A NEW OPENING.
"Henderson," said Bolton to me, one day, "how long are you engaged on
the _Democracy?_"
"Only for this year," said I.
"Because," said he, "I have something to propose to you which I hope may
prove a better thing. Hestermann & Co. sent for me yesterday in secret
session. The head manager of their whole set of magazines and papers has
resigned, and is going to travel in Europe, and they want me to take the
place."
"Good! I am heartily glad of it," said I. "I always felt that you were
not in the position that you ought to have. You will accept, of course."
"Whether I accept or not depends on _you_," he replied.
"I cannot understand," said I.
"In short, then," said he, "the responsibility is a heavy one, and I
cannot undertake it without a partner whom I can trust as myself--I
mean," he added, "whom I can trust _more_ than myself."
"You are a thousand times too good," said I. "I should like nothing
better than such a partnership, but I feel oppressed by your good
opinion. Are you sure that I am the one for you?"
"I think I am," said he, "and it is a case where I am the best judge;
and it offers to you just what you want--a stable position, independence
to express yourself, and a good income. Hestermann & Co. are rich, and
wise enough to know that liberality is the best policy."
"But," said I, "their offers are made to you, and not to me."
"Well, of course, their acquaintance with me is of old standing; but I
have spoken to them of you, and I am to bring you round to talk with
them to-morrow; but, after all, the whole power of arranging is left
with me. They put a certain sum at my disposal, and I do what I please
with it. In short," he said, smiling, "I hold the living, and you are my
curate. Well," he added, "of course you need time to think matters over;
here is paper on which I have made a little memorandum of an arrangement
between us; take it and dream on it, and let me know to-morrow what you
think of it."
I went to my room and unfolded the agreement, and found the terms
liberal beyond all my expectations. In fact, the income of the principal
was awarded to me, and that of the subordinate to Bolton.
I took the paper the next evening to Bolton's room. "Look here, Bolton,"
said I, "these terms are simply absurd."
"How so?" he said, lifting his eyes tranquilly from his book. "What's
the matter with them?"
"Why, you give me all the income."
"Wait till you see how I'll work you," he said, smiling. "I'll get it
out of you; you see if I don't."
"But you leave yourself nothing."
"I have as much as I would have, and that's enough. I'm a literary monk,
you know, with no family but Puss and Stumpy, poor fellow, and I need
the less."
Stumpy upon this pricked up his ragged ears with an expression of lively
satisfaction, sat back on his haunches, and rapped the floor with his
forlorn bit of a tail.
"Poor Stumpy," said Bolton, "you don't know that you are the homeliest
dog in New York, do you? Well, _as far as you go_, you are perfect
goodness, Stumpy, though you are no beauty."
Upon this high praise, Stumpy seemed so elated that he stood on his hind
paws and rested his rough fore-feet on Bolton's knee, and looked up with
eyes of admiration.
"Man is the dog's God," said Bolton. "I can't conceive how any man can
be rude to his dog. A dog," he added, fondling his ragged cur, "why,
he's nothing but organized love--love on four feet, encased in fur, and
looking piteously out at the eyes--love that would die for you, yet
cannot speak--that's the touching part. Stumpy _longs_ to speak; his
poor dog's breast heaves with something he longs to tell me and can't.
Don't it, Stumpy?"
As if he understood his master, Stumpy wheezed a doleful whine, and
actual tears stood in his eyes.
"Well," said Bolton, "Stumpy has beautiful eyes; nobody shall deny
that--there, there! poor fellow, maybe on the other shore your rough
bark will develop into speech; let's hope so. I confess I'm of the poor
Indian's mind, and hope to meet my dog in the hereafter. Why should so
much love go out in nothing? Yes, Stumpy, we'll meet in the
resurrection, won't we?" Stumpy barked aloud with the greatest
animation.
"Bolton, you ought to be a family man," said I. "Why do you take it for
granted that you are to be a literary monk, and spend your love on dogs
and cats?"
"_You_ may get married, Hal, and I'll adopt your children," said Bolton;
"that's one reason why I want to establish you. You see, one's dogs
_will_ die, and it breaks one's heart. If _you_ had a boy, now, I'd
invest in him."
"And why can't you invest in a boy of your own?"
"Oh, I'm a predestined old bachelor."
"No such thing," I persisted, hardily, "Why do you immure yourself in a
den? Why won't you go out into society? Here, ever since I've known you,
you have been in this one cave--a New York hermit; yet if you would once
begin to go into society, you'd like it."
"You think I haven't tried it; you forget that I am some years older
than you are," said Bolton.
"You are a good-looking young fellow yet," said I, "and ought to make
the most of yourself. Why should you turn all the advantages into my
hands, and keep so little for yourself?"
"It suits me," said Bolton; "I am lazy--I mean to get the work out of
you."
"That's all hum," said I; "you know well enough that you are not lazy;
you take delight in work for work's sake."
"One reason I am glad of this position," he said, "is that it gives me a
chance to manage matters a little, as I want them. For instance, there's
Jim Fellows--I want to make something more than a mad Bohemian of that
boy. Jim is one of the wild growths of our New York life; he is a
creature of the impulses and the senses, and will be for good or evil
according as others use him."
"He's capital company," said I, "but he doesn't seem to me to have a
serious thought on any subject."
"And yet," said Bolton, "such is our day and time, that Jim is more
likely than you or I to get along in the world. His cap and bells win
favor everywhere, and the laugh he raises gives him the privilege of
saying anything he pleases. For my part, I couldn't live without Jim. I
have a weakness for him. Nothing is so precious to me as a laugh, and,
wet or dry, I can always get that out of Jim. He'll work in admirably
with us."
"One thing must be said for Jim," said I, "with all his keenness he's
kind-hearted. He never is witty at the expense of real trouble. As he
says, he goes for the under dog in the fight always, and his cheery,
frisky, hit-or-miss morality does many a kind turn for the unfortunate,
while he is always ready to help the poor."
"Jim is not of the sort that is going to do the world's thinking for
them," said Bolton; "neither will he ever be one of the noble army of
martyrs for principle. He is like a lively, sympathetic horse that will
keep the step of the team he is harnessed in, and in the department of
lively nonsense he'd do us yeoman service. Nowadays people must have
truth whipped up to a white froth or they won't touch it. Jim is a
capital egg-beater."
"Yes," said I; "he's like the horse that had the GO in him; he'll run
any team that he's harnessed in, and if you hold the reins he won't run
off the course."
"Then again," said Bolton, "there's your cousin; there is the editorship
of our weekly journal will be just the place for her. You can write and
offer it to her."
"Pardon me," said I, maliciously, "since you are acquainted with the
lady, why not write and offer it yourself? It would be a good chance to
renew your acquaintance."
Bolton's countenance changed, and he remained a moment silent.
"Henderson," he said, "there are very painful circumstances connected
with my acquaintance with your cousin. I never wish to meet her, or
renew my acquaintance with her. Sometime I will tell you why," he added.
The next evening I found on my table the following letter from Bolton:
_Dear Henderson_:--You need feel no hesitancy about accepting in full
every advantage in the position I propose to you, since you may find it
weighted with disadvantages and incumbrances you do not dream of. In
short, I shall ask of you services for which no money can pay, and till
I knew you there was no man in the world of whom I had dared to ask
them. I want a friend, courageous, calm, and true, capable of thinking
broadly and justly, one superior to ordinary prejudices, who may be to
me another, and in some hours a stronger, self.
I can fancy your surprise at this language, and yet I have not read you
aright if you are not one of a thousand on whom I may rest this hope.
You often rally me on my lack of enterprise and ambition, on my hermit
habits. The truth is, Henderson, I am a strained and unseaworthy craft,
for whom the harbor and shore are the safest quarters. I have lost trust
in myself, and dare not put out to sea without feeling the strong hand
of a friend with me.
I suppose no young fellow ever entered the course of life with more
self-confidence. I had splendid health, high spirits, great power of
application, and great social powers. I lived freely and carelessly on
the abundance of my physical resources. I could ride, and row, and
wrestle with the best. I could lead in all social gaieties, yet keep the
head of my class, as I did the first two years of my college life. It
seems hardly fair to us human beings that we should be so buoyed up with
ignorant hope and confidence in the beginning of our life, and that we
should be left in our ignorance to make mistakes which no after years
can retrieve. I thought I was perfectly sure of myself; I thought my
health and strength were inexhaustible, and that I could carry weights
that no man else could. The drain of my wide-awake exhausting life upon
my nervous system I made up by the insidious use of stimulants. I was
like a man habitually overdrawing his capital, and ignorant to what
extent. In my third college year this began to tell perceptibly on my
nerves. I was losing self-control, losing my way in life; I was
excitable, irritable, impatient of guidance or reproof, and at times
horribly depressed. I sought refuge from this depression in social
exhilaration, and having lost control of myself became a marked man
among the college authorities; in short, I was overtaken in a convivial
row, brought under college discipline, and suspended.
It was at this time that I went into your neighborhood to study and
teach. I found no difficulty in getting the highest recommendations as
to scholarship from some of the college officers who were for giving me
a chance to recover myself; and for the rest I was thoroughly sobered
and determined on a new course. Here commenced my acquaintance with your
cousin, and there followed a few months remembered ever since as the
purest happiness of my life. I loved her with all there was in
me,--heart, soul, mind and strength,--with a love which can never die.
She also loved me, more perhaps than she dared to say, for she was
young, hardly come to full consciousness of herself. She was then
scarcely sixteen, ignorant of her own nature, ignorant of life, and
almost frightened at the intensity of the feeling which she excited in
me, yet she loved me. But before we could arrive at anything like a calm
understanding, her father came between us. He was a trustee of the
Academy, and a dispute arose between him and me in which he treated me
with an overbearing haughtiness which aroused the spirit of opposition
in me. I was in the right and knew I was, and I defended my course
before the other trustees in a manner which won them over to my way of
thinking--a victory which he never forgave.
Previously to this encounter I had been in the habit of visiting in his
family quite intimately. Caroline and I enjoyed that kind of unwatched
freedom which the customs of New England allow to young people. I always
attended her home from the singing-school and the weekly lectures, and
the evening after my encounter with the trustees I did the same. At the
door of his house he met us, and as Caroline passed in he stopped me,
and briefly saying that my visits there would no longer be permitted,
closed the door in my face. I tried to obtain an interview soon after,
when he sternly upbraided me as one that had stolen into the village and
won their confidence on false pretences, adding that if he and the
trustees had known the full history of my college life I should never
have been permitted to teach in their village or have access to their
families. It was in vain to attempt a defense to a man determined to
take the very worst view of facts which I did not pretend to deny. I
knew that I had been irreproachable as to my record in the school, that
I had been faithful in my duties, that the majority of parents and
pupils were on my side; but I could not deny the harsh facts which he
had been enabled to obtain from some secret enemy, and which he thought
justified him in saying that he would rather see his daughter in her
grave than to see her my wife. The next day Caroline did not appear in
school. Her father, with prompt energy, took her immediately to an
academy fifty miles away.
I did not attempt to follow her or write to her; a profound sense of
discouragement came over me, and I looked on my acquaintance with her
with a sort of remorse. The truth bitterly told by an enemy with a vivid
power of statement is a tonic oftentimes too strong for one's power of
endurance. I never reflected so seriously on the responsibility which a
man assumes, in awakening the slumbering feelings of a woman, and fixing
them on himself. Under the reproaches of Caroline's father I could but
regard this as a wrong I had done, and which could be expiated only by
leaving her to peace in forgetfulness.
I resolved that I would never let her hear from me again, till I had
fully proved myself to be possessed of such powers of self-control as
would warrant me in offering to be the guardian of her happiness.
But when I set myself to the work, I found what many another does, that
I had reckoned without my host. The man who has begun to live and work
by artificial stimulant, never knows where he stands, and can never
count upon himself with any certainty. He lets into his castle a servant
who becomes the most tyrannical of masters. He may resolve to turn him
out, but will find himself reduced to the condition in which he can
neither do with nor without him.
In short, the use of stimulant to the brain-power brings on a disease,
in whose paroxysms a man is no more his own master than in the ravings
of fever, a disease that few have the knowledge to understand, and for
whose manifestations the world has no pity.
I cannot tell you the dire despair that came upon me, when after
repeated falls, bringing remorse and self-upbraiding to me, and drawing
upon me the severest reproaches of my friends, the idea at last flashed
upon me that I had indeed become the victim of a sort of periodical
insanity in which the power of the will was overwhelmed by a wild
unreasoning impulse. I remember when a boy reading an account of a
bridal party sailing gaily on the coast of Norway who were insidiously
drawn into the resistless outer whirl of the great Maelström. The horror
of the situation was the moment when the shipmaster learned that the
ship _no longer obeyed the rudder_; the cruelty of it was the gradual
manner in which the resistless doom came upon them. The sun still shone,
the sky was still blue. The shore, with its green trees and free birds
and blooming flowers, was near and visible as they went round and round
in dizzy whirls, past the church with its peaceful spire, past the home
cottages, past the dwelling of friends and neighbors, past parents,
brothers, and sisters who stood on the shore warning and shrieking and
entreating; helpless, hopeless, with bitterness in their souls, with all
that made life lovely so near in sight, and yet cut off from it by the
swirl of that tremendous fate!
There have been just such hours to me, in which I have seen the hopes of
manhood, the love of woman, the possession of a home, the opportunities
for acquisition of name, and position, and property, all within sight,
within grasp, yet all made impossible by my knowledge and consciousness
of the deadly drift and suction of that invisible whirlpool.
The more of manliness there yet is left in man in these circumstances,
the more torture. The more sense of honor, love of reputation, love of
friends, conscience in duty, the more anguish. I read once a frightful
story of a woman whose right hand was changed to a serpent, which at
intervals was roused to fiendish activity and demanded of her the blood
of her nearest and dearest friends. The hideous curse was inappeasable,
and the doomed victim spell-bound, powerless to resist. Even so the man
who has lost the control of his will is driven to torture those he
loves, while he shivers with horror and anguish at the sight.
I have seen the time when I gave earnest thanks that no woman loved me,
that I had no power to poison the life of a wife with the fear, and
terror, and lingering agony of watching the slow fulfillment of such a
doom.
It is enough to say that with every advantage--of friends, patronage,
position--I lost _all_.
The world is _exigéant_. It demands above everything that every man
shall keep step. He who cannot, falls to the rear, and is gradually left
behind as the army moves on.
The only profession left to me was one which could avail itself of my
lucid intervals.
The power of clothing thought with language is in our day growing to be
a species of talent for which men are willing to pay, and I have been
able by this to make myself a name and a place in the world; and what is
more, I hope to do some good in it.
I have reflected upon my own temptation, endeavoring to divest myself of
the horror with which my sense of the suffering and disappointment I
have caused my friends inspires me. I have settled in my own mind the
limits of human responsibility on this subject, and have come to the
conclusion that it is to be regarded precisely as Mary Lamb and Charles
Lamb regarded the incursion of the mania which destroyed the peace of
their life. A man who undertakes to comprehend, and cure himself, has to
fight his way back alone. Nobody understands, nobody sympathizes with
him, nobody helps him--not because the world is unfeeling, but because
it is ignorant of the laws which govern this species of insanity.
It took me, therefore, a great while to form my system of self-cure. I
still hope for this. _I_, the sane and sound, _I_ hope to provide for
the insane and unsound intervals of my life. And my theory is, briefly,
a _total_ and _eternal_ relinquishment of the poisonous influence, so
that nature may have power to organize new and healthy brain-matter, and
to remove that which is diseased. Nature will do this, in the end, for
she is ever merciful; there is always "forgiveness with her, that she
may be feared." Since you have known me, you have seen that I live the
life of an anchorite--that my hours are regular, that I avoid exciting
society, that I labor with uniformity, and that I never touch any
stimulating drink. It is a peculiarity of cases like mine that for
lengths of time the morbid disease leaves us, and we feel the utmost
aversion to any thing of the kind. But there is always a danger lying
behind this subtle calm. Three or four drops of alcohol, such as form
the basis of a tincture which a doctor will order without scruple, will
bring back the madness. One five-minutes inadvertence will upset the
painful work of years, and carry one away as with a flood. When I did
not know this, I was constantly falling. Society through all its parts
is full of traps and pitfalls for such as I, and the only refuge is in
flight.
It has been part of my rule of life to avoid all responsibilities that
might involve others in my liability to failure. It is now a very long
time since I have felt any abnormal symptoms, and if I had not so often
been thrown down after such a period of apparent calm, I might fancy my
dangers over, and myself a sound man.
The younger Hestermann was a class-mate and chum of mine in college, and
one whose friendship for me has held on through thick and thin. He has a
trust in me that imposes on me a painful sense of responsibility. I
would not fail him for a thousand worlds, yet if one of my hours of
darkness should come I should fail ignominiously.
Only one motive determined me to take their offer--it gave me a chance
to provide for you and for Caroline.
I dare do it only through trusting you for a friendship beyond that of
the common; in short, for a brotherly kindness such as Charles Lamb
showed to Mary, his sister. If the curse returns upon me, you must not
let me ruin myself and you; you must take me to an asylum till I
recover.
In asking this of you, I am glad to be able to offer what will be to you
an independent position, and give you that home and fireside which I may
not dare to hope for myself.
In the end, I expect to conquer, either here or hereafter. I believe in
the Fatherhood of God, and that He has a purpose even in letting us
blindly stumble through life as we do; and through all my weakness and
unworthiness I still hold his hand. I _know_ that the whole temptation
is one of brain and nerves, and when He chooses He can release me. The
poor brain will be cold and still for good and all some day, and _I_
shall be free and able to see, I trust, why I have been suffered thus to
struggle. After all, _immortality_ opens a large hope, that may overpay
the most unspeakable bitterness of life.
Meanwhile, you can see why I do not wish to be brought into personal
relations with the only woman I have ever loved, or ever can love, and
whose happiness I fear to put in peril. It is an unspeakable delight and
relief to have this power of doing for her, but she must not know of it.
Also, let me tell you that you are to me more transparent than you
think. It requires only the penetration of friendship to see that you
are in love, and that you hesitate and hang back because of an
unwillingness to match your fortunes with hers.
Let me suggest, do you not owe it as a matter of justice, after so much
intimacy as has existed, to give her the opportunity to choose between a
man and circumstances? If the arrangement between us goes into effect,
you will have a definite position and a settled income. Go to her like a
man and lay it before her, and if she is worthy of you she will come to
you.
"He either dreads his fate too much,
Or his desert is small,
Who fears to put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all."
God grant you a home and fireside, Harry, and I will be the indulgent
uncle in the chimney-corner.
Yours ever, BOLTON.