‘I pass over my boyhood.
‘I had now entered upon my sixteenth spring, and with less
unhappiness, perchance, than ordinarily meets us in this world.
Sadness I had known, but unkindness I had never felt; nor had a
suspicion of how very opposed the heart is to rectitude, found a
lodgment in my mind. I was on the point of visiting the metropolis;
and I know I felt as boys mostly do on their entering into the great
world--elated with the thoughts of what I was to see and meet with,
in a scene I had heard so much about. I talked of little else; and
when the day came heralded by a morning of unusual loveliness, my
happiness almost sickened me. I remember I went out into the fields,
and every thing looked gayer and brighter than I had ever seen it.
The flowers looked prettier--the dew was brighter--the birds chirped
to me as I passed them--and a subtle spirit of life seemed to pervade
all things and participate in my happiness. I returned home happy, and
strove to while off the hours preceding my departure (for I was not
to leave till the afternoon)--but ere that afternoon came, a dingy,
dusky atmosphere, spread itself all about the earth, and the very sky
looked, as I thought, fiendish--threatening. I shall not soon forget
how soon it was communicated to my feelings. My spirits sunk down. A
fearful change seemed working itself through my disposition, which
amazed and maddened me. I answered those sharply, who interrogated
me as to the cause of it. I gave my orders harshly. I ran from
room to room, absent and thoughtful. In fine, all my characteristic
amiableness had gone from me, and I seemed transformed into something
devilish. I was changed as I suppose those spirits will be at the last
day, when they turn half hoping to the judgment seat, and, reading
their condemnation there, instantly become fiends.
‘A gentle tap was heard at the door, and my mother glided silently
into the room; and seating herself beside me, she laid my head upon
her bosom. She parted the dark curls from my forehead, and I felt her
lips pressed feverishly upon it, and a tear fell upon my face--one
of her tears! I opened my eyes at this and looked her full in the
face--O! how she looked--pale--wan--beautiful.
“My son--my son--speak to me”--Staring her full in the face, I drew
my hand half unconsciously over my eyes--then, recollection suddenly
returning, I knelt wildly at her feet--
“Your blessing--Mother!” I gasped.
“Bless thee--bless thee--my boy!” I started up--screamed--and fled
from the room. It seemed as if I was mad at her--mad even in my
idolatry; and I verily believe I struck her, for I heard her groan and
fall heavily upon the floor.
* * * * *
‘Before I slept I was upon the ocean--and I have a dim recollection
that there was a storm--that the green and crested billows hissed
angrily as the thunder growled over them--that the ship went forward
like a mad horse plowing through whole mountains of water, and shaking
off the white surf from her bows in sheets of silver--and I remember
that the violence of the tempest seemed to harmonize awfully with the
loud passions within me.
* * * * *
‘Years had passed. The bright enthusiasm of youth had gone off with
them. The glowing thoughts, passions, sympathies, consuming themselves
in their own fire--my whole character had saddened down into the
melancholy, homeless wanderer. I was no longer the sunny featured boy
that had spent so many pleasant hours on the hill side--by the sandy
margin of the lake that washed its base and sent up there with every
wind that fanned it, a gentle lullaby--by the rivulet that in early
days had caught my laughing features as I bent over it to gather water
flowers--no! I was that boy no longer. The peace which had once lived
in my heart, had become a worthless and withered flower, scentless
as a shadow; the innocency which once gave a zest to every thing
had gone from me; the gray hairs of premature age were intermingled
with the dark ones of my youth--no! I was that boy no longer. I had
traveled--but what was travel to me? I had been in the north and
south, in the east and west; I had wandered over the solemn grounds
of Corcyra, and amid the classic ruins of Italy; I had stood beneath
the sky of Africa and sat me down like Marius amid the relics of
her better days, and tried to wake in my heart some of that dormant
enthusiasm belonging to young minds; but it was like seeking to
resuscitate the dead dust in the earth beneath, or to call life into
the mouldering mausoleums and temples around me--no! I was that boy no
longer.
‘The time of the grain gathering had gone by, and later Autumn had
fully set in; for the trees were more than half stripped of that
gorgeous covering peculiar to this season; and no music came out
from the forest save the whistle of a single quail, and this too in
that pensive cadence which is heard only at the close of the year. I
was revisiting the scenes of my childhood--a spot I had not seen for
twenty years, and during which period I had been a wanderer where no
tidings of the weal or wo of my family reached me. It is not necessary
to recount the circumstances which had made me thus long a voluntary
exile. It need only be said, I parted from home and all I held dear,
in anger--angry with self--angry with man--angry with that pure and
exemplary being who had borne me on her heart, and by whom I had
been so often taught to kneel and pray even before I could myself
frame a benediction--‘with her who taught me that God loved obedient
children.’ O! that one offence! Any thing else--had it been any thing
else, I had suppressed the groans over my nightly pillow, and borne
it like a man while it grieved me. But she, she in whose character
unkindness had no part--a blow, a damning blow--God! God! this was
unmitigated misery. And yet I had suffered--God knows it, year after
year, and seen it preying on my health, and felt it withering up all
my finer sensibilities--and yet I would not return. I could not. I
felt as if a power was upon me, against which my united energies
were nothing. I felt as if it was my destiny, and strange as it may
appear, I thought it right. I felt it certain that home was not for
me, and though I would wake from an unrefreshing sleep, and recount
for hours as a miser his gold every early association, it brought the
wish but not the purpose to return. Sickness came--O! what a leveler
is sickness of all the petty passions and enmities which creep into
the dispositions of men! How it tears up the character, wrings out
from the hardened heart the bitter gall of contrition, and forces into
amendment! Sickness accomplished in me what reason and conscience
could not do, and broke down that indomitable barrier which had so
long interposed betwixt me and duty. I rose from my bed, a habitant
rather of another world than the denizen of this, and my first thought
was home. This cherished for a few weeks grew into a passion, and the
fear that the grave had closed over all I loved magnified the wish a
thousand fold, while every obstacle which now interposed betwixt me
and a return sent a chill through me, like that which we may suppose
lies on the heart of the dead. The swiftest speed seemed but delay,
and it was only on the last day of my journey and I neared home
that my impatience subsided, and my anxiety began to assume another
form--something terrible and strange, foreboding and oppressive.
‘The tread of the post horses down the gravelly slope which led
directly to the village, roused me from a lethargy I had fallen into,
and I sprang to the coach window like a madman. We were opposite the
village inn. The same old antiquated elm creaked before the door, and
the same old sign board flapped in the blast, and upon the high step
stones that led to the main body of the building, sat a human form.
A staff lay on the ground beside him--his ragged scrip was at his
feet--and his form was doubled up with age. I looked closely--God of
Heaven!--_it was my brother_.
‘But my cup was not yet full. We drew up at the inn door, and I heard
the guard rudely order the beggar from the spot, and curse him for
an idle mendicant. This was too much for my swollen heart to bear,
and leaping from the opposite side of the carriage, I took my way
forward alone. I came to the small hill which ran along by the side
of the village, from the top of which the immediate valley where lay
my father’s dwelling appeared in view; and as I paused there for a
moment, and memory ran over the thousand senseless objects that lay
around me with each of which I could associate a forgotten happiness,
I thought death a boon I could have prayed for. At that moment the
village school poured forth its groups of noisy and innocent children.
This was as it was wont to be--this seemed natural. But looking
nearer, I knew them not--they were strangers. Here and there I thought
I recognized a face I had once known, but it was transient and soon
passed--all was strange. A celebrated ‘Retreat for the Insane’ was
in our village, and reaching the summit of the hill I stood by its
walls. The door was closed but not fastened; and I know not why, but
an indefinable feeling led me to enter there. I know not but it was
the unbreathed wish of my heart to witness some spectacle of human
suffering--hoping thereby to lessen my own; perhaps I thought I might
soon make it my own dwelling, and I wanted to familiarize the objects
I should meet with;--but I entered. Seated upon the ground with
scarce a mat to cover them, was a lot of wretched beings busied as
their several dispositions prompted them. One was blowing bubbles--he
said he was maturing a system of astronomy, whereby Galileo should
be forgotten and the world profited. Another was heaping up sand,
and hoarding it in his bosom--he called it gold. A third it seemed
had been a lay preacher, and now and then he howled forth a torrent
of truth and error, interlarded with imprecations and blasphemies
the most horrid. And there was one there, a tall and handsome youth,
with eyes as black as midnight, and his brow drawn down into the
scowl of a demon--He said he was ANALYZING A HUMAN HEART. Sudden my
ears were saluted with loud and piercing shrieks that made my whole
frame shiver, and betwixt each scream I thought I recognized the
shrill echo of a lash as applied to the naked skin. Another--and an
old man came tottering round an angle of the building; and seeing me,
he ran to my feet and cowered down like a whipped hound seeking for
protection.
“Curse them for inhuman wretches”--groaned, or rather screamed the
old man--“They chain me up like a vile beast--a dog to murder me.
They drag me into that black den and shut me there, and say I’m
crazed--mad. What is mad? Who?--O! yes,--my children, they broke my
heart--one went from me, and the other--Ah! save me--save me”--His
keepers came in sight, and in their hands were the scourges they had
been using, the sounds of which had rung in my ears so appalling. “O!
don’t--don’t--I’ll follow--you won’t whip me, will you master--I’m
good--good”--and the old man actually knelt down, and like a beast
licked the feet of his tormentors. I fell to the earth senseless.
‘A long and doleful night followed--a blank--a vacancy; so long,
it seemed ten thousand eternities; so gloomy, it seemed as if the
darkness was consolidated. O! what a night is that, when the helm
of reason breaks--the unshackled faculties wander forth--and the
maddened powers invoke images of horror, only to madden themselves the
more by gazing at them! All that is grand--all that is terrible--all
horrible, loathsome, fearful images, that the mind had ever while
healthy repulsed, then come back on the heart like vultures that have
been scared awhile from their prey, whose fasts have only whetted
their ungorged appetites. At one moment, I seemed borne through the
Eternal void chained to the lightnings; at another, I was dashing
downward towards a tremendous barrier of cavernous rocks, and their
serrated pinnacles seemed waiting to embrace me. Now I was tossed on
billows of fire, and a tremendous surge would hurl me on a jagged
precipice; then with its reflux suck me down through unimaginable
depths, and the hot fires scorched me as they shot into my brain.
Again I heard peals of laughter, and howlings of formless, shapeless
beings that hovered around me; they had snakes and basilisks twisted
round their foreheads, and the flames that issued from their forked
mouths seemed to burn into my very soul. Then came the sense of a
release--the gasping, choking, horrible consciousness, that you are
struggling on the confines of two worlds, and not knowing which is to
be yours--whether earth or death shall have you. Suddenly a fountain
seemed tossing its cool spray over me--the fires that withered up
my brain went out--the fiends that howled about me passed away--the
subtlest life began to dance through my veins--and I awoke!
My first thoughts were true to their mark, and my first words,
“Mother, lives she? The rest--father, brother--God of Heaven! why was
I reserved for it?”
‘A form stood by me--a little maid. O! how the innocent words and kind
attentions of infancy, soothe the pillow of an irritable sickness!
We can’t bear the cold studied kindness of such as we are, we are
jealous of them; we fear they will condole with us, curse us with
their stinted pity; and that too in the measured phraseology which
speaks of the head and not of the heart. But a child, a gentle
child--to see its little form gliding about your couch--to feel its
little arms about your pillow--to catch its warm breath on your
cheek as winds breathed from flowers--and see the kind and touching
solicitude of the eye unused to sights of sorrow, yet enduring it
like a martyr, and for ourselves too,--these make irritable diseases
tolerable--may I not say happy? for the evidence of a pure and devoted
affection in a human being, makes a misanthrope (and such I then was)
contented with misery. And my disease was of this nature: it was a
nervousness induced by excess of suffering, and my faculties had
become so exquisite, that the least thing sent a dart through me that
seemed tearing flesh and soul asunder.
“Mother! is she--?” excessive weakness forbade me finish the sentence.
“Your mother lives”--but she placed her finger upon her lips in token
of silence. I attempted to answer--she laid her hand upon my mouth
with a sweet smile, then turned and left the room.
‘Weeks passed, and still was I the denizen of a sick room; and but
slowly regaining my pristine energies. My form had shrunk away--my
eyes were sunk--my voice was almost entirely gone; and as I slowly
paced my apartment and from the window threw my eyes on the dreariness
without, (for the year had gone far into later fall, and the loud
winds whistled bitterly through the naked poplars) I felt as if I
had but little to do in the world, and would as lief go from it. But
yet, one thing held me back, one thirst, one burning desire--the wish
to see my mother. She I had not seen, and for reasons I could not
unravel, her name was never mentioned. And though I was told she was
in the house, I was not suffered to visit her. She was sick, but not
dangerous--received my messages of love daily--returned them--this was
all.
‘One dark night (I shall not forget that night) I was sitting up in
bed, and counting off the weary hours as they limped laggingly by
me. A weight had been on my heart all day, and racking fires had
seemed scorching my brain; and so acute was the suffering, as if
a band of hot iron were riveted closely round my forehead. I sat
thinking--thinking of self--of my sorrows--of my strange destiny; and
then there came back to me the remembrance of other days, and with
them my mother--her care, love, and early tenderness, until my eyes
were suffused with tears. Sudden I was startled by a low sigh breathed
as it were close in my ears. I thought it delusion, but was soon
undeceived--for it was repeated, and that too so audibly I could not
mistake. I turned my eyes in the direction from whence it came. Again
I caught it, and a strain of music rose soft and sweetly as if an
angel sang it, and I saw indistinctly a shadow gliding past me. Then
my name was distinctly sounded, and in a voice I knew too well. Terror
had chained the powers of utterance, and I only gazed at vacancy with
all the horrors of some dark, indefinite foreboding. The same sigh was
repeated and the name, and then as a cloud passed over the moon, a
figure stood in the apartment clad in the habiliments of the grave. It
smiled sweetly upon me--it was my mother! I knew she must have passed
from this to a better world, and the truth came over me with a cold
sweat while the palsy of my limbs made the very bed tremble. I spread
out my arms in agony, and wildly clasped the air. There was another
sigh, the repetition of my name--and the figure vanished.
‘I rose and threw my night garments round me, and grasping my own
flesh to be sure I dreamed not, I took the light from my table and
commenced a search to find--what? my mother’s corse! for such I felt I
must find her, if at all--the warning was not for nothing. I traversed
room after room--met no one--and came to the wing of the building
where I had ever deemed she lodged; and leaving the light at the door,
I slowly lifted the latch and entered the apartment. _On a bed in the
centre of the chamber, she lay lifeless._ There was no light there,
but the moon broke forth at the moment, and I saw she was shrouded for
the grave.
‘O! death!--death!--how solemn thou art! How awful, when thou comest
on those we love! How thought at such moments crowds on the living!
How the words that once issued from the lips that lie there, come up
to recollection! How the eye that looks so chill and glassy, gleams
again--and the face marble-cold and as expressionless, radiates with
love, hope, happiness! There she lay dead, dead--and I not forgiven.
She was gone. I had not heard her say, ‘I forgive thee, boy.’ Not a
word--not a look--not a blessing--God! God!--what next! O, what next!
‘I crept up to the bier and laid my cold face down to hers, and
moaned in all my heart brokenness of sorrow. I kissed her--I shrieked
her name--I stamped--I threw myself upon her corse. There was no
Promethean heat that could reanimate it--and I _felt_ I was alone.
‘Had I heard her say, ‘I forgive--I bless thee, child’--life were
tolerable, and I would have breasted the forceful waves of misery as
they came tumbling in upon me, like a man. This was denied me, and in
its place is blazed in shapes of fire--That one offence.’
* * * * *
The evening wore away, what with the reading of the manuscript and my
many inquiries concerning the stranger, and my host now showing me to
my room, where with many expressions of his happiness to wait upon me,
&c. &c. he bade me good night, I jumped into bed. In the morning I met
him again and tried my hand with him at a good, honest, hearty, New
Hampshire breakfast; afterwards I shook hands with his family, mounted
my horse, and continued my journey--and such was my ‘Night at the Farm
House.’