Chapter 5

O fragile clay! Erst white as e'er a lily of old Nile, But now imbrowned and ambered o'er and through With richest tints and ever-deepening hue, Quintessence of rare essences the while Uphoarding, as thou farest day by day, Thou mind'st me of a genial face I knew. At first it was but fair, nought but a face; But as I read and learned it, wondrous grace And beauty marvellous did grow and grow, Till every hue of the sweet soul did show Most beautiful from brow and lip and eye. And thus, O clay, Child of the sea-foam, nursed amid the spray, Thy visage changes, ever grows more fair As the fine spirit works expression there! Blest be the tide that rapt thee from the roar And cast thee on the far Danubian shore, And blest the art that shaped thee daintily! And thou, O fragrant tube attenuate! No more in the sweet-blooming cherry-grove, Where the shy bulbul plaintive mourns her love, Shalt thou uplift thy blossoms to the sky, Or wave them o'er the waters rippling by; No more thy fruit shall stud with jewels red The leafy crown thou fashionedst for thy head. Not this thy fate. When the swart damsel from thy parent tree Did lop thee with thy fellows, and did strip From off thee, bleeding, leaf and bud and blossom, And bind the odorous fagot carefully, And bear thee in to whom should fashion thee And set new fruit of amber on thy tip, More grateful than the old to eye and lip, Ambrosial odors thou didst then exhale, Leaving thy fragrance in her tawny bosom. Thou still dost hold it. Nothing may avail To rob thee of the odorous memory Thou sweetly bearest of the cherry-grove, Where blossoms bloom and lovers tell their love. Bright amber, fragrant wood, enamelled clay, Help me to burn the incense worthily! Thou fire, assist! Promethean fire, unbound, The azure clouds go wreathing round and round, Float slowly up, then gently melt away; And in their circling wreaths I dimly spy Full many a fleeting vision's fantasy. Alas! alas! How bright soe'er before my view they pass, Whether it be that Memory, pointing back, Doth show each flower along the devious track By which I came forth from the fields of youth,-- Or bright-robed Hope doth deck the sober truth With many-colored garments, pointing on To lighter days and envied honors won,-- Or Fancy, taking many a meaner thing, Doth gild it o'er with bright imagining,-- Alas! alas! Light as the circling smoke, they fade and pass, What time the last thin wreath hath faintly sped Up from the embers dying, dying, dead! So earth's best blessings fade and fleet away,-- Nought left but ashes, smoke, and empty clay.

Awake, my soul! 't is time thou wert awaking! For radiant spirits, innocent and fair, Walking beside thee, hovering in the air Adown the past, thronging thy future way, Wait but thy calling and the thraldom's breaking, Which, all unworthily, to sense hath bound thee, To bless thy days and make the night around thee As bright and beautiful and fair as day. Call thou on these, my soul, and fix thee there! Name nought divine which hath not godlike in it; And if thou burnest incense, let it be That of the heart, enkindled thankfully; And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, Nor let it poison all thy sight forever; Whate'er thou hast to do of worth, begin it, Nor leave the issue free to any doubt, Forgetting never what thou art, and never Whither thou goest, to the far Forever. And then shall gentle Memory, pointing back, Show blessings scattered all along thy track; And bright-robed Hope, shaming thy dreams of youth, Shall lead thee up from dreaming to the truth; And Fancy, leaving every meaner thing, Shall see fulfilled each bright imagining. Then shall the ashes of thy musing be Only the ashes of thy naughtiness; The smoke, the remnant of thy vanity And thorny passions, which entangled thee Till thou didst pray deliverance; the clay, That empty clay e'en, hath a power to bless,-- Empty for that a gem hath passed away, To shine forever in eternal day.

HALCYON DAYS.

"Peace and good-will."

Who hath enchanted Goliath? He sleeps with a smile on his face, but his secret is hid from the charmer. The treacherous will looks abashed on the calm of his slumber, and laments, "The thing that I would I do not!"

Now while the halcyon broods through the Sabbath-days of winter, and, looking from her nest, sees the waves of a summer calm and brightness,--now while she meditates, with the eggs under her wings, of a fast-approaching time when she shall teach her song to the little flock that's coming,--let us also dream. The thing that hath been shall be. Contentment, peace, and love! Fairy folk shall not personate this blessedness for us. Who is your next-door neighbor? One face shines serenely before me, and says, "The world is redeemed!" One voice, sounding clear through all discords, has an echo, fine, true, and eternal, in the midst of the Seraphim's praise.

Therefore, thou blue-winged halcyon, shall I sit beneath the dead sycamore in whose topmost branches thy great nest is built,--finding death crowned here, as everywhere, with life; here shall be told the Christmas tale of contentment, peace, and love.

No tremulous tale of sorrow, of wrong endured and avenged; no report of that Orthodox anguish which, renouncing the present, hopes only by the hereafter; no story of desperate heroic achievement, or of long-suffering patience, or even of martyrdom's glory. The sea is calm, and the halcyon broods, and only love is eternal.

Let us not stint thee, as selfishness must; nor shame thee with praise inadequate; nor walk with shod feet, as the base-bred, into thy palaces; nor as the weak, nor as the wise, who so often profane thee, but as the loving who love thee, holy Love, may we take thy name on our lips, and lay our gift on thine altar! It is a Christmas offering, fashioned, however rudely, from an absolute truth. If thou deem the ointment precious, when I break the unjewelled box, I pour it on thy feet. Let others crown, I would only refresh thee.

Children play on this white, shining, sandy beach, under the leafless sycamore; they look for no shade, they would find no shade; there is neither rock, nor shrub, nor evergreen-tree,--nothing but the white sand, and the dead sycamore, and in the topmost branches the halcyon's great nest.

Is it not a place for children? A little flourish of imagination, and we see them,--Silas, who beats the drum, and Columbia, who carries the flag, manifest leaders of the wild little company, mermen and mermaids all; and the music is fit for the Siren, and the beauty would shame not Venus.

Suppose we stroll home to their fathers, like respectable earth-keeping creatures: the depths of human hearts have sometimes proved full of mystery as the sea; and human faces sometimes glisten with a majesty of feeling or of thought that reduces ocean-splendor to the subordinate part of a similitude.

There is Andrew, father of Silas,--Andrew Swift, says the sign. He dwells in Salt Lane, you perceive, and he deals in ship-stores,--a husband and father by no means living on sea-weed. A yellow-haired little man, shrewd, and a ready reckoner. Of a serious turn of mind. Deficient in self-esteem; his anticipations of the most humble character. A sinner, because fearful and unbelieving: for what right has a man to be such a man as to inspire himself with misgiving? But his offences offset each other: for, if he doubted, Andrew was also obstinate. And obstinacy alone led him into ventures whose failure he expected: as when he laid out the savings of years in the purchase of goods, wherewith he opened those ship-stores in Salt Lane. Ship-stores! that sounds well. One might suppose I referred to blocks of marble-faced buildings, instead of three shelves, three barrels, and their contents! The obstinacy of Andrew Swift was the foundation of his fortune. Men have built on worse.

His opposite neighbor was one Silas Dexter, a flag- and banner-maker, who went into business in Salt Lane sometime during that memorable year of Andrew's venture. Apparently this young man was no better off than Swift, between whom and himself a friendly intercourse was at once established; but he had the advantage of a quick imagination and a sanguine temperament; also the manly courage to look at Fortune with respectful recognition, as we all look at royalty,--even as though he had sometime been presented,--not with a snobbish conceit which would seem to defy her Highness.

Indeed, he was such a man as would find exhilaration of spirit even in the uncertainties of his position. The sight of his banners waving from the sign-post, showing all sorts of devices, the flags flowing round the walls of his shop, enlivening the little dark place with their many gorgeous colors, sufficed for his encouragement. Utter ruin could not have ruined the man. He could not have failed with failure. Some sense of this fact he had, and he lived like one who has had his life insured.

Not a creature looked upon him but was free to the good he might derive. The sparkling eyes, quick smile, and manly voice, the active limbs and generous heart, seemed at the service of every soul that breathed. Trashy thought and base utterance could not cheat his soul of her integrity; the vileness of Salt Lane had nothing to do with him.

And I cannot account for this by bringing his wife forward. For how came he by this wife, except by the excellence and soundness of the virtue which preferred her to the world, and made him preferred of her? Still, you see the ripe cherry, one half full, beautiful, luscious, the other a patch of skin stretched over the pit, worthless and sad to view. This, but for his choice and hers, might have served as an emblem of Dexter.

She was her husband's partner in a twofold sense: for it was DEXTER & CO. on the sign-board, and Jessie was represented by the Company. Of that woman I cannot refrain from saying what was so gracefully said of "the fair and happy milkmaid,"--"All the excellences stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge."

The effect of these diverse influences, his wife Jessie in the house, and his neighbor Andrew to the opposite, kept the spirit of Silas Dexter at work like a ploughing Pegasus. He was full of pranks as a boy, but malice found poor encouragement of him. Andrew was his garden, and he was Andrew's sun: he shone across the lane with a brightness and a warmth sufficient to quicken the poorest earth; and the crops he perfected were various, all of the kind that flourish in heavy soil, but various and good. Do you think the good Samaritan could take the leprosy?

The sort of connection a man is bound to make between the everlasting spirit-world and this transient mortal state Dexter proved in his humble way. I doubt if spiritualists would have accepted his service as a medium. He was neither profane nor imbecile; but he sat at the foot of a ladder the pure ones could not fail to see, and by which they would not disdain to descend. If they chose to come his way, the white robes would take no taint.

Success attended Dexter with a modest grace, and Swift shared in the good fortune. I do not say the profits of either shop were forty millions a year. "Keep the best of everything," said Silas to Andrew; "don't be too hard on 'em; they'll come after they've found your way." And Swift proved the wisdom of such counsel, and tried to get the better of his grim countenance while waiting on the customers Dexter directed to his side: gradually succeeding,--proving down there in Salt Lane the truth of that ancient saying, "Art is the perfection of Nature."

So these two men lived like brothers; and if it was a pleasant thing to listen to Dexter's jokes and laughter, scarcely less profitable was it to hear Swift praise the flag- and banner-maker when he was out of sight.

Dexter's popularity had a varied character. Sea-captains and ship-builders, circus-men, aëronauts, politicians, engineers, target-companies, firemen, the military, deputies of all sorts, looked over his goods, consulted his taste, left their orders. His interest in the several occupations represented by the men who frequented his shop, his ingenuity in devising designs, his skill and expedition in supplying orders, his cheerful speech, and love of talk, and fun, gave the shopman troops of "friends." He could read the common mass of men at a glance, and he was justifiable in the devices he made use of in order to bring his customers into the buying mood: for what he said was true,--they could satisfy themselves in his store, if anywhere.

Dexter understood himself, and Jessie understood him: such folk make no pretences; they are ineffably real.

"Principles, not Men," was the banner-maker's motto. You might have seen the flag on which it was painted with a mighty flourish (and very poor result) in his old shop in the old time. That painting was his first great effort, that flag his first possession; he could not have parted with it, so he _said_, and so he believed, for any sum whatever.

"Principles, not Men": he studied that sentiment in all his graver moments, when he chanced to be alone in his shop,--you may guess with what result, moral and philosophical.

Andrew Swift used to say to his wife, that, when Dexter was studying his thoughts, it was better to hear him than the minister: and verily he did put time-serving to shame by the distinct integrity of his warm speech, and his eloquence of action.

Dexter married Jessie the day before he opened his flag-shop. She had long been employed by his employer, and when she promised to be his, she drew her earnings from the bank, and invested all with him. This was not prudence, certainly, but it was love. Dexter might have failed in business the first year,--might have died, you know, in six months, or even in three, as men do sometimes. It was not prudence; but Jessie--young lady determined on settlements!--Jessie was looking for life and prosperity, as the honest and earnest and young have a right to look in a world God created and governs. And if failure and death had in fact choked the path that promised so fair, clear of regret, free of reproaches, glad even of the losses that proved how love had once blessed her, she would have buried the dead, and worked for the retrieval of fortune.

They began their housekeeping-romance back of the shop in two little rooms. Do you require the actual measurement? There have been wider walls that could contain greatly less.

"How big was Alexander, pa? The people called him _great_."

They considered the sixpences of their outlay and income with a purpose and a spirit that made a miser of neither. But there was no delusion indulged about the business. Jessie never mistook the hilarity of Silas for an indication of incalculable prosperity. Silas never understood her gravity for that of discontent and envy. They never spent in any week more than they earned. They counted the cost of living, and were therefore free and rich. "She was never alone," as Sir Thomas Overbury said of that happy milkmaid, "but still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones." And Dexter loved her with a valiant constancy that spoke volumes for both.

His days were spent, according to the promise advertised, in endeavors to please the public; but, oh, if the public that traded with and liked to patronize him, if the young lads and the old boys who hung about his counters, could have seen him when he shut his shop-door behind him, and went into the back-room where Jessie and he devised the patterns, where she embroidered and lived, where she cooked and washed and ironed, where she nursed Columbia, their daughter, one glance at all this, made with the heart and the understanding, would--ah! _might_, have been to some of them worth more than all Dexter's pleasant stones, and all the contents of the shop, and all the profits the flag-maker would ever make by trading.

For I can hardly believe, though this story be but of "_common_ life," when I take up the newspapers and glance along the items I am constrained to doubt, that such people as Silas and Jessie live in every house, in every alley, lane, and street, in every square and avenue, on every farm, wherever walls inclose those divine temples of which Apostles talked as belonging to God, which temples, said they, are holy! I can hardly believe that Love, void of fear and of selfishness, speaks through all our domestic policy, and devises those curious arrangements, political, theological, social, whose result has approval and praise, it may be, in the regions of outer darkness.

Dark faces, whose sleekness hides a gulf of waters more dead than those of the dreadful Dead Sea, rise between me and the honest, brave face of Silas,--dreary flats, whose wastes are not figured in utter barrenness by the awful African deserts, where ranks upon ranks of women, like Jessie at least in love and fidelity, must stand, or--"where is the promise of His coming?"

The daughter of Silas and Jessie was called Columbia in honor of some valiant enterprise, nautical or other, which charmed the patriotic spirit of the father; and as he was not a fighting man or a speaking man, he offered this modest comment on the brilliant event by way of showing his appreciation.

Columbia Dexter was a great favorite with the children of Salt Lane for various reasons, and among them this, that in all parades and processions she supplied the banners. Columbia's friend of friends was Silas, son of Andrew Swift,--and thus we come among the children of the neighbors.

They were not dependent on Salt Lane for a play-ground. They had the Long Wharf. Ships from the most distant foreign shores deposited their loads of freightage there, and the children were free to read the foreign brands, to guess the contents, and to watch the sailors,--free to all brain-puzzling calculations, and to clothes-soiling, clothes-rending feats, among the treasures of the ship-hold and the wharf: no mean privileges, with the roar of ocean in their ears, and great ships with their towering masts before their eyes. They had the wharf for bustle, confusion, excitement,--and for this they loved it; but the beach that stretched beyond they had for quiet, and there, for miles and miles, curious shells and pretty pebbles, fish-bones and crabs and sand, sea-weed fine and fair, and the old sycamores, the old dead trees, in the tops of whose white branches the halcyon built its nest. Well the children knew the winter days, so bright and mild, when the brave birds were breeding. Well they knew when the young kingfisher would begin to make his royal progress, with such safe dignity descending, branch by branch, until he could no longer resist Nature, but must dash out in a "fine frenzy" for the bounding waves!

Silas Swift, Dexter's namesake, was a grave, sturdy, somewhat heavy-looking fellow, whose brain teemed with thoughts and projects of which his slow-moving body offered no suggestion. Whoever prophesied of them did so at his hazard. Let him play at his will, and the children even were amazed. But this could not happen every day. Set him at work, and the sanguine were in despair. This was because, when work must be done, he deliberated, and did the thing that must be; so that, while misapprehension fretted gently sometimes because of his dulness, he was preparing for that which was not hoped. Celerity enough when he had come to a decision, but no sign or token till he had come to that.

The first exercise of his imagination trusted to the inspection of others was in behalf of Columbia Dexter, with intent to moderate her grief over a dead kitten which they buried in the sand under the sycamore-tree, the procession carrying banners furled and decorated with badges of mourning. Silas made a monument then and there in the high noon of a halcyon day: carved on a pine board which had served for a bier was the face of Tabby, surrounded with devices intended to represent the duration of her virtues. His work consoled Columbia, and inspired him to a more ambitious enterprise, namely, the carving of the same in a block of gypsum, which work of art Dexter obtaining sight of declared that it would have done credit to an artist, and set it on his mantel-shelf between two precious household cards lettered in gilt as follows "_Union is Strength_," and "_Principles, not Men_."

I suppose no children ever led a happier life,--the special joy of childhood being in sport, and food, and liberty, and the love of those who own them. They basked in the sun; they were busy with sport, fretted by no cares; kind words directed them. They lived in the midst of illusions, like princes, or fairies, or spirits,--like _children_. They followed about with processions, training in the rear of every train-band, keeping time with the march of the happy Sunday-schools, when they had their celebrations. Young Silas could be trusted with the care of Columbia, and hand in hand, like brother and sister, they went. Especially were they proud, if the procession carried one of Dexter's flags. Silas, no doubt, had suggested a point of the device, or Columbia had worked a corner.

When Dexter would go on board ship, or to some lodge, with the flags which had been ordered of him, in anticipation of voyages and processions, the children often accompanied him. I see them walking shyly in the rear, and looking up to the father of the little girl with the reverence he deserved. By-and-by would they grow wise and feel ashamed of this? Will you see the fair Columbia, whom the captain pats so kindly on the head, smiling broadly when he hears her name, will you see her, a woman grown, attending her father on such errands? And if you see her not, will the reason be such as proves her worthy to be old Dexter's daughter? Will you hear her saying to her friends, as now, "Guess who worked those flowers," while the target-shooters march past, carrying their blue silk banner, royal with red roses? She and Silas often run panting in the wake of great processions; they would not for the world miss seeing the wide, fluttering folds of the Stars and Stripes, or it might be the conquering St. George, or the transparencies they were all so busy over a day or two ago. Their speed will soon abate, and why?

Human beings are not children forever. Maturity must not manifest itself as childhood does. Ah, but "Principles, not Men"! Is any truth involved in that beyond what Silas recognizes in his trade? Is there another reason which shall have power to make Columbia some day stand coolly on the sidewalk, while her heart is beating fast,--which shall induce her to point out the mottoes on the banners, and the various devices, to another, without trembling in the voice or tears in the eye? If ever she shall glide along the streets, she whose early race-course was Salt Lane, if ever like a lady she shall walk there, will it be at the price of forgetfulness of all this humble sport and joy,--as a sustainer of feeble "social fictions," and a violator of the great covenant?

To the boy and girl it was not a question whether all their lives these relations should continue, and this play go on; but even to them, as children, a question that seriously concerned them, and in whose discussion they bore serious part, arose.

The old building Dexter occupied was becoming unfit for tenants. It had been patched over and over, until it was no longer safe, and agents refused to insure it. The proprietor accordingly determined to pull it down.