written! During all my early years our old Harvard Alma Mater sat still
and lifeless as the colossi in the Egyptian desert. Then all at once,
like the statue in Don Giovanni, she moved from her pedestal. The fall
of that “stony foot” has effected a miracle like the harp that Orpheus
played, like the teeth which Cadmus sowed. The plain where the moose and
the bear were wandering while Shakespeare was writing Hamlet, where a
few plain dormitories and other needed buildings were scattered about
in my school-boy days, groans under the weight of the massive edifices
which have sprung up all around them, crowned by the tower of that noble
structure which stands in full view before me as I lift my eyes from the
portfolio on the back of which I am now writing.
For I must be permitted to remind you that I have not yet opened it. I
have told you that I have just finished a long memoir, and that it has
cost me no little labor to overcome some of its difficulties,--if I have
overcome them, which others must decide. And I feel exactly as honest
Dobbin feels when his harness is slipped off after a long journey with
a good deal of up-hill work. He wants to rest a little, then to feed
a little; then, if you will turn him loose in the pasture, he wants to
roll. I have left my starry and ethereal companionship,--not for a
long time, I hope, for it has lifted me above my common self, but for a
while. And now I want, so to speak, to roll in the grass and among the
dandelions with the other pachyderms. So I have kept to the outside of
the portfolio as yet, and am disporting myself in reminiscences, and
fancies, and vagaries, and parentheses.
How well I understand the feeling which led the Pisans to load their
vessels with earth from the Holy Land, and fill the area of the Campo
Santo with that sacred soil! The old house stood upon about as perverse
a little patch of the planet as ever harbored a half-starved earth-worm.
It was as sandy as Sahara and as thirsty as Tantalus. The rustic
aid-de-camps of the household used to aver that all fertilizing matters
“leached” through it. I tried to disprove their assertion by gorging it
with the best of terrestrial nourishment, until I became convinced that
I was feeding the tea-plants of China, and then I gave over the attempt.
And yet I did love, and do love, that arid patch of ground. I wonder if
a single flower could not be made to grow in a pot of earth from that
Campo Santo of my childhood! One noble product of nature did not
refuse to flourish there,--the tall, stately, beautiful, soft-haired,
many-jointed, generous maize or Indian corn, which thrives on sand and
defies the blaze of our shrivelling summer. What child but loves to
wander in its forest-like depths, amidst the rustling leaves and with
the lofty tassels tossing their heads high above him! There are two
aspects of the cornfield which always impress my imagination: the first
when it has reached its full growth, and its ordered ranks look like an
army on the march with its plumed and bannered battalions; the second
when, after the battle of the harvest, the girdled stacks stand on the
field of slaughter like so many ragged Niobes,--say rather like the
crazy widows and daughters of the dead soldiery.
Once more let us come back to the old house. It was far along in its
second century when the edict went forth that it must stand no longer.
The natural death of a house is very much like that of one of its human
tenants. The roof is the first part to show the distinct signs of age.
Slates and tiles loosen and at last slide off, and leave bald the boards
that supported them; shingles darken and decay, and soon the garret or
the attic lets in the rain and the snow; by and by the beams sag, the
floors warp, the walls crack, the paper peels away, the ceilings scale
off and fall, the windows are crusted with clinging dust, the doors drop
from their rusted hinges, the winds come in without knocking and howl
their cruel death-songs through the empty rooms and passages, and at
last there comes a crash, a great cloud of dust rises, and the home that
had been the shelter of generation after generation finds its grave in
its own cellar. Only the chimney remains as its monument. Slowly, little
by little, the patient solvents that find nothing too hard for their
chemistry pick out the mortar from between the bricks; at last a mighty
wind roars around it and rushes against it, and the monumental relic
crashes down among the wrecks it has long survived. So dies a human
habitation left to natural decay, all that was seen above the surface of
the soil sinking gradually below it,
Till naught remains the saddening tale to tell
Save home's last wrecks, the cellar and the well.
But if this sight is saddening, what is it to see a human dwelling fall
by the hand of violence! The ripping off of the shelter that has kept
out a thousand storms, the tearing off of the once ornamental woodwork,
the wrench of the inexorable crowbar, the murderous blows of the axe,
the progressive ruin, which ends by rending all the joints asunder and
flinging the tenoned and mortised timbers into heaps that will be sawed
and split to warm some new habitation as firewood,--what a brutal act of
destruction it seems!
Why should I go over the old house again, having already described it
more than ten years ago? Alas! how many remember anything they read but
once, and so long ago as that? How many would find it out if one should
say over in the same words that which he said in the last decade? But
there is really no need of telling the story a second time, for it can
be found by those who are curious enough to look it up in a volume of
which it occupies the opening chapter.
In order, however, to save any inquisitive reader that trouble, let me
remind him that the old house was General Ward's headquarters at the
breaking out of the Revolution; that the plan for fortifying Bunker's
Hill was laid, as commonly believed, in the southeast lower room, the
floor of which was covered with dents, made, it was alleged, by the
butts of the soldiers' muskets. In that house, too, General Warren
probably passed the night before the Bunker Hill battle, and over its
threshold must the stately figure of Washington have often cast its
shadow.
But the house in which one drew his first breath, and where he one day
came into the consciousness that he was a personality, an ego, a little
universe with a sky over him all his own, with a persistent identity,
with the terrible responsibility of a separate, independent, inalienable
existence,--that house does not ask for any historical associations to
make it the centre of the earth for him.
If there is any person in the world to be envied, it is the one who is
born to an ancient estate, with a long line of family traditions and
the means in his hands of shaping his mansion and his domain to his own
taste, without losing sight of all the characteristic features which
surrounded his earliest years. The American is, for the most part, a
nomad, who pulls down his house as the Tartar pulls up his tent-poles.
If I had an ideal life to plan for him it would be something like this:
His grandfather should be a wise, scholarly, large-brained,
large-hearted country minister, from whom he should inherit the
temperament that predisposes to cheerfulness and enjoyment, with the
finer instincts which direct life to noble aims and make it rich with
the gratification of pure and elevated tastes and the carrying out of
plans for the good of his neighbors and his fellow-creatures. He should,
if possible, have been born, at any rate have passed some of his early
years, or a large part of them, under the roof of the good old minister.
His father should be, we will say, a business man in one of our great
cities,--a generous manipulator of millions, some of which have adhered
to his private fortunes, in spite of his liberal use of his means. His
heir, our ideally placed American, shall take possession of the old
house, the home of his earliest memories, and preserve it sacredly,
not exactly like the Santa Casa, but, as nearly as may be, just as
he remembers it. He can add as many acres as he will to the narrow
house-lot. He can build a grand mansion for himself, if he chooses, in
the not distant neighborhood. But the old house, and all immediately
round it, shall be as he recollects it when he had to stretch his little
arm up to reach the door-handles. Then, having well provided for his
own household, himself included, let him become the providence of the
village or the town where he finds himself during at least a portion
of every year. Its schools, its library, its poor,--and perhaps the new
clergyman who has succeeded his grandfather's successor may be one of
them,--all its interests, he shall make his own. And from this centre
his beneficence shall radiate so far that all who hear of his wealth
shall also hear of him as a friend to his race.
Is not this a pleasing programme? Wealth is a steep hill, which the
father climbs slowly and the son often tumbles down precipitately; but
there is a table-land on a level with it, which may be found by those
who do not lose their head in looking down from its sharply cloven
summit.---Our dangerously rich men can make themselves hated, held as
enemies of the race, or beloved and recognized as its benefactors.
The clouds of discontent are threatening, but if the gold-pointed
lightning-rods are rightly distributed the destructive element may be
drawn off silently and harmlessly. For it cannot be repeated too often
that the safety of great wealth with us lies in obedience to the new
version of the Old World axiom, RICHESS oblige.
THE NEW PORTFOLIO: FIRST OPENING.
A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
I. GETTING READY.
It is impossible to begin a story which must of necessity tax the powers
of belief of readers unacquainted with the class of facts to which its
central point of interest belongs without some words in the nature of
preparation. Readers of Charles Lamb remember that Sarah Battle insisted
on a clean-swept hearth before sitting down to her favorite game of
whist.
The narrator wishes to sweep the hearth, as it were, in these opening
pages, before sitting down to tell his story. He does not intend to
frighten the reader away by prolix explanation, but he does mean to warn
him against hasty judgments when facts are related which are not within
the range of every-day experience. Did he ever see the Siamese twins, or
any pair like them? Probably not, yet he feels sure that Chang and
Eng really existed; and if he has taken the trouble to inquire, he has
satisfied himself that similar cases have been recorded by credible
witnesses, though at long intervals and in countries far apart from each
other.
This is the first sweep of the brush, to clear the hearth of the
skepticism and incredulity which must be got out of the way before we
can begin to tell and to listen in peace with ourselves and each other.
One more stroke of the brush is needed before the stage will be ready
for the chief characters and the leading circumstances to which the
reader's attention is invited. If the principal personages made their
entrance at once, the reader would have to create for himself the whole
scenery of their surrounding conditions. In point of fact, no matter
how a story is begun, many of its readers have already shaped its chief
actors out of any hint the author may have dropped, and provided from
their own resources a locality and a set of outward conditions to
environ these imagined personalities. These are all to be brushed away,
and the actual surroundings of the subject of the narrative represented
as they were, at the risk of detaining the reader a little while from
the events most likely to interest him. The choicest egg that ever
was laid was not so big as the nest that held it. If a story were so
interesting that a maiden would rather hear it than listen to the praise
of her own beauty, or a poet would rather read it than recite his
own verses, still it would have to be wrapped in some tissue of
circumstance, or it would lose half its effectiveness.
It may not be easy to find the exact locality referred to in this
narrative by looking into the first gazetteer that is at hand. Recent
experiences have shown that it is unsafe to be too exact in designating
places and the people who live in them. There are, it may be added,
so many advertisements disguised under the form of stories and other
literary productions that one naturally desires to avoid the suspicion
of being employed by the enterprising proprietors of this or that
celebrated resort to use his gifts for their especial benefit. There are
no doubt many persons who remember the old sign and the old tavern and
its four chief personages presently to be mentioned. It is to be hoped
that they will not furnish the public with a key to this narrative,
and perhaps bring trouble to the writer of it, as has happened to other
authors. If the real names are a little altered, it need not interfere
with the important facts relating to those who bear them. It might not
be safe to tell a damaging story about John or James Smythe; but if
the slight change is made of spelling the name Smith, the Smythes would
never think of bringing an action, as if the allusion related to any of
them. The same gulf of family distinction separates the Thompsons with a
p from the Thomsons without that letter.
There are few pleasanter places in the Northern States for a summer
residence than that known from the first period of its settlement by the
name of Arrowhead Village. The Indians had found it out, as the relics
they left behind them abundantly testified. The commonest of these were
those chipped stones which are the medals of barbarism, and from
which the place took its name,--the heads of arrows, of various sizes,
material, and patterns: some small enough for killing fish and little
birds, some large enough for such game as the moose and the bear, to say
nothing of the hostile Indian and the white settler; some of flint, now
and then one of white quartz, and others of variously colored jasper.
The Indians must have lived here for many generations, and it must have
been a kind of factory village of the stone age,--which lasted up to
near the present time, if we may judge from the fact that many of these
relics are met with close to the surface of the ground.
No wonder they found this a pleasant residence, for it is to-day one
of the most attractive of all summer resorts; so inviting, indeed, that
those who know it do not like to say too much about it, lest the swarms
of tourists should make it unendurable to those who love it for itself,
and not as a centre of fashionable display and extramural cockneyism.
There is the lake, in the first place,--Cedar Lake,--about five miles
long, and from half a mile to a mile and a half wide, stretching
from north to south. Near the northern extremity are the buildings of
Stoughton University, a flourishing young college with an ambitious
name, but well equipped and promising, the grounds of which reach the
water. At the southern end of the lake are the edifices of the Corinna
Institute, a favorite school for young ladies, where large numbers of
the daughters of America are fitted, so far as education can do it, for
all stations in life, from camping out with a husband at the mines in
Nevada to acting the part of chief lady of the land in the White House
at Washington.
Midway between the two extremities, on the eastern shore of the lake,
is a valley between two hills, which come down to the very edge of the
lake, leaving only room enough for a road between their base and the
water. This valley, half a mile in width, has been long settled, and
here for a century or more has stood the old Anchor Tavern. A famous
place it was so long as its sign swung at the side of the road: famous
for its landlord, portly, paternal, whose welcome to a guest that
looked worthy of the attention was like that of a parent to a returning
prodigal, and whose parting words were almost as good as a marriage
benediction; famous for its landlady, ample in person, motherly, seeing
to the whole household with her own eyes, mistress of all culinary
secrets that Northern kitchens are most proud of; famous also for its
ancient servant, as city people would call her,--help, as she was called
in the tavern and would have called herself,--the unchanging, seemingly
immortal Miranda, who cared for the guests as if she were their nursing
mother, and pressed the specially favorite delicacies on their attention
as a connoisseur calls the wandering eyes of an amateur to the beauties
of a picture. Who that has ever been at the old Anchor Tavern forgets
Miranda's
“A little of this fricassee?-it is ver-y nice;”
or
“Some of these cakes? You will find them ver-y good.”
Nor would it be just to memory to forget that other notable and noted
member of the household,--the unsleeping, unresting, omnipresent Pushee,
ready for everybody and everything, everywhere within the limits of the
establishment at all hours of the day and night. He fed, nobody could
say accurately when or where. There were rumors of a “bunk,” in which he
lay down with his clothes on, but he seemed to be always wide awake,
and at the service of as many guest, at once as if there had been half a
dozen of him.
So much for old reminiscences.
The landlord of the Anchor Tavern had taken down his sign. He had had
the house thoroughly renovated and furnished it anew, and kept it open
in summer for a few boarders. It happened more than once that the summer
boarders were so much pleased with the place that they stayed on through
the autumn, and some of them through the winter. The attractions of
the village were really remarkable. Boating in summer, and skating in
winter; ice-boats, too, which the wild ducks could hardly keep up with;
fishing, for which the lake was renowned; varied and beautiful walks
through the valley and up the hillsides; houses sheltered from the north
and northeasterly winds, and refreshed in the hot summer days by
the breeze which came over the water,--all this made the frame for a
pleasing picture of rest and happiness. But there was a great deal more
than this. There was a fine library in the little village, presented
and richly endowed by a wealthy native of the place. There was a small
permanent population of a superior character to that of an everyday
country town; there was a pretty little Episcopal church, with a
good-hearted rector, broad enough for the Bishop of the diocese to be
a little afraid of, and hospitable to all outsiders, of whom, in the
summer season, there were always some who wanted a place of worship to
keep their religion from dying out during the heathen months, while
the shepherds of the flocks to which they belonged were away from their
empty folds.
What most helped to keep the place alive all through the year was
the frequent coming together of the members of a certain literary
association. Some time before the tavern took down its sign the landlord
had built a hall, where many a ball had been held, to which the young
folks of all the country round had resorted. It was still sometimes used
for similar occasions, but it was especially notable as being the place
of meeting of the famous PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
This association, the name of which might be invidiously interpreted as
signifying that its members knew everything, had no such pretensions,
but, as its Constitution said very plainly and modestly, held itself
open to accept knowledge on any and all subjects from such as had
knowledge to impart. Its President was the rector of the little chapel,
a man who, in spite of the Thirty-Nine Articles, could stand fire from
the widest-mouthed heretical blunderbuss without flinching or losing
his temper. The hall of the old Anchor Tavern was a convenient place
of meeting for the students and instructors of the University and
the Institute. Sometimes in boat-loads, sometimes in carriage-loads,
sometimes in processions of skaters, they came to the meetings in
Pansophian Hall, as it was now commonly called.
These meetings had grown to be occasions of great interest. It was
customary to have papers written by members of the Society, for the
most part, but now and then by friends of the members, sometimes by
the students of the College or the Institute, and in rarer instances
by anonymous personages, whose papers, having been looked over and
discussed by the Committee appointed for that purpose, were thought
worth listening to. The variety of topics considered was very great.
The young ladies of the village and the Institute had their favorite
subjects, the young gentlemen a different set of topics, and the
occasional outside contributors their own; so that one who happened
to be admitted to a meeting never knew whether he was going to hear an
account of recent arctic discoveries, or an essay on the freedom of the
will, or a psychological experience, or a story, or even a poem.
Of late there had been a tendency to discuss the questions relating to
the true status and the legitimate social functions of woman. The most
conflicting views were held on the subject. Many of the young ladies
and some of the University students were strong in defence of all the
“woman's rights” doctrines. Some of these young people were extreme
in their views. They had read about Semiramis and Boadicea and Queen
Elizabeth, until they were ready, if they could get the chance, to
vote for a woman as President of the United States or as General of
the United States Army. They were even disposed to assert the physical
equality of woman to man, on the strength of the rather questionable
history of the Amazons, and especially of the story, believed to be
authentic, of the female body-guard of the King of Dahomey,--females
frightful enough to need no other weapon than their looks to scare off
an army of Cossacks.
Miss Lurida Vincent, gold medallist of her year at the Corinna
Institute, was the leader of these advocates of virile womanhood. It was
rather singular that she should have elected to be the apostle of this
extreme doctrine, for she was herself far better equipped with
brain than muscles. In fact, she was a large-headed, large-eyed,
long-eyelashed, slender-necked, slightly developed young woman; looking
almost like a child at an age when many of the girls had reached their
full stature and proportions. In her studies she was so far in advance
of her different classes that there was always a wide gap between her
and the second scholar. So fatal to all rivalry had she proved herself
that she passed under the school name of The Terror. She learned so
easily that she undervalued her own extraordinary gifts, and felt the
deepest admiration for those of her friends endowed with faculties of an
entirely different and almost opposite nature. After sitting at her desk
until her head was hot and her feet were like ice, she would go and look
at the blooming young girls exercising in the gymnasium of the school,
and feel as if she would give all her knowledge, all her mathematics and
strange tongues and history, all those accomplishments that made her the
encyclopaedia of every class she belonged to, if she could go through
the series of difficult and graceful exercises in which she saw her
schoolmates delighting.
One among them, especially, was the object of her admiration, as she was
of all who knew her exceptional powers in the line for which nature had
specially organized her. All the physical perfections which Miss Lurida
had missed had been united in Miss Euthymia Tower, whose school name was
The Wonder. Though of full womanly stature, there were several taller
girls of her age. While all her contours and all her movements betrayed
a fine muscular development, there was no lack of proportion, and her
finely shaped hands and feet showed that her organization was one of
those carefully finished masterpieces of nature which sculptors are
always in search of, and find it hard to detect among the imperfect
products of the living laboratory.