 | Dream life |  |
Summer;
Or,
The Dreams of Youth.
Summer.
I FEEL a great deal of pity for those honest, but
misguided people, who call their little, spruce
suburban towns, or the shaded streets of their inland
cities,—the country: and I have still more pity
for those who reckon a season at the summer resorts—
country enjoyment. Nay, my feeling is more violent
than pity; and I count it nothing less than blasphemy,
so to take the name of the country in vain.
I thank Heaven every summer's day of my life,
that my lot was humbly cast, within the hearing of
romping brooks, and beneath the shadow of oaks.
And from all the tramp, and bustle of the world, into
which fortune has led me in these latter years of my
life, I delight to steal away for days, and for weeks
woods; and to grow young again, lying upon the
brook side, and counting the white clouds that sail
along the sky, softly and tranquilly—even as holy
memories go stealing over the vault of life.
I am deeply thankful that I could never find it
in my heart, so to pervert truth, as to call the
smart villages with the tricksy shadow of their maple
avenues—the Country.
I love these in their way; and can recall pleasant
passages of thought, as I have idled through the
Sabbath-looking towns, or lounged at the inn-door
of some quiet New England village. But I love far
better to leave them behind me; and to dash boldly
out to where some out-lying farm-house sits—like a
witness—under the shelter of wooded hills, or nestles in
the lap of a noiseless valley.
In the town, small as it may be, and darkened as
it may be with the shadows of trees, you cannot
forget—men. Their voice, and strife, and ambition
come to your eye in the painted paling, in the swinging
sign-board of the tavern, and—worst of all—in the
trim-printed “Attorney at Law.” Even the little
milliner's shop, with its meagre show of leghorns, and
its string across the window, all hung with tabs and
with cloth roses, is a sad epitome of the great and conventional
life of a city neighborhood.
I like to be rid of them all, as I am rid of them this
mid-summer's day. I like to steep my soul in a sea
of quiet, with nothing floating past me as I lie moored
to my thought, but the perfume of flowers, and soaring
birds, and shadows of clouds.
Two days since, I was sweltering in the heat of the
City, jostled by the thousand eager workers, and panting
under the shadow of the walls. But I have stolen
away; and for two hours of healthful regrowth into
the darling Past, I have been lying this blessed summer's
morning, upon the grassy bank of a stream that
babbled me to sleep in boyhood. —Dear, old
stream, unchanging, unfaltering,—with no harsher
notes now than then,—never growing old,—smiling in
your silver rustle, and calming yourself in the broad,
placid pools,—I love you, as I love a friend!
But now, that the sun has grown scalding hot,
and the waves of heat have come rocking under the
shadow of the meadow oaks, I have sought shelter in a
chamber of the old farm-house. The window-blinds
are closed; but some of them are sadly shattered, and
I have intertwined in them a few branches of the
late-blossoming, white Azalia, so that every puff of the
summer air comes to me cooled with fragrance. A
dimple or two of the sunlight still steals through my
flowery screen, and dances (as the breeze moves the
branches) upon the oaken floor of the farm-house.
Through one little gap indeed, I can see the broad
stretch of meadow, and the workmen in the field
bending and swaying to their scythes. I can see too
the glistening of the steel, as they wipe their blades;
and can just catch floating on the air, the measured,
tinkling thwack of the rifle stroke.
Here and there a lark, scared from his feeding place
in the grass, soars up, bubbling forth his melody in
globules of silvery sound, and settles upon some tall
tree, and waves his wings, and sinks to the swaying
twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the meadow
fence, and another trilling his answering whistle from
the hills. Nearer by, a tyrant king-bird is poised on
the topmost branch of a veteran pear-tree; and now
and then dashes down assassin-like, upon some home-bound,
honey-laden bee, and then, with a smack of his
bill, resumes his predatory watch.
A chicken or two lie in the sun, with a wing and
a leg stretched out,—lazily picking at the gravel, or
relieving their ennui from time to time, with a spasmodic
rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen
stalks about the yard with a sedate step; and with
quiet self-assurance, she utters an occasional series of
hoarse, and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an
astonished brood at her heels, is eyeing curiously, and
with earnest variations of the head, a full-fed cat, that
porch.
As I sit thus, watching through the interstices of my
leafy screen the various images of country life, I hear
distant mutterings from beyond the hills.
The sun has thrown its shadow upon the pewter
dial, two hours beyond the meridian line. Great
cream-colored heads of thunder clouds are lifting above
the sharp, clear line of the western horizon: the light
breeze dies away, and the air becomes stifling, even
under the shadow of my withered boughs in the
chamber window. The white-capped clouds roll up
nearer and nearer to the sun; and the creamy masses
below grow dark in their seams. The mutterings
that came faintly before, now spread into wide volumes
of rolling sound, that echo again, and again, from the
eastward heights.
I hear in the deep intervals, the men shouting to
their teams in the meadows; and great companies
of startled swallows are dashing in all directions around
the gray roofs of the barn.
The clouds have now well nigh reached the sun,
which seems to shine the fiercer for his coming eclipse.
The whole West, as I look from the sources of the
brook, to its lazy drift under the swamps that lie to
the South, is hung with a curtain of darkness; and
Zenith, long chains of lightning flash through it;
and the growing thunder seems like the rumble of the
pulleys.
I thrust away my azalia boughs, and fling back the
shattered blinds as the sun and the clouds meet; and
my room darkens with the coming shadows. For an
instant, the edges of the thick creamy masses of cloud
are gilded by the shrouded sun, and show gorgeous
scollops of gold, that toss upon the hem of the storm.
But the blazonry fades as the clouds mount; and the
brightening lines of the lightning dart up from the
lower skirts, and heave the billowy masses into the
middle Heaven.
The workmen are urging their oxen fast across the
meadow; and the loiterers come straggling after, with
rakes upon their shoulders. The matronly hen has
retreated to the stable door; and the brood of turkeys
stand, dressing their feathers, under the open shed.
The air freshens, and blows now from the face of the
coming clouds. I see the great elms in the plain
swaying their tops, even before the storm breeze has
reached me; and a bit of ripened grain upon a swell
of the meadow, waves and tosses like a billowy sea.
Presently, I hear the rush of the wind; and the
cherry and pear trees rustle through all their leaves;
and my paper is whisked away by the intruding blast.
There is a quiet of a moment, in which the wind
even, seems weary and faint; and nothing finds
utterance save one hoarse tree-toad, doling out his
lugubrious notes.
Now comes a blinding flash from the clouds; and a
quick, sharp clang clatters through the heavens, and
bellows loud, and long among the hills. Then,—like
great grief, spending its pent agony in tears—come the
big drops of rain:—pattering on the lawn, and on the
leaves, and most musically of all, upon the roof above
me;—not now, with the light fall of the Spring
shower, but with strong steppings—like the first proud
tread of Youth!
I.
Cloister Life.
IT has very likely occurred to you, my reader, that I
am playing the wanton in these sketches;—and
am breaking through all the canons of the writers, in
making You my hero.
It is even so; for my work is a story of those vague
feelings, doubts, passions, which belong more or less to
every man of us all; and therefore it is, that I lay upon
your shoulders the burden of these dreams. If this or
that one, never belonged to your experience,—have
patience for a while. I feel sure that others are
coming, which will lie like a truth upon your heart;
and draw you unwittingly—perhaps tearfully even—
into the belief that You are indeed my hero.
The scene now changes to the cloister of a college;—
of the Cam or the Isis—huge, battered hulks, on whose
weather-stained decks, great captains of learning have
fought away their lives; nor yet the cavernous,
quadrangular courts, that sleep under the dingy walls
of the Sorbonne.
The youth-dreams of Clarence, begin under the roof
of one of those long, ungainly piles of brick and
mortar, which make the colleges of New England.
The floor of the room is rough, and divided by wide
seams. The study table does not stand firmly, without
a few spare pennies to prop it into solid footing. The
book-case of stained fir-wood, suspended against the
wall by cords, is meagrely stocked, with a couple of
Lexicons, a pair of grammars, a Euclid, a Xenophon,
a Homer, and a Livy. Beside these, are scattered
about here and there,—a thumb-worn copy of British
ballads, an odd volume of the Sketch Book, a clumsy
Shakspeare, and a pocket edition of the Bible.
With such appliances, added to the half score of
Professors and Tutors who preside over the awful
precincts, you are to work your way up to that proud
entry upon our American life, which begins with the
Baccalaureate degree. There is a tingling sensation
in walking first under the shadow of those walls,
uncouth as they are, and in feeling that you belong to
them;—that you are a member, as it were, of the body
to actual moneyed fines—varying from a shilling, to fifty
cents!
There is something exhilarating in the very consciousness
of your subject state; and in the necessity of
measuring your hours by the habit of such a learned
community. You think back upon your respect for the
lank figure of some old teacher of boy days, as a
childish weakness: even the little coteries of the home
fire-side, lose their importance, when compared with the
extraordinary sweep, and dignity of your present
position.
It is pleasant to measure yourself with men; and
there are those about you, who seem to your untaught
eye, to be men already. Your chum, a hard-faced
fellow of ten more years than you,—digging sturdily at
his tasks, seems by that very community of work, to
dignify your labor. You watch his cold, gray eye
bending down over some theorem of Euclid, with a
kind of proud companionship, in what so tasks his
manliness.
It is nothing for him to quit sleep at the first
tinkling of the alarm clock that hangs in your
chamber; or to brave the weather, in that cheerless run
to the morning prayers of winter. Yet, with what a
dreamy horror, you wake on mornings of snow, to that
tinkling alarum!—and glide in the cold and darkness,
under the sharp gusts that come sweeping between the
buildings;—and afterward, gathering yourself up in
your cloak, to watch in a sleepy, listless maze, the
flickering lamps that hang around the dreary chapel!
You follow half unconsciously some tutor's rhetorical
reading of a chapter of Isaiah; and then, as he closes
the Bible with a flourish, your eye, half-open, catches
the feeble figure of the old Domine, as he steps to the
desk, and with his frail hands stretched out upon the
cover of the big book, and his head leaning slightly to
one side, runs through in gentle and tremulous tones,
his wonted form of Invocation.
Your Division room is steaming with foul heat, and
there is a strong smell of burnt feathers, and oil. A
jaunty tutor with pug nose, and consequential air, steps
into the room — while you all rise to show him
deference,—and takes his place at the pulpit-like desk.
Then come the formal loosing of his camlet cloak clasp,—
the opening of his sweaty Xenophon to where the day's
parasangs begin,—the unsliding of his silver pencil
case,—the keen, sour look around the benches, and the
cool pinch of his thumb and forefinger, into the fearful
box of names!
How you listen for each as it is uttered,—running
down the page in advance,—rejoicing when some hard
passage comes to a stout man in the corner; and what
late at night,—when the last paragraph is reached,—
the ballot drawn, and—you, safe!
You speculate dreamily upon the faces around you.
You wonder what sort of schooling they may have had,
and what sort of homes. You think one man has got
an extraordinary name; and another, a still more
extraordinary nose. The glib, easy way of one student,
and his perfect sang-froid, completely charm you: you
set him down in your own mind as a kind of Crichton.
Another weazen-faced, pinched-up fellow in a scant
cloak, you think must have been sometime a school-master:
he is so very precise, and wears such an
indescribable look of the ferule. There is one big
student, with a huge beard, and a rollicking good-natured
eye, who you would quite like to see measure
strength with your old usher; and on careful comparison,
rather think the usher would get the worst of
it. Another appears as venerable as some fathers you
have seen; and it seems wonderfully odd, that a man
old enough to have children, should recite Xenophon by
morning candle-light!
The class in advance, you study curiously; and are
quite amazed at the precocity of certain youths
belonging to it, who are apparently about your own
age. The Juniors you look upon, with a quiet reverence
for their aplomb, and dignity of character; and
you too, shall be admitted freely to the precincts of the
Philosophical chamber, and to the very steep benches
of the Laboratory. This last, seems, from occasional
peeps through the blinds, a most mysterious building.
The chimneys, recesses, vats, and cisterns—to say
nothing of certain galvanic communications, which you
are told, traverse the whole building—in a way capable
of killing a rat, at an incredible remove from the bland
professor,—utterly fatigue your wonder! You humbly
trust—though you have doubts upon the point—that
you will have the capacity to grasp it all, when once
you shall have arrived at the dignity of a Junior.
As for the Seniors, your admiration for them is
entirely boundless. In one or two individual instances,
it is true, it has been broken down, by an unfortunate
squabble, with thick set fellows in the Chapel aisle.
A person who sits not far before you at prayers,
and whose name you seek out very early, bears a
strong resemblance to some portrait of Dr. Johnson;
you have very much the same kind of respect for him,
that you feel for the great lexicographer; and do not
for a moment doubt his capacity to compile a
Dictionary equal if not superior to Johnson's.
Another man with very bushy, black hair, and an
easy look of importance, carries a large cane; and is
represented to you, as an astonishing scholar, and
it. You think of him, as, presently—(say four or five
years hence)—astounding the United States Senate
with his eloquence. And when once you have heard
him in debate, with that ineffable gesture of his, you
absolutely languish in your admiration for him; and
you describe his speaking to your country friends, as
very little inferior, if any, to Mr. Burke's. Beside
this one, are some half dozen others, among whom the
question of superiority is, you understand, strongly
mooted. It puzzles you to think, what an avalanche
of talent will fall upon the country, at the graduation
of those Seniors!
You will find, however, that the country bears
such inundations of college talent, with a remarkable
degree of equanimity. It is quite wonderful how all
the Burkes, and Scotts, and Peels, among college
Seniors, do quietly disappear, as a man gets on in life.
As for any degree of fellowship with such giants,
it is an honor hardly to be thought of. But you have
a classmate—I will call him Dalton,—who is very
intimate with a dashing Senior; they room near each
other outside the college. You quite envy Dalton,
and you come to know him well. He says that you
are not a `green-one,'—that you have `cut your eye
teeth'; in return for which complimentary opinions, you
entertain a strong friendship for Dalton.
He is a `fast,' fellow, as the Senior calls him; and it
is a proud thing to happen at their rooms occasionally,
and to match yourself for an hour or two (with the
windows darkened) against a Senior at `old sledge.'
It is quite `the thing' as Dalton says, to meet a Senior
familiarly in the street. Sometimes you go, after
Dalton has taught you `the ropes,' to have a cosy sit-down
over oysters and champagne;—to which the
Senior lends himself, with the pleasantest condescension
in the world. You are not altogether used to hard
drinking; but this, you conceal,—as most spirited young
fellows do,—by drinking a great deal. You have a
dim recollection of certain circumstances—very unimportant,
yet very vividly impressed on your mind,—
which occurred on one of these occasions.
The oysters were exceedingly fine, and the champagne—exquisite.
You have a recollection of something
being said, toward the end of the first bottle, of
Xenophon, and of the Senior's saying in his playful
way,—`Oh, d—n Xenophon!'
You remember Dalton laughed at this; and you
laughed—for company. You remember that you
thought, and Dalton thought, and the Senior thought—
by a singular coincidence, that the second bottle of
champagne was better even than the first. You
have a dim remembrance of the Senior's saying very
loudly, “Clarence—(calling you by your family name)
confirmation of the remark.
You remember that Dalton broke out into a song,
and that for a time you joined in the chorus; you
think the Senior called you to order for repeating
the chorus, in the wrong place. You think the lights
burned with remarkable brilliancy; and you remember
that a remark of yours to that effect, met with very
much such a response from the Senior, as he had
before employed with reference to Xenophon.
You have a confused idea of calling Dalton—
Xenophon. You think the meeting broke up with
a chorus; and that somebody—you cannot tell who—
broke two or three glasses. You remember questioning
yourself very seriously, as to whether you were,
or were not, tipsy. You think you decided that you
were not, but—might be.
You have a confused recollection of leaning upon
some one, or something, going to your room; this
sense of a desire to lean, you think was very strong.
You remember being horribly afflicted with the idea
of having tried your night key at the tutor's door,
instead of your own; you remember further a hot
stove,—made certain indeed, by a large blister which
appeared on your hand, next day. You think of
throwing off your clothes, by one or two spasmodic
efforts,—leaning, in the intervals, against the bed-post.
There is a recollection of an uncommon dizziness
afterward—as if your body was very quiet, and your
head gyrating with strange velocity, and a kind of
centrifugal action, all about the room, and the college,
and indeed the whole town. You think that you felt
uncontrollable nausea after this, followed by positive
sickness;—which waked your chum, who thought you
very incoherent, and feared derangement.
A dismal state of lassitude follows, broken by the
college clock striking three, and by very rambling
reflections upon champagne, Xenophon, `Captain
Dick,' Madge, and the old deacon who clinched his
wig in the church.
The next morning—(ah, how vexatious that all our
follies are followed by a—`next morning!') you
wake with a parched mouth, and a torturing thirst;
the sun is shining broadly into your reeking chamber.
Prayers and recitations are long ago over; and you
see through the door, in the outer room, that hard
faced chum, with his Lexicon, and Livy, open before
him, working out with all the earnestness of his iron
purpose, the steady steps toward preferment, and
success.
You go with some story of sudden sickness to the
Tutor;—half fearful that the bloodshot, swollen eyes
will betray you. It is very mortifying too, to meet
Dalton appearing so gay, and lively after it all, while
him thoroughly the extraordinary capacity that he has.
Here and there creeps in, amid all the pride and
shame of the new life, a tender thought of the old
home; but its joys are joys no longer: its highest
aspirations even, have resolved themselves into fine
mist,—like rainbows, that the sun drinks with his
beams.
The affection for a mother, whose kindness you recal
with a suffused eye, is not gone, or blighted; but it is
woven up, as only a single adorning tissue, into the
growing pride of youth: it is cherished in the proud
soul, rather as a redeeming weakness, than as a vital
energy.
And the love for Nelly, though it bates no jot of
fervor, is woven into the scale of growing purposes,
rather as a color to adorn, than as a strand to
strengthen.
As for your other loves, those romantic ones, which
were kindled by bright eyes, and the stolen reading of
Miss Porter's novels, they linger on your mind like
perfumes; and they float down your memory, with the
figure, the step, the last words of those young girls, who
raised them,—like the types of some dimly-shadowed,
but deeper passion, which is some time to spur your
maturer purposes, and to quicken your manly resolves.
It would be hard to tell, for you do not as yet know,
to be the very one who will gain such hold upon your
riper affections, as she has held already over your
boyish caprice. It is a part of the pride,—I may say
rather an evidence of the pride, which youth feels in
leaving boyhood behind him, to talk laughingly, and
carelessly, of those attachments which made his young
years so balmy with dreams.
II.
First Ambition.
I BELIEVE that sooner or later, there come to
every man, dreams of ambition. They may be
covered with the sloth of habit, or with a pretence of
humility: they may come only in dim, shadowy visions,
that feed the eye, like the glories of an ocean sun-rise;
but, you may be sure that they will come: even before
one is aware, the bold, adventurous Goddess, whose
name is Ambition, and whose dower is Fame, will be
toying with the feeble heart. And she pushes her
ventures with a bold hand: she makes timidity strong,
and weakness valiant.
The way of a man's heart, will be foreshadowed by
what goodness lies in him,—coming from above, and
from around;—but a way foreshadowed, is not a way
from that quickening of resolve, which we call Ambition.
It is the spur that makes man struggle with Destinv:
it is Heaven's own incentive, to make Purpose great,
and Achievement greater.
It would be strange if you, in that cloister life of a
college, did not sometimes feel a dawning of new
resolves. They grapple you indeed, oftener than you
dare to speak of. Here, you dream first of that very
sweet, but very shadowy success, called reputation.
You think of the delight and astonishment, it would
give your mother and father, and most of all, little
Nelly, if you were winning such honors, as now escape
you. You measure your capacities by those about you,
and watch their habit of study; you gaze for a half
hour together, upon some successful man, who has won
his prizes; and wonder by what secret action he has
done it. And when, in time, you come to be a competitor
yourself, your anxiety is immense.
You spend hours upon hours at your theme.
You write and re-write; and when it is at length
complete, and out of your hands, you are harassed
by a thousand doubts. At times, as you recal your
hours of toil, you question if so much has been spent
upon any other; you feel almost certain of success.
You repeat to yourself, some passages of special
eloquence, at night. You fancy the admiration of
You have a slight fear that its superior
goodness may awaken the suspicion, that some one
out of the college—some superior man, may have
written it. But this fear dies away.
The eventful day is a great one in your calendar;
you hardly sleep the night previous. You tremble
as the Chapel bell is rung; you profess to be very
indifferent, as the reading, and the prayer close; you
even stoop to take up your hat,—as if you had entirely
overlooked the fact, that the old President was in the
desk, for the express purpose of declaring the successful
names. You listen dreamily to his tremulous,
yet fearfully distinct enunciation. Your head swims
strangely.
They all pass out with a harsh murmur, along
the aisles, and through the door ways. It would
be well if there were no disappointments in life more
terrible than this. It is consoling to express very
deprecating opinions of the Faculty in general;—and
very contemptuous ones of that particular officer who
decided upon the merit of the prize themes. An
evening or two at Dalton's room go still farther toward
healing the disappointment; and—if it must be said—
toward moderating the heat of your ambition.
You grow up however, unfortunately, as the College
years fly by, into a very exaggerated sense of your
Squire, for whom you had once entertained so much
respect, seems to your crazy, classic fancy, a very
hum-drum sort of personage. Frank, although as
noble a fellow as ever sat a horse, is yet—you cannot
help thinking—very ignorant of Euripides; even the
English master at Dr. Bidlow's school, you feel sure
would balk at a dozen problems you could give him.
You get an exalted idea of that uncertain quality,
which turns the heads of a vast many of your fellows,
called—Genius. An odd notion seems to be inherent in
the atmosphere of those College chambers, that there is
a certain faculty of mind—first developed as would
seem in Colleges,—which accomplishes whatever it
chooses, without any special pains-taking. For a time,
you fall yourself into this very unfortunate hallucination;
you cultivate it, after the usual college fashion,
by drinking a vast deal of strong coffee, and whiskey
toddy,—by writing a little poor verse, in the Byronic
temper, and by studying very late at night, with
closed blinds.
It costs you, however, more anxiety and hypocrisy
than you could possibly have believed.
—You will learn, Clarence, when the Autumn
has rounded your hopeful Summer, if not before, that
there is no Genius in life, like the Genius of energy and
industry. You will learn, that all the traditions so
characters have wrought their greatness by an inspiration
as it were, grow out of a sad mistake.
And you will further find, when you come to
measure yourself with men, that there are no rivals
so formidable, as those earnest, determined minds,
which reckon the value of every hour, and which
achieve eminence by persistent application.
Literary ambition may inflame you at certain periods;
and a thought of some great names will flash like
a spark into the mine of your purposes; you dream till
midnight over books; you set up shadows, and chase
them down—other shadows, and they fly. Dreaming
will never catch them. Nothing makes the `scent lie
well,' in the hunt after distinction, but labor.
And it is a glorious thing, when once you are weary
of the dissipation, and the ennui of your own aimless
thought, to take up some glowing page of an earnest
thinker, and read—deep, and long, until you feel the
metal of his thought tinkling on your brain, and striking
out from your flinty lethargy, flashes of ideas, that give
the mind light and heat. And away you go, in the
chase of what the soul within, is creating on the instant,
and you wonder at the fecundity of what seemed so
barren, and at the ripeness of what seemed so crude.
The glow of toil wakes you to the consciousness of
your real capacities: you feel sure that they have
mood it is, that one feels grateful to the musty tomes,
which at other hours, stand like curiosity-making
mummies, with no warmth, and no vitality. Now
they grow into the affections like new-found friends;
and gain a hold upon the heart, and light a fire in the
brain, that the years and the mould cannot cover, nor
quench.
III.
College Romance.
IN following the mental vagaries of youth, I must
not forget the curvetings and wiltings of the heart.
The black-eyed Jenny, with whom a correspondence
at red heat, was kept up for several weeks, is long
before this, entirely out of your regard;—not so much
by reason of the six months disparity of age, as from
the fact, communicated quite confidentially by the
travelled Nat, that she has had a desperate flirtation
with a handsome midshipman. The conclusion is
natural, that she is an inconstant, cruel-hearted creature,
with little appreciation of real worth; and furthermore,
that all midshipmen are a very contemptible, not
to say,—dangerous set of men. She is consigned to
forgetfulness and neglect; and the late lover has long
passage of Childe Harold, commencing,—
I have not loved the world, nor the world me.
As for Madge, the memory of her has been more
wakeful, but less violent. To say nothing of occasional
returns to the old homestead when you have met her,
Nelly's letters not unfrequently drop a careless half-sentence,
that keeps her strangely in mind.
`Madge,' she says, `is sitting by me with her work;'
or, `you ought to see the little, silk purse that Madge
is knitting;' or, speaking of some country rout—
`Madge was there in the sweetest dress you can
imagine.' All this will keep Madge in mind; not it is
true in the ambitious moods, or in the frolics with
Dalton; but in those odd half hours that come stealing
over one at twilight, laden with sweet memories of the
days of old.
A new Romantic admiration is started by those pale
lady-faces which light up, on a Sunday, the gallery of
the college chapel. An amiable and modest fancy,
gives to them all a sweet classic grace. The very
atmosphere of those courts, wakened with high metaphysic
discourse, seems to lend them a Greek beauty,
and finesse; and you attach to the prettiest that your
eye can reach, all the charms of some Sciote maiden,
And as you lie half-wakeful, and half-dreaming, through
the long Divisions of the Doctor's morning discourse,
the twinkling eyes in some corner of the gallery, bear
you pleasant company, as you float down those
streaming visions, which radiate from you, far over the
track of the coming life.
But following very closely upon this, comes a whole
volume of street romance. There are prettily shaped
figures that go floating, at convenient hours for college
observation, along the thoroughfares of the town. And
these figures come to be known, and the dresses, and
the streets; and even the door-plate is studied. The
hours are ascertained, by careful observation, and
induction, at which some particular figure is to be met;
or is to be seen at some low parlor window, in white
summer dress, with head leaning on the hand,—very
melancholy, and very dangerous. Perhaps her very
card is stuck proudly into a corner of the mirror, in the
college chamber. After this may come moonlight
meetings at the gate, or long listenings to the plaintive
lyrics that steal out of the parlor windows, and that
blur wofully the text of the Conic Sections.
Or, perhaps she is under the fierce eye of some
Cerberus of a school mistress, about whose grounds
you prowl piteously, searching for small knot holes
in the surrounding board-fence, through which little
Sonnets are written for the town papers, full of telling
phrases, and with classic allusions, and foot notes, which
draw attention to some similar felicity of expression in
Horace, or Ovid. Correspondence may even be ventured
on, enclosing locks of hair, and interchanging
rings, and paper oaths of eternal fidelity.
But the old Cerberus is very wakeful: the letters
fail: the lamp that used to glimmer for a sign among
the sycamores, is gone out: a stolen wave of a
handkerchief,—a despairing look,—and tears, which
you fancy, but do not see,—make you miserable for
long days.
The tyrant teacher, with no trace of compassion in
her withered heart, reports you to the college authorities.
There is a long lecture of admonition upon the folly of
such dangerous practices; and if the offence be aggravated
by some recent joviality with Dalton and the
Senior, you are condemned to a month of exile with a
country clergyman. There are a few tearful regrets
over the painful tone of the home letters; but the
bracing country air, and the pretty faces of the village
girls heal your heart,—with fresh wounds.
The old Doctor sees dimly through his spectacles;
and his pew gives a good look out upon the smiling
choir of singers. A collegian wears the honors of a
stranger; and the country bucks stand but poor chance
and verses. But this fresh dream, odorous with its
memories of sleigh-rides, or lilac blossoms, slips by, and
yields again to the more ambitious dreams of the
cloister.
In the prouder moments that come, when you are
more a man, and less a boy—with more of strategy
and less of faith—your thought of woman runs loftily:
not loftily in the realm of virtue or goodness, but loftily
on your new world-scale. The pride of intellect that is
thirsting in you, fashions ideal graces after a classic
model. The heroines of fable are admired; and the
soul is tortured with that intensity of passion, which
gleams through the broken utterances of Grecian
tragedy.
In the vanity of self-consciousness, one feels at a long
remove above the ordinary love and trustfulness of a
simple and pure heart. You turn away from all such
with a sigh of conceit, to graze on that lofty, but bitter
pasturage, where no daisies grow. Admiration may be
called up by some graceful figure that you see moving
under those sweeping elms; and you follow it with an
intensity of look that makes you blush; and straightway,
hide the memory of the blush, by summing up
some artful sophistry, that resolves your delighted
gaze into a weakness, and your contempt into a virtue.
But this cannot last. As the years drop off, a
to have been cut out of a page of Greek poetry. They
have all its sentiment, its fire, its intellectual reaches: it
would be hard to say what they have not. The profile,
is a Greek profile; and the heavy chestnut hair is
plaited in Greek bands. The figure too, might easily
be that of Helen, or of Andromache.
You gaze—ashamed to gaze; and your heart yearns
—ashamed of its yearning. It is no young girl, who is
thus testing you: there is too much pride for that.
A ripeness, and maturity rest upon her look, and
figure, that completely fill up that ideal, which
exaggerated fancies have wrought out of the Grecian
heaven. The vision steals upon you at all hours,—
now rounding its flowing outline to the mellifluous
metre of Epic Hexameter, and again, with its bounding
life, pulsating with the glorious dashes of tragic verse.
Yet, with the exception of stolen glances, and secret
admiration, you keep aloof. There is no wish to
fathom what seems a happy mystery. There lies a
content in secret obeisance. Sometimes it shames you,
as your mind glows with its fancied dignity; but the
heart thrusts in its voice; and yielding to it, you dream
dreams, like fond, old Boccacio's, upon the olive-shaded
slopes of Italy. The tongue even, is not trusted with
the thoughts that are seething within: they begin and
end in the voiceless pulsations of your nature.
After a time,—it seems a long time, but it is in
truth, a very short time,—you find who she is, who is
thus entrancing you. It is done most carelessly. No
creature could imagine that you felt any interest in the
accomplished sister—of your friend Dalton. Yet it is
even she, who has thus beguiled you; and she is at
least some ten years Dalton's senior; and by even more
years,—your own!
It is singular enough, but it is true,—that the affections
of that transition state from youth to manliness,
run toward the types of maturity. The mind in its
reaches toward strength, and completeness, creates a
heart-sympathy—which, in its turn, craves fullness.
There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly
education, which is disposed to under-rate the innocence,
and unripened judgment of the other sex. Men see
the mistake, as they grow older;—for the judgment
of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by
ten years, faster than a man's.
In place of any relentings on such score, you are
set on fire anew. The stories of her accomplishments,
and of her grace of conversation, absolutely drive you
mad. You watch your occasion for meeting her upon
the street. You wonder if she has any conception
of your capacity for mental labor; and if she has any
adequate idea of your admiration for Greek poetry,
and for herself?
You tie your cravat poet-wise, and wear broad
collars, turned down, wondering how such disposition
may affect her. Her figure and step become a kind
of moving romance to you, drifting forward, and
outward into that great land of dreams, which you
call the world. When you see her walking with
others, you pity her; and feel perfectly sure that if
she had only a hint of that intellectual fervor which
in your own mind, blazes up at the very thought
of her, she would perfectly scorn the stout gentleman
who spends his force in tawdry compliments.
A visit to your home wakens ardor, by contrast,
as much as by absence. Madge, so gentle, and now
stealing sly looks at you, in a way so different from
her hoydenish manner of school-days, you regard
complacently, as a most lovable, fond girl—the very
one for some fond and amiable young man, whose soul
is not filled—as yours is—with higher things! To
Nelly, earnestly listening, you drop only exaggerated
hints of the wonderful beauty, and dignity of this new
being of your fancy. Of her age, you scrupulously say
nothing.
The trivialities of Dalton amaze you; it is hard to
understand how a man within the limit of such
influences, as Miss Dalton must inevitably exert, can
tamely sit down to a rubber of whist, and cigars!
certainly be a proud thing to supply that lack!
The new feeling, wild and vague as it is,—for as yet,
you have only most casual acquaintance with Laura
Dalton,—invests the whole habit of your study; not
quickening overmuch the relish for Dugald Stewart, or
the miserable skeleton of college Logic; but spending
a sweet charm upon the graces of Rhetoric, and the
music of Classic Verse. It blends harmoniously with
your quickened ambition. There is some last appearance
that you have to make upon the College stage,
in the presence of the great worthies of the state, and
of all the beauties of the town,—Laura chiefest among
them. In view of it, you feel dismally intellectual.
Prodigious faculties are to be brought to the task.
You think of throwing out ideas that will quite
startle His Excellency the Governor, and those very
distinguished public characters, whom the College
purveyors vote into their periodic public sittings. You
are quite sure of surprising them, and of deeply provoking
such scheming, shallow politicians, as have never
read `Wayland's Treatise;' and who venture incautiously,
within hearing of your remarks. You fancy yourself in
advance, the victim of a long leader in the next day's
paper; and the thoughtful, but quiet cause of a great
change in the political programme of the State. But
crowning and eclipsing all the triumph, are those dark
their floods of unconscious praise and tenderness.
Your father and Nelly are there to greet you. He
has spoken a few calm, quiet words of encouragement,
that make you feel—very wrongfully—that he is a
cold man, with no earnestness of feeling. As for Nelly,
she clasps your arm with a fondness, and with a pride,
that tell at every step, her praises and her love.
But even this, true and healthful as it is, fades
before a single word of commendation from the new
arbitress of your feeling. You have seen Miss Dalton!
You have met her on that last evening of your cloistered
life, in all the elegance of ball costume; your eye has
feasted on her elegant figure, and upon her eye
sparkling with the consciousness of beauty. You have
talked with Miss Dalton about Byron,—about Wordsworth,—about
Homer. You have quoted poetry to
Miss Dalton; you have clasped Miss Dalton's hand!
Her conversation delights you by its piquancy and
grace; she is quite ready to meet you (a grave matter
of surprise!) upon whatever subject you may suggest.
You lapse easily and lovingly into the current of her
thought, and blush to find yourself vacantly admiring,
when she is looking for reply. The regard you feel for
her, resolves itself into an exquisite mental love, vastly
superior as you think, to any other kind of love.
There is no dream of marriage as yet, but only of
succession of hours, and talking of poetry and nature,—
of destiny, and love.
Magnificent Miss Dalton!
—And all the while, vaunting youth is almost
mindless of the presence of that fond Nelly, whose
warm sisterly affection measures itself hopefully against
the proud associations of your growing years; and
whose deep, loving eye half suffused with its native
tenderness, seems longing to win you back to the old
joys of that Home-love, which linger on the distant
horizon of your boy-hood, like the golden glories of a
sinking day.
As the night wanes, you wander, for a last look,
toward the dingy walls, that have made for you so long
a home. The old broken expectancies, the days of
glee, the triumphs, the rivalries, the defeats, the friendships,
are recalled with a fluttering of the heart, that
pride cannot wholly subdue. You step upon the
Chapel-porch, in the quiet of the night, as you would
step on the graves of friends. You pace back and
forth in the wan moonlight, dreaming of that dim life
which opens wide and long, from the morrow. The
width and length oppress you: they crush down your
struggling self-consciousness, like Titans dealing with
Pigmies. A single piercing thought of the vast and
shadowy future which is so near, tears off on the
vanity that doubles your bigness, and forces you down
to the bare nakedness of what you truly are!
With one more yearning look at the gray hulks of
building, you loiter away under the trees. The
monster elms which have bowered your proud steps
through four years of proudest life, lift up to the night
their rounded canopy of leaves, with a quiet majesty
that mocks you. They kiss the same calm sky, which
they wooed four years ago; and they droop their
trailing limbs lovingly to the same earth, which
has steadily, and quietly, wrought in them their stature,
and their strength. Only here and there, you catch
the loitering foot-fall of some other benighted dreamer,
strolling around the vast quadrangle of level green,
which lies like a prairie-child, under the edging shadows
of the town. The lights glimmer one by one; and
one by one—like breaking hopes—they fade away
from the houses. The full risen moon that dapples the
ground beneath the trees, touches the tall church
spires with silver; and slants their loftiness—as
memory slants grief—in long, dark, tapering lines, upon
the silvered Green.
IV.
First Look at the World.
OUR Clarence is now fairly afloat upon the swift
tide of Youth. The thrall of teachers is ended,
and the audacity of self-resolve is begun. It is not
a little odd, that when we have least strength to
combat the world, we have the highest confidence in
our ability.
Very few individuals in the world, possess that
happy consciousness of their own prowess, which
belongs to the newly graduated Collegian. He has
most abounding faith in the tricksy panoply that he
has wrought out of the metal of his Classics. His
mathematics, he has not a doubt, will solve for him
every complexity of life's questions; and his logic will
as certainly untie all gordian knots, whether in politics
or ethics.
He has no idea of defeat; he proposes to take the
world by storm; he half wonders that quiet people
are not startled by his presence. He brushes with an
air of importance about the halls of country hotels;
he wears his honor at the public tables; he fancies that
the inattentive guests can have little idea that the
young gentleman, who so recently delighted the public
ear with his dissertation on the “General tendency of
Opinion,” is actually among them; and quietly eating
from the same dish of beef, and of pudding!
Our poor Clarence does not know—heaven forbid he
should!—that he is but little wiser now, than when he
turned his back upon the old Academy, with its gallipots
and broken retorts; and that with the addition
of a few Greek roots, a smattering of Latin, and some
readiness of speech, he is almost as weak for breasting
the strong current of life, as when a boy. America
is but a poor place for the romantic book-dreamer.
The demands of this new, Western life of ours, are
practical, and earnest. Prompt action, and ready tact,
are the weapons by which to meet it, and subdue it.
The education of the cloister offers at best, only a sound
starting point, from which to leap into the tide.
The father of Clarence is a cool, matter-of-fact man.
He has little sympathy with any of the romantic notions
that enthrall a youth of twenty. He has a very
humble opinion—much humbler than you think he
short period of travel, that by observation, you may
find out more, how that world is made up, with which
you are henceforth to struggle.
Your mother half fears your alienation from the
affections of home. Her letters all run over with a
tenderness that makes you sigh, and that makes you
feel a deep reproach. You may not have been
wanting in the more ordinary tokens of affection; you
have made your periodic visits; but you blush for the
consciousness that fastens on you, of neglect at heart.
You blush for the lack of that glow of feeling, which
once fastened to every home-object.
[Does a man indeed outgrow affections as his mind
ripens? Do the early and tender sympathies become
a part of his intellectual perceptions, to be appreciated
and reasoned upon, as one reasons about truths of
science? Is their vitality necessarily young? Is there
the same ripe, joyous burst of the heart, at the recollection
of later friendships, which belonged to those of
boyhood; and are not the later ones more the suggestions
of judgment, and less, the absolute conditions
of the heart's health?]
The letters of your mother, as I said, make you sigh:
there is no moment in our lives when we feel less
worthy of the love of others, and less worthy of our
own respect, than when we receive evidences of kindness,
are laid bare to us, and we have too much indifference
to lay bare our own in return.
“Clarence”—writes that neglected mother—“you do
not know how much you are in our thoughts, and how
often you are the burden of my prayers. Oh, Clarence,
I could almost wish that you were still a boy—still
running to me for those little favors, which I was only
too happy to bestow,—still dependent in some degree
on your mother's love, for happiness.
“Perhaps I do you wrong, Clarence, but it does seem
from the changing tone of your letters that you are
becoming more and more forgetful of us all;—that you
are feeling less need of our advice, and—what I feel
far more deeply—less need of our affection. Do not,
my son, forget the lessons of home. There will come a
time, I feel sure, when you will know that those
lessons are good. They may not indeed help you in
that intellectual strife which soon will engross you; and
they may not have fitted you to shine in what are
called the brilliant circles of the world; but they are
such, Clarence, as make the heart pure, and honest, and
strong!
“You may think me weak to write you thus, as I
would have written to my light-hearted boy, years ago;
—indeed I am not strong, but growing every day
more feeble.
“Nelly, your sweet sister, is sitting by me: `Tell
Clarence,' she says, `to come home soon.' You know,
my son, what hearty welcome will greet you; and that
whether here, or away, our love and prayers will be
with you always; and may God, in his infinite mercy
keep you from all harm!”
A tear or two,—brushed away, as soon as they
come,—is all that youth gives, to embalm such treasure
of love! A gay laugh, or the challenge of some
companion of a day, will sweep away into the night,
the earnest, regretful, yet happy dreams, that rise like
incense from the pages of such hallowed affection.
The brusque world too is to be met, with all
its hurry and promptitude. Manhood, in our swift
American world, is measured too much by forgetfulness
of all the sweet liens which tie the heart to the home
of its first attachments. We deaden the glow that
nature has kindled, lest it may lighten our hearts into
an enchanting flame of weakness. We have not
learned to make that flame the beacon of our purposes,
and the warmer of our strength. We are men too
early.
But an experience is approaching Clarence, that
will drive his heart home for shelter, like a wounded
bird!
—It is an autumn morning, with such crimson
glories to kindle it, as lie along the twin ranges of
like changing silk, in the fields of late growing clover;
the river mists curl, and idle along the bosom of the
water, and creep up the hill sides; and at noon, float
their feathery vapors aloft, in clouds; the crimson trees
blaze in the side valleys, and blend their vermillion
tints under the fairy hands of our American frost-painters,
with the dark blood of the ash trees, and the
orange tinted oaks. Blue and bright, under the clear
Fall heaven, the broad river shines before the surging
prow of the boat, like a shield of steel.
The bracing air lights up rich dreams of life. Your
fancy peoples the valleys, and the hill-tops with its
creations; and your hope lends some crowning beauty
of the landscape, to your dreamy future. The vision
of your last college year is not gone. That figure
whose elegance your eyes then feasted on, still floats
before you; and the memory of the last talk with
Laura, is as vivid, as if it were only yesterday, that you
listened. Indeed, this opening campaign of travel,—
although you are half ashamed to confess it to yourself,—is
guided by the thought of her.
Dalton, with a party of friends, his sister among
them, are journeying to the north. A hope of meeting
them—scarce acknowledged as an intention—spurs you
on. The eye rests dreamily, and vaguely on the
beauties that appear at every turn: they are beauties
indefinable association with that fairy object that floats
before you, half unknown, and wholly unclaimed.
The quiet towns, with their noon-day stillness, the
out-lying mansions with their stately splendor, the
bustling cities with their mocking din, and the long
reaches of silent, and wooded shore, chime with their
several beauties to your heart, in keeping with the
master key, that was touched long weeks before.
The cool, honest advices of the father, drift across
your memory in shadowy forms, as you wander through
the streets of the first northern cities; and all the need
for observation, and the incentives to purpose, which
your ambitious designs would once have quickened,
fade dismally, when you find that she is not there. All
the lax gaiety of Saratoga palls on the appetite: even
the magnificent shores of Lake George, though stirring
your spirit to an insensible wonder and love, do not
cheat you into a trance that lingers. In vain, the sun
blazons every isle, and lights every shaded cove, and at
evening, stretches the Black mountain in giant slumber
on the waters.
Your thought bounds away from the beauty of sky
and lake, and fastens upon the ideal which your dreamy
humors cherish. The very glow of pursuit heightens
your fervor:—a fervor that dims sadly the new-wakened
memories of home. The southern gates of Champlain,
you find yourself upon a golden evening of Canadian
autumn, in the quaint old city of Montreal.
Dalton, with his party, has gone down to Quebec.
He is to return within a few days, on his way to
Niagara. There is a letter from Nelly waiting you.
It says:—`Mother is much more feeble: she often
speaks of your return, in a way that I am sure, if you
heard, Clarence, would bring you back to us soon.'
There is a struggle in your mind: old affection is
weaker than young pride and hope. Moreover, the
world is to be faced: the new scenes around you are to
be studied. An answer is penned full of kind remembrances,
and begging a few days of delay. You
wander, wondering, under the quaint old houses, and
wishing for the return of Dalton.
He meets you with that happy, careless way of his—
the dangerous way which some men are born to,—and
which chimes easily to every tone of the world:—a way
you wondered at once; a way, you admire now, and a
way, that you will distrust, as you come to see more of
men. Miss Dalton—(it seems sacrilege to call her
Laura)—is the same elegant being that entranced you
first.
They urge you to join their party. But there is no
need of urgence: those eyes, that figure, the whole
presence indeed of Miss Dalton, attract you with a
look of grace enslaves you; and there is a strange
pride in the enslavement.
—Is it dream, or is it earnest,—those moon-lit
walks upon the hills that skirt the city, when you watch
the stars, listening to her voice, and feel the pressure of
that jewelled hand upon your arm?—when you drain
your memory of its whole stock of poetic beauties, to
lavish upon her ear? Is it love, or is it madness, when
you catch her eye, as it beams more of eloquence than
lies in all your moonlight poetry, and feel an exultant
gush of the heart, that makes you proud as a man, and
yet timid as a boy, beside her?
Has Dalton with that calm, placid, nonchalant look
of his, any inkling of the raptures, which his elegant
sister is exciting? Has the stout, elderly gentleman
who is so prodigal of his bouquets, and attentions, any
idea of the formidable rival that he has found? Has
Laura herself—you dream—any conception of that
intensity of admiration with which you worship?
—Poor Clarence! it is his first look at Life!
The Thousand Isles with their leafy beauties, lie
around your passing beat, like the joys that skirt us,
and pass us, on our way through life. The Thousand
Isles rise sudden before you, and fringe your yeasty
track, and drop away into floating spectres of beauty—
your passion lends the brain. The low banks of
Ontario look sullen by night; and the moon, rising
tranquilly over the tops of vast forests that stand in
majestic ranks over ten thousand acres of shore-land,
drips its silvery sparkles along the rocking waters, and
flashes across your foamy wake.
With such attendance, that subdues for the time the
dreamy forays of your passion, you draw toward the
sound of Niagara; and its distant, vague roar coming
through great aisles of gloomy forest, bears up your
spirit, like a child's, into the Highest Presence.
The morning after, you are standing with your party
upon the steps of the Hotel. A letter is handed to
you. Dalton remarks in a quizzical way, that `it shows
a lady's hand.'
“Aha, a lady!” says Miss Dalton;—and so gaily!
“A sister,” I say; for it is Nelly's hand.
“By the by, Clarence,” says Dalton, “it was a
very pretty sister, you gave us a glimpse of at
commencement.”
“Ah, you think so,” and there is something in your
tone, that shows a little indignation at this careless
mention of your fond Nelly;—and from those lips!
It will occur to you again.
A single glance at the letter blanches your cheek.
Your heart throbs:—throbs harder,—throbs tumultuously.
But it will not do. You hurry away: you find your
chamber: you close and lock the door, and burst into
a flood of tears.
V.
A Broken Home.
IT is Nelly's own fair hand, yet sadly blotted;—
blotted with her tears, and blotted with yours.
—“It is all over, dear, dear Clarence! oh, how I
wish you were here to mourn with us! I can hardly
now believe that our poor mother is indeed dead.”
—Dead!—It is a terrible word! You repeat it,
with a fresh burst of grief. The letter is crumpled in
your hand.—Unfold it again, sobbing, and read on.
“For a week, she had been failing every day; but
on Saturday, we thought her very much better. I told
her, I felt sure she would live to see you again.
`I shall never see him again, Nelly,' said she,
bursting into tears.”
—Ah, Clarence, where is your youthful pride, and
annoy you, crushed in your grasp!
“She sent for Father, and taking his hand in hers,
told him she was dying. I am glad you did not see
his grief. I was kneeling beside her, and she put her
hand upon my head, and let it rest there for a moment,
while her lips moved, as if she were praying.
`Kiss me, Nelly,' said she, growing fainter: `kiss me
again for Clarence.'
“A little while after she died.”
For a long time you remain with only that letter,
and your thought for company. You pace up and
down your chamber: again you seat yourself, and lean
your head upon the table, enfeebled by the very grief,
that you cherish still. The whole day passes thus:
you excuse yourself from all companionship: you have
not the heart to tell the story of your troubles to
Dalton,—least of all, to Miss Dalton. How is this?
Is sorrow too selfish, or too holy?
Toward night-fall there is a calmer, and stronger
feeling. The voice of the present world comes to your
ear again. But you move away from it unobserved to
that stronger voice of God, in the Cataract. Great
masses of angry cloud hang over the West; but
beneath them the red harvest sun shines over the long
reach of Canadian shore, and bathes the whirling
rapids in splendor. You stroll alone over the quaking
edge of the British Fall. You go out to the little
shattered tower, and gaze down with sensations that
will last till death, upon the deep emerald of those
awful masses of water.
It is not the place for a bad man to ponder: it
is not the atmosphere for foul thoughts, or weak ones.
A man is never better than when he has the humblest
sense of himself: he is never so unlike the spirit of
Evil, as when his pride is utterly vanished. You
linger, looking upon the stream of fading sunlight that
plays across the rapids, and down into the shadow of
the depths below, lit up with their clouds of spray:—
yet farther down, your sight swims upon the black
eddying masses, with white ribands streaming across
their glassy surface; and your dizzy eye fastens upon
the frail cockle shells,—their stout oarsmen dwindled to
pigmies,—that dance like atoms upon the vast chasm,—
or like your own weak resolves upon the whirl of Time.
Your thought, growing broad in the view, seems to
cover the whole area of life; you set up your affections
and your duties; you build hopes with fairy scenery,
and away they all go, tossing like the relentless waters
to the deep gulf, that gapes a hideous welcome! You
sigh at your weakness of heart, or of endeavor, and
your sighs float out into the breeze that rises ever from
the shock of the waves, and whirl, empty-handed, to
with round utterance; and your voice like a sparrow's,
is caught up in the roar of the fall, and thrown at you
from the cliffs, and dies away in the solemn thunders
of nature. Great thoughts of life come over you—of
its work and destiny—of its affections and duties, and
roll down swift—like the river—into the deep whirl
of doubt and danger. Other thoughts, grander and
stronger, like the continuing rush of waters, come over
you, and knit your purposes together with their weight,
and crush you to exultant tears, and then leap,
shattered and broken, from the very edge of your
intent,—into mists of fear!
The moon comes out, and gleaming through the
clouds, braids its light, fantastic bow upon the waters.
You feel calmer as the night deepens. The darkness
softens you; it hangs—like the pall that shrouds your
mother's corpse,—low and heavily to your heart. It
helps your inward grief, with some outward show. It
makes the earth a mourner; it makes the flashing
water-drops so many attendant mourners. It makes
the Great Fall itself a mourner, and its roar—a
requiem!
The pleasure of travel is cut short. To one person
of the little company of fellow voyagers, you bid adieu
with regret; pride, love, and hope point toward her,
while all the gentler affections stray back to the broken
not after all, such smile as your warm heart pines for.
Ten days after, you are walking toward the old
homestead, with such feelings as it never called up
before. In the days of boyhood, there were triumphant
thoughts of the gladness, and the pride, with which,
when grown to the stature of manhood, you would
come back to that little town of your birth. As you
have bent with your dreamy resolutions over the tasks
of the cloister life, swift thoughts have flocked on you
of the proud step, and prouder heart, with which you
would one day greet the old acquaintances of boyhood;
and you have regaled yourself on the jaunty manner
with which you would meet old Dr. Bidlow; and the
patronizing air, with which you would address the
pretty, blue-eyed Madge.
It is late afternoon when you come in sight of the
tall sycamores that shade your home; you shudder
now lest you may meet any whom you once knew.
The first, keen grief of youth seeks little of the sympathy
of companions: it lies—with a sensitive man,—
bounded within the narrowest circles of the heart.
They only who hold the key to its innermost recesses
can speak consolation. Years will make a change;—
as the summer grows in fierce heats, the balminess of
the violet banks of Spring, is lost in the odors of a
freshness, but wins breadth.
—Throw a pebble into the brook at its source, and
the agitation is terrible, and the ripples chafe madly
their narrowed banks;—throw in a pebble, when the
brook has become a river, and you see a few circles,
widening, and widening, and widening, until they are
lost in the gentle, every-day murmur of its life!
You draw your hat over your eyes, as you walk
toward the familiar door; the yard is silent; the night
is falling gloomily; a few katydids are crying in the
trees. The mother's window, where—at such a season
as this, it was her custom to sit watching your play, is
shut; and the blinds are closed over it. The honeysuckle
which grew over the window, and which she
loved so much, has flung out its branches carelessly;
and the spiders have hung their foul nets upon its
tendrils.
And she, who made that home so dear to your
boyhood,—so real to your after years,—standing amid
all the flights of your youthful ambition, and your
paltry cares (for they seem paltry now) and your
doubts, and anxieties and weaknesses of heart, like the
light of your hope—burning ever there, under the
shadow of the sycamores,—a holy beacon, by whose
guidance you always came to a sweet haven, and to a
refuge from all your toils,—is gone,—gone forever!
The father is there indeed;—beloved, respected,
esteemed; but the boyish heart, whose old life is now
reviving, leans more readily, and more kindly into that
void, where once beat the heart of a mother.
Nelly is there;—cherished now with all the added
love that is stricken off from her who has left you
forever. Nelly meets you at the door.
—“Clarence!”
—“Nelly!”
There are no other words; but you feel her tears, as
the kiss of welcome is given. With your hand joined
in her's, you walk down the hall, into the old, familiar
room;—not with the jaunty, college step,—not with
any presumption on your dawning manhood,—oh, no,—
nothing of this!
Quietly, meekly, feeling your whole heart shattered,
and your mind feeble as a boy's, and your purposes
nothing, and worse than nothing,—with only one
proud feeling, you fling your arm around the form
of that gentle sister,—the pride of a protector;—the
feeling—“I will care for you now, dear Nelly!”—that
is all. And even that, proud as it is, brings weakness.
You sit down together upon the lounge; Nelly
buries her face in her hands, sobbing.
“Dear Nelly,” and your arm clasps her more fondly.
There is a cricket in the corner of the room, chirping
very loudly. It seems as if nothing else were living—
falls on the chair where she used to sit; it is drawn up
with the same care as ever, beside the fire.
“I am so glad to see you, Clarence,” says Nelly,
recovering herself; and there is a sweet, sad smile now.
And sitting there beside you, she tells you of it all;—
of the day, and of the hour;—and how she looked,—
and of her last prayer, and how happy she was.
“And did she leave no message for me, Nelly?”
“Not to forget us, Clarence; but you could not!”
“Thank you, Nelly; and was there nothing else?”
“Yes, Clarence;—to meet her, one day?”
You only press her hand.
Presently your father comes in: he greets you with
far more than his usual cordiality. He keeps your hand
a long time, looking quietly in your face, as if he were
reading traces of some resemblance, that had never
struck him before.
The father is one of those calm, impassive men, who
shows little upon the surface, and whose feelings you
have always thought, cold. But now, there is a
tremulousness in his tones that you never remember
observing before. He seems conscious of it himself, and
forbears talking. He goes to his old seat, and after
gazing at you a little while with the same steadfastness
as at first, leans forward, and buries his face in his
hands.
From that very moment, you feel a sympathy, and
a love for him, that you have never known till then.
And in after years, when suffering or trial come over
you, and when your thoughts fly, as to a refuge, to
that shattered home, you will recal that stooping image
of the father,—with his head bowed, and from time
to time trembling convulsively with grief,—and feel that
there remains yet by the household fires, a heart of
kindred love, and of kindred sorrow!
Nelly steals away from you gently, and stepping
across the room, lays her hand upon his shoulder, with
a touch, that says, as plainly as words could say it;—
“We are here, Father!”
And he rouses himself,—passes his arm around her;
—looks in her face fondly,—draws her to him, and
prints a kiss upon her forehead.
“Nelly, we must love each other now, more than
ever.”
Nelly's lips tremble, but she cannot answer; a tear
or two go stealing down her cheek.
You approach them; and your father takes your
hand again, with a firm grasp,—looks at you thoughtfully,—drops
his eyes upon the fire, and for a moment
there is a pause;—“We are quite alone, now, my
boy!”
—It is a Broken Home!
VI.
Family Confidence.
GRIEF has a strange power in opening the hearts
of those who sorrow in common. The father,
who has seemed to you, not so much neglectful, as
careless of your aims, and purposes;—toward whom
there have been in your younger years, yearnings of
affection, which his chilliness of manner has seemed to
repress, now grows under the sad light of the broken
household, into a friend. The heart feels a joy, it
cannot express, in its freedom to love and to cherish.
There is a pleasure wholly new to you, in telling him
of your youthful projects, in listening to his questionings,
in seeking his opinions, and in yielding to his
judgment.
It is a sad thing for the child, and quite as sad for
and many a time, with a bursting heart, you have
longed to tell him of some boyish grief, or to ask his
guidance out of some boyish trouble; but at the first
sight of that calm, inflexible face, and at the first sound
of his measured words,—your enthusiastic yearnings
toward his love, and his counsels, have all turned back
upon your eager, and sorrowing heart; and you have
gone away to hide in secret, the tears, which the lack of
his sympathy has wrung from your soul.
But now, over the tomb of her, for whom you weep
in common, there is a new light breaking; and your
only fear is, lest you weary him with what may seem a
barren show of your confidence.
Nelly, too, is nearer now than ever; and with her,
you have no fears of your extravagance; you listen
delightfully there, by the evening flame, to all that she
tells you of the neighbors of your boyhood. You
shudder somewhat at her genial praises of the blue-eyed
Madge;—a shudder that you can hardly account
for, and which you do not seek to explain. It may be,
that there is a clinging and tender memory yet—
wakened by the home atmosphere—of the divided
sixpence.
Of your quondam friend Frank, the pleasant recollection
of whom revives again under the old roof-tree,
she tells you very little; and that little in a hesitating,
be, you think, that there has been some cause of
unkindness?
—Clarence is still very young!
The fire glows warmly upon the accustomed hearth-stone;
and—save that vacant place, never to be filled
again—a home cheer reigns even in this time of your
mourning. The spirit of the lost parent seems to linger
over the remnant of the household; and the Bible
upon its stand—the book she loved so well—the book
so sadly forgotten,—seems still to open on you its
promises, in her sweet tones; and to call you, as it
were, with her angel voice, to the land that she
inherits.
And when late night has come, and the household
is quiet, you call up in the darkness of your chamber,
that other night of grief, which followed upon the
death of Charlie. That was the boy's vision of death;
and this is the youthful vision. Yet essentially, there is
but little difference. Death levels the capacities of the
living, as it levels the strength of its victims. It is as
grand to the man, as to the boy: its teachings are as
deep for age, as for infancy.
You may learn its manner, and estimate its
approaches; but when it comes, it comes always with
the same awful front that it wore to your boyhood.
Reason and Revelation may point to rich issues that
more to your bodily sense, and no more to your
enlightened hope, than those foreshadowings of peace,
which rest like a halo, on the spirit of the child, as he
prays in guileless tones,—Our Father, who art in
Heaven!
It is a holy, and a placid grief that comes over you;
—not crushing, but bringing to life from the grave
of boyhood, all its better and nobler instincts. In their
light, your wild plans of youth look sadly misshapen;
and in the impulse of the hour you abandon them;
holy resolutions beam again upon your soul like
sunlight; your purposes seem bathed in goodness.
There is an effervescence of the spirit, that carries away
all foul matter, and leaves you in a state of calm, that
seems kindred to the land and to the life, whither the
sainted mother has gone.
This calm brings a smile in the middle of tears,
and an inward looking, and leaning toward that
Eternal Power which governs and guides us;—with
that smile and that leaning, sleep comes like an
angelic minister, and fondles your wearied frame, and
thought, into that repose which is the mirror of the
Destroyer.
—Poor Clarence, he is like the rest of the world,
—whose goodness lies chiefly in the occasional throbs
upon the old level of desire.
As you lie between waking and sleeping, you have a
fancy of a sound at your door;—it seems to open
softly; and the tall figure of your father wrapped in his
dressing-gown stands over you, and gazes—as he gazed
at you before;—his look is very mournful; and he
murmurs your mother's name; and—sighs; and—looks
again; and passes out.
At morning, you cannot tell if it was real, or a
dream. Those higher resolves too, which grief, and
the night made, seem very vague and shadowy. Life
with its ambitious, and cankerous desires wakes again.
You do not feel them at first; the subjugation of holy
thoughts, and of reaches toward the Infinite, leave
their traces on you, and perhaps bewilder you into
a half consciousness of strength. But at the first touch
of the grosser elements about you;—on your very first
entrance upon those duties which quicken pride or
shame, and which are pointing at you from every
quarter,—your holy calm, your high-born purpose,—
your spiritual cleavings pass away, like the electricity of
August storms, drawn down by the thousand glittering
turrets of a city!
The world is stronger than the night; and the
bindings of sense are ten-fold stronger than the most
exquisite delirium of soul. This makes you feel, or will
life,—that life which lends approaches to the Infinite,
and takes hold on Heaven, is not so much a Progress,
as it is a Resistance!
There is one special confidence, which in all your
talk about plans, and purposes, you do not give to
your father; you reserve that for the ear of Nelly
alone. Why happens it, that a father is almost the
last confidant that a son makes in any matter deeply
affecting the feelings? Is it the fear that a father may
regard such matter as boyish? Is it a lingering
suspicion of your own childishness; or of that extreme
of affection which reduces you to childishness?
Why is it always, that a man of whatever age or
condition, forbears to exhibit to those, whose respect for
his judgment, and mental abilities he seeks only, the
most earnest qualities of the heart, and those intenser
susceptibilities of love, which underlie his nature, and
which give a color, in spite of him, to the habit of his
life? Why is he so morbidly anxious to keep out of
sight any extravagances of affection, when he blurts
officiously to the world, his extravagances of action, and
of thought? Can any lover explain me this?
Again, why is a sister, the one of all others, to whom
you first whisper the dawnings of any strong emotion;
—as if it were a weakness, that her charity alone could
cover?
However this may be, you have a long story for
Nelly's ear. It is some days after your return: you
are strolling down a quiet, wooded lane—a remembered
place,—when you first open to her your heart. Your
talk is of Laura Dalton. You describe her to Nelly,
with the extravagance of a glowing hope. You
picture those qualities that have attracted you most;
you dwell upon her beauty, her elegant figure, her
grace of conversation, her accomplishments. You make
a study that feeds your passion, as you go on. You
rise by the very glow of your speech into a frenzy
of feeling, that she has never excited before. You are
quite sure that you would be wretched, and miserable,
without her.
“Do you mean to marry her?” says Nelly.
It is a question that gives a swift bound to the blood
of youth. It involves the idea of possession; and of
the dependance of the cherished one upon your own
arm, and strength. But the admiration you entertain,
seems almost too lofty for this; Nelly's question makes
you diffident of reply; and you lose yourself in a new
story of those excellencies of speech, and of figure,
which have so charmed you.
Nelly's eye, on a sudden, becomes full of tears.
—“What is it, Nelly?”
“Our mother; Clarence.”
The word, and the thought dampen your ardor;
parent, for an instant, make a sad contrast with the
showy qualities you have been naming; and the spirit
of that mother—called up by Nelly's words—seems to
hang over you, with an anxious love, that subdues all
your pride of passion.
But this passes; and now,—half believing that
Nelly's thoughts have run over the same ground with
yours,—you turn special pleader for your fancy. You
argue for the beauty, which you just now affirmed; you
do your utmost to win over Nelly to some burst of
admiration. Yet there she sits beside you, thoughtfully,
and half sadly, playing with the frail autumn
flowers that grow at her side. What can she be
thinking? You ask it by a look.
She smiles,—takes your hand, for she will not let
you grow angry,—
“I was thinking, Clarence, whether this Laura
Dalton, would after all, make a good wife,—such an
one as you would love always?”
VII.
A Good Wife.
THE thought of Nelly suggests new dreams, that
are little apt to find place in the rhapsodies of a
youthful lover. The very epithet of a good wife,
mates tamely with the romantic fancies of a first
passion. It is measuring the ideal by too practical a
standard. It sweeps away all the delightful vagueness
of a fairy dream of love, and reduces one to a dull, and
economic estimate of actual qualities Passion lives
above all analysis and estimate, and arrives at its
conclusions by intuition.
Did Petrarch ever think if Laura would make
a good wife; did Oswald ever think it of Corinne?
Nay, did even the more practical Waverley, ever think
it of the impassioned Flora? Would it not weaken
What have such vulgar, practical issues to do with that
passion which sublimates the faculties, and makes the
loving dreamer to live in an ideal sphere, where nothing
but goodness and brightness can come?
Nelly is to be pitied for entertaining such a thought;
and yet Nelly is very good, and kind. Her affections
are, without doubt, all centred in the remnant of the
shattered home: she has never known any further, and
deeper love,—never once fancied it even—
—Ah, Clarence, you are very young!
And yet there are some things that puzzle you in
Nelly. You have found, accidentally, in one of her
treasured books,—a book that lies almost always on her
dressing table,—a little withered flower, with its stem in
a slip of paper; and on the paper the initials of—your
old friend Frank. You recall, in connection with this,
her indisposition to talk of him on the first evening of
your return. It seems,—you scarce know why—that
these are the tokens of something very like a leaning of
the heart. It does occur to you, that she too, may
have her little casket of loves; and you try one day,
very adroitly, to take a look into this casket.
—You will learn, later in life, that the heart of a
modest, gentle girl, is a very hard matter, for even a
brother to probe: it is at once the most tender, and the
most unapproachable of all fastnesses. It admits
not a single scout. It is as calm and pure as polar
snows; but deep underneath, where no footsteps have
gone, and where no eye can reach, but one, lies the
warm, and the throbbing earth.
Make what you will of the slight, quivering blushes,
and of the half-broken expressions,—more you cannot
get. The love that a delicate-minded girl will tell, is a
short-sighted, and outside love; but the love that she
cherishes without voice or token, is a love that will
mould her secret sympathies, and her deepest, fondest
yearnings, either to a quiet world of joy, or to a world
of placid sufferance. The true voice of her love she
will keep back long and late, fearful ever of her most
prized jewel,—fearful to strange sensitiveness: she will
show kindness, but the opening of the real flood-gates
of the heart, and the utterance of those impassioned
yearnings, which belong to its nature, come far later.
And fearful, thrice fearful is the shock, if these flow
out unmet!
That deep, thrilling voice bearing all the perfume of
the womanly soul in its flow, rarely finds utterance; and
if uttered vainly,—if called out by tempting devices,
and by a trust that is abused,—desolate indeed is the
maiden heart,—widowed of its chastest thought! The
soul shrinks affrighted within itself. Like a tried bird,
lost at sea,—fluttering around what seem friendly
slippery spars, with no bloom and no foliage—its last
hope gone—it sinks to a wild, ocean grave!
Nelly—and the thought brings a tear of sympathy
to your eye—must have such a heart: it speaks in
every shadow of her action. And this very delicacy
seems to lend her a charm, that would make her a wife,
to be loved and honored.
Aye, there is something in that maidenly modesty,
retiring from you, as you advance,—retreating timidly
from all bold approaches, fearful and yet joyous, which
wins upon the iron hardness of a man's nature, like a
rising flame. To force of action and resolve, he opposes
force: to strong will, he mates his own: pride lights
pride; but to the gentleness of the true womanly
character, he yields with a gush of tenderness that
nothing else can call out. He will never be subjugated
on his own ground of action and energy; but let him
be lured to that border country, over which the delicacy,
and fondness of a womanly nature presides, and his
energy yields, his haughty determination faints,—he is
proud of submission!
And with this thought of modesty, and gentleness to
illuminate your dream of an ideal wife, you chase the
pleasant phantom to that shadowy home,—lying far off
in the future,—of which she is the glory, and the
crown. I know it is the fashion now-a-days with many,
from her home; but I know too, that a vast many
eager, and hopeful hearts, still cherish the belief that
her virtues will range highest, and live longest within
those sacred walls.
Where indeed, can the modest and earnest virtue of
a woman, tell a stronger story of its worth, than upon
the dawning habit of a child? Where can her grace
of character win a higher, and a riper effect, than upon
the action of her household? What mean those noisy
declaimers who talk of the feeble influence, and of the
crushed faculties of a woman?
What school of learning, or of moral endeavor,
depends more on its teacher, than the home upon the
mother? What influence of all the world's professors,
and teachers, tells so strongly on the habit of a man's
mind, as those gentle droppings from a mother's lips,
which, day by day, and hour by hour, grow into the
enlarging stature of his soul, and live with it forever?
They can hardly be mothers, who aim at a broader, and
noisier field: they have forgotten to be daughters: they
must needs have lost the hope of being wives!
Be this how it may, the heart of a man, with whom
affection is not a name, and love a mere passion of the
hour, yearns toward the quiet of a home, as toward
the goal of his earthly joy, and hope. And as you
fasten there, your thought, an indulgent, yet dreamy
make it sacred.
—She is there to bid you—God speed!—and an
adieu, that hangs like music on your ear, as you go out
to the every day labor of life. At evening, she is there
to greet you, as you come back wearied with a day's
toil; and her look so full of gladness, cheats you of
your fatigue; and she steals her arm around you, with
a soul of welcome, that beams like sunshine on her brow
and that fills your eye with tears of a twin gratitude—
to her, and Heaven!
She is not unmindful of those old-fashioned virtues
of cleanliness, and of order, which give an air of quiet,
and which secure content. Your wants are all anticipated;
the fire is burning brightly; the clean hearth
flashes under the joyous blaze; the old elbow chair is
in its place. Your very unworthiness of all this haunts
you like an accusing spirit, and yet penetrates your
heart with a new devotion, toward the loved one who is
thus watchful of your comfort.
She is gentle;—keeping your love, as she has won it,
by a thousand nameless and modest virtues, which
radiate from her whole life and action. She steals upon
your affections like a summer wind breathing softly
over sleeping valleys. She gains a mastery over your
sterner nature, by very contrast; and wins you unwittingly
to her lightest wish. And yet her wishes are
your manly pride; she subdues, by seeming to yield.
By a single soft word of appeal, she robs your vexation
of its anger; and with a slight touch of that fair hand,
and one pleading look of that earnest eye, she disarms
your sternest pride.
She is kind;—shedding her kindness, as Heaven sheds
dew. Who indeed could doubt it?—least of all, you,
who are living on her kindness, day by day, as flowers
live on light? There is none of that officious parade,
which blunts the point of benevolence: but it tempers
every action with a blessing. If trouble has come upon
you, she knows that her voice beguiling you into
cheerfulness, will lay your fears; and as she draws her
chair beside you, she knows that the tender and
confiding way, with which she takes your hand, and
looks up into your earnest face, will drive away from
your annoyance all its weight. As she lingers, leading
off your thought with pleasant words, she knows well
that she is redeeming you from care, and soothing you
to that sweet calm, which such home, and such wife
can alone bestow. And in sickness,—sickness that you
almost covet for the sympathy it brings,—that hand of
hers resting on your fevered forehead, or those fingers
playing with the scattered locks, are more full of kindness
than the loudest vaunt of friends; and when
your failing strength will permit no more, you grasp
thankfulness, and of love, which your tears only can
tell.
She is good;—her hopes live, where the angels live.
Her kindness and gentleness are sweetly tempered with
that meekness and forbearance which are born of
Faith. Trust comes into her heart, as rivers come to
the sea. And in the dark hours of doubt and fore-boding,
you rest fondly upon her buoyant Faith, as the
treasure of your common life; and in your holier
musings, you look to that frail hand, and that gentle
spirit, to lead you away from the vanities of worldly
ambition, to the fullness of that joy, which the good
inherit.
—Is Laura Dalton, such an one?
VIII.
A Broken Hope.
YOUTHFUL passion is a giant. It overleaps
all the dreams, and all the resolves of our
better and quieter nature; and drives madly toward
some wild issue, that lives only in its frenzy. How
little account does passion take of goodness! It is not
within the cycle of its revolution: it is below: it is
tamer: it is older: it wears no wings.
And your proud heart flashing back to the memory
of that sparkling eye, which lighted your hope—full-fed
upon the vanities of cloister learning, drives your soberer
visions to the wind. As you recal those tones, so full
of brilliancy and pride, the quiet virtues fade, like the
soft haze upon a spring landscape, driven westward by
a swift, sea-born storm. The pulse bounds: the eyes
dilates, like the eye,—fed with swift blood, leaping to
the brain.
Again the image of Miss Dalton, so fine, so noble, so
womanly, fills, and bounds the Future. The lingering
tears of grief drop away from your eye, as the lingering
loves of boyhood drop from your scalding passion, or
drift into clouds of vapor.
You listen to the calm, thoughtful advice of the
father, with a deep consciousness of something stronger
than his counsels, seething in your bosom. The words
of caution, of instruction, of guidance, fall upon your
heated imagination, like the night-dews upon the crater
of an Etna. They are beneficent, and healthful for the
straggling herbage upon the surface of the mountain;
but they do not reach, or temper the inner fires, that
are rolling their billows of flame, beneath!
You drop hints from time to time to those with
whom you are most familiar, of some prospective
change of condition. There is a new and cheerful
interest in the building plans of your neighbors:—a
new, and cheerful study of the principles of domestic
architecture;—in which, very elegant boudoirs, adorned
with harps, hold prominent place; and libraries with
gilt-bound books, very rich in lyrical, and dramatic
poetry;—fine views from bay windows;—graceful pots
of flowers;—sleek looking Italian grey-hounds;—
the wall;—superb pictures of Princesses in peasant
dresses;—soft Axminster carpets;—easy-acting bell-pulls;—gigantic
candelabras;—porcelain vases of classic
shape;—neat waiters in white aprons;—luxurious
lounges; and, to crown them all with the very height
of your pride,—the elegant Laura, the mistress, and the
guardian of your soul—moving amid the scene, like a
new Duchess of Vallière!
You catch chance sights here and there, of the
blue-eyed Madge: you see her, in her mother's household,
the earnest, and devoted daughter,—gliding
gracefully about her mother's cottage, the very type of
gentleness, and of duty. Yet withal, there are sparks
of spirit in her, that pique your pride,—lofty as it is.
You offer flowers, which she accepts with a kind
smile;—not of coquetry—but of simplest thankfulness.
She is not the girl to gratify your vanity with any
half-show of tenderness. And if there lived ever in
her heart an old girlish liking for the school-boy
Clarence, it is all gone before the romantic lover of the
elegant Laura; or at most, it lies in some obscure
corner of her soul, never to be brought to light.
You enter upon the new pursuits, which your father
has advised, with a lofty consciousness,—not only of the
strength of your mind, but of your heart. You relieve
your opening professional study, with long letters to
touched off with very dainty elaboration. And you
receive pleasant, gossipping notes in answer,—full of
quotations, but meaning very little.
Youth is in a grand flush, like the hot days of
ending summer; and pleasant dreams thrall your spirit,
like the smoky atmosphere that bathes the landscape of
an August day. Hope rides high in the Heavens, as
when the summer sun mounts nearest to the zenith.
Youth feels the fullness of maturity, before the second
season of life is ended: yet is it a vain maturity, and
all the glow is deceitful. Those fruits that ripen in
summer do not last. They are sweet; they are
glowing with gold; but they melt with a luscious
sweetness upon the lip. They do not give that
strength, and nutriment, which will bear a man bravely
through the coming chills of winter.
The last scene of summer changes now to the
cobwebbed ceiling of an attorney's office. Books of
law, scattered ingloriously at your elbow, speak dully to
the flush of your vanities. You are seated at your side
desk, where you have wrought at those heavy, mechanic
labors of drafting, which go before a knowledge of
your craft.
A letter is by you, which you regard with strange
feelings: it is yet unopened. It comes from Laura. It
exquisite elaboration. You have made your avowal
of feeling, as much like a poem, as your education
would admit. Indeed, it was a pretty letter,—promising,
not so much the trustful love of an earnest, and
devoted heart,—as the fervor of a passion which
consumed you, and glowed like a furnace through the
lines of your letter. It was a confession, in which your
vanity of intellect had taken very entertaining part; and
in which, your judgment was too cool to appear at all.
She must needs break out into raptures at such a
letter; and her own, will doubtless be tempered with
even greater passion.
It is well to shift your chair somewhat, so that
the clerks of the office may not see your emotion as
you read. It would be silly to manifest your exuberance
in a dismal, dark office of your instructing attorney.
One sighs rather for woods, and brooks, and sunshine,
in whose company, the hopes of youth stretch into
fulfillment.
We will look only at a closing passage:—
—“My friend Clarence will I trust beheve me,
when I say that his letter was a surprise to me. To
say that it was very grateful, would be what my
womanly vanity could not fail to claim. I only wish
that I was equal to the flattering portrait which he has
hardly believe that my matronly air should have quite
won his youthful heart. At least I shall try not to
believe it; and when I welcome him one day, the husband
of some fairy, who is worthy of his love, we will smile
together at the old lady, who once played the Circe
to his senses. Seriously, my friend Clarence, I know
your impulse of heart has carried you away; and that
in a year's time, you will smile with me, at your old
penchant for one so much your senior, and so ill-suited
to your years, as your true friend,
—Magnificent Miss Dalton!
Read it again. Stick your knife in the desk:—tut!
—you will break the blade! Fold up the letter carefully,
and toss it upon your pile of papers. Open
Chitty again;—pleasant reading is Chitty! Lean upon
your hand—your two hands;—so that no one will
catch sight of your face. Chitty is very interesting;—
how sparkling and imaginative!—what a depth and
flow of passion in Chitty!
The office is a capital place—so quiet and sunny.
Law is a delightful study—so captivating, and such
stores of romance! And then those trips to the Hall
offer such relief and variety;—especially just now.
It would be well not to betray your eagerness to go.
You can brush your hat a round or two, and take a
wash-stand.
You lengthen your walk, as you sometimes do, by a
stroll upon the Battery—though rarely, upon such
a blustering November day. You put your hands
in your pockets, and look out upon the tossing sea.
It is a fine sight—very fine. There are few finer
bays in the world than New York bay; either to look
at, or—for that matter—to sleep in. The ships ride
up thickly, dashing about the cold spray delightfully;
the little cutters gleam in the November sunshine, like
white flowers shivering in the wind.
The sky is rich—all mottled with cold, gray streaks
of cloud. The old apple-women, with their noses frost-bitten,
look cheerful, and blue. The ragged immigrants
in short-trowsers, and bell-crowned hats, stalk
about with a very happy expression, and very short
stemmed pipes; their yellow-haired babies look comfortably
red, and glowing. And the trees with their
scant, pinched foliage, have a charming, summer-like
effect!
Amid it all, the thoughts of the boudoir, and
harpsichord, and gold-finches, and Axminster carpets,
and sunshine, and Laura, are so very—very pleasant!
How delighted you would be to see her married to the
stout man in the red cravat, who gave her bouquets,
and strolled with her on the deck of the steamer upon
wore; and with what considerate forbearance he treated
you—calling you once or twice—Master Clarence!
It never occurred to you before, how much you must
be indebted to that pleasant, stout man.
You try sadly to be cheerful; you smile oddly;
your pride comes strongly to your help, but yet helps
you very little. It is not so much a broken heart, that
you have to mourn over, as a broken dream. You
seem to see in a hundred ways that had never occurred
to you before, the marks of her superior age. Above
all, it is manifest in the cool, and unimpassioned tone
of her letter. Yet, how kindly, withal! It would be
a relief to be angry.
New visions come to you, wakened by the broken
fancy which has just now eluded your grasp. You
will make yourself, if not old,—at least, gifted with the
force and dignity of age. You will be a man; and
build no more castles, until you can people them with
men! In an excess of pride, you even take umbrage
at the sex; they can have little appreciation of that
engrossing tenderness, of which you feel yourself to be
capable. Love shall henceforth be dead, and you
will live boldly without it.
—Just so, when some dark, eastern cloud-bank
shrouds for a morning, the sun of later August, we say
in our shivering pride—the winter is come early!
in a day, or an hour perhaps, the cloud will pass, and
the heavens glow again upon our ungrateful heads.
Well, it is even so, that the passionate dreams
of youth break up, and wither. Vanity becomes
tempered with wholesome pride; and passion yields to
the riper judgment of manhood;—even as the August
heats pass on, and over, into the genial glow of a
September sun. There is a strong growth in the
struggles against mortified pride; and then only, does
the youth get an ennobling consciousness of that
manhood which is dawning in him, when he has fairly
surmounted those puny vexations, which a wounded
vanity creates.
Now, your heart is driven home;—and that cherished
place, where, so little while ago, you wore your vanities
with an air, that mocked even your grief, and that
subdued your better nature, seems to stretch toward
you, over long miles of distance,—its wings of love;
and to welcome back to the sister's, and the father's
heart—not the self-sufficient, and vaunting youth,—
but the brother and son,—the school-boy, Clarence.
Like a thirsty child, you stray in thought, to that
fountain of cheer; and live again,—your vanity crushed,
your wild hope broken,—in the warm, and natural
affections of the boyish home.
Clouds weave the Summer into the season of
Autumn: and Youth rises from dashed hopes, into
the stature of a Man.
| Dream life | |