 | Inklings of adventure |  |
MINUTE PHILOSOPHIES.
Was with thee; she who loved us both, she still
Was with thee; and even so didst thou become
A silent poet; from the solitude
Of the vast sea didst bring a watchful heart
Still couchant, an inevitable ear,
And an eye practised like a blind man's touch.
Wordsworth.
A summer or two since, I was wasting a college vacation
among the beautiful creeks and falls in the neighborhood
of New York. In the course of my wanderings,
up stream and down stream, sometimes on foot,
sometimes on horseback, and never without a book for
an excuse to loiter on the mossy banks and beside the
edge of running water, I met frequently a young man
of a peculiarly still and collected eye, and a forehead
more like a broad slab of marble than a human brow.
His mouth was small and thinly cut; his chin had no superfluous
flesh upon it; and his whole appearance was
that of a man, whose intellectual nature prevailed over
the animal. He was evidently a scholar. We had
met so frequently at last, that, on passing each other
one delicious morning, we bowed and smiled simultaneously,
into conversation.
It was a temperate day in August, with a clear but
not oppressive sun, and we wandered down a long
creek together, mineralizing here, botanizing there, and
examining the strata of the ravines, with that sort of
instinctive certainty of each other's attainments, which
scholars always feel, and thrusting in many a little
way-side parenthesis, explanatory of each other's history
and circumstances. I found that he was one of
those pure and unambitious men, who, by close application
and moderate living while in college, become in
love with their books; and, caring little for anything
more than the subsistence, which philosophy tells them
is enough to have of this world, settle down for life
into a wicker-bottomed chair, more contentedly than if
it were the cushion of a throne.
We were together three or four days, and when I
left him, he gave me his address, and promised to write
to me. I shall give below an extract from one of his
letters. I had asked him for a history of his daily
habits, and any incidents which he might choose to
throw in—hinting to him, that I was a dabbler in literature,
and would be obliged to him if he would do it
minutely, and in a form of which I might avail myself
in the way of publication.
After some particulars, unimportant to the reader,
he proceeds:—
“I keep a room at a country tavern. It is a quiet,
out-of-the-way place, with a whole generation of elms
about it; and the greenest grass up to the very door,
and the pleasantest view in the whole country round
from my chamber window. Though it is a public-house,
and the word `Hotel' swings in golden capitals
under a landscape of two hills and a river, painted for
a sign by some wandering Tinto, it is so orderly a
town, that not a lounger is ever seen about the door;
if it were by the very hush of the atmosphere.
“Here, in my pleasant room, upon the second floor,
with my round table covered with choice books, my
shutters closed just so much as to admit light enough
for a painter; and my walls hung with the pictures
which adorned my college chambers, and are therefore
linked with a thousand delightful associations, I can
study my twelve hours a day, in a state of mind sufficiently
even and philosophical. I do not want for excitement.
The animal spirits, thanks to the Creator,
are enough at all times, with employment and temperate
living, to raise us above the common shadows of
life; and after a day of studious confinement, when
my mind is unbound, and I go out and give it up to
reckless association, and lay myself open unreservedly
to the influences of nature—at such a time, there
comes mysteriously upon me a degree of pure joy,
unmingled and unaccountable, which is worth years of
artificial excitement. The common air seems to have
grown rarer; my step is strangely elastic; my sense of
motion full of unwonted dignity; my thoughts elevated;
my perceptions of beauty acuter and more pleasurable;
and my better nature predominant and sublime. There
is nothing in the future which looks difficult, nothing
in my ambition unattainable, nothing in the past which
cannot be reconciled with good; I am a purer and a
better man; and though I am elevated in my own
thoughts, it will not lead to vanity, for my ideas of
God, and of my fellow men, have been enlarged also.
This excitement ceases soon; but it ceases like the
bubbling of a fountain, which leaves the waters purer
for the influence which has passed through them—not
like the mirth of the world, which ebbs like an unnatural
tide, and leaves loathsomeness and disgust.
“Let no one say, that such a mode of life is adapted
to peculiar constitutions, and can be relished by those
and the happiest of fashionable ephemera, and if
he has material for a thought, and can take pride in the
improvement of his nature, I will so order his daily
round, that, with temperance and exercise, he shall be
happier in one hour spent within himself, than in ten
wasted on folly.
“Few know the treasures in their own bosoms—
very few, the elasticity and capacity of a well-regulated
mind for enjoyment. The whole world of philosophers,
and historians, and poets, seem, to the secluded
student, to have labored but for his pleasure; and as he
comes to one new truth and beautiful thought after another,
there answers a chord of joy, richer than music,
in his heart; which spoils him for the coarser pleasures
of the world. I have seen my college chum—a
man, who from a life of mingled business and pleasure,
became suddenly a student—lean back in his chair, at
the triumph of an argument, or the discovery of a philosophical
truth; and give himself up for a few moments
to the enjoyment of sensations, which, he assured
me, surpassed exceedingly the most vivid pleasures
of his life. The mind is like the appetite; when healthy
and well-toned, receiving pleasure from the commonest
food; but becoming a disease, when pampered
and neglected. Give it time to turn in upon itself, satisfy
its restless thirst for knowledge, and it will give
birth to health, to animal spirits, to everything which
invigorates the body, while it is advancing by every
step the capacities of the soul. Oh! if the runners after
pleasure would stoop down by the wayside, they might
drink waters, better even than those which they see
only in their dreams. They will not be told, that they
have in their possession the golden key which they
covet; they will not know, that the music they look to
enchant them, is sleeping in their own untouched instruments;
the enchanter, is burning in their own bosoms!
“When I first came here, my host's eldest daughter
was about twelve years of age. She was, without being
beautiful, an engaging child, rather disposed to be
contemplative, and, like all children at that age, very
inquisitive and curious. She was shy at first, but soon
became acquainted with me; and would come into
my room in her idle hours, and look at my pictures
and read. She never disturbed me, because her natural
politeness forbade it; and I pursued my thoughts
or my studies just as if she were not there, till, by-and-by,
I grew fond of her quiet company, and was happier
when she was moving stealthily around, and looking
into a book here and there, in her quiet way.
“She had been my companion thus for some time,
when it occurred to me that I might be of use to her in
leading her to cultivate a love for study. I seized the
idea enthusiastically. Now, thought I, I will see the
process of a human mind. I have studied its philosophy
from books, and now I will take a single original,
and compare them, step by step. I have seen the bud,
and the flower full blown, and I am told that the change
was gradual, and effected thus---leaf after leaf. Now
I will watch the expansion, and while I water it and
let in the sunshine to its bosom, detect the secret springs
which move to such beautiful results. The idea delighted
me.
“I was aware that there was great drudgery in the
first steps, and I determined to avoid it, and connect
the idea of my own instruction with all that was
delightful and interesting in her mind. For this purpose
I persuaded her father to send her to a better
school than she had been accustomed to attend, and,
by a little conversation, stimulated her to enter upon
her studies with alacrity.
“She was now grown to a girl, and had begun to
age. Her figure had rounded into a flowing symmetry,
and her face, whether from associating principally with
an older person, or for what other reason I know not,
had assumed a thoughtful cast, and she was really a
girl of most interesting and striking personal appearance.
“I did not expect much from the first year of my
experiment. I calculated justly on its being irksome
and common-place. Still, I was amused and interested.
I could hear her light step on the stair, alway at
the same early hour of the evening, and it was a pleasure
to me to say `Come in,' to her timid rap, and set
her a chair by my own, that I might look over her book,
or talk in a low tone to her. I then asked her about
her lessons, and found out what had most attracted her
notice, and I could always find some interesting fact
connected with it, or strike off into some pleasant association,
till she acquired a habit of selection in her
reading, and looked at me earnestly to know what I
would say upon it. You would have smiled to see her
leaning forward, with her soft blue eye fixed on me,
and her lips half parted with attention, waiting for my
ideas upon some bare fact in geography or history;
and it would have convinced you that the natural, unstimulated
mind, takes pleasure in the simplest addition
to its knowledge.
“All this time I kept out of her way every thing
that would have a tendency to destroy a taste for mere
knowledge, and had the pleasure to see that she passed
with keen relish from her text books to my observations,
which were as dry as they, though recommended
by kindness of tone and an interested manner. She
acquired gradually, by this process, a habit of reasoning
upon everything which admitted it, which was afterwards
of great use in fixing and retaining the leading
features of her attainments.
“I proceeded in this way till she was fifteen. Her
mind had now become inured to regular habits of inquiry,
and she began to ask difficult questions and
wonder at common things. Her thoughts assumed a
graver complexion, and she asked for books upon subjects
of which she felt the want of information. She
was ready to receive and appreciate truth and instruction,
and here was to begin my pleasure.
“She came up one evening with an air of embarrassment
approaching to distress. She took her usual
seat, and told me that she had been thinking all day
that it was useless to study any more. There were so
many mysterious things—so much, even that she could
see, which she could not account for, and, with all her
efforts, she got on so slowly, that she was discouraged.
It was better, she said, to be happy in ignorance, than
to be constantly tormented with the sight of knowledge
to which she could not attain, and which she only knew
enough to value. Poor child! she did not know that
she was making the same complaint with Newton, and
Locke, and Bacon, and that the wisest of men were
only `gatherers of pebbles on the shore of an illimitable
sea! I began to talk to her of the mind. I spoke
of its grandeur, and its capacities, and its destiny. I
told her instances of high attainment and wonderful
discovery—sketched the sublime philosophies of the
soul—the possibility that this life was but a link in a
chain of existences, and the glorious power, if it were
true, of entering upon another world, with a loftier capacity
than your fellow-beings for the comprehension
of its mysteries. I then touched upon the duty of self-cultivation—the
pride of a high consciousness of improved
time, and the delicious feelings of self-respect
and true appreciation.
“She listened to me in silence, and wept. It was
one of those periods which occur to all delicate minds,
of distrust and fear; and when it passed by, and her
with a woman's beautiful privilege. I had no more
trouble to urge her on. She began the next day with
the philosophy of the mind, and I was never happier
than while following her from step to step in this delightful
study.
“I have always thought that the most triumphant
intellectual feeling we ever experience, is felt upon the
first opening of philosophy. It is like the interpretation
of a dream of a lifetime. Every topic seems to
you like a phantom of your own mind, from which a
mist has suddenly melted. Every feature has a kind
of half-familiarity, and you remember musing upon it for
hours, till you gave it up with an impatient dissatisfaction.
Without a definite shape, this or that very idea
has floated in your mind continually. It was a phenomenon
without a name—a something which you could
not describe to your friend, and which, by and by, you
came to believe was peculiar to yourself, and would
never be brought out or unravelled. You read on, and
the blood rushes to your face in a tumultuous consciousness—you
have had feelings in peculiar situations
which you could not define, and here are their
very features—and you know, now, that it was jealousy,
or ambition, or love. There have been moments when
your faculties seemed blinded or reversed. You could
not express yourself at all when you felt you should be
eloquent. You could not fix your mind upon the subject,
of which, before, you had been passionately fond.
You felt an aversion for your very partialities, or a
strange warming in your heart toward people or pursuits
that you had disliked; and when the beauty of the
natural world has burst upon you, as it sometimes will,
with an exceeding glory, you have turned away from it
with a deadly sickness of heart, and a wish that you
might die.
“These are mysteries which are not all soluble,
machinery of thought to know its tendencies, and like
the listener to mysterious music, it is enough to have
seen the instrument, without knowing the cunning
craft of the player.
“I remembered my school-day feelings, and lived
them over again with my beautiful pupil. I entered
with as much enthusiasm as she, into the strength and
sublimity which I had wondered at before; and I believe
that, even as she sat reading by herself, my blood
thrilled, and my pulses quickened, as vividly as her
own, when I saw, by the deepening color of her cheek,
or the marked passages of my book, that she had found
a noble thought or a daring hypothesis.
“She proceeded with her course of philosophy rapidly
and eagerly. Her mind was well prepared for
its relish. She said she felt as if a new sense had been
given her—an inner eye which she could turn in upon
herself, and by which she could, as it were, stand aside
while the process of thought went on. She began to
respect and to rely upon her own mind, and the elevation
of countenance and manner, which so certainly
and so beautifully accompanies inward refinement, stole
over her daily. I began to feel respectful in her presence,
and when, with the peculiar elegance of a woman's
mind, she discovered a delicate shade of meaning
which I had not seen, or traced an association
which could spring only from an unsullied heart, I experienced
a sensation like the consciousness of an unseen
presence—elevating, without alarming me.
“It was probably, well, that with all this change in
her mind and manner, her person still retained its childish
grace and flexibility. She had not grown tall, and
she wore her hair yet as she used to do—falling with
a luxuriant fulness upon her shoulders. Hence she
was still a child, when, had she been taller or more
womanly, the demands upon her attention, and the attractiveness
engrossing interest which is necessary to successful
study.
“I have often wished I was a painter; but never so
much as when looking on this beautful being as she sat
absorbed in her studies, or turned to gaze up a moment
to my face, with that delicious expression of inquiry
and affection. Every one knows the elevation given
to the countenance of a man by contemplative habits.
Perhaps the natural delicacy of feminine features has
combined with its rarity, to make this expression less
observable in woman; but, to one familiar with the
study of the human face, there is, in the look of a truly
intellectual women, a keen subtlety of refinement, a
separation from every thing gross and material, which
comes up to our highest dream of the angelic. For
myself, I care not to analyze it. I leave it to philosophy
to find out its secret. It is enough for me that I
can see and feel it in every pulse of my being. It is
not a peculiar susceptibility. Every man who approaches
such a woman feels it. He may not define
it; he may be totally unconscious what it is that awes
him; but he feels as if a mysterious and invisible veil
were about her, and every dark thought is quenched
suddenly in his heart, as if he had come into the atmosphere
of a spirit. I would have every woman
know this. I would tell every mother who prays
nightly for the peculiar watchfulness of good spirits
over the purity of her child, that she may weave round
her a defence stronger than steel—that she may place
in her heart a living amulet whose virtue is like a circle
of fire to pollution. I am not `stringing pearls.' I
have seen, and I know, that an empty mind is not a
strong citadel; and in the melancholy chronicle of female
ruin, the instances are rare of victims distinguished
for mental cultivation. I would my pen were the
`point of a diamond,' and I were writing on living
are its grace and honor—and when I think how the
father and mother that loved her, and the brother that
made her his pride, and the sister in whose bosom she
slept, are all crushed, utterly, by a daughter's degradation,
I feel, that if every word were a burning coal, my
language could not be extravagant!
“My pupil had, as yet, read no poetry. I was uncertain
how to enter upon it. Her taste for the beautiful
in prose had become so decided, that I feared for
the first impression of my poetical world. I wished it
to burst upon her brilliantly—like the entrance to an
inner and more magnificent temple of knowledge. I
hoped to dazzle her with an high and unimagined
beauty, which should exceed far the massive but plain
splendors of philosophy. We had often conversed on
the probability of a previous existence, and, one evening
I opened Wordsworth, and read his sublime `Ode
upon Intimations of Immortality.' She did not interrupt
me, but I looked up at the conclusion, and she
was in tears. I made no remark, but took Byron, and
read some of the finest passages in Childe Harold, and
Manfred, and Cain—and, from that time, poetry has
been her world!
“It would not have have been so earlier. It needs
the simple and strong nutriment of truth to fit us to relish
and feel poetry. The mind must have strength
and cultivated taste, and then it is like a language from
heaven. We are astonished at its power and magnificence.
We have been familiar with knowledge as
with a person of plain garment and a homely presence
—and he comes to us in poetry, with the state of a
king, glorious in purple and gold. We have known
him as an unassuming friend who talked with us by
the wayside, and kept us company on our familiar
paths—and we see him coming with a stately step, and
a glittering diadem on his brow; and we wonder that
and his bearing were fitter for a king!
“Poetry entered to the very soul of Caroline Grey.
It was touching an unreached string, and she felt as if
the whole compass of her heart were given out. I
used to read to her for hours, and it was beautiful to
see her eye kindle, and her cheek burn with excitement.
The sublimed mysticism and spirituality of
Wordsworth were her delight, and she feasted upon
the deep philosophy and half-hidden tenderness of
Coleridge.
“I had observed, with some satisfaction, that, in the
rapid development of her mental powers, she had not
found time to study nature: She knew little of the
character of the material creation, and I now commenced
walking constantly abroad with her at sunset,
and at all the delicious seasons of moonlight and starlight
and dawn. It came in well with her poetry. I
cannot describe the effect. She became, like all who
are, for the first time, made sensible of the glories
around them, a worshipper of the external world.
There is a time when nature first loses its familiarity,
and seems suddenly to have become beautiful.
This is true, even of those who have been taught early
habits of observation. The mind of a child is too feeble
to comprehend, and does not soon learn, the scale of
sublimity and beauty. He would not be surprised if
the sun were brighter, or if the stars were sown thicker
in the sky. He sees that the flower is beautiful, and he
feels admiration at the rainbow; but he would not wonder
if the dyes of the flower were deeper, or if the sky
were laced to the four corners with the colors of a
prism. He grows up with these splendid phenomena
at work about him, till they have become common, and,
in their most wonderful forms, cease to attract his attention.
Then his senses are, suddenly, as by an invisible
influence, unsealed, and, like the proselyte of
temple, and hears exquisite music, and is dazzled
by surpassing glory. He never recovers his indifference.
The perpetual changes of nature keep alive his
enthusiasm, and if his taste is not dulled by subsequent
debasement, the pleasure he receives from it flows on
like a stream—wearing deeper and calmer.
“Caroline became now my constant companion.
The changes of the natural world have always been
my chief source of happiness, and I was curious to
know whether my different sensations, under different
circumstances, were peculiar to myself. I left her,
therefore, to lead the conversation, without any expression
of my feelings, and, to my surprise and delight,
she invariably struck their tone, and pursued the same
vein of reflection. It convinced me of what I had long
thought might be true—that there was, in the varieties
of natural beauty, a hidden meaning and a delightful
purpose of good, and, if I am not deceived, it is a new
and beautiful evidence of the proportion and extent of
God's benevolent wisdom. Thus, you may remember
the peculiar effect of the early dawn—the deep, unruffled
serenity, and the perfect collectedness of your
senses. You may remember the remarkable purity
that pervades the stealing in of color, and the vanishing
of the cold shadows of grey—the heavenly quiet
that seems infused, like a visible spirit, into the pearly
depths of the East, as the light violet tints become
deeper in the upper sky, and the morning mist rises up
like a veil of silvery film, and softens away its intensity;
and then you will remember how the very beatings of
your heart grew quiet, and you felt an irresistible impulse
to pray! There was no irregular delight, no indefinite
sensation, no ecstasy. It was deep, unbroken
repose, and your pulses were free from the fever of
life, and your reason was lying awake in its chamber.
“There is a hush also at noon; but it is not like the
the world, and you turn aside, weary and distracted,
for rest. There is a far depth in the intense blue of
the sky which takes in the spirit, and you are content
to lie down and sleep in the cool shadow, and forget
even your existence. How different from the cool
wakefulness of the morning, and yet how fitted for the
necessity of the hour!
“The day wears on and comes to the sun-setting.
The strong light passes off from the hills, and the
leaves are mingled in golden masses, and the tips of the
long grass, and the blades of maize, and the luxuriant
grain, are all sleeping in a rich glow, as if the daylight
had melted into gold and descended upon every living
thing like dew. The sun goes down, and there is a
tissue of indescribable glory floating upon the clouds,
and the almost imperceptible blending of the sunset
color with the blue sky, is far up towards the zenith.
Presently the pomp of the early sunset passes away;
and the clouds are all clad in purple, with edges of metallic
lustre; and very far in the West, as if they were
sailing away into another world, are seen spots of intense
brightness, and the tall trees on the hilly edge of
the horizon seem piercing the sky, on fire with its consuming
heat. There is a tumultuous joy in the contemplation
of this hour which is peculiar to itself. You
feel as if you should have had wings; for there is a
strange stirring in your heart to follow on—and your
imagination bursts away into that beautiful world, and
revels among the unsubstantial clouds till they become
cold. It is a triumphant and extravagant hour. Its
joyousness is an intoxication, and its pleasure dies with
the day.
“The night, starry and beautiful, comes on. The
sky has a blue, intense almost to blackness, and the
stars are set in it like gems. They are of different
glory, and there are some that burn, and some that
faint. You know their nature, and their motion; and
there is something awful in so many worlds moving on
through the firmament so silently and in order. You
feel an indescribable awe stealing upon you, and your
imagination trembles as it goes up among them. You
gaze on, and on, and the superstitions of olden time,
and the wild visions of astrology steal over your memory,
till, by and by, you hear the music which they
`give out as they go,' and drink in the mysteries of their
hidden meaning, and believe that your destiny is woven
by their burning spheres. There comes on you a delirious
joy, and a kind of terrible fellowship with their
sublime nature, and you feel as if you could go up to a
starry place and course the heavens in company.
There is a spirituality in this hour, a separation from
material things, which is of a fine order of happiness.
The purity of the morning, and the noontide quietness,
and the rapture of the glorious sunset, are all human
and comprehensible feelings; but this has the mystery
and the lofty energy of a higher world, and you return
to your human nature with a refreshed spirit and an
elevated purpose—See now the wisdom of God!—the
collected intellect for the morning prayer and our daily
duty—the delicious repose for our noontide weariness,
and the rapt fervor to purify us by night from our
worldliness, and keep wakeful the eye of immortality!
They are all suited to our need; and it is pleasant to
think, when we go out at this or that season, that its
peculiar beauty is fitted to our peculiar wants, and that
it is not a chance harmony of our hearts with nature.
“The world had become to Caroline a new place.
No change in the season was indifferent to her—nothing
was common or familiar. She found beauty in
things you would pass by, and a lesson for her mind or
her heart in the minutest workmanship of nature. Her
character assumed a cheerful dignity, and an elevation
equable and calm, because her feelings were never
reached by ordinary irritations, and, if there were no
other benefit in cultivation, this were almost argument
enough to induce it.
“It is now five years since I commenced my tutorship.
I have given you the history of two of them. In
the remaining three there has been much that has interested
my mind—probably little that would interest
yours. We have read together, and, as far as possible,
studied together. She has walked with me, and shared
all my leisure and known every thought. She is now a
woman of eighteen. Her childish graces are matured,
and her blue eye would send a thrill through you. You
might object to her want of fashionable tournure, and
find fault with her unfashionable impulses. I do not.
She is a high-minded, noble, impassioned being—with
an enthusiasm that is not without reason, and a common
sense that is not a regard to self-interest. Her
motion was not learnt at schools, but it is unembarrassed
and free; and her tone has not been educated to a
refined whisper, but it expresses the meaning of her
heart, as if its very pulse had become articulate. The
many might not admire her—I know she would be
idolized by the few.
“Our intercourse is as intimate still; and it could
not change without being less so—for we are constantly
together. There is—to be sure—lately—a
slight degree of embarrassment—and—somehow—we
read more poetry than we used to do—but it is nothing
at all—nothing.”
My friend was married to his pupil a few months
after writing the foregoing. He has written to me
since, and I will show you the letter if you will call, any
time. It will not do to print it, because there are some
domestic details not proper for the general eye; but,
interesting to the last degree. He lives the same quiet,
retired life, that he did before he was married. His
room is arranged with the same taste, and with reference
to the same habits as before. The light comes in
as timidly through the half-closed window, and his pictures
look as shadowy and dim, and the rustle of the
turned leaf adds as mysteriously to the silence. He is
the fondest of husbands, but his affection does not encroach
on the habits of his mind. Now and then he
looks up from his book, and, resting his head upon his
hand, lets his eye wander over the pale cheek and
drooping lid of the beautiful being who sits reading beside
him; but he soon returns to his half-forgotten
page, and the smile of affection which had stolen over
his features fades gradually away into the habitual
soberness of thought. There sits his wife, hour after
hour, in the same chair which she occupied when she
first came, a curious loiterer to his room; and though
she does not study so much, because other cares
have a claim upon her now, she still keeps pace with
him in the pleasanter branches of knowledge, and
they talk as often and as earnestly as before on the
thousand topics of a scholar's contemplation. Her
cares may and will multiply; but she understands the
economy of time, and I have no doubt that, with every
attention to her daily duties, she will find ample time for
her mind, and be always as well fitted as now for the
companionship of an intellectual being.
I have, like all bachelors, speculated a great deal upon
matrimony. I have seen young and beautiful women,
the pride of gay circles, married—as the world
said—well! Some have moved into costly houses, and
their friends have all come and looked at their fine
furniture and their splendid arrangements for happiness,
and they have gone away and committed them to
their sunny hopes, cheerfully, and without fear. It is
times, I am carried away by similar feelings. I love to
get unobserved into a corner, and watch the bride in
her white attire, and with her smiling face and her soft
eyes moving before me in their pride of life, weave a
waking dream of her future happiness, and persuade
myself that it will be true. I think how they will sit
upon that luxurious sofa as the twilight falls, and build
gay hopes, and murmur in low tones the now unforbidden
tenderness, and how thrillingly the allowed kiss
and the beautiful endearments of wedded life, will make
even their parting joyous, and how gladly they will
come back from the crowd and the empty mirth of the
gay, to each other's quiet company. I picture to myself
that young creature, who blushes even now, at his
hesitating caress, listening eagerly for his footsteps as
the night steals on, and wishing that he would come;
and when he enters at last, and, with an affection as
undying as his pulse, folds her to his bosom, I can feel
the very tide that goes flowing through his heart, and
gaze with him on her graceful form as she moves about
him for the kind offices of affection, soothing all his unquiet
cares, and making him forget even himself, in
her young and unshadowed beauty.
I go forward for years, and see her luxuriant hair
put soberly away from her brow, and her girlish graces
ripenened into dignity, and her bright loveliness
chastened with the gentle meekness of maternal affection.
Her husband looks on her with a proud eye,
and shows the same fervent love and delicate attention
which first won her, and fair children are growing up
about them, and they go on, full of honor and untroubled
years, and are remembered when they die!
I say I love to dream thus when I go to give the
young bride joy. It is the natural tendency of feelings
touched by lovliness that fears nothing for itself, and,
if I ever yield to darker feelings, it is because the light
on such changes, and I will not, minutely, now. I allude
to it only because I trust that my simple page will
be read by some of the young and beautiful beings who
move daily across my path, and I would whisper
them as they glide by, joyously and confidingly, the secret
of an unclouded future.
The picture I have drawn above is not peculiar. It
is colored like the fancies of the bride; and many—oh
many an hour will she sit, with her rich jewels lying
loose in her fingers, and dream such dreams as these.
She believes them, too—and she goes on, for a while
undeceived. The evening is not too long while they
talk of their plans for happiness, and the quiet meal
still pleasant with the delightful novelty of mutual reliance
and attention. There comes soon, however, a
time when personal topics become bare and wearisome
and slight attentions will not alone keep up the social
excitement. There are long intervals of silence, and
detected symptoms of weariness, and the husband, first
in his impatient manhood, breaks in upon the hours
they were to spend together. I cannot follow it circumstantially.
There come long hours of unhappy
listlessness, and terrible misgivings of each other's worth
and affection, till, by-and-by, they can conceal their
uneasiness no longer, and go out separately to seek relief,
and lean upon a hollow world for the support which
one who was their “lover and friend” could not give
them!
Heed this, ye who are winning by your innocent
beauty, the affections of high-minded and thinking
beings! Remember that he will give up the brothers
of his heart with whom he has had, ever, a fellowship
of mind—the society of his cotemporary runners in
the race of fame, who have held with him a stern companionship—and
frequently, in his passionate love, he
will break away from the arena of his burning ambition
will bewilder him at first, but it will not long; and then,
think you that an idle blandishment will chain the mind
that has been used, for years, to an equal communion?
Think you he will give up, for a weak dalliance, the
animating themes of men, and the search into the fine
mysteries of knowledge!—Oh! no, lady!—believe
me—no! Trust not your influence to such light fetters!
Credit not the old-fashioned absurdity that woman's
is a secondary lot—ministering to the necessities
of her lord and master! It is a higher destiny I would
award you. If your immortality is as complete, and
your gift of mind as capable as ours of increase and
elevation, I would put no wisdom of mine against God's
evident allotment. I would charge you to water the
undying bud, and give it healthy culture, and open its
beauty to the sun—and then you may hope, that when
your life is bound up with another, you will go on
equally, and in a fellowship that shall pervade every
earthly interest!
| Inklings of adventure | |