 | Dream life |  |
II.
With my Reader.
HAVING silenced my Aunt Tabithy, I shall be
generous enough in my triumph, to offer an
explanatory chat to my reader.
This is a history of Dreams; and there will be those
who will sneer at such a history, as the work of a
dreamer. So indeed it is; and you, my courteous
reader, are a dreamer too!
You would perhaps like to find your speculations
about wealth, marriage or influence, called by some
better name than Dreams. You would like to see the
history of them—if written at all—baptized at the font
of your own vanity, with some such title as—life's
cares, or life's work. If there had been a philosophic
naming to my observations, you might have reckoned
palpable fiction.
But is it so? I care not how matter of fact you
may be, you have in your own life, at some time,
proved the very truth of what I have set down:
and the chances are, that even now, gray as you may
be, and economic as you may be, and devotional as you
pretend to be, you light up your Sabbath reflections
with just such dreams of wealth, of per centages, or of
family, as you-will find scattered over these pages.
I am not to be put aside with any talk about stocks,
and duties, and respectability: all these though very
eminent matters, are but so many types in the volume
of your thought; and your eager resolves about them,
are but so many ambitious waves, breaking up from
that great sea of dreamy speculation, that has spread
over your soul, from its first start into the realm of
Consciousness.
No man's brain is so dull, and no man's eye so
blind, that they cannot catch food for dreams. Each
little episode of life is full, had we but the perception
of its fullness. There is no such thing as blank, in the
world of thought. Every action and emotion have
their development growing and gaining on the soul.
Every affection has its tears and smiles. Nay, the very
material world is full of meaning, and by suggesting
will be.
The sparrow that is twittering on the edge of my
balcony, is calling up to me this moment, a world of
memories that reach over half my life time, and a
world of hope that stretches farther than any flight of
sparrows. The rose-tree which shades his mottled coat
is full of buds and blossoms; and each bud and
blossom is a token of promise, that has issues covering
life, and reaching beyond death. The quiet sunshine
beyond the flower and beyond the sparrow,—glistening
upon the leaves, and playing in delicious waves of
warmth over the reeking earth, is lighting both heart
and hope, and quickening into activity a thousand
thoughts of what has been, and of what will be. The
meadow stretching away under its golden flood—
waving with grain, and with the feathery blossoms of
the grass, and golden butter cups, and white, nodding
daisies, comes to my eye like the lapse of fading
childhood,—studded here and there with the bright
blossoms of joy, crimsoned all over with the flush of
health, and enamelled with memories that perfume the
soul. The blue hills beyond, with deep blue shadows
gathered in their bosom, lie before me like mountains
of years, over which I shall climb through shadows to
the slope of Age, and go down to the deeper shadows
of Death.
Nor are dreams without their variety, whatever your
character may be. I care not how much, in the pride
of your practical judgment, or in your learned fancies,
you may sneer at any dream of love, and reckon it all a
poet's fiction: there are times when such dreams come
over you like a summer cloud, and almost stifle you
with their warmth.
Seek as you will for increase of lands or moneys, and
there are moments when a spark of some giant mind
will flash over your cravings, and wake your soul
suddenly to a quick, and yearning sense of that
influence which is begotten of intellect; and you task
your dreams—as I have copied them here—to build
before you the pleasures of such a renown.
I care not how worldly you may be: there are times
when all distinctions seem like dust, and when at the
graves of the great, you dream of a coming country,
where your proudest hopes shall be dimmed forever.
Married or unmarried, young or old, poet or worker,
you are still a dreamer, and will one time know, and
feel, that your life is but a dream. Yet you call this
fiction: you stave off the thoughts in print which come
over you in reverie. You will not admit to the eye
what is true to the heart. Poor weakling, and
worldling,—you are not strong enough to face yourself!
You will read perhaps with smiles: you will possibly
against the slightest quiver, of some bit of pathos, and
say that it is—well done. Yet why is it well done?—
only because it is stolen from your very life and heart.
It is good, because it is so common:—ingenious,
because it is so honest:—well-conceived, because it is
not conceived at all.
There are thousands of mole-eyed people, who count
all passion in print—a lie:—people who will grow into
a rage at trifles, and weep in the dark, and love in
secret, and hope without mention, and cover it all
under the cloak of what they call—propriety. I can
see before me now some gray-haired old gentleman,
very money-getting, very correct, very cleanly, who
reads the morning paper with unction, and his Bible
with determination: who listens to dull sermons with
patience, and who prays with quiet self-applause,—and
yet there are moments belonging to his life, when his
curdled affections yearn for something that they have
not, when his avarice oversteps all the commandments,—when
his pride builds castles full of splendor;
and yet put this before his eye, and he reads with the
most careless air in the world, and condemns as arrant
fiction, what cannot be proved to the elders.
We do not like to see our emotions unriddled: it is
not agreeable to the proud man to find his weaknesses
exposed: it is shocking to the disappointed lover to see
maiden to witness the exposure of her loves. We do
not like our fancies painted: we do not contrive them
for rehearsal: our dreams are private, and when they
are made public, we disown them.
I sometimes think that I must be a very honest
fellow, for writing down those fancies which every one
else seems afraid to whisper. I shall at least, come in
for my share of the odium in entertaining such fancies:
indeed I shall expect the charge of entertaining them
exclusively; and shall scarce expect to find a single
fellow-confessor, unless it be some pure, and innocent
thoughted girl, who will say peccavi, to—here and
there—a single rainbow fancy.
Well, I can bear it; but in bearing it, I shall be
consoled with the reflection that I have a great
company of fellow-sufferers, who lack only the honesty
to tell me of their sympathy. It will even relieve in
no small degree my burden, to watch the effort they
will take to conceal, what I have so boldly divulged.
Nature is very much the same thing in one man, that
it is in another: and as I have already said, Feeling
has a higher truth in it, than circumstance. Let it
only be touched fairly and honestly, and the heart of
humanity answers; but if it be touched foully or
one-sidedly, you may find here and there a lame-souled
throb in it.
Of one thing I am sure:—if my pictures are fair,
worthy, and hearty, you must see it in the reading:
but if they are forced and hard, no amount of kindness
can make you feel their truth as I want them felt.
I make no self-praise out of this: if feeling has been
honestly set down, it is only in virtue of a native
impulse, over which I have altogether too little control;
but if it is set down badly, I have wronged Nature,
and, (as Nature is kind) I have wronged myself.
A great many inquisitive people will, I do not doubt,
be asking after all this prelude, if my pictures are true
pictures? The question,—the courteous reader will
allow me to say,—is an impertinent one. It is but a
shabby truth that wants an author's affidavit to make it
trust-worthy. I shall not help my story by any such
poor support. If there are not enough elements of
truth, honesty and nature in my pictures, to make them
believed, they shall have no oath of mine to bolster
them up.
I have been a sufferer in this way before now; and a
little book that I had the whim to publish a year since,
has been set down by many as an arrant piece of
imposture. Claiming sympathy as a Bachelor, I have
been recklessly set down as a cold, undeserving man of
sneered at, as the sheerest gammon.
But among this crowd of cold-blooded critics, it was
pleasant to hear of one or two pursy old fellows who
railed at me, for winning the affections of a sweet Italian
girl, and then leaving her to pine in discontent! Yet
in the face of this, an old companion of mine in Rome,
with whom I accidentally met the other day,—wondered
how on earth I could have made so tempting a story
out of the matronly and black-haired spinster, with
whom I happened to be quartered in the Eternal City!
I shall leave my critics to settle such differences
between themselves; and consider it far better to bear
with slanders from both sides of the house, than to
bewray the pretty tenderness of the pursy old gentlemen,
or to cast a doubt upon the practical testimony of
my quondam companion. Both give me high and
judicious compliment—all the more grateful because
only half deserved. For I never yet was conscious—
alas, that the confession should be forced from me!—
of winning the heart of any maiden whether native, or
Italian; and as for such delicacy of imagination as to
work up a lovely damsel out of the withered remnant
that forty odd years of Italian life can spare, I can
assure my middle-aged friends, (and it may serve as a
caveat)—I can lay no claim to it whatever.
The trouble has been, that those who have believed
have sympathized with me in trifles, have deserted me
when affairs grew earnest. I have had sympathy
enough with my married griefs; but when it came to
the perplexing torments of my single life—not a
weeper could I find!
I would suggest to those who intend to believe only
half of my present book, that they exercise a little
discretion in their choice. I am not fastidious in the
matter; and only ask them to believe what counts
most toward the goodness of humanity, and to discredit
—if they will persist in it—only what tells badly for
our common nature. The man or the woman who
believes well, is apt to work well; and Faith is as much
the key to happiness here, as it is the key to happiness
hereafter.
I have only one thing more to say, before I get upon
my story. A great many sharp-eyed people, who have
a horror of light reading—by which they mean whatever
does not make mention of stocks, cottons, or moral
homilies,—will find much fault with my book for its
ephemeral character.
I am sorry that I cannot gratify such: homilies are
not at all in my habit; and it does seem to me an
exhausting way of disposing of a good moral, to
hammer it down to a single point, so that there shall be
only one chance of driving it home. For my own
and rarify it, so that it shall spread out into every
crevice of a story, and give a color and a taste, as it
were, to the whole mass.
I know there are very good people, who if they
cannot lay their finger on so much doctrine set down in
old fashioned phrase, will never get an inkling of it at
all. With such people, goodness is a thing of understanding,
more than of feeling; and all their morality
has its action in the brain.
God forbid that I should sneer at this terrible
infirmity, which Providence has seen fit to inflict: God
forbid too, that I should not be grateful to the same
kind Providence, for bestowing upon others among his
creatures a more genial apprehension of true goodness,
and a hearty sympathy with every shade of human
kindness!
But in all this, I am not making out a case for my
own correct teaching, or insinuating the propriety of
my tone. I shall leave the book in this regard, to
speak for itself; and whoever feels himself growing
worse for the reading, I advise to lay it down. It will
be very harmless on the shelf, however it may be in the
hand.
I shall lay no claim to the title of moralist, teacher,
or romancist:—my thoughts start pleasant pictures to
my mind; and in a garrulous humor, I put my finger
some of them,—giving him leave to quit me whenever
he chooses.
Or, if a lady is my listener, let her fancy me only an
honest, simple-hearted fellow, whose familiarities are so
innocent that she can pardon them;—taking her hand
in his, and talking on;—sometimes looking in her eyes,
and then looking into the sunshine for relief;—sometimes
prosy with narrative, and then sharpening up my
matter with a few touches of honest pathos;—let her
imagine this, I say, and we may become the most
excellent friends in the world.
| Dream life | |