1871.
One memory trembles on our lips
It throbs in every breast;
In tear-dimmed eyes, in mirth's eclipse,
The shadow stands confessed.
O silent voice, that cheered so long
Our manhood's marching day,
Without thy breath of heavenly song,
How weary seems the way!
Vain every pictured phrase to tell
Our sorrowing hearts' desire;
The shattered harp, the broken shell,
The silent unstrung lyre;
For youth was round us while he sang;
It glowed in every tone;
With bridal chimes the echoes rang,
And made the past our own.
O blissful dream! Our nursery joys
We know must have an end,
But love and friendships broken toys
May God's good angels mend!
The cheering smile, the voice of mirth
And laughter's gay surprise
That please the children born of earth,
Why deem that Heaven denies?
Methinks in that refulgent sphere
That knows not sun or moon,
An earth-born saint might long to hear
One verse of “Bonny Doon”;
Or walking through the streets of gold
In Heaven's unclouded light,
His lips recall the song of old
And hum “The sky is bright.”
And can we smile when thou art dead?
Ah, brothers, even so!
The rose of summer will be red,
In spite of winter's snow.
Thou wouldst not leave us all in gloom
Because thy song is still,
Nor blight the banquet-garland's bloom
With grief's untimely chill.
The sighing wintry winds complain,
The singing bird has flown,
--Hark! heard I not that ringing strain,
That clear celestial tone?
How poor these pallid phrases seem,
How weak this tinkling line,
As warbles through my waking dream
That angel voice of thine!
Thy requiem asks a sweeter lay;
It falters on my tongue;
For all we vainly strive to say,
Thou shouldst thyself have sung!
V
I fear that I have done injustice in my conversation and my report of it
to a most worthy and promising young man whom I should be very sorry to
injure in any way. Dr. Benjamin Franklin got hold of my account of my
visit to him, and complained that I had made too much of the expression
he used. He did not mean to say that he thought I was suffering from the
rare disease he mentioned, but only that the color reminded him of it.
It was true that he had shown me various instruments, among them one
for exploring the state of a part by means of a puncture, but he did not
propose to make use of it upon my person. In short, I had colored the
story so as to make him look ridiculous.
--I am afraid I did,--I said,--but was n't I colored myself so as to
look ridiculous? I've heard it said that people with the jaundice see
everything yellow; perhaps I saw things looking a little queerly, with
that black and blue spot I could n't account for threatening to make
a colored man and brother of me. But I am sorry if I have done you any
wrong. I hope you won't lose any patients by my making a little fun of
your meters and scopes and contrivances. They seem so odd to us outside
people. Then the idea of being bronzed all over was such an alarming
suggestion. But I did not mean to damage your business, which I trust is
now considerable, and I shall certainly come to you again if I have
need of the services of a physician. Only don't mention the names of any
diseases in English or Latin before me next time. I dreamed about cutis
oenea half the night after I came to see you.
Dr. Benjamin took my apology very pleasantly. He did not want to be
touchy about it, he said, but he had his way to make in the world, and
found it a little hard at first, as most young men did. People were
afraid to trust them, no matter how much they knew. One of the old
doctors asked him to come in and examine a patient's heart for him the
other day. He went with him accordingly, and when they stood by the
bedside, he offered his stethoscope to the old doctor. The old doctor
took it and put the wrong end to his ear and the other to the patient's
chest, and kept it there about two minutes, looking all the time as wise
as an old owl. Then he, Dr. Benjamin, took it and applied it properly,
and made out where the trouble was in no time at all. But what was the
use of a young man's pretending to know anything in the presence of an
old owl? I saw by their looks, he said, that they all thought I used the
stethoscope wrong end up, and was nothing but a 'prentice hand to the
old doctor.
--I am much pleased to say that since Dr. Benjamin has had charge of a
dispensary district, and been visiting forty or fifty patients a day, I
have reason to think he has grown a great deal more practical than when
I made my visit to his office. I think I was probably one of his first
patients, and that he naturally made the most of me. But my second trial
was much more satisfactory. I got an ugly cut from the carving-knife in
an affair with a goose of iron constitution in which I came off second
best. I at once adjourned with Dr. Benjamin to his small office, and put
myself in his hands. It was astonishing to see what a little experience
of miscellaneous practice had done for him. He did not ask me anymore
questions about my hereditary predispositions on the paternal and
maternal sides. He did not examine me with the stethoscope or the
laryngoscope. He only strapped up my cut, and informed me that it would
speedily get well by the “first intention,”--an odd phrase enough, but
sounding much less formidable than cutis oenea.
I am afraid I have had something of the French prejudice which embodies
itself in the maxim “young surgeon, old physician.” But a young
physician who has been taught by great masters of the profession, in
ample hospitals, starts in his profession knowing more than some old
doctors have learned in a lifetime. Give him a little time to get the
use of his wits in emergencies, and to know the little arts that do so
much for a patient's comfort,--just as you give a young sailor time to
get his sea-legs on and teach his stomach to behave itself,--and he will
do well enough.
The old Master knows ten times more about this matter and about all the
professions, as he does about everything else, than I do. My opinion is
that he has studied two, if not three, of these professions in a regular
course. I don't know that he has ever preached, except as Charles Lamb
said Coleridge always did, for when he gets the bit in his teeth he runs
away with the conversation, and if he only took a text his talk would be
a sermon; but if he has not preached, he has made a study of theology,
as many laymen do. I know he has some shelves of medical books in his
library, and has ideas on the subject of the healing art. He confesses
to having attended law lectures and having had much intercourse with
lawyers. So he has something to say on almost any subject that happens
to come up. I told him my story about my visit to the young doctor, and
asked him what he thought of youthful practitioners in general and of
Dr. Benjamin in particular.
I 'll tell you what,--the Master said,--I know something about these
young fellows that come home with their heads full of “science,” as they
call it, and stick up their signs to tell people they know how to cure
their headaches and stomach-aches. Science is a first-rate piece of
furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the
ground-floor. But if a man has n't got plenty of good common sense, the
more science he has the worse for his patient.
--I don't know that I see exactly how it is worse for the patient,--I
said.
--Well, I'll tell you, and you'll find it's a mighty simple matter. When
a person is sick, there is always something to be done for him, and done
at once. If it is only to open or shut a window, if it is only to tell
him to keep on doing just what he is doing already, it wants a man
to bring his mind right down to the fact of the present case and its
immediate needs. Now the present case, as the doctor sees it, is just
exactly such a collection of paltry individual facts as never was
before,--a snarl and tangle of special conditions which it is his
business to wind as much thread out of as he can. It is a good deal as
when a painter goes to take the portrait of any sitter who happens to
send for him. He has seen just such noses and just such eyes and just
such mouths, but he never saw exactly such a face before, and his
business is with that and no other person's,--with the features of the
worthy father of a family before him, and not with the portraits he has
seen in galleries or books, or Mr. Copley's grand pictures of the fine
old Tories, or the Apollos and Jupiters of Greek sculpture. It is the
same thing with the patient. His disease has features of its own; there
never was and never will be another case in all respects exactly like
it. If a doctor has science without common sense, he treats a fever, but
not this man's fever. If he has common sense without science, he treats
this man's fever without knowing the general laws that govern all fevers
and all vital movements. I 'll tell you what saves these last fellows.
They go for weakness whenever they see it, with stimulants and
strengtheners, and they go for overaction, heat, and high pulse, and
the rest, with cooling and reducing remedies. That is three quarters of
medical practice. The other quarter wants science and common sense too.
But the men that have science only, begin too far back, and, before
they get as far as the case in hand, the patient has very likely gone
to visit his deceased relatives. You remember Thomas Prince's
“Chronological History of New England,” I suppose? He begins, you
recollect, with Adam, and has to work down five thousand six hundred
and twenty-four years before he gets to the Pilgrim fathers and the
Mayflower. It was all very well, only it did n't belong there, but got
in the way of something else. So it is with “science” out of place. By
far the larger part of the facts of structure and function you find in
the books of anatomy and physiology have no immediate application to the
daily duties of the practitioner. You must learn systematically, for
all that; it is the easiest way and the only way that takes hold of
the memory, except mere empirical repetition, like that of the
handicraftsman. Did you ever see one of those Japanese figures with the
points for acupuncture marked upon it?
--I had to own that my schooling had left out that piece of information.
Well, I 'll tell you about it. You see they have a way of pushing
long, slender needles into you for the cure of rheumatism and other
complaints, and it seems there is a choice of spots for the operation,
though it is very strange how little mischief it does in a good many
places one would think unsafe to meddle with. So they had a doll made,
and marked the spots where they had put in needles without doing any
harm. They must have had accidents from sticking the needles into the
wrong places now and then, but I suppose they did n't say a great deal
about those. After a time, say a few centuries of experience, they
had their doll all spotted over with safe places for sticking in the
needles. That is their way of registering practical knowledge: We,
on the other hand, study the structure of the body as a whole,
systematically, and have no difficulty at all in remembering the track
of the great vessels and nerves, and knowing just what tracks will be
safe and what unsafe. It is just the same thing with the geologists.
Here is a man close by us boring for water through one of our ledges,
because somebody else got water somewhere else in that way; and a person
who knows geology or ought to know it, because he has given his life to
it, tells me he might as well bore there for lager-beer as for water.
--I thought we had had enough of this particular matter, and that
I should like to hear what the Master had to say about the three
professions he knew something about, each compared with the others.
What is your general estimate of doctors, lawyers, and ministers?--said
I.
--Wait a minute, till I have got through with your first question,--said
the Master.--One thing at a time. You asked me about the young doctors,
and about our young doctor. They come home tres biens chausses, as a
Frenchman would say, mighty well shod with professional knowledge. But
when they begin walking round among their poor patients, they don't
commonly start with millionnaires,--they find that their new shoes of
scientific acquirements have got to be broken in just like a pair of
boots or brogans. I don't know that I have put it quite strong enough.
Let me try again. You've seen those fellows at the circus that get up on
horseback so big that you wonder how they could climb into the saddle.
But pretty soon they throw off their outside coat, and the next minute
another one, and then the one under that, and so they keep peeling off
one garment after another till people begin to look queer and think they
are going too far for strict propriety. Well, that is the way a
fellow with a real practical turn serves a good many of his scientific
wrappers, flings 'em off for other people to pick up, and goes right
at the work of curing stomach-aches and all the other little mean
unscientific complaints that make up the larger part of every doctor's
business. I think our Dr. Benjamin is a worthy young man, and if you are
in need of a doctor at any time I hope you will go to him; and if you
come off without harm, I will recommend some other friend to try him.
--I thought he was going to say he would try him in his own person, but
the Master is not fond of committing himself.
Now, I will answer your other question, he said. The lawyers are the
cleverest men, the ministers are the most learned, and the doctors are
the most sensible.
The lawyers are a picked lot, “first scholars” and the like, but
their business is as unsympathetic as Jack Ketch's. There is nothing
humanizing in their relations with their fellow-creatures. They go for
the side that retains them. They defend the man they know to be a rogue,
and not very rarely throw suspicion on the man they know to be innocent.
Mind you, I am not finding fault with them; every side of a case has a
right to the best statement it admits of; but I say it does not tend
to make them sympathetic. Suppose in a case of Fever vs. Patient, the
doctor should side with either party according to whether the old miser
or his expectant heir was his employer. Suppose the minister should side
with the Lord or the Devil, according to the salary offered and other
incidental advantages, where the soul of a sinner was in question. You
can see what a piece of work it would make of their sympathies. But the
lawyers are quicker witted than either of the other professions, and
abler men generally. They are good-natured, or, if they quarrel, their
quarrels are above-board. I don't think they are as accomplished as the
ministers, but they have a way of cramming with special knowledge for
a case which leaves a certain shallow sediment of intelligence in their
memories about a good many things. They are apt to talk law in mixed
company, and they have a way of looking round when they make a point,
as if they were addressing a jury, that is mighty aggravating, as I once
had occasion to see when one of 'em, and a pretty famous one, put me on
the witness-stand at a dinner-party once.
The ministers come next in point of talent. They are far more curious
and widely interested outside of their own calling than either of the
other professions. I like to talk with 'em. They are interesting men,
full of good feelings, hard workers, always foremost in good deeds, and
on the whole the most efficient civilizing class, working downwards from
knowledge to ignorance, that is,--not so much upwards, perhaps,--that
we have. The trouble is, that so many of 'em work in harness, and it
is pretty sure to chafe somewhere. They feed us on canned meats mostly.
They cripple our instincts and reason, and give us a crutch of doctrine.
I have talked with a great many of 'em of all sorts of belief, and I
don't think they are quite so easy in their minds, the greater number of
them; nor so clear in their convictions, as one would think to hear 'em
lay down the law in the pulpit. They used to lead the intelligence of
their parishes; now they do pretty well if they keep up with it, and
they are very apt to lag behind it. Then they must have a colleague. The
old minister thinks he can hold to his old course, sailing right into
the wind's eye of human nature, as straight as that famous old skipper
John Bunyan; the young minister falls off three or four points and
catches the breeze that left the old man's sails all shivering. By
and by the congregation will get ahead of him, and then it must, have
another new skipper. The priest holds his own pretty well; the minister
is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level
of the useful citizen,--no oracle at all, but a man of more than average
moral instincts, who, if he knows anything, knows how little he knows.
The ministers are good talkers, only the struggle between nature and
grace makes some of 'em a little awkward occasionally. The women do
their best to spoil 'em, as they do the poets; you find it very pleasant
to be spoiled, no doubt; so do they. Now and then one of 'em goes over
the dam; no wonder, they're always in the rapids.
By this time our three ladies had their faces all turned toward the
speaker, like the weathercocks in a northeaster, and I thought it best
to switch off the talk on to another rail.
How about the doctors?--I said.
--Theirs is the least learned of the professions, in this country at
least. They have not half the general culture of the lawyers, nor a
quarter of that of the ministers. I rather think, though, they are more
agreeable to the common run of people than the men with black coats or
the men with green bags. People can swear before 'em if they want to,
and they can't very well before ministers. I don't care whether they
want to swear or not, they don't want to be on their good behavior.
Besides, the minister has a little smack of the sexton about him; he
comes when people are in extremis, but they don't send for him every
time they make a slight moral slip, tell a lie for instance, or smuggle
a silk dress through the customhouse; but they call in the doctor when
a child is cutting a tooth or gets a splinter in its finger. So it does
n't mean much to send for him, only a pleasant chat about the news of
the day; for putting the baby to rights does n't take long. Besides,
everybody does n't like to talk about the next world; people are modest
in their desires, and find this world as good as they deserve; but
everybody loves to talk physic. Everybody loves to hear of strange
cases; people are eager to tell the doctor of the wonderful cures they
have heard of; they want to know what is the matter with somebody or
other who is said to be suffering from “a complication of diseases,” and
above all to get a hard name, Greek or Latin, for some complaint which
sounds altogether too commonplace in plain English. If you will only
call a headache a Cephalgia, it acquires dignity at once, and a patient
becomes rather proud of it. So I think doctors are generally welcome in
most companies.
In old times, when people were more afraid of the Devil and of witches
than they are now, they liked to have a priest or a minister somewhere
near to scare 'em off; but nowadays, if you could find an old woman
that would ride round the room on a broomstick, Barnum would build an
amphitheatre to exhibit her in; and if he could come across a young imp,
with hoofs, tail, and budding horns, a lineal descendant of one of those
“daemons” which the good people of Gloucester fired at, and were fired
at by “for the best part of a month together” in the year 1692, the
great showman would have him at any cost for his museum or menagerie.
Men are cowards, sir, and are driven by fear as the sovereign motive.
Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or
throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if
you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words, which are just
as much used for idols as promissory notes are used for values. The
ministers have a hard time of it without bell and book and holy water;
they are dismounted men in armor since Luther cut their saddle-girths,
and you can see they are quietly taking off one piece of iron after
another until some of the best of 'em are fighting the devil (not the
zoological Devil with the big D) with the sword of the Spirit, and
precious little else in the way of weapons of offence or defence. But
we couldn't get on without the spiritual brotherhood, whatever became of
our special creeds. There is a genius for religion, just as there is for
painting or sculpture. It is half-sister to the genius for music, and
has some of the features which remind us of earthly love. But it lifts
us all by its mere presence. To see a good man and hear his voice once
a week would be reason enough for building churches and pulpits. The
Master stopped all at once, and after about half a minute laughed his
pleasant laugh.
What is it?--I asked him.
I was thinking of the great coach and team that is carrying us fast
enough, I don't know but too fast, somewhere or other. The D. D.'s used
to be the leaders, but now they are the wheel-horses. It's pretty hard
to tell how much they pull, but we know they can hold back like the---
--When we're going down hill,--I said, as neatly as if I had been a
High-Church curate trained to snap at the last word of the response, so
that you couldn't wedge in the tail of a comma between the end of the
congregation's closing syllable and the beginning of the next petition.
They do it well, but it always spoils my devotion. To save my life, I
can't help watching them, as I watch to see a duck dive at the flash of
a gun, and that is not what I go to church for. It is a juggler's trick,
and there is no more religion in it than in catching a ball on the fly.
I was looking at our Scheherezade the other day, and thinking what a
pity it was that she had never had fair play in the world. I wish I knew
more of her history. There is one way of learning it,--making love to
her. I wonder whether she would let me and like it. It is an absurd
thing, and I ought not to confess, but I tell you and you only, Beloved,
my heart gave a perceptible jump when it heard the whisper of that
possibility overhead! Every day has its ebb and flow, but such a thought
as that is like one of those tidal waves they talk about, that rolls in
like a great wall and overtops and drowns out all your landmarks, and
you, too, if you don't mind what you are about and stand ready to run
or climb or swim. Not quite so bad as that, though, this time. I take
an interest in our Scheherezade. I am glad she did n't smile on the pipe
and the Bohemian-looking fellow that finds the best part of his life in
sucking at it. A fine thing, isn't it; for a young woman to marry a man
who will hold her
“Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse,”
but not quite so good as his meerschaum? It is n't for me to throw
stones, though, who have been a Nicotian a good deal more than half my
days. Cigar-stump out now, and consequently have become very bitter on
more persevering sinners. I say I take an interest in our Scheherezade,
but I rather think it is more paternal than anything else, though
my heart did give that jump. It has jumped a good many times without
anything very remarkable coming of it.
This visit to the Observatory is going to bring us all, or most of us,
together in a new way, and it wouldn't be very odd if some of us should
become better acquainted than we ever have been. There is a chance
for the elective affinities. What tremendous forces they are, if two
subjects of them come within range! There lies a bit of iron. All the
dynamic agencies of the universe are pledged to hold it just in that
position, and there it will lie until it becomes a heap of red-brown
rust. But see, I hold a magnet to it,--it looks to you like just such a
bit of iron as the other,--and lo! it leaves them all,--the tugging of
the mighty earth; of the ghostly moon that walks in white, trailing the
snaky waves of the ocean after her; of the awful sun, twice as large
as a sphere that the whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle,--it
leaves the wrestling of all their forces, which are at a dead lock with
each other, all fighting for it, and springs straight to the magnet.
What a lucky thing it is for well-conducted persons that the maddening
elective affinities don't come into play in full force very often!
I suppose I am making a good deal more of our prospective visit than
it deserves. It must be because I have got it into my head that we are
bound to have some kind of sentimental outbreak amongst us, and that
this will give a chance for advances on the part of anybody disposed
in that direction. A little change of circumstance often hastens on a
movement that has been long in preparation. A chemist will show you a
flask containing a clear liquid; he will give it a shake or two, and the
whole contents of the flask will become solid in an instant. Or you
may lay a little heap of iron-filings on a sheet of paper with a magnet
beneath it, and they will be quiet enough as they are, but give the
paper a slight jar and the specks of metal will suddenly find their way
to the north or the south pole of the magnet and take a definite shape
not unpleasing to contemplate, and curiously illustrating the laws of
attraction, antagonism, and average, by which the worlds, conscious
and unconscious, are alike governed. So with our little party, with
any little party of persons who have got used to each other; leave them
undisturbed and they might remain in a state of equilibrium forever;
but let anything give them a shake or a jar, and the long-striving but
hindered affinities come all at once into play and finish the work of a
year in five minutes.
We were all a good deal excited by the anticipation of this visit. The
Capitalist, who for the most part keeps entirely to himself, seemed
to take an interest in it and joined the group in the parlor who were
making arrangements as to the details of the eventful expedition, which
was very soon to take place. The Young Girl was full of enthusiasm;
she is one of those young persons, I think, who are impressible, and
of necessity depressible when their nervous systems are overtasked, but
elastic, recovering easily from mental worries and fatigues, and only
wanting a little change of their conditions to get back their bloom
and cheerfulness. I could not help being pleased to see how much of the
child was left in her, after all the drudgery she had been through. What
is there that youth will not endure and triumph over? Here she was;
her story for the week was done in good season; she had got rid of her
villain by a new and original catastrophe; she had received a sum of
money for an extra string of verses,--painfully small, it is true, but
it would buy her a certain ribbon she wanted for the great excursion;
and now her eyes sparkled so that I forgot how tired and hollow they
sometimes looked when she had been sitting up half the night over her
endless manuscript.
The morning of the day we had looked forward to--promised as good an
evening as we could wish. The Capitalist, whose courteous and bland
demeanor would never have suggested the thought that he was a robber and
an enemy of his race, who was to be trampled underfoot by the beneficent
regenerators of the social order as preliminary to the universal
reign of peace on earth and good-will to men, astonished us all with
a proposal to escort the three ladies and procure a carriage for their
conveyance. The Lady thanked him in a very cordial way, but said she
thought nothing of the walk. The Landlady looked disappointed at this
answer. For her part she was on her legs all day and should be glad
enough to ride, if so be he was going to have a carriage at any rate. It
would be a sight pleasanter than to trudge afoot, but she would n't have
him go to the expense on her account. Don't mention it, madam,--r--said
the Capitalist, in a generous glow of enthusiasm. As for the Young Girl,
she did not often get a chance for a drive, and liked the idea of it for
its own sake, as children do, and she insisted that the Lady should go
in the carriage with her. So it was settled that the Capitalist should
take the three ladies in a carriage, and the rest of us go on foot.
The evening behaved as it was bound to do on so momentous an occasion.
The Capitalist was dressed with almost suspicious nicety. We pedestrians
could not help waiting to see them off, and I thought he handed the
ladies into the carriage with the air of a French marquis.
I walked with Dr. Benjamin and That Boy, and we had to keep the little
imp on the trot a good deal of the way in order not to be too long
behind the carriage party. The Member of the Haouse walked with our
two dummies,--I beg their pardon, I mean the Register of Deeds and the
Salesman.
The Man of Letters, hypothetically so called, walked by himself, smoking
a short pipe which was very far from suggesting the spicy breezes that
blow soft from Ceylon's isle.
I suppose everybody who reads this paper has visited one or more
observatories, and of course knows all about them. But as it may
hereafter be translated into some foreign tongue and circulated among
barbarous, but rapidly improving people, people who have as yet no
astronomers among them, it may be well to give a little notion of what
kind of place an observatory is.
To begin then: a deep and solid stone foundation is laid in the earth,
and a massive pier of masonry is built up on it. A heavy block of
granite forms the summit of this pier, and on this block rests the
equatorial telescope. Around this structure a circular tower is built,
with two or more floors which come close up to the pier, but do not
touch it at any point. It is crowned with a hemispherical dome, which, I
may remark, half realizes the idea of my egg-shell studio. This dome
is cleft from its base to its summit by a narrow, ribbon-like opening,
through which is seen the naked sky. It revolves on cannon-balls, so
easily that a single hand can move it, and thus the opening may be
turned towards any point of the compass. As the telescope can be raised
or depressed so as to be directed to any elevation from the horizon to
the zenith, and turned around the entire circle with the dome, it can be
pointed to any part of the heavens. But as the star or other celestial
object is always apparently moving, in consequence of the real rotatory
movement of the earth, the telescope is made to follow it automatically
by an ingenious clock-work arrangement. No place, short of the temple of
the living God, can be more solemn. The jars of the restless life
around it do not disturb the serene intelligence of the half-reasoning
apparatus. Nothing can stir the massive pier but the shocks that shake
the solid earth itself. When an earthquake thrills the planet, the
massive turret shudders with the shuddering rocks on which it rests,
but it pays no heed to the wildest tempest, and while the heavens are
convulsed and shut from the eye of the far-seeing instrument it waits
without a tremor for the blue sky to come back. It is the type of the
true and steadfast man of the Roman poet, whose soul remains unmoved
while the firmament cracks and tumbles about him. It is the material
image of the Christian; his heart resting on the Rock of Ages, his eye
fixed on the brighter world above.
I did not say all this while we were looking round among these wonders,
quite new to many of us. People don't talk in straight-off sentences
like that. They stumble and stop, or get interrupted, change a word,
begin again, miss connections of verbs and nouns, and so on, till they
blunder out their meaning. But I did let fall a word or two, showing the
impression the celestial laboratory produced upon me. I rather think
I must own to the “Rock of Ages” comparison. Thereupon the “Man of
Letters,” so called, took his pipe from his mouth, and said that he did
n't go in “for sentiment and that sort of thing. Gush was played out.”
The Member of the Haouse, who, as I think, is not wanting in that homely
good sense which one often finds in plain people from the huckleberry
districts, but who evidently supposes the last speaker to be what he
calls “a tahlented mahn,” looked a little puzzled. My remark seemed
natural and harmless enough to him, I suppose, but I had been distinctly
snubbed, and the Member of the Haouse thought I must defend myself,
as is customary in the deliberative body to which he belongs, when one
gentleman accuses another gentleman of mental weakness or obliquity. I
could not make up my mind to oblige him at that moment by showing fight.
I suppose that would have pleased my assailant, as I don't think he has
a great deal to lose, and might have made a little capital out of me if
he could have got a laugh out of the Member or either of the dummies,--I
beg their pardon again, I mean the two undemonstrative boarders. But I
will tell you, Beloved, just what I think about this matter.
We poets, you know, are much given to indulging in sentiment, which is a
mode of consciousness at a discount just now with the new generation of
analysts who are throwing everything into their crucibles. Now we must
not claim too much for sentiment. It does not go a great way in deciding
questions of arithmetic, or algebra, or geometry. Two and two
will undoubtedly make four, irrespective of the emotions or other
idiosyncrasies of the calculator; and the three angles of a triangle
insist on being equal to two right angles, in the face of the most
impassioned rhetoric or the most inspired verse. But inasmuch as
religion and law and the whole social order of civilized society, to
say nothing of literature and art, are so founded on and pervaded by
sentiment that they would all go to pieces without it, it is a word not
to be used too lightly in passing judgment, as if it were an element
to be thrown out or treated with small consideration. Reason may be the
lever, but sentiment gives you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if
you want to move the world. Even “sentimentality,” which is sentiment
overdone, is better than that affectation of superiority to human
weakness which is only tolerable as one of the stage properties of
full-blown dandyism, and is, at best, but half-blown cynicism; which
participle and noun you can translate, if you happen to remember the
derivation of the last of them, by a single familiar word. There is a
great deal of false sentiment in the world, as there is of bad logic
and erroneous doctrine; but--it is very much less disagreeable to hear a
young poet overdo his emotions, or even deceive himself about them,
than to hear a caustic-epithet flinger repeating such words as
“sentimentality” and “entusymusy,”--one of the least admirable of Lord
Byron's bequests to our language,--for the purpose of ridiculing him
into silence. An overdressed woman is not so pleasing as she might be,
but at any rate she is better than the oil of vitriol squirter, whose
profession it is to teach young ladies to avoid vanity by spoiling their
showy silks and satins.
The Lady was the first of our party who was invited to look through the
equatorial. Perhaps this world had proved so hard to her that she was
pained to think that other worlds existed, to be homes of suffering and
sorrow. Perhaps she was thinking it would be a happy change when she
should leave this dark planet for one of those brighter spheres. She
sighed, at any rate, but thanked the Young Astronomer for the beautiful
sights he had shown her, and gave way to the next comer, who was That
Boy, now in a state of irrepressible enthusiasm to see the Man in the
Moon. He was greatly disappointed at not making out a colossal human
figure moving round among the shining summits and shadowy ravines of the
“spotty globe.”
The Landlady came next and wished to see the moon also, in preference to
any other object. She was astonished at the revelations of the powerful
telescope. Was there any live creatures to be seen on the moon? she
asked. The Young Astronomer shook his head, smiling a little at the
question.--Was there any meet'n'-houses? There was no evidence, he said,
that the moon was inhabited. As there did not seem to be either air or
water on its surface, the inhabitants would have a rather hard time of
it, and if they went to meeting the sermons would be apt to be rather
dry. If there were a building on it as big as York minster, as big as
the Boston Coliseum, the great telescopes like Lord Rosse's would make
it out. But it seemed to be a forlorn place; those who had studied it
most agreed in considering it a “cold, crude, silent, and desolate” ruin
of nature, without the possibility, if life were on it, of articulate
speech, of music, even of sound. Sometimes a greenish tint was seen
upon its surface, which might have been taken for vegetation, but it was
thought not improbably to be a reflection from the vast forests of South
America. The ancients had a fancy, some of them, that the face of the
moon was a mirror in which the seas and shores of the earth were imaged.
Now we know the geography of the side toward us about as well as that of
Asia, better than that of Africa. The Astronomer showed them one of
the common small photographs of the moon. He assured them that he had
received letters inquiring in all seriousness if these alleged lunar
photographs were not really taken from a peeled orange. People had got
angry with him for laughing at them for asking such a question. Then
he gave them an account of the famous moon-hoax which came out, he
believed, in 1835. It was full of the most bare-faced absurdities,
yet people swallowed it all, and even Arago is said to have treated it
seriously as a thing that could not well be true, for Mr. Herschel would
have certainly notified him of these marvellous discoveries. The writer
of it had not troubled himself to invent probabilities, but had borrowed
his scenery from the Arabian Nights and his lunar inhabitants from Peter
Wilkins.
After this lecture the Capitalist stepped forward and applied his eye to
the lens. I suspect it to have been shut most of the time, for I observe
a good many elderly people adjust the organ of vision to any optical
instrument in that way. I suppose it is from the instinct of protection
to the eye, the same instinct as that which makes the raw militia-man
close it when he pulls the trigger of his musket the first time. He
expressed himself highly gratified, however, with what he saw, and
retired from the instrument to make room for the Young Girl.
She threw her hair back and took her position at the instrument.
Saint Simeon Stylites the Younger explained the wonders of the moon to
her,--Tycho and the grooves radiating from it, Kepler and Copernicus
with their craters and ridges, and all the most brilliant shows of
this wonderful little world. I thought he was more diffuse and more
enthusiastic in his descriptions than he had been with the older members
of the party. I don't doubt the old gentleman who lived so long on the
top of his pillar would have kept a pretty sinner (if he could have had
an elevator to hoist her up to him) longer than he would have kept her
grandmother. These young people are so ignorant, you know. As for our
Scheherezade, her delight was unbounded, and her curiosity insatiable.
If there were any living creatures there, what odd things they must be.
They could n't have any lungs, nor any hearts. What a pity! Did they
ever die? How could they expire if they didn't breathe? Burn up? No air
to burn in. Tumble into some of those horrid pits, perhaps, and break
all to bits. She wondered how the young people there liked it, or
whether there were any young people there; perhaps nobody was young and
nobody was old, but they were like mummies all of them--what an idea
--two mummies making love to each other! So she went on in a rattling,
giddy kind of way, for she was excited by the strange scene in which
she found herself, and quite astonished the Young Astronomer with her
vivacity. All at once she turned to him.
Will you show me the double star you said I should see?
With the greatest pleasure,--he said, and proceeded to wheel the
ponderous dome, and then to adjust the instrument, I think to the one in
Andromeda, or that in Cygnus, but I should not know one of them from the
other.
How beautiful!--she said as she looked at the wonderful object.--One is
orange red and one is emerald green.
The young man made an explanation in which he said something about
complementary colors.
Goodness!--exclaimed the Landlady.--What! complimentary to our party?
Her wits must have been a good deal confused by the strange sights of
the evening. She had seen tickets marked complimentary, she remembered,
but she could not for the life of her understand why our party should be
particularly favored at a celestial exhibition like this. On the whole,
she questioned inwardly whether it might not be some subtle pleasantry,
and smiled, experimentally, with a note of interrogation in the smile,
but, finding no encouragement, allowed her features to subside gradually
as if nothing had happened. I saw all this as plainly as if it had all
been printed in great-primer type, instead of working itself out in her
features. I like to see other people muddled now and then, because
my own occasional dulness is relieved by a good solid background of
stupidity in my neighbors.
--And the two revolve round each other?--said the Young Girl.
--Yes,--he answered,--two suns, a greater and a less, each shining, but
with a different light, for the other.
--How charming! It must be so much pleasanter than to be alone in such a
great empty space! I should think one would hardly care to shine if its
light wasted itself in the monstrous solitude of the sky. Does not a
single star seem very lonely to you up there?
--Not more lonely than I am myself,--answered the Young Astronomer.
--I don't know what there was in those few words, but I noticed that
for a minute or two after they, were uttered I heard the ticking of the
clock-work that moved the telescope as clearly as if we had all been
holding our breath, and listening for the music of the spheres.
The Young Girl kept her eye closely applied to the eye-piece of
the telescope a very long time, it seemed to me. Those double stars
interested her a good deal, no doubt. When she looked off from the glass
I thought both her eyes appeared very much as if they had been a little
strained, for they were suffused and glistening. It may be that she
pitied the lonely young man.
I know nothing in the world tenderer than the pity that a kind-hearted
young girl has for a young man who feels lonely. It is true that these
dear creatures are all compassion for every form of human woe,
and anxious to alleviate all human misfortunes. They will go to
Sunday-schools through storms their brothers are afraid of, to teach the
most unpleasant and intractable classes of little children the age of
Methuselah and the dimensions of Og the King of Bashan's bedstead. They
will stand behind a table at a fair all day until they are ready to
drop, dressed in their prettiest clothes and their sweetest smiles, and
lay hands upon you, like--so many Lady Potiphars,--perfectly correct
ones, of course,--to make you buy what you do not want, at prices which
you cannot afford; all this as cheerfully as if it were not martyrdom
to them as well as to you. Such is their love for all good objects, such
their eagerness to sympathize with all their suffering fellow-creatures!
But there is nothing they pity as they pity a lonely young man.
I am sure, I sympathize with her in this instance. To see a pale student
burning away, like his own midnight lamp, with only dead men's hands to
hold, stretched out to him from the sepulchres of books, and dead men's
souls imploring him from their tablets to warm them over again just for
a little while in a human consciousness, when all this time there are
soft, warm, living hands that would ask nothing better than to bring the
blood back into those cold thin fingers, and gently caressing natures
that would wind all their tendrils about the unawakened heart which
knows so little of itself, is pitiable enough and would be sadder still
if we did not have the feeling that sooner or later the pale student
will be pretty sure to feel the breath of a young girl against his cheek
as she looks over his shoulder; and that he will come all at once to an
illuminated page in his book that never writer traced in characters,
and never printer set up in type, and never binder enclosed within his
covers! But our young man seems farther away from life than any student
whose head is bent downwards over his books. His eyes are turned away
from all human things. How cold the moonlight is that falls upon his
forehead, and how white he looks in it! Will not the rays strike
through to his brain at last, and send him to a narrower cell than this
egg-shell dome which is his workshop and his prison?
I cannot say that the Young Astronomer seemed particularly impressed
with a sense of his miserable condition. He said he was lonely, it is
true, but he said it in a manly tone, and not as if he were repining
at the inevitable condition of his devoting himself to that particular
branch of science. Of course, he is lonely, the most lonely being that
lives in the midst of our breathing world. If he would only stay a
little longer with us when we get talking; but he is busy almost always
either in observation or with his calculations and studies, and when the
nights are fair loses so much sleep that he must make it up by day. He
wants contact with human beings. I wish he would change his seat and
come round and sit by our Scheherezade!
The rest of the visit went off well enough, except that the “Man of
Letters,” so called, rather snubbed some of the heavenly bodies as
not quite up to his standard of brilliancy. I thought myself that the
double-star episode was the best part of it.
I have an unexpected revelation to make to the reader. Not long after
our visit to the Observatory, the Young Astronomer put a package into my
hands, a manuscript, evidently, which he said he would like to have me
glance over. I found something in it which interested me, and told him
the next day that I should like to read it with some care. He seemed
rather pleased at this, and said that he wished I would criticise it as
roughly as I liked, and if I saw anything in it which might be dressed
to better advantage to treat it freely, just as if it were my own
production. It had often happened to him, he went on to say, to be
interrupted in his observations by clouds covering the objects he was
examining for a longer or shorter time. In these idle moments he had put
down many thoughts, unskilfully he feared, but just as they came into
his mind. His blank verse he suspected was often faulty. His thoughts he
knew must be crude, many of them. It would please him to have me amuse
myself by putting them into shape. He was kind enough to say that I was
an artist in words, but he held himself as an unskilled apprentice.
I confess I was appalled when I cast my eye upon the title of the
manuscript, “Cirri and Nebulae.”
--Oh! oh!--I said,--that will never do. People don't know what
Cirri are, at least not one out of fifty readers. “Wind-Clouds and
Star-Drifts” will do better than that.
--Anything you like,--he answered,--what difference does it make how you
christen a foundling? These are not my legitimate scientific offspring,
and you may consider them left on your doorstep.
--I will not attempt to say just how much of the diction of these lines
belongs to him, and how much to me. He said he would never claim them,
after I read them to him in my version. I, on my part, do not wish to be
held responsible for some of his more daring thoughts, if I should see
fit to reproduce them hereafter. At this time I shall give only the
first part of the series of poetical outbreaks for which the young
devotee of science must claim his share of the responsibility. I may put
some more passages into shape by and by.