CHAPTER VI. THE SKIPPER'S STORY.

"WELL, what's the news below?" asked the Doctor of his housekeeper,

as she came home from a gossiping visit to the landing one afternoon.

"What new piece of scandal is afloat now?"

"Nothing, except what concerns yourself," answered Widow Matson, tartly.

"Mrs. Nugeon says that you've been to see her neighbor Wait's girl--she

that 's sick with the measles--half a dozen times, and never so much as

left a spoonful of medicine; and she should like to know what a doctor's

good for without physic. Besides, she says Lieutenant Brown would have

got well if you'd minded her, and let him have plenty of thoroughwort

tea, and put a split fowl at the pit of his stomach."

"A split stick on her own tongue would be better," said the Doctor,

with a wicked grimace.

"The Jezebel! Let her look out for herself the next time she gets the

rheumatism; I'll blister her from head to heel. But what else is

going?"

"The schooner Polly Pike is at the landing."

"What, from Labrador? The one Tom Osborne went in?"

"I suppose so; I met Tom down street."

"Good!" said the Doctor, with emphasis. "Poor Widow Osborne's prayers

are answered, and she will see her son before she dies."

"And precious little good will it do her," said the housekeeper.

"There's not a more drunken, swearing rakeshame in town than Tom

Osborne."

"It's too true," responded the Doctor. "But he's her only son; and you

know, Mrs. Matson, the heart of a mother."

The widow's hard face softened; a tender shadow passed over it; the

memory of some old bereavement melted her; and as she passed into the

house I saw her put her checked apron to her eyes.

By this time Skipper Evans, who had been slowly working his way up

street for some minutes, had reached the gate.

"Look here!" said he. "Here's a letter that I've got by the Polly Pike

from one of your old patients that you gave over for a dead man long

ago."

"From the other world, of course," said the Doctor.

"No, not exactly, though it's from Labrador, which is about the last

place the Lord made, I reckon."

"What, from Dick Wilson?"

"Sartin," said the Skipper.

"And how is he?"

"Alive and hearty. I tell you what, Doctor, physicking and blistering

are all well enough, may be; but if you want to set a fellow up when

he's kinder run down, there's nothing like a fishing trip to Labrador,

'specially if he's been bothering himself with studying, and writing,

and such like. There's nothing like fish chowders, hard bunks, and sea

fog to take that nonsense out of him. Now, this chap," (the Skipper

here gave me a thrust in the ribs by way of designation,) "if I could

have him down with me beyond sunset for two or three months, would come

back as hearty as a Bay o' Fundy porpoise."

Assuring him that I would like to try the experiment, with him as

skipper, I begged to know the history of the case he had spoken of.

The old fisherman smiled complacently, hitched up his pantaloons, took a

seat beside us, and, after extracting a jack-knife from one pocket, and

a hand of tobacco from the other, and deliberately supplying himself

with a fresh quid, he mentioned, apologetically, that he supposed the

Doctor had heard it all before.

"Yes, twenty times," said the Doctor; "but never mind; it's a good story

yet. Go ahead, Skipper."

"Well, you see," said the Skipper, "this young Wilson comes down here

from Hanover College, in the spring, as lean as a shad in dog-days. He

had studied himself half blind, and all his blood had got into brains.

So the Doctor tried to help him with his poticary stuff, and the women

with their herbs; but all did no good. At last somebody advised him to

try a fishing cruise down East; and so he persuaded me to take him

aboard my schooner. I knew he'd be right in the way, and poor company

at the best, for all his Greek and Latin; for, as a general thing, I've

noticed that your college chaps swop away their common sense for their

larning, and make a mighty poor bargain of it. Well, he brought his

books with him, and stuck to them so close that I was afraid we should

have to slide him off the plank before we got half way to Labrador. So

I just told him plainly that it would n't do, and that if he 'd a mind

to kill himself ashore I 'd no objection, but he should n't do it aboard

my schooner. 'I'm e'en just a mind,' says I, 'to pitch your books

overboard. A fishing vessel's no place for 'em; they'll spoil all our

luck. Don't go to making a Jonah of yourself down here in your bunk,

but get upon deck, and let your books alone, and go to watching the sea,

and the clouds, and the islands, and the fog-banks, and the fishes, and

the birds; for Natur,' says I, don't lie nor give hearsays, but is

always as true as the Gospels.'

"But 't was no use talking. There he'd lay in his bunk with his books

about him, and I had e'en a'most to drag him on deck to snuff the sea-

air. Howsomever, one day,--it was the hottest of the whole season,--

after we left the Magdalenes, and were running down the Gut of Canso, we

hove in sight of the Gannet Rocks. Thinks I to myself, I'll show him

something now that he can't find in his books. So I goes right down

after him; and when we got on deck he looked towards the northeast, and

if ever I saw a chap wonder-struck, he was. Right ahead of us was a

bold, rocky island, with what looked like a great snow bank on its

southern slope; while the air was full overhead, and all about, of what

seemed a heavy fall of snow. The day was blazing hot, and there was n't

a cloud to be seen.

"'What in the world, Skipper, does this mean?' says he. 'We're sailing

right into a snow-storm in dog-days and in a clear sky.'

"By this time we had got near enough to hear a great rushing noise in

the air, every moment growing louder and louder.

"'It's only a storm of gannets,' says I.

"'Sure enough!' says he; 'but I wouldn't have believed it possible.'

"When we got fairly off against the island I fired a gun at it: and such

a fluttering and screaming you can't imagine. The great snow-banks

shook, trembled, loosened, and became all alive, whirling away into the

air like drifts in a nor'wester. Millions of birds went up, wheeling

and zigzagging about, their white bodies and blacktipped wings crossing

and recrossing and mixing together into a thick grayish-white haze above

us.

"'You're right, Skipper,' says Wilson to me;

Nature is better than books.'

"And from that time he was on deck as much as his health would allow of,

and took a deal of notice of everything new and uncommon. But, for all

that, the poor fellow was so sick, and pale, and peaking, that we all

thought we should have to heave him overboard some day or bury him in

Labrador moss."

"But he did n't die after all, did he?" said I.

"Die? No!" cried the Skipper; "not he!"

"And so your fishing voyage really cured him?"

"I can't say as it did, exactly," returned the Skipper, shifting his

quid from one cheek to the other, with a sly wink at the Doctor. "The

fact is, after the doctors and the old herb-women had given him up at

home, he got cured by a little black-eyed French girl on the Labrador

coast."

"A very agreeable prescription, no doubt," quoth the Doctor, turning to

me. "How do you think it would suit your case?"

"It does n't become the patient to choose his own nostrums," said I,

laughing. "But I wonder, Doctor, that you have n't long ago tested the

value of this by an experiment upon yourself."

"Physicians are proverbially shy of their own medicines," said he.

"Well, you see," continued the Skipper, "we had a rough run down the

Labrador shore; rainstorms and fogs so thick you could cut 'em up into

junks with your jack-knife. At last we reached a small fishing station

away down where the sun does n't sleep in summer, but just takes a bit

of a nap at midnight. Here Wilson went ashore, more dead than alive,

and found comfortable lodgings with a little, dingy French oil merchant,

who had a snug, warm house, and a garden patch, where he raised a few

potatoes and turnips in the short summers, and a tolerable field of

grass, which kept his two cows alive through the winter. The country

all about was dismal enough; as far as you could see there was nothing

but moss, and rocks, and bare hills, and ponds of shallow water, with

now and then a patch of stunted firs. But it doubtless looked pleasant

to our poor sick passenger, who for some days had been longing for land.

The Frenchman gave him a neat little room looking out on the harbor, all

alive with fishermen and Indians hunting seals; and to my notion no

place is very dull where you can see the salt-water and the ships at

anchor on it, or scudding over it with sails set in a stiff breeze, and

where you can watch its changes of lights and colors in fair and foul

weather, morning and night. The family was made up of the Frenchman,

his wife, and his daughter,--a little witch of a girl, with bright black

eyes lighting up her brown, good-natured face like lamps in a binnacle.

They all took a mighty liking to young Wilson, and were ready to do

anything for him. He was soon able to walk about; and we used to see

him with the Frenchman's daughter strolling along the shore and among

the mosses, talking with her in her own language. Many and many a time,

as we sat in our boats under the rocks, we could hear her merry laugh

ringing down to us.

"We stayed at the station about three weeks; and when we got ready to

sail I called at the Frenchman's to let Wilson know when to come aboard.

He really seemed sorry to leave; for the two old people urged him to

remain with them, and poor little Lucille would n't hear a word of his

going. She said he would be sick and die on board the vessel, but that

if he stayed with them he would soon be well and strong; that they

should have plenty of milk and eggs for him in the winter; and he should

ride in the dog-sledge with her, and she would take care of him as if he

was her brother. She hid his cap and great-coat; and what with crying,

and scolding, and coaxing, she fairly carried her point.

"'You see I 'm a prisoner,' says he; 'they won't let me go.'

"'Well,' says I, 'you don't seem to be troubled about it. I tell you

what, young man,' says I, 'it's mighty pretty now to stroll round here,

and pick mosses, and hunt birds' eggs with that gal; but wait till

November comes, and everything freezes up stiff and dead except white

bears And Ingens, and there's no daylight left to speak of, and you 'll

be sick enough of your choice. You won't live the winter out; and it 's

an awful place to die in, where the ground freezes so hard that they

can't bury you.'

"'Lucille says,' says he, 'that God is as near us in the winter as in

the summer. The fact is, Skipper, I've no nearer relative left in the

States than a married brother, who thinks more of his family and

business than of me; and if it is God's will that I shall die, I may as

well wait His call here as anywhere. I have found kind friends here;

they will do all they can for me; and for the rest I trust Providence.'

"Lucille begged that I would let him stay; for she said God would hear

her prayers, and he would get well. I told her I would n't urge him any

more; for if I was as young as he was, and had such a pretty nurse to

take care of me, I should be willing to winter at the North Pole.

Wilson gave me a letter for his brother; and we shook hands, and I left

him. When we were getting under way he and Lucille stood on the

landing-place, and I hailed him for the last time, and made signs of

sending the boat for him. The little French girl understood me; she

shook her head, and pointed to her father's house; and then they both

turned back, now and then stopping to wave their handkerchiefs to us. I

felt sorry to leave him there; but for the life of me I could n't blame

him."

"I'm sure I don't," said the Doctor.

"Well, next year I was at Nitisquam Harbor; and, although I was doing

pretty well in the way of fishing, I could n't feel easy without running

away north to 'Brador to see what had become of my sick passenger. It

was rather early in the season, and there was ice still in the harbor;

but we managed to work in at last; when who should I see on shore but

young Wilson, so stout and hearty that I should scarcely have known,

him. He took me up to his lodgings and told me that he had never spent

a happier winter; that he was well and strong, and could fish and hunt

like a native; that he was now a partner with the Frenchman in trade,

and only waited the coming of the priest from the Magdalenes, on his

yearly visit to the settlements, to marry his daughter. Lucille was as

pretty, merry, and happy as ever; and the old Frenchman and his wife

seemed to love Wilson as if he was their son. I've never seen him

since; but he now writes me that he is married, and has prospered in

health and property, and thinks Labrador would be the finest country in

the world if it only had heavy timber-trees."

"One cannot but admire," said the Doctor, "that wise and beneficent

ordination of Providence whereby the spirit of man asserts its power

over circumstances, moulding the rough forms of matter to its fine

ideal, bringing harmony out of discord,--coloring, warming, and lighting

up everything within the circle of its horizon. A loving heart carries

with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the

tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and

sows with flowers the gray desolation of rocks and mosses. Wherever

love goes, there springs the true heart's-ease, rooting itself even in

the polar ices. To the young invalid of the Skipper's story, the dreary

waste of what Moore calls, as you remember,

'the dismal shore

Of cold and pitiless Labrador,'

looked beautiful and inviting; for he saw it softened and irradiated in

an atmosphere of love. Its bare hills, bleak rocks, and misty sky were

but the setting and background of the sweetest picture in the gallery of

life. Apart from this, however, in Labrador, as in every conceivable

locality, the evils of soil and climate have their compensations and

alleviations. The long nights of winter are brilliant with moonlight,

and the changing colors of the northern lights are reflected on the

snow. The summer of Labrador has a beauty of its own, far unlike that

of more genial climates, but which its inhabitants would not forego for

the warm life and lavish luxuriance of tropical landscapes. The dwarf

fir-trees throw from the ends of their branches yellow tufts of stamina,

like small lamps decorating green pyramids for the festival of spring;

and if green grass is in a great measure wanting, its place is supplied

by delicate mosses of the most brilliant colors. The truth is, every

season and climate has its peculiar beauties and comforts; the

footprints of the good and merciful God are found everywhere; and we

should be willing thankfully to own that 'He has made all things

beautiful in their time' if we were not a race of envious, selfish,

ungrateful grumblers."

"Doctor! Doctor!" cried a ragged, dirty-faced boy, running breathless

into the yard.

"What's the matter, my lad?" said the Doctor.

"Mother wants you to come right over to our house. Father's tumbled off

the hay-cart; and when they got him up he didn't know nothing; but they

gin him some rum, and that kinder brought him to."

"No doubt, no doubt," said the Doctor, rising to go. "Similia similibus

curantur. Nothing like hair of the dog that bites you."

"The Doctor talks well," said the Skipper, who had listened rather

dubiously to his friend's commentaries on his story; "but he carries too

much sail for me sometimes, and I can't exactly keep alongside of him.

I told Elder. Staples once that I did n't see but that the Doctor could

beat him at preaching. 'Very likely,' says the Elder, says he; 'for you

know, Skipper, I must stick to my text; but the Doctor's Bible is all

creation.'"

"Yes," said the Elder, who had joined us a few moments before, "the

Doctor takes a wide range, or, as the farmers say, carries a wide swath,

and has some notions of things which in my view have as little

foundation in true philosophy as they have warrant in Scripture; but,

if he sometimes speculates falsely, he lives truly, which is by far

the most important matter. The mere dead letter of a creed, however

carefully preserved and reverently cherished, may be of no more

spiritual or moral efficacy than an African fetish or an Indian

medicine-bag. What we want is, orthodoxy in practice,--the dry bones

clothed with warm, generous, holy life. It is one thing to hold fast

the robust faith of our fathers,--the creed of the freedom-loving

Puritan and Huguenot,--and quite another to set up the five points of

Calvinism, like so many thunder-rods, over a bad life, in the insane

hope of averting the Divine displeasure from sin."

THE LITTLE IRON SOLDIER

OR, WHAT AMINADAB IVISON DREAMED ABOUT.

AMINADAB IVISON started up in his bed. The great clock at the head of

the staircase, an old and respected heirloom of the family, struck one.

"Ah," said he, heaving up a great sigh from the depths of his inner man,

"I've had a tried time of it."

"And so have I," said the wife. "Thee's been kicking and threshing

about all night. I do wonder what ails thee."

And well she might; for her husband, a well-to-do, portly, middle-aged

gentleman, being blessed with an easy conscience, a genial temper, and a

comfortable digestion, was able to bear a great deal of sleep, and

seldom varied a note in the gamut of his snore from one year's end to

another.

"A very remarkable exercise," soliloquized Aminadab; "very."

"Dear me! what was it?" inquired his wife.

"It must have been a dream," said Aminadab.

"Oh, is that all?" returned the good woman. "I'm glad it's nothing

worse. But what has thee been dreaming about?"

"It's the strangest thing, Hannah, that thee ever heard of," said

Aminadab, settling himself slowly back into his bed. Thee recollects

Jones sent me yesterday a sample of castings from the foundry. Well, I

thought I opened the box and found in it a little iron man, in

regimentals; with his sword by his side and a cocked hat on, looking

very much like the picture in the transparency over neighbor O'Neal's

oyster-cellar across the way. I thought it rather out of place for

Jones to furnish me with such a sample, as I should not feel easy to

show it to my customers, on account of its warlike appearance. However,

as the work was well done, I took the little image and set him up on the

table, against the wall; and, sitting down opposite, I began to think

over my business concerns, calculating how much they would increase in

profit in case a tariff man should be chosen our ruler for the next four

years. Thee knows I am not in favor of choosing men of blood and strife

to bear rule in the land: but it nevertheless seems proper to consider

all the circumstances in this case, and, as one or the other of the

candidates of the two great parties must be chosen, to take the least of

two evils. All at once I heard a smart, quick tapping on the table;

and, looking up, there stood the little iron man close at my elbow,

winking and chuckling. 'That's right, Aminadab!' said he, clapping his

little metal hands together till he rang over like a bell, 'take the

least of two evils.' His voice had a sharp, clear, jingling sound, like

that of silver dollars falling into a till. It startled me so that I

woke up, but finding it only a dream presently fell asleep again. Then

I thought I was down in the Exchange, talking with neighbor Simkins

about the election and the tariff. 'I want a change in the

administration, but I can't vote for a military chieftain,' said

neighbor Simkins, 'as I look upon it unbecoming a Christian people to

elect men of blood for their rulers.' 'I don't know,' said I, 'what

objection thee can have to a fighting man; for thee 's no Friend, and

has n't any conscientious scruples against military matters. For my own

part, I do not take much interest in politics, and never attended a

caucus in my life, believing it best to keep very much in the quiet, and

avoid, as far as possible, all letting and hindering things; but there

may be cases where a military man may be voted for as a choice of evils,

and as a means of promoting the prosperity of the country in business

matters.' 'What!' said neighbor Simkins, 'are you going to vote for a

man whose whole life has been spent in killing people?' This vexed me a

little, and I told him there was such a thing as carrying a good

principle too far, and that he night live to be sorry that he had thrown

away his vote, instead of using it discreetly. 'Why, there's the iron

business,' said I; but just then I heard a clatter beside me, and,

looking round, there was the little iron soldier clapping his hands in

great glee. 'That's it, Aminadab!' said he; 'business first, conscience

afterwards! Keep up the price of iron with peace if you can, but keep

it up at any rate.' This waked me again in a good deal of trouble; but,

remembering that it is said that 'dreams come of the multitude of

business,' I once more composed myself to sleep."

"Well, what happened next?" asked his wife.

"Why, I thought I was in the meeting-house, sitting on the facing-seat

as usual. I tried hard to settle my mind down into a quiet and humble

state; but somehow the cares of the world got uppermost, and, before I

was well aware of it, I was far gone in a calculation of the chances of

the election, and the probable rise in the price of iron in the event of

the choice of a President favorable to a high tariff. Rap, tap, went

something on the floor. I opened my eyes, and there was the little

image, red-hot, as if just out of the furnace, dancing, and chuckling,

and clapping his hands. 'That's right, Aminadab!' said he; 'go on as

you have begun; take care of yourself in this world, and I'll promise

you you'll be taken care of in the next. Peace and poverty, or war and

money. It's a choice of evils at best; and here's Scripture to decide

the matter: "Be not righteous overmuch."' Then the wicked-looking

little image twisted his hot lips, and leered at me with his blazing

eyes, and chuckled and laughed with a noise exactly as if a bag of

dollars had been poured out upon the meeting-house floor. This waked me

just now in such a fright. I wish thee would tell me, Hannah, what thee

can make of these three dreams?"

"It don't need a Daniel to interpret them," answered Hannah. "Thee 's

been thinking of voting for a wicked old soldier, because thee cares

more for thy iron business than for thy testimony against wars and

fightings. I don't a bit wonder at thy seeing the iron soldier thee

tells of; and if thee votes to-morrow for a man of blood, it wouldn't be

strange if he should haunt thee all thy life."

Aminadab Ivison was silent, for his conscience spoke in the words of his

wife. He slept no more that night, and rose up in the morning a wiser

and better man.

When he went forth to his place of business he saw the crowds hurrying

to and fro; there were banners flying across the streets, huge placards

were on the walls, and he heard all about him the bustle of the great

election.

"Friend Ivison," said a red-faced lawyer, almost breathless with his

hurry, "more money is needed in the second ward; our committees are

doing a great work there. What shall I put you down for? Fifty

dollars? If we carry the election, your property will rise twenty per

cent. Let me see; you are in the iron business, I think?"

Aminadab thought of the little iron soldier of his dream, and excused

himself. Presently a bank director came tearing into his office.

"Have you voted yet, Mr. Ivison? It 's time to get your vote in. I

wonder you should be in your office now. No business has so much at

stake in this election as yours."

"I don't think I should feel entirely easy to vote for the candidate,"

said Aminadab.

"Mr. Ivison," said the bank director, "I always took you to be a shrewd,

sensible man, taking men and things as they are. The candidate may not

be all you could wish for; but when the question is between him and a

worse man, the best you can do is to choose the least of the two evils."

"Just so the little iron man said," thought Aminadab. "'Get thee behind

me, Satan!' No, neighbor Discount," said he, "I've made up my mind. I

see no warrant for choosing evil at all. I can't vote for that man."

"Very well," said the director, starting to leave the room; "you can do

as you please; but if we are defeated through the ill-timed scruples of

yourself and others, and your business pinches in consequence, you need

n't expect us to help men who won't help themselves. Good day, sir."

Aminadab sighed heavily, and his heart sank within him; but he thought

of his dream, and remained steadfast. Presently he heard heavy steps

and the tapping of a cane on the stairs; and as the door opened he saw

the drab surtout of the worthy and much-esteemed friend who sat beside

him at the head of the meeting.

"How's thee do, Aminadab?" said he. "Thee's voted, I suppose?"

"No, Jacob," said he; "I don't like the candidate. I can't see my way

clear to vote for a warrior."

"Well, but thee does n't vote for him because he is a warrior,

Aminadab," argued the other; "thee votes for him as a tariff man and an

encourager of home industry. I don't like his wars and fightings better

than thee does; but I'm told he's an honest man, and that he disapproves

of war in the abstract, although he has been brought up to the business.

If thee feels tender about the matter, I don't like to urge thee; but it

really seems to me thee had better vote. Times have been rather hard,

thou knows; and if by voting at this election we can make business

matters easier, I don't see how we can justify ourselves in staying at

home. Thou knows we have a command to be diligent in business as well

as fervent in spirit, and that the Apostle accounted him who provided

not for his own household worse than an infidel. I think it important

to maintain on all proper occasions our Gospel testimony against wars

and fightings; but there is such a thing as going to extremes, thou

knows, and becoming over-scrupulous, as I think thou art in this case.

It is said, thou knows, in Ecclesiastes, 'Be not righteous overmuch: why

shouldst thou destroy thyself?'"

"Ah," said Aminadab to himself, "that's what the little iron soldier

said in meeting." So he was strengthened in his resolution, and the

persuasions of his friend were lost upon him.

At night Aminadab sat by his parlor fire, comfortable alike in his inner

and his outer man. "Well, Hannah," said he, "I've taken thy advice. I

did n't vote for the great fighter to-day."

"I'm glad of it," said the good woman, "and I dare say thee feels the

better for it."

Aminadab Ivison slept soundly that night, and saw no more of the little

iron soldier.

PASSACONAWAY. (1833.)

I know not, I ask not, what guilt's in thy heart, But I feel

that I love thee, whatever thou art.

Moor.

THE township of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, contained, in the autumn of

1641, the second year of its settlement, but six dwelling-houses,

situated near each other, on the site of the present village. They were

hastily constructed of rude logs, small and inconvenient, but one remove

from the habitations of the native dwellers of the wilderness. Around

each a small opening had been made through the thick forest, down to the

margin of the river, where, amidst the charred and frequent stumps and

fragments of fallen trees, the first attempts at cultivation had been

made. A few small patches of Indian corn, which had now nearly reached

maturity, exhibited their thick ears and tasselled stalks, bleached by

the frost and sunshine; and, here and there a spot of yellow stubble,

still lingering among the rough incumbrances of the soil, told where a

scanty crop of common English grain had been recently gathered. Traces

of some of the earlier vegetables were perceptible, the melon, the pea,

and the bean. The pumpkin lay ripening on its frosted vines, its sunny

side already changed to a bright golden color; and the turnip spread out

its green mat of leaves in defiance of the season. Everything around

realized the vivid picture of Bryant's Emigrant, who:

"Hewed the dark old woods away,

And gave the virgin fields to the day

And the pea and the bean beside the door

Bloomed where such flowers ne'er bloomed before;

And the maize stood up, and the bearded rye

Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky."

Beyond, extended the great forest, vast, limitless, unexplored, whose

venerable trees had hitherto bowed only to the presence of the storm,

the beaver's tooth, and the axe of Time, working in the melancholy

silence of natural decay. Before the dwellings of the white

adventurers, the broad Merrimac rolled quietly onward the piled-up

foliage of its shores, rich with the hues of a New England autumn.

The first sharp frosts, the avant couriers of approaching winter, had

fallen, and the whole wilderness was in blossom. It was like some vivid

picture of Claude Lorraine, crowded with his sunsets and rainbows, a

natural kaleidoscope of a thousand colors. The oak upon the hillside

stood robed in summer's greenness, in strong contrast with the topaz-

colored walnut. The hemlock brooded gloomily in the lowlands, forming,

with its unbroken mass of shadow, a dark background for the light maple

beside it, bright with its peculiar beauty. The solemn shadows of the

pine rose high in the hazy atmosphere, checkered, here and there, with

the pale yellow of the birch.

"Truly, Alice, this is one of God's great marvels in the wilderness,"

said John Ward, the minister, and the original projector of the

settlement, to his young wife, as they stood in the door of their humble

dwelling. "This would be a rare sight for our friends in old Haverhill.

The wood all about us hath, to my sight, the hues of the rainbow, when,

in the words of the wise man, it compasseth the heavens as with a

circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it. Very beautifully

hath He indeed garnished the excellent works of His wisdom."

"Yea, John," answered Alice, in her soft womanly tone; "the Lord is,

indeed, no respecter of persons. He hath given the wild savages a more

goodly show than any in Old England. Yet, John, I am sometimes very

sorrowful, when I think of our old home, of the little parlor where you

and I used to sit of a Sunday evening. The Lord hath been very

bountiful to this land, and it may be said of us, as it was said of

Israel of old, 'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles,

O Israel!' But the people sit in darkness, and the Gentiles know not

the God of our fathers."

"Nay," answered her husband, "the heathen may be visited and redeemed,

the spirit of the Lord may turn unto the Gentiles; but a more sure evil

hath arisen among us. I tell thee, Alice, it shall be more tolerable in

the day of the Lord, for the Tyre and Sidon, the Sodom and Gomorrah of

the heathen, than for the schemers, the ranters, the Familists, and the

Quakers, who, like Satan of old, are coming among the sons of God."

"I thought," said Alice, "that our godly governor had banished these out

of the colony."

"Truly he hath," answered Mr. Ward, "but the evil seed they have sown

here continues to spring up and multiply. The Quakers have, indeed,

nearly ceased to molest us; but another set of fanatics, headed by

Samuel Gorton, have of late been very troublesome. Their family has

been broken up, and the ring-leaders have been sentenced to be kept at

hard labor for the colony's benefit; one being allotted to each of the

old towns, where they are forbidden to speak on matters of religion.

But there are said to be many still at large, who, under the

encouragement of the arch-heretic, Williams, of the Providence

plantation, are even now zealously doing the evil work of their master.

But, Alice," he continued, as he saw his few neighbors gathering around

a venerable oak which had been spared in the centre of the clearing, "it

is now near our time of worship. Let us join our friends."

And the minister and his wife entered into the little circle of their

neighbors. No house of worship, with spire and tower, and decorated

pulpit, had as yet been reared on the banks of the Merrimac. The stern

settlers came together under the open heavens, or beneath the shadow of

the old trees, to kneel before that God, whose works and manifestations

were around them.

The exercises of the Sabhath commenced. A psalm of the old and homely

version was sung, with true feeling, if not with a perfect regard to

musical effect and harmony. The brief but fervent prayer was offered,

and the good man had just announced the text for his sermon, when a

sudden tramp of feet, and a confused murmur of human voices, fell on the

ears of the assembly.

The minister closed his Bible; and the whole group crowded closer

together. "It is surely a war party of the heathen," said Mr. Ward, as

he listened intently to the approaching sound. "God grant they mean us

no evil!"

The sounds drew nearer. The swarthy figure of an Indian came gliding

through the brush-wood into the clearing, followed closely by several

Englishmen. In answer to the eager inquiries of Mr. Ward, Captain

Eaton, the leader of the party, stated that he had left Boston at

the command of Governor Winthrop, to secure and disarm the sachem,

Passaconaway, who was suspected of hostile intentions towards the

whites. They had missed of the old chief, but had captured his son,

and were taking him to the governor as a hostage for the good faith of

his father. He then proceeded to inform Mr. Ward, that letters had been

received from the governor of the settlements of Good Hoop and Piquag,

in Connecticut, giving timely warning of a most diabolical plot of the

Indians to cut off their white neighbors, root and branch. He pointed

out to the notice of the minister a member of his party as one of the

messengers who had brought this alarming intelligence.

He was a tall, lean man, with straight, lank, sandy hair, cut evenly all

around his narrow forehead, and hanging down so as to remind one of

Smollett's apt similitude of "a pound of candles."

"What news do you bring us of the savages?" inquired Mr. Ward.

"The people have sinned, and the heathen are the instruments whereby the

Lord hath willed to chastise them," said the messenger, with that

peculiar nasal inflection of voice, so characteristic of the "unco'

guid." "The great sachem, Miantonimo, chief of the Narragansetts, hath

plotted to cut off the Lord's people, just after the time of harvest, to

slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children."

"How have ye known this?" asked the minister.

"Even as Paul knew of those who had bound themselves together with a

grievous oath to destroy him. The Lord hath done it. One of the bloody

heathens was dreadfully gored by the oxen of our people, and, being in

great bodily pain and tribulation thereat, he sent for Governor Haines,

and told him that the Englishman's god was angry with him for concealing

the plot to kill his people, and had sent the Englishman's cow to kill

him."

"Truly a marvellous providence," said Mr. Ward; "but what has been done

in your settlements in consequence of it?"

"We have fasted many days," returned the other, in a tone of great

solemnity, "and our godly men have besought the Lord that he might now,

as of old, rebuke Satan. They have, moreover, diligently and earnestly

inquired, Whence cometh this evil? Who is the Achan in the camp of our

Israel? It hath been greatly feared that the Quakers and the Papists

have been sowing tares in the garden of the true worship. We have

therefore banished these on pain of death; and have made it highly penal

for any man to furnish either food or lodging to any of these heretics

and idolaters. We have ordered a more strict observance of the Sabbath

of the Lord, no, one being permitted to walk or run on that day, except

to and from public worship, and then, only in a reverent and becoming

manner; and no one is allowed to cook food, sweep the house, shave or

pare the nails, or kiss a child, on the day which is to be kept holy.

We have also framed many wholesome laws, against the vanity and

licentiousness of the age, in respect to apparel and deportment, and

have forbidden any young man to kiss a maid during the time of

courtship, as, to their shame be it said, is the manner of many in the

old lands."

"Ye have, indeed, done well for the spiritual," said Mr. Ward; "what

have you done for your temporal defence?"

"We have our garrisons and our captains, and a goodly store of carnal

weapons," answered the other. "And, besides, we have the good chief

Uncas, of the Mohegans, to help us against the bloody Narragansetts."

"But, my friend," said the minister, addressing Captain Eaton, "there

must be surely some mistake about Passaconaway. I verily believe him to

be the friend of the white men. And this is his son Wonolanset? I saw

him last year, and remember that he was the pride of the old savage, his

father. I will speak to him, for I know something of his barbarous

tongue."

"Wonolanset!"

The young savage started suddenly at the word, and rolled his keen

bright eye upon the speaker.

"Why is the son of the great chief bound by my brothers?"

The Indian looked one instant upon the cords which confined his arms,

and then glanced fiercely upon his conductors.

"Has the great chief forgotten his white friends? Will he send his

young men to take their scalps when the Narragansett bids him?"

The growl of the young bear when roused from his hiding-place is not

more fierce and threatening than were the harsh tones of Wonolanset as

he uttered through his clenched teeth:--

"Nummus quantum."

"Nay, nay," said Mr. Ward, turning away from the savage, "his heart is

full of bitterness; he says he is angry, and, verily, I like not his

bearing. I fear me there is evil on foot. But ye have travelled far,

and must needs be weary rest yourselves awhile, and haply, while ye

refresh your bodies, I may also refresh your spirits with wholesome and

comfortable doctrines."

The party having acquiesced in this proposal, their captive was secured

by fastening one end of his rope to a projecting branch of the tree.

The minister again named his text, but had only proceeded to the minuter

divisions of his sermon, when he was again interrupted by a loud, clear

whistle from the river, and a sudden exclamation of surprise from those

around him. A single glance sufficed to show him the Indian, disengaged

from his rope, and in full retreat.

Eaton raised his rifle to his eye, and called out to the young sachem,

in his own language, to stop, or he would fire upon him. The Indian

evidently understood the full extent of his danger. He turned suddenly

about, and, pointing, up the river towards the dwelling of his father,

pronounced with a threatening gesture:--

"Nosh, Passaconaway!"

"Hold!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, grasping the arm of Eaton. "He threatens us

with his father's vengeance. For God's sake keep your fire!" It was too

late. The report of the rifle broke sharply upon the Sabbath stillness.

It was answered by a shout from the river, and a small canoe, rowed by

an Indian and a white man, was seen darting along the shore. Wonolanset

bounded on unharmed, and, plunging into the river, he soon reached the

canoe, which was hastily paddled to the opposite bank. Captain Eaton

and his party finding it impossible to retake their prisoner, after

listening to the sermon of Mr. Ward, and partaking of some bodily

refreshment, took their leave of the settlers of Pentucket, and departed

for Boston.

The evening, which followed the day whose events we have narrated, was

one of those peculiar seasons of beauty when the climate of New England

seems preferable to that of Italy. The sun went down in the soft haze

of the horizon, while the full moon was rising at the same time in the

east. Its mellow silver mingled with the deep gold of the sunset. The

south-west wind, as warm as that of summer, but softer, was heard, at

long intervals, faintly harping amidst the pines, and blending its low

sighing with the lulling murmurs of the river. The inhabitants of

Pentucket had taken the precaution, as night came on, to load their

muskets carefully, and place them in readiness for instant use, in the

event of an attack from the savages. Such an occurrence, was, indeed,

not unlikely, after the rude treatment which the son of old Passaconaway

had received at the settlement. It was well known that the old chief

was able, at a word, to send every warrior from Pennacook to Naumkeag

upon the war-path of Miantonimo; the vengeful character of the Indians

was also understood; and, in the event of an out-breaking of their

resentment, the settlement of Pentucket was, of all others, the most

exposed to danger.

"Don't go to neighbor Clements's to-night, Mary," said Alice Ward to her

young, unmarried sister; "I'm afraid some of the tawny Indians may be

lurking hereabout. Mr. Ward says he thinks they will be dangerous

neighbors for us."

Mary had thrown her shawl over her head, and was just stepping out.

"It is but a step, as it were, and I promised good-wife Clements that I

would certainly come. I am not afraid of the Indians. There's none of

them about here except Red Sam, who wanted to buy me of Mr. Ward for his

squaw; and I shall not be afraid of my old spark."

The girl tripped lightly from the threshold towards the dwelling of her

neighbor. She had passed nearly half the distance when the pathway,

before open to the moonlight, began to wind along the margin of the

river, overhung with young sycamores and hemlocks. With a beating heart

and a quickened step she was stealing through the shadow, when the

boughs on the river-side were suddenly parted, and a tall man sprang

into the path before her. Shrinking back with terror, she uttered a

faint scream.

"Mary Edmands!" said the stranger, "do not fear me."

A thousand thoughts wildly chased each other through the mind of the

astonished girl. That familiar voice--that knowledge of her name--that

tall and well-remembered form! She leaned eagerly forward, and looked

into the stranger's face. A straggling gleam of moonshine fell across

its dark features of manly beauty.

"Richard Martin! can it be possible!"

"Yea, Mary," answered the other, "I have followed thee to the new world,

in that love which neither sea nor land can abate. For many weary

months I have waited earnestly for such a meeting as this, and, in that

time, I have been in many and grievous perils by the flood and the

wilderness, and by the heathen Indians and more heathen persecutors

among my own people. But I may not tarry, nor delay to tell my errand.

Mary, thou knowest my love; wilt thou be my wife?"

Mary hesitated.

"I ask thee again, if thou wilt share the fortunes of one who hath loved

thee ever since thou wast but a child, playing under the cottage trees

in old Haverhill, and who hath sacrificed his worldly estate, and

perilled his soul's salvation for thy sake. Mary, dear Mary, for of a

truth thou art very dear to me; wilt thou go with me and be my wife?"

The tones of Richard Martin, usually harsh and forbidding, now fell soft

and musical on the ear of Mary. He was her first love, her only one.

What marvel that she consented?

"Let us hasten to depart," said Martin, "this is no place for me. We

will go to the Providence plantations. Passaconaway will assist us in

our journey."

The bright flush of hope and joy faded from the face of the young girl.

She started back from the embrace of her lover.

"What mean you, Richard? What was 't you said about our going to that

sink of wickedness at Providence? Why don't you go back with me to

sister Ward's?"

"Mary Edmands!" said Martin, in a tone of solemn sternness, "it is

fitting that I should tell thee all. I have renounced the evil

doctrines of thy brother-in-law, and his brethren in false prophecy. It

was a hard struggle, Mary; the spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh

was weak, exceeding weak, for I thought of thee, Mary, and of thy

friends. But I had a measure of strength given me, whereby I have been

enabled to do the work which was appointed me."

"Oh, Richard!" said Mary, bursting into tears, "I'm afraid you have

become a Williamsite, one of them, who, Mr. Ward says, have nothing to

hope for in this world or in that to come."

"The Lord rebuke him!" said Martin, with a loud voice. "Woe to such as

speak evil of the witnesses of the truth. I have seen the utter

nakedness of the land of carnal professors, and I have obeyed the call

to come out from among them and be separate. I belong to that

persecuted family whom the proud priests and rulers of this colony have

driven from their borders. I was brought, with many others, before the

wicked magistrates of Boston, and sentenced to labor, without hire, for

the ungodly. But I have escaped from my bonds; and the Lord has raised

up a friend for his servant, even the Indian Passaconaway, whose son I

assisted, but a little time ago, to escape from his captors."

"Can it be?" sobbed Mary, "can it be? Richard, our own Richard,

following the tribe of Gorton, the Familist! Oh, Richard, if you love

me, if you love God's people and his true worship, do come away from

those wicked fanatics."

"Thou art in the very gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity,"

answered Martin. "Listen, Mary Edmands, to the creed of those whom thou

callest fanatics. We believe in Christ, but not in man-worship. The

Christ we reverence is the shadow or image of God in man; he was

crucified in Adam of old, and hath been crucified in all men since; his

birth, his passion, and his death, were but manifestations or figures of

his sufferings in Adam and his descendants. Faith and Christ are the

same, the spiritual image of God in the heart. We acknowledge no rule

but this Christ, this faith within us, either in temporal or spiritual

things. And the Lord hath blessed us, and will bless us, and truth

shall be magnified and exalted in us; and the children of the heathen

shall be brought to know and partake of this great redemption whereof we

testify. But woe to the false teachers, and to them who prophesy for

hire and make gain of their soothsaying. Their churches are the devices

of Satan, the pride and vanity of the natural Adam. Their baptism is

blasphemy; and their sacrament is an abomination, yea, an incantation

and a spell. Woe to them who take the shadow for the substance, that

bow down to the altars of human device and cunning workmanship, that

make idols of their ceremonies! Woe to the high priests and the

Pharisees, and the captains and the rulers; woe to them who love the

wages of unrighteousness!"

The Familist paused from utter exhaustion, so vehemently had he poured

forth the abundance of his zeal. Mary Edmands, overwhelmed by his

eloquence, but still unconvinced, could only urge the disgrace and

danger attending his adherence to such pernicious doctrines. She

concluded by telling him, in a voice choked by tears, that she could

never marry him while a follower of Gorton.

"Stay then," said Martin, fiercely dashing her hand from his, "stay and

partake of the curse of the ungodly, even of the curse of Meroz, who

come not up to the help of the Lord, against the mighty Stay, till the

Lord hath made a threshing instrument of the heathen, whereby the pride

of the rulers, and the chief priests, and the captains of this land

shall be humbled. Stay, till the vials of His wrath are poured out upon

ye, and the blood of the strong man, and the maid, and the little child

is mingled together!"

The wild language, the fierce tones and gestures of her lover, terrified

the unhappy girl. She looked wildly around her, all was dark and

shadowy, an undefined fear of violence came over her; and, bursting into

tears, she turned to fly. "Stay yet a moment," said Martin, in a hoarse

and subdued voice. He caught hold of her arm. She shrieked as if in

mortal jeopardy.

"Let go the gal, let her go!" said old Job Clements, thrusting the long

barrel of his gun through the bushes within a few feet of the head of

the Familist. "A white man, as sure as I live! I thought, sartin, 't

was a tarnal In-in." Martin relinquished his hold, and, the next

instant, found himself surrounded by the settlers.

After a brief explanation had taken place between Mr. Ward and his

sister-in-law, the former came forward and accosted the Familist.

"Richard Martin!" he said, "I little thought to see thee so soon in the

new world, still less to see thee such as thou art. I am exceeding

sorry that I cannot greet thee here as a brother, either in a temporal

or a spiritual nature. My sister tells me that you are a follower of

that servant of Satan, Samuel Gorton, and that you have sought to entice

her away with you to the colony of fanatics at Rhode Island, which may

be fitly compared to that city which Philip of Macedonia peopled with

rogues and vagabonds, and the offscouring of the whole earth."

"John Ward, I know thee," said the unshrinking Familist; "I know thee

for a man wise above what is written, a man vain, uncharitable, and

given to evil speaking. I value neither thy taunts nor thy wit; for the

one hath its rise in the bitterness, and the other in the vanity, of the

natural Adam. Those who walk in the true light, and who have given over

crucifying Christ in their hearts, heed not a jot of the reproaches and

despiteful doings of the high and mighty in iniquity. For of us it hath

been written: 'I have given them thy word and the world hath hated them

because they are not of the world. If the world hate you, ye know that

it hated me before it hated you. If they have hated me they will hate

you also; if they have persecuted me they will persecute you.' And, of

the scoffers and the scorners, the wise ones of this world, whose wisdom

and knowledge have perverted them, and who have said in their hearts,

There is none beside them, it hath been written, yea, and will be

fulfilled: The day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is

proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he shall be

brought low; and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the

haughtiness of man shall be brought low; and the Lord alone shall be

exalted in that day; and the idols shall he utterly abolish.' Of thee,

John Ward, and of thy priestly brotherhood, I ask nothing; and for the

much evil I have received, and may yet receive at your hands, may ye be

rewarded like Alexander the coppersmith, every man according to his

works."

"Such damnable heresy," said Mr. Ward, addressing his neighbors, "must

not be permitted to spread among the people. My friends, we must send

this man to the magistrates."

The Familist placed his hands to his month, and gave a whistle, similar

to that which was heard in the morning, and which preceded the escape of

Wonolanset. It was answered by a shout from the river; and a score of

Indians came struggling up through the brush-wood.

"Vile heretic!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, snatching a musket from the hands of

his neighbor, and levelling it full at the head of Martin; "you have

betrayed us into this jeopardy."

"Wagh! down um gun," said a powerful Indian, as he laid his rough hand

on the shoulder of the minister. "You catch Wonolanset, tie um, shoot

um, scare squaw. Old sachem come now, me tie white man, shoot um, roast

um;" and the old savage smiled grimly and fiercely in the indistinct

moonlight, as he witnessed the alarm and terror of his prisoner.

"Hold, Passaconaway!" said Martin, in the Indian tongue. "Will the

great chief forget his promise?"

The sachem dropped his hold on Mr. Ward's arm. "My brother is good," he

said; "me no kill um, me make um walk woods like Wonolanset." Martin

spoke a few words in the chief's ear. The countenance of the old

warrior for an instant seemed to express dissatisfaction; but, yielding

to the powerful influence which the Familist had acquired over him, he

said, with some reluctance, "My brother is wise, me do so."

"John Ward," said the Familist, approaching the minister, "thou hast

devised evil against one who hath never injured thee. But I seek not

carnal revenge. I have even now restrained the anger of this heathen

chief whom thou and thine have wronged deeply. Let us part in peace,

for we may never more meet in this world." And he extended his hand and

shook that of the minister.

"For thee, Mary," he said, "I had hoped to pluck thee from the evil

which is to come, even as a brand from the burning. I had hoped to lead

thee to the manna of true righteousness, but thou last chosen the flesh-

pots of Egypt. I had hoped to cherish thee always, but thou hast

forgotten me and my love, which brought me over the great waters for thy

sake. I will go among the Gentiles, and if it be the Lord's will,

peradventure I may turn away their wrath from my people. When my

wearisome pilgrimage is ended, none shall know the grave of Richard

Martin; and none but the heathen shall mourn for him. Mary! I forgive

thee; may the God of all mercies bless thee! I shall never see thee

more."

Hot and fast fell the tears of that stern man upon the hand of Mary.

The eyes of the young woman glanced hurriedly over the faces of her

neighbors, and fixed tearfully upon that of her lover. A thousand

recollections of young affection, of vows and meetings in another land,

came vividly before her. Her sister's home, her brother's instructions,

her own strong faith, and her bitter hatred of her lover's heresy were

all forgotten.

"Richard, dear Richard, I am your Mary as much as ever I was. I'll go

with you to the ends of the earth. Your God shall be my God, and where

you are buried there will I be also."

Silent in the ecstasy of joyful surprise, the Familist pressed her to

his bosom. Passaconaway, who had hitherto been an unmoved spectator of

the scene, relaxed the Indian gravity of his features, and murmured, in

an undertone, "Good, good."

"Will my brother go?" he inquired, touching Martin's shoulder; "my

squaws have fine mat, big wigwam, soft samp, for his young woman."

"Mary," said Martin, "the sachem is impatient; and we must needs go with

him." Mary did not answer, but her head was reclined upon his bosom,

and the Familist knew that she resigned herself wholly to his direction.

He folded the shawl more carefully around her, and supported her down

the precipitous and ragged bank of the river, followed closely by

Passaconaway and his companions.

"Come back, Mary Edmands!" shouted Mr. Ward. "In God's name come back."

Half a dozen canoes shot out into the clear moonlight from the shadow of

the shore. "It is too late!" said the minister, as he struggled down to

the water's edge. "Satan hath laid his hands upon her; but I will

contend for her, even as did Michael of old for the body of Moses.

Mary, sister Mary, for the love of Christ, answer me."

No sound came back from the canoes, which glided like phantoms,

noiselessly and swiftly, through the still waters of the river.

"The enemy hath prevailed," said Mr. Ward; "two women were grinding at

my mill, the one is taken and the other is left. Let us go home, my

friends, and wrestle in prayer against the Tempter."

The heretic and his orthodox bride departed into the thick wilderness,

under the guidance of Passaconaway, and in a few days reached the

Eldorado of the heretic and the persecuted, the colony of Roger

Williams. Passaconaway, ever after, remained friendly to the white men.

As civilization advanced he retired before it, to Pennacook, now

Concord, on the Merrimac, where the tribes of the Naumkeags,

Piscataquas, Accomentas, and Agawams acknowledged his authority.

THE OPIUM EATER. (1833.)

Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving from its lowest depths

of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!

Here was a panacea, a pharmakon nepenthes for all human woes; here

was the secret of happiness about which philosophers had disputed

for so many ages: happiness might be bought for a penny, and

carried in the waistcoat pocket.--DEQUINCEY's "Confessions of an

Opium Eater."

HE was a tall, thin personage, with a marked brow and a sunken eye.

He stepped towards a closet of his apartment, and poured out a few drops

of a dark liquid. His hand shook, as he raised the glass which

contained them to his lips; and with a strange shuddering, a nervous

tremor, as if all the delicate chords of his system were unloosed and

trembling, he turned away from his fearful draught.

He saw that my eye was upon him; and I could perceive that his mind

struggled desperately with the infirmity of his nature, as if ashamed of

the utter weakness of its tabernacle. He passed hastily up and down the

room. "You seem somewhat ill," I said, in the undecided tone of partial

interrogatory.

He paused, and passed his long thin fingers over his forehead. "I am

indeed ill," he said, slowly, and with that quavering, deep-drawn

breathing, which is so indicative of anguish, mental and physical.

"I am weak as a child, weak alike in mind and body, even when I am under

the immediate influence of yonder drug." And he pointed, as he spoke,

to a phial, labelled "Laudanum," upon a table in the corner of the room.

"My dear sir," said I, "for God's sake abandon your desperate practice:

I know not, indeed, the nature of your afflictions, but I feel assured

that you have yet the power to be happy. You have, at least, warm

friends to sympathize with you. But forego, if possible, your

pernicious stimulant of laudanum. It is hurrying you to your grave."

"It may be so," he replied, while another shudder ran along his nerves;

"but why should I fear it? I, who have become worthless to myself and

annoying to my friends; exquisitely sensible of my true condition, yet

wanting the power to change it; cursed with a lively apprehension of all

that I ought now to be, yet totally incapable of even making an effort

to be so! My dear sir, I feel deeply the kindness of your motives, but

it is too late for me to hope to profit by your advice."

I was shocked at his answer. "But can it be possible," said I, "that

the influence of such an excessive use of opium can produce any

alleviation of mental suffering? any real relief to the harassed mind?

Is it not rather an aggravation?"

"I know not," he said, seating himself with considerable calmness,--"I

know not. If it has not removed the evil, it has at least changed its

character. It has diverted my mind from its original grief; and has

broken up and rendered divergent the concentrated agony which oppressed

me. It has, in a measure, substituted imaginary afflictions for real

ones. I cannot but confess, however, that the relief which it has

afforded has been produced by the counteraction of one pain by another;

very much like that of the Russian criminal, who gnaws his own flesh

while undergoing the punishment of the knout.'"

"For Heaven's sake," said I, "try to dispossess your mind of such horrid

images. There are many, very many resources yet left you. Try the

effect of society; and let it call into exercise those fine talents

which all admit are so well calculated to be its ornament and pride.

At least, leave this hypochondriacal atmosphere, and look out more

frequently upon nature. Your opium, if it be an alleviator, is, by your

own confession, a most melancholy one. It exorcises one demon to give

place to a dozen others.

'With other ministrations, thou, O Nature!

Healest thy wandering and distempered child.'"

He smiled bitterly; it was a heartless, melancholy relaxation of

features, a mere muscular movement, with which the eye had no sympathy;

for its wild and dreamy expression, the preternatural lustre, without

transparency, remained unaltered, as if rebuking, with its cold, strange

glare, the mockery around it. He sat before me like a statue, whose eye

alone retained its stony and stolid rigidity, while the other features

were moved by some secret machinery into "a ghastly smile."

"I am not desirous, even were it practicable," he said, "to defend the

use of opium, or rather the abuse of it. I can only say, that the

substitutes you propose are not suited to my condition. The world has

now no enticements for me; society no charms. Love, fame, wealth,

honor, may engross the attention of the multitude; to me they are all

shadows; and why should I grasp at them? In the solitude of my own

thoughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full

gauge of their hollow vanities. No, leave me to myself, or rather to

that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to

which my daily opiate invites me. In society I am alone, fearfully

solitary; for my mind broods gloomily over its besetting sorrow, and I

make myself doubly miserable by contrasting my own darkness with the

light and joy of all about me; nay, you cannot imagine what a very hard

thing it is, at such times, to overcome some savage feelings of

misanthropy which will present themselves. But when I am alone, and

under the influence of opium, I lose for a season my chief source of

misery, myself; my mind takes a new and unnatural channel; and I have

often thought that any one, even that of insanity, would be preferable

to its natural one. It is drawn, as it were, out of itself; and I

realize in my own experience the fable of Pythagoras, of two distinct

existences, enjoyed by the same intellectual being.

"My first use of opium was the consequence of an early and very bitter

disappointment. I dislike to think of it, much more to speak of it. I

recollect, on a former occasion, you expressed some curiosity concerning

it. I then repelled that curiosity, for my mind was not in a situation

to gratify it. But now, since I have been talking of myself, I think I

can go on with my story with a very decent composure. In complying with

your request, I cannot say that my own experience warrants, in any

degree, the old and commonly received idea that sorrow loses half its

poignancy by its revelation to others. It was a humorous opinion of

Sterne, that a blessing which ties up the tongue, and a mishap which

unlooses it, are to be considered equal; and, indeed, I have known some

people happy under all the changes of fortune, when they could find

patient auditors. Tully wept over his dead daughter, but when he

chanced to think of the excellent things he could say on the subject,

he considered it, on the whole, a happy circumstance. But, for my own

part, I cannot say with the Mariner in Coleridge's ballad, that

"'At an uncertain hour My agony returns;

And, till my ghastly tale is told,

This heart within me burns.'"

He paused a moment, and rested his head upon his hand. "You have seen

Mrs. H------, of -------?" he inquired, somewhat abruptly. I replied in

the affirmative.

"Do you not think her a fine woman?"

"Yes, certainly, a fine woman. She was once, I am told, very

beautiful."

"Once? is she not so now?" he asked. "Well, I have heard the same

before. I sometimes think I should like to see her now, now that the

mildew of years and perhaps of accusing recollections are upon her; and

see her toss her gray curls as she used to do her dark ones, and act

over again her old stratagem of smiles upon a face of wrinkles. Just

Heavens! were I revengeful to the full extent of my wrongs, I could wish

her no worse punishment.

"They told you truly, my dear sir,--she was beautiful, nay, externally,

faultless. Her figure was that of womanhood, just touching upon the

meridian of perfection, from which nothing could be taken, and to which

nothing could be added. There was a very witchery in her smile,

trembling, as it did, over her fine Grecian features, like the play of

moonlight upon a shifting and beautiful cloud.

"Her voice was music, low, sweet, bewildering. I have heard it a

thousand times in my dreams. It floated around me, like the tones of

some rare instrument, unseen by the hearer; for, beautiful as she was,

you could not think of her, or of her loveliness, while she was

speaking; it was that sweetly wonderful voice, seemingly abstracted from

herself, pouring forth the soft current of its exquisite cadence, which

alone absorbed the attention. Like that one of Coleridge's heroines,

you could half feel, half fancy, that it had a separate being of its

own, a spiritual presence manifested to but one of the senses; a living

something, whose mode of existence was for the ear alone.--(See Memoirs

of Maria Eleonora Schoning.)

"But what shall I say of the mind? What of the spirit, the resident

divinity of so fair a temple? Vanity, vanity, all was vanity;

a miserable, personal vanity, too, unrelieved by one noble aspiration,

one generous feeling; the whited sepulchre spoken of of old, beautiful

without, but dark and unseemly within.

"I look back with wonder and astonishment to that period of my life,

when such a being claimed and received the entire devotion of my heart.

Her idea blended with or predominated over all others. It was the

common centre in my mind from which all the radii of thought had their

direction; the nucleus around which I had gathered all that my ardent

imagination could conceive, or a memory stored with all the delicious

dreams of poetry and romances could embody, of female excellence and

purity and constancy.

"It is idle to talk of the superior attractions of intellectual beauty,

when compared with mere external loveliness. The mind, invisible and

complicated and indefinite, does not address itself directly to the

senses. It is comprehended only by its similitude in others. It

reveals itself, even then, but slowly and imperfectly. But the beauty

of form and color, the grace of motion, the harmony of tone, are seen

and felt and appreciated at once. The image of substantial and material

loveliness once seen leaves an impression as distinct and perfect upon

the retina of memory as upon that of the eyes. It does not rise before

us in detached and disconnected proportions, like that of spiritual

loveliness, but in crowds, and in solitude, and in all the throngful

varieties of thought and feeling and action, the symmetrical whole, the

beautiful perfection comes up in the vision of memory, and stands, like

a bright angel, between us and all other impressions of outward or

immaterial beauty.

"I saw her, and could not forget her; I sought her society, and was

gratified with it. It is true, I sometimes (in the first stages of my

attachment) had my misgivings in relation to her character. I sometimes

feared that her ideas were too much limited to the perishing beauty of

her person. But to look upon her graceful figure yielding to the dance,

or reclining in its indolent symmetry; to watch the beautiful play of

coloring upon her cheek, and the moonlight transit of her smile; to

study her faultless features in their delicate and even thoughtful

repose, or when lighted up into conversational vivacity, was to forget

everything, save the exceeding and bewildering fascination before me.

Like the silver veil of Khorassan it shut out from my view the mental

deformity beneath it. I could not reason with myself about her; I had

no power of ratiocination which could overcome the blinding dazzle of

her beauty. The master-passion, which had wrestled down all others,

gave to every sentiment of the mind something of its own peculiar

character.

"I will not trouble you with a connected history of my first love, my

boyish love, you may perhaps call it. Suffice it to say, that on the

revelation of that love, it was answered by its object warmly and

sympathizingly. I had hardly dared to hope for her favor; for I had

magnified her into something far beyond mortal desert; and to hear from

her own lips an avowal of affection seemed more like the condescension

of a pitying angel than the sympathy of a creature of passion and

frailty like myself. I was miserably self-deceived; and self-deception

is of a nature most repugnant to the healthy operation of truth. We

suspect others, but seldom ourselves. The deception becomes a part of

our self-love; we hold back the error even when Reason would pluck it

away from us.

"Our whole life may be considered as made up of earnest yearnings after

objects whose value increases with the difficulties of obtaining them,

and which seem greater and more desirable, from our imperfect knowledge

of their nature, just as the objects of the outward vision are magnified

and exalted when seen through a natural telescope of mist. Imagination

fills up and supplies the picture, of which we can only catch the

outlines, with colors brighter, and forms more perfect, than those of

reality. Yet, you may perhaps wonder why, after my earnest desire had

been gratified, after my love had found sympathy in its object, I did

not analyze more closely the inherent and actual qualities of her heart

and intellect. But living, as I did, at a considerable distance from

her, and seeing her only under circumstances calculated to confirm

previous impressions, I had few advantages, even had I desired to do so,

of studying her true character. The world had not yet taught me its

ungenerous lesson. I had not yet learned to apply the rack of

philosophical analysis to the objects around me, and test, by a cold

process of reasoning, deduced from jealous observation, the reality of

all which wore the outward semblance of innocence and beauty. And it

may be, too, that the belief, nay, the assurance, from her own lips, and

from the thousand voiceless but eloquent signs which marked our

interviews, that I was beloved, made me anxious to deceive even myself,

by investing her with those gifts of the intellect and the heart,

without which her very love would have degraded its object. It is not

in human nature, at least it was not in mine, to embitter the delicious

aliment which is offered to our vanity, by admitting any uncomfortable

doubts of the source from which it is derived.

"And thus it was that I came on, careless and secure, dreaming over and

over the same bright dream; without any doubt, without fear, and in the

perfect confidence of an unlimited trust, until the mask fell off, all

at once; without giving me time for preparation, without warning or

interlude; and the features of cold, heartless, systematic treachery

glared full upon me.

"I saw her wedded to another. It was a beautiful morning; and never had

the sun shone down on a gayer assemblage than that which gathered

together at the village church. I witnessed the imposing ceremony which

united the only one being I had ever truly loved to a happy and favored,

because more wealthy, rival. As the grayhaired man pronounced the

inquiring challenge, 'If any man can show just cause why they may not

lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else forever after

hold his peace,' I struggled forward, and would have cried out, but the

words died away in my throat. And the ceremony went on, and the death-

like trance into which I had fallen was broken by the voice of the

priest: 'I require and charge ye both, as ye will answer at the dreadful

day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that

if either of you know of any impediment why ye may not lawfully be

joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well

assured, that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God's

word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful.' As the solemn tones of

the old man died away in the church aisles, I almost expected to hear a

supernatural voice calling upon him to forbear. But there was no sound.

For an instant my eyes met those of the bride; the blood boiled rapidly

to her forehead, and then sank back, and she was as pale as if death had

been in the glance I had given her. And I could see the folds of her

rich dress tremble, and her beautiful lips quiver; and she turned away

her eyes, and the solemn rites were concluded.

"I returned to my lodgings. I heeded not the gay smiles and free

merriment of those around me. I hurried along like one who wanders

abroad in a dark dream; for I could hardly think of the events of the

morning as things of reality. But, when I spurred my horse aside, as

the carriage which contained the newly married swept by me, the terrible

truth came upon me like a tangible substance, and one black and evil

thought passed over my mind, like the whispered suggestion of Satan. It

was a feeling of blood, a sensation like that of grasping the strangling

throat of an enemy. I started from it with horror. For the first time

a thought of murder had risen up in my bosom; and I quenched it with the

natural abhorrence of a nature prone to mildness and peace.

"I reached my chamber, and, exhausted alike in mind and body, I threw

myself upon my bed, but not to sleep. A sense of my utter desolation

and loneliness came over me, blended with a feeling of bitter and

unmerited wrong. I recollected the many manifestations of affection

which I had received from her who had that day given herself, in the

presence of Heaven, to another; and I called to mind the thousand

sacrifices I had made to her lightest caprices, to every shade and

variation of her temper; and then came the maddening consciousness of

the black ingratitude which had requited such tenderness. Then, too,

came the thought, bitter to a pride like mine, that the cold world had a

knowledge of my misfortunes; that I should be pointed out as a

disappointed man, a subject for the pity of some, and the scorn and

jestings of others. Rage and shame mingled with the keen agony of

outraged feeling. 'I will not endure it,' I said, mentally, springing

from my bed and crossing the chamber with a flushed brow and a strong

step; 'never!' And I ground my teeth upon each other, while a fierce

light seemed to break in upon my brain; it was the light of the

Tempter's smile, and I almost laughed aloud as the horrible thought of

suicide started before me. I felt that I might escape the ordeal of

public scorn and pity; that I might bid the world and its falsehood

defiance, and end, by one manly effort, the agony of an existence whose

every breath was torment.

"My resolution was fixed. 'I will never see another morrow!' I said,

sternly, but with a calmness which almost astonished me. Indeed, I

seemed gifted with a supernatural firmness, as I made my arrangements

for the last day of suffering which I was to endure. A few friends had

been invited to dine with me, and I prepared to meet them. They came at

the hour appointed with smiling faces and warm and friendly greetings;

and I received them as if nothing had happened, with even a more

enthusiastic welcome than was my wont.

"Oh! it is terrible to smile when the heart is breaking! to talk

lightly and freely and mirthfully, when every feeling of the mind is

wrung with unutterable agony; to mingle in the laugh and in the gay

volleys of convivial fellowship,

'With the difficult utterance of one

Whose heart is with an iron nerve put down.'

"Yet all this I endured, hour after hour, until my friends departed and I

had pressed their hands as at a common parting, while my heart whispered

an everlasting farewell!

"It was late when they left me. I walked out to look for the last time

upon Nature in her exceeding beauty. I hardly acknowledged to myself

that such was my purpose; but yet I did feel that it was so; and that I

was taking an everlasting farewell of the beautiful things around me.

The sun was just setting; and the hills, that rose like pillars of the

blue horizon, were glowing with a light which was fast deserting the

valleys. It was an evening of summer; everything was still; not a leaf

stirred in the dark, overshadowing foliage; but, silent and beautiful as

a picture, the wide scenery of rock and hill and woodland, stretched

away before me; and, beautiful as it was, it seemed to possess a newness

and depth of beauty beyond its ordinary appearance, as if to aggravate

the pangs of the last, long farewell.

"They do not err who believe that man has a sympathy with even inanimate

Nature, deduced from a common origin; a chain of co-existence and

affinity connecting the outward forms of natural objects with his own

fearful and wonderful machinery; something, in short, manifested in his

love of flowing waters, and soft green shadows, and pleasant blowing

flowers, and in his admiration of the mountain, stretching away into

heaven, sublimed and awful in its cloudy distance; the heave and swell

of the infinite ocean; the thunder of the leaping cataract; and the

onward rush of mighty rivers, which tells of its original source, and

bears evidence of its kindred affinities. Nor was the dream of the

ancient Chaldean 'all a dream.' The stars of heaven, the beauty and the

glory above us, have their influences and their power, not evil and

malignant and partial and irrevocable, but holy and tranquillizing and

benignant, a moral influence, by which all may profit if they will do

so. And I have often marvelled at the hard depravity of that human

heart which could sanction a deed of violence and crime in the calm

solitudes of Nature, and surrounded by the enduring evidences of an

overruling Intelligence. I could conceive of crime, growing up rank and

monstrous in the unwholesome atmosphere of the thronged city, amidst the

taint of moral as well as physical pestilence, and surrounded only by

man and the works of man. But there is something in the harmony and

quiet of the natural world which presents a reproving antagonism to the

fiercer passions of the human heart; an eye of solemn reprehension looks

out from the still places of Nature, as if the Great Soul of the

Universe had chosen the mute creations of his power to be the witnesses

of the deeds done in the body, the researchers of the bosoms of men.

"And then, even at that awful moment, I could feel the bland and gentle

ministrations of Nature; I could feel the fever of my heart cooling, and

a softer haze of melancholy stealing over the blackness of my despair;

and the fierce passions which had distracted me giving place to the calm

of a settled anguish, a profound sorrow, the quiet gloom of an

overshadowing woe, in which love and hatred and wrong were swallowed up

and lost. I no longer hated the world; but I felt that it had nothing

for me; that I was no longer a part and portion of its harmonious

elements; affliction had shut me out forever from the pale of human

happiness and sympathy, and hope pointed only to the resting-place of

the grave!

"I stood steadily gazing at the setting sun. It touched and sat upon

the hill-top like a great circle of fire. I had never before fully

comprehended the feeling of the amiable but misguided Rousseau, who at

his death-hour desired to be brought into the open air, that the last

glance of his failing eye might drink in the glory of the sunset

heavens, and the light of his great intellect and that of Nature go out

together. For surely never did the Mexican idolater mark with deeper

emotion the God of his worship, for the last time veiling his awful

countenance, than did I, untainted by superstition, yet full of perfect

love for the works of Infinite Wisdom, watch over the departure of the

most glorious of them all. I felt, even to agony, the truth of these

exquisite lines of the Milesian poet:

'Blest power of sunshine, genial day!

What joy, what life is in thy ray!

To feel thee is such real bliss,

That, had the world no joy but this,

To sit in sunshine, calm and sweet,

It were a world too exquisite

For man to leave it for the gloom,

The dull, cold shadow of the tomb!'

"Never shall I forget my sensations when the sun went down utterly from

my sight. It was like receiving the last look of a dying friend. To

others he might bring life and health and joy, on the morrow; but tome

he would never rise. As this thought came over me, I felt a stifling

sensation in my throat, tears started in my eyes, and my heart almost

wavered from its purpose. But the bent bow had only relaxed for a

single instant; it returned again to its strong and abiding tension.

"I was alone in my chamber once more. A single lamp burned gloomily

before me; and on the table at my side stood a glass of laudanum. I had

prepared everything. I had written my last letter, and had now only to

drink the fatal draught, and lie down to my last sleep. I heard the old

village clock strike eleven. 'I may as well do it now as ever,' I said

mentally, and my hand moved towards the glass. But my courage failed

me; my hand shook, and some moments elapsed before I could sufficiently

quiet my nerves to lift the glass containing the fatal liquid. The

blood ran cold upon my heart, and my brain reeled, as again and again

I lifted the poison to my closed lips. 'It must be done,' thought I,

'I must drink it.' With a desperate effort I unlocked my clenched teeth

and the deed was done!

"'O God, have mercy upon me!' I murmured, as the empty glass fell from

my hand. I threw myself upon the bed, and awaited the awful

termination. An age of unutterable misery seemed crowded into a brief

moment. All the events of my past life, a life, as it then seemed to

me, made up of folly and crime, rose distinct before me, like accusing

witnesses, as if the recording angel had unrolled to my view the full

and black catalogue of my unnumbered sins:--

'O'er the soul Winters of memory seemed to roll,

And gather, in that drop of time,

A life of pain, an age of crime.'

"I felt that what I had done was beyond recall; and the Phantom of Death,

as it drew nearer, wore an aspect darker and more terrible. I thought

of the coffin, the shroud, and the still and narrow grave, into whose

dumb and frozen solitude none but the gnawing worm intrudes. And then

my thoughts wandered away into the vagueness and mystery of eternity, I

was rushing uncalled for into the presence of a just and pure God, with

a spirit unrepenting, unannealed! And I tried to pray and could not;

for a heaviness, a dull strange torpor crept over me. Consciousness

went out slowly. 'This is death,' thought I; yet I felt no pain,

nothing save a weary drowsiness, against which I struggled in vain.

"My next sensations were those of calmness, deep, ineffable, an

unearthly quiet; a suspension or rather oblivion of every mental

affliction; a condition of the mind betwixt the thoughts of wakefulness

and the dreams of sleep. It seemed to me that the gulf between mind and

matter had been passed over, and that I had entered upon a new

existence. I had no memory, no hope, no sorrow; nothing but a dim

consciousness of a pleasurable and tranquil being. Gradually, however,

the delusion vanished. I was sensible of still wearing the fetters of

the flesh, yet they galled no longer; the burden was lifted from my

heart, it beat happily and calmly, as in childhood. As the stronger

influences of my opiate (for I had really swallowed nothing more, as the

druggist, suspecting from the incoherence of my language, that I was

meditating some fearful purpose, furnished me with a harmless, though

not ineffective draught) passed off, the events of the past came back to

me. It was like the slow lifting of a curtain from a picture of which I

was a mere spectator, about which I could reason calmly, and trace

dispassionately its light and shadow. Having satisfied myself that I

had been deceived in the quantity of opium I had taken, I became also

convinced that I had at last discovered the great antidote for which

philosophy had exhausted its resources, the fabled Lethe, the oblivion

of human sorrow. The strong necessity of suicide had passed away; life,

even for me, might be rendered tolerable by the sovereign panacea of

opium, the only true minister to a mind diseased, the sought 'kalon'

found.

"From that day I have been habitually an opium eater. I am perfectly

sensible that the constant use of the pernicious drug has impaired my

health; but I cannot relinquish it. Some time since I formed a

resolution to abandon it, totally and at once; but had not strength

enough to carry it into practice. The very attempt to do so nearly

drove me to madness. The great load of mental agony which had been

lifted up and held aloof by the daily applied power of opium sank back

upon my heart like a crushing weight. Then, too, my physical sufferings

were extreme; an indescribable irritation, a general uneasiness

tormented me incessantly. I can only think of it as a total

disarrangement of the whole nervous system, the jarring of all the

thousand chords of sensitiveness, each nerve having its own particular

pain.--( Essay on the Effects of Opium, London, 1763.)

"De Quincey, in his wild, metaphysical, and eloquent, yet, in many

respects, fancy sketch, considers the great evil resulting from the use

of opium to be the effect produced upon the mind during the hours of

sleep, the fearful inquietude of unnatural dreams. My own dreams have

been certainly of a different order from those which haunted me previous

to my experience in opium eating. But I cannot easily believe that

opium necessarily introduces a greater change in the mind's sleeping

operations, than in those of its wakefulness.

"At one period, indeed, while suffering under a general, nervous

debility, from which I am even now but partially relieved, my troubled

and broken sleep was overshadowed by what I can only express as

'a horror of thick darkness.' There was nothing distinct or certain in

my visions, all was clouded, vague, hideous; sounds faint and awful, yet

unknown; the sweep of heavy wings, the hollow sound of innumerable

footsteps, the glimpse of countless apparitions, and darkness falling

like a great cloud from heaven.

"I can scarcely give you an adequate idea of my situation in these

dreams, without comparing it with that of the ancient Egyptians while

suffering under the plague of darkness. I never read the awful

description of this curse, without associating many of its horrors with

those of my own experience.

"'But they, sleeping the same sleep that night, which was indeed

intolerable, and which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevitable

hell,

"'Were partly vexed with monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted; for

a sudden fear and not looked for, came upon them.'

"'For neither might the corner which held them keep them from fear; but

noises, as of waters falling down, sounded about them, and sad visions

appeared unto them, with heavy countenances.

"'Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious voice of birds among

the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently;

"'Or, a terrible sound of stones cast down, or, a running that could not

be seen, of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild

beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains: these things

made them to swoon for fear.'--(Wisdom of Solomon, chapter xvii.)

"That creative faculty of the eye, upon which Mr. De Quincey dwells so

strongly, I have myself experienced. Indeed, it has been the principal

cause of suffering which has connected itself with my habit of opium

eating. It developed itself at first in a recurrence of the childish

faculty of painting upon the darkness whatever suggested itself to the

mind; anon, those figures which had before been called up only at will

became the cause, instead of the effect, of the mind's employment; in

other words, they came before me in the night-time, like real images,

and independent of any previous volition of thought. I have often,

after retiring to my bed, seen, looking through the thick wall of

darkness round about me, the faces of those whom I had not known for

years, nay, since childhood; faces, too, of the dead, called up, as it

were, from the church-yard and the wilderness and the deep waters, and

betraying nothing of the grave's terrible secrets. And in the same way,

some of the more important personages I had read of, in history and

romance, glided often before me, like an assembly of apparitions, each

preserving, amidst the multitudinous combinations of my visions, his own

individuality and peculiar characteristics.--(Vide Emanuel Count

Swedenborg, Nicolai of Berlin's Account of Spectral Illusion, Edinburgh

Phrenological Journal.)

"These images were, as you may suppose, sufficiently annoying, yet they

came and went without exciting any emotions of terror. But a change at

length came over them, an awful distinctness and a semblance of reality,

which, operating upon nerves weakened and diseased, shook the very

depths of my spirit with a superstitious awe, and against which reason

and philosophy, for a time, struggled in vain.

"My mind had for some days been dwelling with considerable solicitude

upon an intimate friend, residing in a distant city. I had heard that

he was extremely ill, indeed, that his life was despaired of; and I may

mention that at this period all my mind's operations were dilatory;

there were no sudden emotions; passion seemed exhausted; and when once

any new train of thought had been suggested, it gradually incorporated

itself with those which had preceded it, until it finally became sole

and predominant, just as certain plants of the tropical islands wind

about and blend with and finally take the place of those of another

species. And perhaps to this peculiarity of the mental economy, the

gradual concentring of the mind in a channel, narrowing to that point of

condensation where thought becomes sensible to sight as well as feeling,

may be mainly attributed the vision I am about to describe.

"I was lying in my bed, listless and inert; it was broad day, for the

easterly light fell in strongly through the parted curtains. I felt,

all at once, a strong curiosity, blended with an unaccountable dread, to

look upon a small table which stood near the bedside. I felt certain of

seeing something fearful, and yet I knew not what; there was an awe and

a fascination upon me, more dreadful from their very vagueness. I lay

for some time hesitating and actually trembling, until the agony of

suspense became too strong for endurance. I opened my eyes and fixed

them upon the dreaded object. Upon the table lay what seemed to me a

corpse, wrapped about in the wintry habiliments of the grave, the corpse

of my friend.

(William Hone, celebrated for his antiquarian researches, has given

a distinct and highly interesting account of spectral illusion, in

his own experience, in his Every Day Book. The artist Cellini has

made a similar statement.)

"For a moment, the circumstances of time and place were forgotten; and

the spectre seemed to me a natural reality, at which I might sorrow, but

not wonder. The utter fallacy of this idea was speedily detected; and

then I endeavored to consider the present vision, like those which had

preceded it, a mere delusion, a part of the phenomena of opium eating.

I accordingly closed my eyes for an instant, and then looked again in

full expectation that the frightful object would no longer be visible.

It was still there; the body lay upon its side; the countenance turned

full towards me,--calm, quiet, even beautiful, but certainly that of

death:

'Ere yet Decay's effacing fingers

Had swept the lines where Beauty lingers'

and the white brow, and its light shadowy hair, and the cold, still

familiar features lay evident and manifest to the influx of the

strengthening twilight. A cold agony crept over me; I buried my head in

the bed-clothes, in a child-like fear, and when I again ventured to look

up, the spectre had vanished. The event made a strong impression on my

mind; and I can scarcely express the feeling of relief which was

afforded, a few days after, by a letter from the identical friend in

question, informing me of his recovery of health.

"It would be a weary task, and one which you would no doubt thank me for

declining, to detail the circumstances of a hundred similar visitations,

most of which were, in fact, but different combinations of the same

illusion. One striking exception I will mention, as it relates to some

passages of my early history which you have already heard.

"I have never seen Mrs. H since her marriage. Time, and the continued

action of opium, deadening the old sensibilities of the heart and

awakening new ones, have effected a wonderful change in my feelings

towards her. Little as the confession may argue in favor of my early

passion, I seldom think of her, save with a feeling very closely allied

to indifference. Yet I have often seen her in my spectral illusions,

young and beautiful as ever, but always under circumstances which formed

a wide contrast between her spectral appearance and all my recollections

of the real person. The spectral face, which I often saw looking in

upon me, in my study, when the door was ajar, and visible only in the

uncertain lamplight, or peering over me in the moonlight solitude of my

bed-chamber, when I was just waking from sleep, was uniformly subject

to, and expressive of, some terrible hate, or yet more terrible anguish.

Its first appearance was startling in the extreme. It was the face of

one of the fabled furies: the demon glared in the eye, the nostril was

dilated, the pale lip compressed, and the brow bent and darkened; yet

above all, and mingled with all, the supremacy of human beauty was

manifest, as if the dream of Eastern superstition had been realized, and

a fierce and foul spirit had sought out and animated into a fiendish

existence some beautiful sleeper of the grave. The other expression of

the countenance of the apparition, that of agony, I accounted for on

rational principles. Some years ago I saw, and was deeply affected by,

a series of paintings representing the tortures of a Jew in the Holy

Inquisition; and the expression of pain in the countenance of the victim

I at once recognized in that of the apparition, rendered yet more

distressing by the feminine and beautiful features upon which it rested.

"I am not naturally superstitious; but, shaken and clouded as my mind

had been by the use of opium, I could not wholly divest it of fear when

these phantoms beset me. Yet, on all other occasions, save that of

their immediate presence, I found no difficulty in assigning their

existence to a diseased state of the bodily organs, and a corresponding

sympathy of the mind, rendering it capable of receiving and reflecting

the false, fantastic, and unnatural images presented to it.

(One of our most celebrated medical writers considers spectral

illusion a disease, in which false perceptions take place in some

of the senses; thus, when the excitement of motion is produced in a

particular organ, that organ does not vibrate with the impression

made upon it, but communicates it to another part on which a

similar impression was formerly made. Nicolai states that he made

his illusion a source of philosophical amusement. The spectres

which haunted him came in the day time as well as the night, and

frequently when he was surrounded by his friends; the ideal images

mingling with the real ones, and visible only to himself. Bernard

Barton, the celebrated Quaker poet, describes an illusion of this

nature in a manner peculiarly striking:--

"I only knew thee as thou wert,

A being not of earth!

"I marvelled much they could not see

Thou comest from above

And often to myself I said,

'How can they thus approach the dead?'

"But though all these, with fondness warm,

Said welcome o'er and o'er,

Still that expressive shade or form

Was silent, as before!

And yet its stillness never brought

To them one hesitating thought."

"I recollected that the mode of exorcism which was successfully adopted

by Nicolai of Berlin, when haunted by similar fantasies, was a resort to

the simple process of blood-letting. I accordingly made trial of it,

but without the desired effect. Fearful, from the representations of my

physicians, and from some of my own sensations, that the almost daily

recurrence of my visions might ultimately lead to insanity, I came to

the resolution of reducing my daily allowance of opium; and, confining

myself, with the most rigid pertinacity, to a quantity not exceeding one

third of what I had formerly taken, I became speedily sensible of a most

essential change in my condition. A state of comparative health, mental

and physical with calmer sleep and a more natural exercise of the organs

of vision, succeeded. I have made many attempts at a further reduction,

but have been uniformly unsuccessful, owing to the extreme and almost

unendurable agony occasioned thereby.

"The peculiar creative faculty of the eye, the fearful gift of a

diseased vision, still remains, but materially weakened and divested of

its former terrors. My mind has recovered in some degree its shaken and

suspended faculties. But happiness, the buoyant and elastic happiness

of earlier days, has departed forever. Although, apparently, a

practical disciple of Behmen, I am no believer in his visionary creed.

Quiet is not happiness; nor can the absence of all strong and painful

emotion compensate for the weary heaviness of inert existence,

passionless, dreamless, changeless. The mind requires the excitement of

active and changeful thought; the intellectual fountain, like the pool

of Bethesda, has a more healthful influence when its deep waters are

troubled. There may, indeed, be happiness in those occasional 'sabbaths

of the soul,' when calmness, like a canopy, overshadows it, and the

mind, for a brief season, eddies quietly round and round, instead of

sweeping onward; but none can exist in the long and weary stagnation of

feeling, the silent, the monotonous, neverending calm, broken by neither

hope nor fear."

THE PROSELYTES. (1833)

THE student sat at his books. All the day he had been poring over an

old and time-worn volume; and the evening found him still absorbed in

its contents. It was one of that interminable series of controversial

volumes, containing the theological speculations of the ancient fathers

of the Church. With the patient perseverance so characteristic of his

countrymen, he was endeavoring to detect truth amidst the numberless

inconsistencies of heated controversy; to reconcile jarring

propositions; to search out the thread of scholastic argument amidst

the rant of prejudice and the sallies of passion, and the coarse

vituperations of a spirit of personal bitterness, but little in

accordance with the awful gravity of the question at issue.

Wearied and baffled in his researches, he at length closed the volume,

and rested his care-worn forehead upon his hand. "What avail," he said,

"these long and painful endeavors, these midnight vigils, these weary

studies, before which heart and flesh are failing? What have I gained?

I have pushed my researches wide and far; my life has been one long and

weary lesson; I have shut out from me the busy and beautiful world; I

have chastened every youthful impulse; and at an age when the heart

should be lightest and the pulse the freest, I am grave and silent and

sorrowful,' and the frost of a premature age is gathering around my

heart. Amidst these ponderous tomes, surrounded by the venerable

receptacles of old wisdom, breathing, instead of the free air of heaven,

the sepulchral dust of antiquity, I have become assimilated to the

objects around me; my very nature has undergone a metamorphosis of which

Pythagoras never dreamed. I am no longer a reasoning creature, looking

at everything within the circle of human investigation with a clear and

self-sustained vision, but the cheated follower of metaphysical

absurdities, a mere echo of scholastic subtilty. God knows that my aim

has been a lofty and pure one, that I have buried myself in this living

tomb, and counted the health of this His feeble and outward image as

nothing in comparison with that of the immortal and inward

representation and shadow of His own Infinite Mind; that I have toiled

through what the world calls wisdom, the lore of the old fathers and

time-honored philosophy, not for the dream of power and gratified

ambition, not for the alchemist's gold or life-giving elixir, but with

an eye single to that which I conceived to be the most fitting object of

a godlike spirit, the discovery of Truth,--truth perfect and unclouded,

truth in its severe and perfect beauty, truth as it sits in awe and

holiness in the presence of its Original and Source!

"Was my aim too lofty? It cannot be; for my Creator has given me a

spirit which would spurn a meaner one. I have studied to act in

accordance with His will; yet have I felt all along like one walking in

blindness. I have listened to the living champions of the Church; I

have pored over the remains of the dead; but doubt and heavy darkness

still rest upon my pathway. I find contradiction where I had looked for

harmony; ambiguity where I had expected clearness; zeal taking the place

of reason; anger, intolerance, personal feuds and sectarian bitterness,

interminable discussions and weary controversies; while infinite Truth,

for which I have been seeking, lies still beyond, or seen, if at all,

only by transient and unsatisfying glimpses, obscured and darkened by

miserable subtilties and cabalistic mysteries."

He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant with a letter. The

student broke its well-known seal, and read, in a delicate chirography,

the following words:--

"DEAR ERNEST,--A stranger from the English Kingdom, of gentle birth and

education, hath visited me at the request of the good Princess Elizabeth

of the Palatine. He is a preacher of the new faith, a zealous and

earnest believer in the gifts of the Spirit, but not like John de

Labadie or the lady Schurmans.

(J. de Labadie, Anna Maria Schurmans, and others, dissenters from

the French Protestants, established themselves in Holland, 1670.)

"He speaks like one sent on a message from heaven, a message of wisdom

and salvation. Come, Ernest, and see him; for he hath but a brief hour

to tarry with us. Who knoweth but that this stranger may be

commissioned to lead us to that which we have so long and anxiously

sought for,--the truth as it is in God.

"LEONORA."

"Now may Heaven bless the sweet enthusiast for this interruption of my

bitter reflections!" said the student, in the earnest tenderness of

impassioned feeling. "She knows how gladly I shall obey her summons;

she knows how readily I shall forsake the dogmas of our wisest

schoolmen, to obey the slightest wishes of a heart pure and generous as

hers."

He passed hastily through one of the principal streets of the city to

the dwelling of the lady, Eleonora.

In a large and gorgeous apartment sat the Englishman, his plain and

simple garb contrasting strongly with the richness and luxury around

him. He was apparently quite young, and of a tall and commanding

figure. His countenance was calm and benevolent; it bore no traces of

passion; care had not marked it; there was a holy serenity in its

expression, which seemed a token of that inward "peace which passeth all

understanding."

"And this is thy friend, Eleonora?" said the stranger, as he offered his

hand to Ernest. "I hear," he said, addressing the latter, "thou hast

been a hard student and a lover of philosophy."

"I am but a humble inquirer after Truth," replied Ernest.

"From whence hast thou sought it?"

"From the sacred volume, from the lore of the old fathers, from the

fountains of philosophy, and from my own brief experience of human

life."

"And hast thou attained thy object?"

"Alas, no!" replied the student; "I have thus far toiled in vain."

"Ah! thus must the children of this world ever toil, wearily, wearily,

but in vain. We grasp at shadows, we grapple with the fashionless air,

we walk in the blindness of our own vain imaginations, we compass heaven

and earth for our objects, and marvel that we find them not. The truth

which is of God, the crown of wisdom, the pearl of exceeding price,

demands not this vain-glorious research; easily to be entreated, it

lieth within the reach of all. The eye of the humblest spirit may

discern it. For He who respecteth not the persons of His children hath

not set it afar off, unapproachable save to the proud and lofty; but

hath made its refreshing fountains to murmur, as it were, at the very

door of our hearts. But in the encumbering hurry of the world we

perceive it not; in the noise of our daily vanities we hear not the

waters of Siloah which go softly. We look widely abroad; we lose

ourselves in vain speculation; we wander in the crooked paths of those

who have gone before us; yea, in the language of one of the old fathers,

we ask the earth and it replieth not, we question the sea and its

inhabitants, we turn to the sun, and the moon, and the stars of heaven,

and they may not satisfy us; we ask our eyes, and they cannot see, and

our ears, and they cannot hear; we turn to books, and they delude us; we

seek philosophy, and no response cometh from its dead and silent

learning.

(August. Soliloq. Cap. XXXI. "Interrogavi Terram," etc.)

"It is not in the sky above, nor in the air around, nor in the earth

beneath; it is in our own spirits, it lives within us; and if we would

find it, like the lost silver of the woman of the parable, we must look

at home, to the inward temple, which the inward eye discovereth, and

wherein the spirit of all truth is manifested. The voice of that spirit

is still and small, and the light about it shineth in darkness. But

truth is there; and if we seek it in low humility, in a patient waiting

upon its author, with a giving up of our natural pride of knowledge, a

seducing of self, a quiet from all outward endeavor, it will assuredly

be revealed and fully made known. For as the angel rose of old from the

altar of Manoah even so shall truth arise from the humbling sacrifice of

self-knowledge and human vanity, in all its eternal and ineffable

beauty.

"Seekest thou, like Pilate, after truth? Look thou within. The holy

principle is there; that in whose light the pure hearts of all time have

rejoiced. It is 'the great light of ages' of which Pythagoras speaks,

the 'good spirit' of Socrates; the 'divine mind' of Anaxagoras; the

'perfect principle' of Plato; the 'infallible and immortal law, and

divine power of reason' of Philo. It is the 'unbegotten principle and

source of all light,' whereof Timmus testifieth; the 'interior guide of

the soul and everlasting foundation of virtue,' spoken of by Plutarch.

Yea, it was the hope and guide of those virtuous Gentiles, who, doing by

nature the things contained in the law, became a law unto themselves.

"Look to thyself. Turn thine eye inward. Heed not the opinion of the

world. Lean not upon the broken reed of thy philosophy, thy verbal

orthodoxy, thy skill in tongues, thy knowledge of the Fathers. Remember

that truth was seen by the humble fishermen of Galilee, and overlooked

by the High Priest of the Temple, by the Rabbi and the Pharisee. Thou

canst not hope to reach it by the metaphysics of Fathers, Councils,

Schoolmen, and Universities. It lies not in the high places of human

learning; it is in the silent sanctuary of thy own heart; for He, who

gave thee an immortal soul, hath filled it with a portion of that truth

which is the image of His own unapproachable light. The voice of that

truth is within thee; heed thou its whisper. A light is kindled in thy

soul, which, if thou carefully heedest it, shall shine more and more

even unto the perfect day."

The stranger paused, and the student melted into tears. "Stranger!" he

said, "thou hast taken a weary weight from my heart, and a heavy veil

from my eyes. I feel that thou hast revealed a wisdom which is not of

this world."

"Nay, I am but a humble instrument in the hand of Him who is the

fountain of all truth, and the beginning and the end of all wisdom. May

the message which I have borne thee be sanctified to thy well-being."

"Oh, heed him, Ernest!" said the lady. "It is the holy truth which has

been spoken. Let us rejoice in this truth, and, forgetting the world,

live only for it."

"Oh, may He who watcheth over all His children keep thee in faith of thy

resolution!" said the Preacher, fervently. "Humble yourselves to

receive instruction, and it shall be given you. Turn away now in your

youth from the corrupting pleasures of the world, heed not its hollow

vanities, and that peace which is not such as the world giveth, the

peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall be yours. Yet, let

not yours be the world's righteousness, the world's peace, which shuts

itself up in solitude. Encloister not the body, but rather shut up the

soul from sin. Live in the world, but overcome it: lead a life of

purity in the face of its allurements: learn, from the holy principle of

truth within you, to do justly in the sight of its Author, to meet

reproach without anger, to live without offence, to love those that

offend you, to visit the widow and the fatherless, and keep yourselves

unspotted from the world."

"Eleonora!" said the humbled student, "truth is plain before us; can we

follow its teachings? Alas! canst thou, the daughter of a noble house,

forget the glory of thy birth, and, in the beauty of thy years, tread in

that lowly path, which the wisdom of the world accounteth foolishness?"

"Yes, Ernest, rejoicingly can I do it!" said the lady; and the bright

glow of a lofty purpose gave a spiritual expression to her majestic

beauty. "Glory to God in the highest, that He hath visited us in

mercy!"