IV

I fear we are not getting on much with the joyousness of winter. In

order to be exhilarating it must be real winter. I have noticed that the

lower the thermometer sinks the more fiercely the north wind rages, and

the deeper the snow is, the higher rise the spirits of the community.

The activity of the "elements" has a great effect upon country folk

especially; and it is a more wholesome excitement than that caused by

a great conflagration. The abatement of a snow-storm that grows to

exceptional magnitude is regretted, for there is always the half-hope

that this will be, since it has gone so far, the largest fall of snow

ever known in the region, burying out of sight the great fall of 1808,

the account of which is circumstantially and aggravatingly thrown in our

way annually upon the least provocation. We all know how it reads: "Some

said it began at daylight, others that it set in after sunrise; but

all agree that by eight o'clock Friday morning it was snowing in heavy

masses that darkened the air."

The morning after we settled the five--or is it seven?--points

of Calvinism, there began a very hopeful snow-storm, one of those

wide-sweeping, careering storms that may not much affect the city,

but which strongly impress the country imagination with a sense of the

personal qualities of the weather,--power, persistency, fierceness, and

roaring exultation. Out-doors was terrible to those who looked out of

windows, and heard the raging wind, and saw the commotion in all the

high tree-tops and the writhing of the low evergreens, and could not

summon resolution to go forth and breast and conquer the bluster. The

sky was dark with snow, which was not permitted to fall peacefully

like a blessed mantle, as it sometimes does, but was blown and rent and

tossed like the split canvas of a ship in a gale. The world was taken

possession of by the demons of the air, who had their will of it. There

is a sort of fascination in such a scene, equal to that of a tempest at

sea, and without its attendant haunting sense of peril; there is no fear

that the house will founder or dash against your neighbor's cottage,

which is dimly seen anchored across the field; at every thundering onset

there is no fear that the cook's galley will upset, or the screw break

loose and smash through the side, and we are not in momently expectation

of the tinkling of the little bell to "stop her." The snow rises in

drifting waves, and the naked trees bend like strained masts; but so

long as the window-blinds remain fast, and the chimney-tops do not go,

we preserve an equal mind. Nothing more serious can happen than the

failure of the butcher's and the grocer's carts, unless, indeed, the

little news-carrier should fail to board us with the world's daily

bulletin, or our next-door neighbor should be deterred from coming to

sit by the blazing, excited fire, and interchange the trifling, harmless

gossip of the day. The feeling of seclusion on such a day is sweet, but

the true friend who does brave the storm and come is welcomed with a

sort of enthusiasm that his arrival in pleasant weather would never

excite. The snow-bound in their Arctic hulk are glad to see even a

wandering Esquimau.

On such a day I recall the great snow-storms on the northern New England

hills, which lasted for a week with no cessation, with no sunrise or

sunset, and no observation at noon; and the sky all the while dark with

the driving snow, and the whole world full of the noise of the rioting

Boreal forces; until the roads were obliterated, the fences covered,

and the snow was piled solidly above the first-story windows of the

farmhouse on one side, and drifted before the front door so high that

egress could only be had by tunneling the bank.

After such a battle and siege, when the wind fell and the sun struggled

out again, the pallid world lay subdued and tranquil, and the scattered

dwellings were not unlike wrecks stranded by the tempest and half buried

in sand. But when the blue sky again bent over all, the wide expanse of

snow sparkled like diamond-fields, and the chimney signal-smokes could

be seen, how beautiful was the picture! Then began the stir abroad,

and the efforts to open up communication through roads, or fields, or

wherever paths could be broken, and the ways to the meeting-house

first of all. Then from every house and hamlet the men turned out with

shovels, with the patient, lumbering oxen yoked to the sleds, to break

the roads, driving into the deepest drifts, shoveling and shouting as

if the severe labor were a holiday frolic, the courage and the hilarity

rising with the difficulties encountered; and relief parties, meeting at

length in the midst of the wide white desolation, hailed each other as

chance explorers in new lands, and made the whole country-side ring with

the noise of their congratulations. There was as much excitement and

healthy stirring of the blood in it as in the Fourth of July, and

perhaps as much patriotism. The boy saw it in dumb show from the

distant, low farmhouse window, and wished he were a man. At night there

were great stories of achievement told by the cavernous fireplace;

great latitude was permitted in the estimation of the size of particular

drifts, but never any agreement was reached as to the "depth on a

level." I have observed since that people are quite as apt to agree upon

the marvelous and the exceptional as upon simple facts.

V

By the firelight and the twilight, the Young Lady is finishing a letter

to Herbert,--writing it, literally, on her knees, transforming thus the

simple deed into an act of devotion. Mandeville says that it is bad for

her eyes, but the sight of it is worse for his eyes. He begins to doubt

the wisdom of reliance upon that worn apothegm about absence conquering

love.

Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend absent,

as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable. Mandeville

begins to wish he were in New South Wales.

I did intend to insert here a letter of Herbert's to the Young

Lady,--obtained, I need not say, honorably, as private letters which get

into print always are,--not to gratify a vulgar curiosity, but to show

how the most unsentimental and cynical people are affected by the master

passion. But I cannot bring myself to do it. Even in the interests

of science one has no right to make an autopsy of two loving hearts,

especially when they are suffering under a late attack of the one

agreeable epidemic.

All the world loves a lover, but it laughs at him none the less in his

extravagances. He loses his accustomed reticence; he has something of

the martyr's willingness for publicity; he would even like to show the

sincerity of his devotion by some piece of open heroism. Why should he

conceal a discovery which has transformed the world to him, a secret

which explains all the mysteries of nature and humanity? He is in that

ecstasy of mind which prompts those who were never orators before to

rise in an experience-meeting and pour out a flood of feeling in the

tritest language and the most conventional terms. I am not sure that

Herbert, while in this glow, would be ashamed of his letter in print,

but this is one of the cases where chancery would step in and protect

one from himself by his next friend. This is really a delicate matter,

and perhaps it is brutal to allude to it at all.

In truth, the letter would hardly be interesting in print. Love has a

marvelous power of vivifying language and charging the simplest words

with the most tender meaning, of restoring to them the power they had

when first coined. They are words of fire to those two who know their

secret, but not to others. It is generally admitted that the best

love-letters would not make very good literature. "Dearest," begins

Herbert, in a burst of originality, felicitously selecting a word whose

exclusiveness shuts out all the world but one, and which is a whole

letter, poem, confession, and creed in one breath. What a weight of

meaning it has to carry! There may be beauty and wit and grace and

naturalness and even the splendor of fortune elsewhere, but there is one

woman in the world whose sweet presence would be compensation for the

loss of all else. It is not to be reasoned about; he wants that one; it

is her plume dancing down the sunny street that sets his heart beating;

he knows her form among a thousand, and follows her; he longs to run

after her carriage, which the cruel coachman whirls out of his sight. It

is marvelous to him that all the world does not want her too, and he is

in a panic when he thinks of it. And what exquisite flattery is in that

little word addressed to her, and with what sweet and meek triumph she

repeats it to herself, with a feeling that is not altogether pity for

those who still stand and wait. To be chosen out of all the available

world--it is almost as much bliss as it is to choose. "All that long,

long stage-ride from Blim's to Portage I thought of you every moment,

and wondered what you were doing and how you were looking just that

moment, and I found the occupation so charming that I was almost sorry

when the journey was ended." Not much in that! But I have no doubt the

Young Lady read it over and over, and dwelt also upon every moment, and

found in it new proof of unshaken constancy, and had in that and the

like things in the letter a sense of the sweetest communion. There is

nothing in this letter that we need dwell on it, but I am convinced that

the mail does not carry any other letters so valuable as this sort.

I suppose that the appearance of Herbert in this new light unconsciously

gave tone a little to the evening's talk; not that anybody mentioned

him, but Mandeville was evidently generalizing from the qualities

that make one person admired by another to those that win the love of

mankind.

MANDEVILLE. There seems to be something in some persons that wins them

liking, special or general, independent almost of what they do or say.

THE MISTRESS. Why, everybody is liked by some one.

MANDEVILLE. I'm not sure of that. There are those who are friendless,

and would be if they had endless acquaintances. But, to take the case

away from ordinary examples, in which habit and a thousand circumstances

influence liking, what is it that determines the world upon a personal

regard for authors whom it has never seen?

THE FIRE-TENDER. Probably it is the spirit shown in their writings.

THE MISTRESS. More likely it is a sort of tradition; I don't believe

that the world has a feeling of personal regard for any author who was

not loved by those who knew him most intimately.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Which comes to the same thing. The qualities, the

spirit, that got him the love of his acquaintances he put into his

books.

MANDEVILLE. That does n't seem to me sufficient. Shakespeare has put

everything into his plays and poems, swept the whole range of human

sympathies and passions, and at times is inspired by the sweetest spirit

that ever man had.

THE YOUNG LADY. No one has better interpreted love.

MANDEVILLE. Yet I apprehend that no person living has any personal

regard for Shakespeare, or that his personality affects many,--except

they stand in Stratford church and feel a sort of awe at the thought

that the bones of the greatest poet are so near them.

THE PARSON. I don't think the world cares personally for any mere man or

woman dead for centuries.

MANDEVILLE. But there is a difference. I think there is still rather a

warm feeling for Socrates the man, independent of what he said, which is

little known. Homer's works are certainly better known, but no one cares

personally for Homer any more than for any other shade.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Why not go back to Moses? We've got the evening before us

for digging up people.

MANDEVILLE. Moses is a very good illustration. No name of antiquity

is better known, and yet I fancy he does not awaken the same kind of

popular liking that Socrates does.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Fudge! You just get up in any lecture assembly and

propose three cheers for Socrates, and see where you'll be. Mandeville

ought to be a missionary, and read Robert Browning to the Fijis.

THE FIRE-TENDER. How do you account for the alleged personal regard for

Socrates?

THE PARSON. Because the world called Christian is still more than half

heathen.

MANDEVILLE. He was a plain man; his sympathies were with the people; he

had what is roughly known as "horse-sense," and he was homely. Franklin

and Abraham Lincoln belong to his class. They were all philosophers of

the shrewd sort, and they all had humor. It was fortunate for Lincoln

that, with his other qualities, he was homely. That was the last

touching recommendation to the popular heart.

THE MISTRESS. Do you remember that ugly brown-stone statue of St.

Antonio by the bridge in Sorrento? He must have been a coarse saint,

patron of pigs as he was, but I don't know any one anywhere, or the

homely stone image of one, so loved by the people.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Ugliness being trump, I wonder more people don't win.

Mandeville, why don't you get up a "centenary" of Socrates, and put up

his statue in the Central Park? It would make that one of Lincoln in

Union Square look beautiful.

THE PARSON. Oh, you'll see that some day, when they have a museum there

illustrating the "Science of Religion."

THE FIRE-TENDER. Doubtless, to go back to what we were talking of,

the world has a fondness for some authors, and thinks of them with an

affectionate and half-pitying familiarity; and it may be that this

grows out of something in their lives quite as much as anything in

their writings. There seems to be more disposition of personal liking

to Thackeray than to Dickens, now both are dead,--a result that would

hardly have been predicted when the world was crying over Little Nell,

or agreeing to hate Becky Sharp.

THE YOUNG LADY. What was that you were telling about Charles Lamb,

the other day, Mandeville? Is not the popular liking for him somewhat

independent of his writings?

MANDEVILLE. He is a striking example of an author who is loved. Very

likely the remembrance of his tribulations has still something to do

with the tenderness felt for him. He supported no dignity and permitted

a familiarity which indicated no self-appreciation of his real rank in

the world of letters. I have heard that his acquaintances familiarly

called him "Charley."

OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a relief to know that! Do you happen to know what

Socrates was called?

MANDEVILLE. I have seen people who knew Lamb very well. One of them told

me, as illustrating his want of dignity, that as he was going home late

one night through the nearly empty streets, he was met by a roystering

party who were making a night of it from tavern to tavern. They fell

upon Lamb, attracted by his odd figure and hesitating manner, and,

hoisting him on their shoulders, carried him off, singing as they went.

Lamb enjoyed the lark, and did not tell them who he was. When they were

tired of lugging him, they lifted him, with much effort and difficulty,

to the top of a high wall, and left him there amid the broken bottles,

utterly unable to get down. Lamb remained there philosophically in the

enjoyment of his novel adventure, until a passing watchman rescued him

from his ridiculous situation.

THE FIRE-TENDER. How did the story get out?

MANDEVILLE. Oh, Lamb told all about it next morning; and when asked

afterwards why he did so, he replied that there was no fun in it unless

he told it.