TWO STRANGE BEINGS.
ROMANCE OF WESTERN LIFE--MET BY CHANCE--PARTING ON THE LEVEE--MEETING
AT THE SICK-BED--CONVALESCENT--LOVE-MAKING--"HOME, SWEET HOME"--
THEOLOGICAL DISCUSSIONS--UNCLE TONY--WILD, YET GENTLE--AN ODD
FAMILY--THE ADVENTURER SPECULATES.
It was in the spring of the year away back in time when there landed at
the town of St. Francisville, or Bayou Sara, a small periagua, or
canoe, containing two young men clad in skins, with a camp-kettle,
guns, some curiously painted skins, Indian bows, quivers, and Indian
curiosities. Their hair was long, their unshaven beards were full and
flowing, and in all their appearance they were wild and savage. There
were but few houses in the hamlet below the hill. Among these was one
of more pretensions than the rest. It was a store, and the merchant was
an Irishman. There was near it a neat family carriage. One of the young
savages went into this store to find materials for writing to his
home-friends, from whom he had been separated for many long months. He
found in the store three ladies. Two were young, the other was an aged
matron. They seemed not only surprised at the novel apparition before
them, but alarmed. This surprise seemed to increase when they saw the
young savage rapidly filling, upon the counter, a sheet of paper. They
desisted from their shopping, and watched intently the wild savage.
When his letter was completed, he politely desired the accommodating
merchant to send it for him to the post-office. Then lifting his gray
wolf-skin cap from his head, he bowed politely to the ladies and turned
to leave the store and their presence. The salutation was gracefully
acknowledged, and especially by the matron. Very soon they joined the
curious crowd who were examining the contents of the canoe, now placed
on the land to await the coming of a steamer that was freighting with
cotton above. One of the young ladies seemed much interested and made
many inquiries. A bow and quiver was given into her hand. The latter
was fashioned from the skin of a Mexican tiger, and was filled with
arrows. One of these was bloody, and its history was asked of the youth
she had met in the store. It was the blood of a Pawnee chief who, by
this arrow, had been slain in battle, and was the gift to the youth
from the daughter of the fallen chief, together with the bow and quiver
of the Indian who had slain her father, and who was in turn killed by a
chief of her tribe.
How beautiful she was to this wanderer of the wilderness! Months upon
months had passed away, and he had only looked upon the blank and
unmeaning features of the desert savage woman. With these his heart had
no sympathy. Like the panther of their plains they were swift of foot,
symmetrical in form, wild, untamed and untamable, fierce and unfeeling;
and were not formed by nature for sympathy or social union with the
higher organizations of civilized man. His dream of romance was being
realized. The vacuum in his heart was filling. How in contrast were his
feelings and appearance! Clad as a savage, his skin was covered with
the fabric of an Indian woman, closely fitting, with moccasins on his
feet, and a gray wolf-skin cap upon his head--his long, black hair with
the luxuriant growth of two years curling over his shoulders, and his
beard, like the wing of night fluttering in the breeze, waving down
from his chin to his breast in ringlets, glossy and beautiful. He was
lithe as a savage, and seemed to be one. In his heart were kindling
soft emotions, and memories of maidens he had known--now far, far
away--came crowding upon that heart. Before him stood the embodiment of
beauty and grace, attired with costly and beautiful fabrics which
flowed about her person like the white vapor upon the breezes of
spring. Elegance was in her every attitude, and grace in every
movement. Her features and her eyes beamed with a curious wish to learn
the story of the strange wild being before her. Their two hearts were
in sympathy; but to each other it was a secret. How strangely they had
met! How strangely they were feeling! How soon they were to part!
"Where is he from? Where is he going?" asked her eyes; and he looked:
"Who are you; and where is your home, beautiful being, so strangely and
so unexpectedly met?"
An arrow was shot from the bow to gratify a request. She followed the
quivering thing with her eye, as it sped like a shaft of light to its
destined mark. To retrieve it she walked with the youth to where, fixed
in a bale of cotton, it trembled, some hundred yards away. Slowly she
returned by the youth's side, and drooped her head, listening to the
wild mountain adventures he was telling--the chase of the elk, the
antelope, and the wild buffalo; the hazardous ride through the wild
prairies, expanding away in the distance to kiss the horizon; the
stealthy wiles of the revengeful savage; the fierce fight of savage
men; the race for very life, when the foe followed; and the bivouac
upon the prairie's breast, with the weary horse sleeping and resting by
his side. Will he ever forget the speaking of the beaming features of
that beautiful creature, when she lifted her head and looked into his
face? A frown darkened the matron's features as her _élève_ returned to
the curious group which was listening to the narrative of the older of
the two strangers. It said: "What did you leave me for? Why this
indiscretion?" Ah! how often old women forget they were once young!
The steamer is coming. She is here; and the trappings of the wanderers
are on board. The young wild man stands alone upon the upper deck. His
eyes pierce to where stands the sylph he leaves with reluctance. She is
looking at him. He lifts his cap and bows farewell. She waves her
kerchief in return. The steamer speeds away. They are parted. Has that
brief interview left an impression upon those two young hearts to
endure beyond a day? Will she dream of the dark beard, curled and
flowing--of the darker eye which looked and spoke? and will the wild
story of the western wilderness come in the silent darkness of her
chamber, and make her nestle closer to her pillow? Will her heart ask:
"Shall I ever meet him again?"
He has gone away; a waif about the land--a feather on the world, driven
about, as destiny impels, without fixed intentions; yet buoyant with
the ardor of youth, and happy in the excess of youthful hopes, dreamy
and wild adventures. He has tasted the savage love of woods and wilds,
and the nature--which was born thousands of years ere the teachings of
civilization had tamed the wild man into an educated, home-loving
being--revives, and the two struggle for mastery in his heart. The
bleak mountain-peaks, the wide-extended plain and its wild denizens,
and the excitement these give, stirs his bosom, and the wish struggles
up to return to them. But the gentler chords of his heart are in tune.
The once-loved home, and she, the once-loved and yet-remembered maiden,
is there, and it may be she pines for his return. He gazed on the
beautiful apparition but a moment gone, and thought of another; and
thought begat thought until the loved one he had left rose up to
memory's call. He was alone, looking upon the great river through whose
turbid waters he was borne away, and he felt he was lengthening a chain
linked to his heart which pulled him back--to what, and to whom? It was
a vision--a dream with his eyes open: indistinct, unembodied, a very
shadow; still it floated about in his imagination, and he was sad. He
was in the city--the great Sodom of the West. He was an object of
wonder to every curious eye. His wild appearance and gentle manner
comported illy, and the thoughtless crowd followed him. Attired now as
a civilized being, and feeling that the vagrant life of a savage must
lead to grief, he called to mind the tear which stole from the rheumy
eyes of the old trapper as he narrated his adventures in the
wilderness, and cursed the hour he ever wandered from his home. His
life had been a continual danger, his hope had been always to return to
his early attachments; but the chain of habit fettered him, and he had
learned to love the wild, solitary life, because of its excitements and
its dangers. Should he, like this man, come to love the solitude and
silence of the wilderness, and find companionship only with his traps
and guns?
His resolution was taken, he would renew the strife with the world and
go back to busy life. His companion of many dangers and long marches
was going to Mexico in search of new adventures. They are alone upon
the broad levee--busy men are hurrying to and fro, little heeding the
two--a small schooner is dropping and sheeting home her sails; she is
up for Tampico, and Gilmanot goes in her; she is throwing off her
fastenings. "All aboard," cries the swarthy, whiskered captain--a grasp
of the hand--no word was spoken--it was warm and sincere, there was no
need of words--each understood that last warm farewell pressure. She is
sweeping around Slaughter-house Point--only the topmasts are visible
now--and now she is gone. The young adventurer stands alone and the
crowd goes hurrying on. How many in desolation of heart have stood
alone and unheeded by the busy, passing multitude upon that broad
levee! How many tears of misery have moistened its shell-covered
summit, when thinking of friends far, far away they should never see
again, and when hope had been rooted from the heart!
He wandered to the great square, now so beautifully ornamented with
shrubs and flowers which love the sun and the South's fat soil, growing
and blooming about the bronze representation of the loved hero who had
been her shield and savior in the hour of her peril, Andrew Jackson.
Then there were a few trees only, and beneath these, here and there, a
rude rural seat or bench. The old, gray cathedral was frowning on the
world's sins, so rife around her; and the great, naked square and the
mighty muddy river which was hurrying away to the sea. To the most
thoughtless will come reflection, and the sweetest face is mellowed by
sorrow. Here under these trees, in the midst of a great city, came to
the young adventurer reflection and sighing sorrow. His mother and
father came up in memory; the home of childhood, his brother, his
sister, his friends, all were remembered; his heart flooded over and he
wept like a little child. Blessed are they who can cry. It is nature's
outlet for grief, and the heart would break if we could not cry. The
heart is not desolate when alone in the forest or the boundless
grass-clothed plains of the West. Nature is all around you, and her
smile is beneficent. There is companionship in the breeze, in the
waving grass, the rustling leaves, and the meanings of the wind-swayed
limbs of the yielding forest. In the city's multitude to move, and be
unknown of all; to hear no recognized voice; to meet no sympathizing
smile or eye; to be silent when all are speaking, and to know that not
one of all these multitudes share a thought or wish with you--this is
desolation, the bitterness of solitude.
A year has gone by, and the youth has found a new home and has made new
friends. He is one of the busy world and struggling with it. He is in
commerce's mart and is one of the multitude who come and congregate
there for gain; in the hall of Justice, where litigants court the
smiles and favors of the blind goddess, where right contends against
wrong, and is as often trampled as triumphant; and where wisdom lends
herself for hire, and bad men rarely meet their dues.
Pestilence had come, and the frightened multitude were fleeing from the
scourge. There was one who came and proffered the hospitality of his
home--where Hygeia smiled and fever never came. Thither he went, but
the poison was in his blood, and as he slept it seized upon his vitals.
His suffering was terrible, and for days life's uncertain tenure seemed
ready to release her hold on time. In his fever-dream there was
flitting about him a fairy form; it would come and go, as the moonlight
on the restless wave--a moment seen and in a moment gone. He saw and
knew nothing for many days distinctly; he would call for his mother and
weep, when only winds would answer. Delirium was in his brain, and wild
fancies chased each other; he heard the crowing of cocks and saw his
sister; his father would come to him, and he would stretch out his hand
and grasp the shadowy nothing. There was a halo of beauty all about
him; prismatic hues trembled in the light, and the tones of sweet music
floated upon the breeze. He saw angels swimming in the golden light;
the blue ether opened, and they came through to greet him and to
welcome him to heaven. Then all was darkness, the crisis had come. He
slept in oblivious ease--it was long; and awaking, the fever was gone.
There was a gentle, sweet, sorrowful face before him--their eyes met;
for a moment only he looked--it was she whom he had met and parted from
without a hope of ever meeting again when robed as the Indian he stood
upon the steamer's deck and waved farewell forever. He reached forth
his hand. She took it and approached, saying, "You are better, and will
soon be well." He could only press her hand as the tears flooded over
his eyes. With a kerchief white as innocence it was wiped away and the
hand that held it laid gently on his brow--that touch thrilled his
every nerve.
Days went by, and the convalescent was amid the shrubs and flowers of
the beautifully ornamented grounds. When he came to the maiden reading
in the shade of a great pecan-tree, she bid him to a seat.
"Do you remember our first meeting?" he asked.
"Here, on your sick-bed, yes; you were, oh! so sick, and I little
thought you would ever leave it alive. You called in your delirium your
mother and your father, and in the frenzy of your mind you saw them by
you; how my heart was pained, and how I prayed for you, in my chamber,
here, and everywhere--and now you are well, only weak."
"It was not when sick I met you first," he replied; "as a wild man you
saw me first, clothed in the skins of the wild beasts of the forest."
She gazed intently; could it be? and clasping her hands she bowed her
head and was silent.
"We have met again," he continued; "I had not forgotten you, but I
dared not hope we should ever meet any more. It was a painful thought;
but I must not tell that--" and there was silence.
Days went by, and the invalid was growing in strength and health. They
only met at the table at the family meals, but they were near each
other. It was at dinner when a ride on horseback was proposed for the
evening's recreation. They rode in company, and through the forest
where the winding road circled the hills, and the great magnolias threw
their dark shade and deliciously cooled the vesper breeze.
"Is it romance, or are you the young gentleman with flowing hair and
black, curling beard I met, and who shot the arrow into the cotton bale
for my amusement? O! how often have I seen you in my dreams; but I
shall never see you as I saw you then. What a study you were to me! How
could your words be so soft and gentle in the wild costume of the
murderous savage? Had you uttered the war-whoop and strode away with
the stride and pride of the savage warrior, there would have been
euphony in it, and I should have felt and known you were a savage--and
you would have passed from my mind. But, ah! look how beautifully
bounds away the startled doe we have aroused from her lair in the cave
here."
"She seems scarcely more startled than did you when I came so
unexpectedly upon you in the store at Bayou Sara. Were you not
surprised to see that I could write?"
"You must not question me now. Why have you cut your hair and beard?
why doffed the prairie chieftain's robes of state and come forth a
plain man? You have dispelled my romance. I have tried to paint you as
I saw and remembered you, and made charcoal sketches for the
gratification of friends to whom I would describe you. I would so like
to see you as you were! O! you were a wonder to me, a very Orson--now,
you are simply a--"
"Miserable creature in plain clothes, and by no means a lady's fancy.
Why did you not let me die, since all that was to be fancied about
me--my hair, my beard, and my buckskin coat, pants, and moccasins are
gone and destroyed?"
The maiden laughed wildly; it was not the laugh of mirth or mischief,
there was a madness in it that thrilled and awed.
"Do you know you are on the graves of a great nation?" she asked. "This
mound and yonder three, were, the burial-places of the Natchez Indians.
The Suns and Sachems sleep here, and he, the Great Sun, who came from
the orbit's self, and was their lawgiver, and in whom and whose
divinity they believed as the Jews in that of Moses, or the Christians
in the Redeemer. Is it not all a mystery--strange, strange,
incomprehensible, and unnatural? What is your faith?"
"To worship where I love; the divinity of my soul's worship is the
devotion of my wild heart.'
"Why, you are mysterious! Have you, as had the Natchez, a holy fire
which is never extinguished in your heart? Is the flame first kindled
burning still? Did your sun come to you with fire in her hand and
kindle it in your heart? Your words mean so much. Was she, or is she a
red maiden of the wild prairies; or dwells she in a mansion surrounded
with the appliances of wealth, reclining on cushions of velvet and
sleeping on a bed of down, canopied with a pavilion of damask satin
fretted with stars of silver; with handmaids to subserve and minister
to every want?" And again the wild laugh rang to the echo among the
hills and dense forests all around. "O! I see I have tuned the wrong
chord and have made discord, not music in your mind. Shall we return?
You are not yet strong, and your weakness I have made weaker, because I
have disturbed the fountain of your heart and brought up painful
memories?"
"You are strange," said her companion, "and guess wide of the mark. The
untutored savage is only a romance at a distance--the reality of their
presence a disgusting fact. They are wild, untamable, and wicked,
without sentiment or sympathy, cruel and murderous; disgusting in their
habits and brutal in their passions."
"And yet, sir, the stories which come down to us of these so quietly
sleeping here are full of romance and poetry. Their intercourse with
the French impressed that mercurial people with exalted notions of
their humanity, chivalry, and nobleness of nature. Can it be that these
historians only wrote romances? You must not disturb this romance. If
it is an illusion let me enjoy it; do not strip from it the beard, the
hair, the hunting-shirt, the bow and quiver--reality or fiction, it is
sweet to the memory. How often have I wandered from our home and stood
here alone and conjured from the spirit-land the ghosts of the Great
Suns, the Stung Serpent, and the chief of the Beard, and hers who
warned the French of the conspiracy for their destruction. In my
day-dreaming I have talked with these; and learned with delight of
their bliss in their eternal hunting-grounds. And as I have knelt here,
they in hosts have come to me with all their legends and long accounts
against the white man, and I have wept above these dry bones, and felt
too it was the fate of the white man, when his mission shall have been
completed on earth, and his nation's age bear him into the ground, and
only his legends shall live a tradition, like that of the Natchez.
"The hieroglyphics of Thotmes, of Rameses, of Menephthah, and of the
host of kings gone before these in Egypt's old life, cannot be read;
their language, letters, and traditions, too, sleep beyond the
revelations of time, and yet their tombs, like these, give up their
bones to the curious, who group through the catacombs, or dig at the
base of their monumental pyramids. All besides has passed away and is
lost. Not even the color of the great people who filled these
monuments, and carved from the solid stone these miles of galleries,
now filled to repletion with their mummied dead, and whose capacity is
sufficient to entomb the dead of a nation for thousands of years, is
known now to those who people the fields reclaimed from the forest
beyond the memory of time.
"Nations are born, have their periods of youthful vigor, their manhood
of sturdy strength, the tottering of decrepit age, the imbecility of
superstitious dotage--and their death is final extinction. Such is man,
and such is the world. What we are, we know; what we shall be, we know
not, save that we only leave a pile of bones. Come, we are approaching
home, and the moon dares to shine, ere yet the sun has gone. Yonder is
brother, and I expect a scolding; but let him fret--it is not often I
have a toy. Fate threw you in my way and you must not complain if I use
you."
"I shall not complain," replied the astonished young man; "but will you
ride again to-morrow?"
She checked up her steed (a noble one he was) and seemed to take in his
entire man, as slowly her eye went up from his stirrup to his face,
when she said: "To-morrow, ah, to-morrow! Who can tell what to-morrow
may bring forth? To you and to me, there may come no to-morrow. We may
in a twinkling be hurled from our sphere into oblivion. The earth may
open to-night, or even now, and we may drop into her bosom of liquid
fire, and be only ashes to-morrow.
"'Take no heed for to-morrow,' is the admonition of wisdom. Look,
yonder I was born. Here sleep the Natchez. See yonder tall mound,
shaded from base to summit with the great forest trees peculiar to our
land. On the top of that mound stood the temple dedicated to the
worship of the sun. He smiles on it as the earth rolls up to hide his
light away, as he did when the holy fire was watched by the priests in
that temple. But the Indian worshipper is gone; to him there comes no
morrow. There, on that mound, sleep the parents of my mother; to them
comes no morrow. _Allons!_ We shall be late for tea. Brother has gone
to sister's, and we shall be alone." In a few minutes they were
galloping down the avenue to the old Spanish-looking mansion, hid away
almost from view in the forest and floral surroundings, which made it
so lovely to view.
There had come in their absence another; it was she who was the
youthful companion of his fairy at the Bayou Sara--a silent, reserved
woman: very timid and very polished. Upon the gallery she was awaiting
the return of her cousin. The meeting was (as all meetings between
high-bred women should be) quiet, but cordial; without show, but full
of heart. They loved one another, and were highbred women. The stranger
was presented, and at tea the cousin was informed that he was the man
from the mountains, and there was a curious, silent surprise in her
face, when she almost whispered, "I am pleased, sir, to meet you again.
I hope you will realize the romance of my cousin's dream with your
legends of the West, the woods, and the wild men of the prairies."
Days went by, and still the fever raged in the city. The cerulean was
bright and unflecked with a speck of vapor, like a concave mirror of
burnished steel. It hung above, and the red sun seemed to burn his way
through the azure mass. The leaves drooped as if weighted with lead,
and in the shade kindly thrown upon the wilting grass by the tulips,
oaks, and pecans about the yard, the poultry lifted their wings and
panted with exhaustion in the sickly heat of the fervid atmosphere. The
sun had long passed the zenith, dinner was over, and the inmates were
enjoying the siesta, so refreshing in this climate of the sun. Here and
there the leaves would start and dally with a vagrant puff from
vesper's lips, then droop again as if in grief at the vagaries of the
little truant which now was fanning and stirring into lazy motion
another leafy limb.
There was music in the drawing room. It was suppressed and soft--so
sweet that it melted into the heart in very stealth. Ah! it is gone.
"Home, sweet home!" Poor Paine! like you, wandering in the friendless
streets of England's metropolis and listening to your own sweet song,
breathed from titled lips in palatial Homes, the listener to-day was
homeless. He thought of you and the convivial hours he had passed with
you, listening to the narrative of your vagrant life, and how happy you
were in the poetry of your own thoughts when you were a stranger to
every one, and your purse was empty, and you knew not where you were to
find your dinner.
Genius, thou art a fatal gift! Ever creating, never realizing; living
in a world of beauty etherialized in imagination's lens, and hating the
material world as it is; buffeted by fortune and ridiculed by fools
whose conceptions never rise above the dirt.
A little note, sweetly scented, is placed in his hand:
"Cousin and I propose a ride. Shall we have your company? You are aware
it is the Sabbath. You must not, for us, do violence to your
prejudices."
"Is this," thought he, "a delicate invitation to save my feelings, and
is the latter clause meant as a hint that they do not want me? Well,
the French always, when a compliment has as much bitter as sweet in it,
take the sweet and leave the bitter unappropriated. It is a good
example. I will follow it. Say to the ladies I will accompany them."
"The horses are all ready, sir; and the ladies bonneted wait in the
drawing-room."
The sun was in the tree-tops and the shadows were long. There was a
flirtation going on between the leaves and the breeze. The birds were
flitting from branch to branch. A chill was on the air: it was bathing
the cheek with its delicious touch, and animated life was rejoicing
that evening had come.
Arriving at the great mound of the temple of the sun, with some
difficulty they climb to its summit. So dense is the shade that it is
almost dark. Here are two graves, in which sleep the remains of the
grand-parents of these two beautiful and lovely women. All around are
cultivated fields clothed with rich crops, luxuriant with the promise
of abundance. At its base flows the little creek, gliding and gabbling
along over pure white sand. Sweet Alice! How sad she seems! She stood
at the grave's side, and, looking down, seemed lost in pious reverie.
Every feature spoke reverence for the dead. Her cousin, too, was
silent; and if not reverent, was not gay. He, their gallant, was
respectfully silent, when Alice said, without lifting her eyes:
"I wonder if La Salle ever stood here? This is holy ground. No spot on
earth has a charm for me like this. I am in the temple. I see the
attentive, watchful priest feeding there (as she pointed) the holy
fire, and yonder, with upturned eyes, the great lawgiver worshipping
his god, as he comes up from his sleep, bringing day, warmth, light,
and life. Was not this worship pure? Was it not natural? The sun came
in the spring and awoke everything to life. The grass sprang from the
ground and the leaves clothed the trees; the birds chose their mates
and the flowers gladdened the fields; everything was redolent of life,
and everything rejoiced. He went away in the winter, and death filled
the land. There were no leaves, no grass, no flowers. All nature was
gloomy in death. Could any but a god effect so much? The sun was their
god; his temple was the sky, and his holy fire burned on through all
time. Beautiful conception! Who can say it is not the true faith?"
"To the unlettered mind, it was," answered the young gentleman;
"because the imagination could only be aided by the material presented
to the natural eye. Science opens the eye of faith. It teaches that the
sun is only the instrument, and faith looks beyond for the Creator. To
such the Indian's faith cannot be the true one. The ignorance of one
sees God in the instrument, and his thoughts clothe him with the power
of the Creator, and his heart worships God in sincerity, and to him it
is the true faith. But to the educated, scientific man, who knows the
offices of the sun, it appears as it is, only the creature of the
unseen, unknown God, and to this God he lifts his adoration and
prayers, and to him this is the true faith."
"So, my philosopher, you believe, whatever lifts the mind to worship
God is the true faith?"
"You put it strongly, Miss, and I will answer by a question. If in
sincerity we invoke God's mercy, can the means that prompt the heart's
devotion, reliance, and love, be wrong? His magnitude and perfection
are a mystery to the untutored savage: he knows only what he sees. The
earth to him, (as it was to the founders and patriarchs of our own
faith,) is all the world. He has no idea that it is only one, and a
small one of a numerous family, and can conceive only that the sun
rules his world; gives life and death to everything upon the earth--but
this inspires love and reverence for God. The scientific man sees in
the sun only an attractive centre, and sees space filled with
self-illuminating orbs, and reasoning from the known to the unknown, he
believes these centres of attraction to planetary families, and the
imagination stretches away through space filled with centres and
revolving worlds, and each centre with its dependents revolving around
one great centre, and this great centre he believes is God. His idea is
only one step beyond the Indian's, and has only the same effect: it
leads the heart to depend on and worship God."
"You are a heretic, and must like a naughty boy be made to read your
Bible and go to Sunday-school, and be lectured and taught the true
faith. Fy! fy! shall the heathen go to heaven? Where is the provision
for him in the Bible? What are we to do with missions? If this be true,
there is no need that we should be sending good men and dear, pious
women to convert the Chinese, the Feejees, and the poor Africans so
benighted that their very color is black, and the Australians, and New
Georgians, to be roasted and eaten by the cannibals there. If they
worship God in sincerity, you say that is all?"
"No, miss, faith without works is a futile reliance for heaven. It is
the first necessity, and perhaps the next and greatest, is, to 'Do unto
all what you would have all do unto you.' These are the words of the
great Chinese philosopher, Confucius, and were taught four and a half
centuries before Christ, yet we see Him teaching the same. This, as
Confucius said, was the great cardinal duty of man, and all else was
but a commentary upon this. This I fancy is all, at least it is very
comprehensive. You tell me the traditions of the people who worshipped
here say that this was a cardinal law unto them?"
"You, sir, have lived too long among the heathen, if you are not one
already. You are like an August peach in July: you are turning, and in
a little while will be ripe. You talk, as Uncle Toney says, like a
book, and to me, like a new book, for yours are new thoughts to me.
Cousin, does he not astonish you?"
"By no means; true, they are new thoughts; but they are natural
thoughts, and I do not fear to listen to them--on the contrary, I could
listen to them all day, and, Alice, I have often, very often, heard
from you something like this."
"Nonsense, cousin, nonsense; I am orthodox, you know, and a good girl
and love to go to church, especially when I have a becoming new dress."
"Here are the bones of our ancestors, if they were once animated with
souls; and I guess they were, particularly the old man, for I have
heard many stories from old Toney, that convince me that he was a
pretty hard one. How do we know that their spirits are not here by us
now? Why is it deemed that there shall be no communication between the
living and the dead? O! how I want to ask all about the spirit-land.
Wake up and reclothe thy bones and become again animated dust, and tell
me thou, my great progenitor, the mysteries of the grave, of heaven and
hell. How quiet is the grave? No response, and it is impious to ask
what I have. O! what is life which animates and harmonizes the elements
of this mysterious creation, man! Life how imperious, and yet how kind;
it unites and controls these antagonistic elements, and they do not
quarrel on his watch. Mingling and communing they go on through time,
regardless of the invitation of those from which they came to return.
But when life is weary of his trust and guardianship, and throws up his
commission, they declare war at once--dissolve, and each returns to his
original. Death and corruption do their work, and life returns no more,
and death is eternal, and the soul--answer ye dumb graves--did the soul
come here? or went it with life to the great first cause? or is here
the end of all; here, this little tenement? I shudder--is it the flesh,
the instinct of life; or is it the soul which shrinks with horror from
this little portal through which it must pass to eternal bliss, or
eternal--horrible! Assist me to my horse, if you please. Come cousin,
let us go and see old Uncle Toney--and, sir, he will teach you more
philosophy than you ever dreamed of."
"Who is Uncle Toney? miss," asked the stranger of the visiting cousin
when he returned to aid her descent of the mound.
"He is a very aged African, brought to this country from Carolina by
our grandfather, in 1775, or earlier; he says there were remnants of
the Natchez in the country at that time, and the old man has many
stories of these, and many more very strange ones of the doings of the
whites who first came and settled the country. He retains pretty well
his faculties, and, like most old people, is garrulous and loves a
listener. He will be delighted with our visit."
"Miss Alice, do you frequently visit Uncle Toney?"
"Very nearly every day. I have in my basket, here, something for the
old man. Turn there, if you please--yonder by that lightning-scared old
oak and those top-heavy pecans is his cabin and has been for more than
sixty years. Here was the local of my grand-father's house; here was
born my mother; but all the buildings have long been gone save Uncle
Toney's cabin. Think of the hopes, the aspirations, the blisses, the
sorrows, the little world that once was here--all gone except Uncle
Toney. In my childhood I used to come here and go with him to the
graves where we have been to-day, and have sat by them for hours
listening to the stories he delights to tell of my grandfather and
mother, until their very appearance seems familiar to my vision. I know
that my grandfather was a small man, and a passionate man, and Toney
sometimes tells me I am like him. His eye was gray--so is mine; his
face sharper than round--so is mine, and sometimes my temper is
terrible--so was his;" and she laughed again that same wild thrilling
laugh as she gallopped up to the cabin and leaped down to greet the old
man, who was seated at the door of his hut beneath the shade of a
catalpa, the trunk of which was worn smooth from his long leaning
against it. He was very black and very fat. His wool was white as snow,
and but for the seams in both cheeks, cut by the knife in observance of
some ridiculous rite in his native land, would have been really
fine-looking for one of his age. He arose and shook hands with the
cousin, but did not approach the gentleman. He was evidently not
pleased with his presence and was chary of his talk.
"Ah! young missus," he said, when he received the basket, "you bring
old Toney sometin good. You is my young missus, too; but dis one is de
las one. Dey is all married and gone but dis one." (This conversation
was addressed to the cousin.) "All gone away but dis one, and when she
marry dare will be nobody to fetch dis ole nigger good tings and talk
to de ole man."
"Uncle Toney, I don't intend to marry."
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the old man, "berry well, berry well! I hear dat
from ebery one ob my young misses, and where is dey now? All done
married and gone. You gwine to do jus as all on em hab done, byne by
when de right one come. Ah! may be he come now."
"You old sinner, I have a great mind to pull your ears for you."
"O no, missus, I don't know! I see fine young man dare; but maybe he
come wid Miss Ann, and maybe he belong to her."
"Uncle Toney, don't you remember I told you of a wild man away from the
mountains, all clothed in skins, with a long, curly beard and hair over
his shoulders as black as a stormy night? This is he."
"Gosh!" said the venerable negro. "I mus shake his hand; but what hab
you done wid your beard, your hair, and your huntin-shirt?"
"I have thrown them all into the fire, uncle. People among white people
must not dress like Indians."
"Dat's a fac, young massa; but I tell you Miss Alice was mity taken wid
dem tings. She come here soon as she comed home, and told me all about
'em and all about you--how you could shoot de bow and how you could
talk, and she said: 'O! what would I not give to see him again?'"
"Toney, if you don't shut up, I won't come to see you, or bring you any
more good things. This young gentleman has come with us to see you, and
wishes to hear you tell all about the Natchez, and to get you to show
him the many things you have dug up on and around these mounds, and
have you tell him all about the old people who came here first and made
all these big plantations and built all these great houses."
"Well, Miss Alice, dis is Sunday, you know, and dem tings mus not be
telled on Sunday, and den you and Miss Ann don't want ole nigger to
talk. You go ride and talk wid de young gemman, and maybe to-morrow, or
some week-day, young massa can come down from de great house wid de gun
to shoot de squirrels along de way, and when he tired, den he can come
and rest, and I can tell him all. Yes, young massa, I been live long
time here. Me is mity old. All dem what was here when I comed wid ole
massa is dead long time. Yes, dare aint one on em livin now, and dare
chillin is old."
"I shall be sure to come," said the young man, "and suppose I bring
with me these ladies?"
"Neber you do dat, massa. I knows young folks ways too well for dat.
Toney may talk, but dey neber will listen. Dey will talk wid one
anoder, and Miss Alice been hear all de ole nigger's talk many a time,
and she don't want to hear it ober and ober all de time; and beside
dat, young massa, sometimes when I tells bout de ole folks, she
trimbles and cries. She's got a mity soft heart bout some tings, and
she tells me I mus tell you eberyting."
"There now, Toney, you have said enough about me to make the gentleman
think I am a very silly little girl."
"God bress my young missus!" he said as he tenderly patted her head. "I
wouldn't hurt your feelins for noffin. You is too good, Miss Alice.
Toney lubed your mamma--Toney lubs you, and de day you is married and
goes away, I want to go away too. I want to go yonder, Miss Alice, on
de top ob dat mound, and lie down wid ole massa and missus. He told
your pa to put me dar; but your pa's gone. O Miss Alice! dey's all gone
but you and me and your brodder, and he don't care for Toney, and maybe
he will trow him out in de woods like a dog when he die." Tears stole
down the black face of the venerable man, and the eyes of Alice
filled--and then she laughed the shrill, fearful laugh, and rode
rapidly away.
She was singing and walking hurriedly the gallery, when the stranger
and her cousin came leisurely into the yard.
"Your cousin, Miss Ann, has a strange laugh."
"Indeed she has, sir; but we who know her understand it. She never
laughs that unearthly laugh when her heart is at ease. I doubt if you
have ever met such a person. I think the world has but one Alice. She
is very young, very impressible, and some think very eccentric, very
passionate and romantic to frenzy. There is something which impels me
to tell you--but no, I have no right to do so. But this I must tell
you; for you cannot have been in the house here so long without
observing it. There is no congeniality between herself and brother;
indeed, very little between her and any of her family. She is alone.
She is one by herself; yes, one by herself in the midst of many; for
the family is a large one. But remember, there is none like Alice. Be
gentle to her and pity her; and pity her most when you hear that
strange laugh."
There was music in the drawing-room, soft and gentle, and the
accompanying voice was tremulous with suppressed emotion. Gradually it
swells in volume until it fills the spacious apartment, and the clear
notes from the tender trill rose grandly in full, clear tones, full of
pathetic melody, and now they almost shriek. They cease--and the laugh,
hysterical and shrill, echoes through the entire house. The judge was
silent; but a close observer might have seen a slight contraction of
the lips, and a slighter closing of the eyes. A moment after Alice
entered the room, and there was a glance exchanged between her brother
and herself. There was in it a meaning only for themselves.
"You have been riding, sir," he said to his guest, "and my sister tells
me to the mound at the White Apple village. To those curious in such
legends as are connected with its history, it is an interesting spot.
All I know in relation to these, I acquired from a dreamy and solitary
man employed by my father to fit myself and brother for college. He
read French, and was fond of tracing all he could find in the writings
of the historians of the first settlement of Louisiana and Mississippi,
and of the history, habits, and customs of the aborigines of the
country. He knew something of the adventures of De Soto and La Salle,
and something of the traditions of the Natchez. He was a melancholy
man, and perished by his own hand in the chamber that you occupy. My
sister is curious in such matters, and from her researches in some old
musty volumes she has found in the possession of an old European
family, she has made quite a history of the Natchez, and from the old
servants much of that of the first white or English occupants of this
section. For myself, I have little curiosity in that way. My business
forbids much reading of that kind, and indeed much of anything else,
and I am glad that my tastes and my business accord. I would not
exchange one crop of cotton grown on the village-field, for a perfect
knowledge of the history of every Indian tribe upon the continent."
"I am no antiquarian, sir. A life on a plantation I suppose must be
most irksome and monotonous to a young lady, unless she should have
some resource besides her rural employments."
"Our only amusements, sir," said Alice, "are reading, riding, and
music, with an occasional visit to a neighbor. I ride through the old
forest and consult the great patriarchal trees, and they tell me many
strange stories. When the ruthless axe has prostrated one of these
forest monarchs, my good palfrey waits for me, and I count the
concentric circles and learn his age. Some I have seen which have
yielded to man's use or cupidity who have looked over the younger
scions of the woods, and upon the waters of the mighty river a thousand
years."
"Indeed, miss," replied the guest, "I had not supposed the natural life
of any of our forest trees extended beyond three, or at most four
centuries."
"The tulip or poplar-tree and the red-oak in the rich loam of these
hills live long and attain to giant proportions. The vines which cling
in such profusion to many of these are commensurate with them in time.
They spring up at their bases and grow with them: the tree performing
the kindly office of nurse, lifting them in her arms and carrying them
until their summits, with united leaves, seem to kiss the clouds. They
live and cling together through tempests and time until worn out with
length of days, when they tumble and fall to the earth together, and
together die. We all, Flora and Fauna, go down to the bosom of our
common mother to rest in death. I love the companionship of the forest.
There is an elevation of soul in this communion with incorruptible
nature: there is sincerity and truth in the hills and valleys--in the
trees and vines, and music--grand orchestral music--in the moaning of
the limbs and leaves, played upon by the hurrying winds. I have prayed
to be a savage, and to live in the woods."
"You are as usual, sister, very romantic to-night."
"By and by, brother, I shall forget it I presume. I am human, and shall
soon die, or live on till time hardens my nature, or sordid pursuits
plough from my heart all its sympathies, and old age finds me gloating
over the gains of laborious care and penurious meanness.
"'To such vile uses we must come at last.'"
"You draw a sad picture, miss, for old age. Do not the gentler virtues
of our nature ever ripen with time? Is it the alchemist who always
turns the sweets of youth to the sours of age? There are many examples
in every community to refute your position. I would instance the
venerable negro we visited to-day. He wept as he placed his trembling
hand upon your head. There was surely nothing ascetic or sordid in his
feelings."
"Uncle Toney is an exception, sir. The affectionate memories he has of
our family, and especially of my mother and father, redeems him from
the obloquy of his race. His heart is as tender as his conduct is void
of offense. He was a slave. God had ordained him for his situation. He
had not the capacity to aspire beyond his lot, or to contrast it with
his master's. Contented to render his service, and satisfied with the
supply of his wants from the hands of him he served--he had a home, and
all the comforts his nature required. He has it still; but I know he is
not as contented as when he was my father's slave. God bless the old
man! He shall never want while I have anything, and should I see him
die, he shall sleep where he wished to-day."
"By our grandfather, I suppose, Alice?"
"Yes, my brother, by our grand-parents. They told him it should be so.
Ah! there are no distinctions in the grave; white skin and black skin
alike return to dust, and the marl of the earth is composed alike of
the bones of all races, and their properties seem to be the same. I,
too, wish to sleep there. It is a romantically beautiful spot, and its
grand old traditions make it holy ground. How its associations hallow
it! Imagination peoples it with those bold old red men who assembled in
the temple to worship the holy fire--emblematic of their
faith--humbling their fierce natures and supplicating for mercy. I go
there and I feel in the touch of the air that it is peopled with the
spirits of the mighty dead, surrounding and blessing me for my memory
of, and love for, their extinct race."
"Bravo, sister! What an enthusiast! You, sir, have some knowledge of
the Indians. Do they stir the romance of your nature as that of my baby
sister?"
The glance from her eye was full of scorn: it flashed with almost
malignant hate as she rose from her seat, and taking the arm of her
cousin she swept from the room, audibly whispering "baby sister" in
sneering accents.
"Woman's nature is a strange study, my young friend. I have several
sisters and they are all strange, each in her peculiar way. They are
remarkable for the love they bear their husbands, and yet they all have
a pleasure in tormenting them, and are never so unhappy, as when they
see these happy. This younger sister has a nature all her own. I do not
think she shares a trait with another living being. Wild, yet gentle;
the eagle to some, to some the dove. Quick as the lightning in her
temper--as fervid, too; a heart to hate intensely, and yet to melt in
love and worship its object; but would slay it, if she felt it had
deceived her. Always searching into the history of the past, and always
careless of the future."
"You have drawn something of the character of a Spanish woman. Their
love and their hate is equally fierce; and both easily excited, they
are devoted in all their passions. I have thought that this grew from
the secluded life they live. Ardency is natural to the race, and this
restrained makes their lives one long romance. Their world is all of
imagination. The contacts of real life they never meet outside of their
prison-homes, and the influence of experience is never known. They are
seen through bars, are sought through bars, they love through bars--and
the struggle is, to escape from these restraints; and the moral of the
act or means for its accomplishment, or the object to be attained,
never enters the mind. Such natures properly reared to know the world,
to see it, hear it, and suffer it, tunes all the attributes of the mind
and heart to make sweet music. Nothing mellows the heart like sorrow;
nothing so softens the obduracy of our natures as experience. None,
sir, man or woman, are fitted for the world without the experiences its
contact brings. These experiences are teachings, and the bitter ones
the best. To be happy, we must have been miserable; it is the
idiosyncracy of the mind, to judge by comparison; and the eternal
absence of grief leaves the mind unappreciative of the incidents and
excitements which bring to him or her who have suffered, such exquisite
enjoyment. The rue of life is scarcely misery to those who have never
tasted its ambrosia."
"You are young, sir, thus to philosophize, and must have seen and
experienced more than your years would indicate."
"Some, sir, in an incident see all of its characters that the world in
a lifetime may present. They suffer, and they enjoy with an acuteness
unknown to most natures; and in youth gain the experiences and
knowledge they impart, while most of the world forget the pain and the
pleasure of an incident with its evanescence. With such, experience
teaches nothing. These progress in the world blindly and are always
stumbling and falling."
"The ladies have retired--shall we imitate their example, sir? This
will light you to your chamber; good night."
Alone, and kindly shielded with the darkness, the adventurer lay
thoughtful and sleepless. Here are two strange beings. There is in the
one angelic beauty animated with a soul of giant proportions, large in
love, large in hate, and grandly large in its aspirations; and yet it
is chained to a rock with fetters that chafe at every motion. The other
cold, emotionless, with a reserved severity of manner, which is the
offspring of a heart as malignant and sinister as Satan himself may
boast of. They hate each other, but how different that hatred! The one
is an emotion fierce and fiery but without malice; the other malicious
and revengeful. One is the hatred of the recipient of an injury who can
forgive; the other the hatred of one who has inflicted an injury with
calculation. Such never forgive. And this I am sure is the relation of
this brother and sister. Deprived when yet young of the fostering care
of a mother, scarcely remembering her father, she has been the ward of
this cold, hard being, whose pleasure it has been to thwart every wish
of this lovely being: to hate her because she is lovely, and to
aggravate into fury her resentments, and to sour every generous impulse
of her extraordinary nature. What a curse to have so sensitive a being
subjected to the training of so cold and malignant a one!
There is no natural affection. The heart is born a waste: its loves,
its hates are of education and association; and the responsibility for
the future of a child rests altogether with those intrusted with its
rearing and training. The susceptibilities only are born with the
heart, and these may be cultivated to good or evil, as imperceptibly as
the light permeates the atmosphere. These capacities or
susceptibilities are acute or obtuse as the cranium's form will
indicate, and require a system suited to each. Attention soon teaches
this: the one grows and expands beautifully with the slightest
attention; the other is a fat soil, and will run to weeds, without
constant, close, and deep cultivation, and its production of good fruit
is in exact proportion with its fertility and care. It gives the most
trouble but it yields the greatest product. And here in that warm,
impulsive heart is the fat soil. O! for the hand to weed away all that
is noxious now rooting there. That look, that whispered bitterness was
the fruit of wicked wrong--I know it; the very nature prompting there
would give the sweetest return to justice, kindness, and love.