Mosses from an Old Manse

Contents

THE OLD MANSE

The Author makes the Reader acquainted with his Abode.

Between two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone (the gate itself having fallen
from its hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld the gray front of the old
parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue of black-ash trees. It was now a
twelvemonth since the funeral procession of the venerable clergyman, its last
inhabitant, had turned from that gateway towards the village burying-ground.
The wheel-track leading to the door, as well as the whole breadth of the
avenue, was almost overgrown with grass, affording dainty mouthfuls to two or
three vagrant cows and an old white horse who had his own living to pick up
along the roadside. The glimmering shadows that lay half asleep between the
door of the house and the public highway were a kind of spiritual medium, seen
through which the edifice had not quite the aspect of belonging to the material
world. Certainly it had little in common with those ordinary abodes which stand
so imminent upon the road that every passer-by can thrust his head, as it were,
into the domestic circle. From these quiet windows the figures of passing
travellers looked too remote and dim to disturb the sense of privacy. In its
near retirement and accessible seclusion, it was the very spot for the
residence of a clergyman,—a man not estranged from human life, yet
enveloped, in the midst of it, with a veil woven of intermingled gloom and
brightness. It was worthy to have been one of the time-honored parsonages of
England, in which, through many generations, a succession of holy occupants
pass from youth to age, and bequeath each an inheritance of sanctity to pervade
the house and hover over it as with an atmosphere.

Nor, in truth, had the Old Manse ever been profaned by a lay occupant until
that memorable summer afternoon when I entered it as my home. A priest had
built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly men from time to time
had dwelt in it; and children born in its chambers had grown up to assume the
priestly character. It was awful to reflect how many sermons must have been
written there. The latest inhabitant alone—he by whose translation to
paradise the dwelling was left vacant—had penned nearly three thousand
discourses, besides the better, if not the greater, number that gushed living
from his lips. How often, no doubt, had he paced to and fro along the avenue,
attuning his meditations to the sighs and gentle murmurs and deep and solemn
peals of the wind among the lofty tops of the trees! In that variety of natural
utterances he could find something accordant with every passage of his sermon,
were it of tenderness or reverential fear. The boughs over my head seemed
shadowy with solemn thoughts, as well as with rustling leaves. I took shame to
myself for having been so long a writer of idle stories, and ventured to hope
that wisdom would descend upon me with the falling leaves of the avenue, and
that I should light upon an intellectual treasure in the Old Manse well worth
those hoards of long-hidden gold which people seek for in moss-grown houses.
Profound treatises of morality; a layman’s unprofessional, and therefore
unprejudiced, views of religion; histories (such as Bancroft might have written
had he taken up his abode here, as he once purposed) bright with picture,
gleaming over a depth of philosophic thought,—these were the works that
might fitly have flowed from such a retirement. In the humblest event, I
resolved at least to achieve a novel that should evolve some deep lesson, and
should possess physical substance enough to stand alone.

In furtherance of my design, and as if to leave me no pretext for not
fulfilling it, there was in the rear of the house the most delightful little
nook of a study that ever afforded its snug seclusion to a scholar. It was here
that Emerson wrote Nature; for he was then an inhabitant of the Manse, and used
to watch the Assyrian dawn and Paphian sunset and moonrise from the summit of
our eastern hill. When I first saw the room, its walls were blackened with the
smoke of unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of Puritan
ministers that hung around. These worthies looked strangely like bad angels, or
at least like men who had wrestled so continually and so sternly with the Devil
that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had been imparted to their own visages.
They had all vanished now; a cheerful coat of paint and golden-tinted
paper-hangings lighted up the small apartment; while the shadow of a
willow-tree that swept against the overhanging eaves atempered the cheery
western sunshine. In place of the grim prints there was the sweet and lovely
head of one of Raphael’s Madonnas, and two pleasant little pictures of the Lake
of Como. The only other decorations were a purple vase of flowers, always
fresh, and a bronze one containing graceful ferns. My books (few, and by no
means choice; for they were chiefly such waifs as chance had thrown in my way)
stood in order about the room, seldom to be disturbed.

The study had three windows, set with little, old-fashioned panes of glass,
each with a crack across it. The two on the western side looked, or rather
peeped, between the willow branches, down into the orchard, with glimpses of
the river through the trees. The third, facing northward, commanded a broader
view of the river, at a spot where its hitherto obscure waters gleam forth into
the light of history. It was at this window that the clergyman who then dwelt
in the Manse stood watching the outbreak of a long and deadly struggle between
two nations; he saw the irregular array of his parishioners on the farther side
of the river, and the glittering line of the British on the hither bank. He
awaited, in an agony of suspense, the rattle of the musketry. It came; and
there needed but a gentle wind to sweep the battle-smoke around this quiet
house.

Perhaps the reader, whom I cannot help considering as my guest in the Old
Manse, and entitled to all courtesy in the way of sight-showing,—perhaps
he will choose to take a nearer view of the memorable spot. We stand now on the
river’s brink. It may well be called the Concord,—the river of peace and
quietness; for it is certainly the most unexcitable and sluggish stream that
ever loitered imperceptibly towards its eternity,—the sea. Positively I
had lived three weeks beside it before it grew quite clear to my perception
which way the current flowed. It never has a vivacious aspect, except when a
northwestern breeze is vexing its surface on a sunshiny day. From the incurable
indolence of its nature, the stream is happily incapable of becoming the slave
of human ingenuity, as is the fate of so many a wild, free mountain torrent.
While all things else are compelled to subserve some useful purpose, it idles
its sluggish life away in lazy liberty, without turning a solitary spindle or
affording even water-power enough to grind the corn that grows upon its banks.
The torpor of its movement allows it nowhere a bright, pebbly shore, nor so
much as a narrow strip of glistening sand, in any part of its course. It
slumbers between broad prairies, kissing the long meadow grass, and bathes the
overhanging boughs of elder-bushes and willows, or the roots of elms and
ash-trees and clumps of maples. Flags and rushes grow along its plashy shore;
the yellow water-lily spreads its broad, flat leaves on the margin; and the
fragrant white pond-lily abounds, generally selecting a position just so far
from the river’s brink that it cannot be grasped save at the hazard of plunging
in.

It is a marvel whence this perfect flower derives its loveliness and perfume,
springing as it does from the black mud over which the river sleeps, and where
lurk the slimy eel, and speckled frog, and the mud-turtle, whom continual
washing cannot cleanse. It is the very same black mud out of which the yellow
lily sucks its obscene life and noisome odor. Thus we see, too, in the world
that some persons assimilate only what is ugly and evil from the same moral
circumstances which supply good and beautiful results—the fragrance of
celestial flowers—to the daily life of others.

The reader must not, from any testimony of mine, contract a dislike towards our
slumberous stream. In the light of a calm and golden sunset it becomes lovely
beyond expression; the more lovely for the quietude that so well accords with
the hour, when even the wind, after blustering all day long, usually hushes
itself to rest. Each tree and rock and every blade of grass is distinctly
imaged, and, however unsightly in reality, assumes ideal beauty in the
reflection. The minutest things of earth and the broad aspect of the firmament
are pictured equally without effort and with the same felicity of success. All
the sky glows downward at our feet; the rich clouds float through the unruffled
bosom of the stream like heavenly thoughts through a peaceful heart. We will
not, then, malign our river as gross and impure while it can glorify itself
with so adequate a picture of the heaven that broods above it; or, if we
remember its tawny hue and the muddiness of its bed, let it be a symbol that
the earthiest human soul has an infinite spiritual capacity and may contain the
better world within its depths. But, indeed, the same lesson might be drawn out
of any mud-puddle in the streets of a city; and, being taught us everywhere, it
must be true.

Come, we have pursued a somewhat devious track in our walk to the
battle-ground. Here we are, at the point where the river was crossed by the old
bridge, the possession of which was the immediate object of the contest. On the
hither side grow two or three elms, throwing a wide circumference of shade, but
which must have been planted at some period within the threescore years and ten
that have passed since the battle-day. On the farther shore, overhung by a
clump of elder-bushes, we discern the stone abutment of the bridge. Looking
down into the river, I once discovered some heavy fragments of the timbers, all
green with half a century’s growth of water-moss; for during that length of
time the tramp of horses and human footsteps have ceased along this ancient
highway. The stream has here about the breadth of twenty strokes of a swimmer’s
arm,—a space not too wide when the bullets were whistling across. Old
people who dwell hereabouts will point out, the very spots on the western bank
where our countrymen fell down and died; and on this side of the river an
obelisk of granite has grown up from the soil that was fertilized with British
blood. The monument, not more than twenty feet in height, is such as it
befitted the inhabitants of a village to erect in illustration of a matter of
local interest rather than what was suitable to commemorate an epoch of
national history. Still, by the fathers of the village this famous deed was
done; and their descendants might rightfully claim the privilege of building a
memorial.

A humbler token of the fight, yet a more interesting one than the granite
obelisk, may be seen close under the stone wall which separates the
battle-ground from the precincts of the parsonage. It is the
grave,—marked by a small, mossgrown fragment of stone at the head and
another at the foot,—the grave of two British soldiers who were slain in
the skirmish, and have ever since slept peacefully where Zechariah Brown and
Thomas Davis buried them. Soon was their warfare ended; a weary night-march
from Boston, a rattling volley of musketry across the river, and then these
many years of rest. In the long procession of slain invaders who passed into
eternity from the battle-fields of the Revolution, these two nameless soldiers
led the way.

Lowell, the poet, as we were once standing over this grave, told me a tradition
in reference to one of the inhabitants below. The story has something deeply
impressive, though its circumstances cannot altogether be reconciled with
probability. A youth in the service of the clergyman happened to be chopping
wood, that April morning, at the back door of the Manse; and when the noise of
battle rang from side to side of the bridge, he hastened across the intervening
field to see what might be going forward. It is rather strange, by the way,
that this lad should have been so diligently at work when the whole population
of town and country were startled out of their customary business by the
advance of the British troops. Be that as it might, the tradition, says that
the lad now left his task and hurried to the battle-field with the axe still in
his hand. The British had by this time retreated; the Americans were in
pursuit; and the late scene of strife was thus deserted by both parties. Two
soldiers lay on the ground,—one was a corpse; but, as the young
New-Englander drew nigh, the other Briton raised himself painfully upon his
hands and knees and gave a ghastly stare into his face. The boy,—it must
have been a nervous impulse, without purpose, without thought, and betokening a
sensitive and impressible nature rather than a hardened one,—the boy
uplifted his axe and dealt the wounded soldier a fierce and fatal blow upon the
head.

I could wish that the grave might be opened; for I would fain know whether
either of the skeleton soldiers has the mark of an axe in his skull. The story
comes home to me like truth. Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise,
I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subsequent career and
observe how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain, contracted as it had been
before the long custom of war had robbed human life of its sanctity and while
it still seemed murderous to slay a brother man. This one circumstance has
borne more fruit for me than all that history tells us of the fight.

Many strangers come in the summer-time to view the battle-ground. For my own
part, I have never found my imagination much excited by this or any other scene
of historic celebrity; nor would the placid margin of the river have lost any
of its charm for me, had men never fought and died there. There is a wilder
interest in the tract of land-perhaps a hundred yards in breadth—which
extends between the battle-field and the northern face of our Old Manse, with
its contiguous avenue and orchard. Here, in some unknown age, before the white
man came, stood an Indian village, convenient to the river, whence its
inhabitants must have drawn so large a part of their substance. The site is
identified by the spear and arrow-heads, the chisels, and other implements of
war, labor, and the chase, which the plough turns up from the soil. You see a
splinter of stone, half hidden beneath a sod; it looks like nothing worthy of
note; but, if you have faith enough to pick it up, behold a relic! Thoreau, who
has a strange faculty of finding what the Indians have left behind them, first
set me on the search; and I afterwards enriched myself with some very perfect
specimens, so rudely wrought that it seemed almost as if chance had fashioned
them. Their great charm consists in this rudeness and in the individuality of
each article, so different from the productions of civilized machinery, which
shapes everything on one pattern. There is exquisite delight, too, in picking
up for one’s self an arrow-head that was dropped centuries ago and has never
been handled since, and which we thus receive directly from the hand of the red
hunter, who purposed to shoot it at his game or at an enemy. Such an incident
builds up again the Indian village and its encircling forest, and recalls to
life the painted chiefs and warriors, the squaws at their household toil, and
the children sporting among the wigwams, while the little wind-rocked pappose
swings from the branch of a tree. It can hardly be told whether it is a joy or
a pain, after such a momentary vision, to gaze around in the broad daylight of
reality and see stone fences, white houses, potato-fields, and men doggedly
hoeing in their shirt-sleeves and homespun pantaloons. But this is nonsense.
The Old Manse is better than a thousand wigwams.

The Old Manse! We had almost forgotten it, but will return thither through the
orchard. This was set out by the last clergyman, in the decline of his life,
when the neighbors laughed at the hoary-headed man for planting trees from
which he could have no prospect of gathering fruit. Even had that been the
case, there was only so much the better motive for planting them, in the pure
and unselfish hope of benefiting his successors,—an end so seldom
achieved by more ambitious efforts. But the old minister, before reaching his
patriarchal age of ninety, ate the apples from this orchard during many years,
and added silver and gold to his annual stipend by disposing of the
superfluity. It is pleasant to think of him walking among the trees in the
quiet afternoons of early autumn and picking up here and there a windfall,
while he observes how heavily the branches are weighed down, and computes the
number of empty flour-barrels that will be filled by their burden. He loved
each tree, doubtless, as if it had been his own child. An orchard has a
relation to mankind, and readily connects itself with matters of the heart. The
trees possess a domestic character; they have lost the wild nature of their
forest kindred, and have grown humanized by receiving the care of man as well
as by contributing to his wants. There, is so much individuality of character,
too, among apple trees, that it gives them all additional claim to be the
objects of human interest. One is harsh and crabbed in its manifestations;
another gives us fruit as mild as charity. One is churlish and illiberal,
evidently grudging the few apples that it bears; another exhausts itself in
free-hearted benevolence. The variety of grotesque shapes into which apple,
trees contort themselves has its effect on those who get acquainted with them:
they stretch out their crooked branches, and take such hold of the imagination,
that we remember them as humorists and odd fellows. And what is more melancholy
than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a
homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising out of a grassy
and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer,—apples
that are bitter sweet with the moral of Time’s vicissitude.

I have met with no other such pleasant trouble in the world as that of finding
myself, with only the two or three mouths which it was my privilege to feed,
the sole inheritor of the old clergyman’s wealth of fruits. Throughout the
summer there were cherries and currants; and then came Autumn, with his immense
burden of apples, dropping them continually from his over-laden shoulders as he
trudged along. In the stillest afternoon, if I listened, the thump of a great
apple was audible, falling without a breath of wind, from the mere necessity of
perfect ripeness. And, besides, there were pear-trees, that flung down bushels
upon bushels of heavy pears; and peach-trees, which, in a good year, tormented
me with peaches, neither to be eaten nor kept, nor, without labor and
perplexity, to be given away. The idea of an infinite generosity and
exhaustless bounty on the part of our Mother Nature was well worth obtaining
through such cares as these. That feeling can be enjoyed in perfection only by
the natives of summer islands, where the bread-fruit, the cocoa, the palm, and
the orange grow spontaneously and hold forth the ever-ready meal; but likewise
almost as well by a man long habituated to city life, who plunges into such a
solitude as that of the Old Manse, where he plucks the fruit of trees that he
did not plant, and which therefore, to my heterodox taste, bear the closest
resemblance to those that grew in Eden. It has been an apothegm these five
thousand years, that toil sweetens the bread it earns. For my part (speaking
from hard experience, acquired while belaboring the rugged furrows of Brook
Farm), I relish best the free gifts of Providence.

Not that it can be disputed that the light toil requisite to cultivate a
moderately sized garden imparts such zest to kitchen vegetables as is never
found in those of the market-gardener. Childless men, if they would know
something of the bliss of paternity, should plant a seed,—be it squash,
bean, Indian corn, or perhaps a mere flower or worthless weed,—should
plant it with their own hands, and nurse it from infancy to maturity altogether
by their own care. If there be not too many of them, each individual plant
becomes an object of separate interest. My garden, that skirted the avenue of
the Manse, was of precisely the right extent. An hour or two of morning labor
was all that it required. But I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a
day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that
nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of
creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a
hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row of early peas just peeping
forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green. Later in the season the
humming-birds were attracted by the blossoms of a peculiar variety of bean; and
they were a joy to me, those little spiritual visitants, for deigning to sip
airy food out of my nectar-cups. Multitudes of bees used to bury themselves in
the yellow blossoms of the summer-squashes. This, too, was a deep satisfaction;
although, when they had laden themselves with sweets, they flew away to some
unknown hive, which would give back nothing in requital of what my garden had
contributed. But I was glad thus to fling a benefaction upon the passing breeze
with the certainty that somebody must profit by it and that there would be a
little more honey in the world to allay the sourness and bitterness which
mankind is always complaining of. Yes, indeed; my life was the sweeter for that
honey.

Speaking of summer-squashes, I must say a word of their beautiful and varied
forms. They presented an endless diversity of urns and vases, shallow or deep,
scalloped or plain, moulded in patterns which a sculptor would do well to copy,
since Art has never invented anything more graceful. A hundred squashes in the
garden were worth, in my eyes at least, of being rendered indestructible in
marble. If ever Providence (but I know it never will) should assign me a
superfluity of gold, part of it shall be expended for a service of plate, or
most delicate porcelain, to be wrought into the shapes of summer-squashes
gathered from vines which I will plant with my own hands. As dishes for
containing vegetables, they would be peculiarly appropriate.

But not merely the squeamish love of the beautiful was gratified by my toil in
the kitchen-garden. There was a hearty enjoyment, likewise, in observing the
growth of the crook-necked winter-squashes from the first little bulb, with the
withered blossom adhering to it, until they lay strewn upon the soil, big,
round fellows, hiding their heads beneath the leaves, but turning up their
great yellow rotundities to the noontide sun. Gazing at them, I felt that by my
agency something worth living for had been done. A new substance was born into
the world. They were real and tangible existences, which the mind could seize
hold of and rejoice in. A cabbage, too,—especially the early Dutch
cabbage, which swells to a monstrous circumference, until its ambitious heart
often bursts asunder,—is a matter to be proud of when we can claim a
share with the earth and sky in producing it. But, after all, the hugest
pleasure is reserved until these vegetable children of ours are smoking on the
table, and we, like Saturn, make a meal of them.

What with the river, the battle-field, the orchard, and the garden, the reader
begins to despair of finding his way back into the Old Manse. But, in agreeable
weather, it is the truest hospitality to keep him out of doors. I never grew
quite acquainted with my habitation till a long spell of sulky rain had
confined me beneath its roof. There could not be a more sombre aspect of
external nature than as then seen from the windows of my study. The great
willow-tree had caught and retained among its leaves a whole cataract of water,
to be shaken down at intervals by the frequent gusts of wind. All day long, and
for a week together, the rain was drip-drip-dripping and
splash-splash-splashing from the eaves and bubbling and foaming into the tubs
beneath the spouts. The old, unpainted shingles of the house and outbuildings
were black with moisture; and the mosses of ancient growth upon the walls
looked green and fresh, as if they were the newest things and afterthought of
Time. The usually mirrored surface of the river was blurred by an infinity of
raindrops; the whole landscape had a completely water-soaked appearance,
conveying the impression that the earth was wet through like a sponge; while
the summit of a wooded hill, about a mile distant, was enveloped in a dense
mist, where the demon of the tempest seemed to have his abiding-place and to be
plotting still direr inclemencies.

Nature has no kindness, no hospitality, during a rain. In the fiercest beat of
sunny days she retains a secret mercy, and welcomes the wayfarer to shady nooks
of the woods whither the sun cannot penetrate; but she provides no shelter
against her storms. It makes us shiver to think of those deep, umbrageous
recesses, those overshadowing banks, where we found such enjoyment during the
sultry afternoons. Not a twig of foliage there but would dash a little shower
into our faces. Looking reproachfully towards the impenetrable sky,—if
sky there be above that dismal uniformity of cloud,—we are apt to murmur
against the whole system of the universe, since it involves the extinction of
so many summer days in so short a life by the hissing and spluttering rain. In
such spells of weather,—and it is to be supposed such weather
came,—Eve’s bower in paradise must have been but a cheerless and aguish
kind of shelter, nowise comparable to the old parsonage, which had resources of
its own to beguile the week’s imprisonment. The idea of sleeping on a couch of
wet roses!

Happy the man who in a rainy day can betake himself to a huge garret, stored,
like that of the Manse, with lumber that each generation has left behind it
from a period before the Revolution. Our garret was an arched hall, dimly
illuminated through small and dusty windows; it was but a twilight at the best;
and there were nooks, or rather caverns, of deep obscurity, the secrets of
which I never learned, being too reverent of their dust and cobwebs. The beams
and rafters, roughly hewn and with strips of bark still on them, and the rude
masonry of the chimneys, made the garret look wild and uncivilized, an aspect
unlike what was seen elsewhere in the quiet and decorous old house. But on one
side there was a little whitewashed apartment, which bore the traditionary
title of the Saint’s Chamber, because holy men in their youth had slept, and
studied, and prayed there. With its elevated retirement, its one window, its
small fireplace, and its closet convenient for an oratory, it was the very spot
where a young man might inspire himself with solemn enthusiasm and cherish
saintly dreams. The occupants, at various epochs, had left brief records and
ejaculations inscribed upon the walls. There, too, hung a tattered and
shrivelled roll of canvas, which on inspection proved to be the forcibly
wrought picture of a clergyman, in wig, band, and gown, holding a Bible in his
hand. As I turned his face towards the light, he eyed me with an air of
authority such as men of his profession seldom assume in our days. The original
had been pastor of the parish more than a century ago, a friend of Whitefield,
and almost his equal in fervid eloquence. I bowed before the effigy of the
dignified divine, and felt as if I had now met face to face with the ghost by
whom, as there was reason to apprehend, the Manse was haunted.

Houses of any antiquity in New England are so invariably possessed with spirits
that the matter seems hardly worth alluding to. Our ghost used to heave deep
sighs in a particular corner of the parlor, and sometimes rustled paper, as if
he were turning over a sermon in the long upper entry,—where nevertheless
he was invisible, in spite of the bright moonshine that fell through the
eastern window. Not improbably he wished me to edit and publish a selection
from a chest full of manuscript discourses that stood in the garret. Once,
while Hillard and other friends sat talking with us in the twilight, there came
a rustling noise as of a minister’s silk gown, sweeping through the very midst
of the company, so closely as almost to brush against the chairs. Still there
was nothing visible. A yet stranger business was that of a ghostly
servant-maid, who used to be heard in the kitchen at deepest midnight, grinding
coffee, cooking, ironing,—performing, in short, all kinds of domestic
labor,—although no traces of anything accomplished could be detected the
next morning. Some neglected duty of her servitude, some ill-starched
ministerial band, disturbed the poor damsel in her grave and kept her at work
without any wages.

But to return from this digression. A part of my predecessor’s library was
stored in the garret,—no unfit receptacle indeed for such dreary trash as
comprised the greater number of volumes. The old books would have been worth
nothing at an auction. In this venerable garret, however, they possessed an
interest, quite apart from their literary value, as heirlooms, many of which
had been transmitted down through a series of consecrated hands from the days
of the mighty Puritan divines. Autographs of famous names were to be seen in
faded ink on some of their fly-leaves; and there were marginal observations or
interpolated pages closely covered with manuscript in illegible shorthand,
perhaps concealing matter of profound truth and wisdom. The world will never be
the better for it. A few of the books were Latin folios, written by Catholic
authors; others demolished Papistry, as with a sledge-hammer, in plain English.
A dissertation on the Book of Job—which only Job himself could have had
patience to read—filled at least a score of small, thick-set quartos, at
the rate of two or three volumes to a chapter. Then there was a vast folio body
of divinity,—too corpulent a body, it might be feared, to comprehend the
spiritual element of religion. Volumes of this form dated back two hundred
years or more, and were generally bound in black leather, exhibiting precisely
such an appearance as we should attribute to books of enchantment. Others
equally antique were of a size proper to be carried in the large waistcoat
pockets of old times,—diminutive, but as black as their bulkier brethren,
and abundantly interfused with Greek and Latin quotations. These little old
volumes impressed me as if they had been intended for very large ones, but had
been unfortunately blighted at an early stage of their growth.

The rain pattered upon the roof and the sky gloomed through the dusty
garret-windows while I burrowed among these venerable books in search of any
living thought which should burn like a coal of fire or glow like an
inextinguishable gem beneath the dead trumpery that had long hidden it. But I
found no such treasure; all was dead alike; and I could not but muse deeply and
wonderingly upon the humiliating fact that the works of man’s intellect decay
like those of his hands. Thought grows mouldy. What was good and nourishing
food for the spirits of one generation affords no sustenance for the next.
Books of religion, however, cannot be considered a fair test of the enduring
and vivacious properties of human thought, because such books so seldom really
touch upon their ostensible subject, and have, therefore, so little business to
be written at all. So long as an unlettered soul can attain to saving grace
there would seem to be no deadly error in holding theological libraries to be
accumulations of, for the most part, stupendous impertinence.

Many of the books had accrued in the latter years of the last clergyman’s
lifetime. These threatened to be of even less interest than the elder works a
century hence to any curious inquirer who should then rummage then as I was
doing now. Volumes of the Liberal Preacher and Christian Examiner, occasional
sermons, controversial pamphlets, tracts, and other productions of a like
fugitive nature, took the place of the thick and heavy volumes of past time. In
a physical point of view, there was much the same difference as between a
feather and a lump of lead; but, intellectually regarded, the specific gravity
of old and new was about upon a par. Both also were alike frigid. The elder
books nevertheless seemed to have been earnestly written, and might be
conceived to have possessed warmth at some former period; although, with the
lapse of time, the heated masses had cooled down even to the freezing-point.
The frigidity of the modern productions, on the other hand, was characteristic
and inherent, and evidently had little to do with the writer’s qualities of
mind and heart. In fine, of this whole dusty heap of literature I tossed aside
all the sacred part, and felt myself none the less a Christian for eschewing
it. There appeared no hope of either mounting to the better world on a Gothic
staircase of ancient folios or of flying thither on the wings of a modern
tract.

Nothing, strange to say, retained any sap except what had been written for the
passing day and year, without the remotest pretension or idea of permanence.
There were a few old newspapers, and still older almanacs, which reproduced to
my mental eye the epochs when they had issued from the press with a
distinctness that was altogether unaccountable. It was as if I had found bits
of magic looking-glass among the books with the images of a vanished century in
them. I turned my eyes towards the tattered picture above mentioned, and asked
of the austere divine wherefore it was that he and his brethren, after the most
painful rummaging and groping into their minds, had been able to produce
nothing half so real as these newspaper scribblers and almanac-makers had
thrown off in the effervescence of a moment. The portrait responded not; so I
sought an answer for myself. It is the age itself that writes newspapers and
almanacs, which therefore have a distinct purpose and meaning at the time, and
a kind of intelligible truth for all times; whereas most other
works—being written by men who, in the very act, set themselves apart
from their age—are likely to possess little significance when new, and
none at all when old. Genius, indeed, melts many ages into one, and thus
effects something permanent, yet still with a similarity of office to that of
the more ephemeral writer. A work of genius is but the newspaper of a century,
or perchance of a hundred centuries.

Lightly as I have spoken of these old books, there yet lingers with me a
superstitious reverence for literature of all kinds. A bound volume has a charm
in my eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possess for the good Mussulman.
He imagines that those wind-wafted records are perhaps hallowed by some sacred
verse; and I, that every new book or antique one may contain the “open
sesame,”—the spell to disclose treasures hidden in some unsuspected cave
of Truth. Thus it was not without sadness that I turned away from the library
of the Old Manse.

Blessed was the sunshine when it came again at the close of another stormy day,
beaming from the edge of the western horizon; while the massive firmament of
clouds threw down all the gloom it could, but served only to kindle the golden
light into a more brilliant glow by the strongly contrasted shadows. Heaven
smiled at the earth, so long unseen, from beneath its heavy eyelid. To-morrow
for the hill-tops and the woodpaths.

Or it might be that Ellery Charming came up the avenue to join me in a fishing
excursion on the river. Strange and happy times were those when we cast aside
all irksome forms and strait-laced habitudes and delivered ourselves up to the
free air, to live like the Indians or any less conventional race during one
bright semicircle of the sun. Rowing our boat against the current, between wide
meadows, we turned aside into the Assabeth. A more lovely stream than this, for
a mile above its junction with the Concord, has never flowed on earth, nowhere,
indeed, except to lave the interior regions of a poet’s imagination. It is
sheltered from the breeze by woods and a hillside; so that elsewhere there
might be a hurricane, and here scarcely a ripple across the shaded water. The
current lingers along so gently that the mere force of the boatman’s will seems
sufficient to propel his craft against it. It comes flowing softly through the
midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood which whispers it to be quiet;
while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy borders, as if river and
wood were hushing one another to sleep. Yes; the river sleeps along its course
and dreams of the sky and of the clustering foliage, amid which fall showers of
broken sunlight, imparting specks of vivid cheerfulness, in contrast with the
quiet depth of the prevailing tint. Of all this scene, the slumbering river has
a dream-picture in its bosom. Which, after all, was the most real,—the
picture, or the original?—the objects palpable to our grosser senses, or
their apotheosis in the stream beneath? Surely the disembodied images stand in
closer relation to the soul. But both the original and the reflection had here
an ideal charm; and, had it been a thought more wild, I could have fancied that
this river had strayed forth out of the rich scenery of my companion’s inner
world; only the vegetation along its banks should then have had an Oriental
character.

Gentle and unobtrusive as the river is, yet the tranquil woods seem hardly
satisfied to allow it passage. The trees are rooted on the very verge of the
water, and dip their pendent branches into it. At one spot there is a lofty
bank, on the slope of which grow some hemlocks, declining across the stream
with outstretched arms, as if resolute to take the plunge. In other places the
banks are almost on a level with the water; so that the quiet congregation of
trees set their feet in the flood, and are Fringed with foliage down to the
surface. Cardinal-flowers kindle their spiral flames and illuminate the dark
nooks among the shrubbery. The pond-lily grows abundantly along the
margin,—that delicious flower which, as Thoreau tells me, opens its
virgin bosom to the first sunlight and perfects its being through the magic of
that genial kiss. He has beheld beds of them unfolding in due succession as the
sunrise stole gradually from flower to flower,—a sight not to be hoped
for unless when a poet adjusts his inward eye to a proper focus with the
outward organ. Grapevines here and there twine themselves around shrub and tree
and hang their clusters over the water within reach of the boatman’s hand.
Oftentimes they unite two trees of alien race in an inextricable twine,
marrying the hemlock and the maple against their will and enriching them with a
purple offspring of which neither is the parent. One of these ambitious
parasites has climbed into the upper branches of a tall white-pine, and is
still ascending from bough to bough, unsatisfied till it shall crown the tree’s
airy summit with a wreath of its broad foliage and a cluster of its grapes.

The winding course of the stream continually shut out the scene behind us and
revealed as calm and lovely a one before. We glided from depth to depth, and
breathed new seclusion at every turn. The shy kingfisher flew from the withered
branch close at hand to another at a distance, uttering a shrill cry of anger
or alarm. Ducks that had been floating there since the preceding eve were
startled at our approach and skimmed along the glassy river, breaking its dark
surface with a bright streak. The pickerel leaped from among the lilypads. The
turtle, sunning itself upon a rock or at the root of a tree, slid suddenly into
the water with a plunge. The painted Indian who paddled his canoe along the
Assabeth three hundred years ago could hardly have seen a wilder gentleness
displayed upon its banks and reflected in its bosom than we did. Nor could the
same Indian have prepared his noontide meal with more simplicity. We drew up
our skiff at some point where the overarching shade formed a natural bower, and
there kindled a fire with the pine cones and decayed branches that lay strewn
plentifully around. Soon the smoke ascended among the trees, impregnated with a
savory incense, not heavy, dull, and surfeiting, like the steam of cookery
within doors, but sprightly and piquant. The smell of our feast was akin to the
woodland odors with which it mingled: there was no sacrilege committed by our
intrusion there: the sacred solitude was hospitable, and granted us free leave
to cook and eat in the recess that was at once our kitchen and banqueting-hall.
It is strange what humble offices may be performed in a beautiful scene without
destroying its poetry. Our fire, red gleaming among the trees, and we beside
it, busied with culinary rites and spreading out our meal on a mossgrown log,
all seemed in unison with the river gliding by and the foliage rustling over
us. And, what was strangest, neither did our mirth seem to disturb the
propriety of the solemn woods; although the hobgoblins of the old wilderness
and the will-of-the-wisps that glimmered in the marshy places might have come
trooping to share our table-talk and have added their shrill laughter to our
merriment. It was the very spot in which to utter the extremest nonsense or the
profoundest wisdom, or that ethereal product of the mind which partakes of
both, and may become one or the other, in correspondence with the faith and
insight of the auditor.

So, amid sunshine and shadow, rustling leaves and sighing waters, up gushed our
talk like the babble of a fountain. The evanescent spray was Ellery’s; and his,
too, the lumps of golden thought that lay glimmering in the fountain’s bed and
brightened both our faces by the reflection. Could he have drawn out that
virgin gold, and stamped it with the mint-mark that alone gives currency, the
world might have had the profit, and he the fame. My mind was the richer merely
by the knowledge that it was there. But the chief profit of those wild days, to
him and me, lay not in any definite idea, not in any angular or rounded truth,
which we dug out of the shapeless mass of problematical stuff, but in the
freedom which we thereby won from all custom and conventionalism and fettering
influences of man on man. We were so free to-day that it was impossible to be
slaves again to-morrow. When we crossed the threshold of the house or trod the
thronged pavements of a city, still the leaves of the trees that overhang the
Assabeth were whispering to us, “Be free! be free!” Therefore along that shady
river-bank there are spots, marked with a heap of ashes and half-consumed
brands, only less sacred in my remembrance than the hearth of a household fire.

And yet how sweet, as we floated homeward adown the golden river at
sunset,—how sweet was it to return within the system of human society,
not as to a dungeon and a chain, but as to a stately edifice, whence we could
go forth at will into state—her simplicity! How gently, too, did the
sight of the Old Manse, best seen from the river, overshadowed with its willow
and all environed about with the foliage of its orchard and avenue,—how
gently did its gray, homely aspect rebuke the speculative extravagances of the
day! It had grown sacred in connection with the artificial life against which
we inveighed; it had been a home for many years, in spite of all; it was my
home too; and, with these thoughts, it seemed to me that all the artifice and
conventionalism of life was but an impalpable thinness upon its surface, and
that the depth below was none the worse for it. Once, as we turned our boat to
the bank, there was a cloud, in the shape of an immensely gigantic figure of a
hound, couched above the house, as if keeping guard over it. Gazing at this
symbol, I prayed that the upper influences might long protect the institutions
that had grown out of the heart of mankind.

If ever my readers should decide to give up civilized life, cities, houses, and
whatever moral or material enormities in addition to these the perverted
ingenuity of our race has contrived, let it be in the early autumn. Then Nature
will love him better than at any other season, and will take him to her bosom
with a more motherly tenderness. I could scarcely endure the roof of the old
house above me in those first autumnal days. How early in the summer, too, the
prophecy of autumn comes! Earlier in some years than in others; sometimes even
in the first weeks of July. There is no other feeling like what is caused by
this faint, doubtful, yet real perception—if it be not rather a
foreboding—of the year’s decay, so blessedly sweet and sad in the same
breath.

Did I say that there was no feeling like it? Ah, but there is a
half-acknowledged melancholy like to this when we stand in the perfected vigor
of our life and feel that Time has now given us all his flowers, and that the
next work of his never-idle fingers must be to steal them one by one away.

I have forgotten whether the song of the cricket be not as early a token of
autumn’s approach as any other,—that song which may be called an audible
stillness; for though very loud and heard afar, yet the mind does not take note
of it as a sound, so completely is its individual existence merged among the
accompanying characteristics of the season. Alas for the pleasant summertime!
In August the grass is still verdant on the hills and in the valleys; the
foliage of the trees is as dense as ever and as green; the flowers gleam forth
in richer abundance along the margin of the river and by the stone walls and
deep among the woods; the days, too, are as fervid now as they were a month
ago; and yet in every breath of wind and in every beam of sunshine we hear the
whispered farewell and behold the parting smile of a dear friend. There is a
coolness amid all the heat, a mildness in the blazing noon. Not a breeze can
stir but it thrills us with the breath of autumn. A pensive glory is seen in
the far, golden gleams, among the shadows of the trees. The flowers—even
the brightest of them, and they are the most gorgeous of the year—have
this gentle sadness wedded to their pomp, and typify the character of the
delicious time each within itself. The brilliant cardinal-flower has never
seemed gay to me.

Still later in the season Nature’s tenderness waxes stronger. It is impossible
not to be fond of our mother now; for she is so fond of us! At other periods
she does not make this impression on me, or only at rare intervals; but in
those genial days of autumn, when she has perfected her harvests and
accomplished every needful thing that was given her to do, then she overflows
with a blessed superfluity of love. She has leisure to caress her children now.
It is good to be alive and at such times. Thank Heaven for breath—yes,
for mere breath—when it is made up of a heavenly breeze like this! It
comes with a real kiss upon our cheeks; it would linger fondly around us if it
might; but, since it must be gone, it embraces us with its whole kindly heart
and passes onward to embrace likewise the next thing that it meets. A blessing
is flung abroad and scattered far and wide over the earth, to be gathered up by
all who choose. I recline upon the still unwithered grass and whisper to
myself, “O perfect day! O beautiful world! O beneficent God!” And it is the
promise of a blessed eternity; for our Creator would never have made such
lovely days and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond
all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal. This sunshine is the golden
pledge thereof. It beams through the gates of paradise and shows us glimpses
far inward.

By and by, in a little time, the outward world puts on a drear austerity. On
some October morning there is a heavy hoarfrost on the grass and along the tops
of the fences; and at sunrise the leaves fall from the trees of our avenue,
without a breath of wind, quietly descending by their own weight. All summer
long they have murmured like the noise of waters; they have roared loudly while
the branches were wrestling with the thunder-gust; they have made music both
glad and solemn; they have attuned my thoughts by their quiet sound as I paced
to and fro beneath the arch of intermingling boughs. Now they can only rustle
under my feet. Henceforth the gray parsonage begins to assume a larger
importance, and draws to its fireside,—for the abomination of the
air-tight stove is reserved till wintry weather,—draws closer and closer
to its fireside the vagrant impulses that had gone wandering about through the
summer.

When summer was dead and buried the Old Manse became as lonely as a hermitage.
Not that ever—in my time at least—it had been thronged with
company; but, at no rare intervals, we welcomed some friend out of the dusty
glare and tumult of the world, and rejoiced to share with him the transparent
obscurity that was floating over us. In one respect our precincts were like the
Enchanted Ground through which the pilgrim travelled on his way to the
Celestial City. The guests, each and all, felt a slumberous influence upon
them; they fell asleep in chairs, or took a more deliberate siesta on the sofa,
or were seen stretched among the shadows of the orchard, looking up dreamily
through the boughs. They could not have paid a more acceptable compliment to my
abode nor to my own qualities as a host. I held it as a proof that they left
their cares behind them as they passed between the stone gate-posts at the
entrance of our avenue, and that the so powerful opiate was the abundance of
peace and quiet within and all around us. Others could give them pleasure and
amusement or instruction,—these could be picked up anywhere; but it was
for me to give them rest,—rest in a life of trouble. What better could be
done for those weary and world-worn spirits?—for him whose career of
perpetual action was impeded and harassed by the rarest of his powers and the
richest of his acquirements?—for another who had thrown his ardent heart
from earliest youth into the strife of politics, and now, perchance, began to
suspect that one lifetime is too brief for the accomplishment of any lofty
aim?—for her oil whose feminine nature had been imposed the heavy gift of
intellectual power, such as a strong man might have staggered under, and with
it the necessity to act upon the world?—in a word, not to multiply
instances, what better could be done for anybody who came within our magic
circle than to throw the spell of a tranquil spirit over him? And when it had
wrought its full effect, then we dismissed him, with but misty reminiscences,
as if he had been dreaming of us.

Were I to adopt a pet idea as so many people do, and fondle it in my embraces
to the exclusion of all others, it would be, that the great want which mankind
labors under at this present period is sleep. The world should recline its vast
head on the first convenient pillow and take an age-long nap. It has gone
distracted through a morbid activity, and, while preternaturally wide awake, is
nevertheless tormented by visions that seem real to it now, but would assume
their true aspect and character were all things once set right by an interval
of sound repose. This is the only method of getting rid of old delusions and
avoiding new ones; of regenerating our race, so that it might in due time awake
as an infant out of dewy slumber; of restoring to us the simple perception of
what is right and the single-hearted desire to achieve it, both of which have
long been lost in consequence of this weary activity of brain and torpor or
passion of the heart that now afflict the universe. Stimulants, the only mode
of treatment hitherto attempted, cannot quell the disease; they do but heighten
the delirium.

Let not the above paragraph ever be quoted against the author; for, though
tinctured with its modicum of truth, it is the result and expression of what he
knew, while he was writing, to be but a distorted survey of the state and
prospects of mankind. There were circumstances around me which made it
difficult to view the world precisely as it exists; for, severe and sober as
was the Old Manse, it was necessary to go but a little way beyond its threshold
before meeting with stranger moral shapes of men than might have been
encountered elsewhere in a circuit of a thousand miles.

These hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted thither by the widespreading
influence of a great original thinker, who had his earthly abode at the
opposite extremity of our village. His mind acted upon other minds of a certain
constitution with wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages
to speak with him face to face. Young visionaries—to whom just so much of
insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around
them—came to seek the clew that should guide them out of their
self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists—whose systems, at first
air, had finally imprisoned them in an iron framework—travelled painfully
to his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their
own thraldom. People that had lighted on a new thought or a thought that they
fancied new, came to Emerson, as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a
lapidary, to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain, troubled, earnest
wanderers through the midnight of the moral world beheld his intellectual fire
as a beacon burning on a hill-top, and, climbing the difficult ascent, looked
forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. The light
revealed objects unseen before,—mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses of a
creation among the chaos; but also, as was unavoidable, it attracted bats and
owls and the whole host of night birds, which flapped their dusky wings against
the gazer’s eyes, and sometimes were mistaken for fowls of angelic feather.
Such delusions always hover nigh whenever a beacon-fire of truth is kindled.

For myself, there bad been epochs of my life when I, too, might have asked of
this prophet the master word that should solve me the riddle of the universe;
but now, being happy, I felt as if there were no question to be put, and
therefore admired Emerson as a poet, of deep beauty and austere tenderness, but
sought nothing from him as a philosopher. It was good, nevertheless, to meet
him in the woodpaths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure, intellectual
gleam diffused about his presence like the garment of a shining one; and be, so
quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if
expecting to receive more than he could impart. And, in truth, the heart of
many an ordinary man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not read. But
it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the
mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought, which, in the brains of some people,
wrought a singular giddiness,—new truth being as heady as new wine. Never
was a poor little country village infested with such a variety of queer,
strangely dressed, oddly behaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves to
be important agents of the world’s destiny, yet were simply bores of a very
intense water. Such, I imagine, is the invariable character of persons who
crowd so closely about an original thinker as to draw in his unuttered breath
and thus become imbued with a false originality. This triteness of novelty is
enough to make any man of common-sense blaspheme at all ideas of less than a
century’s standing, and pray that the world may be petrified and rendered
immovable in precisely the worst moral and physical state that it ever yet
arrived at, rather than be benefited by such schemes of such philosophers.

And now I begin to feel—and perhaps should have sooner felt—that we
have talked enough of the Old Manse. Mine honored reader, it may be, will
vilify the poor author as an egotist for babbling through so many pages about a
mossgrown country parsonage, and his life within its walls, and on the river,
and in the woods, and the influences that wrought upon him from all these
sources. My conscience, however, does not reproach me with betraying anything
too sacredly individual to be revealed by a human spirit to its brother or
sister spirit. How narrow-how shallow and scanty too—is the stream of
thought that has been flowing from my pen, compared with the broad tide of dim
emotions, ideas, and associations which swell around me from that portion of my
existence! How little have I told! and of that little, how almost nothing is
even tinctured with any quality that makes it exclusively my own! Has the
reader gone wandering, hand in hand with me, through the inner passages of my
being? and have we groped together into all its chambers and examined their
treasures or their rubbish? Not so. We have been standing on the greensward,
but just within the cavern’s mouth, where the common sunshine is free to
penetrate, and where every footstep is therefore free to come. I have appealed
to no sentiment or sensibilities save such as are diffused among us all. So far
as I am a man of really individual attributes I veil my face; nor am I, nor
have I ever been, one of those supremely hospitable people who serve up their
own hearts, delicately fried, with brain sauce, as a tidbit for their beloved
public.

Glancing back over what I have written, it seems but the scattered
reminiscences of a single summer. In fairyland there is no measurement of time;
and, in a spot so sheltered from the turmoil of life’s ocean, three years
hastened away with a noiseless flight, as the breezy sunshine chases the
cloud-shadows across the depths of a still valley. Now came hints, growing more
and more distinct, that the owner of the old house was pining for his native
air. Carpenters next, appeared, making a tremendous racket among the
outbuildings, strewing the green grass with pine shavings and chips of chestnut
joists, and vexing the whole antiquity of the place with their discordant
renovations. Soon, moreover, they divested our abode of the veil of woodbine
which had crept over a large portion of its southern face. All the aged mosses
were cleared unsparingly away; and there were horrible whispers about brushing
up the external walls with a coat of paint,—a purpose as little to my
taste as might be that of rouging the venerable cheeks of one’s grandmother.
But the hand that renovates is always more sacrilegious than that which
destroys. In fine, we gathered up our household goods, drank a farewell cup of
tea in our pleasant little breakfast-room,—delicately fragrant tea, an
unpurchasable luxury, one of the many angel gifts that had fallen like dew upon
us,—and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts as uncertain as
the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by
the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no
irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce while I
am writing, from the Old Manse into a custom-house. As a story-teller, I have
often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary personages, but none like
this.

The treasure of intellectual gold which I hoped to find in our secluded
dwelling had never come to light. No profound treatise of ethics, no
philosophic history, no novel even, that could stand unsupported on its edges.
All that I had to show, as a man of letters, were these, few tales and essays,
which had blossomed out like flowers in the calm summer of my heart and mind.
Save editing (an easy task) the journal of my friend of many years, the African
Cruiser, I had done nothing else. With these idle weeds and withering blossoms
I have intermixed some that were produced long ago,—old, faded things,
reminding me of flowers pressed between the leaves of a book,—and now
offer the bouquet, such as it is, to any whom it may please. These fitful
sketches, with so little of external life about them, yet claiming no
profundity of purpose,—so reserved, even while they sometimes seem so
frank,—often but half in earnest, and never, even when most so,
expressing satisfactorily the thoughts which they profess to image,—such
trifles, I truly feel, afford no solid basis for a literary reputation.
Nevertheless, the public—if my limited number of readers, whom I venture
to regard rather as a circle of friends, may be termed a public—will
receive them the more kindly, as the last offering, the last collection of this
nature which it is my purpose ever to put forth. Unless I could do better, I
have done enough in this kind. For myself the book will always retain one
charm,—as reminding me of the river, with its delightful solitudes, and
of the avenue, the garden, and the orchard, and especially the dear Old Manse,
with the little study on its western side, and the sunshine glimmering through
the willow branches while I wrote.

Let the reader, if he will do me so much honor, imagine himself my guest, and
that, having seen whatever may be worthy of notice within and about the Old
Manse, he has finally been ushered into my study. There, after seating him in
an antique elbow-chair, an heirloom of the house, I take forth a roll of
manuscript and entreat his attention to the following tales,—an act of
personal inhospitality, however, which I never was guilty of, nor ever will be,
even to my worst enemy.

THE BIRTHMARK

In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent
proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story
opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any
chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared
his fine countenance from the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids from his
fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days when
the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries
of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual
for the love of science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing
energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart
might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their
ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence
to another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative
force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer
possessed this degree of faith in man’s ultimate control over Nature. He had
devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be
weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his young wife might prove
the stronger of the two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his
love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to his own.

Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly remarkable
consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very soon after their
marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble in his countenance that
grew stronger until he spoke.

“Georgiana,” said he, “has it never occurred to you that the mark upon your
cheek might be removed?”

“No, indeed,” said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of his manner,
she blushed deeply. “To tell you the truth it has been so often called a charm
that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so.”

“Ah, upon another face perhaps it might,” replied her husband; “but never on
yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of
Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a
defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly
imperfection.”

“Shocks you, my husband!” cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first reddening with
momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. “Then why did you take me from
my mother’s side? You cannot love what shocks you!”

To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in the centre of
Georgiana’s left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as it
were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual state of her
complexion—a healthy though delicate bloom—the mark wore a tint of
deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding
rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more indistinct, and finally
vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its
brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion caused her to turn pale there was
the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed
an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the
human hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana’s lovers were wont to
say that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant’s
cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were
to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked
life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not
be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual
varied exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the
beholders. Some fastidious persons—but they were exclusively of her own
sex—affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite
destroyed the effect of Georgiana’s beauty, and rendered her countenance even
hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue
stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the
Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark did not
heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the
world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the
semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,—for he thought little or nothing
of the matter before,—Aylmer discovered that this was the case with
himself.

Had she been less beautiful,—if Envy’s self could have found aught else
to sneer at,—he might have felt his affection heightened by the
prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing
forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed
within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect
grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives. It was
the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps
ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary
and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The
crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the
lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to
dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife’s liability to
sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer’s sombre imagination was not long in
rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror
than ever Georgiana’s beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.

At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invariably and
without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary, reverted to
this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first appeared, it so connected
itself with innumerable trains of thought and modes of feeling that it became
the central point of all. With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon
his wife’s face and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat
together at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand that
wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to
shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the peculiar expression that
his face often wore to change the roses of her cheek into a deathlike paleness,
amid which the crimson hand was brought strongly out, like a bass-relief of
ruby on the whitest marble.

Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray the
stain on the poor wife’s cheek, she herself, for the first time, voluntarily
took up the subject.

“Do you remember, my dear Aylmer,” said she, with a feeble attempt at a smile,
“have you any recollection of a dream last night about this odious hand?”

“None! none whatever!” replied Aylmer, starting; but then he added, in a dry,
cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of his emotion,
“I might well dream of it; for before I fell asleep it had taken a pretty firm
hold of my fancy.”

“And you did dream of it?” continued Georgiana, hastily; for she dreaded lest a
gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. “A terrible dream! I wonder
that you can forget it. Is it possible to forget this one expression?—‘It
is in her heart now; we must have it out!’ Reflect, my husband; for by all
means I would have you recall that dream.”

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her
spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth,
affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper
one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He had fancied himself with his servant
Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of the birthmark; but the
deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp
appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana’s heart; whence, however, her husband
was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.

When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in his
wife’s presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to the mind
close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness
of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during
our waking moments. Until now he had not been aware of the tyrannizing
influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might
find in his heart to go for the sake of giving himself peace.

“Aylmer,” resumed Georgiana, solemnly, “I know not what may be the cost to both
of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal may cause cureless
deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as life itself. Again: do we
know that there is a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of
this little hand which was laid upon me before I came into the world?”

“Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,” hastily
interrupted Aylmer. “I am convinced of the perfect practicability of its
removal.”

“If there be the remotest possibility of it,” continued Georgiana, “let the
attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to me; for life, while this
hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust,—life is a
burden which I would fling down with joy. Either remove this dreadful hand, or
take my wretched life! You have deep science. All the world bears witness of
it. You have achieved great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little
mark, which I cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your
power, for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from
madness?”

“Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife,” cried Aylmer, rapturously, “doubt not my
power. I have already given this matter the deepest thought—thought which
might almost have enlightened me to create a being less perfect than yourself.
Georgiana, you have led me deeper than ever into the heart of science. I feel
myself fully competent to render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow;
and then, most beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected
what Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, when his
sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be.”

“It is resolved, then,” said Georgiana, faintly smiling. “And, Aylmer, spare me
not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my heart at last.”

Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek—her right cheek—not that
which bore the impress of the crimson hand.

The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed whereby he
might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant watchfulness which
the proposed operation would require; while Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy
the perfect repose essential to its success. They were to seclude themselves in
the extensive apartments occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during
his toilsome youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of Nature
that had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe. Seated
calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated the secrets of
the highest cloud region and of the profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself
of the causes that kindled and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had
explained the mystery of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so
bright and pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark
bosom of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders
of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature
assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from the
spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The latter pursuit,
however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling recognition of the
truth—against which all seekers sooner or later stumble—that our
great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the
broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in
spite of her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us,
indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account
to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not,
of course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them; but because they
involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his proposed scheme
for the treatment of Georgiana.

As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold and
tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to reassure her,
but was so startled with the intense glow of the birthmark upon the whiteness
of her cheek that he could not restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife
fainted.

“Aminadab! Aminadab!” shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.

Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature, but bulky
frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was grimed with the
vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer’s underworker during his
whole scientific career, and was admirably fitted for that office by his great
mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while incapable of
comprehending a single principle, he executed all the details of his master’s
experiments. With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the
indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man’s
physical nature; while Aylmer’s slender figure, and pale, intellectual face,
were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.

“Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab,” said Aylmer, “and burn a
pastil.”

“Yes, master,” answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless form of
Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, “If she were my wife, I’d never
part with that birthmark.”

When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an
atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had recalled
her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked like enchantment.
Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent his
brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments
not unfit to be the secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with
gorgeous curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no
other species of adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to
the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and straight
lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For aught Georgiana
knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And Aylmer, excluding the
sunshine, which would have interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied
its place with perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting
in a soft, impurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife’s side, watching her
earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science, and felt
that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no evil might intrude.

“Where am I? Ah, I remember,” said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed her hand
over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband’s eyes.

“Fear not, dearest!” exclaimed he. “Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be such a
rapture to remove it.”

“Oh, spare me!” sadly replied his wife. “Pray do not look at it again. I never
can forget that convulsive shudder.”

In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind from the
burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of the light and
playful secrets which science had taught him among its profounder lore. Airy
figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty came and
danced before her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light.
Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena,
still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her
husband possessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a
wish to look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a screen. The
scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented, but with
that bewitching, yet indescribable difference which always makes a picture, an
image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the original. When wearied of
this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of
earth. She did so, with little interest at first; but was soon startled to
perceive the germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil. Then came the
slender stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a
perfect and lovely flower.

“It is magical!” cried Georgiana. “I dare not touch it.”

“Nay, pluck it,” answered Aylmer,—“pluck it, and inhale its brief perfume
while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and leave nothing save
its brown seed vessels; but thence may be perpetuated a race as ephemeral as
itself.”

But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant suffered a
blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by the agency of fire.

“There was too powerful a stimulus,” said Aylmer, thoughtfully.

To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her portrait by a
scientific process of his own invention. It was to be effected by rays of light
striking upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at
the result, was affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and
indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should
have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of
corrosive acid.

Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals of study
and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted, but seemed
invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of the resources of
his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of the alchemists, who spent so
many ages in quest of the universal solvent by which the golden principle might
be elicited from all things vile and base. Aylmer appeared to believe that, by
the plainest scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of
possibility to discover this long-sought medium; “but,” he added, “a
philosopher who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too
lofty a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it.” Not less singular were his
opinions in regard to the elixir vitae. He more than intimated that it was at
his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps
interminably; but that it would produce a discord in Nature which all the
world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal nostrum, would find cause to
curse.

“Aylmer, are you in earnest?” asked Georgiana, looking at him with amazement
and fear. “It is terrible to possess such power, or even to dream of possessing
it.”

“Oh, do not tremble, my love,” said her husband. “I would not wrong either you
or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our lives; but I would have
you consider how trifling, in comparison, is the skill requisite to remove this
little hand.”

At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a redhot
iron had touched her cheek.

Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice in the
distant furnace room giving directions to Aminadab, whose harsh, uncouth,
misshapen tones were audible in response, more like the grunt or growl of a
brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed
that she should now examine his cabinet of chemical products and natural
treasures of the earth. Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which,
he remarked, was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of
impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of
inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he
threw some of the perfume into the air and filled the room with piercing and
invigorating delight.

“And what is this?” asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe
containing a gold-colored liquid. “It is so beautiful to the eye that I could
imagine it the elixir of life.”

“In one sense it is,” replied Aylmer; “or, rather, the elixir of immortality.
It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in this world. By its
aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at whom you might point your
finger. The strength of the dose would determine whether he were to linger out
years, or drop dead in the midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne
could keep his life if I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare
of millions justified me in depriving him of it.”

“Why do you keep such a terrific drug?” inquired Georgiana in horror.

“Do not mistrust me, dearest,” said her husband, smiling; “its virtuous potency
is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is a powerful cosmetic. With
a few drops of this in a vase of water, freckles may be washed away as easily
as the hands are cleansed. A stronger infusion would take the blood out of the
cheek, and leave the rosiest beauty a pale ghost.”

“Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?” asked Georgiana,
anxiously.

“Oh, no,” hastily replied her husband; “this is merely superficial. Your case
demands a remedy that shall go deeper.”

In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute inquiries as to
her sensations and whether the confinement of the rooms and the temperature of
the atmosphere agreed with her. These questions had such a particular drift
that Georgiana began to conjecture that she was already subjected to certain
physical influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her
food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that there was a
stirring up of her system—a strange, indefinite sensation creeping
through her veins, and tingling, half painfully, half pleasurably, at her
heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into the mirror, there she beheld
herself pale as a white rose and with the crimson birthmark stamped upon her
cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it so much as she.

To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary to
devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana turned over the
volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old tomes she met with chapters
full of romance and poetry. They were the works of philosophers of the middle
ages, such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and the famous
friar who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists
stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their
credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined themselves to have
acquired from the investigation of Nature a power above Nature, and from
physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly less curious and imaginative
were the early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Society, in which the
members, knowing little of the limits of natural possibility, were continually
recording wonders or proposing methods whereby wonders might be wrought.

But to Georgiana the most engrossing volume was a large folio from her
husband’s own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of his scientific
career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its development, and its
final success or failure, with the circumstances to which either event was
attributable. The book, in truth, was both the history and emblem of his
ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet practical and laborious life. He handled
physical details as if there were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them
all, and redeemed himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration
towards the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul.
Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more profoundly than
ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than heretofore. Much
as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that his most splendid
successes were almost invariably failures, if compared with the ideal at which
he aimed. His brightest diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by
himself, in comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his
reach. The volume, rich with achievements that had won renown for its author,
was yet as melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had penned. It was the sad
confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the composite
man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and of the despair
that assails the higher nature at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the
earthly part. Perhaps every man of genius in whatever sphere might recognize
the image of his own experience in Aylmer’s journal.

So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her face upon
the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she was found by her
husband.

“It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer’s books,” said he with a smile, though
his countenance was uneasy and displeased. “Georgiana, there are pages in that
volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my senses. Take heed lest it
prove as detrimental to you.”

“It has made me worship you more than ever,” said she.

“Ah, wait for this one success,” rejoined he, “then worship me if you will. I
shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come, I have sought you for the
luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest.”

So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his
spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of gayety, assuring her
that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and that the result was
already certain. Scarcely had he departed when Georgiana felt irresistibly
impelled to follow him. She had forgotten to inform Aylmer of a symptom which
for two or three hours past had begun to excite her attention. It was a
sensation in the fatal birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness
throughout her system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for the first
time into the laboratory.

The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and feverish
worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the quantities of soot
clustered above it seemed to have been burning for ages. There was a distilling
apparatus in full operation. Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders,
crucibles, and other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine
stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was
tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of
science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked
walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to
the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely,
drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.

He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace as if it
depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid which it was
distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or misery. How different
from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had assumed for Georgiana’s
encouragement!

“Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully, thou man of
clay!” muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant. “Now, if there be a
thought too much or too little, it is all over.”

“Ho! ho!” mumbled Aminadab. “Look, master! look!”

Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler than
ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized her arm with a
gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.

“Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in your husband?” cried he,
impetuously. “Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark over my
labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman, go!”

“Nay, Aylmer,” said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed no
stinted endowment, “it is not you that have a right to complain. You mistrust
your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you watch the development
of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my husband. Tell me all the
risk we run, and fear not that I shall shrink; for my share in it is far less
than your own.”

“No, no, Georgiana!” said Aylmer, impatiently; “it must not be.”

“I submit,” replied she calmly. “And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever draught
you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would induce me to take
a dose of poison if offered by your hand.”

“My noble wife,” said Aylmer, deeply moved, “I knew not the height and depth of
your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know, then, that this
crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its grasp into your being
with a strength of which I had no previous conception. I have already
administered agents powerful enough to do aught except to change your entire
physical system. Only one thing remains to be tried. If that fail us we are
ruined.”

“Why did you hesitate to tell me this?” asked she.

“Because, Georgiana,” said Aylmer, in a low voice, “there is danger.”

“Danger? There is but one danger—that this horrible stigma shall be left
upon my cheek!” cried Georgiana. “Remove it, remove it, whatever be the cost,
or we shall both go mad!”

“Heaven knows your words are too true,” said Aylmer, sadly. “And now, dearest,
return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested.”

He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness which
spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After his departure
Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the character of Aylmer, and
did it completer justice than at any previous moment. Her heart exulted, while
it trembled, at his honorable love—so pure and lofty that it would accept
nothing less than perfection nor miserably make itself contented with an
earthlier nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was
such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the
imperfection for her sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy love by
degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole
spirit she prayed that, for a single moment, she might satisfy his highest and
deepest conception. Longer than one moment she well knew it could not be; for
his spirit was ever on the march, ever ascending, and each instant required
something that was beyond the scope of the instant before.

The sound of her husband’s footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal goblet
containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be the draught of
immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the consequence of a
highly-wrought state of mind and tension of spirit than of fear or doubt.

“The concoction of the draught has been perfect,” said he, in answer to
Georgiana’s look. “Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot fail.”

“Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer,” observed his wife, “I might wish to
put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality itself in
preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession to those who have
attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at which I stand. Were I
weaker and blinder it might be happiness. Were I stronger, it might be endured
hopefully. But, being what I find myself, methinks I am of all mortals the most
fit to die.”

“You are fit for heaven without tasting death!” replied her husband “But why do
we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its effect upon this plant.”

On the window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow blotches, which
had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small quantity of the liquid
upon the soil in which it grew. In a little time, when the roots of the plant
had taken up the moisture, the unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a
living verdure.

“There needed no proof,” said Georgiana, quietly. “Give me the goblet I
joyfully stake all upon your word.”

“Drink, then, thou lofty creature!” exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration.
“There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too,
shall soon be all perfect.”

She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.

“It is grateful,” said she with a placid smile. “Methinks it is like water from
a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of unobtrusive fragrance
and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst that had parched me for many
days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My earthly senses are closing over my spirit
like the leaves around the heart of a rose at sunset.”

She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required almost
more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and lingering
syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere she was lost in
slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect with the emotions proper
to a man the whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now to
be tested. Mingled with this mood, however, was the philosophic investigation
characteristic of the man of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A
heightened flush of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the
eyelid, a hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,—such were the
details which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume.
Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that volume, but
the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.

While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and not
without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse he pressed
it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very act, and Georgiana,
out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily and murmured as if in
remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor was it without avail. The
crimson hand, which at first had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness
of Georgiana’s cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less
pale than ever; but the birthmark with every breath that came and went, lost
somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure
was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out the sky, and
you will know how that mysterious symbol passed away.

“By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!” said Aylmer to himself, in almost
irrepressible ecstasy. “I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success! And now
it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood across her
cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!”

He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural day to fall
into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he heard a gross,
hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant Aminadab’s expression of
delight.

“Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!” cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of frenzy, “you
have served me well! Matter and spirit—earth and heaven—have both
done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses! You have earned the right
to laugh.”

These exclamations broke Georgiana’s sleep. She slowly unclosed her eyes and
gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that purpose. A faint
smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how barely perceptible was now
that crimson hand which had once blazed forth with such disastrous brilliancy
as to scare away all their happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer’s face
with a trouble and anxiety that he could by no means account for.

“My poor Aylmer!” murmured she.

“Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!” exclaimed he. “My peerless bride,
it is successful! You are perfect!”

“My poor Aylmer,” she repeated, with a more than human tenderness, “you have
aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that with so high and pure a
feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could offer. Aylmer, dearest
Aylmer, I am dying!”

Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life,
and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal
frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark—that sole token of human
imperfection—faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect
woman passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment near her
husband, took its heavenward flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard
again! Thus ever does the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable
triumph over the immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half
development, demands the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Alymer
reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness
which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the
celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look
beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find
the perfect future in the present.

A SELECT PARTY

The man of fancy made an entertainment at one of his castles in the air, and
invited a select number of distinguished personages to favor him with their
presence. The mansion, though less splendid than many that have been situated
in the same region, was nevertheless of a magnificence such as is seldom
witnessed by those acquainted only with terrestrial architecture. Its strong
foundations and massive walls were quarried out of a ledge of heavy and sombre
clouds which had hung brooding over the earth, apparently as dense and
ponderous as its own granite, throughout a whole autumnal day. Perceiving that
the general effect was gloomy,—so that the airy castle looked like a
feudal fortress, or a monastery of the Middle Ages, or a state prison of our
own times, rather than the home of pleasure and repose which he intended it to
be,—the owner, regardless of expense, resolved to gild the exterior from
top to bottom. Fortunately, there was just then a flood of evening sunshine in
the air. This being gathered up and poured abundantly upon the roof and walls,
imbued them with a kind of solemn cheerfulness; while the cupolas and pinnacles
were made to glitter with the purest gold, and all the hundred windows gleamed
with a glad light, as if the edifice itself were rejoicing in its heart.

And now, if the people of the lower world chanced to be looking upward out of
the turmoil of their petty perplexities, they probably mistook the castle in
the air for a heap of sunset clouds, to which the magic of light and shade had
imparted the aspect of a fantastically constructed mansion. To such beholders
it was unreal, because they lacked the imaginative faith. Had they been worthy
to pass within its portal, they would have recognized the truth, that the
dominions which the spirit conquers for itself among unrealities become a
thousand times more real than the earth whereon they stamp their feet, saying,
“This is solid and substantial; this may be called a fact.”

At the appointed hour, the host stood in his great saloon to receive the
company. It was a vast and noble room, the vaulted ceiling of which was
supported by double rows of gigantic pillars that had been hewn entire out of
masses of variegated clouds. So brilliantly were they polished, and so
exquisitely wrought by the sculptor’s skill, as to resemble the finest
specimens of emerald, porphyry, opal, and chrysolite, thus producing a delicate
richness of effect which their immense size rendered not incompatible with
grandeur. To each of these pillars a meteor was suspended. Thousands of these
ethereal lustres are continually wandering about the firmament, burning out to
waste, yet capable of imparting a useful radiance to any person who has the art
of converting them to domestic purposes. As managed in the saloon, they are far
more economical than ordinary lamplight. Such, however, was the intensity of
their blaze that it had been found expedient to cover each meteor with a globe
of evening mist, thereby muffling the too potent glow and soothing it into a
mild and comfortable splendor. It was like the brilliancy of a powerful yet
chastened imagination,—a light which seemed to hide whatever was unworthy
to be noticed and give effect to every beautiful and noble attribute. The
guests, therefore, as they advanced up the centre of the saloon, appeared to
better advantage than ever before in their lives.

The first that entered, with old-fashioned punctuality, was a venerable figure
in the costume of bygone days, with his white hair flowing down over his
shoulders and a reverend beard upon his breast. He leaned upon a staff, the
tremulous stroke of which, as he set it carefully upon the floor, re-echoed
through the saloon at every footstep. Recognizing at once this celebrated
personage, whom it had cost him a vast deal of trouble and research to
discover, the host advanced nearly three fourths of the distance down between
the pillars to meet and welcome him.

“Venerable sir,” said the Man of Fancy, bending to the floor, “the honor of
this visit would never be forgotten were my term of existence to be as happily
prolonged as your own.”

The old gentleman received the compliment with gracious condescension. He then
thrust up his spectacles over his forehead and appeared to take a critical
survey of the saloon.

“Never within my recollection,” observed he, “have I entered a more spacious
and noble hall. But are you sure that it is built of solid materials and that
the structure will be permanent?”

“O, never fear, my venerable friend,” replied the host. “In reference to a
lifetime like your own, it is true my castle may well be called a temporary
edifice. But it will endure long enough to answer all the purposes for which it
was erected.”

But we forget that the reader has not yet been made acquainted with the guest.
It was no other than that universally accredited character so constantly
referred to in all seasons of intense cold or heat; he that, remembers the hot
Sunday and the cold Friday; the witness of a past age whose negative
reminiscences find their way into every newspaper, yet whose antiquated and
dusky abode is so overshadowed by accumulated years and crowded back by modern
edifices that none but the Man of Fancy could have discovered it; it was, in
short, that twin brother of Time, and great-grandsire of mankind, and
hand-and-glove associate of all forgotten men and things,—the Oldest
Inhabitant. The host would willingly have drawn him into conversation, but
succeeded only in eliciting a few remarks as to the oppressive atmosphere of
this present summer evening compared with one which the guest had experienced
about fourscore years ago. The old gentleman, in fact, was a good deal overcome
by his journey among the clouds, which, to a frame so earth-incrusted by long
continuance in a lower region, was unavoidably more fatiguing than to younger
spirits. He was therefore conducted to an easy-chair, well cushioned and
stuffed with vaporous softness, and left to take a little repose.

The Man of Fancy now discerned another guest, who stood so quietly in the
shadow of one of the pillars that he might easily have been overlooked.

“My dear sir,” exclaimed the host, grasping him warmly by the hand, “allow me
to greet you as the hero of the evening. Pray do not take it as an empty
compliment; for, if there were not another guest in my castle, it would be
entirely pervaded with your presence.”

“I thank you,” answered the unpretending stranger; “but, though you happened to
overlook me, I have not just arrived. I came very early; and, with your
permission, shall remain after the rest of the company have retired.”

And who does the reader imagine was this unobtrusive guest? It was the famous
performer of acknowledged impossibilities,—a character of superhuman
capacity and virtue, and, if his enemies are to be credited, of no less
remarkable weaknesses and defects. With a generosity with which he alone sets
us an example, we will glance merely at his nobler attributes. He it is, then,
who prefers the interests of others to his own and a humble station to an
exalted one. Careless of fashion, custom, the opinions of men, and the
influence of the press, he assimilates his life to the standard of ideal
rectitude, and thus proves himself the one independent citizen of our free
country. In point of ability, many people declare him to be the only
mathematician capable of squaring the circle; the only mechanic acquainted with
the principle of perpetual motion; the only scientific philosopher who can
compel water to run up hill; the only writer of the age whose genius is equal
to the production of an epic poem; and, finally, so various are his
accomplishments, the only professor of gymnastics who has succeeded in jumping
down his own throat. With all these talents, however, he is so far from being
considered a member of good society, that it is the severest censure of any
fashionable assemblage to affirm that this remarkable individual was present.
Public orators, lecturers, and theatrical performers particularly eschew his
company. For especial reasons, we are not at liberty to disclose his name, and
shall mention only one other trait,—a most singular phenomenon in natural
philosophy,—that, when he happens to cast his eyes upon a looking-glass,
he beholds Nobody reflected there!

Several other guests now made their appearance; and among them, chattering with
immense volubility, a brisk little gentleman of universal vogue in private
society, and not unknown in the public journals under the title of Monsieur
On-Dit. The name would seem to indicate a Frenchman; but, whatever be his
country, he is thoroughly versed in all the languages of the day, and can
express himself quite as much to the purpose in English as in any other tongue.
No sooner were the ceremonies of salutation over than this talkative little
person put his mouth to the host’s ear and whispered three secrets of state, an
important piece of commercial intelligence, and a rich item of fashionable
scandal. He then assured the Man of Fancy that he would not fail to circulate
in the society of the lower world a minute description of this magnificent
castle in the air and of the festivities at which he had the honor to be a
guest. So saying, Monsieur On-Dit made his bow and hurried from one to another
of the company, with all of whom he seemed to be acquainted and to possess some
topic of interest or amusement for every individual. Coming at last to the
Oldest Inhabitant, who was slumbering comfortably in the easy-chair, he applied
his mouth to that venerable ear.

“What do you say?” cried the old gentleman, starting from his nap and putting
up his hand to serve the purpose of an ear-trumpet.

Monsieur On-Dit bent forward again and repeated his communication.

“Never within my memory,” exclaimed the Oldest Inhabitant, lifting his hands in
astonishment, “has so remarkable an incident been heard of.”

Now came in the Clerk of the Weather, who had been invited out of deference to
his official station, although the host was well aware that his conversation
was likely to contribute but little to the general enjoyment. He soon, indeed,
got into a corner with his acquaintance of long ago, the Oldest Inhabitant, and
began to compare notes with him in reference to the great storms, gales of
wind, and other atmospherical facts that had occurred during a century past. It
rejoiced the Man of Fancy that his venerable and much-respected guest had met
with so congenial an associate. Entreating them both to make themselves
perfectly at home, he now turned to receive the Wandering Jew. This personage,
however, had latterly grown so common, by mingling in all sorts of society and
appearing at the beck of every entertainer, that he could hardly be deemed a
proper guest in a very exclusive circle. Besides, being covered with dust from
his continual wanderings along the highways of the world, he really looked out
of place in a dress party; so that the host felt relieved of an incommodity
when the restless individual in question, after a brief stay, took his
departure on a ramble towards Oregon.

The portal was now thronged by a crowd of shadowy people with whom the Man of
Fancy had been acquainted in his visionary youth. He had invited them hither
for the sake of observing how they would compare, whether advantageously or
otherwise, with the real characters to whom his maturer life had introduced
him. They were beings of crude imagination, such as glide before a young man’s
eye and pretend to be actual inhabitants of the earth; the wise and witty with
whom he would hereafter hold intercourse; the generous and heroic friends whose
devotion would be requited with his own; the beautiful dream-woman who would
become the helpmate of his human toils and sorrows and at once the source and
partaker of his happiness. Alas! it is not good for the full-grown man to look
too closely at these old acquaintances, but rather to reverence them at a
distance through the medium of years that have gathered duskily between. There
was something laughably untrue in their pompous stride and exaggerated
sentiment; they were neither human nor tolerable likenesses of humanity, but
fantastic maskers, rendering heroism and nature alike ridiculous by the grave
absurdity of their pretensions to such attributes; and as for the peerless
dream-lady, behold! there advanced up the saloon, with a movement like a
jointed doll, a sort of wax-figure of an angel, a creature as cold as
moonshine, an artifice in petticoats, with an intellect of pretty phrases and
only the semblance of a heart, yet in all these particulars the true type of a
young man’s imaginary mistress. Hardly could the host’s punctilious courtesy
restrain a smile as he paid his respects to this unreality and met the
sentimental glance with which the Dream sought to remind him of their former
love passages.

“No, no, fair lady,” murmured he betwixt sighing and smiling; “my taste is
changed; I have learned to love what Nature makes better than my own creations
in the guise of womanhood.”

“Ah, false one,” shrieked the dream-lady, pretending to faint, but dissolving
into thin air, out of which came the deplorable murmur of her voice, “your
inconstancy has annihilated me.”

“So be it,” said the cruel Man of Fancy to himself; “and a good riddance too.”

Together with these shadows, and from the same region, there came an uninvited
multitude of shapes which at any time during his life had tormented the Man of
Fancy in his moods of morbid melancholy or had haunted him in the delirium of
fever. The walls of his castle in the air were not dense enough to keep them
out, nor would the strongest of earthly architecture have availed to their
exclusion. Here were those forms of dim terror which had beset him at the
entrance of life, waging warfare with his hopes; here were strange uglinesses
of earlier date, such as haunt children in the night-time. He was particularly
startled by the vision of a deformed old black woman whom he imagined as
lurking in the garret of his native home, and who, when he was an infant, had
once come to his bedside and grinned at him in the crisis of a scarlet fever.
This same black shadow, with others almost as hideous, now glided among the
pillars of the magnificent saloon, grinning recognition, until the man
shuddered anew at the forgotten terrors of his childhood. It amused him,
however, to observe the black woman, with the mischievous caprice peculiar to
such beings, steal up to the chair of the Oldest Inhabitant and peep into his
half-dreamy mind.

“Never within my memory,” muttered that venerable personage, aghast, “did I see
such a face.”

Almost immediately after the unrealities just described, arrived a number of
guests whom incredulous readers may be inclined to rank equally among creatures
of imagination. The most noteworthy were an incorruptible Patriot; a Scholar
without pedantry; a Priest without worldly ambition; and a Beautiful Woman
without pride or coquetry; a Married Pair whose life had never been disturbed
by incongruity of feeling; a Reformer untrammelled by his theory; and a Poet
who felt no jealousy towards other votaries of the lyre. In truth, however, the
host was not one of the cynics who consider these patterns of excellence,
without the fatal flaw, such rarities in the world; and he had invited them to
his select party chiefly out of humble deference to the judgment of society,
which pronounces them almost impossible to be met with.

“In my younger days,” observed the Oldest Inhabitant, “such characters might be
seen at the corner of every street.”

Be that as it might, these specimens of perfection proved to be not half so
entertaining companions as people with the ordinary allowance of faults.

But now appeared a stranger, whom the host had no sooner recognized than, with
an abundance of courtesy unlavished on any other, he hastened down the whole
length of the saloon in order to pay him emphatic honor. Yet he was a young man
in poor attire, with no insignia of rank or acknowledged eminence, nor anything
to distinguish him among the crowd except a high, white forehead, beneath which
a pair of deep-set eyes were glowing with warm light. It was such a light as
never illuminates the earth save when a great heart burns as the household fire
of a grand intellect. And who was he?—who but the Master Genius for whom
our country is looking anxiously into the mist of Time, as destined to fulfil
the great mission of creating an American literature, hewing it, as it were,
out of the unwrought granite of our intellectual quarries? From him, whether
moulded in the form of an epic poem or assuming a guise altogether new as the
spirit itself may determine, we are to receive our first great original work,
which shall do all that remains to be achieved for our glory among the nations.
How this child of a mighty destiny had been discovered by the Man of Fancy it
is of little consequence to mention. Suffice it that he dwells as yet unhonored
among men, unrecognized by those who have known him from his cradle; the noble
countenance which should be distinguished by a halo diffused around it passes
daily amid the throng of people toiling and troubling themselves about the
trifles of a moment, and none pay reverence to the worker of immortality. Nor
does it matter much to him, in his triumph over all the ages, though a
generation or two of his own times shall do themselves the wrong to disregard
him.

By this time Monsieur On-Dit had caught up the stranger’s name and destiny and
was busily whispering the intelligence among the other guests.

“Pshaw!” said one. “There can never be an American genius.”

“Pish!” cried another. “We have already as good poets as any in the world. For
my part, I desire to see no better.”

And the Oldest Inhabitant, when it was proposed to introduce him to the Master
Genius, begged to be excused, observing that a man who had been honored with
the acquaintance of Dwight, and Freneau, and Joel Barlow, might be allowed a
little austerity of taste.

The saloon was now fast filling up by the arrival of other remarkable
characters, among whom were noticed Davy Jones, the distinguished nautical
personage, and a rude, carelessly dressed, harum-scarum sort of elderly fellow,
known by the nickname of Old Harry. The latter, however, after being shown to a
dressing-room, reappeared with his gray hair nicely combed, his clothes
brushed, a clean dicky on his neck, and altogether so changed in aspect as to
merit the more respectful appellation of Venerable Henry. Joel Doe and Richard
Roe came arm in arm, accompanied by a Man of Straw, a fictitious indorser, and
several persons who had no existence except as voters in closely contested
elections. The celebrated Seatsfield, who now entered, was at first supposed to
belong to the same brotherhood, until he made it apparent that he was a real
man of flesh and blood and had his earthly domicile in Germany. Among the
latest comers, as might reasonably be expected, arrived a guest from the far
future.

“Do you know him? do you know him?” whispered Monsieur On-Dit, who seemed to be
acquainted with everybody. “He is the representative of Posterity,—the
man of an age to come.”

“And how came he here?” asked a figure who was evidently the prototype of the
fashion-plate in a magazine, and might be taken to represent the vanities of
the passing moment. “The fellow infringes upon our rights by coming before his
time.”

“But you forget where we are,” answered the Man of Fancy, who overheard the
remark. “The lower earth, it is true, will be forbidden ground to him for many
long years hence; but a castle in the air is a sort of no-man’s-land, where
Posterity may make acquaintance with us on equal terms.”

No sooner was his identity known than a throng of guests gathered about
Posterity, all expressing the most generous interest in his welfare, and many
boasting of the sacrifices which they had made, or were willing to make, in his
behalf. Some, with as much secrecy as possible, desired his judgment upon
certain copies of verses or great manuscript rolls of prose; others accosted
him with the familiarity of old friends, taking it for granted that he was
perfectly cognizant of their names and characters. At length, finding himself
thus beset, Posterity was put quite beside his patience.

“Gentlemen, my good friends,” cried he, breaking loose from a misty poet who
strove to hold him by the button, “I pray you to attend to your own business,
and leave me to take care of mine! I expect to owe you nothing, unless it be
certain national debts, and other encumbrances and impediments, physical and
moral, which I shall find it troublesome enough to remove from my path. As to
your verses, pray read them to your contemporaries. Your names are as strange
to me as your faces; and even were it otherwise,—let me whisper you a
secret,—the cold, icy memory which one generation may retain of another
is but a poor recompense to barter life for. Yet, if your heart is set on being
known to me, the surest, the only method is, to live truly and wisely for your
own age, whereby, if the native force be in you, you may likewise live for
posterity.”

“It is nonsense,” murmured the Oldest Inhabitant, who, as a man of the past,
felt jealous that all notice should be withdrawn from himself to be lavished on
the future, “sheer nonsense, to waste so much thought on what only is to be.”

To divert the minds of his guests, who were considerably abashed by this little
incident, the Man of Fancy led them through several apartments of the castle,
receiving their compliments upon the taste and varied magnificence that were
displayed in each. One of these rooms was filled with moonlight, which did not
enter through the window, but was the aggregate of all the moonshine that is
scattered around the earth on a summer night while no eyes are awake to enjoy
its beauty. Airy spirits had gathered it up, wherever they found it gleaming on
the broad bosom of a lake, or silvering the meanders of a stream, or glimmering
among the wind-stirred boughs of a wood, and had garnered it in this one
spacious hall. Along the walls, illuminated by the mild intensity of the
moonshine, stood a multitude of ideal statues, the original conceptions of the
great works of ancient or modern art, which the sculptors did but imperfectly
succeed in putting into marble; for it is not to be supposed that the pure idea
of an immortal creation ceases to exist; it is only necessary to know where
they are deposited in order to obtain possession of them.—In the alcoves
of another vast apartment was arranged a splendid library, the volumes of which
were inestimable, because they consisted, not of actual performances, but of
the works which the authors only planned, without ever finding the happy season
to achieve them. To take familiar instances, here were the untold tales of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims; the unwritten cantos of the Fairy Queen; the
conclusion of Coleridge’s Christabel; and the whole of Dryden’s projected epic
on the subject of King Arthur. The shelves were crowded; for it would not be
too much to affirm that every author has imagined and shaped out in his thought
more and far better works than those which actually proceeded from his pen. And
here, likewise, where the unrealized conceptions of youthful poets who died of
the very strength of their own genius before the world had caught one inspired
murmur from their lips.

When the peculiarities of the library and statue-gallery were explained to the
Oldest Inhabitant, he appeared infinitely perplexed, and exclaimed, with more
energy than usual, that he had never heard of such a thing within his memory,
and, moreover, did not at all understand how it could be.

“But my brain, I think,” said the good old gentleman, “is getting not so clear
as it used to be. You young folks, I suppose, can see your way through these
strange matters. For my part, I give it up.”

“And so do I,” muttered the Old Harry. “It is enough to puzzle the—Ahem!”

Making as little reply as possible to these observations, the Man of Fancy
preceded the company to another noble saloon, the pillars of which were solid
golden sunbeams taken out of the sky in the first hour in the morning. Thus, as
they retained all their living lustre, the room was filled with the most
cheerful radiance imaginable, yet not too dazzling to be borne with comfort and
delight. The windows were beautifully adorned with curtains made of the
many-colored clouds of sunrise, all imbued with virgin light, and hanging in
magnificent festoons from the ceiling to the floor. Moreover, there were
fragments of rainbows scattered through the room; so that the guests,
astonished at one another, reciprocally saw their heads made glorious by the
seven primary hues; or, if they chose,—as who would not?—they could
grasp a rainbow in the air and convert it to their own apparel and adornment.
But the morning light and scattered rainbows were only a type and symbol of the
real wonders of the apartment. By an influence akin to magic, yet perfectly
natural, whatever means and opportunities of joy are neglected in the lower
world had been carefully gathered up and deposited in the saloon of morning
sunshine. As may well be conceived, therefore, there was material enough to
supply, not merely a joyous evening, but also a happy lifetime, to more than as
many people as that spacious apartment could contain. The company seemed to
renew their youth; while that pattern and proverbial standard of innocence, the
Child Unborn, frolicked to and fro among them, communicating his own unwrinkled
gayety to all who had the good fortune to witness his gambols.

“My honored friends,” said the Man of Fancy, after they had enjoyed themselves
awhile, “I am now to request your presence in the banqueting-hall, where a
slight collation is awaiting you.”

“Ah, well said!” ejaculated a cadaverous figure, who had been invited for no
other reason than that he was pretty constantly in the habit of dining with
Duke Humphrey. “I was beginning to wonder whether a castle in the air were
provided with a kitchen.”

It was curious, in truth, to see how instantaneously the guests were diverted
from the high moral enjoyments which they had been tasting with so much
apparent zest by a suggestion of the more solid as well as liquid delights of
the festive board. They thronged eagerly in the rear of the host, who now
ushered them into a lofty and extensive hall, from end to end of which was
arranged a table, glittering all over with innumerable dishes and
drinking-vessels of gold. It is an uncertain point whether these rich articles
of plate were made for the occasion out of molten sunbeams, or recovered from
the wrecks of Spanish galleons that had lain for ages at the bottom of the sea.
The upper end of the table was overshadowed by a canopy, beneath which was
placed a chair of elaborate magnificence, which the host himself declined to
occupy, and besought his guests to assign it to the worthiest among them. As a
suitable homage to his incalculable antiquity and eminent distinction, the post
of honor was at first tendered to the Oldest Inhabitant. He, however, eschewed
it, and requested the favor of a bowl of gruel at a side table, where he could
refresh himself with a quiet nap. There was some little hesitation as to the
next candidate, until Posterity took the Master Genius of our country by the
hand and led him to the chair of state beneath the princely canopy. When once
they beheld him in his true place, the company acknowledged the justice of the
selection by a long thunder-roll of vehement applause.

Then was served up a banquet, combining, if not all the delicacies of the
season, yet all the rarities which careful purveyors had met with in the flesh,
fish, and vegetable markets of the land of Nowhere. The bill of fare being
unfortunately lost, we can only mention a phoenix, roasted in its own flames,
cold potted birds of paradise, ice-creams from the Milky-Way, and whip
syllabubs and flummery from the Paradise of Fools, whereof there was a very
great consumption. As for drinkables, the temperance people contented
themselves with water as usual; but it was the water of the Fountain of Youth;
the ladies sipped Nepenthe; the lovelorn, the careworn, and the sorrow-stricken
were supplied with brimming goblets of Lethe; and it was shrewdly conjectured
that a certain golden vase, from which only the more distinguished guests were
invited to partake, contained nectar that had been mellowing ever since the
days of classical mythology. The cloth being removed, the company, as usual,
grew eloquent over their liquor and delivered themselves of a succession of
brilliant speeches,—the task of reporting which we resign to the more
adequate ability of Counsellor Gill, whose indispensable co-operation the Man
of Fancy had taken the precaution to secure.

When the festivity of the banquet was at its most ethereal point, the Clerk of
the Weather was observed to steal from the table and thrust his head between
the purple and golden curtains of one of the windows.

“My fellow-guests,” he remarked aloud, after carefully noting the signs of the
night, “I advise such of you as live at a distance to be going as soon as
possible; for a thunder-storm is certainly at hand.”

“Mercy on me!” cried Mother Carey, who had left her brood of chickens and come
hither in gossamer drapery, with pink silk stockings. “How shall I ever get
home?”

All now was confusion and hasty departure, with but little superfluous
leave-taking. The Oldest Inhabitant, however, true to the rule of those long
past days in which his courtesy had been studied, paused on the threshold of
the meteor-lighted hall to express his vast satisfaction at the entertainment.

“Never, within my memory,” observed the gracious old gentleman, “has it been my
good fortune to spend a pleasanter evening or in more select society.”

The wind here took his breath away, whirled his three-cornered hat into
infinite space, and drowned what further compliments it had been his purpose to
bestow. Many of the company had bespoken will-o’-the-wisps to convoy them home;
and the host, in his general beneficence, had engaged the Man in the Moon, with
an immense horn-lantern, to be the guide of such desolate spinsters as could do
no better for themselves. But a blast of the rising tempest blew out all their
lights in the twinkling of an eye. How, in the darkness that ensued, the guests
contrived to get back to earth, or whether the greater part of them contrived
to get back at all, or are still wandering among clouds, mists, and puffs of
tempestuous wind, bruised by the beams and rafters of the overthrown castle in
the air, and deluded by all sorts of unrealities, are points that concern
themselves much more than the writer or the public. People should think of
these matters before they trust themselves on a pleasure-party into the realm
of Nowhere.

YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN

Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but
put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss
with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own
pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her
cap while she called to Goodman Brown.

“Dearest heart,” whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were
close to his ear, “prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your
own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts
that she’s afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear
husband, of all nights in the year.”

“My love and my Faith,” replied young Goodman Brown, “of all nights in the
year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest
it, forth and back again, must needs be done ’twixt now and sunrise. What, my
sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months
married?”

“Then God bless you!” said Faith, with the pink ribbons; “and may you find all
well when you come back.”

“Amen!” cried Goodman Brown. “Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at
dusk, and no harm will come to thee.”

So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn
the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still
peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.

“Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote him. “What a wretch am I
to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she
spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is
to be done tonight. But no, no; ’twould kill her to think it. Well, she’s a
blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and
follow her to heaven.”

With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself
justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a
dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely
stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately
behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such
a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the
innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps
he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

“There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said Goodman Brown to
himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, “What if the devil
himself should be at my very elbow!”

His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward
again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the
foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown’s approach and walked onward
side by side with him.

“You are late, Goodman Brown,” said he. “The clock of the Old South was
striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes agone.”

“Faith kept me back a while,” replied the young man, with a tremor in his
voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly
unexpected.

It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these
two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was
about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown,
and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in
expression than features. Still they might have been taken for father and son.
And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as
simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world,
and who would not have felt abashed at the governor’s dinner table or in King
William’s court, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But
the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff,
which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it
might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This,
of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.

“Come, Goodman Brown,” cried his fellow-traveller, “this is a dull pace for the
beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary.”

“Friend,” said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, “having
kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return whence I
came. I have scruples touching the matter thou wot’st of.”

“Sayest thou so?” replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. “Let us walk on,
nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn
back. We are but a little way in the forest yet.”

“Too far! too far!” exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. “My
father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him.
We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the
martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path
and kept—”

“Such company, thou wouldst say,” observed the elder person, interpreting his
pause. “Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your
family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and that’s no trifle to say. I
helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so
smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a
pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in
King Philip’s war. They were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk
have we had along this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain
be friends with you for their sake.”

“If it be as thou sayest,” replied Goodman Brown, “I marvel they never spoke of
these matters; or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the
sort would have driven them from New England. We are a people of prayer, and
good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness.”

“Wickedness or not,” said the traveller with the twisted staff, “I have a very
general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a church have
drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers towns make me their
chairman; and a majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of
my interest. The governor and I, too—But these are state secrets.”

“Can this be so?” cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his
undisturbed companion. “Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and
council; they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman like
me. But, were I to go on with thee, how should I meet the eye of that good old
man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble both
Sabbath day and lecture day.”

Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now burst into
a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently that his snake-like
staff actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.

“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted he again and again; then composing himself, “Well, go on,
Goodman Brown, go on; but, prithee, don’t kill me with laughing.”

“Well, then, to end the matter at once,” said Goodman Brown, considerably
nettled, “there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and
I’d rather break my own.”

“Nay, if that be the case,” answered the other, “e’en go thy ways, Goodman
Brown. I would not for twenty old women like the one hobbling before us that
Faith should come to any harm.”

As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom
Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him
his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly
with the minister and Deacon Gookin.

“A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at
nightfall,” said he. “But with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through
the woods until we have left this Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to
you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and whither I was going.”

“Be it so,” said his fellow-traveller. “Betake you to the woods, and let me
keep the path.”

Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion,
who advanced softly along the road until he had come within a staff’s length of
the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best of her way, with singular
speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some indistinct words—a prayer,
doubtless—as she went. The traveller put forth his staff and touched her
withered neck with what seemed the serpent’s tail.

“The devil!” screamed the pious old lady.

“Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?” observed the traveller, confronting
her and leaning on his writhing stick.

“Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?” cried the good dame. “Yea, truly
is it, and in the very image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather
of the silly fellow that now is. But—would your worship believe
it?—my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by
that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I was all anointed with
the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf’s bane.”

“Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe,” said the shape of old
Goodman Brown.

“Ah, your worship knows the recipe,” cried the old lady, cackling aloud. “So,
as I was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I
made up my mind to foot it; for they tell me there is a nice young man to be
taken into communion to-night. But now your good worship will lend me your arm,
and we shall be there in a twinkling.”

“That can hardly be,” answered her friend. “I may not spare you my arm, Goody
Cloyse; but here is my staff, if you will.”

So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being
one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi. Of this
fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes
in astonishment, and, looking down again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the
serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly
as if nothing had happened.

“That old woman taught me my catechism,” said the young man; and there was a
world of meaning in this simple comment.

They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his companion
to make good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly that his
arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his auditor than to be
suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a branch of maple to serve for a
walking stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs, which were
wet with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them they became strangely
withered and dried up as with a week’s sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a
good free pace, until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown
sat himself down on the stump of a tree and refused to go any farther.

“Friend,” said he, stubbornly, “my mind is made up. Not another step will I
budge on this errand. What if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil
when I thought she was going to heaven: is that any reason why I should quit my
dear Faith and go after her?”

“You will think better of this by and by,” said his acquaintance, composedly.
“Sit here and rest yourself a while; and when you feel like moving again, there
is my staff to help you along.”

Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily
out of sight as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat
a few moments by the roadside, applauding himself greatly, and thinking with
how clear a conscience he should meet the minister in his morning walk, nor
shrink from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his
that very night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely and
sweetly now, in the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy
meditations, Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed
it advisable to conceal himself within the verge of the forest, conscious of
the guilty purpose that had brought him thither, though now so happily turned
from it.

On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices,
conversing soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass
along the road, within a few yards of the young man’s hiding-place; but, owing
doubtless to the depth of the gloom at that particular spot, neither the
travellers nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the
small boughs by the wayside, it could not be seen that they intercepted, even
for a moment, the faint gleam from the strip of bright sky athwart which they
must have passed. Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe,
pulling aside the branches and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst
without discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could
have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices of the
minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont to do,
when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council. While yet within
hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.

“Of the two, reverend sir,” said the voice like the deacon’s, “I had rather
miss an ordination dinner than to-night’s meeting. They tell me that some of
our community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, and others from
Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the Indian powwows, who, after
their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us. Moreover, there
is a goodly young woman to be taken into communion.”

“Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!” replied the solemn old tones of the minister.
“Spur up, or we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on
the ground.”

The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty
air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or
solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying so
deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree for
support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and overburdened with
the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether
there really was a heaven above him. Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars
brightening in it.

“With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!”
cried Goodman Brown.

While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted
his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the
zenith and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still visible, except
directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly
northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a
confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once the listener fancied that he could
distinguish the accents of towns-people of his own, men and women, both pious
and ungodly, many of whom he had met at the communion table, and had seen
others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds,
he doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest,
whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones,
heard daily in the sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a cloud
of night There was one voice of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with
an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would
grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners,
seemed to encourage her onward.

“Faith!” shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation; and the
echoes of the forest mocked him, crying, “Faith! Faith!” as if bewildered
wretches were seeking her all through the wilderness.

The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy
husband held his breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately
in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud
swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something
fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The
young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.

“My Faith is gone!” cried he, after one stupefied moment. “There is no good on
earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given.”

And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown
grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along
the forest path rather than to walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier
and more faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of
the dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that guides mortal
man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds—the
creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians;
while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave
a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn.
But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other
horrors.

“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him.

“Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with your
deviltry. Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself, and
here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he fear you.”

In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful
than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing
his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid
blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter as set all the echoes of the
forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less
hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his
course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as
when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and
throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He paused,
in a lull of the tempest that had driven him onward, and heard the swell of
what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly from a distance with the weight of many
voices. He knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the village
meeting-house. The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not
of human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in
awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out, and his cry was lost to his
own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.

In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full upon
his eyes. At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the
forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude, natural resemblance either to an altar
or a pulpit, and surrounded by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their
stems untouched, like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage that
had overgrown the summit of the rock was all on fire, blazing high into the
night and fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy
festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose and fell, a numerous
congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and again
grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods
at once.

“A grave and dark-clad company,” quoth Goodman Brown.

In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between gloom and
splendor, appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council board of
the province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly
heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in
the land. Some affirm that the lady of the governor was there. At least there
were high dames well known to her, and wives of honored husbands, and widows, a
great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young
girls, who trembled lest their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden
gleams of light flashing over the obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he
recognized a score of the church members of Salem village famous for their
especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts
of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But, irreverently consorting with
these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these
chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of
spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected
even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the
wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered also among their
pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared
their native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English
witchcraft.

“But where is Faith?” thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart,
he trembled.

Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious
love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of
sin, and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of
fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and still the chorus of the desert swelled
between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the final peal of
that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing
streams, the howling beasts, and every other voice of the unconcerted
wilderness were mingling and according with the voice of guilty man in homage
to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and
obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths above
the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock shot redly forth
and formed a glowing arch above its base, where now appeared a figure. With
reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb and
manner, to some grave divine of the New England churches.

“Bring forth the converts!” cried a voice that echoed through the field and
rolled into the forest.

At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees and
approached the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood by the
sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He could have well-nigh sworn
that the shape of his own dead father beckoned him to advance, looking downward
from a smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her
hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one
step, nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon
Gookin seized his arms and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came also the
slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher
of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had received the devil’s promise to
be queen of hell. A rampant hag was she. And there stood the proselytes beneath
the canopy of fire.

“Welcome, my children,” said the dark figure, “to the communion of your race.
Ye have found thus young your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind
you!”

They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend
worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.

“There,” resumed the sable form, “are all whom ye have reverenced from youth.
Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin,
contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations
heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping assembly. This night it
shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of
the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households;
how many a woman, eager for widows’ weeds, has given her husband a drink at
bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths
have made haste to inherit their fathers’ wealth; and how fair
damsels—blush not, sweet ones—have dug little graves in the garden,
and bidden me, the sole guest to an infant’s funeral. By the sympathy of your
human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places—whether in church,
bedchamber, street, field, or forest—where crime has been committed, and
shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood
spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the
deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly
supplies more evil impulses than human power—than my power at its
utmost—can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each
other.”

They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man
beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed
altar.

“Lo, there ye stand, my children,” said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone,
almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could
yet mourn for our miserable race. “Depending upon one another’s hearts, ye had
still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is
the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my
children, to the communion of your race.”

“Welcome,” repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.

And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on
the verge of wickedness in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in
the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood?
or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the shape of evil dip his hand and
prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be
partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others,
both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast
one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the
next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they disclosed
and what they saw!

“Faith! Faith!” cried the husband, “look up to heaven, and resist the wicked
one.”

Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found himself
amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind which died
heavily away through the forest. He staggered against the rock, and felt it
chill and damp; while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled
his cheek with the coldest dew.

The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem
village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was
taking a walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate
his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank
from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at
domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open
window. “What God doth the wizard pray to?” quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse,
that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine at her own lattice,
catechizing a little girl who had brought her a pint of morning’s milk. Goodman
Brown snatched away the child as from the grasp of the fiend himself. Turning
the corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith, with the pink
ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him
that she skipped along the street and almost kissed her husband before the
whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and
passed on without a greeting.

Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of
a witch-meeting?

Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman
Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate
man did he become from the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day,
when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen because an
anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain.
When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and,
with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of
saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery
unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should
thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking suddenly
at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide,
when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and
gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was
borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and
children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors not a few,
they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.

RAPPACCINI’S DAUGHTER

A young man, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, very long ago, from the more
southern region of Italy, to pursue his studies at the University of Padua.
Giovanni, who had but a scanty supply of gold ducats in his pocket, took
lodgings in a high and gloomy chamber of an old edifice which looked not
unworthy to have been the palace of a Paduan noble, and which, in fact,
exhibited over its entrance the armorial bearings of a family long since
extinct. The young stranger, who was not unstudied in the great poem of his
country, recollected that one of the ancestors of this family, and perhaps an
occupant of this very mansion, had been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the
immortal agonies of his Inferno. These reminiscences and associations, together
with the tendency to heartbreak natural to a young man for the first time out
of his native sphere, caused Giovanni to sigh heavily as he looked around the
desolate and ill-furnished apartment.

“Holy Virgin, signor!” cried old Dame Lisabetta, who, won by the youth’s
remarkable beauty of person, was kindly endeavoring to give the chamber a
habitable air, “what a sigh was that to come out of a young man’s heart! Do you
find this old mansion gloomy? For the love of Heaven, then, put your head out
of the window, and you will see as bright sunshine as you have left in Naples.”

Guasconti mechanically did as the old woman advised, but could not quite agree
with her that the Paduan sunshine was as cheerful as that of southern Italy.
Such as it was, however, it fell upon a garden beneath the window and expended
its fostering influences on a variety of plants, which seemed to have been
cultivated with exceeding care.

“Does this garden belong to the house?” asked Giovanni.

“Heaven forbid, signor, unless it were fruitful of better pot herbs than any
that grow there now,” answered old Lisabetta. “No; that garden is cultivated by
the own hands of Signor Giacomo Rappaccini, the famous doctor, who, I warrant
him, has been heard of as far as Naples. It is said that he distils these
plants into medicines that are as potent as a charm. Oftentimes you may see the
signor doctor at work, and perchance the signora, his daughter, too, gathering
the strange flowers that grow in the garden.”

The old woman had now done what she could for the aspect of the chamber; and,
commending the young man to the protection of the saints, took her departure.

Giovanni still found no better occupation than to look down into the garden
beneath his window. From its appearance, he judged it to be one of those
botanic gardens which were of earlier date in Padua than elsewhere in Italy or
in the world. Or, not improbably, it might once have been the pleasure-place of
an opulent family; for there was the ruin of a marble fountain in the centre,
sculptured with rare art, but so wofully shattered that it was impossible to
trace the original design from the chaos of remaining fragments. The water,
however, continued to gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully as ever.
A little gurgling sound ascended to the young man’s window, and made him feel
as if the fountain were an immortal spirit that sung its song unceasingly and
without heeding the vicissitudes around it, while one century imbodied it in
marble and another scattered the perishable garniture on the soil. All about
the pool into which the water subsided grew various plants, that seemed to
require a plentiful supply of moisture for the nourishment of gigantic leaves,
and in some instances, flowers gorgeously magnificent. There was one shrub in
particular, set in a marble vase in the midst of the pool, that bore a
profusion of purple blossoms, each of which had the lustre and richness of a
gem; and the whole together made a show so resplendent that it seemed enough to
illuminate the garden, even had there been no sunshine. Every portion of the
soil was peopled with plants and herbs, which, if less beautiful, still bore
tokens of assiduous care, as if all had their individual virtues, known to the
scientific mind that fostered them. Some were placed in urns, rich with old
carving, and others in common garden pots; some crept serpent-like along the
ground or climbed on high, using whatever means of ascent was offered them. One
plant had wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which was thus quite
veiled and shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage, so happily arranged that
it might have served a sculptor for a study.

While Giovanni stood at the window he heard a rustling behind a screen of
leaves, and became aware that a person was at work in the garden. His figure
soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no common laborer, but
a tall, emaciated, sallow, and sickly-looking man, dressed in a scholar’s garb
of black. He was beyond the middle term of life, with gray hair, a thin, gray
beard, and a face singularly marked with intellect and cultivation, but which
could never, even in his more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of
heart.

Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this scientific gardener
examined every shrub which grew in his path: it seemed as if he was looking
into their inmost nature, making observations in regard to their creative
essence, and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape and another in that,
and wherefore such and such flowers differed among themselves in hue and
perfume. Nevertheless, in spite of this deep intelligence on his part, there
was no approach to intimacy between himself and these vegetable existences. On
the contrary, he avoided their actual touch or the direct inhaling of their
odors with a caution that impressed Giovanni most disagreeably; for the man’s
demeanor was that of one walking among malignant influences, such as savage
beasts, or deadly snakes, or evil spirits, which, should he allow them one
moment of license, would wreak upon him some terrible fatality. It was
strangely frightful to the young man’s imagination to see this air of
insecurity in a person cultivating a garden, that most simple and innocent of
human toils, and which had been alike the joy and labor of the unfallen parents
of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of the present world? And this
man, with such a perception of harm in what his own hands caused to
grow,—was he the Adam?

The distrustful gardener, while plucking away the dead leaves or pruning the
too luxuriant growth of the shrubs, defended his hands with a pair of thick
gloves. Nor were these his only armor. When, in his walk through the garden, he
came to the magnificent plant that hung its purple gems beside the marble
fountain, he placed a kind of mask over his mouth and nostrils, as if all this
beauty did but conceal a deadlier malice; but, finding his task still too
dangerous, he drew back, removed the mask, and called loudly, but in the infirm
voice of a person affected with inward disease, “Beatrice! Beatrice!”

“Here am I, my father. What would you?” cried a rich and youthful voice from
the window of the opposite house—a voice as rich as a tropical sunset,
and which made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep hues of purple
or crimson and of perfumes heavily delectable. “Are you in the garden?”

“Yes, Beatrice,” answered the gardener, “and I need your help.”

Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young girl,
arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers,
beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more
would have been too much. She looked redundant with life, health, and energy;
all of which attributes were bound down and compressed, as it were and girdled
tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone. Yet Giovanni’s fancy must
have grown morbid while he looked down into the garden; for the impression
which the fair stranger made upon him was as if here were another flower, the
human sister of those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than
the richest of them, but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be
approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden path, it was
observable that she handled and inhaled the odor of several of the plants which
her father had most sedulously avoided.

“Here, Beatrice,” said the latter, “see how many needful offices require to be
done to our chief treasure. Yet, shattered as I am, my life might pay the
penalty of approaching it so closely as circumstances demand. Henceforth, I
fear, this plant must be consigned to your sole charge.”

“And gladly will I undertake it,” cried again the rich tones of the young lady,
as she bent towards the magnificent plant and opened her arms as if to embrace
it. “Yes, my sister, my splendour, it shall be Beatrice’s task to nurse and
serve thee; and thou shalt reward her with thy kisses and perfumed breath,
which to her is as the breath of life.”

Then, with all the tenderness in her manner that was so strikingly expressed in
her words, she busied herself with such attentions as the plant seemed to
require; and Giovanni, at his lofty window, rubbed his eyes and almost doubted
whether it were a girl tending her favorite flower, or one sister performing
the duties of affection to another. The scene soon terminated. Whether Dr.
Rappaccini had finished his labors in the garden, or that his watchful eye had
caught the stranger’s face, he now took his daughter’s arm and retired. Night
was already closing in; oppressive exhalations seemed to proceed from the
plants and steal upward past the open window; and Giovanni, closing the
lattice, went to his couch and dreamed of a rich flower and beautiful girl.
Flower and maiden were different, and yet the same, and fraught with some
strange peril in either shape.

But there is an influence in the light of morning that tends to rectify
whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred during the
sun’s decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the less wholesome glow
of moonshine. Giovanni’s first movement, on starting from sleep, was to throw
open the window and gaze down into the garden which his dreams had made so
fertile of mysteries. He was surprised and a little ashamed to find how real
and matter-of-fact an affair it proved to be, in the first rays of the sun
which gilded the dew-drops that hung upon leaf and blossom, and, while giving a
brighter beauty to each rare flower, brought everything within the limits of
ordinary experience. The young man rejoiced that, in the heart of the barren
city, he had the privilege of overlooking this spot of lovely and luxuriant
vegetation. It would serve, he said to himself, as a symbolic language to keep
him in communion with Nature. Neither the sickly and thoughtworn Dr. Giacomo
Rappaccini, it is true, nor his brilliant daughter, were now visible; so that
Giovanni could not determine how much of the singularity which he attributed to
both was due to their own qualities and how much to his wonder-working fancy;
but he was inclined to take a most rational view of the whole matter.

In the course of the day he paid his respects to Signor Pietro Baglioni,
professor of medicine in the university, a physician of eminent repute to whom
Giovanni had brought a letter of introduction. The professor was an elderly
personage, apparently of genial nature, and habits that might almost be called
jovial. He kept the young man to dinner, and made himself very agreeable by the
freedom and liveliness of his conversation, especially when warmed by a flask
or two of Tuscan wine. Giovanni, conceiving that men of science, inhabitants of
the same city, must needs be on familiar terms with one another, took an
opportunity to mention the name of Dr. Rappaccini. But the professor did not
respond with so much cordiality as he had anticipated.

“Ill would it become a teacher of the divine art of medicine,” said Professor
Pietro Baglioni, in answer to a question of Giovanni, “to withhold due and
well-considered praise of a physician so eminently skilled as Rappaccini; but,
on the other hand, I should answer it but scantily to my conscience were I to
permit a worthy youth like yourself, Signor Giovanni, the son of an ancient
friend, to imbibe erroneous ideas respecting a man who might hereafter chance
to hold your life and death in his hands. The truth is, our worshipful Dr.
Rappaccini has as much science as any member of the faculty—with perhaps
one single exception—in Padua, or all Italy; but there are certain grave
objections to his professional character.”

“And what are they?” asked the young man.

“Has my friend Giovanni any disease of body or heart, that he is so inquisitive
about physicians?” said the professor, with a smile. “But as for Rappaccini, it
is said of him—and I, who know the man well, can answer for its
truth—that he cares infinitely more for science than for mankind. His
patients are interesting to him only as subjects for some new experiment. He
would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was
dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to
the great heap of his accumulated knowledge.”

“Methinks he is an awful man indeed,” remarked Guasconti, mentally recalling
the cold and purely intellectual aspect of Rappaccini. “And yet, worshipful
professor, is it not a noble spirit? Are there many men capable of so spiritual
a love of science?”

“God forbid,” answered the professor, somewhat testily; “at least, unless they
take sounder views of the healing art than those adopted by Rappaccini. It is
his theory that all medicinal virtues are comprised within those substances
which we term vegetable poisons. These he cultivates with his own hands, and is
said even to have produced new varieties of poison, more horribly deleterious
than Nature, without the assistance of this learned person, would ever have
plagued the world withal. That the signor doctor does less mischief than might
be expected with such dangerous substances is undeniable. Now and then, it must
be owned, he has effected, or seemed to effect, a marvellous cure; but, to tell
you my private mind, Signor Giovanni, he should receive little credit for such
instances of success,—they being probably the work of chance,—but
should be held strictly accountable for his failures, which may justly be
considered his own work.”

The youth might have taken Baglioni’s opinions with many grains of allowance
had he known that there was a professional warfare of long continuance between
him and Dr. Rappaccini, in which the latter was generally thought to have
gained the advantage. If the reader be inclined to judge for himself, we refer
him to certain black-letter tracts on both sides, preserved in the medical
department of the University of Padua.

“I know not, most learned professor,” returned Giovanni, after musing on what
had been said of Rappaccini’s exclusive zeal for science,—“I know not how
dearly this physician may love his art; but surely there is one object more
dear to him. He has a daughter.”

“Aha!” cried the professor, with a laugh. “So now our friend Giovanni’s secret
is out. You have heard of this daughter, whom all the young men in Padua are
wild about, though not half a dozen have ever had the good hap to see her face.
I know little of the Signora Beatrice save that Rappaccini is said to have
instructed her deeply in his science, and that, young and beautiful as fame
reports her, she is already qualified to fill a professor’s chair. Perchance
her father destines her for mine! Other absurd rumors there be, not worth
talking about or listening to. So now, Signor Giovanni, drink off your glass of
lachryma.”

Guasconti returned to his lodgings somewhat heated with the wine he had
quaffed, and which caused his brain to swim with strange fantasies in reference
to Dr. Rappaccini and the beautiful Beatrice. On his way, happening to pass by
a florist’s, he bought a fresh bouquet of flowers.

Ascending to his chamber, he seated himself near the window, but within the
shadow thrown by the depth of the wall, so that he could look down into the
garden with little risk of being discovered. All beneath his eye was a
solitude. The strange plants were basking in the sunshine, and now and then
nodding gently to one another, as if in acknowledgment of sympathy and kindred.
In the midst, by the shattered fountain, grew the magnificent shrub, with its
purple gems clustering all over it; they glowed in the air, and gleamed back
again out of the depths of the pool, which thus seemed to overflow with colored
radiance from the rich reflection that was steeped in it. At first, as we have
said, the garden was a solitude. Soon, however,—as Giovanni had half
hoped, half feared, would be the case,—a figure appeared beneath the
antique sculptured portal, and came down between the rows of plants, inhaling
their various perfumes as if she were one of those beings of old classic fable
that lived upon sweet odors. On again beholding Beatrice, the young man was
even startled to perceive how much her beauty exceeded his recollection of it;
so brilliant, so vivid, was its character, that she glowed amid the sunlight,
and, as Giovanni whispered to himself, positively illuminated the more shadowy
intervals of the garden path. Her face being now more revealed than on the
former occasion, he was struck by its expression of simplicity and
sweetness,—qualities that had not entered into his idea of her character,
and which made him ask anew what manner of mortal she might be. Nor did he fail
again to observe, or imagine, an analogy between the beautiful girl and the
gorgeous shrub that hung its gemlike flowers over the fountain,—a
resemblance which Beatrice seemed to have indulged a fantastic humor in
heightening, both by the arrangement of her dress and the selection of its
hues.

Approaching the shrub, she threw open her arms, as with a passionate ardor, and
drew its branches into an intimate embrace—so intimate that her features
were hidden in its leafy bosom and her glistening ringlets all intermingled
with the flowers.

“Give me thy breath, my sister,” exclaimed Beatrice; “for I am faint with
common air. And give me this flower of thine, which I separate with gentlest
fingers from the stem and place it close beside my heart.”

With these words the beautiful daughter of Rappaccini plucked one of the
richest blossoms of the shrub, and was about to fasten it in her bosom. But
now, unless Giovanni’s draughts of wine had bewildered his senses, a singular
incident occurred. A small orange-colored reptile, of the lizard or chameleon
species, chanced to be creeping along the path, just at the feet of Beatrice.
It appeared to Giovanni,—but, at the distance from which he gazed, he
could scarcely have seen anything so minute,—it appeared to him, however,
that a drop or two of moisture from the broken stem of the flower descended
upon the lizard’s head. For an instant the reptile contorted itself violently,
and then lay motionless in the sunshine. Beatrice observed this remarkable
phenomenon and crossed herself, sadly, but without surprise; nor did she
therefore hesitate to arrange the fatal flower in her bosom. There it blushed,
and almost glimmered with the dazzling effect of a precious stone, adding to
her dress and aspect the one appropriate charm which nothing else in the world
could have supplied. But Giovanni, out of the shadow of his window, bent
forward and shrank back, and murmured and trembled.

“Am I awake? Have I my senses?” said he to himself. “What is this being?
Beautiful shall I call her, or inexpressibly terrible?”

Beatrice now strayed carelessly through the garden, approaching closer beneath
Giovanni’s window, so that he was compelled to thrust his head quite out of its
concealment in order to gratify the intense and painful curiosity which she
excited. At this moment there came a beautiful insect over the garden wall; it
had, perhaps, wandered through the city, and found no flowers or verdure among
those antique haunts of men until the heavy perfumes of Dr. Rappaccini’s shrubs
had lured it from afar. Without alighting on the flowers, this winged
brightness seemed to be attracted by Beatrice, and lingered in the air and
fluttered about her head. Now, here it could not be but that Giovanni
Guasconti’s eyes deceived him. Be that as it might, he fancied that, while
Beatrice was gazing at the insect with childish delight, it grew faint and fell
at her feet; its bright wings shivered; it was dead—from no cause that he
could discern, unless it were the atmosphere of her breath. Again Beatrice
crossed herself and sighed heavily as she bent over the dead insect.

An impulsive movement of Giovanni drew her eyes to the window. There she beheld
the beautiful head of the young man—rather a Grecian than an Italian
head, with fair, regular features, and a glistening of gold among his
ringlets—gazing down upon her like a being that hovered in mid air.
Scarcely knowing what he did, Giovanni threw down the bouquet which he had
hitherto held in his hand.

“Signora,” said he, “there are pure and healthful flowers. Wear them for the
sake of Giovanni Guasconti.”

“Thanks, signor,” replied Beatrice, with her rich voice, that came forth as it
were like a gush of music, and with a mirthful expression half childish and
half woman-like. “I accept your gift, and would fain recompense it with this
precious purple flower; but if I toss it into the air it will not reach you. So
Signor Guasconti must even content himself with my thanks.”

She lifted the bouquet from the ground, and then, as if inwardly ashamed at
having stepped aside from her maidenly reserve to respond to a stranger’s
greeting, passed swiftly homeward through the garden. But few as the moments
were, it seemed to Giovanni, when she was on the point of vanishing beneath the
sculptured portal, that his beautiful bouquet was already beginning to wither
in her grasp. It was an idle thought; there could be no possibility of
distinguishing a faded flower from a fresh one at so great a distance.

For many days after this incident the young man avoided the window that looked
into Dr. Rappaccini’s garden, as if something ugly and monstrous would have
blasted his eyesight had he been betrayed into a glance. He felt conscious of
having put himself, to a certain extent, within the influence of an
unintelligible power by the communication which he had opened with Beatrice.
The wisest course would have been, if his heart were in any real danger, to
quit his lodgings and Padua itself at once; the next wiser, to have accustomed
himself, as far as possible, to the familiar and daylight view of
Beatrice—thus bringing her rigidly and systematically within the limits
of ordinary experience. Least of all, while avoiding her sight, ought Giovanni
to have remained so near this extraordinary being that the proximity and
possibility even of intercourse should give a kind of substance and reality to
the wild vagaries which his imagination ran riot continually in producing.
Guasconti had not a deep heart—or, at all events, its depths were not
sounded now; but he had a quick fancy, and an ardent southern temperament,
which rose every instant to a higher fever pitch. Whether or no Beatrice
possessed those terrible attributes, that fatal breath, the affinity with those
so beautiful and deadly flowers which were indicated by what Giovanni had
witnessed, she had at least instilled a fierce and subtle poison into his
system. It was not love, although her rich beauty was a madness to him; nor
horror, even while he fancied her spirit to be imbued with the same baneful
essence that seemed to pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both
love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered
like the other. Giovanni knew not what to dread; still less did he know what to
hope; yet hope and dread kept a continual warfare in his breast, alternately
vanquishing one another and starting up afresh to renew the contest. Blessed
are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid intermixture
of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions.

Sometimes he endeavored to assuage the fever of his spirit by a rapid walk
through the streets of Padua or beyond its gates: his footsteps kept time with
the throbbings of his brain, so that the walk was apt to accelerate itself to a
race. One day he found himself arrested; his arm was seized by a portly
personage, who had turned back on recognizing the young man and expended much
breath in overtaking him.

“Signor Giovanni! Stay, my young friend!” cried he. “Have you forgotten me?
That might well be the case if I were as much altered as yourself.”

It was Baglioni, whom Giovanni had avoided ever since their first meeting, from
a doubt that the professor’s sagacity would look too deeply into his secrets.
Endeavoring to recover himself, he stared forth wildly from his inner world
into the outer one and spoke like a man in a dream.

“Yes; I am Giovanni Guasconti. You are Professor Pietro Baglioni. Now let me
pass!”

“Not yet, not yet, Signor Giovanni Guasconti,” said the professor, smiling, but
at the same time scrutinizing the youth with an earnest glance. “What! did I
grow up side by side with your father? and shall his son pass me like a
stranger in these old streets of Padua? Stand still, Signor Giovanni; for we
must have a word or two before we part.”

“Speedily, then, most worshipful professor, speedily,” said Giovanni, with
feverish impatience. “Does not your worship see that I am in haste?”

Now, while he was speaking there came a man in black along the street, stooping
and moving feebly like a person in inferior health. His face was all overspread
with a most sickly and sallow hue, but yet so pervaded with an expression of
piercing and active intellect that an observer might easily have overlooked the
merely physical attributes and have seen only this wonderful energy. As he
passed, this person exchanged a cold and distant salutation with Baglioni, but
fixed his eyes upon Giovanni with an intentness that seemed to bring out
whatever was within him worthy of notice. Nevertheless, there was a peculiar
quietness in the look, as if taking merely a speculative, not a human interest,
in the young man.

“It is Dr. Rappaccini!” whispered the professor when the stranger had passed.
“Has he ever seen your face before?”

“Not that I know,” answered Giovanni, starting at the name.

“He HAS seen you! he must have seen you!” said Baglioni, hastily. “For some
purpose or other, this man of science is making a study of you. I know that
look of his! It is the same that coldly illuminates his face as he bends over a
bird, a mouse, or a butterfly, which, in pursuance of some experiment, he has
killed by the perfume of a flower; a look as deep as Nature itself, but without
Nature’s warmth of love. Signor Giovanni, I will stake my life upon it, you are
the subject of one of Rappaccini’s experiments!”

“Will you make a fool of me?” cried Giovanni, passionately. “THAT, signor
professor, were an untoward experiment.”

“Patience! patience!” replied the imperturbable professor. “I tell thee, my
poor Giovanni, that Rappaccini has a scientific interest in thee. Thou hast
fallen into fearful hands! And the Signora Beatrice,—what part does she
act in this mystery?”

But Guasconti, finding Baglioni’s pertinacity intolerable, here broke away, and
was gone before the professor could again seize his arm. He looked after the
young man intently and shook his head.

“This must not be,” said Baglioni to himself. “The youth is the son of my old
friend, and shall not come to any harm from which the arcana of medical science
can preserve him. Besides, it is too insufferable an impertinence in
Rappaccini, thus to snatch the lad out of my own hands, as I may say, and make
use of him for his infernal experiments. This daughter of his! It shall be
looked to. Perchance, most learned Rappaccini, I may foil you where you little
dream of it!”

Meanwhile Giovanni had pursued a circuitous route, and at length found himself
at the door of his lodgings. As he crossed the threshold he was met by old
Lisabetta, who smirked and smiled, and was evidently desirous to attract his
attention; vainly, however, as the ebullition of his feelings had momentarily
subsided into a cold and dull vacuity. He turned his eyes full upon the
withered face that was puckering itself into a smile, but seemed to behold it
not. The old dame, therefore, laid her grasp upon his cloak.

“Signor! signor!” whispered she, still with a smile over the whole breadth of
her visage, so that it looked not unlike a grotesque carving in wood, darkened
by centuries. “Listen, signor! There is a private entrance into the garden!”

“What do you say?” exclaimed Giovanni, turning quickly about, as if an
inanimate thing should start into feverish life. “A private entrance into Dr.
Rappaccini’s garden?”

“Hush! hush! not so loud!” whispered Lisabetta, putting her hand over his
mouth. “Yes; into the worshipful doctor’s garden, where you may see all his
fine shrubbery. Many a young man in Padua would give gold to be admitted among
those flowers.”

Giovanni put a piece of gold into her hand.

“Show me the way,” said he.

A surmise, probably excited by his conversation with Baglioni, crossed his
mind, that this interposition of old Lisabetta might perchance be connected
with the intrigue, whatever were its nature, in which the professor seemed to
suppose that Dr. Rappaccini was involving him. But such a suspicion, though it
disturbed Giovanni, was inadequate to restrain him. The instant that he was
aware of the possibility of approaching Beatrice, it seemed an absolute
necessity of his existence to do so. It mattered not whether she were angel or
demon; he was irrevocably within her sphere, and must obey the law that whirled
him onward, in ever-lessening circles, towards a result which he did not
attempt to foreshadow; and yet, strange to say, there came across him a sudden
doubt whether this intense interest on his part were not delusory; whether it
were really of so deep and positive a nature as to justify him in now thrusting
himself into an incalculable position; whether it were not merely the fantasy
of a young man’s brain, only slightly or not at all connected with his heart.

He paused, hesitated, turned half about, but again went on. His withered guide
led him along several obscure passages, and finally undid a door, through
which, as it was opened, there came the sight and sound of rustling leaves,
with the broken sunshine glimmering among them. Giovanni stepped forth, and,
forcing himself through the entanglement of a shrub that wreathed its tendrils
over the hidden entrance, stood beneath his own window in the open area of Dr.
Rappaccini’s garden.

How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass and
dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find
ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it
would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate! Fate delights to
thwart us thus. Passion will choose his own time to rush upon the scene, and
lingers sluggishly behind when an appropriate adjustment of events would seem
to summon his appearance. So was it now with Giovanni. Day after day his pulses
had throbbed with feverish blood at the improbable idea of an interview with
Beatrice, and of standing with her, face to face, in this very garden, basking
in the Oriental sunshine of her beauty, and snatching from her full gaze the
mystery which he deemed the riddle of his own existence. But now there was a
singular and untimely equanimity within his breast. He threw a glance around
the garden to discover if Beatrice or her father were present, and, perceiving
that he was alone, began a critical observation of the plants.

The aspect of one and all of them dissatisfied him; their gorgeousness seemed
fierce, passionate, and even unnatural. There was hardly an individual shrub
which a wanderer, straying by himself through a forest, would not have been
startled to find growing wild, as if an unearthly face had glared at him out of
the thicket. Several also would have shocked a delicate instinct by an
appearance of artificialness indicating that there had been such commixture,
and, as it were, adultery, of various vegetable species, that the production
was no longer of God’s making, but the monstrous offspring of man’s depraved
fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty. They were probably the
result of experiment, which in one or two cases had succeeded in mingling
plants individually lovely into a compound possessing the questionable and
ominous character that distinguished the whole growth of the garden. In fine,
Giovanni recognized but two or three plants in the collection, and those of a
kind that he well knew to be poisonous. While busy with these contemplations he
heard the rustling of a silken garment, and, turning, beheld Beatrice emerging
from beneath the sculptured portal.

Giovanni had not considered with himself what should be his deportment; whether
he should apologize for his intrusion into the garden, or assume that he was
there with the privity at least, if not by the desire, of Dr. Rappaccini or his
daughter; but Beatrice’s manner placed him at his ease, though leaving him
still in doubt by what agency he had gained admittance. She came lightly along
the path and met him near the broken fountain. There was surprise in her face,
but brightened by a simple and kind expression of pleasure.

“You are a connoisseur in flowers, signor,” said Beatrice, with a smile,
alluding to the bouquet which he had flung her from the window. “It is no
marvel, therefore, if the sight of my father’s rare collection has tempted you
to take a nearer view. If he were here, he could tell you many strange and
interesting facts as to the nature and habits of these shrubs; for he has spent
a lifetime in such studies, and this garden is his world.”

“And yourself, lady,” observed Giovanni, “if fame says true,—you likewise
are deeply skilled in the virtues indicated by these rich blossoms and these
spicy perfumes. Would you deign to be my instructress, I should prove an apter
scholar than if taught by Signor Rappaccini himself.”

“Are there such idle rumors?” asked Beatrice, with the music of a pleasant
laugh. “Do people say that I am skilled in my father’s science of plants? What
a jest is there! No; though I have grown up among these flowers, I know no more
of them than their hues and perfume; and sometimes methinks I would fain rid
myself of even that small knowledge. There are many flowers here, and those not
the least brilliant, that shock and offend me when they meet my eye. But pray,
signor, do not believe these stories about my science. Believe nothing of me
save what you see with your own eyes.”

“And must I believe all that I have seen with my own eyes?” asked Giovanni,
pointedly, while the recollection of former scenes made him shrink. “No,
signora; you demand too little of me. Bid me believe nothing save what comes
from your own lips.”

It would appear that Beatrice understood him. There came a deep flush to her
cheek; but she looked full into Giovanni’s eyes, and responded to his gaze of
uneasy suspicion with a queenlike haughtiness.

“I do so bid you, signor,” she replied. “Forget whatever you may have fancied
in regard to me. If true to the outward senses, still it may be false in its
essence; but the words of Beatrice Rappaccini’s lips are true from the depths
of the heart outward. Those you may believe.”

A fervor glowed in her whole aspect and beamed upon Giovanni’s consciousness
like the light of truth itself; but while she spoke there was a fragrance in
the atmosphere around her, rich and delightful, though evanescent, yet which
the young man, from an indefinable reluctance, scarcely dared to draw into his
lungs. It might be the odor of the flowers. Could it be Beatrice’s breath which
thus embalmed her words with a strange richness, as if by steeping them in her
heart? A faintness passed like a shadow over Giovanni and flitted away; he
seemed to gaze through the beautiful girl’s eyes into her transparent soul, and
felt no more doubt or fear.

The tinge of passion that had colored Beatrice’s manner vanished; she became
gay, and appeared to derive a pure delight from her communion with the youth
not unlike what the maiden of a lonely island might have felt conversing with a
voyager from the civilized world. Evidently her experience of life had been
confined within the limits of that garden. She talked now about matters as
simple as the daylight or summer clouds, and now asked questions in reference
to the city, or Giovanni’s distant home, his friends, his mother, and his
sisters—questions indicating such seclusion, and such lack of familiarity
with modes and forms, that Giovanni responded as if to an infant. Her spirit
gushed out before him like a fresh rill that was just catching its first
glimpse of the sunlight and wondering at the reflections of earth and sky which
were flung into its bosom. There came thoughts, too, from a deep source, and
fantasies of a gemlike brilliancy, as if diamonds and rubies sparkled upward
among the bubbles of the fountain. Ever and anon there gleamed across the young
man’s mind a sense of wonder that he should be walking side by side with the
being who had so wrought upon his imagination, whom he had idealized in such
hues of terror, in whom he had positively witnessed such manifestations of
dreadful attributes,—that he should be conversing with Beatrice like a
brother, and should find her so human and so maidenlike. But such reflections
were only momentary; the effect of her character was too real not to make
itself familiar at once.

In this free intercourse they had strayed through the garden, and now, after
many turns among its avenues, were come to the shattered fountain, beside which
grew the magnificent shrub, with its treasury of glowing blossoms. A fragrance
was diffused from it which Giovanni recognized as identical with that which he
had attributed to Beatrice’s breath, but incomparably more powerful. As her
eyes fell upon it, Giovanni beheld her press her hand to her bosom as if her
heart were throbbing suddenly and painfully.

“For the first time in my life,” murmured she, addressing the shrub, “I had
forgotten thee.”

“I remember, signora,” said Giovanni, “that you once promised to reward me with
one of these living gems for the bouquet which I had the happy boldness to
fling to your feet. Permit me now to pluck it as a memorial of this interview.”

He made a step towards the shrub with extended hand; but Beatrice darted
forward, uttering a shriek that went through his heart like a dagger. She
caught his hand and drew it back with the whole force of her slender figure.
Giovanni felt her touch thrilling through his fibres.

“Touch it not!” exclaimed she, in a voice of agony. “Not for thy life! It is
fatal!”

Then, hiding her face, she fled from him and vanished beneath the sculptured
portal. As Giovanni followed her with his eyes, he beheld the emaciated figure
and pale intelligence of Dr. Rappaccini, who had been watching the scene, he
knew not how long, within the shadow of the entrance.

No sooner was Guasconti alone in his chamber than the image of Beatrice came
back to his passionate musings, invested with all the witchery that had been
gathering around it ever since his first glimpse of her, and now likewise
imbued with a tender warmth of girlish womanhood. She was human; her nature was
endowed with all gentle and feminine qualities; she was worthiest to be
worshipped; she was capable, surely, on her part, of the height and heroism of
love. Those tokens which he had hitherto considered as proofs of a frightful
peculiarity in her physical and moral system were now either forgotten, or, by
the subtle sophistry of passion transmitted into a golden crown of enchantment,
rendering Beatrice the more admirable by so much as she was the more unique.
Whatever had looked ugly was now beautiful; or, if incapable of such a change,
it stole away and hid itself among those shapeless half ideas which throng the
dim region beyond the daylight of our perfect consciousness. Thus did he spend
the night, nor fell asleep until the dawn had begun to awake the slumbering
flowers in Dr. Rappaccini’s garden, whither Giovanni’s dreams doubtless led
him. Up rose the sun in his due season, and, flinging his beams upon the young
man’s eyelids, awoke him to a sense of pain. When thoroughly aroused, he became
sensible of a burning and tingling agony in his hand—in his right
hand—the very hand which Beatrice had grasped in her own when he was on
the point of plucking one of the gemlike flowers. On the back of that hand
there was now a purple print like that of four small fingers, and the likeness
of a slender thumb upon his wrist.

Oh, how stubbornly does love,—or even that cunning semblance of love
which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of root into the
heart,—how stubbornly does it hold its faith until the moment comes when
it is doomed to vanish into thin mist! Giovanni wrapped a handkerchief about
his hand and wondered what evil thing had stung him, and soon forgot his pain
in a reverie of Beatrice.

After the first interview, a second was in the inevitable course of what we
call fate. A third; a fourth; and a meeting with Beatrice in the garden was no
longer an incident in Giovanni’s daily life, but the whole space in which he
might be said to live; for the anticipation and memory of that ecstatic hour
made up the remainder. Nor was it otherwise with the daughter of Rappaccini.
She watched for the youth’s appearance, and flew to his side with confidence as
unreserved as if they had been playmates from early infancy—as if they
were such playmates still. If, by any unwonted chance, he failed to come at the
appointed moment, she stood beneath the window and sent up the rich sweetness
of her tones to float around him in his chamber and echo and reverberate
throughout his heart: “Giovanni! Giovanni! Why tarriest thou? Come down!” And
down he hastened into that Eden of poisonous flowers.

But, with all this intimate familiarity, there was still a reserve in
Beatrice’s demeanor, so rigidly and invariably sustained that the idea of
infringing it scarcely occurred to his imagination. By all appreciable signs,
they loved; they had looked love with eyes that conveyed the holy secret from
the depths of one soul into the depths of the other, as if it were too sacred
to be whispered by the way; they had even spoken love in those gushes of
passion when their spirits darted forth in articulated breath like tongues of
long-hidden flame; and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands,
nor any slightest caress such as love claims and hallows. He had never touched
one of the gleaming ringlets of her hair; her garment—so marked was the
physical barrier between them—had never been waved against him by a
breeze. On the few occasions when Giovanni had seemed tempted to overstep the
limit, Beatrice grew so sad, so stern, and withal wore such a look of desolate
separation, shuddering at itself, that not a spoken word was requisite to repel
him. At such times he was startled at the horrible suspicions that rose,
monster-like, out of the caverns of his heart and stared him in the face; his
love grew thin and faint as the morning mist, his doubts alone had substance.
But, when Beatrice’s face brightened again after the momentary shadow, she was
transformed at once from the mysterious, questionable being whom he had watched
with so much awe and horror; she was now the beautiful and unsophisticated girl
whom he felt that his spirit knew with a certainty beyond all other knowledge.

A considerable time had now passed since Giovanni’s last meeting with Baglioni.
One morning, however, he was disagreeably surprised by a visit from the
professor, whom he had scarcely thought of for whole weeks, and would willingly
have forgotten still longer. Given up as he had long been to a pervading
excitement, he could tolerate no companions except upon condition of their
perfect sympathy with his present state of feeling. Such sympathy was not to be
expected from Professor Baglioni.

The visitor chatted carelessly for a few moments about the gossip of the city
and the university, and then took up another topic.

“I have been reading an old classic author lately,” said he, “and met with a
story that strangely interested me. Possibly you may remember it. It is of an
Indian prince, who sent a beautiful woman as a present to Alexander the Great.
She was as lovely as the dawn and gorgeous as the sunset; but what especially
distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her breath—richer than a
garden of Persian roses. Alexander, as was natural to a youthful conqueror,
fell in love at first sight with this magnificent stranger; but a certain sage
physician, happening to be present, discovered a terrible secret in regard to
her.”

“And what was that?” asked Giovanni, turning his eyes downward to avoid those
of the professor.

“That this lovely woman,” continued Baglioni, with emphasis, “had been
nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until her whole nature was so
imbued with them that she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence.
Poison was her element of life. With that rich perfume of her breath she
blasted the very air. Her love would have been poison—her embrace death.
Is not this a marvellous tale?”

“A childish fable,” answered Giovanni, nervously starting from his chair. “I
marvel how your worship finds time to read such nonsense among your graver
studies.”

“By the by,” said the professor, looking uneasily about him, “what singular
fragrance is this in your apartment? Is it the perfume of your gloves? It is
faint, but delicious; and yet, after all, by no means agreeable. Were I to
breathe it long, methinks it would make me ill. It is like the breath of a
flower; but I see no flowers in the chamber.”

“Nor are there any,” replied Giovanni, who had turned pale as the professor
spoke; “nor, I think, is there any fragrance except in your worship’s
imagination. Odors, being a sort of element combined of the sensual and the
spiritual, are apt to deceive us in this manner. The recollection of a perfume,
the bare idea of it, may easily be mistaken for a present reality.”

“Ay; but my sober imagination does not often play such tricks,” said Baglioni;
“and, were I to fancy any kind of odor, it would be that of some vile
apothecary drug, wherewith my fingers are likely enough to be imbued. Our
worshipful friend Rappaccini, as I have heard, tinctures his medicaments with
odors richer than those of Araby. Doubtless, likewise, the fair and learned
Signora Beatrice would minister to her patients with draughts as sweet as a
maiden’s breath; but woe to him that sips them!”

Giovanni’s face evinced many contending emotions. The tone in which the
professor alluded to the pure and lovely daughter of Rappaccini was a torture
to his soul; and yet the intimation of a view of her character opposite to his
own, gave instantaneous distinctness to a thousand dim suspicions, which now
grinned at him like so many demons. But he strove hard to quell them and to
respond to Baglioni with a true lover’s perfect faith.

“Signor professor,” said he, “you were my father’s friend; perchance, too, it
is your purpose to act a friendly part towards his son. I would fain feel
nothing towards you save respect and deference; but I pray you to observe,
signor, that there is one subject on which we must not speak. You know not the
Signora Beatrice. You cannot, therefore, estimate the wrong—the
blasphemy, I may even say—that is offered to her character by a light or
injurious word.”

“Giovanni! my poor Giovanni!” answered the professor, with a calm expression of
pity, “I know this wretched girl far better than yourself. You shall hear the
truth in respect to the poisoner Rappaccini and his poisonous daughter; yes,
poisonous as she is beautiful. Listen; for, even should you do violence to my
gray hairs, it shall not silence me. That old fable of the Indian woman has
become a truth by the deep and deadly science of Rappaccini and in the person
of the lovely Beatrice.”

Giovanni groaned and hid his face

“Her father,” continued Baglioni, “was not restrained by natural affection from
offering up his child in this horrible manner as the victim of his insane zeal
for science; for, let us do him justice, he is as true a man of science as ever
distilled his own heart in an alembic. What, then, will be your fate? Beyond a
doubt you are selected as the material of some new experiment. Perhaps the
result is to be death; perhaps a fate more awful still. Rappaccini, with what
he calls the interest of science before his eyes, will hesitate at nothing.”

“It is a dream,” muttered Giovanni to himself; “surely it is a dream.”

“But,” resumed the professor, “be of good cheer, son of my friend. It is not
yet too late for the rescue. Possibly we may even succeed in bringing back this
miserable child within the limits of ordinary nature, from which her father’s
madness has estranged her. Behold this little silver vase! It was wrought by
the hands of the renowned Benvenuto Cellini, and is well worthy to be a love
gift to the fairest dame in Italy. But its contents are invaluable. One little
sip of this antidote would have rendered the most virulent poisons of the
Borgias innocuous. Doubt not that it will be as efficacious against those of
Rappaccini. Bestow the vase, and the precious liquid within it, on your
Beatrice, and hopefully await the result.”

Baglioni laid a small, exquisitely wrought silver vial on the table and
withdrew, leaving what he had said to produce its effect upon the young man’s
mind.

“We will thwart Rappaccini yet,” thought he, chuckling to himself, as he
descended the stairs; “but, let us confess the truth of him, he is a wonderful
man—a wonderful man indeed; a vile empiric, however, in his practice, and
therefore not to be tolerated by those who respect the good old rules of the
medical profession.”

Throughout Giovanni’s whole acquaintance with Beatrice, he had occasionally, as
we have said, been haunted by dark surmises as to her character; yet so
thoroughly had she made herself felt by him as a simple, natural, most
affectionate, and guileless creature, that the image now held up by Professor
Baglioni looked as strange and incredible as if it were not in accordance with
his own original conception. True, there were ugly recollections connected with
his first glimpses of the beautiful girl; he could not quite forget the bouquet
that withered in her grasp, and the insect that perished amid the sunny air, by
no ostensible agency save the fragrance of her breath. These incidents,
however, dissolving in the pure light of her character, had no longer the
efficacy of facts, but were acknowledged as mistaken fantasies, by whatever
testimony of the senses they might appear to be substantiated. There is
something truer and more real than what we can see with the eyes and touch with
the finger. On such better evidence had Giovanni founded his confidence in
Beatrice, though rather by the necessary force of her high attributes than by
any deep and generous faith on his part. But now his spirit was incapable of
sustaining itself at the height to which the early enthusiasm of passion had
exalted it; he fell down, grovelling among earthly doubts, and defiled
therewith the pure whiteness of Beatrice’s image. Not that he gave her up; he
did but distrust. He resolved to institute some decisive test that should
satisfy him, once for all, whether there were those dreadful peculiarities in
her physical nature which could not be supposed to exist without some
corresponding monstrosity of soul. His eyes, gazing down afar, might have
deceived him as to the lizard, the insect, and the flowers; but if he could
witness, at the distance of a few paces, the sudden blight of one fresh and
healthful flower in Beatrice’s hand, there would be room for no further
question. With this idea he hastened to the florist’s and purchased a bouquet
that was still gemmed with the morning dew-drops.

It was now the customary hour of his daily interview with Beatrice. Before
descending into the garden, Giovanni failed not to look at his figure in the
mirror,—a vanity to be expected in a beautiful young man, yet, as
displaying itself at that troubled and feverish moment, the token of a certain
shallowness of feeling and insincerity of character. He did gaze, however, and
said to himself that his features had never before possessed so rich a grace,
nor his eyes such vivacity, nor his cheeks so warm a hue of superabundant life.

“At least,” thought he, “her poison has not yet insinuated itself into my
system. I am no flower to perish in her grasp.”

With that thought he turned his eyes on the bouquet, which he had never once
laid aside from his hand. A thrill of indefinable horror shot through his frame
on perceiving that those dewy flowers were already beginning to droop; they
wore the aspect of things that had been fresh and lovely yesterday. Giovanni
grew white as marble, and stood motionless before the mirror, staring at his
own reflection there as at the likeness of something frightful. He remembered
Baglioni’s remark about the fragrance that seemed to pervade the chamber. It
must have been the poison in his breath! Then he shuddered—shuddered at
himself. Recovering from his stupor, he began to watch with curious eye a
spider that was busily at work hanging its web from the antique cornice of the
apartment, crossing and recrossing the artful system of interwoven
lines—as vigorous and active a spider as ever dangled from an old
ceiling. Giovanni bent towards the insect, and emitted a deep, long breath. The
spider suddenly ceased its toil; the web vibrated with a tremor originating in
the body of the small artisan. Again Giovanni sent forth a breath, deeper,
longer, and imbued with a venomous feeling out of his heart: he knew not
whether he were wicked, or only desperate. The spider made a convulsive gripe
with his limbs and hung dead across the window.

“Accursed! accursed!” muttered Giovanni, addressing himself. “Hast thou grown
so poisonous that this deadly insect perishes by thy breath?”

At that moment a rich, sweet voice came floating up from the garden.

“Giovanni! Giovanni! It is past the hour! Why tarriest thou? Come down!”

“Yes,” muttered Giovanni again. “She is the only being whom my breath may not
slay! Would that it might!”

He rushed down, and in an instant was standing before the bright and loving
eyes of Beatrice. A moment ago his wrath and despair had been so fierce that he
could have desired nothing so much as to wither her by a glance; but with her
actual presence there came influences which had too real an existence to be at
once shaken off: recollections of the delicate and benign power of her feminine
nature, which had so often enveloped him in a religious calm; recollections of
many a holy and passionate outgush of her heart, when the pure fountain had
been unsealed from its depths and made visible in its transparency to his
mental eye; recollections which, had Giovanni known how to estimate them, would
have assured him that all this ugly mystery was but an earthly illusion, and
that, whatever mist of evil might seem to have gathered over her, the real
Beatrice was a heavenly angel. Incapable as he was of such high faith, still
her presence had not utterly lost its magic. Giovanni’s rage was quelled into
an aspect of sullen insensibility. Beatrice, with a quick spiritual sense,
immediately felt that there was a gulf of blackness between them which neither
he nor she could pass. They walked on together, sad and silent, and came thus
to the marble fountain and to its pool of water on the ground, in the midst of
which grew the shrub that bore gem-like blossoms. Giovanni was affrighted at
the eager enjoyment—the appetite, as it were—with which he found
himself inhaling the fragrance of the flowers.

“Beatrice,” asked he, abruptly, “whence came this shrub?”

“My father created it,” answered she, with simplicity.

“Created it! created it!” repeated Giovanni. “What mean you, Beatrice?”

“He is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of Nature,” replied
Beatrice; “and, at the hour when I first drew breath, this plant sprang from
the soil, the offspring of his science, of his intellect, while I was but his
earthly child. Approach it not!” continued she, observing with terror that
Giovanni was drawing nearer to the shrub. “It has qualities that you little
dream of. But I, dearest Giovanni,—I grew up and blossomed with the plant
and was nourished with its breath. It was my sister, and I loved it with a
human affection; for, alas!—hast thou not suspected it?—there was
an awful doom.”

Here Giovanni frowned so darkly upon her that Beatrice paused and trembled. But
her faith in his tenderness reassured her, and made her blush that she had
doubted for an instant.

“There was an awful doom,” she continued, “the effect of my father’s fatal love
of science, which estranged me from all society of my kind. Until Heaven sent
thee, dearest Giovanni, oh, how lonely was thy poor Beatrice!”

“Was it a hard doom?” asked Giovanni, fixing his eyes upon her.

“Only of late have I known how hard it was,” answered she, tenderly. “Oh, yes;
but my heart was torpid, and therefore quiet.”

Giovanni’s rage broke forth from his sullen gloom like a lightning flash out of
a dark cloud.

“Accursed one!” cried he, with venomous scorn and anger. “And, finding thy
solitude wearisome, thou hast severed me likewise from all the warmth of life
and enticed me into thy region of unspeakable horror!”

“Giovanni!” exclaimed Beatrice, turning her large bright eyes upon his face.
The force of his words had not found its way into her mind; she was merely
thunderstruck.

“Yes, poisonous thing!” repeated Giovanni, beside himself with passion. “Thou
hast done it! Thou hast blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins with poison! Thou
hast made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as
thyself—a world’s wonder of hideous monstrosity! Now, if our breath be
happily as fatal to ourselves as to all others, let us join our lips in one
kiss of unutterable hatred, and so die!”

“What has befallen me?” murmured Beatrice, with a low moan out of her heart.
“Holy Virgin, pity me, a poor heart-broken child!”

“Thou,—dost thou pray?” cried Giovanni, still with the same fiendish
scorn. “Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with
death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to church and dip our fingers in the holy
water at the portal! They that come after us will perish as by a pestilence!
Let us sign crosses in the air! It will be scattering curses abroad in the
likeness of holy symbols!”

“Giovanni,” said Beatrice, calmly, for her grief was beyond passion, “why dost
thou join thyself with me thus in those terrible words? I, it is true, am the
horrible thing thou namest me. But thou,—what hast thou to do, save with
one other shudder at my hideous misery to go forth out of the garden and mingle
with thy race, and forget there ever crawled on earth such a monster as poor
Beatrice?”

“Dost thou pretend ignorance?” asked Giovanni, scowling upon her. “Behold! this
power have I gained from the pure daughter of Rappaccini.”

There was a swarm of summer insects flitting through the air in search of the
food promised by the flower odors of the fatal garden. They circled round
Giovanni’s head, and were evidently attracted towards him by the same influence
which had drawn them for an instant within the sphere of several of the shrubs.
He sent forth a breath among them, and smiled bitterly at Beatrice as at least
a score of the insects fell dead upon the ground.

“I see it! I see it!” shrieked Beatrice. “It is my father’s fatal science! No,
no, Giovanni; it was not I! Never! never! I dreamed only to love thee and be
with thee a little time, and so to let thee pass away, leaving but thine image
in mine heart; for, Giovanni, believe it, though my body be nourished with
poison, my spirit is God’s creature, and craves love as its daily food. But my
father,—he has united us in this fearful sympathy. Yes; spurn me, tread
upon me, kill me! Oh, what is death after such words as thine? But it was not
I. Not for a world of bliss would I have done it.”

Giovanni’s passion had exhausted itself in its outburst from his lips. There
now came across him a sense, mournful, and not without tenderness, of the
intimate and peculiar relationship between Beatrice and himself. They stood, as
it were, in an utter solitude, which would be made none the less solitary by
the densest throng of human life. Ought not, then, the desert of humanity
around them to press this insulated pair closer together? If they should be
cruel to one another, who was there to be kind to them? Besides, thought
Giovanni, might there not still be a hope of his returning within the limits of
ordinary nature, and leading Beatrice, the redeemed Beatrice, by the hand? O,
weak, and selfish, and unworthy spirit, that could dream of an earthly union
and earthly happiness as possible, after such deep love had been so bitterly
wronged as was Beatrice’s love by Giovanni’s blighting words! No, no; there
could be no such hope. She must pass heavily, with that broken heart, across
the borders of Time—she must bathe her hurts in some fount of paradise,
and forget her grief in the light of immortality, and THERE be well.

But Giovanni did not know it.

“Dear Beatrice,” said he, approaching her, while she shrank away as always at
his approach, but now with a different impulse, “dearest Beatrice, our fate is
not yet so desperate. Behold! there is a medicine, potent, as a wise physician
has assured me, and almost divine in its efficacy. It is composed of
ingredients the most opposite to those by which thy awful father has brought
this calamity upon thee and me. It is distilled of blessed herbs. Shall we not
quaff it together, and thus be purified from evil?”

“Give it me!” said Beatrice, extending her hand to receive the little silver
vial which Giovanni took from his bosom. She added, with a peculiar emphasis,
“I will drink; but do thou await the result.”

She put Baglioni’s antidote to her lips; and, at the same moment, the figure of
Rappaccini emerged from the portal and came slowly towards the marble fountain.
As he drew near, the pale man of science seemed to gaze with a triumphant
expression at the beautiful youth and maiden, as might an artist who should
spend his life in achieving a picture or a group of statuary and finally be
satisfied with his success. He paused; his bent form grew erect with conscious
power; he spread out his hands over them in the attitude of a father imploring
a blessing upon his children; but those were the same hands that had thrown
poison into the stream of their lives. Giovanni trembled. Beatrice shuddered
nervously, and pressed her hand upon her heart.

“My daughter,” said Rappaccini, “thou art no longer lonely in the world. Pluck
one of those precious gems from thy sister shrub and bid thy bridegroom wear it
in his bosom. It will not harm him now. My science and the sympathy between
thee and him have so wrought within his system that he now stands apart from
common men, as thou dost, daughter of my pride and triumph, from ordinary
women. Pass on, then, through the world, most dear to one another and dreadful
to all besides!”

“My father,” said Beatrice, feebly,—and still as she spoke she kept her
hand upon her heart,—“wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable doom
upon thy child?”

“Miserable!” exclaimed Rappaccini. “What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem
it misery to be endowed with marvellous gifts against which no power nor
strength could avail an enemy—misery, to be able to quell the mightiest
with a breath—misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst
thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil
and capable of none?”

“I would fain have been loved, not feared,” murmured Beatrice, sinking down
upon the ground. “But now it matters not. I am going, father, where the evil
which thou hast striven to mingle with my being will pass away like a
dream-like the fragrance of these poisonous flowers, which will no longer taint
my breath among the flowers of Eden. Farewell, Giovanni! Thy words of hatred
are like lead within my heart; but they, too, will fall away as I ascend. Oh,
was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?”

To Beatrice,—so radically had her earthly part been wrought upon by
Rappaccini’s skill,—as poison had been life, so the powerful antidote was
death; and thus the poor victim of man’s ingenuity and of thwarted nature, and
of the fatality that attends all such efforts of perverted wisdom, perished
there, at the feet of her father and Giovanni. Just at that moment Professor
Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window, and called loudly, in a tone of
triumph mixed with horror, to the thunderstricken man of science, “Rappaccini!
Rappaccini! and is this the upshot of your experiment!”

MRS. BULLFROG

It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people act in
the matter of choosing wives. They perplex their judgments by a most undue
attention to little niceties of personal appearance, habits, disposition, and
other trifles which concern nobody but the lady herself. An unhappy gentleman,
resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and hand till
both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman will accept them. Now this
is the very height of absurdity. A kind Providence has so skilfully adapted sex
to sex and the mass of individuals to each other, that, with certain obvious
exceptions, any male and female may be moderately happy in the married state.
The true rule is to ascertain that the match is fundamentally a good one, and
then to take it for granted that all minor objections, should there be such,
will vanish, if you let them alone. Only put yourself beyond hazard as to the
real basis of matrimonial bliss, and it is scarcely to be imagined what
miracles, in the way of recognizing smaller incongruities, connubial love will
effect.

For my own part I freely confess that, in my bachelorship, I was precisely such
an over-curious simpleton as I now advise the reader not to be. My early habits
had gifted me with a feminine sensibility and too exquisite refinement. I was
the accomplished graduate of a dry goods store, where, by dint of ministering
to the whims of fine ladies, and suiting silken hose to delicate limbs, and
handling satins, ribbons, chintzes calicoes, tapes, gauze, and cambric needles,
I grew up a very ladylike sort of a gentleman. It is not assuming too much to
affirm that the ladies themselves were hardly so ladylike as Thomas Bullfrog.
So painfully acute was my sense of female imperfection, and such varied
excellence did I require in the woman whom I could love, that there was an
awful risk of my getting no wife at all, or of being driven to perpetrate
matrimony with my own image in the looking-glass. Besides the fundamental
principle already hinted at, I demanded the fresh bloom of youth, pearly teeth,
glossy ringlets, and the whole list of lovely items, with the utmost delicacy
of habits and sentiments, a silken texture of mind, and, above all, a virgin
heart. In a word, if a young angel just from paradise, yet dressed in earthly
fashion, had come and offered me her hand, it is by no means certain that I
should have taken it. There was every chance of my becoming a most miserable
old bachelor, when, by the best luck in the world, I made a journey into
another state, and was smitten by, and smote again, and wooed, won, and
married, the present Mrs. Bullfrog, all in the space of a fortnight. Owing to
these extempore measures, I not only gave my bride credit for certain
perfections which have not as yet come to light, but also overlooked a few
trifling defects, which, however, glimmered on my perception long before the
close of the honeymoon. Yet, as there was no mistake about the fundamental
principle aforesaid, I soon learned, as will be seen, to estimate Mrs.
Bullfrog’s deficiencies and superfluities at exactly their proper value.

The same morning that Mrs. Bullfrog and I came together as a unit, we took two
seats in the stage-coach and began our journey towards my place of business.
There being no other passengers, we were as much alone and as free to give vent
to our raptures as if I had hired a hack for the matrimonial jaunt. My bride
looked charmingly in a green silk calash and riding habit of pelisse cloth; and
whenever her red lips parted with a smile, each tooth appeared like an
inestimable pearl. Such was my passionate warmth that—we had rattled out
of the village, gentle reader, and were lonely as Adam and Eve in
paradise—I plead guilty to no less freedom than a kiss. The gentle eye of
Mrs. Bullfrog scarcely rebuked me for the profanation. Emboldened by her
indulgence, I threw back the calash from her polished brow, and suffered my
fingers, white and delicate as her own, to stray among those dark and glossy
curls which realized my daydreams of rich hair.

“My love,” said Mrs. Bullfrog tenderly, “you will disarrange my curls.”

“Oh, no, my sweet Laura!” replied I, still playing with the glossy ringlet.
“Even your fair hand could not manage a curl more delicately than mine. I
propose myself the pleasure of doing up your hair in papers every evening at
the same time with my own.”

“Mr. Bullfrog,” repeated she, “you must not disarrange my curls.”

This was spoken in a more decided tone than I had happened to hear, until then,
from my gentlest of all gentle brides. At the same time she put up her hand and
took mine prisoner; but merely drew it away from the forbidden ringlet, and
then immediately released it. Now, I am a fidgety little man, and always love
to have something in my fingers; so that, being debarred from my wife’s curls,
I looked about me for any other plaything. On the front seat of the coach there
was one of those small baskets in which travelling ladies who are too delicate
to appear at a public table generally carry a supply of gingerbread, biscuits
and cheese, cold ham, and other light refreshments, merely to sustain nature to
the journey’s end. Such airy diet will sometimes keep them in pretty good flesh
for a week together. Laying hold of this same little basket, I thrust my hand
under the newspaper with which it was carefully covered.

“What’s this, my dear?” cried I; for the black neck of a bottle had popped out
of the basket.

“A bottle of Kalydor, Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife, coolly taking the basket
from my hands and replacing it on the front seat.

There was no possibility of doubting my wife’s word; but I never knew genuine
Kalydor, such as I use for my own complexion, to smell so much like cherry
brandy. I was about to express my fears that the lotion would injure her skin,
when an accident occurred which threatened more than a skin-deep injury. Our
Jehu had carelessly driven over a heap of gravel and fairly capsized the coach,
with the wheels in the air and our heels where our heads should have been. What
became of my wits I cannot imagine; they have always had a perverse trick of
deserting me just when they were most needed; but so it chanced, that in the
confusion of our overthrow I quite forgot that there was a Mrs. Bullfrog in the
world. Like many men’s wives, the good lady served her husband as a
steppingstone. I had scrambled out of the coach and was instinctively settling
my cravat, when somebody brushed roughly by me, and I heard a smart thwack upon
the coachman’s ear.

“Take that, you villain!” cried a strange, hoarse voice. “You have ruined me,
you blackguard! I shall never be the woman I have been!”

And then came a second thwack, aimed at the driver’s other ear; but which
missed it, and hit him on the nose, causing a terrible effusion of blood. Now,
who or what fearful apparition was inflicting this punishment on the poor
fellow remained an impenetrable mystery to me. The blows were given by a person
of grisly aspect, with a head almost bald, and sunken cheeks, apparently of the
feminine gender, though hardly to be classed in the gentler sex. There being no
teeth to modulate the voice, it had a mumbled fierceness, not passionate, but
stern, which absolutely made me quiver like calf’s-foot jelly. Who could the
phantom be? The most awful circumstance of the affair is yet to be told: for
this ogre, or whatever it was, had a riding habit like Mrs. Bullfrog’s, and
also a green silk calash dangling down her back by the strings. In my terror
and turmoil of mind I could imagine nothing less than that the Old Nick, at the
moment of our overturn, had annihilated my wife and jumped into her petticoats.
This idea seemed the most probable, since I could nowhere perceive Mrs.
Bullfrog alive, nor, though I looked very sharply about the coach, could I
detect any traces of that beloved woman’s dead body. There would have been a
comfort in giving her Christian burial.

“Come, sir, bestir yourself! Help this rascal to set up the coach,” said the
hobgoblin to me; then, with a terrific screech at three countrymen at a
distance, “Here, you fellows, ain’t you ashamed to stand off when a poor woman
is in distress?”

The countrymen, instead of fleeing for their lives, came running at full speed,
and laid hold of the topsy-turvy coach. I, also, though a small-sized man, went
to work like a son of Anak. The coachman, too, with the blood still streaming
from his nose, tugged and toiled most manfully, dreading, doubtless, that the
next blow might break his head. And yet, bemauled as the poor fellow had been,
he seemed to glance at me with an eye of pity, as if my case were more
deplorable than his. But I cherished a hope that all would turn out a dream,
and seized the opportunity, as we raised the coach, to jam two of my fingers
under the wheel, trusting that the pain would awaken me.

“Why, here we are, all to rights again!” exclaimed a sweet voice behind. “Thank
you for your assistance, gentlemen. My dear Mr. Bullfrog, how you perspire! Do
let me wipe your face. Don’t take this little accident too much to heart, good
driver. We ought to be thankful that none of our necks are broken.”

“We might have spared one neck out of the three,” muttered the driver, rubbing
his ear and pulling his nose, to ascertain whether he had been cuffed or not.
“Why, the woman’s a witch!”

I fear that the reader will not believe, yet it is positively a fact, that
there stood Mrs. Bullfrog, with her glossy ringlets curling on her brow, and
two rows of orient pearls gleaming between her parted lips, which wore a most
angelic smile. She had regained her riding habit and calash from the grisly
phantom, and was, in all respects, the lovely woman who had been sitting by my
side at the instant of our overturn. How she had happened to disappear, and who
had supplied her place, and whence she did now return, were problems too knotty
for me to solve. There stood my wife. That was the one thing certain among a
heap of mysteries. Nothing remained but to help her into the coach, and plod
on, through the journey of the day and the journey of life, as comfortably as
we could. As the driver closed the door upon us, I heard him whisper to the
three countrymen, “How do you suppose a fellow feels shut up in the cage with a
she tiger?”

Of course this query could have no reference to my situation. Yet, unreasonable
as it may appear, I confess that my feelings were not altogether so ecstatic as
when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine. True, she was a sweet woman and an
angel of a wife; but what if a Gorgon should return, amid the transports of our
connubial bliss, and take the angel’s place. I recollected the tale of a fairy,
who half the time was a beautiful woman and half the time a hideous monster.
Had I taken that very fairy to be the wife of my bosom? While such whims and
chimeras were flitting across my fancy I began to look askance at Mrs.
Bullfrog, almost expecting that the transformation would be wrought before my
eyes.

To divert my mind, I took up the newspaper which had covered the little basket
of refreshments, and which now lay at the bottom of the coach, blushing with a
deep-red stain and emitting a potent spirituous fume from the contents of the
broken bottle of Kalydor. The paper was two or three years old, but contained
an article of several columns, in which I soon grew wonderfully interested. It
was the report of a trial for breach of promise of marriage, giving the
testimony in full, with fervid extracts from both the gentleman’s and lady’s
amatory correspondence. The deserted damsel had personally appeared in court,
and had borne energetic evidence to her lover’s perfidy and the strength of her
blighted affections. On the defendant’s part there had been an attempt, though
insufficiently sustained, to blast the plaintiff’s character, and a plea, in
mitigation of damages, on account of her unamiable temper. A horrible idea was
suggested by the lady’s name.

“Madam,” said I, holding the newspaper before Mrs. Bullfrog’s eyes,—and,
though a small, delicate, and thin-visaged man, I feel assured that I looked
very terrific,—“madam,” repeated I, through my shut teeth, “were you the
plaintiff in this cause?”

“Oh, my dear Mr. Bullfrog,” replied my wife, sweetly, “I thought all the world
knew that!”

“Horror! horror!” exclaimed I, sinking back on the seat.

Covering my face with both hands, I emitted a deep and deathlike groan, as if
my tormented soul were rending me asunder—I, the most exquisitely
fastidious of men, and whose wife was to have been the most delicate and
refined of women, with all the fresh dew-drops glittering on her virgin rosebud
of a heart!

I thought of the glossy ringlets and pearly teeth; I thought of the Kalydor; I
thought of the coachman’s bruised ear and bloody nose; I thought of the tender
love secrets which she had whispered to the judge and jury and a thousand
tittering auditors,—and gave another groan!

“Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife.

As I made no reply, she gently took my hands within her own, removed them from
my face, and fixed her eyes steadfastly on mine.

“Mr. Bullfrog,” said she, not unkindly, yet with all the decision of her strong
character, “let me advise you to overcome this foolish weakness, and prove
yourself, to the best of your ability, as good a husband as I will be a wife.
You have discovered, perhaps, some little imperfections in your bride. Well,
what did you expect? Women are not angels. If they were, they would go to
heaven for husbands; or, at least, be more difficult in their choice on earth.”

“But why conceal those imperfections?” interposed I, tremulously.

“Now, my love, are not you a most unreasonable little man?” said Mrs. Bullfrog,
patting me on the cheek. “Ought a woman to disclose her frailties earlier than
the wedding day? Few husbands, I assure you, make the discovery in such good
season, and still fewer complain that these trifles are concealed too long.
Well, what a strange man you are! Poh! you are joking.”

“But the suit for breach of promise!” groaned I.

“Ah, and is that the rub?” exclaimed my wife. “Is it possible that you view
that affair in an objectionable light? Mr. Bullfrog, I never could have dreamed
it! Is it an objection that I have triumphantly defended myself against slander
and vindicated my purity in a court of justice? Or do you complain because your
wife has shown the proper spirit of a woman, and punished the villain who
trifled with her affections?”

“But,” persisted I, shrinking into a corner of the coach, however,—for I
did not know precisely how much contradiction the proper spirit of a woman
would endure,—“but, my love, would it not have been more dignified to
treat the villain with the silent contempt he merited?”

“That is all very well, Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife, slyly; “but, in that case,
where would have been the five thousand dollars which are to stock your dry
goods store?”

“Mrs. Bullfrog, upon your honor,” demanded I, as if my life hung upon her
words, “is there no mistake about those five thousand dollars?”

“Upon my word and honor there is none,” replied she. “The jury gave me every
cent the rascal had; and I have kept it all for my dear Bullfrog.”

“Then, thou dear woman,” cried I, with an overwhelming gush of tenderness, “let
me fold thee to my heart. The basis of matrimonial bliss is secure, and all thy
little defects and frailties are forgiven. Nay, since the result has been so
fortunate, I rejoice at the wrongs which drove thee to this blessed lawsuit.
Happy Bullfrog that I am!”

FIRE WORSHIP

It is a great revolution in social and domestic life, and no less so in the
life of a secluded student, this almost universal exchange of the open
fireplace for the cheerless and ungenial stove. On such a morning as now lowers
around our old gray parsonage, I miss the bright face of my ancient friend, who
was wont to dance upon the hearth and play the part of more familiar sunshine.
It is sad to turn from the cloudy sky and sombre landscape; from yonder hill,
with its crown of rusty, black pines, the foliage of which is so dismal in the
absence of the sun; that bleak pasture-land, and the broken surface of the
potato-field, with the brown clods partly concealed by the snowfall of last
night; the swollen and sluggish river, with ice-incrusted borders, dragging its
bluish-gray stream along the verge of our orchard like a snake half torpid with
the cold,—it is sad to turn from an outward scene of so little comfort
and find the same sullen influences brooding within the precincts of my study.
Where is that brilliant guest, that quick and subtle spirit, whom Prometheus
lured from heaven to civilize mankind and cheer them in their wintry
desolation; that comfortable inmate, whose smile, during eight months of the
year, was our sufficient consolation for summer’s lingering advance and early
flight? Alas! blindly inhospitable, grudging the food that kept him cheery and
mercurial, we have thrust him into an iron prison, and compel him to smoulder
away his life on a daily pittance which once would have been too scanty for his
breakfast. Without a metaphor, we now make our fire in an air-tight stove, and
supply it with some half a dozen sticks of wood between dawn and nightfall.

I never shall be reconciled to this enormity. Truly may it be said that the
world looks darker for it. In one way or another, here and there and all around
us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting the picturesque, the poetic,
and the beautiful out of human life. The domestic fire was a type of all these
attributes, and seemed to bring might and majesty, and wild nature and a
spiritual essence, into our in most home, and yet to dwell with us in such
friendliness that its mysteries and marvels excited no dismay. The same mild
companion that smiled so placidly in our faces was he that comes roaring out of
Ætna and rushes madly up the sky like a fiend breaking loose from torment and
fighting for a place among the upper angels. He it is, too, that leaps from
cloud to cloud amid the crashing thunder-storm. It was he whom the Gheber
worshipped with no unnatural idolatry; and it was he who devoured London and
Moscow and many another famous city, and who loves to riot through our own dark
forests and sweep across our prairies, and to whose ravenous maw, it is said,
the universe shall one day be given as a final feast. Meanwhile he is the great
artisan and laborer by whose aid men are enabled to build a world within a
world, or, at least, to smooth down the rough creation which Nature flung to
it. He forges the mighty anchor and every lesser instrument; he drives the
steamboat and drags the rail-car; and it was he—this creature of terrible
might, and so many-sided utility and all-comprehensive
destructiveness—that used to be the cheerful, homely friend of our wintry
days, and whom we have made the prisoner of this iron cage.

How kindly he was! and, though the tremendous agent of change, yet bearing
himself with such gentleness, so rendering himself a part of all life-long and
age-coeval associations, that it seemed as if he were the great conservative of
nature. While a man was true to the fireside, so long would he be true to
country and law, to the God whom his fathers worshipped, to the wife of his
youth, and to all things else which instinct or religion has taught us to
consider sacred. With how sweet humility did this elemental spirit perform all
needful offices for the household in which he was domesticated! He was equal to
the concoction of a grand dinner, yet scorned not to roast a potato or toast a
bit of cheese. How humanely did he cherish the school-boy’s icy fingers, and
thaw the old man’s joints with a genial warmth which almost equalled the glow
of youth! And how carefully did he dry the cowhide boots that had trudged
through mud and snow, and the shaggy outside garment stiff with frozen sleet!
taking heed, likewise, to the comfort of the faithful dog who had followed his
master through the storm. When did he refuse a coal to light a pipe, or even a
part of his own substance to kindle a neighbor’s fire? And then, at twilight,
when laborer, or scholar, or mortal of whatever age, sex, or degree, drew a
chair beside him and looked into his glowing face, how acute, how profound, how
comprehensive was his sympathy with the mood of each and all! He pictured forth
their very thoughts. To the youthful he showed the scenes of the adventurous
life before them; to the aged the shadows of departed love and hope; and, if
all earthly things had grown distasteful, he could gladden the fireside muser
with golden glimpses of a better world. And, amid this varied communion with
the human soul, how busily would the sympathizer, the deep moralist, the
painter of magic pictures, be causing the teakettle to boil!

Nor did it lessen the charm of his soft, familiar courtesy and helpfulness that
the mighty spirit, were opportunity offered him, would run riot through the
peaceful house, wrap its inmates in his terrible embrace, and leave nothing of
them save their whitened bones. This possibility of mad destruction only made
his domestic kindness the more beautiful and touching. It was so sweet of him,
being endowed with such power, to dwell day after day, and one long lonesome
night after another, on the dusky hearth, only now and then betraying his wild
nature by thrusting his red tongue out of the chimney-top! True, he had done
much mischief in the world, and was pretty certain to do more; but his warm
heart atoned for all. He was kindly to the race of man; and they pardoned his
characteristic imperfections.

The good old clergyman, my predecessor in this mansion, was well acquainted
with the comforts of the fireside. His yearly allowance of wood, according to
the terms of his settlement, was no less than sixty cords. Almost an annual
forest was converted from sound oak logs into ashes, in the kitchen, the
parlor, and this little study, where now an unworthy successor, not in the
pastoral office, but merely in his earthly abode, sits scribbling beside an
air-tight stove. I love to fancy one of those fireside days while the good man,
a contemporary of the Revolution, was in his early prime, some five-and-sixty
years ago. Before sunrise, doubtless, the blaze hovered upon the gray skirts of
night and dissolved the frostwork that had gathered like a curtain over the
small window-panes. There is something peculiar in the aspect of the morning
fireside; a fresher, brisker glare; the absence of that mellowness which can be
produced only by half-consumed logs, and shapeless brands with the white ashes
on them, and mighty coals, the remnant of tree-trunks that the hungry, elements
have gnawed for hours. The morning hearth, too, is newly swept, and the brazen
andirons well brightened, so that the cheerful fire may see its face in them.
Surely it was happiness, when the pastor, fortified with a substantial
breakfast, sat down in his arm-chair and slippers and opened the Whole Body of
Divinity, or the Commentary on Job, or whichever of his old folios or quartos
might fall within the range of his weekly sermons. It must have been his own
fault if the warmth and glow of this abundant hearth did not permeate the
discourse and keep his audience comfortable in spite of the bitterest northern
blast that ever wrestled with the church-steeple. He reads while the heat warps
the stiff covers of the volume; he writes without numbness either in his heart
or fingers; and, with unstinted hand, he throws fresh sticks of wood upon the
fire.

A parishioner comes in. With what warmth of benevolence—how should he be
otherwise than warm in any of his attributes?—does the minister bid him
welcome, and set a chair for him in so close proximity to the hearth, that soon
the guest finds it needful to rub his scorched shins with his great red hands!
The melted snow drips from his steaming boots and bubbles upon the hearth. His
puckered forehead unravels its entanglement of crisscross wrinkles. We lose
much of the enjoyment of fireside heat without such an opportunity of marking
its genial effect upon those who have been looking the inclement weather in the
face. In the course of the day our clergyman himself strides forth, perchance
to pay a round of pastoral visits; or, it may he, to visit his mountain of a
wood-pile and cleave the monstrous logs into billets suitable for the fire. He
returns with fresher life to his beloved hearth. During the short afternoon the
western sunshine comes into the study and strives to stare the ruddy blaze out
of countenance but with only a brief triumph, soon to be succeeded by brighter
glories of its rival. Beautiful it is to see the strengthening gleam, the
deepening light that gradually casts distinct shadows of the human figure, the
table, and the high-backed chairs upon the opposite wall, and at length, as
twilight comes on, replenishes the room with living radiance and makes life all
rose-color. Afar the wayfarer discerns the flickering flame as it dances upon
the windows, and hails it as a beacon-light of humanity, reminding him, in his
cold and lonely path, that the world is not all snow, and solitude, and
desolation. At eventide, probably, the study was peopled with the clergyman’s
wife and family, and children tumbled themselves upon the hearth-rug, and grave
puss sat with her back to the fire, or gazed, with a semblance of human
meditation, into its fervid depths. Seasonably the plenteous ashes of the day
were raked over the mouldering brands, and from the heap came jets of flame,
and an incense of night-long smoke creeping quietly up the chimney.

Heaven forgive the old clergyman! In his later life, when for almost ninety
winters he had been gladdened by the firelight,—when it had gleamed upon
him from infancy to extreme age, and never without brightening his spirits as
well as his visage, and perhaps keeping him alive so long,—he had the
heart to brick up his chimney-place and bid farewell to the face of his old
friend forever, why did he not take an eternal leave of the sunshine too? His
sixty cords of wood had probably dwindled to a far less ample supply in modern
times; and it is certain that the parsonage had grown crazy with time and
tempest and pervious to the cold; but still it was one of the saddest tokens of
the decline and fall of open fireplaces that, the gray patriarch should have
deigned to warm himself at an air-tight stove.

And I, likewise,—who have found a home in this ancient owl’s-nest since
its former occupant took his heavenward flight,—I, to my shame, have put
up stoves in kitchen and parlor and chamber. Wander where you will about the
house, not a glimpse of the earth-born, heaven-aspiring fiend of
Ætna,—him that sports in the thunder-storm, the idol of the Ghebers, the
devourer of cities, the forest-rioter and prairie-sweeper, the future destroyer
of our earth, the old chimney-corner companion who mingled himself so sociably
with household joys and sorrows,—not a glimpse of this mighty and kindly
one will greet your eyes. He is now an invisible presence. There is his iron
cage. Touch it, and he scorches your fingers. He delights to singe a garment or
perpetrate any other little unworthy mischief; for his temper is ruined by the
ingratitude of mankind, for whom he cherished such warmth of feeling, and to
whom he taught all their arts, even that of making his own prison-house. In his
fits of rage he puffs volumes of smoke and noisome gas through the crevices of
the door, and shakes the iron walls of his dungeon so as to overthrow the
ornamental urn upon its summit. We tremble lest he should break forth amongst
us. Much of his time is spent in sighs, burdened with unutterable grief, and
long drawn through the funnel. He amuses himself, too, with repeating all the
whispers, the moans, and the louder utterances or tempestuous howls of the
wind; so that the stove becomes a microcosm of the aerial world. Occasionally
there are strange combinations of sounds,—voices talking almost
articulately within the hollow chest of iron,—insomuch that fancy
beguiles me with the idea that my firewood must have grown in that infernal
forest of lamentable trees which breathed their complaints to Dante. When the
listener is half asleep he may readily take these voices for the conversation
of spirits and assign them an intelligible meaning. Anon there is a pattering
noise,—drip, drip, drip,—as if a summer shower were falling within
the narrow circumference of the stove.

These barren and tedious eccentricities are all that the air-tight stove can
bestow in exchange for the invaluable moral influences which we have lost by
our desertion of the open fireplace. Alas! is this world so very bright that we
can afford to choke up such a domestic fountain of gladsomeness, and sit down
by its darkened source without being conscious of a gloom?

It is my belief that social intercourse cannot long continue what it has been,
now that we have subtracted from it so important and vivifying an element as
firelight. The effects will be more perceptible on our children and the
generations that shall succeed them than on ourselves, the mechanism of whose
life may remain unchanged, though its spirit be far other than it was. The
sacred trust of the household fire has been transmitted in unbroken succession
from the earliest ages, and faithfully cherished in spite of every
discouragement such as the curfew law of the Norman conquerors, until in these
evil days physical science has nearly succeeded in extinguishing it. But we at
least have our youthful recollections tinged with the glow of the hearth, and
our life-long habits and associations arranged on the principle of a mutual
bond in the domestic fire. Therefore, though the sociable friend be forever
departed, yet in a degree he will be spiritually present with us; and still
more will the empty forms which were once full of his rejoicing presence
continue to rule our manners. We shall draw our chairs together as we and our
forefathers have been wont for thousands of years back, and sit around some
blank and empty corner of the room, babbling with unreal cheerfulness of topics
suitable to the homely fireside. A warmth from the past—from the ashes of
bygone years and the raked-up embers of long ago—will sometimes thaw the
ice about our hearts; but it must be otherwise with our successors. On the most
favorable supposition, they will be acquainted with the fireside in no better
shape than that of the sullen stove; and more probably they will have grown up
amid furnace heat in houses which might be fancied to have their foundation
over the infernal pit, whence sulphurous steams and unbreathable exhalations
ascend through the apertures of the floor. There will be nothing to attract
these poor children to one centre. They will never behold one another through
that peculiar medium of vision the ruddy gleam of blazing wood or bituminous
coal—-which gives the human spirit so deep an insight into its fellows
and melts all humanity into one cordial heart of hearts. Domestic life, if it
may still be termed domestic, will seek its separate corners, and never gather
itself into groups. The easy gossip; the merry yet unambitious Jest; the
life-like, practical discussion of real matters in a casual way; the soul of
truth which is so often incarnated in a simple fireside word,—will
disappear from earth. Conversation will contract the air of debate, and all
mortal intercourse be chilled with a fatal frost.

In classic times, the exhortation to fight “pro axis et focis,” for the altars
and the hearths, was considered the strongest appeal that could be made to
patriotism. And it seemed an immortal utterance; for all subsequent ages and
people have acknowledged its force and responded to it with the full portion of
manhood that nature had assigned to each. Wisely were the altar and the hearth
conjoined in one mighty sentence; for the hearth, too, had its kindred
sanctity. Religion sat down beside it, not in the priestly robes which
decorated and perhaps disguised her at the altar, but arrayed in a simple
matron’s garb, and uttering her lessons with the tenderness of a mother’s voice
and heart. The holy hearth! If any earthly and material thing, or rather a
divine idea embodied in brick and mortar, might be supposed to possess the
permanence of moral truth, it was this. All revered it. The man who did not put
off his shoes upon this holy ground would have deemed it pastime to trample
upon the altar. It has been our task to uproot the hearth. What further reform
is left for our children to achieve, unless they overthrow the altar too? And
by what appeal hereafter, when the breath of hostile armies may mingle with the
pure, cold breezes of our country, shall we attempt to rouse up native valor?
Fight for your hearths? There will be none throughout the land. FIGHT
FOR YOUR STOVES! Not I, in faith. If in such a cause I strike a blow,
it shall be on the invader’s part; and Heaven grant that it may shatter the
abomination all to pieces!

BUDS AND BIRD VOICES

Balmy Spring—weeks later than we expected and months later than we longed
for her—comes at last to revive the moss on the roof and walls of our old
mansion. She peeps brightly into my study-window, inviting me to throw it open
and create a summer atmosphere by the intermixture of her genial breath with
the black and cheerless comfort of the stove. As the casement ascends, forth
into infinite space fly the innumerable forms of thought or fancy that have
kept me company in the retirement of this little chamber during the sluggish
lapse of wintry weather; visions, gay, grotesque, and sad; pictures of real
life, tinted with nature’s homely gray and russet; scenes in dreamland,
bedizened with rainbow hues which faded before they were well laid
on,—all these may vanish now, and leave me to mould a fresh existence out
of sunshine, Brooding Meditation may flap her dusky wings and take her owl-like
Right, blinking amid the cheerfulness of noontide. Such companions befit the
season of frosted window-panes and crackling fires, when the blast howls
through the black-ash trees of our avenue and the drifting snow-storm chokes up
the wood-paths and fills the highway from stone wall to stone wall. In the
spring and summer time all sombre thoughts should follow the winter northward
with the sombre and thoughtful crows. The old paradisiacal economy of life is
again in force; we live, not to think or to labor, but for the simple end of
being happy. Nothing for the present hour is worthy of man’s infinite capacity
save to imbibe the warm smile of heaven and sympathize with the reviving earth.

The present Spring comes onward with fleeter footsteps, because Winter lingered
so unconscionably long that with her best diligence she can hardly retrieve
half the allotted period of her reign. It is but a fortnight since I stood on
the brink of our swollen river and beheld the accumulated ice of four frozen
months go down the stream. Except in streaks here and there upon the hillsides,
the whole visible universe was then covered with deep snow, the nethermost
layer of which had been deposited by an early December storm. It was a sight to
make the beholder torpid, in the impossibility of imagining how this vast white
napkin was to be removed from the face of the corpse-like world in less time
than had been required to spread it there. But who can estimate the power of
gentle influences, whether amid material desolation or the moral winter of
man’s heart? There have been no tempestuous rains, even no sultry days, but a
constant breath of southern winds, with now a day of kindly sunshine, and now a
no less kindly mist or a soft descent of showers, in which a smile and a
blessing seemed to have been steeped. The snow has vanished as if by magic;
whatever heaps may be hidden in the woods and deep gorges of the hills, only
two solitary specks remain in the landscape; and those I shall almost regret to
miss when to-morrow I look for them in vain. Never before, methinks, has spring
pressed so closely on the footsteps of retreating winter. Along the roadside
the green blades of grass have sprouted on the very edge of the snow-drifts.
The pastures and mowing-fields have not vet assumed a general aspect of
verdure; but neither have they the cheerless-brown tint which they wear in
latter autumn when vegetation has entirely ceased; there is now a faint shadow
of life, gradually brightening into the warm reality. Some tracts in a happy
exposure,—as, for instance, yonder southwestern slope of an orchard, in
front of that old red farm-house beyond the river,—such patches of land
already wear a beautiful and tender green, to which no future luxuriance can
add a charm. It looks unreal; a prophecy, a hope, a transitory effect of sonic
peculiar light, which will vanish with the slightest motion of the eye. But
beauty is never a delusion; not these verdant tracts, but the dark and barren
landscape all around them, is a shadow and a dream. Each moment wins seine
portion of the earth from death to life; a sudden gleam of verdure brightens
along the sunny slope of a bank which an instant ago was brown and bare. You
look again, and behold an apparition of green grass!

The trees in our orchard and elsewhere are as yet naked, but already appear
full of life and vegetable blood. It seems as if by one magic touch they might
instantaneously burst into full foliage, and that the wind which now sighs
through their naked branches might make sudden music amid innumerable leaves.
The mossgrown willow-tree which for forty years past has overshadowed these
western windows will be among the first to put on its green attire. There are
some objections to the willow; it is not a dry and cleanly tree, and impresses
the beholder with an association of sliminess. No trees, I think, are perfectly
agreeable as companions unless they have glossy leaves, dry bark, and a firm
and hard texture of trunk and branches. But the willow is almost the earliest
to gladden us with the promise and reality of beauty in its graceful and
delicate foliage, and the last to scatter its yellow yet scarcely withered
leaves upon the ground. All through the winter, too, its yellow twigs give it a
sunny aspect, which is not without a cheering influence even in the grayest and
gloomiest day. Beneath a clouded sky it faithfully remembers the sunshine. Our
old house would lose a charm were the willow to be cut down, with its golden
crown over the snow-covered roof and its heap of summer verdure.

The lilac-shrubs under my study-windows are likewise almost in leaf: in two or
three days more I may put forth my hand and pluck the topmost bough in its
freshest green. These lilacs are very aged, and have lost the luxuriant foliage
of their prime. The heart, or the judgment, or the moral sense, or the taste is
dissatisfied with their present aspect. Old age is not venerable when it
embodies itself in lilacs, rose-bushes, or any other ornamental shrub; it seems
as if such plants, as they grow only for beauty, ought to flourish always in
immortal youth, or, at least, to die before their sad decrepitude. Trees of
beauty are trees of paradise, and therefore not subject to decay by their
original nature, though they have lost that precious birthright by being
transplanted to an earthly soil. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the
idea of a time-stricken and grandfatherly lilac-bush. The analogy holds good in
human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental—who can give
the world nothing but flowers—should die young, and never be seen with
gray hair and wrinkles, any more than the flower-shrubs with mossy bark and
blighted foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not that beauty is worthy of
less than immortality; no, the beautiful should live forever,—and thence,
perhaps, the sense of impropriety when we see it triumphed over by time.
Apple-trees, on the other hand, grow old without reproach. Let them live as
long as they may, and contort themselves into whatever perversity of shape they
please, and deck their withered limbs with a springtime gaudiness of pink
blossoms; still they are respectable, even if they afford us only an apple or
two in a season. Those few apples—or, at all events, the remembrance of
apples in bygone years—are the atonement which utilitarianism inexorably
demands for the privilege of lengthened life. Human flower-shrubs, if they will
grow old on earth, should, besides their lovely blossoms, bear some kind of
fruit that will satisfy earthly appetites, else neither man nor the decorum of
nature will deem it fit that the moss should gather on them.

One of the first things that strikes the attention when the white sheet of
winter is withdrawn is the neglect and disarray that lay hidden beneath it.
Nature is not cleanly according to our prejudices. The beauty of preceding
years, now transformed to brown and blighted deformity, obstructs the
brightening loveliness of the present hour. Our avenue is strewn with the whole
crop of autumn’s withered leaves. There are quantities of decayed branches
which one tempest after another has flung down, black and rotten, and one or
two with the ruin of a bird’s-nest clinging to them. In the garden are the
dried bean-vines, the brown stalks of the asparagus-bed, and melancholy old
cabbages which were frozen into the soil before their unthrifty cultivator
could find time to gather them. How invariably, throughout all the forms of
life, do we find these intermingled memorials of death! On the soil of thought
and in the garden of the heart, as well as in the sensual world, he withered
leaves,—the ideas and feelings that we have done with. There is no wind
strong enough to sweep them away; infinite space will not garner then from our
sight. What mean they? Why may we not be permitted to live and enjoy, as if
this were the first life and our own the primal enjoyment, instead of treading
always on these dry hones and mouldering relics, from the aged accumulation of
which springs all that now appears so young and new? Sweet must have been the
springtime of Eden, when no earlier year had strewn its decay upon the virgin
turf and no former experience had ripened into summer and faded into autumn in
the hearts of its inhabitants! That was a world worth living in. O then
murmurer, it is out of the very wantonness of such a life that then feignest
these idle lamentations. There is no decay. Each human soul is the
first-created inhabitant of its own Eden. We dwell in an old moss-covered
mansion, and tread in the worn footprints of the past, and have a gray
clergyman’s ghost for our daily and nightly inmate; yet all these outward
circumstances are made less than visionary by the renewing power of the spirit.
Should the spirit ever lose this power,—should the withered leaves, and
the rotten branches, and the moss-covered house, and the ghost of the gray past
ever become its realities, and the verdure and the freshness merely its faint
dream,—then let it pray to be released from earth. It will need the air
of heaven to revive its pristine energies.

What an unlooked-for flight was this from our shadowy avenue of black-ash and
balm of Gilead trees into the infinite! Now we have our feet again upon the
turf. Nowhere does the grass spring up so industriously as in this homely yard,
along the base of the stone wall, and in the sheltered nooks of the buildings,
and especially around the southern doorstep,—a locality which seems
particularly favorable to its growth, for it is already tall enough to bend
over and wave in the wind. I observe that several weeds—and most
frequently a plant that stains the fingers with its yellow juice—have
survived and retained their freshness and sap throughout the winter. One knows
not how they have deserved such an exception from the common lot of their race.
They are now the patriarchs of the departed year, and may preach mortality to
the present generation of flowers and weeds.

Among the delights of spring, how is it possible to forget the birds? Even the
crows were welcome as the sable harbingers of a brighter and livelier race.
They visited us before the snow was off, but seem mostly to have betaken
themselves to remote depths of the woods, which they haunt all summer long.
Many a time shall I disturb them there, and feel as if I had intruded among a
company of silent worshippers, as they sit in Sabbath stillness among the
tree-tops. Their voices, when they speak, are in admirable accordance with the
tranquil solitude of a summer afternoon; and resounding so far above the head,
their loud clamor increases the religious quiet of the scene instead of
breaking it. A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in spite of
his gravity of mien and black attire; he is certainly a thief, and probably an
infidel. The gulls are far more respectable, in a moral point of view. These
denizens of seabeaten rocks and haunters of the lonely beach come up our inland
river at this season, and soar high overhead, flapping their broad wings in the
upper sunshine. They are among the most picturesque of birds, because they so
float and rest upon the air as to become almost stationary parts of the
landscape. The imagination has time to grow acquainted with them; they have not
flitted away in a moment. You go up among the clouds and greet these
lofty-flighted gulls, and repose confidently with them upon the sustaining
atmosphere. Duck’s have their haunts along the solitary places of the river,
and alight in flocks upon the broad bosom of the overflowed meadows. Their
flight is too rapid and determined for the eye to catch enjoyment from it,
although it never fails to stir up the heart with the sportsman’s ineradicable
instinct. They have now gone farther northward, but will visit us again in
autumn.

The smaller birds,—the little songsters of the woods, and those that
haunt man’s dwellings and claim human friendship by building their nests under
the sheltering eaves or among the orchard trees,—these require a touch
more delicate and a gentler heart than mine to do them justice. Their outburst
of melody is like a brook let loose from wintry chains. We need not deem it a
too high and solemn word to call it a hymn of praise to the Creator; since
Nature, who pictures the reviving year in so many sights of beauty, has
expressed the sentiment of renewed life in no other sound save the notes of
these blessed birds. Their music, however, just now, seems to be incidental,
and not the result of a set purpose. They are discussing the economy of life
and love and the site and architecture of their summer residences, and have no
time to sit on a twig and pour forth solemn hymns, or overtures, operas,
symphonies, and waltzes. Anxious questions are asked; grave subjects are
settled in quick and animated debate; and only by occasional accident, as from
pure ecstasy, does a rich warble roll its tiny waves of golden sound through
the atmosphere. Their little bodies are as busy as their voices; they are all a
constant flutter and restlessness. Even when two or three retreat to a tree-top
to hold council, they wag their tails and heads all the time with the
irrepressible activity of their nature, which perhaps renders their brief span
of life in reality as long as the patriarchal age of sluggish man. The
blackbirds, three species of which consort together, are the noisiest of all
our feathered citizens. Great companies of them—more than the famous
“four-and-twenty” whom Mother Goose has immortalized—congregate in
contiguous treetops and vociferate with all the clamor and confusion of a
turbulent political meeting. Politics, certainly, must be the occasion of such
tumultuous debates; but still, unlike all other politicians, they instil melody
into their individual utterances and produce harmony as a general effect. Of
all bird voices, none are more sweet and cheerful to my ear than those of
swallows, in the dim, sunstreaked interior of a lofty barn; they address the
heart with even a closer sympathy than robin-redbreast. But, indeed, all these
winged people, that dwell in the vicinity of homesteads, seem to partake of
human nature, and possess the germ, if not the development, of immortal souls.
We hear them saying their melodious prayers at morning’s blush and eventide. A
little while ago, in the deep of night, there came the lively thrill of a
bird’s note from a neighboring tree,—a real song, such as greets the
purple dawn or mingles with the yellow sunshine. What could the little bird
mean by pouring it forth at midnight? Probably the music gushed out of the
midst of a dream in which he fancied himself in paradise with his mate, but
suddenly awoke on a cold leafless bough, with a New England mist penetrating
through his feathers. That was a sad exchange of imagination for reality.

Insects are among the earliest births of sprung. Multitudes of I know not what
species appeared long ago on the surface of the snow. Clouds of them, almost
too minute for sight, hover in a beam of sunshine, and vanish, as if
annihilated, when they pass into the shade. A mosquito has already been heard
to sound the small horror of his bugle-horn. Wasps infest the sunny windows of
the house. A bee entered one of the chambers with a prophecy of flowers. Rare
butterflies came before the snow was off, flaunting in the chill breeze, and
looking forlorn and all astray, in spite of the magnificence of their dark
velvet cloaks, with golden borders.

The fields and wood-paths have as yet few charms to entice the wanderer. In a
walk, the other day, I found no violets, nor anemones, nor anything in the
likeness of a flower. It was worth while, however, to ascend our opposite hill
for the sake of gaining a general idea of the advance of spring, which I had
hitherto been studying in its minute developments. The river lay around me in a
semicircle, overflowing all the meadows which give it its Indian name, and
offering a noble breadth to sparkle in the sunbeams. Along the hither shore a
row of trees stood up to their knees in water; and afar off, on the surface of
the stream, tufts of bushes thrust up their heads, as it were, to breathe. The
most striking objects were great solitary trees here and there, with a
mile-wide waste of water all around them. The curtailment of the trunk, by its
immersion in the river, quite destroys the fair proportions of the tree, and
thus makes us sensible of a regularity and propriety in the usual forms of
nature. The flood of the present season—though it never amounts to a
freshet on our quiet stream—has encroached farther upon the land than any
previous one for at least a score of years. It has overflowed stone fences, and
even rendered a portion of the highway navigable for boats.

The waters, however, are now gradually subsiding; islands become annexed to the
mainland; and other islands emerge, like new creations, from the watery waste.
The scene supplies an admirable image of the receding of the Nile, except that
there is no deposit of black slime; or of Noah’s flood, only that there is a
freshness and novelty in these recovered portions of the continent which give
the impression of a world just made rather than of one so polluted that a
deluge had been requisite to purify it. These upspringing islands are the
greenest spots in the landscape; the first gleam of sunlight suffices to cover
them with verdure.

Thank Providence for spring! The earth—and man himself, by sympathy with
his birthplace would be far other than we find them if life toiled wearily
onward without this periodical infusion of the primal spirit. Will the world
ever be so decayed that spring may not renew its greenness? Can man be so
dismally age stricken that no faintest sunshine of his youth may revisit him
once a year? It is impossible. The moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into
beauty; the good old pastor who once dwelt here renewed his prime, regained his
boyhood, in the genial breezes of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and
heavy soul if, whether in youth or age, it have outlived its privilege of
springtime sprightliness! From such a soul the world must hope no reformation
of its evil, no sympathy with the lofty faith and gallant struggles of those
who contend in its behalf. Summer works in the present, and thinks not of the
future; autumn is a rich conservative; winter has utterly lost its faith, and
clings tremulously to the remembrance of what has been; but spring, with its
outgushing life, is the true type of the movement.

MONSIEUR DU MIROIR

Than the gentleman above named, there is nobody, in the whole circle of my
acquaintance, whom I have more attentively studied, yet of whom I have less
real knowledge, beneath the surface which it pleases him to present. Being
anxious to discover who and what he really is, and how connected with me, and
what are to be the results to him and to myself of the joint interest which,
without any choice on my part, seems to be permanently established between us,
and incited, furthermore, by the propensities of a student of human nature,
though doubtful whether Monsieur du Miroir have aught of humanity but the
figure,—I have determined to place a few of his remarkable points before
the public, hoping to be favored with some clew to the explanation of his
character. Nor let the reader condemn any part of the narrative as frivolous,
since a subject of such grave reflection diffuses its importance through the
minutest particulars; and there is no judging beforehand what odd little
circumstance may do the office of a blind man’s dog among the perplexities of
this dark investigation; and however extraordinary, marvellous, preternatural,
and utterly incredible some of the meditated disclosures may appear, I pledge
my honor to maintain as sacred a regard to fact as if my testimony were given
on oath and involved the dearest interests of the personage in question. Not
that there is matter for a criminal accusation against Monsieur du Miroir, nor
am I the man to bring it forward if there were. The chief that I complain of is
his impenetrable mystery, which is no better than nonsense if it conceal
anything good, and much worse in the contrary case.

But, if undue partialities could be supposed to influence me, Monsieur du
Miroir might hope to profit rather than to suffer by them, for in the whole of
our long intercourse we have seldom had the slightest disagreement; and,
moreover, there are reasons for supposing him a near relative of mine, and
consequently entitled to the best word that I can give him. He bears
indisputably a strong personal resemblance to myself, and generally puts on
mourning at the funerals of the family. On the other hand, his name would
indicate a French descent; in which case, infinitely preferring that my blood
should flow from a bold British and pure Puritan source, I beg leave to
disclaim all kindred with Monsieur du Miroir. Some genealogists trace his
origin to Spain, and dub him a knight of the order of the CABALLEROS DE
LOS ESPEJOZ, one of whom was overthrown by Don Quixote.
But what says Monsieur du Miroir himself of his paternity and his fatherland?
Not a word did he ever say about the matter; and herein, perhaps, lies one of
his most especial reasons for maintaining such a vexatious mystery, that he
lacks the faculty of speech to expound it. His lips are sometimes seen to move;
his eyes and countenance are alive with shifting expression, as if
corresponding by visible hieroglyphics to his modulated breath; and anon he
will seem to pause with as satisfied an air as if he had been talking excellent
sense. Good sense or bad, Monsieur du Miroir is the sole judge of his own
conversational powers, never having whispered so much as a syllable that
reached the ears of any other auditor. Is he really dumb? or is all the world
deaf? or is it merely a piece of my friend’s waggery, meant for nothing but to
make fools of us? If so, he has the joke all to himself.

This dumb devil which possesses Monsieur do Miroir is, I am persuaded, the sole
reason that he does not make me the most flattering protestations of
friendship. In many particulars—indeed, as to all his cognizable and not
preternatural points, except that, once in a great while, I speak a word or
two—there exists the greatest apparent sympathy between us. Such is his
confidence in my taste that he goes astray from the general fashion and copies
all his dresses after mine. I never try on a new garment without expecting to
meet, Monsieur du Miroir in one of the same pattern. He has duplicates of all
my waistcoats and cravats, shirt-bosoms of precisely a similar plait, and an
old coat for private wear, manufactured, I suspect, by a Chinese tailor, in
exact imitation of a beloved old coat of mine, with a facsimile, stitch by
stitch, of a patch upon the elbow. In truth, the singular and minute
coincidences that occur, both in the accidents of the passing day and the
serious events of our lives, remind me of those doubtful legends of lovers, or
twin children, twins of fate, who have lived, enjoyed, suffered, and died in
unison, each faithfully repeating the last tremor of the other’s breath, though
separated by vast tracts of sea and land. Strange to say, my incommodities
belong equally to my companion, though the burden is nowise alleviated by his
participation. The other morning, after a night of torment from the toothache,
I met Monsieur du Miroir with such a swollen anguish in his cheek that my own
pangs were redoubled, as were also his, if I might judge by a fresh contortion
of his visage. All the inequalities of my spirits are communicated to him,
causing the unfortunate Monsieur du Miroir to mope and scowl through a whole
summer’s day, or to laugh as long, for no better reason than the gay or gloomy
crotchets of my brain. Once we were joint sufferers of a three months’
sickness, and met like mutual ghosts in the first days of convalescence.
Whenever I have been in love, Monsieur du Miroir has looked passionate and
tender; and never did my mistress discard me, but this too susceptible
gentleman grew lackadaisical. His temper, also, rises to blood heat, fever
heat, or boiling-water beat, according to the measure of any wrong which might
seem to have fallen entirely on myself. I have sometimes been calmed down by
the sight of my own inordinate wrath depicted on his frowning brow. Yet,
however prompt in taking up my quarrels, I cannot call to mind that he ever
struck a downright blow in my behalf; nor, in fact, do I perceive that any real
and tangible good has resulted from his constant interference in my affairs; so
that, in my distrustful moods, I am apt to suspect Monsieur du Miroir’s
sympathy to be mere outward show, not a whit better nor worse than other
people’s sympathy. Nevertheless, as mortal man must have something in the guise
of sympathy,—and whether the true metal, or merely copper-washed, is of
less moment,—I choose rather to content myself with Monsieur du Miroir’s,
such as it is, than to seek the sterling coin, and perhaps miss even the
counterfeit.

In my age of vanities I have often seen him in the ballroom, and might again
were I to seek him there. We have encountered each other at the Tremont
Theatre, where, however, he took his seat neither in the dress-circle, pit, nor
upper regions, nor threw a single glance at the stage, though the brightest
star, even Fanny Kemble herself, might be culminating there. No; this whimsical
friend of mine chose to linger in the saloon, near one of the large
looking-glasses which throw back their pictures of the illuminated room. He is
so full of these unaccountable eccentricities that I never like to notice
Monsieur du Miroir, nor to acknowledge the slightest connection with him, in
places of public resort. He, however, has no scruple about claiming my
acquaintance, even when his common-sense, if he had any, might teach him that I
would as willingly exchange a nod with the Old Nick. It was but the other day
that he got into a large brass kettle at the entrance of a hardware-store, and
thrust his head, the moment afterwards, into a bright, new warming-pan, whence
he gave me a most merciless look of recognition. He smiled, and so did I; but
these childish tricks make decent people rather shy of Monsieur du Miroir, and
subject him to more dead cuts than any other gentleman in town.

One of this singular person’s most remarkable peculiarities is his fondness for
water, wherein he excels any temperance man whatever. His pleasure, it must be
owned, is not so much to drink it (in which respect a very moderate quantity
will answer his occasions) as to souse himself over head and ears wherever he
may meet with it. Perhaps he is a merman, or born of a mermaid’s marriage with
a mortal, and thus amphibious by hereditary right, like the children which the
old river deities, or nymphs of fountains, gave to earthly love. When no
cleaner bathing-place happened to be at hand, I have seen the foolish fellow in
a horse-pond. Some times he refreshes himself in the trough of a town-pump,
without caring what the people think about him. Often, while carefully picking
my way along the street after a heavy shower, I have been scandalized to see
Monsieur du Miroir, in full dress, paddling from one mud-puddle to another, and
plunging into the filthy depths of each. Seldom have I peeped into a well
without discerning this ridiculous gentleman at the bottom, whence he gazes up,
as through a long telescopic tube, and probably makes discoveries among the
stars by daylight. Wandering along lonesome paths or in pathless forests, when
I have come to virgin fountains of which it would have been pleasant to deem
myself the first discoverer, I have started to find Monsieur du Miroir there
before me. The solitude seemed lonelier for his presence. I have leaned from a
precipice that frowns over Lake George, which the French call nature’s font of
sacramental water, and used it in their log-churches here and their cathedrals
beyond the sea, and seen him far below in that pure element. At Niagara, too,
where I would gladly have forgotten both myself and him, I could not help
observing my companion in the smooth water on the very verge of the cataract
just above the Table Rock. Were I to reach the sources of the Nile, I should
expect to meet him there. Unless he be another Ladurlad, whose garments the
depth of ocean could not moisten, it is difficult to conceive how he keeps
himself in any decent pickle; though I am bound to confess that his clothes
seem always as dry and comfortable as my own. But, as a friend, I could wish
that he would not so often expose himself in liquor.

All that I have hitherto related may be classed among those little personal
oddities which agreeably diversify the surface of society, and, though they may
sometimes annoy us, yet keep our daily intercourse fresher and livelier than if
they were done away. By an occasional hint, however, I have endeavored to pave
the way for stranger things to come, which, had they been disclosed at once,
Monsieur du Miroir might have been deemed a shadow, and myself a person of no
veracity, and this truthful history a fabulous legend. But, now that the reader
knows me worthy of his confidence, I will begin to make him stare.

To speak frankly, then, I could bring the most astounding proofs that Monsieur
du Miroir is at least a conjurer, if not one of that unearthly tribe with whom
conjurers deal. He has inscrutable methods of conveying himself from place to
place with the rapidity of the swiftest steamboat or rail-car. Brick walls and
oaken doors and iron bolts are no impediment to his passage. Here in my
chamber, for instance, as the evening deepens into night, I sit
alone,—the key turned and withdrawn from the lock, the keyhole stuffed
with paper to keep out a peevish little blast of wind. Yet, lonely as I seem,
were I to lift one of the lamps and step five paces eastward, Monsieur du
Miroir would be sure to meet me with a lamp also in his hand; and were I to
take the stage-coach to-morrow, without giving him the least hint of my design,
and post onward till the week’s end, at whatever hotel I might find myself I
should expect to share my private apartment with this inevitable Monsieur du
Miroir. Or, out of a mere wayward fantasy, were I to go, by moonlight, and
stand beside the stone Pout of the Shaker Spring at Canterbury, Monsieur du
Miroir would set forth on the same fool’s errand, and would not fail to meet me
there. Shall I heighten the reader’s wonder? While writing these latter
sentences, I happened to glance towards the large, round globe of one off the
brass andirons, and lo! a miniature apparition of Monsieur du Miroir, with his
face widened and grotesquely contorted, as if he were making fun of my
amazement! But he has played so many of these jokes that they begin to lose
their effect. Once, presumptuous that he was, he stole into the heaven of a
young lady’s eyes; so that, while I gazed and was dreaming only of herself, I
found him also in my dream. Years have so changed him since that he need never
hope to enter those heavenly orbs again.

From these veritable statements it will be readily concluded that, had Monsieur
du Miroir played such pranks in old witch times, matters might have gone hard
with him; at least if the constable and posse comitatus could have executed a
warrant, or the jailer had been cunning enough to keep him. But it has often
occurred to me as a very singular circumstance, and as betokening either a
temperament morbidly suspicious or some weighty cause of apprehension, that he
never trusts himself within the grasp even of his most intimate friend. If you
step forward to meet him, he readily advances; if you offer him your hand, he
extends his own with an air of the utmost frankness; but, though you calculate
upon a hearty shake, you do not get hold of his little finger. Ah, this
Monsieur du Miroir is a slippery fellow!

These truly are matters of special admiration. After vainly endeavoring, by the
strenuous exertion of my own wits, to gain a satisfactory insight into the
character of Monsieur du Miroir, I had recourse to certain wise men, and also
to books of abstruse philosophy, seeking who it was that haunted me, and why. I
heard long lectures and read huge volumes with little profit beyond the
knowledge that many former instances are recorded, in successive ages, of
similar connections between ordinary mortals and beings possessing the
attributes of Monsieur du Miroir. Some now alive, perhaps, besides myself, have
such attendants. Would that Monsieur du Miroir could be persuaded to transfer
his attachment to one of those, and allow some other of his race to assume the
situation that he now holds in regard to me! If I must needs have so intrusive
an intimate, who stares me in the face in my closest privacy, and follows me
even to my bedchamber, I should prefer—scandal apart—the laughing
bloom of a young girl to the dark and bearded gravity of my present companion.
But such desires are never to be gratified. Though the members of Monsieur du
Miroir’s family have been accused, perhaps justly, of visiting their friends
often in splendid halls, and seldom in darksome dungeons, yet they exhibit a
rare constancy to the objects of their first attachment, however unlovely in
person or unamiable in disposition,—however unfortunate, or even
infamous, and deserted by all the world besides. So will it be with my
associate. Our fates appear inseparably blended. It is my belief, as I find him
mingling with my earliest recollections, that we came into existence together,
as my shadow follows me into the sunshine, and that hereafter, as heretofore,
the brightness or gloom of my fortunes will shine upon, or darken, the face of
Monsieur du Miroir. As we have been young together, and as it is now near the
summer noon with both of us, so, if long life be granted, shall each count his
own wrinkles on the other’s brow and his white hairs on the other’s head. And
when the coffin-lid shall have closed over me and that face and form, which,
more truly than the lover swears it to his beloved, are the sole light of his
existence,—when they shall be laid in that dark chamber, whither his
swift and secret footsteps cannot bring him,—then what is to become of
poor Monsieur du Miroir? Will he have the fortitude, with my other friends, to
take a last look at my pale countenance? Will he walk foremost in the funeral
train? Will he come often and haunt around my grave, and weed away the nettles,
and plant flowers amid the verdure, and scrape the moss out of the letters of
my burial-stone? Will he linger where I have lived, to remind the neglectful
world of one who staked much to win a name, but will not then care whether he
lost or won?

Not thus will he prove his deep fidelity. O, what terror, if this friend of
mine, after our last farewell, should step into the crowded street, or roam
along our old frequented path by the still waters, or sit down in the domestic
circle where our faces are most familiar and beloved! No; but when the rays of
heaven shall bless me no more, nor the thoughtful lamplight gleam upon my
studies, nor the cheerful fireside gladden the meditative man, then, his task
fulfilled, shall this mysterious being vanish from the earth forever. He will
pass to the dark realm of nothingness, but will not find me there.

There is something fearful in bearing such a relation to a creature so
imperfectly known, and in the idea that, to a certain extent, all which
concerns myself will be reflected in its consequences upon him. When we feel
that another is to share the self-same fortune with ourselves we judge more
severely of our prospects, and withhold our confidence from that delusive magic
which appears to shed an infallibility of happiness over our own pathway. Of
late years, indeed, there has been much to sadden my intercourse with Monsieur
de Miroir. Had not our union been a necessary condition of our life, we must
have been estranged ere now. In early youth, when my affections were warm and
free, I loved him well, and could always spend a pleasant hour in his society,
chiefly because it gave me an excellent opinion of myself. Speechless as he
was, Monsieur du Miroir had then a most agreeable way of calling me a handsome
fellow; and I, of course, returned the compliment; so that, the more we kept
each other’s company, the greater coxcombs we mutually grew. But neither of us
need apprehend any such misfortune now. When we chance to meet,—for it is
chance oftener than design,—each glances sadly at the other’s forehead,
dreading wrinkles there; and at our temples, whence the hair is thinning away
too early; and at the sunken eyes, which no longer shed a gladsome light over
the whole face. I involuntarily peruse him as a record of my heavy youth, which
has been wasted in sluggishness for lack of hope and impulse, or equally thrown
away in toil that had no wise motive and has accomplished no good end. I
perceive that the tranquil gloom of a disappointed soul has darkened through
his countenance, where the blackness of the future seems to mingle with the
shadows of the past, giving him the aspect of a fated man. Is it too wild a
thought that my fate may have assumed this image of myself, and therefore
haunts me with such inevitable pertinacity, originating every act which it
appears to imitate, while it deludes me by pretending to share the events of
which it is merely the emblem and the prophecy? I must banish this idea, or it
will throw too deep an awe round my companion. At our next meeting, especially
if it be at midnight or in solitude, I fear that I shall glance aside and
shudder; in which case, as Monsieur du Miroir is extremely sensitive to
ill-treatment, he also will avert his eyes and express horror or disgust.

But no; this is unworthy of me. As of old I sought his society for the
bewitching dreams of woman’s love which he inspired, and because I fancied a
bright fortune in his aspect, so now will I hold daily and long communion with
hint for the sake of the stern lessons that he will teach my manhood. With
folded arms we will sit face to face, and lengthen out our silent converse till
a wiser cheerfulness shall have been wrought from the very texture of
despondency. He will say, perhaps indignantly, that it befits only him to mourn
for the decay of outward grace, which, while he possessed it, was his all. But
have not you, he will ask, a treasure in reserve, to which every year may add
far more value than age or death itself can snatch from that miserable clay? He
will tell me that though the bloom of life has been nipped with a frost, yet
the soul must not sit shivering in its cell, but bestir itself manfully, and
kindle a genial warmth from its own exercise against; the autumnal and the
wintry atmosphere. And I, in return, will bid him be of good cheer, nor take it
amiss that I must blanch his locks and wrinkle him up like a wilted apple,
since it shall be my endeavor so to beautify his face with intellect and mild
benevolence that he shall profit immensely by the change. But here a smile will
glimmer somewhat sadly over Monsieur du Miroir’s visage.

When this subject shall have been sufficiently discussed we may take up others
as important. Reflecting upon his power of following me to the remotest regions
and into the deepest privacy, I will compare the attempt to escape him to the
hopeless race that men sometimes run with memory, or their own hearts, or their
moral selves, which, though burdened with cares enough to crush an elephant,
will never be one step behind. I will be self-contemplative, as nature bids me,
and make him the picture or visible type of what I muse upon, that my mind may
not wander so vaguely as heretofore, chasing its own shadow through a chaos and
catching only the monsters that abide there. Then will we turn our thoughts to
the spiritual world, of the reality of which my companions shall furnish me an
illustration, if not an argument; for, as we have only the testimony of the eye
to Monsieur du Miroir’s existence, while all the other senses would fail to
inform us that such a figure stands within arm’s-length, wherefore should there
not be beings innumerable close beside us, and filling heaven and earth with
their multitude, yet of whom no corporeal perception can take cognizance? A
blind man might as reasonably deny that Monsieur du Miroir exists, as we,
because the Creator has hitherto withheld the spiritual perception, can
therefore contend that there are no spirits. O, there are! And, at this moment,
when the subject of which I write has grown strong within me and surrounded
itself with those solemn and awful associations which might have seemed most
alien to it, I could fancy that Monsieur du Miroir himself is a wanderer from
the spiritual world, with nothing human except his delusive garment of
visibility. Methinks I should tremble now were his wizard power of gliding
through all impediments in search of me to place him suddenly before my eyes.

Ha! What is yonder? Shape of mystery, did the tremor of my heartstrings vibrate
to thine own, and call thee from thy home among the dancers of the northern
lights, and shadows flung from departed sunshine, and giant spectres that
appear on clouds at daybreak and affright the climber of the Alps? In truth it
startled me, as I threw a wary glance eastward across the chamber, to discern
an unbidden guest with his eyes bent on mine. The identical MONSIEUR DU MIROIR!
Still there he sits and returns my gaze with as much of awe and curiosity as if
he, too, had spent a solitary evening in fantastic musings and made me his
theme. So inimitably does he counterfeit that I could almost doubt which of us
is the visionary form, or whether each be not the other’s mystery, and both
twin brethren of one fate, in mutually reflected spheres. O friend, canst thou
not hear and answer me? Break down the barrier between us! Grasp my hand!
Speak! Listen! A few words, perhaps, might satisfy the feverish yearning of my
soul for some master-thought that should guide me through this labyrinth of
life, teaching wherefore I was born, and how to do my task on earth, and what
is death. Alas! Even that unreal image should forget to ape me and smile at
these vain questions. Thus do mortals deify, as it were, a mere shadow of
themselves, a spectre of human reason, and ask of that to unveil the mysteries
which Divine Intelligence has revealed so far as needful to our guidance, and
hid the rest.

Farewell, Monsieur du Miroir. Of you, perhaps, as of many men, it may be
doubted whether you are the wiser, though your whole business is
REFLECTION.

THE HALL OF FANTASY

It has happened to me, on various occasions, to find myself in a certain
edifice which would appear to have some of the characteristics of a public
exchange. Its interior is a spacious hall, with a pavement of white marble.
Overhead is a lofty dome, supported by long rows of pillars of fantastic
architecture, the idea of which was probably taken from the Moorish ruins of
the Alhambra, or perhaps from some enchanted edifice in the Arabian tales. The
windows of this hall have a breadth and grandeur of design and an elaborateness
of workmanship that have nowhere been equalled, except in the Gothic cathedrals
of the Old World. Like their prototypes, too, they admit the light of heaven
only through stained and pictured glass, thus filling the hall with
many-colored radiance and painting its marble floor with beautiful or grotesque
designs; so that its inmates breathe, as it were, a visionary atmosphere, and
tread upon the fantasies of poetic minds. These peculiarities, combining a
wilder mixture of styles than even an American architect usually recognizes as
allowable,—Grecian, Gothic, Oriental, and nondescript,—cause the
whole edifice to give the impression of a dream, which might be dissipated and
shattered to fragments by merely stamping the foot upon the pavement. Yet, with
such modifications and repairs as successive ages demand, the Hall of Fantasy
is likely to endure longer than the most substantial structure that ever
cumbered the earth.

It is not at all times that one can gain admittance into this edifice, although
most persons enter it at some period or other of their lives; if not in their
waking moments, then by the universal passport of a dream. At my last visit I
wandered thither unawares while my mind was busy with an idle tale, and was
startled by the throng of people who seemed suddenly to rise up around me.

“Bless me! Where am I?” cried I, with but a dim recognition of the place.

“You are in a spot,” said a friend who chanced to be near at hand, “which
occupies in the world of fancy the same position which the Bourse, the Rialto,
and the Exchange do in the commercial world. All who have affairs in that
mystic region, which lies above, below, or beyond the actual, may here meet and
talk over the business of their dreams.”

“It is a noble hall,” observed I.

“Yes,” he replied. “Yet we see but a small portion of the edifice. In its upper
stories are said to be apartments where the inhabitants of earth may hold
converse with those of the moon; and beneath our feet are gloomy cells, which
communicate with the infernal regions, and where monsters and chimeras are kept
in confinement and fed with all unwholesomeness.”

In niches and on pedestals around about the hall stood the statues or busts of
men who in every age have been rulers and demigods in the realms of imagination
and its kindred regions. The grand old countenance of Homer; the shrunken and
decrepit form but vivid face of AEsop; the dark presence of Dante; the wild
Ariosto; Rabelais’s smile of deep-wrought mirth, the profound, pathetic humor
of Cervantes; the all-glorious Shakespeare; Spenser, meet guest for an
allegoric structure; the severe divinity of Milton; and Bunyan, moulded of
homeliest clay, but instinct with celestial fire,—were those that chiefly
attracted my eye. Fielding, Richardson, and Scott occupied conspicuous
pedestals. In an obscure and shadowy niche was deposited the bust of our
countryman, the author of Arthur Mervyn.

“Besides these indestructible memorials of real genius,” remarked my companion,
“each century has erected statues of its own ephemeral favorites in wood.”

“I observe a few crumbling relics of such,” said I. “But ever and anon, I
suppose, Oblivion comes with her huge broom and sweeps them all from the marble
floor. But such will never be the fate of this fine statue of Goethe.”

“Nor of that next to it,—Emanuel Swedenborg,” said he. “Were ever two men
of transcendent imagination more unlike?”

In the centre of the hall springs an ornamental fountain, the water of which
continually throws itself into new shapes and snatches the most diversified
lines from the stained atmosphere around. It is impossible to conceive what a
strange vivacity is imparted to the scene by the magic dance of this fountain,
with its endless transformations, in which the imaginative beholder may discern
what form he will. The water is supposed by some to flow from the same source
as the Castalian spring, and is extolled by others as uniting the virtues of
the Fountain of Youth with those of many other enchanted wells long celebrated
in tale and song. Having never tasted it, I can bear no testimony to its
quality.

“Did you ever drink this water?” I inquired of my friend.

“A few sips now and then,” answered he. “But there are men here who make it
their constant beverage,—or, at least, have the credit of doing so. In
some instances it is known to have intoxicating qualities.”

“Pray let us look at these water-drinkers,” said I.

So we passed among the fantastic pillars till we came to a spot where a number
of persons were clustered together in the light of one of the great stained
windows, which seemed to glorify the whole group as well as the marble that
they trod on. Most of them were men of broad foreheads, meditative
countenances, and thoughtful, inward eyes; yet it required but a trifle to
summon up mirth, peeping out from the very midst of grave and lofty musings.
Some strode about, or leaned against the pillars of the hall, alone and in
silence; their faces wore a rapt expression, as if sweet music were in the air
around them, or as if their inmost souls were about to float away in song. One
or two, perhaps, stole a glance at the bystanders, to watch if their poetic
absorption were observed. Others stood talking in groups, with a liveliness of
expression, a ready smile, and a light, intellectual laughter, which showed how
rapidly the shafts of wit were glancing to and fro among them.

A few held higher converse, which caused their calm and melancholy souls to
beam moonlight from their eyes. As I lingered near them,—for I felt an
inward attraction towards these men, as if the sympathy of feeling, if not of
genius, had united me to their order,—my friend mentioned several of
their names. The world has likewise heard those names; with some it has been
familiar for years; and others are daily making their way deeper into the
universal heart.

“Thank Heaven,” observed I to my companion, as we passed to another part of the
hall, “we have done with this techy, wayward, shy, proud unreasonable set of
laurel-gatherers. I love them in their works, but have little desire to meet
them elsewhere.”

“You have adopted all old prejudice, I see,” replied my friend, who was
familiar with most of these worthies, being himself a student of poetry, and
not without the poetic flame. “But, so far as my experience goes, men of genius
are fairly gifted with the social qualities; and in this age there appears to
be a fellow-feeling among them which had not heretofore been developed. As men,
they ask nothing better than to be on equal terms with their fellow-men; and as
authors, they have thrown aside their proverbial jealousy, and acknowledge a
generous brotherhood.”

“The world does not think so,” answered I. “An author is received in general
society pretty much as we honest citizens are in the Hall of Fantasy. We gaze
at him as if he had no business among us, and question whether he is fit for
any of our pursuits.”

“Then it is a very foolish question,” said he. “Now, here are a class of men
whom we may daily meet on ’Change. Yet what poet in the hall is more a fool of
fancy than the sagest of them?”

He pointed to a number of persons, who, manifest as the fact was, would have
deemed it an insult to be told that they stood in the Hall of Fantasy. Their
visages were traced into wrinkles and furrows, each of which seemed the record
of some actual experience in life. Their eyes had the shrewd, calculating
glance which detects so quickly and so surely all that it concerns a man of
business to know about the characters and purposes of his fellow-men. Judging
them as they stood, they might be honored and trusted members of the Chamber of
Commerce, who had found the genuine secret of wealth and whose sagacity gave
them the command of fortune.

There was a character of detail and matter of fact in their talk which
concealed the extravagance of its purport, insomuch that the wildest schemes
had the aspect of everyday realities. Thus the listener was not startled at the
idea of cities to be built, as if by magic, in the heart of pathless forests;
and of streets to be laid out where now the sea was tossing; and of mighty
rivers to be stayed in their courses in order to turn the machinery of a
cotton-mill. It was only by an effort, and scarcely then, that the mind
convinced itself that such speculations were as much matter of fantasy as the
old dream of Eldorado, or as Mammon’s Cave, or any other vision of gold ever
conjured up by the imagination of needy poet or romantic adventurer.

“Upon my word,” said I, “it is dangerous to listen to such dreamers as these.
Their madness is contagious.”

“Yes,” said my friend, “because they mistake the Hall of Fantasy for actual
brick and mortar, and its purple atmosphere for unsophisticated sunshine. But
the poet knows his whereabout, and therefore is less likely to make a fool of
himself in real life.”

“Here again,” observed I, as we advanced a little farther, “we see another
order of dreamers, peculiarly characteristic, too, of the genius of our
country.”

These were the inventors of fantastic machines. Models of their contrivances
were placed against some of the pillars of the hall, and afforded good emblems
of the result generally to be anticipated from an attempt to reduce day-dreams
to practice. The analogy may hold in morals as well as physics; for instance,
here was the model of a railroad through the air and a tunnel under the sea.
Here was a machine—stolen, I believe—for the distillation of heat
from moonshine; and another for the condensation of morning mist into square
blocks of granite, wherewith it was proposed to rebuild the entire Hall of
Fantasy. One man exhibited a sort of lens whereby he had succeeded in making
sunshine out of a lady’s smile; and it was his purpose wholly to irradiate the
earth by means of this wonderful invention.

“It is nothing new,” said I; “for most of our sunshine comes from woman’s smile
already.”

“True,” answered the inventor; “but my machine will secure a constant supply
for domestic use; whereas hitherto it has been very precarious.”

Another person had a scheme for fixing the reflections of objects in a pool of
water, and thus taking the most life-like portraits imaginable; and the same
gentleman demonstrated the practicability of giving a permanent dye to ladies’
dresses, in the gorgeous clouds of sunset. There were at least fifty kinds of
perpetual motion, one of which was applicable to the wits of newspaper editors
and writers of every description. Professor Espy was here, with a tremendous
storm in a gum-elastic bag. I could enumerate many more of these Utopian
inventions; but, after all, a more imaginative collection is to be found in the
Patent Office at Washington.

Turning from the inventors we took a more general survey of the inmates of the
hall. Many persons were present whose right of entrance appeared to consist in
some crotchet of the brain, which, so long as it might operate, produced a
change in their relation to the actual world. It is singular how very few there
are who do not occasionally gain admittance on such a score, either in
abstracted musings, or momentary thoughts, or bright anticipations, or vivid
remembrances; for even the actual becomes ideal, whether in hope or memory, and
beguiles the dreamer into the Hall of Fantasy. Some unfortunates make their
whole abode and business here, and contract habits which unfit them for all the
real employments of life. Others—but these are few—possess the
faculty, in their occasional visits, of discovering a purer truth than the
world call impart among the lights and shadows of these pictured windows.

And with all its dangerous influences, we have reason to thank God that there
is such a place of refuge from the gloom and chillness of actual life. Hither
may come the prisoner, escaping from his dark and narrow cell and cankerous
chain, to breathe free air in this enchanted atmosphere. The sick man leaves
his weary pillow, and finds strength to wander hither, though his wasted limbs
might not support him even to the threshold of his chamber. The exile passes
through the Hall of Fantasy to revisit his native soil. The burden of years
rolls down from the old man’s shoulders the moment that the door uncloses.
Mourners leave their heavy sorrows at the entrance, and here rejoin the lost
ones whose faces would else be seen no more, until thought shall have become
the only fact. It may be said, in truth, that there is but half a
life—the meaner and earthier half—for those who never find their
way into the hall. Nor must I fail to mention that in the observatory of the
edifice is kept that wonderful perspective-glass, through which the shepherds
of the Delectable Mountains showed Christian the far-off gleam of the Celestial
City. The eye of Faith still loves to gaze through it.

“I observe some men here,” said I to my friend, “who might set up a strong
claim to be reckoned among the most real personages of the day.”

“Certainly,” he replied. “If a man be in advance of his age, he must be content
to make his abode in this hall until the lingering generations of his
fellow-men come up with him. He can find no other shelter in the universe. But
the fantasies of one day are the deepest realities of a future one.”

“It is difficult to distinguish them apart amid the gorgeous and bewildering
light of this ball,” rejoined I. “The white sunshine of actual life is
necessary in order to test them. I am rather apt to doubt both men and their
reasonings till I meet them in that truthful medium.”

“Perhaps your faith in the ideal is deeper than you are aware,” said my friend.
“You are at least a democrat; and methinks no scanty share of such faith is
essential to the adoption of that creed.”

Among the characters who had elicited these remarks were most of the noted
reformers of the day, whether in physics, politics, morals, or religion. There
is no surer method of arriving at the Hall of Fantasy than to throw one’s-self
into the current of a theory; for, whatever landmarks of fact may be set up
along the stream, there is a law of nature that impels it thither. And let it
be so; for here the wise head and capacious heart may do their work; and what
is good and true becomes gradually hardened into fact, while error melts away
and vanishes among the shadows of the ball. Therefore may none who believe and
rejoice in the progress of mankind be angry with me because I recognized their
apostles and leaders amid the fantastic radiance of those pictured windows. I
love and honor such men as well as they.

It would be endless to describe the herd of real or self styled reformers that
peopled this place of refuge. They were the representatives of an unquiet
period, when mankind is seeking to cast off the whole tissue of ancient custom
like a tattered garment. Many of then had got possession of some crystal
fragment of truth, the brightness of which so dazzled them that they could see
nothing else in the wide universe. Here were men whose faith had embodied
itself in the form of a potato; and others whose long beards had a deep
spiritual significance. Here was the abolitionist, brandishing his one idea
like an iron flail. In a word, there were a thousand shapes of good and evil,
faith and infidelity, wisdom and nonsense,—a most incongruous throng.

Yet, withal, the heart of the stanchest conservative, unless he abjured his
fellowship with man, could hardly have helped throbbing in sympathy with the
spirit that pervaded these innumerable theorists. It was good for the man of
unquickened heart to listen even to their folly. Far down beyond the fathom of
the intellect the soul acknowledged that all these varying and conflicting
developments of humanity were united in one sentiment. Be the individual theory
as wild as fancy could make it, still the wiser spirit would recognize the
struggle of the race after a better and purer life than had yet been realized
on earth. My faith revived even while I rejected all their schemes. It could
not be that the world should continue forever what it has been; a soil where
Happiness is so rare a flower and Virtue so often a blighted fruit; a
battle-field where the good principle, with its shield flung above its head,
can hardly save itself amid the rush of adverse influences. In the enthusiasm
of such thoughts I gazed through one of the pictured windows, and, behold! the
whole external world was tinged with the dimly glorious aspect that is peculiar
to the Hall of Fantasy, insomuch that it seemed practicable at that very
instant to realize some plan for the perfection of mankind. But, alas! if
reformers would understand the sphere in which their lot is cast they must
cease to look through pictured windows. Yet they not only use this medium, but
mistake it for the whitest sunshine.

“Come,” said I to my friend, starting from a deep revery, “let us hasten hence,
or I shall be tempted to make a theory, after which there is little hope of any
man.”

“Come hither, then,” answered he. “Here is one theory that swallows up and
annihilates all others.”

He led me to a distant part of the hall where a crowd of deeply attentive
auditors were assembled round an elderly man of plain, honest, trustworthy
aspect. With an earnestness that betokened the sincerest faith in his own
doctrine, he announced that the destruction of the world was close at hand.

“It is Father Miller himself!” exclaimed I.

“No less a man,” said my friend; “and observe how picturesque a contrast
between his dogma and those of the reformers whom we have just glanced at. They
look for the earthly perfection of mankind, and are forming schemes which imply
that the immortal spirit will be connected with a physical nature for
innumerable ages of futurity. On the other hand, here comes good Father Miller,
and with one puff of his relentless theory scatters all their dreams like so
many withered leaves upon the blast.”

“It is, perhaps, the only method of getting mankind out of the various
perplexities into which they have fallen,” I replied. “Yet I could wish that
the world might be permitted to endure until some great moral shall have been
evolved. A riddle is propounded. Where is the solution? The sphinx did not slay
herself until her riddle had been guessed. Will it not be so with the world?
Now, if it should be burned to-morrow morning, I am at a loss to know what
purpose will have been accomplished, or how the universe will be wiser or
better for our existence and destruction.”

“We cannot tell what mighty truths may have been embodied in act through the
existence of the globe and its inhabitants,” rejoined my companion. “Perhaps it
may be revealed to us after the fall of the curtain over our catastrophe; or
not impossibly, the whole drama, in which we are involuntary actors, may have
been performed for the instruction of another set of spectators. I cannot
perceive that our own comprehension of it is at all essential to the matter. At
any rate, while our view is so ridiculously narrow and superficial it would be
absurd to argue the continuance of the world from the fact that it seems to
have existed hitherto in vain.”

“The poor old earth,” murmured I. “She has faults enough, in all conscience,
but I cannot hear to have her perish.”

“It is no great matter,” said my friend. “The happiest of us has been weary of
her many a time and oft.”

“I doubt it,” answered I, pertinaciously; “the root of human nature strikes
down deep into this earthly soil, and it is but reluctantly that we submit to
be transplanted, even for a higher cultivation in heaven. I query whether the
destruction of the earth would gratify any one individual, except perhaps some
embarrassed man of business whose notes fall due a day after the day of doom.”

Then methought I heard the expostulating cry of a multitude against the
consummation prophesied by Father Miller. The lover wrestled with Providence
for his foreshadowed bliss. Parents entreated that the earth’s span of
endurance might be prolonged by some seventy years, so that their new-born
infant should not be defrauded of his lifetime. A youthful poet murmured
because there would be no posterity to recognize the inspiration of his song.
The reformers, one and all, demanded a few thousand years to test their
theories, after which the universe might go to wreck. A mechanician, who was
busied with an improvement of the steam-engine, asked merely time to perfect
his model. A miser insisted that the world’s destruction would be a personal
wrong to himself, unless he should first be permitted to add a specified sum to
his enormous heap of gold. A little boy made dolorous inquiry whether the last
day would come before Christmas, and thus deprive him of his anticipated
dainties. In short, nobody seemed satisfied that this mortal scene of things
should have its close just now. Yet, it must be confessed, the motives of the
crowd for desiring its continuance were mostly so absurd, that unless infinite
Wisdom had been aware of much better reasons, the solid earth must have melted
away at once.

For my own part, not to speak of a few private and personal ends, I really
desired our old mother’s prolonged existence for her own dear sake.

“The poor old earth!” I repeated. “What I should chiefly regret in her
destruction would be that very earthliness which no other sphere or state of
existence can renew or compensate. The fragrance of flowers and of new-mown
hay; the genial warmth of sunshine, and the beauty of a sunset among clouds;
the comfort and cheerful glow of the fireside; the deliciousness of fruits and
of all good cheer; the magnificence of mountains, and seas, and cataracts, and
the softer charm of rural scenery; even the fast-falling snow and the gray
atmosphere through which it descends,—all these and innumerable other
enjoyable things of earth must perish with her. Then the country frolics; the
homely humor; the broad, open-mouthed roar of laughter, in which body and soul
conjoin so heartily! I fear that no other world call show its anything just
like this. As for purely moral enjoyments, the good will find them in every
state of being. But where the material and the moral exist together, what is to
happen then? And then our mute four-footed friends and the winged songsters of
our woods! Might it not be lawful to regret them, even in the hallowed groves
of paradise?”

“You speak like the very spirit of earth, imbued with a scent of freshly turned
soil,” exclaimed my friend.

“It is not that I so much object to giving up these enjoyments on my own
account,” continued I, “but I hate to think that they will have been eternally
annihilated from the list of joys.”

“Nor need they be,” he replied. “I see no real force in what you say. Standing
in this Hall of Fantasy, we perceive what even the earth-clogged intellect of
man can do in creating circumstances which, though we call them shadowy and
visionary, are scarcely more so than those that surround us in actual life.
Doubt not then that man’s disembodied spirit may recreate time and the world
for itself, with all their peculiar enjoyments, should there still be human
yearnings amid life eternal and infinite. But I doubt whether we shall be
inclined to play such a poor scene over again.”

“O, you are ungrateful to our mother earth!” rejoined I. “Come what may, I
never will forget her! Neither will it satisfy me to have her exist merely in
idea. I want her great, round, solid self to endure interminably, and still to
be peopled with the kindly race of man, whom I uphold to be much better than he
thinks himself. Nevertheless, I confide the whole matter to Providence, and
shall endeavor so to live that the world may come to an end at any moment
without leaving me at a loss to find foothold somewhere else.”

“It is an excellent resolve,” said my companion, looking at his watch. “But
come; it is the dinner-hour. Will you partake of my vegetable diet?”

A thing so matter of fact as an invitation to dinner, even when the fare was to
be nothing more substantial than vegetables and fruit, compelled us forthwith
to remove from the Hall of Fantasy. As we passed out of the portal we met the
spirits of several persons who had been sent thither in magnetic sleep. I
looked back among the sculptured pillars and at the transformations of the
gleaming fountain, and almost desired that the whole of life might be spent in
that visionary scene where the actual world, with its hard angles, should never
rub against me, and only be viewed through the medium of pictured windows. But
for those who waste all their days in the Hall of Fantasy, good Father Miller’s
prophecy is already accomplished, and the solid earth has come to an untimely
end. Let us be content, therefore, with merely an occasional visit, for the
sake of spiritualizing the grossness of this actual life, and prefiguring to
ourselves a state in which the Idea shall be all in all.

THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD

Not a great while ago, passing through the gate of dreams, I visited that
region of the earth in which lies the famous City of Destruction. It interested
me much to learn that by the public spirit of some of the inhabitants a
railroad has recently been established between this populous and flourishing
town and the Celestial City. Having a little time upon my hands, I resolved to
gratify a liberal curiosity by making a trip thither. Accordingly, one fine
morning after paying my bill at the hotel, and directing the porter to stow my
luggage behind a coach, I took my seat in the vehicle and set out for the
station-house. It was my good fortune to enjoy the company of a
gentleman—one Mr. Smooth-it-away—who, though he had never actually
visited the Celestial City, yet seemed as well acquainted with its laws,
customs, policy, and statistics, as with those of the City of Destruction, of
which he was a native townsman. Being, moreover, a director of the railroad
corporation and one of its largest stockholders, he had it in his power to give
me all desirable information respecting that praiseworthy enterprise.

Our coach rattled out of the city, and at a short distance from its outskirts
passed over a bridge of elegant construction, but somewhat too slight, as I
imagined, to sustain any considerable weight. On both sides lay an extensive
quagmire, which could not have been more disagreeable either to sight or smell,
had all the kennels of the earth emptied their pollution there.

“This,” remarked Mr. Smooth-it-away, “is the famous Slough of Despond—a
disgrace to all the neighborhood; and the greater that it might so easily be
converted into firm ground.”

“I have understood,” said I, “that efforts have been made for that purpose from
time immemorial. Bunyan mentions that above twenty thousand cartloads of
wholesome instructions had been thrown in here without effect.”

“Very probably! And what effect could be anticipated from such unsubstantial
stuff?” cried Mr. Smooth-it-away. “You observe this convenient bridge. We
obtained a sufficient foundation for it by throwing into the slough some
editions of books of morality, volumes of French philosophy and German
rationalism; tracts, sermons, and essays of modern clergymen; extracts from
Plato, Confucius, and various Hindoo sages together with a few ingenious
commentaries upon texts of Scripture,—all of which by some scientific
process, have been converted into a mass like granite. The whole bog might be
filled up with similar matter.”

It really seemed to me, however, that the bridge vibrated and heaved up and
down in a very formidable manner; and, in spite of Mr. Smooth-it-away’s
testimony to the solidity of its foundation, I should be loath to cross it in a
crowded omnibus, especially if each passenger were encumbered with as heavy
luggage as that gentleman and myself. Nevertheless we got over without
accident, and soon found ourselves at the stationhouse. This very neat and
spacious edifice is erected on the site of the little wicket gate, which
formerly, as all old pilgrims will recollect, stood directly across the
highway, and, by its inconvenient narrowness, was a great obstruction to the
traveller of liberal mind and expansive stomach. The reader of John Bunyan will
be glad to know that Christian’s old friend Evangelist, who was accustomed to
supply each pilgrim with a mystic roll, now presides at the ticket office. Some
malicious persons it is true deny the identity of this reputable character with
the Evangelist of old times, and even pretend to bring competent evidence of an
imposture. Without involving myself in a dispute I shall merely observe that,
so far as my experience goes, the square pieces of pasteboard now delivered to
passengers are much more convenient and useful along the road than the antique
roll of parchment. Whether they will be as readily received at the gate of the
Celestial City I decline giving an opinion.

A large number of passengers were already at the station-house awaiting the
departure of the cars. By the aspect and demeanor of these persons it was easy
to judge that the feelings of the community had undergone a very favorable
change in reference to the celestial pilgrimage. It would have done Bunyan’s
heart good to see it. Instead of a lonely and ragged man with a huge burden on
his back, plodding along sorrowfully on foot while the whole city hooted after
him, here were parties of the first gentry and most respectable people in the
neighborhood setting forth towards the Celestial City as cheerfully as if the
pilgrimage were merely a summer tour. Among the gentlemen were characters of
deserved eminence—magistrates, politicians, and men of wealth, by whose
example religion could not but be greatly recommended to their meaner brethren.
In the ladies’ apartment, too, I rejoiced to distinguish some of those flowers
of fashionable society who are so well fitted to adorn the most elevated
circles of the Celestial City. There was much pleasant conversation about the
news of the day, topics of business and politics, or the lighter matters of
amusement; while religion, though indubitably the main thing at heart, was
thrown tastefully into the background. Even an infidel would have heard little
or nothing to shock his sensibility.

One great convenience of the new method of going on pilgrimage I must not
forget to mention. Our enormous burdens, instead of being carried on our
shoulders as had been the custom of old, were all snugly deposited in the
baggage car, and, as I was assured, would be delivered to their respective
owners at the journey’s end. Another thing, likewise, the benevolent reader
will be delighted to understand. It may be remembered that there was an ancient
feud between Prince Beelzebub and the keeper of the wicket gate, and that the
adherents of the former distinguished personage were accustomed to shoot deadly
arrows at honest pilgrims while knocking at the door. This dispute, much to the
credit as well of the illustrious potentate above mentioned as of the worthy
and enlightened directors of the railroad, has been pacifically arranged on the
principle of mutual compromise. The prince’s subjects are now pretty numerously
employed about the station-house, some in taking care of the baggage, others in
collecting fuel, feeding the engines, and such congenial occupations; and I can
conscientiously affirm that persons more attentive to their business, more
willing to accommodate, or more generally agreeable to the passengers, are not
to be found on any railroad. Every good heart must surely exult at so
satisfactory an arrangement of an immemorial difficulty.

“Where is Mr. Greatheart?” inquired I. “Beyond a doubt the directors have
engaged that famous old champion to be chief conductor on the railroad?”

“Why, no,” said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a dry cough. “He was offered the
situation of brakeman; but, to tell you the truth, our friend Greatheart has
grown preposterously stiff and narrow in his old age. He has so often guided
pilgrims over the road on foot that he considers it a sin to travel in any
other fashion. Besides, the old fellow had entered so heartily into the ancient
feud with Prince Beelzebub that he would have been perpetually at blows or ill
language with some of the prince’s subjects, and thus have embroiled us anew.
So, on the whole, we were not sorry when honest Greatheart went off to the
Celestial City in a huff and left us at liberty to choose a more suitable and
accommodating man. Yonder comes the engineer of the train. You will probably
recognize him at once.”

The engine at this moment took its station in advance of the cars, looking, I
must confess, much more like a sort of mechanical demon that would hurry us to
the infernal regions than a laudable contrivance for smoothing our way to the
Celestial City. On its top sat a personage almost enveloped in smoke and flame,
which, not to startle the reader, appeared to gush from his own mouth and
stomach as well as from the engine’s brazen abdomen.

“Do my eyes deceive me?” cried I. “What on earth is this! A living creature? If
so, he is own brother to the engine he rides upon!”

“Poh, poh, you are obtuse!” said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a hearty laugh.
“Don’t you know Apollyon, Christian’s old enemy, with whom he fought so fierce
a battle in the Valley of Humiliation? He was the very fellow to manage the
engine; and so we have reconciled him to the custom of going on pilgrimage, and
engaged him as chief engineer.”

“Bravo, bravo!” exclaimed I, with irrepressible enthusiasm; “this shows the
liberality of the age; this proves, if anything can, that all musty prejudices
are in a fair way to be obliterated. And how will Christian rejoice to hear of
this happy transformation of his old antagonist! I promise myself great
pleasure in informing him of it when we reach the Celestial City.”

The passengers being all comfortably seated, we now rattled away merrily,
accomplishing a greater distance in ten minutes than Christian probably trudged
over in a day. It was laughable, while we glanced along, as it were, at the
tail of a thunderbolt, to observe two dusty foot travellers in the old pilgrim
guise, with cockle shell and staff, their mystic rolls of parchment in their
hands and their intolerable burdens on their backs. The preposterous obstinacy
of these honest people in persisting to groan and stumble along the difficult
pathway rather than take advantage of modern improvements, excited great mirth
among our wiser brotherhood. We greeted the two pilgrims with many pleasant
gibes and a roar of laughter; whereupon they gazed at us with such woful and
absurdly compassionate visages that our merriment grew tenfold more
obstreperous. Apollyon also entered heartily into the fun, and contrived to
flirt the smoke and flame of the engine, or of his own breath, into their
faces, and envelop them in an atmosphere of scalding steam. These little
practical jokes amused us mightily, and doubtless afforded the pilgrims the
gratification of considering themselves martyrs.

At some distance from the railroad Mr. Smooth-it-away pointed to a large,
antique edifice, which, he observed, was a tavern of long standing, and had
formerly been a noted stopping-place for pilgrims. In Bunyan’s road-book it is
mentioned as the Interpreter’s House.

“I have long had a curiosity to visit that old mansion,” remarked I.

“It is not one of our stations, as you perceive,” said my companion “The keeper
was violently opposed to the railroad; and well he might be, as the track left
his house of entertainment on one side, and thus was pretty certain to deprive
him of all his reputable customers. But the footpath still passes his door, and
the old gentleman now and then receives a call from some simple traveller, and
entertains him with fare as old-fashioned as himself.”

Before our talk on this subject came to a conclusion we were rushing by the
place where Christian’s burden fell from his shoulders at the sight of the
Cross. This served as a theme for Mr. Smooth-it-away, Mr. Livefor-the-world,
Mr. Hide-sin-in-the-heart, Mr. Scaly-conscience, and a knot of gentlemen from
the town of Shun-repentance, to descant upon the inestimable advantages
resulting from the safety of our baggage. Myself, and all the passengers
indeed, joined with great unanimity in this view of the matter; for our burdens
were rich in many things esteemed precious throughout the world; and,
especially, we each of us possessed a great variety of favorite Habits, which
we trusted would not be out of fashion even in the polite circles of the
Celestial City. It would have been a sad spectacle to see such an assortment of
valuable articles tumbling into the sepulchre. Thus pleasantly conversing on
the favorable circumstances of our position as compared with those of past
pilgrims and of narrow-minded ones at the present day, we soon found ourselves
at the foot of the Hill Difficulty. Through the very heart of this rocky
mountain a tunnel has been constructed of most admirable architecture, with a
lofty arch and a spacious double track; so that, unless the earth and rocks
should chance to crumble down, it will remain an eternal monument of the
builder’s skill and enterprise. It is a great though incidental advantage that
the materials from the heart of the Hill Difficulty have been employed in
filling up the Valley of Humiliation, thus obviating the necessity of
descending into that disagreeable and unwholesome hollow.

“This is a wonderful improvement, indeed,” said I. “Yet I should have been glad
of an opportunity to visit the Palace Beautiful and be introduced to the
charming young ladies—Miss Prudence, Miss Piety, Miss Charity, and the
rest—who have the kindness to entertain pilgrims there.”

“Young ladies!” cried Mr. Smooth-it-away, as soon as he could speak for
laughing. “And charming young ladies! Why, my dear fellow, they are old maids,
every soul of them—prim, starched, dry, and angular; and not one of them,
I will venture to say, has altered so much as the fashion of her gown since the
days of Christian’s pilgrimage.”

“Ah, well,” said I, much comforted, “then I can very readily dispense with
their acquaintance.”

The respectable Apollyon was now putting on the steam at a prodigious rate,
anxious, perhaps, to get rid of the unpleasant reminiscences connected with the
spot where he had so disastrously encountered Christian. Consulting Mr.
Bunyan’s road-book, I perceived that we must now be within a few miles of the
Valley of the Shadow of Death, into which doleful region, at our present speed,
we should plunge much sooner than seemed at all desirable. In truth, I expected
nothing better than to find myself in the ditch on one side or the Quag on the
other; but on communicating my apprehensions to Mr. Smooth-it-away, he assured
me that the difficulties of this passage, even in its worst condition, had been
vastly exaggerated, and that, in its present state of improvement, I might
consider myself as safe as on any railroad in Christendom.

Even while we were speaking the train shot into the entrance of this dreaded
Valley. Though I plead guilty to some foolish palpitations of the heart during
our headlong rush over the causeway here constructed, yet it were unjust to
withhold the highest encomiums on the boldness of its original conception and
the ingenuity of those who executed it. It was gratifying, likewise, to observe
how much care had been taken to dispel the everlasting gloom and supply the
defect of cheerful sunshine, not a ray of which has ever penetrated among these
awful shadows. For this purpose, the inflammable gas which exudes plentifully
from the soil is collected by means of pipes, and thence communicated to a
quadruple row of lamps along the whole extent of the passage. Thus a radiance
has been created even out of the fiery and sulphurous curse that rests forever
upon the valley—a radiance hurtful, however, to the eyes, and somewhat
bewildering, as I discovered by the changes which it wrought in the visages of
my companions. In this respect, as compared with natural daylight, there is the
same difference as between truth and falsehood, but if the reader have ever
travelled through the dark Valley, he will have learned to be thankful for any
light that he could get—if not from the sky above, then from the blasted
soil beneath. Such was the red brilliancy of these lamps that they appeared to
build walls of fire on both sides of the track, between which we held our
course at lightning speed, while a reverberating thunder filled the Valley with
its echoes. Had the engine run off the track,—a catastrophe, it is
whispered, by no means unprecedented,—the bottomless pit, if there be any
such place, would undoubtedly have received us. Just as some dismal fooleries
of this nature had made my heart quake there came a tremendous shriek,
careering along the valley as if a thousand devils had burst their lungs to
utter it, but which proved to be merely the whistle of the engine on arriving
at a stopping-place.

The spot where we had now paused is the same that our friend Bunyan—a
truthful man, but infected with many fantastic notions—has designated, in
terms plainer than I like to repeat, as the mouth of the infernal region. This,
however, must be a mistake, inasmuch as Mr. Smooth-it-away, while we remained
in the smoky and lurid cavern, took occasion to prove that Tophet has not even
a metaphorical existence. The place, he assured us, is no other than the crater
of a half-extinct volcano, in which the directors had caused forges to be set
up for the manufacture of railroad iron. Hence, also, is obtained a plentiful
supply of fuel for the use of the engines. Whoever had gazed into the dismal
obscurity of the broad cavern mouth, whence ever and anon darted huge tongues
of dusky flame, and had seen the strange, half-shaped monsters, and visions of
faces horribly grotesque, into which the smoke seemed to wreathe itself, and
had heard the awful murmurs, and shrieks, and deep, shuddering whispers of the
blast, sometimes forming themselves into words almost articulate, would have
seized upon Mr. Smooth-it-away’s comfortable explanation as greedily as we did.
The inhabitants of the cavern, moreover, were unlovely personages, dark,
smoke-begrimed, generally deformed, with misshapen feet, and a glow of dusky
redness in their eyes as if their hearts had caught fire and were blazing out
of the upper windows. It struck me as a peculiarity that the laborers at the
forge and those who brought fuel to the engine, when they began to draw short
breath, positively emitted smoke from their mouth and nostrils.

Among the idlers about the train, most of whom were puffing cigars which they
had lighted at the flame of the crater, I was perplexed to notice several who,
to my certain knowledge, had heretofore set forth by railroad for the Celestial
City. They looked dark, wild, and smoky, with a singular resemblance, indeed,
to the native inhabitants, like whom, also, they had a disagreeable propensity
to ill-natured gibes and sneers, the habit of which had wrought a settled
contortion of their visages. Having been on speaking terms with one of these
persons,—an indolent, good-for-nothing fellow, who went by the name of
Take-it-easy,—I called him, and inquired what was his business there.

“Did you not start,” said I, “for the Celestial City?”

“That’s a fact,” said Mr. Take-it-easy, carelessly puffing some smoke into my
eyes. “But I heard such bad accounts that I never took pains to climb the hill
on which the city stands. No business doing, no fun going on, nothing to drink,
and no smoking allowed, and a thrumming of church music from morning till
night. I would not stay in such a place if they offered me house room and
living free.”

“But, my good Mr. Take-it-easy,” cried I, “why take up your residence here, of
all places in the world?”

“Oh,” said the loafer, with a grin, “it is very warm hereabouts, and I meet
with plenty of old acquaintances, and altogether the place suits me. I hope to
see you back again some day soon. A pleasant journey to you.”

While he was speaking the bell of the engine rang, and we dashed away after
dropping a few passengers, but receiving no new ones. Rattling onward through
the Valley, we were dazzled with the fiercely gleaming gas lamps, as before.
But sometimes, in the dark of intense brightness, grim faces, that bore the
aspect and expression of individual sins, or evil passions, seemed to thrust
themselves through the veil of light, glaring upon us, and stretching forth a
great, dusky hand, as if to impede our progress. I almost thought that they
were my own sins that appalled me there. These were freaks of
imagination—nothing more, certainly-mere delusions, which I ought to be
heartily ashamed of; but all through the Dark Valley I was tormented, and
pestered, and dolefully bewildered with the same kind of waking dreams. The
mephitic gases of that region intoxicate the brain. As the light of natural
day, however, began to struggle with the glow of the lanterns, these vain
imaginations lost their vividness, and finally vanished from the first ray of
sunshine that greeted our escape from the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Ere we
had gone a mile beyond it I could well-nigh have taken my oath that this whole
gloomy passage was a dream.

At the end of the valley, as John Bunyan mentions, is a cavern, where, in his
days, dwelt two cruel giants, Pope and Pagan, who had strown the ground about
their residence with the bones of slaughtered pilgrims. These vile old
troglodytes are no longer there; but into their deserted cave another terrible
giant has thrust himself, and makes it his business to seize upon honest
travellers and fatten them for his table with plentiful meals of smoke, mist,
moonshine, raw potatoes, and sawdust. He is a German by birth, and is called
Giant Transcendentalist; but as to his form, his features, his substance, and
his nature generally, it is the chief peculiarity of this huge miscreant that
neither he for himself, nor anybody for him, has ever been able to describe
them. As we rushed by the cavern’s mouth we caught a hasty glimpse of him,
looking somewhat like an ill-proportioned figure, but considerably more like a
heap of fog and duskiness. He shouted after us, but in so strange a phraseology
that we knew not what he meant, nor whether to be encouraged or affrighted.

It was late in the day when the train thundered into the ancient city of
Vanity, where Vanity Fair is still at the height of prosperity, and exhibits an
epitome of whatever is brilliant, gay, and fascinating beneath the sun. As I
purposed to make a considerable stay here, it gratified me to learn that there
is no longer the want of harmony between the town’s-people and pilgrims, which
impelled the former to such lamentably mistaken measures as the persecution of
Christian and the fiery martyrdom of Faithful. On the contrary, as the new
railroad brings with it great trade and a constant influx of strangers, the
lord of Vanity Fair is its chief patron, and the capitalists of the city are
among the largest stockholders. Many passengers stop to take their pleasure or
make their profit in the Fair, instead of going onward to the Celestial City.
Indeed, such are the charms of the place that people often affirm it to be the
true and only heaven; stoutly contending that there is no other, that those who
seek further are mere dreamers, and that, if the fabled brightness of the
Celestial City lay but a bare mile beyond the gates of Vanity, they would not
be fools enough to go thither. Without subscribing to these perhaps exaggerated
encomiums, I can truly say that my abode in the city was mainly agreeable, and
my intercourse with the inhabitants productive of much amusement and
instruction.

Being naturally of a serious turn, my attention was directed to the solid
advantages derivable from a residence here, rather than to the effervescent
pleasures which are the grand object with too many visitants. The Christian
reader, if he have had no accounts of the city later than Bunyan’s time, will
be surprised to hear that almost every street has its church, and that the
reverend clergy are nowhere held in higher respect than at Vanity Fair. And
well do they deserve such honorable estimation; for the maxims of wisdom and
virtue which fall from their lips come from as deep a spiritual source, and
tend to as lofty a religious aim, as those of the sagest philosophers of old.
In justification of this high praise I need only mention the names of the Rev.
Mr. Shallow-deep, the Rev. Mr. Stumble-at-truth, that fine old clerical
character the Rev. Mr. This-today, who expects shortly to resign his pulpit to
the Rev. Mr. That-tomorrow; together with the Rev. Mr. Bewilderment, the Rev.
Mr. Clog-the-spirit, and, last and greatest, the Rev. Dr. Wind-of-doctrine. The
labors of these eminent divines are aided by those of innumerable lecturers,
who diffuse such a various profundity, in all subjects of human or celestial
science, that any man may acquire an omnigenous erudition without the trouble
of even learning to read. Thus literature is etherealized by assuming for its
medium the human voice; and knowledge, depositing all its heavier particles,
except, doubtless, its gold becomes exhaled into a sound, which forthwith
steals into the ever-open ear of the community. These ingenious methods
constitute a sort of machinery, by which thought and study are done to every
person’s hand without his putting himself to the slightest inconvenience in the
matter. There is another species of machine for the wholesale manufacture of
individual morality. This excellent result is effected by societies for all
manner of virtuous purposes, with which a man has merely to connect himself,
throwing, as it were, his quota of virtue into the common stock, and the
president and directors will take care that the aggregate amount be well
applied. All these, and other wonderful improvements in ethics, religion, and
literature, being made plain to my comprehension by the ingenious Mr.
Smooth-it-away, inspired me with a vast admiration of Vanity Fair.

It would fill a volume, in an age of pamphlets, were I to record all my
observations in this great capital of human business and pleasure. There was an
unlimited range of society—the powerful, the wise, the witty, and the
famous in every walk of life; princes, presidents, poets, generals, artists,
actors, and philanthropists,—all making their own market at the fair, and
deeming no price too exorbitant for such commodities as hit their fancy. It was
well worth one’s while, even if he had no idea of buying or selling, to loiter
through the bazaars and observe the various sorts of traffic that were going
forward.

Some of the purchasers, I thought, made very foolish bargains. For instance, a
young man having inherited a splendid fortune, laid out a considerable portion
of it in the purchase of diseases, and finally spent all the rest for a heavy
lot of repentance and a suit of rags. A very pretty girl bartered a heart as
clear as crystal, and which seemed her most valuable possession, for another
jewel of the same kind, but so worn and defaced as to be utterly worthless. In
one shop there were a great many crowns of laurel and myrtle, which soldiers,
authors, statesmen, and various other people pressed eagerly to buy; some
purchased these paltry wreaths with their lives, others by a toilsome servitude
of years, and many sacrificed whatever was most valuable, yet finally slunk
away without the crown. There was a sort of stock or scrip, called Conscience,
which seemed to be in great demand, and would purchase almost anything. Indeed,
few rich commodities were to be obtained without paying a heavy sum in this
particular stock, and a man’s business was seldom very lucrative unless he knew
precisely when and how to throw his hoard of conscience into the market. Yet as
this stock was the only thing of permanent value, whoever parted with it was
sure to find himself a loser in the long run. Several of the speculations were
of a questionable character. Occasionally a member of Congress recruited his
pocket by the sale of his constituents; and I was assured that public officers
have often sold their country at very moderate prices. Thousands sold their
happiness for a whim. Gilded chains were in great demand, and purchased with
almost any sacrifice. In truth, those who desired, according to the old adage,
to sell anything valuable for a song, might find customers all over the Fair;
and there were innumerable messes of pottage, piping hot, for such as chose to
buy them with their birthrights. A few articles, however, could not be found
genuine at Vanity Fair. If a customer wished to renew his stock of youth the
dealers offered him a set of false teeth and an auburn wig; if he demanded
peace of mind, they recommended opium or a brandy bottle.

Tracts of land and golden mansions, situate in the Celestial City, were often
exchanged, at very disadvantageous rates, for a few years’ lease of small,
dismal, inconvenient tenements in Vanity Fair. Prince Beelzebub himself took
great interest in this sort of traffic, and sometimes condescended to meddle
with smaller matters. I once had the pleasure to see him bargaining with a
miser for his soul, which, after much ingenious skirmishing on both sides, his
highness succeeded in obtaining at about the value of sixpence. The prince
remarked with a smile, that he was a loser by the transaction.

Day after day, as I walked the streets of Vanity, my manners and deportment
became more and more like those of the inhabitants. The place began to seem
like home; the idea of pursuing my travels to the Celestial City was almost
obliterated from my mind. I was reminded of it, however, by the sight of the
same pair of simple pilgrims at whom we had laughed so heartily when Apollyon
puffed smoke and steam into their faces at the commencement of our journey.
There they stood amidst the densest bustle of Vanity; the dealers offering them
their purple and fine linen and jewels, the men of wit and humor gibing at
them, a pair of buxom ladies ogling them askance, while the benevolent Mr.
Smooth-it-away whispered some of his wisdom at their elbows, and pointed to a
newly-erected temple; but there were these worthy simpletons, making the scene
look wild and monstrous, merely by their sturdy repudiation of all part in its
business or pleasures.

One of them—his name was Stick-to-the-right—perceived in my face, I
suppose, a species of sympathy and almost admiration, which, to my own great
surprise, I could not help feeling for this pragmatic couple. It prompted him
to address me.

“Sir,” inquired he, with a sad, yet mild and kindly voice, “do you call
yourself a pilgrim?”

“Yes,” I replied, “my right to that appellation is indubitable. I am merely a
sojourner here in Vanity Fair, being bound to the Celestial City by the new
railroad.”

“Alas, friend,” rejoined Mr. Stick-to-the-truth, “I do assure you, and beseech
you to receive the truth of my words, that that whole concern is a bubble. You
may travel on it all your lifetime, were you to live thousands of years, and
yet never get beyond the limits of Vanity Fair. Yea, though you should deem
yourself entering the gates of the blessed city, it will be nothing but a
miserable delusion.”

“The Lord of the Celestial City,” began the other pilgrim, whose name was Mr.
Foot-it-to-heaven, “has refused, and will ever refuse, to grant an act of
incorporation for this railroad; and unless that be obtained, no passenger can
ever hope to enter his dominions. Wherefore every man who buys a ticket must
lay his account with losing the purchase money, which is the value of his own
soul.”

“Poh, nonsense!” said Mr. Smooth-it-away, taking my arm and leading me off,
“these fellows ought to be indicted for a libel. If the law stood as it once
did in Vanity Fair we should see them grinning through the iron bars of the
prison window.”

This incident made a considerable impression on my mind, and contributed with
other circumstances to indispose me to a permanent residence in the city of
Vanity; although, of course, I was not simple enough to give up my original
plan of gliding along easily and commodiously by railroad. Still, I grew
anxious to be gone. There was one strange thing that troubled me. Amid the
occupations or amusements of the Fair, nothing was more common than for a
person—whether at feast, theatre, or church, or trafficking for wealth
and honors, or whatever he might be doing, to vanish like a soap bubble, and be
never more seen of his fellows; and so accustomed were the latter to such
little accidents that they went on with their business as quietly as if nothing
had happened. But it was otherwise with me.

Finally, after a pretty long residence at the Fair, I resumed my journey
towards the Celestial City, still with Mr. Smooth-it-away at my side. At a
short distance beyond the suburbs of Vanity we passed the ancient silver mine,
of which Demas was the first discoverer, and which is now wrought to great
advantage, supplying nearly all the coined currency of the world. A little
further onward was the spot where Lot’s wife had stood forever under the
semblance of a pillar of salt. Curious travellers have long since carried it
away piecemeal. Had all regrets been punished as rigorously as this poor dame’s
were, my yearning for the relinquished delights of Vanity Fair might have
produced a similar change in my own corporeal substance, and left me a warning
to future pilgrims.

The next remarkable object was a large edifice, constructed of moss-grown
stone, but in a modern and airy style of architecture. The engine came to a
pause in its vicinity, with the usual tremendous shriek.

“This was formerly the castle of the redoubted giant Despair,” observed Mr.
Smooth-it-away; “but since his death Mr. Flimsy-faith has repaired it, and
keeps an excellent house of entertainment here. It is one of our
stopping-places.”

“It seems but slightly put together,” remarked I, looking at the frail yet
ponderous walls. “I do not envy Mr. Flimsy-faith his habitation. Some day it
will thunder down upon the heads of the occupants.”

“We shall escape at all events,” said Mr. Smooth-it-away, “for Apollyon is
putting on the steam again.”

The road now plunged into a gorge of the Delectable Mountains, and traversed
the field where in former ages the blind men wandered and stumbled among the
tombs. One of these ancient tombstones had been thrust across the track by some
malicious person, and gave the train of cars a terrible jolt. Far up the rugged
side of a mountain I perceived a rusty iron door, half overgrown with bushes
and creeping plants, but with smoke issuing from its crevices.

“Is that,” inquired I, “the very door in the hill-side which the shepherds
assured Christian was a by-way to hell?”

“That was a joke on the part of the shepherds,” said Mr. Smooth-itaway, with a
smile. “It is neither more nor less than the door of a cavern which they use as
a smoke-house for the preparation of mutton hams.”

My recollections of the journey are now, for a little space, dim and confused,
inasmuch as a singular drowsiness here overcame me, owing to the fact that we
were passing over the enchanted ground, the air of which encourages a
disposition to sleep. I awoke, however, as soon as we crossed the borders of
the pleasant land of Beulah. All the passengers were rubbing their eyes,
comparing watches, and congratulating one another on the prospect of arriving
so seasonably at the journey’s end. The sweet breezes of this happy clime came
refreshingly to our nostrils; we beheld the glimmering gush of silver
fountains, overhung by trees of beautiful foliage and delicious fruit, which
were propagated by grafts from the celestial gardens. Once, as we dashed onward
like a hurricane, there was a flutter of wings and the bright appearance of an
angel in the air, speeding forth on some heavenly mission. The engine now
announced the close vicinity of the final station-house by one last and
horrible scream, in which there seemed to be distinguishable every kind of
wailing and woe, and bitter fierceness of wrath, all mixed up with the wild
laughter of a devil or a madman. Throughout our journey, at every
stopping-place, Apollyon had exercised his ingenuity in screwing the most
abominable sounds out of the whistle of the steam-engine; but in this closing
effort he outdid himself and created an infernal uproar, which, besides
disturbing the peaceful inhabitants of Beulah, must have sent its discord even
through the celestial gates.

While the horrid clamor was still ringing in our ears we heard an exulting
strain, as if a thousand instruments of music, with height and depth and
sweetness in their tones, at once tender and triumphant, were struck in unison,
to greet the approach of some illustrious hero, who had fought the good fight
and won a glorious victory, and was come to lay aside his battered arms
forever. Looking to ascertain what might be the occasion of this glad harmony,
I perceived, on alighting from the cars, that a multitude of shining ones had
assembled on the other side of the river, to welcome two poor pilgrims, who
were just emerging from its depths. They were the same whom Apollyon and
ourselves had persecuted with taunts, and gibes, and scalding steam, at the
commencement of our journey—the same whose unworldly aspect and
impressive words had stirred my conscience amid the wild revellers of Vanity
Fair.

“How amazingly well those men have got on,” cried I to Mr. Smoothit—away.
“I wish we were secure of as good a reception.”

“Never fear, never fear!” answered my friend. “Come, make haste; the ferry boat
will be off directly, and in three minutes you will be on the other side of the
river. No doubt you will find coaches to carry you up to the city gates.”

A steam ferry boat, the last improvement on this important route, lay at the
river side, puffing, snorting, and emitting all those other disagreeable
utterances which betoken the departure to be immediate. I hurried on board with
the rest of the passengers, most of whom were in great perturbation: some
bawling out for their baggage; some tearing their hair and exclaiming that the
boat would explode or sink; some already pale with the heaving of the stream;
some gazing affrighted at the ugly aspect of the steersman; and some still
dizzy with the slumberous influences of the Enchanted Ground. Looking back to
the shore, I was amazed to discern Mr. Smooth-it-away waving his hand in token
of farewell.

“Don’t you go over to the Celestial City?” exclaimed I.

“Oh, no!” answered he with a queer smile, and that same disagreeable contortion
of visage which I had remarked in the inhabitants of the Dark Valley. “Oh, no!
I have come thus far only for the sake of your pleasant company. Good-by! We
shall meet again.”

And then did my excellent friend Mr. Smooth-it-away laugh outright, in the
midst of which cachinnation a smoke-wreath issued from his mouth and nostrils,
while a twinkle of lurid flame darted out of either eye, proving indubitably
that his heart was all of a red blaze. The impudent fiend! To deny the
existence of Tophet, when he felt its fiery tortures raging within his breast.
I rushed to the side of the boat, intending to fling myself on shore; but the
wheels, as they began their revolutions, threw a dash of spray over me so
cold—so deadly cold, with the chill that will never leave those waters
until Death be drowned in his own river—that with a shiver and a
heartquake I awoke. Thank Heaven it was a Dream!

THE PROCESSION OF LIFE

Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession. All of us have
our places, and are to move onward under the direction of the Chief Marshal.
The grand difficulty results from the invariably mistaken principles on which
the deputy marshals seek to arrange this immense concourse of people, so much
more numerous than those that train their interminable length through streets
and highways in times of political excitement. Their scheme is ancient, far
beyond the memory of man or even the record of history, and has hitherto been
very little modified by the innate sense of something wrong, and the dim
perception of better methods, that have disquieted all the ages through which
the procession has taken its march. Its members are classified by the merest
external circumstances, and thus are more certain to be thrown out of their
true positions than if no principle of arrangement were attempted. In one part
of the procession we see men of landed estate or moneyed capital gravely
keeping each other company, for the preposterous reason that they chance to
have a similar standing in the tax-gatherer’s book. Trades and professions
march together with scarcely a more real bond of union. In this manner, it
cannot be denied, people are disentangled from the mass and separated into
various classes according to certain apparent relations; all have some
artificial badge which the world, and themselves among the first, learn to
consider as a genuine characteristic. Fixing our attention on such outside
shows of similarity or difference, we lose sight of those realities by which
nature, fortune, fate, or Providence has constituted for every man a
brotherhood, wherein it is one great office of human wisdom to classify him.
When the mind has once accustomed itself to a proper arrangement of the
Procession of Life, or a true classification of society, even though merely
speculative, there is thenceforth a satisfaction which pretty well suffices for
itself without the aid of any actual reformation in the order of march.

For instance, assuming to myself the power of marshalling the aforesaid
procession, I direct a trumpeter to send forth a blast loud enough to be heard
from hence to China; and a herald, with world-pervading voice, to make
proclamation for a certain class of mortals to take their places. What shall be
their principle of union? After all, an external one, in comparison with many
that might be found, yet far more real than those which the world has selected
for a similar purpose. Let all who are afflicted with like physical diseases
form themselves into ranks.

Our first attempt at classification is not very successful. It may gratify the
pride of aristocracy to reflect that disease, more than any other circumstance
of human life, pays due observance to the distinctions which rank and wealth,
and poverty and lowliness, have established among mankind. Some maladies are
rich and precious, and only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or
purchased with gold. Of this kind is the gout, which serves as a bond of
brotherhood to the purple-visaged gentry, who obey the herald’s voice, and
painfully hobble from all civilized regions of the globe to take their post in
the grand procession. In mercy to their toes, let us hope that the march may
not be long. The Dyspeptics, too, are people of good standing in the world. For
them the earliest salmon is caught in our eastern rivers, and the shy woodcock
stains the dry leaves with his blood in his remotest haunts, and the turtle
comes from the far Pacific Islands to be gobbled up in soup. They can afford to
flavor all their dishes with indolence, which, in spite of the general opinion,
is a sauce more exquisitely piquant than appetite won by exercise. Apoplexy is
another highly respectable disease. We will rank together all who have the
symptom of dizziness in the brain, and as fast as any drop by the way supply
their places with new members of the board of aldermen.

On the other hand, here come whole tribes of people whose physical lives are
but a deteriorated variety of life, and themselves a meaner species of mankind;
so sad an effect has been wrought by the tainted breath of cities, scanty and
unwholesome food, destructive modes of labor, and the lack of those moral
supports that might partially have counteracted such bad influences. Behold
here a train of house painters, all afflicted with a peculiar sort of colic.
Next in place we will marshal those workmen in cutlery, who have breathed a
fatal disorder into their lungs with the impalpable dust of steel. Tailors and
shoemakers, being sedentary men, will chiefly congregate into one part of the
procession and march under similar banners of disease; but among them we may
observe here and there a sickly student, who has left his health between the
leaves of classic volumes; and clerks, likewise, who have caught their deaths
on high official stools; and men of genius too, who have written sheet after
sheet with pens dipped in their heart’s blood. These are a wretched quaking,
short-breathed set. But what is this cloud of pale-cheeked, slender girls, who
disturb the ear with the multiplicity of their short, dry coughs? They are
seamstresses, who have plied the daily and nightly needle in the service of
master tailors and close-fisted contractors, until now it is almost time for
each to hem the borders of her own shroud. Consumption points their place in
the procession. With their sad sisterhood are intermingled many youthful
maidens who have sickened in aristocratic mansions, and for whose aid science
has unavailingly searched its volumes, and whom breathless love has watched. In
our ranks the rich maiden and the poor seamstress may walk arm in arm. We might
find innumerable other instances, where the bond of mutual disease—not to
speak of nation-sweeping pestilence—embraces high and low, and makes the
king a brother of the clown. But it is not hard to own that disease is the
natural aristocrat. Let him keep his state, and have his established orders of
rank, and wear his royal mantle of the color of a fever flush and let the noble
and wealthy boast their own physical infirmities, and display their symptoms as
the badges of high station. All things considered, these are as proper subjects
of human pride as any relations of human rank that men can fix upon.

Sound again, thou deep-breathed trumpeter! and herald, with thy voice of might,
shout forth another summons that shall reach the old baronial castles of
Europe, and the rudest cabin of our western wilderness! What class is next to
take its place in the procession of mortal life? Let it be those whom the gifts
of intellect have united in a noble brotherhood.

Ay, this is a reality, before which the conventional distinctions of society
melt away like a vapor when we would grasp it with the hand. Were Byron now
alive, and Burns, the first would come from his ancestral abbey, flinging
aside, although unwillingly, the inherited honors of a thousand years, to take
the arm of the mighty peasant who grew immortal while he stooped behind his
plough. These are gone; but the hall, the farmer’s fireside, the hut, perhaps
the palace, the counting-room, the workshop, the village, the city, life’s high
places and low ones, may all produce their poets, whom a common temperament
pervades like an electric sympathy. Peer or ploughman, we will muster them pair
by pair and shoulder to shoulder. Even society, in its most artificial state,
consents to this arrangement. These factory girls from Lowell shall mate
themselves with the pride of drawing-rooms and literary circles, the bluebells
in fashion’s nosegay, the Sapphos, and Montagues, and Nortons of the age. Other
modes of intellect bring together as strange companies. Silk-gowned professor
of languages, give your arm to this sturdy blacksmith, and deem yourself
honored by the conjunction, though you behold him grimy from the anvil. All
varieties of human speech are like his mother tongue to this rare man.
Indiscriminately let those take their places, of whatever rank they come, who
possess the kingly gifts to lead armies or to sway a people—Nature’s
generals, her lawgivers, her kings, and with them also the deep philosophers
who think the thought in one generation that is to revolutionize society in the
next. With the hereditary legislator in whom eloquence is a far-descended
attainment—a rich echo repeated by powerful voices from Cicero
downward—we will match some wondrous backwoodsman, who has caught a wild
power of language from the breeze among his native forest boughs. But we may
safely leave these brethren and sisterhood to settle their own congenialities.
Our ordinary distinctions become so trifling, so impalpable, so ridiculously
visionary, in comparison with a classification founded on truth, that all talk
about the matter is immediately a common place.

Yet the longer I reflect the less am I satisfied with the idea of forming a
separate class of mankind on the basis of high intellectual power. At best it
is but a higher development of innate gifts common to all. Perhaps, moreover,
he whose genius appears deepest and truest excels his fellows in nothing save
the knack of expression; he throws out occasionally a lucky hint at truths of
which every human soul is profoundly, though unutterably, conscious. Therefore,
though we suffer the brotherhood of intellect to march onward together, it may
be doubted whether their peculiar relation will not begin to vanish as soon as
the procession shall have passed beyond the circle of this present world. But
we do not classify for eternity.

And next, let the trumpet pour forth a funereal wail, and the herald’s voice
give breath in one vast cry to all the groans and grievous utterances that are
audible throughout the earth. We appeal now to the sacred bond of sorrow, and
summon the great multitude who labor under similar afflictions to take their
places in the march.

How many a heart that would have been insensible to any other call has
responded to the doleful accents of that voice! It has gone far and wide, and
high and low, and left scarcely a mortal roof unvisited. Indeed, the principle
is only too universal for our purpose, and, unless we limit it, will quite
break up our classification of mankind, and convert the whole procession into a
funeral train. We will therefore be at some pains to discriminate. Here comes a
lonely rich man: he has built a noble fabric for his dwelling-house, with a
front of stately architecture and marble floors and doors of precious woods;
the whole structure is as beautiful as a dream and as substantial as the native
rock. But the visionary shapes of a long posterity, for whose home this mansion
was intended, have faded into nothingness since the death of the founder’s only
son. The rich man gives a glance at his sable garb in one of the splendid
mirrors of his drawing-room, and descending a flight of lofty steps
instinctively offers his arm to yonder poverty stricken widow in the rusty
black bonnet, and with a check apron over her patched gown. The sailor boy, who
was her sole earthly stay, was washed overboard in a late tempest. This couple
from the palace and the almshouse are but the types of thousands more who
represent the dark tragedy of life and seldom quarrel for the upper parts.
Grief is such a leveller, with its own dignity and its own humility, that the
noble and the peasant, the beggar and the monarch, will waive their pretensions
to external rank without the officiousness of interference on our part. If
pride—the influence of the world’s false distinctions—remain in the
heart, then sorrow lacks the earnestness which makes it holy and reverend. It
loses its reality and becomes a miserable shadow. On this ground we have an
opportunity to assign over multitudes who would willingly claim places here to
other parts of the procession. If the mourner have anything dearer than his
grief he must seek his true position elsewhere. There are so many unsubstantial
sorrows which the necessity of our mortal state begets on idleness, that an
observer, casting aside sentiment, is sometimes led to question whether there
be any real woe, except absolute physical suffering and the loss of closest
friends. A crowd who exhibit what they deem to be broken hearts—and among
them many lovelorn maids and bachelors, and men of disappointed ambition in
arts or politics, and the poor who were once rich, or who have sought to be
rich in vain—the great majority of these may ask admittance into some
other fraternity. There is no room here. Perhaps we may institute a separate
class where such unfortunates will naturally fall into the procession.
Meanwhile let them stand aside and patiently await their time.

If our trumpeter can borrow a note from the doomsday trumpet blast, let him
sound it now. The dread alarum should make the earth quake to its centre, for
the herald is about to address mankind with a summons to which even the purest
mortal may be sensible of some faint responding echo in his breast. In many
bosoms it will awaken a still small voice more terrible than its own
reverberating uproar.

The hideous appeal has swept around the globe. Come, all ye guilty ones, and
rank yourselves in accordance with the brotherhood of crime. This, indeed, is
an awful summons. I almost tremble to look at the strange partnerships that
begin to be formed, reluctantly, but by the invincible necessity of like to
like in this part of the procession. A forger from the state prison seizes the
arm of a distinguished financier. How indignantly does the latter plead his
fair reputation upon ’Change, and insist that his operations, by their
magnificence of scope, were removed into quite another sphere of morality than
those of his pitiful companion! But let him cut the connection if he can. Here
comes a murderer with his clanking chains, and pairs himself—horrible to
tell—with as pure and upright a man, in all observable respects, as ever
partook of the consecrated bread and wine. He is one of those, perchance the
most hopeless of all sinners, who practise such an exemplary system of outward
duties, that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and
remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do
that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at
the by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous
matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born to
vice as their sole and natural inheritance, can be no fit associates for women
who have been guarded round about by all the proprieties of domestic life, and
who could not err unless they first created the opportunity. Oh no; it must be
merely the impertinence of those unblushing hussies; and we can only wonder how
such respectable ladies should have responded to a summons that was not meant
for them.

We shall make short work of this miserable class, each member of which is
entitled to grasp any other member’s hand, by that vile degradation wherein
guilty error has buried all alike. The foul fiend to whom it properly belongs
must relieve us of our loathsome task. Let the bond servants of sin pass on.
But neither man nor woman, in whom good predominates, will smile or sneer, nor
bid the Rogues’ March be played, in derision of their array. Feeling within
their breasts a shuddering sympathy, which at least gives token of the sin that
might have been, they will thank God for any place in the grand procession of
human existence, save among those most wretched ones. Many, however, will be
astonished at the fatal impulse that drags them thitherward. Nothing is more
remarkable than the various deceptions by which guilt conceals itself from the
perpetrator’s conscience, and oftenest, perhaps, by the splendor of its
garments. Statesmen, rulers, generals, and all men who act over an extensive
sphere, are most liable to be deluded in this way; they commit wrong,
devastation, and murder, on so grand a scale, that it impresses them as
speculative rather than actual; but in our procession we find them linked in
detestable conjunction with the meanest criminals whose deeds have the
vulgarity of petty details. Here the effect of circumstance and accident is
done away, and a man finds his rank according to the spirit of his crime, in
whatever shape it may have been developed.

We have called the Evil; now let us call the Good. The trumpet’s brazen throat
should pour heavenly music over the earth, and the herald’s voice go forth with
the sweetness of an angel’s accents, as if to summon each upright man to his
reward. But how is this? Does none answer to the call? Not one: for the just,
the pure, the true, and all who might most worthily obey it, shrink sadly back,
as most conscious of error and imperfection. Then let the summons be to those
whose pervading principle is Love. This classification will embrace all the
truly good, and none in whose souls there exists not something that may expand
itself into a heaven, both of well-doing and felicity.

The first that presents himself is a man of wealth, who has bequeathed the bulk
of his property to a hospital; his ghost, methinks, would have a better right
here than his living body. But here they come, the genuine benefactors of their
race. Some have wandered about the earth with pictures of bliss in their
imagination, and with hearts that shrank sensitively from the idea of pain and
woe, yet have studied all varieties of misery that human nature can endure. The
prison, the insane asylum, the squalid chamber of the almshouse, the
manufactory where the demon of machinery annihilates the human soul, and the
cotton field where God’s image becomes a beast of burden; to these and every
other scene where man wrongs or neglects his brother, the apostles of humanity
have penetrated. This missionary, black with India’s burning sunshine, shall
give his arm to a pale-faced brother who has made himself familiar with the
infected alleys and loathsome haunts of vice in one of our own cities. The
generous founder of a college shall be the partner of a maiden lady of narrow
substance, one of whose good deeds it has been to gather a little school of
orphan children. If the mighty merchant whose benefactions are reckoned by
thousands of dollars deem himself worthy, let him join the procession with her
whose love has proved itself by watchings at the sick-bed, and all those lowly
offices which bring her into actual contact with disease and wretchedness. And
with those whose impulses have guided them to benevolent actions, we will rank
others to whom Providence has assigned a different tendency and different
powers. Men who have spent their lives in generous and holy contemplation for
the human race; those who, by a certain heavenliness of spirit, have purified
the atmosphere around them, and thus supplied a medium in which good and high
things may be projected and performed—give to these a lofty place among
the benefactors of mankind, although no deed, such as the world calls deeds,
may be recorded of them. There are some individuals of whom we cannot conceive
it proper that they should apply their hands to any earthly instrument, or work
out any definite act; and others, perhaps not less high, to whom it is an
essential attribute to labor in body as well as spirit for the welfare of their
brethren. Thus, if we find a spiritual sage whose unseen, inestimable influence
has exalted the moral standard of mankind, we will choose for his companion
some poor laborer who has wrought for love in the potato field of a neighbor
poorer than himself.

We have summoned this various multitude—and, to the credit of our nature,
it is a large one—on the principle of Love. It is singular, nevertheless,
to remark the shyness that exists among many members of the present class, all
of whom we might expect to recognize one another by the freemasonry of mutual
goodness, and to embrace like brethren, giving God thanks for such various
specimens of human excellence. But it is far otherwise. Each sect surrounds its
own righteousness with a hedge of thorns. It is difficult for the good
Christian to acknowledge the good Pagan; almost impossible for the good
Orthodox to grasp the hand of the good Unitarian, leaving to their Creator to
settle the matters in dispute, and giving their mutual efforts strongly and
trustingly to whatever right thing is too evident to be mistaken. Then again,
though the heart be large, yet the mind is often of such moderate dimensions as
to be exclusively filled up with one idea. When a good man has long devoted
himself to a particular kind of beneficence—to one species of
reform—he is apt to become narrowed into the limits of the path wherein
he treads, and to fancy that there is no other good to be done on earth but
that self-same good to which he has put his hand, and in the very mode that
best suits his own conceptions. All else is worthless. His scheme must be
wrought out by the united strength of the whole world’s stock of love, or the
world is no longer worthy of a position in the universe. Moreover, powerful
Truth, being the rich grape juice expressed from the vineyard of the ages, has
an intoxicating quality, when imbibed by any save a powerful intellect, and
often, as it were, impels the quaffer to quarrel in his cups. For such reasons,
strange to say, it is harder to contrive a friendly arrangement of these
brethren of love and righteousness, in the procession of life, than to unite
even the wicked, who, indeed, are chained together by their crimes. The fact is
too preposterous for tears, too lugubrious for laughter.

But, let good men push and elbow one another as they may during their earthly
march, all will be peace among them when the honorable array of their
procession shall tread on heavenly ground. There they will doubtless find that
they have been working each for the other’s cause, and that every
well-delivered stroke, which, with an honest purpose any mortal struck, even
for a narrow object, was indeed stricken for the universal cause of good. Their
own view may be bounded by country, creed, profession, the diversities of
individual character—but above them all is the breadth of Providence. How
many who have deemed themselves antagonists will smile hereafter, when they
look back upon the world’s wide harvest field, and perceive that, in
unconscious brotherhood, they were helping to bind the selfsame sheaf!

But, come! The sun is hastening westward, while the march of human life, that
never paused before, is delayed by our attempt to rearrange its order. It is
desirable to find some comprehensive principle, that shall render our task
easier by bringing thousands into the ranks where hitherto we have brought one.
Therefore let the trumpet, if possible, split its brazen throat with a louder
note than ever, and the herald summon all mortals, who, from whatever cause,
have lost, or never found, their proper places in the wold.

Obedient to this call, a great multitude come together, most of them with a
listless gait, betokening weariness of soul, yet with a gleam of satisfaction
in their faces, at a prospect of at length reaching those positions which,
hitherto, they have vainly sought. But here will be another disappointment; for
we can attempt no more than merely to associate in one fraternity all who are
afflicted with the same vague trouble. Some great mistake in life is the chief
condition of admittance into this class. Here are members of the learned
professions, whom Providence endowed with special gifts for the plough, the
forge, and the wheelbarrow, or for the routine of unintellectual business. We
will assign to them, as partners in the march, those lowly laborers and
handicraftsmen, who have pined, as with a dying thirst, after the unattainable
fountains of knowledge. The latter have lost less than their companions; yet
more, because they deem it infinite. Perchance the two species of unfortunates
may comfort one another. Here are Quakers with the instinct of battle in them;
and men of war who should have worn the broad brim. Authors shall be ranked
here whom some freak of Nature, making game of her poor children, had imbued
with the confidence of genius and strong desire of fame, but has favored with
no corresponding power; and others, whose lofty gifts were unaccompanied with
the faculty of expression, or any of that earthly machinery by which ethereal
endowments must be manifested to mankind. All these, therefore, are melancholy
laughing-stocks. Next, here are honest and well intentioned persons, who by a
want of tact—by inaccurate perceptions—by a distorting
imagination—have been kept continually at cross purposes with the world
and bewildered upon the path of life. Let us see if they can confine themselves
within the line of our procession. In this class, likewise, we must assign
places to those who have encountered that worst of ill success, a higher
fortune than their abilities could vindicate; writers, actors, painters, the
pets of a day, but whose laurels wither unrenewed amid their hoary hair;
politicians, whom some malicious contingency of affairs has thrust into
conspicuous station, where, while the world stands gazing at them, the dreary
consciousness of imbecility makes them curse their birth hour. To such men, we
give for a companion him whose rare talents, which perhaps require a Revolution
for their exercise, are buried in the tomb of sluggish circumstances.

Not far from these, we must find room for one whose success has been of the
wrong kind; the man who should have lingered in the cloisters of a university,
digging new treasures out of the Herculaneum of antique lore, diffusing depth
and accuracy of literature throughout his country, and thus making for himself
a great and quiet fame. But the outward tendencies around him have proved too
powerful for his inward nature, and have drawn him into the arena of political
tumult, there to contend at disadvantage, whether front to front, or side by
side, with the brawny giants of actual life. He becomes, it may be, a name for
brawling parties to bandy to and fro, a legislator of the Union; a governor of
his native state; an ambassador to the courts of kings or queens; and the world
may deem him a man of happy stars. But not so the wise; and not so himself,
when he looks through his experience, and sighs to miss that fitness, the one
invaluable touch which makes all things true and real. So much achieved, yet
how abortive is his life! Whom shall we choose for his companion? Some weak
framed blacksmith, perhaps, whose delicacy of muscle might have suited a
tailor’s shopboard better than the anvil.

Shall we bid the trumpet sound again? It is hardly worth the while. There
remain a few idle men of fortune, tavern and grog-shop loungers, lazzaroni, old
bachelors, decaying maidens, and people of crooked intellect or temper, all of
whom may find their like, or some tolerable approach to it, in the plentiful
diversity of our latter class. There too, as his ultimate destiny, must we rank
the dreamer, who, all his life long, has cherished the idea that he was
peculiarly apt for something, but never could determine what it was; and there
the most unfortunate of men, whose purpose it has been to enjoy life’s
pleasures, but to avoid a manful struggle with its toil and sorrow. The
remainder, if any, may connect themselves with whatever rank of the procession
they shall find best adapted to their tastes and consciences. The worst
possible fate would be to remain behind, shivering in the solitude of time,
while all the world is on the move towards eternity. Our attempt to classify
society is now complete. The result may be anything but perfect; yet
better—to give it the very lowest praise—than the antique rule of
the herald’s office, or the modern one of the tax-gatherer, whereby the
accidents and superficial attributes with which the real nature of individuals
has least to do, are acted upon as the deepest characteristics of mankind. Our
task is done! Now let the grand procession move!

Yet pause a while! We had forgotten the Chief Marshal.

Hark! That world-wide swell of solemn music, with the clang of a mighty bell
breaking forth through its regulated uproar, announces his approach. He comes;
a severe, sedate, immovable, dark rider, waving his truncheon of universal
sway, as he passes along the lengthened line, on the pale horse of the
Revelation. It is Death! Who else could assume the guidance of a procession
that comprehends all humanity? And if some, among these many millions, should
deem themselves classed amiss, yet let them take to their hearts the
comfortable truth that Death levels us all into one great brotherhood, and that
another state of being will surely rectify the wrong of this. Then breathe thy
wail upon the earth’s wailing wind, thou band of melancholy music, made up of
every sigh that the human heart, unsatisfied, has uttered! There is yet triumph
in thy tones. And now we move! Beggars in their rags, and Kings trailing the
regal purple in the dust; the Warrior’s gleaming helmet; the Priest in his
sable robe; the hoary Grandsire, who has run life’s circle and come back to
childhood; the ruddy School-boy with his golden curls, frisking along the
march; the Artisan’s stuff jacket; the Noble’s star-decorated coat;—the
whole presenting a motley spectacle, yet with a dusky grandeur brooding over
it. Onward, onward, into that dimness where the lights of Time which have
blazed along the procession, are flickering in their sockets! And whither! We
know not; and Death, hitherto our leader, deserts us by the wayside, as the
tramp of our innumerable footsteps echoes beyond his sphere. He knows not, more
than we, our destined goal. But God, who made us, knows, and will not leave us
on our toilsome and doubtful march, either to wander in infinite uncertainty,
or perish by the way!

FEATHERTOP: A MORALIZED LEGEND

“Dickon,” cried Mother Rigby, “a coal for my pipe!”

The pipe was in the old dame’s mouth when she said these words. She had thrust
it there after filling it with tobacco, but without stooping to light it at the
hearth, where indeed there was no appearance of a fire having been kindled that
morning. Forthwith, however, as soon as the order was given, there was an
intense red glow out of the bowl of the pipe, and a whiff of smoke came from
Mother Rigby’s lips. Whence the coal came, and how brought thither by an
invisible hand, I have never been able to discover.

“Good!” quoth Mother Rigby, with a nod of her head. “Thank ye, Dickon! And now
for making this scarecrow. Be within call, Dickon, in case I need you again.”

The good woman had risen thus early (for as yet it was scarcely sunrise) in
order to set about making a scarecrow, which she intended to put in the middle
of her corn-patch. It was now the latter week of May, and the crows and
blackbirds had already discovered the little, green, rolledup leaf of the
Indian corn just peeping out of the soil. She was determined, therefore, to
contrive as lifelike a scarecrow as ever was seen, and to finish it
immediately, from top to toe, so that it should begin its sentinel’s duty that
very morning. Now Mother Rigby (as everybody must have heard) was one of the
most cunning and potent witches in New England, and might, with very little
trouble, have made a scarecrow ugly enough to frighten the minister himself.
But on this occasion, as she had awakened in an uncommonly pleasant humor, and
was further dulcified by her pipe tobacco, she resolved to produce something
fine, beautiful, and splendid, rather than hideous and horrible.

“I don’t want to set up a hobgoblin in my own corn-patch, and almost at my own
doorstep,” said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing out a whiff of smoke; “I could
do it if I pleased, but I’m tired of doing marvellous things, and so I’ll keep
within the bounds of every-day business just for variety’s sake. Besides, there
is no use in scaring the little children for a mile roundabout, though ’tis
true I’m a witch.”

It was settled, therefore, in her own mind, that the scarecrow should represent
a fine gentleman of the period, so far as the materials at hand would allow.
Perhaps it may be as well to enumerate the chief of the articles that went to
the composition of this figure.

The most important item of all, probably, although it made so little show, was
a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken many an airy gallop at
midnight, and which now served the scarecrow by way of a spinal column, or, as
the unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its arms was a disabled flail which
used to be wielded by Goodman Rigby, before his spouse worried him out of this
troublesome world; the other, if I mistake not, was composed of the pudding
stick and a broken rung of a chair, tied loosely together at the elbow. As for
its legs, the right was a hoe handle, and the left an undistinguished and
miscellaneous stick from the woodpile. Its lungs, stomach, and other affairs of
that kind were nothing better than a meal bag stuffed with straw. Thus we have
made out the skeleton and entire corporosity of the scarecrow, with the
exception of its head; and this was admirably supplied by a somewhat withered
and shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother Rigby cut two holes for the eyes and a
slit for the mouth, leaving a bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass for a
nose. It was really quite a respectable face.

“I’ve seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any rate,” said Mother Rigby. “And
many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin head, as well as my scarecrow.”

But the clothes, in this case, were to be the making of the man. So the good
old woman took down from a peg an ancient plum-colored coat of London make, and
with relics of embroidery on its seams, cuffs, pocket-flaps, and button-holes,
but lamentably worn and faded, patched at the elbows, tattered at the skirts,
and threadbare all over. On the left breast was a round hole, whence either a
star of nobility had been rent away, or else the hot heart of some former
wearer had scorched it through and through. The neighbors said that this rich
garment belonged to the Black Man’s wardrobe, and that he kept it at Mother
Rigby’s cottage for the convenience of slipping it on whenever he wished to
make a grand appearance at the governor’s table. To match the coat there was a
velvet waistcoat of very ample size, and formerly embroidered with foliage that
had been as brightly golden as the maple leaves in October, but which had now
quite vanished out of the substance of the velvet. Next came a pair of scarlet
breeches, once worn by the French governor of Louisbourg, and the knees of
which had touched the lower step of the throne of Louis le Grand. The Frenchman
had given these small-clothes to an Indian powwow, who parted with them to the
old witch for a gill of strong waters, at one of their dances in the forest.
Furthermore, Mother Rigby produced a pair of silk stockings and put them on the
figure’s legs, where they showed as unsubstantial as a dream, with the wooden
reality of the two sticks making itself miserably apparent through the holes.
Lastly, she put her dead husband’s wig on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and
surmounted the whole with a dusty three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the
longest tail feather of a rooster.

Then the old dame stood the figure up in a corner of her cottage and chuckled
to behold its yellow semblance of a visage, with its nobby little nose thrust
into the air. It had a strangely self-satisfied aspect, and seemed to say,
“Come look at me!”

“And you are well worth looking at, that’s a fact!” quoth Mother Rigby, in
admiration at her own handiwork. “I’ve made many a puppet since I’ve been a
witch, but methinks this is the finest of them all. ’Tis almost too good for a
scarecrow. And, by the by, I’ll just fill a fresh pipe of tobacco and then take
him out to the corn-patch.”

While filling her pipe the old woman continued to gaze with almost motherly
affection at the figure in the corner. To say the truth, whether it were
chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft, there was something wonderfully
human in this ridiculous shape, bedizened with its tattered finery; and as for
the countenance, it appeared to shrivel its yellow surface into a grin—a
funny kind of expression betwixt scorn and merriment, as if it understood
itself to be a jest at mankind. The more Mother Rigby looked the better she was
pleased.

“Dickon,” cried she sharply, “another coal for my pipe!”

Hardly had she spoken, than, just as before, there was a red-glowing coal on
the top of the tobacco. She drew in a long whiff and puffed it forth again into
the bar of morning sunshine which struggled through the one dusty pane of her
cottage window. Mother Rigby always liked to flavor her pipe with a coal of
fire from the particular chimney corner whence this had been brought. But where
that chimney corner might be, or who brought the coal from it,—further
than that the invisible messenger seemed to respond to the name of
Dickon,—I cannot tell.

“That puppet yonder,” thought Mother Rigby, still with her eyes fixed on the
scarecrow, “is too good a piece of work to stand all summer in a corn-patch,
frightening away the crows and blackbirds. He’s capable of better things. Why,
I’ve danced with a worse one, when partners happened to be scarce, at our witch
meetings in the forest! What if I should let him take his chance among the
other men of straw and empty fellows who go bustling about the world?”

The old witch took three or four more whiffs of her pipe and smiled.

“He’ll meet plenty of his brethren at every street corner!” continued she.
“Well; I didn’t mean to dabble in witchcraft to-day, further than the lighting
of my pipe, but a witch I am, and a witch I’m likely to be, and there’s no use
trying to shirk it. I’ll make a man of my scarecrow, were it only for the
joke’s sake!”

While muttering these words, Mother Rigby took the pipe from her own mouth and
thrust it into the crevice which represented the same feature in the pumpkin
visage of the scarecrow.

“Puff, darling, puff!” said she. “Puff away, my fine fellow! your life depends
on it!”

This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly, to be addressed to a mere thing of
sticks, straw, and old clothes, with nothing better than a shrivelled pumpkin
for a head,—as we know to have been the scarecrow’s case. Nevertheless,
as we must carefully hold in remembrance, Mother Rigby was a witch of singular
power and dexterity; and, keeping this fact duly before our minds, we shall see
nothing beyond credibility in the remarkable incidents of our story. Indeed,
the great difficulty will be at once got over, if we can only bring ourselves
to believe that, as soon as the old dame bade him puff, there came a whiff of
smoke from the scarecrow’s mouth. It was the very feeblest of whiffs, to be
sure; but it was followed by another and another, each more decided than the
preceding one.

“Puff away, my pet! puff away, my pretty one!” Mother Rigby kept repeating,
with her pleasantest smile. “It is the breath of life to ye; and that you may
take my word for.”

Beyond all question the pipe was bewitched. There must have been a spell either
in the tobacco or in the fiercely-glowing coal that so mysteriously burned on
top of it, or in the pungently-aromatic smoke which exhaled from the kindled
weed. The figure, after a few doubtful attempts at length blew forth a volley
of smoke extending all the way from the obscure corner into the bar of
sunshine. There it eddied and melted away among the motes of dust. It seemed a
convulsive effort; for the two or three next whiffs were fainter, although the
coal still glowed and threw a gleam over the scarecrow’s visage. The old witch
clapped her skinny hands together, and smiled encouragingly upon her handiwork.
She saw that the charm worked well. The shrivelled, yellow face, which
heretofore had been no face at all, had already a thin, fantastic haze, as it
were of human likeness, shifting to and fro across it; sometimes vanishing
entirely, but growing more perceptible than ever with the next whiff from the
pipe. The whole figure, in like manner, assumed a show of life, such as we
impart to ill-defined shapes among the clouds, and half deceive ourselves with
the pastime of our own fancy.

If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it may be doubted whether there
was any real change, after all, in the sordid, wornout worthless, and
ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow; but merely a spectral illusion, and a
cunning effect of light and shade so colored and contrived as to delude the
eyes of most men. The miracles of witchcraft seem always to have had a very
shallow subtlety; and, at least, if the above explanation do not hit the truth
of the process, I can suggest no better.

“Well puffed, my pretty lad!” still cried old Mother Rigby. “Come, another good
stout whiff, and let it be with might and main. Puff for thy life, I tell thee!
Puff out of the very bottom of thy heart, if any heart thou hast, or any bottom
to it! Well done, again! Thou didst suck in that mouthful as if for the pure
love of it.”

And then the witch beckoned to the scarecrow, throwing so much magnetic potency
into her gesture that it seemed as if it must inevitably be obeyed, like the
mystic call of the loadstone when it summons the iron.

“Why lurkest thou in the corner, lazy one?” said she. “Step forth! Thou hast
the world before thee!”

Upon my word, if the legend were not one which I heard on my grandmother’s
knee, and which had established its place among things credible before my
childish judgment could analyze its probability, I question whether I should
have the face to tell it now.

In obedience to Mother Rigby’s word, and extending its arm as if to reach her
outstretched hand, the figure made a step forward—a kind of hitch and
jerk, however, rather than a step—then tottered and almost lost its
balance. What could the witch expect? It was nothing, after all, but a
scarecrow stuck upon two sticks. But the strong-willed old beldam scowled, and
beckoned, and flung the energy of her purpose so forcibly at this poor
combination of rotten wood, and musty straw, and ragged garments, that it was
compelled to show itself a man, in spite of the reality of things. So it
stepped into the bar of sunshine. There it stood, poor devil of a contrivance
that it was!—with only the thinnest vesture of human similitude about it,
through which was evident the stiff, rickety, incongruous, faded, tattered,
good-for-nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a heap upon the
floor, as conscious of its own unworthiness to be erect. Shall I confess the
truth? At its present point of vivification, the scarecrow reminds me of some
of the lukewarm and abortive characters, composed of heterogeneous materials,
used for the thousandth time, and never worth using, with which romance writers
(and myself, no doubt, among the rest) have so overpeopled the world of
fiction.

But the fierce old hag began to get angry and show a glimpse of her diabolic
nature (like a snake’s head, peeping with a hiss out of her bosom), at this
pusillanimous behavior of the thing which she had taken the trouble to put
together.

“Puff away, wretch!” cried she, wrathfully. “Puff, puff, puff, thou thing of
straw and emptiness! thou rag or two! thou meal bag! thou pumpkin head! thou
nothing! Where shall I find a name vile enough to call thee by? Puff, I say,
and suck in thy fantastic life with the smoke! else I snatch the pipe from thy
mouth and hurl thee where that red coal came from.”

Thus threatened, the unhappy scarecrow had nothing for it but to puff away for
dear life. As need was, therefore, it applied itself lustily to the pipe, and
sent forth such abundant volleys of tobacco smoke that the small cottage
kitchen became all vaporous. The one sunbeam struggled mistily through, and
could but imperfectly define the image of the cracked and dusty window pane on
the opposite wall. Mother Rigby, meanwhile, with one brown arm akimbo and the
other stretched towards the figure, loomed grimly amid the obscurity with such
port and expression as when she was wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her
victims and stand at the bedside to enjoy their agony. In fear and trembling
did this poor scarecrow puff. But its efforts, it must be acknowledged, served
an excellent purpose; for, with each successive whiff, the figure lost more and
more of its dizzy and perplexing tenuity and seemed to take denser substance.
Its very garments, moreover, partook of the magical change, and shone with the
gloss of novelty and glistened with the skilfully embroidered gold that had
long ago been rent away. And, half revealed among the smoke, a yellow visage
bent its lustreless eyes on Mother Rigby.

At last the old witch clinched her fist and shook it at the figure. Not that
she was positively angry, but merely acting on the principle—perhaps
untrue, or not the only truth, though as high a one as Mother Rigby could be
expected to attain—that feeble and torpid natures, being incapable of
better inspiration, must be stirred up by fear. But here was the crisis. Should
she fail in what she now sought to effect, it was her ruthless purpose to
scatter the miserable simulacre into its original elements.

“Thou hast a man’s aspect,” said she, sternly. “Have also the echo and mockery
of a voice! I bid thee speak!”

The scarecrow gasped, struggled, and at length emitted a murmur, which was so
incorporated with its smoky breath that you could scarcely tell whether it were
indeed a voice or only a whiff of tobacco. Some narrators of this legend hold
the opinion that Mother Rigby’s conjurations and the fierceness of her will had
compelled a familiar spirit into the figure, and that the voice was his.

“Mother,” mumbled the poor stifled voice, “be not so awful with me! I would
fain speak; but being without wits, what can I say?”

“Thou canst speak, darling, canst thou?” cried Mother Rigby, relaxing her grim
countenance into a smile. “And what shalt thou say, quoth-a! Say, indeed! Art
thou of the brotherhood of the empty skull, and demandest of me what thou shalt
say? Thou shalt say a thousand things, and saying them a thousand times over,
thou shalt still have said nothing! Be not afraid, I tell thee! When thou
comest into the world (whither I purpose sending thee forthwith) thou shalt not
lack the wherewithal to talk. Talk! Why, thou shall babble like a mill-stream,
if thou wilt. Thou hast brains enough for that, I trow!”

“At your service, mother,” responded the figure.

“And that was well said, my pretty one,” answered Mother Rigby. “Then thou
speakest like thyself, and meant nothing. Thou shalt have a hundred such set
phrases, and five hundred to the boot of them. And now, darling, I have taken
so much pains with thee and thou art so beautiful, that, by my troth, I love
thee better than any witch’s puppet in the world; and I’ve made them of all
sorts—clay, wax, straw, sticks, night fog, morning mist, sea foam, and
chimney smoke. But thou art the very best. So give heed to what I say.”

“Yes, kind mother,” said the figure, “with all my heart!”

“With all thy heart!” cried the old witch, setting her hands to her sides and
laughing loudly. “Thou hast such a pretty way of speaking. With all thy heart!
And thou didst put thy hand to the left side of thy waistcoat as if thou really
hadst one!”

So now, in high good humor with this fantastic contrivance of hers, Mother
Rigby told the scarecrow that it must go and play its part in the great world,
where not one man in a hundred, she affirmed, was gifted with more real
substance than itself. And, that he might hold up his head with the best of
them, she endowed him, on the spot, with an unreckonable amount of wealth. It
consisted partly of a gold mine in Eldorado, and of ten thousand shares in a
broken bubble, and of half a million acres of vineyard at the North Pole, and
of a castle in the air, and a chateau in Spain, together with all the rents and
income therefrom accruing. She further made over to him the cargo of a certain
ship, laden with salt of Cadiz, which she herself, by her necromantic arts, had
caused to founder, ten years before, in the deepest part of mid-ocean. If the
salt were not dissolved, and could be brought to market, it would fetch a
pretty penny among the fishermen. That he might not lack ready money, she gave
him a copper farthing of Birmingham manufacture, being all the coin she had
about her, and likewise a great deal of brass, which she applied to his
forehead, thus making it yellower than ever.

“With that brass alone,” quoth Mother Rigby, “thou canst pay thy way all over
the earth. Kiss me, pretty darling! I have done my best for thee.”

Furthermore, that the adventurer might lack no possible advantage towards a
fair start in life, this excellent old dame gave him a token by which he was to
introduce himself to a certain magistrate, member of the council, merchant, and
elder of the church (the four capacities constituting but one man), who stood
at the head of society in the neighboring metropolis. The token was neither
more nor less than a single word, which Mother Rigby whispered to the
scarecrow, and which the scarecrow was to whisper to the merchant.

“Gouty as the old fellow is, he’ll run thy errands for thee, when once thou
hast given him that word in his ear,” said the old witch. “Mother Rigby knows
the worshipful Justice Gookin, and the worshipful Justice knows Mother Rigby!”

Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close to the puppet’s, chuckling
irrepressibly, and fidgeting all through her system, with delight at the idea
which she meant to communicate.

“The worshipful Master Gookin,” whispered she, “hath a comely maiden to his
daughter. And hark ye, my pet! Thou hast a fair outside, and a pretty wit
enough of thine own. Yea, a pretty wit enough! Thou wilt think better of it
when thou hast seen more of other people’s wits. Now, with thy outside and thy
inside, thou art the very man to win a young girl’s heart. Never doubt it! I
tell thee it shall be so. Put but a bold face on the matter, sigh, smile,
flourish thy hat, thrust forth thy leg like a dancing-master, put thy right
hand to the left side of thy waistcoat, and pretty Polly Gookin is thine own!”

All this while the new creature had been sucking in and exhaling the vapory
fragrance of his pipe, and seemed now to continue this occupation as much for
the enjoyment it afforded as because it was an essential condition of his
existence. It was wonderful to see how exceedingly like a human being it
behaved. Its eyes (for it appeared to possess a pair) were bent on Mother
Rigby, and at suitable junctures it nodded or shook its head. Neither did it
lack words proper for the occasion: “Really! Indeed! Pray tell me! Is it
possible! Upon my word! By no means! Oh! Ah! Hem!” and other such weighty
utterances as imply attention, inquiry, acquiescence, or dissent on the part of
the auditor. Even had you stood by and seen the scarecrow made, you could
scarcely have resisted the conviction that it perfectly understood the cunning
counsels which the old witch poured into its counterfeit of an ear. The more
earnestly it applied its lips to the pipe, the more distinctly was its human
likeness stamped among visible realities, the more sagacious grew its
expression, the more lifelike its gestures and movements, and the more
intelligibly audible its voice. Its garments, too, glistened so much the
brighter with an illusory magnificence. The very pipe, in which burned the
spell of all this wonderwork, ceased to appear as a smoke-blackened earthen
stump, and became a meerschaum, with painted bowl and amber mouthpiece.