Pleasant is a rainy winter’s day within-doors. The best study for such
a day—or the best amusement: call it what you will—is a book of travels
describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one which is mistily
presented through the windows. I have experienced that Fancy is then
most successful in imparting distinct shapes and vivid colors to the
objects which the author has spread upon his page, and that his words
become magic spells to summon up a thousand varied pictures. Strange
landscapes glimmer through the familiar walls of the room, and
outlandish figures thrust themselves almost within the sacred precincts
of the hearth. Small as my chamber is, it has space enough to contain
the ocean-like circumference of an Arabian desert, its parched sands
tracked by the long line of a caravan with the camels patiently
journeying through the heavy sunshine. Though my ceiling be not lofty,
yet I can pile up the mountains of Central Asia beneath it till their
summits shine far above the clouds of the middle atmosphere. And with
my humble means—a wealth that is not taxable—I can transport hither the
magnificent merchandise of an Oriental bazaar, and call a crowd of
purchasers from distant countries to pay a fair profit for the precious
articles which are displayed on all sides. True it is, however, that
amid the bustle of traffic, or whatever else may seem to be going on
around me, the raindrops will occasionally be heard to patter against
my window-panes, which look forth upon one of the quietest streets in a
New England town. After a time, too, the visions vanish, and will not
appear again at my bidding. Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of
unreality depresses my spirits, and impels me to venture out before the
clock shall strike bedtime to satisfy myself that the world is not
entirely made up of such shadowy materials as have busied me throughout
the day. A dreamer may dwell so long among fantasies that the things
without him will seem as unreal as those within.
When eve has fairly set in, therefore, I sally forth, tightly buttoning
my shaggy overcoat and hoisting my umbrella, the silken dome of which
immediately resounds with the heavy drumming of the invisible
raindrops. Pausing on the lowest doorstep, I contrast the warmth and
cheerfulness of my deserted fireside with the drear obscurity and chill
discomfort into which I am about to plunge. Now come fearful auguries
innumerable as the drops of rain. Did not my manhood cry shame upon me,
I should turn back within-doors, resume my elbow-chair, my slippers and
my book, pass such an evening of sluggish enjoyment as the day has
been, and go to bed inglorious. The same shivering reluctance, no
doubt, has quelled for a moment the adventurous spirit of many a
traveller when his feet, which were destined to measure the earth
around, were leaving their last tracks in the home-paths.
In my own case poor human nature may be allowed a few misgivings. I
look upward and discern no sky, not even an unfathomable void, but only
a black, impenetrable nothingness, as though heaven and all its lights
were blotted from the system of the universe. It is as if Nature were
dead and the world had put on black and the clouds were weeping for
her. With their tears upon my cheek I turn my eyes earthward, but find
little consolation here below. A lamp is burning dimly at the distant
corner, and throws just enough of light along the street to show, and
exaggerate by so faintly showing, the perils and difficulties which
beset my path. Yonder dingily-white remnant of a huge snowbank, which
will yet cumber the sidewalk till the latter days of March, over or
through that wintry waste must I stride onward. Beyond lies a certain
Slough of Despond, a concoction of mud and liquid filth, ankle-deep,
leg-deep, neck-deep—in a word, of unknown bottom—on which the lamplight
does not even glimmer, but which I have occasionally watched in the
gradual growth of its horrors from morn till nightfall. Should I
flounder into its depths, farewell to upper earth! And hark! how
roughly resounds the roaring of a stream the turbulent career of which
is partially reddened by the gleam of the lamp, but elsewhere brawls
noisily through the densest gloom! Oh, should I be swept away in
fording that impetuous and unclean torrent, the coroner will have a job
with an unfortunate gentleman who would fain end his troubles anywhere
but in a mud-puddle.
Pshaw! I will linger not another instant at arm’s-length from these dim
terrors, which grow more obscurely formidable the longer I delay to
grapple with them. Now for the onset, and, lo! with little damage save
a dash of rain in the face and breast, a splash of mud high up the
pantaloons and the left boot full of ice-cold water, behold me at the
corner of the street. The lamp throws down a circle of red light around
me, and twinkling onward from corner to corner I discern other beacons,
marshalling my way to a brighter scene. But this is a lonesome and
dreary spot. The tall edifices bid gloomy defiance to the storm with
their blinds all closed, even as a man winks when he faces a spattering
gust. How loudly tinkles the collected rain down the tin spouts! The
puffs of wind are boisterous, and seem to assail me from various
quarters at once. I have often observed that this corner is a haunt and
loitering-place for those winds which have no work to do upon the deep
dashing ships against our iron-bound shores, nor in the forest tearing
up the sylvan giants with half a rood of soil at their vast roots. Here
they amuse themselves with lesser freaks of mischief. See, at this
moment, how they assail yonder poor woman who is passing just within
the verge of the lamplight! One blast struggles for her umbrella and
turns it wrong side outward, another whisks the cape of her cloak
across her eyes, while a third takes most unwarrantable liberties with
the lower part of her attire. Happily, the good dame is no gossamer,
but a figure of rotundity and fleshly substance; else would these
aerial tormentors whirl her aloft like a witch upon a broomstick, and
set her down, doubtless, in the filthiest kennel hereabout.
From hence I tread upon firm pavements into the centre of the town.
Here there is almost as brilliant an illumination as when some great
victory has been won either on the battlefield or at the polls. Two
rows of shops with windows down nearly to the ground cast a glow from
side to side, while the black night hangs overhead like a canopy, and
thus keeps the splendor from diffusing itself away. The wet sidewalks
gleam with a broad sheet of red light. The raindrops glitter as if the
sky were pouring down rubies. The spouts gush with fire. Methinks the
scene is an emblem of the deceptive glare which mortals throw around
their footsteps in the moral world, thus bedazzling themselves till
they forget the impenetrable obscurity that hems them in, and that can
be dispelled only by radiance from above.
And, after all, it is a cheerless scene, and cheerless are the
wanderers in it. Here comes one who has so long been familiar with
tempestuous weather that he takes the bluster of the storm for a
friendly greeting, as if it should say, “How fare ye, brother?” He is a
retired sea-captain wrapped in some nameless garment of the pea-jacket
order, and is now laying his course toward the marine-insurance office,
there to spin yarns of gale and shipwreck with a crew of old seadogs
like himself. The blast will put in its word among their hoarse voices,
and be understood by all of them. Next I meet an unhappy slipshod
gentleman with a cloak flung hastily over his shoulders, running a race
with boisterous winds and striving to glide between the drops of rain.
Some domestic emergency or other has blown this miserable man from his
warm fireside in quest of a doctor. See that little vagabond! How
carelessly he has taken his stand right underneath a spout while
staring at some object of curiosity in a shop-window! Surely the rain
is his native element; he must have fallen with it from the clouds, as
frogs are supposed to do.
Here is a picture, and a pretty one—a young man and a girl, both
enveloped in cloaks and huddled beneath the scanty protection of a
cotton umbrella. She wears rubber overshoes, but he is in his
dancing-pumps, and they are on their way no doubt, to some
cotillon-party or subscription-ball at a dollar a head, refreshments
included. Thus they struggle against the gloomy tempest, lured onward
by a vision of festal splendor. But ah! a most lamentable disaster!
Bewildered by the red, blue and yellow meteors in an apothecary’s
window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice, and are
precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods at the corner of two
streets. Luckless lovers! Were it my nature to be other than a
looker-on in life, I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not be,
I vow, should you be drowned, to weave such a pathetic story of your
fate as shall call forth tears enough to drown you both anew. Do ye
touch bottom, my young friends? Yes; they emerge like a water-nymph and
a river-deity, and paddle hand in hand out of the depths of the dark
pool. They hurry homeward, dripping, disconsolate, abashed, but with
love too warm to be chilled by the cold water. They have stood a test
which proves too strong for many. Faithful though over head and ears in
trouble!
Onward I go, deriving a sympathetic joy or sorrow from the varied
aspect of mortal affairs even as my figure catches a gleam from the
lighted windows or is blackened by an interval of darkness. Not that
mine is altogether a chameleon spirit with no hue of its own. Now I
pass into a more retired street where the dwellings of wealth and
poverty are intermingled, presenting a range of strongly-contrasted
pictures. Here, too, may be found the golden mean. Through yonder
casement I discern a family circle—the grandmother, the parents and the
children—all flickering, shadow-like, in the glow of a
wood-fire.—Bluster, fierce blast, and beat, thou wintry rain, against
the window-panes! Ye cannot damp the enjoyment of that fireside.—Surely
my fate is hard that I should be wandering homeless here, taking to my
bosom night and storm and solitude instead of wife and children. Peace,
murmurer! Doubt not that darker guests are sitting round the hearth,
though the warm blaze hides all but blissful images.
Well, here is still a brighter scene—a stately mansion illuminated for
a ball, with cut-glass chandeliers and alabaster lamps in every room,
and sunny landscapes hanging round the walls. See! a coach has stopped,
whence emerges a slender beauty who, canopied by two umbrellas, glides
within the portal and vanishes amid lightsome thrills of music. Will
she ever feel the night-wind and the rain? Perhaps—perhaps! And will
Death and Sorrow ever enter that proud mansion? As surely as the
dancers will be gay within its halls to-night. Such thoughts sadden yet
satisfy my heart, for they teach me that the poor man in this mean,
weatherbeaten hovel, without a fire to cheer him, may call the rich his
brother—brethren by Sorrow, who must be an inmate of both their
households; brethren by Death, who will lead them both to other homes.
Onward, still onward, I plunge into the night. Now have I reached the
utmost limits of the town, where the last lamp struggles feebly with
the darkness like the farthest star that stands sentinel on the borders
of uncreated space. It is strange what sensations of sublimity may
spring from a very humble source. Such are suggested by this hollow
roar of a subterranean cataract where the mighty stream of a kennel
precipitates itself beneath an iron grate and is seen no more on earth.
Listen a while to its voice of mystery, and Fancy will magnify it till
you start and smile at the illusion. And now another sound—the rumbling
of wheels as the mail-coach, outward bound, rolls heavily off the
pavements and splashes through the mud and water of the road. All night
long the poor passengers will be tossed to and fro between drowsy watch
and troubled sleep, and will dream of their own quiet beds and awake to
find themselves still jolting onward. Happier my lot, who will
straightway hie me to my familiar room and toast myself comfortably
before the fire, musing and fitfully dozing and fancying a strangeness
in such sights as all may see. But first let me gaze at this solitary
figure who comes hitherward with a tin lantern which throws the
circular pattern of its punched holes on the ground about him. He
passes fearlessly into the unknown gloom, whither I will not follow
him.
This figure shall supply me with a moral wherewith, for lack of a more
appropriate one, I may wind up my sketch. He fears not to tread the
dreary path before him, because his lantern, which was kindled at the
fireside of his home, will light him back to that same fireside again.
And thus we, night-wanderers through a stormy and dismal world, if we
bear the lamp of Faith enkindled at a celestial fire, it will surely
lead us home to that heaven whence its radiance was borrowed.