An old book-keeper, who wears a white cravat and black trowsers in the
morning, who rarely goes to the opera, and never dines out, is clearly
a person of no fashion and of no superior sources of information. His
only journey is from his house to his office; his only satisfaction is
in doing his duty; his only happiness is in his Prue and his children.
What romance can such a life have? What stories can such a man tell?
Yet I think, sometimes, when I look up from the parquet at the opera,
and see Aurelia smiling in the boxes, and holding her court of love,
and youth, and beauty, that the historians have not told of a fairer
queen, nor the travellers seen devouter homage. And when I remember
that it was in misty England that quaint old George Herbert Sang of
the--
"Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright--
The bridal of the earth and sky,"
I am sure that I see days as lovely in our clearer air, and do not
believe that Italian sunsets have a more gorgeous purple or a softer
gold.
So, as the circle of my little life revolves, I console myself with
believing, what I cannot help believing, that a man need not be a
vagabond to enjoy the sweetest charm of travel, but that all countries
and all times repeat themselves in his experience. This is an old
philosophy, I am told, and much favored by those who have travelled;
and I cannot but be glad that my faith has such a fine name and such
competent witnesses. I am assured, however, upon the other hand, that
such a faith is only imagination. But, if that be true, imagination is
as good as many voyages--and how much cheaper!--a consideration which
an old book-keeper can never afford to forget.
I have not found, in my experience, that travellers always bring back
with them the sunshine of Italy or the elegance of Greece. They tell
us that there are such things, and that they have seen them; but,
perhaps, they saw them, as the apples in the garden of the Hesperides
were sometimes seen--over the wall. I prefer the fruit which I can buy
in the market to that which a man tells me he saw in Sicily, but of
which there is no flavor in his story. Others, like Moses Primrose,
bring us a gross of such spectacles as we prefer not to see; so that I
begin to suspect a man must have Italy and Greece in his heart and
mind, if he would ever see them with his eyes.
I know that this may be only a device of that compassionate
imagination designed to comfort me, who shall never take but one other
journey than my daily beat. Yet there have been wise men who taught
that all scenes are but pictures upon the mind; and if I can see them
as I walk the street that leads to my office, or sit at the
office-window looking into the court, or take a little trip down the
bay or up the river, why are not my pictures as pleasant and as
profitable as those which men travel for years, at great cost of time,
and trouble, and money, to behold?
For my part, I do not believe that any man can see softer skies than I
see in Prue's eyes; nor hear sweeter music than I hear in Prue's
voice; nor find a more heaven-lighted temple than I know Prue's mind
to be. And when I wish to please myself with a lovely image of peace
and contentment, I do not think of the plain of Sharon, nor of the
valley of Enna, nor of Arcadia, nor of Claude's pictures; but, feeling
that the fairest fortune of my life is the right to be named with her,
I whisper gently, to myself, with a smile--for it seems as if my very
heart smiled within me, when I think of her--"Prue and I."