University of Virginia Library

35. CHAPTER XXXV.
INTROSPECTIVE.

He must adjust himself to what was about him. He
must ascertain the extent of his obligations and deficits, and
square accounts with existence. He had relations to mankind
that involved a personal attention, — offices to fill or
resign, — scenes to be visited or abandoned.

“What will God have me to do?” he asked. “My
character is questioned, and my influence neutralized; my
pretensions will be derided, and my efforts opposed.”

He was teacher in the same Sunday-school with Melicent
and Barbara, one of whom had a class in the vestry,
directly fronting him. One Sabbath he was at his post;
but he imagined he could not repeat the endeavor. It was
not so much a cross which he would heroically bear, as an
execution that it were wise to dispense with. He told his
class, with some emotion, he should instruct them no more,
but that he should be happy to see them at Willow Croft.
The children opened their innocent eyes with quite a burst
of wonderment, for they were attached to their teacher and
ignorant of events; but he quietly sat down and turned his
back to them.

He had passed some of his happiest and most useful
hours in the cause of Knuckle Lane, and at the Griped
Hand. This was an interest that he loved, and a privilege
that he prized. Shall he attend these meetings no more?
Shall he maintain the “Be Good,” but the “Do Good”
become no other than a lost dream of his youth, — a ruined

attainment of his piety? But how persevere in duties that
brought him into so scandalized a juxtaposition? — how,
with such a load on his heart; — how, with so much shame
in his apprehensions; — how, with a sort of aha! aha! pursuing
him down the street?

The Hebrew Scribes used to write in the margin of the
Bible words that were to be pronounced in room of offensive
ones in the text, which they dared not alter. Richard seemed
to have the feeling that he was an offensive word in the
sacred text of those movements in which he had been engaged,
— movements that he reverenced and loved, — and
that he ought to betake himself to the margin.

Richard had friends, — friends for adversity, — who adhered
to him whatever might befall. Some of his Knuckle
Lane associates, believing in his integrity, not only loaned
him a generous confidence, but would incite him to vindicate
his position, and repossess himself of what Mrs. Melbournism
had taken away. There were those who did not
like Mrs. Eyre, and were impatient at the injustice she
seemed guilty of. But nothing could dissuade Richard
from letting those matters alone. “Come back to `Knuckle
Lane,' ” said Mangil, the Broker. “Cornered, sharp, hard
getting round? Poh! poh! never heard of such a thing.
Banks refuse? Come into the street; call, — you know
where, — 21 Exchange. Never mind backers, — you have
a back of your own;” — he struck him there; — “perhaps
you have forgotten some old deposites; if you don't call for
them, why, they must pass over to your heirs.”

Now, Richard made some mistakes, and one very plain
one. He exaggerated the consequence that attached to his
person and action, and seemed to imagine there was a public
excitement about his affairs. The city appeared to him
one great eye; and that eye, like the sun, looking straight

down upon him, and making his shadow the measure of its
intensity. In fact, there were twenty thousand eyes in the
Old Town and the New; and it would be a miracle, indeed,
if these had all at once become so disinterested, so curious,
or so crazed, as, neglecting their own business, to mind
nothing else but a lessee of Green Mill. It was as if there
were no other self, — no other disappointment, or anxiety, or
sorrow, — but his; as if the people he passed in the street, —
that looked at him, indeed, but only to take the right side
of him, — were not full of bargains and speculations, of
hurryings and fears, of burdens and woes, of light, love,
and hope, without him; as if the houses, that seemed to
stare on him from their windows, were not veiled in their
sick chambers, embroiled in their kitchens, turned topsy-turvy
in their clearings, asleep in their luxuriance or their
solitude, and cared nothing for him.

This turn of Richard's mind was not an uncommon one.
A chambermaid, — I have this out Jonathan Swift, D. D., —
talking with one of her fellow-servants, said, “I hear it is all
over London that I am going to leave my lady.” The same
Divine has other instances, which I need not be at pains to
repeat. An Englishman, having written a three-penny
pamphlet against France, hearing that a French privateer
had been seen off the coast, fled to town, and told his
friends “they need not wonder at his haste, for the French
King had sent a privateer on purpose to catch him.” In a
book-stall, Mr. Swift says he took up a volume entitled
“Poems, by the author of The Choice.” “Poems” were
unendurable; “But what,” asked the Dean, “is The Choice,
or who ever heard of its author?”

“This,” concludes our moralist, “arises from the great
importance which every man supposes himself to be of.”

Whatever he undertook, Richard might feel it would be

entitled, “By the author of a Certain Disturbance!” Yet
how many there were in Woodylin who had never seen the
book, nor heard of the disturbance! How many who had
only seen the cover of the book, or read its title in a newspaper
advertisement!

Perhaps being deplumed has the same effect as wearing
feathers, in the fancy that one is the observed of all observers;
and a sense of disgrace excites the reäcting imagination
like a love of applause.

We have said Richard's heart, among other vagaries, got
into his eyes and ears. In that heart was a variety of
things, — the “World,” the Church, the street, — this and
that man, this and that circle, — many vague and indefinable
objects, and strange and wonderful impressions of things;
and he could hardly look up without seeing or hearing what
pertained to himself, — even as we should suppose, more
literally, the sweet singer of Sweden, who has filled the
earth with her melody, could hardly open her ears anywhere
without hearing the echo of her voice, as she certainly
cannot open her eyes without seeing her name in all
places and on all things.

Yet herein he mistook, — I will not say his duty, — but
the fact.

In the city at large, the Old Town especially, and among
the citizens outside of the Family connection, his rejection
by the Governor's daughter was a nine days' wonder, with
an evening or two of commentary, and no more; and even
in that connection, except in the detached and remote hours
of unreserve and reverie, it gradually dropped from the
tongue.

We say Richard made a mistake. Yet it might have
been difficult for him to be correct.

His great sorrow held up the world to his view as in a

kaleidoscope, which by invisible hands it kept turning round;
and, at each revolution, men and women, — his fellow-beings,
— like the glass and beads in the toy aforesaid,
tumbled into unexpected groups, and darted off with every
conceivable expression.

It would be hard to determine his precise footing with
such folks.

For the most part, he left the public walks, and attached
himself to the Saw-mill and Willow Croft.

He had plenty of time for reflection; and among the
things that self-examination brought to light, he thought he
espied a lurking ambition. Had he been too ambitious?
— sinfully so? — or only to the extent that was natural,
laudable, and Christian? His desire to do good, he feared,
had been a desire to do great good; his actual superiority,
in feeling and comprehension, to many about him, seemed
to have been tinctured with conceit; his endeavor to rise in
the world, honorable and praiseworthy as were the means,
indicated some narrowness of motive; his energy and perseverance,
in every benevolent word and work, were vitiated
by a regard to human approbation; — perhaps he had relied
less on God, and too much on his own activity of nature.
Why did he feel, at times, so wretchedly, and mourn sore
like a dove over his disappointment? If he were truly a
child of God, and sanctified in soul, and imbued with resignation,
and raised to the tranquillity of life in Jesus, and
heir presumptive of eternal blessedness, would he breathe so
heavily? These questions he could not revolve without
solicitude.

Was there not a certain swelling up and inflation of selfish
regard in the whole scheme of his life, and filling a
space that should be occupied solely by God and duty?
Was he not more mortified at the discredit attached to his

reputation, than distressed for detriment accruing to the
cause of Christ? Would he be willing that the works of
godliness and humanity should go on, and he himself have
no agency, or award, or figure therein? Startling topics
these, that made his conscience throb, as if its nerve had
been touched by a dentist's needle. It is said that ants, in a
Church of Brazil, having bored through the floor, brought
up from the vaults beneath bits of coffins and shreds of
grave-clothes, and displayed them to the shuddering eyes
of the worshippers. A great sorrow, even in a sanctified
mind, sinks to the depths of one's being, and perforating the
vaults where follies and sins lie dead and buried, will sometimes
surprise him with the sight of remnants of things
abhorred and rejected, and which he supposed had perished
forever.

“The importance which every man supposes himself to be
of” assumed an unusual aspect, and dilated in extraordinary
proportions, in Richard's mind, about this time. He never
had such a realization of himself before. If he would ever
be great, he never felt himself so large, never experienced
such an exaggerated consciousness, as now. He seemed
aforetime to have lost sight of his own existence and individuality;
and now that existence and individuality, — whatever
he had done or been, — all the plans he had engaged
in, — all the intercourse he had enjoyed, — seemed to confront
him, and inflesh before his eyes, and well up in his
heart, and to be himself, and to double himself, and to shut
out from his attention all things but his attention. He had
no idea of what he had attained, until compelled to retreat,
and contemplate his ground from a distance. One measures
his height more by his fall than by his rise. The fall is
material and perceptible; the rise is spiritual, gradual,

dawn-like. One falls with a crash, — he goes up with a
kind of buoyancy.

Sometimes he exclaimed, with Job, “O that I were as in
months past, — as I was in the days of my youth!” He
wished himself like the boy David, a keeper of sheep again
in his father's pasture; — he sighed for the obscurity and
silence of the old forests where he had cut timber and slept
on boughs. He wished that he had never left the station
of slip-tender, under Captain Creamer; — he envied his own
boy, the shingle-sticker.

He called to mind Cromwell's lament in Shakspeare. He
had read Shakspeare. It was the advice of Pastor Harold
for young persons to possess the great dramatist, — agreeably,
perhaps, to what tradition reports of old Dr. Strong, of
Hartford, Ct., who said he wanted but two books in his
library — the Bible and Shakspeare. He pathetically repeated
Othello's words: —

This “O! O!” came to be quite familiar to Richard. It
was all that remained to him in the way of expression. It
was as a letting off of steam. Eructation is useful in disburthening
the heart. The whole course of his days seemed
to have suddenly struck into a funeral procession, and the
noise of the world to be a beat of the muffled drum, and he
himself to be keeping slow and measured tread, as he moved
downwards to obscurity and silence.

Yet Richard recollected duty, and strove to carry forward

the intention, if he was obliged to deviate from the method,
of his former goodness.

He went occasionally to Elder Jabson's evening meetings,
in the neighborhood of Willow Croft. The Elder was kind
and attentive to Richard, and, waiving reproachful considerations,
treated him as a friend and brother. At this time
the doctrine of the Second Advent was being discussed in
the Elder's parish, and it agitated the meetings. The good
Minister himself was not free of doubt. Some of his flock
were selling out, in anticipation of the great event. Richard
spoke on the subject with some warmth, and not a little
judgment. He explained that the anticipated Coming of
our Lord, so far as concerned this world, was a spiritual phenomenon;
— that it was to be realized in the heart and life,
and to be fulfilled in the amelioration of society and progress
of the race. The fire, said he, is that which consumes
iniquity. The cloud-glory is the beauty of holiness. The
light is the radiance of universal love. The new heavens
are what we may have in our families, our towns, our nation.
The idea of atmospheric convulsions and geological
ruin, he said, originated in error and superstition; and he
explained how, in every age and in various places, it had
been productive of terrible evils and unspeakable wretchedness.
He must have been indebted for some of his facts
to Pastor Harold. Then he expatiated with fervor, and
almost a Pythian boldness, on the power, solemnity and
grandeur, of the real coming of Jesus.

The Elder was pleased, and most of the congregation
acquiesced. “I have felt under trial,” said the former,
“like a cart pressed under sheaves. I have sometimes
thought, in this matter, we had run, before we were sent;
but I have peace in my soul to-night, — I might say a
shouting peace. We shall have cause to thank God in the

day of eternity for Brother Edney's word. I believe he
spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. Let us rejoice
that we are not in hell, but still on praying ground!”

Richard felt refreshed, that night, by the vision of Jesus
that had been kindled in his imagination. He compared his
feelings when he got home with the thought he had at the
meeting. He was sensible of a harmony between the two,
— that he had uttered not merely what he knew, or what
the occasion momentarily suggested, but what was profound
in his convictions, bedded in his nature, and what, after all,
seemed an indestructible tendency and appetency of his
spirit. He was glad to have those old and beloved sensations
revive; — it was a coming up from the darkness that
covered them of sentiments and principles that he believed
were eternal within him. The image of the coming kingdom
of his Lord had a brightness and majesty that contrasted
his situation indeed, but not his purposes; and if it
discouraged certain forms of overt action, it animated all
the more the interior sphere of his piety.

In the parlor, with Roxy and Munk, before retiring, he
sang the hymn that begins, “I love thy kingdom, Lord.”
At these words, —

they were all touched. Richard was a good and sincere
singer, and Roxy not only knew that the pathos of his
voice truly interpreted the condition of his soul, but she felt
how with a certain choking resoluteness of heart, and solemn,
painful heroism of intent, he sang.

The next day, obedient to the feeling of the night before,
he purchased a small golden cross, which he lodged carefully

within his vest, and wore over his heart. Every night
he hung it up directly under his Motto.

Richard would still do good; nor was he without opportunity.
Outside of the large and tempting field where he
had so long labored, and from which he imagined himself in
a sense banished, in the “margin” of things where he lived,
he found enclosures, or rather wastes, that demanded Christian
attention, and appealed to Christian fidelity. At Bill
Stonners' Point, collecting his pupils from the neighboring
forest, from the docks, and Islands, including Chuk, and two
or three mill-boys and river-drivers, he formed a sort of
Ragged School; and Sunday evening he had a small congregation
of what are sometimes denominated the Great
Unwashed; and Miss Freeling would call the Bare Feet.
These had to be instructed, not only in the first principles of
the doctrine of Christ, but in rudiments of behavior and
decency, and the proper use of their mother tongue; and
some must be taught reading and spelling. I know not
whether it is an honor to Chuk, or a reflection on the rest,
to say he was at the head of the class.

In this, Richard did not forget the Griped Hand and the
Church. He loved and would serve both; and hoped that
he might make of these Wild Olives, as he called them,
plants that would do to graft on the domestic and civilized
stock, and such as might adorn and bless those higher
spheres to which he hoped ultimately to commit them.