was sheltered in the winter from the cruel winds by the mighty pines.
In the spring and summer she was even more beautiful than the White
Rose or the Red Rose, although she had a tiny little petal of white
just suffused with a blush. Her leaves were very small but they were
very fragrant. There were no other flowers in the forest for her
to love, and so she loved a Star which she used to see every night
through the branches of the trees. Sometimes when the dew fell in the
night, the Star would come to her in the drops, and she could see
and feel his radiance on her petals, although she could never go to
the Star. And there was a little Child who, sometimes, used to roam
through this forest, who loved the Rose, and used to stop and talk to
it in her childish way, and the Star, which the Rose loved, was the
Child's Star. For, even for each little child, shines a star which
is its own--a star which always rains down blessed influences upon
it--a star which will always guide the child if it will but follow.
One day the Child did not come to the forest, for an Angel had come
down out of the blue heavens--the Angel of Death--and forever closed
the eyes of the little one and sealed its ears to the sweet sounds of
earth, and hushed its merry prattle forever, and strangers went to
the forest and plucked the Rose which the little Child had loved, and
they placed it in the cold marble hands, and the Angel of Light, the
sister of the Angel of Death, came and took the Child and the Rose
and carried them to the Star, and the three were re-united and were
happy.
And the name of the Wild Rose was Wisdom.
These are the stories of the Three Roses, which I tell to you, my
children, upon the old desk, before I leave it forever, and I pray
Heaven for you all, blue eyes and black eyes, brown hair and gold
hair, whether you live in hovel or in hall, whatever ways your little
feet may wander, that they go not in the way of the White Rose which
is that of disappointment leading to death; neither in the way of the
Red Rose which is that of folly leading to ruin; but in the way of
the Wild Rose, which is that of contentment and wisdom.
April 24, 1869.
_THE OLD._
On this May-Day, when Nature is putting on her new spring suit of
green, and decking herself with new buds and flowers; when every
blade of grass shooting up through the brown sod, and every quaint
little package of leaf unrolling itself on the bough are new; when
restless men and women, carting their Lares and Penates through the
streets, are seeking new homes; when new breezes from the North come
shiveringly down upon us, telling new stories they learned of the
icebergs on their way; and when new asparagus and onions are coming
into the market; on this new day, I am free to confess I like the old.
I like old books. I think there is more virtue, and wit, and sense,
and solid stuff in the old tomes--brass-clasped and vellum-paged
mayhap, made to last forever by the old worthies, over whose heads
hundreds of springs have come and gone, and generations of birds
have sung, and they none the wiser, for they left their souls in the
tomes--than in the reams of gaudy modern trash, born in all sorts
of ways, in all sorts of places, and of all sorts of parents, with
lives as permanent as a tadpole's, and, like many a human being,
carrying all the usefulness and beauty they possess in their covers.
Gilt goes a great way with a book, as it does with a man. There are
a great many gilded men and women it won't do to touch or examine
too closely. The moment you handle them, the gilt rubs off and shows
the pewter underneath. There are a great many books of the same
description.
I like old wine. There is virtue in the mildewed, cobwebbed bottle,
which one of your family, whose portrait hangs in the hall because he
is a little old fashioned for the drawing room, placed in the cellar
years ago. Break the neck of the bottle, and see how the imprisoned
genii of the wine leap sparkling into the sunshine, clad in gold,
and fragrant as a rose you stumble upon in the woods. No aquafortis,
logwood, or burnt shavings here. This is the nectar which refreshed
the giants of old time, which Horace sang, and Anacreon drank, with
which Dante pledged Beatrice, and which runs through Beethoven's
_Scherzos_, and inspired the Brindisis of the masters.
I like old songs into which the writers have poured their souls;
songs as full of passion and pain as the West sometimes is full of
thunder clouds; songs full of sadness which is not the boisterous wo
of the hired mute, but as unobtrusive and gentle as the summer rain;
songs full of the quaintness, and delicacy, and beauty which time has
only mellowed, and which come down to us hallowed with associations
which cluster around them like vines. Now and then you get a song
which touches the heart at once, but a song, like a friend, must have
been tested by experience before you can fully receive it. Who would
not take Mendelssohn's "First Violet," and gladly give up all the
flower-songs of to-day? Has the religion of to-day anything more
delicately beautiful and graceful than Herrick, anything more massive
and majestic than the "Ein Feste Berg"? Do our modern lovers sing
such dainty serenades as Spenser and Sidney sang to their Phyllises?
I like old friends. A man can't afford to have too many friends.
It is too expensive in the social economy, not in the matter of
dollars and cents, but in the personal wear and tear they occasion
one. A man with a thousand friends is worse off than the Wandering
Jew. A man with five hundred friends is to be pitied. A man with a
hundred friends is a victim. A man with fifty friends is happy in
a quiet way. A man with twenty-five friends can find time to be a
philosopher. A man with ten friends, one for each finger, each one
of whom will stick to him like his fingers, is justified in crying
"Eureka" over the discovery of perfect happiness. The result of my
observations in a feminine direction, is, that women are so made that
they will be inconsolable without a thousand dear friends, to whom
they are bound by the tenderest ties until death, and ten thousand
other friends entitled to the confidences which distract the female
breast, without which relief, the female breast would be simply a
pent up Vesuvius. If, therefore, you have ten friends, and they
are old friends who have travelled all along the journey with you,
through storm and through sunshine, with any one of whom you would
exchange your personal identity, I congratulate you.
It is because I like old things that I paid a visit to the old
TRIBUNE Buildings. I have a passion for old buildings. The smell of
antiquity about them is as refreshing in the modern combination of
smells as the bouquet of good wine in a villainous beer cellar. I
like to trace all the habits and peculiarities of the dead and gone
men and women, which, in the process of time, have been ingrained
into the building, and become part and parcel of it. I have no
objection to a ghost or two--none of your mice in the wainscotting,
or swaying beams in the attic, but the good old-fashioned ghost
of some poor soul, with streaming black hair and pale face, who
concealed her malady and carried her secret with her under the turf,
and, discontented in Heaven, _must_ come back to the old place
where _he_ used to be, and walk under the trees where they used
to walk--the trees which know the secret as well as she, for they
heard it; or the ghost of the boy who ran away and went to sea and
never came home again, whose sad story most any wave crawling up the
sand will tell you, if you will listen aright; or the ghost of that
wrinkled old flint who hid his ingots under the tiles of the hearth,
and comes back now and then to see if they are safe.
I did not see any spirits in the old building; quite the contrary.
There was a great deal of life there. It was night when I went there,
but by the moonlight I saw some strange sights. Our late co-tenants,
the rats, mice, cockroaches and spiders, were holding a general
mass-meeting in the various rooms, discussing the changed aspect of
affairs. An antique rat, of venerable appearance and gray whiskers,
covered with the scars of many a hard-fought fight, and with a
tail sadly mutilated by the numerous inkstands and paper-weights
which had followed him into his hole many a time and oft, occupied
the Managing Editor's old desk, the empty pigeon-holes of which
brought him into admirable perspective. He acted as Chairman of the
meeting, and presided with dignity, holding a dusty document in his
hand for a gavel, which had been laid away fifteen years ago as of
immense value, and never thought of since--just as you and I, you
know, who think we are of so much value, will be laid away shortly
in a pigeon-hole, and never thought of again. Several rows of rats,
who had come down from a former generation, occupied an old table,
sitting erect, and manifesting a proper appreciation of the spirit of
the meeting. The younger rats were compelled to shift for themselves,
and were sprinkled about the floor. The gas pipe running up the
wall was festooned with mice who looked down upon the assembly with
interested countenances, while the three blind mice of song notoriety
could be distinguished by their tails, that is, as much of their
tails as escaped the carving knife, which protruded from a hole in
the wall. Being bereft of the blessing of sight, it was but natural
that they should make the mistake of turning their backs upon the
Chairman, but they could hear all that was said. The rat who lived in
a well, and who, when he died, went to a warmer climate, you may not
be aware returned from that place some time since. He was present as
an invited guest from the Museum. The cockroaches looked out of the
cracks in every direction, and balanced themselves dexterously on
shreds of wall paper. The spiders occupied the centres of their webs,
apparently asleep, but in reality wide awake, as one unfortunate
blue-bottle fly found, who got caught, and was immediately served
up and sent to the spiders of the Local-Room as a present. Besides
these, there were a few score of old fogy mosquitoes, left over
from last year, and a handsome representation of those quiet little
brown bugs addicted to bedsteads, and pronounced odor, whom I do
not like to mention by name. The Chairman was listening to the
complaints of the multitude, for famine was staring them in the face,
and some means must be adopted for self-preservation. A motion to
serve out an injunction on the TRIBUNE Company, and compel them to
replace the goods they had carried away, was canvassed, but failed
of rat-ification. One large, portly rat, with a very benevolent
face, and getting gray, whom I at once recognized as an old friend
I had seen on my old desk many a time, banqueting on paste, was
complaining particularly of me. He characterized such conduct as
despicable in the highest degree. It was a betrayal of friendship,
a breach of confidence, and he would never again repose trust in a
biped. All that he had found in my desk, during a visit that evening,
was a dried up bouquet or two, rusty pens, one scissor blade, a
photograph of a superannuated prima donna, a paper of pins, and a
huge package of tickets to amateur concerts. There was a time when he
was young and strong. In those days he could gnaw a file, and derive
considerable culinary consolation from a paper-weight, but now he was
obliged to conform his diet to a weakened digestion and disordered
liver. He spoke more in sorrow than in anger, and regretted that
Pickle should be fickle.
At this point, a young mouse, perched upon the top of the gas pipe,
in a piping voice complained that he had just commenced going
through Abbott's History of the War. It was slow work, but he had
got through the covers, and part way through the introduction, and
he didn't like to be interrupted in this manner. It was true he
hadn't derived much sustenance from the thing, but it was a matter
of principle when he commenced a piece of work, to keep at it if
it killed him. Some fifteen or twenty old fossilized rats, with
their wrinkled faces, scanty hairs and shrunk shanks, made the same
complaint with reference to the Patent Office Reports and commercial
statistics. To be sure they had not thriven well. One of them had
devoured half the Georgian Bay Canal; another had swallowed two
Board of Trade Reports, and had got as far as lard in the third, to
which he was looking forward with great expectations, being then
unprofitably engaged upon lumber; a third had almost exhausted
himself with devouring a census table, and was just in sight of
some quotations of cheese; a fourth had swallowed the Smithsonian
Institution, and put the Covode Investigation on the top of it,
and was just ready to attack the American Cyclopedia, in which he
was sure to find something to agree with him and repay him for the
time he had wasted. A sentimental little mouse complained that she
had just got into Mrs. E. D. E. N. Alphabet Southworth's "How He
Won Her," and was interrupted, at a critical moment, when "he" and
"her" were about to say something nice. She was dying to know "how
he won her," and she might go down to a premature grave without the
knowledge of that interesting secret. A grave looking rat, with a
streak of white fur around his neck, and troubled with a slight
cough arising from an affection of the throat, announced that he had
devoted several nights of hard labor, in getting through the back
of a Biblical Cyclopedia, and had just reached the title page. All
the world was before him. Vistas of Hebraic and other sorts of lore,
opened before his longing eyes. He was about to enter, when the prize
was snatched away. He consoled himself with the reflection that all
earthly matters are illusions, but he could not help thinking now
and then how pleasant that Cyclopedia would have been. There was
one wretched old rat who had eaten up a volume of Swinburne, two
duplicates of Walt Whitman, and was feasting upon a gorgeous picture
of the spectacle of Undine. He had eaten up four blonde wigs, sixteen
legs of ballet girls, and left eight coryphees with a leg apiece.
He was very indignant over his disappointment, and even swore about
it, for which he was called to account by the grave-looking rat with
a slight cough. The wicked rodent growled out something in broken
Rattish, and retired to his hole, out of which he shook his tail in
defiance. Presently four or five good little mice, whom I had not
observed before, with their faces very clean, and their fur smoothed
down very sleekly, made their complaint in a weak kind of utterance.
It was to the effect that they had discovered a little stock of
Sunday School books in a paper box, which were very affecting, and
narrated how "Little Freddie" and "Good Teddie" and others, committed
forty feet of texts in one day, which disagreed with them so that
they died very early, not being good enough for this world. They had
just succeeded in getting into the box, and now the books were gone.
In this manner, complaint after complaint was made, and the meeting
adjourned to another evening without taking action. You should have
seen the assembly after adjournment. The whole mass of rats and mice
rushed pell-mell through the dusty heaps of papers on the floor. One
set danced a polka on fragments of editorials touching the finances
and internal revenue, taxation and other topics. In the local
room a rather spare rat, with long reddish hair, mounted the City
Editor's desk, and read off, to the edification of the crowd, several
mutilated fragments of a "Horrible Murder," "Atrocious Villainy
in Bridgeport," "Destructive Fire in Holstein," "Scandal Case on
Michigan Avenue," "Religious Announcements," etc. In the Commercial
Room several casualties occurred. One unfortunate mouse was nearly
choked to death with a column of figures which he found on the
floor, and attempted to swallow. Another, of a sentimental turn of
mind, went insane trying to understand some commercial quotations he
found in an antique looking scrap-book, and three incautious little
mice, venturing too hastily into Colbert's Astronomy, fell into
the Dipper and couldn't get out, until an old rat helped them with
the North Pole and a line dropped from the plane of the ecliptic,
through the parallax of the sun, whatever that is. In another room,
the cockroaches had a carnival in the Night Editor's coffee-pot. It
was one of the most touching sights in the world to see them enter
in festive procession at the top and come out through the nose. On
my own old desk, twenty-three assorted cockroaches, of a beautiful
bronze color, each one of whom I have killed twenty-three times in
twenty-three various ways, were dancing a can-can. A few of the
odoriferous, small brown bugs stood round in various attitudes,
like supernumeraries, while an old rat, against whom I once swore
eternal war, as Hannibal swore against the Romans, beat time with
his stump of a tail. I forgave the rat, but I shall never forget the
scene. I shall miss those cockroaches in the coming days, surrounded
by the inanimate splendors of the new desk, upon which I write you
to-day, looking no more upon the brick walls, but sitting in a flood
of roseate light, which pours through the new window from the dying
day. I could not bear to interfere with the sports of those poor
creatures, and I left them there in the moonlight, engaged in their
wild revels. I cannot say with any degree of veracity that I loved
them while living with them, but still I know that I shall miss them,
and their innocent little ways.
To rat, and mouse, and cockroach, and odoriferous bug, and spider;
to the old desk, and the withered bouquets; to the old rooms, which
have seen so many come and go, and one of tempered judgment, and
calm speech, of dignified presence and upright life, a fast friend
and sure adviser, who left us one morning to rejoin her who had gone
to Heaven a little while before him; to many pleasant associations
and happy scenes; to the familiar stairs worn deeply with the yearly
tread of feet as the water weareth away the rock; to all but memory,
hail and farewell! And welcome the new!
May 1, 1869.
_OLD BLOBBS' OPINIONS._
Old Blobbs came up to see me the other day. He breathed very hard
when he came into the room, was very red in the face, and wiped
his forehead vigorously with his yellow bandanna, for the stairs
troubled him somewhat. Blobbs is not what he was forty years ago--a
broad-breasted, strong-legged, deep-lunged young fellow. The bucket
creaks now in the well, and the grasshopper begins to be a burden.
We all hope the pitcher may not be broken for a long time to come,
but we see many signs that he is on the sun-down side of the hill,
and in his melancholy moods he talks about the shadows down in the
valley whither he is going. I think, however, that he will never
cease his hatred of shams; that he will always delight to strip off
all the fine clothes from human pretence; that he will never admit
that respectability is whatever keeps a gig, and that, under all the
rubbish of the world, he will contend there is something real, and
that it is his duty to find it out. He believes, as I do, that this
great world is a type of the Godlike; that the history of man from
the days when Adam dwelt in Eden, down to this blessed May morning,
so full of spring's odorous promise, is a gospel in itself; that the
morning stars sing together now as of old; and that our souls are
kept in subservience to our bodies, running of errands for them, or
concealed beneath aprons doing the work of the waiter, these starry
strangers who should only be allowed to fulfil their own missions.
When Blobbs had recovered his breath, he signified his desire to say
a few words from the new desk, and I left him in possession. When I
returned, I found the following, written in a large, bold hand, and
underscored to give emphasis, I suppose. I give you the document just
as he wrote it, underscorings and all:
"The _Sin_ of the American nation, sir, is a holiday. The
unpardonable folly is a LAUGH. Sport is unworthy a man born on
American soil. Recreation is an exploded idea, sir, which has come
down to us from a former generation, and if there is anything
which an American looks upon with utter contempt, it is a former
generation. There is no retrospect or prospect between the Atlantic
and the Pacific. It is now and always a simple _spect_. Every man has
a likeness of Mammon set up on his mantel, and to spare one day from
the worship of that small god, is to expose himself to the danger of
not being an old man at thirty, and comfortably into his grave before
fifty. Some unfortunate individuals manage to get beyond fifty, but
they are like old parchments, faded, yellow, and wrinkled, with all
the characters upon them effaced. American babies are begotten of
_fret on one side, and hurry on the other_, and these two forces
are forever propelling them toward a six-by-two patch of ground with
a stone at each end, one of which is Ananias and the other Sapphira.
American babies are _never children_, sir. They make one step from
bibs to breeches, and from pinafores to _paniers_. An American man of
fourteen has squeezed the orange of life dry, and an American woman
of twelve is ready to receive proposals of marriage, and sink her
identity in kettles and pans. There is no law against it, sir. Nature
has kindly preordained that there shall be no bar in the intimate
relations of humanity and asininity. If a man wants to go through
life like a locomotive, I suppose there is nothing to prevent it, but
I don't want him to ask me to ride on his train. I know the rails are
laid on every kindly feeling and elegant grace, and that the smallest
flower can't grow between them. I know that there are all sorts of
obstructions on the track, bankruptcies, suicides, diseases, etc.,
which will prevent him from getting into the three score and ten
station which God Almighty intended for him. People come into the
world in a great hurry, and immediately commence their preparations
to get out of it. They pile up a heap of treasures, and by the time
they get it piled up, under the sod they go, where there is not room
for a five cent shin-plaster.
"What made me think of all these things, sir, was the official
announcement of the city authorities that when the grandest
achievement of this or any other age is celebrated next week,
business will be suspended _for one hour_![2] Actually for one
hour, sir. SIXTY MINUTES, SIR!! And the wretched man who doesn't
recommence his work and put on steam exactly when the hand reaches
the _sixty-first minute_, is unworthy the inestimable privileges of
an American citizen, sir. If I had been the Common Council of the
city of Chicago, I would have passed a law that the merchant who did
not hang out the banners on the outer wall from sunrise to sunset,
who did not double the wages of his clerks for that day, and order
them to celebrate, who did not eat double his usual amount, who did
not execute a _can-can_ on the top of a flour barrel, who did not
make Mrs. Merchant eternally his joyful debtor, by the item of a new
hat, and allow the little Merchants to ruin at least one suit of
clothes in a mud pie bakery, and who did not retire to bed at night
feeling that he was all right at heart, however he might be in his
head, should be liable to fine and imprisonment. _Business will be
suspended for one hour!_ Bah!
"I tell you, sir, when Gabriel blows his horn, and summons us to
square up our accounts, it will be extremely doubtful whether Chicago
will suspend business more than one hour to accommodate him; and,
as I am positive that it will take over an hour to settle up the
accounts _of this city_, it seems to me there is going to be some
confusion. It may be possible that Chicago will not be recognized at
all on that occasion. If she is, I hope some arrangements may be made
by which she can spare a day or two for Gabriel's business.