One of our boarders--perhaps more than one was concerned in it--sent in
some questions to me, the other day, which, trivial as some of them are,
I felt bound to answer.
1.--Whether a lady was ever known to write a letter covering only a
single page?
To this I answered, that there was a case on record where a lady had but
half a sheet of paper and no envelope; and being obliged to send through
the post-office, she covered only one side of the paper (crosswise,
lengthwise, and diagonally).
2.--What constitutes a man a gentleman?
To this I gave several answers, adapted to particular classes of
questioners.
a. Not trying to be a gentleman.
b. Self-respect underlying courtesy.
c. Knowledge and observance of the fitness of things in social
intercourse.
d. f. s. d. (as many suppose.)
3.--Whether face or figure is most attractive in the female sex?
Answered in the following epigram, by a young man about town:
Quoth Tom, “Though fair her features be,
It is her figure pleases me.”
“What may her figure be?” I cried.
“One hundred thousand!” he replied.
When this was read to the boarders, the young man John said he should
like a chance to “step up” to a figger of that kind, if the girl was one
of the right sort.
The landlady said them that merried for money didn't deserve the
blessin' of a good wife. Money was a great thing when them that had it
made a good use of it. She had seen better days herself, and knew what
it was never to want for anything. One of her cousins merried a very
rich old gentleman, and she had heerd that he said he lived ten year
longer than if he'd staid by himself without anybody to take care of
him. There was nothin' like a wife for nussin' sick folks and them that
couldn't take care of themselves.
The young man John got off a little wink, and pointed slyly with his
thumb in the direction of our diminutive friend, for whom he seemed to
think this speech was intended.
If it was meant for him, he did n't appear to know that it was. Indeed,
he seems somewhat listless of late, except when the conversation falls
upon one of those larger topics that specially interest him, and then he
grows excited, speaks loud and fast, sometimes almost savagely,--and, I
have noticed once or twice, presses his left hand to his right side,
as if there were something that ached, or weighed, or throbbed in that
region.
While he speaks in this way, the general conversation is interrupted,
and we all listen to him. Iris looks steadily in his face, and then
he will turn as if magnetized and meet the amber eyes with his own
melancholy gaze. I do believe that they have some kind of understanding
together, that they meet elsewhere than at our table, and that there is
a mystery, which is going to break upon us all of a sudden, involving
the relations of these two persons. From the very first, they have taken
to each other. The one thing they have in common is the heroic will.
In him, it shows itself in thinking his way straightforward, in doing
battle for “free trade and no right of search” on the high seas of
religious controversy, and especially in fighting the battles of his
crooked old city. In her, it is standing up for her little friend with
the most queenly disregard of the code of boarding-house etiquette.
People may say or look what they like,--she will have her way about this
sentiment of hers.
The Poor Relation is in a dreadful fidget whenever the Little Gentleman
says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems
to think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the
toothache,--and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the wind
blows from, she will catch her “death o' cold.”
The landlady herself came to him one day, as I have found out, and
tried to persuade him to hold his tongue.--The boarders was gettin'
uneasy,--she said,--and some of 'em would go, she mistrusted, if he
talked any more about things that belonged to the ministers to settle.
She was a poor woman, that had known better days, but all her livin'
depended on her boarders, and she was sure there was n't any of 'em she
set so much by as she did by him; but there was them that never liked to
hear about sech things, except on Sundays.
The Little Gentleman looked very smiling at the landlady, who smiled
even more cordially in return, and adjusted her cap-ribbon with an
unconscious movement,--a reminiscence of the long-past pairing-time,
when she had smoothed her locks and softened her voice, and won her mate
by these and other bird-like graces.--My dear Madam,--he said,--I will
remember your interests, and speak only of matters to which I am totally
indifferent.--I don't doubt he meant this; but a day or two after,
something stirred him up, and I heard his voice uttering itself aloud,
thus:
-It must be done, Sir!--he was saying,--it must be done! Our religion
has been Judaized, it has been Romanized, it has been Orientalized,
it has been Anglicized, and the time is at hand when it must be
AMERICANIZED! Now, Sir, you see what Americanizing is in politics;--it
means that a man shall have a vote because he is a man,--and shall vote
for whom he pleases, without his neighbor's interference. If he chooses
to vote for the Devil, that is his lookout;--perhaps he thinks the Devil
is better than the other candidates; and I don't doubt he's often right,
Sir. Just so a man's soul has a vote in the spiritual community; and
it doesn't do, Sir, or it won't do long, to call him “schismatic”
and “heretic” and those other wicked names that the old murderous
Inquisitors have left us to help along “peace and goodwill to men”!
As long as you could catch a man and drop him into an oubliette, or pull
him out a few inches longer by machinery, or put a hot iron through his
tongue, or make him climb up a ladder and sit on a board at the top of a
stake so that he should be slowly broiled by the fire kindled round it,
there was some sense in these words; they led to something. But since we
have done with those tools, we had better give up those words. I should
like to see a Yankee advertisement like this!--(the Little Gentleman
laughed fiercely as he uttered the words,--)
--Patent thumb-screws,--will crush the bone in three turns.
--The cast-iron boot, with wedge and mallet, only five dollars!
--The celebrated extension-rack, warranted to stretch a man six inches
in twenty minutes,--money returned, if it proves unsatisfactory.
I should like to see such an advertisement, I say, Sir! Now, what's
the use of using the words that belonged with the thumb-screws, and
the Blessed Virgin with the knives under her petticoats and sleeves and
bodice, and the dry pan and gradual fire, if we can't have the things
themselves, Sir? What's the use of painting the fire round a poor
fellow, when you think it won't do to kindle one under him,--as they did
at Valencia or Valladolid, or wherever it was?
--What story is that?--I said.
Why,--he answered,--at the last auto-da-fe, in 1824 or '5, or somewhere
there,--it's a traveller's story, but a mighty knowing traveller he
is,--they had a “heretic” to use up according to the statutes provided
for the crime of private opinion. They could n't quite make up their
minds to burn him, so they only hung him in a hogshead painted all over
with flames!
No, Sir! when a man calls you names because you go to the ballot-box
and vote for your candidate, or because you say this or that is your
opinion, he forgets in which half of the world he was born, Sir! It
won't be long, Sir, before we have Americanized religion as we have
Americanized government; and then, Sir, every soul God sends into
the world will be good in the face of all men for just so much of His
“inspiration” as “giveth him understanding”!--None of my words, Sir!
none of my words!
--If Iris does not love this Little Gentleman, what does love look like
when one sees it? She follows him with her eyes, she leans over toward
him when he speaks, her face changes with the changes of his speech, so
that one might think it was with her as with Christabel,--
That all her features were resigned
To this sole image in her mind.
But she never looks at him with such intensity of devotion as when he
says anything about the soul and the soul's atmosphere, religion.
Women are twice as religious as men;--all the world knows that.
Whether they are any better, in the eyes of Absolute Justice, might be
questioned; for the additional religious element supplied by sex hardly
seems to be a matter of praise or blame. But in all common aspects they
are so much above us that we get most of our religion from them,--from
their teachings, from their example,--above all, from their pure
affections.
Now this poor little Iris had been talked to strangely in her childhood.
Especially she had been told that she hated all good things,--which
every sensible parent knows well enough is not true of a great many
children, to say the least. I have sometimes questioned whether many
libels on human nature had not been a natural consequence of the
celibacy of the clergy, which was enforced for so long a period.
The child had met this and some other equally encouraging statements
as to her spiritual conditions, early in life, and fought the battle of
spiritual independence prematurely, as many children do. If all she did
was hateful to God, what was the meaning of the approving or else
the disapproving conscience, when she had done “right” or “wrong”? No
“shoulder-striker” hits out straighter than a child with its logic. Why,
I can remember lying in my bed in the nursery and settling questions
which all that I have heard since and got out of books has never been
able to raise again. If a child does not assert itself in this way in
good season, it becomes just what its parents or teachers were, and is
no better than a plastic image.--How old was I at the time?--I suppose
about 5823 years old,--that is, counting from Archbishop Usher's date
of the Creation, and adding the life of the race, whose accumulated
intelligence is a part of my inheritance, to my own. A good deal older
than Plato, you see, and much more experienced than my Lord Bacon and
most of the world's teachers.--Old books, as you well know, are books of
the world's youth, and new books are fruits of its age. How many of all
these ancient folios round me are like so many old cupels! The gold has
passed out of them long ago, but their pores are full of the dross with
which it was mingled.
And so Iris--having thrown off that first lasso which not only fetters,
but chokes those whom it can hold, so that they give themselves up
trembling and breathless to the great soul-subduer, who has them by the
windpipe had settled a brief creed for herself, in which love of the
neighbor, whom we have seen, was the first article, and love of
the Creator, whom we have not seen, grew out of this as its natural
development, being necessarily second in order of time to the first
unselfish emotions which we feel for the fellow-creatures who surround
us in our early years.
The child must have some place of worship. What would a young girl be
who never mingled her voice with the songs and prayers that rose all
around her with every returning day of rest? And Iris was free to
choose. Sometimes one and sometimes another would offer to carry her
to this or that place of worship; and when the doors were hospitably
opened, she would often go meekly in by herself. It was a curious fact,
that two churches as remote from each other in doctrine as could well be
divided her affections.
The Church of Saint Polycarp had very much the look of a Roman
Catholic chapel. I do not wish to run the risk of giving names to the
ecclesiastical furniture which gave it such a Romish aspect; but there
were pictures, and inscriptions in antiquated characters, and there
were reading-stands, and flowers on the altar, and other elegant
arrangements. Then there were boys to sing alternately in choirs
responsive to each other, and there was much bowing, with very loud
responding, and a long service and a short sermon, and a bag, such as
Judas used to hold in the old pictures, was carried round to receive
contributions. Everything was done not only “decently and in order,”
but, perhaps one might say, with a certain air of magnifying their
office on the part of the dignified clergymen, often two or three in
number. The music and the free welcome were grateful to Iris, and she
forgot her prejudices at the door of the chapel. For this was a church
with open doors, with seats for all classes and all colors alike,--a
church of zealous worshippers after their faith, of charitable and
serviceable men and women, one that took care of its children and never
forgot its poor, and whose people were much more occupied in looking out
for their own souls than in attacking the faith of their neighbors. In
its mode of worship there was a union of two qualities,--the taste and
refinement, which the educated require just as much in their churches as
elsewhere, and the air of stateliness, almost of pomp, which impresses
the common worshipper, and is often not without its effect upon
those who think they hold outward forms as of little value. Under the
half-Romish aspect of the Church of Saint Polycarp, the young girl
found a devout and loving and singularly cheerful religious spirit. The
artistic sense, which betrayed itself in the dramatic proprieties of
its ritual, harmonized with her taste. The mingled murmur of the loud
responses, in those rhythmic phrases, so simple, yet so fervent, almost
as if every tenth heart-beat, instead of its dull tic-tac, articulated
itself as “Good Lord, deliver us! “--the sweet alternation of the two
choirs, as their holy song floated from side to side, the keen young
voices rising like a flight of singing-birds that passes from one grove
to another, carrying its music with it back and forward,--why should
she not love these gracious outward signs of those inner harmonies
which none could deny made beautiful the lives of many of her
fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant Chapel of Saint
Polycarp?
The young Marylander, who was born and bred to that mode of worship, had
introduced her to the chapel, for which he did the honors for such of
our boarders as were not otherwise provided for. I saw them looking over
the same prayer-book one Sunday, and I could not help thinking that two
such young and handsome persons could hardly worship together in
safety for a great while. But they seemed to mind nothing but their
prayer-book. By-and-by the silken bag was handed round.--I don't believe
she will; so awkward, you know;--besides, she only came by invitation.
There she is, with her hand in her pocket, though,--and sure enough, her
little bit of silver tinkled as it struck the coin beneath. God bless
her! she has n't much to give; but her eye glistens when she gives it,
and that is all Heaven asks.--That was the first time I noticed these
young people together, and I am sure they behaved with the most charming
propriety,--in fact, there was one of our silent lady-boarders with
them, whose eyes would have kept Cupid and Psyche to their good
behavior. A day or two after this I noticed that the young gentleman had
left his seat, which you may remember was at the corner diagonal to that
of Iris, so that they have been as far removed from each other as they
could be at the table. His new seat is three or four places farther down
the table. Of course I made a romance out of this, at once. So stupid
not to see it! How could it be otherwise?--Did you speak, Madam? I beg
your pardon. (To my lady-reader.)
I never saw anything like the tenderness with which this young girl
treats her little deformed neighbor. If he were in the way of going to
church, I know she would follow him. But his worship, if any, is not
with the throng of men and women and staring children.
I, the Professor, on the other hand, am a regular church-goer. I should
go for various reasons if I did not love it; but I am happy enough to
find great pleasure in the midst of devout multitudes, whether I can
accept all their creeds or not. One place of worship comes nearer than
the rest to my ideal standard, and to this it was that I carried our
young girl.
The Church of the Galileans, as it is called, is even humbler in outside
pretensions than the Church of Saint Polycarp. Like that, it is open to
all comers. The stranger who approaches it looks down a quiet street and
sees the plainest of chapels,--a kind of wooden tent, that owes whatever
grace it has to its pointed windows and the high, sharp roofs--traces,
both, of that upward movement of ecclesiastical architecture which
soared aloft in cathedral-spires, shooting into the sky as the spike of
a flowering aloe from the cluster of broad, sharp-wedged leaves below.
This suggestion of medieval symbolism, aided by a minute turret in which
a hand-bell might have hung and found just room enough to turn over, was
all of outward show the small edifice could boast. Within there was very
little that pretended to be attractive. A small organ at one side, and a
plain pulpit, showed that the building was a church; but it was a church
reduced to its simplest expression:
Yet when the great and wise monarch of the East sat upon his throne, in
all the golden blaze of the spoils of Ophir and the freights of the navy
of Tarshish, his glory was not like that of this simple chapel in its
Sunday garniture. For the lilies of the field, in their season, and the
fairest flowers of the year, in due succession, were clustered every
Sunday morning over the preacher's desk. Slight, thin-tissued
blossoms of pink and blue and virgin white in early spring, then the
full-breasted and deep-hearted roses of summer, then the velvet-robed
crimson and yellow flowers of autumn, and in the winter delicate exotics
that grew under skies of glass in the false summers of our crystal
palaces without knowing that it was the dreadful winter of New England
which was rattling the doors and frosting the panes,--in their language
the whole year told its history of life and growth and beauty from that
simple desk. There was always at least one good sermon,--this floral
homily. There was at least one good prayer,--that brief space when all
were silent, after the manner of the Friends at their devotions.
Here, too, Iris found an atmosphere of peace and love. The same gentle,
thoughtful faces, the same cheerful but reverential spirit, the
same quiet, the same life of active benevolence. But in all else how
different from the Church of Saint Polycarp! No clerical costume, no
ceremonial forms, no carefully trained choirs. A liturgy they have, to
be sure, which does not scruple to borrow from the time-honored manuals
of devotion, but also does not hesitate to change its expressions to its
own liking.
Perhaps the good people seem a little easy with each other;--they are
apt to nod familiarly, and have even been known to whisper before
the minister came in. But it is a relief to get rid of that old
Sunday--no,--Sabbath face, which suggests the idea that the first day
of the week is commemorative of some most mournful event. The truth
is, these brethren and sisters meet very much as a family does for its
devotions, not putting off their humanity in the least, considering it
on the whole quite a delightful matter to come together for prayer and
song and good counsel from kind and wise lips. And if they are freer in
their demeanor than some very precise congregations, they have not the
air of a worldly set of people. Clearly they have not come to advertise
their tailors and milliners, nor for the sake of exchanging criticisms
on the literary character of the sermon they may hear. There is no
restlessness and no restraint among these quiet, cheerful worshippers.
One thing that keeps them calm and happy during the season so evidently
trying to many congregations is, that they join very generally in the
singing. In this way they get rid of that accumulated nervous force
which escapes in all sorts of fidgety movements, so that a minister
trying to keep his congregation still reminds one of a boy with his hand
over the nose of a pump which another boy is working,--this spirting
impatience of the people is so like the jets that find their way through
his fingers, and the grand rush out at the final Amen! has such a
wonderful likeness to the gush that takes place when the boy pulls his
hand away, with immense relief, as it seems, to both the pump and the
officiating youngster.
How sweet is this blending of all voices and all hearts in one common
song of praise! Some will sing a little loud, perhaps,--and now and
then an impatient chorister will get a syllable or two in advance, or an
enchanted singer so lose all thought of time and place in the luxury
of a closing cadence that he holds on to the last semi-breve upon his
private responsibility; but how much more of the spirit of the old
Psalmist in the music of these imperfectly trained voices than in the
academic niceties of the paid performers who take our musical worship
out of our hands!
I am of the opinion that the creed of the Church of the Galileans is not
laid down in as many details as that of the Church of Saint Polycarp.
Yet I suspect, if one of the good people from each of those churches had
met over the bed of a suffering fellow-creature, or for the promotion
of any charitable object, they would have found they had more in common
than all the special beliefs or want of beliefs that separated them
would amount to. There are always many who believe that the fruits of
a tree afford a better test of its condition than a statement of the
composts with which it is dressed, though the last has its meaning and
importance, no doubt.
Between these two churches, then, our young Iris divides her affections.
But I doubt if she listens to the preacher at either with more devotion
than she does to her little neighbor when he talks of these matters.
What does he believe? In the first place, there is some deep-rooted
disquiet lying at the bottom of his soul, which makes him very bitter
against all kinds of usurpation over the right of private judgment. Over
this seems to lie a certain tenderness for humanity in general, bred out
of life-long trial, I should say, but sharply streaked with fiery lines
of wrath at various individual acts of wrong, especially if they come
in an ecclesiastical shape, and recall to him the days when his mother's
great-grandmother was strangled on Witch Hill, with a text from the Old
Testament for her halter. With all this, he has a boundless belief
in the future of this experimental hemisphere, and especially in the
destiny of the free thought of its northeastern metropolis.
--A man can see further, Sir,--he said one day,--from the top of Boston
State House, and see more that is worth seeing, than from all the
pyramids and turrets and steeples in all the places in the world! No
smoke, Sir; no fog, Sir; and a clean sweep from the Outer Light and the
sea beyond it to the New Hampshire mountains! Yes, Sir,--and there are
great truths that are higher than mountains and broader than seas, that
people are looking for from the tops of these hills of ours;--such as
the world never saw, though it might have seen them at Jerusalem, if its
eyes had been open!--Where do they have most crazy people? Tell me that,
Sir!
I answered, that I had heard it said there were more in New England than
in most countries, perhaps more than in any part of the world.
Very good, Sir,--he answered.--When have there been most people killed
and wounded in the course of this century?
During the wars of the French Empire, no doubt,--I said.
That's it! that's it!--said the Little Gentleman;--where the battle of
intelligence is fought, there are most minds bruised and broken! We're
battling for a faith here, Sir.
The divinity-student remarked, that it was rather late in the world's
history for men to be looking out for a new faith.
I did n't say a new faith,--said the Little Gentleman;--old or new,
it can't help being different here in this American mind of ours from
anything that ever was before; the people are new, Sir, and that makes
the difference. One load of corn goes to the sty, and makes the fat
of swine,--another goes to the farm-house, and becomes the muscle that
clothes the right arms of heroes. It is n't where a pawn stands on the
board that makes the difference, but what the game round it is when it
is on this or that square.
Can any man look round and see what Christian countries are now doing,
and how they are governed, and what is the general condition of society,
without seeing that Christianity is the flag under which the world
sails, and not the rudder that steers its course? No, Sir! There was
a great raft built about two thousand years ago,--call it an ark,
rather,--the world's great ark! big enough to hold all mankind, and made
to be launched right out into the open waves of life,--and here it has
been lying, one end on the shore and one end bobbing up and down in the
water, men fighting all the time as to who should be captain and who
should have the state-rooms, and throwing each other over the side
because they could not agree about the points of compass, but the
great vessel never getting afloat with its freight of nations and their
rulers;--and now, Sir, there is and has been for this long time a fleet
of “heretic” lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been
saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, “Pump out your
bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old
rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it
where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's hope
float on the ocean, instead of sticking in the dock-mud where it is
lying!”
It's a slow business, this of getting the ark launched. The Jordan was
n't deep enough, and the Tiber was n't deep enough, and the Rhone was
n't deep enough, and the Thames was n't deep enough, and perhaps the
Charles is n't deep enough; but I don't feel sure of that, Sir, and I
love to hear the workmen knocking at the old blocks of tradition and
making the ways smooth with the oil of the Good Samaritan. I don't know,
Sir,--but I do think she stirs a little,--I do believe she slides;--and
when I think of what a work that is for the dear old three-breasted
mother of American liberty, I would not take all the glory of all the
greatest cities in the world for my birthright in the soil of little
Boston!
--Some of us could not help smiling at this burst of local patriotism,
especially when it finished with the last two words.
And Iris smiled, too. But it was the radiant smile of pleasure which
always lights up her face when her little neighbor gets excited on the
great topics of progress in freedom and religion, and especially on the
part which, as he pleases himself with believing, his own city is
to take in that consummation of human development to which he looks
forward.
Presently she looked into his face with a changed expression,--the
anxiety of a mother that sees her child suffering.
You are not well,--she said.
I am never well,--he answered.--His eyes fell mechanically on the
death's-head ring he wore on his right hand. She took his hand as if it
had been a baby's, and turned the grim device so that it should be out
of sight. One slight, sad, slow movement of the head seemed to say, “The
death-symbol is still there!”
A very odd personage, to be sure! Seems to know what is going on,
--reads books, old and new,--has many recent publications sent him, they
tell me, but, what is more curious, keeps up with the everyday affairs
of the world, too. Whether he hears everything that is said with
preternatural acuteness, or whether some confidential friend visits him
in a quiet way, is more than I can tell. I can make nothing more of
the noises I hear in his room than my old conjectures. The movements
I mention are less frequent, but I often hear the plaintive cry,--I
observe that it is rarely laughing of late;--I never have detected one
articulate word, but I never heard such tones from anything but a human
voice.
There has been, of late, a deference approaching to tenderness, on
the part of the boarders generally so far as he is concerned. This is
doubtless owing to the air of suffering which seems to have saddened his
look of late. Either some passion is gnawing at him inwardly, or some
hidden disease is at work upon him.
--What 's the matter with Little Boston?--said the young man John to me
one day.--There a'n't much of him, anyhow; but 't seems to me he looks
peakeder than ever. The old woman says he's in a bad way, 'n' wants a
puss to take care of him. Them pusses that take care of old rich folks
marry 'em sometimes,--'n' they don't commonly live a great while after
that. No, Sir! I don't see what he wants to die for, after he's taken so
much trouble to live in such poor accommodations as that crooked body
of his. I should like to know how his soul crawled into it, 'n' how it's
goin' to get out. What business has he to die, I should like to know?
Let Ma'am Allen (the gentleman with the diamond) die, if he likes, and
be (this is a family-magazine); but we a'n't goin' to have him dyin'.
Not by a great sight. Can't do without him anyhow. A'n't it fun to hear
him blow off his steam?
I believe the young fellow would take it as a personal insult, if the
Little Gentleman should show any symptoms of quitting our table for a
better world.
--In the mean time, what with going to church in company with our young
lady, and taking every chance I could get to talk with her, I have found
myself becoming, I will not say intimate, but well acquainted with Miss
Iris. There is a certain frankness and directness about her that perhaps
belong to her artist nature. For, you see, the one thing that marks the
true artist is a clear perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction
from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the
feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas
or in stone. A true artist, therefore, can hardly fail to have a sharp,
well-defined mental physiognomy. Besides this, many young girls have
a strange audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy. Even in
physical daring many of them are a match for boys; whereas you will find
few among mature women, and especially if they are mothers, who do not
confess, and not unfrequently proclaim, their timidity. One of these
young girls, as many of us hereabouts remember, climbed to the top of a
jagged, slippery rock lying out in the waves,--an ugly height to get up,
and a worse one to get down, even for a bold young fellow of sixteen.
Another was in the way of climbing tall trees for crows' nests,--and
crows generally know about how far boys can “shin up,” and set their
household establishments above that high-water mark. Still another of
these young ladies I saw for the first time in an open boat, tossing on
the ocean ground-swell, a mile or two from shore, off a lonely island.
She lost all her daring, after she had some girls of her own to look out
for.
Many blondes are very gentle, yielding in character, impressible,
unelastic. But the positive blondes, with the golden tint running
through them, are often full of character. They come, probably enough,
from those deep-bosomed German women that Tacitus portrayed in such
strong colors. The negative blondes, or those women whose tints have
faded out as their line of descent has become impoverished, are of
various blood, and in them the soul has often become pale with that
blanching of the hair and loss of color in the eyes which makes them
approach the character of Albinesses.
I see in this young girl that union of strength and sensibility which,
when directed and impelled by the strong instinct so apt to accompany
this combination of active and passive capacity, we call genius. She is
not an accomplished artist, certainly, as yet; but there is always
an air in every careless figure she draws, as it were of upward
aspiration,--the elan of John of Bologna's Mercury,--a lift to them, as
if they had on winged sandals, like the herald of the Gods. I hear her
singing sometimes; and though she evidently is not trained, yet is there
a wild sweetness in her fitful and sometimes fantastic melodies,--such
as can come only from the inspiration of the moment,--strangely
enough, reminding me of those long passages I have heard from my little
neighbor's room, yet of different tone, and by no means to be mistaken
for those weird harmonies.
I cannot pretend to deny that I am interested in the girl. Alone,
unprotected, as I have seen so many young girls left in boarding-houses,
the centre of all the men's eyes that surround the table, watched with
jealous sharpness by every woman, most of all by that poor relation
of our landlady, who belongs to the class of women that like to
catch others in mischief when they themselves are too mature for
indiscretions, (as one sees old rogues turn to thief-catchers,) one of
Nature's gendarmerie, clad in a complete suit of wrinkles, the
cheapest coat-of-mail against the shafts of the great little enemy,--so
surrounded, Iris spans this commonplace household-life of ours with her
arch of beauty, as the rainbow, whose name she borrows, looks down on a
dreary pasture with its feeding flocks and herds of indifferent animals.
These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much
as they will. The female gendarmes are off guard occasionally. The
sitting-room has its solitary moments, when any two boarders who wish to
meet may come together accidentally, (accidentally, I said, Madam, and
I had not the slightest intention of Italicizing the word,) and discuss
the social or political questions of the day, or any other subject that
may prove interesting. Many charming conversations take place at the
foot of the stairs, or while one of the parties is holding the latch
of a door,--in the shadow of porticoes, and especially on those outside
balconies which some of our Southern neighbors call “stoops,” the most
charming places in the world when the moon is just right and the roses
and honeysuckles are in full blow,--as we used to think in eighteen
hundred and never mention it.
On such a balcony or “stoop,” one evening, I walked with Iris. We were
on pretty good terms now, and I had coaxed her arm under mine,--my left
arm, of course. That leaves one's right arm free to defend the lovely
creature, if the rival--odious wretch! attempt, to ravish her from your
side. Likewise if one's heart should happen to beat a little, its mute
language will not be without its meaning, as you will perceive when the
arm you hold begins to tremble, a circumstance like to occur, if you
happen to be a good-looking young fellow, and you two have the “stoop”
to yourselves.
We had it to ourselves that evening. The Koh-inoor, as we called him,
was in a corner with our landlady's daughter. The young fellow John was
smoking out in the yard. The gendarme was afraid of the evening air, and
kept inside, The young Marylander came to the door, looked out and saw
us walking together, gave his hat a pull over his forehead and stalked
off. I felt a slight spasm, as it were, in the arm I held, and saw the
girl's head turn over her shoulder for a second. What a kind creature
this is! She has no special interest in this youth, but she does not
like to see a young fellow going off because he feels as if he were not
wanted.
She had her locked drawing-book under her arm.--Let me take it,--I said.
She gave it to me to carry.
This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am sure,--said I.
She laughed, and said,--No,--not all of you.