MY DEAR BRIDGE:—Some of the more crabbed of my critics, I understand,
have pronounced your friend egotistical, indiscreet, and even
impertinent, on account of the Prefaces and Introductions with which,
on several occasions, he has seen fit to pave the reader’s way into the
interior edifice of a book. In the justice of this censure I do not
exactly concur, for the reasons, on the one hand, that the public
generally has negatived the idea of undue freedom on the author’s part,
by evincing, it seems to me, rather more interest in those aforesaid
Introductions than in the stories which followed; and that, on the
other hand, with whatever appearance of confidential intimacy, I have
been especially careful to make no disclosures respecting myself which
the most indifferent observer might not have been acquainted with, and
which I was not perfectly willing that my worst enemy should know. I
might further justify myself, on the plea that, ever since my youth, I
have been addressing a very limited circle of friendly readers, without
much danger of being overheard by the public at large; and that the
habits thus acquired might pardonably continue, although strangers may
have begun to mingle with my audience.
But the charge, I am bold to say, is not a reasonable one, in any view
which we can fairly take of it. There is no harm, but, on the contrary,
good, in arraying some of the ordinary facts of life in a slightly
idealized and artistic guise. I have taken facts which relate to
myself, because they chance to be nearest at hand, and likewise are my
own property. And, as for egotism, a person, who has been burrowing, to
his utmost ability, into the depths of our common nature, for the
purposes of psychological romance,—and who pursues his researches in
that dusky region, as he needs must, as well by the tact of sympathy as
by the light of observation,—will smile at incurring such an imputation
in virtue of a little preliminary talk about his external habits, his
abode, his casual associates, and other matters entirely upon the
surface. These things hide the man, instead of displaying him. You must
make quite another kind of inquest, and look through the whole range of
his fictitious characters, good and evil, in order to detect any of his
essential traits.
Be all this as it may, there can be no question as to the propriety of
my inscribing this volume of earlier and later sketches to you, and
pausing here, a few moments, to speak of them, as friend speaks to
friend; still being cautious, however, that the public and the critics
shall overhear nothing which we care about concealing. On you, if on no
other person, I am entitled to rely, to sustain the position of my
Dedicatee. If anybody is responsible for my being at this day an
author, it is yourself. I know not whence your faith came; but, while
we were lads together at a country college,—gathering blueberries, in
study-hours, under those tall academic pines; or watching the great
logs, as they tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin; or
shooting pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods; or bat-fowling in the
summer twilight; or catching trouts in that shadowy little stream
which, I suppose, is still wandering riverward through the
forest,—though you and I will never cast a line in it again,—two idle
lads, in short (as we need not fear to acknowledge now), doing a
hundred things that the Faculty never heard of, or else it had been the
worse for us,—still it was your prognostic of your friend’s destiny,
that he was to be a writer of fiction.
And a fiction-monger, in due season, he became. But was there ever such
a weary delay in obtaining the slightest recognition from the public,
as in my case? I sat down by the wayside of life, like a man under
enchantment, and a shrubbery sprung up around me, and the bushes grew
to be saplings, and the saplings became trees, until no exit appeared
possible, through the entangling depths of my obscurity. And there,
perhaps, I should be sitting at this moment, with the moss on the
imprisoning tree-trunks, and the yellow leaves of more than a score of
autumns piled above me, if it had not been for you. For it was through
your interposition—and that, moreover, unknown to himself—that your
early friend was brought before the public, somewhat more prominently
than theretofore, in the first volume of Twice-told Tales. Not a
publisher in America, I presume, would have thought well enough of my
forgotten or never-noticed stories to risk the expense of print and
paper; nor do I say this with any purpose of casting odium on the
respectable fraternity of booksellers, for their blindness to my
wonderful merit. To confess the truth, I doubted of the public
recognition quite as much as they could do. So much the more generous
was your confidence; and knowing, as I do, that it was founded on old
friendship rather than cold criticism, I value it only the more for
that.
So, now, when I turn back upon my path, lighted by a transitory gleam
of public favor, to pick up a few articles which were left out of my
former collections, I take pleasure in making them the memorial of our
very long and unbroken connection. Some of these sketches were among
the earliest that I wrote, and, after lying for years in manuscript,
they at last skulked into the Annuals or Magazines, and have hidden
themselves there ever since. Others were the productions of a later
period; others, again, were written recently. The comparison of these
various trifles—the indices of intellectual condition at far separate
epochs—affects me with a singular complexity of regrets. I am disposed
to quarrel with the earlier sketches, both because a mature judgment
discerns so many faults, and still more because they come so nearly up
to the standard of the best that I can achieve now. The ripened
autumnal fruit tastes but little better than the early windfalls. It
would, indeed, be mortifying to believe that the summer-time of life
has passed away, without any greater progress and improvement than is
indicated here. But—at least, so I would fain hope—these things are
scarcely to be depended upon, as measures of the intellectual and moral
man. In youth, men are apt to write more wisely than they really know
or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing
and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.
The truth that was only in the fancy then may have since become a
substance in the mind and heart.
I have nothing further, I think, to say; unless it be that the public
need not dread my again trespassing on its kindness, with any more of
these musty and mouse-nibbled leaves of old periodicals, transformed,
by the magic arts of my friendly publishers, into a new book. These are
the last. Or, if a few still remain, they are either such as no
paternal partiality could induce the author to think worth preserving,
or else they have got into some very dark and dusty hiding-place, quite
out of my own remembrance and whence no researches can avail to unearth
them. So there let them rest.
Very sincerely yours,
N. H.
LENOX, November 1, 1851.
THE SNOW-IMAGE:
A CHILDISH MIRACLE
One afternoon of a cold winter’s day, when the sun shone forth with
chilly brightness, after a long storm, two children asked leave of
their mother to run out and play in the new-fallen snow. The elder
child was a little girl, whom, because she was of a tender and modest
disposition, and was thought to be very beautiful, her parents, and
other people who were familiar with her, used to call Violet. But her
brother was known by the style and title of Peony, on account of the
ruddiness of his broad and round little phiz, which made everybody
think of sunshine and great scarlet flowers. The father of these two
children, a certain Mr. Lindsey, it is important to say, was an
excellent but exceedingly matter-of-fact sort of man, a dealer in
hardware, and was sturdily accustomed to take what is called the
common-sense view of all matters that came under his consideration.
With a heart about as tender as other people’s, he had a head as hard
and impenetrable, and therefore, perhaps, as empty, as one of the iron
pots which it was a part of his business to sell. The mother’s
character, on the other hand, had a strain of poetry in it, a trait of
unworldly beauty,—a delicate and dewy flower, as it were, that had
survived out of her imaginative youth, and still kept itself alive amid
the dusty realities of matrimony and motherhood.
So, Violet and Peony, as I began with saying, besought their mother to
let them run out and play in the new snow; for, though it had looked so
dreary and dismal, drifting downward out of the gray sky, it had a very
cheerful aspect, now that the sun was shining on it. The children dwelt
in a city, and had no wider play-place than a little garden before the
house, divided by a white fence from the street, and with a pear-tree
and two or three plum-trees overshadowing it, and some rose-bushes just
in front of the parlor-windows. The trees and shrubs, however, were now
leafless, and their twigs were enveloped in the light snow, which thus
made a kind of wintry foliage, with here and there a pendent icicle for
the fruit.
“Yes, Violet,—yes, my little Peony,” said their kind mother, “you may
go out and play in the new snow.”
Accordingly, the good lady bundled up her darlings in woollen jackets
and wadded sacks, and put comforters round their necks, and a pair of
striped gaiters on each little pair of legs, and worsted mittens on
their hands, and gave them a kiss apiece, by way of a spell to keep
away Jack Frost. Forth sallied the two children, with a
hop-skip-and-jump, that carried them at once into the very heart of a
huge snow-drift, whence Violet emerged like a snow-bunting, while
little Peony floundered out with his round face in full bloom. Then
what a merry time had they! To look at them, frolicking in the wintry
garden, you would have thought that the dark and pitiless storm had
been sent for no other purpose but to provide a new plaything for
Violet and Peony; and that they themselves had been created, as the
snow-birds were, to take delight only in the tempest, and in the white
mantle which it spread over the earth.
At last, when they had frosted one another all over with handfuls of
snow, Violet, after laughing heartily at little Peony’s figure, was
struck with a new idea.
“You look exactly like a snow-image, Peony,” said she, “if your cheeks
were not so red. And that puts me in mind! Let us make an image out of
snow,—an image of a little girl,—and it shall be our sister, and shall
run about and play with us all winter long. Won’t it be nice?”
“Oh yes!” cried Peony, as plainly as he could speak, for he was but a
little boy. “That will be nice! And mamma shall see it!”
“Yes,” answered Violet; “mamma shall see the new little girl. But she
must not make her come into the warm parlor; for, you know, our little
snow-sister will not love the warmth.”
And forthwith the children began this great business of making a
snow-image that should run about; while their mother, who was sitting
at the window and overheard some of their talk, could not help smiling
at the gravity with which they set about it. They really seemed to
imagine that there would be no difficulty whatever in creating a live
little girl out of the snow. And, to say the truth, if miracles are
ever to be wrought, it will be by putting our hands to the work in
precisely such a simple and undoubting frame of mind as that in which
Violet and Peony now undertook to perform one, without so much as
knowing that it was a miracle. So thought the mother; and thought,
likewise, that the new snow, just fallen from heaven, would be
excellent material to make new beings of, if it were not so very cold.
She gazed at the children a moment longer, delighting to watch their
little figures,—the girl, tall for her age, graceful and agile, and so
delicately colored that she looked like a cheerful thought more than a
physical reality; while Peony expanded in breadth rather than height,
and rolled along on his short and sturdy legs as substantial as an
elephant, though not quite so big. Then the mother resumed her work.
What it was I forget; but she was either trimming a silken bonnet for
Violet, or darning a pair of stockings for little Peony’s short legs.
Again, however, and again, and yet other agains, she could not help
turning her head to the window to see how the children got on with
their snow-image.
Indeed, it was an exceedingly pleasant sight, those bright little souls
at their task! Moreover, it was really wonderful to observe how
knowingly and skilfully they managed the matter. Violet assumed the
chief direction, and told Peony what to do, while, with her own
delicate fingers, she shaped out all the nicer parts of the
snow-figure. It seemed, in fact, not so much to be made by the
children, as to grow up under their hands, while they were playing and
prattling about it. Their mother was quite surprised at this; and the
longer she looked, the more and more surprised she grew.
“What remarkable children mine are!” thought she, smiling with a
mother’s pride; and, smiling at herself, too, for being so proud of
them. “What other children could have made anything so like a little
girl’s figure out of snow at the first trial? Well; but now I must
finish Peony’s new frock, for his grandfather is coming to-morrow, and
I want the little fellow to look handsome.”
So she took up the frock, and was soon as busily at work again with her
needle as the two children with their snow-image. But still, as the
needle travelled hither and thither through the seams of the dress, the
mother made her toil light and happy by listening to the airy voices of
Violet and Peony. They kept talking to one another all the time, their
tongues being quite as active as their feet and hands. Except at
intervals, she could not distinctly hear what was said, but had merely
a sweet impression that they were in a most loving mood, and were
enjoying themselves highly, and that the business of making the
snow-image went prosperously on. Now and then, however, when Violet and
Peony happened to raise their voices, the words were as audible as if
they had been spoken in the very parlor where the mother sat. Oh how
delightfully those words echoed in her heart, even though they meant
nothing so very wise or wonderful, after all!
But you must know a mother listens with her heart much more than with
her ears; and thus she is often delighted with the trills of celestial
music, when other people can hear nothing of the kind.
“Peony, Peony!” cried Violet to her brother, who had gone to another
part of the garden, “bring me some of that fresh snow, Peony, from the
very farthest corner, where we have not been trampling. I want it to
shape our little snow-sister’s bosom with. You know that part must be
quite pure, just as it came out of the sky!”
“Here it is, Violet!” answered Peony, in his bluff tone,—but a very
sweet tone, too,—as he came floundering through the half-trodden
drifts. “Here is the snow for her little bosom. O Violet, how
beau-ti-ful she begins to look!”
“Yes,” said Violet, thoughtfully and quietly; “our snow-sister does
look very lovely. I did not quite know, Peony, that we could make such
a sweet little girl as this.”
The mother, as she listened, thought how fit and delightful an incident
it would be, if fairies, or still better, if angel-children were to
come from paradise, and play invisibly with her own darlings, and help
them to make their snow-image, giving it the features of celestial
babyhood! Violet and Peony would not be aware of their immortal
playmates,—only they would see that the image grew very beautiful while
they worked at it, and would think that they themselves had done it
all.
“My little girl and boy deserve such playmates, if mortal children ever
did!” said the mother to herself; and then she smiled again at her own
motherly pride.
Nevertheless, the idea seized upon her imagination; and, ever and anon,
she took a glimpse out of the window, half dreaming that she might see
the golden-haired children of paradise sporting with her own
golden-haired Violet and bright-cheeked Peony.
Now, for a few moments, there was a busy and earnest, but indistinct
hum of the two children’s voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together
with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit,
while Peony acted rather as a laborer, and brought her the snow from
far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently had a proper
understanding of the matter, too!
“Peony, Peony!” cried Violet; for her brother was again at the other
side of the garden. “Bring me those light wreaths of snow that have
rested on the lower branches of the pear-tree. You can clamber on the
snowdrift, Peony, and reach them easily. I must have them to make some
ringlets for our snow-sister’s head!”
“Here they are, Violet!” answered the little boy. “Take care you do not
break them. Well done! Well done! How pretty!”
“Does she not look sweetly?” said Violet, with a very satisfied tone;
“and now we must have some little shining bits of ice, to make the
brightness of her eyes. She is not finished yet. Mamma will see how
very beautiful she is; but papa will say, ‘Tush! nonsense!—come in out
of the cold!’”
“Let us call mamma to look out,” said Peony; and then he shouted
lustily, “Mamma! mamma!! mamma!!! Look out, and see what a nice ’ittle
girl we are making!”
The mother put down her work for an instant, and looked out of the
window. But it so happened that the sun—for this was one of the
shortest days of the whole year—had sunken so nearly to the edge of the
world that his setting shine came obliquely into the lady’s eyes. So
she was dazzled, you must understand, and could not very distinctly
observe what was in the garden. Still, however, through all that
bright, blinding dazzle of the sun and the new snow, she beheld a small
white figure in the garden, that seemed to have a wonderful deal of
human likeness about it. And she saw Violet and Peony,—indeed, she
looked more at them than at the image,—she saw the two children still
at work; Peony bringing fresh snow, and Violet applying it to the
figure as scientifically as a sculptor adds clay to his model.
Indistinctly as she discerned the snow-child, the mother thought to
herself that never before was there a snow-figure so cunningly made,
nor ever such a dear little girl and boy to make it.
“They do everything better than other children,” said she, very
complacently. “No wonder they make better snow-images!”
She sat down again to her work, and made as much haste with it as
possible; because twilight would soon come, and Peony’s frock was not
yet finished, and grandfather was expected, by railroad, pretty early
in the morning. Faster and faster, therefore, went her flying fingers.
The children, likewise, kept busily at work in the garden, and still
the mother listened, whenever she could catch a word. She was amused to
observe how their little imaginations had got mixed up with what they
were doing, and carried away by it. They seemed positively to think
that the snow-child would run about and play with them.
“What a nice playmate she will be for us, all winter long!” said
Violet. “I hope papa will not be afraid of her giving us a cold!
Sha’n’t you love her dearly, Peony?”
“Oh yes!” cried Peony. “And I will hug her, and she shall sit down
close by me and drink some of my warm milk!”
“Oh no, Peony!” answered Violet, with grave wisdom. “That will not do
at all. Warm milk will not be wholesome for our little snow-sister.
Little snow people, like her, eat nothing but icicles. No, no, Peony;
we must not give her anything warm to drink!”
There was a minute or two of silence; for Peony, whose short legs were
never weary, had gone on a pilgrimage again to the other side of the
garden. All of a sudden, Violet cried out, loudly and joyfully,—“Look
here, Peony! Come quickly! A light has been shining on her cheek out of
that rose-colored cloud! and the color does not go away! Is not that
beautiful!”
“Yes; it is beau-ti-ful,” answered Peony, pronouncing the three
syllables with deliberate accuracy. “O Violet, only look at her hair!
It is all like gold!”
“Oh certainly,” said Violet, with tranquillity, as if it were very much
a matter of course. “That color, you know, comes from the golden
clouds, that we see up there in the sky. She is almost finished now.
But her lips must be made very red,—redder than her cheeks. Perhaps,
Peony, it will make them red if we both kiss them!”
Accordingly, the mother heard two smart little smacks, as if both her
children were kissing the snow-image on its frozen mouth. But, as this
did not seem to make the lips quite red enough, Violet next proposed
that the snow-child should be invited to kiss Peony’s scarlet cheek.
“Come, ’ittle snow-sister, kiss me!” cried Peony.
“There! she has kissed you,” added Violet, “and now her lips are very
red. And she blushed a little, too!”
“Oh, what a cold kiss!” cried Peony.
Just then, there came a breeze of the pure west-wind, sweeping through
the garden and rattling the parlor-windows. It sounded so wintry cold,
that the mother was about to tap on the window-pane with her thimbled
finger, to summon the two children in, when they both cried out to her
with one voice. The tone was not a tone of surprise, although they were
evidently a good deal excited; it appeared rather as if they were very
much rejoiced at some event that had now happened, but which they had
been looking for, and had reckoned upon all along.
“Mamma! mamma! We have finished our little snow-sister, and she is
running about the garden with us!”
“What imaginative little beings my children are!” thought the mother,
putting the last few stitches into Peony’s frock. “And it is strange,
too that they make me almost as much a child as they themselves are! I
can hardly help believing, now, that the snow-image has really come to
life!”
“Dear mamma!” cried Violet, “pray look out and see what a sweet
playmate we have!”
The mother, being thus entreated, could no longer delay to look forth
from the window. The sun was now gone out of the sky, leaving, however,
a rich inheritance of his brightness among those purple and golden
clouds which make the sunsets of winter so magnificent. But there was
not the slightest gleam or dazzle, either on the window or on the snow;
so that the good lady could look all over the garden, and see
everything and everybody in it. And what do you think she saw there?
Violet and Peony, of course, her own two darling children. Ah, but whom
or what did she see besides? Why, if you will believe me, there was a
small figure of a girl, dressed all in white, with rose-tinged cheeks
and ringlets of golden hue, playing about the garden with the two
children! A stranger though she was, the child seemed to be on as
familiar terms with Violet and Peony, and they with her, as if all the
three had been playmates during the whole of their little lives. The
mother thought to herself that it must certainly be the daughter of one
of the neighbors, and that, seeing Violet and Peony in the garden, the
child had run across the street to play with them. So this kind lady
went to the door, intending to invite the little runaway into her
comfortable parlor; for, now that the sunshine was withdrawn, the
atmosphere, out of doors, was already growing very cold.
But, after opening the house-door, she stood an instant on the
threshold, hesitating whether she ought to ask the child to come in, or
whether she should even speak to her. Indeed, she almost doubted
whether it were a real child after all, or only a light wreath of the
new-fallen snow, blown hither and thither about the garden by the
intensely cold west-wind. There was certainly something very singular
in the aspect of the little stranger. Among all the children of the
neighborhood, the lady could remember no such face, with its pure
white, and delicate rose-color, and the golden ringlets tossing about
the forehead and cheeks. And as for her dress, which was entirely of
white, and fluttering in the breeze, it was such as no reasonable woman
would put upon a little girl, when sending her out to play, in the
depth of winter. It made this kind and careful mother shiver only to
look at those small feet, with nothing in the world on them, except a
very thin pair of white slippers. Nevertheless, airily as she was clad,
the child seemed to feel not the slightest inconvenience from the cold,
but danced so lightly over the snow that the tips of her toes left
hardly a print in its surface; while Violet could but just keep pace
with her, and Peony’s short legs compelled him to lag behind.
Once, in the course of their play, the strange child placed herself
between Violet and Peony, and taking a hand of each, skipped merrily
forward, and they along with her. Almost immediately, however, Peony
pulled away his little fist, and began to rub it as if the fingers were
tingling with cold; while Violet also released herself, though with
less abruptness, gravely remarking that it was better not to take hold
of hands. The white-robed damsel said not a word, but danced about,
just as merrily as before. If Violet and Peony did not choose to play
with her, she could make just as good a playmate of the brisk and cold
west-wind, which kept blowing her all about the garden, and took such
liberties with her, that they seemed to have been friends for a long
time. All this while, the mother stood on the threshold, wondering how
a little girl could look so much like a flying snow-drift, or how a
snow-drift could look so very like a little girl.
She called Violet, and whispered to her.
“Violet my darling, what is this child’s name?” asked she. “Does she
live near us?”
“Why, dearest mamma,” answered Violet, laughing to think that her
mother did not comprehend so very plain an affair, “this is our little
snow-sister whom we have just been making!”
“Yes, dear mamma,” cried Peony, running to his mother, and looking up
simply into her face. “This is our snow-image! Is it not a nice ’ittle
child?”
At this instant a flock of snow-birds came flitting through the air. As
was very natural, they avoided Violet and Peony. But—and this looked
strange—they flew at once to the white-robed child, fluttered eagerly
about her head, alighted on her shoulders, and seemed to claim her as
an old acquaintance. She, on her part, was evidently as glad to see
these little birds, old Winter’s grandchildren, as they were to see
her, and welcomed them by holding out both her hands. Hereupon, they
each and all tried to alight on her two palms and ten small fingers and
thumbs, crowding one another off, with an immense fluttering of their
tiny wings. One dear little bird nestled tenderly in her bosom; another
put its bill to her lips. They were as joyous, all the while, and
seemed as much in their element, as you may have seen them when
sporting with a snow-storm.
Violet and Peony stood laughing at this pretty sight; for they enjoyed
the merry time which their new playmate was having with these
small-winged visitants, almost as much as if they themselves took part
in it.
“Violet,” said her mother, greatly perplexed, “tell me the truth,
without any jest. Who is this little girl?”
“My darling mamma,” answered Violet, looking seriously into her
mother’s face, and apparently surprised that she should need any
further explanation, “I have told you truly who she is. It is our
little snow-image, which Peony and I have been making. Peony will tell
you so, as well as I.”
“Yes, mamma,” asseverated Peony, with much gravity in his crimson
little phiz; “this is ’ittle snow-child. Is not she a nice one? But,
mamma, her hand is, oh, so very cold!”
While mamma still hesitated what to think and what to do, the
street-gate was thrown open, and the father of Violet and Peony
appeared, wrapped in a pilot-cloth sack, with a fur cap drawn down over
his ears, and the thickest of gloves upon his hands. Mr. Lindsey was a
middle-aged man, with a weary and yet a happy look in his wind-flushed
and frost-pinched face, as if he had been busy all the day long, and
was glad to get back to his quiet home. His eyes brightened at the
sight of his wife and children, although he could not help uttering a
word or two of surprise, at finding the whole family in the open air,
on so bleak a day, and after sunset too. He soon perceived the little
white stranger sporting to and fro in the garden, like a dancing
snow-wreath, and the flock of snow-birds fluttering about her head.
“Pray, what little girl may that be?” inquired this very sensible man.
“Surely her mother must be crazy to let her go out in such bitter
weather as it has been to-day, with only that flimsy white gown and
those thin slippers!”
“My dear husband,” said his wife, “I know no more about the little
thing than you do. Some neighbor’s child, I suppose. Our Violet and
Peony,” she added, laughing at herself for repeating so absurd a story,
“insist that she is nothing but a snow-image, which they have been busy
about in the garden, almost all the afternoon.”
As she said this, the mother glanced her eyes toward the spot where the
children’s snow-image had been made. What was her surprise, on
perceiving that there was not the slightest trace of so much labor!—no
image at all!—no piled up heap of snow!—nothing whatever, save the
prints of little footsteps around a vacant space!
“This is very strange!” said she.
“What is strange, dear mother?” asked Violet. “Dear father, do not you
see how it is? This is our snow-image, which Peony and I have made,
because we wanted another playmate. Did not we, Peony?”
“Yes, papa,” said crimson Peony. “This be our ’ittle snow-sister. Is
she not beau-ti-ful? But she gave me such a cold kiss!”
“Poh, nonsense, children!” cried their good, honest father, who, as we
have already intimated, had an exceedingly common-sensible way of
looking at matters. “Do not tell me of making live figures out of snow.
Come, wife; this little stranger must not stay out in the bleak air a
moment longer. We will bring her into the parlor; and you shall give
her a supper of warm bread and milk, and make her as comfortable as you
can. Meanwhile, I will inquire among the neighbors; or, if necessary,
send the city-crier about the streets, to give notice of a lost child.”
So saying, this honest and very kind-hearted man was going toward the
little white damsel, with the best intentions in the world. But Violet
and Peony, each seizing their father by the hand, earnestly besought
him not to make her come in.
“Dear father,” cried Violet, putting herself before him, “it is true
what I have been telling you! This is our little snow-girl, and she
cannot live any longer than while she breathes the cold west-wind. Do
not make her come into the hot room!”
“Yes, father,” shouted Peony, stamping his little foot, so mightily was
he in earnest, “this be nothing but our ’ittle snow-child! She will not
love the hot fire!”
“Nonsense, children, nonsense, nonsense!” cried the father, half vexed,
half laughing at what he considered their foolish obstinacy. “Run into
the house, this moment! It is too late to play any longer, now. I must
take care of this little girl immediately, or she will catch her
death-a-cold!”
“Husband! dear husband!” said his wife, in a low voice,—for she had
been looking narrowly at the snow-child, and was more perplexed than
ever,—“there is something very singular in all this. You will think me
foolish,—but—but—may it not be that some invisible angel has been
attracted by the simplicity and good faith with which our children set
about their undertaking? May he not have spent an hour of his
immortality in playing with those dear little souls? and so the result
is what we call a miracle. No, no! Do not laugh at me; I see what a
foolish thought it is!”
“My dear wife,” replied the husband, laughing heartily, “you are as
much a child as Violet and Peony.”
And in one sense so she was, for all through life she had kept her
heart full of childlike simplicity and faith, which was as pure and
clear as crystal; and, looking at all matters through this transparent
medium, she sometimes saw truths so profound that other people laughed
at them as nonsense and absurdity.
But now kind Mr. Lindsey had entered the garden, breaking away from his
two children, who still sent their shrill voices after him, beseeching
him to let the snow-child stay and enjoy herself in the cold west-wind.
As he approached, the snow-birds took to flight. The little white
damsel, also, fled backward, shaking her head, as if to say, “Pray, do
not touch me!” and roguishly, as it appeared, leading him through the
deepest of the snow. Once, the good man stumbled, and floundered down
upon his face, so that, gathering himself up again, with the snow
sticking to his rough pilot-cloth sack, he looked as white and wintry
as a snow-image of the largest size. Some of the neighbors, meanwhile,
seeing him from their windows, wondered what could possess poor Mr.
Lindsey to be running about his garden in pursuit of a snow-drift,
which the west-wind was driving hither and thither! At length, after a
vast deal of trouble, he chased the little stranger into a corner,
where she could not possibly escape him. His wife had been looking on,
and, it being nearly twilight, was wonder-struck to observe how the
snow-child gleamed and sparkled, and how she seemed to shed a glow all
round about her; and when driven into the corner, she positively
glistened like a star! It was a frosty kind of brightness, too, like
that of an icicle in the moonlight. The wife thought it strange that
good Mr. Lindsey should see nothing remarkable in the snow-child’s
appearance.
“Come, you odd little thing!” cried the honest man, seizing her by the
hand, “I have caught you at last, and will make you comfortable in
spite of yourself. We will put a nice warm pair of worsted stockings on
your frozen little feet, and you shall have a good thick shawl to wrap
yourself in. Your poor white nose, I am afraid, is actually
frost-bitten. But we will make it all right. Come along in.”
And so, with a most benevolent smile on his sagacious visage, all
purple as it was with the cold, this very well-meaning gentleman took
the snow-child by the hand and led her towards the house. She followed
him, droopingly and reluctant; for all the glow and sparkle was gone
out of her figure; and whereas just before she had resembled a bright,
frosty, star-gemmed evening, with a crimson gleam on the cold horizon,
she now looked as dull and languid as a thaw. As kind Mr. Lindsey led
her up the steps of the door, Violet and Peony looked into his
face,—their eyes full of tears, which froze before they could run down
their cheeks,—and again entreated him not to bring their snow-image
into the house.
“Not bring her in!” exclaimed the kind-hearted man. “Why, you are
crazy, my little Violet!—quite crazy, my small Peony! She is so cold,
already, that her hand has almost frozen mine, in spite of my thick
gloves. Would you have her freeze to death?”
His wife, as he came up the steps, had been taking another long,
earnest, almost awe-stricken gaze at the little white stranger. She
hardly knew whether it was a dream or no; but she could not help
fancying that she saw the delicate print of Violet’s fingers on the
child’s neck. It looked just as if, while Violet was shaping out the
image, she had given it a gentle pat with her hand, and had neglected
to smooth the impression quite away.
“After all, husband,” said the mother, recurring to her idea that the
angels would be as much delighted to play with Violet and Peony as she
herself was,—“after all, she does look strangely like a snow-image! I
do believe she is made of snow!”
A puff of the west-wind blew against the snow-child, and again she
sparkled like a star.
“Snow!” repeated good Mr. Lindsey, drawing the reluctant guest over his
hospitable threshold. “No wonder she looks like snow. She is half
frozen, poor little thing! But a good fire will put everything to
rights!”
Without further talk, and always with the same best intentions, this
highly benevolent and common-sensible individual led the little white
damsel—drooping, drooping, drooping, more and more out of the frosty
air, and into his comfortable parlor. A Heidenberg stove, filled to the
brim with intensely burning anthracite, was sending a bright gleam
through the isinglass of its iron door, and causing the vase of water
on its top to fume and bubble with excitement. A warm, sultry smell was
diffused throughout the room. A thermometer on the wall farthest from
the stove stood at eighty degrees. The parlor was hung with red
curtains, and covered with a red carpet, and looked just as warm as it
felt. The difference betwixt the atmosphere here and the cold, wintry
twilight out of doors, was like stepping at once from Nova Zembla to
the hottest part of India, or from the North Pole into an oven. Oh,
this was a fine place for the little white stranger!
The common-sensible man placed the snow-child on the hearth-rug, right
in front of the hissing and fuming stove.
“Now she will be comfortable!” cried Mr. Lindsey, rubbing his hands and
looking about him, with the pleasantest smile you ever saw. “Make
yourself at home, my child.”
Sad, sad and drooping, looked the little white maiden, as she stood on
the hearth-rug, with the hot blast of the stove striking through her
like a pestilence. Once, she threw a glance wistfully toward the
windows, and caught a glimpse, through its red curtains, of the
snow-covered roofs, and the stars glimmering frostily, and all the
delicious intensity of the cold night. The bleak wind rattled the
window-panes, as if it were summoning her to come forth. But there
stood the snow-child, drooping, before the hot stove!
But the common-sensible man saw nothing amiss.
“Come wife,” said he, “let her have a pair of thick stockings and a
woollen shawl or blanket directly; and tell Dora to give her some warm
supper as soon as the milk boils. You, Violet and Peony, amuse your
little friend. She is out of spirits, you see, at finding herself in a
strange place. For my part, I will go around among the neighbors, and
find out where she belongs.”
The mother, meanwhile, had gone in search of the shawl and stockings;
for her own view of the matter, however subtle and delicate, had given
way, as it always did, to the stubborn materialism of her husband.
Without heeding the remonstrances of his two children, who still kept
murmuring that their little snow-sister did not love the warmth, good
Mr. Lindsey took his departure, shutting the parlor-door carefully
behind him. Turning up the collar of his sack over his ears, he emerged
from the house, and had barely reached the street-gate, when he was
recalled by the screams of Violet and Peony, and the rapping of a
thimbled finger against the parlor window.
“Husband! husband!” cried his wife, showing her horror-stricken face
through the window-panes. “There is no need of going for the child’s
parents!”
“We told you so, father!” screamed Violet and Peony, as he re-entered
the parlor. “You would bring her in; and now our poor—dear-beau-ti-ful
little snow-sister is thawed!”
And their own sweet little faces were already dissolved in tears; so
that their father, seeing what strange things occasionally happen in
this every-day world, felt not a little anxious lest his children might
be going to thaw too! In the utmost perplexity, he demanded an
explanation of his wife. She could only reply, that, being summoned to
the parlor by the cries of Violet and Peony, she found no trace of the
little white maiden, unless it were the remains of a heap of snow,
which, while she was gazing at it, melted quite away upon the
hearth-rug.
“And there you see all that is left of it!” added she, pointing to a
pool of water in front of the stove.
“Yes, father,” said Violet looking reproachfully at him, through her
tears, “there is all that is left of our dear little snow-sister!”
“Naughty father!” cried Peony, stamping his foot, and—I shudder to
say—shaking his little fist at the common-sensible man. “We told you
how it would be! What for did you bring her in?”
And the Heidenberg stove, through the isinglass of its door, seemed to
glare at good Mr. Lindsey, like a red-eyed demon, triumphing in the
mischief which it had done!
This, you will observe, was one of those rare cases, which yet will
occasionally happen, where common-sense finds itself at fault. The
remarkable story of the snow-image, though to that sagacious class of
people to whom good Mr. Lindsey belongs it may seem but a childish
affair, is, nevertheless, capable of being moralized in various
methods, greatly for their edification. One of its lessons, for
instance, might be, that it behooves men, and especially men of
benevolence, to consider well what they are about, and, before acting
on their philanthropic purposes, to be quite sure that they comprehend
the nature and all the relations of the business in hand. What has been
established as an element of good to one being may prove absolute
mischief to another; even as the warmth of the parlor was proper enough
for children of flesh and blood, like Violet and Peony,—though by no
means very wholesome, even for them,—but involved nothing short of
annihilation to the unfortunate snow-image.
But, after all, there is no teaching anything to wise men of good Mr.
Lindsey’s stamp. They know everything,—oh, to be sure!—everything that
has been, and everything that is, and everything that, by any future
possibility, can be. And, should some phenomenon of nature or
providence transcend their system, they will not recognize it, even if
it come to pass under their very noses.
“Wife,” said Mr. Lindsey, after a fit of silence, “see what a quantity
of snow the children have brought in on their feet! It has made quite a
puddle here before the stove. Pray tell Dora to bring some towels and
mop it up!”