opposite, on the other side of Beacon Street. At one of the lower
windows, a woman at work; at one above, a lady hemming a ruff or some
such ladylike thing. She is pretty, young, and married; for a little boy
comes to her knees, and she parts his hair, and caresses him in a
motherly way. A note on colored paper is brought her; and she reads it,
and puts it in her bosom. At another window, at some depth within the
apartment, a gentleman in a dressing-gown, reading, and rocking in an
easy-chair, etc., etc., etc. A rainy day, and people passing with
umbrellas disconsolately between the spectator and these various scenes
of indoor occupation and comfort. With this sketch might be mingled and
worked up some story that was going on within the chamber where the
spectator was situated.
All the dead that had ever been drowned in a certain lake to arise.
The history of a small lake from the first, till it was drained.
An autumnal feature,--boys had swept together the fallen leaves from the
elms along the street in one huge pile, and had made a hollow,
nest-shaped, in this pile, in which three or four of them lay curled,
like young birds.
A tombstone-maker, whom Miss B----y knew, used to cut cherubs on the top
of the tombstones, and had the art of carving the cherubs' faces in the
likeness of the deceased.
A child of Rev. E. P------ was threatened with total blindness. A week
after the father had been informed of this, the child died; and, in the
mean while, his feelings had become so much the more interested in the
child, from its threatened blindness, that it was infinitely harder to
give it up. Had he not been aware of it till after the child's death, it
would probably have been a consolation.
Singular character of a gentleman (H. H------, Esq.) living in retirement
in Boston,--esteemed a man of nicest honor, and his seclusion attributed
to wounded feelings on account of the failure of his firm in business.
Yet it was discovered that this man had been the mover of intrigues by
which men in business had been ruined, and their property absorbed, none
knew how or by whom; love-affairs had been broken off, and much other
mischief done; and for years he was not in the least suspected. He died
suddenly, soon after suspicion fell upon him. Probably it was the love
of management, of having an influence on affairs, that produced these
phenomena.
Character of a man who, in himself and his external circumstances, shall
be equally and totally false: his fortune resting on baseless credit,--
his patriotism assumed,--his domestic affections, his honor and honesty,
all a sham. His own misery in the midst of it,--it making the whole
universe, heaven and earth alike, all unsubstantial mockery to him.
Dr. Johnson's penance in Uttoxeter Market. A man who does penance in
what might appear to lookers-on the most glorious and triumphal
circumstance of his life. Each circumstance of the career of an
apparently successful man to be a penance and torture to him on account
of some fundamental error in early life.
A person to catch fire-flies, and try to kindle his household fire with
them. It would be symbolical of something.
Thanksgiving at the Worcester Lunatic Asylum. A ball and dance of the
inmates in the evening,--a furious lunatic dancing with the principal's
wife. Thanksgiving in an almshouse might make a better sketch.
The house on the eastern corner of North and Essex Streets [Salem],
supposed to have been built about 1640, had, say sixty years later, a
brick turret erected, wherein one of the ancestors of the present
occupants used to practise alchemy. He was the operative of a scientific
person in Boston, the director. There have been other alchemists of old
in this town,--one who kept his fire burning seven weeks, and then lost
the elixir by letting it go out.
An ancient wineglass (Miss Ingersol's), long-stalked, with a small,
cup-like bowl, round which is wreathed a branch of grape-vine, with a
rich cluster of grapes, and leaves spread out. There is also some kind
of a bird flying. The whole is excellently cut or engraved.
In the Duke of Buckingham's comedy "The Chances," Don Frederic says of
Don John (they are two noble Spanish gentlemen), "One bed contains us
ever."
A person, while awake and in the business of life, to think highly of
another, and place perfect confidence in him, but to be troubled with
dreams in which this seeming friend appears to act the part of a most
deadly enemy. Finally it is discovered that the dream-character is the
true one. The explanation would be--the soul's instinctive perception.
Pandora's box for a child's story.
Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.
"A person to look back on a long life ill-spent, and to picture forth a
beautiful life which he would live, if he could be permitted to begin his
life over again. Finally to discover that he had only been dreaming of
old age,--that he was really young, and could live such a life as he had
pictured."
A newspaper, purporting to be published in a family, and satirizing the
political and general world by advertisements, remarks on domestic
affairs,--advertisement of a lady's lost thimble, etc.
L. H------. She was unwilling to die, because she had no friends to meet
her in the other world. Her little son F. being very ill, on his
recovery she confessed a feeling of disappointment, having supposed that
he would have gone before, and welcomed her into heaven!
H. L. C------ heard from a French Canadian a story of a young couple in
Acadie. On their marriage day, all the men of the Province were summoned
to assemble in the church to hear a proclamation. When assembled, they
were all seized and shipped off to be distributed through New England,--
among them the new bridegroom. His bride set off in search of him,--
wandered about New England all her lifetime, and at last, when she was
old, she found her bridegroom on his deathbed. The shock was so great
that it killed her likewise.
January 4th, 1839.--When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of
hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth
being so intermixed, with sky, and gradually transformed into it.
A stranger, dying, is buried; and after many years two strangers come in
search of his grave, and open it.
The strange sensation of a person who feels himself an object of deep
interest, and close observation, and various construction of all his
actions, by another person.
Letters in the shape of figures of men, etc. At a distance, the words
composed by the letters are alone distinguishable. Close at hand, the
figures alone are seen, and not distinguished as letters. Thus things
may have a positive, a relative, and a composite meaning, according to
the point of view.
"Passing along the street, all muddy with puddles, and suddenly seeing
the sky reflected in these puddles in such a way as quite to conceal the
foulness of the street."
A young man in search of happiness,--to be personified by a figure whom
he expects to meet in a crowd, and is to be recognized by certain signs.
All these signs are given by a figure in various garbs and actions, but
he does not recognize that this is the sought-for person till too late.
If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would
appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones,--others to have danced
forth to light, fantastic airs.
Familiar spirits, according to Lilly, used to be worn in rings, watches,
sword-hilts. Thumb-rings were set with jewels of extraordinary size.
A very fanciful person, when dead, to have his burial in a cloud.
"A story there passeth of an Indian king that sent unto Alexander a fair
woman, fed with aconite and other poisons, with this intent
complexionally to destroy him!"--Sir T. Browne.
Dialogues of the unborn, like dialogues of the dead,--or between two
young children.
A mortal symptom for a person being to lose his own aspect and to take
the family lineaments, which were hidden deep in the healthful visage.
Perhaps a seeker might thus recognize the man he had sought, after long
intercourse with him unknowingly.
Some moderns to build a fire on Ararat with the remnants of the ark.
Two little boats of cork, with a magnet in one and steel in the other.
To have ice in one's blood.
To make a story of all strange and impossible things,--as the Salamander,
the Phoenix.
The semblance of a human face to be formed on the side of a mountain, or
in the fracture of a small stone, by a lusus naturae. The face is an
object of curiosity for years or centuries, and by and by a boy is born,
whose features gradually assume the aspect of that portrait. At some
critical juncture, the resemblance is found to be perfect. A prophecy
may be connected.
A person to be the death of his beloved in trying to raise her to more
than mortal perfection; yet this should be a comfort to him for having
aimed so highly and holily.
1840.--A man, unknown, conscious of temptation to secret crimes, puts up
a note in church, desiring the prayers of the congregation for one so
tempted.
Some most secret thing, valued and honored between lovers, to be hung up
in public places, and made the subject of remark by the city,--remarks,
sneers, and laughter.
To make a story out of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes. From
different points of view, it should appear to change,--now an old man,
now an old woman,--a gunner, a farmer, or the Old Nick.
A ground-sparrow's nest in the slope of a bank, brought to view by
mowing the grass, but still sheltered and comfortably hidden by a
blackberry-vine trailing over it. At first, four brown-speckled eggs,--
then two little bare young ones, which, on the slightest noise, lift
their heads, and open wide mouths for food,--immediately dropping their
heads, after a broad gape. The action looks as if they were making a
most earnest, agonized petition. In another egg, as in a coffin, I could
discern the quiet, death-like form of the little bird. The whole thing
had something awful and mysterious in it.
A coroner's inquest on a murdered man,--the gathering of the jury to be
described, and the characters of the members,--some with secret guilt
upon their souls.
To represent a man as spending life and the intensest labor in the
accomplishment of some mechanical trifle,--as in making a miniature coach
to be drawn by fleas, or a dinner-service to be put into a cherry-stone.
A bonfire to be made of the gallows and of all symbols of evil.
The love of posterity is a consequence of the necessity of death. If a
man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his
offspring.
The device of a sun-dial for a monument over a grave, with some suitable
motto.
A man with the right perception of things,--a feeling within him of what
is true and what is false. It might be symbolized by the talisman with
which, in fairy tales, an adventurer was enabled to distinguish
enchantments from realities.
A phantom of the old royal governors, or some such shadowy pageant, on
the night of the evacuation of Boston by the British.
------ taking my likeness, I said that such changes would come over my
face that she would not know me when we met again in heaven. "See if I
do not!" said she, smiling. There was the most peculiar and beautiful
humor in the point itself, and in her manner, that can be imagined.
Little F. H------ used to look into E----'s mouth to see where her smiles
came from.
"There is no Measure for Measure to my affections. If the earth fails
me, I can die, and go to GOD," said ------.
Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. This might be
thought out at great length.
Boston, July 3d, 1839.--I do not mean to imply that I am unhappy or
discontented, for this is not the case. My life only is a burden in the
same way that it is to every toilsome man; and mine is a healthy
weariness, such as needs only a night's sleep to remove it. But from
henceforth forever I shall be entitled to call the sons of toil my
brethren, and shall know how to sympathize with them, seeing that I
likewise have risen at the dawn, and borne the fervor of the midday sun,
nor turned my heavy footsteps homeward till eventide. Years hence,
perhaps, the experience that my heart is acquiring now will flow out in
truth and wisdom.
August 27th.--I have been stationed all day at the end of Long Wharf, and
I rather think that I had the most eligible situation of anybody in
Boston. I was aware that it must be intensely hot in the midst of the
city; but there was only a short space of uncomfortable heat in my
region, half-way towards the centre of the harbor; and almost all the
time there was a pure and delightful breeze, fluttering and palpitating,
sometimes shyly kissing my brow, then dying away, and then rushing upon
me in livelier sport, so that I was fain to settle my straw hat more
tightly upon my head. Late in the afternoon, there was a sunny shower,
which came down so like a benediction that it seemed ungrateful to take
shelter in the cabin or to put up an umbrella. Then there was a rainbow,
or a large segment of one, so exceedingly brilliant and of such long
endurance that I almost fancied it was stained into the sky, and would
continue there permanently. And there were clouds floating all about,--
great clouds and small, of all glorious and lovely hues (save that
imperial crimson which was revealed to our united gaze),--so glorious
indeed, and so lovely, that I had a fantasy of heaven's being broken into
fleecy fragments and dispersed through space, with its blest inhabitants
dwelling blissfully upon those scattered islands.
February 7th, 1840.--What beautiful weather this is!--beautiful, at
least, so far as sun, sky, and atmosphere are concerned, though a poor,
wingless biped is sometimes constrained to wish that he could raise
himself a little above the earth. How much mud and mire, how many pools
of unclean water, how many slippery footsteps, and perchance heavy
tumbles, might be avoided, if we could tread but six inches above the
crust of this world. Physically we cannot do this; our bodies cannot;
but it seems to me that our hearts and minds may keep themselves above
moral mud-puddles and other discomforts of the soul's pathway.
February 11th.--I have been measuring coal all day, on board of a black
little British schooner, in a dismal dock at the north end of the city.
Most of the time I paced the deck to keep myself warm; for the wind
(northeast, I believe) blew up through the dock, as if it had been the
pipe of a pair of bellows. The vessel lying deep between two wharfs,
there was no more delightful prospect, on the right hand and on the left,
than the posts and timbers, half immersed in the water, and covered with
ice, which the rising and falling of successive tides had left upon them,
so that they looked like immense icicles. Across the water, however, not
more than half a mile off, appeared the Bunker Hill Monument; and what
interested me considerably more, a church-steeple, with the dial of a
clock upon it, whereby I was enabled to measure the march of the weary
hours. Sometimes I descended into the dirty little cabin of the
schooner, and warmed myself by a red-hot stove, among biscuit-barrels,
pots and kettles, sea-chests, and innumerable lumber of all sorts,--my
olfactories, meanwhile, being greatly refreshed by the odor of a pipe,
which the captain, or some one of his crew, was smoking. But at last
came the sunset, with delicate clouds, and a purple light upon the
islands; and I blessed it, because it was the signal of my release.
February 12th.--All day long again have I been engaged in a very black
business,--as black as a coal; and, though my face and hands have
undergone a thorough purification, I feel not altogether fit to hold
communion with doves. Methinks my profession is somewhat akin to that of
a chimney-sweeper; but the latter has the advantage over me, because,
after climbing up through the darksome flue of the chimney, he emerges
into the midst of the golden air, and sings out his melodies far over the
heads of the whole tribe of weary earth-plodders. My toil to-day has
been cold and dull enough; nevertheless, I was neither cold nor dull.
March 15th.--I pray that in one year more I may find some way of escaping
from this unblest Custom-House; for it is a very grievous thraldom. I do
detest all offices,--all, at least, that are held on a political tenure.
And I want nothing to do with politicians. Their hearts wither away, and
die out of their bodies. Their consciences are turned to india-rubber,
or to some substance as black as that, and which will stretch as much.
One thing, if no more, I have gained by my custom-house experience,--to
know a politician. It is a knowledge which no previous thought or power
of sympathy could have taught me, because the animal, or the machine
rather, is not in nature.
March 23d.--I do think that it is the doom laid upon me, of murdering
so many of the brightest hours of the day at the Custom-House, that
makes such havoc with my wits, for here I am again trying to write
worthily, . . . . yet with a sense as if all the noblest part of man had
been left out of my composition, or had decayed out of it since my nature
was given to my own keeping. . . . Never comes any bird of Paradise
into that dismal region. A salt or even a coal ship is ten million times
preferable; for there the sky is above me, and the fresh breeze around
me, and my thoughts, having hardly anything to do with my occupation, are
as free as air.
Nevertheless, you are not to fancy that the above paragraph gives a
correct idea of my mental and spiritual state. . . . It is only once in
a while that the image and desire of a better and happier life makes me
feel the iron of my chain; for, after all, a human spirit may find no
insufficiency of food fit for it, even in the Custom-House. And, with
such materials as these, I do think and feel and learn things that are
worth knowing, and which I should not know unless I had learned them
there, so that the present portion of my life shall not be quite left out
of the sum of my real existence. . . . It is good for me, on many
accounts, that my life has had this passage in it. I know much more than
I did a year ago. I have a stronger sense of power to act as a man among
men. I have gained worldly wisdom, and wisdom also that is not
altogether of this world. And, when I quit this earthly cavern where I
am now buried, nothing will cling to me that ought to be left behind.
Men will not perceive, I trust, by my look, or the tenor of my thoughts
and feelings, that I have been a custom-house officer.
April 7th.--It appears to me to have been the most uncomfortable day that
ever was inflicted on poor mortals. . . . Besides the bleak, unkindly
air, I have been plagued by two sets of coal-shovellers at the same time,
and have been obliged to keep two separate tallies simultaneously. But I
was conscious that all this was merely a vision and a fantasy, and that,
in reality, I was not half frozen by the bitter blast, nor tormented by
those grimy coal-beavers, but that I was basking quietly in the sunshine
of eternity. . . . Any sort of bodily and earthly torment may serve to
make us sensible that we have a soul that is not within the jurisdiction
of such shadowy demons,--it separates the immortal within us from the
mortal. But the wind has blown my brains into such confusion that I
cannot philosophize now.
April 19th.--. . . . What a beautiful day was yesterday! My spirit
rebelled against being confined in my darksome dungeon at the
Custom-House. It seemed a sin,--a murder of the joyful young day,--a
quenching of the sunshine. Nevertheless, there I was kept a prisoner
till it was too late to fling myself on a gentle wind, and be blown away
into the country. . . . When I shall be again free, I will enjoy all
things with the fresh simplicity of a child of five years old. I shall
grow young again, made all over anew. I will go forth and stand in a
summer shower, and all the worldly dust that has collected on me shall be
washed away at once, and my heart will be like a bank of fresh flowers
for the weary to rest upon. . . .
6 P. M.--I went out to walk about an hour ago, and found it very
pleasant, though there was a somewhat cool wind. I went round and across
the Common, and stood on the highest point of it, where I could see miles
and miles into the country. Blessed be God for this green tract, and the
view which it affords, whereby we poor citizens may be put in mind,
sometimes, that all his earth is not composed of blocks of brick houses,
and of stone or wooden pavements. Blessed be God for the sky too, though
the smoke of the city may somewhat change its aspect,--but still it is
better than if each street were covered over with a roof. There were a
good many people walking on the mall,--mechanics apparently, and
shopkeepers' clerks, with their wives; and boys were rolling on the
grass, and I would have liked to lie down and roll too.
April 30th.--. . . . I arose this morning feeling more elastic than I
have throughout the winter; for the breathing of the ocean air has
wrought a very beneficial effect. . . . What a beautiful, most
beautiful afternoon this has been! It was a real happiness to live.
If I had been merely a vegetable,--a hawthorn-bush, for instance,--
I must have been happy in such an air and sunshine; but, having a mind
and a soul, . . . . I enjoyed somewhat more than mere vegetable
happiness. . . . The footsteps of May can be traced upon the islands in
the harbor, and I have been watching the tints of green upon them
gradually deepening, till now they are almost as beautiful as they ever
can be.
May 19th.--. . . . Lights and shadows are continually flitting across my
inward sky, and I know neither whence they come nor whither they go; nor
do I inquire too closely into them. It is dangerous to look too minutely
into such phenomena. It is apt to create a substance where at first
there was a mere shadow. . . . If at any time there should seem to be
an expression unintelligible from one soul to another, it is best not to
strive to interpret it in earthly language, but wait for the soul to make
itself understood; and, were we to wait a thousand years, we need deem it
no more time than we can spare. . . . It is not that I have any love of
mystery, but because I abhor it, and because I have often felt that words
may be a thick and darksome veil of mystery between the soul and the
truth which it seeks. Wretched were we, indeed, if we had no better
means of communicating ourselves, no fairer garb in which to array our
essential being, than these poor rags and tatters of Babel. Yet words
are not without their use even for purposes of explanation,--but merely
for explaining outward acts and all sorts of external things, leaving the
soul's life and action to explain itself in its own way.
What a misty disquisition I have scribbled! I would not read it over for
sixpence.
May 29th.--Rejoice with me, for I am free from a load of coal which has
been pressing upon my shoulders throughout all the hot weather. I am
convinced that Christian's burden consisted of coal; and no wonder he
felt so much relieved, when it fell off and rolled into the sepulchre.
His load, however, at the utmost, could not have been more than a few
bushels, whereas mine was exactly one hundred and thirty-five chaldrons
and seven tubs.