CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLIII.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CHAPTER XLV.
CHAPTER XLVI.
CHAPTER XLVII.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
CHAPTER XLIX.
CHAPTER L.
CHAPTER LI.
CHAPTER LII.
CHAPTER LIII.
CHAPTER LIV.
CHAPTER LV.
CHAPTER LVI.
CHAPTER LVII
CHAPTER LVIII.
CHAPTER LIX.
CHAPTER LX.
CHAPTER LXI.
To
THOSE DEAR TO ME
AT
STONEY WOLDE,
TURNERS, NEW YORK;
PINEHURST;
NORWICH, CONNECTICUT;
BROOK FARM,
PROCTORSVILLE, VERMONT;
AND
DUNESIDE,
EASTHAMPTON, NEW YORK,
THIS BOOK,
WRITTEN WHILE AMONG THEM,
IS DEDICATED.
CHAPTER I.
ROMANCE AND REALITY.
Mr. Pierce was talking. Mr. Pierce was generally talking. From the day
that his proud mamma had given him a sweetmeat for a very inarticulate
“goo” which she translated into “papa,” Mr. Pierce had found speech
profitable. He had been able to talk his nurse into granting him every
indulgence. He had talked his way through school and college. He had
talked his wife into marrying him. He had talked himself to the head of
a large financial institution. He had talked his admission into
society. Conversationally, Mr. Pierce was a success. He could discuss
Schopenhauer or cotillion favors; St. Paul, the apostle, or St. Paul,
the railroad. He had cultivated the art as painstakingly as a
professional musician. He had countless anecdotes, which he introduced
to his auditors by a “that reminds me of.” He had endless quotations,
with the quotation marks omitted. Finally he had an idea on every
subject, and generally a theory as well. Carlyle speaks somewhere of an
“inarticulate genius.” He was not alluding to Mr. Pierce.
Like most good talkers, Mr. Pierce was a tongue despot. Conversation
must take his course, or he would none of it. Generally he controlled.
If an upstart endeavored to turn the subject, Mr. Pierce waited till
the intruder had done speaking, and then quietly, but firmly would
remark: “Relative to the subject we were discussing a moment ago—” If
any one ventured to speak, even _sotto voce_, before Mr. Pierce had
finished all he had to say, he would at once cease his monologue, wait
till the interloper had finished, and then resume his lecture just
where he had been interrupted. Only once had Mr. Pierce found this
method to fail in quelling even the sturdiest of rivals. The
recollection of that day is still a mortification to him. It had
happened on the deck of an ocean steamer. For thirty minutes he had
fought his antagonist bravely. Then, humbled and vanquished, he had
sought the smoking-room, to moisten his parched throat, and solace his
wounded spirit, with a star cocktail. He had at last met his superior.
He yielded the deck to the fog-horn.
At the present moment Mr. Pierce was having things very much his own
way. Seated in the standing-room of a small yacht, were some eight
people. With a leaden sky overhead, and a leaden sea about it, the boat
gently rose and fell with the ground swell. Three miles away could be
seen the flash-light marking the entrance to the harbor. But though
slowly gathering clouds told that wind was coming, the yacht now lay
becalmed, drifting with the ebb tide. The pleasure-seekers had been
together all day, and were decidedly talked out. For the last hour they
had been singing songs—always omitting Mr. Pierce, who never so trifled
with his vocal organs. During this time he had been restless. At one
point he had attempted to deliver his opinion on the relation of verse
to music, but an unfeeling member of the party had struck up “John
Brown’s Body,” and his lecture had ended, in the usual serial style, at
the most interesting point, without even the promise of a “continuation
in our next.” Finally, however, the singers had sung themselves hoarse
in the damp night air, the last “Spanish Cavalier” had been safely
restored to his inevitable true-love, and the sound of voices and banjo
floated away over the water. Mr. Pierce’s moment had come.
Some one, and it is unnecessary to mention the sex, had given a sigh,
and regretted that nineteenth century life was so prosaic and
unromantic. Clearing his throat, quite as much to pre-empt the pause as
to articulate the better, Mr. Pierce spoke:
“That modern times are less romantic and interesting than bygone
centuries is a fallacy. From time immemorial, love and the battle
between evil and good are the two things which have given the world
romance and interest. Every story, whether we find it in the myths of
the East, the folklore of Europe, the poems of the Troubadours, or in
our newspaper of this morning, is based on one or the other of these
factors, or on both combined. Now it is a truism that love never played
so important a part as now in shaping the destinies of men and women,
for this is the only century in which it has obtained even a partial
divorce from worldly and parental influences. Moreover the great battle
of society, to crush wrong and elevate right, was never before so
bravely fought, on so many fields, by so many people as to-day. But
because our lovers and heroes no longer brag to the world of their
doings; no longer stand in the moonlight, and sing of their ‘dering
does,’ the world assumes that the days of tourneys and guitars were the
only days of true love and noble deeds. Even our professed writers of
romance join in the cry. ‘Draw life as it is,’ they say. ‘We find
nothing in it but mediocrity, selfishness, and money-loving.’ By all
means let us have truth in our novels, but there is truth and truth.
Most of New York’s firemen presumably sat down at noon to-day to a
dinner of corned-beef and cabbage. But perhaps one of them at the same
moment was fighting his way through smoke and flame, to save life at
the risk of his own. Boiled dinner and burned firemen are equally true.
Are they equally worthy of description? What would the age of chivalry
be, if the chronicles had recorded only the brutality, filthiness and
coarseness of their contemporaries? The wearing of underclothing
unwashed till it fell to pieces; the utter lack of soap; the eating
with fingers; the drunkenness and foul-mouthedness that drove women
from the table at a certain point, and so inaugurated the custom, now
continued merely as an excuse for a cigar? Some one said once that a
man finds in a great city just the qualities he takes to it. That’s
true of romance as well. Modern novelists don’t find beauty and
nobility in life, because they don’t look for them. They predicate from
their inner souls that the world is ‘cheap and nasty’ and that is what
they find it to be. There is more true romance in a New York tenement
than there ever was in a baron’s tower—braver battles, truer love,
nobler sacrifices. Romance is all about us, but we must have eyes for
it. You are young people, with your lives before you. Let me give you a
little advice. As you go through life look for the fine things—not for
the despicable. It won’t make you any richer. It won’t make you famous.
It won’t better you in a worldly way. But it will make your lives
happier, for by the time you are my age, you’ll love humanity, and look
upon the world and call it good. And you will have found romance enough
to satisfy all longings for mediæval times.”
“But, dear, one cannot imagine some people ever finding anything
romantic in life,” said a voice, which, had it been translated into
words would have said, “I know you are right, of course, and you will
convince me at once, but in my present state of unenlightenment it
seems to me that—” the voice, already low, became lower. “Now”—a
moment’s hesitation—“there is—Peter Stirling.”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Pierce. “That is a very case in point, and proves
just what I’ve been saying. Peter is like the novelists of whom I’ve
been talking. I don’t suppose we ought to blame him for it. What can
you expect of a son of a mill-foreman, who lives the first sixteen
years of his life in a mill-village? If his hereditary tendencies gave
him a chance, such an experience would end it. If one lives in the
country, one may get fine thoughts by contact with Nature. In great
cities one is developed and stimulated by art, music, literature, and
contact with clever people. But a mill-village is one vast expanse of
mediocrity and prosaicness, and it would take a bigger nature than
Peter’s to recognize the beautiful in such a life. In truth, he is as
limited, as exact, and as unimaginative as the machines of his own
village. Peter has no romance in him; hence he will never find it, nor
increase it in this world. This very case only proves my point; that to
meet romance one must have it. Boccaccio said he did not write novels,
but lived them. Try to imagine Peter living a romance! He could be
concerned in a dozen and never dream it. They would not interest him
even if he did notice them. And I’ll prove it to you.” Mr. Pierce
raised his voice. “We are discussing romance, Peter. Won’t you stop
that unsocial tramp of yours long enough to give us your opinion on the
subject?”
A moment’s silence followed, and then a singularly clear voice, coming
from the forward part of the yacht, replied: “I never read them, Mr.
Pierce.”
Mr. Pierce laughed quietly. “See,” he said, “that fellow never dreams
of there being romance outside of novels. He is so prosaic that he is
unconscious of anything bigger than his own little sphere of life.
Peter may obtain what he wants in this world, for his desires will be
of the kind to be won by work and money. But he will never be
controlled by a great idea, nor be the hero of a true romance.”
Steele once wrote that the only difference between the Catholic Church
and the Church of England was, that the former was infallible and the
latter never wrong. Mr. Pierce would hardly have claimed for himself
either of these qualities. He was too accustomed in his business to
writing, “E. and O.E.” above his initials, to put much faith in human
dicta. But in the present instance he felt sure of what he said, and
the little group clearly agreed. If they were right, this story is like
that recounted in Mother Goose, which was ended before it was begun.
But Mr. Pierce had said that romance is everywhere to those who have
the spirit of it in them. Perhaps in this case the spirit was lacking
in his judges—not in Peter Stirling.