University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

“Hitherto we have been gliding down the
smooth current of college life with a full breeze of
youthful hopes and pleasures; we seem to have
skimmed over the sunny surface of things, entirely
unconscious of the waters beneath. But now we
are embarked upon the life of passion. No longer
have we the regulated pulsations, the quiet slumbers,
the delightful reveries, the monotonous routine,
and the cool and invigorating shades of college
groves. We now begin to know man in his
developments—we saw him before, but we knew
him not. It is not given to us to stand aloof and
view all this war of the contending elements of
man's composition, without partaking in the adversities
of the storm. And now that we are fairly
embarked, and have occasionally, as is the case with
me now, time to look within and around, to see
how we are prepared for the voyage, what a confounding
sight presents itself?

“Let us see of what our stores consist! We

have reason, it is true, but so feeble and doubtful
in its results, that we seem still to be placed like
our primitive parents, with the tree of life before
us—the devil leading us one way, down-hill, and
reason the other way, upward. Even when we
have that rare combination of all the faculties of
the mind which constitutes true greatness, are we
any better off? and especially when we have
brilliant developments of peculiar faculties called
genius, are we any better prepared for the trials
and troubles of this world? How are we in the
dark, even when possessed of some or all of these
excellences? Conscience may be imperfectly
tutored, reason misled, or genius itself be confounded
with the ravings of the maniac, or so
doubtful in its pilotage as to be worse than common
sense or even instinct itself. I can recollect when
you and I turned up our indignant noses, when
clergymen and moralists descanted upon the trite
subject of the depravity of the human heart; we
had not then embarked upon this ocean which constitutes
human life. We now see differently; at
least I do. There is now no bottom to this profound.
We can already see into the mystery of
the murderer's feelings; we can trace the gradual
steps, at first, and then the leap, as these wretches
are both led and driven to perdition. But above
all, can we now see those fierce contests of human
life which are brewed from the passions;
reason being deluded, and genius run wild; where
one being deceives another, and yet more deceives
himself; where one being wrongs another, and yet
most of all wrongs himself; while multitudes are
engaged in fierce struggles, they know not why.
They are driven by impulses, and surrounded by
circumstances, over which they imagine they have
all, yet have in reality little, control. These do
not plunge down to murder, but they are engaged
in a constant warfare, in which the same passions
are developed with which the murderer sets out;
they wrestle upon the brink of the precipice, and
are preserved from the fall by two things—selfishness
and fear.

“These two passions hold the world in its constant
equipoise. The fear of which I speak is not
the mere dread of the executioner; there is a
darker apprehension lurking in every human heart.
He who is possessed of it fears, he knows not what,
nor how long he has felt it, nor how much power
it can exercise over him. Indeed he has never
analyzed its proporties; for this very power of
analyzing his weakness is often the strength of the
outlaw, the murderer, and the assassin.

“This fear is early developed, and seems at its
very first exhibition to give us some clew to its
future mysterious influence over us. One urchin
will be frightened at stories of ghosts and grave-yards;
another at haunted mansions; a third at
warning dreams; while another, and this is by far
the most common case, at all undefined darkness.

“This fear is matured according to the peculiarity
of the individual, and the circumstances in

which he is placed; but wo be to that man, who,
with an imperfectly matured understanding, learns
how to rid himself of this fear, and thus cuts himself
loose from the safe anchorage which nature has
given him, without acquiring the substitute of a
corresponding pilotage of intelligence and principle.
A spark of genius, ill-directed, may make a murderer;
as a spark of genius, well-directed, may
make a saint.

“But there are some fearful exceptions to this
general lot of humanity; some spirits which are so
dark themselves, at their very entrance upon the
scene, that no darkness terrifies them. The obscurity
of real things to their gloomy minds laughs
to scorn the shadowy creatures of our superstitious
imaginations. These are the characters
which overleap all the usual stepping-stones of
mortality in their career, either upwards or downwards,
as destiny and circumstances may develop
them, and as nature may have qualified them with
collateral powers and feelings.

“The other great passion of supreme selfishness
forms one of the most curious subjects of mental
study. Bear with me a while, and I will tell you
what frightful adventure has given rise to this train
of reflections.

“Selfishness is the master-key to unlock every
heart; it is the great passion upon which all others
have their foundation. It will be found variously
disguised and modified, and sometimes scarcely to
be recognised; and what is strangest of all is, that

ninety-nine hundredths of the subjects of it are
entirely unconscious of its secret operations. But
look (where it is not so evident at first sight)
at the most disinterested acts of the self-deceived,
—of the poet, the scholar, the genius, the philosopher,
the philanthropist. Is it not the main-spring
of all?[1] Look around you at your fellow-probationers,
and see how many of the purest deeds
of apparent piety, and benevolence, and charity,
may be traced through its deep disguise to this
source. If you have doubts remaining, as to this
great ruling motive of mankind, look within, and
there you will find it, Randolph. I do not hesitate
to tell even you this much, because those who have
this main motive adorned with most virtues can see
it most clearly within themselves. There is no
man so free from selfishness in his own opinion, as
he who is ruled by no other motive or principle.
The very power of self-examination seems to be
entirely swallowed up by this mother of passions.
Such persons see themselves through a medium so
tinctured with self, that self always looks pure and
disinterested. The highwayman only robs the
rich to feed the poor, according to his philosophy;
the murderer only rids the world of a monster and
a tyrant in the most disinterested and generous
manner imaginable; the thief only takes that to
which all men were born with equal claims; the
politician and the demagogue live for the benefit
and advancement of others' interests alone; while
the trading community are nothing more than
agents, to gather from the four quarters of the
globe necessaries and luxuries, to supply the
wants, real and imaginary, of their fellow-men,
scarcely ministering to their own cravings of
nature.

“Oh! how generous and benevolent is man to
his fellow-man! How little does self appear in
all the bustle and turmoil of this busy city; that
is, if you only look at the surface of their acts,
and listen to the language of the actors.

“But I do not complain of these things; they
are best as they are. I state them as facts, which
are not always clearly seen in the dear intimacies
of college life. I would not destroy the selfishness
of man if I could, any more than I would destroy
the main-spring of a watch, which I highly prized;
upon it are founded the courage, the industry, the
enterprise, the knowledge, and the prudence of our
species; and out of these grow our governments
and our laws.

“I cannot disguise from you, Randolph, that the
natural tendency to gloom and despondency which
you have so often observed, grows upon me much
of late; but attend to what I am about to relate,
and you may account, perhaps, for that, as well as
the previous train of ideas in this epistle.

“On the evening of the day after our visit to

the falls, the same company, with many additions,
had assembled at the house of Mr.—, father to
one of the young ladies of our party. The stiffness
and formality which generally prevail for
the first hour on such occasions, were just beginning
to give way to a better state of things. Lamar
and Arthur were formidably arrayed against
each other, on either side of Isabel, while Miss St.
Clair and I were ensconced, as aforetime, in one of
those little convenient recesses in which these
fashionable houses abound. I had never seen her
so cheerful, or known her to enter into conversation
with more spirit and apparent enjoyment, than upon
this occasion. She conversed with great animation
and eagerness, which is evidently her natural
manner, until she would catch my eyes unconsciously
riveted upon her countenance; she would
then cast down her own, with the most becoming
modesty, while her usual sadness would again steal
over her countenance, as if she had just recollected
and identified herself and her treasured sadness.
But I would again succeed in banishing the cloud
by leading her to converse and become excited on
some subject which deeply interested her, and
again she would recollect herself. These repeated
excitements eventually led her to look with
more complacency upon the power of pleasing
and of conversation which still remained to her,
for it was evident to me, by the time the evening
was half spent, that she could be said to have enjoyed
the party.

“Every thing seemed thus to be going on
smoothly, until we had all, as is frequently the case
on such occasions, become for a time quite boisterous;
here one little coterie laughed outright; there
another had got into such a lively dispute, that the
neighbours were compelled to pitch their voices
to the same key in order to be heard at all; and
so on round the saloons, until the din resembled a
little bedlam; every person seemed to be enjoying
himself more after our southern fashion than I have
seen since I came hither; there was a reckless
resignation to the enjoyment of the moment, which
you do not often see in these large cities.

“All at once there was a dead pause. Every
tongue was hushed, as if a funeral knell had
been sounded from the richly wrought ceiling.
You could almost have heard the ladies' hearts
beating. My companion and I were deeply absorbed
at the time in a conversation, which it is
not necessary now to relate; but when silence thus
suddenly took place, all were anxious to see the
cause, all the necks in the room were elongated,
and ours last but still among the rest. And there
I beheld, Randolph, a sight which I shall vividly
remember to the latest period of my existence,
both on account of its character, and its effects
upon one around whom are entwined the very fibres
of my heart.

“In the centre of the room, there stood the emaciated
figure of a man, wrapped in a long red dressing-gown,—his
throat bound up with surgical dressings,—his

head shaved and dressed with a plaster,
his gray hair hanging lank from its edges over his
temples and shoulders,—his eyes sunk deep in
their sockets, and glaring round the room,—his
cheek-bones projecting,—his eyebrows gray and
bushy,—his beard and mustachios unshorn,—his
lips thin and retracted, showing a perfect set of
large white teeth, in the most ghastly manner, like
a recently-dissected skeleton,—his nose long, white,
and thin, and collapsed like that of a corpse. Just
above the dressings of his throat was the pomum
Adami, working up and down among the long
stringy tendons, like a tackle or pulley; while an
unnatural fire shot from his eyes, and all his movements
were quick, convulsive, and maniacal.

“As soon as my companion raised her head
above the little crowd which obstructed her view,
the eye of this figure darted upon her with vulture
quickness and malignity, and stretching out his
long bony hand, and pointing his shaking finger
directly at her, `There,' said he, `is the murderess!
Thought you I was dead? Dead men tell
no secrets! but I have risen from the grave! Behold
me! am I not a pretty corpse?' and then he
burst out into one of those singularly frightful and
wretched peals of laughter, which you may sometimes
hear from the maniac's cell.

“Ere his speech was half-concluded, as I subsequently
found, the lady had fallen lifeless at my
feet. My attention was so irresistibly attracted
by the strange visiter, that I was not aware of this

effect until a dozen at once sprang to her relief
By the time she was carried out of the saloon, the
friends of the wretched man, or his attendants, had
been able to trace him; and rushing in, forcibly
dragged him off, and placed him in a carriage at
the door. The room was now one scene of indescribable
confusion: the predominant feeling was
sympathy for the afflicted young lady. There was
a great deal of low whispering, of which I was enabled
to catch only detached sentences, such as,
`That is his father.'—`I thought he was dead.'—`It
is shameful in his friends to suffer him to annoy her
in this way, as if she had not suffered enough by
them already.'

“I ventured not to ask what all this meant,
Randolph; yet the most maddening curiosity
seized me. I left the room without Lamar; indeed
the whole party broke up in confusion, and I
suppose our agreeable little society will now be
dissolved; for I hear that the lady has already
gone up the river to her own home.

“After I left them so abruptly, I wandered round
this large city with as little purpose or motive as
the maniac himself could have done. My brain
seemed to be on fire, and every pulsation to be
throbbing as if it would burst; huge drops of perspiration
would start upon my forehead and upper
lip, as I ran, rather than walked, from one street to
another, Heaven only knows where; and I suppose
I should have been wandering till this time,
if a hackney-coachman had not happened to come

along, which I discerned by the number on his lanterns,
and I immediately employed him to set me
down at the City Hotel.

“When I arrived at our apartments, I found
Lamar and Arthur talking over the circumstances
as busily, and in as friendly a manner, as if they
had never been jealous of each other. What provoked
me, however, was, that the moment I entered
the room they became mute as statues, and
exchanged knowing glances, as if I had been an
idiot, or could not see them. I hate this sort of
commiseration: I suppose they saw it; for they
left the room together. I walked the floor for half
the night; tumbled and tossed in the bed for the
remainder, and arose next morning little refreshed,
and none the wiser to this moment, as to the meaning
of this strange business.