'The moon tempted me out, and I set forth for a house at
no great distance. The beloved south-west was blowing; the
heavens were flooded with light, which could not diminish the
tremulously pure radiance of the evening star; the air was
full of spring sounds, and sweet spring odors came up from
the earth. I felt that happy sort of feeling, as if the soul's
pinions were budding. My mind was full of poetic thoughts, and
nature's song of promise was chanting in my heart.
'But what a change when I entered that human dwelling! I will
try to give you an impression of what you, I fancy, have
never come in contact with. The little room--they have but
one--contains a bed, a table, and some old chairs. A single
stick of wood burns in the fire-place. It is not needed now,
but those who sit near it have long ceased to know what spring
is. They are all frost. Everything is old and faded, but at
the same time as clean and carefully mended as possible. For
all they know of pleasure is to get strength to sweep those
few boards, and mend those old spreads and curtains. That sort
of self-respect they have, and it is all of pride their many
years of poor-tith has left them.
'And there they sit,--mother and daughter! In the mother,
ninety years have quenched every thought and every feeling,
except an imbecile interest about her daughter, and the sort
of self-respect I just spoke of. Husband, sons, strength,
health, house and lands, all are gone. And yet these losses
have not had power to bow that palsied head to the grave.
Morning by morning she rises without a hope, night by night
she lies down vacant or apathetic; and the utmost use she can
make of the day is to totter three or four times across the
floor by the assistance of her staff. Yet, though we wonder
that she is still permitted to cumber the ground, joyless and
weary, "the tomb of her dead self," we look at this dry leaf,
and think how green it once was, and how the birds sung to it
in its summer day.
'But can we think of spring, or summer, or anything joyous
or really life-like, when we look at the daughter?--that
bloodless effigy of humanity, whose care is to eke out this
miserable existence by means of the occasional doles of those
who know how faithful and good a child she has been to that
decrepit creature; who thinks herself happy if she can be
well enough, by hours of patient toil, to perform those menial
services which they both require; whose talk is of the price
of pounds of sugar, and ounces of tea, and yards of flannel;
whose only intellectual resource is hearing five or six
verses of the Bible read every day,--"my poor head," she says,
"cannot bear any more;" and whose only hope is the death to
which she has been so slowly and wearily advancing, through
many years like this.
'The saddest part is, that she does _not wish_ for death. She
clings to this sordid existence. Her soul is now so habitually
enwrapt in the meanest cares, that if she were to be lifted
two or three steps upward, she would not know what to do with
life; how, then, shall she soar to the celestial heights?
Yet she ought; for she has ever been good, and her narrow and
crushing duties have been performed with a self-sacrificing
constancy, which I, for one, could never hope to equal.
'While I listened to her,--and I often think it good for me
to listen to her patiently,--the expressions you used in your
letter, about "drudgery," occurred to me. I remember the time
when I, too, deified the "soul's impulses." It is a noble
worship; but, if we do not aid it by a just though limited
interpretation of what "Ought" means, it will degenerate into
idolatry. For a time it was so with me, and I am not yet good
enough to love the _Ought_.
'Then I came again into the open air, and saw those
resplendent orbs moving so silently, and thought that they
were perhaps tenanted, not only by beings in whom I can see
the germ of a possible angel, but by myriads like this poor
creature, in whom that germ is, so far as we can see, blighted
entirely, I could not help saying, "O my Father! Thou, whom
we are told art all Power, and also all Love, how canst Thou
suffer such even transient specks on the transparence of
Thy creation? These grub-like lives, undignified even by
passion,--these life-long quenchings of the spark divine.--why
dost Thou suffer them? Is not Thy paternal benevolence
impatient till such films be dissipated?"
'Such questionings once had power to move my spirit deeply;
now, they but shade my mind for an instant. I have faith in a
glorious explanation, that shall make manifest perfect justice
and perfect wisdom.'