Let us all own up--we men of above forty who aspire to respectability
and do actually live orderly lives and achieve even the odor of
sanctity--have we not been stained with murder?--aye worse! What man has
not his Bluebeard closet, full of early crimes and villainies? A certain
boy in whom I take a particular interest, who goes to Sunday-school and
whose life is outwardly proper--is he not now on week days a robber of
great renown? A week ago, masked and armed, he held up his own father in
a secluded corner of the library and relieved the old man of swag of
a value beyond the dreams--not of avarice, but--of successful,
respectable, modern speculation. He purposes to be a pirate whenever
there is a convenient sheet of water near the house. God speed him.
Better a pirate at six than at sixty.
Give them work to do and good novels to read and they will get over it.
History breeds queer ideas in children. They read of military heroes,
kings and statesmen who commit awful deeds and are yet monuments of
public honor. What a sweet hero is Raleigh, who was a farmer of piracy;
what a grand Admiral was Drake; what demi-gods the fighting Americans
who murdered Indians for the crime of wanting their own! History hath
charms to move an infant breast to savagery. Good strong novels are the
best pabulum to nourish difference between virtue and vice.
Don't I know? I have felt the miracle and learned the difference so well
that even now at an advanced age I can tell the difference and indulge
in either. It was not a week after the killing of Joquita that I read
the first novel of my life. It was “Scottish Chiefs.” The dead bodies of
ten thousand novels lie between me and that first one. I have not read
it since. Ten Incas of Peru with ten rooms full of solid gold could
not tempt me to read it again. Have I not a clear cinch on a delicious
memory, compared with which gold is only Robinson Crusoe's “drug?” After
a lapse of all these years the content of that one tremendous, noble
chapter of heroic climax is as deeply burned into my memory as if it had
been read yesterday.
A sister, old enough to receive “beaux” and addicted to the piano-forte
accomplishment, was at that time practicing across the hall an
instrumental composition, entitled, “La Rève.” Under the title, printed
in very small letters, was the English translation; but I never thought
to look at it. An elocutionist had shortly before recited Poe's Raven
at a church entertainment, and that gloomy bird flapped its wings in my
young emotional vicinity when the firelight threw vague “shadows on
the floor.” When the piece of music was spoken as “La Rève,” its sad
cadences, suffering, of course, under practice, were instantly wedded in
my mind to Mr. Poe's wonderful bird and for years it meant the “Raven”
to me. How curious are childish impressions. Years afterward when I
saw a copy of the music and read the translation, “The Dream” under the
title, I felt a distinct shock of resentment as if the French language
had been treacherous to my sacred ideas. Then there was the romantic
name of “Ellerslie,” which, notwithstanding considerable precocity in
reading and spelling I carried off as “Elleressie” Yeas afterward when
the actual syllables confronted me in a historical sketch of Wallace,
the truth entered like a stab and I closed the book. O sacred first
illusions of childhood, you are sweeter than a thousand year of fame! It
is God's providence that hardens us to endure the throwing of them down
to our eyes and strengthens us to keep their memory sweet in our hearts.
* * * * *
It would be an affront then, not to assume that every reputable novel
reader has read “Scottish Chiefs.” If there is any descendant or any
personal friend of that admirable lady, Miss Jane Porter, who may now be
in pecuniary distress, let that descendant call upon me privately with
perfect confidence. There are obligations that a glacial evolutionary
period can not lessen. I make no conditions but the simple proof of
proper identity. I am not rich but I am grateful.
It was a Saturday evening when I became aware, as by prescience, that
there hung over Sir William Wallice and Helen Mar some terrible shadow
of fate. And the piano-forte across the hall played “La Rève.” My heart
failed me and I closed the book. If you can't do that, my friend, then
you waste your time trying to be a novel reader. You have not the true
touch of genius for it. It is the miracle of eating your cake and having
it, too. It must have been the unconscious moving of novel reading
genius in me. For I forgot, as clearly as if it were not a possibility,
that the next day was Sunday. And so hurried off, before time, to bed,
to be alone with the burden on my heart.
“Backward, turn backward, O Time in your flight--
Make me a child again just for tonight.”
There are two or three novels I should love to take to bed as of
yore--not to read, but to suffer over and to contemplate and to seek
calmness and courage with which to face the inevitable. Could there be
men base enough to do to death the noble Wallace? Or to break the heart
of Helen Mar with grief? No argument could remove the presentiment, but
facing the matter gave courage. “Let tomorrow answer,” I thought, as the
piano-forte in the next room played “La Rève.” Then fell asleep.
And when I awoke next morning to the full knowledge that it was Sunday,
I could have murdered the calendar. For Sunday was Dies Irae. After
Sunday-school, at least. There is a certain amount of fun to be to
extracted from Sunday-school. The remainder of those early Sundays
was confined to reading the Bible or storybooks from the Sunday-school
library--books, by the Lord Harry, that seem to be contrived especially
to make out of healthy children life-long enemies of the church, and to
bind hypocrites to the altar with hooks of steel. There was no whistling
at all permitted; singing of hymns was encouraged; no “playing”--playing
on Sunday was a distinct source of displeasure to Heaven! Are free-born
men nine years of age to endure such tyranny with resignation? Ask
the kids of today--and with one voice, as true men and free, they will
answer you, “Nit!” In the dark days of my youth liberty was in chains,
and so Sunday was passed in dreadful suspense as to what was doing in
Scotland.
* * * * *
Monday night after supper I rejoined Sir William in his captivity and
soon saw that my worst fears were to be realized. My father sat on the
opposite side of the table reading politics; my mother was effecting the
restoration of socks; my brother was engaged in unraveling mathematical
tangles, and in the parlor across the hall my sister sat alone with
her piano patiently debating “La Rève.” Under these circumstances I
encountered the first great miracle of intellectual emotion in the
chapter describing the execution of William Wallace on Tower Hill. No
other incident of life has left upon me such a profound impression.
It was as if I had sprung at one bound into the arena of heroism.
I remember it all. How Wallace delivered himself of theological and
Christian precepts to Helen Mar after which they both knelt before the
officiating priest. That she thought or said, “My life will expire with
yours!” It was the keynote of death and life devotion. It was worthy to
usher Wallace up the scaffold steps where he stood with his hands bound,
“his noble head uncovered.” There was much Christian edification, but
the presence of such a hero as he with “noble Head uncovered” would
enable any man nine years old with a spark of honor and sympathy in him
to endure agonizing amounts of edification. Then suddenly there was a
frightful shudder in my heart. The hangman approached with the rope, and
Helen Mar, with a shriek, threw herself upon Wallace's breast. Then the
great moment. If I live a thousand years these lines will always be
with me: “Wallace, with a mighty strength, burst the bonds asunder that
confined his arms and clasped her to his heart!”
* * * * *
In reading some critical or pretended text books on construction since
that time I came across this sentence used to illustrate tautology. It
was pointed out that the bonds couldn't be “burst” without necessarily
being asunder. The confoundedest outrages in this world are the capers
that precisionists cut upon the bodies of the noble dead. And with
impunity too. Think of a village surveyor measuring the forest of Arden
to discover the exact acreage! Or a horse-doctor elevating his eye-brow
with a contemptuous smile and turning away, as from an innocent, when
you speak of the wings of that fine horse, Pegasus! Any idiot knows
that bonds couldn't be burst without being burst asunder. But, let the
impregnable Jackass think--what would become of the noble rhythm and the
majestic roll of sound? Shakespeare was an ignorant dunce also when
he characterized the ingratitude that involves the principle of public
honor as “the unkindest cut of all.” Every school child knows that it is
ungrammatical; but only those who have any sense learn after awhile
the esoteric secret that it sometimes requires a tragedy of language to
provide fitting sacrifice to the manes of despair. There never was yet
a man of genius who wrote grammatically and under the scourge of
rhetorical rules. Anthony Trollope is a most perfect example of the
exact correctness that sterilizes in its own immaculate chastity.
Thackeray would knock a qualifying adverb across the street, or thrust
it under your nose to make room for the vivid force of an idea. Trollope
would give the idea a decent funeral for the sake of having his adverb
appear at the grave above reproach from grammatical gossip. Whenever I
have risen from the splendid psychological perspective of old Job, the
solemn introspective howls of Ecclesiasticus and the generous living
philosophy of Shakespeare it has always been with the desire--of course
it is undignified, but it is human--to go and get an English grammar
for the pleasure of spitting upon it. Let us be honest. I understand
everything about grammar except what it means; but if you will give me
the living substance and the proper spirit any gentleman who desires the
grammatical rules may have them, and be hanged to him! And, while it
may appear presumptuous, I can conscientiously say that it will not be
agreeable to me to settle down in heaven with a class of persons who
demand the rules of grammar for the intellectual reason that corresponds
to the call for crutches by one-legged men.
* * * * *
If the foregoing appear ill-tempered pray forget it. Remember rather
that I have sought to leave my friend Sir William Wallace, holding Helen
Mar on his breast as long as possible. And yet, I also loved her! Can
human nature go farther than that?
“Helen,” he said to her, “life's cord is cut by God's own hand.” He
stooped, he fell, and the fall shook the scaffold. Helen--that glorified
heroine--raised his head to her lap. The noble Earl of Gloucester
stepped forward, took the head in his hands.
“There,” he cried in a burst of grief, letting it fall again upon the
insensible bosom of Helen, “there broke the noblest heart that ever beat
in the breast of man!”
That page or two of description I read with difficulty and agony through
blinding tears, and when Gloucester spoke his splendid eulogy my head
fell on the table and I broke into such wild sobbing that the little
family sprang up in astonishment. I could not explain until my mother,
having led me to my room, succeeded in soothing me into calmness and
I told her the cause of it. And she saw me to bed with sympathetic
caresses and, after she left, it all broke out afresh and I cried myself
to sleep in utter desolation and wretchedness. Of course the matter
got out and my father began the book. He was sixty years old, not an
indiscriminate reader, but a man of kind and boyish heart. I felt a sort
of fascinated curiosity to watch him when he reached the chapter that
had broken me. And, as if it were yesterday, I can see him under the
lamplight compressing his lips, or puffing like a smoker through them,
taking off his spectacles, and blowing his nose with great ceremony and
carelessly allowing the handkerchief to reach his eyes. Then another
paragraph and he would complain of the glasses and wipe them carefully,
also his eyes, and replace the spectacles. But he never looked at me,
and when he suddenly banged the lids together and, turning away, sat
staring into the fire with his head bent forward, making unconcealed use
of the handkerchief, I felt a sudden sympathy for him and sneaked out.
He would have made a great novel reader if he had had the heart. But he
couldn't stand sorrow and pain. The novel reader must have a heart
for every fate. For a week or more I read that great chapter and its
approaches over and over, weeping less and less, until I had worn out
that first grief, and could look with dry eyes upon my dead. And never
since have I dared to return to it. Let who will speak freely in other
tones of “Scottish Chiefs”--opinions are sacred liberties--but as for
me I know it changed my career from one of ruthless piracy to better
purposes, and certain boys of my private acquaintance are introduced to
Miss Jane Porter as soon as they show similar bent.