had something to do with it. In any event I left this Earth very
suddenly on a trip among the stars. After I had risen a short
distance, I looked down upon the Earth, and was astonished to find
what a small and insignificant place it was, after all. Quite a
number of people whom I might mention, who make a great parade
and show, and who strut up and down the green footstool, like Sir
Oracles, actually looked to me like ants, running about on an ant
hill, and they didn't appear at my height to any better advantage
than those who were more humble and retired. Several loud, blatant
fellows, and several women gifted with Gab, strange to say, I
couldn't hear at all. In fact, I couldn't discover that there was
anything at all of much consequence in this world, to a man half a
mile up in the air. When I arrived at the Moon, I stopped to rest,
and had a talk with the Man in it, who laid down his bundle of sticks
and was very affable. Much to my surprise, when I looked after the
Earth I couldn't find it, and inquiry of the Man did not help me any,
as he had never known such a place, except from hearsay. He pointed
out several millions of stars in an obscure and remote part of the
heavens, which were dimly visible, and intimated that the Earth might
be among them, but, as it was of so little consequence he never
troubled himself about it. When I told him, however, how the lovers
of Earth worshipped his planet, he seemed pleased, and expressed
his gratification that there was so much moonshine in love. I gave
him the latest intelligence of the doings of the Sorosis, in which
he manifested considerable interest, there being, as he told me, no
women in the Moon. I noticed that the place was exceedingly quiet.
After guiding me upon my way to Heaven, he picked up his bundle of
sticks and resumed his journey, and I set off on another flight. I
passed Jupiter, who was still up to his scandalous tricks, which,
of old, brought Antiope, Leda, Europa, and others, into the divorce
courts; passed Mars, who was just putting on his helmet and preparing
to thresh a small planet in a distant galaxy; passed Venus, to whom
I touched my hat and hurried on, as she was just then engaged in a
_tete-a-tete_ with Adonis; passed the Pleiades, all of whom still
wear mourning for their lost sister, who, they informed me, ran
away several thousand years ago, with a pretty little comet with
a tail like a peacock's; passed Ursa Major, who growled somewhat,
but finally gave me a drink from his Dipper; passed the North Star,
the only steady and well-behaved star in the heavens. After leaving
the Cynosure, my course led me into the Milky Way, a wretched
place, which, to my astonishment, I found full of milkmen, who, on
earth, have been accustomed to sell chalk and water. One of these
unfortunate shades, who used to have an Elgin dairy on the Archer
road, informed me, with tears in his ghostly eyes, that the Milky
Way was reserved for the milkmen of Earth, who have proclivities for
pumps, and that they are doomed to be chased through all eternity by
stump-tailed cows. He begged me, when I returned to earth, to warn
his relatives and all others in the business. I promised to do so,
and, when I left the Milky Way, he was making the grand round, with
a whole herd of stump-tails, who used to live on the North Branch,
after him.
After leaving the Milky Way, I reached the boundary of our system
of planets, and dodging innumerable meteors and comets which were
flying about in the most eccentric manner, and narrowly escaping
destruction by the explosion of a planet, many times larger than the
Earth, which burst into millions of atoms with a roar which seemed
to shake the whole empyrean, and went floating off into space like
a piece of burned tinder, passed into another system of stars and
planets, all revolving round their central sun. The earthly system
was soon lost to view. I passed from planet to planet, from galaxy
to galaxy, floated in azure fields full of gorgeous nebulæ, or rode
on undulating billows of air, between comets of lustrous sheen, and
moons and suns, whose orbits interlaced, in sheens of glowing, rosy
light. Out of this system into still another, and the last faded from
sight again, and so on till I reached a great calm sea of golden
light in which there were no suns nor no moons. I had passed the
confines of all worlds, and they had all disappeared. Above, below,
and all around was only this serene, golden atmosphere, unflecked by
a single spot, undotted by a single island. It was the vast, open sea
of Immortality, which never began, and shall never end. In that sea
there was no limit to vision. In that sea all things became clear.
Time dwindled to a speck, and Death was only an incident. Life was
incomprehensible in this sea, but it seemed to me with my new vision
that I had lived many lives before this one, and that I saw the
shadows and indistinct forms of others yet to be lived. As I floated
on, I suddenly rose out of the gold into a crystal atmosphere, which
was no longer the solitude of the sea, but was peopled with beautiful
forms which flew slowly past me with wondering eyes, and one or two
there were, who gazed at me with an old familiar look I somehow
seemed to remember in that Earth, millions of miles below me, but no
sound came from their lips, and thus I questioned them in vain. As I
rose higher, this crystal atmosphere was crowded with lustrous forms,
and suddenly, in a blaze of almost blinding brightness, I found
myself at the great gate of pearl, with St. Peter keeping watch and
ward, the keys in his hands, as the old masters loved to paint him.
He very courteously denied me admission, as I was only in a dream,
and had not yet passed to that sleep which knows no dreams; but he
allowed me to stand at the gate.
And as I stood there, several disembodied individuals who had
formerly lived on Earth, applied for admission. Upon each
application, St. Peter inquired in a loud voice within, if there was
any objection. The first who came was a cartman. The usual inquiry
was made, and as the cartman was about to enter, his horse, whom he
had beaten and killed with cruelty, and whose sufferings had reached
the throne of the infinite God, confronted him, and gazed at him
with those eyes which had appealed to him for mercy in life, until
he fled in dismay into the outer abyss. Another came, and a little
bird, whom he had wantonly shot on Earth, to whom God had given
life not without purpose, flew from a lotus plant to the gate, and
confronted him. He, too, asked no questions and turned away. Another
came, and, as he was about to enter, a pallid form with a gory wound
on his forehead, suddenly appeared before him, and the now revealed
murderer fled, shrieking, away from the gate. The next who came was
a purse-proud individual, who had on Earth ground down his female
employees, and paid them only the scantiest pittance, and as he was
about to enter, a woman in rags, with pinched, wan features, who had
died of neglect and starvation, met him and prevented his entrance. I
could not begin to enumerate all who came to that gate and went away.
One man's entrance was prevented by a butterfly, whom he, cruelly
and in wanton sport, had torn to pieces to gratify his malicious
idleness. Each one that had perpetrated a needless wrong, met that
wrong at the gate, and it stood in his way. And I inquired of St.
Peter if that was the universal law in Heaven, and he said to me:
"The law of Heaven is love. The law of kindness is the law of love,
and he loves the great God best who loves everything He has made--the
beast of the field, the bird of the air, and the fish of the sea; and
Heaven loves him best who loves all His works on the Earth, from the
tiniest insect to his brother Man."
St. Peter ceased, for just then Beethoven and Mozart and Mendelssohn
and Bach commenced to play a new quartette, which they had just
composed together, and so sweet was that music that all the angels
came flocking to hear it. Dante stood by listening, with Beatrice,
for he no longer looked up to her in the shining heights, but beheld
his "most gentle lady" face to face. Irma, who found repose on the
Heights, and the other Beatrice, now kindred spirits, were there.
Petrarch and Laura, and Abelard and Heloise, freed from all earthly
taints, reclined upon a flowery bank and listened, and many others,
whom I have not time to enumerate, who did great deeds upon Earth,
and suffered great sorrows, and yet were nameless heroes there, found
their great reward in these delights. As the music ceased and I was
about to turn away, there was a little form which flew towards me and
looked at me with unutterable love in her eyes, and stretched out her
little white hands to me, and I recognized the eyes as those I had
seen on Earth and the hands as those which I had seen crossed over a
rose-bud no whiter than they, and the form as one we had laid away,
when all the birds were singing and all the flowers were in bloom,
in the populous Acre of God. And I would fain have gone to her, but
as I sprang forward, she vanished slowly into the distance, still
looking at me with the loving eyes, still stretching out the white
hands, and, like a strain of beautiful music wafted over water in
the night-watches, came the words to me, "Not yet." And the heavens
vanished and I awoke upon the dim spot which men call Earth.
February 20, 1869.
_DAY DREAMS._
Our talk at the breakfast table yesterday morning, was discursive
to a degree which would have distracted Anna Dickinson. We had no
hobbies to ride, and we rattled on about this, that, and the other,
Mignon's Canary singing at the top of his little lungs, and Aurelia's
baby adding to the general confusion by the most desperate protests,
in an unknown tongue, against a pin, which was sticking into his
blessed little back. We were all very happy, and not even Mrs. Blobbs
complained of any invasion of her rights. Old Blobbs, his face
beaming with delight, was undressing his third baked potato, and
asked, in a careless, and slightly sarcastic way, "Well, what have
you been day-dreaming about lately?"
And I replied: "You should not speak so lightly of day dreams, for
_you_ are a day-dreamer."
Blobbs looked up in surprise, and Mrs. Blobbs stopped stirring her
coffee to gravely shake her head. "Yes, my dear Blobbs," said I, "you
are a dreamer. We are all dreamers. Life is all a dream, and we shall
not cease dreaming until we fall into the dreamless sleep, when all
that is now dark will become bright, and the Sphynx will no longer
torment us with the enigma of its stony lips and staring eyes. It is
useless for you to deny that you have any sentiment in your nature.
You may try to cover it up with discounts, invoices, bills of lading
and mortgages. You may mingle with men upon 'Change, and wear a hard,
practical face. You may talk in the conventional _patois_ of life,
and try to convince those around you that you are a mill-stone,
busily engaged in crushing sentiment, but you cannot cheat yourself.
You are a living lie. You are too proud to acknowledge there is any
poetry in your heart. But it is there, nevertheless, and when you
least expect it, some strain of music, some song of a bird, some
perfume of a flower, some thought in a book will bring it out. Deep
down in the heart of man it rests. It may be a thought, it may be
a principle, it may be only a remembrance, but it is there in some
shape. You may conceal it from your fellows, but when you are with
yourself, you dare not deny it. You may forget it in the rush and
din of trade, and the wheels of Mammon may drown its still, small
voice, but there must be times when you retire within yourself and
forget the practical; and, in those moments, when there is no one
near you, those moments which make a man of you, you think of what
has been, and what might have been. Dare you deny that you have a
little memento laid away--some long faded flower, some bit of ribbon,
some little trinket--which is full of precious remembrances? Dare
you deny that I found you the other day with a tear in your eye, as
you stood looking at a wreath of faded white and green, which once
rested upon the breast of a little sleeper, who came among us, and
stayed but for a day, because they had need of her in Heaven? It was
not your child. What was that dead wreath to you? The angels did not
rob you. It was simply, my dear Blobbs, a link between the seen and
the unseen. It tied Heaven and earth together. It suggested to you
what might have been. It made you think of little eyes, you long had
waited for, which never looked into yours; of little feet, you long
had waited for, which never made music in your house. It rekindled
the ashes of a dead longing, and you dare not deny that you thought
with unutterable pain, it were better to have possessed and lost,
than never to have possessed at all. It was your better nature, which
you strive so hard to suppress, coming to the surface."
And Mignon said: "All of us have this sentiment in our composition,
although the most of us are too proud to acknowledge it. I have been
in the woods in March, when the ground was covered with snow. I have
carefully pulled up the matted layers of dead leaves, and underneath
all this debris was the arbutus, with its glossy, green leaves, and
its pink and white petals, as full of beauty and delicious fragrance
as if it had never been buried under the corruption of a dead
year--as if it had never been hidden from the air and the sun. So
in every heart, down under the snows of life, down under the dead,
matted leaves of care, passion, sin, and shame, are growing flowers
of sentiment. You will do well to uncover them now and then, for
they will give beauty and perfume to your whole nature, and make you
a better man or woman. And God grant, that when you clear away the
debris, you do not find a grave of dead hopes."
March 14, 1869.
_LENT AND CHILDREN._
Whew!
Which is meant to express a sigh of relief that Lent is over.
Isn't it nice?
This saving one's soul on fish when fish commands a premium, is
expensive and monotonous.
Welcome the hens. Exit white-fish, enter eggs.
Whew!
Would that we lived in the grand old days when the sun danced in the
sky on Easter morning; when the children played the pretty games
with colored eggs; when the Aldermen went out on Easter morn for a
little municipal game of ball; when it would have been my privilege
to parade the streets and claim the privilege of lifting every woman
three times from the ground, receiving as payment a kiss or a silver
shilling, the women having the same privilege on the next day, in
order to make things even.
Wouldn't it be nice? That is, if one didn't meet Parepa and undertake
that little job.
When the men and women threw apples into the churchyard, and those
who had been married during the year threw three times as many
as the rest. It strikes me, however, that if this rule had been
reversed, and those who had been divorced during the year were
obliged to throw three times as many apples as the rest, the Chicago
church-wardens would fare better.
And then to go to the minister's and feast on bread, cheese and ale,
on bacon and tansy pudding.
As it is, the only relief one has now is the blessed feeling that he
can go to sinning again. It is too much for any constitution to be
strictly pious for six weeks, and live on beans and fish. Neither the
moral nor the physical diet agrees with me. A little sin now will be
an excellent tonic.
And it will agree with you, Celeste, also. You didn't look well
sitting in black, picking fish bones. I knew all the time you
were thinking of the flesh pots. It is useless for you to try to
convince me that you have been an angel for the past six weeks. It
won't do. There is not the slightest sign of a pin feather, even,
on your pretty white shoulders. You are essentially human. I know
that, eating your lentils, you sighed for the salads, and filets,
and Burgundy. I know that, in your suit of serge, your eyes were
prospectively fixed upon the new spring hat and all the pretty petals
which would unfold about you on Easter, and turn you into a lily, to
blossom to-morrow, in accordance with the provisions of the Council
of Nice.
Isn't it nice?
When you kept saying to yourself, all through Lent, that you were
a poor, weak, miserable creature, and that there was nothing but
vanity in the world, I know you excepted that delightful fellow in
black hair, with a divine moustache and taper fingers, who looked
unutterably pretty things at you over the top of his prayer-book,
divided his responses between you and Parson Primrose, and wore a
diamond ring on his third finger, which he managed, somehow, to keep
directly in the light which streamed through St. John on the stained
window.
You are now absolved, my dear Celeste. Go in and sin just a little,
and prove your humanity. You are not made to be an angel, but "a
little lower than the angels," you know. Undrape your pretty rounded
shoulders. Pile up your chignon. Put on those darling white slippers,
which leave footsteps almost as small as those of the robins in
the early spring. No more cypress and rue on your corsage, but the
wicked camelia, and the flaunting azalia. Set your slow monastic
march to a quicker _tempo_ and, _voila_, the German. Sound fiddles
and blow trombones, for Capuchin is now Columbine, and the gilded
doors of Fashion swing quickly open for the maskers to enter. It is
a merry procession. Sly glances flash through the masks, and there
are rounded outlines in the dominoes. Bells tinkle on the gay robes.
Who is who? What matters it, so you keep the masks on? Of course, the
black mask, now and then, will enter and beckon to one or the other
of us to come out with him to the anteroom and take off our masks,
preparatory to a long journey with him.
Heigh ho! We shall never come back to the gay scene; but the revel
will go on just the same as if you and I had never been in the set.
The fiddles will only play a little more _forte_, just loud enough to
drown the dirge outside, and we shall go into the dreamless sleep,
and grope our way through the shadowy land to the light beyond. Pray
God, we all lay ourselves down like true ladies and gentlemen, and
that the bugles sing peace over us with all the world.
Which reminds me to say, that in looking over the advertising
columns, a few mornings since, I observed a card published by
some party who desired boarders--"a gentleman and lady without
encumbrances."
Of course the "encumbrances" are children. I protest against the
application of the term. If there be anything in the world which
can make stale bread and hash palatable, it is a child. If there be
anything which can bring a ray of sunshine into the dreary, gloomy
desert of a boarding house, it is a child.
I am bound to protest against this opposition to children, which is
growing fiercer every day. Occasionally you will find a family with
soul enough in its collective breast to admit a party with one child,
with a mental reservation that they are entitled to a crown of glory
for so doing. But what are those fond parents, whose nest is full of
these lively and demonstrative pledges of conjugal affection, to do?
A house which has not a little blue and gold edition of humanity,
fluttering through its rooms, dancing, singing, and crowing, as full
of love as an egg is of meat, whose sky is all sunshine, or at most
overcast by the thinnest of April clouds, sounding a jubilant peal
of ecstasy in the morning, and making the coming night doubly holy
and beautiful with its little prayer at evening, must be a very
lonely house. A house which has not a little crib in the nursery; a
mutilated battalion of dolls, minus legs, arms, and heads, looking
for all the world as though they had just come from some Lilliputian
battle; marvelous books, reciting the exploits of the matronly
Goose, the good fortune of Cinderella, and the bad fortune of
Polly Flinders, scattered about in every room, _sans_ covers, and
tattered and torn; little blue and red shoes and striped stockings
in the drawers; little fingerprints about the door-knobs and marks
of juvenile industry everywhere, such as combs in the coal scuttle,
carving knives in the molasses jug, tea spoons in the stoves, a
family bible illustrated with pencil marks, intended by the youthful
Raphael to be letters to some distant aunt, or _chefs d`oeuvres_ in
natural history, sugar deftly mixed with the salt, Eau de Cologne in
the slop jar, and your favorite arm chair harnessed with strings, and
mustered into service as a horse-car--such a home must be as cheerful
as the cell of a recluse.
The house which has not seen the day change into night, and all
the blessed sun-light extinguished; which has not heard the music
of childhood suddenly cease; which listens in vain for the little
footfalls pattering from room to room; out from the doors of which a
little coffin went one day, leaving a great blank, carrying with the
little sleeper almost all our love, and hope, and faith; the house
which is not connected more closely with Heaven by that little billow
of turf which will soon be starred all over with daisies--such a
house must be very dreary. Children, encumbrances! Bah! The man or
woman who wrote that card--it could not have been a woman--will never
be troubled with heart disease.
In the name, and for the sake of the children, I protest against this
outrage upon these little people, whose mission it is to elevate,
refine, and humanize us; into whose pure, innocent faces one can look
with so much relief, after a day of intercourse with the rough, hard
faces of the world; who are the only reminders that there ever was an
Eden, and who make Heaven possible on earth.
I wouldn't trust a man with a torn five cent shin-plaster who didn't
love a child. It is impossible for a woman not to love a child. There
never was a woman so depraved, or so unwomanly, but that a little
child could find a good spot in her heart.
And I not only protest against this term of "encumbrance," but I
protest against the manner in which children are treated. The other
day, I observed an elegantly dressed little child paddling along on
the wet, muddy sidewalk, with the thinnest of blue paper shoes. Every
step the little one took, must, inevitably, have dampened her feet. A
foolish woman was walking by her side quite comfortably shod.
I don't know that that foolish woman knew what she was doing, but I
will tell her. In allowing your child to go out with those shoes, you
were sowing the seeds of disease, which will either kill her before
she leaves childhood, or send her into womanhood wrecked for life,
and finally to die of consumption. If your child dies before leaving
childhood, you will undoubtedly mourn as sincerely as did Rachel,
and your good minister will come to comfort you. He will assure you
that "the Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away." He will tell you that
whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. He will also caution you against
repining at an affliction wisely ordered by Divine Providence.
All this may do as a salve for your sorrow; but it isn't true. The
Lord didn't take away your child. You yourself sent her away. This
affliction was not ordered by Divine Providence. It was an affliction
solely of your own preparation and consummation. No one else in the
wide world is responsible for your child's death, and, but for you,
she might have been living now. It may be very pleasant for you to
cast the responsibility upon Divine Providence, but it isn't fair.
We are all of us too apt to shirk the responsibility, and, with a
sort of meek, resigned, gracious wave of the hand, transfer the
responsibility to Divine Providence. But it won't do. You can't
deceive Heaven in that way.
You yourself hold that child's life in your hand. You can save her,
or you can kill her by the mere matter of thickness of leather. If
you don't take off those blue shoes, woman, your child will die.
Divine Providence won't take off the shoes for you. The requisites
for the life of your child are common sense and a shoemaker. It is
criminally thoughtless for you to expose your child. It is cowardly
for you, when your child dies, to try to shift the responsibility
upon Heaven, which had nothing to do with it. If the epitaph was
written properly or truthfully upon her little gravestone, hereafter,
it would read somewhat after the following fashion:
Here Lies the Body of
* * * *
WHO DIED OF THIN SHOES AND MATERNAL FOLLY.
_Her Mother Did It._
If what I have said shall get a pair of thick shoes for even one
child, my purpose will be answered.
March 27, 1869.
_BELLS._
At the dinner table, the other day, we were discussing the subject of
bells, and we unanimously regretted the fact that so many beautiful
churches have been erected in this city without bells. A church
without a bell is like a bush without roses, or a harp without
strings.
I believe it to be a Christian duty to hang a bell in every
church-tower or steeple; a bell dedicated to solemn and eternal
things, dwelling in a realm of music, and swinging in the
mid-heavens, to teach us of the mutability of earth; a voice above
us--above the din and roar of the city--above the strife of mammon
and the jargon of trade--to warn, and to console, and to bring
repose to us. And upon every bell, I would, if I had my way, cause
to be engraved that solemn legend upon the bell in the minster of
Schaffhausen: "Vivos voco; mortuos plango; fulguros frango," ("I call
the living; I mourn the dead; I break the lightnings.")