Chapter 1

exerts upon them. One reason, perhaps, why they do not care to go to places of worship is that they are liable to hear the questions they know something about handled in sermons by those who know very much less about them. And so they lose a great deal. Almost every human being, however vague his notions of the Power addressed, is capable of being lifted and solemnized by the exercise of public prayer. When I was a young girl we travelled in Europe, and I visited Ferney with my parents; and I remember we all stopped before a chapel, and I read upon its front, I knew Latin enough to understand it, I am pleased to say,--Deo erexit Voltaire. I never forgot it; and knowing what a sad scoffer he was at most sacred things, I could not but be impressed with the fact that even he was not satisfied with himself, until he had shown his devotion in a public and lasting form.

We all want religion sooner or later. I am afraid there are some who have no natural turn for it, as there are persons without an ear for music, to which, if I remember right, I heard one of you comparing what you called religious genius. But sorrow and misery bring even these to know what it means, in a great many instances. May I not say to you, my friend, that I am one who has learned the secret of the inner life by the discipline of trials in the life of outward circumstance? I can remember the time when I thought more about the shade of color in a ribbon, whether it matched my complexion or not, than I did about my spiritual interests in this world or the next. It was needful that I should learn the meaning of that text, “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.”

Since I have been taught in the school of trial I have felt, as I never could before, how precious an inheritance is the smallest patrimony of faith. When everything seemed gone from me, I found I had still one possession. The bruised reed that I had never leaned on became my staff. The smoking flax which had been a worry to my eyes burst into flame, and I lighted the taper at it which has since guided all my footsteps. And I am but one of the thousands who have had the same experience. They have been through the depths of affliction, and know the needs of the human soul. It will find its God in the unseen,--Father, Saviour, Divine Spirit, Virgin Mother, it must and will breathe its longings and its griefs into the heart of a Being capable of understanding all its necessities and sympathizing with all its woes.

I am jealous, yes, I own I am jealous of any word, spoken or written, that would tend to impair that birthright of reverence which becomes for so many in after years the basis of a deeper religious sentiment. And yet, as I have said, I cannot and will not shut my eyes to the problems which may seriously affect our modes of conceiving the eternal truths on which, and by which, our souls must live. What a fearful time is this into which we poor sensitive and timid creatures are born! I suppose the life of every century has more or less special resemblance to that of some particular Apostle. I cannot help thinking this century has Thomas for its model. How do you suppose the other Apostles felt when that experimental philosopher explored the wounds of the Being who to them was divine with his inquisitive forefinger? In our time that finger has multiplied itself into ten thousand thousand implements of research, challenging all mysteries, weighing the world as in a balance, and sifting through its prisms and spectroscopes the light that comes from the throne of the Eternal.

Pity us, dear Lord, pity us! The peace in believing which belonged to other ages is not for us. Again Thy wounds are opened that we may know whether it is the blood of one like ourselves which flows from them, or whether it is a Divinity that is bleeding for His creatures. Wilt Thou not take the doubt of Thy children whom the time commands to try all things in the place of the unquestioning faith of earlier and simpler-hearted generations? We too have need of Thee. Thy martyrs in other ages were cast into the flames, but no fire could touch their immortal and indestructible faith. We sit in safety and in peace, so far as these poor bodies are concerned; but our cherished beliefs, the hopes, the trust that stayed the hearts of those we loved who have gone before us, are cast into the fiery furnace of an age which is fast turning to dross the certainties and the sanctities once prized as our most precious inheritance. You will understand me, my dear sir, and all my solicitudes and apprehensions. Had I never been assailed by the questions that meet all thinking persons in our time, I might not have thought so anxiously about the risk of perplexing others. I know as well as you must that there are many articles of belief clinging to the skirts of our time which are the bequests of the ages of ignorance that God winked at. But for all that I would train a child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, according to the simplest and best creed I could disentangle from those barbarisms, and I would in every way try to keep up in young persons that standard of reverence for all sacred subjects which may, without any violent transition, grow and ripen into the devotion of later years. Believe me,

Very sincerely yours,

I have thought a good deal about this letter and the writer of it lately. She seemed at first removed to a distance from all of us, but here I find myself in somewhat near relations with her. What has surprised me more than that, however, is to find that she is becoming so much acquainted with the Register of Deeds. Of all persons in the world, I should least have thought of him as like to be interested in her, and still less, if possible, of her fancying him. I can only say they have been in pretty close conversation several times of late, and, if I dared to think it of so very calm and dignified a personage, I should say that her color was a little heightened after one or more of these interviews. No! that would be too absurd! But I begin to think nothing is absurd in the matter of the relations of the two sexes; and if this high-bred woman fancies the attentions of a piece of human machinery like this elderly individual, it is none of my business.

I have been at work on some more of the Young Astronomer's lines. I find less occasion for meddling with them as he grows more used to versification. I think I could analyze the processes going on in his mind, and the conflict of instincts which he cannot in the nature of things understand. But it is as well to give the reader a chance to find out for himself what is going on in the young man's heart and intellect.

WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.

III

The snows that glittered on the disk of Mars Have melted, and the planet's fiery orb Rolls in the crimson summer of its year; But what to me the summer or the snow Of worlds that throb with life in forms unknown, If life indeed be theirs; I heed not these. My heart is simply human; all my care For them whose dust is fashioned like mine own; These ache with cold and hunger, live in pain, And shake with fear of worlds more full of woe; There may be others worthier of my love, But such I know not save through these I know.

There are two veils of language, hid beneath Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves; And not that other self which nods and smiles And babbles in our name; the one is Prayer, Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven; The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web Around our naked speech and makes it bold. I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb In the great temple where I nightly serve Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim The poet's franchise, though I may not hope To wear his garland; hear me while I tell My story in such form as poets use, But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again.

Thou Vision, floating in the breathless air Between me and the fairest of the stars, I tell my lonely thoughts as unto thee. Look not for marvels of the scholar's pen In my rude measure; I can only show A slender-margined, unillumined page, And trust its meaning to the flattering eye That reads it in the gracious light of love. Ah, wouldst thou clothe thyself in breathing shape And nestle at my side, my voice should lend Whate'er my verse may lack of tender rhythm To make thee listen.

I have stood entranced When, with her fingers wandering o'er the keys, The white enchantress with the golden hair Breathed all her soul through some unvalued rhyme; Some flower of song that long had lost its bloom; Lo! its dead summer kindled as she sang! The sweet contralto, like the ringdove's coo, Thrilled it with brooding, fond, caressing tones, And the pale minstrel's passion lived again, Tearful and trembling as a dewy rose The wind has shaken till it fills the air With light and fragrance. Such the wondrous charm A song can borrow when the bosom throbs That lends it breath.

So from the poet's lips His verse sounds doubly sweet, for none like him Feels every cadence of its wave-like flow; He lives the passion over, while he reads, That shook him as he sang his lofty strain, And pours his life through each resounding line, As ocean, when the stormy winds are hushed, Still rolls and thunders through his billowy caves.

Let me retrace the record of the years That made me what I am. A man most wise, But overworn with toil and bent with age, Sought me to be his scholar,--me, run wild From books and teachers,--kindled in my soul The love of knowledge; led me to his tower, Showed me the wonders of the midnight realm His hollow sceptre ruled, or seemed to rule, Taught me the mighty secrets of the spheres, Trained me to find the glimmering specks of light Beyond the unaided sense, and on my chart To string them one by one, in order due, As on a rosary a saint his beads.

I was his only scholar; I became The echo to his thought; whate'er he knew Was mine for asking; so from year to year We wrought together, till there came a time When I, the learner, was the master half Of the twinned being in the dome-crowned tower.

Minds roll in paths like planets; they revolve This in a larger, that a narrower ring, But round they come at last to that same phase, That self-same light and shade they showed before. I learned his annual and his monthly tale, His weekly axiom and his daily phrase, I felt them coming in the laden air, And watched them laboring up to vocal breath, Even as the first-born at his father's board Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest Is on its way, by some mysterious sign Forewarned, the click before the striking bell.

He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves, Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care; He lived for me in what he once had been, But I for him, a shadow, a defence, The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff, Leaned on so long he fell if left alone. I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand, Love was my spur and longing after fame, But his the goading thorn of sleepless age That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades, That clutches what it may with eager grasp, And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands.

All this he dreamed not. He would sit him down Thinking to work his problems as of old, And find the star he thought so plain a blur, The columned figures labyrinthine wilds Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive And struggle for a while, and then his eye Would lose its light, and over all his mind The cold gray mist would settle; and erelong The darkness fell, and I was left alone.

Alone! no climber of an Alpine cliff, No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea, Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky.

Alone! And as the shepherd leaves his flock To feed upon the hillside, he meanwhile Finds converse in the warblings of the pipe Himself has fashioned for his vacant hour, So have I grown companion to myself, And to the wandering spirits of the air That smile and whisper round us in our dreams. Thus have I learned to search if I may know The whence and why of all beneath the stars And all beyond them, and to weigh my life As in a balance, poising good and ill Against each other,-asking of the Power That flung me forth among the whirling worlds, If I am heir to any inborn right, Or only as an atom of the dust That every wind may blow where'er it will.

I am not humble; I was shown my place, Clad in such robes as Nature had at hand; Took what she gave, not chose; I know no shame, No fear for being simply what I am. I am not proud, I hold my every breath At Nature's mercy. I am as a babe Borne in a giant's arms, he knows not where; Each several heart-beat, counted like the coin A miser reckons, is a special gift As from an unseen hand; if that withhold Its bounty for a moment, I am left A clod upon the earth to which I fall.

Something I find in me that well might claim The love of beings in a sphere above This doubtful twilight world of right and wrong; Something that shows me of the self-same clay That creeps or swims or flies in humblest form. Had I been asked, before I left my bed Of shapeless dust, what clothing I would wear, I would have said, More angel and less worm; But for their sake who are even such as I, Of the same mingled blood, I would not choose To hate that meaner portion of myself Which makes me brother to the least of men.

I dare not be a coward with my lips Who dare to question all things in my soul; Some men may find their wisdom on their knees, Some prone and grovelling in the dust like slaves; Let the meek glow-worm glisten in the dew; I ask to lift my taper to the sky As they who hold their lamps above their heads, Trusting the larger currents up aloft, Rather than crossing eddies round their breast, Threatening with every puff the flickering blaze.

My life shall be a challenge, not a truce! This is my homage to the mightier powers, To ask my boldest question, undismayed By muttered threats that some hysteric sense Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err, They all must err who have to feel their way As bats that fly at noon; for what are we But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps Spell out their paths in syllables of pain?

Thou wilt not hold in scorn the child who dares Look up to Thee, the Father,--dares to ask More than Thy wisdom answers. From Thy hand The worlds were cast; yet every leaflet claims From that same hand its little shining sphere Of star-lit dew; thine image, the great sun, Girt with his mantle of tempestuous flame,

Glares in mid-heaven; but to his noontide blaze The slender violet lifts its lidless eye, And from his splendor steals its fairest hue, Its sweetest perfume from his scorching fire.

I may just as well stop here as anywhere, for there is more of the manuscript to come, and I can only give it in instalments.

The Young Astronomer had told me I might read any portions of his manuscript I saw fit to certain friends. I tried this last extract on the old Master.

It's the same story we all have to tell,--said he, when I had done reading.--We are all asking questions nowadays. I should like to hear him read some of his verses himself, and I think some of the other boarders would like to. I wonder if he wouldn't do it, if we asked him! Poets read their own compositions in a singsong sort of way; but they do seem to love 'em so, that I always enjoy it. It makes me laugh a little inwardly to see how they dandle their poetical babies, but I don't let them know it. We must get up a select party of the boarders to hear him read. We'll send him a regular invitation. I will put my name at the head of it, and you shall write it.

--That was neatly done. How I hate writing such things! But I suppose I must do it.

VIII

The Master and I had been thinking for some time of trying to get the Young Astronomer round to our side of the table. There are many subjects on which both of us like to talk with him, and it would be convenient to have him nearer to us. How to manage it was not quite so clear as it might have been. The Scarabee wanted to sit with his back to the light, as it was in his present position. He used his eyes so much in studying minute objects, that he wished to spare them all fatigue, and did not like facing a window. Neither of us cared to ask the Man of Letters, so called, to change his place, and of course we could not think of making such a request of the Young Girl or the Lady. So we were at a stand with reference to this project of ours.

But while we were proposing, Fate or Providence disposed everything for us. The Man of Letters, so called, was missing one morning, having folded his tent--that is, packed his carpet-bag--with the silence of the Arabs, and encamped--that is, taken lodgings--in some locality which he had forgotten to indicate.

The Landlady bore this sudden bereavement remarkably well. Her remarks and reflections; though borrowing the aid of homely imagery and doing occasional violence to the nicer usages of speech, were not without philosophical discrimination.

--I like a gentleman that is a gentleman. But there's a difference in what folks call gentlemen as there is in what you put on table. There is cabbages and there is cauliflowers. There is clams and there is oysters. There is mackerel and there is salmon. And there is some that knows the difference and some that doos n't. I had a little account with that boarder that he forgot to settle before he went off, so all of a suddin. I sha'n't say anything about it. I've seen the time when I should have felt bad about losing what he owed me, but it was no great matter; and if he 'll only stay away now he 's gone, I can stand losing it, and not cry my eyes out nor lay awake all night neither. I never had ought to have took him. Where he come from and where he's gone to is unbeknown to me. If he'd only smoked good tobacco, I wouldn't have said a word; but it was such dreadful stuff, it 'll take a week to get his chamber sweet enough to show them that asks for rooms. It doos smell like all possest.

--Left any goods?--asked the Salesman.

--Or dockermunts?--added the Member of the Haouse.

The Landlady answered with a faded smile, which implied that there was no hope in that direction. Dr. Benjamin, with a sudden recurrence of youthful feeling, made a fan with the fingers of his right hand, the second phalanx of the thumb resting on the tip of the nose, and the remaining digits diverging from each other, in the plane of the median line of the face,--I suppose this is the way he would have described the gesture, which is almost a specialty of the Parisian gamin. That Boy immediately copied it, and added greatly to its effect by extending the fingers of the other hand in a line with those of the first, and vigorously agitating those of the two hands,--a gesture which acts like a puncture on the distended self-esteem of one to whom it is addressed, and cheapens the memory of the absent to a very low figure.

I wish the reader to observe that I treasure up with interest all the words uttered by the Salesman. It must have been noticed that he very rarely speaks. Perhaps he has an inner life, with its own deep emotional, and lofty contemplative elements, but as we see him, he is the boarder reduced to the simplest expression of that term. Yet, like most human creatures, he has generic and specific characters not unworthy of being studied. I notice particularly a certain electrical briskness of movement, such as one may see in a squirrel, which clearly belongs to his calling. The dry-goodsman's life behind his counter is a succession of sudden, snappy perceptions and brief series of coordinate spasms; as thus:

“Purple calico, three quarters wide, six yards.”

Up goes the arm; bang! tumbles out the flat roll and turns half a dozen somersets, as if for the fun of the thing; the six yards of calico hurry over the measuring nails, hunching their backs up, like six cankerworms; out jump the scissors; snip, clip, rip; the stuff is wisped up, brown--papered, tied, labelled, delivered, and the man is himself again, like a child just come out of a convulsion-fit. Think of a man's having some hundreds of these semi-epileptic seizures every day, and you need not wonder that he does not say much; these fits take the talk all out of him.

But because he, or any other man, does not say much, it does not follow that he may not have, as I have said, an exalted and intense inner life. I have known a number of cases where a man who seemed thoroughly commonplace and unemotional has all at once surprised everybody by telling the story of his hidden life far more pointedly and dramatically than any playwright or novelist or poet could have told it for him. I will not insult your intelligence, Beloved, by saying how he has told it.

--We had been talking over the subjects touched upon in the Lady's letter.

--I suppose one man in a dozen--said the Master--ought to be born a skeptic. That was the proportion among the Apostles, at any rate.

--So there was one Judas among them,--I remarked.

--Well,--said the Master,--they 've been whitewashing Judas of late. But never mind him. I did not say there was not one rogue on the average among a dozen men. I don't see how that would interfere with my proposition. If I say that among a dozen men you ought to find one that weighs over a hundred and fifty pounds, and you tell me that there were twelve men in your club, and one of 'em had red hair, I don't see that you have materially damaged my statement.

--I thought it best to let the old Master have his easy victory, which was more apparent than real, very evidently, and he went on.

--When the Lord sends out a batch of human beings, say a hundred--Did you ever read my book, the new edition of it, I mean?

It is rather awkward to answer such a question in the negative, but I said, with the best grace I could, “No, not the last edition.”

--Well, I must give you a copy of it. My book and I are pretty much the same thing. Sometimes I steal from my book in my talk without mentioning it, and then I say to myself, “Oh, that won't do; everybody has read my book and knows it by heart.” And then the other I says,--you know there are two of us, right and left, like a pair of shoes,--the other I says, “You're a--something or other--fool. They have n't read your confounded old book; besides, if they have, they have forgotten all about it.” Another time, I say, thinking I will be very honest, “I have said something about that in my book”; and then the other I says, “What a Balaam's quadruped you are to tell 'em it's in your book; they don't care whether it is or not, if it's anything worth saying; and if it isn't worth saying, what are you braying for?” That is a rather sensible fellow, that other chap we talk with, but an impudent whelp. I never got such abuse from any blackguard in my life as I have from that No. 2 of me, the one that answers the other's questions and makes the comments, and does what in demotic phrase is called the “sarsing.”

--I laughed at that. I have just such a fellow always with me, as wise as Solomon, if I would only heed him; but as insolent as Shimei, cursing, and throwing stones and dirt, and behaving as if he had the traditions of the “ape-like human being” born with him rather than civilized instincts. One does not have to be a king to know what it is to keep a king's jester.

--I mentioned my book,--the Master said, because I have something in it on the subject we were talking about. I should like to read you a passage here and there out of it, where I have expressed myself a little more freely on some of those matters we handle in conversation. If you don't quarrel with it, I must give you a copy of the book. It's a rather serious thing to get a copy of a book from the writer of it. It has made my adjectives sweat pretty hard, I know, to put together an answer returning thanks and not lying beyond the twilight of veracity, if one may use a figure. Let me try a little of my book on you, in divided doses, as my friends the doctors say.

-Fiat experimentum in corpore vili,--I said, laughing at my own expense. I don't doubt the medicament is quite as good as the patient deserves, and probably a great deal better,--I added, reinforcing my feeble compliment.

[When you pay a compliment to an author, don't qualify it in the next sentence so as to take all the goodness out of it. Now I am thinking of it, I will give you one or two pieces of advice. Be careful to assure yourself that the person you are talking with wrote the article or book you praise. It is not very pleasant to be told, “Well, there, now! I always liked your writings, but you never did anything half so good as this last piece,” and then to have to tell the blunderer that this last piece is n't yours, but t' other man's. Take care that the phrase or sentence you commend is not one that is in quotation-marks. “The best thing in your piece, I think, is a line I do not remember meeting before; it struck me as very true and well expressed:

“'An honest man's the noblest work of God.'

“But, my dear lady, that line is one which is to be found in a writer of the last century, and not original with me.” One ought not to have undeceived her, perhaps, but one is naturally honest, and cannot bear to be credited with what is not his own. The lady blushes, of course, and says she has not read much ancient literature, or some such thing. The pearl upon the Ethiop's arm is very pretty in verse, but one does not care to furnish the dark background for other persons' jewelry.]

I adjourned from the table in company with the old Master to his apartments. He was evidently in easy circumstances, for he had the best accommodations the house afforded. We passed through a reception room to his library, where everything showed that he had ample means for indulging the modest tastes of a scholar.

--The first thing, naturally, when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. One gets a notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his bookshelves.

Of course, you know there are many fine houses where the library is a part of the upholstery, so to speak. Books in handsome binding kept locked under plate-glass in showy dwarf bookcases are as important to stylish establishments as servants in livery; who sit with folded arms, are to stylish equipages. I suppose those wonderful statues with the folded arms do sometimes change their attitude, and I suppose those books with the gilded backs do sometimes get opened, but it is nobody's business whether they do or not, and it is not best to ask too many questions.

This sort of thing is common enough, but there is another case that may prove deceptive if you undertake to judge from appearances. Once in a while you will come on a house where you will find a family of readers and almost no library. Some of the most indefatigable devourers of literature have very few books. They belong to book clubs, they haunt the public libraries, they borrow of friends, and somehow or other get hold of everything they want, scoop out all it holds for them, and have done with it. When I want a book, it is as a tiger wants a sheep. I must have it with one spring, and, if I miss it, go away defeated and hungry. And my experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the