 | Mosses from an old manse |  |
MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE.
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 grey 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 gate-way 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
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
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 offered 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 the 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 eves, attempered 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
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
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 beautified
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
earthliest 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
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 three-score
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 fragment 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.
An 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, moss-grown 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
of slain invaders, who passed into eternity from the battlefields
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
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 battleground.
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 dropt
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;
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, potatoe-fields,
and men doggedly hoeing, in their shirt-sleeves and homespun
pantaloons. But this is nonsense. The old Manse is better
than athousand 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 burthen. 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 an 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
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
burthen 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 closer resemblance
to those that grew in Eden. It has been an apophthegm,
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 re-visit 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 any 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
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 worthy—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 noon-tide 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
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 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 out-buildings 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
after-thought of time. The usually mirrored surface of the
river was blurred by an infinity of rain-drops. 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 heat 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
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 white-washed 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 speculations, inscribed
upon the walls. There, too, hung a tattered and shriveled roll of
canvass, 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 toward 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
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 to
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 short-hand, perhaps
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, thickset 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
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 them, 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 writers' 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 re-produced, 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
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, long unseen from beneath its heavy eyelid.
To-morrow for the hilltops and the woodpaths!
Or it might be that Ellery Channing came up the avenue, to
join me in a fishing excursion on the river. Strange and happy
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 lonely 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 had 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 pendant branches
into it. At one spot, there is a lofty bank, on the slope of which
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. Grape-vines,
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 lily-pads. The turtle, sunning
itself upon a rock, or at the root of a tree, slid suddenly into
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 over-arching 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
moss-grown 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
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, where we could go forth at will into statelier 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 grey, 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
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
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 sandness 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:—“Oh,
perfect day!—Oh, beautiful world!—Oh, 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
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 thundergust;
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 grey 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!
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, on 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 magic 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 is
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;
and expression of what he knew, while he was writing it, 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 wide-spreading 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 clue that should guide
them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Grey-headed theorists—whose
systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them in
an iron frame-work—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
kindled.
For myself, there had 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 his as a philosopher. It was good, nevertheless,
to meet him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue,
with that pure, intellectual gleam diffused about his presence, like
the garment of a shining one; and he 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
babbling through so many pages about a moss-grown 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 green sward, 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 fairy-land, there
is no measurement of time; and, in a spot so sheltered from the
turmoil of life's ocean, three years hasten 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 green grass with pine-shavings
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 unpurchaseable 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 storyteller, I have often contrived strange vicissitudes
for my imaginary personages, but none like this.
The treasure of intellectual gold, which I had 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
seem so frank,—often but half in earnest, and never, 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 heir-loom 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.
| Mosses from an old manse | |