rise but little way, through the blackened air, before he would
come to a region of calm and peace, where the stars shine
unobstructed, and where there is no storm. And a little above
our cloud, a little higher than our darkness, a little beyond
our storm, is God’s upper region of tranquil peace and calm.
And when we have had the discipline of winter here, it will be
possible for us to have eternal summer there.
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
[Illustration]
EXTRACTS FROM
THE GRANDMOTHER’S APOLOGY.
BY ALFRED TENNYSON.
And Willy, my eldest born, is gone you say, little Ann?
Ruddy and white and strong on his legs, he looks like a man.
“Here’s a leg for a babe of a week!” says doctor; and he would be bound
There was not his like that year in twenty parishes round.
Strong of his hands, and strong on his legs, but still of his tongue!
I ought to have gone before him; I wonder he went so young.
I cannot cry for him, Annie; I have not long to stay;
Perhaps I shall see him the sooner, for he lived far away.
Why do you look at me, Annie? you think I am hard and cold;
But all my children have gone before me, I am so old:
I cannot weep for Willy, nor can I weep for the rest;
Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.
The first child that ever I bore was dead before he was born:
Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, flower and thorn.
I had not wept, little Annie, not since I had been a wife;
But I wept like a child, that day; for the babe had fought for his life.
His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or pain;
I looked at the still little body,--his trouble had all been in vain.
For Willy I cannot weep; I shall see him another morn;
But I wept like a child for the child that was dead before he was born.
But he cheered me, my good man, for he seldom said me nay:
Kind, like a man, was he; like a man, too, would have his way;
Never jealous,--not he: we had many a happy year:
And he died, and I could not weep,--my own time seemed so near.
But I wished it had been God’s will that I, too, then could have died:
I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his side;
And that was ten years back, or more, if I don’t forget:
But as for the children, Annie, they are all about me yet.
Pattering over the boards, my Annie, who left me at two;
Patter she goes, my own little Annie,--an Annie like you.
Pattering over the boards, she comes and goes at her will,
While Harry is in the five-acre and Charlie ploughing the hill.
And Harry and Charlie, I hear them, too,--they sing to their team;
Often they come to the door in a pleasant kind of dream.
They come and sit by my chair, they hover about my bed:
I am not always certain if they be alive or dead.
And yet I know for a truth, there’s none of them left alive;
For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty-five;
And Willy, my eldest born, at nigh threescore and ten;
I knew them all as babies, and now they are elderly men.
For mine is a time of peace; it is not often I grieve;
I am oftener sitting at home in my father’s farm at eve:
And the neighbors come and laugh and gossip, and so do I;
I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by.
To be sure the preacher says our sins should make us sad;
But mine is a time of peace, and there is grace to be had;
And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall cease;
And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of peace.
And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain;
And happy has been my life, but I would not live it again.
I seem to be tired a little, that’s all, and long for rest;
Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.
So Willy has gone,--my beauty, my eldest born, my flower;
But how can I weep for Willy? he has but gone for an hour,--
Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next;
I too shall go in a minute. What time have I to be vext?
[Illustration]
THE ANCIENT MAN.
TRANSLATED BY L. O. FROM THE GERMAN OF JEAN PAUL RICHTER’S
MEMOIR OF FIBEL, AUTHOR OF THE BIENENRODA SPELLING-BOOK.
“He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet. He is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten; one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need. He is by Nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy what the old man hardly feels.”
WORDSWORTH.
The stream of Fibel’s history having vanished under ground, like a
second river Rhone, I was obliged to explore where story or stream
again burst forth, and for this purpose I questioned every one. I
was told that no one could better inform me than an exceedingly
aged man, more than a hundred and twenty-five years old, who lived
a few miles from the village of Bienenroda, and who, having been
young at the same time with Fibel, must know all about him. The
prospect of shaking hands with the very oldest man living on the
face of the earth enraptured me. I said to myself that a most
novel and peculiar sensation must be excited by having a whole
past century before you, bodily present, compact and alive, in the
century now passing; by holding, hand to hand, a man of the age
of the antediluvians, over whose head so many entire generations
of young mornings and old evenings have fled, and before whom one
stands, in fact, as neither young nor old; to listen to a human
spirit, outlandish, behind the time, almost mysteriously awful;
sole survivor of the thousand gray, cold sleepers, coevals of his
own remote, hoary age; standing as sentinel before the ancient
dead, looking coldly and strangely on life’s silly novelties;
finding in the present no cooling for his inborn spirit-thirst,
no more enchanting yesterdays or to-morrows, but only the
day-before-yesterday of youth, and the day-after-to-morrow of
death. It may consequently be imagined that so very old a man would
speak only of his _farthest_ past, of his early day-dawn, which,
of course, in the long evening of his protracted day, must now be
blending with his midnight. On the other hand, that one like myself
would not feel particularly younger before such a millionnaire of
hours, as the Bienenroda Patriarch must be; and that his presence
must make one feel more conscious of death than of immortality.
A very aged man is a more powerful memento than a grave; for
the older a grave is, the farther we look back to the succession
of young persons who have mouldered in it; sometimes a maiden is
concealed in an ancient grave; but an ancient dwindled body hides
only an imprisoned spirit.
An opportunity for visiting the Patriarch was presented by a return
coach-and-six, belonging to a count, on which I was admitted to
a seat with the coachman. Just before arriving at Bienenroda, he
pointed with his whip toward an orchard, tuneful with song, and
said, “There sits the old man with his little animals around him.”
I sprang from the noble equipage and went toward him. I ventured to
expect that the Count’s six horses would give me, before the old
man, the appearance of a person of rank, apart from the simplicity
of my dress, whereby princes and heroes are wont to distinguish
themselves from their tinselled lackeys. I was, therefore, a little
surprised that the old man kept on playing with his pet hare, not
even checking the barking of his poodle, as if counts were his
daily bread, until, at last, he lifted his oil-cloth hat from his
head. A buttoned overcoat, which gave room to see his vest, a long
pair of knit over-alls, which were, in fact, enormous stockings,
and a neckerchief, which hung down to his bosom, made his dress
look modern enough. His time-worn frame was far more peculiar. The
inner part of the eye, which is black in childhood, was quite
white; his tallness, more than his years, seemed to bow him over
into an arch; the out-turned point of his chin gave to his speech
the appearance of mumbling; yet the expression of his countenance
was lively, his eyes bright, his jaws full of white teeth, and his
head covered with light hair.
I began by saying: “I came here solely on your account to see a man
for whom there can assuredly be little new under the sun, though
he himself is something very new under it. You are now strictly
in your five and twenties; a man in your best years; since after
a century a _new_ reckoning commences. For myself, I confess that
after once clambering over the century terminus, or church-wall of
a hundred years, I should neither know how old I was, nor whether
I was myself. I should begin fresh and free, just as the world’s
history has often done, counting again from the year one, in the
middle of a thousand years. Yet why can not a man live to be as
old as is many a giant tree of India still standing? It is well to
question very old people concerning the methods by which they have
prolonged their lives. How do you account for it, dear old sir?”
I was beginning to be vexed at the good man’s silence, when he
softly replied: “Some suppose it is because I have always been
cheerful; because I have adopted the maxim, ‘Never sad, ever glad’;
but I ascribe it wholly to our dear Lord God; since the animals,
which here surround us, though never sad, but happy for the most
part, by no means so frequently exceed the usual boundary of their
life, as does man. He exhibits an image of the eternal God, even in
the length of his duration.”
Such words concerning God, uttered by a tongue one hundred and
twenty-five years old, had great weight and consolation; and I at
once felt their beautiful attraction. On mentioning animals, the
old man turned again to his own; and, as though indifferent to him
who had come in a coach-and-six, he began again to play with his
menagerie, the hare, the spaniel, the silky poodle, the starling,
and a couple of turtle-doves on his bosom; a pleasant bee-colony
in the orchard also gave heed to him; with one whistle he sent
the bees away, and with another summoned them into the ring of
creatures, which surrounded him like a court-circle.
At last, he said: “No one need be surprised that a very old man,
who has forgotten everything, and whom no one but the dear God
knows or cares for, should give himself wholly to the dear animals.
To whom can such an old man be of much use? I wander about in the
villages, as in cities, wholly strange. If I see children, they
come before me like my own remote childhood. If I meet old men,
they seem like my past hoary years. I do not quite know where I now
belong. I hang between heaven and earth. Yet God ever looks upon
me bright and lovingly, with his two eyes, the sun and the moon.
Moreover, animals lead into no sin, but rather to devotion. When my
turtle-doves brood over their young and feed them, it seems to me
just as if I saw God himself doing a great deal; for they derive
their love and instinct toward their young, as a gift from him.”
The old man became silent, and looked pensively before him, as was
his wont. A ringing of christening bells sounded from Bienenroda
among the trees in the garden. He wept a little. I know not how
I could have been so simple, after the beautiful words he had
uttered, as to have mistaken his tears for a sign of weakness in
his eyes. “I do not hear well, on account of my great age,” said
he; “and it seems to me as if the baptismal bell from the distant
sanctuary sounded up here very faintly. The old years of my
childhood, more than a hundred years ago, ascend from the ancient
depths of time, and gaze on me in wonder, while I and they know
not whether we ought to weep or laugh.” Then, addressing his silky
poodle, he called out, “Ho! ho! come here old fellow!”
The allusion to his childhood brought me to the purpose of my
visit. “Excellent sir,” said I, “I am preparing the biography
of the deceased Master Gotthelf Fibel, author of the famous
Spelling-Book; and all I now need to complete it is the account of
his death.” The old man smiled, and made a low bow. I continued,
“No one is more likely to know the particulars of his decease than
yourself; and you are the only person who can enrich me with the
rare traits of his childhood; because every incident inscribed on a
child’s brain grows deeper with years, like names cut into a gourd,
while later inscriptions disappear. Tell me, I pray you, all that
you know concerning the departed man; for I am to publish his Life
at the Michaelmas Fair.”
He murmured, “Excellent genius; scholar; man of letters; author
most famous; these and other fine titles I learned by heart and
applied to myself, while I was that vain, blinded Fibel, who wrote
and published the ordinary Spelling-Book in question.”
So then, this old man was the blessed Fibel himself! A hundred and
twenty-five notes of admiration, ay, eighteen hundred and eleven
notes in a row, would but feebly express my astonishment.
[Here follows a long conversation concerning Fibel, after which the
narrative continues as follows:--]
The old man went into his little garden-house, and I followed
him. He whistled, and instantly his black squirrel came down from
a tree, whither it had gone more for pleasure than for food.
Nightingales, thrushes, starlings, and other birds, flew back into
the open window from the tops of the trees. A bulfinch, whose color
had been changed by age from red to black, strutted about the
room, uttering droll sounds, which it could not make distinct. The
hare pattered about in the twilight, sometimes on his hind feet,
sometimes on all fours. Every dog in the house bounded forward
in glad, loving, human glee. But the most joyful of all was the
poodle; for he knew he was to have a box with compartments fastened
to his neck, containing a list of the articles wanted for supper,
which it was his business to bring from the inn in Bienenroda. He
was Fibel’s victualler, or provision-wagon. Children, who ran back
and forth, were the only other ones who ministered to his wants.
In allusion to his pets, he said: “We ought to assist the
circumscribed faculties of animals, by educating them, as far as
we can, since we stand toward them, in a certain degree, as their
Lord God; and we ought to train them to good morals, too; for very
possibly they may continue to live after death. God and the animals
are always good; but not so with man.”
Aged men impart spiritual things, as they give material things,
with a shaking hand, which drops half. In the effort to gather up
his recollections, he permitted me to quicken his memory with my
own; and thus I obtained a connected account of some particulars in
his experience. He said he might have been about a hundred years
old, when he cut a new set of teeth, the pain of which disturbed
him with wild dreams. One night he seemed to be holding in his
hands a large sieve, and it was his task to pull the meshes apart,
one by one. The close net-work, and the fastening to the wooden
rim, gave him indescribable trouble. But as his dream went on,
he seemed to hold in his hand the great bright sun, which flamed
up into his face. He woke with a new-born feeling, and slumbered
again, as if on waving tulips. He dreamed again that he was a
hundred years old, and that he died as an innocent yearling child,
without any of the sin or woe of earth; that he found his parents
on high, who brought before him a long procession of his children,
who had remained invisible to him while he was in this world,
because they were transparent, like the angels. He rose from his
bed with new teeth and new ideas. The old Fibel was consumed, and a
true Phœnix stood in his place, sunning its colored wings. He had
risen glorified out of no other grave than his own body. The world
retreated; heaven came down.
When he had related these things, he at once bade me good night.
Without waiting for the return of his ministering poodle, and with
hands folded for prayer, he showed me the road. I withdrew, but I
rambled a long time round the orchard, which had sprung entirely
from seed of his own planting. Indeed he seldom ate a cherry
without smuggling the stone and burying it in the ground for a
resurrection. This habit often annoyed the neighboring peasants,
who did not want high things growing on their boundaries. “But,”
said he, “I cannot destroy a fruit-stone. If the peasants pull up
the tree it produces, it will still have lived a little while, and
die as a child dies.”
While loitering in the orchard, I heard an evening hymn played and
sung. I returned near Fibel’s window, and saw him slowly turning a
hand-organ, and accompanying the tune by softly singing an evening
hymn. This organ, aided by his fragment of a voice, sufficed, in
its monotonous uniformity, for his domestic devotion. I went away
repeating the song.
Beautiful was the orchard when I returned the next morning. And the
hoar-frost of age seemed thawed and fluid, and to glisten only as
morning dew on Fibel’s after-blossom. The affection of his animals
toward him rendered the morning still more beautiful, in an orchard
every tree of which had for its mother the stone of some fruit that
he had enjoyed. His animals were an inheritance from his parents;
though, of course they were the great, great, great grandchildren
of those which had belonged to them. The trees were full of
brooding birds, and by a slight whistle he could lure down to his
shoulders this tame posterity of his father’s singing-school.
It was refreshing to the heart to see how quickly the tender
flutterers surrounded him.
With the infantine satisfaction of a gray-headed child, he was
accustomed to hang up on sticks, or in the trees, wherever the
rays of the sun could best shine upon them, little balls of
colored glass; and he took indescribable delight in this accordion
of silver, gold, and jewel hues. These parti-colored sun-balls,
varying the green with many flaming tints, were like crystal
tulip-beds. Some of the red ones seemed like ripe apples among the
branches. But what charmed the old man most were reflections of
the landscape from these little world-spheres. They resembled the
moving prospects shadowed forth in a diminishing mirror. “Ah,” said
he, “when I contemplate the colors produced by the sunshine, which
God gives to this dark world, it seems to me as if I had departed,
and were already with God. And yet, since He is _in_ us, we are
always with God.”
I asked him how it happened that, at his age, he spoke German
almost purer than that used even by our best writers. Counting his
birth from the end of his century [the new birth described in his
dream], he replied: “I was somewhere about two years old, when I
happened to hear a holy, spiritual minister, who spoke German with
such an angel tongue, that he would not have needed a better in
heaven. I heard him every Sabbath during several years.” He could
not tell me the preacher’s name, but he vividly described his
manner in the pulpit. He told how he spoke with no superfluity of
words, airs, or gestures; how he uttered, in mild tones, things
the most beautiful and forcible; how, like the Apostle John, with
his resting-place close to heaven, this man spoke to the world,
laying his hands calmly on the pulpit-desk, as an arm-case; how
his every tone was a heart, and his every look a blessing; how the
energy of this disciple of Christ was embedded in love, as the firm
diamond is encased in ductile gold; how the pulpit was to him a
Mount Tabor, whereon he transfigured both himself and his hearers;
and how, of all clergymen, he best performed that which is the most
difficult,--the _praying_ worthily.
My feelings grew constantly warmer toward this time-worn man, while
I did not require a full return of affection from him any more than
I should from a little child. But I remembered that I ought not
to disturb the evening of his days with things of the world, and
that I ought to depart. I would have him preserve undisturbed that
sublime position of old age, where man lives, as it were, at the
pole; where no star rises or sets; where the whole firmament is
motionless and clear, while the Pole-Star of another world shines
fixedly overhead. I therefore said to him, that I would return in
the evening, and take my leave. To my surprise, he replied, that
perhaps he should himself take leave of the whole world at evening,
and that he wished not to be disturbed when dying. He said that he
should that evening read to the end of the Revelation of St. John,
and perhaps it might be the end with _him_ also. I ought to have
mentioned previously that he read continually, and read nothing but
the Bible, regularly through from the beginning to the end; and
he had a fixed impression that he should depart on concluding the
twentieth and twenty-first verses of the twenty-second chapter of
the Revelation of John: “He which testifieth of these things saith,
Surely I come quickly: Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” In consequence of
this belief, he was in the habit of reading the last books of the
Bible faster.
Little as I believed in so sudden a withering of his protracted
after-blossom, I obeyed his latest-formed wish. Whenever a right
wish is expressed by any man, we should do well to remember that
it may be his _last_. I took my leave, requesting him to intrust
me with his testamentary commissions for the village. He said they
had been taken charge of long ago, and the children knew them. He
cut a twig from a Christmas-tree, coeval with his childhood, and
presented me with it as a keepsake.
In the beautiful summer evening, I could not refrain from
stealthily approaching the house, through the orchard, to ascertain
whether the good old man had ended his Bible and his life together.
On the way, I found the torn envelope of a letter sealed with a
black seal, and over me the white storks were speeding their way
to a warmer country. I was not much encouraged when I heard all
the birds singing in his orchard; for their ancestors had done the
same when his father died. A towering cloud, full of the latest
twilight, spread itself before my short-sighted vision, like a
far-off, blooming, foreign landscape; and I could not comprehend
how it was that I had never before noticed this strange-looking,
reddish land; so much the more easily did it occur to me that this
might be his Orient, whither God was leading the weary one. I had
become so confused, as actually to mistake red bean-blossoms for
a bit of fallen sunset. Presently, I heard a man singing to the
accompaniment of an organ. It was the aged man singing his evening
hymn:
“Lord of my life, another day
Once more hath sped away.”
The birds in the room, and those on the distant branches also,
chimed in with his song. The bees, too, joined in with their
humming, as in the warm summer evening they dived into the cups of
the linden-blossoms. My joy kindled into a flame. He was alive!
But I would not disturb his holy evening. I would let him remain
with Him who had surrounded him with gifts and with years, and not
call upon him to think of any man here below. I listened to the
last verse of his hymn, that I might be still more certain of the
actual continuance of his life, and then tardily I slipped away. To
my joy, I still found, in the eternal youth of Nature, beautiful
references to his lengthened age; from the everlasting rippling of
the brook in the meadow, to a late swarm of bees, which had settled
themselves on a linden-tree, probably in the forenoon, before two
o’clock, as if, by taking their lodging with him, he was to be
their bee-father, and continue to live. Every star twinkled to me a
hope.