The manly heart must sometimes cease to languish,
Ruled by the manly brain.--_Bayard Taylor_.
One day the jailer came in at his stated hour. He was, by birth, a
German peasant, stupid and brutish enough; but, his calling
considered, he might have been worse, and, in the lack of better
company, Morton had diligently cultivated his acquaintance. On this
occasion he was more than commonly dogged and impenetrable; and, on
being taken to task for some neglect or malperformance of his
functions, he made no manner of reply, by word, look, or gesture.
Being again upbraided, he turned for a moment towards the prisoner a
face as expressive as a block of pudding stone, and then sullenly
continued his work as before. Morton laughed, partly in vexation, and
resumed his walk, of just three paces, to and fro, the length of his
cell. He followed the jailer with his eye, as the latter closed the
door.
"'God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.' Measure the
distance from Shakspeare down to that fellow, and then from him again
down to a baboon, and which measurement would be the longer? It would
be a knotty problem to settle the question of kindred; and yet, after
all, a soul to be saved, such as it is, and an indefinite power of
expansion and refining, give Jacob strong odds against the baboon. He
has human possibilities, like the rest of us; his unit goes to make up
the sum of man; man, the riddle and marvel of the universe, the centre
of interest, the centre of wonder. When I was a boy, I pleased myself
with planning that I would study out the springs of human action, and
trace human emotion up to its sources. It was a boy's idea,--to fathom
the unfathomable, to line and map out the shifting clouds and the
ever-moving winds. De Stael speaks the truth--'Man may learn to rule
man, but only God can comprehend him.' View him under one aspect only.
Seek to analyze that pervading passion, that mighty mystic influence
which, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, prevails
in human action, and holds the sovereignty of the world. It is a vain
attempt; the reason loses and confounds itself. What human faculty can
follow the workings of a principle which at once exalts man to the
stars, and fetters him to the earth; which can fire him with
triumphant energies, or lull him into effeminate repose; kindle
strange aspirations and eager longings after knowledge; spur the
intellect to range time and space, or cramp it within narrow confines,
among mean fancies and base associations? In its mysterious
contradictions, its boundless possibilities of good and ill, it is a
type of human nature itself. The soldier saint, Loyola, was right when
he figured the conflicts of man's spirit by the collision of two
armies, ranked under adverse banners; for what is the spirit of man
but a field of war, with its marches and retreats, its ambuscades,
stratagems, surprises, skirmishings, and weary life-long sieges; its
shock of onset, and death-grapple, throat to throat? And whoever would
be wise, or safe, must sentinel his thoughts, and rule his mind by
martial law, like a city beleaguered.
"How to escape such strife! There is no escape. It has followed
hermits to their deserts; and it follows me to my prison. It will find
no end but in that decay and torpor, that callousness of faculty,
which long imprisonment is said to bring, but which, as yet, I do not
feel. Perhaps I may never feel it; for strive as I will to prepare for
the worst, by inuring my mind to contemplate it, that spark of hope
which never, it is said, dies wholly in a human heart, is still alive
in mine. And sometimes, of late, it has kindled and glowed, as now,
with a strange brightness. Is it a delusion, or the presage of some
succor not far distant? Let that be as it may, I will still cling to
the possibility of a better time. Whatever new disaster meets me, I
will confront it with some new audacity of hope. I will nail my flag
to the mast, and there it shall fly till all go down, or till flag,
mast, and hulk rot together."