BEGUN AT RIVERDALE, NEW YORK. FINISHED AT YORK HARBOR, MAINE, AUGUST 18,
1902
(See Chapter ccxxiii)
(A bereft and demented mother speaks)
... O, I can see my darling yet: the little form In slip of flimsy stuff
all creamy white, Pink-belted waist with ample bows, Blue shoes scarce
bigger than the house-cat's ears--Capering in delight and choked with
glee.
It was a summer afternoon; the hill Rose green above me and about,
and in the vale below The distant village slept, and all the world Was
steeped in dreams. Upon me lay this peace, And I forgot my sorrow in
its spell. And now My little maid passed by, and she Was deep in thought
upon a solemn thing: A disobedience, and my reproof. Upon my face She
must not look until the day was done; For she was doing penance... She?
O, it was I! What mother knows not that? And so she passed, I worshiping
and longing... It was not wrong? You do not think me wrong? I did it for
the best. Indeed I meant it so.
She flits before me now: The peach-bloom of her gauzy crepe, The plaited
tails of hair, The ribbons floating from the summer hat, The grieving
face, dropp'd head absorbed with care. O, dainty little form! I see it
move, receding slow along the path, By hovering butterflies besieged;
I see it reach The breezy top clear-cut against the sky,... Then pass
beyond and sink from sight-forever!
Within, was light and cheer; without, A blustering winter's right. There
was a play; It was her own; for she had wrought it out Unhelped, from
her own head-and she But turned sixteen! A pretty play, All graced
with cunning fantasies, And happy songs, and peopled all with fays, And
sylvan gods and goddesses, And shepherds, too, that piped and danced,
And wore the guileless hours away In care-free romps and games.
Her girlhood mates played in the piece, And she as well: a goddess,
she,--And looked it, as it seemed to me.
'Twas fairyland restored-so beautiful it was And innocent. It made us
cry, we elder ones, To live our lost youth o'er again With these its
happy heirs.
Slowly, at last, the curtain fell. Before us, there, she stood, all
wreathed and draped In roses pearled with dew-so sweet, so glad, So
radiant!--and flung us kisses through the storm Of praise that crowned
her triumph.... O, Across the mists of time I see her yet, My Goddess of
the Flowers!
... The curtain hid her.... Do you comprehend? Till time shall end! Out
of my life she vanished while I looked!
... Ten years are flown. O, I have watched so long, So long. But she
will come no more. No, she will come no more.
It seems so strange... so strange... Struck down unwarned! In the
unbought grace, of youth laid low--In the glory of her fresh young bloom
laid low--In the morning of her life cut down! And I not by! Not by When
the shadows fell, the night of death closed down The sun that lit my
life went out. Not by to answer When the latest whisper passed the lips
That were so dear to me--my name! Far from my post! the world's whole
breadth away. O, sinking in the waves of death she cried to me For
mother-help, and got for answer Silence!
We that are old--we comprehend; even we That are not mad: whose grown-up
scions still abide; Their tale complete: Their earlier selves we glimpse
at intervals Far in the dimming past; We see the little forms as once
they were, And whilst we ache to take them to our hearts, The vision
fades. We know them lost to us--Forever lost; we cannot have them back;
We miss them as we miss the dead, We mourn them as we mourn the dead.
APPENDIX V. SELECTIONS FROM AN UNFINISHED BOOK, “3,000 YEARS AMONG THE
MICROBES”
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A MICROBE, WHO, IN A FORMER EXISTENCE, HAD BEEN
A MAN--HIS PRESENT HABITAT BEING THE ORGANISM OF A TRAMP, BLITZOWSKI.
(WRITTEN AT DUBLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1905)
(See Chapter ccxxxv)
Our world (the tramp) is as large and grand and awe-compelling to
us microscopic creatures as is man's world to man. Our tramp is
mountainous, there are vast oceans in him, and lakes that are sea-like
for size, there are many rivers (veins and arteries) which are fifteen
miles across, and of a length so stupendous as to make the Mississippi
and the Amazon trifling little Rhode Island brooks by comparison. As for
our minor rivers, they are multitudinous, and the dutiable commerce
of disease which they carry is rich beyond the dreams of the American
custom-house.
Take a man like Sir Oliver Lodge, and what secret of Nature can be
hidden from him? He says: “A billion, that is a million millions,[??
Trillion D.W.] of atoms is truly an immense number, but the resulting
aggregate is still excessively minute. A portion of substance
consisting, of a billion atoms is only barely visible with the highest
power of a microscope; and a speck or granule, in order to be visible to
the naked eye, like a grain of lycopodium-dust, must be a million times
bigger still.”
The human eye could see it then--that dainty little speck. But with my
microbe-eye I could see every individual of the whirling billions of
atoms that compose the speck. Nothing is ever at rest--wood, iron,
water, everything is alive, everything is raging, whirling, whizzing,
day and night and night and day, nothing is dead, there is no such thing
as death, everything is full of bristling life, tremendous life, even
the bones of the crusader that perished before Jerusalem eight centuries
ago. There are no vegetables, all things are animal; each electron is
an animal, each molecule is a collection of animals, and each has an
appointed duty to perform and a soul to be saved. Heaven was not made
for man alone, and oblivion and neglect reserved for the rest of His
creatures. He gave them life, He gave them humble services to perform,
they have performed them, and they will not be forgotten, they will have
their reward. Man-always vain, windy, conceited-thinks he will be in the
majority there. He will be disappointed. Let him humble himself. But for
the despised microbe and the persecuted bacillus, who needed a home and
nourishment, he would not have been created. He has a mission, therefore
a reason for existing: let him do the service he was made for, and keep
quiet.
Three weeks ago I was a man myself, and thought and felt as men think
and feel; I have lived 3,000 years since then [microbic time], and I see
the foolishness of it now. We live to learn, and fortunate are we when
we are wise enough to profit by it.
In matters pertaining to microscopy we necessarily have an advantage
here over the scientist of the earth, because, as I have just been
indicating, we see with our naked eyes minutenesses which no man-made
microscope can detect, and are therefore able to register as facts many
things which exist for him as theories only. Indeed, we know as facts
several things which he has not yet divined even by theory. For example,
he does not suspect that there is no life but animal life, and that
all atoms are individual animals endowed each with a certain degree
of consciousness, great or small, each with likes and dislikes,
predilections and aversions--that, in a word, each has a character, a
character of its own. Yet such is the case. Some of the molecules of
a stone have an aversion for some of those of a vegetable or any other
creature and will not associate with them--and would not be allowed to,
if they tried. Nothing is more particular about society than a molecule.
And so there are no end of castes; in this matter India is not a
circumstance.
“Tell me, Franklin [a microbe of great learning], is the ocean an
individual, an animal, a creature?”
“Yes.”
“Then water--any water-is an individual?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose you remove a drop of it? Is what is left an individual?”
“Yes, and so is the drop.”
“Suppose you divide the drop?”
“Then you have two individuals.”
“Suppose you separate the hydrogen and the oxygen?”
“Again you have two individuals. But you haven't water any more.”
“Of course. Certainly. Well, suppose you combine them again, but in
a new way: make the proportions equal--one part oxygen to one of
hydrogen?”
“But you know you can't. They won't combine on equal terms.”
I was ashamed to have made that blunder. I was embarrassed; to cover it
I started to say we used to combine them like that where I came from,
but thought better of it, and stood pat.
“Now then,” I said, “it amounts to this: water is an individual, an
animal, and is alive; remove the hydrogen and it is an animal and is
alive; the remaining oxygen is also an individual, an animal, and is
alive. Recapitulation: the two individuals combined constitute a third
individual--and yet each continues to be an individual.”
I glanced at Franklin, but... upon reflection, held my peace. I could
have pointed out to him that here was mute Nature explaining the
sublime mystery of the Trinity so luminously--that even the commonest
understanding could comprehend it, whereas many a trained master of
words had labored to do it with speech and failed. But he would not have
known what I was talking about. After a moment I resumed:
“Listen--and see if I have understood you rightly, to wit: All the atoms
that constitute each oxygen molecule are separate individuals, and each
is a living animal; all the atoms that constitute each hydrogen molecule
are separate individuals, and each one is a living animal; each drop
of water consists of millions of living animals, the drop itself is an
individual, a living animal, and the wide ocean is another. Is that it?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“By George, it beats the band!”
He liked the expression, and set it down in his tablets.
“Franklin, we've got it down fine. And to think--there are other animals
that are still smaller than a hydrogen atom, and yet it is so small that
it takes five thousand of them to make a molecule--a molecule so minute
that it could get into a microbe's eye and he wouldn't know it was
there!”
“Yes, the wee creatures that inhabit the bodies of us germs and feed
upon us, and rot us with disease: Ah, what could they have been created
for? They give us pain, they make our lives miserable, they murder
us--and where is the use of it all, where the wisdom? Ah, friend Bkshp
[microbic orthography], we live in a strange and unaccountable world;
our birth is a mystery, our little life is a mystery, a trouble, we
pass and are seen no more; all is mystery, mystery, mystery; we know not
whence we came, nor why; we know not whither we go, nor why we go. We
only know we were not made in vain, we only know we were made for a wise
purpose, and that all is well! We shall not be cast aside in contumely
and unblest after all we have suffered. Let us be patient, let us not
repine, let us trust. The humblest of us is cared for--oh, believe
it!--and this fleeting stay is not the end!”
You notice that? He did not suspect that he, also, was engaged
in gnawing, torturing, defiling, rotting, and murdering a
fellow-creature--he and all the swarming billions of his race. None of
them suspects it. That is significant. It is suggestive--irresistibly
suggestive--insistently suggestive. It hints at the possibility that
the procession of known and listed devourers and persecutors is not
complete. It suggests the possibility, and substantially the certainty,
that man is himself a microbe, and his globe a blood-corpuscle drifting
with its shining brethren of the Milky Way down a vein of the Master
and Maker of all things, whose body, mayhap--glimpsed part-wise from
the earth by night, and receding and lost to view in the measureless
remotenesses of space--is what men name the Universe.
Yes, that was all old to me, but to find that our little old familiar
microbes were themselves loaded up with microbes that fed them, enriched
them, and persistently and faithfully preserved them and their poor old
tramp-planet from destruction--oh, that was new, and too delicious!
I wanted to see them! I was in a fever to see them! I had lenses to
two-million power, but of course the field was no bigger than a person's
finger-nail, and so it wasn't possible to compass a considerable
spectacle or a landscape with them; whereas what I had been craving was
a thirty-foot field, which would represent a spread of several miles of
country and show up things in a way to make them worth looking at. The
boys and I had often tried to contrive this improvement, but had failed.
I mentioned the matter to the Duke and it made him smile. He said it was
a quite simple thing-he had it at home. I was eager to bargain for the
secret, but he said it was a trifle and not worth bargaining for. He
said:
“Hasn't it occurred to you that all you have to do is to bend an X-ray
to an angle-value of 8.4 and refract it with a parabolism, and there you
are?”
Upon my word, I had never thought of that simple thing! You could have
knocked me down with a feather.
We rigged a microscope for an exhibition at once and put a drop of my
blood under it, which got mashed flat when the lens got shut down upon
it. The result was beyond my dreams. The field stretched miles away,
green and undulating, threaded with streams and roads, and bordered all
down the mellowing distances with picturesque hills. And there was a
great white city of tents; and everywhere were parks of artillery and
divisions of cavalry and infantry waiting. We had hit a lucky moment,
evidently there was going to be a march-past or some thing like that. At
the front where the chief banner flew there was a large and showy tent,
with showy guards on duty, and about it were some other tents of a swell
kind.
The warriors--particularly the officers--were lovely to look at, they
were so trim-built and so graceful and so handsomely uniformed. They
were quite distinct, vividly distinct, for it was a fine day, and they
were so immensely magnified that they looked to be fully a finger-nail
high.--[My own expression, and a quite happy one. I said to the Duke:
“Your Grace, they're just about finger-milers!” “How do you mean,
m'lord?” “This. You notice the stately General standing there with his
hand resting upon the muzzle of a cannon? Well, if you could stick your
little finger down against the ground alongside of him his plumes
would just reach up to where your nail joins the flesh.” The Duke said
“finger-milers was good”--good and exact; and he afterward used it
several times himself.]--Everywhere you could see officers moving
smartly about, and they looked gay, but the common soldiers looked sad.
Many wife-swinks [“Swinks,” an atomic race] and daughter-swinks and
sweetheart-swinks were about--crying, mainly. It seemed to indicate that
this was a case of war, not a summer-camp for exercise, and that the
poor labor-swinks were being torn from their planet-saving industries
to go and distribute civilization and other forms of suffering among the
feeble benighted somewhere; else why should the swinkesses cry?
The cavalry was very fine--shiny black horses, shapely and spirited;
and presently when a flash of light struck a lifted bugle (delivering
a command which we couldn't hear) and a division came tearing down on
a gallop it was a stirring and gallant sight, until the dust rose
an inch--the Duke thought more--and swallowed it up in a rolling and
tumbling long gray cloud, with bright weapons glinting and sparkling in
it.
Before long the real business of the occasion began. A battalion of
priests arrived carrying sacred pictures. That settled it: this was war;
these far-stretching masses of troops were bound for the front. Their
little monarch came out now, the sweetest little thing that ever
travestied the human shape I think, and he lifted up his hands and
blessed the passing armies, and they looked as grateful as they could,
and made signs of humble and real reverence as they drifted by the holy
pictures.
It was beautiful--the whole thing; and wonderful, too, when those
serried masses swung into line and went marching down the valley under
the long array of fluttering flags.
Evidently they were going somewhere to fight for their king, which was
the little manny that blessed them; and to preserve him and his brethren
that occupied the other swell tents; to civilize and grasp a valuable
little unwatched country for them somewhere. But the little fellow and
his brethren didn't fall in--that was a noticeable particular. They
didn't fight; they stayed at home, where it was safe, and waited for the
swag.
Very well, then-what ought we to do? Had we no moral duty to perform?
Ought we to allow this war to begin? Was it not our duty to stop it, in
the name of right and righteousness? Was it not our duty to administer a
rebuke to this selfish and heartless Family?
The Duke was struck by that, and greatly moved. He felt as I did about
it, and was ready to do whatever was right, and thought we ought to pour
boiling water on the Family and extinguish it, which we did.
It extinguished the armies, too, which was not intended. We both
regretted this, but the Duke said that these people were nothing to us,
and deserved extinction anyway for being so poor-spirited as to serve
such a Family. He was loyally doing the like himself, and so was I, but
I don't think we thought of that. And it wasn't just the same, anyway,
because we were sooflaskies, and they were only swinks.
Franklin realizes that no atom is destructible; that it has always
existed and will exist forever; but he thinks all atoms will go out
of this world some day and continue their life in a happier one.
Old Tolliver thinks no atom's life will ever end, but he also thinks
Blitzowski is the only world it will ever see, and that at no time in
its eternity will it be either worse off or better off than it is now
and always has been. Of course he thinks the planet Blitzowski is itself
eternal and indestructible--at any rate he says he thinks that. It could
make me sad, only I know better. D. T. will fetch Blitzy yet one of
these days.
But these are alien thoughts, human thoughts, and they falsely indicate
that I do not want this tramp to go on living. What would become of me
if he should disintegrate? My molecules would scatter all around and
take up new quarters in hundreds of plants and animals; each would carry
its special feelings along with it, each would be content in its new
estate, but where should I be? I should not have a rag of a feeling
left, after my disintegration--with his--was complete. Nothing to think
with, nothing to grieve or rejoice with, nothing to hope or despair
with. There would be no more me. I should be musing and thinking and
dreaming somewhere else--in some distant animal maybe--perhaps a
cat--by proxy of my oxygen I should be raging and fuming in some other
creatures--a rat, perhaps; I should be smiling and hoping in still
another child of Nature--heir to my hydrogen--a weed, or a cabbage, or
something; my carbonic acid (ambition) would be dreaming dreams in some
lowly wood-violet that was longing for a showy career; thus my details
would be doing as much feeling as ever, but I should not be aware of it,
it would all be going on for the benefit of those others, and I not in
it at all. I should be gradually wasting away, atom by atom, molecule by
molecule, as the years went on, and at last I should be all distributed,
and nothing left of what had once been Me. It is curious, and not
without impressiveness: I should still be alive, intensely alive, but so
scattered that I would not know it. I should not be dead--no, one cannot
call it that--but I should be the next thing to it. And to think
what centuries and ages and aeons would drift over me before the
disintegration was finished, the last bone turned to gas and blown away!
I wish I knew what it is going to feel like, to lie helpless such a
weary, weary time, and see my faculties decay and depart, one by
one, like lights which burn low, and flicker and perish, until the
ever-deepening gloom and darkness which--oh, away, away with these
horrors, and let me think of something wholesome!
My tramp is only 85; there is good hope that he will live ten years
longer--500,000 of my microbe years. So may it be.
Oh, dear, we are all so wise! Each of us knows it all, and knows he
knows it all--the rest, to a man, are fools and deluded. One man knows
there is a hell, the next one knows there isn't; one man knows high
tariff is right, the next man knows it isn't; one man knows monarchy is
best, the next one knows it isn't; one age knows there are witches, the
next one knows there aren't; one sect knows its religion is the only
true one, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that
know it isn't so. There is not a mind present among this multitude of
verdict-deliverers that is the superior of the minds that persuade and
represent the rest of the divisions of the multitude. Yet this sarcastic
fact does not humble the arrogance nor diminish the know-it-all bulk of
a single verdict-maker of the lot by so much as a shade. Mind is plainly
an ass, but it will be many ages before it finds it out, no doubt. Why
do we respect the opinions of any man or any microbe that ever lived? I
swear I don't know. Why do I respect my own? Well--that is different.