsus.
We have seen that many of the practitioners of medicine, during the first
century of New England, were clergymen. This relation between medicine
and theology has existed from a very early period; from the Egyptian
priest to the Indian medicine-man, the alliance has been maintained in
one form or another. The partnership was very common among our British
ancestors. Mr. Ward, the Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, himself a notable
example of the union of the two characters, writing about 1660, says,
"The Saxons had their blood-letters, but under the Normans physicke,
begunne in England; 300 years agoe itt was not a distinct profession by
itself, but practised by men in orders, witness Nicholas de Ternham, the
chief English physician and Bishop of Durham; Hugh of Evesham, a
physician and cardinal; Grysant, physician and pope; John Chambers, Dr.
of Physick, was the first Bishop of Peterborough; Paul Bush, a bachelor
of divinitie in Oxford, was a man well read in physick as well as
divinitie, he was the first bishop of Bristol."
"Again in King Richard the Second's time physicians and divines were not
distinct professions; for one Tydeman, Bishop of Landaph and Worcester,
was physician to King Richard the Second."
This alliance may have had its share in creating and keeping up the many
superstitions which have figured so largely in the history of medicine.
It is curious to see that a medical work left in manuscript by the Rev.
Cotton Mather and hereafter to be referred to, is running over with
follies and superstitious fancies; while his contemporary and
fellow-townsman, William Douglass, relied on the same few simple remedies
which, through Dr. Edward Holyoke and Dr. James Jackson, have come down
to our own time, as the most important articles of the materia medica.
Let us now take a general glance at some of the conditions of the early
settlers; and first, as to the healthfulness of the climate. The
mortality of the season that followed the landing of the Pilgrims at
Plymouth has been sufficiently accounted for. After this, the colonists
seem to have found the new country agreeing very well with their English
constitutions. Its clear air is the subject of eulogy. Its dainty
springs of sweet water are praised not only by Higginson and Wood, but
even the mischievous Morton says, that for its delicate waters "Canaan
came not near this country." There is a tendency to dilate on these
simple blessings, which reminds one a little of the Marchioness in
Dickens's story, with her orange-peel-and-water beverage. Still more
does one feel the warmth of coloring,--such as we expect from converts to
a new faith, and settlers who want to entice others over to their
clearings, when Winslow speaks, in 1621, of "abundance of roses, white,
red, and damask; single, but very sweet indeed;" a most of all, however,
when, in the same connection, he says, "Here are grapes white and red,
and very sweet and strong also." This of our wild grape, a little
vegetable Indian, which scalps a civilized man's mouth, as his animal
representative scalps his cranium. But there is something quite charming
in Winslow's picture of the luxury in which they are living. Lobsters,
oysters, eels, mussels, fish and fowl, delicious fruit, including the
grapes aforesaid,--if they only had "kine, horses, and sheep," he makes
no question but men would live as contented here as in any part of the
world. We cannot help admiring the way in which they took their trials,
and made the most of their blessings.
"And how Content they were," says Cotton Mather, "when an Honest Man, as
I have heard, inviting his Friends to a Dish of Clams, at the Table gave
Thanks to Heaven, who had given them to suck the abundance of the Seas,
and of the Treasures Aid in the Sands!"
Strangely enough, as it would seem, except for this buoyant determination
to make the best of everything, they hardly appear to recognize the
difference of the climate from that which they had left. After almost
three years' experience, Winslow says, he can scarce distinguish New
England from Old England, in respect of heat and cold, frost, snow, rain,
winds, etc. The winter, he thinks (if there is a difference), is sharper
and longer; but yet he may be deceived by the want of the comforts he
enjoyed at home. He cannot conceive any climate to agree better with the
constitution of the English, not being oppressed with extremity of heats,
nor nipped by biting cold:
"By which means, blessed be God, we enjoy our health, notwithstanding
those difficulties we have undergone, in such a measure as would have
been admired, if we had lived in England with the like means."
Edward Johnson, after mentioning the shifts to which they were put for
food, says,--
"And yet, methinks, our children are as cheerful, fat, and lusty, with
feeding upon those mussels, clams, and other fish, as they were in
England with their fill of bread."
Higginson, himself a dyspeptic, "continually in physic," as he says, and
accustomed to dress in thick clothing, and to comfort his stomach with
drink that was "both strong and stale,"--the "jolly good ale and old," I
suppose, of free and easy Bishop Still's song,--found that he both could
and did oftentimes drink New England water very well,--which he seems to
look upon as a remarkable feat. He could go as lightclad as any, too,
with only a light stuff cassock upon his shirt, and stuff breeches
without linings. Two of his children were sickly: one,--little misshapen
Mary,--died on the passage, and, in her father's words, "was the first in
our ship that was buried in the bowels of the great Atlantic sea;" the
other, who had been "most lamentably handled" by disease, recovered
almost entirely "by the very wholesomeness of the air, altering,
digesting, and drying up the cold and crude humors of the body."
Wherefore, he thinks it a wise course for all cold complexions to come to
take physic in New England, and ends with those often quoted words, that
"a sup of New England's air is better than a whole draught of Old
England's ale." Mr. Higginson died, however, "of a hectic fever," a
little more than a year after his arrival.
The medical records which I shall cite show that the colonists were not
exempt from the complaints of the Old World. Besides the common diseases
to which their descendants are subject, there were two others, to say
nothing of the dreaded small-pox, which later medical science has
disarmed,--little known among us at the present day, but frequent among
the first settlers. The first of these was the scurvy, already
mentioned, of which Winthrop speaks in 1630, saying, that it proved fatal
to those who fell into discontent, and lingered after their former
conditions in England; the poor homesick creatures in fact, whom we so
forget in our florid pictures of the early times of the little band in
the wilderness. Many who were suffering from scurvy got well when the
Lyon arrived from England, bringing store of juice of lemons. The
Governor speaks of another case in 1644; and it seems probable that the
disease was not of rare occurrence.
The other complaint from which they suffered, but which has nearly
disappeared from among us, was intermittent fever, or fever and ague. I
investigated the question as to the prevalence of this disease in New
England, in a dissertation, which was published in a volume with other
papers, in the year 1838. I can add little to the facts there recorded.
One which escaped me was, that Joshua Scottow, in "Old Men's Tears,"
dated 1691, speaks of "shaking agues," as among the trials to which they
had been subjected. The outline map of New England, accompanying the
dissertation above referred to, indicates all the places where I had
evidence that the disease had originated. It was plain enough that it
used to be known in many localities where it has long ceased to be
feared. Still it was and is remarkable to see what a clean bill of
health in this particular respect our barren soil inherited with its
sterility. There are some malarious spots on the edge of Lake Champlain,
and there have been some temporary centres of malaria, within the memory
of man, on one or more of our Massachusetts rivers, but these are
harmless enough, for the most part, unless the millers dam them, when
they are apt to retaliate with a whiff from their meadows, that sets the
whole neighborhood shaking with fever and ague.
The Pilgrims of the Mayflower had with them a good physician, a man of
standing, a deacon of their church, one whom they loved and trusted, Dr.
Samuel Fuller. But no medical skill could keep cold and hunger and bad
food, and, probably enough, desperate homesickness in some of the feebler
sort, from doing their work. No detailed record remains of what they
suffered or what was attempted for their relief during the first sad
winter. The graves of those who died were levelled and sowed with grain
that the losses of the little band might not be suspected by the savage
tenants of the wilderness, and their story remains untold.
Of Dr. Fuller's practice, at a later period, we have an account in a
letter of his to Governor Bradford, dated June, 1630. "I have been to
Matapan" (now Dorchester), he says, "and let some twenty of those people
blood." Such wholesale depletion as this, except with avowed homicidal
intent, is quite unknown in these days; though I once saw the noted
French surgeon, Lisfranc, in a fine phlebotomizing frenzy, order some ten
or fifteen patients, taken almost indiscriminately, to be bled in a
single morning.
Dr. Fuller's two visits to Salem, at the request of Governor Endicott,
seem to have been very satisfactory to that gentleman. Morton, the wild
fellow of Merry Mount, gives a rather questionable reason for the
Governor's being so well pleased with the physician's doings. The names
under which he mentions the two personages, it will be seen, are not
intended to be complimentary. "Dr. Noddy did a great cure for Captain
Littleworth. He cured him of a disease called a wife." William Gager,
who came out with Winthrop, is spoken of as "a right godly man and
skilful chyrurgeon, but died of a malignant fever not very long after his
arrival."
Two practitioners of the ancient town of Newbury are entitled to special
notice, for different reasons. The first is Dr. John Clark, who is said
by tradition to have been the first regularly educated physician who
resided in New England. His portrait, in close-fitting skull-cap, with
long locks and venerable flowing beard, is familiar to our eyes on the
wall of our Society's antechamber. His left hand rests upon a skull, his
right hand holds an instrument which deserves a passing comment. It is a
trephine, a surgical implement for cutting round pieces out of broken
skulls, so as to get at the fragments which have been driven in, and lift
them up. It has a handle like that of a gimlet, with a claw like a
hammer, to lift with, I suppose, which last contrivance I do not see
figured in my books. But the point I refer to is this: the old
instrument, the trepan, had a handle like a wimble, what we call a brace
or bit-stock. The trephine is not mentioned at all in Peter Lowe's book,
London, 1634; nor in Wiseman's great work on Surgery, London, 1676; nor
in the translation of Dionis, published by Jacob Tonson, in 1710. In fact
it was only brought into more general use by Cheselden and Sharpe so late
as the beginning of the last century. As John Clark died in 1661, it is
remarkable to see the last fashion in the way of skull-sawing
contrivances in his hands,--to say nothing of the claw on the handle, and
a Hey's saw, so called in England, lying on the table by him, and painted
there more than a hundred years before Hey was born. This saw is an old
invention, perhaps as old as Hippocrates, and may be seen figured in the
"Armamentarium Chirurgicum" of Scultetus, or in the Works of Ambroise
Pare.
Dr. Clark is said to have received a diploma before he came, for skill in
lithotomy. He loved horses, as a good many doctors do, and left a good
property, as they all ought to do. His grave and noble presence, with
the few facts concerning him, told with more or less traditional
authority, give us the feeling that the people of Newbury, and afterwards
of Boston, had a wise and skilful medical adviser and surgeon in Dr. John
Clark.
The venerable town of Newbury had another physician who was less
fortunate. The following is a court record of 1652:
"This is to certify whom it may concern, that we the subscribers, being
called upon to testify against doctor William Snelling for words by him
uttered, affirm that being in way of merry discourse, a health being
drank to all friends, he answered,
"I'll pledge my friends,
And for my foes
A plague for their heels
And,'----
[a similar malediction on the other extremity of their feet.]
"Since when he hath affirmed that he only intended the proverb used in
the west country, nor do we believe he intended otherwise.
"[Signed] "WILLIAM THOMAS. "THOMAS MILWARD.
"March 12th 1651, All which I acknowledge, and am sorry I did not
expresse my intent, or that I was so weak as to use so foolish a proverb.
"[Signed] "GULIELMUS SNELLING."
Notwithstanding this confession and apology, the record tells us that
"William Snelling in his presentment for cursing is fined ten shillings
and the fees of court."
I will mention one other name among those of the Fathers of the medical
profession in New England. The "apostle" Eliot says, writing in 1647,
"We never had but one anatomy in the country, which Mr. Giles Firman, now
in England, did make and read upon very well."
Giles Firmin, as the name is commonly spelled, practised physic in this
country for a time. He seems to have found it a poor business; for, in a
letter to Governor Winthrop, he says, "I am strongly sett upon to studye
divinitie: my studyes else must be lost, for physick is but a meene
helpe."
Giles Firmin's Lectures on Anatomy were the first scientific teachings of
the New World. While the Fathers were enlightened enough to permit such
instructions, they were severe in dealing with quackery; for, in 1631,
our court records show that one Nicholas Knopp, or Knapp, was sentenced
to be fined or whipped "for taking upon him to cure the scurvey by a
water of noe worth nor value, which he solde att a very deare rate."
Empty purses or sore backs would be common with us to-day if such a rule
were enforced.
Besides the few worthies spoken of, and others whose names I have not
space to record, we must remember that there were many clergymen who took
charge of the bodies as well as the souls of their patients, among them
two Presidents of Harvard College, Charles Chauncy and Leonard Hoar,--and
Thomas Thacher, first minister of the "Old South," author of the earliest
medical treatises printed in the country,[A Brief Rule to Guide the
Common People in Small pox and Measles. 1674.] whose epitaph in Latin
and Greek, said to have been written by Eleazer, an "Indian Youth" and a
member of the Senior Class of Harvard College, may be found in the
"Magnalia." I miss this noble savage's name in our triennial catalogue;
and as there is many a slip between the cup and lip, one is tempted to
guess that he may have lost his degree by some display of his native
instinct,--possibly a flourish of the tomahawk or scalping-knife.
However this may have been, the good man he celebrated was a notable
instance of the Angelical Conjunction, as the author of the "Magnalia"
calls it, of the offices of clergyman and medical practitioner.
Michael Wigglesworth, author of the "Day of Doom," attended the sick,
"not only as a Pastor, but as a Physician too, and this, not only in his
own town, but also in all those of the vicinity." Mather says of the
sons of Charles Chauncy, "All of these did, while they had Opportunity,
Preach the Gospel; and most, if not all of them, like their excellent
Father before them, had an eminent skill in physick added unto their
other accomplishments," etc. Roger Williams is said to have saved many
in a kind of pestilence which swept away many Indians.
To these names must be added, as sustaining a certain relation to the
healing art, that of the first Governor Winthrop, who is said by John
Cotton to have been "Help for our Bodies by Physick [and] for our Estates
by Law," and that of his son, the Governor of Connecticut, who, as we
shall see, was as much physician as magistrate.
I had submitted to me for examination, in 1862, a manuscript found among
the Winthrop Papers, marked with the superscription, "For my worthy
friend Mr. Wintrop," dated in 1643, London, signed Edward Stafford, and
containing medical directions and prescriptions. It may be remembered by
some present that I wrote a report on this paper, which was published in
the "Proceedings" of this Society. Whether the paper was written for
Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts, or for his son, Governor John of
Connecticut, there is no positive evidence that I have been able to
obtain. It is very interesting, however, as giving short and simple
practical directions, such as would be most like to be wanted and most
useful, in the opinion of a physician in repute of that day.
The diseases prescribed for are plague, small-pox, fevers, king's evil,
insanity, falling-sickness, and the like; with such injuries as broken
bones, dislocations, and burning with gunpowder. The remedies are of
three kinds: simples, such as St. John's wort, Clown's all-heal, elder,
parsley, maidenhair, mineral drugs, such as lime, saltpetre, Armenian
bole, crocus metallorum, or sulphuret of antimony; and thaumaturgic or
mystical, of which the chief is, "My black powder against the plague,
small-pox; purples, all sorts of feavers; Poyson; either, by Way of
Prevention or after Infection." This marvellous remedy was made by
putting live toads into an earthen pot so as to half fill it, and baking
and burning them "in the open ayre, not in an house,"--concerning which
latter possibility I suspect Madam Winthrop would have had something to
say,--until they could be reduced by pounding, first into a brown, and
then into a black, powder. Blood-letting in some inflammations, fasting
in the early stage of fevers, and some of those peremptory drugs with
which most of us have been well acquainted in our time, the infragrant
memories of which I will not pursue beyond this slight allusion, are
among his remedies.
The Winthrops, to one of whom Dr. Stafford's directions were addressed,
were the medical as well as the political advisers of their
fellow-citizens for three or four successive generations. One of them,
Governor John of Connecticut, practised so extensively, that, but for his
more distinguished title in the State, he would have been remembered as
the Doctor. The fact that he practised in another colony, for the most
part, makes little difference in the value of the records we have of his
medical experience, which have fortunately been preserved, and give a
very fair idea, in all probability, of the way in which patients were
treated in Massachusetts, when they fell into intelligent and somewhat
educated hands, a little after the middle of the seventeenth century:
I have before me, while writing, a manuscript collection of the medical
cases treated by him, and recorded at the time in his own hand, which has
been intrusted to me by our President, his descendant.
They are generally marked Hartford, and extend from the year 1657 to
1669. From these, manuscripts, and from the letters printed in the
Winthrop Papers published by our Society, I have endeavored to obtain
some idea of the practice of Governor John Winthrop, Junior. The learned
eye of Mr. Pulsifer would have helped me, no doubt, as it has done in
other cases; but I have ventured this time to attempt finding my own way
among the hieroglyphics of these old pages. By careful comparison of
many prescriptions, and by the aid of Schroder, Salmon, Culpeper, and
other old compilers, I have deciphered many of his difficult paragraphs
with their mysterious recipes.
The Governor employed a number of the simples dear to ancient women,
--elecampane and elder and wormwood and anise and the rest; but he also
employed certain mineral remedies, which he almost always indicates by
their ancient symbols, or by a name which should leave them a mystery to
the vulgar. I am now prepared to reveal the mystic secrets of the
Governor's beneficent art, which rendered so many good and great as well
as so many poor and dependent people his debtors,--at least, in their
simple belief,--for their health and their lives.
His great remedy, which he gave oftener than any other, was nitre; which
he ordered in doses of twenty or thirty grains to adults, and of three
grains to infants. Measles, colics, sciatica, headache, giddiness, and
many other ailments, all found themselves treated, and I trust bettered,
by nitre; a pretty safe medicine in moderate doses, and one not likely to
keep the good Governor awake at night, thinking whether it might not
kill, if it did not cure. We may say as much for spermaceti, which he
seems to have considered "the sovereign'st thing on earth" for inward
bruises, and often prescribes after falls and similar injuries.
One of the next remedies, in point of frequency, which he was in the
habit of giving, was (probably diaphoretic) antimony; a mild form of that
very active metal, and which, mild as it was, left his patients very
commonly with a pretty strong conviction that they had been taking
something that did not exactly agree with them. Now and then he gave a
little iron or sulphur or calomel, but very rarely; occasionally, a good,
honest dose of rhubarb or jalap; a taste of stinging horseradish, oftener
of warming guiacum; sometimes an anodyne, in the shape of
mithridate,--the famous old farrago, which owed its virtue to poppy
juice; [This is the remedy which a Boston divine tried to simplify. See
Electuarium Novum Alexipharmacum, by Rev. Thomas Harward, lecturer at
the Royal Chappell. Boston, 1732. This tract is in our Society's
library.] very often, a harmless powder of coral; less frequently, an
inert prescription of pleasing amber; and (let me say it softly within
possible hearing of his honored descendant), twice or oftener,--let us
hope as a last resort,--an electuary of millipedes,--sowbugs, if we must
give them their homely English name. One or two other prescriptions, of
the many unmentionable ones which disgraced the pharmacopoeia of the
seventeenth century, are to be found, but only in very rare instances, in
the faded characters of the manuscript.
The excellent Governor's accounts of diseases are so brief, that we get
only a very general notion of the complaints for which he prescribed.
Measles and their consequences are at first more prominent than any other
one affection, but the common infirmities of both sexes and of all ages
seem to have come under his healing hand. Fever and ague appears to have
been of frequent occurrence.
His published correspondence shows that many noted people were in
communication with him as his patients. Roger Williams wants a little of
his medicine for Mrs. Weekes's daughter; worshipful John Haynes is in
receipt of his powders; troublesome Captain Underhill wants "a little
white vitterall" for his wife, and something to cure his wife's friend's
neuralgia, (I think his wife's friend's husband had a little rather have
had it sent by the hands of Mrs. Underhill, than by those of the gallant
and discursive captain); and pious John Davenport says, his wife "tooke
but one halfe of one of the papers" (which probably contained the
medicine he called rubila), "but could not beare the taste of it, and is
discouraged from taking any more;" and honored William Leete asks for
more powders for his "poore little daughter Graciana," though he found it
"hard to make her take it," delicate, and of course sensitive, child as
she was, languishing and dying before her time, in spite of all the
bitter things she swallowed,--God help all little children in the hands
of dosing doctors and howling dervishes! Restless Samuel Gorton, now
tamed by the burden of fourscore and two years, writes so touching an
account of his infirmities, and expresses such overflowing gratitude for
the relief he has obtained from the Governor's prescriptions, wondering
how "a thing so little in quantity, so little in sent, so little in
taste, and so little to sence in operation, should beget and bring forth
such efects," that we repent our hasty exclamation, and bless the memory
of the good Governor, who gave relief to the worn-out frame of our
long-departed brother, the sturdy old heretic of Rhode Island.
What was that medicine which so frequently occurs in the printed letters
under the name of "rubila"? It is evidently a secret remedy, and, so far
as I know, has not yet been made out. I had almost given it up in
despair, when I found what appears to be a key to the mystery. In the
vast multitude of prescriptions contained in the manuscripts, most of
them written in symbols, I find one which I thus interpret:
"Four grains of (diaphoretic) antimony, with twenty grains of nitre, with
a little salt of tin, making rubila." Perhaps something was added to
redden the powder, as he constantly speaks of "rubifying" or "viridating"
his prescriptions; a very common practice of prescribers, when their
powders look a little too much like plain salt or sugar.
Waitstill Winthrop, the Governor's son, "was a skilful physician," says
Mr. Sewall, in his funeral sermon; "and generously gave, not only his
advice, but also his Medicines, for the healing of the Sick, which, by
the Blessing of God, were made successful for the recovery of many."
"His son John, a member of the Royal Society, speaks of himself as 'Dr.
Winthrop,' and mentions one of his own prescriptions in a letter to
Cotton Mather." Our President tells me that there was an heirloom of the
ancient skill in his family, within his own remembrance, in the form of a
certain precious eye-water, to which the late President John Quincy Adams
ascribed rare virtue, and which he used to obtain from the possessor of
the ancient recipe.
These inherited prescriptions are often treasured in families, I do not
doubt, for many generations. When I was yet of trivial age, and
suffering occasionally, as many children do, from what one of my
Cambridgeport schoolmates used to call the "ager,"--meaning thereby
toothache or face-ache,--I used to get relief from a certain plaster
which never went by any other name in the family than "Dr. Oliver."
Dr. James Oliver was my great-great-grandfather, graduated in 1680, and
died in 1703. This was, no doubt, one of his nostrums; for nostrum, as
is well known, means nothing more than our own or my own particular
medicine, or other possession or secret, and physicians in old times used
to keep their choice recipes to themselves a good deal, as we have had
occasion to see.
Some years ago I found among my old books a small manuscript marked
"James Oliver. This Book Begun Aug. 12, 1685." It is a rough sort of
account-book, containing among other things prescriptions for patients,
and charges for the same, with counter-charges for the purchase of
medicines and other matters. Dr. Oliver practised in Cambridge, where
may be seen his tomb with inscriptions, and with sculptured figures that
look more like Diana of the Ephesians, as given in Calmet's Dictionary,
than like any angels admitted into good society here or elsewhere.
I do not find any particular record of what his patients suffered from,
but I have carefully copied out the remedies he mentions, and find that
they form a very respectable catalogue. Besides the usual simples,
elder, parsley, fennel, saffron, snake-root, wormwood, I find the Elixir
Proprietatis, with other elixire and cordials, as if he rather fancied
warming medicines; but he called in the aid of some of the more energetic
remedies, including iron, and probably mercury, as he bought two pounds
of it at one time.
The most interesting item is his bill against the estate of Samuel Pason
of Roxbury, for services during his last illness. He attended this
gentleman,--for such he must have been, by the amount of physic which he
took, and which his heirs paid for,--from June 4th, 1696, to September 3d
of the same year, three months. I observe he charges for visits as well
as for medicines, which is not the case in most of his bills. He opens
the attack with a carminative appeal to the visceral conscience, and
follows it up with good hard-hitting remedies for dropsy,--as I suppose
the disease would have been called,--and finishes off with a rallying
dose of hartshorn and iron.
It is a source of honest pride to his descendant that his bill, which was
honestly paid, as it seems to have been honorably earned, amounted to the
handsome total of seven pounds and two shillings. Let me add that he
repeatedly prescribes plaster, one of which was very probably the "Dr.
Oliver" that soothed my infant griefs, and for which I blush to say that
my venerated ancestor received from Goodman Hancock the painfully
exiguous sum of no pounds, no shillings, and sixpence.
I have illustrated the practice of the first century, from the two
manuscripts I have examined, as giving an impartial idea of its every-day
methods. The Governor, Johannes Secundus, it is fair to remember, was an
amateur practitioner, while my ancestor was a professed physician.
Comparing their modes of treatment with the many scientific follies still
prevailing in the Old World, and still more with the extraordinary
theological superstitions of the community in which they lived, we shall
find reason, I think, to consider the art of healing as in a
comparatively creditable state during the first century of New England.
In addition to the evidence as to methods of treatment furnished by the
manuscripts I have cited, I subjoin the following document, to which my
attention was called by Dr. Shurtleff, our present Mayor. This is a
letter of which the original is to be found in vol. lxix. page 10 of the
"Archives" preserved at the State House in Boston. It will be seen that
what the surgeon wanted consisted chiefly of opiates, stimulants,
cathartics, plasters, and materials for bandages. The complex and varied
formulae have given place to simpler and often more effective forms of
the same remedies; but the list and the manner in which it is made out
are proofs of the good sense and schooling of the surgeon, who, it may be
noted, was in such haste that he neglected all his stops. He might well
be in a hurry, as on the very day upon which he wrote, a great body of
Indians--supposed to be six or seven hundred--appeared before Hatfield;
and twenty-five resolute young men of Hadley, from which town he wrote,
crossed the river and drove them away.
HADLY May 30: 76
Mr RAWSON Sr
What we have recd by Tho: Houey the past month is not the cheifest of our
wants as you have love for poor wounded I pray let us not want for these
following medicines if you have not a speedy conveyance of them I pray
send on purpose they are those things mentioned in my former letter but
to prevent future mistakes I have wrote them att large wee have great
want with the greatest halt and speed let us be supplyed. Sr Yr Sert WILL
LOCHS
(Endorsed)
Mr. Lockes Letter Recd from the Governor 13 Jane & acquainted ye Council
with it but could not obtaine any thing to be sent in answer thereto.
13 June 1676
I have given some idea of the chief remedies used by our earlier
physicians, which were both Galenic and chemical; that is, vegetable and
mineral. They, of course, employed the usual perturbing medicines which
Montaigne says are the chief reliance of their craft. There were,
doubtless, individual practitioners who employed special remedies with
exceptional boldness and perhaps success. Mr. Eliot is spoken of, in a
letter of William Leete to Winthrop, Junior, as being under Mr.
Greenland's mercurial administrations. The latter was probably enough
one of these specialists.
There is another class of remedies which appears to have been employed
occasionally, but, on the whole, is so little prominent as to imply a
good deal of common sense among the medical practitioners, as compared
with the superstitions prevailing around them. I have said that I have
caught the good Governor, now and then, prescribing the electuary of
millipedes; but he is entirely excused by the almost incredible fact that
they were retained in the materia medica so late as when Rees's
Cyclopaedia was published, and we there find the directions formerly
given by the College of Edinburgh for their preparation. Once or twice
we have found him admitting still more objectionable articles into his
materia medica; in doing which, I am sorry to say that he could plead
grave and learned authority. But these instances are very rare
exceptions in a medical practice of many years, which is, on the whole,
very respectable, considering the time and circumstances.
Some remedies of questionable though not odious character appear
occasionally to have been employed by the early practitioners, but they
were such as still had the support of the medical profession. Governor
John Winthrop, the first, sends for East Indian bezoar, with other
commodities he is writing for. Governor Endicott sends him one he had of
Mr. Humfrey. I hope it was genuine, for they cheated infamously in the
matter of this concretion, which ought to come out of an animal's
stomach, but the real history of which resembles what is sometimes told
of modern sausages.
There is a famous law-case of James the First's time, in which a
goldsmith sold a hundred pounds' worth of what he called bezoar, which
was proved to be false, and the purchaser got a verdict against him.
Governor Endicott also sends Winthrop a unicorn's horn, which was the
property of a certain Mrs. Beggarly, who, in spite of her name, seems to
have been rich in medical knowledge and possessions. The famous Thomas
Bartholinus wrote a treatise on the virtues of this fabulous-sounding
remedy, which was published in 1641, and republished in 1678.
The "antimonial cup," a drinking vessel made of that metal, which, like
our quassia-wood cups, might be filled and emptied in saecula saeculorum
without exhausting its virtues, is mentioned by Matthew Cradock, in a
letter to the elder Winthrop, but in a doubtful way, as it was thought,
he says, to have shortened the days of Sir Nathaniel Riche; and Winthrop
himself, as I think, refers to its use, calling it simply "the cup." An
antimonial cup is included in the inventory of Samuel Seabury, who died
1680, and is valued at five shillings. There is a treatise entitled "The
Universall Remedy, or the Vertues of the Antimoniall Cup, By John Evans,
Minister and Preacher of God's Word, London, 1634," in our own Society's
library.
One other special remedy deserves notice, because of native growth. I do
not know when Culver's root, Leptandra Virginica of our National
Pharmacopoeia, became noted, but Cotton Mather, writing in 1716 to John
Winthrop of New London, speaks of it as famous for the cure of
consumptions, and wishes to get some of it, through his mediation, for
Katharine, his eldest daughter. He gets it, and gives it to the "poor
damsel," who is languishing, as he says, and who dies the next
month,--all the sooner, I have little doubt, for this uncertain and
violent drug, with which the meddlesome pedant tormented her in that
spirit of well-meant but restless quackery, which could touch nothing
without making mischief, not even a quotation, and yet proved at length
the means of bringing a great blessing to our community, as we shall see
by and by; so does Providence use our very vanities and infirmities for
its wise purposes.
Externally, I find the practitioners on whom I have chiefly relied used
the plasters of Paracelsus, of melilot, diachylon, and probably
diaphoenicon, all well known to the old pharmacopoeias, and some of them
to the modern ones,--to say nothing of "my yellow salve," of Governor
John, the second, for the composition of which we must apply to his
respected descendant.
The authors I find quoted are Barbette's Surgery, Camerarius on Gout, and
Wecherus, of all whom notices may be found in the pages of Haller and
Vanderlinden; also, Reed's Surgery, and Nicholas Culpeper's Practice of
Physic and Anatomy, the last as belonging to Samuel Seabury, chirurgeon,
before mentioned. Nicholas Culpeper was a shrewd charlatan, and as
impudent a varlet as ever prescribed for a colic; but knew very well what
he was about, and badgers the College with great vigor. A copy of
Spigelius's famous Anatomy, in the Boston Athenaeum, has the names of
Increase and Samuel Mather written in it, and was doubtless early
overhauled by the youthful Cotton, who refers to the great anatomist's
singular death, among his curious stories in the "Magnalia," and quotes
him among nearly a hundred authors whom he cites in his manuscript "The
Angel of Bethesda." Dr. John Clark's "books and instruments, with
several chirurgery materials in the closet," a were valued in his
inventory at sixty pounds; Dr. Matthew Fuller, who died in 1678, left a
library valued at ten pounds; and a surgeon's chest and drugs valued at
sixteen pounds.'
Here we leave the first century and all attempts at any further detailed
accounts of medicine and its practitioners. It is necessary to show in a
brief glance what had been going on in Europe during the latter part of
that century, the first quarter of which had been made illustrious in the
history of medical science by the discovery of the circulation.
Charles Barbeyrac, a Protestant in his religion, was a practitioner and
teacher of medicine at Montpellier. His creed was in the way of his
obtaining office; but the young men followed his instructions with
enthusiasm. Religious and scientific freedom breed in and in, until it
becomes hard to tell the family of one from that of the other. Barbeyrac
threw overboard the old complex medical farragos of the pharmacopoeias,
as his church had disburdened itself of the popish ceremonies.
Among the students who followed his instructions were two Englishmen: one
of them, John Locke, afterwards author of an "Essay on the Human
Understanding," three years younger than his teacher; the other, Thomas
Sydenham, five years older. Both returned to England. Locke, whose
medical knowledge is borne witness to by Sydenham, had the good fortune
to form a correct opinion on a disease from which the Earl of Shaftesbury
was suffering, which led to an operation that saved his life. Less
felicitous was his experience with a certain ancilla culinaria
virgo,--which I am afraid would in those days have been translated
kitchen-wench, instead of lady of the culinary department,--who turned
him off after she had got tired of him, and called in another
practitioner. [Locke and Sydenham, p. 124. By John Brown, M. D.
Edinburgh, 1866.] This helped, perhaps, to spoil a promising doctor, and
make an immortal metaphysician. At any rate, Locke laid down the
professional wig and cane, and took to other studies.
The name of Thomas Sydenham is as distinguished in the history of
medicine as that of John Locke in philosophy. As Barbeyrac was found in
opposition to the established religion, as Locke took the rational side
against orthodox Bishop Stillingfleet, so Sydenham went with Parliament
against Charles, and was never admitted a Fellow by the College of
Physicians, which, after he was dead, placed his bust in their hall by
the side of that of Harvey.
What Sydenham did for medicine was briefly this he studied the course of
diseases carefully, and especially as affected by the particular season;
to patients with fever he gave air and cooling drinks, instead of
smothering and heating them, with the idea of sweating out their disease;
he ordered horseback exercise to consumptives; he, like his teacher, used
few and comparatively simple remedies; he did not give any drug at all,
if he thought none was needed, but let well enough alone. He was a
sensible man, in short, who applied his common sense to diseases which he
had studied with the best light of science that he could obtain.
The influence of the reform he introduced must have been more or less
felt in this country, but not much before the beginning of the eighteenth
century, as his great work was not published until 1675, and then in
Latin. I very strongly suspect that there was not so much to reform in
the simple practice of the physicians of the new community, as there was
in that of the learned big-wigs of the "College," who valued their
remedies too much in proportion to their complexity, and the extravagant
and fantastic ingredients which went to their making.
During the memorable century which bred and bore the Revolution, the
medical profession gave great names to our history. But John Brooks
belonged to the State, and Joseph Warren belongs to the country and
mankind, and to speak of them would lead me beyond my limited--subject.
There would be little pleasure in dwelling on the name of Benjamin
Church; and as for the medical politicians, like Elisha Cooke in the
early part of the century, or Charles Jarvis, the bald eagle of Boston,
in its later years, whether their practice was heroic or not, their
patients were, for he is a bold man who trusts one that is making
speeches and coaxing voters, to meddle with the internal politics of his
corporeal republic.
One great event stands out in the medical history of this eighteenth
century; namely, the introduction of the practice of inoculation for
small-pox. Six epidemics of this complaint had visited Boston in the
course of a hundred years. Prayers had been asked in the churches for
more than a hundred sick in a single day, and this many times. About a
thousand persons had died in a twelvemonth, we are told, and, as we may
infer, chiefly from this cause.
In 1721, this disease, after a respite of nineteen years, again appeared
as an epidemic. In that year it was that Cotton Mather, browsing, as was
his wont, on all the printed fodder that came within reach of his
ever-grinding mandibles, came upon an account of inoculation as practised
in Turkey, contained in the "Philosophical Transactions." He spoke of it
to several physicians, who paid little heed to his story; for they knew
his medical whims, and had probably been bored, as we say now-a-days,
many of them, with listening to his "Angel of Bethesda," and satiated
with his speculations on the Nishmath Chajim.
The Reverend Mather,--I use a mode of expression he often employed when
speaking of his honored brethren,--the Reverend Mather was right this
time, and the irreverent doctors who laughed at him were wrong. One only
of their number disputes his claim to giving the first impulse to the
practice, in Boston. This is what that person says: "The Small-Pox
spread in Boston, New England, A.1721, and the Reverend Dr. Cotton
Mather, having had the use of these Communications from Dr. William
Douglass (that is, the writer of these words); surreptitiously, without
the knowledge of his Informer, that he might have the honour of a New
fangled notion, sets an Undaunted Operator to work, and in this Country
about 290 were inoculated."
All this has not deprived Cotton Mather of the credit of suggesting, and
a bold and intelligent physician of the honor of carrying out, the new
practice. On the twenty-seventh day of June, 1721, Zabdiel Boylston of
Boston inoculated his only son for smallpox,--the first person ever
submitted to the operation in the New World. The story of the fierce
resistance to the introduction of the practice; of how Boylston was
mobbed, and Mather had a hand-grenade thrown in at his window; of how
William Douglass, the Scotchman, "always positive, and sometimes
accurate," as was neatly said of him, at once depreciated the practice
and tried to get the credit of suggesting it, and how Lawrence Dalhonde,
the Frenchman, testified to its destructive consequences; of how Edmund
Massey, lecturer at St. Albans, preached against sinfully endeavoring to
alter the course of nature by presumptuous interposition, which he would
leave to the atheist and the scoffer, the heathen and unbeliever, while
in the face of his sermon, afterwards reprinted in Boston, many of our
New England clergy stood up boldly in defence of the practice,--all this
has been told so well and so often that I spare you its details. Set
this good hint of Cotton Mather against that letter of his to John
Richards, recommending the search after witch-marks, and the application
of the water-ordeal, which means throw your grandmother into the water,
if she has a mole on her arm;--if she swims, she is a witch and must be
hanged; if she sinks, the Lord have mercy on her soul!
Thus did America receive this great discovery, destined to save thousands
of lives, via Boston, from the hands of one of our own Massachusetts
physicians.
The year 1735 was rendered sadly memorable by the epidemic of the
terrible disease known as "throat distemper," and regarded by many as the
same as our "diphtheria." Dr. Holyoke thinks the more general use of
mercurials in inflammatory complaints dates from the time of their
employment in this disease, in which they were thought to have proved
specially useful.
At some time in the course of this century medical practice had settled
down on four remedies as its chief reliance. I must repeat an incident
which I have related in another of these Essays. When Dr. Holyoke,
nearly seventy years ago, received young Mr. James Jackson as his
student, he showed him the formidable array of bottles, jars, and drawers
around his office, and then named the four remedies referred to as being
of more importance than all the rest put together. These were "Mercury,
Antimony, Opium, and Peruvian Bark." I doubt if either of them
remembered that, nearly seventy years before, in 1730, Dr. William
Douglass, the disputatious Scotchman, mentioned those same four remedies,
in the dedication of his quarrelsome essay on inoculation, as the most
important ones in the hands of the physicians of his time.
In the "Proceedings" of this Society for the year 1863 is a very pleasant
paper by the late Dr. Ephraim Eliot, giving an account of the leading
physicians of Boston during the last quarter of the last century. The
names of Lloyd, Gardiner, Welsh, Rand, Bulfinch, Danforth, John Warren,
Jeffries, are all famous in local history, and are commemorated in our
medical biographies. One of them, at least, appears to have been more
widely known, not only as one of the first aerial voyagers, but as an
explorer in the almost equally hazardous realm of medical theory. Dr.
John Jeffries, the first of that name, is considered by Broussais as a
leader of medical opinion in America, and so referred to in his famous
"Examen des Doctrines Medicales."
Two great movements took place in this eighteenth century, the effect of
which has been chiefly felt in our own time; namely, the establishment of
the Massachusetts Medical Society, and the founding of the Medical School
of Harvard University.
The third century of our medical history began with the introduction of
the second great medical discovery of modern times,--of all time up to
that date, I may say,--once more via Boston, if we count the University
village as its suburb, and once more by one of our Massachusetts
physicians. In the month of July, 1800, Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of
Cambridge submitted four of his own children to the new process of
vaccination,--the first persons vaccinated, as Dr. Zabdiel Boylston's son
had been the first person inoculated in the New World.
A little before the first half of this century was completed, in the
autumn of 1846, the great discovery went forth from the Massachusetts
General Hospital, which repaid the debt of America to the science of the
Old World, and gave immortality to the place of its origin in the memory
and the heart of mankind. The production of temporary insensibility at
will--tuto, cito, jucunde, safely, quickly, pleasantly--is one of those
triumphs over the infirmities of our mortal condition which change the
aspect of life ever afterwards. Rhetoric can add nothing to its glory;
gratitude, and the pride permitted to human weakness, that our Bethlehem
should have been chosen as the birthplace of this new embodiment of the
divine mercy, are all we can yet find room for.
The present century has seen the establishment of all those great
charitable institutions for the cure of diseases of the body and of the
mind, which our State and our city have a right to consider as among the
chief ornaments of their civilization.
The last century had very little to show, in our State, in the way of
medical literature. The worthies who took care of our grandfathers and
great-grandfathers, like the Revolutionary heroes, fought (with disease)
and bled (their patients) and died (in spite of their own remedies); but
their names, once familiar, are heard only at rare intervals. Honored in
their day, not unremembered by a few solitary students of the past, their
memories are going sweetly to sleep in the arms of the patient old
dry-nurse, whose "blackdrop" is the never-failing anodyne of the restless
generations of men. Except the lively controversy on inoculation, and
floating papers in journals, we have not much of value for that long
period, in the shape of medical records.
But while the trouble with the last century is to find authors to
mention, the trouble of this would be to name all that we find. Of
these, a very few claim unquestioned preeminence.
Nathan Smith, born in Rehoboth, Mass., a graduate of the Medical School
of our University, did a great work for the advancement of medicine and
surgery in New England, by his labors as teacher and author, greater, it
is claimed by some, than was ever done by any other man. The two
Warrens, of our time, each left a large and permanent record of a most
extended surgical practice. James Jackson not only educated a whole
generation by his lessons of wisdom, but bequeathed some of the most
valuable results of his experience to those who came after him, in a
series of letters singularly pleasant and kindly as well as instructive.
John Ware, keen and cautious, earnest and deliberate, wrote the two
remarkable essays which have identified his name, for all time, with two
important diseases, on which he has shed new light by his original
observations.
I must do violence to the modesty of the living by referring to the many
important contributions to medical science by Dr. Jacob Bigelow, and
especially to his discourse on "Self-limited Diseases," an address which
can be read in a single hour, but the influence of which will be felt for
a century.
Nor would the profession forgive me if I forgot to mention the admirable
museum of pathological anatomy, created almost entirely by the hands of
Dr. John Barnard Swett Jackson, and illustrated by his own printed
descriptive catalogue, justly spoken of by a distinguished professor in
the University of Pennsylvania as the most important contribution which
had ever been made in this country to the branch to which it relates.
When we look at the literature of mental disease, as seen in hospital
reports and special treatises, we can mention the names of Wyman,
Woodward, Brigham, Bell, and Ray, all either natives of Massachusetts or
placed at the head of her institutions for the treatment of the insane.
We have a right to claim also one who is known all over the civilized
world as a philanthropist, to us as a townsman and a graduate of our own
Medical School, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the guide and benefactor of a
great multitude who were born to a world of inward or of outward
darkness.
I cannot pass over in silence the part taken by our own physicians in
those sanitary movements which are assuming every year greater
importance. Two diseases especially have attracted attention, above all
others, with reference to their causes and prevention; cholera, the
"black death" of the nineteenth century, and consumption, the white
plague of the North, both of which have been faithfully studied and
reported on by physicians of our own State and city. The cultivation of
medical and surgical specialties, which is fast becoming prevalent, is
beginning to show its effects in the literature of the profession, which
is every year growing richer in original observations and investigations.
To these benefactors who have labored for us in their peaceful vocation,
we must add the noble army of surgeons, who went with the soldiers who
fought the battles of their country, sharing many of their dangers, not
rarely falling victims to fatigue, disease, or the deadly volleys to
which they often exposed themselves in the discharge of their duties.
The pleasant biographies of the venerable Dr. Thacher, and the worthy and
kind-hearted gleaner, Dr. Stephen W. Williams, who came after him, are
filled with the names of men who served their generation well, and rest
from their labors, followed by the blessing of those for whom they
endured the toils and fatigues inseparable from their calling. The
hardworking, intelligent country physician more especially deserves the
gratitude of his own generation, for he rarely leaves any permanent
record in the literature of his profession. Books are hard to obtain;
hospitals, which are always centres of intelligence, are remote;
thoroughly educated and superior men are separated by wide intervals; and
long rides, though favorable to reflection, take up much of the time
which might otherwise be given to the labors of the study. So it is that
men of ability and vast experience, like the late Dr. Twitchell, for
instance, make a great and deserved reputation, become the oracles of
large districts, and yet leave nothing, or next to nothing, by which
their names shall be preserved from blank oblivion.
One or two other facts deserve mention, as showing the readiness of our
medical community to receive and adopt any important idea or discovery.
The new science of Histology, as it is now called, was first brought
fully before the profession of this country by the translation of
Bichat's great work, "Anatomie Generale," by the late Dr. George Hayward.
The first work printed in this country on Auscultation,--that wonderful
art of discovering disease, which, as it were, puts a window in the
breast, through which the vital organs can be seen, to all intents and
purposes, was the manual published anonymously by "A Member of the
Massachusetts Medical Society."
We are now in some slight measure prepared to weigh the record of the
medical profession in Massachusetts, and pass our judgment upon it. But
in-order to do justice to the first generation of practitioners, we must
compare what we know of their treatment of disease with the state of the
art in England, and the superstitions which they saw all around them in
other departments of knowledge or belief.
English medical literature must have been at a pretty low ebb when
Sydenham recommended Don Quixote to Sir Richard Blackmore for
professional reading. The College Pharmacopoeia was loaded with the most
absurd compound mixtures, one of the most complex of which (the same
which the Reverend Mr. Harward, "Lecturer at the Royal Chappel in
Boston," tried to simplify), was not dropped until the year 1801. Sir
Kenelm Digby was playing his fantastic tricks with the Sympathetic
powder, and teaching Governor Winthrop, the second, how to cure fever and
ague, which some may like to know. "Pare the patient's nails; put the
parings in a little bag, and hang the bag round the neck of a live eel,
and put him in a tub of water. The eel will die, and the patient will
recover."
Wiseman, the great surgeon, was discoursing eloquently on the efficacy of
the royal touch in scrofula. The founder of the Ashmolean Museum at
Oxford, consorting with alchemists and astrologers, was treasuring the
manuscripts of the late pious Dr. Richard Napier, in which certain
letters (Rx Ris) were understood to mean Responsum Raphaelis,--the answer
of the angel Raphael to the good man's medical questions. The
illustrious Robert Boyle was making his collection of choice and safe
remedies, including the sole of an old shoe, the thigh bone of a hanged
man, and things far worse than these, as articles of his materia medica.
Dr. Stafford, whose paper of directions to his "friend, Mr. Wintrop," I
cited, was probably a man of standing in London; yet toad-powder was his
sovereign remedy.
See what was the state of belief in other matters among the most
intelligent persons of the colonies, magistrates and clergymen. Jonathan
Brewster, son of the church-elder, writes the wildest letters to John
Winthrop about alchemy,--"mad for making gold as the Lynn rock-borers are
for finding it."
Remember the theology and the diabology of the time. Mr. Cotton's
Theocracy was a royal government, with the King of kings as its nominal
head, but with an upper chamber of saints, and a tremendous opposition in
the lower house; the leader of which may have been equalled, but cannot
have been surpassed by any of our earth-born politicians. The demons
were prowling round the houses every night, as the foxes were sneaking
about the hen-roosts. The men of Gloucester fired whole flasks of
gunpowder at devils disguised as Indians and Frenchmen.
How deeply the notion of miraculous interference with the course of
nature was rooted, is shown by the tenacity of the superstition about
earthquakes. We can hardly believe that our Professor Winthrop, father
of the old judge and the "squire," whom many of us Cambridge people
remember so well, had to defend himself against the learned and excellent
Dr. Prince, of the Old South Church, for discussing their phenomena as if
they belonged to the province of natural science:
Not for the sake of degrading the aspect of the noble men who founded our
State, do I refer to their idle beliefs and painful delusions, but to
show against what influences the common sense of the medical profession
had to assert itself.
Think, then, of the blazing stars, that shook their horrid hair in the
sky; the phantom ship, that brought its message direct from the other
world; the story of the mouse and the snake at Watertown; of the mice
and the prayer-book; of the snake in church; of the calf with two heads;
and of the cabbage in the perfect form of a cutlash,--all which innocent
occurrences were accepted or feared as alarming portents.
We can smile at these: but we cannot smile at the account of unhappy Mary
Dyer's malformed offspring; or of Mrs. Hutchinson's domestic misfortune
of similar character, in the story of which the physician, Dr. John Clark
of Rhode Island, alone appears to advantage; or as we read the Rev.
Samuel Willard's fifteen alarming pages about an unfortunate young woman
suffering with hysteria. Or go a little deeper into tragedy, and see
poor Dorothy Talby, mad as Ophelia, first admonished, then whipped; at
last, taking her own little daughter's life; put on trial, and standing
mute, threatened to be pressed to death, confessing, sentenced, praying
to be beheaded; and none the less pitilessly swung from the fatal ladder.
The cooper's crazy wife--crazy in the belief that she has committed the
unpardonable sin--tries to drown her child, to save it from misery; and
the poor lunatic, who would be tenderly cared for to-day in a quiet
asylum, is judged to be acting under the instigation of Satan himself.
Yet, after all, what can we say, who put Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,"
full of nightmare dreams of horror, into all our children's hands; a
story in which the awful image of the man in the cage might well turn the
nursery where it is read into a madhouse?
The miserable delusion of witchcraft illustrates, in a still more
impressive way, the false ideas which governed the supposed relation of
men with the spiritual world. I have no doubt many physicians shared in
these superstitions. Mr. Upham says they--that is, some of them--were in
the habit of attributing their want of success to the fact, that an "evil
hand" was on their patient. The temptation was strong, no doubt, when
magistrates and ministers and all that followed their lead were contented
with such an explanation. But how was it in Salem, according to Mr.
Upham's own statement? Dr. John Swinnerton was, he says, for many years
the principal physician of Salem. And he says, also, "The Swinnerton
family were all along opposed to Mr. Parris, and kept remarkably clear
from the witchcraft delusion." Dr. John Swinnerton--the same, by the
way, whose memory is illuminated by a ray from the genius of
Hawthorne--died the very year before the great witchcraft explosion took
place. But who can doubt that it was from him that the family had
learned to despise and to resist the base superstition; or that Bridget
Bishop, whose house he rented, as Mr. Upham tells me, the first person
hanged in the time of the delusion, would have found an efficient
protector in her tenant, had he been living, to head the opposition of
his family to the misguided clergymen and magistrates?
I cannot doubt that our early physicians brought with them many Old-World
medical superstitions, and I have no question that they were more or less
involved in the prevailing errors of the community in which they lived.
But, on the whole, their record is a clean one, so far as we can get at
it; and where it is questionable we must remember that there must have
been many little-educated persons among them; and that all must have
felt, to some extent, the influence of those sincere and devoted but
unsafe men, the physic-practising clergymen, who often used spiritual
means as a substitute for temporal ones, who looked upon a hysteric
patient as possessed by the devil, and treated a fractured skull by
prayers and plasters, following the advice of a ruling elder in
opposition to the "unanimous opinion of seven surgeons."
To what results the union of the two professions was liable to lead, may
be seen by the example of a learned and famous person, who has left on
record the product of his labors in the double capacity of clergyman and
physician.
I have had the privilege of examining a manuscript of Cotton Mather's
relating to medicine, by the kindness of the librarian of the American
Antiquarian Society, to which society it belongs. A brief notice of this
curious document may prove not uninteresting.
It is entitled "The Angel of Bethesda: an Essay upon the Common Maladies
of Mankind, offering, first, the sentiments of Piety," etc., etc., and "a
collection of plain but potent and Approved REMEDIES for the Maladies."
There are sixty-six "Capsula's," as he calls them, or chapters, in his
table of contents; of which, five--from the fifteenth to the nineteenth,
inclusive--are missing. This is a most unfortunate loss, as the
eighteenth capsula treated of agues, and we could have learned from it
something of their degree of frequency in this part of New England.
There is no date to the manuscript; which, however, refers to a case
observed Nov. 14, 1724.
The divine takes precedence of the physician in this extraordinary
production. He begins by preaching a sermon at his unfortunate patient.
Having thrown him into a cold sweat by his spiritual sudorific, he
attacks him with his material remedies, which are often quite as
unpalatable. The simple and cleanly practice of Sydenham, with whose
works he was acquainted, seems to have been thrown away upon him.
Everything he could find mentioned in the seventy or eighty authors he
cites, all that the old women of both sexes had ever told him of, gets
into his text, or squeezes itself into his margin.
Evolving disease out of sin, he hates it, one would say, as he hates its
cause, and would drive it out of the body with all noisome appliances.
"Sickness is in Fact Flagellum Dei pro peccatis mundi." So saying, he
encourages the young mother whose babe is wasting away upon her breast
with these reflections:
"Think; oh the grievous Effects of Sin! This wretched Infant has not
arrived unto years of sense enough, to sin after the similitude of the
transgression committed by Adam. Nevertheless the Transgression of Adam,
who had all mankind Foederally, yea, Naturally, in him, has involved this
Infant in the guilt of it. And the poison of the old serpent, which
infected Adam when he fell into his Transgression, by hearkening to the
Tempter, has corrupted all mankind, and is a seed unto such diseases as
this Infant is now laboring under. Lord, what are we, and what are our
children, but a Generation of Vipers?"
Many of his remedies are at least harmless, but his pedantry and utter
want of judgment betray themselves everywhere. He piles his
prescriptions one upon another, without the least discrimination. He is
run away with by all sorts of fancies and superstitions. He prescribes
euphrasia, eye-bright, for disease of the eyes; appealing confidently to
the strange old doctrine of signatures, which inferred its use from the
resemblance of its flower to the organ of vision. For the scattering of
wens, the efficacy of a Dead Hand has been out of measure wonderful.
But when he once comes to the odious class of remedies, he revels in them
like a scarabeus. This allusion will bring us quite near enough to the
inconceivable abominations with which he proposed to outrage the sinful
stomachs of the unhappy confederates and accomplices of Adam.
It is well that the treatise was never printed, yet there are passages in
it worth preserving. He speaks of some remedies which have since become
more universally known:
"Among the plants of our soyl, Sir William Temple singles out Five [Six]
as being of the greatest virtue and most friendly to health: and his
favorite plants, Sage, Rue, Saffron, Alehoof, Garlick, and Elder."
"But these Five [Six] plants may admitt of some competitors. The
QUINQUINA--How celebrated: Immoderately, Hyperbolically celebrated!"
Of Ipecacuanha, he says,--"This is now in its reign; the most
fashionable vomit."
"I am not sorry that antimonial emetics begin to be disused."
He quotes "Mr. Lock" as recommending red poppy-water and abstinence from
flesh as often useful in children's diseases.
One of his "Capsula's" is devoted to the animalcular origin of diseases,
at the end of which he says, speaking of remedies for this supposed
source of our distempers:
"Mercury we know thee: But we are afraid thou wilt kill us too, if we
employ thee to kill them that kill us.
"And yett, for the cleansing of the small Blood Vessels, and making way
for the free circulation of the Blood and Lymph--there is nothing like
Mercurial Deobstruents."
From this we learn that mercury was already in common use, and the
subject of the same popular prejudice as in our own time.
His poetical turn shows itself here and there:
"O Nightingale, with a Thorn at thy Breast; Under the trouble of a Cough,
what can be more proper than such thoughts as these?"...
If there is pathos in this, there is bathos in his apostrophe to the
millipede, beginning "Poor sowbug!" and eulogizing the healing virtues of
that odious little beast; of which he tells us to take "half a pound,
putt 'em alive into a quart or two of wine," with saffron and other
drugs, and take two ounces twice a day.
The "Capsula" entitled "Nishmath Chajim" was printed in 1722, at New
London, and is in the possession of our own Society. He means, by these
words, something like the Archxus of Van Helmont, of which he discourses
in a style wonderfully resembling that of Mr. Jenkinson in the "Vicar of
Wakefield." "Many of the Ancients thought there was much of a Real
History in the Parable, and their Opinion was that there is, DIAPHORA
KATA TAS MORPHAS, A Distinction (and so a Resemblance) of men as to their
Shapes after Death." And so on, with Ireaeus, Tertullian, Thespesius,
and "the TA TONE PSEUCONE CROMATA," in the place of "Sanconiathon,
Manetho, Berosus," and "Anarchon ara kai ateleutaion to pan."
One other passage deserves notice, as it relates to the single medical
suggestion which does honor to Cotton Mather's memory. It does not
appear that he availed himself of the information which he says, he
obtained from his slave, for such I suppose he was.
In his appendix to "Variolae Triumphatae," he says,--
"There has been a wonderful practice lately used in several parts of the
world, which indeed is not yet become common in our nation.
"I was first informed of it by a Garamantee servant of my own, long
before I knew that any Europeans or Asiaticks had the least acquaintance
with it, and some years before I was enriched with the communications of
the learned Foreigners, whose accounts I found agreeing with what I
received of my servant, when he shewed me the Scar of the Wound made for
the operation; and said, That no person ever died of the smallpox, in
their countrey, that had the courage to use it.
"I have since met with a considerable Number of these Africans, who all
agree in one story; That in their countrey grandy-many dy of the
small-pox: But now they learn this way: people take juice of smallpox and
cutty-skin and put in a Drop; then by'nd by a little sicky, sicky: then
very few little things like small-pox; and nobody dy of it; and nobody
have small-pox any more. Thus, in Africa, where the poor creatures dy of
the smallpox like Rotten Sheep, a merciful God has taught them an
Infallible preservative. 'T is a common practice, and is attended with a
constant success."
What has come down to us of the first century of medical practice, in the
hands of Winthrop and Oliver, is comparatively simple and reasonable. I
suspect that the conditions of rude, stern life, in which the colonists
found themselves in the wilderness, took the nonsense out of them, as the
exigencies of a campaign did out of our physicians and surgeons in the
late war. Good food and enough of it, pure air and water, cleanliness,
good attendance, an anaesthetic, an opiate, a stimulant, quinine, and two
or three common drugs, proved to be the marrow of medical treatment; and
the fopperies of the pharmacopoeia went the way of embroidered shirts and
white kid gloves and malacca joints, in their time of need. "Good wine
is the best cordiall for her," said Governor John Winthrop, Junior, to
Samuel Symonds, speaking of that gentleman's wife,--just as Sydenham,
instead of physic, once ordered a roast chicken and a pint of canary for
his patient in male hysterics.
But the profession of medicine never could reach its full development
until it became entirely separated from that of divinity. The spiritual
guide, the consoler in affliction, the confessor who is admitted into the
secrets of our souls, has his own noble sphere of duties; but the healer
of men must confine himself solely to the revelations of God in nature,
as he sees their miracles with his own eyes. No doctrine of prayer or
special providence is to be his excuse for not looking straight at
secondary causes, and acting, exactly so far as experience justifies him,
as if he were himself the divine agent which antiquity fabled him to be.
While pious men were praying--humbly, sincerely, rightly, according to
their knowledge--over the endless succession of little children dying of
spasms in the great Dublin Hospital, a sagacious physician knocked some
holes in the walls of the ward, let God's blessed air in on the little
creatures, and so had already saved in that single hospital, as it was
soberly calculated thirty years ago, more than sixteen thousand lives of
these infant heirs of immortality. [Collins's Midwifery, p. 312.
Published by order of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Boston, 1841.]
Let it be, if you will, that the wise inspiration of the physician was
granted in virtue of the clergyman's supplications. Still, the habit of
dealing with things seen generates another kind of knowledge, and another
way of thought, from that of dealing with things unseen; which knowledge
and way of thought are special means granted by Providence, and to be
thankfully accepted.
The mediaeval ecclesiastics expressed a great truth in that saying, so
often quoted, as carrying a reproach with it: "Ubi tres medici, duo
athei,"--"Where there are three physicians, there are two atheists."
It was true then, it is true to-day, that the physician very commonly, if
not very generally, denies and repudiates the deity of ecclesiastical
commerce. The Being whom Ambroise Pare meant when he spoke those
memorable words, which you may read over the professor's chair in the
French School of Medicine, "Te le pensay, et Dieu le guarit," "I dressed
his wound, and God healed it,"--is a different being from the God that
scholastic theologians have projected from their consciousness, or shaped
even from the sacred pages which have proved so plastic in their hands.
He is a God who never leaves himself without witness, who repenteth him
of the evil, who never allows a disease or an injury, compatible with the
enjoyment of life, to take its course without establishing an effort,
limited by certain fixed conditions, it is true, but an effort, always,
to restore the broken body or the shattered mind. In the perpetual
presence of this great Healing Agent, who stays the bleeding of wounds,
who knits the fractured bone, who expels the splinter by a gentle natural
process, who walls in the inflammation that might involve the vital
organs, who draws a cordon to separate the dead part from the living, who
sends his three natural anaesthetics to the over-tasked frame in due
order, according to its need,--sleep, fainting, death; in this perpetual
presence, it is doubtless hard for the physician to realize the
theological fact of a vast and permanent sphere of the universe, where no
organ finds itself in its natural medium, where no wound heals kindly,
where the executive has abrogated the pardoning power, and mercy forgets
its errand; where the omnipotent is unfelt save in malignant agencies,
and the omnipresent is unseen and unrepresented; hard to accept the God
of Dante's "Inferno," and of Bunyan's caged lunatic. If this is atheism,
call three, instead of two of the trio, atheists, and it will probably
come nearer the truth.
I am not disposed to deny the occasional injurious effect of the
materializing influences to which the physician is subjected. A spiritual
guild is absolutely necessary to keep him, to keep us all, from becoming
the "fingering slaves" that Wordsworth treats with such shrivelling
scorn. But it is well that the two callings have been separated, and it
is fitting that they remain apart. In settling the affairs of the late
concern, I am afraid our good friends remain a little in our debt. We
lent them our physician Michael Servetus in fair condition, and they
returned him so damaged by fire as to be quite useless for our purposes.
Their Reverend Samuel Willard wrote us a not over-wise report of a case
of hysteria; and our Jean Astruc gave them (if we may trust Dr. Smith's
Dictionary of the Bible) the first discerning criticism on the authorship
of the Pentateuch. Our John Locke enlightened them with his letters
concerning toleration; and their Cotton Mather obscured our twilight with
his "Nishmath Chajim."
Yet we must remember that the name of Basil Valentine, the monk, is
associated with whatever good and harm we can ascribe to antimony; and
that the most remarkable of our specifics long bore the name of "Jesuit's
Bark," from an old legend connected with its introduction. "Frere
Jacques," who taught the lithotomists of Paris, owes his ecclesiastical
title to courtesy, as he did not belong to a religious order.
Medical science, and especially the study of mental disease, is destined,
I believe, to react to much greater advantage on the theology of the
future than theology has acted on medicine in the past. The liberal
spirit very generally prevailing in both professions, and the good
understanding between their most enlightened members, promise well for
the future of both in a community which holds every point of human
belief, every institution in human hands, and every word written in a
human dialect, open to free discussion today, to-morrow, and to the end
of time. Whether the world at large will ever be cured of trusting to
specifics as a substitute for observing the laws of health, and to
mechanical or intellectual formula as a substitute for character, may
admit of question. Quackery and idolatry are all but immortal.
We can find most of the old beliefs alive amongst us to-day, only having
changed their dresses and the social spheres in which they thrive. We
think the quarrels of Galenists and chemists belong to the past,
forgetting that Thomsonism has its numerous apostles in our community;
that it is common to see remedies vaunted as purely vegetable, and that
the prejudice against "mineral poisons," especially mercury, is as strong
in many quarters now as it was at the beginning of the seventeenth
century. Names are only air, and blow away with a change of wind; but
beliefs are rooted in human wants and weakness, and die hard. The oaks
of Dodona are prostrate, and the shrine of Delphi is desolate; but the
Pythoness and the Sibyl may be consulted in Lowell Street for a very
moderate compensation. Nostradamus and Lilly seem impossible in our time;
but we have seen the advertisements of an astrologer in our Boston papers
year after year, which seems to imply that he found believers and
patrons. You smiled when I related Sir Kenelm Digby's prescription with
the live eel in it; but if each of you were to empty his or her pockets,
would there not roll out, from more than one of them, a horse-chestnut,
carried about as a cure for rheumatism? The brazen head of Roger Bacon
is mute; but is not "Planchette" uttering her responses in a hundred
houses of this city? We think of palmistry or chiromancy as belonging to
the days of Albertus Magnus, or, if existing in our time, as given over
to the gypsies; but a very distinguished person has recently shown me the
line of life, and the line of fortune, on the palm of his hand, with a
seeming confidence in the sanguine predictions of his career which had
been drawn from them. What shall we say of the plausible and
well-dressed charlatans of our own time, who trade in false pretences,
like Nicholas Knapp of old, but without any fear of being fined or
whipped; or of the many follies and inanities, imposing on the credulous
part of the community, each of them gaping with eager, open mouth for a
gratuitous advertisement by the mention of its foolish name in any
respectable connection?
I turn from this less pleasing aspect of the common intelligence which
renders such follies possible, to close the honorable record of the
medical profession in this, our ancient Commonwealth.
We have seen it in the first century divided among clergymen,
magistrates, and regular practitioners; yet, on the whole, for the time,
and under the circumstances, respectable, except where it invoked
supernatural agencies to account for natural phenomena.
In the second century it simplified its practice, educated many
intelligent practitioners, and began the work of organizing for concerted
action, and for medical teaching.
In this, our own century, it has built hospitals, perfected and
multiplied its associations and educational institutions, enlarged and
created museums, and challenged a place in the world of science by its
literature.
In reviewing the whole course of its history we read a long list of
honored names, and a precious record written in private memories, in
public charities, in permanent contributions to medical science, in
generous sacrifices for the country. We can point to our capital as the
port of entry for the New World of the great medical discoveries of two
successive centuries, and we can claim for it the triumph over the most
dreaded foe that assails the human body,--a triumph which the annals of
the race can hardly match in three thousand years of medical history.
THE YOUNG PRACTITIONER
[A Valedictory Address delivered to the Graduating Class of the Bellevue
Hospital College, March 2, 1871.]
The occasion which calls us together reminds us not a little of that
other ceremony which unites a man and woman for life. The banns have
already been pronounced which have wedded our young friends to the
profession of their choice. It remains only to address to them some
friendly words of cheering counsel, and to bestow upon them the parting
benediction.
This is not the time for rhetorical display or ambitious eloquence. We
must forget ourselves, and think only of them. To us it is an occasion;
to them it is an epoch. The spectators at the wedding look curiously at
the bride and bridegroom; at the bridal veil, the orange-flower garland,
the giving and receiving of the ring; they listen for the tremulous "I
will," and wonder what are the mysterious syllables the clergyman
whispers in the ear of the married maiden. But to the newly-wedded pair
what meaning in those words, "for better, for worse," "in sickness and in
health," "till death us do part!" To the father, to the mother, who know
too well how often the deadly nightshade is interwoven with the wreath of
orange-blossoms, how empty the pageant, how momentous the reality!
You will not wonder that I address myself chiefly to those who are just
leaving academic life for the sterner struggle and the larger tasks of
matured and instructed manhood. The hour belongs to them; if others find
patience to listen, they will kindly remember that, after all, they are
but as the spectators at the wedding, and that the priest is thinking
less of them than of their friends who are kneeling at the altar.
I speak more directly to you, then, gentlemen of the graduating class.
The days of your education, as pupils of trained instructors, are over.
Your first harvest is all garnered. Henceforth you are to be sowers as
well as reapers, and your field is the world. How does your knowledge
stand to-day? What have you gained as a permanent possession? What must
you expect to forget? What remains for you yet to learn? These are
questions which it may interest you to consider.
There is another question which must force itself on the thoughts of many
among you: "How am I to obtain patients and to keep their confidence?"
You have chosen a laborious calling, and made many sacrifices to fit
yourselves for its successful pursuit. You wish to be employed that you
may be useful, and that you may receive the reward of your industry. I
would take advantage of these most receptive moments to give you some
hints which may help you to realize your hopes and expectations. Such is
the outline of the familiar talk I shall offer you.
Your acquaintance with some of the accessory branches is probably greater
now than it will be in a year from now,--much greater than it will by ten
years from now. The progress of knowledge, it may be feared, or hoped,
will have outrun the text-books in which you studied these branches.
Chemistry, for instance, is very apt to spoil on one's hands. "Nous
avons change tout cela" might serve as the standing motto of many of our
manuals. Science is a great traveller, and wears her shoes out pretty
fast, as might be expected.
You are now fresh from the lecture-room and the laboratory. You can pass
an examination in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, materia medica, which
the men in large practice all around you would find a more potent
sudorific than any in the Pharmacopceia. These masters of the art of
healing were once as ready with their answers as you are now, but they
have got rid of a great deal of the less immediately practical part of
their acquisitions, and you must undergo the same depleting process.
Hard work will train it off, as sharp exercise trains off the fat of a
prize-fighter.
Yet, pause a moment before you infer that your teachers must have been in
fault when they furnished you with mental stores not directly convertible
to practical purposes, and likely in a few years to lose their place in
your memory. All systematic knowledge involves much that is not
practical, yet it is the only kind of knowledge which satisfies the mind,
and systematic study proves, in the long-run, the easiest way of
acquiring and retaining facts which are practical. There are many things
which we can afford to forget, which yet it was well to learn. Your
mental condition is not the same as if you had never known what you now
try in vain to recall. There is a perpetual metempsychosis of thought,
and the knowledge of to-day finds a soil in the forgotten facts of
yesterday. You cannot see anything in the new season of the guano you
placed last year about the roots of your climbing plants, but it is
blushing and breathing fragrance in your trellised roses; it has scaled
your porch in the bee-haunted honey-suckle; it has found its way where
the ivy is green; it is gone where the woodbine expands its luxuriant
foliage.
Your diploma seems very broad to-day with your list of accomplishments,
but it begins to shrink from this hour like the Peau de Chagrin of
Balzac's story. Do not worry about it, for all the while there will be
making out for you an ampler and fairer parchment, signed by old Father
Time himself as President of that great University in which experience is
the one perpetual and all-sufficient professor.
Your present plethora of acquirements will soon cure itself. Knowledge
that is not wanted dies out like the eyes of the fishes of the Mammoth
Cave. When you come to handle life and death as your daily business,
your memory will of itself bid good-by to such inmates as the well-known
foramina of the sphenoid bone and the familiar oxides of
methyl-ethylamyl-phenyl-ammonium. Be thankful that you have once known
them, and remember that even the learned ignorance of a nomenclature is
something to have mastered, and may furnish pegs to hang facts upon which
would otherwise have strewed the floor of memory in loose disorder.
But your education has, after all, been very largely practical. You have
studied medicine and surgery, not chiefly in books, but at the bedside
and in the operating amphitheatre. It is the special advantage of large
cities that they afford the opportunity of seeing a great deal of disease
in a short space of time, and of seeing many cases of the same kind of
disease brought together. Let us not be unjust to the claims of the
schools remote from the larger centres of population. Who among us has
taught better than Nathan Smith, better than Elisha Bartlett? who teaches
better than some of our living contemporaries who divide their time
between city and country schools? I am afraid we do not always do
justice to our country brethren, whose merits are less conspicuously
exhibited than those of the great city physicians and surgeons, such
especially as have charge of large hospitals. There are modest
practitioners living in remote rural districts who are gifted by nature
with such sagacity and wisdom, trained so well in what is most essential
to the practice of their art, taught so thoroughly by varied experience,
forced to such manly self-reliance by their comparative isolation, that,
from converse with them alone, from riding with them on their long rounds
as they pass from village to village, from talking over cases with them,
putting up their prescriptions, watching their expedients, listening to
their cautions, marking the event of their predictions, hearing them tell
of their mistakes, and now and then glory a little in the detection of
another's blunder, a young man would find himself better fitted for his
real work than many who have followed long courses of lectures and passed
a showy examination. But the young man is exceptionally fortunate who
enjoys the intimacy of such a teacher. And it must be confessed that the
great hospitals, infirmaries, and dispensaries of large cities, where men
of well-sifted reputations are in constant attendance, are the true
centres of medical education. No students, I believe, are more
thoroughly aware of this than those who have graduated at this
institution. Here, as in all our larger city schools, the greatest pains
are taken to teach things as well as names. You have entered into the
inheritance of a vast amount of transmitted skill and wisdom, which you
have taken, warm, as it were, with the life of your well-schooled
instructors. You have not learned all that art has to teach you, but you
are safer practitioners to-day than were many of those whose names we
hardly mention without a genuflection. I had rather be cared for in a
fever by the best-taught among you than by the renowned Fernelius or the
illustrious Boerhaave, could they come back to us from that better world
where there are no physicians needed, and, if the old adage can be
trusted, not many within call. I had rather have one of you exercise his
surgical skill upon me than find myself in the hands of a resuscitated
Fabricius Hildanus, or even of a wise Ambroise Pare, revisiting earth in
the light of the nineteenth century.
You will not accuse me of underrating your accomplishments. You know
what to do for a child in a fit, for an alderman in an apoplexy, for a
girl that has fainted, for a woman in hysterics, for a leg that is
broken, for an arm that is out of joint, for fevers of every color, for
the sailor's rheumatism, and the tailor's cachexy. In fact you do really
know so much at this very hour, that nothing but the searching test of
time can fully teach you the limitations of your knowledge.
Of some of these you will permit me to remind you. You will never have
outgrown the possibility of new acquisitions, for Nature is endless in
her variety. But even the knowledge which you may be said to possess
will be a different thing after long habit has made it a part of your
existence. The tactus eruditus extends to the mind as well as to the
finger-ends. Experience means the knowledge gained by habitual trial,
and an expert is one who has been in the habit of trying. This is the
kind of knowledge that made Ulysses wise in the ways of men. Many cities
had he seen, and known the minds of those who dwelt in them. This
knowledge it was that Chaucer's Shipman brought home with him from the
sea--
"In many a tempest had his berd be shake."
This is the knowledge we place most confidence in, in the practical
affairs of life.
Our training has two stages. The first stage deals with our
intelligence, which takes the idea of what is to be done with the most
charming ease and readiness. Let it be a game of billiards, for
instance, which the marker is going to teach us. We have nothing to do
but to make this ball glance from that ball and hit that other ball, and
to knock that ball with this ball into a certain caecal sacculus or
diverticulum which our professional friend calls a pocket. Nothing can
be clearer; it is as easy as "playing upon this pipe," for which Hamlet
gives Guildenstern such lucid directions. But this intelligent Me, who
steps forward as the senior partner in our dual personality, turns out to
be a terrible bungler. He misses those glancing hits which the
hard-featured young professional person calls "carroms," and insists on
pocketing his own ball instead of the other one.
It is the unintelligent Me, stupid as an idiot, that has to try a thing a
thousand times before he can do it, and then never knows how he does it,
that at last does it well. We have to educate ourselves through the
pretentious claims of intellect, into the humble accuracy of instinct,
and we end at last by acquiring the dexterity, the perfection, the
certainty, which those masters of arts, the bee and the spider, inherit
from Nature.
Book-knowledge, lecture-knowledge, examination-knowledge, are all in the
brain. But work-knowledge is not only in the brain, it is in the senses,
in the muscles, in the ganglia of the sympathetic nerves,--all over the
man, as one may say, as instinct seems diffused through every part of
those lower animals that have no such distinct organ as a brain. See a
skilful surgeon handle a broken limb; see a wise old physician smile away
a case that looks to a novice as if the sexton would soon be sent for;
mark what a large experience has done for those who were fitted to profit
by it, and you will feel convinced that, much as you know, something is
still left for you to learn.
May I venture to contrast youth and experience in medical practice,
something in the way the man painted the lion, that is, the lion under?
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows-the exceptions. The
young man knows his patient, but the old man knows also his patient's
family, dead and alive, up and down for generations. He can tell
beforehand what diseases their unborn children will be subject to, what
they will die of if they live long enough, and whether they had better
live at all, or remain unrealized possibilities, as belonging to a stock
not worth being perpetuated. The young man feels uneasy if he is not
continually doing something to stir up his patient's internal
arrangements. The old man takes things more quietly, and is much more
willing to let well enough alone: All these superiorities, if such they
are,'you must wait for time to bring you. In the meanwhile (if we will
let the lion be uppermost for a moment), the young man's senses are
quicker than those of his older rival. His education in all the
accessory branches is more recent, and therefore nearer the existing
condition of knowledge. He finds it easier than his seniors to accept
the improvements which every year is bringing forward. New ideas build
their nests in young men's brains. "Revolutions are not made by men in
spectacles," as I once heard it remarked, and the first whispers of a new
truth are not caught by those who begin to feel the need of an
ear-trumpet. Granting all these advantages to the young man, he ought,
nevertheless, to go on improving, on the whole, as a medical
practitioner, with every year, until he has ripened into a well-mellowed
maturity. But, to improve, he must be good for something at the start.
If you ship a poor cask of wine to India and back, if you keep it a half
a century, it only grows thinner and sharper.
You are soon to enter into relations with the public, to expend your
skill and knowledge for its benefit, and find your support in the rewards
of your labor. What kind of a constituency is this which is to look to
you as its authorized champions in the struggle of life against its
numerous enemies?
In the first place, the persons who seek the aid of the physician are
very honest and sincere in their wish to get rid of their complaints,
and, generally speaking, to live as long as they can. However
attractively the future is painted to them, they are attached to the
planet with which they are already acquainted. They are addicted to the
daily use of this empirical and unchemical mixture which we call air; and
would hold on to it as a tippler does to his alcoholic drinks. There is
nothing men will not do, there is nothing they have not done, to recover
their health and save their lives. They have submitted to be
half-drowned in water, and half-choked with gases, to be buried up to
their chins in earth, to be seared with hot irons like galley-slaves, to
be crimped with knives, like cod-fish, to have needles thrust into their
flesh, and bonfires kindled on their skin, to swallow all sorts of
abominations, and to pay for all this, as if to be singed and scalded
were a costly privilege, as if blisters were a blessing, and leeches were
a luxury. What more can be asked to prove their honesty and sincerity?
This same community is very intelligent with respect to a great many
subjects-commerce, mechanics, manufactures, politics. But with regard to
medicine it is hopelessly ignorant and never finds it out. I do not know
that it is any worse in this country than in Great Britain, where Mr.
Huxley speaks very freely of "the utter ignorance of the simplest laws of
their own animal life, which prevails among even the most highly educated
persons." And Cullen said before him "Neither the acutest genius nor the
soundest judgment will avail in judging of a particular science, in
regard to which they have not been exercised. I have been obliged to
please my patients sometimes with reasons, and I have found that any will
pass, even with able divines and acute lawyers; the same will pass with
the husbands as with the wives." If the community could only be made
aware of its own utter ignorance, and incompetence to form opinions on
medical subjects, difficult enough to those who give their lives to the
study of them, the practitioner would have an easier task. But it will
form opinions of its own, it cannot help it, and we cannot blame it, even
though we know how slight and deceptive are their foundations.
This is the way it happens: Every grown-up person has either been ill
himself or had a friend suffer from illness, from which he has recovered.
Every sick person has done something or other by somebody's advice, or of
his own accord, a little before getting better. There is an irresistible
tendency to associate the thing done, and the improvement which followed
it, as cause and effect. This is the great source of fallacy in medical
practice. But the physician has some chance of correcting his hasty
inference. He thinks his prescription cured a single case of a
particular complaint; he tries it in twenty similar cases without effect,
and sets down the first as probably nothing more than a coincidence. The
unprofessional experimenter or observer has no large experience to
correct his hasty generalization. He wants to believe that the means he
employed effected his cure. He feels grateful to the person who advised
it, he loves to praise the pill or potion which helped him, and he has a
kind of monumental pride in himself as a living testimony to its
efficacy. So it is that you will find the community in which you live,
be it in town or country, full of brands plucked from the burning, as
they believe, by some agency which, with your better training, you feel
reasonably confident had nothing to do with it. Their disease went out
of itself, and the stream from the medical fire-annihilator had never
even touched it.
You cannot and need not expect to disturb the public in the possession of
its medical superstitions. A man's ignorance is as much his private
property, and as precious in his own eyes, as his family Bible. You have
only to open your own Bible at the ninth chapter of St. John's Gospel,
and you will find that the logic of a restored patient was very simple
then, as it is now, and very hard to deal with. My clerical friends will
forgive me for poaching on their sacred territory, in return for an
occasional raid upon the medical domain of which they have now and then
been accused.
A blind man was said to have been restored to sight by a young person
whom the learned doctors of the Jewish law considered a sinner, and, as
such, very unlikely to have been endowed with a divine gift of healing.
They visited the patient repeatedly, and evidently teased him with their
questions about the treatment, and their insinuations about the young
man, until he lost his temper. At last he turned sharply upon them:
"Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that,
whereas I was blind, now I see."
This is the answer that always has been and always will be given by most
persons when they find themselves getting well after doing anything, no
matter what,--recommended by anybody, no matter whom. Lord Bacon, Robert
Boyle, Bishop Berkeley, all put their faith in panaceas which we should
laugh to scorn. They had seen people get well after using them. Are we
any wiser than those great men? Two years ago, in a lecture before the
Massachusetts Historical Society, I mentioned this recipe of Sir Kenelm
Digby for fever and ague: Pare the patient's nails; put the parings in a
little bag, and hang the bag round the neck of a live eel, and place him
in a tub of water. The eel will die, and the patient will recover.
Referring to this prescription in the course of the same lecture, I said:
"You smiled when I related Sir Kenehn Digby's prescription, with the live
eel in it; but if each of you were to empty his or her pockets, would
there not roll out, from more than one of them, a horse-chestnut, carried
about as a cure for rheumatism?" Nobody saw fit to empty his or her
pockets, and my question brought no response. But two months ago I was in
a company of educated persons, college graduates every one of them, when
a gentleman, well known in our community, a man of superior ability and
strong common-sense, on the occasion of some talk arising about
rheumatism, took a couple of very shiny horse-chestnuts from his
breeches-pocket, and laid them on the table, telling us how, having
suffered from the complaint in question, he had, by the advice of a
friend, procured these two horse-chestnuts on a certain time a year or
more ago, and carried them about him ever since; from which very day he
had been entirely free from rheumatism.
This argument, from what looks like cause and effect, whether it be so or
not, is what you will have to meet wherever you go, and you need not
think you can answer it. In the natural course of things some thousands
of persons must be getting well or better of slight attacks of colds, of
rheumatic pains, every week, in this city alone. Hundreds of them do
something or other in the way of remedy, by medical or other advice, or
of their own motion, and the last thing they do gets the credit of the
recovery. Think what a crop of remedies this must furnish, if it were
all harvested!
Experience has taught, or will teach you, that most of the wonderful
stories patients and others tell of sudden and signal cures are like Owen
Glendower's story of the portents that announced his birth. The earth
shook at your nativity, did it? Very likely, and
"So it would have done,
At the same season, if your mother's cat
Had kittened, though yourself had ne'er been born."
You must listen more meekly than Hotspur did to the babbling Welshman,
for ignorance is a solemn and sacred fact, and, like infancy, which it
resembles, should be respected. Once in a while you will have a patient
of sense, born with the gift of observation, from whom you may learn
something. When you find yourself in the presence of one who is fertile
of medical opinions, and affluent in stories of marvellous cures,--of a
member of Congress whose name figures in certificates to the value of
patent medicines, of a voluble dame who discourses on the miracles she
has wrought or seen wrought with the little jokers of the sugar-of-milk
globule-box, take out your watch and count the pulse; also note the time
of day, and charge the price of a visit for every extra fifteen, or, if
you are not very busy, every twenty minutes. In this way you will turn
what seems a serious dispensation into a double blessing, for this class
of patients loves dearly to talk, and it does them a deal of good, and
you feel as if you had earned your money by the dose you have taken,
quite as honestly as by any dose you may have ordered.
You must take the community just as it is, and make the best of it. You
wish to obtain its confidence; there is a short rule for doing this which
you will find useful,--deserve it. But, to deserve it in full measure,
you must unite many excellences, natural and acquired.
As the basis of all the rest, you must have all those traits of character
which fit you to enter into the most intimate and confidential relations
with the families of which you are the privileged friend and counsellor.
Medical Christianity, if I may use such a term, is of very early date.
By the oath of Hippocrates, the practitioner of ancient times bound
himself to enter his patient's house with the sole purpose of doing him
good, and so to conduct himself as to avoid the very appearance of evil.
Let the physician of to-day begin by coming up to this standard, and add
to it all the more recently discovered virtues and graces.
A certain amount of natural ability is requisite to make you a good
physician, but by no means that disproportionate development of some
special faculty which goes by the name of genius. A just balance of the
mental powers is a great deal more likely to be useful than any single
talent, even were it the power of observation; in excess. For a mere
observer is liable to be too fond of facts for their own sake, so that,
if he told the real truth, he would confess that he takes more pleasure
in a post-mortem examination which shows him what was the matter with a
patient, than in a case which insists on getting well and leaving him in
the dark as to its nature. Far more likely to interfere with the sound
practical balance of the mind is that speculative, theoretical tendency
which has made so many men noted in their day, whose fame has passed away
with their dissolving theories. Read Dr. Bartlett's comparison of the
famous Benjamin Rush with his modest fellow-townsman Dr. William Currie,
and see the dangers into which a passion for grandiose generalizations
betrayed a man of many admirable qualities.
I warn you against all ambitious aspirations outside of your profession.
Medicine is the most difficult of sciences and the most laborious of
arts. It will task all your powers of body and mind if you are faithful
to it. Do not dabble in the muddy sewer of politics, nor linger by the
enchanted streams of literature, nor dig in far-off fields for the hidden
waters of alien sciences. The great practitioners are generally those
who concentrate all their powers on their business. If there are here
and there brilliant exceptions, it is only in virtue of extraordinary
gifts, and industry to which very few are equal.
To get business a man mast really want it; and do you suppose that when
you are in the middle of a heated caucus, or half-way through a delicate
analysis, or in the spasm of an unfinished ode, your eyes rolling in the
fine frenzy of poetical composition, you want to be called to a teething
infant, or an ancient person groaning under the griefs of a lumbago? I
think I have known more than one young man whose doctor's sign proclaimed
his readiness to serve mankind in that capacity, but who hated the sound
of a patient's knock, and as he sat with his book or his microscope, felt
exactly as the old party expressed himself in my friend Mr. Brownell's
poem--
"All I axes is, let me alone."
The community soon finds out whether you are in earnest, and really mean
business, or whether you are one of those diplomaed dilettanti who like
the amusement of quasi medical studies, but have no idea of wasting their
precious time in putting their knowledge in practice for the benefit of
their suffering fellow-creatures.
The public is a very incompetent judge of your skill and knowledge, but
it gives its confidence most readily to those who stand well with their
professional brethren, whom they call upon when they themselves or their
families are sick, whom they choose to honorable offices, whose writings
and teachings they hold in esteem. A man may be much valued by the
profession and yet have defects which prevent his becoming a favorite
practitioner, but no popularity can be depended upon as permanent which
is not sanctioned by the judgment of professional experts, and with these
you will always stand on your substantial merits.
What shall I say of the personal habits you must form if you wish for
success? Temperance is first upon the list. Intemperance in a physician
partakes of the guilt of homicide, for the muddled brain may easily make
a fatal blunder in a prescription and the unsteady hand transfix an
artery in an operation. Tippling doctors have been too common in the
history of medicine. Paracelsus was a sot, Radcliffe was much too fond
of his glass, and Dr. James Hurlbut of Wethersfield, Connecticut, a
famous man in his time, used to drink a square bottle of rum a day, with
a corresponding allowance of opium to help steady his nerves. We
commonly speak of a man as being the worse for liquor, but I was asking
an Irish laborer one day about his doctor, who, as he said, was somewhat
given to drink. "I like him best when he's a little that way," he said;
"then I can spake to him." I pitied the poor patient who could not
venture to allude to his colic or his pleurisy until his physician was
tipsy.
There are personal habits of less gravity than the one I have mentioned
which it is well to guard against, or, if they are formed, to relinquish.
A man who may be called at a moment's warning into the fragrant boudoir
of suffering loveliness should not unsweeten its atmosphere with
reminiscences of extinguished meerschaums. He should remember that the
sick are sensitive and fastidious, that they love the sweet odors and the
pure tints of flowers, and if his presence is not like the breath of the
rose, if his hands are not like the leaf of the lily, his visit may be
unwelcome, and if he looks behind him he may see a window thrown open
after he has left the sick-chamber. I remember too well the old doctor
who sometimes came to help me through those inward griefs to which
childhood is liable. "Far off his coming "--shall I say "shone," and
finish the Miltonic phrase, or leave the verb to the happy conjectures of
my audience? Before him came a soul-subduing whiff of ipecacuanha, and
after him lingered a shuddering consciousness of rhubarb. He had lived
so much among his medicaments that he had at last become himself a drug,
and to have him pass through a sick-chamber was a stronger dose than a
conscientious disciple of Hahnemann would think it safe to administer.
Need I remind you of the importance of punctuality in your engagements,
and of the worry and distress to patients and their friends which the
want of it occasions? One of my old teachers always carried two watches,
to make quite sure of being exact, and not only kept his appointments
with the regularity of a chronometer, but took great pains to be at his
patient's house at the time when he had reason to believe he was
expected, even if no express appointment was made. It is a good rule; if
you call too early, my lady's hair may not be so smooth as could be
wished, and, if you keep her waiting too long, her hair may be smooth,
but her temper otherwise.
You will remember, of course, always to get the weather-gage of your
patient. I mean, to place him so that the light falls on his face and
not on yours. It is a kind of, ocular duel that is about to take place
between you; you are going to look through his features into his
pulmonary and hepatic and other internal machinery, and he is going to
look into yours quite as sharply to see what you think about his
probabilities for time or eternity.
No matter how hard he stares at your countenance, he should never be able
to read his fate in it. It should be cheerful as long as there is hope,
and serene in its gravity when nothing is left but resignation. The face
of a physician, like that of a diplomatist, should be impenetrable.
Nature is a benevolent old hypocrite; she cheats the sick and the dying
with illusions better than any anodynes. If there are cogent reasons why
a patient should be undeceived, do it deliberately and advisedly, but do
not betray your apprehensions through your tell-tale features.
We had a physician in our city whose smile was commonly reckoned as being
worth five thousand dollars a year to him, in the days, too, of moderate
incomes. You cannot put on such a smile as that any more than you can
get sunshine without sun; there was a tranquil and kindly nature under it
that irradiated the pleasant face it made one happier to meet on his
daily rounds. But you can cultivate the disposition, and it will work
its way through to the surface, nay, more,--you can try to wear a quiet
and encouraging look, and it will react on your disposition and make you
like what you seem to be, or at least bring you nearer to its own
likeness.
Your patient has no more right to all the truth you know than he has to
all the medicine in your saddlebags, if you carry that kind of
cartridge-box for the ammunition that slays disease. He should get only
just so much as is good for him. I have seen a physician examining a
patient's chest stop all at once, as he brought out a particular sound
with a tap on the collarbone, in the attitude of a pointer who has just
come on the scent or sight of a woodcock. You remember the Spartan boy,
who, with unmoved countenance, hid the fox that was tearing his vitals
beneath his mantle. What he could do in his own suffering you must learn
to do for others on whose vital organs disease has fastened its devouring
teeth. It is a terrible thing to take away hope, even earthly hope, from
a fellow-creature. Be very careful what names you let fall before your
patient. He knows what it means when you tell him he has tubercles or
Bright's disease, and, if he hears the word carcinoma, he will certainly
look it out in a medical dictionary, if he does not interpret its dread
significance on the instant. Tell him he has asthmatic symptoms, or a
tendency to the gouty diathesis, and he will at once think of all the
asthmatic and gouty old patriarchs he has ever heard of, and be
comforted. You need not be so cautious in speaking of the health of rich
and remote relatives, if he is in the line of succession.
Some shrewd old doctors have a few phrases always on hand for patients
that will insist on knowing the pathology of their complaints without the
slightest capacity of understanding the scientific explanation. I have
known the term "spinal irritation" serve well on such occasions, but I
think nothing on the whole has covered so much ground, and meant so
little, and given such profound satisfaction to all parties, as the
magnificent phrase "congestion of the portal system."
Once more, let me recommend you, as far as possible, to keep your doubts
to yourself, and give the patient the benefit of your decision.
Firmness, gentle firmness, is absolutely necessary in this and certain
other relations. Mr. Rarey with Cruiser, Richard with Lady Ann, Pinel
with his crazy people, show what steady nerves can do with the most
intractable of animals, the most irresistible of despots, and the most
unmanageable of invalids.
If you cannot acquire and keep the confidence of your patient, it is time
for you to give place to some other practitioner who can. If you are
wise and diligent, you can establish relations with the best of them
which they will find it very hard to break. But, if they wish to employ
another person, who, as they think, knows more than you do, do not take
it as a personal wrong. A patient believes another man can save his
life, can restore him to health, which, as he thinks, you have not the
skill to do. No matter whether the patient is right or wrong, it is a
great impertinence to think you have any property in him. Your estimate
of your own ability is not the question, it is what the patient thinks of
it. All your wisdom is to him like the lady's virtue in Raleigh's song:
"If she seem not chaste to me,
What care I how chaste she be?"
What I call a good patient is one who, having found a good physician,
sticks to him till he dies. But there are many very good people who are
not what I call good patients. I was once requested to call on a lady
suffering from nervous and other symptoms. It came out in the
preliminary conversational skirmish, half medical, half social, that I
was the twenty-sixth member of the faculty into whose arms,
professionally speaking, she had successively thrown herself. Not being
a believer in such a rapid rotation of scientific crops, I gently
deposited the burden, commending it to the care of number twenty-seven,
and, him, whoever he might be, to the care of Heaven.
If there happened to be among my audience any person who wished to know
on what principles the patient should choose his physician, I should give
him these few precepts to think over:
Choose a man who is personally agreeable, for a daily visit from an
intelligent, amiable, pleasant, sympathetic person will cost you no more
than one from a sloven or a boor, and his presence will do more for you
than any prescription the other will order.
Let him be a man of recognized good sense in other matters, and the
chance is that he will be sensible as a practitioner.
Let him be a man who stands well with his professional brethren, whom
they approve as honest, able, courteous.
Let him be one whose patients are willing to die in his hands, not one
whom they go to for trifles, and leave as soon as they are in danger, and
who can say, therefore, that he never loses a patient.
Do not leave the ranks of what is called the regular profession, unless
you wish to go farther and fare worse, for you may be assured that its
members recognize no principle which hinders their accepting any remedial
agent proved to be useful, no matter from what quarter it comes. The
difficulty is that the stragglers, organized under fantastic names in
pretentious associations, or lurking in solitary dens behind doors left
ajar, make no real contributions to the art of healing. When they bring
forward a remedial agent like chloral, like the bromide of potassium,
like ether, used as an anesthetic, they will find no difficulty in
procuring its recognition.
Some of you will probably be more or less troubled by the pretensions of
that parody of mediaeval theology which finds its dogma of hereditary
depravity in the doctrine of psora, its miracle of transubstantiation in
the mystery of its triturations and dilutions, its church in the people
who have mistaken their century, and its priests in those who have
mistaken their calling. You can do little with persons who are disposed
to accept these curious medical superstitions. The saturation-point of
individual minds with reference to evidence, and especially medical
evidence, differs, and must always continue to differ, very widely.
There are those whose minds are satisfied with the decillionth dilution
of a scientific proof. No wonder they believe in the efficacy of a
similar attenuation of bryony or pulsatilla. You have no fulcrum you can
rest upon to lift an error out of such minds as these, often highly
endowed with knowledge and talent, sometimes with genius, but commonly
richer in the imaginative than the observing and reasoning faculties.
Let me return once more to the young graduate. Your relations to your
professional brethren may be a source of lifelong happiness and growth in
knowledge and character, or they may make you wretched and end by leaving
you isolated from those who should be your friends and counsellors. The
life of a physician becomes ignoble when he suffers himself to feed on
petty jealousies and sours his temper in perpetual quarrels. You will be
liable to meet an uncomfortable man here and there in the
profession,--one who is so fond of being in hot water that it is a wonder
all the albumen in his body is not coagulated. There are common barrators
among doctors as there are among lawyers,--stirrers up of strife under
one pretext and another, but in reality because they like it. They are
their own worst enemies, and do themselves a mischief each time they
assail their neighbors. In my student days I remember a good deal of
this Donnybrook-Fair style of quarrelling, more especially in Paris,
where some of the noted surgeons were always at loggerheads, and in one
of our lively Western cities. Soon after I had set up an office, I had a
trifling experience which may serve to point a moral in this direction.
I had placed a lamp behind the glass in the entry to indicate to the
passer-by where relief from all curable infirmities was to be sought and
found. Its brilliancy attracted the attention of a devious youth, who
dashed his fist through the glass and upset my modest luminary. All he
got by his vivacious assault was that he left portions of integument from
his knuckles upon the glass, had a lame hand, was very easily identified,
and had to pay the glazier's bill. The moral is that, if the brilliancy
of another's reputation excites your belligerent instincts, it is not
worth your while to strike at it, without calculating which of you is
likely to suffer most, if you do.
You may be assured that when an ill-conditioned neighbor is always
complaining of a bad taste in his mouth and an evil atmosphere about him,
there is something wrong about his own secretions. In such cases there
is an alterative regimen of remarkable efficacy: it is a starvation-diet
of letting alone. The great majority of the profession are peacefully
inclined. Their pursuits are eminently humanizing, and they look with
disgust on the personalities which intrude themselves into the placid
domain of an art whose province it is to heal and not to wound.
The intercourse of teacher and student in a large school is necessarily
limited, but it should be, and, so far as my experience goes, it is,
eminently cordial and kindly. You will leave with regret, and hold in
tender remembrance, those who have taken you by the hand at your entrance
on your chosen path, and led you patiently and faithfully, until the
great gates at its end have swung upon their hinges, and the world lies
open before you. That venerable oath to which I have before referred
bound the student to regard his instructor in the light of a parent, to
treat his children like brothers, to succor him in his day of need. I
trust the spirit of the oath of Hippocrates is not dead in the hearts of
the students of to-day. They will remember with gratitude every earnest
effort, every encouraging word, which has helped them in their difficult
and laborious career of study. The names they read on their diplomas
will recall faces that are like family-portraits in their memory, and the
echo of voices they have listened to so long will linger in their
memories far into the still evening of their lives.
One voice will be heard no more which has been familiar to many among
you. It is not for me, a stranger to these scenes, to speak his eulogy.
I have no right to sadden this hour by dwelling on the deep regrets of
friendship, or to bid the bitter tears of sorrow flow afresh. Yet I
cannot help remembering what a void the death of such a practitioner as
your late instructor must leave in the wide circle of those who leaned
upon his counsel and assistance in their hour of need, in a community
where he was so widely known and esteemed, in a school where he bore so
important a part. There is no exemption from the common doom for him who
holds the shield to protect others. The student is called from his
bench, the professor from his chair, the practitioner in his busiest
period hears a knock more peremptory than any patient's midnight summons,
and goes on that unreturning visit which admits of no excuse, and suffers
no delay. The call of such a man away from us is the bereavement of a
great family. Nor can we help regretting the loss for him of a bright
and cheerful earthly future; for the old age of a physician is one of the
happiest periods of his life. He is loved and cherished for what he has
been, and even in the decline of his faculties there are occasions when
his experience is still appealed to, and his trembling hands are looked
to with renewing hope and trust, as being yet able to stay the arm of the
destroyer.
But if there is so much left for age, how beautiful, how inspiring is the
hope of youth! I see among those whom I count as listeners one by whose
side I have sat as a fellow-teacher, and by whose instructions I have
felt myself not too old to profit. As we borrowed him from your city, I
must take this opportunity of telling you that his zeal, intelligence,
and admirable faculty as an instructor were heartily and universally
recognized among us. We return him, as we trust, uninjured, to the
fellow-citizens who have the privilege of claiming him as their own.
And now, gentlemen of the graduating class, nothing remains but for me to
bid you, in the name of those for whom I am commissioned and privileged
to speak, farewell as students, and welcome as practitioners. I
pronounce the two benedictions in the same breath, as the late king's
demise and the new king's accession are proclaimed by the same voice at
the same moment. You would hardly excuse me if I stooped to any meaner
dialect than the classical and familiar language of your prescriptions,
the same in which your title to the name of physician is, if, like our
own institution, you follow the ancient usage, engraved upon your
diplomas.
Valete, JUVENES, artis medicae studiosi; valete, discipuli, valete,
filii!
Salvete, VIRI, artis medicae magister; Salvete amici; salvete fratres!
MEDICAL LIBRARIES.
[Dedicatory Address at the opening of the Medical Library in Boston,
December 3, 1878.]
It is my appointed task, my honorable privilege, this evening, to speak
of what has been done by others. No one can bring his tribute of words
into the presence of great deeds, or try with them to embellish the
memory of any inspiring achievement, without feeling and leaving with
others a sense of their insufficiency. So felt Alexander when he
compared even his adored Homer with the hero the poet had sung. So felt
Webster when he contrasted the phrases of rhetoric with the eloquence of
patriotism and of self-devotion. So felt Lincoln when on the field of
Gettysburg he spoke those immortal words which Pericles could not have
bettered, which Aristotle could not have criticised. So felt he who
wrote the epitaph of the builder of the dome which looks down on the
crosses and weathercocks that glitter over London.
We are not met upon a battle-field, except so far as every laborious
achievement means a victory over opposition, indifference, selfishness,
faintheartedness, and that great property of mind as well as
matter,--inertia. We are not met in a cathedral, except so far as every
building whose walls are lined with the products of useful and ennobling
thought is a temple of the Almighty, whose inspiration has given us
understanding. But we have gathered within walls which bear testimony to
the self-sacrificing, persevering efforts of a few young men, to whom we
owe the origin and development of all that excites our admiration in this
completed enterprise; and I might consider my task as finished if I
contented myself with borrowing the last word of the architect's epitaph
and only saying, Look around you!
The reports of the librarian have told or will tell you, in some detail,
what has been accomplished since the 21st of December, 1874, when six
gentlemen met at the house of Dr. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch to discuss
different projects for a medical library. In less than four years from
that time, by the liberality of associations and of individuals, this
collection of nearly ten thousand volumes, of five thousand pamphlets,
and of one hundred and twenty-five journals, regularly received,--all
worthily sheltered beneath this lofty roof,--has come into being under
our eyes. It has sprung up, as it were; in the night like a mushroom; it
stands before us in full daylight as lusty as an oak, and promising to
grow and flourish in the perennial freshness of an evergreen.
To whom does our profession owe this already large collection of books,
exceeded in numbers only by four or five of the most extensive medical
libraries in the country, and lodged in a building so well adapted to its
present needs? We will not point out individually all those younger
members of the profession who have accomplished what their fathers and
elder brethren had attempted and partially achieved. We need not write
their names on these walls, after the fashion of those civic dignitaries
who immortalize themselves on tablets of marble and gates of iron. But
their contemporaries know them well, and their descendants will not
forget them,--the men who first met together, the men who have given
their time and their money, the faithful workers, worthy associates of
the strenuous agitator who gave no sleep to his eyes, no slumber to his
eyelids, until he had gained his ends; the untiring, imperturbable,
tenacious, irrepressible, all-subduing agitator who neither rested nor
let others rest until the success of the project was assured. If,
against his injunctions, I name Dr. James Read Chadwick, it is only my
revenge for his having kept me awake so often and so long while he was
urging on the undertaking in which he has been preeminently active and
triumphantly successful.
We must not forget the various medical libraries which preceded this:
that of an earlier period, when Boston contained about seventy regular
practitioners, the collection afterwards transferred to the Boston
Athenaeum; the two collections belonging to the University; the Treadwell
Library at the Massachusetts General Hospital; the collections of the two
societies, that for Medical Improvement and that for Medical Observation;
and more especially the ten thousand volumes relating to medicine
belonging to our noble public city library,--too many blossoms on the
tree of knowledge, perhaps, for the best fruit to ripen. But the
Massachusetts Medical Society now numbers nearly four hundred members in
the city of Boston. The time had arrived for a new and larger movement.
There was needed a place to which every respectable member of the medical
profession could obtain easy access; where, under one roof, all might
find the special information they were seeking; where the latest medical
intelligence should be spread out daily as the shipping news is posted on
the bulletins of the exchange; where men engaged in a common pursuit
could meet, surrounded by the mute oracles of science and art; where the
whole atmosphere should be as full of professional knowledge as the
apothecary's shop is of the odor of his medicaments. This was what the
old men longed for,--the prophets and kings of the profession, who
"Desired it long,
But died without the sight."
This is what the young men and those who worked under their guidance
undertook to give us. And now such a library, such a reading-room, such
an exchange, such an intellectual and social meeting place, we be hold a
fact, plain before us. The medical profession of our city, and, let us
add, of all those neighboring places which it can reach with its iron
arms, is united as never before by the commune vinculum, the common bond
of a large, enduring, ennobling, unselfish interest. It breathes a new
air of awakened intelligence. It marches abreast of the other learned
professions, which have long had their extensive and valuable centralized
libraries; abreast of them, but not promising to be content with that
position. What glorifies a town like a cathedral? What dignifies a
province like a university? What illuminates a country like its
scholarship, and what is the nest that hatches scholars but a library?
The physician, some may say, is a practical man and has little use for
all this book-learning. Every student has heard Sydenham's reply to Sir
Richard Blackmore's question as to what books he should read,--meaning
medical books. "Read Don Quixote," was his famous answer. But Sydenham
himself made medical books and may be presumed to have thought those at
least worth reading. Descartes was asked where was his library, and in
reply held up the dissected body of an animal. But Descartes made books,
great books, and a great many of them. A physician of common sense
without erudition is better than a learned one without common sense, but
the thorough master of his profession must have learning added to his
natural gifts.
It is not necessary to maintain the direct practical utility of all kinds
of learning. Our shelves contain many books which only a certain class
of medical scholars will be likely to consult. There is a dead medical
literature, and there is a live one. The dead is not all ancient, the
live is not all modern. There is none, modern or ancient, which, if it
has no living value for the student, will not teach him something by its
autopsy. But it is with the live literature of his profession that the
medical practitioner is first of all concerned.
Now there has come a great change in our time over the form in which
living thought presents itself. The first printed books,--the
incunabula,--were inclosed in boards of solid oak, with brazen clasps and
corners; the boards by and by were replaced by pasteboard covered with
calf or sheepskin; then cloth came in and took the place of leather; then
the pasteboard was covered with paper instead of cloth; and at this day
the quarterly, the monthly, the weekly periodical in its flimsy
unsupported dress of paper, and the daily journal, naked as it came from
the womb of the press, hold the larger part of the fresh reading we live
upon. We must have the latest thought in its latest expression; the page
must be newly turned like the morning bannock; the pamphlet must be newly
opened like the ante-prandial oyster.
Thus a library, to meet the need of our time, must take, and must spread
out in a convenient form, a great array of periodicals. Our active
practitioners read these by preference over almost everything else. Our
specialists, more particularly, depend on the month's product, on the
yearly crop of new facts, new suggestions, new contrivances, as much as
the farmer on the annual yield of his acres. One of the first wants,
then, of the profession is supplied by our library in its great array of
periodicals from many lands, in many languages. Such a number of medical
periodicals no private library would have room for, no private person
would pay for, or flood his tables with if they were sent him for
nothing. These, I think, with the reports of medical societies and the
papers contributed to them, will form the most attractive part of our
accumulated medical treasures. They will be also one of our chief
expenses, for these journals must be bound in volumes and they require a
great amount of shelf-room; all this, in addition to the cost of
subscription for those which are not furnished us gratuitously.
It is true that the value of old scientific periodicals is, other things
being equal, in the inverse ratio of their age, for the obvious reason
that what is most valuable in the earlier volumes of a series is drained
off into the standard works with which the intelligent practitioner is
supposed to be familiar. But no extended record of facts grows too old
to be useful, provided only that we have a ready and sure way of getting
at the particular fact or facts we are in search of.
And this leads me to speak of what I conceive to be one of the principal
tasks to be performed by the present and the coming generation of
scholars, not only in the medical, but in every department of knowledge.
I mean the formation of indexes, and more especially of indexes to
periodical literature.
This idea has long been working in the minds of scholars, and all who
have had occasion to follow out any special subject. I have a right to
speak of it, for I long ago attempted to supply the want of indexes in
some small measure for my own need. I had a very complete set of the
"American Journal of the Medical Sciences;" an entire set of the "North
American Review," and many volumes of the reprints of the three leading
British quarterlies. Of what use were they to me without general
indexes? I looked them all through carefully and made classified lists
of all the articles I thought I should most care to read. But they soon
outgrew my lists. The "North American Review" kept filling up shelf
after shelf, rich in articles which I often wanted to consult, but what a
labor to find them, until the index of Mr. Gushing, published a few
months since, made the contents of these hundred and twenty volumes as
easily accessible as the words in a dictionary! I had a, copy of good
Dr. Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia, a treasure-house to my boyhood which has
not lost its value for me in later years. But where to look for what I
wanted? I wished to know, for instance, what Dr. Burney had to say about
singing. Who would have looked for it under the Italian word cantare? I
was curious to learn something of the etchings of Rembrandt, and where
should I find it but under the head "Low Countries, Engravers of
the,"--an elaborate and most valuable article of a hundred
double-columned close-printed quarto pages, to which no reference, even,
is made under the title Rembrandt.
There was nothing to be done, if I wanted to know where that which I
specially cared for was to be found in my Rees's Cyclopaedia, but to look
over every page of its forty-one quarto volumes and make out a brief list
of matters of interest which I could not find by their titles, and this I
did, at no small expense of time and trouble.
Nothing, therefore, could be more pleasing to me than to see the
attention which has been given of late years to the great work of
indexing. It is a quarter of a century since Mr. Poole published his
"Index to Periodical Literature," which it is much to be hoped is soon to
appear in a new edition, grown as it must be to formidable dimensions by
the additions of so long a period. The "British and Foreign Medical
Review," edited by the late Sir John Forties, contributed to by Huxley,
Carpenter, Laycock, and others of the most distinguished scientific men
of Great Britain, has an index to its twenty-four volumes, and by its aid
I find this valuable series as manageable as a lexicon. The last edition
of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" had a complete index in a separate
volume, and the publishers of Appletons' "American Cyclopaedia" have
recently issued an index to their useful work, which must greatly add to
its value. I have already referred to the index to the "North American
Review," which to an American, and especially to a New Englander, is the
most interesting and most valuable addition of its kind to our literary
apparatus since the publication of Mr. Allibone's "Dictionary of
Authors." I might almost dare to parody Mr. Webster's words in speaking
of Hamilton, to describe what Mr. Gushing did for the solemn rows of back
volumes of our honored old Review which had been long fossilizing on our
shelves: "He touched the dead corpse of the 'North American,' and it
sprang to its feet." A library of the best thought of the best American
scholars during the greater portion of the century was brought to light
by the work of the indexmaker as truly as were the Assyrian tablets by
the labors of Layard.
A great portion of the best writing and reading literary, scientific,
professional, miscellaneous--comes to us now, at stated intervals, in
paper covers. The writer appears, as it were, in his shirt-sleeves. As
soon as he has delivered his message the book-binder puts a coat on his
back, and he joins the forlorn brotherhood of "back volumes," than which,
so long as they are unindexed, nothing can be more exasperating. Who
wants a lock without a key, a ship without a rudder, a binnacle without a
compass, a check without a signature, a greenback without a goldback
behind it?
I have referred chiefly to the medical journals, but I would include with
these the reports of medical associations, and those separate
publications which, coming in the form of pamphlets, heap themselves into
chaotic piles and bundles which are worse than useless, taking up a great
deal of room, and frightening everything away but mice and mousing
antiquarians, or possibly at long intervals some terebrating specialist.
Arranged, bound, indexed, all these at once become accessible and
valuable. I will take the first instance which happens to suggest
itself. How many who know all about osteoblasts and the experiments of
Ollier, and all that has grown out of them, know where to go for a paper
by the late Dr. A. L. Peirson of Salem, published in the year 1840, under
the modest title, Remarks on Fractures? And if any practitioner who has
to deal with broken bones does not know that most excellent and practical
essay, it is a great pity, for it answers very numerous questions which
will be sure to suggest themselves to the surgeon and the patient as no
one of the recent treatises, on my own shelves, at least, can do.
But if indexing is the special need of our time in medical literature, as
in every department of knowledge, it must be remembered that it is not
only an immense labor, but one that never ends. It requires, therefore,
the cooperation of a large number of individuals to do the work, and a
large amount of money to pay for making its results public through the
press. When it is remembered that the catalogue of the library of the
British Museum is contained in nearly three thousand large folios of
manuscript, and not all its books are yet included, the task of indexing
any considerable branch of science or literature looks as if it were well
nigh impossible. But many hands make light work. An "Index Society" has
been formed in England, already numbering about one hundred and seventy
members. It aims at "supplying thorough indexes to valuable works and
collections which have hitherto lacked them; at issuing indexes to the
literature of special subjects; and at gathering materials for a general
reference index." This society has published a little treatise setting
forth the history and the art of indexing, which I trust is in the hands
of some of our members, if not upon our shelves.
Something has been done in the same direction by individuals in our own
country, as we have already seen. The need of it in the department of
medicine is beginning to be clearly felt. Our library has already an
admirable catalogue with cross references, the work of a number of its
younger members cooperating in the task. A very intelligent medical
student, Mr. William D. Chapin, whose excellent project is indorsed by
well-known New York physicians and professors, proposes to publish a
yearly index to original communications in the medical journals of the
United States, classified by authors and subjects. But it is from the
National Medical Library at Washington that we have the best promise and
the largest expectations. That great and growing collection of fifty
thousand volumes is under the eye and hand of a librarian who knows books
and how to manage them. For libraries are the standing armies of
civilization, and an army is but a mob without a general who can organize
and marshal it so as to make it effective. The "Specimen Fasciculus of a
Catalogue of the National Medical Library," prepared under the direction
of Dr. Billings, the librarian, would have excited the admiration of
Haller, the master scholar in medical science of the last century, or
rather of the profession in all centuries, and if carried out as it is
begun will be to the nineteenth all and more than all that the three
Bibliothecae--Anatomica, Chirurgica, and Medicinae-Practicae--were to the
eighteenth century. I cannot forget the story that Agassiz was so fond
of telling of the king of Prussia and Fichte. It was after the
humiliation and spoliation of the kingdom by Napoleon that the monarch
asked the philosopher what could be done to regain the lost position of
the nation. "Found a great university, Sire," was the answer, and so it
was that in the year 1810 the world-renowned University of Berlin came
into being. I believe that we in this country can do better than found a
national university, whose professors shall be nominated in caucuses, go
in and out, perhaps, like postmasters, with every change of
administration, and deal with science in the face of their constituency
as the courtier did with time when his sovereign asked him what o'clock
it was: "Whatever hour your majesty pleases." But when we have a noble
library like that at Washington, and a librarian of exceptional
qualifications like the gentleman who now holds that office, I believe
that a liberal appropriation by Congress to carry out a conscientious
work for the advancement of sound knowledge and the bettering of human
conditions, like this which Dr. Billings has so well begun, would redound
greatly to the honor of the nation. It ought to be willing to be at some
charge to make its treasures useful to its citizens, and, for its own
sake, especially to that class which has charge of health, public and
private. This country abounds in what are called "self-made men," and is
justly proud of many whom it thus designates. In one sense no man is
self-made who breathes the air of a civilized community. In another
sense every man who is anything other than a phonograph on legs is
self-made. But if we award his just praise to the man who has attained
any kind of excellence without having had the same advantages as others
whom, nevertheless, he has equalled or surpassed, let us not be betrayed
into undervaluing the mechanic's careful training to his business, the
thorough and laborious education of the scholar and the professional man.
Our American atmosphere is vocal with the flippant loquacity of half
knowledge. We must accept whatever good can be got out of it, and keep
it under as we do sorrel and mullein and witchgrass, by enriching the
soil, and sowing good seed in plenty; by good teaching and good books,
rather than by wasting our time in talking against it. Half knowledge
dreads nothing but whole knowledge.
I have spoken of the importance and the predominance of periodical
literature, and have attempted to do justice to its value. But the
almost exclusive reading of it is not without its dangers. The journals
contain much that is crude and unsound; the presumption; it might be
maintained, is against their novelties, unless they come from observers
of established credit. Yet I have known a practitioner,--perhaps more
than one,--who was as much under the dominant influence of the last
article he had read in his favorite medical journal as a milliner under
the sway of the last fashion-plate. The difference between green and
seasoned knowledge is very great, and such practitioners never hold long
enough to any of their knowledge to have it get seasoned.
It is needless to say, then, that all the substantial and permanent
literature of the profession should be represented upon our shelves. Much
of it is there already, and as one private library after another falls
into this by the natural law of gravitation, it will gradually acquire
all that is most valuable almost without effort. A scholar should not be
in a hurry to part with his books. They are probably more valuable to
him than they can be to any other individual. What Swedenborg called
"correspondence" has established itself between his intelligence and the
volumes which wall him within their sacred inclosure. Napoleon said that
his mind was as if furnished with drawers,--he drew out each as he wanted
its contents, and closed it at will when done with them. The scholar's
mind, to use a similar comparison, is furnished with shelves, like his
library. Each book knows its place in the brain as well as against the
wall or in the alcove. His consciousness is doubled by the books which
encircle him, as the trees that surround a lake repeat themselves in its
unruffled waters. Men talk of the nerve that runs to the pocket, but one
who loves his books, and has lived long with them, has a nervous filament
which runs from his sensorium to every one of them. Or, if I may still
let my fancy draw its pictures, a scholar's library is to him what a
temple is to the worshipper who frequents it. There is the altar sacred
to his holiest experiences. There is the font where his new-born thought
was baptized and first had a name in his consciousness. There is the
monumental tablet of a dead belief, sacred still in the memory of what it
was while yet alive. No visitor can read all this on the lettered backs
of the books that have gathered around the scholar, but for him, from the
Aldus on the lowest shelf to the Elzevir on the highest, every volume has
a language which none but he can interpret. Be patient with the
book-collector who loves his companions too well to let them go. Books
are not buried with their owners, and the veriest book-miser that ever
lived was probably doing far more for his successors than his more
liberal neighbor who despised his learned or unlearned avarice. Let the
fruit fall with the leaves still clinging round it. Who would have
stripped Southey's walls of the books that filled them, when, his mind no
longer capable of taking in their meaning, he would still pat and fondle
them with the vague loving sense of what they had once been to him,--to
him, the great scholar, now like a little child among his playthings?
We need in this country not only the scholar, but the virtuoso, who
hoards the treasures which he loves, it may be chiefly for their rarity
and because others who know more than he does of their value set a high
price upon them. As the wine of old vintages is gently decanted out of
its cobwebbed bottles with their rotten corks into clean new receptacles,
so the wealth of the New World is quietly emptying many of the libraries
and galleries of the Old World into its newly formed collections and
newly raised edifices. And this process must go on in an accelerating
ratio. No Englishman will be offended if I say that before the New
Zealander takes his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the
ruins of St. Paul's in the midst of a vast solitude, the treasures of the
British Museum will have found a new shelter in the halls of New York or
Boston. No Catholic will think hardly of my saying that before the
Coliseum falls, and with it the imperial city, whose doom prophecy has
linked with that of the almost eternal amphitheatre, the marbles, the
bronzes, the paintings, the manuscripts of the Vatican will have left the
shores of the Tiber for those of the Potomac, the Hudson, the
Mississippi, or the Sacramento. And what a delight in the pursuit of the
rarities which the eager book-hunter follows with the scent of a beagle!
Shall I ever forget that rainy day in Lyons, that dingy bookshop, where I
found the Aetius, long missing from my Artis bledicae Principes, and
where I bought for a small pecuniary consideration, though it was marked
rare, and was really tres rare, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, edited by
and with a preface from the hand of Francis Rabelais? And the
vellum-bound Tulpius, which I came upon in Venice, afterwards my only
reading when imprisoned in quarantine at Marseilles, so that the two
hundred and twenty-eight cases he has recorded are, many of them, to this
day still fresh in my memory. And the Schenckius,--the folio filled with
casus rariores, which had strayed in among the rubbish of the bookstall
on the boulevard,--and the noble old Vesalius with its grand frontispiece
not unworthy of Titian, and the fine old Ambroise Pare, long waited for
even in Paris and long ago, and the colossal Spigelius with his
eviscerated beauties, and Dutch Bidloo with its miracles of fine
engraving and bad dissection, and Italian Mascagni, the despair of all
would-be imitators, and pre-Adamite John de Ketam, and antediluvian
Berengarius Carpensis,--but why multiply names, every one of which brings
back the accession of a book which was an event almost like the birth of
an infant?
A library like ours must exercise the largest hospitality. A great many
books may be found in every large collection which remind us of those
apostolic looking old men who figure on the platform at our political and
other assemblages. Some of them have spoken words of wisdom in their
day, but they have ceased to be oracles; some of them never had any
particularly important message for humanity, but they add dignity to the
meeting by their presence; they look wise, whether they are so or not,
and no one grudges them their places of honor. Venerable figure-heads,
what would our platforms be without you?
Just so with our libraries. Without their rows of folios in creamy
vellum, or showing their black backs with antique lettering of tarnished
gold, our shelves would look as insufficient and unbalanced as a column
without its base, as a statue without its pedestal. And do not think
they are kept only to be spanked and dusted during that dreadful period
when their owner is but too thankful to become an exile and a wanderer
from the scene of single combats between dead authors and living
housemaids. Men were not all cowards before Agamemnon or all fools
before the days of Virchow and Billroth. And apart from any practical
use to be derived from the older medical authors, is there not a true
pleasure in reading the accounts of great discoverers in their own words?
I do not pretend to hoist up the Bibliotheca Anatomica of Mangetus and
spread it on my table every day. I do not get out my great Albinus
before every lecture on the muscles, nor disturb the majestic repose of
Vesalius every time I speak of the bones he has so admirably described
and figured. But it does please me to read the first descriptions of
parts to which the names of their discoverers or those who have first
described them have become so joined that not even modern science can
part them; to listen to the talk of my old volume as Willis describes his
circle and Fallopius his aqueduct and Varolius his bridge and Eustachius
his tube and Monro his foramen,--all so well known to us in the human
body; it does please me to know the very words in which Winslow described
the opening which bears his name, and Glisson his capsule and De Graaf
his vesicle; I am not content until I know in what language Harvey
announced his discovery of the circulation, and how Spigelius made the
liver his perpetual memorial, and Malpighi found a monument more enduring
than brass in the corpuscles of the spleen and the kidney.
But after all, the readers who care most for the early records of medical
science and art are the specialists who are dividing up the practice of
medicine and surgery as they were parcelled out, according to Herodotus,
by the Egyptians. For them nothing is too old, nothing is too new, for
to their books of all others is applicable the saying of D'Alembert that
the author kills himself in lengthening out what the reader kills himself
in trying to shorten.
There are practical books among these ancient volumes which can never
grow old. Would you know how to recognize "male hysteria" and to treat
it, take down your Sydenham; would you read the experience of a physician
who was himself the subject of asthma, and who, notwithstanding that, in
the words of Dr. Johnson, "panted on till ninety," you will find it in
the venerable treatise of Sir John Floyer; would you listen to the story
of the King's Evil cured by the royal touch, as told by a famous
chirurgeon who fully believed in it, go to Wiseman; would you get at
first hand the description of the spinal disease which long bore his
name, do not be startled if I tell you to go to Pott,--to Percival Pott,
the great surgeon of the last century.
There comes a time for every book in a library when it is wanted by
somebody. It is but a few weeks since one of the most celebrated
physicians in the country wrote to me from a great centre of medical
education to know if I had the works of Sanctorius, which he had tried in
vain to find. I could have lent him the "Medicina Statica," with its
frontispiece showing Sanctorius with his dinner on the table before him,
in his balanced chair which sunk with him below the level of his
banquet-board when he had swallowed a certain number of ounces,--an early
foreshadowing of Pettenkofer's chamber and quantitative physiology,--but
the "Opera Omnia" of Sanctorius I had never met with, and I fear he had
to do without it.
I would extend the hospitality of these shelves to a class of works which
we are in the habit of considering as being outside of the pale of
medical science, properly so called, and sometimes of coupling with a
disrespectful name. Such has always been my own practice. I have
welcomed Culpeper and Salmon to my bookcase as willingly as Dioscorides
or Quincy, or Paris or Wood and Bache. I have found a place for St. John
Long, and read the story of his trial for manslaughter with as much
interest as the laurel-water case in which John Hunter figured as a
witness. I would give Samuel Hahnemann a place by the side of Samuel
Thomson. Am I not afraid that some student of imaginative turn and not
provided with the needful cerebral strainers without which all the refuse
of gimcrack intelligences gets into the mental drains and chokes them
up,--am I not afraid that some such student will get hold of the
"Organon" or the "Maladies Chroniques" and be won over by their
delusions, and so be lost to those that love him as a man of common sense
and a brother in their high calling? Not in the least. If he showed any
symptoms of infection I would for once have recourse to the principle of
similia similibus. To cure him of Hahnemann I would prescribe my
favorite homoeopathic antidote, Okie's Bonninghausen. If that failed, I
would order Grauvogl as a heroic remedy, and if he survived that uncured,
I would give him my blessing, if I thought him honest, and bid him depart
in peace. For me he is no longer an individual. He belongs to a class of
minds which we are bound to be patient with if their Maker sees fit to
indulge them with existence. We must accept the conjuring
ultra-ritualist, the dreamy second adventist, the erratic spiritualist,
the fantastic homoeopathist, as not unworthy of philosophic study; not
more unworthy of it than the squarers of the circle and the inventors of
perpetual motion, and the other whimsical visionaries to whom De Morgan
has devoted his most instructive and entertaining "Budget of Paradoxes."
I hope, therefore, that our library will admit the works of the so-called
Eclectics, of the Thomsonians, if any are in existence, of the
Clairvoyants, if they have a literature, and especially of the
Homoeopathists. This country seems to be the place for such a
collection, which will by and by be curious and of more value than at
present, for Homoeopathy seems to be following the pathological law of
erysipelas, fading out where it originated as it spreads to new regions.
At least I judge so by the following translated extract from a criticism
of an American work in the "Homoeopatische Rundschau" of Leipzig for
October, 1878, which I find in the "Homoeopathic Bulletin" for the month
of November just passed: "While we feel proud of the spread and rise of
Homoeopathy across the ocean, and while the Homoeopathic works reaching
us from there, and published in a style such as is unknown in Germany,
bear eloquent testimony to the eminent activity of our transatlantic
colleagues, we are overcome by sorrowful regrets at the position
Homoeopathy occupies in Germany. Such a work [as the American one
referred to] with us would be impossible; it would lack the necessary
support."
By all means let our library secure a good representation of the
literature of Homoeopathy before it leaves us its "sorrowful regrets" and
migrates with its sugar of milk pellets, which have taken the place of
the old pilulae micae panis, to Alaska, to "Nova Zembla, or the Lord
knows where."
What shall I say in this presence of the duties of a Librarian? Where
have they ever been better performed than in our own public city library,
where the late Mr. Jewett and the living Mr. Winsor have shown us what a
librarian ought to be,--the organizing head, the vigilant guardian, the
seeker's index, the scholar's counsellor? His work is not merely that of
administration, manifold and laborious as its duties are. He must have a
quick intelligence and a retentive memory. He is a public carrier of
knowledge in its germs. His office is like that which naturalists
attribute to the bumble-bee,--he lays up little honey for himself, but
he conveys the fertilizing pollen from flower to flower.
Our undertaking, just completed,--and just begun--has come at the right
time, not a day too soon. Our practitioners need a library like this,
for with all their skill and devotion there is too little genuine
erudition, such as a liberal profession ought to be able to claim for
many of its members. In reading the recent obituary notices of the late
Dr. Geddings of South Carolina, I recalled what our lamented friend Dr.
Coale used to tell me of his learning and accomplishments, and I could
not help reflecting how few such medical scholars we had to show in
Boston or New England. We must clear up this unilluminated atmosphere,
and here,--here is the true electric light which will irradiate its
darkness.
The public will catch the rays reflected from the same source of light,
and it needs instruction on the great subjects of health and
disease,--needs it sadly. It is preyed upon by every kind of imposition
almost without hindrance. Its ignorance and prejudices react upon the
profession to the great injury of both. The jealous feeling, for
instance, with regard to such provisions for the study of anatomy as are
sanctioned by the laws in this State and carried out with strict regard
to those laws, threatens the welfare, if not the existence of
institutions for medical instruction wherever it is not held in check by
enlightened intelligence. And on the other hand the profession has just
been startled by a verdict against a physician, ruinous in its
amount,--enough to drive many a hard-working young practitioner out of
house and home,--a verdict which leads to the fear that suits for
malpractice may take the place of the panel game and child-stealing as a
means of extorting money. If the profession in this State, which claims
a high standard of civilization, is to be crushed and ground beneath the
upper millstone of the dearth of educational advantages and the lower
millstone of ruinous penalties for what the ignorant ignorantly shall
decide to be ignorance, all I can say is
God save the Commonhealth of Massachusetts!
Once more, we cannot fail to see that just as astrology has given place
to astronomy, so theology, the science of Him whom by searching no man
can find out, is fast being replaced by what we may not improperly call
theonomy, or the science of the laws according to which the Creator acts.
And since these laws find their fullest manifestations for us, at least,
in rational human natures, the study of anthropology is largely replacing
that of scholastic divinity. We must contemplate our Maker indirectly in
human attributes as we talk of Him in human parts of speech. And this
gives a sacredness to the study of man in his physical, mental, moral,
social, and religious nature which elevates the faithful students of
anthropology to the dignity of a priesthood, and sheds a holy light on
the recorded results of their labors, brought together as they are in
such a collection as this which is now spread out before us.
Thus, then, our library is a temple as truly as the dome-crowned
cathedral hallowed by the breath of prayer and praise, where the dead
repose and the living worship. May it, with all its treasures, be
consecrated like that to the glory of God, through the contributions it
shall make to the advancement of sound knowledge, to the relief of human
suffering, to the promotion of harmonious relations between the members
of the two noble professions which deal with the diseases of the soul and
with those of the body, and to the common cause in which all good men are
working, the furtherance of the well-being of their fellow-creatures!
NOTE.--As an illustration of the statement in the last paragraph but one,
I take the following notice from the "Boston Daily Advertiser," of
December 4th, the day after the delivery of the address: "Prince Lucien
Bonaparte is now living in London, and is devoting himself to the work of
collecting the creeds of all religions and sects, with a view to their
classification,--his object being simply scientific or anthropological."
Since delivering the address, also, I find a leading article in the
"Cincinnati Lancet and Clinic" of November 30th, headed "The Decadence of
Homoeopathy," abundantly illustrated by extracts from the "Homoeopathic
Times," the leading American organ of that sect.
In the New York "Medical Record" of the same date, which I had not seen
before the delivery of my address, is an account of the action of the
Homoeopathic Medical Society of Northern New York, in which Hahnemann's
theory of "dynamization" is characterized in a formal resolve as
"unworthy the confidence of the Homoeopathic profession."
It will be a disappointment to the German Homoeopathists to read in the
"Homoeopathic Times" such a statement as the following: "Whatever the
influences have been which have checked the outward development of
Homoeopathy, it is plainly evident that the Homoeopathic school, as
regards the number of its openly avowed representatives, has attained its
majority, and has begun to decline both in this country and in England."
All which is an additional reason for making a collection of the
incredibly curious literature of Homoeopathy before that pseudological
inanity has faded out like so many other delusions.
SOME OF MY EARLY TEACHERS
[A Farewell Address to the Medical School of Harvard University, November
28, 1882.]
I had intended that the recitation of Friday last should be followed by a
few parting words to my class and any friends who might happen to be in
the lecture-room. But I learned on the preceding evening that there was
an expectation, a desire, that my farewell should take a somewhat
different form; and not to disappoint the wishes of those whom I was
anxious to gratify, I made up my mind to appear before you with such
hasty preparation as the scanty time admitted.
There are three occasions upon which a human being has a right to
consider himself as a centre of interest to those about him: when he is
christened, when he is married, and when he is buried. Every one is the
chief personage, the hero, of his own baptism, his own wedding, and his
own funeral.
There are other occasions, less momentous, in which one may make more of
himself than under ordinary circumstances he would think it proper to do;
when he may talk about himself, and tell his own experiences, in fact,
indulge in a more or less egotistic monologue without fear or reproach.
I think I may claim that this is one of those occasions. I have
delivered my last anatomical lecture and heard my class recite for the
last time. They wish to hear from me again in a less scholastic mood
than that in which they have known me. Will you not indulge me in
telling you something of my own story?
This is the thirty-sixth Course of Lectures in which I have taken my
place and performed my duties as Professor of Anatomy. For more than
half of my term of office I gave instruction in Physiology, after the
fashion of my predecessors and in the manner then generally prevalent in
our schools, where the physiological laboratory was not a necessary part
of the apparatus of instruction. It was with my hearty approval that the
teaching of Physiology was constituted a separate department and made an
independent Professorship. Before my time, Dr. Warren had taught
Anatomy, Physiology, and Surgery in the same course of Lectures, lasting
only three or four months. As the boundaries of science are enlarged,
new divisions and subdivisions of its territories become necessary. In
the place of six Professors in 1847, when I first became a member of the
Faculty, I count twelve upon the Catalogue before me, and I find the
whole number engaged in the work of instruction in the Medical School
amounts to no less than fifty.
Since I began teaching in this school, the aspect of many branches of
science has undergone a very remarkable transformation. Chemistry and
Physiology are no longer what they were, as taught by the instructors of
that time. We are looking forward to the synthesis of new organic
compounds; our artificial madder is already in the market, and the
indigo-raisers are now fearing that their crop will be supplanted by the
manufactured article. In the living body we talk of fuel supplied and
work done, in movement, in heat, just as if we were dealing with a
machine of our own contrivance.
A physiological laboratory of to-day is equipped with instruments of
research of such ingenious contrivance, such elaborate construction, that
one might suppose himself in a workshop where some exquisite fabric was
to be wrought, such as Queens love to wear, and Kings do not always love
to pay for. They are, indeed, weaving a charmed web, for these are the
looms from which comes the knowledge that clothes the nakedness of the
intellect. Here are the mills that grind food for its hunger, and "is
not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?"
But while many of the sciences have so changed that the teachers of the
past would hardly know them, it has not been so with the branch I teach,
or, rather, with that division of it which is chiefly taught in this
amphitheatre. General anatomy, or histology, on the other hand, is
almost all new; it has grown up, mainly, since I began my medical
studies. I never saw a compound microscope during my years of study in
Paris. Individuals had begun to use the instrument, but I never heard it
alluded to by either Professors or students. In descriptive anatomy I
have found little to unlearn, and not a great deal that was both new and
important to learn. Trifling additions are made from year to year, not
to be despised and not to be overvalued. Some of the older anatomical
works are still admirable, some of the newer ones very much the contrary.
I have had recent anatomical plates brought me for inspection, and I have
actually button-holed the book-agent, a being commonly as hard to get rid
of as the tar-baby in the negro legend, that I might put him to shame
with the imperial illustrations of the bones and muscles in the great
folio of Albinus, published in 1747, and the unapproached figures of the
lymphatic system of Mascagni, now within a very few years of a century
old, and still copied, or, rather, pretended to be copied, in the most
recent works on anatomy.
I am afraid that it is a good plan to get rid of old Professors, and I am
thankful to hear that there is a movement for making provision for those
who are left in need when they lose their offices and their salaries. I
remember one of our ancient Cambridge Doctors once asked me to get into
his rickety chaise, and said to me, half humorously, half sadly, that he
was like an old horse,--they had taken off his saddle and turned him out
to pasture. I fear the grass was pretty short where that old servant of
the public found himself grazing. If I myself needed an apology for
holding my office so long, I should find it in the fact that human
anatomy is much the same study that it was in the days of Vesalius and
Fallopius, and that the greater part of my teaching was of such a nature
that it could never become antiquated.
Let me begin with my first experience as a medical student. I had come
from the lessons of Judge Story and Mr. Ashmun in the Law School at
Cambridge. I had been busy, more or less, with the pages of Blackstone
and Chitty, and other text-books of the first year of legal study. More
or less, I say, but I am afraid it was less rather than more. For during
that year I first tasted the intoxicating pleasure of authorship. A
college periodical, conducted by friends of mine, still undergraduates,
tempted me into print, and there is no form of lead-poisoning which more
rapidly and thoroughly pervades the blood and bones and marrow than that
which reaches the young author through mental contact with type-metal.
Qui a bu, boira,--he who has once been a drinker will drink again, says
the French proverb. So the man or woman who has tasted type is sure to
return to his old indulgence sooner or later. In that fatal year I had
my first attack of authors' lead-poisoning, and I have never got quite
rid of it from that day to this. But for that I might have applied
myself more diligently to my legal studies, and carried a green bag in
place of a stethoscope and a thermometer up to the present day.
What determined me to give up Law and apply myself to Medicine I can
hardly say, but I had from the first looked upon that year's study as an
experiment. At any rate, I made the change, and soon found myself
introduced to new scenes and new companionships.
I can scarcely credit my memory when I recall the first impressions
produced upon me by sights afterwards become so familiar that they could
no more disturb a pulse-beat than the commonest of every-day experiences.
The skeleton, hung aloft like a gibbeted criminal, looked grimly at me as
I entered the room devoted to the students of the school I had joined,
just as the fleshless figure of Time, with the hour-glass and scythe,
used to glare upon me in my childhood from the "New England Primer." The
white faces in the beds at the Hospital found their reflection in my own
cheeks, which lost their color as I looked upon them. All this had to
pass away in a little time; I had chosen my profession, and must meet its
painful and repulsive aspects until they lost their power over my
sensibilities.
The private medical school which I had joined was one established by Dr.
James Jackson, Dr. Walter Channing, Dr. John Ware, Dr. Winslow Lewis, and
Dr. George W. Otis. Of the first three gentlemen I have either spoken
elsewhere or may find occasion to speak hereafter. The two younger
members of this association of teachers were both graduates of our
University, one of the year 1819, the other of 1818.
Dr. Lewis was a great favorite with students. He was a man of very
lively temperament, fond of old books and young people, open-hearted,
free-spoken, an enthusiast in teaching, and especially at home in that
apartment of the temple of science where nature is seen in undress, the
anthropotomic laboratory, known to common speech as the dissecting-room.
He had that quality which is the special gift of the man born for a
teacher,--the power of exciting an interest in that which he taught.
While he was present the apartment I speak of was the sunniest of studios
in spite of its mortuary spectacles. Of the students I met there I best
remember James Jackson, Junior, full of zeal and playful as a boy, a
young man whose early death was a calamity to the profession of which he
promised to be a chief ornament; the late Reverend J. S. C. Greene, who,
as the prefix to his name signifies, afterwards changed his profession,
but one of whose dissections I remember looking upon with admiration; and
my friend Mr. Charles Amory, as we call him, Dr. Charles Amory, as he is
entitled to be called, then, as now and always, a favorite with all about
him. He had come to us from the schools of Germany, and brought with him
recollections of the teachings of Blumenbach and the elder Langenbeck,
father of him whose portrait hangs in our Museum. Dr. Lewis was our
companion as well as our teacher. A good demonstrator is,--I will not
say as important as a good Professor in the teaching of Anatomy, because
I am not sure that he is not more important. He comes into direct
personal relations with the students,--he is one of them, in fact, as the
Professor cannot be from the nature of his duties. The Professor's chair
is an insulating stool, so to speak; his age, his knowledge, real or
supposed, his official station, are like the glass legs which support the
electrician's piece of furniture, and cut it off from the common currents
of the floor upon which it stands. Dr. Lewis enjoyed teaching and made
his students enjoy being taught. He delighted in those anatomical
conundrums to answer which keeps the student's eyes open and his wits
awake. He was happy as he dexterously performed the tour de maitre of
the old barber-surgeons, or applied the spica bandage and taught his
scholars to do it, so neatly and symmetrically that the aesthetic
missionary from the older centre of civilization would bend over it in
blissful contemplation, as if it were a sunflower. Dr. Lewis had many
other tastes, and was a favorite, not only with students, but in a wide
circle, professional, antiquarian, masonic, and social.
Dr. Otis was less widely known, but was a fluent and agreeable lecturer,
and esteemed as a good surgeon.
I must content myself with this glimpse at myself and a few of my
fellow-students in Boston. After attending two courses of Lectures in
the school of the University, I went to Europe to continue my studies.
You may like to hear something of the famous Professors of Paris in the
days when I was a student in the Ecole de Medicine, and following the
great Hospital teachers.
I can hardly believe my own memory when I recall the old practitioners
and Professors who were still going round the hospitals when I mingled
with the train of students that attended the morning visits. See that
bent old man who is groping his way through the wards of La Charity.
That is the famous Baron Boyer, author of the great work on surgery in
nine volumes, a writer whose clearness of style commends his treatise to
general admiration, and makes it a kind of classic. He slashes away at a
terrible rate, they say, when he gets hold of the subject of fistula in
its most frequent habitat,--but I never saw him do more than look as if
he wanted to cut a good dollop out of a patient he was examining. The
short, square, substantial man with iron-gray hair, ruddy face, and white
apron is Baron Larrey, Napoleon's favorite surgeon, the most honest man
he ever saw,--it is reputed that he called him. To go round the Hotel
des Invalides with Larrey was to live over the campaigns of Napoleon, to
look on the sun of Austerlitz, to hear the cannons of Marengo, to
struggle through the icy waters of the Beresina, to shiver in the snows
of the Russian retreat, and to gaze through the battle smoke upon the
last charge of the red lancers on the redder field of Waterloo. Larrey
was still strong and sturdy as I saw him, and few portraits remain
printed in livelier colors on the tablet of my memory.
Leave the little group of students which gathers about Larrey beneath the
gilded dome of the Invalides and follow me to the Hotel Dieu, where rules
and reigns the master-surgeon of his day, at least so far as Paris and
France are concerned,--the illustrious Baron Dupuytren. No man disputed
his reign, some envied his supremacy. Lisfranc shrugged his shoulders as
he spoke of "ce grand homme de l'autre cots de la riviere," that great
man on the other side of the river, but the great man he remained, until
he bowed before the mandate which none may disobey. "Three times," said
Bouillaud, "did the apoplectic thunderbolt fall on that robust
brain,"--it yielded at last as the old bald cliff that is riven and
crashes down into the valley. I saw him before the first thunderbolt had
descended: a square, solid man, with a high and full-domed head, oracular
in his utterances, indifferent to those around him, sometimes, it was
said, very rough with them. He spoke in low, even tones, with quiet
fluency, and was listened to with that hush of rapt attention which I
have hardly seen in any circle of listeners unless when such men as
ex-President John Quincy Adams or Daniel Webster were the speakers. I do
not think that Dupuytren has left a record which explains his influence,
but in point of fact he dominated those around him in a remarkable
manner. You must have all witnessed something of the same kind. The
personal presence of some men carries command with it, and their accents
silence the crowd around them, when the same words from other lips might
fall comparatively unheeded.
As for Lisfranc, I can say little more of him than that he was a great
drawer of blood and hewer of members. I remember his ordering a
wholesale bleeding of his patients, right and left, whatever might be the
matter with them, one morning when a phlebotomizing fit was on him. I
recollect his regretting the splendid guardsmen of the old Empire,--for
what? because they had such magnificent thighs to amputate. I got along
about as far as that with him, when I ceased to be a follower of M.
Lisfranc.
The name of Velpeau must have reached many of you, for he died in 1867,
and his many works made his name widely known. Coming to Paris in wooden
shoes, starving, almost, at first, he raised himself to great eminence as
a surgeon and as an author, and at last obtained the Professorship to
which his talents and learning entitled him. His example may be an
encouragement to some of my younger hearers who are born, not with the
silver spoon in their mouths, but with the two-tined iron fork in their
hands. It is a poor thing to take up their milk porridge with in their
young days, but in after years it will often transfix the solid dumplings
that roll out of the silver spoon. So Velpeau found it. He had not what
is called genius, he was far from prepossessing in aspect, looking as if
he might have wielded the sledge-hammer (as I think he had done in early
life) rather than the lancet, but he had industry, determination,
intelligence, character, and he made his way to distinction and
prosperity, as some of you sitting on these benches and wondering
anxiously what is to become of you in the struggle for life will have
done before the twentieth century has got halfway through its first
quarter. A good sound head over a pair of wooden shoes is a great deal
better than a wooden head belonging to an owner who cases his feet in
calf-skin, but a good brain is not enough without a stout heart to fill
the four great conduits which carry at once fuel and fire to that
mightiest of engines.
How many of you who are before me are familiarly acquainted with the name
of Broussais, or even with that of Andral? Both were lecturing at the
Ecole de Medicine, and I often heard them. Broussais was in those days
like an old volcano, which has pretty nearly used up its fire and
brimstone, but is still boiling and bubbling in its interior, and now and
then sends up a spirt of lava and a volley of pebbles. His theories of
gastro-enteritis, of irritation and inflammation as the cause of disease,
and the practice which sprang from them, ran over the fields of medicine
for a time like flame over the grass of the prairies. The way in which
that knotty-featured, savage old man would bring out the word
irritation--with rattling and rolling reduplication of the resonant
letter r--might have taught a lesson in articulation to Salvini. But
Broussais's theory was languishing and well-nigh become obsolete, and
this, no doubt, added vehemence to his defence of his cherished dogmas.
Old theories, and old men who cling to them, must take themselves out of
the way as the new generation with its fresh thoughts and altered habits
of mind comes forward to take the place of that which is dying out. This
was a truth which the fiery old theorist found it very hard to learn, and
harder to bear, as it was forced upon him. For the hour of his lecture
was succeeded by that of a younger and far more popular professor. As
his lecture drew towards its close, the benches, thinly sprinkled with
students, began to fill up; the doors creaked open and banged back
oftener and oftener, until at last the sound grew almost continuous, and
the voice of the lecturer became a leonine growl as he strove in vain to
be heard over the noise of doors and footsteps.
Broussais was now sixty-two years old. The new generation had outgrown
his doctrines, and the Professor for whose hour the benches had filled
themselves belonged to that new generation. Gabriel Andral was little
more than half the age of Broussais, in the full prime and vigor of
manhood at thirty-seven years. He was a rapid, fluent, fervid, and
imaginative speaker, pleasing in aspect and manner,--a strong contrast to
the harsh, vituperative old man who had just preceded him. His Clinique
Medicale is still valuable as a collection of cases, and his researches
on the blood, conducted in association with Gavarret, contributed new and
valuable facts to science. But I remember him chiefly as one of those
instructors whose natural eloquence made it delightful to listen to him.
I doubt if I or my fellow-students did full justice either to him or to
the famous physician of Hotel Dieu, Chomel. We had addicted ourselves
almost too closely to the words of another master, by whom we were ready
to swear as against all teachers that ever were or ever would be.
This object of our reverence, I might almost say idolatry, was one whose
name is well known to most of the young men before me, even to those who
may know comparatively little of his works and teachings. Pierre Charles
Alexandre Louis, at the age of forty-seven, as I recall him, was a tall,
rather spare, dignified personage, of serene and grave aspect, but with a
pleasant smile and kindly voice for the student with whom he came into
personal relations. If I summed up the lessons of Louis in two
expressions, they would be these; I do not hold him answerable for the
words, but I will condense them after my own fashion in French, and then
give them to you, expanded somewhat, in English:
Formez toujours des idees nettes.
Fuyez toujours les a peu pres.
Always make sure that you form a distinct and clear idea of the matter
you are considering.
Always avoid vague approximations where exact estimates are possible;
about so many,--about so much, instead of the precise number and
quantity.
Now, if there is anything on which the biological sciences have prided
themselves in these latter years it is the substitution of quantitative
for qualitative formulae. The "numerical system," of which Louis was the
great advocate, if not the absolute originator, was an attempt to
substitute series of carefully recorded facts, rigidly counted and
closely compared, for those never-ending records of vague, unverifiable
conclusions with which the classics of the healing art were overloaded.
The history of practical medicine had been like the story of the
Danaides. "Experience" had been, from time immemorial, pouring its
flowing treasures into buckets full of holes. At the existing rate of
supply and leakage they would never be filled; nothing would ever be
settled in medicine. But cases thoroughly recorded and mathematically
analyzed would always be available for future use, and when accumulated
in sufficient number would lead to results which would be trustworthy,
and belong to science.
You young men who are following the hospitals hardly know how much you
are indebted to Louis. I say nothing of his Researches on Phthisis or
his great work on Typhoid Fever. But I consider his modest and brief
Essay on Bleeding in some Inflammatory Diseases, based on cases carefully
observed and numerically analyzed, one of the most important written
contributions to practical medicine, to the treatment of internal
disease, of this century, if not since the days of Sydenham. The lancet
was the magician's wand of the dark ages of medicine. The old physicians
not only believed in its general efficacy as a wonder-worker in disease,
but they believed that each malady could be successfully attacked from
some special part of the body,--the strategic point which commanded the
seat of the morbid affection. On a figure given in the curious old work
of John de Ketam, no less than thirty-eight separate places are marked as
the proper ones to bleed from, in different diseases. Even Louis, who
had not wholly given up venesection, used now and then to order that a
patient suffering from headache should be bled in the foot, in preference
to any other part.
But what Louis did was this: he showed by a strict analysis of numerous
cases that bleeding did not strangle,--jugulate was the word then
used,--acute diseases, more especially pneumonia. This was not a
reform,--it was a revolution. It was followed up in this country by the
remarkable Discourse of Dr. Jacob Bigelow upon Self-Limited Diseases,
which has, I believe, done more than any other work or essay in our own
language to rescue the practice of medicine from the slavery to the
drugging system which was a part of the inheritance of the profession.
Yes, I say, as I look back on the long hours of the many days I spent in
the wards and in the autopsy room of La Pitie, where Louis was one of the
attending physicians,--yes, Louis did a great work for practical
medicine. Modest in the presence of nature, fearless in the face of
authority, unwearying in the pursuit of truth, he was a man whom any
student might be happy and proud to claim as his teacher and his friend,
and yet, as I look back on the days when I followed his teachings, I feel
that I gave myself up too exclusively to his methods of thought and
study.
There is one part of their business which certain medical practitioners
are too apt to forget; namely, that what they should most of all try to
do is to ward off disease, to alleviate suffering, to preserve life, or
at least to prolong it if possible. It is not of the slightest interest
to the patient to know whether three or three and a quarter cubic inches
of his lung are hepatized. His mind is not occupied with thinking of the
curious problems which are to be solved by his own autopsy,--whether this
or that strand of the spinal marrow is the seat of this or that form of
degeneration. He wants something to relieve his pain, to mitigate the
anguish of dyspnea, to bring back motion and sensibility to the dead
limb, to still the tortures of neuralgia. What is it to him that you can
localize and name by some uncouth term the disease which you could not
prevent and which you cannot cure? An old woman who knows how to make a
poultice and how to put it on, and does it tuto, eito, jucunde, just when
and where it is wanted, is better,--a thousand times better in many
cases,--than a staring pathologist, who explores and thumps and doubts
and guesses, and tells his patient be will be better tomorrow, and so
goes home to tumble his books over and make out a diagnosis.
But in those days, I, like most of my fellow students, was thinking much
more of "science" than of practical medicine, and I believe if we had not
clung so closely to the skirts of Louis and had followed some of the
courses of men like Trousseau,--therapeutists, who gave special attention
to curative methods, and not chiefly to diagnosis,--it would have been
better for me and others. One thing, at any rate, we did learn in the
wards of Louis. We learned that a very large proportion of diseases get
well of themselves, without any special medication,--the great fact
formulated, enforced, and popularized by Dr. Jacob Bigelow in the
Discourse referred to. We unlearned the habit of drugging for its own
sake. This detestable practice, which I was almost proscribed for
condemning somewhat too epigrammatically a little more than twenty years
ago, came to us, I suspect, in a considerable measure from the English
"general practitioners," a sort of prescribing apothecaries. You
remember how, when the city was besieged, each artisan who was called
upon in council to suggest the best means of defence recommended the
articles he dealt in: the carpenter, wood; the blacksmith, iron; the
mason, brick; until it came to be a puzzle to know which to adopt. Then
the shoemaker said, "Hang your walls with new boots," and gave good
reasons why these should be the best of all possible defences. Now the
"general practitioner" charged, as I understand, for his medicine, and
in that way got paid for his visit. Wherever this is the practice,
medicine is sure to become a trade, and the people learn to expect
drugging, and to consider it necessary, because drugs are so universally
given to the patients of the man who gets his living by them.
It was something to have unlearned the pernicious habit of constantly
giving poisons to a patient, as if they were good in themselves, of
drawing off the blood which he would want in his struggle with disease,
of making him sore and wretched with needless blisters, of turning his
stomach with unnecessary nauseous draught and mixtures,--only because he
was sick and something must be done. But there were positive as well as
negative facts to be learned, and some of us, I fear, came home rich in
the negatives of the expectant practice, poor in the resources which many
a plain country practitioner had ready in abundance for the relief and
the cure of disease. No one instructor can be expected to do all for a
student which he requires. Louis taught us who followed him the love of
truth, the habit of passionless listening to the teachings of nature, the
most careful and searching methods of observation, and the sure means of
getting at the results to be obtained from them in the constant
employment of accurate tabulation. He was not a showy, or eloquent, or,
I should say, a very generally popular man, though the favorite, almost
the idol, of many students, especially Genevese and Bostonians. But he
was a man of lofty and admirable scientific character, and his work will
endure in its influences long after his name is lost sight of save to the
faded eyes of the student of medical literature.
Many other names of men more or less famous in their day, and who were
teaching while I was in Paris, come up before me. They are but empty
sounds for the most part in the ears of persons of not more than middle
age. Who of you knows anything of Richerand, author of a very popular
work on Physiology, commonly put into the student's hands when I first
began to ask for medical text-books? I heard him lecture once, and have
had his image with me ever since as that of an old, worn-out man,--a
venerable but dilapidated relic of an effete antiquity. To verify this
impression I have just looked out the dates of his birth and death, and
find that he was eighteen years younger than the speaker who is now
addressing you. There is a terrible parallax between the period before
thirty and that after threescore and ten, as two men of those ages look,
one with naked eyes, one through his spectacles, at the man of fifty and
thereabout. Magendie, I doubt not you have all heard of. I attended but
one of his lectures. I question if one here, unless some contemporary of
my own has strayed into the amphitheatre,--knows anything about Marjolin.
I remember two things about his lectures on surgery, the deep tones of
his voice as he referred to his oracle,--the earlier writer, Jean Louis
Petit,--and his formidable snuffbox. What he taught me lies far down, I
doubt not, among the roots of my knowledge, but it does not flower out in
any noticeable blossoms, or offer me any very obvious fruits. Where now
is the fame of Bouillaud, Professor and Deputy, the Sangrado of his time?
Where is the renown of Piorry, percussionist and poet, expert alike in
the resonances of the thoracic cavity and those of the rhyming
vocabulary?--I think life has not yet done with the vivacious Ricord,
whom I remember calling the Voltaire of pelvic literature,--a sceptic as
to the morality of the race in general, who would have submitted Diana to
treatment with his mineral specifics, and ordered a course of blue pills
for the vestal virgins.
Ricord was born at the beginning of the century, and Piorry some years
earlier. Cruveilhier, who died in 1874, is still remembered by his great
work on pathological anatomy; his work on descriptive anatomy has some
things which I look in vain for elsewhere. But where is Civiale,--where
are Orfila, Gendrin, Rostan, Biett, Alibert,--jolly old Baron Alibert,
whom I remember so well in his broad-brimmed hat, worn a little jauntily
on one side, calling out to the students in the court-yard of the
Hospital St. Louis, "Enfans de la methode naturelle, etes-vous tous
ici?" "Children of the natural method [his own method of classification
of skin diseases,] are you all here?" All here, then, perhaps; all
where, now?
My show of ghosts is over. It is always the same story that old men tell
to younger ones, some few of whom will in their turn repeat the tale,
only with altered names, to their children's children.
Like phantoms painted on the magic slide,
Forth from the darkness of the past we glide,
As living shadows for a moment seen
In airy pageant on the eternal screen,
Traced by a ray from one unchanging flame,
Then seek the dust and stillness whence we came.
Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, whom I well remember, came back from Leyden,
where he had written his Latin graduating thesis, talking of the learned
Gaubius and the late illustrious Boerhaave and other dead Dutchmen, of
whom you know as much, most of you, as you do of Noah's apothecary and
the family physician of Methuselah, whose prescriptions seem to have been
lost to posterity. Dr. Lloyd came back to Boston full of the teachings
of Cheselden and Sharpe, William Hunter, Smellie, and Warner; Dr. James
Jackson loved to tell of Mr. Cline and to talk of Mr. John Hunter; Dr.
Reynolds would give you his recollections of Sir Astley Cooper and Mr.
Abernethy; I have named the famous Frenchmen of my student days; Leyden,
Edinburgh, London, Paris, were each in turn the Mecca of medical
students, just as at the present day Vienna and Berlin are the centres
where our young men crowd for instruction. These also must sooner or
later yield their precedence and pass the torch they hold to other hands.
Where shall it next flame at the head of the long procession? Shall it
find its old place on the shores of the Gulf of Salerno, or shall it
mingle its rays with the northern aurora up among the fiords of
Norway,--or shall it be borne across the Atlantic and reach the banks of
the Charles, where Agassiz and Wyman have taught, where Hagen still
teaches, glowing like his own Lampyris splendidula, with enthusiasm,
where the first of American botanists and the ablest of American surgeons
are still counted in the roll of honor of our great University?
Let me add a few words which shall not be other than cheerful, as I bid
farewell to this edifice which I have known so long. I am grateful to
the roof which has sheltered me, to the floors which have sustained me,
though I have thought it safest always to abstain from anything like
eloquence, lest a burst of too emphatic applause might land my class and
myself in the cellar of the collapsing structure, and bury us in the fate
of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. I have helped to wear these stairs into
hollows,--stairs which I trod when they were smooth and level, fresh from
the plane. There are just thirty-two of them, as there were five and
thirty years ago, but they are steeper and harder to climb, it seems to
me, than they were then. I remember that in the early youth of this
building, the late Dr. John K. Mitchell, father of our famous Dr. Weir
Mitchell, said to me as we came out of the Demonstrator's room, that some
day or other a whole class would go heels over head down this graded
precipice, like the herd told of in Scripture story. This has never
happened as yet; I trust it never will. I have never been proud of the
apartment beneath the seats, in which my preparations for lecture were
made. But I chose it because I could have it to myself, and I resign it,
with a wish that it were more worthy of regret, into the hands of my
successor, with my parting benediction. Within its twilight precincts I
have often prayed for light, like Ajax, for the daylight found scanty
entrance, and the gaslight never illuminated its dark recesses. May it
prove to him who comes after me like the cave of the Sibyl, out of the
gloomy depths of which came the oracles which shone with the rays of
truth and wisdom!
This temple of learning is not surrounded by the mansions of the great
and the wealthy. No stately avenues lead up to its facades and
porticoes. I have sometimes felt, when convoying a distinguished
stranger through its precincts to its door, that he might question
whether star-eyed Science had not missed her way when she found herself
in this not too attractive locality. I cannot regret that we--you, I
should say--are soon to migrate to a more favored region, and carry on
your work as teachers and as learners in ampler halls and under far more
favorable conditions.
I hope that I may have the privilege of meeting you there, possibly may
be allowed to add my words of welcome to those of my former colleagues,
and in that pleasing anticipation I bid good-by to this scene of my long
labors, and, for the present at least, to the friends with whom I have
been associated.
APPENDUM
NOTES TO THE ADDRESS ON CURRENTS AND COUNTER
CURRENTS IN MEDICAL SCIENCE.
Some passages contained in the original manuscript of the Address, and
omitted in the delivery on account of its length, are restored in the
text or incorporated with these Notes.
NOTE A.--
There is good reason to doubt whether the nitrate of silver has any real
efficacy in epilepsy. It has seemed to cure many cases, but epilepsy is
a very uncertain disease, and there is hardly anything which has not been
supposed to cure it. Dr. Copland cites many authorities in its favor,
most especially Lombard's cases. But De la Berge and Monneret (Comp. de
Med. Paris), 1839, analyze these same cases, eleven in number, and can
only draw the inference of a very questionable value in the supposed
remedy. Dr. James Jackson says that relief of epilepsy is not to be
attained by any medicine with which he is acquainted, but by diet.
(Letters to a Young Physician, p. 67.) Guy Patin, Dean of the Faculty of
Paris, Professor at the Royal College, Author of the Antimonial
Martyrology, a wit and a man of sense and learning, who died almost two
hundred years ago, had come to the same conclusion, though the chemists
of his time boasted of their remedies. "Did, you ever see a case of
epilepsy cured by nitrate of silver?" I said to one of the oldest and
most experienced surgeons in this country. "Never," was his instant
reply. Dr. Twitchell's experience was very similar. How, then, did
nitrate of silver come to be given for epilepsy? Because, as Dr. Martin
has so well reminded us, lunatics were considered formerly to be under
the special influence of Luna, the moon (which Esquirol, be it observed,
utterly denies), and lunar caustic, or nitrate of silver, is a salt of
that metal which was called luna from its whiteness, and of course must
be in the closest relations with the moon. It follows beyond all
reasonable question that the moon's metal, silver, and its preparations,
must be the specific remedy for moonblasted maniacs and epileptics!
Yet the practitioner who prescribes the nitrate of silver supposes he is
guided by the solemn experience of the past, instead of by its idle
fancies. He laughs at those old physicians who placed such confidence in
the right hind hoof of an elk as a remedy for the same disease, and
leaves the record of his own belief in a treatment quite as fanciful and
far more objectionable, written in indelible ink upon a living tablet
where he who runs may read it for a whole generation, if nature spares
his walking advertisement so long.
NOTE B.--
The presumption that a man is innocent until he is proved guilty, does
not mean that there are no rogues, but lays the onus probandi on the
party to which it properly belongs. So with this proposition. A noxious
agent should never be employed in sickness unless there is ample evidence
in the particular case to overcome the general presumption against all
such agents, and the evidence is very apt to be defective.
The miserable delusion of Homoeopathy builds itself upon an axiom
directly the opposite of this; namely, that the sick are to be cured by
poisons. Similia similibus curantur means exactly this. It is simply a
theory of universal poisoning, nullified in practice by the infinitesimal
contrivance. The only way to kill it and all similar fancies, and to
throw every quack nostrum into discredit, is to root out completely the
suckers of the old rotten superstition that whatever is odious or noxious
is likely to be good for disease. The current of sound practice with
ourselves is, I believe, setting fast in the direction I have indicated
in the above proposition. To uphold the exhibition of noxious agents in
disease, as the rule, instead of admitting them cautiously and
reluctantly as the exception, is, as I think, an eddy of opinion in the
direction of the barbarism out of which we believe our art is escaping.
It is only through the enlightened sentiment and action of the Medical
Profession that the community can be brought to acknowledge that drugs
should always be regarded as evils.
It is true that some suppose, and our scientific and thoughtful
associate, Dr. Gould, has half countenanced the opinion, that there may
yet be discovered a specific for every disease. Let us not despair of
the future, but let us be moderate in our expectations. When an oil is
discovered that will make a bad watch keep good time; when a recipe is
given which will turn an acephalous foetus into a promising child; when a
man can enter the second time into his mother's womb and give her back
the infirmities which twenty generations have stirred into her blood, and
infused into his own through hers, we may be prepared to enlarge the
National Pharmacopoeia with a list of specifies for everything but old
age,--and possibly for that also.
NOTE C.--
The term specific is used here in its ordinary sense, without raising the
question of the propriety of its application to these or other remedies.
The credit of introducing Cinchona rests between the Jesuits, the
Countess of Chinchon, the Cardinal de Lugo, and Sir Robert Talbor, who
employed it as a secret remedy. (Pereira.) Mercury as an internal
specific remedy was brought into use by that impudent and presumptuous
quack, as he was considered, Paracelsus. (Encyc. Brit. art.
"Paracelsus.") Arsenic was introduced into England as a remedy for
intermittents by Dr. Fowler, in consequence of the success of a patent
medicine, the Tasteless Ague Drops, which were supposed, "probably with
reason," to be a preparation of that mineral. (Rees's Cyc. art.
"Arsenic.") Colchicum came into notice in a similar way, from the
success of the Eau Medicinale of M. Husson, a French military officer.
(Pereira.) Iodine was discovered by a saltpetre manufacturer, but applied
by a physician in place of the old remedy, burnt sponge, which seems to
owe its efficacy to it. (Dunglison, New Remedies.) As for Sulphur, "the
common people have long used it as an ointment" for scabies. (Rees's
Cyc. art. "Scabies.") The modern cantiscorbutic regimen is credited to
Captain Cook. "To his sagacity we are indebted for the first impulse to
those regulations by which scorbutus is so successfully prevented in our
navy." (Lond. Cyc. Prac. Med. art. "Scorbutus.") Iron and various
salts which enter into the normal composition of the human body do not
belong to the materia medica by our definition, but to the materia
alimentaria.
For the first introduction of iron as a remedy, see Pereira, who gives a
very curious old story.
The statement in the text concerning a portion of the materia medica
stands exactly as delivered, and is meant exactly as it stands. No
denunciation of drugs, as sparingly employed by a wise physician, was or
is intended. If, however, as Dr. Gould stated in his "valuable and
practical discourse" to which the Massachusetts Medical Society "listened
with profit as well as interest," "Drugs, in themselves considered, may
always be regarded as evils,"--any one who chooses may question whether
the evils from their abuse are, on the whole, greater or less than the
undoubted benefits obtained from their proper use. The large exception
of opium, wine, specifics, and anaesthetics, made in the text, takes off
enough from the useful side, as I fully believe, to turn the balance; so
that a vessel containing none of these, but loaded with antimony,
strychnine, acetate of lead, aloes, aconite, lobelia, lapis infernalis,
stercus diaboli, tormentilla, and other approved, and, in skilful hands,
really useful remedies, brings, on the whole, more harm than good to the
port it enters.
It is a very narrow and unjust view of the practice of medicine, to
suppose it to consist altogether in the use of powerful drugs, or of
drugs of any kind. Far from it. "The physician may do very much for the
welfare of the sick, more than others can do, although he does not, even
in the major part of cases, undertake to control and overcome the disease
by art. It was with these views that I never reported any patient cured
at our hospital. Those who recovered their health were reported as well;
not implying that they were made so by the active treatment they had
received there. But it was to be understood that all patients received
in that house were to be cured, that is, taken care of." (Letters to a
Young Physician, by James Jackson, M. D., Boston, 1855.)
"Hygienic rules, properly enforced, fresh air, change of air, travel,
attention to diet, good and appropriate food judiciously regulated,
together with the administration of our tonics, porter, ale, wine, iron,
etc., supply the diseased or impoverished system with what Mr. Gull, of
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, aptly calls the 'raw material of the blood;'
and we believe that if any real improvement has taken place in medical
practice, independently of those truly valuable contributions we have
before described, it is in the substitution of tonics, stimulants, and
general management, for drastic cathartics, for bleeding, depressing
agents, including mercury, tartar emetics, etc., so much in vogue during
the early part even of this century." (F. P. Porcher, in Charleston Med.
Journal and Review for January, 1860.) 1860.)
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
A MEMOIR, Complete
By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Volume I.
NOTE.
The Memoir here given to the public is based on a biographical sketch
prepared by the writer at the request of the Massachusetts Historical
Society for its Proceedings. The questions involving controversies into
which the Society could not feel called to enter are treated at
considerable length in the following pages. Many details are also given
which would have carried the paper written for the Society beyond the
customary limits of such tributes to the memory of its deceased members.
It is still but an outline which may serve a present need and perhaps be
of some assistance to a future biographer.
I.
1814-1827. To AEt. 13.
BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS.
John Motley, the great-grandfather of the subject of this Memoir, came in
the earlier part of the last century from Belfast in Ireland to Falmouth,
now Portland, in the District, now the State of Maine. He was twice
married, and had ten children, four of the first marriage and six of the
last. Thomas, the youngest son by his first wife, married Emma, a
daughter of John Wait, the first Sheriff of Cumberland County under the
government of the United States. Two of their seven sons, Thomas and
Edward, removed from Portland to Boston in 1802 and established
themselves as partners in commercial business, continuing united and
prosperous for nearly half a century before the firm was dissolved.
The earlier records of New England have preserved the memory of an
incident which deserves mention as showing how the historian's life was
saved by a quickwitted handmaid, more than a hundred years before he was
born. On the 29th of August, 1708, the French and Indians from Canada
made an attack upon the town of Haverhill, in Massachusetts. Thirty or
forty persons were slaughtered, and many others were carried captive into
Canada.
The minister of the town, Rev. Benjamin Rolfe, was killed by a bullet
through the door of his house. Two of his daughters, Mary, aged thirteen,
and Elizabeth, aged nine, were sleeping in a room with the maid-servant,
Hagar. When Hagar heard the whoop of the savages she seized the children,
ran with them into the cellar, and, after concealing them under two large
washtubs, hid herself. The Indians ransacked the cellar, but missed the
prey. Elizabeth, the younger of the two girls, grew up and married the
Rev. Samuel Checkley, first minister of the "New South" Church, Boston.
Her son, Rev. Samuel Checkley, Junior, was minister of the Second Church,
and his successor, Rev. John Lothrop, or Lathrop, as it was more commonly
spelled, married his daughter. Dr. Lothrop was great-grandson of Rev.
John Lothrop, of Scituate, who had been imprisoned in England for
nonconformity. The Checkleys were from Preston Capes, in
Northamptonshire. The name is probably identical with that of the
Chicheles or Chichleys, a well-known Northamptonshire family.
Thomas Motley married Anna, daughter of the Rev. John Lothrop,
granddaughter of the Rev. Samuel Checkley, Junior, the two ministers
mentioned above, both honored in their day and generation. Eight children
were born of this marriage, of whom four are still living.
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, the second of these children, was born in
Dorchester, now a part of Boston, Massachusetts, on the 15th of April,
1814. A member of his family gives a most pleasing and interesting
picture, from his own recollections and from what his mother told him, of
the childhood which was to develop into such rich maturity. The boy was
rather delicate in organization, and not much given to outdoor
amusements, except skating and swimming, of which last exercise he was
very fond in his young days, and in which he excelled. He was a great
reader, never idle, but always had a book in his hand,--a volume of
poetry or one of the novels of Scott or Cooper. His fondness for plays
and declamation is illustrated by the story told by a younger brother,
who remembers being wrapped up in a shawl and kept quiet by sweetmeats,
while he figured as the dead Caesar, and his brother, the future
historian, delivered the speech of Antony over his prostrate body. He was
of a most sensitive nature, easily excited, but not tenacious of any
irritated feelings, with a quick sense of honor, and the most entirely
truthful child, his mother used to say, that she had ever seen. Such are
some of the recollections of those who knew him in his earliest years and
in the most intimate relations.
His father's family was at this time living in the house No. 7 Walnut
Street, looking down Chestnut Street over the water to the western hills.
Near by, at the corner of Beacon Street, was the residence of the family
of the first mayor of Boston, and at a little distance from the opposite
corner was the house of one of the fathers of New England manufacturing
enterprise, a man of superior intellect, who built up a great name and
fortune in our city. The children from these three homes naturally became
playmates. Mr. Motley's house was a very hospitable one, and Lothrop and
two of his young companions were allowed to carry out their schemes of
amusement in the garden and the garret. If one with a prescient glance
could have looked into that garret on some Saturday afternoon while our
century was not far advanced in its second score of years, he might have
found three boys in cloaks and doublets and plumed hats, heroes and
bandits, enacting more or less impromptu melodramas. In one of the boys
he would have seen the embryo dramatist of a nation's life history, John
Lothrop Motley; in the second, a famous talker and wit who has spilled
more good things on the wasteful air in conversation than would carry a
"diner-out" through half a dozen London seasons, and waked up somewhat
after the usual flowering-time of authorship to find himself a very
agreeable and cordially welcomed writer,--Thomas Gold Appleton. In the
third he would have recognized a champion of liberty known wherever that
word is spoken, an orator whom to hear is to revive all the traditions of
the grace, the address, the commanding sway of the silver-tongued
eloquence of the most renowned speakers,--Wendell Phillips.
Both of young Motley's playmates have furnished me with recollections of
him and of those around him at this period of his life, and I cannot do
better than borrow freely from their communications. His father was a man
of decided character, social, vivacious, witty, a lover of books, and
himself not unknown as a writer, being the author of one or more of the
well remembered "Jack Downing" letters. He was fond of having the boys
read to him from such authors as Channing and Irving, and criticised
their way of reading with discriminating judgment and taste. Mrs. Motley
was a woman who could not be looked upon without admiration. I remember
well the sweet dignity of her aspect, her "regal beauty," as Mr. Phillips
truly styles it, and the charm of her serene and noble presence, which
made her the type of a perfect motherhood. Her character corresponded to
the promise of her gracious aspect. She was one of the fondest of
mothers, but not thoughtlessly indulgent to the boy from whom she hoped
and expected more than she thought it wise to let him know. The story
used to be current that in their younger days this father and mother were
the handsomest pair the town of Boston could show. This son of theirs was
"rather tall," says Mr. Phillips, "lithe, very graceful in movement and
gesture, and there was something marked and admirable in the set of his
head on his shoulders,"--a peculiar elegance which was most noticeable in
those later days when I knew him. Lady Byron long afterwards spoke of him
as more like her husband in appearance than any other person she had met;
but Mr. Phillips, who remembers the first bloom of his boyhood and youth,
thinks he was handsomer than any portrait of Byron represents the poet.
"He could not have been eleven years old," says the same correspondent,
"when he began writing a novel. It opened, I remember, not with one
solitary horseman, but with two, riding up to an inn in the valley of the
Housatonic. Neither of us had ever seen the Housatonic, but it sounded
grand and romantic. Two chapters were finished."
There is not much remembered of the single summer he passed at Mr.
Green's school at Jamaica Plain. From that school he went to Round Hill,
Northampton, then under the care of Mr. Cogswell and Mr. Bancroft. The
historian of the United States could hardly have dreamed that the
handsome boy of ten years was to take his place at the side of his
teacher in the first rank of writers in his own department. Motley came
to Round Hill, as one of his schoolmates tells me, with a great
reputation, especially as a declaimer. He had a remarkable facility for
acquiring languages, excelled as a reader and as a writer, and was the
object of general admiration for his many gifts. There is some reason to
think that the flattery he received was for a time a hindrance to his
progress and the development of his character. He obtained praise too
easily, and learned to trust too much to his genius. He had everything to
spoil him,--beauty, precocious intelligence, and a personal charm which
might have made him a universal favorite. Yet he does not seem to have
been generally popular at this period of his life. He was wilful,
impetuous, sometimes supercilious, always fastidious. He would study as
he liked, and not by rule. His school and college mates believed in his
great possibilities through all his forming period, but it may be doubted
if those who counted most confidently on his future could have supposed
that he would develop the heroic power of concentration, the
long-breathed tenacity of purpose, which in after years gave effect to
his brilliant mental endowments. "I did wonder," says Mr. Wendell
Phillips, "at the diligence and painstaking, the drudgery shown in his
historical works. In early life he had no industry, not needing it. All
he cared for in a book he caught quickly,--the spirit of it, and all his
mind needed or would use. This quickness of apprehension was marvellous."
I do not find from the recollections of his schoolmates at Northampton
that he was reproached for any grave offences, though he may have
wandered beyond the prescribed boundaries now and then, and studied
according to his inclinations rather than by rule. While at that school
he made one acquisition much less common then than now,--a knowledge of
the German language and some degree of acquaintance with its literature,
under the guidance of one of the few thorough German scholars this
country then possessed, Mr. George Bancroft.
II.
1827-1831. AEt. 13-17.
COLLEGE LIFE.
Such then was the boy who at the immature, we might almost say the
tender, age of thirteen entered Harvard College. Though two years after
me in college standing, I remember the boyish reputation which he brought
with him, especially that of a wonderful linguist, and the impression
which his striking personal beauty produced upon us as he took his seat
in the college chapel. But it was not until long after this period that I
became intimately acquainted with him, and I must again have recourse to
the classmates and friends who have favored me with their reminiscences
of this period of his life. Mr. Phillips says:
"During our first year in college, though the youngest in the class,
he stood third, I think, or second in college rank, and ours was an
especially able class. Yet to maintain this rank he neither cared
nor needed to make any effort. Too young to feel any
responsibilities, and not yet awake to any ambition, he became so
negligent that he was 'rusticated' [that is, sent away from college
for a time]. He came back sobered, and worked rather more, but with
no effort for college rank thenceforward."
I must finish the portrait of the collegian with all its lights and
shadows by the help of the same friends from whom I have borrowed the
preceding outlines.
He did not care to make acquaintances, was haughty in manner and cynical
in mood, at least as he appeared to those in whom he felt no special
interest. It is no wonder, therefore, that he was not a popular favorite,
although recognized as having very brilliant qualities. During all this
period his mind was doubtless fermenting with projects which kept him in
a fevered and irritable condition. "He had a small writing-table," Mr.
Phillips says, "with a shallow drawer; I have often seen it half full of
sketches, unfinished poems, soliloquies, a scene or two of a play, prose
portraits of some pet character, etc. These he would read to me, though
he never volunteered to do so, and every now and then he burnt the whole
and began to fill the drawer again."
My friend, Mr. John Osborne Sargent, who was a year before him in
college, says, in a very interesting letter with which he has favored me:
"My first acquaintance with him [Motley] was at Cambridge, when he
came from Mr. Cogswell's school at Round Hill. He then had a good
deal of the shyness that was just pronounced enough to make him
interesting, and which did not entirely wear off till he left
college. . . I soon became acquainted with him, and we used to take
long walks together, sometimes taxing each other's memory for poems
or passages from poems that had struck our fancy. Shelley was then
a great favorite of his, and I remember that Praed's verses then
appearing in the 'New Monthly' he thought very clever and brilliant,
and was fond of repeating them. You have forgotten, or perhaps
never knew, that Motley's first appearance in print was in the
'Collegian.' He brought me one day, in a very modest mood, a
translation from Goethe, which I was most happy to oblige him by
inserting. It was very prettily done, and will now be a curiosity.
. . . How it happened that Motley wrote only one piece I do not
remember. I had the pleasure about that time of initiating him as a
member of the Knights of the Square Table,--always my favorite
college club, for the reason, perhaps, that I was a sometime Grand
Master. He was always a genial and jovial companion at our supper-
parties at Fresh Pond and Gallagher's."
We who live in the days of photographs know how many faces belong to
every individual. We know too under what different aspects the same
character appears to those who study it from different points of view and
with different prepossessions. I do not hesitate, therefore, to place
side by side the impressions of two of his classmates as to one of his
personal traits as they observed him at this period of his youth.
"He was a manly boy, with no love for or leaning to girls' company;
no care for dress; not a trace of personal vanity. . . . He was,
or at least seemed, wholly unconscious of his rare beauty and of the
fascination of his manner; not a trace of pretence, the simplest and
most natural creature in the world."
Look on that picture and on this:--
"He seemed to have a passion for dress. But as in everything else,
so in this, his fancy was a fitful one. At one time he would excite
our admiration by the splendor of his outfit, and perhaps the next
week he would seem to take equal pleasure in his slovenly or
careless appearance."
It is not very difficult to reconcile these two portraitures. I recollect
it was said by a witty lady of a handsome clergyman well remembered among
us, that he had dressy eyes. Motley so well became everything he wore,
that if he had sprung from his bed and slipped his clothes on at an alarm
of fire, his costume would have looked like a prince's undress. His
natural presentment, like that of Count D'Orsay, was of the kind which
suggests the intentional effects of an elaborate toilet, no matter how
little thought or care may have been given to make it effective. I think
the "passion for dress" was really only a seeming, and that he often
excited admiration when he had not taken half the pains to adorn himself
that many a youth less favored by nature has wasted upon his unblest
exterior only to be laughed at.
I gather some other interesting facts from a letter which I have received
from his early playmate and school and college classmate, Mr. T. G.
Appleton.
"In his Sophomore year he kept abreast of the prescribed studies,
but his heart was out of bounds, as it often had been at Round Hill
when chasing squirrels or rabbits through forbidden forests.
Already his historical interest was shaping his life. A tutor
coming-by chance, let us hope--to his room remonstrated with him
upon the heaps of novels upon his table.
"'Yes,' said Motley, 'I am reading historically, and have come to the
novels of the nineteenth century. Taken in the lump, they are very hard
reading.'"
All Old Cambridge people know the Brattle House, with its gambrel roof,
its tall trees, its perennial spring, its legendary fame of good fare and
hospitable board in the days of the kindly old bon vivant, Major Brattle.
In this house the two young students, Appleton and Motley, lived during a
part of their college course.
"Motley's room was on the ground floor, the room to the left of the
entrance. He led a very pleasant life there, tempering his college
duties with the literature he loved, and receiving his friends
amidst elegant surroundings, which added to the charm of his
society. Occasionally we amused ourselves by writing for the
magazines and papers of the day. Mr. Willis had just started a slim
monthly, written chiefly by himself, but with the true magazine
flavor. We wrote for that, and sometimes verses in the corner of a
paper called 'The Anti-Masonic Mirror,' and in which corner was a
woodcut of Apollo, and inviting to destruction ambitious youths by
the legend underneath,--
'Much yet remains unsung.'
These pieces were usually dictated to each other, the poet recumbent
upon the bed and a classmate ready to carry off the manuscript for
the paper of the following day. 'Blackwood's' was then in its
glory, its pages redolent of 'mountain dew' in every sense; the
humor of the Shepherd, the elegantly brutal onslaughts upon Whigs
and Cockney poets by Christopher North, intoxicated us youths.
"It was young writing, and made for the young. The opinions were
charmingly wrong, and its enthusiasm was half Glenlivet. But this
delighted the boys. There were no reprints then, and to pass the
paper-cutter up the fresh inviting pages was like swinging over the
heather arm in arm with Christopher himself. It is a little
singular that though we had a college magazine of our own, Motley
rarely if ever wrote for it. I remember a translation from Goethe,
'The Ghost-Seer,' which he may have written for it, and a poem upon
the White Mountains. Motley spoke at one of the college exhibitions
an essay on Goethe so excellent that Mr. Joseph Cogswell sent it to
Madam Goethe, who, after reading it, said, 'I wish to see the first
book that young man will write.'"
Although Motley did not aim at or attain a high college rank, the rules
of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, which confine the number of members to the
first sixteen of each class, were stretched so as to include him,--a
tribute to his recognized ability, and an evidence that a distinguished
future was anticipated for him.
III.
1832-1833. AEt. 18-19.
STUDY AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE.
Of the two years divided between the Universities of Berlin and Gottingen
I have little to record. That he studied hard I cannot doubt; that he
found himself in pleasant social relations with some of his
fellow-students seems probable from the portraits he has drawn in his
first story, "Morton's Hope," and is rendered certain so far as one of
his companions is concerned. Among the records of the past to which he
referred during his last visit to this country was a letter which he took
from a collection of papers and handed me to read one day when I was
visiting him. The letter was written in a very lively and exceedingly
familiar vein. It implied such intimacy, and called up in such a lively
way the gay times Motley and himself had had together in their youthful
days, that I was puzzled to guess who could have addressed him from
Germany in that easy and off-hand fashion. I knew most of his old friends
who would be likely to call him by his baptismal name in its most
colloquial form, and exhausted my stock of guesses unsuccessfully before
looking at the signature. I confess that I was surprised, after laughing
at the hearty and almost boyish tone of the letter, to read at the bottom
of the page the signature of Bismarck. I will not say that I suspect
Motley of having drawn the portrait of his friend in one of the
characters of "Morton's Hope," but it is not hard to point out traits in
one of them which we can believe may have belonged to the great
Chancellor at an earlier period of life than that at which the world
contemplates his overshadowing proportions.
Hoping to learn something of Motley during the two years while we had
lost sight of him, I addressed a letter to His Highness Prince Bismarck,
to which I received the following reply:--
FOREIGN OFFICE, BERLIN, March 11, 1878.
SIR,--I am directed by Prince Bismarck to acknowledge the receipt of
your letter of the 1st of January, relating to the biography of the
late Mr. Motley. His Highness deeply regrets that the state of his
health and pressure of business do not allow him to contribute
personally, and as largely as he would be delighted to do, to your
depicting of a friend whose memory will be ever dear to him. Since
I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr. Motley at
Varzin, I have been intrusted with communicating to you a few
details I have gathered from the mouth of the Prince. I enclose
them as they are jotted down, without any attempt of digestion.
I have the honor to be
Your obedient servant,
LOTHAIR BUCHER.
"Prince Bismarck said:--
"'I met Motley at Gottingen in 1832, I am not sure if at the
beginning of Easter Term or Michaelmas Term. He kept company with
German students, though more addicted to study than we members of
the fighting clubs (corps). Although not having mastered yet the
German language, he exercised a marked attraction by a conversation
sparkling with wit, humor, and originality. In autumn of 1833,
having both of us migrated from Gottingen to Berlin for the
prosecution of our studies, we became fellow-lodgers in the house
No. 161 Friedrich Strasse. There we lived in the closest intimacy,
sharing meals and outdoor exercise. Motley by that time had arrived
at talking German fluently; he occupied himself not only in
translating Goethe's poem "Faust," but tried his hand even in
composing German verses. Enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare,
Byron, Goethe, he used to spice his conversation abundantly with
quotations from these his favorite authors. A pertinacious arguer,
so much so that sometimes he watched my awakening in order to
continue a discussion on some topic of science, poetry, or practical
life, cut short by the chime of the small hours, he never lost his
mild and amiable temper. Our faithful companion was Count Alexander
Keyserling, a native of Courland, who has since achieved distinction
as a botanist.
"'Motley having entered the diplomatic service of his country, we
had frequently the opportunity of renewing our friendly intercourse;
at Frankfort he used to stay with me, the welcome guest of my wife;
we also met at Vienna, and, later, here. The last time I saw him
was in 1872 at Varzin, at the celebration of my "silver wedding,"
namely, the twenty-fifth anniversary.
"'The most striking feature of his handsome and delicate appearance
was uncommonly large and beautiful eyes. He never entered a
drawing-room without exciting the curiosity and sympathy of the
ladies.'"
It is but a glimpse of their young life which the great statesman gives
us, but a bright and pleasing one. Here were three students, one of whom
was to range in the flowery fields of the loveliest of the sciences,
another to make the dead past live over again in his burning pages, and a
third to extend an empire as the botanist spread out a plant and the
historian laid open a manuscript.
IV.
1834-1839. 2ET. 20-25.
RETURN TO AMERICA.--STUDY OF LAW.--MARRIAGE.--HIS FIRST NOVEL, "MORTON'S
HOPE."
Of the years passed in the study of law after his return from Germany I
have very little recollection, and nothing of importance to record. He
never became seriously engaged in the practice of the profession he had
chosen. I had known him pleasantly rather than intimately, and our
different callings tended to separate us. I met him, however, not very
rarely, at one house where we were both received with the greatest
cordiality, and where the attractions brought together many both young
and old to enjoy the society of its charming and brilliant inmates. This
was at No. 14 Temple Place, where Mr. Park Benjamin was then living with
his two sisters, both in the bloom of young womanhood. Here Motley found
the wife to whom his life owed so much of its success and its happiness.
Those who remember Mary Benjamin find it hard to speak of her in the
common terms of praise which they award to the good and the lovely. She
was not only handsome and amiable and agreeable, but there was a cordial
frankness, an openhearted sincerity about her which made her seem like a
sister to those who could help becoming her lovers. She stands quite
apart in the memory of the friends who knew her best, even from the
circle of young persons whose recollections they most cherish. Yet hardly
could one of them have foreseen all that she was to be to him whose life
she was to share. They were married on the 2d of March, 1837. His
intimate friend, Mr. Joseph Lewis Stackpole, was married at about the
same time to her sister, thus joining still more closely in friendship
the two young men who were already like brothers in their mutual
affection.
Two years after his marriage, in 1839, appeared his first work, a novel
in two volumes, called "Morton's Hope." He had little reason to be
gratified with its reception. The general verdict was not favorable to
it, and the leading critical journal of America, not usually harsh or
cynical in its treatment of native authorship, did not even give it a
place among its "Critical Notices," but dropped a small-print
extinguisher upon it in one of the pages of its "List of New
Publications." Nothing could be more utterly disheartening than the
unqualified condemnation passed upon the story. At the same time the
critic says that "no one can read 'Morton's Hope' without perceiving it
to have been written by a person of uncommon resources of mind and
scholarship."
It must be confessed that, as a story, "Morton's Hope" cannot endure a
searching or even a moderately careful criticism. It is wanting in
cohesion, in character, even in a proper regard to circumstances of time
and place; it is a map of dissected incidents which has been flung out of
its box and has arranged itself without the least regard to chronology or
geography. It is not difficult to trace in it many of the influences
which had helped in forming or deforming the mind of the young man of
twenty-five, not yet come into possession of his full inheritance of the
slowly ripening qualities which were yet to assert their robust
independence. How could he help admiring Byron and falling into more or
less unconscious imitation of his moods if not of his special
affectations? Passion showing itself off against a dark foil of cynicism;
sentiment, ashamed of its own self-betrayal, and sneering at itself from
time to time for fear of the laugh of the world at its sincerity,--how
many young men were spoiled and how many more injured by becoming bad
copies of a bad ideal! The blood of Don Juan ran in the veins of Vivian
Grey and of Pelham. But if we read the fantastic dreams of Disraeli, the
intellectual dandyisms of Bulwer, remembering the after careers of which
these were the preludes, we can understand how there might well be
something in those earlier efforts which would betray itself in the way
of thought and in the style of the young men who read them during the
plastic period of their minds and characters. Allow for all these
influences, allow for whatever impressions his German residence and his
familiarity with German literature had produced; accept the fact that the
story is to the last degree disjointed, improbable, impossible; lay it
aside as a complete failure in what it attempted to be, and read it, as
"Vivian Grey" is now read, in the light of the career which it heralded.
"Morton's Hope" is not to be read as a novel: it is to be studied as an
autobiography, a prophecy, a record of aspirations, disguised under a
series of incidents which are flung together with no more regard to the
unities than a pack of shuffled playing-cards. I can do nothing better
than let him picture himself, for it is impossible not to recognize the
portrait. It is of little consequence whether every trait is an exact
copy from his own features, but it is so obvious that many of the lines
are direct transcripts from nature that we may believe the same thing of
many others. Let us compare his fictitious hero's story with what we have
read of his own life.
In early boyhood Morton amused himself and astonished those about him by
enacting plays for a puppet theatre. This was at six years old, and at
twelve we find him acting in a play with other boys, just as Motley's
playmates have already described him. The hero may now speak for himself,
but we shall all perceive that we are listening to the writer's own
story.
"I was always a huge reader; my mind was essentially craving and
insatiable. Its appetite was enormous, and it devoured too greedily
for health. I rejected all guidance in my studies. I already
fancied myself a misanthrope. I had taken a step very common for
boys of my age, and strove with all my might to be a cynic."
He goes on to describe, under the perfectly transparent mask of his hero,
the course of his studies. "To poetry, like most infants, I devoted most
of my time." From modern poetry he went back to the earlier sources,
first with the idea of systematic reading and at last through Chaucer and
Gower and early ballads, until he lost himself "in a dismal swamp of
barbarous romances and lying Latin chronicles. I got hold of the
Bibliotheca Monastica, containing a copious account of Anglo-Norman
authors, with notices of their works, and set seriously to reading every
one of them." One profit of his antiquarianism, however, was, as he says,
his attention to foreign languages,--French, Spanish, German, especially
in their earliest and rudest forms of literature. From these he ascended
to the ancient poets, and from Latin to Greek. He would have taken up the
study of the Oriental languages, but for the advice of a relative, who
begged him seriously to turn his attention to history. The paragraph
which follows must speak for itself as a true record under a feigned
heading.
"The groundwork of my early character was plasticity and fickleness.
I was mortified by this exposure of my ignorance, and disgusted with
my former course of reading. I now set myself violently to the
study of history. With my turn of mind, and with the preposterous
habits which I had been daily acquiring, I could not fail to make as
gross mistakes in the pursuit of this as of other branches of
knowledge. I imagined, on setting out, a system of strict and
impartial investigation of the sources of history. I was inspired
with the absurd ambition, not uncommon to youthful students, of
knowing as much as their masters. I imagined it necessary for me,
stripling as I was, to study the authorities; and, imbued with the
strict necessity of judging for myself, I turned from the limpid
pages of the modern historians to the notes and authorities at the
bottom of the page. These, of course, sent me back to my monastic
acquaintances, and I again found myself in such congenial company to
a youthful and ardent mind as Florence of Worcester and Simeon of
Durham, the Venerable Bede and Matthew Paris; and so on to Gregory
and Fredegarius, down to the more modern and elegant pages of
Froissart, Hollinshed, Hooker, and Stowe. Infant as I was, I
presumed to grapple with masses of learning almost beyond the
strength of the giants of history. A spendthrift of my time and
labor, I went out of my way to collect materials, and to build for
myself, when I should have known that older and abler architects had
already appropriated all that was worth preserving; that the edifice
was built, the quarry exhausted, and that I was, consequently, only
delving amidst rubbish.
"This course of study was not absolutely without its advantages.
The mind gained a certain proportion of vigor even by this exercise
of its faculties, just as my bodily health would have been improved
by transporting the refuse ore of a mine from one pit to another,
instead of coining the ingots which lay heaped before my eyes.
Still, however, my time was squandered. There was a constant want
of fitness and concentration of my energies. My dreams of education
were boundless, brilliant, indefinite; but alas! they were only
dreams. There was nothing accurate and defined in my future course
of life. I was ambitious and conceited, but my aspirations were
vague and shapeless. I had crowded together the most gorgeous and
even some of the most useful and durable materials for my woof, but
I had no pattern, and consequently never began to weave.
"I had not made the discovery that an individual cannot learn, nor
be, everything; that the world is a factory in which each individual
must perform his portion of work:--happy enough if he can choose it
according to his taste and talent, but must renounce the desire of
observing or superintending the whole operation. . . .
"From studying and investigating the sources of history with my own
eyes, I went a step further; I refused the guidance of modern
writers; and proceeding from one point of presumption to another, I
came to the magnanimous conviction that I could not know history as
I ought to know it unless I wrote it for myself. . . .
"It would be tedious and useless to enlarge upon my various attempts
and various failures. I forbear to comment upon mistakes which I
was in time wise enough to retrieve. Pushing out as I did, without
compass and without experience, on the boundless ocean of learning,
what could I expect but an utter and a hopeless shipwreck?
"Thus I went on, becoming more learned, and therefore more ignorant,
more confused in my brain, and more awkward in my habits, from day
to day. I was ever at my studies, and could hardly be prevailed
upon to allot a moment to exercise or recreation. I breakfasted
with a pen behind my ear, and dined in company with a folio bigger
than the table. I became solitary and morose, the necessary
consequence of reckless study; talked impatiently of the value of my
time, and the immensity of my labors; spoke contemptuously of the
learning and acquirements of the whole world, and threw out
mysterious hints of the magnitude and importance of my own project.
"In the midst of all this study and this infant authorship the
perusal of such masses of poetry could not fail to produce their
effect. Of a youth whose mind, like mine at that period, possessed
some general capability, without perhaps a single prominent and
marked talent, a proneness to imitation is sure to be the besetting
sin. I consequently, for a large portion of my earlier life, never
read a work which struck my fancy, without planning a better one
upon its model; for my ambition, like my vanity, knew no bounds.
It was a matter of course that I should be attacked by the poetic
mania. I took the infection at the usual time, went through its
various stages, and recovered as soon as could be expected. I
discovered soon enough that emulation is not capability, and he is
fortunate to whom is soonest revealed the relative extent of his
ambition and his powers.
"My ambition was boundless; my dreams of glory were not confined to
authorship and literature alone; but every sphere in which the
intellect of man exerts itself revolved in a blaze of light before
me. And there I sat in my solitude and dreamed such wondrous
dreams! Events were thickening around me which were soon to change
the world, but they were unmarked by me. The country was changing
to a mighty theatre, on whose stage those who were as great as I
fancied myself to be were to enact a stupendous drama in which I had
no part. I saw it not; I knew it not; and yet how infinitely
beautiful were the imaginations of my solitude! Fancy shook her
kaleidoscope each moment as chance directed, and lo! what new,
fantastic, brilliant, but what unmeaning visions. My ambitious
anticipations were as boundless as they were various and
conflicting. There was not a path which leads to glory in which I
was not destined to gather laurels. As a warrior I would conquer
and overrun the world. As a statesman I would reorganize and govern
it. As a historian I would consign it all to immortality; and in my
leisure moments I would be a great poet and a man of the world.
"In short, I was already enrolled in that large category of what are
called young men of genius,--men who are the pride of their sisters
and the glory of their grandmothers,--men of whom unheard-of things
are expected, till after long preparation comes a portentous
failure, and then they are forgotten; subsiding into indifferent
apprentices and attorneys' clerks.
"Alas for the golden imaginations of our youth! They are bright and
beautiful, but they fade. They glitter brightly enough to deceive
the wisest and most cautious, and we garner them up in the most
secret caskets of our hearts; but are they not like the coins which
the Dervise gave the merchant in the story? When we look for them
the next morning, do we not find them withered leaves?"
The ideal picture just drawn is only a fuller portraiture of the youth
whose outlines have been already sketched by the companions of his
earlier years. If his hero says, "I breakfasted with a pen behind my ear
and dined in company with a folio bigger than the table," one of his
family says of the boy Motley that "if there were five minutes before
dinner, when he came into the parlor he always took up some book near at
hand and began to read until dinner was announced." The same unbounded
thirst for knowledge, the same history of various attempts and various
failures, the same ambition, not yet fixed in its aim, but showing itself
in restless effort, belong to the hero of the story and its narrator.
Let no man despise the first efforts of immature genius. Nothing can be
more crude as a novel, nothing more disappointing, than "Morton's Hope."
But in no other of Motley's writings do we get such an inside view of his
character with its varied impulses, its capricious appetites, its
unregulated forces, its impatient grasp for all kinds of knowledge. With
all his university experiences at home and abroad, it might be said with
a large measure of truth that he was a self-educated man, as he had been
a self-taught boy. His instincts were too powerful to let him work
quietly in the common round of school and college training. Looking at
him as his companions describe him, as he delineates himself 'mutato
nomine,' the chances of success would have seemed to all but truly
prophetic eyes very doubtful, if not decidedly against him. Too many
brilliant young novel-readers and lovers of poetry, excused by their
admirers for their shortcomings on the strength of their supposed
birthright of "genius," have ended where they began; flattered into the
vain belief that they were men at eighteen or twenty, and finding out at
fifty that they were and always had been nothing more than boys. It was
but a tangled skein of life that Motley's book showed us at twenty-five,
and older men might well have doubted whether it would ever be wound off
in any continuous thread. To repeat his own words, he had crowded
together the materials for his work, but he had no pattern, and
consequently never began to weave.
The more this first work of Motley's is examined, the more are its faults
as a story and its interest as a self-revelation made manifest to the
reader. The future historian, who spared no pains to be accurate, falls
into the most extraordinary anachronisms in almost every chapter. Brutus
in a bob-wig, Othello in a swallow-tail coat, could hardly be more
incongruously equipped than some of his characters in the manner of
thought, the phrases, the way of bearing themselves which belong to them
in the tale, but never could have belonged to characters of our
Revolutionary period. He goes so far in his carelessness as to mix up
dates in such a way as almost to convince us that he never looked over
his own manuscript or proofs. His hero is in Prague in June, 1777,
reading a letter received from America in less than a fortnight from the
date of its being written; in August of the same year he is in the
American camp, where he is found in the company of a certain Colonel
Waldron, an officer of some standing in the Revolutionary Army, with whom
he is said to have been constantly associated for some three months,
having arrived in America, as he says, on the 15th of May, that is to
say, six weeks or more before he sailed, according to his previous
account. Bohemia seems to have bewitched his chronology as it did
Shakespeare's geography. To have made his story a consistent series of
contradictions, Morton should have sailed from that Bohemian seashore
which may be found in "A Winter's Tale," but not in the map of Europe.
And yet in the midst of all these marks of haste and negligence, here and
there the philosophical student of history betrays himself, the ideal of
noble achievement glows in an eloquent paragraph, or is embodied in a
loving portrait like that of the professor and historian Harlem. The
novel, taken in connection with the subsequent developments of the
writer's mind, is a study of singular interest. It is a chaos before the
creative epoch; the light has not been divided from the darkness; the
firmament has not yet divided the waters from the waters. The forces at
work in a human intelligence to bring harmony out of its discordant
movements are as mysterious, as miraculous, we might truly say, as those
which give shape and order to the confused materials out of which
habitable worlds are evolved. It is too late now to be sensitive over
this unsuccessful attempt as a story and unconscious success as a
self-portraiture. The first sketches of Paul Veronese, the first patterns
of the Gobelin tapestry, are not to be criticised for the sake of
pointing out their inevitable and too manifest imperfections. They are to
be carefully studied as the earliest efforts of the hand which painted
the Marriage at Cana, of the art which taught the rude fabrics made to be
trodden under foot to rival the glowing canvas of the great painters.
None of Motley's subsequent writings give such an insight into his
character and mental history. It took many years to train the as yet
undisciplined powers into orderly obedience, and to bring the unarranged
materials into the organic connection which was needed in the
construction of a work that should endure. There was a long interval
between his early manhood and the middle term of life, during which the
slow process of evolution was going on. There are plants which open their
flowers with the first rays of the sun; there are others that wait until
evening to spread their petals. It was already the high noon of life with
him before his genius had truly shown itself; if he had not lived beyond
this period, he would have left nothing to give him a lasting name.
V.
1841-1842. AEt. 27-28.
FIRST DIPLOMATIC APPOINTMENT, SECRETARY OF LEGATION TO THE RUSSIAN
MISSION.--BRIEF RESIDENCE AT ST. PETERSBURG.--LETTER TO HIS MOTHER.
--RETURN.
In the autumn of 1841, Mr. Motley received the appointment of Secretary
of Legation to the Russian Mission, Mr. Todd being then the Minister.
Arriving at St. Petersburg just at the beginning of winter, he found the
climate acting very unfavorably upon his spirits if not upon his health,
and was unwilling that his wife and his two young children should be
exposed to its rigors. The expense of living, also, was out of proportion
to his income, and his letters show that he had hardly established
himself in St. Petersburg before he had made up his mind to leave a place
where he found he had nothing to do and little to enjoy. He was homesick,
too, as a young husband and father with an affectionate nature like his
ought to have been under these circumstances. He did not regret having
made the experiment, for he knew that he should not have been satisfied
with himself if he had not made it. It was his first trial of a career in
which he contemplated embarking, and in which afterwards he had an
eventful experience. In his private letters to his family, many of which
I have had the privilege of looking over, he mentions in detail all the
reasons which influenced him in forming his own opinion about the
expediency of a continued residence at St. Petersburg, and leaves the
decision to her in whose judgment he always had the greatest confidence.
No unpleasant circumstance attended his resignation of his secretaryship,
and though it must have been a disappointment to find that the place did
not suit him, as he and his family were then situated, it was only at the
worst an experiment fairly tried and not proving satisfactory. He left
St. Petersburg after a few months' residence, and returned to America. On
reaching New York he was met by the sad tidings of the death of his
first-born child, a boy of great promise, who had called out all the
affections of his ardent nature. It was long before he recovered from the
shock of this great affliction. The boy had shown a very quick and bright
intelligence, and his father often betrayed a pride in his gifts and
graces which he never for a moment made apparent in regard to his own.
Among the letters which he wrote from St. Petersburg are two miniature
ones directed to this little boy. His affectionate disposition shows
itself very sweetly in these touching mementos of a love of which his
first great sorrow was so soon to be born. Not less charming are his
letters to his mother, showing the tenderness with which he always
regarded her, and full of all the details which he thought would
entertain one to whom all that related to her children was always
interesting. Of the letters to his wife it is needless to say more than
that they always show the depth of the love he bore her and the absolute
trust he placed in her, consulting her at all times as his nearest and
wisest friend and adviser,--one in all respects fitted "To warn, to
comfort, and command."
I extract a passage from one of his letters to his mother, as much for
the sake of lending a character of reality to his brief residence at St.
Petersburg as for that of the pleasant picture it gives us of an interior
in that Northern capital.
"We entered through a small vestibule, with the usual arrangement of
treble doors, padded with leather to exclude the cold and guarded by
two 'proud young porters' in severe cocked hats and formidable
batons, into a broad hall,--threw off our furred boots and cloaks,
ascended a carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood
a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished unmentionables,
and reached a broad landing upon the top thronged as usual with
servants. Thence we passed through an antechamber into a long,
high, brilliantly lighted, saffron-papered room, in which a dozen
card-tables were arranged, and thence into the receiving room. This
was a large room, with a splendidly inlaid and polished floor, the
walls covered with crimson satin, the cornices heavily incrusted
with gold, and the ceiling beautifully painted in arabesque. The
massive fauteuils and sofas, as also the drapery, were of crimson
satin with a profusion of gilding. The ubiquitous portrait of the
Emperor was the only picture, and was the same you see everywhere.
This crimson room had two doors upon the side facing the three
windows: The innermost opened into a large supper-room, in which a
table was spread covered with the usual refreshments of European
parties,--tea, ices, lemonade, and et ceteras,--and the other opened
into a ball-room which is a sort of miniature of the 'salle blanche'
of the Winter Palace, being white and gold, and very brilliantly
lighted with 'ormolu' chandeliers filled with myriads of candles.
This room (at least forty feet long by perhaps twenty-five) opened
into a carpeted conservatory of about the same size, filled with
orange-trees and japonica plants covered with fruit and flowers,
arranged very gracefully into arbors, with luxurious seats under the
pendent boughs, and with here and there a pretty marble statue
gleaming through the green and glossy leaves. One might almost have
imagined one's self in the 'land of the cypress and myrtle' instead
of our actual whereabout upon the polar banks of the Neva.
Wandering through these mimic groves, or reposing from the fatigues
of the dance, was many a fair and graceful form, while the
brilliantly lighted ballroom, filled with hundreds of exquisitely
dressed women (for the Russian ladies, if not very pretty, are
graceful, and make admirable toilettes), formed a dazzling contrast
with the tempered light of the 'Winter Garden.' The conservatory
opened into a library, and from the library you reach the
antechamber, thus completing the 'giro' of one of the prettiest
houses in St. Petersburg. I waltzed one waltz and quadrilled one
quadrille, but it was hard work; and as the sole occupation of these
parties is dancing and card-playing--conversation apparently not
being customary--they are to me not very attractive."
He could not be happy alone, and there were good reasons against his
being joined by his wife and children.
"With my reserved habits," he says, "it would take a great deal
longer to become intimate here than to thaw the Baltic. I have only
to 'knock that it shall be opened to me,' but that is just what I
hate to do. . . . 'Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither.'"
Disappointed in his expectations, but happy in the thought of meeting his
wife and children, he came back to his household to find it clad in
mourning for the loss of its first-born.
VI.
1844. AEt. 30.
LETTER TO PARK BENJAMIN.--POLITICAL VIEWS AND FEELINGS.
A letter to Mr. Park Benjamin, dated December 17, 1844, which has been
kindly lent me by Mrs. Mary Lanman Douw of Poughkeepsie, gives a very
complete and spirited account of himself at this period. He begins with a
quiet, but tender reference to the death of his younger brother, Preble,
one of the most beautiful youths seen or remembered among us, "a great
favorite," as he says, "in the family and in deed with every one who knew
him." He mentions the fact that his friends and near connections, the
Stackpoles, are in Washington, which place he considers as exceptionally
odious at the time when he is writing. The election of Mr. Polk as the
opponent of Henry Clay gives him a discouraged feeling about our
institutions. The question, he thinks, is now settled that a statesman
can never again be called to administer the government of the country. He
is almost if not quite in despair "because it is now proved that a man,
take him for all in all, better qualified by intellectual power, energy
and purity of character, knowledge of men, a great combination of
personal qualities, a frank, high-spirited, manly bearing, keen sense of
honor, the power of attracting and winning men, united with a vast
experience in affairs, such as no man (but John Quincy Adams) now living
has had and no man in this country can ever have again,--I say it is
proved that a man better qualified by an extraordinary combination of
advantages to administer the government than any man now living, or any
man we can ever produce again, can be beaten by anybody. . . . . It has
taken forty years of public life to prepare such a man for the
Presidency, and the result is that he can be beaten by anybody,--Mr. Polk
is anybody,--he is Mr. Quelconque."
I do not venture to quote the most burning sentences of this impassioned
letter. It shows that Motley had not only become interested most
profoundly in the general movements of parties, but that he had followed
the course of political events which resulted in the election of Mr. Polk
with careful study, and that he was already looking forward to the revolt
of the slave States which occurred sixteen years later. The letter is
full of fiery eloquence, now and then extravagant and even violent in
expression, but throbbing with a generous heat which shows the excitable
spirit of a man who wishes to be proud of his country and does not wish
to keep his temper when its acts make him ashamed of it. He is disgusted
and indignant to the last degree at seeing "Mr. Quelconque" chosen over
the illustrious statesman who was his favorite candidate. But all his
indignation cannot repress a sense of humor which was one of his marked
characteristics. After fatiguing his vocabulary with hard usage, after
his unsparing denunciation of "the very dirty politics" which he finds
mixed up with our popular institutions, he says,--it must be remembered
that this was an offhand letter to one nearly connected with him,--
"All these things must in short, to use the energetic language of
the Balm of Columbia advertisement, 'bring every generous thinking
youth to that heavy sinking gloom which not even the loss of
property can produce, but only the loss of hair, which brings on
premature decay, causing many to shrink from being uncovered, and
even to shun society, to avoid the jests and sneers of their
acquaintances. The remainder of their lives is consequently spent
in retirement.'"
He continues:--
"Before dropping the subject, and to show the perfect purity of my
motives, I will add that I am not at all anxious about the
legislation of the new government. I desired the election of Clay
as a moral triumph, and because the administration of the country,
at this moment of ten thousand times more importance than its
legislation, would have been placed in pure, strong, and determined
hands."
Then comes a dash of that satirical and somewhat cynical way of feeling
which he had not as yet outgrown. He had been speaking about the general
want of attachment to the Union and the absence of the sentiment of
loyalty as bearing on the probable dissolution of the Union.
"I don't mean to express any opinions on these matters,--I haven't
got any. It seems to me that the best way is to look at the
hodge-podge, be good-natured if possible, and laugh,
'As from the height of contemplation
We view the feeble joints men totter on.'
I began a tremendous political career during the election, having
made two stump speeches of an hour and a half each,--after you went
away,--one in Dedham town-hall and one in Jamaica Plain, with such
eminent success that many invitations came to me from the
surrounding villages, and if I had continued in active political
life I might have risen to be vote-distributor, or fence-viewer, or
selectman, or hog-reeve, or something of the kind."
The letter from which the above passages are quoted gives the same
portrait of the writer, only seen in profile, as it were, which we have
already seen drawn in full face in the story of "Morton's Hope." It is
charged with that 'saeva indignatio' which at times verges on
misanthropic contempt for its objects, not unnatural to a high-spirited
young man who sees his lofty ideals confronted with the ignoble facts
which strew the highways of political life. But we can recognize real
conviction and the deepest feeling beneath his scornful rhetoric and his
bitter laugh. He was no more a mere dilettante than Swift himself, but
now and then in the midst of his most serious thought some absurd or
grotesque image will obtrude itself, and one is reminded of the lines on
the monument of Gay rather than of the fierce epitaph of the Dean of
Saint Patrick's.
VII.
1845-1847. AEt. 31-33.
FIRST HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS.--PETER THE GREAT.--NOVELS OF
BALZAC.--POLITY OF THE PURITANS.
Mr. Motley's first serious effort in historical composition was an
article of fifty pages in "The North American Review" for October, 1845.
This was nominally a notice of two works, one on Russia, the other "A
Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great." It is, however, a narrative
rather than a criticism, a rapid, continuous, brilliant, almost dramatic
narrative. If there had been any question as to whether the young
novelist who had missed his first mark had in him the elements which
might give him success as an author, this essay would have settled the
question. It shows throughout that the writer has made a thorough study
of his subject, but it is written with an easy and abundant, yet
scholarly freedom, not as if he were surrounded by his authorities and
picking out his material piece by piece, but rather as if it were the
overflow of long-pursued and well-remembered studies recalled without
effort and poured forth almost as a recreation.
As he betrayed or revealed his personality in his first novel, so in this
first effort in another department of literature he showed in epitome his
qualities as a historian and a biographer. The hero of his narrative
makes his entrance at once in his character as the shipwright of Saardam,
on the occasion of a visit of the great Duke of Marlborough. The portrait
instantly arrests attention. His ideal personages had been drawn in such
a sketchy way, they presented so many imperfectly harmonized features,
that they never became real, with the exception, of course, of the
story-teller himself. But the vigor with which the presentment of the
imperial ship-carpenter, the sturdy, savage, eager, fiery Peter, was
given in the few opening sentences, showed the movement of the hand, the
glow of the color, that were in due time to display on a broader canvas
the full-length portraits of William the Silent and of John of Barneveld.
The style of the whole article is rich, fluent, picturesque, with light
touches of humor here and there, and perhaps a trace or two of youthful
jauntiness, not quite as yet outgrown. His illustrative poetical
quotations are mostly from Shakespeare,--from Milton and Byron also in a
passage or two,--and now and then one is reminded that he is not
unfamiliar with Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" and the "French Revolution"
of the same unmistakable writer, more perhaps by the way in which phrases
borrowed from other authorities are set in the text than by any more
important evidence of unconscious imitation.
The readers who had shaken their heads over the unsuccessful story of
"Morton's Hope" were startled by the appearance of this manly and
scholarly essay. This young man, it seemed, had been studying,--studying
with careful accuracy, with broad purpose. He could paint a character
with the ruddy life-blood coloring it as warmly as it glows in the cheeks
of one of Van der Helst's burgomasters. He could sweep the horizon in a
wide general outlook, and manage his perspective and his lights and
shadows so as to place and accent his special subject with its due relief
and just relations. It was a sketch, or rather a study for a larger
picture, but it betrayed the hand of a master. The feeling of many was
that expressed in the words of Mr. Longfellow in his review of the
"Twice-Told Tales" of the unknown young writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne:
"When a new star rises in the heavens, people gaze after it for a season
with the naked eye, and with such telescopes as they may find. . . . This
star is but newly risen; and erelong the observation of numerous
star-gazers, perched up on arm-chairs and editor's tables, will inform
the world of its magnitude and its place in the heaven of"--not poetry in
this instance, but that serene and unclouded region of the firmament
where shine unchanging the names of Herodotus and Thucydides. Those who
had always believed in their brilliant schoolmate and friend at last felt
themselves justified in their faith. The artist that sent this unframed
picture to be hung in a corner of the literary gallery was equal to
larger tasks. There was but one voice in the circle that surrounded the
young essayist. He must redeem his pledge, he can and will redeem it, if
he will only follow the bent of his genius and grapple with the heroic
labor of writing a great history.
And this was the achievement he was already meditating.
In the mean time he was studying history for its facts and principles,
and fiction for its scenery and portraits. In "The North American Review"
for July, 1847, is a long and characteristic article on Balzac, of whom
he was an admirer, but with no blind worship. The readers of this great
story-teller, who was so long in obtaining recognition, who "made twenty
assaults upon fame and had forty books killed under him" before he
achieved success, will find his genius fully appreciated and fairly
weighed in this discriminating essay. A few brief extracts will show its
quality.
"Balzac is an artist, and only an artist. In his tranquil,
unimpassioned, remorseless diagnosis of morbid phenomena, in his
cool method of treating the morbid anatomy of the heart, in his
curiously accurate dissection of the passions, in the patient and
painful attention with which, stethoscope in hand, finger on pulse,
eye everywhere, you see him watching every symptom, alive to every
sound and every breath, and in the scientific accuracy with which he
portrays the phenomena which have been the subject of his
investigation,--in all this calm and conscientious study of nature
he often reminds us of Goethe. Balzac, however, is only an artist
. . . He is neither moral nor immoral, but a calm and profound
observer of human society and human passions, and a minute, patient,
and powerful delineator of scenes and characters in the world before
his eyes. His readers must moralize for themselves. . . . It
is, perhaps, his defective style more than anything else which will
prevent his becoming a classic, for style above all other qualities
seems to embalm for posterity. As for his philosophy, his
principles, moral, political, or social, we repeat that he seems to
have none whatever. He looks for the picturesque and the striking.
He studies sentiments and sensations from an artistic point of view.
He is a physiognomist, a physiologist, a bit of an anatomist, a bit
of a mesmerist, a bit of a geologist, a Flemish painter, an
upholsterer, a micrological, misanthropical, sceptical philosopher;
but he is no moralist, and certainly no reformer."
Another article contributed by Mr. Motley to "The North American Review"
is to be found in the number for October, 1849. It is nominally a review
of Talvi's (Mrs. Robinson's) "Geschichte der Colonisation von New
England," but in reality an essay on the Polity of the Puritans,--an
historical disquisition on the principles of self-government evolved in
New England, broad in its views, eloquent in its language. Its spirit is
thoroughly American, and its estimate of the Puritan character is not
narrowed by the nearsighted liberalism which sees the past in the
pitiless light of the present,--which looks around at high noon and finds
fault with early dawn for its long and dark shadows. Here is a sentence
or two from the article:--
"With all the faults of the system devised by the Puritans, it was a
practical system. With all their foibles, with all their teasing,
tyrannical, and arbitrary notions, the Pilgrims were lovers of
liberty as well as sticklers for authority. . . . Nowhere can a
better description of liberty be found than that given by Winthrop,
in his defence of himself before the General Court on a charge of
arbitrary conduct. 'Nor would I have you mistake your own liberty,'
he says. 'There is a freedom of doing what we list, without regard
to law or justice; this liberty is indeed inconsistent with
authority; but civil, moral, and federal liberty consists in every
man's enjoying his property and having the benefit of the laws of
his country; which is very consistent with a due subjection to the
civil magistrate.' . . .
"We enjoy an inestimable advantage in America. One can be a
republican, a democrat, without being a radical. A radical, one who
would uproot, is a man whose trade is dangerous to society. Here is
but little to uproot. The trade cannot flourish. All classes are
conservative by necessity, for none can wish to change the structure
of our polity. . .
"The country without a past cannot be intoxicated by visions of the
past of other lands. Upon this absence of the past it seems to us
that much of the security of our institutions depends. Nothing
interferes with the development of what is now felt to be the true
principle of government, the will of the people legitimately
expressed. To establish that great truth, nothing was to be torn
down, nothing to be uprooted. It grew up in New England out of the
seed unconsciously planted by the first Pilgrims, was not crushed
out by the weight of a thousand years of error spread over the whole
continent, and the Revolution was proclaimed and recognized."
VIII.
1847-1849. AEt. 33-35.
JOSEPH LEWIS STACKPOLE, THE FRIEND OF MOTLEY. HIS SUDDEN DEATH.--MOTLEY
IN THE MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.--SECOND NOVEL,
"MERRY-MOUNT, A ROMANCE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS COLONY."
The intimate friendships of early manhood are not very often kept up
among our people. The eager pursuit of fortune, position, office,
separates young friends, and the indoor home life imprisons them in the
domestic circle so generally that it is quite exceptional to find two
grown men who are like brothers,--or rather unlike most brothers, in
being constantly found together. An exceptional instance of such a more
than fraternal relation was seen in the friendship of Mr. Motley and Mr.
Joseph Lewis Stackpole. Mr. William Amory, who knew them both well, has
kindly furnished me with some recollections, which I cannot improve by
changing his own language.
"Their intimacy began in Europe, and they returned to this country
in 1835. In 1837 they married sisters, and this cemented their
intimacy, which continued to Stackpole's death in 1847. The
contrast in the temperament of the two friends--the one sensitive
and irritable, and the other always cool and good-natured--only
increased their mutual attachment to each other, and Motley's
dependence upon Stackpole. Never were two friends more constantly
together or more affectionately fond of each other. As Stackpole
was about eight years older than Motley, and much less impulsive and
more discreet, his death was to his friend irreparable, and at the
time an overwhelming blow."
Mr. Stackpole was a man of great intelligence, of remarkable personal
attractions, and amiable character. His death was a loss to Motley even
greater than he knew, for he needed just such a friend, older, calmer,
more experienced in the ways of the world, and above all capable of
thoroughly understanding him and exercising a wholesome influence over
his excitable nature without the seeming of a Mentor preaching to a
Telemachus. Mr. Stackpole was killed by a railroad accident on the 20th
of July, 1847.
In the same letter Mr. Amory refers to a very different experience in Mr.
Motley's life,--his one year of service as a member of the Massachusetts
House of Representatives, 1849.
"In respect to the one term during which he was a member of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives, I can recall only one thing,
to which he often and laughingly alluded. Motley, as the Chairman
of the Committee on Education, made, as he thought, a most masterly
report. It was very elaborate, and, as he supposed, unanswerable;
but Boutwell, then a young man from some country town [Groton,
Mass.], rose, and as Motley always said, demolished the report, so
that he was unable to defend it against the attack. You can imagine
his disgust, after the pains he had taken to render it unassailable,
to find himself, as he expressed it, 'on his own dunghill,'
ignominiously beaten. While the result exalted his opinion of the
speech-making faculty of a Representative of a common school
education, it at the same time cured him of any ambition for
political promotion in Massachusetts."
To my letter of inquiry about this matter, Hon. George S. Boutwell
courteously returned the following answer:--
BOSTON, October 14, 1878.
MY DEAR SIR,--As my memory serves me, Mr. Motley was a member of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives in the year 1847 1849. It
may be well to consult the manual for that year. I recollect the
controversy over the report from the Committee on Education.
His failure was not due to his want of faculty or to the vigor of
his opponents.
In truth he espoused the weak side of the question and the unpopular
one also. His proposition was to endow the colleges at the expense
of the fund for the support of the common schools. Failure was
inevitable. Neither Webster nor Choate could have carried the bill.
Very truly,
GEO. S. BOUTWELL.
No one could be more ready and willing to recognize his own failures than
Motley. He was as honest and manly, perhaps I may say as sympathetic with
the feeling of those about him, on this occasion, as was Charles Lamb,
who, sitting with his sister in the front of the pit, on the night when
his farce was damned at its first representation, gave way to the common
feeling, and hissed and hooted lustily with the others around him. It was
what might be expected from his honest and truthful nature, sometimes too
severe in judging itself.
The commendation bestowed upon Motley's historical essays in "The North
American Review" must have gone far towards compensating him for the ill
success of his earlier venture. It pointed clearly towards the field in
which he was to gather his laurels. And it was in the year following the
publication of the first essay, or about that time (1846), that he began
collecting materials for a history of Holland. Whether to tell the story
of men that have lived and of events that have happened, or to create the
characters and invent the incidents of an imaginary tale be the higher
task, we need not stop to discuss. But the young author was just now like
the great actor in Sir Joshua's picture, between the allurements of
Thalia and Melpomene, still doubtful whether he was to be a romancer or a
historian.
The tale of which the title is given at the beginning of this section had
been written several years before the date of its publication. It is a
great advance in certain respects over the first novel, but wants the
peculiar interest which belonged to that as a partially autobiographical
memoir. The story is no longer disjointed and impossible. It is carefully
studied in regard to its main facts. It has less to remind us of "Vivian
Grey" and "Pelham," and more that recalls "Woodstock" and "Kenilworth."
The personages were many of them historical, though idealized; the
occurrences were many of them such as the record authenticated; the
localities were drawn largely from nature. The story betrays marks of
haste or carelessness in some portions, though others are elaborately
studied. His preface shows that the reception of his first book had made
him timid and sensitive about the fate of the second, and explains and
excuses what might be found fault with, to disarm the criticism he had
some reason to fear.
That old watch-dog of our American literature, "The North American
Review," always ready with lambent phrases in stately "Articles" for
native talent of a certain pretension, and wagging its appendix of
"Critical Notices" kindly at the advent of humbler merit, treated
"Merry-Mount" with the distinction implied in a review of nearly twenty
pages. This was a great contrast to the brief and slighting notice of
"Morton's Hope." The reviewer thinks the author's descriptive power
wholly exceeds his conception of character and invention of
circumstances.
"He dwells, perhaps, too long and fondly upon his imagination of the
landscape as it was before the stillness of the forest had been
broken by the axe of the settler; but the picture is so finely
drawn, with so much beauty of language and purity of sentiment, that
we cannot blame him for lingering upon the scene. . . . The
story is not managed with much skill, but it has variety enough of
incident and character, and is told with so much liveliness that few
will be inclined to lay it down before reaching the conclusion. .
. . The writer certainly needs practice in elaborating the details
of a consistent and interesting novel; but in many respects he is
well qualified for the task, and we shall be glad to meet him again
on the half-historical ground he has chosen. His present work,
certainly, is not a fair specimen of what he is able to accomplish,
and its failure, or partial success, ought only to inspirit him for
further effort."
The "half-historical ground" he had chosen had already led him to the
entrance into the broader domain of history. The "further effort" for
which he was to be inspirited had already begun. He had been for some
time, as was before mentioned, collecting materials for the work which
was to cast all his former attempts into the kindly shadow of oblivion,
save when from time to time the light of his brilliant after success is
thrown upon them to illustrate the path by which it was at length
attained.
IX.
1850. AEt. 36.
PLAN OF A HISTORY.--LETTERS.
The reputation of Mr. Prescott was now coextensive with the realm of
scholarship. The histories of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella and of
the conquest of Mexico had met with a reception which might well tempt
the ambition of a young writer to emulate it, but which was not likely to
be awarded to any second candidate who should enter the field in rivalry
with the great and universally popular historian. But this was the field
on which Mr. Motley was to venture.
After he had chosen the subject of the history he contemplated, he found
that Mr. Prescott was occupied with a kindred one, so that there might be
too near a coincidence between them. I must borrow from Mr. Ticknor's
beautiful life of Prescott the words which introduce a letter of Motley's
to Mr. William Amory, who has kindly allowed me also to make use of it.
"The moment, therefore, that he [Mr. Motley] was aware of this
condition of things, and the consequent possibility that there might
be an untoward interference in their plans, he took the same frank
and honorable course with Mr. Prescott that Mr. Prescott had taken
in relation to Mr. Irving, when he found that they had both been
contemplating a 'History of the Conquest of Mexico.' The result was
the same. Mr. Prescott, instead of treating the matter as an
interference, earnestly encouraged Mr. Motley to go on, and placed
at his disposition such of the books in his library as could be most
useful to him. How amply and promptly he did it, Mr. Motley's own
account will best show. It is in a letter dated at Rome, 26th
February, 1859, the day he heard of Mr. Prescott's death, and was
addressed to his intimate friend, Mr. William Amory, of Boston, Mr.
Prescott's much-loved brother-in-law."
"It seems to me but as yesterday," Mr. Motley writes, "though it
must be now twelve years ago, that I was talking with our
ever-lamented friend Stackpole about my intention of writing a history
upon a subject to which I have since that time been devoting myself.
I had then made already some general studies in reference to it,
without being in the least aware that Prescott had the intention of
writing the 'History of Philip the Second.' Stackpole had heard the
fact, and that large preparations had already been made for the
work, although 'Peru' had not yet been published. I felt naturally
much disappointed. I was conscious of the immense disadvantage to
myself of making my appearance, probably at the same time, before
the public, with a work not at all similar in plan to 'Philip the
Second,' but which must of necessity traverse a portion of the same
ground.
"My first thought was inevitably, as it were, only of myself.
It seemed to me that I had nothing to do but to abandon at once a
cherished dream, and probably to renounce authorship. For I had not
first made up my mind to write a history, and then cast about to
take up a subject. My subject had taken me up, drawn me on, and
absorbed me into itself. It was necessary for me, it seemed, to
write the book I had been thinking much of, even if it were destined
to fall dead from the press, and I had no inclination or interest to
write any other. When I had made up my mind accordingly, it then
occurred to me that Prescott might not be pleased that I should come
forward upon his ground. It is true that no announcement of his
intentions had been made, and that he had not, I believe, even
commenced his preliminary studies for Philip. At the same time I
thought it would be disloyal on my part not to go to him at once,
confer with him on the subject, and if I should find a shadow of
dissatisfaction on his mind at my proposition, to abandon my plan
altogether.
"I had only the slightest acquaintance with him at that time. I was
comparatively a young man, and certainly not entitled on any ground
to more than the common courtesy which Prescott never could refuse
to any one. But he received me with such a frank and ready and
liberal sympathy, and such an open-hearted, guileless expansiveness,
that I felt a personal affection for him from that hour. I remember
the interview as if it had taken place yesterday. It was in his
father's house, in his own library, looking on the garden-house and
garden,--honored father and illustrious son,--alas! all numbered
with the things that were! He assured me that he had not the
slightest objection whatever to my plan, that he wished me every
success, and that, if there were any books in his library bearing on
my subject that I liked to use, they were entirely at my service.
After I had expressed my gratitude for his kindness and cordiality,
by which I had been in a very few moments set completely at ease,
--so far as my fears of his disapprobation went,--I also very
naturally stated my opinion that the danger was entirely mine, and
that it was rather wilful of me thus to risk such a collision at my
first venture, the probable consequence of which was utter
shipwreck. I recollect how kindly and warmly he combated this
opinion, assuring me that no two books, as he said, ever injured
each other, and encouraging me in the warmest and most earnest
manner to proceed on the course I had marked out for myself.
"Had the result of that interview been different,--had he distinctly
stated, or even vaguely hinted, that it would be as well if I should
select some other topic, or had he only sprinkled me with the cold
water of conventional and commonplace encouragement,--I should have
gone from him with a chill upon my mind, and, no doubt, have laid
down the pen at once; for, as I have already said, it was not that I
cared about writing a history, but that I felt an inevitable impulse
to write one particular history.
"You know how kindly he always spoke of and to me; and the generous
manner in which, without the slightest hint from me, and entirely
unexpected by me, he attracted the eyes of his hosts of readers to
my forthcoming work, by so handsomely alluding to it in the Preface
to his own, must be almost as fresh in your memory as it is in mine.
"And although it seems easy enough for a man of world-wide
reputation thus to extend the right hand of fellowship to an unknown
and struggling aspirant, yet I fear that the history of literature
will show that such instances of disinterested kindness are as rare
as they are noble."
It was not from any feeling that Mr. Motley was a young writer from whose
rivalry he had nothing to apprehend. Mr. Amory says that Prescott
expressed himself very decidedly to the effect that an author who had
written such descriptive passages as were to be found in Mr. Motley's
published writings was not to be undervalued as a competitor by any one.
The reader who will turn to the description of Charles River in the
eighth chapter of the second volume of "Merry-Mount," or of the autumnal
woods in the sixteenth chapter of the same volume, will see good reason
for Mr. Prescott's appreciation of the force of the rival whose advent he
so heartily and generously welcomed.
X.
1851-1856. AEt. 37-42.
HISTORICAL STUDIES IN EUROPE.-LETTER FROM BRUSSELS.
After working for several years on his projected "History of the Dutch
Republic," he found that, in order to do justice to his subject, he must
have recourse to the authorities to be found only in the libraries and
state archives of Europe. In the year 1851 he left America with his
family, to begin his task over again, throwing aside all that he had
already done, and following up his new course of investigations at
Berlin, Dresden, the Hague, and Brussels during several succeeding years.
I do not know that I can give a better idea of his mode of life during
this busy period, his occupations, his state of mind, his objects of
interest outside of his special work, than by making the following
extracts from a long letter to myself, dated Brussels, 20th November,
1853.
After some personal matters he continued:--
"I don't really know what to say to you. I am in a town which, for
aught I know, may be very gay. I don't know a living soul in it.
We have not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the
fact. There is something rather sublime in thus floating on a
single spar in the wide sea of a populous, busy, fuming, fussy world
like this. At any rate it is consonant to both our tastes. You may
suppose, however, that I find it rather difficult to amuse my
friends out of the incidents of so isolated an existence. Our daily
career is very regular and monotonous. Our life is as stagnant as a
Dutch canal. Not that I complain of it,--on the contrary, the canal
may be richly freighted with merchandise and be a short cut to the
ocean of abundant and perpetual knowledge; but, at the same time,
few points rise above the level of so regular a life, to be worthy
of your notice. You must, therefore, allow me to meander along the
meadows of commonplace. Don't expect anything of the impetuous and
boiling style. We go it weak here. I don't know whether you were
ever in Brussels. It is a striking, picturesque town, built up a
steep promontory, the old part at the bottom, very dingy and mouldy,
the new part at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can be
more exquisite in its way than the grande place in the very heart of
the city, surrounded with those toppling, zigzag, ten-storied
buildings bedizened all over with ornaments and emblems so peculiar
to the Netherlands, with the brocaded Hotel de Ville on one side,
with its impossible spire rising some three hundred and seventy feet
into the air and embroidered to the top with the delicacy of needle-
work, sugarwork, spider-work, or what you will. I haunt this place
because it is my scene, my theatre. Here were enacted so many deep
tragedies, so many stately dramas, and even so many farces, which
have been familiar to me so long that I have got to imagine myself
invested with a kind of property in the place, and look at it as if
it were merely the theatre with the coulisses, machinery, drapery,
etc., for representing scenes which have long since vanished, and
which no more enter the minds of the men and women who are actually
moving across its pavements than if they had occurred in the moon.
When I say that I knew no soul in Brussels I am perhaps wrong. With
the present generation I am not familiar. 'En revanche,' the dead
men of the place are my intimate friends. I am at home in any
cemetery. With the fellows of the sixteenth century I am on the
most familiar terms. Any ghost that ever flits by night across the
moonlight square is at once hailed by me as a man and a brother. I
call him by his Christian name at once. When you come out of this
place, however, which, as I said, is in the heart of the town,--the
antique gem in the modern setting,--you may go either up or down.
If you go down, you will find yourself in the very nastiest
complications of lanes and culs-de-sac possible, a dark entanglement
of gin-shops, beer-houses, and hovels, through which charming valley
dribbles the Senne (whence, I suppose, is derived Senna), the most
nauseous little river in the world, which receives all the
outpourings of all the drains and houses, and is then converted into
beer for the inhabitants, all the many breweries being directly upon
its edge. If you go up the hill instead of down, you come to an
arrangement of squares, palaces, and gardens as trim and fashionable
as you will find in Europe. Thus you see that our Cybele sits with
her head crowned with very stately towers and her feet in a tub of
very dirty water.
"My habits here for the present year are very regular. I came here,
having, as I thought, finished my work, or rather the first Part
(something like three or four volumes, 8vo), but I find so much
original matter here, and so many emendations to make, that I am
ready to despair. However, there is nothing for it but to
penelopize, pull to pieces, and stitch away again. Whatever may be
the result of my labor, nobody can say that I have not worked like
a brute beast,--but I don't care for the result. The labor is in
itself its own reward and all I want. I go day after day to the
archives here (as I went all summer at the Hague), studying the old
letters and documents of the fifteenth century. Here I remain among
my fellow-worms, feeding on these musty mulberry-leaves, out of
which we are afterwards to spin our silk. How can you expect
anything interesting from such a human cocoon? It is, however, not
without its amusement in a mouldy sort of way, this reading of dead
letters. It is something to read the real, bona fide signs-manual
of such fellows as William of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander
Farnese, Philip II., Cardinal Granvelle, and the rest of them. It
gives a 'realizing sense,' as the Americans have it. . . . There
are not many public resources of amusement in this place,--if we
wanted them,--which we don't. I miss the Dresden Gallery very much,
and it makes me sad to think that I shall never look at the face of
the Sistine Madonna again,--that picture beyond all pictures in the
world, in which the artist certainly did get to heaven and painted a
face which was never seen on earth--so pathetic, so gentle, so
passionless, so prophetic. . . . There are a few good Rubenses
here,--but the great wealth of that master is in Antwerp. The great
picture of the Descent from the Cross is free again, after having
been ten years in the repairing room. It has come out in very good
condition. What a picture? It seems to me as if I had really stood
at the cross and seen Mary weeping on John's shoulder, and Magdalen
receiving the dead body of the Saviour in her arms. Never was the
grand tragedy represented in so profound and dramatic a manner. For
it is not only in his color in which this man so easily surpasses
all the world, but in his life-like, flesh-and-blood action,--the
tragic power of his composition. And is it not appalling to think
of the 'large constitution of this man,' when you reflect on the
acres of canvas which he has covered? How inspiriting to see with
what muscular, masculine vigor this splendid Fleming rushed in and
plucked up drowning Art by the locks when it was sinking in the
trashy sea of such creatures as the Luca Giordanos and Pietro
Cortonas and the like. Well might Guido exclaim, 'The fellow mixes
blood with his colors! . . . How providentially did the man come
in and invoke living, breathing, moving men and women out of his
canvas! Sometimes he is ranting and exaggerated, as are all men of
great genius who wrestle with Nature so boldly. No doubt his
heroines are more expansively endowed than would be thought genteel
in our country, where cryptogams are so much in fashion,
nevertheless there is always something very tremendous about him,
and very often much that is sublime, pathetic, and moving. I defy
any one of the average amount of imagination and sentiment to stand
long before the Descent from the Cross without being moved more
nearly to tears than he would care to acknowledge. As for color,
his effects are as sure as those of the sun rising in a tropical
landscape. There is something quite genial in the cheerful sense of
his own omnipotence which always inspired him. There are a few fine
pictures of his here, and I go in sometimes of a raw, foggy morning
merely to warm myself in the blaze of their beauty."
I have been more willing to give room to this description of Rubens's
pictures and the effect they produced upon Motley, because there is a
certain affinity between those sumptuous and glowing works of art and the
prose pictures of the historian who so admired them. He was himself a
colorist in language, and called up the image of a great personage or a
splendid pageant of the past with the same affluence, the same rich
vitality, that floods and warms the vast areas of canvas over which the
full-fed genius of Rubens disported itself in the luxury of imaginative
creation.
XI.
1856-1857. AEt. 42-43.
PUBLICATION OF HIS FIRST HISTORICAL WORK, "RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC."
--ITS RECEPTION.--CRITICAL NOTICES.
The labor of ten years was at last finished. Carrying his formidable
manuscript with him,--and how formidable the manuscript which melts down
into three solid octavo volumes is, only writers and publishers know,--he
knocked at the gate of that terrible fortress from which Lintot and Curll
and Tonson looked down on the authors of an older generation. So large a
work as the "History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic," offered for the
press by an author as yet unknown to the British public, could hardly
expect a warm welcome from the great dealers in literature as
merchandise. Mr. Murray civilly declined the manuscript which was offered
to him, and it was published at its author's expense by Mr. John Chapman.
The time came when the positions of the first-named celebrated publisher
and the unknown writer were reversed. Mr. Murray wrote to Mr. Motley
asking to be allowed to publish his second great work, the "History of
the United Netherlands," expressing at the same time his regret at what
he candidly called his mistake in the first instance, and thus they were
at length brought into business connection as well as the most agreeable
and friendly relations. An American edition was published by the Harpers
at the same time as the London one.
If the new work of the unknown author found it difficult to obtain a
publisher, it was no sooner given to the public than it found an
approving, an admiring, an enthusiastic world of readers, and a noble
welcome at the colder hands of the critics.
"The Westminster Review" for April, 1856, had for its leading article a
paper by Mr. Froude, in which the critic awarded the highest praise to
the work of the new historian. As one of the earliest as well as one of
the most important recognitions of the work, I quote some of its
judgments.
"A history as complete as industry and genius can make it now lies
before us of the first twenty years of the Revolt of the United
Provinces; of the period in which those provinces finally conquered
their independence and established the Republic of Holland. It has
been the result of many years of silent, thoughtful, unobtrusive
labor, and unless we are strangely mistaken, unless we are ourselves
altogether unfit for this office of criticising which we have here
undertaken, the book is one which will take its place among the
finest histories in this or in any language. . . . All the
essentials of a great writer Mr. Motley eminently possesses. His
mind is broad, his industry unwearied. In power of dramatic
description no modern historian, except perhaps Mr. Carlyle,
surpasses him, and in analysis of character he is elaborate and
distinct. His principles are those of honest love for all which is
good and admirable in human character wherever he finds it, while he
unaffectedly hates oppression, and despises selfishness with all his
heart."
After giving a slight analytical sketch of the series of events related
in the history, Mr. Froude objects to only one of the historian's
estimates, that, namely, of the course of Queen Elizabeth.
"It is ungracious, however," he says, "even to find so slight a
fault with these admirable volumes. Mr. Motley has written without
haste, with the leisurely composure of a master. . . . We now
take our leave of Mr. Motley, desiring him only to accept our hearty
thanks for these volumes, which we trust will soon take their place
in every English library. Our quotations will have sufficed to show
the ability of the writer. Of the scope and general character of
his work we have given but a languid conception. The true merit of
a great book must be learned from the book itself. Our part has
been rather to select varied specimens of style and power. Of Mr.
Motley's antecedents we know nothing. If he has previously appeared
before the public, his reputation has not crossed the Atlantic. It
will not be so now. We believe that we may promise him as warm a
welcome among ourselves as he will receive even in America; that his
place will be at once conceded to him among the first historians in
our common language."
The faithful and unwearied Mr. Allibone has swept the whole field of
contemporary criticism, and shown how wide and universal was the welcome
accorded to the hitherto unknown author. An article headed "Prescott and
Motley," attributed to M. Guizot, which must have been translated, I
suppose, from his own language, judging by its freedom from French
idioms, is to be found in "The Edinburgh Review" for January, 1857. The
praise, not unmingled with criticisms, which that great historian
bestowed upon Motley is less significant than the fact that he
superintended a translation of the "Rise of the Dutch Republic," and
himself wrote the Introduction to it.
A general chorus of approbation followed or accompanied these leading
voices. The reception of the work in Great Britain was a triumph. On the
Continent, in addition to the tribute paid to it by M. Guizot, it was
translated into Dutch, into German, and into Russian. At home his
reception was not less hearty. "The North American Review," which had set
its foot on the semi-autobiographical medley which he called "Morton's
Hope," which had granted a decent space and a tepid recognition to his
"semi-historical" romance, in which he had already given the reading
public a taste of his quality as a narrator of real events and a
delineator of real personages,--this old and awe-inspiring New England
and more than New England representative of the Fates, found room for a
long and most laudatory article, in which the son of one of our most
distinguished historians did the honors of the venerable literary
periodical to the new-comer, for whom the folding-doors of all the
critical headquarters were flying open as if of themselves. Mr. Allibone
has recorded the opinions of some of our best scholars as expressed to
him.
Dr. Lieber wrote a letter to Mr. Allibone in the strongest terms of
praise. I quote one passage which in the light of after events borrows a
cruel significance:--
"Congress and Parliament decree thanks for military exploits,
--rarely for diplomatic achievements. If they ever voted their thanks
for books,--and what deeds have influenced the course of human
events more than some books?--Motley ought to have the thanks of our
Congress; but I doubt not that he has already the thanks of every
American who has read the work. It will leave its distinct mark
upon the American mind."
Mr. Everett writes:--
"Mr. Motley's 'History of the Dutch Republic' is in my judgment a
work of the highest merit. Unwearying research for years in the
libraries of Europe, patience and judgment in arranging and
digesting his materials, a fine historical tact, much skill in
characterization, the perspective of narration, as it may be called,
and a vigorous style unite to make it a very capital work, and place
the name of Motley by the side of those of our great historical
trio,--Bancroft, Irving, and Prescott."
Mr. Irving, Mr. Bancroft, Mr. Sumner, Mr. Hillard, united their voices in
the same strain of commendation. Mr. Prescott, whose estimate of the new
history is of peculiar value for obvious reasons, writes to Mr. Allibone
thus:--
"The opinion of any individual seems superfluous in respect to a
work on the merits of which the public both at home and abroad have
pronounced so unanimous a verdict. As Motley's path crosses my own
historic field, I may be thought to possess some advantage over most
critics in my familiarity with the ground.
"However this may be, I can honestly bear my testimony to the extent
of his researches and to the accuracy with which he has given the
results of them to the public. Far from making his book a mere
register of events, he has penetrated deep below the surface and
explored the cause of these events. He has carefully studied the
physiognomy of the times and given finished portraits of the great
men who conducted the march of the revolution. Every page is
instinct with the love of freedom and with that personal knowledge
of the working of free institutions which could alone enable him to
do justice to his subject. We may congratulate ourselves that it
was reserved for one of our countrymen to tell the story-better than
it had yet been told--of this memorable revolution, which in so many
of its features bears a striking resemblance to our own."
The public welcomed the work as cordially as the critics. Fifteen
thousand copies had already been sold in London in 1857. In America it
was equally popular. Its author saw his name enrolled by common consent
among those of the great writers of his time. Europe accepted him, his
country was proud to claim him, scholarship set its jealously guarded
seal upon the result of his labors, the reading world, which had not
cared greatly for his stories, hung in delight over a narrative more
exciting than romances; and the lonely student, who had almost forgotten
the look of living men in the solitude of archives haunted by dead
memories, found himself suddenly in the full blaze of a great reputation.
XII.
1856-1857. AEt. 42-43.
VISIT TO AMERICA.--RESIDENCE IN BOYLSTON PLACE.
He visited this country in 1856, and spent the winter of 1856-57 in
Boston, living with his family in a house in Boylston Place. At this time
I had the pleasure of meeting him often, and of seeing the changes which
maturity, success, the opening of a great literary and social career, had
wrought in his character and bearing. He was in every way greatly
improved; the interesting, impulsive youth had ripened into a noble
manhood. Dealing with great themes, his own mind had gained their
dignity. Accustomed to the company of dead statesmen and heroes, his own
ideas had risen to a higher standard. The flattery of society had added a
new grace to his natural modesty. He was now a citizen of the world by
his reputation; the past was his province, in which he was recognized as
a master; the idol's pedestal was ready for him, but he betrayed no
desire to show himself upon it.
XIII.
1858-1860. AEt. 44-46.
RETURN TO ENGLAND.--SOCIAL RELATIONS.--LADY HARCOURT'S LETTER.
During the years spent in Europe in writing his first history, from 1851
to 1856, Mr. Motley had lived a life of great retirement and simplicity,
devoting himself to his work and to the education of his children, to
which last object he was always ready to give the most careful
supervision. He was as yet unknown beyond the circle of his friends, and
he did not seek society. In this quiet way he had passed the two years of
residence in Dresden, the year divided between Brussels and the Hague,
and a very tranquil year spent at Vevay on the Lake of Geneva. His health
at this time was tolerably good, except for nervous headaches, which
frequently recurred and were of great severity. His visit to England with
his manuscript in search of a publisher has already been mentioned.
In 1858 he revisited England. His fame as a successful author was there
before him, and he naturally became the object of many attentions. He now
made many acquaintances who afterwards became his kind and valued
friends. Among those mentioned by his daughter, Lady Harcourt, are Lord
Lyndhurst, Lord Carlisle, Lady William Russell, Lord and Lady Palmerston,
Dean Milman, with many others. The following winter was passed in Rome,
among many English and American friends.
"In the course of the next summer," his daughter writes to me, "we
all went to England, and for the next two years, marked chiefly by
the success of the 'United Netherlands,' our social life was most
agreeable and most interesting. He was in the fulness of his health
and powers; his works had made him known in intellectual society,
and I think his presence, on the other hand, increased their
effects. As no one knows better than you do, his belief in his own
country and in its institutions at their best was so passionate and
intense that it was a part of his nature, yet his refined and
fastidious tastes were deeply gratified by the influences of his
life in England, and the spontaneous kindness which he received
added much to his happiness. At that time Lord Palmerston was Prime
Minister; the weekly receptions at Cambridge House were the centre
of all that was brilliant in the political and social world, while
Lansdowne House, Holland House, and others were open to the
'sommites' in all branches of literature, science, rank, and
politics. . . . It was the last year of Lord Macaulay's life,
and as a few out of many names which I recall come Dean Milman, Mr.
Froude (whose review of the 'Dutch Republic' in the 'Westminster'
was one of the first warm recognitions it ever received), the Duke
and Duchess of Argyll, Sir William Stirling Maxwell, then Mr.
Stirling of Keir, the Sheridan family in its different brilliant
members, Lord Wensleydale, and many more."
There was no society to which Motley would not have added grace and
attraction by his presence, and to say that he was a welcome guest in the
best houses of England is only saying that these houses are always open
to those whose abilities, characters, achievements, are commended to the
circles that have the best choice by the personal gifts which are
nature's passport everywhere.
XIV.
1859. AEt. 45.
LETTER TO MR. FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD.--PLAN OF MR. MOTLEY'S HISTORICAL
WORKS.--SECOND GREAT WORK, "HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS."
I am enabled by the kindness of Mr. Francis H. Underwood to avail myself
of a letter addressed to him by Mr. Motley in the year before the
publication of this second work, which gives us an insight into his mode
of working and the plan he proposed to follow. It begins with an allusion
which recalls a literary event interesting to many of his American
friends.
ROME, March 4, 1859.
F. H. UNDERWOOD, ESQ.
My dear Sir,--. . . I am delighted to hear of the great success
of "The Atlantic Monthly." In this remote region I have not the
chance of reading it as often as I should like, but from the
specimens which I have seen I am quite sure it deserves its wide
circulation. A serial publication, the contents of which are purely
original and of such remarkable merit, is a novelty in our country,
and I am delighted to find that it has already taken so prominent a
position before the reading world. . .
The whole work [his history], of which the three volumes already
published form a part, will be called "The Eighty Years' War for
Liberty."
Epoch I. is the Rise of the Dutch Republic.
Epoch II. Independence Achieved. From the Death of William the
Silent till the Twelve Years' Truce. 1584-1609.
Epoch III. Independence Recognized. From the Twelve Years' Truce
to the Peace of Westphalia. 1609-1648.
My subject is a very vast one, for the struggle of the United
Provinces with Spain was one in which all the leading states of
Europe were more or less involved. After the death of William the
Silent, the history assumes world-wide proportions. Thus the volume
which I am just about terminating . . . is almost as much English
history as Dutch. The Earl of Leicester, very soon after the death
of Orange, was appointed governor of the provinces, and the alliance
between the two countries almost amounted to a political union. I
shall try to get the whole of the Leicester administration,
terminating with the grand drama of the Invincible Armada, into one
volume; but I doubt, my materials are so enormous. I have been
personally very hard at work, nearly two years, ransacking the
British State Paper Office, the British Museum, and the Holland
archives, and I have had two copyists constantly engaged in London,
and two others at the Hague. Besides this, I passed the whole of
last winter at Brussels, where, by special favor of the Belgian
Government, I was allowed to read what no one else has ever been
permitted to see,--the great mass of copies taken by that government
from the Simancas archives, a translated epitome of which has been
published by Gachard. This correspondence reaches to the death of
Philip II., and is of immense extent and importance. Had I not
obtained leave to read the invaluable and, for my purpose,
indispensable documents at Brussels, I should have gone to Spain,
for they will not be published these twenty years, and then only in
a translated and excessively abbreviated and unsatisfactory form.
I have read the whole of this correspondence, and made very copious
notes of it. In truth, I devoted three months of last winter to
that purpose alone.
The materials I have collected from the English archives are also
extremely important and curious. I have hundreds of interesting
letters never published or to be published, by Queen Elizabeth,
Burghley, Walsingham, Sidney, Drake, Willoughby, Leicester, and
others. For the whole of that portion of my subject in which
Holland and England were combined into one whole, to resist Spain in
its attempt to obtain the universal empire, I have very abundant
collections. For the history of the United Provinces is not at all
a provincial history. It is the history of European liberty.
Without the struggle of Holland and England against Spain, all
Europe might have been Catholic and Spanish. It was Holland that
saved England in the sixteenth century, and, by so doing, secured
the triumph of the Reformation, and placed the independence of the
various states of Europe upon a sure foundation. Of course, the
materials collected by me at the Hague are of great importance. As
a single specimen, I will state that I found in the archives there
an immense and confused mass of papers, which turned out to be the
autograph letters of Olden Barneveld during the last few years of
his life; during, in short, the whole of that most important period
which preceded his execution. These letters are in such an
intolerable handwriting that no one has ever attempted to read them.
I could read them only imperfectly myself, and it would have taken
me a very long time to have acquired the power to do so; but my
copyist and reader there is the most patient and indefatigable
person alive, and he has quite mastered the handwriting, and he
writes me that they are a mine of historical wealth for me. I shall
have complete copies before I get to that period, one of signal
interest, and which has never been described. I mention these
matters that you may see that my work, whatever its other value may
be, is built upon the only foundation fit for history,--original
contemporary documents. These are all unpublished. Of course, I
use the contemporary historians and pamphleteers,--Dutch, Spanish,
French, Italian, German, and English,--but the most valuable of my
sources are manuscript ones. I have said the little which I have
said in order to vindicate the largeness of the subject. The
kingdom of Holland is a small power now, but the Eighty Years' War,
which secured the civil and religious independence of the Dutch
Commonwealth and of Europe, was the great event of that whole age.
The whole work will therefore cover a most remarkable epoch in human
history, from the abdication of Charles Fifth to the Peace of
Westphalia, at which last point the political and geographical
arrangements of Europe were established on a permanent basis,--in
the main undisturbed until the French Revolution. . . .
I will mention that I received yesterday a letter from the
distinguished M. Guizot, informing me that the first volume of the
French translation, edited by him, with an introduction, has just
been published. The publication was hastened in consequence of the
appearance of a rival translation at Brussels. The German
translation is very elegantly and expensively printed in handsome
octavos; and the Dutch translation, under the editorship of the
archivist general of Holland, Bakhuyzen v. d. Brink, is enriched
with copious notes and comments by that distinguished scholar.
There are also three different piratical reprints of the original
work at Amsterdam, Leipzig, and London. I must add that I had
nothing to do with the translation in any case. In fact, with the
exception of M. Guizot, no one ever obtained permission of me to
publish translations, and I never knew of the existence of them
until I read of it in the journals. . . . I forgot to say that
among the collections already thoroughly examined by me is that
portion of the Simancas archives still retained in the Imperial
archives of France. I spent a considerable time in Paris for the
purpose of reading these documents. There are many letters of
Philip II. there, with apostilles by his own hand. . . . I
would add that I am going to pass this summer at Venice for the
purpose of reading and procuring copies from the very rich archives
of that Republic, of the correspondence of their envoys in Madrid,
London, and Brussels during the epoch of which I am treating.
I am also not without hope of gaining access to the archives of the
Vatican here, although there are some difficulties in the way.
With kind regards . . .
I remain very truly yours,
J. L. MOTLEY.
XV.
1860. AT. 46.
PUBLICATION OF THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF THE "HISTORY OF THE UNITED
NETHERLANDS."--THEIR RECEPTION.
We know something of the manner in which Mr. Motley collected his
materials. We know the labors, the difficulties, the cost of his toils
among the dusty records of the past. What he gained by the years he spent
in his researches is so well stated by himself that I shall borrow his
own words:--
"Thanks to the liberality of many modern governments of Europe, the
archives where the state secrets of the buried centuries have so
long mouldered are now open to the student of history. To him who
has patience and industry, many mysteries are thus revealed which no
political sagacity or critical acumen could have divined. He leans
over the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as the
King spells patiently out, with cipher-key in hand, the most
concealed hieroglyphics of Parma, or Guise, or Mendoza. He reads
the secret thoughts of 'Fabius' [Philip II.] as that cunctative
Roman scrawls his marginal apostilles on each dispatch; he pries
into all the stratagems of Camillus, Hortensius, Mucius, Julius,
Tullius, and the rest of those ancient heroes who lent their names
to the diplomatic masqueraders of the sixteenth century; he enters
the cabinet of the deeply pondering Burghley, and takes from the
most private drawer the memoranda which record that minister's
unutterable doubtings; he pulls from the dressing-gown folds of the
stealthy, soft-gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has
picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes or the Pope's pocket, and
which not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, nor the Lord
Treasurer is to see,--nobody but Elizabeth herself; he sits
invisible at the most secret councils of the Nassaus and Barneveld
and Buys, or pores with Farnese over coming victories and vast
schemes of universal conquest; he reads the latest bit of scandal,
the minutest characteristic of king or minister, chronicled by the
gossiping Venetians for the edification of the Forty; and after all
this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the cross-purposes, the
bribings, the windings in the dark, he is not surprised if those who
were systematically deceived did not always arrive at correct
conclusions."
The fascination of such a quest is readily conceivable. A drama with real
characters, and the spectator at liberty to go behind the scenes and look
upon and talk with the kings and queens between the acts; to examine the
scenery, to handle the properties, to study the "make up" of the imposing
personages of full-dress histories; to deal with them all as Thackeray
has done with the Grand Monarque in one of his caustic sketches,--this
would be as exciting, one might suppose, as to sit through a play one
knows by heart at Drury Lane or the Theatre Francais, and might furnish
occupation enough to the curious idler who was only in search of
entertainment. The mechanical obstacles of half-illegible manuscript, of
antiquated forms of speech, to say nothing of the intentional obscurities
of diplomatic correspondence, stand, however, in the way of all but the
resolute and unwearied scholar. These difficulties, in all their complex
obstinacy, had been met and overcome by the heroic efforts, the
concentrated devotion, of the new laborer in the unbroken fields of
secret history.
Without stopping to take breath, as it were,--for his was a task 'de
longue haleine,'--he proceeded to his second great undertaking.
The first portion--consisting of two volumes--of the "History of the
United Netherlands" was published in the year 1860. It maintained and
increased the reputation he had already gained by his first history.
"The London Quarterly Review" devoted a long article to it, beginning
with this handsome tribute to his earlier and later volumes:--
"Mr. Motley's 'History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic' is already
known and valued for the grasp of mind which it displays, for the
earnest and manly spirit in which he has communicated the results of
deep research and careful reflection. Again he appears before us,
rich with the spoils of time, to tell the story of the United
Netherlands from the time of William the Silent to the end of the
eventful year of the Spanish Armada, and we still find him in every
way worthy of this 'great argument.' Indeed, it seems to us that he
proceeds with an increased facility of style, and with a more
complete and easy command over his materials. These materials are
indeed splendid, and of them most excellent use has been made. The
English State Paper Office, the Spanish archives from Simancas, and
the Dutch and Belgian repositories, have all yielded up their
secrets; and Mr. Motley has enjoyed the advantage of dealing with a
vast mass of unpublished documents, of which he has not failed to
avail himself to an extent which places his work in the foremost
rank as an authority for the period to which it relates. By means
of his labor and his art we can sit at the council board of Philip
and Elizabeth, we can read their most private dispatches. Guided by
his demonstration, we are enabled to dissect out to their ultimate
issues the minutest ramifications of intrigue. We join in the
amusement of the popular lampoon; we visit the prison-house; we
stand by the scaffold; we are present at the battle and the siege.
We can scan the inmost characters of men and can view them in their.
habits as they lived."
After a few criticisms upon lesser points of form and style, the writer
says:--
"But the work itself must be read to appreciate the vast and
conscientious industry bestowed upon it. His delineations are true
and life-like, because they are not mere compositions written to
please the ear, but are really taken from the facts and traits
preserved in those authentic records to which he has devoted the
labor of many years. Diligent and painstaking as the humblest
chronicler, he has availed himself of many sources of information
which have not been made use of by any previous historical writer.
At the same time he is not oppressed by his materials, but has
sagacity to estimate their real value, and he has combined with
scholarly power the facts which they contain. He has rescued the
story of the Netherlands from the domain of vague and general
narrative, and has labored, with much judgment and ability, to
unfold the 'Belli causas, et vitia, et modos,' and to assign to
every man and every event their own share in the contest, and their
own influence upon its fortunes. We do not wonder that his earlier
publication has been received as a valuable addition, not only to
English, but to European literature."
One or two other contemporary criticisms may help us with their side
lights. A critic in "The Edinburgh Review" for January, 1861, thinks that
"Mr. Motley has not always been successful in keeping the graphic variety
of his details subordinate to the main theme of his work." Still, he
excuses the fault, as he accounts it, in consideration of the new light
thrown on various obscure points of history, and--
"it is atoned for by striking merits, by many narratives of great
events faithfully, powerfully, and vividly executed, by the clearest
and most life-like conceptions of character, and by a style which,
if it sacrifices the severer principles of composition to a desire
to be striking and picturesque, is always vigorous, full of
animation, and glowing with the genuine enthusiasm of the writer.
Mr. Motley combines as an historian two qualifications seldom found
united,--to great capacity for historical research he adds much
power of pictorial representation. In his pages we find characters
and scenes minutely set forth in elaborate and characteristic
detail, which is relieved and heightened in effect by the artistic
breadth of light and shade thrown across the broader prospects of
history. In an American author, too, we must commend the hearty
English spirit in which the book is written; and fertile as the
present age has been in historical works of the highest merit, none
of them can be ranked above these volumes in the grand qualities of
interest, accuracy, and truth."
A writer in "Blackwood" (May, 1861) contrasts Motley with Froude somewhat
in the way in which another critic had contrasted him with Prescott.
Froude, he says, remembers that there are some golden threads in the
black robe of the Dominican. Motley "finds it black and thrusts it
farther into the darkness."
Every writer carries more or less of his own character into his book, of
course. A great professor has told me that there is a personal flavor in
the mathematical work of a man of genius like Poisson. Those who have
known Motley and Prescott would feel sure beforehand that the impulsive
nature of the one and the judicial serenity of the other would as surely
betray themselves in their writings as in their conversation and in their
every movement. Another point which the critic of "Blackwood's Magazine"
has noticed has not been so generally observed: it is what he calls "a
dashing, offhand, rattling style,"--"fast" writing. It cannot be denied
that here and there may be detected slight vestiges of the way of writing
of an earlier period of Motley's literary life, with which I have no
reason to think the writer just mentioned was acquainted. Now and then I
can trace in the turn of a phrase, in the twinkle of an epithet, a faint
reminiscence of a certain satirical levity, airiness, jauntiness, if I
may hint such a word, which is just enough to remind me of those perilous
shallows of his early time through which his richly freighted argosy had
passed with such wonderful escape from their dangers and such very slight
marks of injury. That which is pleasant gayety in conversation may be
quite out of place in formal composition, and Motley's wit must have had
a hard time of it struggling to show its spangles in the processions
while his gorgeous tragedies went sweeping by.
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
A MEMOIR
By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Volume II.
XVI.
1860-1866. AEt. 46-52.
RESIDENCE IN ENGLAND.--OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR.--LETTERS TO THE LONDON
"TIMES."--VISIT TO AMERICA.--APPOINTED MINISTER TO AUSTRIA.--LADY
HARCOURT'S LETTER.--MISS MOTLEY'S MEMORANDUM.
The winter of 1859-60 was passed chiefly at Oatlands Hotel,
Walton-on-Thames. In 1860 Mr. Motley hired the house No. 31 Hertford
Street, May Fair, London. He had just published the first two volumes of
his "History of the Netherlands," and was ready for the further labors of
its continuation, when the threats, followed by the outbreak, of the
great civil contention in his native land brought him back from the
struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the conflict of
the nineteenth.
His love of country, which had grown upon him so remarkably of late
years, would not suffer him to be silent at such a moment. All around him
he found ignorance and prejudice. The quarrel was like to be prejudged in
default of a champion of the cause which to him was that of Liberty and
Justice. He wrote two long letters to the London "Times," in which he
attempted to make clear to Englishmen and to Europe the nature and
conditions of our complex system of government, the real cause of the
strife, and the mighty issues at stake. Nothing could have been more
timely, nothing more needed. Mr. William Everett, who was then in
England, bears strong testimony to the effect these letters produced. Had
Mr. Motley done no other service to his country, this alone would entitle
him to honorable remembrance as among the first defenders of the flag,
which at that moment had more to fear from what was going on in the
cabinet councils of Europe than from all the armed hosts that were
gathering against it.
He returned to America in 1861, and soon afterwards was appointed by Mr.
Lincoln Minister to Austria. Mr. Burlingame had been previously appointed
to the office, but having been objected to by the Austrian Government for
political reasons, the place unexpectedly left vacant was conferred upon
Motley, who had no expectation of any diplomatic appointment when he left
Europe. For some interesting particulars relating to his residence in
Vienna I must refer to the communications addressed to me by his
daughter, Lady Harcourt, and her youngest sister, and the letters I
received from him while at the Austrian capital. Lady Harcourt writes:--
"He held the post for six years, seeing the civil war fought out and
brought to a triumphant conclusion, and enjoying, as I have every
reason to believe, the full confidence and esteem of Mr. Lincoln to
the last hour of the President's life. In the first dark years the
painful interest of the great national drama was so all-absorbing
that literary work was entirely put aside, and with his countrymen
at home he lived only in the varying fortunes of the day, his
profound faith and enthusiasm sustaining him and lifting him above
the natural influence of a by no means sanguine temperament. Later,
when the tide was turning and success was nearing, he was more able
to work. His social relations during the whole period of his
mission were of the most agreeable character. The society of Vienna
was at that time, and I believe is still, the absolute reverse of
that of England, where all claims to distinction are recognized and
welcomed. There the old feudal traditions were still in full force,
and diplomatic representatives admitted to the court society by
right of official position found it to consist exclusively of an
aristocracy of birth, sixteen quarterings of nobility being
necessary to a right of presentation to the Emperor and Empress.
The society thus constituted was distinguished by great charm and
grace of manner, the exclusion of all outer elements not only
limiting the numbers, but giving the ease of a family party within
the charmed circle. On the other hand, larger interests suffered
under the rigid exclusion of all occupations except the army,
diplomacy, and court place. The intimacy among the different
members of the society was so close that, beyond a courtesy of
manner that never failed, the tendency was to resist the approach of
any stranger as a 'gene'. A single new face was instantly remarked
and commented on in a Vienna saloon to an extent unknown in any
other large capital. This peculiarity, however, worked in favor of
the old resident. Kindliness of feeling increased with familiarity
and grew into something better than acquaintance, and the parting
with most sincere and affectionately disposed friends in the end was
deeply felt on both sides. Those years were passed in a pleasant
house in the Weiden Faubourg, with a large garden at the back, and I
do not think that during this time there was one disagreeable
incident in his relations to his colleagues, while in several cases
the relations, agreeable with all, became those of close friendship.
We lived constantly, of course, in diplomatic and Austrian society,
and during the latter part of the time particularly his house was as
much frequented and the centre of as many dancing and other
receptions as any in the place. His official relations with the
Foreign Office were courteous and agreeable, the successive Foreign
Ministers during his stay being Count Richberg, Count Mensdorff, and
Baron Beust. Austria was so far removed from any real contact with
our own country that, though the interest in our war may have been
languid, they did not pretend to a knowledge which might have
inclined them to controversy, while an instinct that we were acting
as a constituted government against rebellion rather inclined them
to sympathy. I think I may say that as he became known among them
his keen patriotism and high sense of honor and truth were fully
understood and appreciated, and that what he said always commanded a
sympathetic hearing among men with totally different political
ideas, but with chivalrous and loyal instincts to comprehend his
own. I shall never forget his account of the terrible day when the
news of Mr. Lincoln's death came. By some accident a rumor of it
reached him first through a colleague. He went straight to the
Foreign Office for news, hoping against hope, was received by Count
Mensdorff, who merely came forward and laid his arm about his
shoulder with an intense sympathy beyond words."
Miss Motley, the historian's youngest daughter, has added a note to her
sister's communication:--
"During his residence in Vienna the most important negotiations
which he had to carry on with the Austrian Government were those
connected with the Mexican affair. Maximilian at one time applied
to his brother the Emperor for assistance, and he promised to accede
to his demand. Accordingly a large number of volunteers were
equipped and had actually embarked at Trieste, when a dispatch from
Seward arrived, instructing the American Minister to give notice to
the Austrian Government that if the troops sailed for Mexico he was
to leave Vienna at once. My father had to go at once to Count
Mensdorff with these instructions, and in spite of the Foreign
Minister being annoyed that the United States Government had not
sooner intimated that this extreme course would be taken, the
interview was quite amicable and the troops were not allowed to
sail. We were in Vienna during the war in which Denmark fought
alone against Austria and Prussia, and when it was over Bismarck
came to Vienna to settle the terms of peace with the Emperor. He
dined with us twice during his short stay, and was most delightful
and agreeable. When he and my father were together they seemed to
live over the youthful days they had spent together as students,
and many were the anecdotes of their boyish frolics which Bismarck
related."
XVII.
1861-1863. AEt. 47-49.
LETTERS FROM VIENNA.
Soon after Mr. Motley's arrival in Vienna I received a long letter from
him, most of which relates to personal matters, but which contains a few
sentences of interest to the general reader as showing his zealous
labors, wherever he found himself, in behalf of the great cause then in
bloody debate in his own country:
November 14, 1861.
. . . What can I say to you of cis-Atlantic things? I am almost
ashamed to be away from home. You know that I had decided to
remain, and had sent for my family to come to America, when my
present appointment altered my plans. I do what good I can. I
think I made some impression on Lord John Russell, with whom I spent
two days soon after my arrival in England, and I talked very frankly
and as strongly as I could to Palmerston, and I have had long
conversations and correspondences with other leading men in England.
I have also had an hour's [conversation] with Thouvenel in Paris. I
hammered the Northern view into him as soundly as I could. For this
year there will be no foreign interference with us. I don't
anticipate it at any time, unless we bring it on ourselves by bad
management, which I don't expect. Our fate is in our own hands, and
Europe is looking on to see which side is strongest,--when it has
made the discovery it will back it as also the best and the most
moral. Yesterday I had my audience with the Emperor. He received
me with much cordiality, and seemed interested in a long account
which I gave him of our affairs. You may suppose I inculcated the
Northern views. We spoke in his vernacular, and he asked me
afterwards if I was a German. I mention this not from vanity, but
because he asked it with earnestness, and as if it had a political
significance. Of course I undeceived him. His appearance
interested me, and his manner is very pleasing.
I continued to receive long and interesting letters from him at intervals
during his residence as Minister at Vienna. Relating as they often did to
public matters, about which he had private sources of information, his
anxiety that they should not get into print was perfectly natural. As,
however, I was at liberty to read his letters to others at my discretion,
and as many parts of these letters have an interest as showing how
American affairs looked to one who was behind the scenes in Europe, I may
venture to give some extracts without fear of violating the spirit of his
injunctions, or of giving offence to individuals. The time may come when
his extended correspondence can be printed in full with propriety, but it
must be in a future year and after it has passed into the hands of a
younger generation. Meanwhile these few glimpses at his life and records
of his feelings and opinions will help to make the portrait of the man we
are studying present itself somewhat more clearly.
LEGATION of THE U. S. A., VIENNA, January 14, 1862.
MY DEAR HOLMES,--I have two letters of yours, November 29 and
December 17, to express my thanks for. It is quite true that it is
difficult for me to write with the same feeling that inspires you,
--that everything around the inkstand within a radius of a thousand
miles is full of deepest interest to writer and reader. I don't
even intend to try to amuse you with Vienna matters. What is it to
you that we had a very pleasant dinner-party last week at Prince
Esterhazy's, and another this week at Prince Liechtenstein's, and
that to-morrow I am to put on my cocked hat and laced coat to make a
visit to her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Mother, and that to-night
there is to be the first of the assembly balls, the Vienna Almack's,
at which--I shall be allowed to absent myself altogether?
It strikes me that there is likely to be left a fair field for us a
few months longer, say till midsummer. The Trent affair I shall not
say much about, except to state that I have always been for giving
up the prisoners. I was awfully afraid, knowing that the demand had
gone forth,--
"Send us your prisoners or you'll hear of it,"
that the answer would have come back in the Hotspur vein--
'And if the Devil come and roar for them,
We will not send them."
The result would have been most disastrous, for in order to secure a
most trifling advantage,--that of keeping Mason and Slidell at Fort
Warren a little longer,--we should have turned our backs on all the
principles maintained by us when neutral, and should have been
obliged to accept a war at an enormous disadvantage. . . .
But I hardly dared to hope that we should have obtained such a
victory as we have done. To have disavowed the illegal transaction
at once,--before any demand came from England,--to have placed that
disavowal on the broad ground of principle which we have always
cherished, and thus with a clear conscience, and to our entire
honor, to have kept ourselves clear from a war which must have given
the Confederacy the invincible alliance of England,--was exactly
what our enemies in Europe did not suppose us capable of doing. But
we have done it in the handsomest manner, and there is not one
liberal heart in this hemisphere that is not rejoiced, nor one hater
of us and of our institutions that is not gnashing his teeth with
rage.
The letter of ten close pages from which I have quoted these passages is
full of confidential information, and contains extracts from letters of
leading statesmen. If its date had been 1762, I might feel authorized in
disobeying its injunctions of privacy. I must quote one other sentence,
as it shows his animus at that time towards a distinguished statesman of
whom he was afterwards accused of speaking in very hard terms by an
obscure writer whose intent was to harm him. In speaking of the Trent
affair, Mr. Motley says: "The English premier has been foiled by our much
maligned Secretary of State, of whom, on this occasion at least, one has
the right to say, with Sir Henry Wotton,--
'His armor was his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill.'"
"He says at the close of this long letter:
'I wish I could bore you about something else but American politics.
But there is nothing else worth thinking of in the world. All else
is leather and prunella. We are living over again the days of the
Dutchmen or the seventeenth-century Englishmen.'"
My next letter, of fourteen closely written pages, was of similar
character to the last. Motley could think of nothing but the great
conflict. He was alive to every report from America, listening too with
passionate fears or hopes, as the case might be, to the whispers not yet
audible to the world which passed from lip to lip of the statesmen who
were watching the course of events from the other side of the Atlantic
with the sweet complacency of the looker-on of Lucretius; too often
rejoicing in the storm that threatened wreck to institutions and an
organization which they felt to be a standing menace to the established
order of things in their older communities.
A few extracts from this very long letter will be found to have a special
interest from the time at which they were written.
LEGATION OF U. S. A., VIENNA, February 26, 1862.
MY DEAR HOLMES,--. . . I take great pleasure in reading your
prophecies, and intend to be just as free in hazarding my own, for,
as you say, our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the
future, and no one but an idiot would be discouraged at finding
himself sometimes far out in his calculations. If I find you
signally right in any of your predictions, be sure that I will
congratulate and applaud. If you make mistakes, you shall never
hear of them again, and I promise to forget them. Let me ask the
same indulgence from you in return. This is what makes letter-
writing a comfort and journalizing dangerous. . . The ides of March
will be upon us before this letter reaches you. We have got to
squash the rebellion soon, or be squashed forever as a nation. I
don't pretend to judge military plans or the capacities of generals.
But, as you suggest, perhaps I can take a more just view of the
whole picture of the eventful struggle at this great distance than
do those absolutely acting and suffering on the scene. Nor can I
resist the desire to prophesy any more than you can do, knowing that
I may prove utterly mistaken. I say, then, that one great danger
comes from the chance of foreign interference. What will prevent
that?
Our utterly defeating the Confederates in some great and conclusive
battle; or,
Our possession of the cotton ports and opening them to European
trade; or,
A most unequivocal policy of slave emancipation.
Any one of these three conditions would stave off recognition by
foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to
reduce the South to obedience.
The last measure is to my mind the most important. The South has,
by going to war with the United States government, thrust into our
hands against our will the invincible weapon which constitutional
reasons had hitherto forbidden us to employ. At the same time it
has given us the power to remedy a great wrong to four millions of
the human race, in which we had hitherto been obliged to acquiesce.
We are threatened with national annihilation, and defied to use the
only means of national preservation. The question is distinctly
proposed to us, Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic? It is
most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free
States as to the answer.
If we do fall, we deserve our fate. At the beginning of the
contest, constitutional scruples might be respectable. But now we
are fighting to subjugate the South; that is, Slavery. We are
fighting for nothing else that I know of. We are fighting for the
Union. Who wishes to destroy the Union? The slaveholder, nobody
else. Are we to spend twelve hundred millions, and raise six
hundred thousand soldiers, in order to protect slavery? It really
does seem to me too simple for argument. I am anxiously waiting for
the coming Columbus who will set this egg of ours on end by smashing
in the slavery end. We shall be rolling about in every direction
until that is done. I don't know that it is to be done by
proclamation. Rather perhaps by facts. . . . Well, I console
myself with thinking that the people--the American people, at least
--is about as wise collectively as less numerous collections of
individuals, and that the people has really declared emancipation,
and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it
seems to be a law of Providence, that progress should be by a spiral
movement; so that when it seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be
going ahead. I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling
itself to death. With slavery in its pristine vigor, I should think
the restored Union neither possible nor desirable. Don't understand
me as not taking into account all the strategical considerations
against premature governmental utterances on this great subject.
But are there any trustworthy friends to the Union among the
slaveholders? Should we lose many Kentuckians and Virginians who
are now with us, if we boldly confiscated the slaves of all rebels?
--and a confiscation of property which has legs and so confiscates
itself, at command, is not only a legal, but would prove a very
practical measure in time of war. In brief, the time is fast
approaching, I think, when 'Thorough' should be written on all our
banners. Slavery will never accept a subordinate position. The
great Republic and Slavery cannot both survive. We have been defied
to mortal combat, and yet we hesitate to strike. These are my poor
thoughts on this great subject. Perhaps you will think them crude.
I was much struck with what you quote from Mr. Conway, that if
emancipation was proclaimed on the Upper Mississippi it would be
known to the negroes of Louisiana in advance of the telegraph. And
if once the blacks had leave to run, how many whites would have to
stay at home to guard their dissolving property?
You have had enough of my maunderings. But before I conclude them,
may I ask you to give all our kindest regards to Lowell, and to
express our admiration for the Yankee Idyl. I am afraid of using
too extravagant language if I say all I think about it. Was there
ever anything more stinging, more concentrated, more vigorous, more
just? He has condensed into those few pages the essence of a
hundred diplomatic papers and historical disquisitions and Fourth of
July orations. I was dining a day or two since with his friend
Lytton (Bulwer's son, attache here) and Julian Fane (secretary of
the embassy), both great admirers of him,--and especially of the
"Biglow Papers;" they begged me to send them the Mason and Slidell
Idyl, but I wouldn't,--I don't think it is in English nature
(although theirs is very cosmopolitan and liberal) to take such
punishment and come up smiling. I would rather they got it in some
other way, and then told me what they thought voluntarily.
I have very pleasant relations with all the J. B.'s here. They are
all friendly and well disposed to the North,--I speak of the
embassy, which, with the ambassador and---dress, numbers eight or
ten souls, some of them very intellectual ones. There are no other
J. B.'s here. I have no fear at present of foreign interference.
We have got three or four months to do our work in,--a fair field
and no favor. There is no question whatever that the Southern
commissioners have been thoroughly snubbed in London and Paris.
There is to be a blockade debate in Parliament next week, but no bad
consequences are to be apprehended. The Duke de Gramont (French
ambassador, and an intimate friend of the Emperor) told my wife last
night that it was entirely false that the Emperor had ever urged the
English government to break the blockade. "Don't believe it,--don't
believe a word of it," he said. He has always held that language to
me. He added that Prince Napoleon had just come out with a strong
speech about us,--you will see it, doubtless, before you get this
letter,--but it has not yet reached us.
Shall I say anything of Austria,--what can I say that would interest
you? That's the reason why I hate to write. All my thoughts are in
America. Do you care to know about the Archduke Ferdinand
Maximilian, that shall be King hereafter of Mexico (if L. N. has his
way)? He is next brother to the Emperor, but although I have had
the honor of private audiences of many archdukes here, this one is a
resident of Trieste.
He is about thirty,--has an adventurous disposition,--some
imagination,--a turn for poetry,--has voyaged a good deal about the
world in the Austrian ship-of-war,--for in one respect he much
resembles that unfortunate but anonymous ancestor of his, the King
of Bohemia with the seven castles, who, according to Corporal Trim,
had such a passion for navigation and sea-affairs, "with never a
seaport in all his dominions." But now the present King of Bohemia
has got the sway of Trieste, and is Lord High Admiral and Chief of
the Marine Department. He has been much in Spain, also in South
America; I have read some travels, "Reise Skizzen," of his--printed,
not published. They are not without talent, and he ever and anon
relieves his prose jog-trot by breaking into a canter of poetry. He
adores bull-fights, and rather regrets the Inquisition, and
considers the Duke of Alva everything noble and chivalrous, and the
most abused of men. It would do your heart good to hear his
invocations to that deeply injured shade, and his denunciations of
the ignorant and vulgar protestants who have defamed him. (N.B.
Let me observe that the R. of the D. R. was not published until long
after the "Reise Skizzen" were written.) 'Du armer Alva! weil du
dem Willen deines Herrn unerschiitterlich treu vast, weil die
festbestimmten grundsatze der Regierung,' etc., etc., etc. You
can imagine the rest. Dear me! I wish I could get back to the
sixteenth and seventeenth century. . . . But alas! the events
of the nineteenth are too engrossing.
If Lowell cares to read this letter, will you allow me to "make it
over to him jointly," as Captain Cuttle says. I wished to write to
him, but I am afraid only you would tolerate my writing so much when
I have nothing to say. If he would ever send me a line I should be
infinitely obliged, and would quickly respond. We read the "Washers
of the Shroud" with fervid admiration.
Always remember me most sincerely to the Club, one and all. It
touches me nearly when you assure me that I am not forgotten by
them. To-morrow is Saturday and the last of the month.--[See
Appendix A.]--We are going to dine with our Spanish colleague. But
the first bumper of the Don's champagne I shall drain to the health
of my Parker House friends.
From another long letter dated August 31, 1862, I extract the following
passages:--
"I quite agree in all that you said in your last letter. 'The imp
of secession can't reenter its mother's womb.' It is merely
childish to talk of the Union 'as it was.' You might as well bring
back the Saxon Heptarchy. But the great Republic is destined to
live and flourish, I can't doubt. . . . Do you remember that
wonderful scene in Faust in which Mephistopheles draws wine for the
rabble with a gimlet out of the wooden table; and how it changes to
fire as they drink it, and how they all go mad, draw their knives,
grasp each other by the nose, and think they are cutting off bunches
of grapes at every blow, and how foolish they all look when they
awake from the spell and see how the Devil has been mocking them?
It always seems to me a parable of the great Secession.
"I repeat, I can't doubt as to the ultimate result. But I dare say
we have all been much mistaken in our calculations as to time.
Days, months, years, are nothing in history. Men die, man is
immortal, practically, even on this earth. We are so impatient,
--and we are always watching for the last scene of the tragedy. Now I
humbly opine that the drop is only about falling on the first act,
or perhaps only the prologue. This act or prologue will be called,
in after days, War for the status quo. Such enthusiasm, heroism,
and manslaughter as status quo could inspire, has, I trust, been not
entirely in vain, but it has been proved insufficient.
"I firmly believe that when the slaveholders declared war on the
United States government they began a series of events that, in the
logical chain of history, cannot come to a conclusion until the last
vestige of slavery is gone. Looking at the whole field for a moment
dispassionately, objectively, as the dear Teutonic philosophers say,
and merely as an exhibition of phenomena, I cannot imagine any other
issue. Everything else may happen. This alone must happen.
"But after all this isn't a war. It is a revolution. It is n't
strategists that are wanted so much as believers. In revolutions
the men who win are those who are in earnest. Jeff and Stonewall
and the other Devil-worshippers are in earnest, but it was not
written in the book of fate that the slaveholders' rebellion should
be vanquished by a pro-slavery general. History is never so
illogical. No, the coming 'man on horseback' on our side must be a
great strategist, with the soul of that insane lion, mad old John
Brown, in his belly. That is your only Promethean recipe:--
'et insani leonis
Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro.'
"I don't know why Horace runs so in my head this morning. . . .
"There will be work enough for all; but I feel awfully fidgety just
now about Port Royal and Hilton Head, and about affairs generally
for the next three months. After that iron-clads and the new levies
must make us invincible."
In another letter, dated November 2, 1862, he expresses himself very
warmly about his disappointment in the attitude of many of his old
English friends with reference to our civil conflict. He had recently
heard the details of the death of "the noble Wilder Dwight."
"It is unnecessary," he says, "to say how deeply we were moved. I
had the pleasure of knowing him well, and I always appreciated his
energy, his manliness, and his intelligent cheerful heroism. I look
back upon him now as a kind of heroic type of what a young New
Englander ought to be and was. I tell you that one of these days
--after a generation of mankind has passed away--these youths will
take their places in our history, and be regarded by the young men
and women now unborn with the admiration which the Philip Sidneys
and the Max Piccolominis now inspire. After all, what was your
Chevy Chace to stir blood with like a trumpet? What noble
principle, what deathless interest, was there at stake? Nothing but
a bloody fight between a lot of noble gamekeepers on one side and of
noble poachers on the other. And because they fought well and
hacked each other to pieces like devils, they have been heroes for
centuries."
The letter was written in a very excited state of feeling, and runs over
with passionate love of country and indignation at the want of sympathy
with the cause of freedom which he had found in quarters where he had not
expected such coldness or hostile tendencies.
From a letter dated Vienna, September 22, 1863.
. . . "When you wrote me last you said on general matters this:
'In a few days we shall get the news of the success or failure of
the attacks on Port Hudson and Vicksburg. If both are successful,
many will say that the whole matter is about settled.' You may
suppose that when I got the great news I shook hands warmly with you
in the spirit across the Atlantic. Day by day for so long we had
been hoping to hear the fall of Vicksburg. At last when that little
concentrated telegram came, announcing Vicksburg and Gettysburg on
the same day and in two lines, I found myself almost alone. . . .
There was nobody in the house to join in my huzzahs but my youngest
infant. And my conduct very much resembled that of the excellent
Philip II. when he heard the fall of Antwerp,--for I went to her
door, screeching through the key-hole 'Vicksburg is ours!' just as
that other 'pere de famille,' more potent, but I trust not more
respectable than I, conveyed the news to his Infanta. (Fide, for
the incident, an American work on the Netherlands, i. p. 263, and
the authorities there cited.) It is contemptible on my part to
speak thus frivolously of events which will stand out in such golden
letters so long as America has a history, but I wanted to illustrate
the yearning for sympathy which I felt. You who were among people
grim and self-contained usually, who, I trust, were falling on each
other's necks in the public streets, shouting, with tears in their
eyes and triumph in their hearts, can picture my isolation.
"I have never faltered in my faith, and in the darkest hours, when
misfortunes seemed thronging most thickly upon us, I have never felt
the want of anything to lean against; but I own I did feel like
shaking hands with a few hundred people when I heard of our Fourth
of July, 1863, work, and should like to have heard and joined in an
American cheer or two.
"I have not much to say of matters here to interest you. We have
had an intensely hot, historically hot, and very long and very dry
summer. I never knew before what a drought meant. In Hungary the
suffering is great, and the people are killing the sheep to feed the
pigs with the mutton. Here about Vienna the trees have been almost
stripped of foliage ever since the end of August. There is no glory
in the grass nor verdure in anything.
"In fact, we have nothing green here but the Archduke Max, who
firmly believes that he is going forth to Mexico to establish an
American empire, and that it is his divine mission to destroy the
dragon of democracy and reestablish the true Church, the Right
Divine, and all sorts of games. Poor young man! . . .
"Our information from home is to the 12th. Charleston seems to be
in 'articulo mortis,' but how forts nowadays seem to fly in the face
of Scripture. Those founded on a rock, and built of it, fall easily
enough under the rain of Parrotts and Dahlgrens, while the house
built of sand seems to bid defiance to the storm."
In quoting from these confidential letters I have been restrained from
doing full justice to their writer by the fact that he spoke with such
entire freedom of persons as well as events. But if they could be read
from beginning to end, no one could help feeling that his love for his
own country, and passionate absorption of every thought in the strife
upon which its existence as a nation depended, were his very life during
all this agonizing period. He can think and talk of nothing else, or, if
he turns for a moment to other subjects, he reverts to the one great
central interest of "American politics," of which he says in one of the
letters from which I have quoted, "There is nothing else worth thinking
of in the world."
But in spite of his public record as the historian of the struggle for
liberty and the champion of its defenders, and while every letter he
wrote betrayed in every word the intensity of his patriotic feeling, he
was not safe against the attacks of malevolence. A train laid by unseen
hands was waiting for the spark to kindle it, and this came at last in
the shape of a letter from an unknown individual,--a letter the existence
of which ought never to have been a matter of official recognition.
XVIII.
1866-1867. AEt. 52-43.
RESIGNATION OF HIS OFFICE.--CAUSES OF HIS RESIGNATION.
It is a relief to me that just here, where I come to the first of two
painful episodes in this brilliant and fortunate career, I can preface my
statement with the generous words of one who speaks with authority of his
predecessor in office.
The Hon. John Jay, Ex-Minister to Austria, in the tribute to the memory
of Motley read at a meeting of the New York Historical Society, wrote as
follows:--
"In singular contrast to Mr. Motley's brilliant career as an
historian stands the fact recorded in our diplomatic annals that he
was twice forced from the service as one who had forfeited the
confidence of the American government. This society, while he was
living, recognized his fame as a statesman, diplomatist, and
patriot, as belonging to America, and now that death has closed the
career of Seward, Sumner, and Motley, it will be remembered that the
great historian, twice humiliated, by orders from Washington, before
the diplomacy and culture of Europe, appealed from the passions of
the hour to the verdict of history.
"Having succeeded Mr. Motley at Vienna some two years after his
departure, I had occasion to read most of his dispatches, which
exhibited a mastery of the subjects of which they treated, with much
of the clear perception, the scholarly and philosophic tone and
decided judgment, which, supplemented by his picturesque
description, full of life and color, have given character to his
histories. They are features which might well have served to extend
the remark of Madame de Stael that a great historian is almost a
statesman. I can speak also from my own observation of the
reputation which Motley left in the Austrian capital.
Notwithstanding the decision with which, under the direction of Mr.
Seward, he had addressed the minister of foreign affairs, Count
Mensdorff, afterwards the Prince Diedrickstein, protesting against
the departure of an Austrian force of one thousand volunteers, who
were about to embark for Mexico in aid of the ill-fated Maximilian,
--a protest which at the last moment arrested the project,--Mr.
Motley and his amiable family were always spoken of in terms of
cordial regard and respect by members of the imperial family and
those eminent statesmen, Count de Beust and Count Andrassy. His
death, I am sure, is mourned to-day by the representatives of the
historic names of Austria and Hungary, and by the surviving
diplomats then residing near the Court of Vienna, wherever they may
still be found, headed by their venerable Doyen, the Baron de
Heckeren."
The story of Mr. Motley's resignation of his office and its acceptance by
the government is this.
The President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, received a letter
professing to be written from the Hotel Meurice, Paris, dated October 23,
1866, and signed "George W. M'Crackin, of New York." This letter was
filled with accusations directed against various public agents,
ministers, and consuls, representing the United States in different
countries. Its language was coarse, its assertions were improbable, its
spirit that of the lowest of party scribblers. It was bitter against New
England, especially so against Massachusetts, and it singled out Motley
for the most particular abuse. I think it is still questioned whether
there was any such person as the one named,--at any rate, it bore the
characteristic marks of those vulgar anonymous communications which
rarely receive any attention unless they are important enough to have the
police set on the track of the writer to find his rathole, if possible. A
paragraph in the "Daily Advertiser" of June 7, 1869, quotes from a
Western paper a story to the effect that one William R. M'Crackin, who
had recently died at-----confessed to having written the M' Crackin
letter. Motley, he said, had snubbed him and refused to lend him money.
"He appears to have been a Bohemian of the lowest order." Between such
authorship and the anonymous there does not seem to be much to choose.
But the dying confession sounds in my ears as decidedly apocryphal. As
for the letter, I had rather characterize it than reproduce it. It is an
offence to decency and a disgrace to the national record on which it is
found. This letter of "George W. M'Crackin" passed into the hands of Mr.
Seward, the Secretary of State. Most gentlemen, I think, would have
destroyed it on the spot, as it was not fit for the waste-basket. Some,
more cautious, might have smothered it among the piles of their private
communications. If any notice was taken of it, one would say that a
private note to each of the gentlemen attacked might have warned him that
there were malicious eavesdroppers about, ready to catch up any careless
expression he might let fall and make a scandalous report of it to his
detriment.
The secretary, acquiescing without resistance in a suggestion of the
President, saw fit to address a formal note to several of the gentlemen
mentioned in the M'Crackin letter, repeating some of its offensive
expressions, and requesting those officials to deny or confirm the report
that they had uttered them.
A gentleman who is asked whether he has spoken in a "malignant" or
"offensive" manner, whether he has "railed violently and shamefully"
against the President of the United States, or against anybody else,
might well wonder who would address such a question to the humblest
citizen not supposed to be wanting in a common measure of self-respect. A
gentleman holding an important official station in a foreign country,
receiving a letter containing such questions, signed by the prime
minister of his government, if he did not think himself imposed upon by a
forgery, might well consider himself outraged. It was a letter of this
kind which was sent by the Secretary of State to the Minister
Plenipotentiary to the Empire of Austria. Not quite all the vulgar
insolence of the M'Crackin letter was repeated. Mr. Seward did not ask
Mr. Motley to deny or confirm the assertion of the letter that he was a
"thorough flunky" and "un-American functionary." But he did insult him
with various questions suggested by the anonymous letter,--questions that
must have been felt as an indignity by the most thick-skinned of battered
politicians.
Mr. Motley was very sensitive, very high-spirited, very impulsive, very
patriotic, and singularly truthful. The letter of Mr. Seward to such a
man was like a buffet on the cheek of an unarmed officer. It stung like
the thrust of a stiletto. It roused a resentment that could not find any
words to give it expression. He could not wait to turn the insult over in
his mind, to weigh the exact amount of affront in each question, to take
counsel, to sleep over it, and reply to it with diplomatic measure and
suavity. One hour had scarcely elapsed before his answer was written. As
to his feelings as an American, he appeals to his record. This might have
shown that if he erred it was on the side of enthusiasm and extravagant
expressions of reverence for the American people during the heroic years
just passed. He denounces the accusations as pitiful fabrications and
vile calumny. He blushes that such charges could have been uttered; he is
deeply wounded that Mr. Seward could have listened to such falsehood. He
does not hesitate to say what his opinions are with reference to home
questions, and especially to that of reconstruction.
"These opinions," he says, "in the privacy of my own household, and
to occasional American visitors, I have not concealed. The great
question now presenting itself for solution demands the
conscientious scrutiny of every American who loves his country and
believes in the human progress of which that country is one of the
foremost representatives. I have never thought, during my residence
at Vienna, that because I have the honor of being a public servant
of the American people I am deprived of the right of discussing
within my own walls the gravest subjects that can interest freemen.
A minister of the United States does not cease to be a citizen of
the United States, as deeply interested as others in all that
relates to the welfare of his country."
Among the "occasional American visitors" spoken of above must have been
some of those self-appointed or hired agents called "interviewers," who
do for the American public what the Venetian spies did for the Council of
Ten, what the familiars of the Inquisition did for the priesthood, who
invade every public man's privacy, who listen at every key-hole, who
tamper with every guardian of secrets; purveyors to the insatiable
appetite of a public which must have a slain reputation to devour with
its breakfast, as the monster of antiquity called regularly for his
tribute of a spotless virgin.
The "interviewer" has his use, undoubtedly, and often instructs and
amuses his public with gossip they could not otherwise listen to. He
serves the politician by repeating the artless and unstudied remarks
which fall from his lips in a conversation which the reporter has been
invited to take notes of. He tickles the author's vanity by showing him
off as he sits in his library unconsciously uttering the engaging items
of self-portraiture which, as he well knows, are to be given to the
public in next week's illustrated paper. The feathered end of his shaft
titillates harmlessly enough, but too often the arrowhead is crusted with
a poison worse than the Indian gets by mingling the wolf's gall with the
rattlesnake's venom. No man is safe whose unguarded threshold the
mischief-making questioner has crossed. The more unsuspecting, the more
frank, the more courageous, the more social is the subject of his
vivisection, the more easily does he get at his vital secrets, if he has
any to be extracted. No man is safe if the hearsay reports of his
conversation are to be given to the public without his own careful
revision. When we remember that a proof-text bearing on the mighty
question of the future life, words of supreme significance, uttered as
they were in the last hour, and by the lips to which we listen as to none
other,--that this text depends for its interpretation on the position of
a single comma, we can readily see what wrong may be done by the
unintentional blunder of the most conscientious reporter. But too
frequently it happens that the careless talk of an honest and high-minded
man only reaches the public after filtering through the drain of some
reckless hireling's memory,--one who has played so long with other men's
characters and good name that he forgets they have any value except to
fill out his morning paragraphs.
Whether the author of the scandalous letter which it was disgraceful to
the government to recognize was a professional interviewer or only a
malicious amateur, or whether he was a paid "spotter," sent by some
jealous official to report on the foreign ministers as is sometimes done
in the case of conductors of city horsecars, or whether the dying
miscreant before mentioned told the truth, cannot be certainly known. But
those who remember Mr. Hawthorne's account of his consular experiences at
Liverpool are fully aware to what intrusions and impertinences and
impositions our national representatives in other countries are
subjected. Those fellow-citizens who "often came to the consulate in
parties of half a dozen or more, on no business whatever, but merely to
subject their public servant to a rigid examination, and see how he was
getting on with his duties," may very possibly have included among them
some such mischief-maker as the author of the odious letter which
received official recognition. Mr. Motley had spoken in one of his
histories of "a set of venomous familiars who glided through every
chamber and coiled themselves at every fireside." He little thought that
under his own roof he himself was to be the victim of an equally base
espionage.
It was an insult on the part of the government to have sent Mr. Motley
such a letter with such questions as were annexed to it. No very exact
rule can be laid down as to the manner in which an insult shall be dealt
with. Something depends on temperament, and his was of the warmer
complexion. His first impulse, he says, was to content himself with a
flat denial of the truth of the accusations. But his scrupulous honesty
compelled him to make a plain statement of his opinions, and to avow the
fact that he had made no secret of them in conversation under conditions
where he had a right to speak freely of matters quite apart from his
official duties. His answer to the accusation was denial of its charges;
his reply to the insult was his resignation.
It may be questioned whether this was the wisest course, but wisdom is
often disconcerted by an indignity, and even a meek Christian may forget
to turn the other cheek after receiving the first blow until the natural
man has asserted himself by a retort in kind. But the wrong was
committed; his resignation was accepted; the vulgar letter, not fit to be
spread out on these pages, is enrolled in the records of the nation, and
the first deep wound was inflicted on the proud spirit of one whose
renown had shed lustre on the whole country.
That the burden of this wrong may rest where it belongs, I quote the
following statement from Mr. Jay's paper, already referred to.
"It is due to the memory of Mr. Seward to say, and there would seem
now no further motive for concealing the truth, that I was told in
Europe, on what I regarded as reliable authority, that there was
reason to believe that on the receipt of Mr. Motley's resignation
Mr. Seward had written to him declining to accept it, and that this
letter, by a telegraphic order of President Johnson, had been
arrested in the hands of a dispatch agent before its delivery to Mr.
Motley, and that the curt letter of the 18th of April had been
substituted in its stead."
The Hon. John Bigelow, late Minister to France, has published an article
in "The International Review" for July-August, 1878, in which he defends
his late friend Mr. Seward's action in this matter at the expense of the
President, Mr. Andrew Johnson, and not without inferences unfavorable to
the discretion of Mr. Motley. Many readers will think that the simple
record of Mr. Seward's unresisting acquiescence in the action of the
President is far from being to his advantage. I quote from his own
conversation as carefully reported by his friend Mr. Bigelow. "Mr.
Johnson was in a state of intense irritation, and more or less suspicious
of everybody about him."--"Instead of throwing the letter into the fire,"
the President handed it to him, the secretary, and suggested answering
it, and without a word, so far as appears, he simply answered,
"Certainly, sir." Again, the secretary having already written to Mr.
Motley that "his answer was satisfactory," the President, on reaching the
last paragraph of Mr. Motley's letter, in which he begged respectfully to
resign his post, "without waiting to learn what Mr. Seward had done or
proposed to do, exclaimed, with a not unnatural asperity, 'Well, let him
go,' and 'on hearing this,' said Mr. Seward, laughing, 'I did not read my
dispatch.'" Many persons will think that the counsel for the defence has
stated the plaintiff's case so strongly that there is nothing left for
him but to show his ingenuity and his friendship for the late secretary
in a hopeless argument. At any rate, Mr. Seward appears not to have made
the slightest effort to protect Mr. Motley against his coarse and jealous
chief at two critical moments, and though his own continuance in office
may have been more important to the State than that of the Vicar of Bray
was to the Church, he ought to have risked something, as it seems to me,
to shield such a patriot, such a gentleman, such a scholar, from ignoble
treatment; he ought to have been as ready to guard Mr. Motley from wrong
as Mr. Bigelow has shown himself to shield Mr. Seward from reproach, and
his task, if more delicate, was not more difficult. I am willing to
accept Mr. Bigelow's loyal and honorable defence of his friend's memory
as the best that could be said for Mr. Seward, but the best defence in
this case is little better than an impeachment. As for Mr. Johnson, he
had held the weapon of the most relentless of the 'Parcae' so long that
his suddenly clipping the thread of a foreign minister's tenure of office
in a fit of jealous anger is not at all surprising.
Thus finished Mr. Motley's long and successful diplomatic service at the
Court of Austria. He may have been judged hasty in resigning his place;
he may have committed himself in expressing his opinions too strongly
before strangers, whose true character as spies and eavesdroppers he was
too high-minded to suspect. But no caution could have protected him
against a slanderer who hated the place he came from, the company he
kept, the name he had made famous, to whom his very look and bearing
--such as belong to a gentleman of natural refinement and good breeding
--must have been a personal grievance and an unpardonable offence.
I will add, in illustration of what has been said, and as showing his
feeling with reference to the matter, an extract from a letter to me from
Vienna, dated the 12th of March, 1867.
. . . "As so many friends and so many strangers have said so much
that is gratifying to me in public and private on this very painful
subject, it would be like affectation, in writing to so old a friend
as you, not to touch upon it. I shall confine myself, however, to
one fact, which, so far as I know, may be new to you.
"Geo. W. M'Cracken is a man and a name utterly unknown to me.
"With the necessary qualification which every man who values truth
must make when asserting such a negation,--viz., to the very best of
my memory and belief,--I never set eyes on him nor heard of him
until now, in the whole course of my life. Not a member of my
family or of the legation has the faintest recollection of any such
person. I am quite convinced that he never saw me nor heard the
sound of my voice. That his letter was a tissue of vile calumnies,
shameless fabrications, and unblushing and contemptible falsehoods,
--by whomsoever uttered,--I have stated in a reply to what ought
never to have been an official letter. No man can regret more than
I do that such a correspondence is enrolled in the capital among
American state papers. I shall not trust myself to speak of the
matter. It has been a sufficiently public scandal."
XIX.
1867-1868. AEt. 53-54.
LAST TWO VOLUMES OF THE "HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS."--GENERAL
CRITICISMS OF DUTCH SCHOLARS ON MOTLEY'S HISTORICAL WORKS.
In his letter to me of March 12, 1867, just cited, Mr. Motley writes:--
"My two concluding volumes of the United Netherlands are passing
rapidly through the press. Indeed, Volume III. is entirely printed
and a third of Volume IV.
"If I live ten years longer I shall have probably written the
natural sequel to the first two works,--viz., the Thirty Years' War.
After that I shall cease to scourge the public.
"I don't know whether my last two volumes are good or bad; I only
know that they are true--but that need n't make them amusing.
"Alas! one never knows when one becomes a bore."
In 1868 the two concluding volumes of the "History of the Netherlands"
were published at the same time in London and in New York. The events
described and the characters delineated in these two volumes had,
perhaps, less peculiar interest for English and American readers than
some of those which had lent attraction to the preceding ones. There was
no scene like the siege of Antwerp, no story like that of the Spanish
Armada. There were no names that sounded to our ears like those of Sir
Philip Sidney and Leicester and Amy Robsart. But the main course of his
narrative flowed on with the same breadth and depth of learning and the
same brilliancy of expression. The monumental work continued as nobly as
it had begun. The facts had been slowly, quietly gathered, one by one,
like pebbles from the empty channel of a brook. The style was fluent,
impetuous, abundant, impatient, as it were, at times, and leaping the
sober boundaries prescribed to it, like the torrent which rushes through
the same channel when the rains have filled it. Thus there was matter for
criticism in his use of language. He was not always careful in the
construction of his sentences. He introduced expressions now and then
into his vocabulary which reminded one of his earlier literary efforts.
He used stronger language at times than was necessary, coloring too
highly, shading too deeply in his pictorial delineations. To come to the
matter of his narrative, it must be granted that not every reader will
care to follow him through all the details of diplomatic intrigues which
he has with such industry and sagacity extricated from the old
manuscripts in which they had long lain hidden. But we turn a few pages
and we come to one of those descriptions which arrest us at once and show
him in his power and brilliancy as a literary artist. His characters move
before us with the features of life; we can see Elizabeth, or Philip, or
Maurice, not as a name connected with events, but as a breathing and
acting human being, to be loved or hated, admired or despised, as if he
or she were our contemporary. That all his judgments would not be
accepted as final we might easily anticipate; he could not help writing
more or less as a partisan, but he was a partisan on the side of freedom
in politics and religion, of human nature as against every form of
tyranny, secular or priestly, of noble manhood wherever he saw it as
against meanness and violence and imposture, whether clad in the
soldier's mail or the emperor's purple. His sternest critics, and even
these admiring ones, were yet to be found among those who with
fundamental beliefs at variance with his own followed him in his long
researches among the dusty annals of the past.
The work of the learned M. Groen van Prinsterer,--[Maurice et Barnevelt,
Etude Historique. Utrecht, 1875.]--devoted expressly to the revision and
correction of what the author considers the erroneous views of Mr. Motley
on certain important points, bears, notwithstanding, such sincere and
hearty tribute to his industry, his acquisitions, his brilliant qualities
as a historian, that some extracts from it will be read, I think, with
interest.
"My first interview, more than twenty years ago, with Mr. Lothrop
Motley, has left an indelible impression on my memory.
"It was the 8th of August, 1853. A note is handed me from our
eminent archivist Bakhuyzen van den Brink. It informs me that I am
to receive a visit from an American, who, having been struck by the
analogies between the United Provinces and the United States,
between Washington and the founder of our independence, has
interrupted his diplomatic career to write the life of William the
First; that he has already given proof of ardor and perseverance,
having worked in libraries and among collections of manuscripts,
and that he is coming to pursue his studies at the Hague.
"While I am surprised and delighted with this intelligence, I am
informed that Mr. Motley himself is waiting for my answer. My
eagerness to make the acquaintance of such an associate in my
sympathies and my labors may be well imagined. But how shall I
picture my surprise, in presently discovering that this unknown and
indefatigable fellow-worker has really read, I say read and reread,
our Quartos, our Folios, the enormous volumes of Bor, of van
Meteren, besides a multitude of books, of pamphlets, and even of
unedited documents. Already he is familiar with the events, the
changes of condition, the characteristic details of the life of his
and my hero. Not only is he acquainted with my Archives, but it
seems as if there was nothing in this voluminous collection of which
he was ignorant. . . .
"In sending me the last volume of his 'History of the Foundation of
the Republic of the Netherlands,' Mr. Motley wrote to me: 'Without
the help of the Archives I could never have undertaken the difficult
task I had set myself, and you will have seen at least from my
numerous citations that I have made a sincere and conscientious
study of them.' Certainly in reading such a testimonial I
congratulated myself on the excellent fruit of my labors, but the
gratitude expressed to me by Mr. Motley was sincerely reciprocated.
The Archives are a scientific collection, and my 'Manual of National
History,' written in Dutch, hardly gets beyond the limits of my own
country. And here is a stranger, become our compatriot in virtue of
the warmth of his sympathies, who has accomplished what was not in
my power. By the detail and the charm of his narrative, by the
matter and form of a work which the universality of the English
language and numerous translations were to render cosmopolitan, Mr.
Motley, like that other illustrious historian, Prescott, lost to
science by too early death, has popularized in both hemispheres the
sublime devotion of the Prince of Orange, the exceptional and
providential destinies of my country, and the benedictions of the
Eternal for all those who trust in Him and tremble only at his
Word."
The old Dutch scholar differs in many important points from Mr. Motley,
as might be expected from his creed and his life-long pursuits. This I
shall refer to in connection with Motley's last work, "John of
Barneveld." An historian among archivists and annalists reminds one of
Sir John Lubbock in the midst of his ant-hills. Undoubtedly he disturbs
the ants in their praiseworthy industry, much as his attentions may
flatter them. Unquestionably the ants (if their means of expressing
themselves were equal to their apparent intellectual ability) could teach
him many things that he has overlooked and correct him in many mistakes.
But the ants will labor ingloriously without an observer to chronicle
their doings, and the archivists and annalists will pile up facts forever
like so many articulates or mollusks or radiates, until the vertebrate
historian comes with his generalizing ideas, his beliefs, his prejudices,
his idiosyncrasies of all kinds, and brings the facts into a more or less
imperfect, but still organic series of relations. The history which is
not open to adverse criticism is worth little, except as material, for it
is written without taking cognizance of those higher facts about which
men must differ; of which Guizot writes as follows, as quoted in the work
of M. Groen van Prinsterer himself.
"It is with facts that our minds are exercised, it has nothing but
facts as its materials, and when it discovers general laws these
laws are themselves facts which it determines. . . . In the
study of facts the intelligence may allow itself to be crushed; it
may lower, narrow, materialize itself; it may come to believe that
there are no facts except those which strike us at the first glance,
which come close to us, which fall, as we say, under our senses; a
great and gross error; there are remote facts, immense, obscure,
sublime, very difficult to reach, to observe, to describe, and which
are not any less facts for these reasons, and which man is not less
obliged to study and to know; and if he fails to recognize them or
forgets them, his thought will be prodigiously abashed, and all his
ideas carry the stamp of this deterioration."
In that higher region of facts which belongs to the historian, whose task
it is to interpret as well as to transcribe, Mr. Motley showed, of
course, the political and religious school in which he had been brought
up. Every man has a right to his "personal equation" of prejudice, and
Mr. Motley, whose ardent temperament gave life to his writings, betrayed
his sympathies in the disputes of which he told the story, in a way to
insure sharp criticism from those of a different way of thinking. Thus it
is that in the work of M. Groen van Prinsterer, from which I have quoted,
he is considered as having been betrayed into error, while his critic
recognizes "his manifest desire to be scrupulously impartial and
truth-telling." And M. Fruin, another of his Dutch critics, says, "His
sincerity, his perspicacity, the accuracy of his laborious researches,
are incontestable."
Some of the criticisms of Dutch scholars will be considered in the pages
which deal with his last work, "The Life of John of Barneveld."
XX.
1868-1869. AEt. 54-55.
VISIT TO AMERICA.--RESIDENCE AT NO. 2 PARK STREET, BOSTON.--ADDRESS ON
THE COMING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.--ADDRESS ON HISTORIC PROGRESS AND
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.--APPOINTED MINISTER TO ENGLAND.
In June, 1868, Mr. Motley returned with his family to Boston, and
established himself in the house No. 2 Park Street. During his residence
here he entered a good deal into society, and entertained many visitors
in a most hospitable and agreeable way.
On the 20th of October, 1868, he delivered an address before the Parker
Fraternity, in the Music Hall, by special invitation. Its title was "Four
Questions for the People, at the Presidential Election." This was of
course what is commonly called an electioneering speech, but a speech
full of noble sentiments and eloquent expression. Here are two of its
paragraphs:--
"Certainly there have been bitterly contested elections in this
country before. Party spirit is always rife, and in such vivid,
excitable, disputatious communities as ours are, and I trust always
will be, it is the very soul of freedom. To those who reflect upon
the means and end of popular government, nothing seems more stupid
than in grand generalities to deprecate party spirit. Why,
government by parties and through party machinery is the only
possible method by which a free government can accomplish the
purpose of its existence. The old republics of the past may be said
to have fallen, not because of party spirit, but because there was
no adequate machinery by which party spirit could develop itself
with facility and regularity.
"And if our Republic be true to herself, the future of the human
race is assured by our example. No sweep of overwhelming armies, no
ponderous treatises on the rights of man, no hymns to liberty,
though set to martial music and resounding with the full diapason of
a million human throats, can exert so persuasive an influence as
does the spectacle of a great republic, occupying a quarter of the
civilized globe, and governed quietly and sagely by the people
itself."
A large portion of this address is devoted to the proposition that it is
just and reasonable to pay our debts rather than to repudiate them, and
that the nation is as much bound to be honest as is the individual. "It
is an awful thing," he says, "that this should be a question at all," but
it was one of the points on which the election turned, for all that.
In his advocacy of the candidate with whom, and the government of which
he became the head, his relations became afterwards so full of personal
antagonism, he spoke as a man of his ardent nature might be expected to
speak on such an occasion. No one doubts that his admiration of General
Grant's career was perfectly sincere, and no one at the present day can
deny that the great captain stood before the historian with such a record
as one familiar with the deeds of heroes and patriots might well consider
as entitling him to the honors too often grudged to the living to be
wasted on the dead. The speaker only gave voice to the widely prevailing
feelings which had led to his receiving the invitation to speak. The time
was one which called for outspoken utterance, and there was not a
listener whose heart did not warm as he heard the glowing words in which
the speaker recorded the noble achievements of the soldier who must in so
many ways have reminded him of his favorite character, William the
Silent.
On the 16th of December of this same year, 1868, Mr. Motley delivered an
address before the New York Historical Society, on the occasion of the
sixty-fourth anniversary of its foundation. The president of the society,
Mr. Hamilton Fish, introduced the speaker as one "whose name belongs to
no single country, and to no single age. As a statesman and diplomatist
and patriot, he belongs to America; as a scholar, to the world of
letters; as a historian, all ages will claim him in the future."
His subject was "Historic Progress and American Democracy." The discourse
is, to use his own words, "a rapid sweep through the eons and the
centuries," illustrating the great truth of the development of the race
from its origin to the time in which we are living. It is a long distance
from the planetary fact of the obliquity of the equator, which gave the
earth its alternation of seasons, and rendered the history, if not the
existence of man and of civilization a possibility, to the surrender of
General Lee under the apple-tree at Appomattox Court-House. No one but a
scholar familiar with the course of history could have marshalled such a
procession of events into a connected and intelligible sequence. It is
indeed a flight rather than a march; the reader is borne along as on the
wings of a soaring poem, and sees the rising and decaying empires of
history beneath him as a bird of passage marks the succession of cities
and wilds and deserts as he keeps pace with the sun in his journey.
Its eloquence, its patriotism, its crowded illustrations, drawn from vast
resources of knowledge, its epigrammatic axioms, its occasional
pleasantries, are all characteristic of the writer.
Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, the venerable senior member of the society,
proposed the vote of thanks to Mr. Motley with words of warm
commendation.
Mr. William Cullen Bryant rose and said:--
"I take great pleasure in seconding the resolution which has just
been read. The eminent historian of the Dutch Republic, who has
made the story of its earlier days as interesting as that of Athens
and Sparta, and who has infused into the narrative the generous glow
of his own genius, has the highest of titles to be heard with
respectful attention by the citizens of a community which, in its
origin, was an offshoot of that renowned republic. And cheerfully
has that title been recognized, as the vast audience assembled here
to-night, in spite of the storm, fully testifies; and well has our
illustrious friend spoken of the growth of civilization and of the
improvement in the condition of mankind, both in the Old World--the
institutions of which he has so lately observed--and in the country
which is proud to claim him as one of her children."
Soon after the election of General Grant, Mr. Motley received the
appointment of Minister to England. That the position was one which was
in many respects most agreeable to him cannot be doubted. Yet it was not
with unmingled feelings of satisfaction, not without misgivings which
warned him but too truly of the dangers about to encompass him, that he
accepted the place. He writes to me on April 16, 1869:--
"I feel anything but exultation at present,--rather the opposite
sensation. I feel that I am placed higher than I deserve, and at
the same time that I am taking greater responsibilities than ever
were assumed by me before. You will be indulgent to my mistakes and
shortcomings,--and who can expect to avoid them? But the world will
be cruel, and the times are threatening. I shall do my best,--but
the best may be poor enough,--and keep 'a heart for any fate.'"
XXI.
1869-1870. AEt. 55-56.
RECALL FROM THE ENGLISH MISSION.--ITS ALLEGED AND ITS PROBABLE REASONS.
The misgivings thus expressed to me in confidence, natural enough in one
who had already known what it is to fall on evil days and evil tongues,
were but too well justified by after events. I could have wished to leave
untold the story of the English mission, an episode in Motley's life full
of heart-burnings, and long to be regretted as a passage of American
history. But his living appeal to my indulgence comes to me from his
grave as a call for his defence, however little needed, at least as a
part of my tribute to his memory. It is little needed, because the case
is clear enough to all intelligent readers of our diplomatic history, and
because his cause has been amply sustained by others in many ways better
qualified than myself to do it justice. The task is painful, for if a
wrong was done him it must be laid at the doors of those whom the nation
has delighted to honor, and whose services no error of judgment or
feeling or conduct can ever induce us to forget. If he confessed him,
self-liable, like the rest of us, to mistakes and shortcomings, we must
remember that the great officers of the government who decreed his
downfall were not less the subjects of human infirmity.
The outline to be filled up is this: A new administration had just been
elected. The "Alabama Treaty," negotiated by Motley's predecessor, Mr.
Reverdy Johnson, had been rejected by the Senate. The minister was
recalled, and Motley, nominated without opposition and unanimously
confirmed by the Senate, was sent to England in his place. He was
welcomed most cordially on his arrival at Liverpool, and replied in a
similar strain of good feeling, expressing the same kindly sentiments
which may be found in his instructions. Soon after arriving in London he
had a conversation with Lord Clarendon, the British Foreign Secretary, of
which he sent a full report to his own government. While the reported
conversation was generally approved of in the government's dispatch
acknowledging it, it was hinted that some of its expressions were
stronger than were required by the instructions, and that one of its
points was not conveyed in precise conformity with the President's view.
The criticism was very gently worded, and the dispatch closed with a
somewhat guarded paragraph repeating the government's approbation.
This was the first offence alleged against Mr. Motley. The second ground
of complaint was that he had shown written minutes of this conversation
to Lord Clarendon to obtain his confirmation of its exactness, and that
he had--as he said, inadvertently,--omitted to make mention to the
government of this circumstance until some weeks after the time of the
interview.
He was requested to explain to Lord Clarendon that a portion of his
presentation and treatment of the subject discussed at the interview
immediately after his arrival was disapproved by the Secretary of State,
and he did so in a written communication, in which he used the very words
employed by Mr. Fish in his criticism of the conversation with Lord
Clarendon. An alleged mistake; a temperate criticism, coupled with a
general approval; a rectification of the mistake criticised. All this
within the first two months of Mr. Motley's official residence in London.
No further fault was found with him, so far as appears, in the discharge
of his duties, to which he must have devoted himself faithfully, for he
writes to me, under the date of December 27, 1870: "I have worked harder
in the discharge of this mission than I ever did in my life." This from a
man whose working powers astonished the old Dutch archivist, Groen van
Prinsterer, means a good deal.
More than a year had elapsed since the interview with Lord Clarendon,
which had been the subject of criticism. In the mean time a paper of
instructions was sent to Motley, dated September 25, 1869, in which the
points in the report of his interview which had been found fault with are
so nearly covered by similar expressions, that there seemed no real
ground left for difference between the government and the minister.
Whatever over-statement there had been, these new instructions would
imply that the government was now ready to go quite as far as the
minister had gone, and in some points to put the case still more
strongly. Everything was going on quietly. Important business had been
transacted, with no sign of distrust or discontent on the part of the
government as regarded Motley. Whatever mistake he was thought to have
committed was condoned by amicable treatment, neutralized by the virtual
indorsement of the government in the instructions of the 25th of
September, and obsolete as a ground of quarrel by lapse of time. The
question about which the misunderstanding, if such it deserves to be
called, had taken place, was no longer a possible source of disagreement,
as it had long been settled that the Alabama case should only be opened
again at the suggestion of the British government, and that it should be
transferred to Washington whenever that suggestion should again bring it
up for consideration.
Such was the aspect of affairs at the American Legation in London. No
foreign minister felt more secure in his place than Mr. Motley. "I
thought myself," he says in the letter of December 27, "entirely in the
confidence of my own government, and I know that I had the thorough
confidence and the friendship of the leading personages in England." All
at once, on the first of July, 1870, a letter was written by the
Secretary of State, requesting him to resign. This gentle form of
violence is well understood in the diplomatic service. Horace Walpole
says, speaking of Lady Archibald Hamilton: "They have civilly asked her
and grossly forced her to ask civilly to go away, which she has done,
with a pension of twelve hundred a year." Such a request is like the
embrace of the "virgin" in old torture-chambers. She is robed in soft
raiment, but beneath it are the knife-blades which are ready to lacerate
and kill the victim, if he awaits the pressure of the machinery already
in motion.
Mr. Motley knew well what was the logical order in an official execution,
and saw fit to let the government work its will upon him as its servant.
In November he was recalled.
The recall of a minister under such circumstances is an unusual if not an
unprecedented occurrence. The government which appoints a citizen to
represent the country at a foreign court assumes a very serious
obligation to him. The next administration may turn him out and nothing
will be thought of it. He may be obliged to ask for his passports and
leave all at once if war is threatened between his own country and that
which he represents. He may, of course, be recalled for gross misconduct.
But his dismissal is very serious matter to him personally, and not to be
thought of on the ground of passion or caprice. Marriage is a simple
business, but divorce is a very different thing. The world wants to know
the reason of it; the law demands its justification. It was a great blow
to Mr. Motley, a cause of indignation to those who were interested in
him, a surprise and a mystery to the world in general.
When he, his friends, and the public, all startled by this unexpected
treatment, looked to find an explanation of it, one was found which
seemed to many quite sufficient. Mr. Sumner had been prominent among
those who had favored his appointment. A very serious breach had taken
place between the President and Mr. Sumner on the important San Domingo
question. It was a quarrel, in short, neither more nor less, at least so
far as the President was concerned. The proposed San Domingo treaty had
just been rejected by the Senate, on the thirtieth day of June, and
immediately thereupon,--the very next day,--the letter requesting Mr.
Motley's resignation was issued by the executive. This fact was
interpreted as implying something more than a mere coincidence. It was
thought that Sumner's friend, who had been supported by him as a
candidate for high office, who shared many of his political ideas and
feelings, who was his intimate associate, his fellow-townsman, his
companion in scholarship and cultivation, his sympathetic co-laborer in
many ways, had been accounted and dealt with as the ally of an enemy, and
that the shaft which struck to the heart of the sensitive envoy had
glanced from the 'aes triplex' of the obdurate Senator.
Mr. Motley wrote a letter to the Secretary of State immediately after his
recall, in which he reviewed his relations with the government from the
time of his taking office, and showed that no sufficient reason could be
assigned for the treatment to which he had been subjected. He referred
finally to the public rumor which assigned the President's hostility to
his friend Sumner, growing out of the San Domingo treaty question, as the
cause of his own removal, and to the coincidence between the dates of the
rejection of the treaty and his dismissal, with an evident belief that
these two occurrences were connected by something more than accident.
To this, a reply was received from the Secretary of State's office,
signed by Mr. Fish, but so objectionable in its tone and expressions that
it has been generally doubted whether the paper could claim anything more
of the secretary's hand than his signature. It travelled back to the old
record of the conversation with Lord Clarendon, more than a year and a
half before, took up the old exceptions, warmed them over into
grievances, and joined with them whatever the 'captatores verborum,' not
extinct since Daniel Webster's time, could add to their number. This was
the letter which was rendered so peculiarly offensive by a most
undignified comparison which startled every well-bred reader. No answer
was possible to such a letter, and the matter rested until the death of
Mr. Motley caused it to be brought up once more for judgment.
The Honorable John Jay, in his tribute to the memory of Mr. Motley, read
at a meeting of the New York Historical Society, vindicated his character
against the attacks of the late executive in such a way as to leave an
unfavorable impression as to the course of the government. Objection was
made on this account to placing the tribute upon the minutes of the
society. This led to a publication by Mr. Jay, entitled "Motley's Appeal
to History," in which the propriety of the society's action is
questioned, and the wrong done to him insisted upon and further
illustrated.
The defence could not have fallen into better hands. Bearing a name which
is, in itself, a title to the confidence of the American people, a
diplomatist familiar with the rights, the customs, the traditions, the
courtesies, which belong to the diplomatic service, the successor of Mr.
Motley at Vienna, and therefore familiar with his official record, not
self-made, which too commonly means half-made, but with careful training
added to the instincts to which he had a right by inheritance, he could
not allow the memory of such a scholar, of such a high-minded lover of
his country, of so true a gentleman as Mr. Motley, to remain without
challenge under the stigma of official condemnation. I must refer to Mr.
Jay's memorial tribute as printed in the newspapers of the day, and to
his "Appeal" published in "The International Review," for his convincing
presentation of the case, and content myself with a condensed statement
of the general and special causes of complaint against Mr. Motley, and
the explanations which suggest themselves, as abundantly competent to
show the insufficiency of the reasons alleged by the government as an
excuse for the manner in which he was treated.
The grounds of complaint against Mr. Motley are to be looked for:--
1. In the letter of Mr. Fish to Mr. Moran, of December 30, 1870.
2. In Mr. Bancroft Davis's letter to the New York "Herald" of January 4,
1878, entitled, "Mr. Sumner, the Alabama Claims and their Settlement."
3. The reported conversations of General Grant.
4. The reported conversations of Mr. Fish.
In considering Mr. Fish's letter, we must first notice its animus. The
manner in which Dickens's two old women are brought in is not only
indecorous, but it shows a state of feeling from which nothing but harsh
interpretation of every questionable expression of Mr. Motley's was to be
expected.
There is not the least need of maintaining the perfect fitness and
rhetorical felicity of every phrase and every word used by him in his
interview with Lord Clarendon. It is not to be expected that a minister,
when about to hold a conversation with a representative of the government
to which he is accredited, will commit his instructions to memory and
recite them, like a school-boy "speaking his piece." He will give them
more or less in his own language, amplifying, it may be, explaining,
illustrating, at any rate paraphrasing in some degree, but endeavoring to
convey an idea of their essential meaning. In fact, as any one can see, a
conversation between two persons must necessarily imply a certain amount
of extemporization on the part of both. I do not believe any long and
important conference was ever had between two able men without each of
them feeling that he had not spoken exactly in all respects as he would
if he could say all over again.
Doubtless, therefore, Mr. Motley's report of his conversation shows that
some of his expressions might have been improved, and others might as
well have been omitted. A man does not change his temperament on taking
office. General Jackson still swore "by the Eternal," and his illustrious
military successor of a more recent period seems, by his own showing, to
have been able to sudden impulses of excitement. It might be said of
Motley, as it was said of Shakespeare by Ben Jonson, "aliquando
sufflaminandus erat." Yet not too much must be made of this concession.
Only a determination to make out a case could, as it seems to me, have
framed such an indictment as that which the secretary constructed by
stringing together a slender list of pretended peccadillos. One instance
will show the extreme slightness which characterizes many of the grounds
of inculpation:--
The instructions say, "The government, in rejecting the recent
convention, abandons neither its own claims nor those of its citizens,"
etc.
Mr. Motley said, in the course of his conversation, "At present, the
United States government, while withdrawing neither its national claims
nor the claims of its individual citizens against the British
government," etc.
Mr. Fish says, "The determination of this government not to abandon its
claims nor those of its citizens was stated parenthetically, and in such
a subordinate way as not necessarily to attract the attention of Lord
Clarendon."
What reported conversation can stand a captious criticism like this? Are
there not two versions of the ten commandments which were given out in
the thunder and smoke of Sinai, and would the secretary hold that this
would have been a sufficient reason to recall Moses from his "Divine
Legation" at the court of the Almighty?
There are certain expressions which, as Mr. Fish shows them apart from
their connection, do very certainly seem in bad taste, if not actually
indiscreet and unjustifiable. Let me give an example:--
"Instead of expressing the hope entertained by this government that
there would be an early, satisfactory, and friendly settlement of
the questions at issue, he volunteered the unnecessary, and from the
manner in which it was thrust in, the highly objectionable statement
that the United States government had no insidious purposes,'" etc.
This sounds very badly as Mr. Fish puts it; let us see how it stands in
its proper connection:--
"He [Lord Clarendon] added with some feeling, that in his opinion it
would be highly objectionable that the question should be hung up on
a peg, to be taken down at some convenient moment for us, when it
might be difficult for the British government to enter upon its
solution, and when they might go into the debate at a disadvantage.
These were, as nearly as I can remember, his words, and I replied
very earnestly that I had already answered that question when I said
that my instructions were to propose as brief a delay as would
probably be requisite for the cooling of passions and for producing
the calm necessary for discussing the defects of the old treaty and
a basis for a new one. The United States government had no
insidious purposes," etc.
Is it not evident that Lord Clarendon suggested the idea which Mr. Motley
repelled as implying an insidious mode of action? Is it not just as clear
that Mr. Fish's way of reproducing the expression without the insinuation
which called it forth is a practical misstatement which does Mr. Motley
great wrong?
One more example of the method of wringing a dry cloth for drops of
evidence ought to be enough to show the whole spirit of the paper.
Mr. Fish, in his instructions:--
"It might, indeed, well have occurred in the event of the selection
by lot of the arbitrator or umpire in different cases, involving
however precisely the same principles, that different awards,
resting upon antagonistic principles, might have been made."
Mr. Motley, in the conversation with Lord Clarendon:--
"I called his lordship's attention to your very judicious suggestion
that the throwing of the dice for umpires might bring about opposite
decisions in cases arising out of identical principles. He agreed
entirely that no principle was established by the treaty, but that
the throwing of dice or drawing of lots was not a new invention on
that occasion, but a not uncommon method in arbitrations. I only
expressed the opinion that such an aleatory process seemed an
unworthy method in arbitrations," etc.
Mr. Fish, in his letter to Mr. Moran:--
"That he had in his mind at that interview something else than his
letter of instructions from this department would appear to be
evident, when he says that 'he called his lordship's attention to
your [my] very judicious suggestion that the throwing of dice for
umpire might bring about opposite decisions.' The instructions
which Mr. Motley received from me contained no suggestion about
throwing of dice.' That idea is embraced in the suggestive words
'aleatory process' (adopted by Mr. Motley), but previously applied
in a speech made in the Senate on the question of ratifying the
treaty."
Charles Sumner's Speech on the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty, April 13, 1869:
"In the event of failure to agree, the arbitrator is determined 'by
lot' out of two persons named by each side. Even if this aleatory
proceeding were a proper device in the umpirage of private claims,
it is strongly inconsistent with the solemnity which belongs to the
present question."
It is "suggestive" that the critical secretary, so keen in detecting
conversational inaccuracies, having but two words to quote from a printed
document, got one of them wrong. But this trivial comment must not lead
the careful reader to neglect to note how much is made of what is really
nothing at all. The word aleatory, whether used in its original and
limited sense, or in its derived extension as a technical term of the
civil law, was appropriate and convenient; one especially likely to be
remembered by any person who had read Mr. Sumner's speech,--and everybody
had read it; the secretary himself doubtless got the suggestion of
determining the question "by lot" from it. What more natural than that it
should be used again when the subject of appealing to chance came up in
conversation? It "was an excellent good word before it was ill-sorted,"
and we were fortunate in having a minister who was scholar enough to know
what it meant. The language used by Mr. Motley conveyed the idea of his
instructions plainly enough, and threw in a compliment to their author
which should have saved this passage at least from the wringing process.
The example just given is, like the concession of belligerency to the
insurgents by Great Britain, chiefly important as "showing animus."
It is hardly necessary to bring forward other instances of virtual
misrepresentation. If Mr. Motley could have talked his conversation over
again, he would very probably have changed some expressions. But he felt
bound to repeat the interview exactly as it occurred, with all the errors
to which its extemporaneous character exposed it. When a case was to be
made out against him, the secretary wrote, December 30, 1870:
"Well might he say, as he did in a subsequent dispatch on the 15th
of July, 1869, that he had gone beyond the strict letter of his
instructions. He might have added, in direct opposition to their
temper and spirit."
Of the same report the secretary had said, June 28, 1869: "Your general
presentation and treatment of the several subjects discussed in that
interview meet the approval of this department." This general approval is
qualified by mild criticism of a single statement as not having been
conveyed in "precise conformity" to the President's view. The minister
was told he might be well content to rest the question on the very
forcible presentation he had made of the American side of the question,
and that if there were expressions used stronger than were required by
his instructions, they were in the right direction. The mere fact that a
minute of this conversation was confidentially submitted to Lord
Clarendon in order that our own government might have his authority for
the accuracy of the record, which was intended exclusively for its own
use, and that this circumstance was overlooked and not reported to the
government until some weeks afterward, are the additional charges against
Mr. Motley. The submission of the dispatch containing an account of the
interview, the secretary says, is not inconsistent with diplomatic usage,
but it is inconsistent with the duty of a minister not to inform his
government of that submission. "Mr. Motley submitted the draft of his No.
8 to Lord Clarendon, and failed to communicate that fact to his
government." He did inform Mr. Fish, at any rate, on the 30th of July,
and alleged "inadvertence" as the reason for his omission to do it
before.
Inasmuch as submitting the dispatch was not inconsistent with diplomatic
usage, nothing seems left to find fault with but the not very long delay
in mentioning the fact, or in his making the note "private and
confidential," as is so frequently done in diplomatic correspondence.
Such were the grounds of complaint. On the strength of the conversation
which had met with the general approval of the government, tempered by
certain qualifications, and of the omission to report immediately to the
government the fact of its verification by Lord Clarendon, the secretary
rests the case against Mr. Motley. On these grounds it was that,
according to him, the President withdrew all right to discuss the Alabama
question from the minister whose dismissal was now only a question of
time. But other evidence comes in here.
Mr. Motley says:--
"It was, as I supposed, understood before my departure for England,
although not publicly announced, that the so-called Alabama
negotiations, whenever renewed, should be conducted at Washington,
in case of the consent of the British government."
Mr. Sumner says, in his "Explanation in Reply to an Assault:"--
"The secretary in a letter to me at Boston, dated at Washington,
October 9, 1869, informs the that the discussion of the question was
withdrawn from London 'because (the italics are the secretary's) we
think that when renewed it can be carried on here with a better
prospect of settlement, than where the late attempt at a convention
which resulted so disastrously and was conducted so strangely was
had;' and what the secretary thus wrote he repeated in conversation
when we met, carefully making the transfer to Washington depend upon
our advantage here, from the presence of the Senate,--thus showing
that the pretext put forth to wound Mr. Motley was an afterthought."
Again we may fairly ask how the government came to send a dispatch like
that of September 25, 1869, in which the views and expressions for which
Mr. Motley's conversation had been criticised were so nearly reproduced,
and with such emphasis that Mr. Motley says, in a letter to me, dated
April 8, 1871, "It not only covers all the ground which I ever took, but
goes far beyond it. No one has ever used stronger language to the British
government than is contained in that dispatch. . . . It is very able and
well worth your reading. Lord Clarendon called it to me 'Sumner's speech
over again.' It was thought by the English cabinet to have 'out-Sumnered
Sumner,' and now our government, thinking that every one in the United
States had forgotten the dispatch, makes believe that I was removed
because my sayings and doings in England were too much influenced by
Sumner!" Mr. Motley goes on to speak of the report that an offer of his
place in England was made to Sumner "to get him out of the way of San
Domingo." The facts concerning this offer are now sufficiently known to
the public.
Here I must dismiss Mr. Fish's letter to Mr. Moran, having, as I trust,
sufficiently shown the spirit in which it was written and the strained
interpretations and manifest overstatements by which it attempts to make
out its case against Mr. Motley. I will not parade the two old women,
whose untimely and unseemly introduction into the dress-circle of
diplomacy was hardly to have been expected of the high official whose
name is at the bottom of this paper. They prove nothing, they disprove
nothing, they illustrate nothing--except that a statesman may forget
himself. Neither will I do more than barely allude to the unfortunate
reference to the death of Lord Clarendon as connected with Mr. Motley's
removal, so placidly disposed of by a sentence or two in the London
"Times" of January 24, 1871. I think we may consider ourselves ready for
the next witness.
Mr. J. C. Bancroft Davis, Assistant Secretary of State under President
Grant and Secretary Fish, wrote a letter to the New York "Herald," under
the date of January 4, 1878, since reprinted as a pamphlet and entitled
"Mr. Sumner, the Alabama Claims and their Settlement." Mr. Sumner was
never successfully attacked when living,--except with a bludgeon,--and
his friends have more than sufficiently vindicated him since his death.
But Mr. Motley comes in for his share of animadversion in Mr. Davis's
letter. He has nothing of importance to add to Mr. Fish's criticisms on
the interview with Lord Clarendon. Only he brings out the head and front
of Mr. Motley's offending by italicizing three very brief passages from
his conversation at this interview; not discreetly, as it seems to me,
for they will not bear the strain that is put upon them. These are the
passages:--
1. "but that such, measures must always be taken with a full view of the
grave responsibilities assumed." 2. "and as being the fountain head of
the disasters which had been caused to the American people." 3. "as the
fruits of the proclamation."
1. It is true that nothing was said of responsibility in Mr. Motley's
instructions. But the idea was necessarily involved in their statements.
For if, as Mr. Motley's instructions say, the right of a power "to define
its own relations," etc., when a civil conflict has arisen in another
state depends on its (the conflict's) having "attained a sufficient
complexity, magnitude, and completeness," inasmuch as that Power has to
judge whether it has or has not fulfilled these conditions, and is of
course liable to judge wrong, every such act of judgment must be attended
with grave responsibilities. The instructions say that "the necessity and
propriety of the original concession of belligerency by Great Britain at
the time it was made have been contested and are not admitted." It
follows beyond dispute that Great Britain may in this particular case
have incurred grave responsibilities; in fact, the whole negotiations
implied as much. Perhaps Mr. Motley need not have used the word
"responsibilities." But considering that the government itself said in
dispatch No. 70, September 25, 1869, "The President does not deny, on the
contrary he maintains, that every sovereign power decides for itself on
its responsibility whether or not it will, at a given time, accord the
status of belligerency," etc., it was hardly worth while to use italics
about Mr. Motley's employment of the same language as constituting a
grave cause of offence.
2. Mr. Motley's expression, "as being the fountain head of the
disasters," is a conversational paraphrase of the words of his
instructions, "as it shows the beginning and the animus of that course of
conduct which resulted so disastrously," which is not "in precise
conformity" with his instructions, but is just such a variation as is to
be expected when one is talking with another and using the words that
suggest themselves at the moment, just as the familiar expression, "hung
up on a peg," probably suggested itself to Lord Clarendon.
3. "The fruits of the proclamation" is so inconsiderable a variation on
the text of the instructions, "supplemented by acts causing direct
damage," that the secretary's hint about want of precise conformity seems
hardly to have been called for.
It is important to notice this point in the instructions: With other
powers Mr. Motley was to take the position that the "recognition of the
insurgents' state of war" was made "no ground of complaint;" with Great
Britain that the cause of grievance was "not so much" placed upon the
issuance of this recognition as upon her conduct under, and subsequent
to, such recognition.
There is no need of maintaining the exact fitness of every expression
used by Mr. Motley. But any candid person who will carefully read the
government's dispatch No. 70, dated September 25, 1869, will see that a
government holding such language could find nothing in Mr. Motley's
expressions in a conversation held at his first official interview to
visit with official capital punishment more than a year afterwards. If
Mr. Motley had, as it was pretended, followed Sumner, Mr. Fish had
"out-Sumnered" the Senator himself.
Mr. Davis's pamphlet would hardly be complete without a mysterious letter
from an unnamed writer, whether a faithless friend, a disguised enemy, a
secret emissary, or an injudicious alarmist, we have no means of judging
for ourselves. The minister appears to have been watched by somebody in
London, as he was in Vienna. This somebody wrote a private letter in
which he expressed "fear and regret that Mr. Motley's bearing in his
social intercourse was throwing obstacles in the way of a future
settlement." The charge as mentioned in Mr. Davis's letter is hardly
entitled to our attention. Mr. Sumner considered it the work of an enemy,
and the recollection of the M'Crackin letter might well have made the
government cautious of listening to complaints of such a character. This
Somebody may have been one whom we should call Nobody. We cannot help
remembering how well 'Outis' served 'Oduxseus' of old, when he was
puzzled to extricate himself from an embarrassing position. 'Stat nominis
umbra' is a poor showing for authority to support an attack on a public
servant exposed to every form of open and insidious abuse from those who
are prejudiced against his person or his birthplace, who are jealous of
his success, envious of his position, hostile to his politics, dwarfed by
his reputation, or hate him by the divine right of idiosyncrasy, always
liable, too, to questioning comment from well-meaning friends who happen
to be suspicious or sensitive in their political or social relations.
The reported sayings of General Grant and of Mr. Fish to the
correspondents who talked with them may be taken for what they are worth.
They sound naturally enough to have come from the speakers who are said
to have uttered them. I quote the most important part of the Edinburgh
letter, September 11, 1877, to the New York "Herald." These are the words
attributed to General Grant:--
"Mr. Motley was certainly a very able, very honest gentleman, fit to
hold any official position. But he knew long before he went out
that he would have to go. When I was making these appointments, Mr.
Sumner came to me and asked me to appoint Mr. Motley as minister to
the court of St. James. I told him I would, and did. Soon after
Mr. Sumner made that violent speech about the Alabama claims, and
the British government was greatly offended. Mr. Sumner was at the
time chairman of the committee on foreign affairs. Mr. Motley had
to be instructed. The instructions were prepared very carefully,
and after Governor Fish and I had gone over them for the last time I
wrote an addendum charging him that above all things he should
handle the subject of the Alabama claims with the greatest delicacy.
Mr. Motley instead of obeying his explicit instructions,
deliberately fell in line with Sumner, and thus added insult to the
previous injury. As soon as I heard of it I went over to the State
Department and told Governor Fish to dismiss Motley at once. I was
very angry indeed, and I have been sorry many a time since that I
did not stick to my first determination. Mr. Fish advised delay
because of Sumner's position in the Senate and attitude on the
treaty question. We did not want to stir him up just then. We
dispatched a note of severe censure to Motley at once and ordered
him to abstain from any further connection with that question. We
thereupon commenced negotiations with the British minister at
Washington, and the result was the joint high commission and the
Geneva award. I supposed Mr. Motley would be manly enough to resign
after that snub, but he kept on till he was removed. Mr. Sumner
promised me that he would vote for the treaty. But when it was
before the Senate he did all he could to beat it."
General Grant talked again at Cairo, in Egypt.
"Grant then referred to the statement published at an interview with
him in Scotland, and said the publication had some omissions and
errors. He had no ill-will towards Mr. Motley, who, like other
estimable men, made mistakes, and Motley made a mistake which made
him an improper person to hold office under me."
"It is proper to say of me that I killed Motley, or that I made war
upon Sumner for not supporting the annexation of San Domingo. But
if I dare to answer that I removed Motley from the highest
considerations of duty as an executive; if I presume to say that he
made a mistake in his office which made him no longer useful to the
country; if Fish has the temerity to hint that Sumner's temper was
so unfortunate that business relations with him became impossible,
we are slandering the dead."
"Nothing but Mortimer." Those who knew both men--the Ex-President and the
late Senator--would agree, I do not doubt, that they would not be the
most promising pair of human beings to make harmonious members of a
political happy family. "Cedant arma togae," the life-long sentiment of
Sumner, in conflict with "Stand fast and stand sure," the well-known
device of the clan of Grant, reminds one of the problem of an
irresistible force in collision with an insuperable resistance. But the
President says,--or is reported as saying,--"I may be blamed for my
opposition to Mr. Sumner's tactics, but I was not guided so much by
reason of his personal hatred of myself, as I was by a desire to protect
our national interests in diplomatic affairs."
"It would be useless," says Mr. Davis in his letter to the "Herald," "to
enter into a controversy whether the President may or may not have been
influenced in the final determination of the moment for requesting
Motley's resignation by the feeling caused by Sumner's personal hostility
and abuse of himself." Unfortunately, this controversy had been entered
into, and the idleness of suggesting any relation of cause and effect
between Mr. Motley's dismissal and the irritation produced in the
President's mind by the rejection of the San Domingo treaty--which
rejection was mainly due to Motley's friend Sumner's opposition
--strongly insisted upon in a letter signed by the Secretary of State.
Too strongly, for here it was that he failed to remember what was due to
his office, to himself, and to the gentleman of whom he was writing; if
indeed it was the secretary's own hand which held the pen, and not
another's.
We might as well leave out the wrath of Achilles from the Iliad, as the
anger of the President with Sumner from the story of Motley's dismissal.
The sad recital must always begin with M-----------. He was, he is
reported as saying, "very angry indeed" with Motley because he had,
fallen in line with Sumner. He couples them together in his conversation
as closely as Chang and Eng were coupled. The death of Lord Clarendon
would have covered up the coincidence between the rejection of the San
Domingo treaty and Mr. Motley's dismissal very neatly, but for the
inexorable facts about its date, as revealed by the London "Times." It
betrays itself as an afterthought, and its failure as a defence reminds
us too nearly of the trial in which Mr. Webster said suicide is
confession.
It is not strange that the spurs of the man who had so lately got out of
the saddle should catch in the scholastic robe of the man on the floor of
the Senate. But we should not have looked for any such antagonism between
the Secretary of State and the envoy to Great Britain. On the contrary,
they must have had many sympathies, and it must have cost the secretary
pain, as he said it did, to be forced to communicate with Mr. Moran
instead of with Mr. Motley.
He, too, was inquired of by one of the emissaries of the American Unholy
Inquisition. His evidence is thus reported:
"The reason for Mr. Motley's removal was found in considerations of
state. He misrepresented the government on the Alabama question,
especially in the two speeches made by him before his arrival at his
post."
These must be the two speeches made to the American and the Liverpool
chambers of commerce. If there is anything in these short addresses
beyond those civil generalities which the occasion called out, I have
failed to find it. If it was in these that the reason of Mr. Motley's
removal was to be looked for, it is singular that they are not mentioned
in the secretary's letter to Mr. Moran, or by Mr. Davis in his letter to
the New York "Herald." They must have been as unsuccessful as myself in
the search after anything in these speeches which could be construed into
misinterpretation of the government on the Alabama question.
We may much more readily accept "considerations of state" as a reason for
Mr. Motley's removal. Considerations of state have never yet failed the
axe or the bowstring when a reason for the use of those convenient
implements was wanted, and they are quite equal to every emergency which
can arise in a republican autocracy. But for the very reason that a
minister is absolutely in the power of his government, the manner in
which that power is used is always open to the scrutiny, and, if it has
been misused, to the condemnation, of a tribunal higher than itself; a
court that never goes out of office, and which no personal feelings, no
lapse of time, can silence.
The ostensible grounds on which Mr. Motley was recalled are plainly
insufficient to account for the action of the government. If it was in
great measure a manifestation of personal feeling on the part of the high
officials by whom and through whom the act was accomplished, it was a
wrong which can never be repaired and never sufficiently regretted.
Stung by the slanderous report of an anonymous eavesdropper to whom the
government of the day was not ashamed to listen, he had quitted Vienna,
too hastily, it may be, but wounded, indignant, feeling that he had been
unworthily treated. The sudden recall from London, on no pretext whatever
but an obsolete and overstated incident which had ceased to have any
importance, was under these circumstances a deadly blow. It fell upon
"the new-healed wound of malice," and though he would not own it, and
bore up against it, it was a shock from which he never fully recovered.
"I hope I am one of those," he writes to me from the Hague, in 1872, "who
'fortune's buffets and rewards can take with equal thanks.' I am quite
aware that I have had far more than I deserve of political honors, and
they might have had my post as a voluntary gift on my part had they
remembered that I was an honorable man, and not treated me as a detected
criminal deserves to be dealt with."
Mr. Sumner naturally felt very deeply what he considered the great wrong
done to his friend. He says:--
"How little Mr. Motley merited anything but respect and courtesy
from the secretary is attested by all who know his eminent position
in London, and the service he rendered to his country. Already the
London press, usually slow to praise Americans when strenuous for
their country, has furnished its voluntary testimony. The 'Daily
News' of August 16, 1870, spoke of the insulted minister in these
terms:--
"'We are violating no confidence in saying that all the hopes of Mr.
Motley's official residence in England have been amply fulfilled,
and that the announcement of his unexpected and unexplained recall
was received with extreme astonishment and unfeigned regret. The
vacancy he leaves cannot possibly be filled by a minister more
sensitive to the honor of his government, more attentive to the
interests of his country, and more capable of uniting the most
vigorous performance of his public duties with the high-bred
courtesy and conciliatory tact and temper that make those duties
easy and successful. Mr. Motley's successor will find his mission
wonderfully facilitated by the firmness and discretion that have
presided over the conduct of American affairs in this country during
too brief a term, too suddenly and unaccountably concluded.'"
No man can escape being found fault with when it is necessary to make out
a case against him. A diplomatist is watched by the sharpest eyes and
commented on by the most merciless tongues. The best and wisest has his
defects, and sometimes they would seem to be very grave ones if brought
up against him in the form of accusation. Take these two portraits, for
instance, as drawn by John Quincy Adams. The first is that of Stratford
Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe:--
"He is to depart to-morrow. I shall probably see him no more. He
is a proud, high-tempered Englishman, of good but not extraordinary
parts; stubborn and punctilious, with a disposition to be
overbearing, which I have often been compelled to check in its own
way. He is, of all the foreign ministers with whom I have had
occasion to treat, the man who has most severely tried my temper.
Yet he has been long in the diplomatic career, and treated with
governments of the most opposite characters. He has, however, a
great respect for his word, and there is nothing false about him.
This is an excellent quality for a negotiator. Mr. Canning is a man
of forms, studious of courtesy, and tenacious of private morals. As
a diplomatic man, his great want is suppleness, and his great virtue
is sincerity."
The second portrait is that of the French minister, Hyde de Neuville:--
"No foreign minister who ever resided here has been so universally
esteemed and beloved, nor have I ever been in political relations
with any foreign statesman of whose moral qualities I have formed so
good an opinion, with the exception of Count Romanzoff. He has not
sufficient command of his temper, is quick, irritable, sometimes
punctilious, occasionally indiscreet in his discourse, and tainted
with Royalist and Bourbon prejudices. But he has strong sentiments
of honor, justice, truth, and even liberty. His flurries of temper
pass off as quickly as they rise. He is neither profound nor
sublime nor brilliant; but a man of strong and good feelings, with
the experience of many vicissitudes of fortune, a good but common
understanding, and good intentions biassed by party feelings,
occasional interests, and personal affections."
It means very little to say that a man has some human imperfections, or
that a public servant might have done some things better. But when a
questionable cause is to be justified, the victim's excellences are
looked at with the eyes of Liliput and his failings with those of
Brobdingnag.
The recall of a foreign minister for alleged misconduct in office is a
kind of capital punishment. It is the nearest approach to the Sultan's
bowstring which is permitted to the chief magistrate of our Republic. A
general can do nothing under martial law more peremptory than a President
can do with regard to the public functionary whom he has appointed with
the advice and consent of the Senate, but whom he can officially degrade
and disgrace at his own pleasure for insufficient cause or for none at
all. Like the centurion of Scripture, he says Go, and he goeth. The
nation's representative is less secure in his tenure of office than his
own servant, to whom he must give warning of his impending dismissal.
"A breath unmakes him as a breath has made."
The chief magistrate's responsibility to duty, to the fellow-citizen at
his mercy, to his countrymen, to mankind, is in proportion to his power.
His prime minister, the agent of his edicts, should feel bound to
withstand him if he seeks to gratify a personal feeling under the plea of
public policy, unless the minister, like the slaves of the harem, is to
find his qualification for office in leaving his manhood behind him.
The two successive administrations, which treated Mr. Motley in a manner
unworthy of their position and cruel, if not fatal to him, have been
heard, directly or through their advocates. I have attempted to show that
the defence set up for their action is anything but satisfactory. A later
generation will sit in judgment upon the evidence more calmly than our
own. It is not for a friend, like the writer, to anticipate its decision,
but unless the reasons alleged to justify his treatment, and which have
so much the air of afterthoughts, shall seem stronger to that future
tribunal than they do to him, the verdict will be that Mr. Motley was
twice sacrificed to personal feelings which should never have been
cherished by the heads of the government, and should never have been
countenanced by their chief advisers.
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
A MEMOIR
By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Volume III.
XXII.
1874. AEt. 60.
"LIFE OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD."--CRITICISMS.--GROEN VAN PRINSTERER.
The full title of Mr. Motley's next and last work is "The Life and Death
of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland; with a View of the Primary
Causes and Movements of the Thirty Years' War."
In point of fact this work is a history rather than a biography. It is an
interlude, a pause between the acts which were to fill out the complete
plan of the "Eighty Years' Tragedy," and of which the last act, the
Thirty Years' War, remains unwritten. The "Life of Barneveld" was
received as a fitting and worthy continuation of the series of
intellectual labor in which he was engaged. I will quote but two general
expressions of approval from the two best known British critical reviews.
In connection with his previous works, it forms, says "The London
Quarterly," "a fine and continuous story, of which the writer and the
nation celebrated by him have equal reason to be proud; a narrative which
will remain a prominent ornament of American genius, while it has
permanently enriched English literature on this as well as on the other
side of the Atlantic."
"The Edinburgh Review" speaks no less warmly: "We can hardly give too
much appreciation to that subtile alchemy of the brain which has enabled
him to produce out of dull, crabbed, and often illegible state papers,
the vivid, graphic, and sparkling narrative which he has given to the
world."
In a literary point of view, M. Groen van Prinsterer, whose elaborate
work has been already referred to, speaks of it as perhaps the most
classical of Motley's productions, but it is upon this work that the
force of his own and other Dutch criticisms has been chiefly expended.
The key to this biographical history or historical biography may be found
in a few sentences from its opening chapter.
"There have been few men at any period whose lives have been more
closely identical than his [Barneveld's] with a national history.
There have been few great men in any history whose names have become
less familiar to the world, and lived less in the mouths of
posterity. Yet there can be no doubt that if William the Silent was
the founder of the independence of the United Provinces, Barneveld
was the founder of the Commonwealth itself. . . .
"Had that country of which he was so long the first citizen
maintained until our own day the same proportional position among
the empires of Christendom as it held in the seventeenth century,
the name of John of Barneveld would have perhaps been as familiar to
all men as it is at this moment to nearly every inhabitant of the
Netherlands. Even now political passion is almost as ready to flame
forth, either in ardent affection or enthusiastic hatred, as if two
centuries and a half had not elapsed since his death. His name is
so typical of a party, a polity, and a faith, so indelibly
associated with a great historical cataclysm, as to render it
difficult even for the grave, the conscientious, the learned, the
patriotic, of his own compatriots to speak of him with absolute
impartiality.
"A foreigner who loves and admires all that is great and noble in
the history of that famous republic, and can have no hereditary bias
as to its ecclesiastical or political theories, may at least attempt
the task with comparative coldness, although conscious of inability
to do thorough justice to a most complex subject."
With all Mr. Motley's efforts to be impartial, to which even his sternest
critics bear witness, he could not help becoming a partisan of the cause
which for him was that of religious liberty and progress, as against the
accepted formula of an old ecclesiastical organization. For the quarrel
which came near being a civil war, which convulsed the state, and cost
Barneveld his head, had its origin in a difference on certain points, and
more especially on a single point, of religious doctrine.
As a great river may be traced back until its fountainhead is found in a
thread of water streaming from a cleft in the rocks, so a great national
movement may sometimes be followed until its starting-point is found in
the cell of a monk or the studies of a pair of wrangling professors.
The religious quarrel of the Dutchmen in the seventeenth century reminds
us in some points of the strife between two parties in our own New
England, sometimes arraying the "church" on one side against the
"parish," or the general body of worshippers, on the other. The portraits
of Gomarus, the great orthodox champion, and Arminius, the head and front
of the "liberal theology" of his day, as given in the little old quarto
of Meursius, recall two ministerial types of countenance familiar to
those who remember the earlier years of our century.
Under the name of "Remonstrants" and "Contra-Remonstrants,"--Arminians
and old-fashioned Calvinists, as we should say,--the adherents of the two
Leyden professors disputed the right to the possession of the churches,
and the claim to be considered as representing the national religion. Of
the seven United Provinces, two, Holland and Utrecht, were prevailingly
Arminian, and the other five Calvinistic. Barneveld, who, under the title
of Advocate, represented the province of Holland, the most important of
them all, claimed for each province a right to determine its own state
religion. Maurice the Stadholder, son of William the Silent, the military
chief of the republic, claimed the right for the States-General. 'Cujus
regio ejus religio' was then the accepted public doctrine of Protestant
nations. Thus the provincial and the general governments were brought
into conflict by their creeds, and the question whether the republic was
a confederation or a nation, the same question which has been practically
raised, and for the time at least settled, in our own republic, was in
some way to be decided. After various disturbances and acts of violence
by both parties, Maurice, representing the States-General, pronounced for
the Calvinists or Contra-Remonstrants, and took possession of one of the
great churches, as an assertion of his authority. Barneveld, representing
the Arminian or Remonstrant provinces, levied a body of mercenary
soldiers in several of the cities. These were disbanded by Maurice, and
afterwards by an act of the States-General. Barneveld was apprehended,
imprisoned, and executed, after an examination which was in no proper
sense a trial. Grotius, who was on the Arminian side and involved in the
inculpated proceedings, was also arrested and imprisoned. His escape, by
a stratagem successfully repeated by a slave in our own times, may
challenge comparison for its romantic interest with any chapter of
fiction. How his wife packed him into the chest supposed to contain the
folios of the great oriental scholar Erpenius, how the soldiers wondered
at its weight and questioned whether it did not hold an Arminian, how the
servant-maid, Elsje van Houwening, quick-witted as Morgiana of the "Forty
Thieves," parried their questions and convoyed her master safely to the
friendly place of refuge,--all this must be read in the vivid narrative
of the author.
The questions involved were political, local, personal, and above all
religious. Here is the picture which Motley draws of the religious
quarrel as it divided the people:--
"In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back-parlors;
on board herring-smacks, canal-boats, and East Indiamen; in shops,
counting-rooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, alehouses; on the exchange,
in the tennis court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials,
christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met
each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of
Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot
theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts. The
blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker dropped a kettle
half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched, the Scheveningen
fisherman in his wooden shoes forgot the cracks in his pinkie, while
each paused to hold high converse with friend or foe on fate, free-
will, or absolute foreknowledge; losing himself in wandering mazes
whence there was no issue. Province against province, city against
city, family against family; it was one vast scene of bickering,
denunciation, heart-burnings, mutual excommunication and hatred."
The religious grounds of the quarrel which set these seventeenth-century
Dutchmen to cutting each other's throats were to be looked for in the
"Five Points" of the Arminians as arrayed against the "Seven Points" of
the Gomarites, or Contra-Remonstrants. The most important of the
differences which were to be settled by fratricide seem to have been
these:--
According to the Five Points, "God has from eternity resolved to choose
to eternal life those who through his grace believe in Jesus Christ,"
etc. According to the Seven Points, "God in his election has not looked
at the belief and the repentance of the elect," etc. According to the
Five Points, all good deeds must be ascribed to God's grace in Christ,
but it does not work irresistibly. The language of the Seven Points
implies that the elect cannot resist God's eternal and unchangeable
design to give them faith and steadfastness, and that they can never
wholly and for always lose the true faith. The language of the Five
Points is unsettled as to the last proposition, but it was afterwards
maintained by the Remonstrant party that a true believer could, through
his own fault, fall away from God and lose faith.
It must be remembered that these religious questions had an immediate
connection with politics. Independently of the conflict of jurisdiction,
in which they involved the parties to the two different creeds, it was
believed or pretended that the new doctrines of the Remonstrants led
towards Romanism, and were allied with designs which threatened the
independence of the country. "There are two factions in the land," said
Maurice, "that of Orange and that of Spain, and the two chiefs of the
Spanish faction are those political and priestly Arminians, Uytenbogaert
and Oldenbarneveld."
The heads of the two religious and political parties were in such
hereditary, long-continued, and intimate relations up to the time when
one signed the other's death-warrant, that it was impossible to write the
life of one without also writing that of the other. For his biographer
John of Barneveld is the true patriot, the martyr, whose cause was that
of religious and political freedom. For him Maurice is the ambitious
soldier who hated his political rival, and never rested until this rival
was brought to the scaffold.
The questions which agitated men's minds two centuries and a half ago are
not dead yet in the country where they produced such estrangement,
violence, and wrong. No stranger could take them up without encountering
hostile criticism from one party or the other. It may be and has been
conceded that Mr. Motley writes as a partisan,--a partisan of freedom in
politics and religion, as he understands freedom. This secures him the
antagonism of one class of critics. But these critics are themselves
partisans, and themselves open to the cross-fire of their antagonists. M.
Groen van Prinsterer, "the learned and distinguished" editor of the
"Archives et Correspondance" of the Orange and Nassau family, published a
considerable volume, before referred to, in which many of Motley's views
are strongly controverted. But he himself is far from being in accord
with "that eminent scholar," M. Bakhuyzen van den Brink, whose name, he
says, is celebrated enough to need no comment, or with M. Fruin, of whose
impartiality and erudition he himself speaks in the strongest terms. The
ground upon which he is attacked is thus stated in his own words:--
"People have often pretended to find in my writings the deplorable
influence of an extreme Calvinism. The Puritans of the seventeenth
century are my fellow-religionists. I am a sectarian and not an
historian."
It is plain enough to any impartial reader that there are at least
plausible grounds for this accusation against Mr. Motley's critic. And on
a careful examination of the formidable volume, it becomes obvious that
Mr. Motley has presented a view of the events and the personages of the
stormy epoch with which he is dealing, which leaves a battle-ground yet
to be fought over by those who come after him. The dispute is not and
cannot be settled.
The end of all religious discussion has come when one of the parties
claims that it is thinking or acting under immediate Divine guidance. "It
is God's affair, and his honor is touched," says William Lewis to Prince
Maurice. Mr. Motley's critic is not less confident in claiming the
Almighty as on the side of his own views. Let him state his own ground of
departure:--
"To show the difference, let me rather say the contrast, between the
point of view of Mr. Motley and my own, between the Unitarian and
the Evangelical belief. I am issue of CALVIN, child of the
Awakening (reveil). Faithful to the device of the Reformers:
Justification by faith alone, and the Word of God endures eternally.
I consider history from the point of view of Merle d'Aubigne,
Chalmers, Guizot. I desire to be disciple and witness of our Lord
and Saviour, Jesus Christ."
He is therefore of necessity antagonistic to a writer whom he describes
in such words as these:--
"Mr. Motley is liberal and rationalist.
"He becomes, in attacking the principle of the Reformation, the
passionate opponent of the Puritans and of Maurice, the ardent
apologist of Barnevelt and the Arminians.
"It is understood, and he makes no mystery of it, that he inclines
towards the vague and undecided doctrine of the Unitarians."
What M. Groen's idea of Unitarians is may be gathered from the statement
about them which he gets from a letter of De Tocqueville.
"They are pure deists; they talk about the Bible, because they do
not wish to shock too severely public opinion, which is prevailingly
Christian. They have a service on Sundays; I have been there. At
it they read verses from Dryden or other English poets on the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul. They deliver a
discourse on some point of morality, and all is said."
In point of fact the wave of protest which stormed the dikes of Dutch
orthodoxy in the seventeenth century stole gently through the bars of New
England Puritanism in the eighteenth.
"Though the large number," says Mr. Bancroft, "still acknowledged the
fixedness of the divine decrees, and the resistless certainty from all
eternity of election and of reprobation, there were not wanting, even
among the clergy, some who had modified the sternness of the ancient
doctrine by making the self-direction of the active powers of man with
freedom of inquiry and private judgment the central idea of a protest
against Calvinism."
Protestantism, cut loose from an infallible church, and drifting with
currents it cannot resist, wakes up once or oftener in every century, to
find itself in a new locality. Then it rubs its eyes and wonders whether
it has found its harbor or only lost its anchor. There is no end to its
disputes, for it has nothing but a fallible vote as authority for its
oracles, and these appeal only to fallible interpreters.
It is as hard to contend in argument against "the oligarchy of heaven,"
as Motley calls the Calvinistic party, as it was formerly to strive with
them in arms.
To this "aristocracy of God's elect" belonged the party which framed the
declaration of the Synod of Dort; the party which under the forms of
justice shed the blood of the great statesman who had served his country
so long and so well. To this chosen body belonged the late venerable and
truly excellent as well as learned M. Groen van Prinsterer, and he
exercised the usual right of examining in the light of his privileged
position the views of a "liberal" and "rationalist" writer who goes to
meeting on Sunday to hear verses from Dryden. This does not diminish his
claim for a fair reading of the "intimate correspondence," which he
considers Mr. Motley has not duly taken into account, and of the other
letters to be found printed in his somewhat disjointed and fragmentary
volume.
This "intimate correspondence" shows Maurice the Stadholder indifferent
and lax in internal administration and as being constantly advised and
urged by his relative Count William of Nassau. This need of constant
urging extends to religious as well as other matters, and is inconsistent
with M. Groen van Prinsterer's assertion that the question was for
Maurice above all religious, and for Barneveld above all political.
Whether its negative evidence can be considered as neutralizing that
which is adduced by Mr. Motley to show the Stadholder's hatred of the
Advocate may be left to the reader who has just risen from the account of
the mock trial and the swift execution of the great and venerable
statesman. The formal entry on the record upon the day of his "judicial
murder" is singularly solemn and impressive:--
"Monday, 13th May, 1619. To-day was executed with the sword here in
the Hague, on a scaffold thereto erected in the Binnenhof before the
steps of the great hall, Mr. John of Barneveld, in his life Knight,
Lord of Berkel, Rodenrys, etc., Advocate of Holland and West
Friesland, for reasons expressed in the sentence and otherwise, with
confiscation of his property, after he had served the state thirty-
three years two months and five days, since 8th March, 1586; a man
of great activity, business, memory, and wisdom,--yea, extraordinary
in every respect. He that stands let him see that he does not
fall."
Maurice gave an account of the execution of Barneveld to Count William
Lewis on the same day in a note "painfully brief and dry."
Most authors write their own biography consciously or unconsciously. We
have seen Mr. Motley portraying much of himself, his course of life and
his future, as he would have had it, in his first story. In this, his
last work, it is impossible not to read much of his own external and
internal personal history told under other names and with different
accessories. The parallelism often accidentally or intentionally passes
into divergence. He would not have had it too close if he could, but
there are various passages in which it is plain enough that he is telling
his own story.
Mr. Motley was a diplomatist, and he writes of other diplomatists, and
one in particular, with most significant detail. It need not be supposed
that he intends the "arch intriguer" Aerssens to stand for himself, or
that he would have endured being thought to identify himself with the man
of whose "almost devilish acts" he speaks so freely. But the sagacious
reader--and he need not be very sharp-sighted--will very certainly see
something more than a mere historical significance in some of the
passages which I shall cite for him to reflect upon. Mr. Motley's
standard of an ambassador's accomplishments may be judged from the
following passage:--
"That those ministers [those of the Republic] were second to the
representatives of no other European state in capacity and
accomplishment was a fact well known to all who had dealings with
them, for the states required in their diplomatic representatives
knowledge of history and international law, modern languages, and
the classics, as well as familiarity with political customs and
social courtesies; the breeding of gentlemen, in short, and the
accomplishments of scholars."
The story of the troubles of Aerssens, the ambassador of the United
Provinces at Paris, must be given at some length, and will repay careful
reading.
"Francis Aerssens . . . continued to be the Dutch ambassador
after the murder of Henry IV. . . . He was beyond doubt one of
the ablest diplomatists in Europe. Versed in many languages, a
classical student, familiar with history and international law, a
man of the world and familiar with its usages, accustomed to
associate with dignity and tact on friendliest terms with
sovereigns, eminent statesmen, and men of letters; endowed with a
facile tongue, a fluent pen, and an eye and ear of singular
acuteness and delicacy; distinguished for unflagging industry and
singular aptitude for secret and intricate affairs;--he had by the
exercise of these various qualities during a period of nearly twenty
years at the court of Henry the Great been able to render
inestimable services to the Republic which he represented.
"He had enjoyed the intimacy and even the confidence of Henry IV.,
so far as any man could be said to possess that monarch's
confidence, and his friendly relations and familiar access to the
king gave him political advantages superior to those of any of his
colleagues at the same court.
"Acting entirely and faithfully according to the instructions of the
Advocate of Holland, he always gratefully and copiously acknowledged
the privilege of being guided and sustained in the difficult paths
he had to traverse by so powerful and active an intellect. I have
seldom alluded in terms to the instructions and dispatches of the
chief, but every position, negotiation, and opinion of the envoy
--and the reader has seen many of them is pervaded by their spirit.
"It had become a question whether he was to remain at his post or
return. It was doubtful whether he wished to be relieved of his
embassy or not. The States of Holland voted 'to leave it to his
candid opinion if in his free conscience he thinks he can serve the
public any longer. If yes, he may keep his office one year more.
If no, he may take leave and come home.'
"Surely the States, under the guidance of the Advocate, had thus
acted with consummate courtesy towards a diplomatist whose position,
from no apparent fault of his own, but by the force of
circumstances,--and rather to his credit than otherwise,
--was gravely compromised."
The Queen, Mary de' Medici, had a talk with him, got angry, "became very
red in the face," and wanted to be rid of him.
"Nor was the envoy at first desirous of remaining. . . .
Nevertheless, he yielded reluctantly to Barneveld's request that he
should, for the time at least, remain at his post. Later on, as the
intrigues against him began to unfold themselves, and his faithful
services were made use of at home to blacken his character and
procure his removal, he refused to resign, as to do so would be to
play into the hands of his enemies, and, by inference at least, to
accuse himself of infidelity to his trust. . . .
"It is no wonder that the ambassador was galled to the quick by the
outrage which those concerned in the government were seeking to put
upon him. How could an honest man fail to be overwhelmed with rage
and anguish at being dishonored before the world by his masters for
scrupulously doing his duty, and for maintaining the rights and
dignity of his own country? He knew that the charges were but
pretexts, that the motives of his enemies were as base as the
intrigues themselves, but he also knew that the world usually sides
with the government against the individual, and that a man's
reputation is rarely strong enough to maintain itself unsullied in a
foreign land when his own government stretches forth its hand, not
to shield, but to stab him. . . .
"'I know,' he said, that this plot has been woven partly here in
Holland and partly here by good correspondence in order to drive me
from my post.
"'But as I have discovered this accurately, I have resolved to offer
to my masters the continuance of my very humble service for such
time and under such conditions as they may think good to prescribe.
I prefer forcing my natural and private inclinations to giving an
opportunity for the ministers of this kingdom to discredit us, and
to my enemies to succeed in injuring me, and by fraud and malice to
force me from my post. . . . I am truly sorry, being ready to
retire, wishing to have an honorable testimony in recompense of my
labors, that one is in such hurry to take advantage of my fall. .
. . What envoy will ever dare to speak with vigor if he is not
sustained by the government at home? . . . My enemies have
misrepresented my actions, and my language as passionate,
exaggerated, mischievous, but I have no passion except for the
service of my superiors.'
"Barneveld, from well-considered motives of public policy, was
favoring his honorable recall. But he allowed a decorous interval
of more than three years to elapse in which to terminate his
affairs, and to take a deliberate departure from that French embassy
to which the Advocate had originally promoted him, and in which
there had been so many years of mutual benefit and confidence
between the two statesmen. He used no underhand means. He did not
abuse the power of the States-General which he wielded to cast him
suddenly and brutally from the distinguished post which he occupied,
and so to attempt to dishonor him before the world. Nothing could
be more respectful and conciliatory than the attitude of the
government from first to last towards this distinguished
functionary. The Republic respected itself too much to deal with
honorable agents whose services it felt obliged to dispense with as
with vulgar malefactors who had been detected in crime. . . .
"This work aims at being a political study. I would attempt to
exemplify the influence of individual humors and passions--some of
them among the highest, and others certainly the basest that agitate
humanity--upon the march of great events, upon general historical
results at certain epochs, and upon the destiny of eminent
personages."
Here are two suggestive portraits:--
"The Advocate, while acting only in the name of a slender
confederacy, was in truth, so long as he held his place, the prime
minister of European Protestantism. There was none other to rival
him, few to comprehend him, fewer still to sustain him. As Prince
Maurice was at that time the great soldier of Protestantism, without
clearly scanning the grandeur of the field in which he was a chief
actor, or foreseeing the vastness of its future, so the Advocate was
its statesman and its prophet. Could the two have worked together
as harmoniously as they had done at an earlier day, it would have
been a blessing for the common weal of Europe. But, alas! the evil
genius of jealousy, which so often forbids cordial relations between
soldier and statesman, already stood shrouded in the distance,
darkly menacing the strenuous patriot, who was wearing his life out
in exertions for what he deemed the true cause of progress and
humanity. . . .
"All history shows that the brilliant soldier of a republic is apt
to have the advantage, in a struggle for popular affection and
popular applause, over the statesman, however consummate. . . .
The great battles and sieges of the prince had been on a world's
theatre, had enchained the attention of Christendom, and on their
issue had frequently depended, or seemed to depend, the very
existence of the nation. The labors of the statesman, on the
contrary, had been comparatively secret. His noble orations and
arguments had been spoken with closed doors to assemblies of
colleagues, rather envoys than senators, . . while his vast labors
in directing both the internal administration and especially the
foreign affairs of the commonwealth had been by their very nature
as secret as they were perpetual and enormous."
The reader of the "Life of Barneveld" must judge for himself whether in
these and similar passages the historian was thinking solely of Maurice,
the great military leader, of Barneveld, the great statesman, and of
Aerssens, the recalled ambassador. He will certainly find that there were
"burning questions" for ministers to handle then as now, and recognize in
"that visible atmosphere of power the poison of which it is so difficult
to resist" a respiratory medium as well known to the nineteenth as to the
seventeenth century.
XXIII.
1874-1877. AEt. 60-63.
DEATH OF MRS. MOTLEY.--LAST VISIT TO AMERICA.--ILLNESS AND DEATH.-LADY
HARCOURT'S COMMUNICATION.
On the last day of 1874, the beloved wife, whose health had for some
years been failing, was taken from him by death. She had been the pride
of his happier years, the stay and solace of those which had so tried his
sensitive spirit. The blow found him already weakened by mental suffering
and bodily infirmity, and he never recovered from it. Mr. Motley's last
visit to America was in the summer and autumn of 1875. During several
weeks which he passed at Nahant, a seaside resort near Boston, I saw him
almost daily. He walked feebly and with some little difficulty, and
complained of a feeling of great weight in the right arm, which made
writing laborious. His handwriting had not betrayed any very obvious
change, so far as I had noticed in his letters. His features and speech
were without any paralytic character. His mind was clear except when, as
on one or two occasions, he complained of some confused feeling, and
walked a few minutes in the open air to compose himself. His thoughts
were always tending to revert to the almost worshipped companion from
whom death had parted him a few months before. Yet he could often be led
away to other topics, and in talking of them could be betrayed into
momentary cheerfulness of manner. His long-enduring and all-pervading
grief was not more a tribute to the virtues and graces of her whom he
mourned than an evidence of the deeply affectionate nature which in other
relations endeared him to so many whose friendship was a title to love
and honor.
I have now the privilege of once more recurring to the narrative of Mr.
Motley's daughter, Lady Harcourt.
"The harassing work and mental distress of this time [after the
recall from England], acting on an acutely nervous organization,
began the process of undermining his constitution, of which we were
so soon to see the results. It was not the least courageous act of
his life, that, smarting under a fresh wound, tired and unhappy, he
set his face immediately towards the accomplishment of fresh
literary labor. After my sister's marriage in January he went to
the Hague to begin his researches in the archives for John of
Barneveld. The Queen of the Netherlands had made ready a house
for us, and personally superintended every preparation for his
reception. We remained there until the spring, and then removed to
a house more immediately in the town, a charming old-fashioned
mansion, once lived in by John de Witt, where he had a large library
and every domestic comfort during the year of his sojourn. The
incessant literary labor in an enervating climate with enfeebled
health may have prepared the way for the first break in his
constitution, which was to show itself soon after. There were many
compensations in the life about him. He enjoyed the privilege of
constant companionship with one of the warmest hearts and finest
intellects which I have ever known in a woman,--the 'ame d'elite'
which has passed beyond this earth. The gracious sentiment with
which the Queen sought to express her sense of what Holland owed him
would have been deeply felt even had her personal friendship been
less dear to us all. From the King, the society of the Hague, and
the diplomatic circle we had many marks of kindness. Once or twice
I made short journeys with him for change of air to Amsterdam, to
look for the portraits of John of Barneveld and his wife; to
Bohemia, where, with the lingering hope of occupying himself with
the Thirty Years' War, he looked carefully at the scene of
Wallenstein's death near Prague, and later to Varzin in Pomerania
for a week with Prince Bismarck, after the great events of the
Franco-German war. In the autumn of 1872 we moved to England,
partly because it was evident that his health and my mother's
required a change; partly for private reasons to be near my sister
and her children. The day after our arrival at Bournemouth occurred
the rupture of a vessel on the lungs, without any apparently
sufficient cause. He recovered enough to revise and complete his
manuscript, and we thought him better, when at the end of July, in
London, he was struck down by the first attack of the head, which
robbed him of all after power of work, although the intellect
remained untouched. Sir William Gull sent him to Cannes for the
winter, where he was seized with a violent internal inflammation,
in which I suppose there was again the indication of the lesion of
blood-vessels. I am nearing the shadow now,--the time of which I
can hardly bear to write. You know the terrible sorrow which
crushed him on the last day of 1874,--the grief which broke his
heart and from which he never rallied. From that day it seems to me
that his life may be summed up in the two words,--patient waiting.
Never for one hour did her spirit leave him, and he strove to follow
its leading for the short and evil days left and the hope of the
life beyond. I think I have never watched quietly and reverently
the traces of one personal character remaining so strongly impressed
on another nature. With herself--depreciation and unselfishness she
would have been the last to believe how much of him was in her very
existence; nor could we have realized it until the parting came.
Henceforward, with the mind still there, but with the machinery
necessary to set it in motion disturbed and shattered, he could but
try to create small occupations with which to fill the hours of a
life which was only valued for his children's sake. Kind and loving
friends in England and America soothed the passage, and our
gratitude for so many gracious acts is deep and true. His love for
children, always a strong feeling, was gratified by the constant
presence of my sister's babies, the eldest, a little girl who bore
my mother's name, and had been her idol, being the companion of many
hours and his best comforter. At the end the blow came swiftly and
suddenly, as he would have wished it. It was a terrible shock to us
who had vainly hoped to keep him a few years longer, but at least he
was spared what he had dreaded with a great dread, a gradual failure
of mental or bodily power. The mind was never clouded, the
affections never weakened, and after a few hours of unconscious
physical struggle he lay at rest, his face beautiful and calm,
without a trace of suffering or illness. Once or twice he said, 'It
has come, it has come,' and there were a few broken words before
consciousness fled, but there was little time for messages or leave-
taking. By a strange coincidence his life ended near the town of
Dorchester, in the mother country, as if the last hour brought with
it a reminiscence of his birthplace, and of his own dearly loved
mother. By his own wish only the dates of his birth and death
appear upon his gravestone, with the text chosen by himself, 'In God
is light, and in him is no darkness at all.'"
XXIV.
CONCLUSION.--HIS CHARACTER.--HIS LABORS.--HIS REWARD.
In closing this restricted and imperfect record of a life which merits,
and in due time will, I trust, receive an ampler tribute, I cannot
refrain from adding a few thoughts which naturally suggest themselves,
and some of which may seem quite unnecessary to the reader who has
followed the story of the historian and diplomatist's brilliant and
eventful career.
Mr. Motley came of a parentage which promised the gifts of mind and body
very generally to be accounted for, in a measure at least, wherever we
find them, by the blood of one or both of the parents. They gave him
special attractions and laid him open to not a few temptations. Too many
young men born to shine in social life, to sparkle, it may be, in
conversation, perhaps in the lighter walks of literature, become
agreeable idlers, self-indulgent, frivolous, incapable of large designs
or sustained effort, lose every aspiration and forget every ideal. Our
gilded youth want such examples as this of Motley, not a solitary, but a
conspicuous one, to teach them how much better is the restlessness of a
noble ambition than the narcotized stupor of club-life or the vapid
amusement of a dressed-up intercourse which too often requires a
questionable flavor of forbidden license to render it endurable to
persons of vivacious character and temperament.
It would seem difficult for a man so flattered from his earliest days to
be modest in his self-estimate; but Motley was never satisfied with
himself. He was impulsive, and was occasionally, I have heard it said,
over excited, when his prejudices were roughly handled. In all that
related to the questions involved in our civil war, he was, no doubt,
very sensitive. He had heard so much that exasperated him in the foreign
society which he had expected to be in full sympathy with the cause of
liberty as against slavery, that he might be excused if he showed
impatience when he met with similar sentiments among his own countrymen.
He felt that he had been cruelly treated by his own government, and no
one who conceives himself to have been wronged and insulted must be
expected to reason in naked syllogisms on the propriety of the liberties
which have been taken with his name and standing. But with all his
quickness of feeling, his manners were easy and courteous, simply because
his nature was warm and kindly, and with all his natural fastidiousness
there was nothing of the coxcomb about him.
He must have had enemies, as all men of striking individuality are sure
to have; his presence cast more uncouth patriots into the shade; his
learning was a reproach to the ignorant, his fame was too bright a
distinction; his high-bred air and refinement, which he could not help,
would hardly commend him to the average citizen in an order of things in
which mediocrity is at a premium, and the natural nobility of presence,
which rarely comes without family antecedents to account for it, is not
always agreeable to the many whose two ideals are the man on horseback
and the man in his shirt-sleeves. It may well be questioned whether
Washington, with his grand manner, would be nearly as popular with what
are called "the masses" as Lincoln, with his homely ways and broad
stories. The experiment of universal suffrage must render the waters of
political and social life more or less turbid even if they remain
innoxious. The Cloaca Maxima can hardly mingle its contents with the
stream of the Aqua Claudia, without taking something from its crystal
clearness. We need not go so far as one of our well-known politicians has
recently gone in saying that no great man can reach the highest position
in our government, but we can safely say that, apart from military fame,
the loftiest and purest and finest personal qualities are not those which
can be most depended upon at the ballot-box. Strange stories are told of
avowed opposition to Mr. Motley on the ground of the most trivial
differences in point of taste in personal matters,--so told that it is
hard to disbelieve them, and they show that the caprices which we might
have thought belonged exclusively to absolute rulers among their
mistresses or their minions may be felt in the councils of a great people
which calls itself self-governing. It is perfectly true that Mr. Motley
did not illustrate the popular type of politician. He was too
high-minded, too scholarly, too generously industrious, too polished, too
much at home in the highest European circles, too much courted for his
personal fascinations, too remote from the trading world of caucus
managers. To degrade him, so far as official capital punishment could do
it, was not merely to wrong one whom the nation should have delighted to
honor as showing it to the world in the fairest flower of its young
civilization, but it was an indignity to a representative of the highest
scholarship of native growth, which every student in the land felt as a
discouragement to all sound learning and noble ambition.
If he was disappointed in his diplomatic career, he had enough, and more
than enough, to console him in his brilliant literary triumphs. He had
earned them all by the most faithful and patient labor. If he had not the
"frame of adamant" of the Swedish hero, he had his "soul of fire." No
labors could tire him, no difficulties affright him. What most surprised
those who knew him as a young man was, not his ambition, not his
brilliancy, but his dogged, continuous capacity for work. We have seen
with what astonishment the old Dutch scholar, Groen van Prinsterer,
looked upon a man who had wrestled with authors like Bor and Van Meteren,
who had grappled with the mightiest folios and toiled undiscouraged among
half-illegible manuscript records. Having spared no pains in collecting
his materials, he told his story, as we all know, with flowing ease and
stirring vitality. His views may have been more or less partial; Philip
the Second may have deserved the pitying benevolence of poor Maximilian;
Maurice may have wept as sincerely over the errors of Arminius as any one
of "the crocodile crew that believe in election;" Barneveld and Grotius
may have been on the road to Rome; none of these things seem probable,
but if they were all proved true in opposition to his views, we should
still have the long roll of glowing tapestry he has woven for us, with
all its life-like portraits, its almost moving pageants, its sieges where
we can see the artillery flashing, its battle-fields with their smoke and
fire,--pictures which cannot fade, and which will preserve his name
interwoven with their own enduring colors.
Republics are said to be ungrateful; it might be truer to say that they
are forgetful. They forgive those who have wronged them as easily as they
forget those who have done them good service. But History never forgets
and never forgives. To her decision we may trust the question, whether
the warm-hearted patriot who had stood up for his country nobly and
manfully in the hour of trial, the great scholar and writer who had
reflected honor upon her throughout the world of letters, the high-minded
public servant, whose shortcomings it taxed the ingenuity of experts to
make conspicuous enough to be presentable, was treated as such a citizen
should have been dealt with. His record is safe in her hands, and his
memory will be precious always in the hearts of all who enjoyed his
friendship.
APPENDIX.
A.
THE SATURDAY CLUB.
This club, of which we were both members, and which is still flourishing,
came into existence in a very quiet sort of way at about the same time as
"The Atlantic Monthly," and, although entirely unconnected with that
magazine, included as members some of its chief contributors. Of those
who might have been met at some of the monthly gatherings in its earlier
days I may mention Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Motley,
Whipple, Whittier; Professors Agassiz and Peirce; John S. Dwight;
Governor Andrew, Richard H. Dana, Junior, Charles Sumner. It offered a
wide gamut of intelligences, and the meetings were noteworthy occasions.
If there was not a certain amount of "mutual admiration" among some of
those I have mentioned it was a great pity, and implied a defect in the
nature of men who were otherwise largely endowed. The vitality of this
club has depended in a great measure on its utter poverty in statutes and
by-laws, its entire absence of formality, and its blessed freedom from
speech-making.
That holy man, Richard Baxter, says in his Preface to Alleine's
"Alarm:"--
"I have done, when I have sought to remove a little scandal, which I
foresaw, that I should myself write the Preface to his Life where
himself and two of his friends make such a mention of my name, which
I cannot own; which will seem a praising him for praising me. I
confess it looketh ill-favoredly in me. But I had not the power of
other men's writings, and durst not forbear that which was his due."
I do not know that I have any occasion for a similar apology in printing
the following lines read at a meeting of members of the Saturday Club and
other friends who came together to bid farewell to Motley before his
return to Europe in 1857.
A PARTING HEALTH
Yes, we knew we must lose him,--though friendship may claim
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame,
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own,
'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.
As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel,
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.
What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom
Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom,
While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes
That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!
In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time,
Where flit the dark spectres of passion and crime,
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung,
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue!
Let us hear the proud story that time has bequeathed
From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed!
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom,
Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom!
The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake,
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine.
So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed
When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed;
THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING,--the world holds him dear,--
Love bless him, joy crown him, God speed his career!
B.
HABITS AND METHODS OF STUDY.
Mr. Motley's daughter, Lady Harcourt, has favored me with many
interesting particulars which I could not have learned except from a
member of his own family. Her description of his way of living and of
working will be best given in her own words:--
"He generally rose early, the hour varying somewhat at different
parts of his life, according to his work and health. Sometimes when
much absorbed by literary labor he would rise before seven, often
lighting his own fire, and with a cup of tea or coffee writing until
the family breakfast hour, after which his work was immediately
resumed, and he usually sat over his writing-table until late in the
afternoon, when he would take a short walk. His dinner hour was
late, and he rarely worked at night. During the early years of his
literary studies he led a life of great retirement. Later, after
the publication of the 'Dutch Republic' and during the years of
official place, he was much in society in England, Austria, and
Holland. He enjoyed social life, and particularly dining out,
keenly, but was very moderate and simple in all his personal habits,
and for many years before his death had entirely given up smoking.
His work, when not in his own library, was in the Archives of the
Netherlands, Brussels, Paris, the English State Paper Office, and
the British Museum, where he made his own researches, patiently and
laboriously consulting original manuscripts and reading masses of
correspondence, from which he afterwards sometimes caused copies to
be made, and where he worked for many consecutive hours a day.
After his material had been thus painfully and toilfully amassed,
the writing of his own story was always done at home, and his mind,
having digested the necessary matter, always poured itself forth in
writing so copiously that his revision was chiefly devoted to
reducing the over-abundance. He never shrank from any of the
drudgery of preparation, but I think his own part of the work was
sheer pleasure to him."
I should have mentioned that his residence in London while minister was
at the house No. 17 Arlington Street, belonging to Lord Yarborough.
C.
SIR WILLIAM GULL's ACCOUNT OF HIS ILLNESS.
I have availed myself of the permission implied in the subjoined letter
of Sir William Gull to make large extracts from his account of Mr.
Motley's condition while under his medical care. In his earlier years he
had often complained to me of those "nervous feelings connected with the
respiration" referred to by this very distinguished physician. I do not
remember any other habitual trouble to which he was subject.
74 BROOK STREET, GROSVENOR SQUARE, W.
February 13, 1878.
MY DEAR SIR,--I send the notes of Mr. Motley's last illness, as I
promised. They are too technical for general readers, but you will make
such exception as you require. The medical details may interest your
professional friends. Mr. Motley's case was a striking illustration that
the renal disease of so-called Bright's disease may supervene as part and
parcel of a larger and antecedent change in the blood-vessels in other
parts than the kidney. . . . I am, my dear sir,
Yours very truly,
WILLIAM W. GULL.
To OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, ESQ.
I first saw Mr. Motley, I believe, about the year 1870, on account
of some nervous feelings connected with the respiration. At that
time his general health was good, and all he complained of was
occasionally a feeling of oppression about the chest. There were no
physical signs of anything abnormal, and the symptoms quite passed
away in the course of time, and with the use of simple antispasmodic
remedies, such as camphor and the like. This was my first interview
with Mr. Motley, and I was naturally glad to have the opportunity of
making his acquaintance. I remember that in our conversation I
jokingly said that my wife could hardly forgive him for not making
her hero, Henri IV., a perfect character, and the earnestness with
which he replied 'au serieux,' I assure you I have fairly recorded
the facts. After this date I did not see Mr. Motley for some time.
He had three slight attacks of haemoptysis in the autumn of 1872,
but no physical signs of change in the lung tissue resulted. So
early as this I noticed that there were signs of commencing
thickening in the heart, as shown by the degree and extent of its
impulse. The condition of his health, though at that time not very
obviously failing, a good deal arrested my attention, as I thought I
could perceive in the occurrence of the haemoptysis, and in the
cardiac hypertrophy, the early beginnings of vascular degeneration.
In August, 1873, occurred the remarkable seizure, from the effects
of which Mr. Motley never recovered. I did not see him in the
attack, but was informed, as far as I can remember, that he was on a
casual visit at a friend's house at luncheon (or it might have been
dinner), when he suddenly became strangely excited, but not quite
unconscious. . . . I believed at the time, and do so still, that
there was some capillary apoplexy of the convolutions. The attack
was attended with some hemiplegic weakness on the right side, and
altered sensation, and ever after there was a want of freedom and
ease both in the gait and in the use of the arm of that side. To my
inquiries from time to time how the arm was, the patient would
always flex and extend it freely, but nearly always used the
expression, "There is a bedevilment in it;" though the handwriting
was not much, if at all, altered.
In December, 1873, Mr. Motley went by my advice to Cannes. I wrote
the following letter at the time to my friend Dr. Frank, who was
practising there:--
[This letter, every word of which was of value to the
practitioner who was to have charge of the patient, relates
many of the facts given above, and I shall therefore only give
extracts from it.]
December 29, 1873.
MY DEAR DR. FRANK,--My friend Mr. Motley, the historian and late
American Minister, whose name and fame no doubt you know very well,
has by my advice come to Cannes for the winter and spring, and I
have promised him to give you some account of his case. To me it is
one of special interest, and personally, as respects the subject of
it, of painful interest. I have known Mr. Motley for some time, but
he consulted me for the present condition about midsummer.
. . . If I have formed a correct opinion of the pathology of the
case, I believe the smaller vessels are degenerating in several
parts of the vascular area, lung, brain, and kidneys. With this
view I have suggested a change of climate, a nourishing diet, etc.;
and it is to be hoped, and I trust expected, that by great attention
to the conditions of hygiene, internal and external, the progress of
degeneration may be retarded. I have no doubt you will find, as
time goes on, increasing evidence of renal change, but this is
rather a coincidence and consequence than a cause, though no doubt
when the renal change has reached a certain point, it becomes in its
own way a factor of other lesions. I have troubled you at this
length because my mind is much occupied with the pathology of these
cases, and because no case can, on personal grounds, more strongly
challenge our attention.
Yours very truly,
WILLIAM W. GULL.
During the spring of 1874, whilst at Cannes, Mr. Motley had a sharp
attack of nephritis, attended with fever; but on returning to
England in July there was no important change in the health. The
weakness of the side continued, and the inability to undertake any
mental work. The signs of cardiac hypertrophy were more distinct.
In the beginning of the year 1875 I wrote as follows:--
February 20, 1875.
MY DEAR Mr. MOTLEY,--. . . The examination I have just made
appears to indicate that the main conditions of your health are more
stable than they were some months ago, and would therefore be so far
in favor of your going to America in the summer, as we talked of.
The ground of my doubt has lain in the possibility of such a trip
further disordering the circulation. Of this, I hope, there is now
less risk.
On the 4th of June, 1875, I received the following letter:--
CALVERLY PARK HOTEL, TUNBRIDGE WELLS,
June 4, 1875.
MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--I have been absent from town for a long time,
but am to be there on the 9th and 10th. Could I make an appointment
with you for either of those days? I am anxious to have a full
consultation with you before leaving for America. Our departure is
fixed for the 19th of this month. I have not been worse than usual
of late. I think myself, on the contrary, rather stronger, and it
is almost impossible for me not to make my visit to America this
summer, unless you should absolutely prohibit it. If neither of
those days should suit you, could you kindly suggest another day?
I hope, however, you can spare me half an hour on one of those days,
as I like to get as much of this bracing air as I can. Will you
kindly name the hour when I may call on you, and address me at this
hotel. Excuse this slovenly note in pencil, but it fatigues my head
and arm much more to sit at a writing-table with pen and ink.
Always most sincerely yours,
My dear Sir William,
J. L. MOTLEY.
On Mr. Motley's return from America I saw him, and found him, I
thought, rather better in general health than when he left England.
In December, 1875, Mr. Motley consulted me for trouble of vision in
reading or walking, from sensations like those produced by flakes of
falling snow coming between him and the objects he was looking at.
Mr. Bowman, one of our most excellent oculists, was then consulted.
Mr. Bowman wrote to me as follows: "Such symptoms as exist point
rather to disturbed retinal function than to any brain-mischief. It
is, however, quite likely that what you fear for the brain may have
had its counterpart in the nerve-structures of the eye, and as he is
short-sighted, this tendency may be further intensified."
Mr. Bowman suggested no more than such an arrangement of glasses as
might put the eyes, when in use, under better optic conditions.
The year 1876 was passed over without any special change worth
notice. The walking powers were much impeded by the want of control
over the right leg. The mind was entirely clear, though Mr. Motley
did not feel equal, and indeed had been advised not to apply
himself, to any literary work. Occasional conversations, when I had
interviews with him on the subject of his health, proved that the
attack which had weakened the movements of the right side had not
impaired the mental power. The most noticeable change which had
come over Mr. Motley since I first knew him was due to the death of
Mrs. Motley in December, 1874. It had in fact not only profoundly
depressed him, but, if I may so express it, had removed the centre
of his thought to a new world. In long conversations with me of a
speculative kind, after that painful event, it was plain how much
his point of view of the whole course and relation of things had
changed. His mind was the last to dogmatize on any subject. There
was a candid and childlike desire to know, with an equal confession
of the incapacity of the human intellect. I wish I could recall the
actual expressions he used, but the sense was that which has been so
well stated by Hooker in concluding an exhortation against the pride
of the human intellect, where he remarks:--
"Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the
doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to
make mention of His Name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that
we know Him, not indeed as He is, neither can know Him; and our
safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we confess
without confession that His glory is inexplicable, His greatness
above our capacity and reach. He is above and we upon earth;
therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few."
Mrs. Motley's illness was not a long one, and the nature of it was
such that its course could with certainty be predicted. Mr. Motley
and her children passed the remaining days of her life, extending
over about a month, with her, in the mutual under standing that she
was soon to part from them. The character of the illness, and the
natural exhaustion of her strength by suffering, lessened the shock
of her death, though not the loss, to those who survived her.
The last time I saw Mr. Motley was, I believe, about two months
before his death, March 28, 1877. There was no great change in his
health, but he complained of indescribable sensations in his nervous
system, and felt as if losing the whole power of walking, but this
was not obvious in his gait, although he walked shorter distances
than before. I heard no more of him until I was suddenly summoned
on the 29th of May into Devonshire to see him. The telegram I
received was so urgent, that I suspected some rupture of a blood-
vessel in the brain, and that I should hardly reach him alive; and
this was the case. About two o'clock in the day he complained of a
feeling of faintness, said he felt ill and should not recover; and
in a few minutes was insensible with symptoms of ingravescent
apoplexy. There was extensive haemorrhage into the brain, as shown
by post-mortem examination, the cerebral vessels being atheromatous.
The fatal haemorrhage had occurred into the lateral ventricles, from
rupture of one of the middle cerebral arteries.
I am, my dear Sir,
Yours very truly,
WILLIAM W. GULL.
E.
FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY.
At a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, held on Thursday,
the 14th of June, 1877, after the reading of the records of the preceding
meeting, the president, the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, spoke as follows:
"Our first thoughts to-day, gentlemen, are of those whom we may not
again welcome to these halls. We shall be in no mood, certainly,
for entering on other subjects this morning until we have given some
expression to our deep sense of the loss--the double loss--which our
Society has sustained since our last monthly meeting."--[Edmund
Quincy died May 17. John Lothrop Motley died May 29.]
After a most interesting and cordial tribute to his friend, Mr. Quincy,
Mr. Winthrop continued:
"The death of our distinguished associate, Motley, can hardly have
taken many of us by surprise. Sudden at the moment of its
occurrence, we had long been more or less prepared for it by his
failing health. It must, indeed, have been quite too evident to
those who had seen him, during the last two or three years, that his
life-work was finished. I think he so regarded it himself.
"Hopes may have been occasionally revived in the hearts of his
friends, and even in his own heart, that his long-cherished purpose
of completing a History of the Thirty Years' War, as the grand
consummation of his historical labors,--for which all his other
volumes seemed to him to have been but the preludes and overtures,
--might still be accomplished. But such hopes, faint and flickering
from his first attack, had well-nigh died away. They were like
Prescott's hopes of completing his 'Philip the Second,' or like
Macaulay's hopes of finishing his brilliant 'History of England.'
"But great as may be the loss to literature of such a crowning work
from Motley's pen, it was by no means necessary to the completeness
of his own fame. His 'Rise of the Dutch Republic,' his 'History of
the United Netherlands,' and his 'Life of John of Barneveld,' had
abundantly established his reputation, and given him a fixed place
among the most eminent historians of our country and of our age.
"No American writer, certainly, has secured a wider recognition or a
higher appreciation from the scholars of the Old World. The
universities of England and the learned societies of Europe have
bestowed upon him their largest honors. It happened to me to be in
Paris when he was first chosen a corresponding member of the
Institute, and when his claims were canvassed with the freedom and
earnestness which peculiarly characterize such a candidacy in
France. There was no mistaking the profound impression which his
first work had made on the minds of such men as Guizot and Mignet.
Within a year or two past, a still higher honor has been awarded him
from the same source. The journals not long ago announced his
election as one of the six foreign associates of the French Academy
of Moral and Political Sciences,--a distinction which Prescott would
probably have attained had he lived a few years longer, until there
was a vacancy, but which, as a matter of fact, I believe, Motley was
the only American writer, except the late Edward Livingston, of
Louisiana, who has actually enjoyed.
"Residing much abroad, for the purpose of pursuing his historical
researches, he had become the associate and friend of the most
eminent literary men in almost all parts of the world, and the
singular charms of his conversation and manners had made him a
favorite guest in the most refined and exalted circles.
"Of his relations to political and public life, this is hardly the
occasion or the moment for speaking in detail. Misconstructions and
injustices are the proverbial lot of those who occupy eminent
position. It was a duke of Vienna, if I remember rightly, whom
Shakespeare, in his 'Measure for Measure,' introduces as
exclaiming,--
'O place and greatness, millions of false eyes
Are stuck upon thee! Volumes of report
Run with these false and most contrarious quests
Upon thy doings! Thousand 'stapes of wit
Make thee the father of their idle dream,
And rack thee in their fancies!'
"I forbear from all application of the lines. It is enough for me,
certainly, to say here, to-day, that our country was proud to be
represented at the courts of Vienna and London successively by a
gentleman of so much culture and accomplishment as Mr. Motley, and
that the circumstances of his recall were deeply regretted by us
all.
"His fame, however, was quite beyond the reach of any such
accidents, and could neither be enhanced nor impaired by
appointments or removals. As a powerful and brilliant historian we
pay him our unanimous tribute of admiration and regret, and give him
a place in our memories by the side of Prescott and Irving. I do
not forget how many of us lament him, also, as a cherished friend.
"He died on the 29th ultimo, at the house of his daughter, Mrs.
Sheridan, in Dorsetshire, England, and an impressive tribute to his
memory was paid, in Westminster Abbey, on the following Sunday, by
our Honorary Member, Dean Stanley. Such a tribute, from such lips,
and with such surroundings, leaves nothing to be desired in the way
of eulogy. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, by the side of
his beloved wife.
"One might well say of Motley precisely what he said of Prescott, in
a letter from Rome to our associate, Mr. William Amory, immediately
on hearing of Prescott's death: 'I feel inexpressibly disappointed
--speaking now for an instant purely from a literary point of view
--that the noble and crowning monument of his life, for which he had
laid such massive foundations, and the structure of which had been
carried forward in such a grand and masterly manner, must remain
uncompleted, like the unfinished peristyle of some stately and
beautiful temple on which the night of time has suddenly descended.
But, still, the works which his great and untiring hand had already
thoroughly finished will remain to attest his learning and genius,
--a precious and perpetual possession for his country."
.................................
The President now called on Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said:--
"The thoughts which suggest themselves upon this occasion are such
as belong to the personal memories of the dear friends whom we have
lost, rather than to their literary labors, the just tribute to
which must wait for a calmer hour than the present, following so
closely as it does on our bereavement."
.................................
"His first literary venture of any note was the story called
'Morton's Hope; or, The Memoirs of a Provincial.' This first effort
failed to satisfy the critics, the public, or himself. His
personality pervaded the characters and times which he portrayed,
so that there was a discord between the actor and his costume.
Brilliant passages could not save it; and it was plain enough that
he must ripen into something better before the world would give him
the reception which surely awaited him if he should find his true
destination.
"The early failures of a great writer are like the first sketches
of a great artist, and well reward patient study. More than this,
the first efforts of poets and story-tellers are very commonly
palimpsests: beneath the rhymes or the fiction one can almost always
spell out the characters which betray the writer's self. Take these
passages from the story just referred to:
"'Ah! flattery is a sweet and intoxicating potion, whether we drink
it from an earthen ewer or a golden chalice. . . . Flattery from
man to woman is expected: it is a part of the courtesy of society;
but when the divinity descends from the altar to burn incense to the
priest, what wonder if the idolater should feel himself transformed
into a god!'
"He had run the risk of being spoiled, but he had a safeguard in his
aspirations.
"'My ambitious anticipations,' says Morton, in the story, were as
boundless as they were various and conflicting. There was not a
path which leads to glory in which I was not destined to gather
laurels. As a warrior, I would conquer and overrun the world; as a
statesman, I would reorganize and govern it; as a historian, I would
consign it all to immortality; and, in my leisure moments, I would
be a great poet and a man of the world.'
"Who can doubt that in this passage of his story he is picturing his
own visions, one of the fairest of which was destined to become
reality?
"But there was another element in his character, which those who
knew him best recognized as one with which he had to struggle hard,
--that is, a modesty which sometimes tended to collapse into self-
distrust. This, too, betrays itself in the sentences which follow
those just quoted:--
"'In short,' says Morton, 'I was already enrolled in that large
category of what are called young men of genius, . . . men of
whom unheard-of things are expected; till after long preparation
comes a portentous failure, and then they are forgotten. . . .
Alas! for the golden imaginations of our youth. . . . They are
all disappointments. They are bright and beautiful, but they fade.'"
...........................
The President appointed Professor Lowell to write the Memoir of Mr.
Quincy, and Dr. Holmes that of Mr. Motley, for the Society's
"Proceedings."
Professor William Everett then spoke as follows:
"There is one incident, sir, in Mr. Motley's career that has not
been mentioned to-day, which is, perhaps, most vividly remembered by
those of us who were in Europe at the outbreak of our civil war in
1861. At that time, the ignorance of Englishmen, friendly or
otherwise, about America, was infinite: they knew very little of us,
and that little wrong. Americans were overwhelmed with questions,
taunts, threats, misrepresentations, the outgrowth of ignorance, and
ignoring worse than ignorance, from every class of Englishmen.
Never was an authoritative exposition of our hopes and policy worse
needed; and there was no one to do it. The outgoing diplomatic
agents represented a bygone order of things; the representatives of
Mr. Lincoln's administration had not come. At that time of anxiety,
Mr. Motley, living in England as a private person, came forward with
two letters in the 'Times,' which set forth the cause of the United
States once and for all. No unofficial, and few official, men could
have spoken with such authority, and been so certain of obtaining a
hearing from Englishmen. Thereafter, amid all the clouds of
falsehood and ridicule which we had to encounter, there was one
lighthouse fixed on a rock to which we could go for foothold, from
which we could not be driven, and against which all assaults were
impotent.
"There can be no question that the effect produced by these letters
helped, if help had been needed, to point out Mr. Motley as a
candidate for high diplomatic place who could not be overlooked.
Their value was recognized alike by his fellow-citizens in America
and his admirers in England; but none valued them more than the
little band of exiles, who were struggling against terrible odds,
and who rejoiced with a great joy to see the stars and stripes,
whose centennial anniversary those guns are now celebrating, planted
by a hand so truly worthy to rally every American to its support."
G.
POEM BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
I cannot close this Memoir more appropriately than by appending the
following poetical tribute:--
IN MEMORY OF JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
Sleep, Motley, with the great of ancient days,
Who wrote for all the years that yet shall be.
Sleep with Herodotus, whose name and praise
Have reached the isles of earth's remotest sea.
Sleep, while, defiant of the slow delays
Of Time, thy glorious writings speak for thee
And in the answering heart of millions raise
The generous zeal for Right and Liberty.
And should the days o'ertake us, when, at last,
The silence that--ere yet a human pen
Had traced the slenderest record of the past
Hushed the primeval languages of men
Upon our English tongue its spell shall cast,
Thy memory shall perish only then.
American Men of Letters
EDITED BY
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
"_Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled:
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendor to the dead._"
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
BY
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
1891
NOTE.
My thanks are due to the members of Mr. Emerson's family, and the other
friends who kindly assisted me by lending interesting letters and
furnishing valuable information.
The Index, carefully made by Mr. J.H. Wiggin, was revised and somewhat
abridged by myself.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
BOSTON, November 25, 1884.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.
1803-1823. To AET. 20.
Birthplace.--Boyhood.--College Life.
CHAPTER II.
1823-1828. AET. 20-25.
Extract from a Letter to a Classmate.--School-Teaching.--Study of
Divinity.--"Approbated" to Preach.--Visit to the South.--Preaching in
Various Places.
CHAPTER III.
1828-1833. AET. 25-30.
Settled as Colleague of Rev. Henry Ware.--Married to Ellen Louisa
Tucker.--Sermon at the Ordination of Rev. H.B. Goodwin.--His Pastoral
and Other Labors.--Emerson and Father Taylor.--Death of Mrs.
Emerson.--Difference of Opinion with some of his Parishioners.--Sermon
Explaining his Views.--Resignation of his Pastorate.
CHAPTER IV.
1833-1838. AET. 30-35.
Section I. Visit to Europe.--On his Return preaches in Different
Places.--Emerson in the Pulpit.--At Newton.--Fixes his Residence at
Concord.--The Old Manse.--Lectures in Boston.--Lectures on
Michael Angelo and on Milton published in the "North American
Review."--Beginning of the Correspondence with Carlyle.--Letters to the
Rev. James Freeman Clarke.--Republication of "Sartor Resartus."
Section 2. Emerson's Second Marriage.--His New Residence in
Concord.--Historical Address.--Course of Ten Lectures on English
Literature delivered in Boston.--The Concord Battle Hymn.--Preaching
in Concord and East Lexington.--Accounts of his Preaching by
Several Hearers.--A Course of Lectures on the Nature and Ends of
History.--Address on War.--Death of Edward Bliss Emerson.--Death of
Charles Chauncy Emerson.
Section 3. Publication of "Nature."--Outline of this Essay.--Its
Reception.--Address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society
CHAPTER V.
1838-1843. AET. 35-40.
Section 1. Divinity School Address.--Correspondence.--Lectures on Human
Life.--Letters to James Freeman Clarke.--Dartmouth College Address:
Literary Ethics.--Waterville College Address: The Method of
Nature.--Other Addresses: Man the Reformer.--Lecture on the Times.--The
Conservative.--The Transcendentalist.--Boston "Transcendentalism."--"The
Dial."--Brook Farm.
Section 2. First Series of Essays published.--Contents: History,
Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence,
Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, Intellect, Art.--Emerson's Account
of his Mode of Life in a Letter to Carlyle.--Death of Emerson's
Son.--Threnody
CHAPTER VI.
1843-1848. AET. 40-45.
"The Young American."--Address on the Anniversary of the Emancipation
of the Negroes in the British West Indies.--Publication of the
Second Series of Essays.--Contents: The Poet.--Experience.
--Character.--Manners.--Gifts.--Nature.--Politics.--Nominalist
and Realist.--New England Reformers.--Publication of Poems.--Second
Visit to England
CHAPTER VII.
1848-1853. AET. 45-50.
The "Massachusetts Quarterly Review."--Visit to
Europe.--England.--Scotland.--France.--"Representative Men" published.
I. Lives of Great Men. II. Plato; or, the Philosopher; Plato; New
Readings. III. Swedenborg; or, the Mystic. IV. Montaigne; or, the
Skeptic. V. Shakespeare; or, the Poet. VI. Napoleon; or, the Man of the
World. VII. Goethe; or, the Writer.--Contribution to the "Memoirs of
Margaret Fuller Ossoli"
CHAPTER VIII.
1853-1858. AET. 50-55.
Lectures in various Places.--Anti-Slavery Addresses.--Woman. A Lecture
read before the Woman's Rights Convention.--Samuel Hoar. Speech at
Concord.--Publication of "English Traits."--The "Atlantic Monthly."--The
"Saturday Club"
CHAPTER IX
1858-1863. AET. 55-60.
Essay on Persian Poetry.--Speech at the Burns Centennial
Festival.--Letter from Emerson to a Lady.--Tributes to Theodore Parker
and to Thoreau.--Address on the Emancipation Proclamation.--Publication
of "The Conduct of Life." Contents: Fate; Power; Wealth; Culture;
Behavior; Considerations by the Way; Beauty; Illusions
CHAPTER X.
1863-1868. AET. 60-65.
"Boston Hymn."--"Voluntaries."--Other Poems.--"May-Day and other
Pieces."--"Remarks at the Funeral Services of President Lincoln."--Essay
on Persian Poetry.--Address at a Meeting of the Free Religious
Association.--"Progress of Culture." Address before the Phi Beta
Kappa Society of Harvard University.--Course of Lectures in
Philadelphia.--The Degree of LL.D. conferred upon Emerson by Harvard
University.--"Terminus".
CHAPTER XI.
1868-1873. AET. 65-70.
Lectures on the Natural History of the Intellect.--Publication of
"Society and Solitude." Contents: Society and Solitude.
--Civilization.--Art.--Eloquence.--Domestic Life.--Farming.
--Works and Days.--Books.--Clubs.--Courage.--Success.--Old Age.--Other
Literary Labors.--Visit to California.--Burning of his House, and the
Story of its Rebuilding.--Third Visit to Europe.--His Reception at
Concord on his Return
CHAPTER XII
1873-1878. AET. 70-75.
Publication of "Parnassus."--Emerson Nominated as Candidate for the
Office of Lord Rector of Glasgow University.--Publication of
"Letters and Social Aims." Contents: Poetry and Imagination.--Social
Aims.--Eloquence.--Resources.--The Comic.--Quotation and Originality.
--Progress of Culture.--Persian Poetry.--Inspiration.--Greatness.
--Immortality.--Address at the Unveiling of the Statue of "The
Minute-Man" at Concord.--Publication of Collected Poems
CHAPTER XIII.
1878-1882. AET. 75-79.
Last Literary Labors.--Addresses and Essays.--"Lectures and Biographical
Sketches."--"Miscellanies"
CHAPTER XIV.
Emerson's Poems
CHAPTER XV.
Recollections of Emerson's Last Years.--Mr. Conway's Visits.--Extracts
from Mr. Whitman's Journal.--Dr. Le Baron Russell's Visit.--Dr. Edward
Emerson's Account.--Illness and Death.--Funeral Services
CHAPTER XVI.
EMERSON.---A RETROSPECT.
Personality and Habits of Life.--His Commission and Errand.--As a
Lecturer.--His Use of Authorities.--Resemblance to Other Writers.--As
influenced by Others.--His Place as a Thinker.--Idealism and
Intuition.--Mysticism.--His Attitude respecting Science.--As an
American.--His Fondness for Solitary Study.--His Patience and
Amiability.--Feeling with which he was regarded.--Emerson and
Burns.--His Religious Belief.--His Relations with Clergymen.--Future of
his Reputation.--His Life judged by the Ideal Standard
INTRODUCTION.
"I have the feeling that every man's biography is at his own expense. He
furnishes not only the facts, but the report. I mean that all biography
is autobiography. It is only what he tells of himself that comes to be
known and believed."
So writes the man whose life we are to pass in review, and it is
certainly as true of him as of any author we could name. He delineates
himself so perfectly in his various writings that the careful reader
sees his nature just as it was in all its essentials, and has little
more to learn than those human accidents which individualize him
in space and time. About all these accidents we have a natural and
pardonable curiosity. We wish to know of what race he came, what were
the conditions into which he was born, what educational and social
influences helped to mould his character, and what new elements Nature
added to make him Ralph Waldo Emerson.
He himself believes in the hereditary transmission of certain
characteristics. Though Nature appears capricious, he says, "Some
qualities she carefully fixes and transmits, but some, and those the
finer, she exhales with the breath of the individual, as too costly to
perpetuate. But I notice also that they may become fixed and permanent
in any stock, by painting and repainting them on every individual, until
at last Nature adopts them and bakes them in her porcelain."
* * * * *
We have in New England a certain number of families who constitute what
may be called the Academic Races. Their names have been on college
catalogues for generation after generation. They have filled the learned
professions, more especially the ministry, from the old colonial days to
our own time. If aptitudes for the acquisition of knowledge can be
bred into a family as the qualities the sportsman wants in his dog are
developed in pointers and setters, we know what we may expect of a
descendant of one of the Academic Races. Other things being equal, he
will take more naturally, more easily, to his books. His features will
be more pliable, his voice will be more flexible, his whole nature more
plastic than those of the youth with less favoring antecedents. The
gift of genius is never to be reckoned upon beforehand, any more than
a choice new variety of pear or peach in a seedling; it is always a
surprise, but it is born with great advantages when the stock from which
it springs has been long under cultivation.
These thoughts suggest themselves in looking back at the striking record
of the family made historic by the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was
remarkable for the long succession of clergymen in its genealogy, and
for the large number of college graduates it counted on its rolls.
A genealogical table is very apt to illustrate the "survival of the
fittest,"--in the estimate of the descendants. It is inclined to
remember and record those ancestors who do most honor to the living
heirs of the family name and traditions. As every man may count two
grandfathers, four great-grandfathers, eight great-great-grandfathers,
and so on, a few generations give him a good chance for selection. If
he adds his distinguished grandmothers, he may double the number of
personages to choose from. The great-grandfathers of Mr. Emerson at the
sixth remove were thirty-two in number, unless the list was shortened by
intermarriage of relatives. One of these, from whom the name descended,
was Thomas Emerson of Ipswich, who furnished the staff of life to the
people of that wonderfully interesting old town and its neighborhood.
His son, the Reverend Joseph Emerson, minister of the town of Mendon,
Massachusetts, married Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend Edward
Bulkeley, who succeeded his father, the Reverend Peter Bulkeley, as
Minister of Concord, Massachusetts.
Peter Bulkeley was therefore one of Emerson's sixty-four grandfathers
at the seventh remove. We know the tenacity of certain family
characteristics through long lines of descent, and it is not impossible
that any one of a hundred and twenty-eight grandparents, if indeed the
full number existed in spite of family admixtures, may have transmitted
his or her distinguishing traits through a series of lives that cover
more than two centuries, to our own contemporary. Inherited qualities
move along their several paths not unlike the pieces in the game of
chess. Sometimes the character of the son can be traced directly to that
of the father or of the mother, as the pawn's move carries him from one
square to the next. Sometimes a series of distinguished fathers follows
in a line, or a succession of superior mothers, as the black or white
bishop sweeps the board on his own color. Sometimes the distinguishing
characters pass from one sex to the other indifferently, as the castle
strides over the black and white squares. Sometimes an uncle or aunt
lives over again in a nephew or niece, as if the knight's move were
repeated on the squares of human individuality. It is not impossible,
then, that some of the qualities we mark in Emerson may have come from
the remote ancestor whose name figures with distinction in the early
history of New England.
The Reverend Peter Bulkeley is honorably commemorated among the worthies
consigned to immortality in that precious and entertaining medley of
fact and fancy, enlivened by a wilderness of quotations at first or
second hand, the _Magnolia Christi Americana_, of the Reverend Cotton
Mather. The old chronicler tells his story so much better than any one
can tell it for him that he must be allowed to speak for himself in a
few extracts, transferred with all their typographical idiosyncrasies
from the London-printed, folio of 1702.
"He was descended of an Honourable Family in _Bedfordshire_.--He was
born at _Woodhil_ (or _Odel_) in _Bedfordshire_, _January_ 31st,
1582.
"His _Education_ was answerable unto his _Original_; it was
_Learned_, it was _Genteel_, and, which was the top of all, it was
very _Pious_: At length it made him a _Batchellor_ of _Divinity_,
and a Fellow of Saint _John's_ Colledge in Cambridge.--
"When he came abroad into the World, a good benefice befel him,
added unto the estate of a Gentleman, left him by his Father; whom
he succeeded in his Ministry, at the place of his Nativity: Which
one would imagine _Temptations_ enough to keep him out of a
_Wilderness_."
But he could not conscientiously conform to the ceremonies of the
English Church, and so,--
"When Sir _Nathaniel Brent_ was Arch-Bishop _Laud's_ General, as
Arch-Bishop _Laud_ was _another's_, Complaints were made against Mr.
_Bulkly_, for his Non-Conformity, and he was therefore Silenced.
"To _New-England_ he therefore came, in the Year 1635; and there
having been for a while, at _Cambridge_, he carried a good Number of
Planters with him, up further into the _Woods_, where they gathered
the _Twelfth Church_, then formed in the Colony, and call'd the Town
by the Name of _Concord_.
"Here he _buried_ a great Estate, while he _raised_ one still,
for almost every Person whom he employed in the Affairs of his
Husbandry.--
"He was a most excellent _Scholar_, a very-_well read_ Person, and
one, who in his advice to young Students, gave Demonstrations, that
he knew what would go to make a _Scholar_. But it being essential
unto a _Scholar_ to love a _Scholar_, so did he; and in Token
thereof, endowed the Library of _Harvard_-Colledge with no small
part of his own.
"And he was therewithal a most exalted _Christian_--In his Ministry
he was another _Farel, Quo nemo tonuit fortius_--And the observance
which his own People had for him, was also paid him from all sorts
of People throughout the Land; but especially from the Ministers of
the Country, who would still address him as a _Father_, a _Prophet_,
a _Counsellor_, on all occasions."
These extracts may not quite satisfy the exacting reader, who must be
referred to the old folio from which they were taken, where he will
receive the following counsel:--
"If then any Person would know what Mr. _Peter Bulkly_ was, let him read
his Judicious and Savory Treatise of the _Gospel Covenant_, which has
passed through several Editions, with much Acceptance among the People
of God." It must be added that "he had a competently good Stroke at
Latin Poetry; and even in his Old Age, affected sometimes to improve it.
Many of his Composure are yet in our Hands."
It is pleasant to believe that some of the qualities of this
distinguished scholar and Christian were reproduced in the descendant
whose life we are studying. At his death in 1659 he was succeeded, as
was mentioned, by his son Edward, whose daughter became the wife of the
Reverend Joseph Emerson, the minister of Mendon who, when that village
was destroyed by the Indians, removed to Concord, where he died in the
year 1680. This is the first connection of the name of Emerson with
Concord, with which it has since been so long associated.
Edward Emerson, son of the first and father of the second Reverend
Joseph Emerson, though not a minister, was the next thing to being one,
for on his gravestone he is thus recorded: "Mr. Edward Emerson, sometime
Deacon of the first church in Newbury." He was noted for the virtue of
patience, and it is a family tradition that he never complained but
once, when he said mildly to his daughter that her dumplings were
somewhat harder than needful,--"_but not often_." This same Edward was
the only break in the line of ministers who descended from Thomas of
Ipswich. He is remembered in the family as having been "a merchant in
Charlestown."
Their son, the second Reverend Joseph Emerson, Minister of Malden for
nearly half a century, married Mary, the daughter of the Reverend Samuel
Moody,--Father Moody,--of York, Maine. Three of his sons were ministers,
and one of these, William, was pastor of the church at Concord at the
period of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.
As the successive generations narrow down towards the individual whose
life we are recalling, the character of his progenitors becomes more and
more important and interesting to the biographer. The Reverend William
Emerson, grandfather of Ralph Waldo, was an excellent and popular
preacher and an ardent and devoted patriot. He preached resistance to
tyrants from the pulpit, he encouraged his townsmen and their allies to
make a stand against the soldiers who had marched upon their peaceful
village, and would have taken a part in the Fight at the Bridge, which
he saw from his own house, had not the friends around him prevented
his quitting his doorstep. He left Concord in 1776 to join the army at
Ticonderoga, was taken with fever, was advised to return to Concord and
set out on the journey, but died on his way. His wife was the daughter
of the Reverend Daniel Bliss, his predecessor in the pulpit at Concord.
This was another very noticeable personage in the line of Emerson's
ancestors. His merits and abilities are described at great length on his
tombstone in the Concord burial-ground. There is no reason to doubt that
his epitaph was composed by one who knew him well. But the slabs
which record the excellences of our New England clergymen of the past
generations are so crowded with virtues that the reader can hardly help
inquiring whether a sharp bargain was not driven with the stonecutter,
like that which the good Vicar of Wakefield arranged with the
portrait-painter. He was to represent Sophia as a shepherdess, it will
be remembered, with as many sheep as he could afford to put in for
nothing.
William Emerson left four children, a son bearing the same name, and
three daughters, one of whom, Mary Moody Emerson, is well remembered as
pictured for us by her nephew, Ralph Waldo. His widow became the wife
of the Reverend Ezra Ripley, Doctor of Divinity, and his successor as
Minister at Concord.
The Reverend William Emerson, the second of that name and profession,
and the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born in the year 1769, and
graduated at Harvard College in 1789. He was settled as Minister in the
town of Harvard in the year 1792, and in 1799 became Minister of the
First Church in Boston. In 1796 he married Ruth Haskins of Boston. He
died in 1811, leaving five sons, of whom Ralph Waldo was the second.
The interest which attaches itself to the immediate parentage of a man
like Emerson leads us to inquire particularly about the characteristics
of the Reverend William Emerson so far as we can learn them from his own
writings and from the record of his contemporaries.
The Reverend Dr. Sprague's valuable and well-known work, "Annals of the
American Pulpit," contains three letters from which we learn some of
his leading characteristics. Dr. Pierce of Brookline, the faithful
chronicler of his time, speaks of his pulpit talents as extraordinary,
but thinks there was not a perfect sympathy between him and the people
of the quiet little town of Harvard, while he was highly acceptable in
the pulpits of the metropolis. In personal appearance he was attractive;
his voice was melodious, his utterance distinct, his manner agreeable.
"He was a faithful and generous friend and knew how to forgive an
enemy.--In his theological views perhaps he went farther on the liberal
side than most of his brethren with whom he was associated.--He was,
however, perfectly tolerant towards those who differed from him most
widely."
Dr. Charles Lowell, another brother minister, says of him, "Mr. Emerson
was a handsome man, rather tall, with a fair complexion, his cheeks
slightly tinted, his motions easy, graceful, and gentlemanlike, his
manners bland and pleasant. He was an honest man, and expressed himself
decidedly and emphatically, but never bluntly or vulgarly.--Mr. Emerson
was a man of good sense. His conversation was edifying and useful; never
foolish or undignified.--In his theological opinions he was, to say the
least, far from having any sympathy with Calvinism. I have not supposed
that he was, like Dr. Freeman, a Humanitarian, though he may have been
so."
There was no honester chronicler than our clerical Pepys, good, hearty,
sweet-souled, fact-loving Dr. John Pierce of Brookline, who knew the
dates of birth and death of the graduates of Harvard, starred and
unstarred, better, one is tempted to say (_Hibernice_), than they did
themselves. There was not a nobler gentleman in charge of any Boston
parish than Dr. Charles Lowell. But after the pulpit has said what it
thinks of the pulpit, it is well to listen to what the pews have to say
about it.
This is what the late Mr. George Ticknor said in an article in the
"Christian Examiner" for September, 1849.
"Mr. Emerson, transplanted to the First Church in Boston six years
before Mr. Buckminster's settlement, possessed, on the contrary, a
graceful and dignified style of speaking, which was by no means without
its attraction, but he lacked the fervor that could rouse the masses,
and the original resources that could command the few."
As to his religious beliefs, Emerson writes to Dr. Sprague as follows:
"I did not find in any manuscript or printed sermons that I looked
at, any very explicit statement of opinion on the question between
Calvinists and Socinians. He inclines obviously to what is ethical
and universal in Christianity; very little to the personal and
historical.--I think I observe in his writings, as in the writings of
Unitarians down to a recent date, a studied reserve on the subject of
the nature and offices of Jesus. They had not made up their own minds on
it. It was a mystery to them, and they let it remain so."
Mr. William Emerson left, published, fifteen Sermons and Discourses, an
Oration pronounced at Boston on the Fourth of July, 1802, a Collection
of Psalms and Hymns, an Historical Sketch of the First Church in Boston,
besides his contributions to the "Monthly Anthology," of which he was
the Editor.
Ruth Haskins, the wife of William and the mother of Ralph Waldo
Emerson, is spoken of by the late Dr. Frothingham, in an article in the
"Christian Examiner," as a woman "of great patience and fortitude, of
the serenest trust in God, of a discerning spirit, and a most courteous
bearing, one who knew how to guide the affairs of her own house, as long
as she was responsible for that, with the sweetest authority, and knew
how to give the least trouble and the greatest happiness after that
authority was resigned. Both her mind and her character were of a
superior order, and they set their stamp upon manners of peculiar
softness and natural grace and quiet dignity. Her sensible and kindly
speech was always as good as the best instruction; her smile, though it
was ever ready, was a reward."
The Reverend Dr. Furness of Philadelphia, who grew up with her son,
says, "Waldo bore a strong resemblance to his father; the other children
resembled their mother."
Such was the descent of Ralph Waldo Emerson. If the ideas of parents
survive as impressions or tendencies in their descendants, no man had
a better right to an inheritance of theological instincts than this
representative of a long line of ministers. The same trains of thought
and feeling might naturally gain in force from another association of
near family relationship, though not of blood. After the death of the
first William Emerson, the Concord minister, his widow, Mr. Emerson's
grandmother, married, as has been mentioned, his successor, Dr. Ezra
Ripley. The grandson spent much time in the family of Dr. Ripley, whose
character he has drawn with exquisite felicity in a sketch read before
The Social Circle of Concord, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly"
for November, 1883. Mr. Emerson says of him: "He was identified with the
ideas and forms of the New England Church, which expired about the same
time with him, so that he and his coevals seemed the rear guard of the
great camp and army of the Puritans, which, however in its last days
declining into formalism, in the heyday of its strength had planted and
liberated America.... The same faith made what was strong and what was
weak in Dr. Ripley." It would be hard to find a more perfect sketch of
character than Mr. Emerson's living picture of Dr. Ripley. I myself
remember him as a comely little old gentleman, but he was not so
communicative in a strange household as his clerical brethren, smiling
John Foster of Brighton and chatty Jonathan Homer of Newton. Mr. Emerson
says, "He was a natural gentleman; no dandy, but courtly, hospitable,
manly, and public-spirited; his nature social, his house open to all
men.--His brow was serene and open to his visitor, for he loved men, and
he had no studies, no occupations, which company could interrupt. His
friends were his study, and to see them loosened his talents and his
tongue. In his house dwelt order and prudence and plenty. There was
no waste and no stint. He was open-handed and just and generous.
Ingratitude and meanness in his beneficiaries did not wear out his
compassion; he bore the insult, and the next day his basket for the
beggar, his horse and chaise for the cripple, were at their door." How
like Goldsmith's good Dr. Primrose! I do not know any writing of
Mr. Emerson which brings out more fully his sense of humor,--of the
picturesque in character,--and as a piece of composition, continuous,
fluid, transparent, with a playful ripple here and there, it is
admirable and delightful.
Another of his early companionships must have exercised a still more
powerful influence on his character,--that of his aunt, Mary Moody
Emerson. He gave an account of her in a paper read before the Woman's
Club several years ago, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for
December, 1883. Far more of Mr. Emerson is to be found in this aunt of
his than in any other of his relations in the ascending series, with
whose history we are acquainted. Her story is an interesting one, but
for that I must refer the reader to the article mentioned. Her character
and intellectual traits are what we are most concerned with. "Her early
reading was Milton, Young, Akenside, Samuel Clarke, Jonathan Edwards,
and always the Bible. Later, Plato, Plotinus, Marcus Antoninus, Stewart,
Coleridge, Herder, Locke, Madam De Staël, Channing, Mackintosh, Byron.
Nobody can read in her manuscript, or recall the conversation of
old-school people, without seeing that Milton and Young had a religious
authority in their minds, and nowise the slight merely entertaining
quality of modern bards. And Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus,--how venerable
and organic as Nature they are in her mind!"
There are many sentences cited by Mr. Emerson which remind us very
strongly of his own writings. Such a passage as the following might have
come from his Essay, "Nature," but it was written when her nephew was
only four years old.
"Malden, 1807, September.--The rapture of feeling I would part from
for days devoted to higher discipline. But when Nature beams with
such excess of beauty, when the heart thrills with hope in its
Author,--feels it is related to Him more than by any ties of
creation,--it exults, too fondly, perhaps, for a state of trial. But
in dead of night, nearer morning, when the eastern stars glow, or
appear to glow, with more indescribable lustre, a lustre which
penetrates the spirits with wonder and curiosity,--then, however
awed, who can fear?"--"A few pulsations of created beings, a few
successions of acts, a few lamps held out in the firmament, enable
us to talk of Time, make epochs, write histories,--to do more,--to
date the revelations of God to man. But these lamps are held to
measure out some of the moments of eternity, to divide the history
of God's operations in the birth and death of nations, of worlds. It
is a goodly name for our notions of breathing, suffering, enjoying,
acting. We personify it. We call it by every name of fleeting,
dreaming, vaporing imagery. Yet it is nothing. We exist in eternity.
Dissolve the body and the night is gone; the stars are extinguished,
and we measure duration by the number of our thoughts, by the
activity of reason, the discovery of truths, the acquirement of
virtue, the approval of God."
Miss Mary Emerson showed something of the same feeling towards natural
science which may be noted in her nephews Waldo and Charles. After
speaking of "the poor old earth's chaotic state, brought so near in its
long and gloomy transmutings by the geologist," she says:--
"Yet its youthful charms, as decked by the hand of Moses'
Cosmogony, will linger about the heart, while Poetry succumbs to
science."--"And the bare bones of this poor embryo earth may give
the idea of the Infinite, far, far better than when dignified with
arts and industry; its oceans, when beating the symbols of countless
ages, than when covered with cargoes of war and oppression. How
grand its preparation for souls, souls who were to feel the
Divinity, before Science had dissected the emotions and applied its
steely analysis to that state of being which recognizes neither
psychology nor element."--"Usefulness, if it requires action, seems
less like existence than the desire of being absorbed in God,
retaining consciousness.... Scorn trifles, lift your aims; do
what you are afraid to do. Sublimity of character must come from
sublimity of motive."
So far as hereditary and family influences can account for the character
and intellect of Ralph Waldo Emerson, we could hardly ask for a better
inborn inheritance, or better counsels and examples.
* * * * *
Having traced some of the distinguishing traits which belong by descent
to Mr. Emerson to those who were before him, it is interesting to note
how far they showed themselves in those of his own generation, his
brothers. Of these I will mention two, one of whom I knew personally.
Edward Bliss Emerson, who graduated at Harvard College in 1824, three
years after Ralph Waldo, held the first place in his class. He began
the study of the law with Daniel Webster, but overworked himself and
suffered a temporary disturbance of his reason. After this he made
another attempt, but found his health unequal to the task and exiled
himself to Porto Rico, where, in 1834, he died. Two poems preserve his
memory, one that of Ralph Waldo, in which he addresses his memory,--
"Ah, brother of the brief but blazing star,"
the other his own "Last Farewell," written in 1832, whilst sailing out
of Boston Harbor. The lines are unaffected and very touching, full of
that deep affection which united the brothers in the closest intimacy,
and of the tenderest love for the mother whom he was leaving to see no
more.
I had in my early youth a key furnished me to some of the leading traits
which were in due time to develop themselves in Emerson's character and
intelligence. As on the wall of some great artist's studio one may find
unfinished sketches which he recognizes as the first growing conceptions
of pictures painted in after years, so we see that Nature often
sketches, as it were, a living portrait, which she leaves in its
rudimentary condition, perhaps for the reason that earth has no colors
which can worthily fill in an outline too perfect for humanity. The
sketch is left in its consummate incompleteness because this mortal life
is not rich enough to carry out the Divine idea.
Such an unfinished but unmatched outline is that which I find in the
long portrait-gallery of memory, recalled by the name of Charles Chauncy
Emerson. Save for a few brief glimpses of another, almost lost among my
life's early shadows, this youth was the most angelic adolescent my eyes
ever beheld. Remembering what well-filtered blood it was that ran in the
veins of the race from which he was descended, those who knew him in
life might well say with Dryden,--
"If by traduction came thy mind
Our wonder is the less to find
A soul so charming from a stock so good."
His image is with me in its immortal youth as when, almost fifty years
ago, I spoke of him in these lines, which I may venture to quote from
myself, since others have quoted them before me.
Thou calm, chaste scholar! I can see thee now,
The first young laurels on thy pallid brow,
O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down
In graceful folds the academic gown,
On thy curled lip the classic lines that taught
How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought,
And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye,
Too bright to live,--but O, too fair to die.
Being about seven years younger than Waldo, he must have received much
of his intellectual and moral guidance at his elder brother's hands.
I told the story at a meeting of our Historical Society of Charles
Emerson's coming into my study,--this was probably in 1826 or
1827,--taking up Hazlitt's "British Poets" and turning at once to a poem
of Marvell's, which he read with his entrancing voice and manner. The
influence of this poet is plain to every reader in some of Emerson's
poems, and Charles' liking for him was very probably caught from Waldo.
When Charles was nearly through college, a periodical called "The
Harvard Register" was published by students and recent graduates. Three
articles were contributed by him to this periodical. Two of them have
the titles "Conversation," "Friendship." His quotations are from Horace
and Juvenal, Plato, Plutarch, Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Shakespeare, and
Scott. There are passages in these Essays which remind one strongly of
his brother, the Lecturer of twenty-five or thirty years later. Take
this as an example:--
"Men and mind are my studies. I need no observatory high in air to
aid my perceptions or enlarge my prospect. I do not want a costly
apparatus to give pomp to my pursuit or to disguise its inutility.
I do not desire to travel and see foreign lands and learn all
knowledge and speak with all tongues, before I am prepared for my
employment. I have merely to go out of my door; nay, I may stay at
home at my chambers, and I shall have enough to do and enjoy."
The feeling of this sentence shows itself constantly in Emerson's poems.
He finds his inspiration in the objects about him, the forest in which
he walks; the sheet of water which the hermit of a couple of seasons
made famous; the lazy Musketaquid; the titmouse that mocked his weakness
in the bitter cold winter's day; the mountain that rose in the horizon;
the lofty pines; the lowly flowers. All talked with him as brothers and
sisters, and he with them as of his own household.
The same lofty idea of friendship which we find in the man in his
maturity, we recognize in one of the Essays of the youth.
"All men of gifted intellect and fine genius," says Charles Emerson,
"must entertain a noble idea of friendship. Our reverence we are
constrained to yield where it is due,--to rank, merit, talents. But
our affections we give not thus easily.
'The hand of Douglas is his own.'"
--"I am willing to lose an hour in gossip with persons whom good
men hold cheap. All this I will do out of regard to the decent
conventions of polite life. But my friends I must know, and,
knowing, I must love. There must be a daily beauty in their life
that shall secure my constant attachment. I cannot stand upon the
footing of ordinary acquaintance. Friendship is aristocratical--the
affections which are prostituted to every suitor I will not accept."
Here are glimpses of what the youth was to be, of what the man who long
outlived him became. Here is the dignity which commands reverence,--a
dignity which, with all Ralph Waldo Emerson's sweetness of manner and
expression, rose almost to majesty in his serene presence. There was
something about Charles Emerson which lifted those he was with into
a lofty and pure region of thought and feeling. A vulgar soul stood
abashed in his presence. I could never think of him in the presence
of such, listening to a paltry sentiment or witnessing a mean action
without recalling Milton's line,
"Back stepped those two fair angels half amazed,"
and thinking how he might well have been taken for a celestial
messenger.
No doubt there is something of idealization in all these reminiscences,
and of that exaggeration which belongs to the _laudator temporis acti_.
But Charles Emerson was idolized in his own time by many in college and
out of college. George Stillman Hillard was his rival. Neck and neck
they ran the race for the enviable position of first scholar in the
class of 1828, and when Hillard was announced as having the first part
assigned to him, the excitement within the college walls, and to some
extent outside of them, was like that when the telegraph proclaims the
result of a Presidential election,--or the Winner of the Derby. But
Hillard honestly admired his brilliant rival. "Who has a part with ****
at this next exhibition?" I asked him one day, as I met him in the
college yard. "***** the Post," answered Hillard. "Why call him _the
Post_?" said I. "He is a wooden creature," said Hillard. "Hear him and
Charles Emerson translating from the Latin _Domus tota inflammata erat_.
The Post will render the words, 'The whole house was on fire.' Charles
Emerson will translate the sentence 'The entire edifice was wrapped in
flames.'" It was natural enough that a young admirer should prefer the
Bernini drapery of Charles Emerson's version to the simple nudity of
"the Post's" rendering.
* * * * *
The nest is made ready long beforehand for the bird which is to be bred
in it and to fly from it. The intellectual atmosphere into which a
scholar is born, and from which he draws the breath of his early mental
life, must be studied if we would hope to understand him thoroughly.
When the present century began, the elements, thrown into confusion
by the long struggle for Independence, had not had time to arrange
themselves in new combinations. The active intellects of the country had
found enough to keep them busy in creating and organizing a new order of
political and social life. Whatever purely literary talent existed was
as yet in the nebular condition, a diffused luminous spot here and
there, waiting to form centres of condensation.
Such a nebular spot had been brightening in and about Boston for a
number of years, when, in the year 1804, a small cluster of names became
visible as representing a modest constellation of literary luminaries:
John Thornton Kirkland, afterwards President of Harvard University;
Joseph Stevens Buckminster; John Sylvester John Gardiner; William Tudor;
Samuel Cooper Thacher; William Emerson. These were the chief stars of
the new cluster, and their light reached the world, or a small part of
it, as reflected from the pages of "The Monthly Anthology," which very
soon came under the editorship of the Reverend William Emerson.
The father of Ralph Waldo Emerson may be judged of in good measure by
the associates with whom he was thus connected. A brief sketch of these
friends and fellow-workers of his may not be out of place, for these
men made the local sphere of thought into which Ralph Waldo Emerson was
born.
John Thornton Kirkland should have been seen and heard as he is
remembered by old graduates of Harvard, sitting in the ancient
Presidential Chair, on Commencement Day, and calling in his penetrating
but musical accents: "_Expectatur Oratio in Lingua Latina_" or
"_Vernacula_," if the "First Scholar" was about to deliver the English
oration. It was a presence not to be forgotten. His "shining morning
face" was round as a baby's, and talked as pleasantly as his voice did,
with smiles for accents and dimples for punctuation. Mr. Ticknor speaks
of his sermons as "full of intellectual wealth and practical wisdom,
with sometimes a quaintness that bordered on humor." It was of him
that the story was always told,--it may be as old as the invention of
printing,--that he threw his sermons into a barrel, where they went to
pieces and got mixed up, and that when he was going to preach he fished
out what he thought would be about enough for a sermon, and patched the
leaves together as he best might. The Reverend Dr. Lowell says: "He
always found the right piece, and that was better than almost any of
his brethren could have found in what they had written with twice the
labor." Mr. Cabot, who knew all Emerson's literary habits, says he used
to fish out the number of leaves he wanted for a lecture in somewhat the
same way. Emerson's father, however, was very methodical, according
to Dr. Lowell, and had "a place for everything, and everything in its
place." Dr. Kirkland left little to be remembered by, and like many of
the most interesting personalities we have met with, has become a very
thin ghost to the grandchildren of his contemporaries.
Joseph Stevens Buckminster was the pulpit darling of his day, in Boston.
The beauty of his person, the perfection of his oratory, the finish of
his style, added to the sweetness of his character, made him one of
those living idols which seem to be as necessary to Protestantism as
images and pictures are to Romanism.
John Sylvester John Gardiner, once a pupil of the famous Dr. Parr, was
then the leading Episcopal clergyman of Boston. Him I reconstruct from
scattered hints I have met with as a scholarly, social man, with a
sanguine temperament and the cheerful ways of a wholesome English
parson, blest with a good constitution and a comfortable benefice. Mild
Orthodoxy, ripened in Unitarian sunshine, is a very agreeable aspect of
Christianity, and none was readier than Dr. Gardiner, if the voice of
tradition may be trusted, to fraternize with his brothers of the liberal
persuasion, and to make common cause with them in all that related to
the interests of learning.
William Tudor was a chief connecting link between the period of the
"Monthly Anthology," and that of the "North American Review," for he was
a frequent contributor to the first of these periodicals, and he was the
founder of the second. Edward Everett characterizes him, in speaking of
his "Letters on the Eastern States," as a scholar and a gentleman, an
impartial observer, a temperate champion, a liberal opponent, and a
correct writer. Daniel Webster bore similar testimony to his talents and
character.
Samuel Cooper Thacher was hardly twenty years old when the "Anthology"
was founded, and died when he was only a little more than thirty. He
contributed largely to that periodical, besides publishing various
controversial sermons, and writing the "Memoir of Buckminster."
There was no more brilliant circle than this in any of our cities.
There was none where so much freedom of thought was united to so much
scholarship. The "Anthology" was the literary precursor of the "North
American Review," and the theological herald of the "Christian
Examiner." Like all first beginnings it showed many marks of immaturity.
It mingled extracts and original contributions, theology and medicine,
with all manner of literary chips and shavings. It had Magazine
ways that smacked of Sylvanus Urban; leading articles with balanced
paragraphs which recalled the marching tramp of Johnson; translations
that might have been signed with the name of Creech, and Odes to
Sensibility, and the like, which recalled the syrupy sweetness and
languid trickle of Laura Matilda's sentimentalities. It talked about
"the London Reviewers" with a kind of provincial deference. It printed
articles with quite too much of the license of Swift and Prior for the
Magazines of to-day. But it had opinions of its own, and would compare
well enough with the "Gentleman's Magazine," to say nothing of "My
Grandmother's Review, the British." A writer in the third volume (1806)
says: "A taste for the belles lettres is rapidly spreading in our
country. I believe that, fifty years ago, England had never seen a
Miscellany or a Review so well conducted as our 'Anthology,' however
superior such publications may now be in that kingdom."
It is well worth one's while to look over the volumes of the "Anthology"
to see what our fathers and grandfathers were thinking about, and how
they expressed themselves. The stiffness of Puritanism was pretty well
relaxed when a Magazine conducted by clergymen could say that "The
child,"--meaning the new periodical,--"shall not be destitute of the
manners of a gentleman, nor a stranger to genteel amusements. He shall
attend Theatres, Museums, Balls, and whatever polite diversions the town
shall furnish." The reader of the "Anthology" will find for his reward
an improving discourse on "Ambition," and a commendable schoolboy's
"theme" on "Inebriation." He will learn something which may be for his
advantage about the "Anjou Cabbage," and may profit by a "Remedy for
Asthma." A controversy respecting the merits of Sir Richard Blackmore
may prove too little exciting at the present time, and he can turn for
relief to the epistle "Studiosus" addresses to "Alcander." If the lines
of "The Minstrel" who hails, like Longfellow in later years, from "The
District of Main," fail to satisfy him, he cannot accuse "R.T. Paine,
Jr., Esq.," of tameness when he exclaims:--
"Rise Columbia, brave and free,
Poise the globe and bound the sea!"
But the writers did not confine themselves to native or even to English
literature, for there is a distinct mention of "Mr. Goethe's new novel,"
and an explicit reference to "Dante Aligheri, an Italian bard." But
let the smiling reader go a little farther and he will find Mr.
Buckminster's most interesting account of the destruction of Goldau.
And in one of these same volumes he will find the article, by Dr. Jacob
Bigelow, doubtless, which was the first hint of our rural cemeteries,
and foreshadowed that new era in our underground civilization which is
sweetening our atmospheric existence.
The late President Josiah Quincy, in his "History of the Boston
Athenaeum," pays a high tribute of respect to the memory and the
labors of the gentlemen who founded that institution and conducted the
"Anthology." A literary journal had already been published in Boston,
but very soon failed for want of patronage. An enterprising firm of
publishers, "being desirous that the work should be continued, applied
to the Reverend William Emerson, a clergyman of the place, distinguished
for energy and literary taste; and by his exertions several gentlemen
of Boston and its vicinity, conspicuous for talent and zealous for
literature, were induced to engage in conducting the work, and for this
purpose they formed themselves into a Society. This Society was not
completely organized until the year 1805, when Dr. Gardiner was elected
President, and William Emerson Vice-President. The Society thus formed
maintained its existence with reputation for about six years, and issued
ten octavo volumes from the press, constituting one of the most lasting
and honorable monuments of the literature of the period, and may be
considered as a true revival of polite learning in this country after
that decay and neglect which resulted from the distractions of the
Revolutionary War, and as forming an epoch in the intellectual history
of the United States. Its records yet remain, an evidence that it was a
pleasant, active, high-principled association of literary men, laboring
harmoniously to elevate the literary standard of the time, and with a
success which may well be regarded as remarkable, considering the little
sympathy they received from the community, and the many difficulties
with which they had to struggle."
The publication of the "Anthology" began in 1804, when Mr. William
Emerson was thirty-four years of age, and it ceased to be published in
the year of his death, 1811. Ralph Waldo Emerson was eight years old at
that time. His intellectual life began, we may say, while the somewhat
obscure afterglow of the "Anthology" was in the western horizon of the
New England sky.
The nebula which was to form a cluster about the "North American Review"
did not take definite shape until 1815. There is no such memorial of
the growth of American literature as is to be found in the first half
century of that periodical. It is easy to find fault with it for uniform
respectability and occasional dulness. But take the names of its
contributors during its first fifty years from the literary record of
that period, and we should have but a meagre list of mediocrities, saved
from absolute poverty by the genius of two or three writers like Irving
and Cooper. Strike out the names of Webster, Everett, Story, Sumner, and
Cushing; of Bryant, Dana, Longfellow, and Lowell; of Prescott, Ticknor,
Motley, Sparks, and Bancroft; of Verplanck, Hillard, and Whipple; of
Stuart and Robinson; of Norton, Palfrey, Peabody, and Bowen; and,
lastly, that of Emerson himself, and how much American classic
literature would be left for a new edition of "Miller's Retrospect"?
These were the writers who helped to make the "North American Review"
what it was during the period of Emerson's youth and early manhood.
These, and men like them, gave Boston its intellectual character. We
may count as symbols the three hills of "this darling town of ours,"
as Emerson called it, and say that each had its beacon. Civil liberty
lighted the torch on one summit, religious freedom caught the flame and
shone from the second, and the lamp of the scholar has burned steadily
on the third from the days when John Cotton preached his first sermon to
those in which we are living.
The social religious influences of the first part of the century
must not be forgotten. The two high-caste religions of that day were
white-handed Unitarianism and ruffled-shirt Episcopalianism. What called
itself "society" was chiefly distributed between them. Within less than
fifty years a social revolution has taken place which has somewhat
changed the relation between these and other worshipping bodies. This
movement is the general withdrawal of the native New Englanders of both
sexes from domestic service. A large part of the "hired help,"--for
the word servant was commonly repudiated,--worshipped, not with their
employers, but at churches where few or no well-appointed carriages
stood at the doors. The congregations that went chiefly from the
drawing-room and those which were largely made up of dwellers in the
culinary studio were naturally separated by a very distinct line of
social cleavage. A certain exclusiveness and fastidiousness, not
reminding us exactly of primitive Christianity, was the inevitable
result. This must always be remembered in judging the men and women
of that day and their immediate descendants, as much as the surviving
prejudices of those whose parents were born subjects of King George in
the days when loyalty to the crown was a virtue. The line of social
separation was more marked, probably, in Boston, the headquarters of
Unitarianism, than in the other large cities; and even at the present
day our Jerusalem and Samaria, though they by no means refuse dealing
with each other, do not exchange so many cards as they do checks and
dollars. The exodus of those children of Israel from the house of
bondage, as they chose to consider it, and their fusion with the mass of
independent citizens, got rid of a class distinction which was felt even
in the sanctuary. True religious equality is harder to establish than
civil liberty. No man has done more for spiritual republicanism than
Emerson, though he came from the daintiest sectarian circle of the time
in the whole country.
Such were Emerson's intellectual and moral parentage, nurture, and
environment; such was the atmosphere in which he grew up from youth to
manhood.
CHAPTER I.
Birthplace.--Boyhood.--College Life.
1803-1823. To _AET_. 20.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 25th of
May, 1803.
He was the second of five sons; William, R.W., Edward Bliss, Robert
Bulkeley, and Charles Chauncy.
His birthplace and that of our other illustrious Bostonian, Benjamin
Franklin, were within a kite-string's distance of each other. When
the baby philosopher of the last century was carried from Milk Street
through the narrow passage long known as Bishop's Alley, now Hawley
Street, he came out in Summer Street, very nearly opposite the spot
where, at the beginning of this century, stood the parsonage of the
First Church, the home of the Reverend William Emerson, its pastor, and
the birthplace of his son, Ralph Waldo. The oblong quadrangle between
Newbury, now Washington Street, Pond, now Bedford Street, Summer Street,
and the open space called Church Green, where the New South Church was
afterwards erected, is represented on Bonner's maps of 1722 and 1769 as
an almost blank area, not crossed or penetrated by a single passageway.
Even so late as less than half a century ago this region was still a
most attractive little _rus in urbe_. The sunny gardens of the late
Judge Charles Jackson and the late Mr. S.P. Gardner opened their flowers
and ripened their fruits in the places now occupied by great warehouses
and other massive edifices. The most aristocratic pears, the "Saint
Michael," the "Brown Bury," found their natural homes in these sheltered
enclosures. The fine old mansion of Judge William Prescott looked out
upon these gardens. Some of us can well remember the window of his
son's, the historian's, study, the light from which used every evening
to glimmer through the leaves of the pear-trees while "The Conquest of
Mexico" was achieving itself under difficulties hardly less formidable
than those encountered by Cortes. It was a charmed region in which
Emerson first drew his breath, and I am fortunate in having a
communication from one who knew it and him longer than almost any other
living person.
Mr. John Lowell Gardner, a college classmate and life-long friend of Mr.
Emerson, has favored me with a letter which contains matters of
interest concerning him never before given to the public. With his kind
permission I have made some extracts and borrowed such facts as seemed
especially worthy of note from his letter.
"I may be said to have known Emerson from the very beginning. A very
low fence divided my father's estate in Summer Street from the field
in which I remember the old wooden parsonage to have existed,--but
this field, when we were very young, was to be covered by Chauncy
Place Church and by the brick houses on Summer Street. Where the
family removed to I do not remember, but I always knew the boys,
William, Ralph, and perhaps Edward, and I again associated with
Ralph at the Latin School, where we were instructed by Master Gould
from 1815 to 1817, entering College in the latter year.
"... I have no recollection of his relative rank as a scholar, but it
was undoubtedly high, though not the highest. He never was idle or a
lounger, nor did he ever engage in frivolous pursuits. I should say
that his conduct was absolutely faultless. It was impossible that
there should be any feeling about him but of regard and affection.
He had then the same manner and courtly hesitation in addressing you
that you have known in him since. Still, he was not prominent in the
class, and, but for what all the world has since known of him,
his would not have been a conspicuous figure to his classmates in
recalling College days.
"The fact that we were almost the only Latin School fellows in the
class, and the circumstance that he was slow during the Freshman
year to form new acquaintances, brought us much together, and an
intimacy arose which continued through our College life. We were in
the habit of taking long strolls together, often stopping for repose
at distant points, as at Mount Auburn, etc.... Emerson was not
talkative; he never spoke for effect; his utterances were well
weighed and very deliberately made, but there was a certain flash
when he uttered anything that was more than usually worthy to be
remembered. He was so universally amiable and complying that my
evil spirit would sometimes instigate me to take advantage of his
gentleness and forbearance, but nothing could disturb his
equanimity. All that was wanting to render him an almost perfect
character was a few harsher traits and perhaps more masculine vigor.
"On leaving College our paths in life were so remote from each other
that we met very infrequently. He soon became, as it were, public
property, and I was engrossed for many years in my commercial
undertakings. All his course of life is known to many survivors. I
am inclined to believe he had a most liberal spirit. I remember that
some years since, when it was known that our classmate ---- was
reduced almost to absolute want by the war, in which he lost his two
sons, Emerson exerted himself to raise a fund among his classmates
for his relief, and, there being very few possible subscribers, made
what I considered a noble contribution, and this you may be sure was
not from any Southern sentiment on the part of Emerson. I send you
herewith the two youthful productions of Emerson of which I spoke to
you some time since."
The first of these is a prose Essay of four pages, written for a
discussion in which the Professions of Divinity, Medicine, and Law were
to be weighed against each other. Emerson had the Lawyer's side to
advocate. It is a fair and sensible paper, not of special originality or
brilliancy. His opening paragraph is worth citing, as showing the same
instinct for truth which displayed itself in all his after writings and
the conduct of his life.
"It is usual in advocating a favorite subject to appropriate all
possible excellence, and endeavor to concentrate every doubtful
auxiliary, that we may fortify to the utmost the theme of our
attention. Such a design should be utterly disdained, except as far
as is consistent with fairness; and the sophistry of weak arguments
being abandoned, a bold appeal should be made to the heart, for
the tribute of honest conviction, with regard to the merits of the
subject."
From many boys this might sound like well-meaning commonplace, but in
the history of Mr. Emerson's life that "bold appeal to the heart," that
"tribute of honest conviction," were made eloquent and real. The
boy meant it when he said it. To carry out his law of sincerity and
self-trust the man had to sacrifice much that was dear to him, but he
did not flinch from his early principles.
It must not be supposed that the blameless youth was an ascetic in his
College days. The other old manuscript Mr. Gardner sends me is marked
"'Song for Knights of Square Table,' R.W.E."
There are twelve verses of this song, with a chorus of two lines. The
Muses and all the deities, not forgetting Bacchus, were duly invited to
the festival.
"Let the doors of Olympus be open for all
To descend and make merry in Chivalry's hall."
* * * * *
Mr. Sanborn has kindly related to me several circumstances told him by
Emerson about his early years.
The parsonage was situated at the corner of Summer and what is now
Chauncy streets. It had a yard, and an orchard which Emerson said was as
large as Dr. Ripley's, which might have been some two or three acres.
Afterwards there was a brick house looking on Summer Street, in which
Emerson the father lived. It was separated, Emerson said, by a brick
wall from a garden in which _pears grew_ (a fact a boy is likely to
remember). Master Ralph Waldo used to _sit on this wall_,--but we cannot
believe he ever got off it on the wrong side, unless politely asked to
do so. On the occasion of some alarm the little boy was carried in his
nightgown to a neighboring house.
After Reverend William Emerson's death Mrs. Emerson removed to a house
in Beacon Street, where the Athenaeum Building now stands. She kept some
boarders,--among them Lemuel Shaw, afterwards Chief Justice of the State
of Massachusetts. It was but a short distance to the Common, and Waldo
and Charles used to drive their mother's cow there to pasture.
* * * * *
The Reverend Doctor Rufus Ellis, the much respected living successor of
William Emerson as Minister of the First Church, says that R.W. Emerson
must have been born in the old parsonage, as his father (who died
when he was eight years old) lived but a very short time in "the new
parsonage," which was, doubtless, the "brick house" above referred to.
* * * * *
We get a few glimpses of the boy from other sources. Mr. Cooke tells us
that he entered the public grammar school at the age of eight years, and
soon afterwards the Latin School. At the age of eleven he was turning
Virgil into very readable English heroics. He loved the study of Greek;
was fond of reading history and given to the frequent writing of verses.
But he thinks "the idle books under the bench at the Latin School" were
as profitable to him as his regular studies.
Another glimpse of him is that given us by Mr. Ireland from the "Boyhood
Memories" of Rufus Dawes. His old schoolmate speaks of him as "a
spiritual-looking boy in blue nankeen, who seems to be about ten years
old,--whose image more than any other is still deeply stamped upon my
mind, as I then saw him and loved him, I knew not why, and thought him
so angelic and remarkable." That "blue nankeen" sounds strangely, it may
be, to the readers of this later generation, but in the first quarter
of the century blue and yellow or buff-colored cotton from China were a
common summer clothing of children. The places where the factories and
streets of the cities of Lowell and Lawrence were to rise were then open
fields and farms. My recollection is that we did not think very highly
of ourselves when we were in blue nankeen,--a dull-colored fabric, too
nearly of the complexion of the slates on which we did our ciphering.
Emerson was not particularly distinguished in College. Having a near
connection in the same class as he, and being, as a Cambridge boy,
generally familiar with the names of the more noted young men in College
from the year when George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, and Francis William
Winthrop graduated until after I myself left College, I might have
expected to hear something of a young man who afterwards became one of
the great writers of his time. I do not recollect hearing of him except
as keeping school for a short time in Cambridge, before he settled as a
minister. His classmate, Mr. Josiah Quincy, writes thus of his college
days:--
"Two only of my classmates can be fairly said to have got into
history, although one of them, Charles W. Upham [the connection of
mine referred to above] has written history very acceptably. Ralph
Waldo Emerson and Robert W. Barnwell, for widely different reasons,
have caused their names to be known to well-informed Americans. Of
Emerson, I regret to say, there are few notices in my journals. Here
is the sort of way in which I speak of the man who was to make so
profound an impression upon the thought of his time. 'I went to the
chapel to hear Emerson's dissertation: a very good one, but rather
too long to give much pleasure to the hearers.' The fault, I
suspect, was in the hearers; and another fact which I have mentioned
goes to confirm this belief. It seems that Emerson accepted the duty
of delivering the Poem on Class Day, after seven others had been
asked who positively, refused. So it appears that, in the opinion of
this critical class, the author of the 'Woodnotes' and the 'Humble
Bee' ranked about eighth in poetical ability. It can only be because
the works of the other five [seven] have been 'heroically unwritten'
that a different impression has come to prevail in the outside
world. But if, according to the measurement of undergraduates,
Emerson's ability as a poet was not conspicuous, it must also be
admitted that, in the judgment of persons old enough to know better,
he was not credited with that mastery of weighty prose which the
world has since accorded him. In our senior year the higher classes
competed for the Boylston prizes for English composition. Emerson
and I sent in our essays with the rest and were fortunate enough to
take the two prizes; but--Alas for the infallibility of academic
decisions! Emerson received the second prize. I was of course much
pleased with the award of this intelligent committee, and should
have been still more gratified had they mentioned that the man who
was to be the most original and influential writer born in America
was my unsuccessful competitor. But Emerson, incubating over deeper
matters than were dreamt of in the established philosophy of
elegant letters, seems to have given no sign of the power that was
fashioning itself for leadership in a new time. He was quiet,
unobtrusive, and only a fair scholar according to the standard of
the College authorities. And this is really all I have to say about
my most distinguished classmate."
Barnwell, the first scholar in the class, delivered the Valedictory
Oration, and Emerson the Poem. Neither of these performances was highly
spoken of by Mr. Quincy.
I was surprised to find by one of the old Catalogues that Emerson
roomed during a part of his College course with a young man whom I well
remember, J.G.K. Gourdin. The two Gourdins, Robert and John Gaillard
Keith, were dashing young fellows as I recollect them, belonging to
Charleston, South Carolina. The "Southerners" were the reigning College
_elegans_ of that time, the _merveilleux_, the _mirliflores_, of their
day. Their swallow-tail coats tapered to an arrow-point angle, and the
prints of their little delicate calfskin boots in the snow were objects
of great admiration to the village boys of the period. I cannot help
wondering what brought Emerson and the showy, fascinating John Gourdin
together as room-mates.
CHAPTER II.
1823-1828. AET. 20-25.
Extract from a Letter to a Classmate.--School-Teaching.--Study of
Divinity.--"Approbated" to Preach.--Visit to the South.--Preaching in
Various Places.
We get a few brief glimpses of Emerson during the years following his
graduation. He writes in 1823 to a classmate who had gone from Harvard
to Andover:--
"I am delighted to hear there is such a profound studying of German
and Hebrew, Parkhurst and Jahn, and such other names as the memory
aches to think of, on foot at Andover. Meantime, Unitarianism will
not hide her honors; as many hard names are taken, and as much
theological mischief is planned, at Cambridge as at Andover. By the
time this generation gets upon the stage, if the controversy will
not have ceased, it will run such a tide that we shall hardly
he able to speak to one another, and there will be a Guelf and
Ghibelline quarrel, which cannot tell where the differences lie."
"You can form no conception how much one grovelling in the city
needs the excitement and impulse of literary example. The sight of
broad vellum-bound quartos, the very mention of Greek and German
names, the glimpse of a dusty, tugging scholar, will wake you up to
emulation for a month."
After leaving College, and while studying Divinity, Emerson employed a
part of his time in giving instruction in several places successively.
Emerson's older brother William was teaching in Boston, and Ralph Waldo,
after graduating, joined him in that occupation. In the year 1825 or
1826, he taught school also in Chelmsford, a town of Middlesex County,
Massachusetts, a part of which helped to constitute the city of Lowell.
One of his pupils in that school, the Honorable Josiah Gardiner Abbott,
has favored me with the following account of his recollections:--
The school of which Mr. Emerson had the charge was an old-fashioned
country "Academy." Mr. Emerson was probably studying for the ministry
while teaching there. Judge Abbott remembers the impression he made
on the boys. He was very grave, quiet, and very impressive in his
appearance. There was something engaging, almost fascinating, about him;
he was never harsh or severe, always perfectly self-controlled, never
punished except with words, but exercised complete command over the
boys. His old pupil recalls the stately, measured way in which, for some
offence the little boy had committed, he turned on him, saying only
these two words: "Oh, sad!" That was enough, for he had the faculty of
making the boys love him. One of his modes of instruction was to give
the boys a piece of reading to carry home with them,--from some book
like Plutarch's Lives,--and the next day to examine them and find out
how much they retained from their reading. Judge Abbott remembers a
peculiar look in his eyes, as if he saw something beyond what seemed to
be in the field of vision. The whole impression left on this pupil's
mind was such as no other teacher had ever produced upon him.
Mr. Emerson also kept a school for a short time at Cambridge, and among
his pupils was Mr. John Holmes. His impressions seem to be very much
like those of Judge Abbott.
My brother speaks of Mr. Emerson thus:--
"Calm, as not doubting the virtue residing in his sceptre. Rather
stern in his very infrequent rebukes. Not inclined to win boys by a
surface amiability, but kindly in explanation or advice. Every inch
a king in his dominion. Looking back, he seems to me rather like a
captive philosopher set to tending flocks; resigned to his destiny,
but not amused with its incongruities. He once recommended the use
of rhyme as a cohesive for historical items."
In 1823, two years after graduating, Emerson began studying for the
ministry. He studied under the direction of Dr. Charming, attending some
of the lectures in the Divinity School at Cambridge, though not enrolled
as one of its regular students.
The teachings of that day were such as would now be called
"old-fashioned Unitarianism." But no creed can be held to be a finality.
From Edwards to Mayhew, from Mayhew to Channing, from Channing to
Emerson, the passage is like that which leads from the highest lock of
a canal to the ocean level. It is impossible for human nature to remain
permanently shut up in the highest lock of Calvinism. If the gates are
not opened, the mere leakage of belief or unbelief will before long fill
the next compartment, and the freight of doctrine finds itself on
the lower level of Arminianism, or Pelagianism, or even subsides to
Arianism. From this level to that of Unitarianism the outlet is freer,
and the subsidence more rapid. And from Unitarianism to Christian
Theism, the passage is largely open for such as cannot accept the
evidence of the supernatural in the history of the church.
There were many shades of belief in the liberal churches. If De
Tocqueville's account of Unitarian preaching in Boston at the time of
his visit is true, the Savoyard Vicar of Rousseau would have preached
acceptably in some of our pulpits. In fact, the good Vicar might have
been thought too conservative by some of our unharnessed theologians.
At the period when Emerson reached manhood, Unitarianism was the
dominating form of belief in the more highly educated classes of both of
the two great New England centres, the town of Boston and the University
at Cambridge. President Kirkland was at the head of the College, Henry
Ware was Professor of Theology, Andrews Norton of Sacred Literature,
followed in 1830 by John Gorham Palfrey in the same office. James
Freeman, Charles Lowell, and William Ellery Channing were preaching in
Boston. I have mentioned already as a simple fact of local history, that
the more exclusive social circles of Boston and Cambridge were chiefly
connected with the Unitarian or Episcopalian churches. A Cambridge
graduate of ambition and ability found an opening far from undesirable
in a worldly point of view, in a profession which he was led to choose
by higher motives. It was in the Unitarian pulpit that the brilliant
talents of Buckminster and Everett had found a noble eminence from which
their light could shine before men.
Descended from a long line of ministers, a man of spiritual nature, a
reader of Plato, of Augustine, of Jeremy Taylor, full of hope for his
fellow-men, and longing to be of use to them, conscious, undoubtedly, of
a growing power of thought, it was natural that Emerson should turn from
the task of a school-master to the higher office of a preacher. It is
hard to conceive of Emerson in either of the other so-called learned
professions. His devotion to truth for its own sake and his feeling
about science would have kept him out of both those dusty highways. His
brother William had previously begun the study of Divinity, but found
his mind beset with doubts and difficulties, and had taken to the
profession of Law. It is not unlikely that Mr. Emerson was more or less
exercised with the same questionings. He has said, speaking of his
instructors: "If they had examined me, they probably would not have let
me preach at all." His eyes had given him trouble, so that he had not
taken notes of the lectures which he heard in the Divinity School, which
accounted for his being excused from examination. In 1826, after three
years' study, he was "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex Association
of Ministers. His health obliging him to seek a southern climate, he
went in the following winter to South Carolina and Florida. During this
absence he preached several times in Charleston and other places. On his
return from the South he preached in New Bedford, in Northampton, in
Concord, and in Boston. His attractiveness as a preacher, of which we
shall have sufficient evidence in a following chapter, led to his
being invited to share the duties of a much esteemed and honored city
clergyman, and the next position in which we find him is that of a
settled Minister in Boston.
CHAPTER III.
1828-1833. AET. 25-30.
Settled as Colleague of Rev. Henry Ware.--Married to Ellen Louisa
Tucker.--Sermon at the Ordination of Rev. H.B. Goodwin.--His Pastoral
and Other Labors.--Emerson and Father Taylor.--Death of Mrs.
Emerson.--Difference of Opinion with some of his Parishioners.--Sermon
Explaining his Views.--Resignation of his Pastorate.
On the 11th of March, 1829, Emerson was ordained as colleague with
the Reverend Henry Ware, Minister of the Second Church in Boston. In
September of the same year he was married to Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker.
The resignation of his colleague soon after his settlement threw all the
pastoral duties upon the young minister, who seems to have performed
them diligently and acceptably. Mr. Conway gives the following brief
account of his labors, and tells in the same connection a story of
Father Taylor too good not to be repeated:--
"Emerson took an active interest in the public affairs of Boston.
He was on its School Board, and was chosen chaplain of the State
Senate. He invited the anti-slavery lecturers into his church, and
helped philanthropists of other denominations in their work. Father
Taylor [the Methodist preacher to the sailors], to whom Dickens gave
an English fame, found in him his most important supporter when
establishing the Seaman's Mission in Boston. This was told me by
Father Taylor himself in his old age. I happened to be in his
company once, when he spoke rather sternly about my leaving the
Methodist Church; but when I spoke of the part Emerson had in it, he
softened at once, and spoke with emotion of his great friend. I have
no doubt that if the good Father of Boston Seamen was proud of any
personal thing, it was of the excellent answer he is said to have
given to some Methodists who objected to his friendship for Emerson.
Being a Unitarian, they insisted that he must go to"--[the place
which a divine of Charles the Second's day said it was not good
manners to mention in church].--"'It does look so,' said Father
Taylor, 'but I am sure of one thing: if Emerson goes to'"--[that
place]--"'he will change the climate there, and emigration will set
that way.'"
In 1830, Emerson took part in the services at the ordination of the
Reverend H.B. Goodwin as Dr. Ripley's colleague. His address on giving
the right hand of fellowship was printed, but is not included among his
collected works.
The fair prospects with which Emerson began his life as a settled
minister were too soon darkened. In February, 1832, the wife of
his youth, who had been for some time in failing health, died of
consumption.
He had become troubled with doubts respecting a portion of his duties,
and it was not in his nature to conceal these doubts from his people. On
the 9th of September, 1832, he preached a sermon on the Lord's Supper,
in which he announced unreservedly his conscientious scruples against
administering that ordinance, and the grounds upon which those scruples
were founded. This discourse, as his only printed sermon, and as one
which heralded a movement in New England theology which has never
stopped from that day to this, deserves some special notice. The sermon
is in no sense "Emersonian" except in its directness, its sweet temper,
and outspoken honesty. He argues from his comparison of texts in a
perfectly sober, old-fashioned way, as his ancestor Peter Bulkeley might
have done. It happened to that worthy forefather of Emerson that upon
his "pressing a piece of _Charity_ disagreeable to the will of the
_Ruling Elder_, there was occasioned an unhappy _Discord_ in the Church
of _Concord_; which yet was at last healed, by their calling in the help
of a _Council_ and the _Ruling Elder's_ Abdication." So says Cotton
Mather. Whether zeal had grown cooler or charity grown warmer in
Emerson's days we need not try to determine. The sermon was only a more
formal declaration of views respecting the Lord's Supper, which he had
previously made known in a conference with some of the most active
members of his church. As a committee of the parish reported resolutions
radically differing from his opinion on the subject, he preached this
sermon and at the same time resigned his office. There was no "discord,"
there was no need of a "council." Nothing could be more friendly, more
truly Christian, than the manner in which Mr. Emerson expressed himself
in this parting discourse. All the kindness of his nature warms it
throughout. He details the differences of opinion which have existed
in the church with regard to the ordinance. He then argues from the
language of the Evangelists that it was not intended to be a permanent
institution. He takes up the statement of Paul in the Epistle to the
Corinthians, which he thinks, all things considered, ought not to alter
our opinion derived from the Evangelists. He does not think that we are
to rely upon the opinions and practices of the primitive church. If that
church believed the institution to be permanent, their belief does not
settle the question for us. On every other subject, succeeding times
have learned to form a judgment more in accordance with the spirit of
Christianity than was the practice of the early ages.
"But, it is said, 'Admit that the rite was not designed to be
perpetual.' What harm doth it?"
He proceeds to give reasons which show it to be inexpedient to continue
the observance of the rite. It was treating that as authoritative which,
as he believed that he had shown from Scripture, was not so. It confused
the idea of God by transferring the worship of Him to Christ. Christ is
the Mediator only as the instructor of man. In the least petition to God
"the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no more present to your
mind than your brother or child." Again:--
"The use of the elements, however suitable to the people and the
modes of thought in the East, where it originated, is foreign and
unsuited to affect us. The day of formal religion is past, and we
are to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul. The Jewish
was a religion of forms; it was all body, it had no life, and the
Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach
men that they must serve him with the heart; that only that life was
religious which was thoroughly good; that sacrifice was smoke and
forms were shadows. This man lived and died true to that purpose;
and with his blessed word and life before us, Christians must
contend that it is a matter of vital importance,--really a duty to
commemorate him by a certain form, whether that form be acceptable
to their understanding or not. Is not this to make vain the gift of
God? Is not this to turn back the hand on the dial?"
To these objections he adds the practical consideration that it brings
those who do not partake of the communion service into an unfavorable
relation with those who do.
The beautiful spirit of the man shows itself in all its noble sincerity
in these words at the close of his argument:--
"Having said this, I have said all. I have no hostility to this
institution; I am only stating my want of sympathy with it. Neither
should I ever have obtruded this opinion upon other people, had I
not been called by my office to administer it. That is the end of
my opposition, that I am not interested in it. I am content that it
stand to the end of the world if it please men and please Heaven,
and I shall rejoice in all the good it produces."
He then announces that, as it is the prevailing opinion and feeling
in our religious community that it is a part of a pastor's duties to
administer this rite, he is about to resign the office which had been
confided to him.
This is the only sermon of Mr. Emerson's ever published. It was
impossible to hear or to read it without honoring the preacher for his
truthfulness, and recognizing the force of his statement and reasoning.
It was equally impossible that he could continue his ministrations
over a congregation which held to the ordinance he wished to give up
entirely. And thus it was, that with the most friendly feelings on
both sides, Mr. Emerson left the pulpit of the Second Church and found
himself obliged to make a beginning in a new career.
CHAPTER IV.
1833-1838. AET. 30-35.
Section 1. Visit to Europe.--On his Return preaches in Different
Places.--Emerson in the Pulpit.--At Newton.--Fixes his Residence at
Concord.--The Old Manse.--Lectures in Boston.--Lectures on
Michael Angelo and on Milton published in the "North American
Review."--Beginning of the Correspondence with Carlyle.--Letters to the
Rev. James Freeman Clarke.--Republication of "Sartor Resartus."
Section 2. Emerson's Second Marriage.--His New Residence in
Concord.--Historical Address.--Course of Ten Lectures on English
Literature delivered in Boston.--The Concord Battle Hymn.--Preaching
in Concord and East Lexington.--Accounts of his Preaching by
Several Hearers.--A Course of Lectures on the Nature and Ends of
History.--Address on War.--Death of Edward Bliss Emerson.--Death of
Charles Chauncy Emerson.
Section 3. Publication of "Nature."--Outline of this Essay.--Its
Reception.--Address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
Section 1. In the year 1833 Mr. Emerson visited Europe for the first
time. A great change had come over his life, and he needed the relief
which a corresponding change of outward circumstances might afford
him. A brief account of this visit is prefixed to the volume entitled
"English Traits." He took a short tour, in which he visited Sicily,
Italy, and France, and, crossing from Boulogne, landed at the Tower
Stairs in London. He finds nothing in his Diary to publish concerning
visits to places. But he saw a number of distinguished persons, of whom
he gives pleasant accounts, so singularly different in tone from the
rough caricatures in which Carlyle vented his spleen and caprice, that
one marvels how the two men could have talked ten minutes together,
or would wonder, had not one been as imperturbable as the other was
explosive. Horatio Greenough and Walter Savage Landor are the chief
persons he speaks of as having met upon the Continent. Of these he
reports various opinions as delivered in conversation. He mentions
incidentally that he visited Professor Amici, who showed him his
microscopes "magnifying (it was said) two thousand diameters." Emerson
hardly knew his privilege; he may have been the first American to look
through an immersion lens with the famous Modena professor. Mr. Emerson
says that his narrow and desultory reading had inspired him with the
wish to see the faces of three or four writers, Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Landor, De Quincey, Carlyle. His accounts of his interviews with
these distinguished persons are too condensed to admit of further
abbreviation. Goethe and Scott, whom he would have liked to look upon,
were dead; Wellington he saw at Westminster Abbey, at the funeral of
Wilberforce. His impressions of each of the distinguished persons whom
he visited should be looked at in the light of the general remark which,
follows:--
"The young scholar fancies it happiness enough to live with people
who can give an inside to the world; without reflecting that
they are prisoners, too, of their own thought, and cannot apply
themselves to yours. The conditions of literary success are almost
destructive of the best social power, as they do not have that
frolic liberty which only can encounter a companion on the best
terms. It is probable you left some obscure comrade at a tavern, or
in the farms, with right mother-wit, and equality to life, when you
crossed sea and land to play bo-peep with celebrated scribes. I
have, however, found writers superior to their books, and I cling to
my first belief that a strong head will dispose fast enough of these
impediments, and give one the satisfaction of reality, the sense of
having been met, and a larger horizon."
Emerson carried a letter of introduction to a gentleman in Edinburgh,
who, being unable to pay him all the desired attention, handed him over
to Mr. Alexander Ireland, who has given a most interesting account of
him as he appeared during that first visit to Europe. Mr. Ireland's
presentation of Emerson as he heard him in the Scotch pulpit shows
that he was not less impressive and attractive before an audience of
strangers than among his own countrymen and countrywomen:--
"On Sunday, the 18th of August, 1833, I heard him deliver a discourse in
the Unitarian Chapel, Young Street, Edinburgh, and I remember distinctly
the effect which it produced on his hearers. It is almost needless to
say that nothing like it had ever been heard by them before, and many of
them did not know what to make of it. The originality of his thoughts,
the consummate beauty of the language in which they were clothed, the
calm dignity of his bearing, the absence of all oratorical effort, and
the singular directness and simplicity of his manner, free from the
least shadow of dogmatic assumption, made a deep impression on me. Not
long before this I had listened to a wonderful sermon by Dr. Chalmers,
whose force, and energy, and vehement, but rather turgid eloquence
carried, for the moment, all before them,--his audience becoming like
clay in the hands of the potter. But I must confess that the pregnant
thoughts and serene self-possession of the young Boston minister had a
greater charm for me than all the rhetorical splendors of Chalmers. His
voice was the sweetest, the most winning and penetrating of any I ever
heard; nothing like it have I listened to since.
'That music in our hearts we bore
Long after it was heard no more.'"
Mr. George Gilfillan speaks of "the solemnity of his manner, and the
earnest thought pervading his discourse."
As to the effect of his preaching on his American audiences, I find the
following evidence in Mr. Cooke's diligently gathered collections. Mr.
Sanborn says:--
"His pulpit eloquence was singularly attractive, though by no means
equally so to all persons. In 1829, before the two friends had met,
Bronson Alcott heard him preach in Dr. Channing's church on 'The
Universality of the Moral Sentiment,' and was struck, as he said,
with the youth of the preacher, the beauty of his elocution and the
direct and sincere manner in which he addressed his hearers."
Mr. Charles Congdon, of New Bedford, well known as a popular
writer, gives the following account of Emerson's preaching in his
"Reminiscences." I borrow the quotation from Mr. Conway:--
"One day there came into our pulpit the most gracious of mortals,
with a face all benignity, who gave out the first hymn and made the
first prayer as an angel might have read and prayed. Our choir was
a pretty good one, but its best was coarse and discordant after
Emerson's voice. I remember of the sermon only that it had an
indefinite charm of simplicity and wisdom, with occasional
illustrations from nature, which were about the most delicate and
dainty things of the kind which I had ever heard. I could understand
them, if not the fresh philosophical novelties of the discourse."
Everywhere Emerson seems to have pleased his audiences. The Reverend Dr.
Morison, formerly the much respected Unitarian minister of New Bedford,
writes to me as follows:--
"After Dr. Dewey left New Bedford, Mr. Emerson preached there
several months, greatly to the satisfaction and delight of those who
heard him. The Society would have been glad to settle him as their
minister, and he would have accepted a call, had it not been for
some difference of opinion, I think, in regard to the communion
service. Judge Warren, who was particularly his friend, and had at
that time a leading influence in the parish, with all his admiration
for Mr. Emerson, did not think he could well be the pastor of a
Christian church, and so the matter was settled between him and his
friend, without any action by the Society."
All this shows well enough that his preaching was eminently acceptable.
But every one who has heard him lecture can form an idea of what he must
have been as a preacher. In fact, we have all listened, probably, to
many a passage from old sermons of his,--for he tells us he borrowed
from those old sermons for his lectures,--without ever thinking of the
pulpit from which they were first heard.
Among the stray glimpses we get of Emerson between the time when he
quitted the pulpit of his church and that when he came before the public
as a lecturer is this, which I owe to the kindness of Hon. Alexander H.
Rice. In 1832 or 1833, probably the latter year, he, then a boy, with
another boy, Thomas R. Gould, afterwards well known as a sculptor, being
at the Episcopal church in Newton, found that Mr. Emerson was sitting in
the pew behind them. Gould knew Mr. Emerson, and introduced young Rice
to him, and they walked down the street together. As they went along,
Emerson burst into a rhapsody over the Psalms of David, the sublimity of
thought, and the poetic beauty of expression of which they are full, and
spoke also with enthusiasm of the Te Deum as that grand old hymn which
had come down through the ages, voicing the praises of generation after
generation.
When they parted at the house of young Rice's father, Emerson invited
the boys to come and see him at the Allen farm, in the afternoon. They
came to a piece of woods, and, as they entered it, took their hats off.
"Boys," said Emerson, "here we recognize the presence of the Universal
Spirit. The breeze says to us in its own language, How d' ye do? How d'
ye do? and we have already taken our hats off and are answering it with
our own How d' ye do? How d' ye do? And all the waving branches of
the trees, and all the flowers, and the field of corn yonder, and the
singing brook, and the insect and the bird,--every living thing and
things we call inanimate feel the same divine universal impulse while
they join with us, and we with them, in the greeting which is the
salutation of the Universal Spirit."
We perceive the same feeling which pervades many of Emerson's earlier
Essays and much of his verse, in these long-treasured reminiscences
of the poetical improvisation with which the two boys were thus
unexpectedly favored. Governor Rice continues:--
"You know what a captivating charm there always was in Emerson's
presence, but I can never tell you how this line of thought then
impressed a country boy. I do not remember anything about the
remainder of that walk, nor of the after-incidents of that day,--I
only remember that I went home wondering about that mystical dream
of the Universal Spirit, and about what manner of man he was under
whose influence I had for the first time come....
"The interview left impressions that led me into new channels of
thought which have been a life-long pleasure to me, and, I doubt
not, taught me somewhat how to distinguish between mere theological
dogma and genuine religion in the soul."
In the summer of 1834 Emerson became a resident of Concord,
Massachusetts, the town of his forefathers, and the place destined to
be his home for life. He first lived with his venerable connection, Dr.
Ripley, in the dwelling made famous by Hawthorne as the "Old Manse." It
is an old-fashioned gambrel-roofed house, standing close to the scene
of the Fight on the banks of the river. It was built for the Reverend
William Emerson, his grandfather. In one of the rooms of this house
Emerson wrote "Nature," and in the same room, some years later,
Hawthorne wrote "Mosses from an Old Manse."
The place in which Emerson passed the greater part of his life well
deserves a special notice. Concord might sit for its portrait as an
ideal New England town. If wanting in the variety of surface which
many other towns can boast of, it has at least a vision of the distant
summits of Monadnock and Wachusett. It has fine old woods, and noble
elms to give dignity to its open spaces. Beautiful ponds, as they
modestly call themselves,--one of which, Walden, is as well known in our
literature as Windermere in that of Old England,--lie quietly in their
clean basins. And through the green meadows runs, or rather lounges,
a gentle, unsalted stream, like an English river, licking its grassy
margin with a sort of bovine placidity and contentment. This is the
Musketaquid, or Meadow River, which, after being joined by the more
restless Assabet, still keeps its temper and flows peacefully along by
and through other towns, to lose itself in the broad Merrimac. The names
of these rivers tell us that Concord has an Indian history, and there is
evidence that it was a favorite residence of the race which preceded our
own. The native tribes knew as well as the white settlers where were
pleasant streams and sweet springs, where corn grew tall in the meadows
and fish bred fast in the unpolluted waters.
The place thus favored by nature can show a record worthy of its
physical attractions. Its settlement under the lead of Emerson's
ancestor, Peter Bulkeley, was effected in the midst of many
difficulties, which the enterprise and self-sacrifice of that noble
leader were successful in overcoming. On the banks of the Musketaquid
was fired the first fatal shot of the "rebel" farmers. Emerson appeals
to the Records of the town for two hundred years as illustrating the
working of our American institutions and the character of the men of
Concord:--
"If the good counsel prevailed, the sneaking counsel did not fail to
be suggested; freedom and virtue, if they triumphed, triumphed in a
fair field. And so be it an everlasting testimony for them, and so
much ground of assurance of man's capacity for self-government."
What names that plain New England town reckons in the roll of its
inhabitants! Stout Major Buttrick and his fellow-soldiers in the war of
Independence, and their worthy successors in the war of Freedom; lawyers
and statesmen like Samuel Hoar and his descendants; ministers like Peter
Bulkeley, Daniel Bliss, and William Emerson; and men of genius such as
the idealist and poet whose inspiration has kindled so many souls; as
the romancer who has given an atmosphere to the hard outlines of our
stern New England; as that unique individual, half college-graduate and
half Algonquin, the Robinson Crusoe of Walden Pond, who carried out a
school-boy whim to its full proportions, and told the story of Nature in
undress as only one who had hidden in her bedroom could have told it. I
need not lengthen the catalogue by speaking of the living, or mentioning
the women whose names have added to its distinction. It has long been an
intellectual centre such as no other country town of our own land, if of
any other, could boast. Its groves, its streams, its houses, are haunted
by undying memories, and its hillsides and hollows are made holy by the
dust that is covered by their turf.
Such was the place which the advent of Emerson made the Delphi of New
England and the resort of many pilgrims from far-off regions.
On his return from Europe in the winter of 1833-4, Mr. Emerson began to
appear before the public as a lecturer. His first subjects, "Water," and
the "Relation of Man to the Globe," were hardly such as we should have
expected from a scholar who had but a limited acquaintance with physical
and physiological science. They were probably chosen as of a popular
character, easily treated in such a way as to be intelligible and
entertaining, and thus answering the purpose of introducing him
pleasantly to the new career he was contemplating. These lectures are
not included in his published works, nor were they ever published, so
far as I know. He gave three lectures during the same winter, relating
the experiences of his recent tour in Europe. Having made himself at
home on the platform, he ventured upon subjects more congenial to his
taste and habits of thought than some of those earlier topics. In 1834
he lectured on Michael Angelo, Milton, Luther, George Fox, and Edmund
Burke. The first two of these lectures, though not included in his
collected works, may be found in the "North American Review" for 1837
and 1838. The germ of many of the thoughts which he has expanded in
prose and verse may be found in these Essays.
The _Cosmos_ of the Ancient Greeks, the _piu nel' uno_, "The Many in
One," appear in the Essay on Michael Angelo as they also appear in his
"Nature." The last thought takes wings to itself and rises in the little
poem entitled "Each and All." The "Rhodora," another brief poem, finds
itself foreshadowed in the inquiry, "What is Beauty?" and its answer,
"This great Whole the understanding cannot embrace. Beauty may be felt.
It may be produced. But it cannot be defined." And throughout this Essay
the feeling that truth and beauty and virtue are one, and that Nature is
the symbol which typifies it to the soul, is the inspiring sentiment.
_Noscitur a sociis_ applies as well to a man's dead as to his living
companions. A young friend of mine in his college days wrote an essay on
Plato. When he mentioned his subject to Mr. Emerson, he got the caution,
long remembered, "When you strike at a _King_, you must kill him."
He himself knew well with what kings of thought to measure his own
intelligence. What was grandest, loftiest, purest, in human character
chiefly interested him. He rarely meddles with what is petty or ignoble.
Like his "Humble Bee," the "yellow-breeched philosopher," whom he speaks
of as
"Wiser far than human seer,"
and says of him,
"Aught unsavory or unclean
Hath my insect never seen,"
he goes through the world where coarser minds find so much that is
repulsive to dwell upon,
"Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet."
Why Emerson selected Michael Angelo as the subject of one of his
earliest lectures is shown clearly enough by the last sentence as
printed in the Essay.
"He was not a citizen of any country; he belonged to the human race;
he was a brother and a friend to all who acknowledged the beauty
that beams in universal nature, and who seek by labor and
self-denial to approach its source in perfect goodness."
Consciously or unconsciously men describe themselves in the characters
they draw. One must have the mordant in his own personality or he will
not take the color of his subject. He may force himself to picture that
which he dislikes or even detests; but when he loves the character he
delineates, it is his own, in some measure, at least, or one of which he
feels that its possibilities and tendencies belong to himself. Let us
try Emerson by this test in his "Essay on Milton:"--
"It is the prerogative of this great man to stand at this hour
foremost of all men in literary history, and so (shall we not say?)
of all men, in the power to _inspire_. Virtue goes out of him into
others." ... "He is identified in the mind with all select and holy
images, with the supreme interests of the human race."--"Better than
any other he has discharged the office of every great man, namely,
to raise the idea of Man in the minds of his contemporaries and of
posterity,--to draw after nature a life of man, exhibiting such a
composition of grace, of strength, and of virtue as poet had not
described nor hero lived. Human nature in these ages is indebted to
him for its best portrait. Many philosophers in England, France, and
Germany, have formally dedicated their study to this problem; and
we think it impossible to recall one in those countries who
communicates the same vibration of hope, of self-reverence, of
piety, of delight in beauty, which the name of Milton awakes."
Emerson had the same lofty aim as Milton, "To raise the idea of man;"
he had "the power _to inspire_" in a preëminent degree. If ever a man
communicated those _vibrations_ he speaks of as characteristic of
Milton, it was Emerson. In elevation, purity, nobility of nature, he is
worthy to stand with the great poet and patriot, who began like him as a
school-master, and ended as the teacher in a school-house which had for
its walls the horizons of every region where English is spoken. The
similarity of their characters might be followed by the curious into
their fortunes. Both were turned away from the clerical office by a
revolt of conscience against the beliefs required of them; both lost
very dear objects of affection in early manhood, and mourned for them
in tender and mellifluous threnodies. It would be easy to trace many
parallelisms in their prose and poetry, but to have dared to name any
man whom we have known in our common life with the seraphic singer
of the Nativity and of Paradise is a tribute which seems to savor of
audacity. It is hard to conceive of Emerson as "an expert swordsman"
like Milton. It is impossible to think of him as an abusive
controversialist as Milton was in his controversy with Salmasius. But
though Emerson never betrayed it to the offence of others, he must have
been conscious, like Milton, of "a certain niceness of nature, an honest
haughtiness," which was as a shield about his inner nature. Charles
Emerson, the younger brother, who was of the same type, expresses the
feeling in his college essay on Friendship, where it is all summed up in
the line he quotes:--
"The hand of Douglas is his own."
It must be that in writing this Essay on Milton Emerson felt that he was
listening in his own soul to whispers that seemed like echoes from that
of the divine singer.
* * * * *
My friend, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, a life-long friend of Emerson,
who understood him from the first, and was himself a great part in the
movement of which Emerson, more than any other man, was the leader, has
kindly allowed me to make use of the following letters:--
TO REV. JAMES F. CLARKE, LOUISVILLE, KY.
PLYMOUTH, MASS., March 12, 1834.
MY DEAR SIR,--As the day approaches when Mr. Lewis should leave
Boston, I seize a few moments in a friendly house in the first of
towns, to thank you heartily for your kindness in lending me the
valued manuscripts which I return. The translations excited me much,
and who can estimate the value of a good thought? I trust I am to
learn much more from you hereafter of your German studies, and much
I hope of your own. You asked in your note concerning Carlyle. My
recollections of him are most pleasant, and I feel great confidence
in his character. He understands and recognizes his mission. He is
perfectly simple and affectionate in his manner, and frank, as he
can well afford to be, in his communications. He expressed some
impatience of his total solitude, and talked of Paris as a
residence. I told him I hoped not; for I should always remember
him with respect, meditating in the mountains of Nithsdale. He was
cheered, as he ought to be, by learning that his papers were read
with interest by young men unknown to him in this continent; and
when I specified a piece which had attracted warm commendation from
the New Jerusalem people here, his wife said that is always the way;
whatever he has writ that he thinks has fallen dead, he hears of
two or three years afterward.--He has many, many tokens of Goethe's
regard, miniatures, medals, and many letters. If you should go to
Scotland one day, you would gratify him, yourself, and me, by your
visit to Craigenputtock, in the parish of Dunscore, near Dumfries.
He told me he had a book which he thought to publish, but was in
the purpose of dividing into a series of articles for "Fraser's
Magazine." I therefore subscribed for that book, which he calls the
"Mud Magazine," but have seen nothing of his workmanship in the two
last numbers. The mail is going, so I shall finish my letter another
time.
Your obliged friend and servant,
R. WALDO EMERSON.
CONCORD, MASS., November 25, 1834.
MY DEAR SIR,--Miss Peabody has kindly sent me your manuscript piece
on Goethe and Carlyle. I have read it with great pleasure and a
feeling of gratitude, at the same time with a serious regret that it
was not published. I have forgotten what reason you assigned for not
printing it; I cannot think of any sufficient one. Is it too late
now? Why not change its form a little and annex to it some account
of Carlyle's later pieces, to wit: "Diderot," and "Sartor Resartus."
The last is complete, and he has sent it to me in a stitched
pamphlet. Whilst I see its vices (relatively to the reading public)
of style, I cannot but esteem it a noble philosophical poem,
reflecting the ideas, institutions, men of this very hour. And it
seems to me that it has so much wit and other secondary graces as
must strike a class who would not care for its primary merit, that
of being a sincere exhortation to seekers of truth. If you still
retain your interest in his genius (as I see not how you can avoid,
having understood it and cooperated with it so truly), you will be
glad to know that he values his American readers very highly;
that he does not defend this offensive style of his, but calls it
questionable tentative; that he is trying other modes, and is about
publishing a historical piece called "The Diamond Necklace," as a
part of a great work which he meditates on the subject of the French
Revolution. He says it is part of his creed that history is poetry,
could we tell it right. He adds, moreover, in a letter I have
recently received from him, that it has been an odd dream that he
might end in the western woods. Shall we not bid him come, and be
Poet and Teacher of a most scattered flock wanting a shepherd? Or,
as I sometimes think, would it not be a new and worse chagrin to
become acquainted with the extreme deadness of our community to
spiritual influences of the higher kind? Have you read Sampson
Reed's "Growth of the Mind"? I rejoice to be contemporary with that
man, and cannot wholly despair of the society in which he lives;
there must be some oxygen yet, and La Fayette is only just dead.
Your friend, R. WALDO EMERSON.
It occurs to me that 't is unfit to send any white paper so far as
to your house, so you shall have a sentence from Carlyle's letter.
[This may be found in Carlyle's first letter, dated 12th August, 1834.]
Dr. Le Baron Russell, an intimate friend of Emerson for the greater part
of his life, gives me some particulars with reference to the publication
of "Sartor Resartus," which I will repeat in his own words:--
"It was just before the time of which I am speaking [that of
Emerson's marriage] that the 'Sartor Resartus' appeared in 'Fraser.'
Emerson lent the numbers, or the collected sheets of 'Fraser,' to
Miss Jackson, and we all had the reading of them. The excitement
which the book caused among young persons interested in the
literature of the day at that time you probably remember. I was
quite carried away by it, and so anxious to own a copy, that I
determined to publish an American edition. I consulted James Munroe
& Co. on the subject. Munroe advised me to obtain a subscription to
a sufficient number of copies to secure the cost of the publication.
This, with the aid of some friends, particularly of my classmate,
William Silsbee, I readily succeeded in doing. When this was
accomplished, I wrote to Emerson, who up to this time had taken no
part in the enterprise, asking him to write a preface. (This is the
Preface which appears in the American edition, James Munroe & Co.,
1836. It was omitted in the third American from the second London
edition,[1] by the same publishers, 1840.) Before the first edition
appeared, and after the subscription had been secured, Munroe & Co.
offered to assume the whole responsibility of the publication, and
to this I assented.
[Footnote 1: Revised and corrected by the author.]
"This American edition of 1836 was the first appearance of the
'Sartor' in either country, as a distinct edition. Some copies of
the sheets from 'Fraser,' it appears, were stitched together and sent
to a few persons, but Carlyle could find no English publisher willing
to take the responsibility of printing the book. This shows, I think,
how much more interest was taken in Carlyle's writings in this country
than in England."
On the 14th of May, 1834, Emerson wrote to Carlyle the first letter of
that correspondence which has since been given to the world under the
careful editorship of Mr. Charles Norton. This correspondence lasted
from the date mentioned to the 2d of April, 1872, when Carlyle wrote his
last letter to Emerson. The two writers reveal themselves as being in
strong sympathy with each other, in spite of a radical difference of
temperament and entirely opposite views of life. The hatred of unreality
was uppermost with Carlyle; the love of what is real and genuine with
Emerson. Those old moralists, the weeping and the laughing philosophers,
find their counterparts in every thinking community. Carlyle did not
weep, but he scolded; Emerson did not laugh, but in his gravest moments
there was a smile waiting for the cloud to pass from his forehead. The
Duet they chanted was a Miserere with a Te Deum for its Antiphon; a _De_
_Profundis_ answered by a _Sursum Corda_. "The ground of my existence
is black as death," says Carlyle. "Come and live with me a year," says
Emerson, "and if you do not like New England well enough to stay, one of
these years; (when the 'History' has passed its ten editions, and been
translated into as many languages) I will come and dwell with you."
Section 2. In September, 1835, Emerson was married to Miss Lydia
Jackson, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. The wedding took place in the fine
old mansion known as the Winslow House, Dr. Le Baron Russell and his
sister standing up with the bridegroom and his bride. After their
marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson went to reside in the house in which
he passed the rest of his life, and in which Mrs. Emerson and their
daughter still reside. This is the "plain, square, wooden house," with
horse-chestnut trees in the front yard, and evergreens around it, which
has been so often described and figured. It is without pretensions, but
not without an air of quiet dignity. A full and well-illustrated account
of it and its arrangements and surroundings is given in "Poets' Homes,"
by Arthur Gilman and others, published by D. Lothrop & Company in 1879.
On the 12th of September, 1835, Emerson delivered an "Historical
Discourse, at Concord, on the Second Centennial Anniversary of
the Incorporation of the Town." There is no "mysticism," no
"transcendentalism" in this plain, straightforward Address. The facts
are collected and related with the patience and sobriety which became
the writer as one of the Dryasdusts of our very diligent, very useful,
very matter-of-fact, and for the most part judiciously unimaginative
Massachusetts Historical Society. It looks unlike anything else Emerson
ever wrote, in being provided with abundant foot-notes and an appendix.
One would almost as soon have expected to see Emerson equipped with
a musket and a knapsack as to find a discourse of his clogged with
annotations, and trailing a supplement after it. Oracles are brief and
final in their utterances. Delphi and Cumae are not expected to explain
what they say.
It is the habit of our New England towns to celebrate their own worthies
and their own deeds on occasions like this, with more or less of
rhetorical gratitude and self-felicitation. The discourses delivered
on these occasions are commonly worth reading, for there was never a
clearing made in the forest that did not let in the light on heroes and
heroines. Concord is on the whole the most interesting of all the inland
towns of New England. Emerson has told its story in as painstaking,
faithful a way as if he had been by nature an annalist. But with this
fidelity, we find also those bold generalizations and sharp picturesque
touches which reveal the poetic philosopher.
"I have read with care," he says, "the town records themselves.
They exhibit a pleasing picture of a community almost exclusively
agricultural, where no man has much time for words, in his search
after things; of a community of great simplicity of manners, and of
a manifest love of justice. I find our annals marked with a uniform
good sense.--The tone of the record rises with the dignity of the
event. These soiled and musty books are luminous and electric
within. The old town clerks did not spell very correctly, but
they contrive to make intelligible the will of a free and just
community." ... "The matters there debated (in town meetings) are
such as to invite very small consideration. The ill-spelled pages
of the town records contain the result. I shall be excused for
confessing that I have set a value upon any symptom of meanness and
private pique which I have met with in these antique books, as
proof that justice was done; that if the results of our history are
approved as wise and good, it was yet a free strife; if the
good counsel prevailed, the sneaking counsel did not fail to be
suggested; freedom and virtue, if they triumphed, triumphed in a
fair field. And so be it an everlasting testimony for them, and so
much ground of assurance of man's capacity for self-government."
There was nothing in this Address which the plainest of Concord's
citizens could not read understandingly and with pleasure. In fact Mr.
Emerson himself, besides being a poet and a philosopher, was also a
plain Concord citizen. His son tells me that he was a faithful attendant
upon town meetings, and, though he never spoke, was an interested and
careful listener to the debates on town matters. That respect for
"mother-wit" and for all the wholesome human qualities which reveals
itself all through his writings was bred from this kind of intercourse
with men of sense who had no pretensions to learning, and in whom, for
that very reason, the native qualities came out with less disguise in
their expression. He was surrounded by men who ran to extremes in their
idiosyncrasies; Alcott in speculations, which often led him into the
fourth dimension of mental space; Hawthorne, who brooded himself into
a dream--peopled solitude; Thoreau, the nullifier of civilization, who
insisted on nibbling his asparagus at the wrong end, to say nothing of
idolaters and echoes. He kept his balance among them all. It would
be hard to find a more candid and sober record of the result of
self-government in a small community than is contained in this simple
discourse, patient in detail, large in treatment, more effective than
any unsupported generalities about the natural rights of man, which
amount to very little unless men earn the right of asserting them by
attending fairly to their natural duties. So admirably is the working of
a town government, as it goes on in a well-disposed community, displayed
in the history of Concord's two hundred years of village life, that
one of its wisest citizens had portions of the address printed
for distribution, as an illustration of the American principle of
self-government.
After settling in Concord, Emerson delivered courses of Lectures in
Boston during several successive winters; in 1835, ten Lectures on
English Literature; in 1836, twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of
History; in 1837, ten Lectures on Human Culture. Some of these lectures
may have appeared in print under their original titles; all of them
probably contributed to the Essays and Discourses which we find in his
published volumes.
On the 19th of April, 1836, a meeting was held to celebrate the
completion of the monument raised in commemoration of the Concord Fight.
For this occasion Emerson wrote the hymn made ever memorable by the
lines:--
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The last line of this hymn quickens the heartbeats of every American,
and the whole hymn is admirable in thought and expression. Until the
autumn of 1838, Emerson preached twice on Sundays to the church at East
Lexington, which desired him to become its pastor. Mr. Cooke says that
when a lady of the society was asked why they did not settle a friend of
Emerson's whom he had urged them to invite to their pulpit, she replied:
"We are a very simple people, and can understand no one but Mr.
Emerson." He said of himself: "My pulpit is the Lyceum platform."
Knowing that he made his Sermons contribute to his Lectures, we need not
mourn over their not being reported.
In March, 1837, Emerson delivered in Boston a Lecture on War, afterwards
published in Miss Peabody's "Aesthetic Papers." He recognizes war as one
of the temporary necessities of a developing civilization, to disappear
with the advance of mankind:--
"At a certain stage of his progress the man fights, if he be of a
sound body and mind. At a certain high stage he makes no offensive
demonstration, but is alert to repel injury, and of an unconquerable
heart. At a still higher stage he comes into the region of holiness;
passion has passed away from him; his warlike nature is all
converted into an active medicinal principle; he sacrifices himself,
and accepts with alacrity wearisome tasks of denial and charity;
but being attacked, he bears it, and turns the other cheek, as one
engaged, throughout his being, no longer to the service of an
individual, but to the common good of all men."
In 1834 Emerson's brother Edward died, as already mentioned, in the West
India island where he had gone for his health. In his letter to Carlyle,
of November 12th of the same year, Emerson says: "Your letter, which
I received last week, made a bright light in a solitary and saddened
place. I had quite recently received the news of the death of a brother
in the island of Porto Rico, whose loss to me will be a lifelong
sorrow." It was of him that Emerson wrote the lines "In Memoriam," in
which he says,--
"There is no record left on earth
Save on tablets of the heart,
Of the rich, inherent worth,
Of the grace that on him shone
Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit;
He could not frame a word unfit,
An act unworthy to be done."
Another bereavement was too soon to be recorded. On the 7th of October,
1835, he says in a letter to Carlyle:--
"I was very glad to hear of the brother you describe, for I have one
too, and know what it is to have presence in two places. Charles
Chauncy Emerson is a lawyer now settled in this town, and, as I
believe, no better Lord Hamlet was ever. He is our Doctor on
all questions of taste, manners, or action. And one of the pure
pleasures I promise myself in the months to come is to make you two
gentlemen know each other."
Alas for human hopes and prospects! In less than a year from the date of
that letter, on the 17th of September, 1836, he writes to Carlyle:--
"Your last letter, dated in April, found me a mourner, as did your
first. I have lost out of this world my brother Charles, of whom I
have spoken to you,--the friend and companion of many years, the
inmate of my house, a man of a beautiful genius, born to speak well,
and whose conversation for these last years has treated every grave
question of humanity, and has been my daily bread. I have put so
much dependence on his gifts, that we made but one man together; for
I needed never to do what he could do by noble nature, much better
than I. He was to have been married in this month, and at the time
of his sickness and sudden death, I was adding apartments to my
house for his permanent accommodation. I wish that you could have
known him. At twenty-seven years the best life is only preparation.
He built his foundation so large that it needed the full age of
man to make evident the plan and proportions of his character. He
postponed always a particular to a final and absolute success, so
that his life was a silent appeal to the great and generous. But
some time I shall see you and speak of him."
Section 3. In the year 1836 there was published in Boston a little book
of less than a hundred very small pages, entitled "Nature." It bore no
name on its title-page, but was at once attributed to its real author,
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The Emersonian adept will pardon me for burdening this beautiful Essay
with a commentary which is worse than superfluous for him. For it has
proved for many,--I will not say a _pons asinorum_,--but a very narrow
bridge, which it made their heads swim to attempt crossing, and yet they
must cross it, or one domain of Emerson's intellect will not be reached.
It differed in some respects from anything he had hitherto written. It
talked a strange sort of philosophy in the language of poetry. Beginning
simply enough, it took more and more the character of a rhapsody, until,
as if lifted off his feet by the deepened and stronger undercurrent of
his thought, the writer dropped his personality and repeated the words
which "a certain poet sang" to him.
This little book met with a very unemotional reception. Its style was
peculiar,--almost as unlike that of his Essays as that of Carlyle's
"Sartor Resartus" was unlike the style of his "Life of Schiller." It was
vague, mystic, incomprehensible, to most of those who call themselves
common-sense people. Some of its expressions lent themselves easily to
travesty and ridicule. But the laugh could not be very loud or very
long, since it took twelve years, as Mr. Higginson tells us, to sell
five hundred copies. It was a good deal like Keats's
"doubtful tale from fairy-land
Hard for the non-elect to understand."
The same experience had been gone through by Wordsworth.
"Whatever is too original," says De Quincey, "will be hated at the
first. It must slowly mould a public for itself; and the resistance
of the early thoughtless judgments must be overcome by a
counter-resistance to itself, in a better audience slowly mustering
against the first. Forty and seven years it is since William
Wordsworth first appeared as an author. Twenty of these years he was
the scoff of the world, and his poetry a by-word of scorn. Since
then, and more than once, senates have rung with acclamations to the
echo of his name."
No writer is more deeply imbued with the spirit of Wordsworth than
Emerson, as we cannot fail to see in turning the pages of "Nature," his
first thoroughly characteristic Essay. There is the same thought in the
Preface to "The Excursion" that we find in the Introduction to "Nature."
"The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face;
we through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original
relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and
philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by
revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?"
"Paradise and groves
Elysian, Fortunate Fields--like those of old
Sought in the Atlantic Main, why should they be
A history only of departed things,
Or a mere fiction of what never was?"
"Nature" is a reflective prose poem. It is divided into eight chapters,
which might almost as well have been called cantos.
Never before had Mr. Emerson given free utterance to the passion with
which the aspects of nature inspired him. He had recently for the first
time been at once master of himself and in free communion with all the
planetary influences above, beneath, around him. The air of the country
intoxicated him. There are sentences in "Nature" which are as exalted
as the language of one who is just coming to himself after having been
etherized. Some of these expressions sounded to a considerable part of
his early readers like the vagaries of delirium. Yet underlying these
excited outbursts there was a general tone of serenity which reassured
the anxious. The gust passed over, the ripples smoothed themselves, and
the stars shone again in quiet reflection.
After a passionate outbreak, in which he sees all, is nothing, loses
himself in nature, in Universal Being, becomes "part or particle of
God," he considers briefly, in the chapter entitled _Commodity_, the
ministry of nature to the senses. A few picturesque glimpses in pleasing
and poetical phrases, with a touch of archaism, and reminiscences of
Hamlet and Jeremy Taylor, "the Shakspeare of divines," as he has
called him, are what we find in this chapter on Commodity, or natural
conveniences.
But "a nobler want of man is served by Nature, namely, the love
of _Beauty_" which is his next subject. There are some touches of
description here, vivid, high-colored, not so much pictures as hints and
impressions for pictures.
Many of the thoughts which run through all his prose and poetry may be
found here. Analogy is seen everywhere in the works of Nature. "What is
common to them all,--that perfectness and harmony, is beauty."--"Nothing
is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole."--"No
reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty." How easily
these same ideas took on the robe of verse may be seen in the Poems,
"Each and All," and "The Rhodora." A good deal of his philosophy comes
out in these concluding sentences of the chapter:--
"Beauty in its largest and profoundest sense is one expression for
the universe; God is the all-fair. Truth and goodness and beauty are
but different faces of the same All. But beauty in Nature is not
ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not
alone a solid and satisfactory good. It must therefore stand as a
part and not as yet the highest expression of the final cause of
Nature.".
In the "Rhodora" the flower is made to answer that
"Beauty is its own excuse for being."
In this Essay the beauty of the flower is not enough, but it must excuse
itself for being, mainly as the symbol of something higher and deeper
than itself.
He passes next to a consideration of _Language_. Words are signs of
natural facts, particular material facts are symbols of particular
spiritual facts, and Nature is the symbol of spirit. Without going very
profoundly into the subject, he gives some hints as to the mode in
which languages are formed,--whence words are derived, how they become
transformed and worn out. But they come at first fresh from Nature.
"A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual
processes, will find that always a material image, more or less
luminous, arises in his mind, contemporaneous with every thought,
which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence good writing and
brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories."
From this he argues that country life is a great advantage to a powerful
mind, inasmuch as it furnishes a greater number of these material
images. They cannot be summoned at will, but they present themselves
when great exigencies call for them.
"The poet, the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses have been
nourished by their fair and appeasing changes, year after year,
without design and without heed,--shall not lose their lesson
altogether, in the roar of cities or the broil of politics. Long
hereafter, amidst agitations and terror in national councils,--in
the hour of revolution,--these solemn images shall reappear in their
morning lustre, as fit symbols and words of the thought which the
passing events shall awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment, again
the woods wave, the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and
the cattle low upon the mountains, as he saw and heard them in his
infancy. And with these forms the spells of persuasion, the keys of
power, are put into his hands."
It is doing no wrong to this very eloquent and beautiful passage to say
that it reminds us of certain lines in one of the best known poems of
Wordsworth:--
"These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye;
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness sensations sweet
Felt in the blood and felt along the heart."
It is needless to quote the whole passage. The poetry of Wordsworth may
have suggested the prose of Emerson, but the prose loses nothing by the
comparison.
In _Discipline_, which is his next subject, he treats of the influence
of Nature in educating the intellect, the moral sense, and the will.
Man is enlarged and the universe lessened and brought within his grasp,
because
"Time and space relations vanish as laws are known."--"The moral
law lies at the centre of Nature and radiates to the
circumference."--"All things with which we deal preach to us.
What is a farm but a mute gospel?"--"From the child's successive
possession of his several senses up to the hour when he sayeth, 'Thy
will be done!' he is learning the secret that he can reduce under
his will, not only particular events, but great classes, nay, the
whole series of events, and so conform all facts to his character."
The unity in variety which meets us everywhere is again referred to.
He alludes to the ministry of our friendships to our education. When a
friend has done for our education in the way of filling our minds with
sweet and solid wisdom "it is a sign to us that his office is closing,
and he is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time." This
thought was probably suggested by the death of his brother Charles,
which occurred a few months before "Nature" was published. He had
already spoken in the first chapter of this little book as if from some
recent experience of his own, doubtless the same bereavement. "To a man
laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it.
Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has
just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down
over less worth in the population." This was the first effect of the
loss; but after a time he recognizes a superintending power which orders
events for us in wisdom which we could not see at first.
The chapter on _Idealism_ must be read by all who believe themselves
capable of abstract thought, if they would not fall under the judgment
of Turgot, which Emerson quotes: "He that has never doubted the
existence of matter may be assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical
inquiries." The most essential statement is this:--
"It is a sufficient account of that Appearance we call the World,
that God will teach a human mind, and so makes it the receiver of a
certain number of congruent sensations, which we call sun and moon,
man and woman, house and trade. In my utter impotence to test
the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the
impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what
difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in Heaven, or
some god paints the image in the firmament of the Soul?"
We need not follow the thought through the argument from illusions, like
that when we look at the shore from a moving ship, and others which
cheat the senses by false appearances.
The poet animates Nature with his own thoughts, perceives the affinities
between Nature and the soul, with Beauty as his main end. The
philosopher pursues Truth, but, "not less than the poet, postpones
the apparent order and relation of things to the empire of thought."
Religion and ethics agree with all lower culture in degrading Nature
and suggesting its dependence on Spirit. "The devotee flouts
Nature."--"Plotinus was ashamed of his body."--"Michael Angelo said of
external beauty, 'it is the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses
the soul, which He has called into time.'" Emerson would not
undervalue Nature as looked at through the senses and "the unrenewed
understanding." "I have no hostility to Nature," he says, "but a
child's love of it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and
melons."--But, "seen in the light of thought, the world always is
phenomenal; and virtue subordinates it to the mind. Idealism sees the
world in God,"--as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant
eternity, for the contemplation of the soul.
The unimaginative reader is likely to find himself off soundings in the
next chapter, which has for its title _Spirit_.
Idealism only denies the existence of matter; it does not satisfy the
demands of the spirit. "It leaves God out of me."--Of these three
questions, What is matter? Whence is it? Where to? The ideal theory
answers the first only. The reply is that matter is a phenomenon, not a
substance.
"But when we come to inquire Whence is matter? and Whereto? many
truths arise to us out of the recesses of consciousness. We learn
that the highest is present to the soul of man, that the dread
universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or
power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all
things exist, and that by which they are; that spirit creates; that
behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; that spirit is
one and not compound; that spirit does not act upon us from
without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through
ourselves."--"As a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the
bosom of God; he is nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at
his need, inexhaustible power."
Man may have access to the entire mind of the Creator, himself become a
"creator in the finite."
"As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more
evident. We are as much strangers in nature as we are aliens from
God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer
run away from us; the bear and the tiger rend us."
All this has an Old Testament sound as of a lost Paradise. In the next
chapter he dreams of Paradise regained.
This next and last chapter is entitled _Prospects_. He begins with
a bold claim for the province of intuition as against induction,
undervaluing the "half sight of science" as against the "untaught
sallies of the spirit," the surmises and vaticinations of the mind,--the
"imperfect theories, and sentences which contain glimpses of truth." In
a word, he would have us leave the laboratory and its crucibles for
the sibyl's cave and its tripod. We can all--or most of us,
certainly--recognize something of truth, much of imagination, and more
of danger in speculations of this sort. They belong to visionaries and
to poets. Emerson feels distinctly enough that he is getting into the
realm of poetry. He quotes five beautiful verses from George Herbert's
"Poem on Man." Presently he is himself taken off his feet into the air
of song, and finishes his Essay with "some traditions of man and nature
which a certain poet sang to me."--"A man is a god in ruins."--"Man is
the dwarf of himself. Once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit. He
filled nature with his overflowing currents. Out from him sprang the
sun and moon; from man the sun, from woman the moon."--But he no longer
fills the mere shell he had made for himself; "he is shrunk to a drop."
Still something of elemental power remains to him. "It is instinct."
Such teachings he got from his "poet." It is a kind of New England
Genesis in place of the Old Testament one. We read in the Sermon on the
Mount: "Be ye therefore perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect."
The discourse which comes to us from the Trimount oracle commands us,
"Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to
the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions." The
seer of Patmos foretells a heavenly Jerusalem, of which he says, "There
shall in no wise enter into it anything which defileth." The sage of
Concord foresees a new heaven on earth. "A correspondent revolution in
things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable
appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, mad-houses, prisons,
enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more seen."
* * * * *
It may be remembered that Calvin, in his Commentary on the New
Testament, stopped when he came to the book of the "Revelation." He
found it full of difficulties which he did not care to encounter. Yet,
considered only as a poem, the vision of St. John is full of noble
imagery and wonderful beauty. "Nature" is the Book of Revelation of our
Saint Radulphus. It has its obscurities, its extravagances, but as a
poem it is noble and inspiring. It was objected to on the score of its
pantheistic character, as Wordsworth's "Lines composed near Tintern
Abbey" had been long before. But here and there it found devout readers
who were captivated by its spiritual elevation and great poetical
beauty, among them one who wrote of it in the "Democratic Review" in
terms of enthusiastic admiration.
Mr. Bowen, the Professor of Natural Theology and Moral Philosophy
in Harvard University, treated this singular semi-philosophical,
semi-poetical little book in a long article in the "Christian Examiner,"
headed "Transcendentalism," and published in the January number for
1837. The acute and learned Professor meant to deal fairly with his
subject. But if one has ever seen a sagacious pointer making the
acquaintance of a box-tortoise, he will have an idea of the relations
between the reviewer and the reviewed as they appear in this article.
The professor turns the book over and over,--inspects it from plastron
to carapace, so to speak, and looks for openings everywhere, sometimes
successfully, sometimes in vain. He finds good writing and sound
philosophy, passages of great force and beauty of expression, marred by
obscurity, under assumptions and faults of style. He was not, any more
than the rest of us, acclimated to the Emersonian atmosphere, and after
some not unjust or unkind comments with which many readers will heartily
agree, confesses his bewilderment, saying:--
"On reviewing what we have already said of this singular work, the
criticism seems to be couched in contradictory terms; we can only
allege in excuse the fact that the book is a contradiction in
itself."
Carlyle says in his letter of February 13, 1837:--
"Your little azure-colored 'Nature' gave me true satisfaction. I
read it, and then lent it about to all my acquaintances that had a
sense for such things; from whom a similar verdict always came back.
You say it is the first chapter of something greater. I call it
rather the Foundation and Ground-plan on which you may build
whatsoever of great and true has been given you to build. It is the
true Apocalypse, this when the 'Open Secret' becomes revealed to a
man. I rejoice much in the glad serenity of soul with which you look
out on this wondrous Dwelling-place of yours and mine,--with an ear
for the _Ewigen Melodien_, which pipe in the winds round us, and
utter themselves forth in all sounds and sights and things; _not_ to
be written down by gamut-machinery; but which all right writing is a
kind of attempt to write down."
The first edition of "Nature" had prefixed to it the following words
from Plotinus: "Nature is but an image or imitation of wisdom, the last
thing of the soul; Nature being a thing which doth only do, but not
know." This is omitted in after editions, and in its place we read:--
"A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form."
The copy of "Nature" from which I take these lines, his own, of course,
like so many others which he prefixed to his different Essays, was
printed in the year 1849, ten years before the publication of Darwin's
"Origin of Species," twenty years and more before the publication of
"The Descent of Man." But the "Vestiges of Creation," published in 1844,
had already popularized the resuscitated theories of Lamarck. It seems
as if Emerson had a warning from the poetic instinct which, when it does
not precede the movement of the scientific intellect, is the first to
catch the hint of its discoveries. There is nothing more audacious in
the poet's conception of the worm looking up towards humanity, than
the naturalist's theory that the progenitor of the human race was an
acephalous mollusk. "I will not be sworn," says Benedick, "but love may
transform me to an oyster." For "love" read science.
Unity in variety, "_il piu nell uno_" symbolism of Nature and its
teachings, generation of phenomena,--appearances,--from spirit, to
which they correspond and which they obey; evolution of the best and
elimination of the worst as the law of being; all this and much more may
be found in the poetic utterances of this slender Essay. It fell like an
aerolite, unasked for, unaccounted for, unexpected, almost unwelcome,--a
stumbling-block to be got out of the well-trodden highway of New England
scholastic intelligence. But here and there it found a reader to whom it
was, to borrow, with slight changes, its own quotation,--
"The golden key
Which opes the palace of eternity,"
inasmuch as it carried upon its face the highest certificate of truth,
because it animated them to create a new world for themselves through
the purification of their own souls.
Next to "Nature" in the series of his collected publications comes "The
American Scholar. An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society
at Cambridge, August 31, 1837."
The Society known by these three letters, long a mystery to the
uninitiated, but which, filled out and interpreted, signify that
philosophy is the guide of life, is one of long standing, the
annual meetings of which have called forth the best efforts of many
distinguished scholars and thinkers. Rarely has any one of the annual
addresses been listened to with such profound attention and interest.
Mr. Lowell says of it, that its delivery "was an event without any
former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be always treasured
in the memory for its picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded
and breathless aisles, what windows clustering with eager heads, what
enthusiasm of approval, what grim silence of foregone dissent!"
Mr. Cooke says truly of this oration, that nearly all his leading ideas
found expression in it. This was to be expected in an address delivered
before such an audience. Every real thinker's world of thought has its
centre in a few formulae, about which they revolve as the planets circle
round the sun which cast them off. But those who lost themselves now and
then in the pages of "Nature" will find their way clearly enough through
those of "The American Scholar." It is a plea for generous culture;
for the development of all the faculties, many of which tend to become
atrophied by the exclusive pursuit of single objects of thought. It
begins with a note like a trumpet call.
"Thus far," he says, "our holiday has been simply a friendly sign
of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to
give to letters any more. As such it is precious as the sign of an
indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when
it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard
intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and
fill the postponed expectations of the world with something better
than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our
long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a
close. The millions that around us are rushing into life cannot
always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events,
actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can
doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in
the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers
announce shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years?"
Emerson finds his text in the old fable which tells that Man, as he was
in the beginning, was divided into men, as the hand was divided into
fingers, the better to answer the end of his being. The fable covers the
doctrine that there is One Man; present to individuals only in a partial
manner; and that we must take the whole of society to find the whole
man. Unfortunately the unit has been too minutely subdivided, and many
faculties are practically lost for want of use. "The state of society is
one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and
strut about so many walking monsters,--a good finger, a neck, a stomach,
an elbow, but never a man.... Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing,
into many things.... The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute
book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor a rope of the ship."
This complaint is by no means a new one. Scaliger says, as quoted
by omnivorous old Burton: "_Nequaquam, nos homines sumus sed partes
hominis_." The old illustration of this used to be found in pin-making.
It took twenty different workmen to make a pin, beginning with drawing
the wire and ending with sticking in the paper. Each expert, skilled
in one small performance only, was reduced to a minute fraction of a
fraction of humanity. If the complaint was legitimate in Scaliger's
time, it was better founded half a century ago when Mr. Emerson found
cause for it. It has still more serious significance to-day, when
in every profession, in every branch of human knowledge, special
acquirements, special skill have greatly tended to limit the range of
men's thoughts and working faculties.
"In this distribution of functions the scholar is the delegated
intellect. In the right state he is _Man thinking_. In the
degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a
mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.
In this view of him, as Man thinking, the theory of his office is
continued. Him Nature solicits with all her placid, all her monitory
pictures; him the past instructs; him the future invites."
Emerson proceeds to describe and illustrate the influences of nature
upon the mind, returning to the strain of thought with which his
previous Essay has made us familiar. He next considers the influence of
the past, and especially of books as the best type of that influence.
"Books are the best of things well used; abused among the worst." It is
hard to distil what is already a quintessence without loss of what is
just as good as the product of our labor. A sentence or two may serve to
give an impression of the epigrammatic wisdom of his counsel.
"Each age must write its own books, or, rather, each generation
for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit
this."
When a book has gained a certain hold on the mind, it is liable to
become an object of idolatrous regard.
"Instantly the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The
sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the
incursions of reason, having once so opened, having received this
book, stands upon it and makes an outcry if it is disparaged.
Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not
by Man thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set
out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principle.
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to
accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given;
forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in
libraries when they wrote these books.--One must he an inventor to
read well. As the proverb says, 'He that would bring home the wealth
of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies.'--When the
mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book
we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is
doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the
world."
It is not enough that the scholar should be a student of nature and of
books. He must take a part in the affairs of the world about him.
"Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential.
Without it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never ripen
into truth.--The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action
past by, as a loss of power. It is the raw material out of which the
intellect moulds her splendid products. A strange process, too, this
by which experience is converted into thought as a mulberry leaf is
converted into satin. The manufacture goes forward at all hours."
Emerson does not use the words "unconscious cerebration," but these
last words describe the process in an unmistakable way. The beautiful
paragraph in which he pictures the transformation, the transfiguration
of experience, closes with a sentence so thoroughly characteristic, so
Emersonially Emersonian, that I fear some readers who thought they were
his disciples when they came to it went back and walked no more with
him, at least through the pages of this discourse. The reader shall have
the preceding sentence to prepare him for the one referred to.
"There is no fact, no event in our private history, which shall not,
sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by
soaring from our body into the empyrean.
"Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and
dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many
another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already;
friend and relative, professions and party, town and country, nation
and world must also soar and sing."
Having spoken of the education of the scholar by nature, by books, by
action, he speaks of the scholar's duties. "They may all," he says, "be
comprised in self-trust." We have to remember that the _self_ he means
is the highest self, that consciousness which he looks upon as open to
the influx of the divine essence from which it came, and towards which
all its upward tendencies lead, always aspiring, never resting; as he
sings in "The Sphinx ":--
"The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found,--for new heavens
He spurneth the old."
"First one, then another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing greater
by all these supplies, we crave a better and more abundant food. The
man has never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be
enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side of
this unbounded, unboundable empire. It is one central fire, which,
flaming now out of the lips of Etna, lightens the Capes of Sicily,
and now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and
vineyards of Naples. It is one light which beams out of a thousand
stars. It is one soul which animates all men."
And so he comes to the special application of the principles he has laid
down to the American scholar of to-day. He does not spare his censure;
he is full of noble trust and manly courage. Very refreshing it is
to remember in this day of specialists, when the walking fraction of
humanity he speaks of would hardly include a whole finger, but rather
confine itself to the single joint of the finger, such words as these:--
"The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the
ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the
hopes of the future. He must he a university of knowledges.... We
have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of
the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative,
tame.--The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant.--The mind of
this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There
is no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant."
The young men of promise are discouraged and disgusted.
"What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young
men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career do not
yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably on his
instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him."
Each man must be a unit,--must yield that peculiar fruit which he was
created to bear.
"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands;
we will speak our own minds.--A nation of men will for the first
time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the
Divine Soul which also inspires all men."
This grand Oration was our intellectual Declaration of Independence.
Nothing like it had been heard in the halls of Harvard since Samuel
Adams supported the affirmative of the question, "Whether it be lawful
to resist the chief magistrate, if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be
preserved." It was easy to find fault with an expression here and there.
The dignity, not to say the formality of an Academic assembly was
startled by the realism that looked for the infinite in "the meal in the
firkin; the milk in the pan." They could understand the deep thoughts
suggested by "the meanest flower that blows," but these domestic
illustrations had a kind of nursery homeliness about them which the
grave professors and sedate clergymen were unused to expect on so
stately an occasion. But the young men went out from it as if a prophet
had been proclaiming to them "Thus saith the Lord." No listener ever
forgot that Address, and among all the noble utterances of the speaker
it may be questioned if one ever contained more truth in language more
like that of immediate inspiration.
CHAPTER V.
1838-1843. AET. 35-40.
Section 1. Divinity School Address.--Correspondence.--Lectures on Human
Life.--Letters to James Freeman Clarke.--Dartmouth College Address:
Literary Ethics.--Waterville College Address: The Method of
Nature.--Other Addresses: Man the Reformer.--Lecture on the Times.--The
Conservative.--The Transcendentalist.--Boston "Transcendentalism."--"The
Dial."--Brook Farm.
Section 2. First Series of Essays published.--Contents: History,
Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence,
Heroism, The Oversoul, Circles, Intellect, Art.--Emerson's Account
of his Mode of Life in a Letter to Carlyle.--Death of Emerson's
Son.--Threnody.
Section 1. On Sunday evening, July 15, 1838, Emerson delivered an
Address before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge,
which caused a profound sensation in religious circles, and led to a
controversy, in which Emerson had little more than the part of Patroclus
when the Greeks and Trojans fought over his body. In its simplest
and broadest statement this discourse was a plea for the individual
consciousness as against all historical creeds, bibles, churches; for
the soul as the supreme judge in spiritual matters.
He begins with a beautiful picture which must be transferred without the
change of an expression:--
"In this refulgent Summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath
of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with
fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and
sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm of Gilead, and the new
hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade.
Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost
spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge
globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and
prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn."
How softly the phrases of the gentle iconoclast steal upon the ear,
and how they must have hushed the questioning audience into pleased
attention! The "Song of Songs, which is Solomon's," could not have wooed
the listener more sweetly. "Thy lips drop as the honeycomb: honey and
milk are under thy tongue, and the smell of thy garments is like the
smell of Lebanon." And this was the prelude of a discourse which, when
it came to be printed, fared at the hands of many a theologian, who did
not think himself a bigot, as the roll which Baruch wrote with ink from
the words of Jeremiah fared at the hands of Jehoiakim, the King of
Judah. He listened while Jehudi read the opening passages. But "when
Jehudi had read three or four leaves he cut it with the penknife, and
cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was
consumed in the fire that was on the hearth." Such was probably the fate
of many a copy of this famous discourse.
It is reverential, but it is also revolutionary. The file-leaders of
Unitarianism drew back in dismay, and the ill names which had often been
applied to them were now heard from their own lips as befitting this
new heresy; if so mild a reproach as that of heresy belonged to this
alarming manifesto. And yet, so changed is the whole aspect of the
theological world since the time when that discourse was delivered that
it is read as calmly to-day as a common "Election Sermon," if such are
ever read at all. A few extracts, abstracts, and comments may give the
reader who has not the Address before him some idea of its contents and
its tendencies.
The material universe, which he has just pictured in its summer beauty,
deserves our admiration. But when the mind opens and reveals the laws
which govern the world of phenomena, it shrinks into a mere fable and
illustration of this mind. What am I? What is?--are questions always
asked, never fully answered. We would study and admire forever.
But above intellectual curiosity, there is the sentiment of virtue. Man
is born for the good, for the perfect, low as he now lies in evil and
weakness. "The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the
presence of certain divine laws.--These laws refuse to be adequately
stated.--They elude our persevering thought; yet we read them hourly in
each other's faces, in each other's actions, in our own remorse.--The
intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of
the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves.--As we are, so we
associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity,
the vile. Thus, of their own volition, souls proceed into heaven, into
hell."
These facts, Emerson says, have always suggested to man that the
world is the product not of manifold power, but of one will, of one
mind,--that one mind is everywhere active.--"All things proceed out of
the same spirit, and all things conspire with it." While a man seeks
good ends, nature helps him; when he seeks other ends, his being
shrinks, "he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute
badness is absolute death."--"When he says 'I ought;' when love warms
him; when he chooses, warned from on high, the good and great deed; then
deep melodies wander through his soul from Supreme Wisdom."
"This sentiment lies at the foundation of society and successively
creates all forms of worship.--This thought dwelled always deepest
in the minds of men in the devout and contemplative East; not alone in
Palestine, where it reached its purest expression, but in Egypt,
in Persia, in India, in China. Europe has always owed to Oriental
genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men
found agreeable and true. And the unique impression of Jesus upon
mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the
history of this world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this
infusion."
But this truth cannot be received at second hand; it is an intuition.
What another announces, I must find true in myself, or I must reject
it. If the word of another is taken instead of this primary faith, the
church, the state, art, letters, life, all suffer degradation,--"the
doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base doctrine of the majority of
voices usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul."
The following extract will show the view that he takes of Christianity
and its Founder, and sufficiently explain the antagonism called forth by
the discourse:--
"Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with
open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony,
ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there.
Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was
true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in
man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his World.
He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'I am Divine. Through
me God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see
thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' But what a distortion
did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the
following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear
to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this
high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, 'This
was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you if you say
he was a man.' The idioms of his language and the figures of his
rhetoric have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not
built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a
Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He
spoke of Miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and
all that man doth, and he knew that this miracle shines as the
character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian
churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one
with the blowing clover and the falling rain."
He proceeds to point out what he considers the great defects of
historical Christianity. It has exaggerated the personal, the positive,
the ritual. It has wronged mankind by monopolizing all virtues for the
Christian name. It is only by his holy thoughts that Jesus serves us.
"To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul." The
preachers do a wrong to Jesus by removing him from our human sympathies;
they should not degrade his life and dialogues by insulation and
peculiarity.
Another defect of the traditional and limited way of using the mind of
Christ is that the Moral Nature--the Law of Laws--is not explored as the
fountain of the established teaching in society. "Men have come to speak
of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were
dead."--"The soul is not preached. The church seems to totter to its
fall, almost all life extinct.--The stationariness of religion; the
assumption that the age of inspiration is past; that the Bible is
closed; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by representing
him as a man; indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our
theology. It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not
was; that he speaketh, not spake. The true Christianity--a faith like
Christ's in the infinitude of Man--is lost."
When Emerson came to what his earlier ancestors would have called the
"practical application," some of his young hearers must have been
startled at the style of his address.
"Yourself a new--born bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all
conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. Look to it
first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and
money are nothing to you,--are not bandages over your eyes, that
you cannot see,--but live with the privilege of the
immeasurable mind."
Emerson recognizes two inestimable advantages as the gift of
Christianity; first the Sabbath,--hardly a Christian institution,--and
secondly the institution of preaching. He spoke not only eloquently, but
with every evidence of deep sincerity and conviction. He had sacrificed
an enviable position to that inner voice of duty which he now proclaimed
as the sovereign law over all written or spoken words. But he was
assailing the cherished beliefs of those before him, and of Christendom
generally; not with hard or bitter words, not with sarcasm or levity,
rather as one who felt himself charged with a message from the same
divinity who had inspired the prophets and evangelists of old with
whatever truth was in their messages. He might be wrong, but his words
carried the evidence of his own serene, unshaken confidence that the
spirit of all truth was with him. Some of his audience, at least, must
have felt the contrast between his utterances and the formal discourses
they had so long listened to, and said to themselves, "he speaks 'as one
having authority, and not as the Scribes.'"
Such teaching, however, could not be suffered to go unchallenged. Its
doctrines were repudiated in the "Christian Examiner," the leading organ
of the Unitarian denomination. The Rev. Henry Ware, greatly esteemed
and honored, whose colleague he had been, addressed a letter to him, in
which he expressed the feeling that some of the statements of Emerson's
discourse would tend to overthrow the authority and influence of
Christianity. To this note Emerson returned the following answer:--
"What you say about the discourse at Divinity College is just what I
might expect from your truth and charity, combined with your known
opinions. I am not a stick or a stone, as one said in the old time,
and could not but feel pain in saying some things in that place and
presence which I supposed would meet with dissent, I may say, of
dear friends and benefactors of mine. Yet, as my conviction is
perfect in the substantial truth of the doctrines of this discourse,
and is not very new, you will see at once that it must appear very
important that it be spoken; and I thought I could not pay the
nobleness of my friends so mean a compliment as to suppress my
opposition to their supposed views, out of fear of offence. I would
rather say to them, these things look thus to me, to you otherwise.
Let us say our uttermost word, and let the all-pervading truth, as
it surely will, judge between us. Either of us would, I doubt not,
be willingly apprised of his error. Meantime, I shall be admonished
by this expression of your thought, to revise with greater care the
'address,' before it is printed (for the use of the class): and I
heartily thank you for this expression of your tried toleration and
love."
Dr. Ware followed up his note with a sermon, preached on the 23d of
September, in which he dwells especially on the necessity of adding the
idea of personality to the abstractions of Emerson's philosophy, and
sent it to him with a letter, the kindness and true Christian spirit of
which were only what were inseparable from all the thoughts and feelings
of that most excellent and truly apostolic man.
To this letter Emerson sent the following reply:--
CONCORD, October 8, 1838.
"MY DEAR SIR,--I ought sooner to have acknowledged your kind letter
of last week, and the sermon it accompanied. The letter was right
manly and noble. The sermon, too, I have read with attention. If it
assails any doctrine of mine,--perhaps I am not so quick to see it
as writers generally,--certainly I did not feel any disposition
to depart from my habitual contentment, that you should say your
thought, whilst I say mine. I believe I must tell you what I think
of my new position. It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men
at Cambridge and Boston should think of raising me into an object of
criticism. I have always been--from my very incapacity of methodical
writing--a 'chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to
rail,--lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed
near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the
notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated
fully the advantages of my position, for I well know there is no
scholar less willing or less able than myself to be a polemic. I
could not give an account of myself, if challenged. I could not
possibly give you one of the 'arguments' you cruelly hint at, on
which any doctrine of mine stands; for I do not know what arguments
are in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in
telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it
is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not even see
that either of these questions admits of an answer. So that in the
present droll posture of my affairs, when I see myself suddenly
raised to the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I
advert to the supposed duties of such a personage, who is to make
good his thesis against all comers. I certainly shall do no such
thing. I shall read what you and other good men write, as I have
always done, glad when you speak my thoughts, and skipping the
page that has nothing for me. I shall go on just as before, seeing
whatever I can, and telling what I see; and, I suppose, with the
same fortune that has hitherto attended me,--the joy of finding that
my abler and better brothers, who work with the sympathy of society,
loving and beloved, do now and then unexpectedly confirm my
conceptions, and find my nonsense is only their own thought in
motley,--and so I am your affectionate servant," etc.
The controversy which followed is a thing of the past; Emerson took no
part in it, and we need not return to the discussion. He knew his
office and has defined it in the clearest manner in the letter just
given,--"Seeing whatever I can, and telling what I see." But among his
listeners and readers was a man of very different mental constitution,
not more independent or fearless, but louder and more combative, whose
voice soon became heard and whose strength soon began to be felt in the
long battle between the traditional and immanent inspiration,--Theodore
Parker. If Emerson was the moving spirit, he was the right arm in the
conflict, which in one form or another has been waged up to the present
day.
In the winter of 1838-39 Emerson delivered his usual winter course
of Lectures. He names them in a letter to Carlyle as follows: "Ten
Lectures: I. The Doctrine of the Soul; II. Home; III. The School; IV.
Love; V. Genius; VI. The Protest; VII. Tragedy; VIII. Comedy; IX. Duty;
X. Demonology. I designed to add two more, but my lungs played me false
with unseasonable inflammation, so I discoursed no more on Human Life."
Two or three of these titles only are prefixed to his published Lectures
or Essays; Love, in the first volume of Essays; Demonology in "Lectures
and Biographical Sketches;" and "The Comic" in "Letters and Social
Aims."
* * * * *
I owe the privilege of making use of the two following letters to my
kind and honored friend, James Freeman Clarke.
The first letter was accompanied by the Poem "The Humble-bee," which
was first published by Mr. Clarke in the "Western Messenger," from the
autograph copy, which begins "Fine humble-bee! fine humble-bee!" and has
a number of other variations from the poem as printed in his collected
works.
CONCORD, December 7, 1838.
MY DEAR SIR,--Here are the verses. They have pleased some of my
friends, and so may please some of your readers, and you asked me
in the spring if I hadn't somewhat to contribute to your journal. I
remember in your letter you mentioned the remark of some friend of
yours that the verses, "Take, O take those lips away," were not
Shakspeare's; I think they are. Beaumont, nor Fletcher, nor both
together were ever, I think, visited by such a starry gleam as that
stanza. I know it is in "Rollo," but it is in "Measure for Measure"
also; and I remember noticing that the Malones, and Stevens, and
critical gentry were about evenly divided, these for Shakspeare, and
those for Beaumont and Fletcher. But the internal evidence is all
for one, none for the other. If he did not write it, they did not,
and we shall have some fourth unknown singer. What care we _who_
sung this or that. It is we at last who sing. Your friend and
servant, R.W. EMERSON.
TO JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.
CONCORD, February 27, 1839.
MY DEAR SIR,--I am very sorry to have made you wait so long for an
answer to your flattering request for two such little poems. You are
quite welcome to the lines "To the Rhodora;" but I think they need
the superscription ["Lines on being asked 'Whence is the Flower?'"].
Of the other verses ["Good-by proud world," etc] I send you a
corrected copy, but I wonder so much at your wishing to print them
that I think you must read them once again with your critical
spectacles before they go further. They were written sixteen years
ago, when I kept school in Boston, and lived in a corner of Roxbury
called Canterbury. They have a slight misanthropy, a shade deeper
than belongs to me; and as it seems nowadays I am a philosopher and
am grown to have opinions, I think they must have an apologetic
date, though I well know that poetry that needs a date is no poetry,
and so you will wiselier suppress them. I heartily wish I had any
verses which with a clear mind I could send you in lieu of these
juvenilities. It is strange, seeing the delight we take in verses,
that we can so seldom write them, and so are not ashamed to lay up
old ones, say sixteen years, instead of improvising them as freely
as the wind blows, whenever we and our brothers are attuned to
music. I have heard of a citizen who made an annual joke. I believe
I have in April or May an annual poetic _conatus_ rather than
_afflatus_, experimenting to the length of thirty lines or so, if I
may judge from the dates of the rhythmical scraps I detect among my
MSS. I look upon this incontinence as merely the redundancy of
a susceptibility to poetry which makes all the bards my daily
treasures, and I can well run the risk of being ridiculous once a
year for the benefit of happy reading all the other days. In regard
to the Providence Discourse, I have no copy of it; and as far as I
remember its contents, I have since used whatever is striking in it;
but I will get the MS., if Margaret Fuller has it, and you shall
have it if it will pass muster. I shall certainly avail myself
of the good order you gave me for twelve copies of the "Carlyle
Miscellanies," so soon as they appear. He, T.C., writes in excellent
spirits of his American friends and readers.... A new book, he
writes, is growing in him, though not to begin until his spring
lectures are over (which begin in May). Your sister Sarah was kind
enough to carry me the other day to see some pencil sketches done
by Stuart Newton when in the Insane Hospital. They seemed to me to
betray the richest invention, so rich as almost to say, why draw any
line since you can draw all? Genius has given you the freedom of the
universe, why then come within any walls? And this seems to be the
old moral which we draw from our fable, read it how or where you
will, that we cannot make one good stroke until we can make every
possible stroke; and when we can one, every one seems superfluous. I
heartily thank you for the good wishes you send me to open the year,
and I say them back again to you. Your field is a world, and all men
are your spectators, and all men respect the true and great-hearted
service you render. And yet it is not spectator nor spectacle that
concerns either you or me. The whole world is sick of that very ail,
of being seen, and of seemliness. It belongs to the brave now to
trust themselves infinitely, and to sit and hearken alone. I am glad
to see William Channing is one of your coadjutors. Mrs. Jameson's
new book, I should think, would bring a caravan of travellers,
aesthetic, artistic, and what not, up your mighty stream, or along
the lakes to Mackinaw. As I read I almost vowed an exploration, but
I doubt if I ever get beyond the Hudson.
Your affectionate servant, R.W. EMERSON.
On the 24th of July, 1838, a little more than a week after the delivery
of the Address before the Divinity School, Mr. Emerson delivered an
Oration before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College. If any rumor
of the former discourse had reached Dartmouth, the audience must have
been prepared for a much more startling performance than that to
which they listened. The bold avowal which fluttered the dovecotes of
Cambridge would have sounded like the crash of doom to the cautious
old tenants of the Hanover aviary. If there were any drops of false or
questionable doctrine in the silver shower of eloquence under which
they had been sitting, the plumage of orthodoxy glistened with unctuous
repellents, and a shake or two on coming out of church left the sturdy
old dogmatists as dry as ever.
Those who remember the Dartmouth College of that day cannot help smiling
at the thought of the contrast in the way of thinking between the
speaker and the larger part, or at least the older part, of his
audience. President Lord was well known as the scriptural defender of
the institution of slavery. Not long before a controversy had arisen,
provoked by the setting up of the Episcopal form of worship by one of
the Professors, the most estimable and scholarly Dr. Daniel Oliver.
Perhaps, however, the extreme difference between the fundamental
conceptions of Mr. Emerson and the endemic orthodoxy of that place
and time was too great for any hostile feeling to be awakened by the
sweet-voiced and peaceful-mannered speaker. There is a kind of harmony
between boldly contrasted beliefs like that between complementary
colors. It is when two shades of the same color are brought side by side
that comparison makes them odious to each other. Mr. Emerson could go
anywhere and find willing listeners among those farthest in their belief
from the views he held. Such was his simplicity of speech and manner,
such his transparent sincerity, that it was next to impossible to
quarrel with the gentle image-breaker.
The subject of Mr. Emerson's Address is _Literary Ethics._ It is on the
same lofty plane of sentiment and in the same exalted tone of eloquence
as the Phi Beta Kappa Address. The word impassioned would seem
misplaced, if applied to any of Mr. Emerson's orations. But these
discourses were both written and delivered in the freshness of his
complete manhood. They were produced at a time when his mind had learned
its powers and the work to which it was called, in the struggle which
freed him from the constraint of stereotyped confessions of faith and
all peremptory external authority. It is not strange, therefore, to find
some of his paragraphs glowing with heat and sparkling with imaginative
illustration.
"Neither years nor books," he says, "have yet availed to extirpate a
prejudice rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and
earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men." And yet,
he confesses that the scholars of this country have not fulfilled
the reasonable expectation of mankind. "Men here, as elsewhere, are
indisposed to innovation and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery
productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought."
For all this he offers those correctives which in various forms underlie
all his teachings. "The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his
confidence in the attributes of the Intellect." New lessons of spiritual
independence, fresh examples and illustrations, are drawn from history
and biography. There is a passage here so true to nature that it permits
a half page of quotation and a line or two of comment:--
"An intimation of these broad rights is familiar in the sense of
injury which men feel in the assumption of any man to limit their
possible progress. We resent all criticism which denies us anything
that lies In our line of advance. Say to the man of letters, that
he cannot paint a Transfiguration, or build a steamboat, or be a
grand-marshal, and he will not seem to himself depreciated. But deny
to him any quality of literary or metaphysical power, and he is
piqued. Concede to him genius, which is a sort of stoical _plenum_
annulling the comparative, and he is content; but concede him
talents never so rare, denying him genius, and he is aggrieved."
But it ought to be added that if the pleasure of denying the genius of
their betters were denied to the mediocrities, their happiness would be
forever blighted.
From the resources of the American Scholar Mr. Emerson passes to his
tasks. Nature, as it seems to him, has never yet been truly studied.
"Poetry has scarcely chanted its first song. The perpetual admonition of
Nature to us is, 'The world is new, untried. Do not believe the past. I
give you the universe a virgin to-day.'" And in the same way he would
have the scholar look at history, at philosophy. The world belongs to
the student, but he must put himself into harmony with the constitution
of things. "He must embrace solitude as a bride." Not superstitiously,
but after having found out, as a little experience will teach him, all
that society can do for him with its foolish routine. I have spoken of
the exalted strain into which Mr. Emerson sometimes rises in the midst
of his general serenity. Here is an instance of it:--
"You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear
that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. 'What
is this truth you seek? What is this beauty?' men will ask, with
derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore
truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say,
'As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early
visions: I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and
romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season;'--then
dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and
poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand
thousand men.--Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from
every object in nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to
show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom. Why should you
renounce your right to traverse the starlit deserts of truth, for
the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has
its roof and house and board. Make yourself necessary to the world,
and mankind will give you bread; and if not store of it, yet such as
shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all
men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope."
The next Address Emerson delivered was "The Method of Nature," before
the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11,
1841.
In writing to Carlyle on the 31st of July, he says: "As usual at this
season of the year, I, incorrigible spouting Yankee, am writing an
oration to deliver to the boys in one of our little country colleges
nine days hence.... My whole philosophy--which is very real--teaches
acquiescence and optimism. Only when I see how much work is to be done,
what room for a poet--for any spiritualist--in this great, intelligent,
sensual, and avaricious America, I lament my fumbling fingers and
stammering tongue." It may be remembered that Mr. Matthew Arnold quoted
the expression about America, which sounded more harshly as pronounced
in a public lecture than as read in a private letter.
The Oration shows the same vein of thought as the letter. Its title is
"The Method of Nature." He begins with congratulations on the enjoyments
and promises of this literary Anniversary.
"The scholars are the priests of that thought which establishes the
foundations of the castle."--"We hear too much of the results of
machinery, commerce, and the useful arts. We are a puny and a fickle
folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases. The rapid
wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the
incessant expansion of our population and arts, enchants the eyes
of all the rest; this luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the
bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the
farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and
feature of man."--"While the multitude of men degrade each other,
and give currency to desponding doctrines, the scholar must be a
bringer of hope, and must reinforce man against himself."
I think we may detect more of the manner of Carlyle in this Address than
in any of those which preceded it.
"Why then goest thou as some Boswell or literary worshipper to this
saint or to that? That is the only lese-majesty. Here art thou with
whom so long the universe travailed in labor; darest thou think
meanly of thyself whom the stalwart Fate brought forth to unite his
ragged sides, to shoot the gulf, to reconcile the irreconcilable?"
That there is an "intimate divinity" which is the source of all true
wisdom, that the duty of man is to listen to its voice and to follow it,
that "the sanity of man needs the poise of this immanent force,"
that the rule is "Do what you know, and perception is converted into
character,"--all this is strongly enforced and richly illustrated in
this Oration. Just how easily it was followed by the audience, just how
far they were satisfied with its large principles wrought into a few
broad precepts, it would be easier at this time to ask than to learn.
We notice not so much the novelty of the ideas to be found in this
discourse on "The Method of Nature," as the pictorial beauty of
their expression. The deep reverence which underlies all Emerson's
speculations is well shown in this paragraph:--
"We ought to celebrate this hour by expressions of manly joy. Not
thanks nor prayer seem quite the highest or truest name for
our communication with the infinite,--but glad and conspiring
reception,--reception that becomes giving in its turn as the
receiver is only the All-Giver in part and in infancy."--"It is God
in us which checks the language of petition by grander thought. In
the bottom of the heart it is said: 'I am, and by me, O child! this
fair body and world of thine stands and grows. I am, all things are
mine; and all mine are thine.'"
We must not quarrel with his peculiar expressions. He says, in this same
paragraph, "I cannot,--nor can any man,--speak precisely of things so
sublime; but it seems to me the wit of man, his strength, his grace, his
tendency, his art, is the grace and the presence of God. It is beyond
explanation."
"We can point nowhere to anything final but tendency; but tendency
appears on all hands; planet, system, constellation, total nature is
growing like a field of maize in July; is becoming something else;
is in rapid metamorphosis. The embryo does not more strive to be
man, than yonder burr of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring,
a comet, a globe, and parent of new stars." "In short, the spirit
and peculiarity of that impression nature makes on us is this, that
it does not exist to any one, or to any number of particular ends,
but to numberless and endless benefit; that there is in it no
private will, no rebel leaf or limb, but the whole is oppressed by
one superincumbent tendency, obeys that redundancy or excess of life
which in conscious beings we call ecstasy."
Here is another of those almost lyrical passages which seem too long for
the music of rhythm and the resonance of rhyme.
"The great Pan of old, who was clothed in a leopard skin to signify
the beautiful variety of things, and the firmament, his coat of
stars, was but the representative of thee, O rich and various Man!
thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning
and the night and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry
of the City of God; in thy heart the bower of love and the realms of
right and wrong."
His feeling about the soul, which has shown itself in many of the
extracts already given, is summed up in the following sentence:--
"We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know
that it is divine. I cannot tell if these wonderful qualities which
house to-day in this mental home shall ever reassemble in equal
activity in a similar frame, or whether they have before had a
natural history like that of this body you see before you; but this
one thing I know, that these qualities did not now begin to exist,
cannot be sick with my sickness, nor buried in any grave; but that
they circulate through the Universe: before the world was, they
were."
It is hard to see the distinction between the omnipresent Deity
recognized in our formal confessions of faith and the "pantheism" which
is the object of dread to many of the faithful. But there are many
expressions in this Address which must have sounded strangely and
vaguely to his Christian audience. "Are there not moments in the history
of heaven when the human race was not counted by individuals, but was
only the Influenced; was God in distribution, God rushing into manifold
benefit?" It might be feared that the practical philanthropists would
feel that they lost by his counsels.
"The reform whose fame now fills the land with Temperance,
Anti-Slavery, Non-Resistance, No Government, Equal Labor, fair and
generous as each appears, are poor bitter things when prosecuted for
themselves as an end."--"I say to you plainly there is no end to
which your practical faculty can aim so sacred or so large, that if
pursued for itself, will not at last become carrion and an offence
to the nostril. The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with
objects immense and eternal. Your end should be one inapprehensible
to the senses; then it will be a god, always approached,--never
touched; always giving health."
Nothing is plainer than that it was Emerson's calling to supply impulses
and not methods. He was not an organizer, but a power behind many
organizers, inspiring them with lofty motive, giving breadth, to their
views, always tending to become narrow through concentration on their
special objects. The Oration we have been examining was delivered in
the interval between the delivery of two Addresses, one called "Man the
Reformer," and another called "Lecture on the Times." In the first he
preaches the dignity and virtue of manual labor; that "a man should have
a farm, or a mechanical craft for his culture."--That he cannot give up
labor without suffering some loss of power. "How can the man who has
learned but one art procure all the conveniences of life honestly? Shall
we say all we think?--Perhaps with his own hands.--Let us learn the
meaning of economy.--Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast
fowl to my dinner on Sunday is a baseness; but parched corn and a house
with one apartment, that I may be free of all perturbation, that I
may be serene and docile to what the mind shall speak, and quit and
road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or good will, is
frugality for gods and heroes."
This was what Emerson wrote in January, 1841. This "house with one
apartment" was what Thoreau built with his own hands in 1845. In April
of the former year, he went to live with Mr. Emerson, but had been on
intimate terms with him previously to that time. Whether it was from him
that Thoreau got the hint of the Walden cabin and the parched corn, or
whether this idea was working in Thoreau's mind and was suggested to
Emerson by him, is of no great consequence. Emerson, to whom he owed
so much, may well have adopted some of those fancies which Thoreau
entertained, and afterwards worked out in practice. He was at the
philanthropic centre of a good many movements which he watched others
carrying out, as a calm and kindly spectator, without losing his common
sense for a moment. It would never have occurred to him to leave all the
conveniences and comforts of life to go and dwell in a shanty, so as to
prove to himself that he could live like a savage, or like his friends
"Teague and his jade," as he called the man and brother and sister, more
commonly known nowadays as Pat, or Patrick, and his old woman.
"The Americans have many virtues," he says in this Address, "but they
have not Faith and Hope." Faith and Hope, Enthusiasm and Love, are the
burden of this Address. But he would regulate these qualities by "a
great prospective prudence," which shall mediate between the spiritual
and the actual world.
In the "Lecture on the Times" he shows very clearly the effect which a
nearer contact with the class of men and women who called themselves
Reformers had upon him.
"The Reforms have their higher origin in an ideal justice,
but they do not retain the purity of an idea. They are
quickly organized in some low, inadequate form, and present no
more poetic image to the mind than the evil tradition which they
reprobated. They mix the fire of the moral sentiment with personal
and party heats, with measureless exaggerations, and the blindness
that prefers some darling measure to justice and truth. Those who
are urging with most ardor what are called the greatest benefit of
mankind are narrow, self-pleasing, conceited men, and affect us as
the insane do. They bite us, and we run mad also. I think the work
of the reformer as innocent as other work that is done around him;
but when I have seen it near!--I do not like it better. It is done
in the same way; it is done profanely, not piously; by management,
by tactics and clamor."
All this, and much more like it, would hardly have been listened to by
the ardent advocates of the various reforms, if anybody but Mr. Emerson
had said it. He undervalued no sincere action except to suggest a wiser
and better one. He attacked no motive which had a good aim, except in
view of some larger and loftier principle. The charm of his imagination
and the music of his words took away all the sting from the thoughts
that penetrated to the very marrow of the entranced listeners. Sometimes
it was a splendid hyperbole that illuminated a statement which by the
dim light of common speech would have offended or repelled those who
sat before him. He knew the force of _felix audacia_ as well as any
rhetorician could have taught him. He addresses the reformer with one of
those daring images which defy the critics.
"As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain,
the time will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall
eagerly convert more than we possess into means and powers, when we
shall be willing to sow the sun and the moon for seeds."
He said hard things to the reformer, especially to the Abolitionist, in
his "Lecture on the Times." It would have taken a long while to get
rid of slavery if some of Emerson's teachings in this lecture had been
accepted as the true gospel of liberty. But how much its last sentence
covers with its soothing tribute!
"All the newspapers, all the tongues of today will of course defame
what is noble; but you who hold not of to-day, not of the times, but
of the Everlasting, are to stand for it; and the highest compliment
man ever receives from Heaven is the sending to him its disguised
and discredited angels."
The Lecture called "The Transcendentalist" will naturally be looked at
with peculiar interest, inasmuch as this term has been very commonly
applied to Emerson, and to many who were considered his disciples.
It has a proper philosophical meaning, and it has also a local and
accidental application to the individuals of a group which came together
very much as any literary club might collect about a teacher. All this
comes out clearly enough in the Lecture. In the first place, Emerson
explains that the "_new views_," as they are called, are the oldest of
thoughts cast in a new mould.
"What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us is Idealism:
Idealism as it appears in 1842. As thinkers, mankind have ever
divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class
founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class
beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class
perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us
representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they
cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the
force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealist on
the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on
individual culture."
"The materialist takes his departure from the external world,
and esteems a man as one product of that. The idealist takes his
departure from his consciousness, and reckons the world an
appearance.--His thought, that is the Universe."
The association of scholars and thinkers to which the name of
"Transcendentalists" was applied, and which made itself an organ in the
periodical known as "The Dial," has been written about by many who were
in the movement, and others who looked on or got their knowledge of
it at second hand. Emerson was closely associated with these "same
Transcendentalists," and a leading contributor to "The Dial," which was
their organ. The movement borrowed its inspiration more from him than
from any other source, and the periodical owed more to him than to any
other writer. So far as his own relation to the circle of illuminati and
the dial which they shone upon was concerned, he himself is the best
witness.
In his "Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England," he sketches
in a rapid way the series of intellectual movements which led to the
development of the "new views" above mentioned. "There are always two
parties," he says, "the party of the Past and the party of the Future;
the Establishment and the Movement."
About 1820, and in the twenty years which followed, an era of activity
manifested itself in the churches, in politics, in philanthropy, in
literature. In our own community the influence of Swedenborg and of the
genius and character of Dr. Channing were among the more immediate early
causes of the mental agitation. Emerson attributes a great importance
to the scholarship, the rhetoric, the eloquence, of Edward Everett, who
returned to Boston in 1820, after five years of study in Europe. Edward
Everett is already to a great extent a tradition, somewhat as Rufus
Choate is, a voice, a fading echo, as must be the memory of every great
orator. These wondrous personalities have their truest and warmest life
in a few old men's memories. It is therefore with delight that one who
remembers Everett in his robes of rhetorical splendor, who recalls his
full-blown, high-colored, double-flowered periods, the rich, resonant,
grave, far-reaching music of his speech, with just enough of nasal
vibration to give the vocal sounding-board its proper value in the
harmonies of utterance,--it is with delight that such a one reads the
glowing words of Emerson whenever he refers to Edward Everett. It is
enough if he himself caught inspiration from those eloquent lips; but
many a listener has had his youthful enthusiasm fired by that great
master of academic oratory.
Emerson follows out the train of influences which added themselves to
the impulse given by Mr. Everett. German scholarship, the growth of
science, the generalizations of Goethe, the idealism of Schelling, the
influence of Wordsworth, of Coleridge, of Carlyle, and in our immediate
community, the writings of Channing,--he left it to others to say of
Emerson,--all had their part in this intellectual, or if we may call it
so, spiritual revival. He describes with that exquisite sense of the
ridiculous which was a part of his mental ballast, the first attempt at
organizing an association of cultivated, thoughtful people. They came
together, the cultivated, thoughtful people, at Dr. John Collins
Warren's,--Dr. Channing, the great Dr. Channing, among the rest, full
of the great thoughts he wished to impart. The preliminaries went on
smoothly enough with the usual small talk,--
"When a side-door opened, the whole company streamed in to an oyster
supper, crowned by excellent wines [this must have been before
Dr. Warren's temperance epoch], and so ended the first attempt to
establish aesthetic society in Boston.
"Some time afterwards Dr. Channing opened his mind to Mr. and Mrs.
Ripley, and with some care they invited a limited party of ladies
and gentlemen. I had the honor to be present.--Margaret Fuller,
George Ripley, Dr. Convers Francis, Theodore Parker, Dr. Hedge, Mr.
Brownson, James Freeman Clarke, William H. Channing, and many others
gradually drew together, and from time to time spent an afternoon at
each other's houses in a serious conversation."
With them was another, "a pure Idealist,--who read Plato as an
equal, and inspired his companions only in proportion as they were
intellectual." He refers, of course to Mr. Alcott. Emerson goes on to
say:--
"I think there prevailed at that time a general belief in Boston
that there was some concert of _doctrinaires_ to establish certain
opinions, and inaugurate some movement in literature, philosophy,
and religion, of which design the supposed conspirators were quite
innocent; for there was no concert, and only here and there two or
three men and women who read and wrote, each alone, with unusual
vivacity. Perhaps they only agreed in having fallen upon Coleridge
and Wordsworth and Goethe, then on Carlyle, with pleasure and
sympathy. Otherwise their education and reading were not marked, but
had the American superficialness, and their studies were solitary.
I suppose all of them were surprised at this rumor of a school or
sect, and certainly at the name of Transcendentalism, given, nobody
knows by whom, or when it was applied."
Emerson's picture of some of these friends of his is so peculiar as to
suggest certain obvious and not too flattering comments.
"In like manner, if there is anything grand and daring in human
thought or virtue; any reliance on the vast, the unknown; any
presentiment, any extravagance of faith, the Spiritualist adopts
it as most in nature. The Oriental mind has always tended to this
largeness. Buddhism is an expression of it. The Buddhist, who thanks
no man, who says, 'Do not flatter your benefactors,' but who in his
conviction that every good deed can by no possibility escape its
reward, will not deceive the benefactor by pretending that he has
done more than he should, is a Transcendentalist.
"These exacting children advertise us of our wants. There is no
compliment, no smooth speech with them; they pay you only this one
compliment, of insatiable expectation; they aspire, they severely
exact, and if they only stand fast in this watch-tower, and persist
in demanding unto the end, and without end, then are they terrible
friends, whereof poet and priest cannot choose but stand in awe; and
what if they eat clouds, and drink wind, they have not been without
service to the race of man."
The person who adopts "any presentiment, any extravagance as most in
nature," is not commonly called a Transcendentalist, but is known
colloquially as a "crank." The person who does not thank, by word or
look, the friend or stranger who has pulled him out of the fire or
water, is fortunate if he gets off with no harder name than that of a
churl.
Nothing was farther from Emerson himself than whimsical eccentricity or
churlish austerity. But there was occasionally an air of bravado in some
of his followers as if they had taken out a patent for some knowing
machine which was to give them a monopoly of its products. They claimed
more for each other than was reasonable,--so much occasionally that
their pretensions became ridiculous. One was tempted to ask: "What
forlorn hope have you led? What immortal book have you written? What
great discovery have you made? What heroic task of any kind have you
performed?" There was too much talk about earnestness and too little
real work done. Aspiration too frequently got as far as the alpenstock
and the brandy flask, but crossed no dangerous crevasse, and scaled
no arduous summit. In short, there was a kind of "Transcendentalist"
dilettanteism, which betrayed itself by a phraseology as distinctive as
that of the Della Cruscans of an earlier time.
In reading the following description of the "intelligent and religious
persons" who belonged to the "Transcendentalist" communion, the reader
must remember that it is Emerson who draws the portrait,--a friend and
not a scoffer:--
"They are not good citizens, not good members of society:
unwillingly they bear their part of the public and private burdens;
they do not willingly share in the public charities, in the public
religious rites, in the enterprise of education, of missions,
foreign and domestic, in the abolition of the slave-trade, or in the
temperance society. They do not even like to vote."
After arraigning the representatives of Transcendental or spiritual
beliefs in this way, he summons them to plead for themselves, and this
is what they have to say:--
"'New, we confess, and by no means happy, is our condition: if you
want the aid of our labor, we ourselves stand in greater want of the
labor. We are miserable with inaction. We perish of rest and rust:
but we do not like your work.'
'Then,' says the world, 'show me your own.'
'We have none.'
'What will you do, then?' cries the world.
'We will wait.'
'How long?'
'Until the Universe beckons and calls us to work.'
'But whilst you wait you grow old and useless.'
'Be it so: I can sit in a corner and _perish_ (as you call it), but
I will not move until I have the highest command.'"
And so the dissatisfied tenant of this unhappy creation goes on with his
reasons for doing nothing.
It is easy to stay away from church and from town-meetings. It is
easy to keep out of the way of the contribution box and to let the
subscription paper go by us to the next door. The common duties of life
and the good offices society asks of us may be left to take care of
themselves while we contemplate the infinite. There is no safer fortress
for indolence than "the Everlasting No." The chimney-corner is the true
arena for this class of philosophers, and the pipe and mug furnish their
all-sufficient panoply. Emerson undoubtedly met with some of them among
his disciples. His wise counsel did not always find listeners in a
fitting condition to receive it. He was a sower who went forth to sow.
Some of the good seed fell among the thorns of criticism. Some fell on
the rocks of hardened conservatism. Some fell by the wayside and was
picked up by the idlers who went to the lecture-room to get rid of
themselves. But when it fell upon the right soil it bore a growth of
thought which ripened into a harvest of large and noble lives.
Emerson shows up the weakness of his young enthusiasts with that
delicate wit which warns its objects rather than wounds them. But he
makes it all up with the dreamers before he can let them go.
"Society also has its duties in reference to this class, and must
behold them with what charity it can. Possibly some benefit may yet
accrue from them to the state. Besides our coarse implements, there
must be some few finer instruments,--rain-gauges, thermometers, and
telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers,
there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges
and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct,
who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the
by-stander. Perhaps too there might be room for the exciters and
monitors; collectors of the heavenly spark, with power to convey the
electricity to others. Or, as the storm-tossed vessel at sea speaks
the frigate or "line-packet" to learn its longitude, so it may not
be without its advantage that we should now and then encounter rare
and gifted men, to compare the points of our spiritual compass, and
verify our bearings from superior chronometers."
It must be confessed that it is not a very captivating picture which
Emerson draws of some of his transcendental friends. Their faults were
naturally still more obvious to those outside of their charmed circle,
and some prejudice, very possibly, mingled with their critical
judgments. On the other hand we have the evidence of a visitor who knew
a good deal of the world as to the impression they produced upon him:--
"There has sprung up in Boston," says Dickens, in his "American
Notes," "a sect of philosophers known as Transcendentalists. On
inquiring what this appellation might be supposed to signify, I
was given to understand that whatever was unintelligible would be
certainly Transcendental. Not deriving much comfort from this
elucidation, I pursued the inquiry still further, and found that the
Transcendentalists are followers of my friend Mr. Carlyle, or, I
should rather say, of a follower of his, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
This gentleman has written a volume of Essays, in which, among much
that is dreamy and fanciful (if he will pardon me for saying
so), there is much more that is true and manly, honest and bold.
Transcendentalism has its occasional vagaries (what school has
not?), but it has good healthful qualities in spite of them; not
least among the number a hearty disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to
detect her in all the million varieties of her everlasting wardrobe.
And therefore, if I were a Bostonian, I think I would be a
Transcendentalist."
In December, 1841, Emerson delivered a Lecture entitled "The
Conservative." It was a time of great excitement among the members of
that circle of which he was the spiritual leader. Never did Emerson
show the perfect sanity which characterized his practical judgment more
beautifully than in this Lecture and in his whole course with reference
to the intellectual agitation of the period. He is as fair to the
conservative as to the reformer. He sees the fanaticism of the one as
well as that of the other. "Conservatism tends to universal seeming and
treachery; believes in a negative fate; believes that men's tempers
govern them; that for me it avails not to trust in principles, they will
fail me, I must bend a little; it distrusts Nature; it thinks there is a
general law without a particular application,--law for all that does
not include any one. Reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine
resistance, to kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated
self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining
and elevation, which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction. And so,
whilst we do not go beyond general statements, it may be safely affirmed
of these two metaphysical antagonists that each is a good half, but an
impossible whole."
He has his beliefs, and, if you will, his prejudices, but he loves fair
play, and though he sides with the party of the future, he will not be
unjust to the present or the past.
We read in a letter from Emerson to Carlyle, dated March 12, 1835, that
Dr. Charming "lay awake all night, he told my friend last week, because
he had learned in the evening that some young men proposed to issue
a journal, to be called 'The Transcendentalist,' as the organ of a
spiritual philosophy." Again on the 30th of April of the same year, in
a letter in which he lays out a plan for a visit of Carlyle to this
country, Emerson says:--
"It was suggested that if Mr. C. would undertake a journal of which
we have talked much, but which we have never yet produced, he would
do us great service, and we feel some confidence that it could be
made to secure him a support. It is that project which I mentioned
to you in a letter by Mr. Barnard,--a book to be called 'The
Transcendentalist;' or, 'The Spiritual Inquirer,' or the like....
Those who are most interested in it designed to make gratuitous
contribution to its pages, until its success could be assured."
The idea of the grim Scotchman as editor of what we came in due time to
know as "The Dial!" A concert of singing mice with a savage and hungry
old grimalkin as leader of the orchestra! It was much safer to be
content with Carlyle's purring from his own side of the water, as
thus:--
"'The Boston Transcendentalist,' whatever the fate or merit of it
may prove to be, is surely an interesting symptom. There must be
things not dreamt of over in that _Transoceanic_ parish! I shall
certainly wish well to this thing; and hail it as the sure
forerunner of things better."
There were two notable products of the intellectual ferment of the
Transcendental period which deserve an incidental notice here, from the
close connection which Emerson had with one of them and the interest
which he took in the other, in which many of his friends were more
deeply concerned. These were the periodical just spoken of as a
possibility realized, and the industrial community known as Brook Farm.
They were to a certain extent synchronous,--the Magazine beginning in
July, 1840, and expiring in April, 1844; Brook Farm being organized in
1841, and breaking up in 1847.
"The Dial" was edited at first by Margaret Fuller, afterwards by
Emerson, who contributed more than forty articles in prose and verse,
among them "The Conservative," "The Transcendentalist," "Chardon Street
and Bible Convention," and some of his best and best known poems, "The
Problem," "Woodnotes," "The Sphinx," "Fate." The other principal writers
were Margaret Fuller, A. Bronson Alcott, George Ripley, James Freeman
Clarke, Theodore Parker, William H. Channing, Henry Thoreau, Eliot
Cabot, John S. Dwight, C.P. Cranch, William Ellery Channing, Mrs.
Ellen Hooper, and her sister Mrs. Caroline Tappan. Unequal as the
contributions are in merit, the periodical is of singular interest.
It was conceived and carried on in a spirit of boundless hope and
enthusiasm. Time and a narrowing subscription list proved too hard
a trial, and its four volumes remain stranded, like some rare and
curiously patterned shell which a storm of yesterday has left beyond
the reach of the receding waves. Thoreau wrote for nearly every number.
Margaret Fuller, less attractive in print than in conversation, did her
part as a contributor as well as editor. Theodore Parker came down with
his "trip-hammer" in its pages. Mrs. Ellen Hooper published a few poems
in its columns which remain, always beautiful, in many memories. Others,
whose literary lives have fulfilled their earlier promise, and who are
still with us, helped forward the new enterprise with their frequent
contributions. It is a pleasure to turn back to "The Dial," with all its
crudities. It should be looked through by the side of the "Anthology."
Both were April buds, opening before the frosts were over, but with the
pledge of a better season.
We get various hints touching the new Magazine in the correspondence
between Emerson and Carlyle. Emerson tells Carlyle, a few months before
the first number appeared, that it will give him a better knowledge
of our _young people_ than any he has had. It is true that unfledged
writers found a place to try their wings in it, and that makes it more
interesting. This was the time above all others when out of the mouth
of babes and sucklings was to come forth strength. The feeling that
intuition was discovering a new heaven and a new earth was the
inspiration of these "young people" to whom Emerson refers. He has to
apologize for the first number. "It is not yet much," he says; "indeed,
though no copy has come to me, I know it is far short of what it should
be, for they have suffered puffs and dulness to creep in for the sake
of the complement of pages, but it is better than anything we had.--The
Address of the Editors to the Readers is all the prose that is mine, and
whether they have printed a few verses for me I do not know." They did
print "The Problem." There were also some fragments of criticism from
the writings of his brother Charles, and the poem called "The Last
Farewell," by his brother Edward, which is to be found in Emerson's
"May-day and other Pieces."
On the 30th of August, after the periodical had been published a couple
of months, Emerson writes:--
"Our community begin to stand in some terror of Transcendentalism;
and the _Dial_, poor little thing, whose first number contains
scarce anything considerable or even visible, is just now honored
by attacks from almost every newspaper and magazine; which at least
betrays the irritability and the instincts of the good public."
Carlyle finds the second number of "The Dial" better than the first, and
tosses his charitable recognition, as if into an alms-basket, with
his usual air of superiority. He distinguishes what is Emerson's
readily,--the rest he speaks of as the work of [Greek: oi polloi] for
the most part. "But it is all good and very good as a _soul;_ wants only
a body, which want means a great deal." And again, "'The Dial,' too, it
is all spirit like, aeri-form, aurora-borealis like. Will no _Angel_
body himself out of that; no stalwart Yankee _man_, with color in the
cheeks of him and a coat on his back?"
Emerson, writing to Carlyle in March, 1842, speaks of the "dubious
approbation on the part of you and other men," notwithstanding which he
found it with "a certain class of men and women, though few, an object
of tenderness and religion." So, when Margaret Fuller gave it up, at the
end of the second volume, Emerson consented to become its editor. "I
cannot bid you quit 'The Dial,'" says Carlyle, "though it, too, alas, is
Antinomian somewhat! _Perge, perge_, nevertheless."
In the next letter he says:--
"I love your 'Dial,' and yet it is with a kind of shudder. You seem
to me in danger of dividing yourselves from the Fact of this present
Universe, in which alone, ugly as it is, can I find any anchorage,
and soaring away after Ideas, Beliefs, Revelations and such
like,--into perilous altitudes, as I think; beyond the curve of
perpetual frost, for one thing. I know not how to utter what
impression you give me; take the above as some stamping of the
fore-hoof."
A curious way of characterizing himself as a critic,--but he was not
always as well-mannered as the Houyhnhnms.
To all Carlyle's complaints of "The Dial's" short-comings Emerson did
not pretend to give any satisfactory answer, but his plea of guilty,
with extenuating circumstances, is very honest and definite.
"For the _Dial_ and its sins, I have no defence to set up. We write
as we can, and we know very little about it. If the direction of
these speculations is to be deplored, it is yet a fact for literary
history that all the bright boys and girls in New England, quite
ignorant of each other, take the world so, and come and make
confession to fathers and mothers,--the boys, that they do not wish
to go into trade, the girls, that they do not like morning calls and
evening parties. They are all religious, but hate the churches; they
reject all the ways of living of other men, but have none to offer
in their stead. Perhaps one of these days a great Yankee shall come,
who will easily do the unknown deed."
"All the bright boys and girls in New England," and "'The Dial' dying of
inanition!" In October, 1840, Emerson writes to Carlyle:--
"We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social
reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new community in his
waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to live
cleanly. George Ripley is talking up a colony of agriculturists and
scholars, with whom he threatens to take the field and the book.
One man renounces the use of animal food; and another of coin; and
another of domestic hired service; and another of the state; and on
the whole we have a commendable share of reason and hope."
Mr. Ripley's project took shape in the West Roxbury Association, better
known under the name of Brook Farm. Emerson was not involved in this
undertaking. He looked upon it with curiosity and interest, as he would
have looked at a chemical experiment, but he seems to have had only a
moderate degree of faith in its practical working. "It was a noble and
generous movement in the projectors to try an experiment of better
living. One would say that impulse was the rule in the society, without
centripetal balance; perhaps it would not be severe to say, intellectual
sans-culottism, an impatience of the formal routinary character of our
educational, religious, social, and economical life in Massachusetts."
The reader will find a full detailed account of the Brook Farm
experiment in Mr. Frothingham's "Life of George Ripley," its founder,
and the first President of the Association. Emerson had only tangential
relations with the experiment, and tells its story in his "Historic
Notes" very kindly and respectfully, but with that sense of the
ridiculous in the aspect of some of its conditions which belongs to the
sagacious common-sense side of his nature. The married women, he
says, were against the community. "It was to them like the brassy and
lacquered life in hotels. The common school was well enough, but to
the common nursery they had grave objections. Eggs might be hatched in
ovens, but the hen on her own account much preferred the old way. A hen
without her chickens was but half a hen." Is not the inaudible, inward
laughter of Emerson more refreshing than the explosions of our noisiest
humorists?
This is his benevolent summing up:--
"The founders of Brook Farm should have this praise, that they made
what all people try to make, an agreeable place to live in. All
comers, even the most fastidious, found it the pleasantest of
residences. It is certain, that freedom from household routine,
variety of character and talent, variety of work, variety of means
of thought and instruction, art, music, poetry, reading, masquerade,
did not permit sluggishness or despondency; broke up routine.
There is agreement in the testimony that it was, to most of the
associates, education; to many, the most important period of their
life, the birth of valued friendships, their first acquaintance with
the riches of conversation, their training in behavior. The art of
letter-writing, it is said, was immensely cultivated. Letters were
always flying, not only from house to house, but from room to room.
It was a perpetual picnic, a French Revolution in small, an Age of
Reason in a patty-pan."
The public edifice called the "Phalanstery" was destroyed by fire
in 1846. The Association never recovered from this blow, and soon
afterwards it was dissolved.
Section 2. Emerson's first volume of his collected Essays was published
in 1841. In the reprint it contains the following Essays: History;
Self-Reliance; Compensation; Spiritual Laws; Love; Friendship; Prudence;
Heroism; The Over-Soul; Circles; Intellect; Art. "The Young American,"
which is now included in the volume, was not delivered until 1844.
Once accustomed to Emerson's larger formulae we can to a certain extent
project from our own minds his treatment of special subjects. But we
cannot anticipate the daring imagination, the subtle wit, the curious
illustrations, the felicitous language, which make the Lecture or the
Essay captivating as read, and almost entrancing as listened to by
the teachable disciple. The reader must be prepared for occasional
extravagances. Take the Essay on History, in the first series of Essays,
for instance. "Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts,
namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative,
history is to be read and written." When we come to the application,
in the same Essay, almost on the same page, what can we make of such
discourse as this? The sentences I quote do not follow immediately, one
upon the other, but their sense is continuous.
"I hold an actual knowledge very cheap. Hear the rats in the wall,
see the lizard on the fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen on
the log. What do I know sympathetically, morally, of either of these
worlds of life?--How many times we must say Rome and Paris, and
Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are
Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being?
Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimau
seal-hunter, for the Kamchatcan in his canoe, for the fisherman, the
stevedore, the porter?"
The connection of ideas is not obvious. One can hardly help being
reminded of a certain great man's Rochester speech as commonly reported
by the story-teller. "Rome in her proudest days never had a waterfall
a hundred and fifty feet high! Greece in her palmiest days never had a
waterfall a hundred and fifty feet high! Men of Rochester, go on! No
people ever lost their liberty who had a waterfall a hundred and fifty
feet high!"
We cannot help smiling, perhaps laughing, at the odd mixture of Rome
and rats, of Olympiads and Esquimaux. But the underlying idea of the
interdependence of all that exists in nature is far from ridiculous.
Emerson says, not absurdly or extravagantly, that "every history should
be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and
looked at facts as symbols."
We have become familiar with his doctrine of "Self-Reliance," which is
the subject of the second lecture of the series. We know that he
always and everywhere recognized that the divine voice which speaks
authoritatively in the soul of man is the source of all our wisdom.
It is a man's true self, so that it follows that absolute, supreme
self-reliance is the law of his being. But see how he guards his
proclamation of self-reliance as the guide of mankind.
"Truly it demands something god-like in him who has cast off the
common motives of humanity and has ventured to trust himself for a
task-master. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight,
that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself,
that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is
to others!"
"Compensation" might be preached in a synagogue, and the Rabbi would be
praised for his performance. Emerson had been listening to a sermon from
a preacher esteemed for his orthodoxy, in which it was assumed that
judgment is not executed in this world, that the wicked are successful,
and the good are miserable. This last proposition agrees with John
Bunyan's view:--
"A Christian man is never long at ease,
When one fright's gone, another doth him seize."
Emerson shows up the "success" of the bad man and the failures and
trials of the good man in their true spiritual characters, with a noble
scorn of the preacher's low standard of happiness and misery, which
would have made him throw his sermon into the fire.
The Essay on "Spiritual Laws" is full of pithy sayings:--
"As much virtue as there is, so much appears; as much goodness as
there is, so much reverence it commands. All the devils respect
virtue.--A man passes for that he is worth.--The ancestor of every
action is a thought.--To think is to act.--Let a man believe in
God, and not in names and places and persons. Let the great soul
incarnated in some woman's form, poor and sad and single, in some
Dolly or Joan, go out to service and sweep chambers and scour
floors, and its effulgent day-beams cannot be hid, but to sweep and
scour will instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions, the top
and radiance of human life, and all people will get mops and brooms;
until, lo! suddenly the great soul has enshrined itself in some
other form and done some other deed, and that is now the flower and
head of all living nature."
This is not any the worse for being the flowering out of a poetical bud
of George Herbert's. The Essay on "Love" is poetical, but the three
poems, "Initial," "Daemonic," and "Celestial Love" are more nearly equal
to his subject than his prose.
There is a passage in the Lecture on "Friendship" which suggests
some personal relation of Emerson's about which we cannot help being
inquisitive:--
"It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a
friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the
other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is
not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall
wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the
reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold
companion.... Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of
treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness,
a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for
infirmity. It treats its object as a god that it may deify both."
Was he thinking of his relations with Carlyle? It is a curious subject
of speculation what would have been the issue if Carlyle had come to
Concord and taken up his abode under Emerson's most hospitable roof.
"You shall not come nearer a man by getting into his house." How could
they have got on together? Emerson was well-bred, and Carlyle was
wanting in the social graces. "Come rest in this bosom" is a sweet air,
heard in the distance, too apt to be followed, after a protracted season
of close proximity, by that other strain,--
"No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole!
Rise Alps between us and whole oceans roll!"
But Emerson may have been thinking of some very different person,
perhaps some "crude and cold companion" among his disciples, who was not
equal to the demands of friendly intercourse.
He discourses wisely on "Prudence," a virtue which he does not claim for
himself, and nobly on "Heroism," which was a shining part of his own
moral and intellectual being.
The points which will be most likely to draw the reader's attention are
the remarks on the literature of heroism; the claim for our own America,
for Massachusetts and Connecticut River and Boston Bay, in spite of our
love for the names of foreign and classic topography; and most of all
one sentence which, coming from an optimist like Emerson, has a sound of
sad sincerity painful to recognize.
"Who that sees the meanness of our politics but inly congratulates
Washington that he is long already wrapped in his shroud, and
forever safe; that he was laid sweet in his grave, the hope of
humanity not yet subjugated in him. Who does not sometimes envy the
good and brave who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the
natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of
his own conversation with finite nature? And yet the love that
will be annihilated sooner than treacherous has already made death
impossible, and affirms itself no mortal, but a native of the deeps
of absolute and inextinguishable being."
In the following Essay, "The Over-Soul," Emerson has attempted the
impossible. He is as fully conscious of this fact as the reader of his
rhapsody,--nay, he is more profoundly penetrated with it than any of his
readers. In speaking of the exalted condition the soul is capable of
reaching, he says,--
"Every man's words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to
those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part. I dare
not speak for it. My words do not carry its august sense; they fall
short and cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold!
their speech shall be lyrical and sweet, and universal as the rising
of the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, if I may not use
sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity, and to report what
hints I have collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of
the Highest Law."
"The Over-Soul" might almost be called the Over-_flow_ of a spiritual
imagination. We cannot help thinking of the "pious, virtuous,
God-intoxicated" Spinoza. When one talks of the infinite in terms
borrowed from the finite, when one attempts to deal with the absolute
in the language of the relative, his words are not symbols, like those
applied to the objects of experience, but the shadows of symbols,
varying with the position and intensity of the light of the individual
intelligence. It is a curious amusement to trace many of these thoughts
and expressions to Plato, or Plotinus, or Proclus, or Porphyry, to
Spinoza or Schelling, but the same tune is a different thing according
to the instrument on which it is played. There are songs without words,
and there are states in which, in place of the trains of thought moving
in endless procession with ever-varying figures along the highway of
consciousness, the soul is possessed by a single all-absorbing idea,
which, in the highest state of spiritual exaltation, becomes a vision.
Both Plotinus and Porphyry believed they were privileged to look upon
Him whom "no man can see and live."
But Emerson states his own position so frankly in his Essay entitled
"Circles," that the reader cannot take issue with him as against
utterances which he will not defend. There can be no doubt that he would
have confessed as much with reference to "The Over-Soul" as he has
confessed with regard to "Circles," the Essay which follows "The
Over-Soul."
"I am not careful to justify myself.... But lest I should mislead
any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the
reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value
on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I
pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all
things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply
experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back."
Perhaps, after reading these transcendental essays of Emerson, we might
borrow Goethe's language about Spinoza, as expressing the feeling with
which we are left.
"I am reading Spinoza with Frau von Stein. I feel myself very near
to him, though his soul is much deeper and purer than mine.
"I cannot say that I ever read Spinoza straight through, that at any
time the complete architecture of his intellectual system has
stood clear in view before me. But when I look into him I seem to
understand him,--that is, he always appears to me consistent with
himself, and I can always gather from him very salutary influences
for my own way of feeling and acting."
Emerson would not have pretended that he was always "consistent with
himself," but these "salutary influences," restoring, enkindling,
vivifying, are felt by many of his readers who would have to confess,
like Dr. Walter Channing, that these thoughts, or thoughts like these,
as he listened to them in a lecture, "made his head ache."
The three essays which follow "The Over-Soul," "Circles," "Intellect,"
"Art," would furnish us a harvest of good sayings, some of which we
should recognize as parts of our own (borrowed) axiomatic wisdom.
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then
all things are at risk."
"God enters by a private door into every individual."
"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take
which you please,--you can never have both."
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must
carry it with us, or we find it not."
But we cannot reconstruct the Hanging Gardens with a few bricks from
Babylon.
Emerson describes his mode of life in these years in a letter to
Carlyle, dated May 10, 1838.
"I occupy, or improve, as we Yankees say, two acres only of God's
earth; on which is my house, my kitchen-garden, my orchard of thirty
young trees, my empty barn. My house is now a very good one for
comfort, and abounding in room. Besides my house, I have, I believe,
$22,000, whose income in ordinary years is six per cent. I have no
other tithe or glebe except the income of my winter lectures, which
was last winter $800. Well, with this income, here at home, I am a
rich man. I stay at home and go abroad at my own instance. I have
food, warmth, leisure, books, friends. Go away from home, I am rich
no longer. I never have a dollar to spend on a fancy. As no wise
man, I suppose, ever was rich in the sense of freedom to spend,
because of the inundation of claims, so neither am I, who am not
wise. But at home, I am rich,--rich enough for ten brothers. My wife
Lidian is an incarnation of Christianity,--I call her Asia,--and
keeps my philosophy from Antinomianism; my mother, whitest, mildest,
most conservative of ladies, whose only exception to her universal
preference for old things is her son; my boy, a piece of love and
sunshine, well worth my watching from morning to night;--these, and
three domestic women, who cook, and sew and run for us, make all my
household. Here I sit and read and write, with very little system,
and, as far as regards composition, with the most fragmentary
result: paragraphs incompressible, each sentence an infinitely
repellent particle."
A great sorrow visited Emerson and his household at this period of his
life. On the 30th of October, 1841, he wrote to Carlyle: "My little boy
is five years old to-day, and almost old enough to send you his love."
Three months later, on the 28th of February, 1842, he writes once
more:--
"My dear friend, you should have had this letter and these messages
by the last steamer; but when it sailed, my son, a perfect little
boy of five years and three months, had ended his earthly life. You
can never sympathize with me; you can never know how much of me such
a young child can take away. A few weeks ago I accounted myself a
very rich man, and now the poorest of all. What would it avail to
tell you anecdotes of a sweet and wonderful boy, such as we solace
and sadden ourselves with at home every morning and evening? From a
perfect health and as happy a life and as happy influences as ever
child enjoyed, he was hurried out of my arms in three short days by
scarlatina. We have two babes yet, one girl of three years, and one
girl of three months and a week, but a promise like that Boy's I
shall never see. How often I have pleased myself that one day I
should send to you this Morning Star of mine, and stay at home so
gladly behind such a representative. I dare not fathom the Invisible
and Untold to inquire what relations to my Departed ones I yet
sustain."
This was the boy whose memory lives in the tenderest and most pathetic
of Emerson's poems, the "Threnody,"--a lament not unworthy of comparison
with Lycidas for dignity, but full of the simple pathos of Cowper's
well-remembered lines on the receipt of his mother's picture, in the
place of Milton's sonorous academic phrases.
CHAPTER VI.
1843-1848. AET. 40-45.
"The Young American."--Address on the Anniversary of the Emancipation
of the Negroes in the British West Indies.[1]--Publication of the Second
Series of Essays.--Contents: The Poet.--Experience.--Character.
--Manners.--Gifts.--Nature.--Politics.--Nominalist and Realist.--New
England Reformers.--Publication of Poems.--Second Visit to England.
[Footnote 1: These two addresses are to be found in the first and
eleventh volumes, respectively, of the last collective edition of
Emerson's works, namely, "Nature, Addresses, and Lectures," and
"Miscellanies."]
Emerson was American in aspect, temperament, way of thinking, and
feeling; American, with an atmosphere of Oriental idealism; American, so
far as he belonged to any limited part of the universe. He believed in
American institutions, he trusted the future of the American race. In
the address first mentioned in the contents, of this chapter, delivered
February 7, 1844, he claims for this country all that the most ardent
patriot could ask. Not a few of his fellow-countrymen will feel the
significance of the following contrast.
"The English have many virtues, many advantages, and the proudest
history in the world; but they need all and more than all the
resources of the past to indemnify a heroic gentleman in that
country for the mortifications prepared for him by the system of
society, and which seem to impose the alternative to resist or to
avoid it.... It is for Englishmen to consider, not for us; we only
say, Let us live in America, too thankful for our want of feudal
institutions.... If only the men are employed in conspiring with the
designs of the Spirit who led us hither, and is leading us still, we
shall quickly enough advance out of all hearing of others' censures,
out of all regrets of our own, into a new and more excellent social
state than history has recorded."
Thirty years have passed since the lecture from which these passages are
taken was delivered. The "Young American" of that day is the more than
middle-aged American of the present. The intellectual independence of
our country is far more solidly established than when this lecture was
written. But the social alliance between certain classes of Americans
and English is more and more closely cemented from year to year, as the
wealth of the new world burrows its way among the privileged classes
of the old world. It is a poor ambition for the possessor of suddenly
acquired wealth to have it appropriated as a feeder of the impaired
fortunes of a deteriorated household, with a family record of which
its representatives are unworthy. The plain and wholesome language of
Emerson is on the whole more needed now than it was when spoken. His
words have often been extolled for their stimulating quality; following
the same analogy, they are, as in this address, in a high degree tonic,
bracing, strengthening to the American, who requires to be reminded of
his privileges that he may know and find himself equal to his duties.
On the first day of August, 1844, Emerson delivered in Concord an
address on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the
British West India Islands. This discourse would not have satisfied the
Abolitionists. It was too general in its propositions, full of humane
and generous sentiments, but not looking to their extreme and immediate
method of action.
* * * * *
Emerson's second series of Essays was published in 1844. There are
many sayings in the Essay called "The Poet," which are meant for the
initiated, rather than for him who runs, to read:--
"All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is
the principal event in chronology."
Does this sound wild and extravagant? What were the political ups and
downs of the Hebrews,--what were the squabbles of the tribes with each
other, or with their neighbors, compared to the birth of that poet to
whom we owe the Psalms,--the sweet singer whose voice is still the
dearest of all that ever sang to the heart of mankind?
The poet finds his materials everywhere, as Emerson tells him in this
eloquent apostrophe:--
"Thou true land-bird! sea-bird! air-bird! Wherever snow falls, or
water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight,
wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars,
wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets
into celestial space, wherever is danger and awe and love, there is
Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou should'st
walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition
inopportune or ignoble."
"Experience" is, as he says himself, but a fragment. It bears marks of
having been written in a less tranquil state of mind than the other
essays. His most important confession is this:--
"All writing comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having. I
would gladly be moral and keep due metes and bounds, which I dearly
love, and allow the most to the will of man; but I have set my
heart on honesty in this chapter, and I can see nothing at last, in
success or failure, than more or less of vital force supplied from
the Eternal."
The Essay on "Character" requires no difficult study, but is well worth
the trouble of reading. A few sentences from it show the prevailing tone
and doctrine.
"Character is Nature in the highest form. It is of no use to ape it,
or to contend with it. Somewhat is possible of resistance and of
persistence and of creation to this power, which will foil all
emulation."
"There is a class of men, individuals of which appear at long
intervals, so eminently endowed with insight and virtue, that they
have been unanimously saluted as _divine_, and who seem to be an
accumulation of that power we consider.
"The history of those gods and saints which the world has written,
and then worshipped, are documents of character. The ages have
exulted in the manners of a youth who owed nothing to fortune, and
who was hanged at the Tyburn of his nation, who, by the pure quality
of his nature, shed an epic splendor around the facts of his death
which has transfigured every particular into an universal symbol
for the eyes of mankind. This great defeat is hitherto our highest
fact."
In his Essay on "Manners," Emerson gives us his ideas of a gentleman:--
"The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions and
expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner
dependent and servile either on persons or opinions or possessions.
Beyond this fact of truth and real force, the word denotes
good-nature or benevolence: manhood first, and then
gentleness.--Power first, or no leading class.--God knows that
all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door: but whenever used in
strictness, and with any emphasis, the name will be found to point
at original energy.--The famous gentlemen of Europe have been of
this strong type: Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, Julius Caesar, Scipio,
Alexander, Pericles, and the lordliest personages. They sat very
carelessly in their chairs, and were too excellent themselves to
value any condition at a high rate.--I could better eat with one
who did not respect the truth or the laws than with a sloven and
unpresentable person.--The person who screams, or uses the
superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms
to flight.--I esteem it a chief felicity of this country that it
excels in woman."
So writes Emerson, and proceeds to speak of woman in language which
seems almost to pant for rhythm and rhyme.
This essay is plain enough for the least "transcendental" reader.
Franklin would have approved it, and was himself a happy illustration of
many of the qualities which go to the Emersonian ideal of good manners,
a typical American, equal to his position, always as much so in the
palaces and salons of Paris as in the Continental Congress, or the
society of Philadelphia.
"Gifts" is a dainty little Essay with some nice distinctions and some
hints which may help to give form to a generous impulse:--
"The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me.
Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the
farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the
painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing."
"Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because
they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the
utilities of the world.--Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they
are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic values being
attached to them."
"It is a great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning
from one who has had the ill-luck to be served by you. It is a very
onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor naturally
wishes to give you a slap."
Emerson hates the superlative, but he does unquestionably love the
tingling effect of a witty over-statement.
We have recognized most of the thoughts in the Essay entitled "Nature,"
in the previous Essay by the same name, and others which we have passed
in review. But there are poetical passages which will give new pleasure.
Here is a variation of the formula with which we are familiar:--
"Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought
again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated,
and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of
free thought."
And here is a quaint sentence with which we may take leave of this
Essay:--
"They say that by electro-magnetism, your salad shall be grown from
the seed, whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner: it is a symbol of
our modern aims and endeavors,--of our condensation and acceleration
of objects; but nothing is gained: nature cannot be cheated: man's
life is but seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow they slow."
This is pretty and pleasant, but as to the literal value of the
prediction, M. Jules Verne would be the best authority to consult. Poets
are fond of that branch of science which, if the imaginative Frenchman
gave it a name, he would probably call _Onditologie_.
It is not to be supposed that the most sanguine optimist could be
satisfied with the condition of the American political world at the
present time, or when the Essay on "Politics" was written, some years
before the great war which changed the aspects of the country in so many
respects, still leaving the same party names, and many of the characters
of the old parties unchanged. This is Emerson's view of them as they
then were:--
"Of the two great parties, which, at this hour, almost share
the nation between them, I should say that one has the best
cause, and the other contains the best men. The philosopher, the
poet, or the religious man, will, of course, wish to cast his vote
with the democrat, for free trade, for wide suffrage, for the
abolition of legal cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating
in every manner the access of the young and the poor to the sources
of wealth and power. But he can rarely accept the persons whom the
so-called popular party propose to him as representatives of these
liberties. They have not at heart the ends which give to the name of
democracy what hope and virtue are in it. The spirit of our American
radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no
ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and
selfishness. On the other side, the conservative party, composed of
the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is
timid, and merely defensive of property. It indicates no right, it
aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous
policy, it does not build nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor
foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor
emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the
immigrant. From neither party, when in power, has the world any
benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate
with the resources of the nation."
The metaphysician who looks for a closely reasoned argument on the
famous old question which so divided the schoolmen of old will find
a very moderate satisfaction in the Essay entitled "Nominalism and
Realism." But there are many discursive remarks in it worth gathering
and considering. We have the complaint of the Cambridge "Phi Beta
Kappa Oration," reiterated, that there is no complete man, but only a
collection of fragmentary men.
As a Platonist and a poet there could not be any doubt on which side
were all his prejudices; but he takes his ground cautiously.
"In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, the Realists had a good
deal of reason. General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they
round and ennoble the most practical and sordid way of living.
"Though the uninspired man certainly finds persons a conveniency in
household matters, the divine man does not respect them: he sees
them as a rack of clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wind
drives over the surface of the water. But this is flat rebellion.
Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and
insults the philosopher in every moment with a million of fresh
particulars."
_New England Reformers_.--Would any one venture to guess how Emerson
would treat this subject? With his unsparing, though amiable radicalism,
his excellent common sense, his delicate appreciation of the ridiculous,
too deep for laughter, as Wordsworth's thoughts were too deep for tears,
in the midst of a band of enthusiasts and not very remote from a throng
of fanatics, what are we to look for from our philosopher who unites
many characteristics of Berkeley and of Franklin?
We must remember when this lecture was written, for it was delivered on
a Sunday in the year 1844. The Brook Farm experiment was an index of the
state of mind among one section of the Reformers of whom he was writing.
To remodel society and the world into a "happy family" was the aim
of these enthusiasts. Some attacked one part of the old system, some
another; some would build a new temple, some would rebuild the old
church, some would worship in the fields and woods, if at all; one was
for a phalanstery, where all should live in common, and another was
meditating the plan and place of the wigwam where he was to dwell apart
in the proud independence of the woodchuck and the musquash. Emerson had
the largest and kindliest sympathy with their ideals and aims, but he
was too clear-eyed not to see through the whims and extravagances of the
unpractical experimenters who would construct a working world with the
lay figures they had put together, instead of flesh and blood men and
women and children with all their congenital and acquired perversities.
He describes these Reformers in his own good-naturedly half-satirical
way:--
"They defied each other like a congress of kings; each of whom had a
realm to rule, and a way of his own that made concert unprofitable.
What a fertility of projects for the salvation of the world! One
apostle thought all men should go to farming; and another that no
man should buy or sell; that the use of money was the cardinal evil;
another that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink
damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death
to fermentation. It was in vain urged by the housewife that God made
yeast as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he
does vegetation; that fermentation develops the saccharine element
in the grain, and makes it more palatable and more digestible. No,
they wish the pure wheat, and will die but it shall not ferment.
Stop, dear nature, these innocent advances of thine; let us
scotch these ever-rolling wheels! Others attacked the system of
agriculture, the use of animal manures in farming; and the tyranny
of man over brute nature; these abuses polluted his food. The ox
must be taken from the plough, and the horse from the cart, the
hundred acres of the farm must be spaded, and the man must walk
wherever boats and locomotives will not carry him. Even the insect
world was to be defended,--that had been too long neglected, and a
society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and mosquitoes
was to be incorporated without delay. With these appeared the adepts
of homoeopathy, of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and
their wonderful theories of the Christian miracles!"
We have already seen the issue of the famous Brook Farm experiment,
which was a practical outcome of the reforming agitation.
Emerson has had the name of being a leader in many movements in which he
had very limited confidence, this among others to which the idealizing
impulse derived from him lent its force, but for the organization of
which he was in no sense responsible.
He says in the lecture we are considering:--
"These new associations are composed of men and women of superior
talents and sentiments; yet it may easily be questioned whether such
a community will draw, except in its beginnings, the able and the
good; whether these who have energy will not prefer their choice of
superiority and power in the world to the humble certainties of the
association; whether such a retreat does not promise to become an
asylum to those who have tried and failed rather than a field to the
strong; and whether the members will not necessarily be fractions of
men, because each finds that he cannot enter into it without some
compromise."
His sympathies were not allowed to mislead him; he knew human nature too
well to believe in a Noah's ark full of idealists.
All this time he was lecturing for his support, giving courses of
lectures in Boston and other cities, and before the country lyceums in
and out of New England.
His letters to Carlyle show how painstaking, how methodical, how
punctual he was in the business which interested his distant friend. He
was not fond of figures, and it must have cost him a great effort to
play the part of an accountant.
He speaks also of receiving a good deal of company in the summer, and
that some of this company exacted much time and attention,--more than he
could spare,--is made evident by his gentle complaints, especially in
his poems, which sometimes let out a truth he would hardly have uttered
in prose.
In 1846 Emerson's first volume of poems was published. Many of the poems
had been long before the public--some of the best, as we have seen,
having been printed in "The Dial." It is only their being brought
together for the first time which belongs especially to this period,
and we can leave them for the present, to be looked over by and by in
connection with a second volume of poems published in 1867, under the
title, "May-Day and other Pieces."
In October, 1847, he left Concord on a second visit to England, which
will be spoken of in the following chapter.
CHAPTER VII.
1848-1853. AET. 45-50.
The "Massachusetts Quarterly Review;" Visit to Europe.--England.
--Scotland.--France.--"Representative Men" published. I. Uses
of Great Men. II. Plato; or, the Philosopher; Plato; New
Readings. III. Swedenborg; or, the Mystic. IV. Montaigne; or, the
Skeptic. V. Shakespeare; or, the Poet. VI. Napoleon; or, the Man of the
World. VII. Goethe; or, the Writer.--Contribution to the "Memoirs of
Margaret Fuller Ossoli."
A new periodical publication was begun in Boston in 1847, under the name
of the "Massachusetts Quarterly Review." Emerson wrote the "Editor's
Address," but took no further active part in it, Theodore Parker being
the real editor. The last line of this address is characteristic: "We
rely on the truth for aid against ourselves."
On the 5th of October, 1847, Emerson sailed for Europe on his second
visit, reaching Liverpool on the 22d of that month. Many of his admirers
were desirous that he should visit England and deliver some courses of
lectures. Mr. Alexander Ireland, who had paid him friendly attentions
during his earlier visit, and whose impressions of him in the pulpit
have been given on a previous page, urged his coming. Mr. Conway
quotes passages from a letter of Emerson's which show that he had some
hesitation in accepting the invitation, not unmingled with a wish to be
heard by the English audiences favorably disposed towards him.
"I feel no call," he said, "to make a visit of literary propagandism in
England. All my impulses to work of that kind would rather employ me at
home." He does not like the idea of "coaxing" or advertising to get
him an audience. He would like to read lectures before institutions or
friendly persons who sympathize with his studies. He has had a good many
decisive tokens of interest from British men and women, but he doubts
whether he is much and favorably known in any one city, except perhaps
in London. It proved, however, that there was a very widespread desire
to hear him, and applications for lectures flowed in from all parts of
the kingdom.
From Liverpool he proceeded immediately to Manchester, where Mr. Ireland
received him at the Victoria station. After spending a few hours with
him, he went to Chelsea to visit Carlyle, and at the end of a week
returned to Manchester to begin the series of lecturing engagements
which had been arranged for him. Mr. Ireland's account of Emerson's
visits and the interviews between him and many distinguished persons
is full of interest, but the interest largely relates to the persons
visited by Emerson. He lectured at Edinburgh, where his liberal way of
thinking and talking made a great sensation in orthodox circles. But he
did not fail to find enthusiastic listeners. A young student, Mr. George
Cupples, wrote an article on these lectures from which, as quoted by Mr.
Ireland, I borrow a single sentence,--one only, but what could a critic
say more?
Speaking of his personal character, as revealed through his writings, he
says: "In this respect, I take leave to think that Emerson is the most
mark-worthy, the loftiest, and most heroic mere man that ever appeared."
Emerson has a lecture on the superlative, to which he himself was never
addicted. But what would youth be without its extravagances,--its
preterpluperfect in the shape of adjectives, its unmeasured and
unstinted admiration?
I need not enumerate the celebrated literary personages and other
notabilities whom Emerson met in England and Scotland. He thought "the
two finest mannered literary men he met in England were Leigh Hunt and
De Quincey." His diary might tell us more of the impressions made upon
him by the distinguished people he met, but it is impossible to believe
that he ever passed such inhuman judgments on the least desirable of
his new acquaintances as his friend Carlyle has left as a bitter legacy
behind him. Carlyle's merciless discourse about Coleridge and Charles
Lamb, and Swinburne's carnivorous lines, which take a barbarous
vengeance on him for his offence, are on the level of political rhetoric
rather than of scholarly criticism or characterization. Emerson never
forgot that he was dealing with human beings. He could not have long
endured the asperities of Carlyle, and that "loud shout of laughter,"
which Mr. Ireland speaks of as one of his customary explosions, would
have been discordant to Emerson's ears, which were offended by such
noisy manifestations.
During this visit Emerson made an excursion to Paris, which furnished
him materials for a lecture on France delivered in Boston, in 1856, but
never printed.
From the lectures delivered in England he selected a certain number for
publication. These make up the volume entitled "Representative Men,"
which was published in 1850. I will give very briefly an account of its
contents. The title was a happy one, and has passed into literature and
conversation as an accepted and convenient phrase. It would teach us a
good deal merely to consider the names he has selected as typical,
and the ground of their selection. We get his classification of men
considered as leaders in thought and in action. He shows his own
affinities and repulsions, and, as everywhere, writes his own biography,
no matter about whom or what he is talking. There is hardly any book of
his better worth study by those who wish to understand, not Plato, not
Plutarch, not Napoleon, but Emerson himself. All his great men interest
us for their own sake; but we know a good deal about most of them, and
Emerson holds the mirror up to them at just such an angle that we
see his own face as well as that of his hero, unintentionally,
unconsciously, no doubt, but by a necessity which he would be the first
to recognize.
Emerson swears by no master. He admires, but always with a reservation.
Plato comes nearest to being his idol, Shakespeare next. But he says of
all great men: "The power which they communicate is not theirs. When we
are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to
which also Plato was debtor."
Emerson loves power as much as Carlyle does; he likes "rough and
smooth," "scourges of God," and "darlings of the human race." He likes
Julius Caesar, Charles the Fifth, of Spain, Charles the Twelfth, of
Sweden, Richard Plantagenet, and Bonaparte.
"I applaud," he says, "a sufficient man, an officer equal
to his office; captains, ministers, senators. I like a master
standing firm on legs of iron, well born, rich, handsome,
eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing all men by fascination
into tributaries and supporters of his power. Sword and staff,
or talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on the work of the
world. But I find him greater when he can abolish himself and
all heroes by letting in this element of reason, irrespective of
persons, this subtilizer and irresistible upward force, into our
thoughts, destroying individualism; the power is so great that the
potentate is nothing.--
"The genius of humanity is the right point of view of history. The
qualities abide; the men who exhibit them have now more, now less,
and pass away; the qualities remain on another brow.--All that
respects the individual is temporary and prospective, like the
individual himself, who is ascending out of his limits into a
catholic existence."
No man can be an idol for one who looks in this way at all men. But
Plato takes the first place in Emerson's gallery of six great personages
whose portraits he has sketched. And of him he says:--
"Among secular books Plato only is entitled to Omar's fanatical
compliment to the Koran, when he said, 'Burn the libraries; for
their value is in this book.' Out of Plato come all things that are
still written and debated among men of thought."--
"In proportion to the culture of men they become his
scholars."--"How many great men Nature is incessantly sending up
out of night to be _his men_!--His contemporaries tax him with
plagiarism.--But the inventor only knows how to borrow. When we are
praising Plato, it seems we are praising quotations from Solon and
Sophron and Philolaus. Be it so. Every book is a quotation; and
every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone
quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors."
The reader will, I hope, remember this last general statement when
he learns from what wide fields of authorship Emerson filled his
storehouses.
A few sentences from Emerson will show us the probable source of some of
the deepest thought of Plato and his disciples.
The conception of the fundamental Unity, he says, finds its highest
expression in the religious writings of the East, especially in the
Indian Scriptures. "'The whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu,
who is identical with all things, and is to be regarded by the wise as
not differing from but as the same as themselves. I neither am going nor
coming; nor is my dwelling in any one place; nor art thou, thou; nor are
others, others; nor am I, I.' As if he had said, 'All is for the soul,
and the soul is Vishnu; and animals and stars are transient paintings;
and light is whitewash; and durations are deceptive; and form is
imprisonment; and heaven itself a decoy.'" All of which we see
reproduced in Emerson's poem "Brahma."--"The country of unity, of
immovable institutions, the seat of a philosophy delighting in
abstractions, of men faithful in doctrine and in practice to the idea of
a deaf, unimplorable, immense fate, is Asia; and it realizes this faith
in the social institution of caste. On the other side, the genius
of Europe is active and creative: it resists caste by culture; its
philosophy was a discipline; it is a land of arts, inventions, trade,
freedom."--"Plato came to join, and by contact to enhance, the energy of
each."
But Emerson says,--and some will smile at hearing him say it of
another,--"The acutest German, the lovingest disciple, could never tell
what Platonism was; indeed, admirable texts can be quoted on both sides
of every great question from him."
The transcendent intellectual and moral superiorities of this "Euclid of
holiness," as Emerson calls him, with his "soliform eye and his boniform
soul,"--the two quaint adjectives being from the mint of Cudworth,--are
fully dilated upon in the addition to the original article called
"Plato: New Readings."
Few readers will be satisfied with the Essay entitled "Swedenborg; or,
the Mystic." The believers in his special communion as a revealer of
divine truth will find him reduced to the level of other seers. The
believers of the different creeds of Christianity will take offence
at the statement that "Swedenborg and Behmen both failed by attaching
themselves to the Christian symbol, instead of to the moral sentiment,
which carries innumerable christianities, humanities, divinities in
its bosom." The men of science will smile at the exorbitant claims
put forward in behalf of Swedenborg as a scientific discoverer.
"Philosophers" will not be pleased to be reminded that Swedenborg called
them "cockatrices," "asps," or "flying serpents;" "literary men" will
not agree that they are "conjurers and charlatans," and will not listen
with patience to the praises of a man who so called them. As for the
poets, they can take their choice of Emerson's poetical or prose
estimate of the great Mystic, but they cannot very well accept both. In
"The Test," the Muse says:--
"I hung my verses in the wind,
Time and tide their faults may find;
All were winnowed through and through,
Five lines lasted good and true ...
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor time unmake what poets know.
Have you eyes to find the five
Which five hundred did survive?"
In the verses which follow we learn that the five immortal poets
referred to are Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, _Swedenborg_, and Goethe.
And now, in the Essay we have just been looking at, I find that "his
books have no melody, no emotion, no humor, no relief to the dead
prosaic level. We wander forlorn in a lack-lustre landscape. No bird
ever sang in these gardens of the dead. The entire want of poetry in so
transcendent a mind betokens the disease, and like a hoarse voice in a
beautiful person, is a kind of warning." Yet Emerson says of him that
"He lived to purpose: he gave a verdict. He elected goodness as the clue
to which the soul must cling in this labyrinth of nature."
Emerson seems to have admired Swedenborg at a distance, but seen nearer,
he liked Jacob Behmen a great deal better.
"Montaigne; or, the Skeptic," is easier reading than the last-mentioned
Essay. Emerson accounts for the personal regard which he has for
Montaigne by the story of his first acquaintance with him. But no other
reason was needed than that Montaigne was just what Emerson describes
him as being.
"There have been men with deeper insight; but, one would say, never
a man with such abundance of thought: he is never dull, never
insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care for all that
he cares for.
"The sincerity and marrow of the man reaches to his sentences.
I know not anywhere the book that seems less written. It is the
language of conversation transferred to a book. Cut these words and
they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.--
"Montaigne talks with shrewdness, knows the world and books and
himself, and uses the positive degree; never shrieks, or protests,
or prays: no weakness, no convulsion, no superlative: does not wish
to jump out of his skin, or play any antics, or annihilate space or
time, but is stout and solid; tastes every moment of the day; likes
pain because it makes him feel himself and realize things; as we
pinch ourselves to know that we are awake. He keeps the plain; he
rarely mounts or sinks; likes to feel solid ground and the stones
underneath. His writing has no enthusiasms, no aspiration;
contented, self-respecting, and keeping the middle of the road.
There is but one exception,--in his love for Socrates. In speaking
of him, for once his cheek flushes and his style rises to passion."
The writer who draws this portrait must have many of the same
characteristics. Much as Emerson loved his dreams and his dreamers, he
must have found a great relief in getting into "the middle of the road"
with Montaigne, after wandering in difficult by-paths which too often
led him round to the point from which he started.
As to his exposition of the true relations of skepticism to affirmative
and negative belief, the philosophical reader must be referred to the
Essay itself.
In writing of "Shakespeare; or, the Poet," Emerson naturally gives
expression to his leading ideas about the office of the poet and of
poetry.
"Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by
originality." A poet has "a heart in unison with his time and
country."--"There is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production,
but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions,
and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of
in his times."
When Shakespeare was in his youth the drama was the popular means of
amusement. It was "ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, Punch, and
library, at the same time. The best proof of its vitality is the crowd
of writers which suddenly broke into this field." Shakespeare found a
great mass of old plays existing in manuscript and reproduced from time
to time on the stage. He borrowed in all directions: "A great poet who
appears in illiterate times absorbs into his sphere all the light which
is anywhere radiating." Homer, Chaucer, Saadi, felt that all wit was
their wit. "Chaucer is a huge borrower." Emerson gives a list of authors
from whom he drew. This list is in many particulars erroneous, as I have
learned from a letter of Professor Lounsbury's which I have had the
privilege of reading, but this is a detail which need not delay us.
The reason why Emerson has so much to say on this subject of borrowing,
especially when treating of Plato and of Shakespeare, is obvious enough.
He was arguing in his own cause,--not defending himself, as if there
were some charge of plagiarism to be met, but making the proud claim
of eminent domain in behalf of the masters who knew how to use their
acquisitions.
"Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare; and even he can
tell nothing except to the Shakespeare in us."--"Shakespeare is as
much out of the category of eminent authors as he is out of the
crowd. A good reader can in a sort nestle into Plato's brain and
think from thence; but not into Shakespeare's. We are still out of
doors."
After all the homage which Emerson pays to the intellect of Shakespeare,
he weighs him with the rest of mankind, and finds that he shares "the
halfness and imperfection of humanity."
"He converted the elements which waited on his command into
entertainment. He was master of the revels to mankind."
And so, after this solemn verdict on Shakespeare, after looking at the
forlorn conclusions of our old and modern oracles, priest and prophet,
Israelite, German, and Swede, he says: "It must be conceded that these
are half views of half men. The world still wants its poet-priest, who
shall not trifle with Shakespeare the player, nor shall grope in graves
with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act with
equal inspiration."
It is not to be expected that Emerson should have much that is new to
say about "Napoleon; or, the Man of the World."
The stepping-stones of this Essay are easy to find:--
"The instinct of brave, active, able men, throughout the middle
class everywhere, has pointed out Napoleon as the incarnate
democrat.--
"Napoleon is thoroughly modern, and at the highest point of his
fortunes, has the very spirit of the newspapers." As Plato borrowed,
as Shakespeare borrowed, as Mirabeau "plagiarized every good
thought, every good word that was spoken in France," so Napoleon is
not merely "representative, but a monopolizer and usurper of other
minds."
He was "a man of stone and iron,"--equipped for his work by nature as
Sallust describes Catiline as being. "He had a directness of action
never before combined with such comprehension. Here was a man who in
each moment and emergency knew what to do next. He saw only the object;
the obstacle must give way."
"When a natural king becomes a titular king everybody is pleased and
satisfied."--
"I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern
society.--He was the agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the
internal improver, the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, the
opener of doors and markets, the subverter of monopoly and abuse."
But he was without generous sentiments, "a boundless liar," and
finishing in high colors the outline of his moral deformities, Emerson
gives us a climax in two sentences which render further condemnation
superfluous:--
"In short, when you have penetrated through all the circles of power
and splendor, you were not dealing with a gentleman, at last, but
with an impostor and rogue; and he fully deserves the epithet of
Jupiter Scapin, or a sort of Scamp Jupiter.
"So this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and absorbed the
power and existence of those who served him; and the universal cry
of France and of Europe in 1814 was, Enough of him; '_Assez de
Bonaparte_.'"
It was to this feeling that the French poet Barbier, whose death
we have but lately seen announced, gave expression in the terrible
satire in which he pictured France as a fiery courser bestridden by
her spurred rider, who drove her in a mad career over heaps of rocks
and ruins.
But after all, Carlyle's "_carrière ouverte aux talens_" is the
expression for Napoleon's great message to mankind.
"Goethe; or, the Writer," is the last of the Representative Men who
are the subjects of this book of Essays. Emerson says he had read the
fifty-five volumes of Goethe, but no other German writers, at least in
the original. It must have been in fulfilment of some pious vow that
he did this. After all that Carlyle had written about Goethe, he could
hardly help studying him. But this Essay looks to me as if he had found
the reading of Goethe hard work. It flows rather languidly, toys with
side issues as a stream loiters round a nook in its margin, and finds
an excuse for play in every pebble. Still, he has praise enough for his
author. "He has clothed our modern existence with poetry."--"He has
said the best things about nature that ever were said.--He flung into
literature in his Mephistopheles the first organic figure that has
been added for some ages, and which will remain as long as the
Prometheus.--He is the type of culture, the amateur of all arts and
sciences and events; artistic, but not artist; spiritual, but not
spiritualist.--I join Napoleon with him, as being both representatives
of the impatience and reaction of nature against the morgue of
conventions,--two stern realists, who, with their scholars, have
severally set the axe at the root of the tree of cant and seeming, for
this time and for all time."
This must serve as an _ex pede_ guide to reconstruct the Essay which
finishes the volume.
In 1852 there was published a Memoir of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, in which
Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing each took
a part. Emerson's account of her conversation and extracts from
her letters and diaries, with his running commentaries and his
interpretation of her mind and character, are a most faithful and vivid
portraiture of a woman who is likely to live longer by what is written
of her than by anything she ever wrote herself.
CHAPTER VIII.
1858-1858. AEt. 50-55.
Lectures in various Places.--Anti-Slavery Addresses.--Woman. A Lecture
read before the Woman's Rights Convention.--Samuel Hoar. Speech at
Concord.--Publication of "English Traits."--The "Atlantic Monthly."--The
"Saturday Club."
After Emerson's return from Europe he delivered lectures to different
audiences,--one on Poetry, afterwards published in "Letters and Social
Aims," a course of lectures in Freeman Place Chapel, Boston, some of
which have been published, one on the Anglo-Saxon Race, and many
others. In January, 1855, he gave one of the lectures in a course of
Anti-Slavery Addresses delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston. In the same
year he delivered an address before the Anti-Slavery party of New York.
His plan for the extirpation of slavery was to buy the slaves from the
planters, not conceding their right to ownership, but because "it is
the only practical course, and is innocent." It would cost two thousand
millions, he says, according to the present estimate, but "was there
ever any contribution that was so enthusiastically paid as this would
be?"
His optimism flowers out in all its innocent luxuriance in the paragraph
from which this is quoted. Of course with notions like these he could
not be hand in hand with the Abolitionists. He was classed with the Free
Soilers, but he seems to have formed a party by himself in his project
for buying up the negroes. He looked at the matter somewhat otherwise in
1863, when the settlement was taking place in a different currency,--in
steel and not in gold:--
"Pay ransom to the owner,
And fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner? The slave is owner,
And ever was. Pay him."
His sympathies were all and always with freedom. He spoke with
indignation of the outrage on Sumner; he took part in the meeting at
Concord expressive of sympathy with John Brown. But he was never in the
front rank of the aggressive Anti-Slavery men. In his singular "Ode
inscribed to W.H. Channing" there is a hint of a possible solution of
the slavery problem which implies a doubt as to the permanence of the
cause of all the trouble.
"The over-god
Who marries Right to Might,
Who peoples, unpeoples,--
He who exterminates
Races by stronger races,
Black by white faces,--
Knows to bring honey
Out of the lion."
Some doubts of this kind helped Emerson to justify himself when he
refused to leave his "honeyed thought" for the busy world where
"Things are of the snake."
The time came when he could no longer sit quietly in his study, and, to
borrow Mr. Cooke's words, "As the agitation proceeded, and brave men
took part in it, and it rose to a spirit of moral grandeur, he gave a
heartier assent to the outward methods adopted."
* * * * *
No woman could doubt the reverence of Emerson for womanhood. In a
lecture read to the "Woman's Rights Convention" in 1855, he takes bold,
and what would then have been considered somewhat advanced, ground in
the controversy then and since dividing the community. This is the way
in which he expresses himself:
"I do not think it yet appears that women wish this equal share in
public affairs. But it is they and not we that are to determine it.
Let the laws he purged of every barbarous remainder, every barbarous
impediment to women. Let the public donations for education be
equally shared by them, let them enter a school as freely as a
church, let them have and hold and give their property as men do
theirs;--and in a few years it will easily appear whether they wish
a voice in making the laws that are to govern them. If you do refuse
them a vote, you will also refuse to tax them,--according to our
Teutonic principle, No representation, no tax.--The new movement
is only a tide shared by the spirits of man and woman; and you may
proceed in the faith that whatever the woman's heart is prompted to
desire, the man's mind is simultaneously prompted to accomplish."
Emerson was fortunate enough to have had for many years as a neighbor,
that true New England Roman, Samuel Hoar. He spoke of him in Concord
before his fellow-citizens, shortly after his death, in 1856. He
afterwards prepared a sketch of Mr. Hoar for "Putnam's Magazine," from
which I take one prose sentence and the verse with which the sketch
concluded:--
"He was a model of those formal but reverend manners which make
what is called a gentleman of the old school, so called under an
impression that the style is passing away, but which, I suppose, is
an optical illusion, as there are always a few more of the class
remaining, and always a few young men to whom these manners are
native."
The single verse I quote is compendious enough and descriptive enough
for an Elizabethan monumental inscription.
"With beams December planets dart
His cold eye truth and conduct scanned;
July was in his sunny heart,
October in his liberal hand."
Emerson's "English Traits," forming one volume of his works, was
published in 1856. It is a thoroughly fresh and original book. It is not
a tourist's guide, not a detailed description of sights which tired
the traveller in staring at them, and tire the reader who attacks the
wearying pages in which they are recorded. Shrewd observation there is
indeed, but its strength is in broad generalization and epigrammatic
characterizations. They are not to be received as in any sense final;
they are not like the verifiable facts of science; they are more or less
sagacious, more or less well founded opinions formed by a fair-minded,
sharp-witted, kind-hearted, open-souled philosopher, whose presence
made every one well-disposed towards him, and consequently left him
well-disposed to all the world.
A glance at the table of contents will give an idea of the objects which
Emerson proposed to himself in his tour, and which take up the principal
portion of his record. Only one _place_ is given as the heading of a
chapter,--_Stonehenge_. The other eighteen chapters have general titles,
_Land, Race, Ability, Manners_, and others of similar character.
He uses plain English in introducing us to the Pilgrim fathers of the
British Aristocracy:--
"Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of the
House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy
and ferocious pirates. They were all alike, they took everything
they could carry; they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and
killed, until everything English was brought to the verge of ruin.
Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent
and dignified men now existing boast their descent from these filthy
thieves, who showed a far juster conviction of their own merits by
assuming for their types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and
snake, which they severally resembled."
The race preserves some of its better characteristics.
"They have a vigorous health and last well into middle and old age.
The old men are as red as roses, and still handsome. A clear skin,
a peach-bloom complexion, and good teeth are found all over the
island."
English "Manners" are characterized, according to Emerson, by pluck,
vigor, independence. "Every one of these islanders is an island himself,
safe, tranquil, incommunicable." They are positive, methodical, cleanly,
and formal, loving routine and conventional ways; loving truth and
religion, to be sure, but inexorable on points of form.
"They keep their old customs, costumes, and pomps, their wig and
mace, sceptre and crown. A severe decorum rules the court and the
cottage. Pretension and vaporing are once for all distasteful. They
hate nonsense, sentimentalism, and high-flown expressions; they use
a studied plainness."
"In an aristocratical country like England, not the Trial by Jury,
but the dinner is the capital institution."
"They confide in each other,--English believes in English."--"They
require the same adherence, thorough conviction, and reality in
public men."
"As compared with the American, I think them cheerful and contented.
Young people in this country are much more prone to melancholy."
Emerson's observation is in accordance with that of Cotton Mather nearly
two hundred years ago.
"_New England_, a country where splenetic Maladies are prevailing
and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded numberless
instances, of even pious people, who have contracted those
_Melancholy Indispositions_, which have unhinged them from all
service or comfort; yea, not a few persons have been hurried thereby
to lay _Violent Hands_ upon themselves at the last. These are among
the _unsearchable Judgments_ of God."
If there is a little exaggeration about the following portrait of the
Englishman, it has truth enough to excuse its high coloring, and the
likeness will be smilingly recognized by every stout Briton.
"They drink brandy like water, cannot expend their quantities of
waste strength on riding, hunting, swimming, and fencing, and run
into absurd follies with the gravity of the Eumenides. They stoutly
carry into every nook and corner of the earth their turbulent sense;
leaving no lie uncontradicted; no pretension unexamined. They chew
hasheesh; cut themselves with poisoned creases, swing their hammock
in the boughs of the Bohon Upas, taste every poison, buy every
secret; at Naples, they put St. Januarius's blood in an alembic;
they saw a hole into the head of the 'winking virgin' to know why
she winks; measure with an English foot-rule every cell of the
inquisition, every Turkish Caaba, every Holy of Holies; translate
and send to Bentley the arcanum, bribed and bullied away from
shuddering Bramins; and measure their own strength by the terror
they cause."
This last audacious picture might be hung up as a prose pendant to
Marvell's poetical description of Holland and the Dutch.
"A saving stupidity marks and protects their perception as the
curtain of the eagle's eye. Our swifter Americans, when they first
deal with English, pronounce them stupid; but, later, do them
justice as people who wear well, or hide their strength.--High and
low, they are of an unctuous texture.--Their daily feasts argue a
savage vigor of body.--Half their strength they put not forth. The
stability of England is the security of the modern world."
Perhaps nothing in any of his vigorous paragraphs is more striking than
the suggestion that "if hereafter the war of races often predicted,
and making itself a war of opinions also (a question of despotism
and liberty coming from Eastern Europe), should menace the English
civilization, these sea-kings may take once again to their floating
castles and find a new home and a second millennium of power in their
colonies."
In reading some of Emerson's pages it seems as if another Arcadia, or
the new Atlantis, had emerged as the fortunate island of Great Britain,
or that he had reached a heaven on earth where neither moth nor rust
doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal,--or if
they do, never think of denying that they have done it. But this was a
generation ago, when the noun "shoddy," and the verb "to scamp," had not
grown such familiar terms to English ears as they are to-day. Emerson
saw the country on its best side. Each traveller makes his own England.
A Quaker sees chiefly broad brims, and the island looks to him like a
field of mushrooms.
The transplanted Church of England is rich and prosperous and
fashionable enough not to be disturbed by Emerson's flashes of light
that have not come through its stained windows.
"The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on
the continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador's
chapel, and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed
hat, one cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him,
and the religion of a gentleman.
"The church at this moment is much to be pitied. She has nothing
left but possession. If a bishop meets an intelligent gentleman, and
reads fatal interrogation in his eyes, he has no resource but to
take wine with him."
Sydney Smith had a great reverence for a bishop,--so great that he told
a young lady that he used to roll a crumb of bread in his hand, from
nervousness, when he sat next one at a dinner-table,--and if next an
archbishop, used to roll crumbs with both hands,---but Sydney Smith
would have enjoyed the tingling felicity of this last stinging touch
of wit, left as lightly and gracefully as a _banderillero_ leaves his
little gayly ribboned dart in the shoulders of the bull with whose
unwieldy bulk he is playing.
Emerson handles the formalism and the half belief of the Established
Church very freely, but he closes his chapter on Religion with
soft-spoken words.
"Yet if religion be the doing of all good, and for its sake
the suffering of all evil, _souffrir de tout le monde,
et ne faire souffrir personne,_ that divine secret has existed in
England from the days of Alfred to those of Romilly, of Clarkson,
and of Florence Nightingale, and in thousands who have no fame."
"English Traits" closes with Emerson's speech at Manchester, at the
annual banquet of the "Free Trade Athenaeum." This was merely an
occasional after-dinner reply to a toast which called him up, but it had
sentences in it which, if we can imagine Milton to have been called up
in the same way, he might well have spoken and done himself credit in
their utterance.
* * * * *
The total impression left by the book is that Emerson was fascinated
by the charm of English society, filled with admiration of the people,
tempted to contrast his New Englanders in many respects unfavorably with
Old Englanders, mainly in their material and vital stamina; but with all
this not blinded for a moment to the thoroughly insular limitations
of the phlegmatic islander. He alternates between a turn of genuine
admiration and a smile as at a people that has not outgrown its
playthings. This is in truth the natural and genuine feeling of a
self-governing citizen of a commonwealth where thrones and wigs and
mitres seem like so many pieces of stage property. An American need not
be a philosopher to hold these things cheap. He cannot help it. Madame
Tussaud's exhibition, the Lord-Mayor's gilt coach, and a coronation, if
one happens to be in season, are all sights to be seen by an American
traveller, but the reverence which is born with the British subject went
up with the smoke of the gun that fired the long echoing shot at the
little bridge over the sleepy river which works its way along through
the wide-awake town of Concord.
In November, 1857, a new magazine was established in Boston, bearing
the name of "The Atlantic Monthly." Professor James Russell Lowell
was editor-in-chief, and Messrs. Phillips and Sampson, who were the
originators of the enterprise, were the publishers. Many of the old
contributors to "The Dial" wrote for the new magazine, among them
Emerson. He contributed twenty-eight articles in all, more than half of
them verse, to different numbers, from the first to the thirty-seventh
volume. Among them are several of his best known poems, such as "The
Romany Girl," "Days," "Brahma," "Waldeinsamkeit," "The Titmouse,"
"Boston Hymn," "Saadi," and "Terminus."
At about the same time there grew up in Boston a literary association,
which became at last well known as the "Saturday Club," the members
dining together on the last Saturday of every month.
The Magazine and the Club have existed and flourished to the present
day. They have often been erroneously thought to have some organic
connection, and the "Atlantic Club" has been spoken of as if there was
or had been such an institution, but it never existed.
Emerson was a member of the Saturday Club from the first; in reality
before it existed as an empirical fact, and when it was only a Platonic
idea. The Club seems to have shaped itself around him as a nucleus of
crystallization, two or three friends of his having first formed the
habit of meeting him at dinner at "Parker's," the "Will's Coffee-House"
of Boston. This little group gathered others to itself and grew into a
club as Rome grew into a city, almost without knowing how. During its
first decade the Saturday Club brought together, as members or as
visitors, many distinguished persons. At one end of the table sat
Longfellow, florid, quiet, benignant, soft-voiced, a most agreeable
rather than a brilliant talker, but a man upon whom it was always
pleasant to look,--whose silence was better than many another man's
conversation. At the other end of the table sat Agassiz, robust,
sanguine, animated, full of talk, boy-like in his laughter. The stranger
who should have asked who were the men ranged along the sides of the
table would have heard in answer the names of Hawthorne, Motley, Dana,
Lowell, Whipple, Peirce, the distinguished mathematician, Judge Hoar,
eminent at the bar and in the cabinet, Dwight, the leading musical
critic of Boston for a whole generation, Sumner, the academic champion
of freedom, Andrew, "the great War Governor" of Massachusetts, Dr. Howe,
the philanthropist, William Hunt, the painter, with others not unworthy
of such company. And with these, generally near the Longfellow end of
the table, sat Emerson, talking in low tones and carefully measured
utterances to his neighbor, or listening, and recording on his mental
phonograph any stray word worth remembering. Emerson was a very regular
attendant at the meetings of the Saturday Club, and continued to dine at
its table, until within a year or two of his death.
Unfortunately the Club had no Boswell, and its golden hours passed
unrecorded.
CHAPTER IX.
1858-1863: AET. 55-60.
Essay on Persian Poetry.--Speech at the Burns Centennial
Festival--Letter from Emerson to a Lady.--Tributes to Theodore Parker
and to Thoreau.--Address on the Emancipation Proclamation.--Publication
of "The Conduct of Life." Contents: Fate; Power; Wealth; Culture;
Behavior; Worship; Considerations by the Way; Beauty; Illusions.
The Essay on Persian Poetry, published in the "Atlantic Monthly" in
1858, should be studied by all readers who are curious in tracing the
influence of Oriental poetry on Emerson's verse. In many of the shorter
poems and fragments published since "May-Day," as well as in the
"Quatrains" and others of the later poems in that volume, it is
sometimes hard to tell what is from the Persian from what is original.
On the 25th of January, 1859, Emerson attended the Burns Festival, held
at the Parker House in Boston, on the Centennial Anniversary of the
poet's birth. He spoke after the dinner to the great audience with such
beauty and eloquence that all who listened to him have remembered it as
one of the most delightful addresses they ever heard. Among his hearers
was Mr. Lowell, who says of it that "every word seemed to have just
dropped down to him from the clouds." Judge Hoar, who was another of his
hearers, says, that though he has heard many of the chief orators of his
time, he never witnessed such an effect of speech upon men. I was myself
present on that occasion, and underwent the same fascination that these
gentlemen and the varied audience before the speaker experienced. His
words had a passion in them not usual in the calm, pure flow most
natural to his uttered thoughts; white-hot iron we are familiar with,
but white-hot silver is what we do not often look upon, and his
inspiring address glowed like silver fresh from the cupel.
I am allowed the privilege of printing the following letter addressed
to a lady of high intellectual gifts, who was one of the earliest, most
devoted, and most faithful of his intimate friends:--
CONCORD, May 13, 1859.
Please, dear C., not to embark for home until I have despatched these
lines, which I will hasten to finish. Louis Napoleon will not bayonet
you the while,--keep him at the door. So long I have promised to
write! so long I have thanked your long suffering! I have let pass the
unreturning opportunity your visit to Germany gave to acquaint you with
Gisela von Arnim (Bettina's daughter), and Joachim the violinist, and
Hermann Grimm the scholar, her friends. Neither has E.,--wandering in
Europe with hope of meeting you,--yet met. This contumacy of mine I
shall regret as long as I live. How palsy creeps over us, with gossamer
first, and ropes afterwards! and the witch has the prisoner when
once she has put her eye on him, as securely as after the bolts are
drawn.--Yet I and all my little company watch every token from you, and
coax Mrs. H. to read us letters. I learned with satisfaction that you
did not like Germany. Where then did Goethe find his lovers? Do all the
women have bad noses and bad mouths? And will you stop in England, and
bring home the author of "Counterparts" with you? Or did----write the
novels and send them to London, as I fancied when I read them? How
strange that you and I alone to this day should have his secret! I think
our people will never allow genius, without it is alloyed by talent.
But----is paralyzed by his whims, that I have ceased to hope from him.
I could wish your experience of your friends were more animating than
mine, and that there were any horoscope you could not cast from the
first day. The faults of youth are never shed, no, nor the merits, and
creeping time convinces ever the more of our impotence, and of the
irresistibility of our bias. Still this is only science, and must remain
science. Our _praxis_ is never altered for that. We must forever hold
our companions responsible, or they are not companions but stall-fed.
I think, as we grow older, we decrease as individuals, and as if in an
immense audience who hear stirring music, none essays to offer a new
stave, but we only join emphatically in the chorus. We volunteer
no opinion, we despair of guiding people, but are confirmed in
our perception that Nature is all right, and that we have a good
understanding with it. We must shine to a few brothers, as palms or
pines or roses among common weeds, not from greater absolute value, but
from a more convenient nature. But 'tis almost chemistry at last, though
a meta-chemistry. I remember you were such an impatient blasphemer,
however musically, against the adamantine identities, in your youth,
that you should take your turn of resignation now, and be a preacher of
peace. But there is a little raising of the eyebrow, now and then, in
the most passive acceptance,--if of an intellectual turn. Here comes out
around me at this moment the new June,--the leaves say June, though the
calendar says May,--and we must needs hail our young relatives again,
though with something of the gravity of adult sons and daughters
receiving a late-born brother or sister. Nature herself seems a little
ashamed of a law so monstrous, billions of summers, and now the old game
again without a new bract or sepal. But you will think me incorrigible
with my generalities, and you so near, and will be here again this
summer; perhaps with A.W. and the other travellers. My children scan
curiously your E.'s drawings, as they have seen them.
The happiest winds fill the sails of you and yours!
R.W. EMERSON.
In the year 1860, Theodore Parker died, and Emerson spoke
of his life and labors at the meeting held at the Music Hall to do honor
to his memory. Emerson delivered discourses on Sundays and week-days in
the Music Hall to Mr. Parker's society after his death. In 1862, he lost
his friend Thoreau, at whose funeral he delivered an address which was
published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for August of the same year. Thoreau
had many rare and admirable qualities, and Thoreau pictured by Emerson
is a more living personage than White of Selborne would have been on the
canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
The Address on the Emancipation Proclamation was delivered in Boston
in September, 1862. The feeling that inspired it may be judged by the
following extract:--
"Happy are the young, who find the pestilence cleansed out of the
earth, leaving open to them an honest career. Happy the old, who see
Nature purified before they depart. Do not let the dying die; hold
them back to this world, until you have charged their ear and heart
with this message to other spiritual societies, announcing the
melioration of our planet:--
"'Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And Peace proclaims olives of endless age.'"
The "Conduct of Life" was published in 1860. The chapter on "Fate" might
leave the reader with a feeling that what he is to do, as well as what
he is to be and to suffer, is so largely predetermined for him, that
his will, though formally asserted, has but a questionable fraction in
adjusting him to his conditions as a portion of the universe. But let
him hold fast to this reassuring statement:--
"If we must accept Fate, we are not less compelled to affirm
liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty,
the power of character.--We are sure, that, though we know not how,
necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world,
my polarity with the spirit of the times."
But the value of the Essay is not so much in any light it throws on the
mystery of volition, as on the striking and brilliant way in which the
limitations of the individual and the inexplicable rule of law are
illustrated.
"Nature is no sentimentalist,--does not cosset or pamper us. We must
see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a
man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust.--The
way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider,
the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the
crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,--these
are in the system, and our habits are like theirs. You have just
dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in
the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity,--expensive
races,--race living at the expense of race.--Let us not deny it up
and down. Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its
end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed
instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a
clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in divinity."
Emerson cautions his reader against the danger of the doctrines which he
believed in so fully:--
"They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a
lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear."
But certainly no physiologist, no cattle-breeder, no Calvinistic
predestinarian could put his view more vigorously than Emerson, who
dearly loves a picturesque statement, has given it in these words,
which have a dash of science, a flash of imagination, and a hint of the
delicate wit that is one of his characteristics:--
"People are born with the moral or with the material bias;--uterine
brothers with this diverging destination: and I suppose, with
high magnifiers, Mr. Fraunhofer or Dr. Carpenter might come to
distinguish in the embryo at the fourth day, this is a whig and that
a free-soiler."
Let us see what Emerson has to say of "Power:"--
"All successful men have agreed in one thing--they were
_causationists_. They believed that things went not by luck, but by
law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that
joins the first and the last of things.
"The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young
orators describe;--the key to all ages is,--Imbecility; imbecility
in the vast majority of men at all times, and, even in heroes, in
all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and
fear. This gives force to the strong,--that the multitude have no
habit of self-reliance or original action.--
"We say that success is constitutional; depends on a _plus_
condition of mind and body, on power of work, on courage; that is of
main efficacy in carrying on the world, and though rarely found
in the right state for an article of commerce, but oftener in the
supernatural or excess, which makes it dangerous and destructive,
yet it cannot be spared, and must be had in that form, and
absorbents provided to take off its edge."
The "two economies which are the best _succedanea"_ for deficiency of
temperament are concentration and drill. This he illustrates by example,
and he also lays down some good, plain, practical rules which "Poor
Richard" would have cheerfully approved. He might have accepted also the
Essay on "Wealth" as having a good sense so like his own that he could
hardly tell the difference between them.
"Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and
wind out; in a good pump that yields you plenty of sweet
water; in two suits of clothes, so as to change your dress
when you are wet; in dry sticks to burn; in a good double-wick
lamp, and three meals; in a horse or locomotive to cross
the land; in a boat to cross the sea; in tools to work with; in
books to read; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tools and
auxiliaries, the greatest possible extension to our powers, as if it
added feet, and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to the day,
and knowledge and good will. Wealth begins with these articles of
necessity.--
"To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the masterworks and
chief men of each race.--
"The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the
thirst for wealth; but if men should take these moralists at their
word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush
to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest
civilization should be undone."
Who can give better counsels on "Culture" than Emerson? But we must
borrow only a few sentences from his essay on that subject. All kinds of
secrets come out as we read these Essays of Emerson's. We know something
of his friends and disciples who gathered round him and sat at his feet.
It is not hard to believe that he was drawing one of those composite
portraits Mr. Galton has given us specimens of when he wrote as
follows:--
"The pest of society is egotism. This goitre of egotism
is so frequent among notable persons that we must infer some strong
necessity in nature which it subserves; such as we see in the sexual
attraction. The preservation of the species was a point of such
necessity that Nature has secured it at all hazards by immensely
overloading the passion, at the risk of perpetual crime and
disorder. So egotism has its root in the cardinal necessity by which
each individual persists to be what he is.
"The antidotes against this organic egotism are, the range and
variety of attraction, as gained by acquaintance with the world,
with men of merit, with classes of society, with travel, with
eminent persons, and with the high resources of philosophy, art, and
religion: books, travel, society, solitude."
"We can ill spare the commanding social benefits of cities; they
must be used; yet cautiously and haughtily,--and will yield their
best values to him who can best do without them. Keep the town for
occasions, but the habits should be formed to retirement. Solitude,
the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the
cold, obscure shelter, where moult the wings which will bear it
farther than suns and stars."
We must remember, too, that "the calamities are our friends. Try the
rough water as well as the smooth. Rough water can teach lessons worth
knowing. Don't be so tender at making an enemy now and then. He who aims
high, must dread an easy home and popular manners."
Emerson cannot have had many enemies, if any, in his calm and noble
career. He can have cherished no enmity, on personal grounds at least.
But he refused his hand to one who had spoken ill of a friend whom he
respected. It was "the hand of Douglas" again,--the same feeling that
Charles Emerson expressed in the youthful essay mentioned in the
introduction to this volume.
Here are a few good sayings about "Behavior."
"There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an
egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke
of genius or of love,--now repeated and hardened into usage."
Thus it is that Mr. Emerson speaks of "Manners" in his Essay under the
above title.
"The basis of good manners is self-reliance.--Manners require time,
as nothing is more vulgar than haste.--
"Men take each other's measure, when they meet for the first
time,--and every time they meet.--
"It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his
talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man that
stands by himself, the universe stands by him also."
In his Essay on "Worship," Emerson ventures the following prediction:--
"The religion which is to guide and fulfil the present and coming
ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The scientific mind
must have a faith which is science.--There will be a new church
founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a
manger again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law, the church
of men to come, without shawms or psaltery or sackbut; but it will
have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for symbol
and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture,
poetry."
It is a bold prophecy, but who can doubt that all improbable and
unverifiable traditional knowledge of all kinds will make way for the
established facts of science and history when these last reach it in
their onward movement? It may be remarked that he now speaks of science
more respectfully than of old. I suppose this Essay was of later date
than "Beauty," or "Illusions." But accidental circumstances made such
confusion in the strata of Emerson's published thought that one is often
at a loss to know whether a sentence came from the older or the newer
layer.
We come to "Considerations by the Way." The common-sense side of
Emerson's mind has so much in common with the plain practical
intelligence of Franklin that it is a pleasure to find the philosopher
of the nineteenth century quoting the philosopher of the eighteenth.
"Franklin said, 'Mankind are very superficial and dastardly: they
begin upon a thing, but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from it
discouraged; but they have the means if they would employ them.'"
"Shall we judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the
minority, surely." Here we have the doctrine of the "saving remnant,"
which we have since recognized in Mr. Matthew Arnold's well-remembered
lecture. Our republican philosopher is clearly enough outspoken on this
matter of the _vox populi_. "Leave this hypocritical prating about the
masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands, and
need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede
anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and
draw individuals out of them."
Père Bouhours asked a question about the Germans which found its answer
in due time. After reading what Emerson says about "the masses," one is
tempted to ask whether a philosopher can ever have "a constituency" and
be elected to Congress? Certainly the essay just quoted from would not
make a very promising campaign document. Perhaps there was no great
necessity for Emerson's returning to the subject of "Beauty," to which
he had devoted a chapter of "Nature," and of which he had so often
discoursed incidentally. But he says so many things worth reading in the
Essay thus entitled in the "Conduct of Life" that we need not trouble
ourselves about repetitions. The Essay is satirical and poetical rather
than philosophical. Satirical when he speaks of science with something
of that old feeling betrayed by his brother Charles when he was writing
in 1828; poetical in the flight of imagination with which he enlivens,
entertains, stimulates, inspires,--or as some may prefer to say,--amuses
his listeners and readers.
The reader must decide which of these effects is produced by the
following passage:--
"The feat of the imagination is in showing the convertibility of
everything into every other thing. Facts which had never before left
their stark common sense suddenly figure as Eleusinian mysteries. My
boots and chair and candlestick are fairies in disguise, meteors,
and constellations. All the facts in Nature are nouns of the
intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word
has a double, treble, or centuple use and meaning. What! has my
stove and pepper-pot a false bottom? I cry you mercy, good shoe-box!
I did not know you were a jewel-case. Chaff and dust begin to
sparkle, and are clothed about with immortality. And there is a joy
in perceiving the representative or symbolic character of a fact,
which no base fact or event can ever give. There are no days
so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the
imagination."
One is reminded of various things in reading this sentence. An ounce
of alcohol, or a few whiffs from an opium-pipe, may easily make a day
memorable by bringing on this imaginative delirium, which is apt, if
often repeated, to run into visions of rodents and reptiles. A
coarser satirist than Emerson indulged his fancy in "Meditations on a
Broomstick," which My Lady Berkeley heard seriously and to edification.
Meditations on a "Shoe-box" are less promising, but no doubt something
could be made of it. A poet must select, and if he stoops too low he
cannot lift the object he would fain idealize.
The habitual readers of Emerson do not mind an occasional
over-statement, extravagance, paradox, eccentricity; they find them
amusing and not misleading. But the accountants, for whom two and two
always make four, come upon one of these passages and shut the book up
as wanting in sanity. Without a certain sensibility to the humorous, no
one should venture upon Emerson. If he had seen the lecturer's smile
as he delivered one of his playful statements of a runaway truth, fact
unhorsed by imagination, sometimes by wit, or humor, he would have found
a meaning in his words which the featureless printed page could never
show him.
The Essay on "Illusions" has little which we have not met with, or shall
not find repeating itself in the Poems.
During this period Emerson contributed many articles in prose and
verse to the "Atlantic Monthly," and several to "The Dial," a second
periodical of that name published in Cincinnati. Some of these have
been, or will be, elsewhere referred to.
CHAPTER X.
1863-1868. AET. 60-65.
"Boston Hymn."--"Voluntaries."--Other Poems.--"May-Day and other
Pieces."--"Remarks at the Funeral Services of Abraham Lincoln."--Essay
on Persian Poetry.--Address at a Meeting of the Free Religious
Association.--"Progress of Culture." Address before the Phi Beta
Kappa Society of Harvard University.--Course of Lectures in
Philadelphia.--The Degree of LL.D. conferred upon Emerson by Harvard
University.--"Terminus."
The "Boston Hymn" was read by Emerson in the Music Hall, on the first
day of January, 1863. It is a rough piece of verse, but noble from
beginning to end. One verse of it, beginning "Pay ransom to the owner,"
has been already quoted; these are the three that precede it:--
"I cause from every creature
His proper good to flow:
As much as he is and doeth
So much shall he bestow.
"But laying hands on another
To coin his labor and sweat,
He goes in pawn to his victim
For eternal years in debt.
"To-day unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound:
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!"
"Voluntaries," published in the same year in the "Atlantic Monthly," is
more dithyrambic in its measure and of a more Pindaric elevation than
the plain song of the "Boston Hymn."
"But best befriended of the God
He who, in evil times,
Warned by an inward voice,
Heeds not the darkness and the dread,
Biding by his rule and choice,
Feeling only the fiery thread
Leading over heroic ground,
Walled with mortal terror round,
To the aim which him allures,
And the sweet heaven his deed secures.
Peril around, all else appalling,
Cannon in front and leaden rain
Him duly through the clarion calling
To the van called not in vain."
It is in this poem that we find the lines which, a moment after they
were written, seemed as if they had been carved on marble for a thousand
years:--
"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, _Thou must_,
The youth replies, _I can_."
"Saadi" was published in the "Atlantic Monthly" in 1864, "My Garden" in
1866, "Terminus" in 1867. In the same year these last poems with many
others were collected in a small volume, entitled "May-Day, and
Other Pieces." The general headings of these poems are as follows:
May-Day.--The Adirondacs.--Occasional and Miscellaneous Pieces.--Nature
and Life.--Elements.--Quatrains.--Translations.--Some of these poems,
which were written at long intervals, have been referred to in previous
pages. "The Adirondacs" is a pleasant narrative, but not to be compared
for its poetical character with "May-Day," one passage from which,
beginning,
"I saw the bud-crowned Spring go forth,"
is surpassingly imaginative and beautiful. In this volume will be found
"Brahma," "Days," and others which are well known to all readers of
poetry.
Emerson's delineations of character are remarkable for high-relief and
sharp-cut lines. In his Remarks at the Funeral Services for Abraham
Lincoln, held in Concord, April 19, 1865, he drew the portrait of the
homespun-robed chief of the Republic with equal breadth and delicacy:--
"Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no fair weather sailor;
the new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four
years,--four years of battle-days,--his endurance, his fertility
of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found
wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his
fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the
centre of a heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American
people in his time. Step by step he walked before them; slow
with their slowness, quickening his march by theirs, the true
representative of this continent; an entirely public man; father of
his country; the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart,
the thought of their minds articulated by his tongue."
In his "Remarks at the Organization of the Free Religious Association,"
Emerson stated his leading thought about religion in a very succinct and
sufficiently "transcendental" way: intelligibly for those who wish to
understand him; mystically to those who do not accept or wish to accept
the doctrine shadowed forth in his poem, "The Sphinx."
--"As soon as every man is apprised of the Divine Presence within
his own mind,--is apprised that the perfect law of duty corresponds
with the laws of chemistry, of vegetation, of astronomy, as face to
face in a glass; that the basis of duty, the order of society, the
power of character, the wealth of culture, the perfection of taste,
all draw their essence from this moral sentiment; then we have a
religion that exalts, that commands all the social and all the
private action."
Nothing could be more wholesome in a meeting of creed-killers than the
suggestive remark,--
--"What I expected to find here was, some practical suggestions by
which we were to reanimate and reorganize for ourselves the true
Church, the pure worship. Pure doctrine always bears fruit in pure
benefits. It is only by good works, it is only on the basis of
active duty, that worship finds expression.--The interests that grow
out of a meeting like this, should bind us with new strength to the
old eternal duties."
In a later address before the same association, Emerson says:--
"I object, of course, to the claim of miraculous
dispensation,--certainly not to the _doctrine_ of Christianity.--If
you are childish and exhibit your saint as a worker of wonders, a
thaumaturgist, I am repelled. That claim takes his teachings out of
nature, and permits official and arbitrary senses to be grafted on
the teachings."
The "Progress of Culture" was delivered as a Phi Beta Kappa oration just
thirty years after his first address before the same society. It is very
instructive to compare the two orations written at the interval of a
whole generation: one in 1837, at the age of thirty-four; the other in
1867, at the age of sixty-four. Both are hopeful, but the second is more
sanguine than the first. He recounts what he considers the recent gains
of the reforming movement:--
"Observe the marked ethical quality of the innovations urged or
adopted. The new claim of woman to a political status is itself an
honorable testimony to the civilization which has given her a civil
status new in history. Now that by the increased humanity of law she
controls her property, she inevitably takes the next step to her
share in power."
He enumerates many other gains, from the war or from the growth of
intelligence,--"All, one may say, in a high degree revolutionary,
teaching nations the taking of governments into their own hands, and
superseding kings."
He repeats some of his fundamental formulae.
"The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral
sentiment.
"Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any
material force, that thoughts rule the world.
"Periodicity, reaction, are laws of mind as well as of matter."
And most encouraging it is to read in 1884 what was written in
1867,--especially in the view of future possibilities. "Bad kings and
governors help us, if only they are bad enough." _Non tali auxilio_, we
exclaim, with a shudder of remembrance, and are very glad to read these
concluding words: "I read the promise of better times and of greater
men."
In the year 1866, Emerson reached the age which used to be spoken of as
the "grand climacteric." In that year Harvard University conferred upon
him the degree of Doctor of Laws, the highest honor in its gift.
In that same year, having left home on one of his last lecturing trips,
he met his son, Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, at the Brevoort House, in New
York. Then, and in that place, he read to his son the poem afterwards
published in the "Atlantic Monthly," and in his second volume, under the
title "Terminus." This was the first time that Dr. Emerson recognized
the fact that his father felt himself growing old. The thought, which
must have been long shaping itself in the father's mind, had been so far
from betraying itself that it was a shock to the son to hear it plainly
avowed. The poem is one of his noblest; he could not fold his robes
about him with more of serene dignity than in these solemn lines. The
reader may remember that one passage from it has been quoted for a
particular purpose, but here is the whole poem:--
TERMINUS.
It is time to be old,
To take in sail:--
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds,
And said: "No more!
No farther shoot
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Fancy departs: no more invent;
Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent.
There's not enough for this and that,
Make thy option which of two;
Economize the failing river,
Not the less revere the Giver,
Leave the many and hold the few,
Timely wise accept the terms,
Soften the fall with wary foot;
A little while
Still plan and smile,
And,--fault of novel germs,--
Mature the unfallen fruit.
Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,
Bad husbands of their fires,
Who when they gave thee breath,
Failed to bequeath
The needful sinew stark as once,
The baresark marrow to thy bones,
But left a legacy of ebbing veins,
Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,--
Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,
Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.
"As the bird trims her to the gale
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
'Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unharmed;
The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed.'"
CHAPTER XI.
1868-1873. AET. 65-70.
Lectures on the Natural History of the Intellect.--Publication
of "Society and Solitude." Contents: Society and Solitude.
--Civilization.--Art.--Eloquence.--Domestic Life.--Farming.
--Works and Days.--Books.--Clubs.--Courage.--Success.--Old Age.--Other
Literary Labors.--Visit to California.--Burning of his House, and the
Story of its Rebuilding.--Third Visit to Europe.--His Reception at
Concord on his Return.
During three successive years, 1868, 1869, 1870, Emerson delivered a
series of Lectures at Harvard University on the "Natural History of the
Intellect." These Lectures, as I am told by Dr. Emerson, cost him a
great deal of labor, but I am not aware that they have been collected or
reported. They will be referred to in the course of this chapter, in an
extract from Prof. Thayer's "Western Journey with Mr. Emerson." He is
there reported as saying that he cared very little for metaphysics.
It is very certain that he makes hardly any use of the ordinary terms
employed by metaphysicians. If he does not hold the words "subject and
object" with their adjectives, in the same contempt that Mr. Ruskin
shows for them, he very rarely employs either of these expressions.
Once he ventures on the _not me_, but in the main he uses plain English
handles for the few metaphysical tools he has occasion to employ.
"Society and Solitude" was published in 1870. The first Essay in the
volume bears the same name as the volume itself.
In this first Essay Emerson is very fair to the antagonistic claims
of solitary and social life. He recognizes the organic necessity of
solitude. We are driven "as with whips into the desert." But there is
danger in this seclusion. "Now and then a man exquisitely made can live
alone and must; but coop up most men and you undo them.--Here again, as
so often, Nature delights to put us between extreme antagonisms, and
our safety is in the skill with which we keep the diagonal line.--The
conditions are met, if we keep our independence yet do not lose our
sympathy."
The Essay on "Civilization" is pleasing, putting familiar facts in a
very agreeable way. The framed or stone-house in place of the cave or
the camp, the building of roads, the change from war, hunting,
and pasturage to agriculture, the division of labor, the skilful
combinations of civil government, the diffusion of knowledge through the
press, are well worn subjects which he treats agreeably, if not with
special brilliancy:--
"Right position of woman in the State is another index.--Place the
sexes in right relations of mutual respect, and a severe morality
gives that essential charm to a woman which educates all that
is delicate, poetic, and self-sacrificing; breeds courtesy and
learning, conversation and wit, in her rough mate, so that I have
thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of
good women."
My attention was drawn to one paragraph for a reason which my reader
will readily understand, and I trust look upon good-naturedly:--
"The ship, in its latest complete equipment, is an abridgment and
compend of a nation's arts: the ship steered by compass and chart,
longitude reckoned by lunar observation and by chronometer, driven
by steam; and in wildest sea-mountains, at vast distances from
home,--
"'The pulses of her iron heart
Go beating through the storm.'"
I cannot be wrong, it seems to me, in supposing those two lines to be
an incorrect version of these two from a poem of my own called "The
Steamboat:"
"The beating of her restless heart
Still sounding through the storm."
It is never safe to quote poetry from memory, at least while the writer
lives, for he is ready to "cavil on the ninth part of a hair" where his
verses are concerned. But extreme accuracy was not one of Emerson's
special gifts, and vanity whispers to the misrepresented versifier that
'tis better to be quoted wrong
Than to be quoted not at all.
This Essay of Emerson's is irradiated by a single precept that is worthy
to stand by the side of that which Juvenal says came from heaven. How
could the man in whose thought such a meteoric expression suddenly
announced itself fail to recognize it as divine? It is not strange that
he repeats it on the page next the one where we first see it. Not having
any golden letters to print it in, I will underscore it for italics, and
doubly underscore it in the second extract for small capitals:--
"Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor,
to _hitch his wagon to a star_, and see his chore done by the gods
themselves."--
"'It was a great instruction,' said a saint in Cromwell's war, 'that
the best courages are but beams of the Almighty.' HITCH YOUR WAGON
TO A STAR. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and
bag alone. Let us not lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find
all their teams going the other way,--Charles's Wain, Great Bear,
Orion, Leo, Hercules: every god will leave us. Work rather for those
interests which the divinities honor and promote,--justice, love,
freedom, knowledge, utility."--
Charles's Wain and the Great Bear, he should have been reminded, are the
same constellation; the _Dipper_ is what our people often call it, and
the country folk all know "the pinters," which guide their eyes to the
North Star.
I find in the Essay on "Art" many of the thoughts with which we are
familiar in Emerson's poem, "The Problem." It will be enough to cite
these passages:--
"We feel in seeing a noble building which rhymes well, as we do in
hearing a perfect song, that it is spiritually organic; that it had
a necessity in nature for being; was one of the possible forms in
the Divine mind, and is now only discovered and executed by the
artist, not arbitrarily composed by him. And so every genuine work
of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.--
--"The Iliad of Homer, the songs of David, the odes of Pindar, the
tragedies of Aeschylus, the Doric temples, the Gothic cathedrals,
the plays of Shakspeare, all and each were made not for sport, but
in grave earnest, in tears and smiles of suffering and loving men.--
--"The Gothic cathedrals were built when the builder and the priest
and the people were overpowered by their faith. Love and fear laid
every stone.--
"Our arts are happy hits. We are like the musician on the lake,
whose melody is sweeter than he knows."
The discourse on "Eloquence" is more systematic, more professorial,
than many of the others. A few brief extracts will give the key to its
general purport:--
"Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative. Afterwards,
it may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind and color,
speaks only through the most poetic forms; but, first and last, it
must still be at bottom a biblical statement of fact.--
"He who will train himself to mastery in this science of persuasion
must lay the emphasis of education, not on popular arts, but on
character and insight.--
--"The highest platform of eloquence is the moral sentiment.--
--"Its great masters ... were grave men, who preferred their
integrity to their talent, and esteemed that object for which they
toiled, whether the prosperity of their country, or the laws, or a
reformation, or liberty of speech, or of the press, or letters, or
morals, as above the whole world and themselves also."
"Domestic Life" begins with a picture of childhood so charming that it
sweetens all the good counsel which follows like honey round the rim of
the goblet which holds some tonic draught:--
"Welcome to the parents the puny struggler, strong in
his weakness, his little arms more irresistible than the
soldier's, his lips touched with persuasion which Chatham
and Pericles in manhood had not. His unaffected lamentations
when he lifts up his voice on high, or, more beautiful,
the sobbing child,--the face all liquid grief, as he tries to
swallow his vexation,--soften all hearts to pity, and to mirthful
and clamorous compassion. The small despot asks so little that
all reason and all nature are on his side. His ignorance is more
charming than all knowledge, and his little sins more bewitching
than any virtue. His flesh is angels' flesh, all alive.--All day,
between his three or four sleeps, he coos like a pigeon-house,
sputters and spurs and puts on his faces of importance; and when he
fasts, the little Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet before
him."
Emerson has favored his audiences and readers with what he knew about
"Farming." Dr. Emerson tells me that this discourse was read as an
address before the "Middlesex Agricultural Society," and printed in the
"Transactions" of that association. He soon found out that the hoe and
the spade were not the tools he was meant to work with, but he had some
general ideas about farming which he expressed very happily:--
"The farmer's office is precise and important, but you must not try
to paint him in rose-color; you cannot make pretty compliments to
fate and gravitation, whose minister he is.--This hard work will
always be done by one kind of man; not by scheming speculators, nor
by soldiers, nor professors, nor readers of Tennyson; but by men
of endurance, deep-chested, long-winded, tough, slow and sure, and
timely."
Emerson's chemistry and physiology are not profound, but they are
correct enough to make a fine richly colored poetical picture in his
imaginative presentation. He tells the commonest facts so as to make
them almost a surprise:--
"By drainage we went down to a subsoil we did not know, and have
found there is a Concord under old Concord, which we are now getting
the best crops from; a Middlesex under Middlesex; and, in fine, that
Massachusetts has a basement story more valuable and that promises
to pay a better rent than all the superstructure."
In "Works and Days" there is much good reading, but I will call
attention to one or two points only, as having a slight special interest
of their own. The first is the boldness of Emerson's assertions and
predictions in matters belonging to science and art. Thus, he speaks of
"the transfusion of the blood,--which, in Paris, it was claimed, enables
a man to change his blood as often as his linen!" And once more,
"We are to have the balloon yet, and the next war will be fought in the
air."
Possibly; but it is perhaps as safe to predict that it will be fought on
wheels; the soldiers on bicycles, the officers on tricycles.
The other point I have marked is that we find in this Essay a prose
version of the fine poem, printed in "May-Day" under the title "Days." I
shall refer to this more particularly hereafter.
It is wronging the Essay on "Books" to make extracts from it. It is all
an extract, taken from years of thought in the lonely study and the
public libraries. If I commit the wrong I have spoken of, it is under
protest against myself. Every word of this Essay deserves careful
reading. But here are a few sentences I have selected for the reader's
consideration:--
"There are books; and it is practicable to read them because they
are so few.--
"I visit occasionally the Cambridge Library, and I can seldom go
there without renewing the conviction that the best of it all is
already within the four walls of my study at home.--
"The three practical rules which I have to offer are, 1. Never read
any book that is not a year old. 2. Never read any but famed books.
3. Never read any but what you like, or, in Shakspeare's phrase,--
"'No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en;
In brief, Sir, study what you most affect.'"
Emerson has a good deal to say about conversation in his Essay on
"Clubs," but nothing very notable on the special subject of the Essay.
Perhaps his diary would have something of interest with reference to the
"Saturday Club," of which he was a member, which, in fact, formed itself
around him as a nucleus, and which he attended very regularly. But he
was not given to personalities, and among the men of genius and of
talent whom he met there no one was quieter, but none saw and heard and
remembered more. He was hardly what Dr. Johnson would have called a
"clubable" man, yet he enjoyed the meetings in his still way, or he
would never have come from Concord so regularly to attend them. He gives
two good reasons for the existence of a club like that of which I have
been speaking:--
"I need only hint the value of the club for bringing masters in
their several arts to compare and expand their views, to come to
an understanding on these points, and so that their united opinion
shall have its just influence on public questions of education and
politics."
"A principal purpose also is the hospitality of the club, as a means
of receiving a worthy foreigner with mutual advantage."
I do not think "public questions of education and politics" were very
prominent at the social meetings of the "Saturday Club," but "worthy
foreigners," and now and then one not so worthy, added variety to the
meetings of the company, which included a wide range of talents and
callings.
All that Emerson has to say about "Courage" is worth listening to, for
he was a truly brave man in that sphere of action where there are more
cowards than are found in the battle-field. He spoke his convictions
fearlessly; he carried the spear of Ithuriel, but he wore no breastplate
save that which protects him
"Whose armor is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill."
He mentions three qualities as attracting the wonder and reverence of
mankind: 1. Disinterestedness; 2. Practical Power; 3. Courage. "I need
not show how much it is esteemed, for the people give it the first rank.
They forgive everything to it. And any man who puts his life in peril in
a cause which is esteemed becomes the darling of all men."--There are
good and inspiriting lessons for young and old in this Essay or Lecture,
which closes with the spirited ballad of "George Nidiver," written "by a
lady to whom all the particulars of the fact are exactly known."
Men will read any essay or listen to any lecture which has for its
subject, like the one now before me, "Success." Emerson complains of the
same things in America which Carlyle groaned over in England:--
"We countenance each other in this life of show, puffing
advertisement, and manufacture of public opinion; and excellence is
lost sight of in the hunger for sudden performance and praise.--
"Now, though I am by no means sure that the reader will assent to
all my propositions, yet I think we shall agree in my first rule for
success,--that we shall drop the brag and the advertisement and take
Michael Angelo's course, 'to confide in one's self and be something
of worth and value.'"
Reading about "Success" is after all very much like reading in old books
of alchemy. "How not to do it," is the lesson of all the books and
treatises. Geber and Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon and Raymond Lully, and
the whole crew of "pauperes alcumistae," all give the most elaborate
directions showing their student how to fail in transmuting Saturn into
Luna and Sol and making a billionaire of himself. "Success" in its
vulgar sense,--the gaining of money and position,--is not to be reached
by following the rules of an instructor. Our "self-made men," who govern
the country by their wealth and influence, have found their place by
adapting themselves to the particular circumstances in which they were
placed, and not by studying the broad maxims of "Poor Richard," or any
other moralist or economist.--For such as these is meant the cheap
cynical saying quoted by Emerson, "_Rien ne réussit mieux que le
succès_."
But this is not the aim and end of Emerson's teaching:--
"I fear the popular notion of success stands in direct opposition
in all points to the real and wholesome success. One adores public
opinion, the other private opinion; one fame, the other desert; one
feats, the other humility; one lucre, the other love; one monopoly,
and the other hospitality of mind."
And so, though there is no alchemy in this Lecture, it is profitable
reading, assigning its true value to the sterling gold of character,
the gaining of which is true success, as against the brazen idol of the
market-place.
The Essay on "Old Age" has a special value from its containing two
personal reminiscences: one of the venerable Josiah Quincy, a brief
mention; the other the detailed record of a visit in the year 1825,
Emerson being then twenty-two years old, to ex-President John Adams,
soon after the election of his son to the Presidency. It is enough to
allude to these, which every reader will naturally turn to first of all.
But many thoughts worth gathering are dropped along these pages. He
recounts the benefits of age; the perilous capes and shoals it has
weathered; the fact that a success more or less signifies little, so
that the old man may go below his own mark with impunity; the feeling
that he has found expression,--that his condition, in particular and in
general, allows the utterance of his mind; the pleasure of completing
his secular affairs, leaving all in the best posture for the future:--
"When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well
spare, muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works
that belong to these. But the central wisdom which was old in
infancy is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions,
leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise. I have heard
that whoever loves is in no condition old. I have heard that
whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is
announced; it cleaves to his constitution. The mode of it baffles
our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side. But the
inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving
skill,--at the end of life just ready to be born,--affirms the
inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiment."
Other literary labors of Emerson during this period were the
Introduction to "Plutarch's Morals" in 1870, and a Preface to William
Ellery Channing's Poem, "The Wanderer," in 1871. He made a speech at
Howard University, Washington, in 1872.
In the year 1871 Emerson made a visit to California with a very pleasant
company, concerning which Mr. John M. Forbes, one of whose sons married
Emerson's daughter Edith, writes to me as follows. Professor James B.
Thayer, to whom he refers, has more recently written and published an
account of this trip, from which some extracts will follow Mr. Forbes's
letter:--
BOSTON, February 6, 1884.
MY DEAR DR.,--What little I can give will be of a very rambling
character.
One of the first memories of Emerson which comes up is my meeting
him on the steamboat at returning from Detroit East. I persuaded him
to stop over at Niagara, which he had never seen. We took a carriage
and drove around the circuit. It was in early summer, perhaps in
1848 or 1849. When we came to Table Rock on the British side, our
driver took us down on the outer part of the rock in the carriage.
We passed on by rail, and the next day's papers brought us the
telegraphic news that Table Rock had fallen over; perhaps we were
among the last persons on it!
About 1871 I made up a party for California, including Mr. Emerson,
his daughter Edith, and a number of gay young people. We drove with
B----, the famous Vermont coachman, up to the Geysers, and then made
the journey to the Yosemite Valley by wagon and on horseback. I wish
I could give you more than a mere outline picture of the sage at
this time. With the thermometer at 100 degrees he would sometimes
drive with the buffalo robes drawn up over his knees, apparently
indifferent to the weather, gazing on the new and grand scenes
of mountain and valley through which we journeyed. I especially
remember once, when riding down the steep side of a mountain, his
reins hanging loose, the bit entirely out of the horse's mouth,
without his being aware that this was an unusual method of riding
Pegasus, so fixed was his gaze into space, and so unconscious was
he, at the moment, of his surroundings.
In San Francisco he visited with us the dens of the opium smokers,
in damp cellars, with rows of shelves around, on which were
deposited the stupefied Mongolians; perhaps the lowest haunts of
humanity to be found in the world. The contrast between them and
the serene eye and undisturbed brow of the sage was a sight for all
beholders.
When we reached Salt Lake City on our way home he made a point of
calling on Brigham Young, then at the summit of his power. The
Prophet, or whatever he was called, was a burly, bull-necked man of
hard sense, really leading a great industrial army. He did not seem
to appreciate who his visitor was, at any rate gave no sign of so
doing, and the chief interest of the scene was the wide contrast
between these leaders of spiritual and of material forces.
I regret not having kept any notes of what was said on this and
other occasions, but if by chance you could get hold of Professor
J.B. Thayer, who was one of our party, he could no doubt give you
some notes that would be valuable.
Perhaps the latest picture that remains in my mind of our friend is
his wandering along the beaches and under the trees at Naushon, no
doubt carrying home large stealings from my domain there, which lost
none of their value from being transferred to his pages. Next to
his private readings which he gave us there, the most notable
recollection is that of his intense amusement at some comical songs
which our young people used to sing, developing a sense of humor
which a superficial observer would hardly have discovered, but which
you and I know he possessed in a marked degree.
Yours always,
J.M. FORBES.
Professor James B. Thayer's little book, "A Western Journey with Mr.
Emerson," is a very entertaining account of the same trip concerning
which Mr. Forbes wrote the letter just given. Professor Thayer kindly
read many of his notes to me before his account was published, and
allows me to make such use of the book as I see fit. Such liberty must
not be abused, and I will content myself with a few passages in which
Emerson has a part. No extract will interest the reader more than the
following:--
"'How _can_ Mr. Emerson,' said one of the younger members of the
party to me that day, 'be so agreeable, all the time, without
getting tired!' It was the _naive_ expression of what we all had
felt. There was never a more agreeable travelling companion; he was
always accessible, cheerful, sympathetic, considerate, tolerant; and
there was always that same respectful interest in those with whom
he talked, even the humblest, which raised them in their own
estimation. One thing particularly impressed me,--the sense that he
seemed to have of a certain great amplitude of time and leisure. It
was the behavior of one who really _believed_ in an immortal life,
and had adjusted his conduct accordingly; so that, beautiful and
grand as the natural objects were, among which our journey lay, they
were matched by the sweet elevation of character, and the spiritual
charm of our gracious friend. Years afterwards, on that memorable
day of his funeral at Concord, I found that a sentence from his own
Essay on Immortality haunted my mind, and kept repeating itself
all the day long; it seemed to point to the sources of his power:
'Meantime the true disciples saw through the letter the doctrine of
eternity, which dissolved the poor corpse, and Nature also, and gave
grandeur to the passing hour.'"
This extract will be appropriately followed by another alluding to the
same subject.
"The next evening, Sunday, the twenty-third, Mr. Emerson read his
address on 'Immortality,' at Dr. Stebbins's church. It was the first
time that he had spoken on the Western coast; never did he speak
better. It was, in the main, the same noble Essay that has since
been printed.
"At breakfast the next morning we had the newspaper, the 'Alta
California.' It gave a meagre outline of the address, but praised it
warmly, and closed with the following observations: 'All left the
church feeling that an elegant tribute had been paid to the creative
genius of the Great First Cause, and that a masterly use of the
English language had contributed to that end.'"
The story used to be told that after the Reverend Horace Holley had
delivered a prayer on some public occasion, Major Ben. Russell, of ruddy
face and ruffled shirt memory, Editor of "The Columbian Centinel,"
spoke of it in his paper the next day as "the most eloquent prayer ever
addressed to a Boston audience."
The "Alta California's" "elegant tribute" is not quite up to this
rhetorical altitude.
"'The minister,' said he, 'is in no danger of losing his position;
he represents the moral sense and the humanities.' He spoke of his
own reasons for leaving the pulpit, and added that 'some one had
lately come to him whose conscience troubled him about retaining the
name of Christian; he had replied that he himself had no difficulty
about it. When he was called a Platonist, or a Christian, or a
Republican, he welcomed it. It did not bind him to what he did
not like. What is the use of going about and setting up a flag of
negation?'"
"I made bold to ask him what he had in mind in naming his recent
course of lectures at Cambridge, 'The Natural History of the
Intellect.' This opened a very interesting conversation; but, alas!
I could recall but little of it,--little more than the mere hintings
of what he said. He cared very little for metaphysics. But he
thought that as a man grows he observes certain facts about his own
mind,--about memory, for example. These he had set down from time
to time. As for making any methodical history, he did not undertake
it."
Emerson met Brigham Young at Salt Lake City, as has been mentioned, but
neither seems to have made much impression upon the other. Emerson spoke
of the Mormons. Some one had said, "They impress the common people,
through their imagination, by Bible-names and imagery." "Yes," he said,
"it is an after-clap of Puritanism. But one would think that after this
Father Abraham could go no further."
The charm of Boswell's Life of Johnson is that it not merely records
his admirable conversation, but also gives us many of those lesser
peculiarities which are as necessary to a true biography as lights and
shades to a portrait on canvas. We are much obliged to Professor Thayer
therefore for the two following pleasant recollections which he has been
good-natured enough to preserve for us, and with which we will take
leave of his agreeable little volume:--
"At breakfast we had, among other things, pie. This article at
breakfast was one of Mr. Emerson's weaknesses. A pie stood before
him now. He offered to help somebody from it, who declined; and
then one or two others, who also declined; and then Mr.----; he too
declined. 'But Mr.----!' Mr. Emerson remonstrated, with humorous
emphasis, thrusting the knife under a piece of the pie, and putting
the entire weight of his character into his manner,--'but Mr.----,
_what is pie for_?'"
A near friend of mine, a lady, was once in the cars with Emerson, and
when they stopped for the refreshment of the passengers he was very
desirous of procuring something at the station for her solace. Presently
he advanced upon her with a cup of tea in one hand and a wedge of pie in
the other,--such a wedge! She could hardly have been more dismayed
if one of Caesar's _cunei_, or wedges of soldiers, had made a charge
against her.
Yet let me say here that pie, often foolishly abused, is a good
creature, at the right time and in angles of thirty or forty degrees. In
semicircles and quadrants it may sometimes prove too much for delicate
stomachs. But here was Emerson, a hopelessly confirmed pie-eater, never,
so far as I remember, complaining of dyspepsia; and there, on the other
side, was Carlyle, feeding largely on wholesome oatmeal, groaning with
indigestion all his days, and living with half his self-consciousness
habitually centred beneath his diaphragm.
Like his friend Carlyle and like Tennyson, Emerson had a liking for a
whiff of tobacco-smoke:--
"When alone," he said, "he rarely cared to finish a whole cigar. But
in company it was singular to see how different it was. To one who
found it difficult to meet people, as he did, the effect of a cigar
was agreeable; one who is smoking may be as silent as he likes, and
yet be good company. And so Hawthorne used to say that he found it.
On this journey Mr. Emerson generally smoked a single cigar after
our mid-day dinner, or after tea, and occasionally after both. This
was multiplying, several times over, anything that was usual with
him at home."
Professor Thayer adds in a note:--
"Like Milton, Mr. Emerson 'was extraordinary temperate in his Diet,'
and he used even less tobacco. Milton's quiet day seems to have
closed regularly with a pipe; he 'supped,' we are told, 'upon ...
some light thing; and after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water
went to bed.'"
As Emerson's name has been connected with that of Milton in its nobler
aspects, it can do no harm to contemplate him, like Milton, indulging in
this semi-philosophical luxury.
One morning in July, 1872, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson woke to find their room
filled with smoke and fire coming through the floor of a closet in the
room over them. The alarm was given, and the neighbors gathered and did
their best to put out the flames, but the upper part of the house was
destroyed, and with it were burned many papers of value to Emerson,
including his father's sermons. Emerson got wet and chilled, and it
seems too probable that the shock hastened that gradual loss of memory
which came over his declining years.
His kind neighbors did all they could to save his property and relieve
his temporary needs. A study was made ready for him in the old Court
House, and the "Old Manse," which had sheltered his grandfather, and
others nearest to him, received him once more as its tenant.
On the 15th of October he spoke at a dinner given in New York in honor
of James Anthony Froude, the historian, and in the course of this same
month he set out on his third visit to Europe, accompanied by his
daughter Ellen. We have little to record of this visit, which was
suggested as a relief and recreation while his home was being refitted
for him. He went to Egypt, but so far as I have learned the Sphinx had
no message for him, and in the state of mind in which he found himself
upon the mysterious and dream-compelling Nile it may be suspected that
the landscape with its palms and pyramids was an unreal vision,--that,
as to his Humble-bee,
"All was picture as he passed."
But while he was voyaging his friends had not forgotten him. The
sympathy with him in his misfortune was general and profound. It did not
confine itself to expressions of feeling, but a spontaneous movement
organized itself almost without effort. If any such had been needed, the
attached friend whose name is appended to the Address to the Subscribers
to the Fund for rebuilding Mr. Emerson's house would have been as
energetic in this new cause as he had been in the matter of procuring
the reprint of "Sartor Resartus." I have his kind permission to publish
the whole correspondence relating to the friendly project so happily
carried out.
_To the Subscribers to the Fund for the Rebuilding of Mr. Emerson's
House, after the Fire of July_ 24, 1872:
The death of Mr. Emerson has removed any objection which may have
before existed to the printing of the following correspondence. I
have now caused this to be done, that each subscriber may have the
satisfaction of possessing a copy of the touching and affectionate
letters in which he expressed his delight in this, to him, most
unexpected demonstration of personal regard and attachment, in the
offer to restore for him his ruined home.
No enterprise of the kind was ever more fortunate and successful in
its purpose and in its results. The prompt and cordial response to
the proposed subscription was most gratifying. No contribution was
solicited from any one. The simple suggestion to a few friends of
Mr. Emerson that an opportunity was now offered to be of service
to him was all that was needed. From the first day on which it was
made, the day after the fire, letters began to come in, with cheques
for large and small amounts, so that in less than three weeks I
was enabled to send to Judge Hoar the sum named in his letter as
received by him on the 13th of August, and presented by him to Mr.
Emerson the next morning, at the Old Manse, with fitting words.
Other subscriptions were afterwards received, increasing the amount
on my book to eleven thousand six hundred and twenty dollars. A part
of this was handed directly to the builder at Concord. The balance
was sent to Mr. Emerson October 7, and acknowledged by him in his
letter of October 8, 1872.
All the friends of Mr. Emerson who knew of the plan which was
proposed to rebuild his house, seemed to feel that it was a
privilege to be allowed to express in this way the love and
veneration with which he was regarded, and the deep debt of
gratitude which they owed to him, and there is no doubt that a much
larger amount would have been readily and gladly offered, if it had
been required, for the object in view.
Those who have had the happiness to join in this friendly
"conspiracy" may well take pleasure in the thought that what they
have done has had the effect to lighten the load of care and anxiety
which the calamity of the fire brought with it to Mr. Emerson, and
thus perhaps to prolong for some precious years the serene and noble
life that was so dear to all of us.
My thanks are due to the friends who have made me the bearer of this
message of good-will.
LE BARON RUSSELL.
BOSTON, May 8, 1882.
BOSTON, August 13, 1872.
DEAR MR. EMERSON:
It seems to have been the spontaneous desire of your friends, on
hearing of the burning of your house, to be allowed the pleasure of
rebuilding it.
A few of them have united for this object, and now request your
acceptance of the amount which I have to-day deposited to your order
at the Concord Bank, through the kindness of our friend, Judge Hoar.
They trust that you will receive it as an expression of sincere
regard and affection from friends, who will, one and all, esteem it
a great privilege to be permitted to assist in the restoration of
your home.
And if, in their eagerness to participate in so grateful a work,
they may have exceeded the estimate of your architect as to what
is required for that purpose, they beg that you will devote the
remainder to such other objects as may be most convenient to you.
Very sincerely yours,
LE BARON RUSSELL.
CONCORD, August 14, 1872.
DR. LE B. RUSSELL:
_Dear Sir_,--I received your letters, with the check for ten
thousand dollars inclosed, from Mr. Barrett last evening. This
morning I deposited it to Mr. Emerson's credit in the Concord
National Bank, and took a bank book for him, with his little balance
entered at the top, and this following, and carried it to him with
your letter. I told him, by way of prelude, that some of his friends
had made him treasurer of an association who wished him to go to
England and examine Warwick Castle and other noted houses that
had been recently injured by fire, in order to get the best ideas
possible for restoration, and then to apply them to a house which
the association was formed to restore in this neighborhood.
When he understood the thing and had read your letter, he seemed
very deeply moved. He said that he had been allowed so far in life
to stand on his own feet, and that he hardly knew what to say,--that
the kindness of his friends was very great. I said what I thought
was best in reply, and told him that this was the spontaneous act of
friends, who wished the privilege of expressing in this way their
respect and affection, and was done only by those who thought it a
privilege to do so. I mentioned Hillard as you desired, and also
Mrs. Tappan, who, it seems, had written to him and offered any
assistance he might need, to the extent of five thousand dollars,
personally.
I think it is all right, but he said he must see the list of
contributors, and would then say what he had to say about it. He
told me that Mr. F.C. Lowell, who was his classmate and old friend,
Mr. Bangs, Mrs. Gurney, and a few other friends, had already sent
him five thousand dollars, which he seemed to think was as much as
he could bear. This makes the whole a very gratifying result, and
perhaps explains the absence of some names on your book.
I am glad that Mr. Emerson, who is feeble and ill, can learn what a
debt of obligation his friends feel to him, and thank you heartily
for what you have done about it. Very truly yours,
E.R. HOAR.
CONCORD, August 16, 1872.
MY DEAR LE BARON:
I have wondered and melted over your letter and its accompaniments
till it is high time that I should reply to it, if I can. My
misfortunes, as I have lived along so far in this world, have been
so few that I have never needed to ask direct aid of the host of
good men and women who have cheered my life, though many a gift has
come to me. And this late calamity, however rude and devastating,
soon began to look more wonderful in its salvages than in its ruins,
so that I can hardly feel any right to this munificent endowment
with which you, and my other friends through you, have astonished
me. But I cannot read your letter or think of its message without
delight, that my companions and friends bear me so noble a
good-will, nor without some new aspirations in the old heart toward
a better deserving. Judge Hoar has, up to this time, withheld from
me the names of my benefactors, but you may be sure that I shall not
rest till I have learned them, every one, to repeat to myself at
night and at morning.
Your affectionate friend and debtor,
R.W. EMERSON.
DR. LE BARON RUSSELL
CONCORD, October 8, 1872.
MY DEAR DOCTOR LE BARON:
I received last night your two notes, and the cheque, enclosed in
one of them, for one thousand and twenty dollars.
Are my friends bent on killing me with kindness? No, you will say,
but to make me live longer. I thought myself sufficiently loaded
with benefits already, and you add more and more. It appears that
you all will rebuild my house and rejuvenate me by sending me in my
old days abroad on a young man's excursion.
I am a lover of men, but this recent wonderful experience of their
tenderness surprises and occupies my thoughts day by day. Now that
I have all or almost all the names of the men and women who have
conspired in this kindness to me (some of whom I have never
personally known), I please myself with the thought of meeting each
and asking, Why have we not met before? Why have you not told me
that we thought alike? Life is not so long, nor sympathy of thought
so common, that we can spare the society of those with whom we best
agree. Well, 'tis probably my own fault by sticking ever to my
solitude. Perhaps it is not too late to learn of these friends a
better lesson.
Thank them for me whenever you meet them, and say to them that I am
not wood or stone, if I have not yet trusted myself so far as to go
to each one of them directly.
My wife insists that I shall also send her acknowledgments to them
and you.
Yours and theirs affectionately,
R.W. EMERSON.
DR. LE BARON KUSSELL.
The following are the names of the subscribers to the fund for
rebuilding Mr. Emerson's house:--
Mrs. Anne S. Hooper.
Miss Alice S. Hooper.
Mrs. Caroline Tappan.
Miss Ellen S. Tappan.
Miss Mary A. Tappan.
Mr. T.G. Appleton.
Mrs. Henry Edwards.
Miss Susan E. Dorr.
Misses Wigglesworth.
Mr. Edward Wigglesworth.
Mr. J. Elliot Cabot.
Mrs. Sarah S. Russell.
Friends in New York and Philadelphia, through Mr. Williams.
Mr. William Whiting.
Mr. Frederick Beck.
Mr. H.P. Kidder.
Mrs. Abel Adams.
Mrs. George Faulkner.
Hon. E.R. Hoar.
Mr. James B. Thayer.
Mr. John M. Forbes.
Mr. James H. Beal.
Mrs. Anna C. Lodge.
Mr. T. Jefferson Coolidge.
Mr. H.H. Hunnewell.
Mrs. S. Cabot.
Mr. James A. Dupee.
Mrs. Anna C. Lowell.
Mrs. M.F. Sayles.
Miss Helen L. Appleton.
J.R. Osgood & Co.
Mr. Richard Soule.
Mr. Francis Geo. Shaw.
Dr. R.W. Hooper.
Mr. William P. Mason.
Mr. William Gray.
Mr. Sam'l G. Ward.
Mr. J.I. Bowditch.
Mr. Geo. C. Ward.
Mrs. Luicia J. Briggs.
Mr. John E. Williams.
Dr. Le Baron Russell.
In May, 1873, Emerson returned to Concord. His friends and
fellow-citizens received him with every token of affection and
reverence. A set of signals was arranged to announce his arrival.
Carriages were in readiness for him and his family, a band greeted him
with music, and passing under a triumphal arch, he was driven to his
renewed old home amidst the welcomes and the blessings of his loving and
admiring friends and neighbors.
CHAPTER XII.
1873-1878. AET. 70-75.
Publication of "Parnassus."--Emerson Nominated as Candidate for the
Office of Lord Rector of Glasgow University.--Publication of
"Letters and Social Aims." Contents: Poetry and Imagination.--Social
Aims.--Eloquence.--Resources.--The Comic.--Quotation and
Originality.--Progress of Culture.--Persian Poetry.--Inspiration.--
Greatness.--Immortality.--Address at the Unveiling of the Statue of "The
Minute-Man" at Concord.--Publication of Collected Poems.
In December, 1874, Emerson published "Parnassus," a Collection of Poems
by British and American authors. Many readers may like to see his
subdivisions and arrangement of the pieces he has brought together.
They are as follows: "Nature."--"Human Life."--"Intellectual."
--"Contemplation."--"Moral and Religious."--"Heroic."--"Personal."
--"Pictures."--"Narrative Poems and Ballads."--"Songs."--"Dirges and
Pathetic Poems."--"Comic and Humorous."--"Poetry of Terror."--"Oracles
and Counsels."
I have borrowed so sparingly from the rich mine of Mr. George Willis
Cooke's "Ralph Waldo Emerson, His Life, Writings, and Philosophy," that
I am pleased to pay him the respectful tribute of taking a leaf from his
excellent work.
"This collection," he says,
"was the result of his habit, pursued for many years, of copying
into his commonplace book any poem which specially pleased him. Many
of these favorites had been read to illustrate his lectures on
the English poets. The book has no worthless selections, almost
everything it contains bearing the stamp of genius and worth. Yet
Emerson's personality is seen in its many intellectual and serious
poems, and in the small number of its purely religious selections.
With two or three exceptions he copies none of those devotional
poems which have attracted devout souls.--His poetical sympathies
are shown in the fact that one third of the selections are from the
seventeenth century. Shakespeare is drawn on more largely than any
other, no less than eighty-eight selections being made from him. The
names of George Herbert, Herrick, Ben Jonson, and Milton frequently
appear. Wordsworth appears forty-three times, and stands next to
Shakespeare; while Burns, Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and Chaucer make
up the list of favorites. Many little known pieces are included, and
some whose merit is other than poetical.--This selection of poems
is eminently that of a poet of keen intellectual tastes. I
not popular in character, omitting many public favorites, and
introducing very much which can never be acceptable to the general
reader. The Preface is full of interest for its comments on many of
the poems and poets appearing in these selections."
I will only add to Mr. Cooke's criticism these two remarks: First, that
I have found it impossible to know under which of his divisions to look
for many of the poems I was in search of; and as, in the earlier copies
at least, there was no paged index where each author's pieces were
collected together, one had to hunt up his fragments with no little loss
of time and patience, under various heads, "imitating the careful search
that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris." The other remark is that
each one of Emerson's American fellow-poets from whom he has quoted
would gladly have spared almost any of the extracts from the poems of
his brother-bards, if the editor would only have favored us with some
specimens of his own poetry, with a single line of which he has not seen
fit to indulge us.
In 1874 Emerson received the nomination by the independent party among
the students of Glasgow University for the office of Lord Rector. He
received five hundred votes against seven hundred for Disraeli, who was
elected. He says in a letter to Dr. J. Hutchinson Sterling:--
"I count that vote as quite the fairest laurel that has ever fallen
on me; and I cannot but feel deeply grateful to my young friends in
the University, and to yourself, who have been my counsellor and my
too partial advocate."
Mr. Cabot informs us in his Prefatory Note to "Letters and Social Aims,"
that the proof sheets of this volume, now forming the eighth of the
collected works, showed even before the burning of his house and the
illness which followed from the shock, that his loss of memory and of
mental grasp was such as to make it unlikely that he would in any case
have been able to accomplish what he had undertaken. Sentences, even
whole pages, were repeated, and there was a want of order beyond what
even he would have tolerated:--
"There is nothing here that he did not write, and he gave his
full approval to whatever was done in the way of selection and
arrangement; but I cannot say that he applied his mind very closely
to the matter."
This volume contains eleven Essays, the subjects of which, as just
enumerated, are very various. The longest and most elaborate paper is
that entitled "Poetry and Imagination." I have room for little more than
the enumeration of the different headings of this long Essay. By these
it will be seen how wide a ground it covers. They are "Introductory;"
"Poetry;" "Imagination;" "Veracity;" "Creation;" "Melody, Rhythm, Form;"
"Bards and Trouveurs;" "Morals;" "Transcendency." Many thoughts with
which we are familiar are reproduced, expanded, and illustrated in this
Essay. Unity in multiplicity, the symbolism of nature, and others of his
leading ideas appear in new phrases, not unwelcome, for they look fresh
in every restatement. It would be easy to select a score of pointed
sayings, striking images, large generalizations. Some of these we find
repeated in his verse. Thus:--
"Michael Angelo is largely filled with the Creator that made and
makes men. How much of the original craft remains in him, and he a
mortal man!"
And so in the well remembered lines of "The Problem":--
"Himself from God he could not free."
"He knows that he did not make his thought,--no, his thought made him,
and made the sun and stars."
"Art might obey but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o'er him planned."
Hope is at the bottom of every Essay of Emerson's as it was at the
bottom of Pandora's box:--
"I never doubt the riches of nature, the gifts of the future, the
immense wealth of the mind. O yes, poets we shall have, mythology,
symbols, religion of our own.
--"Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every
fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song."
Under the title "Social Aims" he gives some wise counsel concerning
manners and conversation. One of these precepts will serve as a
specimen--if we have met with it before it is none the worse for wear:--
"Shun the negative side. Never worry people with; your contritions,
nor with dismal views of politics or society. Never name sickness;
even if you could trust yourself on that perilous topic, beware of
unmuzzling a valetudinarian, who will give you enough of it."
We have had one Essay on "Eloquence" already. One extract from this new
discourse on the same subject must serve our turn:--
"These are ascending stairs,--a good voice, winning manners, plain
speech, chastened, however, by the schools into correctness; but
we must come to the main matter, of power of statement,--know your
fact; hug your fact. For the essential thing is heat, and heat comes
of sincerity. Speak what you know and believe; and are personally in
it; and are answerable for every word. Eloquence is _the power to_
_translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the
person to whom you speak_."
The italics are Emerson's.
If our learned and excellent John Cotton used to sweeten his mouth
before going to bed with a bit of Calvin, we may as wisely sweeten and
strengthen our sense of existence with a morsel or two from Emerson's
Essay on "Resources":--
"A Schopenhauer, with logic and learning and wit, teaching
pessimism,--teaching that this is the worst of all possible worlds,
and inferring that sleep is better than waking, and death than
sleep,--all the talent in the world cannot save him from being
odious. But if instead of these negatives you give me affirmatives;
if you tell me that there is always life for the living; that what
man has done man can do; that this world belongs to the energetic;
that there is always a way to everything desirable; that every man
is provided, in the new bias of his faculty, with a key to
nature, and that man only rightly knows himself as far as he has
experimented on things,--I am invigorated, put into genial and
working temper; the horizon opens, and we are full of good-will and
gratitude to the Cause of Causes."
The Essay or Lecture on "The Comic" may have formed a part of a series
he had contemplated on the intellectual processes. Two or three sayings
in it will show his view sufficiently:--
"The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or
well-intended halfness; a non-performance of what is pretended to
be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of
performance.
"If the essence of the Comic be the contrast in the intellect
between the idea and the false performance, there is good reason why
we should be affected by the exposure. We have no deeper interest
than our integrity, and that we should be made aware by joke and by
stroke of any lie we entertain. Besides, a perception of the comic
seems to be a balance-wheel in our metaphysical structure. It
appears to be an essential element in a fine character.--A rogue
alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost,
his fellow-men can do little for him."
These and other sayings of like purport are illustrated by
well-preserved stories and anecdotes not for the most part of very
recent date.
"Quotation and Originality" furnishes the key to Emerson's workshop. He
believed in quotation, and borrowed from everybody and every book. Not
in any stealthy or shame-faced way, but proudly, royally, as a king
borrows from one of his attendants the coin that bears his own image and
superscription.
"All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every
moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two
strands.--We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences,
religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses,
tables and chairs by imitation.--
"The borrowing is often honest enough and comes of magnanimity and
stoutness. A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his
invention when his memory serves him with a word as good.
"Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of
it."--
--"The Progress of Culture," his second Phi Beta Kappa oration, has
already been mentioned.
--The lesson of self-reliance, which he is never tired of inculcating,
is repeated and enforced in the Essay on "Greatness."
"There are certain points of identity in which these masters agree.
Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears.--Stick to
your own; don't inculpate yourself in the local, social, or national
crime, but follow the path your genius traces like the galaxy of
heaven for you to walk in.
"Every mind has a new compass, a new direction of its own,
differencing its genius and aim from every other mind.--We call this
specialty the _bias_ of each individual. And none of us will ever
accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens
to this whisper which is heard by him alone."
If to follow this native bias is the first rule, the second is
concentration.--To the bias of the individual mind must be added the
most catholic receptivity for the genius of others.
"Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every
man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of
him."--
"The man whom we have not seen, in whom no regard of self degraded
the adorer of the laws,--who by governing himself governed others;
sportive in manner, but inexorable in act; who sees longevity in his
cause; whose aim is always distinct to him; who is suffered to be
himself in society; who carries fate in his eye;--he it is whom we
seek, encouraged in every good hour that here or hereafter he shall
he found."
What has Emerson to tell us of "Inspiration?"
"I believe that nothing great or lasting can be done except by
inspiration, by leaning on the secret augury.--
"How many sources of inspiration can we count? As many as our
affinities. But to a practical purpose we may reckon a few of
these."
I will enumerate them briefly as he gives them, but not attempting to
reproduce his comments on each:--
1. Health. 2. The experience of writing letters. 3. The renewed
sensibility which comes after seasons of decay or eclipse of the
faculties. 4. The power of the will. 5. Atmospheric causes, especially
the influence of morning. 6. Solitary converse with nature. 7. Solitude
of itself, like that of a country inn in summer, and of a city hotel
in winter. 8. Conversation. 9. New poetry; by which, he says, he means
chiefly old poetry that is new to the reader.
"Every book is good to read which sets the reader in a working
mood."
What can promise more than an Essay by Emerson on "Immortality"? It is
to be feared that many readers will transfer this note of interrogation
to the Essay itself. What is the definite belief of Emerson as expressed
in this discourse,--what does it mean? We must tack together such
sentences as we can find that will stand for an answer:--
"I think all sound minds rest on a certain preliminary conviction,
namely, that if it be best that conscious personal life shall
continue, it will continue; if not best, then it will not; and we,
if we saw the whole, should of course see that it was better so."
This is laying the table for a Barmecide feast of nonentity, with the
possibility of a real banquet to be provided for us. But he continues:--
"Schiller said, 'What is so universal as death must be benefit.'"
He tells us what Michael Angelo said, how Plutarch felt, how Montesquieu
thought about the question, and then glances off from it to the terror
of the child at the thought of life without end, to the story of the two
skeptical statesmen whose unsatisfied inquiry through a long course of
years he holds to be a better affirmative evidence than their failure
to find a confirmation was negative. He argues from our delight in
permanence, from the delicate contrivances and adjustments of created
things, that the contriver cannot be forever hidden, and says at last
plainly:--
"Everything is prospective, and man is to live hereafter. That the
world is for his education is the only sane solution of the enigma."
But turn over a few pages and we may read:--
"I confess that everything connected with our personality fails.
Nature never spares the individual; we are always balked of a
complete success; no prosperity is promised to our self-esteem. We
have our indemnity only in the moral and intellectual reality to
which we aspire. That is immortal, and we only through that. The
soul stipulates for no private good. That which is private I see not
to be good. 'If truth live, I live; if justice live, I live,'
said one of the old saints, 'and these by any man's suffering are
enlarged and enthroned.'"
Once more we get a dissolving view of Emerson's creed, if such a word
applies to a statement like the following:--
--"I mean that I am a better believer, and all serious souls are
better believers in the immortality than we can give grounds for.
The real evidence is too subtle, or is higher than we can write down
in propositions, and therefore Wordsworth's 'Ode' is the best modern
essay on the subject."
Wordsworth's "Ode" is a noble and beautiful dream; is it anything more?
The reader who would finish this Essay, which I suspect to belong to an
early period of Emerson's development, must be prepared to plunge
into mysticism and lose himself at last in an Oriental apologue. The
eschatology which rests upon an English poem and an Indian fable belongs
to the realm of reverie and of imagination rather than the domain of
reason.
On the 19th of April, 1875, the hundredth anniversary of the "Fight at
the Bridge," Emerson delivered a short Address at the unveiling of the
statue of "The Minute-Man," erected at the place of the conflict, to
commemorate the event. This is the last Address he ever wrote, though he
delivered one or more after this date. From the manuscript which lies
before me I extract a single passage:--
"In the year 1775 we had many enemies and many friends in England,
but our one benefactor was King George the Third. The time had
arrived for the political severance of America, that it might play
its part in the history of this globe, and the inscrutable divine
Providence gave an insane king to England. In the resistance of the
Colonies, he alone was immovable on the question of force. England
was so dear to us that the Colonies could only be absolutely
disunited by violence from England, and only one man could compel
the resort to violence. Parliament wavered, Lord North wavered, all
the ministers wavered, but the king had the insanity of one idea; he
was immovable, he insisted on the impossible, so the army was sent,
America was instantly united, and the Nation born."
There is certainly no mark of mental failure in this paragraph, written
at a period when he had long ceased almost entirely from his literary
labors.
Emerson's collected "Poems" constitute the ninth volume of the recent
collected edition of his works. They will be considered in a following
chapter.
CHAPTER XIII.
1878-1882. AET. 75-79.
Last Literary Labors.--Addresses and Essays.--"Lectures and Biographical
Sketches."--"Miscellanies."
The decline of Emerson's working faculties went on gently and gradually,
but he was not condemned to entire inactivity. His faithful daughter,
Ellen, followed him with assiduous, quiet, ever watchful care, aiding
his failing memory, bringing order into the chaos of his manuscript, an
echo before the voice whose words it was to shape for him when his mind
faltered and needed a momentary impulse.
With her helpful presence and support he ventured from time to time
to read a paper before a select audience. Thus, March 30, 1878, he
delivered a Lecture in the Old South Church,--"Fortune of the Republic."
On the 5th of May, 1879, he read a Lecture in the Chapel of Divinity
College, Harvard University,--"The Preacher." In 1881 he read a paper on
Carlyle before the Massachusetts Historical Society.--He also published
a paper in the "North American Review," in 1878,--"The Sovereignty of
Ethics," and one on "Superlatives," in "The Century" for February, 1882.
But in these years he was writing little or nothing. All these papers
were taken from among his manuscripts of different dates. The same
thing is true of the volumes published since his death; they were
only compilations from his stores of unpublished matter, and their
arrangement was the work of Mr. Emerson's friend and literary executor,
Mr. Cabot. These volumes cannot be considered as belonging to any single
period of his literary life.
Mr. Cabot prefixes to the tenth volume of Emerson's collected works,
which bears the title, "Lectures and Biographical Sketches," the
following:--
"NOTE.
"Of the pieces included in this volume the following, namely, those from
'The Dial,' 'Character,' 'Plutarch,' and the biographical sketches of
Dr. Ripley, of Mr. Hoar, and of Henry Thoreau, were printed by Mr.
Emerson before I took any part in the arrangement of his papers. The
rest, except the sketch of Miss Mary Emerson, I got ready for his use
in readings to his friends, or to a limited public. He had given up
the regular practice of lecturing, but would sometimes, upon special
request, read a paper that had been prepared for him from his
manuscripts, in the manner described in the Preface to 'Letters and
Social Aims,'--some former lecture serving as a nucleus for the new.
Some of these papers he afterwards allowed to be printed; others,
namely, 'Aristocracy,' 'Education,' 'The Man of Letters,' 'The Scholar,'
'Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England,' 'Mary Moody
Emerson,' are now published for the first time."
Some of these papers I have already had occasion to refer to. From
several of the others I will make one or two extracts,--a difficult
task, so closely are the thoughts packed together.
From "Demonology":--
"I say to the table-rappers
'I will believe
Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know,'
And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate!"
"Meantime far be from me the impatience which cannot brook the
supernatural, the vast; far be from me the lust of explaining away
all which appeals to the imagination, and the great presentiments
which haunt us. Willingly I too say Hail! to the unknown, awful
powers which transcend the ken of the understanding."
I will not quote anything from the Essay called "Aristocracy." But let
him who wishes to know what the word means to an American whose life has
come from New England soil, whose ancestors have breathed New England
air for many generations, read it, and he will find a new interpretation
of a very old and often greatly wronged appellation.
"Perpetual Forces" is one of those prose poems,--of his earlier epoch,
I have no doubt,--in which he plays with the facts of science with
singular grace and freedom.
What man could speak more fitly, with more authority of "Character,"
than Emerson? When he says, "If all things are taken away, I have
still all things in my relation to the Eternal," we feel that such an
utterance is as natural to his pure spirit as breathing to the frame in
which it was imprisoned.
We have had a glimpse of Emerson as a school-master, but behind and far
above the teaching drill-master's desk is the chair from which he speaks
to us of "Education." Compare the short and easy method of the wise man
of old,--"He that spareth his rod hateth his son," with this other, "Be
the companion of his thought, the friend of his friendship, the lover of
his virtue,--but no kinsman of his sin."
"The Superlative" will prove light and pleasant reading after these
graver essays. [Greek: Maedhen agan]--_ne quid nimis_,--nothing in
excess, was his precept as to adjectives.
Two sentences from "The Sovereignty of Ethics" will go far towards
reconciling elderly readers who have not forgotten the Westminster
Assembly's Catechism with this sweet-souled dealer in spiritual
dynamite:--
"Luther would cut his hand off sooner than write theses against the
pope if he suspected that he was bringing on with all his might the
pale negations of Boston Unitarianism.--
"If I miss the inspiration of the saints of Calvinism, or of
Platonism, or of Buddhism, our times are not up to theirs, or, more
truly, have not yet their own legitimate force."
So, too, this from "The Preacher":--
"All civil mankind have agreed in leaving one day for contemplation
against six for practice. I hope that day will keep its honor and
its use.--The Sabbath changes its forms from age to age, but the
substantial benefit endures."
The special interest of the Address called "The Man of Letters" is, that
it was delivered during the war. He was no advocate for peace where
great principles were at the bottom of the conflict:--
"War, seeking for the roots of strength, comes upon the moral
aspects at once.--War ennobles the age.--Battle, with the sword,
has cut many a Gordian knot in twain which all the wit of East and
West, of Northern and Border statesmen could not untie."
"The Scholar" was delivered before two Societies at the University of
Virginia so late as the year 1876. If I must select any of its wise
words, I will choose the questions which he has himself italicized to
show his sense of their importance:--
"For all men, all women, Time, your country, your condition, the
invisible world are the interrogators: _Who are you? What do you?
Can you obtain what you wish? Is there method in your consciousness?
Can you see tendency in your life? Can you help any soul_?
"Can he answer these questions? Can he dispose of them? Happy if you
can answer them mutely in the order and disposition of your life!
Happy for more than yourself, a benefactor of men, if you can answer
them in works of wisdom, art, or poetry; bestowing on the general
mind of men organic creations, to be the guidance and delight of all
who know them."
The Essay on "Plutarch" has a peculiar value from the fact that Emerson
owes more to him than to any other author except Plato, who is one of
the only two writers quoted oftener than Plutarch. _Mutato nomine_, the
portrait which Emerson draws of the Greek moralist might stand for his
own:--
"Whatever is eminent in fact or in fiction, in opinion, in
character, in institutions, in science--natural, moral, or
metaphysical, or in memorable sayings drew his attention and came to
his pen with more or less fulness of record.
"A poet in verse or prose must have a sensuous eye, but an
intellectual co-perception. Plutarch's memory is full and his
horizon wide. Nothing touches man but he feels to be his.
"Plutarch had a religion which Montaigne wanted, and which defends
him from wantonness; and though Plutarch is as plain spoken, his
moral sentiment is always pure.--
"I do not know where to find a book--to borrow a phrase of Ben
Jonson's--'so rammed with life,' and this in chapters chiefly
ethical, which are so prone to be heavy and sentimental.--His
vivacity and abundance never leave him to loiter or pound on an
incident.--
"In his immense quotation and allusion we quickly cease to
discriminate between what he quotes and what he invents.--'Tis all
Plutarch, by right of eminent domain, and all property vests in this
emperor.
"It is in consequence of this poetic trait in his mind, that I
confess that, in reading him, I embrace the particulars, and carry a
faint memory of the argument or general design of the chapter; but
he is not less welcome, and he leaves the reader with a relish and a
necessity for completing his studies.
"He is a pronounced idealist, who does not hesitate to say, like
another Berkeley, 'Matter is itself privation.'--
"Of philosophy he is more interested in the results than in the
method. He has a just instinct of the presence of a master, and
prefers to sit as a scholar with Plato than as a disputant.
"His natural history is that of a lover and poet, and not of a
physicist.
"But though curious in the questions of the schools on the nature
and genesis of things, his extreme interest in every trait of
character, and his broad humanity, lead him constantly to Morals, to
the study of the Beautiful and Good. Hence his love of heroes, his
rule of life, and his clear convictions of the high destiny of the
soul. La Harpe said that 'Plutarch is the genius the most naturally
moral that ever existed.'
"Plutarch thought 'truth to be the greatest good that man can
receive, and the goodliest blessing that God can give.'
"All his judgments are noble. He thought with Epicurus that it is
more delightful to do than to receive a kindness.
"Plutarch was well-born, well-conditioned--eminently social, he was
a king in his own house, surrounded himself with select friends, and
knew the high value of good conversation.--
"He had that universal sympathy with genius which makes all its
victories his own; though he never used verse, he had many qualities
of the poet in the power of his imagination, the speed of his mental
associations, and his sharp, objective eyes. But what specially
marks him, he is a chief example of the illumination of the
intellect by the force of morals."
How much, of all this would have been recognized as just and true if it
had been set down in an obituary notice of Emerson!
I have already made use of several of the other papers contained in this
volume, and will merely enumerate all that follow the "Plutarch." Some
of the titles will be sure to attract the reader. They are "Historic
Notes of Life and Letters in New England;" "The Chardon Street
Convention;" "Ezra Ripley, D.D.;" "Mary Moody Emerson;" "Samuel Hoar;"
"Thoreau;" "Carlyle."--
Mr. Cabot prefaces the eleventh and last volume of Emerson's writings
with the following "Note":--
"The first five pieces in this volume, and the 'Editorial Address'
from the 'Massachusetts Quarterly Review,' were published by Mr.
Emerson long ago. The speeches at the John Brown, the Walter Scott,
and the Free Religious Association meetings were published at the
time, no doubt with his consent, but without any active co-operation
on his part. The 'Fortune of the Republic' appeared separately in
1879; the rest have never been published. In none was any change
from the original form made by me, except in the 'Fortune of the
Republic,' which was made up of several lectures for the occasion
upon which it was read."
The volume of "Miscellanies" contains no less than twenty-three pieces
of very various lengths and relating to many different subjects. The
five referred to as having been previously published are, "The Lord's
Supper," the "Historical Discourse in Concord," the "Address at the
Dedication of the Soldiers' Monument in Concord," the "Address on
Emancipation in the British West Indies," and the Lecture or Essay on
"War,"--all of which have been already spoken of.
Next in order comes a Lecture on the "Fugitive Slave Law." Emerson says,
"I do not often speak on public questions.--My own habitual view is to
the well-being of scholars." But he leaves his studies to attack the
institution of slavery, from which he says he himself has never suffered
any inconvenience, and the "Law," which the abolitionists would always
call the "Fugitive Slave _Bill_." Emerson had a great admiration for
Mr. Webster, but he did not spare him as he recalled his speech of the
seventh of March, just four years before the delivery of this Lecture.
He warns against false leadership:--
"To make good the cause of Freedom, you must draw off from all
foolish trust in others.--He only who is able to stand alone is
qualified for society. And that I understand to be the end for which
a soul exists in this world,--to be himself the counter-balance of
all falsehood and all wrong.--The Anglo-Saxon race is proud and
strong and selfish.--England maintains trade, not liberty."
Cowper had said long before this:--
"doing good,
Disinterested good, is not our trade."
And America found that England had not learned that trade when, fifteen
years after this discourse was delivered, the conflict between the free
and slave states threatened the ruin of the great Republic, and England
forgot her Anti-slavery in the prospect of the downfall of "a great
empire which threatens to overshadow the whole earth."
It must be remembered that Emerson had never been identified with the
abolitionists. But an individual act of wrong sometimes gives a sharp
point to a blunt dagger which has been kept in its sheath too long:--
"The events of the last few years and months and days have taught us
the lessons of centuries. I do not see how a barbarous community and
a civilized community can constitute one State. I think we must get
rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom."
These were his words on the 26th of May, 1856, in his speech on "The
Assault upon Mr. Sumner." A few months later, in his "Speech on the
Affairs of Kansas," delivered almost five years before the first gun
was fired at Fort Sumter, he spoke the following fatally prophetic and
commanding words:--
"The hour is coming when the strongest will not be strong enough.
A harder task will the new revolution of the nineteenth century be
than was the revolution of the eighteenth century. I think the
American Revolution bought its glory cheap. If the problem was new,
it was simple. If there were few people, they were united, and the
enemy three thousand miles off. But now, vast property, gigantic
interests, family connections, webs of party, cover the land with a
net-work that immensely multiplies the dangers of war.
"Fellow-citizens, in these times full of the fate of the Republic,
I think the towns should hold town meetings, and resolve themselves
into Committees of Safety, go into permanent sessions, adjourning
from week to week, from month to month. I wish we could send the
sergeant-at-arms to stop every American who is about to leave the
country. Send home every one who is abroad, lest they should find no
country to return to. Come home and stay at home while there is a
country to save. When it is lost it will be time enough then for any
who are luckless enough to remain alive to gather up their clothes
and depart to some land where freedom exists."
Two short speeches follow, one delivered at a meeting for the relief of
the family of John Brown, on the 18th of November, 1859, the other after
his execution:--
"Our blind statesmen," he says, "go up and down, with committees of
vigilance and safety, hunting for the origin of this new heresy.
They will need a very vigilant committee indeed to find its
birthplace, and a very strong force to root it out. For the
arch-Abolitionist, older than Brown, and older than the Shenandoah
Mountains, is Love, whose other name is Justice, which was before
Alfred, before Lycurgus, before Slavery, and will be after it."
From his "Discourse on Theodore Parker" I take the following vigorous
sentence:--
"His commanding merit as a reformer is this, that he insisted beyond
all men in pulpits,--I cannot think of one rival,--that the essence
of Christianity is its practical morals; it is there for use, or
it is nothing; and if you combine it with sharp trading, or with
ordinary city ambitions to gloze over municipal corruptions, or
private intemperance, or successful fraud, or immoral politics, or
unjust wars, or the cheating of Indians, or the robbery of frontier
nations, or leaving your principles at home to follow on the
high seas or in Europe a supple complaisance to tyrants,--it is
hypocrisy, and the truth is not in you; and no love of religious
music, or of dreams of Swedenborg, or praise of John Wesley, or of
Jeremy Taylor, can save you from the Satan which you are."
The Lecture on "American Civilization," made up from two Addresses, one
of which was delivered at Washington on the 31st of January, 1862, is,
as might be expected, full of anti-slavery. That on the "Emancipation
Proclamation," delivered in Boston in September, 1862, is as full of
"silent joy" at the advent of "a day which most of us dared not hope
to see,--an event worth the dreadful war, worth its costs and
uncertainties."
From the "Remarks" at the funeral services for Abraham Lincoln, held
in Concord on the 19th of April, 1865, I extract this admirably drawn
character of the man:--
"He is the true history of the American people in his time. Step by
step he walked before them; slow with their slowness, quickening
his march by theirs, the true representative of this continent; an
entirely public man; father of his country, the pulse of twenty
millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds
articulated by his tongue."
The following are the titles of the remaining contents of this volume:
"Harvard Commemoration Speech;" "Editor's Address: Massachusetts
Quarterly Review;" "Woman;" "Address to Kossuth;" "Robert Burns;"
"Walter Scott;" "Remarks at the Organization of the Free Religious
Association;" "Speech at the Annual Meeting of the Free Religious
Association;" "The Fortune of the Republic." In treating of the
"Woman Question," Emerson speaks temperately, delicately, with perfect
fairness, but leaves it in the hands of the women themselves to
determine whether they shall have an equal part in public affairs. "The
new movement," he says, "is only a tide shared by the spirits of man and
woman; and you may proceed in the faith that whatever the woman's heart
is prompted to desire, the man's mind is simultaneously prompted to
accomplish."
It is hard to turn a leaf in any book of Emerson's writing without
finding some pithy remark or some striking image or witty comment which
illuminates the page where we find it and tempts us to seize upon it for
an extract. But I must content myself with these few sentences from "The
Fortune of the Republic," the last address he ever delivered, in which
his belief in America and her institutions, and his trust in the
Providence which overrules all nations and all worlds, have found
fitting utterance:--
"Let the passion for America cast out the passion for Europe. Here
let there be what the earth waits for,--exalted manhood. What this
country longs for is personalities, grand persons, to counteract its
materialities. For it is the rule of the universe that corn shall
serve man, and not man corn.
"They who find America insipid,--they for whom London and Paris have
spoiled their own homes, can be spared to return to those cities. I
not only see a career at home for more genius than we have, but for
more than there is in the world.
"Our helm is given up to a better guidance than our own; the course
of events is quite too strong for any helmsman, and our little
wherry is taken in tow by the ship of the great Admiral which knows
the way, and has the force to draw men and states and planets to
their good."
With this expression of love and respect for his country and trust
in his country's God, we may take leave of Emerson's prose writings.
CHAPTER XIV.
EMERSON'S POEMS.
The following "Prefatory Note" by Mr. Cabot introduces the ninth volume
of the series of Emerson's collected works:--
"This volume contains nearly all the pieces included in the POEMS
and MAY-DAY of former editions. In 1876 Mr. Emerson published a
selection from his poems, adding six new ones, and omitting many.
Of those omitted, several are now restored, in accordance with the
expressed wishes of many readers and lovers of them. Also some
pieces never before published are here given in an Appendix, on
various grounds. Some of them appear to have had Emerson's approval,
but to have been withheld because they were unfinished. These it
seemed best not to suppress, now that they can never receive their
completion. Others, mostly of an early date, remained unpublished
doubtless because of their personal and private nature. Some of
these seem to have an autobiographic interest sufficient to justify
their publication. Others again, often mere fragments, have been
admitted as characteristic, or as expressing in poetic form thoughts
found in the Essays.
"In coming to a decision in these cases, it seemed on the whole
preferable to take the risk of including too much rather than the
opposite, and to leave the task of further winnowing to the hands of
time.
"As was stated in the Preface to the first volume of this edition of
Mr. Emerson's writings, the readings adopted by him in the "Selected
Poems" have not always been followed here, but in some cases
preference has been given to corrections made by him when he was in
fuller strength than at the time of the last revision.
"A change in the arrangement of the stanzas of "May-Day," in the
part representative of the march of Spring, received his sanction as
bringing them more nearly in accordance with the events in Nature."
Emerson's verse has been a fertile source of discussion. Some have
called him a poet and nothing but a poet, and some have made so much of
the palpable defects of his verse that they have forgotten to recognize
its true claims. His prose is often highly poetical, but his verse is
something more than the most imaginative and rhetorical passages of his
prose. An illustration presently to be given will make this point clear.
Poetry is to prose what the so-called full dress of the ball-room is to
the plainer garments of the household and the street. Full dress, as
we call it, is so full of beauty that it cannot hold it all, and the
redundancy of nature overflows the narrowed margin of satin or velvet.
It reconciles us to its approach to nudity by the richness of its
drapery and ornaments. A pearl or diamond necklace or a blushing bouquet
excuses the liberal allowance of undisguised nature. We expect from the
fine lady in her brocades and laces a generosity of display which we
should reprimand with the virtuous severity of Tartuffe if ventured upon
by the waiting-maid in her calicoes. So the poet reveals himself under
the protection of his imaginative and melodious phrases,--the flowers
and jewels of his vocabulary.
Here is a prose sentence from Emerson's "Works and Days:"--
"The days are ever divine as to the first Aryans. They come and go
like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party;
but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring,
they carry them as silently away."
Now see this thought in full dress, and then ask what is the difference
between prose and poetry:--
"DAYS.
"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleachéd garden watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I too late
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn."
--Cinderella at the fireside, and Cinderella at the prince's ball! The
full dress version of the thought is glittering with new images like
bracelets and brooches and ear-rings, and fringed with fresh adjectives
like edges of embroidery. That one word _pleachéd,_ an heir-loom from
Queen Elizabeth's day, gives to the noble sonnet an antique dignity and
charm like the effect of an ancestral jewel. But mark that now the
poet reveals himself as he could not in the prosaic form of the first
extract. It is his own neglect of his great opportunity of which he
now speaks, and not merely the indolent indifference of others. It
is himself who is the object of scorn. Self-revelation of beauty
embellished by ornaments is the privilege of full dress; self-revelation
in the florid costume of verse is the divine right of the poet. Passion
that must express itself longs always for the freedom of rhythmic
utterance. And in spite of the exaggeration and extravagance which
shield themselves under the claim of poetic license, I venture to affirm
that "_In_ vino _veritas_" is not truer than _In_ carmine _veritas_.
As a further illustration of what has just been said of the
self-revelations to be looked for in verse, and in Emerson's verse more
especially, let the reader observe how freely he talks about his bodily
presence and infirmities in his poetry,--subjects he never referred to
in prose, except incidentally, in private letters.
Emerson is so essentially a poet that whole pages of his are like so
many litanies of alternating chants and recitations. His thoughts slip
on and off their light rhythmic robes just as the mood takes him, as was
shown in the passage I have quoted in prose and in verse. Many of the
metrical preludes to his lectures are a versified and condensed abstract
of the leading doctrine of the discourse. They are a curious instance of
survival; the lecturer, once a preacher, still wants his text; and finds
his scriptural motto in his own rhythmic inspiration.
Shall we rank Emerson among the great poets or not?
"The great poets are judged by the frame of mind they induce; and to
them, of all men, the severest criticism is due."
These are Emerson's words in the Preface to "Parnassus."
His own poems will stand this test as well as any in the language. They
lift the reader into a higher region of thought and feeling. This seems
to me a better test to apply to them than the one which Mr. Arnold cited
from Milton. The passage containing this must be taken, not alone, but
with the context. Milton had been speaking of "Logic" and of "Rhetoric,"
and spoke of poetry "as being less subtile and fine, but more simple,
sensuous, and passionate." This relative statement, it must not be
forgotten, is conditioned by what went before. If the terms are used
absolutely, and not comparatively, as Milton used them, they must be
very elastic if they would stretch widely enough to include all the
poems which the world recognizes as masterpieces, nay, to include some
of the best of Milton's own.
In spite of what he said about himself in his letter to Carlyle, Emerson
was not only a poet, but a very remarkable one. Whether a great poet
or not will depend on the scale we use and the meaning we affix to the
term. The heat at eighty degrees of Fahrenheit is one thing and the heat
at eighty degrees of Réaumur is a very different matter. The rank of
poets is a point of very unstable equilibrium. From the days of Homer to
our own, critics have been disputing about the place to be assigned to
this or that member of the poetic hierarchy. It is not the most popular
poet who is necessarily the greatest; Wordsworth never had half the
popularity of Scott or Moore. It is not the multitude of remembered
passages which settles the rank of a metrical composition as poetry.
Gray's "Elegy," it is true, is full of lines we all remember, and is a
great poem, if that term can be applied to any piece of verse of that
length. But what shall we say to the "Ars Poetica" of Horace? It is
crowded with lines worn smooth as old sesterces by constant quotation.
And yet we should rather call it a versified criticism than a poem in
the full sense of that word. And what shall we do with Pope's "Essay on
Man," which has furnished more familiar lines than "Paradise Lost" and
"Paradise Regained" both together? For all that, we know there is a
school of writers who will not allow that Pope deserves the name of
poet.
It takes a generation or two to find out what are the passages in
a great writer which are to become commonplaces in literature and
conversation. It is to be remembered that Emerson is one of those
authors whose popularity must diffuse itself from above downwards. And
after all, few will dare assert that "The Vanity of Human Wishes" is
greater as a poem than Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," or Keats's "Ode
to a Nightingale," because no line in either of these poems is half so
often quoted as
"To point a moral or adorn a tale."
We cannot do better than begin our consideration of Emerson's poetry
with Emerson's own self-estimate. He says in a fit of humility, writing
to Carlyle:--
"I do not belong to the poets, but only to a low department of
literature, the reporters, suburban men."
But Miss Peabody writes to Mr. Ireland:--
"He once said to me, 'I am not a great poet--but whatever is of me
_is a poet_.'"
These opposite feelings were the offspring of different moods and
different periods.
Here is a fragment, written at the age of twenty-eight, in which his
self-distrust and his consciousness of the "vision," if not "the
faculty, divine," are revealed with the brave nudity of the rhythmic
confessional:--
"A dull uncertain brain,
But gifted yet to know
That God has cherubim who go
Singing an immortal strain,
Immortal here below.
I know the mighty bards,
I listen while they sing,
And now I know
The secret store
Which these explore
When they with torch of genius pierce
The tenfold clouds that cover
The riches of the universe
From God's adoring lover.
And if to me it is not given
To fetch one ingot thence
Of that unfading gold of Heaven
His merchants may dispense,
Yet well I know the royal mine
And know the sparkle of its ore,
Know Heaven's truth from lies that shine,--
Explored, they teach us to explore."
These lines are from "The Poet," a series of fragments given in the
"Appendix," which, with his first volume, "Poems," his second, "May-Day,
and other Pieces," form the complete ninth volume of the new series.
These fragments contain some of the loftiest and noblest passages to be
found in his poetical works, and if the reader should doubt which of
Emerson's self-estimates in his two different moods spoken of above had
most truth in it, he could question no longer after reading "The Poet."
Emerson has the most exalted ideas of the true poetic function, as this
passage from "Merlin" sufficiently shows:--
"Thy trivial harp will never please
Or fill my craving ear;
Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,
Free, peremptory, clear.
No jingling serenader's art
Nor tinkling of piano-strings
Can make the wild blood start
In its mystic springs;
The kingly bard
Must smite the chords rudely and hard,
As with hammer or with mace;
That they may render back
Artful thunder, which conveys
Secrets of the solar track,
Sparks of the supersolar blaze.
* * * * *
Great is the art,
Great be the manners of the bard.
He shall not his brain encumber
With the coil of rhythm and number;
But leaving rule and pale forethought
He shall aye climb
For his rhyme.
'Pass in, pass in,' the angels say,
'In to the upper doors,
Nor count compartments of the floors,
But mount to paradise
By the stairway of surprise.'"
And here is another passage from "The Poet," mentioned in the quotation
before the last, in which the bard is spoken of as performing greater
miracles than those ascribed to Orpheus:--
"A Brother of the world, his song
Sounded like a tempest strong
Which tore from oaks their branches broad,
And stars from the ecliptic road.
Time wore he as his clothing-weeds,
He sowed the sun and moon for seeds.
As melts the iceberg in the seas,
As clouds give rain to the eastern breeze,
As snow-banks thaw in April's beam,
The solid kingdoms like a dream
Resist in vain his motive strain,
They totter now and float amain.
For the Muse gave special charge
His learning should be deep and large,
And his training should not scant
The deepest lore of wealth or want:
His flesh should feel, his eyes should read
Every maxim of dreadful Need;
In its fulness he should taste
Life's honeycomb, but not too fast;
Full fed, but not intoxicated;
He should be loved; he should be hated;
A blooming child to children dear,
His heart should palpitate with fear."
We look naturally to see what poets were Emerson's chief favorites. In
his poems "The Test" and "The Solution," we find that the five whom
he recognizes as defying the powers of destruction are Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare, Swedenborg, Goethe.
Here are a few of his poetical characterizations from "The Harp:"--
"And this at least I dare affirm,
Since genius too has bound and term,
There is no bard in all the choir,
Not Homer's self, the poet-sire,
Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,
Or Shakespeare whom no mind can measure,
Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,
Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,
Scott, the delight of generous boys,
Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,--
Not one of all can put in verse,
Or to this presence could rehearse
The sights and voices ravishing
The boy knew on the hills in spring."--
In the notice of "Parnassus" some of his preferences have been already
mentioned.
Comparisons between men of genius for the sake of aggrandizing the
one at the expense of the other are the staple of the meaner kinds of
criticism. No lover of art will clash a Venetian goblet against a Roman
amphora to see which is strongest; no lover of nature undervalues a
violet because it is not a rose. But comparisons used in the way of
description are not odious.
The difference between Emerson's poetry and that of the contemporaries
with whom he would naturally be compared is that of algebra and
arithmetic. He deals largely in general symbols, abstractions, and
infinite series. He is always seeing the universal in the particular.
The great multitude of mankind care more for two and two, something
definite, a fixed quantity, than for _a_ + _b's_ and _x^{2's}_,--symbols
used for undetermined amounts and indefinite possibilities. Emerson is
a citizen of the universe who has taken up his residence for a few days
and nights in this travelling caravansary between the two inns that
hang out the signs of Venus and Mars. This little planet could not
provincialize such a man. The multiplication-table is for the every day
use of every day earth-people, but the symbols he deals with are
too vast, sometimes, we must own, too vague, for the unilluminated
terrestrial and arithmetical intelligence. One cannot help feeling that
he might have dropped in upon us from some remote centre of spiritual
life, where, instead of addition and subtraction, children were taught
quaternions, and where the fourth dimension of space was as familiarly
known to everybody as a foot-measure or a yard-stick is to us. Not that
he himself dealt in the higher or the lower mathematics, but he saw the
hidden spiritual meaning of things as Professor Cayley or Professor
Sylvester see the meaning of their mysterious formulae. Without using
the Rosetta-stone of Swedenborg, Emerson finds in every phenomenon of
nature a hieroglyphic. Others measure and describe the monuments,--he
reads the sacred inscriptions. How alive he makes Monadnoc! Dinocrates
undertook to "hew Mount Athos to the shape of man" in the likeness of
Alexander the Great. Without the help of tools or workmen, Emerson makes
"Cheshire's haughty hill" stand before us an impersonation of kingly
humanity, and talk with us as a god from Olympus might have talked.
This is the fascination of Emerson's poetry; it moves in a world of
universal symbolism. The sense of the infinite fills it with its
majestic presence. It shows, also, that he has a keen delight in the
every-day aspects of nature. But he looks always with the eye of a poet,
never with that of the man of science. The law of association of ideas
is wholly different in the two. The scientific man connects objects in
sequences and series, and in so doing is guided by their collective
resemblances. His aim is to classify and index all that he sees and
contemplates so as to show the relations which unite, and learn the laws
that govern, the subjects of his study. The poet links the most remote
objects together by the slender filament of wit, the flowery chain of
fancy, or the living, pulsating cord of imagination, always guided by
his instinct for the beautiful. The man of science clings to his object,
as the marsupial embryo to its teat, until he has filled himself as full
as he can hold; the poet takes a sip of his dew-drop, throws his head
up like a chick, rolls his eyes around in contemplation of the heavens
above him and the universe in general, and never thinks of asking a
Linnaean question as to the flower that furnished him his dew-drop. The
poetical and scientific natures rarely coexist; Haller and Goethe are
examples which show that such a union may occur, but as a rule the poet
is contented with the colors of the rainbow and leaves the study of
Fraunhofer's lines to the man of science.
Though far from being a man of science, Emerson was a realist in the
best sense of that word. But his realities reached to the highest
heavens: like Milton,--
"He passed the flaming bounds of place and time;
The living throne, the sapphire blaze
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
HE SAW"--
Everywhere his poetry abounds in celestial imagery. If Galileo had been
a poet as well as an astronomer, he would hardly have sowed his verse
thicker with stars than we find them in the poems of Emerson.
Not less did Emerson clothe the common aspects of life with the colors
of his imagination. He was ready to see beauty everywhere:--
"Thou can'st not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake."
He called upon the poet to
"Tell men what they knew before;
Paint the prospect from their door."
And his practice was like his counsel. He saw our plain New England life
with as honest New England eyes as ever looked at a huckleberry-bush or
into a milking-pail.
This noble quality of his had its dangerous side. In one of his exalted
moods he would have us
"Give to barrows, trays and pans
Grace and glimmer of romance."
But in his Lecture on "Poetry and Imagination," he says:--
"What we once admired as poetry has long since come to be a sound
of tin pans; and many of our later books we have outgrown. Perhaps
Homer and Milton will be tin pans yet."
The "grace and glimmer of romance" which was to invest the tin pan are
forgotten, and he uses it as a belittling object for comparison. He
himself was not often betrayed into the mistake of confounding the
prosaic with the poetical, but his followers, so far as the "realists"
have taken their hint from him, have done it most thoroughly. Mr.
Whitman enumerates all the objects he happens to be looking at as if
they were equally suggestive to the poetical mind, furnishing his reader
a large assortment on which he may exercise the fullest freedom of
selection. It is only giving him the same liberty that Lord Timothy
Dexter allowed his readers in the matter of punctuation, by leaving all
stops out of his sentences, and printing at the end of his book a page
of commas, semicolons, colons, periods, notes of interrogation and
exclamation, with which the reader was expected to "pepper" the pages as
he might see fit.
French realism does not stop at the tin pan, but must deal with the
slop-pail and the wash-tub as if it were literally true that
"In the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings."
Happy were it for the world if M. Zola and his tribe would stop even
there; but when they cross the borders of science into its infected
districts, leaving behind them the reserve and delicacy which the
genuine scientific observer never forgets to carry with him, they
disgust even those to whom the worst scenes they describe are too
wretchedly familiar. The true realist is such a man as Parent du
Chatelet; exploring all that most tries the senses and the sentiments,
and reporting all truthfully, but soberly, chastely, without needless
circumstance, or picturesque embellishment, for a useful end, and not
for a mere sensational effect.
What a range of subjects from "The Problem" and "Uriel" and
"Forerunners" to "The Humble-Bee" and "The Titmouse!" Nor let the reader
who thinks the poet must go far to find a fitting theme fail to read the
singularly impressive home-poem, "Hamatreya," beginning with the names
of the successive owners of a piece of land in Concord,--probably the
same he owned after the last of them:--
"Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,"
and ending with the austere and solemn "Earth-Song."
Full of poetical feeling, and with a strong desire for poetical
expression, Emerson experienced a difficulty in the mechanical part
of metrical composition. His muse picked her way as his speech did in
conversation and in lecturing. He made desperate work now and then with
rhyme and rhythm, showing that though a born poet he was not a born
singer. Think of making "feeble" rhyme with "people," "abroad" with
"Lord," and contemplate the following couplet which one cannot make
rhyme without actual verbicide:--
"Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpeck"-are!
And how could prose go on all-fours more unmetrically than this?
"In Adirondac lakes
At morn or noon the guide rows bare-headed."
It was surely not difficult to say--
"At morn or noon bare-headed rows the guide."
And yet while we note these blemishes, many of us will confess that we
like his uncombed verse better, oftentimes, than if it were trimmed more
neatly and disposed more nicely. When he is at his best, his lines flow
with careless ease, as a mountain stream tumbles, sometimes rough and
sometimes smooth, but all the more interesting for the rocks it runs
against and the grating of the pebbles it rolls over.
There is one trick of verse which Emerson occasionally, not very often,
indulges in. This is the crowding of a redundant syllable into a line.
It is a liberty which is not to be abused by the poet. Shakespeare, the
supreme artist, and Milton, the "mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies,"
knew how to use it effectively. Shelley employed it freely. Bryant
indulged in it occasionally, and wrote an article in an early number of
the "North American Review" in defence of its use. Willis was fond of
it. As a relief to monotony it may be now and then allowed,--may even
have an agreeable effect in breaking the monotony of too formal verse.
But it may easily become a deformity and a cause of aversion. A humpback
may add picturesqueness to a procession, but if there are too many
humpbacks in line we turn away from the sight of them. Can any ear
reconcile itself to the last of these three lines of Emerson's?
"Oh, what is Heaven but the fellowship
Of minds that each can stand against the world
By its own meek and incorruptible will?"
These lines that lift their backs up in the middle--span-worm lines, we
may call them--are not to be commended for common use because some great
poets have now and then admitted them. They have invaded some of our
recent poetry as the canker-worms gather on our elms in June. Emerson
has one or two of them here and there, but they never swarm on his
leaves so as to frighten us away from their neighborhood.
As for the violently artificial rhythms and rhymes which have reappeared
of late in English and American literature, Emerson would as soon have
tried to ride three horses at once in a circus as to shut himself up in
triolets, or attempt any cat's-cradle tricks of rhyming sleight of hand.
If we allow that Emerson is not a born singer, that he is a careless
versifier and rhymer, we must still recognize that there is something
in his verse which belongs, indissolubly, sacredly, to his thought. Who
would decant the wine of his poetry from its quaint and antique-looking
_lagena_?--Read his poem to the Aeolian harp ("The Harp") and his model
betrays itself:--
"These syllables that Nature spoke,
And the thoughts that in him woke
Can adequately utter none
Save to his ear the wind-harp lone.
Therein I hear the Parcae reel
The threads of man at their humming wheel,
The threads of life and power and pain,
So sweet and mournful falls the strain.
And best can teach its Delphian chord
How Nature to the soul is moored,
If once again that silent string,
As erst it wont, would thrill and ring."
There is no need of quoting any of the poems which have become familiar
to most true lovers of poetry. Emerson saw fit to imitate the Egyptians
by placing "The Sphinx" at the entrance of his temple of song. This poem
was not fitted to attract worshippers. It is not easy of comprehension,
not pleasing in movement. As at first written it had one verse in it
which sounded so much like a nursery rhyme that Emerson was prevailed
upon to omit it in the later versions. There are noble passages in it,
but they are for the adept and not for the beginner. A commonplace young
person taking up the volume and puzzling his or her way along will come
by and by to the verse:--
"Have I a lover
Who is noble and free?--
I would he were nobler
Than to love me."
The commonplace young person will be apt to say or think _c'est
magnifique, mais ce n'est pas_--_l'amour_.
The third poem in the volume, "The Problem," should have stood first in
order. This ranks among the finest of Emerson's poems. All his earlier
verse has a certain freshness which belongs to the first outburst
of song in a poetic nature. "Each and All," "The Humble-Bee," "The
Snow-Storm," should be read before "Uriel," "The World-Soul," or
"Mithridates." "Monadnoc" will be a good test of the reader's taste for
Emerson's poetry, and after this "Woodnotes."
In studying his poems we must not overlook the delicacy of many of their
descriptive portions. If in the flights of his imagination he is
like the strong-winged bird of passage, in his exquisite choice of
descriptive epithets he reminds me of the _tenui-rostrals._ His subtle
selective instinct penetrates the vocabulary for the one word he wants,
as the long, slender bill of those birds dives deep into the flower for
its drop of honey. Here is a passage showing admirably the two different
conditions: wings closed and the selective instinct picking out its
descriptive expressions; then suddenly wings flashing open and the
imagination in the firmament, where it is always at home. Follow the
pitiful inventory of insignificances of the forlorn being he describes
with a pathetic humor more likely to bring a sigh than a smile, and then
mark the grand hyperbole of the last two lines. The passage is from the
poem called "Destiny":--
"Alas! that one is born in blight,
Victim of perpetual slight:
When thou lookest on his face,
Thy heart saith 'Brother, go thy ways!
None shall ask thee what thou doest,
Or care a rush for what thou knowest.
Or listen when thou repliest,
Or remember where thou liest,
Or how thy supper is sodden;'
And another is born
To make the sun forgotten."
Of all Emerson's poems the "Concord Hymn" is the most nearly complete
and faultless,--but it is not distinctively Emersonian. It is such a
poem as Collins might have written,--it has the very movement and
melody of the "Ode on the Death of Mr. Thomson," and of the "Dirge in
Cymbeline," with the same sweetness and tenderness of feeling. Its one
conspicuous line,
"And fired the shot heard round the world,"
must not take to itself all the praise deserved by this perfect little
poem, a model for all of its kind. Compact, expressive, serene, solemn,
musical, in four brief stanzas it tells the story of the past, records
the commemorative act of the passing day, and invokes the higher Power
that governs the future to protect the Memorial-stone sacred to Freedom
and her martyrs.
These poems of Emerson's find the readers that must listen to them and
delight in them, as the "Ancient Mariner" fastened upon the man who must
hear him. If any doubter wishes to test his fitness for reading them,
and if the poems already mentioned are not enough to settle the
question, let him read the paragraph of "May-Day," beginning,--
"I saw the bud-crowned Spring go forth,"
"Sea-shore," the fine fragments in the "Appendix" to his published
works, called, collectively, "The Poet," blocks bearing the mark of
poetic genius, but left lying round for want of the structural instinct,
and last of all, that which is, in many respects, first of all, the
"Threnody," a lament over the death of his first-born son. This poem has
the dignity of "Lycidas" without its refrigerating classicism, and with
all the tenderness of Cowper's lines on the receipt of his mother's
picture. It may well compare with others of the finest memorial poems in
the language,--with Shelley's "Adonais," and Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis,"
leaving out of view Tennyson's "In Memoriam" as of wider scope and
larger pattern.
Many critics will concede that there is much truth in Mr. Arnold's
remark on the want of "evolution" in Emerson's poems. One is struck
with the fact that a great number of fragments lie about his poetical
workshop: poems begun and never finished; scraps of poems, chips of
poems, paving the floor with intentions never carried out. One cannot
help remembering Coleridge with his incomplete "Christabel," and his
"Abyssinian Maid," and her dulcimer which she never got a tune out of.
We all know there was good reason why Coleridge should have been infirm
of purpose. But when we look at that great unfinished picture over which
Allston labored with the hopeless ineffectiveness of Sisyphus; when we
go through a whole gallery of pictures by an American artist in which
the backgrounds are slighted as if our midsummer heats had taken away
half the artist's life and vigor; when we walk round whole rooms full of
sketches, impressions, effects, symphonies, invisibilities, and other
apologies for honest work, it would not be strange if it should suggest
a painful course of reflections as to the possibility that there may be
something in our climatic or other conditions which tends to scholastic
and artistic anaemia and insufficiency,--the opposite of what we find
showing itself in the full-blooded verse of poets like Browning and on
the flaming canvas of painters like Henri Regnault. Life seemed lustier
in Old England than in New England to Emerson, to Hawthorne, and to
that admirable observer, Mr. John Burroughs. Perhaps we require another
century or two of acclimation.
Emerson never grappled with any considerable metrical difficulties.
He wrote by preference in what I have ventured to call the normal
respiratory measure,--octosyllabic verse, in which one common expiration
is enough and not too much for the articulation of each line. The "fatal
facility" for which this verse is noted belongs to it as recited and
also as written, and it implies the need of only a minimum of skill and
labor. I doubt if Emerson would have written a verse of poetry if he had
been obliged to use the Spenserian stanza. In the simple measures he
habitually employed he found least hindrance to his thought.
Every true poet has an atmosphere as much as every great painter. The
golden sunshine of Claude and the pearly mist of Corot belonged to their
way of looking at nature as much as the color of their eyes and hair
belonged to their personalities. So with the poets; for Wordsworth the
air is always serene and clear, for Byron the sky is uncertain between
storm and sunshine. Emerson sees all nature in the same pearly mist
that wraps the willows and the streams of Corot. Without its own
characteristic atmosphere, illuminated by
"The light that never was on sea or land,"
we may have good verse but no true poem. In his poetry there is not
merely this atmosphere, but there is always a mirage in the horizon.
Emerson's poetry is eminently subjective,--if Mr. Ruskin, who hates the
word, will pardon me for using it in connection with a reference to two
of his own chapters in his "Modern Painters." These are the chapter
on "The Pathetic Fallacy," and the one which follows it "On Classical
Landscape." In these he treats of the transfer of a writer's mental or
emotional conditions to the external nature which he contemplates. He
asks his readers to follow him in a long examination of what he calls by
the singular name mentioned, "the pathetic fallacy," because, he says,
"he will find it eminently characteristic of the modern mind; and in the
landscape, whether of literature or art, he will also find the modern
painter endeavoring to express something which he, as a living creature,
imagines in the lifeless object, while the classical and mediaeval
painters were content with expressing the unimaginary and actual
qualities of the object itself."
Illustrations of Mr. Ruskin's "pathetic fallacy" may be found almost
anywhere in Emerson's poems. Here is one which offers itself without
search:--
"Daily the bending skies solicit man,
The seasons chariot him from this exile,
The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing wheels,
The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,
Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights
Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home."
The expression employed by Ruskin gives the idea that he is dealing with
a defect. If he had called the state of mind to which he refers the
_sympathetic illusion_, his readers might have looked upon it more
justly.
It would be a pleasant and not a difficult task to trace the
resemblances between Emerson's poetry and that of other poets. Two or
three such resemblances have been incidentally referred to, a few others
may be mentioned.
In his contemplative study of Nature he reminds us of Wordsworth, at
least in certain brief passages, but he has not the staying power of
that long-breathed, not to say long-winded, lover of landscapes. Both
are on the most intimate terms with Nature, but Emerson contemplates
himself as belonging to her, while Wordsworth feels as if she belonged
to him.
"Good-by, proud world,"
recalls Spenser and Raleigh. "The Humble-Bee" is strongly marked by the
manner and thought of Marvell. Marvell's
"Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade,"
may well have suggested Emerson's
"The green silence dost displace
With thy mellow, breezy bass."
"The Snow-Storm" naturally enough brings to mind the descriptions of
Thomson and of Cowper, and fragment as it is, it will not suffer by
comparison with either.
"Woodnotes," one of his best poems, has passages that might have been
found in Milton's "Comus;" this, for instance:--
"All constellations of the sky
Shed their virtue through his eye.
Him Nature giveth for defence
His formidable innocence."
Of course his Persian and Indian models betray themselves in many of
his poems, some of which, called translations, sound as if they were
original.
So we follow him from page to page and find him passing through many
moods, but with one pervading spirit:--
"Melting matter into dreams,
Panoramas which I saw,
And whatever glows or seems
Into substance, into Law."
We think in reading his "Poems" of these words of Sainte-Beuve:--
"The greatest poet is not he who has done the best; it is he who
suggests the most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious,
and who leaves you much to desire, to explain, to study; much to
complete in your turn."
Just what he shows himself in his prose, Emerson shows himself in his
verse. Only when he gets into rhythm and rhyme he lets us see more of
his personality, he ventures upon more audacious imagery, his flight is
higher and swifter, his brief crystalline sentences have dissolved and
pour in continuous streams. Where they came from, or whither they flow
to empty themselves, we cannot always say,--it is enough to enjoy them
as they flow by us.
Incompleteness--want of beginning, middle, and end,--is their too common
fault. His pages are too much like those artists' studios all hung round
with sketches and "bits" of scenery. "The Snow-Storm" and "Sea-Shore"
are "bits" out of a landscape that was never painted, admirable, so far
as they go, but forcing us to ask, "Where is the painting for which
these scraps are studies?" or "Out of what great picture have these
pieces been cut?"
We do not want his fragments to be made wholes,--if we did, what hand
could be found equal to the task? We do not want his rhythms and rhymes
smoothed and made more melodious. They are as honest as Chaucer's,
and we like them as they are, not modernized or manipulated by any
versifying drill-sergeant,--if we wanted them reshaped whom could we
trust to meddle with them?
His poetry is elemental; it has the rock beneath it in the eternal laws
on which it rests; the roll of deep waters in its grander harmonies; its
air is full of Aeolian strains that waken and die away as the breeze
wanders over them; and through it shines the white starlight, and
from time to time flashes a meteor that startles us with its sudden
brilliancy.
After all our criticisms, our selections, our analyses, our comparisons,
we have to recognize that there is a charm in Emerson's poems
which cannot be defined any more than the fragrance of a rose or a
hyacinth,--any more than the tone of a voice which we should know from
all others if all mankind were to pass before us, and each of its
articulating representatives should call us by name.
All our crucibles and alembics leave unaccounted for the great mystery
of _style_. "The style is of [a part of] the man himself," said Buffon,
and this saying has passed into the stronger phrase, "The style is the
man."
The "personal equation" which differentiates two observers is not
confined to the tower of the astronomer. Every human being is
individualized by a new arrangement of elements. His mind is a safe with
a lock to which only certain letters are the key. His ideas follow in
an order of their own. His words group themselves together in special
sequences, in peculiar rhythms, in unlooked-for combinations, the
total effect of which is to stamp all that he says or writes with
his individuality. We may not be able to assign the reason of the
fascination the poet we have been considering exercises over us. But
this we can say, that he lives in the highest atmosphere of thought;
that he is always in the presence of the infinite, and ennobles the
accidents of human existence so that they partake of the absolute and
eternal while he is looking at them; that he unites a royal dignity
of manner with the simplicity of primitive nature; that his words and
phrases arrange themselves, as if by an elective affinity of their own,
with a _curiosa felicitas_ which captivates and enthrals the reader who
comes fully under its influence, and that through all he sings as in all
he says for us we recognize the same serene, high, pure intelligence and
moral nature, infinitely precious to us, not only in themselves, but as
a promise of what the transplanted life, the air and soil and breeding
of this western world may yet educe from their potential virtues,
shaping themselves, at length, in a literature as much its own as the
Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi.
CHAPTER XV.
Recollections of Emerson's Last Years.--Mr. Conway's Visits.--Extracts
from Mr. Whitman's Journal.--Dr. Le Baron Russell's Visit.--Dr. Edward
Emerson's Account.--Illness and Death.--Funeral Services.
Mr. Conway gives the following account of two visits to Emerson after
the decline of his faculties had begun to make itself obvious:--
"In 1875, when I stayed at his house in Concord for a little time,
it was sad enough to find him sitting as a listener before those
who used to sit at his feet in silence. But when alone with him he
conversed in the old way, and his faults of memory seemed at
times to disappear. There was something striking in the kind of
forgetfulness by which he suffered. He remembered the realities
and uses of things when he could not recall their names. He would
describe what he wanted or thought of; when he could not recall
'chair' he could speak of that which supports the human frame, and
'the implement that cultivates the soil' must do for plough.--
"In 1880, when I was last in Concord, the trouble had made heavy
strides. The intensity of his silent attention to every word that
was said was painful, suggesting a concentration of his powers to
break through the invisible walls closing around them. Yet his face
was serene; he was even cheerful, and joined in our laughter at some
letters his eldest daughter had preserved, from young girls, trying
to coax autograph letters, and in one case asking for what price he
would write a valedictory address she had to deliver at college. He
was still able to joke about his 'naughty memory;' and no complaint
came from him when he once rallied himself on living too long.
Emerson appeared to me strangely beautiful at this time, and the
sweetness of his voice, when he spoke of the love and providence at
his side, is quite indescribable."--
One of the later glimpses we have of Emerson is that preserved in the
journal of Mr. Whitman, who visited Concord in the autumn of 1881. Mr.
Ireland gives a long extract from this journal, from which I take the
following:--
"On entering he had spoken very briefly, easily and politely to
several of the company, then settled himself in his chair, a trifle
pushed back, and, though a listener and apparently an alert one,
remained silent through the whole talk and discussion. And so, there
Emerson sat, and I looking at him. A good color in his face, eyes
clear, with the well-known expression of sweetness, and the old
clear-peering aspect quite the same."
Mr. Whitman met him again the next day, Sunday, September 18th, and
records:--
"As just said, a healthy color in the cheeks, and good light in the
eyes, cheery expression, and just the amount of talking that best
suited, namely, a word or short phrase only where needed, and almost
always with a smile."
Dr. Le Baron Russell writes to me of Emerson at a still later period:--
"One incident I will mention which occurred at my last visit
to Emerson, only a few months before his death. I went by Mrs.
Emerson's request to pass a Sunday at their house at Concord towards
the end of June. His memory had been failing for some time, and his
mind as you know was clouded, but the old charm of his voice and
manner had never left him. On the morning after my arrival Mrs.
Emerson took us into the garden to see the beautiful roses in which
she took great delight. One red rose of most brilliant color she
called our attention to especially; its 'hue' was so truly 'angry
and brave' that I involuntarily repeated Herbert's line,--
'Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,'--
from the verses which Emerson had first repeated to me so long ago.
Emerson looked at the rose admiringly, and then as if by a sudden
impulse lifted his hat gently, and said with a low bow, 'I take off
my hat to it.'"
Once a poet, always a poet. It was the same reverence for the beautiful
that he had shown in the same way in his younger days on entering the
wood, as Governor Rice has told us the story, given in an earlier
chapter.
I do not remember Emerson's last time of attendance at the "Saturday
Club," but I recollect that he came after the trouble in finding words
had become well marked. "My memory hides itself," he said. The last time
I saw him, living, was at Longfellow's funeral. I was sitting opposite
to him when he rose, and going to the side of the coffin, looked
intently upon the face of the dead poet. A few minutes later he rose
again and looked once more on the familiar features, not apparently
remembering that he had just done so. Mr. Conway reports that he said to
a friend near him, "That gentleman was a sweet, beautiful soul, but I
have entirely forgotten his name."
Dr. Edward Emerson has very kindly furnished me, in reply to my request,
with information regarding his father's last years which will interest
every one who has followed his life through its morning and midday to
the hour of evening shadows.
"May-Day," which was published in 1867, was made up of the poems written
since his first volume appeared. After this he wrote no poems, but with
some difficulty fitted the refrain to the poem "Boston," which had
remained unfinished since the old Anti-slavery days. "Greatness," and
the "Phi Beta Kappa Oration" of 1867, were among his last pieces of
work. His College Lectures, "The Natural History of the Intellect,"
were merely notes recorded years before, and now gathered and welded
together. In 1876 he revised his poems, and made the selections from
them for the "Little Classic" edition of his works, then called
"Selected Poems." In that year he gave his "Address to the Students of
the University of Virginia." This was a paper written long before, and
its revision, with the aid of his daughter Ellen, was accomplished with
much difficulty.
The year 1867 was about the limit of his working life. During the last
five years he hardly answered a letter. Before this time it had become
increasingly hard for him to do so, and he always postponed and thought
he should feel more able the next day, until his daughter Ellen was
compelled to assume the correspondence. He did, however, write some
letters in 1876, as, for instance, the answer to the invitation of the
Virginia students.
Emerson left off going regularly to the "Saturday Club" probably in
1875. He used to depend on meeting Mr. Cabot there, but after Mr. Cabot
began to come regularly to work on "Letters and Social Aims," Emerson,
who relied on his friendly assistance, ceased attending the meetings.
The trouble he had in finding the word he wanted was a reason for his
staying away from all gatherings where he was called upon to take a
part in conversation, though he the more willingly went to lectures and
readings and to church. His hearing was very slightly impaired, and his
sight remained pretty good, though he sometimes said letters doubled,
and that "M's" and "N's" troubled him to read. He recognized the members
of his own family and his _old_ friends; but, as I infer from this
statement, he found a difficulty in remembering the faces of new
acquaintances, as is common with old persons.
He continued the habit of reading,--read through all his printed works
with much interest and surprise, went through all his manuscripts, and
endeavored, unsuccessfully, to index them. In these Dr. Emerson found
written "Examined 1877 or 1878," but he found no later date.
In the last year or two he read anything which he picked up on his
table, but he read the same things over, and whispered the words like a
child. He liked to look over the "Advertiser," and was interested in the
"Nation." He enjoyed pictures in books and showed them with delight to
guests.
All this with slight changes and omissions is from the letter of Dr.
Emerson in answer to my questions. The twilight of a long, bright day
of life may be saddening, but when the shadow falls so gently and
gradually, with so little that is painful and so much that is soothing
and comforting, we do not shrink from following the imprisoned spirit to
the very verge of its earthly existence.
But darker hours were in the order of nature very near at hand. From
these he was saved by his not untimely release from the imprisonment of
the worn-out bodily frame.
In April, 1882, Emerson took a severe cold, and became so hoarse that he
could hardly speak. When his son, Dr. Edward Emerson, called to see him,
he found him on the sofa, feverish, with more difficulty of expression
than usual, dull, but not uncomfortable. As he lay on his couch he
pointed out various objects, among others a portrait of Carlyle "the
good man,--my friend." His son told him that he had seen Carlyle, which
seemed to please him much. On the following day the unequivocal signs of
pneumonia showed themselves, and he failed rapidly. He still recognized
those around him, among the rest Judge Hoar, to whom he held out his
arms for a last embrace. A sharp pain coming on, ether was administered
with relief. And in a little time, surrounded by those who loved him
and whom he loved, he passed quietly away. He lived very nearly to the
completion of his seventy-ninth year, having been born May 25, 1803, and
his death occurring on the 27th of April, 1882.
Mr. Ireland has given a full account of the funeral, from which are, for
the most part, taken the following extracts:--
"The last rites over the remains of Ralph Waldo Emerson took place
at Concord on the 30th of April. A special train from Boston carried
a large number of people. Many persons were on the street, attracted
by the services, but were unable to gain admission to the church
where the public ceremonies were held. Almost every building in town
bore over its entrance-door a large black and white rosette with
other sombre draperies. The public buildings were heavily draped,
and even the homes of the very poor bore outward marks of grief at
the loss of their friend and fellow-townsman.
"The services at the house, which were strictly private, occurred
at 2.30, and were conducted by Rev. W.H. Furness of Philadelphia, a
kindred spirit and an almost life-long friend. They were simple in
character, and only Dr. Furness took part in them. The body lay in
the front northeast room, in which were gathered the family and
close friends of the deceased. The only flowers were contained in
three vases on the mantel, and were lilies of the valley, red and
white roses, and arbutus. The adjoining room and hall were filled
with friends and neighbors.
"At the church many hundreds of persons were awaiting the arrival
of the procession, and all the space, except the reserved pews, was
packed. In front of the pulpit were simple decorations, boughs of
pine covered the desk, and in their centre was a harp of yellow
jonquils, the gift of Miss Louisa M. Alcott. Among the floral
tributes was one from the teachers and scholars in the Emerson
school. By the sides of the pulpit were white and scarlet geraniums
and pine boughs, and high upon the wall a laurel wreath.
"Before 3.30 the pall-bearers brought in the plain black walnut
coffin, which was placed before the pulpit. The lid was turned back,
and upon it was put a cluster of richly colored pansies and a small
bouquet of roses. While the coffin was being carried in, 'Pleyel's
Hymn' was rendered on the organ by request of the family of the
deceased. Dr. James Freeman Clarke then entered the pulpit. Judge
E. Rockwood Hoar remained by the coffin below, and when the
congregation became quiet, made a brief and pathetic address, his
voice many times trembling with emotion."
I subjoin this most impressive "Address" entire, from the manuscript
with which Judge Hoar has kindly favored me:--
"The beauty of Israel is fallen in its high place! Mr. Emerson
has died; and we, his friends and neighbors, with this sorrowing
company, have turned aside the procession from his home to his
grave,--to this temple of his fathers, that we may here unite in our
parting tribute of memory and love.
"There is nothing to mourn for him. That brave and manly life was
rounded out to the full length of days. That dying pillow was
softened by the sweetest domestic affection; and as he lay down to
the sleep which the Lord giveth his beloved, his face was as the
face of an angel, and his smile seemed to give a glimpse of the
opening heavens.
"Wherever the English language is spoken throughout the world his
fame is established and secure. Throughout this great land and from
beyond the sea will come innumerable voices of sorrow for this great
public loss. But we, his neighbors and townsmen, feel that he was
_ours_. He was descended from the founders of the town. He chose our
village as the place where his lifelong work was to be done. It was
to our fields and orchards that his presence gave such value; it was
our streets in which the children looked up to him with love, and
the elders with reverence. He was our ornament and pride.
"'He is gone--is dust,--
He the more fortunate! Yea, he hath finished!
For him there is no longer any future.
His life is bright--bright without spot it was
And cannot cease to be. No ominous hour
Knocks at his door with tidings of mishap.
Far off is he, above desire and fear;
No more submitted to the change and chance
Of the uncertain planets.--
"'The bloom is vanished from my life,
For, oh! he stood beside me like my youth;
Transformed for me the real to a dream,
Clothing the palpable and the familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn.
Whatever fortunes wait my future toils,
The _beautiful_ is vanished and returns not.'
"That lofty brow, the home of all wise thoughts and high
aspirations,--those lips of eloquent music,--that great soul, which
trusted in God and never let go its hope of immortality,--that large
heart, to which everything that belonged to man was welcome,--that
hospitable nature, loving and tender and generous, having no
repulsion or scorn for anything but meanness and baseness,--oh,
friend, brother, father, lover, teacher, inspirer, guide! is there
no more that we can do now than to give thee this our hail and
farewell!"
Judge Hoar's remarks were followed by the congregation singing the
hymns, "Thy will be done," "I will not fear the fate provided by Thy
love." The Rev. Dr. Furness then read selections from the Scriptures.
The Rev. James Freeman Clarke then delivered an "Address," from which I
extract two eloquent and inspiring passages, regretting to omit any
that fell from lips so used to noble utterances and warmed by their
subject,--for there is hardly a living person more competent to speak or
write of Emerson than this high-minded and brave-souled man, who did not
wait until he was famous to be his admirer and champion.
"The saying of the Liturgy is true and wise, that 'in the midst of
life we are in death.' But it is still more true that in the midst
of death we are in life. Do we ever believe so much in immortality
as when we look on such a dear and noble face, now so still, which a
few hours ago was radiant with thought and love? 'He is not here:
he is risen.' That power which we knew,--that soaring intelligence,
that soul of fire, that ever-advancing spirit,--_that_ cannot have
been suddenly annihilated with the decay of these earthly organs. It
has left its darkened dust behind. It has outsoared the shadow of
our night. God does not trifle with his creatures by bringing to
nothing the ripe fruit of the ages by the lesion of a cerebral cell,
or some bodily tissue. Life does not die, but matter dies off from
it. The highest energy we know, the soul of man, the unit in which
meet intelligence, imagination, memory, hope, love, purpose,
insight,--this agent of immense resource and boundless power,--this
has not been subdued by its instrument. When we think of such an one
as he, we can only think of life, never of death.
"Such was his own faith, as expressed in his paper on 'Immortality.'
But he himself was the best argument for immortality. Like the
greatest thinkers, he did not rely on logical proof, but on the
higher evidence of universal instincts,--the vast streams of belief
which flow through human thought like currents in the ocean; those
shoreless rivers which forever roll along their paths in the
Atlantic and Pacific, not restrained by banks, but guided by the
revolutions of the globe and the attractions of the sun."
* * * * *
"Let us then ponder his words:--
'Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know
What rainbows teach and sunsets show?
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of saints that inly burned,
Saying, _What is excellent
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Hearts' love will meet thee again._
* * * *
House and tenant go to ground
Lost in God, in Godhead found.'"
After the above address a feeling prayer was offered by Rev. Howard M.
Brown, of Brookline, and the benediction closed the exercises in the
church. Immediately before the benediction, Mr. Alcott recited the
following sonnet, which he had written for the occasion:---
"His harp is silent: shall successors rise,
Touching with venturous hand the trembling string,
Kindle glad raptures, visions of surprise,
And wake to ecstasy each slumbering thing?
Shall life and thought flash new in wondering eyes,
As when the seer transcendent, sweet, and wise,
World-wide his native melodies did sing,
Flushed with fair hopes and ancient memories?
Ah, no! That matchless lyre shall silent lie:
None hath the vanished minstrel's wondrous skill
To touch that instrument with art and will.
With him, winged poesy doth droop and die;
While our dull age, left voiceless, must lament
The bard high heaven had for its service sent."
"Over an hour was occupied by the passing files of neighbors,
friends, and visitors looking for the last time upon the face of the
dead poet. The body was robed completely in white, and the face bore
a natural and peaceful expression. From the church the procession
took its way to the cemetery. The grave was made beneath a tall
pine-tree upon the hill-top of Sleepy Hollow, where lie the bodies
of his friends Thoreau and Hawthorne, the upturned sod being
concealed by strewings of pine boughs. A border of hemlock spray
surrounded the grave and completely lined its sides. The services
here were very brief, and the casket was soon lowered to its final
resting-place.
"The Rev. Dr. Haskins, a cousin of the family, an Episcopal
clergyman, read the Episcopal Burial Service, and closed with the
Lord's Prayer, ending at the words, 'and deliver us from evil.'
In this all the people joined. Dr. Haskins then pronounced the
benediction. After it was over the grandchildren passed the open
grave and threw flowers into it."
So vanished from human eyes the bodily presence of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
and his finished record belongs henceforth to memory.
CHAPTER XVI.
EMERSON.--A RETROSPECT.
Personality and Habits of Life.--His Commission and Errand.--As a
Lecturer.--His Use of Authorities.--Resemblance to Other Writers.--As
influenced by Others.--His Place as a Thinker.--Idealism and
Intuition.--Mysticism.--His Attitude respecting Science.--As an
American.--His Fondness for Solitary Study.--His Patience and
Amiability.--Feeling with which he was regarded.--Emerson and
Burns.--His Religious Belief.--His Relations with Clergymen.--Future of
his Reputation.--His Life judged by the Ideal Standard.
Emerson's earthly existence was in the estimate of his own philosophy so
slight an occurrence in his career of being that his relations to the
accidents of time and space seem quite secondary matters to one who has
been long living in the companionship of his thought. Still, he had to
be born, to take in his share of the atmosphere in which we are all
immersed, to have dealings with the world of phenomena, and at length to
let them all "soar and sing" as he left his earthly half-way house. It
is natural and pardonable that we should like to know the details of the
daily life which the men whom we admire have shared with common mortals,
ourselves among the rest. But Emerson has said truly "Great geniuses
have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about
them. They lived in their writings, and so their home and street life
was trivial and commonplace."
The reader has had many extracts from Emerson's writings laid before
him. It was no easy task to choose them, for his paragraphs are
so condensed, so much in the nature of abstracts, that it is like
distilling absolute alcohol to attempt separating the spirit of what he
says from his undiluted thought. His books are all so full of his life
to their last syllable that we might letter every volume _Emersoniana_,
by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
From the numerous extracts I have given from Emerson's writings it may
be hoped that the reader will have formed an idea for himself of the man
and of the life which have been the subjects of these pages. But he may
probably expect something like a portrait of the poet and moralist from
the hand of his biographer, if the author of this Memoir may borrow the
name which will belong to a future and better equipped laborer in the
same field. He may not unreasonably look for some general estimate of
the life work of the scholar and thinker of whom he has been reading.
He will not be disposed to find fault with the writer of the Memoir
if he mentions many things which would seem very trivial but for the
interest they borrow from the individual to whom they relate.
Emerson's personal appearance was that of a scholar, the descendant of
scholars. He was tall and slender, with the complexion which is bred in
the alcove and not in the open air. He used to tell his son Edward that
he measured six feet in his shoes, but his son thinks he could hardly
have straightened himself to that height in his later years. He was very
light for a man of his stature. He got on the scales at Cheyenne, on
his trip to California, comparing his weight with that of a lady of
the party. A little while afterwards he asked of his fellow-traveller,
Professor Thayer, "How much did I weigh? A hundred and forty?" "A
hundred and forty and a half," was the answer. "Yes, yes, a hundred and
forty and a half! That _half_ I prize; it is an index of better things!"
Emerson's head was not such as Schopenhauer insists upon for a
philosopher. He wore a hat measuring six and seven eighths on the
_cephalometer_ used by hatters, which is equivalent to twenty-one inches
and a quarter of circumference. The average size is from seven to seven
and an eighth, so that his head was quite small in that dimension. It
was long and narrow, but lofty, almost symmetrical, and of more nearly
equal breadth in its anterior and posterior regions than many or most
heads.
His shoulders sloped so much as to be commented upon for this
peculiarity by Mr. Gilfillan, and like "Ammon's great son," he carried
one shoulder a little higher than the other. His face was thin, his nose
somewhat accipitrine, casting a broad shadow; his mouth rather wide,
well formed and well closed, carrying a question and an assertion in
its finely finished curves; the lower lip a little prominent, the chin
shapely and firm, as becomes the corner-stone of the countenance. His
expression was calm, sedate, kindly, with that look of refinement,
centring about the lips, which is rarely found in the male New
Englander, unless the family features have been for two or three
cultivated generations the battlefield and the playground of varied
thoughts and complex emotions as well as the sensuous and nutritive port
of entry. His whole look was irradiated by an ever active inquiring
intelligence. His manner was noble and gracious. Few of our
fellow-countrymen have had larger opportunities of seeing distinguished
personages than our present minister at the Court of St. James. In
a recent letter to myself, which I trust Mr. Lowell will pardon my
quoting, he says of Emerson:--
"There was a majesty about him beyond all other men I have known, and he
habitually dwelt in that ampler and diviner air to which most of us, if
ever, only rise in spurts."
From members of his own immediate family I have derived some particulars
relating to his personality and habits which are deserving of record.
His hair was brown, quite fine, and, till he was fifty, very thick.
His eyes were of the "strongest and brightest blue." The member of the
family who tells me this says:--
"My sister and I have looked for many years to see whether any one else
had such absolutely blue eyes, and have never found them except in
sea-captains. I have seen three sea-captains who had them."
He was not insensible to music, but his gift in that direction was very
limited, if we may judge from this family story. When he was in College,
and the singing-master was gathering his pupils, Emerson presented
himself, intending to learn to sing. The master received him, and when
his turn came, said to him, "Chord!" "What?" said Emerson. "Chord!
Chord! I tell you," repeated the master. "I don't know what you mean,"
said Emerson. "Why, sing! Sing a note." "So I made some kind of a noise,
and the singing-master said, 'That will do, sir. You need not come
again.'"
Emerson's mode of living was very simple: coffee in the morning, tea in
the evening, animal food by choice only once a day, wine only when with
others using it, but always _pie_ at breakfast. "It stood before him and
was the first thing eaten." Ten o'clock was his bed-time, six his hour
of rising until the last ten years of his life, when he rose at seven.
Work or company sometimes led him to sit up late, and this he could
do night after night. He never was hungry,--could go any time from
breakfast to tea without food and not know it, but was always ready for
food when it was set before him.
He always walked from about four in the afternoon till tea-time, and
often longer when the day was fine, or he felt that he should work the
better.
It is plain from his writings that Emerson was possessed all his life
long with the idea of his constitutional infirmity and insufficiency.
He hated invalidism, and had little patience with complaints about
ill-health, but in his poems, and once or twice in his letters to
Carlyle, he expresses himself with freedom about his own bodily
inheritance. In 1827, being then but twenty-four years old, he writes:--
"I bear in youth the sad infirmities
That use to undo the limb and sense of age."
Four years later:--
"Has God on thee conferred
A bodily presence mean as Paul's,
Yet made thee bearer of a word
Which sleepy nations as with trumpet calls?"
and again, in the same year:--
"Leave me, Fear, thy throbs are base,
Trembling for the body's sake."--
Almost forty years from the first of these dates we find him bewailing
in "Terminus" his inherited weakness of organization.
And in writing to Carlyle, he says:--
"You are of the Anakirn and know nothing of the debility and
postponement of the blonde constitution."
Again, "I am the victim of miscellany--miscellany of designs, vast
debility and procrastination."
He thought too much of his bodily insufficiencies, which, it will be
observed, he refers to only in his private correspondence, and in that
semi-nudity of self-revelation which is the privilege of poetry. His
presence was fine and impressive, and his muscular strength was enough
to make him a rapid and enduring walker.
Emerson's voice had a great charm in conversation, as in the
lecture-room. It was never loud, never shrill, but singularly
penetrating. He was apt to hesitate in the course of a sentence, so as
to be sure of the exact word he wanted; picking his way through
his vocabulary, to get at the best expression of his thought, as a
well-dressed woman crosses the muddy pavement to reach the opposite
sidewalk. It was this natural slight and not unpleasant semicolon
pausing of the memory which grew upon him in his years of decline, until
it rendered conversation laborious and painful to him.
He never laughed loudly. When he laughed it was under protest, as it
were, with closed doors, his mouth shut, so that the explosion had to
seek another respiratory channel, and found its way out quietly, while
his eyebrows and nostrils and all his features betrayed the "ground
swell," as Professor Thayer happily called it, of the half-suppressed
convulsion. He was averse to loud laughter in others, and objected to
Margaret Fuller that she made him laugh too much.
Emerson was not rich in some of those natural gifts which are considered
the birthright of the New Englander. He had not the mechanical turn of
the whittling Yankee. I once questioned him about his manual dexterity,
and he told me he could split a shingle four ways with one nail,
--which, as the intention is not to split it at all in fastening it
to the roof of a house or elsewhere, I took to be a confession of
inaptitude for mechanical works. He does not seem to have been very
accomplished in the handling of agricultural implements either, for it
is told in the family that his little son, Waldo, seeing him at work
with a spade, cried out, "Take care, papa,--you will dig your leg."
He used to regret that he had no ear for music. I have said enough about
his verse, which often jars on a sensitive ear, showing a want of the
nicest perception of harmonies and discords in the arrangement of the
words.
There are stories which show that Emerson had a retentive memory in the
earlier part of his life. It is hard to say from his books whether he
had or not, for he jotted down such a multitude of things in his diary
that this was a kind of mechanical memory which supplied him with
endless materials of thought and subjects for his pen.
Lover and admirer of Plato as Emerson was, the doors of the academy,
over which was the inscription [Greek: maedeis hageometraetos
eseito]--Let no one unacquainted with geometry enter here,--would have
been closed to him. All the exact sciences found him an unwilling
learner. He says of himself that he cannot multiply seven by twelve with
impunity.
In an unpublished manuscript kindly submitted to me by Mr. Frothingham,
Emerson is reported as saying, "God has given me the seeing eye, but not
the working hand." His gift was insight: he saw the germ through its
envelop; the particular in the light of the universal; the fact in
connection with the principle; the phenomenon as related to the law; all
this not by the slow and sure process of science, but by the sudden
and searching flashes of imaginative double vision. He had neither the
patience nor the method of the inductive reasoner; he passed from one
thought to another not by logical steps but by airy flights, which left
no footprints. This mode of intellectual action when found united with
natural sagacity becomes poetry, philosophy, wisdom, or prophecy in its
various forms of manifestation. Without that gift of natural sagacity
(_odoratio quaedam venatica_),--a good scent for truth and beauty,--it
appears as extravagance, whimsicality, eccentricity, or insanity,
according to its degree of aberration. Emerson was eminently sane for
an idealist. He carried the same sagacity into the ideal world that
Franklin showed in the affairs of common life.
He was constitutionally fastidious, and had to school himself to become
able to put up with the terrible inflictions of uncongenial fellowships.
We must go to his poems to get at his weaknesses. The clown of the first
edition of "Monadnoc" "with heart of cat and eyes of bug," disappears
in the after-thought of the later version of the poem, but the eye that
recognized him and the nature that recoiled from him were there still.
What must he not have endured from the persecutions of small-minded
worshippers who fastened upon him for the interminable period between
the incoming and the outgoing railroad train! He was a model of patience
and good temper. We might have feared that he lacked the sensibility to
make such intrusions and offences an annoyance. But when Mr. Frothingham
gratifies the public with those most interesting personal recollections
which I have had the privilege of looking over, it will be seen that his
equanimity, admirable as it was, was not incapable of being disturbed,
and that on rare occasions he could give way to the feeling which showed
itself of old in the doom pronounced on the barren fig-tree.
Of Emerson's affections his home-life, and those tender poems in memory
of his brothers and his son, give all the evidence that could be asked
or wished for. His friends were all who knew him, for none could be
his enemy; and his simple graciousness of manner, with the sincerity
apparent in every look and tone, hardly admitted indifference on the
part of any who met him were it but for a single hour. Even the little
children knew and loved him, and babes in arms returned his angelic
smile. Of the friends who were longest and most intimately associated
with him, it is needless to say much in this place. Of those who are
living, it is hardly time to speak; of those who are dead, much has
already been written. Margaret Fuller,--I must call my early schoolmate
as I best remember her,--leaves her life pictured in the mosaic of
five artists,--Emerson himself among the number; Thoreau is faithfully
commemorated in the loving memoir by Mr. Sanborn; Theodore Parker lives
in the story of his life told by the eloquent Mr. Weiss; Hawthorne
awaits his portrait from the master-hand of Mr. Lowell.
How nearly any friend, other than his brothers Edward and Charles, came
to him, I cannot say, indeed I can hardly guess. That "majesty" Mr.
Lowell speaks of always seemed to hedge him round like the divinity that
doth hedge a king. What man was he who would lay his hand familiarly
upon his shoulder and call him Waldo? No disciple of Father Mathew
would be likely to do such a thing. There may have been such irreverent
persons, but if any one had so ventured at the "Saturday Club," it would
have produced a sensation like Brummel's "George, ring the bell," to
the Prince Regent. His ideas of friendship, as of love, seem almost too
exalted for our earthly conditions, and suggest the thought as do many
others of his characteristics, that the spirit which animated his mortal
frame had missed its way on the shining path to some brighter and better
sphere of being.
Not so did Emerson appear among the plain working farmers of the village
in which he lived. He was a good, unpretending fellow-citizen who put on
no airs, who attended town-meetings, took his part in useful measures,
was no great hand at farming, but was esteemed and respected, and felt
to be a principal source of attraction to Concord, for strangers came
flocking to the place as if it held the tomb of Washington.
* * * * *
What was the errand on which he visited our earth,--the message with
which he came commissioned from the Infinite source of all life?
Every human soul leaves its port with sealed orders. These may be opened
earlier or later on its voyage, but until they are opened no one can
tell what is to be his course or to what harbor he is bound.
Emerson inherited the traditions of the Boston pulpit, such as they
were, damaged, in the view of the prevailing sects of the country,
perhaps by too long contact with the "Sons of Liberty," and their
revolutionary notions. But the most "liberal" Boston pulpit still held
to many doctrines, forms, and phrases open to the challenge of any
independent thinker.
In the year 1832 this young priest, then a settled minister, "began," as
was said of another,--"to be about thirty years of age." He had opened
his sealed orders and had read therein:
Thou shalt not profess that which thou dost not believe.
Thou shalt not heed the voice of man when it agrees not with the voice
of God in thine own soul.
Thou shalt study and obey the laws of the Universe and they will be thy
fellow-servants.
Thou shalt speak the truth as thou seest it, without fear, in the spirit
of kindness to all thy fellow-creatures, dealing with the manifold
interests of life and the typical characters of history.
Nature shall be to thee as a symbol. The life of the soul, in conscious
union with the Infinite, shall be for thee the only real existence.
This pleasing show of an external world through which thou art passing
is given thee to interpret by the light which is in thee. Its least
appearance is not unworthy of thy study. Let thy soul be open and thine
eyes will reveal to thee beauty everywhere.
Go forth with thy message among thy fellow-creatures; teach them they
must trust themselves as guided by that inner light which dwells with
the pure in heart, to whom it was promised of old that they shall see
God.
Teach them that each generation begins the world afresh, in perfect
freedom; that the present is not the prisoner of the past, but that
today holds captive all yesterdays, to compare, to judge, to accept, to
reject their teachings, as these are shown by its own morning's sun.
To thy fellow-countrymen thou shalt preach the gospel of the New World,
that here, here in our America, is the home of man; that here is the
promise of a new and more excellent social state than history has
recorded.
Thy life shall be as thy teachings, brave, pure, truthful, beneficent,
hopeful, cheerful, hospitable to all honest belief, all sincere
thinkers, and active according to thy gifts and opportunities.
* * * * *
He was true to the orders he had received. Through doubts, troubles,
privations, opposition, he would not
"bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward."
All through the writings of Emerson the spirit of these orders manifests
itself. His range of subjects is very wide, ascending to the highest
sphere of spiritual contemplation, bordering on that "intense inane"
where thought loses itself in breathless ecstasy, and stooping to the
homeliest maxims of prudence and the every-day lessons of good manners,
And all his work was done, not so much
"As ever in his great Taskmaster's eye,"
as in the ever-present sense of divine companionship.
He was called to sacrifice his living, his position, his intimacies, to
a doubt, and he gave them all up without a murmur. He might have been an
idol, and he broke his own pedestal to attack the idolatry which he saw
all about him. He gave up a comparatively easy life for a toilsome and
trying one; he accepted a precarious employment, which hardly kept him
above poverty, rather than wear the golden padlock on his lips which has
held fast the conscience of so many pulpit Chrysostoms. Instead of a
volume or two of sermons, bridled with a text and harnessed with a
confession of faith, he bequeathed us a long series of Discourses and
Essays in which we know we have his honest thoughts, free from that
professional bias which tends to make the pulpit teaching of the
fairest-minded preacher follow a diagonal of two forces,--the promptings
of his personal and his ecclesiastical opinions.
Without a church or a pulpit, he soon had a congregation. It was largely
made up of young persons of both sexes, young by nature, if not
in years, who, tired of routine and formulae, and full of vague
aspirations, found in his utterances the oracles they sought. To them,
in the words of his friend and neighbor Mr. Alcott, he
"Sang his full song of hope and lofty cheer."
Nor was it only for a few seasons that he drew his audiences of devout
listeners around him. Another poet, his Concord neighbor, Mr. Sanborn,
who listened to him many years after the first flush of novelty was
over, felt the same enchantment, and recognized the same inspiring life
in his words, which had thrilled the souls of those earlier listeners.
"His was the task and his the lordly gift
Our eyes, our hearts, bent earthward, to uplift."
This was his power,--to inspire others, to make life purer, loftier,
calmer, brighter. Optimism is what the young want, and he could no more
help taking the hopeful view of the universe and its future than Claude
could help flooding his landscapes with sunshine.
"Nature," published in 1836, "the first clear manifestation of his
genius," as Mr. Norton calls it, revealed him as an idealist and a
poet, with a tendency to mysticism. If he had been independent in
circumstances, he would doubtless have developed more freely in these
directions. But he had his living to get and a family to support, and
he must look about him for some paying occupation. The lecture-room
naturally presented itself to a scholar accustomed to speaking from
the pulpit. This medium of communicating thought was not as yet very
popular, and the rewards it offered were but moderate. Emerson was of a
very hopeful nature, however, and believed in its possibilities.
--"I am always haunted with brave dreams of what might be accomplished
in the lecture-room,--so free and so unpretending a platform,--a Delos
not yet made fast. I imagine an eloquence of infinite variety, rich as
conversation can be, with anecdote, joke, tragedy, epics and pindarics,
argument and confession." So writes Emerson to Carlyle in 1841.
It would be as unfair to overlook the special form in which Emerson gave
most of his thoughts to the world, as it would be to leave out of view
the calling of Shakespeare in judging his literary character. Emerson
was an essayist and a lecturer, as Shakespeare was a dramatist and a
play-actor.
The exigencies of the theatre account for much that is, as it were,
accidental in the writings of Shakespeare. The demands of the
lecture-room account for many peculiarities which are characteristic of
Emerson as an author. The play must be in five acts, each of a given
length. The lecture must fill an hour and not overrun it. Both play and
lecture must be vivid, varied, picturesque, stimulating, or the audience
would tire before the allotted time was over.
Both writers had this in common: they were poets and moralists.
They reproduced the conditions of life in the light of penetrative
observation and ideal contemplation; they illustrated its duties in
their breach and in their observance, by precepts and well-chosen
portraits of character. The particular form in which they wrote makes
little difference when we come upon the utterance of a noble truth or an
elevated sentiment.
It was not a simple matter of choice with the dramatist or the lecturer
in what direction they should turn their special gifts. The actor had
learned his business on the stage; the lecturer had gone through his
apprenticeship in the pulpit. Each had his bread to earn, and he must
work, and work hard, in the way open before him. For twenty years the
playwright wrote dramas, and retired before middle age with a good
estate to his native town. For forty years Emerson lectured and
published lectures, and established himself at length in competence in
the village where his ancestors had lived and died before him. He never
became rich, as Shakespeare did. He was never in easy circumstances
until he was nearly seventy years old. Lecturing was hard work, but he
was under the "base necessity," as he called it, of constant labor,
writing in summer, speaking everywhere east and west in the trying and
dangerous winter season.
He spoke in great cities to such cultivated audiences as no other man
could gather about him, and in remote villages where he addressed
plain people whose classics were the Bible and the "Farmer's Almanac."
Wherever he appeared in the lecture-room, he fascinated his listeners by
his voice and manner; the music of his speech pleased those who found
his thought too subtle for their dull wits to follow.
When the Lecture had served its purpose, it came before the public
in the shape of an Essay. But the Essay never lost the character it
borrowed from the conditions under which it was delivered; it was a
lay sermon,--_concio ad populum_. We must always remember what we are
dealing with. "Expect nothing more of my power of construction,--no
ship-building, no clipper, smack, nor skiff even, only boards and logs
tied together."--"Here I sit and read and write, with very little
system, and, as far as regards composition, with the most fragmentary
result: paragraphs incompressible, each sentence an infinitely repellent
particle." We have then a moralist and a poet appearing as a Lecturer
and an Essayist, and now and then writing in verse. He liked the freedom
of the platform. "I preach in the Lecture-room," he says, "and there it
tells, for there is no prescription. You may laugh, weep, reason, sing,
sneer, or pray, according to your genius." In England, he says, "I find
this lecturing a key which opens all doors." But he did not tend to
overvalue the calling which from "base necessity" he followed so
diligently. "Incorrigible spouting Yankee," he calls himself; and again,
"I peddle out all the wit I can gather from Time or from Nature, and
am pained at heart to see how thankfully that little is received."
Lecture-peddling was a hard business and a poorly paid one in the
earlier part of the time when Emerson was carrying his precious wares
about the country and offering them in competition with the cheapest
itinerants, with shilling concerts and negro-minstrel entertainments.
But one could get a kind of living out of it if he had invitations
enough. I remember Emerson's coming to my house to know if I could
fill his place at a certain Lyceum so that he might accept a very
advantageous invitation in another direction. I told him that I was
unfortunately engaged for the evening mentioned. He smiled serenely,
saying that then he supposed he must give up the new stove for that
season.
No man would accuse Emerson of parsimony of ideas. He crams his pages
with the very marrow of his thought. But in weighing out a lecture he
was as punctilious as Portia about the pound of flesh. His utterance was
deliberate and spaced with not infrequent slight delays. Exactly at the
end of the hour the lecture stopped. Suddenly, abruptly, but quietly,
without peroration of any sort, always with "a gentle shock of mild
surprise" to the unprepared listener. He had weighed out the full
measure to his audience with perfect fairness.
[Greek: oste thalanta gunhae cheruhaetis halaethaes
Aetestathmhon hechon echousa kahi heirion hamphis hanhelkei
Ishazous ina paishin haeikhea misthon haraetai,]
or, in Bryant's version,
"as the scales
Are held by some just woman, who maintains
By spinning wool her household,--carefully
She poises both the wool and weights, to make
The balance even, that she may provide
A pittance for her babes."--
As to the charm of his lectures all are agreed. It is needless to handle
this subject, for Mr. Lowell has written upon it. Of their effect on
his younger listeners he says, "To some of us that long past experience
remains the most marvellous and fruitful we have ever had. Emerson
awakened us, saved us from the body of this death. It is the sound of
the trumpet that the young soul longs for, careless of what breath may
fill it. Sidney heard it in the ballad of 'Chevy Chase,' and we in
Emerson. Nor did it blow retreat, but called us with assurance of
victory."
There was, besides these stirring notes, a sweet seriousness in
Emerson's voice that was infinitely soothing. So might "Peace, be
still," have sounded from the lips that silenced the storm. I remember
that in the dreadful war-time, on one of the days of anguish and terror,
I fell in with Governor Andrew, on his way to a lecture of Emerson's,
where he was going, he said, to relieve the strain upon his mind. An
hour passed in listening to that flow of thought, calm and clear as the
diamond drops that distil from a mountain rock, was a true nepenthe for
a careworn soul.
An author whose writings are like mosaics must have borrowed from many
quarries. Emerson had read more or less thoroughly through a very wide
range of authors. I shall presently show how extensive was his reading.
No doubt he had studied certain authors diligently, a few, it would
seem, thoroughly. But let no one be frightened away from his pages by
the terrible names of Plotinus and Proclus and Porphyry, of Behmen or
Spinoza, or of those modern German philosophers with whom it is not
pretended that he had any intimate acquaintance. Mr. George Ripley, a
man of erudition, a keen critic, a lover and admirer of Emerson, speaks
very plainly of his limitations as a scholar.
"As he confesses in the Essay on 'Books,' his learning is second hand;
but everything sticks which his mind can appropriate. He defends the use
of translations, and I doubt whether he has ever read ten pages of
his great authorities, Plato, Plutarch, Montaigne, or Goethe, in the
original. He is certainly no friend of profound study any more than
of philosophical speculation. Give him a few brilliant and suggestive
glimpses, and he is content."
One correction I must make to this statement. Emerson says he has
"contrived to read" almost every volume of Goethe, and that he has
fifty-five of them, but that he has read nothing else in German, and has
not looked into him for a long time. This was in 1840, in a letter to
Carlyle. It was up-hill work, it may be suspected, but he could not well
be ignorant of his friend's great idol, and his references to Goethe are
very frequent.
Emerson's quotations are like the miraculous draught of fishes. I hardly
know his rivals except Burton and Cotton Mather. But no one would accuse
him of pedantry. Burton quotes to amuse himself and his reader; Mather
quotes to show his learning, of which he had a vast conceit; Emerson
quotes to illustrate some original thought of his own, or because
another writer's way of thinking falls in with his own,--never with
a trivial purpose. Reading as he did, he must have unconsciously
appropriated a great number of thoughts from others. But he was profuse
in his references to those from whom he borrowed,--more profuse than
many of his readers would believe without taking the pains to count his
authorities. This I thought it worth while to have done, once for all,
and I will briefly present the results of the examination. The named
references, chiefly to authors, as given in the table before me, are
three thousand three hundred and ninety-three, relating to eight hundred
and sixty-eight different individuals. Of these, four hundred and eleven
are mentioned more than once; one hundred and fifty-five, five times
or more; sixty-nine, ten times or more; thirty-eight, fifteen times or
more; and twenty-seven, twenty times or more. These twenty-seven names
alone, the list of which is here given, furnish no less than one
thousand and sixty-five references.
Authorities. Number of times mentioned.
Shakespeare.....112
Napoleon.........84
Plato............81
Plutarch.........70
Goethe...........62
Swift............49
Bacon............47
Milton...........46
Newton...........43
Homer............42
Socrates.........42
Swedenborg.......40
Montaigne........30
Saadi............30
Luther...........30
Webster..........27
Aristotle........25
Hafiz............25
Wordsworth.......25
Burke............24
Saint Paul.......24
Dante............22
Shattuck (Hist. of
Concord).......21
Chaucer..........20
Coleridge........20
Michael Angelo...20
The name of Jesus occurs fifty-four times.
It is interesting to observe that Montaigne, Franklin, and Emerson all
show the same fondness for Plutarch.
Montaigne says, "I never settled myself to the reading of any book of
solid learning but Plutarch and Seneca."
Franklin says, speaking of the books in his father's library, "There was
among them Plutarch's Lives, which I read abundantly, and I still think
that time spent to great advantage."
Emerson says, "I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to
all the ancient writers."
Studies of life and character were the delight of all these four
moralists. As a judge of character, Dr. Hedge, who knew Emerson well,
has spoken to me of his extraordinary gift, and no reader of "English
Traits" can have failed to mark the formidable penetration of the
intellect which looked through those calm cerulean eyes.
_Noscitur a sociis_ is as applicable to the books a man most affects as
well as to the companions he chooses. It is with the kings of
thought that Emerson most associates. As to borrowing from his royal
acquaintances his ideas are very simple and expressed without reserve.
"All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment.
There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By
necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote."
What Emerson says of Plutarch applies very nearly to himself.
"In his immense quotation and allusion we quickly cease to discriminate
between what he quotes and what he invents. We sail on his memory into
the ports of every nation, enter into every private property, and do not
stop to discriminate owners, but give him the praise of all."
Mr. Ruskin and Lord Tennyson have thought it worth their while to defend
themselves from the charge of plagiarism. Emerson would never have taken
the trouble to do such a thing. His mind was overflowing with thought as
a river in the season of flood, and was full of floating fragments from
an endless variety of sources. He drew ashore whatever he wanted that
would serve his purpose. He makes no secret of his mode of writing. "I
dot evermore in my endless journal, a line on every knowable in nature;
but the arrangement loiters long, and I get a brick-kiln instead of
a house." His journal is "full of disjointed dreams and audacities."
Writing by the aid of this, it is natural enough that he should speak of
his "lapidary style" and say "I build my house of boulders."
"It is to be remembered," says Mr. Ruskin, "that all men who have sense
and feeling are continually helped: they are taught by every person they
meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest
is he who has been oftenest aided; and if the attainments of all human
minds could be traced to their real sources, it would be found that the
world had been laid most under contribution by the men of most original
powers, and that every day of their existence deepened their debt to
their race, while it enlarged their gifts to it."
The reader may like to see a few coincidences between Emerson's words
and thoughts and those of others.
Some sayings seem to be a kind of family property. "Scorn trifles"
comes from Aunt Mary Moody Emerson, and reappears in her nephew, Ralph
Waldo.--"What right have you, Sir, to your virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?
This is a jewel among the rags of a beggar." So writes Ralph Waldo
Emerson in his Lecture "New England Reformers."--"Hiding the badges of
royalty beneath the gown of the mendicant, and ever on the watch lest
their rank be betrayed by the sparkle of a gem from under their rags."
Thus wrote Charles Chauncy Emerson in the "Harvard Register" nearly
twenty years before.
"The hero is not fed on sweets,
Daily his own heart he eats."
The image comes from Pythagoras _via_ Plutarch.
Now and then, but not with any questionable frequency, we find a
sentence which recalls Carlyle.
"The national temper, in the civil history, is not flashy or whiffling.
The slow, deep English mass smoulders with fire, which at last sets all
its borders in flame. The wrath of London is not French wrath, but has a
long memory, and in hottest heat a register and rule."
Compare this passage from "English Traits" with the following one from
Carlyle's "French Revolution":--
"So long this Gallic fire, through its successive changes of color and
character, will blaze over the face of Europe, and afflict and scorch
all men:--till it provoke all men, till it kindle another kind of fire,
the Teutonic kind, namely; and be swallowed up, so to speak, in a day!
For there is a fire comparable to the burning of dry jungle and grass;
most sudden, high-blazing: and another fire which we liken to the
burning of coal, or even of anthracite coal, but which no known thing
will put out."
"O what are heroes, prophets, men
But pipes through which the breath of man doth blow
A momentary music."
The reader will find a similar image in one of Burns's letters, again in
one of Coleridge's poetical fragments, and long before any of them, in a
letter of Leibnitz.
"He builded better than he knew"
is the most frequently quoted line of Emerson. The thought is constantly
recurring in our literature. It helps out the minister's sermon; and a
Fourth of July Oration which does not borrow it is like the "Address
without a Phoenix" among the Drury Lane mock poems. Can we find any
trace of this idea elsewhere?
In a little poem of Coleridge's, "William Tell," are these two lines:
"On wind and wave the boy would toss
Was great, nor knew how great he was."
The thought is fully worked out in the celebrated Essay of Carlyle
called "Characteristics." It reappears in Emerson's poem "Fate."
"Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell's measure and degree;
Unknown to him as to his horse,
If he than his groom is better or worse."
It is unnecessary to illustrate this point any further in this
connection. In dealing with his poetry other resemblances will suggest
themselves. All the best poetry the world has known is full of such
resemblances. If we find Emerson's wonderful picture, "Initial Love"
prefigured in the "Symposium" of Plato, we have only to look in the
"Phaedrus" and we we shall find an earlier sketch of Shakespeare's
famous group,--
"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet."
Sometimes these resemblances are nothing more than accidental
coincidences; sometimes the similar passages are unconsciously borrowed
from another; sometimes they are paraphrases, variations, embellished
copies, _éditions de luxe_ of sayings that all the world knows are old,
but which it seems to the writer worth his while to say over again.
The more improved versions of the world's great thoughts we have, the
better, and we look to the great minds for them. The larger the river
the more streams flow into it. The wide flood of Emerson's discourse has
a hundred rivers and thousands of streamlets for its tributaries.
It was not from books only that he gathered food for thought and for his
lectures and essays. He was always on the lookout in conversation for
things to be remembered. He picked up facts one would not have expected
him to care for. He once corrected me in giving Flora Temple's time at
Kalamazoo. I made a mistake of a quarter of a second, and he set me
right. He was not always so exact in his memory, as I have already shown
in several instances. Another example is where he speaks of Quintus
Curtius, the historian, when he is thinking of Mettus Curtius, the
self-sacrificing equestrian. Little inaccuracies of this kind did not
concern him much; he was a wholesale dealer in illustrations, and could
not trouble himself about a trifling defect in this or that particular
article.
Emerson was a man who influenced others more than others influenced him.
Outside of his family connections, the personalities which can be most
easily traced in his own are those of Carlyle, Mr. Alcott, and Thoreau.
Carlyle's harsh virility could not be without its effect on his
valid, but sensitive nature. Alcott's psychological and physiological
speculations interested him as an idealist. Thoreau lent him a new set
of organs of sense of wonderful delicacy. Emerson looked at nature as a
poet, and his natural history, if left to himself, would have been as
vague as that of Polonius. But Thoreau had a pair of eyes which, like
those of the Indian deity, could see the smallest emmet on the blackest
stone in the darkest night,--or come nearer to seeing it than those of
most mortals. Emerson's long intimacy with him taught him to give an
outline to many natural objects which would have been poetic nebulae to
him but for this companionship. A nicer analysis would detect many
alien elements mixed with his individuality, but the family traits
predominated over all the external influences, and the personality stood
out distinct from the common family qualities. Mr. Whipple has well
said: "Some traits of his mind and character may be traced back to his
ancestors, but what doctrine of heredity can give us the genesis of his
genius? Indeed the safest course to pursue is to quote his own words,
and despairingly confess that it is the nature of genius 'to spring,
like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the
past and refuse all history.'"
* * * * *
Emerson's place as a thinker is somewhat difficult to fix. He cannot
properly be called a psychologist. He made notes and even delivered
lectures on the natural history of the intellect; but they seem to have
been made up, according to his own statement, of hints and fragments
rather than of the results of systematic study. He was a man of
intuition, of insight, a seer, a poet, with a tendency to mysticism.
This tendency renders him sometimes obscure, and once in a while almost,
if not quite, unintelligible. We can, for this reason, understand why
the great lawyer turned him over to his daughters, and Dr. Walter
Channing complained that his lecture made his head ache. But it is not
always a writer's fault that he is not understood. Many persons have
poor heads for abstractions; and as for mystics, if they understand
themselves it is quite as much as can be expected. But that which is
mysticism to a dull listener may be the highest and most inspiring
imaginative clairvoyance to a brighter one. It is to be hoped that no
reader will take offence at the following anecdote, which may be found
under the title "Diogenes," in the work of his namesake, Diogenes
Laertius. I translate from the Latin version.
"Plato was talking about ideas, and spoke of _mensality_ and _cyathity_
[_tableity_, and _gobletity_]. 'I can see a table and a goblet,' said
the cynic, 'but I can see no such things as tableity and gobletity.'
'Quite so,' answered Plato, 'because you have the eyes to see a goblet
and a table with, but you have not the brains to understand tableity and
gobletity.'"
This anecdote may be profitably borne in mind in following Emerson into
the spheres of intuition and mystical contemplation.
Emerson was an idealist in the Platonic sense of the word, a
spiritualist as opposed to a materialist. He believes, he says, "as
the wise Spenser teaches," that the soul makes its own body. This, of
course, involves the doctrine of preexistence; a doctrine older than
Spenser, older than Plato or Pythagoras, having its cradle in India,
fighting its way down through Greek philosophers and Christian fathers
and German professors, to our own time, when it has found Pierre Leroux,
Edward Beecher, and Brigham Young among its numerous advocates. Each has
his fancies on the subject. The geography of an undiscovered country and
the soundings of an ocean that has never been sailed over may belong to
romance and poetry, but they do not belong to the realm of knowledge.
That the organ of the mind brings with it inherited aptitudes is a
simple matter of observation. That it inherits truths is a different
proposition. The eye does not bring landscapes into the world on its
retina,--why should the brain bring thoughts? Poetry settles such
questions very simply by saying it is so.
The poet in Emerson never accurately differentiated itself from the
philosopher. He speaks of Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of
Immortality as the high-water mark of the poetry of this century. It
sometimes seems as if he had accepted the lofty rhapsodies of this noble
Ode as working truths.
"Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home."
In accordance with this statement of a divine inheritance from a
preexisting state, the poet addresses the infant:--
"Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find."--
These are beautiful fancies, but the philosopher will naturally ask the
poet what are the truths which the child has lost between its cradle and
the age of eight years, at which Wordsworth finds the little girl of
whom he speaks in the lines,--
"A simple child--
That lightly draws its breath
And feels its life in every limb,--
What should it know of death?"
What should it, sure enough, or of any other of those great truths which
Time with its lessons, and the hardening of the pulpy brain can alone
render appreciable to the consciousness? Undoubtedly every brain has its
own set of moulds ready to shape all material of thought into its own
individual set of patterns. If the mind comes into consciousness with a
good set of moulds derived by "traduction," as Dryden called it, from a
good ancestry, it may be all very well to give the counsel to the youth
to plant himself on his instincts. But the individual to whom this
counsel is given probably has dangerous as well as wholesome instincts.
He has also a great deal besides the instincts to be considered. His
instincts are mixed up with innumerable acquired prejudices, erroneous
conclusions, deceptive experiences, partial truths, one-sided
tendencies. The clearest insight will often find it hard to decide what
is the real instinct, and whether the instinct itself is, in theological
language, from God or the devil. That which was a safe guide for Emerson
might not work well with Lacenaire or Jesse Pomeroy. The cloud of glory
which the babe brings with it into the world is a good set of instincts,
which dispose it to accept moral and intellectual truths,--not the
truths themselves. And too many children come into life trailing after
them clouds which are anything but clouds of glory.
It may well be imagined that when Emerson proclaimed the new
doctrine,--new to his young disciples,--of planting themselves on their
instincts, consulting their own spiritual light for guidance,--trusting
to intuition,--without reference to any other authority, he opened the
door to extravagances in any unbalanced minds, if such there were, which
listened to his teachings. Too much was expected out of the mouths of
babes and sucklings. The children shut up by Psammetichus got as far as
one word in their evolution of an original language, but _bekkos_ was a
very small contribution towards a complete vocabulary. "The Dial"
was well charged with intuitions, but there was too much vagueness,
incoherence, aspiration without energy, effort without inspiration, to
satisfy those who were looking for a new revelation.
The gospel of intuition proved to be practically nothing more or less
than this: a new manifesto of intellectual and spiritual independence.
It was no great discovery that we see many things as truths which we
cannot prove. But it was a great impulse to thought, a great advance
in the attitude of our thinking community, when the profoundly devout
religious free-thinker took the ground of the undevout and irreligious
free-thinker, and calmly asserted and peaceably established the right
and the duty of the individual to weigh the universe, its laws and its
legends, in his own balance, without fear of authority, or names, or
institutions.
All this brought its dangers with it, like other movements of
emancipation. For the Fay _ce que voudras_ of the revellers of Medmenham
Abbey, was substituted the new motto, Pense _ce que voudras_. There was
an intoxication in this newly proclaimed evangel which took hold of some
susceptible natures and betrayed itself in prose and rhyme, occasionally
of the Bedlam sort. Emerson's disciples were never accused of falling
into the more perilous snares of antinomianism, but he himself
distinctly recognizes the danger of it, and the counterbalancing
effect of household life, with its curtain lectures and other benign
influences. Extravagances of opinion cure themselves. Time wore off the
effects of the harmless debauch, and restored the giddy revellers to the
regimen of sober thought, as reformed spiritual inebriates.
Such were some of the incidental effects of the Emersonian declaration
of independence. It was followed by a revolutionary war of opinion not
yet ended or at present like to be. A local outbreak, if you will, but
so was throwing the tea overboard. A provincial affair, if the Bohemian
press likes that term better, but so was the skirmish where the gun was
fired the echo of which is heard in every battle for freedom all over
the world.
* * * * *
Too much has been made of Emerson's mysticism. He was an intellectual
rather than an emotional mystic, and withal a cautious one. He never let
go the string of his balloon. He never threw over all his ballast of
common sense so as to rise above an atmosphere in which a rational being
could breathe. I found in his library William Law's edition of Jacob
Behmen. There were all those wonderful diagrams over which the reader
may have grown dizzy,--just such as one finds on the walls of lunatic
asylums,--evidences to all sane minds of cerebral strabismus in the
contrivers of them. Emerson liked to lose himself for a little while in
the vagaries of this class of minds, the dangerous proximity of which to
insanity he knew and has spoken of. He played with the incommunicable,
the inconceivable, the absolute, the antinomies, as he would have played
with a bundle of jack-straws. "Brahma," the poem which so mystified
the readers of the "Atlantic Monthly," was one of his spiritual
divertisements. To the average Western mind it is the nearest approach
to a Torricellian vacuum of intelligibility that language can pump out
of itself. If "Rejected Addresses" had not been written half a century
before Emerson's poem, one would think these lines were certainly meant
to ridicule and parody it.
"The song of Braham is an Irish howl;
Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,
And nought is everything and everything is nought."
Braham, Hazlitt might have said, is so obviously the anagram of Brahma
that dulness itself could not mistake the object intended.
Of course no one can hold Emerson responsible for the "Yoga" doctrine
of Brahmanism, which he has amused himself with putting in verse. The
oriental side of Emerson's nature delighted itself in these narcotic
dreams, born in the land of the poppy and of hashish. They lend a
peculiar charm to his poems, but it is not worth while to try to
construct a philosophy out of them. The knowledge, if knowledge it be,
of the mystic is not transmissible. It is not cumulative; it begins and
ends with the solitary dreamer, and the next who follows him has to
build his own cloud-castle as if it were the first aerial edifice that a
human soul had ever constructed.
Some passages of "Nature," "The Over-Soul," "The Sphinx," "Uriel,"
illustrate sufficiently this mood of spiritual exaltation. Emerson's
calm temperament never allowed it to reach the condition he sometimes
refers to,--that of ecstasy. The passage in "Nature" where he says "I
become a transparent eyeball" is about as near it as he ever came. This
was almost too much for some of his admirers and worshippers. One of his
most ardent and faithful followers, whose gifts as an artist are well
known, mounted the eyeball on legs, and with its cornea in front for
a countenance and its optic nerve projecting behind as a queue, the
spiritual cyclops was shown setting forth on his travels.
Emerson's reflections in the "transcendental" mood do beyond question
sometimes irresistibly suggest the close neighborhood of the sublime to
the ridiculous. But very near that precipitous border line there is a
charmed region where, if the statelier growths of philosophy die out and
disappear, the flowers of poetry next the very edge of the chasm have
a peculiar and mysterious beauty. "Uriel" is a poem which finds itself
perilously near to the gulf of unsounded obscurity, and has, I doubt
not, provoked the mirth of profane readers; but read in a lucid moment,
it is just obscure enough and just significant enough to give the
voltaic thrill which comes from the sudden contacts of the highest
imaginative conceptions.
Human personality presented itself to Emerson as a passing phase of
universal being. Born of the Infinite, to the Infinite it was to return.
Sometimes he treats his own personality as interchangeable with objects
in nature,--he would put it off like a garment and clothe himself in the
landscape. Here is a curious extract from "The Adirondacs," in which the
reader need not stop to notice the parallelism with Byron's--
"The sky is changed,--and such a change! O night
And storm and darkness, ye are wondrous strong."--
Now Emerson:--
"And presently the sky is changed; O world!
What pictures and what harmonies are thine!
The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene,
_So like the soul of me, what if't were me_?"
We find this idea of confused personal identity also in a brief poem
printed among the "Translations" in the Appendix to Emerson's Poems.
These are the last two lines of "The Flute, from Hilali":--
"Saying, Sweetheart! the old mystery remains,
If I am I; thou, thou, or thou art I?"
The same transfer of personality is hinted in the line of Shelley's "Ode
to the West Wind":
"Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!"
Once more, how fearfully near the abyss of the ridiculous! A few drops
of alcohol bring about a confusion of mind not unlike this poetical
metempsychosis.
The laird of Balnamoon had been at a dinner where they gave him
cherry-brandy instead of port wine. In driving home over a wild tract of
land called Munrimmon Moor his hat and wig blew off, and his servant got
out of the gig and brought them to him. The hat he recognized, but not
the wig. "It's no my wig, Hairy [Harry], lad; it's no my wig," and he
would not touch it. At last Harry lost his patience: "Ye'd better tak'
it, sir, for there's nae waile [choice] o' wigs on Munrimmon Moor."
And in our earlier days we used to read of the bewildered market-woman,
whose _Ego_ was so obscured when she awoke from her slumbers that she
had to leave the question of her personal identity to the instinct of
her four-footed companion:--
"If it be I, he'll wag his little tail;
And if it be not I, he'll loudly bark and wail."
I have not lost my reverence for Emerson in showing one of his fancies
for a moment in the distorting mirror of the ridiculous. He would
doubtless have smiled with me at the reflection, for he had a keen sense
of humor. But I take the opportunity to disclaim a jesting remark about
"a foresmell of the Infinite" which Mr. Conway has attributed to me, who
am innocent of all connection with it.
The mystic appeals to those only who have an ear for the celestial
concords, as the musician only appeals to those who have the special
endowment which enables them to understand his compositions. It is
not for organizations untuned to earthly music to criticise the great
composers, or for those who are deaf to spiritual harmonies to criticise
the higher natures which lose themselves in the strains of divine
contemplation. The bewildered reader must not forget that passage of
arms, previously mentioned, between Plato and Diogenes.
* * * * *
Emerson looked rather askance at Science in his early days. I remember
that his brother Charles had something to say in the "Harvard Register"
(1828) about its disenchantments. I suspect the prejudice may have come
partly from Wordsworth. Compare this verse of his with the lines of
Emerson's which follow it.
"Physician art thou, one all eyes;
Philosopher, a fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave?"
Emerson's lines are to be found near the end of the Appendix in the new
edition of his works.
"Philosophers are lined with eyes within,
And, being so, the sage unmakes the man.
In love he cannot therefore cease his trade;
Scarce the first blush has overspread his cheek,
He feels it, introverts his learned eye
To catch the unconscious heart in the very act.
His mother died,--the only friend he had,--
Some tears escaped, but his philosophy
Couched like a cat, sat watching close behind
And throttled all his passion. Is't not like
That devil-spider that devours her mate
Scarce freed from her embraces?"
The same feeling comes out in the Poem "Blight," where he says the
"young scholars who invade our hills"
"Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
And all their botany is Latin names;"
and in "The Walk," where the "learned men" with their glasses are
contrasted with the sons of Nature,--the poets are no doubt meant,--much
to the disadvantage of the microscopic observers. Emerson's mind
was very far from being of the scientific pattern. Science is
quantitative,--loves the foot-rule and the balance,--methodical,
exhaustive, indifferent to the beautiful as such. The poet is curious,
asks all manner of questions, and never thinks of waiting for the
answer, still less of torturing Nature to get at it. Emerson wonders,
for instance,--
"Why Nature loves the number five,"
but leaves his note of interrogation without troubling himself any
farther. He must have picked up some wood-craft and a little botany
from Thoreau, and a few chemical notions from his brother-in-law, Dr.
Jackson, whose name is associated with the discovery of artificial
anaesthesia. It seems probable that the genial companionship of Agassiz,
who united with his scientific genius, learning, and renown, most
delightful social qualities, gave him a kinder feeling to men of science
and their pursuits than he had entertained before that great master came
among us. At any rate he avails himself of the facts drawn from their
specialties without scruple when they will serve his turn. But he loves
the poet always better than the scientific student of nature. In his
Preface to the Poems of Mr. W.E. Channing, he says:--
"Here is a naturalist who sees the flower and the bud with a poet's
curiosity and awe, and does not count the stamens in the aster, nor the
feathers in the wood-thrush, but rests in the surprise and affection
they awake."--
This was Emerson's own instinctive attitude to all the phenomena of
nature.
Emerson's style is epigrammatic, incisive, authoritative, sometimes
quaint, never obscure, except when he is handling nebulous subjects.
His paragraphs are full of brittle sentences that break apart and are
independent units, like the fragments of a coral colony. His imagery is
frequently daring, leaping from the concrete to the abstract, from the
special to the general and universal, and _vice versa_, with a bound
that is like a flight. Here are a few specimens of his pleasing
_audacities_:--
"There is plenty of wild azote and carbon unappropriated, but it is
naught till we have made it up into loaves and soup."--
"He arrives at the sea-shore and a sumptuous ship has floored and
carpeted for him the stormy Atlantic."--
"If we weave a yard of tape in all humility and as well as we can, long
hereafter we shall see it was no cotton tape at all but some galaxy
which we braided, and that the threads were Time and Nature."--
"Tapping the tempest for a little side wind."--
"The locomotive and the steamboat, like enormous shuttles, shoot
every day across the thousand various threads of national descent and
employment and bind them fast in one web."--
He is fond of certain archaisms and unusual phrases. He likes
the expression "mother-wit," which he finds in Spenser, Marlowe,
Shakespeare, and other old writers. He often uses the word "husband"
in its earlier sense of economist. His use of the word "haughty" is so
fitting, and it sounds so nobly from his lips, that we could wish its
employment were forbidden henceforth to voices which vulgarize it. But
his special, constitutional, word is "fine," meaning something like
dainty, as Shakespeare uses it,--"my dainty Ariel,"--"fine Ariel." It
belongs to his habit of mind and body as "faint" and "swoon" belong to
Keats. This word is one of the ear-marks by which Emerson's imitators
are easily recognized. "Melioration" is another favorite word of
Emerson's. A clairvoyant could spell out some of his most characteristic
traits by the aid of his use of these three words; his inborn
fastidiousness, subdued and kept out of sight by his large charity and
his good breeding, showed itself in his liking for the word "haughty;"
his exquisite delicacy by his fondness for the word "fine," with a
certain shade of meaning; his optimism in the frequent recurrence of the
word "melioration."
We must not find fault with his semi-detached sentences until we quarrel
with Solomon and criticise the Sermon on the Mount. The "point and
surprise" which he speaks of as characterizing the style of Plutarch
belong eminently to his own. His fertility of illustrative imagery is
very great. His images are noble, or, if borrowed from humble objects,
ennobled by his handling. He throws his royal robe over a milking-stool
and it becomes a throne. But chiefly he chooses objects of comparison
grand in themselves. He deals with the elements at first hand. Such
delicacy of treatment, with such breadth and force of effect, is hard to
match anywhere, and we know him by his style at sight. It is as when the
slight fingers of a girl touch the keys of some mighty and many-voiced
organ, and send its thunders rolling along the aisles and startling
the stained windows of a great cathedral. We have seen him as an
unpretending lecturer. We follow him round as he "peddles out all the
wit he can gather from Time or from Nature," and we find that "he has
changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun," and is carrying
about the morning light as merchandise.
* * * * *
Emerson was as loyal an American, as thorough a New Englander, as
home-loving a citizen, as ever lived. He arraigned his countrymen
sharply for their faults. Mr. Arnold made one string of his epithets
familiar to all of us,--"This great, intelligent, sensual, and
avaricious America." This was from a private letter to Carlyle. In his
Essay, "Works and Days," he is quite as outspoken: "This mendicant
America, this curious, peering, itinerant, imitative America." "I
see plainly," he says, "that our society is as bigoted to the
respectabilities of religion and education as yours." "The war," he
says, "gave back integrity to this erring and immoral nation." All his
life long he recognized the faults and errors of the new civilization.
All his life long he labored diligently and lovingly to correct them.
To the dark prophecies of Carlyle, which came wailing to him across the
ocean, he answered with ever hopeful and cheerful anticipations. "Here,"
he said, in words I have already borrowed, "is the home of man--here is
the promise of a new and more excellent social state than history has
recorded."
Such a man as Emerson belongs to no one town or province or continent;
he is the common property of mankind; and yet we love to think of him
as breathing the same air and treading the same soil that we and our
fathers and our children have breathed and trodden. So it pleases us
to think how fondly he remembered his birthplace; and by the side of
Franklin's bequest to his native city we treasure that golden verse of
Emerson's:--
"A blessing through the ages thus
Shield all thy roofs and towers,
GOD WITH THE FATHERS, SO WITH US,
Thou darling town of ours!"
Emerson sympathized with all generous public movements, but he was not
fond of working in associations, though he liked well enough to attend
their meetings as a listener and looker-on. His study was his workshop,
and he preferred to labor in solitude. When he became famous he paid the
penalty of celebrity in frequent interruptions by those "devastators of
the day" who sought him in his quiet retreat. His courtesy and kindness
to his visitors were uniform and remarkable. Poets who come to recite
their verses and reformers who come to explain their projects are
among the most formidable of earthly visitations. Emerson accepted
his martyrdom with meek submission; it was a martyrdom in detail, but
collectively its petty tortures might have satisfied a reasonable
inquisitor as the punishment of a moderate heresy. Except in that one
phrase above quoted he never complained of his social oppressors, so far
as I remember, in his writings. His perfect amiability was one of his
most striking characteristics, and in a nature fastidious as was his in
its whole organization, it implied a self-command worthy of admiration.
* * * * *
The natural purity and elevation of Emerson's character show themselves
in all that he writes. His life corresponded to the ideal we form of him
from his writings. This it was which made him invulnerable amidst all
the fierce conflicts his gentle words excited. His white shield was so
spotless that the least scrupulous combatants did not like to leave
their defacing marks upon it. One would think he was protected by some
superstition like that which Voltaire refers to as existing about
Boileau,--
"Ne disons pas mal de Nicolas,--cela porte malheur."
(Don't let us abuse Nicolas,--it brings ill luck.) The cooped-up
dogmatists whose very citadel of belief he was attacking, and who had
their hot water and boiling pitch and flaming brimstone ready for the
assailants of their outer defences, withheld their missiles from him,
and even sometimes, in a movement of involuntary human sympathy,
sprinkled him with rose-water. His position in our Puritan New England
was in some respects like that of Burns in Presbyterian Scotland. The
_dour_ Scotch ministers and elders could not cage their minstrel, and
they could not clip his wings; and so they let this morning lark rise
above their theological mists, and sing to them at heaven's gate, until
he had softened all their hearts and might nestle in their bosoms and
find his perch on "the big ha' bible," if he would,--and as he did. So
did the music of Emerson's words and life steal into the hearts of our
stern New England theologians, and soften them to a temper which would
have seemed treasonable weakness to their stiff-kneed forefathers. When
a man lives a life commended by all the Christian virtues, enlightened
persons are not so apt to cavil at his particular beliefs or unbeliefs
as in former generations. We do, however, wish to know what are the
convictions of any such persons in matters of highest interest about
which there is so much honest difference of opinion in this age of deep
and anxious and devout religious scepticism.
It was a very wise and a very prudent course which was taken by
Simonides, when he was asked by his imperial master to give him his
ideas about the Deity. He begged for a day to consider the question, but
when the time came for his answer he wanted two days more, and at the
end of these, four days. In short, the more he thought about it, the
more he found himself perplexed.
The name most frequently applied to Emerson's form of belief is
Pantheism. How many persons who shudder at the sound of this word can
tell the difference between that doctrine and their own professed belief
in the omnipresence of the Deity?
Theodore Parker explained Emerson's position, as he understood it, in an
article in the "Massachusetts Quarterly Review." I borrow this quotation
from Mr. Cooke:--
"He has an absolute confidence in God. He has been foolishly accused of
Pantheism, which sinks God in nature, but no man Is further from it.
He never sinks God in man; he does not stop with the law, in matter or
morals, but goes to the Law-giver; yet probably it would not be so easy
for him to give his definition of God, as it would be for most graduates
at Andover or Cambridge."
We read in his Essay, "Self-Reliance ": "This is the ultimate fact which
we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all
into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the
Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in
which it enters into all lower forms."
The "ever-blessed ONE" of Emerson corresponds to the Father in the
doctrine of the Trinity. The "Over-Soul" of Emerson is that aspect of
Deity which is known to theology as the Holy Spirit. Jesus was for him a
divine manifestation, but only as other great human souls have been in
all ages and are to-day. He was willing to be called a Christian just as
he was willing to be called a Platonist.
Explanations are apt not to explain much in dealing with subjects like
this. "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the
Almighty unto perfection?" But on certain great points nothing could be
clearer than the teaching of Emerson. He believed in the doctrine of
spiritual influx as sincerely as any Calvinist or Swedenborgian. His
views as to fate, or the determining conditions of the character,
brought him near enough to the doctrine of predestination to make him
afraid of its consequences, and led him to enter a caveat against any
denial of the self-governing power of the will.
His creed was a brief one, but he carried it everywhere with him. In all
he did, in all he said, and so far as all outward signs could show, in
all his thoughts, the indwelling Spirit was his light and guide; through
all nature he looked up to nature's God; and if he did not worship the
"man Christ Jesus" as the churches of Christendom have done, he followed
his footsteps so nearly that our good Methodist, Father Taylor, spoke of
him as more like Christ than any man he had known.
Emerson was in friendly relations with many clergymen of the church
from which he had parted. Since he left the pulpit, the lesson, not
of tolerance, for that word is an insult as applied by one set of
well-behaved people to another, not of charity, for that implies an
impertinent assumption, but of good feeling on the part of divergent
sects and their ministers has been taught and learned as never before.
Their official Confessions of Faith make far less difference in their
human sentiments and relations than they did even half a century ago.
These ancient creeds are handed along down, to be kept in their phials
with their stoppers fast, as attar of rose is kept in its little
bottles; they are not to be opened and exposed to the atmosphere so long
as their perfume,--the odor of sanctity,--is diffused from the carefully
treasured receptacles,--perhaps even longer than that.
Out of the endless opinions as to the significance and final outcome of
Emerson's religious teachings I will select two as typical.
Dr. William Hague, long the honored minister of a Baptist church in
Boston, where I had the pleasure of friendly acquaintance with him, has
written a thoughtful, amiable paper on Emerson, which he read before the
New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. This Essay closes with
the following sentence:--
"Thus, to-day, while musing, as at the beginning, over the works of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, we recognize now as ever his imperial genius as one
of the greatest of writers; at the same time, his life work, as a whole,
tested by its supreme ideal, its method and its fruitage, shows also a
great waste of power, verifying the saying of Jesus touching the harvest
of human life: 'HE THAT GATHERETH NOT WITH ME SCATTERETH ABROAD.'"
"But when Dean Stanley returned from America, it was to report," says
Mr. Conway "('Macmillan,' June, 1879), that religion had there passed
through an evolution from Edwards to Emerson, and that 'the genial
atmosphere which Emerson has done so much to promote is shared by all
the churches equally.'"
What is this "genial atmosphere" but the very spirit of Christianity?
The good Baptist minister's Essay is full of it. He comes asking what
has become of Emerson's "wasted power" and lamenting his lack of
"fruitage," and lo! he himself has so ripened and mellowed in that same
Emersonian air that the tree to which he belongs would hardly know him.
The close-communion clergyman handles the arch-heretic as tenderly as if
he were the nursing mother of a new infant Messiah. A few generations
ago this preacher of a new gospel would have been burned; a little later
he would been tried and imprisoned; less than fifty years ago he was
called infidel and atheist; names which are fast becoming relinquished
to the intellectual half-breeds who sometimes find their way into
pulpits and the so-called religious periodicals.
It is not within our best-fenced churches and creeds that the
self-governing American is like to find the religious freedom which the
Concord prophet asserted with the strength of Luther and the sweetness
of Melancthon, and which the sovereign in his shirt-sleeves will surely
claim. Milton was only the precursor of Emerson when he wrote:--
"Neither is God appointed and confined, where and out of what place
these his chosen shall be first heard to speak; for he sees not as man
sees, chooses not as man chooses, lest we should devote ourselves again
to set places and assemblies, and outward callings of men, planting our
faith one while in the old convocation house, and another while in the
Chapel at Westminster, when all the faith and religion that shall be
there canonized is not sufficient without plain convincement, and
the charity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of
conscience, to edify the meanest Christian who desires to walk in the
spirit and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of
voices that can be there made; no, though Harry the Seventh himself
there, with all his liege tombs about him, should lend their voices from
the dead, to swell their number."
The best evidence of the effect produced by Emerson's writings and life
is to be found in the attention he has received from biographers and
critics. The ground upon which I have ventured was already occupied by
three considerable Memoirs. Mr. George Willis Cooke's elaborate work is
remarkable for its careful and thorough analysis of Emerson's teachings.
Mr. Moncure Daniel Conway's "Emerson at Home and Abroad" is a lively
picture of its subject by one long and well acquainted with him. Mr.
Alexander Ireland's "Biographical Sketch" brings together, from a great
variety of sources, as well as from his own recollections, the facts of
Emerson's history and the comments of those whose opinions were best
worth reproducing. I must refer to this volume for a bibliography of the
various works and Essays of which Emerson furnished the subject.
From the days when Mr. Whipple attracted the attention of our
intelligent, but unawakened reading community, by his discriminating and
appreciative criticisms of Emerson's Lectures, and Mr. Lowell drew the
portrait of the New England "Plotinus-Montaigne" in his brilliant "Fable
for Critics," to the recent essays of Mr. Matthew Arnold, Mr. John
Morley, Mr. Henry Norman, and Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, Emerson's
writings have furnished one of the most enduring _pièces de résistance_
at the critical tables of the old and the new world.
He early won the admiration of distinguished European thinkers and
writers: Carlyle accepted his friendship and his disinterested services;
Miss Martineau fully recognized his genius and sounded his praises; Miss
Bremer fixed her sharp eyes on him and pronounced him "a noble man."
Professor Tyndall found the inspiration of his life in Emerson's
fresh thought; and Mr. Arnold, who clipped his medals reverently but
unsparingly, confessed them to be of pure gold, even while he questioned
whether they would pass current with posterity. He found discerning
critics in France, Germany, and Holland. Better than all is the
testimony of those who knew him best. They who repeat the saying that
"a prophet is not without honor save in his own country," will find an
exception to its truth in the case of Emerson. Read the impressive words
spoken at his funeral by his fellow-townsman, Judge Hoar; read the
glowing tributes of three of Concord's poets,--Mr. Alcott, Mr. Channing,
and Mr. Sanborn,--and it will appear plainly enough that he, whose fame
had gone out into all the earth, was most of all believed in, honored,
beloved, lamented, in the little village circle that centred about his
own fireside.
It is a not uninteresting question whether Emerson has bequeathed to the
language any essay or poem which will resist the flow of time like "the
adamant of Shakespeare," and remain a classic like the Essays of Addison
or Gray's Elegy. It is a far more important question whether his thought
entered into the spirit of his day and generation, so that it modified
the higher intellectual, moral, and religious life of his time, and, as
a necessary consequence, those of succeeding ages. _Corpora non agunt
nisi soluta_, and ideas must be dissolved and taken up as well as
material substances before they can act. "That which thou sowest is not
quickened except it die," or rather lose the form with which it was
sown. Eight stanzas of four lines each have made the author of "The
Burial of Sir John Moore" an immortal, and endowed the language with a
classic, perfect as the most finished cameo. But what is the gift of a
mourning ring to the bequest of a perpetual annuity? How many lives
have melted into the history of their time, as the gold was lost
in Corinthian brass, leaving no separate monumental trace of their
influence, but adding weight and color and worth to the age of which
they formed a part and the generations that came after them! We can dare
to predict of Emerson, in the words of his old friend and disciple, Mr.
Cranch:--
"The wise will know thee and the good will love,
The age to come will feel thy impress given
In all that lifts the race a step above
Itself, and stamps it with the seal of heaven."
It seems to us, to-day, that Emerson's best literary work in prose and
verse must live as long as the language lasts; but whether it live or
fade from memory, the influence of his great and noble life and
the spoken and written words which were its exponents, blends,
indestructible, with the enduring elements of civilization.
* * * * *
It is not irreverent, but eminently fitting, to compare any singularly
pure and virtuous life with that of the great exemplar in whose
footsteps Christendom professes to follow. The time was when the divine
authority of his gospel rested chiefly upon the miracles he is reported
to have wrought. As the faith in these exceptions to the general laws
of the universe diminished, the teachings of the Master, of whom it was
said that he spoke as never man spoke, were more largely relied upon
as evidence of his divine mission. Now, when a comparison of these
teachings with those of other religious leaders is thought by many to
have somewhat lessened the force of this argument, the life of the
sinless and self-devoted servant of God and friend of man is appealed to
as the last and convincing proof that he was an immediate manifestation
of the Divinity.
Judged by his life Emerson comes very near our best ideal of humanity.
He was born too late for the trial of the cross or the stake, or even
the jail. But the penalty of having an opinion of his own and expressing
it was a serious one, and he accepted it as cheerfully as any of Queen
Mary's martyrs accepted his fiery baptism. His faith was too large and
too deep for the formulae he found built into the pulpit, and he was too
honest to cover up his doubts under the flowing vestments of a sacred
calling. His writings, whether in prose or verse, are worthy of
admiration, but his manhood was the underlying quality which gave them
their true value. It was in virtue of this that his rare genius acted on
so many minds as a trumpet call to awaken them to the meaning and the
privileges of this earthly existence with all its infinite promise.
No matter of what he wrote or spoke, his words, his tones, his looks,
carried the evidence of a sincerity which pervaded them all and was to
his eloquence and poetry like the water of crystallization; without
which they would effloresce into mere rhetoric. He shaped an ideal for
the commonest life, he proposed an object to the humblest seeker after
truth. Look for beauty in the world around you, he said, and you shall
see it everywhere. Look within, with pure eyes and simple trust, and you
shall find the Deity mirrored in your own soul. Trust yourself because
you trust the voice of God in your inmost consciousness.
There are living organisms so transparent that we can see their hearts
beating and their blood flowing through their glassy tissues. So
transparent was the life of Emerson; so clearly did the true nature of
the man show through it. What he taught others to be, he was himself.
His deep and sweet humanity won him love and reverence everywhere
among those whose natures were capable of responding to the highest
manifestations of character. Here and there a narrow-eyed sectary may
have avoided or spoken ill of him; but if He who knew what was in man
had wandered from door to door in New England as of old in Palestine, we
can well believe that one of the thresholds which "those blessed feet"
would have crossed, to hallow and receive its welcome, would have been
that of the lovely and quiet home of Emerson.
INDEX.
[For many references, not found elsewhere, see under the general
headings of _Emerson's Books, Essays, Poems_.]
Abbott, Josiah Gardiner, a pupil of Emerson, 49, 50.
Academic Races, 2, 3. (See _Heredity_.)
Action, subordinate, 112.
Adams, John, old age, 261.
Adams, Samuel, Harvard debate, 115.
Addison, Joseph, classic, 416.
Advertiser, The, Emerson's interest in, 348.
Aeolian Harp, his model, 329, 340.
(See _Emerson's Poems_,--Harp.)
Aeschylus, tragedies, 253. (See _Greek_.)
Agassiz, Louis:
Saturday Club, 222;
companionship, 403.
Agriculture:
in Anthology, 30;
attacked, 190;
not Emerson's field, 255, 256, 365.
Akenside, Mark, allusion, 16.
Alchemy, adepts, 260, 261.
Alcott, A. Bronson:
hearing Emerson, 66;
speculations, 86;
an idealist, 150;
The Dial, 159;
sonnet, 355;
quoted, 373;
personality traceable, 389.
Alcott, Louisa M., funeral bouquet, 351.
Alexander the Great:
allusion, 184;
mountain likeness, 322.
Alfred the Great, 220, 306.
Allston, Washington, unfinished picture, 334.
(See _Pictures_.)
Ambition, treated in Anthology, 30.
America:
room for a poet, 136, 137;
virtues and defects, 143;
faith in, 179;
people compared with English, 216;
things awry, 260;
_aristocracy_, 296;
in the Civil War, 304;
Revolution, 305;
Lincoln, the true history of his time, 307;
passion for, 308, 309;
artificial rhythm, 329;
its own literary style, 342;
home of man, 371;
loyalty to, 406;
epithets, 406, 407.
(See _England, New England_, etc.)
Amici, meeting Emerson, 63.
(See _Italy_.)
Amusements, in New England, 30.
Anaemia, artistic, 334.
Ancestry:
in general, 1-3;
Emerson's, 3 _et seq._
(See _Heredity_.)
Andover, Mass.:
Theological School, 48;
graduates, 411.
Andrew, John Albion:
War Governor, 223;
hearing Emerson, 379.
(See _South_.)
Angelo. (See _Michael Angelo_.)
Antinomianism:
in The Dial, 162;
kept from, 177.
(See _God, Religion_, etc.)
Anti-Slavery:
in Emerson's pulpit, 57;
the reform, 141, 145, 152;
Emancipation address, 181;
Boston and New York addresses, 210-212;
Emancipation Proclamation, 228;
Fugitive Slave Law, and other matters, 303-307.
(See _South_.)
Antoninus, Marcus, allusion, 16.
Architecture, illustrations, 253.
Arianism, 51.
(See _Unitarianism_.)
Aristotle:
influence over Mary Emerson, 17;
times mentioned, 382.
Arminianism, 51.
(See _Methodism, Religion_, etc.)
Arnim, Gisela von, 225.
Arnold, Matthew:
quotation about America, 137:
lecture, 236;
on Milton, 315;
his Thyrsis, 333;
criticism, 334;
string of Emerson's epithets, 406.
Aryans, comparison, 312.
Asia:
a pet name, 176;
immovable, 200.
Assabet River, 70, 71.
Astronomy:
Harp illustration, 108;
stars against wrong, 252, 253.
(See _Galileo, Stars, Venus_, etc.)
Atlantic Monthly:
sketch of Dr. Ripley, 14, 15;
of Mary Moody Emerson, 16;
established, 221;
supposititious club, 222;
on Persian Poetry, 224;
on Thoreau, 228;
Emerson's contributions, 239, 241;
Brahma, 296.
Atmosphere:
effect on inspiration, 290;
spiritual, 413, 414.
Augustine, Emerson's study of, 52.
Authors, quoted by Emerson, 381-383.
(See _Plutarch_, etc.)
Bacon, Francis:
allusion, 22, 111;
times quoted, 382.
Bancroft, George:
literary rank, 33;
in college, 45.
Barbier, Henri Auguste, on Napoleon, 208.
Barnwell, Robert W.:
in history, 45;
in college, 47.
Beaumont and Fletcher, disputed, line, 128, 129.
Beauty:
its nature, 74, 94, 95;
an end, 99, 135, 182;
study, 301.
Beecher, Edward, on preexistence, 391.
(See _Preexistence_.)
Behmen, Jacob:
mysticism, 201, 202, 396;
citation, 380.
Berkeley, Bishop:
characteristics, 189;
matter, 300.
Bible:
Mary Emerson's study, 16;
Mosaic cosmogony, 18;
the Exodus, 35;
the Lord's Supper, 58;
Psalms, 68, 181, 182, 253;
lost Paradise, 101;
Genesis, Sermon on the Mount, 102;
Seer of Patmos, 102, 103;
Apocalypse, 105;
Song of Songs, 117;
Baruch's roll, 117, 118;
not closed, 122;
the Sower, 154;
Noah's Ark, 191;
Pharisee's trumpets, 255;
names and imagery, 268;
sparing the rod, 297;
rhythmic mottoes, 314;
beauty of Israel, 351;
face of an angel, 352;
barren fig-tree, 367;
a classic, 376;
body of death, "Peace be still!" 379;
draught of fishes, 381;
its semi-detached sentences, 405;
Job quoted, 411;
"the man Christ Jesus," 412;
scattering abroad, 414.
(See _Christ, God, Religion,_ etc.)
Bigelow, Jacob, on rural cemeteries, 31.
Biography, every man writes his own, 1.
Blackmore, Sir Richard, controversy, 31.
Bliss Family, 9.
Bliss, Daniel, patriotism, 72.
Blood, transfusion of, 256.
Books, use and abuse, 110, 111.
(See _Emerson's Essays_.)
Boston, Mass.:
First Church, 10, 12, 13;
Woman's Club, 16;
Harbor, 19;
nebular spot, 25, 26;
its pulpit darling, 27;
Episcopacy, 28;
Athenaeum, 31;
magazines, 28-34;
intellectual character, lights on its three hills, high caste
religion, 34;
Samaria and Jerusalem, 35;
streets and squares, 37-39;
Latin School, 39, 40, 43;
new buildings, 42;
Mrs. Emerson's boarding-house, the Common as a pasture, 43;
Unitarian preaching, 51;
a New England centre, 52;
Emerson's settlement, 54;
Second Church, 55-61;
lectures, 87, 88, 191;
Trimount Oracle, 102;
stirred by the Divinity-School address, 126;
school-keeping, Roxbury, 129;
aesthetic society, 149;
Transcendentalists, 155, 156;
Bay, 172;
Freeman Place Chapel, 210:
Saturday Club, 221-223;
Burns Centennial, 224, 225;
Parker meeting, 228;
letters, 263, 274, 275;
Old South lecture, 294;
Unitarianism, 298;
Emancipation Proclamation, 307;
special train, 350;
Sons of Liberty, 369;
birthplace, 407;
Baptists, 413.
Boswell, James:
allusion, 138;
one lacking, 223;
Life of Johnson, 268.
Botany, 403.
(See _Science_.)
Bowen, Francis: literary rank, 34;
on Nature, 103, 104.
Brook Farm, 159, 164-166, 189, 191.
(See _Transcendentalism_, etc.)
Brown, Howard N., prayer, 355.
Brown, John, sympathy with, 211.
(See _Anti-Slavery, South_.)
Brownson, Orestes A., at a party, 149.
Bryant, William Cullen:
his literary rank, 33;
redundant syllable, 328;
his translation of Homer quoted, 378.
Buckminster, Joseph Stevens:
minister in Boston, 12, 26, 27, 52;
Memoir, 29;
destruction of Goldau, 31.
Buddhism:
like Transcendentalism, 151;
Buddhist nature, 188;
saints
298. (See _Emerson's Poems_,--Brahma,
--_India_, etc.)
Buffon, on style, 341.
Bulkeley Family, 4-7.
Bulkeley, Peter:
minister of Concord, 4-7, 71;
comparison of sermons, 57;
patriotism, 72;
landowner, 327.
Bunyan, John, quoted, 169.
Burke, Edmund:
essay, 73;
times mentioned, 382.
Burns, Robert:
festival, 224, 225;
rank, 281;
image referred to, 386;
religious position, 409. (See _Scotland_.)
Burroughs, John, view of English life, 335.
Burton, Robert, quotations, 109, 381.
Buttrick, Major, in the Revolution, 71, 72.
Byron, Lord:
allusion, 16;
rank, 281;
disdain, 321;
uncertain sky, 335;
parallelism, 399.
CABOT, J. ELLIOT:
on Emerson's literary habits, 27;
The Dial, 159;
prefaces, 283, 302;
Note, 295, 296;
Prefatory Note, 310, 311;
the last meetings, 347, 348.
Caesar, Julius, 184,197.
California, trip, 263-271, 359. (See _Thayer_.)
Calvin, John:
his Commentary, 103;
used by Cotton, 286.
Calvinism:
William Emerson's want of sympathy with, 11, 12;
outgrown, 51;
predestination, 230;
saints, 298;
spiritual influx, 412.
(See _God, Puritanism, Religion, Unitarianism.)_
Cambridge, Mass.:
Emerson teaching there, 50;
exclusive circles, 52.
(See _Harvard University_.)
Cant, disgust with, 156.
Carlyle, Thomas:
meeting Emerson, 63;
recollections of their relations, 78-80, 83;
Sartor Resartus, 81, 82, 91;
correspondence, 82, 83, 89, 90, 127, 176, 177, 192, 315, 317, 374,
380, 381, 406, 407;
Life of Schiller, 91;
on Nature, 104, 105;
Miscellanies, 130;
the Waterville Address, 136-138;
influence, 149, 150;
on Transcendentalism, 156-158;
The Dial, 160-163;
Brook Farm, 164;
friendship, 171;
Chelsea visit, 194;
bitter legacy, 196;
love of power, 197;
on Napoleon and Goethe, 208;
grumblings, 260;
tobacco, 270;
Sartor reprinted, 272;
paper on, 294;
Emerson's dying friendship, 349;
physique, 363;
Gallic fire, 386;
on Characteristics, 387;
personality traceable, 389.
Carpenter, William B., 230.
Century, The, essay in, 295.
Cerebration, unconscious, 112, 113.
Chalmers, Thomas, preaching, 65.
Channing, Walter, headache, 175, 390.
Channing, William Ellery:
allusion, 16;
directing Emerson's studies, 51;
preaching, 52;
Emerson in his pulpit, 66;
influence, 147, 149;
kept awake, 157.
Channing, William Ellery, the poet:
his Wanderer, 263;
Poems, 403.
Channing, William Henry:
allusions, 131, 149;
in The Dial, 159;
the Fuller Memoir, 209;
Ode inscribed to, 211, 212.
Charleston, S C, Emerson's preaching, 53. (See _South_.)
Charlestown, Mass., Edward Emerson's residence, 8.
Charles V., 197.
Charles XII., 197.
Chatelet, Parent du, a realist, 326.
Chatham, Lord, 255.
Chaucer, Geoffrey:
borrowings, 205;
rank, 281;
honest rhymes, 340;
times mentioned, 382.
Chelmsford, Mass., Emerson teaching there, 49, 50.
Chemistry, 403. (See _Science_.)
Cheshire, its "haughty hill," 323.
Choate, Rufus, oratory, 148.
Christ:
reserved expressions about, 13;
mediatorship, 59;
true office, 120-122;
worship, 412. (See _Jesus, Religion_, etc.)
Christianity:
its essentials, 13;
primitive, 35;
a mythus, defects, 121;
the true, 122;
two benefits, 123;
authority, 124;
incarnation of, 176;
the essence, 306;
Fathers, 391.
Christian, Emerson a, 267.
Christian Examiner, The:
on William Emerson, 12;
its literary predecessor, 29;
on Nature, 103, 104;
repudiates Divinity School Address, 124.
Church:
activity in 1820, 147;
avoidance of, 153;
the true, 244;
music, 306. (See _God, Jesus, Religion_, etc.)
Cicero, allusion, 111.
Cid, the, 184.
Clarke, James Freeman:
letters, 77-80, 128-131;
transcendentalism, 149;
The Dial, 159;
Fuller Memoir, 209;
Emerson's funeral, 351, 353-355.
Clarke, Samuel, allusion, 16.
Clarke, Sarah, sketches, 130.
Clarkson, Thomas, 220.
Clergy:
among Emerson's ancestry, 3-8;
gravestones, 9. (See _Cotton, Heredity_, etc.)
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor:
allusion, 16;
Emerson's account, 63;
influence, 149, 150;
Carlyle's criticism, 196;
Ancient Mariner, 333;
Christabel, Abyssinian Maid, 334;
times mentioned, 382;
an image quoted, 386;
William Tell, 387.
Collins, William:
poetry, 321;
Ode and Dirge, 332.
Commodity, essay, 94.
Concentration, 288.
Concord, Mass.:
Bulkeley's ministry, 4-7;
first association with the Emerson name, 7;
Joseph's descendants, 8;
the Fight, 9; Dr. Ripley, 10;
Social Club, 14;
Emerson's preaching, 54;
Goodwin's settlement, 56;
discord, 57;
Emerson's residence begun, 69, 70;
a typical town, 70;
settlement, 71;
a Delphi, 72;
Emerson home, 83;
Second Centennial, 84, 85, 303;
noted citizens, 86;
town government, the, monument, 87;
the Sage, 102;
letters, 125-131, 225;
supposition of Carlyle's life there, 171;
Emancipation Address, 181;
leaving, 192;
John Brown meeting, 211;
Samuel Hoar, 213;
wide-awake, 221;
Lincoln obsequies, 243, 307;
an _under_-Concord, 256;
fire, 271-279;
letters, 275-279;
return, 279;
Minute Man unveiled, 292;
Soldiers' Monument, 303;
land-owners, 327;
memorial stone, 333;
Conway's visits, 343, 344;
Whitman's, 344, 345;
Russell's, 345; funeral, 350-356;
founders, 352;
Sleepy Hollow, 356;
a strong attraction, 369;
neighbors, 373;
Prophet, 415.
Congdon, Charles, his Reminiscences,
66.
Conservatism, fairly treated, 156,
157. (See _Reformers, Religion,
Transcendentalism,_ etc.)
Conversation:
C.C. Emerson's essay, 22, 258;
inspiration, 290.
Conway, Moncure D.:
account of Emerson, 55, 56, 66, 194;
two visits, 343, 344;
anecdote, 346;
error, 401;
on Stanley, 414.
Cooke, George Willis:
biography of Emerson, 43, 44, 66, 88;
on American Scholar, 107, 108;
on anti-slavery, 212;
on Parnassus, 280-282;
on pantheism, 411.
Cooper, James Fenimore, 33.
Corot, pearly mist, 335, 336. (See
_Pictures_, etc.)
Cotton, John:
service to scholarship, 34;
reading Calvin, 286.
Counterparts, the story, 226.
Cowper, William:
Mother's Picture, 178;
disinterested good, 304;
tenderness, 333;
verse, 338.
Cranch, Christopher P.:
The Dial, 159;
poetic prediction, 416, 417.
Cromwell, Oliver:
saying by a war saint, 252;
in poetry, 387.
Cudworth, Ralph, epithets, 200.
Cupples, George, on Emerson's lectures, 195.
Curtius, Quintus for Mettus, 388.
Cushing, Caleb:
rank, 33;
in college, 45.
Dana, Richard Henry, his literary place, 33, 223.
Dante:
allusion in Anthology, 31;
rank, 202, 320;
times mentioned, 382.
Dartmouth College, oration, 131-135.
Darwin, Charles, Origin of Species, 105.
Dawes, Rufus, Boyhood Memories, 44.
Declaration of Independence, intellectual,
115. (See _American_, etc.)
Delirium, imaginative, easily produced,
238. (See _Intuition_.)
Delia Cruscans, allusion, 152. (See
_Transcendentalism_.)
Delos, allusion, 374.
Delphic Oracle:
of New England, 72;
illustration, 84.
Democratic Review, The, on Nature, 103.
De Profundis, illustrating Carlyle's spirit, 83.
De Quincey, Thomas:
Emerson's interview with, 63, 195;
on originality, 92.
De Staël, Mme., allusion, 16.
De Tocqueville, account of Unitarianism, 51.
Dewey, Orville, New Bedford ministry, 67.
Dexter, Lord Timothy, punctuation, 325, 326.
Dial, The:
established, 147, 158;
editors, 159;
influence, 160-163;
death, 164;
poems, 192;
old contributors, 221;
papers, 295;
intuitions, 394.
Dial, The (second), in Cincinnati, 239.
Dickens, Charles:
on Father Taylor, 56;
American Notes, 155.
Diderot, Denis, essay, 79.
Diogenes, story, 401. (See _Laertius_.)
Disinterestedness, 259.
Disraeli, Benjamin, the rectorship, 282.
Dramas, their limitations, 375. (See _Shakespeare_.)
Dress, illustration of poetry, 311, 312.
Dryden, John, quotation, 20, 21.
Dwight, John S.:
in The Dial, 159;
musical critic, 223.
East Lexington, Mass., the Unitarian pulpit, 88.
Economy, its meaning, 142.
Edinburgh, Scotland:
Emerson's visit and preaching, 64, 65;
lecture, 195.
Education:
through friendship, 97, 98;
public questions, 258, 259.
Edwards, Jonathan:
allusions, 16, 51;
the atmosphere changed, 414.
(See _Calvinism, Puritanism, Unitarianism_, etc.)
Egotism, a pest, 233.
Egypt:
poetic teaching, 121;
trip, 271, 272;
Sphinx, 330. (See _Emerson's Poems_,--Sphinx.)
Election Sermon, illustration, 112.
Elizabeth, Queen, verbal heir-loom, 313. (See _Raleigh_, etc.)
Ellis, Rufus, minister of the First Church, Boston, 43.
Eloquence, defined, 285, 286.
Emerson Family, 3 _et seq_.
Emerson, Charles Chauncy, brother of Ralph Waldo:
feeling towards natural science, 18, 237;
memories, 19-25, 37, 43;
character, 77;
death, 89, 90;
influence, 98;
The Dial, 161;
"the hand of Douglas," 234;
nearness, 368;
poetry, 385;
Harvard Register, 401.
Emerson, Edith, daughter of Ralph Waldo, 263.
Emerson, Edward, of Newbury, 8.
Emerson, Edward Bliss, brother of Ralph Waldo:
allusions, 19, 20, 37, 38;
death, 89;
Last Farewell, poem, 161;
nearness, 368.
Emerson, Edward Waldo, son of Ralph Waldo:
in New York, 246;
on the Farming essay, 255;
father's last days, 346-349;
reminiscences, 359.
Emerson, Ellen, daughter of Ralph Waldo:
residence, 83;
trip to Europe, 271;
care of her father, 294;
correspondence, 347.
Emerson, Mrs. Ellen Louisa Tucker, first wife of Ralph Waldo, 55.
Emerson, Joseph, minister of Mendon, 4, 7, 8.
Emerson, Joseph, the second, minister of Malden, 8.
Emerson, Mrs. Lydia Jackson, second wife of Ralph Waldo:
marriage, 83;
_Asia_, 176.
Emerson, Mary Moody:
influence over her nephew, 16-18;
quoted, 385.
Emerson, Robert Bulkeley, brother of Ralph Waldo, 37.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, His Life:
moulding influences, 1;
New England heredity, 2;
ancestry, 3-10;
parents, 10-16;
Aunt Mary, 16-19;
brothers, 19-25;
the nest, 25;
noted scholars, 26-36;
birthplace, 37, 38;
boyhood, 39, 40;
early efforts, 41, 42;
parsonages, 42;
father's death, 43;
boyish appearance, 44;
college days, 45-47;
letter, 48;
teaching, 49, 50;
studying theology, and preaching, 51-54;
ordination, marriage, 55;
benevolent efforts, wife's death, 56;
withdrawal from his church, 57-61;
first trip to Europe, 62-65;
preaching in America, 66, 67;
remembered conversations, 68, 69;
residence in the Old Manse, 69-72;
lecturing, essays in The North American, 73;
poems, 74;
portraying himself, 75;
comparison with Milton, 76, 77;
letters to Clarke, 78-80, 128-131;
interest in Sartor Resartus, 81;
first letter to Carlyle, 82;
second marriage and Concord home, 83;
Second Centennial, 84-87;
Boston lectures, Concord Fight; 87;
East Lexington church, War, 88;
death of brothers, 89, 90;
Nature published, 91;
parallel with Wordsworth, 92;
free utterance, 93;
Beauty, poems,
94;
Language, 95-97;
Discipline, 97, 98;
Idealism, 98, 99;
Illusions, 99, 100;
Spirit and Matter, 100;
Paradise regained, 101;
the Bible spirit, 102;
Revelations, 103;
Bowen's criticism, 104;
Evolution, 105, 106;
Phi Beta Kappa oration, 107, 108;
fable of the One Man, 109;
man thinking, 110;
Books, 111;
unconscious cerebration, 112;
a scholar's duties, 113;
specialists, 114;
a declaration of intellectual independence, 115;
address at the Theological School, 116, 117;
effect on Unitarians, 118;
sentiment of duty, 119;
Intuition, 120;
Reason, 121;
the Traditional Jesus, 122;
Sabbath and Preaching, 123;
correspondence with Ware, 124-127;
ensuing controversy, 127;
Ten Lectures, 128;
Dartmouth Address, 131-136;
Waterville Address, 136-140;
reforms, 141-145;
new views, 146;
Past and Present, 147;
on Everett, 148;
assembly at Dr. Warren's, 149;
Boston _doctrinaires_, 150;
unwise followers, 151-156;
Conservatives, 156, 157;
two Transcendental products, 157-166;
first volume of Essays, 166;
History, 167, 168;
Self-reliance, 168, 169;
Compensation, 169;
other essays, 170;
Friendship, 170, 171;
Heroism, 172;
Over-Soul, 172-175;
house and income, 176;
son's death, 177, 178;
American and Oriental qualities, 179;
English virtues, 180;
Emancipation addresses in 1844, 181;
second series of Essays, 181-188;
Reformers, 188-191;
Carlyle's business, Poems published, 192;
a second trip to Europe, 193-196;
Representative Men, 196-209;
lectures again, 210;
Abolitionism, 211, 212;
Woman's Rights, 212, 213;
a New England Roman, 213, 214;
English Traits, 214-221;
a new magazine, 221;
clubs, 222, 223;
more poetry, 224;
Burns Festival, 224;
letter about various literary matters, 225-227;
Parker's death, Lincoln's Proclamation, 228;
Conduct of Life, 228-239;
Boston Hymn, 240;
"So nigh is grandeur to our dust," 241;
Atlantic contributions, 242;
Lincoln obsequies, 243;
Free Religion, 243, 244;
second Phi Beta Kappa oration, 244-246;
poem read to his son, 246-248;
Harvard Lectures, 249-255;
agriculture and science, 255, 256;
predictions, 257;
Books, 258;
Conversation, 258;
elements of Courage, 259;
Success, 260, 261;
on old men, 261, 262;
California trip, 263-268;
eating, 269;
smoking, 270;
conflagration, loss of memory, Froude banquet, third trip abroad, 272;
friendly gifts, 272-279;
editing Parnassus, 280-282;
failing powers, 283;
Hope everywhere, 284;
negations, 285;
Eloquence, Pessimism, 286;
Comedy, Plagiarism, 287;
lessons repeated, 288;
Sources of Inspiration, 289, 290;
Future Life, 290-292;
dissolving creed, 292;
Concord Bridge, 292, 293;
decline of faculties, Old South lecture, 294;
papers, 294, 295;
quiet pen, 295;
posthumous works, 295 _et seq.;_
the pedagogue, 297;
University of Virginia, 299;
indebtedness to Plutarch, 299-302;
slavery questions, 303-308;
Woman Question, 308;
patriotism, 308, 309;
nothing but a poet, 311;
antique words, 313;
self-revelation, 313, 314;
a great poet? 314-316;
humility, 317-319;
poetic favorites, 320, 321;
comparison with contemporaries, 321;
citizen of the universe, 322;
fascination of symbolism, 323;
realism, science, imaginative coloring, 324;
dangers of realistic poetry, 325;
range of subjects, 326;
bad rhymes, 327;
a trick of verse, 328;
one faultless poem, 332;
spell-bound readers, 333;
workshop, 334;
octosyllabic verse, atmosphere, 335, 336;
comparison with Wordsworth, 337;
and others, 338;
dissolving sentences, 339;
incompleteness, 339, 340;
personality, 341, 342;
last visits received, 343-345;
the red rose, 345;
forgetfulness, 346;
literary work of last years, 346, 347;
letters unanswered, 347;
hearing and sight, subjects that interested him, 348;
later hours, death, 349;
last rites, 350-356;
portrayal, 357-419;
atmosphere, 357;
books, distilled alcohol, 358;
physique, 359;
demeanor, 360;
hair and eyes, insensibility to music, 361;
daily habits, 362;
bodily infirmities, 362, 363;
voice, 363;
quiet laughter, want of manual dexterity, 364;
spade anecdote, memory,
ignorance of exact science, 305;
intuition and natural sagacity united, fastidiousness, 366;
impatience with small-minded worshippers, Frothingham's Biography, 367;
intimates, familiarity not invited, 368;
among fellow-townsmen, errand to earth, inherited traditions, 369;
sealed orders, 370, 371;
conscientious work, sacrifices for truth, essays instead of sermons,
372;
congregation at large, charm, optimism, 373;
financially straitened, 374;
lecture room limitations, 374, 375;
a Shakespeare parallel, 375, 376;
platform fascination, 376;
constructive power, 376, 377;
English experiences, lecture-peddling, 377;
a stove relinquished, utterance, an hour's weight, 378;
trumpet-sound, sweet seriousness, diamond drops, effect on Governor
Andrew, 379;
learning at second hand, 380;
the study of Goethe, 380;
a great quoter, no pedantry, 381;
list of authors referred to, 381, 382;
special indebtedness, 382;
penetration, borrowing, 383;
method of writing and its results, aided by others, 384;
sayings that seem family property, 385;
passages compared, 385-387;
the tributary streams, 388;
accuracy as to facts, 388;
personalities traceable in him, 389;
place as a thinker, 390;
Platonic anecdote, 391;
preëxistence, 391, 392;
mind-moulds, 393;
relying on instinct, 394;
dangers of intuition, 395;
mysticism, 396;
Oriental side, 397;
transcendental mood, 398;
personal identity confused, 399;
a distorting mirror, 400;
distrust of science, 401-403;
style illustrated, 403, 404;
favorite words, 405;
royal imagery, 406;
comments on America, 406, 407;
common property of mankind, 407;
public spirit, solitary workshop, martyrdom from visitors, 408;
white shield invulnerable, 409;
religious attitude, 409-411;
spiritual influx, creed, 412;
clerical relations, 413;
Dr. Hague's criticism, 413, 414;
ameliorating religious influence, 414;
freedom, 415;
enduring verse and thought, 416, 417;
comparison with Jesus, 417;
sincere manhood, 418;
transparency, 419.
Emerson's Books:--
Conduct of Life, 229, 237.
English Traits:
the first European trip, 62;
published, 214;
analysis, 214-220;
penetration, 383;
Teutonic fire, 386.
Essays:
Dickens's allusion, 156;
collected, 166.
Essays, second series, 183.
Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 128, 295, 296, 347.
Letters and Social Aims, 210, 283, 284, 296.
May-day and Other Pieces, 161, 192, 224, 242, 257, 310, 318, 346.
Memoir of Margaret Fuller, 209.
Miscellanies, 302, 303.
Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, 179.
Nature:
resemblance of extracts from Mary Moody Emerson, 17;
where written, 70;
the Many in One, 73;
first published, 91, 92, 373;
analysis, 93-107;
obscure, 108;
Beauty, 237.
Parnassus:
collected, 280;
Preface, 314;
allusion, 321.
Poems, 293, 310, 318, 339.
Representative Men, 196-209.
Selected Poems, 311, 347.
Society and Solitude, 250.
Emerson's Essays, Lectures, Sermons, Speeches, etc.:--
In general:
essays, 73, 88, 91, 92, 310;
income from lectures, 176, 191, 192;
lectures in England, 194-196;
long series, 372;
lecture-room, 374;
plays and lectures, 375;
double duty, 376, 377;
charm, 379.
(See _Emerson's Life, Lyceum_, etc.)
American Civilization, 307.
American Scholar, The, 107-115, 133, 188.
Anglo-Saxon Race, The, 210.
Anti-Slavery Address, New York, 210-212.
Anti-Slavery Lecture, Boston, 210, 211.
Aristocracy, 296.
Art, 166, 175, 253, 254.
Beauty, 235-237.
Behavior, 234.
Books, 257, 380.
Brown, John, 302, 305, 306.
Burke, Edmund, 73.
Burns, Robert, 224, 225, 307.
Carlyle, Thomas, 294, 302, 317.
Channing's Poem, preface, 262, 263, 403.
Character, 183, 295, 297.
Chardon Street and Bible Convention, 159, 302.
Circles, 166, 174, 175.
Civilization, 250-253.
Clubs, 258.
Comedy. 128.
Comic, The, 286, 287.
Commodity, 94.
Compensation, 166, 169.
Concord Fight, the anniversary speech, 292, 293.
Concord, Second Centennial Discourse, 84-86.
Conservative, The, 156, 157, 159.
Considerations by the Way, 235.
Courage, 259.
Culture, 232, 233.
Demonology, 128, 296.
Discipline, 97, 98.
Divinity School Address, 116-127, 131.
Doctrine of the Soul, 127.
Domestic Life, 254, 255.
Duty, 128.
Editorial Address, Mass. Quarterly Review, 193, 302, 307.
Education, 296, 297.
Eloquence, 254;
second essay, 285, 286.
Emancipation in the British West Indies, 181, 303.
Emancipation Proclamation, 228, 307.
Emerson, Mary Moody, 295, 296, 302.
English Literature, 87.
Experience, 182.
Farming, 255, 256.
Fate, 228-330.
Fortune of the Republic, 294, 302, 307-309.
Fox, George, 73.
France, 196.
Free Religious Association, 243, 302, 307.
Friendship, 166, 170.
Froude, James Anthony, after-dinner speech, 271.
Fugitive Slave Law, 303, 304.
Genius, 127.
Gifts, 184, 185.
Goethe, or the Writer, 208, 209.
Greatness, 288, 346.
Harvard Commemoration, 307.
Heroism, 166, 172.
Historical Discourse, at Concord, 303.
Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England, 147, 165, 296, 302.
History, 166, 167.
Hoar, Samuel, 213, 214, 295, 302.
Home, 127.
Hope, 284, 285.
Howard University, speech, 263.
Human Culture, 87.
Idealism, 98-100.
Illusions, 235, 239.
Immortality, 266, 290-292, 354.
Inspiration, 289.
Intellect, 166, 175.
Kansas Affairs, 305.
Kossuth, 307.
Language, 95-97.
Lincoln, Abraham, funeral remarks, 242, 243, 307.
Literary Ethics, 131-136.
Lord's Supper, 57-60, 303.
Love, 127,128,166,170. (See _Emerson's Poems_.)
Luther, 73.
Manners, 183, 234.
Man of Letters, The, 296, 298.
Man the Reformer, 142, 143.
Method of Nature, The, 136-141.
Michael Angelo, 73, 75.
Milton, 73, 75.
Montaigne, or the Skeptic, 202-204.
Napoleon, or the Man of the World, 206-209.
Natural History of the Intellect, 249, 268, 347.
Nature (the essay), 185, 186, 398.
New England Reformers, 188-191, 385.
Nominalism and Realism, 188.
Old Age, 261, 262.
Over-Soul, The, 166, 172-175, 398, 411.
Parker, Theodore, 228, 306.
Perpetual Forces, 297.
Persian Poetry, 224.
Phi Beta Kappa oration, 347.
Philosophy of History, 87.
Plato, 198-200;
New Readings, 200.
Plutarch, 295, 299-302.
Plutarch's Morals, introduction, 262.
Poet, The, 181, 182.
Poetry, 210.
Poetry and Imagination, 283;
subdivisions: Bards and Trouveurs,
Creation, Form, Imagination,
Melody, Morals, Rhythm, Poetry,
Transcendency, Veracity, 283, 284;
quoted, 325.
Politics, 186, 187.
Power, 230, 231.
Preacher, The, 294, 298.
Professions of Divinity, Law, and Medicine, 41.
Progress of Culture, The, 244, 288.
Prospects, 101-103.
Protest, The, 127.
Providence Sermon, 130.
Prudence, 166, 171, 172.
Quotation and Originality, 287, 288.
Relation of Man to the Globe, 73.
Resources, 286.
Right Hand of Fellowship, The, at Concord, 56.
Ripley, Dr. Ezra, 295, 302.
Scholar, The, 296, 299.
School, The, 127.
Scott, speech, 302, 307.
Self-Reliance, 166, 168, 411.
Shakespeare, or the Poet, 204-206.
Social Aims, 285.
Soldiers' Monument, at Concord, 303.
Sovereignty of Ethics, The, 295, 297, 298.
Spirit, 100, 101.
Spiritual Laws, 166, 168.
Success, 260, 261.
Sumner Assault, 304.
Superlatives, 295, 297.
Swedenborg, or the Mystic, 201, 202, 206.
Thoreau, Henry D., 228, 295, 302.
Times, The, 142-145.
Tragedy, 127.
Transcendentalist, The, 145-155, 159.
Universality of the Moral Sentiment, 66.
University of Virginia, address, 347.
War, 88, 303.
Water, 73.
Wealth, 231, 232.
What is Beauty? 74, 94, 95.
Woman, 307, 308.
Woman's Rights, 212, 213.
Work and Days, 256, 312, 406, 407.
Worship, 235.
Young American, The, 166, 180, 181.
Emerson's Poems:--
In general: inspiration from nature, 22, 96;
poetic rank in college, 45, 46;
prose-poetry and philosophy, 91, 93;
annual _afflatus_, in America, 136, 137;
first volume, 192;
five immortal poets, 202;
ideas repeated, 239;
true position, 311 _et seq.; in carmine veritas_, 313;
litanies, 314;
arithmetic, 321, 322;
fascination, 323;
celestial imagery, 324;
tin pans, 325;
realism, 326;
metrical difficulties, 327, 335;
blemishes, 328;
careless rhymes, 329;
delicate descriptions, 331;
pathos, 332;
fascination, 333;
unfinished, 334, 339, 340;
atmosphere, 335;
subjectivity, 336;
sympathetic illusion, 337;
resemblances, 337, 338;
rhythms, 340;
own order, 341, 342;
always a poet, 346.
(See _Emerson's Life, Milton, Poets_, etc.)
Adirondacs, The, 242, 309, 327.
Blight, 402.
Boston, 346, 407, 408.
Boston Hymn, 211, 221, 241, 242.
Brahma, 221, 242, 396, 397.
Celestial Love, 170. (Three Loves.)
Class Day Poem, 45-47.
Concord Hymn, 87, 332.
Daemonic Love, 170. (Three Loves.)
Days, 221, 242, 257, 312;
_pleachéd_, 313.
Destiny, 332.
Each and All, 73, 74, 94, 331.
Earth-Song, 327.
Elements, 242.
Fate, 159, 387.
Flute, The, 399.
Good-by, Proud World, 129, 130, 338.
Hamatreya, 327.
Harp, The, 320, 321, 329, 330. (See _Aeolian Harp_.)
Hoar, Samuel, 213, 214.
Humble Bee, 46, 74, 75, 128, 272, 326, 331, 338.
Initial Love, 170, 387. (Three Loves.)
In Memoriam, 19, 89.
Latin Translations, 43.
May Day, 242;
changes, 311, 333.
Merlin, 318, 319. (Merlin's Song.)
Mithridates, 331.
Monadnoc, 322, 331;
alterations, 366.
My Garden, 242.
Nature and Life, 242.
Occasional and Miscellaneous Pieces, 242.
Ode inscribed to W.H. Channing, 211, 212.
Poet, The, 317-320, 333.
Preface to Nature, 105.
Problem, The, 159, 161, 253, 284, 326, 337, 380.
Quatrains, 223, 242.
Rhodora, The, 74, 94, 95, 129.
Romany Girl, The, 221.
Saadi, 221, 242.
Sea-Shore, 333, 339.
Snow-Storm, 331, 338, 339.
Solution, 320.
Song for Knights of Square Table, 42.
Sphinx, The, 113, 159, 243, 330, 398.
Terminus, 221, 242;
read to his son, 246-248, 363.
Test, The, 201, 202, 320.
Threnody, 178, 333.
Titmouse, The, 221, 326.
Translations, 242, 399.
Uriel, 326, 331, 398.
Voluntaries, 241.
Waldeinsamkeit, 221.
Walk, The, 402.
Woodnotes, 46, 159, 331, 338.
World-Soul, The, 331.
Emersoniana, 358.
Emerson, Thomas, of Ipswich, 38.
Emerson, Waldo, child of Ralph Waldo:
death, 177, 178;
anecdote, 265.
Emerson, William, grandfather of Ralph Waldo:
minister of Concord, 8-10, 14;
building the Manse, 70;
patriotism, 72.
Emerson, William, father of Ralph Waldo:
minister, in Harvard and Boston, 10-14;
editorship, 26, 32, 33;
the parsonage, 37, 42;
death, 43.
Emerson, William, brother of Ralph Waldo, 37, 39, 49, 53.
England:
first visit, 62-65;
Lake Windermere, 70;
philosophers, 76;
the virtues of the people, 179, 180;
a second visit, 192 _et seq.;_
notabilities 195;
the lectures, 196;
Stonehenge, 215;
the aristocracy, 215;
matters wrong, 260;
Anglo-Saxon race, trade and liberty, 304;
lustier life, 335;
language, 352;
lecturing, a key, 377;
smouldering fire, 385. (See _America, Europe_, etc.)
Enthusiasm:
need of, 143;
weakness, 154.
Epicurus, agreement with, 301.
Episcopacy:
in Boston, 28, 34, 52;
church in Newton, 68;
at Hanover, 132;
quotation from liturgy, 354;
burial service, 356. (See _Calvinism, Church, Religion_, etc.)
Esquimau, allusion, 167.
Establishment, party of the, 147. (See _Puritanism, Religion,
Unitarianism_, etc.)
Eternal, relations to the, 297. (See _God, Jesus, Religion_, etc.)
Europe:
Emerson's first visit, 62-65;
return, 72;
the Muses, 114;
debt to the East, 120;
famous gentlemen, 184;
second visit, 193-196;
weary of Napoleon, 207;
return, 210;
conflict possible, 218;
third visit, 271-279;
cast-out passion for, 308. (See _America, England, France_, etc.)
Everett, Edward:
on Tudor, 28;
literary rank, 33;
preaching, 52;
influence, 148.
Evolution, taught in "Nature," 105, 106.
Eyeball, transparent, 398.
Faith:
lacking in America, 143,
building cathedrals, 253. (See _God, Religion_, etc.)
Fine, a characteristic expression, 405.
Fire, illustration, 386. (See _England, France_, etc.)
Forbes, John M., connected with the Emerson family, 263-265;
his letter, 263.
Foster, John, minister of Brighton, 15.
Fourth-of-July, orations, 386. (See _America_, etc.)
Fox, George, essay on, 73.
France:
Emerson's first visit, 62, 63;
philosophers, 76;
Revolution, 80;
tired of Napoleon, 207, 208;
realism, 326;
wrath, 385, 386. (See _Carlyle, England, Europe_, etc.)
Francis, Convers, at a party, 149.
Franklin, Benjamin:
birthplace, 37;
allusion, 184;
characteristics, 189;
Poor Richard, 231;
quoted, 236;
maxims, 261;
fondness for Plutarch, 382;
bequest, 407.
Fraunhofer, Joseph, optician, 230, 324.
Frazer's Magazine:
"The Mud," 79;
Sartor Resartus, 81. (See _Carlyle_.)
Freeman, James, minister of King's Chapel, 11, 12, 52.
Free Trade, Athenaeum banquet, 220.
Friendship, C.C. Emerson's essay, 22, 23, 77.
Frothingham, Nathaniel L., account of Emerson's mother, 13.
Frothingham, Octavius Brooks: Life of Ripley, 165;
an unpublished manuscript, 365-367.
Fuller, Margaret:
borrowed sermon, 130;
at a party, 149;
The Dial, 159, 160, 162;
Memoir, 209;
causing laughter, 364;
mosaic Biography, 368.
Furness, William Henry:
on the Emerson family, 14;
Emerson's funeral, 350, 353.
Future, party of the, 147.
Galton, Francis, composite portraits, 232.
Gardiner, John Sylvester John:
allusion, 26;
leadership in Boston, 28;
Anthology Society, 32.
(See _Episcopacy_.)
Gardner, John Lowell, recollections of Emerson's boyhood, 38-42.
Gardner, S.P., garden, 38.
Genealogy, survival of the fittest, 3.
(See _Heredity_.)
Gentleman's Magazine, 30.
Gentleman, the, 183.
Geography, illustration, 391.
German:
study of, 48, 49, 78, 380;
philosophers, 76;
scholarship, 148;
oracles, 206;
writers unread, 208;
philosophers, 380;
professors, 391.
Germany, a visit, 225, 226.
(See _Europe, France, Goethe_, etc.)
Gifts, 185.
Gilfillan, George:
on Emerson's preaching, 65;
Emerson's physique, 360.
Gilman, Arthur, on the Concord home, 83.
Glasgow, the rectorship, 280.
God:
the universal spirit, 68, 69, 94;
face to face, 92, 93;
teaching the human mind, 98, 99;
aliens from, 101;
in us, 139-141;
his thought, 146;
belief, 170;
seen by man, 174;
divine offer, 176;
writing by grace, 182;
presence, 243;
tribute to Great First Cause, 267;
perplexity about, 410;
ever-blessed One, 411;
mirrored, 412.
(See _Christianity, Religion_, etc.)
Goethe:
called _Mr_., 31;
dead, 63;
Clarke's essay, 79;
generalizations, 148;
influence, 150;
on Spinoza, 174, 175;
rank as a poet, 202, 320;
lovers, 226;
rare union, 324;
his books read, 380, 381;
times quoted, 382.
(See _German_, etc.)
Goldsmith, Oliver, his Vicar of Wakefield, 9, 10, 15.
Good, the study of, 301.
Goodwin, H.B., Concord minister, 56.
Gould, Master of Latin School, 39.
Gould, Thomas R., sculptor, 68.
Gourdin, John Gaillard Keith and Robert, in college, 47.
Government, abolition of, 141.
Grandmother's Review, 30.
Gray, Thomas, Elegy often quoted, 316, 317, 416.
Greece:
poetic teaching, 121;
allusion, 108.
Greek:
Emerson's love for, 43, 44;
in Harvard, 49;
poets, 253;
moralist, 299;
Bryant's translation, 378;
philosophers, 391.
(See _Homer_, etc.)
Greenough, Horatio, meeting Emerson, 63.
Grimm, Hermann, 226.
Guelfs and Ghibellines, illustration, 47.
Hafiz, times mentioned, 382.
(See _Persia_.)
Hague, William, essay, 413.
Haller, Albert von, rare union, 324.
Harvard, Mass., William Emerson's settlement, 10, 11.
Harvard University:
the Bulkeley gift, 6;
William Emerson's graduation, 10;
list of graduates, 12;
Emerson's brothers, 19, 21;
Register, 21, 24, 385, 401;
Hillard, 24, 25;
Kirkland's presidency, 26, 27;
Gardner, 39-41;
Emerson's connection, 44-49;
the Boylston prizes, 46;
Southern students, 47;
graduates at Andover, 48;
Divinity School, 51, 53;
a New England centre, 52;
Bowen's professorship, 103;
Phi Beta Kappa oration, 107, 115, 133, 188, 244;
Divinity School address, 116-132;
degree conferred, 246;
lectures, 249;
library, 257;
last Divinity address, 294;
Commemoration, 307;
singing class, 361;
graduates, 411.
(See _Cambridge_.)
Haskins, David Green, at Emerson's funeral, 356.
Haskins, Ruth (Emerson's mother), 10, 13, 14.
Haughty, a characteristic expression, 405.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel:
his Mosses, 70;
"dream-peopled solitude," 86;
at the club, 223;
view of English life, 335;
grave, 356;
biography, 368.
Hazlitt, William:
British Poets, 21.
Health, inspiration, 289.
Hebrew Language, study, 48. (See _Bible_.)
Hedge, Frederic Henry:
at a party, 149;
quoted, 383.
Henry VII., tombs, 415.
Herbert, George:
Poem on Man, 102;
parallel, 170;
poetry, 281;
a line quoted, 345.
Herder, Johann Gottfried, allusion, 16.
Heredity:
Emerson's belief, 1, 2;
in Emerson family, 4, 19;
Whipple on, 389;
Jonson, 393.
Herrick, Robert, poetry, 281.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. (See _Emerson's Books_,--Nature.)
Hilali, The Flute, 399.
Hillard, George Stillman:
in college, 24, 25;
his literary place, 33;
aid, 276.
Hindoo Scriptures, 199, 200. (See _Bible, India_, etc.)
History, how it should be written, 168.
Hoar, Ebenezer Rockwood:
reference to, 223;
on the Burns speech, 225;
kindness, 273, 274, 276-279;
at Emerson's death-bed, 349;
funeral address, 351-353.
Hoar, Samuel:
statesman, 72;
tribute, 213, 214.
Holland, description of the Dutch, 217.
Holley, Horace, prayer, 267.
Holmes, John, a pupil of Emerson, 50.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
memories of Dr. Ripley, 15;
of C.C. Emerson, 20, 21;
familiarity with Cambridge and its college, 45;
erroneous quotation from, 251, 252;
jest erroneously attributed to, 400, 401.
Holy Ghost, "a new born bard of the," 123. (See _Christ, God,
Religion_, etc.)
Homer:
poetic rank, 202, 320;
plagiarism, 205;
Iliad, 253;
allusion, 315;
tin pans, 325;
times quoted, 382. (See _Greek_, etc.)
Homer, Jonathan, minister of Newton, 15.
Hooper, Mrs. Ellen, The Dial, 159, 160.
Hope:
lacking in America, 143;
in every essay, 284.
Horace:
allusion, 22;
Ars Poetica, 316.
Horses, Flora Temple's time, 388.
Howard University, speech, 263.
Howe, Samuel Gridley, the philanthropist, 223.
Hunt, Leigh, meeting Emerson, 195.
Hunt, William, the painter, 223.
Idealism, 98-100, 146, 150.
Idealists:
Ark full, 191;
Platonic sense, 391.
Imagination:
the faculty, 141;
defined, 237, 238;
essay, 283;
coloring life, 324.
Imbecility, 231.
Immortality, 262. (See _God, Religion_, etc.)
Incompleteness, in poetry, 339.
India:
poetic models, 338;
idea of preëxistence, 391;
Brahmanism, 397. (See _Emerson's Poems_,--Brahma.)
Indians:
in history of Concord, 71;
Algonquins, 72.
Inebriation, subject in Monthly Anthology, 30.
Insects, defended, 190.
Inspiration:
of Nature, 22, 96, 141;
urged, 146.
Instinct, from God or Devil, 393.
Intellect, confidence in, 134.
Intuition, 394.
Ipswich, Mass., 3, 4, 8.
Ireland, Alexander:
glimpses of Emerson, 44, 64, 65:
reception, 193,194;
on Carlyle, 196;
letter from Miss Peabody, 317;
quoting Whitman, 344;
quoted, 350.
Irving, Washington, 33.
Italy:
Emerson's first visit, 62, 63;
Naples, 113.
Jackson, Charles, garden, 38.
Jackson, Dr. Charles Thomas, anaesthesia, 403.
Jackson, Miss Lydia, reading Carlyle, 81. (See _Mrs. Emerson_.)
Jahn, Johann, studied at Andover, 48.
Jameson, Anna, new book, 131.
Jesus:
times mentioned, 382;
a divine manifestation, 411;
followers, 417;
and Emerson, 419. (See _Bible, Christ, Church, Religion_, etc.)
Joachim, the violinist, 225, 226.
Johnson, Samuel, literary style, 29.
Jonson, Ben:
poetic rank, 281;
a phrase, 300;
_traduction_, 393.
(See _Heredity_, etc.)
Journals, as a method of work, 384.
Jupiter Scapin, 207.
Jury Trial, and dinners, 216.
Justice, the Arch Abolitionist, 306.
Juvenal:
allusion, 22;
precept from heaven, 252.
Kalamazoo, Mich., allusion, 388.
Kamschatka, allusion, 167.
Keats, John:
quoted, 92;
Ode to a Nightingale, 316;
_faint, swoon_, 405.
King, the, illustration, 74.
Kirkland, John Thornton:
Harvard presidency, 26, 52;
memories, 27.
Koran, allusion, 198.
(See _Bible, God, Religion_, etc.)
Labor:
reform, 141;
dignity, 142.
Lacenaire, evil instinct, 392.
Laertius, Diogenes, 390, 391.
La Harpe, Jean Francois, on Plutarch, 301.
Lamarck, theories, 166.
Lamb, Charles, Carlyle's criticism, 196.
Landor, Walter Savage, meeting Emerson, 63.
Landscape, never painted, 339, 240.
(See _Pictures, etc_.)
Language:
its symbolism, 95-97;
an original, 394.
Latin:
Peter Bulkeley's scholarship, 7;
translation, 24, 25;
Emerson's Translations, 43, 44.
Laud, Archbishop, 6.
Law, William, mysticism, 396.
Lawrence, Mass., allusion, 44.
Lecturing, given up, 295.
(See _Emerson's Essays, Lectures_, etc.)
Leibnitz, 386.
Leroux, Pierre, preëxistance, 391.
Letters, inspiration, 289.
Lincoln, Abraham, character, 307.
(See _Emerson's Essays_.)
Linnaeus, illustration, 323, 324.
Litanies, in Emerson, 314.
(See _Episcopacy_.)
Literature:
aptitude for, 2, 3;
activity in 1820, 147.
Little Classics, edition, 347.
Liverpool, Eng., a visit, 193, 194.
(See _England, Europe, Scotland_, etc.)
Locke, John, allusion, 16, 111.
London, England.:
Tower Stairs, 63;
readers, 194;
sights, 221;
travellers, 308;
wrath, 385.
(See _England_, etc.)
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth:
allusions, 31, 33;
Saturday Club, 222, 223;
burial, 346.
Lord, Nathan, President of Dartmouth College, 132.
Lord's Supper, Emerson's doubts, 57-61.
Lothrop & Co., publishers, 83.
Louisville, Ky., Dr. Clarke's residence, 78-80.
Lounsbury, Professor, Chaucer letter, 205.
Love:
in America, 143;
the Arch Abolitionist, 306.
(See _Emerson's Poems_.)
Lowell, Charles:
minister of the West Church, 11, 12, 52;
on Kirkland, 27.
Lowell, F.C., generosity, 276.
Lowell, James Russell:
an allusion, 33;
on The American Scholar, 107;
editorship, 221;
club, 223;
on the Burns speech, 225;
on Emerson's bearing, 360, 361;
Hawthorne biography, 368;
on lectures, 379.
Lowell, Mass., factories, 44.
Luther, Martin:
lecture, 73;
his conservatism, 298;
times mentioned, 382.
Lyceum, the:
a pulpit, 88;
New England, 192;
a sacrifice, 378.
(See _Lecturing, Emerson's Lectures_, etc.)
Lycurgus, 306. (See _Greece_.)
Mackintosh, Sir James, an allusion, 16.
Macmillan's Magazine, 414.
Malden, Mass.:
Joseph Emerson's ministry, 8;
diary, 17.
Man:
a fable about, 109, 110;
faith in, 122;
apostrophe, 140.
Manchester, Eng.:
visit, 194, 195;
banquet, 220.
(See _England_, etc.)
Marlowe, Christopher, expressions, 404.
Marvell, Andrew:
reading by C.C. Emerson, 21;
on the Dutch, 217;
verse, 338.
Mary, Queen, her martyrs, 418.
Massachusetts Historical Society:
tribute to C.C. Emerson, 21;
quality of its literature, 84;
on Carlyle, 294.
Massachusetts Quarterly Review, 193, 302, 307, 411.
Materialism, 146, 391.
(See _Religion_.)
Mather, Cotton:
his Magnalia, 5-7;
on Concord discord, 57;
on New England Melancholy, 216;
a borrower, 381.
Mathew, Father, disciples, 368.
Mayhew, Jonathan, Boston minister, 51.
Melioration, a characteristic expression, 405.
Mendon, Mass., Joseph Emerson's ministry, 4.
Mephistopheles, Goethe's creation, 208.
Merrimac River, 71.
Metaphysics, indifference to, 249.
Methodism, in Boston, 56.
(See _Father Taylor_.)
Michael Angelo:
allusions, 73, 75;
on external beauty, 99;
course, 260;
filled with God, 284;
on immortality, 290;
times mentioned, 382.
Middlesex Agricultural Association, 235.
(See _Agriculture, Emerson's Essays._)
Middlesex Association, Emerson admitted, 53.
Miller's Retrospect, 34.
Milton, John:
influence in New England, 16;
quotation, 24;
essay, 73, 75;
compared with Emerson, 76, 77;
Lycidas, 178;
supposed speech, 220;
diet, 270, 271;
poetic rank, 281;
Arnold's citation, Logic, Rhetoric, 315;
popularity, 316;
quoted, 324;
tin pans, 325;
inventor of harmonies, 328;
Lycidas, 333;
Comus, 338;
times mentioned, 382;
precursor, quotation, 415.
Miracles:
false impression, 121, 122;
and idealism, 146;
theories, 191;
St. Januarius, 217;
objections, 244.
(See _Bible, Christ, Religion_, etc.)
Modena, Italy, Emerson's visit, 63.
Monadnoc, Mount, 70.
Montaigne:
want of religion, 300;
great authority, 380;
times quoted, 382.
Montesquieu, on immortality, 291.
Monthly Anthology:
Wm. Emerson's connection, 13, 26;
precursor of North American Review, 28, 29;
character, 30, 31;
Quincy's tribute, 31;
Society formed, 32;
career, 33;
compared with The Dial, 160.
Moody Family, of York, Me., 8,10.
Morals, in Plutarch, 301.
Morison, John Hopkins, on Emerson's preaching, 67.
Mormons, 264, 268.
Mother-wit, a favorite expression, 404, 405.
Motley, John Lothrop, 33, 223.
Mount Auburn, strolls, 40.
Movement, party of the, 147.
Munroe & Co., publishers, 81.
Music:
church, 306;
inaptitude for, 361;
great composers, 401.
Musketaquid River, 22, 70, 71.
Mysticism:
unintelligible, 390;
Emerson's, 396.
Napoleon:
allusion, 197;
times mentioned, 382.
Napoleon III., 225.
Nation, The, Emerson's interest in, 348.
Native Bias, 288.
Nature:
in undress, 72;
solicitations, 110;
not truly studied, 135;
great men, 199;
tortured, 402.
(See _Emerson's Books, Emerson's Essays_, etc.)
Negations, to be shunned, 285.
New Bedford, Mass., Emerson's preaching, 52, 67.
Newbury, Mass., Edward Emerson's deaconship, 8.
New England:
families, 2, 3, 5;
Peter Bulkeley's coming, 6;
clerical virtues, 9;
Church, 14;
literary sky, 33;
domestic service, 34, 35;
two centres, 52;
an ideal town, 70, 71;
the Delphi, 72;
Carlyle invited, 83;
anniversaries, 84;
town records, 85;
Genesis, 102;
effect of Nature, 106;
boys and girls, 163;
Massachusetts, Connecticut River, 172;
lyceums, 192;
melancholy, 216;
New Englanders and Old, 220;
meaning of a word, 296, 297;
eyes, 325;
life, 325, 335;
birthright, 364;
a thorough New Englander, 406;
Puritan, 409;
theologians, 410;
Jesus wandering in, 419.
(See _America, England_, etc.)
Newspapers:
defaming the noble, 145;
in Shakespeare's day, 204.
Newton, Mass.:
its minister, 15;
Episcopal Church, 68.
(See _Rice_.)
Newton, Sir Isaac, times quoted, 382.
Newton, Stuart, sketches, 130.
New World, gospel, 371. (See _America_.)
New York:
Brevoort House, 246;
Genealogical Society, 413.
Niagara, visit, 263.
Nidiver, George, ballad, 259.
Nightingale, Florence, 220.
Nithsdale, Eng., mountains, 78.
Non-Resistance, 141.
North American Review:
its predecessor, 28, 29, 33;
the writers, 34;
Emerson's contributions, 73;
Ethics, 294, 295;
Bryant's article, 328.
Northampton, Mass., Emerson's preaching, 53.
Norton, Andrews:
literary rank, 34;
professorship, 52.
Norton, Charles Eliot:
editor of Correspondence, 82;
on Emerson's genius, 373.
Old Manse, The:
allusion, 70;
fire, 271-279.
(See _Concord_.)
Oliver, Daniel, in Dartmouth College, 132.
Optimism:
in philosophy, 136;
"innocent luxuriance," 211;
wanted by the young, 373.
Oriental:
genius, 120;
spirit in Emerson, 179.
Orpheus, allusion, 319.
Paine, R.T., JR., quoted, 31.
Palfrey, John Gorham:
literary rank, 34;
professorship, 52.
Pan, the deity, 140.
Pantheism:
in Wordsworth and Nature, 103;
dreaded, 141;
Emerson's, 410, 411.
Paris, Trance:
as a residence, 78;
allusion, 167;
salons, 184;
visit, 196, 308.
Parker, Theodore:
a right arm of freedom, 127;
at a party, 149;
The Dial, 159, 160;
editorship, 193;
death, 228;
essence of Christianity, 306;
biography, 368;
on Emerson's position, 411.
Parkhurst, John, studied at Andover, 48.
Parr, Samuel, allusion, 28.
Past, party of the, 147.
Peabody, Andrew Preston, literary rank, 34.
Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer:
her Aesthetic Papers, 88;
letter to Mr. Ireland, 317.
Peirce, Benjamin, mathematician, 223.
Pelagianisin, 51.
(See _Religion_.)
Pepys, Samuel, allusion, 12.
Pericles, 184, 253.
Persia, poetic models, 338.
(See _Emerson's Poems, Saadi_).
Pessimism, 286.
(See _Optimism_).
Philadelphia, Pa., society, 184.
Philanthropy, activity in 1820, 147.
Philolaus, 199.
Pie, fondness for, 269.
Pierce, John:
the minister of Brookline, 11;
"our clerical Pepys," 12.
Pindar, odes, 253.
(See _Greek, Homer_, etc.)
Plagiarism, 205, 206, 287, 288, 384.
(See _Quotations, Mather_, etc.)
Plato:
influence on Mary Emerson, 16, 17;
over Emerson, 22, 52, 173, 188, 299, 301;
youthful essay, 74;
Alcott's study, 150;
reading, 197;
borrowed thought, 205, 206;
Platonic idea, 222;
a Platonist, 267;
saints of Platonism, 298;
academy inscription, 365;
great authority, 380;
times quoted, 382;
Symposium and Phaedrus quoted, 387;
_tableity_, preëxistence, 391;
Diogenes dialogue, 401;
a Platonist, 411.
(See _Emerson's Books_, and _Essays, Greek_, etc.)
Plotinus:
influence over Mary Emerson, 16, 17;
ashamed of his body, 99;
motto, 105;
opinions, 173, 174;
studied, 380.
Plutarch:
allusion, 22;
his Lives, 50;
study, 197;
on immortality, 291;
influence over Emerson, 299 _et seq_.;
his great authority, 380;
times mentioned, 382;
Emerson on, 383;
imagery quoted, 385;
style, 405.
Plymouth, Mass.:
letters written, 78, 79;
marriage, 83.
Poetry:
as an inspirer, 290;
Milton on, 315.
(See _Shakespeare_, etc.)
Poets:
list in Parnassus, 281;
comparative popularity, 316, 317;
consulting Emerson, 408.
(See _Emerson's Poems_).
Politics:
activity in 1820, 147;
in Saturday Club, 259.
Pomeroy, Jesse, allusion, 393.
Pope, Alexander, familiar lines, 316
Porphyry:
opinions, 173, 174;
studied, 380.
Porto Rico, E.B. Emerson's death, 19.
Power, practical, 259.
Prayer:
not enough, 138, 139;
anecdotes, 267.
(See _God, Religion_, etc.)
Preaching, a Christian blessing, 123.
Preëxistence, 391.
Presbyterianism, in Scotland, 409.
Prescott, William, the Judge's mansion, 38.
Prescott, William Hickling:
rank, 33;
Conquest of Mexico, 38.
Prior, Matthew, 30.
Proclus, influence, 173, 380.
Prometheus, 209.
Prospects, for man, 101-103.
(See _Emerson's Essays_.)
Protestantism, its idols, 28.
(See _Channing, Religion, Unitarianism_, etc.)
Psammetichus, an original language, 394.
(See _Heredity, Language_, etc.)
Punch, London, 204.
Puritans, rear guard, 15.
(See _Calvinism_, etc.)
Puritanism:
relaxation from, 30;
after-clap, 268;
in New England, 409.
(See _Unitarianism_.)
Putnam's Magazine, on Samuel Hoar, 213, 214.
Pythagoras:
imagery quoted, 385;
preëxistence, 391.
Quakers, seeing only broad-brims, 218.
Quincy, Josiah:
History of Boston Athenaeum, 31;
tribute to the Anthology, 32, 33;
memories of Emerson, 45-47;
old age, 261.
Quotations, 381-383.
(See _Plagiarism_, etc.)
Raleigh, Sir Walter, verse, 338.
Raphael, his Transfiguration, 134.
(See _Allston, Painters_, etc.)
Rats, illustration, 167, 168.
Reed, Sampson, his Growth of the Mind, 80.
Reforms, in America, 141-145.
Reformers, fairness towards, 156, 157, 188-192.
(See _Anti-Slavery, John Brown_.)
Religion:
opinions of Wm. Emerson and others, 11-13;
nature the symbol of spirit, 95;
pleas for independence, 117;
universal sentiment, 118-120;
public rites, 152;
Church of England, 219;
of the future, 235;
relative positions towards, 409, 410;
Trinity, 411;
Emerson's belief, 412-415;
bigotry modified, 414.
(See _Calvinism, Channing, Christ, Emerson's Life, Essays_,
and _Poems, Episcopacy, God, Unitarianism_, etc.)
Republicanism, spiritual, 36.
Revolutionary War:
Wm. Emerson's service, 8, 9;
subsequent confusion, 25, 32;
Concord's part, 71, 72, 292, 293.
(See _America, New England_, etc.)
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 228.
Rhythm, 328, 329, 340.
(See _Emerson's Poems_, etc.)
Rice, Alexander H., anecdote, 68, 69, 346.
(See _Newton_.)
Richard Plantagenet, 197.
Ripley, Ezra:
minister of Concord, 10;
Emerson's sketch, 14-16;
garden, 42;
colleague, 56;
residence, 70.
Ripley, George:
a party, 149;
The Dial, 159;
Brook Farm, 164-166;
on Emerson's limitations, 380.
Robinson, Edward, literary rank, 34.
Rochester, N.Y., speech, 168.
Rome:
allusions, 167, 168;
growth, 222;
amphora, 321.
(See _Latin_.)
Romilly, Samuel, allusion, 220.
Rose, anecdote, 345.
(See _Flowers_.)
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, his Savoyard Vicar, 51, 52.
Ruskin, John:
on metaphysics, 250;
certain chapters, 336;
pathetic fallacy, 337;
plagiarism, 384.
Russell, Ben., quoted, 267.
Russell, Le Baron:
on Sartor Resartus, 81, 82;
groomsman, 83;
aid in rebuilding the Old Manse, 272-279;
Concord visit, 345.
Saadi: a borrower, 205;
times mentioned, 382.
(See _Persia_.)
Sabbath: a blessing of Christianity, 123, 298.
Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin, on poetry, 339.
Saint Paul, times mentioned, 382.
(See _Bible_.)
Saladin, 184.
Sallust, on Catiline, 207.
Sanborn, Frank B.:
facts about Emerson, 42, 43, 66;
Thoreau memoir, 368;
old neighbor, 373.
Sapor, 184.
Satan, safety from, 306.
(See _Mephistopheles, Religion_, etc.)
Saturday Club:
establishment, 221-223, 258;
last visits, 346, 347;
familiarity at, 368.
Scaliger, quotation, 109, 110.
Schelling, idealism, 148;
influence 173.
Schiller, on immortality, 290.
Scholarship:
a priesthood, 137;
docility of, 289.
School-teaching, 297.
(See _Chelmsford_.)
Schopenhauer, Arthur:
his pessimism, 286;
idea of a philosopher, 359.
Science:
growth of, 148;
Emerson inaccurate in, 256;
attitude toward, 401, 402.
(See _C.C. Emerson_.)
Scipio, 184.
Scotland:
Carlyle's haunts, 79;
notabilities, 195, 196;
Presbyterian, 409.
Scott, Sir Walter:
allusion, 22;
quotations, 23, 77;
dead, 63;
"the hand of Douglas," 234;
as a poet, 281;
popularity, 316;
poetic rank, 321.
Self:
the highest, 113;
respect for, 288, 289.
Seneca, Montaigne's study, 382.
Shakespeare:
allusion, 22;
Hamlet, 90, 94;
Benedick and love, 106;
disputed line, 128, 129;
an idol, 197;
poetic rank, 202, 281, 320, 321;
plagiarism, 204-206;
on studies, 257, 258;
supremacy, 328;
a comparison, 374;
a playwright, 375, 376;
punctiliousness of Portia, 378;
times mentioned, 382;
lunatic, lover, poet, 387;
Polonius, 389;
_mother-wit_, 404;
_fine_ Ariel, 405;
adamant, 418.
Shattuck, Lemuel, History of Concord, 382.
Shaw, Lemuel, boarding-place, 43.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe:
Ode to the West Wind, 316, 399;
redundant syllable, 328;
Adonais, 333.
Shenandoah Mountain, 306.
Shingle, Emerson's jest, 364.
Ships:
illustration of longitude, 154;
erroneous quotation, 251, 252;
building illustration, 376, 377.
Sicily:
Emerson's visit, 62;
Etna, 113.
Sidney, Sir Philip, Chevy Chace, 379.
Silsbee, William, aid in publishing Carlyle, 81.
Simonides, prudence, 410.
Sisyphus, illustration, 334.
Sleight-of-hand, illustration, 332.
Smith, James and Horace, Rejected Addresses, 387, 397.
Smith, Sydney, on bishops, 219.
Socrates:
allusion, 203;
times mentioned, 382.
Solitude, sought, 135.
Solomon, epigrammatic, 405.
(See _Bible_.)
Solon, 199.
Sophron, 199.
South, the:
Emerson's preaching tour, 53;
Rebellion, 305, 407.
(See _America, Anti-Slavery_, etc.)
Southerners, in college, 47.
Sparks, Jared, literary rank, 33.
Spenser, Edmund:
stanza, 335, 338;
soul making body, 391;
_mother-wit_, 404.
Spinoza, influence, 173, 380.
Spirit and matter, 100, 101.
(See _God, Religion, Spenser_, etc.)
Spiritualism, 296.
Sprague, William Buel, Annals of the American Pulpit, 10-12.
Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, on American religion, 414.
Star:
"hitch your wagon to a star," 252, 253;
stars in poetry, 324.
Sterling, J. Hutchinson, letter to, 282, 283.
Stewart, Dugald, allusion, 16.
Story, Joseph, literary rank, 33.
Stuart, Moses, literary rank, 33.
Studio, illustration, 20.
Summer, description, 117.
Sumner, Charles:
literary rank, 33:
the outrage on, 211;
Saturday Club, 223.
Swedenborg, Emanuel:
poetic rank, 202, 320;
dreams, 306;
Rosetta-Stone, 322;
times mentioned, 382.
Swedenborgians:
liking for a paper of Carlyle's, 78;
Reed's essay, 80;
spiritual influx, 412.
Swift, Jonathan:
allusion, 30;
the Houyhnhnms, 163;
times mentioned, 382.
Synagogue, illustration, 169.
Tappan, Mrs. Caroline, The Dial, 159.
Tartuffe, allusion, 312.
Taylor, Father, relation to Emerson, 55, 56, 413.
Taylor, Jeremy:
allusion, 22;
Emerson's study, 52;
"the Shakespeare of divines," 94;
praise for, 306.
Teague, Irish name, 143.
Te Deum:
the hymn, 68;
illustration, 82.
Temperance, the reform, 141, 152.
(See _Reforms_.)
Tennyson, Alfred:
readers, 256;
tobacco, 270;
poetic rank, 281;
In Memoriam, 333;
on plagiarism, 384.
Thacher, Samuel Cooper:
allusion, 26;
death, 29.
Thayer, James B.:
Western Journey with Emerson, 249, 263, 265-271, 359;
_ground swell_, 364.
(See _California_.)
Thinkers, let loose, 175.
Thomson, James, descriptions, 338.
Thoreau, Henry D.:
allusion, 22;
a Crusoe, 72;
"nullifier of civilization," 86;
one-apartment house, 142, 143;
The Dial, 159, 160;
death, 228;
Emerson's burial-place, 356;
biography, 368;
personality traceable, 389;
woodcraft, 403.
Ticknor, George:
on William Emerson, 12;
on Kirkland, 27;
literary rank, 33.
Traduction, 393.
(See _Heredity, Jonson_, etc.)
Transcendentalism:
Bowen's paper, 103, 104;
idealism, 146;
adherents, 150-152;
dilettanteism, 152-155;
a terror, 161.
Transcendentalist, The, 157-159.
Truth:
as an end, 99;
sought, 135.
Tudor, William:
allusion, 26;
connecting literary link, 28, 29.
Turgot, quoted, 98, 99.
Tyburn, allusion, 183.
Unitarianism:
Dr. Freeman's, 11, 12;
nature of Jesus, 13;
its sunshine, 28;
white-handed, 34;
headquarters, 35;
lingual studies, 48, 49;
transition, 51;
domination, 52;
pulpits, 53, 54;
chapel in Edinburgh, 65;
file-leaders, 118;
its organ, 124;
"pale negations," 298.
(See _Religion, Trinity_, etc.)
United States, intellectual history, 32.
(See _America, New England_, etc.)
Unity, in diversity, 73, 106, 284.
Upham, Charles W., his History, 45.
Verne, Jules, _onditologie_, 186.
Verplanck, Gulian Crommelin, literary rank, 33.
Virginia, University of, 299.
Volcano, illustration, 113.
Voltaire, 409.
Voting, done reluctantly, 152, 153.
Wachusett, Mount, 70.
Walden Pond:
allusion, 22, 70, 72;
cabin, 142, 143.
(See _Concord_.)
War:
outgrown, 88, 89;
ennobling, 298.
Ware, Henry, professorship, 52.
(See _Harvard University_.)
Ware, Henry, Jr.:
Boston ministry, 55;
correspondence, 124-127.
(See _Unitarianism_, etc.)
Warren, John Collins, Transcendentalism and Temperance, 149.
Warren, Judge, of New Bedford, 67.
Warwick Castle, fire, 275.
Washington City, addresses, 307.
(See _Anti-Slavery_, etc.)
Waterville College, Adelphi Society, 135-142.
Webster, Daniel:
E.B. Emerson's association with, 19;
on Tudor, 28, 29;
literary rank, 33;
Seventh-of-March Speech, 303;
times mentioned, 382.
Weiss, John, Parker biography, 368.
Wellington, Lord, seen by Emerson, 63, 64.
Wesley, John, praise of, 306.
(See _Methodism_.)
Western Messenger, poems in, 128.
West India Islands, Edward B. Emerson's death, 89.
Westminster Abbey, Emerson's visit, 63, 64.
(See _Emerson's Books_,--English Traits,--_England_, etc.)
Westminster Catechism, 298.
(See _Calvinism, Religion_, etc.)
Whipple, Edwin Percy:
literary rank, 33;
club, 223;
on heredity, 389.
White of Selborne, 228.
Whitman, Walt:
his enumerations, 325, 326;
journal, 344, 346.
Wilberforce, William, funeral, 64.
Will:
inspiration of, 289;
power of, 290.
Windermere, Lake, 70.
(See _England_.)
Winthrop, Francis William, in college, 45.
Wolfe, Charles, Burial of Moore, 416.
Woman:
her position, 212, 213, 251;
crossing a street, 364.
Woman's Club, 16.
Words, Emerson's favorite, 404, 405.
(See _Emerson's Poems_,--Days.)
Wordsworth, William:
Emerson's account, 63;
early reception, Excursion, 92, 95;
quoted, 96, 97;
Tintern Abbey, 103;
influence, 148, 150;
poetic rank, 281, 321;
on Immortality, 293, 392;
popularity, 316;
serenity, 335;
study of nature, 337;
times mentioned, 382;
We are Seven, 393;
prejudice against science, 401.
Wotton, Sir Henry, quoted, 259.
Yankee:
a spouting, 136;
_improve_, 176;
whittling, 364.
(See _America, New England_, etc.)
Yoga, Hindoo idea, 397.
Young, Brigham:
Utah, 264, 268;
on preëxistence, 391.
Young, Edward, influence in New England, 16, 17.
Zola, Émile, offensive realism, 326.
OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE
BY
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
To
MY DAUGHTER AMELIA
(MRS. TURNER SARGENT)
MY FAITHFUL AND DEVOTED COMPANION
THIS OUTLINE OF OUR SUMMER EXCURSION
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTORY
A PROSPECTIVE VISIT
OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE.
CHAPTER
I. THE VOYAGE.--LIVERPOOL.--CHESTER.--LONDON.--EPSOM
II. EPSOM.--LONDON.--WINDSOR
III. LONDON.--ISLE OF WIGHT.--CAMBRIDGE.--OXFORD.--YORK.--EDINBURGH
IV. STRATFORD-ON-AVON.--GREAT MALVERN.--TEWKESBURY.--BATH.--SALISBURY.
--STONEHENGE
V. STONEHENGE.--SALISBURY.--OLD SARUM.--BEMERTON.--BRIGHTON
VI. LONDON
VII. BOULOGNE.--PARIS.--LONDON.--LIVERPOOL.--THE HOMEWARD PASSAGE
VIII. GENERAL IMPRESSIONS.--MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES AT THE AGE OF 82. From a painting by Sarah W.
Whitman
ROBERT BROWNING
MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL
PLACE DE LA CONCORDE
INTRODUCTORY.
A PROSPECTIVE VISIT.
After an interval of more than fifty years, I propose taking a second
look at some parts of Europe. It is a Rip Van Winkle experiment which I
am promising myself. The changes wrought by half a century in the
countries I visited amount almost to a transformation. I left the
England of William the Fourth, of the Duke of Wellington, of Sir Robert
Peel; the France of Louis Philippe, of Marshal Soult, of Thiers, of
Guizot. I went from Manchester to Liverpool by the new railroad, the
only one I saw in Europe. I looked upon England from the box of a
stage-coach, upon France from the coupé of a diligence, upon Italy from
the cushion of a carrozza. The broken windows of Apsley House were still
boarded up when I was in London. The asphalt pavement was not laid in
Paris. The Obelisk of Luxor was lying in its great boat in the Seine, as
I remember it. I did not see it erected; it must have been an exciting
scene to witness, the engineer standing underneath, so as to be crushed
by the great stone if it disgraced him by falling in the process. As for
the dynasties which have overlaid each other like Dr. Schliemann's
Trojan cities, there is no need of moralizing over a history which
instead of Finis is constantly ending with What next?
With regard to the changes in the general conditions of society and the
advance in human knowledge, think for one moment what fifty years have
done! I have often imagined myself escorting some wise man of the past
to our Saturday Club, where we often have distinguished strangers as our
guests. Suppose there sat by me, I will not say Sir Isaac Newton, for he
has been too long away from us, but that other great man, whom Professor
Tyndall names as next to him in intellectual stature, as he passes along
the line of master minds of his country, from the days of Newton to our
own,--Dr. Thomas Young, who died in 1829. Would he or I be the listener,
if we were side by side? However humble I might feel in such a presence,
I should be so clad in the grandeur of the new discoveries, inventions,
ideas, I had to impart to him that I should seem to myself like the
ambassador of an Emperor. I should tell him of the ocean steamers, the
railroads that spread themselves like cobwebs over the civilized and
half-civilized portions of the earth, the telegraph and the telephone,
the photograph and the spectroscope. I should hand him a paper with the
morning news from London to read by the electric light, I should startle
him with a friction match, I should amaze him with the incredible truths
about anesthesia, I should astonish him with the later conclusions of
geology, I should dazzle him by the fully developed law of the
correlation of forces, I should delight him with the cell-doctrine, I
should confound him with the revolutionary apocalypse of Darwinism. All
this change in the aspects, position, beliefs, of humanity since the
time of Dr. Young's death, the date of my own graduation from college!
I ought to consider myself highly favored to have lived through such a
half century. But it seems to me that in walking the streets of London
and Paris I shall revert to my student days, and appear to myself like a
relic of a former generation. Those who have been born into the
inheritance of the new civilization feel very differently about it from
those who have lived their way into it. To the young and those
approaching middle age all these innovations in life and thought are as
natural, as much a matter of course, as the air they breathe; they form
a part of the inner framework of their intelligence, about which their
mental life is organized. To men and women of more than threescore and
ten they are external accretions, like the shell of a mollusk, the
jointed plates of an articulate. This must be remembered in reading
anything written by those who knew the century in its teens; it is not
likely to be forgotten, for the fact betrays itself in all the writer's
thoughts and expressions.
The story of my first visit to Europe is briefly this: my object was to
study the medical profession, chiefly in Paris, and I was in Europe
about two years and a half, from April, 1833, to October, 1835. I sailed
in the packet ship Philadelphia from New York for Portsmouth, where we
arrived after a passage of twenty-four days. A week was spent in
visiting Southampton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, Wilton, and the Isle of
Wight. I then crossed the Channel to Havre, from which I went to Paris.
In the spring and summer of 1834 I made my principal visit to England
and Scotland. There were other excursions to the Rhine and to Holland,
to Switzerland and to Italy, but of these I need say nothing here. I
returned in the packet ship Utica, sailing from Havre, and reaching New
York after a passage of forty-two days.
A few notes from my recollections will serve to recall the period of my
first visit to Europe, and form a natural introduction to the
experiences of my second. I take those circumstances which happen to
suggest themselves.
After a short excursion to Strasbourg, down the Rhine, and through
Holland, a small steamer took us from Rotterdam across the Channel, and
we found ourselves in the British capital.
The great sight in London is--London. No man understands himself as an
infinitesimal until he has been a drop in that ocean, a grain of sand on
that sea-margin, a mote in its sunbeam, or the fog or smoke which stands
for it; in plainer phrase, a unit among its millions.
I had two letters to persons in England: one to kind and worthy Mr.
Petty Vaughan, who asked me to dinner; one to pleasant Mr. William
Clift, conservator of the Hunterian Museum, who asked me to tea.
To Westminster Abbey. What a pity it could not borrow from Paris the
towers of Notre Dame! But the glory of its interior made up for this
shortcoming. Among the monuments, one to Rear Admiral Charles Holmes, a
descendant, perhaps, of another namesake, immortalized by Dryden in the
"Annus Mirabilis" as
"the Achates of the general's fight."
He accompanied Wolfe in his expedition which resulted in the capture of
Quebec. My relative, I will take it for granted, as I find him in
Westminster Abbey. Blood is thicker than water,--and warmer than marble,
I said to myself, as I laid my hand on the cold stone image of the once
famous Admiral.
To the Tower, to see the lions,--of all sorts. There I found a "poor
relation," who made my acquaintance without introduction. A large
baboon, or ape,--some creature of that family,--was sitting at the open
door of his cage, when I gave him offence by approaching too near and
inspecting him too narrowly. He made a spring at me, and if the keeper
had not pulled me back would have treated me unhandsomely, like a
quadrumanous rough, as he was. He succeeded in stripping my waistcoat of
its buttons, as one would strip a pea-pod of its peas.
To Vauxhall Gardens. All Americans went there in those days, as they go
to Madame Tussaud's in these times. There were fireworks and an
exhibition of polar scenery. "Mr. Collins, the English PAGANINI,"
treated us to music on his violin. A comic singer gave us a song, of
which I remember the line,
"You'll find it all in the agony bill."
This referred to a bill proposed by Sir Andrew Agnew, a noted Scotch
Sabbatarian agitator.
To the opera to hear Grisi. The king, William the Fourth, was in his
box; also the Princess Victoria, with the Duchess of Kent. The king
tapped with his white-gloved hand on the ledge of the box when he was
pleased with the singing.--To a morning concert and heard the real
Paganini. To one of the lesser theatres and heard a monologue by the
elder Mathews, who died a year or two after this time. To another
theatre, where I saw Listen in Paul Pry. Is it not a relief that I am
abstaining from description of what everybody has heard described?
To Windsor. Machinery to the left of the road. Recognized it instantly,
by recollection of the plate in "Rees's Cyclopedia," as Herschel's great
telescope.--Oxford. Saw only its outside. I knew no one there, and no
one knew me.--Blenheim,--the Titians best remembered of its objects on
exhibition. The great Derby day of the Epsom races. Went to the race
with a coach-load of friends and acquaintances. Plenipotentiary, the
winner, "rode by P. Connelly." So says Herring's picture of him, now
before me. Chestnut, a great "bullock" of a horse, who easily beat the
twenty-two that started. Every New England deacon ought to see one Derby
day to learn what sort of a world this is he lives in. Man is a sporting
as well as a praying animal.
Stratford-on-Avon. Emotions, but no scribbling of name on
walls.--Warwick. The castle. A village festival, "The Opening of the
Meadows," a true exhibition of the semi-barbarism which had come down
from Saxon times.--Yorkshire. "The Hangman's Stone." Story told in my
book called the "Autocrat," etc. York Cathedral.--Northumberland.
Alnwick Castle. The figures on the walls which so frightened my man John
when he ran away from Scotland in his boyhood. Berwick-on-Tweed. A
regatta going on; a very pretty show. Scotland. Most to be remembered,
the incomparable loveliness of Edinburgh.--Sterling. The view of the
Links of Forth from the castle. The whole country full of the romance of
history and poetry. Made one acquaintance in Scotland, Dr. Robert Knox,
who asked my companion and myself to breakfast. I was treated to five
entertainments in Great Britain: the breakfast just mentioned; lunch
with Mrs. Macadam,--the good old lady gave me bread, and not a stone;
dinner with Mr. Vaughan; one with Mr. Stanley, the surgeon; tea with Mr.
Clift,--for all which attentions I was then and am still grateful, for
they were more than I had any claim to expect. Fascinated with
Edinburgh. Strolls by Salisbury Crag; climb to the top of Arthur's Seat;
delight of looking up at the grand old castle, of looking down on
Holyrood Palace, of watching the groups on Calton Hill, wandering in the
quaint old streets and sauntering on the sidewalks of the noble avenues,
even at that time adding beauty to the new city. The weeks I spent in
Edinburgh are among the most memorable of my European experiences. To
the Highlands, to the Lakes, in short excursions; to Glasgow, seen to
disadvantage under gray skies and with slippery pavements. Through
England rapidly to Dover and to Calais, where I found the name of M.
Dessein still belonging to the hotel I sought, and where I read Sterne's
"Preface Written in a Désobligeante," sitting in the vehicle most like
one that I could find in the stable. From Calais back to Paris, where I
began working again.
All my travelling experiences, including a visit to Switzerland and
Italy in the summer and autumn of 1835, were merely interludes of my
student life in Paris. On my return to America, after a few years of
hospital and private practice, I became a Professor in Harvard
University, teaching Anatomy and Physiology, afterwards Anatomy alone,
for the period of thirty-five years, during part of which time I paid
some attention to literature, and became somewhat known as the author of
several works in prose and verse which have been well received. My
prospective visit will not be a professional one, as I resigned my
office in 1882, and am no longer known chiefly as a teacher or a
practitioner.
BOSTON, _April_, 1886.
OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE
I.
I begin this record with the columnar, self-reliant capital letter to
signify that there is no disguise in its egoisms. If it were a chapter
of autobiography, this is what the reader would look for as a matter of
course. Let him consider it as being such a chapter, and its egoisms
will require no apology.
I have called the record _our_ hundred days, because I was
accompanied by my daughter, without the aid of whose younger eyes and
livelier memory, and especially of her faithful diary, which no fatigue
or indisposition was allowed to interrupt, the whole experience would
have remained in my memory as a photograph out of focus.
We left Boston on the 29th of April, 1886, and reached New York on the
29th of August, four months of absence in all, of which nearly three
weeks were taken up by the two passages; one week was spent in Paris,
and the rest of the time in England and Scotland.
No one was so much surprised as myself at my undertaking this visit. Mr.
Gladstone, a strong man for his years, is reported as saying that he is
too old to travel, at least to cross the ocean, and he is younger than I
am,--just four months, to a day, younger. It is true that Sir Henry
Holland came to this country, and travelled freely about the world,
after he was eighty years old; but his pitcher went to the well once too
often, and met the usual doom of fragile articles. When my friends asked
me why I did not go to Europe, I reminded them of the fate of Thomas
Parr. He was only twice my age, and was getting on finely towards his
two hundredth year, when the Earl of Arundel carried him up to London,
and, being feasted and made a lion of, he found there a premature and
early grave at the age of only one hundred and fifty-two years. He lies
in Westminster Abbey, it is true, but he would probably have preferred
the upper side of his own hearth-stone to the under side of the slab
which covers him.
I should never have thought of such an expedition if it had not been
suggested by a member of my family that I should accompany my daughter,
who was meditating a trip to Europe. I remembered how many friends had
told me I ought to go; among the rest, Mr. Emerson, who had spoken to me
repeatedly about it. I had not seen Europe for more than half a century,
and I had a certain longing for one more sight of the places I
remembered, and others it would be a delight to look upon. There were a
few living persons whom I wished to meet. I was assured that I should be
kindly received in England. All this was tempting enough, but there was
an obstacle in the way which I feared, and, as it proved, not without
good reason. I doubted whether I could possibly breathe in a narrow
state-room. In certain localities I have found myself liable to attacks
of asthma, and, although I had not had one for years, I felt sure that I
could not escape it if I tried to sleep in a state-room.
I did not escape it, and I am glad to tell my story about it, because it
excuses some of my involuntary social shortcomings, and enables me to
thank collectively all those kind members of the profession who trained
all the artillery of the pharmacopoeia upon my troublesome enemy, from
bicarbonate of soda and Vichy water to arsenic and dynamite. One costly
contrivance, sent me by the Reverend Mr. Haweis, whom I have never duly
thanked for it, looked more like an angelic trump for me to blow in a
better world than what I believe it is, an inhaling tube intended to
prolong my mortal respiration. The best thing in my experience was
recommended to me by an old friend in London. It was Himrod's asthma
cure, one of the many powders, the smoke of which when burning is
inhaled. It is made in Providence, Rhode Island, and I had to go to
London to find it. It never failed to give at least temporary relief,
but nothing enabled me to sleep in my state-room, though I had it all to
myself, the upper berth being removed. After the first night and part of
the second, I never lay down at all while at sea. The captain allowed me
to have a candle and sit up in the saloon, where I worried through the
night as I best might. How could I be in a fit condition to accept the
attention of my friends in Liverpool, after sitting up every night for
more than a week; and how could I be in a mood for the catechizing of
interviewers, without having once lain down during the whole return
passage? I hope the reader will see why I mention these facts. They
explain and excuse many things; they have been alluded to, sometimes
with exaggeration, in the newspapers, and I could not tell my story
fairly without mentioning them. I got along well enough as soon as I
landed, and have had no return of the trouble since I have been back in
my own home. I will not advertise an assortment of asthma remedies for
sale, but I assure my kind friends I have had no use for any one of them
since I have walked the Boston pavements, drank, not the Cochituate, but
the Belmont spring water, and breathed the lusty air of my native
northeasters.
My companion and I required an attendant, and we found one of those
useful androgynous personages known as _courier-maids_, who had
travelled with friends of ours, and who was ready to start with us at a
moment's warning. She was of English birth, lively, short-gaited,
serviceable, more especially in the first of her dual capacities. So far
as my wants were concerned, I found her zealous and active in providing
for my comfort.
It was no sooner announced in the papers that I was going to England
than I began to hear of preparations to welcome me. An invitation to a
club meeting was cabled across the Atlantic. One of my countrywomen who
has a house in London made an engagement for me to meet friends at her
residence. A reverend friend, who thought I had certain projects in my
head, wrote to me about lecturing: where I should appear, what fees I
should obtain, and such business matters. I replied that I was going to
England to spend money, not to make it; to hear speeches, very possibly,
but not to make them; to revisit scenes I had known in my younger days;
to get a little change of my routine, which I certainly did; and to
enjoy a little rest, which I as certainly did not, at least in London.
In a word, I wished a short vacation, and had no thought of doing
anything more important than rubbing a little rust off and enjoying
myself, while at the same time I could make my companion's visit
somewhat pleasanter than it would be if she went without me. The visit
has answered most of its purposes for both of us, and if we have saved a
few recollections which our friends can take any pleasure in reading,
this slight record may be considered a work of supererogation.
The Cephalonia was to sail at half past six in the morning, and at that
early hour a company of well-wishers was gathered on the wharf at East
Boston to bid us good-by. We took with us many tokens of their
thoughtful kindness; flowers and fruits from Boston and Cambridge, and a
basket of champagne from a Concord friend whose company is as
exhilarating as the sparkling wine he sent us. With the other gifts came
a small tin box, about as big as a common round wooden match box. I
supposed it to hold some pretty gimcrack, sent as a pleasant parting
token of remembrance. It proved to be a most valued daily companion,
useful at all times, never more so than when the winds were blowing hard
and the ship was struggling with the waves. There must have been some
magic secret in it, for I am sure that I looked five years younger after
closing that little box than when I opened it. Time will explain its
mysterious power.
All the usual provisions for comfort made by seagoing experts we had
attended to. Impermeable rugs and fleecy shawls, head-gear to defy the
rudest northeasters, sea-chairs of ample dimensions, which we took care
to place in as sheltered situations as we could find,--all these were a
matter of course. Everybody stays on deck as much as possible, and lies
wrapped up and spread out at full length on his or her sea-chair, so
that the deck looks as if it had a row of mummies on exhibition. Nothing
is more comfortable, nothing, I should say, more indispensable, than a
hot-water bag,--or rather, _two_ hot-water bags; for they will
burst sometimes, as I found out, and a passenger who has become intimate
with one of these warm bosom friends feels its loss almost as if it were
human.
Passengers carry all sorts of luxuries on board, in the firm faith that
they shall be able to profit by them all. Friends send them various
indigestibles. To many all these well-meant preparations soon become a
mockery, almost an insult. It is a clear case of _Sic(k) vos non
vobis_. The tougher neighbor is the gainer by these acts of kindness;
the generosity of a sea-sick sufferer in giving away the delicacies
which seemed so desirable on starting is not ranked very high on the
books of the recording angel. With us three things were best: grapes,
oranges, and especially oysters, of which we had provided a half barrel
in the shell. The "butcher" of the ship opened them fresh for us every
day, and they were more acceptable than anything else.
Among our ship's company were a number of family relatives and
acquaintances. We formed a natural group at one of the tables, where we
met in more or less complete numbers. I myself never missed; my
companion, rarely. Others were sometimes absent, and sometimes came to
time when they were in a very doubtful state, looking as if they were
saying to themselves, with Lear,--
"Down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element's below."
As for the intellectual condition of the passengers, I should say that
faces were prevailingly vacuous, their owners half hypnotized, as it
seemed, by the monotonous throb and tremor of the great sea-monster on
whose back we were riding. I myself had few thoughts, fancies, emotions.
One thing above all struck me as never before,--the terrible solitude of
the ocean.
"So lonely 'twas that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be."
Whole days passed without our seeing a single sail. The creatures of the
deep which gather around sailing vessels are perhaps frightened off by
the noise and stir of the steamship. At any rate, we saw nothing more
than a few porpoises, so far as I remember.
No man can find himself over the abysses, the floor of which is paved
with wrecks and white with the bones of the shrieking myriads of human
beings whom the waves have swallowed up, without some thought of the
dread possibilities hanging over his fate. There is only one way to get
rid of them: that which an old sea-captain mentioned to me, namely, to
keep one's self under opiates until he wakes up in the harbor where he
is bound. I did not take this as serious advice, but its meaning is that
one who has all his senses about him cannot help being anxious. My old
friend, whose beard had been shaken in many a tempest, knew too well
that there is cause enough for anxiety.
What does the reader suppose was the source of the most ominous thought
which forced itself upon my mind, as I walked the decks of the mighty
vessel? Not the sound of the rushing winds, nor the sight of the
foam-crested billows; not the sense of the awful imprisoned force which
was wrestling in the depths below me. The ship is made to struggle with
the elements, and the giant has been tamed to obedience, and is manacled
in bonds which an earthquake would hardly rend asunder. No! It was the
sight of the _boats_ hanging along at the sides of the deck,--the
boats, always suggesting the fearful possibility that before another day
dawns one may be tossing about in the watery Sahara, shelterless,
fireless, almost foodless, with a fate before him he dares not
contemplate. No doubt we should feel worse without the boats; still they
are dreadful tell-tales. To all who remember Géricault's Wreck of the
Medusa,--and those who have seen it do not forget it,--the picture the
mind draws is one it shudders at. To be sure, the poor wretches in the
painting were on a raft, but to think of fifty people in one of these
open boats! Let us go down into the cabin, where at least we shall not
see them.
The first morning at sea revealed the mystery of the little round tin
box. The process of _shaving_, never a delightful one, is a very
unpleasant and awkward piece of business when the floor on which one
stands, the glass in which he looks, and he himself are all describing
those complex curves which make cycles and epicycles seem like
simplicity itself. The little box contained a reaping machine, which
gathered the capillary harvest of the past twenty-four hours with a
thoroughness, a rapidity, a security, and a facility which were a
surprise, almost a revelation. The idea of a guarded cutting edge is an
old one; I remember the "Plantagenet" razor, so called, with the
comb-like row of blunt teeth, leaving just enough of the edge free to do
its work. But this little affair had a blade only an inch and a half
long by three quarters of an inch wide. It had a long slender handle,
which took apart for packing, and was put together with the greatest
ease. It was, in short, a lawn-mower for the masculine growth of which
the proprietor wishes to rid his countenance. The mowing operation
required no glass, could be performed with almost reckless boldness, as
one cannot cut himself, and in fact had become a pleasant amusement
instead of an irksome task. I have never used any other means of shaving
from that day to this. I was so pleased with it that I exhibited it to
the distinguished tonsors of Burlington Arcade, half afraid they would
assassinate me for bringing in an innovation which bid fair to destroy
their business. They probably took me for an agent of the manufacturers;
and so I was, but not in their pay nor with their knowledge. I
determined to let other persons know what a convenience I had found the
"Star Razor" of Messrs. Kampf, of New York, without fear of reproach for
so doing. I know my danger,--does not Lord Byron say, "I have even been
accused of writing puffs for Warren's blacking"? I was once offered pay
for a poem in praise of a certain stove polish, but I declined. It is
pure good-will to my race which leads me to commend the Star Razor to
all who travel by land or by sea, as well as to all who stay at home.
With the first sight of land many a passenger draws a long sigh of
relief. Yet everybody knows that the worst dangers begin after we have
got near enough to see the shore, for there are several ways of landing,
not all of which are equally desirable. On Saturday, May 8th, we first
caught a glimpse of the Irish coast, and at half past four in the
afternoon we reached the harbor of Queenstown. A tug came off, bringing
newspapers, letters, and so forth, among the rest some thirty letters
and telegrams for me. This did not look much like rest, but this was
only a slight prelude to what was to follow. I was in no condition to go
on shore for sight-seeing, as some of the passengers did.
We made our way through the fog towards Liverpool, and arrived at 1.30,
on Sunday, May 9th. A special tug came to take us off: on it were the
American consul, Mr. Russell, the vice-consul, Mr. Sewall, Dr. Nevins,
and Mr. Rathbone, who came on behalf of our as yet unseen friend, Mr.
Willett, of Brighton, England. Our Liverpool friends were meditating
more hospitalities to us than, in our fatigued condition, we were equal
to supporting. They very kindly, however, acquiesced in our wishes,
which were for as much rest as we could possibly get before any attempt
to busy ourselves with social engagements. So they conveyed us to the
Grand Hotel for a short time, and then saw us safely off to the station
to take the train for Chester, where we arrived in due season, and soon
found ourselves comfortably established at the Grosvenor Arms Hotel. A
large basket of Surrey primroses was brought by Mr. Rathbone to my
companion. I had set before me at the hotel a very handsome floral harp,
which my friend's friend had offered me as a tribute. It made melody in
my ears as sweet as those hyacinths of Shelley's, the music of whose
bells was so
"delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odor within the sense."
At Chester we had the blissful security of being unknown, and were left
to ourselves. Americans know Chester better than most other old towns in
England, because they so frequently stop there awhile on their way from
Liverpool to London. It has a mouldy old cathedral, an old wall, partly
Roman, strange old houses with overhanging upper floors, which make
sheltered sidewalks and dark basements. When one sees an old house in
New England with the second floor projecting a foot or two beyond the
wall of the ground floor, the country boy will tell him that "them
haouses was built so th't th' folks upstairs could shoot the Injins when
they was tryin' to git threew th' door or int' th' winder." There are
plenty of such houses all over England, where there are no "Injins" to
shoot. But the story adds interest to the somewhat lean traditions of
our rather dreary past, and it is hardly worth while to disturb it. I
always heard it in my boyhood. Perhaps it is true; certainly it was a
very convenient arrangement for discouraging an untimely visit. The oval
lookouts in porches, common in our Essex County, have been said to
answer a similar purpose, that of warning against the intrusion of
undesirable visitors. The walk round the old wall of Chester is
wonderfully interesting and beautiful. At one part it overlooks a wide
level field, over which the annual races are run. I noticed that here as
elsewhere the short grass was starred with daisies. They are not
considered in place in a well-kept lawn. But remembering the cuckoo song
in "Love's Labour's Lost," "When daisies pied ... do paint the meadows
with delight," it was hard to look at them as unwelcome intruders.
The old cathedral seemed to me particularly mouldy, and in fact too
high-flavored with antiquity. I could not help comparing some of the
ancient cathedrals and abbey churches to so many old cheeses. They have
a tough gray rind and a rich interior, which find food and lodging for
numerous tenants who live and die under their shelter or their
shadow,--lowly servitors some of them, portly dignitaries others, humble
holy ministers of religion many, I doubt not,--larvae of angels, who
will get their wings by and by. It is a shame to carry the comparison so
far, but it is natural enough; for Cheshire cheeses are among the first
things we think of as we enter that section of the country, and this
venerable cathedral is the first that greets the eyes of great numbers
of Americans.
We drove out to Eaton Hall, the seat of the Duke of Westminster, the
many-millioned lord of a good part of London. It is a palace,
high-roofed, marble-columned, vast, magnificent, everything but
homelike, and perhaps homelike to persons born and bred in such
edifices. A painter like Paul Veronese finds a palace like this not too
grand for his banqueting scenes. But to those who live, as most of us
do, in houses of moderate dimensions, snug, comfortable, which the
owner's presence fills sufficiently, leaving room for a few visitors, a
vast marble palace is disheartening and uninviting. I never get into a
very large and lofty saloon without feeling as if I were a weak solution
of myself,--my personality almost drowned out in the flood of space
about me. The wigwam is more homelike than the cavern. Our wooden houses
are a better kind of wigwam; the marble palaces are artificial caverns,
vast, resonant, chilling, good to visit, not desirable to live in, for
most of us. One's individuality should betray itself in all that
surrounds him; he should _secrete_ his shell, like a mollusk; if he
can sprinkle a few pearls through it, so much the better. It is best,
perhaps, that one should avoid being a duke and living in a
palace,--that is, if he has his choice in the robing chamber where souls
are fitted with their earthly garments.
One of the most interesting parts of my visit to Eaton Hall was my tour
through the stables. The Duke is a famous breeder and lover of the turf.
Mr. Rathbone and myself soon made the acquaintance of the chief of the
stable department. Readers of Homer do not want to be reminded that
_hippodamoio_, horse-subduer, is the genitive of an epithet applied
as a chief honor to the most illustrious heroes. It is the last word of
the last line of the Iliad, and fitly closes the account of the funeral
pageant of Hector, the tamer of horses. We Americans are a little shy of
confessing that any title or conventional grandeur makes an impression
upon us. If at home we wince before any official with a sense of
blighted inferiority, it is by general confession the clerk at the hotel
office. There is an excuse for this, inasmuch as he holds our destinies
in his hands, and decides whether, in case of accident, we shall have to
jump from the third or sixth story window. Lesser grandeurs do not find
us very impressible. There is, however, something about the man who
deals in horses which takes down the spirit, however proud, of him who
is unskilled in equestrian matters and unused to the horse-lover's
vocabulary. We followed the master of the stables, meekly listening and
once in a while questioning. I had to fall back on my reserves, and
summoned up memories half a century old to gain the respect and win the
confidence of the great horse-subduer. He showed us various fine
animals, some in their stalls, some outside of them. Chief of all was
the renowned Bend Or, a Derby winner, a noble and beautiful bay,
destined in a few weeks to gain new honors on the same turf in the
triumph of his offspring Ormonde, whose acquaintance we shall make
by-and-by.
The next day, Tuesday, May 11th, at 4.25, we took the train for London.
We had a saloon car, which had been thoughtfully secured for us through
unseen, not unsuspected, agencies, which had also beautified the
compartment with flowers.
Here are some of my first impressions of England as seen from the
carriage and from the cars.--How very English! I recall Birket Foster's
Pictures of English Landscape,--a beautiful, poetical series of views,
but hardly more poetical than the reality. How thoroughly England _is
groomed_! Our New England out-of-doors landscape often looks as if it
had just got out of bed, and had not finished its toilet. The glowing
green of everything strikes me: green hedges in place of our
rail-fences, always ugly, and our rude stone-walls, which are not
wanting in a certain look of fitness approaching to comeliness, and are
really picturesque when lichen-coated, but poor features of landscape as
compared to these universal hedges. I am disappointed in the trees, so
far; I have not seen one large tree as yet. Most of those I see are of
very moderate dimensions, feathered all the way up their long slender
trunks, with a lop-sided mop of leaves at the top, like a wig which has
slipped awry. I trust that I am not finding everything _couleur de
rose_; but I certainly do find the cheeks of children and young
persons of such brilliant rosy hue as I do not remember that I have ever
seen before. I am almost ready to think this and that child's face has
been colored from a pink saucer. If the Saxon youth exposed for sale at
Rome, in the days of Pope Gregory the Great, had complexions like these
children, no wonder that the pontiff exclaimed, Not _Angli_, but
_angeli_! All this may sound a little extravagant, but I am giving
my impressions without any intentional exaggeration. How far these first
impressions may be modified by after-experiences there will be time
enough to find out and to tell. It is better to set them down at once
just as they are. A first impression is one never to be repeated; the
second look will see much that was not noticed before, but it will not
reproduce the sharp lines of the _first proof_, which is always
interesting, no matter what the eye or the mind fixes upon. "I see men
as trees walking." That first experience could not be mended. When
Dickens landed in Boston, he was struck with the brightness of all the
objects he saw,--buildings, signs, and so forth. When I landed in
Liverpool, everything looked very dark, very dingy, very massive, in the
streets I drove through. So in London, but in a week it all seemed
natural enough.
We got to the hotel where we had engaged quarters, at eleven o'clock in
the evening of Wednesday, the 12th of May. Everything was ready for
us,--a bright fire blazing and supper waiting. When we came to look at
the accommodations, we found they were not at all adapted to our needs.
It was impossible to stay there another night. So early the next morning
we sent out our courier-maid, a dove from the ark, to find us a place
where we could rest the soles of our feet. London is a nation of
something like four millions of inhabitants, and one does not feel easy
without he has an assured place of shelter. The dove flew all over the
habitable districts of the city,--inquired at as many as twenty houses.
No roosting-place for our little flock of three. At last the good angel
who followed us everywhere, in one shape or another, pointed the
wanderer to a place which corresponded with all our requirements and
wishes. This was at No. 17 Dover Street, Mackellar's Hotel, where we
found ourselves comfortably lodged and well cared for during the whole
time we were in London. It was close to Piccadilly and to Bond Street.
Near us, in the same range, were Brown's Hotel and Batt's Hotel, both
widely known to the temporary residents of London.
We were but partially recovered from the fatigues and trials of the
voyage when our arrival pulled the string of the social shower-bath, and
the invitations began pouring down upon us so fast that we caught our
breath, and felt as if we should be smothered. The first evening saw us
at a great dinner-party at our well-remembered friend Lady Harcourt's.
Twenty guests, celebrities and agreeable persons, with or without
titles. The tables were radiant with silver, glistening with choice
porcelain, blazing with a grand show of tulips. This was our "baptism of
fire" in that long conflict which lasts through the London season. After
dinner came a grand reception, most interesting, but fatiguing to
persons hardly as yet in good condition for social service. We lived
through it, however, and enjoyed meeting so many friends, known and
unknown, who were very cordial and pleasant in their way of receiving
us.
It was plain that we could not pretend to answer all the invitations
which flooded our tables. If we had attempted it, we should have found
no time for anything else. A secretary was evidently a matter of
immediate necessity. Through the kindness of Mrs. Pollock, we found a
young lady who was exactly fitted for the place. She was installed in
the little room intended for her, and began the work of accepting with
pleasure and regretting our inability, of acknowledging the receipt of
books, flowers, and other objects, and being very sorry that we could
not subscribe to this good object and attend that meeting in behalf of a
deserving charity,--in short, writing almost everything for us except
autographs, which I can warrant were always genuine. The poor young lady
was almost tired out sometimes, having to stay at her table, on one
occasion, so late as eleven in the evening, to get through her day's
work. I simplified matters for her by giving her a set of formulae as a
base to start from, and she proved very apt at the task of modifying
each particular letter to suit its purpose.
From this time forward continued a perpetual round of social
engagements. Breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, teas, receptions with
spread tables, two, three, and four deep of an evening, with receiving
company at our own rooms, took up the day, so that we had very little
time for common sight-seeing.
Of these kinds of entertainments, the breakfast, though pleasant enough
when the company is agreeable, as I always found it, is the least
convenient of all times and modes of visiting. You have already
interviewed one breakfast, and are expecting soon to be coquetting with
a tempting luncheon. If one had as many stomachs as a ruminant, he would
not mind three or four serious meals a day, not counting the tea as one
of them. The luncheon is a very convenient affair: it does not require
special dress; it is informal; it is soon over, and may be made light or
heavy, as one chooses. The afternoon tea is almost a necessity in London
life. It is considered useful as "a pick me up," and it serves an
admirable purpose in the social system. It costs the household hardly
any trouble or expense. It brings people together in the easiest
possible way, for ten minutes or an hour, just as their engagements or
fancies may settle it. A cup of tea at the right moment does for the
virtuous reveller all that Falstaff claims for a good sherris-sack, or
at least the first half of its "twofold operation:" "It ascends me into
the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapors
which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of
nimble, fiery and delectable shapes, which delivered over to the voice,
the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit."
But it must have the right brain to work upon, and I doubt if there is
any brain to which it is so congenial and from which it brings so much
as that of a first-rate London old lady. I came away from the great city
with the feeling that this most complex product of civilization was
nowhere else developed to such perfection. The octogenarian Londoness
has been in society,--let us say the highest society,--all her days. She
is as tough as an old macaw, or she would not have lasted so long. She
has seen and talked with all the celebrities of three generations, all
the beauties of at least half a dozen decades. Her wits have been kept
bright by constant use, and as she is free of speech it requires some
courage to face her. Yet nobody can be more agreeable, even to young
persons, than one of these precious old dowagers. A great beauty is
almost certainly thinking how she looks while one is talking with her;
an authoress is waiting to have one praise her book; but a grand old
lady, who loves London society, who lives in it, who understands young
people and all sorts of people, with her high-colored recollections of
the past and her grand-maternal interests in the new generation, is the
best of companions, especially over a cup of tea just strong enough to
stir up her talking ganglions.
A breakfast, a lunch, a tea, is a circumstance, an occurrence, in social
life, but a dinner is an event. It is the full-blown flower of that
cultivated growth of which those lesser products are the buds. I will
not try to enumerate, still less to describe, the various entertainments
to which we were invited, and many of which we attended. Among the
professional friends I found or made during this visit to London, none
were more kindly attentive than Dr. Priestley, who, with his charming
wife, the daughter of the late Robert Chambers, took more pains to carry
out our wishes than we could have asked or hoped for. At his house I
first met Sir James Paget and Sir William Gull, long well known to me,
as to the medical profession everywhere, as preëminent in their several
departments. If I were an interviewer or a newspaper reporter, I should
be tempted to give the impression which the men and women of distinction
I met made upon me; but where all were cordial, where all made me feel
as nearly as they could that I belonged where I found myself, whether
the ceiling were a low or a lofty one, I do not care to differentiate my
hosts and my other friends. _Fortemque Gyan fortemque Cloanthum_,
--I left my microscope and my test-papers at home.
Our friends, several of them, had a pleasant way of sending their
carriages to give us a drive in the Park, where, except in certain
permitted regions, the common numbered vehicles are not allowed to
enter. Lady Harcourt sent her carriage for us to go to her sister's,
Mrs. Mildmay's, where we had a pleasant little "tea," and met one of the
most agreeable and remarkable of those London old ladies I have spoken
of. For special occasions we hired an unnumbered carriage, with
professionally equipped driver and footman.
Mrs. Bloomfield Moore sent her carriage for us to take us to a lunch at
her house, where we met Mr. Browning, Sir Henry and Lady Layard, Oscar
Wilde and his handsome wife, and other well-known guests. After lunch,
recitations, songs, etc. House full of pretty things. Among other
curiosities a portfolio of drawings illustrating Keeley's motor, which,
up to this time, has manifested a remarkably powerful _vis
inertice_, but which promises miracles. In the evening a grand
reception at Lady Granville's, beginning (for us, at least) at eleven
o'clock. The house a palace, and A---- thinks there were a thousand
people there. We made the tour of the rooms, saw many great personages,
had to wait for our carriage a long time, but got home at one o'clock.
English people have queer notions about iced-water and ice-cream. "You
will surely die, eating such cold stuff," said a lady to my companion.
"Oh, no," she answered, "but I should certainly die were I to drink your
two cups of strong tea." I approved of this "counter" on the teacup, but
I did not think either of them was in much danger.
The next day Rev. Mr. Haweis sent his carriage, and we drove in the
Park. In the afternoon we went to our Minister's to see the American
ladies who had been presented at the drawing-room. After this, both of
us were glad to pass a day or two in comparative quiet, except that we
had a room full of visitors. So many persons expressed a desire to make
our acquaintance that we thought it would be acceptable to them if we
would give a reception ourselves. We were thinking how we could manage
it with our rooms at the hotel, which were not arranged so that they
could be thrown together. Still, we were planning to make the best of
them, when Dr. and Mrs. Priestley suggested that we should receive our
company at their house. This was a surprise, and a most welcome one, and
A---- and her kind friend busied themselves at once about the
arrangements.
We went to a luncheon at Lansdowne House, Lord Rosebery's residence, not
far from our hotel. My companion tells a little incident which may
please an American six-year-old: "The eldest of the four children,
Sibyl, a pretty, bright child of six, told me that she wrote a letter to
the Queen. I said, 'Did you begin, Dear Queen?' 'No,' she answered, 'I
began, Your Majesty, and signed myself, Your little humble servant,
Sibyl.'" A very cordial and homelike reception at this great house,
where a couple of hours were passed most agreeably.
On the following Sunday I went to Westminster Abbey to hear a sermon
from Canon Harford on A Cheerful Life. A lively, wholesome, and
encouraging discourse, such as it would do many a forlorn New England
congregation good to hear. In the afternoon we both went together to the
Abbey. Met our Beverly neighbor, Mrs. Vaughan, and adopted her as one of
our party. The seats we were to have were full, and we had to be stowed
where there was any place that would hold us. I was smuggled into a
stall, going through long and narrow passages, between crowded rows of
people, and found myself at last with a big book before me and a set of
official personages around me, whose duties I did not clearly
understand. I thought they might be mutes, or something of that sort,
salaried to look grave and keep quiet. After service we took tea with
Dean Bradley, and after tea we visited the Jerusalem Chamber. I had been
twice invited to weddings in that famous room: once to the marriage of
my friend Motley's daughter, then to that of Mr. Frederick Locker's
daughter to Lionel Tennyson, whose recent death has been so deeply
mourned. I never expected to see that Jerusalem in which Harry the
Fourth died, but there I found myself in the large panelled chamber,
with all its associations. The older memories came up but vaguely; an
American finds it as hard to call back anything over two or three
centuries old as a sucking-pump to draw up water from a depth of over
thirty-three feet and a fraction. After this A---- went to a musical
party, dined with the Vaughans, and had a good time among American
friends.
The next evening we went to the Lyceum Theatre to see Mr. Irving. He had
placed the Royal box at our disposal, so we invited our friends the
Priestleys to go with us, and we all enjoyed the evening mightily.
Between the scenes we went behind the curtain, and saw the very curious
and admirable machinery of the dramatic spectacle. We made the
acquaintance of several imps and demons, who were got up wonderfully
well. Ellen Terry was as fascinating as ever. I remembered that once
before I had met her and Mr. Irving behind the scenes. It was at the
Boston Theatre, and while I was talking with them a very heavy piece of
scenery came crashing down, and filled the whole place with dust. It was
but a short distance from where we were standing, and I could not help
thinking how near our several life-dramas came to a simultaneous
_exeunt omnes_.
A long visit from a polite interviewer, shopping, driving, calling,
arranging about the people to be invited to our reception, and an
agreeable dinner at Chelsea with my American friend, Mrs. Merritt,
filled up this day full enough, and left us in good condition for the
next, which was to be a very busy one.
In the Introduction to these papers, I mentioned the fact that more than
half a century ago I went to the famous Derby race at Epsom. I
determined, if possible, to see the Derby of 1886, as I had seen that of
1834. I must have spoken of this intention to some interviewer, for I
find the following paragraph in an English sporting newspaper, "The
Field," for May 29th, 1886:--
"The Derby has always been the one event in the racing year which
statesmen, philosophers, poets, essayists, and _littérateurs_
desire to see once in their lives. A few years since Mr. Gladstone was
induced by Lord Granville and Lord Wolverton to run down to Epsom on the
Derby day. The impression produced upon the Prime Minister's sensitive
and emotional mind was that the mirth and hilarity displayed by his
compatriots upon Epsom race-course was Italian rather than English in
its character. On the other hand, Gustave Doré, who also saw the Derby
for the first and only time in his life, exclaimed, as he gazed with
horror upon the faces below him, _Quelle scène brutale!_ We wonder
to which of these two impressions Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes inclined, if
he went last Wednesday to Epsom! Probably the well-known, etc., etc.--Of
one thing Dr. Holmes may rest finally satisfied: the Derby of 1886 may
possibly have seemed to him far less exciting than that of 1834; but
neither in 1834 nor in any other year was the great race ever won by a
better sportsman or more honorable man than the Duke of Westminster."
My desire to see the Derby of this year was of the same origin and
character as that which led me to revisit many scenes which I
remembered. I cared quite as much about renewing old impressions as
about getting new ones. I enjoyed everything which I had once seen all
the more from the blending of my recollections with the present as it
was before me.
The Derby day of 1834 was exceedingly windy and dusty. Our party, riding
on the outside of the coach, was half smothered with the dust, and
arrived in a very deteriorated condition, but recompensed for it by the
extraordinary sights we had witnessed. There was no train in those days,
and the whole road between London and Epsom was choked with vehicles of
all kinds, from four-in-hands to donkey-carts and wheelbarrows. My
friends and I mingled freely in the crowds, and saw all the "humours" of
the occasion. The thimble-riggers were out in great force, with their
light, movable tables, the cups or thimbles, and the "little jokers,"
and the coachman, the sham gentleman, the country greenhorn, all
properly got up and gathered about the table. I think we had "Aunt
Sally," too,--the figure with a pipe in her mouth, which one might shy a
stick at for a penny or two and win something, I forget what. The
clearing the course of stragglers, and the chasing about of the
frightened little dog who had got in between the thick ranks of
spectators, reminded me of what I used to see on old "artillery
election" days.
It was no common race that I went to see in 1834. "It is asserted in the
columns of a contemporary that Plenipotentiary was absolutely the best
horse of the century." This was the winner of the race I saw so long
ago. Herring's colored portrait, which I have always kept, shows him as
a great, powerful chestnut horse, well deserving the name of "bullock,"
which one of the jockeys applied to him. "Rumor credits Dr. Holmes," so
"The Field" says, "with desiring mentally to compare his two Derbies
with each other." I was most fortunate in my objects of comparison. The
horse I was about to see win was not unworthy of being named with the
renowned champion of my earlier day. I quote from a writer in the
"London Morning Post," whose words, it will be seen, carry authority
with them:--
"Deep as has hitherto been my reverence for Plenipotentiary, Bay
Middleton, and Queen of Trumps from hearsay, and for Don John, Crucifix,
etc., etc., from my own personal knowledge, I am inclined to award the
palm to Ormonde as the best three-year-old I have ever seen during close
upon half a century's connection with the turf."
Ormonde, the Duke of Westminster's horse, was the son of that other
winner of the Derby, Bend Or, whom I saw at Eaton Hall.
Perhaps some coeval of mine may think it was a rather youthful idea to
go to the race. I cannot help that. I was off on my first long vacation
for half a century, and had a right to my whims and fancies. But it was
one thing to go in with a vast crowd at five and twenty, and another
thing to run the risks of the excursion at more than thrice that age. I
looked about me for means of going safely, and could think of nothing
better than to ask one of the pleasantest and kindest of gentlemen, to
whom I had a letter from Mr. Winthrop, at whose house I had had the
pleasure of making his acquaintance. Lord Rosebery suggested that the
best way would be for me to go in the special train which was to carry
the Prince of Wales. First, then, I was to be introduced to his Royal
Highness, which office was kindly undertaken by our very obliging and
courteous Minister, Mr. Phelps. After this all was easily arranged, and
I was cared for as well as if I had been Mr. Phelps himself. On the
grand stand I found myself in the midst of the great people, who were
all very natural, and as much at their ease as the rest of the world.
The Prince is of a lively temperament and a very cheerful aspect,--a
young girl would call him "jolly" as well as "nice." I recall the story
of "Mr. Pope" and his Prince of Wales, as told by Horace Walpole. "Mr.
Pope, you don't love princes." "Sir, I beg your pardon." "Well, you
don't love kings, then." "Sir, I own I love the lion best before his
claws are grown." Certainly, nothing in Prince Albert Edward suggests
any aggressive weapons or tendencies. The lovely, youthful-looking,
gracious Alexandra, the always affable and amiable Princess Louise, the
tall youth who sees the crown and sceptre afar off in his dreams, the
slips of girls so like many school misses we left behind us,--all these
grand personages, not being on exhibition, but off enjoying themselves,
just as I was and as other people were, seemed very much like their
fellow-mortals. It is really easier to feel at home with the highest
people in the land than with the awkward commoner who was knighted
yesterday. When "My Lord and Sir Paul" came into the Club which
Goldsmith tells us of, the hilarity of the evening was instantly
checked. The entrance of a dignitary like the present Prince of Wales
would not have spoiled the fun of the evening. If there is any one
accomplishment specially belonging to princes, it is that of making the
persons they meet feel at ease.
The grand stand to which I was admitted was a little privileged
republic. I remember Thackeray's story of his asking some simple
question of a royal or semi-royal personage whom he met in the courtyard
of an hotel, which question his Highness did not answer, but called a
subordinate to answer for him. I had been talking some time with a tall,
good-looking gentleman, whom I took for a nobleman to whom I had been
introduced. Something led me to think I was mistaken in the identity of
this gentleman. I asked him, at last, if he were not So and So. "No," he
said, "I am Prince Christian." You are a Christian prince, anyhow, I
said to myself, if I may judge by your manners.
I once made a similar mistake in addressing a young fellow-citizen of
some social pretensions. I apologized for my error.
"No offence," he answered.
_Offence_ indeed! I should hope not. But he had not the "_manière
de prince_", or he would never have used that word.
I must say something about the race I had taken so much pains to see.
There was a preliminary race, which excited comparatively little
interest. After this the horses were shown in the paddock, and many of
our privileged party went down from the stand to look at them. Then they
were brought out, smooth, shining, fine-drawn, frisky, spirit-stirring
to look upon,--most beautiful of all the bay horse Ormonde, who could
hardly be restrained, such was his eagerness for action. The horses
disappear in the distance.--They are off,--not yet distinguishable, at
least to me. A little waiting time, and they swim into our ken, but in
what order of precedence it is as yet not easy to say. Here they come!
Two horses have emerged from the ruck, and are sweeping, rushing,
storming, towards us, almost side by side. One slides by the other, half
a length, a length, a length and a half. Those are Archer's colors, and
the beautiful bay Ormonde flashes by the line, winner of the Derby of
1886. "The Bard" has made a good fight for the first place, and comes in
second. Poor Archer, the king of the jockeys! He will bestride no more
Derby winners. A few weeks later he died by his own hand.
While the race was going on, the yells of the betting crowd beneath us
were incessant. It must have been the frantic cries and movements of
these people that caused Gustave Doré to characterize it as a brutal
scene. The vast mob which thronged the wide space beyond the shouting
circle just round us was much like that of any other fair, so far as I
could see from my royal perch. The most conspicuous object was a man on
an immensely tall pair of stilts, stalking about among the crowd. I
think it probable that I had as much enjoyment in forming one of the
great mob in 1834 as I had among the grandeurs in 1886, but the last is
pleasanter to remember and especially to tell of.
After the race we had a luncheon served us, a comfortable and
substantial one, which was very far from unwelcome. I did not go to the
Derby to bet on the winner. But as I went in to luncheon, I passed a
gentleman standing in custody of a plate half covered with sovereigns.
He politely asked me if I would take a little paper from a heap there
was lying by the plate, and add a sovereign to the collection already
there. I did so, and, unfolding my paper, found it was a blank, and
passed on. The pool, as I afterwards learned, fell to the lot of the
Turkish Ambassador. I found it very windy and uncomfortable on the more
exposed parts of the grand stand, and was glad that I had taken a shawl
with me, in which I wrapped myself as if I had been on shipboard. This,
I told my English friends, was the more civilized form of the Indian's
blanket. My report of the weather does not say much for the English May,
but it is generally agreed upon that this is a backward and unpleasant
spring.
After my return from the race we went to a large dinner at Mr. Phelps's
house, where we met Mr. Browning again, and the Lord Chancellor
Herschell, among others. Then to Mrs. Cyril Flower's, one of the most
sumptuous houses in London; and after that to Lady Rothschild's, another
of the private palaces, with ceilings lofty as firmaments, and walls
that might have been copied from the New Jerusalem. There was still
another great and splendid reception at Lady Dalhousie's, and a party at
Mrs. Smith's, but we were both tired enough to be willing to go home
after what may be called a pretty good day's work at enjoying ourselves.
We had been a fortnight in London, and were now inextricably entangled
in the meshes of the golden web of London social life.
II.
The reader who glances over these papers, and, finding them too full of
small details and the lesser personal matters which belong naturally to
private correspondences, turns impatiently from them, has my entire
sympathy and good-will. He is not one of those for whom these pages are
meant. Having no particular interest in the writer or his affairs, he
does not care for the history of "the migrations from the blue bed to
the brown" and the many Mistress Quicklyisms of circumstantial
narrative. Yet all this may be pleasant reading to relatives and
friends.
But I must not forget that a new generation of readers has come into
being since I have been writing for the public, and that a new
generation of aspiring and brilliant authors has grown into general
recognition. The dome of Boston State House, which is the centre of my
little universe, was glittering in its fresh golden pellicle before I
had reached the scriptural boundary of life. It has lost its lustre now,
and the years which have dulled its surface have whitened the dome of
that fragile structure in which my consciousness holds the session of
its faculties. Time is not to be cheated. It is easy to talk of
perennial youth, and to toy with the flattering fictions which every
ancient personage accepts as true so far as he himself is concerned, and
laughs at as foolish talk when he hears them applied to others. When, in
my exulting immaturity, I wrote the lines not unknown to the reading
public under the name of "The Last Leaf", I spoke of the possibility
that I myself might linger on the old bough until the buds and blossoms
of a new spring were opening and spreading all around me. I am not as
yet the solitary survivor of my literary contemporaries, and,
remembering who my few coevals are, it may well be hoped that I shall
not be. But I feel lonely, very lonely, in the pages through which I
wander. These are new names in the midst of which I find my own. In
another sense I am very far from alone. I have daily assurances that I
have a constituency of known and unknown personal friends, whose
indulgence I have no need of asking. I know there are readers enough who
will be pleased to follow me in my brief excursion, _because I am
myself_, and will demand no better reason. If I choose to write for
them, I do no injury to those for whom my personality is an object of
indifference. They will find on every shelf some publications which are
not intended for them, and which they prefer to let alone. No person is
expected to help himself to everything set before him at a public table.
I will not, therefore, hesitate to go on with the simple story of our
Old World experiences.
Thanks to my Indian blanket,--my shawl, I mean,--I found myself nothing
the worse for my manifold adventures of the 27th of May. The cold wind
sweeping over Epsom downs reminded me of our own chilling easterly
breezes; especially the northeasterly ones, which are to me less
disagreeable than the southeasterly. But the poetical illusion about an
English May,--
"Zephyr with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying,"--
and all that, received a shrewd thrust. Zephyr ought to have come in an
ulster, and offered Aurora a warm petticoat. However, in spite of all
difficulties, I brought off my recollections of the Derby of 1886 in
triumph, and am now waiting for the colored portrait of Ormonde with
Archer on his back,--Archer, the winner of five Derby races, one of
which was won by the American horse Iroquois. When that picture, which I
am daily expecting, arrives, I shall have it framed and hung by the side
of Herring's picture of Plenipotentiary, the horse I saw win the Derby
in 1834. These two, with an old portrait of the great Eclipse, who, as
my engraving of 1780 (Stubbs's) says, "was never beat, or ever had
occation for Whip or Spur," will constitute my entire sporting gallery.
I have not that vicious and demoralizing love of horse-flesh which makes
it next to impossible to find a perfectly honest hippophile. But a racer
is the realization of an ideal quadruped,--
"A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift;"
so ethereal, so bird-like, that it is no wonder that the horse about
whom those old story-tellers lied so stoutly,--telling of his running a
mile in a minute,--was called Flying Childers.
The roses in Mrs. Pfeiffer's garden were hardly out of flower when I
lunched with her at her pretty villa at Putney. There I met Mr.
Browning, Mr. Holman Hunt, Mrs. Ritchie, Miss Anna Swanwick, the
translator of Æschylus, and other good company, besides that of my
entertainer.
One of my very agreeable experiences was a call from a gentleman with
whom I had corresponded, but whom I had never met. This was Mr. John
Bellows, of Gloucester, publisher, printer, man of letters, or rather of
words; for he is the author of that truly remarkable little manual, "The
Bona Fide Pocket Dictionary of the French and English Languages." To the
review of this little book, which is dedicated to Prince Lucien
Bonaparte, the "London Times" devoted a full column. I never heard any
one who had used it speak of it except with admiration. The modest
Friend may be surprised to find himself at full length in my pages, but
those who know the little miracle of typography, its conciseness,
completeness, arrangement, will not wonder that I was gratified to see
the author, who sent it to me, and who has written me most interesting
letters on the local antiquities of Gloucester and its neighborhood.
We lunched that day at Lady Camperdown's, where we were happy to meet
Miss Frances Power Cobbe. In the afternoon we went by invitation to a
"tea and talk" at the Reverend Mr. Haweis's, at Chelsea. We found the
house close packed, but managed to get through the rooms, shaking
innumerable hands of the reverend gentleman's parishioners and other
visitors. It was very well arranged, so as not to be too fatiguing, and
we left the cordial gathering in good condition. We drove home with
Bishop and Mrs. Ellicott.
After this Sir James Paget called, and took me to a small and early
dinner-party; and A---- went with my secretary, the young lady of whom I
have spoken, to see "Human Nature," at Drury Lane Theatre.
On the following day, after dining with Lady Holland (wife of Sir Henry,
niece of Macaulay), we went across the street to our neighbor's, Lady
Stanley's. There was to be a great meeting of schoolmistresses, in whose
work her son, the Honorable Lyulph Stanley, is deeply interested. Alas!
The schoolma'ams were just leaving as we entered the door, and all we
saw of them was the trail of their descending robes. I was very sorry
for this, for I have a good many friends among our own schoolmistresses,
--friends whom I never saw, but know through the kind words they have
addressed to me.
No place in London looks more reserved and exclusive than Devonshire
House, standing back behind its high wall, extending along Piccadilly.
There is certainly nothing in its exterior which invites intrusion. We
had the pleasure of taking tea in the great house, accompanying our
American friend, Lady Harcourt, and were graciously received and
entertained by Lady Edward Cavendish. Like the other great houses, it is
a museum of paintings, statues, objects of interest of all sorts. It
must be confessed that it is pleasanter to go through the rooms with one
of the ladies of the household than under the lead of a liveried
servant. Lord Hartington came in while we were there. All the men who
are distinguished in political life become so familiar to the readers of
"Punch" in their caricatures, that we know them at sight. Even those who
can claim no such public distinction are occasionally the subjects of
the caricaturist, as some of us have found out for ourselves. A good
caricature, which seizes the prominent features and gives them the
character Nature hinted, but did not fully carry out, is a work of
genius. Nature herself is a remorseless caricaturist, as our daily
intercourse with our fellow men and women makes evident to us, and as is
curiously illustrated in the figures of Charles Lebrun, showing the
relations between certain human faces and those of various animals.
Hardly an English statesman in bodily presence could be mistaken by any
of "Punch's" readers.
On the same day that we made this quiet visit we attended a great and
ceremonious assembly. There were two parts in the programme, in the
first of which I was on the stage _solus_,--that is, without my
companion; in the second we were together. This day, Saturday, the 29th
of May, was observed as the Queen's birthday, although she was born on
the 24th. Sir William Harcourt gave a great dinner to the officials of
his department, and later in the evening Lady Rosebery held a reception
at the Foreign Office. On both these occasions everybody is expected to
be in court dress, but my host told me I might present myself in
ordinary evening dress. I thought that I might feel awkwardly among so
many guests, all in the wedding garments, knee-breeches and the rest,
without which I ventured among them. I never passed an easier evening in
any company than among these official personages. Sir William took me
under the shield of his ample presence, and answered all my questions
about the various notable personages at his table in a way to have made
my fortune if I had been a reporter. From the dinner I went to Mrs.
Gladstone's, at 10 Downing Street, where A---- called for me. She had
found a very small and distinguished company there, Prince Albert Victor
among the rest. At half past eleven we walked over to the Foreign Office
to Lady Rosebery's reception.
Here Mr. Gladstone was of course the centre of a group, to which I was
glad to add myself. His features are almost as familiar to me as my own,
for a photograph of him in his library has long stood on my revolving
bookcase, with a large lens before it. He is one of a small circle of
individuals in whom I have had and still have a special personal
interest. The year 1809, which introduced me to atmospheric existence,
was the birth-year of Gladstone, Tennyson, Lord Houghton, and Darwin. It
seems like an honor to have come into the world in such company, but it
is more likely to promote humility than vanity in a common mortal to
find himself coeval with such illustrious personages. Men born in the
same year watch each other, especially as the sands of life begin to run
low, as we can imagine so many damaged hour-glasses to keep an eye on
each other. Women, of course, never know who are their contemporaries.
Familiar to me as were the features of Mr. Gladstone, I looked upon him
with astonishment. For he stood before me with epaulets on his shoulders
and a rapier at his side, as military in his aspect as if he had been
Lord Wolseley, to whom I was introduced a short time afterwards. I was
fortunate enough to see and hear Mr. Gladstone on a still more memorable
occasion, and can afford to leave saying what were my impressions of the
very eminent statesman until I speak of that occasion.
A great number of invitations had been given out for the reception at
Lady Rosebery's,--over two thousand, my companion heard it said.
Whatever the number was, the crowd was very great,--so great that one
might well feel alarmed for the safety of any delicate person who was in
the _pack_ which formed itself at one place in the course of the
evening. Some obstruction must have existed _a fronte_, and the
_vis a tergo_ became fearful in its pressure on those who were
caught in the jam. I began thinking of the crushes in which I had been
caught, or which I had read and heard of: the terrible time at the
execution of Holloway and Haggerty, where some forty persons were
squeezed or trampled to death; the Brooklyn Theatre and other similar
tragedies; the crowd I was in at the unveiling of the statue on the
column of the Place Vendome, where I felt as one may suppose Giles Corey
did when, in his misery, he called for "more weight" to finish him. But
there was always a _deus ex machina_ for us when we were in
trouble. Looming up above the crowd was the smiling and encouraging
countenance of the ever active, always present, always helpful Mr.
Smalley. He cleared a breathing space before us. For a short time it was
really a formidable wedging together of people, and if a lady had
fainted in the press, she might have run a serious risk before she could
have been extricated. No more "marble halls" for us, if we had to
undergo the _peine forte et dure_ as the condition of our presence!
We were both glad to escape from this threatened asphyxia, and move
freely about the noble apartments. Lady Rosebery, who was kindness
itself, would have had us stay and sit down in comfort at the
supper-table, after the crowd had thinned, but we were tired with all we
had been through, and ordered our carriage. _Ordered our carriage!_
"I can call spirits from the vasty deep." ...
_But will they come when you do call for them?_"
The most formidable thing about a London party is getting away from it.
"C'est le _dernier_ pas qui coute." A crowd of anxious persons in
retreat is hanging about the windy door, and the breezy stairway, and
the airy hall.
A stentorian voice, hard as that of Rhadamanthus, exclaims,--
"Lady Vere de Vere's carriage stops the way!"
If my Lady Vere de Vere is not on hand, and that pretty quickly, off
goes her carriage, and the stern voice bawls again,--
"Mrs. Smith's carriage stops the way!"
Mrs. Smith's particular Smith may be worth his millions and live in his
marble palace; but if Mrs. Smith thinks her coachman is going to stand
with his horses at that door until she appears, she is mistaken, for she
is a minute late, and now the coach moves on, and Rhadamanthus calls
aloud,--
"Mrs. Brown's carriage stops the way!"
Half the lung fevers that carry off the great people are got waiting for
their carriages.
I know full well that many readers would be disappointed if I did not
mention some of the grand places and bring in some of the great names
that lend their lustre to London society. We were to go to a fine
musical party at Lady Rothschild's on the evening of the 30th of May. It
happened that the day was Sunday, and if we had been as punctilious as
some New England Sabbatarians, we might have felt compelled to decline
the tempting invitation. But the party was given by a daughter of
Abraham, and in every Hebrew household the true Sabbath was over. We
were content for that evening to shelter ourselves under the old
dispensation.
The party, or concert, was a very brilliant affair. Patti sang to us,
and a tenor, and a violinist played for us. How we two Americans came to
be in so favored a position I do not know; all I do know is that we were
shown to our places, and found them very agreeable ones. In the same row
of seats was the Prince of Wales, two chairs off from A----'s seat.
Directly in front of A---- was the Princess of Wales, "in ruby velvet,
with six rows of pearls encircling her throat, and two more strings
falling quite low;" and next her, in front of me, the startling presence
of Lady de Grey, formerly Lady Lonsdale, and before that Gladys Herbert.
On the other side of the Princess sat the Grand Duke Michael of Russia.
As we are among the grandest of the grandees, I must enliven my sober
account with an extract from my companion's diary:--
"There were several great beauties there, Lady Claude Hamilton, a
queenly blonde, being one. Minnie Stevens Paget had with her the pretty
Miss Langdon, of New York. Royalty had one room for supper, with its
attendant lords and ladies. Lord Rothschild took me down to a long table
for a sit-down supper,--there were some thirty of us. The most superb
pink orchids were on the table. The [Thane] of ---- sat next me, and how
he stared before he was introduced! ... This has been the finest party
we have been to, sitting comfortably in such a beautiful ball-room,
gazing at royalty in the flesh, and at the shades of departed beauties
on the wall, by Sir Joshua and Gainsborough. It was a new experience to
find that the royal lions fed upstairs, and mixed animals below!"
A visit to Windsor had been planned, under the guidance of a friend
whose kindness had already shown itself in various forms, and who,
before we left England, did for us more than we could have thought of
owing to any one person. This gentleman, Mr. Willett, of Brighton,
called with Mrs. Willett to take us on the visit which had been arranged
between us.
Windsor Castle, which everybody knows, or can easily learn, all about,
is one of the largest of those huge caverns in which the descendants of
the original cave men, when they have reached the height of human
grandeur, delight to shelter themselves. It seems as if such a great
hollow quarry of rock would strike a chill through every tenant, but
modern improvements reach even the palaces of kings and queens, and the
regulation temperature of the castle, or of its inhabited portions, is
fixed at sixty-five degrees of Fahrenheit. The royal standard was not
floating from the tower of the castle, and everything was quiet and
lonely. We saw all we wanted to,--pictures, furniture, and the rest. My
namesake, the Queen's librarian, was not there to greet us, or I should
have had a pleasant half-hour in the library with that very polite
gentleman, whom I had afterwards the pleasure of meeting in London.
After going through all the apartments in the castle that we cared to
see, or our conductress cared to show us, we drove in the park, along
the "three-mile walk," and in the by-roads leading from it. The
beautiful avenue, the open spaces with scattered trees here and there,
made this a most delightful excursion. I saw many fine oaks, one about
sixteen feet of honest girth, but no one which was very remarkable. I
wished I could have compared the handsomest of them with one in Beverly,
which I never look at without taking my hat off. This is a young tree,
with a future before it, if barbarians do not meddle with it, more
conspicuous for its spread than its circumference, stretching not very
far from a hundred feet from bough-end to bough-end. I do not think I
saw a specimen of the British _Quercus robur_ of such consummate
beauty. But I know from Evelyn and Strutt what England has to boast of,
and I will not challenge the British oak.
Two sensations I had in Windsor park, or forest, for I am not quite sure
of the boundary which separates them. The first was the lovely sight of
the _hawthorn_ in full bloom. I had always thought of the hawthorn
as a pretty shrub, growing in hedges; as big as a currant bush or a
barberry bush, or some humble plant of that character. I was surprised
to see it as a tree, standing by itself, and making the most delicious
roof a pair of young lovers could imagine to sit under. It looked at a
little distance like a young apple-tree covered with new-fallen snow. I
shall never see the word hawthorn in poetry again without the image of
the snowy but far from chilling canopy rising before me. It is the very
bower of young love, and must have done more than any growth of the
forest to soften the doom brought upon man by the fruit of the forbidden
tree. No wonder that
"In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of
love,"
with the object of his affections awaiting him in this boudoir of
nature. What a pity that Zekle, who courted Huldy over the apples she
was peeling, could not have made love as the bucolic youth does, when
"Every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale!"
(I will have it _love_-tale, in spite of Warton's comment.) But
I suppose it does not make so much difference, for love transmutes the
fruit in Huldy's lap into the apples of the Hesperides.
In this way it is that the associations with the poetry we remember come
up when we find ourselves surrounded by English scenery. The great poets
build temples of song, and fill them with images and symbols which move
us almost to adoration; the lesser minstrels fill a panel or gild a
cornice here and there, and make our hearts glad with glimpses of
beauty. I felt all this as I looked around and saw the hawthorns in full
bloom, in the openings among the oaks and other trees of the forest.
Presently I heard a sound to which I had never listened before, and
which I have never heard since:--
Coooo--coooo!
Nature had sent one cuckoo from her aviary to sing his double note for
me, that I might not pass away from her pleasing show without once
hearing the call so dear to the poets. It was the last day of spring. A
few more days, and the solitary voice might have been often heard; for
the bird becomes so common as to furnish Shakespeare an image to fit
"the skipping king:"--
"He was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard, not regarded."
For the lyric poets the cuckoo is "companion of the spring," "darling of
the spring;" coming with the daisy, and the primrose, and the blossoming
sweet-pea. Where the sound came from I could not tell; it puzzled
Wordsworth, with younger eyes than mine, to find whence issued
"that cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky."
Only one hint of the prosaic troubled my emotional delight: I could not
help thinking how capitally the little rogue imitated the cuckoo clock,
with the sound of which I was pretty well acquainted.
On our return from Windsor we had to get ready for another great dinner
with our Minister, Mr. Phelps. As we are in the habit of considering our
great officials as public property, and as some of my readers want as
many glimpses of high life as a decent regard to republican
sensibilities will permit, I will borrow a few words from the diary to
which I have often referred:--
"The Princess Louise was there with the Marquis, and I had the best
opportunity of seeing how they receive royalty at private houses. Mr.
and Mrs. Phelps went down to the door to meet her the moment she came,
and then Mr. Phelps entered the drawing-room with the Princess on his
arm, and made the tour of the room with her, she bowing and speaking to
each one of us. Mr. Goschen took me in to dinner, and Lord Lorne was on
my other side. All of the flowers were of the royal color, red. It was a
grand dinner.... The Austrian Ambassador, Count Karoli, took Mrs. Phelps
in [to dinner], his position being higher than that of even the Duke [of
Argyll], who sat upon her right."
It was a very rich experience for a single day: the stately abode of
royalty, with all its manifold historical recollections, the magnificent
avenue of forest trees, the old oaks, the hawthorn in full bloom, and
the one cry of the cuckoo, calling me back to Nature in her spring-time
freshness and glory; then, after that, a great London dinner-party at a
house where the kind host and the gracious hostess made us feel at home,
and where we could meet the highest people in the land,--the people whom
we who live in a simpler way at home are naturally pleased to be with
under such auspices. What of all this shall I remember longest? Let me
not seem ungrateful to my friends who planned the excursion for us, or
to those who asked us to the brilliant evening entertainment, but I feel
as Wordsworth felt about the cuckoo,--he will survive all the other
memories.
"And I can listen to thee yet,
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again."
Nothing is more hackneyed than an American's description of his feelings
in the midst of the scenes and objects he has read of all his days, and
is looking upon for the first time. To each of us it appears in some
respects in the same way, but with a difference for every individual. We
may smile at Irving's emotions at the first sight of a distinguished
Englishman on his own soil,--the ingenious Mr. Roscoe, as an earlier
generation would have called him. Our tourists, who are constantly going
forward and back between England and America, lose all sense of the
special distinctions between the two countries which do not bear on
their personal convenience. Happy are those who go with unworn,
unsatiated sensibilities from the New World to the Old; as happy, it may
be, those who come from the Old World to the New, but of that I cannot
form a judgment.
On the first day of June we called by appointment upon Mr. Peel, the
Speaker of the House of Commons, and went through the Houses of
Parliament. We began with the train-bearer, then met the housekeeper,
and presently were joined by Mr. Palgrave. The "Golden Treasury" stands
on my drawing-room table at home, and the name on its title-page had a
familiar sound. This gentleman is, I believe, a near relative of
Professor Francis Turner Palgrave, its editor.
Among other things to which Mr. Palgrave called our attention was the
death-warrant of Charles the First. One name in the list of signers
naturally fixed our eyes upon it. It was that of John Dixwell. A lineal
descendant of the old regicide is very near to me by family connection,
Colonel Dixwell having come to this country, married, and left a
posterity, which has resumed the name, dropped for the sake of safety at
the time when he, Goffe, and Whalley, were in concealment in various
parts of New England.
We lunched with the Speaker, and had the pleasure of the company of
Archdeacon Farrar. In the afternoon we went to a tea at a very grand
house, where, as my companion says in her diary, "it took full six men
in red satin knee-breeches to let us in." Another grand personage asked
us to dine with her at her country place, but we were too full of
engagements. In the evening we went to a large reception at Mr. Gosse's.
It was pleasant to meet artists and scholars,--the kind of company to
which we are much used in our aesthetic city. I found our host as
agreeable at home as he was when in Boston, where he became a favorite,
both as a lecturer and as a visitor.
Another day we visited Stafford House, where Lord Ronald Gower, himself
an artist, did the honors of the house, showing us the pictures and
sculptures, his own included, in a very obliging and agreeable way. I
have often taken note of the resemblances of living persons to the
portraits and statues of their remote ancestors. In showing us the
portrait of one of his own far-back progenitors, Lord Ronald placed a
photograph of himself in the corner of the frame. The likeness was so
close that the photograph might seem to have been copied from the
painting, the dress only being changed. The Duke of Sutherland, who had
just come back from America, complained that the dinners and lunches had
used him up. I was fast learning how to sympathize with him.
Then to Grosvenor House to see the pictures. I best remember
Gainsborough's beautiful Blue Boy, commonly so called, from the color of
his dress, and Sir Joshua's Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, which
everybody knows in engravings. We lunched in clerical company that day,
at the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol's, with the Archbishop of York,
the Reverend Mr. Haweis, and others as guests. I told A---- that she was
not sufficiently impressed with her position at the side of an
archbishop; she was not _crumbling bread_ in her nervous
excitement. The company did not seem to remember Sydney Smith's remark
to the young lady next him at a dinner-party: "My dear, I see you are
nervous, by your crumbling your bread as you do. _I_ always crumble
bread when I sit by a bishop, and when I sit by an archbishop I crumble
bread with both hands." That evening I had the pleasure of dining with
the distinguished Mr. Bryce, whose acquaintance I made in our own
country, through my son, who has introduced me to many agreeable persons
of his own generation, with whose companionship I am glad to mend the
broken and merely fragmentary circle of old friendships.
The 3d of June was a memorable day for us, for on the evening of that
day we were to hold our reception. If Dean Bradley had proposed our
meeting our guests in the Jerusalem Chamber, I should hardly have been
more astonished. But these kind friends meant what they said, and put
the offer in such a shape that it was impossible to resist it. So we
sent out our cards to a few hundreds of persons,--those who we thought
might like invitations. I was particularly desirous that many members of
the medical profession whom I had not met, but who felt well disposed
towards me, should be at this gathering. The meeting was in every
respect a success. I wrote a prescription for as many baskets of
champagne as would be consistent with the well-being of our guests, and
such light accompaniments as a London company is wont to expect under
similar circumstances. My own recollections of the evening, unclouded by
its festivities, but confused by its multitudinous succession of
introductions, are about as definite as the Duke of Wellington's alleged
monosyllabic description of the battle of Waterloo. But A---- writes in
her diary: "From nine to twelve we stood, receiving over three hundred
people out of the four hundred and fifty we invited." As I did not go to
Europe to visit hospitals or museums, I might have missed seeing some of
those professional brethren whose names I hold in honor and whose
writings are in my library. If any such failed to receive our cards of
invitation, it was an accident which, if I had known, I should have
deeply regretted. So far as we could judge by all we heard, our
unpretentious party gave general satisfaction. Many different social
circles were represented, but it passed off easily and agreeably. I can
say this more freely, as the credit of it belongs so largely to the care
and self-sacrificing efforts of Dr. Priestley and his charming wife.
I never refused to write in the birthday book or the album of the
humblest schoolgirl or schoolboy, and I could not refuse to set my name,
with a verse from one of my poems, in the album of the Princess of
Wales, which was sent me for that purpose. It was a nice new book, with
only two or three names in it, and those of musical composers,--
Rubinstein's, I think, was one of them,--so that I felt honored by
the great lady's request. I ought to describe the book, but I only
remember that it was quite large and sumptuously elegant, and that
I copied into it the last verse of a poem of mine called "The Chambered
Nautilus," as I have often done for plain republican albums.
The day after our simple reception was notable for three social events
in which we had our part. The first was a lunch at the house of Mrs.
Cyril Flower, one of the finest in London,--Surrey House, as it is
called. Mr. Browning, who seems to go everywhere, and is one of the
vital elements of London society, was there as a matter of course. Miss
Cobbe, many of whose essays I have read with great satisfaction, though
I cannot accept all her views, was a guest whom I was very glad to meet
a second time.
In the afternoon we went to a garden-party given by the Princess Louise
at Kensington Palace, a gloomy-looking edifice, which might be taken
for a hospital or a poorhouse. Of all the festive occasions which I
attended, the garden-parties were to me the most formidable. They are
all very well for young people, and for those who do not mind the
nipping and eager air, with which, as I have said, the climate of
England, no less than that of America, falsifies all the fine things the
poets have said about May, and, I may add, even June. We wandered about
the grounds, spoke with the great people, stared at the odd ones, and
said to ourselves,--at least I said to myself,--with Hamlet,
"The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold."
[Illustration: Robert Browning.]
The most curious personages were some East Indians, a chocolate-colored
lady, her husband, and children. The mother had a diamond on the side of
her nose, its setting riveted on the inside, one might suppose; the
effect was peculiar, far from captivating. A---- said that she should
prefer the good old-fashioned nose-ring, as we find it described and
pictured by travellers. She saw a great deal more than I did, of course.
I quote from her diary: "The little Eastern children made their native
salaam to the Princess by prostrating themselves flat on their little
stomachs in front of her, putting their hands between her feet, pushing
them aside, and kissing the print of her feet!"
I really believe one or both of us would have run serious risks of
catching our "death o' cold," if we had waited for our own carriage,
which seemed forever in coming forward. The good Lady Holland, who was
more than once our guardian angel, brought us home in hers. So we got
warmed up at our own hearth, and were ready in due season for the large
and fine dinner-party at Archdeacon Farrar's, where, among other guests,
were Mrs. Phelps, our Minister's wife, who is a great favorite alike
with Americans and English, Sir John Millais, Mr. Tyndall, and other
interesting people.
I am sorry that we could not have visited Newstead Abbey. I had a letter
from Mr. Thornton Lothrop to Colonel Webb, the present proprietor, with
whom we lunched. I have spoken of the pleasure I had when I came
accidentally upon persons with whose name and fame I had long been
acquainted. A similar impression was that which I received when I found
myself in the company of the bearer of an old historic name. When my
host at the lunch introduced a stately-looking gentleman as Sir Kenelm
Digby, it gave me a start, as if a ghost had stood before me. I
recovered myself immediately, however, for there was nothing of the
impalpable or immaterial about the stalwart personage who bore the name.
I wanted to ask him if he carried any of his ancestor's "powder of
sympathy" about with him. Many, but not all, of my readers remember that
famous man's famous preparation. When used to cure a wound, it was
applied to the weapon that made it; the part was bound up so as to bring
the edges of the wound together, and by the wondrous influence of the
sympathetic powder the healing process took place in the kindest
possible manner. Sir Kenelm, the ancestor, was a gallant soldier, a
grand gentleman, and the husband of a wonderfully beautiful wife, whose
charms he tried to preserve from the ravages of time by various
experiments. He was also the homoeopathist of his day, the Elisha
Perkins (metallic tractors) of his generation. The "mind cure" people
might adopt him as one of their precursors.
I heard a curious statement which was illustrated in the person of one
of the gentlemen we met at this table. It is that English sporting men
are often deaf on one side, in consequence of the noise of the frequent
discharge of their guns affecting the right ear. This is a very
convenient infirmity for gentlemen who indulge in slightly aggressive
remarks, but when they are hit back never seem to be conscious at all of
the _riposte_,--the return thrust of the fencer.
Dr. Allchin called and took me to a dinner, where I met many
professional brothers, and enjoyed myself highly.
By this time every day was pledged for one or more engagements, so that
many very attractive invitations had to be declined. I will not follow
the days one by one, but content myself with mentioning some of the more
memorable visits. I had been invited to the Rabelais Club, as I have
before mentioned, by a cable message. This is a club of which the late
Lord Houghton was president, and of which I am a member, as are several
other Americans. I was afraid that the gentlemen who met,
"To laugh and shake in Rabelais's easy chair,"
might be more hilarious and demonstrative in their mirth than I, a sober
New Englander in the superfluous decade, might find myself equal to. But
there was no uproarious jollity; on the contrary, it was a pleasant
gathering of literary people and artists, who took their pleasure not
sadly, but serenely, and I do not remember a single explosive guffaw.
Another day, after going all over Dudley House, including Lady Dudley's
boudoir, "in light blue satin, the prettiest room we have seen," A----
says, we went, by appointment, to Westminster Abbey, where we spent two
hours under the guidance of Archdeacon Farrar. I think no part of the
Abbey is visited with so much interest as Poets' Corner. We are all
familiarly acquainted with it beforehand. We are all ready for "O rare
Ben Jonson!" as we stand over the place where he was planted standing
upright, as if he had been dropped into a post-hole. We remember too
well the foolish and flippant mockery of Gay's "Life is a Jest." If I
were dean of the cathedral, I should be tempted to alter the _J_ to
a _G_. Then we could read it without contempt; for life _is_ a
gest, an achievement,--or always ought to be. Westminster Abbey is too
crowded with monuments to the illustrious dead and those who have been
considered so in their day to produce any other than a confused
impression. When we visit the tomb of Napoleon at the Invalides, no
side-lights interfere with the view before us in the field of mental
vision. We see the Emperor; Marengo, Austerlitz, Waterloo, Saint Helena,
come before us, with him as their central figure. So at Stratford,--the
Cloptons and the John a Combes, with all their memorials, cannot make us
lift our eyes from the stone which covers the dust that once breathed
and walked the streets of Stratford as Shakespeare.
Ah, but here is one marble countenance that I know full well, and knew
for many a year in the flesh! Is there an American who sees the bust of
Longfellow among the effigies of the great authors of England without
feeling a thrill of pleasure at recognizing the features of his native
fellow-countryman in the Valhalla of his ancestral fellow-countrymen?
There are many memorials in Poets' Corner and elsewhere in the Abbey
which could be better spared than that. Too many that were placed there
as luminaries have become conspicuous by their obscurity in the midst of
that illustrious company. On the whole, the Abbey produces a distinct
sense of being overcrowded. It appears too much like a lapidary's
store-room. Look up at the lofty roof, which we willingly pardon for
shutting out the heaven above us,--at least in an average London day;
look down at the floor and think of what precious relics it covers; but
do not look around you with the hope of getting any clear, concentrated,
satisfying effect from this great museum of gigantic funereal bricabrac.
Pardon me, shades of the mighty dead! I had something of this feeling,
but at another hour I might perhaps be overcome by emotion, and weep, as
my fellow-countryman did at the grave of the earliest of his ancestors.
I should love myself better in that aspect than I do in this coldblooded
criticism; but it suggested itself, and as no flattery can soothe, so no
censure can wound, "the dull, cold ear of death."
Of course we saw all the sights of the Abbey in a hurried way, yet with
such a guide and expositor as Archdeacon Farrar our two hours' visit was
worth a whole day with an undiscriminating verger, who recites his
lesson by rote, and takes the life out of the little mob that follows
him round by emphasizing the details of his lesson, until "Patience on a
monument" seems to the sufferer, who knows what he wants and what he
does not want, the nearest emblem of himself he can think of. Amidst all
the imposing recollections of the ancient edifice, one impressed me in
the inverse ratio of its importance. The Archdeacon pointed out the
little holes in the stones, in one place, where the boys of the choir
used to play marbles, before America was discovered, probably,--
centuries before, it may be. It is a strangely impressive glimpse
of a living past, like the _graffiti_ of Pompeii. I find it
is often the accident rather than the essential which fixes my attention
and takes hold of my memory. This is a tendency of which I suppose I
ought to be ashamed, if we have any right to be ashamed of those
idiosyncrasies which are ordered for us. It is the same tendency which
often leads us to prefer the picturesque to the beautiful. Mr. Gilpin
liked the donkey in a forest landscape better than the horse. A touch of
imperfection interferes with the beauty of an object and lowers its
level to that of the picturesque. The accident of the holes in the stone
of the noble building, for the boys to play marbles with, makes me a boy
again and at home with them, after looking with awe upon the statue of
Newton, and turning with a shudder from the ghastly monument of Mrs.
Nightingale.
What a life must be that of one whose years are passed chiefly in and
about the great Abbey! Nowhere does Macbeth's expression "dusty death"
seem so true to all around us. The dust of those who have been lying
century after century below the marbles piled over them,--the dust on
the monuments they lie beneath; the dust on the memories those monuments
were raised to keep living in the recollection of posterity,--dust,
dust, dust, everywhere, and we ourselves but shapes of breathing dust
moving amidst these objects and remembrances! Come away! The good
Archdeacon of the "Eternal Hope" has asked us to take a cup of tea with
him. The tea-cup will be a cheerful substitute for the funeral urn, and
a freshly made infusion of the fragrant leaf is one of the best things
in the world to lay the dust of sad reflections.
It is a somewhat fatiguing pleasure to go through the Abbey, in spite of
the intense interest no one can help feeling. But my day had but just
begun when the two hours we had devoted to the visit were over. At a
quarter before eight, my friend Mr. Frederick Locker called for me to go
to a dinner at the Literary Club. I was particularly pleased to dine
with this association, as it reminded me of our own Saturday Club, which
sometimes goes by the same name as the London one. They complimented me
with a toast, and I made some kind of a reply. As I never went prepared
with a speech for any such occasion, I take it for granted that I
thanked the company in a way that showed my gratitude rather than my
eloquence. And now, the dinner being over, my day was fairly begun.
This was to be a memorable date in the record of the year, one long to
be remembered in the political history of Great Britain. For on this
day, the 7th of June, Mr. Gladstone was to make his great speech on the
Irish question, and the division of the House on the Government of
Ireland Bill was to take place. The whole country, to the corners of its
remotest colony, was looking forward to the results of this evening's
meeting of Parliament. The kindness of the Speaker had furnished me with
a ticket, entitling me to a place among the "distinguished guests,"
which I presented without modestly questioning my right to the title.
The pressure for entrance that evening was very great, and I, coming
after my dinner with the Literary Club, was late upon the ground. The
places for "distinguished guests" were already filled. But all England
was in a conspiracy to do everything possible to make my visit
agreeable. I did not take up a great deal of room,--I might be put into
a seat with the ambassadors and foreign ministers. And among them I was
presently installed. It was now between ten and eleven o'clock, as
nearly as I recollect. The House had been in session since four o'clock.
A gentleman was speaking, who was, as my unknown next neighbor told me,
Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, a leading member, as we all know, of the
opposition. When he sat down there was a hush of expectation, and
presently Mr. Gladstone rose to his feet. A great burst of applause
welcomed him, lasting more than a minute. His clean-cut features, his
furrowed cheeks, his scanty and whitened hair, his well-shaped but not
extraordinary head, all familiarized by innumerable portraits and
emphasized in hundreds of caricatures, revealed him at once to every
spectator. His great speech has been universally read, and I need only
speak of the way in which it was delivered. His manner was forcible
rather than impassioned or eloquent; his voice was clear enough, but
must have troubled him somewhat, for he had a small bottle from which he
poured something into a glass from time to time and swallowed a little,
yet I heard him very well for the most part. In the last portion of his
speech he became animated and inspiriting, and his closing words were
uttered with an impressive solemnity: "Think, I beseech you, think well,
think wisely, think not for a moment, but for the years that are to
come, before you reject this bill."
After the burst of applause which followed the conclusion of Mr.
Gladstone's speech, the House proceeded to the division on the question
of passing the bill to a second reading. While the counting of the votes
was going on there was the most intense excitement. A rumor ran round
the House at one moment that the vote was going in favor of the second
reading. It soon became evident that this was not the case, and
presently the result was announced, giving a majority of thirty against
the bill, and practically overthrowing the liberal administration. Then
arose a tumult of applause from the conservatives and a wild confusion,
in the midst of which an Irish member shouted, "Three cheers for the
Grand Old Man!" which were lustily given, with waving of hats and all
but Donnybrook manifestations of enthusiasm.
I forgot to mention that I had a very advantageous seat among the
diplomatic gentlemen, and was felicitating myself on occupying one of
the best positions in the House, when an usher politely informed me that
the Russian Ambassador, in whose place I was sitting, had arrived, and
that I must submit to the fate of eviction. Fortunately, there were some
steps close by, on one of which I found a seat almost as good as the one
I had just left.
It was now two o'clock in the morning, and I had to walk home, not a
vehicle being attainable. I did not know my way to my headquarters, and
I had no friend to go with me, but I fastened on a stray gentleman, who
proved to be an ex-member of the House, and who accompanied me to 17
Dover Street, where I sought my bed with a satisfying sense of having
done a good day's work and having been well paid for it.
III.
On the 8th of June we visited the Record Office for a sight of the
Domesday Book and other ancient objects of interest there preserved. As
I looked at this too faithful memorial of an inexorable past, I thought
of the battle of Hastings and all its consequences, and that reminded me
of what I have long remembered as I read it in Dr. Robert Knox's "Races
of Men." Dr. Knox was the monoculous Waterloo surgeon, with whom I
remember breakfasting, on my first visit to England and Scotland. His
celebrity is less owing to his book than to the unfortunate connection
of his name with the unforgotten Burke and Hare horrors. This is his
language in speaking of Hastings: "... that bloody field, surpassing far
in its terrible results the unhappy day of Waterloo. From this the Celt
has recovered, but not so the Saxon. To this day he feels, and feels
deeply, the most disastrous day that ever befell his race; here he was
trodden down by the Norman, whose iron heel is on him yet.... To this
day the Saxon race in England have never recovered a tithe of their
rights, and probably never will."
The Conqueror meant to have a thorough summing up of his stolen
property. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says,--I quote it at second
hand,--"So very straitly did he cause the survey to be made, that there
was not a single hyde, nor a yardland of ground, nor--it is shameful to
say what he thought no shame to do--was there an ox or a cow, or a pig
passed by, and that was not down in the accounts, and then all these
writings were brought to him." The "looting" of England by William and
his "twenty thousand thieves," as Mr. Emerson calls his army, was a
singularly methodical proceeding, and Domesday Book is a searching
inventory of their booty, movable and immovable.
From this reminder of the past we turned to the remembrances of home;
A---- going to dine with a transplanted Boston friend and other ladies
from that blessed centre of New England life, while I dined with a party
of gentlemen at my friend Mr. James Russell Lowell's.
I had looked forward to this meeting with high expectations, and they
were abundantly satisfied. I knew that Mr. Lowell must gather about him,
wherever he might be, the choicest company, but what his selection would
be I was curious to learn. I found with me at the table my own
countrymen and his, Mr. Smalley and Mr. Henry James. Of the other
guests, Mr. Leslie Stephen was my only old acquaintance in person; but
Du Maurier and Tenniel I have met in my weekly "Punch" for many a year;
Mr. Lang, Mr. Oliphant, Mr. Townsend, we all know through their
writings; Mr. Burne-Jones and Mr. Alma Tadema, through the frequent
reproductions of their works in engravings, as well as by their
paintings. If I could report a dinner-table conversation, I might be
tempted to say something of my talk with Mr. Oliphant. I like well
enough conversation which floats safely over the shallows, touching
bottom at intervals with a commonplace incident or truism to push it
along; I like better to find a few fathoms of depth under the surface;
there is a still higher pleasure in the philosophical discourse which
calls for the deep sea line to reach bottom; but best of all, when one
is in the right mood, is the contact of intelligences when they are off
soundings in the ocean of thought. Mr. Oliphant is what many of us call
a mystic, and I found a singular pleasure in listening to him. This
dinner at Mr. Lowell's was a very remarkable one for the men it brought
together, and I remember it with peculiar interest. My entertainer holds
a master-key to London society, and he opened the gate for me into one
of its choicest preserves on that evening.
I did not undertake to renew my old acquaintance with hospitals and
museums. I regretted that I could not be with my companion, who went
through the Natural History Museum with the accomplished director,
Professor W. H. Flower. One old acquaintance I did resuscitate. For the
second time I took the hand of Charles O'Byrne, the celebrated Irish
giant of the last century. I met him, as in my first visit, at the Royal
College of Surgeons, where I accompanied Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson. He was
in the condition so longed for by Sydney Smith on a very hot day;
namely, with his flesh taken off, and sitting, or rather standing, in
his bones. The skeleton measures eight feet, and the living man's height
is stated as having been eight feet two, or four inches, by different
authorities. His hand was the only one I took, either in England or
Scotland, which had not a warm grasp and a hearty welcome in it.
A---- went with Boston friends to see "Faust" a second time, Mr. Irving
having offered her the Royal box, and the polite Mr. Bram Stoker serving
the party with tea in the little drawing-room behind the box; so that
she had a good time while I was enjoying myself at a dinner at Sir Henry
Thompson's, where I met Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Browning, and other
distinguished gentlemen. These dinners of Sir Henry's are well known for
the good company one meets at them, and I felt myself honored to be a
guest on this occasion.
Among the pleasures I had promised myself was that of a visit to
Tennyson, at the Isle of Wight. I feared, however, that this would be
rendered impracticable by reason of the very recent death of his younger
son, Lionel. But I learned from Mr. Locker-Lampson, whose daughter Mr.
Lionel Tennyson had married, that the poet would be pleased to see me at
his place, Farringford; and by the kind intervention of Mr.
Locker-Lampson, better known to the literary world as Frederick Locker,
arrangements were made for my daughter and myself to visit him. I
considered it a very great favor, for Lord Tennyson has a poet's
fondness for the tranquillity of seclusion, which many curious explorers
of society fail to remember. Lady Tennyson is an invalid, and though
nothing could be more gracious than her reception of us both, I fear it
may have cost her an effort which she would not allow to betray itself.
Mr. Hallam Tennyson and his wife, both of most pleasing presence and
manners, did everything to make our stay agreeable. I saw the poet to
the best advantage, under his own trees and walking over his own domain.
He took delight in pointing out to me the finest and the rarest of his
trees,--and there were many beauties among them. I recalled my morning's
visit to Whittier at Oak Knoll, in Danvers, a little more than a year
ago, when he led me to one of his favorites, an aspiring evergreen which
shot up like a flame. I thought of the graceful American elms in front
of Longfellow's house and the sturdy English elms that stand in front of
Lowell's. In this garden of England, the Isle of Wight, where everything
grows with such a lavish extravagance of greenness that it seems as if
it must bankrupt the soil before autumn, I felt as if weary eyes and
overtasked brains might reach their happiest haven of rest. We all
remember Shenstone's epigram on the pane of a tavern window. If we find
our "warmest welcome at an inn," we find our most soothing companionship
in the trees among which we have lived, some of which we may ourselves
have planted. We lean against them, and they never betray our trust;
they shield us from the sun and from the rain; their spring welcome is a
new birth, which never loses its freshness; they lay their beautiful
robes at our feet in autumn; in winter they "stand and wait," emblems of
patience and of truth, for they hide nothing, not even the little
leaf-buds which hint to us of hope, the last element in their triple
symbolism.
This digression, suggested by the remembrance of the poet under his
trees, breaks my narrative, but gives me the opportunity of paying a
debt of gratitude. For I have owned many beautiful trees, and loved many
more outside of my own leafy harem. Those who write verses have no
special claim to be lovers of trees, but so far as one is of the
poetical temperament he is likely to be a tree-lover. Poets have, as a
rule, more than the average nervous sensibility and irritability. Trees
have no nerves. They live and die without suffering, without
self-questioning or self-reproach. They have the divine gift of silence.
They cannot obtrude upon the solitary moments when one is to himself the
most agreeable of companions. The whole vegetable world, even "the
meanest flower that blows," is lovely to contemplate. What if creation
had paused there, and you or I had been called upon to decide whether
self-conscious life should be added in the form of the existing animal
creation, and the hitherto peaceful universe should come under the rule
of Nature as we now know her,
"red in tooth and claw"?
Are we not glad that the responsibility of the decision did not rest on
us?
I am sorry that I did not ask Tennyson to read or repeat to me some
lines of his own. Hardly any one perfectly understands a poem but the
poet himself. One naturally loves his own poem as no one else can. It
fits the mental mould in which it was cast, and it will not exactly fit
any other. For this reason I had rather listen to a poet reading his own
verses than hear the best elocutionist that ever spouted recite them. He
may not have a good voice or enunciation, but he puts his heart and his
inter-penetrative intelligence into every line, word, and syllable. I
should have liked to hear Tennyson read such lines as
"Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere;"
and in spite of my good friend Matthew Arnold's _in terrorem_, I
should have liked to hear Macaulay read,
"And Aulus the Dictator
Stroked Auster's raven mane,"
and other good mouthable lines, from the "Lays of Ancient Rome." Not
less should I like to hear Mr. Arnold himself read the passage
beginning,--
"In his cool hall with haggard eyes
The Roman noble lay."
The next day Mrs. Hallam Tennyson took A---- in her pony cart to see
Alum Bay, The Needles, and other objects of interest, while I wandered
over the grounds with Tennyson. After lunch his carriage called for us,
and we were driven across the island, through beautiful scenery, to
Ventnor, where we took the train to Ryde, and there the steamer to
Portsmouth, from which two hours and a half of travel carried us to
London.
* * * * *
My first visit to Cambridge was at the invitation of Mr. Gosse, who
asked me to spend Sunday, the 13th of June, with him. The rooms in
Neville Court, Trinity College, occupied by Sir William Vernon Harcourt
when lecturing at Cambridge, were placed at my disposal. The room I
slept in was imposing with the ensigns armorial of the Harcourts and
others which ornamented its walls. I had great delight in walking
through the quadrangles, along the banks of the Cam, and beneath the
beautiful trees which border it. Mr. Gosse says that I stopped in the
second court of Clare, and looked around and smiled as if I were
bestowing my benediction. He was mistaken: I smiled as if I were
receiving a benediction from my dear old grandmother; for Cambridge in
New England is my mother town, and Harvard University in Cambridge is my
Alma Mater. She is the daughter of Cambridge in Old England, and my
relationship is thus made clear.
Mr. Gosse introduced me to many of the younger and some of the older men
of the university. Among my visits was one never to be renewed and never
to be forgotten. It was to the Master of Trinity, the Reverend William
Hepworth Thompson. I hardly expected to have the privilege of meeting
this very distinguished and greatly beloved personage, famous not alone
for scholarship, or as the successor of Dr. Whewell in his high office,
but also as having said some of the wittiest things which we have heard
since Voltaire's _pour encourager les autres_. I saw him in his
chamber, a feeble old man, but noble to look upon in all "the monumental
pomp of age." He came very near belonging to the little group I have
mentioned as my coevals, but was a year after us. Gentle, dignified,
kindly in his address as if I had been his schoolmate, he left a very
charming impression. He gave me several mementoes of my visit, among
them a beautiful engraving of Sir Isaac Newton, representing him as one
of the handsomest of men. Dr. Thompson looked as if he could not be very
long for this world, but his death, a few weeks after my visit, was a
painful surprise to me. I had been just in time to see "the last of the
great men" at Cambridge, as my correspondent calls him, and I was very
grateful that I could store this memory among the hoarded treasures I
have been laying by for such possible extra stretch of time as may be
allowed me.
My second visit to Cambridge will be spoken of in due season.
While I was visiting Mr. Gosse at Cambridge, A---- was not idle. On
Saturday she went to Lambeth, where she had the pleasure and honor of
shaking hands with the Archbishop of Canterbury in his study, and of
looking about the palace with Mrs. Benson. On Sunday she went to the
Abbey, and heard "a broad and liberal sermon" from Archdeacon Farrar.
Our young lady-secretary stayed and dined with her, and after dinner
sang to her. "A peaceful, happy Sunday," A---- says in her diary,--not
less peaceful, I suspect, for my being away, as my callers must have got
many a "not at 'ome" from young Robert of the multitudinous buttons.
On Monday, the 14th of June, after getting ready for our projected
excursions, we had an appointment which promised us a great deal of
pleasure. Mr. Augustus Harris, the enterprising and celebrated manager
of Drury Lane Theatre, had sent us an invitation to occupy a box, having
eight seats, at the representation of "Carmen." We invited the
Priestleys and our Boston friends, the Shimminses, to take seats with
us. The chief singer in the opera was Marie Roze, who looked well and
sang well, and the evening went off very happily. After the performance
we were invited by Mr. Harris to a supper of some thirty persons, where
we were the special guests. The manager toasted me, and I said
something,--I trust appropriate; but just what I said is as
irrecoverable as the orations of Demosthenes on the seashore, or the
sermons of St. Francis to the beasts and birds.
Of all the attentions I received in England, this was, perhaps, the
least to be anticipated or dreamed of. To be fêted and toasted and to
make a speech in Drury Lane Theatre would not have entered into my
flightiest conceptions, if I had made out a programme beforehand. It is
a singularly gratifying recollection. Drury Lane Theatre is so full of
associations with literature, with the great actors and actresses of the
past, with the famous beauties who have stood behind the footlights and
the splendid audiences that have sat before them, that it is an
admirable nucleus for remembrances to cluster around. It was but a vague
spot in memory before, but now it is a bright centre for other images of
the past. That one evening seems to make me the possessor of all its
traditions from the time when it rose from its ashes, when Byron's poem
was written and recited, and when the brothers Smith gave us the
"Address without a Phoenix," and all those exquisite parodies which make
us feel towards their originals somewhat as our dearly remembered Tom
Appleton did when he said, in praise of some real green turtle soup,
that it was almost as good as mock.
With much regret we gave up an invitation we had accepted to go to
Durdans to dine with Lord Rosebery. We must have felt very tired indeed
to make so great a sacrifice, but we had to be up until one o'clock
getting ready for the next day's journey; writing, packing, and
attending to what we left behind us as well as what was in prospect.
On the morning of Wednesday, June 16th, Dr. Donald Macalister called to
attend us on our second visit to Cambridge, where we were to be the
guests of his cousin, Alexander Macalister, Professor of Anatomy, who,
with Mrs. Macalister, received us most cordially. There was a large
luncheon-party at their house, to which we sat down in our travelling
dresses. In the evening they had a dinner-party, at which were present,
among others, Professor Stokes, President of the Royal Society, and
Professor Wright. We had not heard much talk of political matters at the
dinner-tables where we had been guests, but A---- sat near a lady who
was very earnest in advocating the Irish side of the great impending
question.
The 17th of June is memorable in the annals of my country. On that day
of the year 1775 the battle of Bunker's Hill was fought on the height I
see from the window of my library, where I am now writing. The monument
raised in memory of our defeat, which was in truth a victory, is almost
as much a part of the furniture of the room as its chairs and tables;
outside, as they are inside, furniture. But the 17th of June, 1886, is
memorable to me above all the other anniversaries of that day I have
known. For on that day I received from the ancient University of
Cambridge, England, the degree of Doctor of Letters, "Doctor Litt.," in
its abbreviated academic form. The honor was an unexpected one; that is,
until a short time before it was conferred.
Invested with the academic gown and cap, I repaired in due form at the
appointed hour to the Senate Chamber. Every seat was filled, and among
the audience were youthful faces in large numbers, looking as if they
were ready for any kind of outbreak of enthusiasm or hilarity.
The first degree conferred was that of LL.D., on Sir W. A. White,
G.C.M., G.C.B., to whose long list of appended initials it seemed like
throwing a perfume on the violet to add three more letters.
When I was called up to receive my honorary title, the young voices were
true to the promise of the young faces. There was a great noise, not
hostile nor unpleasant in its character, in answer to which I could
hardly help smiling my acknowledgments. In presenting me for my degree
the Public Orator made a Latin speech, from which I venture to give a
short extract, which I would not do for the world if it were not
disguised by being hidden in the mask of a dead language. But there will
be here and there a Latin scholar who will be pleased with the way in
which the speaker turned a compliment to the candidate before him, with
a reference to one of his poems and to some of his prose works.
_"Juvat nuper audivisse eum cujus carmen prope primum 'Folium ultimum'
nominatum est, folia adhuc plura e scriniis suis esse prolaturum.
Novimus quanta lepore descripserit colloquia illa antemeridiana,
symposia illa sobria et severa, sed eadem festiva et faceta, in quibus
totiens mutata persona, modo poeta, modo professor, modo princeps et
arbiter, loquendi, inter convivas suos regnat."_
I had no sooner got through listening to the speech and receiving my
formal sentence as Doctor of Letters than the young voices broke out in
fresh clamor. There were cries of "A speech! a speech!" mingled with the
title of a favorite poem by John Howard Payne, having a certain amount
of coincidence with the sound of my name. The play upon the word was not
absolutely a novelty to my ear, but it was good-natured, and I smiled
again, and perhaps made a faint inclination, as much as to say, "I hear
you, young gentlemen, but I do not forget that I am standing on my
dignity, especially now since a new degree has added a moral cubit to my
stature." Still the cries went on, and at last I saw nothing else to do
than to edge back among the silk gowns, and so lose myself and be lost
to the clamorous crowd in the mass of dignitaries. It was not
indifference to the warmth of my welcome, but a feeling that I had no
claim to address the audience because some of its younger members were
too demonstrative. I have not forgotten my very cordial reception, which
made me feel almost as much at home in the old Cambridge as in the new,
where I was born and took my degrees, academic, professional, and
honorary.
The university town left a very deep impression upon my mind, in which a
few grand objects predominate over the rest, all being of a delightful
character. I was fortunate enough to see the gathering of the boats,
which was the last scene in their annual procession. The show was
altogether lovely. The pretty river, about as wide as the Housatonic, I
should judge, as that slender stream winds through "Canoe Meadow," my
old Pittsfield residence, the gaily dressed people who crowded the
banks, the flower-crowned boats, with the gallant young oarsmen who
handled them so skilfully, made a picture not often equalled. The walks,
the bridges, the quadrangles, the historic college buildings, all
conspired to make the place a delight and a fascination. The library of
Trinity College, with its rows of busts by Roubiliac and Woolner, is a
truly noble hall. But beyond, above all the rest, the remembrance of
King's College Chapel, with its audacious and richly wrought roof and
its wide and lofty windows, glowing with old devices in colors which are
ever fresh, as if just from the furnace, holds the first place in my
gallery of Cambridge recollections.
I cannot do justice to the hospitalities which were bestowed upon us in
Cambridge. Professor and Mrs. Macalister, aided by Dr. Donald
Macalister, did all that thoughtful hosts could do to make us feel at
home. In the afternoon the ladies took tea at Mr. Oscar Browning's. In
the evening we went to a large dinner at the invitation of the
Vice-Chancellor. Many little points which I should not have thought of
are mentioned in A----'s diary. I take the following extract from it,
toning down its vivacity more nearly to my own standard:--
"Twenty were there. The Master of St. John's took me in, and the
Vice-Chancellor was on the other side.... The Vice-Chancellor rose and
returned thanks after the meats and before the sweets, as usual. I have
now got used to this proceeding, which strikes me as extraordinary.
Everywhere here in Cambridge, and the same in Oxford, I believe, they
say grace and give thanks. A gilded ewer and flat basin were passed,
with water in the basin to wash with, and we all took our turn at the
bath! Next to this came the course with the finger-bowls!... Why two
baths?"
On Friday, the 18th, I went to a breakfast at the Combination Room, at
which about fifty gentlemen were present, Dr. Sandys taking the chair.
After the more serious business of the morning's repast was over, Dr.
Macalister, at the call of the chairman, arose, and proposed my welfare
in a very complimentary way. I of course had to respond, and I did so in
the words which came of their own accord to my lips. After my
unpremeditated answer, which was kindly received, a young gentleman of
the university, Mr. Heitland, read a short poem, of which the following
is the title:--
LINES OF GREETING TO DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
AT BREAKFAST IN COMBINATION ROOM, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
ENGLAND.
I wish I dared quote more than the last two verses of these lines, which
seemed to me, not unused to giving and receiving complimentary tributes,
singularly happy, and were so considered by all who heard them. I think
I may venture to give the two verses referred to:--
"By all sweet memory of the saints and sages
Who wrought among us in the days of yore;
By youths who, turning now life's early pages,
Ripen to match the worthies gone before:
"On us, O son of England's greatest daughter,
A kindly word from heart and tongue bestow;
Then chase the sunsets o'er the western water,
And bear our blessing with you as you go."
I need not say that I left the English Cambridge with a heart full of
all grateful and kindly emotions.
I must not forget that I found at Cambridge, very pleasantly established
and successfully practising his profession, a former student in the
dental department of our Harvard Medical School, Dr. George Cunningham,
who used to attend my lectures on anatomy. In the garden behind the
quaint old house in which he lives is a large medlar-tree,--the first I
remember seeing.
On this same day we bade good-by to Cambridge, and took the two o'clock
train to Oxford, where we arrived at half past five. At this first visit
we were to be the guests of Professor Max Müller, at his fine residence
in Norham Gardens. We met there, at dinner, Mr. Herkomer, whom we have
recently had with us in Boston, and one or two others. In the evening we
had music; the professor playing on the piano, his two daughters, Mrs.
Conybeare and her unmarried sister, singing, and a young lady playing
the violin. It was a very lovely family picture; a pretty house,
surrounded by attractive scenery; scholarship, refinement, simple
elegance, giving distinction to a home which to us seemed a pattern of
all we could wish to see beneath an English roof. It all comes back to
me very sweetly, but very tenderly and sadly, for the voice of the elder
of the two sisters who sang to us is heard no more on earth, and a deep
shadow has fallen over the household we found so bright and cheerful.
Everything was done to make me enjoy my visit to Oxford, but I was
suffering from a severe cold, and was paying the penalty of too much
occupation and excitement. I missed a great deal in consequence, and
carried away a less distinct recollection of this magnificent seat of
learning than of the sister university.
If one wishes to know the magic of names, let him visit the places made
memorable by the lives of the illustrious men of the past in the Old
World. As a boy I used to read the poetry of Pope, of Goldsmith, and of
Johnson. How could I look at the Bodleian Library, or wander beneath its
roof, without recalling the lines from "The Vanity of Human Wishes"?
"When first the college rolls receive his name,
The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;
Resistless burns the fever of renown,
Caught from the strong contagion of the gown:
O'er Bodley's dome his future labors spread,
And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head."
The last line refers to Roger Bacon. "There is a tradition that the
study of Friar Bacon, built on an arch over the bridge, will fall when a
man greater than Bacon shall pass under it. To prevent so shocking an
accident, it was pulled down many years since." We shall meet with a
similar legend in another university city. Many persons have been shy of
these localities, who were in no danger whatever of meeting the fate
threatened by the prediction.
We passed through the Bodleian Library, only glancing at a few of its
choicest treasures, among which the exquisitely illuminated missals were
especially tempting objects of study. It was almost like a mockery to
see them opened and closed, without having the time to study their
wonderful miniature paintings. A walk through the grounds of Magdalen
College, under the guidance of the president of that college, showed us
some of the fine trees for which I was always looking. One of these, a
wych-elm (Scotch elm of some books), was so large that I insisted on
having it measured. A string was procured and carefully carried round
the trunk, above the spread of the roots and below that of the branches,
so as to give the smallest circumference. I was curious to know how the
size of the trunk of this tree would compare with that of the trunks of
some of our largest New England elms. I have measured a good many of
these. About sixteen feet is the measurement of a large elm, like that
on Boston Common, which all middle-aged people remember. From twenty-two
to twenty-three feet is the ordinary maximum of the very largest trees.
I never found but one exceed it: that was the great Springfield elm,
which looked as if it might have been formed by the coalescence from the
earliest period of growth, of two young trees. When I measured this in
1837, it was twenty-four feet eight inches in circumference at five feet
from the ground; growing larger above and below. I remembered this tree
well, as we measured the string which was to tell the size of its
English rival. As we came near the end of the string, I felt as I did
when I was looking at the last dash of Ormonde and The Bard at
Epsom.--Twenty feet, and a long piece of string left.--Twenty-one.
--Twenty-two.--Twenty-three.--An extra heartbeat or two.--Twenty-four!
--Twenty-five and six inches over!!--The Springfield elm may have grown
a foot or more since I measured it, fifty years ago, but the tree at
Magdalen stands ahead of all my old measurements. Many of the fine old
trees, this in particular, may have been known in their younger days to
Addison, whose favorite walk is still pointed out to the visitor.
I would not try to compare the two university towns, as one might who
had to choose between them. They have a noble rivalry, each honoring the
other, and it would take a great deal of weighing one point of
superiority against another to call either of them the first, except in
its claim to antiquity.
After a garden-party in the afternoon, a pleasant evening at home, when
the professor played and his daughter Beatrice sang, and a garden-party
the next day, I found myself in somewhat better condition, and ready for
the next move.
[Illustration: Magdalen College, Oxford.]
At noon on the 23d of June we left for Edinburgh, stopping over night at
York, where we found close by the station an excellent hotel, and where
the next morning we got one of the best breakfasts we had in our whole
travelling experience. At York we wandered to and through a flower-show,
and _did_ the cathedral, as people _do_ all the sights they
see under the lead of a paid exhibitor, who goes through his lesson like
a sleepy old professor. I missed seeing the slab with the inscription
_miserrimus_. There may be other stones bearing this sad
superlative, but there is a story connected with this one, which sounds
as if it might be true.
In the year 1834, I spent several weeks in Edinburgh. I was fascinated
by the singular beauties of that "romantic town," which Scott called his
own, and which holds his memory, with that of Burns, as a most precious
part of its inheritance. The castle with the precipitous rocky wall out
of which it grows, the deep ravines with their bridges, pleasant Calton
Hill and memorable Holyrood Palace, the new town and the old town with
their strange contrasts, and Arthur's Seat overlooking all,--these
varied and enchanting objects account for the fondness with which all
who have once seen Edinburgh will always regard it.
We were the guests of Professor Alexander Crum Brown, a near relative of
the late beloved and admired Dr. John Brown. Professor and Mrs. Crum
Brown did everything to make our visit a pleasant one. We met at their
house many of the best known and most distinguished people of Scotland.
The son of Dr. John Brown dined with us on the day of our arrival, and
also a friend of the family, Mr. Barclay, to whom we made a visit on the
Sunday following. Among the visits I paid, none was more gratifying to
me than one which I made to Dr. John Brown's sister. No man could leave
a sweeter memory than the author of "Rab and his Friends," of "Pet
Marjorie," and other writings, all full of the same loving, human
spirit. I have often exchanged letters with him, and I thought how much
it would have added to the enjoyment of my visit if I could have taken
his warm hand and listened to his friendly voice. I brought home with me
a precious little manuscript, written expressly for me by one who had
known Dr. John Brown from the days of her girlhood, in which his
character appears in the same lovable and loving light as that which
shines in every page he himself has written.
On Friday, the 25th, I went to the hall of the university, where I was
to receive the degree of LL.D. The ceremony was not unlike that at
Cambridge, but had one peculiar feature: the separate special investment
of the candidate with the _hood_, which Johnson defines as "an
ornamental fold which hangs down the back of a graduate." There were
great numbers of students present, and they showed the same exuberance
of spirits as that which had forced me to withdraw from the urgent calls
at Cambridge. The cries, if possible, were still louder and more
persistent; they must have a speech and they would have a speech, and
what could I do about it? I saw but one way of pacifying a crowd as
noisy and long-breathed as that which for about the space of two hours
cried out, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" So I stepped to the front
and made a brief speech, in which, of course, I spoke of the
"_perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_." A speech without that would have
been like that "Address without a Phoenix" before referred to. My few
remarks were well received, and quieted the shouting Ephesians of the
warm-brained and warm-hearted northern university. It gave me great
pleasure to meet my friend Mr. Underwood, now American consul in
Glasgow, where he has made himself highly esteemed and respected.
In my previous visit to Edinburgh in 1834, I was fond of rambling along
under Salisbury Crags, and climbing the sides of Arthur's Seat. I had
neither time nor impulse for such walks during this visit, but in
driving out to dine at Nidrie, the fine old place now lived in by Mr.
Barclay and his daughters, we passed under the crags and by the side of
the great hill. I had never heard, or if I had I had forgotten, the name
and the story of "Samson's Ribs." These are the columnar masses of rock
which form the face of Salisbury Crags. There is a legend that one day
one of these pillars will fall and crush the greatest man that ever
passes under them. It is said that a certain professor was always very
shy of "Samson's Ribs," for fear the prophecy might be fulfilled in his
person. We were most hospitably received at Mr. Barclay's, and the
presence of his accomplished and pleasing daughters made the visit
memorable to both of us. There was one picture on their walls, that of a
lady, by Sir Joshua, which both of us found very captivating. This is
what is often happening in the visits we make. Some painting by a master
looks down upon us from its old canvas, and leaves a lasting copy of
itself, to be stored in memory's picture gallery. These surprises are
not so likely to happen in the New World as in the Old.
It seemed cruel to be forced to tear ourselves away from Edinburgh,
where so much had been done to make us happy, where so much was left to
see and enjoy, but we were due in Oxford, where I was to receive the
last of the three degrees with which I was honored in Great Britain.
Our visit to Scotland gave us a mere glimpse of the land and its people,
but I have a very vivid recollection of both as I saw them on my first
visit, when I made an excursion into the Highlands to Stirling and to
Glasgow, where I went to church, and wondered over the uncouth ancient
psalmody, which I believe is still retained in use to this day. I was
seasoned to that kind of poetry in my early days by the verses of Tate
and Brady, which I used to hear "entuned in the nose ful swetely,"
accompanied by vigorous rasping of a huge bass-viol. No wonder that
Scotland welcomed the song of Burns!
On our second visit to Oxford we were to be the guests of the
Vice-Chancellor of the university, Dr. Jowett. This famous scholar and
administrator lives in a very pleasant establishment, presided over by
the Muses, but without the aid of a Vice-Chancelloress. The hospitality
of this classic mansion is well known, and we added a second pleasant
chapter to our previous experience under the roof of Professor Max
Müller. There was a little company there before us, including the Lord
Chancellor and Lady Herschell, Lady Camilla Wallop, Mr. Browning, and
Mr. Lowell. We were too late, in consequence of the bad arrangement of
the trains, and had to dine by ourselves, as the whole party had gone
out to a dinner, to which we should have accompanied them had we not
been delayed. We sat up long enough to see them on their return, and
were glad to get to bed, after our day's journey from Edinburgh to
Oxford.
At eleven o'clock on the following day we who were to receive degrees
met at Balliol College, whence we proceeded in solemn procession to the
Sheldonian Theatre. Among my companions on this occasion were Mr. John
Bright, the Lord Chancellor Herschell, and Mr. Aldis Wright. I have an
instantaneous photograph, which was sent me, of this procession. I can
identify Mr. Bright and myself, but hardly any of the others, though
many better acquainted with their faces would no doubt recognize them.
There is a certain sensation in finding one's self invested with the
academic gown, conspicuous by its red facings, and the cap with its
square top and depending tassel, which is not without its accompanying
satisfaction. One can walk the streets of any of the university towns in
his academic robes without being jeered at, as I am afraid he would be
in some of our own thoroughfares. There is a noticeable complacency in
the members of our Phi Beta Kappa society when they get the pink and
blue ribbons in their buttonholes, on the day of annual meeting. How
much more when the scholar is wrapped in those flowing folds, with their
flaming borders, and feels the dignity of the distinction of which they
are the symbol! I do not know how Mr. John Bright felt, but I cannot
avoid the impression that some in the ranks which moved from Balliol to
the Sheldonian felt as if Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
the candidates for the degree of D.C.L.
After my experience at Cambridge and Edinburgh, I might have felt some
apprehension about my reception at Oxford. I had always supposed the
audience assembled there at the conferring of degrees was a more
demonstrative one than that at any other of the universities, and I did
not wish to be forced into a retreat by calls for a speech, as I was at
Cambridge, nor to repeat my somewhat irregular proceeding of addressing
the audience, as at Edinburgh. But when I found that Mr. John Bright was
to be one of the recipients of the degree I felt safe, for if he made a
speech I should be justified in saying a few words, if I thought it
best; and if he, one of the most eloquent men in England, remained
silent, I surely need not make myself heard on the occasion. It was a
great triumph for him, a liberal leader, to receive the testimonial of a
degree from the old conservative university. To myself it was a graceful
and pleasing compliment; to him it was a grave and significant tribute.
As we marched through the crowd on our way from Balliol, the people
standing around recognized Mr. Bright, and cheered him vociferously.
The exercises in the Sheldonian Theatre were more complex and lasted
longer than those at the other two universities. The candidate stepped
forward and listened to one sentence, then made another move forward and
listened to other words, and at last was welcomed to all the privileges
conferred by the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, which was announced as
being bestowed upon him. Mr. Bright, of course, was received with
immense enthusiasm. I had every reason to be gratified with my own
reception. The only "chaffing" I heard was the question from one of the
galleries, "Did he come in the One-Hoss Shay?"--at which there was a
hearty laugh, joined in as heartily by myself. A part of the
entertainment at this ceremony consisted in the listening to the reading
of short extracts from the prize essays, some or all of them in the dead
languages, which could not have been particularly intelligible to a
large part of the audience. During these readings there were frequent
_interpellations_, as the French call such interruptions, something
like these: "That will do, sir!" or "You had better stop, sir!"
--always, I noticed, with the sir at the end of the remark. With us it
would have been "Dry up!" or "Hold on!" At last came forward the young
poet of the occasion, who read an elaborate poem, "Savonarola," which
was listened to in most respectful silence, and loudly applauded at its
close, as I thought, deservedly. Prince and Princess Christian were
among the audience. They were staying with Professor and Mrs. Max
Müller, whose hospitalities I hope they enjoyed as much as we did. One
or two short extracts from A----'s diary will enliven my record: "The
Princess had a huge bouquet, and going down the aisle had to bow both
ways at once, it seemed to me: but then she has the Guelph spine and
neck! Of course it is necessary that royalty should have more elasticity
in the frame than we poor ordinary mortals. After all this we started
for a luncheon at All Souls, but had to wait (impatiently) for H. R. H.
to rest herself, while our resting was done standing."
It is a long while since I read Madame d'Arblay's Recollections, but if
I remember right, _standing_ while royalty rests its bones is one
of the drawbacks to a maid of honor's felicity.
"Finally, at near three, we went into a great luncheon of some fifty.
There were different tables, and I sat at the one with royalty. The
Provost of Oriel took me in, and Mr. Browning was on my other side.
Finally, we went home to rest, but the others started out again to go to
a garden-party, but that was beyond us." After all this came a
dinner-party of twenty at the Vice-Chancellor's, and after that a
reception, where among others we met Lord and Lady Coleridge, the lady
resplendent in jewels. Even after London, this could hardly be called a
day of rest.
The Chinese have a punishment which consists simply in keeping the
subject of it awake, by the constant teasing of a succession of
individuals employed for the purpose. The best of our social pleasures,
if carried beyond the natural power of physical and mental endurance,
begin to approach the character of such a penance. After this we got a
little rest; did some mild sight-seeing, heard some good music, called
on the Max Müllers, and bade them good-by with the warmest feeling to
all the members of a household which it was a privilege to enter. There
only remained the parting from our kind entertainer, the
Vice-Chancellor, who added another to the list of places which in
England and Scotland were made dear to us by hospitality, and are
remembered as true homes to us while we were under their roofs.
On the second day of July we left the Vice-Chancellor's, and went to the
Randolph Hotel to meet our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Willett, from Brighton,
with whom we had an appointment of long standing. With them we left
Oxford, to enter on the next stage of our pilgrimage.
IV.
It had been the intention of Mr. Willett to go with us to visit Mr.
Ruskin, with whom he is in the most friendly relations. But a letter
from Mr. Ruskin's sister spoke of his illness as being too serious for
him to see company, and we reluctantly gave up this part of our plan.
My first wish was to revisit Stratford-on-Avon, and as our travelling
host was guided in everything by our inclinations, we took the cars for
Stratford, where we arrived at five o'clock in the afternoon. It had
been arranged beforehand that we should be the guests of Mr. Charles E.
Flower, one of the chief citizens of Stratford, who welcomed us to his
beautiful mansion in the most cordial way, and made us once more at home
under an English roof.
I well remembered my visit to Stratford in 1834. The condition of the
old house in which Shakespeare was born was very different from that in
which we see it to-day. A series of photographs taken in different years
shows its gradual transformation since the time when the old projecting
angular sign-board told all who approached "The immortal Shakespeare was
born in this House." How near the old house came to sharing the fortunes
of Jumbo under the management of our enterprising countryman, Mr.
Barnum, I am not sure; but that he would have "traded" for it, if the
proprietors had been willing, I do not doubt, any more than I doubt that
he would make an offer for the Tower of London, if that venerable
structure were in the market. The house in which Shakespeare was born is
the Santa Casa of England. What with my recollections and the
photographs with which I was familiarly acquainted, it had nothing very
new for me. Its outside had undergone great changes, but its bare
interior was little altered.
My previous visit was a hurried one,--I took but a glimpse, and then
went on my way. Now, for nearly a week I was a resident of
Stratford-on-Avon. How shall I describe the perfectly ideal beauty of
the new home in which I found myself! It is a fine house, surrounded by
delightful grounds, which skirt the banks of the Avon for a considerable
distance, and come close up to the enclosure of the Church of the Holy
Trinity, beneath the floor of which lie the mortal remains of
Shakespeare. The Avon is one of those narrow English rivers in which
half a dozen boats might lie side by side, but hardly wide enough for a
race between two rowing abreast of each other. Just here the river is
comparatively broad and quiet, there being a dam a little lower down the
stream. The waters were a perfect mirror, as I saw them on one of the
still days we had at Stratford. I do not remember ever before seeing
cows walking with their legs in the air, as I saw them reflected in the
Avon. Along the banks the young people were straying. I wondered if the
youthful swains quoted Shakespeare to their ladyloves. Could they help
recalling Romeo and Juliet? It is quite impossible to think of any human
being growing up in this place which claims Shakespeare as its child,
about the streets of which he ran as a boy, on the waters of which he
must have often floated, without having his image ever present. Is it
so? There are some boys, from eight to ten or a dozen years old, fishing
in the Avon, close by the grounds of "Avonbank," the place at which we
are staying. I call to the little group. I say, "Boys, who was this man
Shakespeare, people talk so much about?" Boys turn round and look up
with a plentiful lack of intelligence in their countenances. "Don't you
know who he was nor what he was?" Boys look at each other, but confess
ignorance.--Let us try the universal stimulant of human faculties. "Here
are some pennies for the boy that will tell me what that Mr. Shakespeare
was." The biggest boy finds his tongue at last. "He was a writer,--he
wrote plays." That was as much as I could get out of the youngling. I
remember meeting some boys under the monument upon Bunker Hill, and
testing their knowledge as I did that of the Stratford boys. "What is
this great stone pillar here for?" I asked. "Battle fought here,--great
battle." "Who fought?" "Americans and British." (I never hear the
expression Britishers.) "Who was the general on the American side?"
"Don' know,--General Washington or somebody."--What is an old battle,
though it may have settled the destinies of a nation, to the game of
base-ball between the Boston and Chicago Nines which is to come off
to-morrow, or to the game of marbles which Tom and Dick are just going
to play together under the shadow of the great obelisk which
commemorates the conflict?
The room more especially assigned to me looked out, at a distance of not
more than a stone's-throw, on the northern aspect of the church where
Shakespeare lies buried. Workmen were busy on the roof of the transept.
I could not conveniently climb up to have a talk with the roofers, but I
have my doubts whether they were thinking all the time of the dust over
which they were working. How small a matter literature is to the great
seething, toiling, struggling, love-making, bread-winning,
child-rearing, death-awaiting men and women who fill this huge,
palpitating world of ours! It would be worth while to pass a week or a
month among the plain, average people of Stratford. What is the relative
importance in human well-being of the emendations of the text of Hamlet
and the patching of the old trousers and the darning of the old
stockings which task the needles of the hard-working households that
fight the battle of life in these narrow streets and alleys? I ask the
question; the reader may answer it.
Our host, Mr. Flower, is more deeply interested, perhaps, than any other
individual in the "Shakespeare Memorial" buildings which have been
erected on the banks of the Avon, a short distance above the Church of
the Holy Trinity. Under Mr. Flower's guidance we got into one of his
boats, and were rowed up the stream to the Memorial edifice. There is a
theatre, in a round tower which has borrowed some traits from the
octagon "Globe" theatre of Shakespeare's day; a Shakespeare library and
portrait gallery are forming; and in due time these buildings, of
stately dimensions and built solidly of brick, will constitute a
Shakespearean centre which will attract to itself many mementoes now
scattered about in various parts of the country.
On the 4th of July we remembered our native land with all the
affectionate pride of temporary exiles, and did not forget to drink at
lunch to the prosperity and continued happiness of the United States of
America. In the afternoon we took to the boat again, and were rowed up
the river to the residence of Mr. Edgar Flower, where we found another
characteristic English family, with its nine children, one of whom was
the typical English boy, most pleasing and attractive in look, voice,
and manner.
I attempt no description of the church, the birthplace, or the other
constantly visited and often described localities. The noble bridge,
built in the reign of Henry VII. by Sir Hugh Clopton, and afterwards
widened, excited my admiration. It was a much finer piece of work than
the one built long afterwards. I have hardly seen anything which gave me
a more striking proof of the thoroughness of the old English workmen.
They built not for an age, but for all time, and the New Zealander will
have to wait a long while before he will find in any one of the older
bridges that broken arch from which he is to survey the ruins of London.
It is very pleasant to pick up a new epithet to apply to the poet upon
whose genius our language has nearly exhausted itself. It delights me to
speak of him in the words which I have just found in a memoir not yet a
century old, as "the Warwickshire bard," "the inestimable Shakespeare."
Ever since Miss Bacon made her insane attempt to unearth what is left of
Shakespeare's bodily frame, the thought of doing reverently and openly
what she would have done by stealth has been entertained by
psychologists, artists, and others who would like to know what were his
cranial developments, and to judge from the conformation of the skull
and face which of the various portraits is probably the true one. There
is little doubt that but for the curse invoked upon the person who
should disturb his bones, in the well-known lines on the slab which
covers him, he would rest, like Napoleon, like Washington, in a fitting
receptacle of marble or porphyry. In the transfer of his remains the
curiosity of men of science and artists would have been gratified, if
decay had spared the more durable portions of his material structure. It
was probably not against such a transfer that the lines were
written,--whoever was their author,--but in the fear that they would be
carried to the charnel-house.
"In this charnel-house was contained a vast collection of human bones.
How long they had been deposited there is not easily to be determined;
but it is evident, from the immense quantity contained in the vault, it
could have been used for no other purpose for many ages." "It is
probable that from an early contemplation of this dreary spot
Shakespeare imbibed that horror of a violation of sepulture which is
observable in many parts of his writings."
The body of Raphael was disinterred in 1833 to settle a question of
identity of the remains, and placed in a new coffin of lead, which was
deposited in a marble sarcophagus presented by the Pope. The
sarcophagus, with its contents, was replaced in the same spot from which
the remains had been taken. But for the inscription such a transfer of
the bones of Shakespeare would have been proposed, and possibly carried
out. Kings and emperors have frequently been treated in this way after
death, and the proposition is no more an indignity than was that of the
exhumation of the remains of Napoleon, or of André, or of the author of
"Home, Sweet Home." But sentiment, a tender regard for the supposed
wishes of the dead poet, and a natural dread of the consequences of
violating a dying wish, coupled with the execration of its contemner,
are too powerful for the arguments of science and the pleadings of art.
If Shakespeare's body had been embalmed,--which there is no reason that
I know of to suppose,--the desire to compare his features with the bust
and the portraits would have been much more imperative. When the body of
Charles the First was examined, under the direction of Sir Henry
Halford, in the presence of the Regent, afterwards George the Fourth,
the face would have been recognized at once by all who were acquainted
with Vandyke's portrait of the monarch, if the lithograph which comes
attached to Sir Henry's memoir is an accurate representation of what
they found. Even the bony framework of the face, as I have had occasion
to know, has sometimes a striking likeness to what it was when clothed
in its natural features. As between the first engraved portrait and the
bust in the church, the form of the bones of the head and face would
probably be decisive. But the world can afford to live without solving
this doubt, and leave his perishing vesture of decay to its repose.
After seeing the Shakespeare shrines, we drove over to Shottery, and
visited the Anne Hathaway cottage. I am not sure whether I ever saw it
before, but it was as familiar to me as if I had lived in it. The old
lady who showed it was agreeably communicative, and in perfect keeping
with the place.
A delightful excursion of ten or a dozen miles carried our party,
consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Flower, Mr. and Mrs. Willett, with A---- and
myself, to Compton Wynyate, a most interesting old mansion, belonging to
the Marquis of Northampton, who, with his daughter-in-law, Lady William
Compton, welcomed us and showed us all the wonders of the place. It was
a fine morning, but hot enough for one of our American July days. The
drive was through English rural scenery; that is to say, it was lovely.
The old house is a great curiosity. It was built in the reign of Henry
the Eighth, and has passed through many vicissitudes. The place, as well
as the edifice, is a study for the antiquarian. Remains of the old moat
which surrounded it are still distinguishable. The twisted and variously
figured chimneys are of singular variety and exceptional forms. Compton
_Wynyate_ is thought to get its name from the vineyards formerly
under cultivation on the hillsides, which show the signs of having been
laid out in terraces. The great hall, with its gallery, and its
hangings, and the long table made from the trunk of a single tree,
carries one back into the past centuries. There are strange nooks and
corners and passages in the old building, and one place, a queer little
"cubby-hole," has the appearance of having been a Roman Catholic chapel.
I asked the master of the house, who pointed out the curiosities of the
place most courteously, about the ghosts who of course were tenants in
common with the living proprietors. I was surprised when he told me
there were none. It was incredible, for here was every accommodation for
a spiritual visitant. I should have expected at least one haunted
chamber, to say nothing of blood-stains that could never be got rid of;
but there were no legends of the supernatural or the terrible.
Refreshments were served us, among which were some hot-house peaches,
ethereally delicate as if they had grown in the Elysian Fields and been
stolen from a banquet of angels. After this we went out on the lawn,
where, at Lady William Compton's request, I recited one or two poems;
the only time I did such a thing in England.
It seems as if Compton Wynyate must have been written about in some
novel or romance,--perhaps in more than one of both. It is the place of
all others to be the scene of a romantic story. It lies so hidden away
among the hills that its vulgar name, according to old Camden, was
"Compton in the Hole." I am not sure that it was the scene of any actual
conflict, but it narrowly escaped demolition in the great civil war, and
in 1646 it was garrisoned by the Parliament army.
On the afternoon of July 6th, our hosts had a large garden-party. If
nothing is more trying than one of these out-of-door meetings on a cold,
windy, damp day, nothing can be more delightful than such a social
gathering if the place and the weather are just what we could wish them.
The garden-party of this afternoon was as near perfection as such a
meeting could well be. The day was bright and warm, but not
uncomfortably hot, to me, at least. The company strolled about the
grounds, or rested on the piazzas, or watched the birds in the aviary,
or studied rudimentary humanity in the monkey, or, better still, in a
charming baby, for the first time on exhibition since she made the
acquaintance of sunshine. Every one could dispose of himself or herself
as fancy might suggest. I broke away at one time, and wandered alone by
the side of the Avon, under the shadow of the tall trees upon its bank.
The whole scene was as poetical, as inspiring, as any that I remember.
It would be easy to write verses about it, but unwritten poems are so
much better!
One reminiscence of that afternoon claims precedence over all the rest.
The reader must not forget that I have been a medical practitioner, and
for thirty-five years a professor in a medical school. Among the guests
whom I met in the grounds was a gentleman of the medical profession,
whose name I had often heard, and whom I was very glad to see and talk
with. This was Mr. Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S., M.D., of Birmingham. Mr., or
more properly Dr., Tait has had the most extraordinary success in a
class of cases long considered beyond the reach of surgery. If I refer
to it as a scientific _hari kari_, not for the taking but for the
saving of life, I shall come near enough to its description. This
operation is said to have been first performed by an American surgeon in
Danville, Kentucky, in the year 1809. So rash and dangerous did it seem
to most of the profession that it was sometimes spoken of as if to
attempt it were a crime. Gradually, however, by improved methods, and
especially by the most assiduous care in nursing the patient after the
operation, the mortality grew less and less, until it was recognized as
a legitimate and indeed an invaluable addition to the resources of
surgery. Mr. Lawson Tait has had, so far as I have been able to learn,
the most wonderful series of successful cases on record: namely, one
hundred and thirty-nine consecutive operations without a single death.
As I sat by the side of this great surgeon, a question suggested itself
to my mind which I leave the reader to think over. Which would give the
most satisfaction to a thoroughly humane and unselfish being, of
cultivated intelligence and lively sensibilities: to have written all
the plays which Shakespeare has left as an inheritance for mankind, or
to have snatched from the jaws of death more than a hundred fellow-
creatures,--almost seven scores of suffering women,--and restored them
to sound and comfortable existence? It would be curious to get the
answers of a hundred men and a hundred women, of a hundred young people
and a hundred old ones, of a hundred scholars and a hundred operatives.
My own specialty is asking questions, not answering them, and I trust I
shall not receive a peck or two of letters inquiring of me how I should
choose if such a question were asked me. It may prove as fertile a
source of dispute as "The Lady or the Tiger."
It would have been a great thing to pass a single night close to the
church where Shakespeare's dust lies buried. A single visit by daylight
leaves a comparatively slight impression. But when, after a night's
sleep, one wakes up and sees the spire and the old walls full before
him, that impression is very greatly deepened, and the whole scene
becomes far more a reality. Now I was nearly a whole week at
Stratford-on-Avon. The church, its exterior, its interior, the
birthplace, the river, had time to make themselves permanent images in
my mind. To effect this requires a certain amount of exposure, as much
as in the case of a photographic negative.
* * * * *
And so we bade good-by to Stratford-on-Avon and its hospitalities, with
grateful remembrances of our kind entertainers and all they did for our
comfort and enjoyment.
Where should we go next? Our travelling host proposed Great Malvern, a
famous watering-place, where we should find peace, rest, and good
accommodations. So there we went, and soon found ourselves installed at
the "Foley Arms" hotel. The room I was shown to looked out upon an
apothecary's shop, and from the window of that shop stared out upon me a
plaster bust which I recognized as that of Samuel Hahnemann. I was glad
to change to another apartment, but it may be a comfort to some of his
American followers to know that traces of homoeopathy,--or what still
continues to call itself so,--survive in the Old World, which we have
understood was pretty well tired of it.
We spent several days very pleasantly at Great Malvern. It lies at the
foot of a range of hills, the loftiest of which is over a thousand feet
in height. A---- and I thought we would go to the top of one of these,
known as the Beacon. We hired a "four-wheeler," dragged by a
much-enduring horse and in charge of a civil young man. We turned out of
one of the streets not far from the hotel, and found ourselves facing an
ascent which looked like what I should suppose would be a pretty steep
toboggan slide. We both drew back. _"Facilis ascensus,"_ I said to
myself, _"sed revocare gradum."_ It is easy enough to get up if you
are dragged up, but how will it be to come down such a declivity? When
we reached it on our return, the semi-precipice had lost all its
terrors. We had seen and travelled over so much worse places that this
little bit of slanting road seemed as nothing. The road which wound up
to the summit of the Beacon was narrow and uneven. It ran close to the
edge of the steep hillside,--so close that there were times when every
one of our forty digits curled up like a bird's claw. If we went over,
it would not be a fall down a good honest precipice,--a swish through
the air and a smash at the bottom,--but a tumbling, and a rolling over
and over, and a bouncing and bumping, ever accelerating, until we
bounded into the level below, all ready for the coroner. At one sudden
turn of the road the horse's body projected so far over its edge that
A---- declared if the beast had been an inch longer he would have
toppled over. When we got close to the summit we found the wind blowing
almost a gale. A---- says in her diary that I (meaning her honored
parent) "nearly blew off from the top of the mountain." It is true that
the force of the wind was something fearful, and seeing that two young
men near me were exposed to its fury, I offered an arm to each of them,
which they were not too proud to accept; A---- was equally attentive to
another young person; and having seen as much of the prospect as we
cared to, we were glad to get back to our four-wheeler and our hotel,
after a perilous journey almost comparable to Mark Twain's ascent of the
Riffelberg.
At Great Malvern we were deliciously idle. We walked about the place,
rested quietly, drove into the neighboring country, and made a single
excursion,--to Tewkesbury. There are few places better worth seeing than
this fine old town, full of historical associations and monumental
relics. The magnificent old abbey church is the central object of
interest. The noble Norman tower, one hundred and thirty-two feet in
height, was once surmounted by a spire, which fell during divine service
on Easter Day of the year 1559. The arch of the west entrance is sixteen
feet high and thirty-four feet wide. The fourteen columns of the nave
are each six feet and three inches in diameter and thirty feet in
height. I did not take these measurements from the fabric itself, but
from the guidebook, and I give them here instead of saying that the
columns were huge, enormous, colossal, as they did most assuredly seem
to me. The old houses of Tewkesbury compare well with the finest of
those in Chester. I have a photograph before me of one of them, in which
each of the three upper floors overhangs the one beneath it, and the
windows in the pointed gable above project over those of the fourth
floor.
I ought to have visited the site of Holme Castle, the name of which
reminds me of my own origin. "The meaning of the Saxon word 'Holme' is a
meadow surrounded with brooks, and here not only did the castle bear the
name, but the meadow is described as the 'Holme,--where the castle
was.'" The final _s_ in the name as we spell it is a frequent
addition to old English names, as Camden mentions, giving the name
Holmes among the examples. As there is no castle at the Holme now, I
need not pursue my inquiries any further. It was by accident that I
stumbled on this bit of archaeology, and as I have a good many
namesakes, it may perhaps please some of them to be told about it. Few
of us hold any castles, I think, in these days, except those _châteaux
en Espagne_, of which I doubt not, many of us are lords and masters.
In another of our excursions we visited a venerable church, where our
attention was called to a particular monument. It was erected to the
memory of one of the best of husbands by his "wretched widow," who
records upon the marble that there never was such a man on the face of
the earth before, and never will be again, and that there never was
anybody so miserable as she,--no, never, never, never! These are not the
exact words, but this is pretty nearly what she declares. The story is
that she married again within a year.
From my window at the Foley Arms I can see the tower of the fine old
abbey church of Malvern, which would be a centre of pilgrimages if it
were in our country. But England is full of such monumental structures,
into the history of which the local antiquarians burrow, and pass their
peaceful lives in studying and writing about them with the same innocent
enthusiasm that White of Selborne manifested in studying nature as his
village showed it to him.
In our long drives we have seen everywhere the same picturesque old
cottages, with the pretty gardens, and abundant flowers, and noble
trees, more frequently elms than any other. One day--it was on the 10th
of July--we found ourselves driving through what seemed to be a
gentleman's estate, an ample domain, well wooded and well kept. On
inquiring to whom this place belonged, I was told that the owner was Sir
Edmund Lechmere. The name had a very familiar sound to my ears. Without
rising from the table at which I am now writing, I have only to turn my
head, and in full view, at the distance of a mile, just across the
estuary of the Charles, shining in the morning sun, are the roofs and
spires and chimneys of East Cambridge, always known in my younger days
as Lechmere's Point. Judge Richard Lechmere was one of our old Cambridge
Tories, whose property was confiscated at the time of the Revolution. An
engraving of his handsome house, which stands next to the Vassall house,
long known as Washington's headquarters, and since not less celebrated
as the residence of Longfellow, is before me, on one of the pages of the
pleasing little volume, "The Cambridge of 1776." I take it for granted
that our Lechmeres were of the same stock as the owner of this property.
If so, he probably knows all that I could tell him about his colonial
relatives, who were very grand people, belonging to a little
aristocratic circle of friends and relatives who were faithful to their
king and their church. The Baroness Riedesel, wife of a Hessian officer
who had been captured, was for a while resident in this house, and her
name, scratched on a window-pane, was long shown as a sight for eyes
unused to titles other than governor, judge, colonel, and the like. I
was tempted to present myself at Sir Edmund's door as one who knew
something about the Lechmeres in America, but I did not feel sure how
cordially a descendant of the rebels who drove off Richard and Mary
Lechmere would be received.
From Great Malvern we went to Bath, another place where we could rest
and be comfortable. The Grand Pump-Room Hotel was a stately building,
and the bath-rooms were far beyond anything I had ever seen of that
kind. The remains of the old Roman baths, which appear to have been very
extensive, are partially exposed. What surprises one all over the Old
World is to see how deeply all the old civilizations contrive to get
buried. Everybody seems to have lived in the cellar. It is hard to
believe that the cellar floor was once the sun surface of the smiling
earth.
I looked forward to seeing Bath with a curious kind of interest. I once
knew one of those dear old English ladies whom one finds all the world
over, with their prim little ways, and their gilt prayer-books, and
lavender-scented handkerchiefs, and family recollections. She gave me
the idea that Bath, a city where the great people often congregate, was
more especially the paradise of decayed gentlewomen. There, she told me,
persons with very narrow incomes--not _demi-fortunes_, but
_demi-quart-de-fortunes_--could find everything arranged to
accommodate their modest incomes. I saw the evidence of this everywhere.
So great was the delight I had in looking in at the shop-windows of the
long street which seemed to be one of the chief thoroughfares that,
after exploring it in its full extent by myself, I went for A----, and
led her down one side its whole length and up the other. In these shops
the precious old dears could buy everything they wanted in the most
minute quantities. Such tempting heaps of lumps of white sugar, only
twopence! Such delectable cakes, two for a penny! Such seductive scraps
of meat, which would make a breakfast nourishing as well as relishing,
possibly even what called itself a dinner, blushing to see themselves
labelled threepence or fourpence! We did not know whether to smile or to
drop a tear, as we contemplated these baits hung out to tempt the coins
from the exiguous purses of ancient maidens, forlorn widows, withered
annuitants, stranded humanity in every stage of shipwrecked penury. I am
reminded of Thackeray's "Jack Spiggot." "And what are your pursuits,
Jack? says I. 'Sold out when the governor died. Mother lives at Bath. Go
down there once a year for a week. Dreadful slow. Shilling whist.'" Mrs.
Gaskell's picture of "Cranford" is said to have been drawn from a
village in Cheshire, but Bath must have a great deal in common with its
"elegant economies." Do not make the mistake, however, of supposing that
this splendid watering-place, sometimes spoken of as "the handsomest
city in Britain," is only a city of refuge for people that have seen
better days. Lord Macaulay speaks of it as "that beautiful city which
charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and
Palladio." If it is not quite so conspicuous as a fashionable resort as
it was in the days of Beau Nash or of Christopher Anstey, it has never
lost its popularity. Chesterfield writes in 1764, "The number of people
in this place is infinite," and at the present time the annual influx of
visitors is said to vary from ten to fourteen thousand. Many of its
public buildings are fine, and the abbey church, dating from 1499, is an
object of much curiosity, especially on account of the sculptures on its
western façade. These represent two ladders, with angels going up and
down upon them,--suggested by a dream of the founder of the church,
repeating that of Jacob.
On the 14th of July we left Bath for Salisbury. While passing Westbury,
one of our fellow-passengers exclaimed, "Look out! Look out!" "What is
it?" "The horse! the horse!" All our heads turned to the window, and all
our eyes fastened on the figure of a white horse, upon a hillside some
miles distant. This was not the white horse which Mr. Thomas Hughes has
made famous, but one of much less archaic aspect and more questionable
history. A little book which we bought tells us all we care to know
about it. "It is formed by excoriating the turf over the steep slope of
the northern escarpment of Salisbury Plain." It was "remodelled" in
1778, and "restored" in 1873 at a cost of between sixty and seventy
pounds. It is said that a smaller and ruder horse stood here from time
immemorial, and was made to commemorate a victory of Alfred over the
Danes. However that may be, the horse we now see on the hillside is a
very modern-looking and well-shaped animal, and is of the following
dimensions: length, 170 feet; height from highest part of back, 128
feet; thickness of body, 55 feet; length of head, 50 feet; eye, 6 by 8
feet. It is a very pretty little object as we see it in the distance.
Salisbury Cathedral was my first love among all the wonderful
ecclesiastical buildings which I saw during my earlier journey. I looked
forward to seeing it again with great anticipations of pleasure, which
were more than realized.
Our travelling host had taken a whole house in the Close,--a privileged
enclosure, containing the cathedral, the bishop's palace, houses of the
clergy, and a limited number of private residences, one of the very best
of which was given over entirely into the hands of our party during our
visit. The house was about as near the cathedral as Mr. Flower's house,
where we stayed at Stratford-on-Avon, was to the Church of the Holy
Trinity. It was very completely furnished, and in the room assigned to
me as my library I found books in various languages, showing that the
residence was that of a scholarly person.
If one had to name the apple of the eye of England, I think he would be
likely to say that Salisbury Cathedral was as near as he could come to
it, and that the white of the eye was Salisbury Close. The cathedral is
surrounded by a high wall, the gates of which,--its eyelids,--are closed
every night at a seasonable hour, at which the virtuous inhabitants are
expected to be in their safe and sacred quarters. Houses within this
hallowed precinct naturally bring a higher rent than those of the
unsanctified and unprotected region outside of its walls. It is a realm
of peace, glorified by the divine edifice, which lifts the least
imaginative soul upward to the heavens its spire seems trying to reach;
beautified by rows of noble elms which stretch high aloft, as if in
emulation of the spire; beatified by holy memories of the good and great
men who have worn their lives out in the service of the church of which
it is one of the noblest temples.
For a whole week we lived under the shadow of the spire of the great
cathedral. Our house was opposite the north transept, only separated by
the road in front of it from the cathedral grounds. Here, as at
Stratford, I learned what it was to awake morning after morning and find
that I was not dreaming, but there in the truth-telling daylight the
object of my admiration, devotion, almost worship, stood before me. I
need not here say anything more of the cathedral, except that its
perfect exterior is hardly equalled in beauty by its interior, which
looks somewhat bare and cold. It was my impression that there is more to
study than to admire in the interior, but I saw the cathedral so much
oftener on the outside than on the inside that I may not have done
justice to the latter aspect of the noble building.
Nothing could be more restful than our week at Salisbury. There was
enough in the old town besides the cathedral to interest us,--old
buildings, a museum, full of curious objects, and the old town itself.
When I was there the first time, I remember that we picked up a
guide-book in which we found a verse that has remained in my memory ever
since. It is an epitaph on a native of Salisbury who died in Venice.
"Born in the English Venice, thou didst dye
Dear Friend, in the Italian Salisbury."
This would be hard to understand except for the explanation which the
local antiquarians give us of its significance. The Wiltshire Avon flows
by or through the town, which is drained by brooks that run through its
streets. These, which used to be open, are now covered over, and thus
the epitaph becomes somewhat puzzling, as there is nothing to remind one
of Venice in walking about the town.
While at Salisbury we made several excursions: to Old Sarum; to
Bemerton, where we saw the residence of holy George Herbert, and visited
the little atom of a church in which he ministered; to Clarendon Park;
to Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, a most interesting place
for itself and its recollections; and lastly to Stonehenge. My second
visit to the great stones after so long an interval was a strange
experience. But what is half a century to a place like Stonehenge?
Nothing dwarfs an individual life like one of these massive, almost
unchanging monuments of an antiquity which refuses to be measured. The
"Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" was represented by an old man, who told
all he knew and a good deal more about the great stones, and sheared a
living, not from sheep, but from visitors, in the shape of shillings and
sixpences. I saw nothing that wore unwoven wool on its back in the
neighborhood of the monuments, but sheep are shown straggling among them
in the photographs.
The broken circle of stones, some in their original position, some
bending over like old men, some lying prostrate, suggested the thoughts
which took form in the following verses. They were read at the annual
meeting, in January, of the class which graduated at Harvard College in
the year 1829. Eight of the fifty-nine men who graduated sat round the
small table. There were several other classmates living, but infirmity,
distance, and other peremptory reasons kept them from being with us. I
have read forty poems at our successive annual meetings. I will
introduce this last one by quoting a stanza from the poem I read in
1851:--
As one by one is falling
Beneath the leaves or snows,
Each memory still recalling
The broken ring shall close,
Till the night winds softly pass
O'er the green and growing grass,
Where it waves on the graves
Of the "Boys of 'Twenty-nine."
THE BROKEN CIRCLE.
I stood on Sarum's treeless plain,
The waste that careless Nature owns;
Lone tenants of her bleak domain,
Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.
Upheaved in many a billowy mound
The sea-like, naked turf arose,
Where wandering flocks went nibbling round
The mingled graves of friends and foes.
The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane,
This windy desert roamed in turn;
Unmoved these mighty blocks remain
Whose story none that lives may learn.
Erect, half buried, slant or prone,
These awful listeners, blind and dumb,
Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown,
As wave on wave they go and come.
"Who are you, giants, whence and why?"
I stand and ask in blank amaze;
My soul accepts their mute reply:
"A mystery, as are you that gaze.
"A silent Orpheus wrought the charm
From riven rocks their spoils to bring;
A nameless Titan lent his arm
To range us in our magic ring.
"But Time with still and stealthy stride,
That climbs and treads and levels all,
That bids the loosening keystone slide,
And topples down the crumbling wall,--
"Time, that unbuilds the quarried past,
Leans on these wrecks that press the sod;
They slant, they stoop, they fall at last,
And strew the turf their priests have trod.
"No more our altar's wreath of smoke
Floats up with morning's fragrant dew;
The fires are dead, the ring is broke,
Where stood the many stand the few."
--My thoughts had wandered far away,
Borne off on Memory's outspread wing,
To where in deepening twilight lay
The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.
Ah me! of all our goodly train
How few will find our banquet hall!
Yet why with coward lips complain
That this must lean and that must fall?
Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,
Its vanished flame no more returns;
But ours no chilling damp has known,--
Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns.
So let our broken circle stand
A wreck, a remnant, yet the same,
While one last, loving, faithful hand
Still lives to feed its altar-flame!
My heart has gone back over the waters to my old friends and my own
home. When this vision has faded, I will return to the silence of the
lovely Close and the shadow of the great Cathedral.
V.
The remembrance of home, with its early and precious and long-enduring
friendships, has intruded itself among my recollections of what I saw
and heard, of what I felt and thought, in the distant land I was
visiting. I must return to the scene where I found myself when the
suggestion of the broken circle ran away with my imagination.
The literature of Stonehenge is extensive, and illustrates the weakness
of archaeologists almost as well as the "Praetorium" of Scott's
"Antiquary." "In 1823," says a local handbook, "H. Browne, of Amesbury,
published 'An Illustration of Stonehenge and Abury,' in which he
endeavored to show that both of these monuments were antediluvian, and
that the latter was formed under the direction of Adam. He ascribes the
present dilapidated condition of Stonehenge to the operation of the
general deluge; for, he adds, 'to suppose it to be the work of any
people since the flood is entirely monstrous.'"
We know well enough how great stones--pillars and obelisks--are brought
into place by means of our modern appliances. But if the great blocks
were raised by a mob of naked Picts, or any tribe that knew none of the
mechanical powers but the lever, how did they set them up and lay the
cross-stones, the imposts, upon the uprights? It is pleasant, once in a
while, to think how we should have managed any such matters as this if
left to our natural resources. We are all interested in the make-shifts
of Robinson Crusoe. Now the rudest tribes make cords of some kind, and
the earliest, or almost the earliest, of artificial structures is an
earth-mound. If a hundred, or hundreds, of men could drag the huge
stones many leagues, as they must have done to bring them to their
destined place, they could have drawn each of them up a long slanting
mound ending in a sharp declivity, with a hole for the foot of the stone
at its base. If the stone were now tipped over, it would slide into its
place, and could be easily raised from its slanting position to the
perpendicular. Then filling in the space between the mound and two
contiguous stones, the impost could be dragged up to its position. I
found a pleasure in working at this simple mechanical problem, as a
change from the more imaginative thoughts suggested by the mysterious
monuments.
One incident of our excursion to Stonehenge had a significance for me
which renders it memorable in my personal experience. As we drove over
the barren plain, one of the party suddenly exclaimed, "Look! Look! See
the lark rising!" I looked up with the rest. There was the bright blue
sky, but not a speck upon it which my eyes could distinguish. Again, one
called out, "Hark! Hark! Hear him singing!" I listened, but not a sound
reached my ear. Was it strange that I felt a momentary pang? _Those
that look out at the windows are darkened, and all the daughters of
music are brought low._ Was I never to see or hear the soaring
songster at Heaven's gate,--unless,--unless,--if our mild humanized
theology promises truly, I may perhaps hereafter listen to him singing
far down beneath me? For in whatever world I may find myself, I hope I
shall always love our poor little spheroid, so long my home, which some
kind angel may point out to me as a gilded globule swimming in the
sunlight far away. After walking the streets of pure gold in the New
Jerusalem, might not one like a short vacation, to visit the
well-remembered green fields and flowery meadows? I had a very sweet
emotion of self-pity, which took the sting out of my painful discovery
that the orchestra of my pleasing life-entertainment was unstringing its
instruments, and the lights were being extinguished,--that the show was
almost over. All this I kept to myself, of course, except so far as I
whispered it to the unseen presence which we all feel is in sympathy
with us, and which, as it seemed to my fancy, was looking into my eyes,
and through them into my soul, with the tender, tearful smile of a
mother who for the first time gently presses back the longing lips of
her as yet unweaned infant.
On our way back from Stonehenge we stopped and took a cup of tea with a
friend of our host, Mr. Nightingale. His house, a bachelor
establishment, was very attractive to us by the beauty within and around
it. His collection of "china," as Pope and old-fashioned people call all
sorts of earthenware, excited the enthusiasm of our host, whose
admiration of some rare pieces in the collection was so great that it
would have run into envy in a less generous nature.
It is very delightful to find one's self in one of these English country
residences. The house is commonly old, and has a history. It is
oftentimes itself a record, like that old farmhouse my friend John
Bellows wrote to me about, which chronicled half a dozen reigns by
various architectural marks as exactly as if it had been an official
register. "The stately homes of England," as we see them at Wilton and
Longford Castle, are not more admirable in their splendors than "the
blessed homes of England" in their modest beauty. Everywhere one may see
here old parsonages by the side of ivy-mantled churches, and the
comfortable mansions where generations of country squires have lived in
peace, while their sons have gone forth to fight England's battles, and
carry her flags of war and commerce all over the world. We in America
can hardly be said to have such a possession as a family home. We
encamp,--not under canvas, but in fabrics of wood or more lasting
materials, which are pulled down after a brief occupancy by the
builders, and possibly their children, or are modernized so that the
former dwellers in them would never recognize their old habitations.
In my various excursions from Salisbury I was followed everywhere by the
all-pervading presence of the towering spire. Just what it was in that
earlier visit, when my eyes were undimmed and my sensibilities unworn,
just such I found it now. As one drives away from the town, the roofs of
the houses drop out of the landscape, the lesser spires disappear one by
one, until the great shaft is left standing alone,--solitary as the
broken statue of Ozymandias in the desert, as the mast of some mighty
ship above the waves which have rolled over the foundering vessel. Most
persons will, I think, own to a feeling of awe in looking up at it. Few
can look down from a great height without creepings and crispations, if
they do not get as far as vertigos and that aerial calenture which
prompts them to jump from the pinnacle on which they are standing. It
does not take much imagination to make one experience something of the
same feeling in looking up at a very tall steeple or chimney. To one
whose eyes are used to Park Street and the Old South steeples as
standards of height, a spire which climbs four hundred feet towards the
sky is a new sensation. Whether I am more "afraid of that which is high"
than I was at my first visit, as I should be on the authority of
Ecclesiastes, I cannot say, but it was quite enough for me to let my
eyes climb the spire, and I had no desire whatever to stand upon that
"bad eminence," as I am sure that I should have found it.
I soon noticed a slight deflection from the perpendicular at the upper
part of the spire. This has long been observed. I could not say that I
saw the spire quivering in the wind, as I felt that of Strasburg doing
when I ascended it,--swaying like a blade of grass when a breath of air
passes over it. But it has been, for at least two hundred years, nearly
two feet out of the perpendicular. No increase in the deviation was
found to exist when it was examined early in the present century. It is
a wonder that this slight-looking structure can have survived the
blasts, and thunderbolts, and earthquakes, and the weakening effects of
time on its stones and timbers for five hundred years. Since the spire
of Chichester Cathedral fell in 1861, sheathing itself in its tower like
a sword dropping into its scabbard, one can hardly help looking with
apprehension at all these lofty fabrics. I have before referred to the
fall of the spire of Tewkesbury Abbey church, three centuries earlier.
There has been a good deal of fear for the Salisbury spire, and great
precautions have been taken to keep it firm, so that we may hope it will
stand for another five hundred years. It ought to be a "joy forever,"
for it is a thing of beauty, if ever there were one.
I never felt inclined to play the part of the young enthusiast in
"Excelsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the
spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it
in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty
feet of the top, where there is a small door, through which he emerges,
to crawl up the remaining distance on the outside. "The situation and
appearance," says one of the guide-books, "must be terrific, yet many
persons have voluntarily and daringly clambered to the top, even in a
state of intoxication." Such, I feel sure, was not the state of my most
valued and exemplary clerical friend, who, with a cool head and steady
nerves, found himself standing in safety at the top of the spire, with
his hand upon the vane, which nothing terrestrial had ever looked down
upon in its lofty position, except a bird, a bat, a sky-rocket, or a
balloon.
In saying that the exterior of Salisbury Cathedral is more interesting
than its interior, I was perhaps unfair to the latter, which only yields
to the surpassing claims of the wonderful structure as seen from the
outside. One may get a little tired of marble Crusaders, with their
crossed legs and broken noses, especially if, as one sometimes finds
them, they are covered with the pencilled autographs of cockney
scribblers. But there are monuments in this cathedral which excite
curiosity, and others which awaken the most striking associations. There
is the "Boy Bishop," his marble effigy protected from vandalism by an
iron cage. There is the skeleton figure representing Fox (who should
have been called Goose), the poor creature who starved himself to death
in trying to imitate the fast of forty days in the wilderness. Since
this performance has been taken out of the list of miracles, it is not
so likely to be repeated by fanatics. I confess to a strong suspicion
that this is one of the ambulatory or movable stories, like the
"hangman's stone" legend, which I have found in so many different parts
of England. Skulls and crossbones, sometimes skeletons or skeleton-like
figures, are not uncommon among the sepulchral embellishments of an
earlier period. Where one of these figures is found, the forty-day-fast
story is likely to grow out of it, as the mistletoe springs from the oak
or apple tree.
With far different emotions we look upon the spot where lie buried many
of the Herbert family, among the rest,
"Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother,"
for whom Ben Jonson wrote the celebrated epitaph. I am almost afraid to
say it, but I never could admire the line,
"Lies the subject of all verse,"
nor the idea of Time dropping his hour-glass and scythe to throw a dart
at the fleshless figure of Death. This last image seems to me about the
equivalent in mortuary poetry of Roubiliac's monument to Mrs.
Nightingale in mortuary sculpture,--poor conceits both of them, without
the suggestion of a tear in the verses or in the marble; but the
rhetorical exaggeration does not prevent us from feeling that we are
standing by the resting-place of one who was
"learn'd and fair and good"
enough to stir the soul of stalwart Ben Jonson, and the names of Sidney
and Herbert make us forget the strange hyperboles.
History meets us everywhere, as we stray among these ancient monuments.
Under that effigy lie the great bones of Sir John Cheyne, a mighty man
of war, said to have been "overthrown" by Richard the Third at the
battle of Bosworth Field. What was left of him was unearthed in 1789 in
the demolition of the Beauchamp chapel, and his thigh-bone was found to
be four inches longer than that of a man of common stature.
The reader may remember how my recollections started from their
hiding-place when I came, in one of our excursions, upon the name of
Lechmere, as belonging to the owner of a fine estate by or through which
we were driving. I had a similar twinge of reminiscence at meeting with
the name of Gorges, which is perpetuated by a stately monument at the
end of the north aisle of the cathedral. Sir Thomas Gorges, Knight of
Longford Castle, may or may not have been of the same family as the
well-remembered grandiose personage of the New England Pilgrim period.
The title this gentleman bore had a far more magnificent sound than
those of his contemporaries, Governor Carver and Elder Brewster. No
title ever borne among us has filled the mouth quite so full as that of
"Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Lord Palatine of the Province of Maine," a
province with "Gorgeana" (late the plantation of Agamenticus) as its
capital. Everywhere in England a New Englander is constantly meeting
with names of families and places which remind him that he comes of a
graft from an old tree on a new stock. I could not keep down the
associations called up by the name of Gorges. There is a certain
pleasure in now and then sprinkling our prosaic colonial history with
the holy water of a high-sounding title; not that a "Sir" before a man's
name makes him any better,--for are we not all equal, and more than
equal, to each other?--but it sounds pleasantly. Sir Harry Vane and Sir
Harry Frankland look prettily on the printed page, as the illuminated
capital at the head of a chapter in an old folio pleases the eye of the
reader. Sir Thomas Gorges was the builder of Longford Castle, now the
seat of the Earl of Radnor, whose family name is Bouverie. Whether our
Sir Ferdinando was of the Longford Castle stock or not I must leave to
my associates of the Massachusetts Historical Society to determine.
We lived very quietly at our temporary home in Salisbury Close. A
pleasant dinner with the Dean, a stroll through the grounds of the
episcopal palace, with that perpetual feast of the eyes which the
cathedral offered us, made our residence delightful at the time, and
keeps it so in remembrance. Besides the cathedral there were the very
lovely cloisters, the noble chapter-house with its central pillar,--this
structure has been restored and rejuvenated since my earlier visit,--and
there were the peaceful dwellings, where I insist on believing that only
virtue and happiness are ever tenants. Even outside the sacred enclosure
there is a great deal to enjoy, in the ancient town of Salisbury. One
may rest under the Poultry Cross, where twenty or thirty generations
have rested before him. One may purchase his china at the well-furnished
establishment of the tenant of a spacious apartment of ancient
date,--"the Halle of John Halle," a fine private edifice built in the
year 1470, restored and beautified in 1834; the emblazonment of the
royal arms having been executed by the celebrated architectural artist
Pugin. The old houses are numerous, and some of them eminently
picturesque.
Salisbury was formerly very unhealthy, on account of the low, swampy
nature of its grounds. The Sanitary Reform, dating from about thirty
years ago, had a great effect on the condition of the place. Before the
drainage the annual mortality was twenty-seven in the thousand; since
the drainage twenty in the thousand, which is below that of Boston. In
the Close, which is a little Garden of Eden, with no serpent in it that
I could hear of, the deaths were only fourteen in a thousand. Happy
little enclosure, where thieves cannot break through and steal, where
Death himself hesitates to enter, and makes a visit only now and then at
long intervals, lest the fortunate inhabitants should think they had
already reached the Celestial City!
[Illustration: Salisbury Cathedral.]
It must have been a pretty bitter quarrel that drove the tenants of the
airy height of Old Sarum to remove to the marshy level of the present
site of the cathedral and the town. I wish we could have given more time
to the ancient fortress and cathedral town. This is one of the most
interesting historic localities of Great Britain. We looked from
different points of view at the mounds and trenches which marked it as a
strongly fortified position. For many centuries it played an important
part in the history of England. At length, however, the jealousies of
the laity and the clergy, a squabble like that of "town and gown," but
with graver underlying causes, broke up the harmony and practically
ended the existence of the place except as a monument of the past. It
seems a pity that the headquarters of the Prince of Peace could not have
managed to maintain tranquillity within its own borders. But so it was;
and the consequence followed that Old Sarum, with all its grand
recollections, is but a collection of mounds and hollows,--as much a
tomb of its past as Birs Nimroud of that great city, Nineveh. Old Sarum
is now best remembered by its long-surviving privilege, as a borough, of
sending two members to Parliament. The farcical ceremony of electing two
representatives who had no real constituency behind them was put an end
to by the Reform Act of 1832.
Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, within an easy drive's
distance from Salisbury, was the first nobleman's residence I saw in my
early visit. Not a great deal of what I then saw had survived in my
memory. I recall the general effect of the stately mansion and its
grounds. A picture or two of Vandyke's had not quite faded out of my
recollection. I could not forget the armor of Anne de Montmorenci,--not
another Maid of Orleans, but Constable of France,--said to have been
taken in battle by an ancestor of the Herberts. It was one of the first
things that made me feel I was in the Old World. Miles Standish's sword
was as far back as New England collections of armor carried us at that
day. The remarkable gallery of ancient sculptures impressed me at the
time, but no one bust or statue survived as a distinct image. Even the
beautiful Palladian bridge had not pictured itself on my mental tablet
as it should have done, and I could not have taken my oath that I had
seen it. But the pretty English maidens whom we met on the day of our
visit to Wilton,--daughters or granddaughters of a famous inventor and
engineer,--still lingered as vague and pleasing visions, so lovely had
they seemed among the daisies and primroses. The primroses and daisies
were as fresh in the spring of 1886 as they were in the spring of 1833,
but I hardly dared to ask after the blooming maidens of that early
period.
One memory predominates over all others, in walking through the halls,
or still more in wandering through the grounds, of Wilton House. Here
Sir Philip Sidney wrote his "Arcadia," and the ever youthful presence of
the man himself rather than the recollection of his writings takes
possession of us. There are three young men in history whose names
always present themselves to me in a special companionship: Pico della
Mirandola, "the Phoenix of the Age" for his contemporaries; "the
Admirable Crichton," accepting as true the accounts which have come down
to us of his wonderful accomplishments; and Sidney, the Bayard of
England, "that glorious star, that lively pattern of virtue and the
lovely joy of all the learned sort, ... born into the world to show unto
our age a sample of ancient virtue." The English paragon of excellence
was but thirty-two years old when he was slain at Zutphen, the Italian
Phoenix but thirty-one when he was carried off by a fever, and the
Scotch prodigy of gifts and attainments was only twenty-two when he was
assassinated by his worthless pupil. Sir Philip Sidney is better
remembered by the draught of water he gave the dying soldier than by all
the waters he ever drew from the fountain of the Muses, considerable as
are the merits of his prose and verse. But here, where he came to cool
his fiery spirit after the bitter insult he had received from the Earl
of Leicester; here, where he mused and wrote, and shaped his lofty plans
for a glorious future, he lives once more in our imagination, as if his
spirit haunted the English Arcadia he loved so dearly.
The name of Herbert, which we have met with in the cathedral, and which
belongs to the Earls of Pembroke, presents itself to us once more in a
very different and very beautiful aspect. Between Salisbury and Wilton,
three miles and a half distant, is the little village of Bemerton, where
"holy George Herbert" lived and died, and where he lies buried. Many
Americans who know little else of him recall the lines borrowed from him
by Irving in the "Sketch-Book" and by Emerson in "Nature." The
"Sketch-Book" gives the lines thus:--
"Sweet day, so pure, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky."
In other versions the fourth word is _cool_ instead of _pure_,
and _cool_ is, I believe, the correct reading. The day when we
visited Bemerton was, according to A----'s diary, "perfect." I was
struck with the calm beauty of the scene around us, the fresh greenness
of all growing things, and the stillness of the river which mirrored the
heavens above it. It must have been this reflection which the poet was
thinking of when he spoke of the bridal of the earth and sky. The river
is the Wiltshire Avon; not Shakespeare's Avon, but the southern stream
of the same name, which empties into the British Channel.
So much of George Herbert's intellectual and moral character repeat
themselves in Emerson that if I believed in metempsychosis I should
think that the English saint had reappeared in the American philosopher.
Their features have a certain resemblance, but the type, though an
exceptional and fine one, is not so very rare. I found a portrait in the
National Gallery which was a good specimen of it; the bust of a near
friend of his, more intimate with him than almost any other person, is
often taken for that of Emerson. I see something of it in the portrait
of Sir Philip Sidney, and I doubt not that traces of a similar mental
resemblance ran through the whole group, with individual characteristics
which were in some respects quite different. I will take a single verse
of Herbert's from Emerson's "Nature,"--one of the five which he
quotes:--
"Nothing hath got so far
But man hath caught and kept it as his prey;
His eyes dismount the highest star:
He is in little all the sphere.
Herbs gladly cure our flesh because that they
Find their acquaintance there."
Emerson himself fully recognizes his obligations to "the beautiful
psalmist of the seventeenth century," as he calls George Herbert. There
are many passages in his writings which sound as if they were
paraphrases from the elder poet. From him it is that Emerson gets a word
he is fond of, and of which his imitators are too fond:--
"Who sweeps a room as for thy laws
Makes that and the action _fine_."
The little chapel in which Herbert officiated is perhaps half as long
again as the room in which I am writing, but it is four or five feet
narrower,--and I do not live in a palace. Here this humble servant of
God preached and prayed, and here by his faithful and loving service he
so endeared himself to all around him that he has been canonized by an
epithet no other saint of the English Church has had bestowed upon him.
His life as pictured by Izaak Walton is, to borrow one of his own lines,
"A box where sweets compacted lie;"
and I felt, as I left his little chapel and the parsonage which he
rebuilt as a free-will offering, as a pilgrim might feel who had just
left the holy places at Jerusalem.
Among the places which I saw in my first visit was Longford Castle, the
seat of the Earl of Radnor. I remembered the curious triangular
building, constructed with reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, as
churches are built in the form of the cross. I remembered how the
omnipresent spire of the great cathedral, three miles away, looked down
upon the grounds about the building as if it had been their next-door
neighbor. I had not forgotten the two celebrated Claudes, Morning and
Evening. My eyes were drawn to the first of these two pictures when I
was here before; now they turned naturally to the landscape with the
setting sun. I have read my St. Ruskin with due reverence, but I have
never given up my allegiance to Claude Lorraine. But of all the fine
paintings at Longford Castle, no one so much impressed me at my recent
visit as the portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein. This is one of those
pictures which help to make the Old World worth a voyage across the
Atlantic. Portraits of Erasmus are not uncommon; every scholar would
know him if he met him in the other world with the look he wore on
earth. All the etchings and their copies give a characteristic
presentation of the spiritual precursor of Luther, who pricked the false
image with his rapier which the sturdy monk slashed with his broadsword.
What a face it is which Hans Holbein has handed down to us in this
wonderful portrait at Longford Castle! How dry it is with scholastic
labor, how keen with shrewd scepticism, how worldly-wise, how conscious
of its owner's wide-awake sagacity! Erasmus and Rabelais,--Nature used
up all her arrows for their quivers, and had to wait a hundred years and
more before she could find shafts enough for the outfit of Voltaire,
leaner and keener than Erasmus, and almost as free in his language as
the audacious creator of Gargantua and Pantagruel.
I have not generally given descriptions of the curious objects which I
saw in the great houses and museums which I visited. There is, however,
a work of art at Longford Castle so remarkable that I must speak of it.
I was so much struck by the enormous amount of skilful ingenuity and
exquisite workmanship bestowed upon it that I looked up its history,
which I found in the "Beauties of England and Wales." This is what is
there said of the wonderful steel chair: "It was made by Thomas Rukers
at the city of Augsburgh, in the year 1575, and consists of more than
130 compartments, all occupied by groups of figures representing a
succession of events in the annals of the Roman Empire, from the landing
of Æneas to the reign of Rodolphus the Second." It looks as if a life
had gone into the making of it, as a pair or two of eyes go to the
working of the bridal veil of an empress.
Fifty years ago and more, when I was at Longford Castle with my two
companions, who are no more with us, we found there a pleasant, motherly
old housekeeper, or attendant of some kind, who gave us a draught of
home-made ale and left a cheerful remembrance with us, as, I need hardly
say, we did with her, in a materialized expression of our good-will. It
always rubbed very hard on my feelings to offer money to any persons who
had served me well, as if they were doing it for their own pleasure. It
may have been the granddaughter of the kindly old matron of the year
1833 who showed us round, and possibly, if I had sunk a shaft of
inquiry, I might have struck a well of sentiment. But
"Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee,"
carried into practical life, is certain in its financial result to the
subject of the emotional impulse, but is less sure to call forth a
tender feeling in the recipient. One will hardly find it worth while to
go through the world weeping over his old recollections, and paying gold
instead of silver and silver instead of copper to astonished boatmen and
bewildered chambermaids.
On Sunday, the 18th of July, we attended morning service at the
cathedral. The congregation was not proportioned to the size of the
great edifice. These vast places of worship were built for ages when
faith was the rule and questioning the exception. I will not say that
faith has grown cold, but it has cooled from white heat to cherry red or
a still less flaming color. As to church attendance, I have heard the
saying attributed to a great statesman, that "once a day is Orthodox,
but twice a day is Puritan." No doubt many of the same class of people
that used to fill the churches stay at home and read about evolution or
telepathy, or whatever new gospel they may have got hold of. Still the
English seem to me a religious people; they have leisure enough to say
grace and give thanks before and after meals, and their institutions
tend to keep alive the feelings of reverence which cannot be said to be
distinctive of our own people.
In coming out of the cathedral, on the Sunday I just mentioned, a
gentleman addressed me as a fellow-countryman. There is something,--I
will not stop now to try and define it,--but there is something by which
we recognize an American among the English before he speaks and betrays
his origin. Our new friend proved to be the president of one of our
American colleges; an intelligent and well-instructed gentleman, of
course. By the invitation of our host he came in to visit us in the
evening, and made himself very welcome by his agreeable conversation.
I took great delight in wandering about the old town of Salisbury. There
are no such surprises in our oldest places as one finds in Chester, or
Tewkesbury, or Stratford, or Salisbury, and I have no doubt in scores or
hundreds of similar places which I have never visited. The best
substitute for such rambles as one can take through these mouldy
boroughs (or burrows) is to be found in such towns as Salem,
Newburyport, Portsmouth. Without imagination, Shakespeare's birthplace
is but a queer old house, and Anne Hathaway's home a tumble-down
cottage. With it, one can see the witches of Salem Village sailing out
of those little square windows, which look as if they were made on
purpose for them, or stroll down to Derby's wharf and gaze at
"Cleopatra's Barge," precursor of the yachts of the Astors and Goulds
and Vanderbilts, as she comes swimming into the harbor in all her gilded
glory. But it must make a difference what the imagination has to work
upon, and I do not at all wonder that Mr. Ruskin would not wish to live
in a land where there are no old ruins of castles and monasteries. Man
will not live on bread only; he wants a great deal more, if he can get
it,--frosted cake as well as corn-bread; and the New World keeps the
imagination on plain and scanty diet, compared to the rich traditional
and historic food which furnishes the banquets of the Old World.
What memories that week in Salisbury and the excursions from it have
left in my mind's picture gallery! The spire of the great cathedral had
been with me as a frequent presence during the last fifty years of my
life, and this second visit has deepened every line of the impression,
as Old Mortality refreshed the inscriptions on the tombstones of the
Covenanters. I find that all these pictures which I have brought home
with me to look at, with
"that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,"
are becoming clearer and brighter as the excitement of overcrowded days
and weeks gradually calms down. I can _be_ in those places where I
passed days and nights, and became habituated to the sight of the
cathedral, or of the Church of the Holy Trinity, at morning, at noon, at
evening, whenever I turned my eyes in its direction. I often close my
eyelids, and startle my household by saying, "Now I am in Salisbury," or
"Now I am in Stratford." It is a blessed thing to be able, in the
twilight of years, to illuminate the soul with such visions. The
Charles, which flows beneath my windows, which I look upon between the
words of the sentence I am now writing, only turning my head as I sit at
my table,--the Charles is hardly more real to me than Shakespeare's
Avon, since I floated on its still waters, or strayed along its banks
and saw the cows reflected in the smooth expanse, their legs upward, as
if they were walking the skies as the flies walk the ceiling. Salisbury
Cathedral stands as substantial in my thought as our own King's Chapel,
since I slumbered by its side, and arose in the morning to find it still
there, and not one of those unsubstantial fabrics built by the architect
of dreams.
On Thursday, the 22d of July, we left Salisbury for Brighton, where we
were to be guests at Arnold House, the residence of our kind host. Here
we passed another delightful week, with everything around us to
contribute to our quiet comfort and happiness. The most thoughtful of
entertainers, a house filled with choice works of art, fine paintings,
and wonderful pottery, pleasant walks and drives, a visitor now and
then, Mr. and Mrs. Goldwin Smith among the number, rest and peace in a
magnificent city built for enjoyment,--what more could we have asked to
make our visit memorable? Many watering-places look forlorn and desolate
in the intervals of "the season." This was not the time of Brighton's
influx of visitors, but the city was far from dull. The houses are very
large, and have the grand air, as if meant for princes; the shops are
well supplied; the salt breeze comes in fresh and wholesome, and the
noble esplanade is lively with promenaders and Bath chairs, some of them
occupied by people evidently ill or presumably lame, some, I suspect,
employed by healthy invalids who are too lazy to walk. I took one
myself, drawn by an old man, to see how I liked it, and found it very
convenient, but I was tempted to ask him to change places and let me
drag him.
With the aid of the guide-book I could describe the wonders of the
pavilion and the various changes which have come over the great
watering-place. The grand walks, the two piers, the aquarium, and all
the great sights which are shown to strangers deserve full attention
from the tourist who writes for other travellers, but none of these
things seem to me so interesting as what we saw and heard in a little
hamlet which has never, so far as I know, been vulgarized by sightseers.
We drove in an open carriage,--Mr. and Mrs. Willett, A----, and
myself,--into the country, which soon became bare, sparsely settled, a
long succession of rounded hills and hollows. These are the South Downs,
from which comes the famous mutton known all over England, not unknown
at the table of our Saturday Club and other well-spread boards. After a
drive of ten miles or more we arrived at a little "settlement," as we
Americans would call it, and drove up to the door of a modest parsonage,
where dwells the shepherd of the South Down flock of Christian
worshippers. I hope that the good clergyman, if he ever happens to see
what I am writing, will pardon me for making mention of his hidden
retreat, which he himself speaks of as "one of the remoter nooks of the
old country." Nothing I saw in England brought to my mind Goldsmith's
picture of "the man to all the country dear," and his surroundings, like
this visit. The church dates, if I remember right, from the thirteenth
century. Some of its stones show marks, as it is thought, of having
belonged to a Saxon edifice. The massive leaden font is of a very great
antiquity. In the wall of the church is a narrow opening, at which the
priest is supposed to have sat and listened to the confession of the
sinner on the outside of the building. The dead lie all around the
church, under stones bearing the dates of several centuries. One
epitaph, which the unlettered Muse must have dictated, is worth
recording. After giving the chief slumberer's name the epitaph adds,--
"Here lies on either side, the remains of each of his former wives."
Those of a third have found a resting-place close by, behind him.
It seemed to me that Mr. Bunner's young man in search of Arcady might
look for it here with as good a chance of being satisfied as anywhere I
can think of. But I suppose that men and women and especially boys,
would prove to be a good deal like the rest of the world, if one lived
here long enough to learn all about them. One thing I can safely
say,--an English man or boy never goes anywhere without his fists. I saw
a boy of ten or twelve years, whose pleasant face attracted my
attention. I said to the rector, "That is a fine-looking little fellow,
and I should think an intelligent and amiable kind of boy." "Yes," he
said, "yes; he can strike from the shoulder pretty well, too. I had to
stop him the other day, indulging in that exercise." Well, I said to
myself, we have not yet reached the heaven on earth which I was fancying
might be embosomed in this peaceful-looking hollow. Youthful angels can
hardly be in the habit of striking from the shoulder. But the well-known
phrase, belonging to the pugilist rather than to the priest, brought me
back from the ideal world into which my imagination had wandered.
Our week at Brighton was passed in a very quiet but most enjoyable way.
It could not be otherwise with such a host and hostess, always arranging
everything with reference to our well-being and in accordance with our
wishes. I became very fond of the esplanade, such a public walk as I
never saw anything to compare with. In these tranquil days, and long,
honest nights of sleep, the fatigues of what we had been through were
forgotten, the scales showed that we were becoming less ethereal every
day, and we were ready for another move.
We bade good-by to our hosts with the most grateful and the warmest
feeling towards them, after a month of delightful companionship and the
experience of a hospitality almost too generous to accept, but which
they were pleased to look upon as if we were doing them a favor.
On the 29th of July we found ourselves once more in London.
VI.
We found our old quarters all ready and awaiting us. Mrs. Mackellar's
motherly smile, Sam's civil bow, and the rosy cheeks of many-buttoned
Robert made us feel at home as soon as we crossed the threshold.
The dissolution of Parliament had brought "the season" abruptly to an
end. London was empty. There were three or four millions of people in
it, but the great houses were for the most part left without occupants
except their liveried guardians. We kept as quiet as possible, to avoid
all engagements. For now we were in London for London itself, to do
shopping, to see sights, to be our own master and mistress, and to live
as independent a life as we possibly could.
The first thing we did on the day of our arrival was to take a hansom
and drive over to Chelsea, to look at the place where Carlyle passed the
larger part of his life. The whole region about him must have been
greatly changed during his residence there, for the Thames Embankment
was constructed long after he removed to Chelsea. We had some little
difficulty in finding the place we were in search of. Cheyne (pronounced
"Chainie") Walk is a somewhat extended range of buildings. Cheyne Row is
a passage which reminded me a little of my old habitat, Montgomery
Place, now Bosworth Street. Presently our attention was drawn to a
marble medallion portrait on the corner building of an ordinary-looking
row of houses. This was the head of Carlyle, and an inscription informed
us that he lived for forty-seven years in the house No. 24 of this row
of buildings. Since Carlyle's home life has been made public, he has
appeared to us in a different aspect from the ideal one which he had
before occupied. He did not show to as much advantage under the
Boswellizing process as the dogmatist of the last century, dear old Dr.
Johnson. But he remains not the less one of the really interesting men
of his generation, a man about whom we wish to know all that we have a
right to know.
The sight of an old nest over which two or three winters have passed is
a rather saddening one. The dingy three-story brick house in which
Carlyle lived, one in a block of similar houses, was far from
attractive. It was untenanted, neglected; its windows were unwashed, a
pane of glass was broken; its threshold appeared untrodden, its whole
aspect forlorn and desolate. Yet there it stood before me, all covered
with its associations as an ivy-clad tower with its foliage. I wanted to
see its interior, but it looked as if it did not expect a tenant and
would not welcome a visitor. Was there nothing but this forbidding
house-front to make the place alive with some breathing memory? I saw
crossing the street a middle-aged woman,--a decent body, who looked as
if she might have come from the lower level of some not opulent but
respectable household. She might have some recollection of an old man
who was once her neighbor. I asked her if she remembered Mr. Carlyle.
Indeed she did, she told us. She used to see him often, in front of his
house, putting bits of bread on the railing for the birds. He did not
like to see anything wasted, she said. The merest scrap of information,
but genuine and pleasing; an instantaneous photograph only, but it makes
a pretty vignette in the volume of my reminiscences. There are many
considerable men in every generation of mankind, but not a great number
who are personally interesting,--not a great many of whom we feel that
we cannot know too much; whose foibles, even, we care to know about;
whose shortcomings we try to excuse; who are not models, but whose
special traits make them attractive. Carlyle is one of these few, and no
revelations can prevent his interesting us. He was not quite finished in
his parental existence. The bricklayer's mortar of his father's calling
stuck to his fingers through life, but only as the soil he turned with
his ploughshare clung to the fingers of Burns. We do not wish either to
have been other than what he was. Their breeding brings them to the
average level, carries them more nearly to the heart, makes them a
simpler expression of our common humanity. As we rolled in the cars by
Ecclefechan, I strained my eyes to take in every point of the landscape,
every cottage, every spire, if by any chance I could find one in that
lonely region. There was not a bridge nor a bit of masonry of any kind
that I did not eagerly scrutinize, to see if it were solid and honest
enough to have been built by Carlyle's father. Solitary enough the
country looked. I admired Mr. Emerson's devotion in seeking his friend
in his bare home among what he describes as the "desolate heathery
hills" about Craigenputtock, which were, I suppose, much like the region
through which we were passing.
It is one of the regrets of my life that I never saw or heard Carlyle.
Nature, who seems to be fond of trios, has given us three dogmatists,
all of whom greatly interested their own generation, and whose
personality, especially in the case of the first and the last of the
trio, still interests us,--Johnson, Coleridge, and Carlyle. Each was an
oracle in his way, but unfortunately oracles are fallible to their
descendants. The author of "Taxation no Tyranny" had wholesale opinions,
and pretty harsh ones, about us Americans, and did not soften them in
expression: "Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful
for anything we allow them short of hanging." We smile complacently when
we read this outburst, which Mr. Croker calls in question, but which
agrees with his saying in the presence of Miss Seward, "I am willing to
love all mankind _except an American_."
A generation or two later comes along Coleridge, with his circle of
reverential listeners. He says of Johnson that his fame rests
principally upon Boswell, and that "his _bow-wow_ manner must have
had a good deal to do with the effect produced." As to Coleridge
himself, his contemporaries hardly know how to set bounds to their
exaltation of his genius. Dibdin comes pretty near going into rhetorical
hysterics in reporting a conversation of Coleridge's to which he
listened: "The auditors seemed to be wrapt in wonder and delight, as one
observation more profound, or clothed in more forcible language, than
another fell from his tongue.... As I retired homeward I thought a
SECOND JOHNSON had visited the earth to make wise the sons of men." And
De Quincey speaks of him as "the largest and most spacious intellect,
the subtlest and most comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet
existed amongst men." One is sometimes tempted to wish that the
superlative could be abolished, or its use allowed only to old experts.
What are men to do when they get to heaven, after having exhausted their
vocabulary of admiration on earth?
Now let us come down to Carlyle, and see what he says of Coleridge. We
need not take those conversational utterances which called down the
wrath of Mr. Swinburne, and found expression in an epigram which
violates all the proprieties of literary language. Look at the
full-length portrait in the Life of Sterling. Each oracle denies his
predecessor, each magician breaks the wand of the one who went before
him. There were Americans enough ready to swear by Carlyle until he
broke his staff in meddling with our anti-slavery conflict, and buried
it so many fathoms deep that it could never be fished out again. It is
rather singular that Johnson and Carlyle should each of them have
shipwrecked his sagacity and shown a terrible leak in his moral
sensibilities on coming in contact with American rocks and currents,
with which neither had any special occasion to concern himself, and
which both had a great deal better have steered clear of.
But here I stand once more before the home of the long-suffering,
much-laboring, loud-complaining Heraclitus of his time, whose very smile
had a grimness in it more ominous than his scowl. Poor man! Dyspeptic on
a diet of oatmeal porridge; kept wide awake by crowing cocks; drummed
out of his wits by long-continued piano-pounding; sharp of speech, I
fear, to his high-strung wife, who gave him back as good as she got! I
hope I am mistaken about their everyday relations, but again I say, poor
man!--for all his complaining must have meant real discomfort, which a
man of genius feels not less, certainly, than a common mortal.
I made a second visit to the place where he lived, but I saw nothing
more than at the first. I wanted to cross the threshold over which he
walked so often, to see the noise-proof room in which he used to write,
to look at the chimney-place down which the soot came, to sit where he
used to sit and smoke his pipe, and to conjure up his wraith to look in
once more upon his old deserted dwelling. That vision was denied me.
After visiting Chelsea we drove round through Regent's Park. I suppose
that if we use the superlative in speaking of Hyde Park, Regent's Park
will be the comparative, and Battersea Park the positive, ranking them
in the descending grades of their hierarchy. But this is my conjecture
only, and the social geography of London is a subject which only one who
has become familiarly acquainted with the place should speak of with any
confidence. A stranger coming to our city might think it made little
difference whether his travelling Boston acquaintance lived in Alpha
Avenue or in Omega Square, but he would have to learn that it is farther
from one of these places to the other, a great deal farther, than it is
from Beacon Street, Boston, to Fifth Avenue, New York.
An American finds it a little galling to be told that he must not drive
in his _numbered_ hansom or four-wheeler except in certain portions
of Hyde Park. If he is rich enough to keep his own carriage, or if he
will pay the extra price of a vehicle not vulgarized by being on the
numbered list, he may drive anywhere that his Grace or his Lordship
does, and perhaps have a mean sense of satisfaction at finding himself
in the charmed circle of exclusive "gigmanity." It is a pleasure to meet
none but well-dressed and well-mannered people, in well-appointed
equipages. In the high road of our own country, one is liable to fall in
with people and conveyances that it is far from a pleasure to meet. I
was once driving in an open carriage, with members of my family, towards
my own house in the country town where I was then living. A cart drawn
by oxen was in the road in front of us. Whenever we tried to pass, the
men in it turned obliquely across the road and prevented us, and this
was repeated again and again. I could have wished I had been driving in
Hyde Park, where clowns and boors, with their carts and oxen, do not
find admittance. Exclusiveness has its conveniences.
The next day, as I was strolling through Burlington Arcade, I saw a
figure just before me which I recognized as that of my townsman, Mr.
Abbott Lawrence. He was accompanied by his son, who had just returned
from a trip round the planet. There are three grades of recognition,
entirely distinct from each other: the meeting of two persons of
different countries who speak the same language,--an American and an
Englishman, for instance; the meeting of two Americans from different
cities, as of a Bostonian and a New Yorker or a Chicagonian; and the
meeting of two from the same city, as of two Bostonians.
The difference of these recognitions may be illustrated by supposing
certain travelling philosophical instruments, endowed with intelligence
and the power of speech, to come together in their wanderings,--let us
say in a restaurant of the Palais Royal. "Very hot," says the talking
Fahrenheit (Thermometer) from Boston, and calls for an ice, which he
plunges his bulb into and cools down. In comes an intelligent and
socially disposed English Barometer. The two travellers greet each
other, not exactly as old acquaintances, but each has heard very
frequently about the other, and their relatives have been often
associated. "We have a good deal in common," says the Barometer. "Of the
same blood, as we may say; quicksilver is thicker than water." "Yes,"
says the little Fahrenheit, "and we are both of the same mercurial
temperament." While their columns are dancing up and down with laughter
at this somewhat tepid and low-pressure pleasantry, there come in a New
York Réaumur and a Centigrade from Chicago. The Fahrenheit, which has
got warmed up to _temperate_, rises to _summer heat_, and even
a little above it. They enjoy each other's company mightily. To be sure,
their scales differ, but have they not the same freezing and the same
boiling point? To be sure, each thinks his own scale is the true
standard, and at home they might get into a contest about the matter,
but here in a strange land they do not think of disputing. Now, while
they are talking about America and their own local atmosphere and
temperature, there comes in a second Boston Fahrenheit. The two of the
same name look at each other for a moment, and rush together so eagerly
that their bulbs are endangered. How well they understand each other!
Thirty-two degrees marks the freezing point. Two hundred and twelve
marks the boiling point. They have the same scale, the same fixed
points, the same record: no wonder they prefer each other's company!
I hope that my reader has followed my illustration, and finished it off
for himself. Let me give a few practical examples. An American and an
Englishman meet in a foreign land. The Englishman has occasion to
mention his weight, which he finds has gained in the course of his
travels. "How much is it now?" asks the American. "Fourteen stone. How
much do you weigh?" "Within four pounds of two hundred." Neither of them
takes at once any clear idea of what the other weighs. The American has
never thought of his own, or his friends', or anybody's weight in
_stones_ of fourteen pounds. The Englishman has never thought of
any one's weight in _pounds_. They can calculate very easily with a
slip of paper and a pencil, but not the less is their language but half
intelligible as they speak and listen. The same thing is in a measure
true of other matters they talk about. "It is about as large a space as
the Common," says the Boston man. "It is as large as St. James's Park,"
says the Londoner. "As high as the State House," says the Bostonian, or
"as tall as Bunker Hill Monument," or "about as big as the Frog Pond,"
where the Londoner would take St. Paul's, the Nelson Column, the
Serpentine, as his standard of comparison. The difference of scale does
not stop here; it runs through a great part of the objects of thought
and conversation. An average American and an average Englishman are
talking together, and one of them speaks of the beauty of a field of
corn. They are thinking of two entirely different objects: one of a
billowy level of soft waving wheat, or rye, or barley; the other of a
rustling forest of tall, jointed stalks, tossing their plumes and
showing their silken epaulettes, as if every stem in the ordered ranks
were a soldier in full regimentals. An Englishman planted for the first
time in the middle of a well-grown field of Indian corn would feel as
much lost as the babes in the wood. Conversation between two Londoners,
two New Yorkers, two Bostonians, requires no foot-notes, which is a
great advantage in their intercourse.
To return from my digression and my illustration. I did not do a great
deal of shopping myself while in London, being contented to have it done
for me. But in the way of looking in at shop windows I did a very large
business. Certain windows attracted me by a variety in unity which
surpassed anything I have been accustomed to. Thus one window showed
every conceivable convenience that could be shaped in ivory, and nothing
else. One shop had such a display of magnificent dressing-cases that I
should have thought a whole royal family was setting out on its travels.
I see the cost of one of them is two hundred and seventy guineas.
Thirteen hundred and fifty dollars seems a good deal to pay for a
dressing-case.
On the other hand, some of the first-class tradesmen and workmen make no
show whatever. The tailor to whom I had credentials, and who proved
highly satisfactory to me, as he had proved to some of my countrymen and
to Englishmen of high estate, had only one small sign, which was placed
in one of his windows, and received his customers in a small room that
would have made a closet for one of our stylish merchant tailors. The
bootmaker to whom I went on good recommendation had hardly anything
about his premises to remind one of his calling. He came into his
studio, took my measure very carefully, and made me a pair of what we
call Congress boots, which fitted well when once on my feet, but which
it cost more trouble to get into and to get out of than I could express
my feelings about without dangerously enlarging my limited vocabulary.
Bond Street, Old and New, offered the most inviting windows, and I
indulged almost to profligacy in the prolonged inspection of their
contents. Stretching my walk along New Bond Street till I came to a
great intersecting thoroughfare, I found myself in Oxford Street. Here
the character of the shop windows changed at once. Utility and
convenience took the place of show and splendor. Here I found various
articles of use in a household, some of which were new to me. It is very
likely that I could have found most of them in our own Boston Cornhill,
but one often overlooks things at home which at once arrest his
attention when he sees them in a strange place. I saw great numbers of
illuminating contrivances, some of which pleased me by their arrangement
of reflectors.
Bryant and May's safety matches seemed to be used everywhere. I procured
some in Boston with these names on the box, but the label said they were
made in Sweden, and they diffused vapors that were enough to produce
asphyxia. I greatly admired some of Dr. Dresser's water-cans and other
contrivances, modelled more or less after the antique, but I found an
abundant assortment of them here in Boston, and I have one I obtained
here more original in design and more serviceable in daily use than any
I saw in London. I should have regarded Wolverhampton, as we glided
through it, with more interest, if I had known at that time that the
inventive Dr. Dresser had his headquarters in that busy-looking town.
One thing, at least, I learned from my London experience: better a small
city where one knows all it has to offer, than a great city where one
has no disinterested friend to direct him to the right places to find
what he wants. But of course there are some grand magazines which are
known all the world over, and which no one should leave London without
entering as a looker-on, if not as a purchaser.
There was one place I determined to visit, and one man I meant to see,
before returning. The place was a certain book-store or book-shop, and
the person was its proprietor, Mr. Bernard Quaritch. I was getting very
much pressed for time, and I allowed ten minutes only for my visit. I
never had any dealings with Mr. Quaritch, but one of my near relatives
had, and I had often received his catalogues, the scale of prices in
which had given me an impression almost of sublimity. I found Mr.
Bernard Quaritch at No. 15 Piccadilly, and introduced myself, not as one
whose name he must know, but rather as a stranger, of whom he might have
heard through my relative. The extensive literature of catalogues is
probably little known to most of my readers. I do not pretend to claim a
thorough acquaintance with it, but I know the luxury of reading good
catalogues, and such are those of Mr. Quaritch. I should like to deal
with him; for if he wants a handsome price for what he sells, he knows
its value, and does not offer the refuse of old libraries, but, on the
other hand, all that is most precious in them is pretty sure to pass
through his hands, sooner or later.
"Now, Mr. Quaritch," I said, after introducing myself, "I have ten
minutes to pass with you. You must not open a book; if you do I am lost,
for I shall have to look at every illuminated capital, from the first
leaf to the colophon." Mr. Quaritch did not open a single book, but let
me look round his establishment, and answered my questions very
courteously. It so happened that while I was there a gentleman came in
whom I had previously met,--my namesake, Mr. Holmes, the Queen's
librarian at Windsor Castle. My ten minutes passed very rapidly in
conversation with these two experts in books, the bibliopole and the
bibliothecary. No place that I visited made me feel more thoroughly that
I was in London, the great central mart of all that is most precious in
the world.
_Leave at home all your guineas, ye who enter here_, would be a
good motto to put over his door, unless you have them in plenty and can
spare them, in which case _Take all your guineas with you_ would be
a better one. For you can here get their equivalent, and more than their
equivalent, in the choicest products of the press and the finest work of
the illuminator, the illustrator, and the binder. You will be sorely
tempted. But do not be surprised when you ask the price of the volume
you may happen to fancy. You are not dealing with a _bouquiniste_
of the Quais, in Paris. You are not foraging in an old book-shop of New
York or Boston. Do not suppose that I undervalue these dealers in old and
rare volumes. Many a much-prized rarity have I obtained from Drake and
Burnham and others of my townsmen, and from Denham in New York; and
in my student years many a choice volume, sometimes even an Aldus or
an Elzevir, have I found among the trumpery spread out on the parapets
of the quays. But there is a difference between going out on the Fourth
of July with a militia musket to shoot any catbird or "chipmunk" that
turns up in a piece of woods within a few miles of our own cities, and
shooting partridges in a nobleman's preserves on the First of September.
I confess to having felt a certain awe on entering the precincts made
sacred by their precious contents. The lord and master of so many
_Editiones Principes_, the guardian of this great nursery full of
_incunabula_, did not seem to me like a simple tradesman. I felt that
I was in the presence of the literary purveyor of royal and imperial
libraries, the man before whom millionaires tremble as they calculate,
and billionaires pause and consider. I have recently received two of Mr.
Quaritch's catalogues, from which I will give my reader an extract or two,
to show him what kind of articles this prince of bibliopoles deals in.
Perhaps you would like one of those romances which turned the head of
Don Quixote. Here is a volume which will be sure to please you. It is on
one of his lesser lists, confined principally to Spanish and Portuguese
works:--
"Amadis de Gaula ... folio, gothic letter, FIRST EDITION, unique ... red
morocco super extra, _doublé_ with olive morocco, richly gilt,
tooled to an elegant Grolier design, gilt edges ... in a neat case."
A pretty present for a scholarly friend. A nice old book to carry home
for one's own library. Two hundred pounds--one thousand dollars--will
make you the happy owner of this volume.
But if you would have also on your shelves the first edition of the
"Cronica del famoso cabaluero cid Ruy Diaz Campadero," not "richly
gilt," not even bound in leather, but in "cloth boards," you will have
to pay two hundred and ten pounds to become its proprietor. After this
you will not be frightened by the thought of paying three hundred
dollars for a little quarto giving an account of the Virginia
Adventurers. You will not shrink from the idea of giving something more
than a hundred guineas for a series of Hogarth's plates. But when it
comes to Number 1001 in the May catalogue, and you see that if you would
possess a first folio Shakespeare, "untouched by the hand of any modern
renovator," you must be prepared to pay seven hundred and eighty-five
pounds, almost four thousand dollars, for the volume, it would not be
surprising if you changed color and your knees shook under you. No doubt
some brave man will be found to carry off that prize, in spite of the
golden battery which defends it, perhaps to Cincinnati, or Chicago, or
San Francisco. But do not be frightened. These Alpine heights of
extravagance climb up from the humble valley where shillings and
sixpences are all that are required to make you a purchaser.
One beauty of the Old World shops is that if a visitor comes back to the
place where he left them fifty years before, he finds them, or has a
great chance of finding them, just where they stood at his former visit.
In driving down to the old city, to the place of business of the
Barings, I found many streets little changed. Temple Bar was gone, and
the much-abused griffin stood in its place. There was a shop close to
Temple Bar, where, in 1834, I had bought some brushes. I had no
difficulty in finding Prout's, and I could not do less than go in and
buy some more brushes. I did not ask the young man who served me how the
old shopkeeper who attended to my wants on the earlier occasion was at
this time. But I thought what a different color the locks these brushes
smooth show from those that knew their predecessors in the earlier
decade!
I ought to have made a second visit to the Tower, so tenderly spoken of
by Artemus Ward as "a sweet boon," so vividly remembered by me as the
scene of a personal encounter with one of the animals then kept in the
Tower menagerie. But the project added a stone to the floor of the
underground thoroughfare which is paved with good intentions.
St. Paul's I must and did visit. The most striking addition since I was
there is the massive monument to the Duke of Wellington. The great
temple looked rather bare and unsympathetic. Poor Dr. Johnson, sitting
in semi-nude exposure, looked to me as unhappy as our own half-naked
Washington at the national capital. The Judas of Matthew Arnold's poem
would have cast his cloak over those marble shoulders, if he had found
himself in St. Paul's, and have earned another respite. We brought away
little, I fear, except the grand effect of the dome as we looked up at
it. It gives us a greater idea of height than the sky itself, which we
have become used to looking upon.
A second visit to the National Gallery was made in company with A----.
It was the repetition of an attempt at a draught from the Cup of
Tantalus. I was glad of a sight of the Botticellis, of which I had heard
so much, and others of the more recently acquired paintings of the great
masters; of a sweeping glance at the Turners; of a look at the
well-remembered Hogarths and the memorable portraits by Sir Joshua. I
carried away a confused mass of impressions, much as the soldiers that
sack a city go off with all the precious things they can snatch up,
huddled into clothes-bags and pillow-cases. I am reminded, too, of Mr.
Galton's composite portraits; a thousand glimpses, as one passes through
the long halls lined with paintings, all blending in one not unpleasing
general effect, out of which emerges from time to time some single
distinct image.
In the same way we passed through the exhibition of paintings at the
Royal Academy. I noticed that A---- paid special attention to the
portraits of young ladies by John Sargent and by Collier, while I was
more particularly struck with the startling portrait of an ancient
personage in a full suit of wrinkles, such as Rembrandt used to bring
out with wonderful effect. Hunting in couples is curious and
instructive; the scent for this or that kind of game is sure to be very
different in the two individuals.
I made but two brief visits to the British Museum, and I can easily
instruct my reader so that he will have no difficulty, if he will follow
my teaching, in learning how not to see it. When he has a spare hour at
his disposal, let him drop in at the Museum, and wander among its books
and its various collections. He will know as much about it as the fly
that buzzes in at one window and out at another. If I were asked whether
I brought away anything from my two visits, I should say, Certainly I
did. The fly sees some things, not very intelligently, but he cannot
help seeing them. The great round reading-room, with its silent
students, impressed me very much. I looked at once for the Elgin
Marbles, but casts and photographs and engravings had made me familiar
with their chief features. I thought I knew something of the sculptures
brought from Nineveh, but I was astonished, almost awe-struck, at the
sight of those mighty images which mingled with the visions of the
Hebrew prophets. I did not marvel more at the skill and labor expended
upon them by the Assyrian artists than I did at the enterprise and
audacity which had brought them safely from the mounds under which they
were buried to the light of day and the heart of a great modern city. I
never thought that I should live to see the Birs Nimroud laid open, and
the tablets in which the history of Nebuchadnezzar was recorded spread
before me. The Empire of the Spade in the world of history was founded
at Nineveh by Layard, a great province added to it by Schliemann, and
its boundary extended by numerous explorers, some of whom are diligently
at work at the present day. I feel very grateful that many of its
revelations have been made since I have been a tenant of the travelling
residence which holds so many secrets in its recesses.
There is one lesson to be got from a visit of an hour or two to the
British Museum,--namely, the fathomless abyss of our own ignorance. One
is almost ashamed of his little paltry heartbeats in the presence of the
rushing and roaring torrent of Niagara. So if he has published a little
book or two, collected a few fossils, or coins, or vases, he is crushed
by the vastness of the treasures in the library and the collections of
this universe of knowledge.
I have shown how not to see the British museum; I will tell how to see
it.
Take lodgings next door to it,--in a garret, if you cannot afford
anything better,--and pass all your days at the Museum during the whole
period of your natural life. At threescore and ten you will have some
faint conception of the contents, significance, and value of this great
British institution, which is as nearly as any one spot the _noeud
vital_ of human civilization, a stab at which by the dagger of
anarchy would fitly begin the reign of chaos.
On the 3d of August, a gentleman, Mr. Wedmore, who had promised to be my
guide to certain interesting localities, called for me, and we took a
hansom for the old city. The first place we visited was the Temple, a
collection of buildings with intricate passages between them, some of
the edifices reminding me of our college dormitories. One, however, was
a most extraordinary exception,--the wonderful Temple church, or rather
the ancient part of it which is left, the round temple. We had some
trouble to get into it, but at last succeeded in finding a slip of a
girl, the daughter of the janitor, who unlocked the door for us. It
affected my imagination strangely to see this girl of a dozen years old,
or thereabouts, moving round among the monuments which had kept their
place there for some six or seven hundred years; for the church was
built in the year 1185, and the most recent of the crusaders' monuments
is said to date as far back as 1241. Their effigies have lain in this
vast city, and passed unharmed through all its convulsions. The Great
Fire must have crackled very loud in their stony ears, and they must
have shaken day and night, as the bodies of the victims of the Plague
were rattled over the pavements.
Near the Temple church, in a green spot among the buildings, a plain
stone laid flat on the turf bears these words: "Here lies Oliver
Goldsmith." I believe doubt has been thrown upon the statement that
Goldsmith was buried in that place, but, as some poet ought to have
written,
Where doubt is disenchantment
'Tis wisdom to believe.
We do not "drop a tear" so often as our Della Cruscan predecessors, but
the memory of the author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" stirred my feelings
more than a whole army of crusaders would have done. A pretty rough set
of filibusters they were, no doubt.
The whole group to which Goldsmith belonged came up before me, and as
the centre of that group the great Dr. Johnson; not the Johnson of the
"Rambler," or of "The Vanity of Human Wishes," or even of "Rasselas,"
but Boswell's Johnson, dear to all of us, the "Grand Old Man" of his
time, whose foibles we care more for than for most great men's virtues.
Fleet Street, which he loved so warmly, was close by. Bolt Court,
entered from it, where he lived for many of his last years, and where he
died, was the next place to visit. I found Fleet Street a good deal like
Washington Street as I remember it in former years. When I came to the
place pointed out as Bolt Court, I could hardly believe my eyes that so
celebrated a place of residence should be entered by so humble a
passageway. I was very sorry to find that No. 3, where he lived, was
demolished, and a new building erected in its place. In one of the other
houses in this court he is said to have labored on his dictionary. Near
by was a building of mean aspect, in which Goldsmith is said to have at
one time resided. But my kind conductor did not profess to be well
acquainted with the local antiquities of this quarter of London.
If I had a long future before me, I should like above all things to
study London with a dark lantern, so to speak, myself in deepest shadow
and all I wanted to see in clearest light. Then I should want time,
time, time. For it is a sad fact that sight-seeing as commonly done is
one of the most wearying things in the world, and takes the life out of
any but the sturdiest or the most elastic natures more efficiently than
would a reasonable amount of daily exercise on a treadmill. In my
younger days I used to find that a visit to the gallery of the Louvre
was followed by more fatigue and exhaustion than the same amount of time
spent in walking the wards of a hospital.
Another grand sight there was, not to be overlooked, namely, the
Colonial Exhibition. The popularity of this immense show was very great,
and we found ourselves, A---- and I, in the midst of a vast throng, made
up of respectable and comfortable looking people. It was not strange
that the multitude flocked to this exhibition. There was a jungle, with
its (stuffed) monsters,--tigers, serpents, elephants; there were
carvings which may well have cost a life apiece, and stuffs which none
but an empress or a millionairess would dare to look at. All the arts of
the East were there in their perfection, and some of the artificers were
at their work. We had to content ourselves with a mere look at all these
wonders. It was a pity; instead of going to these fine shows tired,
sleepy, wanting repose more than anything else, we should have come to
them fresh, in good condition, and had many days at our disposal. I
learned more in a visit to the Japanese exhibition in Boston than I
should have learned in half a dozen half-awake strolls through this
multitudinous and most imposing collection of all
"The gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings,"
and all the masterpieces of its wonder-working artisans.
One of the last visits we paid before leaving London for a week in Paris
was to the South Kensington Museum. Think of the mockery of giving one
hour to such a collection of works of art and wonders of all kinds! Why
should I consider it worth while to say that we went there at all? All
manner of objects succeeded each other in a long series of dissolving
views, so to speak, nothing or next to nothing having a chance to leave
its individual impress. In the battle for life which took place in my
memory, as it always does among the multitude of claimants for a
permanent hold, I find that two objects came out survivors of the
contest. The first is the noble cast of the column of Trajan, vast in
dimensions, crowded with history in its most striking and enduring form;
a long array of figures representing in unquestioned realism the
military aspect of a Roman army. The second case of survival is thus
described in the catalogue: "An altar or shrine of a female saint,
recently acquired from Padua, is also ascribed to the same sculptor
[Donatello]. This very valuable work of art had for many years been used
as a drinking-trough for horses. A hole has been roughly pierced in it."
I thought the figure was the most nearly perfect image of heavenly
womanhood that I had ever looked upon, and I could have gladly given my
whole hour to sitting--I could almost say kneeling--before it in silent
contemplation. I found the curator of the Museum, Mr. Soden Smith,
shared my feelings with reference to the celestial loveliness of this
figure. Which is best, to live in a country where such a work of art is
taken for a horse-trough, or in a country where the products from the
studio of a self-taught handicraftsman, equal to the shaping of a
horse-trough and not much more, are put forward as works of art?
A little time before my visit to England, before I had even thought of
it as a possibility, I had the honor of having two books dedicated to me
by two English brother physicians. One of these two gentlemen was Dr.
Walshe, of whom I shall speak hereafter; the other was Dr. J. Milner
Fothergill. The name Fothergill was familiar to me from my boyhood. My
old townsman, Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, who died in 1846 at the age of
ninety-two, had a great deal to say about his relative Dr. John
Fothergill, the famous Quaker physician of the last century, of whom
Benjamin Franklin said, "I can hardly conceive that a better man ever
existed." Dr. and Mrs. Fothergill sent us some beautiful flowers a
little before we left, and when I visited him he gave me a medallion of
his celebrated kinsman.
London is a place of mysteries. Looking out of one of the windows at the
back of Dr. Fothergill's house, I saw an immense wooden blind, such as
we have on our windows in summer, but reaching from the ground as high
as the top of the neighboring houses. While admitting the air freely, it
shut the property to which it belonged completely from sight. I asked
the meaning of this extraordinary structure, and learned that it was put
up by a great nobleman, of whose subterranean palace and strange
seclusion I had before heard. Common report attributed his unwillingness
to be seen to a disfiguring malady with which he was said to be
afflicted. The story was that he was visible only to his valet. But a
lady of quality, whom I met in this country, told me she had seen him,
and observed nothing to justify it. These old countries are full of
romances and legends and _diableries_ of all sorts, in which truth
and lies are so mixed that one does not know what to believe. What
happens behind the high walls of the old cities is as much a secret as
were the doings inside the prisons of the Inquisition.
Little mistakes sometimes cause us a deal of trouble. This time it was
the presence or absence of a single letter which led us to fear that an
important package destined to America had miscarried. There were two
gentlemen unwittingly involved in the confusion. On inquiring for the
package at Messrs. Low, the publishers, Mr. Watts, to whom I thought it
had been consigned, was summoned. He knew nothing about it, had never
heard of it, was evidently utterly ignorant of us and our affairs. While
we were in trouble and uncertainty, our Boston friend, Mr. James R.
Osgood, came in. "Oh," said he, "it is Mr. Watt you want, the agent of a
Boston firm," and gave us the gentleman's address. I had confounded Mr.
Watt's name with Mr. Watts's name. "W'at's in a name?" A great deal
sometimes. I wonder if I shall be pardoned for quoting six lines from
one of my after-dinner poems of long ago:--
--One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt,
One trivial letter ruins all, left out;
A knot can change a felon into clay,
A not will save him, spelt without the k;
The smallest word has some unguarded spot,
And danger lurks in i without a dot.
I should find it hard to account for myself during our two short stays
in London in the month of August, separated by the week we passed in
Paris. The ferment of continued over-excitement, calmed very much by our
rest in the various places I have mentioned, had not yet wholly worked
itself off. There was some of that everlasting shopping to be done.
There were photographs to be taken, a call here and there to be made, a
stray visitor now and then, a walk in the morning to get back the use of
the limbs which had been too little exercised, and a drive every
afternoon to one of the parks, or the Thames Embankment, or other
locality. After all this, an honest night's sleep served to round out
the day, in which little had been effected besides making a few
purchases, writing a few letters, reading the papers, the Boston "Weekly
Advertiser" among the rest, and making arrangements for our passage
homeward. The sights we saw were looked upon for so short a time, most
of them so very superficially, that I am almost ashamed to say that I
have been in the midst of them and brought home so little. I remind
myself of my boyish amusement of _skipping stones_,--throwing a
flat stone so that it shall only touch the water, but touch it in half a
dozen places before it comes to rest beneath the smooth surface. The
drives we took showed us a thousand objects which arrested our
attention. Every street, every bridge, every building, every monument,
every strange vehicle, every exceptional personage, was a show which
stimulated our curiosity. For we had not as yet changed our Boston eyes
for London ones, and very common sights were spectacular and dramatic to
us. I remember that one of our New England country boys exclaimed, when
he first saw a block of city dwellings, "Darn it all, who ever see
anything like that 'are? Sich a lot o' haousen all stuck together!" I
must explain that "haousen" used in my early days to be as common an
expression in speaking of houses among our country-folk as its phonetic
equivalent ever was in Saxony. I felt not unlike that country-boy.
In thinking of how much I missed seeing, I sometimes have said to
myself, Oh, if the carpet of the story in the Arabian Nights would only
take me up and carry me to London for one week,--just one short
week,--setting me down fresh from quiet, wholesome living, in my usual
good condition, and bringing me back at the end of it, what a different
account I could give of my experiences! But it is just as well as it is.
Younger eyes have studied and will study, more instructed travellers
have pictured and will picture, the great metropolis from a hundred
different points of view. No person can be said to know London. The most
that any one can claim is that he knows something of it. I am now just
going to leave it for another great capital, but in my concluding pages
I shall return to Great Britain, and give some of the general
impressions left by what I saw and heard in our mother country.
VII.
Straitened as we were for time, it was impossible to return home without
a glimpse, at least, of Paris. Two precious years of my early manhood
were spent there under the reign of Louis Philippe, king of the French,
_le Roi Citoyen_. I felt that I must look once more on the places I
knew so well,--once more before shutting myself up in the world of
recollections. It is hardly necessary to say that a lady can always find
a little shopping, and generally a good deal of it, to do in Paris. So
it was not difficult to persuade my daughter that a short visit to that
city was the next step to be taken.
We left London on the 5th of August to go _via_ Folkestone and
Boulogne. The passage across the Channel was a very smooth one, and
neither of us suffered any inconvenience. Boulogne as seen from the
landing did not show to great advantage. I fell to thinking of Brummel,
and what a satisfaction it would have been to treat him to a good
dinner, and set him talking about the days of the Regency. Boulogne was
all Brummel in my associations, just as Calais was all Sterne. I find
everywhere that it is a distinctive personality which makes me want to
linger round a spot, more than an important historical event. There is
not much worth remembering about Brummel; but his audacity, his starched
neckcloth, his assumptions and their success, make him a curious subject
for the student of human nature.
Leaving London at twenty minutes before ten in the forenoon, we arrived
in Paris at six in the afternoon. I could not say that the region of
France through which we passed was peculiarly attractive. I saw no fine
trees, no pretty cottages, like those so common in England. There was
little which an artist would be tempted to sketch, or a traveller by the
railroad would be likely to remember.
The place where we had engaged lodgings was Hôtel d'Orient, in the Rue
Daunou. The situation was convenient, very near the Place Vendome and
the Rue de la Paix. But the house was undergoing renovations which made
it as unpresentable as a moulting fowl. Scrubbing, painting of blinds,
and other perturbing processes did all they could to make it
uncomfortable. The courtyard was always sloppy, and the whole condition
of things reminded me forcibly of the state of Mr. Briggs's household
while the mason was carrying out the complex operations which began with
the application of "a little compo." (I hope all my readers remember Mr.
Briggs, whose adventures as told by the pencil of John Leech are not
unworthy of comparison with those of Mr. Pickwick as related by
Dickens.) Barring these unfortunate conditions, the hotel was
commendable, and when in order would be a desirable place of temporary
residence.
It was the dead season of Paris, and everything had the air of suspended
animation. The solitude of the Place Vendome was something oppressive; I
felt, as I trod its lonely sidewalk, as if I were wandering through
Tadmor in the Desert. We were indeed as remote, as unfriended,--I will
not say as melancholy or as slow,--as Goldsmith by the side of the lazy
Scheldt or the wandering Po. Not a soul did either of us know in that
great city. Our most intimate relations were with the people of the
hotel and with the drivers of the fiacres. These last were a singular
looking race of beings. Many of them had a dull red complexion, almost
brick color, which must have some general cause. I questioned whether
the red wine could have something to do with it. They wore glazed hats,
and drove shabby vehicles for the most part; their horses would not
compare with those of the London hansom drivers, and they themselves
were not generally inviting in aspect, though we met with no incivility
from any of them. One, I remember, was very voluble, and over-explained
everything, so that we became afraid to ask him a question. They were
fellow-creatures with whom one did not naturally enter into active
sympathy, and the principal point of interest about the fiacre and its
arrangements was whether the horse was fondest of trotting or of
walking. In one of our drives we made it a point to call upon our
Minister, Mr. McLane, but he was out of town. We did not bring a single
letter, but set off exactly as if we were on a picnic.
While A---- and her attendant went about making their purchases, I
devoted myself to the sacred and pleasing task of reviving old memories.
One of the first places I visited was the house I lived in as a student,
which in my English friend's French was designated as "Noomero sankont
sank Roo Monshure ler Pranse." I had been told that the whole region
thereabout had been transformed by the creation of a new boulevard. I
did not find it so. There was the house, the lower part turned into a
shop, but there were the windows out of which I used to look along the
Rue Vaugirard,--_au troisième_ the first year, _au second_ the
second year. Why should I go mousing about the place? What would the
shopkeeper know about M. Bertrand, my landlord of half a century ago; or
his first wife, to whose funeral I went; or his second, to whose bridal
I was bidden?
I ought next to have gone to the hospital La Pitié, where I passed much
of my time during those two years. But the people there would not know
me, and my old master's name, Louis, is but a dim legend in the wards
where he used to teach his faithful band of almost worshipping students.
Besides, I have not been among hospital beds for many a year, and my
sensibilities are almost as impressible as they were before daily habit
had rendered them comparatively callous.
How strange it is to look down on one's venerated teachers, after
climbing with the world's progress half a century above the level where
we left them! The stethoscope was almost a novelty in those days. The
microscope was never mentioned by any clinical instructor I listened to
while a medical student. _Nous avons changé tout cela_ is true of
every generation in medicine,--changed oftentimes by improvement,
sometimes by fashion or the pendulum-swing from one extreme to another.
On my way back from the hospital I used to stop at the beautiful little
church St. Etienne du Mont, and that was one of the first places to
which I drove after looking at my student-quarters. All was just as of
old. The tapers were burning about the tomb of St. Genevieve. Samson,
with the jawbone of the ass, still crouched and sweated, or looked as if
he did, under the weight of the pulpit. One might question how well the
preacher in the pulpit liked the suggestion of the figure beneath it.
The sculptured screen and gallery, the exquisite spiral stairways, the
carved figures about the organ, the tablets on the walls,--one in
particular relating the fall of two young girls from the gallery, and
their miraculous protection from injury,--all these images found their
counterpart in my memory. I did not remember how very beautiful is the
stained glass in the _charniers_, which must not be overlooked by
visitors.
It is not far from St. Etienne du Mont to the Pantheon. I cannot say
that there is any odor of sanctity about this great temple, which has
been consecrated, if I remember correctly, and, I will not say
desecrated, but secularized from time to time, according to the party
which happened to be uppermost. I confess that I did not think of it
chiefly as a sacred edifice, or as the resting-place, more or less
secure, of the "_grands hommes_" to whom it is dedicated. I was
thinking much more of Foucault's grand experiment, one of the most
sublime visible demonstrations of a great physical fact in the records
of science. The reader may not happen to remember it, and will like,
perhaps, to be reminded of it. Foucault took advantage of the height of
the dome, nearly three hundred feet, and had a heavy weight suspended by
a wire from its loftiest point, forming an immense pendulum,--the
longest, I suppose, ever constructed. Now a moving body tends to keep
its original plane of movement, and so the great pendulum, being set
swinging north and south, tended to keep on in the same direction. But
the earth was moving under it, and as it rolled from west to east the
plane running through the north and south poles was every instant
changing. Thus the pendulum appeared to change its direction, and its
deviation was shown on a graduated arc, or by the marks it left in a
little heap of sand which it touched as it swung. This experiment on the
great scale has since been repeated on the small scale by the aid of
other contrivances.
My thoughts wandered back, naturally enough, to Galileo in the Cathedral
at Pisa. It was the swinging of the suspended lamp in that edifice which
set his mind working on the laws which govern the action of the
pendulum. While he was meditating on this physical problem, the priest
may have been holding forth on the dangers of meddling with matters
settled by Holy Church, who stood ready to enforce her edicts by the
logic of the rack and the fagot. An inference from the above remarks is
that what one brings from a church depends very much on what he carries
into it.
The next place to visit could be no other than the Café Procope. This
famous resort is the most ancient and the most celebrated of all the
Parisian cafés. Voltaire, the poet J. B. Rousseau, Marmontel, Sainte
Foix, Saurin, were among its frequenters in the eighteenth century. It
stands in the Rue des Fossés-Saint Germain, now Rue de l'Ancienne
Comédie. Several American students, Bostonians and Philadelphians,
myself among the number, used to breakfast at this café every morning. I
have no doubt that I met various celebrities there, but I recall only
one name which is likely to be known to most or many of my readers. A
delicate-looking man, seated at one of the tables, was pointed out to me
as Jouffroy. If I had known as much about him as I learned afterwards, I
should have looked at him with more interest. He had one of those
imaginative natures, tinged by constitutional melancholy and saddened by
ill health, which belong to a certain class of poets and sentimental
writers, of which Pascal is a good example, and Cowper another. The
world must have seemed very cruel to him. I remember that when he was a
candidate for the Assembly, one of the popular cries, as reported by the
newspapers of the time, was _A bas le poitrinaire!_ His malady soon
laid him low enough, for he died in 1842, at the age of forty-six. I
must have been very much taken up with my medical studies to have
neglected my opportunity of seeing the great statesmen, authors,
artists, orators, and men of science outside of the medical profession.
Poisson, Arago, and Jouffroy are all I can distinctly recall, among the
Frenchmen of eminence whom I had all around me.
The Café Procope has been much altered and improved, and bears an
inscription telling the date of its establishment, which was in the year
1689. I entered the cafe, which was nearly or quite empty, the usual
breakfast hour being past.
_Garçon! Une tasse de café._
If there is a river of _mneme_ as a counterpart of the river
_lethe_, my cup of coffee must have got its water from that stream
of memory. If I could borrow that eloquence of Jouffroy which made his
hearers turn pale, I might bring up before my readers a long array of
pallid ghosts, whom these walls knew well in their earthly habiliments.
Only a single one of those I met here still survives. The rest are
mostly well-nigh forgotten by all but a few friends, or remembered
chiefly in their children and grandchildren.
"How much?" I said to the garçon in his native tongue, or what I
supposed to be that language. "_Cinq sous_," was his answer. By the
laws of sentiment, I ought to have made the ignoble sum five francs, at
least. But if I had done so, the waiter would undoubtedly have thought
that I had just come from Charenton. Besides, why should I violate the
simple habits and traditions of the place, where generation after
generation of poor students and threadbare Bohemians had taken their
morning coffee and pocketed their two lumps of sugar? It was with a
feeling of virile sanity and Roman self-conquest that I paid my five
sous, with the small additional fraction which I supposed the waiter to
expect, and no more.
So I passed for the last time over the threshold of the Café Procope,
where Voltaire had matured his plays and Piron sharpened his epigrams;
where Jouffroy had battled with his doubts and fears; where, since their
time,--since my days of Parisian life,--the terrible storming youth,
afterwards renowned as Léon Michel Gambetta, had startled the quiet
guests with his noisy eloquence, till the old _habitués_ spilled
their coffee, and the red-capped students said to each other, _"Il ira
loin, ce gaillard-là!"_
But what to me were these shadowy figures by the side of the group of my
early friends and companions, that came up before me in all the
freshness of their young manhood? The memory of them recalls my own
youthful days, and I need not go to Florida to bathe in the fountain of
Ponce de Leon.
I have sometimes thought that I love so well the accidents of this
temporary terrestrial residence, its endeared localities, its precious
affections, its pleasing variety of occupation, its alternations of
excited and gratified curiosity, and whatever else comes nearest to the
longings of the natural man, that I might be wickedly homesick in a
far-off spiritual realm where such toys are done with. But there is a
pretty lesson which I have often meditated, taught, not this time by the
lilies of the field, but by the fruits of the garden. When, in the June
honeymoon of the seasons, the strawberry shows itself among the bridal
gifts, many of us exclaim for the hundredth time with Dr. Boteler,
"Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never
did." Nature, who is God's handmaid, does not attempt a rival berry. But
by and by a little woolly knob, which looked and saw with wonder the
strawberry reddening, and perceived the fragrance it diffused all
around, begins to fill out, and grow soft and pulpy and sweet; and at
last a glow comes to its cheek, and we say the peach is ripening. When
Nature has done with it, and delivers it to us in its perfection, we
forget all the lesser fruits which have gone before it. If the flavor of
the peach and the fragrance of the rose are not found in some fruit and
flower which grow by the side of the river of life, an earth-born spirit
might be forgiven for missing them. The strawberry and the pink are very
delightful, but we could be happy without them.
So, too, we may hope that when the fruits of our brief early season of
three or four score years have given us all they can impart for our
happiness; when "the love of little maids and berries," and all other
earthly prettinesses, shall "soar and sing," as Mr. Emerson sweetly
reminds us that they all must, we may hope that the abiding felicities
of our later life-season may far more than compensate us for all that
have taken their flight.
I looked forward with the greatest interest to revisiting the Gallery of
the Louvre, accompanied by my long-treasured recollections. I retained a
vivid remembrance of many pictures, which had been kept bright by seeing
great numbers of reproductions of them in photographs and engravings.
The first thing which struck me was that the pictures had been
rearranged in such a way that I could find nothing in the place where I
looked for it. But when I found them, they greeted me, so I fancied,
like old acquaintances. The meek-looking "Belle Jardinière" was as
lamb-like as ever; the pearly nymph of Correggio invited the stranger's
eye as frankly as of old; Titian's young man with the glove was the
calm, self-contained gentleman I used to admire; the splashy Rubenses,
the pallid Guidos, the sunlit Claudes, the shadowy Poussins, the moonlit
Girardets, Géricault's terrible shipwreck of the Medusa, the exquisite
home pictures of Gerard Douw and Terburg,--all these and many more have
always been on exhibition in my ideal gallery, and I only mention them
as the first that happen to suggest themselves. The Museum of the Hôtel
Cluny is a curious receptacle of antiquities, many of which I looked at
with interest; but they made no lasting impression, and have gone into
the lumber-room of memory, from which accident may, from time to time,
drag out some few of them.
After the poor unsatisfactory towers of Westminster Abbey, the two
massive, noble, truly majestic towers of Notre Dame strike the traveller
as a crushing contrast. It is not hard to see that one of these grand
towers is somewhat larger than the other, but the difference does not
interfere with the effect of the imposing front of the cathedral.
I was much pleased to find that I could have entrance to the Sainte
Chapelle, which was used, at the time of my earlier visit, as a
storehouse of judicial archives, of which there was a vast accumulation.
With the exception of my call at the office of the American Legation, I
made but a single visit to any person in Paris. That person was M.
Pasteur. I might have carried a letter to him, for my friend Mrs.
Priestley is well acquainted with him, but I had not thought of asking
for one. So I presented myself at his headquarters, and was admitted
into a courtyard, where a multitude of his patients were gathered. They
were of various ages and of many different nationalities, every one of
them with the vague terror hanging over him or her. Yet the young people
seemed to be cheerful enough, and very much like scholars out of school.
I sent my card in to M. Pasteur, who was busily engaged in writing, with
his clerks or students about him, and presently he came out and greeted
me. I told him I was an American physician, who wished to look in his
face and take his hand,--nothing more. I looked in his face, which was
that of a thoughtful, hard-worked student, a little past the grand
climacteric,--he was born in 1822. I took his hand, which has performed
some of the most delicate and daring experiments ever ventured upon,
with results of almost incalculable benefit to human industries, and the
promise of triumph in the treatment of human disease which prophecy
would not have dared to anticipate. I will not say that I have a full
belief that hydrophobia--in some respects the most terrible of all
diseases--is to be extirpated or rendered tractable by his method of
treatment. But of his inventive originality, his unconquerable
perseverance, his devotion to the good of mankind, there can be no
question. I look upon him as one of the greatest experimenters that ever
lived, one of the truest benefactors of his race; and if I made my due
obeisance before princes, I felt far more humble in the presence of this
great explorer, to whom the God of Nature has entrusted some of her most
precious secrets.
There used to be--I can hardly think it still exists--a class of
persons who prided themselves on their disbelief in the reality of any
such distinct disease as hydrophobia. I never thought it worth while to
argue with them, for I have noticed that this disbelief is only a
special manifestation of a particular habit of mind. Its advocates will
be found, I think, most frequently among "the long-haired men and the
short-haired women." Many of them dispute the efficacy of vaccination.
Some are disciples of Hahnemann, some have full faith in the mind-cure,
some attend the séances where flowers (bought from the nearest florist)
are materialized, and some invest their money in Mrs. Howe's Bank of
Benevolence. Their tendency is to reject the truth which is generally
accepted, and to accept the improbable; if the impossible offers itself,
they deny the existence of the impossible. Argument with this class of
minds is a lever without a fulcrum.
I was glad to leave that company of--patients, still uncertain of their
fate,--hoping, yet pursued by their terror: peasants bitten by mad
wolves in Siberia; women snapped at by their sulking lap-dogs in London;
children from over the water who had been turned upon by the irritable
Skye terrier; innocent victims torn by ill-conditioned curs at the doors
of the friends they were meaning to visit,--all haunted by the same
ghastly fear, all starting from sleep in the same nightmare.
If canine rabies is a fearful subject to contemplate, there is a sadder
and deeper significance in _rabies humana_; in that awful madness
of the human race which is marked by a thirst for blood and a rage for
destruction. The remembrance of such a distemper which has attacked
mankind, especially mankind of the Parisian sub-species, came over me
very strongly when I first revisited the Place Vendôme. I should have
supposed that the last object upon which Parisians would, in their
wildest frenzy, have laid violent hands would have been the column with
the figure of Napoleon at its summit. We all know what happened in 1871.
An artist, we should have thought, would be the last person to lead the
iconoclasts in such an outrage. But M. Courbet has attained an
immortality like that of Erostratus by the part he took in pulling down
the column. It was restored in 1874. I do not question that the work of
restoration was well done, but my eyes insisted on finding a fault in
some of its lines which was probably in their own refracting media.
Fifty years before an artist helped to overthrow the monument to the
Emperor, a poet had apostrophized him in the bitterest satire since the
days of Juvenal:--
"Encor Napoléon! encor sa grande image!
Ah! que ce rude et dur guerrier
Nous a couté de sang et de pleurs et d'outrage
Pour quelques rameaux de laurier!
* * * * *
"Eh bien! dans tous ces jours d'abaissement, de peine,
Pour tous ces outrages sans nom,
Je n'ai jamais chargé qu'un être de ma haine,...
Sois maudit, O Napoléon!"
After looking at the column of the Place Vendôme and recalling these
lines of Barbier, I was ready for a visit to the tomb of Napoleon. The
poet's curse had helped me to explain the painter's frenzy against the
bronze record of his achievements and the image at its summit. But I
forgot them both as I stood under the dome of the Invalides, and looked
upon the massive receptacle which holds the dust of the imperial exile.
Two things, at least, Napoleon accomplished: he opened the way for
ability of all kinds, and he dealt the death-blow to the divine right of
kings and all the abuses which clung to that superstition. If I brought
nothing else away from my visit to his mausoleum, I left it impressed
with what a man can be when fully equipped by nature, and placed in
circumstances where his forces can have full play. "How infinite in
faculty! ... in apprehension how like a god!" Such were my reflections;
very much, I suppose, like those of the average visitor, and too
obviously having nothing to require contradiction or comment.
Paris as seen by the morning sun of three or four and twenty and Paris
in the twilight of the superfluous decade cannot be expected to look
exactly alike. I well remember my first breakfast at a Parisian café in
the spring of 1833. It was in the Place de la Bourse, on a beautiful
sunshiny morning. The coffee was nectar, the _flute_ was ambrosia,
the _brioche_ was more than good enough for the Olympians. Such an
experience could not repeat itself fifty years later. The first
restaurant at which we dined was in the Palais Royal. The place was hot
enough to cook an egg. Nothing was very excellent nor very bad; the wine
was not so good as they gave us at our hotel in London; the enchanter
had not waved his wand over our repast, as he did over my earlier one in
the Place de la Bourse, and I had not the slightest desire to pay the
garçon thrice his fee on the score of cherished associations.
We dined at our hotel on some days, at different restaurants on others.
One day we dined, and dined well, at the old Café Anglais, famous in my
earlier times for its turbot. Another day we took our dinner at a very
celebrated restaurant on the boulevard. One sauce which was served us
was a gastronomic symphony, the harmonies of which were new to me and
pleasing. But I remember little else of superior excellence. The garçon
pocketed the franc I gave him with the air of having expected a
napoleon.
Into the mysteries of a lady's shopping in Paris I would not venture to
inquire. But A---- and I strolled together through the Palais Royal in
the evening, and amused ourselves by staring at the glittering windows
without being severely tempted. Bond Street had exhausted our
susceptibility to the shop-window seduction, and the napoleons did not
burn in the pockets where the sovereigns had had time to cool.
Nothing looked more nearly the same as of old than the bridges. The Pont
Neuf did not seem to me altered, though we had read in the papers that
it was in ruins or seriously injured in consequence of a great flood.
The statues had been removed from the Pont Royal, one or two new bridges
had been built, but all was natural enough, and I was tempted to look
for the old woman, at the end of the Pont des Arts, who used to sell me
a bunch of violets, for two or three sous,--such as would cost me a
quarter of a dollar in Boston. I did not see the three objects which a
popular saying alleges are always to be met on the Pont Neuf: a priest,
a soldier, and a white horse.
The weather was hot; we were tired, and did not care to go to the
theatres, if any of them were open. The pleasantest hours were those of
our afternoon drive in the Champs Elysées and the Bois de Boulogne,--or
"the Boulogne Woods," as our American tailor's wife of the old time
called the favorite place for driving. In passing the Place de la
Concorde, two objects in especial attracted my attention,--the obelisk,
which was lying, when I left it, in the great boat which brought it from
the Nile, and the statue of Strasbourg, all covered with wreaths and
flags. How like children these Parisians do act; crying "À Berlin, à
Berlin!" and when Berlin comes to Paris, and Strasbourg goes back to her
old proprietors, instead of taking it quietly, making all this parade of
patriotic symbols, the display of which belongs to victory rather than
to defeat!
I was surprised to find the trees in the Bois de Boulogne so well grown:
I had an idea that they had been largely sacrificed in the time of the
siege. Among the objects which deserve special mention are the shrieking
parrots and other birds and the yelping dogs in the grounds of the
Society of Acclimatization,--out of the range of which the visitor will
be glad to get as soon as possible. A fountain visited by newly married
couples and their friends, with a restaurant near by, where the bridal
party drink the health of the newly married pair, was an object of
curiosity. An unsteadiness of gait was obvious in some of the feasters.
At one point in the middle of the road a maenad was flinging her arms
about and shrieking as if she were just escaped from a madhouse. But the
drive in the Bois was what made Paris tolerable. There were few fine
equipages, and few distinguished-looking people in the carriages, but
there were quiet groups by the wayside, seeming happy enough; and now
and then a pretty face or a wonderful bonnet gave variety to the
somewhat _bourgeois_ character of the procession of fiacres.
[Illustration: Place de la Concorde]
I suppose I ought to form no opinion at all about the aspect of Paris,
any more than I should of an oyster in a month without an _r_ in
it. We were neither of us in the best mood for sight-seeing, and Paris
was not sitting up for company; in fact, she was "not at home."
Remembering all this, I must say that the whole appearance of the city
was dull and dreary. London out of season seemed still full of life;
Paris out of season looked vacuous and torpid. The recollection of the
sorrow, the humiliation, the shame, and the agony she had passed through
since I left her picking her way on the arm of the Citizen King, with
his old _riflard_ over her, rose before me sadly, ominously, as I
looked upon the high board fence which surrounded the ruins of the
Tuileries. I can understand the impulse which led the red caps to make a
wreck of this grand old historical building. "Pull down the nest," they
said, "and the birds will not come back." But I shudder when I think
what "the red fool-fury of the Seine" has done and is believed capable
of doing. I think nothing has so profoundly impressed me as the story of
the precautions taken to preserve the Venus of Milo from the brutal
hands of the mob. A little more violent access of fury, a little more
fiery declamation, a few more bottles of _vin bleu_, and the
Gallery of the Louvre, with all its treasures of art, compared with
which the crown jewels just sold are but pretty pebbles, the market
price of which fairly enough expresses their value,--much more, rather,
than their true value,--that noble gallery, with all its masterpieces
from the hands of Greek sculptors and Italian painters, would have been
changed in a single night into a heap of blackened stones and a pile of
smoking cinders.
I love to think that now that the people have, or at least think they
have, the power in their own hands, they will outgrow this form of
madness, which is almost entitled to the name of a Parisian endemic.
Everything looked peaceable and stupid enough during the week I passed
in Paris. But among all the fossils which Cuvier found in the Parisian
basin, nothing was more monstrous than the _poissardes_ of the old
Revolution, or the _pétroleuses_ of the recent Commune, and I fear
that the breed is not extinct. An American comes to like Paris as warmly
as he comes to love England, after living in it long enough to become
accustomed to its ways, and I, like the rest of my countrymen who
remember that France was our friend in the hour of need, who remember
all the privileges and enjoyments she has freely offered us, who feel
that as a sister republic her destinies are of the deepest interest to
us, can have no other wish than for her continued safety, order, and
prosperity.
We returned to London on the 13th of August by the same route we had
followed in going from London to Paris. Our passage was rough, as
compared to the former one, and some of the passengers were seasick. We
were both fortunate enough to escape that trial of comfort and
self-respect.
I can hardly separate the story of the following week from that of the
one before we went to Paris. We did a little more shopping and saw a few
more sights. I hope that no reader of mine would suppose that I would
leave London without seeing Madame Tussaud's exhibition. Our afternoon
drives made us familiar with many objects which I always looked upon
with pleasure. There was the obelisk, brought from Egypt at the expense
of a distinguished and successful medical practitioner, Sir Erasmus
Wilson, the eminent dermatologist and author of a manual of anatomy
which for many years was my favorite text-book. There was "The
Monument," which characterizes itself by having no prefix to its generic
name. I enjoyed looking at and driving round it, and thinking over
Pepys's lively account of the Great Fire, and speculating as to where
Pudding Lane and Pie Corner stood, and recalling Pope's lines which I
used to read at school, wondering what was the meaning of the second
one:--
"Where London's column, pointing to the skies
Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies."
The week passed away rapidly enough, and we made ready for our
departure. It was no easy matter to get a passage home, but we had at
last settled it that we would return in the same vessel in which we had
at first engaged our passage to Liverpool, the Catalonia. But we were
fortunate enough to have found an active and efficient friend in our
townsman, Mr. Montgomery Sears, who procured staterooms for us in a much
swifter vessel, to sail on the 21st for New York, the Aurania.
Our last visitor in London was the faithful friend who had been the
first to welcome us, Lady Harcourt, in whose kind attentions I felt the
warmth of my old friendship with her admired and honored father and her
greatly beloved mother. I had recently visited their place of rest in
the Kensal Green Cemetery, recalling with tenderest emotions the many
years in which I had enjoyed their companionship.
On the 19th of August we left London for Liverpool, and on our arrival
took lodgings at the Adelphi Hotel.
The kindness with which I had been welcomed, when I first arrived at
Liverpool, had left a deep impression upon my mind. It seemed very
ungrateful to leave that noble city, which had met me in some of its
most esteemed representatives with a warm grasp of the hand even before
my foot had touched English soil, without staying to thank my new
friends, who would have it that they were old friends. But I was
entirely unfit for enjoying any company when I landed. I took care,
therefore, to allow sufficient time in Liverpool, before sailing for
home, to meet such friends, old and recent, as cared to make or renew
acquaintance with me. In the afternoon of the 20th we held a reception,
at which a hundred visitors, more or less, presented themselves, and we
had a very sociable hour or two together. The Vice-Consul, Mr. Sewall,
in the enforced absence of his principal, Mr. Russell, paid us every
attention, and was very agreeable. In the evening I was entertained at a
great banquet given by the Philomathean Society. This flourishing
institution enrolls among its members a large proportion of the most
cultivated and intelligent gentlemen of Liverpool. I enjoyed the meeting
very highly, listened to pleasant things which were said about myself,
and answered in the unpremeditated words which came to my lips and were
cordially received. I could have wished to see more of Liverpool, but I
found time only to visit the great exhibition, then open. The one class
of objects which captivated my attention was the magnificent series of
models of steamboats and other vessels. I did not look upon them with
the eye of an expert, but the great number and variety of these
beautiful miniature ships and boats excited my admiration.
On the 21st of August we went on board the Aurania. Everything was done
to make us comfortable. Many old acquaintances, friends, and family
connections were our fellow-passengers. As for myself, I passed through
the same trying experiences as those which I have recorded as
characterizing my outward passage. Our greatest trouble during the
passage was from fog. The frequency of collisions, of late years, tends
to make everybody nervous when they hear the fog-whistle shrieking. This
sound and the sight of the boats are not good for timid people.
Fortunately, no one was particularly excitable, or if so, no one
betrayed any special uneasiness.
On the evening of the 27th we had an entertainment, in which Miss
Kellogg sang and I read several poems. A very pretty sum was realized
for some charity,--I forget what,--and the affair was voted highly
successful. The next day, the 28th, we were creeping towards our harbor
through one of those dense fogs which are more dangerous than the old
rocks of the sirens, or Scylla and Charybdis, or the much-lied-about
maelstrom.
On Sunday, the 29th of August, my birthday, we arrived in New York. In
these days of birthday-books our chronology is not a matter of secret
history, in case we have been much before the public. I found a great
cake had been made ready for me, in which the number of my summers was
represented by a ring of raisins which made me feel like Methuselah. A
beautiful bouquet which had been miraculously preserved for the occasion
was for the first time displayed. It came from Dr. Beach, of Boston,
_via_ London. Such is the story, and I can only suppose that the
sweet little cherub who sits up aloft had taken special charge of it, or
it would have long ago withered.
We slept at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which we found fresh, sweet,
bright,--it must have been recently rejuvenated, I thought. The next day
we took the train for New Haven, Springfield, and Boston, and that night
slept in our own beds, thankful to find ourselves safe at home after our
summer excursion, which had brought us so many experiences delightful to
remember, so many friendships which have made life better worth living.
In the following section I shall give some of the general impressions
which this excursion has left in my memory, and a few suggestions
derived from them.
VIII.
My reader was fairly forewarned that this narrative was to be more like
a chapter of autobiography than the record of a tourist. In the language
of philosophy, it is written from a subjective, not an objective, point
of view. It is not exactly a "Sentimental Journey," though there are
warm passages here and there which end with notes of admiration. I
remind myself now and then of certain other travellers: of Benjamin of
Tudela, going from the hospitalities of one son of Abraham to another;
of John Buncle, finding the loveliest of women under every roof that
sheltered him; sometimes, perhaps, of that tipsy rhymester whose record
of his good and bad fortunes at the hands of landlords and landladies is
enlivened by an occasional touch of humor, which makes it palatable to
coarse literary feeders. But in truth these papers have many of the
characteristics of private letters written home to friends. They
_are_ written for friends, rather than for a public which cares
nothing about the writer. I knew that there were many such whom it would
please to know where the writer went, whom he saw and what he saw, and
how he was impressed by persons and things.
If I were planning to make a tour of the United Kingdom, and could
command the service of all the wise men I count or have counted among my
friends, I would go with such a retinue summoned from the ranks of the
living and the dead as no prince ever carried with him. I would ask Mr.
Lowell to go with me among scholars, where I could be a listener; Mr.
Norton to visit the cathedrals with me; Professor Gray to be my
botanical oracle; Professor Agassiz to be always ready to answer
questions about the geological strata and their fossils; Dr. Jeffries
Wyman to point out and interpret the common objects which present
themselves to a sharp-eyed observer; and Mr. Boyd Dawkins to pilot me
among the caves and cairns. Then I should want a better pair of eyes and
a better pair of ears, and, while I was reorganizing, perhaps a quicker
apprehension and a more retentive memory; in short, a new outfit, bodily
and mental. But Nature does not care to mend old shoes; she prefers a
new pair, and a young person to stand in them.
What a great book one could make, with such aids, and how many would
fling it down, and take up anything in preference, provided only that it
were short enough; even this slight record, for want of something
shorter!
Not only did I feel sure that many friends would like to read our
itinerary, but another motive prompted me to tell the simple story of
our travels. I could not receive such kindness, so great evidences of
friendly regard, without a strong desire, amounting to a positive
necessity, for the expression of my grateful sense of all that had been
done for us. Individually, I felt it, of course, as a most pleasing
experience. But I believed it to have a more important significance as
an illustration of the cordial feeling existing between England and
America. I know that many of my countrymen felt the attentions paid to
me as if they themselves shared them with me. I have lived through many
strata of feeling in America towards England. My parents, full-blooded
Americans, were both born subjects of King George III. Both learned in
their early years to look upon Britons as the enemies of their country.
A good deal of the old hostility lingered through my boyhood, and this
was largely intensified by the war of 1812. After nearly half a century
this feeling had in great measure subsided, when the War of Secession
called forth expressions of sympathy with the slaveholding States which
surprised, shocked, and deeply wounded the lovers of liberty and of
England in the Northern States. A new generation is outgrowing that
alienation. More and more the older and younger nations are getting to
be proud and really fond of each other. There is no shorter road to a
mother's heart than to speak pleasantly to her child, and caress it, and
call it pretty names. No matter whether the child is something
remarkable or not, it is _her_ child, and that is enough. It may be
made too much of, but that is not its mother's fault. If I could believe
that every attention paid me was due simply to my being an American, I
should feel honored and happy in being one of the humbler media through
which the good-will of a great and generous country reached the heart of
a far-off people not always in friendly relations with her.
I have named many of the friends who did everything to make our stay in
England and Scotland agreeable. The unforeseen shortening of my visit
must account for many disappointments to myself, and some, it may be, to
others.
First in the list of lost opportunities was that of making my bow to the
Queen. I had the honor of receiving a card with the invitation to meet
Her Majesty at a garden-party, but we were travelling when it was sent,
and it arrived too late.
I was very sorry not to meet Mr. Ruskin, to whom Mr. Norton had given me
a note of introduction. At the time when we were hoping to see him it
was thought that he was too ill to receive visitors, but he has since
written me that he regretted we did not carry out our intention. I
lamented my being too late to see once more two gentlemen from whom I
should have been sure of a kind welcome,--Lord Houghton and Dean
Stanley, both of whom I had met in Boston. Even if I had stayed out the
whole time I had intended to remain abroad, I should undoubtedly have
failed to see many persons and many places that I must always feel sorry
for having missed. But as it is, I will not try to count all that I
lost; let me rather be thankful that I met so many friends whom it was a
pleasure to know personally, and saw so much that it is a pleasure to
remember.
I find that many of the places I most wish to see are those associated
with the memory of some individual, generally one of the generations
more or less in advance of my own. One of the first places I should go
to, in a leisurely tour, would be Selborne. Gilbert White was not a
poet, neither was he a great systematic naturalist. But he used his eyes
on the world about him; he found occupation and happiness in his daily
walks, and won as large a measure of immortality within the confines of
his little village as he could have gained in exploring the sources of
the Nile. I should make a solemn pilgrimage to the little town of Eyam,
in Derbyshire, where the Reverend Mr. Mompesson, the hero of the plague
of 1665, and his wife, its heroine and its victim, lie buried. I should
like to follow the traces of Cowper at Olney and of Bunyan at Elstow. I
found an intense interest in the Reverend Mr. Alger's account of his
visit to the Vale of Llangollen, where Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss
Ponsonby passed their peaceful days in long, uninterrupted friendship.
Of course the haunts of Burns, the home of Scott, the whole region made
sacred by Wordsworth and the group to which he belongs would be so many
shrines to which I should make pilgrimages.
I own, also, to having something of the melodramatic taste so notable in
Victor Hugo. I admired the noble façade of Wells cathedral and the grand
old episcopal palace, but I begged the bishop to show me the place where
his predecessor, Bishop Kidder, and his wife, were killed by the falling
chimney in the "Great Storm."--I wanted to go to Devizes, and see the
monument in the market-place, where Ruth Pierce was struck dead with a
lie in her mouth,--about all which I had read in early boyhood. I
contented myself with a photograph of it which my friend, Mr. Willett,
went to Devizes and bought for me.
There are twenty different Englands, every one of which it would be a
delight to visit, and I should hardly know with which of them to begin.
The few remarks I have to make on what I saw and heard have nothing
beyond the value of first impressions; but as I have already said, if
these are simply given, without pretending to be anything more, they are
not worthless. At least they can do little harm, and may sometimes amuse
a reader whom they fail to instruct. But we must all beware of hasty
conclusions. If a foreigner of limited intelligence were whirled through
England on the railways, he would naturally come to the conclusion that
the chief product of that country is _mustard_, and that its most
celebrated people are Mr. Keen and Mr. Colman, whose great advertising
boards, yellow letters on a black ground, and black letters on a yellow
ground, stare the traveller in the face at every station.
Of the climate, as I knew it in May and the summer months, I will only
say that if I had any illusions about May and June in England, my
fireplace would have been ample evidence that I was entirely
disenchanted. The Derby day, the 26th of May, was most chilly and
uncomfortable; at the garden-party at Kensington Palace, on the 4th of
June, it was cold enough to make hot drinks and warm wraps a comfort, if
not a necessity. I was thankful to have passed through these two ordeals
without ill consequences. Drizzly, or damp, or cold, cloudy days were
the rule rather than the exception, while we were in London. We had some
few hot days, especially at Stratford, in the early part of July. In
London an umbrella is as often carried as a cane; in Paris _"un homme
à para-pluie"_ is, or used to be, supposed to carry that useful
article because he does not keep and cannot hire a carriage of some
sort. He may therefore be safely considered a person, and not a
personage.
The soil of England does not seem to be worn out, to judge by the
wonderful verdure and the luxuriance of vegetation. It contains a great
museum of geological specimens, and a series of historical strata which
are among the most instructive of human records. I do not pretend to
much knowledge of geology. The most interesting geological objects in
our New England that I can think of are the great boulders and the
scratched and smoothed surface of the rocks; the fossil footprints in
the valley of the Connecticut; the trilobites found at Quincy. But the
readers of Hugh Miller remember what a variety of fossils he found in
the stratified rocks of his little island, and the museums are full of
just such objects. When it comes to underground historical relics, the
poverty of New England as compared with the wealth of Old England is
very striking. Stratum after stratum carries the explorer through the
relics of successive invaders. After passing through the characteristic
traces of different peoples, he comes upon a Roman pavement, and below
this the weapons and ornaments of a tribe of ancient Britons. One cannot
strike a spade into the earth, in Great Britain, without a fair chance
of some surprise in the form of a Saxon coin, or a Celtic implement, or
a Roman fibula. Nobody expects any such pleasing surprise in a New
England field. One must be content with an Indian arrowhead or two, now
and then a pestle and mortar, or a stone pipe. A top dressing of
antiquity is all he can look for. The soil is not humanized enough to be
interesting; whereas in England so much of it has been trodden by human
feet, built on in the form of human habitations, nay, has been itself a
part of preceding generations of human beings, that it is in a kind of
dumb sympathy with those who tread its turf. Perhaps it is not literally
true that
One half her soil has walked the rest
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages;
but so many of all these lie within it that the whole mother island is a
_campo santo_ to all who can claim the same blood as that which
runs in the veins of her unweaned children.
The flora and fauna of a country, as seen from railroad trains and
carriages, are not likely to be very accurately or exhaustively studied.
I spoke of the trees I noticed between Chester and London somewhat
slightingly. But I did not form any hasty opinions from what happened to
catch my eye. Afterwards, in the oaks and elms of Windsor Park, in the
elms of Cambridge and Oxford and Salisbury, in the lindens of Stratford,
in the various noble trees, including the cedar of Lebanon, in which
Tennyson very justly felt a pride as their owner, I saw enough to make
me glad that I had not uttered any rash generalizations on the strength
of my first glance. The most interesting comparison I made was between
the New England and the Old England elms. It is not necessary to cross
the ocean to do this, as we have both varieties growing side by side in
our parks,--on Boston Common, for instance. It is wonderful to note how
people will lie about big trees. There must be as many as a dozen trees,
each of which calls itself the "largest elm in New England." In my
younger days, when I never travelled without a measuring-tape in my
pocket, it amused me to see how meek one of the great swaggering elms
would look when it saw the fatal measure begin to unreel itself. It
seemed to me that the leaves actually trembled as the inexorable band
encircled the trunk in _the smallest place it could find_, which is
the only safe rule. The English elm (_Ulmus campestris_) as we see
it in Boston comes out a little earlier perhaps, than our own, but the
difference is slight. It holds its leaves long after our elms are bare.
It grows upward, with abundant dark foliage, while ours spreads,
sometimes a hundred and twenty feet, and often droops like a weeping
willow. The English elm looks like a much more robust tree than ours,
yet they tell me it is very fragile, and that its limbs are constantly
breaking off in high winds, just as happens with our native elms. Ours
is not a very long-lived tree; between two and three hundred years is, I
think, the longest life that can be hoped for it. Since I have heard of
the fragility of the English elm, which is the fatal fault of our own, I
have questioned whether it can claim a greater longevity than ours.
There is a hint of a typical difference in the American and the
Englishman which I have long recognized in the two elms as compared to
each other. It may be fanciful, but I have thought that the compactness
and robustness about the English elm, which are replaced by the long,
tapering limbs and willowy grace and far-spreading reach of our own,
might find a certain parallelism in the people, especially the females
of the two countries.
I saw no horse-chestnut trees equal to those I remember in Salem, and
especially to one in Rockport, which is the largest and finest I have
ever seen; no willows like those I pass in my daily drives.
On the other hand, I think I never looked upon a Lombardy poplar equal
to one I saw in Cambridge, England. This tree seems to flourish in
England much more than with us.
I do not remember any remarkable beeches, though there are some very
famous ones, especially the Burnham beeches.
No apple-trees I saw in England compare with one next my own door, and
there are many others as fine in the neighborhood.
I have spoken of the pleasure I had in seeing by the roadside primroses,
cowslips, and daisies. Dandelions, buttercups, hawkweed looked much as
ours do at home. Wild roses also grew at the roadside,--smaller and
paler, I thought, than ours.
I cannot make a chapter like the famous one on Iceland, from my own
limited observation: _There are no snakes in England._ I can say
that I found two small caterpillars on my overcoat, in coming from Lord
Tennyson's grounds. If they had stayed on his premises, they might
perhaps have developed into "purple emperors," or spread "the tiger
moth's deep damasked wings" before the enraptured eyes of the noble
poet. These two caterpillars and a few house-flies are all I saw, heard,
or felt, by day or night, of the native fauna of England, except a few
birds,--rooks, starlings, a blackbird, and the larks of Salisbury Plain
just as they rose; for I lost sight of them almost immediately. I
neither heard nor saw the nightingales, to my great regret. They had
been singing at Oxford a short time before my visit to that place. The
only song I heard was that which I have mentioned, the double note of
the cuckoo.
England is the paradise of horses. They are bred, fed, trained, groomed,
housed, cared for, in a way to remind one of the Houyhnhnms, and
strikingly contrasting with the conditions of life among the wretched
classes whose existence is hardly more tolerable than that of those
_quasi_-human beings under whose name it pleased the fierce
satirist to degrade humanity. The horses that are driven in the hansoms
of London are the best I have seen in any public conveyance. I cannot
say as much of those in the four-wheelers.
Broad streets, sometimes, as in Bond Street, with narrow sidewalks;
_islands_ for refuge in the middle of many of them; deep areas;
lofty houses; high walls; plants in the windows; frequent open spaces;
policemen at near intervals, always polite in my experience,--such are
my recollections of the quarter I most frequented.
Are the English taller, stouter, lustier, ruddier, healthier, than our
New England people? If I gave my impression, I should say that they are.
Among the wealthier class, tall, athletic-looking men and stately,
well-developed women are more common, I am compelled to think, than with
us. I met in company at different times five gentlemen, each of whom
would be conspicuous in any crowd for his stature and proportions. We
could match their proportions, however, in the persons of well-known
Bostonians. To see how it was with other classes, I walked in the Strand
one Sunday, and noted carefully the men and women I met. I was surprised
to see how many of both sexes were of low stature. I counted in the
course of a few minutes' walk no less than twenty of these little
people. I set this experience against the other. Neither is convincing.
The anthropologists will settle the question of man in the Old and in
the New World before many decades have passed.
In walking the fashionable streets of London one can hardly fail to be
struck with the well-dressed look of gentlemen of all ages. The special
point in which the Londoner excels all other citizens I am conversant
with is the hat. I have not forgotten Béranger's
"_Quoique leurs chapeaux soient bien laids_
*** ***! moi, j'aime les Anglais;"
but in spite of it I believe in the English hat as the best thing of its
ugly kind. As for the Englishman's feeling with reference to it, a
foreigner might be pardoned for thinking it was his fetich, a North
American Indian for looking at it as taking the place of his own
medicine-bag. It is a common thing for the Englishman to say his prayers
into it, as he sits down in his pew. Can it be that this imparts a
religious character to the article? However this may be, the true
Londoner's hat is cared for as reverentially as a High-Church altar. Far
off its coming shines. I was always impressed by the fact that even with
us a well-bred gentleman in reduced circumstances never forgets to keep
his beaver well brushed, and I remember that long ago I spoke of the hat
as the _ultimum moriens_ of what we used to call gentility,--the
last thing to perish in the decay of a gentleman's outfit. His hat is as
sacred to an Englishman as his beard to a Mussulman.
* * * * *
In looking at the churches and the monuments which I saw in London and
elsewhere in England, certain resemblances, comparisons, parallels,
contrasts, and suggestions obtruded themselves upon my consciousness. We
have one steeple in Boston which to my eyes seems absolutely perfect:
that of the Central Church, at the corner of Newbury and Berkeley
streets. Its resemblance to the spire of Salisbury had always struck me.
On mentioning this to the late Mr. Richardson, the very distinguished
architect, he said to me that he thought it more nearly like that of the
Cathedral of Chartres. One of our best living architects agreed with me
as to its similarity to that of Salisbury. It does not copy either
exactly, but, if it had twice its actual dimensions, would compare well
with the best of the two, if one is better than the other.
Saint-Martin's-in-the-Fields made me feel as if I were in Boston. Our
Arlington Street Church copies it pretty closely, but Mr. Gilman left
out the columns. I could not admire the Nelson Column, nor that which
lends monumental distinction to the Duke of York. After Trajan's and
that of the Place Vendôme, each of which is a permanent and precious
historical record, accounting sufficiently for its existence, there is
something very unsatisfactory in these nude cylinders. That to the Duke
of York might well have the confession of the needy knife grinder as an
inscription on its base. I confess in all honesty that I vastly prefer
the monument commemorating the fire to either of them. That _has_ a
story to tell and tells it,--with a lie or two added, according to Pope,
but it tells it in language and symbol.
As for the kind of monument such as I see from my library window
standing on the summit of Bunker Hill, and have recently seen for the
first time at Washington, on a larger scale, I own that I think a
built-up obelisk a poor affair as compared with an Egyptian monolith of
the same form. It was a triumph of skill to quarry, to shape, to
transport, to cover with expressive symbols, to erect, such a stone as
that which has been transferred to the Thames Embankment, or that which
now stands in Central Park, New York. Each of its four sides is a page
of history, written so as to endure through scores of centuries. A
built-up obelisk requires very little more than brute labor. A child can
shape its model from a carrot or a parsnip, and set it up in miniature
with blocks of loaf sugar. It teaches nothing, and the stranger must go
to his guide-book to know what it is there for. I was led into many
reflections by a sight of the Washington Monument. I found that it was
almost the same thing at a mile's distance as the Bunker Hill Monument
at half a mile's distance; and unless the eye had some means of
measuring the space between itself and the stone shaft, one was about as
good as the other. A mound like that of Marathon or that at Waterloo, a
cairn, even a shaft of the most durable form and material, are fit
memorials of the place where a great battle was fought. They seem less
appropriate as monuments to individuals. I doubt the durability of these
piecemeal obelisks, and when I think of that vast inverted pendulum
vibrating in an earthquake, I am glad that I do not live in its shadow.
The Washington Monument is more than a hundred feet higher than
Salisbury steeple, but it does not look to me so high as that, because
the mind has nothing to climb by. But the forming taste of the country
revels in superlatives, and if we could only have the deepest artesian
well in the world sunk by the side of the tallest column in all
creation, the admiring, not overcritical patriot would be happier than
ever was the Athenian when he looked up at the newly erected Parthenon.
I made a few miscellaneous observations which may be worth recording.
One of these was the fact of the repetition of the types of men and
women with which I was familiar at home. Every now and then I met a new
acquaintance whom I felt that I had seen before. Presently I identified
him with his double on the other side. I had found long ago that even
among Frenchmen I often fell in with persons whose counterparts I had
known in America. I began to feel as if Nature turned out a batch of
human beings for every locality of any importance, very much as a
workman makes a set of chessmen. If I had lived a little longer in
London, I am confident that I should have met myself, as I did actually
meet so many others who were duplicates of those long known to me.
I met Mr. Galton for a few moments, but I had no long conversation with
him. If he should ask me to say how many faces I can visually recall, I
should have to own that there are very few such. The two pictures which
I have already referred to, those of Erasmus and of Dr. Johnson, come up
more distinctly before my mind's eye than almost any faces of the
living. My mental retina has, I fear, lost much of its sensitiveness.
Long and repeated exposure of an object of any kind, in a strong light,
is necessary to fix its image.
* * * * *
Among the gratifications that awaited me in England and Scotland was
that of meeting many before unseen friends with whom I had been in
correspondence. I have spoken of Mr. John Bellows. I should have been
glad to meet Mr. William Smith, the Yorkshire antiquary, who has sent me
many of his antiquarian and biographical writings and publications. I do
not think I saw Mr. David Gilmour, of Paisley, whose "Paisley Folk" and
other writings have given me great pleasure. But I did have the
satisfaction of meeting Professor Gairdner, of Glasgow, to whose
writings my attention was first called by my revered instructor, the
late Dr. James Jackson, and with whom I had occasionally corresponded. I
ought to have met Dr. Martineau. I should have visited the Reverend
Stopford Brooke, who could have told me much that I should have liked to
hear of dear friends of mine, of whom he saw a great deal in their hours
of trial. The Reverend Mr. Voysey, whose fearless rationalism can hardly
give him popularity among the conservative people I saw most of, paid me
the compliment of calling, as he had often done of sending me his
published papers. Now and then some less known correspondent would
reveal himself or herself in bodily presence. Let most authors beware of
showing themselves to those who have idealized them, and let readers not
be too anxious to see in the flesh those whom they have idealized. When
I was a boy, I read Miss Edgeworth's "L'Amie Inconnue." I have learned
to appreciate its meaning in later years by abundant experiences, and I
have often felt unwilling to substitute my real for my imaginary
presence. I will add here that I must have met a considerable number of
persons, in the crowd at our reception and elsewhere, whose names I
failed to hear, and whom I consequently did not recognize as the authors
of books I had read, or of letters I had received. The story of my
experience with the lark accounts for a good deal of what seemed like
negligence or forgetfulness, and which must be, not pardoned, but sighed
over.
I visited several of the well-known clubs, either by special invitation,
or accompanied by a member. The Athenaeum was particularly attentive,
but I was unable to avail myself of the privileges it laid freely open
before me during my stay in London. Other clubs I looked in upon were:
the Reform Club, where I had the pleasure of dining at a large party
given by the very distinguished Dr. Morell Mackenzie; the Rabelais, of
which, as I before related, I have been long a member, and which was one
of the first places where I dined; the Saville; the Savage; the St.
George's. I saw next to nothing of the proper club-life of London, but
it seemed to me that the Athenaeum must be a very desirable place of
resort to the educated Londoner, and no doubt each of the many
institutions of this kind with which London abounds has its special
attractions.
My obligations to my brethren of the medical profession are too numerous
to be mentioned in detail. Almost the first visit I paid was one to my
old friend and fellow-student in Paris, Dr. Walter Hayle Walshe. After
more than half a century's separation, two young friends, now old
friends, must not expect to find each other just the same as when they
parted. Dr. Walshe thought he should have known me; my eyes are not so
good as his, and I would not answer for them and for my memory. That he
should have dedicated his recent original and ingenious work to me,
before I had thought of visiting England, was a most gratifying
circumstance. I have mentioned the hospitalities extended to me by
various distinguished members of the medical profession, but I have not
before referred to the readiness with which, on all occasions, when
professional advice was needed, it was always given with more than
willingness, rather as if it were a pleasure to give it. I could not
have accepted such favors as I received had I not remembered that I, in
my time, had given my services freely for the benefit of those of my own
calling. If I refer to two names among many, it is for special reasons.
Dr. Wilson Fox, the distinguished and widely known practitioner, who
showed us great kindness, has since died, and this passing tribute is
due to his memory. I have before spoken of the exceptional favor we owed
to Dr. and Mrs. Priestley. It enabled us to leave London feeling that we
had tried, at least, to show our grateful sense of all the attentions
bestowed upon us. If there were any whom we overlooked, among the guests
we wished to honor, all such accidental omissions will be pardoned, I
feel sure, by those who know how great and bewildering is the pressure
of social life in London.
I was, no doubt, often more or less confused, in my perceptions, by the
large number of persons whom I met in society. I found the
dinner-parties, as Mr. Lowell told me I should, very much like the same
entertainments among my home acquaintances. I have not the gift of
silence, and I am not a bad listener, yet I brought away next to nothing
from dinner-parties where I had said and heard enough to fill out a
magazine article. After I was introduced to a lady, the conversation
frequently began somewhat in this way:--
"It is a long time since you have been in this country, I believe?"
"It is a _very_ long time: fifty years and more."
"You find great changes in London, of course, I suppose?"
"Not so great as you might think. The Tower is where I left it. The
Abbey is much as I remember it. Northumberland House with its lion is
gone, but Charing Cross is in the same old place. My attention is drawn
especially to the things which have not changed,--those which I
remember."
That stream was quickly dried up. Conversation soon found other springs.
I never knew the talk to get heated or noisy. Religion and politics
rarely came up, and never in any controversial way. The bitterest
politician I met at table was a quadruped,--a lady's dog,--who refused a
desirable morsel offered him in the name of Mr. Gladstone, but snapped
up another instantly on being told that it came from Queen Victoria. I
recall many pleasant and some delightful talks at the dinner-table; one
in particular, with the most charming woman in England. I wonder if she
remembers how very lovely and agreeable she was? Possibly she may be
able to identify herself.
People--the right kind of people--meet at a dinner-party as two ships
meet and pass each other at sea. They exchange a few signals; ask each
other's reckoning, where from, where bound; perhaps one supplies the
other with a little food or a few dainties; then they part, to see each
other no more. But one or both may remember the hour passed together all
their days, just as I recollect our brief parley with the brig
Economist, of Leith, from Sierra Leone, in mid ocean, in the spring of
1833.
I am very far from despising the science of gastronomy, but if I wished
to institute a comparison between the tables of England and America, I
could not do it without eating my way through the four seasons. I will
say that I did not think the bread from the bakers' shops was so good as
our own. It was very generally tough and hard, and even the muffins were
not always so tender and delicate as they ought to be. I got impatient
one day, and sent out for some biscuits. They brought some very
excellent ones, which we much preferred to the tough bread. They proved
to be the so-called "seafoam" biscuit from New York. The potatoes never
came on the table looking like new fallen snow, as we have them at home.
We were surprised to find both mutton and beef overdone, according to
our American taste. The French talk about the Briton's "_bifteck
saignant_," but we never saw anything cooked so as to be, as we
should say, "rare." The tart is national with the English, as the pie is
national with us. I never saw on an English table that excellent
substitute for both, called the Washington pie, in memory of him whom we
honor as first in pies, as well as in war and in the hearts of his
countrymen.
The truth is that I gave very little thought to the things set before
me, in the excitement of constantly changing agreeable companionship. I
understand perfectly the feeling of the good liver in Punch, who
suggests to the lady next him that their host has one of the best cooks
in London, and that it might therefore be well to defer all conversation
until they adjourned to the drawing-room. I preferred the conversation,
and adjourned, indefinitely, the careful appreciation of the
_menu_. I think if I could devote a year to it, I might be able to
make out a graduated scale of articles of food, taking a well-boiled
fresh egg as the unit of gastronomic value, but I leave this scientific
task to some future observer.
The most remarkable piece of European handiwork I remember was the steel
chair at Longford Castle. The most startling and frightful work of man I
ever saw or expect to see was another specimen of work in steel, said to
have been taken from one of the infernal chambers of the Spanish
Inquisition. It was a complex mechanism, which grasped the body and the
head of the heretic or other victim, and by means of many ingeniously
arranged screws and levers was capable of pressing, stretching,
piercing, rending, crushing, all the most sensitive portions of the
human body, one at a time or many at once. The famous Virgin, whose
embrace drove a hundred knives into the body of the poor wretch she took
in her arms, was an angel of mercy compared to this masterpiece of
devilish enginery.
Ingenuity is much better shown in contrivances for making our daily life
more comfortable. I was on the lookout for everything that promised to
be a convenience. I carried out two things which seemed to be new to the
Londoners: the Star Razor, which I have praised so freely, and still
find equal to all my commendations; and the mucilage pencil, which is a
very handy implement to keep on the writer's desk or table. I found a
contrivance for protecting the hand in drawing corks, which all who are
their own butlers will appreciate, and luminous match-boxes which really
shine brightly in the dark, and that after a year's usage; whereas one
professing to shine by night, which I bought in Boston, is only visible
by borrowed light. I wanted a very fine-grained hone, and inquired for
it at a hardware store, where they kept everything in their line of the
best quality. I brought away a very pretty but very small stone, for
which I paid a large price. The stone was from Arkansas, and I need not
have bought in London what would have been easily obtained at a dozen or
more stores in Boston. It was a renewal of my experience with the
seafoam biscuit. "Know thyself" and the things about thee, and "Take the
good the gods provide thee," if thou wilt only keep thine eyes open, are
two safe precepts.
Who is there of English descent among us that does not feel with Cowper,
"England, with all thy faults, I love thee still"?
Our recently naturalized fellow-citizens, of a different blood and
different religion, must not suppose that we are going to forget our
inborn love for the mother to whom we owe our being. Protestant England
and Protestant America are coming nearer and nearer to each other every
year. The interchange of the two peoples is more and more frequent, and
there are many reasons why it is likely to continue increasing.
Hawthorne says in a letter to Longfellow, "Why don't you come over,
being now a man of leisure and with nothing to keep you in America? If I
were in your position, I think I should make my home on this side of the
water,--though always with an indefinite and never-to-be-executed
intention to go back and die in my native land. America is a good land
for young people, but not for those who are past their prime. ... A man
of individuality and refinement can certainly live far more comfortably
here--provided he has the means to live at all--than in New England. Be
it owned, however, that I sometimes feel a tug at my very heart-strings
when I think of my old home and friends." This was written from
Liverpool in 1854.
We must not forget that our fathers were exiles from their dearly loved
native land, driven by causes which no longer exist. "Freedom to worship
God" is found in England as fully as in America, in our day. In placing
the Atlantic between themselves and the Old World civilizations they
made an enormous sacrifice. It is true that the wonderful advance of our
people in all the arts and accomplishments which make life agreeable has
transformed the wilderness into a home where men and women can live
comfortably, elegantly, happily, if they are of contented disposition;
and without that they can be happy nowhere. What better provision can be
made for a mortal man than such as our own Boston can afford its wealthy
children? A palace on Commonwealth Avenue or on Beacon Street; a
country-place at Framingham or Lenox; a seaside residence at Nahant,
Beverly Farms, Newport, or Bar Harbor; a pew at Trinity or King's
Chapel; a tomb at Mount Auburn or Forest Hills; with the prospect of a
memorial stained window after his lamented demise,--is not this a pretty
programme to offer a candidate for human existence?
Give him all these advantages, and he will still be longing to cross the
water, to get back to that old home of his fathers, so delightful in
itself, so infinitely desirable on account of its nearness to Paris, to
Geneva, to Rome, to all that is most interesting in Europe. The less
wealthy, less cultivated, less fastidious class of Americans are not so
much haunted by these longings. But the convenience of living in the Old
World is so great, and it is such a trial and such a risk to keep
crossing the ocean, that it seems altogether likely that a considerable
current of re-migration will gradually develop itself among our people.
Some find the climate of the other side of the Atlantic suits them
better than their own. As the New England characteristics are gradually
superseded by those of other races, other forms of belief, and other
associations, the time may come when a New Englander will feel more as
if he were among his own people in London than in one of our seaboard
cities. The vast majority of our people love their country too well and
are too proud of it to be willing to expatriate themselves. But going
back to our old home, to find ourselves among the relatives from whom we
have been separated for a few generations, is not like transferring
ourselves to a land where another language is spoken, and where there
are no ties of blood and no common religious or political traditions. I,
for one, being myself as inveterately rooted an American of the
Bostonian variety as ever saw himself mirrored in the Frog Pond, hope
that the exchanges of emigrants and re-migrants will be much more evenly
balanced by and by than at present. I hope that more Englishmen like
James Smithson will help to build up our scientific and literary
institutions. I hope that more Americans like George Peabody will call
down the blessings of the English people by noble benefactions to the
cause of charity. It was with deep feelings of pride and gratitude that
I looked upon the bust of Longfellow, holding its place among the
monuments of England's greatest and best children. I see with equal
pleasure and pride that one of our own large-hearted countrymen has
honored the memory of three English poets, Milton, and Herbert, and
Cowper, by the gift of two beautiful stained windows, and with still
ampler munificence is erecting a stately fountain in the birthplace of
Shakespeare. Such acts as these make us feel more and more the truth of
the generous sentiment which closes the ode of Washington Allston,
"America to Great Britain:" We are one!
* * * * *
I have told our story with the help of my daughter's diary, and often
aided by her recollections. Having enjoyed so much, I am desirous that
my countrymen and countrywomen should share my good fortune with me. I
hesitated at first about printing names in full, but when I remembered
that we received nothing but the most overflowing hospitality and the
most considerate kindness from all we met, I felt sure that I could not
offend by telling my readers who the friends were that made England a
second home to us. If any one of them is disturbed by such reference as
I have made to him or to her, I most sincerely apologize for the liberty
I have taken. I am far more afraid that through sheer forgetfulness I
have left unmentioned many to whom I was and still remain under
obligations.
If I were asked what I think of people's travelling after the commonly
accepted natural term of life is completed, I should say that everything
depends on constitution and habit. The old soldier says, in speaking of
crossing the Beresina, where the men had to work in the freezing stream
constructing the bridges, "Faut du tempérament pour cela!" I often
thought of this expression, in the damp and chilly weather which not
rarely makes English people wish they were in Italy. I escaped unharmed
from the windy gusts at Epsom and the nipping chill of the Kensington
garden-party; but if a score of my contemporaries had been there with
me, there would not improbably have been a funeral or two within a week.
If, however, the super-septuagenarian is used to exposures, if he is an
old sportsman or an old officer not retired from active service, he may
expect to elude the pneumonia which follows his footsteps whenever he
wanders far from his fireside. But to a person of well-advanced years
coming from a counting-room, a library, or a studio, the risk is
considerable, unless he is of hardy natural constitution; any other will
do well to remember, "Faut du tempérament pour cela!"
Suppose there to be a reasonable chance that he will come home alive,
what is the use of one's going to Europe after his senses have lost
their acuteness, and his mind no longer retains its full measure of
sensibilities and vigor? I should say that the visit to Europe under
those circumstances was much the same thing as the _petit
verre_,--the little glass of Chartreuse, or Maraschino, or Curaçoa,
or, if you will, of plain Cognac, at the end of a long banquet. One has
gone through many courses, which repose in the safe recesses of his
economy. He has swallowed his coffee, and still there is a little corner
left with its craving unappeased. Then comes the drop of liqueur,
_chasse-café_, which is the last thing the stomach has a right to
expect. It warms, it comforts, it exhales its benediction on all that
has gone before. So the trip to Europe may not do much in the way of
instructing the wearied and overloaded intelligence, but it gives it a
fillip which makes it feel young again for a little while.
Let not the too mature traveller think it will change any of his habits.
It will interrupt his routine for a while, and then he will settle down
into his former self, and be just what he was before. I brought home a
pair of shoes I had made in London; they do not fit like those I had
before I left, and I rarely wear them. It is just so with the new habits
I formed and the old ones I left behind me.
But am I not glad, for my own sake, that I went? Certainly I have every
reason to be, and I feel that the visit is likely to be a great source
of happiness for my remaining days. But there is a higher source of
satisfaction. If the kindness shown me strengthens the slenderest link
that binds us in affection to that ancestral country which is, and I
trust will always be to her descendants, "dear Mother England," that
alone justifies my record of it, and to think it is so is more than
reward enough. If, in addition, this account of our summer experiences
is a source of pleasure to many friends, and of pain to no one, as I
trust will prove to be the fact, I hope I need never regret giving to
the public the pages which are meant more especially for readers who
have a personal interest in the writer.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Complete PG Works of Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Sr., by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
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