University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
WHICH TREATS OF ROMANCE.

There is no word in the English language
more unceremoniously and indefinitely kicked and
cuffed about, by what are called sensible people,
than the word romance. When Mr. Smith or
Mr. Stubbs has brought every wheel of life into
such range and order that it is one steady, daily
grind, — when they themselves have come into the
habits and attitudes of the patient donkey, who
steps round and round the endlessly turning wheel
of some machinery, then they fancy that they
have gotten “the victory that overcometh the
world.”

All but this dead grind, and the dollars that
come through the mill, is by them thrown into
one waste “catch-all” and labelled romance. Perhaps
there was a time in Mr. Smith's youth, — he
remembers it now, — when he read poetry, when
his cheek was wet with strange tears, when a little
song, ground out by an organ-grinder in the
street, had power to set his heart beating and

bring a mist before his eyes. Ah, in those days
he had a vision! — a pair of soft eyes stirred him
strangely; a little weak hand was laid on his
manhood, and it shook and trembled; and then
came all the humility, the aspiration, the fear, the
hope, the high desire, the troubling of the waters
by the descending angel of love, — and a little
more and Mr. Smith might have become a man,
instead of a banker! He thinks of it now, sometimes,
as he looks across the fireplace after dinner
and sees Mrs. Smith asleep, innocently shaking
the bouquet of pink bows and Brussels lace that
waves over her placid red countenance.

Mrs. Smith wasn't his first love, nor, indeed,
any love at all; but they agree reasonably well.
And as for poor Nellie, — well, she is dead and
buried, — all that was stuff and romance. Mrs.
Smith's money set him up in business, and Mrs.
Smith is a capital manager, and he thanks God
that he isn't romantic, and tells Smith Junior not
to read poetry or novels, and to stick to realities.

“This is the victory that overcometh the world,”
— to learn to be fat and tranquil, to have warm
fires and good dinners, to hang your hat on the
same peg at the same hour every day, to sleep
soundly all night, and never to trouble your head
with a thought or imagining beyond.

But there are many people besides Mr. Smith
who have gained this victory, — who have stran

gled their higher nature and buried it, and built
over its grave the structure of their life, the better
to keep it down.

The fascinating Mrs. T., whose life is a whirl
between ball and opera, point-lace, diamonds, and
schemings of admiration for herself, and of establishments
for her daughters, — there was a time,
if you will believe me, when that proud, worldly
woman was so humbled, under the touch of some
mighty power, that she actually thought herself
capable of being a poor man's wife. She thought
she could live in a little, mean house on no-matter-what-street,
with one servant, and make her
own bonnets and mend her own clothes, and
sweep the house Mondays, while Betty washed, —
all for what? All because she thought that there
was a man so noble, so true, so good, so high-minded,
that to live with him in poverty, to be
guided by him in adversity, to lean on him in
every rough place of life, was a something nobler,
better, purer, more satisfying, than French
laces, opera-boxes, and even Madame Roget's best
gowns.

Unfortunately, this was all romance, — there was
no such man. There was, indeed, a person of
very common, self-interested aims and worldly nature,
whom she had credited at sight with an unlimited
draft on all her better nature; and when
the hour of discovery came, she awoke from her

dream with a start and a laugh, and ever since
has despised aspiration, and been busy with the
realities of life, and feeds poor little Mary Jane,
who sits by her in the opera-box there, with all
the fruit which she has picked from the bitter tree
of knowledge. There is no end of the epigrams
and witticisms which she can throw out, this
elegant Mrs. T., on people who marry for love,
lead prosy, worky lives, and put on their best cap
with pink ribbons for Sunday. “Mary Jane shall
never make a fool of herself;” but, even as she
speaks, poor Mary Jane's heart is dying within
her at the vanishing of a pair of whiskers from
an opposite box, — which whiskers the poor little
fool has credited with a résumé drawn from her
own imaginings of all that is grandest and most
heroic, most worshipful in man. By-and-by, when
Mrs. T. finds the glamour has fallen on her daughter,
she wonders; she has “tried to keep novels
out of the girl's way, — where did she get these
notions?”

All prosaic, and all bitter, disenchanted people
talk as if poets and novelists made romance. They
do, — just as much as craters make volcanoes, —
no more. What is romance? whence comes it?
Plato spoke to the subject wisely, in his quaint
way, some two thousand years ago, when he said,
“Man's soul, in a former state, was winged and
soared among the gods and so it comes to pass,

that, in this life, when the soul, by the power of
music or poetry, or the sight of beauty, hath her
remembrance quickened, forthwith there is a struggling
and a pricking pain as of wings trying to
come forth, — even as children in teething.” And
if an old heathen, two thousand years ago, discoursed
thus gravely of the romantic part of our
nature, whence comes it that in Christian lands
we think in so pagan a way of it, and turn the
whole care of it to ballad-makers, romancers, and
opera-singers?

Let us look up in fear and reverence and say,
“God is the great maker of romance. He, from
whose hand came man and woman, — HE, who
strung the great harp of Existence with all its
wild and wonderful and manifold chords, and attuned
them to one another, — HE is the great Poet
of life.” Every impulse of beauty, of heroism
and every craving for purer love, fairer perfection,
nobler type and style of being than that which
closes like a prison-house around us, in the dim,
daily walk of life, is God's breath, God's impulse,
God's reminder to the soul that there is something
higher, sweeter, purer, yet to be attained.

Therefore, man or woman, when thy ideal is
shattered, — as shattered a thousand times it must
be, — when the vision fades, the rapture burns out,
turn not away in skepticism and bitterness, saying,
“There is nothing better for a man than that

he should eat and drink,” but rather cherish the
revelations of those hours as prophecies and foreshadowings
of something real and possible, yet to
be attained in the manhood of immortality. The
scoffing spirit that laughs at romance is an apple
of the Devil's own handing from the bitter tree of
knowledge; — it opens the eyes only to see eternal
nakedness.

If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating
friendship, — a boundless worship and belief in some
hero of your soul, — if ever you have so loved, that
all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations
have gone down like drift-wood before a river
flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you
even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your
whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering
before the feet of another, and all for nothing,
— if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still
give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse
of heaven. The door now shut will open again.
Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal
inheritance has been made known to you; treasure
it, as the highest honor of your being, that ever
you could so feel, — that so divine a guest ever
possessed your soul.

By such experiences are we taught the pathos,
the sacredness of life; and if we use them wisely,
our eyes will ever after be anointed to see what
poems, what romances, what sublime tragedies lie

around us in the daily walk of life, “written not
with ink, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” The
dullest street of the most prosaic town has matter
in it for more smiles, more tears, more intense excitement,
than ever were written in story or sung
in poem; the reality is there, of which the romancer
is the second-hand recorder.

So much of a plea we put in boldly, because
we foresee grave heads beginning to shake over
our history, and doubts rising in reverend and discreet
minds whether this history is going to prove
anything but a love-story, after all.

We do assure you, right reverend Sir, and you,
most discreet Madam, that it is not going to prove
anything else; and you will find, if you will follow
us, that there is as much romance burning
under the snow-banks of cold Puritan preciseness
as if Dr. Hopkins had been brought up to attend
operas instead of metaphysical preaching, and Mary
had been nourished on Byron's poetry instead of
“Edwards on the Affections.”

The innocent credulities, the subtle deceptions,
that were quietly at work under the grave, white
curls of the Doctor's wig, were exactly of the kind
which have beguiled man in all ages, when near the
sovereign presence of her who is born for his destiny;
— and as for Mary, what did it avail her that
she could say the Assembly's Catechism from end
to end without tripping, and that every habit of

her life beat time to practical realities, steadily as
the parlor clock? The wildest Italian singer or
dancer, nursed on nothing but excitement from her
cradle, never was more thoroughly possessed by the
awful and solemn mystery of woman's life than
this Puritan girl.

It is quite true, that, the next morning after
James's departure, she rose as usual in the dim
gray, and was to be seen opening the kitchen-door
just at the moment when the birds were giving
the first little drowsy stir and chirp, — and that she
went on setting the breakfast-table for the two
hired men, who were bound to the fields with the
oxen, — and that then she went on skimming cream
for the butter, and getting ready to churn, and
making up biscuit for the Doctor's breakfast, when
he and they should sit down together at a somewhat
later hour; and as she moved about, doing
all these things, she sung various scraps of old
psalm-tunes; and the good Doctor, who was then
busy with his early exercises of devotion, listened,
as he heard the voice, now here, now there, and
thought about angels and the Millennium. Solemnly
and tenderly there floated in at his open
study-window, through the breezy lilacs, mixed with
low of kine and bleat of sheep and hum of early
wakening life, the little silvery ripples of that singing,
somewhat mournful in its cadence, as if a
gentle soul were striving to hush itself to rest.

The words were those of the rough old version of
the Psalms then in use: —
And then came the busy patter of the little footsteps
without, the moving of chairs, the clink of
plates, as busy hands were arranging the table;
and then again there was a pause, and he thought
she seemed to come near to the open window of
the adjoining room, for the voice floated in clearer
and sadder: —

The tone of life in New England, so habitually
earnest and solemn, breathed itself in the grave
and plaintive melodies of the tunes then sung in
the churches; and so these words, though in the
saddest minor key, did not suggest to the listening
ear of the auditor anything more than that
pensive religious calm in which he delighted to

repose. A contrast indeed they were, in their melancholy
earnestness, to the exuberant carollings of
a robin, who, apparently attracted by them, perched
himself hard by in the lilacs, and struck up such
a merry roulade as quite diverted the attention of
the fair singer; — in fact, the intoxication breathed
in the strain of this little messenger, whom God
had feathered and winged and filled to the throat
with ignorant joy, came in singular contrast with
the sadder notes breathed by that creature of so
much higher mould and fairer clay, — that creature
born for an immortal life.

But the good Doctor was inly pleased when she
sung, — and when she stopped, looked up from his
Bible wistfully, as missing something, he knew not
what; for he scarce thought how pleasant the little
voice was, or knew he had been listening to
it, — and yet he was in a manner enchanted by it,
so thankful and happy that he exclaimed with fervor,
“The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places;
yea, I have a goodly heritage.”

So went the world with him, full of joy and
praise, because the voice and the presence wherein
lay his unsuspected life were securely near, so
certainly and constantly a part of his daily walk
that he had not even the trouble to wish for them.
But in that other heart how was it? — how with
the sweet saint that was talking to herself in
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs?

The good child had remembered her mother's
parting words the night before, — “Put your mind
upon your duties,” — and had begun her first conscious
exercise of thought with a prayer that grace
might be given her to do it. But even as she
spoke, mingling and interweaving with that golden
thread of prayer was another consciousness, a life
in another soul, as she prayed that the grace of
God might overshadow him, shield him from temptation,
and lead him up to heaven; and this prayer
so got the start of the other, that, ere she was
aware, she had quite forgotten self, and was feeling,
living, thinking in that other life.

The first discovery she made, when she looked out
into the fragrant orchard, whose perfumes steamed
in at her window, and listened to the first chirping
of birds among the old apple-trees, was one
that has astonished many a person before her; it
was this: she found that all that had made life
interesting to her was suddenly gone. She herself
had not known, that, for the month past, since
James came from sea, she had been living in an
enchanted land, — that Newport harbor, and every
rock and stone, and every mat of yellow seaweed
on the shore, that the two-mile road between the
cottage and the white house of Zebedee Marvyn,
every mullein-stalk, every juniper-tree, had all had
a light and a charm which were suddenly gone.
There had not been an hour in the day for the

last four weeks that had not had its unsuspected
interest, — because he was at the white house, because,
possibly, he might be going by, or coming
in; nay, even in church, when she stood up to
sing, and thought she was thinking only of God,
had she not been conscious of that tenor voice
that poured itself out by her side? and though
afraid to turn her head that way, had she not felt
that he was there every moment, — heard every
word of the sermon and prayer for him? The
very vigilant care which her mother had taken to
prevent private interviews had only served to increase
the interest by throwing over it the veil of
constraint and mystery. Silent looks, involuntary
starts, things indicated, not expressed, — these are
the most dangerous, the most seductive aliment
of thought to a delicate and sensitive nature. If
things were said out, they might not be said
wisely, — they might repel by their freedom, or disturb
by their unfitness; but what is only looked
is sent into the soul through the imagination,
which makes of it all that the ideal faculties
desire.

In a refined and exalted nature, it is very seldom
that the feeling of love, when once thoroughly
aroused, bears any sort of relation to the
reality of the object. It is commonly an enkindling
of the whole power of the soul's love for
whatever she considers highest and fairest; it is,

in fact, the love of something divine and unearthly,
which, by a sort of illusion, connects
itself with a personality. Properly speaking, there
is but One true, eternal Object of all that the
mind conceives, in this trance of its exaltation.
Disenchantment must come, of course; and in a
love which terminates in happy marriage, there is
a tender and gracious process, by which, without
shock or violence, the ideal is gradually sunk in
the real, which, though found faulty and earthly,
is still ever tenderly remembered as it seemed
under the morning light of that enchantment.

What Mary loved so passionately, that which
came between her and God in every prayer, was
not the gay, young, dashing sailor, — sudden in
anger, imprudent of speech, and, though generous
in heart, yet worldly in plans and schemings, —
but her own ideal of a grand and noble man, —
such a man as she thought he might become.
He stood glorified before her, an image of the
strength that overcomes things physical, of the
power of command which controls men and circumstances,
of the courage which disdains fear, of
the honor which cannot lie, of constancy which
knows no shadow of turning, of tenderness which
protects the weak, and, lastly, of religious loyalty
which should lay the golden crown of its perfected
manhood at the feet of a Sovereign Lord
and Redeemer. This was the man she loved, and

with this regal mantle of glories she invested the
person called James Marvyn; and all that she saw
and felt to be wanting she prayed for with the
faith of a believing woman.

Nor was she wrong; — for, as to every leaf and
every flower there is an ideal to which the growth
of the plant is constantly urging, so is there an
ideal to every human being, — a perfect form in
which it might appear, were every defect removed
and every characteristic excellence stimulated to
the highest point. Once in an age, God sends to
some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false
imagining, an unreal character, but, looking through
all the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us
the divine ideal of our nature, — loves, not the
man that we are, but the angel that we may be.
Such friends seem inspired by a divine gift of
prophecy, — like the mother of St. Augustine, who,
in the midst of the wayward, reckless youth of
her son, beheld him in a vision, standing, clothed
in white, a ministering priest at the right hand
of God, — as he has stood for long ages since.
Could a mysterious foresight unveil to us this
resurrection form of the friends with whom we
daily walk, compassed about with mortal infirmity,
we should follow them with faith and reverence
through all the disguises of human faults and
weaknesses, “waiting for the manifestation of the
sons of God.”

But these wonderful soul-friends, to whom God
grants such perception, are the exceptions in life;
yet sometimes are we blessed with one who sees
through us, as Michel Angelo saw through a
block of marble, when he attacked it in a divine
fervor, declaring that an angel was imprisoned
within it; and it is often the resolute and delicate
hand of such a friend that sets the angel
free.

There be soul-artists, who go through this world,
looking among their fellows with reverence, as
one looks amid the dust and rubbish of old shops
for hidden works of Titian and Leonardo, and,
finding them, however cracked or torn or painted
over with tawdry daubs of pretenders, immediately
recognize the divine original, and set themselves
to cleanse and restore. Such be God's real
priests, whose ordination and anointing are from
the Holy Spirit; and he who hath not this enthusiasm
is not ordained of God, though whole
synods of bishops laid hands on him.

Many such priests there be among women; —
for to this silent ministry their nature calls them,
endowed, as it is, with fineness of fibre, and a
subtile keenness of perception outrunning slow-footed
reason; — and she of whom we write was
one of these.

At this very moment, while the crimson wings
of morning were casting delicate reflections on

tree, and bush, and rock, they were also reddening
innumerable waves round a ship that sailed
alone, with a wide horizon stretching like an eternity
around it; and in the advancing morning
stood a young man thoughtfully looking off into
the ocean, with a book in his hand, — James Marvyn,
— as truly and heartily a creature of this
material world as Mary was of the invisible and
heavenly.

There are some who seem made to live; — life
is such a joy to them, their senses are so fully en
rapport with all outward things, the world is so
keenly appreciable, so much a part of themselves,
they are so conscious of power and victory in the
government and control of material things, — that
the moral and invisible life often seems to hang
tremulous and unreal in their minds, like the pale,
faded moon in the light of a gorgeous sunrise.
When brought face to face with the great truths
of the invisible world, they stand related to the
higher wisdom much like the gorgeous, gay Alcibiades
to the divine Socrates, or like the young
man in Holy Writ to Him for whose appearing
Socrates longed; — they gaze, imperfectly comprehending,
and at the call of ambition or riches
turn away sorrowing.

So it was with James; — in the full tide of
worldly energy and ambition, there had been forming
over his mind that hard crust, that skepticism

of the spiritual and exalted, which men of the
world delight to call practical sense; he had been
suddenly arrested and humbled by the revelation
of a nature so much nobler than his own that he
seemed worthless in his own eyes. He had asked
for love; but when such love unveiled itself, he
felt like the disciple of old in the view of a diviner
tenderness, — “Depart from me, for I am a
sinful man.”

But it is not often that all the current of a
life is reversed in one hour; and now, as James
stood on the ship's deck, with life passing around
him, and everything drawing upon the strings
of old habits, Mary and her religion recurred to
his mind as some fair, sweet, inexplicable vision.
Where she stood he saw; but how he was ever
to get there seemed as incomprehensible as how
a mortal man should pillow his form on sunset
clouds.

He held the little Bible in his hand as if it
were some amulet charmed by the touch of a
superior being; but when he strove to read it, his
thoughts wandered, and he shut it, troubled and
unsatisfied. Yet there were within him yearnings
and cravings, wants never felt before, the beginning
of that trouble which must ever precede the
soul's rise to a higher plane of being.

There we leave him. We have shown you

now our three different characters, each one in its
separate sphere, feeling the force of that strongest
and holiest power with which it has pleased our
great Author to glorify this mortal life.