the woods; to lie, stretched prone upon the grass, in the grateful
shade, with no heavier task than to watch a sluggish beetle, or an
ant carrying its burden, in imminent danger of collision with every
tiny stalk; to listen to all the sounds in nature's orchestra, the
stringed instruments of the insects floating in the air, and the
reeds of the insects crawling in the grass, the flutes of the birds,
the horns of the wind blowing through the tree-tops, and all those
sweet, indefinable sounds you only hear when your ear is close to
the ground, but which play their part in the grand symphony; to lie
upon the grass, with not a sound from the great world jarring upon
your Arcadia; to dream of Satyrs, and Fauns, and wood-nymphs, and
water-nymphs, and the great god Pan, piping upon his pastoral reeds;
to think of absent friends who are thinking of you, and will return,
and of absent friends who are thinking of you, but will never return,
as no road leads back from that country whither they have journeyed,
and the daisies tell no stories, nor even the rustle of the grass
which grows above them; to remember a chord of music long forgotten,
and let its subtle melancholy weave a vision in the Past, when the
chord was a sound and not a sigh, and the vision was a reality and
not a shadow.
And to let the little bugs crawl in your ear and shiver the whole
beautiful Dream-Fabric.
June 13, 1868.
_THE GERMANS AND MUSIC._
To make a good German, four things are requisite, viz: Music, beer,
Rhine wine and _Gemuethlichkeit_. In regard to the first and last
qualities, I think that I am half a German. For four days past,
I have been trying to achieve the other two qualities, and thus
Teutonize myself _in toto_.
I have fought the white beer of Berlin with an energy worthy of a
better cause. I have wrestled with the red beer of Chicago. I have
struggled with Hocheimer, Rudesheimer and Johannisberg, until I was
Black, White and Red in the face, and hung out the German flag in my
countenance. I have wished, with Mein Herr Von Dunk, that my trough
was as deep as the rolling Zuyder Zee. But when I had accomplished
my fifth glass of the mantling beer with internal satisfaction, and
then beheld a German friend call for his thirtieth, just by way of
an appetizer for the half barrel he had ordered, I saw at once the
futility of my undertaking.
In fact, I was not equal to the beer capacity of a small German baby,
and when I saw great, jolly Teutons, flaxen-haired, deep-lunged and
stout-handed, with a whole case of Rhenish hidden away under their
jackets, is it proper for me to allude to the poor little bottle
of Steinberger I had demolished, or to have any other feeling in
regard to that feat than one of intense mortification? The spirit was
willing, but the flesh was weak. Nature was against me.
On the tenth glass of beer, the German is serene; on the twentieth,
he is philosophical and will discuss the problem of how many angels
can stand upon the point of a needle; on the thirtieth, he is full
of _Bruderlichkeit_; on the fortieth, he reaches _Freiheit_; on the
fiftieth, he will troll you a _Trinklied_ in the manner of Hermanns
with his Golden Calf; on the sixtieth he is a little weary, but his
heart is in the right place, and he pronounces _zwei glass_ with a
strong emphasis on the _zwei_; on the seventieth, he is tired, but
he recovers from it with the eightieth; on the ninetieth, he feels
_gut_; and on the hundredth he is himself again, _frisch, frei und
froh_, and is then prepared to drink some beer with you, to sing you
one of Abt's best, to criticise a statue, or discuss the everlasting
essence of the negative pole of infinity. Set him down to the
glorious Rhenish vintages and the pile of old bottles he will leave
behind him would have gone a great ways towards building the tower of
Babel.
Your German is essentially a talker, and it is astonishing,
considering the "schs," and "achs," and "ichs," and other gutturals
distressing to an American windpipe, which are continually in his
way, how much ground he will talk over in an hour. He talks with his
tongue, his arms and his legs, and throws in the punctuation points
as he goes along, with nods of his head. When he is the most social
and affectionate, when his heart warms towards you, then he appears
as if he were immediately about to demolish you, and the more
affectionate he grows, the more alarmed you become for your personal
safety and anxious to inform your family that you may be brought
home feet foremost. A company of Germans together, when they are
inspired with _Gemuethlichkeit_, and when social feeling is at its
highest temperature, exactly resemble Americans at the other extreme,
preparing for a general fight, and you wonder the police do not
interfere. And _vice versa_, when the German is excited to pugnacity,
he does not seem to be excited at all. He appears to be serene, but
beneath all the calm outside there is a terrible rage.
The German is addicted to Fatherland, and if any human being on the
face of the earth has a right to be, it is the German. If any other
nationality has a better literature, grander poets, more inspired
dreamers, sublimer musicians, better artists, or deeper thinkers,
I have not heard of it. The ties which bind him to the Fatherland
are too strong ever to be broken, and on the invisible strings
which stretch from his heart to Germany are continually sounding
the home melodies. Could any more beautiful idea be conceived than
the fact that on Friday evening, when the grand chorus at the Fest
Hall[1] were singing the glorious German poem, "What is the German's
Fatherland," in every part of Germany, in every city, village and
hamlet, wherever there was a singing society, this same song was
being sung on the same evening, in honor of their brethren assembled
at Chicago?
We may laugh at the peculiarities of the Germans, but when we
approach German art, it must give us pause. Berlioz and Scribe took
the skull of a fool, who had once laughed at the incantation music
of Der Freischutz, and when the orchestra had reached that point,
placed it before them and said: "Now, laugh if you dare. The music
of Von Weber is thundering round you." No man who was not destitute
of a soul, and utterly wedded to all gross things, could have felt
any other than a religious feeling in the great swell of human voices
on Thursday evening, as it surged in great waves of harmony, as it
rose like the march of a storm in the Battle Hymn of Rienzi, full of
martial inspiration and clarion cries, or died away in the gentle
and placid melody of the Lindenbaum of Schubert, sweetest of all
song-writers. The man who could go away from that concert without
feeling that he was a better man, without having recognized that
human nature may soar to the infinite on the wings of song, has sunk
his soul so far into the uncleaness of life, that Gabriel will have
some difficulty in finding it, what time he sounds his final trumpet
call.
The Fest was a notable event, from the bare fact that it gave us the
immortal Seventh Symphony of Beethoven, about which the critics and
rhapsodists have loved to dream in searching for its hidden meaning,
and around which they have woven so many delicate and tender fancies.
No two persons probably will ever agree upon the exact event it is
intended to illustrate, but it seems to me that there is one idea
which must be patent to all. To me, the Seventh Symphony appears to
be a true picture of a beautiful life--its _allegro_ full of the
longings and joyousness of youth; its _allegretto_ filled with
the delicious melancholy of love; its _scherzo_ buoyant with the
gladness and ecstasy of living; and its final _allegro_ summing all
up in a climax of contentment and hope. It seems to me that when the
grand old Master, the Jupiter Tonans of music, whose soul pierced
the sublimity of the infinite, wrote this symphony, he must have
forgotten all the trials and troubles of life. All the joy of nature,
her sunlight and breezes, and the hidden melodies of inanimate
things; all the glow and elasticity of life's morning; a passionate
love for some golden-haired Gretchen; a rhythm to which fairies
might have danced in the moonlight, seem to me to be expressed in
this wonderful production--the whole bathed in sunlight and clothed
with supernatural beauty. In the Seventh Symphony, Beethoven does
not sadden you with the profound melancholy, or inspire you with the
sublimity of some of his works, but he gives you new ideas of the
beauty and joy of living. And as I sat listening to the masterly
performance of the _Allegretto_ by the great orchestra--every
player's face lit up with the enthusiasm of the music--every
instrument moving in perfect precision--the whole air full of the
bewitching, almost supernatural music--there occurred to me a letter
which I have received this week, in which the writer wants to know if
it is the duty of a Christian to encourage the Saengerfest. Although
the letter was signed "A Christian,"--in the presence of the great
Master's work the question seemed to me utterly profane. Why! Music
is full of religion! The first tidings that ever came from Heaven to
man came in music on the plains of Bethlehem. It reaches far down
into the soul. It fills it with longings for the Unknown. It reveals
the Infinite more clearly than the spoken word. Its tendency is
upward. It gives birth to aspirations. It makes a true man, truer. It
makes a bad man, better.
If the writer of that letter does not appreciate music, let me
commend to him the dictum of the father of modern Protestantism:
"Who loves not wine, woman and song,
Remains a fool his whole life long."
I should not care to deny that Martin Luther was a Christian,
even in the face of his rather generous platform--in fact, his
specifications would rather go to show that he was. I would advise
my letter-writing friend, therefore, if he cannot love wine and
woman, at least to love song, and see if it does not make a better
Christian out of him. I think he could love every plank in Martin
Luther's platform, and still be as good a Christian as Martin Luther
was, and pitch ink-stands at the devil quite as vigorously. Before a
man is thoroughly fitted for Heaven, he ought to be thoroughly fitted
for earth. A great many people who think themselves good enough for
Heaven, and are all the time wanting to go there, are not half good
enough for earth. It is sheer ingratitude to Divine Providence--this
lifting of the eyes so high as never to see the sublime world He has
placed you in, with its never-ending scenes of beauty and sublimity,
and never to see this life with its joys and possibilities. Fling
your theologies to the winds. Unloosen your stiff neck. Don't forever
snuff evil in everything around you. Up, and out into the world.
Throw yourself into the arms of the loving mother, Nature, and see
if there is no religion in her eyes. Get to the secret heart of
music, and see if it is not anchored hard by the eternal throne.
Draw yourself closer to humanity and to universal brotherhood, and
see if there is no religion in it. If your soul does not expand in
the operation, and if it does not make a better Christian out of you,
then you are hardly good enough for this world, and the sooner you
are out of it the better.
June 20, 1868.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The Northwestern Saengerfest, held at Chicago, June, 1868.
_THE OLD STORY._
In these fast days of the period, when human life is of so little
account that we sever its frail thread with as little compunction
as we would pick a flower from its stem; when, in our hot haste, we
drain the cup clear to the bitter lees, and, disappointed, plunge
ourselves into the outer darkness; when a mist of error and frenzy
settles down upon us, so dense that it hides from our gaze all that
is True and Beautiful; when, in all the heavens, there is only the
angriness of driving clouds, and no star shining--in these fast
days, the mere recital of a solitary case, where a tired human being
has gone to rest voluntarily, rather than bear the great burden of
agony and scorn upon her weak shoulders any longer, only causes the
indulgence of a moment's curiosity and wonderment. The case published
in the columns of the TRIBUNE this morning, of the suicide of
"Augusta," seems to me, however, one over which we should pause and
think.
Very little is given of her history, and yet enough to indicate
that she was but eighteen years of age--that time in life when the
world is clad in its brightest colors, when the heart is full of
hope and the body full of the buoyancy of youth; that she was very
intelligent; that she was very pretty; that she was very amiable,
and beloved by all who knew her; that she had been utterly deserted
by a brute; and that she still wanted to live--for, in her sad note,
she says: "And yet, if there seemed the shadow of a hope to regain
your love, once so true and tender, I would longer suffer the agony
you have so ruthlessly thrown upon me."
To me, there is something inexpressibly sad in that last note:
"My Darling Percy: The dark clouds are gathering around the little
girl you once loved, and who still clings to you in hope that your
heart will soften; but, oh! dear one, to suffer the agony of this
suspense is worse than death. You trifled with my susceptible heart,
but I forgive you. I court death; and yet, if there seemed the shadow
of a hope to regain your love, once so true and tender, I would
longer suffer the agony you have so ruthlessly thrown upon me. O,
come, come! Press me to your heart again, and then let me die.
Loving and true,
AUGUSTA."
Deserted! And, alone in the world, she attempts to ward off, with her
weak, little hands, those dark clouds gathering around her. Deserted!
She still clings to all he has left her--a bitter memory. Deserted!
She bears an agony which is worse than death. Deserted! She still
loves and forgives him, who has utterly blotted out her bright young
life. Deserted! She would still bear the great agony, if there was
only the shadow of a hope that, at some day, she might regain that
love. Deserted! And from her white lips comes that last mournful
appeal--"Come! come! and let me die"--and then utter despair sets
in, which is only another name for utter madness, for when hope dies,
the light of reason goes out, too, and she goes to her death, "rashly
importunate," out of the world, and out of life, to the arms of the
Great Father.
To the Great Father, notwithstanding the technical notions of my
theological brethren, whose cold, hard formulæ, in a case like this,
must give way. They dare not assert them in the presence of this
little girl, around whom the clouds are gathering. If they should, it
would only argue a soul which has run entirely to brain.
Her last words, "loving and true," have nothing of the romantic about
them, no flavor of the boarding-school, no characteristic of the
gushing young misses just into their teens and chignons. It is the
full strength of a woman's love, which knows no abatement, even in
the face of scorn, abuse and desertion. If, by an exceedingly remote
possibility, this little girl should meet her betrayer in Paradise, I
do not believe she would avert her face. The vine clings to the tree
when its trunk is sturdy with sap and its branches are full of leaves
and nests, and it clings to it, also, when it is only a jagged stump,
riven and shattered by the lightnings.
The force of this passion is best illustrated by the fact that there
could be no compensation but death, for the loss of its object; no
compensation in all this great world, with its beauty of sunrises,
woods, rivers and mountains. The flowers bloomed no longer for her.
There was no soothing in the melancholy of music. The stars in Heaven
went out. All sweet sounds grew strangely silent. It was a living
death. She stretched out her hand for help, and it only met the cold
hand of a dead love. She could only see in the darkness the ghost of
a memory. There was only one escape out of this passion, and that way
she fled--and it led out of life.
The great world moves on undisturbed. The great woods are not
disturbed when a single leaf drops off a tree and flutters down to
its death. The eagle, in his flight, does not miss a feather that
drops from his plumage. Men will still buy and sell, and women will
gossip and dress. We shall all walk, and talk, and sing, and dance,
and flirt, and laugh, each in our own little world, happy as ever, so
long as dark Care does not ride behind the horseman.
But among us there will be one who can never again go companionless.
There is a ghost forever chained to him, which he cannot shake off.
It will sit by him and follow him into the land of dreams. It will
walk by his side. It will echo his faintest whisper and his loudest
laugh. He may wander like Ahasuerus, but he cannot escape from it.
He may plunge into excess, but he will see its face at the bottom of
every cup. There is no place so remote, under the blessed heavens,
where he can escape from it. There is no darkness so intense that
he will not see its sad, reproachful eyes looking at him. It will
follow him here, to meet him There. He carries his punishment with
him forever. In Faustus, there is an account of a memorable banquet
given by Satan, at which the viands were composed of souls cooked in
divers ways, and the wines were the tears of those who had suffered
on earth--a glowing story it is, told in excellent fashion, which
I would commend to him. I need not urge this handsomely-named man
to think sometimes of his victim. He will have no difficulty in
remembering, but very much in forgetting. A man who commits murder
is not very apt to forget. Society conveniently glosses over these
crimes with mild names, but the crime is just the same. Society
individually knows, and he knows, that he has committed murder, just
as surely as if he had plunged a knife into his victim, whose only
crime was love.
I think it would be an excellent practice, in these cases, to place
upon the tombstone some such epitaph as this:
Sacred to the Memory
OF
AUGUSTA,
_Murdered in her 18th year by Percy_.
She was Beautiful, Intelligent and Amiable, but was guilty of
LOVE.
_IN MEMORIAM._
To-day, in this crystal atmosphere, in these glorious, invigorating
breaths from the North, full of suggestions of cool pine woods--of
brooks dancing over the shallows--of rivers flashing down to the
great lakes--of a fisherman rocking upon the waves--of breezes which
have journeyed all the way from the pole, whispering stories to
the trees of the weird things done in the Northern glow--in this
perfection of a new-created day, created for the first time for you
and for me, thus ever renewing the wonder of the first morning, life
is no longer a burden, but a blessing. Not the life social, mental or
moral, but the life physical. The mere fact of living, of breathing,
of feeling the blood coursing in your veins, of allying yourself with
the waves of the lake, which are sparkling with smiles; with the
leaves, which are dancing on the tree-tops; with the flowers bursting
into richer bloom, and lifting up their drooping cups to catch the
wine of the morning; with the birds, curving through the invigorating
air; with the insects, no longer droning their hot, dry notes in
the burnt grass, but making a Babel of little sweet sounds in every
hillock; the mere fact of living in this world, when every tint, from
the Iris in a foam-bell to the haze on a hill-side, is perfect;
when every sound, from the buzz of a grasshopper to the diapason of
the waves or the swell of the wind-smitten trees, is in unison, is a
blessing. On such a day, Donatello, the Faun, would have called the
animals to him with that universal language which makes us and them
kin. On such a day, Memnon sings more grandly to the sun. On such a
day, Heine's pine tree in the northern snows dreams of the palm in
the burning sands. Such a day comes like a benediction, after the
long, tedious sermon, and it brings with it benisons from the Great
Father to the parched, burning leaves, to the poor sufferers tossing
upon beds of pain, to tired, toiling humanity.
The last week has been a reign of terror. It is stated that the birds
have never died so fast, especially the singing birds. The flowers,
too, have died. And with the flowers and the birds, their companions,
the little children have passed away, until it makes one sad to think
into how many homes a shadow has come within the past short week.
Death, like another Herod, has knocked at every door, save where
some protecting angel guards the threshold. We fain would have kept
him out, but our hands were powerless, and in almost every household
where he entered, he smote the youngest and the fairest--little eyes,
in which the light of Heaven had never faded--little hands, untaxed
by any of life's burdens--little feet, unstained by any of the dust
of life's highway, in which we elder ones are so sadly begrimed that
we have lost much of the semblance of our former selves. And I think
this morning that, if earth is sadder for the loss of the children,
Heaven must be brighter and more beautiful for the troops of little
ones that have passed through the Gate Beautiful, and now walk in
Paradise, among the birds and flowers which died when they died. And
I think that, along the invisible strings which stretch from our
hearts to the little green waves of turf in the Acres of God, and
thence reach heavenward, will come songs in the night-watches, and
pulses of music we shall recognize, and, recognizing, become better
men and better women.
I am sure that some loving angel will tenderly watch each of these
new mounds of earth, and that, on each recurring spring, we shall
see the blue of their eyes in the blue of the violet, and the gold
of their hair in the gold of the daisies; that we shall hear their
voices in the songs of the robin, and that they will live for us
evermore, in all things beautiful.
And may the Great Father stretch His hands in infinite tenderness and
blessing over all bowed heads and darkened homes, and in benison over
all beds of suffering.
July 25, 1868.
* * * * *
Last summer, in those hot days, when the cruel weather killed the
birds, and flowers, and little children, I wrote to you of the death
of a little one, as fragile as the rose-bud she held in her little
waxen hand, and how the sunshine was extinguished in the house when
we carried her out and tenderly laid her away under the turf, on
which the golden and scarlet glories of autumn have fallen, the
storms of winter have beaten, and the promises of spring are now
brightening. There were with us, on that sad day, those to whom
Heaven had consigned a little one, and now the messenger has come for
it and taken it home again. In the mysterious dispensations of the
Great Father, it was ordained that the little life of the one should
flash out and expire like the light of the glow-worm; that the other
should wear his life slowly out through a weary year and pass away,
trying to fashion the words "Papa" and "Mamma" on his thin lips. The
one went when the birds went and the flowers were fading--when the
reapers were among the sheaves, and the golden glow of summer was
dissolving into the purple haze of autumn. She never saw the spring,
except in that land where the spring is eternal; just across that
River we sometimes hear in the mists of the Valley of the Shadow, and
shall some day see. The other went away when the birds were coming,
and the leaves were bursting into emerald bloom on the trees, and the
flowers were opening their cups to catch the sunshine and the rain.
And to-day, on this blessed Sabbath, the two are together again in
that far-off land which is brought so near to us when the little ones
go there.
May 29, 1869.
_LAKE MICHIGAN._
I need not tell you of the general appearance of Lake Michigan. I
take it for granted everyone knows it, but how many have studied it
in its details, watched its rare combinations with the clouds, or
discovered the subtle changes and colors, all the time at work upon
its surface?
How many, for instance, have seen the Lake when it was apparently all
green--not its ordinary green, but a peculiar, light green which it
only wears on state occasions, and especially at this season of the
year? Your first glance leads you to suppose it is simply green, but
look steadily at it, and you will find that the green is suffused
with purple, giving a color which I do not think can be matched
elsewhere in nature. You may possibly find it in some of the endless
varieties of color in wild roses. This is the royal color of the
Lake, because the rarest. You may look for weeks and months and not
see it, for it requires a peculiar combination of cloud, and wind,
and sunlight to produce it. But if you are only patient, some day
it will flash upon you in all its beauty, and richly repay you for
waiting.