_Salem_, Oct. 4th, 1840--½ past 10 A.M.
_Mine ownest_,
Here sits thy husband in his old accustomed chamber, where he used to
sit in years gone by, before his soul became acquainted with thine.
Here I have written many tales--many that have been burned to
ashes--many that doubtless deserved the same fate. This deserves to be
called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon thousands of visions have
appeared to me in it; and some few of them have become visible to the
world. If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to make great
mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely
youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were formed; and
here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been despondent;
and here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the world to
know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or
whether it would ever know me at all--at least, till I were in my
grave. And sometimes (for I had no wife then to keep my heart warm) it
seemed as if I were already in the grave, with only life enough to be
chilled and benumbed. But oftener I was happy--at least, as happy as I
then knew how to be, or was aware of the possibility of being. By and
bye, the world found me out in my lonely chamber, and called me
forth--not, indeed, with a loud roar of acclamation, but rather with a
still, small voice; and forth I went, but found nothing in the world
that I thought preferable to my old solitude, till at length a certain
Dove was revealed to me, in the shadow of a seclusion as deep as my
own had been. And I drew nearer and nearer to the Dove, and opened my
bosom to her, and she flitted into it, and closed her wings there--and
there she nestles now and forever, keeping my heart warm, and renewing
my life with her own. So now I begin to understand why I was
imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never
break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my
escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been
covered with earthly dust, and my heart would have become callous by
rude encounters with the multitude; so that I should have been all
unfit to shelter a heavenly Dove in my arms. But living in solitude
till the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth
and the freshness of my heart, and had these to offer to my Dove.
Well, dearest, I had no notion what I was going to write, when I
began, and indeed I doubted whether I should write anything at all;
for after such communion as that of our last blissful evening, it
seems as if a sheet of paper could only be a veil betwixt us. Ownest,
in the times that I have been speaking of, I used to think that I
could imagine all passions, all feelings, all states of the heart and
mind; but how little did I know what it is to be mingled with
another's being! Thou only hast taught me that I have a heart--thou
only hast thrown a light deep downward, and upward, into my soul. Thou
only hast revealed me to myself; for without thy aid, my best
knowledge of myself would have been merely to know my own shadow--to
watch it flickering on the wall, and mistake its fantasies for my own
real actions. Indeed, we are but shadows--we are not endowed with real
life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest
substance of a dream--till the heart is touched. That touch creates
us--then we begin to be--thereby we are beings of reality, and
inheritors of eternity. Now, dearest, dost thou comprehend what thou
hast done for me? And is it not a somewhat fearful thought, that a few
slight circumstances might have prevented us from meeting, and then I
should have returned to my solitude, sooner or later (probably now,
when I have thrown down my burthen of coal and salt) and never should
[have] been created at all! But this is an idle speculation. If the
whole world had stood between us, we must have met--if we had been
born in different ages, we could not have been sundered.
Belovedest, how dost thou do? If I mistake not, it was a southern rain
yesterday, and, next to the sunshine of Paradise, _that_ seems to be
thy element.
Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
Boston, Mass.