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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories, by 
+Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories
+
+Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #512]
+Release Date: April, 1996
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE AND OTHER STORIES
+
+
+by
+
+Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+  The Birthmark
+  Young Goodman Brown
+  Rappaccini's Daughter
+  Mrs. Bullfrog
+  The Celestial Railroad
+  The Procession of Life
+  Feathertop: A Moralized Legend
+  Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent
+  Drowne's Wooden Image
+  Roger Malvin's Burial
+  The Artist of the Beautiful
+
+
+
+
+FROM MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE
+
+
+
+THE BIRTHMARK
+
+In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an
+eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long
+before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more
+attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the
+care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace
+smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a
+beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days when the
+comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred
+mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it
+was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in
+its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination,
+the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment
+in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would
+ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the
+philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and
+perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer
+possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over Nature.
+He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies
+ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his
+young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by
+intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength
+of the latter to his own.
+
+Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly
+remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
+soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble
+in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
+
+"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon
+your cheek might be removed?"
+
+"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of his
+manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth it has been so often
+called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so."
+
+"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but
+never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from
+the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we
+hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the
+visible mark of earthly imperfection."
+
+"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first
+reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then why
+did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks you!"
+
+To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in the centre of
+Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as
+it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual state
+of her complexion--a healthy though delicate bloom--the mark wore a
+tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the
+surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more
+indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that
+bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting
+motion caused her to turn pale there was the mark again, a crimson
+stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful
+distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand,
+though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say
+that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the
+infant's cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic
+endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a
+desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing
+his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however,
+that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual varied
+exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the
+beholders. Some fastidious persons--but they were exclusively of her
+own sex--affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite
+destroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty, and rendered her
+countenance even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one
+of those small blue stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary
+marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine
+observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration,
+contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess
+one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a
+flaw. After his marriage,--for he thought little or nothing of the
+matter before,--Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.
+
+Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy's self could have found aught
+else to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection heightened by the
+prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
+stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
+emotion that throbbed within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so
+perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
+every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
+which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
+productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
+that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
+hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
+highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
+the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
+frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
+his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
+imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object,
+causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty,
+whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
+
+At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invariably
+and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary,
+reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first
+appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and
+modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the
+morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face and
+recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat together at
+the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
+beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand
+that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped. Georgiana
+soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the
+peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her
+cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
+brought strongly out, like a bass-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.
+
+Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray
+the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first time,
+voluntarily took up the subject.
+
+"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at a
+smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
+odious hand?"
+
+"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting; but then he added, in
+a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of
+his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for before I fell asleep it had
+taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."
+
+"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
+dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A
+terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
+forget this one expression?--'It is in her heart now; we must have it
+out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
+that dream."
+
+The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
+confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
+them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
+perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
+had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation
+for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
+deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
+caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was
+inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.
+
+When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in
+his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to
+the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
+uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an
+unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
+not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over
+his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for
+the sake of giving himself peace.
+
+"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the cost
+to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal
+may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as
+life itself. Again: do we know that there is a possibility, on any
+terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid
+upon me before I came into the world?"
+
+"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"
+hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect
+practicability of its removal."
+
+"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana, "let
+the attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to me; for
+life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and
+disgust,--life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either
+remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep
+science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great
+wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with
+the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake
+of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?"
+
+"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously, "doubt
+not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
+thought--thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a
+being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper
+than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to
+render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most
+beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what
+Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, when his
+sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will
+be."
+
+"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And, Aylmer,
+spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my
+heart at last."
+
+Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek--her right cheek--not that which
+bore the impress of the crimson hand.
+
+The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed
+whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant
+watchfulness which the proposed operation would require; while
+Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its
+success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments
+occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome
+youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of Nature that
+had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe.
+Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated
+the secrets of the highest cloud region and of the profoundest mines;
+he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the
+fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and
+how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and others
+with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth.
+Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the
+human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature
+assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from
+the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The
+latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling
+recognition of the truth--against which all seekers sooner or later
+stumble--that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with
+apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to
+keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us
+nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar, but seldom to
+mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now,
+however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not, of
+course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them; but because
+they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his
+proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.
+
+As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold
+and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
+reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
+birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
+strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.
+
+"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.
+
+Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
+but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
+grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer's
+underworker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably
+fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill
+with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he
+executed all the details of his master's experiments. With his vast
+strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable
+earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical
+nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual face,
+were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.
+
+"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn
+a pastil."
+
+"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless form
+of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my wife,
+I'd never part with that birthmark."
+
+When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an
+atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
+recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
+like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre
+rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pursuits,
+into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded
+abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains,
+which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other
+species of adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to
+the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and
+straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For
+aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And
+Aylmer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered with his
+chemical processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps,
+emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, impurpled
+radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side, watching her earnestly, but
+without alarm; for he was confident in his science, and felt that he
+could draw a magic circle round her within which no evil might intrude.
+
+"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed
+her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's
+eyes.
+
+"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
+Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be
+such a rapture to remove it."
+
+"Oh, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it again.
+I never can forget that convulsive shudder."
+
+In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind from
+the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of the
+light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its
+profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of
+unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their
+momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct
+idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was
+almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed
+sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look
+forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
+answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a screen.
+The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented,
+but with that bewitching, yet indescribable difference which always
+makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the
+original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a
+vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so, with little interest
+at first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant
+shooting upward from the soil. Then came the slender stalk; the leaves
+gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely
+flower.
+
+"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."
+
+"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,--"pluck it, and inhale its brief
+perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and
+leave nothing save its brown seed vessels; but thence may be
+perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."
+
+But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant
+suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by the agency of
+fire.
+
+"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.
+
+To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her
+portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be
+effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal.
+Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to
+find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the
+minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been.
+Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive
+acid.
+
+Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals of
+study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted, but
+seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of
+the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of the
+alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by
+which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and
+base. Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest scientific
+logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover
+this long-sought medium; "but," he added, "a philosopher who should go
+deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to
+stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his opinions in
+regard to the elixir vitae. He more than intimated that it was at his
+option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps
+interminably; but that it would produce a discord in Nature which all
+the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal nostrum, would find
+cause to curse.
+
+"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him with
+amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power, or even to
+dream of possessing it."
+
+"Oh, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not wrong
+either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our
+lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is
+the skill requisite to remove this little hand."
+
+At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a
+redhot iron had touched her cheek.
+
+Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice in
+the distant furnace room giving directions to Aminadab, whose harsh,
+uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like the grunt
+or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer
+reappeared and proposed that she should now examine his cabinet of
+chemical products and natural treasures of the earth. Among the former
+he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a
+gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the
+breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of inestimable value, the
+contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he threw some of the
+perfume into the air and filled the room with piercing and invigorating
+delight.
+
+"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe
+containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to the eye that I
+could imagine it the elixir of life."
+
+"In one sense it is," replied Aylmer; "or, rather, the elixir of
+immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in
+this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at
+whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would
+determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the
+midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life if
+I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare of millions
+justified me in depriving him of it."
+
+"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana in horror.
+
+"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its virtuous
+potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is a
+powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water,
+freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A
+stronger infusion would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave the
+rosiest beauty a pale ghost."
+
+"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked
+Georgiana, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial.
+Your case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."
+
+In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
+inquiries as to her sensations and whether the confinement of the rooms
+and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These questions
+had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to conjecture that she
+was already subjected to certain physical influences, either breathed
+in with the fragrant air or taken with her food. She fancied likewise,
+but it might be altogether fancy, that there was a stirring up of her
+system--a strange, indefinite sensation creeping through her veins, and
+tingling, half painfully, half pleasurably, at her heart. Still,
+whenever she dared to look into the mirror, there she beheld herself
+pale as a white rose and with the crimson birthmark stamped upon her
+cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it so much as she.
+
+To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary
+to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
+turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old
+tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the
+works of philosophers of the middle ages, such as Albertus Magnus,
+Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and the famous friar who created the
+prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists stood in advance
+of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their credulity, and
+therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined themselves to have
+acquired from the investigation of Nature a power above Nature, and
+from physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly less curious and
+imaginative were the early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal
+Society, in which the members, knowing little of the limits of natural
+possibility, were continually recording wonders or proposing methods
+whereby wonders might be wrought.
+
+But to Georgiana the most engrossing volume was a large folio from her
+husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of his
+scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its
+development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances
+to which either event was attributable. The book, in truth, was both
+the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet
+practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there
+were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed
+himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards the
+infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul.
+Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more profoundly
+than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than
+heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that
+his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if
+compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were
+the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in comparison with
+the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach. The volume,
+rich with achievements that had won renown for its author, was yet as
+melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had penned. It was the sad
+confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the
+composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and
+of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so
+miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps every man of genius in
+whatever sphere might recognize the image of his own experience in
+Aylmer's journal.
+
+So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her face
+upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she was
+found by her husband.
+
+"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile,
+though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there are
+pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my
+senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."
+
+"It has made me worship you more than ever," said she.
+
+"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he, "then worship me if you
+will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come, I have
+sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest."
+
+So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of
+his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of gayety,
+assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and
+that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he departed when
+Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She had forgotten
+to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three hours past had
+begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in the fatal
+birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness throughout her
+system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for the first time
+into the laboratory.
+
+The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and
+feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
+quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for
+ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full operation. Around the
+room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of
+chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use.
+The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous
+odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The
+severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and
+brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to
+the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost
+solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.
+
+He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace
+as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid which
+it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or
+misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had
+assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!
+
+"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully,
+thou man of clay!" muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant.
+"Now, if there be a thought too much or too little, it is all over."
+
+"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! look!"
+
+Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler
+than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized her
+arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.
+
+"Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried he,
+impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark over
+my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman, go!"
+
+"Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed
+no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right to complain. You
+mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you watch
+the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my
+husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall shrink;
+for my share in it is far less than your own."
+
+"No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."
+
+"I submit," replied she calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever
+draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would
+induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."
+
+"My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the height and
+depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know, then,
+that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its grasp
+into your being with a strength of which I had no previous conception.
+I have already administered agents powerful enough to do aught except
+to change your entire physical system. Only one thing remains to be
+tried. If that fail us we are ruined."
+
+"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.
+
+"Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is danger."
+
+"Danger? There is but one danger--that this horrible stigma shall be
+left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it, whatever
+be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"
+
+"Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And now,
+dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested."
+
+He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness
+which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After
+his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the
+character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous
+moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love--so
+pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection nor
+miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had
+dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than
+that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her
+sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its
+perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole spirit she
+prayed that, for a single moment, she might satisfy his highest and
+deepest conception. Longer than one moment she well knew it could not
+be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever ascending, and each
+instant required something that was beyond the scope of the instant
+before.
+
+The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal
+goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be
+the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the
+consequence of a highly-wrought state of mind and tension of spirit
+than of fear or doubt.
+
+"The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in answer to
+Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot
+fail."
+
+"Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I might
+wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality
+itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession to
+those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at
+which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder it might be happiness. Were I
+stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself,
+methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die."
+
+"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her husband
+"But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its
+effect upon this plant."
+
+On the window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
+blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small
+quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little
+time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the
+unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.
+
+"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the goblet I
+joyfully stake all upon your word."
+
+"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid
+admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy
+sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."
+
+She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
+
+"It is grateful," said she with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like
+water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of
+unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst
+that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My
+earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the
+heart of a rose at sunset."
+
+She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
+almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
+lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere
+she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect
+with the emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose existence
+was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood,
+however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of
+science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of
+the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a
+hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,--such were the details
+which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume.
+Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that
+volume, but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.
+
+While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and
+not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse
+he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very
+act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily
+and murmured as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor
+was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first had been
+strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's cheek, now
+grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than ever; but
+the birthmark with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat of
+its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure was
+more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out the sky,
+and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed away.
+
+"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost
+irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
+And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood
+across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"
+
+He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural day
+to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
+heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
+Aminadab's expression of delight.
+
+"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of
+frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit--earth and
+heaven--have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses!
+You have earned the right to laugh."
+
+These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed her
+eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that
+purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
+barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed
+forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their
+happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and
+anxiety that he could by no means account for.
+
+"My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.
+
+"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My
+peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"
+
+"My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human tenderness, "you
+have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that with so
+high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could
+offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"
+
+Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of
+life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union
+with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark--that
+sole token of human imperfection--faded from her cheek, the parting
+breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her
+soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight.
+Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the
+gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the
+immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half development, demands
+the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Alymer reached a
+profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which
+would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the
+celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed
+to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in
+eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
+
+
+
+YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN
+
+Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem
+village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to
+exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was
+aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the
+wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman
+Brown.
+
+"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips
+were close to his ear, "prithee put off your journey until sunrise and
+sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such
+dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes. Pray
+tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year."
+
+"My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in
+the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as
+thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done 'twixt now
+and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already,
+and we but three months married?"
+
+"Then God bless you!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons; "and may you
+find all well when you come back."
+
+"Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to
+bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee."
+
+So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to
+turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head
+of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her
+pink ribbons.
+
+"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a
+wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too.
+Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had
+warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; 't would kill
+her to think it. Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this
+one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven."
+
+With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself
+justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had
+taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest,
+which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and
+closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there
+is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not
+who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs
+overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through
+an unseen multitude.
+
+"There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman Brown
+to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, "What if
+the devil himself should be at my very elbow!"
+
+His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking
+forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire,
+seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown's approach
+and walked onward side by side with him.
+
+"You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The clock of the Old South was
+striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes
+agone."
+
+"Faith kept me back a while," replied the young man, with a tremor in
+his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though not
+wholly unexpected.
+
+It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it
+where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the
+second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank
+of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to
+him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might
+have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person
+was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had
+an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not have
+felt abashed at the governor's dinner table or in King William's court,
+were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only
+thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff,
+which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought
+that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living
+serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted
+by the uncertain light.
+
+"Come, Goodman Brown," cried his fellow-traveller, "this is a dull pace
+for the beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon
+weary."
+
+"Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop,
+"having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to
+return whence I came. I have scruples touching the matter thou wot'st
+of."
+
+"Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let us
+walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not
+thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest yet."
+
+"Too far! too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his
+walk. "My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his
+father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good
+Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of
+the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept--"
+
+"Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the elder person,
+interpreting his pause. "Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well
+acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and
+that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when
+he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and
+it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own
+hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war. They
+were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along
+this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends
+with you for their sake."
+
+"If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, "I marvel they never
+spoke of these matters; or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least
+rumor of the sort would have driven them from New England. We are a
+people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness."
+
+"Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the twisted staff, "I have
+a very general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a
+church have drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers
+towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General
+Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too--But
+these are state secrets."
+
+"Can this be so?" cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his
+undisturbed companion. "Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor
+and council; they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple
+husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how should I meet
+the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his
+voice would make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day."
+
+Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now
+burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently
+that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he again and again; then composing himself,
+"Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go on; but, prithee, don't kill me with
+laughing."
+
+"Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown,
+considerably nettled, "there is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear
+little heart; and I'd rather break my own."
+
+"Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "e'en go thy ways,
+Goodman Brown. I would not for twenty old women like the one hobbling
+before us that Faith should come to any harm."
+
+As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in
+whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had
+taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and
+spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.
+
+"A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness
+at nightfall," said he. "But with your leave, friend, I shall take a
+cut through the woods until we have left this Christian woman behind.
+Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and
+whither I was going."
+
+"Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. "Betake you to the woods, and
+let me keep the path."
+
+Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his
+companion, who advanced softly along the road until he had come within
+a staff's length of the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best
+of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some
+indistinct words--a prayer, doubtless--as she went. The traveller put
+forth his staff and touched her withered neck with what seemed the
+serpent's tail.
+
+"The devil!" screamed the pious old lady.
+
+"Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed the traveller,
+confronting her and leaning on his writhing stick.
+
+"Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?" cried the good dame.
+"Yea, truly is it, and in the very image of my old gossip, Goodman
+Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is. But--would your
+worship believe it?--my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen,
+as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I
+was all anointed with the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf's
+bane."
+
+"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said the
+shape of old Goodman Brown.
+
+"Ah, your worship knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling
+aloud. "So, as I was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no
+horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they tell me there
+is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your
+good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a
+twinkling."
+
+"That can hardly be," answered her friend. "I may not spare you my arm,
+Goody Cloyse; but here is my staff, if you will."
+
+So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed
+life, being one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the
+Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take
+cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down
+again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his
+fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had
+happened.
+
+"That old woman taught me my catechism," said the young man; and there
+was a world of meaning in this simple comment.
+
+They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his
+companion to make good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so
+aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his
+auditor than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a
+branch of maple to serve for a walking stick, and began to strip it of
+the twigs and little boughs, which were wet with evening dew. The
+moment his fingers touched them they became strangely withered and
+dried up as with a week's sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good
+free pace, until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman
+Brown sat himself down on the stump of a tree and refused to go any
+farther.
+
+"Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my mind is made up. Not another step
+will I budge on this errand. What if a wretched old woman do choose to
+go to the devil when I thought she was going to heaven: is that any
+reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after her?"
+
+"You will think better of this by and by," said his acquaintance,
+composedly. "Sit here and rest yourself a while; and when you feel like
+moving again, there is my staff to help you along."
+
+Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as
+speedily out of sight as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom.
+The young man sat a few moments by the roadside, applauding himself
+greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the
+minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old
+Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his that very night, which
+was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely and sweetly now, in
+the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations,
+Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it
+advisable to conceal himself within the verge of the forest, conscious
+of the guilty purpose that had brought him thither, though now so
+happily turned from it.
+
+On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old
+voices, conversing soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds
+appeared to pass along the road, within a few yards of the young man's
+hiding-place; but, owing doubtless to the depth of the gloom at that
+particular spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds were visible.
+Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the wayside, it could
+not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the faint gleam
+from the strip of bright sky athwart which they must have passed.
+Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling aside
+the branches and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst without
+discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could
+have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices
+of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were
+wont to do, when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council.
+While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.
+
+"Of the two, reverend sir," said the voice like the deacon's, "I had
+rather miss an ordination dinner than to-night's meeting. They tell me
+that some of our community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, and
+others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the Indian
+powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the
+best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into
+communion."
+
+"Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!" replied the solemn old tones of the
+minister. "Spur up, or we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know,
+until I get on the ground."
+
+The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the
+empty air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been
+gathered or solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy
+men be journeying so deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman
+Brown caught hold of a tree for support, being ready to sink down on
+the ground, faint and overburdened with the heavy sickness of his
+heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether there really was a
+heaven above him. Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars
+brightening in it.
+
+"With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the
+devil!" cried Goodman Brown.
+
+While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had
+lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried
+across the zenith and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still
+visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was
+sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of
+the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once the
+listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of towns-people
+of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had
+met at the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern.
+The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he
+had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a
+wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily
+in the sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a cloud of
+night There was one voice of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet
+with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which,
+perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude,
+both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.
+
+"Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation;
+and the echoes of the forest mocked him, crying, "Faith! Faith!" as if
+bewildered wretches were seeking her all through the wilderness.
+
+The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the
+unhappy husband held his breath for a response. There was a scream,
+drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off
+laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent
+sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly down through
+the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it,
+and beheld a pink ribbon.
+
+"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is no
+good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this
+world given."
+
+And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did
+Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate that
+he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to walk or run. The
+road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at
+length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing
+onward with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil. The whole
+forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees,
+the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes
+the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad
+roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn.
+But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from
+its other horrors.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him.
+
+"Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with
+your deviltry. Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil
+himself, and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he
+fear you."
+
+In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more
+frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black
+pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to
+an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such
+laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons
+around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he
+rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course,
+until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as
+when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been set on
+fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of
+midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that had driven him
+onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly
+from a distance with the weight of many voices. He knew the tune; it
+was a familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house. The verse
+died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices,
+but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful
+harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out, and his cry was lost to his
+own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.
+
+In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full
+upon his eyes. At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark
+wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude, natural
+resemblance either to an altar or a pulpit, and surrounded by four
+blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles
+at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage that had overgrown the
+summit of the rock was all on fire, blazing high into the night and
+fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy
+festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose and fell, a numerous
+congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and
+again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the
+solitary woods at once.
+
+"A grave and dark-clad company," quoth Goodman Brown.
+
+In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between gloom
+and splendor, appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council
+board of the province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked
+devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the
+holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm that the lady of the governor
+was there. At least there were high dames well known to her, and wives
+of honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient
+maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled
+lest their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light
+flashing over the obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he
+recognized a score of the church members of Salem village famous for
+their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited
+at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But,
+irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people,
+these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there
+were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given
+over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes.
+It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor
+were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered also among their
+pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often
+scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any
+known to English witchcraft.
+
+"But where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his
+heart, he trembled.
+
+Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as
+the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that our nature
+can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable to
+mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and
+still the chorus of the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of
+a mighty organ; and with the final peal of that dreadful anthem there
+came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling
+beasts, and every other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were
+mingling and according with the voice of guilty man in homage to the
+prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and
+obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths
+above the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock
+shot redly forth and formed a glowing arch above its base, where now
+appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no
+slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the
+New England churches.
+
+"Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice that echoed through the field
+and rolled into the forest.
+
+At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees
+and approached the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful
+brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He
+could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father
+beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a
+woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him
+back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one step, nor
+to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon
+Gookin seized his arms and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came
+also the slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse,
+that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had
+received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was
+she. And there stood the proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.
+
+"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your
+race. Ye have found thus young your nature and your destiny. My
+children, look behind you!"
+
+They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the
+fiend worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on
+every visage.
+
+"There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from
+youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own
+sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful
+aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping
+assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret
+deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton
+words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager
+for widows' weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him
+sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste
+to inherit their fathers' wealth; and how fair damsels--blush not,
+sweet ones--have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the
+sole guest to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts
+for sin ye shall scent out all the places--whether in church,
+bedchamber, street, field, or forest--where crime has been committed,
+and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one
+mighty blood spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate,
+in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked
+arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human
+power--than my power at its utmost--can make manifest in deeds. And
+now, my children, look upon each other."
+
+They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the
+wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling
+before that unhallowed altar.
+
+"Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and
+solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once
+angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon
+one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a
+dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must
+be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of
+your race."
+
+"Welcome," repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and
+triumph.
+
+And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet
+hesitating on the verge of wickedness in this dark world. A basin was
+hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the
+lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did
+the shape of evil dip his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism
+upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of
+sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and
+thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast one look
+at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the
+next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they
+disclosed and what they saw!
+
+"Faith! Faith!" cried the husband, "look up to heaven, and resist the
+wicked one."
+
+Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found
+himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind
+which died heavily away through the forest. He staggered against the
+rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a hanging twig, that had been
+all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
+
+The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of
+Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old
+minister was taking a walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for
+breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he
+passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to
+avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the
+holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window. "What God
+doth the wizard pray to?" quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that
+excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine at her own
+lattice, catechizing a little girl who had brought her a pint of
+morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the grasp
+of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied
+the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and
+bursting into such joy at sight of him that she skipped along the
+street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But
+Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on
+without a greeting.
+
+Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild
+dream of a witch-meeting?
+
+Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young
+Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if
+not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream.
+On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he
+could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear
+and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the
+pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open
+Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives
+and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then
+did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down
+upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking suddenly at
+midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or
+eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered
+to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he
+had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by
+Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly
+procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse
+upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.
+
+
+
+RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER [From the Writings of Aubepine.]
+
+We do not remember to have seen any translated specimens of the
+productions of M. de l'Aubepine--a fact the less to be wondered at, as
+his very name is unknown to many of his own countrymen as well as to
+the student of foreign literature. As a writer, he seems to occupy an
+unfortunate position between the Transcendentalists (who, under one
+name or another, have their share in all the current literature of the
+world) and the great body of pen-and-ink men who address the intellect
+and sympathies of the multitude. If not too refined, at all events too
+remote, too shadowy, and unsubstantial in his modes of development to
+suit the taste of the latter class, and yet too popular to satisfy the
+spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former, he must
+necessarily find himself without an audience, except here and there an
+individual or possibly an isolated clique. His writings, to do them
+justice, are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they
+might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate love of
+allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and characters with the
+aspect of scenery and people in the clouds, and to steal away the human
+warmth out of his conceptions. His fictions are sometimes historical,
+sometimes of the present day, and sometimes, so far as can be
+discovered, have little or no reference either to time or space. In any
+case, he generally contents himself with a very slight embroidery of
+outward manners,--the faintest possible counterfeit of real life,--and
+endeavors to create an interest by some less obvious peculiarity of the
+subject. Occasionally a breath of Nature, a raindrop of pathos and
+tenderness, or a gleam of humor, will find its way into the midst of
+his fantastic imagery, and make us feel as if, after all, we were yet
+within the limits of our native earth. We will only add to this very
+cursory notice that M. de l'Aubepine's productions, if the reader
+chance to take them in precisely the proper point of view, may amuse a
+leisure hour as well as those of a brighter man; if otherwise, they can
+hardly fail to look excessively like nonsense.
+
+Our author is voluminous; he continues to write and publish with as
+much praiseworthy and indefatigable prolixity as if his efforts were
+crowned with the brilliant success that so justly attends those of
+Eugene Sue. His first appearance was by a collection of stories in a
+long series of volumes entitled "Contes deux fois racontees." The
+titles of some of his more recent works (we quote from memory) are as
+follows: "Le Voyage Celeste a Chemin de Fer," 3 tom., 1838; "Le nouveau
+Pere Adam et la nouvelle Mere Eve," 2 tom., 1839; "Roderic; ou le
+Serpent a l'estomac," 2 tom., 1840; "Le Culte du Feu," a folio volume
+of ponderous research into the religion and ritual of the old Persian
+Ghebers, published in 1841; "La Soiree du Chateau en Espagne," 1 tom.,
+8vo, 1842; and "L'Artiste du Beau; ou le Papillon Mecanique," 5 tom.,
+4to, 1843. Our somewhat wearisome perusal of this startling catalogue
+of volumes has left behind it a certain personal affection and
+sympathy, though by no means admiration, for M. de l'Aubepine; and we
+would fain do the little in our power towards introducing him favorably
+to the American public. The ensuing tale is a translation of his
+"Beatrice; ou la Belle Empoisonneuse," recently published in "La Revue
+Anti-Aristocratique." This journal, edited by the Comte de Bearhaven,
+has for some years past led the defence of liberal principles and
+popular rights with a faithfulness and ability worthy of all praise.
+
+
+A young man, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, very long ago, from the
+more southern region of Italy, to pursue his studies at the University
+of Padua. Giovanni, who had but a scanty supply of gold ducats in his
+pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy chamber of an old edifice
+which looked not unworthy to have been the palace of a Paduan noble,
+and which, in fact, exhibited over its entrance the armorial bearings
+of a family long since extinct. The young stranger, who was not
+unstudied in the great poem of his country, recollected that one of the
+ancestors of this family, and perhaps an occupant of this very mansion,
+had been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of his
+Inferno. These reminiscences and associations, together with the
+tendency to heartbreak natural to a young man for the first time out of
+his native sphere, caused Giovanni to sigh heavily as he looked around
+the desolate and ill-furnished apartment.
+
+"Holy Virgin, signor!" cried old Dame Lisabetta, who, won by the
+youth's remarkable beauty of person, was kindly endeavoring to give the
+chamber a habitable air, "what a sigh was that to come out of a young
+man's heart! Do you find this old mansion gloomy? For the love of
+Heaven, then, put your head out of the window, and you will see as
+bright sunshine as you have left in Naples."
+
+Guasconti mechanically did as the old woman advised, but could not
+quite agree with her that the Paduan sunshine was as cheerful as that
+of southern Italy. Such as it was, however, it fell upon a garden
+beneath the window and expended its fostering influences on a variety
+of plants, which seemed to have been cultivated with exceeding care.
+
+"Does this garden belong to the house?" asked Giovanni.
+
+"Heaven forbid, signor, unless it were fruitful of better pot herbs
+than any that grow there now," answered old Lisabetta. "No; that garden
+is cultivated by the own hands of Signor Giacomo Rappaccini, the famous
+doctor, who, I warrant him, has been heard of as far as Naples. It is
+said that he distils these plants into medicines that are as potent as
+a charm. Oftentimes you may see the signor doctor at work, and
+perchance the signora, his daughter, too, gathering the strange flowers
+that grow in the garden."
+
+The old woman had now done what she could for the aspect of the
+chamber; and, commending the young man to the protection of the saints,
+took her departure.
+
+Giovanni still found no better occupation than to look down into the
+garden beneath his window. From its appearance, he judged it to be one
+of those botanic gardens which were of earlier date in Padua than
+elsewhere in Italy or in the world. Or, not improbably, it might once
+have been the pleasure-place of an opulent family; for there was the
+ruin of a marble fountain in the centre, sculptured with rare art, but
+so wofully shattered that it was impossible to trace the original
+design from the chaos of remaining fragments. The water, however,
+continued to gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully as ever.
+A little gurgling sound ascended to the young man's window, and made
+him feel as if the fountain were an immortal spirit that sung its song
+unceasingly and without heeding the vicissitudes around it, while one
+century imbodied it in marble and another scattered the perishable
+garniture on the soil. All about the pool into which the water subsided
+grew various plants, that seemed to require a plentiful supply of
+moisture for the nourishment of gigantic leaves, and in some instances,
+flowers gorgeously magnificent. There was one shrub in particular, set
+in a marble vase in the midst of the pool, that bore a profusion of
+purple blossoms, each of which had the lustre and richness of a gem;
+and the whole together made a show so resplendent that it seemed enough
+to illuminate the garden, even had there been no sunshine. Every
+portion of the soil was peopled with plants and herbs, which, if less
+beautiful, still bore tokens of assiduous care, as if all had their
+individual virtues, known to the scientific mind that fostered them.
+Some were placed in urns, rich with old carving, and others in common
+garden pots; some crept serpent-like along the ground or climbed on
+high, using whatever means of ascent was offered them. One plant had
+wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which was thus quite
+veiled and shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage, so happily
+arranged that it might have served a sculptor for a study.
+
+While Giovanni stood at the window he heard a rustling behind a screen
+of leaves, and became aware that a person was at work in the garden.
+His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no
+common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow, and sickly-looking man,
+dressed in a scholar's garb of black. He was beyond the middle term of
+life, with gray hair, a thin, gray beard, and a face singularly marked
+with intellect and cultivation, but which could never, even in his more
+youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart.
+
+Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this scientific gardener
+examined every shrub which grew in his path: it seemed as if he was
+looking into their inmost nature, making observations in regard to
+their creative essence, and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape
+and another in that, and wherefore such and such flowers differed among
+themselves in hue and perfume. Nevertheless, in spite of this deep
+intelligence on his part, there was no approach to intimacy between
+himself and these vegetable existences. On the contrary, he avoided
+their actual touch or the direct inhaling of their odors with a caution
+that impressed Giovanni most disagreeably; for the man's demeanor was
+that of one walking among malignant influences, such as savage beasts,
+or deadly snakes, or evil spirits, which, should he allow them one
+moment of license, would wreak upon him some terrible fatality. It was
+strangely frightful to the young man's imagination to see this air of
+insecurity in a person cultivating a garden, that most simple and
+innocent of human toils, and which had been alike the joy and labor of
+the unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of
+the present world? And this man, with such a perception of harm in what
+his own hands caused to grow,--was he the Adam?
+
+The distrustful gardener, while plucking away the dead leaves or
+pruning the too luxuriant growth of the shrubs, defended his hands with
+a pair of thick gloves. Nor were these his only armor. When, in his
+walk through the garden, he came to the magnificent plant that hung its
+purple gems beside the marble fountain, he placed a kind of mask over
+his mouth and nostrils, as if all this beauty did but conceal a
+deadlier malice; but, finding his task still too dangerous, he drew
+back, removed the mask, and called loudly, but in the infirm voice of a
+person affected with inward disease, "Beatrice!  Beatrice!"
+
+"Here am I, my father. What would you?" cried a rich and youthful voice
+from the window of the opposite house--a voice as rich as a tropical
+sunset, and which made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep
+hues of purple or crimson and of perfumes heavily delectable. "Are you
+in the garden?"
+
+"Yes, Beatrice," answered the gardener, "and I need your help."
+
+Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young
+girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of
+the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid
+that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with
+life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and
+compressed, as it were and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her
+virgin zone. Yet Giovanni's fancy must have grown morbid while he
+looked down into the garden; for the impression which the fair stranger
+made upon him was as if here were another flower, the human sister of
+those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than the
+richest of them, but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be
+approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden path, it
+was observable that she handled and inhaled the odor of several of the
+plants which her father had most sedulously avoided.
+
+"Here, Beatrice," said the latter, "see how many needful offices
+require to be done to our chief treasure. Yet, shattered as I am, my
+life might pay the penalty of approaching it so closely as
+circumstances demand. Henceforth, I fear, this plant must be consigned
+to your sole charge."
+
+"And gladly will I undertake it," cried again the rich tones of the
+young lady, as she bent towards the magnificent plant and opened her
+arms as if to embrace it. "Yes, my sister, my splendour, it shall be
+Beatrice's task to nurse and serve thee; and thou shalt reward her with
+thy kisses and perfumed breath, which to her is as the breath of life."
+
+Then, with all the tenderness in her manner that was so strikingly
+expressed in her words, she busied herself with such attentions as the
+plant seemed to require; and Giovanni, at his lofty window, rubbed his
+eyes and almost doubted whether it were a girl tending her favorite
+flower, or one sister performing the duties of affection to another.
+The scene soon terminated. Whether Dr. Rappaccini had finished his
+labors in the garden, or that his watchful eye had caught the
+stranger's face, he now took his daughter's arm and retired. Night was
+already closing in; oppressive exhalations seemed to proceed from the
+plants and steal upward past the open window; and Giovanni, closing the
+lattice, went to his couch and dreamed of a rich flower and beautiful
+girl. Flower and maiden were different, and yet the same, and fraught
+with some strange peril in either shape.
+
+But there is an influence in the light of morning that tends to rectify
+whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred
+during the sun's decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the
+less wholesome glow of moonshine. Giovanni's first movement, on
+starting from sleep, was to throw open the window and gaze down into
+the garden which his dreams had made so fertile of mysteries. He was
+surprised and a little ashamed to find how real and matter-of-fact an
+affair it proved to be, in the first rays of the sun which gilded the
+dew-drops that hung upon leaf and blossom, and, while giving a brighter
+beauty to each rare flower, brought everything within the limits of
+ordinary experience. The young man rejoiced that, in the heart of the
+barren city, he had the privilege of overlooking this spot of lovely
+and luxuriant vegetation. It would serve, he said to himself, as a
+symbolic language to keep him in communion with Nature. Neither the
+sickly and thoughtworn Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini, it is true, nor his
+brilliant daughter, were now visible; so that Giovanni could not
+determine how much of the singularity which he attributed to both was
+due to their own qualities and how much to his wonder-working fancy;
+but he was inclined to take a most rational view of the whole matter.
+
+In the course of the day he paid his respects to Signor Pietro
+Baglioni, professor of medicine in the university, a physician of
+eminent repute to whom Giovanni had brought a letter of introduction.
+The professor was an elderly personage, apparently of genial nature,
+and habits that might almost be called jovial. He kept the young man to
+dinner, and made himself very agreeable by the freedom and liveliness
+of his conversation, especially when warmed by a flask or two of Tuscan
+wine. Giovanni, conceiving that men of science, inhabitants of the same
+city, must needs be on familiar terms with one another, took an
+opportunity to mention the name of Dr. Rappaccini. But the professor
+did not respond with so much cordiality as he had anticipated.
+
+"Ill would it become a teacher of the divine art of medicine," said
+Professor Pietro Baglioni, in answer to a question of Giovanni, "to
+withhold due and well-considered praise of a physician so eminently
+skilled as Rappaccini; but, on the other hand, I should answer it but
+scantily to my conscience were I to permit a worthy youth like
+yourself, Signor Giovanni, the son of an ancient friend, to imbibe
+erroneous ideas respecting a man who might hereafter chance to hold
+your life and death in his hands. The truth is, our worshipful Dr.
+Rappaccini has as much science as any member of the faculty--with
+perhaps one single exception--in Padua, or all Italy; but there are
+certain grave objections to his professional character."
+
+"And what are they?" asked the young man.
+
+"Has my friend Giovanni any disease of body or heart, that he is so
+inquisitive about physicians?" said the professor, with a smile. "But
+as for Rappaccini, it is said of him--and I, who know the man well, can
+answer for its truth--that he cares infinitely more for science than
+for mankind. His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for
+some new experiment. He would sacrifice human life, his own among the
+rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so
+much as a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated
+knowledge."
+
+"Methinks he is an awful man indeed," remarked Guasconti, mentally
+recalling the cold and purely intellectual aspect of Rappaccini. "And
+yet, worshipful professor, is it not a noble spirit? Are there many men
+capable of so spiritual a love of science?"
+
+"God forbid," answered the professor, somewhat testily; "at least,
+unless they take sounder views of the healing art than those adopted by
+Rappaccini. It is his theory that all medicinal virtues are comprised
+within those substances which we term vegetable poisons. These he
+cultivates with his own hands, and is said even to have produced new
+varieties of poison, more horribly deleterious than Nature, without the
+assistance of this learned person, would ever have plagued the world
+withal. That the signor doctor does less mischief than might be
+expected with such dangerous substances is undeniable. Now and then, it
+must be owned, he has effected, or seemed to effect, a marvellous cure;
+but, to tell you my private mind, Signor Giovanni, he should receive
+little credit for such instances of success,--they being probably the
+work of chance,--but should be held strictly accountable for his
+failures, which may justly be considered his own work."
+
+The youth might have taken Baglioni's opinions with many grains of
+allowance had he known that there was a professional warfare of long
+continuance between him and Dr. Rappaccini, in which the latter was
+generally thought to have gained the advantage. If the reader be
+inclined to judge for himself, we refer him to certain black-letter
+tracts on both sides, preserved in the medical department of the
+University of Padua.
+
+"I know not, most learned professor," returned Giovanni, after musing
+on what had been said of Rappaccini's exclusive zeal for science,--"I
+know not how dearly this physician may love his art; but surely there
+is one object more dear to him. He has a daughter."
+
+"Aha!" cried the professor, with a laugh. "So now our friend Giovanni's
+secret is out. You have heard of this daughter, whom all the young men
+in Padua are wild about, though not half a dozen have ever had the good
+hap to see her face. I know little of the Signora Beatrice save that
+Rappaccini is said to have instructed her deeply in his science, and
+that, young and beautiful as fame reports her, she is already qualified
+to fill a professor's chair. Perchance her father destines her for
+mine! Other absurd rumors there be, not worth talking about or
+listening to. So now, Signor Giovanni, drink off your glass of
+lachryma."
+
+Guasconti returned to his lodgings somewhat heated with the wine he had
+quaffed, and which caused his brain to swim with strange fantasies in
+reference to Dr. Rappaccini and the beautiful Beatrice. On his way,
+happening to pass by a florist's, he bought a fresh bouquet of flowers.
+
+Ascending to his chamber, he seated himself near the window, but within
+the shadow thrown by the depth of the wall, so that he could look down
+into the garden with little risk of being discovered. All beneath his
+eye was a solitude. The strange plants were basking in the sunshine,
+and now and then nodding gently to one another, as if in acknowledgment
+of sympathy and kindred. In the midst, by the shattered fountain, grew
+the magnificent shrub, with its purple gems clustering all over it;
+they glowed in the air, and gleamed back again out of the depths of the
+pool, which thus seemed to overflow with colored radiance from the rich
+reflection that was steeped in it. At first, as we have said, the
+garden was a solitude. Soon, however,--as Giovanni had half hoped, half
+feared, would be the case,--a figure appeared beneath the antique
+sculptured portal, and came down between the rows of plants, inhaling
+their various perfumes as if she were one of those beings of old
+classic fable that lived upon sweet odors. On again beholding Beatrice,
+the young man was even startled to perceive how much her beauty
+exceeded his recollection of it; so brilliant, so vivid, was its
+character, that she glowed amid the sunlight, and, as Giovanni
+whispered to himself, positively illuminated the more shadowy intervals
+of the garden path. Her face being now more revealed than on the former
+occasion, he was struck by its expression of simplicity and
+sweetness,--qualities that had not entered into his idea of her
+character, and which made him ask anew what manner of mortal she might
+be. Nor did he fail again to observe, or imagine, an analogy between
+the beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub that hung its gemlike flowers
+over the fountain,--a resemblance which Beatrice seemed to have
+indulged a fantastic humor in heightening, both by the arrangement of
+her dress and the selection of its hues.
+
+Approaching the shrub, she threw open her arms, as with a passionate
+ardor, and drew its branches into an intimate embrace--so intimate that
+her features were hidden in its leafy bosom and her glistening ringlets
+all intermingled with the flowers.
+
+"Give me thy breath, my sister," exclaimed Beatrice; "for I am faint
+with common air. And give me this flower of thine, which I separate
+with gentlest fingers from the stem and place it close beside my heart."
+
+With these words the beautiful daughter of Rappaccini plucked one of
+the richest blossoms of the shrub, and was about to fasten it in her
+bosom. But now, unless Giovanni's draughts of wine had bewildered his
+senses, a singular incident occurred. A small orange-colored reptile,
+of the lizard or chameleon species, chanced to be creeping along the
+path, just at the feet of Beatrice. It appeared to Giovanni,--but, at
+the distance from which he gazed, he could scarcely have seen anything
+so minute,--it appeared to him, however, that a drop or two of moisture
+from the broken stem of the flower descended upon the lizard's head.
+For an instant the reptile contorted itself violently, and then lay
+motionless in the sunshine. Beatrice observed this remarkable
+phenomenon and crossed herself, sadly, but without surprise; nor did
+she therefore hesitate to arrange the fatal flower in her bosom. There
+it blushed, and almost glimmered with the dazzling effect of a precious
+stone, adding to her dress and aspect the one appropriate charm which
+nothing else in the world could have supplied. But Giovanni, out of the
+shadow of his window, bent forward and shrank back, and murmured and
+trembled.
+
+"Am I awake? Have I my senses?" said he to himself. "What is this
+being? Beautiful shall I call her, or inexpressibly terrible?"
+
+Beatrice now strayed carelessly through the garden, approaching closer
+beneath Giovanni's window, so that he was compelled to thrust his head
+quite out of its concealment in order to gratify the intense and
+painful curiosity which she excited. At this moment there came a
+beautiful insect over the garden wall; it had, perhaps, wandered
+through the city, and found no flowers or verdure among those antique
+haunts of men until the heavy perfumes of Dr. Rappaccini's shrubs had
+lured it from afar. Without alighting on the flowers, this winged
+brightness seemed to be attracted by Beatrice, and lingered in the air
+and fluttered about her head. Now, here it could not be but that
+Giovanni Guasconti's eyes deceived him. Be that as it might, he fancied
+that, while Beatrice was gazing at the insect with childish delight, it
+grew faint and fell at her feet; its bright wings shivered; it was
+dead--from no cause that he could discern, unless it were the
+atmosphere of her breath. Again Beatrice crossed herself and sighed
+heavily as she bent over the dead insect.
+
+An impulsive movement of Giovanni drew her eyes to the window. There
+she beheld the beautiful head of the young man--rather a Grecian than
+an Italian head, with fair, regular features, and a glistening of gold
+among his ringlets--gazing down upon her like a being that hovered in
+mid air. Scarcely knowing what he did, Giovanni threw down the bouquet
+which he had hitherto held in his hand.
+
+"Signora," said he, "there are pure and healthful flowers. Wear them
+for the sake of Giovanni Guasconti."
+
+"Thanks, signor," replied Beatrice, with her rich voice, that came
+forth as it were like a gush of music, and with a mirthful expression
+half childish and half woman-like. "I accept your gift, and would fain
+recompense it with this precious purple flower; but if I toss it into
+the air it will not reach you. So Signor Guasconti must even content
+himself with my thanks."
+
+She lifted the bouquet from the ground, and then, as if inwardly
+ashamed at having stepped aside from her maidenly reserve to respond to
+a stranger's greeting, passed swiftly homeward through the garden. But
+few as the moments were, it seemed to Giovanni, when she was on the
+point of vanishing beneath the sculptured portal, that his beautiful
+bouquet was already beginning to wither in her grasp. It was an idle
+thought; there could be no possibility of distinguishing a faded flower
+from a fresh one at so great a distance.
+
+For many days after this incident the young man avoided the window that
+looked into Dr. Rappaccini's garden, as if something ugly and monstrous
+would have blasted his eyesight had he been betrayed into a glance. He
+felt conscious of having put himself, to a certain extent, within the
+influence of an unintelligible power by the communication which he had
+opened with Beatrice. The wisest course would have been, if his heart
+were in any real danger, to quit his lodgings and Padua itself at once;
+the next wiser, to have accustomed himself, as far as possible, to the
+familiar and daylight view of Beatrice--thus bringing her rigidly and
+systematically within the limits of ordinary experience. Least of all,
+while avoiding her sight, ought Giovanni to have remained so near this
+extraordinary being that the proximity and possibility even of
+intercourse should give a kind of substance and reality to the wild
+vagaries which his imagination ran riot continually in producing.
+Guasconti had not a deep heart--or, at all events, its depths were not
+sounded now; but he had a quick fancy, and an ardent southern
+temperament, which rose every instant to a higher fever pitch. Whether
+or no Beatrice possessed those terrible attributes, that fatal breath,
+the affinity with those so beautiful and deadly flowers which were
+indicated by what Giovanni had witnessed, she had at least instilled a
+fierce and subtle poison into his system. It was not love, although her
+rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he fancied her
+spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to
+pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both love and
+horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered
+like the other. Giovanni knew not what to dread; still less did he know
+what to hope; yet hope and dread kept a continual warfare in his
+breast, alternately vanquishing one another and starting up afresh to
+renew the contest. Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or
+bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the
+illuminating blaze of the infernal regions.
+
+Sometimes he endeavored to assuage the fever of his spirit by a rapid
+walk through the streets of Padua or beyond its gates: his footsteps
+kept time with the throbbings of his brain, so that the walk was apt to
+accelerate itself to a race. One day he found himself arrested; his arm
+was seized by a portly personage, who had turned back on recognizing
+the young man and expended much breath in overtaking him.
+
+"Signor Giovanni! Stay, my young friend!" cried he. "Have you forgotten
+me? That might well be the case if I were as much altered as yourself."
+
+It was Baglioni, whom Giovanni had avoided ever since their first
+meeting, from a doubt that the professor's sagacity would look too
+deeply into his secrets. Endeavoring to recover himself, he stared
+forth wildly from his inner world into the outer one and spoke like a
+man in a dream.
+
+"Yes; I am Giovanni Guasconti. You are Professor Pietro Baglioni. Now
+let me pass!"
+
+"Not yet, not yet, Signor Giovanni Guasconti," said the professor,
+smiling, but at the same time scrutinizing the youth with an earnest
+glance. "What! did I grow up side by side with your father? and shall
+his son pass me like a stranger in these old streets of Padua? Stand
+still, Signor Giovanni; for we must have a word or two before we part."
+
+"Speedily, then, most worshipful professor, speedily," said Giovanni,
+with feverish impatience. "Does not your worship see that I am in
+haste?"
+
+Now, while he was speaking there came a man in black along the street,
+stooping and moving feebly like a person in inferior health. His face
+was all overspread with a most sickly and sallow hue, but yet so
+pervaded with an expression of piercing and active intellect that an
+observer might easily have overlooked the merely physical attributes
+and have seen only this wonderful energy. As he passed, this person
+exchanged a cold and distant salutation with Baglioni, but fixed his
+eyes upon Giovanni with an intentness that seemed to bring out whatever
+was within him worthy of notice. Nevertheless, there was a peculiar
+quietness in the look, as if taking merely a speculative, not a human
+interest, in the young man.
+
+"It is Dr. Rappaccini!" whispered the professor when the stranger had
+passed. "Has he ever seen your face before?"
+
+"Not that I know," answered Giovanni, starting at the name.
+
+"He HAS seen you! he must have seen you!" said Baglioni, hastily. "For
+some purpose or other, this man of science is making a study of you. I
+know that look of his! It is the same that coldly illuminates his face
+as he bends over a bird, a mouse, or a butterfly, which, in pursuance
+of some experiment, he has killed by the perfume of a flower; a look as
+deep as Nature itself, but without Nature's warmth of love. Signor
+Giovanni, I will stake my life upon it, you are the subject of one of
+Rappaccini's experiments!"
+
+"Will you make a fool of me?" cried Giovanni, passionately. "THAT,
+signor professor, were an untoward experiment."
+
+"Patience! patience!" replied the imperturbable professor. "I tell
+thee, my poor Giovanni, that Rappaccini has a scientific interest in
+thee. Thou hast fallen into fearful hands! And the Signora
+Beatrice,--what part does she act in this mystery?"
+
+But Guasconti, finding Baglioni's pertinacity intolerable, here broke
+away, and was gone before the professor could again seize his arm. He
+looked after the young man intently and shook his head.
+
+"This must not be," said Baglioni to himself. "The youth is the son of
+my old friend, and shall not come to any harm from which the arcana of
+medical science can preserve him. Besides, it is too insufferable an
+impertinence in Rappaccini, thus to snatch the lad out of my own hands,
+as I may say, and make use of him for his infernal experiments. This
+daughter of his! It shall be looked to. Perchance, most learned
+Rappaccini, I may foil you where you little dream of it!"
+
+Meanwhile Giovanni had pursued a circuitous route, and at length found
+himself at the door of his lodgings. As he crossed the threshold he was
+met by old Lisabetta, who smirked and smiled, and was evidently
+desirous to attract his attention; vainly, however, as the ebullition
+of his feelings had momentarily subsided into a cold and dull vacuity.
+He turned his eyes full upon the withered face that was puckering
+itself into a smile, but seemed to behold it not. The old dame,
+therefore, laid her grasp upon his cloak.
+
+"Signor! signor!" whispered she, still with a smile over the whole
+breadth of her visage, so that it looked not unlike a grotesque carving
+in wood, darkened by centuries. "Listen, signor! There is a private
+entrance into the garden!"
+
+"What do you say?" exclaimed Giovanni, turning quickly about, as if an
+inanimate thing should start into feverish life. "A private entrance
+into Dr. Rappaccini's garden?"
+
+"Hush! hush! not so loud!" whispered Lisabetta, putting her hand over
+his mouth. "Yes; into the worshipful doctor's garden, where you may see
+all his fine shrubbery. Many a young man in Padua would give gold to be
+admitted among those flowers."
+
+Giovanni put a piece of gold into her hand.
+
+"Show me the way," said he.
+
+A surmise, probably excited by his conversation with Baglioni, crossed
+his mind, that this interposition of old Lisabetta might perchance be
+connected with the intrigue, whatever were its nature, in which the
+professor seemed to suppose that Dr. Rappaccini was involving him. But
+such a suspicion, though it disturbed Giovanni, was inadequate to
+restrain him. The instant that he was aware of the possibility of
+approaching Beatrice, it seemed an absolute necessity of his existence
+to do so. It mattered not whether she were angel or demon; he was
+irrevocably within her sphere, and must obey the law that whirled him
+onward, in ever-lessening circles, towards a result which he did not
+attempt to foreshadow; and yet, strange to say, there came across him a
+sudden doubt whether this intense interest on his part were not
+delusory; whether it were really of so deep and positive a nature as to
+justify him in now thrusting himself into an incalculable position;
+whether it were not merely the fantasy of a young man's brain, only
+slightly or not at all connected with his heart.
+
+He paused, hesitated, turned half about, but again went on. His
+withered guide led him along several obscure passages, and finally
+undid a door, through which, as it was opened, there came the sight and
+sound of rustling leaves, with the broken sunshine glimmering among
+them. Giovanni stepped forth, and, forcing himself through the
+entanglement of a shrub that wreathed its tendrils over the hidden
+entrance, stood beneath his own window in the open area of Dr.
+Rappaccini's garden.
+
+How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass
+and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible
+realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid
+circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to
+anticipate! Fate delights to thwart us thus. Passion will choose his
+own time to rush upon the scene, and lingers sluggishly behind when an
+appropriate adjustment of events would seem to summon his appearance.
+So was it now with Giovanni. Day after day his pulses had throbbed with
+feverish blood at the improbable idea of an interview with Beatrice,
+and of standing with her, face to face, in this very garden, basking in
+the Oriental sunshine of her beauty, and snatching from her full gaze
+the mystery which he deemed the riddle of his own existence. But now
+there was a singular and untimely equanimity within his breast. He
+threw a glance around the garden to discover if Beatrice or her father
+were present, and, perceiving that he was alone, began a critical
+observation of the plants.
+
+The aspect of one and all of them dissatisfied him; their gorgeousness
+seemed fierce, passionate, and even unnatural. There was hardly an
+individual shrub which a wanderer, straying by himself through a
+forest, would not have been startled to find growing wild, as if an
+unearthly face had glared at him out of the thicket. Several also would
+have shocked a delicate instinct by an appearance of artificialness
+indicating that there had been such commixture, and, as it were,
+adultery, of various vegetable species, that the production was no
+longer of God's making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved
+fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty. They were probably
+the result of experiment, which in one or two cases had succeeded in
+mingling plants individually lovely into a compound possessing the
+questionable and ominous character that distinguished the whole growth
+of the garden. In fine, Giovanni recognized but two or three plants in
+the collection, and those of a kind that he well knew to be poisonous.
+While busy with these contemplations he heard the rustling of a silken
+garment, and, turning, beheld Beatrice emerging from beneath the
+sculptured portal.
+
+Giovanni had not considered with himself what should be his deportment;
+whether he should apologize for his intrusion into the garden, or
+assume that he was there with the privity at least, if not by the
+desire, of Dr. Rappaccini or his daughter; but Beatrice's manner placed
+him at his ease, though leaving him still in doubt by what agency he
+had gained admittance. She came lightly along the path and met him near
+the broken fountain. There was surprise in her face, but brightened by
+a simple and kind expression of pleasure.
+
+"You are a connoisseur in flowers, signor," said Beatrice, with a
+smile, alluding to the bouquet which he had flung her from the window.
+"It is no marvel, therefore, if the sight of my father's rare
+collection has tempted you to take a nearer view. If he were here, he
+could tell you many strange and interesting facts as to the nature and
+habits of these shrubs; for he has spent a lifetime in such studies,
+and this garden is his world."
+
+"And yourself, lady," observed Giovanni, "if fame says true,--you
+likewise are deeply skilled in the virtues indicated by these rich
+blossoms and these spicy perfumes. Would you deign to be my
+instructress, I should prove an apter scholar than if taught by Signor
+Rappaccini himself."
+
+"Are there such idle rumors?" asked Beatrice, with the music of a
+pleasant laugh. "Do people say that I am skilled in my father's science
+of plants? What a jest is there! No; though I have grown up among these
+flowers, I know no more of them than their hues and perfume; and
+sometimes methinks I would fain rid myself of even that small
+knowledge. There are many flowers here, and those not the least
+brilliant, that shock and offend me when they meet my eye. But pray,
+signor, do not believe these stories about my science. Believe nothing
+of me save what you see with your own eyes."
+
+"And must I believe all that I have seen with my own eyes?" asked
+Giovanni, pointedly, while the recollection of former scenes made him
+shrink. "No, signora; you demand too little of me. Bid me believe
+nothing save what comes from your own lips."
+
+It would appear that Beatrice understood him. There came a deep flush
+to her cheek; but she looked full into Giovanni's eyes, and responded
+to his gaze of uneasy suspicion with a queenlike haughtiness.
+
+"I do so bid you, signor," she replied. "Forget whatever you may have
+fancied in regard to me. If true to the outward senses, still it may be
+false in its essence; but the words of Beatrice Rappaccini's lips are
+true from the depths of the heart outward. Those you may believe."
+
+A fervor glowed in her whole aspect and beamed upon Giovanni's
+consciousness like the light of truth itself; but while she spoke there
+was a fragrance in the atmosphere around her, rich and delightful,
+though evanescent, yet which the young man, from an indefinable
+reluctance, scarcely dared to draw into his lungs. It might be the odor
+of the flowers. Could it be Beatrice's breath which thus embalmed her
+words with a strange richness, as if by steeping them in her heart? A
+faintness passed like a shadow over Giovanni and flitted away; he
+seemed to gaze through the beautiful girl's eyes into her transparent
+soul, and felt no more doubt or fear.
+
+The tinge of passion that had colored Beatrice's manner vanished; she
+became gay, and appeared to derive a pure delight from her communion
+with the youth not unlike what the maiden of a lonely island might have
+felt conversing with a voyager from the civilized world. Evidently her
+experience of life had been confined within the limits of that garden.
+She talked now about matters as simple as the daylight or summer
+clouds, and now asked questions in reference to the city, or Giovanni's
+distant home, his friends, his mother, and his sisters--questions
+indicating such seclusion, and such lack of familiarity with modes and
+forms, that Giovanni responded as if to an infant. Her spirit gushed
+out before him like a fresh rill that was just catching its first
+glimpse of the sunlight and wondering at the reflections of earth and
+sky which were flung into its bosom. There came thoughts, too, from a
+deep source, and fantasies of a gemlike brilliancy, as if diamonds and
+rubies sparkled upward among the bubbles of the fountain. Ever and anon
+there gleamed across the young man's mind a sense of wonder that he
+should be walking side by side with the being who had so wrought upon
+his imagination, whom he had idealized in such hues of terror, in whom
+he had positively witnessed such manifestations of dreadful
+attributes,--that he should be conversing with Beatrice like a brother,
+and should find her so human and so maidenlike. But such reflections
+were only momentary; the effect of her character was too real not to
+make itself familiar at once.
+
+In this free intercourse they had strayed through the garden, and now,
+after many turns among its avenues, were come to the shattered
+fountain, beside which grew the magnificent shrub, with its treasury of
+glowing blossoms. A fragrance was diffused from it which Giovanni
+recognized as identical with that which he had attributed to Beatrice's
+breath, but incomparably more powerful. As her eyes fell upon it,
+Giovanni beheld her press her hand to her bosom as if her heart were
+throbbing suddenly and painfully.
+
+"For the first time in my life," murmured she, addressing the shrub, "I
+had forgotten thee."
+
+"I remember, signora," said Giovanni, "that you once promised to reward
+me with one of these living gems for the bouquet which I had the happy
+boldness to fling to your feet. Permit me now to pluck it as a memorial
+of this interview."
+
+He made a step towards the shrub with extended hand; but Beatrice
+darted forward, uttering a shriek that went through his heart like a
+dagger. She caught his hand and drew it back with the whole force of
+her slender figure. Giovanni felt her touch thrilling through his
+fibres.
+
+"Touch it not!" exclaimed she, in a voice of agony. "Not for thy life!
+It is fatal!"
+
+Then, hiding her face, she fled from him and vanished beneath the
+sculptured portal. As Giovanni followed her with his eyes, he beheld
+the emaciated figure and pale intelligence of Dr. Rappaccini, who had
+been watching the scene, he knew not how long, within the shadow of the
+entrance.
+
+No sooner was Guasconti alone in his chamber than the image of Beatrice
+came back to his passionate musings, invested with all the witchery
+that had been gathering around it ever since his first glimpse of her,
+and now likewise imbued with a tender warmth of girlish womanhood. She
+was human; her nature was endowed with all gentle and feminine
+qualities; she was worthiest to be worshipped; she was capable, surely,
+on her part, of the height and heroism of love. Those tokens which he
+had hitherto considered as proofs of a frightful peculiarity in her
+physical and moral system were now either forgotten, or, by the subtle
+sophistry of passion transmitted into a golden crown of enchantment,
+rendering Beatrice the more admirable by so much as she was the more
+unique. Whatever had looked ugly was now beautiful; or, if incapable of
+such a change, it stole away and hid itself among those shapeless half
+ideas which throng the dim region beyond the daylight of our perfect
+consciousness. Thus did he spend the night, nor fell asleep until the
+dawn had begun to awake the slumbering flowers in Dr. Rappaccini's
+garden, whither Giovanni's dreams doubtless led him. Up rose the sun in
+his due season, and, flinging his beams upon the young man's eyelids,
+awoke him to a sense of pain. When thoroughly aroused, he became
+sensible of a burning and tingling agony in his hand--in his right
+hand--the very hand which Beatrice had grasped in her own when he was
+on the point of plucking one of the gemlike flowers. On the back of
+that hand there was now a purple print like that of four small fingers,
+and the likeness of a slender thumb upon his wrist.
+
+Oh, how stubbornly does love,--or even that cunning semblance of love
+which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of root into
+the heart,--how stubbornly does it hold its faith until the moment
+comes when it is doomed to vanish into thin mist! Giovanni wrapped a
+handkerchief about his hand and wondered what evil thing had stung him,
+and soon forgot his pain in a reverie of Beatrice.
+
+After the first interview, a second was in the inevitable course of
+what we call fate. A third; a fourth; and a meeting with Beatrice in
+the garden was no longer an incident in Giovanni's daily life, but the
+whole space in which he might be said to live; for the anticipation and
+memory of that ecstatic hour made up the remainder. Nor was it
+otherwise with the daughter of Rappaccini. She watched for the youth's
+appearance, and flew to his side with confidence as unreserved as if
+they had been playmates from early infancy--as if they were such
+playmates still. If, by any unwonted chance, he failed to come at the
+appointed moment, she stood beneath the window and sent up the rich
+sweetness of her tones to float around him in his chamber and echo and
+reverberate throughout his heart: "Giovanni! Giovanni! Why tarriest
+thou? Come down!" And down he hastened into that Eden of poisonous
+flowers.
+
+But, with all this intimate familiarity, there was still a reserve in
+Beatrice's demeanor, so rigidly and invariably sustained that the idea
+of infringing it scarcely occurred to his imagination. By all
+appreciable signs, they loved; they had looked love with eyes that
+conveyed the holy secret from the depths of one soul into the depths of
+the other, as if it were too sacred to be whispered by the way; they
+had even spoken love in those gushes of passion when their spirits
+darted forth in articulated breath like tongues of long-hidden flame;
+and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any
+slightest caress such as love claims and hallows. He had never touched
+one of the gleaming ringlets of her hair; her garment--so marked was
+the physical barrier between them--had never been waved against him by
+a breeze. On the few occasions when Giovanni had seemed tempted to
+overstep the limit, Beatrice grew so sad, so stern, and withal wore
+such a look of desolate separation, shuddering at itself, that not a
+spoken word was requisite to repel him. At such times he was startled
+at the horrible suspicions that rose, monster-like, out of the caverns
+of his heart and stared him in the face; his love grew thin and faint
+as the morning mist, his doubts alone had substance. But, when
+Beatrice's face brightened again after the momentary shadow, she was
+transformed at once from the mysterious, questionable being whom he had
+watched with so much awe and horror; she was now the beautiful and
+unsophisticated girl whom he felt that his spirit knew with a certainty
+beyond all other knowledge.
+
+A considerable time had now passed since Giovanni's last meeting with
+Baglioni. One morning, however, he was disagreeably surprised by a
+visit from the professor, whom he had scarcely thought of for whole
+weeks, and would willingly have forgotten still longer. Given up as he
+had long been to a pervading excitement, he could tolerate no
+companions except upon condition of their perfect sympathy with his
+present state of feeling. Such sympathy was not to be expected from
+Professor Baglioni.
+
+The visitor chatted carelessly for a few moments about the gossip of
+the city and the university, and then took up another topic.
+
+"I have been reading an old classic author lately," said he, "and met
+with a story that strangely interested me. Possibly you may remember
+it. It is of an Indian prince, who sent a beautiful woman as a present
+to Alexander the Great. She was as lovely as the dawn and gorgeous as
+the sunset; but what especially distinguished her was a certain rich
+perfume in her breath--richer than a garden of Persian roses.
+Alexander, as was natural to a youthful conqueror, fell in love at
+first sight with this magnificent stranger; but a certain sage
+physician, happening to be present, discovered a terrible secret in
+regard to her."
+
+"And what was that?" asked Giovanni, turning his eyes downward to avoid
+those of the professor.
+
+"That this lovely woman," continued Baglioni, with emphasis, "had been
+nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until her whole nature
+was so imbued with them that she herself had become the deadliest
+poison in existence. Poison was her element of life. With that rich
+perfume of her breath she blasted the very air. Her love would have
+been poison--her embrace death. Is not this a marvellous tale?"
+
+"A childish fable," answered Giovanni, nervously starting from his
+chair. "I marvel how your worship finds time to read such nonsense
+among your graver studies."
+
+"By the by," said the professor, looking uneasily about him, "what
+singular fragrance is this in your apartment? Is it the perfume of your
+gloves? It is faint, but delicious; and yet, after all, by no means
+agreeable. Were I to breathe it long, methinks it would make me ill. It
+is like the breath of a flower; but I see no flowers in the chamber."
+
+"Nor are there any," replied Giovanni, who had turned pale as the
+professor spoke; "nor, I think, is there any fragrance except in your
+worship's imagination. Odors, being a sort of element combined of the
+sensual and the spiritual, are apt to deceive us in this manner. The
+recollection of a perfume, the bare idea of it, may easily be mistaken
+for a present reality."
+
+"Ay; but my sober imagination does not often play such tricks," said
+Baglioni; "and, were I to fancy any kind of odor, it would be that of
+some vile apothecary drug, wherewith my fingers are likely enough to be
+imbued. Our worshipful friend Rappaccini, as I have heard, tinctures
+his medicaments with odors richer than those of Araby. Doubtless,
+likewise, the fair and learned Signora Beatrice would minister to her
+patients with draughts as sweet as a maiden's breath; but woe to him
+that sips them!"
+
+Giovanni's face evinced many contending emotions. The tone in which the
+professor alluded to the pure and lovely daughter of Rappaccini was a
+torture to his soul; and yet the intimation of a view of her character
+opposite to his own, gave instantaneous distinctness to a thousand dim
+suspicions, which now grinned at him like so many demons. But he strove
+hard to quell them and to respond to Baglioni with a true lover's
+perfect faith.
+
+"Signor professor," said he, "you were my father's friend; perchance,
+too, it is your purpose to act a friendly part towards his son. I would
+fain feel nothing towards you save respect and deference; but I pray
+you to observe, signor, that there is one subject on which we must not
+speak. You know not the Signora Beatrice. You cannot, therefore,
+estimate the wrong--the blasphemy, I may even say--that is offered to
+her character by a light or injurious word."
+
+"Giovanni! my poor Giovanni!" answered the professor, with a calm
+expression of pity, "I know this wretched girl far better than
+yourself. You shall hear the truth in respect to the poisoner
+Rappaccini and his poisonous daughter; yes, poisonous as she is
+beautiful. Listen; for, even should you do violence to my gray hairs,
+it shall not silence me. That old fable of the Indian woman has become
+a truth by the deep and deadly science of Rappaccini and in the person
+of the lovely Beatrice."
+
+Giovanni groaned and hid his face
+
+"Her father," continued Baglioni, "was not restrained by natural
+affection from offering up his child in this horrible manner as the
+victim of his insane zeal for science; for, let us do him justice, he
+is as true a man of science as ever distilled his own heart in an
+alembic. What, then, will be your fate? Beyond a doubt you are selected
+as the material of some new experiment. Perhaps the result is to be
+death; perhaps a fate more awful still. Rappaccini, with what he calls
+the interest of science before his eyes, will hesitate at nothing."
+
+"It is a dream," muttered Giovanni to himself; "surely it is a dream."
+
+"But," resumed the professor, "be of good cheer, son of my friend. It
+is not yet too late for the rescue. Possibly we may even succeed in
+bringing back this miserable child within the limits of ordinary
+nature, from which her father's madness has estranged her. Behold this
+little silver vase! It was wrought by the hands of the renowned
+Benvenuto Cellini, and is well worthy to be a love gift to the fairest
+dame in Italy. But its contents are invaluable. One little sip of this
+antidote would have rendered the most virulent poisons of the Borgias
+innocuous. Doubt not that it will be as efficacious against those of
+Rappaccini. Bestow the vase, and the precious liquid within it, on your
+Beatrice, and hopefully await the result."
+
+Baglioni laid a small, exquisitely wrought silver vial on the table and
+withdrew, leaving what he had said to produce its effect upon the young
+man's mind.
+
+"We will thwart Rappaccini yet," thought he, chuckling to himself, as
+he descended the stairs; "but, let us confess the truth of him, he is a
+wonderful man--a wonderful man indeed; a vile empiric, however, in his
+practice, and therefore not to be tolerated by those who respect the
+good old rules of the medical profession."
+
+Throughout Giovanni's whole acquaintance with Beatrice, he had
+occasionally, as we have said, been haunted by dark surmises as to her
+character; yet so thoroughly had she made herself felt by him as a
+simple, natural, most affectionate, and guileless creature, that the
+image now held up by Professor Baglioni looked as strange and
+incredible as if it were not in accordance with his own original
+conception. True, there were ugly recollections connected with his
+first glimpses of the beautiful girl; he could not quite forget the
+bouquet that withered in her grasp, and the insect that perished amid
+the sunny air, by no ostensible agency save the fragrance of her
+breath. These incidents, however, dissolving in the pure light of her
+character, had no longer the efficacy of facts, but were acknowledged
+as mistaken fantasies, by whatever testimony of the senses they might
+appear to be substantiated. There is something truer and more real than
+what we can see with the eyes and touch with the finger. On such better
+evidence had Giovanni founded his confidence in Beatrice, though rather
+by the necessary force of her high attributes than by any deep and
+generous faith on his part. But now his spirit was incapable of
+sustaining itself at the height to which the early enthusiasm of
+passion had exalted it; he fell down, grovelling among earthly doubts,
+and defiled therewith the pure whiteness of Beatrice's image. Not that
+he gave her up; he did but distrust. He resolved to institute some
+decisive test that should satisfy him, once for all, whether there were
+those dreadful peculiarities in her physical nature which could not be
+supposed to exist without some corresponding monstrosity of soul. His
+eyes, gazing down afar, might have deceived him as to the lizard, the
+insect, and the flowers; but if he could witness, at the distance of a
+few paces, the sudden blight of one fresh and healthful flower in
+Beatrice's hand, there would be room for no further question. With this
+idea he hastened to the florist's and purchased a bouquet that was
+still gemmed with the morning dew-drops.
+
+It was now the customary hour of his daily interview with Beatrice.
+Before descending into the garden, Giovanni failed not to look at his
+figure in the mirror,--a vanity to be expected in a beautiful young
+man, yet, as displaying itself at that troubled and feverish moment,
+the token of a certain shallowness of feeling and insincerity of
+character. He did gaze, however, and said to himself that his features
+had never before possessed so rich a grace, nor his eyes such vivacity,
+nor his cheeks so warm a hue of superabundant life.
+
+"At least," thought he, "her poison has not yet insinuated itself into
+my system. I am no flower to perish in her grasp."
+
+With that thought he turned his eyes on the bouquet, which he had never
+once laid aside from his hand. A thrill of indefinable horror shot
+through his frame on perceiving that those dewy flowers were already
+beginning to droop; they wore the aspect of things that had been fresh
+and lovely yesterday. Giovanni grew white as marble, and stood
+motionless before the mirror, staring at his own reflection there as at
+the likeness of something frightful. He remembered Baglioni's remark
+about the fragrance that seemed to pervade the chamber. It must have
+been the poison in his breath! Then he shuddered--shuddered at himself.
+Recovering from his stupor, he began to watch with curious eye a spider
+that was busily at work hanging its web from the antique cornice of the
+apartment, crossing and recrossing the artful system of interwoven
+lines--as vigorous and active a spider as ever dangled from an old
+ceiling. Giovanni bent towards the insect, and emitted a deep, long
+breath. The spider suddenly ceased its toil; the web vibrated with a
+tremor originating in the body of the small artisan. Again Giovanni
+sent forth a breath, deeper, longer, and imbued with a venomous feeling
+out of his heart: he knew not whether he were wicked, or only
+desperate. The spider made a convulsive gripe with his limbs and hung
+dead across the window.
+
+"Accursed! accursed!" muttered Giovanni, addressing himself. "Hast thou
+grown so poisonous that this deadly insect perishes by thy breath?"
+
+At that moment a rich, sweet voice came floating up from the garden.
+
+"Giovanni! Giovanni! It is past the hour! Why tarriest thou? Come down!"
+
+"Yes," muttered Giovanni again. "She is the only being whom my breath
+may not slay! Would that it might!"
+
+He rushed down, and in an instant was standing before the bright and
+loving eyes of Beatrice. A moment ago his wrath and despair had been so
+fierce that he could have desired nothing so much as to wither her by a
+glance; but with her actual presence there came influences which had
+too real an existence to be at once shaken off: recollections of the
+delicate and benign power of her feminine nature, which had so often
+enveloped him in a religious calm; recollections of many a holy and
+passionate outgush of her heart, when the pure fountain had been
+unsealed from its depths and made visible in its transparency to his
+mental eye; recollections which, had Giovanni known how to estimate
+them, would have assured him that all this ugly mystery was but an
+earthly illusion, and that, whatever mist of evil might seem to have
+gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel. Incapable as
+he was of such high faith, still her presence had not utterly lost its
+magic. Giovanni's rage was quelled into an aspect of sullen
+insensibility. Beatrice, with a quick spiritual sense, immediately felt
+that there was a gulf of blackness between them which neither he nor
+she could pass. They walked on together, sad and silent, and came thus
+to the marble fountain and to its pool of water on the ground, in the
+midst of which grew the shrub that bore gem-like blossoms. Giovanni was
+affrighted at the eager enjoyment--the appetite, as it were--with which
+he found himself inhaling the fragrance of the flowers.
+
+"Beatrice," asked he, abruptly, "whence came this shrub?"
+
+"My father created it," answered she, with simplicity.
+
+"Created it! created it!" repeated Giovanni. "What mean you, Beatrice?"
+
+"He is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of Nature," replied
+Beatrice; "and, at the hour when I first drew breath, this plant sprang
+from the soil, the offspring of his science, of his intellect, while I
+was but his earthly child. Approach it not!" continued she, observing
+with terror that Giovanni was drawing nearer to the shrub. "It has
+qualities that you little dream of. But I, dearest Giovanni,--I grew up
+and blossomed with the plant and was nourished with its breath. It was
+my sister, and I loved it with a human affection; for, alas!--hast thou
+not suspected it?--there was an awful doom."
+
+Here Giovanni frowned so darkly upon her that Beatrice paused and
+trembled. But her faith in his tenderness reassured her, and made her
+blush that she had doubted for an instant.
+
+"There was an awful doom," she continued, "the effect of my father's
+fatal love of science, which estranged me from all society of my kind.
+Until Heaven sent thee, dearest Giovanni, oh, how lonely was thy poor
+Beatrice!"
+
+"Was it a hard doom?" asked Giovanni, fixing his eyes upon her.
+
+"Only of late have I known how hard it was," answered she, tenderly.
+"Oh, yes; but my heart was torpid, and therefore quiet."
+
+Giovanni's rage broke forth from his sullen gloom like a lightning
+flash out of a dark cloud.
+
+"Accursed one!" cried he, with venomous scorn and anger. "And, finding
+thy solitude wearisome, thou hast severed me likewise from all the
+warmth of life and enticed me into thy region of unspeakable horror!"
+
+"Giovanni!" exclaimed Beatrice, turning her large bright eyes upon his
+face. The force of his words had not found its way into her mind; she
+was merely thunderstruck.
+
+"Yes, poisonous thing!" repeated Giovanni, beside himself with passion.
+"Thou hast done it! Thou hast blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins
+with poison! Thou hast made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and
+deadly a creature as thyself--a world's wonder of hideous monstrosity!
+Now, if our breath be happily as fatal to ourselves as to all others,
+let us join our lips in one kiss of unutterable hatred, and so die!"
+
+"What has befallen me?" murmured Beatrice, with a low moan out of her
+heart. "Holy Virgin, pity me, a poor heart-broken child!"
+
+"Thou,--dost thou pray?" cried Giovanni, still with the same fiendish
+scorn. "Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the
+atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to church and dip
+our fingers in the holy water at the portal! They that come after us
+will perish as by a pestilence! Let us sign crosses in the air! It will
+be scattering curses abroad in the likeness of holy symbols!"
+
+"Giovanni," said Beatrice, calmly, for her grief was beyond passion,
+"why dost thou join thyself with me thus in those terrible words? I, it
+is true, am the horrible thing thou namest me. But thou,--what hast
+thou to do, save with one other shudder at my hideous misery to go
+forth out of the garden and mingle with thy race, and forget there ever
+crawled on earth such a monster as poor Beatrice?"
+
+"Dost thou pretend ignorance?" asked Giovanni, scowling upon her.
+"Behold! this power have I gained from the pure daughter of Rappaccini."
+
+There was a swarm of summer insects flitting through the air in search
+of the food promised by the flower odors of the fatal garden. They
+circled round Giovanni's head, and were evidently attracted towards him
+by the same influence which had drawn them for an instant within the
+sphere of several of the shrubs. He sent forth a breath among them, and
+smiled bitterly at Beatrice as at least a score of the insects fell
+dead upon the ground.
+
+"I see it! I see it!" shrieked Beatrice. "It is my father's fatal
+science! No, no, Giovanni; it was not I! Never! never! I dreamed only
+to love thee and be with thee a little time, and so to let thee pass
+away, leaving but thine image in mine heart; for, Giovanni, believe it,
+though my body be nourished with poison, my spirit is God's creature,
+and craves love as its daily food. But my father,--he has united us in
+this fearful sympathy. Yes; spurn me, tread upon me, kill me! Oh, what
+is death after such words as thine? But it was not I. Not for a world
+of bliss would I have done it."
+
+Giovanni's passion had exhausted itself in its outburst from his lips.
+There now came across him a sense, mournful, and not without
+tenderness, of the intimate and peculiar relationship between Beatrice
+and himself. They stood, as it were, in an utter solitude, which would
+be made none the less solitary by the densest throng of human life.
+Ought not, then, the desert of humanity around them to press this
+insulated pair closer together? If they should be cruel to one another,
+who was there to be kind to them? Besides, thought Giovanni, might
+there not still be a hope of his returning within the limits of
+ordinary nature, and leading Beatrice, the redeemed Beatrice, by the
+hand? O, weak, and selfish, and unworthy spirit, that could dream of an
+earthly union and earthly happiness as possible, after such deep love
+had been so bitterly wronged as was Beatrice's love by Giovanni's
+blighting words! No, no; there could be no such hope. She must pass
+heavily, with that broken heart, across the borders of Time--she must
+bathe her hurts in some fount of paradise, and forget her grief in the
+light of immortality, and THERE be well.
+
+But Giovanni did not know it.
+
+"Dear Beatrice," said he, approaching her, while she shrank away as
+always at his approach, but now with a different impulse, "dearest
+Beatrice, our fate is not yet so desperate. Behold! there is a
+medicine, potent, as a wise physician has assured me, and almost divine
+in its efficacy. It is composed of ingredients the most opposite to
+those by which thy awful father has brought this calamity upon thee and
+me. It is distilled of blessed herbs. Shall we not quaff it together,
+and thus be purified from evil?"
+
+"Give it me!" said Beatrice, extending her hand to receive the little
+silver vial which Giovanni took from his bosom. She added, with a
+peculiar emphasis, "I will drink; but do thou await the result."
+
+She put Baglioni's antidote to her lips; and, at the same moment, the
+figure of Rappaccini emerged from the portal and came slowly towards
+the marble fountain. As he drew near, the pale man of science seemed to
+gaze with a triumphant expression at the beautiful youth and maiden, as
+might an artist who should spend his life in achieving a picture or a
+group of statuary and finally be satisfied with his success. He paused;
+his bent form grew erect with conscious power; he spread out his hands
+over them in the attitude of a father imploring a blessing upon his
+children; but those were the same hands that had thrown poison into the
+stream of their lives. Giovanni trembled. Beatrice shuddered nervously,
+and pressed her hand upon her heart.
+
+"My daughter," said Rappaccini, "thou art no longer lonely in the
+world. Pluck one of those precious gems from thy sister shrub and bid
+thy bridegroom wear it in his bosom. It will not harm him now. My
+science and the sympathy between thee and him have so wrought within
+his system that he now stands apart from common men, as thou dost,
+daughter of my pride and triumph, from ordinary women. Pass on, then,
+through the world, most dear to one another and dreadful to all
+besides!"
+
+"My father," said Beatrice, feebly,--and still as she spoke she kept
+her hand upon her heart,--"wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable
+doom upon thy child?"
+
+"Miserable!" exclaimed Rappaccini. "What mean you, foolish girl? Dost
+thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvellous gifts against which
+no power nor strength could avail an enemy--misery, to be able to quell
+the mightiest with a breath--misery, to be as terrible as thou art
+beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak
+woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?"
+
+"I would fain have been loved, not feared," murmured Beatrice, sinking
+down upon the ground. "But now it matters not. I am going, father,
+where the evil which thou hast striven to mingle with my being will
+pass away like a dream-like the fragrance of these poisonous flowers,
+which will no longer taint my breath among the flowers of Eden.
+Farewell, Giovanni! Thy words of hatred are like lead within my heart;
+but they, too, will fall away as I ascend. Oh, was there not, from the
+first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?"
+
+To Beatrice,--so radically had her earthly part been wrought upon by
+Rappaccini's skill,--as poison had been life, so the powerful antidote
+was death; and thus the poor victim of man's ingenuity and of thwarted
+nature, and of the fatality that attends all such efforts of perverted
+wisdom, perished there, at the feet of her father and Giovanni. Just at
+that moment Professor Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window, and
+called loudly, in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, to the
+thunderstricken man of science, "Rappaccini! Rappaccini! and is THIS
+the upshot of your experiment!"
+
+
+
+MRS. BULLFROG
+
+It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people
+act in the matter of choosing wives. They perplex their judgments by a
+most undue attention to little niceties of personal appearance, habits,
+disposition, and other trifles which concern nobody but the lady
+herself. An unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of
+perfection, keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered
+that no tolerable woman will accept them. Now this is the very height
+of absurdity. A kind Providence has so skilfully adapted sex to sex and
+the mass of individuals to each other, that, with certain obvious
+exceptions, any male and female may be moderately happy in the married
+state. The true rule is to ascertain that the match is fundamentally a
+good one, and then to take it for granted that all minor objections,
+should there be such, will vanish, if you let them alone. Only put
+yourself beyond hazard as to the real basis of matrimonial bliss, and
+it is scarcely to be imagined what miracles, in the way of recognizing
+smaller incongruities, connubial love will effect.
+
+For my own part I freely confess that, in my bachelorship, I was
+precisely such an over-curious simpleton as I now advise the reader not
+to be. My early habits had gifted me with a feminine sensibility and
+too exquisite refinement. I was the accomplished graduate of a dry
+goods store, where, by dint of ministering to the whims of fine ladies,
+and suiting silken hose to delicate limbs, and handling satins,
+ribbons, chintzes calicoes, tapes, gauze, and cambric needles, I grew
+up a very ladylike sort of a gentleman. It is not assuming too much to
+affirm that the ladies themselves were hardly so ladylike as Thomas
+Bullfrog. So painfully acute was my sense of female imperfection, and
+such varied excellence did I require in the woman whom I could love,
+that there was an awful risk of my getting no wife at all, or of being
+driven to perpetrate matrimony with my own image in the looking-glass.
+Besides the fundamental principle already hinted at, I demanded the
+fresh bloom of youth, pearly teeth, glossy ringlets, and the whole list
+of lovely items, with the utmost delicacy of habits and sentiments, a
+silken texture of mind, and, above all, a virgin heart. In a word, if a
+young angel just from paradise, yet dressed in earthly fashion, had
+come and offered me her hand, it is by no means certain that I should
+have taken it. There was every chance of my becoming a most miserable
+old bachelor, when, by the best luck in the world, I made a journey
+into another state, and was smitten by, and smote again, and wooed,
+won, and married, the present Mrs. Bullfrog, all in the space of a
+fortnight. Owing to these extempore measures, I not only gave my bride
+credit for certain perfections which have not as yet come to light, but
+also overlooked a few trifling defects, which, however, glimmered on my
+perception long before the close of the honeymoon. Yet, as there was no
+mistake about the fundamental principle aforesaid, I soon learned, as
+will be seen, to estimate Mrs. Bullfrog's deficiencies and
+superfluities at exactly their proper value.
+
+The same morning that Mrs. Bullfrog and I came together as a unit, we
+took two seats in the stage-coach and began our journey towards my
+place of business. There being no other passengers, we were as much
+alone and as free to give vent to our raptures as if I had hired a hack
+for the matrimonial jaunt. My bride looked charmingly in a green silk
+calash and riding habit of pelisse cloth; and whenever her red lips
+parted with a smile, each tooth appeared like an inestimable pearl.
+Such was my passionate warmth that--we had rattled out of the village,
+gentle reader, and were lonely as Adam and Eve in paradise--I plead
+guilty to no less freedom than a kiss. The gentle eye of Mrs. Bullfrog
+scarcely rebuked me for the profanation. Emboldened by her indulgence,
+I threw back the calash from her polished brow, and suffered my
+fingers, white and delicate as her own, to stray among those dark and
+glossy curls which realized my daydreams of rich hair.
+
+"My love," said Mrs. Bullfrog tenderly, "you will disarrange my curls."
+
+"Oh, no, my sweet Laura!" replied I, still playing with the glossy
+ringlet. "Even your fair hand could not manage a curl more delicately
+than mine. I propose myself the pleasure of doing up your hair in
+papers every evening at the same time with my own."
+
+"Mr. Bullfrog," repeated she, "you must not disarrange my curls."
+
+This was spoken in a more decided tone than I had happened to hear,
+until then, from my gentlest of all gentle brides. At the same time she
+put up her hand and took mine prisoner; but merely drew it away from
+the forbidden ringlet, and then immediately released it. Now, I am a
+fidgety little man, and always love to have something in my fingers; so
+that, being debarred from my wife's curls, I looked about me for any
+other plaything. On the front seat of the coach there was one of those
+small baskets in which travelling ladies who are too delicate to appear
+at a public table generally carry a supply of gingerbread, biscuits and
+cheese, cold ham, and other light refreshments, merely to sustain
+nature to the journey's end. Such airy diet will sometimes keep them in
+pretty good flesh for a week together. Laying hold of this same little
+basket, I thrust my hand under the newspaper with which it was
+carefully covered.
+
+"What's this, my dear?" cried I; for the black neck of a bottle had
+popped out of the basket.
+
+"A bottle of Kalydor, Mr. Bullfrog," said my wife, coolly taking the
+basket from my hands and replacing it on the front seat.
+
+There was no possibility of doubting my wife's word; but I never knew
+genuine Kalydor, such as I use for my own complexion, to smell so much
+like cherry brandy. I was about to express my fears that the lotion
+would injure her skin, when an accident occurred which threatened more
+than a skin-deep injury. Our Jehu had carelessly driven over a heap of
+gravel and fairly capsized the coach, with the wheels in the air and
+our heels where our heads should have been. What became of my wits I
+cannot imagine; they have always had a perverse trick of deserting me
+just when they were most needed; but so it chanced, that in the
+confusion of our overthrow I quite forgot that there was a Mrs.
+Bullfrog in the world. Like many men's wives, the good lady served her
+husband as a steppingstone. I had scrambled out of the coach and was
+instinctively settling my cravat, when somebody brushed roughly by me,
+and I heard a smart thwack upon the coachman's ear.
+
+"Take that, you villain!" cried a strange, hoarse voice. "You have
+ruined me, you blackguard! I shall never be the woman I have been!"
+
+And then came a second thwack, aimed at the driver's other ear; but
+which missed it, and hit him on the nose, causing a terrible effusion
+of blood. Now, who or what fearful apparition was inflicting this
+punishment on the poor fellow remained an impenetrable mystery to me.
+The blows were given by a person of grisly aspect, with a head almost
+bald, and sunken cheeks, apparently of the feminine gender, though
+hardly to be classed in the gentler sex. There being no teeth to
+modulate the voice, it had a mumbled fierceness, not passionate, but
+stern, which absolutely made me quiver like calf's-foot jelly. Who
+could the phantom be? The most awful circumstance of the affair is yet
+to be told: for this ogre, or whatever it was, had a riding habit like
+Mrs. Bullfrog's, and also a green silk calash dangling down her back by
+the strings. In my terror and turmoil of mind I could imagine nothing
+less than that the Old Nick, at the moment of our overturn, had
+annihilated my wife and jumped into her petticoats. This idea seemed
+the most probable, since I could nowhere perceive Mrs. Bullfrog alive,
+nor, though I looked very sharply about the coach, could I detect any
+traces of that beloved woman's dead body. There would have been a
+comfort in giving her Christian burial.
+
+"Come, sir, bestir yourself! Help this rascal to set up the coach,"
+said the hobgoblin to me; then, with a terrific screech at three
+countrymen at a distance, "Here, you fellows, ain't you ashamed to
+stand off when a poor woman is in distress?"
+
+The countrymen, instead of fleeing for their lives, came running at
+full speed, and laid hold of the topsy-turvy coach. I, also, though a
+small-sized man, went to work like a son of Anak. The coachman, too,
+with the blood still streaming from his nose, tugged and toiled most
+manfully, dreading, doubtless, that the next blow might break his head.
+And yet, bemauled as the poor fellow had been, he seemed to glance at
+me with an eye of pity, as if my case were more deplorable than his.
+But I cherished a hope that all would turn out a dream, and seized the
+opportunity, as we raised the coach, to jam two of my fingers under the
+wheel, trusting that the pain would awaken me.
+
+"Why, here we are, all to rights again!" exclaimed a sweet voice
+behind. "Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen. My dear Mr.
+Bullfrog, how you perspire! Do let me wipe your face. Don't take this
+little accident too much to heart, good driver. We ought to be thankful
+that none of our necks are broken."
+
+"We might have spared one neck out of the three," muttered the driver,
+rubbing his ear and pulling his nose, to ascertain whether he had been
+cuffed or not. "Why, the woman's a witch!"
+
+I fear that the reader will not believe, yet it is positively a fact,
+that there stood Mrs. Bullfrog, with her glossy ringlets curling on her
+brow, and two rows of orient pearls gleaming between her parted lips,
+which wore a most angelic smile. She had regained her riding habit and
+calash from the grisly phantom, and was, in all respects, the lovely
+woman who had been sitting by my side at the instant of our overturn.
+How she had happened to disappear, and who had supplied her place, and
+whence she did now return, were problems too knotty for me to solve.
+There stood my wife. That was the one thing certain among a heap of
+mysteries. Nothing remained but to help her into the coach, and plod
+on, through the journey of the day and the journey of life, as
+comfortably as we could. As the driver closed the door upon us, I heard
+him whisper to the three countrymen, "How do you suppose a fellow feels
+shut up in the cage with a she tiger?"
+
+Of course this query could have no reference to my situation. Yet,
+unreasonable as it may appear, I confess that my feelings were not
+altogether so ecstatic as when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine. True,
+she was a sweet woman and an angel of a wife; but what if a Gorgon
+should return, amid the transports of our connubial bliss, and take the
+angel's place. I recollected the tale of a fairy, who half the time was
+a beautiful woman and half the time a hideous monster. Had I taken that
+very fairy to be the wife of my bosom? While such whims and chimeras
+were flitting across my fancy I began to look askance at Mrs. Bullfrog,
+almost expecting that the transformation would be wrought before my
+eyes.
+
+To divert my mind, I took up the newspaper which had covered the little
+basket of refreshments, and which now lay at the bottom of the coach,
+blushing with a deep-red stain and emitting a potent spirituous fume
+from the contents of the broken bottle of Kalydor. The paper was two or
+three years old, but contained an article of several columns, in which
+I soon grew wonderfully interested. It was the report of a trial for
+breach of promise of marriage, giving the testimony in full, with
+fervid extracts from both the gentleman's and lady's amatory
+correspondence. The deserted damsel had personally appeared in court,
+and had borne energetic evidence to her lover's perfidy and the
+strength of her blighted affections. On the defendant's part there had
+been an attempt, though insufficiently sustained, to blast the
+plaintiff's character, and a plea, in mitigation of damages, on account
+of her unamiable temper. A horrible idea was suggested by the lady's
+name.
+
+"Madam," said I, holding the newspaper before Mrs. Bullfrog's
+eyes,--and, though a small, delicate, and thin-visaged man, I feel
+assured that I looked very terrific,--"madam," repeated I, through my
+shut teeth, "were you the plaintiff in this cause?"
+
+"Oh, my dear Mr. Bullfrog," replied my wife, sweetly, "I thought all
+the world knew that!"
+
+"Horror! horror!" exclaimed I, sinking back on the seat.
+
+Covering my face with both hands, I emitted a deep and deathlike groan,
+as if my tormented soul were rending me asunder--I, the most
+exquisitely fastidious of men, and whose wife was to have been the most
+delicate and refined of women, with all the fresh dew-drops glittering
+on her virgin rosebud of a heart!
+
+I thought of the glossy ringlets and pearly teeth; I thought of the
+Kalydor; I thought of the coachman's bruised ear and bloody nose; I
+thought of the tender love secrets which she had whispered to the judge
+and jury and a thousand tittering auditors,--and gave another groan!
+
+"Mr. Bullfrog," said my wife.
+
+As I made no reply, she gently took my hands within her own, removed
+them from my face, and fixed her eyes steadfastly on mine.
+
+"Mr. Bullfrog," said she, not unkindly, yet with all the decision of
+her strong character, "let me advise you to overcome this foolish
+weakness, and prove yourself, to the best of your ability, as good a
+husband as I will be a wife. You have discovered, perhaps, some little
+imperfections in your bride. Well, what did you expect? Women are not
+angels. If they were, they would go to heaven for husbands; or, at
+least, be more difficult in their choice on earth."
+
+"But why conceal those imperfections?" interposed I, tremulously.
+
+"Now, my love, are not you a most unreasonable little man?" said Mrs.
+Bullfrog, patting me on the cheek. "Ought a woman to disclose her
+frailties earlier than the wedding day? Few husbands, I assure you,
+make the discovery in such good season, and still fewer complain that
+these trifles are concealed too long. Well, what a strange man you are!
+Poh! you are joking."
+
+"But the suit for breach of promise!" groaned I.
+
+"Ah, and is that the rub?" exclaimed my wife. "Is it possible that you
+view that affair in an objectionable light? Mr. Bullfrog, I never could
+have dreamed it! Is it an objection that I have triumphantly defended
+myself against slander and vindicated my purity in a court of justice?
+Or do you complain because your wife has shown the proper spirit of a
+woman, and punished the villain who trifled with her affections?"
+
+"But," persisted I, shrinking into a corner of the coach, however,--for
+I did not know precisely how much contradiction the proper spirit of a
+woman would endure,--"but, my love, would it not have been more
+dignified to treat the villain with the silent contempt he merited?"
+
+"That is all very well, Mr. Bullfrog," said my wife, slyly; "but, in
+that case, where would have been the five thousand dollars which are to
+stock your dry goods store?"
+
+"Mrs. Bullfrog, upon your honor," demanded I, as if my life hung upon
+her words, "is there no mistake about those five thousand dollars?"
+
+"Upon my word and honor there is none," replied she. "The jury gave me
+every cent the rascal had; and I have kept it all for my dear Bullfrog."
+
+"Then, thou dear woman," cried I, with an overwhelming gush of
+tenderness, "let me fold thee to my heart. The basis of matrimonial
+bliss is secure, and all thy little defects and frailties are forgiven.
+Nay, since the result has been so fortunate, I rejoice at the wrongs
+which drove thee to this blessed lawsuit. Happy Bullfrog that I am!"
+
+
+
+THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD
+
+Not a great while ago, passing through the gate of dreams, I visited
+that region of the earth in which lies the famous City of Destruction.
+It interested me much to learn that by the public spirit of some of the
+inhabitants a railroad has recently been established between this
+populous and flourishing town and the Celestial City. Having a little
+time upon my hands, I resolved to gratify a liberal curiosity by making
+a trip thither. Accordingly, one fine morning after paying my bill at
+the hotel, and directing the porter to stow my luggage behind a coach,
+I took my seat in the vehicle and set out for the station-house. It was
+my good fortune to enjoy the company of a gentleman--one Mr.
+Smooth-it-away--who, though he had never actually visited the Celestial
+City, yet seemed as well acquainted with its laws, customs, policy, and
+statistics, as with those of the City of Destruction, of which he was a
+native townsman. Being, moreover, a director of the railroad
+corporation and one of its largest stockholders, he had it in his power
+to give me all desirable information respecting that praiseworthy
+enterprise.
+
+Our coach rattled out of the city, and at a short distance from its
+outskirts passed over a bridge of elegant construction, but somewhat
+too slight, as I imagined, to sustain any considerable weight. On both
+sides lay an extensive quagmire, which could not have been more
+disagreeable either to sight or smell, had all the kennels of the earth
+emptied their pollution there.
+
+"This," remarked Mr. Smooth-it-away, "is the famous Slough of
+Despond--a disgrace to all the neighborhood; and the greater that it
+might so easily be converted into firm ground."
+
+"I have understood," said I, "that efforts have been made for that
+purpose from time immemorial. Bunyan mentions that above twenty
+thousand cartloads of wholesome instructions had been thrown in here
+without effect."
+
+"Very probably! And what effect could be anticipated from such
+unsubstantial stuff?" cried Mr. Smooth-it-away. "You observe this
+convenient bridge. We obtained a sufficient foundation for it by
+throwing into the slough some editions of books of morality, volumes of
+French philosophy and German rationalism; tracts, sermons, and essays
+of modern clergymen; extracts from Plato, Confucius, and various Hindoo
+sages together with a few ingenious commentaries upon texts of
+Scripture,--all of which by some scientific process, have been
+converted into a mass like granite. The whole bog might be filled up
+with similar matter."
+
+It really seemed to me, however, that the bridge vibrated and heaved up
+and down in a very formidable manner; and, in spite of Mr.
+Smooth-it-away's testimony to the solidity of its foundation, I should
+be loath to cross it in a crowded omnibus, especially if each passenger
+were encumbered with as heavy luggage as that gentleman and myself.
+Nevertheless we got over without accident, and soon found ourselves at
+the stationhouse. This very neat and spacious edifice is erected on the
+site of the little wicket gate, which formerly, as all old pilgrims
+will recollect, stood directly across the highway, and, by its
+inconvenient narrowness, was a great obstruction to the traveller of
+liberal mind and expansive stomach The reader of John Bunyan will be
+glad to know that Christian's old friend Evangelist, who was accustomed
+to supply each pilgrim with a mystic roll, now presides at the ticket
+office. Some malicious persons it is true deny the identity of this
+reputable character with the Evangelist of old times, and even pretend
+to bring competent evidence of an imposture. Without involving myself
+in a dispute I shall merely observe that, so far as my experience goes,
+the square pieces of pasteboard now delivered to passengers are much
+more convenient and useful along the road than the antique roll of
+parchment. Whether they will be as readily received at the gate of the
+Celestial City I decline giving an opinion.
+
+A large number of passengers were already at the station-house awaiting
+the departure of the cars. By the aspect and demeanor of these persons
+it was easy to judge that the feelings of the community had undergone a
+very favorable change in reference to the celestial pilgrimage. It
+would have done Bunyan's heart good to see it. Instead of a lonely and
+ragged man with a huge burden on his back, plodding along sorrowfully
+on foot while the whole city hooted after him, here were parties of the
+first gentry and most respectable people in the neighborhood setting
+forth towards the Celestial City as cheerfully as if the pilgrimage
+were merely a summer tour. Among the gentlemen were characters of
+deserved eminence--magistrates, politicians, and men of wealth, by
+whose example religion could not but be greatly recommended to their
+meaner brethren. In the ladies' apartment, too, I rejoiced to
+distinguish some of those flowers of fashionable society who are so
+well fitted to adorn the most elevated circles of the Celestial City.
+There was much pleasant conversation about the news of the day, topics
+of business and politics, or the lighter matters of amusement; while
+religion, though indubitably the main thing at heart, was thrown
+tastefully into the background. Even an infidel would have heard little
+or nothing to shock his sensibility.
+
+One great convenience of the new method of going on pilgrimage I must
+not forget to mention. Our enormous burdens, instead of being carried
+on our shoulders as had been the custom of old, were all snugly
+deposited in the baggage car, and, as I was assured, would be delivered
+to their respective owners at the journey's end. Another thing,
+likewise, the benevolent reader will be delighted to understand. It may
+be remembered that there was an ancient feud between Prince Beelzebub
+and the keeper of the wicket gate, and that the adherents of the former
+distinguished personage were accustomed to shoot deadly arrows at
+honest pilgrims while knocking at the door. This dispute, much to the
+credit as well of the illustrious potentate above mentioned as of the
+worthy and enlightened directors of the railroad, has been pacifically
+arranged on the principle of mutual compromise. The prince's subjects
+are now pretty numerously employed about the station-house, some in
+taking care of the baggage, others in collecting fuel, feeding the
+engines, and such congenial occupations; and I can conscientiously
+affirm that persons more attentive to their business, more willing to
+accommodate, or more generally agreeable to the passengers, are not to
+be found on any railroad. Every good heart must surely exult at so
+satisfactory an arrangement of an immemorial difficulty.
+
+"Where is Mr. Greatheart?" inquired I. "Beyond a doubt the directors
+have engaged that famous old champion to be chief conductor on the
+railroad?"
+
+"Why, no," said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a dry cough. "He was offered
+the situation of brakeman; but, to tell you the truth, our friend
+Greatheart has grown preposterously stiff and narrow in his old age. He
+has so often guided pilgrims over the road on foot that he considers it
+a sin to travel in any other fashion. Besides, the old fellow had
+entered so heartily into the ancient feud with Prince Beelzebub that he
+would have been perpetually at blows or ill language with some of the
+prince's subjects, and thus have embroiled us anew. So, on the whole,
+we were not sorry when honest Greatheart went off to the Celestial City
+in a huff and left us at liberty to choose a more suitable and
+accommodating man. Yonder comes the engineer of the train. You will
+probably recognize him at once."
+
+The engine at this moment took its station in advance of the cars,
+looking, I must confess, much more like a sort of mechanical demon that
+would hurry us to the infernal regions than a laudable contrivance for
+smoothing our way to the Celestial City. On its top sat a personage
+almost enveloped in smoke and flame, which, not to startle the reader,
+appeared to gush from his own mouth and stomach as well as from the
+engine's brazen abdomen.
+
+"Do my eyes deceive me?" cried I. "What on earth is this! A living
+creature? If so, he is own brother to the engine he rides upon!"
+
+"Poh, poh, you are obtuse!" said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a hearty
+laugh. "Don't you know Apollyon, Christian's old enemy, with whom he
+fought so fierce a battle in the Valley of Humiliation? He was the very
+fellow to manage the engine; and so we have reconciled him to the
+custom of going on pilgrimage, and engaged him as chief engineer."
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" exclaimed I, with irrepressible enthusiasm; "this shows
+the liberality of the age; this proves, if anything can, that all musty
+prejudices are in a fair way to be obliterated. And how will Christian
+rejoice to hear of this happy transformation of his old antagonist! I
+promise myself great pleasure in informing him of it when we reach the
+Celestial City."
+
+The passengers being all comfortably seated, we now rattled away
+merrily, accomplishing a greater distance in ten minutes than Christian
+probably trudged over in a day. It was laughable, while we glanced
+along, as it were, at the tail of a thunderbolt, to observe two dusty
+foot travellers in the old pilgrim guise, with cockle shell and staff,
+their mystic rolls of parchment in their hands and their intolerable
+burdens on their backs. The preposterous obstinacy of these honest
+people in persisting to groan and stumble along the difficult pathway
+rather than take advantage of modern improvements, excited great mirth
+among our wiser brotherhood. We greeted the two pilgrims with many
+pleasant gibes and a roar of laughter; whereupon they gazed at us with
+such woful and absurdly compassionate visages that our merriment grew
+tenfold more obstreperous. Apollyon also entered heartily into the fun,
+and contrived to flirt the smoke and flame of the engine, or of his own
+breath, into their faces, and envelop them in an atmosphere of scalding
+steam. These little practical jokes amused us mightily, and doubtless
+afforded the pilgrims the gratification of considering themselves
+martyrs.
+
+At some distance from the railroad Mr. Smooth-it-away pointed to a
+large, antique edifice, which, he observed, was a tavern of long
+standing, and had formerly been a noted stopping-place for pilgrims. In
+Bunyan's road-book it is mentioned as the Interpreter's House.
+
+"I have long had a curiosity to visit that old mansion," remarked I.
+
+"It is not one of our stations, as you perceive," said my companion
+"The keeper was violently opposed to the railroad; and well he might
+be, as the track left his house of entertainment on one side, and thus
+was pretty certain to deprive him of all his reputable customers. But
+the footpath still passes his door, and the old gentleman now and then
+receives a call from some simple traveller, and entertains him with
+fare as old-fashioned as himself."
+
+Before our talk on this subject came to a conclusion we were rushing by
+the place where Christian's burden fell from his shoulders at the sight
+of the Cross. This served as a theme for Mr. Smooth-it-away, Mr.
+Livefor-the-world, Mr. Hide-sin-in-the-heart, Mr. Scaly-conscience, and
+a knot of gentlemen from the town of Shun-repentance, to descant upon
+the inestimable advantages resulting from the safety of our baggage.
+Myself, and all the passengers indeed, joined with great unanimity in
+this view of the matter; for our burdens were rich in many things
+esteemed precious throughout the world; and, especially, we each of us
+possessed a great variety of favorite Habits, which we trusted would
+not be out of fashion even in the polite circles of the Celestial City.
+It would have been a sad spectacle to see such an assortment of
+valuable articles tumbling into the sepulchre. Thus pleasantly
+conversing on the favorable circumstances of our position as compared
+with those of past pilgrims and of narrow-minded ones at the present
+day, we soon found ourselves at the foot of the Hill Difficulty.
+Through the very heart of this rocky mountain a tunnel has been
+constructed of most admirable architecture, with a lofty arch and a
+spacious double track; so that, unless the earth and rocks should
+chance to crumble down, it will remain an eternal monument of the
+builder's skill and enterprise. It is a great though incidental
+advantage that the materials from the heart of the Hill Difficulty have
+been employed in filling up the Valley of Humiliation, thus obviating
+the necessity of descending into that disagreeable and unwholesome
+hollow.
+
+"This is a wonderful improvement, indeed," said I. "Yet I should have
+been glad of an opportunity to visit the Palace Beautiful and be
+introduced to the charming young ladies--Miss Prudence, Miss Piety,
+Miss Charity, and the rest--who have the kindness to entertain pilgrims
+there."
+
+"Young ladies!" cried Mr. Smooth-it-away, as soon as he could speak for
+laughing. "And charming young ladies! Why, my dear fellow, they are old
+maids, every soul of them--prim, starched, dry, and angular; and not
+one of them, I will venture to say, has altered so much as the fashion
+of her gown since the days of Christian's pilgrimage."
+
+"Ah, well," said I, much comforted, "then I can very readily dispense
+with their acquaintance."
+
+The respectable Apollyon was now putting on the steam at a prodigious
+rate, anxious, perhaps, to get rid of the unpleasant reminiscences
+connected with the spot where he had so disastrously encountered
+Christian. Consulting Mr. Bunyan's road-book, I perceived that we must
+now be within a few miles of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, into
+which doleful region, at our present speed, we should plunge much
+sooner than seemed at all desirable. In truth, I expected nothing
+better than to find myself in the ditch on one side or the Quag on the
+other; but on communicating my apprehensions to Mr. Smooth-it-away, he
+assured me that the difficulties of this passage, even in its worst
+condition, had been vastly exaggerated, and that, in its present state
+of improvement, I might consider myself as safe as on any railroad in
+Christendom.
+
+Even while we were speaking the train shot into the entrance of this
+dreaded Valley. Though I plead guilty to some foolish palpitations of
+the heart during our headlong rush over the causeway here constructed,
+yet it were unjust to withhold the highest encomiums on the boldness of
+its original conception and the ingenuity of those who executed it. It
+was gratifying, likewise, to observe how much care had been taken to
+dispel the everlasting gloom and supply the defect of cheerful
+sunshine, not a ray of which has ever penetrated among these awful
+shadows. For this purpose, the inflammable gas which exudes plentifully
+from the soil is collected by means of pipes, and thence communicated
+to a quadruple row of lamps along the whole extent of the passage. Thus
+a radiance has been created even out of the fiery and sulphurous curse
+that rests forever upon the valley--a radiance hurtful, however, to the
+eyes, and somewhat bewildering, as I discovered by the changes which it
+wrought in the visages of my companions. In this respect, as compared
+with natural daylight, there is the same difference as between truth
+and falsehood, but if the reader have ever travelled through the dark
+Valley, he will have learned to be thankful for any light that he could
+get--if not from the sky above, then from the blasted soil beneath.
+Such was the red brilliancy of these lamps that they appeared to build
+walls of fire on both sides of the track, between which we held our
+course at lightning speed, while a reverberating thunder filled the
+Valley with its echoes. Had the engine run off the track,--a
+catastrophe, it is whispered, by no means unprecedented,--the
+bottomless pit, if there be any such place, would undoubtedly have
+received us. Just as some dismal fooleries of this nature had made my
+heart quake there came a tremendous shriek, careering along the valley
+as if a thousand devils had burst their lungs to utter it, but which
+proved to be merely the whistle of the engine on arriving at a
+stopping-place.
+
+The spot where we had now paused is the same that our friend Bunyan--a
+truthful man, but infected with many fantastic notions--has designated,
+in terms plainer than I like to repeat, as the mouth of the infernal
+region. This, however, must be a mistake, inasmuch as Mr.
+Smooth-it-away, while we remained in the smoky and lurid cavern, took
+occasion to prove that Tophet has not even a metaphorical existence.
+The place, he assured us, is no other than the crater of a half-extinct
+volcano, in which the directors had caused forges to be set up for the
+manufacture of railroad iron. Hence, also, is obtained a plentiful
+supply of fuel for the use of the engines. Whoever had gazed into the
+dismal obscurity of the broad cavern mouth, whence ever and anon darted
+huge tongues of dusky flame, and had seen the strange, half-shaped
+monsters, and visions of faces horribly grotesque, into which the smoke
+seemed to wreathe itself, and had heard the awful murmurs, and shrieks,
+and deep, shuddering whispers of the blast, sometimes forming
+themselves into words almost articulate, would have seized upon Mr.
+Smooth-it-away's comfortable explanation as greedily as we did. The
+inhabitants of the cavern, moreover, were unlovely personages, dark,
+smoke-begrimed, generally deformed, with misshapen feet, and a glow of
+dusky redness in their eyes as if their hearts had caught fire and were
+blazing out of the upper windows. It struck me as a peculiarity that
+the laborers at the forge and those who brought fuel to the engine,
+when they began to draw short breath, positively emitted smoke from
+their mouth and nostrils.
+
+Among the idlers about the train, most of whom were puffing cigars
+which they had lighted at the flame of the crater, I was perplexed to
+notice several who, to my certain knowledge, had heretofore set forth
+by railroad for the Celestial City. They looked dark, wild, and smoky,
+with a singular resemblance, indeed, to the native inhabitants, like
+whom, also, they had a disagreeable propensity to ill-natured gibes and
+sneers, the habit of which had wrought a settled contortion of their
+visages. Having been on speaking terms with one of these persons,--an
+indolent, good-for-nothing fellow, who went by the name of
+Take-it-easy,--I called him, and inquired what was his business there.
+
+"Did you not start," said I, "for the Celestial City?"
+
+"That's a fact," said Mr. Take-it-easy, carelessly puffing some smoke
+into my eyes. "But I heard such bad accounts that I never took pains to
+climb the hill on which the city stands. No business doing, no fun
+going on, nothing to drink, and no smoking allowed, and a thrumming of
+church music from morning till night. I would not stay in such a place
+if they offered me house room and living free."
+
+"But, my good Mr. Take-it-easy," cried I, "why take up your residence
+here, of all places in the world?"
+
+"Oh," said the loafer, with a grin, "it is very warm hereabouts, and I
+meet with plenty of old acquaintances, and altogether the place suits
+me. I hope to see you back again some day soon. A pleasant journey to
+you."
+
+While he was speaking the bell of the engine rang, and we dashed away
+after dropping a few passengers, but receiving no new ones. Rattling
+onward through the Valley, we were dazzled with the fiercely gleaming
+gas lamps, as before. But sometimes, in the dark of intense brightness,
+grim faces, that bore the aspect and expression of individual sins, or
+evil passions, seemed to thrust themselves through the veil of light,
+glaring upon us, and stretching forth a great, dusky hand, as if to
+impede our progress. I almost thought that they were my own sins that
+appalled me there. These were freaks of imagination--nothing more,
+certainly-mere delusions, which I ought to be heartily ashamed of; but
+all through the Dark Valley I was tormented, and pestered, and
+dolefully bewildered with the same kind of waking dreams. The mephitic
+gases of that region intoxicate the brain. As the light of natural day,
+however, began to struggle with the glow of the lanterns, these vain
+imaginations lost their vividness, and finally vanished from the first
+ray of sunshine that greeted our escape from the Valley of the Shadow
+of Death. Ere we had gone a mile beyond it I could well-nigh have taken
+my oath that this whole gloomy passage was a dream.
+
+At the end of the valley, as John Bunyan mentions, is a cavern, where,
+in his days, dwelt two cruel giants, Pope and Pagan, who had strown the
+ground about their residence with the bones of slaughtered pilgrims.
+These vile old troglodytes are no longer there; but into their deserted
+cave another terrible giant has thrust himself, and makes it his
+business to seize upon honest travellers and fatten them for his table
+with plentiful meals of smoke, mist, moonshine, raw potatoes, and
+sawdust. He is a German by birth, and is called Giant
+Transcendentalist; but as to his form, his features, his substance, and
+his nature generally, it is the chief peculiarity of this huge
+miscreant that neither he for himself, nor anybody for him, has ever
+been able to describe them. As we rushed by the cavern's mouth we
+caught a hasty glimpse of him, looking somewhat like an
+ill-proportioned figure, but considerably more like a heap of fog and
+duskiness. He shouted after us, but in so strange a phraseology that we
+knew not what he meant, nor whether to be encouraged or affrighted.
+
+It was late in the day when the train thundered into the ancient city
+of Vanity, where Vanity Fair is still at the height of prosperity, and
+exhibits an epitome of whatever is brilliant, gay, and fascinating
+beneath the sun. As I purposed to make a considerable stay here, it
+gratified me to learn that there is no longer the want of harmony
+between the town's-people and pilgrims, which impelled the former to
+such lamentably mistaken measures as the persecution of Christian and
+the fiery martyrdom of Faithful. On the contrary, as the new railroad
+brings with it great trade and a constant influx of strangers, the lord
+of Vanity Fair is its chief patron, and the capitalists of the city are
+among the largest stockholders. Many passengers stop to take their
+pleasure or make their profit in the Fair, instead of going onward to
+the Celestial City. Indeed, such are the charms of the place that
+people often affirm it to be the true and only heaven; stoutly
+contending that there is no other, that those who seek further are mere
+dreamers, and that, if the fabled brightness of the Celestial City lay
+but a bare mile beyond the gates of Vanity, they would not be fools
+enough to go thither. Without subscribing to these perhaps exaggerated
+encomiums, I can truly say that my abode in the city was mainly
+agreeable, and my intercourse with the inhabitants productive of much
+amusement and instruction.
+
+Being naturally of a serious turn, my attention was directed to the
+solid advantages derivable from a residence here, rather than to the
+effervescent pleasures which are the grand object with too many
+visitants. The Christian reader, if he have had no accounts of the city
+later than Bunyan's time, will be surprised to hear that almost every
+street has its church, and that the reverend clergy are nowhere held in
+higher respect than at Vanity Fair. And well do they deserve such
+honorable estimation; for the maxims of wisdom and virtue which fall
+from their lips come from as deep a spiritual source, and tend to as
+lofty a religious aim, as those of the sagest philosophers of old. In
+justification of this high praise I need only mention the names of the
+Rev. Mr. Shallow-deep, the Rev. Mr. Stumble-at-truth, that fine old
+clerical character the Rev. Mr. This-today, who expects shortly to
+resign his pulpit to the Rev. Mr. That-tomorrow; together with the Rev.
+Mr. Bewilderment, the Rev. Mr. Clog-the-spirit, and, last and greatest,
+the Rev. Dr. Wind-of-doctrine. The labors of these eminent divines are
+aided by those of innumerable lecturers, who diffuse such a various
+profundity, in all subjects of human or celestial science, that any man
+may acquire an omnigenous erudition without the trouble of even
+learning to read. Thus literature is etherealized by assuming for its
+medium the human voice; and knowledge, depositing all its heavier
+particles, except, doubtless, its gold becomes exhaled into a sound,
+which forthwith steals into the ever-open ear of the community. These
+ingenious methods constitute a sort of machinery, by which thought and
+study are done to every person's hand without his putting himself to
+the slightest inconvenience in the matter. There is another species of
+machine for the wholesale manufacture of individual morality. This
+excellent result is effected by societies for all manner of virtuous
+purposes, with which a man has merely to connect himself, throwing, as
+it were, his quota of virtue into the common stock, and the president
+and directors will take care that the aggregate amount be well applied.
+All these, and other wonderful improvements in ethics, religion, and
+literature, being made plain to my comprehension by the ingenious Mr.
+Smooth-it-away, inspired me with a vast admiration of Vanity Fair.
+
+It would fill a volume, in an age of pamphlets, were I to record all my
+observations in this great capital of human business and pleasure.
+There was an unlimited range of society--the powerful, the wise, the
+witty, and the famous in every walk of life; princes, presidents,
+poets, generals, artists, actors, and philanthropists,--all making
+their own market at the fair, and deeming no price too exorbitant for
+such commodities as hit their fancy. It was well worth one's while,
+even if he had no idea of buying or selling, to loiter through the
+bazaars and observe the various sorts of traffic that were going
+forward.
+
+Some of the purchasers, I thought, made very foolish bargains. For
+instance, a young man having inherited a splendid fortune, laid out a
+considerable portion of it in the purchase of diseases, and finally
+spent all the rest for a heavy lot of repentance and a suit of rags. A
+very pretty girl bartered a heart as clear as crystal, and which seemed
+her most valuable possession, for another jewel of the same kind, but
+so worn and defaced as to be utterly worthless. In one shop there were
+a great many crowns of laurel and myrtle, which soldiers, authors,
+statesmen, and various other people pressed eagerly to buy; some
+purchased these paltry wreaths with their lives, others by a toilsome
+servitude of years, and many sacrificed whatever was most valuable, yet
+finally slunk away without the crown. There was a sort of stock or
+scrip, called Conscience, which seemed to be in great demand, and would
+purchase almost anything. Indeed, few rich commodities were to be
+obtained without paying a heavy sum in this particular stock, and a
+man's business was seldom very lucrative unless he knew precisely when
+and how to throw his hoard of conscience into the market. Yet as this
+stock was the only thing of permanent value, whoever parted with it was
+sure to find himself a loser in the long run. Several of the
+speculations were of a questionable character. Occasionally a member of
+Congress recruited his pocket by the sale of his constituents; and I
+was assured that public officers have often sold their country at very
+moderate prices. Thousands sold their happiness for a whim. Gilded
+chains were in great demand, and purchased with almost any sacrifice.
+In truth, those who desired, according to the old adage, to sell
+anything valuable for a song, might find customers all over the Fair;
+and there were innumerable messes of pottage, piping hot, for such as
+chose to buy them with their birthrights. A few articles, however,
+could not be found genuine at Vanity Fair. If a customer wished to
+renew his stock of youth the dealers offered him a set of false teeth
+and an auburn wig; if he demanded peace of mind, they recommended opium
+or a brandy bottle.
+
+Tracts of land and golden mansions, situate in the Celestial City, were
+often exchanged, at very disadvantageous rates, for a few years' lease
+of small, dismal, inconvenient tenements in Vanity Fair. Prince
+Beelzebub himself took great interest in this sort of traffic, and
+sometimes condescended to meddle with smaller matters. I once had the
+pleasure to see him bargaining with a miser for his soul, which, after
+much ingenious skirmishing on both sides, his highness succeeded in
+obtaining at about the value of sixpence. The prince remarked with a
+smile, that he was a loser by the transaction.
+
+Day after day, as I walked the streets of Vanity, my manners and
+deportment became more and more like those of the inhabitants. The
+place began to seem like home; the idea of pursuing my travels to the
+Celestial City was almost obliterated from my mind. I was reminded of
+it, however, by the sight of the same pair of simple pilgrims at whom
+we had laughed so heartily when Apollyon puffed smoke and steam into
+their faces at the commencement of our journey. There they stood amidst
+the densest bustle of Vanity; the dealers offering them their purple
+and fine linen and jewels, the men of wit and humor gibing at them, a
+pair of buxom ladies ogling them askance, while the benevolent Mr.
+Smooth-it-away whispered some of his wisdom at their elbows, and
+pointed to a newly-erected temple; but there were these worthy
+simpletons, making the scene look wild and monstrous, merely by their
+sturdy repudiation of all part in its business or pleasures.
+
+One of them--his name was Stick-to-the-right--perceived in my face, I
+suppose, a species of sympathy and almost admiration, which, to my own
+great surprise, I could not help feeling for this pragmatic couple. It
+prompted him to address me.
+
+"Sir," inquired he, with a sad, yet mild and kindly voice, "do you call
+yourself a pilgrim?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, "my right to that appellation is indubitable. I am
+merely a sojourner here in Vanity Fair, being bound to the Celestial
+City by the new railroad."
+
+"Alas, friend," rejoined Mr. Stick-to-the-truth, "I do assure you, and
+beseech you to receive the truth of my words, that that whole concern
+is a bubble. You may travel on it all your lifetime, were you to live
+thousands of years, and yet never get beyond the limits of Vanity Fair.
+Yea, though you should deem yourself entering the gates of the blessed
+city, it will be nothing but a miserable delusion."
+
+"The Lord of the Celestial City," began the other pilgrim, whose name
+was Mr. Foot-it-to-heaven, "has refused, and will ever refuse, to grant
+an act of incorporation for this railroad; and unless that be obtained,
+no passenger can ever hope to enter his dominions. Wherefore every man
+who buys a ticket must lay his account with losing the purchase money,
+which is the value of his own soul."
+
+"Poh, nonsense!" said Mr. Smooth-it-away, taking my arm and leading me
+off, "these fellows ought to be indicted for a libel. If the law stood
+as it once did in Vanity Fair we should see them grinning through the
+iron bars of the prison window."
+
+This incident made a considerable impression on my mind, and
+contributed with other circumstances to indispose me to a permanent
+residence in the city of Vanity; although, of course, I was not simple
+enough to give up my original plan of gliding along easily and
+commodiously by railroad. Still, I grew anxious to be gone. There was
+one strange thing that troubled me. Amid the occupations or amusements
+of the Fair, nothing was more common than for a person--whether at
+feast, theatre, or church, or trafficking for wealth and honors, or
+whatever he might be doing, to vanish like a soap bubble, and be never
+more seen of his fellows; and so accustomed were the latter to such
+little accidents that they went on with their business as quietly as if
+nothing had happened. But it was otherwise with me.
+
+Finally, after a pretty long residence at the Fair, I resumed my
+journey towards the Celestial City, still with Mr. Smooth-it-away at my
+side. At a short distance beyond the suburbs of Vanity we passed the
+ancient silver mine, of which Demas was the first discoverer, and which
+is now wrought to great advantage, supplying nearly all the coined
+currency of the world. A little further onward was the spot where Lot's
+wife had stood forever under the semblance of a pillar of salt. Curious
+travellers have long since carried it away piecemeal. Had all regrets
+been punished as rigorously as this poor dame's were, my yearning for
+the relinquished delights of Vanity Fair might have produced a similar
+change in my own corporeal substance, and left me a warning to future
+pilgrims.
+
+The next remarkable object was a large edifice, constructed of
+moss-grown stone, but in a modern and airy style of architecture. The
+engine came to a pause in its vicinity, with the usual tremendous
+shriek.
+
+"This was formerly the castle of the redoubted giant Despair," observed
+Mr. Smooth-it-away; "but since his death Mr. Flimsy-faith has repaired
+it, and keeps an excellent house of entertainment here. It is one of
+our stopping-places."
+
+"It seems but slightly put together," remarked I, looking at the frail
+yet ponderous walls. "I do not envy Mr. Flimsy-faith his habitation.
+Some day it will thunder down upon the heads of the occupants."
+
+"We shall escape at all events," said Mr. Smooth-it-away, "for Apollyon
+is putting on the steam again."
+
+The road now plunged into a gorge of the Delectable Mountains, and
+traversed the field where in former ages the blind men wandered and
+stumbled among the tombs. One of these ancient tombstones had been
+thrust across the track by some malicious person, and gave the train of
+cars a terrible jolt. Far up the rugged side of a mountain I perceived
+a rusty iron door, half overgrown with bushes and creeping plants, but
+with smoke issuing from its crevices.
+
+"Is that," inquired I, "the very door in the hill-side which the
+shepherds assured Christian was a by-way to hell?"
+
+"That was a joke on the part of the shepherds," said Mr. Smooth-itaway,
+with a smile. "It is neither more nor less than the door of a cavern
+which they use as a smoke-house for the preparation of mutton hams."
+
+My recollections of the journey are now, for a little space, dim and
+confused, inasmuch as a singular drowsiness here overcame me, owing to
+the fact that we were passing over the enchanted ground, the air of
+which encourages a disposition to sleep. I awoke, however, as soon as
+we crossed the borders of the pleasant land of Beulah. All the
+passengers were rubbing their eyes, comparing watches, and
+congratulating one another on the prospect of arriving so seasonably at
+the journey's end. The sweet breezes of this happy clime came
+refreshingly to our nostrils; we beheld the glimmering gush of silver
+fountains, overhung by trees of beautiful foliage and delicious fruit,
+which were propagated by grafts from the celestial gardens. Once, as we
+dashed onward like a hurricane, there was a flutter of wings and the
+bright appearance of an angel in the air, speeding forth on some
+heavenly mission. The engine now announced the close vicinity of the
+final station-house by one last and horrible scream, in which there
+seemed to be distinguishable every kind of wailing and woe, and bitter
+fierceness of wrath, all mixed up with the wild laughter of a devil or
+a madman. Throughout our journey, at every stopping-place, Apollyon had
+exercised his ingenuity in screwing the most abominable sounds out of
+the whistle of the steam-engine; but in this closing effort he outdid
+himself and created an infernal uproar, which, besides disturbing the
+peaceful inhabitants of Beulah, must have sent its discord even through
+the celestial gates.
+
+While the horrid clamor was still ringing in our ears we heard an
+exulting strain, as if a thousand instruments of music, with height and
+depth and sweetness in their tones, at once tender and triumphant, were
+struck in unison, to greet the approach of some illustrious hero, who
+had fought the good fight and won a glorious victory, and was come to
+lay aside his battered arms forever. Looking to ascertain what might be
+the occasion of this glad harmony, I perceived, on alighting from the
+cars, that a multitude of shining ones had assembled on the other side
+of the river, to welcome two poor pilgrims, who were just emerging from
+its depths. They were the same whom Apollyon and ourselves had
+persecuted with taunts, and gibes, and scalding steam, at the
+commencement of our journey--the same whose unworldly aspect and
+impressive words had stirred my conscience amid the wild revellers of
+Vanity Fair.
+
+"How amazingly well those men have got on," cried I to Mr.
+Smoothit--away. "I wish we were secure of as good a reception."
+
+"Never fear, never fear!" answered my friend. "Come, make haste; the
+ferry boat will be off directly, and in three minutes you will be on
+the other side of the river. No doubt you will find coaches to carry
+you up to the city gates."
+
+A steam ferry boat, the last improvement on this important route, lay
+at the river side, puffing, snorting, and emitting all those other
+disagreeable utterances which betoken the departure to be immediate. I
+hurried on board with the rest of the passengers, most of whom were in
+great perturbation: some bawling out for their baggage; some tearing
+their hair and exclaiming that the boat would explode or sink; some
+already pale with the heaving of the stream; some gazing affrighted at
+the ugly aspect of the steersman; and some still dizzy with the
+slumberous influences of the Enchanted Ground. Looking back to the
+shore, I was amazed to discern Mr. Smooth-it-away waving his hand in
+token of farewell.
+
+"Don't you go over to the Celestial City?" exclaimed I.
+
+"Oh, no!" answered he with a queer smile, and that same disagreeable
+contortion of visage which I had remarked in the inhabitants of the
+Dark Valley. "Oh, no! I have come thus far only for the sake of your
+pleasant company. Good-by! We shall meet again."
+
+And then did my excellent friend Mr. Smooth-it-away laugh outright, in
+the midst of which cachinnation a smoke-wreath issued from his mouth
+and nostrils, while a twinkle of lurid flame darted out of either eye,
+proving indubitably that his heart was all of a red blaze. The impudent
+fiend! To deny the existence of Tophet, when he felt its fiery tortures
+raging within his breast. I rushed to the side of the boat, intending
+to fling myself on shore; but the wheels, as they began their
+revolutions, threw a dash of spray over me so cold--so deadly cold,
+with the chill that will never leave those waters until Death be
+drowned in his own river--that with a shiver and a heartquake I awoke.
+Thank Heaven it was a Dream!
+
+
+
+THE PROCESSION OF LIFE
+
+Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession. All of us
+have our places, and are to move onward under the direction of the
+Chief Marshal. The grand difficulty results from the invariably
+mistaken principles on which the deputy marshals seek to arrange this
+immense concourse of people, so much more numerous than those that
+train their interminable length through streets and highways in times
+of political excitement. Their scheme is ancient, far beyond the memory
+of man or even the record of history, and has hitherto been very little
+modified by the innate sense of something wrong, and the dim perception
+of better methods, that have disquieted all the ages through which the
+procession has taken its march. Its members are classified by the
+merest external circumstances, and thus are more certain to be thrown
+out of their true positions than if no principle of arrangement were
+attempted. In one part of the procession we see men of landed estate or
+moneyed capital gravely keeping each other company, for the
+preposterous reason that they chance to have a similar standing in the
+tax-gatherer's book. Trades and professions march together with
+scarcely a more real bond of union. In this manner, it cannot be
+denied, people are disentangled from the mass and separated into
+various classes according to certain apparent relations; all have some
+artificial badge which the world, and themselves among the first, learn
+to consider as a genuine characteristic. Fixing our attention on such
+outside shows of similarity or difference, we lose sight of those
+realities by which nature, fortune, fate, or Providence has constituted
+for every man a brotherhood, wherein it is one great office of human
+wisdom to classify him. When the mind has once accustomed itself to a
+proper arrangement of the Procession of Life, or a true classification
+of society, even though merely speculative, there is thenceforth a
+satisfaction which pretty well suffices for itself without the aid of
+any actual reformation in the order of march.
+
+For instance, assuming to myself the power of marshalling the aforesaid
+procession, I direct a trumpeter to send forth a blast loud enough to
+be heard from hence to China; and a herald, with world-pervading voice,
+to make proclamation for a certain class of mortals to take their
+places. What shall be their principle of union? After all, an external
+one, in comparison with many that might be found, yet far more real
+than those which the world has selected for a similar purpose. Let all
+who are afflicted with like physical diseases form themselves into
+ranks.
+
+Our first attempt at classification is not very successful. It may
+gratify the pride of aristocracy to reflect that disease, more than any
+other circumstance of human life, pays due observance to the
+distinctions which rank and wealth, and poverty and lowliness, have
+established among mankind. Some maladies are rich and precious, and
+only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or purchased with gold.
+Of this kind is the gout, which serves as a bond of brotherhood to the
+purple-visaged gentry, who obey the herald's voice, and painfully
+hobble from all civilized regions of the globe to take their post in
+the grand procession. In mercy to their toes, let us hope that the
+march may not be long. The Dyspeptics, too, are people of good standing
+in the world. For them the earliest salmon is caught in our eastern
+rivers, and the shy woodcock stains the dry leaves with his blood in
+his remotest haunts, and the turtle comes from the far Pacific Islands
+to be gobbled up in soup. They can afford to flavor all their dishes
+with indolence, which, in spite of the general opinion, is a sauce more
+exquisitely piquant than appetite won by exercise. Apoplexy is another
+highly respectable disease. We will rank together all who have the
+symptom of dizziness in the brain, and as fast as any drop by the way
+supply their places with new members of the board of aldermen.
+
+On the other hand, here come whole tribes of people whose physical
+lives are but a deteriorated variety of life, and themselves a meaner
+species of mankind; so sad an effect has been wrought by the tainted
+breath of cities, scanty and unwholesome food, destructive modes of
+labor, and the lack of those moral supports that might partially have
+counteracted such bad influences. Behold here a train of house
+painters, all afflicted with a peculiar sort of colic. Next in place we
+will marshal those workmen in cutlery, who have breathed a fatal
+disorder into their lungs with the impalpable dust of steel. Tailors
+and shoemakers, being sedentary men, will chiefly congregate into one
+part of the procession and march under similar banners of disease; but
+among them we may observe here and there a sickly student, who has left
+his health between the leaves of classic volumes; and clerks, likewise,
+who have caught their deaths on high official stools; and men of genius
+too, who have written sheet after sheet with pens dipped in their
+heart's blood. These are a wretched quaking, short-breathed set. But
+what is this cloud of pale-cheeked, slender girls, who disturb the ear
+with the multiplicity of their short, dry coughs? They are
+seamstresses, who have plied the daily and nightly needle in the
+service of master tailors and close-fisted contractors, until now it is
+almost time for each to hem the borders of her own shroud. Consumption
+points their place in the procession. With their sad sisterhood are
+intermingled many youthful maidens who have sickened in aristocratic
+mansions, and for whose aid science has unavailingly searched its
+volumes, and whom breathless love has watched. In our ranks the rich
+maiden and the poor seamstress may walk arm in arm. We might find
+innumerable other instances, where the bond of mutual disease--not to
+speak of nation-sweeping pestilence--embraces high and low, and makes
+the king a brother of the clown. But it is not hard to own that disease
+is the natural aristocrat. Let him keep his state, and have his
+established orders of rank, and wear his royal mantle of the color of a
+fever flush and let the noble and wealthy boast their own physical
+infirmities, and display their symptoms as the badges of high station.
+All things considered, these are as proper subjects of human pride as
+any relations of human rank that men can fix upon.
+
+Sound again, thou deep-breathed trumpeter! and herald, with thy voice
+of might, shout forth another summons that shall reach the old baronial
+castles of Europe, and the rudest cabin of our western wilderness! What
+class is next to take its place in the procession of mortal life? Let
+it be those whom the gifts of intellect have united in a noble
+brotherhood.
+
+Ay, this is a reality, before which the conventional distinctions of
+society melt away like a vapor when we would grasp it with the hand.
+Were Byron now alive, and Burns, the first would come from his
+ancestral abbey, flinging aside, although unwillingly, the inherited
+honors of a thousand years, to take the arm of the mighty peasant who
+grew immortal while he stooped behind his plough. These are gone; but
+the hall, the farmer's fireside, the hut, perhaps the palace, the
+counting-room, the workshop, the village, the city, life's high places
+and low ones, may all produce their poets, whom a common temperament
+pervades like an electric sympathy. Peer or ploughman, we will muster
+them pair by pair and shoulder to shoulder. Even society, in its most
+artificial state, consents to this arrangement. These factory girls
+from Lowell shall mate themselves with the pride of drawing-rooms and
+literary circles, the bluebells in fashion's nosegay, the Sapphos, and
+Montagues, and Nortons of the age. Other modes of intellect bring
+together as strange companies. Silk-gowned professor of languages, give
+your arm to this sturdy blacksmith, and deem yourself honored by the
+conjunction, though you behold him grimy from the anvil. All varieties
+of human speech are like his mother tongue to this rare man.
+Indiscriminately let those take their places, of whatever rank they
+come, who possess the kingly gifts to lead armies or to sway a
+people--Nature's generals, her lawgivers, her kings, and with them also
+the deep philosophers who think the thought in one generation that is
+to revolutionize society in the next. With the hereditary legislator in
+whom eloquence is a far-descended attainment--a rich echo repeated by
+powerful voices from Cicero downward--we will match some wondrous
+backwoodsman, who has caught a wild power of language from the breeze
+among his native forest boughs. But we may safely leave these brethren
+and sisterhood to settle their own congenialities. Our ordinary
+distinctions become so trifling, so impalpable, so ridiculously
+visionary, in comparison with a classification founded on truth, that
+all talk about the matter is immediately a common place.
+
+Yet the longer I reflect the less am I satisfied with the idea of
+forming a separate class of mankind on the basis of high intellectual
+power. At best it is but a higher development of innate gifts common to
+all. Perhaps, moreover, he whose genius appears deepest and truest
+excels his fellows in nothing save the knack of expression; he throws
+out occasionally a lucky hint at truths of which every human soul is
+profoundly, though unutterably, conscious. Therefore, though we suffer
+the brotherhood of intellect to march onward together, it may be
+doubted whether their peculiar relation will not begin to vanish as
+soon as the procession shall have passed beyond the circle of this
+present world. But we do not classify for eternity.
+
+And next, let the trumpet pour forth a funereal wail, and the herald's
+voice give breath in one vast cry to all the groans and grievous
+utterances that are audible throughout the earth. We appeal now to the
+sacred bond of sorrow, and summon the great multitude who labor under
+similar afflictions to take their places in the march.
+
+How many a heart that would have been insensible to any other call has
+responded to the doleful accents of that voice! It has gone far and
+wide, and high and low, and left scarcely a mortal roof unvisited.
+Indeed, the principle is only too universal for our purpose, and,
+unless we limit it, will quite break up our classification of mankind,
+and convert the whole procession into a funeral train. We will
+therefore be at some pains to discriminate. Here comes a lonely rich
+man: he has built a noble fabric for his dwelling-house, with a front
+of stately architecture and marble floors and doors of precious woods;
+the whole structure is as beautiful as a dream and as substantial as
+the native rock. But the visionary shapes of a long posterity, for
+whose home this mansion was intended, have faded into nothingness since
+the death of the founder's only son. The rich man gives a glance at his
+sable garb in one of the splendid mirrors of his drawing-room, and
+descending a flight of lofty steps instinctively offers his arm to
+yonder poverty stricken widow in the rusty black bonnet, and with a
+check apron over her patched gown. The sailor boy, who was her sole
+earthly stay, was washed overboard in a late tempest. This couple from
+the palace and the almshouse are but the types of thousands more who
+represent the dark tragedy of life and seldom quarrel for the upper
+parts. Grief is such a leveller, with its own dignity and its own
+humility, that the noble and the peasant, the beggar and the monarch,
+will waive their pretensions to external rank without the officiousness
+of interference on our part. If pride--the influence of the world's
+false distinctions--remain in the heart, then sorrow lacks the
+earnestness which makes it holy and reverend. It loses its reality and
+becomes a miserable shadow. On this ground we have an opportunity to
+assign over multitudes who would willingly claim places here to other
+parts of the procession. If the mourner have anything dearer than his
+grief he must seek his true position elsewhere. There are so many
+unsubstantial sorrows which the necessity of our mortal state begets on
+idleness, that an observer, casting aside sentiment, is sometimes led
+to question whether there be any real woe, except absolute physical
+suffering and the loss of closest friends. A crowd who exhibit what
+they deem to be broken hearts--and among them many lovelorn maids and
+bachelors, and men of disappointed ambition in arts or politics, and
+the poor who were once rich, or who have sought to be rich in vain--the
+great majority of these may ask admittance into some other fraternity.
+There is no room here. Perhaps we may institute a separate class where
+such unfortunates will naturally fall into the procession. Meanwhile
+let them stand aside and patiently await their time.
+
+If our trumpeter can borrow a note from the doomsday trumpet blast, let
+him sound it now. The dread alarum should make the earth quake to its
+centre, for the herald is about to address mankind with a summons to
+which even the purest mortal may be sensible of some faint responding
+echo in his breast. In many bosoms it will awaken a still small voice
+more terrible than its own reverberating uproar.
+
+The hideous appeal has swept around the globe. Come, all ye guilty
+ones, and rank yourselves in accordance with the brotherhood of crime.
+This, indeed, is an awful summons. I almost tremble to look at the
+strange partnerships that begin to be formed, reluctantly, but by the
+in vincible necessity of like to like in this part of the procession. A
+forger from the state prison seizes the arm of a distinguished
+financier. How indignantly does the latter plead his fair reputation
+upon 'Change, and insist that his operations, by their magnificence of
+scope, were removed into quite another sphere of morality than those of
+his pitiful companion! But let him cut the connection if he can. Here
+comes a murderer with his clanking chains, and pairs himself--horrible
+to tell--with as pure and upright a man, in all observable respects, as
+ever partook of the consecrated bread and wine. He is one of those,
+perchance the most hopeless of all sinners, who practise such an
+exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be
+hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal
+frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting
+girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the
+by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous
+matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures,
+born to vice as their sole and natural inheritance, can be no fit
+associates for women who have been guarded round about by all the
+proprieties of domestic life, and who could not err unless they first
+created the opportunity. Oh no; it must be merely the impertinence of
+those unblushing hussies; and we can only wonder how such respectable
+ladies should have responded to a summons that was not meant for them.
+
+We shall make short work of this miserable class, each member of which
+is entitled to grasp any other member's hand, by that vile degradation
+wherein guilty error has buried all alike. The foul fiend to whom it
+properly belongs must relieve us of our loathsome task. Let the bond
+servants of sin pass on. But neither man nor woman, in whom good
+predominates, will smile or sneer, nor bid the Rogues' March be played,
+in derision of their array. Feeling within their breasts a shuddering
+sympathy, which at least gives token of the sin that might have been,
+they will thank God for any place in the grand procession of human
+existence, save among those most wretched ones. Many, however, will be
+astonished at the fatal impulse that drags them thitherward. Nothing is
+more remarkable than the various deceptions by which guilt conceals
+itself from the perpetrator's conscience, and oftenest, perhaps, by the
+splendor of its garments. Statesmen, rulers, generals, and all men who
+act over an extensive sphere, are most liable to be deluded in this
+way; they commit wrong, devastation, and murder, on so grand a scale,
+that it impresses them as speculative rather than actual; but in our
+procession we find them linked in detestable conjunction with the
+meanest criminals whose deeds have the vulgarity of petty details. Here
+the effect of circumstance and accident is done away, and a man finds
+his rank according to the spirit of his crime, in whatever shape it may
+have been developed.
+
+We have called the Evil; now let us call the Good. The trumpet's brazen
+throat should pour heavenly music over the earth, and the herald's
+voice go forth with the sweetness of an angel's accents, as if to
+summon each upright man to his reward. But how is this? Does none
+answer to the call? Not one: for the just, the pure, the true, and an
+who might most worthily obey it, shrink sadly back, as most conscious
+of error and imperfection. Then let the summons be to those whose
+pervading principle is Love. This classification will embrace all the
+truly good, and none in whose souls there exists not something that may
+expand itself into a heaven, both of well-doing and felicity.
+
+The first that presents himself is a man of wealth, who has bequeathed
+the bulk of his property to a hospital; his ghost, methinks, would have
+a better right here than his living body. But here they come, the
+genuine benefactors of their race. Some have wandered about the earth
+with pictures of bliss in their imagination, and with hearts that
+shrank sensitively from the idea of pain and woe, yet have studied all
+varieties of misery that human nature can endure. The prison, the
+insane asylum, the squalid chamber of the almshouse, the manufactory
+where the demon of machinery annihilates the human soul, and the cotton
+field where God's image becomes a beast of burden; to these and every
+other scene where man wrongs or neglects his brother, the apostles of
+humanity have penetrated. This missionary, black with India's burning
+sunshine, shall give his arm to a pale-faced brother who has made
+himself familiar with the infected alleys and loathsome haunts of vice
+in one of our own cities. The generous founder of a college shall be
+the partner of a maiden lady of narrow substance, one of whose good
+deeds it has been to gather a little school of orphan children. If the
+mighty merchant whose benefactions are reckoned by thousands of dollars
+deem himself worthy, let him join the procession with her whose love
+has proved itself by watchings at the sick-bed, and all those lowly
+offices which bring her into actual contact with disease and
+wretchedness. And with those whose impulses have guided them to
+benevolent actions, we will rank others to whom Providence has assigned
+a different tendency and different powers. Men who have spent their
+lives in generous and holy contemplation for the human race; those who,
+by a certain heavenliness of spirit, have purified the atmosphere
+around them, and thus supplied a medium in which good and high things
+may be projected and performed--give to these a lofty place among the
+benefactors of mankind, although no deed, such as the world calls
+deeds, may be recorded of them. There are some individuals of whom we
+cannot conceive it proper that they should apply their hands to any
+earthly instrument, or work out any definite act; and others, perhaps
+not less high, to whom it is an essential attribute to labor in body as
+well as spirit for the welfare of their brethren. Thus, if we find a
+spiritual sage whose unseen, inestimable influence has exalted the
+moral standard of mankind, we will choose for his companion some poor
+laborer who has wrought for love in the potato field of a neighbor
+poorer than himself.
+
+We have summoned this various multitude--and, to the credit of our
+nature, it is a large one--on the principle of Love. It is singular,
+nevertheless, to remark the shyness that exists among many members of
+the present class, all of whom we might expect to recognize one another
+by the freemasonry of mutual goodness, and to embrace like brethren,
+giving God thanks for such various specimens of human excellence. But
+it is far otherwise. Each sect surrounds its own righteousness with a
+hedge of thorns. It is difficult for the good Christian to acknowledge
+the good Pagan; almost impossible for the good Orthodox to grasp the
+hand of the good Unitarian, leaving to their Creator to settle the
+matters in dispute, and giving their mutual efforts strongly and
+trustingly to whatever right thing is too evident to be mistaken. Then
+again, though the heart be large, yet the mind is often of such
+moderate dimensions as to be exclusively filled up with one idea. When
+a good man has long devoted himself to a particular kind of
+beneficence--to one species of reform--he is apt to become narrowed
+into the limits of the path wherein he treads, and to fancy that there
+is no other good to be done on earth but that self-same good to which
+he has put his hand, and in the very mode that best suits his own
+conceptions. All else is worthless. His scheme must be wrought out by
+the united strength of the whole world's stock of love, or the world is
+no longer worthy of a position in the universe. Moreover, powerful
+Truth, being the rich grape juice expressed from the vineyard of the
+ages, has an intoxicating quality, when imbibed by any save a powerful
+intellect, and often, as it were, impels the quaffer to quarrel in his
+cups. For such reasons, strange to say, it is harder to contrive a
+friendly arrangement of these brethren of love and righteousness, in
+the procession of life, than to unite even the wicked, who, indeed, are
+chained together by their crimes. The fact is too preposterous for
+tears, too lugubrious for laughter.
+
+But, let good men push and elbow one another as they may during their
+earthly march, all will be peace among them when the honorable array or
+their procession shall tread on heavenly ground. There they will
+doubtless find that they have been working each for the other's cause,
+and that every well-delivered stroke, which, with an honest purpose any
+mortal struck, even for a narrow object, was indeed stricken for the
+universal cause of good. Their own view may be bounded by country,
+creed, profession, the diversities of individual character--but above
+them all is the breadth of Providence. How many who have deemed
+themselves antagonists will smile hereafter, when they look back upon
+the world's wide harvest field, and perceive that, in unconscious
+brotherhood, they were helping to bind the selfsame sheaf!
+
+But, come! The sun is hastening westward, while the march of human
+life, that never paused before, is delayed by our attempt to rearrange
+its order. It is desirable to find some comprehensive principle, that
+shall render our task easier by bringing thousands into the ranks where
+hitherto we have brought one. Therefore let the trumpet, if possible,
+split its brazen throat with a louder note than ever, and the herald
+summon all mortals, who, from whatever cause, have lost, or never
+found, their proper places in the wold.
+
+Obedient to this call, a great multitude come together, most of them
+with a listless gait, betokening weariness of soul, yet with a gleam of
+satisfaction in their faces, at a prospect of at length reaching those
+positions which, hitherto, they have vainly sought. But here will be
+another disappointment; for we can attempt no more than merely to
+associate in one fraternity all who are afflicted with the same vague
+trouble. Some great mistake in life is the chief condition of
+admittance into this class. Here are members of the learned
+professions, whom Providence endowed with special gifts for the plough,
+the forge, and the wheelbarrow, or for the routine of unintellectual
+business. We will assign to them, as partners in the march, those lowly
+laborers and handicraftsmen, who have pined, as with a dying thirst,
+after the unattainable fountains of knowledge. The latter have lost
+less than their companions; yet more, because they deem it infinite.
+Perchance the two species of unfortunates may comfort one another. Here
+are Quakers with the instinct of battle in them; and men of war who
+should have worn the broad brim. Authors shall be ranked here whom some
+freak of Nature, making game of her poor children, had imbued with the
+confidence of genius and strong desire of fame, but has favored with no
+corresponding power; and others, whose lofty gifts were unaccompanied
+with the faculty of expression, or any of that earthly machinery by
+which ethereal endowments must be manifested to mankind. All these,
+therefore, are melancholy laughing-stocks. Next, here are honest and
+well intentioned persons, who by a want of tact--by inaccurate
+perceptions--by a distorting imagination--have been kept continually at
+cross purposes with the world and bewildered upon the path of life. Let
+us see if they can confine themselves within the line of our
+procession. In this class, likewise, we must assign places to those who
+have encountered that worst of ill success, a higher fortune than their
+abilities could vindicate; writers, actors, painters, the pets of a
+day, but whose laurels wither unrenewed amid their hoary hair;
+politicians, whom some malicious contingency of affairs has thrust into
+conspicuous station, where, while the world stands gazing at them, the
+dreary consciousness of imbecility makes them curse their birth hour.
+To such men, we give for a companion him whose rare talents, which
+perhaps require a Revolution for their exercise, are buried in the tomb
+of sluggish circumstances.
+
+Not far from these, we must find room for one whose success has been of
+the wrong kind; the man who should have lingered in the cloisters of a
+university, digging new treasures out of the Herculaneum of antique
+lore, diffusing depth and accuracy of literature throughout his
+country, and thus making for himself a great and quiet fame. But the
+outward tendencies around him have proved too powerful for his inward
+nature, and have drawn him into the arena of political tumult, there to
+contend at disadvantage, whether front to front, or side by side, with
+the brawny giants of actual life. He becomes, it may be, a name for
+brawling parties to bandy to and fro, a legislator of the Union; a
+governor of his native state; an ambassador to the courts of kings or
+queens; and the world may deem him a man of happy stars. But not so the
+wise; and not so himself, when he looks through his experience, and
+sighs to miss that fitness, the one invaluable touch which makes all
+things true and real. So much achieved, yet how abortive is his life!
+Whom shall we choose for his companion? Some weak framed blacksmith,
+perhaps, whose delicacy of muscle might have suited a tailor's
+shopboard better than the anvil.
+
+Shall we bid the trumpet sound again? It is hardly worth the while.
+There remain a few idle men of fortune, tavern and grog-shop loungers,
+lazzaroni, old bachelors, decaying maidens, and people of crooked
+intellect or temper, all of whom may find their like, or some tolerable
+approach to it, in the plentiful diversity of our latter class. There
+too, as his ultimate destiny, must we rank the dreamer, who, all his
+life long, has cherished the idea that he was peculiarly apt for
+something, but never could determine what it was; and there the most
+unfortunate of men, whose purpose it has been to enjoy life's
+pleasures, but to avoid a manful struggle with its toil and sorrow. The
+remainder, if any, may connect themselves with whatever rank of the
+procession they shall find best adapted to their tastes and
+consciences. The worst possible fate would be to remain behind,
+shivering in the solitude of time, while all the world is on the move
+towards eternity. Our attempt to classify society is now complete. The
+result may be anything but perfect; yet better--to give it the very
+lowest praise--than the antique rule of the herald's office, or the
+modern one of the tax-gatherer, whereby the accidents and superficial
+attributes with which the real nature of individuals has least to do,
+are acted upon as the deepest characteristics of mankind. Our task is
+done! Now let the grand procession move!
+
+Yet pause a while! We had forgotten the Chief Marshal.
+
+Hark! That world-wide swell of solemn music, with the clang of a mighty
+bell breaking forth through its regulated uproar, announces his
+approach. He comes; a severe, sedate, immovable, dark rider, waving his
+truncheon of universal sway, as he passes along the lengthened line, on
+the pale horse of the Revelation. It is Death! Who else could assume
+the guidance of a procession that comprehends all humanity? And if
+some, among these many millions, should deem themselves classed amiss,
+yet let them take to their hearts the comfortable truth that Death
+levels us all into one great brotherhood, and that another state of
+being will surely rectify the wrong of this. Then breathe thy wail upon
+the earth's wailing wind, thou band of melancholy music, made up of
+every sigh that the human heart, unsatisfied, has uttered! There is yet
+triumph in thy tones. And now we move! Beggars in their rags, and Kings
+trailing the regal purple in the dust; the Warrior's gleaming helmet;
+the Priest in his sable robe; the hoary Grandsire, who has run life's
+circle and come back to childhood; the ruddy School-boy with his golden
+curls, frisking along the march; the Artisan's stuff jacket; the
+Noble's star-decorated coat;--the whole presenting a motley spectacle,
+yet with a dusky grandeur brooding over it. Onward, onward, into that
+dimness where the lights of Time which have blazed along the
+procession, are flickering in their sockets! And whither! We know not;
+and Death, hitherto our leader, deserts us by the wayside, as the tramp
+of our innumerable footsteps echoes beyond his sphere. He knows not,
+more than we, our destined goal. But God, who made us, knows, and will
+not leave us on our toilsome and doubtful march, either to wander in
+infinite uncertainty, or perish by the way!
+
+
+
+FEATHERTOP: A MORALIZED LEGEND
+
+"Dickon," cried Mother Rigby, "a coal for my pipe!"
+
+The pipe was in the old dame's mouth when she said these words. She had
+thrust it there after filling it with tobacco, but without stooping to
+light it at the hearth, where indeed there was no appearance of a fire
+having been kindled that morning. Forthwith, however, as soon as the
+order was given, there was an intense red glow out of the bowl of the
+pipe, and a whiff of smoke came from Mother Rigby's lips. Whence the
+coal came, and how brought thither by an invisible hand, I have never
+been able to discover.
+
+"Good!" quoth Mother Rigby, with a nod of her head. "Thank ye, Dickon!
+And now for making this scarecrow. Be within call, Dickon, in case I
+need you again."
+
+The good woman had risen thus early (for as yet it was scarcely
+sunrise) in order to set about making a scarecrow, which she intended
+to put in the middle of her corn-patch. It was now the latter week of
+May, and the crows and blackbirds had already discovered the little,
+green, rolledup leaf of the Indian corn just peeping out of the soil.
+She was determined, therefore, to contrive as lifelike a scarecrow as
+ever was seen, and to finish it immediately, from top to toe, so that
+it should begin its sentinel's duty that very morning. Now Mother Rigby
+(as everybody must have heard) was one of the most cunning and potent
+witches in New England, and might, with very little trouble, have made
+a scarecrow ugly enough to frighten the minister himself. But on this
+occasion, as she had awakened in an uncommonly pleasant humor, and was
+further dulcified by her pipe tobacco, she resolved to produce
+something fine, beautiful, and splendid, rather than hideous and
+horrible.
+
+"I don't want to set up a hobgoblin in my own corn-patch, and almost at
+my own doorstep," said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing out a whiff of
+smoke; "I could do it if I pleased, but I'm tired of doing marvellous
+things, and so I'll keep within the bounds of every-day business just
+for variety's sake. Besides, there is no use in scaring the little
+children for a mile roundabout, though 't is true I'm a witch."
+
+It was settled, therefore, in her own mind, that the scarecrow should
+represent a fine gentleman of the period, so far as the materials at
+hand would allow. Perhaps it may be as well to enumerate the chief of
+the articles that went to the composition of this figure.
+
+The most important item of all, probably, although it made so little
+show, was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken many an
+airy gallop at midnight, and which now served the scarecrow by way of a
+spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its
+arms was a disabled flail which used to be wielded by Goodman Rigby,
+before his spouse worried him out of this troublesome world; the other,
+if I mistake not, was composed of the pudding stick and a broken rung
+of a chair, tied loosely together at the elbow. As for its legs, the
+right was a hoe handle, and the left an undistinguished and
+miscellaneous stick from the woodpile. Its lungs, stomach, and other
+affairs of that kind were nothing better than a meal bag stuffed with
+straw. Thus we have made out the skeleton and entire corporosity of the
+scarecrow, with the exception of its head; and this was admirably
+supplied by a somewhat withered and shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother
+Rigby cut two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth, leaving a
+bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass for a nose. It was really
+quite a respectable face.
+
+"I've seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any rate," said Mother
+Rigby. "And many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin head, as well as my
+scarecrow."
+
+But the clothes, in this case, were to be the making of the man. So the
+good old woman took down from a peg an ancient plum-colored coat of
+London make, and with relics of embroidery on its seams, cuffs,
+pocket-flaps, and button-holes, but lamentably worn and faded, patched
+at the elbows, tattered at the skirts, and threadbare all over. On the
+left breast was a round hole, whence either a star of nobility had been
+rent away, or else the hot heart of some former wearer had scorched it
+through and through. The neighbors said that this rich garment belonged
+to the Black Man's wardrobe, and that he kept it at Mother Rigby's
+cottage for the convenience of slipping it on whenever he wished to
+make a grand appearance at the governor's table. To match the coat
+there was a velvet waistcoat of very ample size, and formerly
+embroidered with foliage that had been as brightly golden as the maple
+leaves in October, but which had now quite vanished out of the
+substance of the velvet. Next came a pair of scarlet breeches, once
+worn by the French governor of Louisbourg, and the knees of which had
+touched the lower step of the throne of Louis le Grand. The Frenchman
+had given these small-clothes to an Indian powwow, who parted with them
+to the old witch for a gill of strong waters, at one of their dances in
+the forest. Furthermore, Mother Rigby produced a pair of silk stockings
+and put them on the figure's legs, where they showed as unsubstantial
+as a dream, with the wooden reality of the two sticks making itself
+miserably apparent through the holes. Lastly, she put her dead
+husband's wig on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and surmounted the
+whole with a dusty three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the longest
+tail feather of a rooster.
+
+Then the old dame stood the figure up in a corner of her cottage and
+chuckled to behold its yellow semblance of a visage, with its nobby
+little nose thrust into the air. It had a strangely self-satisfied
+aspect, and seemed to say, "Come look at me!"
+
+"And you are well worth looking at, that's a fact!" quoth Mother Rigby,
+in admiration at her own handiwork. "I've made many a puppet since I've
+been a witch, but methinks this is the finest of them all. 'Tis almost
+too good for a scarecrow. And, by the by, I'll just fill a fresh pipe
+of tobacco and then take him out to the corn-patch."
+
+While filling her pipe the old woman continued to gaze with almost
+motherly affection at the figure in the corner. To say the truth,
+whether it were chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft, there was
+something wonderfully human in this ridiculous shape, bedizened with
+its tattered finery; and as for the countenance, it appeared to shrivel
+its yellow surface into a grin--a funny kind of expression betwixt
+scorn and merriment, as if it understood itself to be a jest at
+mankind. The more Mother Rigby looked the better she was pleased.
+
+"Dickon," cried she sharply, "another coal for my pipe!"
+
+Hardly had she spoken, than, just as before, there was a red-glowing
+coal on the top of the tobacco. She drew in a long whiff and puffed it
+forth again into the bar of morning sunshine which struggled through
+the one dusty pane of her cottage window. Mother Rigby always liked to
+flavor her pipe with a coal of fire from the particular chimney corner
+whence this had been brought. But where that chimney corner might be,
+or who brought the coal from it,--further than that the invisible
+messenger seemed to respond to the name of Dickon,--I cannot tell.
+
+"That puppet yonder," thought Mother Rigby, still with her eyes fixed
+on the scarecrow, "is too good a piece of work to stand all summer in a
+corn-patch, frightening away the crows and blackbirds. He's capable of
+better things. Why, I've danced with a worse one, when partners
+happened to be scarce, at our witch meetings in the forest! What if I
+should let him take his chance among the other men of straw and empty
+fellows who go bustling about the world?"
+
+The old witch took three or four more whiffs of her pipe and smiled.
+
+"He'll meet plenty of his brethren at every street corner!" continued
+she. "Well; I didn't mean to dabble in witchcraft to-day, further than
+the lighting of my pipe, but a witch I am, and a witch I'm likely to
+be, and there's no use trying to shirk it. I'll make a man of my
+scarecrow, were it only for the joke's sake!"
+
+While muttering these words, Mother Rigby took the pipe from her own
+mouth and thrust it into the crevice which represented the same feature
+in the pumpkin visage of the scarecrow.
+
+"Puff, darling, puff!" said she. "Puff away, my fine fellow! your life
+depends on it!"
+
+This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly, to be addressed to a mere
+thing of sticks, straw, and old clothes, with nothing better than a
+shrivelled pumpkin for a head,--as we know to have been the scarecrow's
+case. Nevertheless, as we must carefully hold in remembrance, Mother
+Rigby was a witch of singular power and dexterity; and, keeping this
+fact duly before our minds, we shall see nothing beyond credibility in
+the remarkable incidents of our story. Indeed, the great difficulty
+will be at once got over, if we can only bring ourselves to believe
+that, as soon as the old dame bade him puff, there came a whiff of
+smoke from the scarecrow's mouth. It was the very feeblest of whiffs,
+to be sure; but it was followed by another and another, each more
+decided than the preceding one.
+
+"Puff away, my pet! puff away, my pretty one!" Mother Rigby kept
+repeating, with her pleasantest smile. "It is the breath of life to ye;
+and that you may take my word for."
+
+Beyond all question the pipe was bewitched. There must have been a
+spell either in the tobacco or in the fiercely-glowing coal that so
+mysteriously burned on top of it, or in the pungently-aromatic smoke
+which exhaled from the kindled weed. The figure, after a few doubtful
+attempts at length blew forth a volley of smoke extending all the way
+from the obscure corner into the bar of sunshine. There it eddied and
+melted away among the motes of dust. It seemed a convulsive effort; for
+the two or three next whiffs were fainter, although the coal still
+glowed and threw a gleam over the scarecrow's visage. The old witch
+clapped her skinny hands together, and smiled encouragingly upon her
+handiwork. She saw that the charm worked well. The shrivelled, yellow
+face, which heretofore had been no face at all, had already a thin,
+fantastic haze, as it were of human likeness, shifting to and fro
+across it; sometimes vanishing entirely, but growing more perceptible
+than ever with the next whiff from the pipe. The whole figure, in like
+manner, assumed a show of life, such as we impart to ill-defined shapes
+among the clouds, and half deceive ourselves with the pastime of our
+own fancy.
+
+If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it may be doubted whether
+there was any real change, after all, in the sordid, wornout worthless,
+and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow; but merely a spectral
+illusion, and a cunning effect of light and shade so colored and
+contrived as to delude the eyes of most men. The miracles of witchcraft
+seem always to have had a very shallow subtlety; and, at least, if the
+above explanation do not hit the truth of the process, I can suggest no
+better.
+
+"Well puffed, my pretty lad!" still cried old Mother Rigby. "Come,
+another good stout whiff, and let it be with might and main. Puff for
+thy life, I tell thee! Puff out of the very bottom of thy heart, if any
+heart thou hast, or any bottom to it! Well done, again! Thou didst suck
+in that mouthful as if for the pure love of it."
+
+And then the witch beckoned to the scarecrow, throwing so much magnetic
+potency into her gesture that it seemed as if it must inevitably be
+obeyed, like the mystic call of the loadstone when it summons the iron.
+
+"Why lurkest thou in the corner, lazy one?" said she. "Step forth! Thou
+hast the world before thee!"
+
+Upon my word, if the legend were not one which I heard on my
+grandmother's knee, and which had established its place among things
+credible before my childish judgment could analyze its probability, I
+question whether I should have the face to tell it now.
+
+In obedience to Mother Rigby's word, and extending its arm as if to
+reach her outstretched hand, the figure made a step forward--a kind of
+hitch and jerk, however, rather than a step--then tottered and almost
+lost its balance. What could the witch expect? It was nothing, after
+all, but a scarecrow stuck upon two sticks. But the strong-willed old
+beldam scowled, and beckoned, and flung the energy of her purpose so
+forcibly at this poor combination of rotten wood, and musty straw, and
+ragged garments, that it was compelled to show itself a man, in spite
+of the reality of things. So it stepped into the bar of sunshine. There
+it stood, poor devil of a contrivance that it was!--with only the
+thinnest vesture of human similitude about it, through which was
+evident the stiff, rickety, incongruous, faded, tattered,
+good-for-nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a heap
+upon the floor, as conscious of its own unworthiness to be erect. Shall
+I confess the truth? At its present point of vivification, the
+scarecrow reminds me of some of the lukewarm and abortive characters,
+composed of heterogeneous materials, used for the thousandth time, and
+never worth using, with which romance writers (and myself, no doubt,
+among the rest) have so overpeopled the world of fiction.
+
+But the fierce old hag began to get angry and show a glimpse of her
+diabolic nature (like a snake's head, peeping with a hiss out of her
+bosom), at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing which she had taken
+the trouble to put together.
+
+"Puff away, wretch!" cried she, wrathfully. "Puff, puff, puff, thou
+thing of straw and emptiness! thou rag or two! thou meal bag! thou
+pumpkin head! thou nothing! Where shall I find a name vile enough to
+call thee by? Puff, I say, and suck in thy fantastic life with the
+smoke! else I snatch the pipe from thy mouth and hurl thee where that
+red coal came from."
+
+Thus threatened, the unhappy scarecrow had nothing for it but to puff
+away for dear life. As need was, therefore, it applied itself lustily
+to the pipe, and sent forth such abundant volleys of tobacco smoke that
+the small cottage kitchen became all vaporous. The one sunbeam
+struggled mistily through, and could but imperfectly define the image
+of the cracked and dusty window pane on the opposite wall. Mother
+Rigby, meanwhile, with one brown arm akimbo and the other stretched
+towards the figure, loomed grimly amid the obscurity with such port and
+expression as when she was wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her
+victims and stand at the bedside to enjoy their agony. In fear and
+trembling did this poor scarecrow puff. But its efforts, it must be
+acknowledged, served an excellent purpose; for, with each successive
+whiff, the figure lost more and more of its dizzy and perplexing
+tenuity and seemed to take denser substance. Its very garments,
+moreover, partook of the magical change, and shone with the gloss of
+novelty and glistened with the skilfully embroidered gold that had long
+ago been rent away. And, half revealed among the smoke, a yellow visage
+bent its lustreless eyes on Mother Rigby.
+
+At last the old witch clinched her fist and shook it at the figure. Not
+that she was positively angry, but merely acting on the
+principle--perhaps untrue, or not the only truth, though as high a one
+as Mother Rigby could be expected to attain--that feeble and torpid
+natures, being incapable of better inspiration, must be stirred up by
+fear. But here was the crisis. Should she fail in what she now sought
+to effect, it was her ruthless purpose to scatter the miserable
+simulacre into its original elements.
+
+"Thou hast a man's aspect," said she, sternly. "Have also the echo and
+mockery of a voice! I bid thee speak!"
+
+The scarecrow gasped, struggled, and at length emitted a murmur, which
+was so incorporated with its smoky breath that you could scarcely tell
+whether it were indeed a voice or only a whiff of tobacco. Some
+narrators of this legend hold the opinion that Mother Rigby's
+conjurations and the fierceness of her will had compelled a familiar
+spirit into the figure, and that the voice was his.
+
+"Mother," mumbled the poor stifled voice, "be not so awful with me! I
+would fain speak; but being without wits, what can I say?"
+
+"Thou canst speak, darling, canst thou?" cried Mother Rigby, relaxing
+her grim countenance into a smile. "And what shalt thou say, quoth-a!
+Say, indeed! Art thou of the brotherhood of the empty skull, and
+demandest of me what thou shalt say? Thou shalt say a thousand things,
+and saying them a thousand times over, thou shalt still have said
+nothing! Be not afraid, I tell thee! When thou comest into the world
+(whither I purpose sending thee forthwith) thou shalt not lack the
+wherewithal to talk. Talk! Why, thou shall babble like a mill-stream,
+if thou wilt. Thou hast brains enough for that, I trow!"
+
+"At your service, mother," responded the figure.
+
+"And that was well said, my pretty one," answered Mother Rigby. "Then
+thou speakest like thyself, and meant nothing. Thou shalt have a
+hundred such set phrases, and five hundred to the boot of them. And
+now, darling, I have taken so much pains with thee and thou art so
+beautiful, that, by my troth, I love thee better than any witch's
+puppet in the world; and I've made them of all sorts--clay, wax, straw,
+sticks, night fog, morning mist, sea foam, and chimney smoke. But thou
+art the very best. So give heed to what I say."
+
+"Yes, kind mother," said the figure, "with all my heart!"
+
+"With all thy heart!" cried the old witch, setting her hands to her
+sides and laughing loudly. "Thou hast such a pretty way of speaking.
+With all thy heart! And thou didst put thy hand to the left side of thy
+waistcoat as if thou really hadst one!"
+
+So now, in high good humor with this fantastic contrivance of hers,
+Mother Rigby told the scarecrow that it must go and play its part in
+the great world, where not one man in a hundred, she affirmed, was
+gifted with more real substance than itself. And, that he might hold up
+his head with the best of them, she endowed him, on the spot, with an
+unreckonable amount of wealth. It consisted partly of a gold mine in
+Eldorado, and of ten thousand shares in a broken bubble, and of half a
+million acres of vineyard at the North Pole, and of a castle in the
+air, and a chateau in Spain, together with all the rents and income
+therefrom accruing. She further made over to him the cargo of a certain
+ship, laden with salt of Cadiz, which she herself, by her necromantic
+arts, had caused to founder, ten years before, in the deepest part of
+mid-ocean. If the salt were not dissolved, and could be brought to
+market, it would fetch a pretty penny among the fishermen. That he
+might not lack ready money, she gave him a copper farthing of
+Birmingham manufacture, being all the coin she had about her, and
+likewise a great deal of brass, which she applied to his forehead, thus
+making it yellower than ever.
+
+"With that brass alone," quoth Mother Rigby, "thou canst pay thy way
+all over the earth. Kiss me, pretty darling! I have done my best for
+thee."
+
+Furthermore, that the adventurer might lack no possible advantage
+towards a fair start in life, this excellent old dame gave him a token
+by which he was to introduce himself to a certain magistrate, member of
+the council, merchant, and elder of the church (the four capacities
+constituting but one man), who stood at the head of society in the
+neighboring metropolis. The token was neither more nor less than a
+single word, which Mother Rigby whispered to the scarecrow, and which
+the scarecrow was to whisper to the merchant.
+
+"Gouty as the old fellow is, he'll run thy errands for thee, when once
+thou hast given him that word in his ear," said the old witch. "Mother
+Rigby knows the worshipful Justice Gookin, and the worshipful Justice
+knows Mother Rigby!"
+
+Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close to the puppet's,
+chuckling irrepressibly, and fidgeting all through her system, with
+delight at the idea which she meant to communicate.
+
+"The worshipful Master Gookin," whispered she, "hath a comely maiden to
+his daughter. And hark ye, my pet! Thou hast a fair outside, and a
+pretty wit enough of thine own. Yea, a pretty wit enough! Thou wilt
+think better of it when thou hast seen more of other people's wits.
+Now, with thy outside and thy inside, thou art the very man to win a
+young girl's heart. Never doubt it! I tell thee it shall be so. Put but
+a bold face on the matter, sigh, smile, flourish thy hat, thrust forth
+thy leg like a dancing-master, put thy right hand to the left side of
+thy waistcoat, and pretty Polly Gookin is thine own!"
+
+All this while the new creature had been sucking in and exhaling the
+vapory fragrance of his pipe, and seemed now to continue this
+occupation as much for the enjoyment it afforded as because it was an
+essential condition of his existence. It was wonderful to see how
+exceedingly like a human being it behaved. Its eyes (for it appeared to
+possess a pair) were bent on Mother Rigby, and at suitable junctures it
+nodded or shook its head. Neither did it lack words proper for the
+occasion: "Really! Indeed! Pray tell me! Is it possible! Upon my word!
+By no means! Oh! Ah! Hem!" and other such weighty utterances as imply
+attention, inquiry, acquiescence, or dissent on the part of the
+auditor. Even had you stood by and seen the scarecrow made, you could
+scarcely have resisted the conviction that it perfectly understood the
+cunning counsels which the old witch poured into its counterfeit of an
+ear. The more earnestly it applied its lips to the pipe, the more
+distinctly was its human likeness stamped among visible realities, the
+more sagacious grew its expression, the more lifelike its gestures and
+movements, and the more intelligibly audible its voice. Its garments,
+too, glistened so much the brighter with an illusory magnificence. The
+very pipe, in which burned the spell of all this wonderwork, ceased to
+appear as a smoke-blackened earthen stump, and became a meerschaum,
+with painted bowl and amber mouthpiece.
+
+It might be apprehended, however, that as the life of the illusion
+seemed identical with the vapor of the pipe, it would terminate
+simultaneously with the reduction of the tobacco to ashes. But the
+beldam foresaw the difficulty.
+
+"Hold thou the pipe, my precious one," said she, "while I fill it for
+thee again."
+
+It was sorrowful to behold how the fine gentleman began to fade back
+into a scarecrow while Mother Rigby shook the ashes out of the pipe and
+proceeded to replenish it from her tobacco-box.
+
+"Dickon," cried she, in her high, sharp tone, "another coal for this
+pipe!"
+
+No sooner said than the intensely red speck of fire was glowing within
+the pipe-bowl; and the scarecrow, without waiting for the witch's
+bidding, applied the tube to his lips and drew in a few short,
+convulsive whiffs, which soon, however, became regular and equable.
+
+"Now, mine own heart's darling," quoth Mother Rigby, "whatever may
+happen to thee, thou must stick to thy pipe. Thy life is in it; and
+that, at least, thou knowest well, if thou knowest nought besides.
+Stick to thy pipe, I say! Smoke, puff, blow thy cloud; and tell the
+people, if any question be made, that it is for thy health, and that so
+the physician orders thee to do. And, sweet one, when thou shalt find
+thy pipe getting low, go apart into some corner, and (first filling
+thyself with smoke) cry sharply, 'Dickon, a fresh pipe of tobacco!'
+and, 'Dickon, another coal for my pipe!' and have it into thy pretty
+mouth as speedily as may be. Else, instead of a gallant gentleman in a
+gold-laced coat, thou wilt be but a jumble of sticks and tattered
+clothes, and a bag of straw, and a withered pumpkin! Now depart, my
+treasure, and good luck go with thee!"
+
+"Never fear, mother!" said the figure, in a stout voice, and sending
+forth a courageous whiff of smoke, "I will thrive, if an honest man and
+a gentleman may!"
+
+"Oh, thou wilt be the death of me!" cried the old witch, convulsed with
+laughter. "That was well said. If an honest man and a gentleman may!
+Thou playest thy part to perfection. Get along with thee for a smart
+fellow; and I will wager on thy head, as a man of pith and substance,
+with a brain and what they call a heart, and all else that a man should
+have, against any other thing on two legs. I hold myself a better witch
+than yesterday, for thy sake. Did not I make thee? And I defy any witch
+in New England to make such another! Here; take my staff along with
+thee!"
+
+The staff, though it was but a plain oaken stick, immediately took the
+aspect of a gold-headed cane.
+
+"That gold head has as much sense in it as thine own," said Mother
+Rigby, "and it will guide thee straight to worshipful Master Gookin's
+door. Get thee gone, my pretty pet, my darling, my precious one, my
+treasure; and if any ask thy name, it is Feathertop. For thou hast a
+feather in thy hat, and I have thrust a handful of feathers into the
+hollow of thy head, and thy wig, too, is of the fashion they call
+Feathertop,--so be Feathertop thy name!"
+
+And, issuing from the cottage, Feathertop strode manfully towards town.
+Mother Rigby stood at the threshold, well pleased to see how the
+sunbeams glistened on him, as if all his magnificence were real, and
+how diligently and lovingly he smoked his pipe, and how handsomely he
+walked, in spite of a little stiffness of his legs. She watched him
+until out of sight, and threw a witch benediction after her darling,
+when a turn of the road snatched him from her view.
+
+Betimes in the forenoon, when the principal street of the neighboring
+town was just at its acme of life and bustle, a stranger of very
+distinguished figure was seen on the sidewalk. His port as well as his
+garments betokened nothing short of nobility. He wore a
+richly-embroidered plum-colored coat, a waistcoat of costly velvet,
+magnificently adorned with golden foliage, a pair of splendid scarlet
+breeches, and the finest and glossiest of white silk stockings. His
+head was covered with a peruke, so daintily powdered and adjusted that
+it would have been sacrilege to disorder it with a hat; which,
+therefore (and it was a gold-laced hat, set off with a snowy feather),
+he carried beneath his arm. On the breast of his coat glistened a star.
+He managed his gold-headed cane with an airy grace, peculiar to the
+fine gentlemen of the period; and, to give the highest possible finish
+to his equipment, he had lace ruffles at his wrist, of a most ethereal
+delicacy, sufficiently avouching how idle and aristocratic must be the
+hands which they half concealed.
+
+It was a remarkable point in the accoutrement of this brilliant
+personage that he held in his left hand a fantastic kind of a pipe,
+with an exquisitely painted bowl and an amber mouthpiece. This he
+applied to his lips as often as every five or six paces, and inhaled a
+deep whiff of smoke, which, after being retained a moment in his lungs,
+might be seen to eddy gracefully from his mouth and nostrils.
+
+As may well be supposed, the street was all astir to find out the
+stranger's name.
+
+"It is some great nobleman, beyond question," said one of the
+townspeople. "Do you see the star at his breast?"
+
+"Nay; it is too bright to be seen," said another. "Yes; he must needs
+be a nobleman, as you say. But by what conveyance, think you, can his
+lordship have voyaged or travelled hither? There has been no vessel
+from the old country for a month past; and if he have arrived overland
+from the southward, pray where are his attendants and equipage?"
+
+"He needs no equipage to set off his rank," remarked a third. "If he
+came among us in rags, nobility would shine through a hole in his
+elbow. I never saw such dignity of aspect. He has the old Norman blood
+in his veins, I warrant him."
+
+"I rather take him to be a Dutchman, or one of your high Germans," said
+another citizen. "The men of those countries have always the pipe at
+their mouths."
+
+"And so has a Turk," answered his companion. "But, in my judgment, this
+stranger hath been bred at the French court, and hath there learned
+politeness and grace of manner, which none understand so well as the
+nobility of France. That gait, now! A vulgar spectator might deem it
+stiff--he might call it a hitch and jerk--but, to my eye, it hath an
+unspeakable majesty, and must have been acquired by constant
+observation of the deportment of the Grand Monarque. The stranger's
+character and office are evident enough. He is a French ambassador,
+come to treat with our rulers about the cession of Canada."
+
+"More probably a Spaniard," said another, "and hence his yellow
+complexion; or, most likely, he is from the Havana, or from some port
+on the Spanish main, and comes to make investigation about the piracies
+which our government is thought to connive at. Those settlers in Peru
+and Mexico have skins as yellow as the gold which they dig out of their
+mines."
+
+"Yellow or not," cried a lady, "he is a beautiful man!--so tall, so
+slender! such a fine, noble face, with so well-shaped a nose, and all
+that delicacy of expression about the mouth! And, bless me, how bright
+his star is! It positively shoots out flames!"
+
+"So do your eyes, fair lady," said the stranger, with a bow and a
+flourish of his pipe; for he was just passing at the instant. "Upon my
+honor, they have quite dazzled me."
+
+"Was ever so original and exquisite a compliment?" murmured the lady,
+in an ecstasy of delight.
+
+Amid the general admiration excited by the stranger's appearance, there
+were only two dissenting voices. One was that of an impertinent cur,
+which, after snuffing at the heels of the glistening figure, put its
+tail between its legs and skulked into its master's back yard,
+vociferating an execrable howl. The other dissentient was a young
+child, who squalled at the fullest stretch of his lungs, and babbled
+some unintelligible nonsense about a pumpkin.
+
+Feathertop meanwhile pursued his way along the street. Except for the
+few complimentary words to the lady, and now and then a slight
+inclination of the head in requital of the profound reverences of the
+bystanders, he seemed wholly absorbed in his pipe. There needed no
+other proof of his rank and consequence than the perfect equanimity
+with which he comported himself, while the curiosity and admiration of
+the town swelled almost into clamor around him. With a crowd gathering
+behind his footsteps, he finally reached the mansion-house of the
+worshipful Justice Gookin, entered the gate, ascended the steps of the
+front door, and knocked. In the interim, before his summons was
+answered, the stranger was observed to shake the ashes out of his pipe.
+
+"What did he say in that sharp voice?" inquired one of the spectators.
+
+"Nay, I know not," answered his friend. "But the sun dazzles my eyes
+strangely. How dim and faded his lordship looks all of a sudden! Bless
+my wits, what is the matter with me?"
+
+"The wonder is," said the other, "that his pipe, which was out only an
+instant ago, should be all alight again, and with the reddest coal I
+ever saw. There is something mysterious about this stranger. What a
+whiff of smoke was that! Dim and faded did you call him? Why, as he
+turns about the star on his breast is all ablaze."
+
+"It is, indeed," said his companion; "and it will go near to dazzle
+pretty Polly Gookin, whom I see peeping at it out of the chamber
+window."
+
+The door being now opened, Feathertop turned to the crowd, made a
+stately bend of his body like a great man acknowledging the reverence
+of the meaner sort, and vanished into the house. There was a mysterious
+kind of a smile, if it might not better be called a grin or grimace,
+upon his visage; but, of all the throng that beheld him, not an
+individual appears to have possessed insight enough to detect the
+illusive character of the stranger except a little child and a cur dog.
+
+Our legend here loses somewhat of its continuity, and, passing over the
+preliminary explanation between Feathertop and the merchant, goes in
+quest of the pretty Polly Gookin. She was a damsel of a soft, round
+figure, with light hair and blue eyes, and a fair, rosy face, which
+seemed neither very shrewd nor very simple. This young lady had caught
+a glimpse of the glistening stranger while standing on the threshold,
+and had forthwith put on a laced cap, a string of beads, her finest
+kerchief, and her stiffest damask petticoat in preparation for the
+interview. Hurrying from her chamber to the parlor, she had ever since
+been viewing herself in the large looking-glass and practising pretty
+airs-now a smile, now a ceremonious dignity of aspect, and now a softer
+smile than the former, kissing her hand likewise, tossing her head, and
+managing her fan; while within the mirror an unsubstantial little maid
+repeated every gesture and did all the foolish things that Polly did,
+but without making her ashamed of them. In short, it was the fault of
+pretty Polly's ability rather than her will if she failed to be as
+complete an artifice as the illustrious Feathertop himself; and, when
+she thus tampered with her own simplicity, the witch's phantom might
+well hope to win her.
+
+No sooner did Polly hear her father's gouty footsteps approaching the
+parlor door, accompanied with the stiff clatter of Feathertop's
+high-heeled shoes, than she seated herself bolt upright and innocently
+began warbling a song.
+
+"Polly! daughter Polly!" cried the old merchant. "Come hither, child."
+
+Master Gookin's aspect, as he opened the door, was doubtful and
+troubled.
+
+"This gentleman," continued he, presenting the stranger, "is the
+Chevalier Feathertop,--nay, I beg his pardon, my Lord Feathertop,--who
+hath brought me a token of remembrance from an ancient friend of mine.
+Pay your duty to his lordship, child, and honor him as his quality
+deserves."
+
+After these few words of introduction, the worshipful magistrate
+immediately quitted the room. But, even in that brief moment, had the
+fair Polly glanced aside at her father instead of devoting herself
+wholly to the brilliant guest, she might have taken warning of some
+mischief nigh at hand. The old man was nervous, fidgety, and very pale.
+Purposing a smile of courtesy, he had deformed his face with a sort of
+galvanic grin, which, when Feathertop's back was turned, he exchanged
+for a scowl, at the same time shaking his fist and stamping his gouty
+foot--an incivility which brought its retribution along with it. The
+truth appears to have been that Mother Rigby's word of introduction,
+whatever it might be, had operated far more on the rich merchant's
+fears than on his good will. Moreover, being a man of wonderfully acute
+observation, he had noticed that these painted figures on the bowl of
+Feathertop's pipe were in motion. Looking more closely he became
+convinced that these figures were a party of little demons, each duly
+provided with horns and a tail, and dancing hand in hand, with gestures
+of diabolical merriment, round the circumference of the pipe bowl. As
+if to confirm his suspicions, while Master Gookin ushered his guest
+along a dusky passage from his private room to the parlor, the star on
+Feathertop's breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw a
+flickering gleam upon the wall, the ceiling, and the floor.
+
+With such sinister prognostics manifesting themselves on all hands, it
+is not to be marvelled at that the merchant should have felt that he
+was committing his daughter to a very questionable acquaintance. He
+cursed, in his secret soul, the insinuating elegance of Feathertop's
+manners, as this brilliant personage bowed, smiled, put his hand on his
+heart, inhaled a long whiff from his pipe, and enriched the atmosphere
+with the smoky vapor of a fragrant and visible sigh. Gladly would poor
+Master Gookin have thrust his dangerous guest into the street; but
+there was a constraint and terror within him. This respectable old
+gentleman, we fear, at an earlier period of life, had given some pledge
+or other to the evil principle, and perhaps was now to redeem it by the
+sacrifice of his daughter.
+
+It so happened that the parlor door was partly of glass, shaded by a
+silken curtain, the folds of which hung a little awry. So strong was
+the merchant's interest in witnessing what was to ensue between the
+fair Polly and the gallant Feathertop that, after quitting the room, he
+could by no means refrain from peeping through the crevice of the
+curtain.
+
+But there was nothing very miraculous to be seen; nothing--except the
+trifles previously noticed--to confirm the idea of a supernatural peril
+environing the pretty Polly. The stranger it is true was evidently a
+thorough and practised man of the world, systematic and self-possessed,
+and therefore the sort of a person to whom a parent ought not to
+confide a simple, young girl without due watchfulness for the result.
+The worthy magistrate who had been conversant with all degrees and
+qualities of mankind, could not but perceive every motion and gesture
+of the distinguished Feathertop came in its proper place; nothing had
+been left rude or native in him; a well-digested conventionalism had
+incorporated itself thoroughly with his substance and transformed him
+into a work of art. Perhaps it was this peculiarity that invested him
+with a species of ghastliness and awe. It is the effect of anything
+completely and consummately artificial, in human shape, that the person
+impresses us as an unreality and as having hardly pith enough to cast a
+shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all this resulted in a
+wild, extravagant, and fantastical impression, as if his life and being
+were akin to the smoke that curled upward from his pipe.
+
+But pretty Polly Gookin felt not thus. The pair were now promenading
+the room: Feathertop with his dainty stride and no less dainty grimace,
+the girl with a native maidenly grace, just touched, not spoiled, by a
+slightly affected manner, which seemed caught from the perfect artifice
+of her companion. The longer the interview continued, the more charmed
+was pretty Polly, until, within the first quarter of an hour (as the
+old magistrate noted by his watch), she was evidently beginning to be
+in love. Nor need it have been witchcraft that subdued her in such a
+hurry; the poor child's heart, it may be, was so very fervent that it
+melted her with its own warmth as reflected from the hollow semblance
+of a lover. No matter what Feathertop said, his words found depth and
+reverberation in her ear; no matter what he did, his action was heroic
+to her eye. And by this time it is to be supposed there was a blush on
+Polly's cheek, a tender smile about her mouth and a liquid softness in
+her glance; while the star kept coruscating on Feathertop's breast, and
+the little demons careered with more frantic merriment than ever about
+the circumference of his pipe bowl. O pretty Polly Gookin, why should
+these imps rejoice so madly that a silly maiden's heart was about to be
+given to a shadow! Is it so unusual a misfortune, so rare a triumph?
+
+By and by Feathertop paused, and throwing himself into an imposing
+attitude, seemed to summon the fair girl to survey his figure and
+resist him longer if she could. His star, his embroidery, his buckles
+glowed at that instant with unutterable splendor; the picturesque hues
+of his attire took a richer depth of coloring; there was a gleam and
+polish over his whole presence betokening the perfect witchery of
+well-ordered manners. The maiden raised her eyes and suffered them to
+linger upon her companion with a bashful and admiring gaze. Then, as if
+desirous of judging what value her own simple comeliness might have
+side by side with so much brilliancy, she cast a glance towards the
+full-length looking-glass in front of which they happened to be
+standing. It was one of the truest plates in the world and incapable of
+flattery. No sooner did the images therein reflected meet Polly's eye
+than she shrieked, shrank from the stranger's side, gazed at him for a
+moment in the wildest dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor.
+Feathertop likewise had looked towards the mirror, and there beheld,
+not the glittering mockery of his outside show, but a picture of the
+sordid patchwork of his real composition stripped of all witchcraft.
+
+The wretched simulacrum! We almost pity him. He threw up his arms with
+an expression of despair that went further than any of his previous
+manifestations towards vindicating his claims to be reckoned human, for
+perchance the only time since this so often empty and deceptive life of
+mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully recognized
+itself.
+
+Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth in the twilight of this
+eventful day, and had just shaken the ashes out of a new pipe, when she
+heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did not seem so much the
+tramp of human footsteps as the clatter of sticks or the rattling of
+dry bones.
+
+"Ha!" thought the old witch, "what step is that? Whose skeleton is out
+of its grave now, I wonder?"
+
+A figure burst headlong into the cottage door. It was Feathertop! His
+pipe was still alight; the star still flamed upon his breast; the
+embroidery still glowed upon his garments; nor had he lost, in any
+degree or manner that could be estimated, the aspect that assimilated
+him with our mortal brotherhood. But yet, in some indescribable way (as
+is the case with all that has deluded us when once found out), the poor
+reality was felt beneath the cunning artifice.
+
+"What has gone wrong?" demanded the witch. "Did yonder sniffling
+hypocrite thrust my darling from his door? The villain! I'll set twenty
+fiends to torment him till he offer thee his daughter on his bended
+knees!"
+
+"No, mother," said Feathertop despondingly; "it was not that."
+
+"Did the girl scorn my precious one?" asked Mother Rigby, her fierce
+eyes glowing like two coals of Tophet. "I'll cover her face with
+pimples! Her nose shall be as red as the coal in thy pipe! Her front
+teeth shall drop out! In a week hence she shall not be worth thy
+having!"
+
+"Let her alone, mother," answered poor Feathertop; "the girl was half
+won; and methinks a kiss from her sweet lips might have made me
+altogether human. But," he added, after a brief pause and then a howl
+of self-contempt, "I've seen myself, mother! I've seen myself for the
+wretched, ragged, empty thing I am! I'll exist no longer!"
+
+Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with all his might
+against the chimney, and at the same instant sank upon the floor, a
+medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from
+the heap, and a shrivelled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes were now
+lustreless; but the rudely-carved gap, that just before had been a
+mouth still seemed to twist itself into a despairing grin, and was so
+far human.
+
+"Poor fellow!" quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics
+of her ill-fated contrivance. "My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There
+are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world,
+made up of just such a jumble of wornout, forgotten, and
+good-for-nothing trash as he was! Yet they live in fair repute, and
+never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet
+be the only one to know himself and perish for it?"
+
+While thus muttering, the witch had filled a fresh pipe of tobacco, and
+held the stem between her fingers, as doubtful whether to thrust it
+into her own mouth or Feathertop's.
+
+"Poor Feathertop!" she continued. "I could easily give him another
+chance and send him forth again tomorrow. But no; his feelings are too
+tender, his sensibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart to
+bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world.
+Well! well! I'll make a scarecrow of him after all. 'Tis an innocent
+and useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and, if each of his
+human brethren had as fit a one, 't would be the better for mankind;
+and as for this pipe of tobacco, I need it more than he."
+
+So saying Mother Rigby put the stem between her lips. "Dickon!" cried
+she, in her high, sharp tone, "another coal for my pipe!"
+
+
+
+EGOTISM;[1] OR, THE BOSOM SERPENT
+
+[From the Unpublished "Allegories of the Heart."]
+
+[1] The physical fact, to which it is here attempted to give a moral
+signification, has been known to occur in more than one instance.
+
+
+"Here he comes!" shouted the boys along the street. "Here comes the man
+with a snake in his bosom!"
+
+This outcry, saluting Herkimer's ears as he was about to enter the iron
+gate of the Elliston mansion, made him pause. It was not without a
+shudder that he found himself on the point of meeting his former
+acquaintance, whom he had known in the glory of youth, and whom now
+after an interval of five years, he was to find the victim either of a
+diseased fancy or a horrible physical misfortune.
+
+"A snake in his bosom!" repeated the young sculptor to himself. "It
+must be he. No second man on earth has such a bosom friend. And now, my
+poor Rosina, Heaven grant me wisdom to discharge my errand aright!
+Woman's faith must be strong indeed since thine has not yet failed."
+
+Thus musing, he took his stand at the entrance of the gate and waited
+until the personage so singularly announced should make his appearance.
+After an instant or two he beheld the figure of a lean man, of
+unwholesome look, with glittering eyes and long black hair, who seemed
+to imitate the motion of a snake; for, instead of walking straight
+forward with open front, he undulated along the pavement in a curved
+line. It may be too fanciful to say that something, either in his moral
+or material aspect, suggested the idea that a miracle had been wrought
+by transforming a serpent into a man, but so imperfectly that the snaky
+nature was yet hidden, and scarcely hidden, under the mere outward
+guise of humanity. Herkimer remarked that his complexion had a greenish
+tinge over its sickly white, reminding him of a species of marble out
+of which he had once wrought a head of Envy, with her snaky locks.
+
+The wretched being approached the gate, but, instead of entering,
+stopped short and fixed the glitter of his eye full upon the
+compassionate yet steady countenance of the sculptor.
+
+"It gnaws me! It gnaws me!" he exclaimed.
+
+And then there was an audible hiss, but whether it came from the
+apparent lunatic's own lips, or was the real hiss of a serpent, might
+admit of a discussion. At all events, it made Herkimer shudder to his
+heart's core.
+
+"Do you know me, George Herkimer?" asked the snake-possessed.
+
+Herkimer did know him; but it demanded all the intimate and practical
+acquaintance with the human face, acquired by modelling actual
+likenesses in clay, to recognize the features of Roderick Elliston in
+the visage that now met the sculptor's gaze. Yet it was he. It added
+nothing to the wonder to reflect that the once brilliant young man had
+undergone this odious and fearful change during the no more than five
+brief years of Herkimer's abode at Florence. The possibility of such a
+transformation being granted, it was as easy to conceive it effected in
+a moment as in an age. Inexpressibly shocked and startled, it was still
+the keenest pang when Herkimer remembered that the fate of his cousin
+Rosina, the ideal of gentle womanhood, was indissolubly interwoven with
+that of a being whom Providence seemed to have unhumanized.
+
+"Elliston! Roderick!" cried he, "I had heard of this; but my conception
+came far short of the truth. What has befallen you? Why do I find you
+thus?"
+
+"Oh, 'tis a mere nothing! A snake! A snake! The commonest thing in the
+world. A snake in the bosom--that's all," answered Roderick Elliston.
+"But how is your own breast?" continued he, looking the sculptor in the
+eye with the most acute and penetrating glance that it had ever been
+his fortune to encounter. "All pure and wholesome? No reptile there? By
+my faith and conscience, and by the devil within me, here is a wonder!
+A man without a serpent in his bosom!"
+
+"Be calm, Elliston," whispered George Herkimer, laying his hand upon
+the shoulder of the snake-possessed. "I have crossed the ocean to meet
+you. Listen! Let us be private. I bring a message from Rosina--from
+your wife!"
+
+"It gnaws me! It gnaws me!" muttered Roderick.
+
+With this exclamation, the most frequent in his mouth, the unfortunate
+man clutched both hands upon his breast as if an intolerable sting or
+torture impelled him to rend it open and let out the living mischief,
+even should it be intertwined with his own life. He then freed himself
+from Herkimer's grasp by a subtle motion, and, gliding through the
+gate, took refuge in his antiquated family residence. The sculptor did
+not pursue him. He saw that no available intercourse could be expected
+at such a moment, and was desirous, before another meeting, to inquire
+closely into the nature of Roderick's disease and the circumstances
+that had reduced him to so lamentable a condition. He succeeded in
+obtaining the necessary information from an eminent medical gentleman.
+
+Shortly after Elliston's separation from his wife--now nearly four
+years ago--his associates had observed a singular gloom spreading over
+his daily life, like those chill, gray mists that sometimes steal away
+the sunshine from a summer's morning. The symptoms caused them endless
+perplexity. They knew not whether ill health were robbing his spirits
+of elasticity, or whether a canker of the mind was gradually eating, as
+such cankers do, from his moral system into the physical frame, which
+is but the shadow of the former. They looked for the root of this
+trouble in his shattered schemes of domestic bliss,--wilfully shattered
+by himself,--but could not be satisfied of its existence there. Some
+thought that their once brilliant friend was in an incipient stage of
+insanity, of which his passionate impulses had perhaps been the
+forerunners; others prognosticated a general blight and gradual
+decline. From Roderick's own lips they could learn nothing. More than
+once, it is true, he had been heard to say, clutching his hands
+convulsively upon his breast,--"It gnaws me! It gnaws me!"--but, by
+different auditors, a great diversity of explanation was assigned to
+this ominous expression. What could it be that gnawed the breast of
+Roderick Elliston? Was it sorrow? Was it merely the tooth of physical
+disease? Or, in his reckless course, often verging upon profligacy, if
+not plunging into its depths, had he been guilty of some deed which
+made his bosom a prey to the deadlier fangs of remorse? There was
+plausible ground for each of these conjectures; but it must not be
+concealed that more than one elderly gentleman, the victim of good
+cheer and slothful habits, magisterially pronounced the secret of the
+whole matter to be Dyspepsia!
+
+Meanwhile, Roderick seemed aware how generally he had become the
+subject of curiosity and conjecture, and, with a morbid repugnance to
+such notice, or to any notice whatsoever, estranged himself from all
+companionship. Not merely the eye of man was a horror to him; not
+merely the light of a friend's countenance; but even the blessed
+sunshine, likewise, which in its universal beneficence typifies the
+radiance of the Creator's face, expressing his love for all the
+creatures of his hand. The dusky twilight was now too transparent for
+Roderick Elliston; the blackest midnight was his chosen hour to steal
+abroad; and if ever he were seen, it was when the watchman's lantern
+gleamed upon his figure, gliding along the street, with his hands
+clutched upon his bosom, still muttering, "It gnaws me! It gnaws me!"
+What could it be that gnawed him?
+
+After a time, it became known that Elliston was in the habit of
+resorting to all the noted quacks that infested the city, or whom money
+would tempt to journey thither from a distance. By one of these
+persons, in the exultation of a supposed cure, it was proclaimed far
+and wide, by dint of handbills and little pamphlets on dingy paper,
+that a distinguished gentleman, Roderick Elliston, Esq., had been
+relieved of a SNAKE in his stomach! So here was the monstrous secret,
+ejected from its lurking place into public view, in all its horrible
+deformity. The mystery was out; but not so the bosom serpent. He, if it
+were anything but a delusion, still lay coiled in his living den. The
+empiric's cure had been a sham, the effect, it was supposed, of some
+stupefying drug which more nearly caused the death of the patient than
+of the odious reptile that possessed him. When Roderick Elliston
+regained entire sensibility, it was to find his misfortune the town
+talk--the more than nine days' wonder and horror--while, at his bosom,
+he felt the sickening motion of a thing alive, and the gnawing of that
+restless fang which seemed to gratify at once a physical appetite and a
+fiendish spite.
+
+He summoned the old black servant, who had been bred up in his father's
+house, and was a middle-aged man while Roderick lay in his cradle.
+
+"Scipio!" he began; and then paused, with his arms folded over his
+heart. "What do people say of me, Scipio."
+
+"Sir! my poor master! that you had a serpent in your bosom," answered
+the servant with hesitation.
+
+"And what else?" asked Roderick, with a ghastly look at the man.
+
+"Nothing else, dear master," replied Scipio, "only that the doctor gave
+you a powder, and that the snake leaped out upon the floor."
+
+"No, no!" muttered Roderick to himself, as he shook his head, and
+pressed his hands with a more convulsive force upon his breast, "I feel
+him still. It gnaws me! It gnaws me!"
+
+From this time the miserable sufferer ceased to shun the world, but
+rather solicited and forced himself upon the notice of acquaintances
+and strangers. It was partly the result of desperation on finding that
+the cavern of his own bosom had not proved deep and dark enough to hide
+the secret, even while it was so secure a fortress for the loathsome
+fiend that had crept into it. But still more, this craving for
+notoriety was a symptom of the intense morbidness which now pervaded
+his nature. All persons chronically diseased are egotists, whether the
+disease be of the mind or body; whether it be sin, sorrow, or merely
+the more tolerable calamity of some endless pain, or mischief among the
+cords of mortal life. Such individuals are made acutely conscious of a
+self, by the torture in which it dwells. Self, therefore, grows to be
+so prominent an object with them that they cannot but present it to the
+face of every casual passer-by. There is a pleasure--perhaps the
+greatest of which the sufferer is susceptible--in displaying the wasted
+or ulcerated limb, or the cancer in the breast; and the fouler the
+crime, with so much the more difficulty does the perpetrator prevent it
+from thrusting up its snake-like head to frighten the world; for it is
+that cancer, or that crime, which constitutes their respective
+individuality. Roderick Elliston, who, a little while before, had held
+himself so scornfully above the common lot of men, now paid full
+allegiance to this humiliating law. The snake in his bosom seemed the
+symbol of a monstrous egotism to which everything was referred, and
+which he pampered, night and day, with a continual and exclusive
+sacrifice of devil worship.
+
+He soon exhibited what most people considered indubitable tokens of
+insanity. In some of his moods, strange to say, he prided and gloried
+himself on being marked out from the ordinary experience of mankind, by
+the possession of a double nature, and a life within a life. He
+appeared to imagine that the snake was a divinity,--not celestial, it
+is true, but darkly infernal,--and that he thence derived an eminence
+and a sanctity, horrid, indeed, yet more desirable than whatever
+ambition aims at. Thus he drew his misery around him like a regal
+mantle, and looked down triumphantly upon those whose vitals nourished
+no deadly monster. Oftener, however, his human nature asserted its
+empire over him in the shape of a yearning for fellowship. It grew to
+be his custom to spend the whole day in wandering about the streets,
+aimlessly, unless it might be called an aim to establish a species of
+brotherhood between himself and the world. With cankered ingenuity, he
+sought out his own disease in every breast. Whether insane or not, he
+showed so keen a perception of frailty, error, and vice, that many
+persons gave him credit for being possessed not merely with a serpent,
+but with an actual fiend, who imparted this evil faculty of recognizing
+whatever was ugliest in man's heart.
+
+For instance, he met an individual, who, for thirty years, had
+cherished a hatred against his own brother. Roderick, amidst the throng
+of the street, laid his hand on this man's chest, and looking full into
+his forbidding face, "How is the snake to-day?" he inquired, with a
+mock expression of sympathy.
+
+"The snake!" exclaimed the brother hater--"what do you mean?"
+
+"The snake! The snake! Does it gnaw you?" persisted Roderick. "Did you
+take counsel with him this morning when you should have been saying
+your prayers? Did he sting, when you thought of your brother's health,
+wealth, and good repute? Did he caper for joy, when you remembered the
+profligacy of his only son? And whether he stung, or whether he
+frolicked, did you feel his poison throughout your body and soul,
+converting everything to sourness and bitterness? That is the way of
+such serpents. I have learned the whole nature of them from my own!"
+
+"Where is the police?" roared the object of Roderick's persecution, at
+the same time giving an instinctive clutch to his breast. "Why is this
+lunatic allowed to go at large?"
+
+"Ha, ha!" chuckled Roderick, releasing his grasp of the man.-- "His
+bosom serpent has stung him then!"
+
+Often it pleased the unfortunate young man to vex people with a lighter
+satire, yet still characterized by somewhat of snake-like virulence.
+One day he encountered an ambitious statesman, and gravely inquired
+after the welfare of his boa constrictor; for of that species, Roderick
+affirmed, this gentleman's serpent must needs be, since its appetite
+was enormous enough to devour the whole country and constitution. At
+another time, he stopped a close-fisted old fellow, of great wealth,
+but who skulked about the city in the guise of a scarecrow, with a
+patched blue surtout, brown hat, and mouldy boots, scraping pence
+together, and picking up rusty nails. Pretending to look earnestly at
+this respectable person's stomach, Roderick assured him that his snake
+was a copper-head and had been generated by the immense quantities of
+that base metal with which he daily defiled his fingers. Again, he
+assaulted a man of rubicund visage, and told him that few bosom
+serpents had more of the devil in them than those that breed in the
+vats of a distillery. The next whom Roderick honored with his attention
+was a distinguished clergyman, who happened just then to be engaged in
+a theological controversy, where human wrath was more perceptible than
+divine inspiration.
+
+"You have swallowed a snake in a cup of sacramental wine," quoth he.
+
+"Profane wretch!" exclaimed the divine; but, nevertheless, his hand
+stole to his breast.
+
+He met a person of sickly sensibility, who, on some early
+disappointment, had retired from the world, and thereafter held no
+intercourse with his fellow-men, but brooded sullenly or passionately
+over the irrevocable past. This man's very heart, if Roderick might be
+believed, had been changed into a serpent, which would finally torment
+both him and itself to death. Observing a married couple, whose
+domestic troubles were matter of notoriety, he condoled with both on
+having mutually taken a house adder to their bosoms. To an envious
+author, who depreciated works which he could never equal, he said that
+his snake was the slimiest and filthiest of all the reptile tribe, but
+was fortunately without a sting. A man of impure life, and a brazen
+face, asking Roderick if there were any serpent in his breast, he told
+him that there was, and of the same species that once tortured Don
+Rodrigo, the Goth. He took a fair young girl by the hand, and gazing
+sadly into her eyes, warned her that she cherished a serpent of the
+deadliest kind within her gentle breast; and the world found the truth
+of those ominous words, when, a few months afterwards, the poor girl
+died of love and shame. Two ladies, rivals in fashionable life who
+tormented one another with a thousand little stings of womanish spite,
+were given to understand that each of their hearts was a nest of
+diminutive snakes, which did quite as much mischief as one great one.
+
+But nothing seemed to please Roderick better than to lay hold of a
+person infected with jealousy, which he represented as an enormous
+green reptile, with an ice-cold length of body, and the sharpest sting
+of any snake save one.
+
+"And what one is that?" asked a by-stander, overhearing him.
+
+It was a dark-browed man who put the question; he had an evasive eye,
+which in the course of a dozen years had looked no mortal directly in
+the face. There was an ambiguity about this person's character,--a
+stain upon his reputation,--yet none could tell precisely of what
+nature, although the city gossips, male and female, whispered the most
+atrocious surmises. Until a recent period he had followed the sea, and
+was, in fact, the very shipmaster whom George Herkimer had encountered,
+under such singular circumstances, in the Grecian Archipelago.
+
+"What bosom serpent has the sharpest sting?" repeated this man; but he
+put the question as if by a reluctant necessity, and grew pale while he
+was uttering it.
+
+"Why need you ask?" replied Roderick, with a look of dark intelligence.
+"Look into your own breast. Hark! my serpent bestirs himself! He
+acknowledges the presence of a master fiend!"
+
+And then, as the by-standers afterwards affirmed, a hissing sound was
+heard, apparently in Roderick Elliston's breast. It was said, too, that
+an answering hiss came from the vitals of the shipmaster, as if a snake
+were actually lurking there and had been aroused by the call of its
+brother reptile. If there were in fact any such sound, it might have
+been caused by a malicious exercise of ventriloquism on the part of
+Roderick.
+
+Thus making his own actual serpent--if a serpent there actually was in
+his bosom--the type of each man's fatal error, or hoarded sin, or
+unquiet conscience, and striking his sting so unremorsefully into the
+sorest spot, we may well imagine that Roderick became the pest of the
+city. Nobody could elude him--none could withstand him. He grappled
+with the ugliest truth that he could lay his hand on, and compelled his
+adversary to do the same. Strange spectacle in human life where it is
+the instinctive effort of one and all to hide those sad realities, and
+leave them undisturbed beneath a heap of superficial topics which
+constitute the materials of intercourse between man and man! It was not
+to be tolerated that Roderick Elliston should break through the tacit
+compact by which the world has done its best to secure repose without
+relinquishing evil. The victims of his malicious remarks, it is true,
+had brothers enough to keep them in countenance; for, by Roderick's
+theory, every mortal bosom harbored either a brood of small serpents or
+one overgrown monster that had devoured all the rest. Still the city
+could not bear this new apostle. It was demanded by nearly all, and
+particularly by the most respectable inhabitants, that Roderick should
+no longer be permitted to violate the received rules of decorum by
+obtruding his own bosom serpent to the public gaze, and dragging those
+of decent people from their lurking places.
+
+Accordingly, his relatives interfered and placed him in a private
+asylum for the insane. When the news was noised abroad, it was observed
+that many persons walked the streets with freer countenances and
+covered their breasts less carefully with their hands.
+
+His confinement, however, although it contributed not a little to the
+peace of the town, operated unfavorably upon Roderick himself. In
+solitude his melancholy grew more black and sullen. He spent whole
+days--indeed, it was his sole occupation--in communing with the
+serpent. A conversation was sustained, in which, as it seemed, the
+hidden monster bore a part, though unintelligibly to the listeners, and
+inaudible except in a hiss. Singular as it may appear, the sufferer had
+now contracted a sort of affection for his tormentor, mingled, however,
+with the intensest loathing and horror. Nor were such discordant
+emotions incompatible. Each, on the contrary, imparted strength and
+poignancy to its opposite. Horrible love--horrible antipathy--embracing
+one another in his bosom, and both concentrating themselves upon a
+being that had crept into his vitals or been engendered there, and
+which was nourished with his food, and lived upon his life, and was as
+intimate with him as his own heart, and yet was the foulest of all
+created things! But not the less was it the true type of a morbid
+nature.
+
+Sometimes, in his moments of rage and bitter hatred against the snake
+and himself, Roderick determined to be the death of him, even at the
+expense of his own life. Once he attempted it by starvation; but, while
+the wretched man was on the point of famishing, the monster seemed to
+feed upon his heart, and to thrive and wax gamesome, as if it were his
+sweetest and most congenial diet. Then he privily took a dose of active
+poison, imagining that it would not fail to kill either himself or the
+devil that possessed him, or both together. Another mistake; for if
+Roderick had not yet been destroyed by his own poisoned heart nor the
+snake by gnawing it, they had little to fear from arsenic or corrosive
+sublimate. Indeed, the venomous pest appeared to operate as an antidote
+against all other poisons. The physicians tried to suffocate the fiend
+with tobacco smoke. He breathed it as freely as if it were his native
+atmosphere. Again, they drugged their patient with opium and drenched
+him with intoxicating liquors, hoping that the snake might thus be
+reduced to stupor and perhaps be ejected from the stomach. They
+succeeded in rendering Roderick insensible; but, placing their hands
+upon his breast, they were inexpressibly horror stricken to feel the
+monster wriggling, twining, and darting to and fro within his narrow
+limits, evidently enlivened by the opium or alcohol, and incited to
+unusual feats of activity. Thenceforth they gave up all attempts at
+cure or palliation. The doomed sufferer submitted to his fate, resumed
+his former loathsome affection for the bosom fiend, and spent whole
+miserable days before a looking-glass, with his mouth wide open,
+watching, in hope and horror, to catch a glimpse of the snake's head
+far down within his throat. It is supposed that he succeeded; for the
+attendants once heard a frenzied shout, and, rushing into the room,
+found Roderick lifeless upon the floor.
+
+He was kept but little longer under restraint. After minute
+investigation, the medical directors of the asylum decided that his
+mental disease did not amount to insanity, nor would warrant his
+confinement, especially as its influence upon his spirits was
+unfavorable, and might produce the evil which it was meant to remedy.
+His eccentricities were doubtless great; he had habitually violated
+many of the customs and prejudices of society; but the world was not,
+without surer ground, entitled to treat him as a madman. On this
+decision of such competent authority Roderick was released, and had
+returned to his native city the very day before his encounter with
+George Herkimer.
+
+As soon as possible after learning these particulars the sculptor,
+together with a sad and tremulous companion, sought Elliston at his own
+house. It was a large, sombre edifice of wood, with pilasters and a
+balcony, and was divided from one of the principal streets by a terrace
+of three elevations, which was ascended by successive flights of stone
+steps. Some immense old elms almost concealed the front of the mansion.
+This spacious and once magnificent family residence was built by a
+grandee of the race early in the past century, at which epoch, land
+being of small comparative value, the garden and other grounds had
+formed quite an extensive domain. Although a portion of the ancestral
+heritage had been alienated, there was still a shadowy enclosure in the
+rear of the mansion where a student, or a dreamer, or a man of stricken
+heart might lie all day upon the grass, amid the solitude of murmuring
+boughs, and forget that a city had grown up around him.
+
+Into this retirement the sculptor and his companion were ushered by
+Scipio, the old black servant, whose wrinkled visage grew almost sunny
+with intelligence and joy as he paid his humble greetings to one of the
+two visitors.
+
+"Remain in the arbor," whispered the sculptor to the figure that leaned
+upon his arm. "You will know whether, and when, to make your
+appearance."
+
+"God will teach me," was the reply. "May He support me too!"
+
+Roderick was reclining on the margin of a fountain which gushed into
+the fleckered sunshine with the same clear sparkle and the same voice
+of  airy quietude as when trees of primeval growth flung their shadows
+cross its bosom. How strange is the life of a fountain!--born at every
+moment, yet of an age coeval with the rocks, and far surpassing the
+venerable antiquity of a forest.
+
+"You are come! I have expected you," said Elliston, when he became
+aware of the sculptor's presence.
+
+His manner was very different from that of the preceding day--quiet,
+courteous, and, as Herkimer thought, watchful both over his guest and
+himself. This unnatural restraint was almost the only trait that
+betokened anything amiss. He had just thrown a book upon the grass,
+where it lay half opened, thus disclosing itself to be a natural
+history of the serpent tribe, illustrated by lifelike plates. Near it
+lay that bulky volume, the Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor, full of
+cases of conscience, and in which most men, possessed of a conscience,
+may find something applicable to their purpose.
+
+"You see," observed Elliston, pointing to the book of serpents, while a
+smile gleamed upon his lips, "I am making an effort to become better
+acquainted with my bosom friend; but I find nothing satisfactory in
+this volume. If I mistake not, he will prove to be sui generis, and
+akin to no other reptile in creation."
+
+"Whence came this strange calamity?" inquired the sculptor.
+
+"My sable friend Scipio has a story," replied Roderick, "of a snake
+that had lurked in this fountain--pure and innocent as it looks--ever
+since it was known to the first settlers. This insinuating personage
+once crept into the vitals of my great grandfather and dwelt there many
+years, tormenting the old gentleman beyond mortal endurance. In short
+it is a family peculiarity. But, to tell you the truth, I have no faith
+in this idea of the snake's being an heirloom. He is my own snake, and
+no man's else."
+
+"But what was his origin?" demanded Herkimer.
+
+"Oh, there is poisonous stuff in any man's heart sufficient to generate
+a brood of serpents," said Elliston with a hollow laugh. "You should
+have heard my homilies to the good town's-people. Positively, I deem
+myself fortunate in having bred but a single serpent. You, however,
+have none in your bosom, and therefore cannot sympathize with the rest
+of the world. It gnaws me! It gnaws me!"
+
+With this exclamation Roderick lost his self-control and threw himself
+upon the grass, testifying his agony by intricate writhings, in which
+Herkimer could not but fancy a resemblance to the motions of a snake.
+Then, likewise, was heard that frightful hiss, which often ran through
+the sufferer's speech, and crept between the words and syllables
+without interrupting their succession.
+
+"This is awful indeed!" exclaimed the sculptor--"an awful infliction,
+whether it be actual or imaginary. Tell me, Roderick Elliston, is there
+any remedy for this loathsome evil?"
+
+"Yes, but an impossible one," muttered Roderick, as he lay wallowing
+with his face in the grass. "Could I for one moment forget myself, the
+serpent might not abide within me. It is my diseased self-contemplation
+that has engendered and nourished him."
+
+"Then forget yourself, my husband," said a gentle voice above him;
+"forget yourself in the idea of another!"
+
+Rosina had emerged from the arbor, and was bending over him with the
+shadow of his anguish reflected in her countenance, yet so mingled with
+hope and unselfish love that all anguish seemed but an earthly shadow
+and a dream. She touched Roderick with her hand. A tremor shivered
+through his frame. At that moment, if report be trustworthy, the
+sculptor beheld a waving motion through the grass, and heard a tinkling
+sound, as if something had plunged into the fountain. Be the truth as
+it might, it is certain that Roderick Elliston sat up like a man
+renewed, restored to his right mind, and rescued from the fiend which
+had so miserably overcome him in the battle-field of his own breast.
+
+"Rosina!" cried he, in broken and passionate tones, but with nothing of
+the wild wail that had haunted his voice so long, "forgive! forgive!"
+
+Her happy tears bedewed his face.
+
+"The punishment has been severe," observed the sculptor. "Even Justice
+might now forgive; how much more a woman's tenderness! Roderick
+Elliston, whether the serpent was a physical reptile, or whether the
+morbidness of your nature suggested that symbol to your fancy, the
+moral of the story is not the less true and strong. A tremendous
+Egotism, manifesting itself in your case in the form of jealousy, is as
+fearful a fiend as ever stole into the human heart. Can a breast, where
+it has dwelt so long, be purified?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Rosina with a heavenly smile. "The serpent was but a
+dark fantasy, and what it typified was as shadowy as itself. The past,
+dismal as it seems, shall fling no gloom upon the future. To give it
+its due importance we must think of it but as an anecdote in our
+Eternity."
+
+
+
+DROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE
+
+One sunshiny morning, in the good old times of the town of Boston, a
+young carver in wood, well known by the name of Drowne, stood
+contemplating a large oaken log, which it was his purpose to convert
+into the figure-head of a vessel. And while he discussed within his own
+mind what sort of shape or similitude it were well to bestow upon this
+excellent piece of timber, there came into Drowne's workshop a certain
+Captain Hunnewell, owner and commander of the good brig called the
+Cynosure, which had just returned from her first voyage to Fayal.
+
+"Ah! that will do, Drowne, that will do!" cried the jolly captain,
+tapping the log with his rattan. "I bespeak this very piece of oak for
+the figure-head of the Cynosure. She has shown herself the sweetest
+craft that ever floated, and I mean to decorate her prow with the
+handsomest image that the skill of man can cut out of timber. And,
+Drowne, you are the fellow to execute it."
+
+"You give me more credit than I deserve, Captain Hunnewell," said the
+carver, modestly, yet as one conscious of eminence in his art. "But,
+for the sake of the good brig, I stand ready to do my best. And which
+of these designs do you prefer? Here,"--pointing to a staring,
+half-length figure, in a white wig and scarlet coat,--"here is an
+excellent model, the likeness of our gracious king. Here is the valiant
+Admiral Vernon. Or, if you prefer a female figure, what say you to
+Britannia with the trident?"
+
+"All very fine, Drowne; all very fine," answered the mariner. "But as
+nothing like the brig ever swam the ocean, so I am determined she shall
+have such a figure-head as old Neptune never saw in his life. And what
+is more, as there is a secret in the matter, you must pledge your
+credit not to betray it."
+
+"Certainly," said Drowne, marvelling, however, what possible mystery
+there could be in reference to an affair so open, of necessity, to the
+inspection of all the world as the figure-head of a vessel. "You may
+depend, captain, on my being as secret as the nature of the case will
+permit."
+
+Captain Hunnewell then took Drowne by the button, and communicated his
+wishes in so low a tone that it would be unmannerly to repeat what was
+evidently intended for the carver's private ear. We shall, therefore,
+take the opportunity to give the reader a few desirable particulars
+about Drowne himself.
+
+He was the first American who is known to have attempted--in a very
+humble line, it is true--that art in which we can now reckon so many
+names already distinguished, or rising to distinction. From his
+earliest boyhood he had exhibited a knack--for it would be too proud a
+word to call it genius--a knack, therefore, for the imitation of the
+human figure in whatever material came most readily to hand. The snows
+of a New England winter had often supplied him with a species of marble
+as dazzingly white, at least, as the Parian or the Carrara, and if less
+durable, yet sufficiently so to correspond with any claims to permanent
+existence possessed by the boy's frozen statues. Yet they won
+admiration from maturer judges than his school-fellows, and were
+indeed, remarkably clever, though destitute of the native warmth that
+might have made the snow melt beneath his hand. As he advanced in life,
+the young man adopted pine and oak as eligible materials for the
+display of his skill, which now began to bring him a return of solid
+silver as well as the empty praise that had been an apt reward enough
+for his productions of evanescent snow. He became noted for carving
+ornamental pump heads, and wooden urns for gate posts, and decorations,
+more grotesque than fanciful, for mantelpieces. No apothecary would
+have deemed himself in the way of obtaining custom without setting up a
+gilded mortar, if not a head of Galen or Hippocrates, from the skilful
+hand of Drowne.
+
+But the great scope of his business lay in the manufacture of
+figure-heads for vessels. Whether it were the monarch himself, or some
+famous British admiral or general, or the governor of the province, or
+perchance the favorite daughter of the ship-owner, there the image
+stood above the prow, decked out in gorgeous colors, magnificently
+gilded, and staring the whole world out of countenance, as if from an
+innate consciousness of its own superiority. These specimens of native
+sculpture had crossed the sea in all directions, and been not ignobly
+noticed among the crowded shipping of the Thames and wherever else the
+hardy mariners of New England had pushed their adventures. It must be
+confessed that a family likeness pervaded these respectable progeny of
+Drowne's skill; that the benign countenance of the king resembled those
+of his subjects, and that Miss Peggy Hobart, the merchant's daughter,
+bore a remarkable similitude to Britannia, Victory, and other ladies of
+the allegoric sisterhood; and, finally, that they all had a kind of
+wooden aspect which proved an intimate relationship with the unshaped
+blocks of timber in the carver's workshop. But at least there was no
+inconsiderable skill of hand, nor a deficiency of any attribute to
+render them really works of art, except that deep quality, be it of
+soul or intellect, which bestows life upon the lifeless and warmth upon
+the cold, and which, had it been present, would have made Drowne's
+wooden image instinct with spirit.
+
+The captain of the Cynosure had now finished his instructions.
+
+"And Drowne," said he, impressively, "you must lay aside all other
+business and set about this forthwith. And as to the price, only do the
+job in first-rate style, and you shall settle that point yourself."
+
+"Very well, captain," answered the carver, who looked grave and
+somewhat perplexed, yet had a sort of smile upon his visage; "depend
+upon it, I'll do my utmost to satisfy you."
+
+From that moment the men of taste about Long Wharf and the Town Dock
+who were wont to show their love for the arts by frequent visits to
+Drowne's workshop, and admiration of his wooden images, began to be
+sensible of a mystery in the carver's conduct. Often he was absent in
+the daytime. Sometimes, as might be judged by gleams of light from the
+shop windows, he was at work until a late hour of the evening; although
+neither knock nor voice, on such occasions, could gain admittance for a
+visitor, or elicit any word of response. Nothing remarkable, however,
+was observed in the shop at those late hours when it was thrown open. A
+fine piece of timber, indeed, which Drowne was known to have reserved
+for some work of especial dignity, was seen to be gradually assuming
+shape. What shape it was destined ultimately to take was a problem to
+his friends and a point on which the carver himself preserved a rigid
+silence. But day after day, though Drowne was seldom noticed in the act
+of working upon it, this rude form began to be developed until it
+became evident to all observers that a female figure was growing into
+mimic life. At each new visit they beheld a larger pile of wooden chips
+and a nearer approximation to something beautiful. It seemed as if the
+hamadryad of the oak had sheltered herself from the unimaginative world
+within the heart of her native tree, and that it was only necessary to
+remove the strange shapelessness that had incrusted her, and reveal the
+grace and loveliness of a divinity. Imperfect as the design, the
+attitude, the costume, and especially the face of the image still
+remained, there was already an effect that drew the eye from the wooden
+cleverness of Drowne's earlier productions and fixed it upon the
+tantalizing mystery of this new project.
+
+Copley, the celebrated painter, then a young man and a resident of
+Boston, came one day to visit Drowne; for he had recognized so much of
+moderate ability in the carver as to induce him, in the dearth of
+professional sympathy, to cultivate his acquaintance. On entering the
+shop, the artist glanced at the inflexible image of king, commander,
+dame, and allegory, that stood around, on the best of which might have
+been bestowed the questionable praise that it looked as if a living man
+had here been changed to wood, and that not only the physical, but the
+intellectual and spiritual part, partook of the stolid transformation.
+But in not a single instance did it seem as if the wood were imbibing
+the ethereal essence of humanity. What a wide distinction is here! and
+how far the slightest portion of the latter merit have outvalued the
+utmost degree of the former!
+
+"My friend Drowne;" said Copley, smiling to himself, but alluding to
+the mechanical and wooden cleverness that so invariably distinguished
+the images, "you are really a remarkable person! I have seldom met with
+a man in your line of business that could do so much; for one other
+touch might make this figure of General Wolfe, for instance, a
+breathing and intelligent human creature."
+
+"You would have me think that you are praising me highly, Mr. Copley,"
+answered Drowne, turning his back upon Wolfe's image in apparent
+disgust. "But there has come a light into my mind. I know what you know
+as well, that the one touch which you speak of as deficient is the only
+one that would be truly valuable, and that without it these works of
+mine are no better than worthless abortions. There is the same
+difference between them and the works of an inspired artist as between
+a sign-post daub and one of your best pictures."
+
+"This is strange," cried Copley, looking him in the face, which now, as
+the painter fancied, had a singular depth of intelligence, though
+hitherto it had not given him greatly the advantage over his own family
+of wooden images. "What has come over you? How is it that, possessing
+the idea which you have now uttered, you should produce only such works
+as these?"
+
+The carver smiled, but made no reply. Copley turned again to the
+images, conceiving that the sense of deficiency which Drowne had just
+expressed, and which is so rare in a merely mechanical character, must
+surely imply a genius, the tokens of which had heretofore been
+overlooked. But no; there was not a trace of it. He was about to
+withdraw when his eyes chanced to fall upon a half-developed figure
+which lay in a corner of the workshop, surrounded by scattered chips of
+oak. It arrested him at once.
+
+"What is here? Who has done this?" he broke out, after contemplating it
+in speechless astonishment for an instant. "Here is the divine, the
+lifegiving touch. What inspired hand is beckoning this wood to arise
+and live? Whose work is this?"
+
+"No man's work," replied Drowne. "The figure lies within that block of
+oak, and it is my business to find it."
+
+"Drowne," said the true artist, grasping the carver fervently by the
+hand, "you are a man of genius!"
+
+As Copley departed, happening to glance backward from the threshold, he
+beheld Drowne bending over the half-created shape, and stretching forth
+his arms as if he would have embraced and drawn it to his heart; while,
+had such a miracle been possible, his countenance expressed passion
+enough to communicate warmth and sensibility to the lifeless oak.
+
+"Strange enough!" said the artist to himself. "Who would have looked
+for a modern Pygmalion in the person of a Yankee mechanic!"
+
+As yet, the image was but vague in its outward presentment; so that, as
+in the cloud shapes around the western sun, the observer rather felt,
+or was led to imagine, than really saw what was intended by it. Day by
+day, however, the work assumed greater precision, and settled its
+irregular and misty outline into distincter grace and beauty. The
+general design was now obvious to the common eye. It was a female
+figure, in what appeared to be a foreign dress; the gown being laced
+over the bosom, and opening in front so as to disclose a skirt or
+petticoat, the folds and inequalities of which were admirably
+represented in the oaken substance. She wore a hat of singular
+gracefulness, and abundantly laden with flowers, such as never grew in
+the rude soil of New England, but which, with all their fanciful
+luxuriance, had a natural truth that it seemed impossible for the most
+fertile imagination to have attained without copying from real
+prototypes. There were several little appendages to this dress, such as
+a fan, a pair of earrings, a chain about the neck, a watch in the
+bosom, and a ring upon the finger, all of which would have been deemed
+beneath the dignity of sculpture. They were put on, however, with as
+much taste as a lovely woman might have shown in her attire, and could
+therefore have shocked none but a judgment spoiled by artistic rules.
+
+The face was still imperfect; but gradually, by a magic touch,
+intelligence and sensibility brightened through the features, with all
+the effect of light gleaming forth from within the solid oak. The face
+became alive. It was a beautiful, though not precisely regular and
+somewhat haughty aspect, but with a certain piquancy about the eyes and
+mouth, which, of all expressions, would have seemed the most impossible
+to throw over a wooden countenance. And now, so far as carving went,
+this wonderful production was complete.
+
+"Drowne," said Copley, who had hardly missed a single day in his visits
+to the carver's workshop, "if this work were in marble it would make
+you famous at once; nay, I would almost affirm that it would make an
+era in the art. It is as ideal as an antique statue, and yet as real as
+any lovely woman whom one meets at a fireside or in the street. But I
+trust you do not mean to desecrate this exquisite creature with paint,
+like those staring kings and admirals yonder?"
+
+"Not paint her!" exclaimed Captain Hunnewell, who stood by; "not paint
+the figure-head of the Cynosure! And what sort of a figure should I cut
+in a foreign port with such an unpainted oaken stick as this over my
+prow! She must, and she shall, be painted to the life, from the topmost
+flower in her hat down to the silver spangles on her slippers."
+
+"Mr. Copley," said Drowne, quietly, "I know nothing of marble statuary,
+and nothing of the sculptor's rules of art; but of this wooden image,
+this work of my hands, this creature of my heart,"--and here his voice
+faltered and choked in a very singular manner,--"of this--of her--I may
+say that I know something. A well-spring of inward wisdom gushed within
+me as I wrought upon the oak with my whole strength, and soul, and
+faith. Let others do what they may with marble, and adopt what rules
+they choose. If I can produce my desired effect by painted wood, those
+rules are not for me, and I have a right to disregard them."
+
+"The very spirit of genius," muttered Copley to himself. "How otherwise
+should this carver feel himself entitled to transcend all rules, and
+make me ashamed of quoting them?"
+
+He looked earnestly at Drowne, and again saw that expression of human
+love which, in a spiritual sense, as the artist could not help
+imagining, was the secret of the life that had been breathed into this
+block of wood.
+
+The carver, still in the same secrecy that marked all his operations
+upon this mysterious image, proceeded to paint the habiliments in their
+proper colors, and the countenance with Nature's red and white. When
+all was finished he threw open his workshop, and admitted the towns
+people to behold what he had done. Most persons, at their first
+entrance, felt impelled to remove their hats, and pay such reverence as
+was due to the richly-dressed and beautiful young lady who seemed to
+stand in a corner of the room, with oaken chips and shavings scattered
+at her feet. Then came a sensation of fear; as if, not being actually
+human, yet so like humanity, she must therefore be something
+preternatural. There was, in truth, an indefinable air and expression
+that might reasonably induce the query, Who and from what sphere this
+daughter of the oak should be? The strange, rich flowers of Eden on her
+head; the complexion, so much deeper and more brilliant than those of
+our native beauties; the foreign, as it seemed, and fantastic garb, yet
+not too fantastic to be worn decorously in the street; the
+delicately-wrought embroidery of the skirt; the broad gold chain about
+her neck; the curious ring upon her finger; the fan, so exquisitely
+sculptured in open work, and painted to resemble pearl and
+ebony;--where could Drowne, in his sober walk of life, have beheld the
+vision here so matchlessly embodied! And then her face! In the dark
+eyes, and around the voluptuous mouth, there played a look made up of
+pride, coquetry, and a gleam of mirthfulness, which impressed Copley
+with the idea that the image was secretly enjoying the perplexing
+admiration of himself and other beholders.
+
+"And will you," said he to the carver, "permit this masterpiece to
+become the figure-head of a vessel? Give the honest captain yonder
+figure of Britannia--it will answer his purpose far better--and send
+this fairy queen to England, where, for aught I know, it may bring you
+a thousand pounds."
+
+"I have not wrought it for money," said Drowne.
+
+"What sort of a fellow is this!" thought Copley. "A Yankee, and throw
+away the chance of making his fortune! He has gone mad; and thence has
+come this gleam of genius."
+
+There was still further proof of Drowne's lunacy, if credit were due to
+the rumor that he had been seen kneeling at the feet of the oaken lady,
+and gazing with a lover's passionate ardor into the face that his own
+hands had created. The bigots of the day hinted that it would be no
+matter of surprise if an evil spirit were allowed to enter this
+beautiful form, and seduce the carver to destruction.
+
+The fame of the image spread far and wide. The inhabitants visited it
+so universally, that after a few days of exhibition there was hardly an
+old man or a child who had not become minutely familiar with its
+aspect. Even had the story of Drowne's wooden image ended here, its
+celebrity might have been prolonged for many years by the reminiscences
+of those who looked upon it in their childhood, and saw nothing else so
+beautiful in after life. But the town was now astounded by an event,
+the narrative of which has formed itself into one of the most singular
+legends that are yet to be met with in the traditionary chimney corners
+of the New England metropolis, where old men and women sit dreaming of
+the past, and wag their heads at the dreamers of the present and the
+future.
+
+One fine morning, just before the departure of the Cynosure on her
+second voyage to Fayal, the commander of that gallant vessel was seen
+to issue from his residence in Hanover Street. He was stylishly dressed
+in a blue broadcloth coat, with gold lace at the seams and
+button-holes, an embroidered scarlet waistcoat, a triangular hat, with
+a loop and broad binding of gold, and wore a silver-hilted hanger at
+his side. But the good captain might have been arrayed in the robes of
+a prince or the rags of a beggar, without in either case attracting
+notice, while obscured by such a companion as now leaned on his arm.
+The people in the street started, rubbed their eyes, and either leaped
+aside from their path, or stood as if transfixed to wood or marble in
+astonishment.
+
+"Do you see it?--do you see it?" cried one, with tremulous eagerness.
+"It is the very same!"
+
+"The same?" answered another, who had arrived in town only the night
+before. "Who do you mean? I see only a sea-captain in his shoregoing
+clothes, and a young lady in a foreign habit, with a bunch of beautiful
+flowers in her hat. On my word, she is as fair and bright a damsel as
+my eyes have looked on this many a day!"
+
+"Yes; the same!--the very same!" repeated the other. "Drowne's wooden
+image has come to life!"
+
+Here was a miracle indeed! Yet, illuminated by the sunshine, or
+darkened by the alternate shade of the houses, and with its garments
+fluttering lightly in the morning breeze, there passed the image along
+the street. It was exactly and minutely the shape, the garb, and the
+face which the towns-people had so recently thronged to see and admire.
+Not a rich flower upon her head, not a single leaf, but had had its
+prototype in Drowne's wooden workmanship, although now their fragile
+grace had become flexible, and was shaken by every footstep that the
+wearer made. The broad gold chain upon the neck was identical with the
+one represented on the image, and glistened with the motion imparted by
+the rise and fall of the bosom which it decorated. A real diamond
+sparkled on her finger. In her right hand she bore a pearl and ebony
+fan, which she flourished with a fantastic and bewitching coquetry,
+that was likewise expressed in all her movements as well as in the
+style of her beauty and the attire that so well harmonized with it. The
+face with its brilliant depth of complexion had the same piquancy of
+mirthful mischief that was fixed upon the countenance of the image, but
+which was here varied and continually shifting, yet always essentially
+the same, like the sunny gleam upon a bubbling fountain. On the whole,
+there was something so airy and yet so real in the figure, and withal
+so perfectly did it represent Drowne's image, that people knew not
+whether to suppose the magic wood etherealized into a spirit or warmed
+and softened into an actual woman.
+
+"One thing is certain," muttered a Puritan of the old stamp, "Drowne
+has sold himself to the devil; and doubtless this gay Captain Hunnewell
+is a party to the bargain."
+
+"And I," said a young man who overheard him, "would almost consent to
+be the third victim, for the liberty of saluting those lovely lips."
+
+"And so would I," said Copley, the painter, "for the privilege of
+taking her picture."
+
+The image, or the apparition, whichever it might be, still escorted by
+the bold captain, proceeded from Hanover Street through some of the
+cross lanes that make this portion of the town so intricate, to Ann
+Street, thence into Dock Square, and so downward to Drowne's shop,
+which stood just on the water's edge. The crowd still followed,
+gathering volume as it rolled along. Never had a modern miracle
+occurred in such broad daylight, nor in the presence of such a
+multitude of witnesses. The airy image, as if conscious that she was
+the object of the murmurs and disturbance that swelled behind her,
+appeared slightly vexed and flustered, yet still in a manner consistent
+with the light vivacity and sportive mischief that were written in her
+countenance. She was observed to flutter her fan with such vehement
+rapidity that the elaborate delicacy of its workmanship gave way, and
+it remained broken in her hand.
+
+Arriving at Drowne's door, while the captain threw it open, the
+marvellous apparition paused an instant on the threshold, assuming the
+very attitude of the image, and casting over the crowd that glance of
+sunny coquetry which all remembered on the face of the oaken lady. She
+and her cavalier then disappeared.
+
+"Ah!" murmured the crowd, drawing a deep breath, as with one vast pair
+of lungs.
+
+"The world looks darker now that she has vanished," said some of the
+young men.
+
+But the aged, whose recollections dated as far back as witch times,
+shook their heads, and hinted that our forefathers would have thought
+it a pious deed to burn the daughter of the oak with fire.
+
+"If she be other than a bubble of the elements," exclaimed Copley, "I
+must look upon her face again."
+
+He accordingly entered the shop; and there, in her usual corner, stood
+the image, gazing at him, as it might seem, with the very same
+expression of mirthful mischief that had been the farewell look of the
+apparition when, but a moment before, she turned her face towards the
+crowd. The carver stood beside his creation mending the beautiful fan,
+which by some accident was broken in her hand. But there was no longer
+any motion in the lifelike image, nor any real woman in the workshop,
+nor even the witchcraft of a sunny shadow, that might have deluded
+people's eyes as it flitted along the street. Captain Hunnewell, too,
+had vanished. His hoarse sea-breezy tones, however, were audible on the
+other side of a door that opened upon the water.
+
+"Sit down in the stern sheets, my lady," said the gallant captain.
+"Come, bear a hand, you lubbers, and set us on board in the turning of
+a minute-glass."
+
+And then was heard the stroke of oars.
+
+"Drowne," said Copley with a smile of intelligence, "you have been a
+truly fortunate man. What painter or statuary ever had such a subject!
+No wonder that she inspired a genius into you, and first created the
+artist who afterwards created her image."
+
+Drowne looked at him with a visage that bore the traces of tears, but
+from which the light of imagination and sensibility, so recently
+illuminating it, had departed. He was again the mechanical carver that
+he had been known to be all his lifetime.
+
+"I hardly understand what you mean, Mr. Copley," said he, putting his
+hand to his brow. "This image! Can it have been my work? Well, I have
+wrought it in a kind of dream; and now that I am broad awake I must set
+about finishing yonder figure of Admiral Vernon."
+
+And forthwith he employed himself on the stolid countenance of one of
+his wooden progeny, and completed it in his own mechanical style, from
+which he was never known afterwards to deviate. He followed his
+business industriously for many years, acquired a competence, and in
+the latter part of his life attained to a dignified station in the
+church, being remembered in records and traditions as Deacon Drowne,
+the carver. One of his productions, an Indian chief, gilded all over,
+stood during the better part of a century on the cupola of the Province
+House, bedazzling the eyes of those who looked upward, like an angel of
+the sun. Another work of the good deacon's hand--a reduced likeness of
+his friend Captain Hunnewell, holding a telescope and quadrant--may be
+seen to this day, at the corner of Broad and State streets, serving in
+the useful capacity of sign to the shop of a nautical instrument maker.
+We know not how to account for the inferiority of this quaint old
+figure, as compared with the recorded excellence of the Oaken Lady,
+unless on the supposition that in every human spirit there is
+imagination, sensibility, creative power, genius, which, according to
+circumstances, may either be developed in this world, or shrouded in a
+mask of dulness until another state of being. To our friend Drowne
+there came a brief season of excitement, kindled by love. It rendered
+him a genius for that one occasion, but, quenched in disappointment,
+left him again the mechanical carver in wood, without the power even of
+appreciating the work that his own hands had wrought. Yet who can doubt
+that the very highest state to which a human spirit can attain, in its
+loftiest aspirations, is its truest and most natural state, and that
+Drowne was more consistent with himself when he wrought the admirable
+figure of the mysterious lady, than when he perpetrated a whole progeny
+of blockheads?
+
+There was a rumor in Boston, about this period, that a young Portuguese
+lady of rank, on some occasion of political or domestic disquietude,
+had fled from her home in Fayal and put herself under the protection of
+Captain Hunnewell, on board of whose vessel, and at whose residence,
+she was sheltered until a change of affairs. This fair stranger must
+have been the original of Drowne's Wooden Image.
+
+
+
+ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL
+
+One of the few incidents of Indian warfare naturally susceptible of the
+moonlight of romance was that expedition undertaken for the defence of
+the frontiers in the year 1725, which resulted in the well-remembered
+"Lovell's Fight." Imagination, by casting certain circumstances
+judicially into the shade, may see much to admire in the heroism of a
+little band who gave battle to twice their number in the heart of the
+enemy's country. The open bravery displayed by both parties was in
+accordance with civilized ideas of valor; and chivalry itself might not
+blush to record the deeds of one or two individuals. The battle, though
+so fatal to those who fought, was not unfortunate in its consequences
+to the country; for it broke the strength of a tribe and conduced to
+the peace which subsisted during several ensuing years. History and
+tradition are unusually minute in their memorials of their affair; and
+the captain of a scouting party of frontier men has acquired as actual
+a military renown as many a victorious leader of thousands. Some of the
+incidents contained in the following pages will be recognized,
+notwithstanding the substitution of fictitious names, by such as have
+heard, from old men's lips, the fate of the few combatants who were in
+a condition to retreat after "Lovell's Fight."
+
+     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
+
+The early sunbeams hovered cheerfully upon the tree-tops, beneath which
+two weary and wounded men had stretched their limbs the night before.
+Their bed of withered oak leaves was strewn upon the small level space,
+at the foot of a rock, situated near the summit of one of the gentle
+swells by which the face of the country is there diversified. The mass
+of granite, rearing its smooth, flat surface fifteen or twenty feet
+above their heads, was not unlike a gigantic gravestone, upon which the
+veins seemed to form an inscription in forgotten characters. On a tract
+of several acres around this rock, oaks and other hard-wood trees had
+supplied the place of the pines, which were the usual growth of the
+land; and a young and vigorous sapling stood close beside the
+travellers.
+
+The severe wound of the elder man had probably deprived him of sleep;
+for, so soon as the first ray of sunshine rested on the top of the
+highest tree, he reared himself painfully from his recumbent posture
+and sat erect. The deep lines of his countenance and the scattered gray
+of his hair marked him as past the middle age; but his muscular frame
+would, but for the effect of his wound, have been as capable of
+sustaining fatigue as in the early vigor of life. Languor and
+exhaustion now sat upon his haggard features; and the despairing glance
+which he sent forward through the depths of the forest proved his own
+conviction that his pilgrimage was at an end. He next turned his eyes
+to the companion who reclined by his side. The youth--for he had
+scarcely attained the years of manhood--lay, with his head upon his
+arm, in the embrace of an unquiet sleep, which a thrill of pain from
+his wounds seemed each moment on the point of breaking. His right hand
+grasped a musket; and, to judge from the violent action of his
+features, his slumbers were bringing back a vision of the conflict of
+which he was one of the few survivors. A shout deep and loud in his
+dreaming fancy--found its way in an imperfect murmur to his lips; and,
+starting even at the slight sound of his own voice, he suddenly awoke.
+The first act of reviving recollection was to make anxious inquiries
+respecting the condition of his wounded fellow-traveller. The latter
+shook his head.
+
+"Reuben, my boy," said he, "this rock beneath which we sit will serve
+for an old hunter's gravestone. There is many and many a long mile of
+howling wilderness before us yet; nor would it avail me anything if the
+smoke of my own chimney were but on the other side of that swell of
+land. The Indian bullet was deadlier than I thought."
+
+"You are weary with our three days' travel," replied the youth, "and a
+little longer rest will recruit you. Sit you here while I search the
+woods for the herbs and roots that must be our sustenance; and, having
+eaten, you shall lean on me, and we will turn our faces homeward. I
+doubt not that, with my help, you can attain to some one of the
+frontier garrisons."
+
+"There is not two days' life in me, Reuben," said the other, calmly,
+"and I will no longer burden you with my useless body, when you can
+scarcely support your own. Your wounds are deep and your strength is
+failing fast; yet, if you hasten onward alone, you may be preserved.
+For me there is no hope, and I will await death here."
+
+"If it must be so, I will remain and watch by you," said Reuben,
+resolutely.
+
+"No, my son, no," rejoined his companion. "Let the wish of a dying man
+have weight with you; give me one grasp of your hand, and get you
+hence. Think you that my last moments will be eased by the thought that
+I leave you to die a more lingering death? I have loved you like a
+father, Reuben; and at a time like this I should have something of a
+father's authority. I charge you to be gone that I may die in peace."
+
+"And because you have been a father to me, should I therefore leave you
+to perish and to lie unburied in the wilderness?" exclaimed the youth.
+"No; if your end be in truth approaching, I will watch by you and
+receive your parting words. I will dig a grave here by the rock, in
+which, if my weakness overcome me, we will rest together; or, if Heaven
+gives me strength, I will seek my way home."
+
+"In the cities and wherever men dwell," replied the other, "they bury
+their dead in the earth; they hide them from the sight of the living;
+but here, where no step may pass perhaps for a hundred years, wherefore
+should I not rest beneath the open sky, covered only by the oak leaves
+when the autumn winds shall strew them? And for a monument, here is
+this gray rock, on which my dying hand shall carve the name of Roger
+Malvin, and the traveller in days to come will know that here sleeps a
+hunter and a warrior. Tarry not, then, for a folly like this, but
+hasten away, if not for your own sake, for hers who will else be
+desolate."
+
+Malvin spoke the last few words in a faltering voice, and their effect
+upon his companion was strongly visible. They reminded him that there
+were other and less questionable duties than that of sharing the fate
+of a man whom his death could not benefit. Nor can it be affirmed that
+no selfish feeling strove to enter Reuben's heart, though the
+consciousness made him more earnestly resist his companion's entreaties.
+
+"How terrible to wait the slow approach of death in this solitude!"
+exclaimed he. "A brave man does not shrink in the battle; and, when
+friends stand round the bed, even women may die composedly; but here--"
+
+"I shall not shrink even here, Reuben Bourne," interrupted Malvin. "I
+am a man of no weak heart, and, if I were, there is a surer support
+than that of earthly friends. You are young, and life is dear to you.
+Your last moments will need comfort far more than mine; and when you
+have laid me in the earth, and are alone, and night is settling on the
+forest, you will feel all the bitterness of the death that may now be
+escaped. But I will urge no selfish motive to your generous nature.
+Leave me for my sake, that, having said a prayer for your safety, I may
+have space to settle my account undisturbed by worldly sorrows."
+
+"And your daughter,--how shall I dare to meet her eye?" exclaimed
+Reuben. "She will ask the fate of her father, whose life I vowed to
+defend with my own. Must I tell her that he travelled three days' march
+with me from the field of battle and that then I left him to perish in
+the wilderness? Were it not better to lie down and die by your side
+than to return safe and say this to Dorcas?"
+
+"Tell my daughter," said Roger Malvin, "that, though yourself sore
+wounded, and weak, and weary, you led my tottering footsteps many a
+mile, and left me only at my earnest entreaty, because I would not have
+your blood upon my soul. Tell her that through pain and danger you were
+faithful, and that, if your lifeblood could have saved me, it would
+have flowed to its last drop; and tell her that you will be something
+dearer than a father, and that my blessing is with you both, and that
+my dying eyes can see a long and pleasant path in which you will
+journey together."
+
+As Malvin spoke he almost raised himself from the ground, and the
+energy of his concluding words seemed to fill the wild and lonely
+forest with a vision of happiness; but, when he sank exhausted upon his
+bed of oak leaves, the light which had kindled in Reuben's eye was
+quenched. He felt as if it were both sin and folly to think of
+happiness at such a moment. His companion watched his changing
+countenance, and sought with generous art to wile him to his own good.
+
+"Perhaps I deceive myself in regard to the time I have to live," he
+resumed. "It may be that, with speedy assistance, I might recover of my
+wound. The foremost fugitives must, ere this, have carried tidings of
+our fatal battle to the frontiers, and parties will be out to succor
+those in like condition with ourselves. Should you meet one of these
+and guide them hither, who can tell but that I may sit by my own
+fireside again?"
+
+A mournful smile strayed across the features of the dying man as he
+insinuated that unfounded hope,--which, however, was not without its
+effect on Reuben. No merely selfish motive, nor even the desolate
+condition of Dorcas, could have induced him to desert his companion at
+such a moment--but his wishes seized on the thought that Malvin's life
+might be preserved, and his sanguine nature heightened almost to
+certainty the remote possibility of procuring human aid.
+
+"Surely there is reason, weighty reason, to hope that friends are not
+far distant," he said, half aloud. "There fled one coward, unwounded,
+in the beginning of the fight, and most probably he made good speed.
+Every true man on the frontier would shoulder his musket at the news;
+and, though no party may range so far into the woods as this, I shall
+perhaps encounter them in one day's march. Counsel me faithfully," he
+added, turning to Malvin, in distrust of his own motives. "Were your
+situation mine, would you desert me while life remained?"
+
+"It is now twenty years," replied Roger Malvin,--sighing, however, as
+he secretly acknowledged the wide dissimilarity between the two
+cases,-"it is now twenty years since I escaped with one dear friend
+from Indian captivity near Montreal. We journeyed many days through the
+woods, till at length overcome with hunger and weariness, my friend lay
+down and besought me to leave him; for he knew that, if I remained, we
+both must perish; and, with but little hope of obtaining succor, I
+heaped a pillow of dry leaves beneath his head and hastened on."
+
+"And did you return in time to save him?" asked Reuben, hanging on
+Malvin's words as if they were to be prophetic of his own success.
+
+"I did," answered the other. "I came upon the camp of a hunting party
+before sunset of the same day. I guided them to the spot where my
+comrade was expecting death; and he is now a hale and hearty man upon
+his own farm, far within the frontiers, while I lie wounded here in the
+depths of the wilderness."
+
+This example, powerful in affecting Reuben's decision, was aided,
+unconsciously to himself, by the hidden strength of many another
+motive. Roger Malvin perceived that the victory was nearly won.
+
+"Now, go, my son, and Heaven prosper you!" he said. "Turn not back with
+your friends when you meet them, lest your wounds and weariness
+overcome you; but send hitherward two or three, that may be spared, to
+search for me; and believe me, Reuben, my heart will be lighter with
+every step you take towards home." Yet there was, perhaps, a change
+both in his countenance and voice as he spoke thus; for, after all, it
+was a ghastly fate to be left expiring in the wilderness.
+
+Reuben Bourne, but half convinced that he was acting rightly, at length
+raised himself from the ground and prepared himself for his departure.
+And first, though contrary to Malvin's wishes, he collected a stock of
+roots and herbs, which had been their only food during the last two
+days. This useless supply he placed within reach of the dying man, for
+whom, also, he swept together a bed of dry oak leaves. Then climbing to
+the summit of the rock, which on one side was rough and broken, he bent
+the oak sapling downward, and bound his handkerchief to the topmost
+branch. This precaution was not unnecessary to direct any who might
+come in search of Malvin; for every part of the rock, except its broad,
+smooth front, was concealed at a little distance by the dense
+undergrowth of the forest. The handkerchief had been the bandage of a
+wound upon Reuben's arm; and, as he bound it to the tree, he vowed by
+the blood that stained it that he would return, either to save his
+companion's life or to lay his body in the grave. He then descended,
+and stood, with downcast eyes, to receive Roger Malvin's parting words.
+
+The experience of the latter suggested much and minute advice
+respecting the youth's journey through the trackless forest. Upon this
+subject he spoke with calm earnestness, as if he were sending Reuben to
+the battle or the chase while he himself remained secure at home, and
+not as if the human countenance that was about to leave him were the
+last he would ever behold. But his firmness was shaken before he
+concluded.
+
+"Carry my blessing to Dorcas, and say that my last prayer shall be for
+her and you. Bid her to have no hard thoughts because you left me
+here,"--Reuben's heart smote him,--"for that your life would not have
+weighed with you if its sacrifice could have done me good. She will
+marry you after she has mourned a little while for her father; and
+Heaven grant you long and happy days, and may your children's children
+stand round your death bed! And, Reuben," added he, as the weakness of
+mortality made its way at last, "return, when your wounds are healed
+and your weariness refreshed,--return to this wild rock, and lay my
+bones in the grave, and say a prayer over them."
+
+An almost superstitious regard, arising perhaps from the customs of the
+Indians, whose war was with the dead as well as the living, was paid by
+the frontier inhabitants to the rites of sepulture; and there are many
+instances of the sacrifice of life in the attempt to bury those who had
+fallen by the "sword of the wilderness." Reuben, therefore, felt the
+full importance of the promise which he most solemnly made to return
+and perform Roger Malvin's obsequies. It was remarkable that the
+latter, speaking his whole heart in his parting words, no longer
+endeavored to persuade the youth that even the speediest succor might
+avail to the preservation of his life. Reuben was internally convinced
+that he should see Malvin's living face no more. His generous nature
+would fain have delayed him, at whatever risk, till the dying scene
+were past; but the desire of existence and the hope of happiness had
+strengthened in his heart, and he was unable to resist them.
+
+"It is enough," said Roger Malvin, having listened to Reuben's promise.
+"Go, and God speed you!"
+
+The youth pressed his hand in silence, turned, and was departing. His
+slow and faltering steps, however, had borne him but a little way
+before Malvin's voice recalled him.
+
+"Reuben, Reuben," said he, faintly; and Reuben returned and knelt down
+by the dying man.
+
+"Raise me, and let me lean against the rock," was his last request. "My
+face will be turned towards home, and I shall see you a moment longer
+as you pass among the trees."
+
+Reuben, having made the desired alteration in his companion's posture,
+again began his solitary pilgrimage. He walked more hastily at first
+than was consistent with his strength; for a sort of guilty feeling,
+which sometimes torments men in their most justifiable acts, caused him
+to seek concealment from Malvin's eyes; but after he had trodden far
+upon the rustling forest leaves he crept back, impelled by a wild and
+painful curiosity, and, sheltered by the earthy roots of an uptorn
+tree, gazed earnestly at the desolate man. The morning sun was
+unclouded, and the trees and shrubs imbibed the sweet air of the month
+of May; yet there seemed a gloom on Nature's face, as if she
+sympathized with mortal pain and sorrow Roger Malvin's hands were
+uplifted in a fervent prayer, some of the words of which stole through
+the stillness of the woods and entered Reuben's heart, torturing it
+with an unutterable pang. They were the broken accents of a petition
+for his own happiness and that of Dorcas; and, as the youth listened,
+conscience, or something in its similitude, pleaded strongly with him
+to return and lie down again by the rock. He felt how hard was the doom
+of the kind and generous being whom he had deserted in his extremity.
+Death would come like the slow approach of a corpse, stealing gradually
+towards him through the forest, and showing its ghastly and motionless
+features from behind a nearer and yet a nearer tree. But such must have
+been Reuben's own fate had he tarried another sunset; and who shall
+impute blame to him if he shrink from so useless a sacrifice? As he
+gave a parting look, a breeze waved the little banner upon the sapling
+oak and reminded Reuben of his vow.
+
+     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+Many circumstances combined to retard the wounded traveller in his way
+to the frontiers. On the second day the clouds, gathering densely over
+the sky, precluded the possibility of regulating his course by the
+position of the sun; and he knew not but that every effort of his
+almost exhausted strength was removing him farther from the home he
+sought. His scanty sustenance was supplied by the berries and other
+spontaneous products of the forest. Herds of deer, it is true,
+sometimes bounded past him, and partridges frequently whirred up before
+his footsteps; but his ammunition had been expended in the fight, and
+he had no means of slaying them. His wounds, irritated by the constant
+exertion in which lay the only hope of life, wore away his strength and
+at intervals confused his reason. But, even in the wanderings of
+intellect, Reuben's young heart clung strongly to existence; and it was
+only through absolute incapacity of motion that he at last sank down
+beneath a tree, compelled there to await death.
+
+In this situation he was discovered by a party who, upon the first
+intelligence of the fight, had been despatched to the relief of the
+survivors. They conveyed him to the nearest settlement, which chanced
+to be that of his own residence.
+
+Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time, watched by the bedside of
+her wounded lover, and administered all those comforts that are in the
+sole gift of woman's heart and hand. During several days Reuben's
+recollection strayed drowsily among the perils and hardships through
+which he had passed, and he was incapable of returning definite answers
+to the inquiries with which many were eager to harass him. No authentic
+particulars of the battle had yet been circulated; nor could mothers,
+wives, and children tell whether their loved ones were detained by
+captivity or by the stronger chain of death. Dorcas nourished her
+apprehensions in silence till one afternoon when Reuben awoke from an
+unquiet sleep, and seemed to recognize her more perfectly than at any
+previous time. She saw that his intellect had become composed, and she
+could no longer restrain her filial anxiety.
+
+"My father, Reuben?" she began; but the change in her lover's
+countenance made her pause.
+
+The youth shrank as if with a bitter pain, and the blood gushed vividly
+into his wan and hollow cheeks. His first impulse was to cover his
+face; but, apparently with a desperate effort, he half raised himself
+and spoke vehemently, defending himself against an imaginary accusation.
+
+"Your father was sore wounded in the battle, Dorcas; and he bade me not
+burden myself with him, but only to lead him to the lakeside, that he
+might quench his thirst and die. But I would not desert the old man in
+his extremity, and, though bleeding myself, I supported him; I gave him
+half my strength, and led him away with me. For three days we journeyed
+on together, and your father was sustained beyond my hopes, but,
+awaking at sunrise on the fourth day, I found him faint and exhausted;
+he was unable to proceed; his life had ebbed away fast; and--"
+
+"He died!" exclaimed Dorcas, faintly.
+
+Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge that his selfish love of life
+had hurried him away before her father's fate was decided. He spoke
+not; he only bowed his head; and, between shame and exhaustion, sank
+back and hid his face in the pillow. Dorcas wept when her fears were
+thus confirmed; but the shock, as it had been long anticipated, was on
+that account the less violent.
+
+"You dug a grave for my poor father in the wilderness, Reuben?" was the
+question by which her filial piety manifested itself.
+
+"My hands were weak; but I did what I could," replied the youth in a
+smothered tone. "There stands a noble tombstone above his head; and I
+would to Heaven I slept as soundly as he!"
+
+Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter words, inquired no
+further at the time; but her heart found ease in the thought that Roger
+Malvin had not lacked such funeral rites as it was possible to bestow.
+The tale of Reuben's courage and fidelity lost nothing when she
+communicated it to her friends; and the poor youth, tottering from his
+sick chamber to breathe the sunny air, experienced from every tongue
+the miserable and humiliating torture of unmerited praise. All
+acknowledged that he might worthily demand the hand of the fair maiden
+to whose father he had been "faithful unto death;" and, as my tale is
+not of love, it shall suffice to say that in the space of a few months
+Reuben became the husband of Dorcas Malvin. During the marriage
+ceremony the bride was covered with blushes, but the bridegroom's face
+was pale.
+
+There was now in the breast of Reuben Bourne an incommunicable
+thought--something which he was to conceal most heedfully from her whom
+he most loved and trusted. He regretted, deeply and bitterly, the moral
+cowardice that had restrained his words when he was about to disclose
+the truth to Dorcas; but pride, the fear of losing her affection, the
+dread of universal scorn, forbade him to rectify this falsehood. He
+felt that for leaving Roger Malvin he deserved no censure. His
+presence, the gratuitous sacrifice of his own life, would have added
+only another and a needless agony to the last moments of the dying man;
+but concealment had imparted to a justifiable act much of the secret
+effect of guilt; and Reuben, while reason told him that he had done
+right, experienced in no small degree the mental horrors which punish
+the perpetrator of undiscovered crime. By a certain association of
+ideas, he at times almost imagined himself a murderer. For years, also,
+a thought would occasionally recur, which, though he perceived all its
+folly and extravagance, he had not power to banish from his mind. It
+was a haunting and torturing fancy that his father-in-law was yet
+sitting at the foot of the rock, on the withered forest leaves, alive,
+and awaiting his pledged assistance. These mental deceptions, however,
+came and went, nor did he ever mistake them for realities: but in the
+calmest and clearest moods of his mind he was conscious that he had a
+deep vow unredeemed, and that an unburied corpse was calling to him out
+of the wilderness. Yet such was the consequence of his prevarication
+that he could not obey the call. It was now too late to require the
+assistance of Roger Malvin's friends in performing his long-deferred
+sepulture; and superstitious fears, of which none were more susceptible
+than the people of the outward settlements, forbade Reuben to go alone.
+Neither did he know where in the pathless and illimitable forest to
+seek that smooth and lettered rock at the base of which the body lay:
+his remembrance of every portion of his travel thence was indistinct,
+and the latter part had left no impression upon his mind. There was,
+however, a continual impulse, a voice audible only to himself,
+commanding him to go forth and redeem his vow; and he had a strange
+impression that, were he to make the trial, he would be led straight to
+Malvin's bones. But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was
+disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his
+spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart; and he was
+transformed into a sad and downcast yet irritable man.
+
+In the course of a few years after their marriage changes began to be
+visible in the external prosperity of Reuben and Dorcas. The only
+riches of the former had been his stout heart and strong arm; but the
+latter, her father's sole heiress, had made her husband master of a
+farm, under older cultivation, larger, and better stocked than most of
+the frontier establishments. Reuben Bourne, however, was a neglectful
+husbandman; and, while the lands of the other settlers became annually
+more fruitful, his deteriorated in the same proportion. The
+discouragements to agriculture were greatly lessened by the cessation
+of Indian war, during which men held the plough in one hand and the
+musket in the other, and were fortunate if the products of their
+dangerous labor were not destroyed, either in the field or in the barn,
+by the savage enemy. But Reuben did not profit by the altered condition
+of the country; nor can it be denied that his intervals of industrious
+attention to his affairs were but scantily rewarded with success. The
+irritability by which he had recently become distinguished was another
+cause of his declining prosperity, as it occasioned frequent quarrels
+in his unavoidable intercourse with the neighboring settlers. The
+results of these were innumerable lawsuits; for the people of New
+England, in the earliest stages and wildest circumstances of the
+country, adopted, whenever attainable, the legal mode of deciding their
+differences. To be brief, the world did not go well with Reuben Bourne;
+and, though not till many years after his marriage, he was finally a
+ruined man, with but one remaining expedient against the evil fate that
+had pursued him. He was to throw sunlight into some deep recess of the
+forest, and seek subsistence from the virgin bosom of the wilderness.
+
+The only child of Reuben and Dorcas was a son, now arrived at the age
+of fifteen years, beautiful in youth, and giving promise of a glorious
+manhood. He was peculiarly qualified for, and already began to excel
+in, the wild accomplishments of frontier life. His foot was fleet, his
+aim true, his apprehension quick, his heart glad and high; and all who
+anticipated the return of Indian war spoke of Cyrus Bourne as a future
+leader in the land. The boy was loved by his father with a deep and
+silent strength, as if whatever was good and happy in his own nature
+had been transferred to his child, carrying his affections with it.
+Even Dorcas, though loving and beloved, was far less dear to him; for
+Reuben's secret thoughts and insulated emotions had gradually made him
+a selfish man, and he could no longer love deeply except where he saw
+or imagined some reflection or likeness of his own mind. In Cyrus he
+recognized what he had himself been in other days; and at intervals he
+seemed to partake of the boy's spirit, and to be revived with a fresh
+and happy life. Reuben was accompanied by his son in the expedition,
+for the purpose of selecting a tract of land and felling and burning
+the timber, which necessarily preceded the removal of the household
+gods. Two months of autumn were thus occupied, after which Reuben
+Bourne and his young hunter returned to spend their last winter in the
+settlements.
+
+     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+It was early in the month of May that the little family snapped asunder
+whatever tendrils of affections had clung to inanimate objects, and
+bade farewell to the few who, in the blight of fortune, called
+themselves their friends. The sadness of the parting moment had, to
+each of the pilgrims, its peculiar alleviations. Reuben, a moody man,
+and misanthropic because unhappy, strode onward with his usual stern
+brow and downcast eye, feeling few regrets and disdaining to
+acknowledge any. Dorcas, while she wept abundantly over the broken ties
+by which her simple and affectionate nature had bound itself to
+everything, felt that the inhabitants of her inmost heart moved on with
+her, and that all else would be supplied wherever she might go. And the
+boy dashed one tear-drop from his eye, and thought of the adventurous
+pleasures of the untrodden forest.
+
+Oh, who, in the enthusiasm of a daydream, has not wished that he were a
+wanderer in a world of summer wilderness, with one fair and gentle
+being hanging lightly on his arm? In youth his free and exulting step
+would know no barrier but the rolling ocean or the snow-topped
+mountains; calmer manhood would choose a home where Nature had strewn a
+double wealth in the vale of some transparent stream; and when hoary
+age, after long, long years of that pure life, stole on and found him
+there, it would find him the father of a race, the patriarch of a
+people, the founder of a mighty nation yet to be. When death, like the
+sweet sleep which we welcome after a day of happiness, came over him,
+his far descendants would mourn over the venerated dust. Enveloped by
+tradition in mysterious attributes, the men of future generations would
+call him godlike; and remote posterity would see him standing, dimly
+glorious, far up the valley of a hundred centuries.
+
+The tangled and gloomy forest through which the personages of my tale
+were wandering differed widely from the dreamer's land of fantasy; yet
+there was something in their way of life that Nature asserted as her
+own, and the gnawing cares which went with them from the world were all
+that now obstructed their happiness. One stout and shaggy steed, the
+bearer of all their wealth, did not shrink from the added weight of
+Dorcas; although her hardy breeding sustained her, during the latter
+part of each day's journey, by her husband's side. Reuben and his son,
+their muskets on their shoulders and their axes slung behind them, kept
+an unwearied pace, each watching with a hunter's eye for the game that
+supplied their food. When hunger bade, they halted and prepared their
+meal on the bank of some unpolluted forest brook, which, as they knelt
+down with thirsty lips to drink, murmured a sweet unwillingness, like a
+maiden at love's first kiss. They slept beneath a hut of branches, and
+awoke at peep of light refreshed for the toils of another day. Dorcas
+and the boy went on joyously, and even Reuben's spirit shone at
+intervals with an outward gladness; but inwardly there was a cold cold
+sorrow, which he compared to the snowdrifts lying deep in the glens and
+hollows of the rivulets while the leaves were brightly green above.
+
+Cyrus Bourne was sufficiently skilled in the travel of the woods to
+observe that his father did not adhere to the course they had pursued
+in their expedition of the preceding autumn. They were now keeping
+farther to the north, striking out more directly from the settlements,
+and into a region of which savage beasts and savage men were as yet the
+sole possessors. The boy sometimes hinted his opinions upon the
+subject, and Reuben listened attentively, and once or twice altered the
+direction of their march in accordance with his son's counsel; but,
+having so done, he seemed ill at ease. His quick and wandering glances
+were sent forward apparently in search of enemies lurking behind the
+tree trunks, and, seeing nothing there, he would cast his eyes
+backwards as if in fear of some pursuer. Cyrus, perceiving that his
+father gradually resumed the old direction, forbore to interfere; nor,
+though something began to weigh upon his heart, did his adventurous
+nature permit him to regret the increased length and the mystery of
+their way.
+
+On the afternoon of the fifth day they halted, and made their simple
+encampment nearly an hour before sunset. The face of the country, for
+the last few miles, had been diversified by swells of land resembling
+huge waves of a petrified sea; and in one of the corresponding hollows,
+a wild and romantic spot, had the family reared their hut and kindled
+their fire. There is something chilling, and yet heart-warming, in the
+thought of these three, united by strong bands of love and insulated
+from all that breathe beside. The dark and gloomy pines looked down
+upon them, and, as the wind swept through their tops, a pitying sound
+was heard in the forest; or did those old trees groan in fear that men
+were come to lay the axe to their roots at last? Reuben and his son,
+while Dorcas made ready their meal, proposed to wander out in search of
+game, of which that day's march had afforded no supply. The boy,
+promising not to quit the vicinity of the encampment, bounded off with
+a step as light and elastic as that of the deer he hoped to slay; while
+his father, feeling a transient happiness as he gazed after him, was
+about to pursue an opposite direction. Dorcas in the meanwhile, had
+seated herself near their fire of fallen branches upon the mossgrown
+and mouldering trunk of a tree uprooted years before. Her employment,
+diversified by an occasional glance at the pot, now beginning to simmer
+over the blaze, was the perusal of the current year's Massachusetts
+Almanac, which, with the exception of an old black-letter Bible,
+comprised all the literary wealth of the family. None pay a greater
+regard to arbitrary divisions of time than those who are excluded from
+society; and Dorcas mentioned, as if the information were of
+importance, that it was now the twelfth of May. Her husband started.
+
+"The twelfth of May! I should remember it well," muttered he, while
+many thoughts occasioned a momentary confusion in his mind. "Where am
+I? Whither am I wandering? Where did I leave him?"
+
+Dorcas, too well accustomed to her husband's wayward moods to note any
+peculiarity of demeanor, now laid aside the almanac and addressed him
+in that mournful tone which the tender hearted appropriate to griefs
+long cold and dead.
+
+"It was near this time of the month, eighteen years ago, that my poor
+father left this world for a better. He had a kind arm to hold his head
+and a kind voice to cheer him, Reuben, in his last moments; and the
+thought of the faithful care you took of him has comforted me many a
+time since. Oh, death would have been awful to a solitary man in a wild
+place like this!"
+
+"Pray Heaven, Dorcas," said Reuben, in a broken voice,--"pray Heaven
+that neither of us three dies solitary and lies unburied in this
+howling wilderness!" And he hastened away, leaving her to watch the
+fire beneath the gloomy pines.
+
+Reuben Bourne's rapid pace gradually slackened as the pang,
+unintentionally inflicted by the words of Dorcas, became less acute.
+Many strange reflections, however, thronged upon him; and, straying
+onward rather like a sleep walker than a hunter, it was attributable to
+no care of his own that his devious course kept him in the vicinity of
+the encampment. His steps were imperceptibly led almost in a circle;
+nor did he observe that he was on the verge of a tract of land heavily
+timbered, but not with pine-trees. The place of the latter was here
+supplied by oaks and other of the harder woods; and around their roots
+clustered a dense and bushy under-growth, leaving, however, barren
+spaces between the trees, thick strewn with withered leaves. Whenever
+the rustling of the branches or the creaking of the trunks made a
+sound, as if the forest were waking from slumber, Reuben instinctively
+raised the musket that rested on his arm, and cast a quick, sharp
+glance on every side; but, convinced by a partial observation that no
+animal was near, he would again give himself up to his thoughts. He was
+musing on the strange influence that had led him away from his
+premeditated course, and so far into the depths of the wilderness.
+Unable to penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives
+lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him
+onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat. He
+trusted that it was Heaven's intent to afford him an opportunity of
+expiating his sin; he hoped that he might find the bones so long
+unburied; and that, having laid the earth over them, peace would throw
+its sunlight into the sepulchre of his heart. From these thoughts he
+was aroused by a rustling in the forest at some distance from the spot
+to which he had wandered. Perceiving the motion of some object behind a
+thick veil of undergrowth, he fired, with the instinct of a hunter and
+the aim of a practised marksman. A low moan, which told his success,
+and by which even animals cars express their dying agony, was unheeded
+by Reuben Bourne. What were the recollections now breaking upon him?
+
+The thicket into which Reuben had fired was near the summit of a swell
+of land, and was clustered around the base of a rock, which, in the
+shape and smoothness of one of its surfaces, was not unlike a gigantic
+gravestone. As if reflected in a mirror, its likeness was in Reuben's
+memory. He even recognized the veins which seemed to form an
+inscription in forgotten characters: everything remained the same,
+except that a thick covert of bushes shrouded the lowerpart of the
+rock, and would have hidden Roger Malvin had he still been sitting
+there. Yet in the next moment Reuben's eye was caught by another change
+that time had effected since he last stood where he was now standing
+again behind the earthy roots of the uptorn tree. The sapling to which
+he had bound the bloodstained symbol of his vow had increased and
+strengthened into an oak, far indeed from its maturity, but with no
+mean spread of shadowy branches. There was one singularity observable
+in this tree which made Reuben tremble. The middle and lower branches
+were in luxuriant life, and an excess of vegetation had fringed the
+trunk almost to the ground; but a blight had apparently stricken the
+upper part of the oak, and the very topmost bough was withered,
+sapless, and utterly dead. Reuben remembered how the little banner had
+fluttered on that topmost bough, when it was green and lovely, eighteen
+years before. Whose guilt had blasted it?
+
+     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+Dorcas, after the departure of the two hunters, continued her
+preparations for their evening repast. Her sylvan table was the
+moss-covered trunk of a large fallen tree, on the broadest part of
+which she had spread a snow-white cloth and arranged what were left of
+the bright pewter vessels that had been her pride in the settlements.
+It had a strange aspect that one little spot of homely comfort in the
+desolate heart of Nature. The sunshine yet lingered upon the higher
+branches of the trees that grew on rising ground; but the shadows of
+evening had deepened into the hollow where the encampment was made, and
+the firelight began to redden as it gleamed up the tall trunks of the
+pines or hovered on the dense and obscure mass of foliage that circled
+round the spot. The heart of Dorcas was not sad; for she felt that it
+was better to journey in the wilderness with two whom she loved than to
+be a lonely woman in a crowd that cared not for her. As she busied
+herself in arranging seats of mouldering wood, covered with leaves, for
+Reuben and her son, her voice danced through the gloomy forest in the
+measure of a song that she had learned in youth. The rude melody, the
+production of a bard who won no name, was descriptive of a winter
+evening in a frontier cottage, when, secured from savage inroad by the
+high-piled snow-drifts, the family rejoiced by their own fireside. The
+whole song possessed the nameless charm peculiar to unborrowed thought,
+but four continually-recurring lines shone out from the rest like the
+blaze of the hearth whose joys they celebrated. Into them, working
+magic with a few simple words, the poet had instilled the very essence
+of domestic love and household happiness, and they were poetry and
+picture joined in one. As Dorcas sang, the walls of her forsaken home
+seemed to encircle her; she no longer saw the gloomy pines, nor heard
+the wind which still, as she began each verse, sent a heavy breath
+through the branches, and died away in a hollow moan from the burden of
+the song. She was aroused by the report of a gun in the vicinity of the
+encampment; and either the sudden sound, or her loneliness by the
+glowing fire, caused her to tremble violently. The next moment she
+laughed in the pride of a mother's heart.
+
+"My beautiful young hunter! My boy has slain a deer!" she exclaimed,
+recollecting that in the direction whence the shot proceeded Cyrus had
+gone to the chase.
+
+She waited a reasonable time to hear her son's light step bounding over
+the rustling leaves to tell of his success. But he did not immediately
+appear; and she sent her cheerful voice among the trees in search of
+him.
+
+"Cyrus! Cyrus!"
+
+His coming was still delayed; and she determined, as the report had
+apparently been very near, to seek for him in person. Her assistance,
+also, might be necessary in bringing home the venison which she
+flattered herself he had obtained. She therefore set forward, directing
+her steps by the long-past sound, and singing as she went, in order
+that the boy might be aware of her approach and run to meet her. From
+behind the trunk of every tree, and from every hiding-place in the
+thick foliage of the undergrowth, she hoped to discover the countenance
+of her son, laughing with the sportive mischief that is born of
+affection. The sun was now beneath the horizon, and the light that came
+down among the leaves was sufficiently dim to create many illusions in
+her expecting fancy. Several times she seemed indistinctly to see his
+face gazing out from among the leaves; and once she imagined that he
+stood beckoning to her at the base of a craggy rock. Keeping her eyes
+on this object, however, it proved to be no more than the trunk of an
+oak fringed to the very ground with little branches, one of which,
+thrust out farther than the rest, was shaken by the breeze. Making her
+way round the foot of the rock, she suddenly found herself close to her
+husband, who had approached in another direction. Leaning upon the butt
+of his gun, the muzzle of which rested upon the withered leaves, he was
+apparently absorbed in the contemplation of some object at his feet.
+
+"How is this, Reuben? Have you slain the deer and fallen asleep over
+him?" exclaimed Dorcas, laughing cheerfully, on her first slight
+observation of his posture and appearance.
+
+He stirred not, neither did he turn his eyes towards her; and a cold,
+shuddering fear, indefinite in its source and object, began to creep
+into her blood. She now perceived that her husband's face was ghastly
+pale, and his features were rigid, as if incapable of assuming any
+other expression than the strong despair which had hardened upon them.
+He gave not the slightest evidence that he was aware of her approach.
+
+"For the love of Heaven, Reuben, speak to me!" cried Dorcas; and the
+strange sound of her own voice affrighted her even more than the dead
+silence.
+
+Her husband started, stared into her face, drew her to the front of the
+rock, and pointed with his finger.
+
+Oh, there lay the boy, asleep, but dreamless, upon the fallen forest
+leaves! His cheek rested upon his arm--his curled locks were thrown
+back from his brow--his limbs were slightly relaxed. Had a sudden
+weariness overcome the youthful hunter? Would his mother's voice arouse
+him? She knew that it was death.
+
+"This broad rock is the gravestone of your near kindred, Dorcas," said
+her husband. "Your tears will fall at once over your father and your
+son."
+
+She heard him not. With one wild shriek, that seemed to force its way
+from the sufferer's inmost soul, she sank insensible by the side of her
+dead boy. At that moment the withered topmost bough of the oak loosened
+itself in the stilly air, and fell in soft, light fragments upon the
+rock, upon the leaves, upon Reuben, upon his wife and child, and upon
+Roger Malvin's bones. Then Reuben's heart was stricken, and the tears
+gushed out like water from a rock. The vow that the wounded youth had
+made the blighted man had come to redeem. His sin was expiated,--the
+curse was gone from him; and in the hour when he had shed blood dearer
+to him than his own, a prayer, the first for years, went up to Heaven
+from the lips of Reuben Bourne.
+
+
+
+THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+An elderly man, with his pretty daughter on his arm, was passing along
+the street, and emerged from the gloom of the cloudy evening into the
+light that fell across the pavement from the window of a small shop. It
+was a projecting window; and on the inside were suspended a variety of
+watches, pinchbeck, silver, and one or two of gold, all with their
+faces turned from the streets, as if churlishly disinclined to inform
+the wayfarers what o'clock it was. Seated within the shop, sidelong to
+the window with his pale face bent earnestly over some delicate piece
+of mechanism on which was thrown the concentrated lustre of a shade
+lamp, appeared a young man.
+
+"What can Owen Warland be about?" muttered old Peter Hovenden, himself
+a retired watchmaker, and the former master of this same young man
+whose occupation he was now wondering at. "What can the fellow be
+about? These six months past I have never come by his shop without
+seeing him just as steadily at work as now. It would be a flight beyond
+his usual foolery to seek for the perpetual motion; and yet I know
+enough of my old business to be certain that what he is now so busy
+with is no part of the machinery of a watch."
+
+"Perhaps, father," said Annie, without showing much interest in the
+question, "Owen is inventing a new kind of timekeeper. I am sure he has
+ingenuity enough."
+
+"Poh, child! He has not the sort of ingenuity to invent anything better
+than a Dutch toy," answered her father, who had formerly been put to
+much vexation by Owen Warland's irregular genius. "A plague on such
+ingenuity! All the effect that ever I knew of it was to spoil the
+accuracy of some of the best watches in my shop. He would turn the sun
+out of its orbit and derange the whole course of time, if, as I said
+before, his ingenuity could grasp anything bigger than a child's toy!"
+
+"Hush, father! He hears you!" whispered Annie, pressing the old man's
+arm. "His ears are as delicate as his feelings; and you know how easily
+disturbed they are. Do let us move on."
+
+So Peter Hovenden and his daughter Annie plodded on without further
+conversation, until in a by-street of the town they found themselves
+passing the open door of a blacksmith's shop. Within was seen the
+forge, now blazing up and illuminating the high and dusky roof, and now
+confining its lustre to a narrow precinct of the coal-strewn floor,
+according as the breath of the bellows was puffed forth or again
+inhaled into its vast leathern lungs. In the intervals of brightness it
+was easy to distinguish objects in remote corners of the shop and the
+horseshoes that hung upon the wall; in the momentary gloom the fire
+seemed to be glimmering amidst the vagueness of unenclosed space.
+Moving about in this red glare and alternate dusk was the figure of the
+blacksmith, well worthy to be viewed in so picturesque an aspect of
+light and shade, where the bright blaze struggled with the black night,
+as if each would have snatched his comely strength from the other. Anon
+he drew a white-hot bar of iron from the coals, laid it on the anvil,
+uplifted his arm of might, and was soon enveloped in the myriads of
+sparks which the strokes of his hammer scattered into the surrounding
+gloom.
+
+"Now, that is a pleasant sight," said the old watchmaker. "I know what
+it is to work in gold; but give me the worker in iron after all is said
+and done. He spends his labor upon a reality. What say you, daughter
+Annie?"
+
+"Pray don't speak so loud, father," whispered Annie, "Robert Danforth
+will hear you."
+
+"And what if he should hear me?" said Peter Hovenden. "I say again, it
+is a good and a wholesome thing to depend upon main strength and
+reality, and to earn one's bread with the bare and brawny arm of a
+blacksmith. A watchmaker gets his brain puzzled by his wheels within a
+wheel, or loses his health or the nicety of his eyesight, as was my
+case, and finds himself at middle age, or a little after, past labor at
+his own trade and fit for nothing else, yet too poor to live at his
+ease. So I say once again, give me main strength for my money. And
+then, how it takes the nonsense out of a man! Did you ever hear of a
+blacksmith being such a fool as Owen Warland yonder?"
+
+"Well said, uncle Hovenden!" shouted Robert Danforth from the forge, in
+a full, deep, merry voice, that made the roof re-echo. "And what says
+Miss Annie to that doctrine? She, I suppose, will think it a genteeler
+business to tinker up a lady's watch than to forge a horseshoe or make
+a gridiron."
+
+Annie drew her father onward without giving him time for reply.
+
+But we must return to Owen Warland's shop, and spend more meditation
+upon his history and character than either Peter Hovenden, or probably
+his daughter Annie, or Owen's old school-fellow, Robert Danforth, would
+have thought due to so slight a subject. From the time that his little
+fingers could grasp a penknife, Owen had been remarkable for a delicate
+ingenuity, which sometimes produced pretty shapes in wood, principally
+figures of flowers and birds, and sometimes seemed to aim at the hidden
+mysteries of mechanism. But it was always for purposes of grace, and
+never with any mockery of the useful. He did not, like the crowd of
+school-boy artisans, construct little windmills on the angle of a barn
+or watermills across the neighboring brook. Those who discovered such
+peculiarity in the boy as to think it worth their while to observe him
+closely, sometimes saw reason to suppose that he was attempting to
+imitate the beautiful movements of Nature as exemplified in the flight
+of birds or the activity of little animals. It seemed, in fact, a new
+development of the love of the beautiful, such as might have made him a
+poet, a painter, or a sculptor, and which was as completely refined
+from all utilitarian coarseness as it could have been in either of the
+fine arts. He looked with singular distaste at the stiff and regular
+processes of ordinary machinery. Being once carried to see a
+steam-engine, in the expectation that his intuitive comprehension of
+mechanical principles would be gratified, he turned pale and grew sick,
+as if something monstrous and unnatural had been presented to him. This
+horror was partly owing to the size and terrible energy of the iron
+laborer; for the character of Owen's mind was microscopic, and tended
+naturally to the minute, in accordance with his diminutive frame and
+the marvellous smallness and delicate power of his fingers. Not that
+his sense of beauty was thereby diminished into a sense of prettiness.
+The beautiful idea has no relation to size, and may be as perfectly
+developed in a space too minute for any but microscopic investigation
+as within the ample verge that is measured by the arc of the rainbow.
+But, at all events, this characteristic minuteness in his objects and
+accomplishments made the world even more incapable than it might
+otherwise have been of appreciating Owen Warland's genius. The boy's
+relatives saw nothing better to be done--as perhaps there was not--than
+to bind him apprentice to a watchmaker, hoping that his strange
+ingenuity might thus be regulated and put to utilitarian purposes.
+
+Peter Hovenden's opinion of his apprentice has already been expressed.
+He could make nothing of the lad. Owen's apprehension of the
+professional mysteries, it is true, was inconceivably quick; but he
+altogether forgot or despised the grand object of a watchmaker's
+business, and cared no more for the measurement of time than if it had
+been merged into eternity. So long, however, as he remained under his
+old master's care, Owen's lack of sturdiness made it possible, by
+strict injunctions and sharp oversight, to restrain his creative
+eccentricity within bounds; but when his apprenticeship was served out,
+and he had taken the little shop which Peter Hovenden's failing
+eyesight compelled him to relinquish, then did people recognize how
+unfit a person was Owen Warland to lead old blind Father Time along his
+daily course. One of his most rational projects was to connect a
+musical operation with the machinery of his watches, so that all the
+harsh dissonances of life might be rendered tuneful, and each flitting
+moment fall into the abyss of the past in golden drops of harmony. If a
+family clock was intrusted to him for repair,--one of those tall,
+ancient clocks that have grown nearly allied to human nature by
+measuring out the lifetime of many generations,--he would take upon
+himself to arrange a dance or funeral procession of figures across its
+venerable face, representing twelve mirthful or melancholy hours.
+Several freaks of this kind quite destroyed the young watchmaker's
+credit with that steady and matter-of-fact class of people who hold the
+opinion that time is not to be trifled with, whether considered as the
+medium of advancement and prosperity in this world or preparation for
+the next. His custom rapidly diminished--a misfortune, however, that
+was probably reckoned among his better accidents by Owen Warland, who
+was becoming more and more absorbed in a secret occupation which drew
+all his science and manual dexterity into itself, and likewise gave
+full employment to the characteristic tendencies of his genius. This
+pursuit had already consumed many months.
+
+After the old watchmaker and his pretty daughter had gazed at him out
+of the obscurity of the street, Owen Warland was seized with a
+fluttering of the nerves, which made his hand tremble too violently to
+proceed with such delicate labor as he was now engaged upon.
+
+"It was Annie herself!" murmured he. "I should have known it, by this
+throbbing of my heart, before I heard her father's voice. Ah, how it
+throbs! I shall scarcely be able to work again on this exquisite
+mechanism to-night. Annie! dearest Annie! thou shouldst give firmness
+to my heart and hand, and not shake them thus; for if I strive to put
+the very spirit of beauty into form and give it motion, it is for thy
+sake alone. O throbbing heart, be quiet! If my labor be thus thwarted,
+there will come vague and unsatisfied dreams which will leave me
+spiritless to-morrow."
+
+As he was endeavoring to settle himself again to his task, the shop
+door opened and gave admittance to no other than the stalwart figure
+which Peter Hovenden had paused to admire, as seen amid the light and
+shadow of the blacksmith's shop. Robert Danforth had brought a little
+anvil of his own manufacture, and peculiarly constructed, which the
+young artist had recently bespoken. Owen examined the article and
+pronounced it fashioned according to his wish.
+
+"Why, yes," said Robert Danforth, his strong voice filling the shop as
+with the sound of a bass viol, "I consider myself equal to anything in
+the way of my own trade; though I should have made but a poor figure at
+yours with such a fist as this," added he, laughing, as he laid his
+vast hand beside the delicate one of Owen. "But what then? I put more
+main strength into one blow of my sledge hammer than all that you have
+expended since you were a 'prentice. Is not that the truth?"
+
+"Very probably," answered the low and slender voice of Owen. "Strength
+is an earthly monster. I make no pretensions to it. My force, whatever
+there may be of it, is altogether spiritual."
+
+"Well, but, Owen, what are you about?" asked his old school-fellow,
+still in such a hearty volume of tone that it made the artist shrink,
+especially as the question related to a subject so sacred as the
+absorbing dream of his imagination. "Folks do say that you are trying
+to discover the perpetual motion."
+
+"The perpetual motion? Nonsense!" replied Owen Warland, with a movement
+of disgust; for he was full of little petulances. "It can never be
+discovered. It is a dream that may delude men whose brains are
+mystified with matter, but not me. Besides, if such a discovery were
+possible, it would not be worth my while to make it only to have the
+secret turned to such purposes as are now effected by steam and water
+power. I am not ambitious to be honored with the paternity of a new
+kind of cotton machine."
+
+"That would be droll enough!" cried the blacksmith, breaking out into
+such an uproar of laughter that Owen himself and the bell glasses on
+his work-board quivered in unison. "No, no, Owen! No child of yours
+will have iron joints and sinews. Well, I won't hinder you any more.
+Good night, Owen, and success, and if you need any assistance, so far
+as a downright blow of hammer upon anvil will answer the purpose, I'm
+your man."
+
+And with another laugh the man of main strength left the shop.
+
+"How strange it is," whispered Owen Warland to himself, leaning his
+head upon his hand, "that all my musings, my purposes, my passion for
+the beautiful, my consciousness of power to create it,--a finer, more
+ethereal power, of which this earthly giant can have no
+conception,--all, all, look so vain and idle whenever my path is
+crossed by Robert Danforth! He would drive me mad were I to meet him
+often. His hard, brute force darkens and confuses the spiritual element
+within me; but I, too, will be strong in my own way. I will not yield
+to him."
+
+He took from beneath a glass a piece of minute machinery, which he set
+in the condensed light of his lamp, and, looking intently at it through
+a magnifying glass, proceeded to operate with a delicate instrument of
+steel. In an instant, however, he fell back in his chair and clasped
+his hands, with a look of horror on his face that made its small
+features as impressive as those of a giant would have been.
+
+"Heaven! What have I done?" exclaimed he. "The vapor, the influence of
+that brute force,--it has bewildered me and obscured my perception. I
+have made the very stroke--the fatal stroke--that I have dreaded from
+the first. It is all over--the toil of months, the object of my life. I
+am ruined!"
+
+And there he sat, in strange despair, until his lamp flickered in the
+socket and left the Artist of the Beautiful in darkness.
+
+Thus it is that ideas, which grow up within the imagination and appear
+so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call valuable, are
+exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical.
+It is requisite for the ideal artist to possess a force of character
+that seems hardly compatible with its delicacy; he must keep his faith
+in himself while the incredulous world assails him with its utter
+disbelief; he must stand up against mankind and be his own sole
+disciple, both as respects his genius and the objects to which it is
+directed.
+
+For a time Owen Warland succumbed to this severe but inevitable test.
+He spent a few sluggish weeks with his head so continually resting in
+his hands that the towns-people had scarcely an opportunity to see his
+countenance. When at last it was again uplifted to the light of day, a
+cold, dull, nameless change was perceptible upon it. In the opinion of
+Peter Hovenden, however, and that order of sagacious understandings who
+think that life should be regulated, like clockwork, with leaden
+weights, the alteration was entirely for the better. Owen now, indeed,
+applied himself to business with dogged industry. It was marvellous to
+witness the obtuse gravity with which he would inspect the wheels of a
+great old silver watch thereby delighting the owner, in whose fob it
+had been worn till he deemed it a portion of his own life, and was
+accordingly jealous of its treatment. In consequence of the good report
+thus acquired, Owen Warland was invited by the proper authorities to
+regulate the clock in the church steeple. He succeeded so admirably in
+this matter of public interest that the merchants gruffly acknowledged
+his merits on 'Change; the nurse whispered his praises as she gave the
+potion in the sick-chamber; the lover blessed him at the hour of
+appointed interview; and the town in general thanked Owen for the
+punctuality of dinner time. In a word, the heavy weight upon his
+spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his own system, but
+wheresoever the iron accents of the church clock were audible. It was a
+circumstance, though minute, yet characteristic of his present state,
+that, when employed to engrave names or initials on silver spoons, he
+now wrote the requisite letters in the plainest possible style,
+omitting a variety of fanciful flourishes that had heretofore
+distinguished his work in this kind.
+
+One day, during the era of this happy transformation, old Peter
+Hovenden came to visit his former apprentice.
+
+"Well, Owen," said he, "I am glad to hear such good accounts of you
+from all quarters, and especially from the town clock yonder, which
+speaks in your commendation every hour of the twenty-four. Only get rid
+altogether of your nonsensical trash about the beautiful, which I nor
+nobody else, nor yourself to boot, could ever understand,--only free
+yourself of that, and your success in life is as sure as daylight. Why,
+if you go on in this way, I should even venture to let you doctor this
+precious old watch of mine; though, except my daughter Annie, I have
+nothing else so valuable in the world."
+
+"I should hardly dare touch it, sir," replied Owen, in a depressed
+tone; for he was weighed down by his old master's presence.
+
+"In time," said the latter,--"In time, you will be capable of it."
+
+The old watchmaker, with the freedom naturally consequent on his former
+authority, went on inspecting the work which Owen had in hand at the
+moment, together with other matters that were in progress. The artist,
+meanwhile, could scarcely lift his head. There was nothing so antipodal
+to his nature as this man's cold, unimaginative sagacity, by contact
+with which everything was converted into a dream except the densest
+matter of the physical world. Owen groaned in spirit and prayed
+fervently to be delivered from him.
+
+"But what is this?" cried Peter Hovenden abruptly, taking up a dusty
+bell glass, beneath which appeared a mechanical something, as delicate
+and minute as the system of a butterfly's anatomy. "What have we here?
+Owen! Owen! there is witchcraft in these little chains, and wheels, and
+paddles. See! with one pinch of my finger and thumb I am going to
+deliver you from all future peril."
+
+"For Heaven's sake," screamed Owen Warland, springing up with wonderful
+energy, "as you would not drive me mad, do not touch it! The slightest
+pressure of your finger would ruin me forever."
+
+"Aha, young man! And is it so?" said the old watchmaker, looking at him
+with just enough penetration to torture Owen's soul with the bitterness
+of worldly criticism. "Well, take your own course; but I warn you again
+that in this small piece of mechanism lives your evil spirit. Shall I
+exorcise him?"
+
+"You are my evil spirit," answered Owen, much excited,--"you and the
+hard, coarse world! The leaden thoughts and the despondency that you
+fling upon me are my clogs, else I should long ago have achieved the
+task that I was created for."
+
+Peter Hovenden shook his head, with the mixture of contempt and
+indignation which mankind, of whom he was partly a representative, deem
+themselves entitled to feel towards all simpletons who seek other
+prizes than the dusty one along the highway. He then took his leave,
+with an uplifted finger and a sneer upon his face that haunted the
+artist's dreams for many a night afterwards. At the time of his old
+master's visit, Owen was probably on the point of taking up the
+relinquished task; but, by this sinister event, he was thrown back into
+the state whence he had been slowly emerging.
+
+But the innate tendency of his soul had only been accumulating fresh
+vigor during its apparent sluggishness. As the summer advanced he
+almost totally relinquished his business, and permitted Father Time, so
+far as the old gentleman was represented by the clocks and watches
+under his control, to stray at random through human life, making
+infinite confusion among the train of bewildered hours. He wasted the
+sunshine, as people said, in wandering through the woods and fields and
+along the banks of streams. There, like a child, he found amusement in
+chasing butterflies or watching the motions of water insects. There was
+something truly mysterious in the intentness with which he contemplated
+these living playthings as they sported on the breeze or examined the
+structure of an imperial insect whom he had imprisoned. The chase of
+butterflies was an apt emblem of the ideal pursuit in which he had
+spent so many golden hours; but would the beautiful idea ever be
+yielded to his hand like the butterfly that symbolized it? Sweet,
+doubtless, were these days, and congenial to the artist's soul. They
+were full of bright conceptions, which gleamed through his intellectual
+world as the butterflies gleamed through the outward atmosphere, and
+were real to him, for the instant, without the toil, and perplexity,
+and many disappointments of attempting to make them visible to the
+sensual eye. Alas that the artist, whether in poetry, or whatever other
+material, may not content himself with the inward enjoyment of the
+beautiful, but must chase the flitting mystery beyond the verge of his
+ethereal domain, and crush its frail being in seizing it with a
+material grasp. Owen Warland felt the impulse to give external reality
+to his ideas as irresistibly as any of the poets or painters who have
+arrayed the world in a dimmer and fainter beauty, imperfectly copied
+from the richness of their visions.
+
+The night was now his time for the slow progress of re-creating the one
+idea to which all his intellectual activity referred itself. Always at
+the approach of dusk he stole into the town, locked himself within his
+shop, and wrought with patient delicacy of touch for many hours.
+Sometimes he was startled by the rap of the watchman, who, when all the
+world should be asleep, had caught the gleam of lamplight through the
+crevices of Owen Warland's shutters. Daylight, to the morbid
+sensibility of his mind, seemed to have an intrusiveness that
+interfered with his pursuits. On cloudy and inclement days, therefore,
+he sat with his head upon his hands, muffling, as it were, his
+sensitive brain in a mist of indefinite musings, for it was a relief to
+escape from the sharp distinctness with which he was compelled to shape
+out his thoughts during his nightly toil.
+
+From one of these fits of torpor he was aroused by the entrance of
+Annie Hovenden, who came into the shop with the freedom of a customer,
+and also with something of the familiarity of a childish friend. She
+had worn a hole through her silver thimble, and wanted Owen to repair
+it.
+
+"But I don't know whether you will condescend to such a task," said
+she, laughing, "now that you are so taken up with the notion of putting
+spirit into machinery."
+
+"Where did you get that idea, Annie?" said Owen, starting in surprise.
+
+"Oh, out of my own head," answered she, "and from something that I
+heard you say, long ago, when you were but a boy and I a little child.
+But come, will you mend this poor thimble of mine?"
+
+"Anything for your sake, Annie," said Owen Warland,--"anything, even
+were it to work at Robert Danforth's forge."
+
+"And that would be a pretty sight!" retorted Annie, glancing with
+imperceptible slightness at the artist's small and slender frame.
+"Well; here is the thimble."
+
+"But that is a strange idea of yours," said Owen, "about the
+spiritualization of matter."
+
+And then the thought stole into his mind that this young girl possessed
+the gift to comprehend him better than all the world besides. And what
+a help and strength would it be to him in his lonely toil if he could
+gain the sympathy of the only being whom he loved! To persons whose
+pursuits are insulated from the common business of life--who are either
+in advance of mankind or apart from it--there often comes a sensation
+of moral cold that makes the spirit shiver as if it had reached the
+frozen solitudes around the pole. What the prophet, the poet, the
+reformer, the criminal, or any other man with human yearnings, but
+separated from the multitude by a peculiar lot, might feel, poor Owen
+felt.
+
+"Annie," cried he, growing pale as death at the thought, "how gladly
+would I tell you the secret of my pursuit! You, methinks, would
+estimate it rightly. You, I know, would hear it with a reverence that I
+must not expect from the harsh, material world."
+
+"Would I not? to be sure I would!" replied Annie Hovenden, lightly
+laughing. "Come; explain to me quickly what is the meaning of this
+little whirligig, so delicately wrought that it might be a plaything
+for Queen Mab. See! I will put it in motion."
+
+"Hold!" exclaimed Owen, "hold!"
+
+Annie had but given the slightest possible touch, with the point of a
+needle, to the same minute portion of complicated machinery which has
+been more than once mentioned, when the artist seized her by the wrist
+with a force that made her scream aloud. She was affrighted at the
+convulsion of intense rage and anguish that writhed across his
+features. The next instant he let his head sink upon his hands.
+
+"Go, Annie," murmured he; "I have deceived myself, and must suffer for
+it. I yearned for sympathy, and thought, and fancied, and dreamed that
+you might give it me; but you lack the talisman, Annie, that should
+admit you into my secrets. That touch has undone the toil of months and
+the thought of a lifetime! It was not your fault, Annie; but you have
+ruined me!"
+
+Poor Owen Warland! He had indeed erred, yet pardonably; for if any
+human spirit could have sufficiently reverenced the processes so sacred
+in his eyes, it must have been a woman's. Even Annie Hovenden, possibly
+might not have disappointed him had she been enlightened by the deep
+intelligence of love.
+
+The artist spent the ensuing winter in a way that satisfied any persons
+who had hitherto retained a hopeful opinion of him that he was, in
+truth, irrevocably doomed to unutility as regarded the world, and to an
+evil destiny on his own part. The decease of a relative had put him in
+possession of a small inheritance. Thus freed from the necessity of
+toil, and having lost the steadfast influence of a great
+purpose,--great, at least, to him,--he abandoned himself to habits from
+which it might have been supposed the mere delicacy of his organization
+would have availed to secure him. But when the ethereal portion of a
+man of genius is obscured the earthly part assumes an influence the
+more uncontrollable, because the character is now thrown off the
+balance to which Providence had so nicely adjusted it, and which, in
+coarser natures, is adjusted by some other method. Owen Warland made
+proof of whatever show of bliss may be found in riot. He looked at the
+world through the golden medium of wine, and contemplated the visions
+that bubble up so gayly around the brim of the glass, and that people
+the air with shapes of pleasant madness, which so soon grow ghostly and
+forlorn. Even when this dismal and inevitable change had taken place,
+the young man might still have continued to quaff the cup of
+enchantments, though its vapor did but shroud life in gloom and fill
+the gloom with spectres that mocked at him. There was a certain
+irksomeness of spirit, which, being real, and the deepest sensation of
+which the artist was now conscious, was more intolerable than any
+fantastic miseries and horrors that the abuse of wine could summon up.
+In the latter case he could remember, even out of the midst of his
+trouble, that all was but a delusion; in the former, the heavy anguish
+was his actual life.
+
+From this perilous state he was redeemed by an incident which more than
+one person witnessed, but of which the shrewdest could not explain or
+conjecture the operation on Owen Warland's mind. It was very simple. On
+a warm afternoon of spring, as the artist sat among his riotous
+companions with a glass of wine before him, a splendid butterfly flew
+in at the open window and fluttered about his head.
+
+"Ah," exclaimed Owen, who had drank freely, "are you alive again, child
+of the sun and playmate of the summer breeze, after your dismal
+winter's nap? Then it is time for me to be at work!"
+
+And, leaving his unemptied glass upon the table, he departed and was
+never known to sip another drop of wine.
+
+And now, again, he resumed his wanderings in the woods and fields. It
+might be fancied that the bright butterfly, which had come so
+spirit-like into the window as Owen sat with the rude revellers, was
+indeed a spirit commissioned to recall him to the pure, ideal life that
+had so etheralized him among men. It might be fancied that he went
+forth to seek this spirit in its sunny haunts; for still, as in the
+summer time gone by, he was seen to steal gently up wherever a
+butterfly had alighted, and lose himself in contemplation of it. When
+it took flight his eyes followed the winged vision, as if its airy
+track would show the path to heaven. But what could be the purpose of
+the unseasonable toil, which was again resumed, as the watchman knew by
+the lines of lamplight through the crevices of Owen Warland's shutters?
+The towns-people had one comprehensive explanation of all these
+singularities. Owen Warland had gone mad! How universally
+efficacious--how satisfactory, too, and soothing to the injured
+sensibility of narrowness and dulness--is this easy method of
+accounting for whatever lies beyond the world's most ordinary scope!
+From St. Paul's days down to our poor little Artist of the Beautiful,
+the same talisman had been applied to the elucidation of all mysteries
+in the words or deeds of men who spoke or acted too wisely or too well.
+In Owen Warland's case the judgment of his towns-people may have been
+correct. Perhaps he was mad. The lack of sympathy--that contrast
+between himself and his neighbors which took away the restraint of
+example--was enough to make him so. Or possibly he had caught just so
+much of ethereal radiance as served to bewilder him, in an earthly
+sense, by its intermixture with the common daylight.
+
+One evening, when the artist had returned from a customary ramble and
+had just thrown the lustre of his lamp on the delicate piece of work so
+often interrupted, but still taken up again, as if his fate were
+embodied in its mechanism, he was surprised by the entrance of old
+Peter Hovenden. Owen never met this man without a shrinking of the
+heart. Of all the world he was most terrible, by reason of a keen
+understanding which saw so distinctly what it did see, and disbelieved
+so uncompromisingly in what it could not see. On this occasion the old
+watchmaker had merely a gracious word or two to say.
+
+"Owen, my lad," said he, "we must see you at my house to-morrow night."
+
+The artist began to mutter some excuse.
+
+"Oh, but it must be so," quoth Peter Hovenden, "for the sake of the
+days when you were one of the household. What, my boy! don't you know
+that my daughter Annie is engaged to Robert Danforth? We are making an
+entertainment, in our humble way, to celebrate the event."
+
+That little monosyllable was all he uttered; its tone seemed cold and
+unconcerned to an ear like Peter Hovenden's; and yet there was in it
+the stifled outcry of the poor artist's heart, which he compressed
+within him like a man holding down an evil spirit. One slight outbreak,
+however, imperceptible to the old watchmaker, he allowed himself.
+Raising the instrument with which he was about to begin his work, he
+let it fall upon the little system of machinery that had, anew, cost
+him months of thought and toil. It was shattered by the stroke!
+
+Owen Warland's story would have been no tolerable representation of the
+troubled life of those who strive to create the beautiful, if, amid all
+other thwarting influences, love had not interposed to steal the
+cunning from his hand. Outwardly he had been no ardent or enterprising
+lover; the career of his passion had confined its tumults and
+vicissitudes so entirely within the artist's imagination that Annie
+herself had scarcely more than a woman's intuitive perception of it;
+but, in Owen's view, it covered the whole field of his life. Forgetful
+of the time when she had shown herself incapable of any deep response,
+he had persisted in connecting all his dreams of artistical success
+with Annie's image; she was the visible shape in which the spiritual
+power that he worshipped, and on whose altar he hoped to lay a not
+unworthy offering, was made manifest to him. Of course he had deceived
+himself; there were no such attributes in Annie Hovenden as his
+imagination had endowed her with. She, in the aspect which she wore to
+his inward vision, was as much a creature of his own as the mysterious
+piece of mechanism would be were it ever realized. Had he become
+convinced of his mistake through the medium of successful love,--had he
+won Annie to his bosom, and there beheld her fade from angel into
+ordinary woman,--the disappointment might have driven him back, with
+concentrated energy, upon his sole remaining object. On the other hand,
+had he found Annie what he fancied, his lot would have been so rich in
+beauty that out of its mere redundancy he might have wrought the
+beautiful into many a worthier type than he had toiled for; but the
+guise in which his sorrow came to him, the sense that the angel of his
+life had been snatched away and given to a rude man of earth and iron,
+who could neither need nor appreciate her ministrations,--this was the
+very perversity of fate that makes human existence appear too absurd
+and contradictory to be the scene of one other hope or one other fear.
+There was nothing left for Owen Warland but to sit down like a man that
+had been stunned.
+
+He went through a fit of illness. After his recovery his small and
+slender frame assumed an obtuser garniture of flesh than it had ever
+before worn. His thin cheeks became round; his delicate little hand, so
+spiritually fashioned to achieve fairy task-work, grew plumper than the
+hand of a thriving infant. His aspect had a childishness such as might
+have induced a stranger to pat him on the head--pausing, however, in
+the act, to wonder what manner of child was here. It was as if the
+spirit had gone out of him, leaving the body to flourish in a sort of
+vegetable existence. Not that Owen Warland was idiotic. He could talk,
+and not irrationally. Somewhat of a babbler, indeed, did people begin
+to think him; for he was apt to discourse at wearisome length of
+marvels of mechanism that he had read about in books, but which he had
+learned to consider as absolutely fabulous. Among them he enumerated
+the Man of Brass, constructed by Albertus Magnus, and the Brazen Head
+of Friar Bacon; and, coming down to later times, the automata of a
+little coach and horses, which it was pretended had been manufactured
+for the Dauphin of France; together with an insect that buzzed about
+the ear like a living fly, and yet was but a contrivance of minute
+steel springs. There was a story, too, of a duck that waddled, and
+quacked, and ate; though, had any honest citizen purchased it for
+dinner, he would have found himself cheated with the mere mechanical
+apparition of a duck.
+
+"But all these accounts," said Owen Warland, "I am now satisfied are
+mere impositions."
+
+Then, in a mysterious way, he would confess that he once thought
+differently. In his idle and dreamy days he had considered it possible,
+in a certain sense, to spiritualize machinery, and to combine with the
+new species of life and motion thus produced a beauty that should
+attain to the ideal which Nature has proposed to herself in all her
+creatures, but has never taken pains to realize. He seemed, however, to
+retain no very distinct perception either of the process of achieving
+this object or of the design itself.
+
+"I have thrown it all aside now," he would say. "It was a dream such as
+young men are always mystifying themselves with. Now that I have
+acquired a little common sense, it makes me laugh to think of it."
+
+Poor, poor and fallen Owen Warland! These were the symptoms that he had
+ceased to be an inhabitant of the better sphere that lies unseen around
+us. He had lost his faith in the invisible, and now prided himself, as
+such unfortunates invariably do, in the wisdom which rejected much that
+even his eye could see, and trusted confidently in nothing but what his
+hand could touch. This is the calamity of men whose spiritual part dies
+out of them and leaves the grosser understanding to assimilate them
+more and more to the things of which alone it can take cognizance; but
+in Owen Warland the spirit was not dead nor passed away; it only slept.
+
+How it awoke again is not recorded. Perhaps the torpid slumber was
+broken by a convulsive pain. Perhaps, as in a former instance, the
+butterfly came and hovered about his head and reinspired him,--as
+indeed this creature of the sunshine had always a mysterious mission
+for the artist,--reinspired him with the former purpose of his life.
+Whether it were pain or happiness that thrilled through his veins, his
+first impulse was to thank Heaven for rendering him again the being of
+thought, imagination, and keenest sensibility that he had long ceased
+to be.
+
+"Now for my task," said he. "Never did I feel such strength for it as
+now."
+
+Yet, strong as he felt himself, he was incited to toil the more
+diligently by an anxiety lest death should surprise him in the midst of
+his labors. This anxiety, perhaps, is common to all men who set their
+hearts upon anything so high, in their own view of it, that life
+becomes of importance only as conditional to its accomplishment. So
+long as we love life for itself, we seldom dread the losing it. When we
+desire life for the attainment of an object, we recognize the frailty
+of its texture. But, side by side with this sense of insecurity, there
+is a vital faith in our invulnerability to the shaft of death while
+engaged in any task that seems assigned by Providence as our proper
+thing to do, and which the world would have cause to mourn for should
+we leave it unaccomplished. Can the philosopher, big with the
+inspiration of an idea that is to reform mankind, believe that he is to
+be beckoned from this sensible existence at the very instant when he is
+mustering his breath to speak the word of light? Should he perish so,
+the weary ages may pass away--the world's, whose life sand may fall,
+drop by drop--before another intellect is prepared to develop the truth
+that might have been uttered then. But history affords many an example
+where the most precious spirit, at any particular epoch manifested in
+human shape, has gone hence untimely, without space allowed him, so far
+as mortal judgment could discern, to perform his mission on the earth.
+The prophet dies, and the man of torpid heart and sluggish brain lives
+on. The poet leaves his song half sung, or finishes it, beyond the
+scope of mortal ears, in a celestial choir. The painter--as Allston
+did--leaves half his conception on the canvas to sadden us with its
+imperfect beauty, and goes to picture forth the whole, if it be no
+irreverence to say so, in the hues of heaven. But rather such
+incomplete designs of this life will be perfected nowhere. This so
+frequent abortion of man's dearest projects must be taken as a proof
+that the deeds of earth, however etherealized by piety or genius, are
+without value, except as exercises and manifestations of the spirit. In
+heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more melodious than Milton's
+song. Then, would he add another verse to any strain that he had left
+unfinished here?
+
+But to return to Owen Warland. It was his fortune, good or ill, to
+achieve the purpose of his life. Pass we over a long space of intense
+thought, yearning effort, minute toil, and wasting anxiety, succeeded
+by an instant of solitary triumph: let all this be imagined; and then
+behold the artist, on a winter evening, seeking admittance to Robert
+Danforth's fireside circle. There he found the man of iron, with his
+massive substance thoroughly warmed and attempered by domestic
+influences. And there was Annie, too, now transformed into a matron,
+with much of her husband's plain and sturdy nature, but imbued, as Owen
+Warland still believed, with a finer grace, that might enable her to be
+the interpreter between strength and beauty. It happened, likewise,
+that old Peter Hovenden was a guest this evening at his daughter's
+fireside, and it was his well-remembered expression of keen, cold
+criticism that first encountered the artist's glance.
+
+"My old friend Owen!" cried Robert Danforth, starting up, and
+compressing the artist's delicate fingers within a hand that was
+accustomed to gripe bars of iron. "This is kind and neighborly to come
+to us at last. I was afraid your perpetual motion had bewitched you out
+of the remembrance of old times."
+
+"We are glad to see you," said Annie, while a blush reddened her
+matronly cheek. "It was not like a friend to stay from us so long."
+
+"Well, Owen," inquired the old watchmaker, as his first greeting, "how
+comes on the beautiful? Have you created it at last?"
+
+The artist did not immediately reply, being startled by the apparition
+of a young child of strength that was tumbling about on the carpet,--a
+little personage who had come mysteriously out of the infinite, but
+with something so sturdy and real in his composition that he seemed
+moulded out of the densest substance which earth could supply. This
+hopeful infant crawled towards the new-comer, and setting himself on
+end, as Robert Danforth expressed the posture, stared at Owen with a
+look of such sagacious observation that the mother could not help
+exchanging a proud glance with her husband. But the artist was
+disturbed by the child's look, as imagining a resemblance between it
+and Peter Hovenden's habitual expression. He could have fancied that
+the old watchmaker was compressed into this baby shape, and looking out
+of those baby eyes, and repeating, as he now did, the malicious
+question: "The beautiful, Owen! How comes on the beautiful? Have you
+succeeded in creating the beautiful?"
+
+"I have succeeded," replied the artist, with a momentary light of
+triumph in his eyes and a smile of sunshine, yet steeped in such depth
+of thought that it was almost sadness. "Yes, my friends, it is the
+truth. I have succeeded."
+
+"Indeed!" cried Annie, a look of maiden mirthfulness peeping out of her
+face again. "And is it lawful, now, to inquire what the secret is?"
+
+"Surely; it is to disclose it that I have come," answered Owen Warland.
+"You shall know, and see, and touch, and possess the secret! For,
+Annie,--if by that name I may still address the friend of my boyish
+years,--Annie, it is for your bridal gift that I have wrought this
+spiritualized mechanism, this harmony of motion, this mystery of
+beauty. It comes late, indeed; but it is as we go onward in life, when
+objects begin to lose their freshness of hue and our souls their
+delicacy of perception, that the spirit of beauty is most needed.
+If,--forgive me, Annie,--if you know how--to value this gift, it can
+never come too late."
+
+He produced, as he spoke, what seemed a jewel box. It was carved richly
+out of ebony by his own hand, and inlaid with a fanciful tracery of
+pearl, representing a boy in pursuit of a butterfly, which, elsewhere,
+had become a winged spirit, and was flying heavenward; while the boy,
+or youth, had found such efficacy in his strong desire that he ascended
+from earth to cloud, and from cloud to celestial atmosphere, to win the
+beautiful. This case of ebony the artist opened, and bade Annie place
+her fingers on its edge. She did so, but almost screamed as a butterfly
+fluttered forth, and, alighting on her finger's tip, sat waving the
+ample magnificence of its purple and gold-speckled wings, as if in
+prelude to a flight. It is impossible to express by words the glory,
+the splendor, the delicate gorgeousness which were softened into the
+beauty of this object. Nature's ideal butterfly was here realized in
+all its perfection; not in the pattern of such faded insects as flit
+among earthly flowers, but of those which hover across the meads of
+paradise for child-angels and the spirits of departed infants to
+disport themselves with. The rich down was visible upon its wings; the
+lustre of its eyes seemed instinct with spirit. The firelight glimmered
+around this wonder--the candles gleamed upon it; but it glistened
+apparently by its own radiance, and illuminated the finger and
+outstretched hand on which it rested with a white gleam like that of
+precious stones. In its perfect beauty, the consideration of size was
+entirely lost. Had its wings overreached the firmament, the mind could
+not have been more filled or satisfied.
+
+"Beautiful! beautiful!" exclaimed Annie. "Is it alive? Is it alive?"
+
+"Alive? To be sure it is," answered her husband. "Do you suppose any
+mortal has skill enough to make a butterfly, or would put himself to
+the trouble of making one, when any child may catch a score of them in
+a summer's afternoon? Alive? Certainly! But this pretty box is
+undoubtedly of our friend Owen's manufacture; and really it does him
+credit."
+
+At this moment the butterfly waved its wings anew, with a motion so
+absolutely lifelike that Annie was startled, and even awestricken; for,
+in spite of her husband's opinion, she could not satisfy herself
+whether it was indeed a living creature or a piece of wondrous
+mechanism.
+
+"Is it alive?" she repeated, more earnestly than before.
+
+"Judge for yourself," said Owen Warland, who stood gazing in her face
+with fixed attention.
+
+The butterfly now flung itself upon the air, fluttered round Annie's
+head, and soared into a distant region of the parlor, still making
+itself perceptible to sight by the starry gleam in which the motion of
+its wings enveloped it. The infant on the floor followed its course
+with his sagacious little eyes. After flying about the room, it
+returned in a spiral curve and settled again on Annie's finger.
+
+"But is it alive?" exclaimed she again; and the finger on which the
+gorgeous mystery had alighted was so tremulous that the butterfly was
+forced to balance himself with his wings. "Tell me if it be alive, or
+whether you created it."
+
+"Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful?" replied Owen
+Warland. "Alive?  Yes, Annie; it may well be said to possess life, for
+it has absorbed my own being into itself; and in the secret of that
+butterfly, and in its beauty,--which is not merely outward, but deep as
+its whole system,--is represented the intellect, the imagination, the
+sensibility, the soul of an Artist of the Beautiful! Yes; I created it.
+But"--and here his countenance somewhat changed--"this butterfly is not
+now to me what it was when I beheld it afar off in the daydreams of my
+youth."
+
+"Be it what it may, it is a pretty plaything," said the blacksmith,
+grinning with childlike delight. "I wonder whether it would condescend
+to alight on such a great clumsy finger as mine? Hold it hither, Annie."
+
+By the artist's direction, Annie touched her finger's tip to that of
+her husband; and, after a momentary delay, the butterfly fluttered from
+one to the other. It preluded a second flight by a similar, yet not
+precisely the same, waving of wings as in the first experiment; then,
+ascending from the blacksmith's stalwart finger, it rose in a gradually
+enlarging curve to the ceiling, made one wide sweep around the room,
+and returned with an undulating movement to the point whence it had
+started.
+
+"Well, that does beat all nature!" cried Robert Danforth, bestowing the
+heartiest praise that he could find expression for; and, indeed, had he
+paused there, a man of finer words and nicer perception could not
+easily have said more. "That goes beyond me, I confess. But what then?
+There is more real use in one downright blow of my sledge hammer than
+in the whole five years' labor that our friend Owen has wasted on this
+butterfly."
+
+Here the child clapped his hands and made a great babble of indistinct
+utterance, apparently demanding that the butterfly should be given him
+for a plaything.
+
+Owen Warland, meanwhile, glanced sidelong at Annie, to discover whether
+she sympathized in her husband's estimate of the comparative value of
+the beautiful and the practical. There was, amid all her kindness
+towards himself, amid all the wonder and admiration with which she
+contemplated the marvellous work of his hands and incarnation of his
+idea, a secret scorn--too secret, perhaps, for her own consciousness,
+and perceptible only to such intuitive discernment as that of the
+artist. But Owen, in the latter stages of his pursuit, had risen out of
+the region in which such a discovery might have been torture. He knew
+that the world, and Annie as the representative of the world, whatever
+praise might be bestowed, could never say the fitting word nor feel the
+fitting sentiment which should be the perfect recompense of an artist
+who, symbolizing a lofty moral by a material trifle,--converting what
+was earthly to spiritual gold,--had won the beautiful into his
+handiwork. Not at this latest moment was he to learn that the reward of
+all high performance must be sought within itself, or sought in vain.
+There was, however, a view of the matter which Annie and her husband,
+and even Peter Hovenden, might fully have understood, and which would
+have satisfied them that the toil of years had here been worthily
+bestowed. Owen Warland might have told them that this butterfly, this
+plaything, this bridal gift of a poor watchmaker to a blacksmith's
+wife, was, in truth, a gem of art that a monarch would have purchased
+with honors and abundant wealth, and have treasured it among the jewels
+of his kingdom as the most unique and wondrous of them all. But the
+artist smiled and kept the secret to himself.
+
+"Father," said Annie, thinking that a word of praise from the old
+watchmaker might gratify his former apprentice, "do come and admire
+this pretty butterfly."
+
+"Let us see," said Peter Hovenden, rising from his chair, with a sneer
+upon his face that always made people doubt, as he himself did, in
+everything but a material existence. "Here is my finger for it to
+alight upon. I shall understand it better when once I have touched it."
+
+But, to the increased astonishment of Annie, when the tip of her
+father's finger was pressed against that of her husband, on which the
+butterfly still rested, the insect drooped its wings and seemed on the
+point of falling to the floor. Even the bright spots of gold upon its
+wings and body, unless her eyes deceived her, grew dim, and the glowing
+purple took a dusky hue, and the starry lustre that gleamed around the
+blacksmith's hand became faint and vanished.
+
+"It is dying! it is dying!" cried Annie, in alarm.
+
+"It has been delicately wrought," said the artist, calmly. "As I told
+you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence--call it magnetism, or what you
+will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery its exquisite
+susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him who instilled
+his own life into it. It has already lost its beauty; in a few moments
+more its mechanism would be irreparably injured."
+
+"Take away your hand, father!" entreated Annie, turning pale. "Here is
+my child; let it rest on his innocent hand. There, perhaps, its life
+will revive and its colors grow brighter than ever."
+
+Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his finger. The butterfly
+then appeared to recover the power of voluntary motion, while its hues
+assumed much of their original lustre, and the gleam of starlight,
+which was its most ethereal attribute, again formed a halo round about
+it. At first, when transferred from Robert Danforth's hand to the small
+finger of the child, this radiance grew so powerful that it positively
+threw the little fellow's shadow back against the wall. He, meanwhile,
+extended his plump hand as he had seen his father and mother do, and
+watched the waving of the insect's wings with infantine delight.
+Nevertheless, there was a certain odd expression of sagacity that made
+Owen Warland feel as if here were old Pete Hovenden, partially, and but
+partially, redeemed from his hard scepticism into childish faith.
+
+"How wise the little monkey looks!" whispered Robert Danforth to his
+wife.
+
+"I never saw such a look on a child's face," answered Annie, admiring
+her own infant, and with good reason, far more than the artistic
+butterfly. "The darling knows more of the mystery than we do."
+
+As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of something not
+entirely congenial in the child's nature, it alternately sparkled and
+grew dim. At length it arose from the small hand of the infant with an
+airy motion that seemed to bear it upward without an effort, as if the
+ethereal instincts with which its master's spirit had endowed it
+impelled this fair vision involuntarily to a higher sphere. Had there
+been no obstruction, it might have soared into the sky and grown
+immortal. But its lustre gleamed upon the ceiling; the exquisite
+texture of its wings brushed against that earthly medium; and a sparkle
+or two, as of stardust, floated downward and lay glimmering on the
+carpet. Then the butterfly came fluttering down, and, instead of
+returning to the infant, was apparently attracted towards the artist's
+hand.
+
+"Not so! not so!" murmured Owen Warland, as if his handiwork could have
+understood him. "Thou has gone forth out of thy master's heart. There
+is no return for thee."
+
+With a wavering movement, and emitting a tremulous radiance, the
+butterfly struggled, as it were, towards the infant, and was about to
+alight upon his finger; but while it still hovered in the air, the
+little child of strength, with his grandsire's sharp and shrewd
+expression in his face, made a snatch at the marvellous insect and
+compressed it in his hand. Annie screamed. Old Peter Hovenden burst
+into a cold and scornful laugh. The blacksmith, by main force, unclosed
+the infant's hand, and found within the palm a small heap of glittering
+fragments, whence the mystery of beauty had fled forever. And as for
+Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's
+labor, and which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly
+than this. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful,
+the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of
+little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the
+enjoyment of the reality.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mosses from an Old Manse and Other
+Stories, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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+
+From MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+The Birthmark 
+Young Goodman Brown 
+Rappaccini's Daughter 
+Mrs. Bullfrog 
+The Celestial Railroad  
+The Procession of Life  
+Feathertop: A Moralized Legend  
+Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent  
+Drowne's Wooden Image 
+Roger Malvin's Burial 
+The Artist of the Beautiful 
+
+
+
+
+FROM MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE
+
+
+THE BIRTHMARK
+
+In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of
+science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural
+philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made
+experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any
+chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an
+assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke,
+washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a
+beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days when the
+comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred
+mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of
+miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the
+love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher
+intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might
+all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of
+their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of
+powerful intelligence to another, until the philosopher should
+lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new
+worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer possessed this
+degree of faith in man's ultimate control over Nature. He had
+devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies
+ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. His love for
+his young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could
+only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and
+uniting the strength of the latter to his own.
+
+Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly
+remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day,
+very soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife
+with a trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he
+spoke.
+
+"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark
+upon your cheek might be removed?"
+
+"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness
+of his manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth it has
+been so often called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine
+it might be so."
+
+"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband;
+"but never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly
+perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible
+defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty,
+shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection."
+
+"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first
+reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears.
+"Then why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love
+what shocks you!"
+
+To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in the
+centre of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark,
+deeply interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of
+her face. In the usual state of her complexion--a healthy though
+delicate bloom--the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which
+imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When
+she blushed it gradually became more indistinct, and finally
+vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole
+cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion caused
+her to turn pale there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon
+the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful
+distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human
+hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were
+wont to say that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny
+hand upon the infant's cheek, and left this impress there in
+token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway
+over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life
+for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It
+must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by
+this fairy sign manual varied exceedingly, according to the
+difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious
+persons--but they were exclusively of her own sex--affirmed that
+the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the
+effect of Georgiana's beauty, and rendered her countenance even
+hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one of those
+small blue stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary
+marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine
+observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration,
+contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might
+possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the
+semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,--for he thought little
+or nothing of the matter before,--Aylmer discovered that this was
+the case with himself.
+
+Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy's self could have found
+aught else to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection
+heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely
+portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again and glimmering to
+and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her
+heart; but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one
+defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their
+united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in
+one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions,
+either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their
+perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand
+expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
+highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred
+with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their
+visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as
+the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and
+death, Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the
+birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror
+than ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given
+him delight.
+
+At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he
+invariably  and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose
+to the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling
+as it at first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable
+trains of thought and modes of feeling that it became the central
+point of all. With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes
+upon his wife's face and recognized the symbol of imperfection;
+and when they sat together at the evening hearth his eyes
+wandered stealthily to her cheek, and beheld, flickering with the
+blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand that wrote mortality
+where he would fain have worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to
+shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the peculiar
+expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her
+cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
+brought strongly out, like a bass-relief of ruby on the whitest
+marble.
+
+Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to
+betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the
+first time, voluntarily took up the subject.
+
+"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble
+attempt at a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last
+night about this odious hand?"
+
+"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting; but then he
+added, in a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing
+the real depth of his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for
+before I fell asleep it had taken a pretty firm hold of my
+fancy."
+
+"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
+dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to
+say. "A terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it
+possible to forget this one expression?--'It is in her heart now;
+we must have it out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I
+would have you recall that dream."
+
+The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
+confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but
+suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with
+secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now
+remembered his dream. He had fancied himself with his servant
+Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of the
+birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the
+hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold
+of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably
+resolved to cut or wrench it away.
+
+When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer
+sat in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often
+finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and
+then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard
+to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our
+waking moments. Until now he had not been aware of the
+tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of
+the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for the sake
+of giving himself peace.
+
+"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be
+the cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps
+its removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain
+goes as deep as life itself. Again: do we know that there is a
+possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this
+little hand which was laid upon me before I came into the world?"
+
+"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"
+hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect
+practicability of its removal."
+
+"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued
+Georgiana, "let the attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is
+nothing to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the
+object of your horror and disgust,--life is a burden which I
+would fling down with joy. Either remove this dreadful hand, or
+take my wretched life! You have deep science. All the world bears
+witness of it. You have achieved great wonders. Cannot you remove
+this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two
+small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your
+own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?"
+
+"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously,
+"doubt not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
+thought--thought which might almost have enlightened me to create
+a being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me
+deeper than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully
+competent to render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow;
+and then, most beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have
+corrected what Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even
+Pygmalion, when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not
+greater ecstasy than mine will be."
+
+"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And,
+Aylmer, spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take
+refuge in my heart at last."
+
+Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek--her right cheek--not that
+which bore the impress of the crimson hand.
+
+The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had
+formed whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought
+and constant watchfulness which the proposed operation would
+require; while Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect
+repose essential to its success. They were to seclude themselves
+in the extensive apartments occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory,
+and where, during his toilsome youth, he had made discoveries in
+the elemental powers of Nature that had roused the admiration of
+all the learned societies in Europe. Seated calmly in this
+laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated the secrets of
+the highest cloud region and of the profoundest mines; he had
+satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the
+fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains,
+and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and
+others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of
+the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the
+wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very
+process by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences
+from earth and air, and from the spiritual world, to create and
+foster man, her masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer
+had long laid aside in unwilling recognition of the
+truth--against which all seekers sooner or later stumble--that
+our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently
+working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep
+her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows
+us nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar, but
+seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to
+make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten
+investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as
+first suggested them; but because they involved much
+physiological truth and lay in the path of his proposed scheme
+for the treatment of Georgiana.
+
+As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was
+cold and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with
+intent to reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow
+of the birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could
+not restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.
+
+"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the
+floor.
+
+Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low
+stature, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his
+visage, which was grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This
+personage had been Aylmer's underworker during his whole
+scientific career, and was admirably fitted for that office by
+his great mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while
+incapable of comprehending a single principle, he executed all
+the details of his master's experiments. With his vast strength,
+his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable
+earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's
+physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale,
+intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual
+element.
+
+"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and
+burn a pastil."
+
+"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the
+lifeless form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If
+she were my wife, I'd never part with that birthmark."
+
+When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself
+breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle
+potency of which had recalled her from her deathlike faintness.
+The scene around her looked like enchantment. Aylmer had
+converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent
+his brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a series of
+beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded abode of a
+lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which
+imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other
+species of adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the
+ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing
+all angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from
+infinite space. For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion
+among the clouds. And Aylmer, excluding the sunshine, which would
+have interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its 
+place with perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but
+all uniting in a soft, impurpled radiance. He now knelt by his
+wife's side, watching her earnestly, but without alarm; for he
+was confident in his science, and felt that he could draw a magic
+circle round her within which no evil might intrude.
+
+"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she
+placed her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her
+husband's eyes.
+
+"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me!
+Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single
+imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to remove it."
+
+"Oh, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it
+again. I never can forget that convulsive shudder."
+
+In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her
+mind from the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice
+some of the light and playful secrets which science had taught
+him among its profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless
+ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty came and danced before
+her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light.
+Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these
+optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough
+to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the
+spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth
+from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
+answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a
+screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly
+represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribable
+difference which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so
+much more attractive than the original. When wearied of this,
+Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity
+of earth. She did so, with little interest at first; but was soon
+startled to perceive the germ of a plant shooting upward from the
+soil. Then came the slender stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded
+themselves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely flower.
+
+"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."
+
+"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,--"pluck it, and inhale its
+brief perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few
+moments and leave nothing save its brown seed vessels; but thence
+may be perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."
+
+But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole
+plant suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by
+the agency of fire.
+
+"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.
+
+To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her
+portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to
+be effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of
+metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was
+affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and
+indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the
+cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and
+threw it into a jar of corrosive acid.
+
+Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the
+intervals of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed
+and exhausted, but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke
+in glowing language of the resources of his art. He gave a
+history of the long dynasty of the alchemists, who spent so many
+ages in quest of the universal solvent by which the golden
+principle might be elicited from all things vile and base. Aylmer
+appeared to believe that, by the plainest scientific logic, it
+was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover this
+long-sought medium; "but," he added, "a philosopher who should go
+deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom
+to stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his
+opinions in regard to the elixir vitae. He more than intimated
+that it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong
+life for years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a
+discord in Nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of
+the immortal nostrum, would find cause to curse.
+
+"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him
+with amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power,
+or even to dream of possessing it."
+
+"Oh, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not
+wrong either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects
+upon our lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in
+comparison, is the skill requisite to remove this little hand."
+
+At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as
+if a redhot iron had touched her cheek.
+
+Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his
+voice in the distant furnace room giving directions to Aminadab,
+whose harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response,
+more like the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After
+hours of absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed that she should
+now examine his cabinet of chemical products and natural
+treasures of the earth. Among the former he showed her a small
+vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a gentle yet most
+powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the breezes that
+blow across a kingdom. They were of inestimable value, the
+contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he threw some
+of the perfume into the air and filled the room with piercing and
+invigorating delight.
+
+"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal
+globe containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to
+the eye that I could imagine it the elixir of life."
+
+"In one sense it is," replied Aylmer; "or, rather, the elixir of
+immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was
+concocted in this world. By its aid I could apportion the
+lifetime of any mortal at whom you might point your finger. The
+strength of the dose would determine whether he were to linger
+out years, or drop dead in the midst of a breath. No king on his
+guarded throne could keep his life if I, in my private station,
+should deem that the welfare of millions justified me in
+depriving him of it."
+
+"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana in
+horror.
+
+"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its
+virtuous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see!
+here is a powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase
+of water, freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are
+cleansed. A stronger infusion would take the blood out of the
+cheek, and leave the rosiest beauty a pale ghost."
+
+"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked
+Georgiana, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely
+superficial. Your case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."
+
+In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
+inquiries as to her sensations and whether the confinement of the
+rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her.
+These questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began
+to conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical
+influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken
+with her food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether
+fancy, that there was a stirring up of her system--a strange,
+indefinite sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling,
+half painfully, half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever
+she dared to look into the mirror, there she beheld herself pale
+as a white rose and with the crimson birthmark stamped upon her
+cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it so much as she.
+
+To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it
+necessary to devote to the processes of combination and analysis,
+Georgiana turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In
+many dark old tomes she met with chapters full of romance and
+poetry. They were the works of philosophers of the middle ages,
+such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and the
+famous friar who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these
+antique naturalists stood in advance of their centuries, yet were
+imbued with some of their credulity, and therefore were believed,
+and perhaps imagined themselves to have acquired from the
+investigation of Nature a power above Nature, and from physics a
+sway over the spiritual world. Hardly less curious and
+imaginative were the early volumes of the Transactions of the
+Royal Society, in which the members, knowing little of the limits
+of natural possibility, were continually recording wonders or
+proposing methods whereby wonders might be wrought.
+
+But to Georgiana the most engrossing volume was a large folio
+from her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every
+experiment of his scientific career, its original aim, the
+methods adopted for its development, and its final success or
+failure, with the circumstances to which either event was
+attributable. The book, in truth, was both the history and emblem
+of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet practical and
+laborious life. He handled physical details as if there were
+nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed
+himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration
+towards the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth
+assumed a soul. Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and
+loved him more profoundly than ever, but with a less entire
+dependence on his judgment than heretofore. Much as he had
+accomplished, she could not but observe that his most splendid
+successes were almost invariably failures, if compared with the
+ideal at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were the merest
+pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in comparison with the
+inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach. The volume,
+rich with achievements that had won renown for its author, was
+yet as melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had penned. It was
+the sad confession and continual exemplification of the
+shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay
+and working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher
+nature at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly
+part. Perhaps every man of genius in whatever sphere might
+recognize the image of his own experience in Aylmer's journal.
+
+So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid
+her face upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this
+situation she was found by her husband.
+
+"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a
+smile, though his countenance was uneasy and displeased.
+"Georgiana, there are pages in that volume which I can scarcely
+glance over and keep my senses. Take heed lest it prove as
+detrimental to you."
+
+"It has made me worship you more than ever," said she.
+
+"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he, "then worship me if
+you will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come, I
+have sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me,
+dearest."
+
+So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the
+thirst of his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish
+exuberance of gayety, assuring her that her seclusion would
+endure but a little longer, and that the result was already
+certain. Scarcely had he departed when Georgiana felt
+irresistibly impelled to follow him. She had forgotten to inform
+Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three hours past had begun
+to excite her attention. It was a sensation in the fatal
+birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness
+throughout her system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded
+for the first time into the laboratory.
+
+The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and
+feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
+quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning
+for ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full operation.
+Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and
+other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine stood
+ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close,
+and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth
+by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of
+the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked
+strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic
+elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely,
+drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.
+
+He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the
+furnace as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether
+the liquid which it was distilling should be the draught of
+immortal happiness or misery. How different from the sanguine and
+joyous mien that he had assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!
+
+"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine;
+carefully, thou man of clay!" muttered Aylmer, more to himself
+than his assistant. "Now, if there be a thought too much or too
+little, it is all over."
+
+"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! look!"
+
+Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew
+paler than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her
+and seized her arm with a gripe that left the print of his
+fingers upon it.
+
+"Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in your husband?"
+cried he, impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal
+birthmark over my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman,
+go!"
+
+"Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she
+possessed no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right
+to complain. You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the
+anxiety with which you watch the development of this experiment.
+Think not so unworthily of me, my husband. Tell me all the risk
+we run, and fear not that I shall shrink; for my share in it is
+far less than your own."
+
+"No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."
+
+"I submit," replied she calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff
+whatever draught you bring me; but it will be on the same
+principle that would induce me to take a dose of poison if
+offered by your hand."
+
+"My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the
+height and depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be
+concealed. Know, then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it
+seems, has clutched its grasp into your being with a strength of
+which I had no previous conception. I have already administered
+agents powerful enough to do aught except to change your entire
+physical system. Only one thing remains to be tried. If that fail
+us we are ruined."
+
+"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.
+
+"Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is
+danger."
+
+"Danger? There is but one danger--that this horrible stigma shall
+be left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it,
+whatever be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"
+
+"Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And
+now, dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will
+be tested."
+
+He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn
+tenderness which spoke far more than his words how much was now
+at stake. After his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings.
+She considered the character of Aylmer, and did it completer
+justice than at any previous moment. Her heart exulted, while it
+trembled, at his honorable love--so pure and lofty that it would
+accept nothing less than perfection nor miserably make itself
+contented with an earthlier nature than he had dreamed of. She
+felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than that meaner
+kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her sake,
+and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its
+perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole
+spirit she prayed that, for a single moment, she might satisfy
+his highest and deepest conception. Longer than one moment she
+well knew it could not be; for his spirit was ever on the march,
+ever ascending, and each instant required something that was
+beyond the scope of the instant before.
+
+The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a
+crystal goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright
+enough to be the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it
+seemed rather the consequence of a highly-wrought state of mind
+and tension of spirit than of fear or doubt.
+
+"The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in
+answer to Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived
+me, it cannot fail."
+
+"Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I
+might wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by
+relinquishing mortality itself in preference to any other mode.
+Life is but a sad possession to those who have attained precisely
+the degree of moral advancement at which I stand. Were I weaker
+and blinder it might be happiness. Were I stronger, it might be
+endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself, methinks I am
+of all mortals the most fit to die."
+
+"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her
+husband "But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail.
+Behold its effect upon this plant."
+
+On the window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
+blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a
+small quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a
+little time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the
+moisture, the unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a
+living verdure.
+
+"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the
+goblet I joyfully stake all upon your word."
+
+"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid
+admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy
+sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."
+
+She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
+
+"It is grateful," said she with a placid smile. "Methinks it is
+like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not
+what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a
+feverish thirst that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest,
+let me sleep. My earthly senses are closing over my spirit like
+the leaves around the heart of a rose at sunset."
+
+She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it
+required almost more energy than she could command to pronounce
+the faint and lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered
+through her lips ere she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her
+side, watching her aspect with the emotions proper to a man the
+whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now to
+be tested. Mingled with this mood, however, was the philosophic
+investigation characteristic of the man of science. Not the
+minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of the cheek, a
+slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly
+perceptible tremor through the frame,--such were the details
+which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume.
+Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of
+that volume, but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon
+the last.
+
+While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal
+hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and
+unaccountable impulse he pressed it with his lips. His spirit
+recoiled, however, in the very act, and Georgiana, out of the
+midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily and murmured as if in
+remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor was it without
+avail. The crimson hand, which at first had been strongly visible
+upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's cheek, now grew more
+faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than ever; but the
+birthmark with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat of
+its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its
+departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow
+fading out the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol
+passed away.
+
+"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in
+almost irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now.
+Success! success! And now it is like the faintest rose color. The
+lightest flush of blood across her cheek would overcome it. But
+she is so pale!"
+
+He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of
+natural day to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the
+same time he heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long
+known as his servant Aminadab's expression of delight.
+
+"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of
+frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit--earth and
+heaven --have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the
+senses! You have earned the right to laugh."
+
+These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed
+her eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged
+for that purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she
+recognized how barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which
+had once blazed forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare
+away all their happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face
+with a trouble and anxiety that he could by no means account for.
+
+"My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.
+
+"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My
+peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"
+
+"My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human
+tenderness, "you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not
+repent that with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected
+the best the earth could offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am
+dying!"
+
+Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the
+mystery of life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept
+itself in union with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of
+the birthmark--that sole token of human imperfection--faded from
+her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed
+into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment near her
+husband, took its heavenward flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling
+laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the gross fatality of earth
+exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal essence which,
+in this dim sphere of half development, demands the completeness
+of a higher state. Yet, had Alymer reached a profounder wisdom,
+he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have
+woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial.
+The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to
+look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all
+in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
+
+
+
+YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN
+
+Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem
+village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to
+exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the
+wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street,
+letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she
+called to Goodman Brown.
+
+"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her
+lips were close to his ear, "prithee put off your journey until
+sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is
+troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of
+herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband,
+of all nights in the year."
+
+"My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all
+nights in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee.
+My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs
+be done 'twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost
+thou doubt me already, and we but three months married?"
+
+"Then God bless youe!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons; "and
+may
+you find all well whn you come back."
+
+"Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go
+to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee."
+
+So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being
+about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and
+saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy
+air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
+
+"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a
+wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams,
+too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if
+a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no,
+no; 't would kill her to think it. Well, she's a blessed angel on
+earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and
+follow her to heaven."
+
+With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt
+himself justified in making more haste on his present evil
+purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the
+gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let
+the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It
+was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in
+such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be
+concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs
+overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing
+through an unseen multitude.
+
+"There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman
+Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he
+added, "What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!"
+
+His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and,
+looking forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and
+decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at
+Goodman Brown's approach and walked onward side by side with him.
+
+"You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The clock of the Old
+South was striking as I came through Boston, and that is full
+fifteen minutes agone."
+
+"Faith kept me back a while," replied the young man, with a
+tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his
+companion, though not wholly unexpected.
+
+It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of
+it where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be
+discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old,
+apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing
+a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in
+expression than features. Still they might have been taken for
+father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply
+clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an
+indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not
+have felt abashed at the governor's dinner table or in King
+William's court, were it possible that his affairs should call
+him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed
+upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a
+great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be
+seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of
+course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the
+uncertain light.
+
+"Come, Goodman Brown," cried his fellow-traveller, "this is a
+dull pace for the beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you
+are so soon weary."
+
+"Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full
+stop, "having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my
+purpose now to return whence I came. I have scruples touching the
+matter thou wot'st of."
+
+"Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let
+us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince
+thee not thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the
+forest yet."
+
+"Too far! too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming
+his walk. "My father never went into the woods on such an errand,
+nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and
+good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the
+first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and
+kept"
+
+"Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the elder person,
+interpreting his pause. "Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as
+well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the
+Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather,
+the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through
+the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a
+pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an
+Indian village, in King Philip's war. They were my good friends,
+both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and
+returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you
+for their sake."
+
+"If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, "I marvel they
+never spoke of these matters; or, verily, I marvel not, seeing
+that the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New
+England. We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and
+abide no such wickedness."
+
+"Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the twisted staff,
+"I have a very general acquaintance here in New England. The
+deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with me;
+the selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman; and a
+majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of my
+interest. The governor and I, too--But these are state secrets."
+
+"Can this be so?" cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement
+at his undisturbed companion. "Howbeit, I have nothing to do with
+the governor and council; they have their own ways, and are no
+rule for a simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with
+thee, how should I meet the eye of that good old man, our
+minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble
+both Sabbath day and lecture day."
+
+Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but
+now burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so
+violently that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in
+sympathy.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he again and again; then composing himself,
+"Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go on; but, prithee, don't kill me
+with laughing."
+
+"Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown,
+considerably nettled, "there is my wife, Faith. It would break
+her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own."
+
+"Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "e'en go thy
+ways, Goodman Brown. I would not for twenty old women like the
+one hobbling before us that Faith should come to any harm."
+
+As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path,
+in whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame,
+who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his
+moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon
+Gookin.
+
+"A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the
+wilderness at nightfall," said he. "But with your leave, friend,
+I shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this
+Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask
+whom I was consorting with and whither I was going."
+
+"Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. "Betake you to the woods,
+and let me keep the path."
+
+Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch
+his companion, who advanced softly along the road until he had
+come within a staff's length of the old dame. She, meanwhile, was
+making the best of her way, with singular speed for so aged a
+woman, and mumbling some indistinct words--a prayer,
+doubtless--as she went. The traveller put forth his staff and
+touched her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail.
+
+"The devil!" screamed the pious old lady.
+
+"Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed the traveller,
+confronting her and leaning on his writhing stick.
+
+"Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?" cried the good
+dame. "Yea, truly is it, and in the very image of my old gossip,
+Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is.
+But--would your worship believe it?--my broomstick hath strangely
+disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody
+Cory, and that, too, when I was all anointed with the juice of
+smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf's bane"
+
+"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said
+the shape of old Goodman Brown.
+
+"Ah, your worship knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling
+aloud. "So, as I was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and
+no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they tell
+me there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night.
+But now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be
+there in a twinkling."
+
+"That can hardly be," answered her friend. "I may not spare you
+my arm, Goody Cloyse; but here is my staff, if you will."
+
+So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it
+assumed life, being one of the rods which its owner had formerly
+lent to the Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown
+could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in
+astonishment, and, looking down again, beheld neither Goody
+Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone,
+who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.
+
+"That old woman taught me my catechism," said the young man; and
+there was a world of meaning in this simple comment.
+
+They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted
+his companion to make good speed and persevere in the path,
+discoursing so aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring
+up in the bosom of his auditor than to be suggested by himself.
+As they went, he plucked a branch of maple to serve for a walking
+stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs,
+which were wet with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched
+them they became strangely withered and dried up as with a week's
+sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace, until
+suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat
+himself down on the stump of a tree and refused to go any
+farther.
+
+"Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my mind is made up. Not another
+step will I budge on this errand. What if a wretched old woman do
+choose to go to the devil when I thought she was going to heaven:
+is that any reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after
+her?"
+
+"You will think better of this by and by," said his acquaintance,
+composedly. "Sit here and rest yourself a while; and when you
+feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along."
+
+Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and
+was as speedily out of sight as if he had vanished into the
+deepening gloom. The young man sat a few moments by the roadside,
+applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a
+conscience he should meet the minister in his morning walk, nor
+shrink from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm
+sleep would be his that very night, which was to have been spent
+so wickedly, but so purely and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith!
+Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations, Goodman Brown
+heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it advisable
+to conceal himself within the verge of the forest, conscious of
+the guilty purpose that had brought him thither, though now so
+happily turned from it.
+
+On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave
+old voices, conversing soberly as they drew near. These mingled
+sounds appeared to pass along the road, within a few yards of the
+young man's hiding-place; but, owing doubtless to the depth of
+the gloom at that particular spot, neither the travellers nor
+their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the small
+boughs by the wayside, it could not be seen that they
+intercepted, even for a moment, the faint gleam from the strip of
+bright sky athwart which they must have passed. Goodman Brown
+alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling aside the
+branches and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst without
+discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he
+could have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he recognized
+the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along
+quietly, as they were wont to do, when bound to some ordination
+or ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the
+riders stopped to pluck a switch.
+
+"Of the two, reverend sir," said the voice like the deacon's, "I
+had rather miss an ordination dinner than to-night's meeting.
+They tell me that some of our community are to be here from
+Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode
+Island, besides several of the Indian powwows, who, after their
+fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us.
+Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into
+communion."
+
+"Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!" replied the solemn old tones of the
+minister. "Spur up, or we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you
+know, until I get on the ground."
+
+The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely
+in the empty air, passed on through the forest, where no church
+had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed. Whither,
+then, could these holy men be journeying so deep into the heathen
+wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree for
+support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and
+overburdened with the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up
+to the sky, doubting whether there really was a heaven above him.
+Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars brightening in it.
+
+"With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against
+the devil!" cried Goodman Brown.
+
+While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament
+and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was
+stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the brightening
+stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead,
+where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward.
+Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a
+confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once the listener fancied
+that he could distinguish the accents of towns-people of his own,
+men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at
+the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern.
+The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted
+whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest,
+whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those
+familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine at Salem village, but
+never until now from a cloud of night There was one voice of a
+young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow,
+and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve
+her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude, both saints and
+sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.
+
+"Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and
+desperation; and the echoes of the forest mocked him, crying,
+"Faith! Faith!" as if bewildered wretches were seeking her all
+through the wilderness.
+
+The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night,
+when the unhappy husband held his breath for a response. There
+was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices,
+fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away,
+leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But
+something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on
+the branch of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink
+ribbon.
+
+"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There
+is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to
+thee is this world given."
+
+And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did
+Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate
+that he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to walk
+or run. The road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly
+traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the
+dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that
+guides mortal man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with
+frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild
+beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled
+like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar
+around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to
+scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and
+shrank not from its other horrors.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him.
+
+"Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me
+with your deviltry. Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow,
+come devil himself, and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well
+fear him as he fear you."
+
+In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing
+more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among
+the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures,
+now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now
+shouting forth such laughter as set all the echoes of the forest
+laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is
+less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped
+the demoniac on his course, until, quivering among the trees, he
+saw a red light before him, as when the felled trunks and
+branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and throw up their
+lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He paused,
+in a lull of the tempest that had driven him onward, and heard
+the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly from a distance
+with the weight of many voices. He knew the tune; it was a
+familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house. The verse
+died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human
+voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing
+in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out, and his cry
+was lost to his own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.
+
+In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light
+glared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an open space,
+hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing
+some rude, natural resemblance either to an alter or a pulpit,
+and surrounded by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their
+stems untouched, like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of
+foliage that had overgrown the summit of the rock was all on
+fire, blazing high into the night and fitfully illuminating the
+whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze.
+As the red light arose and fell, a numerous congregation
+alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and again
+grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the
+solitary woods at once.
+
+"A grave and dark-clad company," quoth Goodman Brown.
+
+In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between
+gloom and splendor, appeared faces that would be seen next day at
+the council board of the province, and others which, Sabbath
+after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over
+the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some
+affirm that the lady of the governor was there. At least there
+were high dames well known to her, and wives of honored husbands,
+and widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of
+excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled lest their
+mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light
+flashing over the obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he
+recognized a score of the church members of Salem village famous
+for their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived,
+and waited at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered
+pastor. But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable,
+and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames
+and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of
+spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice,
+and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that
+the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed
+by the saints. Scattered also among their pale-faced enemies were
+the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their native
+forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English
+witchcraft.
+
+"But where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came
+into his heart, he trembled.
+
+Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such
+as the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that
+our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more.
+Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after
+verse was sung; and still the chorus of the desert swelled
+between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the
+final peal of that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if the
+roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling beasts, and every
+other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were mingling and
+according with the voice of guilty man in homage to the prince of
+all. The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and
+obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke
+wreaths above the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire
+on the rock shot redly forth and formed a glowing arch above its
+base, where now appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken,
+the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to
+some grave divine of the New England churches.
+
+"Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice that echoed through the
+field and rolled into the forest.
+
+At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the
+trees and approached the congregation, with whom he felt a
+loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in
+his heart. He could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his
+own dead father beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a
+smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim features of despair, threw
+out her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no
+power to retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought, when
+the minister and good old Deacon Gookin seized his arms and led
+him to the blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form of a
+veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of
+the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had received the devil's
+promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was she. And there
+stood the proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.
+
+"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion
+of your race. Ye have found thus young your nature and your
+destiny. My children, look behind you!"
+
+They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame,
+the fiend worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed
+darkly on every visage.
+
+"There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced
+from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank
+from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of
+righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are
+they all in my worshipping assembly. This night it shall be
+granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders
+of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of
+their households; how many a woman, eager for widows' weeds, has
+given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last
+sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to
+inherit their fathers' wealth; and how fair damsels--blush not,
+sweet ones--have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me,
+the sole guest to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your
+human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places--whether
+in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest--where crime has
+been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one
+stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot. Far more than this. It
+shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of
+sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly
+supplies more evil impulses than human power--than my power at
+its utmost--can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children,
+look upon each other."
+
+They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the
+wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband,
+trembling before that unhallowed altar.
+
+"Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and
+solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his
+once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race.
+"Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that
+virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the
+nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome
+again, my children, to the communion of your race."
+
+"Welcome," repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair
+and triumph.
+
+And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet
+hesitating on the verge of wickedness in this dark world. A basin
+was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water,
+reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a
+liquid flame? Herein did the shape of evil dip his hand and
+prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that
+they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of
+the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they
+could now be of their own. The husband cast one look at his pale
+wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next
+glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they
+disclosed and what they saw!
+
+"Faith! Faith!" cried the husband, "look up to heaven, and resist
+the wicked one."
+
+Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he
+found himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar
+of the wind which died heavily away through the forest. He
+staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a
+hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek
+with the coldest dew.
+
+The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street
+of Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The
+good old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard to get an
+appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a
+blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the
+venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was
+at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard
+through the open window. "What God doth the wizard pray to?"
+quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian,
+stood in the early sunshine at her own lattice, catechizing a
+little girl who had brought her a pint of morning's milk. Goodman
+Brown snatched away the child as from the grasp of the fiend
+himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied the
+head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and
+bursting into such joy at sight of him that she skipped along the
+street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village.
+But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and
+passed on without a greeting.
+
+Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a
+wild dream of a witch-meeting?
+
+Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for
+young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a
+distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night
+of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation
+were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen because an anthem
+of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed
+strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and
+fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open Bible, of the
+sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and
+triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable,
+then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should
+thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often,
+waking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith;
+and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer,
+he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his
+wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne
+to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman,
+and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides
+neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his
+tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.
+
+
+
+RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER [From the Writings of Aubepine.]
+
+We do not remember to have seen any translated specimens of the
+productions of M. de l'Aubepine--a fact the less to be wondered
+at, as his very name is unknown to many of his own countrymen as
+well as to the student of foreign literature. As a writer, he
+seems to occupy an unfortunate position between the
+Transcendentalists (who, under one name or another, have their
+share in all the current literature of the world) and the great
+body of pen-and-ink men who address the intellect and sympathies
+of the multitude. If not too refined, at all events too remote,
+too shadowy, and unsubstantial in his modes of development to
+suit the taste of the latter class, and yet too popular to
+satisfy the spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former,
+he must necessarily find himself without an audience, except here
+and there an individual or possibly an isolated clique. His
+writings, to do them justice, are not altogether destitute of
+fancy and originality; they might have won him greater reputation
+but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to invest
+his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people in
+the clouds, and to steal away the human warmth out of his
+conceptions. His fictions are sometimes historical, sometimes of
+the present day, and sometimes, so far as can be discovered, have
+little or no reference either to time or space. In any case, he
+generally contents himself with a very slight embroidery of
+outward manners,--the faintest possible counterfeit of real
+life,--and endeavors to create an interest by some less obvious
+peculiarity of the subject. Occasionally a breath of Nature, a
+raindrop of pathos and tenderness, or a gleam of humor, will find
+its way into the midst of his fantastic imagery, and make us feel
+as if, after all, we were yet within the limits of our native
+earth. We will only add to this very cursory notice that M. de
+l'Aubepine's productions, if the reader chance to take them in
+precisely the proper point of view, may amuse a leisure hour as
+well as those of a brighter man; if otherwise, they can hardly
+fail to look excessively like nonsense.
+
+Our author is voluminous; he continues to write and publish with
+as much praiseworthy and indefatigable prolixity as if his
+efforts were crowned with the brilliant success that so justly
+attends those of Eugene Sue. His first appearance was by a
+collection of stories in a long series of volumes entitled
+"Contes deux fois racontees." The titles of some of his more
+recent works (we quote from memory) are as follows: "Le Voyage
+Celeste a Chemin de Fer," 3 tom., 1838; "Le nouveau Pere Adam et
+la nouvelle Mere Eve," 2 tom., 1839; "Roderic; ou le Serpent a
+l'estomac," 2 tom., 1840; "Le Culte du Feu," a folio volume of
+ponderous research into the religion and ritual of the old
+Persian Ghebers, published in 1841; "La Soiree du Chateau en
+Espagne," 1 tom., 8vo, 1842; and "L'Artiste du Beau; ou le
+Papillon Mecanique," 5 tom., 4to, 1843. Our somewhat wearisome
+perusal of this startling catalogue of volumes has left behind it
+a certain personal affection and sympathy, though by no means
+admiration, for M. de l'Aubepine; and we would fain do the little
+in our power towards introducing him favorably to the American
+public. The ensuing tale is a translation of his "Beatrice; ou la
+Belle Empoisonneuse," recently published in "La Revue
+Anti-Aristocratique." This journal, edited by the Comte de
+Bearhaven, has for some years past led the defence of liberal
+principles and popular rights with a faithfulness and ability
+worthy of all praise.
+
+
+A young man, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, very long ago, from
+the more southern region of Italy, to pursue his studies at the
+University of Padua. Giovanni, who had but a scanty supply of
+gold ducats in his pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy
+chamber of an old edifice which looked not unworthy to have been
+the palace of a Paduan noble, and which, in fact, exhibited over
+its entrance the armorial bearings of a family long since
+extinct. The young stranger, who was not unstudied in the great
+poem of his country, recollected that one of the ancestors of
+this family, and perhaps an occupant of this very mansion, had
+been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of
+his Inferno. These reminiscences and associations, together with
+the tendency to heartbreak natural to a young man for the first
+time out of his native sphere, caused Giovanni to sigh heavily as
+he looked around the desolate and ill-furnished apartment.
+
+"Holy Virgin, signor!" cried old Dame Lisabetta, who, won by the
+youth's remarkable beauty of person, was kindly endeavoring to
+give the chamber a habitable air, "what a sigh was that to come
+out of a young man's heart! Do you find this old mansion gloomy?
+For the love of Heaven, then, put your head out of the window,
+and you will see as bright sunshine as you have left in Naples."
+
+Guasconti mechanically did as the old woman advised, but could
+not quite agree with her that the Paduan sunshine was as cheerful
+as that of southern Italy. Such as it was, however, it fell upon
+a garden beneath the window and expended its fostering influences
+on a variety of plants, which seemed to have been cultivated with
+exceeding care.
+
+"Does this garden belong to the house?" asked Giovanni.
+
+"Heaven forbid, signor, unless it were fruitful of better pot
+herbs than any that grow there now," answered old Lisabetta. "No;
+that garden is cultivated by the own hands of Signor Giacomo
+Rappaccini, the famous doctor, who, I warrant him, has been heard
+of as far as Naples. It is said that he distils these plants into
+medicines that are as potent as a charm. Oftentimes you may see
+the signor doctor at work, and perchance the signora, his
+daughter, too, gathering the strange flowers that grow in the
+garden."
+
+The old woman had now done what she could for the aspect of the
+chamber; and, commending the young man to the protection of the
+saints, took her departure
+
+Giovanni still found no better occupation than to look down into
+the garden beneath his window. From its appearance, he judged it
+to be one of those botanic gardens which were of earlier date in
+Padua than elsewhere in Italy or in the world. Or, not
+improbably, it might once have been the pleasure-place of an
+opulent family; for there was the ruin of a marble fountain in
+the centre, sculptured with rare art, but so wofully shattered
+that it was impossible to trace the original design from the
+chaos of remaining fragments. The water, however, continued to
+gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully as ever. A
+little gurgling sound ascended to the young man's window, and
+made him feel as if the fountain were an immortal spirit that
+sung its song unceasingly and without heeding the vicissitudes
+around it, while one century imbodied it in marble and another
+scattered the perishable garniture on the soil. All about the
+pool into which the water subsided grew various plants, that
+seemed to require a plentiful supply of moisture for the
+nourishment of gigantic leaves, and in some instances, flowers
+gorgeously magnificent. There was one shrub in particular, set in
+a marble vase in the midst of the pool, that bore a profusion of
+purple blossoms, each of which had the lustre and richness of a
+gem; and the whole together made a show so resplendent that it
+seemed enough to illuminate the garden, even had there been no
+sunshine. Every portion of the soil was peopled with plants and
+herbs, which, if less beautiful, still bore tokens of assiduous
+care, as if all had their individual virtues, known to the
+scientific mind that fostered them. Some were placed in urns,
+rich with old carving, and others in common garden pots; some
+crept serpent-like along the ground or climbed on high, using
+whatever means of ascent was offered them. One plant had wreathed
+itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which was thus quite veiled
+and shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage, so happily arranged
+that it might have served a sculptor for a study.
+
+While Giovanni stood at the window he heard a rustling behind a
+screen of leaves, and became aware that a person was at work in
+the garden. His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself
+to be that of no common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow,
+and sickly-looking man, dressed in a scholar's garb of black. He
+was beyond the middle term of life, with gray hair, a thin, gray
+beard, and a face singularly marked with intellect and
+cultivation, but which could never, even in his more youthful
+days, have expressed much warmth of heart.
+
+Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this scientific
+gardener examined every shrub which grew in his path: it seemed
+as if he was looking into their inmost nature, making
+observations in regard to their creative essence, and discovering
+why one leaf grew in this shape and another in that, and
+wherefore such and such flowers differed among themselves in hue
+and perfume. Nevertheless, in spite of this deep intelligence on
+his part, there was no approach to intimacy between himself and
+these vegetable existences. On the contrary, he avoided their
+actual touch or the direct inhaling of their odors with a caution
+that impressed Giovanni most disagreeably; for the man's demeanor
+was that of one walking among malignant influences, such as
+savage beasts, or deadly snakes, or evil spirits, which, should
+he allow them one moment of license, would wreak upon him some
+terrible fatality. It was strangely frightful to the young man's
+imagination to see this air of insecurity in a person cultivating
+a garden, that most simple and innocent of human toils, and which
+had been alike the joy and labor of the unfallen parents of the
+race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of the present world? And
+this man, with such a perception of harm in what his own hands
+caused to grow,--was he the Adam?
+
+The distrustful gardener, while plucking away the dead leaves or
+pruning the too luxuriant growth of the shrubs, defended his
+hands with a pair of thick gloves. Nor were these his only armor.
+When, in his walk through the garden, he came to the magnificent
+plant that hung its purple gems beside the marble fountain, he
+placed a kind of mask over his mouth and nostrils, as if all this
+beauty did but conceal a deadlier malice; but, finding his task
+still too dangerous, he drew back, removed the mask, and called
+loudly, but in the infirm voice of a person affected with inward
+disease, "Beatrice!  Beatrice!"
+
+"Here am I, my father. What would you?" cried a rich and youthful
+voice from the window of the opposite house--a voice as rich as a
+tropical sunset, and which made Giovanni, though he knew not why,
+think of deep hues of purple or crimson and of perfumes heavily
+delectable. "Are you in the garden?"
+
+"Yes, Beatrice," answered the gardener, "and I need your help."
+
+Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a
+young girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most
+splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom
+so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much.
+She looked redundant with life, health, and energy; all of which
+attributes were bound down and compressed, as it were and girdled
+tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone. Yet Giovanni's
+fancy must have grown morbid while he looked down into the
+garden; for the impression which the fair stranger made upon him
+was as if here were another flower, the human sister of those
+vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than the
+richest of them, but still to be touched only with a glove, nor
+to be approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden
+path, it was observable that she handled and inhaled the odor of
+several of the plants which her father had most sedulously
+avoided.
+
+"Here, Beatrice," said the latter, "see how many needful offices
+require to be done to our chief treasure. Yet, shattered as I am,
+my life might pay the penalty of approaching it so closely as
+circumstances demand. Henceforth, I fear, this plant must be
+consigned to your sole charge."
+
+"And gladly will I undertake it," cried again the rich tones of
+the young lady, as she bent towards the magnificent plant and
+opened her arms as if to embrace it. "Yes, my sister, my
+splendour, it shall be Beatrice's task to nurse and serve thee;
+and thou shalt reward her with thy kisses and perfumed breath,
+which to her is as the breath of life."
+
+Then, with all the tenderness in her manner that was so
+strikingly expressed in her words, she busied herself with such
+attentions as the plant seemed to require; and Giovanni, at his
+lofty window, rubbed his eyes and almost doubted whether it were
+a girl tending her favorite flower, or one sister performing the
+duties of affection to another. The scene soon terminated.
+Whether Dr. Rappaccini had finished his labors in the garden, or
+that his watchful eye had caught the stranger's face, he now took
+his daughter's arm and retired. Night was already closing in;
+oppressive exhalations seemed to proceed from the plants and
+steal upward past the open window; and Giovanni, closing the
+lattice, went to his couch and dreamed of a rich flower and
+beautiful girl. Flower and maiden were different, and yet the
+same, and fraught with some strange peril in either shape.
+
+But there is an influence in the light of morning that tends to
+rectify whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may
+have incurred during the sun's decline, or among the shadows of
+the night, or in the less wholesome glow of moonshine. Giovanni's
+first movement, on starting from sleep, was to throw open the
+window and gaze down into the garden which his dreams had made so
+fertile of mysteries. He was surprised and a little ashamed to
+find how real and matter-of-fact an affair it proved to be, in
+the first rays of the sun which gilded the dew-drops that hung
+upon leaf and blossom, and, while giving a brighter beauty to
+each rare flower, brought everything within the limits of
+ordinary experience. The young man rejoiced that, in the heart of
+the barren city, he had the privilege of overlooking this spot of
+lovely and luxuriant vegetation. It would serve, he said to
+himself, as a symbolic language to keep him in communion with
+Nature. Neither the sickly and thoughtworn Dr. Giacomo
+Rappaccini, it is true, nor his brilliant daughter, were now
+visible; so that Giovanni could not determine how much of the
+singularity which he attributed to both was due to their own
+qualities and how much to his wonder-working fancy; but he was
+inclined to take a most rational view of the whole matter.
+
+In the course of the day he paid his respects to Signor Pietro
+Baglioni, professor of medicine in the university, a physician of
+eminent repute to whom Giovanni had brought a letter of
+introduction. The professor was an elderly personage, apparently
+of genial nature, and habits that might almost be called jovial.
+He kept the young man to dinner, and made himself very agreeable
+by the freedom and liveliness of his conversation, especially
+when warmed by a flask or two of Tuscan wine. Giovanni,
+conceiving that men of science, inhabitants of the same city,
+must needs be on familiar terms with one another, took an
+opportunity to mention the name of Dr. Rappaccini. But the
+professor did not respond with so much cordiality as he had
+anticipated.
+
+"Ill would it become a teacher of the divine art of medicine,"
+said Professor Pietro Baglioni, in answer to a question of
+Giovanni, "to withhold due and well-considered praise of a
+physician so eminently skilled as Rappaccini; but, on the other
+hand, I should answer it but scantily to my conscience were I to
+permit a worthy youth like yourself, Signor Giovanni, the son of
+an ancient friend, to imbibe erroneous ideas respecting a man who
+might hereafter chance to hold your life and death in his hands.
+The truth is, our worshipful Dr. Rappaccini has as much science
+as any member of the faculty--with perhaps one single
+exception--in Padua, or all Italy; but there are certain grave
+objections to his professional character."
+
+"And what are they?" asked the young man.
+
+"Has my friend Giovanni any disease of body or heart, that he is
+so inquisitive about physicians?" said the professor, with a
+smile. "But as for Rappaccini, it is said of him--and I, who know
+the man well, can answer for its truth--that he cares infinitely
+more for science than for mankind. His patients are interesting
+to him only as subjects for some new experiment. He would
+sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else
+was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of
+mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge."
+
+"Methinks he is an awful man indeed," remarked Guasconti,
+mentally recalling the cold and purely intellectual aspect of
+Rappaccini. "And yet, worshipful professor, is it not a noble
+spirit? Are there many men capable of so spiritual a love of
+science?"
+
+"God forbid," answered the professor, somewhat testily; "at
+least, unless they take sounder views of the healing art than
+those adopted by Rappaccini. It is his theory that all medicinal
+virtues are comprised within those substances which we term
+vegetable poisons. These he cultivates with his own hands, and is
+said even to have produced new varieties of poison, more horribly
+deleterious than Nature, without the assistance of this learned
+person, would ever have plagued the world withal. That the signor
+doctor does less mischief than might be expected with such
+dangerous substances is undeniable. Now and then, it must be
+owned, he has effected, or seemed to effect, a marvellous cure;
+but, to tell you my private mind, Signor Giovanni, he should
+receive little credit for such instances of success,--they being
+probably the work of chance, --but should be held strictly
+accountable for his failures, which may justly be considered his
+own work."
+
+The youth might have taken Baglioni's opinions with many grains
+of allowance had he known that there was a professional warfare
+of long continuance between him and Dr. Rappaccini, in which the
+latter was generally thought to have gained the advantage. If the
+reader be inclined to judge for himself, we refer him to certain
+black-letter tracts on both sides, preserved in the medical
+department of the University of Padua.
+
+"I know not, most learned professor," returned Giovanni, after
+musing on what had been said of Rappaccini's exclusive zeal for
+science,--"I know not how dearly this physician may love his art;
+but surely there is one object more dear to him. He has a
+daughter."
+
+"Aha!" cried the professor, with a laugh. "So now our friend
+Giovanni's secret is out. You have heard of this daughter, whom
+all the young men in Padua are wild about, though not half a
+dozen have ever had the good hap to see her face. I know little
+of the Signora Beatrice save that Rappaccini is said to have
+instructed her deeply in his science, and that, young and
+beautiful as fame reports her, she is already qualified to fill a
+professor's chair. Perchance her father destines her for mine!
+Other absurd rumors there be, not worth talking about or
+listening to. So now, Signor Giovanni, drink off your glass of
+lachryma."
+
+Guasconti returned to his lodgings somewhat heated with the wine
+he had quaffed, and which caused his brain to swim with strange
+fantasies in reference to Dr. Rappaccini and the beautiful
+Beatrice. On his way, happening to pass by a florist's, he bought
+a fresh bouquet of flowers.
+
+Ascending to his chamber, he seated himself near the window, but
+within the shadow thrown by the depth of the wall, so that he
+could look down into the garden with little risk of being
+discovered. All beneath his eye was a solitude. The strange
+plants were basking in the sunshine, and now and then nodding
+gently to one another, as if in acknowledgment of sympathy and
+kindred. In the midst, by the shattered fountain, grew the
+magnificent shrub, with its purple gems clustering all over it;
+they glowed in the air, and gleamed back again out of the depths
+of the pool, which thus seemed to overflow with colored radiance
+from the rich reflection that was steeped in it. At first, as we
+have said, the garden was a solitude. Soon, however,--as Giovanni
+had half hoped, half feared, would be the case,--a figure
+appeared beneath the antique sculptured portal, and came down
+between the rows of plants, inhaling their various perfumes as if
+she were one of those beings of old classic fable that lived upon
+sweet odors. On again beholding Beatrice, the young man was even
+startled to perceive how much her beauty exceeded his
+recollection of it; so brilliant, so vivid, was its character,
+that she glowed amid the sunlight, and, as Giovanni whispered to
+himself, positively illuminated the more shadowy intervals of the
+garden path. Her face being now more revealed than on the former
+occasion, he was struck by its expression of simplicity and
+sweetness,--qualities that had not entered into his idea of her
+character, and which made him ask anew what manner of mortal she
+might be. Nor did he fail again to observe, or imagine, an
+analogy between the beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub that
+hung its gemlike flowers over the fountain,--a resemblance which
+Beatrice seemed to have indulged a fantastic humor in
+heightening, both by the arrangement of her dress and the
+selection of its hues.
+
+Approaching the shrub, she threw open her arms, as with a
+passionate ardor, and drew its branches into an intimate
+embrace--so intimate that her features were hidden in its leafy
+bosom and her glistening ringlets all intermingled with the
+flowers
+
+"Give me thy breath, my sister," exclaimed Beatrice; "for I am
+faint with common air. And give me this flower of thine, which I
+separate with gentlest fingers from the stem and place it close
+beside my heart."
+
+With these words the beautiful daughter of Rappaccini plucked one
+of the richest blossoms of the shrub, and was about to fasten it
+in her bosom. But now, unless Giovanni's draughts of wine had
+bewildered his senses, a singular incident occurred. A small
+orange-colored reptile, of the lizard or chameleon species,
+chanced to be creeping along the path, just at the feet of
+Beatrice. It appeared to Giovanni,--but, at the distance from
+which he gazed, he could scarcely have seen anything so
+minute,--it appeared to him, however, that a drop or two of
+moisture from the broken stem of the flower descended upon the
+lizard's head. For an instant the reptile contorted itself
+violently, and then lay motionless in the sunshine. Beatrice
+observed this remarkable phenomenon and crossed herself, sadly,
+but without surprise; nor did she therefore hesitate to arrange
+the fatal flower in her bosom. There it blushed, and almost
+glimmered with the dazzling effect of a precious stone, adding to
+her dress and aspect the one appropriate charm which nothing else
+in the world could have supplied. But Giovanni, out of the shadow
+of his window, bent forward and shrank back, and murmured and
+trembled.
+
+"Am I awake? Have I my senses?" said he to himself. "What is this
+being? Beautiful shall I call her, or inexpressibly terrible?"
+
+Beatrice now strayed carelessly through the garden, approaching
+closer beneath Giovanni's window, so that he was compelled to
+thrust his head quite out of its concealment in order to gratify
+the intense and painful curiosity which she excited. At this
+moment there came a beautiful insect over the garden wall; it
+had, perhaps, wandered through the city, and found no flowers or
+verdure among those antique haunts of men until the heavy
+perfumes of Dr. Rappaccini's shrubs had lured it from afar.
+Without alighting on the flowers, this winged brightness seemed
+to be attracted by Beatrice, and lingered in the air and
+fluttered about her head. Now, here it could not be but that
+Giovanni Guasconti's eyes deceived him. Be that as it might, he
+fancied that, while Beatrice was gazing at the insect with
+childish delight, it grew faint and fell at her feet; its bright
+wings shivered; it was dead--from no cause that he could discern,
+unless it were the atmosphere of her breath. Again Beatrice
+crossed herself and sighed heavily as she bent over the dead
+insect.
+
+An impulsive movement of Giovanni drew her eyes to the window.
+There she beheld the beautiful head of the young man--rather a
+Grecian than an Italian head, with fair, regular features, and a
+glistening of gold among his ringlets--gazing down upon her like
+a being that hovered in mid air. Scarcely knowing what he did,
+Giovanni threw down the bouquet which he had hitherto held in his
+hand.
+
+"Signora," said he, "there are pure and healthful flowers. Wear
+them for the sake of Giovanni Guasconti."
+
+"Thanks, signor," replied Beatrice, with her rich voice, that
+came forth as it were like a gush of music, and with a mirthful
+expression half childish and half woman-like. "I accept your
+gift, and would fain recompense it with this precious purple
+flower; but if I toss it into the air it will not reach you. So
+Signor Guasconti must even content himself with my thanks."
+
+She lifted the bouquet from the ground, and then, as if inwardly
+ashamed at having stepped aside from her maidenly reserve to
+respond to a stranger's greeting, passed swiftly homeward through
+the garden. But few as the moments were, it seemed to Giovanni,
+when she was on the point of vanishing beneath the sculptured
+portal, that his beautiful bouquet was already beginning to
+wither in her grasp. It was an idle thought; there could be no
+possibility of distinguishing a faded flower from a fresh one at
+so great a distance.
+
+For many days after this incident the young man avoided the
+window that looked into Dr. Rappaccini's garden, as if something
+ugly and monstrous would have blasted his eyesight had he been
+betrayed into a glance. He felt conscious of having put himself,
+to a certain extent, within the influence of an unintelligible
+power by the communication which he had opened with Beatrice. The
+wisest course would have been, if his heart were in any real
+danger, to quit his lodgings and Padua itself at once; the next
+wiser, to have accustomed himself, as far as possible, to the
+familiar and daylight view of Beatrice--thus bringing her rigidly
+and systematically within the limits of ordinary experience.
+Least of all, while avoiding her sight, ought Giovanni to have
+remained so near this extraordinary being that the proximity and
+possibility even of intercourse should give a kind of substance
+and reality to the wild vagaries which his imagination ran riot
+continually in producing. Guasconti had not a deep heart--or, at
+all events, its depths were not sounded now; but he had a quick
+fancy, and an ardent southern temperament, which rose every
+instant to a higher fever pitch. Whether or no Beatrice possessed
+those terrible attributes, that fatal breath, the affinity with
+those so beautiful and deadly flowers which were indicated by
+what Giovanni had witnessed, she had at least instilled a fierce
+and subtle poison into his system. It was not love, although her
+rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he
+fancied her spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence
+that seemed to pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring
+of both love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned
+like one and shivered like the other. Giovanni knew not what to
+dread; still less did he know what to hope; yet hope and dread
+kept a continual warfare in his breast, alternately vanquishing
+one another and starting up afresh to renew the contest. Blessed
+are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid
+intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of
+the infernal regions.
+
+Sometimes he endeavored to assuage the fever of his spirit by a
+rapid walk through the streets of Padua or beyond its gates: his
+footsteps kept time with the throbbings of his brain, so that the
+walk was apt to accelerate itself to a race. One day he found
+himself arrested; his arm was seized by a portly personage, who
+had turned back on recognizing the young man and expended much
+breath in overtaking him.
+
+"Signor Giovanni! Stay, my young friend!" cried he. "Have you
+forgotten me? That might well be the case if I were as much
+altered as yourself."
+
+It was Baglioni, whom Giovanni had avoided ever since their first
+meeting, from a doubt that the professor's sagacity would look
+too deeply into his secrets. Endeavoring to recover himself, he
+stared forth wildly from his inner world into the outer one and
+spoke like a man in a dream.
+
+"Yes; I am Giovanni Guasconti. You are Professor Pietro Baglioni.
+Now let me pass!"
+
+"Not yet, not yet, Signor Giovanni Guasconti," said the
+professor, smiling, but at the same time scrutinizing the youth
+with an earnest glance. "What! did I grow up side by side with
+your father? and shall his son pass me like a stranger in these
+old streets of Padua? Stand still, Signor Giovanni; for we must
+have a word or two before we part."
+
+"Speedily, then, most worshipful professor, speedily," said
+Giovanni, with feverish impatience. "Does not your worship see
+that I am in haste?"
+
+Now, while he was speaking there came a man in black along the
+street, stooping and moving feebly like a person in inferior
+health. His face was all overspread with a most sickly and sallow
+hue, but yet so pervaded with an expression of piercing and
+active intellect that an observer might easily have overlooked
+the merely physical attributes and have seen only this wonderful
+energy. As he passed, this person exchanged a cold and distant
+salutation with Baglioni, but fixed his eyes upon Giovanni with
+an intentness that seemed to bring out whatever was within him
+worthy of notice. Nevertheless, there was a peculiar quietness in
+the look, as if taking merely a speculative, not a human
+interest, in the young man.
+
+"It is Dr. Rappaccini!" whispered the professor when the stranger
+had passed. "Has he ever seen your face before?"
+
+"Not that I know," answered Giovanni, starting at the name.
+
+"He HAS seen you! he must have seen you!" said Baglioni, hastily.
+"For some purpose or other, this man of science is making a study
+of you. I know that look of his! It is the same that coldly
+illuminates his face as he bends over a bird, a mouse, or a
+butterfly, which, in pursuance of some experiment, he has killed
+by the perfume of a flower; a look as deep as Nature itself, but
+without Nature's warmth of love. Signor Giovanni, I will stake my
+life upon it, you are the subject of one of Rappaccini's
+experiments!"
+
+"Will you make a fool of me?" cried Giovanni, passionately.
+"THAT, signor professor, were an untoward experiment."
+
+"Patience! patience!" replied the imperturbable professor. "I
+tell thee, my poor Giovanni, that Rappaccini has a scientific
+interest in thee. Thou hast fallen into fearful hands! And the
+Signora Beatrice,--what part does she act in this mystery?"
+
+But Guasconti, finding Baglioni's pertinacity intolerable, here
+broke away, and was gone before the professor could again seize
+his arm. He looked after the young man intently and shook his
+head.
+
+"This must not be," said Baglioni to himself. "The youth is the
+son of my old friend, and shall not come to any harm from which
+the arcana of medical science can preserve him. Besides, it is
+too insufferable an impertinence in Rappaccini, thus to snatch
+the lad out of my own hands, as I may say, and make use of him
+for his infernal experiments. This daughter of his! It shall be
+looked to. Perchance, most learned Rappaccini, I may foil you
+where you little dream of it!"
+
+Meanwhile Giovanni had pursued a circuitous route, and at length
+found himself at the door of his lodgings. As he crossed the
+threshold he was met by old Lisabetta, who smirked and smiled,
+and was evidently desirous to attract his attention; vainly,
+however, as the ebullition of his feelings had momentarily
+subsided into a cold and dull vacuity. He turned his eyes full
+upon the withered face that was puckering itself into a smile,
+but seemed to behold it not. The old dame, therefore, laid her
+grasp upon his cloak.
+
+"Signor! signor!" whispered she, still with a smile over the
+whole breadth of her visage, so that it looked not unlike a
+grotesque carving in wood, darkened by centuries. "Listen,
+signor! There is a private entrance into the garden!"
+
+"What do you say?" exclaimed Giovanni, turning quickly about, as
+if an inanimate thing should start into feverish life. "A private
+entrance into Dr. Rappaccini's garden?"
+
+"Hush! hush! not so loud!" whispered Lisabetta, putting her hand
+over his mouth. "Yes; into the worshipful doctor's garden, where
+you may see all his fine shrubbery. Many a young man in Padua
+would give gold to be admitted among those flowers."
+
+Giovanni put a piece of gold into her hand.
+
+"Show me the way," said he.
+
+A surmise, probably excited by his conversation with Baglioni,
+crossed his mind, that this interposition of old Lisabetta might
+perchance be connected with the intrigue, whatever were its
+nature, in which the professor seemed to suppose that Dr.
+Rappaccini was involving him. But such a suspicion, though it
+disturbed Giovanni, was inadequate to restrain him. The instant
+that he was aware of the possibility of approaching Beatrice, it
+seemed an absolute necessity of his existence to do so. It
+mattered not whether she were angel or demon; he was irrevocably
+within her sphere, and must obey the law that whirled him onward,
+in ever-lessening circles, towards a result which he did not
+attempt to foreshadow; and yet, strange to say, there came across
+him a sudden doubt whether this intense interest on his part were
+not delusory; whether it were really of so deep and positive a
+nature as to justify him in now thrusting himself into an
+incalculable position; whether it were not merely the fantasy of
+a young man's brain, only slightly or not at all connected with
+his heart.
+
+He paused, hesitated, turned half about, but again went on. His
+withered guide led him along several obscure passages, and
+finally undid a door, through which, as it was opened, there came
+the sight and sound of rustling leaves, with the broken sunshine
+glimmering among them. Giovanni stepped forth, and, forcing
+himself through the entanglement of a shrub that wreathed its
+tendrils over the hidden entrance, stood beneath his own window
+in the open area of Dr. Rappaccini's garden.
+
+How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to
+pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into
+tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly
+self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a
+delirium of joy or agony to anticipate! Fate delights to thwart
+us thus. Passion will choose his own time to rush upon the scene,
+and lingers sluggishly behind when an appropriate adjustment of
+events would seem to summon his appearance. So was it now with
+Giovanni. Day after day his pulses had throbbed with feverish
+blood at the improbable idea of an interview with Beatrice, and
+of standing with her, face to face, in this very garden, basking
+in the Oriental sunshine of her beauty, and snatching from her
+full gaze the mystery which he deemed the riddle of his own
+existence. But now there was a singular and untimely equanimity
+within his breast. He threw a glance around the garden to
+discover if Beatrice or her father were present, and, perceiving
+that he was alone, began a critical observation of the plants.
+
+The aspect of one and all of them dissatisfied him; their
+gorgeousness seemed fierce, passionate, and even unnatural. There
+was hardly an individual shrub which a wanderer, straying by
+himself through a forest, would not have been startled to find
+growing wild, as if an unearthly face had glared at him out of
+the thicket. Several also would have shocked a delicate instinct
+by an appearance of artificialness indicating that there had been
+such commixture, and, as it were, adultery, of various vegetable
+species, that the production was no longer of God's making, but
+the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy, glowing with
+only an evil mockery of beauty. They were probably the result of
+experiment, which in one or two cases had succeeded in mingling
+plants individually lovely into a compound possessing the
+questionable and ominous character that distinguished the whole
+growth of the garden. In fine, Giovanni recognized but two or
+three plants in the collection, and those of a kind that he well
+knew to be poisonous. While busy with these contemplations he
+heard the rustling of a silken garment, and, turning, beheld
+Beatrice emerging from beneath the sculptured portal.
+
+Giovanni had not considered with himself what should be his
+deportment; whether he should apologize for his intrusion into
+the garden, or assume that he was there with the privity at
+least, if not by the desire, of Dr. Rappaccini or his daughter;
+but Beatrice's manner placed him at his ease, though leaving him
+still in doubt by what agency he had gained admittance. She came
+lightly along the path and met him near the broken fountain.
+There was surprise in her face, but brightened by a simple and
+kind expression of pleasure.
+
+"You are a connoisseur in flowers, signor," said Beatrice, with a
+smile, alluding to the bouquet which he had flung her from the
+window. "It is no marvel, therefore, if the sight of my father's
+rare collection has tempted you to take a nearer view. If he were
+here, he could tell you many strange and interesting facts as to
+the nature and habits of these shrubs; for he has spent a
+lifetime in such studies, and this garden is his world."
+
+"And yourself, lady," observed Giovanni, "if fame says true,--you
+likewise are deeply skilled in the virtues indicated by these
+rich blossoms and these spicy perfumes. Would you deign to be my
+instructress, I should prove an apter scholar than if taught by
+Signor Rappaccini himself."
+
+"Are there such idle rumors?" asked Beatrice, with the music of a
+pleasant laugh. "Do people say that I am skilled in my father's
+science of plants? What a jest is there! No; though I have grown
+up among these flowers, I know no more of them than their hues
+and perfume; and sometimes methinks I would fain rid myself of
+even that small knowledge. There are many flowers here, and those
+not the least brilliant, that shock and offend me when they meet
+my eye. But pray, signor, do not believe these stories about my
+science. Believe nothing of me save what you see with your own
+eyes."
+
+"And must I believe all that I have seen with my own eyes?" asked
+Giovanni, pointedly, while the recollection of former scenes made
+him shrink. "No, signora; you demand too little of me. Bid me
+believe nothing save what comes from your own lips."
+
+It would appear that Beatrice understood him. There came a deep
+flush to her cheek; but she looked full into Giovanni's eyes, and
+responded to his gaze of uneasy suspicion with a queenlike
+haughtiness.
+
+"I do so bid you, signor," she replied. "Forget whatever you may
+have fancied in regard to me. If true to the outward senses,
+still it may be false in its essence; but the words of Beatrice
+Rappaccini's lips are true from the depths of the heart outward.
+Those you may believe."
+
+A fervor glowed in her whole aspect and beamed upon Giovanni's
+consciousness like the light of truth itself; but while she spoke
+there was a fragrance in the atmosphere around her, rich and
+delightful, though evanescent, yet which the young man, from an
+indefinable reluctance, scarcely dared to draw into his lungs. It
+might be the odor of the flowers. Could it be Beatrice's breath
+which thus embalmed her words with a strange richness, as if by
+steeping them in her heart? A faintness passed like a shadow over
+Giovanni and flitted away; he seemed to gaze through the
+beautiful girl's eyes into her transparent soul, and felt no more
+doubt or fear.
+
+The tinge of passion that had colored Beatrice's manner vanished;
+she became gay, and appeared to derive a pure delight from her
+communion with the youth not unlike what the maiden of a lonely
+island might have felt conversing with a voyager from the
+civilized world. Evidently her experience of life had been
+confined within the limits of that garden. She talked now about
+matters as simple as the daylight or summer clouds, and now asked
+questions in reference to the city, or Giovanni's distant home,
+his friends, his mother, and his sisters--questions indicating
+such seclusion, and such lack of familiarity with modes and
+forms, that Giovanni responded as if to an infant. Her spirit
+gushed out before him like a fresh rill that was just catching
+its first glimpse of the sunlight and wondering at the
+reflections of earth and sky which were flung into its bosom.
+There came thoughts, too, from a deep source, and fantasies of a
+gemlike brilliancy, as if diamonds and rubies sparkled upward
+among the bubbles of the fountain. Ever and anon there gleamed
+across the young man's mind a sense of wonder that he should be
+walking side by side with the being who had so wrought upon his
+imagination, whom he had idealized in such hues of terror, in
+whom he had positively witnessed such manifestations of dreadful
+attributes,--that he should be conversing with Beatrice like a
+brother, and should find her so human and so maidenlike. But such
+reflections were only momentary; the effect of her character was
+too real not to make itself familiar at once.
+
+In this free intercourse they had strayed through the garden, and
+now, after many turns among its avenues, were come to the
+shattered fountain, beside which grew the magnificent shrub, with
+its treasury of glowing blossoms. A fragrance was diffused from
+it which Giovanni recognized as identical with that which he had
+attributed to Beatrice's breath, but incomparably more powerful.
+As her eyes fell upon it, Giovanni beheld her press her hand to
+her bosom as if her heart were throbbing suddenly and painfully.
+
+"For the first time in my life," murmured she, addressing the
+shrub, "I had forgotten thee."
+
+"I remember, signora," said Giovanni, "that you once promised to
+reward me with one of these living gems for the bouquet which I
+had the happy boldness to fling to your feet. Permit me now to
+pluck it as a memorial of this interview."
+
+He made a step towards the shrub with extended hand; but Beatrice
+darted forward, uttering a shriek that went through his heart
+like a dagger. She caught his hand and drew it back with the
+whole force of her slender figure. Giovanni felt her touch
+thrilling through his fibres.
+
+"Touch it not!" exclaimed she, in a voice of agony. "Not for thy
+life! It is fatal!"
+
+Then, hiding her face, she fled from him and vanished beneath the
+sculptured portal. As Giovanni followed her with his eyes, he
+beheld the emaciated figure and pale intelligence of Dr.
+Rappaccini, who had been watching the scene, he knew not how
+long, within the shadow of the entrance.
+
+No sooner was Guasconti alone in his chamber than the image of
+Beatrice came back to his passionate musings, invested with all
+the witchery that had been gathering around it ever since his
+first glimpse of her, and now likewise imbued with a tender
+warmth of girlish womanhood. She was human; her nature was
+endowed with all gentle and feminine qualities; she was worthiest
+to be worshipped; she was capable, surely, on her part, of the
+height and heroism of love. Those tokens which he had hitherto
+considered as proofs of a frightful peculiarity in her physical
+and moral system were now either forgotten, or, by the subtle
+sophistry of passion transmitted into a golden crown of
+enchantment, rendering Beatrice the more admirable by so much as
+she was the more unique. Whatever had looked ugly was now
+beautiful; or, if incapable of such a change, it stole away and
+hid itself among those shapeless half ideas which throng the dim
+region beyond the daylight of our perfect consciousness. Thus did
+he spend the night, nor fell asleep until the dawn had begun to
+awake the slumbering flowers in Dr. Rappaccini's garden, whither
+Giovanni's dreams doubtless led him. Up rose the sun in his due
+season, and, flinging his beams upon the young man's eyelids,
+awoke him to a sense of pain. When thoroughly aroused, he became
+sensible of a burning and tingling agony in his hand--in his
+right hand--the very hand which Beatrice had grasped in her own
+when he was on the point of plucking one of the gemlike flowers.
+On the back of that hand there was now a purple print like that
+of four small fingers, and the likeness of a slender thumb upon
+his wrist.
+
+Oh, how stubbornly does love,--or even that cunning semblance of
+love which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of
+root into the heart,--how stubbornly does it hold its faith until
+the moment comes when it is doomed to vanish into thin mist!
+Giovanni wrapped a handkerchief about his hand and wondered what
+evil thing had stung him, and soon forgot his pain in a reverie
+of Beatrice.
+
+After the first interview, a second was in the inevitable course
+of what we call fate. A third; a fourth; and a meeting with
+Beatrice in the garden was no longer an incident in Giovanni's
+daily life, but the whole space in which he might be said to
+live; for the anticipation and memory of that ecstatic hour made
+up the remainder. Nor was it otherwise with the daughter of
+Rappaccini. She watched for the youth's appearance, and flew to
+his side with confidence as unreserved as if they had been
+playmates from early infancy--as if they were such playmates
+still. If, by any unwonted chance, he failed to come at the
+appointed moment, she stood beneath the window and sent up the
+rich sweetness of her tones to float around him in his chamber
+and echo and reverberate throughout his heart: "Giovanni!
+Giovanni! Why tarriest thou? Come down!" And down he hastened
+into that Eden of poisonous flowers.
+
+But, with all this intimate familiarity, there was still a
+reserve in Beatrice's demeanor, so rigidly and invariably
+sustained that the idea of infringing it scarcely occurred to his
+imagination. By all appreciable signs, they loved; they had
+looked love with eyes that conveyed the holy secret from the
+depths of one soul into the depths of the other, as if it were
+too sacred to be whispered by the way; they had even spoken love
+in those gushes of passion when their spirits darted forth in
+articulated breath like tongues of long-hidden flame; and yet
+there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any
+slightest caress such as love claims and hallows. He had never
+touched one of the gleaming ringlets of her hair; her garment--so
+marked was the physical barrier between them--had never been
+waved against him by a breeze. On the few occasions when Giovanni
+had seemed tempted to overstep the limit, Beatrice grew so sad,
+so stern, and withal wore such a look of desolate separation,
+shuddering at itself, that not a spoken word was requisite to
+repel him. At such times he was startled at the horrible
+suspicions that rose, monster-like, out of the caverns of his
+heart and stared him in the face; his love grew thin and faint as
+the morning mist, his doubts alone had substance. But, when
+Beatrice's face brightened again after the momentary shadow, she
+was transformed at once from the mysterious, questionable being
+whom he had watched with so much awe and horror; she was now the
+beautiful and unsophisticated girl whom he felt that his spirit
+knew with a certainty beyond all other knowledge.
+
+A considerable time had now passed since Giovanni's last meeting
+with Baglioni. One morning, however, he was disagreeably
+surprised by a visit from the professor, whom he had scarcely
+thought of for whole weeks, and would willingly have forgotten
+still longer. Given up as he had long been to a pervading
+excitement, he could tolerate no companions except upon condition
+of their perfect sympathy with his present state of feeling. Such
+sympathy was not to be expected from Professor Baglioni.
+
+The visitor chatted carelessly for a few moments about the gossip
+of the city and the university, and then took up another topic.
+
+"I have been reading an old classic author lately," said he, "and
+met with a story that strangely interested me. Possibly you may
+remember it. It is of an Indian prince, who sent a beautiful
+woman as a present to Alexander the Great. She was as lovely as
+the dawn and gorgeous as the sunset; but what especially
+distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her
+breath--richer than a garden of Persian roses. Alexander, as was
+natural to a youthful conqueror, fell in love at first sight with
+this magnificent stranger; but a certain sage physician,
+happening to be present, discovered a terrible secret in regard
+to her."
+
+"And what was that?" asked Giovanni, turning his eyes downward to
+avoid those of the professor
+
+"That this lovely woman," continued Baglioni, with emphasis, "had
+been nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until her
+whole nature was so imbued with them that she herself had become
+the deadliest poison in existence. Poison was her element of
+life. With that rich perfume of her breath she blasted the very
+air. Her love would have been poison--her embrace death. Is not
+this a marvellous tale?"
+
+"A childish fable," answered Giovanni, nervously starting from
+his chair. "I marvel how your worship finds time to read such
+nonsense among your graver studies."
+
+"By the by," said the professor, looking uneasily about him,
+"what singular fragrance is this in your apartment? Is it the
+perfume of your gloves? It is faint, but delicious; and yet,
+after all, by no means agreeable. Were I to breathe it long,
+methinks it would make me ill. It is like the breath of a flower;
+but I see no flowers in the chamber."
+
+"Nor are there any," replied Giovanni, who had turned pale as the
+professor spoke; "nor, I think, is there any fragrance except in
+your worship's imagination. Odors, being a sort of element
+combined of the sensual and the spiritual, are apt to deceive us
+in this manner. The recollection of a perfume, the bare idea of
+it, may easily be mistaken for a present reality."
+
+"Ay; but my sober imagination does not often play such tricks,"
+said Baglioni; "and, were I to fancy any kind of odor, it would
+be that of some vile apothecary drug, wherewith my fingers are
+likely enough to be imbued. Our worshipful friend Rappaccini, as
+I have heard, tinctures his medicaments with odors richer than
+those of Araby. Doubtless, likewise, the fair and learned Signora
+Beatrice would minister to her patients with draughts as sweet as
+a maiden's breath; but woe to him that sips them!"
+
+Giovanni's face evinced many contending emotions. The tone in
+which the professor alluded to the pure and lovely daughter of
+Rappaccini was a torture to his soul; and yet the intimation of a
+view of her character opposite to his own, gave instantaneous
+distinctness to a thousand dim suspicions, which now grinned at
+him like so many demons. But he strove hard to quell them and to
+respond to Baglioni with a true lover's perfect faith.
+
+"Signor professor," said he, "you were my father's friend;
+perchance, too, it is your purpose to act a friendly part towards
+his son. I would fain feel nothing towards you save respect and
+deference; but I pray you to observe, signor, that there is one
+subject on which we must not speak. You know not the Signora
+Beatrice. You cannot, therefore, estimate the wrong--the
+blasphemy, I may even say--that is offered to her character by a
+light or injurious word."
+
+"Giovanni! my poor Giovanni!" answered the professor, with a calm
+expression of pity, "I know this wretched girl far better than
+yourself. You shall hear the truth in respect to the poisoner
+Rappaccini and his poisonous daughter; yes, poisonous as she is
+beautiful. Listen; for, even should you do violence to my gray
+hairs, it shall not silence me. That old fable of the Indian
+woman has become a truth by the deep and deadly science of
+Rappaccini and in the person of the lovely Beatrice."
+
+Giovanni groaned and hid his face
+
+"Her father," continued Baglioni, "was not restrained by natural
+affection from offering up his child in this horrible manner as
+the victim of his insane zeal for science; for, let us do him
+justice, he is as true a man of science as ever distilled his own
+heart in an alembic. What, then, will be your fate? Beyond a
+doubt you are selected as the material of some new experiment.
+Perhaps the result is to be death; perhaps a fate more awful
+still. Rappaccini, with what he calls the interest of science
+before his eyes, will hesitate at nothing."
+
+"It is a dream," muttered Giovanni to himself; "surely it is a
+dream."
+
+"But," resumed the professor, "be of good cheer, son of my
+friend. It is not yet too late for the rescue. Possibly we may
+even succeed in bringing back this miserable child within the
+limits of ordinary nature, from which her father's madness has
+estranged her. Behold this little silver vase! It was wrought by
+the hands of the renowned Benvenuto Cellini, and is well worthy
+to be a love gift to the fairest dame in Italy. But its contents
+are invaluable. One little sip of this antidote would have
+rendered the most virulent poisons of the Borgias innocuous.
+Doubt not that it will be as efficacious against those of
+Rappaccini. Bestow the vase, and the precious liquid within it,
+on your Beatrice, and hopefully await the result."
+
+Baglioni laid a small, exquisitely wrought silver vial on the
+table and withdrew, leaving what he had said to produce its
+effect upon the young man's mind.
+
+"We will thwart Rappaccini yet," thought he, chuckling to
+himself, as he descended the stairs; "but, let us confess the
+truth of him, he is a wonderful man--a wonderful man indeed; a
+vile empiric, however, in his practice, and therefore not to be
+tolerated by those who respect the good old rules of the medical
+profession."
+
+Throughout Giovanni's whole acquaintance with Beatrice, he had
+occasionally, as we have said, been haunted by dark surmises as
+to her character; yet so thoroughly had she made herself felt by
+him as a simple, natural, most affectionate, and guileless
+creature, that the image now held up by Professor Baglioni looked
+as strange and incredible as if it were not in accordance with
+his own original conception. True, there were ugly recollections
+connected with his first glimpses of the beautiful girl; he could
+not quite forget the bouquet that withered in her grasp, and the
+insect that perished amid the sunny air, by no ostensible agency
+save the fragrance of her breath. These incidents, however,
+dissolving in the pure light of her character, had no longer the
+efficacy of facts, but were acknowledged as mistaken fantasies,
+by whatever testimony of the senses they might appear to be
+substantiated. There is something truer and more real than what
+we can see with the eyes and touch with the finger. On such
+better evidence had Giovanni founded his confidence in Beatrice,
+though rather by the necessary force of her high attributes than
+by any deep and generous faith on his part. But now his spirit
+was incapable of sustaining itself at the height to which the
+early enthusiasm of passion had exalted it; he fell down,
+grovelling among earthly doubts, and defiled therewith the pure
+whiteness of Beatrice's image. Not that he gave her up; he did
+but distrust. He resolved to institute some decisive test that
+should satisfy him, once for all, whether there were those
+dreadful peculiarities in her physical nature which could not be
+supposed to exist without some corresponding monstrosity of soul.
+His eyes, gazing down afar, might have deceived him as to the
+lizard, the insect, and the flowers; but if he could witness, at
+the distance of a few paces, the sudden blight of one fresh and
+healthful flower in Beatrice's hand, there would be room for no
+further question. With this idea he hastened to the florist's and
+purchased a bouquet that was still gemmed with the morning
+dew-drops.
+
+It was now the customary hour of his daily interview with
+Beatrice. Before descending into the garden, Giovanni failed not
+to look at his figure in the mirror,--a vanity to be expected in
+a beautiful young man, yet, as displaying itself at that troubled
+and feverish moment, the token of a certain shallowness of
+feeling and insincerity of character. He did gaze, however, and
+said to himself that his features had never before possessed so
+rich a grace, nor his eyes such vivacity, nor his cheeks so warm
+a hue of superabundant life.
+
+"At least," thought he, "her poison has not yet insinuated itself
+into my system. I am no flower to perish in her grasp."
+
+With that thought he turned his eyes on the bouquet, which he had
+never once laid aside from his hand. A thrill of indefinable
+horror shot through his frame on perceiving that those dewy
+flowers were already beginning to droop; they wore the aspect of
+things that had been fresh and lovely yesterday. Giovanni grew
+white as marble, and stood motionless before the mirror, staring
+at his own reflection there as at the likeness of something
+frightful. He remembered Baglioni's remark about the fragrance
+that seemed to pervade the chamber. It must have been the poison
+in his breath! Then he shuddered--shuddered at himself.
+Recovering from his stupor, he began to watch with curious eye a
+spider that was busily at work hanging its web from the antique
+cornice of the apartment, crossing and recrossing the artful
+system of interwoven lines--as vigorous and active a spider as
+ever dangled from an old ceiling. Giovanni bent towards the
+insect, and emitted a deep, long breath. The spider suddenly
+ceased its toil; the web vibrated with a tremor originating in
+the body of the small artisan. Again Giovanni sent forth a
+breath, deeper, longer, and imbued with a venomous feeling out of
+his heart: he knew not whether he were wicked, or only desperate.
+The spider made a convulsive gripe with his limbs and hung dead
+across the window.
+
+"Accursed! accursed!" muttered Giovanni, addressing himself.
+"Hast thou grown so poisonous that this deadly insect perishes by
+thy breath?"
+
+At that moment a rich, sweet voice came floating up from the
+garden
+
+"Giovanni! Giovanni! It is past the hour! Why tarriest thou? Come
+down!"
+
+"Yes," muttered Giovanni again. "She is the only being whom my
+breath may not slay! Would that it might!"
+
+He rushed down, and in an instant was standing before the bright
+and loving eyes of Beatrice. A moment ago his wrath and despair
+had been so fierce that he could have desired nothing so much as
+to wither her by a glance; but with her actual presence there
+came influences which had too real an existence to be at once
+shaken off: recollections of the delicate and benign power of her
+feminine nature, which had so often enveloped him in a religious
+calm; recollections of many a holy and passionate outgush of her
+heart, when the pure fountain had been unsealed from its depths
+and made visible in its transparency to his mental eye;
+recollections which, had Giovanni known how to estimate them,
+would have assured him that all this ugly mystery was but an
+earthly illusion, and that, whatever mist of evil might seem to
+have gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel.
+Incapable as he was of such high faith, still her presence had
+not utterly lost its magic. Giovanni's rage was quelled into an
+aspect of sullen insensibility. Beatrice, with a quick spiritual
+sense, immediately felt that there was a gulf of blackness
+between them which neither he nor she could pass. They walked on
+together, sad and silent, and came thus to the marble fountain
+and to its pool of water on the ground, in the midst of which
+grew the shrub that bore gem-like blossoms. Giovanni was
+affrighted at the eager enjoyment--the appetite, as it were--with
+which he found himself inhaling the fragrance of the flowers.
+
+"Beatrice," asked he, abruptly, "whence came this shrub?"
+
+"My father created it," answered she, with simplicity.
+
+"Created it! created it!" repeated Giovanni. "What mean you,
+Beatrice?"
+
+"He is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of Nature,"
+replied Beatrice; "and, at the hour when I first drew breath,
+this plant sprang from the soil, the offspring of his science, of
+his intellect, while I was but his earthly child. Approach it
+not!" continued she, observing with terror that Giovanni was
+drawing nearer to the shrub. "It has qualities that you little
+dream of. But I, dearest Giovanni,--I grew up and blossomed with
+the plant and was nourished with its breath. It was my sister,
+and I loved it with a human affection; for, alas!--hast thou not
+suspected it?--there was an awful doom."
+
+Here Giovanni frowned so darkly upon her that Beatrice paused and
+trembled. But her faith in his tenderness reassured her, and made
+her blush that she had doubted for an instant.
+
+"There was an awful doom," she continued, "the effect of my
+father's fatal love of science, which estranged me from all
+society of my kind. Until Heaven sent thee, dearest Giovanni, oh,
+how lonely was thy poor Beatrice!"
+
+"Was it a hard doom?" asked Giovanni, fixing his eyes upon her.
+
+"Only of late have I known how hard it was," answered she,
+tenderly. "Oh, yes; but my heart was torpid, and therefore
+quiet."
+
+Giovanni's rage broke forth from his sullen gloom like a
+lightning flash out of a dark cloud.
+
+"Accursed one!" cried he, with venomous scorn and anger. "And,
+finding thy solitude wearisome, thou hast severed me likewise
+from all the warmth of life and enticed me into thy region of
+unspeakable horror!"
+
+"Giovanni!" exclaimed Beatrice, turning her large bright eyes
+upon his face. The force of his words had not found its way into
+her mind; she was merely thunderstruck.
+
+"Yes, poisonous thing!" repeated Giovanni, beside himself with
+passion. "Thou hast done it! Thou hast blasted me! Thou hast
+filled my veins with poison! Thou hast made me as hateful, as
+ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself--a world's
+wonder of hideous monstrosity! Now, if our breath be happily as
+fatal to ourselves as to all others, let us join our lips in one
+kiss of unutterable hatred, and so die!"
+
+"What has befallen me?" murmured Beatrice, with a low moan out of
+her heart. "Holy Virgin, pity me, a poor heart-broken child!"
+
+"Thou,--dost thou pray?" cried Giovanni, still with the same
+fiendish scorn. "Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips,
+taint the atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to
+church and dip our fingers in the holy water at the portal! They
+that come after us will perish as by a pestilence! Let us sign
+crosses in the air! It will be scattering curses abroad in the
+likeness of holy symbols!"
+
+"Giovanni," said Beatrice, calmly, for her grief was beyond
+passion, "why dost thou join thyself with me thus in those
+terrible words? I, it is true, am the horrible thing thou namest
+me. But thou,--what hast thou to do, save with one other shudder
+at my hideous misery to go forth out of the garden and mingle
+with thy race, and forget there ever crawled on earth such a
+monster as poor Beatrice?"
+
+"Dost thou pretend ignorance?" asked Giovanni, scowling upon her.
+"Behold! this power have I gained from the pure daughter of
+Rappaccini.
+
+There was a swarm of summer insects flitting through the air in
+search of the food promised by the flower odors of the fatal
+garden. They circled round Giovanni's head, and were evidently
+attracted towards him by the same influence which had drawn them
+for an instant within the sphere of several of the shrubs. He
+sent forth a breath among them, and smiled bitterly at Beatrice
+as at least a score of the insects fell dead upon the ground.
+
+"I see it! I see it!" shrieked Beatrice. "It is my father's fatal
+science! No, no, Giovanni; it was not I! Never! never! I dreamed
+only to love thee and be with thee a little time, and so to let
+thee pass away, leaving but thine image in mine heart; for,
+Giovanni, believe it, though my body be nourished with poison, my
+spirit is God's creature, and craves love as its daily food. But
+my father,--he has united us in this fearful sympathy. Yes; spurn
+me, tread upon me, kill me! Oh, what is death after such words as
+thine? But it was not I. Not for a world of bliss would I have
+done it."
+
+Giovanni's passion had exhausted itself in its outburst from his
+lips. There now came across him a sense, mournful, and not
+without tenderness, of the intimate and peculiar relationship
+between Beatrice and himself. They stood, as it were, in an utter
+solitude, which would be made none the less solitary by the
+densest throng of human life. Ought not, then, the desert of
+humanity around them to press this insulated pair closer
+together? If they should be cruel to one another, who was there
+to be kind to them? Besides, thought Giovanni, might there not
+still be a hope of his returning within the limits of ordinary
+nature, and leading Beatrice, the redeemed Beatrice, by the hand?
+O, weak, and selfish, and unworthy spirit, that could dream of an
+earthly union and earthly happiness as possible, after such deep
+love had been so bitterly wronged as was Beatrice's love by
+Giovanni's blighting words! No, no; there could be no such hope.
+She must pass heavily, with that broken heart, across the borders
+of Time--she must bathe her hurts in some fount of paradise, and
+forget her grief in the light of immortality, and THERE be well.
+
+But Giovanni did not know it.
+
+"Dear Beatrice," said he, approaching her, while she shrank away
+as always at his approach, but now with a different impulse,
+"dearest Beatrice, our fate is not yet so desperate. Behold!
+there is a medicine, potent, as a wise physician has assured me,
+and almost divine in its efficacy. It is composed of ingredients
+the most opposite to those by which thy awful father has brought
+this calamity upon thee and me. It is distilled of blessed herbs.
+Shall we not quaff it together, and thus be purified from evil?"
+
+"Give it me!" said Beatrice, extending her hand to receive the
+little silver vial which Giovanni took from his bosom. She added,
+with a peculiar emphasis, "I will drink; but do thou await the
+result."
+
+She put Baglioni's antidote to her lips; and, at the same moment,
+the figure of Rappaccini emerged from the portal and came slowly
+towards the marble fountain. As he drew near, the pale man of
+science seemed to gaze with a triumphant expression at the
+beautiful youth and maiden, as might an artist who should spend
+his life in achieving a picture or a group of statuary and
+finally be satisfied with his success. He paused; his bent form
+grew erect with conscious power; he spread out his hands over
+them in the attitude of a father imploring a blessing upon his
+children; but those were the same hands that had thrown poison
+into the stream of their lives. Giovanni trembled. Beatrice
+shuddered nervously, and pressed her hand upon her heart.
+
+"My daughter," said Rappaccini, "thou art no longer lonely in the
+world. Pluck one of those precious gems from thy sister shrub and
+bid thy bridegroom wear it in his bosom. It will not harm him
+now. My science and the sympathy between thee and him have so
+wrought within his system that he now stands apart from common
+men, as thou dost, daughter of my pride and triumph, from
+ordinary women. Pass on, then, through the world, most dear to
+one another and dreadful to all besides!"
+
+"My father," said Beatrice, feebly,--and still as she spoke she
+kept her hand upon her heart,--"wherefore didst thou inflict this
+miserable doom upon thy child?"
+
+"Miserable!" exclaimed Rappaccini. "What mean you, foolish girl?
+Dost thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvellous gifts
+against which no power nor strength could avail an enemy--misery,
+to be able to quell the mightiest with a breath--misery, to be as
+terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have
+preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and
+capable of none?"
+
+"I would fain have been loved, not feared," murmured Beatrice,
+sinking down upon the ground. "But now it matters not. I am
+going, father, where the evil which thou hast striven to mingle
+with my being will pass away like a dream-like the fragrance of
+these poisonous flowers, which will no longer taint my breath
+among the flowers of Eden. Farewell, Giovanni! Thy words of
+hatred are like lead within my heart; but they, too, will fall
+away as I ascend. Oh, was there not, from the first, more poison
+in thy nature than in mine?"
+
+To Beatrice,--so radically had her earthly part been wrought upon
+by Rappaccini's skill,--as poison had been life, so the powerful
+antidote was death; and thus the poor victim of man's ingenuity
+and of thwarted nature, and of the fatality that attends all such
+efforts of perverted wisdom, perished there, at the feet of her
+father and Giovanni. Just at that moment Professor Pietro
+Baglioni looked forth from the window, and called loudly, in a
+tone of triumph mixed with horror, to the thunderstricken man of
+science,"Rappaccini! Rappaccini! and is THIS the upshot of your
+experiment!"
+
+
+
+MRS. BULLFROG
+
+It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible
+people act in the matter of choosing wives. They perplex their
+judgments by a most undue attention to little niceties of
+personal appearance, habits, disposition, and other trifles which
+concern nobody but the lady herself. An unhappy gentleman,
+resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and
+hand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman
+will accept them. Now this is the very height of absurdity. A
+kind Providence has so skilfully adapted sex to sex and the mass
+of individuals to each other, that, with certain obvious
+exceptions, any male and female may be moderately happy in the
+married state. The true rule is to ascertain that the match is
+fundamentally a good one, and then to take it for granted that
+all minor objections, should there be such, will vanish, if you
+let them alone. Only put yourself beyond hazard as to the real
+basis of matrimonial bliss, and it is scarcely to be imagined
+what miracles, in the way of recognizing smaller incongruities,
+connubial love will effect.
+
+For my own part I freely confess that, in my bachelorship, I was
+precisely such an over-curious simpleton as I now advise the
+reader not to be. My early habits had gifted me with a feminine
+sensibility and too exquisite refinement. I was the accomplished
+graduate of a dry goods store, where, by dint of ministering to
+the whims of fine ladies, and suiting silken hose to delicate
+limbs, and handling satins, ribbons, chintzes calicoes, tapes,
+gauze, and cambric needles, I grew up a very ladylike sort of a
+gentleman. It is not assuming too much to affirm that the ladies
+themselves were hardly so ladylike as Thomas Bullfrog. So
+painfully acute was my sense of female imperfection, and such
+varied excellence did I require in the woman whom I could love,
+that there was an awful risk of my getting no wife at all, or of
+being driven to perpetrate matrimony with my own image in the
+looking-glass. Besides the fundamental principle already hinted
+at, I demanded the fresh bloom of youth, pearly teeth, glossy
+ringlets, and the whole list of lovely items, with the utmost
+delicacy of habits and sentiments, a silken texture of mind, and,
+above all, a virgin heart. In a word, if a young angel just from
+paradise, yet dressed in earthly fashion, had come and offered me
+her hand, it is by no means certain that I should have taken it.
+There was every chance of my becoming a most miserable old
+bachelor, when, by the best luck in the world, I made a journey
+into another state, and was smitten by, and smote again, and
+wooed, won, and married, the present Mrs. Bullfrog, all in the
+space of a fortnight. Owing to these extempore measures, I not
+only gave my bride credit for certain perfections which have not
+as yet come to light, but also overlooked a few trifling defects,
+which, however, glimmered on my perception long before the close
+of the honeymoon. Yet, as there was no mistake about the
+fundamental principle aforesaid, I soon learned, as will be
+seen, to estimate Mrs. Bullfrog's deficiencies and superfluities
+at exactly their proper value.
+
+The same morning that Mrs. Bullfrog and I came together as a
+unit, we took two seats in the stage-coach and began our journey
+towards my place of business. There being no other passengers, we
+were as much alone and as free to give vent to our raptures as if
+I had hired a hack for the matrimonial jaunt. My bride looked
+charmingly in a green silk calash and riding habit of pelisse
+cloth; and whenever her red lips parted with a smile, each tooth
+appeared like an inestimable pearl. Such was my passionate warmth
+that--we had rattled out of the village, gentle reader, and were
+lonely as Adam and Eve in paradise--I plead guilty to no less
+freedom than a kiss. The gentle eye of Mrs. Bullfrog scarcely
+rebuked me for the profanation. Emboldened by her indulgence, I
+threw back the calash from her polished brow, and suffered my
+fingers, white and delicate as her own, to stray among those dark
+and glossy curls which realized my daydreams of rich hair.
+
+"My love," said Mrs. Bullfrog tenderly, "you will disarrange my
+curls."
+
+"Oh, no, my sweet Laura!" replied I, still playing with the
+glossy ringlet. "Even your fair hand could not manage a curl more
+delicately than mine. I propose myself the pleasure of doing up
+your hair in papers every evening at the same time with my own."
+
+"Mr. Bullfrog," repeated she, "you must not disarrange my curls."
+
+This was spoken in a more decided tone than I had happened to
+hear, until then, from my gentlest of all gentle brides. At the
+same time she put up her hand and took mine prisoner; but merely
+drew it away from the forbidden ringlet, and then immediately
+released it. Now, I am a fidgety little man, and always love to
+have something in my fingers; so that, being debarred from my
+wife's curls, I looked about me for any other plaything. On the
+front seat of the coach there was one of those small baskets in
+which travelling ladies who are too delicate to appear at a
+public table generally carry a supply of gingerbread, biscuits
+and cheese, cold ham, and other light refreshments, merely to
+sustain nature to the journey's end. Such airy diet will
+sometimes keep them in pretty good flesh for a week together.
+Laying hold of this same little basket, I thrust my hand under
+the newspaper with which it was carefully covered.
+
+"What's this, my dear?" cried I; for the black neck of a bottle
+had popped out of the basket.
+
+"A bottle of Kalydor, Mr. Bullfrog," said my wife, coolly taking
+the basket from my hands and replacing it on the front seat.
+
+There was no possibility of doubting my wife's word; but I never
+knew genuine Kalydor, such as I use for my own complexion, to
+smell so much like cherry brandy. I was about to express my fears
+that the lotion would injure her skin, when an accident occurred
+which threatened more than a skin-deep injury. Our Jehu had
+carelessly driven over a heap of gravel and fairly capsized the
+coach, with the wheels in the air and our heels where our heads
+should have been. What became of my wits I cannot imagine; they
+have always had a perverse trick of deserting me just when they
+were most needed; but so it chanced, that in the confusion of our
+overthrow I quite forgot that there was a Mrs. Bullfrog in the
+world. Like many men's wives, the good lady served her husband as
+a steppingstone. I had scrambled out of the coach and was
+instinctively settling my cravat, when somebody brushed roughly
+by me, and I heard a smart thwack upon the coachman's ear.
+
+"Take that, you villain!" cried a strange, hoarse voice. "You
+have ruined me, you blackguard! I shall never be the woman I have
+been!"
+
+And then came a second thwack, aimed at the driver's other ear;
+but which missed it, and hit him on the nose, causing a terrible
+effusion of blood. Now, who or what fearful apparition was
+inflicting this punishment on the poor fellow remained an
+impenetrable mystery to me. The blows were given by a person of
+grisly aspect, with a head almost bald, and sunken cheeks,
+apparently of the feminine gender, though hardly to be classed in
+the gentler sex. There being no teeth to modulate the voice, it
+had a mumbled fierceness, not passionate, but stern, which
+absolutely made me quiver like calf's-foot jelly. Who could the
+phantom be? The most awful circumstance of the affair is yet to
+be told: for this ogre, or whatever it was, had a riding habit
+like Mrs. Bullfrog's, and also a green silk calash dangling down
+her back by the strings. In my terror and turmoil of mind I could
+imagine nothing less than that the Old Nick, at the moment of our
+overturn, had annihilated my wife and jumped into her petticoats.
+This idea seemed the most probable, since I could nowhere
+perceive Mrs. Bullfrog alive, nor, though I looked very sharply
+about the coach, could I detect any traces of that beloved
+woman's dead body. There would have been a comfort in giving her
+Christian burial.
+
+"Come, sir, bestir yourself! Help this rascal to set up the
+coach," sai the hobgoblin to me; then, with a terrific screech at
+three countrymen at a distance, "Here, you fellows, ain't you
+ashamed to stand off when a poor woman is in distress?"
+
+The countrymen, instead of fleeing for their lives, came running
+at full speed, and laid hold of the topsy-turvy coach. I, also,
+though a small-sized man, went to work like a son of Anak. The
+coachman, too, with the blood still streaming from his nose,
+tugged and toiled most manfully, dreading, doubtless, that the
+next blow might break his head. And yet, bemauled as the poor
+fellow had been, he seemed to glance at me with an eye of pity,
+as if my case were more deplorable than his. But I cherished a
+hope that all would turn out a dream, and seized the opportunity,
+as we raised the coach, to jam two of my fingers under the wheel,
+trusting that the pain would awaken me.
+
+"Why, here we are, all to rights again!" exclaimed a sweet voice
+behind. "Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen. My dear Mr.
+Bullfrog, how you perspire! Do let me wipe your face. Don't take
+this little accident too much to heart, good driver. We ought to
+be thankful that none of our necks are broken."
+
+"We might have spared one neck out of the three," muttered the
+driver, rubbing his ear and pulling his nose, to ascertain
+whether he had been cuffed or not. "Why, the woman's a witch!"
+
+I fear that the reader will not believe, yet it is positively a
+fact, that there stood Mrs. Bullfrog, with her glossy ringlets
+curling on her brow, and two rows of orient pearls gleaming
+between her parted lips, which wore a most angelic smile. She had
+regained her riding habit and calash from the grisly phantom, and
+was, in all respects, the lovely woman who had been sitting by my
+side at the instant of our overturn. How she had happened to
+disappear, and who had supplied her place, and whence she did now
+return, were problems too knotty for me to solve. There stood my
+wife. That was the one thing certain among a heap of mysteries.
+Nothing remained but to help her into the coach, and plod on,
+through the journey of the day and the journey of life, as
+comfortably as we could. As the driver closed the door upon us, I
+heard him whisper to the three countrymen,"How do you suppose a
+fellow feels shut up in the cage with a she tiger?"
+
+Of course this query could have no reference to my situation.
+Yet, unreasonable as it may appear, I confess that my feelings
+were not altogether so ecstatic as when I first called Mrs.
+Bullfrog mine. True, she was a sweet woman and an angel of a
+wife; but what if a Gorgon should return, amid the transports of
+our connubial bliss, and take the angel's place. I recollected
+the tale of a fairy, who half the time was a beautiful woman and
+half the time a hideous monster. Had I taken that very fairy to
+be the wife of my bosom? While such whims and chimeras were
+flitting across my fancy I began to look askance at Mrs.
+Bullfrog, almost expecting that the transformation would be
+wrought before my eyes.
+
+To divert my mind, I took up the newspaper which had covered the
+little basket of refreshments, and which now lay at the bottom of
+the coach, blushing with a deep-red stain and emitting a potent
+spirituous fume from the contents of the broken bottle of
+Kalydor. The paper was two or three years old, but contained an
+article of several columns, in which I soon grew wonderfully
+interested. It was the report of a trial for breach of promise of
+marriage, giving the testimony in full, with fervid extracts from
+both the gentleman's and lady's amatory correspondence. The
+deserted damsel had personally appeared in court, and had borne
+energetic evidence to her lover's perfidy and the strength of her
+blighted affections. On the defendant's part there had been an
+attempt, though insufficiently sustained, to blast the
+plaintiff's character, and a plea, in mitigation of damages, on
+account of her unamiable temper. A horrible idea was suggested by
+the lady's name.
+
+"Madam," said I, holding the newspaper before Mrs. Bullfrog's
+eyes,--and, though a small, delicate, and thin-visaged man, I
+feel assured that I looked very terrific,--"madam," repeated I,
+through my shut teeth, "were you the plaintiff in this cause?"
+
+"Oh, my dear Mr. Bullfrog," replied my wife, sweetly, "I thought
+all the world knew that!"
+
+"Horror! horror!" exclaimed I, sinking back on the seat.
+
+Covering my face with both hands, I emitted a deep and deathlike
+groan, as if my tormented soul were rending me asunder--I, the
+most exquisitely fastidious of men, and whose wife was to have
+been the most delicate and refined of women, with all the fresh
+dew-drops glittering on her virgin rosebud of a heart!
+
+I thought of the glossy ringlets and pearly teeth; I thought of
+the Kalydor; I thought of the coachman's bruised ear and bloody
+nose; I thought of the tender love secrets which she had
+whispered to the judge and jury and a thousand tittering
+auditors,--and gave another groan!
+
+"Mr. Bullfrog," said my wife.
+
+As I made no reply, she gently took my hands within her own,
+removed them from my face, and fixed her eyes steadfastly on
+mine.
+
+"Mr. Bullfrog," said she, not unkindly, yet with all the decision
+of her strong character, "let me advise you to overcome this
+foolish weakness, and prove yourself, to the best of your
+ability, as good a husband as I will be a wife. You have
+discovered, perhaps, some little imperfections in your bride.
+Well, what did you expect? Women are not angels. If they were,
+they would go to heaven for husbands; or, at least, be more
+difficult in their choice on earth."
+
+"But why conceal those imperfections?" interposed I, tremulously.
+
+"Now, my love, are not you a most unreasonable little man?" said
+Mrs. Bullfrog, patting me on the cheek. "Ought a woman to
+disclose her frailties earlier than the wedding day? Few
+husbands, I assure you, make the discovery in such good season,
+and still fewer complain that these trifles are concealed too
+long. Well, what a strange man you are! Poh! you are joking."
+
+"But the suit for breach of promise!" groaned I.
+
+"Ah, and is that the rub?" exclaimed my wife. "Is it possible
+that you view that affair in an objectionable light? Mr.
+Bullfrog, I never could have dreamed it! Is it an objection that
+I have triumphantly defended myself against slander and
+vindicated my purity in a court of justice? Or do you complain
+because your wife has shown the proper spirit of a woman, and
+punished the villain who trifled with her affections?"
+
+"But," persisted I, shrinking into a corner of the coach,
+however,--for I did not know precisely how much contradiction the
+proper spirit of a woman would endure,--"but, my love, would it
+not have been more dignified to treat the villain with the silent
+contempt he merited?"
+
+"That is all very well, Mr. Bullfrog," said my wife, slyly; "but,
+in that case, where would have been the five thousand dollars
+which are to stock your dry goods store?"
+
+"Mrs. Bullfrog, upon your honor," demanded I, as if my life hung
+upon her words, "is there no mistake about those five thousand
+dollars?"
+
+"Upon my word and honor there is none," replied she. "The jury
+gave me every cent the rascal had; and I have kept it all for my
+dear Bullfrog."
+
+"Then, thou dear woman," cried I, with an overwhelming gush of
+tenderness, "let me fold thee to my heart. The basis of
+matrimonial bliss is secure, and all thy little defects and
+frailties are forgiven. Nay, since the result has been so
+fortunate, I rejoice at the wrongs which drove thee to this
+blessed lawsuit. Happy Bullfrog that I am!"
+
+
+
+THE CELESTIAL RAILROAD
+
+Not a great while ago, passing through the gate of dreams, I
+visited that region of the earth in which lies the famous City of
+Destruction. It interested me much to learn that by the public
+spirit of some of the inhabitants a railroad has recently been
+established between this populous and flourishing town and the
+Celestial City. Having a little time upon my hands, I resolved to
+gratify a liberal curiosity by making a trip thither.
+Accordingly, one fine morning after paying my bill at the hotel,
+and directing the porter to stow my luggage behind a coach, I
+took my seat in the vehicle and set out for the station-house. It
+was my good fortune to enjoy the company of a gentleman--one Mr.
+Smooth-it-away--who, though he had never actually visited the
+Celestial City, yet seemed as well acquainted with its laws,
+customs, policy, and statistics, as with those of the City of
+Destruction, of which he was a native townsman. Being, moreover,
+a director of the railroad corporation and one of its largest
+stockholders, he had it in his power to give me all desirable
+information respecting that praiseworthy enterprise.
+
+Our coach rattled out of the city, and at a short distance from
+its outskirts passed over a bridge of elegant construction, but
+somewhat too slight, as I imagined, to sustain any considerable
+weight. On both sides lay an extensive quagmire, which could not
+have been more disagreeable either to sight or smell, had all the
+kennels of the earth emptied their pollution there.
+
+"This," remarked Mr. Smooth-it-away, "is the famous Slough of
+Despond--a disgrace to all the neighborhood; and the greater that
+it might so easily be converted into firm ground."
+
+"I have understood," said I, "that efforts have been made for
+that purpose from time immemorial. Bunyan mentions that above
+twenty thousand cartloads of wholesome instructions had been
+thrown in here without effect."
+
+"Very probably! And what effect could be anticipated from such
+unsubstantial stuff?" cried Mr. Smooth-it-away. "You observe this
+convenient bridge. We obtained a sufficient foundation for it by
+throwing into the slough some editions of books of morality,
+volumes of French philosophy and German rationalism; tracts,
+sermons, and essays of modern clergymen; extracts from Plato,
+Confucius, and various Hindoo sages together with a few ingenious
+commentaries upon texts of Scripture,--all of which by some
+scientific process, have been converted into a mass like granite.
+The whole bog might be filled up with similar matter."
+
+It really seemed to me, however, that the bridge vibrated and
+heaved up and down in a very formidable manner; and, in spite of
+Mr. Smooth-it-away's testimony to the solidity of its foundation,
+I should be loath to cross it in a crowded omnibus, especially if
+each passenger were encumbered with as heavy luggage as that
+gentleman and myself. Nevertheless we got over without accident,
+and soon found ourselves at the stationhouse. This very neat and
+spacious edifice is erected on the site of the little wicket
+gate, which formerly, as all old pilgrims will recollect, stood
+directly across the highway, and, by its inconvenient narrowness,
+was a great obstruction to the traveller of liberal mind and
+expansive stomach The reader of John Bunyan will be glad to know
+that Christian's old friend Evangelist, who was accustomed to
+supply each pilgrim with a mystic roll, now presides at the
+ticket office. Some malicious persons it is true deny the
+identity of this reputable character with the Evangelist of old
+times, and even pretend to bring competent evidence of an
+imposture. Without involving myself in a dispute I shall merely
+observe that, so far as my experience goes, the square pieces of
+pasteboard now delivered to passengers are much more convenient
+and useful along the road than the antique roll of parchment.
+Whether they will be as readily received at the gate of the
+Celestial City I decline giving an opinion.
+
+A large number of passengers were already at the station-house
+awaiting the departure of the cars. By the aspect and demeanor of
+these persons it was easy to judge that the feelings of the
+community had undergone a very favorable change in reference to
+the celestial pilgrimage. It would have done Bunyan's heart good
+to see it. Instead of a lonely and ragged man with a huge burden
+on his back, plodding along sorrowfully on foot while the whole
+city hooted after him, here were parties of the first gentry and
+most respectable people in the neighborhood setting forth towards
+the Celestial City as cheerfully as if the pilgrimage were merely
+a summer tour. Among the gentlemen were characters of deserved
+eminence--magistrates, politicians, and men of wealth, by whose
+example religion could not but be greatly recommended to their
+meaner brethren. In the ladies' apartment, too, I rejoiced to
+distinguish some of those flowers of fashionable society who are
+so well fitted to adorn the most elevated circles of the
+Celestial City. There was much pleasant conversation about the
+news of the day, topics of business and politics, or the lighter
+matters of amusement; while religion, though indubitably the main
+thing at heart, was thrown tastefully into the background. Even
+an infidel would have heard little or nothing to shock his
+sensibility.
+
+One great convenience of the new method of going on pilgrimage I
+must not forget to mention. Our enormous burdens, instead of
+being carried on our shoulders as had been the custom of old,
+were all snugly deposited in the baggage car, and, as I was
+assured, would be delivered to their respective owners at the
+journey's end. Another thing, likewise, the benevolent reader
+will be delighted to understand. It may be remembered that there
+was an ancient feud between Prince Beelzebub and the keeper of
+the wicket gate, and that the adherents of the former
+distinguished personage were accustomed to shoot deadly arrows at
+honest pilgrims while knocking at the door. This dispute, much to
+the credit as well of the illustrious potentate above mentioned
+as of the worthy and enlightened directors of the railroad, has
+been pacifically arranged on the principle of mutual compromise.
+The prince's subjects are now pretty numerously employed about
+the station-house, some in taking care of the baggage, others in
+collecting fuel, feeding the engines, and such congenial
+occupations; and I can conscientiously affirm that persons more
+attentive to their business, more willing to accommodate, or more
+generally agreeable to the passengers, are not to be found on any
+railroad. Every good heart must surely exult at so satisfactory
+an arrangement of an immemorial difficulty.
+
+"Where is Mr. Greatheart?" inquired I. "Beyond a doubt the
+directors have engaged that famous old champion to be chief
+conductor on the railroad?"
+
+"Why, no," said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a dry cough. "He was
+offered the situation of brakeman; but, to tell you the truth,
+our friend Greatheart has grown preposterously stiff and narrow
+in his old age. He has so often guided pilgrims over the road on
+foot that he considers it a sin to travel in any other fashion.
+Besides, the old fellow had entered so heartily into the ancient
+feud with Prince Beelzebub that he would have been perpetually at
+blows or ill language with some of the prince's subjects, and
+thus have embroiled us anew. So, on the whole, we were not sorry
+when honest Greatheart went off to the Celestial City in a huff
+and left us at liberty to choose a more suitable and
+accommodating man. Yonder comes the engineer of the train. You
+will probably recognize him at once."
+
+The engine at this moment took its station in advance of the
+cars, looking, I must confess, much more like a sort of
+mechanical demon that would hurry us to the infernal regions than
+a laudable contrivance for smoothing our way to the Celestial
+City. On its top sat a personage almost enveloped in smoke and
+flame, which, not to startle the reader, appeared to gush from
+his own mouth and stomach as well as from the engine's brazen
+abdomen.
+
+"Do my eyes deceive me?" cried I. "What on earth is this! A
+living creature? If so, he is own brother to the engine he rides
+upon!"
+
+"Poh, poh, you are obtuse!" said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a
+hearty laugh. "Don't you know Apollyon, Christian's old enemy,
+with whom he fought so fierce a battle in the Valley of
+Humiliation? He was the very fellow to manage the engine; and so
+we have reconciled him to the custom of going on pilgrimage, and
+engaged him as chief engineer."
+
+"Bravo, bravo!" exclaimed I, with irrepressible enthusiasm; "this
+shows the liberality of the age; this proves, if anything can,
+that all musty prejudices are in a fair way to be obliterated.
+And how will Christian rejoice to hear of this happy
+transformation of his old antagonist! I promise myself great
+pleasure in informing him of it when we reach the Celestial
+City."
+
+The passengers being all comfortably seated, we now rattled away
+merrily, accomplishing a greater distance in ten minutes than
+Christian probably trudged over in a day. It was laughable, while
+we glanced along, as it were, at the tail of a thunderbolt, to
+observe two dusty foot travellers in the old pilgrim guise, with
+cockle shell and staff, their mystic rolls of parchment in their
+hands and their intolerable burdens on their backs. The
+preposterous obstinacy of these honest people in persisting to
+groan and stumble along the difficult pathway rather than take
+advantage of modern improvements, excited great mirth among our
+wiser brotherhood. We greeted the two pilgrims with many pleasant
+gibes and a roar of laughter; whereupon they gazed at us with
+such woful and absurdly compassionate visages that our merriment
+grew tenfold more obstreperous. Apollyon also entered heartily
+into the fun, and contrived to flirt the smoke and flame of the
+engine, or of his own breath, into their faces, and envelop them
+in an atmosphere of scalding steam. These little practical jokes
+amused us mightily, and doubtless afforded the pilgrims the
+gratification of considering themselves martyrs.
+
+At some distance from the railroad Mr. Smooth-it-away pointed to
+a large, antique edifice, which, he observed, was a tavern of
+long standing, and had formerly been a noted stopping-place for
+pilgrims. In Bunyan's road-book it is mentioned as the
+Interpreter's House.
+
+"I have long had a curiosity to visit that old mansion," remarked
+I.
+
+"It is not one of our stations, as you perceive," said my
+companion "The keeper was violently opposed to the railroad; and
+well he might be, as the track left his house of entertainment on
+one side, and thus was pretty certain to deprive him of all his
+reputable customers. But the footpath still passes his door, and
+the old gentleman now and then receives a call from some simple
+traveller, and entertains him with fare as old-fashioned as
+himself."
+
+Before our talk on this subject came to a conclusion we were
+rushing by the place where Christian's burden fell from his
+shoulders at the sight of the Cross. This served as a theme for
+Mr. Smooth-it-away, Mr. Livefor-the-world, Mr.
+Hide-sin-in-the-heart, Mr. Scaly-conscience, and a knot of
+gentlemen from the town of Shun-repentance, to descant upon the
+inestimable advantages resulting from the safety of our baggage.
+Myself, and all the passengers indeed, joined with great
+unanimity in this view of the matter; for our burdens were rich
+in many things esteemed precious throughout the world; and,
+especially, we each of us possessed a great variety of favorite
+Habits, which we trusted would not be out of fashion even in the
+polite circles of the Celestial City. It would have been a sad
+spectacle to see such an assortment of valuable articles tumbling
+into the sepulchre. Thus pleasantly conversing on the favorable
+circumstances of our position as compared with those of past
+pilgrims and of narrow-minded ones at the present day, we soon
+found ourselves at the foot of the Hill Difficulty. Through the
+very heart of this rocky mountain a tunnel has been constructed
+of most admirable architecture, with a lofty arch and a spacious
+double track; so that, unless the earth and rocks should chance
+to crumble down, it will remain an eternal monument of the
+builder's skill and enterprise. It is a great though incidental
+advantage that the materials from the heart of the Hill
+Difficulty have been employed in filling up the Valley of
+Humiliation, thus obviating the necessity of descending into that
+disagreeable and unwholesome hollow.
+
+"This is a wonderful improvement, indeed," said I. "Yet I should
+have been glad of an opportunity to visit the Palace Beautiful
+and be introduced to the charming young ladies--Miss Prudence,
+Miss Piety, Miss Charity, and the rest--who have the kindness to
+entertain pilgrims there."
+
+"Young ladies!" cried Mr. Smooth-it-away, as soon as he could
+speak for laughing. "And charming young ladies! Why, my dear
+fellow, they are old maids, every soul of them--prim, starched,
+dry, and angular; and not one of them, I will venture to say, has
+altered so much as the fashion of her gown since the days of
+Christian's pilgrimage."
+
+"Ah, well," said I, much comforted, "then I can very readily
+dispense with their acquaintance."
+
+The respectable Apollyon was now putting on the steam at a
+prodigious rate, anxious, perhaps, to get rid of the unpleasant
+reminiscences connected with the spot where he had so
+disastrously encountered Christian. Consulting Mr. Bunyan's
+road-book, I perceived that we must now be within a few miles of
+the Valley of the Shadow of Death, into which doleful region, at
+our present speed, we should plunge much sooner than seemed at
+all desirable. In truth, I expected nothing better than to find
+myself in the ditch on one side or the Quag on the other; but on
+communicating my apprehensions to Mr. Smooth-it-away, he assured
+me that the difficulties of this passage, even in its worst
+condition, had been vastly exaggerated, and that, in its present
+state of improvement, I might consider myself as safe as on any
+railroad in Christendom.
+
+Even while we were speaking the train shot into the entrance of
+this dreaded Valley. Though I plead guilty to some foolish
+palpitations of the heart during our headlong rush over the
+causeway here constructed, yet it were unjust to withhold the
+highest encomiums on the boldness of its original conception and
+the ingenuity of those who executed it. It was gratifying,
+likewise, to observe how much care had been taken to dispel the
+everlasting gloom and supply the defect of cheerful sunshine, not
+a ray of which has ever penetrated among these awful shadows. For
+this purpose, the inflammable gas which exudes plentifully from
+the soil is collected by means of pipes, and thence communicated
+to a quadruple row of lamps along the whole extent of the
+passage. Thus a radiance has been created even out of the fiery
+and sulphurous curse that rests forever upon the valley--a
+radiance hurtful, however, to the eyes, and somewhat bewildering,
+as I discovered by the changes which it wrought in the visages of
+my companions. In this respect, as compared with natural
+daylight, there is the same difference as between truth and
+falsehood, but if the reader have ever travelled through the dark
+Valley, he will have learned to be thankful for any light that he
+could get--if not from the sky above, then from the blasted soil
+beneath. Such was the red brilliancy of these lamps that they
+appeared to build walls of fire on both sides of the track,
+between which we held our course at lightning speed, while a
+reverberating thunder filled the Valley with its echoes. Had the
+engine run off the track,--a catastrophe, it is whispered, by no
+means unprecedented,--the bottomless pit, if there be any such
+place, would undoubtedly have received us. Just as some dismal
+fooleries of this nature had made my heart quake there came a
+tremendous shriek, careering along the valley as if a thousand
+devils had burst their lungs to utter it, but which proved to be
+merely the whistle of the engine on arriving at a stopping-place.
+
+The spot where we had now paused is the same that our friend
+Bunyan--a truthful man, but infected with many fantastic
+notions--has designated, in terms plainer than I like to repeat,
+as the mouth of the infernal region. This, however, must be a
+mistake, inasmuch as Mr. Smooth-it-away, while we remained in the
+smoky and lurid cavern, took occasion to prove that Tophet has
+not even a metaphorical existence. The place, he assured us, is
+no other than the crater of a half-extinct volcano, in which the
+directors had caused forges to be set up for the manufacture of
+railroad iron. Hence, also, is obtained a plentiful supply of
+fuel for the use of the engines. Whoever had gazed into the
+dismal obscurity of the broad cavern mouth, whence ever and anon
+darted huge tongues of dusky flame, and had seen the strange,
+half-shaped monsters, and visions of faces horribly grotesque,
+into which the smoke seemed to wreathe itself, and had heard the
+awful murmurs, and shrieks, and deep, shuddering whispers of the
+blast, sometimes forming themselves into words almost articulate,
+would have seized upon Mr. Smooth-it-away's comfortable
+explanation as greedily as we did. The inhabitants of the cavern,
+moreover, were unlovely personages, dark, smoke-begrimed,
+generally deformed, with misshapen feet, and a glow of dusky
+redness in their eyes as if their hearts had caught fire and were
+blazing out of the upper windows. It struck me as a peculiarity
+that the laborers at the forge and those who brought fuel to the
+engine, when they began to draw short breath, positively emitted
+smoke from their mouth and nostrils.
+
+Among the idlers about the train, most of whom were puffing
+cigars which they had lighted at the flame of the crater, I was
+perplexed to notice several who, to my certain knowledge, had
+heretofore set forth by railroad for the Celestial City. They
+looked dark, wild, and smoky, with a singular resemblance,
+indeed, to the native inhabitants, like whom, also, they had a
+disagreeable propensity to ill-natured gibes and sneers, the
+habit of which had wrought a settled contortion of their visages.
+Having been on speaking terms with one of these persons,--an
+indolent, good-for-nothing fellow, who went by the name of
+Take-it-easy,--I called him, and inquired what was his business
+there.
+
+"Did you not start," said I, "for the Celestial City?"
+
+"That's a fact," said Mr. Take-it-easy, carelessly puffing some
+smoke into my eyes. "But I heard such bad accounts that I never
+took pains to climb the hill on which the city stands. No
+business doing, no fun going on, nothing to drink, and no smoking
+allowed, and a thrumming of church music from morning till night.
+I would not stay in such a place if they offered me house room
+and living free."
+
+"But, my good Mr. Take-it-easy," cried I, "why take up your
+residence here, of all places in the world?"
+
+"Oh," said the loafer, with a grin, "it is very warm hereabouts,
+and I meet with plenty of old acquaintances, and altogether the
+place suits me. I hope to see you back again some day soon. A
+pleasant journey to you."
+
+While he was speaking the bell of the engine rang, and we dashed
+away after dropping a few passengers, but receiving no new ones.
+Rattling onward through the Valley, we were dazzled with the
+fiercely gleaming gas lamps, as before. But sometimes, in the
+dark of intense brightness, grim faces, that bore the aspect and
+expression of individual sins, or evil passions, seemed to thrust
+themselves through the veil of light, glaring upon us, and
+stretching forth a great, dusky hand, as if to impede our
+progress. I almost thought that they were my own sins that
+appalled me there. These were freaks of imagination--nothing
+more, certainly-mere delusions, which I ought to be heartily
+ashamed of; but all through the Dark Valley I was tormented, and
+pestered, and dolefully bewildered with the same kind of waking
+dreams. The mephitic gases of that region intoxicate the brain.
+As the light of natural day, however, began to struggle with the
+glow of the lanterns, these vain imaginations lost their
+vividness, and finally vanished from the first ray of sunshine
+that greeted our escape from the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
+Ere we had gone a mile beyond it I could well-nigh have taken my
+oath that this whole gloomy passage was a dream.
+
+At the end of the valley, as John Bunyan mentions, is a cavern,
+where, in his days, dwelt two cruel giants, Pope and Pagan, who
+had strown the ground about their residence with the bones of
+slaughtered pilgrims. These vile old troglodytes are no longer
+there; but into their deserted cave another terrible giant has
+thrust himself, and makes it his business to seize upon honest
+travellers and fatten them for his table with plentiful meals of
+smoke, mist, moonshine, raw potatoes, and sawdust. He is a German
+by birth, and is called Giant Transcendentalist; but as to his
+form, his features, his substance, and his nature generally, it
+is the chief peculiarity of this huge miscreant that neither he
+for himself, nor anybody for him, has ever been able to describe
+them. As we rushed by the cavern's mouth we caught a hasty
+glimpse of him, looking somewhat like an ill-proportioned figure,
+but considerably more like a heap of fog and duskiness. He
+shouted after us, but in so strange a phraseology that we knew
+not what he meant, nor whether to be encouraged or affrighted.
+
+It was late in the day when the train thundered into the ancient
+city of Vanity, where Vanity Fair is still at the height of
+prosperity, and exhibits an epitome of whatever is brilliant,
+gay, and fascinating beneath the sun. As I purposed to make a
+considerable stay here, it gratified me to learn that there is no
+longer the want of harmony between the town's-people and
+pilgrims, which impelled the former to such lamentably mistaken
+measures as the persecution of Christian and the fiery martyrdom
+of Faithful. On the contrary, as the new railroad brings with it
+great trade and a constant influx of strangers, the lord of
+Vanity Fair is its chief patron, and the capitalists of the city
+are among the largest stockholders. Many passengers stop to take
+their pleasure or make their profit in the Fair, instead of going
+onward to the Celestial City. Indeed, such are the charms of the
+place that people often affirm it to be the true and only heaven;
+stoutly contending that there is no other, that those who seek
+further are mere dreamers, and that, if the fabled brightness of
+the Celestial City lay but a bare mile beyond the gates of
+Vanity, they would not be fools enough to go thither. Without
+subscribing to these perhaps exaggerated encomiums, I can truly
+say that my abode in the city was mainly agreeable, and my
+intercourse with the inhabitants productive of much amusement and
+instruction.
+
+Being naturally of a serious turn, my attention was directed to
+the solid advantages derivable from a residence here, rather than
+to the effervescent pleasures which are the grand object with too
+many visitants. The Christian reader, if he have had no accounts
+of the city later than Bunyan's time, will be surprised to hear
+that almost every street has its church, and that the reverend
+clergy are nowhere held in higher respect than at Vanity Fair.
+And well do they deserve such honorable estimation; for the
+maxims of wisdom and virtue which fall from their lips come from
+as deep a spiritual source, and tend to as lofty a religious aim,
+as those of the sagest philosophers of old. In justification of
+this high praise I need only mention the names of the Rev. Mr.
+Shallow-deep, the Rev. Mr. Stumble-at-truth, that fine old
+clerical character the Rev. Mr. This-today, who expects shortly
+to resign his pulpit to the Rev. Mr. That-tomorrow; together with
+the Rev. Mr. Bewilderment, the Rev. Mr. Clog-the-spirit, and,
+last and greatest, the Rev. Dr. Wind-of-doctrine. The labors of
+these eminent divines are aided by those of innumerable
+lecturers, who diffuse such a various profundity, in all subjects
+of human or celestial science, that any man may acquire an
+omnigenous erudition without the trouble of even learning to
+read. Thus literature is etherealized by assuming for its medium
+the human voice; and knowledge, depositing all its heavier
+particles, except, doubtless, its gold becomes exhaled into a
+sound, which forthwith steals into the ever-open ear of the
+community. These ingenious methods constitute a sort of
+machinery, by which thought and study are done to every person's
+hand without his putting himself to the slightest inconvenience
+in the matter. There is another species of machine for the
+wholesale manufacture of individual morality. This excellent
+result is effected by societies for all manner of virtuous
+purposes, with which a man has merely to connect himself,
+throwing, as it were, his quota of virtue into the common stock,
+and the president and directors will take care that the aggregate
+amount be well applied. All these, and other wonderful
+improvements in ethics, religion, and literature, being made
+plain to my comprehension by the ingenious Mr. Smooth-it-away,
+inspired me with a vast admiration of Vanity Fair.
+
+It would fill a volume, in an age of pamphlets, were I to record
+all my observations in this great capital of human business and
+pleasure. There was an unlimited range of society--the powerful,
+the wise, the witty, and the famous in every walk of life;
+princes, presidents, poets, generals, artists, actors, and
+philanthropists,--all making their own market at the fair, and
+deeming no price too exorbitant for such commodities as hit their
+fancy. It was well worth one's while, even if he had no idea of
+buying or selling, to loiter through the bazaars and observe the
+various sorts of traffic that were going forward.
+
+Some of the purchasers, I thought, made very foolish bargains.
+For instance, a young man having inherited a splendid fortune,
+laid out a considerable portion of it in the purchase of
+diseases, and finally spent all the rest for a heavy lot of
+repentance and a suit of rags. A very pretty girl bartered a
+heart as clear as crystal, and which seemed her most valuable
+possession, for another jewel of the same kind, but so worn and
+defaced as to be utterly worthless. In one shop there were a
+great many crowns of laurel and myrtle, which soldiers, authors,
+statesmen, and various other people pressed eagerly to buy; some
+purchased these paltry wreaths with their lives, others by a
+toilsome servitude of years, and many sacrificed whatever was
+most valuable, yet finally slunk away without the crown. There
+was a sort of stock or scrip, called Conscience, which seemed to
+be in great demand, and would purchase almost anything. Indeed,
+few rich commodities were to be obtained without paying a heavy
+sum in this particular stock, and a man's business was seldom
+very lucrative unless he knew precisely when and how to throw his
+hoard of conscience into the market. Yet as this stock was the
+only thing of permanent value, whoever parted with it was sure to
+find himself a loser in the long run. Several of the speculations
+were of a questionable character. Occasionally a member of
+Congress recruited his pocket by the sale of his constituents;
+and I was assured that public officers have often sold their
+country at very moderate prices. Thousands sold their happiness
+for a whim. Gilded chains were in great demand, and purchased
+with almost any sacrifice. In truth, those who desired, according
+to the old adage, to sell anything valuable for a song, might
+find customers all over the Fair; and there were innumerable
+messes of pottage, piping hot, for such as chose to buy them with
+their birthrights. A few articles, however, could not be found
+genuine at Vanity Fair. If a customer wished to renew his stock
+of youth the dealers offered him a set of false teeth and an
+auburn wig; if he demanded peace of mind, they recommended opium
+or a brandy bottle.
+
+Tracts of land and golden mansions, situate in the Celestial
+City, were often exchanged, at very disadvantageous rates, for a
+few years' lease of small, dismal, inconvenient tenements in
+Vanity Fair. Prince Beelzebub himself took great interest in this
+sort of traffic, and sometimes condescended to meddle with
+smaller matters. I once had the pleasure to see him bargaining
+with a miser for his soul, which, after much ingenious
+skirmishing on both sides, his highness succeeded in obtaining at
+about the value of sixpence. The prince remarked with a smile,
+that he was a loser by the transaction.
+
+Day after day, as I walked the streets of Vanity, my manners and
+deportment became more and more like those of the inhabitants.
+The place began to seem like home; the idea of pursuing my
+travels to the Celestial City was almost obliterated from my
+mind. I was reminded of it, however, by the sight of the same
+pair of simple pilgrims at whom we had laughed so heartily when
+Apollyon puffed smoke and steam into their faces at the
+commencement of our journey. There they stood amidst the densest
+bustle of Vanity; the dealers offering them their purple and fine
+linen and jewels, the men of wit and humor gibing at them, a pair
+of buxom ladies ogling them askance, while the benevolent Mr.
+Smooth-it-away whispered some of his wisdom at their elbows, and
+pointed to a newly-erected temple; but there were these worthy
+simpletons, making the scene look wild and monstrous, merely by
+their sturdy repudiation of all part in its business or
+pleasures.
+
+One of them--his name was Stick-to-the-right--perceived in my
+face, I suppose, a species of sympathy and almost admiration,
+which, to my own great surprise, I could not help feeling for
+this pragmatic couple. It prompted him to address me.
+
+"Sir," inquired he, with a sad, yet mild and kindly voice. "do
+you call yourself a pilgrim?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, "my right to that appellation is indubitable. I
+am merely a sojourner here in Vanity Fair, being bound to the
+Celestial City by the new railroad."
+
+"Alas, friend," rejoined Mr. Stick-to-the-truth, "I do assure
+you, and beseech you to receive the truth of my words, that that
+whole concern is a bubble. You may travel on it all your
+lifetime, were you to live thousands of years, and yet never get
+beyond the limits of Vanity Fair. Yea, though you should deem
+yourself entering the gates of the blessed city, it will be
+nothing but a miserable delusion."
+
+"The Lord of the Celestial City," began the other pilgrim, whose
+name was Mr. Foot-it-to-heaven, "has refused, and will ever
+refuse, to grant an act of incorporation for this railroad; and
+unless that be obtained, no passenger can ever hope to enter his
+dominions. Wherefore every man who buys a ticket must lay his
+account with losing the purchase money, which is the value of his
+own soul."
+
+"Poh, nonsense!" said Mr. Smooth-it-away, taking my arm and
+leading me off, "these fellows ought to be indicted for a libel.
+If the law stood as it once did in Vanity Fair we should see them
+grinning through the iron bars of the prison window."
+
+This incident made a considerable impression on my mind, and
+contributed with other circumstances to indispose me to a
+permanent residence in the city of Vanity; although, of course, I
+was not simple enough to give up my original plan of gliding
+along easily and commodiously by railroad. Still, I grew anxious
+to be gone. There was one strange thing that troubled me. Amid
+the occupations or amusements of the Fair, nothing was more
+common than for a person--whether at feast, theatre, or church,
+or trafficking for wealth and honors, or whatever he might be
+doing, to vanish like a soap bubble, and be never more seen of
+his fellows; and so accustomed were the latter to such little
+accidents that they went on with their business as quietly as if
+nothing had happened. But it was otherwise with me.
+
+Finally, after a pretty long residence at the Fair, I resumed my
+journey towards the Celestial City, still with Mr. Smooth-it-away
+at my side. At a short distance beyond the suburbs of Vanity we
+passed the ancient silver mine, of which Demas was the first
+discoverer, and which is now wrought to great advantage,
+supplying nearly all the coined currency of the world. A little
+further onward was the spot where Lot's wife had stood forever
+under the semblance of a pillar of salt. Curious travellers have
+long since carried it away piecemeal. Had all regrets been
+punished as rigorously as this poor dame's were, my yearning for
+the relinquished delights of Vanity Fair might have produced a
+similar change in my own corporeal substance, and left me a
+warning to future pilgrims.
+
+The next remarkable object was a large edifice, constructed of
+moss-grown stone, but in a modern and airy style of architecture.
+The engine came to a pause in its vicinity, with the usual
+tremendous shriek.
+
+"This was formerly the castle of the redoubted giant Despair,"
+observed Mr. Smooth-it-away; "but since his death Mr.
+Flimsy-faith has repaired it, and keeps an excellent house of
+entertainment here. It is one of our stopping-places."
+
+"It seems but slightly put together," remarked I, looking at the
+frail yet ponderous walls. "I do not envy Mr. Flimsy-faith his
+habitation. Some day it will thunder down upon the heads of the
+occupants."
+
+"We shall escape at all events," said Mr. Smooth-it-away, "for
+Apollyon is putting on the steam again."
+
+The road now plunged into a gorge of the Delectable Mountains,
+and traversed the field where in former ages the blind men
+wandered and stumbled among the tombs. One of these ancient
+tombstones had been thrust across the track by some malicious
+person, and gave the train of cars a terrible jolt. Far up the
+rugged side of a mountain I perceived a rusty iron door, half
+overgrown with bushes and creeping plants, but with smoke issuing
+from its crevices.
+
+"Is that," inquired I, "the very door in the hill-side which the
+shepherds assured Christian was a by-way to hell?"
+
+"That was a joke on the part of the shepherds," said Mr.
+Smooth-itaway, with a smile. "It is neither more nor less than
+the door of a cavern which they use as a smoke-house for the
+preparation of mutton hams."
+
+My recollections of the journey are now, for a little space, dim
+and confused, inasmuch as a singular drowsiness here overcame me,
+owing to the fact that we were passing over the enchanted ground,
+the air of which encourages a disposition to sleep. I awoke,
+however, as soon as we crossed the borders of the pleasant land
+of Beulah. All the passengers were rubbing their eyes, comparing
+watches, and congratulating one another on the prospect of
+arriving so seasonably at the journey's end. The sweet breezes of
+this happy clime came refreshingly to our nostrils; we beheld the
+glimmering gush of silver fountains, overhung by trees of
+beautiful foliage and delicious fruit, which were propagated by
+grafts from the celestial gardens. Once, as we dashed onward like
+a hurricane, there was a flutter of wings and the bright
+appearance of an angel in the air, speeding forth on some
+heavenly mission. The engine now announced the close vicinity of
+the final station-house by one last and horrible scream, in which
+there seemed to be distinguishable every kind of wailing and woe,
+and bitter fierceness of wrath, all mixed up with the wild
+laughter of a devil or a madman. Throughout our journey, at every
+stopping-place, Apollyon had exercised his ingenuity in screwing
+the most abominable sounds out of the whistle of the
+steam-engine; but in this closing effort he outdid himself and
+created an infernal uproar, which, besides disturbing the
+peaceful inhabitants of Beulah, must have sent its discord even
+through the celestial gates.
+
+While the horrid clamor was still ringing in our ears we heard an
+exulting strain, as if a thousand instruments of music, with
+height and depth and sweetness in their tones, at once tender and
+triumphant, were struck in unison, to greet the approach of some
+illustrious hero, who had fought the good fight and won a
+glorious victory, and was come to lay aside his battered arms
+forever. Looking to ascertain what might be the occasion of this
+glad harmony, I perceived, on alighting from the cars, that a
+multitude of shining ones had assembled on the other side of the
+river, to welcome two poor pilgrims, who were just emerging from
+its depths. They were the same whom Apollyon and ourselves had
+persecuted with taunts, and gibes, and scalding steam, at the
+commencement of our journey--the same whose unworldly aspect and
+impressive words had stirred my conscience amid the wild
+revellers of Vanity Fair.
+
+"How amazingly well those men have got on," cried I to Mr.
+Smoothit--away. "I wish we were secure of as good a reception."
+
+"Never fear, never fear!" answered my friend. "Come, make haste;
+the ferry boat will be off directly, and in three minutes you
+will be on the other side of the river. No doubt you will find
+coaches to carry you up to the city gates."
+
+A steam ferry boat, the last improvement on this important route,
+lay at the river side, puffing, snorting, and emitting all those
+other disagreeable utterances which betoken the departure to be
+immediate. I hurried on board with the rest of the passengers,
+most of whom were in great perturbation: some bawling out for
+their baggage; some tearing their hair and exclaiming that the
+boat would explode or sink; some already pale with the heaving of
+the stream; some gazing affrighted at the ugly aspect of the
+steersman; and some still dizzy with the slumberous influences of
+the Enchanted Ground. Looking back to the shore, I was amazed to
+discern Mr. Smooth-it-away waving his hand in token of farewell.
+
+"Don't you go over to the Celestial City?" exclaimed I.
+
+"Oh, no!" answered he with a queer smile, and that same
+disagreeable contortion of visage which I had remarked in the
+inhabitants of the Dark Valley. "Oh, no! I have come thus far
+only for the sake of your pleasant company. Good-by! We shall
+meet again."
+
+And then did my excellent friend Mr. Smooth-it-away laugh
+outright, in the midst of which cachinnation a smoke-wreath
+issued from his mouth and nostrils, while a twinkle of lurid
+flame darted out of either eye, proving indubitably that his
+heart was all of a red blaze. The impudent fiend! To deny the
+existence of Tophet, when he felt its fiery tortures raging
+within his breast. I rushed to the side of the boat, intending to
+fling myself on shore; but the wheels, as they began their
+revolutions, threw a dash of spray over me so cold--so deadly
+cold, with the chill that will never leave those waters until
+Death be drowned in his own river--that with a shiver and a
+heartquake I awoke. Thank Heaven it was a Dream!
+
+
+
+THE PROCESSION OF LIFE
+
+Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession. All
+of us have our places, and are to move onward under the direction
+of the Chief Marshal. The grand difficulty results from the
+invariably mistaken principles on which the deputy marshals seek
+to arrange this immense concourse of people, so much more
+numerous than those that train their interminable length through
+streets and highways in times of political excitement. Their
+scheme is ancient, far beyond the memory of man or even the
+record of history, and has hitherto been very little modified by
+the innate sense of something wrong, and the dim perception of
+better methods, that have disquieted all the ages through which
+the procession has taken its march. Its members are classified by
+the merest external circumstances, and thus are more certain to
+be thrown out of their true positions than if no principle of
+arrangement were attempted. In one part of the procession we see
+men of landed estate or moneyed capital gravely keeping each
+other company, for the preposterous reason that they chance to
+have a similar standing in the tax-gatherer's book. Trades and
+professions march together with scarcely a more real bond of
+union. In this manner, it cannot be denied, people are
+disentangled from the mass and separated into various classes
+according to certain apparent relations; all have some artificial
+badge which the world, and themselves among the first, learn to
+consider as a genuine characteristic. Fixing our attention on
+such outside shows of similarity or difference, we lose sight of
+those realities by which nature, fortune, fate, or Providence has
+constituted for every man a brotherhood, wherein it is one great
+office of human wisdom to classify him. When the mind has once
+accustomed itself to a proper arrangement of the Procession of
+Life, or a true classification of society, even though merely
+speculative, there is thenceforth a satisfaction which pretty
+well suffices for itself without the aid of any actual
+reformation in the order of march.
+
+For instance, assuming to myself the power of marshalling the
+aforesaid procession, I direct a trumpeter to send forth a blast
+loud enough to be heard from hence to China; and a herald, with
+world-pervading voice, to make proclamation for a certain class
+of mortals to take their places. What shall be their principle of
+union? After all, an external one, in comparison with many that
+might be found, yet far more real than those which the world has
+selected for a similar purpose. Let all who are afflicted with
+like physical diseases form themselves into ranks.
+
+Our first attempt at classification is not very successful. It
+may gratify the pride of aristocracy to reflect that disease,
+more than any other circumstance of human life, pays due
+observance to the distinctions which rank and wealth, and poverty
+and lowliness, have established among mankind. Some maladies are
+rich and precious, and only to be acquired by the right of
+inheritance or purchased with gold. Of this kind is the gout,
+which serves as a bond of brotherhood to the purple-visaged
+gentry, who obey the herald's voice, and painfully hobble from
+all civilized regions of the globe to take their post in the
+grand procession. In mercy to their toes, let us hope that the
+march may not be long. The Dyspeptics, too, are people of good
+standing in the world. For them the earliest salmon is caught in
+our eastern rivers, and the shy woodcock stains the dry leaves
+with his blood in his remotest haunts, and the turtle comes from
+the far Pacific Islands to be gobbled up in soup. They can afford
+to flavor all their dishes with indolence, which, in spite of the
+general opinion, is a sauce more exquisitely piquant than
+appetite won by exercise. Apoplexy is another highly respectable
+disease. We will rank together all who have the symptom of
+dizziness in the brain, and as fast as any drop by the way supply
+their places with new members of the board of aldermen.
+
+On the other hand, here come whole tribes of people whose
+physical lives are but a deteriorated variety of life, and
+themselves a meaner species of mankind; so sad an effect has been
+wrought by the tainted breath of cities, scanty and unwholesome
+food, destructive modes of labor, and the lack of those moral
+supports that might partially have counteracted such bad
+influences. Behold here a train of house painters, all afflicted
+with a peculiar sort of colic. Next in place we will marshal
+those workmen in cutlery, who have breathed a fatal disorder into
+their lungs with the impalpable dust of steel. Tailors and
+shoemakers, being sedentary men, will chiefly congregate into one
+part of the procession and march under similar banners of
+disease; but among them we may observe here and there a sickly
+student, who has left his health between the leaves of classic
+volumes; and clerks, likewise, who have caught their deaths on
+high official stools; and men of genius too, who have written
+sheet after sheet with pens dipped in their heart's blood. These
+are a wretched quaking, short-breathed set. But what is this
+cloud of pale-cheeked, slender girls, who disturb the ear with
+the multiplicity of their short, dry coughs? They are
+seamstresses, who have plied the daily and nightly needle in the
+service of master tailors and close-fisted contractors, until now
+it is almost time for each to hem the borders of her own shroud.
+Consumption points their place in the procession. With their sad
+sisterhood are intermingled many youthful maidens who have
+sickened in aristocratic mansions, and for whose aid science has
+unavailingly searched its volumes, and whom breathless love has
+watched. In our ranks the rich maiden and the poor seamstress may
+walk arm in arm. We might find innumerable other instances, where
+the bond of mutual disease--not to speak of nation-sweeping
+pestilence--embraces high and low, and makes the king a brother
+of the clown. But it is not hard to own that disease is the
+natural aristocrat. Let him keep his state, and have his
+established orders of rank, and wear his royal mantle of the
+color of a fever flush and let the noble and wealthy boast their
+own physical infirmities, and display their symptoms as the
+badges of high station. All things considered, these are as
+proper subjects of human pride as any relations of human rank
+that men can fix upon.
+
+Sound again, thou deep-breathed trumpeter! and herald, with thy
+voice of might, shout forth another summons that shall reach the
+old baronial castles of Europe, and the rudest cabin of our
+western wilderness! What class is next to take its place in the
+procession of mortal life? Let it be those whom the gifts of
+intellect have united in a noble brotherhood.
+
+Ay, this is a reality, before which the conventional distinctions
+of society melt away like a vapor when we would grasp it with the
+hand. Were Byron now alive, and Burns, the first would come from
+his ancestral abbey, flinging aside, although unwillingly, the
+inherited honors of a thousand years, to take the arm of the
+mighty peasant who grew immortal while he stooped behind his
+plough. These are gone; but the hall, the farmer's fireside, the
+hut, perhaps the palace, the counting-room, the workshop, the
+village, the city, life's high places and low ones, may all
+produce their poets, whom a common temperament pervades like an
+electric sympathy. Peer or ploughman, we will muster them pair by
+pair and shoulder to shoulder. Even society, in its most
+artificial state, consents to this arrangement. These factory
+girls from Lowell shall mate themselves with the pride of
+drawing-rooms and literary circles, the bluebells in fashion's
+nosegay, the Sapphos, and Montagues, and Nortons of the age.
+Other modes of intellect bring together as strange companies.
+Silk-gowned professor of languages, give your arm to this sturdy
+blacksmith, and deem yourself honored by the conjunction, though
+you behold him grimy from the anvil. All varieties of human
+speech are like his mother tongue to this rare man.
+Indiscriminately let those take their places, of whatever rank
+they come, who possess the kingly gifts to lead armies or to sway
+a people--Nature's generals, her lawgivers, her kings, and with
+them also the deep philosophers who think the thought in one
+generation that is to revolutionize society in the next. With the
+hereditary legislator in whom eloquence is a far-descended
+attainment--a rich echo repeated by powerful voices from Cicero
+downward--we will match some wondrous backwoodsman, who has
+caught a wild power of language from the breeze among his native
+forest boughs. But we may safely leave these brethren and
+sisterhood to settle their own congenialities. Our ordinary
+distinctions become so trifling, so impalpable, so ridiculously
+visionary, in comparison with a classification founded on truth,
+that all talk about the matter is immediately a common place.
+
+Yet the longer I reflect the less am I satisfied with the idea of
+forming a separate class of mankind on the basis of high
+intellectual power. At best it is but a higher development of
+innate gifts common to all. Perhaps, moreover, he whose genius
+appears deepest and truest excels his fellows in nothing save the
+knack of expression; he throws out occasionally a lucky hint at
+truths of which every human soul is profoundly, though
+unutterably, conscious. Therefore, though we suffer the
+brotherhood of intellect to march onward together, it may be
+doubted whether their peculiar relation will not begin to vanish
+as soon as the procession shall have passed beyond the circle of
+this present world. But we do not classify for eternity.
+
+And next, let the trumpet pour forth a funereal wail, and the
+herald's voice give breath in one vast cry to all the groans and
+grievous utterances that are audible throughout the earth. We
+appeal now to the sacred bond of sorrow, and summon the great
+multitude who labor under similar afflictions to take their
+places in the march.
+
+How many a heart that would have been insensible to any other
+call has responded to the doleful accents of that voice! It has
+gone far and wide, and high and low, and left scarcely a mortal
+roof unvisited. Indeed, the principle is only too universal for
+our purpose, and, unless we limit it, will quite break up our
+classification of mankind, and convert the whole procession into
+a funeral train. We will therefore be at some pains to
+discriminate. Here comes a lonely rich man: he has built a noble
+fabric for his dwelling-house, with a front of stately
+architecture and marble floors and doors of precious woods; the
+whole structure is as beautiful as a dream and as substantial as
+the native rock. But the visionary shapes of a long posterity,
+for whose home this mansion was intended, have faded into
+nothingness since the death of the founder's only son. The rich
+man gives a glance at his sable garb in one of the splendid
+mirrors of his drawing-room, and descending a flight of lofty
+steps instinctively offers his arm to yonder poverty stricken
+widow in the rusty black bonnet, and with a check apron over her
+patched gown. The sailor boy, who was her sole earthly stay, was
+washed overboard in a late tempest. This couple from the palace
+and the almshouse are but the types of thousands more who
+represent the dark tragedy of life and seldom quarrel for the
+upper parts. Grief is such a leveller, with its own dignity and
+its own humility, that the noble and the peasant, the beggar and
+the monarch, will waive their pretensions to external rank
+without the officiousness of interference on our part. If
+pride--the influence of the world's false distinctions--remain in
+the heart, then sorrow lacks the earnestness which makes it holy
+and reverend. It loses its reality and becomes a miserable
+shadow. On this ground we have an opportunity to assign over
+multitudes who would willingly claim places here to other parts
+of the procession. If the mourner have anything dearer than his
+grief he must seek his true position elsewhere. There are so many
+unsubstantial sorrows which the necessity of our mortal state
+begets on idleness, that an observer, casting aside sentiment, is
+sometimes led to question whether there be any real woe, except
+absolute physical suffering and the loss of closest friends. A
+crowd who exhibit what they deem to be broken hearts--and among
+them many lovelorn maids and bachelors, and men of disappointed
+ambition in arts or politics, and the poor who were once rich, or
+who have sought to be rich in vain--the great majority of these
+may ask admittance into some other fraternity. There is no room
+here. Perhaps we may institute a separate class where such
+unfortunates will naturally fall into the procession. Meanwhile
+let them stand aside and patiently await their time.
+
+If our trumpeter can borrow a note from the doomsday trumpet
+blast, let him sound it now. The dread alarum should make the
+earth quake to its centre, for the herald is about to address
+mankind with a summons to which even the purest mortal may be
+sensible of some faint responding echo in his breast. In many
+bosoms it will awaken a still small voice more terrible than its
+own reverberating uproar.
+
+The hideous appeal has swept around the globe. Come, all ye
+guilty ones, and rank yourselves in accordance with the
+brotherhood of crime. This, indeed, is an awful summons. I almost
+tremble to look at the strange partnerships that begin to be
+formed, reluctantly, but by the in vincible necessity of like to
+like in this part of the procession. A forger from the state
+prison seizes the arm of a distinguished financier. How
+indignantly does the latter plead his fair reputation upon
+'Change, and insist that his operations, by their magnificence of
+scope, were removed into quite another sphere of morality than
+those of his pitiful companion! But let him cut the connection if
+he can. Here comes a murderer with his clanking chains, and pairs
+himself--horrible to tell--with as pure and upright a man, in all
+observable respects, as ever partook of the consecrated bread and
+wine. He is one of those, perchance the most hopeless of all
+sinners, who practise such an exemplary system of outward duties,
+that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and
+remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his
+place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert,
+affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrude
+themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, and
+that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born
+to vice as their sole and natural inheritance, can be no fit
+associates for women who have been guarded round about by all the
+proprieties of domestic life, and who could not err unless they
+first created the opportunity. Oh no; it must be merely the
+impertinence of those unblushing hussies; and we can only wonder
+how such respectable ladies should have responded to a summons
+that was not meant for them.
+
+We shall make short work of this miserable class, each member of
+which is entitled to grasp any other member's hand, by that vile
+degradation wherein guilty error has buried all alike. The foul
+fiend to whom it properly belongs must relieve us of our
+loathsome task. Let the bond servants of sin pass on. But neither
+man nor woman, in whom good predominates, will smile or sneer,
+nor bid the Rogues' March be played, in derision of their array.
+Feeling within their breasts a shuddering sympathy, which at
+least gives token of the sin that might have been, they will
+thank God for any place in the grand procession of human
+existence, save among those most wretched ones. Many, however,
+will be astonished at the fatal impulse that drags them
+thitherward. Nothing is more remarkable than the various
+deceptions by which guilt conceals itself from the perpetrator's
+conscience, and oftenest, perhaps, by the splendor of its
+garments. Statesmen, rulers, generals, and all men who act over
+an extensive sphere, are most liable to be deluded in this way;
+they commit wrong, devastation, and murder, on so grand a scale,
+that it impresses them as speculative rather than actual; but in
+our procession we find them linked in detestable conjunction with
+the meanest criminals whose deeds have the vulgarity of petty
+details. Here the effect of circumstance and accident is done
+away, and a man finds his rank according to the spirit of his
+crime, in whatever shape it may have been developed.
+
+We have called the Evil; now let us call the Good. The trumpet's
+brazen throat should pour heavenly music over the earth, and the
+herald's voice go forth with the sweetness of an angel's accents,
+as if to summon each upright man to his reward. But how is this?
+Does none answer to the call? Not one: for the just, the pure,
+the true, and an who might most worthily obey it, shrink sadly
+back, as most conscious of error and imperfection. Then let the
+summons be to those whose pervading principle is Love. This
+classification will embrace all the truly good, and none in whose
+souls there exists not something that may expand itself into a
+heaven, both of well-doing and felicity.
+
+The first that presents himself is a man of wealth, who has
+bequeathed the bulk of his property to a hospital; his ghost,
+methinks, would have a better right here than his living body.
+But here they come, the genuine benefactors of their race. Some
+have wandered about the earth with pictures of bliss in their
+imagination, and with hearts that shrank sensitively from the
+idea of pain and woe, yet have studied all varieties of misery
+that human nature can endure. The prison, the insane asylum, the
+squalid chamber of the almshouse, the manufactory where the demon
+of machinery annihilates the human soul, and the cotton field
+where God's image becomes a beast of burden; to these and every
+other scene where man wrongs or neglects his brother, the
+apostles of humanity have penetrated. This missionary, black with
+India's burning sunshine, shall give his arm to a pale-faced
+brother who has made himself familiar with the infected alleys
+and loathsome haunts of vice in one of our own cities. The
+generous founder of a college shall be the partner of a maiden
+lady of narrow substance, one of whose good deeds it has been to
+gather a little school of orphan children. If the mighty merchant
+whose benefactions are reckoned by thousands of dollars deem
+himself worthy, let him join the procession with her whose love
+has proved itself by watchings at the sick-bed, and all those
+lowly offices which bring her into actual contact with disease
+and wretchedness. And with those whose impulses have guided them
+to benevolent actions, we will rank others to whom Providence has
+assigned a different tendency and different powers. Men who have
+spent their lives in generous and holy contemplation for the
+human race; those who, by a certain heavenliness of spirit, have
+purified the atmosphere around them, and thus supplied a medium
+in which good and high things may be projected and
+performed--give to these a lofty place among the benefactors of
+mankind, although no deed, such as the world calls deeds, may be
+recorded of them. There are some individuals of whom we cannot
+conceive it proper that they should apply their hands to any
+earthly instrument, or work out any definite act; and others,
+perhaps not less high, to whom it is an essential attribute to
+labor in body as well as spirit for the welfare of their
+brethren. Thus, if we find a spiritual sage whose unseen,
+inestimable influence has exalted the moral standard of mankind,
+we will choose for his companion some poor laborer who has
+wrought for love in the potato field of a neighbor poorer than
+himself.
+
+We have summoned this various multitude--and, to the credit of
+our nature, it is a large one--on the principle of Love. It is
+singular, nevertheless, to remark the shyness that exists among
+many members of the present class, all of whom we might expect to
+recognize one another by the freemasonry of mutual goodness, and
+to embrace like brethren, giving God thanks for such various
+specimens of human excellence. But it is far otherwise. Each sect
+surrounds its own righteousness with a hedge of thorns. It is
+difficult for the good Christian to acknowledge the good Pagan;
+almost impossible for the good Orthodox to grasp the hand of the
+good Unitarian, leaving to their Creator to settle the matters in
+dispute, and giving their mutual efforts strongly and trustingly
+to whatever right thing is too evident to be mistaken. Then
+again, though the heart be large, yet the mind is often of such
+moderate dimensions as to be exclusively filled up with one idea.
+When a good man has long devoted himself to a particular kind of
+beneficence--to one species of reform--he is apt to become
+narrowed into the limits of the path wherein he treads, and to
+fancy that there is no other good to be done on earth but that
+self-same good to which he has put his hand, and in the very mode
+that best suits his own conceptions. All else is worthless. His
+scheme must be wrought out by the united strength of the whole
+world's stock of love, or the world is no longer worthy of a
+position in the universe. Moreover, powerful Truth, being the
+rich grape juice expressed from the vineyard of the ages, has an
+intoxicating quality, when imbibed by any save a powerful
+intellect, and often, as it were, impels the quaffer to quarrel
+in his cups. For such reasons, strange to say, it is harder to
+contrive a friendly arrangement of these brethren of love and
+righteousness, in the procession of life. than to unite even the
+wicked, who, indeed, are chained together by their crimes. The
+fact is too preposterous for tears, too lugubrious for laughter.
+
+But, let good men push and elbow one another as they may during
+their earthly march, all will be peace among them when the
+honorable array or their procession shall tread on heavenly
+ground. There they will doubtless find that they have been
+working each for the other's cause, and that every well-delivered
+stroke, which, with an honest purpose any mortal struck, even for
+a narrow object, was indeed stricken for the universal cause of
+good. Their own view may be bounded by country, creed,
+profession, the diversities of individual character--but above
+them all is the breadth of Providence. How many who have deemed
+themselves antagonists will smile hereafter, when they look back
+upon the world's wide harvest field, and perceive that, in
+unconscious brotherhood, they were helping to bind the selfsame
+sheaf!
+
+But, come! The sun is hastening westward, while the march of
+human life, that never paused before, is delayed by our attempt
+to rearrange its order. It is desirable to find some
+comprehensive principle, that shall render our task easier by
+bringing thousands into the ranks where hitherto we have brought
+one. Therefore let the trumpet, if possible, split its brazen
+throat with a louder note than ever, and the herald summon all
+mortals, who, from whatever cause, have lost, or never found,
+their proper places in the wold.
+
+Obedient to this call, a great multitude come together, most of
+them with a listless gait, betokening weariness of soul, yet with
+a gleam of satisfaction in their faces, at a prospect of at
+length reaching those positions which, hitherto, they have vainly
+sought. But here will be another disappointment; for we can
+attempt no more than merely to associate in one fraternity all
+who are afflicted with the same vague trouble. Some great mistake
+in life is the chief condition of admittance into this class.
+Here are members of the learned professions, whom Providence
+endowed with special gifts for the plough, the forge, and the
+wheelbarrow, or for the routine of unintellectual business. We
+will assign to them, as partners in the march, those lowly
+laborers and handicraftsmen, who have pined, as with a dying
+thirst, after the unattainable fountains of knowledge. The latter
+have lost less than their companions; yet more, because they deem
+it infinite. Perchance the two species of unfortunates may
+comfort one another. Here are Quakers with the instinct of battle
+in them; and men of war who should have worn the broad brim.
+Authors shall be ranked here whom some freak of Nature, making
+game of her poor children, had imbued with the confidence of
+genius and strong desire of fame, but has favored with no
+corresponding power; and others, whose lofty gifts were
+unaccompanied with the faculty of expression, or any of that
+earthly machinery by which ethereal endowments must be manifested
+to mankind. All these, therefore, are melancholy laughing-stocks.
+Next, here are honest and well intentioned persons, who by a want
+of tact--by inaccurate perceptions--by a distorting
+imagination--have been kept continually at cross purposes with
+the world and bewildered upon the path of life. Let us see if
+they can confine themselves within the line of our procession. In
+this class, likewise, we must assign places to those who have
+encountered that worst of ill success, a higher fortune than
+their abilities could vindicate; writers, actors, painters, the
+pets of a day, but whose laurels wither unrenewed amid their
+hoary hair; politicians, whom some malicious contingency of
+affairs has thrust into conspicuous station, where, while the
+world stands gazing at them, the dreary consciousness of
+imbecility makes them curse their birth hour. To such men, we
+give for a companion him whose rare talents, which perhaps
+require a Revolution for their exercise, are buried in the tomb
+of sluggish circumstances.
+
+Not far from these, we must find room for one whose success has
+been of the wrong kind; the man who should have lingered in the
+cloisters of a university, digging new treasures out of the
+Herculaneum of antique lore, diffusing depth and accuracy of
+literature throughout his country, and thus making for himself a
+great and quiet fame. But the outward tendencies around him have
+proved too powerful for his inward nature, and have drawn him
+into the arena of political tumult, there to contend at
+disadvantage, whether front to front, or side by side, with the
+brawny giants of actual life. He becomes, it may be, a name for
+brawling parties to bandy to and fro, a legislator of the Union;
+a governor of his native state; an ambassador to the courts of
+kings or queens; and the world may deem him a man of happy stars.
+But not so the wise; and not so himself, when he looks through
+his experience, and sighs to miss that fitness, the one
+invaluable touch which makes all things true and real. So much
+achieved, yet how abortive is his life! Whom shall we choose for
+his companion? Some weak framed blacksmith, perhaps, whose
+delicacy of muscle might have suited a tailor's shopboard better
+than the anvil.
+
+Shall we bid the trumpet sound again? It is hardly worth the
+while. There remain a few idle men of fortune, tavern and
+grog-shop loungers, lazzaroni, old bachelors, decaying maidens,
+and people of crooked intellect or temper, all of whom may find
+their like, or some tolerable approach to it, in the plentiful
+diversity of our latter class. There too, as his ultimate
+destiny, must we rank the dreamer, who, all his life long, has
+cherished the idea that he was peculiarly apt for something, but
+never could determine what it was; and there the most unfortunate
+of men, whose purpose it has been to enjoy life's pleasures, but
+to avoid a manful struggle with its toil and sorrow. The
+remainder, if any, may connect themselves with whatever rank of
+the procession they shall find best adapted to their tastes and
+consciences. The worst possible fate would be to remain behind,
+shivering in the solitude of time, while all the world is on the
+move towards eternity. Our attempt to classify society is now
+complete. The result may be anything but perfect; yet better--to
+give it the very lowest praise--than the antique rule of the
+herald's office, or the modern one of the tax-gatherer, whereby
+the accidents and superficial attributes with which the real
+nature of individuals has least to do, are acted upon as the
+deepest characteristics of mankind. Our task is done! Now let the
+grand procession move!
+
+Yet pause a while! We had forgotten the Chief Marshal.
+
+Hark! That world-wide swell of solemn music, with the clang of a
+mighty bell breaking forth through its regulated uproar,
+announces his approach. He comes; a severe, sedate, immovable,
+dark rider, waving his truncheon of universal sway, as he passes
+along the lengthened line, on the pale horse of the Revelation.
+It is Death! Who else could assume the guidance of a procession
+that comprehends all humanity? And if some, among these many
+millions, should deem themselves classed amiss, yet let them take
+to their hearts the comfortable truth that Death levels us all
+into one great brotherhood, and that another state of being will
+surely rectify the wrong of this. Then breathe thy wail upon the
+earth's wailing wind, thou band of melancholy music, made up of
+every sigh that the human heart, unsatisfied, has uttered! There
+is yet triumph in thy tones. And now we move! Beggars in their
+rags, and Kings trailing the regal purple in the dust; the
+Warrior's gleaming helmet; the Priest in his sable robe; the
+hoary Grandsire, who has run life's circle and come back to
+childhood; the ruddy School-boy with his golden curls, frisking
+along the march; the Artisan's stuff jacket; the Noble's
+star-decorated coat;--the whole presenting a motley spectacle,
+yet with a dusky grandeur brooding over it. Onward, onward, into
+that dimness where the lights of Time which have blazed along the
+procession, are flickering in their sockets! And whither! We know
+not; and Death, hitherto our leader, deserts us by the wayside,
+as the tramp of our innumerable footsteps echoes beyond his
+sphere. He knows not, more than we, our destined goal. But God,
+who made us, knows, and will not leave us on our toilsome and
+doubtful march, either to wander in infinite uncertainty, or
+perish by the way!
+
+
+
+FEATHERTOP: A MORALIZED LEGEND
+
+
+"Dickon," cried Mother Rigby, "a coal for my pipe!"
+
+The pipe was in the old dame's mouth when she said these words.
+She had thrust it there after filling it with tobacco, but
+without stooping to light it at the hearth, where indeed there
+was no appearance of a fire having been kindled that morning.
+Forthwith, however, as soon as the order was given, there was an
+intense red glow out of the bowl of the pipe, and a whiff of
+smoke came from Mother Rigby's lips. Whence the coal came, and
+how brought thither by an invisible hand, I have never been able
+to discover.
+
+"Good!" quoth Mother Rigby, with a nod of her head. "Thank ye,
+Dickon! And now for making this scarecrow. Be within call,
+Dickon, in case I need you again."
+
+The good woman had risen thus early (for as yet it was scarcely
+sunrise) in order to set about making a scarecrow, which she
+intended to put in the middle of her corn-patch. It was now the
+latter week of May, and the crows and blackbirds had already
+discovered the little, green, rolledup leaf of the Indian corn
+just peeping out of the soil. She was determined, therefore, to
+contrive as lifelike a scarecrow as ever was seen, and to finish
+it immediately, from top to toe, so that it should begin its
+sentinel's duty that very morning. Now Mother Rigby (as
+everybody must have heard) was one of the most cunning and potent
+witches in New England, and might, with very little trouble, have
+made a scarecrow ugly enough to frighten the minister himself.
+But on this occasion, as she had awakened in an uncommonly
+pleasant humor, and was further dulcified by her pipe tobacco,
+she resolved to produce something fine, beautiful, and splendid,
+rather than hideous and horrible.
+
+"I don't want to set up a hobgoblin in my own corn-patch, and
+almost at my own doorstep," said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing
+out a whiff of smoke; "I could do it if I pleased, but I'm tired
+of doing marvellous things, and so I'll keep within the bounds of
+every-day business just for variety's sake. Besides, there is no
+use in scaring the little children for a mile roundabout, though
+'t is true I'm a witch."
+
+It was settled, therefore, in her own mind, that the scarecrow
+should represent a fine gentleman of the period, so far as the
+materials at hand would allow. Perhaps it may be as well to
+enumerate the chief of the articles that went to the composition
+of this figure.
+
+The most important item of all, probably, although it made so
+little show, was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had
+taken many an airy gallop at midnight, and which now served the
+scarecrow by way of a spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase
+it, a backbone. One of its arms was a disabled flail which used
+to be wielded by Goodman Rigby, before his spouse worried him out
+of this troublesome world; the other, if I mistake not, was
+composed of the pudding stick and a broken rung of a chair, tied
+loosely together at the elbow. As for its legs, the right was a
+hoe handle, and the left an undistinguished and miscellaneous
+stick from the woodpile. Its lungs, stomach, and other affairs of
+that kind were nothing better than a meal bag stuffed with straw.
+Thus we have made out the skeleton and entire corporosity of the
+scarecrow, with the exception of its head; and this was admirably
+supplied by a somewhat withered and shrivelled pumpkin, in which
+Mother Rigby cut two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth,
+leaving a bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass for a nose.
+It was really quite a respectable face.
+
+"I've seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any rate," said
+Mother Rigby. "And many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin head, as
+well as my scarecrow."
+
+But the clothes, in this case, were to be the making of the man.
+So the good old woman took down from a peg an ancient
+plum-colored coat of London make, and with relics of embroidery
+on its seams, cuffs, pocket-flaps, and button-holes, but
+lamentably worn and faded, patched at the elbows, tattered at the
+skirts, and threadbare all over. On the left breast was a round
+hole, whence either a star of nobility had been rent away, or
+else the hot heart of some former wearer had scorched it through
+and through. The neighbors said that this rich garment belonged
+to the Black Man's wardrobe, and that he kept it at Mother
+Rigby's cottage for the convenience of slipping it on whenever he
+wished to make a grand appearance at the governor's table. To
+match the coat there was a velvet waistcoat of very ample size,
+and formerly embroidered with foliage that had been as brightly
+golden as the maple leaves in October, but which had now quite
+vanished out of the substance of the velvet. Next came a pair of
+scarlet breeches, once worn by the French governor of Louisbourg,
+and the knees of which had touched the lower step of the throne
+of Louis le Grand. The Frenchman had given these
+small-clothes to an Indian powwow, who parted with them to
+the old witch for a gill of strong waters, at one of their dances
+in the forest. Furthermore, Mother Rigby produced a pair of silk
+stockings and put them on the figure's legs, where they showed as
+unsubstantial as a dream, with the wooden reality of the two
+sticks making itself miserably apparent through the holes.
+Lastly, she put her dead husband's wig on the bare scalp of the
+pumpkin, and surmounted the whole with a dusty three-cornered
+hat, in which was stuck the longest tail feather of a rooster.
+
+Then the old dame stood the figure up in a corner of her cottage
+and chuckled to behold its yellow semblance of a visage, with its
+nobby little nose thrust into the air. It had a strangely
+self-satisfied aspect, and seemed to say, "Come look at me!"
+
+"And you are well worth looking at, that's a fact!" quoth Mother
+Rigby, in admiration at her own handiwork. "I've made many a
+puppet since I've been a witch, but methinks this is the finest
+of them all. 'Tis almost too good for a scarecrow. And, by the
+by, I'll just fill a fresh pipe of tobacco and then take him out
+to the corn-patch."
+
+While filling her pipe the old woman continued to gaze with
+almost motherly affection at the figure in the corner. To say the
+truth, whether it were chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft,
+there was something wonderfully human in this ridiculous shape,
+bedizened with its tattered finery; and as for the countenance,
+it appeared to shrivel its yellow surface into a grin--a funny
+kind of expression betwixt scorn and merriment, as if it
+understood itself to be a jest at mankind. The more Mother Rigby
+looked the better she was pleased.
+
+"Dickon," cried she sharply, "another coal for my pipe!"
+
+Hardly had she spoken, than, just as before, there was a
+red-glowing coal on the top of the tobacco. She drew in a long
+whiff and puffed it forth again into the bar of morning sunshine
+which struggled through the one dusty pane of her cottage window.
+Mother Rigby always liked to flavor her pipe with a coal of fire
+from the particular chimney corner whence this had been brought.
+But where that chimney corner might be, or who brought the coal
+from it,--further than that the invisible messenger seemed to
+respond to the name of Dickon,--I cannot tell.
+
+"That puppet yonder," thought Mother Rigby, still with her eyes
+fixed on the scarecrow, "is too good a piece of work to stand all
+summer in a corn-patch, frightening away the crows and
+blackbirds. He's capable of better things. Why, I've danced with
+a worse one, when partners happened to be scarce, at our witch
+meetings in the forest! What if I should let him take his chance
+among the other men of straw and empty fellows who go bustling
+about the world?"
+
+The old witch took three or four more whiffs of her pipe and
+smiled.
+
+"He'll meet plenty of his brethren at every street corner!"
+continued she. "Well; I didn't mean to dabble in witchcraft
+to-day, further than the lighting of my pipe, but a witch I am,
+and a witch I'm likely to be, and there's no use trying to shirk
+it. I'll make a man of my scarecrow, were it only for the joke's
+sake!"
+
+While muttering these words, Mother Rigby took the pipe from her
+own mouth and thrust it into the crevice which represented the
+same feature in the pumpkin visage of the scarecrow.
+
+"Puff, darling, puff!" said she. "Puff away, my fine fellow! your
+life depends on it!"
+
+This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly, to be addressed to a
+mere thing of sticks, straw, and old clothes, with nothing better
+than a shrivelled pumpkin for a head,--as we know to have been
+the scarecrow's case. Nevertheless, as we must carefully hold in
+remembrance, Mother Rigby was a witch of singular power and
+dexterity; and, keeping this fact duly before our minds, we shall
+see nothing beyond credibility in the remarkable incidents of our
+story. Indeed, the great difficulty will be at once got over, if
+we can only bring ourselves to believe that, as soon as the old
+dame bade him puff, there came a whiff of smoke from the
+scarecrow's mouth. It was the very feeblest of whiffs, to be
+sure; but it was followed by another and another, each more
+decided than the preceding one.
+
+"Puff away, my pet! puff away, my pretty one!" Mother Rigby kept
+repeating, with her pleasantest smile. "It is the breath of life
+to ye; and that you may take my word for."
+
+Beyond all question the pipe was bewitched. There must have been
+a spell either in the tobacco or in the fiercely-glowing coal
+that so mysteriously burned on top of it, or in the
+pungently-aromatic smoke which exhaled from the kindled weed. The
+figure, after a few doubtful attempts at length blew forth a
+volley of smoke extending all the way from the obscure corner
+into the bar of sunshine. There it eddied and melted away among
+the motes of dust. It seemed a convulsive effort; for the two or
+three next whiffs were fainter, although the coal still glowed
+and threw a gleam over the scarecrow's visage. The old witch
+clapped her skinny hands together, and smiled encouragingly upon
+her handiwork. She saw that the charm worked well. The
+shrivelled, yellow face, which heretofore had been no face at
+all, had already a thin, fantastic haze, as it were of human
+likeness, shifting to and fro across it; sometimes vanishing
+entirely, but growing more perceptible than ever with the next
+whiff from the pipe. The whole figure, in like manner, assumed a
+show of life, such as we impart to ill-defined shapes among the
+clouds, and half deceive ourselves with the pastime of our own
+fancy.
+
+If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it may be doubted
+whether there was any real change, after all, in the sordid,
+wornout worthless, and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow;
+but merely a spectral illusion, and a cunning effect of light and
+shade so colored and contrived as to delude the eyes of most men.
+The miracles of witchcraft seem always to have had a very shallow
+subtlety; and, at least, if the above explanation do not hit the
+truth of the process, I can suggest no better.
+
+"Well puffed, my pretty lad!" still cried old Mother Rigby.
+"Come, another good stout whiff, and let it be with might and
+main. Puff for thy life, I tell thee! Puff out of the very bottom
+of thy heart, if any heart thou hast, or any bottom to it! Well
+done, again! Thou didst suck in that mouthful as if for the pure
+love of it."
+
+And then the witch beckoned to the scarecrow, throwing so much
+magnetic potency into her gesture that it seemed as if it must
+inevitably be obeyed, like the mystic call of the loadstone when
+it summons the iron.
+
+"Why lurkest thou in the corner, lazy one?" said she. "Step
+forth! Thou hast the world before thee!"
+
+Upon my word, if the legend were not one which I heard on my
+grandmother's knee, and which had established its place among
+things credible before my childish judgment could analyze its
+probability, I question whether I should have the face to tell it
+now.
+
+In obedience to Mother Rigby's word, and extending its arm as if
+to reach her outstretched hand, the figure made a step forward--a
+kind of hitch and jerk, however, rather than a step--then
+tottered and almost lost its balance. What could the witch
+expect? It was nothing, after all, but a scarecrow stuck upon two
+sticks. But the strong-willed old beldam scowled, and beckoned,
+and flung the energy of her purpose so forcibly at this poor
+combination of rotten wood, and musty straw, and ragged garments,
+that it was compelled to show itself a man, in spite of the
+reality of things. So it stepped into the bar of sunshine. There
+it stood, poor devil of a contrivance that it was!--with only the
+thinnest vesture of human similitude about it, through which was
+evident the stiff, rickety, incongruous, faded, tattered,
+good-for-nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a
+heap upon the floor, as conscious of its own unworthiness to be
+erect. Shall I confess the truth? At its present point of
+vivification, the scarecrow reminds me of some of the lukewarm
+and abortive characters, composed of heterogeneous materials,
+used for the thousandth time, and never worth using, with which
+romance writers (and myself, no doubt, among the rest) have so
+overpeopled the world of fiction.
+
+But the fierce old hag began to get angry and show a glimpse of
+her diabolic nature (like a snake's head, peeping with a hiss out
+of her bosom), at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing which
+she had taken the trouble to put together.
+
+"Puff away, wretch!" cried she, wrathfully. "Puff, puff, puff,
+thou thing of straw and emptiness! thou rag or two! thou meal
+bag! thou pumpkin head! thou nothing! Where shall I find a name
+vile enough to call thee by? Puff, I say, and suck in thy
+fantastic life with the smoke! else I snatch the pipe from thy
+mouth and hurl thee where that red coal came from."
+
+Thus threatened, the unhappy scarecrow had nothing for it but to
+puff away for dear life. As need was, therefore, it applied
+itself lustily to the pipe, and sent forth such abundant volleys
+of tobacco smoke that the small cottage kitchen became all
+vaporous. The one sunbeam struggled mistily through, and could
+but imperfectly define the image of the cracked and dusty window
+pane on the opposite wall. Mother Rigby, meanwhile, with one
+brown arm akimbo and the other stretched towards the figure,
+loomed grimly amid the obscurity with such port and expression as
+when she was wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her victims
+and stand at the bedside to enjoy their agony. In fear and
+trembling did this poor scarecrow puff. But its efforts, it must
+be acknowledged, served an excellent purpose; for, with each
+successive whiff, the figure lost more and more of its dizzy and
+perplexing tenuity and seemed to take denser substance. Its very
+garments, moreover, partook of the magical change, and shone with
+the gloss of novelty and glistened with the skilfully embroidered
+gold that had long ago been rent away. And, half revealed among
+the smoke, a yellow visage bent its lustreless eyes on Mother
+Rigby.
+
+At last the old witch clinched her fist and shook it at the
+figure. Not that she was positively angry, but merely acting on
+the principle--perhaps untrue, or not the only truth, though as
+high a one as Mother Rigby could be expected to attain--that
+feeble and torpid natures, being incapable of better inspiration,
+must be stirred up by fear. But here was the crisis. Should she
+fail in what she now sought to effect, it was her ruthless
+purpose to scatter the miserable simulacre into its original
+elements.
+
+"Thou hast a man's aspect," said she, sternly. "Have also the
+echo and mockery of a voice! I bid thee speak!"
+
+The scarecrow gasped, struggled, and at length emitted a murmur,
+which was so incorporated with its smoky breath that you could
+scarcely tell whether it were indeed a voice or only a whiff of
+tobacco. Some narrators of this legend hold the opinion that
+Mother Rigby's conjurations and the fierceness of her will had
+compelled a familiar spirit into the figure, and that the voice
+was his.
+
+"Mother," mumbled the poor stifled voice, "be not so awful with
+me! I would fain speak; but being without wits, what can I say?"
+
+"Thou canst speak, darling, canst thou?" cried Mother Rigby,
+relaxing her grim countenance into a smile. "And what shalt thou
+say, quoth-a! Say, indeed! Art thou of the brotherhood of the
+empty skull, and demandest of me what thou shalt say? Thou shalt
+say a thousand things, and saying them a thousand times over,
+thou shalt still have said nothing! Be not afraid, I tell thee!
+When thou comest into the world (whither I purpose sending thee
+forthwith) thou shalt not lack the wherewithal to talk. Talk!
+Why, thou shall babble like a mill-stream, if thou wilt. Thou
+hast brains enough for that, I trow!"
+
+"At your service, mother," responded the figure.
+
+"And that was well said, my pretty one," answered Mother Rigby.
+"Then thou speakest like thyself, and meant nothing. Thou shalt
+have a hundred such set phrases, and five hundred to the boot of
+them. And now, darling, I have taken so much pains with thee and
+thou art so beautiful, that, by my troth, I love thee better than
+any witch's puppet in the world; and I've made them of all
+sorts--clay, wax, straw, sticks, night fog, morning mist, sea
+foam, and chimney smoke. But thou art the very best. So give heed
+to what I say."
+
+"Yes, kind mother," said the figure, "with all my heart!"
+
+"With all thy heart!" cried the old witch, setting her hands to
+her sides and laughing loudly. "Thou hast such a pretty way of
+speaking. With all thy heart! And thou didst put thy hand to the
+left side of thy waistcoat as if thou really hadst one!"
+
+So now, in high good humor with this fantastic contrivance of
+hers, Mother Rigby told the scarecrow that it must go and play
+its part in the great world, where not one man in a hundred, she
+affirmed, was gifted with more real substance than itself. And,
+that he might hold up his head with the best of them, she endowed
+him, on the spot, with an unreckonable amount of wealth. It
+consisted partly of a gold mine in Eldorado, and of ten thousand
+shares in a broken bubble, and of half a million acres of
+vineyard at the North Pole, and of a castle in the air, and a
+chateau in Spain, together with all the rents and income
+therefrom accruing. She further made over to him the cargo of a
+certain ship, laden with salt of Cadiz, which she herself, by her
+necromantic arts, had caused to founder, ten years before, in the
+deepest part of mid-ocean. If the salt were not dissolved, and
+could be brought to market, it would fetch a pretty penny among
+the fishermen. That he might not lack ready money, she gave him a
+copper farthing of Birmingham manufacture, being all the coin she
+had about her, and likewise a great deal of brass, which she
+applied to his forehead, thus making it yellower than ever.
+
+"With that brass alone," quoth Mother Rigby, "thou canst pay thy
+way all over the earth. Kiss me, pretty darling! I have done my
+best for thee."
+
+Furthermore, that the adventurer might lack no possible advantage
+towards a fair start in life, this excellent old dame gave him a
+token by which he was to introduce himself to a certain
+magistrate, member of the council, merchant, and elder of the
+church (the four capacities constituting but one man), who stood
+at the head of society in the neighboring metropolis. The token
+was neither more nor less than a single word, which Mother Rigby
+whispered to the scarecrow, and which the scarecrow was to
+whisper to the merchant.
+
+"Gouty as the old fellow is, he'll run thy errands for thee, when
+once thou hast given him that word in his ear," said the old
+witch. "Mother Rigby knows the worshipful Justice Gookin, and the
+worshipful Justice knows Mother Rigby!"
+
+Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close to the puppet's,
+chuckling irrepressibly, and fidgeting all through her system,
+with delight at the idea which she meant to communicate.
+
+"The worshipful Master Gookin," whispered she, "hath a comely
+maiden to his daughter. And hark ye, my pet! Thou hast a fair
+outside, and a pretty wit enough of thine own. Yea, a pretty wit
+enough! Thou wilt think better of it when thou hast seen more of
+other people's wits. Now, with thy outside and thy inside, thou
+art the very man to win a young girl's heart. Never doubt it! I
+tell thee it shall be so. Put but a bold face on the matter,
+sigh, smile, flourish thy hat, thrust forth thy leg like a
+dancing-master, put thy right hand to the left side of thy
+waistcoat, and pretty Polly Gookin is thine own!"
+
+All this while the new creature had been sucking in and exhaling
+the vapory fragrance of his pipe, and seemed now to continue this
+occupation as much for the enjoyment it afforded as because it
+was an essential condition of his existence. It was wonderful to
+see how exceedingly like a human being it behaved. Its eyes (for
+it appeared to possess a pair) were bent on Mother Rigby, and at
+suitable junctures it nodded or shook its head. Neither did it
+lack words proper for the occasion: "Really! Indeed! Pray tell
+me! Is it possible! Upon my word! By no means! Oh! Ah! Hem!" and
+other such weighty utterances as imply attention, inquiry,
+acquiescence, or dissent on the part of the auditor. Even had you
+stood by and seen the scarecrow made, you could scarcely have
+resisted the conviction that it perfectly understood the cunning
+counsels which the old witch poured into its counterfeit of an
+ear. The more earnestly it applied its lips to the pipe, the more
+distinctly was its human likeness stamped among visible
+realities, the more sagacious grew its expression, the more
+lifelike its gestures and movements, and the more intelligibly
+audible its voice. Its garments, too, glistened so much the
+brighter with an illusory magnificence. The very pipe, in which
+burned the spell of all this wonderwork, ceased to appear as a
+smoke-blackened earthen stump, and became a meerschaum, with
+painted bowl and amber mouthpiece.
+
+It might be apprehended, however, that as the life of the
+illusion seemed identical with the vapor of the pipe, it would
+terminate simultaneously with the reduction of the tobacco to
+ashes. But the beldam foresaw the difficulty.
+
+"Hold thou the pipe, my precious one," said she, "while I fill it
+for thee again.
+
+It was sorrowful to behold how the fine gentleman began to fade
+back into a scarecrow while Mother Rigby shook the ashes out of
+the pipe and proceeded to replenish it from her tobacco-box.
+
+"Dickon," cried she, in her high, sharp tone, "another coal for
+this pipe!"
+
+No sooner said than the intensely red speck of fire was glowing
+within the pipe-bowl; and the scarecrow, without waiting for the
+witch's bidding, applied the tube to his lips and drew in a few
+short, convulsive whiffs, which soon, however, became regular and
+equable.
+
+"Now, mine own heart's darling," quoth Mother Rigby, "whatever
+may happen to thee, thou must stick to thy pipe. Thy life is in
+it; and that, at least, thou knowest well, if thou knowest nought
+besides. Stick to thy pipe, I say! Smoke, puff, blow thy cloud;
+and tell the people, if any question be made, that it is for thy
+health, and that so the physician orders thee to do. And, sweet
+one, when thou shalt find thy pipe getting low, go apart into
+some corner, and (first filling thyself with smoke) cry sharply,
+'Dickon, a fresh pipe of tobacco!' and, 'Dickon, another coal for
+my pipe!' and have it into thy pretty mouth as speedily as may
+be. Else, instead of a gallant gentleman in a gold-laced coat,
+thou wilt be but a jumble of sticks and tattered clothes, and a
+bag of straw, and a withered pumpkin! Now depart, my treasure,
+and good luck go with thee!"
+
+"Never fear, mother!" said the figure, in a stout voice, and
+sending forth a courageous whiff of smoke, "I will thrive, if an
+honest man and a gentleman may!"
+
+"Oh, thou wilt be the death of me!" cried the old witch,
+convulsed with laughter. "That was well said. If an honest man
+and a gentleman may! Thou playest thy part to perfection. Get
+along with thee for a smart fellow; and I will wager on thy head,
+as a man of pith and substance, with a brain and what they call a
+heart, and all else that a man should have, against any other
+thing on two legs. I hold myself a better witch than yesterday,
+for thy sake. Did not I make thee? And I defy any witch in New
+England to make such another! Here; take my staff along with
+thee!"
+
+The staff, though it was but a plain oaken stick, immediately
+took the aspect of a gold-headed cane.
+
+"That gold head has as much sense in it as thine own," said
+Mother Rigby, "and it will guide thee straight to worshipful
+Master Gookin's door. Get thee gone, my pretty pet, my darling,
+my precious one, my treasure; and if any ask thy name, it is
+Feathertop. For thou hast a feather in thy hat, and I have thrust
+a handful of feathers into the hollow of thy head, and thy wig,
+too, is of the fashion they call Feathertop,--so be Feathertop
+thy name!"
+
+And, issuing from the cottage, Feathertop strode manfully towards
+town. Mother Rigby stood at the threshold, well pleased to see
+how the sunbeams glistened on him, as if all his magnificence
+were real, and how diligently and lovingly he smoked his pipe,
+and how handsomely he walked, in spite of a little stiffness of
+his legs. She watched him until out of sight, and threw a witch
+benediction after her darling, when a turn of the road snatched
+him from her view.
+
+Betimes in the forenoon, when the principal street of the
+neighboring town was just at its acme of life and bustle, a
+stranger of very distinguished figure was seen on the sidewalk.
+His port as well as his garments betokened nothing short of
+nobility. He wore a richly-embroidered plum-colored coat, a
+waistcoat of costly velvet, magnificently adorned with golden
+foliage, a pair of splendid scarlet breeches, and the finest and
+glossiest of white silk stockings. His head was covered with a
+peruke, so daintily powdered and adjusted that it would have been
+sacrilege to disorder it with a hat; which, therefore (and it was
+a gold-laced hat, set off with a snowy feather), he carried
+beneath his arm. On the breast of his coat glistened a star. He
+managed his gold-headed cane with an airy grace, peculiar to the
+fine gentlemen of the period; and, to give the highest possible
+finish to his equipment, he had lace ruffles at his wrist, of a
+most ethereal delicacy, sufficiently avouching how idle and
+aristocratic must be the hands which they half concealed.
+
+It was a remarkable point in the accoutrement of this brilliant
+personage that he held in his left hand a fantastic kind of a
+pipe, with an exquisitely painted bowl and an amber mouthpiece.
+This he applied to his lips as often as every five or six paces,
+and inhaled a deep whiff of smoke, which, after being retained a
+moment in his lungs, might be seen to eddy gracefully from his
+mouth and nostrils.
+
+As may well be supposed, the street was all astir to find out the
+stranger's name.
+
+"It is some great nobleman, beyond question," said one of the
+townspeople. "Do you see the star at his breast?"
+
+"Nay; it is too bright to be seen," said another. "Yes; he must
+needs be a nobleman, as you say. But by what conveyance, think
+you, can his lordship have voyaged or travelled hither? There has
+been no vessel from the old country for a month past; and if he
+have arrived overland from the southward, pray where are his
+attendants and equipage?"
+
+"He needs no equipage to set off his rank," remarked a third. "If
+he came among us in rags, nobility would shine through a hole in
+his elbow. I never saw such dignity of aspect. He has the old
+Norman blood in his veins, I warrant him."
+
+"I rather take him to be a Dutchman, or one of your high
+Germans," said another citizen. "The men of those countries have
+always the pipe at their mouths."
+
+"And so has a Turk," answered his companion. "But, in my
+judgment, this stranger hath been bred at the French court, and
+hath there learned politeness and grace of manner, which none
+understand so well as the nobility of France. That gait, now! A
+vulgar spectator might deem it stiff--he might call it a hitch
+and jerk--but, to my eye, it hath an unspeakable majesty, and
+must have been acquired by constant observation of the deportment
+of the Grand Monarque. The stranger's character and office are
+evident enough. He is a French ambassador, come to treat with our
+rulers about the cession of Canada."
+
+"More probably a Spaniard," said another, "and hence his yellow
+complexion; or, most likely, he is from the Havana, or from some
+port on the Spanish main, and comes to make investigation about
+the piracies which our government is thought to connive at. Those
+settlers in Peru and Mexico have skins as yellow as the gold
+which they dig out of their mines."
+
+"Yellow or not," cried a lady, "he is a beautiful man!--so tall,
+so slender! such a fine, noble face, with so well-shaped a nose,
+and all that delicacy of expression about the mouth! And, bless
+me, how bright his star is! It positively shoots out flames!"
+
+"So do your eyes, fair lady," said the stranger, with a bow and a
+flourish of his pipe; for he was just passing at the instant.
+"Upon my honor, they have quite dazzled me."
+
+"Was ever so original and exquisite a compliment?" murmured the
+lady, in an ecstasy of delight.
+
+Amid the general admiration excited by the stranger's appearance,
+there were only two dissenting voices. One was that of an
+impertinent cur, which, after snuffing at the heels of the
+glistening figure, put its tail between its legs and skulked into
+its master's back yard, vociferating an execrable howl. The other
+dissentient was a young child, who squalled at the fullest
+stretch of his lungs, and babbled some unintelligible nonsense
+about a pumpkin.
+
+Feathertop meanwhile pursued his way along the street. Except for
+the few complimentary words to the lady, and now and then a
+slight inclination of the head in requital of the profound
+reverences of the bystanders, he seemed wholly absorbed in his
+pipe. There needed no other proof of his rank and consequence
+than the perfect equanimity with which he comported himself,
+while the curiosity and admiration of the town swelled almost
+into clamor around him. With a crowd gathering behind his
+footsteps, he finally reached the mansion-house of the worshipful
+Justice Gookin, entered the gate, ascended the steps of the front
+door, and knocked. In the interim, before his summons was
+answered, the stranger was observed to shake the ashes out of his
+pipe.
+
+"What did he say in that sharp voice?" inquired one of the
+spectators.
+
+"Nay, I know not," answered his friend. "But the sun dazzles my
+eyes strangely. How dim and faded his lordship looks all of a
+sudden! Bless my wits, what is the matter with me?"
+
+"The wonder is," said the other, "that his pipe, which was out
+only an instant ago, should be all alight again, and with the
+reddest coal I ever saw. There is something mysterious about this
+stranger. What a whiff of smoke was that! Dim and faded did you
+call him? Why, as he turns about the star on his breast is all
+ablaze."
+
+"It is, indeed," said his companion; "and it will go near to
+dazzle pretty Polly Gookin, whom I see peeping at it out of the
+chamber window."
+
+The door being now opened, Feathertop turned to the crowd, made a
+stately bend of his body like a great man acknowledging the
+reverence of the meaner sort, and vanished into the house. There
+was a mysterious kind of a smile, if it might not better be
+called a grin or grimace, upon his visage; but, of all the throng
+that beheld him, not an individual appears to have possessed
+insight enough to detect the illusive character of the stranger
+except a little child and a cur dog.
+
+Our legend here loses somewhat of its continuity, and, passing
+over the preliminary explanation between Feathertop and the
+merchant, goes in quest of the pretty Polly Gookin. She was a
+damsel of a soft, round figure, with light hair and blue eyes,
+and a fair, rosy face, which seemed neither very shrewd nor very
+simple. This young lady had caught a glimpse of the glistening
+stranger while standing on the threshold, and had forthwith put
+on a laced cap, a string of beads, her finest kerchief, and her
+stiffest damask petticoat in preparation for the interview.
+Hurrying from her chamber to the parlor, she had ever since been
+viewing herself in the large looking-glass and practising pretty
+airs-now a smile, now a ceremonious dignity of aspect, and now a
+softer smile than the former, kissing her hand likewise, tossing
+her head, and managing her fan; while within the mirror an
+unsubstantial little maid repeated every gesture and did all the
+foolish things that Polly did, but without making her ashamed of
+them. In short, it was the fault of pretty Polly's ability rather
+than her will if she failed to be as complete an artifice as the
+illustrious Feathertop himself; and, when she thus tampered with
+her own simplicity, the witch's phantom might well hope to win
+her.
+
+No sooner did Polly hear her father's gouty footsteps approaching
+the parlor door, accompanied with the stiff clatter of
+Feathertop's high-heeled shoes, than she seated herself bolt
+upright and innocently began warbling a song.
+
+"Polly! daughter Polly!" cried the old merchant. "Come hither,
+child."
+
+Master Gookin's aspect, as he opened the door, was doubtful and
+troubled.
+
+"This gentleman," continued he, presenting the stranger, "is the
+Chevalier Feathertop,--nay, I beg his pardon, my Lord Feathertop,
+--who hath brought me a token of remembrance from an ancient
+friend of mine. Pay your duty to his lordship, child, and honor
+him as his quality deserves."
+
+After these few words of introduction, the worshipful magistrate
+immediately quitted the room. But, even in that brief moment, had
+the fair Polly glanced aside at her father instead of devoting
+herself wholly to the brilliant guest, she might have taken
+warning of some mischief nigh at hand. The old man was nervous,
+fidgety, and very pale. Purposing a smile of courtesy, he had
+deformed his face with a sort of galvanic grin, which, when
+Feathertop's back was turned, he exchanged for a scowl, at the
+same time shaking his fist and stamping his gouty foot--an
+incivility which brought its retribution along with it. The truth
+appears to have been that Mother Rigby's word of introduction,
+whatever it might be, had operated far more on the rich
+merchant's fears than on his good will. Moreover, being a man of
+wonderfully acute observation, he had noticed that these painted
+figures on the bowl of Feathertop's pipe were in motion. Looking
+more closely he became convinced that these figures were a party
+of little demons, each duly provided with horns and a tail, and
+dancing hand in hand, with gestures of diabolical merriment,
+round the circumference of the pipe bowl. As if to confirm his
+suspicions, while Master Gookin ushered his guest along a dusky
+passage from his private room to the parlor, the star on
+Feathertop's breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw a
+flickering gleam upon the wall, the ceiling, and the floor.
+
+With such sinister prognostics manifesting themselves on all
+hands, it is not to be marvelled at that the merchant should have
+felt that he was committing his daughter to a very questionable
+acquaintance. He cursed, in his secret soul, the insinuating
+elegance of Feathertop's manners, as this brilliant personage
+bowed, smiled, put his hand on his heart, inhaled a long whiff
+from his pipe, and enriched the atmosphere with the smoky vapor
+of a fragrant and visible sigh. Gladly would poor Master Gookin
+have thrust his dangerous guest into the street; but there was a
+constraint and terror within him. This respectable old gentleman,
+we fear, at an earlier period of life, had given some pledge or
+other to the evil principle, and perhaps was now to redeem it by
+the sacrifice of his daughter.
+
+It so happened that the parlor door was partly of glass, shaded
+by a silken curtain, the folds of which hung a little awry. So
+strong was the merchant's interest in witnessing what was to
+ensue between the fair Polly and the gallant Feathertop that,
+after quitting the room, he could by no means refrain from
+peeping through the crevice of the curtain.
+
+But there was nothing very miraculous to be seen; nothing--except
+the trifles previously noticed--to confirm the idea of a
+supernatural peril environing the pretty Polly. The stranger it
+is true was evidently a thorough and practised man of the world,
+systematic and self-possessed, and therefore the sort of a person
+to whom a parent ought not to confide a simple, young girl
+without due watchfulness for the result. The worthy magistrate
+who had been conversant with all degrees and qualities of
+mankind, could not but perceive every motion and gesture of the
+distinguished Feathertop came in its proper place; nothing had
+been left rude or native in him; a well-digested conventionalism
+had incorporated itself thoroughly with his substance and
+transformed him into a work of art. Perhaps it was this
+peculiarity that invested him with a species of ghastliness and
+awe. It is the effect of anything completely and consummately
+artificial, in human shape, that the person impresses us as an
+unreality and as having hardly pith enough to cast a shadow upon
+the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all this resulted in a wild,
+extravagant, and fantastical impression, as if his life and being
+were akin to the smoke that curled upward from his pipe.
+
+But pretty Polly Gookin felt not thus. The pair were now
+promenading the room: Feathertop with his dainty stride and no
+less dainty grimace, the girl with a native maidenly grace, just
+touched, not spoiled, by a slightly affected manner, which seemed
+caught from the perfect artifice of her companion. The longer the
+interview continued, the more charmed was pretty Polly, until,
+within the first quarter of an hour (as the old magistrate noted
+by his watch), she was evidently beginning to be in love. Nor
+need it have been witchcraft that subdued her in such a hurry;
+the poor child's heart, it may be, was so very fervent that it
+melted her with its own warmth as reflected from the hollow
+semblance of a lover. No matter what Feathertop said, his words
+found depth and reverberation in her ear; no matter what he did,
+his action was heroic to her eye. And by this time it is to be
+supposed there was a blush on Polly's cheek, a tender smile about
+her mouth and a liquid softness in her glance; while the star
+kept coruscating on Feathertop's breast, and the little demons
+careered with more frantic merriment than ever about the
+circumference of his pipe bowl. O pretty Polly Gookin, why should
+these imps rejoice so madly that a silly maiden's heart was about
+to be given to a shadow! Is it so unusual a misfortune, so rare a
+triumph?
+
+By and by Feathertop paused, and throwing himself into an
+imposing attitude, seemed to summon the fair girl to survey his
+figure and resist him longer if she could. His star, his
+embroidery, his buckles glowed at that instant with unutterable
+splendor; the picturesque hues of his attire took a richer depth
+of coloring; there was a gleam and polish over his whole presence
+betokening the perfect witchery of well-ordered manners. The
+maiden raised her eyes and suffered them to linger upon her
+companion with a bashful and admiring gaze. Then, as if desirous
+of judging what value her own simple comeliness might have side
+by side with so much brilliancy, she cast a glance towards the
+full-length looking-glass in front of which they happened to be
+standing. It was one of the truest plates in the world and
+incapable of flattery. No sooner did the images therein reflected
+meet Polly's eye than she shrieked, shrank from the stranger's
+side, gazed at him for a moment in the wildest dismay, and sank
+insensible upon the floor. Feathertop likewise had looked towards
+the mirror, and there beheld, not the glittering mockery of his
+outside show, but a picture of the sordid patchwork of his real
+composition stripped of all witchcraft.
+
+The wretched simulacrum! We almost pity him. He threw up his arms
+with an expression of despair that went further than any of his
+previous manifestations towards vindicating his claims to be
+reckoned human, for perchance the only time since this so often
+empty and deceptive life of mortals began its course, an illusion
+had seen and fully recognized itself.
+
+Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth in the twilight of
+this eventful day, and had just shaken the ashes out of a new
+pipe, when she heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did
+not seem so much the tramp of human footsteps as the clatter of
+sticks or the rattling of dry bones.
+
+"Ha!" thought the old witch, "what step is that? Whose skeleton
+is out of its grave now, I wonder?"
+
+A figure burst headlong into the cottage door. It was Feathertop!
+His pipe was still alight; the star still flamed upon his breast;
+the embroidery still glowed upon his garments; nor had he lost,
+in any degree or manner that could be estimated, the aspect that
+assimilated him with our mortal brotherhood. But yet, in some
+indescribable way (as is the case with all that has deluded us
+when once found out), the poor reality was felt beneath the
+cunning artifice.
+
+"What has gone wrong?" demanded the witch. "Did yonder sniffling
+hypocrite thrust my darling from his door? The villain! I'll set
+twenty fiends to torment him till he offer thee his daughter on
+his bended knees!"
+
+"No, mother," said Feathertop despondingly; "it was not that."
+
+"Did the girl scorn my precious one?" asked Mother Rigby, her
+fierce eyes glowing like two coals of Tophet. "I'll cover her
+face with pimples! Her nose shall be as red as the coal in thy
+pipe! Her front teeth shall drop out! In a week hence she shall
+not be worth thy having!"
+
+"Let her alone, mother," answered poor Feathertop; "the girl was
+half won; and methinks a kiss from her sweet lips might have made
+me altogether human. But," he added, after a brief pause and then
+a howl of self-contempt, "I've seen myself, mother! I've seen
+myself for the wretched, ragged, empty thing I am! I'll exist no
+longer!"
+
+Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with all his might
+against the chimney, and at the same instant sank upon the floor,
+a medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks
+protruding from the heap, and a shrivelled pumpkin in the midst.
+The eyeholes were now lustreless; but the rudely-carved gap, that
+just before had been a mouth still seemed to twist itself into a
+despairing grin, and was so far human.
+
+"Poor fellow!" quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the
+relics of her ill-fated contrivance. "My poor, dear, pretty
+Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and
+charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of
+wornout, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was! Yet
+they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they
+are. And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know
+himself and perish for it?"
+
+While thus muttering, the witch had filled a fresh pipe of
+tobacco, and held the stem between her fingers, as doubtful
+whether to thrust it into her own mouth or Feathertop's.
+
+"Poor Feathertop!" she continued. "I could easily give him
+another chance and send him forth again tomorrow. But no; his
+feelings are too tender, his sensibilities too deep. He seems to
+have too much heart to bustle for his own advantage in such an
+empty and heartless world. Well! well! I'll make a scarecrow of
+him after all. 'Tis an innocent and useful vocation, and will
+suit my darling well; and, if each of his human brethren had as
+fit a one, 't would be the better for mankind; and as for this
+pipe of tobacco, I need it more than he."
+
+So saying Mother Rigby put the stem between her lips. "Dickon!"
+cried she, in her high, sharp tone, "another coal for my pipe!"
+
+
+
+EGOTISM;[1] OR, THE BOSOM SERPENT
+
+[From the Unpublished "Allegories of the Heart."]
+
+[1] The physical fact, to which it is here attempted to give a
+moral signification, has been known to occur in more than one
+instance.
+
+
+"Here he comes!" shouted the boys along the street. "Here comes
+the man with a snake in his bosom!"
+
+This outcry, saluting Herkimer's ears as he was about to enter
+the iron gate of the Elliston mansion, made him pause. It was not
+without a shudder that he found himself on the point of meeting
+his former acquaintance, whom he had known in the glory of youth,
+and whom now after an interval of five years, he was to find the
+victim either of a diseased fancy or a horrible physical
+misfortune.
+
+"A snake in his bosom!" repeated the young sculptor to himself.
+"It must be he. No second man on earth has such a bosom friend.
+And now, my poor Rosina, Heaven grant me wisdom to discharge my
+errand aright! Woman's faith must be strong indeed since thine
+has not yet failed."
+
+Thus musing, he took his stand at the entrance of the gate and
+waited until the personage so singularly announced should make
+his appearance. After an instant or two he beheld the figure of a
+lean man, of unwholesome look, with glittering eyes and long
+black hair, who seemed to imitate the motion of a snake; for,
+instead of walking straight forward with open front, he undulated
+along the pavement in a curved line. It may be too fanciful to
+say that something, either in his moral or material aspect,
+suggested the idea that a miracle had been wrought by
+transforming a serpent into a man, but so imperfectly that the
+snaky nature was yet hidden, and scarcely hidden, under the mere
+outward guise of humanity. Herkimer remarked that his complexion
+had a greenish tinge over its sickly white, reminding him of a
+species of marble out of which he had once wrought a head of
+Envy, with her snaky locks.
+
+The wretched being approached the gate, but, instead of entering,
+stopped short and fixed the glitter of his eye full upon the
+compassionate yet steady countenance of the sculptor.
+
+"It gnaws me! It gnaws me!" he exclaimed.
+
+And then there was an audible hiss, but whether it came from the
+apparent lunatic's own lips, or was the real hiss of a serpent,
+might admit of a discussion. At all events, it made Herkimer
+shudder to his heart's core.
+
+"Do you know me, George Herkimer?" asked the snake-possessed.
+
+Herkimer did know him; but it demanded all the intimate and
+practical acquaintance with the human face, acquired by modelling
+actual likenesses in clay, to recognize the features of Roderick
+Elliston in the visage that now met the sculptor's gaze. Yet it
+was he. It added nothing to the wonder to reflect that the once
+brilliant young man had undergone this odious and fearful change
+during the no more than five brief years of Herkimer's abode at
+Florence. The possibility of such a transformation being granted,
+it was as easy to conceive it effected in a moment as in an age.
+Inexpressibly shocked and startled, it was still the keenest pang
+when Herkimer remembered that the fate of his cousin Rosina, the
+ideal of gentle womanhood, was indissolubly interwoven with that
+of a being whom Providence seemed to have unhumanized.
+
+"Elliston! Roderick!" cried he, "I had heard of this; but my
+conception came far short of the truth. What has befallen you?
+Why do I find you thus?"
+
+"Oh, 'tis a mere nothing! A snake! A snake! The commonest thing
+in the world. A snake in the bosom--that's all," answered
+Roderick Elliston. "But how is your own breast?" continued he,
+looking the sculptor in the eye with the most acute and
+penetrating glance that it had ever been his fortune to
+encounter. "All pure and wholesome? No reptile there? By my faith
+and conscience, and by the devil within me, here is a wonder! A
+man without a serpent in his bosom!"
+
+"Be calm, Elliston," whispered George Herkimer, laying his hand
+upon the shoulder of the snake-possessed. "I have crossed the
+ocean to meet you. Listen! Let us be private. I bring a message
+from Rosina--from your wife!"
+
+"It gnaws me! It gnaws me!" muttered Roderick.
+
+With this exclamation, the most frequent in his mouth, the
+unfortunate man clutched both hands upon his breast as if an
+intolerable sting or torture impelled him to rend it open and let
+out the living mischief, even should it be intertwined with his
+own life. He then freed himself from Herkimer's grasp by a subtle
+motion, and, gliding through the gate, took refuge in his
+antiquated family residence. The sculptor did not pursue him. He
+saw that no available intercourse could be expected at such a
+moment, and was desirous, before another meeting, to inquire
+closely into the nature of Roderick's disease and the
+circumstances that had reduced him to so lamentable a condition.
+He succeeded in obtaining the necessary information from an
+eminent medical gentleman.
+
+Shortly after Elliston's separation from his wife--now nearly
+four years ago--his associates had observed a singular gloom
+spreading over his daily life, like those chill, gray mists that
+sometimes steal away the sunshine from a summer's morning. The
+symptoms caused them endless perplexity. They knew not whether
+ill health were robbing his spirits of elasticity, or whether a
+canker of the mind was gradually eating, as such cankers do, from
+his moral system into the physical frame, which is but the shadow
+of the former. They looked for the root of this trouble in his
+shattered schemes of domestic bliss,--wilfully shattered by
+himself,--but could not be satisfied of its existence there. Some
+thought that their once brilliant friend was in an incipient
+stage of insanity, of which his passionate impulses had perhaps
+been the forerunners; others prognosticated a general blight and
+gradual decline. From Roderick's own lips they could learn
+nothing. More than once, it is true, he had been heard to say,
+clutching his hands convulsively upon his breast,--"It gnaws me!
+It gnaws me!"--but, by different auditors, a great diversity of
+explanation was assigned to this ominous expression. What could
+it be that gnawed the breast of Roderick Elliston? Was it sorrow?
+Was it merely the tooth of physical disease? Or, in his reckless
+course, often verging upon profligacy, if not plunging into its
+depths, had he been guilty of some deed which made his bosom a
+prey to the deadlier fangs of remorse? There was plausible ground
+for each of these conjectures; but it must not be concealed that
+more than one elderly gentleman, the victim of good cheer and
+slothful habits, magisterially pronounced the secret of the whole
+matter to be Dyspepsia!
+
+Meanwhile, Roderick seemed aware how generally he had become the
+subject of curiosity and conjecture, and, with a morbid
+repugnance to such notice, or to any notice whatsoever, estranged
+himself from all companionship. Not merely the eye of man was a
+horror to him; not merely the light of a friend's countenance;
+but even the blessed sunshine, likewise, which in its universal
+beneficence typifies the radiance of the Creator's face,
+expressing his love for all the creatures of his hand. The dusky
+twilight was now too transparent for Roderick Elliston; the
+blackest midnight was his chosen hour to steal abroad; and if
+ever he were seen, it was when the watchman's lantern gleamed
+upon his figure, gliding along the street, with his hands
+clutched upon his bosom, still muttering, "It gnaws me! It gnaws
+me!" What could it be that gnawed him?
+
+After a time, it became known that Elliston was in the habit of
+resorting to all the noted quacks that infested the city, or whom
+money would tempt to journey thither from a distance. By one of
+these persons, in the exultation of a supposed cure, it was
+proclaimed far and wide, by dint of handbills and little
+pamphlets on dingy paper, that a distinguished gentleman,
+Roderick Elliston, Esq., had been relieved of a SNAKE in his
+stomach! So here was the monstrous secret, ejected from its
+lurking place into public view, in all its horrible deformity.
+The mystery was out; but not so the bosom serpent. He, if it were
+anything but a delusion, still lay coiled in his living den. The
+empiric's cure had been a sham, the effect, it was supposed, of
+some stupefying drug which more nearly caused the death of the
+patient than of the odious reptile that possessed him. When
+Roderick Elliston regained entire sensibility, it was to find his
+misfortune the town talk--the more than nine days' wonder and
+horror--while, at his bosom, he felt the sickening motion of a
+thing alive, and the gnawing of that restless fang which seemed
+to gratify at once a physical appetite and a fiendish spite.
+
+He summoned the old black servant, who had been bred up in his
+father's house, and was a middle-aged man while Roderick lay in
+his cradle.
+
+"Scipio!" he began; and then paused, with his arms folded over
+his heart. "What do people say of me, Scipio."
+
+"Sir! my poor master! that you had a serpent in your bosom,"
+answered the servant with hesitation.
+
+"And what else?" asked Roderick, with a ghastly look at the man.
+
+"Nothing else, dear master," replied Scipio, "only that the
+doctor gave you a powder, and that the snake leaped out upon the
+floor."
+
+"No, no!" muttered Roderick to himself, as he shook his head, and
+pressed his hands with a more convulsive force upon his breast,
+"I feel him still. It gnaws me! It gnaws me!"
+
+From this time the miserable sufferer ceased to shun the world,
+but rather solicited and forced himself upon the notice of
+acquaintances and strangers. It was partly the result of
+desperation on finding that the cavern of his own bosom had not
+proved deep and dark enough to hide the secret, even while it was
+so secure a fortress for the loathsome fiend that had crept into
+it. But still more, this craving for notoriety was a symptom of
+the intense morbidness which now pervaded his nature. All persons
+chronically diseased are egotists, whether the disease be of the
+mind or body; whether it be sin, sorrow, or merely the more
+tolerable calamity of some endless pain, or mischief among the
+cords of mortal life. Such individuals are made acutely conscious
+of a self, by the torture in which it dwells. Self, therefore,
+grows to be so prominent an object with them that they cannot but
+present it to the face of every casual passer-by. There is a
+pleasure--perhaps the greatest of which the sufferer is
+susceptible--in displaying the wasted or ulcerated limb, or the
+cancer in the breast; and the fouler the crime, with so much the
+more difficulty does the perpetrator prevent it from thrusting up
+its snake-like head to frighten the world; for it is that cancer,
+or that crime, which constitutes their respective individuality.
+Roderick Elliston, who, a little while before, had held himself
+so scornfully above the common lot of men, now paid full
+allegiance to this humiliating law. The snake in his bosom seemed
+the symbol of a monstrous egotism to which everything was
+referred, and which he pampered, night and day, with a continual
+and exclusive sacrifice of devil worship.
+
+He soon exhibited what most people considered indubitable tokens
+of insanity. In some of his moods, strange to say, he prided and
+gloried himself on being marked out from the ordinary experience
+of mankind, by the possession of a double nature, and a life
+within a life. He appeared to imagine that the snake was a
+divinity,--not celestial, it is true, but darkly infernal,--and
+that he thence derived an eminence and a sanctity, horrid,
+indeed, yet more desirable than whatever ambition aims at. Thus
+he drew his misery around him like a regal mantle, and looked
+down triumphantly upon those whose vitals nourished no deadly
+monster. Oftener, however, his human nature asserted its empire
+over him in the shape of a yearning for fellowship. It grew to be
+his custom to spend the whole day in wandering about the streets,
+aimlessly, unless it might be called an aim to establish a
+species of brotherhood between himself and the world. With
+cankered ingenuity, he sought out his own disease in every
+breast. Whether insane or not, he showed so keen a perception of
+frailty, error, and vice, that many persons gave him credit for
+being possessed not merely with a serpent, but with an actual
+fiend, who imparted this evil faculty of recognizing whatever was
+ugliest in man's heart.
+
+For instance, he met an individual, who, for thirty years, had
+cherished a hatred against his own brother. Roderick, amidst the
+throng of the street, laid his hand on this man's chest, and
+looking full into his forbidding face,"How is the snake to-day?"
+he inquired, with a mock expression of sympathy.
+
+"The snake!" exclaimed the brother hater--"what do you mean?"
+
+"The snake! The snake! Does it gnaw you?" persisted Roderick.
+"Did you take counsel with him this morning when you should have
+been saying your prayers? Did he sting, when you thought of your
+brother's health, wealth, and good repute? Did he caper for joy,
+when you remembered the profligacy of his only son? And whether
+he stung, or whether he frolicked, did you feel his poison
+throughout your body and soul, converting everything to sourness
+and bitterness? That is the way of such serpents. I have learned
+the whole nature of them from my own!"
+
+"Where is the police?" roared the object of Roderick's
+persecution, at the same time giving an instinctive clutch to his
+breast. "Why is this lunatic allowed to go at large?"
+
+"Ha, ha!" chuckled Roderick, releasing his grasp of the man.--
+"His bosom serpent has stung him then!"
+
+Often it pleased the unfortunate young man to vex people with a
+lighter satire, yet still characterized by somewhat of snake-like
+virulence. One day he encountered an ambitious statesman, and
+gravely inquired after the welfare of his boa constrictor; for of
+that species, Roderick affirmed, this gentleman's serpent must
+needs be, since its appetite was enormous enough to devour the
+whole country and constitution. At another time, he stopped a
+close-fisted old fellow, of great wealth, but who skulked about
+the city in the guise of a scarecrow, with a patched blue
+surtout, brown hat, and mouldy boots, scraping pence together,
+and picking up rusty nails. Pretending to look earnestly at this
+respectable person's stomach, Roderick assured him that his snake
+was a copper-head and had been generated by the immense
+quantities of that base metal with which he daily defiled his
+fingers. Again, he assaulted a man of rubicund visage, and told
+him that few bosom serpents had more of the devil in them than
+those that breed in the vats of a distillery. The next whom
+Roderick honored with his attention was a distinguished
+clergyman, who happened just then to be engaged in a theological
+controversy, where human wrath was more perceptible than divine
+inspiration.
+
+"You have swallowed a snake in a cup of sacramental wine," quoth
+he. 
+
+"Profane wretch!" exclaimed the divine; but, nevertheless, his
+hand stole to his breast.
+
+He met a person of sickly sensibility, who, on some early
+disappointment, had retired from the world, and thereafter held
+no intercourse with his fellow-men, but brooded sullenly or
+passionately over the irrevocable past. This man's very heart, if
+Roderick might be believed, had been changed into a serpent,
+which would finally torment both him and itself to death.
+Observing a married couple, whose domestic troubles were matter
+of notoriety, he condoled with both on having mutually taken a
+house adder to their bosoms. To an envious author, who
+depreciated works which he could never equal, he said that his
+snake was the slimiest and filthiest of all the reptile tribe,
+but was fortunately without a sting. A man of impure life, and a
+brazen face, asking Roderick if there were any serpent in his
+breast, he told him that there was, and of the same species that
+once tortured Don Rodrigo, the Goth. He took a fair young girl by
+the hand, and gazing sadly into her eyes, warned her that she
+cherished a serpent of the deadliest kind within her gentle
+breast; and the world found the truth of those ominous words,
+when, a few months afterwards, the poor girl died of love and
+shame. Two ladies, rivals in fashionable life who tormented one
+another with a thousand little stings of womanish spite, were
+given to understand that each of their hearts was a nest of
+diminutive snakes, which did quite as much mischief as one great
+one.
+
+But nothing seemed to please Roderick better than to lay hold of
+a person infected with jealousy, which he represented as an
+enormous green reptile, with an ice-cold length of body, and the
+sharpest sting of any snake save one.
+
+"And what one is that?" asked a by-stander, overhearing him.
+
+It was a dark-browed man who put the question; he had an evasive
+eye, which in the course of a dozen years had looked no mortal
+directly in the face. There was an ambiguity about this person's
+character,--a stain upon his reputation,--yet none could tell
+precisely of what nature, although the city gossips, male and
+female, whispered the most atrocious surmises. Until a recent
+period he had followed the sea, and was, in fact, the very
+shipmaster whom George Herkimer had encountered, under such
+singular circumstances, in the Grecian Archipelago.
+
+"What bosom serpent has the sharpest sting?" repeated this man;
+but he put the question as if by a reluctant necessity, and grew
+pale while he was uttering it.
+
+"Why need you ask?" replied Roderick, with a look of dark
+intelligence. "Look into your own breast. Hark! my serpent
+bestirs himself! He acknowledges the presence of a master fiend!"
+
+And then, as the by-standers afterwards affirmed, a hissing sound
+was heard, apparently in Roderick Elliston's breast. It was said,
+too, that an answering hiss came from the vitals of the
+shipmaster, as if a snake were actually lurking there and had
+been aroused by the call of its brother reptile. If there were in
+fact any such sound, it might have been caused by a malicious
+exercise of ventriloquism on the part of Roderick.
+
+Thus making his own actual serpent--if a serpent there actually
+was in his bosom--the type of each man's fatal error, or hoarded
+sin, or unquiet conscience, and striking his sting so
+unremorsefully into the sorest spot, we may well imagine that
+Roderick became the pest of the city. Nobody could elude
+him--none could withstand him. He grappled with the ugliest truth
+that he could lay his hand on, and compelled his adversary to do
+the same. Strange spectacle in human life where it is the
+instinctive effort of one and all to hide those sad realities,
+and leave them undisturbed beneath a heap of superficial topics
+which constitute the materials of intercourse between man and
+man! It was not to be tolerated that Roderick Elliston should
+break through the tacit compact by which the world has done its
+best to secure repose without relinquishing evil. The victims of
+his malicious remarks, it is true, had brothers enough to keep
+them in countenance; for, by Roderick's theory, every mortal
+bosom harbored either a brood of small serpents or one overgrown
+monster that had devoured all the rest. Still the city could not
+bear this new apostle. It was demanded by nearly all, and
+particularly by the most respectable inhabitants, that Roderick
+should no longer be permitted to violate the received rules of
+decorum by obtruding his own bosom serpent to the public gaze,
+and dragging those of decent people from their lurking places.
+
+Accordingly, his relatives interfered and placed him in a private
+asylum for the insane. When the news was noised abroad, it was
+observed that many persons walked the streets with freer
+countenances and covered their breasts less carefully with their
+hands.
+
+His confinement, however, although it contributed not a little to
+the peace of the town, operated unfavorably upon Roderick
+himself. In solitude his melancholy grew more black and sullen.
+He spent whole days--indeed, it was his sole occupation--in
+communing with the serpent. A conversation was sustained, in
+which, as it seemed, the hidden monster bore a part, though
+unintelligibly to the listeners, and inaudible except in a hiss.
+Singular as it may appear, the sufferer had now contracted a sort
+of affection for his tormentor, mingled, however, with the
+intensest loathing and horror. Nor were such discordant emotions
+incompatible. Each, on the contrary, imparted strength and
+poignancy to its opposite. Horrible love--horrible
+antipathy--embracing one another in his bosom, and both
+concentrating themselves upon a being that had crept into his
+vitals or been engendered there, and which was nourished with his
+food, and lived upon his life, and was as intimate with him as
+his own heart, and yet was the foulest of all created things! But
+not the less was it the true type of a morbid nature.
+
+Sometimes, in his moments of rage and bitter hatred against the
+snake and himself, Roderick determined to be the death of him,
+even at the expense of his own life. Once he attempted it by
+starvation; but, while the wretched man was on the point of
+famishing, the monster seemed to feed upon his heart, and to
+thrive and wax gamesome, as if it were his sweetest and most
+congenial diet. Then he privily took a dose of active poison,
+imagining that it would not fail to kill either himself or the
+devil that possessed him, or both together. Another mistake; for
+if Roderick had not yet been destroyed by his own poisoned heart
+nor the snake by gnawing it, they had little to fear from arsenic
+or corrosive sublimate. Indeed, the venomous pest appeared to
+operate as an antidote against all other poisons. The physicians
+tried to suffocate the fiend with tobacco smoke. He breathed it
+as freely as if it were his native atmosphere. Again, they
+drugged their patient with opium and drenched him with
+intoxicating liquors, hoping that the snake might thus be reduced
+to stupor and perhaps be ejected from the stomach. They succeeded
+in rendering Roderick insensible; but, placing their hands upon
+his breast, they were inexpressibly horror stricken to feel the
+monster wriggling, twining, and darting to and fro within his
+narrow limits, evidently enlivened by the opium or alcohol, and
+incited to unusual feats of activity. Thenceforth they gave up
+all attempts at cure or palliation. The doomed sufferer submitted
+to his fate, resumed his former loathsome affection for the bosom
+fiend, and spent whole miserable days before a looking-glass,
+with his mouth wide open, watching, in hope and horror, to catch
+a glimpse of the snake's head far down within his throat. It is
+supposed that he succeeded; for the attendants once heard a
+frenzied shout, and, rushing into the room, found Roderick
+lifeless upon the floor.
+
+He was kept but little longer under restraint. After minute
+investigation, the medical directors of the asylum decided that
+his mental disease did not amount to insanity, nor would warrant
+his confinement, especially as its influence upon his spirits was
+unfavorable, and might produce the evil which it was meant to
+remedy. His eccentricities were doubtless great; he had
+habitually violated many of the customs and prejudices of
+society; but the world was not, without surer ground, entitled to
+treat him as a madman. On this decision of such competent
+authority Roderick was released, and had returned to his native
+city the very day before his encounter with George Herkimer.
+
+As soon as possible after learning these particulars the
+sculptor, together with a sad and tremulous companion, sought
+Elliston at his own house. It was a large, sombre edifice of
+wood, with pilasters and a balcony, and was divided from one of
+the principal streets by a terrace of three elevations, which was
+ascended by successive flights of stone steps. Some immense old
+elms almost concealed the front of the mansion. This spacious and
+once magnificent family residence was built by a grandee of the
+race early in the past century, at which epoch, land being of
+small comparative value, the garden and other grounds had formed
+quite an extensive domain. Although a portion of the ancestral
+heritage had been alienated, there was still a shadowy enclosure
+in the rear of the mansion where a student, or a dreamer, or a
+man of stricken heart might lie all day upon the grass, amid the
+solitude of murmuring boughs, and forget that a city had grown up
+around him.
+
+Into this retirement the sculptor and his companion were ushered
+by Scipio, the old black servant, whose wrinkled visage grew
+almost sunny with intelligence and joy as he paid his humble
+greetings to one of the two visitors.
+
+"Remain in the arbor," whispered the sculptor to the figure that
+leaned upon his arm. "You will know whether, and when, to make
+your appearance."
+
+"God will teach me," was the reply. "May He support me too!"
+
+Roderick was reclining on the margin of a fountain which gushed
+into the fleckered sunshine with the same clear sparkle and the
+same voice of  airy quietude as when trees of primeval growth
+flung their shadows cross its bosom. How strange is the life of a
+fountain!--born at every moment, yet of an age coeval with the
+rocks, and far surpassing the venerable antiquity of a forest.
+
+"You are come! I have expected you," said Elliston, when he
+became aware of the sculptor's presence.
+
+His manner was very different from that of the preceding
+day--quiet, courteous, and, as Herkimer thought, watchful both
+over his guest and himself. This unnatural restraint was almost
+the only trait that betokened anything amiss. He had just thrown
+a book upon the grass, where it lay half opened, thus disclosing
+itself to be a natural history of the serpent tribe, illustrated
+by lifelike plates. Near it lay that bulky volume, the Ductor
+Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor, full of cases of conscience, and in
+which most men, possessed of a conscience, may find something
+applicable to their purpose.
+
+"You see," observed Elliston, pointing to the book of serpents,
+while a smile gleamed upon his lips, "I am making an effort to
+become better acquainted with my bosom friend; but I find nothing
+satisfactory in this volume. If I mistake not, he will prove to
+be sui generis, and akin to no other reptile in creation."
+
+"Whence came this strange calamity?" inquired the sculptor.
+
+"My sable friend Scipio has a story," replied Roderick, "of a
+snake that had lurked in this fountain--pure and innocent as it
+looks--ever since it was known to the first settlers. This
+insinuating personage once crept into the vitals of my great
+grandfather and dwelt there many years, tormenting the old
+gentleman beyond mortal endurance. In short it is a family
+peculiarity. But, to tell you the truth, I have no faith in this
+idea of the snake's being an heirloom. He is my own snake, and no
+man's else."
+
+"But what was his origin?" demanded Herkimer.
+
+"Oh, there is poisonous stuff in any man's heart sufficient to
+generate a brood of serpents," said Elliston with a hollow laugh.
+"You should have heard my homilies to the good town's-people.
+Positively, I deem myself fortunate in having bred but a single
+serpent. You, however, have none in your bosom, and therefore
+cannot sympathize with the rest of the world. It gnaws me! It
+gnaws me!"
+
+With this exclamation Roderick lost his self-control and threw
+himself upon the grass, testifying his agony by intricate
+writhings, in which Herkimer could not but fancy a resemblance to
+the motions of a snake. Then, likewise, was heard that frightful
+hiss, which often ran through the sufferer's speech, and crept
+between the words and syllables without interrupting their
+succession.
+
+"This is awful indeed!" exclaimed the sculptor--"an awful
+infliction, whether it be actual or imaginary. Tell me, Roderick
+Elliston, is there any remedy for this loathsome evil?"
+
+"Yes, but an impossible one," muttered Roderick, as he lay
+wallowing with his face in the grass. "Could I for one moment
+forget myself, the serpent might not abide within me. It is my
+diseased self-contemplation that has engendered and nourished
+him."
+
+"Then forget yourself, my husband," said a gentle voice above
+him; "forget yourself in the idea of another!"
+
+Rosina had emerged from the arbor, and was bending over him with
+the shadow of his anguish reflected in her countenance, yet so
+mingled with hope and unselfish love that all anguish seemed but
+an earthly shadow and a dream. She touched Roderick with her
+hand. A tremor shivered through his frame. At that moment, if
+report be trustworthy, the sculptor beheld a waving motion
+through the grass, and heard a tinkling sound, as if something
+had plunged into the fountain. Be the truth as it might, it is
+certain that Roderick Elliston sat up like a man renewed,
+restored to his right mind, and rescued from the fiend which had
+so miserably overcome him in the battle-field of his own breast.
+
+"Rosina!" cried he, in broken and passionate tones, but with
+nothing of the wild wail that had haunted his voice so long,
+"forgive! forgive!"
+
+Her happy tears bedewed his face.
+
+"The punishment has been severe," observed the sculptor. "Even
+Justice might now forgive; how much more a woman's tenderness!
+Roderick Elliston, whether the serpent was a physical reptile, or
+whether the morbidness of your nature suggested that symbol to
+your fancy, the moral of the story is not the less true and
+strong. A tremendous Egotism, manifesting itself in your case in
+the form of jealousy, is as fearful a fiend as ever stole into
+the human heart. Can a breast, where it has dwelt so long, be
+purified?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Rosina with a heavenly smile. "The serpent was but
+a dark fantasy, and what it typified was as shadowy as itself.
+The past, dismal as it seems, shall fling no gloom upon the
+future. To give it its due importance we must think of it but as
+an anecdote in our Eternity."
+
+
+
+DROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE
+
+One sunshiny morning, in the good old times of the town of
+Boston, a young carver in wood, well known by the name of Drowne,
+stood contemplating a large oaken log, which it was his purpose
+to convert into the figure-head of a vessel. And while he
+discussed within his own mind what sort of shape or similitude it
+were well to bestow upon this excellent piece of timber, there
+came into Drowne's workshop a certain Captain Hunnewell, owner
+and commander of the good brig called the Cynosure, which had
+just returned from her first voyage to Fayal.
+
+"Ah! that will do, Drowne, that will do!" cried the jolly
+captain, tapping the log with his rattan. "I bespeak this very
+piece of oak for the figure-head of the Cynosure. She has shown
+herself the sweetest craft that ever floated, and I mean to
+decorate her prow with the handsomest image that the skill of man
+can cut out of timber. And, Drowne, you are the fellow to execute
+it."
+
+"You give me more credit than I deserve, Captain Hunnewell," said
+the carver, modestly, yet as one conscious of eminence in his
+art. "But, for the sake of the good brig, I stand ready to do my
+best. And which of these designs do you prefer? Here,"--pointing
+to a staring, half-length figure, in a white wig and scarlet
+coat,--"here is an excellent model, the likeness of our gracious
+king. Here is the valiant Admiral Vernon. Or, if you prefer a
+female figure, what say you to Britannia with the trident?"
+
+"All very fine, Drowne; all very fine," answered the mariner.
+"But as nothing like the brig ever swam the ocean, so I am
+determined she shall have such a figure-head as old Neptune never
+saw in his life. And what is more, as there is a secret in the
+matter, you must pledge your credit not to betray it."
+
+"Certainly," said Drowne, marvelling, however, what possible
+mystery there could be in reference to an affair so open, of
+necessity, to the inspection of all the world as the figure-head
+of a vessel. "You may depend, captain, on my being as secret as
+the nature of the case will permit."
+
+Captain Hunnewell then took Drowne by the button, and
+communicated his wishes in so low a tone that it would be
+unmannerly to repeat what was evidently intended for the carver's
+private ear. We shall, therefore, take the opportunity to give
+the reader a few desirable particulars about Drowne himself.
+
+He was the first American who is known to have attempted--in a
+very humble line, it is true--that art in which we can now reckon
+so many names already distinguished, or rising to distinction.
+From his earliest boyhood he had exhibited a knack--for it would
+be too proud a word to call it genius--a knack, therefore, for
+the imitation of the human figure in whatever material came most
+readily to hand. The snows of a New England winter had often
+supplied him with a species of marble as dazzingly white, at
+least, as the Parian or the Carrara, and if less durable, yet
+sufficiently so to correspond with any claims to permanent
+existence possessed by the boy's frozen statues. Yet they won
+admiration from maturer judges than his school-fellows, and were
+indeed, remarkably clever, though destitute of the native warmth
+that might have made the snow melt beneath his hand. As he
+advanced in life, the young man adopted pine and oak as eligible
+materials for the display of his skill, which now began to bring
+him a return of solid silver as well as the empty praise that had
+been an apt reward enough for his productions of evanescent snow.
+He became noted for carving ornamental pump heads, and wooden
+urns for gate posts, and decorations, more grotesque than
+fanciful, for mantelpieces. No apothecary would have deemed
+himself in the way of obtaining custom without setting up a
+gilded mortar, if not a head of Galen or Hippocrates, from the
+skilful hand of Drowne.
+
+But the great scope of his business lay in the manufacture of
+figure-heads for vessels. Whether it were the monarch himself, or
+some famous British admiral or general, or the governor of the
+province, or perchance the favorite daughter of the ship-owner,
+there the image stood above the prow, decked out in gorgeous
+colors, magnificently gilded, and staring the whole world out of
+countenance, as if from an innate consciousness of its own
+superiority. These specimens of native sculpture had crossed the
+sea in all directions, and been not ignobly noticed among the
+crowded shipping of the Thames and wherever else the hardy
+mariners of New England had pushed their adventures. It must be
+confessed that a family likeness pervaded these respectable
+progeny of Drowne's skill; that the benign countenance of the
+king resembled those of his subjects, and that Miss Peggy Hobart,
+the merchant's daughter, bore a remarkable similitude to
+Britannia, Victory, and other ladies of the allegoric sisterhood;
+and, finally, that they all had a kind of wooden aspect which
+proved an intimate relationship with the unshaped blocks of
+timber in the carver's workshop. But at least there was no
+inconsiderable skill of hand, nor a deficiency of any attribute
+to render them really works of art, except that deep quality, be
+it of soul or intellect, which bestows life upon the lifeless and
+warmth upon the cold, and which, had it been present, would have
+made Drowne's wooden image instinct with spirit.
+
+The captain of the Cynosure had now finished his instructions.
+
+"And Drowne," said he, impressively, "you must lay aside all
+other business and set about this forthwith. And as to the price,
+only do the job in first-rate style, and you shall settle that
+point yourself."
+
+"Very well, captain," answered the carver, who looked grave and
+somewhat perplexed, yet had a sort of smile upon his visage;
+"depend upon it, I'll do my utmost to satisfy you."
+
+From that moment the men of taste about Long Wharf and the Town
+Dock who were wont to show their love for the arts by frequent
+visits to Drowne's workshop, and admiration of his wooden images,
+began to be sensible of a mystery in the carver's conduct. Often
+he was absent in the daytime. Sometimes, as might be judged by
+gleams of light from the shop windows, he was at work until a
+late hour of the evening; although neither knock nor voice, on
+such occasions, could gain admittance for a visitor, or elicit
+any word of response. Nothing remarkable, however, was observed
+in the shop at those late hours when it was thrown open. A fine
+piece of timber, indeed, which Drowne was known to have reserved
+for some work of especial dignity, was seen to be gradually
+assuming shape. What shape it was destined ultimately to take was
+a problem to his friends and a point on which the carver himself
+preserved a rigid silence. But day after day, though Drowne was
+seldom noticed in the act of working upon it, this rude form
+began to be developed until it became evident to all observers
+that a female figure was growing into mimic life. At each new
+visit they beheld a larger pile of wooden chips and a nearer
+approximation to something beautiful. It seemed as if the
+hamadryad of the oak had sheltered herself from the unimaginative
+world within the heart of her native tree, and that it was only
+necessary to remove the strange shapelessness that had incrusted
+her, and reveal the grace and loveliness of a divinity. Imperfect
+as the design, the attitude, the costume, and especially the face
+of the image still remained, there was already an effect that
+drew the eye from the wooden cleverness of Drowne's earlier
+productions and fixed it upon the tantalizing mystery of this new
+project.
+
+Copley, the celebrated painter, then a young man and a resident
+of Boston, came one day to visit Drowne; for he had recognized so
+much of moderate ability in the carver as to induce him, in the
+dearth of professional sympathy, to cultivate his acquaintance.
+On entering the shop, the artist glanced at the inflexible image
+of king, commander, dame, and allegory, that stood around, on the
+best of which might have been bestowed the questionable praise
+that it looked as if a living man had here been changed to wood,
+and that not only the physical, but the intellectual and
+spiritual part, partook of the stolid transformation. But in not
+a single instance did it seem as if the wood were imbibing the
+ethereal essence of humanity. What a wide distinction is here!
+and how far the slightest portion of the latter merit have
+outvalued the utmost degree of the former!
+
+"My friend Drowne;" said Copley, smiling to himself, but alluding
+to the mechanical and wooden cleverness that so invariably
+distinguished the images, "you are really a remarkable person! I
+have seldom met with a man in your line of business that could do
+so much; for one other touch might make this figure of General
+Wolfe, for instance, a breathing and intelligent human creature."
+
+"You would have me think that you are praising me highly, Mr.
+Copley," answered Drowne, turning his back upon Wolfe's image in
+apparent disgust. "But there has come a light into my mind. I
+know what you know as well, that the one touch which you speak of
+as deficient is the only one that would be truly valuable, and
+that without it these works of mine are no better than worthless
+abortions. There is the same difference between them and the
+works of an inspired artist as between a sign-post daub and one
+of your best pictures."
+
+"This is strange," cried Copley, looking him in the face, which
+now, as the painter fancied, had a singular depth of
+intelligence, though hitherto it had not given him greatly the
+advantage over his own family of wooden images. "What has come
+over you? How is it that, possessing the idea which you have now
+uttered, you should produce only such works as these?"
+
+The carver smiled, but made no reply. Copley turned again to the
+images, conceiving that the sense of deficiency which Drowne had
+just expressed, and which is so rare in a merely mechanical
+character, must surely imply a genius, the tokens of which had
+heretofore been overlooked. But no; there was not a trace of it.
+He was about to withdraw when his eyes chanced to fall upon a
+half-developed figure which lay in a corner of the workshop,
+surrounded by scattered chips of oak. It arrested him at once.
+
+"What is here? Who has done this?" he broke out, after
+contemplating it in speechless astonishment for an instant. "Here
+is the divine, the lifegiving touch. What inspired hand is
+beckoning this wood to arise and live? Whose work is this?"
+
+"No man's work," replied Drowne. "The figure lies within that
+block of oak, and it is my business to find it."
+
+"Drowne," said the true artist, grasping the carver fervently by
+the hand, "you are a man of genius!"
+
+As Copley departed, happening to glance backward from the
+threshold, he beheld Drowne bending over the half-created shape,
+and stretching forth his arms as if he would have embraced and
+drawn it to his heart; while, had such a miracle been possible,
+his countenance expressed passion enough to communicate warmth
+and sensibility to the lifeless oak.
+
+"Strange enough!" said the artist to himself. "Who would have
+looked for a modern Pygmalion in the person of a Yankee
+mechanic!"
+
+As yet, the image was but vague in its outward presentment; so
+that, as in the cloud shapes around the western sun, the observer
+rather felt, or was led to imagine, than really saw what was
+intended by it. Day by day, however, the work assumed greater
+precision, and settled its irregular and misty outline into
+distincter grace and beauty. The general design was now obvious
+to the common eye. It was a female figure, in what appeared to be
+a foreign dress; the gown being laced over the bosom, and opening
+in front so as to disclose a skirt or petticoat, the folds and
+inequalities of which were admirably represented in the oaken
+substance. She wore a hat of singular gracefulness, and
+abundantly laden with flowers, such as never grew in the rude
+soil of New England, but which, with all their fanciful
+luxuriance, had a natural truth that it seemed impossible for the
+most fertile imagination to have attained without copying from
+real prototypes. There were several little appendages to this
+dress, such as a fan, a pair of earrings, a chain about the neck,
+a watch in the bosom, and a ring upon the finger, all of which
+would have been deemed beneath the dignity of sculpture. They
+were put on, however, with as much taste as a lovely woman might
+have shown in her attire, and could therefore have shocked none
+but a judgment spoiled by artistic rules.
+
+The face was still imperfect; but gradually, by a magic touch,
+intelligence and sensibility brightened through the features,
+with all the effect of light gleaming forth from within the solid
+oak. The face became alive. It was a beautiful, though not
+precisely regular and somewhat haughty aspect, but with a certain
+piquancy about the eyes and mouth, which, of all expressions,
+would have seemed the most impossible to throw over a wooden
+countenance. And now, so far as carving went, this wonderful
+production was complete.
+
+"Drowne," said Copley, who had hardly missed a single day in his
+visits to the carver's workshop, "if this work were in marble it
+would make you famous at once; nay, I would almost affirm that it
+would make an era in the art. It is as ideal as an antique
+statue, and yet as real as any lovely woman whom one meets at a
+fireside or in the street. But I trust you do not mean to
+desecrate this exquisite creature with paint, like those staring
+kings and admirals yonder?"
+
+"Not paint her!" exclaimed Captain Hunnewell, who stood by; "not
+paint the figure-head of the Cynosure! And what sort of a figure
+should I cut in a foreign port with such an unpainted oaken stick
+as this over my prow! She must, and she shall, be painted to the
+life, from the topmost flower in her hat down to the silver
+spangles on her slippers."
+
+"Mr. Copley," said Drowne, quietly, "I know nothing of marble
+statuary, and nothing of the sculptor's rules of art; but of this
+wooden image, this work of my hands, this creature of my
+heart,"--and here his voice faltered and choked in a very
+singular manner,--"of this--of her --I may say that I know
+something. A well-spring of inward wisdom gushed within me as I
+wrought upon the oak with my whole strength, and soul, and faith.
+Let others do what they may with marble, and adopt what rules
+they choose. If I can produce my desired effect by painted wood,
+those rules are not for me, and I have a right to disregard
+them."
+
+"The very spirit of genius," muttered Copley to himself. "How
+otherwise should this carver feel himself entitled to transcend
+all rules, and make me ashamed of quoting them?"
+
+He looked earnestly at Drowne, and again saw that expression of
+human love which, in a spiritual sense, as the artist could not
+help imagining, was the secret of the life that had been breathed
+into this block of wood.
+
+The carver, still in the same secrecy that marked all his
+operations upon this mysterious image, proceeded to paint the
+habiliments in their proper colors, and the countenance with
+Nature's red and white. When all was finished he threw open his
+workshop, and admitted the towns people to behold what he had
+done. Most persons, at their first entrance, felt impelled to
+remove their hats, and pay such reverence as was due to the
+richly-dressed and beautiful young lady who seemed to stand in a
+corner of the room, with oaken chips and shavings scattered at
+her feet. Then came a sensation of fear; as if, not being
+actually human, yet so like humanity, she must therefore be
+something preternatural. There was, in truth, an indefinable air
+and expression that might reasonably induce the query, Who and
+from what sphere this daughter of the oak should be? The strange,
+rich flowers of Eden on her head; the complexion, so much deeper
+and more brilliant than those of our native beauties; the
+foreign, as it seemed, and fantastic garb, yet not too fantastic
+to be worn decorously in the street; the delicately-wrought
+embroidery of the skirt; the broad gold chain about her neck; the
+curious ring upon her finger; the fan, so exquisitely sculptured
+in open work, and painted to resemble pearl and ebony;--where
+could Drowne, in his sober walk of life, have beheld the vision
+here so matchlessly embodied! And then her face! In the dark
+eyes, and around the voluptuous mouth, there played a look made
+up of pride, coquetry, and a gleam of mirthfulness, which
+impressed Copley with the idea that the image was secretly
+enjoying the perplexing admiration of himself and other
+beholders.
+
+"And will you," said he to the carver, "permit this masterpiece
+to become the figure-head of a vessel? Give the honest captain
+yonder figure of Britannia--it will answer his purpose far
+better--and send this fairy queen to England, where, for aught I
+know, it may bring you a thousand pounds."
+
+"I have not wrought it for money," said Drowne.
+
+"What sort of a fellow is this!" thought Copley. "A Yankee, and
+throw away the chance of making his fortune! He has gone mad; and
+thence has come this gleam of genius."
+
+There was still further proof of Drowne's lunacy, if credit were
+due to the rumor that he had been seen kneeling at the feet of
+the oaken lady, and gazing with a lover's passionate ardor into
+the face that his own hands had created. The bigots of the day
+hinted that it would be no matter of surprise if an evil spirit
+were allowed to enter this beautiful form, and seduce the carver
+to destruction.
+
+The fame of the image spread far and wide. The inhabitants
+visited it so universally, that after a few days of exhibition
+there was hardly an old man or a child who had not become
+minutely familiar with its aspect. Even had the story of Drowne's
+wooden image ended here, its celebrity might have been prolonged
+for many years by the reminiscences of those who looked upon it
+in their childhood, and saw nothing else so beautiful in after
+life. But the town was now astounded by an event, the narrative
+of which has formed itself into one of the most singular legends
+that are yet to be met with in the traditionary chimney corners
+of the New England metropolis, where old men and women sit
+dreaming of the past, and wag their heads at the dreamers of the
+present and the future.
+
+One fine morning, just before the departure of the Cynosure on
+her second voyage to Fayal, the commander of that gallant vessel
+was seen to issue from his residence in Hanover Street. He was
+stylishly dressed in a blue broadcloth coat, with gold lace at
+the seams and button-holes, an embroidered scarlet waistcoat, a
+triangular hat, with a loop and broad binding of gold, and wore a
+silver-hilted hanger at his side. But the good captain might have
+been arrayed in the robes of a prince or the rags of a beggar,
+without in either case attracting notice, while obscured by such
+a companion as now leaned on his arm. The people in the street
+started, rubbed their eyes, and either leaped aside from their
+path, or stood as if transfixed to wood or marble in
+astonishment.
+
+"Do you see it?--do you see it?" cried one, with tremulous
+eagerness. "It is the very same!"
+
+"The same?" answered another, who had arrived in town only the
+night before. "Who do you mean? I see only a sea-captain in his
+shoregoing clothes, and a young lady in a foreign habit, with a
+bunch of beautiful flowers in her hat. On my word, she is as fair
+and bright a damsel as my eyes have looked on this many a day!"
+
+"Yes; the same!--the very same!" repeated the other. "Drowne's
+wooden image has come to life!"
+
+Here was a miracle indeed! Yet, illuminated by the sunshine, or
+darkened by the alternate shade of the houses, and with its
+garments fluttering lightly in the morning breeze, there passed
+the image along the street. It was exactly and minutely the
+shape, the garb, and the face which the towns-people had so
+recently thronged to see and admire. Not a rich flower upon her
+head, not a single leaf, but had had its prototype in Drowne's
+wooden workmanship, although now their fragile grace had become
+flexible, and was shaken by every footstep that the wearer made.
+The broad gold chain upon the neck was identical with the one
+represented on the image, and glistened with the motion imparted
+by the rise and fall of the bosom which it decorated. A real
+diamond sparkled on her finger. In her right hand she bore a
+pearl and ebony fan, which she flourished with a fantastic and
+bewitching coquetry, that was likewise expressed in all her
+movements as well as in the style of her beauty and the attire
+that so well harmonized with it. The face with its brilliant
+depth of complexion had the same piquancy of mirthful mischief
+that was fixed upon the countenance of the image, but which was
+here varied and continually shifting, yet always essentially the
+same, like the sunny gleam upon a bubbling fountain. On the
+whole, there was something so airy and yet so real in the figure,
+and withal so perfectly did it represent Drowne's image, that
+people knew not whether to suppose the magic wood etherealized
+into a spirit or warmed and softened into an actual woman.
+
+"One thing is certain," muttered a Puritan of the old stamp,
+"Drowne has sold himself to the devil; and doubtless this gay
+Captain Hunnewell is a party to the bargain."
+
+"And I," said a young man who overheard him, "would almost
+consent to be the third victim, for the liberty of saluting those
+lovely lips."
+
+"And so would I," said Copley, the painter, "for the privilege of
+taking her picture."
+
+The image, or the apparition, whichever it might be, still
+escorted by the bold captain, proceeded from Hanover Street
+through some of the cross lanes that make this portion of the
+town so intricate, to Ann Street, thence into Dock Square, and so
+downward to Drowne's shop, which stood just on the water's edge.
+The crowd still followed, gathering volume as it rolled along.
+Never had a modern miracle occurred in such broad daylight, nor
+in the presence of such a multitude of witnesses. The airy image,
+as if conscious that she was the object of the murmurs and
+disturbance that swelled behind her, appeared slightly vexed and
+flustered, yet still in a manner consistent with the light
+vivacity and sportive mischief that were written in her
+countenance. She was observed to flutter her fan with such
+vehement rapidity that the elaborate delicacy of its workmanship
+gave way, and it remained broken in her hand.
+
+Arriving at Drowne's door, while the captain threw it open, the
+marvellous apparition paused an instant on the threshold,
+assuming the very attitude of the image, and casting over the
+crowd that glance of sunny coquetry which all remembered on the
+face of the oaken lady. She and her cavalier then disappeared.
+
+"Ah!" murmured the crowd, drawing a deep breath, as with one vast
+pair of lungs.
+
+"The world looks darker now that she has vanished," said some of
+the young men.
+
+But the aged, whose recollections dated as far back as witch
+times, shook their heads, and hinted that our forefathers would
+have thought it a pious deed to burn the daughter of the oak with
+fire.
+
+"If she be other than a bubble of the elements," exclaimed
+Copley, "I must look upon her face again."
+
+He accordingly entered the shop; and there, in her usual corner,
+stood the image, gazing at him, as it might seem, with the very
+same expression of mirthful mischief that had been the farewell
+look of the apparition when, but a moment before, she turned her
+face towards the crowd. The carver stood beside his creation
+mending the beautiful fan, which by some accident was broken in
+her hand. But there was no longer any motion in the lifelike
+image, nor any real woman in the workshop, nor even the
+witchcraft of a sunny shadow, that might have deluded people's
+eyes as it flitted along the street. Captain Hunnewell, too, had
+vanished. His hoarse sea-breezy tones, however, were audible on
+the other side of a door that opened upon the water.
+
+"Sit down in the stern sheets, my lady," said the gallant
+captain. "Come, bear a hand, you lubbers, and set us on board in
+the turning of a minute-glass."
+
+And then was heard the stroke of oars.
+
+"Drowne," said Copley with a smile of intelligence, "you have
+been a truly fortunate man. What painter or statuary ever had
+such a subject! No wonder that she inspired a genius into you,
+and first created the artist who afterwards created her image."
+
+Drowne looked at him with a visage that bore the traces of tears,
+but from which the light of imagination and sensibility, so
+recently illuminating it, had departed. He was again the
+mechanical carver that he had been known to be all his lifetime.
+
+"I hardly understand what you mean, Mr. Copley," said he, putting
+his hand to his brow. "This image! Can it have been my work?
+Well, I have wrought it in a kind of dream; and now that I am
+broad awake I must set about finishing yonder figure of Admiral
+Vernon."
+
+And forthwith he employed himself on the stolid countenance of
+one of his wooden progeny, and completed it in his own mechanical
+style, from which he was never known afterwards to deviate. He
+followed his business industriously for many years, acquired a
+competence, and in the latter part of his life attained to a
+dignified station in the church, being remembered in records and
+traditions as Deacon Drowne, the carver. One of his productions,
+an Indian chief, gilded all over, stood during the better part of
+a century on the cupola of the Province House, bedazzling the
+eyes of those who looked upward, like an angel of the sun.
+Another work of the good deacon's hand--a reduced likeness of his
+friend Captain Hunnewell, holding a telescope and quadrant--may
+be seen to this day, at the corner of Broad and State streets,
+serving in the useful capacity of sign to the shop of a nautical
+instrument maker. We know not how to account for the inferiority
+of this quaint old figure, as compared with the recorded
+excellence of the Oaken Lady, unless on the supposition that in
+every human spirit there is imagination, sensibility, creative
+power, genius, which, according to circumstances, may either be
+developed in this world, or shrouded in a mask of dulness until
+another state of being. To our friend Drowne there came a brief
+season of excitement, kindled by love. It rendered him a genius
+for that one occasion, but, quenched in disappointment, left him
+again the mechanical carver in wood, without the power even of
+appreciating the work that his own hands had wrought. Yet who can
+doubt that the very highest state to which a human spirit can
+attain, in its loftiest aspirations, is its truest and most
+natural state, and that Drowne was more consistent with himself
+when he wrought the admirable figure of the mysterious lady, than
+when he perpetrated a whole progeny of blockheads?
+
+There was a rumor in Boston, about this period, that a young
+Portuguese lady of rank, on some occasion of political or
+domestic disquietude, had fled from her home in Fayal and put
+herself under the protection of Captain Hunnewell, on board of
+whose vessel, and at whose residence, she was sheltered until a
+change of affairs. This fair stranger must have been the original
+of Drowne's Wooden Image.
+
+
+
+ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL
+
+One of the few incidents of Indian warfare naturally susceptible
+of the moonlight of romance was that expedition undertaken for
+the defence of the frontiers in the year 1725, which resulted in
+the well-remembered "Lovell's Fight." Imagination, by casting
+certain circumstances judicially into the shade, may see much to
+admire in the heroism of a little band who gave battle to twice
+their number in the heart of the enemy's country. The open
+bravery displayed by both parties was in accordance with
+civilized ideas of valor; and chivalry itself might not blush to
+record the deeds of one or two individuals. The battle, though so
+fatal to those who fought, was not unfortunate in its
+consequences to the country; for it broke the strength of a tribe
+and conduced to the peace which subsisted during several ensuing
+years. History and tradition are unusually minute in their
+memorials of their affair; and the captain of a scouting party of
+frontier men has acquired as actual a military renown as many a
+victorious leader of thousands. Some of the incidents contained
+in the following pages will be recognized, notwithstanding the
+substitution of fictitious names, by such as have heard, from old
+men's lips, the fate of the few combatants who were in a
+condition to retreat after "Lovell's Fight."
+
+     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
+
+The early sunbeams hovered cheerfully upon the tree-tops, beneath
+which two weary and wounded men had stretched their limbs the
+night before. Their bed of withered oak leaves was strewn upon
+the small level space, at the foot of a rock, situated near the
+summit of one of the gentle swells by which the face of the
+country is there diversified. The mass of granite, rearing its
+smooth, flat surface fifteen or twenty feet above their heads,
+was not unlike a gigantic gravestone, upon which the veins seemed
+to form an inscription in forgotten characters. On a tract of
+several acres around this rock, oaks and other hard-wood trees
+had supplied the place of the pines, which were the usual growth
+of the land; and a young and vigorous sapling stood close beside
+the travellers.
+
+The severe wound of the elder man had probably deprived him of
+sleep; for, so soon as the first ray of sunshine rested on the
+top of the highest tree, he reared himself painfully from his
+recumbent posture and sat erect. The deep lines of his
+countenance and the scattered gray of his hair marked him as past
+the middle age; but his muscular frame would, but for the effect
+of his wound, have been as capable of sustaining fatigue as in
+the early vigor of life. Languor and exhaustion now sat upon his
+haggard features; and the despairing glance which he sent forward
+through the depths of the forest proved his own conviction that
+his pilgrimage was at an end. He next turned his eyes to the
+companion who reclined by his side. The youth--for he had
+scarcely attained the years of manhood--lay, with his head upon
+his arm, in the embrace of an unquiet sleep, which a thrill of
+pain from his wounds seemed each moment on the point of breaking.
+His right hand grasped a musket; and, to judge from the violent
+action of his features, his slumbers were bringing back a vision
+of the conflict of which he was one of the few survivors. A
+shout deep and loud in his dreaming fancy--found its way in an
+imperfect murmur to his lips; and, starting even at the slight
+sound of his own voice, he suddenly awoke. The first act of
+reviving recollection was to make anxious inquiries respecting
+the condition of his wounded fellow-traveller. The latter shook
+his head.
+
+"Reuben, my boy," said he, "this rock beneath which we sit will
+serve for an old hunter's gravestone. There is many and many a
+long mile of howling wilderness before us yet; nor would it avail
+me anything if the smoke of my own chimney were but on the other
+side of that swell of land. The Indian bullet was deadlier than I
+thought."
+
+"You are weary with our three days' travel," replied the youth,
+"and a little longer rest will recruit you. Sit you here while I
+search the woods for the herbs and roots that must be our
+sustenance; and, having eaten, you shall lean on me, and we will
+turn our faces homeward. I doubt not that, with my help, you can
+attain to some one of the frontier garrisons."
+
+"There is not two days' life in me, Reuben," said the other,
+calmly, "and I will no longer burden you with my useless body,
+when you can scarcely support your own. Your wounds are deep and
+your strength is failing fast; yet, if you hasten onward alone,
+you may be preserved. For me there is no hope, and I will await
+death here."
+
+"If it must be so, I will remain and watch by you," said Reuben,
+resolutely
+
+"No, my son, no," rejoined his companion. "Let the wish of a
+dying man have weight with you; give me one grasp of your hand,
+and get you hence. Think you that my last moments will be eased
+by the thought that I leave you to die a more lingering death? I
+have loved you like a father, Reuben; and at a time like this I
+should have something of a father's authority. I charge you to be
+gone that I may die in peace."
+
+"And because you have been a father to me, should I therefore
+leave you to perish and to lie unburied in the wilderness?"
+exclaimed the youth. "No; if your end be in truth approaching, I
+will watch by you and receive your parting words. I will dig a
+grave here by the rock, in which, if my weakness overcome me, we
+will rest together; or, if Heaven gives me strength, I will seek
+my way home."
+
+"In the cities and wherever men dwell," replied the other, "they
+bury their dead in the earth; they hide them from the sight of
+the living; but here, where no step may pass perhaps for a
+hundred years, wherefore should I not rest beneath the open sky,
+covered only by the oak leaves when the autumn winds shall strew
+them? And for a monument, here is this gray rock, on which my
+dying hand shall carve the name of Roger Malvin, and the
+traveller in days to come will know that here sleeps a hunter and
+a warrior. Tarry not, then, for a folly like this, but hasten
+away, if not for your own sake, for hers who will else be
+desolate.'
+
+Malvin spoke the last few words in a faltering voice, and their
+effect upon his companion was strongly visible. They reminded him
+that there were other and less questionable duties than that of
+sharing the fate of a man whom his death could not benefit. Nor
+can it be affirmed that no selfish feeling strove to enter
+Reuben's heart, though the consciousness made him more earnestly
+resist his companion's entreaties.
+
+"How terrible to wait the slow approach of death in this
+solitude!" exclaimed he. "A brave man does not shrink in the
+battle; and, when friends stand round the bed, even women may die
+composedly; but here--"
+
+"I shall not shrink even here, Reuben Bourne," interrupted
+Malvin. "I am a man of no weak heart, and, if I were, there is a
+surer support than that of earthly friends. You are young, and
+life is dear to you. Your last moments will need comfort far more
+than mine; and when you have laid me in the earth, and are alone,
+and night is settling on the forest, you will feel all the
+bitterness of the death that may now be escaped. But I will urge
+no selfish motive to your generous nature. Leave me for my sake,
+that, having said a prayer for your safety, I may have space to
+settle my account undisturbed by worldly sorrows."
+
+"And your daughter,--how shall I dare to meet her eye?" exclaimed
+Reuben. "She will ask the fate of her father, whose life I vowed
+to defend with my own. Must I tell her that he travelled three
+days' march with me from the field of battle and that then I left
+him to perish in the wilderness? Were it not better to lie down
+and die by your side than to return safe and say this to Dorcas?"
+
+"Tell my daughter," said Roger Malvin, "that, though yourself
+sore wounded, and weak, and weary, you led my tottering footsteps
+many a mile, and left me only at my earnest entreaty, because I
+would not have your blood upon my soul. Tell her that through
+pain and danger you were faithful, and that, if your lifeblood
+could have saved me, it would have flowed to its last drop; and
+tell her that you will be something dearer than a father, and
+that my blessing is with you both, and that my dying eyes can see
+a long and pleasant path in which you will journey together."
+
+As Malvin spoke he almost raised himself from the ground, and the
+energy of his concluding words seemed to fill the wild and lonely
+forest with a vision of happiness; but, when he sank exhausted
+upon his bed of oak leaves, the light which had kindled in
+Reuben's eye was quenched. He felt as if it were both sin and
+folly to think of happiness at such a moment. His companion
+watched his changing countenance, and sought with generous art to
+wile him to his own good.
+
+"Perhaps I deceive myself in regard to the time I have to live,"
+he resumed. "It may be that, with speedy assistance, I might
+recover of my wound. The foremost fugitives must, ere this, have
+carried tidings of our fatal battle to the frontiers, and parties
+will be out to succor those in like condition with ourselves.
+Should you meet one of these and guide them hither, who can tell
+but that I may sit by my own fireside again?"
+
+A mournful smile strayed across the features of the dying man as
+he insinuated that unfounded hope,--which, however, was not
+without its effect on Reuben. No merely selfish motive, nor even
+the desolate condition of Dorcas, could have induced him to
+desert his companion at such a moment--but his wishes seized on
+the thought that Malvin's life might be preserved, and his
+sanguine nature heightened almost to certainty the remote
+possibility of procuring human aid.
+
+"Surely there is reason, weighty reason, to hope that friends are
+not far distant," he said, half aloud. "There fled one coward,
+unwounded, in the beginning of the fight, and most probably he
+made good speed. Every true man on the frontier would shoulder
+his musket at the news; and, though no party may range so far
+into the woods as this, I shall perhaps encounter them in one
+day's march. Counsel me faithfully," he added, turning to Malvin,
+in distrust of his own motives. "Were your situation mine, would
+you desert me while life remained?"
+
+"It is now twenty years," replied Roger Malvin,--sighing,
+however, as he secretly acknowledged the wide dissimilarity
+between the two cases,-"it is now twenty years since I escaped
+with one dear friend from Indian captivity near Montreal. We
+journeyed many days through the woods, till at length overcome
+with hunger and weariness, my friend lay down and besought me to
+leave him; for he knew that, if I remained, we both must perish;
+and, with but little hope of obtaining succor, I heaped a pillow
+of dry leaves beneath his head and hastened on."
+
+"And did you return in time to save him?" asked Reuben, hanging
+on Malvin's words as if they were to be prophetic of his own
+success.
+
+"I did," answered the other. "I came upon the camp of a hunting
+party before sunset of the same day. I guided them to the spot
+where my comrade was expecting death; and he is now a hale and
+hearty man upon his own farm, far within the frontiers, while I
+lie wounded here in the depths of the wilderness."
+
+This example, powerful in affecting Reuben's decision, was aided,
+unconsciously to himself, by the hidden strength of many another
+motive. Roger Malvin perceived that the victory was nearly won.
+
+"Now, go, my son, and Heaven prosper you!" he said. "Turn not
+back with your friends when you meet them, lest your wounds and
+weariness overcome you; but send hitherward two or three, that
+may be spared, to search for me; and believe me, Reuben, my heart
+will be lighter with every step you take towards home." Yet there
+was, perhaps, a change both in his countenance and voice as he
+spoke thus; for, after all, it was a ghastly fate to be left
+expiring in the wilderness.
+
+Reuben Bourne, but half convinced that he was acting rightly, at
+length raised himself from the ground and prepared himself for
+his departure. And first, though contrary to Malvin's wishes, he
+collected a stock of roots and herbs, which had been their only
+food during the last two days. This useless supply he placed
+within reach of the dying man, for whom, also, he swept together
+a bed of dry oak leaves. Then climbing to the summit of the rock,
+which on one side was rough and broken, he bent the oak sapling
+downward, and bound his handkerchief to the topmost branch. This
+precaution was not unnecessary to direct any who might come in
+search of Malvin; for every part of the rock, except its broad,
+smooth front, was concealed at a little distance by the dense
+undergrowth of the forest. The handkerchief had been the bandage
+of a wound upon Reuben's arm; and, as he bound it to the tree, he
+vowed by the blood that stained it that he would return, either
+to save his companion's life or to lay his body in the grave. He
+then descended, and stood, with downcast eyes, to receive Roger
+Malvin's parting words.
+
+The experience of the latter suggested much and minute advice
+respecting the youth's journey through the trackless forest. Upon
+this subject he spoke with calm earnestness, as if he were
+sending Reuben to the battle or the chase while he himself
+remained secure at home, and not as if the human countenance that
+was about to leave him were the last he would ever behold. But
+his firmness was shaken before he concluded.
+
+"Carry my blessing to Dorcas, and say that my last prayer shall
+be for her and you. Bid her to have no hard thoughts because you
+left me here," --Reuben's heart smote him,--"for that your life
+would not have weighed with you if its sacrifice could have done
+me good. She will marry you after she has mourned a little while
+for her father; and Heaven grant you long and happy days, and may
+your children's children stand round your death bed! And,
+Reuben," added he, as the weakness of mortality made its way at
+last, "return, when your wounds are healed and your weariness
+refreshed,--return to this wild rock, and lay my bones in the
+grave, and say a prayer over them."
+
+An almost superstitious regard, arising perhaps from the customs
+of the Indians, whose war was with the dead as well as the
+living, was paid by the frontier inhabitants to the rites of
+sepulture; and there are many instances of the sacrifice of life
+in the attempt to bury those who had fallen by the "sword of the
+wilderness." Reuben, therefore, felt the full importance of the
+promise which he most solemnly made to return and perform Roger
+Malvin's obsequies. It was remarkable that the latter, speaking
+his whole heart in his parting words, no longer endeavored to
+persuade the youth that even the speediest succor might avail to
+the preservation of his life. Reuben was internally convinced
+that he should see Malvin's living face no more. His generous
+nature would fain have delayed him, at whatever risk, till the
+dying scene were past; but the desire of existence and the hope
+of happiness had strengthened in his heart, and he was unable to
+resist them.
+
+"It is enough," said Roger Malvin, having listened to Reuben's
+promise. "Go, and God speed you!"
+
+The youth pressed his hand in silence, turned, and was departing.
+His slow and faltering steps, however, had borne him but a little
+way before Malvin's voice recalled him.
+
+"Reuben, Reuben," said he, faintly; and Reuben returned and knelt
+down by the dying man.
+
+"Raise me, and let me lean against the rock," was his last
+request. "My face will be turned towards home, and I shall see
+you a moment longer as you pass among the trees."
+
+Reuben, having made the desired alteration in his companion's
+posture, again began his solitary pilgrimage. He walked more
+hastily at first than was consistent with his strength; for a
+sort of guilty feeling, which sometimes torments men in their
+most justifiable acts, caused him to seek concealment from
+Malvin's eyes; but after he had trodden far upon the rustling
+forest leaves he crept back, impelled by a wild and painful
+curiosity, and, sheltered by the earthy roots of an uptorn tree,
+gazed earnestly at the desolate man. The morning sun was
+unclouded, and the trees and shrubs imbibed the sweet air of the
+month of May; yet there seemed a gloom on Nature's face, as if
+she sympathized with mortal pain and sorrow Roger Malvin's hands
+were uplifted in a fervent prayer, some of the words of which
+stole through the stillness of the woods and entered Reuben's
+heart, torturing it with an unutterable pang. They were the
+broken accents of a petition for his own happiness and that of
+Dorcas; and, as the youth listened, conscience, or something in
+its similitude, pleaded strongly with him to return and lie down
+again by the rock. He felt how hard was the doom of the kind and
+generous being whom he had deserted in his extremity. Death would
+come like the slow approach of a corpse, stealing gradually
+towards him through the forest, and showing its ghastly and
+motionless features from behind a nearer and yet a nearer tree.
+But such must have been Reuben's own fate had he tarried another
+sunset; and who shall impute blame to him if he shrink from so
+useless a sacrifice? As he gave a parting look, a breeze waved
+the little banner upon the sapling oak and reminded Reuben of his
+vow.
+
+     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+Many circumstances combined to retard the wounded traveller in
+his way to the frontiers. On the second day the clouds, gathering
+densely over the sky, precluded the possibility of regulating his
+course by the position of the sun; and he knew not but that every
+effort of his almost exhausted strength was removing him farther
+from the home he sought. His scanty sustenance was supplied by
+the berries and other spontaneous products of the forest. Herds
+of deer, it is true, sometimes bounded past him, and partridges
+frequently whirred up before his footsteps; but his ammunition
+had been expended in the fight, and he had no means of slaying
+them. His wounds, irritated by the constant exertion in which lay
+the only hope of life, wore away his strength and at intervals
+confused his reason. But, even in the wanderings of intellect,
+Reuben's young heart clung strongly to existence; and it was only
+through absolute incapacity of motion that he at last sank down
+beneath a tree, compelled there to await death.
+
+In this situation he was discovered by a party who, upon the
+first intelligence of the fight, had been despatched to the
+relief of the survivors. They conveyed him to the nearest
+settlement, which chanced to be that of his own residence.
+
+Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time, watched by the
+bedside of her wounded lover, and administered all those comforts
+that are in the sole gift of woman's heart and hand. During
+several days Reuben's recollection strayed drowsily among the
+perils and hardships through which he had passed, and he was
+incapable of returning definite answers to the inquiries with
+which many were eager to harass him. No authentic particulars of
+the battle had yet been circulated; nor could mothers, wives, and
+children tell whether their loved ones were detained by captivity
+or by the stronger chain of death. Dorcas nourished her
+apprehensions in silence till one afternoon when Reuben awoke
+from an unquiet sleep, and seemed to recognize her more perfectly
+than at any previous time. She saw that his intellect had become
+composed, and she could no longer restrain her filial anxiety.
+
+"My father, Reuben?" she began; but the change in her lover's
+countenance made her pause.
+
+The youth shrank as if with a bitter pain, and the blood gushed
+vividly into his wan and hollow cheeks. His first impulse was to
+cover his face; but, apparently with a desperate effort, he half
+raised himself and spoke vehemently, defending himself against an
+imaginary accusation.
+
+"Your father was sore wounded in the battle, Dorcas; and he bade
+me not burden myself with him, but only to lead him to the
+lakeside, that he might quench his thirst and die. But I would
+not desert the old man in his extremity, and, though bleeding
+myself, I supported him; I gave him half my strength, and led him
+away with me. For three days we journeyed on together, and your
+father was sustained beyond my hopes, but, awaking at sunrise on
+the fourth day, I found him faint and exhausted; he was unable to
+proceed; his life had ebbed away fast; and--"
+
+"He died!" exclaimed Dorcas, faintly.
+
+Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge that his selfish love of
+life had hurried him away before her father's fate was decided.
+He spoke not; he only bowed his head; and, between shame and
+exhaustion, sank back and hid his face in the pillow. Dorcas wept
+when her fears were thus confirmed; but the shock, as it had been
+long anticipated. was on that account the less violent.
+
+"You dug a grave for my poor father in the wilderness, Reuben?"
+was the question by which her filial piety manifested itself.
+
+"My hands were weak; but I did what I could," replied the youth
+in a smothered tone. "There stands a noble tombstone above his
+head; and I would to Heaven I slept as soundly as he!"
+
+Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter words, inquired no
+further at the time; but her heart found ease in the thought that
+Roger Malvin had not lacked such funeral rites as it was possible
+to bestow. The tale of Reuben's courage and fidelity lost nothing
+when she communicated it to her friends; and the poor youth,
+tottering from his sick chamber to breathe the sunny air,
+experienced from every tongue the miserable and humiliating
+torture of unmerited praise. All acknowledged that he might
+worthily demand the hand of the fair maiden to whose father he
+had been "faithful unto death;" and, as my tale is not of love,
+it shall suffice to say that in the space of a few months Reuben
+became the husband of Dorcas Malvin. During the marriage ceremony
+the bride was covered with blushes, but the bridegroom's face was
+pale.
+
+There was now in the breast of Reuben Bourne an incommunicable
+thought--something which he was to conceal most heedfully from
+her whom he most loved and trusted. He regretted, deeply and
+bitterly, the moral cowardice that had restrained his words when
+he was about to disclose the truth to Dorcas; but pride, the fear
+of losing her affection, the dread of universal scorn, forbade
+him to rectify this falsehood. He felt that for leaving Roger
+Malvin he deserved no censure. His presence, the gratuitous
+sacrifice of his own life, would have added only another and a
+needless agony to the last moments of the dying man; but
+concealment had imparted to a justifiable act much of the secret
+effect of guilt; and Reuben, while reason told him that he had
+done right, experienced in no small degree the mental horrors
+which punish the perpetrator of undiscovered crime. By a certain
+association of ideas, he at times almost imagined himself a
+murderer. For years, also, a thought would occasionally recur,
+which, though he perceived all its folly and extravagance, he had
+not power to banish from his mind. It was a haunting and
+torturing fancy that his father-in-law was yet sitting at the
+foot of the rock, on the withered forest leaves, alive, and
+awaiting his pledged assistance. These mental deceptions,
+however, came and went, nor did he ever mistake them for
+realities: but in the calmest and clearest moods of his mind he
+was conscious that he had a deep vow unredeemed, and that an
+unburied corpse was calling to him out of the wilderness. Yet
+such was the consequence of his prevarication that he could not
+obey the call. It was now too late to require the assistance of
+Roger Malvin's friends in performing his long-deferred sepulture;
+and superstitious fears, of which none were more susceptible than
+the people of the outward settlements, forbade Reuben to go
+alone. Neither did he know where in the pathless and illimitable
+forest to seek that smooth and lettered rock at the base of which
+the body lay: his remembrance of every portion of his travel
+thence was indistinct, and the latter part had left no impression
+upon his mind. There was, however, a continual impulse, a voice
+audible only to himself, commanding him to go forth and redeem
+his vow; and he had a strange impression that, were he to make
+the trial, he would be led straight to Malvin's bones. But year
+after year that summons, unheard but felt, was disobeyed. His one
+secret thought became like a chain binding down his spirit and
+like a serpent gnawing into his heart; and he was transformed
+into a sad and downcast yet irritable man.
+
+In the course of a few years after their marriage changes began
+to be visible in the external prosperity of Reuben and Dorcas.
+The only riches of the former had been his stout heart and strong
+arm; but the latter, her father's sole heiress, had made her
+husband master of a farm, under older cultivation, larger, and
+better stocked than most of the frontier establishments. Reuben
+Bourne, however, was a neglectful husbandman; and, while the
+lands of the other settlers became annually more fruitful, his
+deteriorated in the same proportion. The discouragements to
+agriculture were greatly lessened by the cessation of Indian war,
+during which men held the plough in one hand and the musket in
+the other, and were fortunate if the products of their dangerous
+labor were not destroyed, either in the field or in the barn, by
+the savage enemy. But Reuben did not profit by the altered
+condition of the country; nor can it be denied that his intervals
+of industrious attention to his affairs were but scantily
+rewarded with success. The irritability by which he had recently
+become distinguished was another cause of his declining
+prosperity, as it occasioned frequent quarrels in his unavoidable
+intercourse with the neighboring settlers. The results of these
+were innumerable lawsuits; for the people of New England, in the
+earliest stages and wildest circumstances of the country,
+adopted, whenever attainable, the legal mode of deciding their
+differences. To be brief, the world did not go well with Reuben
+Bourne; and, though not till many years after his marriage, he
+was finally a ruined man, with but one remaining expedient
+against the evil fate that had pursued him. He was to throw
+sunlight into some deep recess of the forest, and seek
+subsistence from the virgin bosom of the wilderness.
+
+The only child of Reuben and Dorcas was a son, now arrived at the
+age of fifteen years, beautiful in youth, and giving promise of a
+glorious manhood. He was peculiarly qualified for, and already
+began to excel in, the wild accomplishments of frontier life. His
+foot was fleet, his aim true, his apprehension quick, his heart
+glad and high; and all who anticipated the return of Indian war
+spoke of Cyrus Bourne as a future leader in the land. The boy was
+loved by his father with a deep and silent strength, as if
+whatever was good and happy in his own nature had been
+transferred to his child, carrying his affections with it. Even
+Dorcas, though loving and beloved, was far less dear to him; for
+Reuben's secret thoughts and insulated emotions had gradually
+made him a selfish man, and he could no longer love deeply except
+where he saw or imagined some reflection or likeness of his own
+mind. In Cyrus he recognized what he had himself been in other
+days; and at intervals he seemed to partake of the boy's spirit,
+and to be revived with a fresh and happy life. Reuben was
+accompanied by his son in the expedition, for the purpose of
+selecting a tract of land and felling and burning the timber,
+which necessarily preceded the removal of the household gods. Two
+months of autumn were thus occupied, after which Reuben Bourne
+and his young hunter returned to spend their last winter in the
+settlements.
+
+     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+It was early in the month of May that the little family snapped
+asunder whatever tendrils of affections had clung to inanimate
+objects, and bade farewell to the few who, in the blight of
+fortune, called themselves their friends. The sadness of the
+parting moment had, to each of the pilgrims, its peculiar
+alleviations. Reuben, a moody man, and misanthropic because
+unhappy, strode onward with his usual stern brow and downcast
+eye, feeling few regrets and disdaining to acknowledge any.
+Dorcas, while she wept abundantly over the broken ties by which
+her simple and affectionate nature had bound itself to
+everything, felt that the inhabitants of her inmost heart moved
+on with her, and that all else would be supplied wherever she
+might go. And the boy dashed one tear-drop from his eye, and
+thought of the adventurous pleasures of the untrodden forest.
+
+Oh, who, in the enthusiasm of a daydream, has not wished that he
+were a wanderer in a world of summer wilderness, with one fair
+and gentle being hanging lightly on his arm? In youth his free
+and exulting step would know no barrier but the rolling ocean or
+the snow-topped mountains; calmer manhood would choose a home
+where Nature had strewn a double wealth in the vale of some
+transparent stream; and when hoary age, after long, long years of
+that pure life, stole on and found him there, it would find him
+the father of a race, the patriarch of a people, the founder of a
+mighty nation yet to be. When death, like the sweet sleep which
+we welcome after a day of happiness, came over him, his far
+descendants would mourn over the venerated dust. Enveloped by
+tradition in mysterious attributes, the men of future generations
+would call him godlike; and remote posterity would see him
+standing, dimly glorious, far up the valley of a hundred
+centuries.
+
+The tangled and gloomy forest through which the personages of my
+tale were wandering differed widely from the dreamer's land of
+fantasy; yet there was something in their way of life that Nature
+asserted as her own, and the gnawing cares which went with them
+from the world were all that now obstructed their happiness. One
+stout and shaggy steed, the bearer of all their wealth, did not
+shrink from the added weight of Dorcas; although her hardy
+breeding sustained her, during the latter part of each day's
+journey, by her husband's side. Reuben and his son, their muskets
+on their shoulders and their axes slung behind them, kept an
+unwearied pace, each watching with a hunter's eye for the game
+that supplied their food. When hunger bade, they halted and
+prepared their meal on the bank of some unpolluted forest brook,
+which, as they knelt down with thirsty lips to drink, murmured a
+sweet unwillingness, like a maiden at love's first kiss. They
+slept beneath a hut of branches, and awoke at peep of light
+refreshed for the toils of another day. Dorcas and the boy went
+on joyously, and even Reuben's spirit shone at intervals with an
+outward gladness; but inwardly there was a cold cold sorrow,
+which he compared to the snowdrifts lying deep in the glens and
+hollows of the rivulets while the leaves were brightly green
+above.
+
+Cyrus Bourne was sufficiently skilled in the travel of the woods
+to observe that his father did not adhere to the course they had
+pursued in their expedition of the preceding autumn. They were
+now keeping farther to the north, striking out more directly from
+the settlements, and into a region of which savage beasts and
+savage men were as yet the sole possessors. The boy sometimes
+hinted his opinions upon the subject, and Reuben listened
+attentively, and once or twice altered the direction of their
+march in accordance with his son's counsel; but, having so done,
+he seemed ill at ease. His quick and wandering glances were sent
+forward apparently in search of enemies lurking behind the tree
+trunks, and, seeing nothing there, he would cast his eyes
+backwards as if in fear of some pursuer. Cyrus, perceiving that
+his father gradually resumed the old direction, forbore to
+interfere; nor, though something began to weigh upon his heart,
+did his adventurous nature permit him to regret the increased
+length and the mystery of their way.
+
+On the afternoon of the fifth day they halted, and made their
+simple encampment nearly an hour before sunset. The face of the
+country, for the last few miles, had been diversified by swells
+of land resembling huge waves of a petrified sea; and in one of
+the corresponding hollows, a wild and romantic spot, had the
+family reared their hut and kindled their fire. There is
+something chilling, and yet heart-warming, in the thought of
+these three, united by strong bands of love and insulated from
+all that breathe beside. The dark and gloomy pines looked down
+upon them, and, as the wind swept through their tops, a pitying
+sound was heard in the forest; or did those old trees groan in
+fear that men were come to lay the axe to their roots at last?
+Reuben and his son, while Dorcas made ready their meal, proposed
+to wander out in search of game, of which that day's march had
+afforded no supply. The boy, promising not to quit the vicinity
+of the encampment, bounded off with a step as light and elastic
+as that of the deer he hoped to slay; while his father, feeling a
+transient happiness as he gazed after him, was about to pursue an
+opposite direction. Dorcas in the meanwhile, had seated herself
+near their fire of fallen branches upon the mossgrown and
+mouldering trunk of a tree uprooted years before. Her employment,
+diversified by an occasional glance at the pot, now beginning to
+simmer over the blaze, was the perusal of the current year's
+Massachusetts Almanac, which, with the exception of an old
+black-letter Bible, comprised all the literary wealth of the
+family. None pay a greater regard to arbitrary divisions of time
+than those who are excluded from society; and Dorcas mentioned,
+as if the information were of importance, that it was now the
+twelfth of May. Her husband started.
+
+"The twelfth of May! I should remember it well," muttered he,
+while many thoughts occasioned a momentary confusion in his mind.
+"Where am I? Whither am I wandering? Where did I leave him?"
+
+Dorcas, too well accustomed to her husband's wayward moods to
+note any peculiarity of demeanor, now laid aside the almanac and
+addressed him in that mournful tone which the tender hearted
+appropriate to griefs long cold and dead.
+
+"It was near this time of the month, eighteen years ago, that my
+poor father left this world for a better. He had a kind arm to
+hold his head and a kind voice to cheer him, Reuben, in his last
+moments; and the thought of the faithful care you took of him has
+comforted me many a time since. Oh, death would have been awful
+to a solitary man in a wild place like this!"
+
+"Pray Heaven, Dorcas," said Reuben, in a broken voice,--"pray
+Heaven that neither of us three dies solitary and lies unburied
+in this howling wilderness!" And he hastened away, leaving her to
+watch the fire beneath the gloomy pines.
+
+Reuben Bourne's rapid pace gradually slackened as the pang,
+unintentionally inflicted by the words of Dorcas, became less
+acute. Many strange reflections, however, thronged upon him; and,
+straying onward rather like a sleep walker than a hunter, it was
+attributable to no care of his own that his devious course kept
+him in the vicinity of the encampment. His steps were
+imperceptibly led almost in a circle; nor did he observe that he
+was on the verge of a tract of land heavily timbered, but not
+with pine-trees. The place of the latter was here supplied by
+oaks and other of the harder woods; and around their roots
+clustered a dense and bushy under-growth, leaving, however,
+barren spaces between the trees, thick strewn with withered
+leaves. Whenever the rustling of the branches or the creaking of
+the trunks made a sound, as if the forest were waking from
+slumber, Reuben instinctively raised the musket that rested on
+his arm, and cast a quick, sharp glance on every side; but,
+convinced by a partial observation that no animal was near, he
+would again give himself up to his thoughts. He was musing on the
+strange influence that had led him away from his premeditated
+course, and so far into the depths of the wilderness. Unable to
+penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives lay
+hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him
+onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat.
+He trusted that it was Heaven's intent to afford him an
+opportunity of expiating his sin; he hoped that he might find the
+bones so long unburied; and that, having laid the earth over
+them, peace would throw its sunlight into the sepulchre of his
+heart. From these thoughts he was aroused by a rustling in the
+forest at some distance from the spot to which he had wandered.
+Perceiving the motion of some object behind a thick veil of
+undergrowth, he fired, with the instinct of a hunter and the aim
+of a practised marksman. A low moan, which told his success, and
+by which even animals cars express their dying agony, was
+unheeded by Reuben Bourne. What were the recollections now
+breaking upon him?
+
+The thicket into which Reuben had fired was near the summit of a
+swell of land, and was clustered around the base of a rock,
+which, in the shape and smoothness of one of its surfaces, was
+not unlike a gigantic gravestone. As if reflected in a mirror,
+its likeness was in Reuben's memory. He even recognized the veins
+which seemed to form an inscription in forgotten characters:
+everything remained the same, except that a thick covert of
+bushes shrouded the lowerpart of the rock, and would have hidden
+Roger Malvin had he still been sitting there. Yet in the next
+moment Reuben's eye was caught by another change that time had
+effected since he last stood where he was now standing again
+behind the earthy roots of the uptorn tree. The sapling to which
+he had bound the bloodstained symbol of his vow had increased and
+strengthened into an oak, far indeed from its maturity, but with
+no mean spread of shadowy branches. There was one singularity
+observable in this tree which made Reuben tremble. The middle and
+lower branches were in luxuriant life, and an excess of
+vegetation had fringed the trunk almost to the ground; but a
+blight had apparently stricken the upper part of the oak, and the
+very topmost bough was withered, sapless, and utterly dead.
+Reuben remembered how the little banner had fluttered on that
+topmost bough, when it was green and lovely, eighteen years
+before. Whose guilt had blasted it?
+
+     .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+Dorcas, after the departure of the two hunters, continued her
+preparations for their evening repast. Her sylvan table was the
+moss-covered trunk of a large fallen tree, on the broadest part
+of which she had spread a snow-white cloth and arranged what were
+left of the bright pewter vessels that had been her pride in the
+settlements. It had a strange aspect that one little spot of
+homely comfort in the desolate heart of Nature. The sunshine yet
+lingered upon the higher branches of the trees that grew on
+rising ground; but the shadows of evening had deepened into the
+hollow where the encampment was made, and the firelight began to
+redden as it gleamed up the tall trunks of the pines or hovered
+on the dense and obscure mass of foliage that circled round the
+spot. The heart of Dorcas was not sad; for she felt that it was
+better to journey in the wilderness with two whom she loved than
+to be a lonely woman in a crowd that cared not for her. As she
+busied herself in arranging seats of mouldering wood, covered
+with leaves, for Reuben and her son, her voice danced through the
+gloomy forest in the measure of a song that she had learned in
+youth. The rude melody, the production of a bard who won no name,
+was descriptive of a winter evening in a frontier cottage, when,
+secured from savage inroad by the high-piled snow-drifts, the
+family rejoiced by their own fireside. The whole song possessed
+the nameless charm peculiar to unborrowed thought, but four
+continually-recurring lines shone out from the rest like the
+blaze of the hearth whose joys they celebrated. Into them,
+working magic with a few simple words, the poet had instilled the
+very essence of domestic love and household happiness, and they
+were poetry and picture joined in one. As Dorcas sang, the walls
+of her forsaken home seemed to encircle her; she no longer saw
+the gloomy pines, nor heard the wind which still, as she began
+each verse, sent a heavy breath through the branches, and died
+away in a hollow moan from the burden of the song. She was
+aroused by the report of a gun in the vicinity of the encampment;
+and either the sudden sound, or her loneliness by the glowing
+fire, caused her to tremble violently. The next moment she
+laughed in the pride of a mother's heart.
+
+"My beautiful young hunter! My boy has slain a deer!" she
+exclaimed, recollecting that in the direction whence the shot
+proceeded Cyrus had gone to the chase.
+
+She waited a reasonable time to hear her son's light step
+bounding over the rustling leaves to tell of his success. But he
+did not immediately appear; and she sent her cheerful voice among
+the trees in search of him.
+
+"Cyrus! Cyrus!"
+
+His coming was still delayed; and she determined, as the report
+had apparently been very near, to seek for him in person. Her
+assistance, also, might be necessary in bringing home the venison
+which she flattered herself he had obtained. She therefore set
+forward, directing her steps by the long-past sound, and singing
+as she went, in order that the boy might be aware of her approach
+and run to meet her. From behind the trunk of every tree, and
+from every hiding-place in the thick foliage of the undergrowth,
+she hoped to discover the countenance of her son, laughing with
+the sportive mischief that is born of affection. The sun was now
+beneath the horizon, and the light that came down among the
+leaves was sufficiently dim to create many illusions in her
+expecting fancy. Several times she seemed indistinctly to see his
+face gazing out from among the leaves; and once she imagined that
+he stood beckoning to her at the base of a craggy rock. Keeping
+her eyes on this object, however, it proved to be no more than
+the trunk of an oak fringed to the very ground with little
+branches, one of which, thrust out farther than the rest, was
+shaken by the breeze. Making her way round the foot of the rock,
+she suddenly found herself close to her husband, who had
+approached in another direction. Leaning upon the butt of his
+gun, the muzzle of which rested upon the withered leaves, he was
+apparently absorbed in the contemplation of some object at his
+feet.
+
+"How is this, Reuben? Have you slain the deer and fallen asleep
+over him?" exclaimed Dorcas, laughing cheerfully, on her first
+slight observation of his posture and appearance.
+
+He stirred not, neither did he turn his eyes towards her; and a
+cold, shuddering fear, indefinite in its source and object, began
+to creep into her blood. She now perceived that her husband's
+face was ghastly pale, and his features were rigid, as if
+incapable of assuming any other expression than the strong
+despair which had hardened upon them. He gave not the slightest
+evidence that he was aware of her approach.
+
+"For the love of Heaven, Reuben, speak to me!" cried Dorcas; and
+the strange sound of her own voice affrighted her even more than
+the dead silence.
+
+Her husband started, stared into her face, drew her to the front
+of the rock, and pointed with his finger.
+
+Oh, there lay the boy, asleep, but dreamless, upon the fallen
+forest leaves! His cheek rested upon his arm--his curled locks
+were thrown back from his brow--his limbs were slightly relaxed.
+Had a sudden weariness overcome the youthful hunter? Would his
+mother's voice arouse him? She knew that it was death.
+
+"This broad rock is the gravestone of your near kindred, Dorcas,"
+said her husband. "Your tears will fall at once over your father
+and your son."
+
+She heard him not. With one wild shriek, that seemed to force its
+way from the sufferer's inmost soul, she sank insensible by the
+side of her dead boy. At that moment the withered topmost bough
+of the oak loosened itself in the stilly air, and fell in soft,
+light fragments upon the rock, upon the leaves, upon Reuben, upon
+his wife and child, and upon Roger Malvin's bones. Then Reuben's
+heart was stricken, and the tears gushed out like water from a
+rock. The vow that the wounded youth had made the blighted man
+had come to redeem. His sin was expiated,--the curse was gone
+from him; and in the hour when he had shed blood dearer to him
+than his own, a prayer, the first for years, went up to Heaven
+from the lips of Reuben Bourne.
+
+
+
+THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL
+
+An elderly man, with his pretty daughter on his arm, was passing
+along the street, and emerged from the gloom of the cloudy
+evening into the light that fell across the pavement from the
+window of a small shop. It was a projecting window; and on the
+inside were suspended a variety of watches, pinchbeck, silver,
+and one or two of gold, all with their faces turned from the
+streets, as if churlishly disinclined to inform the wayfarers
+what o'clock it was. Seated within the shop, sidelong to the
+window with his pale face bent earnestly over some delicate piece
+of mechanism on which was thrown the concentrated lustre of a
+shade lamp, appeared a young man.
+
+"What can Owen Warland be about?" muttered old Peter Hovenden,
+himself a retired watchmaker, and the former master of this same
+young man whose occupation he was now wondering at. "What can the
+fellow be about? These six months past I have never come by his
+shop without seeing him just as steadily at work as now. It would
+be a flight beyond his usual foolery to seek for the perpetual
+motion; and yet I know enough of my old business to be certain
+that what he is now so busy with is no part of the machinery of a
+watch."
+
+"Perhaps, father," said Annie, without showing much interest in
+the question, "Owen is inventing a new kind of timekeeper. I am
+sure he has ingenuity enough."
+
+"Poh, child! He has not the sort of ingenuity to invent anything
+better than a Dutch toy," answered her father, who had formerly
+been put to much vexation by Owen Warland's irregular genius. "A
+plague on such ingenuity! All the effect that ever I knew of it
+was to spoil the accuracy of some of the best watches in my shop.
+He would turn the sun out of its orbit and derange the whole
+course of time, if, as I said before, his ingenuity could grasp
+anything bigger than a child's toy!"
+
+"Hush, father! He hears you!" whispered Annie, pressing the old
+man's arm. "His ears are as delicate as his feelings; and you
+know how easily disturbed they are. Do let us move on."
+
+So Peter Hovenden and his daughter Annie plodded on without
+further conversation, until in a by-street of the town they found
+themselves passing the open door of a blacksmith's shop. Within
+was seen the forge, now blazing up and illuminating the high and
+dusky roof, and now confining its lustre to a narrow precinct of
+the coal-strewn floor, according as the breath of the bellows was
+puffed forth or again inhaled into its vast leathern lungs. In
+the intervals of brightness it was easy to distinguish objects in
+remote corners of the shop and the horseshoes that hung upon the
+wall; in the momentary gloom the fire seemed to be glimmering
+amidst the vagueness of unenclosed space. Moving about in this
+red glare and alternate dusk was the figure of the blacksmith,
+well worthy to be viewed in so picturesque an aspect of light and
+shade, where the bright blaze struggled with the black night, as
+if each would have snatched his comely strength from the other.
+Anon he drew a white-hot bar of iron from the coals, laid it on
+the anvil, uplifted his arm of might, and was soon enveloped in
+the myriads of sparks which the strokes of his hammer scattered
+into the surrounding gloom.
+
+"Now, that is a pleasant sight," said the old watchmaker. "I know
+what it is to work in gold; but give me the worker in iron after
+all is said and done. He spends his labor upon a reality. What
+say you, daughter Annie?"
+
+"Pray don't speak so loud, father," whispered Annie, "Robert
+Danforth will hear you."
+
+"And what if he should hear me?" said Peter Hovenden. "I say
+again, it is a good and a wholesome thing to depend upon main
+strength and reality, and to earn one's bread with the bare and
+brawny arm of a blacksmith. A watchmaker gets his brain puzzled
+by his wheels within a wheel, or loses his health or the nicety
+of his eyesight, as was my case, and finds himself at middle age,
+or a little after, past labor at his own trade and fit for
+nothing else, yet too poor to live at his ease. So I say once
+again, give me main strength for my money. And then, how it takes
+the nonsense out of a man! Did you ever hear of a blacksmith
+being such a fool as Owen Warland yonder?"
+
+"Well said, uncle Hovenden!" shouted Robert Danforth from the
+forge, in a full, deep, merry voice, that made the roof re-echo.
+"And what says Miss Annie to that doctrine? She, I suppose, will
+think it a genteeler business to tinker up a lady's watch than to
+forge a horseshoe or make a gridiron."
+
+Annie drew her father onward without giving him time for reply.
+
+But we must return to Owen Warland's shop, and spend more
+meditation upon his history and character than either Peter
+Hovenden, or probably his daughter Annie, or Owen's old
+school-fellow, Robert Danforth, would have thought due to so
+slight a subject. From the time that his little fingers could
+grasp a penknife, Owen had been remarkable for a delicate
+ingenuity, which sometimes produced pretty shapes in wood,
+principally figures of flowers and birds, and sometimes seemed to
+aim at the hidden mysteries of mechanism. But it was always for
+purposes of grace, and never with any mockery of the useful. He
+did not, like the crowd of school-boy artisans, construct little
+windmills on the angle of a barn or watermills across the
+neighboring brook. Those who discovered such peculiarity in the
+boy as to think it worth their while to observe him closely,
+sometimes saw reason to suppose that he was attempting to imitate
+the beautiful movements of Nature as exemplified in the flight of
+birds or the activity of little animals. It seemed, in fact, a
+new development of the love of the beautiful, such as might have
+made him a poet, a painter, or a sculptor, and which was as
+completely refined from all utilitarian coarseness as it could
+have been in either of the fine arts. He looked with singular
+distaste at the stiff and regular processes of ordinary
+machinery. Being once carried to see a steam-engine, in the
+expectation that his intuitive comprehension of mechanical
+principles would be gratified, he turned pale and grew sick, as
+if something monstrous and unnatural had been presented to him.
+This horror was partly owing to the size and terrible energy of
+the iron laborer; for the character of Owen's mind was
+microscopic, and tended naturally to the minute, in accordance
+with his diminutive frame and the marvellous smallness and
+delicate power of his fingers. Not that his sense of beauty was
+thereby diminished into a sense of prettiness. The beautiful idea
+has no relation to size, and may be as perfectly developed in a
+space too minute for any but microscopic investigation as within
+the ample verge that is measured by the arc of the rainbow. But,
+at all events, this characteristic minuteness in his objects and
+accomplishments made the world even more incapable than it might
+otherwise have been of appreciating Owen Warland's genius. The
+boy's relatives saw nothing better to be done--as perhaps there
+was not--than to bind him apprentice to a watchmaker, hoping that
+his strange ingenuity might thus be regulated and put to
+utilitarian purposes.
+
+Peter Hovenden's opinion of his apprentice has already been
+expressed. He could make nothing of the lad. Owen's apprehension
+of the professional mysteries, it is true, was inconceivably
+quick; but he altogether forgot or despised the grand object of a
+watchmaker's business, and cared no more for the measurement of
+time than if it had been merged into eternity. So long, however,
+as he remained under his old master's care, Owen's lack of
+sturdiness made it possible, by strict injunctions and sharp
+oversight, to restrain his creative eccentricity within bounds;
+but when his apprenticeship was served out, and he had taken the
+little shop which Peter Hovenden's failing eyesight compelled him
+to relinquish, then did people recognize how unfit a person was
+Owen Warland to lead old blind Father Time along his daily
+course. One of his most rational projects was to connect a
+musical operation with the machinery of his watches, so that all
+the harsh dissonances of life might be rendered tuneful, and each
+flitting moment fall into the abyss of the past in golden drops
+of harmony. If a family clock was intrusted to him for
+repair,--one of those tall, ancient clocks that have grown nearly
+allied to human nature by measuring out the lifetime of many
+generations,--he would take upon himself to arrange a dance or
+funeral procession of figures across its venerable face,
+representing twelve mirthful or melancholy hours. Several freaks
+of this kind quite destroyed the young watchmaker's credit with
+that steady and matter-of-fact class of people who hold the
+opinion that time is not to be trifled with, whether considered
+as the medium of advancement and prosperity in this world or
+preparation for the next. His custom rapidly diminished--a
+misfortune, however, that was probably reckoned among his better
+accidents by Owen Warland, who was becoming more and more
+absorbed in a secret occupation which drew all his science and
+manual dexterity into itself, and likewise gave full employment
+to the characteristic tendencies of his genius. This pursuit had
+already consumed many months.
+
+After the old watchmaker and his pretty daughter had gazed at him
+out of the obscurity of the street, Owen Warland was seized with
+a fluttering of the nerves, which made his hand tremble too
+violently to proceed with such delicate labor as he was now
+engaged upon.
+
+"It was Annie herself!" murmured he. "I should have known it, by
+this throbbing of my heart, before I heard her father's voice.
+Ah, how it throbs! I shall scarcely be able to work again on this
+exquisite mechanism to-night. Annie! dearest Annie! thou shouldst
+give firmness to my heart and hand, and not shake them thus; for
+if I strive to put the very spirit of beauty into form and give
+it motion, it is for thy sake alone. O throbbing heart, be quiet!
+If my labor be thus thwarted, there will come vague and
+unsatisfied dreams which will leave me spiritless to-morrow."
+
+As he was endeavoring to settle himself again to his task, the
+shop door opened and gave admittance to no other than the
+stalwart figure which Peter Hovenden had paused to admire, as
+seen amid the light and shadow of the blacksmith's shop. Robert
+Danforth had brought a little anvil of his own manufacture, and
+peculiarly constructed, which the young artist had recently
+bespoken. Owen examined the article and pronounced it fashioned
+according to his wish.
+
+"Why, yes," said Robert Danforth, his strong voice filling the
+shop as with the sound of a bass viol, "I consider myself equal
+to anything in the way of my own trade; though I should have made
+but a poor figure at yours with such a fist as this," added he,
+laughing, as he laid his vast hand beside the delicate one of
+Owen. "But what then? I put more main strength into one blow of
+my sledge hammer than all that you have expended since you were a
+'prentice. Is not that the truth?"
+
+"Very probably," answered the low and slender voice of Owen.
+"Strength is an earthly monster. I make no pretensions to it. My
+force, whatever there may be of it, is altogether spiritual."
+
+"Well, but, Owen, what are you about?" asked his old
+school-fellow, still in such a hearty volume of tone that it made
+the artist shrink, especially as the question related to a
+subject so sacred as the absorbing dream of his imagination.
+"Folks do say that you are trying to discover the perpetual
+motion."
+
+"The perpetual motion? Nonsense!" replied Owen Warland, with a
+movement of disgust; for he was full of little petulances. "It
+can never be discovered. It is a dream that may delude men whose
+brains are mystified with matter, but not me. Besides, if such a
+discovery were possible, it would not be worth my while to make
+it only to have the secret turned to such purposes as are now
+effected by steam and water power. I am not ambitious to be
+honored with the paternity of a new kind of cotton machine."
+
+"That would be droll enough!" cried the blacksmith, breaking out
+into such an uproar of laughter that Owen himself and the bell
+glasses on his work-board quivered in unison. "No, no, Owen! No
+child of yours will have iron joints and sinews. Well, I won't
+hinder you any more. Good night, Owen, and success, and if you
+need any assistance, so far as a downright blow of hammer upon
+anvil will answer the purpose, I'm your man."
+
+And with another laugh the man of main strength left the shop.
+
+"How strange it is," whispered Owen Warland to himself, leaning
+his head upon his hand, "that all my musings, my purposes, my
+passion for the beautiful, my consciousness of power to create
+it,--a finer, more ethereal power, of which this earthly giant
+can have no conception,--all, all, look so vain and idle whenever
+my path is crossed by Robert Danforth! He would drive me mad were
+I to meet him often. His hard, brute force darkens and confuses
+the spiritual element within me; but I, too, will be strong in my
+own way. I will not yield to him."
+
+He took from beneath a glass a piece of minute machinery, which
+he set in the condensed light of his lamp, and, looking intently
+at it through a magnifying glass, proceeded to operate with a
+delicate instrument of steel. In an instant, however, he fell
+back in his chair and clasped his hands, with a look of horror on
+his face that made its small features as impressive as those of a
+giant would have been.
+
+"Heaven! What have I done?" exclaimed he. "The vapor, the
+influence of that brute force,--it has bewildered me and obscured
+my perception. I have made the very stroke--the fatal
+stroke--that I have dreaded from the first. It is all over--the
+toil of months, the object of my life. I am ruined!"
+
+And there he sat, in strange despair, until his lamp flickered in
+the socket and left the Artist of the Beautiful in darkness.
+
+Thus it is that ideas, which grow up within the imagination and
+appear so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call
+valuable, are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact
+with the practical. It is requisite for the ideal artist to
+possess a force of character that seems hardly compatible with
+its delicacy; he must keep his faith in himself while the
+incredulous world assails him with its utter disbelief; he must
+stand up against mankind and be his own sole disciple, both as
+respects his genius and the objects to which it is directed.
+
+For a time Owen Warland succumbed to this severe but inevitable
+test. He spent a few sluggish weeks with his head so continually
+resting in his hands that the towns-people had scarcely an
+opportunity to see his countenance. When at last it was again
+uplifted to the light of day, a cold, dull, nameless change was
+perceptible upon it. In the opinion of Peter Hovenden, however,
+and that order of sagacious understandings who think that life
+should be regulated, like clockwork, with leaden weights, the
+alteration was entirely for the better. Owen now, indeed, applied
+himself to business with dogged industry. It was marvellous to
+witness the obtuse gravity with which he would inspect the wheels
+of a great old silver watch thereby delighting the owner, in
+whose fob it had been worn till he deemed it a portion of his own
+life, and was accordingly jealous of its treatment. In
+consequence of the good report thus acquired, Owen Warland was
+invited by the proper authorities to regulate the clock in the
+church steeple. He succeeded so admirably in this matter of
+public interest that the merchants gruffly acknowledged his
+merits on 'Change; the nurse whispered his praises as she gave
+the potion in the sick-chamber; the lover blessed him at the hour
+of appointed interview; and the town in general thanked Owen for
+the punctuality of dinner time. In a word, the heavy weight upon
+his spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his own
+system, but wheresoever the iron accents of the church clock were
+audible. It was a circumstance, though minute, yet characteristic
+of his present state, that, when employed to engrave names or
+initials on silver spoons, he now wrote the requisite letters in
+the plainest possible style, omitting a variety of fanciful
+flourishes that had heretofore distinguished his work in this
+kind.
+
+One day, during the era of this happy transformation, old Peter
+Hovenden came to visit his former apprentice.
+
+"Well, Owen," said he, "I am glad to hear such good accounts of
+you from all quarters, and especially from the town clock yonder,
+which speaks in your commendation every hour of the twenty-four.
+Only get rid altogether of your nonsensical trash about the
+beautiful, which I nor nobody else, nor yourself to boot, could
+ever understand,--only free yourself of that, and your success in
+life is as sure as daylight. Why, if you go on in this way, I
+should even venture to let you doctor this precious old watch of
+mine; though, except my daughter Annie, I have nothing else so
+valuable in the world."
+
+"I should hardly dare touch it, sir," replied Owen, in a
+depressed tone; for he was weighed down by his old master's
+presence.
+
+"In time," said the latter,--"In time, you will be capable of
+it."
+
+The old watchmaker, with the freedom naturally consequent on his
+former authority, went on inspecting the work which Owen had in
+hand at the moment, together with other matters that were in
+progress. The artist, meanwhile, could scarcely lift his head.
+There was nothing so antipodal to his nature as this man's cold,
+unimaginative sagacity, by contact with which everything was
+converted into a dream except the densest matter of the physical
+world. Owen groaned in spirit and prayed fervently to be
+delivered from him.
+
+"But what is this?" cried Peter Hovenden abruptly, taking up a
+dusty bell glass, beneath which appeared a mechanical something,
+as delicate and minute as the system of a butterfly's anatomy.
+"What have we here? Owen! Owen! there is witchcraft in these
+little chains, and wheels, and paddles. See! with one pinch of my
+finger and thumb I am going to deliver you from all future
+peril."
+
+"For Heaven's sake," screamed Owen Warland, springing up with
+wonderful energy, "as you would not drive me mad, do not touch
+it! The slightest pressure of your finger would ruin me forever."
+
+"Aha, young man! And is it so?" said the old watchmaker, looking
+at him with just enough penetration to torture Owen's soul with
+the bitterness of worldly criticism. "Well, take your own course;
+but I warn you again that in this small piece of mechanism lives
+your evil spirit. Shall I exorcise him?"
+
+"You are my evil spirit," answered Owen, much excited,--"you and
+the hard, coarse world! The leaden thoughts and the despondency
+that you fling upon me are my clogs, else I should long ago have
+achieved the task that I was created for."
+
+Peter Hovenden shook his head, with the mixture of contempt and
+indignation which mankind, of whom he was partly a
+representative, deem themselves entitled to feel towards all
+simpletons who seek other prizes than the dusty one along the
+highway. He then took his leave, with an uplifted finger and a
+sneer upon his face that haunted the artist's dreams for many a
+night afterwards. At the time of his old master's visit, Owen was
+probably on the point of taking up the relinquished task; but, by
+this sinister event, he was thrown back into the state whence he
+had been slowly emerging.
+
+But the innate tendency of his soul had only been accumulating
+fresh vigor during its apparent sluggishness. As the summer
+advanced he almost totally relinquished his business, and
+permitted Father Time, so far as the old gentleman was
+represented by the clocks and watches under his control, to stray
+at random through human life, making infinite confusion among the
+train of bewildered hours. He wasted the sunshine, as people
+said, in wandering through the woods and fields and along the
+banks of streams. There, like a child, he found amusement in
+chasing butterflies or watching the motions of water insects.
+There was something truly mysterious in the intentness with which
+he contemplated these living playthings as they sported on the
+breeze or examined the structure of an imperial insect whom he
+had imprisoned. The chase of butterflies was an apt emblem of the
+ideal pursuit in which he had spent so many golden hours; but
+would the beautiful idea ever be yielded to his hand like the
+butterfly that symbolized it? Sweet, doubtless, were these days,
+and congenial to the artist's soul. They were full of bright
+conceptions, which gleamed through his intellectual world as the
+butterflies gleamed through the outward atmosphere, and were real
+to him, for the instant, without the toil, and perplexity, and
+many disappointments of attempting to make them visible to the
+sensual eye. Alas that the artist, whether in poetry, or whatever
+other material, may not content himself with the inward enjoyment
+of the beautiful, but must chase the flitting mystery beyond the
+verge of his ethereal domain, and crush its frail being in
+seizing it with a material grasp. Owen Warland felt the impulse
+to give external reality to his ideas as irresistibly as any of
+the poets or painters who have arrayed the world in a dimmer and
+fainter beauty, imperfectly copied from the richness of their
+visions.
+
+The night was now his time for the slow progress of re-creating
+the one idea to which all his intellectual activity referred
+itself. Always at the approach of dusk he stole into the town,
+locked himself within his shop, and wrought with patient delicacy
+of touch for many hours. Sometimes he was startled by the rap of
+the watchman, who, when all the world should be asleep, had
+caught the gleam of lamplight through the crevices of Owen
+Warland's shutters. Daylight, to the morbid sensibility of his
+mind, seemed to have an intrusiveness that interfered with his
+pursuits. On cloudy and inclement days, therefore, he sat with
+his head upon his hands, muffling, as it were, his sensitive
+brain in a mist of indefinite musings, for it was a relief to
+escape from the sharp distinctness with which he was compelled to
+shape out his thoughts during his nightly toil.
+
+From one of these fits of torpor he was aroused by the entrance
+of Annie Hovenden, who came into the shop with the freedom of a
+customer, and also with something of the familiarity of a
+childish friend. She had worn a hole through her silver thimble,
+and wanted Owen to repair it.
+
+"But I don't know whether you will condescend to such a task,"
+said she, laughing, "now that you are so taken up with the notion
+of putting spirit into machinery."
+
+"Where did you get that idea, Annie?" said Owen, starting in
+surprise.
+
+"Oh, out of my own head," answered she, "and from something that
+I heard you say, long ago, when you were but a boy and I a little
+child. But come, will you mend this poor thimble of mine?"
+
+"Anything for your sake, Annie," said Owen Warland,--"anything,
+even were it to work at Robert Danforth's forge."
+
+"And that would be a pretty sight!" retorted Annie, glancing with
+imperceptible slightness at the artist's small and slender frame.
+"Well; here is the thimble."
+
+"But that is a strange idea of yours," said Owen, "about the
+spiritualization of matter."
+
+And then the thought stole into his mind that this young girl
+possessed the gift to comprehend him better than all the world
+besides. And what a help and strength would it be to him in his
+lonely toil if he could gain the sympathy of the only being whom
+he loved! To persons whose pursuits are insulated from the common
+business of life--who are either in advance of mankind or apart
+from it--there often comes a sensation of moral cold that makes
+the spirit shiver as if it had reached the frozen solitudes
+around the pole. What the prophet, the poet, the reformer, the
+criminal, or any other man with human yearnings, but separated
+from the multitude by a peculiar lot, might feel, poor Owen felt.
+
+"Annie," cried he, growing pale as death at the thought, "how
+gladly would I tell you the secret of my pursuit! You, methinks,
+would estimate it rightly. You, I know, would hear it with a
+reverence that I must not expect from the harsh, material world."
+
+"Would I not? to be sure I would!" replied Annie Hovenden,
+lightly laughing. "Come; explain to me quickly what is the
+meaning of this little whirligig, so delicately wrought that it
+might be a plaything for Queen Mab. See! I will put it in
+motion."
+
+"Hold!" exclaimed Owen, "hold!"
+
+Annie had but given the slightest possible touch, with the point
+of a needle, to the same minute portion of complicated machinery
+which has been more than once mentioned, when the artist seized
+her by the wrist with a force that made her scream aloud. She was
+affrighted at the convulsion of intense rage and anguish that
+writhed across his features. The next instant he let his head
+sink upon his hands.
+
+"Go, Annie," murmured he; "I have deceived myself, and must
+suffer for it. I yearned for sympathy, and thought, and fancied,
+and dreamed that you might give it me; but you lack the talisman,
+Annie, that should admit you into my secrets. That touch has
+undone the toil of months and the thought of a lifetime! It was
+not your fault, Annie; but you have ruined me!"
+
+Poor Owen Warland! He had indeed erred, yet pardonably; for if
+any human spirit could have sufficiently reverenced the processes
+so sacred in his eyes, it must have been a woman's. Even Annie
+Hovenden, possibly might not have disappointed him had she been
+enlightened by the deep intelligence of love.
+
+The artist spent the ensuing winter in a way that satisfied any
+persons who had hitherto retained a hopeful opinion of him that
+he was, in truth, irrevocably doomed to unutility as regarded the
+world, and to an evil destiny on his own part. The decease of a
+relative had put him in possession of a small inheritance. Thus
+freed from the necessity of toil, and having lost the steadfast
+influence of a great purpose,--great, at least, to him,--he
+abandoned himself to habits from which it might have been
+supposed the mere delicacy of his organization would have availed
+to secure him. But when the ethereal portion of a man of genius
+is obscured the earthly part assumes an influence the more
+uncontrollable, because the character is now thrown off the
+balance to which Providence had so nicely adjusted it, and which,
+in coarser natures, is adjusted by some other method. Owen
+Warland made proof of whatever show of bliss may be found in
+riot. He looked at the world through the golden medium of wine,
+and contemplated the visions that bubble up so gayly around the
+brim of the glass, and that people the air with shapes of
+pleasant madness, which so soon grow ghostly and forlorn. Even
+when this dismal and inevitable change had taken place, the young
+man might still have continued to quaff the cup of enchantments,
+though its vapor did but shroud life in gloom and fill the gloom
+with spectres that mocked at him. There was a certain irksomeness
+of spirit, which, being real, and the deepest sensation of which
+the artist was now conscious, was more intolerable than any
+fantastic miseries and horrors that the abuse of wine could
+summon up. In the latter case he could remember, even out of the
+midst of his trouble, that all was but a delusion; in the former,
+the heavy anguish was his actual life.
+
+From this perilous state he was redeemed by an incident which
+more than one person witnessed, but of which the shrewdest could
+not explain or conjecture the operation on Owen Warland's mind.
+It was very simple. On a warm afternoon of spring, as the artist
+sat among his riotous companions with a glass of wine before him,
+a splendid butterfly flew in at the open window and fluttered
+about his head.
+
+"Ah," exclaimed Owen, who had drank freely, "are you alive again,
+child of the sun and playmate of the summer breeze, after your
+dismal winter's nap? Then it is time for me to be at work!"
+
+And, leaving his unemptied glass upon the table, he departed and
+was never known to sip another drop of wine.
+
+And now, again, he resumed his wanderings in the woods and
+fields. It might be fancied that the bright butterfly, which had
+come so spirit-like into the window as Owen sat with the rude
+revellers, was indeed a spirit commissioned to recall him to the
+pure, ideal life that had so etheralized him among men. It might
+be fancied that he went forth to seek this spirit in its sunny
+haunts; for still, as in the summer time gone by, he was seen to
+steal gently up wherever a butterfly had alighted, and lose
+himself in contemplation of it. When it took flight his eyes
+followed the winged vision, as if its airy track would show the
+path to heaven. But what could be the purpose of the unseasonable
+toil, which was again resumed, as the watchman knew by the lines
+of lamplight through the crevices of Owen Warland's shutters? The
+towns-people had one comprehensive explanation of all these
+singularities. Owen Warland had gone mad! How universally
+efficacious--how satisfactory, too, and soothing to the injured
+sensibility of narrowness and dulness--is this easy method of
+accounting for whatever lies beyond the world's most ordinary
+scope! From St. Paul's days down to our poor little Artist of the
+Beautiful, the same talisman had been applied to the elucidation
+of all mysteries in the words or deeds of men who spoke or acted
+too wisely or too well. In Owen Warland's case the judgment of
+his towns-people may have been correct. Perhaps he was mad. The
+lack of sympathy--that contrast between himself and his neighbors
+which took away the restraint of example--was enough to make him
+so. Or possibly he had caught just so much of ethereal radiance
+as served to bewilder him, in an earthly sense, by its
+intermixture with the common daylight.
+
+One evening, when the artist had returned from a customary ramble
+and had just thrown the lustre of his lamp on the delicate piece
+of work so often interrupted, but still taken up again, as if his
+fate were embodied in its mechanism, he was surprised by the
+entrance of old Peter Hovenden. Owen never met this man without a
+shrinking of the heart. Of all the world he was most terrible, by
+reason of a keen understanding which saw so distinctly what it
+did see, and disbelieved so uncompromisingly in what it could not
+see. On this occasion the old watchmaker had merely a gracious
+word or two to say.
+
+"Owen, my lad," said he, "we must see you at my house to-morrow
+night."
+
+The artist began to mutter some excuse.
+
+"Oh, but it must be so," quoth Peter Hovenden, "for the sake of
+the days when you were one of the household. What, my boy! don't
+you know that my daughter Annie is engaged to Robert Danforth? 
+We are making an entertainment, in our humble way, to celebrate
+the event."
+
+That little monosyllable was all he uttered; its tone seemed cold
+and unconcerned to an ear like Peter Hovenden's; and yet there
+was in it the stifled outcry of the poor artist's heart, which he
+compressed within him like a man holding down an evil spirit. One
+slight outbreak. however, imperceptible to the old watchmaker, he
+allowed himself. Raising the instrument with which he was about
+to begin his work, he let it fall upon the little system of
+machinery that had, anew, cost him months of thought and toil. It
+was shattered by the stroke!
+
+Owen Warland's story would have been no tolerable representation
+of the troubled life of those who strive to create the beautiful,
+if, amid all other thwarting influences, love had not interposed
+to steal the cunning from his hand. Outwardly he had been no
+ardent or enterprising lover; the career of his passion had
+confined its tumults and vicissitudes so entirely within the
+artist's imagination that Annie herself had scarcely more than a
+woman's intuitive perception of it; but, in Owen's view, it
+covered the whole field of his life. Forgetful of the time when
+she had shown herself incapable of any deep response, he had
+persisted in connecting all his dreams of artistical success with
+Annie's image; she was the visible shape in which the spiritual
+power that he worshipped, and on whose altar he hoped to lay a
+not unworthy offering, was made manifest to him. Of course he had
+deceived himself; there were no such attributes in Annie Hovenden
+as his imagination had endowed her with. She, in the aspect which
+she wore to his inward vision, was as much a creature of his own
+as the mysterious piece of mechanism would be were it ever
+realized. Had he become convinced of his mistake through the
+medium of successful love,--had he won Annie to his bosom, and
+there beheld her fade from angel into ordinary woman,--the
+disappointment might have driven him back, with concentrated
+energy, upon his sole remaining object. On the other hand, had he
+found Annie what he fancied, his lot would have been so rich in
+beauty that out of its mere redundancy he might have wrought the
+beautiful into many a worthier type than he had toiled for; but
+the guise in which his sorrow came to him, the sense that the
+angel of his life had been snatched away and given to a rude man
+of earth and iron, who could neither need nor appreciate her
+ministrations,--this was the very perversity of fate that makes
+human existence appear too absurd and contradictory to be the
+scene of one other hope or one other fear. There was nothing left
+for Owen Warland but to sit down like a man that had been
+stunned.
+
+He went through a fit of illness. After his recovery his small
+and slender frame assumed an obtuser garniture of flesh than it
+had ever before worn. His thin cheeks became round; his delicate
+little hand, so spiritually fashioned to achieve fairy task-work,
+grew plumper than the hand of a thriving infant. His aspect had a
+childishness such as might have induced a stranger to pat him on
+the head--pausing, however, in the act, to wonder what manner of
+child was here. It was as if the spirit had gone out of him,
+leaving the body to flourish in a sort of vegetable existence.
+Not that Owen Warland was idiotic. He could talk, and not
+irrationally. Somewhat of a babbler, indeed, did people begin to
+think him; for he was apt to discourse at wearisome length of
+marvels of mechanism that he had read about in books, but which
+he had learned to consider as absolutely fabulous. Among them he
+enumerated the Man of Brass, constructed by Albertus Magnus, and
+the Brazen Head of Friar Bacon; and, coming down to later times,
+the automata of a little coach and horses, which it was pretended
+had been manufactured for the Dauphin of France; together with an
+insect that buzzed about the ear like a living fly, and yet was
+but a contrivance of minute steel springs. There was a story,
+too, of a duck that waddled, and quacked, and ate; though, had
+any honest citizen purchased it for dinner, he would have found
+himself cheated with the mere mechanical apparition of a duck.
+
+"But all these accounts," said Owen Warland, "I am now satisfied
+are mere impositions."
+
+Then, in a mysterious way, he would confess that he once thought
+differently. In his idle and dreamy days he had considered it
+possible, in a certain sense, to spiritualize machinery, and to
+combine with the new species of life and motion thus produced a
+beauty that should attain to the ideal which Nature has proposed
+to herself in all her creatures, but has never taken pains to
+realize. He seemed, however, to retain no very distinct
+perception either of the process of achieving this object or of
+the design itself.
+
+"I have thrown it all aside now," he would say. "It was a dream
+such as young men are always mystifying themselves with. Now that
+I have acquired a little common sense, it makes me laugh to think
+of it."
+
+Poor, poor and fallen Owen Warland! These were the symptoms that
+he had ceased to be an inhabitant of the better sphere that lies
+unseen around us. He had lost his faith in the invisible, and now
+prided himself, as such unfortunates invariably do, in the wisdom
+which rejected much that even his eye could see, and trusted
+confidently in nothing but what his hand could touch. This is the
+calamity of men whose spiritual part dies out of them and leaves
+the grosser understanding to assimilate them more and more to the
+things of which alone it can take cognizance; but in Owen Warland
+the spirit was not dead nor passed away; it only slept.
+
+How it awoke again is not recorded. Perhaps the torpid slumber
+was broken by a convulsive pain. Perhaps, as in a former
+instance, the butterfly came and hovered about his head and
+reinspired him,--as indeed this creature of the sunshine had
+always a mysterious mission for the artist,--reinspired him with
+the former purpose of his life. Whether it were pain or happiness
+that thrilled through his veins, his first impulse was to thank
+Heaven for rendering him again the being of thought, imagination,
+and keenest sensibility that he had long ceased to be.
+
+"Now for my task," said he. "Never did I feel such strength for
+it as now."
+
+Yet, strong as he felt himself, he was incited to toil the more
+diligently by an anxiety lest death should surprise him in the
+midst of his labors. This anxiety, perhaps, is common to all men
+who set their hearts upon anything so high, in their own view of
+it, that life becomes of importance only as conditional to its
+accomplishment. So long as we love life for itself, we seldom
+dread the losing it. When we desire life for the attainment of an
+object, we recognize the frailty of its texture. But, side by
+side with this sense of insecurity, there is a vital faith in our
+invulnerability to the shaft of death while engaged in any task
+that seems assigned by Providence as our proper thing to do, and
+which the world would have cause to mourn for should we leave it
+unaccomplished. Can the philosopher, big with the inspiration of
+an idea that is to reform mankind, believe that he is to be
+beckoned from this sensible existence at the very instant when he
+is mustering his breath to speak the word of light? Should he
+perish so, the weary ages may pass away--the world's, whose life
+sand may fall, drop by drop--before another intellect is prepared
+to develop the truth that might have been uttered then. But
+history affords many an example where the most precious spirit,
+at any particular epoch manifested in human shape, has gone hence
+untimely, without space allowed him, so far as mortal judgment
+could discern, to perform his mission on the earth. The prophet
+dies, and the man of torpid heart and sluggish brain lives on.
+The poet leaves his song half sung, or finishes it, beyond the
+scope of mortal ears, in a celestial choir. The painter--as
+Allston did--leaves half his conception on the canvas to sadden
+us with its imperfect beauty, and goes to picture forth the
+whole, if it be no irreverence to say so, in the hues of heaven.
+But rather such incomplete designs of this life will be perfected
+nowhere. This so frequent abortion of man's dearest projects must
+be taken as a proof that the deeds of earth, however etherealized
+by piety or genius, are without value, except as exercises and
+manifestations of the spirit. In heaven, all ordinary thought is
+higher and more melodious than Milton's song. Then, would he add
+another verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here?
+
+But to return to Owen Warland. It was his fortune, good or ill,
+to achieve the purpose of his life. Pass we over a long space of
+intense thought, yearning effort, minute toil, and wasting
+anxiety, succeeded by an instant of solitary triumph: let all
+this be imagined; and then behold the artist, on a winter
+evening, seeking admittance to Robert Danforth's fireside circle.
+There he found the man of iron, with his massive substance
+thoroughly warmed and attempered by domestic influences. And
+there was Annie, too, now transformed into a matron, with much of
+her husband's plain and sturdy nature, but imbued, as Owen
+Warland still believed, with a finer grace, that might enable her
+to be the interpreter between strength and beauty. It happened,
+likewise, that old Peter Hovenden was a guest this evening at his
+daughter's fireside, and it was his well-remembered expression of
+keen, cold criticism that first encountered the artist's glance.
+
+"My old friend Owen!" cried Robert Danforth, starting up, and
+compressing the artist's delicate fingers within a hand that was
+accustomed to gripe bars of iron. "This is kind and neighborly to
+come to us at last. I was afraid your perpetual motion had
+bewitched you out of the remembrance of old times."
+
+"We are glad to see you," said Annie, while a blush reddened her
+matronly cheek. "It was not like a friend to stay from us so
+long."
+
+"Well, Owen," inquired the old watchmaker, as his first greeting,
+"how comes on the beautiful? Have you created it at last?"
+
+The artist did not immediately reply, being startled by the
+apparition of a young child of strength that was tumbling about
+on the carpet,--a little personage who had come mysteriously out
+of the infinite, but with something so sturdy and real in his
+composition that he seemed moulded out of the densest substance
+which earth could supply. This hopeful infant crawled towards the
+new-comer, and setting himself on end, as Robert Danforth
+expressed the posture, stared at Owen with a look of such
+sagacious observation that the mother could not help exchanging a
+proud glance with her husband. But the artist was disturbed by
+the child's look, as imagining a resemblance between it and Peter
+Hovenden's habitual expression. He could have fancied that the
+old watchmaker was compressed into this baby shape, and looking
+out of those baby eyes, and repeating, as he now did, the
+malicious question: "The beautiful, Owen! How comes on the
+beautiful? Have you succeeded in creating the beautiful?"
+
+"I have succeeded," replied the artist, with a momentary light of
+triumph in his eyes and a smile of sunshine, yet steeped in such
+depth of thought that it was almost sadness. "Yes, my friends, it
+is the truth. I have succeeded."
+
+"Indeed!" cried Annie, a look of maiden mirthfulness peeping out
+of her face again. "And is it lawful, now, to inquire what the
+secret is?"
+
+"Surely; it is to disclose it that I have come," answered Owen
+Warland. "You shall know, and see, and touch, and possess the
+secret! For, Annie,--if by that name I may still address the
+friend of my boyish years,--Annie, it is for your bridal gift
+that I have wrought this spiritualized mechanism, this harmony of
+motion, this mystery of beauty. It comes late, indeed; but it is
+as we go onward in life, when objects begin to lose their
+freshness of hue and our souls their delicacy of perception, that
+the spirit of beauty is most needed. If,--forgive me, Annie,--if
+you know how--to value this gift, it can never come too late."
+
+He produced, as he spoke, what seemed a jewel box. It was carved
+richly out of ebony by his own hand, and inlaid with a fanciful
+tracery of pearl, representing a boy in pursuit of a butterfly,
+which, elsewhere, had become a winged spirit, and was flying
+heavenward; while the boy, or youth, had found such efficacy in
+his strong desire that he ascended from earth to cloud, and from
+cloud to celestial atmosphere, to win the beautiful. This case of
+ebony the artist opened, and bade Annie place her fingers on its
+edge. She did so, but almost screamed as a butterfly fluttered
+forth, and, alighting on her finger's tip, sat waving the ample
+magnificence of its purple and gold-speckled wings, as if in
+prelude to a flight. It is impossible to express by words the
+glory, the splendor, the delicate gorgeousness which were
+softened into the beauty of this object. Nature's ideal butterfly
+was here realized in all its perfection; not in the pattern of
+such faded insects as flit among earthly flowers, but of those
+which hover across the meads of paradise for child-angels and the
+spirits of departed infants to disport themselves with. The rich
+down was visible upon its wings; the lustre of its eyes seemed
+instinct with spirit. The firelight glimmered around this
+wonder--the candles gleamed upon it; but it glistened apparently
+by its own radiance, and illuminated the finger and outstretched
+hand on which it rested with a white gleam like that of precious
+stones. In its perfect beauty, the consideration of size was
+entirely lost. Had its wings overreached the firmament, the mind
+could not have been more filled or satisfied.
+
+"Beautiful! beautiful!" exclaimed Annie. "Is it alive? Is it
+alive?"
+
+"Alive? To be sure it is," answered her husband. "Do you suppose
+any mortal has skill enough to make a butterfly, or would put
+himself to the trouble of making one, when any child may catch a
+score of them in a summer's afternoon? Alive? Certainly! But this
+pretty box is undoubtedly of our friend Owen's manufacture; and
+really it does him credit."
+
+At this moment the butterfly waved its wings anew, with a motion
+so absolutely lifelike that Annie was startled, and even
+awestricken; for, in spite of her husband's opinion, she could
+not satisfy herself whether it was indeed a living creature or a
+piece of wondrous mechanism.
+
+"Is it alive?" she repeated, more earnestly than before.
+
+"Judge for yourself," said Owen Warland, who stood gazing in her
+face with fixed attention.
+
+The butterfly now flung itself upon the air, fluttered round
+Annie's head, and soared into a distant region of the parlor,
+still making itself perceptible to sight by the starry gleam in
+which the motion of its wings enveloped it. The infant on the
+floor followed its course with his sagacious little eyes. After
+flying about the room, it returned in a spiral curve and settled
+again on Annie's finger.
+
+"But is it alive?" exclaimed she again; and the finger on which
+the gorgeous mystery had alighted was so tremulous that the
+butterfly was forced to balance himself with his wings. "Tell me
+if it be alive, or whether you created it."
+
+"Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful?" replied Owen
+Warland. "Alive?  Yes, Annie; it may well be said to possess
+life, for it has absorbed my own being into itself; and in the
+secret of that butterfly, and in its beauty,--which is not merely
+outward, but deep as its whole system,--is represented the
+intellect, the imagination, the sensibility, the soul of an
+Artist of the Beautiful! Yes; I created it. But"--and here his
+countenance somewhat changed--"this butterfly is not now to me
+what it was when I beheld it afar off in the daydreams of my
+youth."
+
+"Be it what it may, it is a pretty plaything," said the
+blacksmith, grinning with childlike delight. "I wonder whether it
+would condescend to alight on such a great clumsy finger as mine?
+Hold it hither, Annie."
+
+By the artist's direction, Annie touched her finger's tip to that
+of her husband; and, after a momentary delay, the butterfly
+fluttered from one to the other. It preluded a second flight by a
+similar, yet not precisely the same, waving of wings as in the
+first experiment; then, ascending from the blacksmith's stalwart
+finger, it rose in a gradually enlarging curve to the ceiling,
+made one wide sweep around the room, and returned with an
+undulating movement to the point whence it had started.
+
+"Well, that does beat all nature!" cried Robert Danforth,
+bestowing the heartiest praise that he could find expression for;
+and, indeed, had he paused there, a man of finer words and nicer
+perception could not easily have said more. "That goes beyond me,
+I confess. But what then? There is more real use in one downright
+blow of my sledge hammer than in the whole five years' labor that
+our friend Owen has wasted on this butterfly."
+
+Here the child clapped his hands and made a great babble of
+indistinct utterance, apparently demanding that the butterfly
+should be given him for a plaything.
+
+Owen Warland, meanwhile, glanced sidelong at Annie, to discover
+whether she sympathized in her husband's estimate of the
+comparative value of the beautiful and the practical. There was,
+amid all her kindness towards himself, amid all the wonder and
+admiration with which she contemplated the marvellous work of his
+hands and incarnation of his idea, a secret scorn--too secret,
+perhaps, for her own consciousness, and perceptible only to such
+intuitive discernment as that of the artist. But Owen, in the
+latter stages of his pursuit, had risen out of the region in
+which such a discovery might have been torture. He knew that the
+world, and Annie as the representative of the world, whatever
+praise might be bestowed, could never say the fitting word nor
+feel the fitting sentiment which should be the perfect recompense
+of an artist who, symbolizing a lofty moral by a material
+trifle,--converting what was earthly to spiritual gold,--had won
+the beautiful into his handiwork. Not at this latest moment was
+he to learn that the reward of all high performance must be
+sought within itself, or sought in vain. There was, however, a
+view of the matter which Annie and her husband, and even Peter
+Hovenden, might fully have understood, and which would have
+satisfied them that the toil of years had here been worthily
+bestowed. Owen Warland might have told them that this butterfly,
+this plaything, this bridal gift of a poor watchmaker to a
+blacksmith's wife, was, in truth, a gem of art that a monarch
+would have purchased with honors and abundant wealth, and have
+treasured it among the jewels of his kingdom as the most unique
+and wondrous of them all. But the artist smiled and kept the
+secret to himself .
+
+"Father," said Annie, thinking that a word of praise from the old
+watchmaker might gratify his former apprentice, "do come and
+admire this pretty butterfly."
+
+"Let us see," said Peter Hovenden, rising from his chair, with a
+sneer upon his face that always made people doubt, as he himself
+did, in everything but a material existence. "Here is my finger
+for it to alight upon. I shall understand it better when once I
+have touched it."
+
+But, to the increased astonishment of Annie, when the tip of her
+father's finger was pressed against that of her husband, on which
+the butterfly still rested, the insect drooped its wings and
+seemed on the point of falling to the floor. Even the bright
+spots of gold upon its wings and body, unless her eyes deceived
+her, grew dim, and the glowing purple took a dusky hue, and the
+starry lustre that gleamed around the blacksmith's hand became
+faint and vanished.
+
+"It is dying! it is dying!" cried Annie, in alarm.
+
+"It has been delicately wrought," said the artist, calmly. "As I
+told you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence--call it magnetism,
+or what you will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery its
+exquisite susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him
+who instilled his own life into it. It has already lost its
+beauty; in a few moments more its mechanism would be irreparably
+injured."
+
+"Take away your hand, father!" entreated Annie, turning pale.
+"Here is my child; let it rest on his innocent hand. There,
+perhaps, its life will revive and its colors grow brighter than
+ever."
+
+Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his finger. The
+butterfly then appeared to recover the power of voluntary motion,
+while its hues assumed much of their original lustre, and the
+gleam of starlight, which was its most ethereal attribute, again
+formed a halo round about it. At first, when transferred from
+Robert Danforth's hand to the small finger of the child, this
+radiance grew so powerful that it positively threw the little
+fellow's shadow back against the wall. He, meanwhile, extended
+his plump hand as he had seen his father and mother do, and
+watched the waving of the insect's wings with infantine delight.
+Nevertheless, there was a certain odd expression of sagacity that
+made Owen Warland feel as if here were old Pete Hovenden,
+partially, and but partially, redeemed from his hard scepticism
+into childish faith.
+
+"How wise the little monkey looks!" whispered Robert Danforth to
+his wife.
+
+"I never saw such a look on a child's face," answered Annie,
+admiring her own infant, and with good reason, far more than the
+artistic butterfly. "The darling knows more of the mystery than
+we do."
+
+As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of something
+not entirely congenial in the child's nature, it alternately
+sparkled and grew dim. At length it arose from the small hand of
+the infant with an airy motion that seemed to bear it upward
+without an effort, as if the ethereal instincts with which its
+master's spirit had endowed it impelled this fair vision
+involuntarily to a higher sphere. Had there been no obstruction,
+it might have soared into the sky and grown immortal. But its
+lustre gleamed upon the ceiling; the exquisite texture of its
+wings brushed against that earthly medium; and a sparkle or two,
+as of stardust, floated downward and lay glimmering on the
+carpet. Then the butterfly came fluttering down, and, instead of
+returning to the infant, was apparently attracted towards the
+artist's hand.
+
+"Not so! not so!" murmured Owen Warland, as if his handiwork
+could have understood him. "Thou has gone forth out of thy
+master's heart. There is no return for thee."
+
+With a wavering movement, and emitting a tremulous radiance, the
+butterfly struggled, as it were, towards the infant, and was
+about to alight upon his finger; but while it still hovered in
+the air, the little child of strength, with his grandsire's sharp
+and shrewd expression in his face, made a snatch at the
+marvellous insect and compressed it in his hand. Annie screamed.
+Old Peter Hovenden burst into a cold and scornful laugh. The
+blacksmith, by main force, unclosed the infant's hand, and found
+within the palm a small heap of glittering fragments, whence the
+mystery of beauty had fled forever. And as for Owen Warland, he
+looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and
+which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly than
+this. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful,
+the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses
+became of little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed
+itself in the enjoyment of the reality.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etexts from From Mosses From An Old Manse
+
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