Part 8

On general principles, this avidity of people to get their garments advertised in the public prints, while it may minister to their foolish vanity, is pernicious in its effects, and a positive injury to society. It has one of two effects. It will either keep a great many ladies away from places of public amusement, who cannot afford to dress in a showy manner, and are too sensitive to have their plain toilets spread before the universal eye; or it will encourage them to foolishly fling away money, in order that they may make a presentable appearance. And beyond these effects, it directly encourages, or rather compels a competition in dress which is ruinous to good taste, not to speak of purses.

And now, my Dear Children, let me advise you to avoid all show. A house full of wedding presents and dear friends, and detectives to watch the costly presents, lest the dear friends steal them, is not desirable. A wedding _trousseau_ constructed regardless of expense, to outdo some other _trousseau_ and to create popular effect, is very vulgar. A lavish display of diamonds and silver, and glittering gewgaws, exhibited merely for ostentation, may make your curious friends envious, but it will make your judicious friends grieve. A clean flag-stone walk to the church will not injure your dainty feet any more than the Brussels carpet, and I would not favor your feet too much, for they may have to walk in some very flinty places yet. It is well, also, to have some regard to the proprieties of the church itself, and not transform it so much, that if St. Paul should happen to drop in, he wouldn't know whether he was in a circus or a menagerie.

I always tremble for the bride who starts off in life in this manner. We cannot always float smoothly along, reclining on velvet cushions, with favoring winds swelling silken sails, and golden oars keeping time to music. It has been discreetly ordered that reverses shall overtake us all before we get into the snug haven of old age. And in that night of tempests, when the whole heavens seem shutting grimly down, and not a star of hope can peep through the wild wrack, the fate of a Canary bird in a thunder-storm is the fate of this bride. The first move is the key to all the rest. It is well, therefore, to have that move made calmly, deliberately and thoughtfully, without any reference to the opinions or the curiosities of others, with all the contingencies of life steadily in view, and with the two lives in one, braced and fortified to meet them.

My say was ended, and as Boosey and Celeste thanked me and went out seriously, she with a little faster hold upon his arm, and he with a firmer look of resolution upon his face, as if he were mentally bidding good bye to his follies, I sent my blessing out with them, for I was sure that he would get the vessel into such good trim that he and the Butterfly would be uninjured in any storm.

March 28, 1868.

_APRIL._

Although this snivelling humbug, April, as I write, has spread out one of the bluest and softest of skies, and is coaxing the leaves to unroll their little green packages, and the grass to shoot up through the brown sod, and the birds to come up from the warm South, I can only say with the Rabbi in Uriel Acosta, "We have seen all this before."

She has dallied so long with that wild roysterer, March, that there is suspicion in the hem of her garments. She has indulged in boisterous and disgraceful revelries with him. She has listened to his bold license of speech. She has allowed him entrance at unseasonable hours. And she comes from the contact, no longer the coy, bashful, weeping maiden of yore, but a bold, unblushing hoyden, clothing herself to-day in her old beauty and softness, but still with the vile breath of March upon her lips.

And, worst of all, while couched in the fierce passion of March, she forgot her old friends who have never forgotten her, and so the buds were blasted, and the birds who had listened to her syren song died, and the flowers turned over and went back to their odorous sleep; and the arbutus which should be now showing its little pink and white face, under the dead leaves, shrunk back affrighted from her, as she went noisily through the woods, boasting her shame in the robes with which March covered her nakedness as he thrust her away.

It is only a few Sundays ago that I told you of the little blue trumpeter who was heralding spring from the dry boughs. He, too, was sacrificed, and yesterday I saw him lying upon his back in the brown stubble, his claws bent with the pain of the cold, the light of his eyes quenched, his song forever hushed, and his soul fled to the Bird Heaven, where all the good blue birds, robins, orioles, and nightingales go; where they sing forever among the asphodels and in the lotuses to those who loved them and cared for them among the elms and the oaks; and where all the little captives who are caged here below regain their liberty and soar and sing untrammelled.

The blue trumpeter suffered the fate of all reformers. He came before his time. He was heralding the truth before the world was ready for it, and he died unheard and neglected. And hundreds of other heralds are lying dead to-day in the fields, victims to the merciless rigor of the rain and the snow and the cold.

And I therefore plead for all the birds who have come to us from the South. Shelter them whenever you can. Feed them and care for them. Summer, without its choir of birds, will be as blank as heaven without stars, a house without a child, a garden without flowers. The clearest indications of Paradise we get on earth, are the birds, the flowers, and the little children, and the man or woman who doesn't love them will have a trying time in Paradise, if he or she ever gets there.

I have never seen it recorded that they have any of these things in the other place.

Therefore, again I say, deal gently with the birds and the flowers, for not a sparrow falls to the ground without His notice, and Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like the lilies of the fields.

April 17, 1868.

_A SUMMER REVERIE._

Can you inform me why it was necessary for every man, woman and child whom I have met to-day, to remind me that it was hot? Why had all these people the right to assume that I did not know it was hot?

I am serious on this subject. I have been used this way before. I am continually informed by somebody that it is hot, or it is cold, or it rains, or it snows. To be informed once in the course of twenty-four hours that it is hot, is bad enough of itself; but to be apprised of that fact by every person you meet, is an improper interference with the funeral.

Now, for the benefit of the public at large, which is so eager to inform me that it is hot, I want to announce that I know it is hot. My knowledge on that score is positive, large and satisfactory. I am prepared, if necessary, to make a statement in writing that it is hot; to get me to a notary and make affidavit that it is hot.

Do I not know that it is hot, sitting here, with a vista of brick walls on every side, from which the sun glares at me; fanned through the open window by zephyrs, which bear on their wings nothing less cooling than coal smoke and caloric; with the hot whirling of machinery on one side and the rumble of the dusty, sweltering street on the other? Through an open space in the walls, I can see a patch of sky as large as a lady's pocket-handkerchief, across which bits of cloud go with thoughts of rain in them; and with the infinite longing with which poor Marie Stuart watched the clouds which were floating across from her prison to France, and as she, prisoned in Fotheringay, sent her thoughts and wishes by those cloudy messengers, with that kind of longing, I think of distant fields and woods, of cooling waters and leafy shades to which they are hastening, and so I send messages to the trees, and the rocks, and the flowers, and to the least living thing that "praises God by rubbing its legs together," as Thackeray so finely puts it.

On such a day as this, it would be supreme delight to eat lotus in the woods; to lie, stretched prone upon the grass, in the grateful shade, with no heavier task than to watch a sluggish beetle, or an ant carrying its burden, in imminent danger of collision with every tiny stalk; to listen to all the sounds in nature's orchestra, the stringed instruments of the insects floating in the air, and the reeds of the insects crawling in the grass, the flutes of the birds, the horns of the wind blowing through the tree-tops, and all those sweet, indefinable sounds you only hear when your ear is close to the ground, but which play their part in the grand symphony; to lie upon the grass, with not a sound from the great world jarring upon your Arcadia; to dream of Satyrs, and Fauns, and wood-nymphs, and water-nymphs, and the great god Pan, piping upon his pastoral reeds; to think of absent friends who are thinking of you, and will return, and of absent friends who are thinking of you, but will never return, as no road leads back from that country whither they have journeyed, and the daisies tell no stories, nor even the rustle of the grass which grows above them; to remember a chord of music long forgotten, and let its subtle melancholy weave a vision in the Past, when the chord was a sound and not a sigh, and the vision was a reality and not a shadow.

And to let the little bugs crawl in your ear and shiver the whole beautiful Dream-Fabric.

June 13, 1868.

_THE GERMANS AND MUSIC._

To make a good German, four things are requisite, viz: Music, beer, Rhine wine and _Gemuethlichkeit_. In regard to the first and last qualities, I think that I am half a German. For four days past, I have been trying to achieve the other two qualities, and thus Teutonize myself _in toto_.

I have fought the white beer of Berlin with an energy worthy of a better cause. I have wrestled with the red beer of Chicago. I have struggled with Hocheimer, Rudesheimer and Johannisberg, until I was Black, White and Red in the face, and hung out the German flag in my countenance. I have wished, with Mein Herr Von Dunk, that my trough was as deep as the rolling Zuyder Zee. But when I had accomplished my fifth glass of the mantling beer with internal satisfaction, and then beheld a German friend call for his thirtieth, just by way of an appetizer for the half barrel he had ordered, I saw at once the futility of my undertaking.

In fact, I was not equal to the beer capacity of a small German baby, and when I saw great, jolly Teutons, flaxen-haired, deep-lunged and stout-handed, with a whole case of Rhenish hidden away under their jackets, is it proper for me to allude to the poor little bottle of Steinberger I had demolished, or to have any other feeling in regard to that feat than one of intense mortification? The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. Nature was against me.

On the tenth glass of beer, the German is serene; on the twentieth, he is philosophical and will discuss the problem of how many angels can stand upon the point of a needle; on the thirtieth, he is full of _Bruderlichkeit_; on the fortieth, he reaches _Freiheit_; on the fiftieth, he will troll you a _Trinklied_ in the manner of Hermanns with his Golden Calf; on the sixtieth he is a little weary, but his heart is in the right place, and he pronounces _zwei glass_ with a strong emphasis on the _zwei_; on the seventieth, he is tired, but he recovers from it with the eightieth; on the ninetieth, he feels _gut_; and on the hundredth he is himself again, _frisch, frei und froh_, and is then prepared to drink some beer with you, to sing you one of Abt's best, to criticise a statue, or discuss the everlasting essence of the negative pole of infinity. Set him down to the glorious Rhenish vintages and the pile of old bottles he will leave behind him would have gone a great ways towards building the tower of Babel.

Your German is essentially a talker, and it is astonishing, considering the "schs," and "achs," and "ichs," and other gutturals distressing to an American windpipe, which are continually in his way, how much ground he will talk over in an hour. He talks with his tongue, his arms and his legs, and throws in the punctuation points as he goes along, with nods of his head. When he is the most social and affectionate, when his heart warms towards you, then he appears as if he were immediately about to demolish you, and the more affectionate he grows, the more alarmed you become for your personal safety and anxious to inform your family that you may be brought home feet foremost. A company of Germans together, when they are inspired with _Gemuethlichkeit_, and when social feeling is at its highest temperature, exactly resemble Americans at the other extreme, preparing for a general fight, and you wonder the police do not interfere. And _vice versa_, when the German is excited to pugnacity, he does not seem to be excited at all. He appears to be serene, but beneath all the calm outside there is a terrible rage.

The German is addicted to Fatherland, and if any human being on the face of the earth has a right to be, it is the German. If any other nationality has a better literature, grander poets, more inspired dreamers, sublimer musicians, better artists, or deeper thinkers, I have not heard of it. The ties which bind him to the Fatherland are too strong ever to be broken, and on the invisible strings which stretch from his heart to Germany are continually sounding the home melodies. Could any more beautiful idea be conceived than the fact that on Friday evening, when the grand chorus at the Fest Hall[1] were singing the glorious German poem, "What is the German's Fatherland," in every part of Germany, in every city, village and hamlet, wherever there was a singing society, this same song was being sung on the same evening, in honor of their brethren assembled at Chicago?

We may laugh at the peculiarities of the Germans, but when we approach German art, it must give us pause. Berlioz and Scribe took the skull of a fool, who had once laughed at the incantation music of Der Freischutz, and when the orchestra had reached that point, placed it before them and said: "Now, laugh if you dare. The music of Von Weber is thundering round you." No man who was not destitute of a soul, and utterly wedded to all gross things, could have felt any other than a religious feeling in the great swell of human voices on Thursday evening, as it surged in great waves of harmony, as it rose like the march of a storm in the Battle Hymn of Rienzi, full of martial inspiration and clarion cries, or died away in the gentle and placid melody of the Lindenbaum of Schubert, sweetest of all song-writers. The man who could go away from that concert without feeling that he was a better man, without having recognized that human nature may soar to the infinite on the wings of song, has sunk his soul so far into the uncleaness of life, that Gabriel will have some difficulty in finding it, what time he sounds his final trumpet call.

The Fest was a notable event, from the bare fact that it gave us the immortal Seventh Symphony of Beethoven, about which the critics and rhapsodists have loved to dream in searching for its hidden meaning, and around which they have woven so many delicate and tender fancies. No two persons probably will ever agree upon the exact event it is intended to illustrate, but it seems to me that there is one idea which must be patent to all. To me, the Seventh Symphony appears to be a true picture of a beautiful life--its _allegro_ full of the longings and joyousness of youth; its _allegretto_ filled with the delicious melancholy of love; its _scherzo_ buoyant with the gladness and ecstasy of living; and its final _allegro_ summing all up in a climax of contentment and hope. It seems to me that when the grand old Master, the Jupiter Tonans of music, whose soul pierced the sublimity of the infinite, wrote this symphony, he must have forgotten all the trials and troubles of life. All the joy of nature, her sunlight and breezes, and the hidden melodies of inanimate things; all the glow and elasticity of life's morning; a passionate love for some golden-haired Gretchen; a rhythm to which fairies might have danced in the moonlight, seem to me to be expressed in this wonderful production--the whole bathed in sunlight and clothed with supernatural beauty. In the Seventh Symphony, Beethoven does not sadden you with the profound melancholy, or inspire you with the sublimity of some of his works, but he gives you new ideas of the beauty and joy of living. And as I sat listening to the masterly performance of the _Allegretto_ by the great orchestra--every player's face lit up with the enthusiasm of the music--every instrument moving in perfect precision--the whole air full of the bewitching, almost supernatural music--there occurred to me a letter which I have received this week, in which the writer wants to know if it is the duty of a Christian to encourage the Saengerfest. Although the letter was signed "A Christian,"--in the presence of the great Master's work the question seemed to me utterly profane. Why! Music is full of religion! The first tidings that ever came from Heaven to man came in music on the plains of Bethlehem. It reaches far down into the soul. It fills it with longings for the Unknown. It reveals the Infinite more clearly than the spoken word. Its tendency is upward. It gives birth to aspirations. It makes a true man, truer. It makes a bad man, better.

If the writer of that letter does not appreciate music, let me commend to him the dictum of the father of modern Protestantism:

"Who loves not wine, woman and song, Remains a fool his whole life long."

I should not care to deny that Martin Luther was a Christian, even in the face of his rather generous platform--in fact, his specifications would rather go to show that he was. I would advise my letter-writing friend, therefore, if he cannot love wine and woman, at least to love song, and see if it does not make a better Christian out of him. I think he could love every plank in Martin Luther's platform, and still be as good a Christian as Martin Luther was, and pitch ink-stands at the devil quite as vigorously. Before a man is thoroughly fitted for Heaven, he ought to be thoroughly fitted for earth. A great many people who think themselves good enough for Heaven, and are all the time wanting to go there, are not half good enough for earth. It is sheer ingratitude to Divine Providence--this lifting of the eyes so high as never to see the sublime world He has placed you in, with its never-ending scenes of beauty and sublimity, and never to see this life with its joys and possibilities. Fling your theologies to the winds. Unloosen your stiff neck. Don't forever snuff evil in everything around you. Up, and out into the world. Throw yourself into the arms of the loving mother, Nature, and see if there is no religion in her eyes. Get to the secret heart of music, and see if it is not anchored hard by the eternal throne. Draw yourself closer to humanity and to universal brotherhood, and see if there is no religion in it. If your soul does not expand in the operation, and if it does not make a better Christian out of you, then you are hardly good enough for this world, and the sooner you are out of it the better.

June 20, 1868.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The Northwestern Saengerfest, held at Chicago, June, 1868.

_THE OLD STORY._

In these fast days of the period, when human life is of so little account that we sever its frail thread with as little compunction as we would pick a flower from its stem; when, in our hot haste, we drain the cup clear to the bitter lees, and, disappointed, plunge ourselves into the outer darkness; when a mist of error and frenzy settles down upon us, so dense that it hides from our gaze all that is True and Beautiful; when, in all the heavens, there is only the angriness of driving clouds, and no star shining--in these fast days, the mere recital of a solitary case, where a tired human being has gone to rest voluntarily, rather than bear the great burden of agony and scorn upon her weak shoulders any longer, only causes the indulgence of a moment's curiosity and wonderment. The case published in the columns of the TRIBUNE this morning, of the suicide of "Augusta," seems to me, however, one over which we should pause and think.

Very little is given of her history, and yet enough to indicate that she was but eighteen years of age--that time in life when the world is clad in its brightest colors, when the heart is full of hope and the body full of the buoyancy of youth; that she was very intelligent; that she was very pretty; that she was very amiable, and beloved by all who knew her; that she had been utterly deserted by a brute; and that she still wanted to live--for, in her sad note, she says: "And yet, if there seemed the shadow of a hope to regain your love, once so true and tender, I would longer suffer the agony you have so ruthlessly thrown upon me."

To me, there is something inexpressibly sad in that last note:

"My Darling Percy: The dark clouds are gathering around the little girl you once loved, and who still clings to you in hope that your heart will soften; but, oh! dear one, to suffer the agony of this suspense is worse than death. You trifled with my susceptible heart, but I forgive you. I court death; and yet, if there seemed the shadow of a hope to regain your love, once so true and tender, I would longer suffer the agony you have so ruthlessly thrown upon me. O, come, come! Press me to your heart again, and then let me die.

Loving and true,

AUGUSTA."

Deserted! And, alone in the world, she attempts to ward off, with her weak, little hands, those dark clouds gathering around her. Deserted! She still clings to all he has left her--a bitter memory. Deserted! She bears an agony which is worse than death. Deserted! She still loves and forgives him, who has utterly blotted out her bright young life. Deserted! She would still bear the great agony, if there was only the shadow of a hope that, at some day, she might regain that love. Deserted! And from her white lips comes that last mournful appeal--"Come! come! and let me die"--and then utter despair sets in, which is only another name for utter madness, for when hope dies, the light of reason goes out, too, and she goes to her death, "rashly importunate," out of the world, and out of life, to the arms of the Great Father.

To the Great Father, notwithstanding the technical notions of my theological brethren, whose cold, hard formulæ, in a case like this, must give way. They dare not assert them in the presence of this little girl, around whom the clouds are gathering. If they should, it would only argue a soul which has run entirely to brain.

Her last words, "loving and true," have nothing of the romantic about them, no flavor of the boarding-school, no characteristic of the gushing young misses just into their teens and chignons. It is the full strength of a woman's love, which knows no abatement, even in the face of scorn, abuse and desertion. If, by an exceedingly remote possibility, this little girl should meet her betrayer in Paradise, I do not believe she would avert her face. The vine clings to the tree when its trunk is sturdy with sap and its branches are full of leaves and nests, and it clings to it, also, when it is only a jagged stump, riven and shattered by the lightnings.