Part 6
Not only these my childish fancy saw, but there seemed to gather with them many, many others, bearing names that sometime had been cited in my presence from the bright annals of Massachusetts; and out of their syllables I framed a ghostly pageant, following ever, like a breath of wind, close on the footsteps of their living peers. The dream-cohorts, too, smiled up at me, and swept by. "Trenmor came, the tall form of vanished years, his blue hosts behind him."
I went to camp several times thereafter, though never with my own brigade; but having outlived its enchantment, inasmuch as I were now conscious of "playing soldier" merely, I took a stand on my war record, and decided to withdraw from the militia. That was long ago. But the old prepossessions are immortal. The smell of powder is sweeter to me than Oriental lilies. I resent the doctrine of absorption into the restful bosom of Brahma. An it please you, I aspire to Mars.
I used to love the sight of those shabby warriors, dolefully bewailing their forlorn condition, and mildly suggesting their eligibility to a bounteous dinner, who prowled, in long succession, about our side door. I thrilled with indignation at their counterfeited wrongs. I brought them my sweetmeats, to throw a halo about their sober meal. Do I not take kindly yet to the battered coat bedizened with bright buttons, on the back of M., grimy vender of coal? Do I not encourage the handsome charges of our grocer, solely because I know his antecedents, and can trace his limp to Ball's Bluff?
It was an article of belief, in my Utopian childhood, that a soldier could do no wrong. It went hard with me, in my eleventh year, to catch a glimpse of the silver Maltese cross, the badge of the impeccable Fifth Corps, on the breast of a scowling state prisoner, the hero "shorn of his beams." His arm no longer rested on a howitzer; he wielded a crowbar. He might have hallowed Libby or Andersonville with his passing, and now,--O Absalom!
The warden, the benignant warden, himself of the "trade of war," did he know what he was doing, when he assured me that the cells were peopled with ex-Federal knights? Men have tried vainly to restore the lost completeness of the glorious statue of Melos. Even so with a broken faith. What it might have been is out of the province of diviners.
ON GRAVEYARDS.
A KINDNESS for graveyards, and a superadded leaning to the old, battered, weed-grown ones, are not incompatible with the cheeriest spirit. A marked distinction is to be drawn between the amateur and the professional haunter of the _coemetrion_, the place of sleep. If the pilgrimage among marbles cannot be an impersonal matter, pray, sweet reader, keep to the courts of the living. The intolerable pain of meeting with some clear-cut beloved name; the chance of stumbling on some parody of the departed, under a glass case, or of brushing against the clayey sexton, fresh from his delving,--these are things whose risk one would not willingly run. Therefore stick to antiquities, and let thy fastidious eye look with favor at no carven mortuary date that was cut later than under the third of the Georges. If there be a suspicion of Scotch granite, or of landscape gardening in any God's acre as thou passest by, turn thee about to windward. But where there stand, in honest slate, armorial ensigns, gaping cherubs, and cheerful scythes and hour-glasses, labelled (as a child labels his drawing, "This is a cow") with "Memento mori," or the scarcely less admirable truism, "Fugit hora," then enter in, and read that chronicle, with its grassy margin, which the centuries have written.
Here is the great dormitory; here sits the little god Harpocrates, swinging on the lotos-leaf, his finger on his lips.
"No noyse here But the toning of a teare."
Thousands possess the earth in peace. Are not Spurius Cassius and the Gracchi vindicated, when the Agrarian law prevails at last?
How paltry a thing is a monument to the dead, save as expressing the affection of survivors! Cannot the liberal soil absorb, without comment, the vast number of lives so sadly inessential to the world's growth and beauty? It must needs forever be placarded to the stranger, who would fain not be critical concerning the failings of these old hearts, where John Smith lies. It is not the chisel which keeps a memory alive. An inscription is superfluous for him whose deeds are graven in the book of life. Many another, who has but elbowed his way selfishly through the world, is laid under all the figures of rhetoric, and is beholden to nothing better than an obelisk to speak him fair. "To be but pyramidally extant," says Sir Thomas Browne, "is a fallacy in duration." A monument, "a stone to a bone," shows the terminus of the corporeal journey, and serves merely to mark the gateway through which something perishable, that was dear, has passed away.
Think of the gloomy, pessimistic habit of the Puritan colonists, surmounting every grave with a grinning skull, in tracery, when the benighted pagans, ages before, crushed out the material aspects of death beneath chaplets of roses, amaranth, and myrtle; imagery of the liberated insect, leaping to the sun with impetuous wings; poesy full of hopefulness and cheer; and the symbolic figure of an inverted torch over the burial pile! It might disparage the acrid sanctity of the forefathers to ask which of the two seemed worthiest to inherit immortality.
Cotton Mather, after his whimsical fashion, pronounces it as the best eulogy of Ralph Partridge, the first shepherd of the old Duxborough flock, that being distressed at home by the ecclesiastical setters, he had no defence, neither beak nor claw, but flight over the ocean; that now being a bird of Paradise, it may be written of him, that he had the loftiness of the eagle and the innocency of the dove. His epitaph is: AVOLAVIT.
The most exquisite epitaph I ever saw was one of an infant of German extraction, who died, at the notable age of sixteen months: "Beloved and respected by all who knew him." Wellnigh as pompous and as plausible is an obituary in favor of a similar lambkin, yet to be deciphered at Copp's Hill: "He bore a Lingering sicknesse with Patience, and met ye King of Terrors with a Smile." One Abigail Dudley sleeps in a New England village under a white stone, professionally indicative "of her moral character;" a widow droops in effigy over a Plymouth tomb, and states in large capitals that she has lost "an agreeable companion." Near by is the harrowing script: "Father. Parted Below;" and its sequel a yard's length off: "Mother. United Above." It flashes across your brain like a revelation of Vandal atrocities.
What wondrously sweet lines old English poets wrote over the graves of women and children! Think of Carew's "darling in an urn;" of Ben Jonson's "Elizabeth;" of "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother;" of Drummond's "Margaret;" of Herrick's "On a Maid," every word precious as a pearl; and of the wholly startling pathos wherewith one now without a name bewailed his friend:--
"If such goodness live 'mongst men, Bring me it! I shall know then She is come from Heaven again."
General Charles Lee, that sad Revolutionary rogue, wrote in his last will and testament: "I do earnestly desire that I may not be buried in any church or churchyard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist meeting-house; for since I have resided in this country, I have kept so much bad company while living that I do not choose to continue it when dead."
Of Roger Williams, who was also granted solitary sepulture, a strange tale is told. There was question, some years back, of transplanting him from his sequestered resting-place to a stately mausoleum. The diggers dug, and the beholders beheld--what? Not any received version of that which was he, but the roots of an adjacent apple-tree formed into a netted oval, indented with punctures not wholly unlike human features; parallel branches lying perpendicularly on either side; fibres intertwined over a central area; and lastly, two long sprouts, knotted half-way down, and terminating in a pediform excrescence wonderful to see. It was plain, thought the _savants_ of P., that the apple-tree had eaten of ancient Roger; now who had eaten of the fruit of that apple-tree? Verily, "to what base uses may we return!"
It was said of old by the English Chrysostom: "A man shall read a sermon, the best and most passionate that ever was preached, will he but enter into the sepulchre of kings." Let a tourist go through Europe, from town to town, pausing in the porches of burial-grounds: shall he not touch the naked candor of governments and follow the hoary chronicle of ages backward with his Hebraic eye? To him, the graveyard moss that eats out the charactery of proud names, is a sage commentator on mundane fame; and the humble mound to which genius and virtue have lent their blessed association inspires him with precepts beyond all philosophy. For history is not a clear scroll, but a palimpsest; and he who is versed only in the autography of his contemporaries misses half the opportunity and half the gladness of life.
The habit of providing for personal comfort anticipates an easy couch and a fair prospect for us at the end. How many men, from the royal warriors of yore who willed their ashes to be carried into a far-away country, have chosen, and jealously guarded in thought, their to-morrow's place of rest? A superfluous care, when the unawaited waves of ocean have cradled thousands, and every battle-field opens to receive the staunch and strong! Even for the sake of mysterious beauty such as hath thy holy hill, Concordia! alert youth itself might harbor a not ungentle welcoming thought of death. Yet that head which is confident of quiet sleep is scarce solicitous of its pillow. One last assurance vibrates, like triumphant music, in ears impatient of much speech upon a text so sacred. "To live indeed," it echoes, "is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope, but an evidence in noble believers, it is all one to lie in St. Innocent's churchyard as in the sands of Egypt: ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six feet as with the moles of Adrianus."
SOME GARDEN-FOLK.
THE snail is a kind-hearted, happy-go-lucky creature. Carrying his house with him, he leaves no cares at home. He is _otium cum dignitate_. He is the moral antipode of the ant. He shirks responsibilities, and turns the cold shoulder on labor and fret. Deliberation, calmness of intellect, consciousness of superiority, are in his slow, majestic tread. So that he gets to the place in mind, it is of no possible consequence how long the journey may be. The crystal day is all his own. He is a Nabob, a gentleman of leisure, and considers haste vulgar, and proper only to grasshoppers and miserable sparrows.
Rose-bugs are impertinent. Humming-birds, bright and beautiful, come too seldom amongst our flowers of June, but the bees come instead, and burden the air with their soothing baritone. Yet the bees have a way of pressing personal souvenirs upon you. Pray you, avoid it! as Hamlet tells the players.
Caterpillars fascinate a spectator. They are full of mysterious interest, berthed in their soft cocoons, deftly caught on to the jagged edges of stone walls, or bent on travelling from leaf to leaf, with their "many twinkling feet" in full motion. A caterpillar, however varied and attractive his coloring, is not a favorite with society, or with that branch of it which goes about in bonnets and high-heeled boots. Moralists, rather, shall befriend him, the kind little creeper, and treat him with that reverence which the knowledge of his coming glories inspires.
The earth-worm is the Pariah of garden-folk. His appearance, primarily, is against him; he looks like an intriguer, an uneasy, officious sinner, wriggling his crooked way through the world. The "inadvertent step," which Cowper would fain spare him, ends too often our groundling's peregrinations. He is born to be disregarded and abused; a child, whose protective instincts are yet dormant, will decimate him for the pleasure of seeing his posthumous remnants take up their separate lives, and unconcernedly disperse. Worm is a reputed political exile. With his greater cousin, the snake, he shares the popular odium of Erin's isle. I have heard an old fellow, mowing grass, turn about to tell an incredulous companion that if, by any chance, one could put a bit of Irish soil, nay, so small a thing as a shamrock, under a "Yankee wurrum," that instant would be the death of him.
The legend is given in that very quaint "Lives of the Saints," which Warton thinks was written in the twelfth century:--
"Seyn Pateryck com thoru Goddes grace to preche in Irelonde, To teche men ther ryt believe Jehu Cryste to onderstonde; So fil of worms that londe he found that no man in myghte gon, In som stede for worms that he nas wenemyd anon; Seyn Pateryck bade our lord Cryste that the londe delyvered were Of thilke foul wormis that none ne com ther!"
HOSPITALITIES.
IT does the heart good to read of some light-footed troubadour or reverend pilgrim trudging from gate to gate, all the way across a strange country, everywhere welcome as an expected guest, and given the liberty of the host's kingdom. Chroniclers give us pretty pictures of the household sitting about the dusty palmer, listening to his pious and spirited homily; of the errant singer, wrapped in his worn velvet cloak, delighting young maids and children with the old burden of Roncesvalles, or with the tale of that dreamer Rudel who crossed seas to find his unseen lady-love at Tripoli, and to die, satisfactorily, in her arms. Whether the master of the castle had subsequent cause to regret the shelter proffered to his birds of passage, posterity shall never learn. For those were the days of chivalry; and the brave bounty which accepted the wayfarers without question was able to overlook a deficiency, if such there were, in the family silver. Of this best sort, too, was the hospitality of Alcinoüs to Ulysses, treating him like a king, and dreaming not of his hidden kingliness. Spanish courtesy yet keeps a show of heart-whole giving: "This is thy house," an Andalusian tells his visitor. An Indian, in his forest wigwam, does yet better. If he abide you at all, with your scalp at its accustomed altitude, he tenders whatsoever he calls his, and would scorn to conceal from you the innermost recesses of his savage larder.
"Is he not hospitable," quaintly asks one of our American essayists, "who entertains thoughts?"
Think of the unlicensed generosity of the Roberds-men, dealing out what had but just become theirs by right of might, and of our niggardly modern dispensation! of that Duke of Newcastle, the lavish splendor of whose receptions bewildered all England; or of another social peer, Edward, Earl of Derby, "in whose grave, since 1572," said Thomas Fuller, "hospitality hath in a manner been laid asleep." Timon began as bravely as any of these. Waiving all formal recognition of his royal liberality, he made his frank exordium in the banquet-hall:--
----"My lords! ceremony Was but devised at first to set a gloss On faint deeds, hollow welcomes, Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown; But where there is true friendship, there needs none; Pray sit...."
Hospitality hath been called threefold: for one's family, of necessity; for strangers, of courtesy; for the poor, of charity. Friendship pushes its privilege to the broad extreme, and loses its sense of ownership.
"Cot or cabin have I none, And sing the more that thou hast one."
The twin playwrights of the reign of Queen Bess set up their tent "on the Bankside;" alternately wearing "the same cloathes and clokes," and having but one bench of the house between them, which the twain "did so much admire"!
A guest should be permitted to graze, as it were, in the pastures of his host's kindness, left even to his own devices, like a rational being, and handsomely neglected. Our merry friend, T., has been known to beat his breast and groan while passing a certain suburban house, whose inmates consider themselves his devoted friends. It seems that on his last visit he found only the ladies of the establishment at home,--ardent, solicitous creatures, whose good manners were nearly the death of him. He had a mind to await their brother's return, and while the fair Araminta was gathering roses on the terrace, and her sister had momentarily vanished in-doors, our tender innocent, pleased with the landscape, and not averse to bodily comfort, incontinently got into the hammock. He had barely begun to sway to and fro, in his idle fashion, when delicate expostulations smote his incredulous ear. He learned, with respectful awe, that he was liable to headache, to sea-sickness, to certain and sudden thuds on the floor of the piazza, and, lastly, to influenza and kindred ills, by facing the formidable summer atmosphere, in a recumbent position, without wrap or shawl. The climax was capped by the wheeling forward of a portly arm-chair, and the persuasive order to "take that," and be "comfortable." T. was too dazed, or too shy, to protest. When he sought a cool seat in the bay-window, down came the sash, "for fear of a draught;" he made bold to caress the dog, and Nero was led away and chained to his kennel, because he was "apt to bite;" he fell in, to his infinite diversion, with the junior member of the household, and master was marched off to bed, with the stern bidding to "be a good boy," and not "trouble the gentleman." Like sorrows hovered over him till the blessed hour of release. B. was back at seven, and wondered why his old classmate had gone.
Who does not envy them that knew Henry Wotton, "a very great lover of his neighbors, a bountiful entertainer of them very often at his table, where his meat was _choice_, and his discourse _better_;" or the Bohemian spirits of 4 Inner Temple Lane, with "the card-tables drawn out, the fire crackling, the long-sixes lit, the snuff-boxes ready for any one's handling, the kettle singing on the hob, glasses and bottles and cold viands within reach, books lying about, familiar guests doing what they pleased, chatting, reading, coming, going,--veritable At Homes, with a sense of slippered, almost of slip-shod ease"? But hold! are we to indite a disquisition on the Decay of Hospitality? Are there no open hearts above ground, nor any houses where the elected comer may still hold the key to every room, with no direful Blue-beard exclusions? Leaving Dives to the practice or omission of a virtue eminently appropriate to his coffers, what of the very poor? For there is a paradoxical extravagance in their way of life; a glorious communism between one that is needy and one whom he discovers, day on day, to be needier than himself. Where have they learned that sweet readiness of succor? The churl, with them, is he who withholds his little superfluity from a more miserable brother. In the close kinship of suffering, their souls grow mutually pitying, mutually helpful, clinging each to the rest, as a coral atom is moored to the patient island, built from the incalculable depths of the sea. If the wealth that is gracious and thoughtful should vanish to-morrow from the earth, generous giving should find its home in the thin, kind hands of poverty; and then, as now, should some bright-eyed student arise to deny the asseveration of history that the noble old Hospitallers are no more.
THE TWO VOICES.
DOWN a tranquil country road, I walked in a reverie, one April Sabbath afternoon. I seemed to be in a strange land, and pictures and fancies of Maiano and the Tyrol were floating in my brain; yet I was unconsciously moving, like a drowsy star, in the old, old orbit, whence I had never strayed, within brief distance of the spot where I was born, and where for years my life had worked itself into so dear a bondage, that the desire of journeying gladly elsewhere, save in the spirit, had become a sort of treason. The air was laden with the moist delicious fragrance of early spring, which comes as yet from nothing but the ground, as if the persuasive showers had stirred and awakened the very clods and roots and buried fragments of leaves into something like hope and aspiration. This is the advent-time of Nature, far more touching and suggestive than the imminent beauty whereof it is the fore-runner. As I ventured onward, wrapped in solitary thought, and resolved, as it were, into the sweet indolent joy of living, I stooped to pick up a branch, silvered with thick buds, which the wind had blown across my path. At that moment, distracted from the invisible world, and in the transition-state between dreaming and alert attention, I was saluted with a strain of exquisite music, such as one can conceive of as floating ever in Jeremy Taylor's "blessed country, where an enemy never entered, and whence a friend never went away." I raised my head to listen, and immediately perceived ahead of me, back from the highway, and embowered in trees, a gray church porch, out of which were ushered the interlacing harmonies which had charmed my wandering ear. The door stood open, and no idlers were in sight; no late wheel-marks were betrayed on the soft, fine dust of the road. Yet by the many-colored sunlight, filtered through the costly windows of the nave, I saw that a number of people were gathered together in the cool and quiet edifice. A single glance showed me that the interior was of extreme beauty, and of precisely that delicacy and airiness of design most unlikely to be coupled with massive granite walls. Yet there it was, impregnably grim without, peaceful and assuring within, like a kindly heroic heart beating under armor. From it, and about it, and through it, floated the siren voices of my search. In an illusion-loving mood, I sought not to pluck out the heart of my mystery, nor to rob it of its soft promise by vain questionings. I slipped into a deserted seat in the shadow of the choir-stairs, and gave myself up to this sole delight: as to prayers and sermons, either they were already over, or else they went past in the lapses of melody, as the swallows by the window above me, beating their shining way upward, utterly without my knowledge or furtherance.
I heard, above the rest, and sometimes intertwined only with each other, a brave, jubilant voice, and a voice steadfast and tender. Neither know I which was the fairer, so ministrant were both, so helpful and unfailing. The soft, starlit voice might touch an over-eager soul with calm; to the soul distressed, the strong voice would come like a great noon-tide wind, impelling it towards the height where the sun dwelt, and all the fountains of the day. Clear as thought was the bright voice, striving, surmounting, and instinct with truth; but like the first sigh of passion was the sad voice, thrilling, too, with memories of yesterdays that cannot return forever; fond, sensitive, dedicated to the deep recesses of the heart, where there is search after hidden meanings, and mourning over the inscrutable laws through which not even Love's anointed eyes can see. I recognized the battle-call, the rush of the wings of the morning, the pæan of young ambition in the victor-voice, whose very petition was a conquest, in the irresistible faith and strength of its asking; but the lowly voice sang with unspeakable pathos, in whose every plea the greater grief of rejection was already apprehended. A grateful spirit would fain bestow on the glorious voice an ardent welcome, and on the gentle voice a lingering caress. Both I loved, and unto both my soul hearkened; for they were the voices of angels, and one was Joy, and one was Peace.