Title: Mosses from an Old Manse, and Other Stories
Author: Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Language: English
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MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE AND OTHER STORIES


by

Nathaniel Hawthorne



Contents


  The Birthmark
  Young Goodman Brown
  Rappaccini’s Daughter
  Mrs. Bullfrog
  The Celestial Railroad
  The Procession of Life
  Feathertop: A Moralized Legend
  Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent
  Drowne’s Wooden Image
  Roger Malvin’s Burial
  The Artist of the Beautiful



FROM MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE



THE BIRTHMARK

In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an
eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long
before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more
attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the
care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace
smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a
beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days when the
comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred
mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it
was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in
its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination,
the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment
in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would
ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the
philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and
perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer
possessed this degree of faith in man’s ultimate control over Nature.
He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies
ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his
young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by
intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength
of the latter to his own.

Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly
remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble
in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.

“Georgiana,” said he, “has it never occurred to you that the mark upon
your cheek might be removed?”

“No, indeed,” said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of his
manner, she blushed deeply. “To tell you the truth it has been so often
called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so.”

“Ah, upon another face perhaps it might,” replied her husband; “but
never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from
the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we
hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the
visible mark of earthly imperfection.”

“Shocks you, my husband!” cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first
reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. “Then why
did you take me from my mother’s side? You cannot love what shocks you!”

To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in the centre of
Georgiana’s left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as
it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual state
of her complexion--a healthy though delicate bloom--the mark wore a
tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the
surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more
indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that
bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting
motion caused her to turn pale there was the mark again, a crimson
stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful
distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand,
though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana’s lovers were wont to say
that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the
infant’s cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic
endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a
desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing
his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however,
that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual varied
exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the
beholders. Some fastidious persons--but they were exclusively of her
own sex--affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite
destroyed the effect of Georgiana’s beauty, and rendered her
countenance even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one
of those small blue stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary
marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine
observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration,
contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess
one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a
flaw. After his marriage,--for he thought little or nothing of the
matter before,--Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.

Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy’s self could have found aught
else to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection heightened by the
prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
emotion that throbbed within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so
perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
his wife’s liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer’s sombre
imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object,
causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana’s beauty,
whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.

At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invariably
and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary,
reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first
appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and
modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the
morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife’s face and
recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat together at
the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand
that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped. Georgiana
soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the
peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her
cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
brought strongly out, like a bass-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.

Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray
the stain on the poor wife’s cheek, she herself, for the first time,
voluntarily took up the subject.

“Do you remember, my dear Aylmer,” said she, with a feeble attempt at a
smile, “have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
odious hand?”

“None! none whatever!” replied Aylmer, starting; but then he added, in
a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of
his emotion, “I might well dream of it; for before I fell asleep it had
taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy.”

“And you did dream of it?” continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. “A
terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
forget this one expression?--‘It is in her heart now; we must have it
out!’ Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
that dream.”

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation
for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
caught hold of Georgiana’s heart; whence, however, her husband was
inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.

When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in
his wife’s presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to
the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an
unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over
his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for
the sake of giving himself peace.

“Aylmer,” resumed Georgiana, solemnly, “I know not what may be the cost
to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal
may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as
life itself. Again: do we know that there is a possibility, on any
terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid
upon me before I came into the world?”

“Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,”
hastily interrupted Aylmer. “I am convinced of the perfect
practicability of its removal.”

“If there be the remotest possibility of it,” continued Georgiana, “let
the attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to me; for
life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and
disgust,--life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either
remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep
science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great
wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with
the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake
of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?”

“Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife,” cried Aylmer, rapturously, “doubt
not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
thought--thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a
being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper
than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to
render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most
beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what
Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, when his
sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will
be.”

“It is resolved, then,” said Georgiana, faintly smiling. “And, Aylmer,
spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my
heart at last.”

Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek--her right cheek--not that which
bore the impress of the crimson hand.

The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed
whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant
watchfulness which the proposed operation would require; while
Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its
success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments
occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome
youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of Nature that
had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe.
Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated
the secrets of the highest cloud region and of the profoundest mines;
he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the
fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and
how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and others
with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth.
Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the
human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature
assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from
the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The
latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling
recognition of the truth--against which all seekers sooner or later
stumble--that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with
apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to
keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us
nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar, but seldom to
mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now,
however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not, of
course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them; but because
they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his
proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.

As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold
and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.

“Aminadab! Aminadab!” shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.

Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer’s
underworker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably
fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill
with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he
executed all the details of his master’s experiments. With his vast
strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable
earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man’s physical
nature; while Aylmer’s slender figure, and pale, intellectual face,
were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.

“Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab,” said Aylmer, “and burn
a pastil.”

“Yes, master,” answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless form
of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, “If she were my wife,
I’d never part with that birthmark.”

When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an
atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre
rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pursuits,
into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded
abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains,
which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other
species of adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to
the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and
straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For
aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And
Aylmer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered with his
chemical processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps,
emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, impurpled
radiance. He now knelt by his wife’s side, watching her earnestly, but
without alarm; for he was confident in his science, and felt that he
could draw a magic circle round her within which no evil might intrude.

“Where am I? Ah, I remember,” said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed
her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband’s
eyes.

“Fear not, dearest!” exclaimed he. “Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be
such a rapture to remove it.”

“Oh, spare me!” sadly replied his wife. “Pray do not look at it again.
I never can forget that convulsive shudder.”

In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind from
the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of the
light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its
profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of
unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their
momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct
idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was
almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed
sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look
forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a screen.
The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented,
but with that bewitching, yet indescribable difference which always
makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the
original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a
vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so, with little interest
at first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant
shooting upward from the soil. Then came the slender stalk; the leaves
gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely
flower.

“It is magical!” cried Georgiana. “I dare not touch it.”

“Nay, pluck it,” answered Aylmer,--“pluck it, and inhale its brief
perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and
leave nothing save its brown seed vessels; but thence may be
perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself.”

But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant
suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by the agency of
fire.

“There was too powerful a stimulus,” said Aylmer, thoughtfully.

To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her
portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be
effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal.
Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to
find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the
minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been.
Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive
acid.

Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals of
study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted, but
seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of
the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of the
alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by
which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and
base. Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest scientific
logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover
this long-sought medium; “but,” he added, “a philosopher who should go
deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to
stoop to the exercise of it.” Not less singular were his opinions in
regard to the elixir vitae. He more than intimated that it was at his
option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps
interminably; but that it would produce a discord in Nature which all
the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal nostrum, would find
cause to curse.

“Aylmer, are you in earnest?” asked Georgiana, looking at him with
amazement and fear. “It is terrible to possess such power, or even to
dream of possessing it.”

“Oh, do not tremble, my love,” said her husband. “I would not wrong
either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our
lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is
the skill requisite to remove this little hand.”

At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a
redhot iron had touched her cheek.

Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice in
the distant furnace room giving directions to Aminadab, whose harsh,
uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like the grunt
or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer
reappeared and proposed that she should now examine his cabinet of
chemical products and natural treasures of the earth. Among the former
he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a
gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the
breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of inestimable value, the
contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he threw some of the
perfume into the air and filled the room with piercing and invigorating
delight.

“And what is this?” asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe
containing a gold-colored liquid. “It is so beautiful to the eye that I
could imagine it the elixir of life.”

“In one sense it is,” replied Aylmer; “or, rather, the elixir of
immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in
this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at
whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would
determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the
midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life if
I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare of millions
justified me in depriving him of it.”

“Why do you keep such a terrific drug?” inquired Georgiana in horror.

“Do not mistrust me, dearest,” said her husband, smiling; “its virtuous
potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is a
powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water,
freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A
stronger infusion would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave the
rosiest beauty a pale ghost.”

“Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?” asked
Georgiana, anxiously.

“Oh, no,” hastily replied her husband; “this is merely superficial.
Your case demands a remedy that shall go deeper.”

In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
inquiries as to her sensations and whether the confinement of the rooms
and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These questions
had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to conjecture that she
was already subjected to certain physical influences, either breathed
in with the fragrant air or taken with her food. She fancied likewise,
but it might be altogether fancy, that there was a stirring up of her
system--a strange, indefinite sensation creeping through her veins, and
tingling, half painfully, half pleasurably, at her heart. Still,
whenever she dared to look into the mirror, there she beheld herself
pale as a white rose and with the crimson birthmark stamped upon her
cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it so much as she.

To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary
to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old
tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the
works of philosophers of the middle ages, such as Albertus Magnus,
Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and the famous friar who created the
prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists stood in advance
of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their credulity, and
therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined themselves to have
acquired from the investigation of Nature a power above Nature, and
from physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly less curious and
imaginative were the early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal
Society, in which the members, knowing little of the limits of natural
possibility, were continually recording wonders or proposing methods
whereby wonders might be wrought.

But to Georgiana the most engrossing volume was a large folio from her
husband’s own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of his
scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its
development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances
to which either event was attributable. The book, in truth, was both
the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet
practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there
were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed
himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards the
infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul.
Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more profoundly
than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than
heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that
his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if
compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were
the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in comparison with
the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach. The volume,
rich with achievements that had won renown for its author, was yet as
melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had penned. It was the sad
confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the
composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and
of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so
miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps every man of genius in
whatever sphere might recognize the image of his own experience in
Aylmer’s journal.

So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her face
upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she was
found by her husband.

“It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer’s books,” said he with a smile,
though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. “Georgiana, there are
pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my
senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you.”

“It has made me worship you more than ever,” said she.

“Ah, wait for this one success,” rejoined he, “then worship me if you
will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come, I have
sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest.”

So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of
his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of gayety,
assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and
that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he departed when
Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She had forgotten
to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three hours past had
begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in the fatal
birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness throughout her
system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for the first time
into the laboratory.

The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and
feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for
ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full operation. Around the
room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of
chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use.
The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous
odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The
severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and
brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to
the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost
solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.

He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace
as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid which
it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or
misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had
assumed for Georgiana’s encouragement!

“Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully,
thou man of clay!” muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant.
“Now, if there be a thought too much or too little, it is all over.”

“Ho! ho!” mumbled Aminadab. “Look, master! look!”

Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler
than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized her
arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.

“Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in your husband?” cried he,
impetuously. “Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark over
my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman, go!”

“Nay, Aylmer,” said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed
no stinted endowment, “it is not you that have a right to complain. You
mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you watch
the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my
husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall shrink;
for my share in it is far less than your own.”

“No, no, Georgiana!” said Aylmer, impatiently; “it must not be.”

“I submit,” replied she calmly. “And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever
draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would
induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand.”

“My noble wife,” said Aylmer, deeply moved, “I knew not the height and
depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know, then,
that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its grasp
into your being with a strength of which I had no previous conception.
I have already administered agents powerful enough to do aught except
to change your entire physical system. Only one thing remains to be
tried. If that fail us we are ruined.”

“Why did you hesitate to tell me this?” asked she.

“Because, Georgiana,” said Aylmer, in a low voice, “there is danger.”

“Danger? There is but one danger--that this horrible stigma shall be
left upon my cheek!” cried Georgiana. “Remove it, remove it, whatever
be the cost, or we shall both go mad!”

“Heaven knows your words are too true,” said Aylmer, sadly. “And now,
dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested.”

He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness
which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After
his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the
character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous
moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love--so
pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection nor
miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had
dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than
that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her
sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its
perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole spirit she
prayed that, for a single moment, she might satisfy his highest and
deepest conception. Longer than one moment she well knew it could not
be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever ascending, and each
instant required something that was beyond the scope of the instant
before.

The sound of her husband’s footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal
goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be
the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the
consequence of a highly-wrought state of mind and tension of spirit
than of fear or doubt.

“The concoction of the draught has been perfect,” said he, in answer to
Georgiana’s look. “Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot
fail.”

“Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer,” observed his wife, “I might
wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality
itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession to
those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at
which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder it might be happiness. Were I
stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself,
methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die.”

“You are fit for heaven without tasting death!” replied her husband
“But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its
effect upon this plant.”

On the window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small
quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little
time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the
unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.

“There needed no proof,” said Georgiana, quietly. “Give me the goblet I
joyfully stake all upon your word.”

“Drink, then, thou lofty creature!” exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid
admiration. “There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy
sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect.”

She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.

“It is grateful,” said she with a placid smile. “Methinks it is like
water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of
unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst
that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My
earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the
heart of a rose at sunset.”

She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere
she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect
with the emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose existence
was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood,
however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of
science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of
the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a
hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,--such were the details
which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume.
Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that
volume, but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.

While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and
not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse
he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very
act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily
and murmured as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor
was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first had been
strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana’s cheek, now
grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than ever; but
the birthmark with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat of
its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure was
more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out the sky,
and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed away.

“By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!” said Aylmer to himself, in almost
irrepressible ecstasy. “I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood
across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!”

He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural day
to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
Aminadab’s expression of delight.

“Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!” cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of
frenzy, “you have served me well! Matter and spirit--earth and
heaven--have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses!
You have earned the right to laugh.”

These exclamations broke Georgiana’s sleep. She slowly unclosed her
eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that
purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed
forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their
happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer’s face with a trouble and
anxiety that he could by no means account for.

“My poor Aylmer!” murmured she.

“Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!” exclaimed he. “My
peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!”

“My poor Aylmer,” she repeated, with a more than human tenderness, “you
have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that with so
high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could
offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!”

Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of
life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union
with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark--that
sole token of human imperfection--faded from her cheek, the parting
breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her
soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight.
Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the
gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the
immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half development, demands
the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Alymer reached a
profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which
would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the
celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed
to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in
eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.



YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN

Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem
village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to
exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was
aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the
wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman
Brown.

“Dearest heart,” whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips
were close to his ear, “prithee put off your journey until sunrise and
sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such
dreams and such thoughts that she’s afeard of herself sometimes. Pray
tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year.”

“My love and my Faith,” replied young Goodman Brown, “of all nights in
the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as
thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done ’twixt now
and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already,
and we but three months married?”

“Then God bless you!” said Faith, with the pink ribbons; “and may you
find all well when you come back.”

“Amen!” cried Goodman Brown. “Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to
bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee.”

So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to
turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head
of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her
pink ribbons.

“Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote him. “What a
wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too.
Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had
warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; ’t would kill
her to think it. Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth; and after this
one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.”

With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself
justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had
taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest,
which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and
closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there
is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not
who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs
overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through
an unseen multitude.

“There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said Goodman Brown
to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, “What if
the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”

His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking
forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire,
seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown’s approach
and walked onward side by side with him.

“You are late, Goodman Brown,” said he. “The clock of the Old South was
striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes
agone.”

“Faith kept me back a while,” replied the young man, with a tremor in
his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though not
wholly unexpected.

It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it
where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the
second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank
of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to
him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might
have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person
was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had
an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not have
felt abashed at the governor’s dinner table or in King William’s court,
were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only
thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff,
which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought
that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living
serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted
by the uncertain light.

“Come, Goodman Brown,” cried his fellow-traveller, “this is a dull pace
for the beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon
weary.”

“Friend,” said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop,
“having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to
return whence I came. I have scruples touching the matter thou wot’st
of.”

“Sayest thou so?” replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. “Let us
walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not
thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest yet.”

“Too far! too far!” exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his
walk. “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his
father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good
Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of
the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept--”

“Such company, thou wouldst say,” observed the elder person,
interpreting his pause. “Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well
acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and
that’s no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when
he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and
it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own
hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip’s war. They
were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along
this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends
with you for their sake.”

“If it be as thou sayest,” replied Goodman Brown, “I marvel they never
spoke of these matters; or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least
rumor of the sort would have driven them from New England. We are a
people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness.”

“Wickedness or not,” said the traveller with the twisted staff, “I have
a very general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a
church have drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers
towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General
Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too--But
these are state secrets.”

“Can this be so?” cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his
undisturbed companion. “Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor
and council; they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple
husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how should I meet
the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his
voice would make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day.”

Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now
burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently
that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.

“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted he again and again; then composing himself,
“Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go on; but, prithee, don’t kill me with
laughing.”

“Well, then, to end the matter at once,” said Goodman Brown,
considerably nettled, “there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear
little heart; and I’d rather break my own.”

“Nay, if that be the case,” answered the other, “e’en go thy ways,
Goodman Brown. I would not for twenty old women like the one hobbling
before us that Faith should come to any harm.”

As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in
whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had
taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and
spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.

“A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness
at nightfall,” said he. “But with your leave, friend, I shall take a
cut through the woods until we have left this Christian woman behind.
Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and
whither I was going.”

“Be it so,” said his fellow-traveller. “Betake you to the woods, and
let me keep the path.”

Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his
companion, who advanced softly along the road until he had come within
a staff’s length of the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best
of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some
indistinct words--a prayer, doubtless--as she went. The traveller put
forth his staff and touched her withered neck with what seemed the
serpent’s tail.

“The devil!” screamed the pious old lady.

“Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?” observed the traveller,
confronting her and leaning on his writhing stick.

“Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?” cried the good dame.
“Yea, truly is it, and in the very image of my old gossip, Goodman
Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is. But--would your
worship believe it?--my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen,
as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I
was all anointed with the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf’s
bane.”

“Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe,” said the
shape of old Goodman Brown.

“Ah, your worship knows the recipe,” cried the old lady, cackling
aloud. “So, as I was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no
horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they tell me there
is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your
good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a
twinkling.”

“That can hardly be,” answered her friend. “I may not spare you my arm,
Goody Cloyse; but here is my staff, if you will.”

So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed
life, being one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the
Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take
cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down
again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his
fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had
happened.

“That old woman taught me my catechism,” said the young man; and there
was a world of meaning in this simple comment.

They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his
companion to make good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so
aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his
auditor than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a
branch of maple to serve for a walking stick, and began to strip it of
the twigs and little boughs, which were wet with evening dew. The
moment his fingers touched them they became strangely withered and
dried up as with a week’s sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good
free pace, until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman
Brown sat himself down on the stump of a tree and refused to go any
farther.

“Friend,” said he, stubbornly, “my mind is made up. Not another step
will I budge on this errand. What if a wretched old woman do choose to
go to the devil when I thought she was going to heaven: is that any
reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after her?”

“You will think better of this by and by,” said his acquaintance,
composedly. “Sit here and rest yourself a while; and when you feel like
moving again, there is my staff to help you along.”

Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as
speedily out of sight as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom.
The young man sat a few moments by the roadside, applauding himself
greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the
minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old
Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his that very night, which
was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely and sweetly now, in
the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations,
Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it
advisable to conceal himself within the verge of the forest, conscious
of the guilty purpose that had brought him thither, though now so
happily turned from it.

On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old
voices, conversing soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds
appeared to pass along the road, within a few yards of the young man’s
hiding-place; but, owing doubtless to the depth of the gloom at that
particular spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds were visible.
Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the wayside, it could
not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the faint gleam
from the strip of bright sky athwart which they must have passed.
Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling aside
the branches and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst without
discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could
have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices
of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were
wont to do, when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council.
While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.

“Of the two, reverend sir,” said the voice like the deacon’s, “I had
rather miss an ordination dinner than to-night’s meeting. They tell me
that some of our community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, and
others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the Indian
powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the
best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into
communion.”

“Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!” replied the solemn old tones of the
minister. “Spur up, or we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know,
until I get on the ground.”

The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the
empty air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been
gathered or solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy
men be journeying so deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman
Brown caught hold of a tree for support, being ready to sink down on
the ground, faint and overburdened with the heavy sickness of his
heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether there really was a
heaven above him. Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars
brightening in it.

“With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the
devil!” cried Goodman Brown.

While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had
lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried
across the zenith and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still
visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was
sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of
the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once the
listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of towns-people
of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had
met at the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern.
The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he
had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a
wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily
in the sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a cloud of
night There was one voice of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet
with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which,
perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude,
both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.

“Faith!” shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation;
and the echoes of the forest mocked him, crying, “Faith! Faith!” as if
bewildered wretches were seeking her all through the wilderness.

The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the
unhappy husband held his breath for a response. There was a scream,
drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off
laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent
sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly down through
the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it,
and beheld a pink ribbon.

“My Faith is gone!” cried he, after one stupefied moment. “There is no
good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this
world given.”

And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did
Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate that
he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to walk or run. The
road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at
length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing
onward with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil. The whole
forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees,
the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes
the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad
roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn.
But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from
its other horrors.

“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him.

“Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with
your deviltry. Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil
himself, and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he
fear you.”

In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more
frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black
pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to
an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such
laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons
around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he
rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course,
until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as
when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been set on
fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of
midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that had driven him
onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly
from a distance with the weight of many voices. He knew the tune; it
was a familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house. The verse
died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices,
but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful
harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out, and his cry was lost to his
own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.

In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full
upon his eyes. At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark
wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude, natural
resemblance either to an altar or a pulpit, and surrounded by four
blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles
at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage that had overgrown the
summit of the rock was all on fire, blazing high into the night and
fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy
festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose and fell, a numerous
congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and
again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the
solitary woods at once.

“A grave and dark-clad company,” quoth Goodman Brown.

In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between gloom
and splendor, appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council
board of the province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked
devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the
holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm that the lady of the governor
was there. At least there were high dames well known to her, and wives
of honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient
maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled
lest their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light
flashing over the obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he
recognized a score of the church members of Salem village famous for
their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited
at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But,
irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people,
these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there
were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given
over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes.
It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor
were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered also among their
pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often
scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any
known to English witchcraft.

“But where is Faith?” thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his
heart, he trembled.

Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as
the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature
can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to
mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and
still the chorus of the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of
a mighty organ; and with the final peal of that dreadful anthem there
came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling
beasts, and every other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were
mingling and according with the voice of guilty man in homage to the
prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and
obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths
above the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock
shot redly forth and formed a glowing arch above its base, where now
appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no
slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the
New England churches.

“Bring forth the converts!” cried a voice that echoed through the field
and rolled into the forest.

At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees
and approached the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful
brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He
could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father
beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a
woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him
back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one step, nor
to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon
Gookin seized his arms and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came
also the slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse,
that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had
received the devil’s promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was
she. And there stood the proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.

“Welcome, my children,” said the dark figure, “to the communion of your
race. Ye have found thus young your nature and your destiny. My
children, look behind you!”

They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the
fiend worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on
every visage.

“There,” resumed the sable form, “are all whom ye have reverenced from
youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own
sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful
aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping
assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret
deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton
words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager
for widows’ weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him
sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste
to inherit their fathers’ wealth; and how fair damsels--blush not,
sweet ones--have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the
sole guest to an infant’s funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts
for sin ye shall scent out all the places--whether in church,
bedchamber, street, field, or forest--where crime has been committed,
and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one
mighty blood spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate,
in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked
arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human
power--than my power at its utmost--can make manifest in deeds. And
now, my children, look upon each other.”

They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the
wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling
before that unhallowed altar.

“Lo, there ye stand, my children,” said the figure, in a deep and
solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once
angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. “Depending upon
one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a
dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must
be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of
your race.”

“Welcome,” repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and
triumph.

And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet
hesitating on the verge of wickedness in this dark world. A basin was
hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the
lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did
the shape of evil dip his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism
upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of
sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and
thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast one look
at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the
next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they
disclosed and what they saw!

“Faith! Faith!” cried the husband, “look up to heaven, and resist the
wicked one.”

Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found
himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind
which died heavily away through the forest. He staggered against the
rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a hanging twig, that had been
all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.

The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of
Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old
minister was taking a walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for
breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he
passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to
avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the
holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window. “What God
doth the wizard pray to?” quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that
excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine at her own
lattice, catechizing a little girl who had brought her a pint of
morning’s milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the grasp
of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied
the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and
bursting into such joy at sight of him that she skipped along the
street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But
Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on
without a greeting.

Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild
dream of a witch-meeting?

Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young
Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if
not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream.
On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he
could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear
and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the
pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open
Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives
and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then
did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down
upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking suddenly at
midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or
eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered
to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he
had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by
Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly
procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse
upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.



RAPPACCINI’S DAUGHTER [From the Writings of Aubepine.]

We do not remember to have seen any translated specimens of the
productions of M. de l’Aubepine--a fact the less to be wondered at, as
his very name is unknown to many of his own countrymen as well as to
the student of foreign literature. As a writer, he seems to occupy an
unfortunate position between the Transcendentalists (who, under one
name or another, have their share in all the current literature of the
world) and the great body of pen-and-ink men who address the intellect
and sympathies of the multitude. If not too refined, at all events too
remote, too shadowy, and unsubstantial in his modes of development to
suit the taste of the latter class, and yet too popular to satisfy the
spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former, he must
necessarily find himself without an audience, except here and there an
individual or possibly an isolated clique. His writings, to do them
justice, are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they
might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate love of
allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and characters with the
aspect of scenery and people in the clouds, and to steal away the human
warmth out of his conceptions. His fictions are sometimes historical,
sometimes of the present day, and sometimes, so far as can be
discovered, have little or no reference either to time or space. In any
case, he generally contents himself with a very slight embroidery of
outward manners,--the faintest possible counterfeit of real life,--and
endeavors to create an interest by some less obvious peculiarity of the
subject. Occasionally a breath of Nature, a raindrop of pathos and
tenderness, or a gleam of humor, will find its way into the midst of
his fantastic imagery, and make us feel as if, after all, we were yet
within the limits of our native earth. We will only add to this very
cursory notice that M. de l’Aubepine’s productions, if the reader
chance to take them in precisely the proper point of view, may amuse a
leisure hour as well as those of a brighter man; if otherwise, they can
hardly fail to look excessively like nonsense.

Our author is voluminous; he continues to write and publish with as
much praiseworthy and indefatigable prolixity as if his efforts were
crowned with the brilliant success that so justly attends those of
Eugene Sue. His first appearance was by a collection of stories in a
long series of volumes entitled “Contes deux fois racontees.” The
titles of some of his more recent works (we quote from memory) are as
follows: “Le Voyage Celeste a Chemin de Fer,” 3 tom., 1838; “Le nouveau
Pere Adam et la nouvelle Mere Eve,” 2 tom., 1839; “Roderic; ou le
Serpent a l’estomac,” 2 tom., 1840; “Le Culte du Feu,” a folio volume
of ponderous research into the religion and ritual of the old Persian
Ghebers, published in 1841; “La Soiree du Chateau en Espagne,” 1 tom.,
8vo, 1842; and “L’Artiste du Beau; ou le Papillon Mecanique,” 5 tom.,
4to, 1843. Our somewhat wearisome perusal of this startling catalogue
of volumes has left behind it a certain personal affection and
sympathy, though by no means admiration, for M. de l’Aubepine; and we
would fain do the little in our power towards introducing him favorably
to the American public. The ensuing tale is a translation of his
“Beatrice; ou la Belle Empoisonneuse,” recently published in “La Revue
Anti-Aristocratique.” This journal, edited by the Comte de Bearhaven,
has for some years past led the defence of liberal principles and
popular rights with a faithfulness and ability worthy of all praise.


A young man, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, very long ago, from the
more southern region of Italy, to pursue his studies at the University
of Padua. Giovanni, who had but a scanty supply of gold ducats in his
pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy chamber of an old edifice
which looked not unworthy to have been the palace of a Paduan noble,
and which, in fact, exhibited over its entrance the armorial bearings
of a family long since extinct. The young stranger, who was not
unstudied in the great poem of his country, recollected that one of the
ancestors of this family, and perhaps an occupant of this very mansion,
had been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of his
Inferno. These reminiscences and associations, together with the
tendency to heartbreak natural to a young man for the first time out of
his native sphere, caused Giovanni to sigh heavily as he looked around
the desolate and ill-furnished apartment.

“Holy Virgin, signor!” cried old Dame Lisabetta, who, won by the
youth’s remarkable beauty of person, was kindly endeavoring to give the
chamber a habitable air, “what a sigh was that to come out of a young
man’s heart! Do you find this old mansion gloomy? For the love of
Heaven, then, put your head out of the window, and you will see as
bright sunshine as you have left in Naples.”

Guasconti mechanically did as the old woman advised, but could not
quite agree with her that the Paduan sunshine was as cheerful as that
of southern Italy. Such as it was, however, it fell upon a garden
beneath the window and expended its fostering influences on a variety
of plants, which seemed to have been cultivated with exceeding care.

“Does this garden belong to the house?” asked Giovanni.

“Heaven forbid, signor, unless it were fruitful of better pot herbs
than any that grow there now,” answered old Lisabetta. “No; that garden
is cultivated by the own hands of Signor Giacomo Rappaccini, the famous
doctor, who, I warrant him, has been heard of as far as Naples. It is
said that he distils these plants into medicines that are as potent as
a charm. Oftentimes you may see the signor doctor at work, and
perchance the signora, his daughter, too, gathering the strange flowers
that grow in the garden.”

The old woman had now done what she could for the aspect of the
chamber; and, commending the young man to the protection of the saints,
took her departure.

Giovanni still found no better occupation than to look down into the
garden beneath his window. From its appearance, he judged it to be one
of those botanic gardens which were of earlier date in Padua than
elsewhere in Italy or in the world. Or, not improbably, it might once
have been the pleasure-place of an opulent family; for there was the
ruin of a marble fountain in the centre, sculptured with rare art, but
so wofully shattered that it was impossible to trace the original
design from the chaos of remaining fragments. The water, however,
continued to gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully as ever.
A little gurgling sound ascended to the young man’s window, and made
him feel as if the fountain were an immortal spirit that sung its song
unceasingly and without heeding the vicissitudes around it, while one
century imbodied it in marble and another scattered the perishable
garniture on the soil. All about the pool into which the water subsided
grew various plants, that seemed to require a plentiful supply of
moisture for the nourishment of gigantic leaves, and in some instances,
flowers gorgeously magnificent. There was one shrub in particular, set
in a marble vase in the midst of the pool, that bore a profusion of
purple blossoms, each of which had the lustre and richness of a gem;
and the whole together made a show so resplendent that it seemed enough
to illuminate the garden, even had there been no sunshine. Every
portion of the soil was peopled with plants and herbs, which, if less
beautiful, still bore tokens of assiduous care, as if all had their
individual virtues, known to the scientific mind that fostered them.
Some were placed in urns, rich with old carving, and others in common
garden pots; some crept serpent-like along the ground or climbed on
high, using whatever means of ascent was offered them. One plant had
wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which was thus quite
veiled and shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage, so happily
arranged that it might have served a sculptor for a study.

While Giovanni stood at the window he heard a rustling behind a screen
of leaves, and became aware that a person was at work in the garden.
His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no
common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow, and sickly-looking man,
dressed in a scholar’s garb of black. He was beyond the middle term of
life, with gray hair, a thin, gray beard, and a face singularly marked
with intellect and cultivation, but which could never, even in his more
youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart.

Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this scientific gardener
examined every shrub which grew in his path: it seemed as if he was
looking into their inmost nature, making observations in regard to
their creative essence, and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape
and another in that, and wherefore such and such flowers differed among
themselves in hue and perfume. Nevertheless, in spite of this deep
intelligence on his part, there was no approach to intimacy between
himself and these vegetable existences. On the contrary, he avoided
their actual touch or the direct inhaling of their odors with a caution
that impressed Giovanni most disagreeably; for the man’s demeanor was
that of one walking among malignant influences, such as savage beasts,
or deadly snakes, or evil spirits, which, should he allow them one
moment of license, would wreak upon him some terrible fatality. It was
strangely frightful to the young man’s imagination to see this air of
insecurity in a person cultivating a garden, that most simple and
innocent of human toils, and which had been alike the joy and labor of
the unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of
the present world? And this man, with such a perception of harm in what
his own hands caused to grow,--was he the Adam?

The distrustful gardener, while plucking away the dead leaves or
pruning the too luxuriant growth of the shrubs, defended his hands with
a pair of thick gloves. Nor were these his only armor. When, in his
walk through the garden, he came to the magnificent plant that hung its
purple gems beside the marble fountain, he placed a kind of mask over
his mouth and nostrils, as if all this beauty did but conceal a
deadlier malice; but, finding his task still too dangerous, he drew
back, removed the mask, and called loudly, but in the infirm voice of a
person affected with inward disease, “Beatrice! Beatrice!”

“Here am I, my father. What would you?” cried a rich and youthful voice
from the window of the opposite house--a voice as rich as a tropical
sunset, and which made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep
hues of purple or crimson and of perfumes heavily delectable. “Are you
in the garden?”

“Yes, Beatrice,” answered the gardener, “and I need your help.”

Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young
girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of
the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid
that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with
life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and
compressed, as it were and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her
virgin zone. Yet Giovanni’s fancy must have grown morbid while he
looked down into the garden; for the impression which the fair stranger
made upon him was as if here were another flower, the human sister of
those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than the
richest of them, but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be
approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden path, it
was observable that she handled and inhaled the odor of several of the
plants which her father had most sedulously avoided.

“Here, Beatrice,” said the latter, “see how many needful offices
require to be done to our chief treasure. Yet, shattered as I am, my
life might pay the penalty of approaching it so closely as
circumstances demand. Henceforth, I fear, this plant must be consigned
to your sole charge.”

“And gladly will I undertake it,” cried again the rich tones of the
young lady, as she bent towards the magnificent plant and opened her
arms as if to embrace it. “Yes, my sister, my splendour, it shall be
Beatrice’s task to nurse and serve thee; and thou shalt reward her with
thy kisses and perfumed breath, which to her is as the breath of life.”

Then, with all the tenderness in her manner that was so strikingly
expressed in her words, she busied herself with such attentions as the
plant seemed to require; and Giovanni, at his lofty window, rubbed his
eyes and almost doubted whether it were a girl tending her favorite
flower, or one sister performing the duties of affection to another.
The scene soon terminated. Whether Dr. Rappaccini had finished his
labors in the garden, or that his watchful eye had caught the
stranger’s face, he now took his daughter’s arm and retired. Night was
already closing in; oppressive exhalations seemed to proceed from the
plants and steal upward past the open window; and Giovanni, closing the
lattice, went to his couch and dreamed of a rich flower and beautiful
girl. Flower and maiden were different, and yet the same, and fraught
with some strange peril in either shape.

But there is an influence in the light of morning that tends to rectify
whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred
during the sun’s decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the
less wholesome glow of moonshine. Giovanni’s first movement, on
starting from sleep, was to throw open the window and gaze down into
the garden which his dreams had made so fertile of mysteries. He was
surprised and a little ashamed to find how real and matter-of-fact an
affair it proved to be, in the first rays of the sun which gilded the
dew-drops that hung upon leaf and blossom, and, while giving a brighter
beauty to each rare flower, brought everything within the limits of
ordinary experience. The young man rejoiced that, in the heart of the
barren city, he had the privilege of overlooking this spot of lovely
and luxuriant vegetation. It would serve, he said to himself, as a
symbolic language to keep him in communion with Nature. Neither the
sickly and thoughtworn Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini, it is true, nor his
brilliant daughter, were now visible; so that Giovanni could not
determine how much of the singularity which he attributed to both was
due to their own qualities and how much to his wonder-working fancy;
but he was inclined to take a most rational view of the whole matter.

In the course of the day he paid his respects to Signor Pietro
Baglioni, professor of medicine in the university, a physician of
eminent repute to whom Giovanni had brought a letter of introduction.
The professor was an elderly personage, apparently of genial nature,
and habits that might almost be called jovial. He kept the young man to
dinner, and made himself very agreeable by the freedom and liveliness
of his conversation, especially when warmed by a flask or two of Tuscan
wine. Giovanni, conceiving that men of science, inhabitants of the same
city, must needs be on familiar terms with one another, took an
opportunity to mention the name of Dr. Rappaccini. But the professor
did not respond with so much cordiality as he had anticipated.

“Ill would it become a teacher of the divine art of medicine,” said
Professor Pietro Baglioni, in answer to a question of Giovanni, “to
withhold due and well-considered praise of a physician so eminently
skilled as Rappaccini; but, on the other hand, I should answer it but
scantily to my conscience were I to permit a worthy youth like
yourself, Signor Giovanni, the son of an ancient friend, to imbibe
erroneous ideas respecting a man who might hereafter chance to hold
your life and death in his hands. The truth is, our worshipful Dr.
Rappaccini has as much science as any member of the faculty--with
perhaps one single exception--in Padua, or all Italy; but there are
certain grave objections to his professional character.”

“And what are they?” asked the young man.

“Has my friend Giovanni any disease of body or heart, that he is so
inquisitive about physicians?” said the professor, with a smile. “But
as for Rappaccini, it is said of him--and I, who know the man well, can
answer for its truth--that he cares infinitely more for science than
for mankind. His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for
some new experiment. He would sacrifice human life, his own among the
rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so
much as a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated
knowledge.”

“Methinks he is an awful man indeed,” remarked Guasconti, mentally
recalling the cold and purely intellectual aspect of Rappaccini. “And
yet, worshipful professor, is it not a noble spirit? Are there many men
capable of so spiritual a love of science?”

“God forbid,” answered the professor, somewhat testily; “at least,
unless they take sounder views of the healing art than those adopted by
Rappaccini. It is his theory that all medicinal virtues are comprised
within those substances which we term vegetable poisons. These he
cultivates with his own hands, and is said even to have produced new
varieties of poison, more horribly deleterious than Nature, without the
assistance of this learned person, would ever have plagued the world
withal. That the signor doctor does less mischief than might be
expected with such dangerous substances is undeniable. Now and then, it
must be owned, he has effected, or seemed to effect, a marvellous cure;
but, to tell you my private mind, Signor Giovanni, he should receive
little credit for such instances of success,--they being probably the
work of chance,--but should be held strictly accountable for his
failures, which may justly be considered his own work.”

The youth might have taken Baglioni’s opinions with many grains of
allowance had he known that there was a professional warfare of long
continuance between him and Dr. Rappaccini, in which the latter was
generally thought to have gained the advantage. If the reader be
inclined to judge for himself, we refer him to certain black-letter
tracts on both sides, preserved in the medical department of the
University of Padua.

“I know not, most learned professor,” returned Giovanni, after musing
on what had been said of Rappaccini’s exclusive zeal for science,--“I
know not how dearly this physician may love his art; but surely there
is one object more dear to him. He has a daughter.”

“Aha!” cried the professor, with a laugh. “So now our friend Giovanni’s
secret is out. You have heard of this daughter, whom all the young men
in Padua are wild about, though not half a dozen have ever had the good
hap to see her face. I know little of the Signora Beatrice save that
Rappaccini is said to have instructed her deeply in his science, and
that, young and beautiful as fame reports her, she is already qualified
to fill a professor’s chair. Perchance her father destines her for
mine! Other absurd rumors there be, not worth talking about or
listening to. So now, Signor Giovanni, drink off your glass of
lachryma.”

Guasconti returned to his lodgings somewhat heated with the wine he had
quaffed, and which caused his brain to swim with strange fantasies in
reference to Dr. Rappaccini and the beautiful Beatrice. On his way,
happening to pass by a florist’s, he bought a fresh bouquet of flowers.

Ascending to his chamber, he seated himself near the window, but within
the shadow thrown by the depth of the wall, so that he could look down
into the garden with little risk of being discovered. All beneath his
eye was a solitude. The strange plants were basking in the sunshine,
and now and then nodding gently to one another, as if in acknowledgment
of sympathy and kindred. In the midst, by the shattered fountain, grew
the magnificent shrub, with its purple gems clustering all over it;
they glowed in the air, and gleamed back again out of the depths of the
pool, which thus seemed to overflow with colored radiance from the rich
reflection that was steeped in it. At first, as we have said, the
garden was a solitude. Soon, however,--as Giovanni had half hoped, half
feared, would be the case,--a figure appeared beneath the antique
sculptured portal, and came down between the rows of plants, inhaling
their various perfumes as if she were one of those beings of old
classic fable that lived upon sweet odors. On again beholding Beatrice,
the young man was even startled to perceive how much her beauty
exceeded his recollection of it; so brilliant, so vivid, was its
character, that she glowed amid the sunlight, and, as Giovanni
whispered to himself, positively illuminated the more shadowy intervals
of the garden path. Her face being now more revealed than on the former
occasion, he was struck by its expression of simplicity and
sweetness,--qualities that had not entered into his idea of her
character, and which made him ask anew what manner of mortal she might
be. Nor did he fail again to observe, or imagine, an analogy between
the beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub that hung its gemlike flowers
over the fountain,--a resemblance which Beatrice seemed to have
indulged a fantastic humor in heightening, both by the arrangement of
her dress and the selection of its hues.

Approaching the shrub, she threw open her arms, as with a passionate
ardor, and drew its branches into an intimate embrace--so intimate that
her features were hidden in its leafy bosom and her glistening ringlets
all intermingled with the flowers.

“Give me thy breath, my sister,” exclaimed Beatrice; “for I am faint
with common air. And give me this flower of thine, which I separate
with gentlest fingers from the stem and place it close beside my heart.”

With these words the beautiful daughter of Rappaccini plucked one of
the richest blossoms of the shrub, and was about to fasten it in her
bosom. But now, unless Giovanni’s draughts of wine had bewildered his
senses, a singular incident occurred. A small orange-colored reptile,
of the lizard or chameleon species, chanced to be creeping along the
path, just at the feet of Beatrice. It appeared to Giovanni,--but, at
the distance from which he gazed, he could scarcely have seen anything
so minute,--it appeared to him, however, that a drop or two of moisture
from the broken stem of the flower descended upon the lizard’s head.
For an instant the reptile contorted itself violently, and then lay
motionless in the sunshine. Beatrice observed this remarkable
phenomenon and crossed herself, sadly, but without surprise; nor did
she therefore hesitate to arrange the fatal flower in her bosom. There
it blushed, and almost glimmered with the dazzling effect of a precious
stone, adding to her dress and aspect the one appropriate charm which
nothing else in the world could have supplied. But Giovanni, out of the
shadow of his window, bent forward and shrank back, and murmured and
trembled.

“Am I awake? Have I my senses?” said he to himself. “What is this
being? Beautiful shall I call her, or inexpressibly terrible?”

Beatrice now strayed carelessly through the garden, approaching closer
beneath Giovanni’s window, so that he was compelled to thrust his head
quite out of its concealment in order to gratify the intense and
painful curiosity which she excited. At this moment there came a
beautiful insect over the garden wall; it had, perhaps, wandered
through the city, and found no flowers or verdure among those antique
haunts of men until the heavy perfumes of Dr. Rappaccini’s shrubs had
lured it from afar. Without alighting on the flowers, this winged
brightness seemed to be attracted by Beatrice, and lingered in the air
and fluttered about her head. Now, here it could not be but that
Giovanni Guasconti’s eyes deceived him. Be that as it might, he fancied
that, while Beatrice was gazing at the insect with childish delight, it
grew faint and fell at her feet; its bright wings shivered; it was
dead--from no cause that he could discern, unless it were the
atmosphere of her breath. Again Beatrice crossed herself and sighed
heavily as she bent over the dead insect.

An impulsive movement of Giovanni drew her eyes to the window. There
she beheld the beautiful head of the young man--rather a Grecian than
an Italian head, with fair, regular features, and a glistening of gold
among his ringlets--gazing down upon her like a being that hovered in
mid air. Scarcely knowing what he did, Giovanni threw down the bouquet
which he had hitherto held in his hand.

“Signora,” said he, “there are pure and healthful flowers. Wear them
for the sake of Giovanni Guasconti.”

“Thanks, signor,” replied Beatrice, with her rich voice, that came
forth as it were like a gush of music, and with a mirthful expression
half childish and half woman-like. “I accept your gift, and would fain
recompense it with this precious purple flower; but if I toss it into
the air it will not reach you. So Signor Guasconti must even content
himself with my thanks.”

She lifted the bouquet from the ground, and then, as if inwardly
ashamed at having stepped aside from her maidenly reserve to respond to
a stranger’s greeting, passed swiftly homeward through the garden. But
few as the moments were, it seemed to Giovanni, when she was on the
point of vanishing beneath the sculptured portal, that his beautiful
bouquet was already beginning to wither in her grasp. It was an idle
thought; there could be no possibility of distinguishing a faded flower
from a fresh one at so great a distance.

For many days after this incident the young man avoided the window that
looked into Dr. Rappaccini’s garden, as if something ugly and monstrous
would have blasted his eyesight had he been betrayed into a glance. He
felt conscious of having put himself, to a certain extent, within the
influence of an unintelligible power by the communication which he had
opened with Beatrice. The wisest course would have been, if his heart
were in any real danger, to quit his lodgings and Padua itself at once;
the next wiser, to have accustomed himself, as far as possible, to the
familiar and daylight view of Beatrice--thus bringing her rigidly and
systematically within the limits of ordinary experience. Least of all,
while avoiding her sight, ought Giovanni to have remained so near this
extraordinary being that the proximity and possibility even of
intercourse should give a kind of substance and reality to the wild
vagaries which his imagination ran riot continually in producing.
Guasconti had not a deep heart--or, at all events, its depths were not
sounded now; but he had a quick fancy, and an ardent southern
temperament, which rose every instant to a higher fever pitch. Whether
or no Beatrice possessed those terrible attributes, that fatal breath,
the affinity with those so beautiful and deadly flowers which were
indicated by what Giovanni had witnessed, she had at least instilled a
fierce and subtle poison into his system. It was not love, although her
rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he fancied her
spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to
pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both love and
horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered
like the other. Giovanni knew not what to dread; still less did he know
what to hope; yet hope and dread kept a continual warfare in his
breast, alternately vanquishing one another and starting up afresh to
renew the contest. Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or
bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the
illuminating blaze of the infernal regions.

Sometimes he endeavored to assuage the fever of his spirit by a rapid
walk through the streets of Padua or beyond its gates: his footsteps
kept time with the throbbings of his brain, so that the walk was apt to
accelerate itself to a race. One day he found himself arrested; his arm
was seized by a portly personage, who had turned back on recognizing
the young man and expended much breath in overtaking him.

“Signor Giovanni! Stay, my young friend!” cried he. “Have you forgotten
me? That might well be the case if I were as much altered as yourself.”

It was Baglioni, whom Giovanni had avoided ever since their first
meeting, from a doubt that the professor’s sagacity would look too
deeply into his secrets. Endeavoring to recover himself, he stared
forth wildly from his inner world into the outer one and spoke like a
man in a dream.

“Yes; I am Giovanni Guasconti. You are Professor Pietro Baglioni. Now
let me pass!”

“Not yet, not yet, Signor Giovanni Guasconti,” said the professor,
smiling, but at the same time scrutinizing the youth with an earnest
glance. “What! did I grow up side by side with your father? and shall
his son pass me like a stranger in these old streets of Padua? Stand
still, Signor Giovanni; for we must have a word or two before we part.”

“Speedily, then, most worshipful professor, speedily,” said Giovanni,
with feverish impatience. “Does not your worship see that I am in
haste?”

Now, while he was speaking there came a man in black along the street,
stooping and moving feebly like a person in inferior health. His face
was all overspread with a most sickly and sallow hue, but yet so
pervaded with an expression of piercing and active intellect that an
observer might easily have overlooked the merely physical attributes
and have seen only this wonderful energy. As he passed, this person
exchanged a cold and distant salutation with Baglioni, but fixed his
eyes upon Giovanni with an intentness that seemed to bring out whatever
was within him worthy of notice. Nevertheless, there was a peculiar
quietness in the look, as if taking merely a speculative, not a human
interest, in the young man.

“It is Dr. Rappaccini!” whispered the professor when the stranger had
passed. “Has he ever seen your face before?”

“Not that I know,” answered Giovanni, starting at the name.

“He HAS seen you! he must have seen you!” said Baglioni, hastily. “For
some purpose or other, this man of science is making a study of you. I
know that look of his! It is the same that coldly illuminates his face
as he bends over a bird, a mouse, or a butterfly, which, in pursuance
of some experiment, he has killed by the perfume of a flower; a look as
deep as Nature itself, but without Nature’s warmth of love. Signor
Giovanni, I will stake my life upon it, you are the subject of one of
Rappaccini’s experiments!”

“Will you make a fool of me?” cried Giovanni, passionately. “THAT,
signor professor, were an untoward experiment.”

“Patience! patience!” replied the imperturbable professor. “I tell
thee, my poor Giovanni, that Rappaccini has a scientific interest in
thee. Thou hast fallen into fearful hands! And the Signora
Beatrice,--what part does she act in this mystery?”

But Guasconti, finding Baglioni’s pertinacity intolerable, here broke
away, and was gone before the professor could again seize his arm. He
looked after the young man intently and shook his head.

“This must not be,” said Baglioni to himself. “The youth is the son of
my old friend, and shall not come to any harm from which the arcana of
medical science can preserve him. Besides, it is too insufferable an
impertinence in Rappaccini, thus to snatch the lad out of my own hands,
as I may say, and make use of him for his infernal experiments. This
daughter of his! It shall be looked to. Perchance, most learned
Rappaccini, I may foil you where you little dream of it!”

Meanwhile Giovanni had pursued a circuitous route, and at length found
himself at the door of his lodgings. As he crossed the threshold he was
met by old Lisabetta, who smirked and smiled, and was evidently
desirous to attract his attention; vainly, however, as the ebullition
of his feelings had momentarily subsided into a cold and dull vacuity.
He turned his eyes full upon the withered face that was puckering
itself into a smile, but seemed to behold it not. The old dame,
therefore, laid her grasp upon his cloak.

“Signor! signor!” whispered she, still with a smile over the whole
breadth of her visage, so that it looked not unlike a grotesque carving
in wood, darkened by centuries. “Listen, signor! There is a private
entrance into the garden!”

“What do you say?” exclaimed Giovanni, turning quickly about, as if an
inanimate thing should start into feverish life. “A private entrance
into Dr. Rappaccini’s garden?”

“Hush! hush! not so loud!” whispered Lisabetta, putting her hand over
his mouth. “Yes; into the worshipful doctor’s garden, where you may see
all his fine shrubbery. Many a young man in Padua would give gold to be
admitted among those flowers.”

Giovanni put a piece of gold into her hand.

“Show me the way,” said he.

A surmise, probably excited by his conversation with Baglioni, crossed
his mind, that this interposition of old Lisabetta might perchance be
connected with the intrigue, whatever were its nature, in which the
professor seemed to suppose that Dr. Rappaccini was involving him. But
such a suspicion, though it disturbed Giovanni, was inadequate to
restrain him. The instant that he was aware of the possibility of
approaching Beatrice, it seemed an absolute necessity of his existence
to do so. It mattered not whether she were angel or demon; he was
irrevocably within her sphere, and must obey the law that whirled him
onward, in ever-lessening circles, towards a result which he did not
attempt to foreshadow; and yet, strange to say, there came across him a
sudden doubt whether this intense interest on his part were not
delusory; whether it were really of so deep and positive a nature as to
justify him in now thrusting himself into an incalculable position;
whether it were not merely the fantasy of a young man’s brain, only
slightly or not at all connected with his heart.

He paused, hesitated, turned half about, but again went on. His
withered guide led him along several obscure passages, and finally
undid a door, through which, as it was opened, there came the sight and
sound of rustling leaves, with the broken sunshine glimmering among
them. Giovanni stepped forth, and, forcing himself through the
entanglement of a shrub that wreathed its tendrils over the hidden
entrance, stood beneath his own window in the open area of Dr.
Rappaccini’s garden.

How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass
and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible
realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid
circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to
anticipate! Fate delights to thwart us thus. Passion will choose his
own time to rush upon the scene, and lingers sluggishly behind when an
appropriate adjustment of events would seem to summon his appearance.
So was it now with Giovanni. Day after day his pulses had throbbed with
feverish blood at the improbable idea of an interview with Beatrice,
and of standing with her, face to face, in this very garden, basking in
the Oriental sunshine of her beauty, and snatching from her full gaze
the mystery which he deemed the riddle of his own existence. But now
there was a singular and untimely equanimity within his breast. He
threw a glance around the garden to discover if Beatrice or her father
were present, and, perceiving that he was alone, began a critical
observation of the plants.

The aspect of one and all of them dissatisfied him; their gorgeousness
seemed fierce, passionate, and even unnatural. There was hardly an
individual shrub which a wanderer, straying by himself through a
forest, would not have been startled to find growing wild, as if an
unearthly face had glared at him out of the thicket. Several also would
have shocked a delicate instinct by an appearance of artificialness
indicating that there had been such commixture, and, as it were,
adultery, of various vegetable species, that the production was no
longer of God’s making, but the monstrous offspring of man’s depraved
fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty. They were probably
the result of experiment, which in one or two cases had succeeded in
mingling plants individually lovely into a compound possessing the
questionable and ominous character that distinguished the whole growth
of the garden. In fine, Giovanni recognized but two or three plants in
the collection, and those of a kind that he well knew to be poisonous.
While busy with these contemplations he heard the rustling of a silken
garment, and, turning, beheld Beatrice emerging from beneath the
sculptured portal.

Giovanni had not considered with himself what should be his deportment;
whether he should apologize for his intrusion into the garden, or
assume that he was there with the privity at least, if not by the
desire, of Dr. Rappaccini or his daughter; but Beatrice’s manner placed
him at his ease, though leaving him still in doubt by what agency he
had gained admittance. She came lightly along the path and met him near
the broken fountain. There was surprise in her face, but brightened by
a simple and kind expression of pleasure.

“You are a connoisseur in flowers, signor,” said Beatrice, with a
smile, alluding to the bouquet which he had flung her from the window.
“It is no marvel, therefore, if the sight of my father’s rare
collection has tempted you to take a nearer view. If he were here, he
could tell you many strange and interesting facts as to the nature and
habits of these shrubs; for he has spent a lifetime in such studies,
and this garden is his world.”

“And yourself, lady,” observed Giovanni, “if fame says true,--you
likewise are deeply skilled in the virtues indicated by these rich
blossoms and these spicy perfumes. Would you deign to be my
instructress, I should prove an apter scholar than if taught by Signor
Rappaccini himself.”

“Are there such idle rumors?” asked Beatrice, with the music of a
pleasant laugh. “Do people say that I am skilled in my father’s science
of plants? What a jest is there! No; though I have grown up among these
flowers, I know no more of them than their hues and perfume; and
sometimes methinks I would fain rid myself of even that small
knowledge. There are many flowers here, and those not the least
brilliant, that shock and offend me when they meet my eye. But pray,
signor, do not believe these stories about my science. Believe nothing
of me save what you see with your own eyes.”

“And must I believe all that I have seen with my own eyes?” asked
Giovanni, pointedly, while the recollection of former scenes made him
shrink. “No, signora; you demand too little of me. Bid me believe
nothing save what comes from your own lips.”

It would appear that Beatrice understood him. There came a deep flush
to her cheek; but she looked full into Giovanni’s eyes, and responded
to his gaze of uneasy suspicion with a queenlike haughtiness.

“I do so bid you, signor,” she replied. “Forget whatever you may have
fancied in regard to me. If true to the outward senses, still it may be
false in its essence; but the words of Beatrice Rappaccini’s lips are
true from the depths of the heart outward. Those you may believe.”

A fervor glowed in her whole aspect and beamed upon Giovanni’s
consciousness like the light of truth itself; but while she spoke there
was a fragrance in the atmosphere around her, rich and delightful,
though evanescent, yet which the young man, from an indefinable
reluctance, scarcely dared to draw into his lungs. It might be the odor
of the flowers. Could it be Beatrice’s breath which thus embalmed her
words with a strange richness, as if by steeping them in her heart? A
faintness passed like a shadow over Giovanni and flitted away; he
seemed to gaze through the beautiful girl’s eyes into her transparent
soul, and felt no more doubt or fear.

The tinge of passion that had colored Beatrice’s manner vanished; she
became gay, and appeared to derive a pure delight from her communion
with the youth not unlike what the maiden of a lonely island might have
felt conversing with a voyager from the civilized world. Evidently her
experience of life had been confined within the limits of that garden.
She talked now about matters as simple as the daylight or summer
clouds, and now asked questions in reference to the city, or Giovanni’s
distant home, his friends, his mother, and his sisters--questions
indicating such seclusion, and such lack of familiarity with modes and
forms, that Giovanni responded as if to an infant. Her spirit gushed
out before him like a fresh rill that was just catching its first
glimpse of the sunlight and wondering at the reflections of earth and
sky which were flung into its bosom. There came thoughts, too, from a
deep source, and fantasies of a gemlike brilliancy, as if diamonds and
rubies sparkled upward among the bubbles of the fountain. Ever and anon
there gleamed across the young man’s mind a sense of wonder that he
should be walking side by side with the being who had so wrought upon
his imagination, whom he had idealized in such hues of terror, in whom
he had positively witnessed such manifestations of dreadful
attributes,--that he should be conversing with Beatrice like a brother,
and should find her so human and so maidenlike. But such reflections
were only momentary; the effect of her character was too real not to
make itself familiar at once.

In this free intercourse they had strayed through the garden, and now,
after many turns among its avenues, were come to the shattered
fountain, beside which grew the magnificent shrub, with its treasury of
glowing blossoms. A fragrance was diffused from it which Giovanni
recognized as identical with that which he had attributed to Beatrice’s
breath, but incomparably more powerful. As her eyes fell upon it,
Giovanni beheld her press her hand to her bosom as if her heart were
throbbing suddenly and painfully.

“For the first time in my life,” murmured she, addressing the shrub, “I
had forgotten thee.”

“I remember, signora,” said Giovanni, “that you once promised to reward
me with one of these living gems for the bouquet which I had the happy
boldness to fling to your feet. Permit me now to pluck it as a memorial
of this interview.”

He made a step towards the shrub with extended hand; but Beatrice
darted forward, uttering a shriek that went through his heart like a
dagger. She caught his hand and drew it back with the whole force of
her slender figure. Giovanni felt her touch thrilling through his
fibres.

“Touch it not!” exclaimed she, in a voice of agony. “Not for thy life!
It is fatal!”

Then, hiding her face, she fled from him and vanished beneath the
sculptured portal. As Giovanni followed her with his eyes, he beheld
the emaciated figure and pale intelligence of Dr. Rappaccini, who had
been watching the scene, he knew not how long, within the shadow of the
entrance.

No sooner was Guasconti alone in his chamber than the image of Beatrice
came back to his passionate musings, invested with all the witchery
that had been gathering around it ever since his first glimpse of her,
and now likewise imbued with a tender warmth of girlish womanhood. She
was human; her nature was endowed with all gentle and feminine
qualities; she was worthiest to be worshipped; she was capable, surely,
on her part, of the height and heroism of love. Those tokens which he
had hitherto considered as proofs of a frightful peculiarity in her
physical and moral system were now either forgotten, or, by the subtle
sophistry of passion transmitted into a golden crown of enchantment,
rendering Beatrice the more admirable by so much as she was the more
unique. Whatever had looked ugly was now beautiful; or, if incapable of
such a change, it stole away and hid itself among those shapeless half
ideas which throng the dim region beyond the daylight of our perfect
consciousness. Thus did he spend the night, nor fell asleep until the
dawn had begun to awake the slumbering flowers in Dr. Rappaccini’s
garden, whither Giovanni’s dreams doubtless led him. Up rose the sun in
his due season, and, flinging his beams upon the young man’s eyelids,
awoke him to a sense of pain. When thoroughly aroused, he became
sensible of a burning and tingling agony in his hand--in his right
hand--the very hand which Beatrice had grasped in her own when he was
on the point of plucking one of the gemlike flowers. On the back of
that hand there was now a purple print like that of four small fingers,
and the likeness of a slender thumb upon his wrist.

Oh, how stubbornly does love,--or even that cunning semblance of love
which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of root into
the heart,--how stubbornly does it hold its faith until the moment
comes when it is doomed to vanish into thin mist! Giovanni wrapped a
handkerchief about his hand and wondered what evil thing had stung him,
and soon forgot his pain in a reverie of Beatrice.

After the first interview, a second was in the inevitable course of
what we call fate. A third; a fourth; and a meeting with Beatrice in
the garden was no longer an incident in Giovanni’s daily life, but the
whole space in which he might be said to live; for the anticipation and
memory of that ecstatic hour made up the remainder. Nor was it
otherwise with the daughter of Rappaccini. She watched for the youth’s
appearance, and flew to his side with confidence as unreserved as if
they had been playmates from early infancy--as if they were such
playmates still. If, by any unwonted chance, he failed to come at the
appointed moment, she stood beneath the window and sent up the rich
sweetness of her tones to float around him in his chamber and echo and
reverberate throughout his heart: “Giovanni! Giovanni! Why tarriest
thou? Come down!” And down he hastened into that Eden of poisonous
flowers.

But, with all this intimate familiarity, there was still a reserve in
Beatrice’s demeanor, so rigidly and invariably sustained that the idea
of infringing it scarcely occurred to his imagination. By all
appreciable signs, they loved; they had looked love with eyes that
conveyed the holy secret from the depths of one soul into the depths of
the other, as if it were too sacred to be whispered by the way; they
had even spoken love in those gushes of passion when their spirits
darted forth in articulated breath like tongues of long-hidden flame;
and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any
slightest caress such as love claims and hallows. He had never touched
one of the gleaming ringlets of her hair; her garment--so marked was
the physical barrier between them--had never been waved against him by
a breeze. On the few occasions when Giovanni had seemed tempted to
overstep the limit, Beatrice grew so sad, so stern, and withal wore
such a look of desolate separation, shuddering at itself, that not a
spoken word was requisite to repel him. At such times he was startled
at the horrible suspicions that rose, monster-like, out of the caverns
of his heart and stared him in the face; his love grew thin and faint
as the morning mist, his doubts alone had substance. But, when
Beatrice’s face brightened again after the momentary shadow, she was
transformed at once from the mysterious, questionable being whom he had
watched with so much awe and horror; she was now the beautiful and
unsophisticated girl whom he felt that his spirit knew with a certainty
beyond all other knowledge.

A considerable time had now passed since Giovanni’s last meeting with
Baglioni. One morning, however, he was disagreeably surprised by a
visit from the professor, whom he had scarcely thought of for whole
weeks, and would willingly have forgotten still longer. Given up as he
had long been to a pervading excitement, he could tolerate no
companions except upon condition of their perfect sympathy with his
present state of feeling. Such sympathy was not to be expected from
Professor Baglioni.

The visitor chatted carelessly for a few moments about the gossip of
the city and the university, and then took up another topic.

“I have been reading an old classic author lately,” said he, “and met
with a story that strangely interested me. Possibly you may remember
it. It is of an Indian prince, who sent a beautiful woman as a present
to Alexander the Great. She was as lovely as the dawn and gorgeous as
the sunset; but what especially distinguished her was a certain rich
perfume in her breath--richer than a garden of Persian roses.
Alexander, as was natural to a youthful conqueror, fell in love at
first sight with this magnificent stranger; but a certain sage
physician, happening to be present, discovered a terrible secret in
regard to her.”

“And what was that?” asked Giovanni, turning his eyes downward to avoid
those of the professor.

“That this lovely woman,” continued Baglioni, with emphasis, “had been
nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until her whole nature
was so imbued with them that she herself had become the deadliest
poison in existence. Poison was her element of life. With that rich
perfume of her breath she blasted the very air. Her love would have
been poison--her embrace death. Is not this a marvellous tale?”

“A childish fable,” answered Giovanni, nervously starting from his
chair. “I marvel how your worship finds time to read such nonsense
among your graver studies.”

“By the by,” said the professor, looking uneasily about him, “what
singular fragrance is this in your apartment? Is it the perfume of your
gloves? It is faint, but delicious; and yet, after all, by no means
agreeable. Were I to breathe it long, methinks it would make me ill. It
is like the breath of a flower; but I see no flowers in the chamber.”

“Nor are there any,” replied Giovanni, who had turned pale as the
professor spoke; “nor, I think, is there any fragrance except in your
worship’s imagination. Odors, being a sort of element combined of the
sensual and the spiritual, are apt to deceive us in this manner. The
recollection of a perfume, the bare idea of it, may easily be mistaken
for a present reality.”

“Ay; but my sober imagination does not often play such tricks,” said
Baglioni; “and, were I to fancy any kind of odor, it would be that of
some vile apothecary drug, wherewith my fingers are likely enough to be
imbued. Our worshipful friend Rappaccini, as I have heard, tinctures
his medicaments with odors richer than those of Araby. Doubtless,
likewise, the fair and learned Signora Beatrice would minister to her
patients with draughts as sweet as a maiden’s breath; but woe to him
that sips them!”

Giovanni’s face evinced many contending emotions. The tone in which the
professor alluded to the pure and lovely daughter of Rappaccini was a
torture to his soul; and yet the intimation of a view of her character
opposite to his own, gave instantaneous distinctness to a thousand dim
suspicions, which now grinned at him like so many demons. But he strove
hard to quell them and to respond to Baglioni with a true lover’s
perfect faith.

“Signor professor,” said he, “you were my father’s friend; perchance,
too, it is your purpose to act a friendly part towards his son. I would
fain feel nothing towards you save respect and deference; but I pray
you to observe, signor, that there is one subject on which we must not
speak. You know not the Signora Beatrice. You cannot, therefore,
estimate the wrong--the blasphemy, I may even say--that is offered to
her character by a light or injurious word.”

“Giovanni! my poor Giovanni!” answered the professor, with a calm
expression of pity, “I know this wretched girl far better than
yourself. You shall hear the truth in respect to the poisoner
Rappaccini and his poisonous daughter; yes, poisonous as she is
beautiful. Listen; for, even should you do violence to my gray hairs,
it shall not silence me. That old fable of the Indian woman has become
a truth by the deep and deadly science of Rappaccini and in the person
of the lovely Beatrice.”

Giovanni groaned and hid his face

“Her father,” continued Baglioni, “was not restrained by natural
affection from offering up his child in this horrible manner as the
victim of his insane zeal for science; for, let us do him justice, he
is as true a man of science as ever distilled his own heart in an
alembic. What, then, will be your fate? Beyond a doubt you are selected
as the material of some new experiment. Perhaps the result is to be
death; perhaps a fate more awful still. Rappaccini, with what he calls
the interest of science before his eyes, will hesitate at nothing.”

“It is a dream,” muttered Giovanni to himself; “surely it is a dream.”

“But,” resumed the professor, “be of good cheer, son of my friend. It
is not yet too late for the rescue. Possibly we may even succeed in
bringing back this miserable child within the limits of ordinary
nature, from which her father’s madness has estranged her. Behold this
little silver vase! It was wrought by the hands of the renowned
Benvenuto Cellini, and is well worthy to be a love gift to the fairest
dame in Italy. But its contents are invaluable. One little sip of this
antidote would have rendered the most virulent poisons of the Borgias
innocuous. Doubt not that it will be as efficacious against those of
Rappaccini. Bestow the vase, and the precious liquid within it, on your
Beatrice, and hopefully await the result.”

Baglioni laid a small, exquisitely wrought silver vial on the table and
withdrew, leaving what he had said to produce its effect upon the young
man’s mind.

“We will thwart Rappaccini yet,” thought he, chuckling to himself, as
he descended the stairs; “but, let us confess the truth of him, he is a
wonderful man--a wonderful man indeed; a vile empiric, however, in his
practice, and therefore not to be tolerated by those who respect the
good old rules of the medical profession.”

Throughout Giovanni’s whole acquaintance with Beatrice, he had
occasionally, as we have said, been haunted by dark surmises as to her
character; yet so thoroughly had she made herself felt by him as a
simple, natural, most affectionate, and guileless creature, that the
image now held up by Professor Baglioni looked as strange and
incredible as if it were not in accordance with his own original
conception. True, there were ugly recollections connected with his
first glimpses of the beautiful girl; he could not quite forget the
bouquet that withered in her grasp, and the insect that perished amid
the sunny air, by no ostensible agency save the fragrance of her
breath. These incidents, however, dissolving in the pure light of her
character, had no longer the efficacy of facts, but were acknowledged
as mistaken fantasies, by whatever testimony of the senses they might
appear to be substantiated. There is something truer and more real than
what we can see with the eyes and touch with the finger. On such better
evidence had Giovanni founded his confidence in Beatrice, though rather
by the necessary force of her high attributes than by any deep and
generous faith on his part. But now his spirit was incapable of
sustaining itself at the height to which the early enthusiasm of
passion had exalted it; he fell down, grovelling among earthly doubts,
and defiled therewith the pure whiteness of Beatrice’s image. Not that
he gave her up; he did but distrust. He resolved to institute some
decisive test that should satisfy him, once for all, whether there were
those dreadful peculiarities in her physical nature which could not be
supposed to exist without some corresponding monstrosity of soul. His
eyes, gazing down afar, might have deceived him as to the lizard, the
insect, and the flowers; but if he could witness, at the distance of a
few paces, the sudden blight of one fresh and healthful flower in
Beatrice’s hand, there would be room for no further question. With this
idea he hastened to the florist’s and purchased a bouquet that was
still gemmed with the morning dew-drops.

It was now the customary hour of his daily interview with Beatrice.
Before descending into the garden, Giovanni failed not to look at his
figure in the mirror,--a vanity to be expected in a beautiful young
man, yet, as displaying itself at that troubled and feverish moment,
the token of a certain shallowness of feeling and insincerity of
character. He did gaze, however, and said to himself that his features
had never before possessed so rich a grace, nor his eyes such vivacity,
nor his cheeks so warm a hue of superabundant life.

“At least,” thought he, “her poison has not yet insinuated itself into
my system. I am no flower to perish in her grasp.”

With that thought he turned his eyes on the bouquet, which he had never
once laid aside from his hand. A thrill of indefinable horror shot
through his frame on perceiving that those dewy flowers were already
beginning to droop; they wore the aspect of things that had been fresh
and lovely yesterday. Giovanni grew white as marble, and stood
motionless before the mirror, staring at his own reflection there as at
the likeness of something frightful. He remembered Baglioni’s remark
about the fragrance that seemed to pervade the chamber. It must have
been the poison in his breath! Then he shuddered--shuddered at himself.
Recovering from his stupor, he began to watch with curious eye a spider
that was busily at work hanging its web from the antique cornice of the
apartment, crossing and recrossing the artful system of interwoven
lines--as vigorous and active a spider as ever dangled from an old
ceiling. Giovanni bent towards the insect, and emitted a deep, long
breath. The spider suddenly ceased its toil; the web vibrated with a
tremor originating in the body of the small artisan. Again Giovanni
sent forth a breath, deeper, longer, and imbued with a venomous feeling
out of his heart: he knew not whether he were wicked, or only
desperate. The spider made a convulsive gripe with his limbs and hung
dead across the window.

“Accursed! accursed!” muttered Giovanni, addressing himself. “Hast thou
grown so poisonous that this deadly insect perishes by thy breath?”

At that moment a rich, sweet voice came floating up from the garden.

“Giovanni! Giovanni! It is past the hour! Why tarriest thou? Come down!”

“Yes,” muttered Giovanni again. “She is the only being whom my breath
may not slay! Would that it might!”

He rushed down, and in an instant was standing before the bright and
loving eyes of Beatrice. A moment ago his wrath and despair had been so
fierce that he could have desired nothing so much as to wither her by a
glance; but with her actual presence there came influences which had
too real an existence to be at once shaken off: recollections of the
delicate and benign power of her feminine nature, which had so often
enveloped him in a religious calm; recollections of many a holy and
passionate outgush of her heart, when the pure fountain had been
unsealed from its depths and made visible in its transparency to his
mental eye; recollections which, had Giovanni known how to estimate
them, would have assured him that all this ugly mystery was but an
earthly illusion, and that, whatever mist of evil might seem to have
gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel. Incapable as
he was of such high faith, still her presence had not utterly lost its
magic. Giovanni’s rage was quelled into an aspect of sullen
insensibility. Beatrice, with a quick spiritual sense, immediately felt
that there was a gulf of blackness between them which neither he nor
she could pass. They walked on together, sad and silent, and came thus
to the marble fountain and to its pool of water on the ground, in the
midst of which grew the shrub that bore gem-like blossoms. Giovanni was
affrighted at the eager enjoyment--the appetite, as it were--with which
he found himself inhaling the fragrance of the flowers.

“Beatrice,” asked he, abruptly, “whence came this shrub?”

“My father created it,” answered she, with simplicity.

“Created it! created it!” repeated Giovanni. “What mean you, Beatrice?”

“He is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of Nature,” replied
Beatrice; “and, at the hour when I first drew breath, this plant sprang
from the soil, the offspring of his science, of his intellect, while I
was but his earthly child. Approach it not!” continued she, observing
with terror that Giovanni was drawing nearer to the shrub. “It has
qualities that you little dream of. But I, dearest Giovanni,--I grew up
and blossomed with the plant and was nourished with its breath. It was
my sister, and I loved it with a human affection; for, alas!--hast thou
not suspected it?--there was an awful doom.”

Here Giovanni frowned so darkly upon her that Beatrice paused and
trembled. But her faith in his tenderness reassured her, and made her
blush that she had doubted for an instant.

“There was an awful doom,” she continued, “the effect of my father’s
fatal love of science, which estranged me from all society of my kind.
Until Heaven sent thee, dearest Giovanni, oh, how lonely was thy poor
Beatrice!”

“Was it a hard doom?” asked Giovanni, fixing his eyes upon her.

“Only of late have I known how hard it was,” answered she, tenderly.
“Oh, yes; but my heart was torpid, and therefore quiet.”

Giovanni’s rage broke forth from his sullen gloom like a lightning
flash out of a dark cloud.

“Accursed one!” cried he, with venomous scorn and anger. “And, finding
thy solitude wearisome, thou hast severed me likewise from all the
warmth of life and enticed me into thy region of unspeakable horror!”

“Giovanni!” exclaimed Beatrice, turning her large bright eyes upon his
face. The force of his words had not found its way into her mind; she
was merely thunderstruck.

“Yes, poisonous thing!” repeated Giovanni, beside himself with passion.
“Thou hast done it! Thou hast blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins
with poison! Thou hast made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and
deadly a creature as thyself--a world’s wonder of hideous monstrosity!
Now, if our breath be happily as fatal to ourselves as to all others,
let us join our lips in one kiss of unutterable hatred, and so die!”

“What has befallen me?” murmured Beatrice, with a low moan out of her
heart. “Holy Virgin, pity me, a poor heart-broken child!”

“Thou,--dost thou pray?” cried Giovanni, still with the same fiendish
scorn. “Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the
atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to church and dip
our fingers in the holy water at the portal! They that come after us
will perish as by a pestilence! Let us sign crosses in the air! It will
be scattering curses abroad in the likeness of holy symbols!”

“Giovanni,” said Beatrice, calmly, for her grief was beyond passion,
“why dost thou join thyself with me thus in those terrible words? I, it
is true, am the horrible thing thou namest me. But thou,--what hast
thou to do, save with one other shudder at my hideous misery to go
forth out of the garden and mingle with thy race, and forget there ever
crawled on earth such a monster as poor Beatrice?”

“Dost thou pretend ignorance?” asked Giovanni, scowling upon her.
“Behold! this power have I gained from the pure daughter of Rappaccini.”

There was a swarm of summer insects flitting through the air in search
of the food promised by the flower odors of the fatal garden. They
circled round Giovanni’s head, and were evidently attracted towards him
by the same influence which had drawn them for an instant within the
sphere of several of the shrubs. He sent forth a breath among them, and
smiled bitterly at Beatrice as at least a score of the insects fell
dead upon the ground.

“I see it! I see it!” shrieked Beatrice. “It is my father’s fatal
science! No, no, Giovanni; it was not I! Never! never! I dreamed only
to love thee and be with thee a little time, and so to let thee pass
away, leaving but thine image in mine heart; for, Giovanni, believe it,
though my body be nourished with poison, my spirit is God’s creature,
and craves love as its daily food. But my father,--he has united us in
this fearful sympathy. Yes; spurn me, tread upon me, kill me! Oh, what
is death after such words as thine? But it was not I. Not for a world
of bliss would I have done it.”

Giovanni’s passion had exhausted itself in its outburst from his lips.
There now came across him a sense, mournful, and not without
tenderness, of the intimate and peculiar relationship between Beatrice
and himself. They stood, as it were, in an utter solitude, which would
be made none the less solitary by the densest throng of human life.
Ought not, then, the desert of humanity around them to press this
insulated pair closer together? If they should be cruel to one another,
who was there to be kind to them? Besides, thought Giovanni, might
there not still be a hope of his returning within the limits of
ordinary nature, and leading Beatrice, the redeemed Beatrice, by the
hand? O, weak, and selfish, and unworthy spirit, that could dream of an
earthly union and earthly happiness as possible, after such deep love
had been so bitterly wronged as was Beatrice’s love by Giovanni’s
blighting words! No, no; there could be no such hope. She must pass
heavily, with that broken heart, across the borders of Time--she must
bathe her hurts in some fount of paradise, and forget her grief in the
light of immortality, and THERE be well.

But Giovanni did not know it.

“Dear Beatrice,” said he, approaching her, while she shrank away as
always at his approach, but now with a different impulse, “dearest
Beatrice, our fate is not yet so desperate. Behold! there is a
medicine, potent, as a wise physician has assured me, and almost divine
in its efficacy. It is composed of ingredients the most opposite to
those by which thy awful father has brought this calamity upon thee and
me. It is distilled of blessed herbs. Shall we not quaff it together,
and thus be purified from evil?”

“Give it me!” said Beatrice, extending her hand to receive the little
silver vial which Giovanni took from his bosom. She added, with a
peculiar emphasis, “I will drink; but do thou await the result.”

She put Baglioni’s antidote to her lips; and, at the same moment, the
figure of Rappaccini emerged from the portal and came slowly towards
the marble fountain. As he drew near, the pale man of science seemed to
gaze with a triumphant expression at the beautiful youth and maiden, as
might an artist who should spend his life in achieving a picture or a
group of statuary and finally be satisfied with his success. He paused;
his bent form grew erect with conscious power; he spread out his hands
over them in the attitude of a father imploring a blessing upon his
children; but those were the same hands that had thrown poison into the
stream of their lives. Giovanni trembled. Beatrice shuddered nervously,
and pressed her hand upon her heart.

“My daughter,” said Rappaccini, “thou art no longer lonely in the
world. Pluck one of those precious gems from thy sister shrub and bid
thy bridegroom wear it in his bosom. It will not harm him now. My
science and the sympathy between thee and him have so wrought within
his system that he now stands apart from common men, as thou dost,
daughter of my pride and triumph, from ordinary women. Pass on, then,
through the world, most dear to one another and dreadful to all
besides!”

“My father,” said Beatrice, feebly,--and still as she spoke she kept
her hand upon her heart,--“wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable
doom upon thy child?”

“Miserable!” exclaimed Rappaccini. “What mean you, foolish girl? Dost
thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvellous gifts against which
no power nor strength could avail an enemy--misery, to be able to quell
the mightiest with a breath--misery, to be as terrible as thou art
beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak
woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?”

“I would fain have been loved, not feared,” murmured Beatrice, sinking
down upon the ground. “But now it matters not. I am going, father,
where the evil which thou hast striven to mingle with my being will
pass away like a dream-like the fragrance of these poisonous flowers,
which will no longer taint my breath among the flowers of Eden.
Farewell, Giovanni! Thy words of hatred are like lead within my heart;
but they, too, will fall away as I ascend. Oh, was there not, from the
first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?”

To Beatrice,--so radically had her earthly part been wrought upon by
Rappaccini’s skill,--as poison had been life, so the powerful antidote
was death; and thus the poor victim of man’s ingenuity and of thwarted
nature, and of the fatality that attends all such efforts of perverted
wisdom, perished there, at the feet of her father and Giovanni. Just at
that moment Professor Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window, and
called loudly, in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, to the
thunderstricken man of science, “Rappaccini! Rappaccini! and is THIS
the upshot of your experiment!”



MRS. BULLFROG

It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people
act in the matter of choosing wives. They perplex their judgments by a
most undue attention to little niceties of personal appearance, habits,
disposition, and other trifles which concern nobody but the lady
herself. An unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of
perfection, keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered
that no tolerable woman will accept them. Now this is the very height
of absurdity. A kind Providence has so skilfully adapted sex to sex and
the mass of individuals to each other, that, with certain obvious
exceptions, any male and female may be moderately happy in the married
state. The true rule is to ascertain that the match is fundamentally a
good one, and then to take it for granted that all minor objections,
should there be such, will vanish, if you let them alone. Only put
yourself beyond hazard as to the real basis of matrimonial bliss, and
it is scarcely to be imagined what miracles, in the way of recognizing
smaller incongruities, connubial love will effect.

For my own part I freely confess that, in my bachelorship, I was
precisely such an over-curious simpleton as I now advise the reader not
to be. My early habits had gifted me with a feminine sensibility and
too exquisite refinement. I was the accomplished graduate of a dry
goods store, where, by dint of ministering to the whims of fine ladies,
and suiting silken hose to delicate limbs, and handling satins,
ribbons, chintzes calicoes, tapes, gauze, and cambric needles, I grew
up a very ladylike sort of a gentleman. It is not assuming too much to
affirm that the ladies themselves were hardly so ladylike as Thomas
Bullfrog. So painfully acute was my sense of female imperfection, and
such varied excellence did I require in the woman whom I could love,
that there was an awful risk of my getting no wife at all, or of being
driven to perpetrate matrimony with my own image in the looking-glass.
Besides the fundamental principle already hinted at, I demanded the
fresh bloom of youth, pearly teeth, glossy ringlets, and the whole list
of lovely items, with the utmost delicacy of habits and sentiments, a
silken texture of mind, and, above all, a virgin heart. In a word, if a
young angel just from paradise, yet dressed in earthly fashion, had
come and offered me her hand, it is by no means certain that I should
have taken it. There was every chance of my becoming a most miserable
old bachelor, when, by the best luck in the world, I made a journey
into another state, and was smitten by, and smote again, and wooed,
won, and married, the present Mrs. Bullfrog, all in the space of a
fortnight. Owing to these extempore measures, I not only gave my bride
credit for certain perfections which have not as yet come to light, but
also overlooked a few trifling defects, which, however, glimmered on my
perception long before the close of the honeymoon. Yet, as there was no
mistake about the fundamental principle aforesaid, I soon learned, as
will be seen, to estimate Mrs. Bullfrog’s deficiencies and
superfluities at exactly their proper value.

The same morning that Mrs. Bullfrog and I came together as a unit, we
took two seats in the stage-coach and began our journey towards my
place of business. There being no other passengers, we were as much
alone and as free to give vent to our raptures as if I had hired a hack
for the matrimonial jaunt. My bride looked charmingly in a green silk
calash and riding habit of pelisse cloth; and whenever her red lips
parted with a smile, each tooth appeared like an inestimable pearl.
Such was my passionate warmth that--we had rattled out of the village,
gentle reader, and were lonely as Adam and Eve in paradise--I plead
guilty to no less freedom than a kiss. The gentle eye of Mrs. Bullfrog
scarcely rebuked me for the profanation. Emboldened by her indulgence,
I threw back the calash from her polished brow, and suffered my
fingers, white and delicate as her own, to stray among those dark and
glossy curls which realized my daydreams of rich hair.

“My love,” said Mrs. Bullfrog tenderly, “you will disarrange my curls.”

“Oh, no, my sweet Laura!” replied I, still playing with the glossy
ringlet. “Even your fair hand could not manage a curl more delicately
than mine. I propose myself the pleasure of doing up your hair in
papers every evening at the same time with my own.”

“Mr. Bullfrog,” repeated she, “you must not disarrange my curls.”

This was spoken in a more decided tone than I had happened to hear,
until then, from my gentlest of all gentle brides. At the same time she
put up her hand and took mine prisoner; but merely drew it away from
the forbidden ringlet, and then immediately released it. Now, I am a
fidgety little man, and always love to have something in my fingers; so
that, being debarred from my wife’s curls, I looked about me for any
other plaything. On the front seat of the coach there was one of those
small baskets in which travelling ladies who are too delicate to appear
at a public table generally carry a supply of gingerbread, biscuits and
cheese, cold ham, and other light refreshments, merely to sustain
nature to the journey’s end. Such airy diet will sometimes keep them in
pretty good flesh for a week together. Laying hold of this same little
basket, I thrust my hand under the newspaper with which it was
carefully covered.

“What’s this, my dear?” cried I; for the black neck of a bottle had
popped out of the basket.

“A bottle of Kalydor, Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife, coolly taking the
basket from my hands and replacing it on the front seat.

There was no possibility of doubting my wife’s word; but I never knew
genuine Kalydor, such as I use for my own complexion, to smell so much
like cherry brandy. I was about to express my fears that the lotion
would injure her skin, when an accident occurred which threatened more
than a skin-deep injury. Our Jehu had carelessly driven over a heap of
gravel and fairly capsized the coach, with the wheels in the air and
our heels where our heads should have been. What became of my wits I
cannot imagine; they have always had a perverse trick of deserting me
just when they were most needed; but so it chanced, that in the
confusion of our overthrow I quite forgot that there was a Mrs.
Bullfrog in the world. Like many men’s wives, the good lady served her
husband as a steppingstone. I had scrambled out of the coach and was
instinctively settling my cravat, when somebody brushed roughly by me,
and I heard a smart thwack upon the coachman’s ear.

“Take that, you villain!” cried a strange, hoarse voice. “You have
ruined me, you blackguard! I shall never be the woman I have been!”

And then came a second thwack, aimed at the driver’s other ear; but
which missed it, and hit him on the nose, causing a terrible effusion
of blood. Now, who or what fearful apparition was inflicting this
punishment on the poor fellow remained an impenetrable mystery to me.
The blows were given by a person of grisly aspect, with a head almost
bald, and sunken cheeks, apparently of the feminine gender, though
hardly to be classed in the gentler sex. There being no teeth to
modulate the voice, it had a mumbled fierceness, not passionate, but
stern, which absolutely made me quiver like calf’s-foot jelly. Who
could the phantom be? The most awful circumstance of the affair is yet
to be told: for this ogre, or whatever it was, had a riding habit like
Mrs. Bullfrog’s, and also a green silk calash dangling down her back by
the strings. In my terror and turmoil of mind I could imagine nothing
less than that the Old Nick, at the moment of our overturn, had
annihilated my wife and jumped into her petticoats. This idea seemed
the most probable, since I could nowhere perceive Mrs. Bullfrog alive,
nor, though I looked very sharply about the coach, could I detect any
traces of that beloved woman’s dead body. There would have been a
comfort in giving her Christian burial.

“Come, sir, bestir yourself! Help this rascal to set up the coach,”
said the hobgoblin to me; then, with a terrific screech at three
countrymen at a distance, “Here, you fellows, ain’t you ashamed to
stand off when a poor woman is in distress?”

The countrymen, instead of fleeing for their lives, came running at
full speed, and laid hold of the topsy-turvy coach. I, also, though a
small-sized man, went to work like a son of Anak. The coachman, too,
with the blood still streaming from his nose, tugged and toiled most
manfully, dreading, doubtless, that the next blow might break his head.
And yet, bemauled as the poor fellow had been, he seemed to glance at
me with an eye of pity, as if my case were more deplorable than his.
But I cherished a hope that all would turn out a dream, and seized the
opportunity, as we raised the coach, to jam two of my fingers under the
wheel, trusting that the pain would awaken me.

“Why, here we are, all to rights again!” exclaimed a sweet voice
behind. “Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen. My dear Mr.
Bullfrog, how you perspire! Do let me wipe your face. Don’t take this
little accident too much to heart, good driver. We ought to be thankful
that none of our necks are broken.”

“We might have spared one neck out of the three,” muttered the driver,
rubbing his ear and pulling his nose, to ascertain whether he had been
cuffed or not. “Why, the woman’s a witch!”

I fear that the reader will not believe, yet it is positively a fact,
that there stood Mrs. Bullfrog, with her glossy ringlets curling on her
brow, and two rows of orient pearls gleaming between her parted lips,
which wore a most angelic smile. She had regained her riding habit and
calash from the grisly phantom, and was, in all respects, the lovely
woman who had been sitting by my side at the instant of our overturn.
How she had happened to disappear, and who had supplied her place, and
whence she did now return, were problems too knotty for me to solve.
There stood my wife. That was the one thing certain among a heap of
mysteries. Nothing remained but to help her into the coach, and plod
on, through the journey of the day and the journey of life, as
comfortably as we could. As the driver closed the door upon us, I heard
him whisper to the three countrymen, “How do you suppose a fellow feels
shut up in the cage with a she tiger?”

Of course this query could have no reference to my situation. Yet,
unreasonable as it may appear, I confess that my feelings were not
altogether so ecstatic as when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine. True,
she was a sweet woman and an angel of a wife; but what if a Gorgon
should return, amid the transports of our connubial bliss, and take the
angel’s place. I recollected the tale of a fairy, who half the time was
a beautiful woman and half the time a hideous monster. Had I taken that
very fairy to be the wife of my bosom? While such whims and chimeras
were flitting across my fancy I began to look askance at Mrs. Bullfrog,
almost expecting that the transformation would be wrought before my
eyes.

To divert my mind, I took up the newspaper which had covered the little
basket of refreshments, and which now lay at the bottom of the coach,
blushing with a deep-red stain and emitting a potent spirituous fume
from the contents of the broken bottle of Kalydor. The paper was two or
three years old, but contained an article of several columns, in which
I soon grew wonderfully interested. It was the report of a trial for
breach of promise of marriage, giving the testimony in full, with
fervid extracts from both the gentleman’s and lady’s amatory
correspondence. The deserted damsel had personally appeared in court,
and had borne energetic evidence to her lover’s perfidy and the
strength of her blighted affections. On the defendant’s part there had
been an attempt, though insufficiently sustained, to blast the
plaintiff’s character, and a plea, in mitigation of damages, on account
of her unamiable temper. A horrible idea was suggested by the lady’s
name.

“Madam,” said I, holding the newspaper before Mrs. Bullfrog’s
eyes,--and, though a small, delicate, and thin-visaged man, I feel
assured that I looked very terrific,--“madam,” repeated I, through my
shut teeth, “were you the plaintiff in this cause?”

“Oh, my dear Mr. Bullfrog,” replied my wife, sweetly, “I thought all
the world knew that!”

“Horror! horror!” exclaimed I, sinking back on the seat.

Covering my face with both hands, I emitted a deep and deathlike groan,
as if my tormented soul were rending me asunder--I, the most
exquisitely fastidious of men, and whose wife was to have been the most
delicate and refined of women, with all the fresh dew-drops glittering
on her virgin rosebud of a heart!

I thought of the glossy ringlets and pearly teeth; I thought of the
Kalydor; I thought of the coachman’s bruised ear and bloody nose; I
thought of the tender love secrets which she had whispered to the judge
and jury and a thousand tittering auditors,--and gave another groan!

“Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife.

As I made no reply, she gently took my hands within her own, removed
them from my face, and fixed her eyes steadfastly on mine.

“Mr. Bullfrog,” said she, not unkindly, yet with all the decision of
her strong character, “let me advise you to overcome this foolish
weakness, and prove yourself, to the best of your ability, as good a
husband as I will be a wife. You have discovered, perhaps, some little
imperfections in your bride. Well, what did you expect? Women are not
angels. If they were, they would go to heaven for husbands; or, at
least, be more difficult in their choice on earth.”

“But why conceal those imperfections?” interposed I, tremulously.

“Now, my love, are not you a most unreasonable little man?” said Mrs.
Bullfrog, patting me on the cheek. “Ought a woman to disclose her
frailties earlier than the wedding day? Few husbands, I assure you,
make the discovery in such good season, and still fewer complain that
these trifles are concealed too long. Well, what a strange man you are!
Poh! you are joking.”

“But the suit for breach of promise!” groaned I.

“Ah, and is that the rub?” exclaimed my wife. “Is it possible that you
view that affair in an objectionable light? Mr. Bullfrog, I never could
have dreamed it! Is it an objection that I have triumphantly defended
myself against slander and vindicated my purity in a court of justice?
Or do you complain because your wife has shown the proper spirit of a
woman, and punished the villain who trifled with her affections?”

“But,” persisted I, shrinking into a corner of the coach, however,--for
I did not know precisely how much contradiction the proper spirit of a
woman would endure,--“but, my love, would it not have been more
dignified to treat the villain with the silent contempt he merited?”

“That is all very well, Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife, slyly; “but, in
that case, where would have been the five thousand dollars which are to
stock your dry goods store?”

“Mrs. Bullfrog, upon your honor,” demanded I, as if my life hung upon
her words, “is there no mistake about those five thousand dollars?”

“Upon my word and honor there is none,” replied she. “The jury gave me
every cent the rascal had; and I have kept it all for my dear Bullfrog.”

“Then, thou dear woman,” cried I, with an overwhelming gush of
tenderness, “let me fold thee to my heart. The basis of matrimonial
bliss is secure, and all thy little defects and frailties are forgiven.
Nay, since the result has been so fortunate, I rejoice at the wrongs
which drove thee to this blessed lawsuit. Happy Bullfrog that I am!”



THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD

Not a great while ago, passing through the gate of dreams, I visited
that region of the earth in which lies the famous City of Destruction.
It interested me much to learn that by the public spirit of some of the
inhabitants a railroad has recently been established between this
populous and flourishing town and the Celestial City. Having a little
time upon my hands, I resolved to gratify a liberal curiosity by making
a trip thither. Accordingly, one fine morning after paying my bill at
the hotel, and directing the porter to stow my luggage behind a coach,
I took my seat in the vehicle and set out for the station-house. It was
my good fortune to enjoy the company of a gentleman--one Mr.
Smooth-it-away--who, though he had never actually visited the Celestial
City, yet seemed as well acquainted with its laws, customs, policy, and
statistics, as with those of the City of Destruction, of which he was a
native townsman. Being, moreover, a director of the railroad
corporation and one of its largest stockholders, he had it in his power
to give me all desirable information respecting that praiseworthy
enterprise.

Our coach rattled out of the city, and at a short distance from its
outskirts passed over a bridge of elegant construction, but somewhat
too slight, as I imagined, to sustain any considerable weight. On both
sides lay an extensive quagmire, which could not have been more
disagreeable either to sight or smell, had all the kennels of the earth
emptied their pollution there.

“This,” remarked Mr. Smooth-it-away, “is the famous Slough of
Despond--a disgrace to all the neighborhood; and the greater that it
might so easily be converted into firm ground.”

“I have understood,” said I, “that efforts have been made for that
purpose from time immemorial. Bunyan mentions that above twenty
thousand cartloads of wholesome instructions had been thrown in here
without effect.”

“Very probably! And what effect could be anticipated from such
unsubstantial stuff?” cried Mr. Smooth-it-away. “You observe this
convenient bridge. We obtained a sufficient foundation for it by
throwing into the slough some editions of books of morality, volumes of
French philosophy and German rationalism; tracts, sermons, and essays
of modern clergymen; extracts from Plato, Confucius, and various Hindoo
sages together with a few ingenious commentaries upon texts of
Scripture,--all of which by some scientific process, have been
converted into a mass like granite. The whole bog might be filled up
with similar matter.”

It really seemed to me, however, that the bridge vibrated and heaved up
and down in a very formidable manner; and, in spite of Mr.
Smooth-it-away’s testimony to the solidity of its foundation, I should
be loath to cross it in a crowded omnibus, especially if each passenger
were encumbered with as heavy luggage as that gentleman and myself.
Nevertheless we got over without accident, and soon found ourselves at
the stationhouse. This very neat and spacious edifice is erected on the
site of the little wicket gate, which formerly, as all old pilgrims
will recollect, stood directly across the highway, and, by its
inconvenient narrowness, was a great obstruction to the traveller of
liberal mind and expansive stomach. The reader of John Bunyan will be
glad to know that Christian’s old friend Evangelist, who was accustomed
to supply each pilgrim with a mystic roll, now presides at the ticket
office. Some malicious persons it is true deny the identity of this
reputable character with the Evangelist of old times, and even pretend
to bring competent evidence of an imposture. Without involving myself
in a dispute I shall merely observe that, so far as my experience goes,
the square pieces of pasteboard now delivered to passengers are much
more convenient and useful along the road than the antique roll of
parchment. Whether they will be as readily received at the gate of the
Celestial City I decline giving an opinion.

A large number of passengers were already at the station-house awaiting
the departure of the cars. By the aspect and demeanor of these persons
it was easy to judge that the feelings of the community had undergone a
very favorable change in reference to the celestial pilgrimage. It
would have done Bunyan’s heart good to see it. Instead of a lonely and
ragged man with a huge burden on his back, plodding along sorrowfully
on foot while the whole city hooted after him, here were parties of the
first gentry and most respectable people in the neighborhood setting
forth towards the Celestial City as cheerfully as if the pilgrimage
were merely a summer tour. Among the gentlemen were characters of
deserved eminence--magistrates, politicians, and men of wealth, by
whose example religion could not but be greatly recommended to their
meaner brethren. In the ladies’ apartment, too, I rejoiced to
distinguish some of those flowers of fashionable society who are so
well fitted to adorn the most elevated circles of the Celestial City.
There was much pleasant conversation about the news of the day, topics
of business and politics, or the lighter matters of amusement; while
religion, though indubitably the main thing at heart, was thrown
tastefully into the background. Even an infidel would have heard little
or nothing to shock his sensibility.

One great convenience of the new method of going on pilgrimage I must
not forget to mention. Our enormous burdens, instead of being carried
on our shoulders as had been the custom of old, were all snugly
deposited in the baggage car, and, as I was assured, would be delivered
to their respective owners at the journey’s end. Another thing,
likewise, the benevolent reader will be delighted to understand. It may
be remembered that there was an ancient feud between Prince Beelzebub
and the keeper of the wicket gate, and that the adherents of the former
distinguished personage were accustomed to shoot deadly arrows at
honest pilgrims while knocking at the door. This dispute, much to the
credit as well of the illustrious potentate above mentioned as of the
worthy and enlightened directors of the railroad, has been pacifically
arranged on the principle of mutual compromise. The prince’s subjects
are now pretty numerously employed about the station-house, some in
taking care of the baggage, others in collecting fuel, feeding the
engines, and such congenial occupations; and I can conscientiously
affirm that persons more attentive to their business, more willing to
accommodate, or more generally agreeable to the passengers, are not to
be found on any railroad. Every good heart must surely exult at so
satisfactory an arrangement of an immemorial difficulty.

“Where is Mr. Greatheart?” inquired I. “Beyond a doubt the directors
have engaged that famous old champion to be chief conductor on the
railroad?”

“Why, no,” said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a dry cough. “He was offered
the situation of brakeman; but, to tell you the truth, our friend
Greatheart has grown preposterously stiff and narrow in his old age. He
has so often guided pilgrims over the road on foot that he considers it
a sin to travel in any other fashion. Besides, the old fellow had
entered so heartily into the ancient feud with Prince Beelzebub that he
would have been perpetually at blows or ill language with some of the
prince’s subjects, and thus have embroiled us anew. So, on the whole,
we were not sorry when honest Greatheart went off to the Celestial City
in a huff and left us at liberty to choose a more suitable and
accommodating man. Yonder comes the engineer of the train. You will
probably recognize him at once.”

The engine at this moment took its station in advance of the cars,
looking, I must confess, much more like a sort of mechanical demon that
would hurry us to the infernal regions than a laudable contrivance for
smoothing our way to the Celestial City. On its top sat a personage
almost enveloped in smoke and flame, which, not to startle the reader,
appeared to gush from his own mouth and stomach as well as from the
engine’s brazen abdomen.

“Do my eyes deceive me?” cried I. “What on earth is this! A living
creature? If so, he is own brother to the engine he rides upon!”

“Poh, poh, you are obtuse!” said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a hearty
laugh. “Don’t you know Apollyon, Christian’s old enemy, with whom he
fought so fierce a battle in the Valley of Humiliation? He was the very
fellow to manage the engine; and so we have reconciled him to the
custom of going on pilgrimage, and engaged him as chief engineer.”

“Bravo, bravo!” exclaimed I, with irrepressible enthusiasm; “this shows
the liberality of the age; this proves, if anything can, that all musty
prejudices are in a fair way to be obliterated. And how will Christian
rejoice to hear of this happy transformation of his old antagonist! I
promise myself great pleasure in informing him of it when we reach the
Celestial City.”

The passengers being all comfortably seated, we now rattled away
merrily, accomplishing a greater distance in ten minutes than Christian
probably trudged over in a day. It was laughable, while we glanced
along, as it were, at the tail of a thunderbolt, to observe two dusty
foot travellers in the old pilgrim guise, with cockle shell and staff,
their mystic rolls of parchment in their hands and their intolerable
burdens on their backs. The preposterous obstinacy of these honest
people in persisting to groan and stumble along the difficult pathway
rather than take advantage of modern improvements, excited great mirth
among our wiser brotherhood. We greeted the two pilgrims with many
pleasant gibes and a roar of laughter; whereupon they gazed at us with
such woful and absurdly compassionate visages that our merriment grew
tenfold more obstreperous. Apollyon also entered heartily into the fun,
and contrived to flirt the smoke and flame of the engine, or of his own
breath, into their faces, and envelop them in an atmosphere of scalding
steam. These little practical jokes amused us mightily, and doubtless
afforded the pilgrims the gratification of considering themselves
martyrs.

At some distance from the railroad Mr. Smooth-it-away pointed to a
large, antique edifice, which, he observed, was a tavern of long
standing, and had formerly been a noted stopping-place for pilgrims. In
Bunyan’s road-book it is mentioned as the Interpreter’s House.

“I have long had a curiosity to visit that old mansion,” remarked I.

“It is not one of our stations, as you perceive,” said my companion
“The keeper was violently opposed to the railroad; and well he might
be, as the track left his house of entertainment on one side, and thus
was pretty certain to deprive him of all his reputable customers. But
the footpath still passes his door, and the old gentleman now and then
receives a call from some simple traveller, and entertains him with
fare as old-fashioned as himself.”

Before our talk on this subject came to a conclusion we were rushing by
the place where Christian’s burden fell from his shoulders at the sight
of the Cross. This served as a theme for Mr. Smooth-it-away, Mr.
Livefor-the-world, Mr. Hide-sin-in-the-heart, Mr. Scaly-conscience, and
a knot of gentlemen from the town of Shun-repentance, to descant upon
the inestimable advantages resulting from the safety of our baggage.
Myself, and all the passengers indeed, joined with great unanimity in
this view of the matter; for our burdens were rich in many things
esteemed precious throughout the world; and, especially, we each of us
possessed a great variety of favorite Habits, which we trusted would
not be out of fashion even in the polite circles of the Celestial City.
It would have been a sad spectacle to see such an assortment of
valuable articles tumbling into the sepulchre. Thus pleasantly
conversing on the favorable circumstances of our position as compared
with those of past pilgrims and of narrow-minded ones at the present
day, we soon found ourselves at the foot of the Hill Difficulty.
Through the very heart of this rocky mountain a tunnel has been
constructed of most admirable architecture, with a lofty arch and a
spacious double track; so that, unless the earth and rocks should
chance to crumble down, it will remain an eternal monument of the
builder’s skill and enterprise. It is a great though incidental
advantage that the materials from the heart of the Hill Difficulty have
been employed in filling up the Valley of Humiliation, thus obviating
the necessity of descending into that disagreeable and unwholesome
hollow.

“This is a wonderful improvement, indeed,” said I. “Yet I should have
been glad of an opportunity to visit the Palace Beautiful and be
introduced to the charming young ladies--Miss Prudence, Miss Piety,
Miss Charity, and the rest--who have the kindness to entertain pilgrims
there.”

“Young ladies!” cried Mr. Smooth-it-away, as soon as he could speak for
laughing. “And charming young ladies! Why, my dear fellow, they are old
maids, every soul of them--prim, starched, dry, and angular; and not
one of them, I will venture to say, has altered so much as the fashion
of her gown since the days of Christian’s pilgrimage.”

“Ah, well,” said I, much comforted, “then I can very readily dispense
with their acquaintance.”

The respectable Apollyon was now putting on the steam at a prodigious
rate, anxious, perhaps, to get rid of the unpleasant reminiscences
connected with the spot where he had so disastrously encountered
Christian. Consulting Mr. Bunyan’s road-book, I perceived that we must
now be within a few miles of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, into
which doleful region, at our present speed, we should plunge much
sooner than seemed at all desirable. In truth, I expected nothing
better than to find myself in the ditch on one side or the Quag on the
other; but on communicating my apprehensions to Mr. Smooth-it-away, he
assured me that the difficulties of this passage, even in its worst
condition, had been vastly exaggerated, and that, in its present state
of improvement, I might consider myself as safe as on any railroad in
Christendom.

Even while we were speaking the train shot into the entrance of this
dreaded Valley. Though I plead guilty to some foolish palpitations of
the heart during our headlong rush over the causeway here constructed,
yet it were unjust to withhold the highest encomiums on the boldness of
its original conception and the ingenuity of those who executed it. It
was gratifying, likewise, to observe how much care had been taken to
dispel the everlasting gloom and supply the defect of cheerful
sunshine, not a ray of which has ever penetrated among these awful
shadows. For this purpose, the inflammable gas which exudes plentifully
from the soil is collected by means of pipes, and thence communicated
to a quadruple row of lamps along the whole extent of the passage. Thus
a radiance has been created even out of the fiery and sulphurous curse
that rests forever upon the valley--a radiance hurtful, however, to the
eyes, and somewhat bewildering, as I discovered by the changes which it
wrought in the visages of my companions. In this respect, as compared
with natural daylight, there is the same difference as between truth
and falsehood, but if the reader have ever travelled through the dark
Valley, he will have learned to be thankful for any light that he could
get--if not from the sky above, then from the blasted soil beneath.
Such was the red brilliancy of these lamps that they appeared to build
walls of fire on both sides of the track, between which we held our
course at lightning speed, while a reverberating thunder filled the
Valley with its echoes. Had the engine run off the track,--a
catastrophe, it is whispered, by no means unprecedented,--the
bottomless pit, if there be any such place, would undoubtedly have
received us. Just as some dismal fooleries of this nature had made my
heart quake there came a tremendous shriek, careering along the valley
as if a thousand devils had burst their lungs to utter it, but which
proved to be merely the whistle of the engine on arriving at a
stopping-place.

The spot where we had now paused is the same that our friend Bunyan--a
truthful man, but infected with many fantastic notions--has designated,
in terms plainer than I like to repeat, as the mouth of the infernal
region. This, however, must be a mistake, inasmuch as Mr.
Smooth-it-away, while we remained in the smoky and lurid cavern, took
occasion to prove that Tophet has not even a metaphorical existence.
The place, he assured us, is no other than the crater of a half-extinct
volcano, in which the directors had caused forges to be set up for the
manufacture of railroad iron. Hence, also, is obtained a plentiful
supply of fuel for the use of the engines. Whoever had gazed into the
dismal obscurity of the broad cavern mouth, whence ever and anon darted
huge tongues of dusky flame, and had seen the strange, half-shaped
monsters, and visions of faces horribly grotesque, into which the smoke
seemed to wreathe itself, and had heard the awful murmurs, and shrieks,
and deep, shuddering whispers of the blast, sometimes forming
themselves into words almost articulate, would have seized upon Mr.
Smooth-it-away’s comfortable explanation as greedily as we did. The
inhabitants of the cavern, moreover, were unlovely personages, dark,
smoke-begrimed, generally deformed, with misshapen feet, and a glow of
dusky redness in their eyes as if their hearts had caught fire and were
blazing out of the upper windows. It struck me as a peculiarity that
the laborers at the forge and those who brought fuel to the engine,
when they began to draw short breath, positively emitted smoke from
their mouth and nostrils.

Among the idlers about the train, most of whom were puffing cigars
which they had lighted at the flame of the crater, I was perplexed to
notice several who, to my certain knowledge, had heretofore set forth
by railroad for the Celestial City. They looked dark, wild, and smoky,
with a singular resemblance, indeed, to the native inhabitants, like
whom, also, they had a disagreeable propensity to ill-natured gibes and
sneers, the habit of which had wrought a settled contortion of their
visages. Having been on speaking terms with one of these persons,--an
indolent, good-for-nothing fellow, who went by the name of
Take-it-easy,--I called him, and inquired what was his business there.

“Did you not start,” said I, “for the Celestial City?”

“That’s a fact,” said Mr. Take-it-easy, carelessly puffing some smoke
into my eyes. “But I heard such bad accounts that I never took pains to
climb the hill on which the city stands. No business doing, no fun
going on, nothing to drink, and no smoking allowed, and a thrumming of
church music from morning till night. I would not stay in such a place
if they offered me house room and living free.”

“But, my good Mr. Take-it-easy,” cried I, “why take up your residence
here, of all places in the world?”

“Oh,” said the loafer, with a grin, “it is very warm hereabouts, and I
meet with plenty of old acquaintances, and altogether the place suits
me. I hope to see you back again some day soon. A pleasant journey to
you.”

While he was speaking the bell of the engine rang, and we dashed away
after dropping a few passengers, but receiving no new ones. Rattling
onward through the Valley, we were dazzled with the fiercely gleaming
gas lamps, as before. But sometimes, in the dark of intense brightness,
grim faces, that bore the aspect and expression of individual sins, or
evil passions, seemed to thrust themselves through the veil of light,
glaring upon us, and stretching forth a great, dusky hand, as if to
impede our progress. I almost thought that they were my own sins that
appalled me there. These were freaks of imagination--nothing more,
certainly-mere delusions, which I ought to be heartily ashamed of; but
all through the Dark Valley I was tormented, and pestered, and
dolefully bewildered with the same kind of waking dreams. The mephitic
gases of that region intoxicate the brain. As the light of natural day,
however, began to struggle with the glow of the lanterns, these vain
imaginations lost their vividness, and finally vanished from the first
ray of sunshine that greeted our escape from the Valley of the Shadow
of Death. Ere we had gone a mile beyond it I could well-nigh have taken
my oath that this whole gloomy passage was a dream.

At the end of the valley, as John Bunyan mentions, is a cavern,
where, in his days, dwelt two cruel giants, Pope and Pagan, who had
strown the ground about their residence with the bones of slaughtered
pilgrims. These vile old troglodytes are no longer there; but into
their deserted cave another terrible giant has thrust himself, and
makes it his business to seize upon honest travellers and fatten
them for his table with plentiful meals of smoke, mist, moonshine,
raw potatoes, and sawdust. He is a German by birth, and is called
Giant Transcendentalist; but as to his form, his features, his
substance, and his nature generally, it is the chief peculiarity of
this huge miscreant that neither he for himself, nor anybody for him,
has ever been able to describe them. As we rushed by the cavern’s
mouth we caught a hasty glimpse of him, looking somewhat like an
ill-proportioned figure, but considerably more like a heap of fog and
duskiness. He shouted after us, but in so strange a phraseology that we
knew not what he meant, nor whether to be encouraged or affrighted.

It was late in the day when the train thundered into the ancient city
of Vanity, where Vanity Fair is still at the height of prosperity, and
exhibits an epitome of whatever is brilliant, gay, and fascinating
beneath the sun. As I purposed to make a considerable stay here, it
gratified me to learn that there is no longer the want of harmony
between the town’s-people and pilgrims, which impelled the former to
such lamentably mistaken measures as the persecution of Christian and
the fiery martyrdom of Faithful. On the contrary, as the new railroad
brings with it great trade and a constant influx of strangers, the lord
of Vanity Fair is its chief patron, and the capitalists of the city are
among the largest stockholders. Many passengers stop to take their
pleasure or make their profit in the Fair, instead of going onward to
the Celestial City. Indeed, such are the charms of the place that
people often affirm it to be the true and only heaven; stoutly
contending that there is no other, that those who seek further are mere
dreamers, and that, if the fabled brightness of the Celestial City lay
but a bare mile beyond the gates of Vanity, they would not be fools
enough to go thither. Without subscribing to these perhaps exaggerated
encomiums, I can truly say that my abode in the city was mainly
agreeable, and my intercourse with the inhabitants productive of much
amusement and instruction.

Being naturally of a serious turn, my attention was directed to the
solid advantages derivable from a residence here, rather than to the
effervescent pleasures which are the grand object with too many
visitants. The Christian reader, if he have had no accounts of the city
later than Bunyan’s time, will be surprised to hear that almost every
street has its church, and that the reverend clergy are nowhere held in
higher respect than at Vanity Fair. And well do they deserve such
honorable estimation; for the maxims of wisdom and virtue which fall
from their lips come from as deep a spiritual source, and tend to as
lofty a religious aim, as those of the sagest philosophers of old. In
justification of this high praise I need only mention the names of the
Rev. Mr. Shallow-deep, the Rev. Mr. Stumble-at-truth, that fine old
clerical character the Rev. Mr. This-today, who expects shortly to
resign his pulpit to the Rev. Mr. That-tomorrow; together with the Rev.
Mr. Bewilderment, the Rev. Mr. Clog-the-spirit, and, last and greatest,
the Rev. Dr. Wind-of-doctrine. The labors of these eminent divines are
aided by those of innumerable lecturers, who diffuse such a various
profundity, in all subjects of human or celestial science, that any man
may acquire an omnigenous erudition without the trouble of even
learning to read. Thus literature is etherealized by assuming for its
medium the human voice; and knowledge, depositing all its heavier
particles, except, doubtless, its gold becomes exhaled into a sound,
which forthwith steals into the ever-open ear of the community. These
ingenious methods constitute a sort of machinery, by which thought and
study are done to every person’s hand without his putting himself to
the slightest inconvenience in the matter. There is another species of
machine for the wholesale manufacture of individual morality. This
excellent result is effected by societies for all manner of virtuous
purposes, with which a man has merely to connect himself, throwing, as
it were, his quota of virtue into the common stock, and the president
and directors will take care that the aggregate amount be well applied.
All these, and other wonderful improvements in ethics, religion, and
literature, being made plain to my comprehension by the ingenious Mr.
Smooth-it-away, inspired me with a vast admiration of Vanity Fair.

It would fill a volume, in an age of pamphlets, were I to record all my
observations in this great capital of human business and pleasure.
There was an unlimited range of society--the powerful, the wise, the
witty, and the famous in every walk of life; princes, presidents,
poets, generals, artists, actors, and philanthropists,--all making
their own market at the fair, and deeming no price too exorbitant for
such commodities as hit their fancy. It was well worth one’s while,
even if he had no idea of buying or selling, to loiter through the
bazaars and observe the various sorts of traffic that were going
forward.

Some of the purchasers, I thought, made very foolish bargains. For
instance, a young man having inherited a splendid fortune, laid out a
considerable portion of it in the purchase of diseases, and finally
spent all the rest for a heavy lot of repentance and a suit of rags. A
very pretty girl bartered a heart as clear as crystal, and which seemed
her most valuable possession, for another jewel of the same kind, but
so worn and defaced as to be utterly worthless. In one shop there were
a great many crowns of laurel and myrtle, which soldiers, authors,
statesmen, and various other people pressed eagerly to buy; some
purchased these paltry wreaths with their lives, others by a toilsome
servitude of years, and many sacrificed whatever was most valuable, yet
finally slunk away without the crown. There was a sort of stock or
scrip, called Conscience, which seemed to be in great demand, and would
purchase almost anything. Indeed, few rich commodities were to be
obtained without paying a heavy sum in this particular stock, and a
man’s business was seldom very lucrative unless he knew precisely when
and how to throw his hoard of conscience into the market. Yet as this
stock was the only thing of permanent value, whoever parted with it was
sure to find himself a loser in the long run. Several of the
speculations were of a questionable character. Occasionally a member of
Congress recruited his pocket by the sale of his constituents; and I
was assured that public officers have often sold their country at very
moderate prices. Thousands sold their happiness for a whim. Gilded
chains were in great demand, and purchased with almost any sacrifice.
In truth, those who desired, according to the old adage, to sell
anything valuable for a song, might find customers all over the Fair;
and there were innumerable messes of pottage, piping hot, for such as
chose to buy them with their birthrights. A few articles, however,
could not be found genuine at Vanity Fair. If a customer wished to
renew his stock of youth the dealers offered him a set of false teeth
and an auburn wig; if he demanded peace of mind, they recommended opium
or a brandy bottle.

Tracts of land and golden mansions, situate in the Celestial City, were
often exchanged, at very disadvantageous rates, for a few years’ lease
of small, dismal, inconvenient tenements in Vanity Fair. Prince
Beelzebub himself took great interest in this sort of traffic, and
sometimes condescended to meddle with smaller matters. I once had the
pleasure to see him bargaining with a miser for his soul, which, after
much ingenious skirmishing on both sides, his highness succeeded in
obtaining at about the value of sixpence. The prince remarked with a
smile, that he was a loser by the transaction.

Day after day, as I walked the streets of Vanity, my manners and
deportment became more and more like those of the inhabitants. The
place began to seem like home; the idea of pursuing my travels to the
Celestial City was almost obliterated from my mind. I was reminded of
it, however, by the sight of the same pair of simple pilgrims at whom
we had laughed so heartily when Apollyon puffed smoke and steam into
their faces at the commencement of our journey. There they stood amidst
the densest bustle of Vanity; the dealers offering them their purple
and fine linen and jewels, the men of wit and humor gibing at them, a
pair of buxom ladies ogling them askance, while the benevolent Mr.
Smooth-it-away whispered some of his wisdom at their elbows, and
pointed to a newly-erected temple; but there were these worthy
simpletons, making the scene look wild and monstrous, merely by their
sturdy repudiation of all part in its business or pleasures.

One of them--his name was Stick-to-the-right--perceived in my face, I
suppose, a species of sympathy and almost admiration, which, to my own
great surprise, I could not help feeling for this pragmatic couple. It
prompted him to address me.

“Sir,” inquired he, with a sad, yet mild and kindly voice, “do you call
yourself a pilgrim?”

“Yes,” I replied, “my right to that appellation is indubitable. I am
merely a sojourner here in Vanity Fair, being bound to the Celestial
City by the new railroad.”

“Alas, friend,” rejoined Mr. Stick-to-the-truth, “I do assure you, and
beseech you to receive the truth of my words, that that whole concern
is a bubble. You may travel on it all your lifetime, were you to live
thousands of years, and yet never get beyond the limits of Vanity Fair.
Yea, though you should deem yourself entering the gates of the blessed
city, it will be nothing but a miserable delusion.”

“The Lord of the Celestial City,” began the other pilgrim, whose name
was Mr. Foot-it-to-heaven, “has refused, and will ever refuse, to grant
an act of incorporation for this railroad; and unless that be obtained,
no passenger can ever hope to enter his dominions. Wherefore every man
who buys a ticket must lay his account with losing the purchase money,
which is the value of his own soul.”

“Poh, nonsense!” said Mr. Smooth-it-away, taking my arm and leading me
off, “these fellows ought to be indicted for a libel. If the law stood
as it once did in Vanity Fair we should see them grinning through the
iron bars of the prison window.”

This incident made a considerable impression on my mind, and
contributed with other circumstances to indispose me to a permanent
residence in the city of Vanity; although, of course, I was not simple
enough to give up my original plan of gliding along easily and
commodiously by railroad. Still, I grew anxious to be gone. There was
one strange thing that troubled me. Amid the occupations or amusements
of the Fair, nothing was more common than for a person--whether at
feast, theatre, or church, or trafficking for wealth and honors, or
whatever he might be doing, to vanish like a soap bubble, and be never
more seen of his fellows; and so accustomed were the latter to such
little accidents that they went on with their business as quietly as if
nothing had happened. But it was otherwise with me.

Finally, after a pretty long residence at the Fair, I resumed my
journey towards the Celestial City, still with Mr. Smooth-it-away at my
side. At a short distance beyond the suburbs of Vanity we passed the
ancient silver mine, of which Demas was the first discoverer, and which
is now wrought to great advantage, supplying nearly all the coined
currency of the world. A little further onward was the spot where Lot’s
wife had stood forever under the semblance of a pillar of salt. Curious
travellers have long since carried it away piecemeal. Had all regrets
been punished as rigorously as this poor dame’s were, my yearning for
the relinquished delights of Vanity Fair might have produced a similar
change in my own corporeal substance, and left me a warning to future
pilgrims.

The next remarkable object was a large edifice, constructed of
moss-grown stone, but in a modern and airy style of architecture. The
engine came to a pause in its vicinity, with the usual tremendous
shriek.

“This was formerly the castle of the redoubted giant Despair,” observed
Mr. Smooth-it-away; “but since his death Mr. Flimsy-faith has repaired
it, and keeps an excellent house of entertainment here. It is one of
our stopping-places.”

“It seems but slightly put together,” remarked I, looking at the frail
yet ponderous walls. “I do not envy Mr. Flimsy-faith his habitation.
Some day it will thunder down upon the heads of the occupants.”

“We shall escape at all events,” said Mr. Smooth-it-away, “for Apollyon
is putting on the steam again.”

The road now plunged into a gorge of the Delectable Mountains, and
traversed the field where in former ages the blind men wandered and
stumbled among the tombs. One of these ancient tombstones had been
thrust across the track by some malicious person, and gave the train of
cars a terrible jolt. Far up the rugged side of a mountain I perceived
a rusty iron door, half overgrown with bushes and creeping plants, but
with smoke issuing from its crevices.

“Is that,” inquired I, “the very door in the hill-side which the
shepherds assured Christian was a by-way to hell?”

“That was a joke on the part of the shepherds,” said Mr. Smooth-itaway,
with a smile. “It is neither more nor less than the door of a cavern
which they use as a smoke-house for the preparation of mutton hams.”

My recollections of the journey are now, for a little space, dim and
confused, inasmuch as a singular drowsiness here overcame me, owing to
the fact that we were passing over the enchanted ground, the air of
which encourages a disposition to sleep. I awoke, however, as soon as
we crossed the borders of the pleasant land of Beulah. All the
passengers were rubbing their eyes, comparing watches, and
congratulating one another on the prospect of arriving so seasonably at
the journey’s end. The sweet breezes of this happy clime came
refreshingly to our nostrils; we beheld the glimmering gush of silver
fountains, overhung by trees of beautiful foliage and delicious fruit,
which were propagated by grafts from the celestial gardens. Once, as we
dashed onward like a hurricane, there was a flutter of wings and the
bright appearance of an angel in the air, speeding forth on some
heavenly mission. The engine now announced the close vicinity of the
final station-house by one last and horrible scream, in which there
seemed to be distinguishable every kind of wailing and woe, and bitter
fierceness of wrath, all mixed up with the wild laughter of a devil or
a madman. Throughout our journey, at every stopping-place, Apollyon had
exercised his ingenuity in screwing the most abominable sounds out of
the whistle of the steam-engine; but in this closing effort he outdid
himself and created an infernal uproar, which, besides disturbing the
peaceful inhabitants of Beulah, must have sent its discord even through
the celestial gates.

While the horrid clamor was still ringing in our ears we heard an
exulting strain, as if a thousand instruments of music, with height and
depth and sweetness in their tones, at once tender and triumphant, were
struck in unison, to greet the approach of some illustrious hero, who
had fought the good fight and won a glorious victory, and was come to
lay aside his battered arms forever. Looking to ascertain what might be
the occasion of this glad harmony, I perceived, on alighting from the
cars, that a multitude of shining ones had assembled on the other side
of the river, to welcome two poor pilgrims, who were just emerging from
its depths. They were the same whom Apollyon and ourselves had
persecuted with taunts, and gibes, and scalding steam, at the
commencement of our journey--the same whose unworldly aspect and
impressive words had stirred my conscience amid the wild revellers of
Vanity Fair.

“How amazingly well those men have got on,” cried I to Mr.
Smoothit--away. “I wish we were secure of as good a reception.”

“Never fear, never fear!” answered my friend. “Come, make haste; the
ferry boat will be off directly, and in three minutes you will be on
the other side of the river. No doubt you will find coaches to carry
you up to the city gates.”

A steam ferry boat, the last improvement on this important route, lay
at the river side, puffing, snorting, and emitting all those other
disagreeable utterances which betoken the departure to be immediate. I
hurried on board with the rest of the passengers, most of whom were in
great perturbation: some bawling out for their baggage; some tearing
their hair and exclaiming that the boat would explode or sink; some
already pale with the heaving of the stream; some gazing affrighted at
the ugly aspect of the steersman; and some still dizzy with the
slumberous influences of the Enchanted Ground. Looking back to the
shore, I was amazed to discern Mr. Smooth-it-away waving his hand in
token of farewell.

“Don’t you go over to the Celestial City?” exclaimed I.

“Oh, no!” answered he with a queer smile, and that same disagreeable
contortion of visage which I had remarked in the inhabitants of the
Dark Valley. “Oh, no! I have come thus far only for the sake of your
pleasant company. Good-by! We shall meet again.”

And then did my excellent friend Mr. Smooth-it-away laugh outright, in
the midst of which cachinnation a smoke-wreath issued from his mouth
and nostrils, while a twinkle of lurid flame darted out of either eye,
proving indubitably that his heart was all of a red blaze. The impudent
fiend! To deny the existence of Tophet, when he felt its fiery tortures
raging within his breast. I rushed to the side of the boat, intending
to fling myself on shore; but the wheels, as they began their
revolutions, threw a dash of spray over me so cold--so deadly cold,
with the chill that will never leave those waters until Death be
drowned in his own river--that with a shiver and a heartquake I awoke.
Thank Heaven it was a Dream!



THE PROCESSION OF LIFE

Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession. All of us
have our places, and are to move onward under the direction of the
Chief Marshal. The grand difficulty results from the invariably
mistaken principles on which the deputy marshals seek to arrange this
immense concourse of people, so much more numerous than those that
train their interminable length through streets and highways in times
of political excitement. Their scheme is ancient, far beyond the memory
of man or even the record of history, and has hitherto been very little
modified by the innate sense of something wrong, and the dim perception
of better methods, that have disquieted all the ages through which the
procession has taken its march. Its members are classified by the
merest external circumstances, and thus are more certain to be thrown
out of their true positions than if no principle of arrangement were
attempted. In one part of the procession we see men of landed estate or
moneyed capital gravely keeping each other company, for the
preposterous reason that they chance to have a similar standing in the
tax-gatherer’s book. Trades and professions march together with
scarcely a more real bond of union. In this manner, it cannot be
denied, people are disentangled from the mass and separated into
various classes according to certain apparent relations; all have some
artificial badge which the world, and themselves among the first, learn
to consider as a genuine characteristic. Fixing our attention on such
outside shows of similarity or difference, we lose sight of those
realities by which nature, fortune, fate, or Providence has constituted
for every man a brotherhood, wherein it is one great office of human
wisdom to classify him. When the mind has once accustomed itself to a
proper arrangement of the Procession of Life, or a true classification
of society, even though merely speculative, there is thenceforth a
satisfaction which pretty well suffices for itself without the aid of
any actual reformation in the order of march.

For instance, assuming to myself the power of marshalling the aforesaid
procession, I direct a trumpeter to send forth a blast loud enough to
be heard from hence to China; and a herald, with world-pervading voice,
to make proclamation for a certain class of mortals to take their
places. What shall be their principle of union? After all, an external
one, in comparison with many that might be found, yet far more real
than those which the world has selected for a similar purpose. Let all
who are afflicted with like physical diseases form themselves into
ranks.

Our first attempt at classification is not very successful. It may
gratify the pride of aristocracy to reflect that disease, more than any
other circumstance of human life, pays due observance to the
distinctions which rank and wealth, and poverty and lowliness, have
established among mankind. Some maladies are rich and precious, and
only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or purchased with gold.
Of this kind is the gout, which serves as a bond of brotherhood to the
purple-visaged gentry, who obey the herald’s voice, and painfully
hobble from all civilized regions of the globe to take their post in
the grand procession. In mercy to their toes, let us hope that the
march may not be long. The Dyspeptics, too, are people of good standing
in the world. For them the earliest salmon is caught in our eastern
rivers, and the shy woodcock stains the dry leaves with his blood in
his remotest haunts, and the turtle comes from the far Pacific Islands
to be gobbled up in soup. They can afford to flavor all their dishes
with indolence, which, in spite of the general opinion, is a sauce more
exquisitely piquant than appetite won by exercise. Apoplexy is another
highly respectable disease. We will rank together all who have the
symptom of dizziness in the brain, and as fast as any drop by the way
supply their places with new members of the board of aldermen.

On the other hand, here come whole tribes of people whose physical
lives are but a deteriorated variety of life, and themselves a meaner
species of mankind; so sad an effect has been wrought by the tainted
breath of cities, scanty and unwholesome food, destructive modes of
labor, and the lack of those moral supports that might partially have
counteracted such bad influences. Behold here a train of house
painters, all afflicted with a peculiar sort of colic. Next in place we
will marshal those workmen in cutlery, who have breathed a fatal
disorder into their lungs with the impalpable dust of steel. Tailors
and shoemakers, being sedentary men, will chiefly congregate into one
part of the procession and march under similar banners of disease; but
among them we may observe here and there a sickly student, who has left
his health between the leaves of classic volumes; and clerks, likewise,
who have caught their deaths on high official stools; and men of genius
too, who have written sheet after sheet with pens dipped in their
heart’s blood. These are a wretched quaking, short-breathed set. But
what is this cloud of pale-cheeked, slender girls, who disturb the ear
with the multiplicity of their short, dry coughs? They are
seamstresses, who have plied the daily and nightly needle in the
service of master tailors and close-fisted contractors, until now it is
almost time for each to hem the borders of her own shroud. Consumption
points their place in the procession. With their sad sisterhood are
intermingled many youthful maidens who have sickened in aristocratic
mansions, and for whose aid science has unavailingly searched its
volumes, and whom breathless love has watched. In our ranks the rich
maiden and the poor seamstress may walk arm in arm. We might find
innumerable other instances, where the bond of mutual disease--not to
speak of nation-sweeping pestilence--embraces high and low, and makes
the king a brother of the clown. But it is not hard to own that disease
is the natural aristocrat. Let him keep his state, and have his
established orders of rank, and wear his royal mantle of the color of a
fever flush and let the noble and wealthy boast their own physical
infirmities, and display their symptoms as the badges of high station.
All things considered, these are as proper subjects of human pride as
any relations of human rank that men can fix upon.

Sound again, thou deep-breathed trumpeter! and herald, with thy voice
of might, shout forth another summons that shall reach the old baronial
castles of Europe, and the rudest cabin of our western wilderness! What
class is next to take its place in the procession of mortal life? Let
it be those whom the gifts of intellect have united in a noble
brotherhood.

Ay, this is a reality, before which the conventional distinctions of
society melt away like a vapor when we would grasp it with the hand.
Were Byron now alive, and Burns, the first would come from his
ancestral abbey, flinging aside, although unwillingly, the inherited
honors of a thousand years, to take the arm of the mighty peasant who
grew immortal while he stooped behind his plough. These are gone; but
the hall, the farmer’s fireside, the hut, perhaps the palace, the
counting-room, the workshop, the village, the city, life’s high places
and low ones, may all produce their poets, whom a common temperament
pervades like an electric sympathy. Peer or ploughman, we will muster
them pair by pair and shoulder to shoulder. Even society, in its most
artificial state, consents to this arrangement. These factory girls
from Lowell shall mate themselves with the pride of drawing-rooms and
literary circles, the bluebells in fashion’s nosegay, the Sapphos, and
Montagues, and Nortons of the age. Other modes of intellect bring
together as strange companies. Silk-gowned professor of languages, give
your arm to this sturdy blacksmith, and deem yourself honored by the
conjunction, though you behold him grimy from the anvil. All varieties
of human speech are like his mother tongue to this rare man.
Indiscriminately let those take their places, of whatever rank they
come, who possess the kingly gifts to lead armies or to sway a
people--Nature’s generals, her lawgivers, her kings, and with them also
the deep philosophers who think the thought in one generation that is
to revolutionize society in the next. With the hereditary legislator in
whom eloquence is a far-descended attainment--a rich echo repeated by
powerful voices from Cicero downward--we will match some wondrous
backwoodsman, who has caught a wild power of language from the breeze
among his native forest boughs. But we may safely leave these brethren
and sisterhood to settle their own congenialities. Our ordinary
distinctions become so trifling, so impalpable, so ridiculously
visionary, in comparison with a classification founded on truth, that
all talk about the matter is immediately a common place.

Yet the longer I reflect the less am I satisfied with the idea of
forming a separate class of mankind on the basis of high intellectual
power. At best it is but a higher development of innate gifts common to
all. Perhaps, moreover, he whose genius appears deepest and truest
excels his fellows in nothing save the knack of expression; he throws
out occasionally a lucky hint at truths of which every human soul is
profoundly, though unutterably, conscious. Therefore, though we suffer
the brotherhood of intellect to march onward together, it may be
doubted whether their peculiar relation will not begin to vanish as
soon as the procession shall have passed beyond the circle of this
present world. But we do not classify for eternity.

And next, let the trumpet pour forth a funereal wail, and the herald’s
voice give breath in one vast cry to all the groans and grievous
utterances that are audible throughout the earth. We appeal now to the
sacred bond of sorrow, and summon the great multitude who labor under
similar afflictions to take their places in the march.

How many a heart that would have been insensible to any other call has
responded to the doleful accents of that voice! It has gone far and
wide, and high and low, and left scarcely a mortal roof unvisited.
Indeed, the principle is only too universal for our purpose, and,
unless we limit it, will quite break up our classification of mankind,
and convert the whole procession into a funeral train. We will
therefore be at some pains to discriminate. Here comes a lonely rich
man: he has built a noble fabric for his dwelling-house, with a front
of stately architecture and marble floors and doors of precious woods;
the whole structure is as beautiful as a dream and as substantial as
the native rock. But the visionary shapes of a long posterity, for
whose home this mansion was intended, have faded into nothingness since
the death of the founder’s only son. The rich man gives a glance at his
sable garb in one of the splendid mirrors of his drawing-room, and
descending a flight of lofty steps instinctively offers his arm to
yonder poverty stricken widow in the rusty black bonnet, and with a
check apron over her patched gown. The sailor boy, who was her sole
earthly stay, was washed overboard in a late tempest. This couple from
the palace and the almshouse are but the types of thousands more who
represent the dark tragedy of life and seldom quarrel for the upper
parts. Grief is such a leveller, with its own dignity and its own
humility, that the noble and the peasant, the beggar and the monarch,
will waive their pretensions to external rank without the officiousness
of interference on our part. If pride--the influence of the world’s
false distinctions--remain in the heart, then sorrow lacks the
earnestness which makes it holy and reverend. It loses its reality and
becomes a miserable shadow. On this ground we have an opportunity to
assign over multitudes who would willingly claim places here to other
parts of the procession. If the mourner have anything dearer than his
grief he must seek his true position elsewhere. There are so many
unsubstantial sorrows which the necessity of our mortal state begets on
idleness, that an observer, casting aside sentiment, is sometimes led
to question whether there be any real woe, except absolute physical
suffering and the loss of closest friends. A crowd who exhibit what
they deem to be broken hearts--and among them many lovelorn maids and
bachelors, and men of disappointed ambition in arts or politics, and
the poor who were once rich, or who have sought to be rich in vain--the
great majority of these may ask admittance into some other fraternity.
There is no room here. Perhaps we may institute a separate class where
such unfortunates will naturally fall into the procession. Meanwhile
let them stand aside and patiently await their time.

If our trumpeter can borrow a note from the doomsday trumpet blast, let
him sound it now. The dread alarum should make the earth quake to its
centre, for the herald is about to address mankind with a summons to
which even the purest mortal may be sensible of some faint responding
echo in his breast. In many bosoms it will awaken a still small voice
more terrible than its own reverberating uproar.

The hideous appeal has swept around the globe. Come, all ye guilty
ones, and rank yourselves in accordance with the brotherhood of crime.
This, indeed, is an awful summons. I almost tremble to look at the
strange partnerships that begin to be formed, reluctantly, but by the
invincible necessity of like to like in this part of the procession. A
forger from the state prison seizes the arm of a distinguished
financier. How indignantly does the latter plead his fair reputation
upon ’Change, and insist that his operations, by their magnificence of
scope, were removed into quite another sphere of morality than those of
his pitiful companion! But let him cut the connection if he can. Here
comes a murderer with his clanking chains, and pairs himself--horrible
to tell--with as pure and upright a man, in all observable respects, as
ever partook of the consecrated bread and wine. He is one of those,
perchance the most hopeless of all sinners, who practise such an
exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be
hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal
frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting
girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the
by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous
matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures,
born to vice as their sole and natural inheritance, can be no fit
associates for women who have been guarded round about by all the
proprieties of domestic life, and who could not err unless they first
created the opportunity. Oh no; it must be merely the impertinence of
those unblushing hussies; and we can only wonder how such respectable
ladies should have responded to a summons that was not meant for them.

We shall make short work of this miserable class, each member of which
is entitled to grasp any other member’s hand, by that vile degradation
wherein guilty error has buried all alike. The foul fiend to whom it
properly belongs must relieve us of our loathsome task. Let the bond
servants of sin pass on. But neither man nor woman, in whom good
predominates, will smile or sneer, nor bid the Rogues’ March be played,
in derision of their array. Feeling within their breasts a shuddering
sympathy, which at least gives token of the sin that might have been,
they will thank God for any place in the grand procession of human
existence, save among those most wretched ones. Many, however, will be
astonished at the fatal impulse that drags them thitherward. Nothing is
more remarkable than the various deceptions by which guilt conceals
itself from the perpetrator’s conscience, and oftenest, perhaps, by the
splendor of its garments. Statesmen, rulers, generals, and all men who
act over an extensive sphere, are most liable to be deluded in this
way; they commit wrong, devastation, and murder, on so grand a scale,
that it impresses them as speculative rather than actual; but in our
procession we find them linked in detestable conjunction with the
meanest criminals whose deeds have the vulgarity of petty details. Here
the effect of circumstance and accident is done away, and a man finds
his rank according to the spirit of his crime, in whatever shape it may
have been developed.

We have called the Evil; now let us call the Good. The trumpet’s brazen
throat should pour heavenly music over the earth, and the herald’s
voice go forth with the sweetness of an angel’s accents, as if to
summon each upright man to his reward. But how is this? Does none
answer to the call? Not one: for the just, the pure, the true, and all
who might most worthily obey it, shrink sadly back, as most conscious
of error and imperfection. Then let the summons be to those whose
pervading principle is Love. This classification will embrace all the
truly good, and none in whose souls there exists not something that may
expand itself into a heaven, both of well-doing and felicity.

The first that presents himself is a man of wealth, who has bequeathed
the bulk of his property to a hospital; his ghost, methinks, would have
a better right here than his living body. But here they come, the
genuine benefactors of their race. Some have wandered about the earth
with pictures of bliss in their imagination, and with hearts that
shrank sensitively from the idea of pain and woe, yet have studied all
varieties of misery that human nature can endure. The prison, the
insane asylum, the squalid chamber of the almshouse, the manufactory
where the demon of machinery annihilates the human soul, and the cotton
field where God’s image becomes a beast of burden; to these and every
other scene where man wrongs or neglects his brother, the apostles of
humanity have penetrated. This missionary, black with India’s burning
sunshine, shall give his arm to a pale-faced brother who has made
himself familiar with the infected alleys and loathsome haunts of vice
in one of our own cities. The generous founder of a college shall be
the partner of a maiden lady of narrow substance, one of whose good
deeds it has been to gather a little school of orphan children. If the
mighty merchant whose benefactions are reckoned by thousands of dollars
deem himself worthy, let him join the procession with her whose love
has proved itself by watchings at the sick-bed, and all those lowly
offices which bring her into actual contact with disease and
wretchedness. And with those whose impulses have guided them to
benevolent actions, we will rank others to whom Providence has assigned
a different tendency and different powers. Men who have spent their
lives in generous and holy contemplation for the human race; those who,
by a certain heavenliness of spirit, have purified the atmosphere
around them, and thus supplied a medium in which good and high things
may be projected and performed--give to these a lofty place among the
benefactors of mankind, although no deed, such as the world calls
deeds, may be recorded of them. There are some individuals of whom we
cannot conceive it proper that they should apply their hands to any
earthly instrument, or work out any definite act; and others, perhaps
not less high, to whom it is an essential attribute to labor in body as
well as spirit for the welfare of their brethren. Thus, if we find a
spiritual sage whose unseen, inestimable influence has exalted the
moral standard of mankind, we will choose for his companion some poor
laborer who has wrought for love in the potato field of a neighbor
poorer than himself.

We have summoned this various multitude--and, to the credit of our
nature, it is a large one--on the principle of Love. It is singular,
nevertheless, to remark the shyness that exists among many members of
the present class, all of whom we might expect to recognize one another
by the freemasonry of mutual goodness, and to embrace like brethren,
giving God thanks for such various specimens of human excellence. But
it is far otherwise. Each sect surrounds its own righteousness with a
hedge of thorns. It is difficult for the good Christian to acknowledge
the good Pagan; almost impossible for the good Orthodox to grasp the
hand of the good Unitarian, leaving to their Creator to settle the
matters in dispute, and giving their mutual efforts strongly and
trustingly to whatever right thing is too evident to be mistaken. Then
again, though the heart be large, yet the mind is often of such
moderate dimensions as to be exclusively filled up with one idea. When
a good man has long devoted himself to a particular kind of
beneficence--to one species of reform--he is apt to become narrowed
into the limits of the path wherein he treads, and to fancy that there
is no other good to be done on earth but that self-same good to which
he has put his hand, and in the very mode that best suits his own
conceptions. All else is worthless. His scheme must be wrought out by
the united strength of the whole world’s stock of love, or the world is
no longer worthy of a position in the universe. Moreover, powerful
Truth, being the rich grape juice expressed from the vineyard of the
ages, has an intoxicating quality, when imbibed by any save a powerful
intellect, and often, as it were, impels the quaffer to quarrel in his
cups. For such reasons, strange to say, it is harder to contrive a
friendly arrangement of these brethren of love and righteousness, in
the procession of life, than to unite even the wicked, who, indeed, are
chained together by their crimes. The fact is too preposterous for
tears, too lugubrious for laughter.

But, let good men push and elbow one another as they may during their
earthly march, all will be peace among them when the honorable array of
their procession shall tread on heavenly ground. There they will
doubtless find that they have been working each for the other’s cause,
and that every well-delivered stroke, which, with an honest purpose any
mortal struck, even for a narrow object, was indeed stricken for the
universal cause of good. Their own view may be bounded by country,
creed, profession, the diversities of individual character--but above
them all is the breadth of Providence. How many who have deemed
themselves antagonists will smile hereafter, when they look back upon
the world’s wide harvest field, and perceive that, in unconscious
brotherhood, they were helping to bind the selfsame sheaf!

But, come! The sun is hastening westward, while the march of human
life, that never paused before, is delayed by our attempt to rearrange
its order. It is desirable to find some comprehensive principle, that
shall render our task easier by bringing thousands into the ranks where
hitherto we have brought one. Therefore let the trumpet, if possible,
split its brazen throat with a louder note than ever, and the herald
summon all mortals, who, from whatever cause, have lost, or never
found, their proper places in the wold.

Obedient to this call, a great multitude come together, most of them
with a listless gait, betokening weariness of soul, yet with a gleam of
satisfaction in their faces, at a prospect of at length reaching those
positions which, hitherto, they have vainly sought. But here will be
another disappointment; for we can attempt no more than merely to
associate in one fraternity all who are afflicted with the same vague
trouble. Some great mistake in life is the chief condition of
admittance into this class. Here are members of the learned
professions, whom Providence endowed with special gifts for the plough,
the forge, and the wheelbarrow, or for the routine of unintellectual
business. We will assign to them, as partners in the march, those lowly
laborers and handicraftsmen, who have pined, as with a dying thirst,
after the unattainable fountains of knowledge. The latter have lost
less than their companions; yet more, because they deem it infinite.
Perchance the two species of unfortunates may comfort one another. Here
are Quakers with the instinct of battle in them; and men of war who
should have worn the broad brim. Authors shall be ranked here whom some
freak of Nature, making game of her poor children, had imbued with the
confidence of genius and strong desire of fame, but has favored with no
corresponding power; and others, whose lofty gifts were unaccompanied
with the faculty of expression, or any of that earthly machinery by
which ethereal endowments must be manifested to mankind. All these,
therefore, are melancholy laughing-stocks. Next, here are honest and
well intentioned persons, who by a want of tact--by inaccurate
perceptions--by a distorting imagination--have been kept continually at
cross purposes with the world and bewildered upon the path of life. Let
us see if they can confine themselves within the line of our
procession. In this class, likewise, we must assign places to those who
have encountered that worst of ill success, a higher fortune than their
abilities could vindicate; writers, actors, painters, the pets of a
day, but whose laurels wither unrenewed amid their hoary hair;
politicians, whom some malicious contingency of affairs has thrust into
conspicuous station, where, while the world stands gazing at them, the
dreary consciousness of imbecility makes them curse their birth hour.
To such men, we give for a companion him whose rare talents, which
perhaps require a Revolution for their exercise, are buried in the tomb
of sluggish circumstances.

Not far from these, we must find room for one whose success has been of
the wrong kind; the man who should have lingered in the cloisters of a
university, digging new treasures out of the Herculaneum of antique
lore, diffusing depth and accuracy of literature throughout his
country, and thus making for himself a great and quiet fame. But the
outward tendencies around him have proved too powerful for his inward
nature, and have drawn him into the arena of political tumult, there to
contend at disadvantage, whether front to front, or side by side, with
the brawny giants of actual life. He becomes, it may be, a name for
brawling parties to bandy to and fro, a legislator of the Union; a
governor of his native state; an ambassador to the courts of kings or
queens; and the world may deem him a man of happy stars. But not so the
wise; and not so himself, when he looks through his experience, and
sighs to miss that fitness, the one invaluable touch which makes all
things true and real. So much achieved, yet how abortive is his life!
Whom shall we choose for his companion? Some weak framed blacksmith,
perhaps, whose delicacy of muscle might have suited a tailor’s
shopboard better than the anvil.

Shall we bid the trumpet sound again? It is hardly worth the while.
There remain a few idle men of fortune, tavern and grog-shop loungers,
lazzaroni, old bachelors, decaying maidens, and people of crooked
intellect or temper, all of whom may find their like, or some tolerable
approach to it, in the plentiful diversity of our latter class. There
too, as his ultimate destiny, must we rank the dreamer, who, all his
life long, has cherished the idea that he was peculiarly apt for
something, but never could determine what it was; and there the most
unfortunate of men, whose purpose it has been to enjoy life’s
pleasures, but to avoid a manful struggle with its toil and sorrow. The
remainder, if any, may connect themselves with whatever rank of the
procession they shall find best adapted to their tastes and
consciences. The worst possible fate would be to remain behind,
shivering in the solitude of time, while all the world is on the move
towards eternity. Our attempt to classify society is now complete. The
result may be anything but perfect; yet better--to give it the very
lowest praise--than the antique rule of the herald’s office, or the
modern one of the tax-gatherer, whereby the accidents and superficial
attributes with which the real nature of individuals has least to do,
are acted upon as the deepest characteristics of mankind. Our task is
done! Now let the grand procession move!

Yet pause a while! We had forgotten the Chief Marshal.

Hark! That world-wide swell of solemn music, with the clang of a mighty
bell breaking forth through its regulated uproar, announces his
approach. He comes; a severe, sedate, immovable, dark rider, waving his
truncheon of universal sway, as he passes along the lengthened line, on
the pale horse of the Revelation. It is Death! Who else could assume
the guidance of a procession that comprehends all humanity? And if
some, among these many millions, should deem themselves classed amiss,
yet let them take to their hearts the comfortable truth that Death
levels us all into one great brotherhood, and that another state of
being will surely rectify the wrong of this. Then breathe thy wail upon
the earth’s wailing wind, thou band of melancholy music, made up of
every sigh that the human heart, unsatisfied, has uttered! There is yet
triumph in thy tones. And now we move! Beggars in their rags, and Kings
trailing the regal purple in the dust; the Warrior’s gleaming helmet;
the Priest in his sable robe; the hoary Grandsire, who has run life’s
circle and come back to childhood; the ruddy School-boy with his golden
curls, frisking along the march; the Artisan’s stuff jacket; the
Noble’s star-decorated coat;--the whole presenting a motley spectacle,
yet with a dusky grandeur brooding over it. Onward, onward, into that
dimness where the lights of Time which have blazed along the
procession, are flickering in their sockets! And whither! We know not;
and Death, hitherto our leader, deserts us by the wayside, as the tramp
of our innumerable footsteps echoes beyond his sphere. He knows not,
more than we, our destined goal. But God, who made us, knows, and will
not leave us on our toilsome and doubtful march, either to wander in
infinite uncertainty, or perish by the way!



FEATHERTOP: A MORALIZED LEGEND

“Dickon,” cried Mother Rigby, “a coal for my pipe!”

The pipe was in the old dame’s mouth when she said these words. She had
thrust it there after filling it with tobacco, but without stooping to
light it at the hearth, where indeed there was no appearance of a fire
having been kindled that morning. Forthwith, however, as soon as the
order was given, there was an intense red glow out of the bowl of the
pipe, and a whiff of smoke came from Mother Rigby’s lips. Whence the
coal came, and how brought thither by an invisible hand, I have never
been able to discover.

“Good!” quoth Mother Rigby, with a nod of her head. “Thank ye, Dickon!
And now for making this scarecrow. Be within call, Dickon, in case I
need you again.”

The good woman had risen thus early (for as yet it was scarcely
sunrise) in order to set about making a scarecrow, which she intended
to put in the middle of her corn-patch. It was now the latter week of
May, and the crows and blackbirds had already discovered the little,
green, rolledup leaf of the Indian corn just peeping out of the soil.
She was determined, therefore, to contrive as lifelike a scarecrow as
ever was seen, and to finish it immediately, from top to toe, so that
it should begin its sentinel’s duty that very morning. Now Mother Rigby
(as everybody must have heard) was one of the most cunning and potent
witches in New England, and might, with very little trouble, have made
a scarecrow ugly enough to frighten the minister himself. But on this
occasion, as she had awakened in an uncommonly pleasant humor, and was
further dulcified by her pipe tobacco, she resolved to produce
something fine, beautiful, and splendid, rather than hideous and
horrible.

“I don’t want to set up a hobgoblin in my own corn-patch, and almost at
my own doorstep,” said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing out a whiff of
smoke; “I could do it if I pleased, but I’m tired of doing marvellous
things, and so I’ll keep within the bounds of every-day business just
for variety’s sake. Besides, there is no use in scaring the little
children for a mile roundabout, though ’t is true I’m a witch.”

It was settled, therefore, in her own mind, that the scarecrow should
represent a fine gentleman of the period, so far as the materials at
hand would allow. Perhaps it may be as well to enumerate the chief of
the articles that went to the composition of this figure.

The most important item of all, probably, although it made so little
show, was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken many an
airy gallop at midnight, and which now served the scarecrow by way of a
spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its
arms was a disabled flail which used to be wielded by Goodman Rigby,
before his spouse worried him out of this troublesome world; the other,
if I mistake not, was composed of the pudding stick and a broken rung
of a chair, tied loosely together at the elbow. As for its legs, the
right was a hoe handle, and the left an undistinguished and
miscellaneous stick from the woodpile. Its lungs, stomach, and other
affairs of that kind were nothing better than a meal bag stuffed with
straw. Thus we have made out the skeleton and entire corporosity of the
scarecrow, with the exception of its head; and this was admirably
supplied by a somewhat withered and shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother
Rigby cut two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth, leaving a
bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass for a nose. It was really
quite a respectable face.

“I’ve seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any rate,” said Mother
Rigby. “And many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin head, as well as my
scarecrow.”

But the clothes, in this case, were to be the making of the man. So the
good old woman took down from a peg an ancient plum-colored coat of
London make, and with relics of embroidery on its seams, cuffs,
pocket-flaps, and button-holes, but lamentably worn and faded, patched
at the elbows, tattered at the skirts, and threadbare all over. On the
left breast was a round hole, whence either a star of nobility had been
rent away, or else the hot heart of some former wearer had scorched it
through and through. The neighbors said that this rich garment belonged
to the Black Man’s wardrobe, and that he kept it at Mother Rigby’s
cottage for the convenience of slipping it on whenever he wished to
make a grand appearance at the governor’s table. To match the coat
there was a velvet waistcoat of very ample size, and formerly
embroidered with foliage that had been as brightly golden as the maple
leaves in October, but which had now quite vanished out of the
substance of the velvet. Next came a pair of scarlet breeches, once
worn by the French governor of Louisbourg, and the knees of which had
touched the lower step of the throne of Louis le Grand. The Frenchman
had given these small-clothes to an Indian powwow, who parted with them
to the old witch for a gill of strong waters, at one of their dances in
the forest. Furthermore, Mother Rigby produced a pair of silk stockings
and put them on the figure’s legs, where they showed as unsubstantial
as a dream, with the wooden reality of the two sticks making itself
miserably apparent through the holes. Lastly, she put her dead
husband’s wig on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and surmounted the
whole with a dusty three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the longest
tail feather of a rooster.

Then the old dame stood the figure up in a corner of her cottage and
chuckled to behold its yellow semblance of a visage, with its nobby
little nose thrust into the air. It had a strangely self-satisfied
aspect, and seemed to say, “Come look at me!”

“And you are well worth looking at, that’s a fact!” quoth Mother Rigby,
in admiration at her own handiwork. “I’ve made many a puppet since I’ve
been a witch, but methinks this is the finest of them all. ’Tis almost
too good for a scarecrow. And, by the by, I’ll just fill a fresh pipe
of tobacco and then take him out to the corn-patch.”

While filling her pipe the old woman continued to gaze with almost
motherly affection at the figure in the corner. To say the truth,
whether it were chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft, there was
something wonderfully human in this ridiculous shape, bedizened with
its tattered finery; and as for the countenance, it appeared to shrivel
its yellow surface into a grin--a funny kind of expression betwixt
scorn and merriment, as if it understood itself to be a jest at
mankind. The more Mother Rigby looked the better she was pleased.

“Dickon,” cried she sharply, “another coal for my pipe!”

Hardly had she spoken, than, just as before, there was a red-glowing
coal on the top of the tobacco. She drew in a long whiff and puffed it
forth again into the bar of morning sunshine which struggled through
the one dusty pane of her cottage window. Mother Rigby always liked to
flavor her pipe with a coal of fire from the particular chimney corner
whence this had been brought. But where that chimney corner might be,
or who brought the coal from it,--further than that the invisible
messenger seemed to respond to the name of Dickon,--I cannot tell.

“That puppet yonder,” thought Mother Rigby, still with her eyes fixed
on the scarecrow, “is too good a piece of work to stand all summer in a
corn-patch, frightening away the crows and blackbirds. He’s capable of
better things. Why, I’ve danced with a worse one, when partners
happened to be scarce, at our witch meetings in the forest! What if I
should let him take his chance among the other men of straw and empty
fellows who go bustling about the world?”

The old witch took three or four more whiffs of her pipe and smiled.

“He’ll meet plenty of his brethren at every street corner!” continued
she. “Well; I didn’t mean to dabble in witchcraft to-day, further than
the lighting of my pipe, but a witch I am, and a witch I’m likely to
be, and there’s no use trying to shirk it. I’ll make a man of my
scarecrow, were it only for the joke’s sake!”

While muttering these words, Mother Rigby took the pipe from her own
mouth and thrust it into the crevice which represented the same feature
in the pumpkin visage of the scarecrow.

“Puff, darling, puff!” said she. “Puff away, my fine fellow! your life
depends on it!”

This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly, to be addressed to a mere
thing of sticks, straw, and old clothes, with nothing better than a
shrivelled pumpkin for a head,--as we know to have been the scarecrow’s
case. Nevertheless, as we must carefully hold in remembrance, Mother
Rigby was a witch of singular power and dexterity; and, keeping this
fact duly before our minds, we shall see nothing beyond credibility in
the remarkable incidents of our story. Indeed, the great difficulty
will be at once got over, if we can only bring ourselves to believe
that, as soon as the old dame bade him puff, there came a whiff of
smoke from the scarecrow’s mouth. It was the very feeblest of whiffs,
to be sure; but it was followed by another and another, each more
decided than the preceding one.

“Puff away, my pet! puff away, my pretty one!” Mother Rigby kept
repeating, with her pleasantest smile. “It is the breath of life to ye;
and that you may take my word for.”

Beyond all question the pipe was bewitched. There must have been a
spell either in the tobacco or in the fiercely-glowing coal that so
mysteriously burned on top of it, or in the pungently-aromatic smoke
which exhaled from the kindled weed. The figure, after a few doubtful
attempts at length blew forth a volley of smoke extending all the way
from the obscure corner into the bar of sunshine. There it eddied and
melted away among the motes of dust. It seemed a convulsive effort; for
the two or three next whiffs were fainter, although the coal still
glowed and threw a gleam over the scarecrow’s visage. The old witch
clapped her skinny hands together, and smiled encouragingly upon her
handiwork. She saw that the charm worked well. The shrivelled, yellow
face, which heretofore had been no face at all, had already a thin,
fantastic haze, as it were of human likeness, shifting to and fro
across it; sometimes vanishing entirely, but growing more perceptible
than ever with the next whiff from the pipe. The whole figure, in like
manner, assumed a show of life, such as we impart to ill-defined shapes
among the clouds, and half deceive ourselves with the pastime of our
own fancy.

If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it may be doubted whether
there was any real change, after all, in the sordid, wornout worthless,
and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow; but merely a spectral
illusion, and a cunning effect of light and shade so colored and
contrived as to delude the eyes of most men. The miracles of witchcraft
seem always to have had a very shallow subtlety; and, at least, if the
above explanation do not hit the truth of the process, I can suggest no
better.

“Well puffed, my pretty lad!” still cried old Mother Rigby. “Come,
another good stout whiff, and let it be with might and main. Puff for
thy life, I tell thee! Puff out of the very bottom of thy heart, if any
heart thou hast, or any bottom to it! Well done, again! Thou didst suck
in that mouthful as if for the pure love of it.”

And then the witch beckoned to the scarecrow, throwing so much magnetic
potency into her gesture that it seemed as if it must inevitably be
obeyed, like the mystic call of the loadstone when it summons the iron.

“Why lurkest thou in the corner, lazy one?” said she. “Step forth! Thou
hast the world before thee!”

Upon my word, if the legend were not one which I heard on my
grandmother’s knee, and which had established its place among things
credible before my childish judgment could analyze its probability, I
question whether I should have the face to tell it now.

In obedience to Mother Rigby’s word, and extending its arm as if to
reach her outstretched hand, the figure made a step forward--a kind of
hitch and jerk, however, rather than a step--then tottered and almost
lost its balance. What could the witch expect? It was nothing, after
all, but a scarecrow stuck upon two sticks. But the strong-willed old
beldam scowled, and beckoned, and flung the energy of her purpose so
forcibly at this poor combination of rotten wood, and musty straw, and
ragged garments, that it was compelled to show itself a man, in spite
of the reality of things. So it stepped into the bar of sunshine. There
it stood, poor devil of a contrivance that it was!--with only the
thinnest vesture of human similitude about it, through which was
evident the stiff, rickety, incongruous, faded, tattered,
good-for-nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a heap
upon the floor, as conscious of its own unworthiness to be erect. Shall
I confess the truth? At its present point of vivification, the
scarecrow reminds me of some of the lukewarm and abortive characters,
composed of heterogeneous materials, used for the thousandth time, and
never worth using, with which romance writers (and myself, no doubt,
among the rest) have so overpeopled the world of fiction.

But the fierce old hag began to get angry and show a glimpse of her
diabolic nature (like a snake’s head, peeping with a hiss out of her
bosom), at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing which she had taken
the trouble to put together.

“Puff away, wretch!” cried she, wrathfully. “Puff, puff, puff, thou
thing of straw and emptiness! thou rag or two! thou meal bag! thou
pumpkin head! thou nothing! Where shall I find a name vile enough to
call thee by? Puff, I say, and suck in thy fantastic life with the
smoke! else I snatch the pipe from thy mouth and hurl thee where that
red coal came from.”

Thus threatened, the unhappy scarecrow had nothing for it but to puff
away for dear life. As need was, therefore, it applied itself lustily
to the pipe, and sent forth such abundant volleys of tobacco smoke that
the small cottage kitchen became all vaporous. The one sunbeam
struggled mistily through, and could but imperfectly define the image
of the cracked and dusty window pane on the opposite wall. Mother
Rigby, meanwhile, with one brown arm akimbo and the other stretched
towards the figure, loomed grimly amid the obscurity with such port and
expression as when she was wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her
victims and stand at the bedside to enjoy their agony. In fear and
trembling did this poor scarecrow puff. But its efforts, it must be
acknowledged, served an excellent purpose; for, with each successive
whiff, the figure lost more and more of its dizzy and perplexing
tenuity and seemed to take denser substance. Its very garments,
moreover, partook of the magical change, and shone with the gloss of
novelty and glistened with the skilfully embroidered gold that had long
ago been rent away. And, half revealed among the smoke, a yellow visage
bent its lustreless eyes on Mother Rigby.

At last the old witch clinched her fist and shook it at the figure.
Not that she was positively angry, but merely acting on the
principle--perhaps untrue, or not the only truth, though as high a one
as Mother Rigby could be expected to attain--that feeble and torpid
natures, being incapable of better inspiration, must be stirred up
by fear. But here was the crisis. Should she fail in what she now
sought to effect, it was her ruthless purpose to scatter the miserable
simulacre into its original elements.

“Thou hast a man’s aspect,” said she, sternly. “Have also the echo and
mockery of a voice! I bid thee speak!”

The scarecrow gasped, struggled, and at length emitted a murmur, which
was so incorporated with its smoky breath that you could scarcely tell
whether it were indeed a voice or only a whiff of tobacco. Some
narrators of this legend hold the opinion that Mother Rigby’s
conjurations and the fierceness of her will had compelled a familiar
spirit into the figure, and that the voice was his.

“Mother,” mumbled the poor stifled voice, “be not so awful with me! I
would fain speak; but being without wits, what can I say?”

“Thou canst speak, darling, canst thou?” cried Mother Rigby, relaxing
her grim countenance into a smile. “And what shalt thou say, quoth-a!
Say, indeed! Art thou of the brotherhood of the empty skull, and
demandest of me what thou shalt say? Thou shalt say a thousand things,
and saying them a thousand times over, thou shalt still have said
nothing! Be not afraid, I tell thee! When thou comest into the world
(whither I purpose sending thee forthwith) thou shalt not lack the
wherewithal to talk. Talk! Why, thou shall babble like a mill-stream,
if thou wilt. Thou hast brains enough for that, I trow!”

“At your service, mother,” responded the figure.

“And that was well said, my pretty one,” answered Mother Rigby. “Then
thou speakest like thyself, and meant nothing. Thou shalt have a
hundred such set phrases, and five hundred to the boot of them. And
now, darling, I have taken so much pains with thee and thou art so
beautiful, that, by my troth, I love thee better than any witch’s
puppet in the world; and I’ve made them of all sorts--clay, wax, straw,
sticks, night fog, morning mist, sea foam, and chimney smoke. But thou
art the very best. So give heed to what I say.”

“Yes, kind mother,” said the figure, “with all my heart!”

“With all thy heart!” cried the old witch, setting her hands to her
sides and laughing loudly. “Thou hast such a pretty way of speaking.
With all thy heart! And thou didst put thy hand to the left side of thy
waistcoat as if thou really hadst one!”

So now, in high good humor with this fantastic contrivance of hers,
Mother Rigby told the scarecrow that it must go and play its part in
the great world, where not one man in a hundred, she affirmed, was
gifted with more real substance than itself. And, that he might hold up
his head with the best of them, she endowed him, on the spot, with an
unreckonable amount of wealth. It consisted partly of a gold mine in
Eldorado, and of ten thousand shares in a broken bubble, and of half a
million acres of vineyard at the North Pole, and of a castle in the
air, and a chateau in Spain, together with all the rents and income
therefrom accruing. She further made over to him the cargo of a certain
ship, laden with salt of Cadiz, which she herself, by her necromantic
arts, had caused to founder, ten years before, in the deepest part of
mid-ocean. If the salt were not dissolved, and could be brought to
market, it would fetch a pretty penny among the fishermen. That he
might not lack ready money, she gave him a copper farthing of
Birmingham manufacture, being all the coin she had about her, and
likewise a great deal of brass, which she applied to his forehead, thus
making it yellower than ever.

“With that brass alone,” quoth Mother Rigby, “thou canst pay thy way
all over the earth. Kiss me, pretty darling! I have done my best for
thee.”

Furthermore, that the adventurer might lack no possible advantage
towards a fair start in life, this excellent old dame gave him a token
by which he was to introduce himself to a certain magistrate, member of
the council, merchant, and elder of the church (the four capacities
constituting but one man), who stood at the head of society in the
neighboring metropolis. The token was neither more nor less than a
single word, which Mother Rigby whispered to the scarecrow, and which
the scarecrow was to whisper to the merchant.

“Gouty as the old fellow is, he’ll run thy errands for thee, when once
thou hast given him that word in his ear,” said the old witch. “Mother
Rigby knows the worshipful Justice Gookin, and the worshipful Justice
knows Mother Rigby!”

Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close to the puppet’s,
chuckling irrepressibly, and fidgeting all through her system, with
delight at the idea which she meant to communicate.

“The worshipful Master Gookin,” whispered she, “hath a comely maiden to
his daughter. And hark ye, my pet! Thou hast a fair outside, and a
pretty wit enough of thine own. Yea, a pretty wit enough! Thou wilt
think better of it when thou hast seen more of other people’s wits.
Now, with thy outside and thy inside, thou art the very man to win a
young girl’s heart. Never doubt it! I tell thee it shall be so. Put but
a bold face on the matter, sigh, smile, flourish thy hat, thrust forth
thy leg like a dancing-master, put thy right hand to the left side of
thy waistcoat, and pretty Polly Gookin is thine own!”

All this while the new creature had been sucking in and exhaling the
vapory fragrance of his pipe, and seemed now to continue this
occupation as much for the enjoyment it afforded as because it was an
essential condition of his existence. It was wonderful to see how
exceedingly like a human being it behaved. Its eyes (for it appeared to
possess a pair) were bent on Mother Rigby, and at suitable junctures it
nodded or shook its head. Neither did it lack words proper for the
occasion: “Really! Indeed! Pray tell me! Is it possible! Upon my word!
By no means! Oh! Ah! Hem!” and other such weighty utterances as imply
attention, inquiry, acquiescence, or dissent on the part of the
auditor. Even had you stood by and seen the scarecrow made, you could
scarcely have resisted the conviction that it perfectly understood the
cunning counsels which the old witch poured into its counterfeit of an
ear. The more earnestly it applied its lips to the pipe, the more
distinctly was its human likeness stamped among visible realities, the
more sagacious grew its expression, the more lifelike its gestures and
movements, and the more intelligibly audible its voice. Its garments,
too, glistened so much the brighter with an illusory magnificence. The
very pipe, in which burned the spell of all this wonderwork, ceased to
appear as a smoke-blackened earthen stump, and became a meerschaum,
with painted bowl and amber mouthpiece.

It might be apprehended, however, that as the life of the illusion
seemed identical with the vapor of the pipe, it would terminate
simultaneously with the reduction of the tobacco to ashes. But the
beldam foresaw the difficulty.

“Hold thou the pipe, my precious one,” said she, “while I fill it for
thee again.”

It was sorrowful to behold how the fine gentleman began to fade back
into a scarecrow while Mother Rigby shook the ashes out of the pipe and
proceeded to replenish it from her tobacco-box.

“Dickon,” cried she, in her high, sharp tone, “another coal for this
pipe!”

No sooner said than the intensely red speck of fire was glowing within
the pipe-bowl; and the scarecrow, without waiting for the witch’s
bidding, applied the tube to his lips and drew in a few short,
convulsive whiffs, which soon, however, became regular and equable.

“Now, mine own heart’s darling,” quoth Mother Rigby, “whatever may
happen to thee, thou must stick to thy pipe. Thy life is in it; and
that, at least, thou knowest well, if thou knowest nought besides.
Stick to thy pipe, I say! Smoke, puff, blow thy cloud; and tell the
people, if any question be made, that it is for thy health, and that so
the physician orders thee to do. And, sweet one, when thou shalt find
thy pipe getting low, go apart into some corner, and (first filling
thyself with smoke) cry sharply, ‘Dickon, a fresh pipe of tobacco!’
and, ‘Dickon, another coal for my pipe!’ and have it into thy pretty
mouth as speedily as may be. Else, instead of a gallant gentleman in a
gold-laced coat, thou wilt be but a jumble of sticks and tattered
clothes, and a bag of straw, and a withered pumpkin! Now depart, my
treasure, and good luck go with thee!”

“Never fear, mother!” said the figure, in a stout voice, and sending
forth a courageous whiff of smoke, “I will thrive, if an honest man and
a gentleman may!”

“Oh, thou wilt be the death of me!” cried the old witch, convulsed with
laughter. “That was well said. If an honest man and a gentleman may!
Thou playest thy part to perfection. Get along with thee for a smart
fellow; and I will wager on thy head, as a man of pith and substance,
with a brain and what they call a heart, and all else that a man should
have, against any other thing on two legs. I hold myself a better witch
than yesterday, for thy sake. Did not I make thee? And I defy any witch
in New England to make such another! Here; take my staff along with
thee!”

The staff, though it was but a plain oaken stick, immediately took the
aspect of a gold-headed cane.

“That gold head has as much sense in it as thine own,” said Mother
Rigby, “and it will guide thee straight to worshipful Master Gookin’s
door. Get thee gone, my pretty pet, my darling, my precious one, my
treasure; and if any ask thy name, it is Feathertop. For thou hast a
feather in thy hat, and I have thrust a handful of feathers into the
hollow of thy head, and thy wig, too, is of the fashion they call
Feathertop,--so be Feathertop thy name!”

And, issuing from the cottage, Feathertop strode manfully towards town.
Mother Rigby stood at the threshold, well pleased to see how the
sunbeams glistened on him, as if all his magnificence were real, and
how diligently and lovingly he smoked his pipe, and how handsomely he
walked, in spite of a little stiffness of his legs. She watched him
until out of sight, and threw a witch benediction after her darling,
when a turn of the road snatched him from her view.

Betimes in the forenoon, when the principal street of the neighboring
town was just at its acme of life and bustle, a stranger of very
distinguished figure was seen on the sidewalk. His port as well
as his garments betokened nothing short of nobility. He wore a
richly-embroidered plum-colored coat, a waistcoat of costly velvet,
magnificently adorned with golden foliage, a pair of splendid scarlet
breeches, and the finest and glossiest of white silk stockings. His
head was covered with a peruke, so daintily powdered and adjusted
that it would have been sacrilege to disorder it with a hat; which,
therefore (and it was a gold-laced hat, set off with a snowy feather),
he carried beneath his arm. On the breast of his coat glistened a star.
He managed his gold-headed cane with an airy grace, peculiar to the
fine gentlemen of the period; and, to give the highest possible finish
to his equipment, he had lace ruffles at his wrist, of a most ethereal
delicacy, sufficiently avouching how idle and aristocratic must be the
hands which they half concealed.

It was a remarkable point in the accoutrement of this brilliant
personage that he held in his left hand a fantastic kind of a pipe,
with an exquisitely painted bowl and an amber mouthpiece. This he
applied to his lips as often as every five or six paces, and inhaled a
deep whiff of smoke, which, after being retained a moment in his lungs,
might be seen to eddy gracefully from his mouth and nostrils.

As may well be supposed, the street was all astir to find out the
stranger’s name.

“It is some great nobleman, beyond question,” said one of the
townspeople. “Do you see the star at his breast?”

“Nay; it is too bright to be seen,” said another. “Yes; he must needs
be a nobleman, as you say. But by what conveyance, think you, can his
lordship have voyaged or travelled hither? There has been no vessel
from the old country for a month past; and if he have arrived overland
from the southward, pray where are his attendants and equipage?”

“He needs no equipage to set off his rank,” remarked a third. “If he
came among us in rags, nobility would shine through a hole in his
elbow. I never saw such dignity of aspect. He has the old Norman blood
in his veins, I warrant him.”

“I rather take him to be a Dutchman, or one of your high Germans,” said
another citizen. “The men of those countries have always the pipe at
their mouths.”

“And so has a Turk,” answered his companion. “But, in my judgment, this
stranger hath been bred at the French court, and hath there learned
politeness and grace of manner, which none understand so well as the
nobility of France. That gait, now! A vulgar spectator might deem it
stiff--he might call it a hitch and jerk--but, to my eye, it hath an
unspeakable majesty, and must have been acquired by constant
observation of the deportment of the Grand Monarque. The stranger’s
character and office are evident enough. He is a French ambassador,
come to treat with our rulers about the cession of Canada.”

“More probably a Spaniard,” said another, “and hence his yellow
complexion; or, most likely, he is from the Havana, or from some port
on the Spanish main, and comes to make investigation about the piracies
which our government is thought to connive at. Those settlers in Peru
and Mexico have skins as yellow as the gold which they dig out of their
mines.”

“Yellow or not,” cried a lady, “he is a beautiful man!--so tall, so
slender! such a fine, noble face, with so well-shaped a nose, and all
that delicacy of expression about the mouth! And, bless me, how bright
his star is! It positively shoots out flames!”

“So do your eyes, fair lady,” said the stranger, with a bow and a
flourish of his pipe; for he was just passing at the instant. “Upon my
honor, they have quite dazzled me.”

“Was ever so original and exquisite a compliment?” murmured the lady,
in an ecstasy of delight.

Amid the general admiration excited by the stranger’s appearance, there
were only two dissenting voices. One was that of an impertinent cur,
which, after snuffing at the heels of the glistening figure, put its
tail between its legs and skulked into its master’s back yard,
vociferating an execrable howl. The other dissentient was a young
child, who squalled at the fullest stretch of his lungs, and babbled
some unintelligible nonsense about a pumpkin.

Feathertop meanwhile pursued his way along the street. Except for the
few complimentary words to the lady, and now and then a slight
inclination of the head in requital of the profound reverences of the
bystanders, he seemed wholly absorbed in his pipe. There needed no
other proof of his rank and consequence than the perfect equanimity
with which he comported himself, while the curiosity and admiration of
the town swelled almost into clamor around him. With a crowd gathering
behind his footsteps, he finally reached the mansion-house of the
worshipful Justice Gookin, entered the gate, ascended the steps of the
front door, and knocked. In the interim, before his summons was
answered, the stranger was observed to shake the ashes out of his pipe.

“What did he say in that sharp voice?” inquired one of the spectators.

“Nay, I know not,” answered his friend. “But the sun dazzles my eyes
strangely. How dim and faded his lordship looks all of a sudden! Bless
my wits, what is the matter with me?”

“The wonder is,” said the other, “that his pipe, which was out only an
instant ago, should be all alight again, and with the reddest coal I
ever saw. There is something mysterious about this stranger. What a
whiff of smoke was that! Dim and faded did you call him? Why, as he
turns about the star on his breast is all ablaze.”

“It is, indeed,” said his companion; “and it will go near to dazzle
pretty Polly Gookin, whom I see peeping at it out of the chamber
window.”

The door being now opened, Feathertop turned to the crowd, made a
stately bend of his body like a great man acknowledging the reverence
of the meaner sort, and vanished into the house. There was a mysterious
kind of a smile, if it might not better be called a grin or grimace,
upon his visage; but, of all the throng that beheld him, not an
individual appears to have possessed insight enough to detect the
illusive character of the stranger except a little child and a cur dog.

Our legend here loses somewhat of its continuity, and, passing over the
preliminary explanation between Feathertop and the merchant, goes in
quest of the pretty Polly Gookin. She was a damsel of a soft, round
figure, with light hair and blue eyes, and a fair, rosy face, which
seemed neither very shrewd nor very simple. This young lady had caught
a glimpse of the glistening stranger while standing on the threshold,
and had forthwith put on a laced cap, a string of beads, her finest
kerchief, and her stiffest damask petticoat in preparation for the
interview. Hurrying from her chamber to the parlor, she had ever since
been viewing herself in the large looking-glass and practising pretty
airs-now a smile, now a ceremonious dignity of aspect, and now a softer
smile than the former, kissing her hand likewise, tossing her head, and
managing her fan; while within the mirror an unsubstantial little maid
repeated every gesture and did all the foolish things that Polly did,
but without making her ashamed of them. In short, it was the fault of
pretty Polly’s ability rather than her will if she failed to be as
complete an artifice as the illustrious Feathertop himself; and, when
she thus tampered with her own simplicity, the witch’s phantom might
well hope to win her.

No sooner did Polly hear her father’s gouty footsteps approaching the
parlor door, accompanied with the stiff clatter of Feathertop’s
high-heeled shoes, than she seated herself bolt upright and innocently
began warbling a song.

“Polly! daughter Polly!” cried the old merchant. “Come hither, child.”

Master Gookin’s aspect, as he opened the door, was doubtful and
troubled.

“This gentleman,” continued he, presenting the stranger, “is the
Chevalier Feathertop,--nay, I beg his pardon, my Lord Feathertop,--who
hath brought me a token of remembrance from an ancient friend of mine.
Pay your duty to his lordship, child, and honor him as his quality
deserves.”

After these few words of introduction, the worshipful magistrate
immediately quitted the room. But, even in that brief moment, had the
fair Polly glanced aside at her father instead of devoting herself
wholly to the brilliant guest, she might have taken warning of some
mischief nigh at hand. The old man was nervous, fidgety, and very pale.
Purposing a smile of courtesy, he had deformed his face with a sort of
galvanic grin, which, when Feathertop’s back was turned, he exchanged
for a scowl, at the same time shaking his fist and stamping his gouty
foot--an incivility which brought its retribution along with it. The
truth appears to have been that Mother Rigby’s word of introduction,
whatever it might be, had operated far more on the rich merchant’s
fears than on his good will. Moreover, being a man of wonderfully acute
observation, he had noticed that these painted figures on the bowl of
Feathertop’s pipe were in motion. Looking more closely he became
convinced that these figures were a party of little demons, each duly
provided with horns and a tail, and dancing hand in hand, with gestures
of diabolical merriment, round the circumference of the pipe bowl. As
if to confirm his suspicions, while Master Gookin ushered his guest
along a dusky passage from his private room to the parlor, the star on
Feathertop’s breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw a
flickering gleam upon the wall, the ceiling, and the floor.

With such sinister prognostics manifesting themselves on all hands, it
is not to be marvelled at that the merchant should have felt that he
was committing his daughter to a very questionable acquaintance. He
cursed, in his secret soul, the insinuating elegance of Feathertop’s
manners, as this brilliant personage bowed, smiled, put his hand on his
heart, inhaled a long whiff from his pipe, and enriched the atmosphere
with the smoky vapor of a fragrant and visible sigh. Gladly would poor
Master Gookin have thrust his dangerous guest into the street; but
there was a constraint and terror within him. This respectable old
gentleman, we fear, at an earlier period of life, had given some pledge
or other to the evil principle, and perhaps was now to redeem it by the
sacrifice of his daughter.

It so happened that the parlor door was partly of glass, shaded by a
silken curtain, the folds of which hung a little awry. So strong was
the merchant’s interest in witnessing what was to ensue between the
fair Polly and the gallant Feathertop that, after quitting the room, he
could by no means refrain from peeping through the crevice of the
curtain.

But there was nothing very miraculous to be seen; nothing--except the
trifles previously noticed--to confirm the idea of a supernatural peril
environing the pretty Polly. The stranger it is true was evidently a
thorough and practised man of the world, systematic and self-possessed,
and therefore the sort of a person to whom a parent ought not to
confide a simple, young girl without due watchfulness for the result.
The worthy magistrate who had been conversant with all degrees and
qualities of mankind, could not but perceive every motion and gesture
of the distinguished Feathertop came in its proper place; nothing had
been left rude or native in him; a well-digested conventionalism had
incorporated itself thoroughly with his substance and transformed him
into a work of art. Perhaps it was this peculiarity that invested him
with a species of ghastliness and awe. It is the effect of anything
completely and consummately artificial, in human shape, that the person
impresses us as an unreality and as having hardly pith enough to cast a
shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all this resulted in a
wild, extravagant, and fantastical impression, as if his life and being
were akin to the smoke that curled upward from his pipe.

But pretty Polly Gookin felt not thus. The pair were now promenading
the room: Feathertop with his dainty stride and no less dainty grimace,
the girl with a native maidenly grace, just touched, not spoiled, by a
slightly affected manner, which seemed caught from the perfect artifice
of her companion. The longer the interview continued, the more charmed
was pretty Polly, until, within the first quarter of an hour (as the
old magistrate noted by his watch), she was evidently beginning to be
in love. Nor need it have been witchcraft that subdued her in such a
hurry; the poor child’s heart, it may be, was so very fervent that it
melted her with its own warmth as reflected from the hollow semblance
of a lover. No matter what Feathertop said, his words found depth and
reverberation in her ear; no matter what he did, his action was heroic
to her eye. And by this time it is to be supposed there was a blush on
Polly’s cheek, a tender smile about her mouth and a liquid softness in
her glance; while the star kept coruscating on Feathertop’s breast, and
the little demons careered with more frantic merriment than ever about
the circumference of his pipe bowl. O pretty Polly Gookin, why should
these imps rejoice so madly that a silly maiden’s heart was about to be
given to a shadow! Is it so unusual a misfortune, so rare a triumph?

By and by Feathertop paused, and throwing himself into an imposing
attitude, seemed to summon the fair girl to survey his figure and
resist him longer if she could. His star, his embroidery, his buckles
glowed at that instant with unutterable splendor; the picturesque hues
of his attire took a richer depth of coloring; there was a gleam and
polish over his whole presence betokening the perfect witchery of
well-ordered manners. The maiden raised her eyes and suffered them to
linger upon her companion with a bashful and admiring gaze. Then, as if
desirous of judging what value her own simple comeliness might have
side by side with so much brilliancy, she cast a glance towards the
full-length looking-glass in front of which they happened to be
standing. It was one of the truest plates in the world and incapable of
flattery. No sooner did the images therein reflected meet Polly’s eye
than she shrieked, shrank from the stranger’s side, gazed at him for a
moment in the wildest dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor.
Feathertop likewise had looked towards the mirror, and there beheld,
not the glittering mockery of his outside show, but a picture of the
sordid patchwork of his real composition stripped of all witchcraft.

The wretched simulacrum! We almost pity him. He threw up his arms with
an expression of despair that went further than any of his previous
manifestations towards vindicating his claims to be reckoned human, for
perchance the only time since this so often empty and deceptive life of
mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully recognized
itself.

Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth in the twilight of this
eventful day, and had just shaken the ashes out of a new pipe, when she
heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did not seem so much the
tramp of human footsteps as the clatter of sticks or the rattling of
dry bones.

“Ha!” thought the old witch, “what step is that? Whose skeleton is out
of its grave now, I wonder?”

A figure burst headlong into the cottage door. It was Feathertop! His
pipe was still alight; the star still flamed upon his breast; the
embroidery still glowed upon his garments; nor had he lost, in any
degree or manner that could be estimated, the aspect that assimilated
him with our mortal brotherhood. But yet, in some indescribable way (as
is the case with all that has deluded us when once found out), the poor
reality was felt beneath the cunning artifice.

“What has gone wrong?” demanded the witch. “Did yonder sniffling
hypocrite thrust my darling from his door? The villain! I’ll set twenty
fiends to torment him till he offer thee his daughter on his bended
knees!”

“No, mother,” said Feathertop despondingly; “it was not that.”

“Did the girl scorn my precious one?” asked Mother Rigby, her fierce
eyes glowing like two coals of Tophet. “I’ll cover her face with
pimples! Her nose shall be as red as the coal in thy pipe! Her front
teeth shall drop out! In a week hence she shall not be worth thy
having!”

“Let her alone, mother,” answered poor Feathertop; “the girl was half
won; and methinks a kiss from her sweet lips might have made me
altogether human. But,” he added, after a brief pause and then a howl
of self-contempt, “I’ve seen myself, mother! I’ve seen myself for the
wretched, ragged, empty thing I am! I’ll exist no longer!”

Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with all his might
against the chimney, and at the same instant sank upon the floor, a
medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from
the heap, and a shrivelled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes were now
lustreless; but the rudely-carved gap, that just before had been a
mouth still seemed to twist itself into a despairing grin, and was so
far human.

“Poor fellow!” quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics
of her ill-fated contrivance. “My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There
are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world,
made up of just such a jumble of wornout, forgotten, and
good-for-nothing trash as he was! Yet they live in fair repute, and
never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet
be the only one to know himself and perish for it?”

While thus muttering, the witch had filled a fresh pipe of tobacco, and
held the stem between her fingers, as doubtful whether to thrust it
into her own mouth or Feathertop’s.

“Poor Feathertop!” she continued. “I could easily give him another
chance and send him forth again tomorrow. But no; his feelings are too
tender, his sensibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart to
bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world.
Well! well! I’ll make a scarecrow of him after all. ’Tis an innocent
and useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and, if each of his
human brethren had as fit a one, ’t would be the better for mankind;
and as for this pipe of tobacco, I need it more than he.”

So saying Mother Rigby put the stem between her lips. “Dickon!” cried
she, in her high, sharp tone, “another coal for my pipe!”



EGOTISM;[1] OR, THE BOSOM SERPENT

[From the Unpublished “Allegories of the Heart.”]

[1] The physical fact, to which it is here attempted to give a moral
signification, has been known to occur in more than one instance.


“Here he comes!” shouted the boys along the street. “Here comes the man
with a snake in his bosom!”

This outcry, saluting Herkimer’s ears as he was about to enter the iron
gate of the Elliston mansion, made him pause. It was not without a
shudder that he found himself on the point of meeting his former
acquaintance, whom he had known in the glory of youth, and whom now
after an interval of five years, he was to find the victim either of a
diseased fancy or a horrible physical misfortune.

“A snake in his bosom!” repeated the young sculptor to himself. “It
must be he. No second man on earth has such a bosom friend. And now, my
poor Rosina, Heaven grant me wisdom to discharge my errand aright!
Woman’s faith must be strong indeed since thine has not yet failed.”

Thus musing, he took his stand at the entrance of the gate and waited
until the personage so singularly announced should make his appearance.
After an instant or two he beheld the figure of a lean man, of
unwholesome look, with glittering eyes and long black hair, who seemed
to imitate the motion of a snake; for, instead of walking straight
forward with open front, he undulated along the pavement in a curved
line. It may be too fanciful to say that something, either in his moral
or material aspect, suggested the idea that a miracle had been wrought
by transforming a serpent into a man, but so imperfectly that the snaky
nature was yet hidden, and scarcely hidden, under the mere outward
guise of humanity. Herkimer remarked that his complexion had a greenish
tinge over its sickly white, reminding him of a species of marble out
of which he had once wrought a head of Envy, with her snaky locks.

The wretched being approached the gate, but, instead of entering,
stopped short and fixed the glitter of his eye full upon the
compassionate yet steady countenance of the sculptor.

“It gnaws me! It gnaws me!” he exclaimed.

And then there was an audible hiss, but whether it came from the
apparent lunatic’s own lips, or was the real hiss of a serpent, might
admit of a discussion. At all events, it made Herkimer shudder to his
heart’s core.

“Do you know me, George Herkimer?” asked the snake-possessed.

Herkimer did know him; but it demanded all the intimate and practical
acquaintance with the human face, acquired by modelling actual
likenesses in clay, to recognize the features of Roderick Elliston in
the visage that now met the sculptor’s gaze. Yet it was he. It added
nothing to the wonder to reflect that the once brilliant young man had
undergone this odious and fearful change during the no more than five
brief years of Herkimer’s abode at Florence. The possibility of such a
transformation being granted, it was as easy to conceive it effected in
a moment as in an age. Inexpressibly shocked and startled, it was still
the keenest pang when Herkimer remembered that the fate of his cousin
Rosina, the ideal of gentle womanhood, was indissolubly interwoven with
that of a being whom Providence seemed to have unhumanized.

“Elliston! Roderick!” cried he, “I had heard of this; but my conception
came far short of the truth. What has befallen you? Why do I find you
thus?”

“Oh, ’tis a mere nothing! A snake! A snake! The commonest thing in the
world. A snake in the bosom--that’s all,” answered Roderick Elliston.
“But how is your own breast?” continued he, looking the sculptor in the
eye with the most acute and penetrating glance that it had ever been
his fortune to encounter. “All pure and wholesome? No reptile there? By
my faith and conscience, and by the devil within me, here is a wonder!
A man without a serpent in his bosom!”

“Be calm, Elliston,” whispered George Herkimer, laying his hand upon
the shoulder of the snake-possessed. “I have crossed the ocean to meet
you. Listen! Let us be private. I bring a message from Rosina--from
your wife!”

“It gnaws me! It gnaws me!” muttered Roderick.

With this exclamation, the most frequent in his mouth, the unfortunate
man clutched both hands upon his breast as if an intolerable sting or
torture impelled him to rend it open and let out the living mischief,
even should it be intertwined with his own life. He then freed himself
from Herkimer’s grasp by a subtle motion, and, gliding through the
gate, took refuge in his antiquated family residence. The sculptor did
not pursue him. He saw that no available intercourse could be expected
at such a moment, and was desirous, before another meeting, to inquire
closely into the nature of Roderick’s disease and the circumstances
that had reduced him to so lamentable a condition. He succeeded in
obtaining the necessary information from an eminent medical gentleman.

Shortly after Elliston’s separation from his wife--now nearly four
years ago--his associates had observed a singular gloom spreading over
his daily life, like those chill, gray mists that sometimes steal away
the sunshine from a summer’s morning. The symptoms caused them endless
perplexity. They knew not whether ill health were robbing his spirits
of elasticity, or whether a canker of the mind was gradually eating, as
such cankers do, from his moral system into the physical frame, which
is but the shadow of the former. They looked for the root of this
trouble in his shattered schemes of domestic bliss,--wilfully shattered
by himself,--but could not be satisfied of its existence there. Some
thought that their once brilliant friend was in an incipient stage of
insanity, of which his passionate impulses had perhaps been the
forerunners; others prognosticated a general blight and gradual
decline. From Roderick’s own lips they could learn nothing. More than
once, it is true, he had been heard to say, clutching his hands
convulsively upon his breast,--“It gnaws me! It gnaws me!”--but, by
different auditors, a great diversity of explanation was assigned to
this ominous expression. What could it be that gnawed the breast of
Roderick Elliston? Was it sorrow? Was it merely the tooth of physical
disease? Or, in his reckless course, often verging upon profligacy, if
not plunging into its depths, had he been guilty of some deed which
made his bosom a prey to the deadlier fangs of remorse? There was
plausible ground for each of these conjectures; but it must not be
concealed that more than one elderly gentleman, the victim of good
cheer and slothful habits, magisterially pronounced the secret of the
whole matter to be Dyspepsia!

Meanwhile, Roderick seemed aware how generally he had become the
subject of curiosity and conjecture, and, with a morbid repugnance to
such notice, or to any notice whatsoever, estranged himself from all
companionship. Not merely the eye of man was a horror to him; not
merely the light of a friend’s countenance; but even the blessed
sunshine, likewise, which in its universal beneficence typifies the
radiance of the Creator’s face, expressing his love for all the
creatures of his hand. The dusky twilight was now too transparent for
Roderick Elliston; the blackest midnight was his chosen hour to steal
abroad; and if ever he were seen, it was when the watchman’s lantern
gleamed upon his figure, gliding along the street, with his hands
clutched upon his bosom, still muttering, “It gnaws me! It gnaws me!”
What could it be that gnawed him?

After a time, it became known that Elliston was in the habit of
resorting to all the noted quacks that infested the city, or whom money
would tempt to journey thither from a distance. By one of these
persons, in the exultation of a supposed cure, it was proclaimed far
and wide, by dint of handbills and little pamphlets on dingy paper,
that a distinguished gentleman, Roderick Elliston, Esq., had been
relieved of a SNAKE in his stomach! So here was the monstrous secret,
ejected from its lurking place into public view, in all its horrible
deformity. The mystery was out; but not so the bosom serpent. He, if it
were anything but a delusion, still lay coiled in his living den. The
empiric’s cure had been a sham, the effect, it was supposed, of some
stupefying drug which more nearly caused the death of the patient than
of the odious reptile that possessed him. When Roderick Elliston
regained entire sensibility, it was to find his misfortune the town
talk--the more than nine days’ wonder and horror--while, at his bosom,
he felt the sickening motion of a thing alive, and the gnawing of that
restless fang which seemed to gratify at once a physical appetite and a
fiendish spite.

He summoned the old black servant, who had been bred up in his father’s
house, and was a middle-aged man while Roderick lay in his cradle.

“Scipio!” he began; and then paused, with his arms folded over his
heart. “What do people say of me, Scipio.”

“Sir! my poor master! that you had a serpent in your bosom,” answered
the servant with hesitation.

“And what else?” asked Roderick, with a ghastly look at the man.

“Nothing else, dear master,” replied Scipio, “only that the doctor gave
you a powder, and that the snake leaped out upon the floor.”

“No, no!” muttered Roderick to himself, as he shook his head, and
pressed his hands with a more convulsive force upon his breast, “I feel
him still. It gnaws me! It gnaws me!”

From this time the miserable sufferer ceased to shun the world, but
rather solicited and forced himself upon the notice of acquaintances
and strangers. It was partly the result of desperation on finding that
the cavern of his own bosom had not proved deep and dark enough to hide
the secret, even while it was so secure a fortress for the loathsome
fiend that had crept into it. But still more, this craving for
notoriety was a symptom of the intense morbidness which now pervaded
his nature. All persons chronically diseased are egotists, whether the
disease be of the mind or body; whether it be sin, sorrow, or merely
the more tolerable calamity of some endless pain, or mischief among the
cords of mortal life. Such individuals are made acutely conscious of a
self, by the torture in which it dwells. Self, therefore, grows to be
so prominent an object with them that they cannot but present it to the
face of every casual passer-by. There is a pleasure--perhaps the
greatest of which the sufferer is susceptible--in displaying the wasted
or ulcerated limb, or the cancer in the breast; and the fouler the
crime, with so much the more difficulty does the perpetrator prevent it
from thrusting up its snake-like head to frighten the world; for it is
that cancer, or that crime, which constitutes their respective
individuality. Roderick Elliston, who, a little while before, had held
himself so scornfully above the common lot of men, now paid full
allegiance to this humiliating law. The snake in his bosom seemed the
symbol of a monstrous egotism to which everything was referred, and
which he pampered, night and day, with a continual and exclusive
sacrifice of devil worship.

He soon exhibited what most people considered indubitable tokens of
insanity. In some of his moods, strange to say, he prided and gloried
himself on being marked out from the ordinary experience of mankind, by
the possession of a double nature, and a life within a life. He
appeared to imagine that the snake was a divinity,--not celestial, it
is true, but darkly infernal,--and that he thence derived an eminence
and a sanctity, horrid, indeed, yet more desirable than whatever
ambition aims at. Thus he drew his misery around him like a regal
mantle, and looked down triumphantly upon those whose vitals nourished
no deadly monster. Oftener, however, his human nature asserted its
empire over him in the shape of a yearning for fellowship. It grew to
be his custom to spend the whole day in wandering about the streets,
aimlessly, unless it might be called an aim to establish a species of
brotherhood between himself and the world. With cankered ingenuity, he
sought out his own disease in every breast. Whether insane or not, he
showed so keen a perception of frailty, error, and vice, that many
persons gave him credit for being possessed not merely with a serpent,
but with an actual fiend, who imparted this evil faculty of recognizing
whatever was ugliest in man’s heart.

For instance, he met an individual, who, for thirty years, had
cherished a hatred against his own brother. Roderick, amidst the throng
of the street, laid his hand on this man’s chest, and looking full into
his forbidding face, “How is the snake to-day?” he inquired, with a
mock expression of sympathy.

“The snake!” exclaimed the brother hater--“what do you mean?”

“The snake! The snake! Does it gnaw you?” persisted Roderick. “Did you
take counsel with him this morning when you should have been saying
your prayers? Did he sting, when you thought of your brother’s health,
wealth, and good repute? Did he caper for joy, when you remembered the
profligacy of his only son? And whether he stung, or whether he
frolicked, did you feel his poison throughout your body and soul,
converting everything to sourness and bitterness? That is the way of
such serpents. I have learned the whole nature of them from my own!”

“Where is the police?” roared the object of Roderick’s persecution, at
the same time giving an instinctive clutch to his breast. “Why is this
lunatic allowed to go at large?”

“Ha, ha!” chuckled Roderick, releasing his grasp of the man.-- “His
bosom serpent has stung him then!”

Often it pleased the unfortunate young man to vex people with a lighter
satire, yet still characterized by somewhat of snake-like virulence.
One day he encountered an ambitious statesman, and gravely inquired
after the welfare of his boa constrictor; for of that species, Roderick
affirmed, this gentleman’s serpent must needs be, since its appetite
was enormous enough to devour the whole country and constitution. At
another time, he stopped a close-fisted old fellow, of great wealth,
but who skulked about the city in the guise of a scarecrow, with a
patched blue surtout, brown hat, and mouldy boots, scraping pence
together, and picking up rusty nails. Pretending to look earnestly at
this respectable person’s stomach, Roderick assured him that his snake
was a copper-head and had been generated by the immense quantities of
that base metal with which he daily defiled his fingers. Again, he
assaulted a man of rubicund visage, and told him that few bosom
serpents had more of the devil in them than those that breed in the
vats of a distillery. The next whom Roderick honored with his attention
was a distinguished clergyman, who happened just then to be engaged in
a theological controversy, where human wrath was more perceptible than
divine inspiration.

“You have swallowed a snake in a cup of sacramental wine,” quoth he.

“Profane wretch!” exclaimed the divine; but, nevertheless, his hand
stole to his breast.

He met a person of sickly sensibility, who, on some early
disappointment, had retired from the world, and thereafter held no
intercourse with his fellow-men, but brooded sullenly or passionately
over the irrevocable past. This man’s very heart, if Roderick might be
believed, had been changed into a serpent, which would finally torment
both him and itself to death. Observing a married couple, whose
domestic troubles were matter of notoriety, he condoled with both on
having mutually taken a house adder to their bosoms. To an envious
author, who depreciated works which he could never equal, he said that
his snake was the slimiest and filthiest of all the reptile tribe, but
was fortunately without a sting. A man of impure life, and a brazen
face, asking Roderick if there were any serpent in his breast, he told
him that there was, and of the same species that once tortured Don
Rodrigo, the Goth. He took a fair young girl by the hand, and gazing
sadly into her eyes, warned her that she cherished a serpent of the
deadliest kind within her gentle breast; and the world found the truth
of those ominous words, when, a few months afterwards, the poor girl
died of love and shame. Two ladies, rivals in fashionable life who
tormented one another with a thousand little stings of womanish spite,
were given to understand that each of their hearts was a nest of
diminutive snakes, which did quite as much mischief as one great one.

But nothing seemed to please Roderick better than to lay hold of a
person infected with jealousy, which he represented as an enormous
green reptile, with an ice-cold length of body, and the sharpest sting
of any snake save one.

“And what one is that?” asked a by-stander, overhearing him.

It was a dark-browed man who put the question; he had an evasive eye,
which in the course of a dozen years had looked no mortal directly in
the face. There was an ambiguity about this person’s character,--a
stain upon his reputation,--yet none could tell precisely of what
nature, although the city gossips, male and female, whispered the most
atrocious surmises. Until a recent period he had followed the sea, and
was, in fact, the very shipmaster whom George Herkimer had encountered,
under such singular circumstances, in the Grecian Archipelago.

“What bosom serpent has the sharpest sting?” repeated this man; but he
put the question as if by a reluctant necessity, and grew pale while he
was uttering it.

“Why need you ask?” replied Roderick, with a look of dark intelligence.
“Look into your own breast. Hark! my serpent bestirs himself! He
acknowledges the presence of a master fiend!”

And then, as the by-standers afterwards affirmed, a hissing sound was
heard, apparently in Roderick Elliston’s breast. It was said, too, that
an answering hiss came from the vitals of the shipmaster, as if a snake
were actually lurking there and had been aroused by the call of its
brother reptile. If there were in fact any such sound, it might have
been caused by a malicious exercise of ventriloquism on the part of
Roderick.

Thus making his own actual serpent--if a serpent there actually was in
his bosom--the type of each man’s fatal error, or hoarded sin, or
unquiet conscience, and striking his sting so unremorsefully into the
sorest spot, we may well imagine that Roderick became the pest of the
city. Nobody could elude him--none could withstand him. He grappled
with the ugliest truth that he could lay his hand on, and compelled his
adversary to do the same. Strange spectacle in human life where it is
the instinctive effort of one and all to hide those sad realities, and
leave them undisturbed beneath a heap of superficial topics which
constitute the materials of intercourse between man and man! It was not
to be tolerated that Roderick Elliston should break through the tacit
compact by which the world has done its best to secure repose without
relinquishing evil. The victims of his malicious remarks, it is true,
had brothers enough to keep them in countenance; for, by Roderick’s
theory, every mortal bosom harbored either a brood of small serpents or
one overgrown monster that had devoured all the rest. Still the city
could not bear this new apostle. It was demanded by nearly all, and
particularly by the most respectable inhabitants, that Roderick should
no longer be permitted to violate the received rules of decorum by
obtruding his own bosom serpent to the public gaze, and dragging those
of decent people from their lurking places.

Accordingly, his relatives interfered and placed him in a private
asylum for the insane. When the news was noised abroad, it was observed
that many persons walked the streets with freer countenances and
covered their breasts less carefully with their hands.

His confinement, however, although it contributed not a little to the
peace of the town, operated unfavorably upon Roderick himself. In
solitude his melancholy grew more black and sullen. He spent whole
days--indeed, it was his sole occupation--in communing with the
serpent. A conversation was sustained, in which, as it seemed, the
hidden monster bore a part, though unintelligibly to the listeners, and
inaudible except in a hiss. Singular as it may appear, the sufferer had
now contracted a sort of affection for his tormentor, mingled, however,
with the intensest loathing and horror. Nor were such discordant
emotions incompatible. Each, on the contrary, imparted strength and
poignancy to its opposite. Horrible love--horrible antipathy--embracing
one another in his bosom, and both concentrating themselves upon a
being that had crept into his vitals or been engendered there, and
which was nourished with his food, and lived upon his life, and was as
intimate with him as his own heart, and yet was the foulest of all
created things! But not the less was it the true type of a morbid
nature.

Sometimes, in his moments of rage and bitter hatred against the snake
and himself, Roderick determined to be the death of him, even at the
expense of his own life. Once he attempted it by starvation; but, while
the wretched man was on the point of famishing, the monster seemed to
feed upon his heart, and to thrive and wax gamesome, as if it were his
sweetest and most congenial diet. Then he privily took a dose of active
poison, imagining that it would not fail to kill either himself or the
devil that possessed him, or both together. Another mistake; for if
Roderick had not yet been destroyed by his own poisoned heart nor the
snake by gnawing it, they had little to fear from arsenic or corrosive
sublimate. Indeed, the venomous pest appeared to operate as an antidote
against all other poisons. The physicians tried to suffocate the fiend
with tobacco smoke. He breathed it as freely as if it were his native
atmosphere. Again, they drugged their patient with opium and drenched
him with intoxicating liquors, hoping that the snake might thus be
reduced to stupor and perhaps be ejected from the stomach. They
succeeded in rendering Roderick insensible; but, placing their hands
upon his breast, they were inexpressibly horror stricken to feel the
monster wriggling, twining, and darting to and fro within his narrow
limits, evidently enlivened by the opium or alcohol, and incited to
unusual feats of activity. Thenceforth they gave up all attempts at
cure or palliation. The doomed sufferer submitted to his fate, resumed
his former loathsome affection for the bosom fiend, and spent whole
miserable days before a looking-glass, with his mouth wide open,
watching, in hope and horror, to catch a glimpse of the snake’s head
far down within his throat. It is supposed that he succeeded; for the
attendants once heard a frenzied shout, and, rushing into the room,
found Roderick lifeless upon the floor.

He was kept but little longer under restraint. After minute
investigation, the medical directors of the asylum decided that his
mental disease did not amount to insanity, nor would warrant his
confinement, especially as its influence upon his spirits was
unfavorable, and might produce the evil which it was meant to remedy.
His eccentricities were doubtless great; he had habitually violated
many of the customs and prejudices of society; but the world was not,
without surer ground, entitled to treat him as a madman. On this
decision of such competent authority Roderick was released, and had
returned to his native city the very day before his encounter with
George Herkimer.

As soon as possible after learning these particulars the sculptor,
together with a sad and tremulous companion, sought Elliston at his own
house. It was a large, sombre edifice of wood, with pilasters and a
balcony, and was divided from one of the principal streets by a terrace
of three elevations, which was ascended by successive flights of stone
steps. Some immense old elms almost concealed the front of the mansion.
This spacious and once magnificent family residence was built by a
grandee of the race early in the past century, at which epoch, land
being of small comparative value, the garden and other grounds had
formed quite an extensive domain. Although a portion of the ancestral
heritage had been alienated, there was still a shadowy enclosure in the
rear of the mansion where a student, or a dreamer, or a man of stricken
heart might lie all day upon the grass, amid the solitude of murmuring
boughs, and forget that a city had grown up around him.

Into this retirement the sculptor and his companion were ushered by
Scipio, the old black servant, whose wrinkled visage grew almost sunny
with intelligence and joy as he paid his humble greetings to one of the
two visitors.

“Remain in the arbor,” whispered the sculptor to the figure that leaned
upon his arm. “You will know whether, and when, to make your
appearance.”

“God will teach me,” was the reply. “May He support me too!”

Roderick was reclining on the margin of a fountain which gushed into
the fleckered sunshine with the same clear sparkle and the same voice
of  airy quietude as when trees of primeval growth flung their shadows
cross its bosom. How strange is the life of a fountain!--born at every
moment, yet of an age coeval with the rocks, and far surpassing the
venerable antiquity of a forest.

“You are come! I have expected you,” said Elliston, when he became
aware of the sculptor’s presence.

His manner was very different from that of the preceding day--quiet,
courteous, and, as Herkimer thought, watchful both over his guest and
himself. This unnatural restraint was almost the only trait that
betokened anything amiss. He had just thrown a book upon the grass,
where it lay half opened, thus disclosing itself to be a natural
history of the serpent tribe, illustrated by lifelike plates. Near it
lay that bulky volume, the Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor, full of
cases of conscience, and in which most men, possessed of a conscience,
may find something applicable to their purpose.

“You see,” observed Elliston, pointing to the book of serpents, while a
smile gleamed upon his lips, “I am making an effort to become better
acquainted with my bosom friend; but I find nothing satisfactory in
this volume. If I mistake not, he will prove to be sui generis, and
akin to no other reptile in creation.”

“Whence came this strange calamity?” inquired the sculptor.

“My sable friend Scipio has a story,” replied Roderick, “of a snake
that had lurked in this fountain--pure and innocent as it looks--ever
since it was known to the first settlers. This insinuating personage
once crept into the vitals of my great grandfather and dwelt there many
years, tormenting the old gentleman beyond mortal endurance. In short
it is a family peculiarity. But, to tell you the truth, I have no faith
in this idea of the snake’s being an heirloom. He is my own snake, and
no man’s else.”

“But what was his origin?” demanded Herkimer.

“Oh, there is poisonous stuff in any man’s heart sufficient to generate
a brood of serpents,” said Elliston with a hollow laugh. “You should
have heard my homilies to the good town’s-people. Positively, I deem
myself fortunate in having bred but a single serpent. You, however,
have none in your bosom, and therefore cannot sympathize with the rest
of the world. It gnaws me! It gnaws me!”

With this exclamation Roderick lost his self-control and threw himself
upon the grass, testifying his agony by intricate writhings, in which
Herkimer could not but fancy a resemblance to the motions of a snake.
Then, likewise, was heard that frightful hiss, which often ran through
the sufferer’s speech, and crept between the words and syllables
without interrupting their succession.

“This is awful indeed!” exclaimed the sculptor--“an awful infliction,
whether it be actual or imaginary. Tell me, Roderick Elliston, is there
any remedy for this loathsome evil?”

“Yes, but an impossible one,” muttered Roderick, as he lay wallowing
with his face in the grass. “Could I for one moment forget myself, the
serpent might not abide within me. It is my diseased self-contemplation
that has engendered and nourished him.”

“Then forget yourself, my husband,” said a gentle voice above him;
“forget yourself in the idea of another!”

Rosina had emerged from the arbor, and was bending over him with the
shadow of his anguish reflected in her countenance, yet so mingled with
hope and unselfish love that all anguish seemed but an earthly shadow
and a dream. She touched Roderick with her hand. A tremor shivered
through his frame. At that moment, if report be trustworthy, the
sculptor beheld a waving motion through the grass, and heard a tinkling
sound, as if something had plunged into the fountain. Be the truth as
it might, it is certain that Roderick Elliston sat up like a man
renewed, restored to his right mind, and rescued from the fiend which
had so miserably overcome him in the battle-field of his own breast.

“Rosina!” cried he, in broken and passionate tones, but with nothing of
the wild wail that had haunted his voice so long, “forgive! forgive!”

Her happy tears bedewed his face.

“The punishment has been severe,” observed the sculptor. “Even Justice
might now forgive; how much more a woman’s tenderness! Roderick
Elliston, whether the serpent was a physical reptile, or whether the
morbidness of your nature suggested that symbol to your fancy, the
moral of the story is not the less true and strong. A tremendous
Egotism, manifesting itself in your case in the form of jealousy, is as
fearful a fiend as ever stole into the human heart. Can a breast, where
it has dwelt so long, be purified?”

“Oh yes,” said Rosina with a heavenly smile. “The serpent was but a
dark fantasy, and what it typified was as shadowy as itself. The past,
dismal as it seems, shall fling no gloom upon the future. To give it
its due importance we must think of it but as an anecdote in our
Eternity.”



DROWNE’S WOODEN IMAGE

One sunshiny morning, in the good old times of the town of Boston, a
young carver in wood, well known by the name of Drowne, stood
contemplating a large oaken log, which it was his purpose to convert
into the figure-head of a vessel. And while he discussed within his own
mind what sort of shape or similitude it were well to bestow upon this
excellent piece of timber, there came into Drowne’s workshop a certain
Captain Hunnewell, owner and commander of the good brig called the
Cynosure, which had just returned from her first voyage to Fayal.

“Ah! that will do, Drowne, that will do!” cried the jolly captain,
tapping the log with his rattan. “I bespeak this very piece of oak for
the figure-head of the Cynosure. She has shown herself the sweetest
craft that ever floated, and I mean to decorate her prow with the
handsomest image that the skill of man can cut out of timber. And,
Drowne, you are the fellow to execute it.”

“You give me more credit than I deserve, Captain Hunnewell,” said the
carver, modestly, yet as one conscious of eminence in his art. “But,
for the sake of the good brig, I stand ready to do my best. And which
of these designs do you prefer? Here,”--pointing to a staring,
half-length figure, in a white wig and scarlet coat,--“here is an
excellent model, the likeness of our gracious king. Here is the valiant
Admiral Vernon. Or, if you prefer a female figure, what say you to
Britannia with the trident?”

“All very fine, Drowne; all very fine,” answered the mariner. “But as
nothing like the brig ever swam the ocean, so I am determined she shall
have such a figure-head as old Neptune never saw in his life. And what
is more, as there is a secret in the matter, you must pledge your
credit not to betray it.”

“Certainly,” said Drowne, marvelling, however, what possible mystery
there could be in reference to an affair so open, of necessity, to the
inspection of all the world as the figure-head of a vessel. “You may
depend, captain, on my being as secret as the nature of the case will
permit.”

Captain Hunnewell then took Drowne by the button, and communicated his
wishes in so low a tone that it would be unmannerly to repeat what was
evidently intended for the carver’s private ear. We shall, therefore,
take the opportunity to give the reader a few desirable particulars
about Drowne himself.

He was the first American who is known to have attempted--in a very
humble line, it is true--that art in which we can now reckon so many
names already distinguished, or rising to distinction. From his
earliest boyhood he had exhibited a knack--for it would be too proud a
word to call it genius--a knack, therefore, for the imitation of the
human figure in whatever material came most readily to hand. The snows
of a New England winter had often supplied him with a species of marble
as dazzingly white, at least, as the Parian or the Carrara, and if less
durable, yet sufficiently so to correspond with any claims to permanent
existence possessed by the boy’s frozen statues. Yet they won
admiration from maturer judges than his school-fellows, and were
indeed, remarkably clever, though destitute of the native warmth that
might have made the snow melt beneath his hand. As he advanced in life,
the young man adopted pine and oak as eligible materials for the
display of his skill, which now began to bring him a return of solid
silver as well as the empty praise that had been an apt reward enough
for his productions of evanescent snow. He became noted for carving
ornamental pump heads, and wooden urns for gate posts, and decorations,
more grotesque than fanciful, for mantelpieces. No apothecary would
have deemed himself in the way of obtaining custom without setting up a
gilded mortar, if not a head of Galen or Hippocrates, from the skilful
hand of Drowne.

But the great scope of his business lay in the manufacture of
figure-heads for vessels. Whether it were the monarch himself, or some
famous British admiral or general, or the governor of the province, or
perchance the favorite daughter of the ship-owner, there the image
stood above the prow, decked out in gorgeous colors, magnificently
gilded, and staring the whole world out of countenance, as if from an
innate consciousness of its own superiority. These specimens of native
sculpture had crossed the sea in all directions, and been not ignobly
noticed among the crowded shipping of the Thames and wherever else the
hardy mariners of New England had pushed their adventures. It must be
confessed that a family likeness pervaded these respectable progeny of
Drowne’s skill; that the benign countenance of the king resembled those
of his subjects, and that Miss Peggy Hobart, the merchant’s daughter,
bore a remarkable similitude to Britannia, Victory, and other ladies of
the allegoric sisterhood; and, finally, that they all had a kind of
wooden aspect which proved an intimate relationship with the unshaped
blocks of timber in the carver’s workshop. But at least there was no
inconsiderable skill of hand, nor a deficiency of any attribute to
render them really works of art, except that deep quality, be it of
soul or intellect, which bestows life upon the lifeless and warmth upon
the cold, and which, had it been present, would have made Drowne’s
wooden image instinct with spirit.

The captain of the Cynosure had now finished his instructions.

“And Drowne,” said he, impressively, “you must lay aside all other
business and set about this forthwith. And as to the price, only do the
job in first-rate style, and you shall settle that point yourself.”

“Very well, captain,” answered the carver, who looked grave and
somewhat perplexed, yet had a sort of smile upon his visage; “depend
upon it, I’ll do my utmost to satisfy you.”

From that moment the men of taste about Long Wharf and the Town Dock
who were wont to show their love for the arts by frequent visits to
Drowne’s workshop, and admiration of his wooden images, began to be
sensible of a mystery in the carver’s conduct. Often he was absent in
the daytime. Sometimes, as might be judged by gleams of light from the
shop windows, he was at work until a late hour of the evening; although
neither knock nor voice, on such occasions, could gain admittance for a
visitor, or elicit any word of response. Nothing remarkable, however,
was observed in the shop at those late hours when it was thrown open. A
fine piece of timber, indeed, which Drowne was known to have reserved
for some work of especial dignity, was seen to be gradually assuming
shape. What shape it was destined ultimately to take was a problem to
his friends and a point on which the carver himself preserved a rigid
silence. But day after day, though Drowne was seldom noticed in the act
of working upon it, this rude form began to be developed until it
became evident to all observers that a female figure was growing into
mimic life. At each new visit they beheld a larger pile of wooden chips
and a nearer approximation to something beautiful. It seemed as if the
hamadryad of the oak had sheltered herself from the unimaginative world
within the heart of her native tree, and that it was only necessary to
remove the strange shapelessness that had incrusted her, and reveal the
grace and loveliness of a divinity. Imperfect as the design, the
attitude, the costume, and especially the face of the image still
remained, there was already an effect that drew the eye from the wooden
cleverness of Drowne’s earlier productions and fixed it upon the
tantalizing mystery of this new project.

Copley, the celebrated painter, then a young man and a resident of
Boston, came one day to visit Drowne; for he had recognized so much of
moderate ability in the carver as to induce him, in the dearth of
professional sympathy, to cultivate his acquaintance. On entering the
shop, the artist glanced at the inflexible image of king, commander,
dame, and allegory, that stood around, on the best of which might have
been bestowed the questionable praise that it looked as if a living man
had here been changed to wood, and that not only the physical, but the
intellectual and spiritual part, partook of the stolid transformation.
But in not a single instance did it seem as if the wood were imbibing
the ethereal essence of humanity. What a wide distinction is here! and
how far the slightest portion of the latter merit have outvalued the
utmost degree of the former!

“My friend Drowne;” said Copley, smiling to himself, but alluding to
the mechanical and wooden cleverness that so invariably distinguished
the images, “you are really a remarkable person! I have seldom met with
a man in your line of business that could do so much; for one other
touch might make this figure of General Wolfe, for instance, a
breathing and intelligent human creature.”

“You would have me think that you are praising me highly, Mr. Copley,”
answered Drowne, turning his back upon Wolfe’s image in apparent
disgust. “But there has come a light into my mind. I know what you know
as well, that the one touch which you speak of as deficient is the only
one that would be truly valuable, and that without it these works of
mine are no better than worthless abortions. There is the same
difference between them and the works of an inspired artist as between
a sign-post daub and one of your best pictures.”

“This is strange,” cried Copley, looking him in the face, which now, as
the painter fancied, had a singular depth of intelligence, though
hitherto it had not given him greatly the advantage over his own family
of wooden images. “What has come over you? How is it that, possessing
the idea which you have now uttered, you should produce only such works
as these?”

The carver smiled, but made no reply. Copley turned again to the
images, conceiving that the sense of deficiency which Drowne had just
expressed, and which is so rare in a merely mechanical character, must
surely imply a genius, the tokens of which had heretofore been
overlooked. But no; there was not a trace of it. He was about to
withdraw when his eyes chanced to fall upon a half-developed figure
which lay in a corner of the workshop, surrounded by scattered chips of
oak. It arrested him at once.

“What is here? Who has done this?” he broke out, after contemplating it
in speechless astonishment for an instant. “Here is the divine, the
lifegiving touch. What inspired hand is beckoning this wood to arise
and live? Whose work is this?”

“No man’s work,” replied Drowne. “The figure lies within that block of
oak, and it is my business to find it.”

“Drowne,” said the true artist, grasping the carver fervently by the
hand, “you are a man of genius!”

As Copley departed, happening to glance backward from the threshold, he
beheld Drowne bending over the half-created shape, and stretching forth
his arms as if he would have embraced and drawn it to his heart; while,
had such a miracle been possible, his countenance expressed passion
enough to communicate warmth and sensibility to the lifeless oak.

“Strange enough!” said the artist to himself. “Who would have looked
for a modern Pygmalion in the person of a Yankee mechanic!”

As yet, the image was but vague in its outward presentment; so that, as
in the cloud shapes around the western sun, the observer rather felt,
or was led to imagine, than really saw what was intended by it. Day by
day, however, the work assumed greater precision, and settled its
irregular and misty outline into distincter grace and beauty. The
general design was now obvious to the common eye. It was a female
figure, in what appeared to be a foreign dress; the gown being laced
over the bosom, and opening in front so as to disclose a skirt or
petticoat, the folds and inequalities of which were admirably
represented in the oaken substance. She wore a hat of singular
gracefulness, and abundantly laden with flowers, such as never grew in
the rude soil of New England, but which, with all their fanciful
luxuriance, had a natural truth that it seemed impossible for the most
fertile imagination to have attained without copying from real
prototypes. There were several little appendages to this dress, such as
a fan, a pair of earrings, a chain about the neck, a watch in the
bosom, and a ring upon the finger, all of which would have been deemed
beneath the dignity of sculpture. They were put on, however, with as
much taste as a lovely woman might have shown in her attire, and could
therefore have shocked none but a judgment spoiled by artistic rules.

The face was still imperfect; but gradually, by a magic touch,
intelligence and sensibility brightened through the features, with all
the effect of light gleaming forth from within the solid oak. The face
became alive. It was a beautiful, though not precisely regular and
somewhat haughty aspect, but with a certain piquancy about the eyes and
mouth, which, of all expressions, would have seemed the most impossible
to throw over a wooden countenance. And now, so far as carving went,
this wonderful production was complete.

“Drowne,” said Copley, who had hardly missed a single day in his visits
to the carver’s workshop, “if this work were in marble it would make
you famous at once; nay, I would almost affirm that it would make an
era in the art. It is as ideal as an antique statue, and yet as real as
any lovely woman whom one meets at a fireside or in the street. But I
trust you do not mean to desecrate this exquisite creature with paint,
like those staring kings and admirals yonder?”

“Not paint her!” exclaimed Captain Hunnewell, who stood by; “not paint
the figure-head of the Cynosure! And what sort of a figure should I cut
in a foreign port with such an unpainted oaken stick as this over my
prow! She must, and she shall, be painted to the life, from the topmost
flower in her hat down to the silver spangles on her slippers.”

“Mr. Copley,” said Drowne, quietly, “I know nothing of marble statuary,
and nothing of the sculptor’s rules of art; but of this wooden image,
this work of my hands, this creature of my heart,”--and here his voice
faltered and choked in a very singular manner,--“of this--of her--I may
say that I know something. A well-spring of inward wisdom gushed within
me as I wrought upon the oak with my whole strength, and soul, and
faith. Let others do what they may with marble, and adopt what rules
they choose. If I can produce my desired effect by painted wood, those
rules are not for me, and I have a right to disregard them.”

“The very spirit of genius,” muttered Copley to himself. “How otherwise
should this carver feel himself entitled to transcend all rules, and
make me ashamed of quoting them?”

He looked earnestly at Drowne, and again saw that expression of human
love which, in a spiritual sense, as the artist could not help
imagining, was the secret of the life that had been breathed into this
block of wood.

The carver, still in the same secrecy that marked all his operations
upon this mysterious image, proceeded to paint the habiliments in their
proper colors, and the countenance with Nature’s red and white. When
all was finished he threw open his workshop, and admitted the towns
people to behold what he had done. Most persons, at their first
entrance, felt impelled to remove their hats, and pay such reverence as
was due to the richly-dressed and beautiful young lady who seemed to
stand in a corner of the room, with oaken chips and shavings scattered
at her feet. Then came a sensation of fear; as if, not being actually
human, yet so like humanity, she must therefore be something
preternatural. There was, in truth, an indefinable air and expression
that might reasonably induce the query, Who and from what sphere this
daughter of the oak should be? The strange, rich flowers of Eden on her
head; the complexion, so much deeper and more brilliant than those of
our native beauties; the foreign, as it seemed, and fantastic garb, yet
not too fantastic to be worn decorously in the street; the
delicately-wrought embroidery of the skirt; the broad gold chain about
her neck; the curious ring upon her finger; the fan, so exquisitely
sculptured in open work, and painted to resemble pearl and
ebony;--where could Drowne, in his sober walk of life, have beheld the
vision here so matchlessly embodied! And then her face! In the dark
eyes, and around the voluptuous mouth, there played a look made up of
pride, coquetry, and a gleam of mirthfulness, which impressed Copley
with the idea that the image was secretly enjoying the perplexing
admiration of himself and other beholders.

“And will you,” said he to the carver, “permit this masterpiece to
become the figure-head of a vessel? Give the honest captain yonder
figure of Britannia--it will answer his purpose far better--and send
this fairy queen to England, where, for aught I know, it may bring you
a thousand pounds.”

“I have not wrought it for money,” said Drowne.

“What sort of a fellow is this!” thought Copley. “A Yankee, and throw
away the chance of making his fortune! He has gone mad; and thence has
come this gleam of genius.”

There was still further proof of Drowne’s lunacy, if credit were due to
the rumor that he had been seen kneeling at the feet of the oaken lady,
and gazing with a lover’s passionate ardor into the face that his own
hands had created. The bigots of the day hinted that it would be no
matter of surprise if an evil spirit were allowed to enter this
beautiful form, and seduce the carver to destruction.

The fame of the image spread far and wide. The inhabitants visited it
so universally, that after a few days of exhibition there was hardly an
old man or a child who had not become minutely familiar with its
aspect. Even had the story of Drowne’s wooden image ended here, its
celebrity might have been prolonged for many years by the reminiscences
of those who looked upon it in their childhood, and saw nothing else so
beautiful in after life. But the town was now astounded by an event,
the narrative of which has formed itself into one of the most singular
legends that are yet to be met with in the traditionary chimney corners
of the New England metropolis, where old men and women sit dreaming of
the past, and wag their heads at the dreamers of the present and the
future.

One fine morning, just before the departure of the Cynosure on her
second voyage to Fayal, the commander of that gallant vessel was seen
to issue from his residence in Hanover Street. He was stylishly dressed
in a blue broadcloth coat, with gold lace at the seams and
button-holes, an embroidered scarlet waistcoat, a triangular hat, with
a loop and broad binding of gold, and wore a silver-hilted hanger at
his side. But the good captain might have been arrayed in the robes of
a prince or the rags of a beggar, without in either case attracting
notice, while obscured by such a companion as now leaned on his arm.
The people in the street started, rubbed their eyes, and either leaped
aside from their path, or stood as if transfixed to wood or marble in
astonishment.

“Do you see it?--do you see it?” cried one, with tremulous eagerness.
“It is the very same!”

“The same?” answered another, who had arrived in town only the night
before. “Who do you mean? I see only a sea-captain in his shoregoing
clothes, and a young lady in a foreign habit, with a bunch of beautiful
flowers in her hat. On my word, she is as fair and bright a damsel as
my eyes have looked on this many a day!”

“Yes; the same!--the very same!” repeated the other. “Drowne’s wooden
image has come to life!”

Here was a miracle indeed! Yet, illuminated by the sunshine, or
darkened by the alternate shade of the houses, and with its garments
fluttering lightly in the morning breeze, there passed the image along
the street. It was exactly and minutely the shape, the garb, and the
face which the towns-people had so recently thronged to see and admire.
Not a rich flower upon her head, not a single leaf, but had had its
prototype in Drowne’s wooden workmanship, although now their fragile
grace had become flexible, and was shaken by every footstep that the
wearer made. The broad gold chain upon the neck was identical with the
one represented on the image, and glistened with the motion imparted by
the rise and fall of the bosom which it decorated. A real diamond
sparkled on her finger. In her right hand she bore a pearl and ebony
fan, which she flourished with a fantastic and bewitching coquetry,
that was likewise expressed in all her movements as well as in the
style of her beauty and the attire that so well harmonized with it. The
face with its brilliant depth of complexion had the same piquancy of
mirthful mischief that was fixed upon the countenance of the image, but
which was here varied and continually shifting, yet always essentially
the same, like the sunny gleam upon a bubbling fountain. On the whole,
there was something so airy and yet so real in the figure, and withal
so perfectly did it represent Drowne’s image, that people knew not
whether to suppose the magic wood etherealized into a spirit or warmed
and softened into an actual woman.

“One thing is certain,” muttered a Puritan of the old stamp, “Drowne
has sold himself to the devil; and doubtless this gay Captain Hunnewell
is a party to the bargain.”

“And I,” said a young man who overheard him, “would almost consent to
be the third victim, for the liberty of saluting those lovely lips.”

“And so would I,” said Copley, the painter, “for the privilege of
taking her picture.”

The image, or the apparition, whichever it might be, still escorted by
the bold captain, proceeded from Hanover Street through some of the
cross lanes that make this portion of the town so intricate, to Ann
Street, thence into Dock Square, and so downward to Drowne’s shop,
which stood just on the water’s edge. The crowd still followed,
gathering volume as it rolled along. Never had a modern miracle
occurred in such broad daylight, nor in the presence of such a
multitude of witnesses. The airy image, as if conscious that she was
the object of the murmurs and disturbance that swelled behind her,
appeared slightly vexed and flustered, yet still in a manner consistent
with the light vivacity and sportive mischief that were written in her
countenance. She was observed to flutter her fan with such vehement
rapidity that the elaborate delicacy of its workmanship gave way, and
it remained broken in her hand.

Arriving at Drowne’s door, while the captain threw it open, the
marvellous apparition paused an instant on the threshold, assuming the
very attitude of the image, and casting over the crowd that glance of
sunny coquetry which all remembered on the face of the oaken lady. She
and her cavalier then disappeared.

“Ah!” murmured the crowd, drawing a deep breath, as with one vast pair
of lungs.

“The world looks darker now that she has vanished,” said some of the
young men.

But the aged, whose recollections dated as far back as witch times,
shook their heads, and hinted that our forefathers would have thought
it a pious deed to burn the daughter of the oak with fire.

“If she be other than a bubble of the elements,” exclaimed Copley, “I
must look upon her face again.”

He accordingly entered the shop; and there, in her usual corner, stood
the image, gazing at him, as it might seem, with the very same
expression of mirthful mischief that had been the farewell look of the
apparition when, but a moment before, she turned her face towards the
crowd. The carver stood beside his creation mending the beautiful fan,
which by some accident was broken in her hand. But there was no longer
any motion in the lifelike image, nor any real woman in the workshop,
nor even the witchcraft of a sunny shadow, that might have deluded
people’s eyes as it flitted along the street. Captain Hunnewell, too,
had vanished. His hoarse sea-breezy tones, however, were audible on the
other side of a door that opened upon the water.

“Sit down in the stern sheets, my lady,” said the gallant captain.
“Come, bear a hand, you lubbers, and set us on board in the turning of
a minute-glass.”

And then was heard the stroke of oars.

“Drowne,” said Copley with a smile of intelligence, “you have been a
truly fortunate man. What painter or statuary ever had such a subject!
No wonder that she inspired a genius into you, and first created the
artist who afterwards created her image.”

Drowne looked at him with a visage that bore the traces of tears, but
from which the light of imagination and sensibility, so recently
illuminating it, had departed. He was again the mechanical carver that
he had been known to be all his lifetime.

“I hardly understand what you mean, Mr. Copley,” said he, putting his
hand to his brow. “This image! Can it have been my work? Well, I have
wrought it in a kind of dream; and now that I am broad awake I must set
about finishing yonder figure of Admiral Vernon.”

And forthwith he employed himself on the stolid countenance of one of
his wooden progeny, and completed it in his own mechanical style, from
which he was never known afterwards to deviate. He followed his
business industriously for many years, acquired a competence, and in
the latter part of his life attained to a dignified station in the
church, being remembered in records and traditions as Deacon Drowne,
the carver. One of his productions, an Indian chief, gilded all over,
stood during the better part of a century on the cupola of the Province
House, bedazzling the eyes of those who looked upward, like an angel of
the sun. Another work of the good deacon’s hand--a reduced likeness of
his friend Captain Hunnewell, holding a telescope and quadrant--may be
seen to this day, at the corner of Broad and State streets, serving in
the useful capacity of sign to the shop of a nautical instrument maker.
We know not how to account for the inferiority of this quaint old
figure, as compared with the recorded excellence of the Oaken Lady,
unless on the supposition that in every human spirit there is
imagination, sensibility, creative power, genius, which, according to
circumstances, may either be developed in this world, or shrouded in a
mask of dulness until another state of being. To our friend Drowne
there came a brief season of excitement, kindled by love. It rendered
him a genius for that one occasion, but, quenched in disappointment,
left him again the mechanical carver in wood, without the power even of
appreciating the work that his own hands had wrought. Yet who can doubt
that the very highest state to which a human spirit can attain, in its
loftiest aspirations, is its truest and most natural state, and that
Drowne was more consistent with himself when he wrought the admirable
figure of the mysterious lady, than when he perpetrated a whole progeny
of blockheads?

There was a rumor in Boston, about this period, that a young Portuguese
lady of rank, on some occasion of political or domestic disquietude,
had fled from her home in Fayal and put herself under the protection of
Captain Hunnewell, on board of whose vessel, and at whose residence,
she was sheltered until a change of affairs. This fair stranger must
have been the original of Drowne’s Wooden Image.



ROGER MALVIN’S BURIAL

One of the few incidents of Indian warfare naturally susceptible of the
moonlight of romance was that expedition undertaken for the defence of
the frontiers in the year 1725, which resulted in the well-remembered
“Lovell’s Fight.” Imagination, by casting certain circumstances
judicially into the shade, may see much to admire in the heroism of a
little band who gave battle to twice their number in the heart of the
enemy’s country. The open bravery displayed by both parties was in
accordance with civilized ideas of valor; and chivalry itself might not
blush to record the deeds of one or two individuals. The battle, though
so fatal to those who fought, was not unfortunate in its consequences
to the country; for it broke the strength of a tribe and conduced to
the peace which subsisted during several ensuing years. History and
tradition are unusually minute in their memorials of their affair; and
the captain of a scouting party of frontier men has acquired as actual
a military renown as many a victorious leader of thousands. Some of the
incidents contained in the following pages will be recognized,
notwithstanding the substitution of fictitious names, by such as have
heard, from old men’s lips, the fate of the few combatants who were in
a condition to retreat after “Lovell’s Fight.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The early sunbeams hovered cheerfully upon the tree-tops, beneath which
two weary and wounded men had stretched their limbs the night before.
Their bed of withered oak leaves was strewn upon the small level space,
at the foot of a rock, situated near the summit of one of the gentle
swells by which the face of the country is there diversified. The mass
of granite, rearing its smooth, flat surface fifteen or twenty feet
above their heads, was not unlike a gigantic gravestone, upon which the
veins seemed to form an inscription in forgotten characters. On a tract
of several acres around this rock, oaks and other hard-wood trees had
supplied the place of the pines, which were the usual growth of the
land; and a young and vigorous sapling stood close beside the
travellers.

The severe wound of the elder man had probably deprived him of sleep;
for, so soon as the first ray of sunshine rested on the top of the
highest tree, he reared himself painfully from his recumbent posture
and sat erect. The deep lines of his countenance and the scattered gray
of his hair marked him as past the middle age; but his muscular frame
would, but for the effect of his wound, have been as capable of
sustaining fatigue as in the early vigor of life. Languor and
exhaustion now sat upon his haggard features; and the despairing glance
which he sent forward through the depths of the forest proved his own
conviction that his pilgrimage was at an end. He next turned his eyes
to the companion who reclined by his side. The youth--for he had
scarcely attained the years of manhood--lay, with his head upon his
arm, in the embrace of an unquiet sleep, which a thrill of pain from
his wounds seemed each moment on the point of breaking. His right hand
grasped a musket; and, to judge from the violent action of his
features, his slumbers were bringing back a vision of the conflict of
which he was one of the few survivors. A shout deep and loud in his
dreaming fancy--found its way in an imperfect murmur to his lips; and,
starting even at the slight sound of his own voice, he suddenly awoke.
The first act of reviving recollection was to make anxious inquiries
respecting the condition of his wounded fellow-traveller. The latter
shook his head.

“Reuben, my boy,” said he, “this rock beneath which we sit will serve
for an old hunter’s gravestone. There is many and many a long mile of
howling wilderness before us yet; nor would it avail me anything if the
smoke of my own chimney were but on the other side of that swell of
land. The Indian bullet was deadlier than I thought.”

“You are weary with our three days’ travel,” replied the youth, “and a
little longer rest will recruit you. Sit you here while I search the
woods for the herbs and roots that must be our sustenance; and, having
eaten, you shall lean on me, and we will turn our faces homeward. I
doubt not that, with my help, you can attain to some one of the
frontier garrisons.”

“There is not two days’ life in me, Reuben,” said the other, calmly,
“and I will no longer burden you with my useless body, when you can
scarcely support your own. Your wounds are deep and your strength is
failing fast; yet, if you hasten onward alone, you may be preserved.
For me there is no hope, and I will await death here.”

“If it must be so, I will remain and watch by you,” said Reuben,
resolutely.

“No, my son, no,” rejoined his companion. “Let the wish of a dying man
have weight with you; give me one grasp of your hand, and get you
hence. Think you that my last moments will be eased by the thought that
I leave you to die a more lingering death? I have loved you like a
father, Reuben; and at a time like this I should have something of a
father’s authority. I charge you to be gone that I may die in peace.”

“And because you have been a father to me, should I therefore leave you
to perish and to lie unburied in the wilderness?” exclaimed the youth.
“No; if your end be in truth approaching, I will watch by you and
receive your parting words. I will dig a grave here by the rock, in
which, if my weakness overcome me, we will rest together; or, if Heaven
gives me strength, I will seek my way home.”

“In the cities and wherever men dwell,” replied the other, “they bury
their dead in the earth; they hide them from the sight of the living;
but here, where no step may pass perhaps for a hundred years, wherefore
should I not rest beneath the open sky, covered only by the oak leaves
when the autumn winds shall strew them? And for a monument, here is
this gray rock, on which my dying hand shall carve the name of Roger
Malvin, and the traveller in days to come will know that here sleeps a
hunter and a warrior. Tarry not, then, for a folly like this, but
hasten away, if not for your own sake, for hers who will else be
desolate.”

Malvin spoke the last few words in a faltering voice, and their effect
upon his companion was strongly visible. They reminded him that there
were other and less questionable duties than that of sharing the fate
of a man whom his death could not benefit. Nor can it be affirmed that
no selfish feeling strove to enter Reuben’s heart, though the
consciousness made him more earnestly resist his companion’s entreaties.

“How terrible to wait the slow approach of death in this solitude!”
exclaimed he. “A brave man does not shrink in the battle; and, when
friends stand round the bed, even women may die composedly; but here--”

“I shall not shrink even here, Reuben Bourne,” interrupted Malvin. “I
am a man of no weak heart, and, if I were, there is a surer support
than that of earthly friends. You are young, and life is dear to you.
Your last moments will need comfort far more than mine; and when you
have laid me in the earth, and are alone, and night is settling on the
forest, you will feel all the bitterness of the death that may now be
escaped. But I will urge no selfish motive to your generous nature.
Leave me for my sake, that, having said a prayer for your safety, I may
have space to settle my account undisturbed by worldly sorrows.”

“And your daughter,--how shall I dare to meet her eye?” exclaimed
Reuben. “She will ask the fate of her father, whose life I vowed to
defend with my own. Must I tell her that he travelled three days’ march
with me from the field of battle and that then I left him to perish in
the wilderness? Were it not better to lie down and die by your side
than to return safe and say this to Dorcas?”

“Tell my daughter,” said Roger Malvin, “that, though yourself sore
wounded, and weak, and weary, you led my tottering footsteps many a
mile, and left me only at my earnest entreaty, because I would not have
your blood upon my soul. Tell her that through pain and danger you were
faithful, and that, if your lifeblood could have saved me, it would
have flowed to its last drop; and tell her that you will be something
dearer than a father, and that my blessing is with you both, and that
my dying eyes can see a long and pleasant path in which you will
journey together.”

As Malvin spoke he almost raised himself from the ground, and the
energy of his concluding words seemed to fill the wild and lonely
forest with a vision of happiness; but, when he sank exhausted upon his
bed of oak leaves, the light which had kindled in Reuben’s eye was
quenched. He felt as if it were both sin and folly to think of
happiness at such a moment. His companion watched his changing
countenance, and sought with generous art to wile him to his own good.

“Perhaps I deceive myself in regard to the time I have to live,” he
resumed. “It may be that, with speedy assistance, I might recover of my
wound. The foremost fugitives must, ere this, have carried tidings of
our fatal battle to the frontiers, and parties will be out to succor
those in like condition with ourselves. Should you meet one of these
and guide them hither, who can tell but that I may sit by my own
fireside again?”

A mournful smile strayed across the features of the dying man as he
insinuated that unfounded hope,--which, however, was not without its
effect on Reuben. No merely selfish motive, nor even the desolate
condition of Dorcas, could have induced him to desert his companion at
such a moment--but his wishes seized on the thought that Malvin’s life
might be preserved, and his sanguine nature heightened almost to
certainty the remote possibility of procuring human aid.

“Surely there is reason, weighty reason, to hope that friends are not
far distant,” he said, half aloud. “There fled one coward, unwounded,
in the beginning of the fight, and most probably he made good speed.
Every true man on the frontier would shoulder his musket at the news;
and, though no party may range so far into the woods as this, I shall
perhaps encounter them in one day’s march. Counsel me faithfully,” he
added, turning to Malvin, in distrust of his own motives. “Were your
situation mine, would you desert me while life remained?”

“It is now twenty years,” replied Roger Malvin,--sighing, however, as
he secretly acknowledged the wide dissimilarity between the two
cases,-“it is now twenty years since I escaped with one dear friend
from Indian captivity near Montreal. We journeyed many days through the
woods, till at length overcome with hunger and weariness, my friend lay
down and besought me to leave him; for he knew that, if I remained, we
both must perish; and, with but little hope of obtaining succor, I
heaped a pillow of dry leaves beneath his head and hastened on.”

“And did you return in time to save him?” asked Reuben, hanging on
Malvin’s words as if they were to be prophetic of his own success.

“I did,” answered the other. “I came upon the camp of a hunting party
before sunset of the same day. I guided them to the spot where my
comrade was expecting death; and he is now a hale and hearty man upon
his own farm, far within the frontiers, while I lie wounded here in the
depths of the wilderness.”

This example, powerful in affecting Reuben’s decision, was aided,
unconsciously to himself, by the hidden strength of many another
motive. Roger Malvin perceived that the victory was nearly won.

“Now, go, my son, and Heaven prosper you!” he said. “Turn not back with
your friends when you meet them, lest your wounds and weariness
overcome you; but send hitherward two or three, that may be spared, to
search for me; and believe me, Reuben, my heart will be lighter with
every step you take towards home.” Yet there was, perhaps, a change
both in his countenance and voice as he spoke thus; for, after all, it
was a ghastly fate to be left expiring in the wilderness.

Reuben Bourne, but half convinced that he was acting rightly, at length
raised himself from the ground and prepared himself for his departure.
And first, though contrary to Malvin’s wishes, he collected a stock of
roots and herbs, which had been their only food during the last two
days. This useless supply he placed within reach of the dying man, for
whom, also, he swept together a bed of dry oak leaves. Then climbing to
the summit of the rock, which on one side was rough and broken, he bent
the oak sapling downward, and bound his handkerchief to the topmost
branch. This precaution was not unnecessary to direct any who might
come in search of Malvin; for every part of the rock, except its broad,
smooth front, was concealed at a little distance by the dense
undergrowth of the forest. The handkerchief had been the bandage of a
wound upon Reuben’s arm; and, as he bound it to the tree, he vowed by
the blood that stained it that he would return, either to save his
companion’s life or to lay his body in the grave. He then descended,
and stood, with downcast eyes, to receive Roger Malvin’s parting words.

The experience of the latter suggested much and minute advice
respecting the youth’s journey through the trackless forest. Upon this
subject he spoke with calm earnestness, as if he were sending Reuben to
the battle or the chase while he himself remained secure at home, and
not as if the human countenance that was about to leave him were the
last he would ever behold. But his firmness was shaken before he
concluded.

“Carry my blessing to Dorcas, and say that my last prayer shall be for
her and you. Bid her to have no hard thoughts because you left me
here,”--Reuben’s heart smote him,--“for that your life would not have
weighed with you if its sacrifice could have done me good. She will
marry you after she has mourned a little while for her father; and
Heaven grant you long and happy days, and may your children’s children
stand round your death bed! And, Reuben,” added he, as the weakness of
mortality made its way at last, “return, when your wounds are healed
and your weariness refreshed,--return to this wild rock, and lay my
bones in the grave, and say a prayer over them.”

An almost superstitious regard, arising perhaps from the customs of the
Indians, whose war was with the dead as well as the living, was paid by
the frontier inhabitants to the rites of sepulture; and there are many
instances of the sacrifice of life in the attempt to bury those who had
fallen by the “sword of the wilderness.” Reuben, therefore, felt the
full importance of the promise which he most solemnly made to return
and perform Roger Malvin’s obsequies. It was remarkable that the
latter, speaking his whole heart in his parting words, no longer
endeavored to persuade the youth that even the speediest succor might
avail to the preservation of his life. Reuben was internally convinced
that he should see Malvin’s living face no more. His generous nature
would fain have delayed him, at whatever risk, till the dying scene
were past; but the desire of existence and the hope of happiness had
strengthened in his heart, and he was unable to resist them.

“It is enough,” said Roger Malvin, having listened to Reuben’s promise.
“Go, and God speed you!”

The youth pressed his hand in silence, turned, and was departing. His
slow and faltering steps, however, had borne him but a little way
before Malvin’s voice recalled him.

“Reuben, Reuben,” said he, faintly; and Reuben returned and knelt down
by the dying man.

“Raise me, and let me lean against the rock,” was his last request. “My
face will be turned towards home, and I shall see you a moment longer
as you pass among the trees.”

Reuben, having made the desired alteration in his companion’s posture,
again began his solitary pilgrimage. He walked more hastily at first
than was consistent with his strength; for a sort of guilty feeling,
which sometimes torments men in their most justifiable acts, caused him
to seek concealment from Malvin’s eyes; but after he had trodden far
upon the rustling forest leaves he crept back, impelled by a wild and
painful curiosity, and, sheltered by the earthy roots of an uptorn
tree, gazed earnestly at the desolate man. The morning sun was
unclouded, and the trees and shrubs imbibed the sweet air of the month
of May; yet there seemed a gloom on Nature’s face, as if she
sympathized with mortal pain and sorrow. Roger Malvin’s hands were
uplifted in a fervent prayer, some of the words of which stole through
the stillness of the woods and entered Reuben’s heart, torturing it
with an unutterable pang. They were the broken accents of a petition
for his own happiness and that of Dorcas; and, as the youth listened,
conscience, or something in its similitude, pleaded strongly with him
to return and lie down again by the rock. He felt how hard was the doom
of the kind and generous being whom he had deserted in his extremity.
Death would come like the slow approach of a corpse, stealing gradually
towards him through the forest, and showing its ghastly and motionless
features from behind a nearer and yet a nearer tree. But such must have
been Reuben’s own fate had he tarried another sunset; and who shall
impute blame to him if he shrink from so useless a sacrifice? As he
gave a parting look, a breeze waved the little banner upon the sapling
oak and reminded Reuben of his vow.

       *       *       *       *       *

Many circumstances combined to retard the wounded traveller in his way
to the frontiers. On the second day the clouds, gathering densely over
the sky, precluded the possibility of regulating his course by the
position of the sun; and he knew not but that every effort of his
almost exhausted strength was removing him farther from the home he
sought. His scanty sustenance was supplied by the berries and other
spontaneous products of the forest. Herds of deer, it is true,
sometimes bounded past him, and partridges frequently whirred up before
his footsteps; but his ammunition had been expended in the fight, and
he had no means of slaying them. His wounds, irritated by the constant
exertion in which lay the only hope of life, wore away his strength and
at intervals confused his reason. But, even in the wanderings of
intellect, Reuben’s young heart clung strongly to existence; and it was
only through absolute incapacity of motion that he at last sank down
beneath a tree, compelled there to await death.

In this situation he was discovered by a party who, upon the first
intelligence of the fight, had been despatched to the relief of the
survivors. They conveyed him to the nearest settlement, which chanced
to be that of his own residence.

Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time, watched by the bedside of
her wounded lover, and administered all those comforts that are in the
sole gift of woman’s heart and hand. During several days Reuben’s
recollection strayed drowsily among the perils and hardships through
which he had passed, and he was incapable of returning definite answers
to the inquiries with which many were eager to harass him. No authentic
particulars of the battle had yet been circulated; nor could mothers,
wives, and children tell whether their loved ones were detained by
captivity or by the stronger chain of death. Dorcas nourished her
apprehensions in silence till one afternoon when Reuben awoke from an
unquiet sleep, and seemed to recognize her more perfectly than at any
previous time. She saw that his intellect had become composed, and she
could no longer restrain her filial anxiety.

“My father, Reuben?” she began; but the change in her lover’s
countenance made her pause.

The youth shrank as if with a bitter pain, and the blood gushed vividly
into his wan and hollow cheeks. His first impulse was to cover his
face; but, apparently with a desperate effort, he half raised himself
and spoke vehemently, defending himself against an imaginary accusation.

“Your father was sore wounded in the battle, Dorcas; and he bade me not
burden myself with him, but only to lead him to the lakeside, that he
might quench his thirst and die. But I would not desert the old man in
his extremity, and, though bleeding myself, I supported him; I gave him
half my strength, and led him away with me. For three days we journeyed
on together, and your father was sustained beyond my hopes, but,
awaking at sunrise on the fourth day, I found him faint and exhausted;
he was unable to proceed; his life had ebbed away fast; and--”

“He died!” exclaimed Dorcas, faintly.

Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge that his selfish love of life
had hurried him away before her father’s fate was decided. He spoke
not; he only bowed his head; and, between shame and exhaustion, sank
back and hid his face in the pillow. Dorcas wept when her fears were
thus confirmed; but the shock, as it had been long anticipated, was on
that account the less violent.

“You dug a grave for my poor father in the wilderness, Reuben?” was the
question by which her filial piety manifested itself.

“My hands were weak; but I did what I could,” replied the youth in a
smothered tone. “There stands a noble tombstone above his head; and I
would to Heaven I slept as soundly as he!”

Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter words, inquired no
further at the time; but her heart found ease in the thought that Roger
Malvin had not lacked such funeral rites as it was possible to bestow.
The tale of Reuben’s courage and fidelity lost nothing when she
communicated it to her friends; and the poor youth, tottering from his
sick chamber to breathe the sunny air, experienced from every tongue
the miserable and humiliating torture of unmerited praise. All
acknowledged that he might worthily demand the hand of the fair maiden
to whose father he had been “faithful unto death;” and, as my tale is
not of love, it shall suffice to say that in the space of a few months
Reuben became the husband of Dorcas Malvin. During the marriage
ceremony the bride was covered with blushes, but the bridegroom’s face
was pale.

There was now in the breast of Reuben Bourne an incommunicable
thought--something which he was to conceal most heedfully from her whom
he most loved and trusted. He regretted, deeply and bitterly, the moral
cowardice that had restrained his words when he was about to disclose
the truth to Dorcas; but pride, the fear of losing her affection, the
dread of universal scorn, forbade him to rectify this falsehood. He
felt that for leaving Roger Malvin he deserved no censure. His
presence, the gratuitous sacrifice of his own life, would have added
only another and a needless agony to the last moments of the dying man;
but concealment had imparted to a justifiable act much of the secret
effect of guilt; and Reuben, while reason told him that he had done
right, experienced in no small degree the mental horrors which punish
the perpetrator of undiscovered crime. By a certain association of
ideas, he at times almost imagined himself a murderer. For years, also,
a thought would occasionally recur, which, though he perceived all its
folly and extravagance, he had not power to banish from his mind. It
was a haunting and torturing fancy that his father-in-law was yet
sitting at the foot of the rock, on the withered forest leaves, alive,
and awaiting his pledged assistance. These mental deceptions, however,
came and went, nor did he ever mistake them for realities: but in the
calmest and clearest moods of his mind he was conscious that he had a
deep vow unredeemed, and that an unburied corpse was calling to him out
of the wilderness. Yet such was the consequence of his prevarication
that he could not obey the call. It was now too late to require the
assistance of Roger Malvin’s friends in performing his long-deferred
sepulture; and superstitious fears, of which none were more susceptible
than the people of the outward settlements, forbade Reuben to go alone.
Neither did he know where in the pathless and illimitable forest to
seek that smooth and lettered rock at the base of which the body lay:
his remembrance of every portion of his travel thence was indistinct,
and the latter part had left no impression upon his mind. There was,
however, a continual impulse, a voice audible only to himself,
commanding him to go forth and redeem his vow; and he had a strange
impression that, were he to make the trial, he would be led straight to
Malvin’s bones. But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was
disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his
spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart; and he was
transformed into a sad and downcast yet irritable man.

In the course of a few years after their marriage changes began to be
visible in the external prosperity of Reuben and Dorcas. The only
riches of the former had been his stout heart and strong arm; but the
latter, her father’s sole heiress, had made her husband master of a
farm, under older cultivation, larger, and better stocked than most of
the frontier establishments. Reuben Bourne, however, was a neglectful
husbandman; and, while the lands of the other settlers became annually
more fruitful, his deteriorated in the same proportion. The
discouragements to agriculture were greatly lessened by the cessation
of Indian war, during which men held the plough in one hand and the
musket in the other, and were fortunate if the products of their
dangerous labor were not destroyed, either in the field or in the barn,
by the savage enemy. But Reuben did not profit by the altered condition
of the country; nor can it be denied that his intervals of industrious
attention to his affairs were but scantily rewarded with success. The
irritability by which he had recently become distinguished was another
cause of his declining prosperity, as it occasioned frequent quarrels
in his unavoidable intercourse with the neighboring settlers. The
results of these were innumerable lawsuits; for the people of New
England, in the earliest stages and wildest circumstances of the
country, adopted, whenever attainable, the legal mode of deciding their
differences. To be brief, the world did not go well with Reuben Bourne;
and, though not till many years after his marriage, he was finally a
ruined man, with but one remaining expedient against the evil fate that
had pursued him. He was to throw sunlight into some deep recess of the
forest, and seek subsistence from the virgin bosom of the wilderness.

The only child of Reuben and Dorcas was a son, now arrived at the age
of fifteen years, beautiful in youth, and giving promise of a glorious
manhood. He was peculiarly qualified for, and already began to excel
in, the wild accomplishments of frontier life. His foot was fleet, his
aim true, his apprehension quick, his heart glad and high; and all who
anticipated the return of Indian war spoke of Cyrus Bourne as a future
leader in the land. The boy was loved by his father with a deep and
silent strength, as if whatever was good and happy in his own nature
had been transferred to his child, carrying his affections with it.
Even Dorcas, though loving and beloved, was far less dear to him; for
Reuben’s secret thoughts and insulated emotions had gradually made him
a selfish man, and he could no longer love deeply except where he saw
or imagined some reflection or likeness of his own mind. In Cyrus he
recognized what he had himself been in other days; and at intervals he
seemed to partake of the boy’s spirit, and to be revived with a fresh
and happy life. Reuben was accompanied by his son in the expedition,
for the purpose of selecting a tract of land and felling and burning
the timber, which necessarily preceded the removal of the household
gods. Two months of autumn were thus occupied, after which Reuben
Bourne and his young hunter returned to spend their last winter in the
settlements.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was early in the month of May that the little family snapped asunder
whatever tendrils of affections had clung to inanimate objects, and
bade farewell to the few who, in the blight of fortune, called
themselves their friends. The sadness of the parting moment had, to
each of the pilgrims, its peculiar alleviations. Reuben, a moody man,
and misanthropic because unhappy, strode onward with his usual stern
brow and downcast eye, feeling few regrets and disdaining to
acknowledge any. Dorcas, while she wept abundantly over the broken ties
by which her simple and affectionate nature had bound itself to
everything, felt that the inhabitants of her inmost heart moved on with
her, and that all else would be supplied wherever she might go. And the
boy dashed one tear-drop from his eye, and thought of the adventurous
pleasures of the untrodden forest.

Oh, who, in the enthusiasm of a daydream, has not wished that he were a
wanderer in a world of summer wilderness, with one fair and gentle
being hanging lightly on his arm? In youth his free and exulting step
would know no barrier but the rolling ocean or the snow-topped
mountains; calmer manhood would choose a home where Nature had strewn a
double wealth in the vale of some transparent stream; and when hoary
age, after long, long years of that pure life, stole on and found him
there, it would find him the father of a race, the patriarch of a
people, the founder of a mighty nation yet to be. When death, like the
sweet sleep which we welcome after a day of happiness, came over him,
his far descendants would mourn over the venerated dust. Enveloped by
tradition in mysterious attributes, the men of future generations would
call him godlike; and remote posterity would see him standing, dimly
glorious, far up the valley of a hundred centuries.

The tangled and gloomy forest through which the personages of my tale
were wandering differed widely from the dreamer’s land of fantasy; yet
there was something in their way of life that Nature asserted as her
own, and the gnawing cares which went with them from the world were all
that now obstructed their happiness. One stout and shaggy steed, the
bearer of all their wealth, did not shrink from the added weight of
Dorcas; although her hardy breeding sustained her, during the latter
part of each day’s journey, by her husband’s side. Reuben and his son,
their muskets on their shoulders and their axes slung behind them, kept
an unwearied pace, each watching with a hunter’s eye for the game that
supplied their food. When hunger bade, they halted and prepared their
meal on the bank of some unpolluted forest brook, which, as they knelt
down with thirsty lips to drink, murmured a sweet unwillingness, like a
maiden at love’s first kiss. They slept beneath a hut of branches, and
awoke at peep of light refreshed for the toils of another day. Dorcas
and the boy went on joyously, and even Reuben’s spirit shone at
intervals with an outward gladness; but inwardly there was a cold cold
sorrow, which he compared to the snowdrifts lying deep in the glens and
hollows of the rivulets while the leaves were brightly green above.

Cyrus Bourne was sufficiently skilled in the travel of the woods to
observe that his father did not adhere to the course they had pursued
in their expedition of the preceding autumn. They were now keeping
farther to the north, striking out more directly from the settlements,
and into a region of which savage beasts and savage men were as yet the
sole possessors. The boy sometimes hinted his opinions upon the
subject, and Reuben listened attentively, and once or twice altered the
direction of their march in accordance with his son’s counsel; but,
having so done, he seemed ill at ease. His quick and wandering glances
were sent forward apparently in search of enemies lurking behind the
tree trunks, and, seeing nothing there, he would cast his eyes
backwards as if in fear of some pursuer. Cyrus, perceiving that his
father gradually resumed the old direction, forbore to interfere; nor,
though something began to weigh upon his heart, did his adventurous
nature permit him to regret the increased length and the mystery of
their way.

On the afternoon of the fifth day they halted, and made their simple
encampment nearly an hour before sunset. The face of the country, for
the last few miles, had been diversified by swells of land resembling
huge waves of a petrified sea; and in one of the corresponding hollows,
a wild and romantic spot, had the family reared their hut and kindled
their fire. There is something chilling, and yet heart-warming, in the
thought of these three, united by strong bands of love and insulated
from all that breathe beside. The dark and gloomy pines looked down
upon them, and, as the wind swept through their tops, a pitying sound
was heard in the forest; or did those old trees groan in fear that men
were come to lay the axe to their roots at last? Reuben and his son,
while Dorcas made ready their meal, proposed to wander out in search of
game, of which that day’s march had afforded no supply. The boy,
promising not to quit the vicinity of the encampment, bounded off with
a step as light and elastic as that of the deer he hoped to slay; while
his father, feeling a transient happiness as he gazed after him, was
about to pursue an opposite direction. Dorcas in the meanwhile, had
seated herself near their fire of fallen branches upon the mossgrown
and mouldering trunk of a tree uprooted years before. Her employment,
diversified by an occasional glance at the pot, now beginning to simmer
over the blaze, was the perusal of the current year’s Massachusetts
Almanac, which, with the exception of an old black-letter Bible,
comprised all the literary wealth of the family. None pay a greater
regard to arbitrary divisions of time than those who are excluded from
society; and Dorcas mentioned, as if the information were of
importance, that it was now the twelfth of May. Her husband started.

“The twelfth of May! I should remember it well,” muttered he, while
many thoughts occasioned a momentary confusion in his mind. “Where am
I? Whither am I wandering? Where did I leave him?”

Dorcas, too well accustomed to her husband’s wayward moods to note any
peculiarity of demeanor, now laid aside the almanac and addressed him
in that mournful tone which the tender hearted appropriate to griefs
long cold and dead.

“It was near this time of the month, eighteen years ago, that my poor
father left this world for a better. He had a kind arm to hold his head
and a kind voice to cheer him, Reuben, in his last moments; and the
thought of the faithful care you took of him has comforted me many a
time since. Oh, death would have been awful to a solitary man in a wild
place like this!”

“Pray Heaven, Dorcas,” said Reuben, in a broken voice,--“pray Heaven
that neither of us three dies solitary and lies unburied in this
howling wilderness!” And he hastened away, leaving her to watch the
fire beneath the gloomy pines.

Reuben Bourne’s rapid pace gradually slackened as the pang,
unintentionally inflicted by the words of Dorcas, became less acute.
Many strange reflections, however, thronged upon him; and, straying
onward rather like a sleep walker than a hunter, it was attributable to
no care of his own that his devious course kept him in the vicinity of
the encampment. His steps were imperceptibly led almost in a circle;
nor did he observe that he was on the verge of a tract of land heavily
timbered, but not with pine-trees. The place of the latter was here
supplied by oaks and other of the harder woods; and around their roots
clustered a dense and bushy under-growth, leaving, however, barren
spaces between the trees, thick strewn with withered leaves. Whenever
the rustling of the branches or the creaking of the trunks made a
sound, as if the forest were waking from slumber, Reuben instinctively
raised the musket that rested on his arm, and cast a quick, sharp
glance on every side; but, convinced by a partial observation that no
animal was near, he would again give himself up to his thoughts. He was
musing on the strange influence that had led him away from his
premeditated course, and so far into the depths of the wilderness.
Unable to penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives
lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him
onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat. He
trusted that it was Heaven’s intent to afford him an opportunity of
expiating his sin; he hoped that he might find the bones so long
unburied; and that, having laid the earth over them, peace would throw
its sunlight into the sepulchre of his heart. From these thoughts he
was aroused by a rustling in the forest at some distance from the spot
to which he had wandered. Perceiving the motion of some object behind a
thick veil of undergrowth, he fired, with the instinct of a hunter and
the aim of a practised marksman. A low moan, which told his success,
and by which even animals cars express their dying agony, was unheeded
by Reuben Bourne. What were the recollections now breaking upon him?

The thicket into which Reuben had fired was near the summit of a swell
of land, and was clustered around the base of a rock, which, in the
shape and smoothness of one of its surfaces, was not unlike a gigantic
gravestone. As if reflected in a mirror, its likeness was in Reuben’s
memory. He even recognized the veins which seemed to form an
inscription in forgotten characters: everything remained the same,
except that a thick covert of bushes shrouded the lowerpart of the
rock, and would have hidden Roger Malvin had he still been sitting
there. Yet in the next moment Reuben’s eye was caught by another change
that time had effected since he last stood where he was now standing
again behind the earthy roots of the uptorn tree. The sapling to which
he had bound the bloodstained symbol of his vow had increased and
strengthened into an oak, far indeed from its maturity, but with no
mean spread of shadowy branches. There was one singularity observable
in this tree which made Reuben tremble. The middle and lower branches
were in luxuriant life, and an excess of vegetation had fringed the
trunk almost to the ground; but a blight had apparently stricken the
upper part of the oak, and the very topmost bough was withered,
sapless, and utterly dead. Reuben remembered how the little banner had
fluttered on that topmost bough, when it was green and lovely, eighteen
years before. Whose guilt had blasted it?

       *       *       *       *       *

Dorcas, after the departure of the two hunters, continued her
preparations for their evening repast. Her sylvan table was the
moss-covered trunk of a large fallen tree, on the broadest part of
which she had spread a snow-white cloth and arranged what were left of
the bright pewter vessels that had been her pride in the settlements.
It had a strange aspect that one little spot of homely comfort in the
desolate heart of Nature. The sunshine yet lingered upon the higher
branches of the trees that grew on rising ground; but the shadows of
evening had deepened into the hollow where the encampment was made, and
the firelight began to redden as it gleamed up the tall trunks of the
pines or hovered on the dense and obscure mass of foliage that circled
round the spot. The heart of Dorcas was not sad; for she felt that it
was better to journey in the wilderness with two whom she loved than to
be a lonely woman in a crowd that cared not for her. As she busied
herself in arranging seats of mouldering wood, covered with leaves, for
Reuben and her son, her voice danced through the gloomy forest in the
measure of a song that she had learned in youth. The rude melody, the
production of a bard who won no name, was descriptive of a winter
evening in a frontier cottage, when, secured from savage inroad by the
high-piled snow-drifts, the family rejoiced by their own fireside. The
whole song possessed the nameless charm peculiar to unborrowed thought,
but four continually-recurring lines shone out from the rest like the
blaze of the hearth whose joys they celebrated. Into them, working
magic with a few simple words, the poet had instilled the very essence
of domestic love and household happiness, and they were poetry and
picture joined in one. As Dorcas sang, the walls of her forsaken home
seemed to encircle her; she no longer saw the gloomy pines, nor heard
the wind which still, as she began each verse, sent a heavy breath
through the branches, and died away in a hollow moan from the burden of
the song. She was aroused by the report of a gun in the vicinity of the
encampment; and either the sudden sound, or her loneliness by the
glowing fire, caused her to tremble violently. The next moment she
laughed in the pride of a mother’s heart.

“My beautiful young hunter! My boy has slain a deer!” she exclaimed,
recollecting that in the direction whence the shot proceeded Cyrus had
gone to the chase.

She waited a reasonable time to hear her son’s light step bounding over
the rustling leaves to tell of his success. But he did not immediately
appear; and she sent her cheerful voice among the trees in search of
him.

“Cyrus! Cyrus!”

His coming was still delayed; and she determined, as the report had
apparently been very near, to seek for him in person. Her assistance,
also, might be necessary in bringing home the venison which she
flattered herself he had obtained. She therefore set forward, directing
her steps by the long-past sound, and singing as she went, in order
that the boy might be aware of her approach and run to meet her. From
behind the trunk of every tree, and from every hiding-place in the
thick foliage of the undergrowth, she hoped to discover the countenance
of her son, laughing with the sportive mischief that is born of
affection. The sun was now beneath the horizon, and the light that came
down among the leaves was sufficiently dim to create many illusions in
her expecting fancy. Several times she seemed indistinctly to see his
face gazing out from among the leaves; and once she imagined that he
stood beckoning to her at the base of a craggy rock. Keeping her eyes
on this object, however, it proved to be no more than the trunk of an
oak fringed to the very ground with little branches, one of which,
thrust out farther than the rest, was shaken by the breeze. Making her
way round the foot of the rock, she suddenly found herself close to her
husband, who had approached in another direction. Leaning upon the butt
of his gun, the muzzle of which rested upon the withered leaves, he was
apparently absorbed in the contemplation of some object at his feet.

“How is this, Reuben? Have you slain the deer and fallen asleep over
him?” exclaimed Dorcas, laughing cheerfully, on her first slight
observation of his posture and appearance.

He stirred not, neither did he turn his eyes towards her; and a cold,
shuddering fear, indefinite in its source and object, began to creep
into her blood. She now perceived that her husband’s face was ghastly
pale, and his features were rigid, as if incapable of assuming any
other expression than the strong despair which had hardened upon them.
He gave not the slightest evidence that he was aware of her approach.

“For the love of Heaven, Reuben, speak to me!” cried Dorcas; and the
strange sound of her own voice affrighted her even more than the dead
silence.

Her husband started, stared into her face, drew her to the front of the
rock, and pointed with his finger.

Oh, there lay the boy, asleep, but dreamless, upon the fallen forest
leaves! His cheek rested upon his arm--his curled locks were thrown
back from his brow--his limbs were slightly relaxed. Had a sudden
weariness overcome the youthful hunter? Would his mother’s voice arouse
him? She knew that it was death.

“This broad rock is the gravestone of your near kindred, Dorcas,” said
her husband. “Your tears will fall at once over your father and your
son.”

She heard him not. With one wild shriek, that seemed to force its way
from the sufferer’s inmost soul, she sank insensible by the side of her
dead boy. At that moment the withered topmost bough of the oak loosened
itself in the stilly air, and fell in soft, light fragments upon the
rock, upon the leaves, upon Reuben, upon his wife and child, and upon
Roger Malvin’s bones. Then Reuben’s heart was stricken, and the tears
gushed out like water from a rock. The vow that the wounded youth had
made the blighted man had come to redeem. His sin was expiated,--the
curse was gone from him; and in the hour when he had shed blood dearer
to him than his own, a prayer, the first for years, went up to Heaven
from the lips of Reuben Bourne.



THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL

An elderly man, with his pretty daughter on his arm, was passing along
the street, and emerged from the gloom of the cloudy evening into the
light that fell across the pavement from the window of a small shop. It
was a projecting window; and on the inside were suspended a variety of
watches, pinchbeck, silver, and one or two of gold, all with their
faces turned from the streets, as if churlishly disinclined to inform
the wayfarers what o’clock it was. Seated within the shop, sidelong to
the window with his pale face bent earnestly over some delicate piece
of mechanism on which was thrown the concentrated lustre of a shade
lamp, appeared a young man.

“What can Owen Warland be about?” muttered old Peter Hovenden, himself
a retired watchmaker, and the former master of this same young man
whose occupation he was now wondering at. “What can the fellow be
about? These six months past I have never come by his shop without
seeing him just as steadily at work as now. It would be a flight beyond
his usual foolery to seek for the perpetual motion; and yet I know
enough of my old business to be certain that what he is now so busy
with is no part of the machinery of a watch.”

“Perhaps, father,” said Annie, without showing much interest in the
question, “Owen is inventing a new kind of timekeeper. I am sure he has
ingenuity enough.”

“Poh, child! He has not the sort of ingenuity to invent anything better
than a Dutch toy,” answered her father, who had formerly been put to
much vexation by Owen Warland’s irregular genius. “A plague on such
ingenuity! All the effect that ever I knew of it was to spoil the
accuracy of some of the best watches in my shop. He would turn the sun
out of its orbit and derange the whole course of time, if, as I said
before, his ingenuity could grasp anything bigger than a child’s toy!”

“Hush, father! He hears you!” whispered Annie, pressing the old man’s
arm. “His ears are as delicate as his feelings; and you know how easily
disturbed they are. Do let us move on.”

So Peter Hovenden and his daughter Annie plodded on without further
conversation, until in a by-street of the town they found themselves
passing the open door of a blacksmith’s shop. Within was seen the
forge, now blazing up and illuminating the high and dusky roof, and now
confining its lustre to a narrow precinct of the coal-strewn floor,
according as the breath of the bellows was puffed forth or again
inhaled into its vast leathern lungs. In the intervals of brightness it
was easy to distinguish objects in remote corners of the shop and the
horseshoes that hung upon the wall; in the momentary gloom the fire
seemed to be glimmering amidst the vagueness of unenclosed space.
Moving about in this red glare and alternate dusk was the figure of the
blacksmith, well worthy to be viewed in so picturesque an aspect of
light and shade, where the bright blaze struggled with the black night,
as if each would have snatched his comely strength from the other. Anon
he drew a white-hot bar of iron from the coals, laid it on the anvil,
uplifted his arm of might, and was soon enveloped in the myriads of
sparks which the strokes of his hammer scattered into the surrounding
gloom.

“Now, that is a pleasant sight,” said the old watchmaker. “I know what
it is to work in gold; but give me the worker in iron after all is said
and done. He spends his labor upon a reality. What say you, daughter
Annie?”

“Pray don’t speak so loud, father,” whispered Annie, “Robert Danforth
will hear you.”

“And what if he should hear me?” said Peter Hovenden. “I say again, it
is a good and a wholesome thing to depend upon main strength and
reality, and to earn one’s bread with the bare and brawny arm of a
blacksmith. A watchmaker gets his brain puzzled by his wheels within a
wheel, or loses his health or the nicety of his eyesight, as was my
case, and finds himself at middle age, or a little after, past labor at
his own trade and fit for nothing else, yet too poor to live at his
ease. So I say once again, give me main strength for my money. And
then, how it takes the nonsense out of a man! Did you ever hear of a
blacksmith being such a fool as Owen Warland yonder?”

“Well said, uncle Hovenden!” shouted Robert Danforth from the forge, in
a full, deep, merry voice, that made the roof re-echo. “And what says
Miss Annie to that doctrine? She, I suppose, will think it a genteeler
business to tinker up a lady’s watch than to forge a horseshoe or make
a gridiron.”

Annie drew her father onward without giving him time for reply.

But we must return to Owen Warland’s shop, and spend more meditation
upon his history and character than either Peter Hovenden, or probably
his daughter Annie, or Owen’s old school-fellow, Robert Danforth, would
have thought due to so slight a subject. From the time that his little
fingers could grasp a penknife, Owen had been remarkable for a delicate
ingenuity, which sometimes produced pretty shapes in wood, principally
figures of flowers and birds, and sometimes seemed to aim at the hidden
mysteries of mechanism. But it was always for purposes of grace, and
never with any mockery of the useful. He did not, like the crowd of
school-boy artisans, construct little windmills on the angle of a barn
or watermills across the neighboring brook. Those who discovered such
peculiarity in the boy as to think it worth their while to observe him
closely, sometimes saw reason to suppose that he was attempting to
imitate the beautiful movements of Nature as exemplified in the flight
of birds or the activity of little animals. It seemed, in fact, a new
development of the love of the beautiful, such as might have made him a
poet, a painter, or a sculptor, and which was as completely refined
from all utilitarian coarseness as it could have been in either of the
fine arts. He looked with singular distaste at the stiff and regular
processes of ordinary machinery. Being once carried to see a
steam-engine, in the expectation that his intuitive comprehension of
mechanical principles would be gratified, he turned pale and grew sick,
as if something monstrous and unnatural had been presented to him. This
horror was partly owing to the size and terrible energy of the iron
laborer; for the character of Owen’s mind was microscopic, and tended
naturally to the minute, in accordance with his diminutive frame and
the marvellous smallness and delicate power of his fingers. Not that
his sense of beauty was thereby diminished into a sense of prettiness.
The beautiful idea has no relation to size, and may be as perfectly
developed in a space too minute for any but microscopic investigation
as within the ample verge that is measured by the arc of the rainbow.
But, at all events, this characteristic minuteness in his objects and
accomplishments made the world even more incapable than it might
otherwise have been of appreciating Owen Warland’s genius. The boy’s
relatives saw nothing better to be done--as perhaps there was not--than
to bind him apprentice to a watchmaker, hoping that his strange
ingenuity might thus be regulated and put to utilitarian purposes.

Peter Hovenden’s opinion of his apprentice has already been expressed.
He could make nothing of the lad. Owen’s apprehension of the
professional mysteries, it is true, was inconceivably quick; but he
altogether forgot or despised the grand object of a watchmaker’s
business, and cared no more for the measurement of time than if it had
been merged into eternity. So long, however, as he remained under his
old master’s care, Owen’s lack of sturdiness made it possible, by
strict injunctions and sharp oversight, to restrain his creative
eccentricity within bounds; but when his apprenticeship was served out,
and he had taken the little shop which Peter Hovenden’s failing
eyesight compelled him to relinquish, then did people recognize how
unfit a person was Owen Warland to lead old blind Father Time along his
daily course. One of his most rational projects was to connect a
musical operation with the machinery of his watches, so that all the
harsh dissonances of life might be rendered tuneful, and each flitting
moment fall into the abyss of the past in golden drops of harmony. If a
family clock was intrusted to him for repair,--one of those tall,
ancient clocks that have grown nearly allied to human nature by
measuring out the lifetime of many generations,--he would take upon
himself to arrange a dance or funeral procession of figures across its
venerable face, representing twelve mirthful or melancholy hours.
Several freaks of this kind quite destroyed the young watchmaker’s
credit with that steady and matter-of-fact class of people who hold the
opinion that time is not to be trifled with, whether considered as the
medium of advancement and prosperity in this world or preparation for
the next. His custom rapidly diminished--a misfortune, however, that
was probably reckoned among his better accidents by Owen Warland, who
was becoming more and more absorbed in a secret occupation which drew
all his science and manual dexterity into itself, and likewise gave
full employment to the characteristic tendencies of his genius. This
pursuit had already consumed many months.

After the old watchmaker and his pretty daughter had gazed at him out
of the obscurity of the street, Owen Warland was seized with a
fluttering of the nerves, which made his hand tremble too violently to
proceed with such delicate labor as he was now engaged upon.

“It was Annie herself!” murmured he. “I should have known it, by this
throbbing of my heart, before I heard her father’s voice. Ah, how it
throbs! I shall scarcely be able to work again on this exquisite
mechanism to-night. Annie! dearest Annie! thou shouldst give firmness
to my heart and hand, and not shake them thus; for if I strive to put
the very spirit of beauty into form and give it motion, it is for thy
sake alone. O throbbing heart, be quiet! If my labor be thus thwarted,
there will come vague and unsatisfied dreams which will leave me
spiritless to-morrow.”

As he was endeavoring to settle himself again to his task, the shop
door opened and gave admittance to no other than the stalwart figure
which Peter Hovenden had paused to admire, as seen amid the light and
shadow of the blacksmith’s shop. Robert Danforth had brought a little
anvil of his own manufacture, and peculiarly constructed, which the
young artist had recently bespoken. Owen examined the article and
pronounced it fashioned according to his wish.

“Why, yes,” said Robert Danforth, his strong voice filling the shop as
with the sound of a bass viol, “I consider myself equal to anything in
the way of my own trade; though I should have made but a poor figure at
yours with such a fist as this,” added he, laughing, as he laid his
vast hand beside the delicate one of Owen. “But what then? I put more
main strength into one blow of my sledge hammer than all that you have
expended since you were a ’prentice. Is not that the truth?”

“Very probably,” answered the low and slender voice of Owen. “Strength
is an earthly monster. I make no pretensions to it. My force, whatever
there may be of it, is altogether spiritual.”

“Well, but, Owen, what are you about?” asked his old school-fellow,
still in such a hearty volume of tone that it made the artist shrink,
especially as the question related to a subject so sacred as the
absorbing dream of his imagination. “Folks do say that you are trying
to discover the perpetual motion.”

“The perpetual motion? Nonsense!” replied Owen Warland, with a movement
of disgust; for he was full of little petulances. “It can never be
discovered. It is a dream that may delude men whose brains are
mystified with matter, but not me. Besides, if such a discovery were
possible, it would not be worth my while to make it only to have the
secret turned to such purposes as are now effected by steam and water
power. I am not ambitious to be honored with the paternity of a new
kind of cotton machine.”

“That would be droll enough!” cried the blacksmith, breaking out into
such an uproar of laughter that Owen himself and the bell glasses on
his work-board quivered in unison. “No, no, Owen! No child of yours
will have iron joints and sinews. Well, I won’t hinder you any more.
Good night, Owen, and success, and if you need any assistance, so far
as a downright blow of hammer upon anvil will answer the purpose, I’m
your man.”

And with another laugh the man of main strength left the shop.

“How strange it is,” whispered Owen Warland to himself, leaning his
head upon his hand, “that all my musings, my purposes, my passion
for the beautiful, my consciousness of power to create it,--a
finer, more ethereal power, of which this earthly giant can have no
conception,--all, all, look so vain and idle whenever my path is
crossed by Robert Danforth! He would drive me mad were I to meet him
often. His hard, brute force darkens and confuses the spiritual element
within me; but I, too, will be strong in my own way. I will not yield
to him.”

He took from beneath a glass a piece of minute machinery, which he set
in the condensed light of his lamp, and, looking intently at it through
a magnifying glass, proceeded to operate with a delicate instrument of
steel. In an instant, however, he fell back in his chair and clasped
his hands, with a look of horror on his face that made its small
features as impressive as those of a giant would have been.

“Heaven! What have I done?” exclaimed he. “The vapor, the influence of
that brute force,--it has bewildered me and obscured my perception. I
have made the very stroke--the fatal stroke--that I have dreaded from
the first. It is all over--the toil of months, the object of my life. I
am ruined!”

And there he sat, in strange despair, until his lamp flickered in the
socket and left the Artist of the Beautiful in darkness.

Thus it is that ideas, which grow up within the imagination and appear
so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call valuable, are
exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical.
It is requisite for the ideal artist to possess a force of character
that seems hardly compatible with its delicacy; he must keep his faith
in himself while the incredulous world assails him with its utter
disbelief; he must stand up against mankind and be his own sole
disciple, both as respects his genius and the objects to which it is
directed.

For a time Owen Warland succumbed to this severe but inevitable test.
He spent a few sluggish weeks with his head so continually resting in
his hands that the towns-people had scarcely an opportunity to see his
countenance. When at last it was again uplifted to the light of day, a
cold, dull, nameless change was perceptible upon it. In the opinion of
Peter Hovenden, however, and that order of sagacious understandings who
think that life should be regulated, like clockwork, with leaden
weights, the alteration was entirely for the better. Owen now, indeed,
applied himself to business with dogged industry. It was marvellous to
witness the obtuse gravity with which he would inspect the wheels of a
great old silver watch thereby delighting the owner, in whose fob it
had been worn till he deemed it a portion of his own life, and was
accordingly jealous of its treatment. In consequence of the good report
thus acquired, Owen Warland was invited by the proper authorities to
regulate the clock in the church steeple. He succeeded so admirably in
this matter of public interest that the merchants gruffly acknowledged
his merits on ’Change; the nurse whispered his praises as she gave the
potion in the sick-chamber; the lover blessed him at the hour of
appointed interview; and the town in general thanked Owen for the
punctuality of dinner time. In a word, the heavy weight upon his
spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his own system, but
wheresoever the iron accents of the church clock were audible. It was a
circumstance, though minute, yet characteristic of his present state,
that, when employed to engrave names or initials on silver spoons, he
now wrote the requisite letters in the plainest possible style,
omitting a variety of fanciful flourishes that had heretofore
distinguished his work in this kind.

One day, during the era of this happy transformation, old Peter
Hovenden came to visit his former apprentice.

“Well, Owen,” said he, “I am glad to hear such good accounts of you
from all quarters, and especially from the town clock yonder, which
speaks in your commendation every hour of the twenty-four. Only get rid
altogether of your nonsensical trash about the beautiful, which I nor
nobody else, nor yourself to boot, could ever understand,--only free
yourself of that, and your success in life is as sure as daylight. Why,
if you go on in this way, I should even venture to let you doctor this
precious old watch of mine; though, except my daughter Annie, I have
nothing else so valuable in the world.”

“I should hardly dare touch it, sir,” replied Owen, in a depressed
tone; for he was weighed down by his old master’s presence.

“In time,” said the latter,--“In time, you will be capable of it.”

The old watchmaker, with the freedom naturally consequent on his former
authority, went on inspecting the work which Owen had in hand at the
moment, together with other matters that were in progress. The artist,
meanwhile, could scarcely lift his head. There was nothing so antipodal
to his nature as this man’s cold, unimaginative sagacity, by contact
with which everything was converted into a dream except the densest
matter of the physical world. Owen groaned in spirit and prayed
fervently to be delivered from him.

“But what is this?” cried Peter Hovenden abruptly, taking up a dusty
bell glass, beneath which appeared a mechanical something, as delicate
and minute as the system of a butterfly’s anatomy. “What have we here?
Owen! Owen! there is witchcraft in these little chains, and wheels, and
paddles. See! with one pinch of my finger and thumb I am going to
deliver you from all future peril.”

“For Heaven’s sake,” screamed Owen Warland, springing up with wonderful
energy, “as you would not drive me mad, do not touch it! The slightest
pressure of your finger would ruin me forever.”

“Aha, young man! And is it so?” said the old watchmaker, looking at him
with just enough penetration to torture Owen’s soul with the bitterness
of worldly criticism. “Well, take your own course; but I warn you again
that in this small piece of mechanism lives your evil spirit. Shall I
exorcise him?”

“You are my evil spirit,” answered Owen, much excited,--“you and the
hard, coarse world! The leaden thoughts and the despondency that you
fling upon me are my clogs, else I should long ago have achieved the
task that I was created for.”

Peter Hovenden shook his head, with the mixture of contempt and
indignation which mankind, of whom he was partly a representative, deem
themselves entitled to feel towards all simpletons who seek other
prizes than the dusty one along the highway. He then took his leave,
with an uplifted finger and a sneer upon his face that haunted the
artist’s dreams for many a night afterwards. At the time of his old
master’s visit, Owen was probably on the point of taking up the
relinquished task; but, by this sinister event, he was thrown back into
the state whence he had been slowly emerging.

But the innate tendency of his soul had only been accumulating fresh
vigor during its apparent sluggishness. As the summer advanced he
almost totally relinquished his business, and permitted Father Time, so
far as the old gentleman was represented by the clocks and watches
under his control, to stray at random through human life, making
infinite confusion among the train of bewildered hours. He wasted the
sunshine, as people said, in wandering through the woods and fields and
along the banks of streams. There, like a child, he found amusement in
chasing butterflies or watching the motions of water insects. There was
something truly mysterious in the intentness with which he contemplated
these living playthings as they sported on the breeze or examined the
structure of an imperial insect whom he had imprisoned. The chase of
butterflies was an apt emblem of the ideal pursuit in which he had
spent so many golden hours; but would the beautiful idea ever be
yielded to his hand like the butterfly that symbolized it? Sweet,
doubtless, were these days, and congenial to the artist’s soul. They
were full of bright conceptions, which gleamed through his intellectual
world as the butterflies gleamed through the outward atmosphere, and
were real to him, for the instant, without the toil, and perplexity,
and many disappointments of attempting to make them visible to the
sensual eye. Alas that the artist, whether in poetry, or whatever other
material, may not content himself with the inward enjoyment of the
beautiful, but must chase the flitting mystery beyond the verge of his
ethereal domain, and crush its frail being in seizing it with a
material grasp. Owen Warland felt the impulse to give external reality
to his ideas as irresistibly as any of the poets or painters who have
arrayed the world in a dimmer and fainter beauty, imperfectly copied
from the richness of their visions.

The night was now his time for the slow progress of re-creating the one
idea to which all his intellectual activity referred itself. Always at
the approach of dusk he stole into the town, locked himself within his
shop, and wrought with patient delicacy of touch for many hours.
Sometimes he was startled by the rap of the watchman, who, when all the
world should be asleep, had caught the gleam of lamplight through the
crevices of Owen Warland’s shutters. Daylight, to the morbid
sensibility of his mind, seemed to have an intrusiveness that
interfered with his pursuits. On cloudy and inclement days, therefore,
he sat with his head upon his hands, muffling, as it were, his
sensitive brain in a mist of indefinite musings, for it was a relief to
escape from the sharp distinctness with which he was compelled to shape
out his thoughts during his nightly toil.

From one of these fits of torpor he was aroused by the entrance of
Annie Hovenden, who came into the shop with the freedom of a customer,
and also with something of the familiarity of a childish friend. She
had worn a hole through her silver thimble, and wanted Owen to repair
it.

“But I don’t know whether you will condescend to such a task,” said
she, laughing, “now that you are so taken up with the notion of putting
spirit into machinery.”

“Where did you get that idea, Annie?” said Owen, starting in surprise.

“Oh, out of my own head,” answered she, “and from something that I
heard you say, long ago, when you were but a boy and I a little child.
But come, will you mend this poor thimble of mine?”

“Anything for your sake, Annie,” said Owen Warland,--“anything, even
were it to work at Robert Danforth’s forge.”

“And that would be a pretty sight!” retorted Annie, glancing with
imperceptible slightness at the artist’s small and slender frame.
“Well; here is the thimble.”

“But that is a strange idea of yours,” said Owen, “about the
spiritualization of matter.”

And then the thought stole into his mind that this young girl possessed
the gift to comprehend him better than all the world besides. And what
a help and strength would it be to him in his lonely toil if he could
gain the sympathy of the only being whom he loved! To persons whose
pursuits are insulated from the common business of life--who are either
in advance of mankind or apart from it--there often comes a sensation
of moral cold that makes the spirit shiver as if it had reached the
frozen solitudes around the pole. What the prophet, the poet, the
reformer, the criminal, or any other man with human yearnings, but
separated from the multitude by a peculiar lot, might feel, poor Owen
felt.

“Annie,” cried he, growing pale as death at the thought, “how gladly
would I tell you the secret of my pursuit! You, methinks, would
estimate it rightly. You, I know, would hear it with a reverence that I
must not expect from the harsh, material world.”

“Would I not? to be sure I would!” replied Annie Hovenden, lightly
laughing. “Come; explain to me quickly what is the meaning of this
little whirligig, so delicately wrought that it might be a plaything
for Queen Mab. See! I will put it in motion.”

“Hold!” exclaimed Owen, “hold!”

Annie had but given the slightest possible touch, with the point of a
needle, to the same minute portion of complicated machinery which has
been more than once mentioned, when the artist seized her by the wrist
with a force that made her scream aloud. She was affrighted at the
convulsion of intense rage and anguish that writhed across his
features. The next instant he let his head sink upon his hands.

“Go, Annie,” murmured he; “I have deceived myself, and must suffer for
it. I yearned for sympathy, and thought, and fancied, and dreamed that
you might give it me; but you lack the talisman, Annie, that should
admit you into my secrets. That touch has undone the toil of months and
the thought of a lifetime! It was not your fault, Annie; but you have
ruined me!”

Poor Owen Warland! He had indeed erred, yet pardonably; for if any
human spirit could have sufficiently reverenced the processes so sacred
in his eyes, it must have been a woman’s. Even Annie Hovenden, possibly
might not have disappointed him had she been enlightened by the deep
intelligence of love.

The artist spent the ensuing winter in a way that satisfied any persons
who had hitherto retained a hopeful opinion of him that he was, in
truth, irrevocably doomed to unutility as regarded the world, and to an
evil destiny on his own part. The decease of a relative had put him in
possession of a small inheritance. Thus freed from the necessity of
toil, and having lost the steadfast influence of a great
purpose,--great, at least, to him,--he abandoned himself to habits from
which it might have been supposed the mere delicacy of his organization
would have availed to secure him. But when the ethereal portion of a
man of genius is obscured the earthly part assumes an influence the
more uncontrollable, because the character is now thrown off the
balance to which Providence had so nicely adjusted it, and which, in
coarser natures, is adjusted by some other method. Owen Warland made
proof of whatever show of bliss may be found in riot. He looked at the
world through the golden medium of wine, and contemplated the visions
that bubble up so gayly around the brim of the glass, and that people
the air with shapes of pleasant madness, which so soon grow ghostly and
forlorn. Even when this dismal and inevitable change had taken place,
the young man might still have continued to quaff the cup of
enchantments, though its vapor did but shroud life in gloom and fill
the gloom with spectres that mocked at him. There was a certain
irksomeness of spirit, which, being real, and the deepest sensation of
which the artist was now conscious, was more intolerable than any
fantastic miseries and horrors that the abuse of wine could summon up.
In the latter case he could remember, even out of the midst of his
trouble, that all was but a delusion; in the former, the heavy anguish
was his actual life.

From this perilous state he was redeemed by an incident which more than
one person witnessed, but of which the shrewdest could not explain or
conjecture the operation on Owen Warland’s mind. It was very simple. On
a warm afternoon of spring, as the artist sat among his riotous
companions with a glass of wine before him, a splendid butterfly flew
in at the open window and fluttered about his head.

“Ah,” exclaimed Owen, who had drank freely, “are you alive again, child
of the sun and playmate of the summer breeze, after your dismal
winter’s nap? Then it is time for me to be at work!”

And, leaving his unemptied glass upon the table, he departed and was
never known to sip another drop of wine.

And now, again, he resumed his wanderings in the woods and fields. It
might be fancied that the bright butterfly, which had come so
spirit-like into the window as Owen sat with the rude revellers, was
indeed a spirit commissioned to recall him to the pure, ideal life that
had so etheralized him among men. It might be fancied that he went
forth to seek this spirit in its sunny haunts; for still, as in the
summer time gone by, he was seen to steal gently up wherever a
butterfly had alighted, and lose himself in contemplation of it. When
it took flight his eyes followed the winged vision, as if its airy
track would show the path to heaven. But what could be the purpose of
the unseasonable toil, which was again resumed, as the watchman knew by
the lines of lamplight through the crevices of Owen Warland’s shutters?
The towns-people had one comprehensive explanation of all these
singularities. Owen Warland had gone mad! How universally
efficacious--how satisfactory, too, and soothing to the injured
sensibility of narrowness and dulness--is this easy method of
accounting for whatever lies beyond the world’s most ordinary scope!
From St. Paul’s days down to our poor little Artist of the Beautiful,
the same talisman had been applied to the elucidation of all mysteries
in the words or deeds of men who spoke or acted too wisely or too well.
In Owen Warland’s case the judgment of his towns-people may have been
correct. Perhaps he was mad. The lack of sympathy--that contrast
between himself and his neighbors which took away the restraint of
example--was enough to make him so. Or possibly he had caught just so
much of ethereal radiance as served to bewilder him, in an earthly
sense, by its intermixture with the common daylight.

One evening, when the artist had returned from a customary ramble and
had just thrown the lustre of his lamp on the delicate piece of work so
often interrupted, but still taken up again, as if his fate were
embodied in its mechanism, he was surprised by the entrance of old
Peter Hovenden. Owen never met this man without a shrinking of the
heart. Of all the world he was most terrible, by reason of a keen
understanding which saw so distinctly what it did see, and disbelieved
so uncompromisingly in what it could not see. On this occasion the old
watchmaker had merely a gracious word or two to say.

“Owen, my lad,” said he, “we must see you at my house to-morrow night.”

The artist began to mutter some excuse.

“Oh, but it must be so,” quoth Peter Hovenden, “for the sake of the
days when you were one of the household. What, my boy! don’t you know
that my daughter Annie is engaged to Robert Danforth? We are making an
entertainment, in our humble way, to celebrate the event.”

That little monosyllable was all he uttered; its tone seemed cold and
unconcerned to an ear like Peter Hovenden’s; and yet there was in it
the stifled outcry of the poor artist’s heart, which he compressed
within him like a man holding down an evil spirit. One slight outbreak,
however, imperceptible to the old watchmaker, he allowed himself.
Raising the instrument with which he was about to begin his work, he
let it fall upon the little system of machinery that had, anew, cost
him months of thought and toil. It was shattered by the stroke!

Owen Warland’s story would have been no tolerable representation of the
troubled life of those who strive to create the beautiful, if, amid all
other thwarting influences, love had not interposed to steal the
cunning from his hand. Outwardly he had been no ardent or enterprising
lover; the career of his passion had confined its tumults and
vicissitudes so entirely within the artist’s imagination that Annie
herself had scarcely more than a woman’s intuitive perception of it;
but, in Owen’s view, it covered the whole field of his life. Forgetful
of the time when she had shown herself incapable of any deep response,
he had persisted in connecting all his dreams of artistical success
with Annie’s image; she was the visible shape in which the spiritual
power that he worshipped, and on whose altar he hoped to lay a not
unworthy offering, was made manifest to him. Of course he had deceived
himself; there were no such attributes in Annie Hovenden as his
imagination had endowed her with. She, in the aspect which she wore to
his inward vision, was as much a creature of his own as the mysterious
piece of mechanism would be were it ever realized. Had he become
convinced of his mistake through the medium of successful love,--had he
won Annie to his bosom, and there beheld her fade from angel into
ordinary woman,--the disappointment might have driven him back, with
concentrated energy, upon his sole remaining object. On the other hand,
had he found Annie what he fancied, his lot would have been so rich in
beauty that out of its mere redundancy he might have wrought the
beautiful into many a worthier type than he had toiled for; but the
guise in which his sorrow came to him, the sense that the angel of his
life had been snatched away and given to a rude man of earth and iron,
who could neither need nor appreciate her ministrations,--this was the
very perversity of fate that makes human existence appear too absurd
and contradictory to be the scene of one other hope or one other fear.
There was nothing left for Owen Warland but to sit down like a man that
had been stunned.

He went through a fit of illness. After his recovery his small and
slender frame assumed an obtuser garniture of flesh than it had ever
before worn. His thin cheeks became round; his delicate little hand, so
spiritually fashioned to achieve fairy task-work, grew plumper than the
hand of a thriving infant. His aspect had a childishness such as might
have induced a stranger to pat him on the head--pausing, however, in
the act, to wonder what manner of child was here. It was as if the
spirit had gone out of him, leaving the body to flourish in a sort of
vegetable existence. Not that Owen Warland was idiotic. He could talk,
and not irrationally. Somewhat of a babbler, indeed, did people begin
to think him; for he was apt to discourse at wearisome length of
marvels of mechanism that he had read about in books, but which he had
learned to consider as absolutely fabulous. Among them he enumerated
the Man of Brass, constructed by Albertus Magnus, and the Brazen Head
of Friar Bacon; and, coming down to later times, the automata of a
little coach and horses, which it was pretended had been manufactured
for the Dauphin of France; together with an insect that buzzed about
the ear like a living fly, and yet was but a contrivance of minute
steel springs. There was a story, too, of a duck that waddled, and
quacked, and ate; though, had any honest citizen purchased it for
dinner, he would have found himself cheated with the mere mechanical
apparition of a duck.

“But all these accounts,” said Owen Warland, “I am now satisfied are
mere impositions.”

Then, in a mysterious way, he would confess that he once thought
differently. In his idle and dreamy days he had considered it possible,
in a certain sense, to spiritualize machinery, and to combine with the
new species of life and motion thus produced a beauty that should
attain to the ideal which Nature has proposed to herself in all her
creatures, but has never taken pains to realize. He seemed, however, to
retain no very distinct perception either of the process of achieving
this object or of the design itself.

“I have thrown it all aside now,” he would say. “It was a dream such as
young men are always mystifying themselves with. Now that I have
acquired a little common sense, it makes me laugh to think of it.”

Poor, poor and fallen Owen Warland! These were the symptoms that he had
ceased to be an inhabitant of the better sphere that lies unseen around
us. He had lost his faith in the invisible, and now prided himself, as
such unfortunates invariably do, in the wisdom which rejected much that
even his eye could see, and trusted confidently in nothing but what his
hand could touch. This is the calamity of men whose spiritual part dies
out of them and leaves the grosser understanding to assimilate them
more and more to the things of which alone it can take cognizance; but
in Owen Warland the spirit was not dead nor passed away; it only slept.

How it awoke again is not recorded. Perhaps the torpid slumber was
broken by a convulsive pain. Perhaps, as in a former instance, the
butterfly came and hovered about his head and reinspired him,--as
indeed this creature of the sunshine had always a mysterious mission
for the artist,--reinspired him with the former purpose of his life.
Whether it were pain or happiness that thrilled through his veins, his
first impulse was to thank Heaven for rendering him again the being of
thought, imagination, and keenest sensibility that he had long ceased
to be.

“Now for my task,” said he. “Never did I feel such strength for it as
now.”

Yet, strong as he felt himself, he was incited to toil the more
diligently by an anxiety lest death should surprise him in the midst of
his labors. This anxiety, perhaps, is common to all men who set their
hearts upon anything so high, in their own view of it, that life
becomes of importance only as conditional to its accomplishment. So
long as we love life for itself, we seldom dread the losing it. When we
desire life for the attainment of an object, we recognize the frailty
of its texture. But, side by side with this sense of insecurity, there
is a vital faith in our invulnerability to the shaft of death while
engaged in any task that seems assigned by Providence as our proper
thing to do, and which the world would have cause to mourn for should
we leave it unaccomplished. Can the philosopher, big with the
inspiration of an idea that is to reform mankind, believe that he is to
be beckoned from this sensible existence at the very instant when he is
mustering his breath to speak the word of light? Should he perish so,
the weary ages may pass away--the world’s, whose life sand may fall,
drop by drop--before another intellect is prepared to develop the truth
that might have been uttered then. But history affords many an example
where the most precious spirit, at any particular epoch manifested in
human shape, has gone hence untimely, without space allowed him, so far
as mortal judgment could discern, to perform his mission on the earth.
The prophet dies, and the man of torpid heart and sluggish brain lives
on. The poet leaves his song half sung, or finishes it, beyond the
scope of mortal ears, in a celestial choir. The painter--as Allston
did--leaves half his conception on the canvas to sadden us with its
imperfect beauty, and goes to picture forth the whole, if it be no
irreverence to say so, in the hues of heaven. But rather such
incomplete designs of this life will be perfected nowhere. This so
frequent abortion of man’s dearest projects must be taken as a proof
that the deeds of earth, however etherealized by piety or genius, are
without value, except as exercises and manifestations of the spirit. In
heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more melodious than Milton’s
song. Then, would he add another verse to any strain that he had left
unfinished here?

But to return to Owen Warland. It was his fortune, good or ill, to
achieve the purpose of his life. Pass we over a long space of intense
thought, yearning effort, minute toil, and wasting anxiety, succeeded
by an instant of solitary triumph: let all this be imagined; and then
behold the artist, on a winter evening, seeking admittance to Robert
Danforth’s fireside circle. There he found the man of iron, with his
massive substance thoroughly warmed and attempered by domestic
influences. And there was Annie, too, now transformed into a matron,
with much of her husband’s plain and sturdy nature, but imbued, as Owen
Warland still believed, with a finer grace, that might enable her to be
the interpreter between strength and beauty. It happened, likewise,
that old Peter Hovenden was a guest this evening at his daughter’s
fireside, and it was his well-remembered expression of keen, cold
criticism that first encountered the artist’s glance.

“My old friend Owen!” cried Robert Danforth, starting up, and
compressing the artist’s delicate fingers within a hand that was
accustomed to gripe bars of iron. “This is kind and neighborly to come
to us at last. I was afraid your perpetual motion had bewitched you out
of the remembrance of old times.”

“We are glad to see you,” said Annie, while a blush reddened her
matronly cheek. “It was not like a friend to stay from us so long.”

“Well, Owen,” inquired the old watchmaker, as his first greeting, “how
comes on the beautiful? Have you created it at last?”

The artist did not immediately reply, being startled by the apparition
of a young child of strength that was tumbling about on the carpet,--a
little personage who had come mysteriously out of the infinite, but
with something so sturdy and real in his composition that he seemed
moulded out of the densest substance which earth could supply. This
hopeful infant crawled towards the new-comer, and setting himself on
end, as Robert Danforth expressed the posture, stared at Owen with a
look of such sagacious observation that the mother could not help
exchanging a proud glance with her husband. But the artist was
disturbed by the child’s look, as imagining a resemblance between it
and Peter Hovenden’s habitual expression. He could have fancied that
the old watchmaker was compressed into this baby shape, and looking out
of those baby eyes, and repeating, as he now did, the malicious
question: “The beautiful, Owen! How comes on the beautiful? Have you
succeeded in creating the beautiful?”

“I have succeeded,” replied the artist, with a momentary light of
triumph in his eyes and a smile of sunshine, yet steeped in such depth
of thought that it was almost sadness. “Yes, my friends, it is the
truth. I have succeeded.”

“Indeed!” cried Annie, a look of maiden mirthfulness peeping out of her
face again. “And is it lawful, now, to inquire what the secret is?”

“Surely; it is to disclose it that I have come,” answered Owen Warland.
“You shall know, and see, and touch, and possess the secret! For,
Annie,--if by that name I may still address the friend of my boyish
years,--Annie, it is for your bridal gift that I have wrought this
spiritualized mechanism, this harmony of motion, this mystery of
beauty. It comes late, indeed; but it is as we go onward in life, when
objects begin to lose their freshness of hue and our souls their
delicacy of perception, that the spirit of beauty is most needed.
If,--forgive me, Annie,--if you know how--to value this gift, it can
never come too late.”

He produced, as he spoke, what seemed a jewel box. It was carved richly
out of ebony by his own hand, and inlaid with a fanciful tracery of
pearl, representing a boy in pursuit of a butterfly, which, elsewhere,
had become a winged spirit, and was flying heavenward; while the boy,
or youth, had found such efficacy in his strong desire that he ascended
from earth to cloud, and from cloud to celestial atmosphere, to win the
beautiful. This case of ebony the artist opened, and bade Annie place
her fingers on its edge. She did so, but almost screamed as a butterfly
fluttered forth, and, alighting on her finger’s tip, sat waving the
ample magnificence of its purple and gold-speckled wings, as if in
prelude to a flight. It is impossible to express by words the glory,
the splendor, the delicate gorgeousness which were softened into the
beauty of this object. Nature’s ideal butterfly was here realized in
all its perfection; not in the pattern of such faded insects as flit
among earthly flowers, but of those which hover across the meads of
paradise for child-angels and the spirits of departed infants to
disport themselves with. The rich down was visible upon its wings; the
lustre of its eyes seemed instinct with spirit. The firelight glimmered
around this wonder--the candles gleamed upon it; but it glistened
apparently by its own radiance, and illuminated the finger and
outstretched hand on which it rested with a white gleam like that of
precious stones. In its perfect beauty, the consideration of size was
entirely lost. Had its wings overreached the firmament, the mind could
not have been more filled or satisfied.

“Beautiful! beautiful!” exclaimed Annie. “Is it alive? Is it alive?”

“Alive? To be sure it is,” answered her husband. “Do you suppose any
mortal has skill enough to make a butterfly, or would put himself to
the trouble of making one, when any child may catch a score of them in
a summer’s afternoon? Alive? Certainly! But this pretty box is
undoubtedly of our friend Owen’s manufacture; and really it does him
credit.”

At this moment the butterfly waved its wings anew, with a motion so
absolutely lifelike that Annie was startled, and even awestricken; for,
in spite of her husband’s opinion, she could not satisfy herself
whether it was indeed a living creature or a piece of wondrous
mechanism.

“Is it alive?” she repeated, more earnestly than before.

“Judge for yourself,” said Owen Warland, who stood gazing in her face
with fixed attention.

The butterfly now flung itself upon the air, fluttered round Annie’s
head, and soared into a distant region of the parlor, still making
itself perceptible to sight by the starry gleam in which the motion of
its wings enveloped it. The infant on the floor followed its course
with his sagacious little eyes. After flying about the room, it
returned in a spiral curve and settled again on Annie’s finger.

“But is it alive?” exclaimed she again; and the finger on which the
gorgeous mystery had alighted was so tremulous that the butterfly was
forced to balance himself with his wings. “Tell me if it be alive, or
whether you created it.”

“Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful?” replied Owen
Warland. “Alive?  Yes, Annie; it may well be said to possess life, for
it has absorbed my own being into itself; and in the secret of that
butterfly, and in its beauty,--which is not merely outward, but deep as
its whole system,--is represented the intellect, the imagination, the
sensibility, the soul of an Artist of the Beautiful! Yes; I created it.
But”--and here his countenance somewhat changed--“this butterfly is not
now to me what it was when I beheld it afar off in the daydreams of my
youth.”

“Be it what it may, it is a pretty plaything,” said the blacksmith,
grinning with childlike delight. “I wonder whether it would condescend
to alight on such a great clumsy finger as mine? Hold it hither, Annie.”

By the artist’s direction, Annie touched her finger’s tip to that of
her husband; and, after a momentary delay, the butterfly fluttered from
one to the other. It preluded a second flight by a similar, yet not
precisely the same, waving of wings as in the first experiment; then,
ascending from the blacksmith’s stalwart finger, it rose in a gradually
enlarging curve to the ceiling, made one wide sweep around the room,
and returned with an undulating movement to the point whence it had
started.

“Well, that does beat all nature!” cried Robert Danforth, bestowing the
heartiest praise that he could find expression for; and, indeed, had he
paused there, a man of finer words and nicer perception could not
easily have said more. “That goes beyond me, I confess. But what then?
There is more real use in one downright blow of my sledge hammer than
in the whole five years’ labor that our friend Owen has wasted on this
butterfly.”

Here the child clapped his hands and made a great babble of indistinct
utterance, apparently demanding that the butterfly should be given him
for a plaything.

Owen Warland, meanwhile, glanced sidelong at Annie, to discover whether
she sympathized in her husband’s estimate of the comparative value of
the beautiful and the practical. There was, amid all her kindness
towards himself, amid all the wonder and admiration with which she
contemplated the marvellous work of his hands and incarnation of his
idea, a secret scorn--too secret, perhaps, for her own consciousness,
and perceptible only to such intuitive discernment as that of the
artist. But Owen, in the latter stages of his pursuit, had risen out of
the region in which such a discovery might have been torture. He knew
that the world, and Annie as the representative of the world, whatever
praise might be bestowed, could never say the fitting word nor feel the
fitting sentiment which should be the perfect recompense of an artist
who, symbolizing a lofty moral by a material trifle,--converting what
was earthly to spiritual gold,--had won the beautiful into his
handiwork. Not at this latest moment was he to learn that the reward of
all high performance must be sought within itself, or sought in vain.
There was, however, a view of the matter which Annie and her husband,
and even Peter Hovenden, might fully have understood, and which would
have satisfied them that the toil of years had here been worthily
bestowed. Owen Warland might have told them that this butterfly, this
plaything, this bridal gift of a poor watchmaker to a blacksmith’s
wife, was, in truth, a gem of art that a monarch would have purchased
with honors and abundant wealth, and have treasured it among the jewels
of his kingdom as the most unique and wondrous of them all. But the
artist smiled and kept the secret to himself.

“Father,” said Annie, thinking that a word of praise from the old
watchmaker might gratify his former apprentice, “do come and admire
this pretty butterfly.”

“Let us see,” said Peter Hovenden, rising from his chair, with a sneer
upon his face that always made people doubt, as he himself did, in
everything but a material existence. “Here is my finger for it to
alight upon. I shall understand it better when once I have touched it.”

But, to the increased astonishment of Annie, when the tip of her
father’s finger was pressed against that of her husband, on which the
butterfly still rested, the insect drooped its wings and seemed on the
point of falling to the floor. Even the bright spots of gold upon its
wings and body, unless her eyes deceived her, grew dim, and the glowing
purple took a dusky hue, and the starry lustre that gleamed around the
blacksmith’s hand became faint and vanished.

“It is dying! it is dying!” cried Annie, in alarm.

“It has been delicately wrought,” said the artist, calmly. “As I told
you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence--call it magnetism, or what you
will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery its exquisite
susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him who instilled
his own life into it. It has already lost its beauty; in a few moments
more its mechanism would be irreparably injured.”

“Take away your hand, father!” entreated Annie, turning pale. “Here is
my child; let it rest on his innocent hand. There, perhaps, its life
will revive and its colors grow brighter than ever.”

Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his finger. The butterfly
then appeared to recover the power of voluntary motion, while its hues
assumed much of their original lustre, and the gleam of starlight,
which was its most ethereal attribute, again formed a halo round about
it. At first, when transferred from Robert Danforth’s hand to the small
finger of the child, this radiance grew so powerful that it positively
threw the little fellow’s shadow back against the wall. He, meanwhile,
extended his plump hand as he had seen his father and mother do, and
watched the waving of the insect’s wings with infantine delight.
Nevertheless, there was a certain odd expression of sagacity that made
Owen Warland feel as if here were old Pete Hovenden, partially, and but
partially, redeemed from his hard scepticism into childish faith.

“How wise the little monkey looks!” whispered Robert Danforth to his
wife.

“I never saw such a look on a child’s face,” answered Annie, admiring
her own infant, and with good reason, far more than the artistic
butterfly. “The darling knows more of the mystery than we do.”

As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of something not
entirely congenial in the child’s nature, it alternately sparkled and
grew dim. At length it arose from the small hand of the infant with an
airy motion that seemed to bear it upward without an effort, as if the
ethereal instincts with which its master’s spirit had endowed it
impelled this fair vision involuntarily to a higher sphere. Had there
been no obstruction, it might have soared into the sky and grown
immortal. But its lustre gleamed upon the ceiling; the exquisite
texture of its wings brushed against that earthly medium; and a sparkle
or two, as of stardust, floated downward and lay glimmering on the
carpet. Then the butterfly came fluttering down, and, instead of
returning to the infant, was apparently attracted towards the artist’s
hand.

“Not so! not so!” murmured Owen Warland, as if his handiwork could have
understood him. “Thou has gone forth out of thy master’s heart. There
is no return for thee.”

With a wavering movement, and emitting a tremulous radiance, the
butterfly struggled, as it were, towards the infant, and was about to
alight upon his finger; but while it still hovered in the air, the
little child of strength, with his grandsire’s sharp and shrewd
expression in his face, made a snatch at the marvellous insect and
compressed it in his hand. Annie screamed. Old Peter Hovenden burst
into a cold and scornful laugh. The blacksmith, by main force, unclosed
the infant’s hand, and found within the palm a small heap of glittering
fragments, whence the mystery of beauty had fled forever. And as for
Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life’s
labor, and which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly
than this. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful,
the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of
little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the
enjoyment of the reality.





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