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DREAM LIFE:
A
FABLE OF THE SEASONS
BY
DONALD G. MITCHELL
---- We are such stuff
As dreams are made of; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep
Tempest.
NEW YORK
SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, AND COMPANY
1876.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by
Charles Scribner & Co.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H.O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY
_A NEW PREFACE._
Twelve years ago, this autumn, when I had finished the concluding
chapters of this little book, I wrote a letter of Dedication to
Washington Irving, and, forwarding it by mail to Sunnyside, begged his
permission to print it. I think I shall gratify a rational curiosity of
my readers (however much they may condemn my vanity) if I give his reply
in full.
"My dear Sir,--
"Though I have a great disinclination in general to be the object
of literary oblations and compliments, yet in the present instance
I have enjoyed your writings with such peculiar relish, and been so
drawn toward the author by the qualities of head and heart evinced
in them, that I confess I feel gratified by a dedication,
over-flattering as I may deem it, which may serve as an outward
sign that we are cordially linked together in sympathies and
friendship.
"I would only suggest that in your dedication you would omit the
LL.D., a learned dignity urged upon me very much 'against the
stomach of my sense,' and to which I have never laid claim.
"Ever, my dear sir,
"Yours, very truly,
"Washington Irving
"Sunnyside, Nov. 1851."
I had been personally presented to Mr. Irving for the first time, only a
year before, under the introduction of my good friend, Mr. Clark (the
veteran Editor of the old Knickerbocker in its palmy days). Thereafter I
had met him from time to time, and had paid a charming visit to his
delightful home of Sunnyside. But it was after the date of the
publication of this book and during the summer of 1852, that I saw Mr.
Irving more familiarly, and came to appreciate more fully that charming
_bonhomie_ and geniality in his character which we all recognize so
constantly in his writings. And if I set down here a few recollections
of that pleasant intercourse, they will, I am sure, more than make good
the place of the old letter of Dedication, and will serve to keep alive
the association I wish to cherish between my little book and the name of
the distinguished author who so kindly showed me his favor.
For the first time, after many years, Mr. Irving made a stay of a few
weeks at Saratoga, in the summer of 1852. By good fortune, I chanced to
occupy a room upon the same corridor of the hotel, within a few doors of
his, and shared very many of his early morning walks to the "Spring."
What at once struck me very forcibly in the course of these walks, was
the rare alertness and minuteness of his observation: not a fair young
face could dash past us in its drapery of muslin, but the eye of the old
gentleman drank in all its freshness and beauty with the keen appetite
and the grateful admiration of a boy; not a dowager brushed past us
bedizened with finery, but he fastened the apparition in my memory with
some piquant remark,--as the pin of an entomologist fastens a gaudy fly.
No rheumatic old hero-invalid, battered in long wars with the
doctors,--no droll marplot of a boy, could appear within range, but I
could see in the changeful expression of my companion the admeasurement
and quiet adjustment of the appeal which either made upon his sympathy
or his humor. A flower, a tree, a burst of music, a country market-man
hoisted upon his wagon of cabbages,--all these by turns caught and
engaged his attention, however little they might interrupt the flow of
his talk.
I ventured to ask on one occasion, if he had depended solely upon his
memory for the thousand little descriptions of natural objects which
occur in his books.
"Not wholly," he replied; and went on to tell me it had been his way, in
the earlier days of his authorship, to carry little tablets with him
into the country, and whenever he saw a scene specially picturesque,--a
cottage of marked features, a noticeable tree, any picture, in short,
which promised service to him,--to note down its distinguishing points,
and hold it in reserve.
"This," said he, "is one among those small arts and industries which a
person who writes much must avail himself of: they are equivalent to the
little thumb-sketches from which a painter makes up his larger
compositions."
On our way to the church on a certain Sunday morning, he tapped my
shoulder as we entered the little gate, and called my attention to a
lithe young Indian girl, who had strolled down from the campment on the
plains, and was standing proudly erect upon the church-porch, with
finger to her lips, scanning curiously the worshippers as they passed
in.
"What a splendid figure of a woman!" said he, "she is puzzling over the
extravagances and devotions of the white-faces."
The black, straight elf-locks, the swart face, the great wondering eye,
with the gay blanket, short gown of woollen-stuff, and brilliant
moccasins, made a striking picture to be sure; and I could not help
thinking, that if the apparition had chanced upon him earlier, she might
have figured in some story of Pokanoket or of the Prairies.
I took occasion one morning to ask if he was always able to control the
"humors of writing," and to put himself resolutely to work, whatever
might be the state of his feeling.
"No," he said, very decidedly,--"unfortunately I cannot: there are men
who do, I believe. I always envied them; but there was a period of a
month or more, after I had finally decided upon literary labors, and had
declined a lucrative position under Government, when it seemed as if I
was utterly bereft of all the fancies I ever had; for weeks I could do
nothing; but at last the clouds lifted, and I wrote off the first
numbers of the 'Sketch-Book,' and dispatched them to my good friends in
this country, to make the most of. I feared it would not be much.
"And the worst of it is," continued he, "the good people do not allow
for these periods of depression; if a man does a thing tolerably well in
his happy moods, they see no reason why he should not be always in a
happy mood."
I asked if he had never found relief, and a stimulant to work, in the
reading aloud of some favorite old author.
"Often," said he; "and none are more effective with me for this service
than the sacred writers; I think I have waked a good many sleeping
fancies by the reading of a chapter in Isaiah."
In answer to inquiries of mine in regard to the incomplete state of
several of the stories of "Wolfert's Roost," he said: "Yes, we do not
get through all we lay out. Some of those sketches had lain in my mind
for a great many years; they made a sort of garret-trumpery, of which I
thought I would make a general clearance, leaving the odds and ends to
take care of themselves.
"There was a novel too, I once laid out, in which an English lad, being
a son of one of the old Regicide Judges, was to come over to New England
in search of his father: he was to meet with a throng of adventures, and
to arrive at length upon a Saturday night, in the midst of a terrible
thunder-storm, at the house of a stern old Massachusetts Puritan, who
comes out to answer to the rappings; and by a flash of lightning which
gleams upon the harsh, iron visage of the old man, the son fancies he
recognizes his father."
And as he told it, the old gentleman wrinkled his brow, and tried to put
on the fierce look he would describe.
"It's all there is of it," said he. "If you want to make a story, you
can furbish it up."
There were among other notable people at Saratoga, during the summer of
which I speak, the well-known Mrs. Dr. R----, of Philadelphia, since
deceased,--a woman of great eccentricities, but of a wonderfully
masculine mind, and of great cultivation. It was a fancy of hers to give
special, social patronage to foreign artists; and among those just then
at Saratoga, and the recipients of her favor, were a distinguished
violinist--whose name I do not now recall--and the newly married Mme.
Alboni. Mr. Irving, in common with her other acquaintances, she was
inclined to make contributory to her attentions. To this Mr. Irving was
not averse, both from his extreme love of music, and his kindliness
toward the artists themselves; yet, in his own quiet way, I think he
fretted considerably at being pounced upon at odd hours to give them
French talk.
"It's very awkward," said he to me one day; "I have had large occasion
for practice to be sure; but I rather fancy, after all, our own
language; it's heartier and easier."
He was utterly incapable of being lionized. Time and again, under the
trees in the court of the hotel, did I hear him enter upon some pleasant
story, lighted up with that rare turn of his eye, and by his deft
expressions, when, as chance acquaintances grouped about him,--as is the
way of watering-places,--and eager listeners multiplied, his hilarity
and spirit took a chill from the increasing auditory, and drawing
abruptly to a close, he would sidle away with a friend and be gone.
Among the visitors was a tall, interesting young girl--from Louisiana,
if I mistake not--who had the reputation of being a great heiress, and
who was, of course, beset by a host of admirers. There was something
very attractive in her air, and Mr. Irving was never tired of gazing on
her as she walked, with what he called a "faun-like step," across the
lawn, or up and down the corridors. Her eyes too--"dove-like," he
termed them--were his special admiration. He watched with an amused
interest the varying fortunes of the rival lovers, and often met me
with--"Well, who is in favor to-day?" And he discussed very freely the
varying chances.
One brusque, heavy man, who thought to carry the matter through by a
_coup de main_, he was sure could never succeed. A second, who was most
assiduous, but whose brazen confidence was unyielding, he counted still
less upon. But a quiet, somewhat older gentleman, whose look was ever
full of tender appeal, and who bore himself with a modest dignity, he
reckoned the probable winner. "He will feel a Nay grievously," said he;
"but for the others, they will forget it in a supper."
I believe it eventually proved that no one of those present was the
successful suitor. I know only that the fair girl was afterward a bride;
and (what we all so little anticipated) her home is now a scene of
desolation, her fortune very likely a wreck, her family scattered or
slain, and herself, maybe, a fugitive.
I saw Mr. Irving afterward repeatedly in New York, and passed two
delightful days at Sunnyside. I can never forget a drive with him upon a
crisp autumn morning through Sleepy Hollow, and all the notable
localities of his neighborhood, in the course of which he kindly called
my attention, in the most unaffected and incidental way, to those which
had been specially illustrated by his pen; and with a rare humor
recounted to me some of his boyish adventures among the old Dutch
farmers of this region. Most of all, it is impossible for me to forget
the rare kindliness of his manner, his friendly suggestions, and the
beaming expression of his eye.
I met it last at the little stile from which I strolled away to the
station at Dearman; and when I saw the kind face again, it was in the
coffin, at the little church where he attended service. But the eyes
were closed, and the wonderful radiance of expression gone. It seemed to
me that death never took away more from a living face; it was but a cold
shadow lying there, of the man who had taught a nation to love him.
Edgewood, _Sept._ 1863.
CONTENTS.
_INTRODUCTORY._
page
I. With my Aunt Tabithy 1
II. With my Reader 9
_DREAMS OF BOYHOOD._
Spring 21
I. Rain in the Garret 26
II. School-Dreams 33
III. Boy Sentiment 43
IV. A Friend made and Friend lost 49
V. Boy Religion 60
VI. A New-England Squire 67
VII. The Country Church 78
VIII. A Home Scene 86
_DREAMS OF YOUTH._
Summer 97
I. Cloister Life 104
II. First Ambition 115
III. College Romance 120
IV. First Look at the World 132
V. A Broken Home 142
VI. Family Confidence 151
VII. A Good Wife 159
VIII. A Broken Hope 167
_DREAMS OF MANHOOD._
Autumn 179
I. Pride of Manliness 184
II. Man of the World 191
III. Manly Hope 198
IV. Manly Love 207
V. Cheer and Children 213
VI. A Dream of Darkness 221
VII. Peace 229
_DREAMS OF AGE._
Winter 239
I. What is Gone 243
II. What is Left 249
III. Grief and Joy of Age 255
IV. The End of Dreams 261
_INTRODUCTORY._
I.
_With my Aunt Tabithy._
"Pshaw!" said my Aunt Tabithy, "have you not done with dreaming?"
My Aunt Tabithy, though an excellent and most notable person, loves
occasionally a quiet bit of satire. And when I told her that I was
sharpening my pen for a new story of those dreamy fancies and
half-experiences which lie grouped along the journeying hours of my
solitary life, she smiled as if in derision.
----"Ah, Isaac," said she, "all that is exhausted; you have rung so many
changes on your hopes and your dreams, that you have nothing left but to
make them real--if you can."
It is very idle to get angry with a good-natured old lady. I did better
than this,--I made her listen to me.
----Exhausted, do you say, Aunt Tabithy? Is life then exhausted; is
hope gone out; is fancy dead?
No, no. Hope and the world are full; and he who drags into book-pages a
phase or two of the great life of passion, of endurance, of love, of
sorrow, is but wetting a feather in the sea that breaks ceaselessly
along the great shore of the years. Every man's heart is a living drama;
every death is a drop-scene; every book only a faint foot-light to throw
a little flicker on the stage.
There is no need of wandering widely to catch incident or adventure;
they are everywhere about us; each day is a succession of escapes and
joys,--not perhaps clear to the world, but brooding in our thought, and
living in our brain. From the very first, Angels and Devils are busy
with us, and we are struggling against them and for them.
No, no, Aunt Tabithy; this life of musing does not exhaust so easily. It
is like the springs on the farmland, that are fed with all the showers
and the dews of the year, and that from the narrow fissures of the rock
send up streams continually; or it is like the deep well in the meadow,
where one may see stars at noon when no stars are shining.
What is Reverie, and what are these Day-dreams, but fleecy cloud-drifts
that float eternally, and eternally change shapes, upon the great
over-arching sky of thought? You may seize the strong outlines that the
passion-breezes of to-day shall throw into their figures; but to-morrow
may breed a whirlwind that will chase swift, gigantic shadows over the
heaven of your thought, and change the whole landscape of your life.
Dream-land will never be exhausted, until we enter the land of dreams,
and until, in "shuffling off this mortal coil," thought will become
fact, and all facts will be only thought.
As it is, I can conceive no mood of mind more in keeping with what is to
follow upon the grave, than those fancies which warp our frail hulks
toward the ocean of the Infinite, and that so sublimate the realities of
this being, that they seem to belong to that shadowy realm whither every
day's journey is leading.
--It was warm weather, and my aunt was dozing. "What is this all to be
about?" said she, recovering her knitting-needle.
"About love, and toil, and duty, and sorrow," said I.
My aunt laid down her knitting, looked at me over the rim of her
spectacles, and--took snuff.
I said nothing.
"How many times have you been in love, Isaac?" said she.
It was now my turn to say, "Pshaw!"
Judging from her look of assurance, I could not possibly have made a
more satisfactory reply.
My aunt finished the needle she was upon, smoothed the stocking-leg over
her knee, and looking at me with a very comical expression, said, "Isaac,
you are a sad fellow!"
I did not like the tone of this; it sounded very much as if it would
have been in the mouth of any one else--"bad fellow."
And she went on to ask me, in a very bantering way, if my stock of
youthful loves was not nearly exhausted; and she cited the episode of
the fair-haired Enrica, as perhaps the most tempting that I could draw
from my experience.
A better man than myself, if he had only a fair share of vanity, would
have been nettled at this; and I replied somewhat tartly, that I had
never professed to write my experiences. These might be more or less
tempting; but certainly if they were of a kind which I have attempted to
portray in the characters of Bella, or of Carry, neither my Aunt Tabithy
nor any one else should have learned such truth from any book of mine.
There are griefs too sacred to be babbled to the world; and there may be
loves which one would forbear to whisper even to a friend.
No, no; imagination has been playing pranks with memory; and if I have
made the feeling real, I am content that the facts should be false.
Feeling, indeed, has a higher truth in it than circumstance. It appeals
to a larger jury for acquittal; it is approved or condemned by a better
judge. And if I can catch this bolder and richer truth of feeling, I
will not mind if the types of it are all fabrications.
If I run over some sweet experience of love, (my Aunt Tabithy brightened
a little,) must I make good the fact that the loved one lives, and
expose her name and qualities to make your sympathy sound? Or shall I
not rather be working upon higher and holier ground, if I take the
passion for itself, and so weave it into words, that you and every
willing sufferer may recognize the fervor, and forget the personality?
Life, after all, is but a bundle of hints, each suggesting actual and
positive development, but rarely reaching it. And as I recall these
hints, and in fancy trace them to their issues, I am as truly dealing
with life as if my life had dealt them all to me.
This is what I would be doing in the present book. I would catch up here
and there the shreds of feeling which the brambles and roughnesses of
the world have left tangling on my heart, and weave them out into those
soft and perfect tissues which, if the world had been only a little less
rough, might now perhaps enclose my heart altogether.
"Ah," said my Aunt Tabithy, as she smoothed the stocking-leg again, with
a sigh, "there is, after all, but one youth-time; and if you put down
its memories once, you can find no second growth."
My Aunt Tabithy was wrong. There is as much growth in the thoughts and
feelings that run behind us as in those that run before us. You may make
a rich, full picture of your childhood to-day; but let the hour go by,
and the darkness stoop to your pillow with its million shapes of the
past, and my word for it, you shall have some flash of childhood lighten
upon you, that was unknown to your busiest thought of the morning.
Let a week go by, and in some interval of care, as you recall the smile
of a mother, or some pale sister who is dead, a new crowd of memories
will rush upon your soul, and leave their traces in such tears as will
make you kinder and better for days and weeks. Or you shall assist at
some neighbor funeral, where the little dead one (like one you have seen
before) shall hold in its tiny grasp (as you have taught little dead
hands to do) fresh flowers, laughing flowers, lying lightly on the white
robe of the dear child,--all pale, cold, silent--
I had touched my Aunt Tabithy: she had dropped a stitch in her knitting.
I believe she was weeping.
--Aye, this brain of ours is a master-worker, whose appliances we do not
one half know; and this heart of ours is a rare storehouse, furnishing
the brain with new material every hour of our lives; and their limits we
shall not know, until they shall end--together.
Nor is there, as many faint-hearts imagine, but one phase of earnestness
in our life of feeling. One train of deep emotion cannot fill up the
heart: it radiates like a star, God-ward and earth-ward. It spends and
reflects all ways. Its force is to be reckoned not so much by token as
by capacity. Facts are the poorest and most slumberous evidences of
passion or of affection. True feeling is ranging everywhere; whereas
your actual attachments are too apt to be tied to sense.
A single affection may indeed be true, earnest, and absorbing; but such
an one, after all, is but a type--and if the object be worthy, a
glorious type--of the great book of feeling: it is only the vapor from
the caldron of the heart, and bears no deeper relation to its
exhaustless sources than the letter, which my pen makes, bears to the
thought that inspires it,--or than a single morning strain of your
orioles and thrushes bears to that wide bird-chorus which is making
every sunrise a worship, and every grove a temple!
My Aunt Tabithy nodded.
Nor is this a mere bachelor fling against constancy. I can believe,
Heaven knows, in an unalterable and unflinching affection, which neither
desires nor admits the prospect of any other. But when one is tasking
his brain to talk for his heart,--when he is not writing positive
history, but only making mention, as it were, of the heart's
capacities,--who shall say that he has reached the fulness, that he has
exhausted the stock of its feeling, or that he has touched its highest
notes? It is true, there is but one heart in a man to be stirred; but
every stir creates a new combination of feeling, that like the turn of a
kaleidoscope will show some fresh color or form.
A bachelor, to be sure, has a marvellous advantage in this; and with the
tenderest influences once anchored in the bay of marriage, there is
little disposition to scud off under each pleasant breeze of feeling.
Nay, I can even imagine--perhaps somewhat captiously--that after
marriage, feeling would become a habit, a rich and holy habit certainly,
but yet a habit, which weakens the omnivorous grasp of the affections,
and schools one to a unity of emotion that doubts and ignores the
promptness and variety of impulse which we bachelors possess.
My aunt nodded again.
Could it be that she approved what I had been saying? I hardly knew.
Poor old lady,--she did not know herself. She was asleep!
II.
_With my Reader._
Having silenced my Aunt Tabithy, I shall be generous enough, in my
triumph, to offer an explanatory chat to my reader.
This is a history of Dreams; and there will be those who will sneer at
such a history, as the work of a dreamer. So indeed it is; and you, my
courteous reader, are a dreamer too!
You would perhaps like to find your speculations about wealth, marriage,
or influence called by some better name than Dreams. You would like to
see the history of them--if written at all--baptized at the font of your
own vanity, with some such title as--life's cares, or life's work. If
there had been a philosophic naming to my observations, you might have
reckoned them good; as it is, you count them all bald and palpable
fiction.
But is it so? I care not how matter-of-fact you may be, you have in your
own life at some time proved the very truth of what I have set down; and
the chances are, that even now, gray as you may be, and economic as you
may be, and devotional as you pretend to be, you light up your Sabbath
reflections with just such dreams of wealth, of per centages, or of
family, as you will find scattered over these pages.
I am not to be put aside with any talk about stocks, and duties, and
respectability: all these, though very eminent matters, are but so many
types in the volume of your thought; and your eager resolves about them
are but so many ambitious waves breaking up from that great sea of
dreamy speculation that has spread over your soul from its first start
into the realm of Consciousness.
No man's brain is so dull, and no man's eye so blind, that they cannot
catch food for dreams. Each little episode of life is full, had we but
the perception of its fulness. There is no such thing as blank in the
world of thought. Every action and emotion have their development
growing and gaining on the soul. Every affection has its tears and
smiles. Nay, the very material world is full of meaning, and by
suggesting thought is making us what we are and what we will be.
The sparrow that is twittering on the edge of my balcony is calling up
to me this moment a world of memories that reach over half my lifetime,
and a world of hope that stretches farther than any flight of sparrows.
The rose-tree which shades his mottled coat is full of buds and
blossoms; and each bud and blossom is a token of promise that has
issues covering life, and reaching beyond death. The quiet sunshine
beyond the flower and beyond the sparrow,--glistening upon the leaves,
and playing in delicious waves of warmth over the reeking earth,--is
lighting both heart and hope, and quickening into activity a thousand
thoughts of what has been and of what will be. The meadow stretching
away under its golden flood,--waving with grain, and with the feathery
blossoms of the grass, and golden buttercups, and white, nodding
daisies,--comes to my eye like the lapse of fading childhood, studded
here and there with the bright blossoms of joy, crimsoned all over with
the flush of health, and enamelled with memories that perfume the soul.
The blue hills beyond, with deep-blue shadows gathered in their bosom,
lie before me like mountains of years, over which I shall climb through
shadows to the slope of Age, and go down to the deeper shadows of Death.
Nor are dreams without their variety, whatever your character may be. I
care not how much in the pride of your practical judgment, or in your
learned fancies, you may sneer at any dream of love, and reckon it all a
poet's fiction: there are times when such dreams come over you like a
summer-cloud, and almost stifle you with their warmth.
Seek as you will for increase of lands or moneys, and there are moments
when a spark of some giant mind will flash over your cravings, and wake
your soul suddenly to a quick and yearning sense of that influence which
is begotten of intellect; and you task your dreams--as I have copied
them here--to build before you the pleasures of such a renown.
I care not how worldly you may be: there are times when all distinctions
seem like dust, and when at the graves of the great you dream of a
coming country, where your proudest hopes shall be dimmed forever.
Married or unmarried, young or old, poet or worker, you are still a
dreamer, and will one time know, and feel, that your life is but a
dream. Yet you call this fiction: you stave off the thoughts in print
which come over you in reverie. You will not admit to the eye what is
true to the heart. Poor weakling, and worldling, you are not strong
enough to face yourself!
You will read perhaps with smiles; you will possibly praise the
ingenuity; you will talk with a lip schooled against the slightest
quiver of some bit of pathos, and say that it is--well done. Yet why is
it well done?--only because it is stolen from your very life and heart.
It is good, because it is so common; ingenious, because it is so honest;
well-conceived, because it is not conceived at all.
There are thousands of mole-eyed people who count all passion in print a
lie,--people who will grow into a rage at trifles, and weep in the dark,
and love in secret, and hope without mention, and cover it all under
the cloak of what they call--propriety. I can see before me now some
gray-haired old gentleman, very money-getting, very correct, very
cleanly, who reads the morning paper with unction, and his Bible with
determination,--who listens to dull sermons with patience, and who prays
with quiet self-applause; and yet there are moments belonging to his
life, when his curdled affections yearn for something that they have
not,--when his avarice oversteps all the commandments,--when his pride
builds castles full of splendor; and yet put this before his eye, and he
reads with the most careless air in the world, and condemns as arrant
fiction, what cannot be proved to the elders.
We do not like to see our emotions unriddled: it is not agreeable to the
proud man to find his weaknesses exposed; it is shocking to the
disappointed lover to see his heart laid bare; it is a great grief to
the pining maiden to witness the exposure of her loves. We do not like
our fancies painted; we do not contrive them for rehearsal: our dreams
are private, and when they are made public, we disown them.
I sometimes think that I must be a very honest fellow for writing down
those fancies,--which every one else seems afraid to whisper. I shall at
least come in for my share of the odium in entertaining such fancies:
indeed I shall expect the charge of entertaining them exclusively, and
shall scarce expect to find a single fellow-confessor, unless it be some
pure and innocent-thoughted girl, who will say _peccavi_ to--here and
there--a single rainbow fancy.
Well, I can bear it; but in bearing it, I shall be consoled with the
reflection that I have a great company of fellow-sufferers, who lack
only the honesty to tell me of their sympathy. It will even relieve in
no small degree my burden to watch the effort they will take to conceal
what I have so boldly divulged.
Nature is very much the same thing in one man that it is in another;
and, as I have already said, Feeling has a higher truth in it than
circumstance. Let it only be touched fairly and honestly, and the heart
of humanity answers; but if it be touched foully or one-sidedly, you may
find here and there a lame-souled creature who will give response, but
there is no heart-throb in it.
Of one thing I am sure:--if my pictures are fair, worthy, and hearty,
you _must_ see it in the reading; but if they are forced and hard, no
amount of kindness can make you feel their truth, as I want them felt.
I make no self-praise out of this: if feeling has been honestly set
down, it is only in virtue of a native impulse, over which I have
altogether too little control, but if it is set down badly, I have
wronged Nature, and (as Nature is kind) I have wronged myself.
A great many inquisitive people will, I do not doubt, be asking, after
all this prelude, if my pictures are true pictures? The question--the
courteous reader will allow me to say--is an impertinent one. It is but
a shabby truth that wants an author's affidavit to make it trustworthy.
I shall not help my story by any such poor support. If there are not
enough elements of truth, honesty, and nature in my pictures to make
them believed, they shall have no oath of mine to bolster them up.
I have been a sufferer in this way before now; and a little book that I
had the whim to publish a year since, has been set down by many as an
arrant piece of imposture. Claiming sympathy as a Bachelor, I have been
recklessly set down as a cold, undeserving man of family! My story of
troubles and loves has been sneered at as the sheerest gammon.
But among this crowd of cold-blooded critics, it was pleasant to hear of
one or two pursy old fellows who railed at me for winning the affections
of a sweet Italian girl, and then leaving her to pine in discontent! Yet
in the face of this, an old companion of mine in Rome, with whom I
accidentally met the other day, wondered how on earth I could have made
so tempting a story out of the matronly and black-haired spinster with
whom I happened to be quartered in the Eternal City!
I shall leave my critics to settle such differences between themselves;
and consider it far better to bear with slanders from both sides of the
house, than to bewray the pretty tenderness of the pursy old gentlemen,
or to cast a doubt upon the practical testimony of my quondam companion.
Both give me high and judicious compliment,--all the more grateful
because only half deserved. For I never yet was conscious--alas, that
the confession should be forced from me!--of winning the heart of any
maiden, whether native or Italian; and as for such delicacy of
imagination as to work up a lovely damsel out of the withered remnant
that forty odd years of Italian life can spare, I can assure my
middle-aged friends, (and it may serve as a _caveat_,) I can lay no
claim to it whatever.
The trouble has been, that those who have believed one passage, have
discredited another; and those who have sympathized with me in trifles,
have deserted me when affairs grew earnest. I have had sympathy enough
with my married griefs, but when it came to the perplexing torments of
my single life--not a weeper could I find!
I would suggest to those who intend to believe only half of my present
book, that they exercise a little discretion in their choice. I am not
fastidious in the matter, and only ask them to believe what counts most
toward the goodness of humanity, and to discredit--if they will persist
in it--only what tells badly for our common nature. The man, or the
woman, who believes well, is apt to work well; and Faith is as much the
key to happiness here, as it is the key to happiness hereafter.
I have only one thing more to say before I get upon my story. A great
many sharp-eyed people, who have a horror of light reading,--by which
they mean whatever does not make mention of stocks, cottons, or moral
homilies,--will find much fault with my book for its ephemeral
character.
I am sorry that I cannot gratify such: homilies are not at all in my
habit; and it does seem to me an exhausting way of disposing of a good
moral, to hammer it down to a single point, so that there shall be only
one chance of driving it home. For my own part, I count it a great deal
better philosophy to fuse it, and rarefy it, so that it shall spread out
into every crevice of a story, and give a color and a taste, as it were,
to the whole mass.
I know there are very good people, who, if they cannot lay their finger
on so much doctrine set down in old-fashioned phrase, will never get an
inkling of it at all. With such people, goodness is a thing of
understanding, more than of feeling, and all their morality has its
action in the brain.
God forbid that I should sneer at this terrible infirmity, which
Providence has seen fit to inflict; God forbid too, that I should not be
grateful to the same kind Providence for bestowing upon others among
his creatures a more genial apprehension of true goodness, and a hearty
sympathy with every shade of human kindness.
But in all this I am not making out a case for my own correct teaching,
or insinuating the propriety of my tone. I shall leave the book, in this
regard, to speak for itself; and whoever feels himself growing worse for
the reading, I advise to lay it down. It will be very harmless on the
shelf, however it may be in the hand.
I shall lay no claim to the title of moralist, teacher, or romancist: my
thoughts start pleasant pictures to my mind; and in a garrulous humor I
put my finger in the button-hole of my indulgent friend, and tell him
some of them,--giving him leave to quit me whenever he chooses.
Or, if a lady is my listener, let her fancy me only an honest,
simple-hearted fellow, whose familiarities are so innocent that she can
pardon them;--taking her hand in his, and talking on; sometimes looking
in her eyes, and then looking into the sunshine for relief; sometimes
prosy with narrative, and then sharpening up my matter with a few
touches of honest pathos;--let her imagine this, I say, and we may
become the most excellent friends in the world.
_SPRING;_
OR,
_DREAMS OF BOYHOOD._
_DREAMS OF BOYHOOD._
_Spring._
The old chroniclers made the year begin in the season of frosts; and
they have launched us upon the current of the months from the snowy
banks of January. I love better to count time from spring to spring; it
seems to me far more cheerful to reckon the year by blossoms than by
blight.
Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his sweet story of Virginia, makes the bloom
of the cocoa-tree, or the growth of the banana, a yearly and a loved
monitor of the passage of her life. How cold and cheerless in the
comparison would be the icy chronology of the North;--So many years have
I seen the lakes locked, and the foliage die!
The budding and blooming of spring seem to belong properly to the
opening of the months. It is the season of the quickest expansion, of
the warmest blood, of the readiest growth; it is the boy-age of the
year. The birds sing in chorus in the spring--just as children prattle;
the brooks run full--like the overflow of young hearts; the showers drop
easily--as young tears flow; and the whole sky is as capricious as the
mind of a boy.
Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child, struggles into the
warmth of life. The old year--say what the chronologists will--lingers
upon the very lap of spring, and is only fairly gone when the blossoms
of April have strown their pall of glory upon his tomb, and the
bluebirds have chanted his requiem.
It always seems to me as if an access of life came with the melting of
the winter's snows, and as if every rootlet of grass, that lifted its
first green blade from the matted _débris_ of the old year's decay, bore
my spirit upon it, nearer to the largess of Heaven.
I love to trace the break of spring step by step: I love even those long
rain-storms, that sap the icy fortresses of the lingering winter,--that
melt the snows upon the hills, and swell the mountain-brooks,--that make
the pools heave up their glassy cerements of ice, and hurry down the
crashing fragments into the wastes of ocean.
I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by day, by the stained
snow-banks, shrinking from the grass; and by the gentle drip of the
cottage-eaves. I love to search out the sunny slopes by a southern wall,
where the reflected sun does double duty to the earth and where the
frail anemone, or the faint blush of the arbutus, in the midst of the
bleak March atmosphere, will touch your heart, like a hope of Heaven in
a field of graves! Later come those soft, smoky days, when the patches
of winter grain show green under the shelter of leafless woods, and the
last snow-drifts, reduced to shrunken skeletons of ice, lie upon the
slope of northern hills, leaking away their life.
Then the grass at your door grows into the color of the sprouting grain,
and the buds upon the lilacs swell and burst. The peaches bloom upon the
wall, and the plums wear bodices of white. The sparkling oriole picks
string for his hammock on the sycamore, and the sparrows twitter in
pairs. The old elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their
spray with green; and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the
minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blossoms of the maple.
Finally the oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with grayish
tufts of a modest verdure, which by-and-by will be long and glossy
leaves. The dogwood pitches his broad, white tent in the edge of the
forest; the dandelions lie along the hillocks, like stars in a sky of
green; and the wild cherry, growing in all the hedge-rows, without other
culture than God's, lifts up to Him thankfully its tremulous white
fingers.
Amid all this come the rich rains of spring. The affections of a boy
grow up with tears to water them; and the year blooms with showers. But
the clouds hover over an April sky timidly, like shadows upon innocence.
The showers come gently, and drop daintily to the earth,--with now and
then a glimpse of sunshine to make the drops bright--like so many tears
of joy.
The rain of winter is cold, and it comes in bitter scuds that blind you;
but the rain of April steals upon you coyly, half reluctantly,--yet
lovingly--like the steps of a bride to the Altar.
It does not gather like the storm-clouds of winter, gray and heavy along
the horizon, and creep with subtle and insensible approaches (like age)
to the very zenith; but there are a score of white-winged swimmers
afloat, that your eye has chased as you lay fatigued with the delicious
languor of an April sun;--nor have you scarce noticed that a little bevy
of those floating clouds had grouped together in a sombre company. But
presently you see across the fields the dark gray streaks, stretching
like lines of mists from the green bosom of the valley to that spot of
sky where the company of clouds is loitering; and with an easy shifting
of the helm the fleet of swimmers come drifting over you, and drop their
burden into the dancing pools, and make the flowers glisten, and the
eaves drip with their crystal bounty.
The cattle linger still, cropping the new-come grass; and childhood
laughs joyously at the warm rain, or under the cottage-roof catches with
eager ear the patter of its fall.
----And with that patter on the roof,--so like to the patter of
childish feet,--my story of boyish dreams shall begin.
I.
_Rain in the Garret._
It is an old garret with big brown rafters; and the boards between are
stained darkly with the rain-storms of fifty years. And as the sportive
April shower quickens its flood, it seems as if its torrents would come
dashing through the shingles upon you, and upon your play. But it will
not; for you know that the old roof is strong, and that it has kept you,
and all that love you, for long years from the rain and from the cold;
you know that the hardest storms of winter will only make a little
oozing leak, that trickles down the brown stains--like tears.
You love that old garret-roof; and you nestle down under its slope with
a sense of its protecting power that no castle-walls can give to your
maturer years. Aye, your heart clings in boyhood to the roof-tree of the
old family garret with a grateful affection and an earnest confidence,
that the after-years--whatever may be their successes, or their
honors--can never re-create. Under the roof-tree of his home the boy
feels SAFE: and where in the whole realm of life, with its
bitter toils and its bitterer temptations, will he feel _safe_ again?
But this you do not know. It seems only a grand old place; and it is
capital fun to search in its corners, and drag out some bit of quaint
old furniture, with a leg broken, and lay a cushion across it, and fix
your reins upon the lion's claws of the feet, and then--gallop away! And
you offer sister Nelly a chance, if she will be good; and throw out very
patronizing words to little Charlie, who is mounted upon a much humbler
horse,--to wit, a decrepit nursery-chair,--as he of right should be,
since he is three years your junior.
I know no nobler forage-ground for a romantic, venturesome, mischievous
boy, than the garret of an old family mansion on a day of storm. It is a
perfect field of chivalry. The heavy rafters, the dashing rain, the
piles of spare mattresses to carouse upon, the big trunks to hide in,
the old white coats and hats hanging in obscure corners, like
ghosts,--are great! And it is so far away from the old lady who keeps
rule in the nursery, that there is no possible risk of a scolding for
twisting off the fringe of the rug. There is no baby in the garret to
wake up. There is no "company" in the garret to be disturbed by the
noise. There is no crotchety old Uncle, or Grand-Ma, with their
everlasting "Boys, boys!" and then a look of such horror!
There is great fun in groping through a tall barrel of books and
pamphlets, on the look-out for startling pictures; and there are
chestnuts in the garret drying, which you have discovered on a ledge of
the chimney; and you slide a few into your pocket, and munch them
quietly,--giving now and then one to Nelly, and begging her to keep
silent,--for you have a great fear of its being forbidden fruit.
Old family garrets have their stock, as I said, of castaway clothes of
twenty years gone by; and it is rare sport to put them on; buttoning in
a pillow or two for the sake of good fulness; and then to trick out
Nelly in some strange-shaped head-gear, and old-fashioned brocade
petticoat caught up with pins; and in such guise to steal cautiously
down-stairs, and creep slyly into the sitting-room,--half afraid of a
scolding, and very sure of good fun,--trying to look very sober, and yet
almost ready to die with the laugh that you know you will make. And your
mother tries to look harshly at little Nelly for putting on her
grandmother's best bonnet; but Nelly's laughing eyes forbid it utterly;
and the mother spoils all her scolding with a perfect shower of kisses.
After this you go, marching very stately, into the nursery, and utterly
amaze the old nurse; and make a deal of wonderment for the staring,
half-frightened baby, who drops his rattle, and makes a bob at you as if
he would jump into your waistcoat-pocket.
But you grow tired of this; you tire even of the swing, and of the
pranks of Charlie; and you glide away into a corner with an old,
dog's-eared copy of "Robinson Crusoe." And you grow heart and soul into
the story, until you tremble for the poor fellow with his guns behind
the palisade; and are yourself half dead with fright when you peep
cautiously over the hill with your glass, and see the cannibals at their
orgies around the fire.
Yet, after all, you think the old fellow must have had a capital time
with a whole island to himself; and you think you would like such a time
yourself, if only Nelly and Charlie could be there with you. But this
thought does not come till afterward; for the time you are nothing but
Crusoe; you are living in his cave with Poll the parrot, and are looking
out for your goats and man Friday.
You dream what a nice thing it would be for you to slip away some
pleasant morning,--not to York, as young Crusoe did, but to New
York,--and take passage as a sailor; and how, if they knew you were
going, there would be such a world of good-byes; and how, if they did
not know it, there would be such a world of wonder!
And then the sailor's dress would be altogether such a jaunty affair;
and it would be such rare sport to lie off upon the yards far aloft, as
you have seen sailors in pictures, looking out upon the blue and
tumbling sea. No thought now, in your boyish dreams, of sleety storms,
and cables stiffened with ice, and crashing spars, and great icebergs
towering fearfully around you!
You would have better luck than even Crusoe; you would save a compass,
and a Bible, and stores of hatchets, and the captain's dog, and great
puncheons of sweetmeats, (which Crusoe altogether overlooked;) and you
would save a tent or two, which you could set up on the shore, and an
American flag, and a small piece of cannon, which you could fire as
often as you liked. At night you would sleep in a tree,--though you
wonder how Crusoe did it,--and would say the prayers you had been taught
to say at home, and fall to sleep, dreaming of Nelly and Charlie.
At sunrise, or thereabouts, you would come down, feeling very much
refreshed; and make a very nice breakfast off of smoked herring and
sea-bread, with a little currant jam, and a few oranges. After this you
would haul ashore a chest or two of the sailors' clothes, and putting a
few large jackknives in your pocket, would take a stroll over the
island, and dig a cave somewhere, and roll in a cask or two of
sea-bread. And you fancy yourself growing after a time very tall and
corpulent, and wearing a magnificent goat-skin cap trimmed with green
ribbons, and set off with a plume. You think you would have put a few
more guns in the palisade than Crusoe did, and charged them with a
little more grape.
After a long while you fancy a ship would arrive which would carry you
back; and you count upon very great surprise on the part of your father
and little Nelly, as you march up to the door of the old family mansion,
with plenty of gold in your pocket, and a small bag of cocoa-nuts for
Charlie, and with a great deal of pleasant talk about your island far
away in the South Seas.
----Or perhaps it is not Crusoe at all, that your eyes and your heart
cling to, but only some little story about Paul and Virginia;--that dear
little Virginia! how many tears have been shed over her--not in garrets
only, or by boys only!
You would have liked Virginia, you know you would; but you perfectly
hate the beldame aunt who sent for her to come to France; you think she
must have been like the old schoolmistress, who occasionally boxes your
ears with the cover of the spelling-book, or makes you wear one of the
girls' bonnets, that smells strongly of pasteboard and calico.