 | Mosses from an old manse |  |
THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE.
A grave figure, with a pair of mysterious spectacles on his nose
and a pen behind his ear, was seated at a desk, in the corner of
a metropolitan office. The apartment was fitted up with a counter,
and furnished with an oaken cabinet and a chair or two, in
simple and business-like style. Around the walls were stuck
advertisements of articles lost, or articles wanted, or articles to
be disposed of; in one or another of which classes were comprehended
nearly all the conveniences, or otherwise, that the imagination
of man has contrived. The interior of the room was
thrown into shadow, partly by the tall edifices that rose on the
opposite side of the street, and partly by the immense show-bills
of blue and crimson paper, that were expanded over each of the
three windows. Undisturbed by the tramp of feet, the rattle of
wheels, the hum of voices, the shout of the city-crier, the scream
of the news-boys, and other tokens of the multitudinous life that
surged along in front of the office, the figure at the desk pored
diligently over a folio volume, of ledger-like size and aspect.
He looked like the spirit of a record—the soul of his own great
volume—made visible in mortal shape.
But scarcely an instant elapsed without the appearance at the
door of some individual from the busy population whose vicinity
was manifested by so much buzz, and clatter, and outcry. Now,
it was a thriving mechanic, in quest of a tenement that should
come within his moderate means of rent; now, a ruddy Irish
kitchen of our land, while her heart still hung in the peat-smoke
of her native cottage; now, a single gentleman, looking out for
economical board; and now—for this establishment offered an
epitome of worldly pursuits—it was a faded beauty inquiring for
her lost bloom; or Peter Schlemihl for his lost shadow; or an
author, of ten years' standing, for his vanished reputation; or a
moody man for yesterday's sunshine.
At the next lifting of the latch there entered a person with his
hat awry upon his head, his clothes perversely ill-suited to his
form, his eyes staring in directions opposite to their intelligence,
and a certain odd unsuitableness pervading his whole figure.
Wherever he might chance to be, whether in palace or cottage,
church or market, on land or sea, or even at his own fireside, he
must have worn the characteristic expression of a man out of his
right place.
“This,” inquired he, putting his question in the form of an
assertion, “this is the Central Intelligence Office?”
“Even so,” answered the figure at the desk, turning another
leaf of his volume; he then looked the applicant in the face, and
said briefly—“Your business?”
“I want,” said the latter, with tremulous earnestness, “a
place!”
“A place!—and of what nature?” asked the Intelligencer.
“There are many vacant, or soon to be so, some of which will
probably suit, since they range from that of a footman up to a
seat at the council-board, or in the cabinet, or a throne, or a presidential
chair.”
The stranger stood pondering before the desk, with an unquiet,
dissatisfied air—a dull, vague pain of heart, expressed by a slight
contortion of the brow—an earnestness of glance, that asked and
expected, yet continually wavered, as if distrusting. In short,
he evidently wanted, not in a physical or intellectual sense, but
satisfy, since it knows not its own object.
“Ah, you mistake me!” said he at length, with a gesture of
nervous impatience. “Either of the places you mention, indeed,
might answer my purpose—or, more probably, none of them. I
want my place!—my own place!—my true place in the world!
—my proper sphere!—my thing to do, which nature intended me
to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which I have
vainly sought, all my lifetime! Whether it be a footman's duty,
or a king's, is of little consequence, so it be naturally mine. Can
you help me here?”
“I will enter your application,” answered the Intelligencer, at
the same time writing a few lines in his volume. “But to undertake
such a business, I tell you frankly, is quite apart from
the ground covered by my official duties. Ask for something
specific, and it may doubtless be negotiated for you, on your compliance
with the conditions. But were I to go further, I should
have the whole population of the city upon my shoulders; since
far the greater proportion of them are, more or less, in your predicament.”
The applicant sank into a fit of despondency, and passed out
of the door without again lifting his eyes; and, if he died of the
disappointment, he was probably buried in the wrong tomb; inasmuch
as the fatality of such people never deserts them, and,
whether alive or dead, they are invariably out of place.
Almost immediately, another foot was heard on the threshold.
A youth entered hastily, and threw a glance around the office to
ascertain whether the man of intelligence was alone. He then
approached close to the desk, blushed like a maiden, and seemed
at a loss how to broach his business.
“You come upon an affair of the heart,” said the official personage,
looking into him through his mysterious spectacles.
“State it in as few words as may be.”
“You are right,” replied the youth. “I have a heart to dispose
of.”
“You seek an exchange?” said the Intelligencer. “Foolish
youth, why not be contented with your own?”
“Because,” exclaimed the young man, losing his embarrassment
in a passionate glow,—“because my heart burns me with
an intolerable fire; it tortures me all day long with yearnings for
I know not what, and feverish throbbings, and the pangs of a
vague sorrow; and it awakens me in the night-time with a quake,
when there is nothing to be feared! I cannot endure it any
longer. It were wiser to throw away such a heart, even if it
brings me nothing in return!”
“Oh, very well,” said the man of office, making an entry in
his volume. “Your affair will be easily transacted. This species
of brokerage makes no inconsiderable part of my business;
and there is always a large assortment of the article to select
from. Here, if I mistake not, comes a pretty fair sample.”
Even as he spoke, the door was gently and slowly thrust ajar,
affording a glimpse of the slender figure of a young girl, who, as
she timidly entered, seemed to bring the light and cheerfulness
of the outer atmosphere into the somewhat gloomy apartment.
We know not her errand there; nor can we reveal whether the
young man gave up his heart into her custody. If so, the arrangement
was neither better nor worse than in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred, where the parallel sensibilities of a similar age,
importunate affections, and the easy satisfaction of characters not
deeply conscious of themselves, supply the place of any profounder
sympathy.
Not always, however, was the agency of the passions and
affections an office of so little trouble. It happened—rarely, indeed,
in proportion to the cases that came under an ordinary rule,
but still it did happen—that a heart was occasionally brought
hither, of such exquisite material, so delicately attempered, and
it. It might almost be considered a misfortune, in a worldly point
of view, to be the possessor of such a diamond of the purest
water; since in any reasonable probability, it could only be exchanged
for an ordinary pebble, or a bit of cunningly manufactured
glass, or, at least, for a jewel of native richness, but ill-set,
or with some fatal flaw, or an earthy vein running through
its central lustre. To choose another figure, it is sad that hearts
which have their well-spring in the infinite, and contain inexhaustible
sympathies, should ever be doomed to pour themselves
into shallow vessels, and thus lavish their rich affections on the
ground. Strange, that the finer and deeper nature, whether in
man or woman, while possessed of every other delicate instinct,
should so often lack that most invaluable one, of preserving itself
from contamination with what is of a baser kind! Sometimes, it
is true, the spiritual fountain is kept pure by a wisdom within
itself, and sparkles into the light of heaven, without a stain from
the earthy strata through which it had gushed upward. And
sometimes, even here on earth, the pure mingles with the pure,
and the inexhaustible is recompensed with the infinite. But these
miracles, though he should claim the credit of them, are far beyond
the scope of such a superficial agent in human affairs, as
the figure in the mysterious spectacles.
Again the door was opened, admitting the bustle of the city
with a fresher reverberation into the Intelligence Office. Now
entered a man of wo-begone and downcast look; it was such an
aspect as if he had lost the very soul out of his body, and had traversed
all the world over, searching in the dust of the highways,
and along the shady footpaths, and beneath the leaves of the
forest, and among the sands of the sea-shore, in hopes to recover
it again. He had bent an anxious glance along the pavement of
the street, as he came hitherward; he looked, also, in the angle
of the door-step, and upon the floor of the room; and, finally,
inscrutable spectacles which the latter wore, as if the lost treasure
might be hidden within his eyes.
“I have lost—” he began; and then he paused.
“Yes,” said the Intelligencer, “I see that you have lost—but
what?”
“I have lost a precious jewel!” replied the unfortunate person,
“the like of which is not to be found among any prince's treasures.
While I possessed it, the contemplation of it was my sole
and sufficient happiness. No price should have purchased it of
me; but it has fallen from my bosom, where I wore it, in my
careless wanderings about the city.”
After causing the stranger to describe the marks of his lost
jewel, the Intelligencer opened a drawer of the oaken cabinet,
which has been mentioned as forming a part of the furniture of the
room. Here were deposited whatever articles had been picked up
in the streets, until the right owners should claim them. It was
a strange and heterogeneous collection. Not the least remarkable
part of it was a great number of wedding-rings, each one of
which had been riveted upon the finger with holy vows, and all
the mystic potency that the most solemn rites could attain, but had,
nevertheless, proved too slippery for the wearer's vigilance. The
gold of some was worn thin, betokening the attrition of years of
wedlock: others, glittering from the jeweller's shop, must have
been lost within the honey-moon. There were ivory tablets, the
leaves scribbled over with sentiments that had been the deepest
truths of the writer's earlier years, but which were now quite
obliterated from his memory. So scrupulously were articles preserved
in this depository, that not even withered flowers were
rejected; white roses, and blush roses, and moss-rosses, fit emblems
of virgin purity and shamefacedness, which had been lost
or flung away, and trampled into the pollution of the streets;
locks of hair—the golden, and the glossy dark—the long tresses
now and then so heedless of the faith entrusted to them, as to drop
its symbol from the treasure-place of the bosom. Many of these
things were imbued with perfumes; and perhaps a sweet scent had
departed from the lives of their former possessors, ever since they
had so wilfully or negligently lost them. Here were gold pencil-cases,
little ruby hearts with golden arrows through them, bosompins,
pieces of coin, and small articles of every description, comprising
nearly all that have been lost, since a long while ago.
Most of them, doubtless, had a history and a meaning, if there
were time to search it out and room to tell it. Whoever has
missed anything valuable, whether out of his heart, mind, or
pocket, would do well to make inquiry at the Central Intelligence
Office.
And, in the corner of one of the drawers of the oaken cabinet,
after considerable research, was found a great pearl, looking like
the soul of celestial purity, congealed and polished.
“There is my jewel! my very pearl!” cried the stranger,
almost beside himself with rapture. “It is mine! Give it me—
this moment!—or I shall perish!”
“I perceive,” said the Man of Intelligence, examining it more
closely, “that this is the Pearl of Great Price.”
“The very same,” answered the stranger. “Judge, then, of
my misery at losing it out of my bosom! Restore it to me! I
must not live without it an instant longer.”
“Pardon me,” rejoined the Intelligencer, calmly. “You ask
what is beyond my duty. This pearl, as you well know, is held
upon a peculiar tenure; and having once let it escape from your
keeping, you have no greater claim to it—nay, not so great—as
any other person. I cannot give it back.”
Nor could the entreaties of the miserable man—who saw before
his eyes the jewel of his life, without the power to reclaim it—
soften the heart of this stern being, impassive to human sympathy,
Finally the loser of the inestimable pearl clutched his
hands among his hair, and ran madly forth into the world, which
was affrighted at his desperate looks. There passed him on the
door-step a fashionable young gentleman, whose business was to
inquire for a damask rose-bud, the gift of his lady love, which he
had lost out of his button-hole within an hour after receiving it.
So various were the errands of those who visited this Central
Office, where all human wishes seemed to be made known, and, so
far as destiny would allow, negotiated to their fulfilment.
The next that entered was a man beyond the middle age, bearing
the look of one who knew the world and his own course in it.
He had just alighted from a handsome private carriage, which had
orders to wait in the street while its owner transacted his business.
This person came up to the desk with a quick, determined step,
and looked the Intelligencer in the face with a resolute eye;
though, at the same time, some secret trouble gleamed from it in
red and dusky light.
“I have an estate to dispose of,” said he, with a brevity that
seemed characteristic.
“Describe it,” said the Intelligencer.
The applicant proceeded to give the boundaries of his property,
its nature, comprising tillage, pasture, woodland, and pleasure-grounds,
in ample circuit; together with a mansion-house, in the
construction of which it had been his object to realize a castle in
the air, hardening its shadowy walls into granite, and rendering
its visionary splendor perceptible to the awakened eye. Judging
from his description, it was beautiful enough to vanish like a
dream, yet substantial enough to endure for centuries. He spoke,
too, of the gorgeous furniture, the refinements of upholstery, and
all the luxurious artifices that combined to render this a residence
where life might flow onward in a stream of golden days, undisturbed
by the ruggedness which fate loves to fling into it.
“I am a man of strong will,” said he, in conclusion; “and at
my first setting out in life, as a poor, unfriended youth, I resolved
to make myself the possessor of such a mansion and estate as this,
together with the abundant revenue necessary to uphold it. I
have succeeded to the extent of my utmost wish. And this is the
estate which I have now concluded to dispose of.”
“And your terms?” asked the Intelligencer, after taking down
the particulars with which the stranger had supplied him.
“Easy—abundantly easy!” answered the successful man,
smiling, but with a stern and almost frightful contraction of the
brow, as if to quell an inward pang. “I have been engaged in
various sorts of business—a distiller, a trader to Africa, an East
India merchant, a speculator in the stocks—and, in the course of
these affairs, have contracted an incumbrance of a certain nature.
The purchaser of the estate shall merely be required to assume
this burden to himself.”
“I understand you,” said the Man of Intelligence, putting his
pen behind his ear. “I fear that no bargain can be negotiated
on these conditions. Very probably, the next possessor may acquire
the estate with a similar incumbrance, but it will be of his
own contracting, and will not lighten your burden in the least.”
“And am I to live on,” fiercely exclaimed the stranger, “with
the dirt of these accursed acres, and the granite of this infernal
mansion, crushing down my soul? How, if I should turn the
edifice into an almshouse or a hospital, or tear it down and build
a church?”
“You can at least make the experiment,” said the Intelligencer;
“but the whole matter is one which you must settle for yourself.”
The man of deplorable success withdrew, and got into his
coach, which rattled off lightly over the wooden pavements,
though laden with the weight of much land, a stately house, and
ponderous heaps of gold, all compressed into an evil conscience.
There now appeared many applicants for places; among the
gave himself out to be one of the bad spirits that had waited upon
Doctor Faustus in his laboratory. He pretended to show a certificate
of character. which, he averred, had been given him by
that famous necromancer, and countersigned by several masters
whom he had subsequently served.
“I am afraid, my good friend,” observed the Intelligencer,
“that your chance of getting a service is but poor. Now-a-days,
men act the evil spirit for themselves and for their neighbors, and
play the part more effectually than ninety-nine out of a hundred
of your fraternity.”
But, just as the poor friend was assuming a vaporous consistency,
being about to vanis through the floor in sad disappointment and
chagrin, the editor of a political newspaper chanced to enter the
office, in quest of a scribbler of party paragraphs. The former
servant of Doctor Faustus, with some misgivings as to his sufficiency
of venom, was allowed to try his hand in this capacity.
Next appeared, likewise seeking a service, the mysterious Man
in Red, who had aided Buonaparte in his ascent to imperial power.
He was examined as to his qualifications by an aspiring politician,
but finally rejected, as lacking familiarity with the cunning tactics
of the present day.
People continued to succeed each other, with as much briskness
as if everybody turned aside, out of the roar and tumult of
the city, to record here some want, or superfluity, or desire.
Some had goods or possessions, of which they wished to negotiate
the sale. A China merchant had lost his health by a long residence
in that wasting climate; he very liberally offered his disease,
and his wealth along with it, to any physician who would
rid him of both together. A soldier offered his wreath of laurels
for as good a leg as that which it had cost him, on the battle-field.
One poor weary wretch desired nothing but to be accommodated
with any creditable method of laying down his life; for misfortune
could no longer conceive the possibility of happiness, nor had the
heart to try for it. Nevertheless, happening to overhear some
conversation in the Intelligence Office, respecting wealth to be
rapidly accumulated by a certain mode of speculation, he resolved
to live out this one other experiment of better fortune. Many
persons desired to exchange their youthful vices for others better
suited to the gravity of advancing age; a few, we are glad to
say, made earnest efforts to exchange vice for virtue, and, hard
as the bargain was, succeeded in effecting it. But it was remarkable,
that what all were the least willing to give up, even
on the most advantageous terms, were the habits, the oddities, the
characteristic traits, the little ridiculous indulgences, somewhere
between faults and follies, of which nobody but themselves could
understand the fascination.
The great folio, in which the Man of Intelligence recorded all
these freaks of idle hearts, and aspirations of deep hearts, and
desperate longings of miserable hearts, and evil prayers of perverted
hearts, would be curious reading, were it possible to obtain
it for publication. Human character in its individual developments—human
nature in the mass—may best be studied in
its wishes; and this was the record of them all. There was an
endless diversity of mode and circumstance, yet withal such a
similarity in the real ground-work, that any one page of the
volume—whether written in the days before the Flood, or the
yesterday that is just gone by, or to be written on the morrow
that is close at hand, or a thousand ages hence—might serve as a
specimen of the whole. Not but that there were wild sallies of
fantasy that could scarcely occur to more than one man's brain,
whether reasonable or lunatic. The strangest wishes—yet most
incident to men who had gone deep into scientific pursuits, and
attained a high intellectual stage, though not the loftiest—were,
to contend with Nature, and wrest from her some secret, or some
She loves to delude her aspiring students, and mock them with
mysteries that seem but just beyond their utmost reach. To concoct
new minerals—to produce new forms of vegetable life—to
create an insect, if nothing higher in the living scale—is a
sort of wish that has often revelled in the breast of a man of
science. An astronomer, who lived far more among the distant
worlds of space than in this lower sphere, recorded a wish to behold
the opposite side of the moon, which, unless the system of the
firmament be reversed, she can never turn towards the earth.
On the same page of the volume, was written the wish of a little
child, to have the stars for playthings.
The most ordinary wish, that was written down with wearisome
recurrence, was, of course, for wealth, wealth, wealth, in sums
from a few shillings up to unreckonable thousands. But, in
reality, this often repeated expression covered as many different
desires. Wealth is the golden essence of the outward world, embodying
almost everything that exists beyond the limits of the
soul; and therefore it is the natural yearning for the life in the
midst of which we find ourselves, and of which gold is the condition
of enjoyment, that men abridge into this general wish.
Here and there, it is true, the volume testified to some heart so
perverted as to desire gold for its own sake. Many wished for
power; a strange desire, indeed, since it is but another form of
slavery. Old people wished for the delights of youth; a fop, for
a fashionable coat; an idle reader, for a new novel; a versifier,
for a rhyme to some stubborn word; a painter, for Titian's secret
of coloring; a prince, for a cottage; a republican, for a kingdom
and a palace; a libertine, for his neighbor's wife; a man of
palate, for green peas; and a poor man, for a crust of bread.
The ambitious desires of public men, elsewhere so craftily concealed,
were here expressed openly and boldly, side by side with
the unselfish wishes of the philanthropist for the welfare of the
continually weighed self against the world. Into the darker
secrets of the Book of Wishes, we will not penetrate.
It would be an instructive employment for a student of mankind,
perusing this volume carefully, and comparing its records
with men's perfected designs, as expressed in their deeds and
daily life, to ascertain how far the one accorded with the other.
Undoubtedly, in most cases, the correspondence would be found
remote. The holy and generous wish, that rises like incense
from a pure heart towards heaven, often lavishes its sweet perfume
on the blast of evil times. The foul, selfish, murderous
wish, that steams forth from a corrupted heart, often passes into
the spiritual atmosphere, without being concreted into an earthly
deed. Yet this volume is probably truer, as a representation of
the human heart, than is the living drama of action, as it evolves
around us. There is more of good and more of evil in it; more
redeeming points of the bad, and more errors of the virtuous;
higher up-soarings, and baser degradation of the soul; in short,
a more perplexing amalgamation of vice and virtue, than we witness
in the outward world. Decency, and external conscience,
often produce a far fairer outside, than is warranted by the stains
within. And be it owned, on the other hand, that a man seldom
repeats to his nearest friend, any more than he realizes in act,
the purest wishes, which, at some blessed time or other, have
arisen from the depths of his nature, and witnessed for him in this
volume. Yet there is enough, on every leaf, to make the good
man shudder for his own wild and idle wishes, as well as for the
sinner, whose whole life is the incarnation of a wicked desire.
But again the door is opened; and we hear the tumultuous stir
of the world—a deep and awful sound, expressing in another form
some portion of what is written in the volume that lies before the
Man of Intelligence. A grandfatherly personage tottered hastily
into the office, with such an earnestness in his infirm alacrity that
while his dim eyes caught a momentary lustre from his vehemence
of purpose. This venerable figure explained that he was
in search of To-morrow.
“I have spent all my life in pursuit of it,” added the sage old
gentleman, “being assured that To-morrow has some vast benefit
or other in store for me. But I am now getting a little in years,
and must make haste; for unless I overtake To-morrow soon, I
begin to be afraid it will finally escape me.”
“This fugitive To-morrow, my venerable friend,” said the
Man of Intelligence, “is a stray child of Time, and is flying from
his father into the region of the infinite. Continue your pursuit,
and you will doubtless come up with him; but as to the earthly
gifts which you expect, he has scattered them all among a throng
of Yesterdays.”
Obliged to content himself with this enigmatical response, the
grandsire hastened forth, with a quick clatter of his staff upon the
floor; and as he disappeared, a little boy scampered through the
door in chase of a butterfly, which had got astray amid the barren
sunshine of the city. Had the old gentleman been shrewder,
he might have detected To-morrow under the semblance of that
gaudy insect. The golden butterfly glistened through the shadowy
apartment, and brushed its wings against the Book of Wishes,
and fluttered forth again, with the child still in pursuit.
A man now entered, in neglected attire, with the aspect of a
thinker, but somewhat too rough-hewn and brawny for a scholar.
His face was full of sturdy vigor, with some finer and keener
attribute beneath; though harsh at first, it was tempered with the
glow of a large, warm heart, which had force enough to heat his
powerful intellect through and through. He advanced to the
Intelligencer, and looked at him with a glance of such stern sincerity,
that perhaps few secrets were beyond its scope.
“I seek for Truth,” said he.
“It is precisely the most rare pursuit that has ever come under
my cognizance,” replied the Intelligencer, as he made the new
inscription in his volume. “Most men seek to impose some cunning
falsehood upon themselves for truth. But I can lend no help
to your researches. You must achieve the miracle for yourself.
At some fortunate moment, you may find Truth at your side—
or, perhaps, she may be mistily discerned, far in advance—or,
possibly, behind you.”
“Not behind me,” said the seeker, “for I have left nothing on
my track without a thorough investigation. She flits before me,
passing now through a naked solitude, and now mingling with
the throng of a popular assembly, and now writing with the pen
of a French philosopher, and now standing at the altar of an old
cathedral, in the guise of a Catholic priest, performing the high
mass. Oh weary search! But I must not falter; and surely my
heart-deep quest of Truth shall avail at last.”
He paused, and fixed his eyes upon the Intelligencer, with a
depth of investigation that seemed to hold commerce with the
inner nature of this being, wholly regardless of his external
development.
“And what are you?” said he. “It will not satisfy me to
point to this fantastic show of an Intelligence Office, and this
mockery of business. Tell me what is beneath it, and what your
real agency in life, and your influence upon mankind?”
“Yours is a mind,” answered the Man of Intelligence, “before
which the forms and fantasies that conceal the inner idea from
the multitude, vanish at once, and leave the naked reality beneath.
Know, then, the secret. My agency in worldly action—
my connection with the press, and tumult, and intermingling, and
development of human affairs—is merely delusive. The desire
of man's heart does for him whatever I seem to do. I am no
minister of action, but the Recording Spirit!”
What further secrets were then spoken, remains a mystery;
the outcry of the jostling masses, the rush and tumult of man's
life, in its noisy and brief career, arose so high that it drowned
the words of these two talkers. And whether they stood talking
in the Moon, or in Vanity Fair, or in a city of this actual world,
is more than I can say.
| Mosses from an old manse | |