‘Our affections are
Heaven’s influences, that by the good they do,
Betray their origin.
‘So I have seen
A frail flower that the storm has trampled on--
Lovely in ruins; for though broken quite
With its affliction, ’twas a flow’ret still,
And ask’d from me affection.’
The allotments of providence are as various as are our several
necessities. To one is granted wealth, to another talents, to a third
family; every man, however humble, finds himself the possessor of some
separate good the which has not been equally vouchsafed to all, and in
that particular good whatsoever it be is treasured his individual sum
of human happiness. It is a beautiful thing that this is so, for hence
a greater degree of comfort among men, as each is pleased with his own;
and to a thinking man it is fraught with deep and powerful truths, that
tell greatly both upon the understanding and the heart. In it is seen
the kind plan of an ever present, ever watchful Deity, studious for our
comforts; and the mind is at once fired with a nobler energy, and the
heart is quickened with newer faith to works of obedience, and taught
to look with renewed confidence and an unclouded eye through sorrows
here, and rest on that star of hope beyond the grave.
Among the blessings of providence, there is none which exceeds the
rich love of a sister. He who has been blessed with such, whether he
knows it or not, has ever had near him a fountain of sweet thoughts
and gentle sympathies, that could have made the darkest day cheerful.
Especially has he been blessed, if circumstances have contrived to
break him from all other ties of consanguinity, and in joys and
sorrows he has witnessed the development of those beautiful principles
which enter so largely into the composition of her character, for the
development of those principles must have been attended by such love
and considerateness on her part, as only served to make them more
beautiful, and bring them nearer the attributes of angels.
A sister’s love is disinterested, and therefore invaluable. No one has
ever doubted but that the female heart generally is richer in feelings
than a man’s; that among our sweetest consolations when earthly ties
are sundered, and ‘thick coming fancies’ crowd in upon the brain till
it is black with sadness, are placed those alleviations which her
tenderness and her solicitude can offer. But yet the love of another
than a sister, from the very grounds of such preference and its means
of perpetuity, cannot be other than a selfish and mixed passion. It
is far more the result of circumstances; these have power to modify
it, and they are eternally changing. With a sister there is nothing of
this; with her it is the involuntary promptings of nature, and to call
such a selfish or mixed passion, is to call truth falsehood. There is
no chilling calculation, no selfish wish for a reciprocate sympathy,
and a latent purpose within to be _ruled_ by this in the degree of her
own affection. She never thinks to ask if there is a chance of the
better feelings of her heart’s running to waste; nor can she lean to
the side of an overweening prudence, and coolly measure out her love in
just proportion to the worth of him to whom she gives it. No! she can
do none of these;--on the contrary, the most eminent instances of her
warmest devotion are found, where the recipients of it were the least
worthy. Cases innumerous might be cited, in which, against difficulties
to daunt other than her, her love has seemed to grow purer and more
enduring, even as a green and luxuriant vine seems to take newer
beauty, as it clambers about a scathed oak or melancholy ruin.
A sister’s love is pure, and therefore invaluable. No truth is
more obvious than this, that those who have been favored with the
sweet sympathies and affections of a sister, and educated in that
unrestrained intercourse so favorable to the development of domestic
virtue, possess a softness of character and purity of feeling, to which
other men are strangers. I know it has been objected to this, that
such a character is effeminate, and altogether unfitted for the sphere
to which men are called. Now were the charge of effeminacy admitted,
we have yet to learn that true fortitude is not equally the property
of gentle as well as rugged natures, and that the manifestation of it
in one person more than another, is not traceable altogether to other
and opposite causes. But we do not admit it; the characteristic above
referred to is not effeminate; it is too sacred not to be a treasure,
and it is too beautiful to be an error. It is a spirit like His who
stood upon the waves, passing over and stilling the angry waters of
human passion; a breath of spring sent upon the world calling the moss
and ivy to their high dwellings, and scattering the flowers upon the
slopes and in the vallies; a beam of sunshine thrown down from a summer
sky, casting into shade the roughness of the landscape, and softening
all into beauty. A character matured under the circumstances referred
to, need lose nothing of its firmness by the process. On the contrary,
the native energies of the mind may expand with greater freedom (for
many of those things which usually retard it are removed) and it can
ruffle its wings with a wider sweep, and stoop for the quarry with a
nobler vision. As for the charge, that our capacities for misery are
increased in an increased ratio by that refinement of feeling which
is induced by feminine intercourse, we hardly think it worth the
refutation. The fact that that French fool, Rousseau, could start a
question which involves this, has not succeeded in raising it above
contempt; and we shall quit the subject therefore with the simple
statement of our own belief, viz.--that Heaven never endowed man with
any superfluous faculties, that at every successive stage of moral
and mental culture there is more than a proportionate increase of
positive happiness, and that it is only when every power of the mind is
in requisition and each taxed to its extreme capacity, that the mind
approaches its perfection.
A sister’s love is eternal, and therefore invaluable. Much ink has
been wasted on the subject, of the power of female affection--for
which subject we have the current phrases of ‘dying for love,’ ‘broken
hearts,’ ‘Cupid’s achievements,’ and other such classical appellatives.
Poets have worn the matter thread-bare, and novelists have picked up
the shreds to patch garments for their heroes. One gentleman less
scrupulous than another, has dared raise a doubt of the matter,
somewhat withholding from the ladies the exclusive privilege of dying
thus heroically; another conceiving this a challenge to his gallantry,
has most manfully seized the crab-stick and fallen to work pell-mell on
the other side. Now amid such a clash of fire arms as this we suppose
it behoves us to walk circumspectly, and somewhat question whether
the fair bevy of our acquaintance would not cry us heretic, did _we_
call in question this same right, viz., of dying for this or that
thing just as suits them without asking leave of judge or jury. But
the truth of it is we have a belief on the matter, and sorry are we to
say that for lack of something better we feel called upon to divulge
it, deprecating however from our souls every intention of making any
unpleasant expositions, and professing a love for the truth and nothing
but the truth. To begin then;--we boldly make the remark, that many a
woman has gone to her grave from ill-requited affection. The man who
denies this, has either never mingled in society, or has kept his eyes
shut while there, or is a fool. But--and here is the rub--whether the
passion which resulted in the breaking of this or that heart was an
unmixed one, a thing which of itself destroyed the heart, this I say
‘puzzles the will,’ and is a sad problem for solution. We make the
following remarks: any one who looks closely at society, and looks
at the little springs which operate on this side and on that to keep
the whole machinery in operation, will be wonderfully struck with the
great discrepancy betwixt real truths and those admitted as such by
the world. He will see that to trace an act to its cause, to find that
principle and trace it into generalities, is to frighten him at the
artificiality of society and the extreme ignorance of the human race.
Effects which he had been accustomed to assign to certain causes as
things of course, he finds are traceable altogether to other causes.
The strangest phenomena does he meet with; causes producing effects as
opposite to their apparent tendencies as possible; causes misnamed
effects; effects taken for causes; in short, terms misapplied and
jumbled together with most admirable confusion. Now to apply these
remarks, we beg leave to add--that men _may_ have made a mistake in
reference to the subject in question. For ourselves we have known a
case of misplaced affection--a lovely girl, fair as the first star that
peeps through the net-work of twilight, and gentle as the bonniest May
flower of the season. And yet she died; and when the first burst of a
generous indignation had passed off and space was given for reflection,
for the life of us we could not make other conclusion, than that the
_pity_ of the world and her extreme susceptibility to ridicule were
enough of themselves to destroy her. The truth of it is, it is one
of the subtlest passions of our nature, yet not the most powerful;
and though it gain the same end, first subjecting the other powers to
itself and _thus_ breaking down the spirit, it does this rather by its
extreme cunning than by any energies of its own. But a sister’s deep
faith, what alloy find we here! what sentiment that the pure heart
might not offer at the throne of God! This is that star which brightens
and brightens as it comes up from the horizon and pours its undimmed
beauty upon the world! It is one of those flowers that sometimes spring
up by the path-way of life to tell us how bright was the primitive
world, and give us a glimpse of the brightness and profusion of the
one to come! And the eye brightens, the heart expands, and the soul
bounds exultant on its heavenward mission as we gaze upon it, till the
veil seems rent in twain, and we think and see and _feel_ our certain
immortality!
A circumstance fell under my observation not many years since in
a part of the state of New York, with which I shall close these
remarks--indeed, it forms not an inappropriate conclusion. It made a
great impression on me at the time, and the reader perhaps will thank
me for rescuing from oblivion one of those touching incidents in real
life which sometimes occur, and cast into shadow the wildest dreams of
fiction.
Any one who has visited the little town of P---- in Ulster County,
remembers well enough that there’s no way of entering it from the
west, save through a long defile cut as it would seem by art through
the heart of a mountain, and he also remembers what a scene of beauty
is presented as he emerges from the pass and sends his gaze before
him. A common of about half a mile square, surrounded by neat and in
some instances very elegant dwellings, in the center of which with its
neat bow windows and little spire, is the only church of the village.
The village has an air of life and business; a stream tumbles off
from the hills on the north supplying a large factory on the lower
grounds, and from the more elevated parts may the eye catch the bends
of the lordly Hudson in the distance, and in clear still mornings may
the ‘yo-heave-yo’ of sailors or the clatter of steam boats be faintly
heard, as they pass and repass on the river.
It was into this little village that I jogged with a quiet pace one
warm afternoon, and began to look around for an inn. It was the heat of
summer, and for no less than forty good English miles had myself and
horse stumped it since morning, and over as dusty a road withall as one
would like to travel on; and my horse seeming to feel his necessities
as well as myself began to move a little faster, and by a sort of
instinct, point his ears straight towards a large sign board swinging
directly over the road, on which was a rampant lion large as life his
fiery tongue lolling part way from his mouth, and a sort of dare-devil
threat in his eye that he was about to leap down on the passengers.
This however was yet a good half a mile off; and as I passed along, the
village church-yard lay upon the left. I had come nearly to the end
of this, when a light form sprang over the wall, and running up to me
seized my horse by the bridle, while it said--
“O, sir, do come--they’ve left him all alone there, and I’ve called
to him and sung to him, and he wont hear me--do come, sir, won’t
you?”--and it pulled gently by the bit as it spake, and my horse
stopped.
I was thunder-struck. The creature before me was a faded girl, and as I
should think in the last stages of the consumption. She must have been
exceedingly beautiful once, for her form was still symmetry itself,
and her features were as regular as if shaped with a chisel. Her face
however was very pale. The blue veins were traceable on a forehead of
silver by the ridges they made, though almost as white as the skin
about them. Her eye-brows were regular as if struck out with a compass,
and beneath them her eyes large, dark, and full, flashed as bright and
as wild as stars in a wintry night. Her lip was as thin as paper. Her
dress lay loose and low, and surely no lovelier neck and bosom (though
they were shrunken) ever came into a poet’s vision, than that which
rose and sank there painfully rapid as she stood waiting my answer.
The hand which still lay on my bridle-bit was so thin and attenuated,
that actually the sun shone through it almost as easily as if it were
a piece of glass; and her small feet and ankles which were without
covering, gave equal evidence of sorrow and abandonment. The only
thing about her which still retained all its former beauty, was her
hair, long, dark, and silky--that ornament of woman which death cannot
destroy--which she still possessed, and in thick masses of luxuriant
brown it hung about her with all the grace of a Madonna.
I know not but nature has given me an undue quantum of sensibility, but
I was melted to tears by this poor creature before me. I have described
her features--these the reader will see; but the whole expression, the
thing which cannot be conveyed to paper, that must be imagined. Its
wo, its extreme wo; the circumstances too, so near a populous village,
and yet alone; the church yard at hand, and the few incoherent words
dropped from her lips; these at first came over me with a sort of
sickening fear, and I trembled lest the figure before me should, like
the witches that met Macbeth on the heath, ‘change into the air.’
Just at that moment a dull dolt of a farmer came along the common,
cracking his whip and bellowing most lustily. Seeing me stopped in
the road, the girl by my bridle gently pulling it and eyeing me with
a beseeching look, he cried out, “Hillo, you Luce! what the d--l are
you at there with that gentleman’s bridle? out of the way ye’--using
a term I shall not repeat--‘and let me get by, wont ye?” Seeing my
cheek burning with an indignation that tempted me to knock the rascal
down, he said as he drove by and in a much softer tone, “It’s only Luce
Selden, the mad gal--don’t mind her, sir.”
I turned towards her thus designated--poor creature! she had sunk down
at my horse’s feet like a young flower which the wind has passed over
too roughly, her long hair disheveled in rich masses on the turf,
and her hand grasping a few dead flowers she had brought with her.
Springing to the ground I lifted her delicate form in my arms, and
bearing her to a runnel of water which wimpled near, I cast some of it
upon her face and bosom. Slowly opening her eyes she seemed at once to
feel my kindness, and wreathing her emaciated arms about my neck, her
pent heart poured itself forth into my bosom.
O never tell me of the equal distribution of happiness in this world!
Let the mad dreamer preach it if he list to those equally mad, and
for his own sad purposes; but let not man, immortal man, man gifted
with reason and obedient to the voice in every enlightened one’s soul,
herald such a monstrous absurdity! What had this young and faded
creature gained--what joy--what blessing--what blissful moments had
been hers--what bright dream had she dwelt in--what fond hallucination
had enrapt her young being in her few brief days of infancy and
childhood, that now just bursting into the pride and prime of woman,
such a cloud should come over her fair sky, and with its folds, its
thick folds, shut from her gaze every star of hope forever! Dwelt
she in a fairy-land--where bright wings glanced hither and thither,
touching and retouching its soft airs--its mellow sunsets--its streams
and golden fountains with a newer beauty! and had her life like an
unshadowed current in Eastern fable, moved on in one unbroken flood
of happiness! Had fancy been hers--and imagination--and the dangerous
gift of poesy--and the faculty to shape out her own existence unmoved
by the realities of life--and her being been lifted up in high revel
and communion with the great and good of former days, and the far
remote treasures of purer existences! Had such blessings been hers! and
in return for them must the wick of the lamp thus early burn to its
socket--must society cast this flower from its bosom--must reason lose
her dwelling place--and her young life just opening upon her with its
flowers, and feelings, and passionate thoughts, and innocent gushes
of tenderness, turn out a blank, a dead letter, and at one fell blow
be cut off--and she like a useless weed or wreck tossed up by Ocean,
be thrown out from her proper sphere--scorned--crushed--slandered--an
insulted yet still beautiful thing--a mark for the rabble’s jeers,
the clown’s coarse brutality, and the damning pity of a mock-charity
close-fisted world! _Let her unambitious story give answer._
Luce Selden was a twin child. Her mother died in giving her birth,
leaving her and a beautiful boy to their remaining yet now broken
hearted father, and a victim to those sad crosses which motherless
children must meet with from the very nature of the case--though that
father was all in all to them, and though it was his pride to watch
over and nourish these beautiful blossoms of a love, as pure as it
was imperishable. He had married in New York, and came to P---- while
a young man and just starting in life, and by industry and very fine
talents had by the time he reached the meridian of life, amassed a
splendid fortune. His talents and wealth forced the meed of praise from
the rich, and his very uniform disinterested and noble charities won
the blessings of the poor, and fortune seemed to have nothing to do but
shower down her favors on his head.
But prosperity cannot always last. No! let the prosperous man ever
tremble at any long succession of blessings; for it is then that
sorrows are nearest, and those sorrows the worst and heaviest. If it
is not so in reality--if the reverses which we witness here and there
coming upon the rich and the fortunate--if they are not worse than
those which overtake other men, they are so at least to all intents
and purposes, for the hackneyed adage is a true one despise it who
may, ‘prosperity unfits us for adversity.’ The noble scorn with which
this or that man learns to look upon a run of ill luck, or the heroism
and devotedness of woman, may take a charm when hallowed by the pen of
Irving, but they are after all but as the creations of the poet, mere
creations having no parallel in real life. That there is philosophy
enough in the human soul even this side of stoicism, to enable a man to
look unmoved on the changes about him, we do not doubt; but that the
philosopher has yet risen who has discovered the treasure, of this we
do as unhesitatingly declare a disbelief.
If it is so, Mr. Charles Selden had never learned it, and it was at the
demise of his wife that he began to date the commencement of his ill
fortunes, which like rising waves seemed heavier and heavier as the
shattered bark was less and less able to endure their fury. This was
the first blow, the death of his wife--and he bent beneath it. Yet his
character seemed to have that elasticity, that springiness in it which
recovers itself again; and he once more mingled with men, pursued his
profession, and smiled with the same cheerfulness. Yet there were times
when his language seemed too light, too rapid, too artificial, so to
speak, for a perfectly happy man; and his friends sometimes whispered
to their own hearts that all was not as it should be, that there was
something wrong within, that that fine and delicate organization, his
mind, did not act as formerly; and they sometimes marked a kind of
perverse vehemence, which did not tally well with that uniform sound
sense and remarkable discrimination which had characterized the efforts
of his earlier years. Ah! they guessed well--there _was_ something
wrong. There was a fountain in his heart which had been chilled, and
which kept bubbling up its cool waters to remind him continually of his
wretchedness; and there were moments, when withdrawn from business and
the world shut out, he gave himself up to that deadly yet sweet sorrow
which sooner or later saps the springs of existence.
Grief should never be alone. It is one of the most selfish of our
passions. The man of sorrows should be forced into the world--into
the bustle, and roar, and change, and activity of life, where against
himself outward and passing events shall catch his eye, and force him
off if but for a moment from his wretchedness. It will finally loose
the grasp of the disease, and thought by degrees may be turned into
other channels, and the heart beat with its accustomed excitation.
But even this did not save the bereaved husband. Perhaps it might had
no other ills assailed him; but he had become reckless--had risked
much--had entered largely into the excitements and speculations of the
day; and every thing working against him, losses succeeding losses, the
poor man sank under it and died--a bankrupt.
But the saddest of my story is yet to come.
There are some men in this world from whom nature seems to have
withholden the commonest feelings of our race--men who have no humanity
about them--men who despise and disclaim every thing like sympathy as
troublesome and out of place, and who would as lief dwell in a desert
or on an island shut out from the whole world, as any where else--save
perhaps that they should not have their fellow creatures to prey on. In
short, your cool, calculating, miserly souls, whose feelings all begin
in self and end in self, and who can like Judas or Shylock, coolly set
off so much suffering and so many ounces of human blood against so much
money, with the same callousness that they could barter dog’s flesh.
It was into the hands of such a wretch, a Mr. Saxelby, that these
orphan children fell now entering upon their twelfth year, and their
privations it may be relied on were proportionate to _his_ wickedness.
The little that had been saved from the wreck of their once splendid
fortune he contrived to sink by one means and another, and by the time
they were sixteen it was formally announced that their means were
exhausted, and that master Lyle Selden and his sister--must either work
or starve.
It was like a thunder clap. The brother had hoped to study his father’s
profession; his talents were commanding, his industry unexampled, and
he had proudly looked forward to the moment when he should redeem that
father’s lost reputation, and lift his lovely, ah, how lovely sister!
into the station which her exceeding beauty seemed so eminently to fit
her for, and of which she would become such a witching ornament.
This brother was a marked character. His person was manly, his voice
firm, and his countenance the index of a soul that showed plain enough
he was not born to be overlooked in the world. He was sensitive and
exceedingly proud, yet a nobler heart never knocked against the ribs
of mortality. But such a character as this is not calculated to gain
friends. He was too open--gave his opinions too freely--and his talents
were altogether too commanding and brilliant. Your popular fellows are
your middling ones. Lyle Selden was no middling fellow--you would find
it out by the first word that fell from him though he were half asleep
at the time, and though the subject were as trite as those about which
we witness the first volitation of your incipient poetasters. He was an
original--a marked man--and his opinions though they might be sneered
at, had nevertheless more weight than half the school put together. As
he was sensitive so was he often unhappy, and though he met the taunts
brought to his ears by his few real friends, with ‘I care not,’ yet
he _did_ care--his heart inly bled, and his lonely hours were often
embittered. As he was proud, this got him into difficulties; for though
it was quite the reverse of vanity and self was the last one he thought
of, yet it made his character a complex one which none understood
unless he chose to enlighten them, and this save to a few his pride
would not descend to. Hence he was thought callous and distant, when
in reality his heart was the seat of every gentler feeling; and to
those that _had_ skill to look beneath the surface, he was linked by
a friendship as unyielding as it was noble. But these were few, and
his character is best told in one sentence,--_he was respected and
disliked_.
His sister was an opposite character. She scarcely ever thought for
herself, and in person she was rather lovely than beautiful, and had
that touching feminineness about her which is rather to be felt than
told of. She was too gentle to be independent, one of those rare
specimens of loveliness that are shaped by associations, that can be
moulded into any thing by the energies of a master mind. In short, she
was too trusting, and had a spice of that credulous confidence in her
composition, which, if fortune does not try it sorely, makes a woman a
perfect nympholepsy and a vision.
Such were these orphan children, and in a world as we well know not
famous for its charities. It will be taxing my reader’s patience--who
is anxious I see to come to the end of my story--to trace their lives
minutely through the two or three following years. Their lot was a
hard one. Thrown out of a station to which their birth entitled them,
the trials to which they were exposed had the same effect on them as
it does upon every body else under similar circumstances, viz. made
young Selden suspicious and fretful, soured his temper, and took from
him even the little amiableness which the world had ever allowed was in
his composition. While his sister, his too gentle sister, like the vine
round the tree which supports it and moves with it as that is moved by
the forest wind, so she changed with her brother though winning still,
for in her any thing like harshness was softened down by a sweetness
which nothing could destroy.
What I am now about to lay before the reader, is one of those black
passages in the catalogue of human suffering that may well make me
shudder as I write, and if the facts are doubted as here laid down, my
authority for them shall be given hereafter.
Lyle Selden, despised and trampled on by the world, neglected and
contemned by those that had abundant reasons for loving him, opposed
by fortune in every shape, and seeing that all his best and most
strenuous exertions to win his way availed not, but served only to heap
up greater difficulties, committed a forgery, and that too under the
signature of his guardian. That he was in a measure justified in taking
some means to gain back the fortune stolen from him, may be admitted
by all; but the law is not supposed to make any distinction in favor
of such circumstances, and its dread sentence now hung over him, with
nothing but the selfish griping hand of Saxelby to stay the blow. The
event was not yet public, and here only was the last desperate hope of
mercy.
The agony of Luce’s mind at this dread climax of suffering, must be
imagined, not written. Every means was thought of--every compromise
was proffered--every suggestion that a tender and delicate girl almost
maddened by the threatening evil could suggest, was resorted to, but
they availed not. The hard hand of Saxelby could not yield--his ear
could not catch the voice of mercy--his heart responded not to any
cry--he must have justice.
Luce was in the prisoner’s dungeon, and worn with watching and grief
and suffering, hung clinging to the neck of that brother who had
wept and toiled for her so many years. She saw that brother broken
down, the high purpose had flagged at last, the spirit had quailed,
the spring had broken, and the heart that had beat so true and firm
for her was now at her feet, and the storm had beaten it nigh to its
death. Was there no hope? Could she do nothing? Was there nothing left
for a brain on the brink of madness? No dreadful, desperate, damning
resort? Ah! there was--it smote her like lightning--she lingered a
moment--rose--clasped her brother--kissed him--and with a wild look
burst from the prison.
In a moment she was at the door of Saxelby, in the next at his feet.
There she poured out her soul--proffered him all--all that woman
values, life, soul, honor--_it was accepted_.
It broke her brother’s heart.
She became a maniac.
Such is a story of facts, and the half dead creature I held in my
arms was that same unfortunate sister. I conveyed her to the inn
of the village where I learned that she was a great trouble to the
place, and to one or two excellent families who treated her with every
affection. They were obliged to confine her. Yet she always baffled
them and resorted immediately to her brother’s grave, where she would
spend night and day sitting on the turf, and singing some little ditty
of former days. I learned also to my eternal indignation, that save
these two or three families, the village thought her little better
than a wanton--for Saxelby had died, and the facts were known. Oh,
cursed, and doubly cursed be this queasy prudery of the world! Cursed
be the spirit that casts out the repentant lost one, who craves our
forgiveness! Cursed be they who rant so noisily of virtue, and prate of
self-government! Tremble, and be merciful!--_ye have not been tried_.
The story of this girl made an impression on me never to be forgotten,
and having so well as I was able made arrangement for her future
comforts, I left the village.
I afterwards passed through the place and learned that she was dead.
She had continued as formerly to spend her time at the church yard,
pulling the flowers from this or that mound to scatter them over her
brother, singing her little songs and talking half-reasonable and
half-wild to every chance passenger. Thus she continued until late
fall, when she was found one cold morning stiff upon his grave--one arm
bent beneath her and her lips softly apart, as if the last words that
passed them was her brother’s name.
*