CHAPTER I.

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ERNEST LINWOOD;

OR,

THE INNER LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

BY MRS. CAROLINE LEE HENTZ.

AUTHOR OF "LINDA; OR, THE YOUNG PILOT OF THE BELLE CREOLE," "THE

BANISHED SON," "COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE; OR, THE JOYS AND SORROWS OF

AMERICAN LIFE," "THE PLANTER'S NORTHERN BRIDE; OR, SCENES IN MRS. HENTZ

CHILDHOOD," "LOVE AFTER MARRIAGE," "MARCUS WARLAND; OR, THE LONG MOSS

SPRING," "EOLINE; OR, MAGNOLIA VALE; OR, THE HEIRESS OF GLENMORE,"

"HELEN AND ARTHUR; OR, MISS THUSA'S SPINNING-WHEEL," "RENA; OR, THE SNOW

BIRD," "THE LOST DAUGHTER," "ROBERT GRAHAM;" A SEQUEL TO "LINDA," ETC.

PHILADELPHIA:

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS;

306 CHESTNUT STREET.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by T. B.

PETERSON & BROTHERS

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and

for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

* * * * *

"Thou hast called me thine angel in moments of bliss,

Still thine angel I'll prove mid the horrors of this.

Through the furnace unshrinking thy steps I'll pursue,

And shield thee, and save thee, and perish there too."

* * * * *

ERNEST LINWOOD.

CHAPTER I.

With an incident of my childhood I will commence the record of my life.

It stands out in bold prominence, rugged and bleak, through the haze of

memory.

I was only twelve years old. He might have spoken less harshly. He might

have remembered and pitied my youth and sensitiveness, that tall,

powerful, hitherto kind man,--my preceptor, and, as I believed, my

friend. Listen to what he did say, in the presence of the whole school

of boys, as well as girls, assembled on that day to hear the weekly

exercises read, written on subjects which the master had given us the

previous week.

One by one, we were called up to the platform, where he sat enthroned in

all the majesty of the Olympian king-god. One by one, the manuscripts

were read by their youthful authors,--the criticisms uttered, which

marked them with honor or shame,--gliding figures passed each other,

going and returning, while a hasty exchange of glances, betrayed the

flash of triumph, or the gloom of disappointment.

"Gabriella Lynn!" The name sounded like thunder in my ears. I rose,

trembling, blushing, feeling as if every pair of eyes in the hall were

burning like redhot balls on my face. I tried to move, but my feet were

glued to the floor.

"Gabriella Lynn!"

The tone was louder, more commanding, and I dared not resist the

mandate. The greater fear conquered the less. With a desperate effort I

walked, or rather rushed, up the steps, the paper fluttering in my hand,

as if blown upon by a strong wind.

"A little less haste would be more decorous, Miss."

The shadow of a pair of beetling brows rolled darkly over me. Had I

stood beneath an overhanging cliff, with the ocean waves dashing at my

feet, I could not have felt more awe or dread. A mist settled on my

eyes.

"Read,"--cried the master, waving his ferula with a commanding

gesture,--"our time is precious."

I opened my lips, but no sound issued from my paralyzed tongue. With a

feeling of horror, which the intensely diffident can understand, and

only they, I turned and was about to fly back to my seat, when a large,

strong hand pressed its weight upon my shoulder, and arrested my flight.

"Stay where you are," exclaimed Mr. Regulus. "Have I not lectured you a

hundred times on this preposterous shame-facedness of yours? Am I a

Draco, with laws written in blood, a tyrant, scourging with an iron rod,

that you thus shrink and tremble before me? Read, or suffer the penalty

due to disobedience and waywardness."

Thus threatened, I commenced in a husky, faltering voice the reading of

lines which, till that moment, I had believed glowing with the

inspiration of genius. Now, how flat and commonplace they seemed! It was

the first time I had ever ventured to reveal to others the talent hidden

with all a miser's vigilance in my bosom casket. I had lisped in

rhyme,--I had improvised in rhyme,--I had dreamed in poetry, when the

moon and stars were looking down on me with benignant lustre;--I had

_thought_ poetry at the sunset hour, amid twilight shadows and midnight

darkness. I had scribbled it at early morn in my own little room, at

noonday recess at my solitary desk; but no human being, save my mother,

knew of the young dream-girl's poetic raptures.

One of those irresistible promptings of the spirit which all have felt,

and to which many have yielded, induced me at this era to break loose

from my shell and come forth, as I imagined, a beautiful and brilliant

butterfly, soaring up above the gaze of my astonished and admiring

companions. Yes; with all my diffidence I anticipated a scene of

triumph, a dramatic scene, which would terminate perhaps in a crown of

laurel, or a public ovation.

Lowly self-estimation is by no means a constant accompaniment of

diffidence. The consciousness of possessing great powers and deep

sensibility often creates bashfulness. It is their veil and guard while

maturing and strengthening. It is the flower-sheath, that folds the

corolla, till prepared to encounter the sun's burning rays.

"Read!"

I did read,--one stanza. I could not go on though the scaffold were the

doom of my silence.

"What foolery is this! Give it to me."

The paper was pulled from my clinging fingers. Clearing his throat with

a loud and prolonged hem,--then giving a flourish of his ruler on the

desk, he read, in a tone of withering derision, the warm breathings of a

child's heart and soul, struggling after immortality,--the spirit and

trembling utterance of long cherished, long imprisoned yearnings.

Now, when after years of reflection I look back on that

never-to-be-forgotten moment, I can form a true estimate of the poem

subjected to that fiery ordeal, I wonder the paper did not scorch and

shrivel up like a burning scroll. It did not deserve ridicule. The

thoughts were fresh and glowing, the measure correct, the versification

melodious. It was the genuine offspring of a young imagination, urged by

the "strong necessity" of giving utterance to its bright idealities, the

sighings of a heart looking beyond its lowly and lonely destiny. Ah! Mr.

Regulus, you were cruel then.

Methinks I see him,--hear him now, weighing in the iron scales of

criticism every springing, winged idea, cutting and slashing the words

till it seemed to me they dropped blood,--then glancing from me to the

living rows of benches with such a cold, sarcastic smile.

"What a barbarous, unfeeling monster!" perhaps I hear some one exclaim.

No, he was not. He could be very kind and indulgent. He had been kind

and generous to me. He gave me my tuition, and had taken unwearied pains

with my lessons. He could forgive great offences, but had no toleration

for little follies. He really thought it a sinful waste of time to write

poetry in school. He had given me a subject for composition, a useful,

practical one, but not at all to my taste, and I had ventured to

disregard it. I had jumped over the rock, and climbed up to the flowers

that grew above it. He was a thorough mathematician, a celebrated

grammarian, a renowned geographer and linguist, but I then thought he

had no more ear for poetry or music, no more eye for painting,--the

painting of God, or man,--than the stalled ox, or the Greenland seal. I

did him injustice, and he was unjust to me. I had not intended to slight

or scorn the selection he had made, but I could not write upon it,--I

could not help my thoughts flowing into rhyme.

Can the stream help gliding and rippling through its flowery margins?

Can the bird help singing and warbling upward into the deep blue sky,

sending down a silver shower of melody as it flies?

Perhaps some may think I am swelling small things into great; but

incidents and actions are to be judged by their results, by their

influence in the formation of character, and the hues they reflect on

futurity. Had I received encouragement instead of rebuke, praise instead

of ridicule,--had he taken me by the hand and spoken some such kindly

words as these:--

"This is very well for a little girl like you. Lift up that downcast

face, nor blush and tremble, as if detected in a guilty act. You must

not spend too much time in the reveries of imagination, for this is a

working-day world, my child. Even the birds have to build their nests,

and the coral insect is a mighty laborer. The gift of song is sweet, and

may be made an instrument of the Creator's glory. The first notes of the

lark are feeble, compared to his heaven-high strains. The fainter dawn

precedes the risen day."

Oh! had he addressed me in indulgent words as these, who knows but that,

like burning Sappho, I might have sang as well as loved? Who knows but

that the golden gates of the Eden of immortality might have opened to

admit the wandering Peri to her long-lost home? I might have been the

priestess of a shrine of Delphic celebrity, and the world have offered

burning incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel crown, and

found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves. I

might,--but it matters not. The divine spark is undying, and though

circumstances may smother the flame it enkindles, it glows in the bosom

with unquenchable fire.

I remember very well what the master said, instead of the imagined words

I have written.

"Poetry, is it?--or something you meant to be called by that name?

Nonsense, child--folly--moon-beam hallucination! Child! do you know that

this is an unpardonable waste of time? Do you remember that

opportunities of improvement are given you to enable you hereafter to

secure an honorable independence? This accounts for your reveries over

the blackboard, your indifference to mathematics, that grand and

glorious science! Poetry! ha, ha! I began to think you did not

understand the use of capitals,--ha, ha!"

Did you ever imagine how a tender loaf of bread must feel when cut into

slices by the sharpened knife? How the young bark feels when the iron

wedge is driven through it with cleaving force? I think _I_ can, by the

experience of that hour. I stood with quivering lip, burning cheek, and

panting breast,--my eyes riveted on the paper which he flourished in his

left hand, pointing _at_ it with the forefinger of his right.

"He shall not go on,"--said I to myself, exasperation giving me

boldness,--"he shall not read what I have written of my mother. I will

die sooner. He may insult _my_ poverty but hers shall be sacred, and her

sorrows too."

I sprang forward, forgetting every thing in the fear of hearing _her_

name associated with derision, and attempted to get possession of the

manuscript. A fly might as well attempt to wring the trunk of the

elephant.

"Really, little poetess, you are getting bold. I should like to see you

try that again. You had better keep quiet."

A resolute glance of the keen, black eye, resolute, yet twinkling with

secret merriment, and he was about to commence another stanza.

I jumped up with the leap of the panther. I could not loosen his strong

grasp, but I tore the paper from round his fingers, ran down the steps

through the rows of desks and benches, without looking to the right or

left, and flew without bonnet or covering out into the broad sunlight

and open air.

"Come back, this moment!"

The thundering voice of the master rolled after me, like a heavy stone,

threatening to crush me as it rolled. I bounded on before it with

constantly accelerating speed.

"Go back,--never!"

I said this to myself. I repeated it aloud to the breeze that came

coolly and soothingly through the green boughs, to fan the burning

cheeks of the fugitive. At length the dread of pursuit subsiding, I

slackened my steps, and cast a furtive glance behind me. The cupola of

the academy gleamed white through the oak trees that surrounded it, and

above them the glittering vane, fashioned in the form of a giant pen,

seemed writing on the azure page of heaven.

My home,--the little cottage in the woods, was one mile distant. There

was a by-path, a foot-path, as it was called, which cut the woods in a

diagonal line, and which had been trodden hard and smooth by the feet of

the children. Even at mid-day there was twilight in that solitary path,

and when the shadows deepened and lengthened on the plain, they

concentrated into gloominess there. The moment I turned into that path,

I was supreme. It was _mine_. The public road, the thoroughfare leading

through the heart of the town, belonged to the world. I was obliged to

walk there like other people, with mincing steps, and bonnet tied primly

under the chin, according to the rule and plummet line of school-girl

propriety. But in my own little by-path, I could do just as I pleased. I

could run with my bonnet swinging in my hand, and my hair floating like

the wild vine of the woods. I could throw myself down on the grass at

the foot of the great trees, and looking up into the deep, distant sky,

indulge my own wondrous imaginings.

I did so now. I cast myself panting on the turf, and turning my face

downward instead of upward, clasped my hands over it, and the hot tears

gushed in scalding streams through my fingers, till the pillow of earth

was all wet as with a shower.

Oh, they did me good, those fast-gushing tears! There was comfort, there

was luxury in them. Bless God for tears! How they cool the dry and

sultry heart! How they refresh the fainting virtues! How they revive the

dying affections!

The image of my pale sweet, gentle mother rose softly through the

falling drops. A rainbow seemed to crown her with its seven-fold beams.

Dear mother!--would she will me to go back where the giant pen dipped

its glittering nib into the deep blue ether?