of that fond Nelly whose warm sisterly affection measures itself
hopefully against the proud associations of your growing years,--and
whose deep, loving eye, half suffused with its native tenderness, seems
longing to win you back to the old joys of that Home-love, which linger
on the distant horizon of your boyhood like the golden glories of a
sinking day.
As the night wanes, you wander for a last look toward the dingy walls
that have made for you so long a home. The old broken expectancies, the
days of glee, the triumphs, the rivalries, the defeats, the friendships,
are recalled with a fluttering of the heart that pride cannot wholly
subdue. You step upon the chapel-porch in the quiet of the night as you
would step on the graves of friends. You pace back and forth in the wan
moonlight, dreaming of that dim life which opens wide and long from the
morrow. The width and length oppress you: they crush down your
struggling self-consciousness like Titans dealing with Pygmies. A single
piercing thought of the vast and shadowy future, which is so near, tears
off on the instant all the gewgaws of pride, strips away the vanity that
doubles your bigness, and forces you down to the bare nakedness of what
you truly _are_!
With one more yearning look at the gray hulks of building, you loiter
away under the trees. The monster elms, which have bowered your proud
steps through four years of proudest life, lift up to the night their
rounded canopy of leaves with a quiet majesty that mocks you. They kiss
the same calm sky which they wooed four years ago; and they droop their
trailing limbs lovingly to the same earth, which has steadily and
quietly wrought in them their stature and their strength. Only here and
there you catch the loitering footfall of some other benighted dreamer,
strolling around the vast quadrangle of level green, which lies, like a
prairie-child, under the edging shadows of the town. The lights glimmer
one by one; and one by one, like breaking hopes, they fade away from the
houses. The full-risen moon, that dapples the ground beneath the trees,
touches the tall church-spires with silver, and slants their
loftiness--as memory slants grief--in long, dark, tapering lines upon
the silvered Green.
IV.
_First Look at the World._
Our Clarence is now fairly afloat upon the swift tide of Youth. The
thrall of teachers is ended, and the audacity of self-resolve is begun.
It is not a little odd, that, when we have least strength to combat the
world, we have the highest confidence in our ability.
Very few individuals in the world possess that happy consciousness of
their own prowess which belongs to the newly-graduated collegian. He has
most abounding faith in the tricksy panoply that he has wrought out of
the metal of his Classics. His Mathematics, he has not a doubt, will
solve for him every complexity of life's questions; and his Logic will
as certainly untie all Gordian knots, whether in politics or ethics.
He has no idea of defeat; he proposes to take the world by storm; he
half wonders that quiet people are not startled by his presence. He
brushes with an air of importance about the halls of country hotels; he
wears his honor at the public tables; he fancies that the inattentive
guests can have little idea that the young gentleman, who so recently
delighted the public ear with his dissertation on the "General Tendency
of Opinion," is actually among them, and quietly eating from the same
dish of beef and of pudding!
Our poor Clarence does not know--Heaven forbid he should!--that he is
but little wiser now than when he turned his back upon the old Academy,
with its gallipots and broken retorts; and that with the addition of a
few Greek roots, a smattering of Latin, and some readiness of speech, he
is almost as weak for breasting the strong current of life as when a
boy. America is but a poor place for the romantic book-dreamer. The
demands of this new, Western life of ours are practical and earnest.
Prompt action, and ready tact, are the weapons by which to meet it, and
subdue it. The education of the cloister offers at best only a sound
starting-point from which to leap into the tide.
The father of Clarence is a cool, matter-of-fact man. He has little
sympathy with any of the romantic notions that enthrall a youth of
twenty. He has a very humble opinion--much humbler than you think he
should have--of your attainments at college. He advises a short period
of travel, that by observation you may find out more fully how that
world is made up with which you are henceforth to struggle.
Your mother half fears your alienation from the affections of home. Her
letters all run over with a tenderness that makes you sigh, and that
makes you feel a deep reproach. You may not have been wanting in the
more ordinary tokens of affection; you have made your periodic visits;
but you blush for the consciousness that fastens on you of neglect at
heart. You blush for the lack of that glow of feeling which once
fastened to every home-object.
[Does a man indeed outgrow affections as his mind ripens? Do the early
and tender sympathies become a part of his intellectual perceptions, to
be appreciated and reasoned upon as one reasons about truths of science?
Is their vitality necessarily young? Is there the same ripe, joyous
burst of the heart at the recollection of later friendships, which
belonged to those of boyhood; and are not the later ones more the
suggestions of judgment, and less the absolute conditions of the heart's
health?]
The letters of your mother, as I said, make you sigh: there is no moment
in our lives when we feel less worthy of the love of others, and less
worthy of our own respect, than when we receive evidences of kindness
which we know we do not merit,--and when souls are laid bare to us, and
we have too much indifference to lay bare our own in return.
"Clarence,"--writes that neglected mother,--"you do not know how much
you are in our thoughts, and how often you are the burden of my prayers.
Oh, Clarence, I could almost wish that you were still a boy,--still
running to me for those little favors which I was only too happy to
bestow,--still dependent in some degree on your mother's love for
happiness.
"Perhaps I do you wrong, Clarence, but it does seem from the changing
tone of your letters, that you are becoming more and more forgetful of
us all; that you are feeling less need of our advice, and--what I feel
far more deeply--less need of our affection. Do not, my son, forget the
lessons of home. There will come a time, I feel sure, when you will know
that those lessons are good. They may not indeed help you in that
intellectual strife which soon will engross you; and they may not have
fitted you to shine in what are called the brilliant circles of the
world, but they are such, Clarence, as make the heart pure and honest
and strong!
"You may think me weak to write you thus, as I would have written to my
light-hearted boy years ago; indeed I am not strong, but growing every
day more feeble.
"Nelly, your sweet sister, is sitting by me. 'Tell Clarence,' she says,
'to come home soon.' You know, my son, what hearty welcome will greet
you; and that, whether here or away, our love and prayers will be with
you always; and may God in his infinite mercy keep you from all harm!"
A tear or two--brushed away as soon as they come--is all that youth
gives to embalm such treasure of love! A gay laugh, or the challenge of
some companion of a day, will sweep away into the night the earnest,
regretful, yet happy dreams that rise like incense from the pages of
such hallowed affection.
The brusque world too is to be met, with all its hurry and promptitude.
Manhood, in our swift American world, is measured too much by
forgetfulness of all the sweet bonds which tie the heart to the home of
its first attachments. We deaden the glow that nature has kindled, lest
it may lighten our hearts into an enchanting flame of weakness. We have
not learned to make that flame the beacon of our purposes and the warmer
of our strength. We are men too early.
But an experience is approaching Clarence, that will drive his heart
home for shelter, like a wounded bird!
----It is an autumn morning, with such crimson glories to kindle it as
lie along the twin ranges of mountain that guard the Hudson. The white
frosts shine like changing silk in the fields of late-growing clover;
the river-mists curl, and idle along the bosom of the water, and creep
up the hill-sides, and at noon float their feathery vapors aloft in
clouds; the crimson trees blaze in the side valleys, and blend their
vermilion tints under the fairy hands of our American frost-painters
with the dark blood of the ash-trees and the orange-tinted oaks. Blue
and bright under the clear Fall heaven, the broad river shines before
the surging prow of the boat like a shield of steel.
The bracing air lights up rich dreams of life. Your fancy peoples the
valleys and the hill-tops with its creations; and your hope lends some
crowning beauty of the landscape to your dreamy future. The vision of
your last college year is not gone. That figure, whose elegance your
eyes then feasted on, still floats before you; and the memory of the
last talk with Laura is as vivid as if it were only yesterday that you
listened. Indeed this opening campaign of travel--although you are half
ashamed to confess it to yourself--is guided by the thought of her.
Dalton with a party of friends, his sister among them, is journeying to
the north. A hope of meeting them--scarce acknowledged as an
intention--spurs you on. The eye rests dreamily and vaguely on the
beauties that appear at every turn: they are beauties that charm you,
and charm you the more by an indefinable association with that fairy
object that floats before you, half unknown, and wholly unclaimed. The
quiet towns with their noonday stillness, the out-lying mansions with
their stately splendor, the bustling cities with their mocking din, and
the long reaches of silent and wooded shore, chime with their several
beauties to your heart, in keeping with the master-key that was touched
long weeks before.
The cool, honest advices of the father drift across your memory in
shadowy forms, as you wander through the streets of the first northern
cities; and all the need for observation, and the incentives to purpose,
which your ambitious designs would once have quickened, fade dismally
when you find that _she_ is not there. All the lax gayety of Saratoga
palls on the appetite; even the magnificent shores of Lake George,
though stirring your spirit to an insensible wonder and love, do not
cheat you into a trance that lingers. In vain the sun blazons every
isle, and lights every shaded cove, and at evening stretches the Black
Mountain in giant slumber on the waters.
Your thought bounds away from the beauty of sky and lake, and fastens
upon the ideal which your dreamy humors cherish. The very glow of
pursuit heightens your fervor,--a fervor that dims sadly the new-wakened
memories of home. The southern gates of Champlain, those fir-draped
Trosachs of America, are passed, and you find yourself, upon a golden
evening of Canadian autumn, in the quaint old city of Montreal.
Dalton with his party has gone down to Quebec. He is to return within a
few days on his way to Niagara. There is a letter from Nelly awaiting
you. It says:--"Mother is much more feeble: she often speaks of your
return in a way that I am sure, if you heard, Clarence, would bring you
back to us soon."
There is a struggle in your mind: old affection is weaker than young
pride and hope. Moreover, the world is to be faced; the new scenes
around you are to be studied. An answer is penned full of kind
remembrances, and begging a few days of delay. You wander, wondering,
under the quaint old houses, and wishing for the return of Dalton.
He meets you with that happy, careless way of his,--the dangerous way
which some men are born to, and which chimes easily to every tone of the
world,--a way you wondered at once; a way you admire now; and a way that
you will distrust as you come to see more of men. Miss Dalton--(it seems
sacrilege to call her Laura)--is the same elegant being that entranced
you first.
They urge you to join their party. But there is no need of urging: those
eyes, that figure, the whole presence indeed of Miss Dalton, attract you
with a power which you can neither explain nor resist. One look of grace
enslaves you; and there is a strange pride in the enslavement.
----Is it dream, or is it earnest,--those moonlit walks upon the hills
that skirt the city, when you watch the stars, listening to her voice,
and feel the pressure of that jewelled hand upon your arm?--when you
drain your memory of its whole stock of poetic beauties to lavish upon
her ear? Is it love, or is it madness, when you catch her eye as it
beams more of eloquence than lies in all your moonlight poetry, and feel
an exultant gush of the heart that makes you proud as a man, and yet
timid as a boy, beside her?
Has Dalton, with that calm, placid, _nonchalant_ look of his, any
inkling of the raptures which his elegant sister is exciting? Has the
stout, elderly gentleman, who is so prodigal of his bouquets and
attentions, any idea of the formidable rival that he has found? Has
Laura herself--you dream--any conception of that intensity of admiration
with which you worship?
----Poor Clarence! it is his first look at Life!
The Thousand Isles with their leafy beauties lie around your passing
boat, like the joys that skirt us, and pass us, on our way through life.
The Thousand Isles rise sudden before you, and fringe your yeasty track,
and drop away into floating spectres of beauty, of haze, of distance,
like those dreams of joy that your passion lends the brain. The low
banks of Ontario look sullen by night; and the moon, rising tranquilly
over the tops of vast forests that stand in majestic ranks over ten
thousand acres of shore-land, drips its silvery sparkles along the
rocking waters, and flashes across your foamy wake.
With such attendance, that subdues for the time the dreamy forays of
your passion, you draw toward the sound of Niagara; and its distant,
vague roar, coming through great aisles of gloomy forest, bears up your
spirit, like a child's, into the Highest Presence.
The morning after, you are standing with your party upon the steps of
the hotel. A letter is handed to you. Dalton remarks in a quizzical way,
that "it shows a lady's hand."
"Aha, a lady!" says Miss Dalton,--and _so_ gayly!
"A sister," I say; for it is Nelly's hand.
"By the by, Clarence," says Dalton, "it was a very pretty sister you
gave us a glimpse of at Commencement."
"Ah, you think so;" and there is something in your tone that shows a
little indignation at this careless mention of your fond Nelly; and from
those lips! It will occur to you again.
A single glance at the letter blanches your cheek. Your heart
throbs--throbs harder--throbs tumultuously. You bite your lip, for there
are lookers-on. But it will not do. You hurry away; you find your
chamber; you close and lock the door, and burst into a flood of tears.
V.
_A Broken Home._
It is Nelly's own fair hand, yet sadly blotted,--blotted with her tears,
and blotted with yours.
----"It is all over, dear, dear Clarence! Oh, how I wish you were here
to mourn with us! I can hardly now believe that our poor mother is
indeed dead."
----Dead!--It is a terrible word! You repeat it with a fresh burst of
grief. The letter is crumpled in your hand. Unfold it again, sobbing,
and read on.
"For a week she had been failing every day; but on Saturday we thought
her very much better. I told her I felt sure she would live to see you
again.
"'I shall never see him again, Nelly,' said she, bursting into tears."
----Ah, Clarence, where is your youthful pride, and your strength
now?--with only that frail paper to annoy you, crushed in your grasp!
"She sent for father, and taking his hand in hers, told him she was
dying. I am glad you did not see his grief. I was kneeling beside her,
and she put her hand upon my head, and let it rest there for a moment,
while her lips moved as if she were praying.
"'Kiss me, Nelly,' said she, growing fainter: kiss me again for
Clarence.'
"A little while after she died."
For a long time you remain with only that letter, and your thought, for
company. You pace up and down your chamber: again you seat yourself, and
lean your head upon the table, enfeebled by the very grief that you
cherish still. The whole day passes thus: you excuse yourself from all
companionship: you have not the heart to tell the story of your troubles
to Dalton,--least of all, to Miss Dalton. How is this? Is sorrow too
selfish, or too holy?
Toward nightfall there is a calmer and stronger feeling. The voice of
the present world comes to your ear again. But you move away from it
unobserved to that stronger voice of God in the Cataract. Great masses
of angry cloud hang over the west; but beneath them the red harvest sun
shines over the long reach of Canadian shore, and bathes the whirling
rapids in splendor. You stroll alone over the quaking bridge, and under
the giant trees of the Island, to the edge of the British Fall. You go
out to the little shattered tower, and gaze down, with sensations that
will last till death, upon the deep emerald of those awful masses of
water.
It is not the place for a bad man to ponder; it is not the atmosphere
for foul thoughts, or weak ones. A man is never better than when he has
the humblest sense of himself: he is never so unlike the spirit of Evil
as when his pride is utterly vanished. You linger, looking upon the
stream of fading sunlight that plays across the rapids, and down into
the shadow of the depths below, lit up with their clouds of spray;--yet
farther down, your sight swims upon the black eddying masses, with white
ribbons streaming across their glassy surface; and your dizzy eye
fastens upon the frail cockle-shells--their stout oarsmen dwindled to
pygmies--that dance like atoms upon the vast chasm, or like your own
weak resolves upon the whirl of Time.
Your thought, growing broad in the view, seems to cover the whole area
of life: you set up your affections and your duties; you build hopes
with fairy scenery, and away they all go, tossing like the relentless
waters to the deep gulf that gapes a hideous welcome! You sigh at your
weakness of heart, or of endeavor, and your sighs float out into the
breeze, that rises ever from the shock of the waves, and whirl,
empty-handed, to Heaven. You avow high purposes, and clench them with
round utterance; and your voice, like a sparrow's, is caught up in the
roar of the fall, and thrown at you from the cliffs, and dies away in
the solemn thunders of nature. Great thoughts of life come over you--of
its work and destiny--of its affections and duties, and roll down
swift--like the river--into the deep whirl of doubt and danger. Other
thoughts, grander and stronger, like the continuing rush of waters, come
over you, and knit your purposes together with their weight, and crush
you to exultant tears, and then leap, shattered and broken, from the
very edge of your intent into mists of fear!
The moon comes out, and gleaming through the clouds, braids its light
fantastic bow upon the waters. You feel calmer as the night deepens. The
darkness softens you; it hangs--like the pall that shrouds your mother's
corpse--low and heavily to your heart. It helps your inward grief with
some outward show. It makes the earth a mourner; it makes the flashing
water-drops so many attendant mourners. It makes the Great Fall itself a
mourner, and its roar a requiem!
The pleasure of travel is cut short. To one person of the little company
of fellow-voyagers you bid adieu with regret; pride, love, and hope
point toward her, while all the gentler affections stray back to the
broken home. Her smile of parting is very gracious, but it is not, after
all, such a smile as your warm heart pines for.
Ten days after, you are walking toward the old homestead with such
feelings as it never called up before. In the days of boyhood there were
triumphant thoughts of the gladness and the pride with which, when
grown to the stature of manhood, you would come back to that little town
of your birth. As you have bent with your dreamy resolutions over the
tasks of the cloister life, swift thoughts have flocked on you of the
proud step, and prouder heart, with which you would one day greet the
old acquaintances of boyhood; and you have regaled yourself on the
jaunty manner with which you would meet old Dr. Bidlow, and the
patronizing air with which you would address the pretty, blue-eyed
Madge.
It is late afternoon when you come in sight of the tall sycamores that
shade your home; you shudder now, lest you may meet any whom you once
knew. The first keen grief of youth seeks little of the sympathy of
companions: it lies--with a sensitive man--bounded within the narrowest
circles of the heart. They only who hold the key to its innermost
recesses can speak consolation. Years will make a change;--as the Summer
grows in fierce heats, the balminess of the violet banks of Spring is
lost in the odors of a thousand flowers;--the heart, as it gains in age,
loses freshness, but wins breadth.
----Throw a pebble into the brook at its source, and the agitation is
terrible, and the ripples chafe madly their narrowed banks;--throw in a
pebble when the brook has become a river, and you see a few circles,
widening and widening and widening, until they are lost in the gentle
every-day murmur of its life!
You draw your hat over your eyes, as you walk toward the familiar door:
the yard is silent; the night is falling gloomily; a few katydids are
crying in the trees. The mother's window, where at such a season as this
it was her custom to sit watching your play, is shut, and the blinds are
closed over it. The honeysuckle, which grew over the window, and which
she loved so much, has flung out its branches carelessly; and the
spiders have hung their foul nets upon its tendrils.
And she, who made that home so dear to your boyhood, so real to your
after-years,--standing amid all the flights of your youthful ambition,
and your paltry cares (for they seem paltry now), and your doubts, and
anxieties and weaknesses of heart, like the light of your hope--burning
ever there under the shadow of the sycamores,--a holy beacon, by whose
guidance you always came to a sweet haven, and to a refuge from all your
toils,--is gone, gone forever!
The father is there indeed,--beloved, respected, esteemed; but the
boyish heart, whose old life is now reviving, leans more readily and
more kindly into that void where once beat the heart of a mother.
Nelly is there,--cherished now with all the added love that is stricken
off from her who has left you forever. Nelly meets you at the door.
----"Clarence!"
----"Nelly!"
There are no other words; but you feel her tears as the kiss of welcome
is given. With your hand joined in hers, you walk down the hall into the
old, familiar room,--not with the jaunty college step,--not with any
presumption on your dawning manhood,--oh, no,--nothing of this!
Quietly, meekly, feeling your whole heart shattered, and your mind
feeble as a boy's, and your purposes nothing, and worse than
nothing,--with only one proud feeling you fling your arm around the form
of that gentle sister,--the pride of a protector,--the feeling--"_I_
will care for you now, dear Nelly!"--that is all. And even that, proud
as it is, brings weakness.
You sit down together upon the lounge; Nelly buries her face in her
hands, sobbing.
"Dear Nelly!" and your arm clasps her more fondly.
There is a cricket in the corner of the room, chirping very loudly. It
seems as if nothing else were living,--only Nelly, Clarence, and the
noisy cricket. Your eye on the chair where she used to sit; it is drawn
up with the same care as ever beside the fire.
"I am _so_ glad to see you, Clarence," says Nelly, recovering herself;
there is a sweet, sad smile now And sitting there beside you, she tells
you of it all,--of the day, and of the hour,--and how she looked,--and
of her last prayer, and how happy she was.
"And did she leave no message for me, Nelly?"
"Not to forget us, Clarence; but you could not!"
"Thank you, Nelly. And was there nothing else?"
"Yes, Clarence,--to meet her one day!"
You only press her hand.