Borthtoestern Hníüeraítg Xíbrarg
BEQUEST OF
CORNELIA GRAY LUNT
THE SUNNY SIDE OF SHADOW
" I am the same to all mankind. They who honestly serve
other gods involuntarily worship me. I am He who partaketh
of all worship, and I am the reward of all worshippers."
(Supposed to come from the mouth of Brahma.)
11 We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry
aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry; . . .
but in the night . . . Hope sees a star, and listening Love
can hear the rustle of a wing !"
THE SIXTY SIDE OF SHADOW
%EVERIES OF A CONVALESCENT
BY
FANNIE NICHOLS BENJAMIN
BOSTON
Ticknor AND CO MP AN Y
1887
Copyright, 1887,
TICKNOR AND COMPANY.
RAND AVERY COMPANY,
ELECTROTYPERS AND PRINTERS,
BOSTON.
To my husband
PREFACE.
During the lingering hours of a long con¬
valescence, I have sometimes noted down the
dreams of the day, with scarcely a thought
beyond the writing. If I bind these loose
leaves into a book, it is with no plea in its
defence. To understand not books or tilings,
but life, has been m 3- perpetual aspiration ;
and if in this region of calms, my revery has
at any time mirrored back that which shall
touch another soul with refreshment, it has,
however insignificant, its right to live.
One need not always bring fresh flowers !
In wandering through bright gardens, some
5
6
PREFACE.
delicate and lasting fragrance may impregnate
the garments and the hair ; and it is this cling¬
ing bit of perfume I have hoped might make
these pages welcome.
F. N. B.
New York, Feb. 15, 1887.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. The Doctor 9
II. Patsy Pringle 22
III. Mrs. Runabout 34
IV. The Harpies 47
V. Loving 07
VI. Friendship 80
VII. Suggestions of the Sea .... 100
VIII. Thanksgiving 113
IX. TnF. Materialist 127
X. Presentiments 139
XI. Christmas Musing 158
XII. From Xigiit to Light 171
TIIE SUNNY SIDE OF SHADOW.
I.
THE DOCTOR.
W ho said sickness was only a misfor¬
tune ? Not the doctor, to be sure : pray,
what would become of his pocket-book?
Lying here deliciously lazy, counting the
hours, the weeks, which run noiselessly
by, we incline to think it was not the
doctor's patient. Were we a croaker,
croak we should, doubtless, sick or well ;
being rather of a speculative turn of
9
10
THE DOCTOR.
mind, we find the sick-room quietly sug¬
gestive, albeit sometimes of rather a wo-
ful bliss. Life here, if any thing beyond
stupor or pain, is like looking through
a blue-tinted glass far away ; it is pale,
faintly defined, delicate, poetical, full of
ideal meanings. To be well! Ah, that is
to go down into the every-day prose trans¬
lation of it, too often to find it coarse,
cruel, clamorous ! It is to be forever
" climbing up a climbing wave ; " to chase
will-o'-the-wisps ; to pluck roses, and see
both beauty and fragrance slip through
unwilling fingers ; to fold close a darling
joy, and find it sting like a scorpion.
Why, then, should an "atom" complain
that it is now and then stranded from the
whirling life-current, — shelved for repairs?
It is said imagination is the divinest of
THE DOCTOR. 11
human faculties. Physicians assert that
never as in illness, and during the long
stages of convalescence, does it have full
play. Too often the dull energy of the
material crowds out the earnest seeking of
the spirit. Why, in this utter relaxation
of the physical, may not the soul at times
have keener vision ? " The three thrones
upon which life lifts itself to power are
self-reverence, self-knowledge, and self-
control." Why call that a misfortune,
which brings to the soul tlie solitude, the
discipline, necessary to mount the steps
leading thitherward ?
IIow could we know the divine beauty
of unselfishness, how be able truly to
number our friends, were we not some¬
times thrown helpless upon their bounty ?
The world is divided into two classes, —
12
THE DOCTOR.
genuine people with hearts; and made-up,
artificial people without, the latter largely
predominating. In society we find this
class mostly all moulded after one model ;
their smiles are " childlike and bland "
(while they can use you), their favors
and courtesies for sale to the highest bid¬
der. These friends do not trouble your
sick-room, and you are glad of it. They
were monotonous, and tired you, when
well ; and now that you don't care about
the weather or the fashions, your servants
do not worry you, or other people's affairs
interest you — what could you find to say
to them ? But the true, the loving hearts,
how they open like beautiful blossoms
about you ! How patient, how untiring,
how delicate, how thoughtful, is love!
every sweet beat of the heart, a token
THE DOCTOR.
of something spiritual you know will be
yours in paradise.
There are times when we think we know
what God means by the " elect," and are
half glad when life runs down to death's
door to meet them. We look up at the
doctor, and wonder he brightens to say we
" are better." Why is it good fortune to
be brought back ? Death is no ghastly
skeleton, that we need fear him more than
life. We looked into his face; and, as it
neared us, it paled with a celestial bright¬
ness.
"To die — to sleep —
Ko more ; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished."
Hamlet's sigh for restful peace sent our
14
THE DOCTOR.
thoughts straying back to the beautiful
young Macaría of Euripides, who volun¬
tarily offers her spotless life a sacrifice
to appease the gods — so long ago rose
this passionate desire that the grave should
end all.
" Oh that there may be nothing ! If again
Beyond the grave we wake once more to pain,
What hope will there remain to us? To die
Is of all ills the surest remedy."
Something of this old Greek longing
creeps into our own heart between its
fever-beats. Oh for rest ! " After life's
fitful fever, to sleep well ; " rather repose
than paradise !
We asked of the kind face that had so
many long years looked into sick and dy--
ing faces, what was the innermost secret it
THE DOCTOR.
15
liad learned of life and death. The reply
came slowly : " Greater trust in goodness
and in God; less faith in merely nominal
piety ; greater surety that beyond the sci¬
entists and their human confines *of laws
there extends a shoreless infinite, unknown
and-unknowable." Said he, "A thought¬
ful physician who goes down to the very
gates of death with his patients, less than
others, can sa}r he knows of the beyond :
he turns to face a mystery. He, more
than others, knows the effect of the imagi¬
nation upon the dying ; before him surface
conventionalities crumble away, and all
shams are thrown aside ; he comes very
near the naked soul in its supreme hour,
and unto him is a gospel preached not of
the theological schools."
The fear of death, it seems, is with
IG
THE DOCTOR.
most, at last, more a physical shrinking
than any spiritual dread of the hereafter ;
certain characteristics are strong to the
last. Our good doctor tells an odd story
of a patient who was in life greatly given to
joking. At length, after a long illness, lie
upon one occasion thought himself dying.
The doctor suggested that immediate death
was impossible, because his extremities
were still warm. " Ah, but," said the
patient, "there are exceptions." — "No,"
said the physician : " in years of study
and practice I know of none." — "You
cannot be well read, then," replied he. " I
can cite a number. What do you say to
John Rogers?" Before morning the man
lay dead.
Jean Paul beautifully says, " Death takes
place 011 earth, when 011 the heart the
THE DOCTOR.
17
flower-wreath of earth is great enough or
the crown of thorns too great." We lie
some clays, faint and still, thinking of this.
Delicious rest of death ! it is as though
after a dull, sad storm our head were an¬
chored on the beloved breast, and like a
sweet narcotic its tender warmth swept
through our veins. Limitations of earthly
knowledge are so faintly defined ; where
we most crave light, there is such a sense
of darkness! We long to creep nearer
the shadow of thy white and sunlit wing,
O Death ! We stagger in trying to keep
the head aloft where purer currents sweep :
the sense of responsibility weighs us down
like a cross. May it not be that the guid¬
ing Father-hand permits us thus to stum¬
ble and be benumbed, that we may the
more utterly lean upon him?
18
THE DOCTOR.
" Is this the way, my Father? — 'Tis, my child,
For thou must pass through tangled forests wild
If thou wouldst reach the city undefiled,
Thy peaceful home above.
O Father, it is dark ! — Child, take my hand ;
Cling close to me, I'll lead thee through the land;
Trust my all-seeing care : so shalt thou stand
'Mid glory bright above."
One must be sick to appreciate doctors.
To us they had, in some indefinable
va}-, been always too suggestive of bread-
pills and liumbuggery. We were homoeo¬
pathic, because we liked our powdered
sugar and dough in small quantities. We
imagined them as occasionally interested,
perhaps, in some curious phase of disease,
or on the alert to experiment as to the
effect of certain drugs on cats and mor¬
tals; and opened our eyes in a lazy sur-
THE DOCTOR. 19
prise wlien a grand, royal old face looked
in upon us, questioning slowly. The
Doctor! We glanced furtively up to see
if he wanted to dissect us. The eyes
were searching and kind that looked
quietly back into ours. We wished the
fever would go away, that we might study
the face : sick or well, we like to study
such faces. Certain heads and faces bear
such impress of power, they make you
comfortably sure of immortality. They
enter a room : you are conscious of a
grand presence, are impressed as with
some emanation of purity, truth, or
beauty. Others may enter, crowd, fill
a room, and you know you are alone still.
What is it, this thrill of kinship with
immortals? Doctors, we take it, .must
be very good or very bad, and cannot,
20
THE DOCTOR.
like the clergy, vacillate between an
orthodox head and an indifferent or het¬
erodox heart. Think what a life-work !
to minister to suffering — only to suffer¬
ing ; to become the confidant of sad se¬
crets, to know sickness of soul that no
medicine can touch, to bear around with
you the burden of others' pain ; to know
110 time your own, sleeping or waking ;
to be called forever to sustain, to abstain,
to minister unto ! What a labor of love!
And if at the last God pronounces, "Well
done, good and faithful servant," what
riches of reward ! We are glad of this
for the sake of the kind, wise face, with
its circle of gray hair, and the bit of sad¬
ness bidden away back of the eyes. We
know this man will drop down some day
in the harness; he will never rust out.
THE DOCTOR.
21
After half a century of busy work lie
will leave no fortune behind him ; hut in
a thousand hearts a tender thrill of love
shall waken with his name, and the
memory of his face with its rugged lines
of patient sympathy and quiet endur¬
ance shall be to many lives a perpetual
sermon. Behold how much better than
riches is such an immortality !
II.
TATST TRINGLE.
It is well to be kept prisoner by illness
sometimes, just to get time to study the
sky. Having all external Nature like an
open book to read, we would never, per¬
haps, in all our threescore years and
ten, guess what beauty is framed in by
a three-by-six window. We have in
health such excess of riches, it is as in
viewing a varied and extended landscape :
there is the sense of delight, bnt not the
exquisite thrill of pleasure with which a
stray beam of sunlight, the pure outlin-
22
PATSY PRINGLE. 23
ing of a passing cloud, or the soft color¬
ing of a distant hill, touches us. Sad it
is, but too much beauty often deadens
the sense of beauty ! We are but finite,
and our eyes look too much down ever
to take in half the beauty floating above.
We are almost content to lie here, that
we may have time to lazily drink it in.
There need be no hurried glance ; we are
not driven hither and thither by business,
by soeiet}', by fashions and follies ; thrice
blessed of mortals, we have 110 ruffles to
seduce, or worries to perplex. What to
us are laces or jewels ? Have we not
those square feet of changing sky?
What lace-work like the fleecy veiling
of the blue heaven-face shining in upon
us? Such massing and grouping of
winged clouds ! such curious and grace-
24 PATSY PRINGLE.
ful outlining of hurrying forms ! And
the blue itself, — what soft gloom, what
tender brightness, what lustrous depth!
The sky appeals to us as do eyes of those
we love, with an eager longing to get
back of it all to the soul of it, to sound
all depths of meaning and expression, as
though in some way we were coming
close to Deity. Human eyes may dis¬
appoint, but the returning glance of the
sky is exquisitely pure and sincere. One
longs to be born a star, to penetrate the
blue abyss ! Already is the body half
forgotten in its weakness and weariness;
the soul has found wings, and from yon¬
der window flies forth toward paradise.
But the outer brightness fades ; we
close our eyes, and half between sleeping
and waking summon the wonderful spirit
PATSY PRINGLE. 25
of the air, impulsive, passionate, beauti¬
ful Athena ! How all the soft clouds
flutter about lier, a filmy robe veiling
the roseate beauty of her limbs ! her
breast is like down, and all the gold of
the sunsets dyes her floating hair. We
feel a Pagan, half-sensuous longing to
fall down and worship her.
Small wonder the old Greek thought
wrought itself out in forms of immortal
beauty we moderns can hardly conceive.
Their life was an endless calm, a lifelong
dream. From their golden skies to their
gracefully curving shores and tranquil
seas, all was infinite repose. They were
children of the sun, and their art sprang
up and grew and blossomed, a part of their
life ; body and soul opened in graceful and
harmonious development ; they lived long,
26
PATSY PRINGLE.
and died serenely. What have we, with
our vulgar pushing and striving and el¬
bowing and dodging, with our noisy steam-
whistles and flying steam-horses, in common
witli these children of the gods ? Only in
dreams, or on some beautiful idle day like
this, shall we be touched by a sense of the
sweet vision of their life. Toward us (as
unto them in those old days) all beauty
approaches : but we moderns mostly tie
the world-bandage too tightly about our
eyes for seeing well ; we pause not to look
within or without, reaching out only for
the gold coin which we can carry at last
but as death-weights on our closed eyelids.
Oh, these long days of convalescence 1
How long they are, and how full! Some¬
times a friend drops in ; we like to lie
still and watch when we cannot talk to
l'A TS Y PRINGLE. 27
them. What a study the "human face
divine ! " the nurse s, for instance. Good
soul, we use and then abuse her ; her
stout square frame with its soft yet heavy
tread rises before us reprovingly. Lynx-
eyed Nemesis ! we never dare wink while
she watches us ; we eat as we are bidden,
and should swallow nectar or poison with
equal meekness. True, the soft fat hand
has a touch like a kid glove, fine and
soothing ; many a time have we dropped
asleep, and dreamed of angels and Madon¬
nas bending over us, when it was only dear
old Patsy Pringle, her face without a curve
or a dimple, and her only halo the frills of
her well-worn cap. We like her, and we
detest her. She soothes and she rasps.
Why need she forever taste our soups
in advance? (we have eyes in the back
28 PATSY PRINGLE.
of our head, Patsy !) Why smell of all
our medicine-bottles as though they held
choice perfumes ? We laugh to this day
as we recall having substituted liquid am¬
monia in place of a colorless tonic one
day, and her gasping surprise. Patsy's
one vanity is her hands. Pretty and
dimpled they were once, no doubt ; unctu¬
ous with service and good-will they still
remain. They have a funny way of cross¬
ing and caressing each other, of patting
and rubbing, as if forever " washing with
invisible soap, in imperceptible water."
Poor Patsy 1 garrulous and kind, petulant,
crotchety, old Patsy 1 To-day we enshrine
thee among the saints ; but beware, lest
to-morrow we consign thee to purgatory !
But the other faces, the friendly ones
that beam in upon us, how they ripple
PATSY PRIÁ'GLE. 29
and dimple with expression! what a
study they are, to he sure ! Here is one
seems to us like some alabaster vase illu¬
mined by some white and shining light
within. There is a certain refining and
chiselling of features, a gracious moulding
and development of brow, which forever
suggest to us that apostolic expression,
" the temple of the living God.'' Not
beautiful, perhaps, but proudly noble, —
quick, intellectual, sensitive, not always
tolerant, too impetuous in judgment by
half, but true, true always, longing for
truth in others. Ruskin says, '-The flesh-
bound volume is the only revelation of
God there is, or can be ; a tremulous crys¬
tal waved as water: we see through a
glass darkly, but except through the glass
in no wise." IIow can one divine, pray, a
30
PA TSV PRINGLE.
face like that bending over the flowers on
the table near us? There is in it both
strength and tenderness; is there also
weakness? The brow is full; you would
read courage and power, which you would
dread in an enemy. Dare you lean upon
it in a friend ? If life is not a battle, is it
not a play ? If God gives power, must
it not be used or abused? You try to read
the fine lines about the eyes, etchings time
has made; but alas ! there are hieroglyph¬
ics a woman may not decipher. And the
eyes ! winsome the}r must always have
been. Were they ever content? You are
sorry for the hunger in them ; but why
will they forever question 3*011, and never
answer ? W hence comes the swift fine
light which quickly draws and lazily re¬
pels 3'ou ? Can one be both whoU}* true
PA TS y TRINGLE. 31
and wholly false? both thoughtfully con¬
stant and thoughtlessly otherwise? both
tender and cold ? Perhaps, as the soul
may contain both heaven and hell.
In health, in the world, in society, we
mostly all wear masks which in the sick¬
room are lifted a little ; thus we seem
to come closer to our friend's very self.
As worldly conventionalities crumble, the
heart comes uppermost ; and it is the
heart of our friend we want, after all,
more than the thought. What is culture
that does not form character? The Devil
is wise ! If one knows all, and feels noth¬
ing, let him be "anathema maranatha."
The cui bono ? of some lives, we are too
simple to understand. To forever absorb
and never diffuse light, — to have printer's
type and moonshine in one's veins instead
32
PATSY PRINGLE.
of red blood! Bah! We hope to meet
some responsive dogs we know, in our
paradise, rather than these evolved and
educated oysters.
But now, more than ever, much learn¬
ing is too high for us ; so our friends lay
aside their abstractions, and let only warm
glances of sympathy sweep over us. How
the soul flashes out through some eyes !
What immortal, evanescent, God-given
beauty ! too perfect, too divine, to cast a
shadow ; even the sun cannot paint it,
much less artist put upon canvas its elf-
like witchery. That was an exquisite
thought, that Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona
Lisa" was an attempt to immortalize
woman's smile. It is said the artist
worked four years at this wonderful por¬
trait, and gave up in despair. Are there
PATSY PRINGLE.
38
not some faces of which no picture can
ever satisfy, save the beautiful gracious
one we carry next our hearts ? Ah, those
eyes we love ! that " light that never was
on sea or land!" It would strike down
fifty fathoms deep, and warm us in our
graves, we know. Death may close them ;
but in eternity they shall open, young and
beautiful forever. We think of them, and
little touches of tenderness fall about us;
our hungry heart is warmed and fed ; we
lie still, flooded with a sweet content.
III.
MRS. RUNABOUT.
" One should be willing to go to Cov¬
entry sometimes," says Emerson. God's
mercies are not to be counted 011 the out¬
side so much as 011 the inside. Why
deplore the stillness of hours wherein
truth passes over into the realm of spirit ?
To forever absorb amounts to nothing.
Beauty and truth must become a part of
and blossom into the life, must come
through some fine alembic to be a part
of the fibre of the soul, else for us
they have 110 deep significance. A man's
34
MRS. RUNABOUT.
35
character writes his history. Our great¬
est dramatists, novelists, — Shakespeare,
George Eliot, and the rest, — recognize
this fact. Few writers are noble enough
to put aside their own self-hood ; few are
great enough and subtile enough to com¬
prehend individuality otlier and different
from their own. The genius of a Shake¬
speare was at home with all characters ;
his wide charity could feel, think, and live
with the basest as the best, finding good
in all. If culture shall make us truly
wise, if civilization shall be of permanent
benefit, it shall somehow give us this sym-
pathetic insight into other lives, into the
great life of the universe. It shall engen¬
der a far-reaching benevolence, true kind¬
liness of feeling, — Gemuthliclikeit, as the
Germans have it.
36 MRS. RUNABOUT.
Truest life is lived both inwardly and
outwardly. "Work and love, that is the
body and soul of the human being." And
truest life of individuals makes up truest
life of nations.
Sometimes, as we look at it, our boasted
civilization seems, after all, to be a good
deal of a failure. Why should we send
missionaries to the heathen ? There have
arisen among us, it is true, a few apostles,
and no end of martyrs; but as for the
rest, we go about " well wadded with
stupidity," our lucid moments being few
and far between.
How few of us seem to know how
truly to live, even how truly to enjoy
wealth, power, success, culture (if God
gives them), not to speak of the greater
but more common blessings of health,
MRS. RUNABOUT. 37
thought, the sky, the earth, the air !
I low do we know that "resting quietly
beside God, watching his working, and
in some vague way living out his pur¬
poses of peace, charity, and good-will,"
the Feejee Islander is so far behind?
Wh at is our social life in this enlight¬
ened nineteenth century ? To quote a
friend, " Society plants a stake, and Jones
and Brown and all the rest of us must
walk up and lie measured." Now, Jones
(if he is any thing at all) is not Brown,
and never will be, trim and fashion him as
you may. But society holds this to be
high treason, is indignant at the absence
of Brown in Jones, and votes him freez-
ingly "not of our set."
Thus social life is death to all indi¬
viduality, its inner circles too often made
38 MRS. RUNABOUT.
up of people who indulge in the noble
occupation of depreciating each other.
Ilow many of us are noble enough, broad
enough, deep enough, to possess and ex¬
ercise that delicate, sympathetic insight
which .would always put a friend in the
best light, as we hang our pictures ; which
would judge him from his best moments,
not his weakest? Who of us but has
his lapses of folly? and shall we dis¬
crown another, we who can scarcely stand
alone ?
Our scholars too often become recluses,
— creep into their shells, and are glad to
stay there. Our men and women of gen¬
ius— poets, artists, musicians, thinkers,
and workers — lead a Bohemian sort of
life, glad to run across each other, and
touch hands for a moment anywhere,
MRS. RUNABOUT.
39
everywhere, but in the fashionable draw¬
ing-room. Titans need room to stretch
their limbs ; the close, stilling air of
most fashionable gatherings would cramp
and stifle them. Do you call the scholars
dumb or pedantic? Do not blame the
sun-dial if it mark not the hours in the
shade. In a pure and brilliant social
atmosphere, they will blossom out like
flowers. When men meet their mates,
then society truly begins ; all topics are
discussed without offence, and the sincere
and happy exchange of thought doubles
our power. There is a social life that is
delicious !
What have become of those salons of
old with their brilliant gathering of highly
organized souls? Where are the De
Staëls and Recamiers? (for it is woman
40
MRS. RUNABOUT.
who must lead here always. She is the
intellectual irritant.) How swiftly does
the conversation of our drawing-rooms
descend to commonplaces, and how fre¬
quently do we go away from the most
brilliant circles hollow and famished !
We try too much to say what we are
expected to say, to do what Smith,
Brown, c b our coterie expect us to do ;
and when the fine social attrition has
polished and rounded off all our sharp
corners, we fold our bejewelled hands
over our fashionable Parisian finery,
thanking God we are not as that poor
" publican."
We are not so safely shelved but "the
world" comes sometimes even into the
sick-room. There is that little Mrs. llun-
about who has just left us. She is called
MRS. RUNABOUT.
41
" so sweet " by her friends, — " very lady¬
like and nice, you know." You watch
her as she drops into the low cushioned
easy-chair by your side. Fascinating curls
shade the small, expressive face, dimpling
and smiling before you. From her lady¬
like head to the tips of her ladylike fin¬
gers this woman gives you an electric
sense of unruffled adjustment ; you quake
a little lest the nurse forgot to put on
your rings, or properly adjust the best
wrapper. You feel sure that between her
smiles this pious little worldling sees your
under pillow-case is cotton instead of
linen, and will item the same. You think
of that lady friend of Emerson's who
assured him that " the sense of being per¬
fectly well dressed gives a feeling of in¬
ward tranquillity religion itself is power-
42 MRS. RUNABOUT.
less to bestow." You feel nervous about
your back liair, and wish the lace on your
breakfast-cap were hancl-made instead of
woven. You hope the nurse, stupid thing,
will be sure to bring you your broth in
the majolica bowl. You feel morally cer¬
tain your dear friend, who sits smiling and
dimpling at you, will go away, and say
with a shrug, "Mrs. W ate her jelly
made of gelatine and not calves-feet ; that
she presumed she wasn't so very ill
after all." She a gossip ! Heaven forbid !
She disparage ! Why, she never made a
direct charge in her life ! Who ever
knew her to meddle with other people's
affairs, except from a painful and con¬
scientious sense of duty?
Your first-class scavengers are the
birds who, with unruffled plumage, peck
MRS. RUA'ABOUT.
43
daintily here and there, not the poor
beggars who go about with arms and
aprons full !
There are certain emotional, excitable,
shallow natures, that tend inevitably to
gossip and a certain sort of piety. To
tell them to " stay at home in their own
minds," not to recite other people's opin¬
ions or meddle with other people's af¬
fairs, would be simply to tell them not to
exist.
Such women are not, perhaps, deliber¬
ately malicious or uncharitable : it comes
rather from lack of breadth, from lack of
insight and sympathy — principally from
lack of culture. The cure for ignorance
in any of its manifestations is culture,
and it is better if this could run back a
generation or two. To eradicate Mrs.
44
MRS. RUA1 A BO UT.
Runabout, you should have educated her
grandmother !
In social circles made up of such peo¬
ple, it is a wonder the air does not rush
in like a whirlwind to fill the vacuum.
What is it George Eliot makes Gwen¬
dolen say at a fashionable party about
"such a sense of empty benches "?
It is vain to affirm our social life does
not run out into, and affect for good or
ill, our political and national life. Why
must we drop our eyes with shame at
the follies and crimes this very year has
opened up to us in civil and religious
as well as social life ?
What we seem to need mainly is moral
courage ; in society, courage to be simply
one's self, to speak happily, truthfully,
sincerely always; charity to judge kindly.
MRS. RUNABOUT.
45
We need culture that shall raise us above
low hopes and fears, above earth and
earthiness, above self and selfish inter¬
ests. We need enthusiasm; this is not
fashionable, yet it is the " leaping light¬
ning " that opens wide the pathway of
genius, of talent. Without earnestness
life settles into a stagnant pool. We
need sentiment, true and deep feeling
(not the sentimental mask of it), to renew
and invigorate the heart, to burn up a
sweet and gracious flame into the life.
Lastly, we need a more frequent resort
to the Divine oracle : we need inspira¬
tion! Let us, as Americans, crave a
more profound and wholesome piety, sup¬
plied from a perennial fountain. Then
shall our statesmen be also gentlemen,
and our gentlemen be men of honor,
46
MRS. RUNABOUT.
" sans peur et sans reprocheThen
shall intelligence, virtue, a truer man¬
hood and purer womanhood, abound, and
the coming century hold up American
civilization as the light of the world.
IV.
THE HARPIES.
People are undoubtedly born with dif¬
ferent constitutional tendencies. We talk
of inheriting consumption, scrofula, can¬
cer. Why not spiritual disease as well?
That sour-visaged man, that sharp-eyed
woman, were, perhaps, predestined to see
the wrong side of every thing. I-ife has
its right and wrong sides, as people are
made up of light and shade. The critics
may, if they choose, sit off in the corner
like the spiders, and weave their own
little web of darkness, stinging to death
47
48
THE HARPIES.
any poor fly that comes in their way.
Possibly the spicier-poison is in the blood,
coming down from some remote ancestry.
Like " goats browsing upon morning-
glories," they have an inherited tendency
to chew up what else might blossom into
beauty for them and for others.
How different the sunny, blithe spirit
that lifts its sweet " God bless you "
everywhere ! O ye children of the Sun !
were ye born winged? We wonder the
angels do not miss you out of heaven.
How the world-cares and world-weariness
slip away as your happy feet glide by !
How dull faces brighten, and the old
heavy load falls off, as your singing voices
bid us good cheer ! And if death shall
silence them, what then shall be left for
us on earth ?
THE HARPIES.
49
The Greeks had a curious way of weav¬
ing into their mythology odd truths of
life and experience. Their gods were
friendly or adverse, as they represented
noble and tender or ungenerous and base
attributes. On the more distant heights
of Greek history, we find the worship of
the one god Zeus ; afterward the powers
of Nature passed into a family of gods;
later still, historical characters became
deified abstractions. Mythology did not
create its heroes, but laid hold of history,
and " clung to it so closely, it was as diffi¬
cult to separate as the lichen from the
granite." Lastly, it coiled itself about
the various attributes of humanity ; and
just here, we think, we may profitably go
back to the old Greeks for many a lesson.
Who has not heard of the "Harpies"?
50
THE H ART IES.
They were sisters of the rainbow, and
near akin to much beauty and goodness.
They were gifted in many ways, pos¬
sessed of many charms, but alas ! also of
a cold unfriendliness of disposition, which
is represented as always malign in its
influence. The rasping, carping Celœno
whirled fitful gusts of wind and dust
into the eyes of mortals. Uncomfortable
Storm-swift and Swift-foot, forsworn by
Boreas, came with nipping and irritating
frost to chill and sting. Together they
were enough to bedevil the patience of
a saint. It is small wonder that in the
Inferno the Harpies are represented as
hovering in the tree with suicides. The
pitiful snugness of the grave must have
looked peaceful to poor mortals coming
much in contact with this spirit of unrest.
THE H ART I ES.
51
In strong contrast to that searching,
helpful criticism, which comes of a spirit
of love and good-will, and which the
Greeks typified by Boreas, the north
wind, kindly, invigorating, and bracing,
is the petty spirit of fault-finding, un¬
generous, uncomfortable, which carries a
poison in its sting, sure to lash at last
into feverish discomfort or fury.
All men have their superior and inferior
parts, of which they are as conscious as
others can be. Appeal to what is noblest
in them, and you find few intolerant of
even the most searching criticism ; nay,
more, they may be eager to know and
vanquish themselves. But the human
centaur cannot be cut in twain ! You
may not ignore the good, and expect to
cure the evil. "Men recognize subtly the
52
THE HARPIES.
true fire, and whether it be of heaven ! "
They look into your glass house, and
know what manner of spirit it is that is
throwing the stones.
It is said, if men would hate themselves
as they often líate their neighbors, it would
he a good step toward loving their neigh¬
bors as they do themselves.
"True virtue stoops graciously to lift
inferiors toward itself ; looks reverently at
the merits of others, and only tenderly
at their defects." It is a spurious article
that shows its canine teeth, and reminds
us how our forefathers tore each other in
pieces for their morsel of flesh. True
modesty is not so much an outlook as an
inloolc! It finds too much to correct in its
own life, to have much time for criticism
of other lives. " The real man or woman
THE HARPIES.
53
is lie who, beholding himself in a purga¬
tory of self-condemnation, yet maintains
his faith in purity and goodness without."
The vulgarized man is he who, folding his
"ice-cold, slippery, serpent skin of hypoc¬
risy" about him, sits off in indifferent
coldness, saying, "Stand off! I am holier
than thou 1 "
Emerson says, "If greatness can be shut
up in qualities, it may be found to consist
in generosity and openness of soul. No
man or woman can be truly great without
large and extended sympathies which see
their way full of warmth and light into
all other souls." Man's capacity for un¬
derstanding another depends entirely upon
this loving insight. It takes a frank and
generous nature to understand a frank
and generous one. " Send a deep man to
54
THE HARPIES.
town, and lie finds another deep man
there." The sharpest-sighted hunter in
the universe is prejudice, for finding what
he wants to find. It is a narrow and
ungenerous soul, that entertains and cul¬
tivates it: true nobility would rise above
it and dispel it. Dislike, envy, cast their
own shadow before, so dark it would dim
and cloud the brightest tints of any char¬
acter.
There is a poem of Barry Cornwall's
about a strange winged creature having
the lineaments of man, that pecked at and
tore and preyed on men, until finally, com¬
ing to a clear stream to drink, he beheld
his own face therein, and found he had
been preying on a creature precisely like
himself.
"Acanthio " wears a garment of nettles
THE HA RP/ES.
55
which puncture and provoke. The ivy-
poison is in his blood. Stand off! be¬
ware ! " Positiva " was born with a
ramrod down her back ; and to ask lier to
bend, to make allowance, to sympathize,
would be to ask her to yield her obstinacy ;
and " when she won't, she won't, and
there's the end on't! " Together they are
a fair exponent of the spirit of censorious-
ness. So long as they are modest, large-
hearted, and charitable, keeping prejudice
undermost and benevolence uppermost,
acknowledging "there are more things on
earth than are dreamed of in their philos¬
ophy," so long their positiveness is a vir¬
tue, and we have nothing for them save a
"God bless you!" But of all the trials
appointed to mortals in this sublunary
sphere, perhaps the most rasping and
56
THE HARPIES.
exasperating is the companionship of
those eminently respectable individuals
who know they know it, and know yon
don't ; who, being immaculate, stake out
their ground at right angles, and insist
there is no other arrangement possible, —
that those who differ from them in opinion
simply lack discernment or judgment.
" Positiva " is made up of frost and flint
and backbone ; excellent things in their
way, but unitedly brought to bear would
wear out an angel. She undoubtedly has
lier excellences, so have the bull-dozer
and the South-Sea Islander ; but they jar
your ideal dreams, and shatter the chords
of your life into discord, nevertheless.
"Positiva" lias her affinities and antipa¬
thies ; if she takes a dislike, heaven and
earth could not persuade her she saw
THE HA RPIES. 57
crooked and other people straight. Fichte
says, '■'■Der Mensch kann ivas er soll; und
wenn er sa;jt er kann nicht, so will er
nicht." Who is pure enough, who is
wise enough, to place himself in the
judgment-seat of the Almighty? In life
the points of view have much to do with
making up opinion. When we grow
divinely tall enough to overlook all,
then shall we also know there lies with¬
in the meanest sinner the possibilities of
a saint.
It is said, "manners are not idle, but
the fruit of royal nature." The manner
of doing a thing is almost as important as
the thing itself. Even criticism may be
made acceptable or offensive by the man¬
ner of giving it. Any person of spirit
has pride enough to resent any thing bor-
58 THE HARPIES.
tiering upon disrespect. Wrongs may be
forgiven, but this shadow shall sting for¬
ever. The more delicate the nature,
the more sensitive to this pain, and the
more lasting its scar. There are people
whose very manner can be a perpetual
insult, kindling every tingling drop of
blood in the body into resentment. But
gentle blood and purity of soul do not
thus express themselves. The true lady
is she whose readiness to appreciate your
good makes you doubly ashamed of your
evil ; whose courtesy and delicate consid¬
eration are large-hearted and generous.
Addison tells us, " Vulgarity is an un¬
trained bluntness, a callousness to the
feelings of others;" and Montesquieu says,
"II me semble que Vesprit de politesse, est
une certaine attention à faire que par nos
THE HARPIES.
59
paroles et nos manières les autres soient
contents de nous et d'eux-mêmes
" Look at the roses saluting each other,
Look at the herds all at peace on the plain;
Man, and man only, makes war 011 his brother,
And laughs in his heart at his peril and pain, —
Shamed by the beasts that go down 011 the plain.
Were il not well in this brief little journey,
On over the isthmus, down into the tide,
We give him a ßsli instead of a serpent,
Ere folding the hands to be and abide
Forever and aye in the dust at his side? "
There was a fairy once (Melusina) who
liad every talent under the sun, and many
winning graces ; but at certain times,
when she turned in one direction, became
a serpent. Who of us has not seen and
recognized her here ? Ah, my fairy sis¬
ter ! with what spell can we exorcise that
60
THE HARPIES.
blemish on thy beauty? See goodness?
Of course you will not while you are all
the time hunting for faults. Remember,
the shellfish contracts its claws over an
atom ; besides, if you wear " a garment
embroidered with hooks," which puncture
and provoke, if you show yourself per¬
sistently ungenerous and unfriendly, you
bring everything unhealthy to the surface,
— you may, indeed, develop the very evils
you decry.
It is well that inherited tendencies for
good or evil never come singly. " God
does not crown natural gifts or faculties."
It is to him that overcometh is given the
palm. Our saints and martyrs are those
who have come up out of great tribula¬
tion. Each soul has its own little battle
to fight,—one more, another less. All
THE HARPIES.
61
inheritance of evil is offset by some good,
and unto every soul God gives the will¬
power to choose between them. The
greater the forces arrayed against us, the
more triumphant the victory over them.
In every sense we are responsible for our¬
selves, — our own dispositions, our own
lives. It is useless to attempt to shift
this ; but in judging of another, innate
and inborn differences of character must
be taken into consideration. Natures
equally earnest and sincere express them¬
selves often quite differently, see things
differently, act differently under the same
circumstances. They could not conform
to one standard if they would, and per-
haps they would not if they could. For
the critic to judge others by himself, is
simply, in nine cases out of ten, to mis-
G 2
THE HARPIES.
judge them altogether. Let us, for exam¬
ple, take the practical and prose spirit of
the age, in contrast with the imaginative
and poetical. It has often been sugges¬
tive to us of a whole volume upon " the
conceit of accuracy." People in this
world either have imagination, or they
have it not ; the difference being one of
kind rather than degree. Each should
modify and help the other. Unfortu¬
nately, though these people speak the
same tongue, they often speak a different
language, and strangely misunderstand
and misjudge each other. Of the two, it
seems most likely (and is, as a matter of
fact, noticeabl}- the case) that the practi¬
cal, prosaic spirit least comprehends the
other, is most positive as to its right and
the other's wrong. It is said, " Imagina-
THE HARPIES.
63
tion is the supernal faculty : all others
have the brown touch of earth upon them ;
this alone wears the livery of heaven."
If this be true, certes the angel gets
his wings pretty severely clipped in his
wanderings to and fro 011 the earth !
There is an old North-German proverb,
" He that is born poet can boil soup on a
sausage-peg." Alger says, " To him, every
moment of time is surcharged with ex¬
pressiveness ; every spot of space baffles
ineffable truths." The poetical soul is
likely to feel every thing intensely, and its
expression of any feeling would seem an
exaggeration often to others. The prim¬
rose by the river's brim, which to his
matter-of-fact companion is but " a yellow
primrose, nothing more," becomes to Ins
heart a message, a sweet possession from
04
THE HARPIES.
the heavens, a sacred voice, a revelation
giving " thoughts tiro deep for utterance."
Iiis "loves" are other people's "likes."
lie has a passionate heart, easily moved ;
Iiis happiness is an ecstasy, his pain a
misery ; lively, mobile, sensitive to divine,
imaginative, impassioned, tender, he lives
in the heights and the depths. God only
and his own heart can know what life
means, and is, to him. For Miss Accuracy
to attempt to measure such a one with
her yard-stick, is simply absurd.
Oh for the grace of adaptability ! Oh
for the virtue of loving kindness ! Oh
for the beauty of tender charity and sym¬
pathy !
It is a virtue of machinery, that it adapts
itself to various uses and purposes. AVhy
is it less so in life ?
THE HA TT IE S.
05
All growth implies capacity for change,
progression, lie who prides himself 011
holding the same opinion yesterday, to¬
day, and forever, is simply morbid or a
bigot, and will always remain in some
corner of his soul dwarfed and stunted
and deformed.
"Judge not. The workings of his brain
And of his heart thou canst not see ;
What looks to thy dim eyes a stain,
In God's pure light may only be
A scar brought from some well-won field
Where thou wouldst only faint and yield."
Charity embraces the wide circle of all
possible kindnesses. The smiling (not
frowning) in your neighbor's face is char¬
ity ; your removing (not placing therein)
thorns and hard places from the road is
charitj' ; and your good deeds are your
66
THE HARPIES.
wealth, the only treasure you can take
over beyond.
What is the innermost secret of the
Christ-life, but a charity altogether divine ?
And the history of all saintly lives that
have followed after, has but mirrored back
the story. May it not be that that is
God's supreme lesson to us here, — a
love not of self and that which is nearest,
but of all, "from the mouse to the arch¬
angel " !
V.
LOVING.
Novalis writes: "Sickness is necessary
to self-knowledge, to individualization.
Every act of introversion, every glance
into our interior, is at the same time an
ascension, a going-up toward heaven ; the
more intimate the communion, the pro-
founder our insight into the great soul
of all."
Too often during illness the soul has
only " feelers," not wings ; the brain is
hardly clear enough to get a lucid and
unconcerned view of worldly interests,
of our own deeper thought : for this
07
68
LOVING.
reason, it may be, love, sympathy, friend¬
ship, have glided from twilight obscurity
into bold relief. The thought of friends
is an abiding presence, softening and
illumining like the sunshine ; and it is
not the many friends, but the few, who
dwell with us now. Out of the hundreds,
one is fortunate to count the tens who
really touch the inner life, — are some¬
thing to the soul. The long days of ill¬
ness bring the thought home with great
emphasis, that the world wastes much
precious time in insincere and valueless
friendships. The longest life is too short
to afford it. We give hours which would
be a delicious treat and an abiding bene¬
fit, passed in contact with congenial and
elevated souls, to people who really care
nothing for us, who visit us 'pour passer
LOVING.
69
le temps,— to amuse themselves, — or, per¬
haps, for some worldly profit that may
accrue to them through the acquaintance.
This visiting which means nothing, and
is nothing, becomes a sort of dissipation
"with many women, leaving their life
vacant and profitless. Inevitably their
thought becomes shallow, spreading itself
out more and more into idle curiosity
and idler gossip over other people's affairs.
Having no deep inner life of their own,
they can form no conception of a pro¬
found and earnest life in another: in¬
dividuality, enthusiasm, shock them; they
judge superficially, and with all manner
of uncharitableness.
We always suspect that man or woman
who is everybody's friend. Only shallow
natures will crave many intimacies. That
70
LOVING.
public man who is "liail fellow well
met" with Jones, Smith, Brown, and the
rest, is no true friend at all ; be very sure
lie will serve and use these dear constitu¬
ents quite as his convenience requires.
IIow is it possible to be profoundly and
earnestly your friend's friend and the
world's friend at the same time ? Giving
to all, what is there left of you that you
should be more to your friend than to
others ?
That which is peculiarly and specially
you, worldliness kills, society levels down
as an excrescence. And yet in friendships
that are elevating and enduring, it must
be your very self that attracts, — that
wherein you differ from others, not re¬
semble them. Feeling that runs deep
ever wraps about itself a delicate mantle
LOVING.
71
of reserve ; it resents bold and indeco¬
rous intrusion ; it lias its holy of holies,
across whose threshold, even, irreverent
steps may not pass. Sunny natures will
feel kindly toward all, will warm and
gladden all,—-that is well!—but they
cannot abound toward all. As love is
valueless except it be the sacred conse¬
cration of one toward one, so friendship,
to be delicate, tender, and true, cannot
lie too diffusive ; it must reserve itself,
must enrich and deepen its own life, that
it may become of worth to the life of
another. " Friendship is a kind of abso¬
lute, leaving the language of love even
suspicious and common." "Friends are
self-elected ; you do not choose your
friend." He brings to you what you
have not, else will you after a while find his
72 LOVING.
love superfluous. It is not so much the how
lie loves you, as the what he is who loves
you, that determines the duration and
depth of your own regard and need of him.
Love is described as fickle, changeable,
unenduring. Of love as a passion merely,
this is perhaps true. It rests upon the
mutable, the material, and must die or
change with it. But of love sublimed from
the senses to the soul, it is not true, or
true only in a degree. In proportion as
the soul lias need, and finds not wherewith
to satisfy, it must slowly drift away from
the closest moorings. The saddest of all
separations is not death : it is life! Who
of us has not touched closely the heart of
friends for a space, and finding a blank
where we had expected the filled page,
finding dissonant tones where we hoped
LOVING. 73
for sweetest consonance, finding death
where we had expected life, has slowly
felt the unclasping of hands, the fatal
drifting out at sea?
" As barks upon the boundless main
Meet once, and never touch again."
Blame not love that it is thus incon¬
stant : blame rather the life that had not
wherewith to give, to enrich, to hold.
The love that is immortal must rest upon
the enduring!
During the long clays of illness, we
have found one thought always uppermost.
Sweet human companionship (visible or
invisible) has been an abiding presence in
the sick-room. Many problems of love
and friendship have thus come from ob¬
scurity into clearer light. Our thoughts
7-1
LOVING.
have loved to cluster about and sun them¬
selves in their soft and tender warmth, as
in some delicious atmosphere. We have
daintily toyed with, fingered over (as it
were), our treasure ; have loved to count
it up, and, like the miser, tenderly hoard
it away, only to bring it forth again,
and say over again to our hearts how rich
we were ! We have found those natures
which were most to us—present or ab¬
sent— tobe those most needed to com¬
plete our own ; wherein we lacked, we
craved of their abundance. Some one has
said that "in the truest marriage of souls,
a monotone is not agreeable or profitable
or possible; consonant tones are required
for the melody of life and true enjoyment,
not unison : otherwise friendship is lost in
mere fellowship." One nature will inev-
LOVING.
itably be the stronger (representing the
masculine element) : yet each should be
central, self-poised, in a certain degree
self-sufficing, to be of truest worth to the
other. We are not to run to our friend
as to a confessor : God only is the Divine
Leader, — lie who is supremely invisible,
faithful, and wise. lie gives us our
friend for comfort and inspiration. Let
us take and hold the gift sacredly, rever¬
ently, as in trust ! Thus we shall not treat
our friends as we are likely to treat ac¬
quaintances according to their character,
to adapt ourselves always and entirely to
their moods and thought, simply to give
them momentary happiness. That is not
truest love. Perfect freedom from pain
is not highest good. Such treatment
simply leaves a man's character as though
76
LOVING.
it were unalterable. Noble natures are
fearless of salutary pain, eager to know
and vanquish themselves. True, we are
not called on to reform our friends always,
yet surely our friendliness is much to be
doubted if it confirm in error. In propor¬
tion as we love, do the beautiful possibili¬
ties of the friendly soul gleam out upon
us. It is a personal grief and loss to us
when this beauty is marred. Love being
the essence of Deity, in degree as the soul
is filled with it does it see with divine
clearness the mar, the blight, as well as
the beauty. And }^et in its tender pity
sweet human love would veil away rather
than probe the wound : not so the Divine.
Should not a broad and deep love seek to
give enduring happiness rather than fleet¬
ing pleasure? Should we not exalt our-
LO VIy G.
77
selves to be more than the temporary
sweetness, the restful solace, the soothing
opiate, to our friend ? Is present comfort
of soul better than abiding health? Shall
we satisfy hunger with sweets, when
invigorating tonics are better?
O Ö
And then, on the other hand, life is so
short, and beyond lies the great mystery.
And all lives at best are so full of sad¬
nesses that we do not know, griefs that are
dumb and voiceless. How can we who
love give a moment's pain,—-we who so
long to let our love bubble up and over¬
flow, and drown ont the ache and the void
and the restlessness and the sadness ? We
would flood the life with sunny warmth,
tint all gray and leaden days with rose,
gild and glorify. We would bring the
sweets of all flowers, the lustre of all
78
LOVIXG.
stars, the shine of all suns, and lay at the
feet of the beloved. And must we twine
thorns with the rose-wreaths, — ice too
with the rest ? And will not God take care
of his own? This little life is so short, be¬
tween the two eternities ! After all, will
it matter so much? These questions have
drifted over us, hither and thither dur¬
ing the sick days, — vague, pliantom-like
faces that would not be gone. Our heart
and our head have pleaded with each
oilier, and neither has gained the mastery.
The old questioning, " Am I my brother's
keeper ? " has glided out ghost-like from
the dead centuries, to thwart and baffle.
Somewhere, from some corner of the
brain, there comes this song of the love
that is golden. It is as a sweet narcotic
to our tired thought.
LOVING.
79
"No! not with turbulence ;
Not with fret and worry of doubt;
Not with uncertainty compassed about, —
With wooing and coaxing to-day,
And thwarting and crossing to-morrow ;
Not with light laughter and play,
Or too much trouble and sorrow,
Or vexed tears scorching the longing eyes,
Or pitiful glances or penitent sighs,
Would I have love !
No; calm and earnest, good and true,
Mellowed by tenderness through and through,
Ever the same, yet ever new ;
Quietly watchful, brooding above,
O'er me and round me, — such the love,
Such the love only, I care to have.
Patient and restful, holy calm;
Life's pulse and breath
Pouring into all wounds a balm
Enduring till death."
VI.
FRIENDSHIP.
Swift says, " I never yet knew a tol¬
erable woman to be fond of lier own sex.
Clever women invariably prefer the wit,
wisdom, and earnestness of cultured men,
to the too frequent triviality of women."
. Those women who are most to each
other are generally very unlike, one na¬
ture being greatly the stronger. This un-
likeness between natures congenial of the
same sex being naturally rare, may in a
measure account for the lack of frequent
and profound attachments among them.
80
FRIENDSHIP
81
Friendship is the reflection of souls in
each other. Jean Paul tells us, " A wo¬
man, unlike Narcissus, seeks not her own
image and a second I : she much prefers a
not IP It has seemed to us a too common
failure among women, to comprehend the
innermost secret of enduring friendship.
If mutually attached, they quickly be¬
come too intimate. They expect too much
of each other, are too observant of each
other ; too soon, perhaps, their friendship
becomes ingulfed in love. They are too
familiar, holding nothing in reserve ; bore
each other with ceaseless talk of their pur¬
suits, of their ailments, of petty interests
and pleasures. They lack cheerfulness
and reticence with each other, are too
critical and out-spoken. They do not take
each other sufficiently on trust, are too in-
82 FRIENDSHIP.
clined to be over-interested in the every¬
day life beneath the roof-tops, to dwell
much in the more spiritual and enduring
life that lifts itself above. With persons
of opposite sex this is less likely. The
closest friendship possible, that between
husband and wife, if both natures are
noble, is the most perfect and profound.
The pity is, this is so rare ! Men and
women marry, thinking they need only
love. Unfortunately, they need also rea¬
son, tact, unselfishness, forbearance. Many
marriages commencing with these qualities,
combined with respect and regard, give
more enduring happiness than a union
of lovers without them. This sounds
heterodox. We are sorry that it is true,
for we believe in love profoundly ; but a
very limited observation convinces one
FRIENDSHIP. 83
that unless love rises into an ardent and
profound friendship, it is not likely to he
enduring. Too many men and women
look upon marriage simply as possession,
weighing much their own right in the
compact, as though they held a chattel,
which is hound necessarily to them,
whether they seek to hold or not. Un¬
fortunately, love is not a matter of the
will. It is not property, or substance, hut
a relation. " We are loved as we are lovable
to the person loving."
"The general laws of the mind are not
suspended for the sake of the affections."
One's tastes can he offended as easily after
marriage as before ; and, unfortunately,
the most refined part of us lies in this re¬
gion of subtile sympathies and antipathies.
The wife before marriage seeks to charm
84 FRIENDSHIP.
the husband with grace, gentleness, beaut}r,
and wit. Is she not too often forgetful
of it afterward? The lover is devoted,
tender, thoughtful. Should the husband
be less so ?
It seems as if half the trouble of the
world comes of lack of thought. If we
lose a treasure, we blame the treasure,
blame (rod, blame any thing but our¬
selves. It is true that men and women
are sometimes led astray by the evil in
them, but is it not also true that they
often drift astray because of the lack of
good about them ? " Incompatibility of
temper " covers broad ground in the di¬
vorce suits. If wives are irritable and
sharp, all the more reason husbands, if
noble and unselfish, should soothe and
tenderly quell instead of carelessly incit-
FRIENDSHIP.
85
in o' aimer. If husbands are morose or
O Ö
inconstant, greater need wives should deli¬
cately and kindly suggest the harm to
themselves, to their own souls, instead of
harshly resenting a personal offence. If
women did but know it, nothing will
make their homes so fair as that they
themselves should be holy and noble.
Woman's besetting sin is littleness, and it
brings with it its own torture. If man
seeks a home, and finds only a workshop
or a nest of the " Harpies," he will quite
likely seek rest elsewhere ; he wants a wife,
not simply a housekeeper, a nursery-maid,
or a critic. There are too many Marthas,
alas! self-burdened with overmuch care;
and too many husbands go out to find the
Marys. Some one has said men are ilutes,
they must be filled with the warm breath
86 FRIENDSHIP.
of a foreign sympathy ; women are harp¬
sichords, oid)r needing to he struck. To
some natures friendship is more than a
pleasure, it is a necessity. It is a fact run¬
ning down through all history, that women
have heen the inspiration and the sustain¬
ing encourager of artistic creations in
poetry, music, painting, and sculpture ;
her swift perceptions and keen and tender
sympathy have incited, consoled, and
moulded the statesman as the scholar ; her
sensitive regard to Iiis honor and repute
has heen as a bulwark of strength to him.
Who is it has said " to associate with a
quick-witted woman is a liberal educa¬
tion " ?
The soul seems to need something with¬
out itself, to which it may attach itself,
about which it may rally all the powers of
FRIENDSHIP.
87
its being. The more tender, contempla¬
tive, earnest, the soul, the more it hungers
for true love and friendship.
Pure and elevated friendships are, per¬
haps, the most exalted and ennobling in¬
fluence of life. To have a friend, and be
one, that of itself will sublime and beau¬
tify any soul.
The friendship of young persons of the
same sex is tinged with a romance that
does not often come in later life, yet the
friendships of those grown older should
be by so much richer as to far surpass this
early glow. Some one has said, " Friends
must be units before they can be united."
Individuality is mainly a growth, and
comes only with years. We are gaining
daily a more deep and extensive knowl¬
edge of human life as we recede more and
88
FRIENDSHIP.
more from the clamor of the world and
the distraction of its requirements. We
gain more that clarity of vision, that se¬
renity of soul, which shall make our love
and sympathy a deep and abiding benefit,
it is a lamentable fact, that society looks
•with great uncharity upon all friendships
of maturer years between persons not of
the same sex. The number of people who
have taken out "Judge's patent" for
themselves in these matters is great.
It requires a Pericles and Aspasia, a
Michael Angelo, a Pope Hildebrand and
Countess Matilda, a Klopstock, Madame
Swetchine, De Tocqueville, or a Channing,
to come out unsullied from the small be¬
spattering of slime which these social
gnats continually send forth.
Woman ever idealizes her friends, and
FRIENDSHIP. 89
moulds them by her fair ideal reflected in
their own minds. Her instinctive love of
goodness she imparts slowly, attracting
the soul she loves to all high aims, and
thus withdrawing it from all wretched
ends of folly. A friend writes us :
" Though silent, do not fear I am for¬
getting ; there can be no separation
between friends who are noble, except
a separation in the purpose of their lives."
Whatever love is, it is not a commodity;
it cannot be put for temporary conven¬
ience "where it will do the most good."
Our friends are a gift of God, or tliey
are nothing worth the having or the
losing. They are the sweetness of life,
the delicious kernel of the nut " where¬
of all nature and all thought is but the
husk and the shell."
90
FRIENDSHIP
We strike sharp bargains with the
world, and find ourselves always the
losers. We look for friendship where
no true friendship is, or can be. We
sell ourselves cheaply, and, not fitting
ourselves to mate with the noblest, let
all true nobility forever escape us. In
fashionable life we seek comfort in "our
set," and too frequently find it stale, flat,
and unprofitable. If the congenial soul
stands without, we dare not reach over
to embrace, well knowing these people
who use will also abuse us ; that this
" silken and perfumed amity " has claws
as well as smiles, and does not always go
gloved !
The vacant and artificial life of society
disenchants the soul, is fatal to a mag¬
nanimous wisdom and trustful sympathy.
FRIENDSHIP.
91
Oar friends are the angel visitants who
keep heaven near. It is a fatal mistake,
then, to keep the petty joys and sorrows
of earth uppermost before them ; they
are but tire mere accidents of life, not
of supreme importance to any soul. A
noble friendship finds better subjects of
discourse than the acts of the world
that jostles about us ; it should be inde¬
pendent of outward circumstances, en¬
riching itself from within. We should
not run to a friend for support, but meet
personal trials with a brave strength,
before which they are sure to retreat :
relying supremely on ourselves, the lov¬
ing sympathy of friendship is a deli¬
cious balm that but quickens the healing,
— all the more sweet to us because it
is not a necessity to the life. As with
92
FRIENDSHIP
pain, so with happiness, having resources
within independent of it, not needing it,
it comes to us in sweetest perfection ;
it gleams in upon our already peaceful
heart a bright superabundance of jo}^.
Thus we go to our friend, not as a
weight, rather as an inspiration. He
need not lift us, or hold us, or bear ns :
we have wings. All earthly supports may
give way beneath us, we yet sing. He
can, if he be able, go on before, and
beckon ; we soar serenely near, and shall
not hold him back.
Too few of us look at friendship with
any sense of responsibility. Why should
we take of our friend's time, of his pre¬
cious stores of strength or sympathy,
lightly, for things of little worth?
The French definition of friendship,
FRIENDSHIP 93
" bien de s entendre " (good, understand¬
ing) is very suggestive. " Let there lie
truth between us forever : this is, perhaps,
the highest compact."
Character induces trust ; simple and
noble natures have 110 need of re-enfer-
eing themselves or others by continued
assurances of love, by tokens of remem¬
brance, by bodily presence. "The soul is
seen and known to be divine," therefore
ive love.
There is a quick intelligence that comes
of love, that needs not messages or ca¬
resses to assure. We know our friend,
therefore he need not explain himself ;
it is not so much what friends say to
each other, it is the life that tells.
The symbol of the clasped hands, a life
in common, something close, hearty, en-
94
FRIENDSHIP.
during ; this is the marrow of all friend¬
ship. IIow delicate are its secrets ! what
refinements of feeling, what mutual un¬
locking and sharing of hearts! "The
inner life of the soul is doubled, yet each
individuality thereby rendered more clear
and perfect."
The truth is, we do not care enough
to either be a friend or have one. What
the world mostly seeks, if it seek any
thing outside of self, is companionship,
which is another and a different thing.
Even here how we stumble and are at
fault ! To be a good and acceptable
companion is no slight thing. Like friend¬
ship, companionship must rest upon a
thorough conviction of the fundamental
difference in character, conviction, life,
and education, of those by whom we
FRIENDSHIP 95
are surrounded. Some one says, "This
is to social life what Newton's law is
to astronomy." That " one piece of tree
is cut for a weathercock, and one for
the sleeper of a bridge, does not damage
the virtue of the wood in either." We
must learn to recognize truth and virtue
under a million of disguises. No two
souls are quite alike ; and one soul cannot
force its feelings, tastes, convictions, upon
the other. If parents, relatives, friends,
would only wisely consider this, how much
time and ill-feeling might be saved ! The
world little knows how much active dis¬
like is engendered within bonds that are
closest. Every one likes to be justly
estimated at his fair value ; it is not van¬
ity or egotism that makes him more comfort¬
able when the good his soul feels within
96
FRIENDSHIP
itself is acknowledged openly. Too often
relatives and intimates forget to praise,
even if they recognize good, and in looking-
for flaws neglect altogether to see the
real value of the gem the}7 hold.
Our age has been too hurried, too
wearied with frittering multiplicity of
vulgar and sordid interests, to abound in
noble and enduring friendships. We seek
a friend not sacredly, nor hold him close¬
ly. We run to those intimacies which
may profit us in externals, or merely put
us at ease internally. We forget that to
have a friend, one must he one, and that
this requires character, individuality, pur¬
ity ; it is you yourself must attract, not
any external painted mask of you. The
lover may be deceived for a time, but
the faithful friend never ! Cupid was
FRIENDSHIP 97
not born blind, rather lie was born all
eyes. The lover sees, but looks through
the gleaming rose-tinted glass of his pas¬
sion, and finds only what he wants to
i find, — an idealized delight, a glorified
"other self." But faithful friendship
rises (sometimes through love) to greater
heights, to clearer vision. It sees and ap¬
preciates the beautiful possibilities of the
nature, and through it as quickly recog¬
nizes wherein you fall short: yet though
you disappoint seventy times seven, this
love shall not fail. But one must have a
personal inner life that abounds, else will
a noble and gifted friend soon touch bot¬
tom, and, finding your nature shallow, tire
of you. One must have individuality.
" Whoso cannot repel, neither can he
attract; the two powers are but one pul-
98
FRIENDSHIP.
sation of the soul." Surface polish and
culture may draw admiration, it can never
win and hold love. There must he at
the bottom character, or even in exter¬
nals we do not long please. "The tint
of the flower proceeds from its roots,
and the lustres of the sea-shell are a
part of its existence." The gist of noble
friendship is the culture of the indi¬
vidual inner life of those who partake.
No words or caresses can assure, no
protestations avail long, if the life be
false. Love casts off its bandage, and
sees with wide-open eyes that its gods
are clay. It feels itself insulted in the
holiest and profoundest part of its na¬
ture, and there can be no atonement. To
trifle with love is sacrilege. Is love not
the very essence of Deity, — " an off-
FRIENDSHIP.
99
glance of the Infinite flame ? " It is the
last thing we should take on our lips
lightly. No man or woman of true dig¬
nity or worth would think of it. Senti¬
mental trifling is for hoys and girls whose
souls have not been born.
The soul of our friend thus becomes
" the door through which we enter the
society of all good and pure souls," —
the beautiful gateway opening out toward
heaven ; the shining ladder on which we
climb upward toward the Supreme Friend,
the Supreme Good, — even God.
VII.
SUGGESTIONS OF THE SEA.
To-day I long for the sea. It is some
Heimweh of the soul, one can never de¬
scribe or account for. Even in the folds
of the long curtains I see its slow-mov¬
ing waves, and listen dreamily for the
lapping of the silver waters on the beach.
To picture the sea, is to paint a soul.
What pen can limn that changeful,
evanescent, untamable face, a commin¬
gling of dew and fire? To the landsman
it is a new world, with its delicate, trans¬
lucent coloring, its flowing, fantastic, curd-
100
SUGGESTIONS OF THE SEA. 101
ling curves. On shore there is much to
divide the thought. Objects are clearly
defined, palpable, disenchanting. Our lit¬
tle, every-day life projects itself into all,
disillusionizes all.
As the fading shore recedes, we seem
to leave the old world behind, to slip out
of its life as from some chrysalis out¬
worn. It is like waking from a fevered
dream, into some still, cool, eternal morn¬
ing. Great weights fall off, and we be¬
come, as it were, a part of nature, of the
flowing wave, of sky and sea.
It is owing in part, perhaps, to the
suggestions of another, that I so thor¬
oughly enjoy always the marvellous gray
effect of sea and sky. Who can ever ex¬
press the deep obligation to that friend
or companion who helps us to see well ?
102 SUGGEST/OAS OF THE SEA.
To be led out of ourselves, into some¬
thing external to ourselves, is perhaps the
highest philosophy; and no comradely is
more healthful than that of a nature
touched quickly and profoundly by all
beauty and truth, broad in its culture,
sensitive, highly organized, cosmopolitan
in its life.
To cross hands with such an one, is to
be left richer forevermore in proportion
to our receptivity.
Shelley tells us of the wonderful sym¬
metry and variety of the fleecy white
clouds, "shepherded," the poet says, "by
the. slow unwilling wind." At sea the
lower rain-clouds are a brown, oclirous
gray, only beautiful as they let glimpses
of beauty through, and pique you with
their soft, veil-like mystery. The clouds
SUGGEST/OA'S OF THE SEA. 103
of the central region, however, have pure
aerial grays, are milk-white, opalescent.
Notice those two lines of color along the
horizon, how they meet and commingle.
The gray of the sky is warm, rosy, am¬
ber, purple ; that of the water, a green
tire, a blue cold. To us there is often a
more exquisite thrill of pleasure in a bit
of coloring like this, in the pure outlin¬
ing of a few delicate lines, or in the sud¬
den glory produced from a stray beam
of sunlight, than in the most varied and
extended landscape. We are but finite,
and can take in but slowly suggestions
of the iiifi nite.
Is it Schiller who has said, " We may
wake some day to discover that which
we worshipped as beauty, reveal itself
as truth " ? There was much mean-
10-1 SUGGESTIONS OF THE SEA.
ing in the old rite of worshipping the
goddess veiled. We have often observed,
that the more delicately organized the na¬
ture, the more unnecessary become vivid
coloring or glaring effects.
The infinite suggestiveness of that
which is not wholly expressed ; the in¬
tangible, indefinable attraction of that
beauty which is forever veiling, shroud¬
ing, attempering itself (as if a part of
that Deity whose effulgence no mortal
eye can look upon and live), — how noble
souls lean toward it, yearning to unveil,
to translate, to gather in, to hold close
forevermore ! It is as if ascending steps
nearer and nearer toward the eternal
source.
I have always felt that to be one of the
delights of Turner's pictures. lie seems
SUGGESTIONS OF THE SEA. 105
to intend to suggest far more than one
sees.
A great thought finds no possibility of
completeness of mortal expression ; but
to the elect ones a hint is enough. What
care they, if all is not filled out in detail?
Indeed, the greatness of the thought often
loses through too elaborate expression.
When Turner paints great things, like
mid-ocean effects, then all the sea seems
rolling in one linge wave toward you,
and his work thrills you with delighted
recognition ; but the forms upon the ves¬
sel, or in the foreground — one may not
be able to tell whether they are fish,
flesh, or fowl.
Said a very practical and wise friend
to me one day, after gazing long at the
pictures in the British Museum, "Turner's
103 SUGGESTIONS OF THE SEA.
Venetian scenes are dreamy and poetic.
I can understand and like them. But
some of the others ! My friend, I can
tell a cow from a horse, and really that
is more than your favorite artist has
done."
A great many people feel in this way
(but do not dare to express it), simply
because their thought seizes upon just
what Turner was not thinking of at all.
It is one thing to get at the thought of
the artist, and quite another to judge
critically of his technique.
That mind seems to me greatest (other
things being equal) where great thoughts
so preponderate as to force strong ex¬
pression, more or less forgetful often of
details that do not directly contribute.
May it not be that the work, spiritually,
SUGGESTIONS OF THE SEA. 107
of the Supreme Artist, seems to our
limited vision lacking here, or awry
there, or amiss altogether, because we
never in any way comprehend Iiis
great thought in our lives, or in the
larger life of the universe ? And is it
not a part of heaven to learn to compre¬
hend? the knowledge beginning with
many here below, and ending when and
where ?
And shall souls who, through some
beautiful kinship, do see suggestions of
the divine beauty and perfection, not trust
it so absolutely as to bear witness of it
to others ?
Behold how we have wandered away,
and forgotten our homesickness of soul, as
one stills all earthly longing in the deep,
cool wells of the Infinite.
108 SUGGESTIONS OF THE SEA.
The lessons of the sea are numerous
and variable. It seems to us sometimes
that all else is evanescent and shallow,
in teaching us infinity, compared with
this calm and luminous distance. The
waters of the sea, — all its little ripples
and great waves, — while seemingly dis¬
cordant, move in a majestic harmony like
the melodic notes of a symphony. There
is unity in it all ; one thought, — God.
We shall never forget one star-like
hour, when we stood out among the
cordage of the ship, a speck between sea
and sky. There came the sense of wings,
of exhilaration, as if from nectar of the
gods. There existed no longer any "I"
and "thou;" with the old earth-weariness,
had dropped off all sense of personality.
And the nights on deck, how perfect
SUGGESTIONS OF THE SEA. 109
they were with their lambent light, their
cool stillness! The stars — "the forget-
me-nots of the angels" — were our inti¬
mate companions. They seemed so near,
it made the dear faces upturned in the
moonlight seem sometimes very far away ;
and yet the pale light brought out fine,
delicate points of expression we had not
seen before, spiritualized, refined, enno¬
bled them. We recall two that seemed
to us poetic pictures of the genius of the
North and South ; one, dark, glowing,
tropical, full of elegant languor and
fastidious refinement. This one should
have been born a prince ; and yet, were
he king, his queen might some day turn
pale with envy of some lowlier one who
knelt beside him. There are souls born
to give, others to receive, homage. The
110 SUGGEST/OA'S OF THE SEA.
other face was but an alabaster mask with
the light shining through; pure intellectu¬
ality, white, shining, cold ; the emotional
nature kept always undermost, that you
knew. It may be, some high-souled
Beatrice, who shall not lean or linger,
but go ever , on before, beckoning, allur¬
ing, will some day win and hold until for
both the far-away paradise be gained ;
but this soul will never love downward ;
and, after all, the thought-life may be
forever the most perfect.
Some natures attract, and yet touch
one with sense of chill ; you may know
them absolutely pure, and yet, like the
flawless gem, you long to cut down
through the whiteness, and find the pris¬
matic colors.
The sea has forever its wondrous lessons
SUGGESTIONS OF THE SEA. Ill
of beauty, purity, symmetry, and repose.
Our hearts are filled with its rhythmic
cadence, with the tender suggestiveness
and sacred rest of the sea; and in poor
verse we try to express that which,
like all deep feeling, is forever inex¬
pressible.
O shining, shimmering sea,
Thy coral dells are still and fair,
Thy tinted weeds are soft and rare!
Ilast thou no couch whereon to lie?
(We're very tired, my heart and I.)
Is there no place whereon to creep
Low down within thy breast, and sleep?
O vast and wandering sea,
Far out beyond thy purling foam,
And far below thy great waves' moan,
Thy silent depths flow on, flow on !
2 SUGGEST/OA'S OF THE SEA.
Ob, give thy secret peace to me,
Great-hearted, calmly brooding sea!
Life's vagrant streams, at last, at best,
But slip into some mother-breast.
In solemn, tender undertone,
The sea made answer to our moan :
" My face reflects the Light above.
Thyself must lose thyself in Love."
VIII.
THANKSGIVING.
Our Thanksgiving Days, suggesting as
they do every twelvemonth the thought,
Are we thankful, and for what? send us
to-day out into a deep sea of questioning
for which the Thanksgiving sermons af¬
ford little answer. Thankful for life, lib-
erty, and the pursuit of happiness—yes !
But what is life and liberty? and, above
all, what is that will-o'-the-wisp, happi¬
ness? Life is a casket, valuable only
for what we put in it. "Liberty is law,"
human or divine. And happiness — ?
113
114
THANKSGIVING.
Taine says, "Society is made up of four
classes : lovers, the ambitious, observers,
and fools. The fools are the happiest."
Carlyle says, " Man's unliappiness comes
of his greatness." We wonder how many
people to-day will say " grace " before the
turkey and plum-pudding, and truly give
thanks afterward — not that the Lord of
the harvest lias brought the sweets of all
grasses, the sunshine of all fields and
shining hillsides, in delicately compacted
tissues of meats and fibres of vegetables
and juices of fruits, to their table (though
that is well ! ), but that through the long-
year II is hand has led them, perhaps by
rugged steps, up to some height from
which, a year ago, they could not look
down. What if the feet be bleeding? it
is the height that charms, not the steps up
THANK SGI I 'INC.
115
to it. " The life of the gods is infinite bat¬
tle against infinite labor." Shall we sigh
for the "soporifieal good-for-nothingness"
that comes of rest and ease and abun¬
dance,— companionship with shrimps and
oysters and the rest ? " God's mercies
should not be counted on the outside, but
on the inside." We are statues, not of
clay to be softly and tenderly moulded,
but of imperishable marble to be hewn
and cut and chiselled by the refiner's
fingers to some beautiful perfection of
which we cannot know or dream. Why
will not our preachers thunder in our
ears, Forget happiness, and accept instead
thereof blessedness? Fools that we would
sit supinely down, and cry out for a gay
bauble afar off, which in our hands turns
dull and heavy and dead ! " Love not
116
THAXKSCl VIaVG.
pleasure — love God ; this is the ever¬
lasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is
solved."
As our thoughts go chasing back
through the passing year, Ave count here
a joy, there a sadness ; here some good
gift of thought or love, there a veiling
aAvay or an unveiling (which is sadder)
of loved faces, shadorving God's too
much; here long ilecks of sunshine, there
deep shadoAV ; now sweet memories of
bliss that make us forgetful, and then
sad memories of pain that bid us re¬
member. It is a good old year, for the
dear God is in it all. If our thought
could but touch Iiis, then should Ave
also see and know. Vouloir ce que Dieu
veut, c'est la seule science. What if more
and more, as Ave ascend, Ave sit solitary?
THA NKSGI VIXG.
117
So that the shadow of self does not blot
our sunshine, we shall not feel the cold.
Life is always rich, if we will but
receive ; even misfortune may be " a
disease of long standing which becomes
a pearl." Every noble crown is, and
forever will be, a crown of thorns : shall
we bare our head the less reverently to
receive it?
Is not this whole subject of Thanks¬
giving treated too often superficially ?
Gratitude, devout emotion, will not
bubble lip at call, " like the fountain
at formal turning of the spigot." Our
thanks for material prosperity, if it has
come to us, are checked too often by
the thought of the many from whom
it has flown ; of the world's poor, who
can count neither goods, nor home, nor
118 THA NKSGI VING.
friends. We Americans are quite inclined
to thank ourselves for our successes,
not God. We say we are "self-made"
men. We are our own special provi¬
dences. And, in a measure, this is
true. "The animal man fights for his
morsel : game is rare, and on every side
an untrained covetousness leaps to seize
it." He that gets up betimes, goes out
earliest, lies down latest, gathers most
dogs and arms and nets and friends,
walks quickest, and scents most keenly,
shuts up his bag most closely, — he gets
the best dinner.
But is this dreary grubbing for bread
and butter, this unending hurry and
drive and push, — is this all ? Shall we
count that a success, which fills our bare
homes with upholstery, our bare life
THANKSGIVING.
119
with gay trappings of material successes?
How shall Ave e\rer knoAV the hidden
SAveetness of our grapes, if Ave continu¬
ally take thought but to add a furlong
to our vineyard? It is not our wealth,
but how we are to our Avealth, that
constitutes true riches. It is the silent
growth within, that makes up the true
life : neAv gifts are Avell, but the capacity
for better appreciating the old is better.
When our souls shall have groAvn "di¬
vinely tall and most divinely fair," then
shall the beautiful meaning and pos¬
sibilities of life dawn upon us. No day
can be stale or hackneyed with thought
of death beneath and God just over¬
head ! Our mistake is, Ave call the out-
AA'ard details of life, life, and think not
of the immortal one growing silently up
120 THANKSGIVING.
within ; and so, when our festival days
wheel slowly round upon us, we wonder
sometimes what we have to be thankful
for, — or turn irreverently, and thank
God " it is 110 worse."
As life brings us only what we take
into it, as all beauty and truth exist in
the soul or not at all (for us), so all
purest happiness grows from within up¬
ward, and that which tends most to en¬
rich our own soul is to us of greatest
worth.
" Life rounds itself between the two
opposite but mutually sustaining poles of
what we long for, and what we must."
Alas ! " we make a ladder of our thoughts
that touches heaven, but sleep ourselves
at the foot." The sturdy strength that
enables us to live life rightly does not
THANKSGIVING.
121
come of wishing. There must exist a
sacred confidence between our souls and
God, that we be ever receptive of the
Divine inspiration. There must be an
earnest sincerity, — truth in dealing with
ourselves and others. There must be
courage that shall look the ills of life in
the face, knowing they are but accidents,
and not of supreme importance to any
soul. " The man in pursuit of greatness
feels no little wants." There must be
openness of soul that shall see its way
into all other souls, feeling their experi¬
ence, thereby broadening his own. " The
great man is in himself a people ! "
To be truly wise, we must know and
experience all ; and shall this discipline
be lost more than the other? Life is a
school. The scholar shall not omit cer-
THANKSGIVIXG.
tain studies because they are painful or
distasteful. In the end lie shall be glad
of all knowledge. But the scholar, if
he is wise and aspiring, does not go
out straightway and forget what he has
learned. He does not lock it away
ill his brain. lie inwardly digests and
assimilates, making it a part of his
life.
Above all, there must be the continual
remembrance that this life is not the
end ; that it is the school of trial, not
in any sense of completion or attain¬
ment. As our beautiful ideals forever
recede, so our steps must ever, more and
more swiftly, follow on after; "not that
we have already attained, but that we
press forward toward the mark of the
high calling."
THANKSGIVING.
123
Sainte-Beuve says, " The golden age is
not behind us, but before us." Our lives
are a drama, wherein we are the hero,
who must vanquish or be vanquished.
Other men take knowledge of the play,
and learn from it some good or ill. They
recognize subtly the true fire, if it be
of heaven, and know us letter than we
think. '• We are the photometers, the
irritable gold-leaf and tin-foil, that meas¬
ure for them the accumulations of the
divine element." No life is lost. The
true fire burnetii upward. The true
life is warmth and light, an atmosphere
pervading and illumining all other lives.
Let us take this beautiful thought
home to our heart and life, that the
Creator has not deserted Iiis offspring ;
that in proportion as we turn and open
124 THANKSGIVING.
our souls to receive emanations from the
Divine Spirit, He does come and dwell
with us. The days of inspiration are
not past. Where does goodness come
from ? where love, holiness, wisdom, if
not from the divine source?
Has the year brought suffering in its
train? How do we know pain was not
the best good that could have come to
us? All knowledge is good. We are
not gods, to know without experience.
The truth is, " we think too much of
what the gods have given us, and too
little why." If transition into the divine
is ever woeful, yet it is life. The day
and the night make up the perfect day.
If the day be great and final, who shall
repine at the brief darkness? All knowl¬
edge that expands the soul is good —
THA NKSGI VING.
12-5
why not that of pain also? An old
Italian painter once said, the secret of
all effect and beauty in his art lay in
the putting black upon white, and white
upon black. Ancl shall not mortal man
trust the Great Artist?
It is said women should not think
pronouncedly, but give forth the ex¬
quisite perfume of a thought. Read
from a sweet woman and true poet
what she has better said than we can
write, — a text about which to crystal¬
lize our Thanksgiving thought:—■
" If, as two colors must be viewed
In a seen image, mortals should
Need good and evil to see good ;
If to speak nobly comprehends
To feel profoundly; if the ends
Of power and suffering Nature blends:
126
THANKSGIVING.
What say ye unto this? Refuse
This baptism in salt water? Choose
Calm breasts, mute lips, and labor lose?
Rather content to be so bare
Before the archers ! everywhere
Thy wounds being stroked by heavenly air;
To lay thy soul before Iiis feet,
That images of fair and sweet
Way walk to other men on it.
For knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death."
IX.
THE MATERIALIST.
Burns lias said there were two crea¬
tures he envied, — a wild horse in the
forests of Asia, and an oyster 011 some
desert shore : one had 110 wish without
enjoyment ; the other, neither wish nor
fear. Perhaps the nearest we mortals
are likely to attain to this latter degree
of blessedness is just here, where we
drift for a space near the edge of the
boundless shore of existence, — run on
soundings, as it were, the great world-
roar being far off, faint. If there are
127
128
THE MATERIALIST.
clays wlien the spiritual within us is
quickened, and thoughts move their
"buskined clew-bathed feet" through our
soul with heavenly clearness, so also
there come days like these, when a dull
gray veil, like some vast eyelid, seems
folding down over all. It is winter :
thoughts and feelings are dried up and
dead ; " the senses lie under a heavy
dream carpet." We have neither wish
nor fear, only a vague content, if God
choose, that he stretch the time out
very wide. Is he not working out his
own ideals? We are the statues un-
shaped ; what have we to do but lie still
and wait? We suppose, if the 03'ster
could be said to have a creed (and why
not? since many who think as little, are
seemingly firmly anchored), it would run
THE MATERIALIST. 129
something in this wise : " The world with¬
out God is an impossible idea ; God
without the world is impossible: ergo,
one will take care of the other ; let us
not give ourselves headache over it.
Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow
we are evolved!" There seem to come
states of physical and mental languor
(debility, if you choose so to name it),
when we easily drift into a sort of nega¬
tive acceptance of any thing.
Are there not certain temperaments
that, even in health, are full of this
spiritual languor? They hold a parasitic
home in the church, perhaps living 011
the more vital faith of others, or oftener
drift, anchorless and rudderless, into the
deep sea of materialism, simply from hack
of force to bring themselves up standing.
130 THE MATERIALIST.
Goethe conceived the essence of evil
to he negative, rather than positive, in
its character. As cold is the privation
of heat, darkness the absence of light,
so is evil the negation of good. The
Mephistopheles of Faust is made to say,
" I am the spirit that denies."
The materialist's creed, " This life ye
have, what know ye of any other? Fol¬
low nature: there is no other law or
revelation. Take thine ease, O soul ! the
Creator shall not condemn the created,"
dispels its fine spiritual malaria through
all our social life, and dwarfs ancl mars
often what else might be good and noble.
Of all the siren voices that lure from
our energetic, intense, practical Ameri¬
can life, this which calls to sensuous
irresponsibility is, perhaps, most fatally
THE MATERIALIST. 131
attractive. From our thought and our
work, from our struggle and our aspira¬
tion, we lean wearily towards its win¬
some promise of rest and ease. Alas
that the deadly night-shade grows in
its soft, warm shadow, and the serpent
and the asp love also its brooding
warmth !
Men talk of "drifting" into weakness,
error, inconstancy, crime, as though the
very fact they do drift were not sign
and token of weakness. George Eliot
says, "Drifting depends on something
beside the currents, when all the sails
have been set beforehand." We believe
there is an underlying stratum of weak¬
ness running through all the languor,
the refinement, the falsehood, of charac¬
ter built upon this creed ; dig down
132 THE MATERIALIST.
deep enough, and you are sure to strike
it. Intellectual gifts, graces of person
and manner, refinement, amiability, do
not make character. It is because we
let them cloud and confuse our vision,
that we so often judge falsely, and tie
cords which bring great unhappiness
into our lives.
The materialist, whose life is in the
senses, if he make personal happiness
the controlling thought of life, drifts
speedily into the sensualist, and mars
other lives with scarcely a pang or a
regret. Self-gratification becomes, in its
last analysis, selfishness pure and simple.
Law, human and divine, considers the
greatest good of the greatest number,
not of the individual ; and if one become
a law unto himself, there conies sooner
THE MATERIALIST.
1S3
or later the inevitable necessity of con¬
cealment.
Thus falsehood creeps into the life,
distils its poison through it ; like a
terrible cancer, eats its way down to the
very vitals; and when it touches the
heart, spiritual death must come sooner
or later.
Moral deformity often wears a shining
mask of gifts and graces, is full of appar¬
ent strength and tenderness ; but bring
it to the test, and you shall find the cour¬
age and honor upon which you leaned
but a brittle reed, shaken by the winds.
True strength is developed only by
struggle. " God never crowns natural
gifts or faculties." Up on the heights
the air is chill, but it is full of life; the
deadly miasma crawls low in those shin-
134 THE MATERIALIST.
ing valleys which lure you clown. As¬
piration, struggle against self, are to
the materialist words from an unknown
tongue.
Woe to him who has laid aside his
ideals ! He who keeps himself in a pur¬
gatory of self-condemnation, because of
his ardent faith and longing and striv¬
ing for things noblest and truest and
o o
purest, — he is the real man : he who
brings himself out of purgatory into a
condition of self-complacency, because
he requires so little of himself, is a vul¬
garized man.
The voice which would lead us through
flowery labyrinths, to " taste, eat, arid
be as gods," takes but to the desert
whose bitter sands shall parch and burn.
When the feet wander, cut and bleed-
THE MA TERIALIST.
135
ing, over its flint and stones, and the
eyes are blinded with mist and dark,
then, in some supreme moment of need,
the friendly mask shall fall.
"Be happy, make happy." The creed
is beautiful (in words) ; but like some
shining shell, if you clasp it close, it
crushes in, — is hollow. Be loyal first,
O soul ! then if the beautiful bauble,
happiness, escape thee, still thou art
doubly blessed in that thou hast so
richly earned it. Whatever in life in¬
duces falsehood in any of the relations
of life, brings its morbid unhealth. Let
no human soul think to touch its lips
to poison, and not drink in death.
Happiness must be purchased. The
difference between the true and false
happiness is, that one is paid for in ad-
186
THE MATERIALIST.
vanee and the other afterward. "Faust"
tastes of earth's ripest and richest and
rarest, but comes to dwell at last by the
shore of the eternal sea, and to find
true happiness only in self-abnegation.
All else is but vague unrest. The
earthy never yet soothed and quelled
any human soul. The infinite cannot
be buried under the finite. Knowledge
and amiability do not make character,
but strength and truth do. They are
one and inseparable. " The more false¬
hood, the more weakness: strength goes
straight ; every cannon-ball that has in
it hollows and lióles goes crooked." It
is the pilotage of the ship, not the
weicht or ballast, that tells.
o '
The materialist would develop a splen¬
did, successful animal ; and the very pros-
THE MATERIALIST. 137
perity, indulgence, and ease he covets,
are fatal to him. Strength grows from
earnestness ; it courts the struggle that
lifts, and is glad of the storm that puri¬
fies. Zimmermann tells us, "The hered¬
itary sin of human nature is not pride,
or ambition, or egotism, but indolence.''''
All good must stagnate where there is
O O
not spiritual activity. The vine that
spreads itself in rich luxuriance of leaves
brings small fruit to the vintage; it must
be shorn and cut and pruned, that its
"very loss of blood may redound in rich
return of fruit for the harvest." Our
life is a drama, where we are the hero
who must vanquish or be vanquished.
In every act and scene, it touches other
lives for good or ill. Men take knowl¬
edge of the play, and recognize subtly
138
THE MATERIALIST.
the true fire, if it he of heaven. The
true life is warmth and light, — an at¬
mosphere pervading all other lives. The
false life spreads its poison-shadow like
the upas-tree. Woe to the flowers that
open into bloom, the tender vines that
cling about it 1 it shall breathe a subtle
darkness through all the summer of their
lives.
X.
PRESE XT IM E X TS.
During the long hours of illness,
when the physical is at low ebb, spirit¬
ual truths loom out with startling dis¬
tinctness ; phantom-like questionings stalk
to and fi'o, and will not " out ! " The
whole subject of the action of mind upon
mind, and spirit upon spirit, has, during
these days of convalescence, rep>eatedly
confronted us. A physician has many
interesting experiences. The wonderful
efficacy of bread-pills and sugar-powders
is almost incredible ! Mesmerism, too,
139
140 PRESE.VT/.MENTS.
has its uses as a curative, as every physi¬
cian of large practice knows. Thoughts
upon these subjects open a great field
of inquiry out into the border-land of
the spiritual.
We are aware it is much the fashion
to scoff at any thing beyond one's own
practical vision or ken, as if there were
not "more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamed of" in any mortal's
" philosophy ! " Bettine prettily says,
" Limits of earthly wisdom are but
the star-lighted little men who grope
blindly."
"Common-sense" stigmatizes any faith
foolishness other than its own. Ah,
well ! it may be it requires a finer kind
of sense to apprehend spiritual rela¬
tions.
PRESENTIMENTS. 141
" Sparks electric only strike on sparks electrical
alike ;
The flash of spirit soon expires unless it meet
congenial fires."
Man draws with pretty conceit the
boundary lines between the spiritual
and the sensual, thinking he knows the
one and the other. How can lie assert
that one does not run into and become
the other, if properly apprehended ?
" The more thought with emotion blends,
the more, up-buoyed by both, the soul
ascends."
Sense and spirit are the fine warp and
woof of the checkered fabric of life.
Time is the element in which it is
woven. The something beyond, without,
we call God. What we can absolutely
say we know of either, is that it is all a
142
PRESEA'TLIfEA'TS.
mysteiy. Whatever we judge of internal
powers of things, we judge by presenti¬
ment, by sympathy. Thus "every man
has his own individual universe," and
cannot decide for another. The great
man is he who can transport himself
into the universal life around him, not
lie who seeks to compress it all within
his own little experience.
For ourselves, we do not incline much
to a belief in super-mundane influences
and interferences, preferring to refer the
whole subject of visions, clairvoyance, and
the like, to the existence and operation
of natural laws beyond our ken ; but to
ignore them, or deem their existence only
the illusion of weak minds, is to beg the
whole question. Because half mankind
are moulded of common potter's clay,
PRESENTIMENTS.
143
does not prove the other half may not
be of finer material.
How is it in the natural world ? A
touch that would not be felt by the
tough oak-leaf, would wither the deli¬
cate mountain fern or sensitive-plant.
Goethe believed in the existence of a
spiritual aura, through which impression:
independent of the external senses migh
be communicated. lie relates with em
phasis the prophetic visions of his father
Luther held that influences from guard
ian spirits give direction to our sleepily,
and waking thoughts. His sermon upon
the " ministry of angels " is too well
known to make special reference to it
here necessary. Surely this is a sweet
and consoling illusion (if an illusion) ;
and, as John Hay very irreverently ex-
lu
PRESENTIMENTS.
presses himself, it seems better business
for the angels than "loafing around the
O O
throne." Whatever judgment we may
pass upon the visions of Swedenborg, and
his peculiar views, his writings certainly
evince a power and spiritual insight not
to be disregarded.
The case of Jacob Böhme, the German
mystic, is, perhaps, as wonderful an in¬
stance of the influence and power of
visions to shape a life, as any we can cite.
Born in 157Ô, of poor, ignorant parents,
apprenticed to a shoemaker, with ab¬
solutely no instruction, and until his
eleventh year unable to read, and then
having access to 110 book but the Bible,
he yet, through visions and dreams, com¬
municated to the world thoughts upon
philosophic and religious subjects, that
PRESENTIMENTS. 145
largely influenced the minds of Schölling,
Goethe, and the most cultivated of German
transcendentalists. Thrice (he states) he
was environed by a celestial light, which
so quickened his intelligence that in
walking he was enabled to see into the
essences of herbs and grasses. Knowing
little of the use of language, he could
not communicate his thoughts as clearly
as he might otherwise have done ; but
his interpretation of the Trinity and of
other religious mysteries is certainly
quite wonderful.
That we ourselves have no seemingly
supernatural experiences, is no argument
against, them. If we are blind, and can
see but a few steps ahead, it does not fol¬
low that others may not see hundreds of
degrees farther 011, even, at times, it may
14(3
PRESENTIMENTS.
Le, into the "deep, cool well of the fore-
world," and there discern, bright and
clear, what to us lies hidden in a fog-
bank.
What if we do not see the Divine
motive always in direct spiritual influ¬
ences ? Do we know the cui bono of
the earthquake, the devastating fire, the
plague, the whirlwind? We say God
would not set aside " natural laws."
What do we know of natural laws ?
The scientists tell us, if within the next
century our knowledge of the nature of
electricity and the laws that govern it
advances as during the last, we may
almost divine the creative power itself.
W e now know that nerve-force and life-
force are electroid in their character, the
blood a " metal-bearing fluid." But what
PRESENTIMENTS. 147
may we not learn of their possible com¬
binations ? What of the force or forces
brought to bear on them ? Each century
unfolds its link in the chain of knowledge.
Alas that the chain yet ever ends '* in
a link unknown " !
Wonderful instances of mesmeric in¬
fluence are of common occurrence. If
minds in proximity act thus upon each
other separated by fleshly barriers, why
not at greater distance, separated still
by the material onty ? The soul takes
possession of the body to make it a tool,
nota prison. What is distance to spirit?
What do we know, anyway, of space, ex¬
cept our failure to overcome it? London
is nearer New York to-day, than Boston
was to our great-grandfathers of a century
back. The distance of the fixed stars
148
PRESENTIMENTS.
is nothing to light. Are, then, light and
electricity more potent, more intelligent,
more free, than spirit ? Who shall say ?
Who of us has not, at times, felt a
sweet consciousness of some loved pres¬
ence that was yet leagues away? How it
gleams in upon us in unexpected moments
like the sunshine, fair and radiant ! A
sudden force has drawn us to the beloved
heart ; and through all sense of cold or
loss, we have felt its divine warmth. If
this is an illusion, it is a royal one ; let
us hedge it about. Who knows but
love itself may be an illusion, or life ?
Verily, earth is arched round about by
mystery. Only now and then do we
drift on soundings, even ! The unknown,
the "beyond," stands sphinx-like, finger¬
tip on lips. Who knows when the près-
PRESENTIMENTS.
149
cient soul may see behind the veil ? or
how, or ivliat? Men do not relate their
deepest experiences. There are thoughts
and feelings that seem but the fine aroma
of thought and sense, too delicate for
words, beyond expression.
Perhaps music, better than any other
form of expression, suggests that which
is beyond words. Unable thus to speak,
I have tried to say in verse the thought
that conies to me now, for which bald
prose seems inadequate : —
As on the stream that swiftly winds its way
O'er pebbled sands, and flowers and mosses gay,
There shimmers ever from the heaven above
A shadowy mirroring of its sun and clouds :
So in the soul of man, where reason stands per¬
plexed,
Is mirrored faintly light from that world next
150
PRESENTIMENTS.
The heaven that arches near, whose roof fit:
closely round,
Though through the night of sense it yields nor
sight nor sound.
"Whence come those shadowing« faint, that fine
intelligence,
Unsanctioned by the will, untouched by any sense,
That ofttimes limn life's prison-walls with light,
(Heaven's glory flung across our waves of night,)
As if the gleaming shadow of some lustrous wing
Had shaken all its soft bright sunlight down?
Sweet " Ileaven-born instincts ! may ye not to
loving souls
Be loving answer to questionings of God untold?
It is said, there exists a subtile, power¬
ful fluid, which transmits to the brain
impressions received by the senses ; the
excitement caused is ideas. The soul is a
lute to be touched, a mirror to reflect,
PRESENTIMENTS. 151
a pilot to guide. Life is at best, mostly,
but a beautiful night, wherein only now
and then some stars shine out. May
thcre not come twilight moments before
the dawn, when through the dim clair-
obscure we faintly discern the light?
Whatever we may believe, or refuse to
believe, 011 the subject of clairvoyance,
presentiments, prophetic visions, and the
like, it is very certain our ancestors at¬
tached great importance to them. Aris¬
totle, Plato, Socrates, and most of the
ancient philosophers, refer repeatedly to
their influence. The Bible is explicit in
its testimony to the existence of the seem¬
ingly miraculous. Job says, "in slum¬
bering upon the bed, then God openeth
the ears of men, and sealeth their instruc¬
tion." Even great Caesar trembled at
152 PRESENTIMENTS.
Calpliurnia's visions, and Columbus be¬
held in dreams " God would give him the
gates of the ocean." All who are famil¬
iar with Dante's "Vita Nuova" remem¬
ber his wonderful vision of the illness
and death of the beloved Beatrice, then
leagues away.
Life ordinarily, to one highly organized,
vibrates like a pendulum between pleas¬
ure and pain, the more intense as the
nature is more exquisite. To feel keenly,
— what is it but to hear the little grasses
growing under one's feet ; to see forever,
beneath all gilding and show, the great,
silent, pale face of God's poor, hungrily
uplifted ; to know height and depth of
love and loss ; to feel the ecstasy of all
winged life ; to dwell in the azure, sipping
nectar of the gods, and with glass up-
PRESENTIMENTS.
153
lifted hear slowly the woe, the sob, the
heartbreak of humanity, weaving its
sombre minor in and out? Sadly the
old chorus, semi-Calvinistic, Greek, what
not, comes floating over us : —
"The tides of life uneven flow,
And ever betwixt weal and woe
We drift and waver to and fro,
Because the gods will have it so."
In illness, if bodily pain be not too
great, the soul is likely to attain a sort
of serenity and rest. There are moments
when one is left utterly alone with one's
self ; society, business, outside cares, be¬
ing far away and dim. Coleridge says,
" lleflection is like looking back at one's
self in a mirror." You resolve the past
into details,—regard yourself curiously,
154
PRESENTIMENTS.
seeing there were in reality two selves
amazingly alike ; one thought, aspired,
hoped, and longed, went winged; the
other crawled, low down, was a mask
and a subterfuge too often, needed the
quickening life and fire of the other, was
of clay, dull and heavy. This self went
into society, to the dinner-table, smiled
and talked small nothings, was trivial
and ordinary : the other lived sacred and
recluse. You perceive in this dual ex¬
istence, there were conflicts of soul and
body, not always harmony ; and yet you
can perceive also, dimly, that this was
not so fore-ordained.
Genius has an immortality of its own.
It is an efflux of Deity, and cannot die.
Not so the earthly vessels that hold it.
To-day men are quarrelling about the
PRESENTIMENTS. 155
personality of Homer ; centuries hence
men may question if ever such a per¬
son existed as Shakespeare. Already
they are asking if he wrote his own
plays.
We believe all high and noble thought,
all original and vivifying thought, to
come not so much from the perfect co-
working of all man's faculties in their
most harmonious moments, as directly
from Deity, the divine source. Can mat¬
ter, under mo¡¡t favorable auspices, originate
spirit ?
The soul at times, as in sleep, lives
within itself; the will-power is dormant;
impressions from without touch it with¬
out the intervention of external objects.
Awake, one's whole being is affected;
in sleep, only the ever - active brain.
1,56
PRESENTIMENTS.
Some time we may understand better
man's double nature. At present we
may as well confess we know little or
nothing. Dreams may often be but the
memory of sensation ; and as there is
no chance for one sensation to rectify
the other, as when awake, we should ac¬
cept impressions thus given guardedly, if
at all : but that is not to deny that forces
external to ourselves do act upon the soul.
It has passed into a proverb, that " com¬
ing events cast their shadows before."
The soul, delicately organized, seems to
pass into the shadowy penumbra, feeling
the dark and chill, even before life's sad
eclipses enshroud it. How often, too,
do we know with vague sense of loss
or sadness, the pain of the beloved far
away! It is as though their night or
PRESENTIMENTS.
157
storms sent misty arms of darkness over
our day.
The wisdom of the wise may call this
foolishness; but they cannot reduce life
to a mathematical problem, if they would.
Reason may sneer at imagination ; all
the same, it is God's supernal faculty :
all others have " the brown touch of
earth upon them — this alone wears the
livery of heaven." Our sweetest posses¬
sions we must ever take on trust, — love,
God, immortality. If we believe, may
we not be said already, in a measure, to
possess ?
" We cry to the spirits, ' Come nearer, come nearer,
And lift up the lap of this dark, and speak clearer;
And teach us the song that ye sung ; '
And we smile in our thought, if they answer or no,
For to dream of a sweetness is sweet as to know.''
XI.
CHRISTMAS MUSING.
"We are only God's thought when
he is ours," some one has said. If this
were true, perhaps at no season of tire
year would the golden network of hu¬
man sighs and prayers and thanksgiving
bind God closer to earth than now, at
the slipping-out of the old year, and in¬
coming of the new. At no season do
we pause to take breath and be glad, —
sometimes even to think, — as in this
holiday time. All the year, life so presses
upon us, our e very-day cares, business,
158
CHRISTMAS MUSI HG.
159
and follies so ciystallize about the soul.
We Americans, especially, can never
tarry to pluck flowers by the wayside,
much less to look up and adore. We
rub all the gilding off life, sighing that
our days become commonplace and weari¬
some. The flying years drive us on
with whip and spur, and only death's
terrible '■ Halt ! " can command our weary
feet at last to rest. All about us lie the
wrecks of men and women, yet we are
not warned. Our feet go on crushing
out the exquisite mosses and lilies of
life, in swift and vain pursuit of some
phantom of riches or success or worldly
honors just before. Half-way up the
hill, Nature utters her protest ; and, tired
with life's burdens, we drop silently by
the wayside.
160 CHRISTMAS MUSING.
And is this all of life ? Goethe writes
the inscription on Mignon's tomb, " Ge¬
denke zu laben." What if to-day we also
inscribe these words, in shining letters,
upon the tomb of the old year, "Think
how to live"? We hear a great deal
from our spiritual teachers, of prepara¬
tion for death. Would that they could
tell us offener and more intelligently
how truly to live !
Philosophy tells us all life is com¬
prised in two words: to sustain and to
abstain. According to Plato, the heart
and the understanding are the two wings
O O
by which man ascends ; and he who
by his goodness, his veracity, his chastity,
his efforts to attain a luminous intelli¬
gence, most honors God, most truly lives.
On the contrary, the world says, " Eat,
CHRISTMAS MUSING.
1G1
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye
die." Our own hearts bid us taste the
kernel of each day's sweetness, for is
not to-morrow already here ? Which of
all the conflicting voices shall we heed ?
Some good preacher has said, " There is
no use of life but to find out what is fit
for us to do, and, doing it, it matters not
whether we live or die : God wants not
our work, but our willingness to work."
If we could, to these holiday feasts,
bring hearts less tainted with worldli-
ness, perhaps we might touch closer the
pure Christ-life, and receive answer ; but
we come overburdened with selfishness,
and because we do not see God we say
he is not near our life. The soul must
be still to hear him speak. " God hath
no other harbor but the spirit of man : "
1G2
CHRISTMAS MC/SING.
How if the harbor be not open to re¬
ceive ?
The Christian Church, mindful of the
rest and undercurrent of thought of these
days, takes this first week of the New
Year to offer up prayer and praise (which
it may be God has already heard in the
richer speech of human aspiration, sighs,
and longings). As we tenderly fold away
the old year, its memories, its hopes, and
its regrets alike slipping from our cling¬
ing hands, shall we make of it a sepul¬
chre like the rest, wherein we only bury
our dead ? Surely God had other uses
for this bit of eternity vouchsafed us.
Time is really but a name : it is what we
do with it, makes the substance. What
are a dozen centuries to the rock, to the
stars? And yet, of all our little "three-
CHRISTMAS MUSING. 163
score years and ten " (deducting the
proper ratio for sleep, for recreation, and
illness, the needs of our physical nature,
and for the days of preparation), we
have hardly a paltry dozen left for work
and worship.
What wonder if the little dumb heap
of thoughts, wishes, cares, and loves,
which lie at our feet within the shroud
of the old year, look up with sadness
and warning in their sweet, dead faces !
Ah ! life is indeed a puzzle ; it is full
of " dark alleys leading nowhere : " how
may we avoid them ? It is full of will-o'-
the-wisps beckoning, eluding : how may
we know them ? It is full of depths
and heights, of sun and storm ; of a
misery we cannot redress, and a luxury
we cannot attain — how glide serenely
104
CHRISTMAS MUSING.
through this labyrinth? How glean and
bind and bear richest sheaves to the
Lord of the harvest? IIow make the
flying years steps up a ladder of light,
the last always the best, because richer,
fuller from the experience of those gone
before ?
II ave the Christmas Glorias no voice
of reply? Shall the new year bear no
torch in its hands to light the way ?
Shall our lives forever consume beneath
the level of the roof-tops, nor rise to
pierce the low mist clouds which alone
obscure the sun?
It is said, " Men seem to need little
less than every thing to make them
happy, and little more than nothing to
make them unhappy ; for the former a
sun, for the latter a particle of saw-
CHRISTMAS MUSING. 1(35
dust." How sad that with all true hap¬
piness and nobleness so near us, we yet
court misery because we cannot touch
the stars ! To think, to read, to love,
to hope, to pray, — will man ever have
power to do more ?
Far back in time was the advent of
the new year celebrated; the Greeks and
Romans both observed it, and through-
7 o
out Christendom it has ranked next
Christinas rejoicings. The celebration of
Epiphany (the twelfth day) was adopted
somewhere about 1550. At this feast
went round, in old Saxon times, the
"wassail bowl." Homes were decorated,
great candles lighted, and at Christmas
time the great yule-log rolled in to
make bright the hearth ; the boar's
head, bedecked with rosemary, was car-
166
CHRISTMAS MUSING.
lied on a silver platter to the table ;
parties went from house to house sing¬
ing " Christmas carols " (the oldest of
our English songs) ; and from our jolly
forefathers down to our day has crept
something of the general rejoicing. Why
is it all, but that into the world has
come the new love impulse ? The Christ-
life was a huhbling-over in thought, word,
and deed, of the love side of Deity.
We sing our carols and our Glorias to
the spirit of love. Heretofore man had
thought to love "only what was lovable,
— to give only what might yield ample
return. Ah ! poverty of soul ! We
must needs grow taller and diviner.
Christ came, and life became energy of
love. He was the Sun of the world
more than the real sun; the fire of Iiis
CHRISTMAS MUSING.
167
wonderful heart swept light and heat
down all the centuries. "God planted
the beam of revelation into mankind;
but Love must enter Iiis bosom, and
plant the desire for revelation." Our
small loves became coldness to the Divine
burning. We must teach our heart not
only to be full, but to overflow. What
matter if our riches fall on shallow
soil? No love is lost. "The fountain,
unto itself returning, shall fill it full of
refreshment." If love is strong, "it tar¬
ries not to heed or know if its return
exceed its gift ; to its sweet haste no
greed, no strifes belong." Out of our
own heart must we know what God is.
No words or sounds can tell in the
smallest point what love means. We
cannot cleanse our life in spots ; it must
1G8 CHRISTMAS MUSING.
be whole manhood, pure womanhood,
supplied from a perennial fountain, or
it is nothing at all worth the giving
or taking. Love must "strike the chord
of self till it vanish out of sight." Then
shall we seek our pleasures not selfishly,
but purely and with exultant reverence ;
feeling them not to be necessary, but
added to, enhancing, the true life. We
shall be content oft-times to live and
breathe in a cloud, seeing it opening
here and closing there, " rejoicing to
catch through thinnest films of it a
glimpse of stable and substantial things,
but perceiving a nobleness in conceal¬
ment, glad that a kindly veil is spread
where the infinite clearness might have
blinded and dazzled."
How can men spend so much time
CHRISTMAS MUSING. 109
quarrelling over Christ, some asserting,
some denying his divinity, when any¬
way it is such blessing to call him
" brother," " friend," " master," even if
we do not say " Lord "? If he had taught
us nothing more than that " love is a
questioning of God, and loving his an¬
swer," that love meant service, and truest
living was truest loving, how could we
ever count up our thanks, or too rever¬
ently remember and adore ? Oh ! if we,
as a nation, could be found offener learn¬
ing and reading and worshipping, find¬
ing whereof to grow soulward, then
should we also find that happiness which
most of us are forever pursuing, and
forever failing to attain. If we would
offener pause to " consider the lilies,"
the mosses, the clouds, to look into
170 CHRISTMAS MUSING.
the still depths of our own soul, then
would the sweet secret of life shine out
in letters of gold ; and the mystic light
from the Holy Grail would fall down
upon us from the heavenly cloud wherein
the tender hand of God has forever
locked it away. Knowledge passes, phi¬
losophies and theologies fade and give
place; hut Faith, Hope, and Love, these
three abide.
XII.
FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT.
To-day a gray pall seems to hang over
the earth. The Lenten clays have come ;
and my soul, with the rest, sits much in
shadow. Through the dim light of the
open door, a darker shadow falls. It
is he, my friend, pale, calm, defiant.
"You, too, are sad?" lie said. "I chose
to-day, because I would not blot the
sunshine of any brighter one for you."
" I am a philosopher," I cried, " and
depend not 011 the sunshine without.
Mine I hold imprisoned within. Come
171
172 FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT.
in, bend low your head, and it may be
a few rays of light will fall upon
you."
I had been thinking of him, and of
that great universal law of suffering,
through knowledge of which all souls in
this disciplinary state must pass to light.
Patiently, tirelessly, lie had hammered
away in life's conflicts, only to return
thwarted and baffled, driven back by
great waves, that ate more and more
deeply into his soul as they washed him
nearer soundings.
"And has my philosophic friend quite
taken in the lesson of pain yet," he
said, "physical pain, I mean, and ennui
and weariness ? When the Potter fash¬
ioned His jars, wherefore did He make
any of them, pray, thin and twisted
FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT. 173
and brittle ? Tell me, why should the
infinitely wise One have fashioned a
body to clothe the soul, so imperfect as
only to clog and dim its vision, or so in¬
tricate in its mechanism as to be forever
run down or out of order? Man's side of
the story has never been told, save per¬
haps in that ringing line of old Omar
Khayyam, ' Man's forgiveness give and
talce.'' I tell you, life is only a grand
Inquisition, wherein one after another of
us is turned on the wheel, and if per¬
chance in some rare moment there comes
surcease of pain, it is only that we may
gather new and keener life to suffer.
And do you blame us, if, beaten upon
and broken by this remorseless wheel
of destiny, we are some day cast up by
life's great waves as wrecked and useless
174 FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT.
on the wide, infinite shore ? No, it is all
gray, gray, my friend, like this Lenten
day ; even you yourself cannot pene¬
trate the thickness of this cloud."
"Look up," I cried, "way out beyond
these shaded fields, beyond the violet
lake, do you not see that glinting of
sunlight on the crest of the hills? Must
you always need see and feel the warmth
of that bit of reflected light, to know the
sun is still shining? I need not; and
that is all the difference between us.
Only climb the great hills high enough,
and you will leave this belt of cloud
below ; but remember, my friend, it must
grow more and more solitary as you
ascend.
" Of course, if you stay down in your
cave of shadow, and bar the door, your
FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT. 175
soul will find darkness and cold enough
to fill the Purgatorio of great Dante.
"PI ave you never read those sweet
lines of Alfred de Musset?
'La joie a pour symbole une plante brisée,
Humide encore de pluie, et couverte de fleurs.'
"Think you the great Gardener loves
the plant the less, that he permits the
rough winds to blow upon it, and the
tears of dew to fall, if so be that new
strength shall go into its final blossom¬
ing and fruit? May He not even, in
tender pity, bend it low to earth before
breaking it from its earthly stem for
transfer to His courts of life and light?"
"Ah!" he sighed, "all that is very
sweet, it is poetic and pure. It floats in
upon my harassed and troubled life like
17(3 FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT.
some refrain of low music. You women
are imaginative ; we would not liave you
otherwise : but your dreams are only
clreams, and facts are stubborn things.
Alas that it is not life-giving breezes
O O
that blow, or gentle dews that fall, but
harsh, rasping north winds, and ener¬
vating, insinuating siroccos, and acrid,
bitter tears, that eat into and corrode !
They do not make the soul better, but
worse ; even the blossoming of a rich
nature is stunted and dwarfed by them.
You make your God refined, poetic, gen¬
erous, and good, like yourself. But I do
not wonder half the world have made
His image of stone and brass, and seen
Him only in the lightning and storm and
consuming llame."
" Since no created soul," I replied
FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT.
177
slowl}r, "can reflect more than existed
in its Creator, since man's highest and
best attributes must have come from
some source higher, why not grant as
reasonable, that any thing lovable you
see in your friend must have its counter¬
part in something more lovable ? Does
water rise higher than its source? Tell
me, is beauty also but a figment of a few
feverish brains ? Because the plough¬
man sees only the brown earth at the
roots of the daisies his ploughshare is
turning, or the miner delving for gold
mid his shadows forgets to take note
of the rose-tints and bright warmth of
the outer sky, would you say, there¬
fore, no crimson-tipped flower or golden
glowing' heavens smiled down in bless-
O O
ing on the poets who sung their halle-
178
FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT.
lujahs? It is in contemplation of the
beautiful, the sense of beauty grows into
the soul. Shut the eyes to it, and the
most finely organized soul will never
find it. But Athena does not wholly
unveil her face to any mortal. One may
interpret here, and another there. So
God: all beautiful souls that ever lived
but faintly reflect the multitudinous rays
of this Sun of suns. Are your highest
dreams evermore beautiful than beauty?
Then how can you prove that the saints'
purest visions rise ever beyond the radi¬
ant Source ? No : the more our beincf
o
revolves about the highest and best we
know, more and more will the vision un¬
fold itself of that which is higher. What
are rough winds to the eagle? Does he
not soon leave far beneath him the ener-
FROM MIGHT TO LIGHT.
179
vating sirocco? and what rasping sleet or
rain shall dull Iiis glorious plumage?"
As 1 ceased to speak, lo ! the little lift
of sunlight from the hills had spread
itself down their green sides into the
water. My head fell back with a sigh
of weariness on the richly cushioned
chair. Just then a ray of brightness
streamed in across the room, shedding a
sort of glory that was almost blinding.
" There it is ! " said my friend. " You
always coax all sunshine to follow you, but
alas ! I must have been born under a
shadow. Kismet !" and he waved an adieu.
Perhaps he had seen her coming; for
into his vacant place stepped my lady
Lovell, calm, placid, content. " I am
glad he is gone," she said, " though, poor
fellow, I am rather sorry for him. Too
180 FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT.
proud, you know, by half, always feel¬
ing things too deeply, over-sensitive, and
all that. That is just the sort of man to
wear himself out by rasping himself with
small straws. Give me placid, shallow
natures ! Why love much what you
may lose, or hope much what may dis¬
appoint, or aspire for that which you
may never attain, or think deeply of
what you can never absolutely know ?
The truest and wisest philosopher is he
who sits much in the sun, lets no emo-
tiun take deep hold, avoids strong and
excitable natures, and, enfin, lives mainly
on the lotus."
She laughed a little as she said this,
slowly drawing off the long gloves,
and regarding with complaisant satisfac¬
tion the bejewelled fingers, watching to
catch the play of light on them.
FROM MIGHT TO LIGHT. 181
"And what if all your wonderful dia¬
monds were paste, instead of the deep-
hearted, light-imprisoned stones?"' said
I. "Fancy them when the newness and
the freshness were gone, how dull and
bleared and dark! AVhat if the expression
of suffering, of discipline, of patience, of
tender sympathy, of deep feeling, of for¬
titude, and of persistent study and
thought, were all taken out of the old
faces? After the color and fulness were
gone, what would be left ? After the
glow of youth and the vigor of man¬
hood had departed, what would be left?
Did you ever think what darkness,
what chill and damp and loneliness, what
slow accretion, go to make up the true
diamond ? "
The ray of sunlight faded slowly from
182 FROM MIGHT TO LIGHT.
the room. It was the last ; and before
the ashen night crept in, my lady had
gone. A great weariness of soul crept
over me. After all, was I right, and
were they all wrong? And if I saw
the Light more than they, wherefore! did
not they also wish to know the truth ?
I thought of a letter that had come only
yesterday to me. My friend had writ¬
ten : —
" If there be such a God as you think,
lie will understand irhy I do not under¬
stand. I am not a hypocrite, and I will
not say I believe that which, so far as I
have light, I do not believe ; nor will
I worship what I neither comprehend nor
(so far as I comprehend it) do I approve !
I wait for light. When it comes, I may
see."
FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT. 183
Can one see the distant hills with a
sevenfold bandage over the eyes, — I
thought, — or know the glories of light
by looking through deep-tinted glasses ?
The natural attitude of the soul is
one of affirmation. It is the spirit of
Mephistopheles that denies. As the eyes
are opened to receive light, and the ears
to catch the faintest sound, so should the
soul of man hold itself ever sensitively
receptive toward the Divine. But we
can close the eyes from seeing if we
will, and perhaps even a God cannot
penetrate the soul that deliberately shuts
Him out. Now I think of it, God does
not promise to come to him that waits, or
even to him that wishes, but unto "them
that hear my call." How can the soul
hear the "still small voice," if it be not
184 FROM NICHT TO LIGHT.
in the attitude of intently listening?
The ear may be finely attuned, but if the
rush and the roar of the world fill its
outer chambers, or it be dull and inat¬
tentive within, will the song of the sky¬
lark touch it?
And yet, so long ago, these very da3-s
of shadow fell heavily upon One su¬
premely good and pure. Did not He
also once cry out, " My God, my God,
why hast Thou forsaken me ?" I thought
of Iiis church draped in gloom; and
even as I thought, the sweet jangle of
the evening bells came to me, and one
above them all seemed to triumph, say¬
ing»—
" Tu demandes à Dieu, de soulager ton âme,
Ton âme est immortelle, et ton cœur va guérir.
FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT.
185
Le regret d'un instant te trouble, et te dévore,
Tandis que le passé te voile l'avenir;
Ne te plains pas d'hier, laisse venir l'aurore,
Ton âme est immortelle, et le temps va s'enfuir."
And with these words, laisse venir
Vaurore, coming in soft refrain, I fell
asleep ; to wake with the radiant bright¬
ness of an Easter morning shining full in
my face.
A print of Raphael's " Transfigura¬
tion " hung over my head. There was
the dear Christ, no longer borne down
by the weight of his cross, but erect,
risen, triumphant, — fit type of the human
soul, its chrysalis outworn, all weights
fallen off, risen, treading diviner air !
And can the gem not wait its thousand
years, if so be at last it shall take this
limpid light to its heart of hearts?
186 FROM MIGHT TO LIGHT.
With the new day came a new friend,
with all the light of the morning in his
open brow. This face has a peace not of
the lotus, but as if coining from hidden
sources of perennial refreshment ; the eye
looks out steadily, sympathetically, into
life, not flinching, you can see, at its pain.
Happily, not through the long procession
of life's love and loss was this soul edu¬
cated to the divine ; but when God called
His own, with quick response the laborer
went out into the harvest.
Do not human faces, after all, tell their
own stories of heaven and purgatory and
hell ? What is it, — this visible impress of
the something back of the soul within? I
said to my friend, " Verily, you seem part
of this Easter day. For once, come 3-ou
to the confessional, and let me be high
FROM NIGHT TO LIGHT.
187
¡Driest. Let the very soul of your soul
speak through the latticed grating, and
tell its most secret creed."
In knightly fashion, he half knelt before
me, and slowly and reverently repeated, —
"Who dare express Him,
And who profess Him,
Saying, 'I believe in Ilim'?
Who, feeling, seeing,
Deny His being,
Saying, 'I believe Ilim not'?
The All-enfolding,
The All-upholding,
Folds and upholds He not
Thee, me, Himself?
Arches not there the sky above us?
Lies not beneath firm the earth ?
And rise not on us, shining,
Friendly, the everlasting stars?
Look I not eye to eye on thee?
188 FROM NICHT TO LIGHT.
And feel'st thou not, thronging
To head and heart, the force
Still weaving its eternal secret,
Invisible, visible, round thy life?
Vast as it is,fill with that Force thy heart,
And when thou in the feeling wholly blessed art,
Call it bliss; heart; Love,— God!
I have no name to give it 1
Feeling is all in all.
The name is sound and smoke
Obscuring Heaven's clear glow."