"I remember, I remember,
In the days of chill November,
How the blackbird on the--"
I forget the rest. It is the beginning of the first piece of poetry I
ever learned; for
"Hey, diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,"
I take no note of, it being of a frivolous character and lacking in the
qualities of true poetry. I collected fourpence by the recital of "I
remember, I remember." I knew it was fourpence, because they told me
that if I kept it until I got twopence more I should have sixpence,
which argument, albeit undeniable, moved me not, and the money was
squandered, to the best of my recollection, on the very next morning,
although upon what memory is a blank.
That is just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us is
complete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. I remember
tumbling into a huge dust-hole when a very small boy, but I have not the
faintest recollection of ever getting out again; and if memory were all
we had to trust to, I should be compelled to believe I was there still.
At another time--some years later--I was assisting at an exceedingly
interesting love scene; but the only thing about it I can call to mind
distinctly is that at the most critical moment somebody suddenly opened
the door and said, "Emily, you're wanted," in a sepulchral tone that
gave one the idea the police had come for her. All the tender words
she said to me and all the beautiful things I said to her are utterly
forgotten.
Life altogether is but a crumbling ruin when we turn to look behind: a
shattered column here, where a massive portal stood; the broken shaft
of a window to mark my lady's bower; and a moldering heap of blackened
stones where the glowing flames once leaped, and over all the tinted
lichen and the ivy clinging green.
For everything looms pleasant through the softening haze of time. Even
the sadness that is past seems sweet. Our boyish days look very merry to
us now, all nutting, hoop, and gingerbread. The snubbings and toothaches
and the Latin verbs are all forgotten--the Latin verbs especially. And
we fancy we were very happy when we were hobbledehoys and loved; and we
wish that we could love again. We never think of the heartaches, or the
sleepless nights, or the hot dryness of our throats, when she said she
could never be anything to us but a sister--as if any man wanted more
sisters!
Yes, it is the brightness, not the darkness, that we see when we look
back. The sunshine casts no shadows on the past. The road that we have
traversed stretches very fair behind us. We see not the sharp stones. We
dwell but on the roses by the wayside, and the strong briers that stung
us are, to our distant eyes, but gentle tendrils waving in the wind. God
be thanked that it is so--that the ever-lengthening chain of memory has
only pleasant links, and that the bitterness and sorrow of to-day are
smiled at on the morrow.
It seems as though the brightest side of everything were also its
highest and best, so that as our little lives sink back behind us into
the dark sea of forgetfulness, all that which is the lightest and the
most gladsome is the last to sink, and stands above the waters, long in
sight, when the angry thoughts and smarting pain are buried deep below
the waves and trouble us no more.
It is this glamour of the past, I suppose, that makes old folk talk so
much nonsense about the days when they were young. The world appears to
have been a very superior sort of place then, and things were more
like what they ought to be. Boys were boys then, and girls were very
different. Also winters were something like winters, and summers not
at all the wretched-things we get put off with nowadays. As for the
wonderful deeds people did in those times and the extraordinary events
that happened, it takes three strong men to believe half of them.
I like to hear one of the old boys telling all about it to a party
of youngsters who he knows cannot contradict him. It is odd if, after
awhile, he doesn't swear that the moon shone every night when he was a
boy, and that tossing mad bulls in a blanket was the favorite sport at
his school.
It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of our
grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden;
and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense
for the aggravation of the next generation. "Oh, give me back the
good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's
fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find
the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the
German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Saga writers long
before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the
philosophers of ancient Greece. From all accounts, the world has been
getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that
it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened
to the public, for it is very pleasant even now if you only keep as much
as possible in the sunshine and take the rain good-temperedly.
Yet there is no gainsaying but that it must have been somewhat sweeter
in that dewy morning of creation, when it was young and fresh, when the
feet of the tramping millions had not trodden its grass to dust, nor the
din of the myriad cities chased the silence forever away. Life must have
been noble and solemn to those free-footed, loose-robed fathers of the
human race, walking hand in hand with God under the great sky. They
lived in sunkissed tents amid the lowing herds. They took their simple
wants from the loving hand of Nature. They toiled and talked and
thought; and the great earth rolled around in stillness, not yet laden
with trouble and wrong.
Those days are past now. The quiet childhood of Humanity, spent in the
far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers, is gone forever; and
human life is deepening down to manhood amid tumult, doubt, and hope.
Its age of restful peace is past. It has its work to finish and must
hasten on. What that work may be--what this world's share is in the
great design--we know not, though our unconscious hands are helping to
accomplish it. Like the tiny coral insect working deep under the dark
waters, we strive and struggle each for our own little ends, nor dream
of the vast fabric we are building up for God.
Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that
never will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; and
"Forward!" is our motto. Let us not sit with folded hands, gazing upon
the past as if it were the building; it is but the foundation. Let us
not waste heart and life thinking of what might have been and forgetting
the may be that lies before us. Opportunities flit by while we sit
regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us
we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.
Years ago, when I used to wander of an evening from the fireside to
the pleasant land of fairy-tales, I met a doughty knight and true. Many
dangers had he overcome, in many lands had been; and all men knew him
for a brave and well-tried knight, and one that knew not fear; except,
maybe, upon such seasons when even a brave man might feel afraid and yet
not be ashamed. Now, as this knight one day was pricking wearily along a
toilsome road, his heart misgave him and was sore within him because of
the trouble of the way. Rocks, dark and of a monstrous size, hung high
above his head, and like enough it seemed unto the knight that they
should fall and he lie low beneath them. Chasms there were on either
side, and darksome caves wherein fierce robbers lived, and dragons,
very terrible, whose jaws dripped blood. And upon the road there hung a
darkness as of night. So it came over that good knight that he would no
more press forward, but seek another road, less grievously beset with
difficulty unto his gentle steed. But when in haste he turned and looked
behind, much marveled our brave knight, for lo! of all the way that he
had ridden there was naught for eye to see; but at his horse's heels
there yawned a mighty gulf, whereof no man might ever spy the bottom,
so deep was that same gulf. Then when Sir Ghelent saw that of going back
there was none, he prayed to good Saint Cuthbert, and setting spurs into
his steed rode forward bravely and most joyously. And naught harmed him.
There is no returning on the road of life. The frail bridge of time on
which we tread sinks back into eternity at every step we take. The past
is gone from us forever. It is gathered in and garnered. It belongs
to us no more. No single word can ever be unspoken; no single step
retraced. Therefore it beseems us as true knights to prick on bravely,
not idly weep because we cannot now recall.
A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forward joyously
to meet it. We must press on whether we will or no, and we shall walk
better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind.
A friend came to me the other day and urged me very eloquently to learn
some wonderful system by which you never forgot anything. I don't know
why he was so eager on the subject, unless it be that I occasionally
borrow an umbrella and have a knack of coming out, in the middle of a
game of whist, with a mild "Lor! I've been thinking all along that
clubs were trumps." I declined the suggestion, however, in spite of
the advantages he so attractively set forth. I have no wish to remember
everything. There are many things in most men's lives that had better be
forgotten. There is that time, many years ago, when we did not act quite
as honorably, quite as uprightly, as we perhaps should have done--that
unfortunate deviation from the path of strict probity we once committed,
and in which, more unfortunate still, we were found out--that act of
folly, of meanness, of wrong. Ah, well! we paid the penalty, suffered
the maddening hours of vain remorse, the hot agony of shame, the scorn,
perhaps, of those we loved. Let us forget. Oh, Father Time, lift with
your kindly hands those bitter memories from off our overburdened
hearts, for griefs are ever coming to us with the coming hours, and our
little strength is only as the day.
Not that the past should be buried. The music of life would be mute
if the chords of memory were snapped asunder. It is but the poisonous
weeds, not the flowers, that we should root out from the garden of
Mnemosyne. Do you remember Dickens' "Haunted Man"--how he prayed for
forgetfulness, and how, when his prayer was answered, he prayed for
memory once more? We do not want all the ghosts laid. It is only the
haggard, cruel-eyed specters that we flee from. Let the gentle, kindly
phantoms haunt us as they will; we are not afraid of them.
Ah me! the world grows very full of ghosts as we grow older. We need
not seek in dismal church-yards nor sleep in moated granges to see the
shadowy faces and hear the rustling of their garments in the night.
Every house, every room, every creaking chair has its own particular
ghost. They haunt the empty chambers of our lives, they throng around us
like dead leaves whirled in the autumn wind. Some are living, some are
dead. We know not. We clasped their hands once, loved them, quarreled
with them, laughed with them, told them our thoughts and hopes and aims,
as they told us theirs, till it seemed our very hearts had joined in a
grip that would defy the puny power of Death. They are gone now; lost to
us forever. Their eyes will never look into ours again and their voices
we shall never hear. Only their ghosts come to us and talk with us. We
see them, dim and shadowy, through our tears. We stretch our yearning
hands to them, but they are air.
Ghosts! They are with us night and day. They walk beside us in the busy
street under the glare of the sun. They sit by us in the twilight at
home. We see their little faces looking from the windows of the old
school-house. We meet them in the woods and lanes where we shouted and
played as boys. Hark! cannot you hear their low laughter from behind the
blackberry-bushes and their distant whoops along the grassy glades?
Down here, through the quiet fields and by the wood, where the evening
shadows are lurking, winds the path where we used to watch for her at
sunset. Look, she is there now, in the dainty white frock we knew so
well, with the big bonnet dangling from her little hands and the sunny
brown hair all tangled. Five thousand miles away! Dead for all we know!
What of that? She is beside us now, and we can look into her laughing
eyes and hear her voice. She will vanish at the stile by the wood and we
shall be alone; and the shadows will creep out across the fields and the
night wind will sweep past moaning. Ghosts! they are always with us and
always will be while the sad old world keeps echoing to the sob of long
good-bys, while the cruel ships sail away across the great seas, and the
cold green earth lies heavy on the hearts of those we loved.
But, oh, ghosts, the world would be sadder still without you. Come to
us and speak to us, oh you ghosts of our old loves! Ghosts of playmates,
and of sweethearts, and old friends, of all you laughing boys and girls,
oh, come to us and be with us, for the world is very lonely, and new
friends and faces are not like the old, and we cannot love them, nay,
nor laugh with them as we have loved and laughed with you. And when we
walked together, oh, ghosts of our youth, the world was very gay and
bright; but now it has grown old and we are growing weary, and only you
can bring the brightness and the freshness back to us.
Memory is a rare ghost-raiser. Like a haunted house, its walls are
ever echoing to unseen feet. Through the broken casements we watch the
flitting shadows of the dead, and the saddest shadows of them all are
the shadows of our own dead selves.
Oh, those young bright faces, so full of truth and honor, of pure, good
thoughts, of noble longings, how reproachfully they look upon us with
their deep, clear eyes!
I fear they have good cause for their sorrow, poor lads. Lies and
cunning and disbelief have crept into our hearts since those preshaving
days--and we meant to be so great and good.
It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of fourteen
who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty.
I like to sit and have a talk sometimes with that odd little chap that
was myself long ago. I think he likes it too, for he comes so often of
an evening when I am alone with my pipe, listening to the whispering
of the flames. I see his solemn little face looking at me through the
scented smoke as it floats upward, and I smile at him; and he smiles
back at me, but his is such a grave, old-fashioned smile. We chat about
old times; and now and then he takes me by the hand, and then we slip
through the black bars of the grate and down the dusky glowing caves
to the land that lies behind the firelight. There we find the days that
used to be, and we wander along them together. He tells me as we walk
all he thinks and feels. I laugh at him now and then, but the next
moment I wish I had not, for he looks so grave I am ashamed of being
frivolous. Besides, it is not showing proper respect to one so much
older than myself--to one who was myself so very long before I became
myself.
We don't talk much at first, but look at one another; I down at his
curly hair and little blue bow, he up sideways at me as he trots. And
some-how I fancy the shy, round eyes do not altogether approve of me,
and he heaves a little sigh, as though he were disappointed. But after
awhile his bashfulness wears off and he begins to chat. He tells me
his favorite fairy-tales, he can do up to six times, and he has a
guinea-pig, and pa says fairy-tales ain't true; and isn't it a pity?
'cos he would so like to be a knight and fight a dragon and marry a
beautiful princess. But he takes a more practical view of life when he
reaches seven, and would prefer to grow up be a bargee, and earn a lot
of money. Maybe this is the consequence of falling in love, which he
does about this time with the young lady at the milk shop aet. six. (God
bless her little ever-dancing feet, whatever size they may be now!)
He must be very fond of her, for he gives her one day his chiefest
treasure, to wit, a huge pocket-knife with four rusty blades and a
corkscrew, which latter has a knack of working itself out in some
mysterious manner and sticking into its owner's leg. She is an
affectionate little thing, and she throws her arms round his neck and
kisses him for it, then and there, outside the shop. But the stupid
world (in the person of the boy at the cigar emporium next door) jeers
at such tokens of love. Whereupon my young friend very properly prepares
to punch the head of the boy at the cigar emporium next door; but fails
in the attempt, the boy at the cigar emporium next door punching his
instead.
And then comes school life, with its bitter little sorrows and its
joyous shoutings, its jolly larks, and its hot tears falling on beastly
Latin grammars and silly old copy-books. It is at school that he injures
himself for life--as I firmly believe--trying to pronounce German;
and it is there, too, that he learns of the importance attached by the
French nation to pens, ink, and paper. "Have you pens, ink, and paper?"
is the first question asked by one Frenchman of another on their
meeting. The other fellow has not any of them, as a rule, but says
that the uncle of his brother has got them all three. The first fellow
doesn't appear to care a hang about the uncle of the other fellow's
brother; what he wants to know now is, has the neighbor of the other
fellow's mother got 'em? "The neighbor of my mother has no pens, no ink,
and no paper," replies the other man, beginning to get wild. "Has the
child of thy female gardener some pens, some ink, or some paper?" He has
him there. After worrying enough about these wretched inks, pens, and
paper to make everybody miserable, it turns out that the child of his
own female gardener hasn't any. Such a discovery would shut up any one
but a French exercise man. It has no effect at all, though, on this
shameless creature. He never thinks of apologizing, but says his aunt
has some mustard.
So in the acquisition of more or less useless knowledge, soon happily to
be forgotten, boyhood passes away. The red-brick school-house fades from
view, and we turn down into the world's high-road. My little friend is
no longer little now. The short jacket has sprouted tails. The battered
cap, so useful as a combination of pocket-handkerchief, drinking-cup,
and weapon of attack, has grown high and glossy; and instead of a
slate-pencil in his mouth there is a cigarette, the smoke of which
troubles him, for it will get up his nose. He tries a cigar a little
later on as being more stylish--a big black Havanna. It doesn't seem
altogether to agree with him, for I find him sitting over a bucket in
the back kitchen afterward, solemnly swearing never to smoke again.
And now his mustache begins to be almost visible to the naked eye,
whereupon he immediately takes to brandy-and-sodas and fancies himself
a man. He talks about "two to one against the favorite," refers to
actresses as "Little Emmy" and "Kate" and "Baby," and murmurs about his
"losses at cards the other night" in a style implying that thousands
have been squandered, though, to do him justice, the actual amount is
most probably one-and-twopence. Also, if I see aright--for it is always
twilight in this land of memories--he sticks an eyeglass in his eye and
stumbles over everything.
His female relations, much troubled at these things, pray for him (bless
their gentle hearts!) and see visions of Old Bailey trials and halters
as the only possible outcome of such reckless dissipation; and the
prediction of his first school-master, that he would come to a bad end,
assumes the proportions of inspired prophecy.
He has a lordly contempt at this age for the other sex, a blatantly good
opinion of himself, and a sociably patronizing manner toward all the
elderly male friends of the family. Altogether, it must be confessed, he
is somewhat of a nuisance about this time.
It does not last long, though. He falls in love in a little while, and
that soon takes the bounce out of him. I notice his boots are much too
small for him now, and his hair is fearfully and wonderfully arranged.
He reads poetry more than he used, and he keeps a rhyming dictionary in
his bedroom. Every morning Emily Jane finds scraps of torn-up paper on
the floor and reads thereon of "cruel hearts and love's deep darts," of
"beauteous eyes and lovers' sighs," and much more of the old, old song
that lads so love to sing and lassies love to listen to while giving
their dainty heads a toss and pretending never to hear.
The course of love, however, seems not to have run smoothly, for later
on he takes more walking exercise and less sleep, poor boy, than is good
for him; and his face is suggestive of anything but wedding-bells and
happiness ever after.
And here he seems to vanish. The little, boyish self that has grown up
beside me as we walked is gone.
I am alone and the road is very dark. I stumble on, I know not how nor
care, for the way seems leading nowhere, and there is no light to guide.
But at last the morning comes, and I find that I have grown into myself.