9. A SHADOW.
I SHALL always remember one winter evening, a
little before Christmas-time, when I took a long,
solitary walk in the outskirts of the town. The
cold sunset had left a trail of orange light along
the horizon, the dry snow tinkled beneath my feet,
and the early stars had a keen, clear lustre that
matched well with the sharp sound and the frosty
sensation. For some time I had walked toward
the gleam of a distant window, and as I approached,
the light showed more and more clearly
through the white curtains of a little cottage by
the road. I stopped, on reaching it, to enjoy the
suggestion of domestic cheerfulness in contrast
with the dark outside. I could not see the inmates,
nor they me; but something of human
sympathy came from that steadfast ray.
As I looked, a film of shade kept appearing
and disappearing with rhythmic regularity in a
corner of the window, as if some one might be
sitting in a low rocking-chair close by. Presently
the motion ceased, and suddenly across the curtain
came the shadow of a woman. She raised in her
arms the shadow of a baby, and kissed it; then
both disappeared, and I walked on.
What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow
of a mother's love, so traced as to endure forever?
In this picture of mine, the group actually
moved upon the canvas. The curtains that
hid it revealed it. The ecstasy of human love
passed in brief, intangible panorama before me. It
was something seen, yet unseen; airy, yet solid; a
type, yet a reality; fugitive, yet destined to last
in my memory while I live. It said more to me
than would any Madonna of Raphael's, for his
mother never kisses her child. I believe I have
never passed over that road since then, never seen
the house, never heard the names of its occupants.
Their character, their history, their fate, are all unknown.
But these two will always stand for me
as disembodied types of humanity, — the Mother
and the Child; they seem nearer to me than my
immediate neighbors, yet they are as ideal and
impersonal as the goddesses of Greece or as Plato's
archetypal man.
I know not the parentage of that child, whether
black or white, native or foreign, rich or poor. It
makes no difference. The presence of a baby
equalizes all social conditions. On the floor of
some Southern hut, scarcely so comfortable as a
dog-kennel, I have seen a dusky woman look down
upon her infant with such an expression of delight
as painter never drew. No social culture can make
a mother's face more than a mother's, as no wealth
can make a nursery more than a place where children
dwell. Lavish thousands of dollars on your
baby-clothes, and after all the child is prettiest
when every garment is laid aside. That becoming
nakedness, at least, may adorn the chubby darling
of the poorest home.
I know not what triumph or despair may have
come and gone through that wayside house since
then, what jubilant guests may have entered, what
lifeless form passed out. What anguish or what
sin may have come between that woman and that
child; through what worlds they now wander, and
whether separate or in each other's arms, — this is
all unknown. Fancy can picture other joys to
which the first happiness was but the prelude,
and, on the other hand, how easy to imagine some
special heritage of human woe and call it theirs!
"I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality;
And Grief, uneasy lover, might not rest
Save when he sat within the touch of thee."
Nay, the foretaste of that changed fortune may
have been present, even in the kiss. Who knows
what absorbing emotion, besides love's immediate
impulse, may have been uttered in that shadowy
embrace? There may have been some contrition
for ill-temper or neglect, or some triumph over
ruinous temptation, or some pledge of immortal
patience, or some heart-breaking prophecy of bereavement.
It may have been simply an act of
habitual tenderness, or it may have been the wild
reaction toward a neglected duty; the renewed
self-consecration of the saint, or the joy of the
sinner that repenteth. No matter. She kissed
the baby. The feeling of its soft flesh, the busy
struggle of its little arms between her hands, the
impatient pressure of its little feet against her
knees, — these were the same, whatever the mood
or circumstance beside. They did something to
equalize joy and sorrow, honor and shame. Maternal
love is love, whether a woman be a wife or
only a mother. Only a mother!
The happiness beneath that roof may, perhaps,
have never reached so high a point as at that precise
moment of my passing. In the coarsest household,
the mother of a young child is placed on a
sort of pedestal of care and tenderness, at least for
a time. She resumes something of the sacredness
and dignity of the maiden. Coleridge ranks as
the purest of human emotions that of a husband
towards a wife who has a baby at her breast, — "a
feeling how free from sensual desire, yet how different
from friendship!" And to the true mother
however cultivated, or however ignorant, this period
of early parentage is happier than all else, in spite
of its exhausting cares. In that delightful book,
the "Letters" of Mrs. Richard Trench (mother of
the well-known English writer), the most agreeable
passage is perhaps that in which, after looking
back upon a life spent in the most brilliant society
of Europe, she gives the palm of happiness
to the time when she was a young mother. She
writes to her god-daughter: "I believe it is the
happiest time of any woman's life, who has affectionate
feelings, and is blessed with healthy and
well-disposed children. I know at least that
neither the gayeties and boundless hopes of early
life, nor the more grave pursuits and deeper affections
of later years, are by any means comparable
in my recollection with the serene, yet lively
pleasure of seeing my children playing on the
grass, enjoying their little temperate supper, or
repeating 'with holy look' their simple prayers,
and undressing for bed, growing prettier for every
part of their dress they took off, and at last lying
down, all freshness and love, in complete happiness,
and an amiable contest for mamma's last kiss."
That kiss welcomed the child into a world where
joy predominates. The vast multitude of human
beings enjoy existence and wish to live. They all
have their earthly life under their own control.
Some religions sanction suicide; the Christian
Scriptures nowhere explicitly forbid it; and yet
it is a rare thing. Many persons sigh for death
when it seems far off, but the desire vanishes
when the boat upsets, or the locomotive runs off
the track, or the measles set in. A wise physician
once said to me: "I observe that every one wishes
to go to heaven, but I observe that most people
are willing to take a great deal of very disagreeable
medicine first." The lives that one least
envies — as of the Digger Indian or the outcast
boy in the city — are yet sweet to the living.
"They have only a pleasure like that of the
brutes," we say with scorn. But what a racy and
substantial pleasure is that! The flashing speed of
the swallow in the air, the cool play of the minnow
in the water, the dance of twin butterflies
round a thistle-blossom, the thundering gallop of
the buffalo across the prairie, nay, the clumsy walk
of the grizzly bear; it were doubtless enough to
reward existence, could we have joy like such as
these, and ask no more. This is the hearty physical
basis of animated life, and as step by step the
savage creeps up to the possession of intellectual
manhood, each advance brings with it new sorrow
and new joy, with the joy always in excess.
There are many who will utterly disavow this
creed that life is desirable in itself. A fair woman
in a ball-room, exquisitely dressed, and possessed
of all that wealth could give, once declared to me
her belief — and I think honestly — that no person
over thirty was consciously happy, or would
wish to live, but for the fear of death. There could
not even be pleasure in contemplating one's children,
she asserted, since they were living in such a
world of sorrow. Asking the opinion, within half
an hour, of another woman as fair and as favored
by fortune, I found directly the opposite verdict.
"For my part I can truly say," she answered, "that
I enjoy every moment I live." The varieties of
temperament and of physical condition will always
afford us these extremes; but the truth lies
between them, and most persons will endure many
sorrows and still find life sweet.
And the mother's kiss welcomes the child into
a world where good predominates as well as joy.
What recreants must we be, in an age that has
abolished slavery in America and popularized the
governments of all Europe, if we doubt that the
tendency of man is upward! How much that
the world calls selfishness is only generosity with
narrow walls, — a too exclusive solicitude to maintain
a wife in luxury or make one's children rich!
In an audience of rough people a generous sentiment
always brings down the house. In the
tumult of war both sides applaud an heroic deed.
A courageous woman, who had traversed alone, on
benevolent errands, the worst parts of New York
told me that she never felt afraid except in the
solitudes of the country; wherever there was a
crowd, she found a protector. A policeman of
great experience once spoke to me with admiration.
of the fidelity of professional thieves to each other,
and the risks they would run for the women whom
they loved; when "Bristol Bill" was arrested, he
said, there was found upon the burglar a set of
false keys, not quite finished, by which he would
certainly, within twenty-four hours, have had his
mistress out of jail. Parent-Duchatelet found always
the remains of modesty among the fallen
women of Paris hospitals; and Mayhew, amid the
London outcasts, says that he thinks better of
human nature every day. Even among politicians,
whom it is our American fashion to revile as the
chief of sinners, there is less of evil than of good.
In Wilberforce's "Memoirs" there is an account
of his having once asked Mr. Pitt whether his long
experience as Prime Minister had made him think
well or ill of his fellow-men. Mr. Pitt answered,
"Well"; and his successor, Lord Melbourne, being
asked the same question, answered, after a little
reflection, "My opinion is the same as that of Mr.
Pitt."
Let us have faith. It was a part of the vigor
of the old Hebrew tradition to rejoice when a man-child
was born into the world; and the maturer
strength of nobler ages should rejoice over a
woman-child as well. Nothing human is wholly
sad, until it is effete and dying out. Where there
is life there is promise. "Vitality is always hopeful,"
was the verdict of the most refined and clear-sighted
woman who has yet explored the rough
mining villages of the Rocky Mountains. There
is apt to be a certain coarse virtue in rude health;
as the Germanic races were purest when least civilized,
and our American Indians did not unlearn
chastity till they began to decay. But even where
vigor and vice are found together, they still may
hold a promise for the next generation. Out of
the strong cometh forth sweetness. Parisian wickedness
is not so discouraging merely because it is
wicked, as from a suspicion that it is draining
the life-blood of the nation. A mob of miners or
of New York bullies may be uncomfortable neighbors,
and may make a man of refinement hesitate
whether to stop his ears or to feel for his revolver;
but they hold more promise for the coming generations
than the line which ends in Madame Bovary or the Vicomte de Camors.
But behind that cottage curtain, at any rate, a
new and prophetic life had begun. I cannot fore-tell
that child's future, but I know something of
its past. The boy may grow up into a criminal,
the woman into an outcast, yet the baby was
beloved. It came "not in utter nakedness." It
found itself heir of the two prime essentials of
existence, — life and love. Its first possession was
a woman's kiss; and in that heritage the most
important need of its career was guaranteed. "An
ounce of mother," says the Spanish proverb, "is
worth a pound of clergy." Jean Paul says that in
life every successive influence affects us less and
less, so that the circumnavigator of the globe is
less influenced by all the nations he has seen than
by his nurse. Well may the child imbibe that
reverence for motherhood which is the first need
of man. Where woman is most a slave, she is at
least sacred to her son. The Turkish Sultan must
prostrate himself at the door of his mother's apartments,
and were he known to have insulted her,
it would make his throne tremble. Among the
savage African Touaricks, if two parents disagree,
it is to the mother that the child's obedience
belongs. Over the greater part of the earth's
surface, the foremost figures in all temples are the
Mother and Child. Christian and Buddhist
nations, numbering together two thirds of the
world's population, unite in this worship. Into
the secrets of the ritual that baby in the window
had already received initiation.
And how much spiritual influence may in turn
have gone forth from that little one! The coarsest
father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment
of his baby's birth; he scarcely sees it when
awake, and yet it is with him all the time. Every
stroke he strikes is for his child. New social aims,
new moral motives, come vaguely up to him. The
London costermonger told Mayhew that he thought
every man would like his son or daughter to have a
better start in the world than his own. After all,
there is no tonic like the affections. Philosophers
express wonder that the divine laws should give to
some young girl, almost a child, the custody of an
immortal soul. But what instruction the baby
brings to the mother! She learns patience, self-control,
endurance; her very arm grows strong, so
that she can hold the dear burden longer than the
father can. She learns to understand character,
too, by dealing with it. "In training my first
children," said a wise mother to me, "I thought
that all were born just the same, and that I was
wholly responsible for what they should become.
I learned by degrees that each had a temperament
of its own, which I must study before I could
teach it." And thus, as the little ones grow older,
their dawning instincts guide those of the parents;
their questions suggest new answers, and to have
loved them is a liberal education.
For the height of heights is love. The philosopher
dries into a skeleton like that he investigates,
unless love teaches him. He is blind among his
microscopes, unless he sees in the humblest human
soul a revelation that dwarfs all the world beside.
While he grows gray in ignorance among his
crucibles, every girlish mother is being illuminated
by every kiss of her child. That house is so far
sacred, which holds within its walls this new-born
heir of eternity. But to dwell on these high
mysteries would take us into depths beyond the
present needs of mother or of infant, and it is
better that the greater part of the baby-life should
be that of an animated toy.
Perhaps it is well for all of us that we should
live mostly on the surfaces of things and should
play with life, to avoid taking it too hard. In a
nursery the youngest child is a little more than a
doll, and the doll is a little less than a child.
What spell does fancy weave on earth like that
which the one of these small beings performs for
the other? This battered and tattered doll, this
shapeless, featureless, possibly legless creature,
whose mission it is to be dragged by one arm, or
stood upon its head in the bathing-tub, until it
finally reverts to the rag-bag whence it came, —
what an affluence of breathing life is thrown around
it by one touch of dawning imagination! Its
little mistress will find all joy unavailing without
its sympathetic presence, will confide every emotion
to its pen-and-ink ears, and will weep passionate
tears if its extremely soiled person is pricked
when its clothes are mended. What psychologist,
what student of the human heart, has ever applied
his subtile analysis to the emotions of a child
toward her doll?
I read lately the charming autobiography of a
little girl of eight years, written literally from her
own dictation. Since "Pet Marjorie" I have seen
no such actual self-revelation on the part of a
child. In the course of her narration she describes,
with great precision and correctness, the travels of
the family through Europe in the preceding year,
assigning usually the place of importance to her
doll, who appears simply as "My Baby." Nothing
can be more grave, more accurate, more serious
than the whole history, but nothing in it seems
quite so real and alive as the doll. "When we
got to Nice, I was sick. The next morning the
doctor came, and he said I had something that was
very much like scarlet fever. Then I had Annie
take care of baby, and keep her away, for I was
afraid she would get the fever. She used to cry
to come to me, but I knew it wouldn't be good
for her."
What firm judgment is here, what tenderness
without weakness, what discreet motherhood!
When Christmas came, it appears that baby hung
up her stocking with the rest. Her devoted parent
had bought for her a slate with a real pencil.
Others provided thimble and scissors and bodkin
and a spool of thread, and a travelling-shawl with
a strap, and a cap with tarletan ruffles. "I found
baby with the cap on, early in the morning, and
she was so pleased she almost jumped out of my
arms." Thus in the midst of visits to the Coliseum
and St. Peter's, the drama of early affection goes
always on. "I used to take her to hear the band,
in the carriage, and she went everywhere I did."
But the love of all dolls, as of other pets, must
end with a tragedy, and here it comes. "The
next place we went to was Lucerne. There was a
lovely lake there, but I had a very sad time. One
day I thought I'd take baby down to breakfast,
and, as I was going up stairs, my foot slipped and
baby broke her head. And O, I felt so bad! and
I cried out, and I ran up stairs to Annie, and
mamma came, and O, we were all so sorry! And
mamma said she thought I could get another
head, but I said, 'It won't be the same baby.'
And mamma said, maybe we could make it
seem so."
At this crisis the elder brother and sister departed
for Mount Righi. "They were going to
stay all night, and mamma and I stayed at home
to take care of each other. I felt very bad about
baby and about their going, too. After they went,
mamma and I thought we would go to the little
town and see what we could find." After many
difficulties, a waxen head was discovered. "Mamma
bought it, and we took it home and put it on
baby; but I said it wasn't like my real baby,
only it was better than having no child at all!"
This crushing bereavement, this reluctant acceptance
of a child by adoption, to fill the vacant
heart, — how real and formidable is all this rehearsal
of the tragedies of maturer years! I knew
an instance in which the last impulse of ebbing
life was such a gush of imaginary motherhood.
A dear friend of mine, whose sweet charities
prolong into a third generation the unbounded
benevolence of old Isaac Hopper, used to go at
Christmas-time with dolls and other gifts to the
poor children on Randall's Island. Passing the
bed of a little girl whom the physician pronounced
to be unconscious and dying, the kind visitor
insisted on putting a doll into her arms. Instantly
the eyes of the little invalid opened, and she
pressed the gift eagerly to her heart, murmuring
over it and caressing it. The matron afterwards
wrote that the child died within two hours, wearing
a happy face, and still clinging to her new-found treasure.
And beginning with this transfer of all human
associations to a doll, the child's life interfuses
itself readily among all the affairs of the elders.
In its presence, formality vanishes, the most
oppressive ceremonial is a little relieved when
children enter. Their influence is pervasive and
irresistible, like that of water, which adapts itself
to any landscape, — always takes its place, welcome
or unwelcome, — keeps its own level and seems
always to have its natural and proper margin.
Out of doors how children mingle with nature, and
seem to begin just where birds and butterflies
leave off! Leigh Hunt, with his delicate perceptions,
paints this well: "The voices of children
seem as natural to the early morning as the voice
of the birds. The suddenness, the lightness, the
loudness, the sweet confusion, the sparkling gayety,
seem alike in both. The sudden little jangle is
now here and now there; and now a single voice
calls to another, and the boy is off like the bird."
So Heine, with deeper thoughtfulness, noticed the
"intimacy with the trees" of the little wood-gatherer
in the Hartz Mountains; soon the child
whistled like a linnet, and the other birds all
answered him; then he disappeared in the thicket
with his bare feet and his bundle of brushwood.
"Children," thought Heine, "are younger than we,
and can still remember the time when they were
trees or birds, and can therefore understand and
speak their language; but we are grown old, and
have too many cares, and too much jurisprudence
and bad poetry in our heads."
But why go to literature for a recognition of
what one may see by opening one's eyes? Before
my window there is a pool, two rods square, that
is haunted all winter by children, — clearing away
the snow of many a storm, if need be, and mining
downward till they strike the ice. I look this
morning from the window, and the pond is bare.
In a moment I happen to look again, and it is
covered with a swarm of boys; a great migrating
flock has settled upon it, as if swooping down
from parts unknown to scream and sport themselves
here. The air is full of their voices; they
have all tugged on their skates instantaneously, as
it were by magic. Now they are in a confused
cluster, now they sweep round and round in a
circle, now it is broken into fragments and as
quickly formed again; games are improvised and
abandoned; there seems to be no plan or leader,
but all do as they please, and yet somehow act in
concert, and all chatter all the time. Now they
have alighted, every one, upon the bank of snow
that edges the pond, each scraping a little hollow
in which to perch. Now every perch is vacant
again, for they are all in motion; each moment
increases the jangle of shrill voices, — since a
boy's outdoor whisper to his nearest crony is as if
he was hailing a ship in the offing, — and what
they are all saying can no more be made out than
if they were a flock of gulls or blackbirds. I look
away from the window once more, and when I
glance out again there is not a boy in sight. They
have whirled away like snowbirds, and the little
pool sleeps motionless beneath the cheerful wintry
sun. Who but must see how gradually the joyous
life of the animal rises through childhood into
man, — since the soaring gnats, the glancing
fishes, the sliding seals are all represented in
this mob of half-grown boyhood just released
from school.
If I were to choose among all gifts and qualities
that which, on the whole, makes life pleasantest,
I should select the love of children. No circumstance
can render this world wholly a solitude to
one who has that possession. It is a freemasonry.
Wherever one goes, there are the little brethren
and sisters of the mystic tie. No diversity of race
or tongue makes much difference. A smile speaks
the universal language. "If I value myself on
anything," said the lonely Hawthorne, "it is on
having a smile that children love." They are
such prompt little beings; they require so little
prelude; hearts are won in two minutes, at that
frank period, and so long as you are true to them
they will be true to you. They need no argument,
no bribery. They have a hearty appetite
for gifts, no doubt, but it is not for these that
they love the giver. Take the wealth of the
world and lavish it with counterfeited affection:
I will win all the children's hearts away from
you by empty-handed love. The gorgeous toys
will dazzle them for an hour; then their instincts
will revert to their natural friends. In visiting a
house where there are children I do not like to
take them presents: it is better to forego the
pleasure of the giving than to divide the welcome
between yourself and the gift. Let that follow
after you are gone.
It is an exaggerated compliment to women when
we ascribe to them alone this natural sympathy
with childhood. It is an individual, not a sexual
trait, and is stronger in many men than in many
women. It is nowhere better exhibited in literature
than where the happy Wilhelm Meister takes
his boy by the hand, to lead him "into the free
and lordly world." Such love is not universal
among the other sex, though men, in that humility
which so adorns their natures, keep up the pleasing
fiction that it is. As a general rule any little girl
feels some glimmerings of emotion towards anything
that can pass for a doll, but it does not follow
that, when grown older, she will feel as ready an
instinct toward every child. Try it. Point out to
a woman some bundle of blue-and-white or white-and-scarlet
in some one's arms at the next street
corner. Ask her, "Do you love that baby?"
Not one woman in three will say promptly, "Yes."
The others will hesitate, will bid you wait till they
are nearer, till they can personally inspect the
little thing and take an inventory of its traits; it
may be dirty, too; it may be diseased. Ah! but
this is not to love children, and you might as well
be a man. To love children is to love childhood,
instinctively, at whatever distance, the first impulse
being one of attraction, though it may be
checked by later discoveries. Unless your heart
commands at least as long a range as your eye, it
is not worth much. The dearest saint in my calendar
never entered a railway car that she did not
look round for a baby, which, when discovered,
must always be won at once into her arms. If it
was dirty, she would have been glad to bathe it;
if ill, to heal it. It would not have seemed to her
anything worthy the name of love, to seek only
those who were wholesome and clean. Like the
young girl in Holmes's most touching poem, she
would have claimed as her own the outcast child
whom nurses and physicians had abandoned.
"'Take her, dread Angel! Break in love
This bruised reed and make it thine!'
No voice descended from above,
But Avis answered, 'She is mine!'"
When I think of the self-devotion which the
human heart can contain — of those saintly souls
that are in love with sorrow, and that yearn to
shelter all weakness and all grief -it inspires an
unspeakable confidence that there must also be an
instinct of parentage beyond this human race, a
heart of hearts, cor cordium. As we all crave
something to protect, so we long to feel ourselves
protected. We are all infants before the Infinite;
and as I turned from that cottage window to the
resplendent sky, it was easy to fancy that mute
embrace, that shadowy symbol of affection, expanding
from the narrow lattice till it touched the
stars, gathering every created soul into the arms
of Immortal Love.