MOVING.

Man is like an onion. He exists in concentric layers. He is born a

bulb and grows by external accretions. The number and character of his

involutions certify to his culture and courtesy. Those of the boor are

few and coarse. Those of the gentleman are numerous and fine. But strip

off the scales from all and you come to the same germ. The core of

humanity is barbarism. Every man is a latent savage.

You may be startled and shocked, but I am stating fact, not theory. I

announce not an invention, but a discovery. You look around you, and

because you do not see tomahawks and tattooing you doubt my assertion.

But your observation is superficial. You have not penetrated into the

secret place where souls abide. You are staring only at the outside

layer of your neighbors; just peel them and see what you will find.

I speak from the highest possible authority,--my own. Representing the

gentler half of humanity, of respectable birth, tolerable parts, and

good education, as tender-hearted as most women, not unfamiliar with

the best society, mingling, to some extent, with those who understand

and practise the minor moralities, you would at once infer from my

circumstances that I was a very fair specimen of the better class of

Americans,--and so I am. For one that stands higher than I in the

moral, social, and intellectual scale, you will undoubtedly find ten

that stand lower. Yet through all these layers gleam the fiery eyes of

my savage. I thought I was a Christian, I have endeavored to do my duty

to my day and generation; but of a sudden Christianity and civilization

leave me in the lurch, and the "old Adam" within me turns out to be

just such a fierce Saxon pirate as hurtled down against the white

shores of Britain fifteen hundred years ago.

For we have been moving.

People who live in cities and move regularly every year from one good,

finished, right-side-up house to another will think I give a very small

reason for a very broad fact; but they do not know what they are

talking about. They have fallen into a way of looking upon a house only

as an exaggerated trunk, into which they pack themselves annually with

as much nonchalance as if it were only their preparation for a summer

trip to the seashore. They don't strike root anywhere. They don't have

to tear up anything. A man comes with cart and horses. There is a stir

in the one house,--they are gone;--there is a stir in the other

house,--they are settled,--and everything is wound up and set going to

run another year. We do these things differently in the country. We

don't build a house by way of experiment and live in it a few years,

then tear it down and build another. We live in a house till it cracks,

and then we plaster it over; then it totters, and we prop it up; then

it rocks, and we rope it down; then it sprawls, and we clamp it; then

it crumbles, and we have a new underpinning,--but keep living in it all

the time. To know what moving really means, you must move from just

such a rickety-rackety old farmhouse, where you have clung and grown

like a fungus ever since there was anything to grow,--where your life

and luggage have crept into all the crevices and corners, and every

wall is festooned with associations thicker than the cobwebs, though

the cobwebs are pretty thick,--where the furniture and the pictures and

the knick-knacks are so become a part and parcel of the house, so grown

with it and into it, that you do not know they are chiefly rubbish till

you begin to move them and they fall to pieces, and don't know it then,

but persist in packing them up and carrying them away for the sake of

auld lang syne, till, set up again in your new abode, you suddenly find

that their sacredness is gone, their dignity has degraded into

dinginess, and the faded, patched chintz sofa, that was not only

comfortable, but respectable, in the old wainscoted sitting-room, has

suddenly turned into "an object," when lang syne goes by the board and

the heirloom is incontinently set adrift. Undertake to move from this

tumble-down old house, strewn thick with the _débris_ of many

generations, into a tumble-up, peaky, perky, plastery, shingly, stary

new one, that is not half finished, and never will be, and good enough

for it, and you will perhaps comprehend how it is that I find a great

crack in my life. On the farther side are prosperity, science,

literature, philosophy, religion, society, all the refinements, and

amenities, and benevolences, and purities of life,--in short, all the

arts of peace, and civilization, and Christianity,--and on this

side--moving. You will also understand why that one word comprises, to

my thinking, all the discomforts short of absolute physical torture

that can be condensed into the human lot. Condensed, did I say? If it

were a condensed agony, I could endure it. One great, stunning,

overpowering blow is undoubtedly terrible, but you rally all your

fortitude to meet and resist it, and when it is over it is over and the

recuperative forces go to work; but a trouble that worries and baffles

and pricks and rasps you, that penetrates into all the ramifications of

your life, that fills you with profound disgust, and fires you with

irrepressible fury, and makes of you an Ishmaelite indeed, with your

hand against every man and every man's hand against you,--ah! that is

the _experimentum crucis_. Such is moving, in the country,--not an

act, but a process,--not a volition, but a fermentation.

We will say that the first of September is the time appointed for the

transit. The day approaches. It is the twenty-ninth of August. I

prepare to take hold of the matter in earnest. I am nipped in the bud

by learning that the woman who was to help about the carpets cannot

come, because her baby is taken with the croup. I have not a doubt of

it. I never knew a baby yet that did not go and have the croup, or the

colic, or the cholera infantum, just when it was imperatively necessary

that it should not have them. But there is no help for it. I shudder

and bravely gird myself for the work. I tug at the heavy, bulky,

unwieldy carpets, and am covered with dust and abomination. I think

carpets are the most untidy, unwholesome nuisances in the whole world.

It is impossible to be clean with them under your feet. You may sweep

your carpet twenty times and raise a dust on the twenty-first. I am

sure I heard long ago of some new fashion that was to be

introduced,--some Italian style, tiles, or mosaic-work, or something of

the sort. I should welcome anything that would dispense with these vile

rags. I sigh over the good old sanded floors that our grandmothers

rejoiced in,--and so, apotheosizing the past and anathematizing the

present, I pull away, and the tacks tear my fingers, and the hammer

slips and lets me back with a jerk, and the dust fills my hair and nose

and eyes and mouth and lungs, and my hands grow red and coarse and

ragged and sore and begrimed, and I pull and choke and cough and

strangle and pull.

So the carpets all come up and the curtains all come down. The bureaus

march out of the chamber-windows and dance on a tight-rope down into

the yard below. The chairs are set at "heads and points." The clothes

are packed into the trunks. The flour and meal and sugar, all the

wholesale edibles, are carted down to the new house and stored. The

forks are wrapped up and we eat with our fingers, and have nothing to

eat at that. Then we are informed that the new house will not be ready

short of two weeks at least. Unavoidable delays. The plasterers were

hindered; the painters misunderstood orders; the paperers have

defalcated, and the universe generally comes to a pause. It is no

matter in what faith I was nurtured, I am now a believer in total

depravity. Contractors have no conscience; masons are not men of their

word; carpenters are tricky; all manner of cunning workmen are bruised

reeds. But there is nothing to do but submit and make the best of

it,--a horrible kind of mechanism. We go forthwith into a chrysalis

state for two weeks. The only sign of life is an occasional lurch

towards the new house, just sufficient to keep up the circulation. One

day I dreamily carry down a basket of wine-glasses. At another time I

listlessly stuff all my slippers into a huge pitcher and take up the

line of march. Again a bucket is filled with tea-cups, or I shoulder

the fire-shovel. The two weeks drag themselves away, and the cry is

still, "Unfinished!" To prevent petrifying into a fossil remain, or

relapsing into primitive barbarism, or degenerating into a dormouse, I

rouse my energies and determine to put my own shoulder to the wheel and

see if something cannot be accomplished. I rise early in the morning

and walk to Dan, to hire a painter who is possessed of "gumption,"

"faculty." Arrived in Dan, I am told that he is in Beersheba. Nothing

daunted, I take a short cut across the fields to Beersheba, bearding

manifold dangers from rickety stone-walls, strong enough to keep women

in, but not strong enough to keep bears, bulls, and other wild beasts

out,--toppling enough to play the mischief with draperies, but not

toppling enough to topple over when urgently pressed to do so. But I

secure my man, and remember no more my sorrow of bulls and stones for

joy at my success. From Beersheba I proceed to Padan-aram to buy seven

pounds of flour, thence to Galilee of the Gentiles for a pound of

cheese, thence to the land of Uz for a smoked halibut, thence to the

ends of the earth for a lemon to make life tolerable,--and the days

hobble on.

"The flying gold of the ruined woodlands" drives through the air, the

signal is given, and there is no longer "quiet on the Potomac." The

unnatural calm gives way to an unearthly din. Once more I bring myself

to bear on the furniture and the trumpery, and there is a small

household whirlpool. All that went before "pales its ineffectual

fires." Now comes the strain upon my temper, and my temper bends, and

quivers, and creaks, and cracks. Ithuriel touches me with his spear;

all the integuments of my conventional, artificial, and acquired

gentleness peel off, and I stand revealed a savage. Everything around

me sloughs off its usual habitude and becomes savage. Looking-glasses

are shivered by the dozen. A bit is nicked out of the best China

sugar-bowl. A pin gets under the matting that is wrapped around the

centre-table and jags horrible hieroglyphics over the whole polished

surface. The bookcase that we are trying to move tilts, and trembles,

and goes over, and the old house through all her frame gives signs of

woe. A crash detonate on the stairs brings me up from the depths of the

closet where I am burrowing. I remember seeing Petronius disappear a

moment ago with my lovely and beloved marble Hebe in his arms. I rush

rampant to the upper landing in time to see him couchant on the lower.

"I have broken my leg," roars Petronius, as if I cared for his leg. A

fractured leg is easily mended; but who shall restore me the nose of

my nymph, marred into irremediable deformity and dishonor?

Occasionally a gleam of sunshine shoots athwart the darkness to keep me

back from rash deeds. Behind the sideboard I find a little cross of

dark, bright hair and gold and pearls, that I lost two years ago and

would not be comforted. O happy days woven in with the dark, bright

hair! O golden, pearly days, come back to me again! "Never mind your

gewgaws," interposes real life; "what is to be done with the things in

this drawer?" Lying atop of a heap of old papers in the front-yard,

waiting the match that is to glorify them into flame, I find a letter

that mysteriously disappeared long since and caused me infinite alarm

lest indelicate eyes might see it and indelicate hands make ignoble use

of its honest and honorable meaning. I learn also sundry new and

interesting facts in mechanics. I become acquainted for the first time

with the _modus operandi_ of "roller-cloths." I never understood

before how the roller got inside the towel. It was one of those gentle

domestic mysteries that repel even while they invite investigation. I

shall not give the result of my discovery to the public. If you wish

very much to find out, you can move, as I did.

But the rifts of sunshine disappear, the clouds draw together and close

in. The savage walks abroad once more, and I go to bed tired of life.

I have scarcely fallen asleep, when I am reluctantly, by short and

difficult stages, awakened. A rumbling, grating, strident noise first

confuses, then startles me. Is it robbers? Is it an earthquake? Is it

the coming of fate? I lie rigid, bathed in a cold perspiration. I hear

the tread of banditti on the moaning stairs. I see the flutter of

ghostly robes by the uncurtained windows. A chill, uncanny air rushes

in and grips at my damp hair. I am nerved by the extremity of my

terror. I will die of anything but fright. I jerk off the bedclothes,

convulse into an upright posture, and glare into the darkness. Nothing.

I rise softly, creep cautiously and swiftly over the floor, that always

creaked, but now thunders at every footfall. A light gleams through

the open door of the opposite room whence the sound issues. A familiar

voice utters an exclamation which I recognize. It is Petronius, the

unprincipled scoundrel, who is uncording a bed, dragging remorselessly

through innumerable holes the long rope whose doleful wail came near

giving me an epilepsy. My savage lets loose the dogs of war. Petronius

would fain defend himself by declaring that it is morning. I

indignantly deny it. He produces his watch. A fig for his watch! I

stake my consciousness against twenty watches, and go to bed again; but

Sleep, angry goddess, once repulsed, returns no more. The dawn comes up

the sky and confirms the scorned watch. The golden daggers of the

morning prick in under my eyelids, and Petronius introduces himself

upon the scene once more to announce, that, if I don't wish to be

corded up myself, I must abdicate that bed. The threat does not terrify

me. Indeed, nothing at the moment seems more inviting than to be corded

up and let alone; but duty still binds me to life, and, assuring

Petronius that the just law will do that service for him, if he does

not mend his ways, I slowly emerge again into the world,--the dreary,

chaotic world,--the world that is never at rest.

And there is hurrying to and fro, and a clang of many voices, and the

clatter of much crockery, and a lifting, and balancing, and battering

against walls and curving around corners, and sundry contusions, and a

great waste of expletives, and a loading of wagons, and a driving of

patient oxen back and forth with me generally on the top of the load,

steadying a basket of eggs with one foot, keeping a tin can of

something from upsetting with the other, and both arms stretched around

a very big and very square picture-frame that knocks against my nose or

my chin every time the cart goes over a stone or drops into a rut, and

the wind threatening to blow my hat off, and blowing it off, and my

"back-hair" tumbling down,--and the old house is at last despoiled. The

rooms stand bare and brown and desolate. The sun, a hand-breadth above

the horizon, pours in through the unblinking windows. The last load is

gone. The last man has departed. I am left alone to lock up the house

and walk over the hill to the new home. Then, for the first time, I

remember that I am leaving. As I pass through the door of my own room,

not regretfully, I turn. I look up and down and through and through the

place where I shall never rest again, and I rejoice that it is so. As I

stand there, with the red, solid sunshine lying on the floor, lying on

the walls, unfamiliar in its new profusion, the silence becomes

audible. In the still October evening there is an effort in the air.

The dumb house is striving to find a voice. I feel the struggle of its

insensate frame. The old timbers quiver with the unusual strain. The

strong, blind, vegetable energy agonizes to find expression, and,

wrestling like a pinioned giant, the soul of matter throws off the

weight of Its superincumbent inertia. Slowly, gently, most sorrowfully

through the golden air cleaves a voice that is somewhat a wail, yet not

untuned by love. Inarticulate at first, I catch only the low

mournfulness; but it clears, it concentrates, it murmurs into cadence,

it syllables into intelligence, and thus the old house speaks:--

"Child, my child, forward to depart, stay for one moment your eager

feet. Put off from your brow the crown which the sunset has woven, and

linger yet a little longer in the shadow which enshrouds me forever. I

remember, in this parting hour, the day of days which the tremulous

years bore in their bosom,--a day crimson with the woodbine's happy

flush and glowing with the maple's gold. On that day a tender, tiny

life came down, and stately Silence fled before the pelting of

baby-laughter. Faint memories of far-off olden time were softly

stirred. Blindly thrilled through all my frame a vague, dim sense of

swelling buds, and singing-birds, and summer-gales,--of the purple

beauty of violets, the smells of fragrant earth, and the sweetness of

summer dews and darks. Many a harvest-moon since then has filled her

yellow horn, and queenly Junes crowned with roses have paled before the

sternness of Decembers. But Decembers and Junes alike bore royal gifts

to you,--gifts to the busy brain and the awakening heart. In dell and

copse and meadow and gay green-wood you drank great draughts of life.

Yet, even as I watched, your eyes grew wistful. Your lips framed

questions for which the Springs found no reply, and the sacred mystery

of living brought its sweet, uncertain pain. Then you went away, and a

shadow fell. A gleam passed out of the sunshine and a note from the

robin's song. The knights that pranced on the household hearth grew

faint and still, and died for want of young eyes to mark their

splendor. But when your feet, ever and anon, turned homeward, they used

a firmer step, and I knew, that, though the path might be rough, you

trod it bravely. I saw that you had learned how doing is a nobler thing

than dreaming, yet kept the holy fire burning in the holy place. But

now you go, and there will be no return. The stars are faded from the

sky. The leaves writhe on the greensward. The breezes wail a dirge. The

summer rain is pallid like winter snow. And--O bitterest cup of

all!--the golden memories of the past have vanished from your heart. I

totter down to the grave, while you go on from strength to strength.

The Junes that gave you life brought death to me, and you sorrow not. O

child of my tender care, look not so coldly on my pain! Breathe one

sigh of regret, drop one tear of pity, before we part!"

The mournful murmur ceased. I am not adamant. My savage crouched out of

sight among the underbrush. I think something stirred in the back of my

eyes. There was even a suspicion of dampness in front. I thrust my hand

in my pocket to have my handkerchief ready in case of a catastrophe. It

was an unfortunate proceeding. My pocket was crammed full. I had to

push my fingers in between all manner of rubbish, to get at the

required article, and when I got hold of it, I had to pull with all my

might to get it out, and when it did come, out with it came a tin box

of mustard seed, a round wooden box of tooth-powder, a ball of twine, a

paper of picture-books, and a pair of gloves. Of course, the covers of

both the boxes came off. The seed scattered over the floor. The

tooth-powder puffed a white cloud into my face. The ball of twine

unrolled and trundled to the other side of the room. I gathered up what

I could, but, by the time order was restored and my handkerchief ready

for use, I had no use for it. The stirring in the back of my eyes had

stopped. The dewiness had disappeared. My savage sprang out from the

underbrush and brandished his tomahawk. And to the old house I made

answer as a Bushman of Caffraria might, or a Sioux of the

Prae-Pilgrimic Age:--

"Old House, hush up! Why do you talk stuff? 'Golden memories' indeed!

To hear you, one might suppose you were an ivied castle on the Rhine,

and I a fair-haired princess, cradled in the depths of regal luxury,

feeding on the blossoms of a thousand generations, and heroic from

inborn royalty. 'Tender care'! Did you not wake me in the middle of the

night, last summer, by trickling down water on my face from a passing

shower? and did I not have to get up at that unearthly hour to move the

bed, and step splash into a puddle, and come very near being floated

away? Did not the water drip, drip, drip upon my writing-desk, and soak

the leather and swell the wood, and stain the ribbon and spoil the

paper inside, and all because you were treacherous at the roof and let

it? Have you not made a perfect rattery of yourself, yawning at every

possible chink and crumbling at the underpinning, and keeping me awake

night after night by the tramp of a whole brigade of the Grand Army

that slaughtered Bishop Hatto? Whenever a breeze comes along stout

enough to make an aspen-leaf tremble, don't you immediately go into

hysterics, and rock, and creak, and groan, as if you were the shell of

an earthquake? Don't you shrivel at every window to let in the

northeasters and all the snow-storms that walk abroad? Whenever a

needle, or a pencil, or a penny drops, don't you open somewhere and

take it in? 'Golden memories'! Leaden memories! Wooden memories! Madden

memories!"

My savage gave a war-whoop. I turned scornfully. I swept down the

staircase. I banged the front-door. I locked it with an accent, and

marched up the hill. A soft sighing breathed past me. I knew it was the

old house mourning for her departing child. The sun had disappeared,

but the western sky was jubilant in purple and gold. The cool evening

calmed me. The echoes of the war-whoop vibrated almost tenderly along

the hushed hillside. I paused on the summit of the hill and looked

back. Down in the valley stood the sorrowful house, tasting the first

bitterness of perpetual desolation. The maples and the oaks and the

beech-trees hung out their flaming banners. The pond lay dark in the

shadow of the circling hills. The years called to me,--the happy,

sun-ripe years that I had left tangled in the apple-blossoms, and

moaning among the pines, and tinkling in the brook, and floating in the

cups of the water-lilies. They looked up at me from the orchard, dark

and cool. They thrilled across from the hill-tops, glowing still with

the glowing sky. I heard their voice by the lilac-bush. They smiled at

me under the peach-trees, and where the blackberries had ripened

against the southern wall. I felt them once more in the clover-smells

and the new-mown hay. They swayed again in the silken tassels of the

crisp, rustling corn. They hummed with the bees in the garden-borders.

They sang with the robins in the cherry-trees, and their tone was

tender and passing sweet. They besought me not to cast away their

memory for despite of the black-browed troop whose vile and sombre

robes had mingled in with their silver garments. They prayed me to

forget, but not all. They minded me of the sweet counsel we had taken

together, when summer came over the hills and walked by the

watercourses. They bade me remember the good tidings of great joy which

they had brought me when my eyes were dim with unavailing tears. My

lips trembled to their call. The war-whoop chanted itself into a

vesper. A happy calm lifted from my heart and quivered out over the

valley, and a comfort settled on the sad old house as I stretched forth

my hands and from my inmost soul breathed down a _Benedicite!_

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