don't mean anything now-a-days--are the most beautiful and lovable
things in the world. They are so near heaven that they catch the glow
and the brightness which radiate from the pearly gates and illuminate
their faces. When the hair begins to silver, and the embers in the
fire grow gray and cold, and the sun has got so far around in life's
horizon that the present makes no shadow, while the past stretches
down the hillside to a little mound of earth, where we will rest for
a season--a little mound not big enough to hold our corner lots, and
marble fronts, and safes, which we shall have to leave on the other
side of the hill, but big enough, I trust, to hold our memories, and
fancies, our air castles and secrets; and when the journey is nearly
done, and the night is setting in, and the darkness begins to gather
around us without any stars, and the birds sing low in the trees, and
the flowers wither and die, and the music we hear comes from afar,
strangely sweet, like sounds coming over the water, and like little
children we live in ourselves, and the world gradually recedes from
us--then I should like to be an old woman, full of blessed memories
and peaceful anticipations.
I think I know the best woman in the world, and I think every other
man knows her. I think the one I know has the kindest heart, and
the dearest face, and the most caressing hand, and the most undying
devotion among all women. Her eyes were once to me the boundaries of
the world, and were the first things I ever looked into, and pray
Heaven they may also be the last I shall look into. And I think the
best woman every other man knows has all these qualities in the same
degree. And I think there is not one of us who has strayed so far
from that woman--the best of all women--not one of us so calloused
with the strife and toil of life, not one of us in the midst of
difficulty and danger, who does not feel the invisible arms around
him to shield him, and who does not long to go back to the arms and
the love of that woman, and to rest, as we rested before our feet got
into the flinty roads, upon the breast of our MOTHER.
October 3, 1868.
_THE SCHOOL HOUSE._
In the round of my daily walks, it is my pleasure to pass a
school-house, and I try to arrange my walks that I may happen to
be there when school is opening and closing. The little men and
women who compose the miniature world in the schoolyard, and make
sunlight for me, undoubtedly have no idea of the great pleasure they
afford me, or how rapidly my thoughts, under the magic influence
of their bright eyes, lithe forms, and merry games, go back into
the past, the morning-red of life, when the beautiful glamor of
morning brightened every object it touched; when the flowers bloomed
perennially; when the birds sang the sweetest of melodies; and
when the brooks went laughing and dancing over the pebbles, full
soon to broaden into sad, serene rivers, too soon to be hurled and
beaten against the grey crags in eternal unrest; and forward, into
the future, a hazy, twilight land, full of indefinable shapes and
perplexing uncertainties. And yet, as our shadows lengthen in the
journey towards it, there is always one certainty: that we shall find
there, those who have gone before. Some who traveled the whole weary
journey, and arrived footsore and travel-stained, and some who never
became old, and were spared the toilsome journey, because the angels
loved them better than we and better than us.
And I think, as I watch those children at play, how many unseen
agencies are at work around them--of avarice which will corrode and
blacken this young life, and of charity which will make that young
life beautiful; of ambition, which some day with its trumpet blasts
will wake this thoughtful one into action, and make the world wonder
at him; of love, which will make this one's pathway smooth, thinking
of what is; which will interlace cypress in the myrtle, thinking of
what might have been; which will darken all God's Heaven for this
one, thinking of what never should have been; of fame which will send
the name of this one sounding round the world; of skill which will
enable this one to see and know the very heart of nature; of misery
which will follow this one like a Mephistophiles; and of despair,
which never stops short of the grave.
And all this time, as I watch these children, chasing each other at
play, as the yellow skeletons of the leaves chase each other in the
wind in these memorial mornings, the fates sit spinning in the air
above them, and weaving the tangled web of their destinies, some
of them all white, some with here and there a black thread, while
Atropos sits by with her fatal shears, which will sever this thread
too soon and that too late.
It is only a few days, and this chase in the schoolyard will be
transferred into life, where no walls will hem them in, and away they
will go to the four winds of Heaven, and another set will take their
places as they took ours. Ours! Do you remember anything about those
days in the midst of your invoices and bills of lading, your Berlin
wools and Grecian Bends, and somebody coming home to tea and nothing
in the house to eat? Do you remember the little red school-house on
the hill, with poplar trees in front of it, that you used to think
almost touched the sky? Do you remember the school mistress, with her
pale face and sweet smile, and her little blue ribbon, now sleeping
under the flowers, for school's out forever, and she has a long
vacation? Do you remember the little girl in white apron and blue
gown, with blue eyes and golden curls, whose satchel you carried up
the hill, and whose name you cut into the bark of the apple-trees,
vowing an eternal constancy--an eternity which lasted until the
apple-trees lost the last of their pink-and-white blossoms? Do you
remember the swallows which twittered round the eaves of the school
house all the spring and summer, and suddenly one bright morning all
left together, scared by a little brown bird, who came from the far
north, and told them a story of something coming, which made them
all shiver? And when that something came, do you remember the old
box stove piled up with logs, and the snow-houses, and the nuts and
cider, and the forfeits at the parties, especially that one where you
carried the pillow to the girl with black hair, instead of little
Gold Curls, not being on speaking terms with her, and the school
mistress, with cheeks paler, and eyes brighter than ever, and flushes
in the face which came and went like lightnings in the western sky
in summer eves, for the little brown bird did not warn her that she
ought to go with the swallows? You remember that when the swallows
came back one sunny morning in the next May, they did not find the
school-mistress, for she went away with the brown bird.
If you don't remember any of these things, I pity you, for the
friction of life must have worn you quite smooth, and the outlook
must be very dreary.
October 11, 1868.
_A NEW LIFE._
In these latter days of the year, so full of melancholy, it occurs
to me that we do not altogether die when we shuffle off this mortal
coil. Is not physical death only a change to vegetable birth? We are
born, we mature, flourish, and decay, and are laid away in the mould,
only to reappear in the flower, the shrub, and the tree. That little
child whom you buried when the leaves were falling, as you weep over
its grave, in the bright springtime, when the leaves are repeating
the miracle of the new creation, may look at you out of the golden
petals of the dandelion and the butter-cup. There may be remembrance
for you in the leaves of the shrub at the headstone, as they are
ruffled by the breeze. There may be the _souvenir_ of a familiar
smile in the tremor of a daisy.
The generations of men come and go, but their life is not all gone.
Life does not cease to exist. It is eternal in its revolutions,
its changes, and its new forms. Down under the sod this active
principle of life is still at work. Mysterious chemical processes
are operating in that silent darkness. The old life shoots up in
the grasses. All the lives, and loves, and passions of long ago
blossom in the flowers. The life you once knew is giving strength
to the sturdy trunks of trees. It flows through the veins of the
branches with the sap, and gives color to the leaves. In mythology,
the Fauns and Dryads, Naiads and Hamadryads, typified this idea to
a certain extent, and were the most beautiful creatures of that
beautiful mythology--so beautiful, indeed, that I am heretic enough
to acknowledge I would like to have known all those dear divine
creatures, so full of good, old-fashioned mortal failings; to have
sipped nectar from Hebe's cup, and lunched on ambrosia with the
Thunder Bearer himself; to have gone to the opera with Apollo,
flirted with the naughty Venus, philosophized with Minerva, taken tea
with Juno, and had one roaring old supper with Bacchus.
Thus there are whole races of men in the boundless forests, and
friends of yours and mine in the flowers. It seems to me a very
pleasant thought to believe that those whom we have loved, and
whose lives were so beautiful and graceful, are still growing in
the beauty of the flowers, and the grace of the vines; that those
whose lives were bad and ungracious, yet exist in the nightshade and
hemlock; that those whose lives never blossomed in the shadow of
great misfortunes, still live for us in those flowerless plants whose
leaves are full of perfume; that Nero is in the Upas, and Marat is in
the dogwood.
It is a pleasant fancy to me to think that some friend whom I love
will not altogether die, but will live in a rose; that I shall see
the red of her cheeks in its petals, and that her grace will continue
in its form; that the fragrance of her memory will come to me in the
fragrance of its perfume, and that the tears which have stood in her
eyes will be forever sacred in the dew drops on its leaves.
There are strong, upright, and sturdy lives, which live again in
the firs and pines, which are proof against all storms, and are
green when all others are bare and sere; there are far-reaching,
all-embracing lives, which live again in the umbrageous oaks; there
are lives, which were warped in childhood, which live again in
the crooked, gnarled trunks; there are lives full of the gall of
bitterness, which never sweeten in the crab and wormwood; there are
graceful lives, which curve and undulate in the vines; there are
black lives which grow blacker in the poisonous plants, and the birds
avoid the vegetable life as the children avoided the human, for birds
and children are very much alike; and I think sometimes that the
souls of the musicians are still sentient in the murmuring waves of
the sea, and in the diapason of the wind-swept pines.
November 14, 1868.
_OLD BLOBBS--HIS SPEECH._
Fitz-Herbert happened in this morning, and was lounging against
the mantel, trying to look interesting. Old Blobbs was very much
disgusted with the fellow, and begged to be allowed to have his say.
So I yielded the floor to him.
And Old Blobbs' screed ran somewhat as follows: "I think it is every
woman's duty to look as pretty as she can, and, so long as she
doesn't carry fashion to an extreme and commit the mistake of making
herself ridiculous, she is excusable. I don't see any particular
necessity in a young man's looking pretty. In fact, it has been
my experience that when a young man does try to look pretty, he
generally succeeds in making an ass of himself. It should be the duty
of every man to do something before he dies of which he may be proud,
and which may be of some benefit to the world or to the individual,
so that when he gets up to the gates, and St. Peter questions his
right to come in, he may have something to show for himself. I think
a young man who is merely a walking advertisement for his tailor
and barber, and who has degenerated into a fashionable dawdler, is
in a poor way to accomplish anything for _himself_, let alone the
world. And I furthermore think that if I were St. Peter, and such
a specimen came before me, I would lift my blessed angelic foot and
send him flying into Chaos, without asking to see his credentials at
all. A small, black-backed beetle, pushing his lump of dirt before
him, is praising God more with those busy legs of his, fulfilling
the duty which God gave him to do, and conferring more benefit upon
mankind in general, than an army of fashionable dawdling young men,
the energy of whose enormous natures is mainly confined to murdering
King's English, and endangering the integrity of looking-glasses.
And when this fashionable young man lets his fashion run him into
fashionable expenditure, there isn't a fashionable young woman in
the city who can keep up with him. If he cannot have his Grecian
Bend, he can have his benders, which, if not so Grecian, are vastly
more expensive. Dress, dinners, fast horses, betting, gambling, and
the elegant vices which follow in their train, are ten thousand fold
worse than all the pleasant little sillinesses of which Araminta may
be guilty. The extremely fashionable young woman is pitiable, but she
is only trying to make herself look handsome, and that is the object
of her life; but the extremely fashionable young man is disgusting,
because he has no right to look pretty, and is simply squandering
away opportunities he has no right to waste."
Old Blobbs, as is his wont, grew excited as he talked, and, bringing
his fist down upon the table with a vim which made the glasses fairly
dance in their fright, and sent the condiments of the castor and the
contents of the sugar bowl into promiscuous ruin, added: "Yes sir! a
man with nothing to do but to entertain himself and exhibit himself
to society, is the most contemptible object on God's footstool, and
the sooner he gets off from it, and makes room for somebody else, the
better." And here he grew slightly personal, and very red as to the
face. "Yes sir! You, Mr. Fitz-Herbert, holding up the mantel-piece!
You think you are of some importance in the world, and yet I will
wager that your direst responsibility to-day will be the parting of
your back hair. I will wager that you never had an opinion in your
life of more consequence than the relative merits of Macassar and
Ursine! I will wager that you are not capable of feeling any distress
keener than the anxiety of a doubt relative to the exact condition of
your neck-tie. I will wager that Timothy Maloney, scraping dirt on
the avenue to-day, although he may get drunk to-night and beat his
wife, like the brute that he is, is of more service to the world than
you are. That is my opinion of you, Mr. Fitz-what's-your-name, and if
an opinion on any conceivable subject can be of any service to you,
you are heartily welcome to it, sir. I repeat it, welcome to it, sir."
I think Fitz-Herbert got an idea through his head that Old Blobbs was
talking about him, for he actually took his tooth-pick out of his
mouth and himself out of the room.
December 5, 1868.
_DEATH OF THE MAIDEN AUNT._
A little black-bordered billet reached us yesterday, and a cloud has
settled down upon all of us, for it brought the news of the death of
the Maiden Aunt.
She died in the night, by the side of the sea, which she always
loved, and the last sounds she heard were its waves moaning on the
beach, as her own life ebbed away on the strand of death; and, after
that, such music as Raphael's St. Cecilia would sing, or the angels
who hover around his Madonnas.
She died by the side of the church-yard, in which for thirty years
the daisies have bloomed over him, to whom she promised always to be
loyal, and for whom she always wore the forget-me-not in the silken
floss of her hair, in eternal remembrance. The forget-me-not is now
quite withered, for memory has blossomed into realization, and hope
is lost in possession, and the snow now covers them side by side
here, and, for all that, they are side by side There.
Her life was so hidden from the world, that few knew her except the
children and the house-dog, and some birds which were pets, and they
mourn her loss. The children miss her, and it is something to be
missed by the children, for it shows that however the body may have
been tossed about and weather-beaten in the tempest of life, the soul
has preserved itself in the repose of childhood. The dog misses her,
and goes about the house moaning, and stirs uneasily in his sleep as
if dreaming of her, just as Florence Dombey's dog did, in her and
his first sorrow. And it is something to be missed by a dog, for it
argues a great deal of humanity. The birds miss her, and have ceased
their songs; and it is something to be missed by the birds, for no
ungracious souls care for them or their songs.
The heavens were mantled with grey, and the air was full of snow,
and the black harbor waves moaned on the bar like a knell, when
they buried her by the side of him who took away all her sunshine
when he died, and left her life in the shadow. She sent some little
remembrances to us--a curl of her hair to Aurelia; a bit of blue
ribbon, full of memories, to Celeste; a turquoise ring, which he had
worn, to Blanche; and the faded forget-me-not to Mignon. For the
Maiden Aunt was rich only in memories.
She did not die like a saint, for she was not a saint; neither like
a sinner, for she was not a sinner; but like a true woman, full of
courage and dignity, contented to cross the River, because she knew
she would find him waiting for her on the other side, and wherever he
went she would go.
The Maiden Aunt always regarded human nature as something very sacred
and sublime, and she regulated herself by that regard. I remember she
used to tell me that she believed there was no nature so bad, but
that it had a chord which would vibrate to goodness, provided the
finger was skilled to find and touch that chord; and that there was
no soul so barren, but that somewhere in it a flower was blooming.
She did not believe that the divine spark which God implanted in
each nature could ever be utterly quenched, however its light might
be concealed in life's confusion and chaos. She had faith in His
omnipotence.
She had her faults and her frailties, which proved her humanity.
She was intensely human. The dead were to her as the living, and he
who had gone before her, I think was always with her. He was only
absent on a journey, and would send for her when the time came, and
she waited in patience. Her knowledge, like the knowledge of the
most of us, was bounded by this life; and she used to say that,
when her thoughts reached that boundary where knowledge ceased, her
thoughts ceased also. Consequently, she gave her work to this life,
and her love to him, whom she kept in this life, although absent;
and, notwithstanding all her faults and her frailties, I think, in
the presence of the great sorrow which had eclipsed her inward being,
the angels at the Celestial Gate did not question her--for the faults
and the frailties were of the body, and under the snow with his, and
never soiled the spirit, which had been sanctified and purified by
the grief which she had carried as a burden at her heart. I think
the angels recognized her at once, as they recognized the Beatrices
who died--the one in glory, the other in agony--or that Irmgard, who
found repose on the Heights.
Our lives are twofold. There is the active, every-day life in
ourselves, and the life which we live in sleep, and is made up of
the tangled web of dreams. One of her lives was in herself, hidden
to the outward gaze, and yet manifesting its presence in a thousand
graceful ways. The other, which no one ever saw or knew but herself,
went even beyond the realm of dreams, and in the place left vacant in
her heart, by the absence of that life, there was eternal snow.
What was beautiful a thousand years ago, is beautiful now, and if
there were saints a thousand years ago, there must be saints now,
although their record may be unchronicled, save in some human heart.
I think the Maiden Aunt was as worthy of canonization as Ursula or
Agatha, and that in this common, homely human life, there are many
worthy of it, whose saintliness will not be known until that day
when we are all brought upon a common level. The homeliest humanity
is full of contests as fierce as those Tamerlane waged; full of
deeds as glorious as those achieved by the gods and demigods we set
up for worship. They are never known to the world, for they have no
historians or singers to chronicle them, but when they come to be
known as they will be one day, we shall be surprised to find that
they were the real victors.
December 12, 1868.
_THE NEW YEAR._
I suppose this old world will revolve about its axis in 1869, just
as it did in 1868, and that we shall revolve with it just the same.
I suppose we shall go on loving, hating, praying, cursing, marrying,
dying, and doing foolish things in the new, as we did in the old;
that Old Midas and Gunnybags will chase the Almighty Dollar just
as hard, and swindle just as much; that Mrs. Blobbs will continue
to lecture Old Blobbs on the proprieties, and that Old Blobbs will
continue to grow worse and worse; that Aurelia will have another baby
in the new year just as she did in the old, and will think there
never was such a baby born before; that Celeste will continue to do
foolish things, and be the most delightfully wicked little creature
in the world, for she is just wicked enough to be completely good;
that Fitz-Herbert will make an ass of himself next year as he did
this; that Mignon will be just as sweet and lovely, and keep all the
rest of us in sunshine, and that Blanche will still search for the
lost melody in her life.
In general, I suppose, men and women will do in the new year just as
they did in the last, and will continue to air their vices in the
courts as if they were of any interest to other people who have
vices of their own, which are a great deal more interesting, and
boasting their virtues, when everybody knows that under the cuticle
they are just as shabby as the rest of the world. This is the one
grand mistake which people make, viz: To suppose their virtues or
their vices are of any earthly interest to other people.
As a general rule, you are only essential to yourself, and the man
who takes off your boots, and puts on your coat, or the young woman
who does up your coiffure, and looks after your toilet, and knows
you best, will tell you this. Some people succeed in making heroes
of themselves, and are worshipped by some other people, but they are
never heroes to those who know them best. Strip your hero of his
decorations, bid him come down from his pedestal, undress him, and
stand him up by the side of Terence Maloney, and you can't tell one
from the other.
You see the whole thing is conventional.
So I suppose the sun will rise and set, and the world go on just the
same, until suddenly it stops going, for you and for me, and we shall
go out of it like gentlemen, I trust.
We shall make the usual number of resolutions, I suppose, on New
Year's Day, and break them before the next with our usual success.
We shall firmly persuade ourselves next Friday morning that we are
hereafter to be models of goodness, and pinks of propriety. We shall
appropriate to ourselves the most of virtue and decency in the world,
and set examples for the rest of mankind. We shall all be shining
instances of temperance and godliness. We shall confine ourselves
to a proper use of King's English. We shall attend upon Parson
Primrose's ministrations twice each Sunday. We shall no longer ruin
the characters of others with our idle, foolish gossip. We shall
take off our masks and wear our souls upon our sleeves. And before
the year is over, there isn't one of us who will do anything of the
kind. Our cemeteries, next New Year's Day, will be just as full of
head-stones set up to mark where our broken resolutions _lie_, as
they have ever been.
And a hundred years hence, it is extremely doubtful whether any one
will care for our resolutions, whether they were kept or broken, or
for us, whether we have lived or died. But I suppose, for all that,
it will be necessary for us, during the coming year, to conceive that
we are of some importance, and that the curious looker-on in Jupiter,
and the Man in the Moon, will wonder what we are all doing on our
ant-hills, and why we are making such a fuss.
And I suppose when you and I retire from the stage, and the curtain
comes down on the little farce we have been playing, that the great
audience will not go home, nor the manager close up the theatre, but
that other actors will step into our buskins, and thus the play will
be kept up, and men will laugh, and women will weep, and others will
love and hate, and do brave deeds and naughty deeds, although the
call-boy may never summon us again behind the lights.
Now, I might go on from this point and preach you a sermon, as my
brethren in the pulpit will do, upon the brevity of time and the
stern realities of life, but I am not going to do anything of the
kind. Life is not measured by years, nor by flight of time. He lives
most who loves most, and lives longest who appreciates what is best.
Some men live longer in a year than others in a lifetime.
December 26, 1868.
_PUBLIC PARTIES._