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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prue and I, by George William Curtis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world 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.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Prue and I
+
+Author: George William Curtis
+
+Posting Date: August 24, 2014 [EBook #8645]
+Release Date: August, 2005
+First Posted: July 29, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRUE AND I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PRUE AND I.
+
+BY
+
+GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
+
+  "Knitters in the sun."
+  _Twelfth Night._
+
+
+
+A WORD TO THE GENTLE READER.
+
+An old book-keeper, who wears a white cravat and black trowsers in the
+morning, who rarely goes to the opera, and never dines out, is clearly
+a person of no fashion and of no superior sources of information. His
+only journey is from his house to his office; his only satisfaction is
+in doing his duty; his only happiness is in his Prue and his children.
+
+What romance can such a life have? What stories can such a man tell?
+
+Yet I think, sometimes, when I look up from the parquet at the opera,
+and see Aurelia smiling in the boxes, and holding her court of love,
+and youth, and beauty, that the historians have not told of a fairer
+queen, nor the travellers seen devouter homage. And when I remember
+that it was in misty England that quaint old George Herbert Sang of
+the--
+
+  "Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright--
+    The bridal of the earth and sky,"
+
+I am sure that I see days as lovely in our clearer air, and do not
+believe that Italian sunsets have a more gorgeous purple or a softer
+gold.
+
+So, as the circle of my little life revolves, I console myself with
+believing, what I cannot help believing, that a man need not be a
+vagabond to enjoy the sweetest charm of travel, but that all countries
+and all times repeat themselves in his experience. This is an old
+philosophy, I am told, and much favored by those who have travelled;
+and I cannot but be glad that my faith has such a fine name and such
+competent witnesses. I am assured, however, upon the other hand, that
+such a faith is only imagination. But, if that be true, imagination is
+as good as many voyages--and how much cheaper!--a consideration which
+an old book-keeper can never afford to forget.
+
+I have not found, in my experience, that travellers always bring back
+with them the sunshine of Italy or the elegance of Greece. They tell
+us that there are such things, and that they have seen them; but,
+perhaps, they saw them, as the apples in the garden of the Hesperides
+were sometimes seen--over the wall. I prefer the fruit which I can buy
+in the market to that which a man tells me he saw in Sicily, but of
+which there is no flavor in his story. Others, like Moses Primrose,
+bring us a gross of such spectacles as we prefer not to see; so that I
+begin to suspect a man must have Italy and Greece in his heart and
+mind, if he would ever see them with his eyes.
+
+I know that this may be only a device of that compassionate
+imagination designed to comfort me, who shall never take but one other
+journey than my daily beat. Yet there have been wise men who taught
+that all scenes are but pictures upon the mind; and if I can see them
+as I walk the street that leads to my office, or sit at the
+office-window looking into the court, or take a little trip down the
+bay or up the river, why are not my pictures as pleasant and as
+profitable as those which men travel for years, at great cost of time,
+and trouble, and money, to behold?
+
+For my part, I do not believe that any man can see softer skies than I
+see in Prue's eyes; nor hear sweeter music than I hear in Prue's
+voice; nor find a more heaven-lighted temple than I know Prue's mind
+to be. And when I wish to please myself with a lovely image of peace
+and contentment, I do not think of the plain of Sharon, nor of the
+valley of Enna, nor of Arcadia, nor of Claude's pictures; but, feeling
+that the fairest fortune of my life is the right to be named with her,
+I whisper gently, to myself, with a smile--for it seems as if my very
+heart smiled within me, when I think of her--"Prue and I."
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+  I. DINNER-TIME
+ II. MY CHATEAUX
+III. SEA FROM SHORE
+ IV. TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES
+  V. A CRUISE IN THE FLYING DUTCHMAN
+ VI. FAMILY PORTRAITS
+VII. OUR COUSIN THE CURATE
+
+
+
+DINNER-TIME.
+
+  "Within this hour it will be dinner-time;
+  I'll view the manners of the town,
+  Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings."
+  _Comedy of Errors_.
+
+
+In the warm afternoons of the early summer, it is my pleasure to
+stroll about Washington Square and along the Fifth Avenue, at the hour
+when the diners-out are hurrying to the tables of the wealthy and
+refined. I gaze with placid delight upon the cheerful expanse of white
+waistcoat that illumes those streets at that hour, and mark the
+variety of emotions that swell beneath all that purity. A man going
+out to dine has a singular cheerfulness of aspect.  Except for his
+gloves, which fit so well, and which he has carefully buttoned, that
+he may not make an awkward pause in the hall of his friend's house, I
+am sure he would search his pocket for a cent to give the wan beggar
+at the corner. It is impossible just now, my dear woman; but God bless
+you!
+
+It is pleasant to consider that simple suit of black.  If my man be
+young and only lately cognizant of the rigors of the social law, he is
+a little nervous at being seen in his dress suit--body coat and black
+trowsers--before sunset. For in the last days of May the light lingers
+long over the freshly leaved trees in the Square, and lies warm along
+the Avenue. All winter the sun has not been permitted to see
+dress-coats.  They come out only with the stars, and fade with ghosts,
+before the dawn. Except, haply, they be brought homeward before
+breakfast in an early twilight of hackney-coach. Now, in the budding
+and bursting summer, the sun takes his revenge, and looks aslant over
+the tree-tops and the chimneys upon the most unimpeachable garments. A
+cat may look upon a king.
+
+I know my man at a distance. If I am chatting with the nursery maids
+around the fountain, I see him upon the broad walk of Washington
+Square, and detect him by the freshness of his movement his springy
+gait. Then the white waistcoat flashes in the sun.
+
+"Go on, happy youth," I exclaim aloud, to the great alarm of the
+nursery maids, who suppose me to be an innocent insane person suffered
+to go at large, unattended,--"go on, and be happy with fellow
+waistcoats over fragrant wines."
+
+It is hard to describe the pleasure in this amiable spectacle of a man
+going out to dine. I, who am a quiet family man, and take a quiet
+family cut at four o'clock; or, when I am detained down town by a
+false quantity in my figures, who run into Delmonico's and seek
+comfort in a cutlet, am rarely invited to dinner and have few white
+waistcoats.  Indeed, my dear Prue tells me that I have but one in the
+world, and I often want to confront my eager young friends as they
+bound along, and ask abruptly, "What do you think of a man whom one
+white waistcoat suffices?"
+
+By the time I have eaten my modest repast, it is the hour for the
+diners-out to appear. If the day is unusually soft and sunny, I hurry
+my simple meal a little, that I may not lose any of my favorite
+spectacle.  Then I saunter out. If you met me you would see that I am
+also clad in black. But black is my natural color, so that it begets
+no false theories concerning my intentions. Nobody, meeting me in full
+black, supposes that I am going to dine out. That sombre hue is
+professional with me. It belongs to book-keepers as to clergymen,
+physicians, and undertakers. We wear it because we follow solemn
+callings. Saving men's bodies and souls, or keeping the machinery of
+business well wound, are such sad professions that it is becoming to
+drape dolefully those who adopt them.
+
+I wear a white cravat, too, but nobody supposes that it is in any
+danger of being stained by Lafitte.  It is a limp cravat with a craven
+tie. It has none of the dazzling dash of the white that my young
+friends sport, or, I should say, sported; for the white cravat is now
+abandoned to the sombre professions of which I spoke. My young friends
+suspect that the flunkeys of the British nobleman wear such ties, and
+they have, therefore, discarded them.  I am sorry to remark, also, an
+uneasiness, if not downright skepticism, about the white waistcoat.
+Will it extend to shirts, I ask myself with sorrow.
+
+But there is something pleasanter to contemplate during these quiet
+strolls of mine, than the men who are going to dine out, and that is,
+the women. They roll in carriages to the happy houses which they shall
+honor, and I strain my eyes in at the carriage window to see their
+cheerful faces as they pass. I have already dined; upon beef and
+cabbage, probably, if it is boiled day. I I am not expected at the
+table to which Aurelia is hastening, yet no guest there shall enjoy
+more than I enjoy,--nor so much, if he considers the meats the best
+part of the dinner. The beauty of the beautiful Aurelia I see and
+worship as she drives by. The vision of many beautiful Aurelias
+driving to dinner, is the mirage of that pleasant journey of mine
+along the avenue. I do not envy the Persian poets, on those
+afternoons, nor long to be an Arabian traveller. For I can walk that
+street, finer than any of which the Ispahan architects dreamed; and I
+can see sultanas as splendid as the enthusiastic and exaggerating
+Orientals describe.
+
+But not only do I see and enjoy Aurelia's beauty I delight in her
+exquisite attire. In these warm days she does not wear so much as the
+lightest shawl. She is clad only in spring sunshine. It glitters in
+the soft darkness of her hair. It touches the diamonds, the opals, the
+pearls, that cling to her arms, and neck, and fingers. They flash back
+again, and the gorgeous silks glisten, and the light laces flutter,
+until the stately Aurelia seems to me, in tremulous radiance, swimming
+by.
+
+I doubt whether you who are to have the inexpressible pleasure of
+dining with her, and even of sitting by her side, will enjoy more than
+I. For my pleasure is inexpressible, also. And it is in this greater
+than yours, that I see all the beautiful ones who are to dine at
+various tables, while you only see your own circle, although that, I
+will not deny, is the most desirable of all.
+
+Beside, although my person is not present at your dinner, my fancy
+is. I see Aurelia's carriage stop, and behold white-gloved servants
+opening wide doors. There is a brief glimpse of magnificence for the
+dull eyes of the loiterers outside; then the door closes. But my fancy
+went in with Aurelia. With her, it looks at the vast mirror, and
+surveys her form at length in the Psyche-glass. It gives the final
+shake to the skirt, the last flirt to the embroidered handkerchief,
+carefully held, and adjusts the bouquet, complete as a tropic nestling
+in orange leaves. It descends with her, and marks the faint blush upon
+her cheek at the thought of her exceeding beauty; the consciousness of
+the most beautiful woman, that the most beautiful woman is entering
+the room. There is the momentary hush, the subdued greeting, the quick
+glance of the Aurelias who have arrived earlier, and who perceive in a
+moment the hopeless perfection of that attire; the courtly gaze of
+gentlemen, who feel the serenity of that beauty. All this my fancy
+surveys; my fancy, Aurelia's invisible cavalier.
+
+You approach with hat in hand and the thumb of your left hand in your
+waistcoat pocket. You are polished and cool, and have an
+irreproachable repose of manner. There are no improper wrinkles in
+your cravat; your shirt-bosom does not bulge; the trowsers are
+accurate about your admirable boot. But you look very stiff and
+brittle. You are a little bullied by your unexceptionable
+shirt-collar, which interdicts perfect freedom of movement in your
+head. You are elegant, undoubtedly, but it seems as if you might break
+and fall to pieces, like a porcelain vase, if you were roughly shaken.
+
+Now, here, I have the advantage of you. My fancy quietly surveying the
+scene, is subject to none of these embarrassments. My fancy will not
+utter commonplaces. That will not say to the superb lady, who stands
+with her flowers, incarnate May, "What a beautiful day, Miss Aurelia."
+That will not feel constrained to say something, when it has nothing
+to say; nor will it be obliged to smother all the pleasant things that
+occur, because they would be too flattering to express.  My fancy
+perpetually murmurs in Aurelia's ear, "Those flowers would not be fair
+in your hand, if you yourself were not fairer. That diamond necklace
+would be gaudy, if your eyes were not brighter. That queenly movement
+would be awkward, if your soul were not queenlier."
+
+You could not say such things to Aurelia, although, if you are worthy
+to dine at her side, they are the very things you are longing to
+say. What insufferable stuff you are talking about the weather, and
+the opera, and Alboni's delicious voice, and Newport, and Saratoga!
+They are all very pleasant subjects, but do you suppose Ixion talked
+Thessalian politics when he was admitted to dine with Juno?
+
+I almost begin to pity you, and to believe that a scarcity of white
+waistcoats is true wisdom. For now dinner is announced, and you, O
+rare felicity, are to hand down Aurelia. But you run the risk of
+tumbling her expansive skirt, and you have to drop your hat upon a
+chance chair, and wonder, _en passant_ who will wear it home,
+which is annoying.  My fancy runs no such risk; is not at all
+solicitous about its hat, and glides by the side of Aurelia, stately
+as she. There! you stumble on the stair, and are vexed at your own
+awkwardness, and are sure you saw the ghost of a smile glimmer along
+that superb face at your side. My fancy doesn't tumble down stairs,
+and what kind of looks it sees upon Aurelia's face, are its own
+secret.
+
+Is it any better, now you are seated at table?  Your companion eats
+little because she wishes little.  You eat little because you think it
+is elegant to do so. It is a shabby, second-hand elegance, like your
+brittle behavior. It is just as foolish for you to play with the
+meats, when you ought to satisfy your healthy appetite generously, as
+it is for you, in the drawing-room, to affect that cool indifference
+when you have real and noble interests.
+
+I grant you that fine manners, if you please, are a fine art. But is
+not monotony the destruction of art? Your manners, O happy Ixion,
+banqueting with Juno, are Egyptian. They have no perspective, no
+variety. They have no color, no shading. They are all on a dead level;
+they are flat. Now, for you are a man of sense, you are conscious that
+those wonderful eyes of Aurelia see straight through all this net-work
+of elegant manners in which you have entangled yourself, and that
+consciousness is uncomfortable to you. It is another trick in the game
+for me, because those eyes do not pry into my fancy. How can they,
+since Aurelia does not know of my existence?
+
+Unless, indeed, she should remember the first time I saw her. It was
+only last year, in May. I had dined, somewhat hastily, in
+consideration of the fine day, and of my confidence that many would be
+wending dinnerwards that afternoon. I saw my Prue comfortably engaged
+in seating the trowsers of Adoniram, our eldest boy--an economical
+care to which my darling Prue is not unequal, even in these days and
+in this town--and then hurried toward the avenue. It is never much
+thronged at that hour. The moment is sacred to dinner. As I paused at
+the corner of Twelfth Street, by the church, you remember, I saw an
+apple-woman, from whose stores I determined to finish my dessert,
+which had been imperfect at home. But, mindful of meritorious and
+economical Prue, I was not the man to pay exorbitant prices for
+apples, and while still haggling with the wrinkled Eve who had tempted
+me, I became suddenly aware of a carriage approaching, and, indeed,
+already close by. I raised my eyes, still munching an apple which I
+held in one hand, while the other grasped my walking-stick (true to my
+instincts of dinner guests, as young women to a passing wedding or old
+ones to a funeral), and beheld Aurelia!
+
+Old in this kind of observation as I am, there was something so
+graciously alluring in the look that she cast upon me, as
+unconsciously, indeed, as she would have cast it upon the church,
+that, fumbling hastily for my spectacles to enjoy the boon more fully,
+I thoughtlessly advanced upon the apple-stand, and, in some
+indescribable manner, tripping, down we all fell into the street, old
+woman, apples, baskets, stand, and I, in promiscuous confusion.  As I
+struggled there, somewhat bewildered, yet sufficiently self-possessed
+to look after the carriage, I beheld that beautiful woman looking at
+us through the back-window (you could not have done it; the integrity
+of your shirt-collar would have interfered,) and smiling pleasantly,
+so that her going around the corner was like a gentle sunset, so
+seemed she to disappear in her own smiling; or--if you choose, in view
+of the apple difficulties--like a rainbow after a storm.
+
+If the beautiful Aurelia recalls that event, she may know of my
+existence; not otherwise. And even then she knows me only as a funny
+old gentleman, who, in his eagerness to look at her, tumbled over an
+apple-woman.
+
+My fancy from that moment followed her. How grateful I was to the
+wrinkled Eve's extortion, and to the untoward tumble, since it
+procured me the sight of that smile. I took my sweet revenge from
+that. For I knew that the beautiful Aurelia entered the house of her
+host with beaming eyes, and my fancy heard her sparkling story. You
+consider yourself happy because you are sitting by her and helping her
+to a lady-finger, or a macaroon, for which she smiles. But I was her
+theme for ten mortal minutes. She was my bard, my blithe historian.
+She was the Homer of my luckless Trojan fall. She set my mishap to
+music, in telling it.  Think what it is to have inspired Urania; to
+have called a brighter beam into the eyes of Miranda, and do not think
+so much of passing Aurelia the mottoes, my dear young friend.
+
+There was the advantage of not going to that dinner. Had I been
+invited, as you were, I should have pestered Prue about the buttons on
+my white waistcoat, instead of leaving her placidly piecing adolescent
+trowsers. She would have been flustered, fearful of being too late, of
+tumbling the garment, of soiling it, fearful of offending me in some
+way, (admirable woman!) I, in my natural impatience, might have let
+drop a thoughtless word, which would have been a pang in her heart and
+a tear in her eye, for weeks afterward.
+
+As I walked nervously up the avenue (for I am unaccustomed to prandial
+recreations), I should not have had that solacing image of quiet Prue,
+and the trowsers, as the back-ground in the pictures of the gay
+figures I passed, making each, by contrast, fairer. I should have been
+wondering what to say and do at the dinner. I should surely have been
+very warm, and yet not have enjoyed the rich, waning sunlight. Need I
+tell you that I should not have stopped for apples, but instead of
+economically tumbling into the street with apples and apple-women,
+whereby I merely rent my trowsers across the knee, in a manner that
+Prue can readily, and at little cost, repair. I should, beyond
+peradventure, have split a new dollar-pair of gloves in the effort of
+straining my large hands into them, which would, also, have caused me
+additional redness in the face, and renewed fluttering.
+
+Above all, I should not have seen Aurelia passing in her carriage, nor
+would she have smiled at me, nor charmed my memory with her radiance,
+nor the circle at dinner with the sparkling Iliad of my woes. Then at
+the table, I should not have sat by her. You would have had that
+pleasure; I should have led out the maiden aunt from the country, and
+have talked poultry, when I talked at all. Aurelia would not have
+remarked me. Afterward, in describing the dinner to her virtuous
+parents, she would have concluded, "and one old gentleman, whom I
+didn't know."
+
+No, my polished friend, whose elegant repose of manner I yet greatly
+commend, I am content, if you are. How much better it was that I was
+not invited to that dinner, but was permitted, by a kind fate, to
+furnish a subject for Aurelia's wit.
+
+There is one other advantage in sending your fancy to dinner, instead
+of going yourself. It is, that then the occasion remains wholly fair
+in your memory. You, who devote yourself to dining out, and who are to
+be daily seen affably sitting down to such feasts, as I know mainly by
+hearsay--by the report of waiters, guests, and others who were
+present--you cannot escape the little things that spoil the picture,
+and which the fancy does not see.
+
+For instance, in handing you the _potage a la Bisque_, at the
+very commencement of this dinner to-day, John, the waiter, who never
+did such a thing before, did this time suffer the plate to tip, so
+that a little of that rare soup dripped into your lap--just enough to
+spoil those trowsers, which is nothing to you, because you can buy a
+great many more trowsers, but which little event is inharmonious with
+the fine porcelain dinner service, with the fragrant wines, the
+glittering glass, the beautiful guests, and the mood of mind suggested
+by all of these. There is, in fact, if you will pardon a free use of
+the vernacular, there is a grease-spot upon your remembrance of this
+dinner.
+
+Or, in the same way, and with the same kind of mental result, you can
+easily imagine the meats a little tough; a suspicion of smoke
+somewhere in the sauces; too much pepper, perhaps, or too little salt;
+or there might be the graver dissonance of claret not properly
+attempered, or a choice Rhenish below the average mark, or the
+spilling of some of that Arethusa Madeira, marvellous for its
+innumerable circumnavigations of the globe, and for being as dry as
+the conversation of the host. These things are not up to the high
+level of the dinner; for wherever Aurelia dines, all accessories
+should be as perfect in their kind as she, the principal, is in hers.
+
+That reminds me of a possible dissonance worse than all. Suppose that
+soup had trickled down the unimaginable _berthe_ of Aurelia's
+dress (since it might have done so), instead of wasting itself upon
+your trowsers! Could even the irreproachable elegance of your manners
+have contemplated, unmoved, a grease-spot upon your remembrance of the
+peerless Aurelia?
+
+You smile, of course, and remind me that that lady's manners are so
+perfect that, if she drank poison, she would wipe her mouth after it
+as gracefully as ever. How much more then, you say, in the case of
+such a slight _contretemps_ as spotting her dress, would she
+appear totally unmoved.
+
+So she would, undoubtedly. She would be, and look, as pure as ever;
+but, my young friend, her dress would not. Once, I dropped a pickled
+oyster in the lap of my Prue, who wore, on the occasion, her sea-green
+silk gown. I did not love my Prue the less; but there certainly was a
+very unhandsome spot upon her dress. And although I know my Prue to be
+spotless, yet, whenever I recall that day, I see her in a spotted
+gown, and I would prefer never to have been obliged to think of her in
+such a garment.
+
+Can you not make the application to the case, very likely to happen,
+of some disfigurement of that exquisite toilette of Aurelia's? In
+going down stairs, for instance, why should not heavy old Mr
+Carbuncle, who is coming close behind with Mrs.  Peony, both very
+eager for dinner, tread upon the hem of that garment which my lips
+would grow pale to kiss? The august Aurelia, yielding to natural laws,
+would be drawn suddenly backward--a very undignified movement--and the
+dress would be dilapidated. There would be apologies, and smiles, and
+forgiveness, and pinning up the pieces, nor would there be the
+faintest feeling of awkwardness or vexation in Aurelia's mind. But to
+you, looking on, and, beneath all that pure show of waistcoat, cursing
+old Carbuncle's carelessness, this tearing of dresses and repair of
+the toilette is by no means a poetic and cheerful spectacle. Nay, the
+very impatience that it produces in your mind jars upon the harmony of
+the moment.
+
+You will respond, with proper scorn, that you are not so absurdly
+fastidious as to heed the little necessary drawbacks of social
+meetings, and that you have not much regard for "the harmony of the
+occasion" (which phrase I fear you will repeat in a sneering
+tone). You will do very right in saying this; and it is a remark to
+which I shall give all the hospitality of my mind, and I do so because
+I heartily coincide in it. I hold a man to be very foolish who will
+not eat a good dinner because the table-cloth is not clean, or who
+cavils at the spots upon the sun. But still a man who does not apply
+his eye to a telescope or some kind of prepared medium, does not see
+those spots, while he has just as much light and heat as he who does.
+
+So it is with me. I walk in the avenue, and eat all the delightful
+dinners without seeing the spots upon the table-cloth, and behold all
+the beautiful Aurelias without swearing at old Carbuncle. I am the
+guest who, for the small price of invisibility, drinks only the best
+wines, and talks only to the most agreeable people. That is something,
+I can tell you, for you might be asked to lead out old Mrs.  Peony. My
+fancy slips in between you and Aurelia, sit you never so closely
+together. It not only hears what she says, but it perceives what she
+thinks and feels. It lies like a bee in her flowery thoughts, sucking
+all their honey. If there are unhandsome or unfeeling guests at table,
+it will not see them.  It knows only the good and fair. As I stroll in
+the fading light and observe the stately houses, my fancy believes the
+host equal to his house, and the courtesy of his wife more agreeable
+than her conservatory.  It will not believe that the pictures on the
+wall and the statues in the corners shame the guests. It will not
+allow that they are less than noble. It hears them speak gently of
+error, and warmly of worth. It knows that they commend heroism and
+devotion, and reprobate insincerity.  My fancy is convinced that the
+guests are not only feasted upon the choicest fruits of every land and
+season, but are refreshed by a consciousness of greater loveliness and
+grace in human character.  Now you, who actually go to the dinner, may
+not entirely agree with the view my fancy takes of that
+entertainment. Is it not, therefore, rather your loss? Or, to put it
+in another way, ought I to envy you the discovery that the guests
+_are_ shamed by the statues and pictures;--yes, and by the spoons
+and forks also, if they should chance neither to be so genuine nor so
+useful as those instruments?  And, worse than this, when your fancy
+wishes to enjoy the picture which mine forms of that feast, it cannot
+do so, because you have foolishly interpolated the fact between the
+dinner and your fancy.
+
+Of course, by this time it is late twilight, and the spectacle I
+enjoyed is almost over. But not quite, for as I return slowly along
+the streets, the windows are open, and only a thin haze of lace or
+muslin separates me from the Paradise within.
+
+I see the graceful cluster of girls hovering over the piano, and the
+quiet groups of the elders in easy chairs, around little tables. I
+cannot hear what is said, nor plainly see the faces. But some hoyden
+evening wind, more daring than I, abruptly parts the cloud to look in,
+and out comes a gush of light, music, and fragrance, so that I shrink
+away into the dark, that I may not seem, even by chance, to have
+invaded that privacy.
+
+Suddenly there is singing. It is Aurelia, who does not cope with the
+Italian Prima Donna, nor sing indifferently to-night, what was sung,
+superbly last evening at the opera. She has a strange, low, sweet
+voice, as if she only sang in the twilight. It is the ballad of "Allan
+Percy" that she sings.  There is no dainty applause of kid gloves,
+when it is ended, but silence follows the singing, like a tear.
+
+Then you, my young friend, ascend into the drawing-room, and, after a
+little graceful gossip, retire; or you wait, possibly, to hand Aurelia
+into her carriage, and to arrange a waltz for to-morrow evening. She
+smiles, you bow, and it is over. But it is not yet over with me. My
+fancy still follows her, and, like a prophetic dream, rehearses her
+destiny.  For, as the carriage rolls away into the darkness and I
+return homewards, how can my fancy help rolling away also, into the
+dim future, watching her go down the years?
+
+Upon my way home I see her in a thousand new situations. My fancy says
+to me, "The beauty of this beautiful woman is heaven's stamp upon
+virtue.  She will be equal to every chance that shall befall her, and
+she is so radiant and charming in the circle of prosperity, only
+because she has that irresistible simplicity and fidelity of
+character, which can also pluck the sting from adversity. Do you not
+see, you wan old book-keeper in faded cravat, that in a poor man's
+house this superb Aurelia would be more stately than sculpture, more
+beautiful than painting, and more graceful than the famous
+vases. Would her husband regret the opera if she sang 'Allan Percy' to
+him in the twilight? Would he not feel richer than the Poets, when his
+eyes rose from their jewelled pages, to fall again dazzled by the
+splendor of his wife's beauty?"
+
+At this point in my reflections I sometimes run, rather violently,
+against a lamp-post, and then proceed along the street more sedately.
+
+It is yet early when I reach home, where my Prue awaits me. The
+children are asleep, and the trowsers mended. The admirable woman is
+patient of my idiosyncrasies, and asks me if I have had a pleasant
+walk, and if there were many fine dinners to-day, as if I had been
+expected at a dozen tables.  She even asks me if I have seen the
+beautiful Aurelia (for there is always some Aurelia,) and inquires
+what dress she wore. I respond, and dilate upon what I have seen. Prue
+listens, as the children listen to her fairy tales. We discuss the
+little stories that penetrate our retirement, of the great people who
+actually dine out. Prue, with fine womanly instinct, declares it is a
+shame that Aurelia should smile for a moment upon ----, yes, even upon
+you, my friend of the irreproachable manners!
+
+"I know him," says my simple Prue; "I have watched his cold courtesy,
+his insincere devotion.  I have seen him acting in the boxes at the
+opera, much more adroitly than the singers upon the stage.  I have
+read his determination to marry Aurelia; and I shall not be
+surprised," concludes my tender wife, sadly, "if he wins her at last,
+by tiring her out, or, by secluding her by his constant devotion from
+the homage of other men, convinces her that she had better marry him,
+since it is so dismal to live on unmarried."
+
+And so, my friend, at the moment when the bouquet you ordered is
+arriving at Aurelia's house, and she is sitting before the glass while
+her maid arranges the last flower in her hair, my darling Prue, whom
+you will never hear of, is shedding warm tears over your probable
+union, and I am sitting by, adjusting my cravat and incontinently
+clearing my throat.
+
+It is rather a ridiculous business, I allow; yet you will smile at it
+tenderly, rather than scornfully, if you remember that it shows how
+closely linked we human creatures are, without knowing it, and that
+more hearts than we dream of enjoy our happiness and share our sorrow.
+
+Thus, I dine at great tables uninvited, and, unknown, converse with
+the famous beauties. If Aurelia is at last engaged, (but who is
+worthy?)  she will, with even greater care, arrange that wondrous
+toilette, will teach that lace a fall more alluring, those gems a
+sweeter light. But even then, as she rolls to dinner in her carriage,
+glad that she is fair, not for her own sake nor for the world's, but
+for that of a single youth (who, I hope, has not been smoking at the
+club all the morning), I, sauntering upon the sidewalk, see her pass,
+I pay homage to her beauty, and her lover can do no more; and if,
+perchance, my garments--which must seem quaint to her, with their
+shining knees and carefully brushed elbows; my white cravat, careless,
+yet prim; my meditative movement, as I put my stick under my arm to
+pare an apple, and not, I hope, this time to fall into the
+street,--should remind her, in her spring of youth, and beauty, and
+love, that there are age, and care, and poverty, also; then, perhaps,
+the good fortune of the meeting is not wholly mine.
+
+For, O beautiful Aurelia, two of these things, at least, must come
+even to you. There will be a time when you will no longer go out to
+dinner, or only very quietly, in the family. I shall be gone then: but
+other old book-keepers in white cravats will inherit my tastes, and
+saunter, on summer afternoons, to see what I loved to see.
+
+They will not pause, I fear, in buying apples, to look at the old lady
+in venerable cap, who is rolling by in the carriage. They will worship
+another Aurelia. You will not wear diamonds or opals any more, only
+one pearl upon your blue-veined finger--your engagement ring. Grave
+clergymen and antiquated beaux will hand you down to dinner, and the
+group of polished youth, who gather around the yet unborn Aurelia of
+that day, will look at you, sitting quietly upon the sofa, and say,
+softly, "She must have been very handsome in her time."
+
+All this must be: for consider how few years since it was your
+grandmother who was the belle, by whose side the handsome, young men
+longed to sit and pass expressive mottoes. Your grandmother was the
+Aurelia of a half-century ago, although you cannot fancy her
+young. She is indissolubly associated in your mind with caps and dark
+dresses. You can believe Mary Queen of Scots, or Nell Gwyn or
+Cleopatra, to have been young and blooming, although they belong to
+old and dead centuries, but not your grandmother. Think of those who
+shall believe the same of you--you, who to-day are the very flower of
+youth.
+
+Might I plead with you, Aurelia--I, who would be too happy to receive
+one of those graciously beaming bows that I see you bestow upon young
+men, in passing,--I would ask you to bear that thought with you,
+always, not to sadden your sunny smile, but to give it a more subtle
+grace. Wear in your summer garland this little leaf of rue. It will
+not be the skull at the feast, it will rather be the tender
+thoughtfulness in the face of the young Madonna.
+
+For the years pass like summer clouds, Aurelia, and the children of
+yesterday are the wives and mothers of to-day. Even I do sometimes
+discover the mild eyes of my Prue fixed pensively upon my face, as if
+searching for the bloom which she remembers there in the days, long
+ago, when we were young. She will never see it there again, any more
+than the flowers she held in her hand, in our old spring rambles. Yet
+the tear that slowly gathers as she gazes, is not grief that the bloom
+has faded from my cheek, but the sweet consciousness that it can never
+fade from my heart; and as her eyes fall upon her work again, or the
+children climb her lap to hear the old fairy tales they already know
+by heart, my wife Prue is dearer to me than the sweetheart of those
+days long ago.
+
+
+
+MY CHATEAUX.
+
+  "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
+  A stately pleasure-dome decree."
+  _Coleridge._
+
+
+I am the owner of great estates. Many of them lie in the West; but the
+greater part are in Spain.  You may see my western possessions any
+evening at sunset when their spires and battlements flash against the
+horizon.
+
+It gives me a feeling of pardonable importance, as a proprietor, that
+they are visible, to my eyes at least, from any part of the world in
+which I chance to be. In my long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope
+to India (the only voyage I ever made, when I was a boy and a
+supercargo), if I fell home-sick, or sank into a reverie of all the
+pleasant homes I had left behind, I had but to wait until sunset, and
+then looking toward the west, I beheld my clustering pinnacles and
+towers brightly burnished as if to salute and welcome me.
+
+So, in the city, if I get vexed and wearied, and cannot find my wonted
+solace in sallying forth at dinner-time to contemplate the gay world
+of youth and beauty hurrying to the congress of fashion,--or if I
+observe that years are deepening their tracks around the eyes of my
+wife, Prue, I go quietly up to the housetop, toward evening, and
+refresh myself with a distant prospect of my estates. It is as dear to
+me as that of Eton to the poet Gray; and, if I sometimes wonder at
+such moments whether I shall find those realms as fair as they appear,
+I am suddenly reminded that the night air may be noxious, and
+descending, I enter the little parlor where Prue sits stitching, and
+surprise that precious woman by exclaiming with the poet's pensive
+enthusiasm;
+
+  "Thought would destroy their Paradise,
+  No more;--where ignorance is bliss,
+  'Tis folly to be wise."
+
+Columbus, also, had possessions in the West; and as I read aloud the
+romantic story of his life, my voice quivers when I come to the point
+in which it is related that sweet odors of the land mingled with the
+sea-air, as the admiral's fleet approached the shores; that tropical
+birds flew out and fluttered around the ships, glittering in the sun,
+the gorgeous promises of the new country; that boughs, perhaps with
+blossoms not all decayed, floated out to welcome the strange wood from
+which the craft were hollowed. Then I cannot restrain myself, I think
+of the gorgeous visions I have seen before I have even undertaken the
+journey to the West, and I cry aloud to Prue:
+
+"What sun-bright birds, and gorgeous blossoms, and celestial odors
+will float out to us, my Prue, as we approach our western
+possessions!"
+
+The placid Prue raises her eyes to mine with a reproof so delicate
+that it could not be trusted to words; and, after a moment, she
+resumes her knitting and I proceed.
+
+These are my western estates, but my finest castles are in Spain. It
+is a country famously romantic, and my castles are all of perfect
+proportions, and appropriately set in the most picturesque situations.
+I have never been to Spain myself, but I have naturally conversed much
+with travellers to that country; although, I must allow, without
+deriving from them much substantial information about my property
+there. The wisest of them told me that there were more holders of real
+estate in Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of, and
+they are all great proprietors. Every one of them possesses a
+multitude of the stateliest castles.  From conversation with them you
+easily gather that each one considers his own castles much the largest
+and in the loveliest positions. And, after I had heard this said, I
+verified it, by discovering that all my immediate neighbors in the
+city were great Spanish proprietors.
+
+One day as I raised my head from entering some long and tedious
+accounts in my books, and began to reflect that the quarter was
+expiring, and that I must begin to prepare the balance-sheet, I
+observed my subordinate, in office but not in years, (for poor old
+Titbottom will never see sixty again!) leaning on his hand, and much
+abstracted.
+
+"Are you not well, Titbottom!" asked I.
+
+"Perfectly, but I was just building a castle in Spain," said he.
+
+I looked at his rusty coat, his faded hands, his sad eye, and white
+hair, for a moment, in great surprise, and then inquired,
+
+"Is it possible that you own property there too?"
+
+He shook his head silently; and still leaning on his hand, and with an
+expression in his eye, as if he were looking upon the most fertile
+estate of Andalusia, he went on making his plans; laying out his
+gardens, I suppose, building terraces for the vines, determining a
+library with a southern exposure, and resolving which should be the
+tapestried chamber.
+
+"What a singular whim," thought I, as I watched Titbottom and filled
+up a cheque for four hundred dollars, my quarterly salary, "that a man
+who owns castles in Spain should be deputy book-keeper at nine hundred
+dollars a year!"
+
+When I went home I ate my dinner silently, and afterward sat for a
+long time upon the roof of the house, looking at my western property,
+and thinking of Titbottom.
+
+It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have ever been to Spain
+to take possession and report to the rest of us the state of our
+property there. I, of course, cannot go, I am too much engaged. So is
+Titbottom.  And I find it is the case with all the proprietors.  We
+have so much to detain us at home that we cannot get away. But it is
+always so with rich men.  Prue sighed once as she sat at the window
+and saw Bourne, the millionaire, the President of innumerable
+companies, and manager and director of all the charitable societies in
+town, going by with wrinkled brow and hurried step. I asked her why
+she sighed.
+
+"Because I was remembering that my mother used to tell me not to
+desire great riches, for they occasioned great cares," said she.
+
+"They do indeed," answered I, with emphasis, remembering Titbottom,
+and the impossibility of looking after my Spanish estates.
+
+Prue turned and looked at me with mild surprise; but I saw that her
+mind had gone down the street with Bourne. I could never discover if
+he held much Spanish stock. But I think he does. All the Spanish
+proprietors have a certain expression.  Bourne has it to a remarkable
+degree. It is a kind of look, as if, in fact, a man's mind were in
+Spain.  Bourne was an old lover of Prue's, and he is not married,
+which is strange for a man in his position.
+
+It is not easy for me to say how I know so much, as I certainly do,
+about my castles in Spain. The sun always shines upon them. They stand
+lofty and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy and
+dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer, but in which no gales blow
+and there are no tempests.  All the sublime mountains, and beautiful
+valleys, and soft landscape, that I have not yet seen, are to be found
+in the grounds. They command a noble view of the Alps; so fine,
+indeed, that I should be quite content with the prospect of them from
+the highest tower of my castle, and not care to go to Switzerland.
+
+The neighboring ruins, too, are as picturesque as those of Italy, and
+my desire of standing in the Coliseum, and of seeing the shattered
+arches of the Aqueducts stretching along the Campagna and melting into
+the Alban Mount, is entirely quenched.  The rich gloom of my orange
+groves is gilded by fruit as brilliant of complexion and exquisite of
+flavor as any that ever dark-eyed Sorrento girls, looking over the
+high plastered walls of southern Italy, hand to the youthful
+travellers, climbing on donkeys up the narrow lane beneath.
+
+The Nile flows through my grounds. The Desert lies upon their edge,
+and Damascus stands in my garden. I am given to understand, also, that
+the Parthenon has been removed to my Spanish possessions.  The
+Golden-Horn is my fish-preserve; my flocks of golden fleece are
+pastured on the plain of Marathon, and the honey of Hymettus is
+distilled from the flowers that grow in the vale of Enna--all in my
+Spanish domains.
+
+From the windows of those castles look the beautiful women whom I have
+never seen, whose portraits the poets have painted. They wait for me
+there, and chiefly the fair-haired child, lost to my eyes so long ago,
+now bloomed into an impossible beauty. The lights that never shone,
+glance at evening in the vaulted halls, upon banquets that were never
+spread. The bands I have never collected, play all night long, and
+enchant the brilliant company, that was never assembled, into silence.
+
+In the long summer mornings the children that I never had, play in the
+gardens that I never planted.  I hear their sweet voices sounding low
+and far away, calling, "Father! Father!" I see the lost fair-haired
+girl, grown now into a woman, descending the stately stairs of my
+castle in Spain, stepping out upon the lawn, and playing with those
+children.  They bound away together down the garden; but those voices
+linger, this time airily calling, "Mother!  mother!"
+
+But there is a stranger magic than this in my Spanish estates. The
+lawny slopes on which, when a child, I played, in my father's old
+country place, which was sold when he failed, are all there, and not a
+flower faded, nor a blade of grass sere. The green leaves have not
+fallen from the spring woods of half a century ago, and a gorgeous
+autumn has blazed undimmed for fifty years, among the trees I
+remember.
+
+Chestnuts are not especially sweet to my palate now, but those with
+which I used to prick my fingers when gathering them in New Hampshire
+woods are exquisite as ever to my taste, when I think of eating them
+in Spain. I never ride horseback now at home; but in Spain, when I
+think of it, I bound over all the fences in the country, barebacked
+upon the wildest horses. Sermons I am apt to find a little soporific
+in this country; but in Spain I should listen as reverently as ever,
+for proprietors must set a good example on their estates.
+
+Plays are insufferable to me here--Prue and I never go. Prue, indeed,
+is not quite sure it is moral; but the theatres in my Spanish castles
+are of a prodigious splendor, and when I think of going there, Prue
+sits in a front box with me--a kind of royal box--the good woman,
+attired in such wise as I have never seen her here, while I wear my
+white waistcoat, which in Spain has no appearance of mending, but
+dazzles with immortal newness, and is a miraculous fit.
+
+Yes, and in those castles in Spain, Prue is not the placid,
+breeches-patching helpmate, with whom you are acquainted, but her face
+has a bloom which we both remember, and her movement a grace which my
+Spanish swans emulate, and her voice a music sweeter than those that
+orchestras discourse.  She is always there what she seemed to me when
+I fell in love with her, many and many years ago.  The neighbors
+called her then a nice, capable girl; and certainly she did knit and
+darn with a zeal and success to which my feet and my legs have
+testified for nearly half a century. But she could spin a finer web
+than ever came from cotton, and in its subtle meshes my heart was
+entangled, and there has reposed softly and happily ever since. The
+neighbors declared she could make pudding and cake better than any
+girl of her age; but stale bread from Prue's hand was ambrosia to my
+palate.
+
+"She who makes every thing well, even to making neighbors speak well
+of her, will surely make a good wife," said I to myself when I knew
+her; and the echo of a half century answers, "a good wife."
+
+So, when I meditate my Spanish castles, I see Prue in them as my heart
+saw her standing by her father's door. "Age cannot wither her." There
+is a magic in the Spanish air that paralyzes Time.  He glides by,
+unnoticed and unnoticing. I greatly admire the Alps, which I see so
+distinctly from my Spanish windows; I delight in the taste of the
+southern fruit that ripens upon my terraces; I enjoy the pensive shade
+of the Italian ruins in my gardens; I like to shoot crocodiles, and
+talk with the Sphinx upon the shores of the Nile, flowing through my
+domain; I am glad to drink sherbet in Damascus, and fleece my flocks
+on the plains of Marathon; but I would resign all these for ever
+rather than part with that Spanish portrait of Prue for a day. Nay,
+have I not resigned them all for ever, to live with that portrait's
+changing original?
+
+I have often wondered how I should reach my castles. The desire of
+going comes over me very strongly sometimes, and I endeavor to see how
+I can arrange my affairs, so as to get away. To tell the truth, I am
+not quite sure of the route,--I mean, to that particular part of Spain
+in which my estates lie. I have inquired very particularly, but nobody
+seems to know precisely. One morning I met young Aspen, trembling with
+excitement.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked I with interest, for I knew that he held a
+great deal of Spanish stock.
+
+"Oh!" said he, "I'm going out to take possession.  I have found the
+way to my castles in Spain."
+
+"Dear me!" I answered, with the blood streaming into my face; and,
+heedless of Prue, pulling my glove until it ripped--"what is it?"
+
+"The direct route is through California," answered he.
+
+"But then you have the sea to cross afterward," said I, remembering
+the map.
+
+"Not at all," answered Aspen, "the road runs along the shore of the
+Sacramento River."
+
+He darted away from me, and I did not meet him again. I was very
+curious to know if he arrived safely in Spain, and was expecting every
+day to hear news from him of my property there, when, one evening, I
+bought an extra, full of California news, and the first thing upon
+which my eye fell was this: "Died, in San Francisco, Edward Aspen,
+Esq., aged 35." There is a large body of the Spanish stockholders who
+believe with Aspen, and sail for California every week. I have not yet
+heard of their arrival out at their castles, but I suppose they are so
+busy with their own affairs there, that they have no time to write to
+the rest of us about the condition of our property.
+
+There was my wife's cousin, too, Jonathan Bud, who is a good, honest,
+youth from the country, and, after a few weeks' absence, he burst into
+the office one day, just as I was balancing my books, and whispered to
+me, eagerly:
+
+"I've found my castle in Spain."
+
+I put the blotting-paper in the leaf deliberately, for I was wiser now
+than when Aspen had excited me, and looked at my wife's cousin,
+Jonathan Bud, inquiringly.
+
+"Polly Bacon," whispered he, winking.
+
+I continued the interrogative glance.
+
+"She's going to marry me, and she'll show me the way to Spain," said
+Jonathan Bud, hilariously.
+
+"She'll make you walk Spanish, Jonathan Bud," said I.
+
+And so she does. He makes no more hilarious remarks. He never bursts
+into a room. He does not ask us to dinner. He says that Mrs. Bud does
+not like smoking. Mrs. Bud has nerves and babies.  She has a way of
+saying, "Mr. Bud!" which destroys conversation, and casts a gloom upon
+society.
+
+It occurred to me that Bourne, the millionaire, must have ascertained
+the safest and most expeditious route to Spain; so I stole a few
+minutes one afternoon, and went into his office. He was sitting at his
+desk, writing rapidly, and surrounded by files of papers and patterns,
+specimens, boxes, everything that covers the tables of a great
+merchant.  In the outer rooms clerks were writing. Upon high shelves
+over their heads, were huge chests, covered with dust, dingy with age,
+many of them, and all marked with the name of the firm, in large black
+letters--"Bourne & Dye." They were all numbered also with the proper
+year; some of them with a single capital B, and dates extending back
+into the last century, when old Bourne made the great fortune, before
+he went into partnership with Dye. Everything was indicative of
+immense and increasing prosperity.
+
+There were several gentlemen in waiting to converse with Bourne (we
+all call him so, familiarly, down town), and I waited until they went
+out. But others came in. There was no pause in the rush.  All kinds of
+inquiries were made and answered. At length I stepped up.
+
+"A moment, please, Mr. Bourne."
+
+He looked up hastily, wished me good morning which he had done to none
+of the others, and which courtesy I attributed to Spanish sympathy.
+"What is it, sir?" he asked, blandly, but with wrinkled brow.
+
+"Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in Spain?"  said I, without preface.
+
+He looked at me for a few moments without speaking, and without
+seeming to see me. His brow gradually smoothed, and his eyes,
+apparently looking into the street, were really, I have no doubt,
+feasting upon the Spanish landscape.
+
+"Too many, too many," said he at length, musingly, shaking his head,
+and without addressing me.
+
+I suppose he felt himself too much extended--as we say in Wall
+Street. He feared, I thought, that he had too much impracticable
+property elsewhere, to own so much in Spain; so I asked,
+
+"Will you tell me what you consider the shortest and safest route
+thither, Mr. Bourne? for, of course, a man who drives such an immense
+trade with all parts of the world, will know all that I have come to
+inquire."
+
+"My dear sir," answered he wearily, "I have been trying all my life to
+discover it; but none of my ships have ever been there--none of my
+captains have any report to make. They bring me, as they brought my
+father, gold dust from Guinea; ivory, pearls, and precious stones,
+from every part of the earth; but not a fruit, not a solitary flower,
+from one of my castles in Spain. I have sent clerks, agents, and
+travellers of all kinds, philosophers, pleasure-hunters, and invalids,
+in all sorts of ships, to all sorts of places, but none of them ever
+saw or heard of my castles, except one young poet, and he died in a
+mad-house."
+
+"Mr. Bourne, will you take five thousand at ninety-seven?" hastily
+demanded a man, whom, as he entered, I recognized as a broker. "We'll
+make a splendid thing of it."
+
+Bourne nodded assent, and the broker disappeared.
+
+"Happy man!" muttered the merchant, as the broker went out; "he has no
+castles in Spain."
+
+"I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Bourne," said I, retiring.
+
+"I am glad you came," returned he; "but I assure you, had I known the
+route you hoped to ascertain from me, I should have sailed years and
+years ago. People sail for the North-west Passage, which is nothing
+when you have found it. Why don't the English Admiralty fit out
+expeditions to discover all our castles in Spain?"
+
+He sat lost in thought.
+
+"It's nearly post-time, sir," said the clerk.
+
+Mr. Bourne did not heed him. He was still musing; and I turned to go,
+wishing him good morning. When I had nearly reached the door, he
+called me back, saying, as if continuing his remarks--
+
+"It is strange that you, of all men, should come to ask me this
+question. If I envy any man, it is you, for I sincerely assure you
+that I supposed you lived altogether upon your Spanish estates. I once
+thought I knew the way to mine. I gave directions for furnishing them,
+and ordered bridal bouquets, which were never used, but I suppose they
+are there still."
+
+He paused a moment, then said slowly--"How is your wife?"
+
+I told him that Prue was well--that she was always remarkably
+well. Mr. Bourne shook me warmly by the hand.
+
+"Thank you," said he. "Good morning."
+
+I knew why he thanked me; I knew why he thought that I lived
+altogether upon my Spanish estates; I knew a little bit about those
+bridal bouquets.  Mr. Bourne, the millionaire, was an old lover of
+Prue's. There is something very odd about these Spanish castles. When
+I think of them, I somehow see the fair-haired girl whom I knew when I
+was not out of short jackets. When Bourne meditates them, he sees Prue
+and me quietly at home in their best chambers. It is a very singular
+thing that my wife should live in another man's castle in Spain.
+
+At length I resolved to ask Titbottom if he had ever heard of the best
+route to our estates. He said that he owned castles, and sometimes
+there was an expression in his face, as if he saw them. I hope he
+did. I should long ago have asked him if he had ever observed the
+turrets of my possessions in the West, without alluding to Spain, if I
+had not feared he would suppose I was mocking his poverty.  I hope his
+poverty has not turned his head, for he is very forlorn.
+
+One Sunday I went with him a few miles into the country. It was a
+soft, bright day, the fields and hills lay turned to the sky, as if
+every leaf and blade of grass were nerves, bared to the touch of the
+sun. I almost felt the ground warm under my feet. The meadows waved
+and glittered, the lights and shadows were exquisite, and the distant
+hills seemed only to remove the horizon farther away. As we strolled
+along, picking wild flowers, for it was in summer, I was thinking what
+a fine day it was for a trip to Spain, when Titbottom suddenly
+exclaimed:
+
+"Thank God! I own this landscape."
+
+"You," returned I.
+
+"Certainly," said he.
+
+"Why," I answered, "I thought this was part of Bourne's property?"
+
+Titbottom smiled.
+
+"Does Bourne own the sun and sky? Does Bourne own that sailing shadow
+yonder? Does Bourne own the golden lustre of the grain, or the motion
+of the wood, or those ghosts of hills, that glide pallid along the
+horizon? Bourne owns the dirt and fences; I own the beauty that makes
+the landscape, or otherwise how could I own castles in Spain?"
+
+That was very true. I respected Titbottom more than ever.
+
+"Do you know," said he, after a long pause, "that I fancy my castles
+lie just beyond those distant hills.  At all events, I can see them
+distinctly from their summits."
+
+He smiled quietly as he spoke, and it was then I asked:
+
+"But, Titbottom, have you never discovered the way to them?"
+
+"Dear me! yes," answered he, "I know the way well enough; but it would
+do no good to follow it.  I should give out before I arrived. It is a
+long and difficult journey for a man of my years and habits--and
+income," he added slowly.
+
+As he spoke he seated himself upon the ground; and while he pulled
+long blades of grass, and, putting them between his thumbs, whistled
+shrilly, he said:
+
+"I have never known but two men who reached their estates in Spain."
+
+"Indeed!" said I, "how did they go?"
+
+"One went over the side of a ship, and the other out of a third story
+window," said Titbottom, fitting a broad blade between his thumbs and
+blowing a demoniacal blast.
+
+"And I know one proprietor who resides upon his estates constantly,"
+continued he.
+
+"Who is that?"
+
+"Our old friend Slug, whom you may see any day at the asylum, just
+coming in from the hunt, or going to call upon his friend the Grand
+Lama, or dressing for the wedding of the Man in the Moon, or receiving
+an ambassador from Timbuctoo. Whenever I go to see him, Slug insists
+that I am the Pope, disguised as a journeyman carpenter, and he
+entertains me in the most distinguished manner.  He always insists
+upon kissing my foot, and I bestow upon him, kneeling, the apostolic
+benediction.  This is the only Spanish proprietor in possession, with
+whom I am acquainted."
+
+And, so saying, Titbottom lay back upon the ground, and making a
+spy-glass of his hand, surveyed the landscape through it. This was a
+marvellous book-keeper of more than sixty!
+
+"I know another man who lived in his Spanish castle for two months,
+and then was tumbled out head first. That was young Stunning who
+married old Buhl's daughter. She was all smiles, and mamma was all
+sugar, and Stunning was all bliss, for two months. He carried his head
+in the clouds, and felicity absolutely foamed at his eyes. He was
+drowned in love; seeing, as usual, not what really was, but what he
+fancied. He lived so exclusively in his castle, that he forgot the
+office down town, and one morning there came a fall, and Stunning was
+smashed."
+
+Titbottom arose, and stooping over, contemplated the landscape, with
+his head down between his legs.
+
+"It's quite a new effect, so," said the nimble book-keeper.
+
+"Well," said I, "Stunning failed?"
+
+"Oh yes, smashed all up, and the castle in Spain came down about his
+ears with a tremendous crash.  The family sugar was all dissolved into
+the original cane in a moment. Fairy-times are over, are they?
+Heigh-ho! the falling stones of Stunning's castle have left their
+marks all over his face. I call them his Spanish scars."
+
+"But, my dear Titbottom," said I, "what is the matter with you this
+morning, your usual sedateness is quite gone?"
+
+"It's only the exhilarating air of Spain," he answered.  "My castles
+are so beautiful that I can never think of them, nor speak of them,
+without excitement; when I was younger I desired to reach them even
+more ardently than now, because I heard that the philosopher's stone
+was in the vault of one of them."
+
+"Indeed," said I, yielding to sympathy, "and I have good reason to
+believe that the fountain of eternal youth flows through the garden of
+one of mine. Do you know whether there are any children upon your
+grounds?"
+
+"'The children of Alice call Bartrum father!'"  replied Titbottom,
+solemnly, and in a low voice, as he folded his faded hands before him,
+and stood erect, looking wistfully over the landscape. The light wind
+played with his thin white hair, and his sober, black suit was almost
+sombre in the sunshine.  The half bitter expression, which I had
+remarked upon his face during part of our conversation, had passed
+away, and the old sadness had returned to his eye. He stood, in the
+pleasant morning, the very image of a great proprietor of castles in
+Spain.
+
+"There is wonderful music there," he said: "sometimes I awake at
+night, and hear it. It is full of the sweetness of youth, and love,
+and a new world. I lie and listen, and I seem to arrive at the great
+gates of my estates. They swing open upon noiseless hinges, and the
+tropic of my dreams receives me. Up the broad steps, whose marble
+pavement mingled light and shadow print with shifting mosaic, beneath
+the boughs of lustrous oleanders, and palms, and trees of unimaginable
+fragrance, I pass into the vestibule, warm with summer odors, and into
+the presence-chamber beyond, where my wife awaits me. But castle, and
+wife, and odorous woods, and pictures, and statues, and all the bright
+substance of my household, seem to reel and glimmer in the splendor,
+as the music fails.
+
+"But when it swells again, I clasp the wife to my heart, and we move
+on with a fair society, beautiful women, noble men, before whom the
+tropical luxuriance of that world bends and bows in homage; and,
+through endless days and nights of eternal summer, the stately revel
+of our life proceeds.  Then, suddenly, the music stops. I hear my
+watch ticking under the pillow. I see dimly the outline of my little
+upper room. Then I fall asleep, and in the morning some one of the
+boarders at the breakfast-table says:
+
+"'Did you hear the serenade last night, Mr. Titbottom.'"
+
+I doubted no longer that Titbottom was a very extensive
+proprietor. The truth is, that he was so constantly engaged in
+planning and arranging his castles, that he conversed very little at
+the office, and I had misinterpreted his silence. As we walked
+homeward, that day, he was more than ever tender and gentle. "We must
+all have something to do in this world," said he, "and I, who have so
+much leisure--for you know I have no wife nor children to work
+for--know not what I should do, if I had not my castles in Spain to
+look after."
+
+When I reached home, my darling Prue was sitting in the small parlor,
+reading. I felt a little guilty for having been so long away, and upon
+my only holiday, too. So I began to say that Titbottom invited me to
+go to walk, and that I had no idea we had gone so far, and that----
+
+"Don't excuse yourself," said Prue, smiling as she laid down her book;
+"I am glad you have enjoyed yourself. You ought to go out sometimes,
+and breathe the fresh air, and run about the fields, which I am not
+strong enough to do. Why did you not bring home Mr. Titbottom to tea?
+He is so lonely, and looks so sad. I am sure he has very little
+comfort in this life," said my thoughtful Prue, as she called Jane to
+set the tea-table.
+
+"But he has a good deal of comfort in Spain, Prue," answered I.
+
+"When was Mr. Titbottom in Spain," inquired my wife.
+
+"Why, he is there more than half the time," I replied.
+
+Prue looked quietly at me and smiled. "I see it has done you good to
+breathe the country air," said she. "Jane, get some of the blackberry
+jam, and call Adoniram and the children."
+
+So we went in to tea. We eat in the back parlor, for our little house
+and limited means do not allow us to have things upon the Spanish
+scale. It is better than a sermon to hear my wife Prue talk to the
+children; and when she speaks to me it seems sweeter than psalm
+singing; at least, such as we have in our church. I am very happy.
+
+Yet I dream my dreams, and attend to my castles in Spain. I have so
+much property there, that I could not, in conscience, neglect it. All
+the years of my youth, and the hopes of my manhood, are stored away,
+like precious stones, in the vaults; and I know that I shall find
+everything convenient, elegant, and beautiful, when I come into
+possession.
+
+As the years go by, I am not conscious that my interest diminishes. If
+I see that age is subtly sifting his snow in the dark hair of my Prue,
+I smile, contented, for her hair, dark and heavy as when I first saw
+it, is all carefully treasured in my castles in Spain. If I feel her
+arm more heavily leaning upon mine, as we walk around the squares, I
+press it closely to my side, for I know that the easy grace of her
+youth's motion will be restored by the elixir of that Spanish air. If
+her voice sometimes falls less clearly from her lips, it is no less
+sweet to me for the music of her voice's prime fills, freshly as ever,
+those Spanish halls. If the light I love fades a little from her eyes,
+I know that the glances she gave me, in our youth, are the eternal
+sunshine of my castles in Spain.
+
+I defy time and change. Each year laid upon our heads, is a hand of
+blessing. I have no doubt that I shall find the shortest route to my
+possessions as soon as need be. Perhaps, when Adoniram is married, we
+shall all go out to one of my castles to pass the honey-moon.
+
+Ah! if the true history of Spain could be written what a book were
+there! The most purely romantic ruin in the world is the Alhambra. But
+of the Spanish castles, more spacious and splendid than any possible
+Alhambra, and for ever unruined, no towers are visible, no pictures
+have been painted, and only a few ecstatic songs have been sung. The
+pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan, which Coleridge saw in Xanadu (a province
+with which I am not familiar), and a fine Castle of Indolence
+belonging to Thomson, and the Palace of art which Tennyson built as a
+"lordly pleasure-house" for his soul, are among the best statistical
+accounts of those Spanish estates.  Turner, too, has done for them
+much the same service that Owen Jones has done for the Alhambra.  In
+the vignette to Moore's Epicurean you will find represented one of the
+most extensive castles in Spain; and there are several exquisite
+studies from others, by the same artists, published in Rogers's Italy.
+
+But I confess I do not recognize any of these as mine, and that fact
+makes me prouder of my own castles, for, if there be such boundless
+variety of magnificence in their aspect and exterior, imagine the life
+that is led there, a life not unworthy such a setting.
+
+If Adoniram should be married within a reasonable time, and we should
+make up that little family party to go out, I have considered already
+what society I should ask to meet the bride. Jephthah's daughter and
+the Chevalier Bayard, I should say--and fair Rosamond with Dean
+Swift--King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba would come over, I think,
+from his famous castle--Shakespeare and his friend the Marquis of
+Southampton might come in a galley with Cleopatra; and, if any guest
+were offended by her presence, he should devote himself to the Fair
+One with Golden Locks. Mephistophiles is not personally disagreeable,
+and is exceedingly well-bred in society, I am told; and he should come
+_tete-a-tete_ with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. Spenser should escort his
+Faerie Queen, who would preside at the tea-table.
+
+Mr. Samuel Weller I should ask as Lord of Misrule, and Dr. Johnson as
+the Abbot of Unreason. I would suggest to Major Dobbin to accompany
+Mrs. Fry; Alcibiades would bring Homer and Plato in his purple-sailed
+galley; and I would have Aspasia, Ninon de l'Enclos, and Mrs. Battle,
+to make up a table of whist with Queen Elizabeth. I shall order a seat
+placed in the oratory for Lady Jane Grey and Joan of Arc. I shall
+invite General Washington to bring some of the choicest cigars from
+his plantation for Sir Walter Raleigh; and Chaucer, Browning, and
+Walter Savage Landor, should talk with Goethe, who is to bring Tasso
+on one arm and Iphigenia on the other.
+
+Dante and Mr. Carlyle would prefer, I suppose, to go down into the
+dark vaults under the castle.  The Man in the Moon, the Old Harry, and
+William of the Wisp would be valuable additions, and the Laureate
+Tennyson might compose an official ode upon the occasion: or I would
+ask "They" to say all about it.
+
+Of course there are many other guests whose names I do not at the
+moment recall. But I should invite, first of all, Miles Coverdale, who
+knows every thing about these places and this society, for he was at
+Blithedale, and he has described "a select party" which he attended at
+a castle in the air.
+
+Prue has not yet looked over the list. In fact I am not quite sure
+that she knows my intention.  For I wish to surprise her, and I think
+it would be generous to ask Bourne to lead her out in the bridal
+quadrille. I think that I shall try the first waltz with the girl I
+sometimes seem to see in my fairest castle, but whom I very vaguely
+remember. Titbottom will come with old Burton and Jaques.  But I have
+not prepared half my invitations. Do you not guess it, seeing that I
+did not name, first of all, Elia, who assisted at the "Rejoicings upon
+the new year's coming of age"?
+
+And yet, if Adoniram should never marry?--or if we could not get to
+Spain?--or if the company would not come?
+
+What then? Shall I betray a secret? I have already entertained this
+party in my humble little parlor at home; and Prue presided as
+serenely as Semiramis over her court. Have I not said that I defy
+time, and shall space hope to daunt me? I keep books by day, but by
+night books keep me.  They leave me to dreams and reveries. Shall I
+confess, that sometimes when I have been sitting, reading to my Prue,
+Cymbeline, perhaps, or a Canterbury tale, I have seemed to see clearly
+before me the broad highway to my castles in Spain; and as she looked
+up from her work, and smiled in sympathy, I have even fancied that I
+was already there.
+
+
+
+SEA FROM SHORE
+
+  "Come unto these yellow sands."
+  _The Tempest._
+
+  "Argosies of magic sails,
+  Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales."
+  _Tennyson_
+
+
+In the month of June, Prue and I like to walk upon the Battery toward
+sunset, and watch the steamers, crowded with passengers, bound for the
+pleasant places along the coast where people pass the hot months.
+Sea-side lodgings are not very comfortable, I am told; but who would
+not be a little pinched in his chamber, if his windows looked upon the
+sea?
+
+In such praises of the ocean do I indulge at such times, and so
+respectfully do I regard the sailors who may chance to pass, that Prue
+often says, with her shrewd smiles, that my mind is a kind of
+Greenwich Hospital, full of abortive marine hopes and wishes,
+broken-legged intentions, blind regrets, and desires, whose hands have
+been shot away in some hard battle of experience, so that they cannot
+grasp the results towards which they reach.
+
+She is right, as usual. Such hopes and intentions do lie, ruined and
+hopeless now, strewn about the placid contentment of my mental life,
+as the old pensioners sit about the grounds at Greenwich, maimed and
+musing in the quiet morning sunshine.  Many a one among them thinks
+what a Nelson he would have been if both his legs had not been
+prematurely carried away; or in what a Trafalgar of triumph he would
+have ended, if, unfortunately, he had not happened to have been blown
+blind by the explosion of that unlucky magazine.
+
+So I dream, sometimes, of a straight scarlet collar, stiff with gold
+lace, around my neck, instead of this limp white cravat; and I have
+even brandished my quill at the office so cutlass-wise, that Titbottom
+has paused in his additions and looked at me as if he doubted whether
+I should come out quite square in my petty cash. Yet he understands
+it. Titbottom was born in Nantucket.
+
+That is the secret of my fondness for the sea; I was born by it. Not
+more surely do Savoyards pine for the mountains, or Cockneys for the
+sound of Bow bells, than those who are born within sight and sound of
+the ocean to return to it and renew their fealty. In dreams the
+children of the sea hear its voice.
+
+I have read in some book of travels that certain tribes of Arabs have
+no name for the ocean, and that when they came to the shore for the
+first time, they asked with eager sadness, as if penetrated by the
+conviction of a superior beauty, "what is that desert of water more
+beautiful than the land?"  And in the translations of German stories
+which Adoniram and the other children read, and into which I
+occasionally look in the evening when they are gone to bed--for I like
+to know what interests my children--I find that the Germans, who do
+not live near the sea, love the fairy lore of water, and tell the
+sweet stories of Undine and Melusina, as if they had especial charm
+for them, because their country is inland.
+
+We who know the sea have less fairy feeling about it, but our
+realities are romance. My earliest remembrances are of a long range of
+old, half dilapidated stores; red brick stores with steep wooden
+roofs, and stone window-frames and door-frames, which stood upon docks
+built as if for immense trade with all quarters of the globe.
+
+Generally there were only a few sloops moored to the tremendous posts,
+which I fancied could easily hold fast a Spanish Armada in a tropical
+hurricane.  But sometimes a great ship, an East Indiaman, with rusty,
+seamed, blistered sides, and dingy sails, came slowly moving up the
+harbor, with an air of indolent self-importance and consciousness of
+superiority, which inspired me with profound respect. If the ship had
+ever chanced to run down a row-boat, or a sloop, or any specimen of
+smaller craft, I should only have wondered at the temerity of any
+floating thing in crossing the path of such supreme majesty.  The ship
+was leisurely chained and cabled to the old dock, and then came the
+disembowelling.
+
+How the stately monster had been fattening upon foreign spoils! How it
+had gorged itself (such galleons did never seem to me of the feminine
+gender) with the luscious treasures of the tropics! It had lain its
+lazy length along the shores of China, and sucked in whole flowery
+harvests of tea. The Brazilian sun flashed through the strong wicker
+prisons, bursting with bananas and nectarean fruits that eschew the
+temperate zone. Steams of camphor, of sandal wood, arose from the
+hold. Sailors chanting cabalistic strains, that had to my ear a shrill
+and monotonous pathos, like the uniform rising and falling of an
+autumn wind, turned cranks that lifted the bales, and boxes, and
+crates, and swung them ashore.
+
+But to my mind, the spell of their singing raised the fragrant
+freight, and not the crank. Madagascar and Ceylon appeared at the
+mystic bidding of the song. The placid sunshine of the docks was
+perfumed with India. The universal calm of southern seas poured from
+the bosom of the ship over the quiet, decaying old northern port.
+
+Long after the confusion of unloading was over, and the ship lay as if
+all voyages were ended, I dared to creep timorously along the edge of
+the dock, and at great risk of falling in the black water of its huge
+shadow, I placed my hand upon the hot hulk, and so established a
+mystic and exquisite connection with Pacific islands, with palm groves
+and all the passionate beauties they embower; with jungles, Bengal
+tigers, pepper, and the crushed feet of Chinese fairies. I touched
+Asia, the Cape of Good Hope and the Happy Islands. I would not believe
+that the heat I felt was of our northern sun; to my finer sympathy it
+burned with equatorial fervors.
+
+The freight was piled in the old stores. I believe that many of them
+remain, but they have lost their character. When I knew them, not only
+was I younger, but partial decay had overtaken the town; at least the
+bulk of its India trade had shifted to New York and Boston. But the
+appliances remained.  There was no throng of busy traffickers, and
+after school, in the afternoon, I strolled by and gazed into the
+solemn interiors.
+
+Silence reigned within,--silence, dimness, and piles of foreign
+treasure. Vast coils of cable, like tame boa-constrictors, served as
+seats for men with large stomachs, and heavy watch-seals, and nankeen
+trowsers, who sat looking out of the door toward the ships, with
+little other sign of life than an occasional low talking, as if in
+their sleep. Huge hogsheads perspiring brown sugar and oozing slow
+molasses, as if nothing tropical could keep within bounds, but must
+continually expand, and exude, and overflow, stood against the walls,
+and had an architectural significance, for they darkly reminded me of
+Egyptian prints, and in the duskiness of the low vaulted store seemed
+cyclopean columns incomplete.  Strange festoons and heaps of bags,
+square piles of square boxes cased in mats, bales of airy summer
+stuffs, which, even in winter, scoffed at cold, and shamed it by
+audacious assumption of eternal sun, little specimen boxes of precious
+dyes that even now shine through my memory, like old Venetian schools
+unpainted,--these were all there in rich confusion.
+
+The stores had a twilight of dimness, the air was spicy with mingled
+odors. I liked to look suddenly in from the glare of sunlight outside,
+and then the cool sweet dimness was like the palpable breath of the
+far off island-groves; and if only some parrot or macaw hung within,
+would flaunt with glistening plumage in his cage, and as the gay hue
+flashed in a chance sunbeam, call in his hard, shrill voice, as if
+thrusting sharp sounds upon a glistening wire from out that grateful
+gloom, then the enchantment was complete, and without moving, I was
+circumnavigating the globe.
+
+From the old stores and the docks slowly crumbling, touched, I know
+not why or how, by the pensive air of past prosperity, I rambled out
+of town on those well remembered afternoons, to the fields that lay
+upon hillsides over the harbor, and there sat, looking out to sea,
+fancying some distant sail proceeding to the glorious ends of the
+earth, to be my type and image, who would so sail, stately and
+successful, to all the glorious ports of the Future. Going home, I
+returned by the stores, which black porters were closing. But I stood
+long looking in, saturating my imagination, and as it appeared, my
+clothes, with the spicy suggestion.  For when I reached home my
+thrifty mother--another Prue--came snuffing and smelling about me.
+
+"Why! my son, (_snuff, snuff,_) where have you been? (_snuff,
+snuff._) Has the baker been making (_snuff_) ginger-bread? You
+smell as if you'd been in (_snuff, snuff,_) a bag of cinnamon."
+
+"I've only been on the wharves, mother."
+
+"Well, my dear, I hope you haven't stuck up your clothes with
+molasses. Wharves are dirty places, and dangerous. You must take care
+of yourself, my son. Really this smell is (_snuff, snuff_,) very
+strong."
+
+But I departed from the maternal presence, proud and happy. I was
+aromatic. I bore about me the true foreign air. Whoever smelt me smelt
+distant countries. I had nutmeg, spices, cinnamon, and cloves, without
+the jolly red-nose. I pleased myself with being the representative of
+the Indies. I was in good odor with myself and all the world.
+
+I do not know how it is, but surely Nature makes kindly provision. An
+imagination so easily excited as mine could not have escaped
+disappointment if it had had ample opportunity and experience of the
+lands it so longed to see. Therefore, although I made the India
+voyage, I have never been a traveller, and saving the little time I
+was ashore in India, I did not lose the sense of novelty and romance,
+which the first sight of foreign lands inspires.
+
+That little time was all my foreign travel. I am glad of it. I see now
+that I should never have found the country from which the East
+Indiaman of my early days arrived. The palm groves do not grow with
+which that hand laid upon the ship placed me in magic conception. As
+for the lovely Indian maid whom the palmy arches bowered, she has long
+since clasped some native lover to her bosom, and, ripened into mild
+maternity, how should I know her now?
+
+"You would find her quite as easily now as then," says my Prue, when I
+speak of it.  She is right again, as usual, that precious woman; and
+it is therefore I feel that if the chances of life have moored me fast
+to a book-keeper's desk, they have left all the lands I longed to see
+fairer and fresher in my mind than they could ever be in my
+memory. Upon my only voyage I used to climb into the top and search
+the horizon for the shore.  But now in a moment of calm thought I see
+a more Indian India than ever mariner discerned, and do not envy the
+youths who go there and make fortunes, who wear grass-cloth jackets,
+drink iced beer, and eat curry; whose minds fall asleep, and whose
+bodies have liver complaints.
+
+Unseen by me for ever, nor ever regretted, shall wave the Egyptian
+palms and the Italian pines.  Untrodden by me, the Forum shall still
+echo with the footfall of imperial Rome, and the Parthenon unrifled of
+its marbles, look, perfect, across the Egean blue.
+
+My young friends return from their foreign tours elate with the smiles
+of a nameless Italian, or Parisian belle. I know not such cheap
+delights; I am a suitor of Vittoria Colonna; I walk with Tasso along
+the terraced garden of the Villa d'Este, and look to see Beatrice
+smiling down the rich gloom of the cypress shade. You staid at the
+_Hotel Europa_ in Venice, at _Danielli's_ or the _Leone
+bianco_; I am the guest of Marino Faliero, and I whisper to his
+wife as we climb the giant staircase in the summer moonlight,
+
+  "Ah! senza amaro
+  Andare sul mare,
+  Col sposo del mare,
+  Non puo consolare."
+
+It is for the same reason that I did not care to dine with you and
+Aurelia, that I am content not to stand in St. Peter's. Alas! if I
+could see the end of it, it would not be St. Peter's. For those of us
+whom Nature means to keep at home, she provides entertainment. One man
+goes four thousand miles to Italy, and does not see it, he is so
+short-sighted. Another is so far-sighted that he stays in his room and
+sees more than Italy.
+
+But for this very reason that it washes the shores of my possible
+Europe and Asia, the sea draws me constantly to itself. Before I came
+to New York, while I was still a clerk in Boston, courting Prue, and
+living out of town, I never knew of a ship sailing for India or even
+for England and France, but I went up to the State House cupola or to
+the observatory on some friend's house in Roxbury, where I could not
+be interrupted, and there watched the departure.
+
+The sails hung ready; the ship lay in the stream; busy little boats
+and puffing steamers darted about it, clung to its sides, paddled away
+from it, or led the way to sea, as minnows might pilot a whale.  The
+anchor was slowly swung at the bow; I could not hear the sailors'
+song, but I knew they were singing. I could not see the parting
+friends, but I knew farewells were spoken. I did not share the
+confusion, although I knew what bustle there was, what hurry, what
+shouting, what creaking, what fall of ropes and iron, what sharp
+oaths, low laughs, whispers, sobs. But I was cool, high, separate. To
+me it was
+
+  "A painted ship
+  Upon a painted ocean."
+
+The sails were shaken out, and the ship began to move. It was a fair
+breeze, perhaps, and no steamer was needed to tow her away. She
+receded down the bay. Friends turned back--I could not see them--and
+waved their hands, and wiped their eyes, and went home to dinner.
+Farther and farther from the ships at anchor, the lessening vessel
+became single and solitary upon the water. The sun sank in the west;
+but I watched her still.  Every flash of her sails, as she tacked and
+turned, thrilled my heart.
+
+Yet Prue was not on board. I had never seen one of the passengers or
+the crew. I did not know the consignees, nor the name of the vessel. I
+had shipped no adventure, nor risked any insurance, nor made any bet,
+but my eyes clung to her as Ariadne's to the fading sail of
+Theseus. The ship was freighted with more than appeared upon her
+papers, yet she was not a smuggler. She bore all there was of that
+nameless lading, yet the next ship would carry as much. She was
+freighted with fancy. My hopes, and wishes, and vague desires, were
+all on board. It seemed to me a treasure not less rich than that which
+filled the East Indiaman at the old dock in my boyhood.
+
+When, at length, the ship was a sparkle upon the horizon, I waved my
+hand in last farewell, I strained my eyes for a last glimpse. My mind
+had gone to sea, and had left noise behind. But now I heard again the
+multitudinous murmur of the city, and went down rapidly, and threaded
+the short, narrow, streets to the office. Yet, believe it, every dream
+of that day, as I watched the vessel, was written at night to
+Prue. She knew my heart had not sailed away.
+
+Those days are long past now, but still I walk upon the Battery and
+look towards the Narrows and know that beyond them, separated only by
+the sea, are many of whom I would so gladly know, and so rarely
+hear. The sea rolls between us like the lapse of dusky ages. They
+trusted themselves to it, and it bore them away far and far as if into
+the past. Last night I read of Antony, but I have not heard from
+Christopher these many months, and by so much farther away is he, so
+much older and more remote, than Antony. As for William, he is as
+vague as any of the shepherd kings of ante-Pharaonic dynasties.
+
+It is the sea that has done it, it has carried them off and put them
+away upon its other side. It is fortunate the sea did not put them
+upon its underside.  Are they hale and happy still? Is their hair
+gray, and have they mustachios? Or have they taken to wigs and
+crutches? Are they popes or cardinals yet? Do they feast with Lucrezia
+Borgia, or preach red republicanism to the Council of Ten? Do they
+sing, _Behold how brightly breaks the morning_ with Masaniello?
+Do they laugh at Ulysses and skip ashore to the Syrens? Has Mesrour,
+chief of the Eunuchs, caught them with Zobeide in the Caliph's garden,
+or have they made cheese cakes without pepper? Friends of my youth,
+where in your wanderings have you tasted the blissful Lotus, that you
+neither come nor send us tidings?
+
+Across the sea also came idle rumors, as false reports steal into
+history and defile fair fames.  Was it longer ago than yesterday that
+I walked with my cousin, then recently a widow, and talked with her of
+the countries to which she meant to sail? She was young, and
+dark-eyed, and wore great hoops of gold, barbaric gold, in her ears.
+The hope of Italy, the thought of living there, had risen like a dawn
+in the darkness of her mind. I talked and listened by rapid turns.
+
+Was it longer ago than yesterday that she told me of her splendid
+plans, how palaces tapestried with gorgeous paintings should be
+cheaply hired, and the best of teachers lead her children to the
+completest and most various knowledge; how,--and with her slender
+pittance!--she should have a box at the opera, and a carriage, and
+liveried servants, and in perfect health and youth, lead a perfect
+life in a perfect climate?
+
+And now what do I hear? Why does a tear sometimes drop so audibly upon
+my paper, that Titbottom looks across with a sort of mild rebuking
+glance of inquiry, whether it is kind to let even a single tear fall,
+when an ocean of tears is pent up in hearts that would burst and
+overflow if but one drop should force its way out? Why across the sea
+came faint gusty stories, like low voices in the wind, of a cloistered
+garden and sunny seclusion--and a life of unknown and unexplained
+luxury.  What is this picture of a pale face showered with streaming
+black hair, and large sad eyes looking upon lovely and noble children
+playing in the sunshine--and a brow pained with thought straining into
+their destiny? Who is this figure, a man tall and comely, with melting
+eyes and graceful motion, who comes and goes at pleasure, who is not a
+husband, yet has the key of the cloistered garden?
+
+I do not know. They are secrets of the sea. The pictures pass before
+my mind suddenly and unawares, and I feel the tears rising that I
+would gladly repress. Titbottom looks at me, then stands by the window
+of the office and leans his brow against the cold iron bars, and looks
+down into the little square paved court. I take my hat and steal out
+of the office for a few minutes, and slowly pace the hurrying
+streets. Meek-eyed Alice! magnificent Maud! sweet baby Lilian! why
+does the sea imprison you so far away, when will you return, where do
+you linger? The water laps idly about docks,--lies calm, or gaily
+heaves.  Why does it bring me doubts and fears now, that brought such
+bounty of beauty in the days long gone?
+
+I remember that the day when my dark haired cousin, with hoops of
+barbaric gold in her ears, sailed for Italy, was quarter-day, and we
+balanced the books at the office. It was nearly noon, and in my
+impatience to be away, I had not added my columns with sufficient
+care. The inexorable hand of the office clock pointed sternly towards
+twelve, and the remorseless pendulum ticked solemnly to noon.
+
+To a man whose pleasures are not many, and rather small, the loss of
+such an event as saying farewell and wishing God-speed to a friend
+going to Europe, is a great loss. It was so to me, especially, because
+there was always more to me, in every departure, than the parting and
+the farewell.  I was gradually renouncing this pleasure, as I saw
+small prospect of ending before noon, when Titbottom, after looking at
+me a moment, came to my side of the desk, and said:
+
+"I should like to finish that for you."
+
+I looked at him: poor Titbottom! he had no friends to wish God-speed
+upon any journey. I quietly wiped my pen, took down my hat, and went
+out. It was in the days of sail packets and less regularity, when
+going to Europe was more of an epoch in life. How gaily my cousin
+stood upon the deck and detailed to me her plan! How merrily the
+children shouted and sang! How long I held my cousin's little hand in
+mine, and gazed into her great eyes, remembering that they would see
+and touch the things that were invisible to me for ever, but all the
+more precious and fair! She kissed me--I was younger then--there were
+tears, I remember, and prayers, and promises, a waving handkerchief,--a
+fading sail.
+
+It was only the other day that I saw another parting of the same
+kind. I was not a principal, only a spectator; but so fond am I of
+sharing, afar off, as it were, and unseen, the sympathies of human
+beings, that I cannot avoid often going to the dock upon steamer-days
+and giving myself to that pleasant and melancholy observation. There
+is always a crowd, but this day it was almost impossible to advance
+through the masses of people.  The eager faces hurried by; a constant
+stream poured up the gangway into the steamer, and the upper deck, to
+which I gradually made my way, was crowded with the passengers and
+their friends.
+
+There was one group upon which my eyes first fell, and upon which my
+memory lingers. A glance, brilliant as daybreak--a voice,
+
+  "Her voice's music,--call it the well's bubbling, the bird's
+  warble,"
+
+a goddess girdled with flowers, and smiling farewell upon a circle of
+worshippers, to each one of whom that gracious calmness made the smile
+sweeter, and the farewell more sad--other figures, other flowers, an
+angel face--all these I saw in that group as I was swayed up and down
+the deck by the eager swarm of people. The hour came, and I went on
+shore with the rest. The plank was drawn away--the captain raised his
+hand--the huge steamer slowly moved--a cannon was fired--the ship was
+gone.
+
+The sun sparkled upon the water as they sailed away. In five minutes
+the steamer was as much separated from the shore as if it had been at
+sea a thousand years.
+
+I leaned against a post upon the dock and looked around. Ranged upon
+the edge of the wharf stood that band of worshippers, waving
+handkerchiefs and straining their eyes to see the last smile of
+farewell--did any eager selfish eye hope to see a tear?  They to whom
+the handkerchiefs were waved stood high upon the stern, holding
+flowers. Over them hung the great flag, raised by the gentle wind into
+the graceful folds of a canopy,--say rather a gorgeous gonfalon waved
+over the triumphant departure, over that supreme youth, and bloom, and
+beauty, going out across the mystic ocean to carry a finer charm and
+more human splendor into those realms of my imagination beyond the
+sea.
+
+"You will return, O youth and beauty!" I said to my dreaming and
+foolish self, as I contemplated those fair figures, "richer than
+Alexander with Indian spoils. All that historic association, that
+copious civilization, those grandeurs and graces of art, that variety
+and picturesqueness of life, will mellow and deepen your experience
+even as time silently touches those old pictures into a more
+persuasive and pathetic beauty, and as this increasing summer sheds
+ever softer lustre upon the landscape.  You will return conquerors and
+not conquered.  You will bring Europe, even as Aurelian brought
+Zenobia captive, to deck your homeward triumph.  I do not wonder that
+these clouds break away, I do not wonder that the sun presses out and
+floods all the air, and land, and water, with light that graces with
+happy omens your stately farewell."
+
+But if my faded face looked after them with such earnest and longing
+emotion,--I, a solitary old man, unknown to those fair beings, and
+standing apart from that band of lovers, yet in that moment bound more
+closely to them than they knew,--how was it with those whose hearts
+sailed away with that youth and beauty? I watched them closely from
+behind my post. I knew that life had paused with them; that the world
+stood still. I knew that the long, long summer would be only a
+yearning regret. I knew that each asked himself the mournful question,
+"Is this parting typical--this slow, sad, sweet recession?" And I knew
+that they did not care to ask whether they should meet again, nor dare
+to contemplate the chances of the sea.
+
+The steamer swept on, she was near Staten Island, and a final gun
+boomed far and low across the water. The crowd was dispersing, but the
+little group remained. Was it not all Hood had sung?
+
+  "I saw thee, lovely Inez,
+  Descend along the shore
+  With bands of noble gentlemen,
+  And banners waved before;
+  And gentle youths and maidens gay,
+  And snowy plumes they wore;--
+  It would have been a beauteous dream,
+  If it had been no more!"
+
+"O youth!" I said to them without speaking, "be it gently said, as it
+is solemnly thought, should they return no more, yet in your memories
+the high hour of their loveliness is for ever enshrined. Should they
+come no more they never will be old, nor changed, to you. You will wax
+and wane, you will suffer, and struggle, and grow old; but this summer
+vision will smile, immortal, upon your lives, and those fair faces
+shall shed, for ever, from under that slowly waving flag, hope and
+peace."
+
+It is so elsewhere; it is the tenderness of Nature.  Long, long ago we
+lost our first-born, Prue and I. Since then, we have grown older and
+our children with us. Change comes, and grief, perhaps, and decay. We
+are happy, our children are obedient and gay. But should Prue live
+until she has lost us all, and laid us, gray and weary, in our graves,
+she will have always one babe in her heart.  Every mother who has lost
+an infant, has gained a child of immortal youth. Can you find comfort
+here, lovers, whose mistress has sailed away?
+
+I did not ask the question aloud, I thought it only, as I watched the
+youths, and turned away while they still stood gazing. One, I
+observed, climbed a post and waved his black hat before the
+white-washed side of the shed over the dock, whence I supposed he
+would tumble into the water. Another had tied a handkerchief to the
+end of a somewhat baggy umbrella, and in the eagerness of gazing, had
+forgotten to wave it, so that it hung mournfully down, as if
+overpowered with grief it could not express.  The entranced youth
+still held the umbrella aloft. It seemed to me as if he had struck his
+flag; or as if one of my cravats were airing in that sunlight.  A
+negro carter was joking with an apple-woman at the entrance of the
+dock. The steamer was out of sight.
+
+I found that I was belated and hurried back to my desk. Alas! poor
+lovers; I wonder if they are watching still? Has he fallen exhausted
+from the post into the water? Is that handkerchief, bleached and rent,
+still pendant upon that somewhat baggy umbrella?
+
+"Youth and beauty went to Europe to-day," said I to Prue, as I stirred
+my tea at evening.  As I spoke, our youngest daughter brought me the
+sugar. She is just eighteen, and her name should be Hebe. I took a
+lump of sugar and looked at her. She had never seemed so lovely, and
+as I dropped the lump in my cup, I kissed her. I glanced at Prue as I
+did so. The dear woman smiled, but did not answer my exclamation.
+
+Thus, without travelling, I travel, and share the emotions of those I
+do not know. But sometimes the old longing comes over me as in the
+days when I timidly touched the huge East Indiaman, and magnetically
+sailed around the world.
+
+It was but a few days after the lovers and I waved farewell to the
+steamer, and while the lovely figures standing under the great
+gonfalon were as vivid in my mind as ever, that a day of premature
+sunny sadness, like those of the Indian summer, drew me away from the
+office early in the afternoon: for fortunately it is our dull season
+now, and even Titbottom sometimes leaves the office by five o'clock.
+Although why he should leave it, or where he goes, or what he does, I
+do not well know. Before I knew him, I used sometimes to meet him with
+a man whom I was afterwards told was Bartleby, the scrivener.  Even
+then it seemed to me that they rather clubbed their loneliness than
+made society for each other. Recently I have not seen Bartleby; but
+Titbottom seems no more solitary because he is alone.
+
+I strolled into the Battery as I sauntered about.  Staten Island
+looked so alluring, tender-hued with summer and melting in the haze,
+that I resolved to indulge myself in a pleasure-trip. It was a little
+selfish, perhaps, to go alone, but I looked at my watch, and saw that
+if I should hurry home for Prue the trip would be lost; then I should
+be disappointed, and she would be grieved.
+
+Ought I not rather (I like to begin questions, which I am going to
+answer affirmatively, with _ought_,) to take the trip and recount
+my adventures to Prue upon, my return, whereby I should actually enjoy
+the excursion and the pleasure of telling her; while she would enjoy
+my story and be glad that I was pleased? Ought I wilfully to deprive
+us both of this various enjoyment by aiming at a higher, which, in
+losing, we should lose all?
+
+Unfortunately, just as I was triumphantly answering "Certainly not!"
+another question marched into my mind, escorted by a very defiant
+_ought_.
+
+"Ought I to go when I have such a debate about it?"
+
+But while I was perplexed, and scoffing at my own scruples, the
+ferry-bell suddenly rang, and answered all my questions. Involuntarily
+I hurried on board. The boat slipped from the dock. I went up on deck
+to enjoy the view of the city from the bay, but just as I sat down,
+and meant to have said "how beautiful!" I found myself asking:
+
+"Ought I to have come?"
+
+Lost in perplexing debate, I saw little of the scenery of the bay; but
+the remembrance of Prue and the gentle influence of the day plunged me
+into a mood of pensive reverie which nothing tended to destroy, until
+we suddenly arrived at the landing.
+
+As I was stepping ashore, I was greeted by Mr.  Bourne, who passes the
+summer on the island, and who hospitably asked if I were going his
+way.  His way was toward the southern end of the island, and I said
+yes. His pockets were full of papers and his brow of wrinkles; so when
+we reached the point where he should turn off, I asked him to let me
+alight, although he was very anxious to carry me wherever I was going.
+
+"I am only strolling about," I answered, as I clambered carefully out
+of the wagon.
+
+"Strolling about?" asked he, in a bewildered manner; "'do people
+stroll about, now-a-days?"
+
+"Sometimes," I answered, smiling, as I pulled my trowsers down over my
+boots, for they had dragged up, as I stepped out of the wagon, "and
+beside, what can an old book-keeper do better in the dull season than
+stroll about this pleasant island, and watch the ships at sea?"
+
+Bourne looked at me with his weary eyes.
+
+"I'd give five thousand dollars a year for a dull season," said he,
+"but as for strolling, I've forgotten how."
+
+As he spoke, his eyes wandered dreamily across the fields and woods,
+and were fastened upon the distant sails.
+
+"It is pleasant," he said musingly, and fell into silence. But I had
+no time to spare, so I wished him good afternoon.
+
+"I hope your wife is well," said Bourne to me, as I turned away. Poor
+Bourne! He drove on alone in his wagon.
+
+But I made haste to the most solitary point upon the southern shore,
+and there sat, glad to be so near the sea. There was that warm,
+sympathetic silence in the air, that gives to Indian-summer days
+almost a human tenderness of feeling. A delicate haze, that seemed
+only the kindly air made visible, hung over the sea. The water lapped
+languidly among the rocks, and the voices of children in a boat
+beyond, rang musically, and gradually receded, until they were lost in
+the distance.
+
+It was some time before I was aware of the outline of a large ship,
+drawn vaguely upon the mist, which I supposed, at first, to be only a
+kind of mirage. But the more steadfastly I gazed, the more distinct it
+became, and I could no longer doubt that I saw a stately ship lying at
+anchor, not more than half a mile from the land.
+
+"It is an extraordinary place to anchor," I said to myself, "or can
+she be ashore?"
+
+There were no signs of distress; the sails were carefully clewed up,
+and there were no sailors in the tops, nor upon the shrouds. A flag,
+of which I could not see the device or the nation, hung heavily at the
+stern, and looked as if it had fallen asleep.  My curiosity began to
+be singularly excited. The form of the vessel seemed not to be
+permanent; but within a quarter of an hour, I was sure that I had seen
+half a dozen different ships. As I gazed, I saw no more sails nor
+masts, but a long range of oars, flashing like a golden fringe, or
+straight and stiff, like the legs of a sea-monster.
+
+"It is some bloated crab, or lobster, magnified by the mist," I said
+to myself, complacently.  But, at the same moment, there was a
+concentrated flashing and blazing in one spot among the rigging, and
+it was as if I saw a beatified ram, or, more truly, a sheep-skin,
+splendid as the hair of Berenice.
+
+"Is that the golden fleece?" I thought. "But, surely, Jason and the
+Argonauts have gone home long since. Do people go on gold-fleecing
+expeditions now?" I asked myself, in perplexity. "Can this be a
+California steamer?"
+
+How could I have thought it a steamer? Did I not see those sails,
+"thin and sere?" Did I not feel the melancholy of that solitary bark?
+It had a mystic aura; a boreal brilliancy shimmered in its wake, for
+it was drifting seaward. A strange fear curdled along my veins. That
+summer sun shone cool. The weary, battered ship was gashed, as if
+gnawed by ice. There was terror in the air, as a "skinny hand so
+brown" waved to me from the deck. I lay as one bewitched. The hand of
+the ancient mariner seemed to be reaching for me, like the hand of
+death.
+
+Death? Why, as I was inly praying Prue's forgiveness for my solitary
+ramble and consequent demise, a glance like the fulness of summer
+splendor gushed over me; the odor of flowers and of eastern gums made
+all the atmosphere. I breathed the orient, and lay drunk with balm,
+while that strange ship, a golden galley now, with glittering
+draperies festooned with flowers, paced to the measured beat of oars
+along the calm, and Cleopatra smiled alluringly from the great
+pageant's heart.
+
+Was this a barge for summer waters, this peculiar ship I saw? It had a
+ruined dignity, a cumbrous grandeur, although its masts were
+shattered, and its sails rent. It hung preternaturally still upon the
+sea, as if tormented and exhausted by long driving and drifting. I saw
+no sailors, but a great Spanish ensign floated over, and waved, a
+funereal plume.  I knew it then. The armada was long since scattered;
+but, floating far
+
+  "on desolate rainy seas,"
+
+lost for centuries, and again restored to sight, here lay one of the
+fated ships of Spain. The huge galleon seemed to fill all the air,
+built up against the sky, like the gilded ships of Claude Lorraine
+against the sunset.
+
+But it fled, for now a black flag fluttered at the mast-head--a long
+low vessel darted swiftly where the vast ship lay; there came a shrill
+piping whistle, the clash of cutlasses, fierce ringing oaths, sharp
+pistol cracks, the thunder of command, and over all the gusty yell of
+a demoniac chorus,
+
+  "My name was Robert Kidd, when I sailed."
+
+--There were no clouds longer, but under a serene sky I saw a bark
+moving with festal pomp, thronged with grave senators in flowing
+robes, and one with ducal bonnet in the midst, holding a ring. The
+smooth bark swam upon a sea like that of southern latitudes. I saw the
+Bucentoro and the nuptials of Venice and the Adriatic.
+
+Who where those coming over the side? Who crowded the boats, and
+sprang into the water, men in old Spanish armor, with plumes and
+swords, and bearing a glittering cross? Who was he standing upon the
+deck with folded arms and gazing towards the shore, as lovers on their
+mistresses and martyrs upon heaven? Over what distant and tumultuous
+seas had this small craft escaped from other centuries and distant
+shores? What sounds of foreign hymns, forgotten now, were these, and
+what solemnity of debarkation? Was this grave form, Columbus?
+
+Yet these were not so Spanish as they seemed just now. This group of
+stern-faced men with high peaked hats, who knelt upon the cold deck
+and looked out upon a shore which, I could see by their joyless smile
+of satisfaction, was rough, and bare, and forbidding. In that soft
+afternoon, standing in mournful groups upon the small deck, why did
+they seem to me to be seeing the sad shores of wintry New England?
+That phantom-ship could not be the May Flower!
+
+I gazed long upon the shifting illusion.
+
+"If I should board this ship," I asked myself, "where should I go?
+whom should I meet? what should I see? Is not this the vessel that
+shall carry me to my Europe, my foreign countries, my impossible
+India, the Atlantis that I have lost?"
+
+As I sat staring at it I could not but wonder whether Bourne had seen
+this sail when he looked upon the water? Does he see such sights every
+day, because he lives down here? Is it not perhaps a magic yacht of
+his; and does he slip off privately after business hours to Venice,
+and Spain, and Egypt, perhaps to El Dorado? Does he run races with
+Ptolemy, Philopater and Hiero of Syracuse, rare regattas on fabulous
+seas?
+
+Why not? He is a rich, man, too, and why should not a New York
+merchant do what a Syracuse tyrant and an Egyptian prince did? Has
+Bourne's yacht those sumptuous chambers, like Philopater's galley, of
+which the greater part was made of split cedar, and of Milesian
+cypress; and has he twenty doors put together with beams of
+citron-wood, with many ornaments? Has the roof of his cabin a carved
+golden face, and is his sail linen with a purple fringe?
+
+"I suppose it is so," I said to myself, as I looked wistfully at the
+ship, which began to glimmer and melt in the haze.
+
+"It certainly is not a fishing smack?" I asked, doubtfully.
+
+No, it must be Bourne's magic yacht; I was sure of it. I could not
+help laughing at poor old Hiero, whose cabins were divided into many
+rooms, with floors composed of mosaic work, of all kinds of stones
+tessellated. And, on this mosaic, the whole story of the Iliad was
+depicted in a marvellous manner.  He had gardens "of all sorts of most
+wonderful beauty, enriched with all sorts of plants, and shadowed by
+roofs of lead or tiles. And, besides this, there were tents roofed
+with boughs of white ivy and of the vine--the roots of which derived
+their moisture from casks full of earth, and were watered in the same
+manner as the gardens. There were temples, also, with doors of ivory
+and citron-wood, furnished in the most exquisite manner, with pictures
+and statues, and with goblets and vases of every form and shape
+imaginable."
+
+"Poor Bourne!" I said. "I suppose his is finer than Hiero's, which is
+a thousand years old. Poor Bourne! I don't wonder that his eyes are
+weary, and that he would pay so dearly for a day of leisure.  Dear me!
+is it one of the prices that must be paid for wealth, the keeping up a
+magic yacht?"
+
+Involuntarily, I had asked the question aloud.
+
+"The magic yacht is not Bourne's," answered a familiar voice. I looked
+up, and Titbottom stood by my side. "Do you not know that all Bourne's
+money would not buy the yacht?" asked he. "He cannot even see it. And
+if he could, it would be no magic yacht to him, but only a battered
+and solitary hulk."
+
+The haze blew gently away, as Titbottom spoke and there lay my Spanish
+galleon, my Bucentoro, my Cleopatra's galley, Columbus's Santa Maria,
+and the Pilgrims' May Flower, an old bleaching wreck upon the beach.
+
+"Do you suppose any true love is in vain?" asked Titbottom solemnly,
+as he stood bareheaded, and the soft sunset wind played with his few
+hairs. "Could Cleopatra smile upon Antony, and the moon upon Endymion,
+and the sea not love its lovers?"
+
+The fresh air breathed upon our faces as he spoke.  I might have
+sailed in Hiero's ship, or in Roman galleys, had I lived long
+centuries ago, and been born a nobleman. But would it be so sweet a
+remembrance, that of lying on a marble couch, under a golden-faced
+roof, and within doors of citron-wood and ivory, and sailing in that
+state to greet queens who are mummies now, as that of seeing those
+fair figures, standing under the great gonfalon, themselves as lovely
+as Egyptian belles, and going to see more than Egypt dreamed?
+
+The yacht was mine, then, and not Bourne's. I took Titbottom's arm,
+and we sauntered toward the ferry. What sumptuous sultan was I, with
+this sad vizier? My languid odalisque, the sea, lay at my feet as we
+advanced, and sparkled all over with a sunset smile. Had I trusted
+myself to her arms, to be borne to the realms that I shall never see,
+or sailed long voyages towards Cathay, I am not sure I should have
+brought a more precious present to Prue, than the story of that
+afternoon.
+
+"Ought I to have gone alone?" I asked her, as I ended.
+
+"I ought not to have gone with you," she replied, "for I had work to
+do. But how strange that you should see such things at Staten
+Island. I never did, Mr. Titbottom," said she, turning to my deputy,
+whom I had asked to tea.
+
+"Madam," answered Titbottom, with a kind of wan and quaint dignity, so
+that I could not help thinking he must have arrived in that stray ship
+from the Spanish armada, "neither did Mr. Bourne."
+
+
+
+TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES.
+
+  "In my mind's eye, Horatio."
+  _Hamlet_.
+
+
+Prue and I do not entertain much; our means forbid it. In truth, other
+people entertain for us.  We enjoy that hospitality of which no
+account is made. We see the show, and hear the music, and smell the
+flowers, of great festivities, tasting, as it were, the drippings from
+rich dishes.
+
+Our own dinner service is remarkably plain, our dinners, even on state
+occasions, are strictly in keeping, and almost our only guest is
+Titbottom. I buy a handful of roses as I come up from the office,
+perhaps, and Prue arranges them so prettily in a glass dish for the
+centre of the table, that, even when I have hurried out to see Aurelia
+step into her carriage to go out to dine, I have thought that the
+bouquet she carried was not more beautiful because it was more costly.
+
+I grant that it was more harmonious with her superb beauty and her
+rich attire. And I have no doubt that if Aurelia knew the old man,
+whom she must have seen so often watching her, and his wife, who
+ornaments her sex with as much sweetness, although with less splendor,
+than Aurelia herself, she would also acknowledge that the nosegay of
+roses was as fine and fit upon their table, as her own sumptuous
+bouquet is for herself. I have so much faith in the perception of that
+lovely lady.
+
+It is my habit,--I hope I may say, my nature,--to believe the best of
+people, rather than the worst.  If I thought that all this sparkling
+setting of beauty,--this fine fashion,--these blazing jewels, and
+lustrous silks, and airy gauzes, embellished with gold-threaded
+embroidery and wrought in a thousand exquisite elaborations, so that I
+cannot see one of those lovely girls pass me by, without thanking God
+for the vision,--if I thought that this was all, and that, underneath
+her lace flounces and diamond bracelets, Aurelia was a sullen, selfish
+woman, then I should turn sadly homeward, for I should see that her
+jewels were flashing scorn upon the object they adorned, that her
+laces were of a more exquisite loveliness than the woman whom they
+merely touched with a superficial grace. It would be like a gaily
+decorated mausoleum,--bright to see, but silent and dark within.
+
+"Great excellences, my dear Prue," I sometimes allow myself to say,
+"lie concealed in the depths of character, like pearls at the bottom
+of the sea.  Under the laughing, glancing surface, how little they are
+suspected! Perhaps love is nothing else than the sight of them by one
+person. Hence every man's mistress is apt to be an enigma to everybody
+else.
+
+"I have no doubt that when Aurelia is engaged, people will say she is
+a most admirable girl, certainly; but they cannot understand why any
+man should be in love with her. As if it were at all necessary that
+they should! And her lover, like a boy who finds a pearl in the public
+street, and wonders as much that others did not see it as that he did,
+will tremble until he knows his passion is returned; feeling, of
+course, that the whole world must be in love with this paragon, who
+cannot possibly smile upon anything so unworthy as he.
+
+"I hope, therefore, my dear Mrs. Prue," I continue, and my wife looks
+up, with pleased pride, from her work, as if I were such an
+irresistible humorist, "you will allow me to believe that the depth
+may be calm, although the surface is dancing.  If you tell me that
+Aurelia is but a giddy girl, I shall believe that you think so. But I
+shall know, all the while, what profound dignity, and sweetness, and
+peace, lie at the foundation of her character."
+
+I say such things to Titbottom, during the dull season at the
+office. And I have known him sometimes to reply, with a kind of dry,
+sad humor, not as if he enjoyed the joke, but as if the joke must be
+made, that he saw no reason why I should be dull because the season
+was so.
+
+"And what do I know of Aurelia, or any other girl?" he says to me with
+that abstracted air; "I, whose Aurelias were of another century, and
+another zone."
+
+Then he falls into a silence which it seems quite profane to
+interrupt. But as we sit upon our high stools, at the desk, opposite
+each other, I leaning upon my elbows, and looking at him, he, with
+sidelong face, glancing out of the window, as if it commanded a
+boundless landscape, instead of a dim, dingy office court, I cannot
+refrain from saying:
+
+"Well!"
+
+He turns slowly, and I go chatting on,--a little too loquacious
+perhaps, about those young girls.  But I know that Titbottom regards
+such an excess as venial, for his sadness is so sweet that you could
+believe it the reflection of a smile from long, long years ago.
+
+One day, after I had been talking for a long time, and we had put up
+our books, and were preparing to leave, he stood for some time by the
+window, gazing with a drooping intentness, as if he really saw
+something more than the dark court, and said slowly:
+
+"Perhaps you would have different impressions of things, if you saw
+them through my spectacles."
+
+There was no change in his expression. He still looked from the
+window, and I said:
+
+"Titbottom, I did not know that you used glasses.  I have never seen
+you wearing spectacles."
+
+"No, I don't often wear them. I am not very fond of looking through
+them. But sometimes an irresistible necessity compels me to put them
+on, and I cannot help seeing."
+
+Titbottom sighed.
+
+"Is it so grievous a fate to see?" inquired I.
+
+"Yes; through my spectacles," he said, turning slowly, and looking at
+me with wan solemnity.
+
+It grew dark as we stood in the office talking, and, taking our hats,
+we went out together. The narrow street of business was deserted. The
+heavy iron shutters were gloomily closed over the windows.  From one
+or two offices struggled the dim gleam of an early candle, by whose
+light some perplexed accountant sat belated, and hunting for his
+error. A careless clerk passed, whistling. But the great tide of life
+had ebbed. We heard its roar far away, and the sound stole into that
+silent street like the murmur of the ocean into an inland dell.
+
+"You will come and dine with us, Titbottom?"
+
+He assented by continuing to walk with me, and I think we were both
+glad when we reached the house, and Prue came to meet us, saying:
+
+"Do you know I hoped you would bring Mr.  Titbottom to dine?"
+
+Titbottom smiled gently, and answered:
+
+"He might have brought his spectacles with him, and have been a
+happier man for it."
+
+Prue looked a little puzzled.
+
+"My dear," I said, "you must know that our friend, Mr. Titbottom, is
+the happy possessor of a pair of wonderful spectacles. I have never
+seen them, indeed; and, from what he says, I should be rather afraid
+of being seen by them. Most short-sighted persons are very glad to
+have the help of glasses; but Mr. Titbottom seems to find very little
+pleasure in his."
+
+"It is because they make him too far-sighted, perhaps," interrupted
+Prue quietly, as she took the silver soup-ladle from the sideboard.
+
+We sipped our wine after dinner, and Prue took her work. Can a man be
+too far-sighted? I did not ask the question aloud. The very tone in
+which Prue had spoken, convinced me that he might.
+
+"At least," I said, "Mr. Titbottom will not refuse to tell us the
+history of his mysterious spectacles.  I have known plenty of magic in
+eyes (and I glanced at the tender blue eyes of Prue), but I have not
+heard of any enchanted glasses."
+
+"Yet you must have seen the glass in which your wife looks every
+morning, and, I take it, that glass must be daily enchanted," said
+Titbottom, with a bow of quaint respect to my wife.
+
+I do not think I have seen such a blush upon Prue's cheek since--well,
+since a great many years ago.
+
+"I will gladly tell you the history of my spectacles," began
+Titbottom. "It is very simple; and I am not at all sure that a great
+many other people have not a pair of the same kind. I have never,
+indeed, heard of them by the gross, like those of our young friend,
+Moses, the you of the Vicar of Wakefield. In fact, I think a gross
+would be quite enough to supply the world. It is a kind of article for
+which the demand does not increase with use If we should all wear
+spectacles like mine, we should never smile any more. Or--I am not
+quite sure--we should all be very happy."
+
+"A very important difference," said Prue, counting her stitches.
+
+"You know my grandfather Titbottom was a West Indian. A large
+proprietor, and an easy man he basked in the tropical sun, leading his
+quiet, luxurious life. He lived much alone, and was what people call
+eccentric--by which I understand, that he was very much himself, and,
+refusing the influence of other people, they had their revenges, and
+called him names. It is a habit not exclusively tropical. I think I
+have seen the same thing even in this city.
+
+"But he was greatly beloved--my bland and bountiful grandfather. He
+was so large-hearted and open-handed. He was so friendly, and
+thoughtful, and genial, that even his jokes had the air of graceful
+benedictions. He did not seem to grow old, and he was one of those who
+never appear to have been very young. He flourished in a perennial
+maturity, an immortal middle-age.
+
+"My grandfather lived upon one of the small islands--St. Kitt's,
+perhaps--and his domain extended to the sea. His house, a rambling
+West Indian mansion, was surrounded with deep, spacious piazzas,
+covered with luxurious lounges, among which one capacious chair was
+his peculiar seat. They tell me, he used sometimes to sit there for
+the whole day, his great, soft, brown eyes fastened upon the sea,
+watching the specks of sails that flashed upon the horizon, while the
+evanescent expressions chased each other over his placid face as if it
+reflected the calm and changing sea before him.
+
+"His morning costume was an ample dressing-gown of gorgeously-flowered
+silk, and his morning was very apt to last all day. He rarely read;
+but he would pace the great piazza for hours, with his hands buried in
+the pockets of his dressing-gown, and an air of sweet reverie, which
+any book must be a very entertaining one to produce.
+
+"Society, of course, he saw little. There was some slight apprehension
+that, if he were bidden to social entertainments, he might forget his
+coat, or arrive without some other essential part of his dress; and
+there is a sly tradition in the Titbottom family, that once, having
+been invited to a ball in honor of a new governor of the island, my
+grand father Titbottom sauntered into the hall towards midnight,
+wrapped in the gorgeous flowers of his dressing-gown, and with his
+hands buried in the pockets, as usual. There was great excitement
+among the guests, and immense deprecation of gubernatorial
+ire. Fortunately, it happened that the governor and my grandfather
+were old friends, and there was no offence. But, as they were
+conversing together, one of the distressed managers cast indignant
+glances at the brilliant costume of my grandfather, who summoned him,
+and asked courteously:
+
+"'Did you invite me, or my coat?'
+
+"'You, in a proper coat,' replied the manager.
+
+"The governor smiled approvingly, and looked at my grandfather.
+
+"'My friend,' said he to the manager, 'I beg your pardon, I forgot.'
+
+"The next day, my grandfather was seen promenading in full ball dress
+along the streets of the little town.
+
+"'They ought to know,' said he, 'that I have a proper coat, and that
+not contempt, nor poverty, but forgetfulness, sent me to a ball in my
+dressing-gown.'
+
+"He did not much frequent social festivals after this failure, but he
+always told the story with satisfaction and a quiet smile.
+
+"To a stranger, life upon those little islands is uniform even to
+weariness. But the old native dons, like my grandfather, ripen in the
+prolonged sunshine, like the turtle upon the Bahama banks, nor know of
+existence more desirable. Life in the tropics, I take to be a placid
+torpidity.
+
+"During the long, warm mornings of nearly half a century, my
+grandfather Titbottom had sat in his dressing-gown, and gazed at the
+sea. But one calm June day, as he slowly paced the piazza after
+breakfast, his dreamy glance was arrested by a little vessel,
+evidently nearing the shore. He called for his spyglass, and,
+surveying the craft, saw that she came from the neighboring
+island. She glided smoothly, slowly, over the summer sea. The warm
+morning air was sweet with perfumes, and silent with heat. The sea
+sparkled languidly, and the brilliant blue sky hung cloudlessly
+over. Scores of little island vessels had my grandfather seen coming
+over the horizon, and cast anchor in the port.  Hundreds of summer
+mornings had the white sails flashed and faded, like vague faces
+through forgotten dreams. But this time he laid down the spyglass, and
+leaned against a column of the piazza, and watched the vessel with an
+intentness that he could not explain. She came nearer and nearer, a
+graceful spectre in the dazzling morning.
+
+"'Decidedly, I must step down and see about that vessel,' said my
+grandfather Titbottom.
+
+"He gathered his ample dressing-gown about him, and stepped from the
+piazza, with no other protection from the sun than the little
+smoking-cap upon his head. His face wore a calm, beaming smile, as if
+he loved the whole world. He was not an old man; but there was almost
+a patriarchal pathos in his expression, as he sauntered along in the
+sunshine towards the shore. A group of idle gazers was collected, to
+watch the arrival. The little vessel furled her sails, and drifted
+slowly landward, and, as she was of very light draft, she came close
+to the shelving shore. A long plank was put out from her side, and the
+debarkation commenced.
+
+"My grandfather Titbottom stood looking on, to see the passengers as
+they passed. There were but a few of them, and mostly traders from the
+neighboring island. But suddenly the face of a young girl appeared
+over the side of the vessel, and she stepped upon the plank to
+descend. My grandfather Titbottom instantly advanced, and, moving
+briskly, reached the top of the plank at the same moment, and with the
+old tassel of his cap flashing in the sun, and one hand in the pocket
+of his dressing-gown, with the other he handed the young lady
+carefully down the plank. That young lady was afterwards my
+grandmother Titbottom.
+
+"For, over the gleaming sea which he had watched so long, and which
+seemed thus to reward his patient gaze, came his bride that sunny
+morning.
+
+"'Of course, we are happy,' he used to say to her, after they were
+married: 'For you are the gift of the sun I have loved so long and so
+well.' And my grandfather Titbottom would lay his hand so tenderly
+upon the golden hair of his young bride, that you could fancy him a
+devout Parsee, caressing sunbeams.
+
+"There were endless festivities upon occasion of the marriage; and my
+grandfather did not go to one of them in his dressing-gown. The gentle
+sweetness of his wife melted every heart into love and sympathy. He
+was much older than she, without doubt. But age, as he used to say
+with a smile of immortal youth, is a matter of feeling, not of years.
+
+"And if, sometimes, as she sat by his side on the piazza, her fancy
+looked through her eyes upon that summer sea, and saw a younger lover,
+perhaps some one of those graceful and glowing heroes who occupy the
+foreground of all young maidens' visions by the sea, yet she could not
+find one more generous and gracious, nor fancy one more worthy and
+loving than my grandfather Titbottom.
+
+"And if, in the moonlit midnight, while he lay calmly sleeping, she
+leaned out of the window, and sank into vague reveries of sweet
+possibility, and watched the gleaming path of the moonlight upon the
+water, until the dawn glided over it--it was only that mood of
+nameless regret and longing, which underlies all human happiness; or
+it was the vision of that life of cities and the world, which she had
+never seen, but of which she had often read, and which looked very
+fair and alluring across the sea, to a girlish imagination, which knew
+that it should never see that reality.
+
+"These West Indian years were the great days of the family," said
+Titbottom, with an air of majestic and regal regret, pausing, and
+musing, in our little parlor, like a late Stuart in exile, remembering
+England.
+
+Prue raised her eyes from her work, and looked at him with subdued
+admiration; for I have observed that, like the rest of her sex, she
+has a singular sympathy with the representative of a reduced family.
+
+Perhaps it is their finer perception, which leads these tender-hearted
+women to recognize the divine right of social superiority so much more
+readily than we; and yet, much as Titbottom was enhanced in my wife's
+admiration by the discovery that his dusky sadness of nature and
+expression was, as it were, the expiring gleam and late twilight of
+ancestral splendors, I doubt if Mr. Bourne would have preferred him
+for book-keeper a moment sooner upon that account. In truth, I have
+observed, down town, that the fact of your ancestors doing nothing, is
+not considered good proof that you can do anything.
+
+But Prue and her sex regard sentiment more than action, and I
+understand easily enough why she is never tired of hearing me read of
+Prince Charlie.  If Titbottom had been only a little younger, a little
+handsomer, a little more gallantly dressed--in fact, a little more of
+a Prince Charlie, I am sure her eyes would not have fallen again upon
+her work so tranquilly, as he resumed his story.
+
+"I can remember my grandfather Titbottom, although I was a very young
+child, and he was a very old man. My young mother and my young
+grandmother are very distinct figures in my memory, ministering to the
+old gentleman, wrapped in his dressing-gown, and seated upon the
+piazza. I remember his white hair, and his calm smile, and how, not
+long before he died, he called me to him, and laying his hand upon my
+head, said to me:
+
+"'My child, the world is not this great sunny piazza, nor life the
+fairy stories which the women tell you here, as you sit in their
+laps. I shall soon be gone, but I want to leave with you some memento
+of my love for you, and I know of nothing more valuable than these
+spectacles, which your grandmother brought from her native island,
+when she arrived here one fine summer morning, long ago. I cannot tell
+whether, when you grow older, you will regard them as a gift of the
+greatest value, or as something that you had been happier never to
+have possessed.'
+
+"'But, grandpapa, I am not short-sighted.'
+
+"'My son, are you not human?' said the old gentleman; and how shall I
+ever forget the thoughtful sadness with which, at the same time, he
+handed me the spectacles.
+
+"Instinctively I put them on, and looked at my grandfather. But I saw
+no grandfather, no piazza, no flowered dressing-gown; I saw only a
+luxuriant palm-tree, waving broadly over a tranquil landscape;
+pleasant homes clustered around it; gardens teeming with fruit and
+flowers; flocks quietly feeding; birds wheeling and chirping. I heard
+children's voices, and the low lullaby of happy mothers. The sound of
+cheerful singing came wafted from distant fields upon the light
+breeze. Golden harvests glistened out of sight, and I caught their
+rustling whispers of prosperity. A warm, mellow atmosphere bathed the
+whole.
+
+"I have seen copies of the landscapes of the Italian, painter Claude,
+which seemed to me faint reminiscences of that calm and happy
+vision. But all this peace and prosperity seemed to flow from the
+spreading palm as from a fountain.
+
+"I do not know how long I looked, but I had, apparently, no power, as
+I had no will, to remove the spectacles. What a wonderful island must
+Nevis be, thought I, if people carry such pictures in their pockets,
+only by buying a pair of spectacles!  What wonder that my dear
+grandmother Titbottom has lived such a placid life, and has blessed us
+all with her sunny temper, when she has lived surrounded by such
+images of peace!
+
+"My grandfather died. But still, in the warm morning sunshine upon the
+piazza, I felt his placid presence, and as I crawled into his great
+chair, and drifted on in reverie through the still tropical day, it
+was as if his soft dreamy eye had passed into my soul. My grandmother
+cherished his memory with tender regret. A violent passion of grief
+for his loss was no more possible than for the pensive decay of the
+year.
+
+"We have no portrait of him, but I see always, when I remember him,
+that peaceful and luxuriant palm. And I think that to have known one
+good old man--one man who, through the chances and rubs of a long
+life, has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm branch, waving
+all discords into peace, helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in
+each other, more than many sermons. I hardly know whether to be
+grateful to my grandfather for the spectacles; and yet when I remember
+that it is to them I owe the pleasant image of him which I cherish I
+seem to myself sadly ungrateful.
+
+"Madam," said Titbottom to Prue, solemnly, "my memory is a long and
+gloomy gallery, and only remotely, at its further end, do I see the
+glimmer of soft sunshine, and only there are the pleasant pictures
+hung. They seem to me very happy along whose gallery the sunlight
+streams to their very feet, striking all the pictured walls into
+unfading splendor."
+
+Prue had laid her work in her lap, and as Titbottom paused a moment,
+and I turned towards her, I found her mild eyes fastened upon my face,
+and glistening with many tears. I knew that the tears meant that she
+felt herself to be one of those who seemed to Titbottom very happy.
+
+"Misfortunes of many kinds came heavily upon the family after the head
+was gone. The great house was relinquished. My parents were both dead,
+and my grandmother had entire charge of me.  But from the moment that
+I received the gift of the spectacles, I could not resist their
+fascination, and I withdrew into myself, and became a solitary boy.
+There were not many companions for me of my own age, and they
+gradually left me, or, at least, had not a hearty sympathy with me;
+for, if they teased me, I pulled out my spectacles and surveyed them
+so seriously that they acquired a kind of awe of me, and evidently
+regarded my grandfather's gift as a concealed magical weapon which
+might be dangerously drawn upon them at any moment.  Whenever, in our
+games, there were quarrels and high words, and I began to feel about
+my dress and to wear a grave look, they all took the alarm, and
+shouted, 'Look out for Titbottom's spectacles,' and scattered like a
+flock of scared sheep.
+
+"Nor could I wonder at it. For, at first, before they took the alarm,
+I saw strange sights when I looked at them through the glasses.
+
+"If two were quarrelling about a marble, or a ball, I had only to go
+behind a tree where I was concealed and look at them leisurely. Then
+the scene changed, and it was no longer a green meadow with boys
+playing, but a spot which I did not recognise, and forms that made me
+shudder, or smile.  It was not a big boy bullying a little one, but a
+young wolf with glistening teeth and a lamb cowering before him; or,
+it was a dog faithful and famishing--or a star going slowly into
+eclipse--or a rainbow fading--or a flower blooming--or a sun
+rising--or a waning moon.
+
+"The revelations of the spectacles determined my feeling for the boys,
+and for all whom I saw through them. No shyness, nor awkwardness, nor
+silence, could separate me from those who looked lovely as lilies to
+my illuminated eyes. But the vision made me afraid. If I felt myself
+warmly drawn to any one, I struggled with the fierce desire of seeing
+him through the spectacles, for I feared to find him something else
+than I fancied. I longed to enjoy the luxury of ignorant feeling, to
+love without knowing, to float like a leaf upon the eddies of life,
+drifted now to a sunny point, now to a solemn shade--now over
+glittering ripples, now over gleaming calms,--and not to determined
+ports, a trim vessel with an inexorable rudder.
+
+"But sometimes, mastered after long struggles, as if the unavoidable
+condition of owning the spectacles were using them, I seized them and
+sauntered into the little town. Putting them to my eyes I peered into
+the houses and at the people who passed me. Here sat a family at
+breakfast, and I stood at the window looking in. O motley meal!
+fantastic vision! The good mother saw her lord sitting opposite, a
+grave, respectable being, eating muffins.  But I saw only a bank-bill,
+more or less crumbled and tattered, marked with a larger or lesser
+figure.  If a sharp wind blew suddenly, I saw it tremble and flutter;
+it was thin, flat, impalpable. I removed my glasses, and looked with
+my eyes at the wife. I could have smiled to see the humid tenderness
+with which she regarded her strange _vis-a-vis_. Is life only a
+game of blindman's-buff? of droll cross-purposes?
+
+"Or I put them on again, and then looked at the wives. How many stout
+trees I saw,--how many tender flowers,--how many placid pools; yes,
+and how many little streams winding out of sight, shrinking before the
+large, hard, round eyes opposite, and slipping off into solitude and
+shade, with a low, inner song for their own solace.
+
+"In many houses I thought to see angels, nymphs, or, at least, women,
+and could only find broomsticks, mops, or kettles, hurrying about,
+rattling and tinkling, in a state of shrill activity. I made calls
+upon elegant ladies, and after I had enjoyed the gloss of silk, and
+the delicacy of lace, and the glitter of jewels, I slipped on my
+spectacles, and saw a peacock's feather, flounced, and furbelowed, and
+fluttering; or an iron rod, thin, sharp, and hard; nor could I
+possibly mistake the movement of the drapery for any flexibility of
+the thing draped.
+
+"Or, mysteriously chilled, I saw a statue of perfect form, or flowing
+movement, it might be alabaster, or bronze, or marble,--but sadly
+often it was ice; and I knew that after it had shone a little, and
+frozen a few eyes with its despairing perfection, it could not be put
+away in the niches of palaces for ornament and proud family tradition,
+like the alabaster, or bronze, or marble statues, but would melt, and
+shrink, and fall coldly away in colorless and useless water, be
+absorbed in the earth and utterly forgotten.
+
+"But the true sadness was rather in seeing those who, not having the
+spectacles, thought that the iron rod was flexible, and the ice statue
+warm. I saw many a gallant heart, which seemed to me brave and loyal
+as the crusaders, pursuing, through days and nights, and a long life
+of devotion, the hope of lighting at least a smile in the cold eyes,
+if not a fire in the icy heart. I watched the earnest, enthusiastic
+sacrifice. I saw the pure resolve, the generous faith, the fine scorn
+of doubt, the impatience of suspicion. I watched the grace, the
+ardor, the glory of devotion. Through those strange spectacles how
+often I saw the noblest heart renouncing all other hope, all other
+ambition, all other life, than the possible love of some one of those
+statues.
+
+"Ah! me, it was terrible, but they had not the love to give. The face
+was so polished and smooth, because there was no sorrow in the
+heart,--and drearily, often, no heart to be touched. I could not
+wonder that the noble heart of devotion was broken, for it had dashed
+itself against a stone. I wept, until my spectacles were dimmed, for
+those hopeless lovers; but there was a pang beyond tears for those icy
+statues.
+
+"Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in knowledge,--I did not
+comprehend the sights I was compelled to see. I used to tear my
+glasses away from my eyes, and, frightened at myself, run to escape my
+own consciousness. Reaching the small house where we then lived, I
+plunged into my grandmother's room, and, throwing myself upon the
+floor, buried my face in her lap; and sobbed myself to sleep with
+premature grief.
+
+"But when I awakened, and felt her cool hand upon my hot forehead, and
+heard the low sweet song, or the gentle story, or the tenderly told
+parable from the Bible, with which she tried to soothe me, I could not
+resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to
+steal a glance at her through the spectacles.
+
+"Pictures of the Madonna have not her rare and pensive beauty. Upon
+the tranquil little islands her life had been eventless, and all the
+fine possibilities of her nature were like flowers that never
+bloomed. Placid were all her years; yet I have read of no heroine, of
+no woman great in sudden crises, that it did not seem to me she might
+have been. The wife and widow of a man who loved his home better than
+the homes of others, I have yet heard of no queen, no belle, no
+imperial beauty whom in grace, and brilliancy, and persuasive
+courtesy, she might not have surpassed.
+
+"Madam," said Titbottom to my wife, whose heart hung upon his story;
+"your husband's young friend, Aurelia, wears sometimes a camelia in
+her hair, and no diamond in the ball-room seems so costly as that
+perfect flower, which women envy, and for whose least and withered
+petal men sigh; yet, in the tropical solitudes of Brazil, how many a
+camelia bud drops from the bush that no eye has ever seen, which, had
+it flowered and been noticed, would have gilded all hearts with its
+memory.
+
+"When I stole these furtive glances at my grandmother, half fearing
+that they were wrong, I saw only a calm lake, whose shores were low,
+and over which the sun hung unbroken, so that the least star was
+clearly reflected. It had an atmosphere of solemn twilight
+tranquillity, and so completely did its unruffled surface blend with
+the cloudless, star-studded sky, that, when I looked through my
+spectacles at my grandmother, the vision seemed to me all heaven and
+stars.
+
+"Yet, as I gazed and gazed, I felt what stately cities might well have
+been built upon those shores, and have flashed prosperity over the
+calm, like coruscations of pearls. I dreamed of gorgeous fleets,
+silken-sailed, and blown by perfumed winds, drifting over those
+depthless waters and through those spacious skies. I gazed upon the
+twilight, the inscrutable silence, like a God-fearing discoverer upon
+a new and vast sea bursting upon him through forest glooms, and in the
+fervor of whose impassioned gaze, a millenial and poetic world arises,
+and man need no longer die to be happy.
+
+"My companions naturally deserted me, for I had grown wearily grave
+and abstracted: and, unable to resist the allurements of my
+spectacles, I was constantly lost in the world, of which those
+companions were part, yet of which they knew nothing.
+
+"I grew cold and hard, almost morose; people seemed to me so blind and
+unreasonable. They did the wrong thing. They called green, yellow; and
+black, white. Young men said of a girl, 'What a lovely, simple
+creature!' I looked, and there was only a glistening wisp of straw,
+dry and hollow.  Or they said, 'What a cold, proud beauty!'  I looked,
+and lo! a Madonna, whose heart held the world. Or they said, 'What a
+wild, giddy girl!'  and I saw a glancing, dancing mountain stream,
+pure as the virgin snows whence it flowed, singing through sun and
+shade, over pearls and gold dust, slipping along unstained by weed or
+rain, or heavy foot of cattle, touching the flowers with a dewy
+kiss,--a beam of grace, a happy song, a line of light, in the dim and
+troubled landscape.
+
+"My grandmother sent me to school, but I looked at the master, and saw
+that he was a smooth round ferule, or an improper noun, or a vulgar
+fraction, and refused to obey him. Or he was a piece of string, a rag,
+a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one was a well of
+cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw the stars.
+
+"That one gave me all my schooling. With him I used to walk by the
+sea, and, as we strolled and the waves plunged in long legions before
+us, I looked at him through the spectacles, and as his eyes dilated
+with the boundless view, and his chest heaved with an impossible
+desire, I saw Xerxes and his army, tossed and glittering, rank upon
+rank, multitude upon multitude, out of sight, but ever regularly
+advancing, and with confused roar of ceaseless music, prostrating
+themselves in abject homage.  Or, as with arms outstretched and hair
+streaming on the wind, he chanted full lines of the resounding Iliad,
+I saw Homer pacing the Aegean sands of the Greek sunsets of forgotten
+times.
+
+"My grandmother died, and I was thrown into the world without
+resources, and with no capital but my spectacles. I tried to find
+employment, but everybody was shy of me. There was a vague suspicion
+that I was either a little crazed, or a good deal in league with the
+prince of darkness. My companions, who would persist in calling a
+piece of painted muslin, a fair and fragrant flower, had no
+difficulty; success waited for them around every corner, and arrived
+in every ship.
+
+"I tried to teach, for I loved children. But if anything excited a
+suspicion of my pupils, and putting on my spectacles, I saw that I was
+fondling a snake, or smelling at a bud with a worm in it, I sprang up
+in horror and ran away; or, if it seemed to me through the glasses,
+that a cherub smiled upon me, or a rose was blooming in my
+button-hole, then I felt myself imperfect and impure, not fit to be
+leading and training what was so essentially superior to myself, and I
+kissed the children and left them weeping and wondering.
+
+"In despair I went to a great merchant on the island, and asked him to
+employ me.
+
+"'My dear young friend,' said he, 'I understand that you have some
+singular secret, some charm, or spell, or amulet, or something, I
+don't know what, of which people are afraid. Now you know, my dear,'
+said the merchant, swelling up, and apparently prouder of his great
+stomach than of his large fortune, 'I am not of that kind. I am not
+easily frightened. You may spare yourself the pain of trying to impose
+upon me. People who propose to come to time before I arrive, are
+accustomed to arise very early in the morning,' said he, thrusting his
+thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and spreading the fingers
+like two fans, upon his bosom.  'I think I have heard something of
+your secret.  You have a pair of spectacles, I believe, that you value
+very much, because your grandmother brought them as a marriage portion
+to your grandfather.  Now, if you think fit to sell me those
+spectacles, I will pay you the largest market price for them.  What do
+you say?'
+
+"I told him I had not the slightest idea of selling my spectacles.
+
+"'My young friend means to eat them, I suppose,' said he, with a
+contemptuous smile.
+
+"I made no reply, but was turning to leave the office, when the
+merchant called after me--
+
+"'My young friend, poor people should never suffer themselves to get
+into pets. Anger is an expensive luxury, in which only men of a
+certain income can indulge. A pair of spectacles and a hot temper are
+not the most promising capital for success in life, Master Titbottom.'
+
+"I said nothing, but put my hand upon the door to go out, when the
+merchant said, more respectfully--
+
+"'Well, you foolish boy, if you will not sell your spectacles, perhaps
+you will agree to sell the use of them to me. That is, you shall only
+put them on when I direct you, and for my purposes. Hallo!  you little
+fool!' cried he, impatiently, as he saw that I intended to make no
+reply.
+
+"But I had pulled out my spectacles and put them on for my own
+purposes, and against his wish and desire. I looked at him, and saw a
+huge, bald-headed wild boar, with gross chaps and a leering eye--only
+the more ridiculous for the high-arched, gold-bowed spectacles, that
+straddled his nose One of his fore-hoofs was thrust into the safe,
+where his bills receivable were hived, and the other into his pocket,
+among the loose change and bills there.  His ears were pricked forward
+with a brisk, sensitive smartness. In a world where prize pork was the
+best excellence, he would have carried off all the premiums.
+
+"I stepped into the next office in the street, and a mild-faced;
+genial man, also a large and opulent merchant, asked me my business in
+such a tone, that I instantly looked through my spectacles, and saw a
+land flowing with milk and honey. There I pitched my tent, and staid
+till the good man died, and his business was discontinued.
+
+"But while there," said Titbottom, and his voice trembled away into a
+sigh, "I first saw Preciosa.  Despite the spectacles, I saw
+Preciosa. For days, for weeks, for months, I did not take my
+spectacles with me. I ran away from them, I threw them up on high
+shelves, I tried to make up my mind to throw them into the sea, or
+down the well. I could not, I would not, I dared not, look at Preciosa
+through the spectacles. It was not possible for me deliberately to
+destroy them; but I awoke in the night, and could almost have cursed
+my dear old grandfather for his gift.
+
+"I sometimes escaped from the office, and sat for whole days with
+Preciosa. I told her the strange things I had seen with my mystic
+glasses. The hours were not enough for the wild romances which I raved
+in her ear. She listened, astonished and appalled. Her blue eyes
+turned upon me with sweet deprecation. She clung to me, and then
+withdrew, and fled fearfully from the room.
+
+"But she could not stay away. She could not resist my voice, in whose
+tones burnt all the love that filled my heart and brain. The very
+effort to resist the desire of seeing her as I saw everybody else,
+gave a frenzy and an unnatural tension to my feeling and my manner. I
+sat by her side, looking into her eyes, smoothing her hair, folding
+her to my heart, which was sunken deep and deep--why not for ever?--in
+that dream of peace. I ran from her presence, and shouted, and leaped
+with joy, and sat the whole night through, thrilled into happiness by
+the thought of her love and loveliness, like a wind harp, tightly
+strung, and answering the airiest sigh of the breeze with music.
+
+"Then came calmer days--the conviction of deep love settled upon our
+lives--as after the hurrying, heaving days of spring, comes the bland
+and benignant summer.
+
+"'It is no dream, then, after all, and we are happy,' I said to her,
+one day; and there came no answer, for happiness is speechless.
+
+"'We are happy, then,' I said to myself, 'there is no excitement
+now. How glad I am that I can now look at her through my spectacles.'
+
+"I feared least some instinct should warn me to beware. I escaped from
+her arms, and ran home and seized the glasses, and bounded back again
+to Preciosa. As I entered the room I was heated, my head was swimming
+with confused apprehensions, my eyes must have glared. Preciosa was
+frightened, and rising from her seat, stood with an inquiring glance
+of surprise in her eyes.
+
+"But I was bent with frenzy upon my purpose.  I was merely aware that
+she was in the room. I saw nothing else. I heard nothing. I cared for
+nothing, but to see her through that magic glass, and feel at once all
+the fulness of blissful perfection which that would reveal. Preciosa
+stood before the mirror, but alarmed at my wild and eager movements,
+unable to distinguish what I had in my hands, and seeing me raise them
+suddenly to my face, she shrieked with terror, and fell fainting upon
+the floor, at the very moment that I placed the glasses before my
+eyes, and beheld--_myself_, reflected in the mirror, before which
+she had been standing.
+
+"Dear madam," cried Titbottom, to my wife, springing up and falling
+back again in his chair, pale and trembling, while Prue ran to him and
+took his hand, and I poured out a glass of water--"I saw myself."
+
+There was silence for many minutes. Prue laid her hand gently upon the
+head of our guest, whose eyes were closed, and who breathed softly
+like an infant in sleeping. Perhaps, in all the long years of anguish
+since that hour, no tender hand had touched his brow, nor wiped away
+the damps of a bitter sorrow.  Perhaps the tender, maternal fingers of
+my wife soothed his weary head with the conviction that he felt the
+hand of his mother playing with the long hair of her boy in the soft
+West India morning.  Perhaps it was only the natural relief of
+expressing a pent-up sorrow.
+
+When he spoke again, it was with the old subdued tone, and the air of
+quaint solemnity.
+
+"These things were matters of long, long ago, and I came to this
+country soon after. I brought with me, premature age, a past of
+melancholy memories, and the magic spectacles. I had become their
+slave. I had nothing more to fear. Having seen myself, I was compelled
+to see others, properly to understand my relations to them. The lights
+that cheer the future of other men had gone out for me; my eyes were
+those of an exile turned backwards upon the receding shore, and not
+forwards with hope upon the ocean.
+
+"I mingled with men, but with little pleasure.  There are but many
+varieties of a few types. I did not find those I came to
+clearer-sighted than those I had left behind. I heard men called
+shrewd and wise, and report said they were highly intelligent and
+successful. My finest sense detected no aroma of purity and principle;
+but I saw only a fungus that had fattened and spread in a night. They
+went to the theatres to see actors upon the stage. I went to see
+actors in the boxes, so consummately cunning, that others did not know
+they were acting, and they did not suspect it themselves.
+
+"Perhaps you wonder it did not make me misanthropical.  My dear
+friends, do not forget that I had seen myself. That made me
+compassionate not cynical.
+
+"Of course, I could not value highly the ordinary standards of success
+and excellence. When I went to church and saw a thin, blue, artificial
+flower, or a great sleepy cushion expounding the beauty of holiness to
+pews full of eagles, half-eagles, and three-pences, however adroitly
+concealed they might be in broadcloth and boots: or saw an onion in an
+Easter bonnet weeping over the sins of Magdalen, I did not feel as
+they felt who saw in all this, not only propriety but piety.
+
+"Or when at public meetings an eel stood up on end, and wriggled and
+squirmed lithely in every direction, and declared that, for his part,
+he went in for rainbows and hot water--how could I help seeing that he
+was still black and loved a slimy pool?
+
+"I could not grow misanthropical when I saw in the eyes of so many who
+were called old, the gushing fountains of eternal youth, and the light
+of an immortal dawn, or when I saw those who were esteemed
+unsuccessful and aimless, ruling a fair realm of peace and plenty,
+either in their own hearts, or in another's--a realm and princely
+possession for which they had well renounced a hopeless search and a
+belated triumph.
+
+"I knew one man who had been for years a byword for having sought the
+philosopher's stone. But I looked at him through the spectacles and
+saw a satisfaction in concentrated energies, and a tenacity arising
+from devotion to a noble dream which was not apparent in the youths
+who pitied him in the aimless effeminacy of clubs, nor in the clever
+gentlemen who cracked their thin jokes upon him over a gossiping
+dinner.
+
+"And there was your neighbor over the way, who passes for a woman who
+has failed in her career, because she is an old maid. People wag
+solemn heads of pity, and say that she made so great a mistake in not
+marrying the brilliant and famous man who was for long years her
+suitor. It is clear that no orange flower will ever bloom for her. The
+young people make their tender romances about her as they watch her,
+and think of her solitary hours of bitter regret and wasting longing,
+never to be satisfied.
+
+"When I first came to town I shared this sympathy, and pleased my
+imagination with fancying her hard struggle with the conviction that
+she had lost all that made life beautiful. I supposed that if I had
+looked at her through my spectacles, I should see that it was only her
+radiant temper which so illuminated her dress, that we did not see it
+to be heavy sables.
+
+"But when, one day, I did raise my glasses, and glanced at her, I did
+not see the old maid whom we all pitied for a secret sorrow, but a
+woman whose nature was a tropic, in which the sun shone, and birds
+sang, and flowers bloomed for ever.  There were no regrets, no doubts
+and half wishes, but a calm sweetness, a transparent peace. I saw her
+blush when that old lover passed by, or paused to speak to her, but it
+was only the sign of delicate feminine consciousness. She knew his
+love, and honored it, although she could not understand it nor return
+it. I looked closely at her, and I saw that although all the world had
+exclaimed at her indifference to such homage, and had declared it was
+astonishing she should lose so fine a match, she would only say simply
+and quietly--
+
+"'If Shakespeare loved me and I did not love him, how could I marry
+him?'
+
+"Could I be misanthropical when I saw such fidelity, and dignity, and
+simplicity?
+
+"You may believe that I was especially curious to look at that old
+lover of hers, through my glasses.  He was no longer young, you know,
+when I came, and his fame and fortune were secure. Certainly I have
+heard of few men more beloved, and of none more worthy to be loved. He
+had the easy manner of a man of the world, the sensitive grace of a
+poet, and the charitable judgment of a wide-traveller.  He was
+accounted the most successful and most unspoiled of men. Handsome,
+brilliant, wise, tender, graceful, accomplished, rich, and famous, I
+looked at him, without the spectacles, in surprise, and admiration,
+and wondered how your neighbor over the way had been so entirely
+untouched by his homage. I watched their intercourse in society, I saw
+her gay smile, her cordial greeting; I marked his frank address, his
+lofty courtesy. Their manner told no tales. The eager world was
+baulked, and I pulled out my spectacles.
+
+"I had seen her already, and now I saw him.  He lived only in memory,
+and his memory was a spacious and stately palace. But he did not
+oftenest frequent the banqueting hall, where were endless hospitality
+and feasting,--nor did he loiter much in the reception rooms, where a
+throng of new visitors was for ever swarming,--nor did he feed his
+vanity by haunting the apartment in which were stored the trophies of
+his varied triumphs,--nor dream much in the great gallery hung with
+pictures of his travels.
+
+"From all these lofty halls of memory he constantly escaped to a
+remote and solitary chamber, into which no one had ever
+penetrated. But my fatal eyes, behind the glasses, followed and
+entered with him, and saw that the chamber was a chapel.  It was dim,
+and silent, and sweet with perpetual incense that burned upon an altar
+before a picture forever veiled. There, whenever I chanced to look, I
+saw him kneel and pray; and there, by day and by night, a funeral hymn
+was chanted.
+
+"I do not believe you will be surprised that I have been content to
+remain a deputy book-keeper.  My spectacles regulated my ambition, and
+I early learned that there were better gods than Plutus.  The glasses
+have lost much of their fascination now, and I do not often use
+them. But sometimes the desire is irresistible. Whenever I am greatly
+interested, I am compelled to take them out and see what it is that I
+admire.
+
+"And yet--and yet," said Titbottom, after a pause, "I am not sure that
+I thank my grandfather."
+
+Prue had long since laid away her work, and had heard every word of
+the story. I saw that the dear woman had yet one question to ask, and
+had been earnestly hoping to hear something that would spare her the
+necessity of asking. But Titbottom had resumed his usual tone, after
+the momentary excitement, and made no further allusion to himself. We
+all sat silently; Titbottom's eyes fastened musingly upon the carpet,
+Prue looking wistfully at him, and I regarding both.
+
+It was past midnight, and our guest arose to go.  He shook hands
+quietly, made his grave Spanish bow to Prue, and, taking his hat, went
+towards the front door. Prue and I accompanied him. I saw in her eyes
+that she would ask her question, And as Titbottom opened the door, I
+heard the low words:
+
+"And Preciosa?"
+
+Titbottom paused. He had just opened the door, and the moonlight
+streamed over him as he stood, turning back to us.
+
+"I have seen her but once since. It was in church, and she was
+kneeling, with her eyes closed, so that she did not see me. But I
+rubbed the glasses well, and looked at her, and saw a white lily,
+whose stem was broken, but which was fresh, and luminous, and fragrant
+still."
+
+"That was a miracle," interrupted Prue.
+
+"Madam, it was a miracle," replied Titbottom, "and for that one sight
+I am devoutly grateful for my grandfather's gift. I saw, that although
+a flower may have lost its hold upon earthly moisture, it may still
+bloom as sweetly, fed by the dews of heaven."
+
+The door closed, and he was gone. But as Prue put her arm in mine, and
+we went up stairs together, she whispered in my ear:
+
+"How glad I am that you don't wear spectacles."
+
+
+
+A CRUISE IN THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
+
+  "When I sailed: when I sailed."
+  _Ballad of Robert Kidd._
+
+
+With the opening of spring my heart opens. My fancy expands with the
+flowers, and, as I walk down town in the May morning, toward the dingy
+counting-room, and the old routine, you would hardly believe that I
+would not change my feelings for those of the French Barber-Poet
+Jasmin, who goes, merrily singing, to his shaving and hair cutting.
+
+The first warm day puts the whole winter to flight. It stands in front
+of the summer like a young warrior before his host, and,
+single-handed, defies and destroys its remorseless enemy.
+
+I throw up the chamber-window, to breathe the earliest breath of
+summer.
+
+"The brave young David has hit old Goliath square in the forehead this
+morning," I say to Prue, as I lean out, and bathe in the soft
+sunshine.
+
+My wife is tying on her cap at the glass, and, not quite disentangled
+from her dreams, thinks I am speaking of a street-brawl, and replies
+that I had better take care of my own head.
+
+"Since you have charge of my heart, I suppose," I answer gaily,
+turning round to make her one of Titbottom's bows.
+
+"But seriously, Prue, how is it about my summer wardrobe?"
+
+Prue smiles, and tells me we shall have two months of winter yet, and
+I had better stop and order some more coal as I go down town.
+
+"Winter--coal!"
+
+Then I step back, and taking her by the arm, lead her to the window. I
+throw it open even wider than before. The sunlight streams on the
+great church-towers opposite, and the trees in the neighboring square
+glisten, and wave their boughs gently, as if they would burst into
+leaf before dinner.  Cages are hung at the open chamber-windows in the
+street, and the birds, touched into song by the sun, make Memnon
+true. Prue's purple and white hyacinths are in full blossom, and
+perfume the warm air, so that the canaries and the mocking birds are
+no longer aliens in the city streets, but are once more swinging in
+their spicy native groves.
+
+A soft wind blows upon us as we stand, listening and looking. Cuba and
+the Tropics are in the air.  The drowsy tune of a hand-organ rises
+from the square, and Italy comes singing in upon the sound.  My
+triumphant eyes meet Prue's. They are full of sweetness and spring.
+
+"What do you think of the summer-wardrobe now?" I ask, and we go down
+to breakfast.
+
+But the air has magic in it, and I do not cease to dream. If I meet
+Charles, who is bound for Alabama, or John, who sails for Savannah,
+with a trunk full of white jackets, I do not say to them, as their
+other friends say,--
+
+"Happy travellers, who cut March and April out of the dismal year!"
+
+I do not envy them. They will be sea-sick on the way. The southern
+winds will blow all the water out of the rivers, and, desolately
+stranded upon mud, they will relieve the tedium of the interval by
+tying with large ropes a young gentleman raving with delirium
+tremens. They will hurry along, appalled by forests blazing in the
+windy night; and, housed in a bad inn, they will find themselves
+anxiously asking, "Are the cars punctual in leaving?"--grimly sure
+that impatient travellers find all conveyances too slow. The
+travellers are very warm, indeed, even in March and April,--but Prue
+doubts if it is altogether the effect of the southern climate.
+
+Why should they go to the South? If they only wait a little, the South
+will come to them. Savannah arrives in April; Florida in May; Cuba and
+the Gulf come in with June, and the full splendor of the Tropics
+burns through July and August. Sitting upon the earth, do we not
+glide by all the constellations, all the awful stars? Does not the
+flash of Orion's scimeter dazzle as we pass? Do we not hear, as we
+gaze in hushed midnights, the music of the Lyre; are we not throned
+with Cassiopea; do we not play with the tangles of Berenice's hair, as
+we sail, as we sail?
+
+When Christopher told me that he was going to Italy, I went into
+Bourne's conservatory, saw a magnolia, and so reached Italy before
+him. Can Christopher bring Italy home? But I brought to Prue a branch
+of magnolia blossoms, with Mr.  Bourne's kindest regards, and she put
+them upon her table, and our little house smelled of Italy for a week
+afterward. The incident developed Prue's Italian tastes, which I had
+not suspected to be so strong. I found her looking very often at the
+magnolias; even holding them in her hand, and standing before the
+table with a pensive air. I suppose she was thinking of Beatrice
+Cenci, or of Tasso and Leonora, or of the wife of Marino Faliero, or
+of some other of those sad old Italian tales of love and woe So easily
+Prue went to Italy!
+
+Thus the spring comes in my heart as well as in the air, and leaps
+along my veins as well as through the trees. I immediately travel. An
+orange takes me to Sorrento, and roses, when they blow, to Paestum.
+The camelias in Aurelia's hair bring Brazil into the happy rooms she
+treads, and she takes me to South America as she goes to dinner. The
+pearls upon her neck make me free of the Persian gulf.  Upon her
+shawl, like the Arabian prince upon his carpet, I am transported to
+the vales of Cashmere; and thus, as I daily walk in the bright spring
+days, I go round the world.
+
+But the season wakes a finer longing, a desire that could only be
+satisfied if the pavilions of the clouds were real, and I could stroll
+among the towering splendors of a sultry spring evening. Ah! if I
+could leap those flaming battlements that glow along the west--if I
+could tread those cool, dewy, serene isles of sunset, and sink with
+them in the sea of stars.
+
+I say so to Prue, and my wife smiles.
+
+"But why is it so impossible," I ask, "if you go to Italy upon a
+magnolia branch?"
+
+The smile fades from her eyes.
+
+"I went a shorter voyage than that," she answered; "it was only to
+Mr. Bourne's."
+
+I walked slowly out of the house, and overtook Titbottom as I went. He
+smiled gravely as he greeted me, and said:
+
+"I have been asked to invite you to join a little pleasure party."
+
+"Where is it going?"
+
+"Oh! anywhere," answered Titbottom.
+
+"And how?"
+
+"Oh! anyhow," he replied.
+
+"You mean that everybody is to go wherever he pleases, and in the way
+he best can. My dear Titbottom, I have long belonged to that pleasure
+party, although I never heard it called by so pleasant a name before."
+
+My companion said only:
+
+"If you would like to join, I will introduce you to the party. I
+cannot go, but they are all on board."
+
+I answered nothing; but Titbottom drew me along. We took a boat, and
+put off to the most extraordinary craft I had ever seen. We approached
+her stern, and, as I curiously looked at it, I could think of nothing
+but an old picture that hung in my father's house. It was of the
+Flemish school, and represented the rear view of the _vrouw_ of a
+burgomaster going to market. The wide yards were stretched like
+elbows, and even the studding-sails were spread. The hull was seared
+and blistered, and, in the tops, I saw what I supposed to be strings
+of turnips or cabbages, little round masses, with tufted crests; but
+Titbottom assured me they were sailors.
+
+We rowed hard, but came no nearer the vessel.
+
+"She is going with the tide and wind," said I; "we shall never catch
+her."
+
+My companion said nothing.
+
+"But why have they set the studding-sails?"  asked I.
+
+"She never takes in any sails," answered Titbottom.
+
+"The more fool she," thought I, a little impatiently, angry at not
+getting nearer to the vessel.  But I did not say it aloud. I would as
+soon have said it to Prue as to Titbottom. The truth is, I began to
+feel a little ill, from the motion of the boat, and remembered, with a
+shade of regret, Prue and peppermint. If wives could only keep their
+husbands a little nauseated, I am confident they might be very sure of
+their constancy.
+
+But, somehow, the strange ship was gained, and I found myself among as
+singular a company as I have ever seen. There were men of every
+country, and costumes of all kinds. There was an indescribable
+mistiness in the air, or a premature twilight, in which all the
+figures looked ghostly and unreal.  The ship was of a model such as I
+had never seen, and the rigging had a musty odor, so that the whole
+craft smelled like a ship-chandler's shop grown mouldy. The figures
+glided rather than walked about, and I perceived a strong smell of
+cabbage issuing from the hold.
+
+But the most extraordinary thing of all was the sense of resistless
+motion which possessed my mind the moment my foot struck the deck. I
+could have sworn we were dashing through, the water at the rate of
+twenty knots an hour. (Prue has a great, but a little ignorant,
+admiration of my technical knowledge of nautical affairs and phrases.)
+I looked aloft and saw the sails taut with a stiff breeze, and I
+heard a faint whistling of the wind in the rigging, but very faint,
+and rather, it seemed to me, as if it came from the creak of cordage
+in the ships of Crusaders; or of quaint old craft upon the Spanish
+main, echoing through remote years--so far away it sounded.
+
+Yet I heard no orders given; I saw no sailors running aloft, and only
+one figure crouching over the wheel: He was lost behind his great
+beard as behind a snow-drift. But the startling speed with which we
+scudded along did not lift a solitary hair of that beard, nor did the
+old and withered face of the pilot betray any curiosity or interest as
+to what breakers, or reefs, or pitiless shores, might be lying in
+ambush to destroy us.
+
+Still on we swept; and as the traveller in a night-train knows that he
+is passing green fields, and pleasant gardens, and winding streams
+fringed with flowers, and is now gliding through tunnels or darting
+along the base of fearful cliffs, so I was conscious that we were
+pressing through various climates and by romantic shores. In vain I
+peered into the gray twilight mist that folded all. I could only see
+the vague figures that grew and faded upon the haze, as my eye fell
+upon them, like the intermittent characters of sympathetic ink when
+heat touches them.
+
+Now, it was a belt of warm, odorous air in which we sailed, and then
+cold as the breath of a polar ocean. The perfume of new-mown hay and
+the breath of roses, came mingled with the distant music of bells, and
+the twittering song of birds, and a low surf-like sound of the wind in
+summer woods.  There were all sounds of pastoral beauty, of a tranquil
+landscape such as Prue loves--and which shall be painted as the
+background of her portrait whenever she sits to any of my many artist
+friends--and that pastoral beauty shall be called England; I strained
+my eyes into the cruel mist that held all that music and all that
+suggested beauty, but I could see nothing. It was so sweet that I
+scarcely knew if I cared to see. The very thought of it charmed my
+senses and satisfied my heart. I smelled and heard the landscape that
+I could not see.
+
+Then the pungent, penetrating fragrance of blossoming vineyards was
+wafted across the air; the flowery richness of orange groves, and the
+sacred odor of crushed bay leaves, such as is pressed from them when
+they are strewn upon the flat pavement of the streets of Florence, and
+gorgeous priestly processions tread them under foot. A steam of
+incense filled the air. I smelled Italy--as in the magnolia from
+Bourne's garden--and, even while my heart leaped with the
+consciousness, the odor passed, and a stretch of burning silence
+succeeded.
+
+It was an oppressive zone of heat--oppressive not only from its
+silence, but from the sense of awful, antique forms, whether of art or
+nature, that were sitting, closely veiled, in that mysterious
+obscurity.  I shuddered as I felt that if my eyes could pierce that
+mist, or if it should lift and roll away, I should see upon a silent
+shore low ranges of lonely hills, or mystic figures and huge temples
+trampled out of history by time.
+
+This, too, we left. There was a rustling of distant palms, the
+indistinct roar of beasts, and the hiss of serpents. Then all was
+still again. Only at times the remote sigh of the weary sea, moaning
+around desolate isles undiscovered; and the howl of winds that had
+never wafted human voices, but had rung endless changes upon the sound
+of dashing waters, made the voyage more appalling and the figures
+around me more fearful.
+
+As the ship plunged on through all the varying zones, as climate and
+country drifted behind us, unseen in the gray mist, but each, in turn,
+making that quaint craft England or Italy, Africa and the Southern
+seas, I ventured to steal a glance at the motley crew, to see what
+impression this wild career produced upon them.
+
+They sat about the deck in a hundred listless postures. Some leaned
+idly over the bulwarks, and looked wistfully away from the ship, as if
+they fancied they saw all that I inferred but could not see. As the
+perfume, and sound, and climate changed, I could see many a longing
+eye sadden and grow moist, and as the chime of bells echoed distinctly
+like the airy syllables of names, and, as it were, made pictures in
+music upon the minds of those quaint mariners--then dry lips moved,
+perhaps to name a name, perhaps to breathe a prayer.  Others sat upon
+the deck, vacantly smoking pipes that required no refilling, but had
+an immortality of weed and fire. The more they smoked the more
+mysterious they became. The smoke made the mist around them more
+impenetrable, and I could clearly see that those distant sounds
+gradually grew more distant, and, by some of the most desperate and
+constant smokers, were heard no more. The faces of such had an apathy,
+which, had it been human, would have been despair.
+
+Others stood staring up into the rigging, as if calculating when the
+sails must needs be rent and the voyage end. But there was no hope in
+their eyes, only a bitter longing. Some paced restlessly up and down
+the deck. They had evidently been walking a long, long time. At
+intervals they, too threw a searching glance into the mist that
+enveloped the ship, and up into the sails and rigging that stretched
+over them in hopeless strength and order.
+
+One of the promenaders I especially noticed.  His beard was long and
+snowy, like that of the pilot. He had a staff in his hand, and his
+movement was very rapid. His body swung forward, as if to avoid
+something, and his glance half turned back over his shoulder,
+apprehensively, as if he were threatened from behind. The head and the
+whole figure were bowed as if under a burden, although I could not see
+that he had anything upon his shoulders; and his gait was not that of
+a man who is walking off the ennui of a voyage, but rather of a
+criminal flying, or of a startled traveller pursued.
+
+As he came nearer to me in his walk, I saw that his features were
+strongly Hebrew, and there was an air of the proudest dignity,
+fearfully abased, in his mien and expression. It was more than the
+dignity of an individual. I could have believed that the pride of a
+race was humbled in his person.
+
+His agile eye presently fastened itself upon me, as a stranger. He
+came nearer and nearer to me, as he paced rapidly to and fro, and was
+evidently several times on the point of addressing me, but, looking
+over his shoulder apprehensively, he passed on. At length, with a
+great effort, he paused for an instant, and invited me to join him in
+his walk.  Before the invitation was fairly uttered, he was in motion
+again. I followed, but I could not overtake him. He kept just before
+me, and turned occasionally with an air of terror, as if he fancied I
+were dogging him; then glided on more rapidly.
+
+His face was by no means agreeable, but it had an inexplicable
+fascination, as if it had been turned upon what no other mortal eyes
+had ever seen. Yet I could hardly tell whether it were, probably, an
+object of supreme beauty or of terror. He looked at everything as if
+he hoped its impression might obliterate some anterior and awful one;
+and I was gradually possessed with the unpleasant idea that his eyes
+were never closed--that, in fact, he never slept.
+
+Suddenly, fixing me with his unnatural, wakeful glare, he whispered
+something which I could not understand, and then darted forward even
+more rapidly, as if he dreaded that, in merely speaking, he had lost
+time.
+
+Still the ship drove on, and I walked hurriedly along the deck, just
+behind my companion. But our speed and that of the ship contrasted
+strangely with the mouldy smell of old rigging, and the listless and
+lazy groups, smoking and leaning on the bulwarks. The seasons, in
+endless succession and iteration, passed over the ship. The twilight
+was summer haze at the stern, while it was the fiercest winter mist at
+the bows. But as a tropical breath, like the warmth of a Syrian day,
+suddenly touched the brow of my companion, he sighed, and I could not
+help saying:
+
+"You must be tired."
+
+He only shook his head and quickened his pace.  But now that I had
+once spoken, it was not so difficult to speak, and I asked him why he
+did not stop and rest.
+
+He turned for moment, and a mournful sweetness shone in his dark eyes
+and haggard, swarthy face.  It played flittingly around that strange
+look of ruined human dignity, like a wan beam of late sunset about a
+crumbling and forgotten temple. He put his hand hurriedly to his
+forehead, as if he were trying to remember--like a lunatic, who,
+having heard only the wrangle of fiends in his delirium, suddenly in a
+conscious moment, perceives the familiar voice of love. But who could
+this be, to whom mere human sympathy was so startlingly sweet?
+
+Still moving, he whispered with a woful sadness, "I want to stop, but
+I cannot. If I could only stop long enough to leap over the bulwarks!"
+
+Then he sighed long and deeply, and added, "But I should not drown."
+
+So much had my interest been excited by his face and movement, that I
+had not observed the costume of this strange being. He wore a black
+hat upon his head. It was not only black, but it was shiny. Even in
+the midst of this wonderful scene, I could observe that it had the
+artificial newness of a second-hand hat; and, at the same moment, I
+was disgusted by the odor of old clothes--very old clothes,
+indeed. The mist and my sympathy had prevented my seeing before what a
+singular garb the figure wore. It was all second-hand and carefully
+ironed, but the garments were obviously collected from every part of
+the civilized globe. Good heavens! as I looked at the coat, I had a
+strange sensation. I was sure that I had once worn that coat. It was
+my wedding surtout--long in the skirts--which Prue had told me, years
+and years before, she had given away to the neediest Jew beggar she
+had ever seen.
+
+The spectral figure dwindled in my fancy--the features lost their
+antique grandeur, and the restless eye ceased to be sublime from
+immortal sleeplessness, and became only lively with mean cunning.  The
+apparition was fearfully grotesque, but the driving ship and the
+mysterious company gradually restored its tragic interest. I stopped
+and leaned against the side, and heard the rippling water that I could
+not see, and flitting through the mist, with anxious speed, the figure
+held its way. What was he flying? What conscience with relentless
+sting pricked this victim on?
+
+He came again nearer and nearer to me in his walk. I recoiled with
+disgust, this time, no less than terror. But he seemed resolved to
+speak, and, finally, each time, as he passed me, he asked single
+questions, as a ship which fires whenever it can bring a gun to bear.
+
+"Can you tell me to what port we are bound?"
+
+"No," I replied; "but how came you to take passage without inquiry? To
+me it makes little difference."
+
+"Nor do I care," he answered, when he next came near enough; "I have
+already been there."
+
+"Where?" asked I.
+
+"Wherever we are going," he replied. "I have been there a great many
+times, and, oh! I am very tired of it."
+
+"But why are you here at all, then; and why don't you stop?"
+
+There was a singular mixture of a hundred conflicting emotions in his
+face, as I spoke. The representative grandeur of a race, which he
+sometimes showed in his look, faded into a glance of hopeless and puny
+despair. His eyes looked at me curiously, his chest heaved, and there
+was clearly a struggle in his mind, between some lofty and mean
+desire. At times, I saw only the austere suffering of ages in his
+strongly-carved features, and again I could see nothing but the
+second-hand black hat above them. He rubbed his forehead with his
+skinny hand; he glanced over his shoulder, as if calculating whether
+he had time to speak to me; and then, as a splendid defiance flashed
+from his piercing eyes, so that I know how Milton's Satan looked, he
+said, bitterly, and with hopeless sorrow, that no mortal voice ever
+knew before:
+
+"I cannot stop: my woe is infinite, like my sin!"--and he passed into
+the mist.
+
+But, in a few moments, he reappeared. I could now see only the hat,
+which sank more and more over his face, until it covered it entirely;
+and I heard a querulous voice, which seemed to be quarrelling with
+itself, for saying what it was compelled to say, so that the words
+were even more appalling than what it had said before:
+
+"Old clo'! old clo'!"
+
+I gazed at the disappearing figure, in speechless amazement, and was
+still looking, when I was tapped upon the shoulder, and, turning
+round, saw a German cavalry officer, with a heavy moustache, and a
+dog-whistle in his hand.
+
+"Most extraordinary man, your friend yonder," said the officer; "I
+don't remember to have seen him in Turkey, and yet I recognize upon
+his feet the boots that I wore in the great Russian cavalry charge,
+where I individually rode down five hundred and thirty Turks, slew
+seven hundred, at a moderate computation, by the mere force of my
+rush, and, taking the seven insurmountable walls of Constantinople at
+one clean flying leap, rode straight into the seraglio, and, dropping
+the bridle, cut the sultan's throat with my bridle-hand, kissed the
+other to the ladies of the hareem, and was back again within our lines
+and taking a glass of wine with the hereditary Grand Duke
+Generalissimo before he knew that I had mounted. Oddly enough, your
+old friend is now sporting the identical boots I wore on that
+occasion."
+
+The cavalry officer coolly curled his moustache with his fingers. I
+looked at him in silence.
+
+"Speaking of boots," he resumed, "I don't remember to have told you of
+that little incident of the Princess of the Crimea's diamonds. It was
+slight, but curious. I was dining one day with the Emperor of the
+Crimea, who always had a cover laid for me at his table, when he said,
+in great perplexity, 'Baron, my boy, I am in straits. The Shah of
+Persia has just sent me word that he has presented me with two
+thousand pearl-of-Oman necklaces, and I don't know how to get them
+over, the duties are so heavy.' 'Nothing easier,' replied I; 'I'll
+bring them in my boots.' 'Nonsense!' said the Emperor of the
+Crimea. 'Nonsense! yourself,' replied I, sportively: for the Emperor
+of the Crimea always gives me my joke; and so after dinner I went over
+to Persia. The thing was easily enough done. I ordered a hundred
+thousand pairs of boots or so, filled them with the pearls; said at
+the Custom-house that they were part of my private wardrobe, and I had
+left the blocks in to keep them stretched, for I was particular about
+my bunions. The officers bowed, and said that their own feet were
+tender,--upon which I jokingly remarked that I wished their
+consciences were, and so in the pleasantest manner possible the
+pearl-of-Oman necklaces were bowed out of Persia, and the Emperor of
+the Crimea gave me three thousand of them as my share. It was no
+trouble. It was only ordering the boots, and whistling to the infernal
+rascals of Persian shoe-makers to hang for their pay."
+
+I could reply nothing to my new acquaintance, but I treasured his
+stories to tell to Prue, and at length summoned courage to ask him why
+he had taken passage.
+
+"Pure fun," answered he, "nothing else under the sun. You see, it
+happened in this way:--I was sitting quietly and swinging in a cedar
+of Lebanon, on the very summit of that mountain, when suddenly,
+feeling a little warm, I took a brisk dive into the Mediterranean. Now
+I was careless, and got going obliquely, and with the force of such a
+dive I could not come up near Sicily, as I had intended, but I went
+clean under Africa, and came out at the Cape of Good Hope, and as
+Fortune would have it, just as this good ship was passing.  So I
+sprang over the side, and offered the crew to treat all round if they
+would tell me where I started from. But I suppose they had just been
+piped to grog, for not a man stirred, except your friend yonder, and
+he only kept on stirring."
+
+"Are you going far?" I asked.
+
+The cavalry officer looked a little disturbed. "I cannot precisely
+tell," answered he, "in fact, I wish I could;" and he glanced round
+nervously at the strange company.
+
+"If you should come our way, Prue and I will be very glad to see you,"
+said I, "and I can promise you a warm welcome from the children."
+
+"Many thanks," said the officer,--and handed me his card, upon which I
+read, _Le Baron Munchausen_.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said a low voice at my side; and, turning, I saw
+one of the most constant smokers--a very old man--"I beg your pardon,
+but can you tell me where I came from?"
+
+"I am sorry to say I cannot," answered I, as I surveyed a man with a
+very bewildered and wrinkled face, who seemed to be intently looking
+for something.
+
+"Nor where I am going?"
+
+I replied that it was equally impossible. He mused a few moments, and
+then said slowly, "Do you know, it is a very strange thing that I have
+not found anybody who can answer me either of those questions. And yet
+I must have come from somewhere," said he, speculatively--"yes, and I
+must be going somewhere, and I should really like to know something
+about it."
+
+"I observe," said I, "that you smoke a good deal, and perhaps you find
+tobacco clouds your brain a little."
+
+"Smoke! Smoke!" repeated he, sadly, dwelling upon the words; "why, it
+all seems smoke to me;" and he looked wistfully around the deck, and I
+felt quite ready to agree with him.
+
+"May I ask what you are here for," inquired I; "perhaps your health,
+or business of some kind; although I was told it was a pleasure
+party?"
+
+"That's just it," said he; "if I only knew where we were going, I might
+be able to say something about it. But where are you going?"
+
+"I am going home as fast as I can," replied I warmly, for I began to
+be very uncomfortable.  The old man's eyes half closed, and his mind
+seemed to have struck a scent.
+
+"Isn't that where I was going? I believe it is; I wish I knew; I think
+that's what it is called, Where is home?"
+
+And the old man puffed a prodigious cloud of smoke, in which he was
+quite lost.
+
+"It is certainly very smoky," said he, "I came on board this ship to
+go to--in fact, I meant, as I was saying, I took passage for--." He
+smoked silently. "I beg your pardon, but where did you say I was
+going?"
+
+Out of the mist where he had been leaning over the side, and gazing
+earnestly into the surrounding obscurity, now came a pale young man,
+and put his arm in mine.
+
+"I see," said he, "that you have rather a general acquaintance, and,
+as you know many persons, perhaps you know many things. I am young,
+you see, but I am a great traveller. I have been all over the world,
+and in all kinds of conveyances; but," he continued, nervously,
+starting continually, and looking around, "I haven't yet got abroad."
+
+"Not got abroad, and yet you have been everywhere?"
+
+"Oh! yes; I know," he replied, hurriedly; "but I mean that I haven't
+yet got away. I travel constantly, but it does no good--and perhaps
+you can tell me the secret I want to know. I will pay any sum for
+it. I am very rich and very young, and, if money cannot buy it, I will
+give as many years of my life as you require."
+
+He moved his hands convulsively, and his hair was wet upon his
+forehead. He was very handsome in that mystic light, but his eye
+burned with eagerness, and his slight, graceful frame thrilled with
+the earnestness of his emotion. The Emperor Hadrian, who loved the boy
+Antinous, would have loved the youth.
+
+"But what is it that you wish to leave behind?"  said I, at length,
+holding his arm paternally; "what do you wish to escape?"
+
+He threw his arms straight down by his side, clenched his, hands, and
+looked fixedly in my eyes.  The beautiful head was thrown a little
+back upon one shoulder, and the wan faced glowed with yearning desire
+and utter abandonment to confidence, so that, without his saying it, I
+knew that he had never whispered the secret which he was about to
+impart to me. Then, with a long sigh, as if his life were exhaling, he
+whispered,
+
+"Myself."
+
+"Ah! my boy, you are bound upon a long journey."
+
+"I know it," he replied mournfully; "and I cannot even get started. If
+I don't get off in this ship, I fear I shall never escape." His last
+words were lost in the mist which gradually removed him from my view.
+
+"The youth has been amusing you with some of his wild fancies, I
+suppose," said a venerable man, who might have been twin brother of
+that snowy-bearded pilot. "It is a great pity so promising a young man
+should be the victim of such vagaries."
+
+He stood looking over the side for some time, and at length added,
+
+"Don't you think we ought to arrive soon?"
+
+"Where?" asked I.
+
+"Why, in Eldorado, of course," answered he.
+
+"The truth is, I became very tired of that long process to find the
+Philosopher's Stone, and, although I was just upon the point of the
+last combination which must infallibly have produced the medium, I
+abandoned it when I heard Orellana's account, and found that Nature
+had already done in Eldorado precisely what I was trying to do. You
+see," continued the old man abstractedly, "I had put youth, and love,
+and hope, besides a great many scarce minerals, into the crucible, and
+they all dissolved slowly, and vanished--in vapor. It was curious, but
+they left no residuum except a little ashes, which were not strong
+enough to make a lye to cure a lame finger. But, as I was saying,
+Orellana told us about Eldorado just in time, and I thought, if any
+ship would carry me there it must be this. But I am very sorry to find
+that any one who is in pursuit of such a hopeless goal as that pale
+young man yonder, should have taken passage. It is only age," he said,
+slowly stroking his white beard, "that teaches us wisdom, and
+persuades us to renounce the hope of escaping ourselves; and just as
+we are discovering the Philosopher's Stone, relieves our anxiety by
+pointing the way to Eldorado."
+
+"Are we really going there?" asked I, in some trepidation.
+
+"Can there be any doubt of it?" replied the old man. "Where should we
+be going, if not there?  However, let us summon the passengers and
+ascertain."
+
+So saying, the venerable man beckoned to the various groups that were
+clustered, ghost-like, in the mist that enveloped the ship. They
+seemed to draw nearer with listless curiosity, and stood or sat near
+us, smoking as before, or, still leaning on the side, idly gazing. But
+the restless figure who had first accosted me, still paced the deck,
+flitting in and out of the obscurity; and as he passed there was the
+same mien of humbled pride, and the air of a fate of tragic grandeur,
+and still the same faint odor of old clothes, and the low querulous
+cry, "Old clo!' old clo'!"
+
+The ship dashed on. Unknown odors and strange sounds still filled the
+air, and all the world went by us as we flew, with no other noise than
+the low gurgling of the sea around the side.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the reverend passenger for Eldorado, "I hope there
+is no misapprehension as to our destination?"
+
+As he said this, there was a general movement of anxiety and
+curiosity. Presently the smoker, who had asked me where he was going,
+said, doubtfully:
+
+"I don't know--it seems to me--I mean I wish somebody would distinctly
+say where we are going."
+
+"I think I can throw a light upon this subject," said a person whom I
+had not before remarked. He was dressed like a sailor, and had a
+dreamy eye.  "It is very clear to me where we are going. I have been
+taking observations for some time, and I am glad to announce that we
+are on the eve of achieving great fame; and I may add," said he,
+modestly, "that my own good name for scientific acumen will be amply
+vindicated. Gentlemen, we are undoubtedly going into the Hole."
+
+"What hole is that?" asked M. le Baron Munchausen, a little
+contemptuously.
+
+"Sir, it will make you more famous than you ever were before," replied
+the first speaker, evidently much enraged.
+
+"I am persuaded we are going into no such absurd place," said the
+Baron, exasperated.
+
+The sailor with the dreamy eye was fearfully angry. He drew himself up
+stiffly and said:
+
+"Sir, you lie!"
+
+M. le Baron Munchausen took it in very good part. He smiled and held
+out his hand:
+
+"My friend," said he, blandly, "that is precisely what I have always
+heard. I am glad you do me no more than justice. I fully assent to
+your theory: and your words constitute me the proper historiographer
+of the expedition. But tell me one thing, how soon, after getting into
+the Hole, do you think we shall get out?"
+
+"The result will prove," said the marine gentleman, handing the
+officer his card, upon which was written, _Captain Symmes_. The
+two gentlemen then walked aside; and the groups began to sway to and
+fro in the haze as if not quite contented.
+
+"Good God," said the pale youth, running up to me and clutching my
+arm, "I cannot go into any Hole alone with myself. I should die--I
+should kill myself. I thought somebody was on board, and I hoped you
+were he, who would steer us to the fountain of oblivion."
+
+"Very well, that is in the Hole," said M. le Baron, who came out of
+the mist at that moment, leaning upon the Captain's arm.
+
+"But can I leave myself outside?" asked the youth, nervously.
+
+"Certainly," interposed the old Alchemist; "you may be sure that you
+will not get into the Hole, until you have left yourself behind."
+
+The pale young man grasped his hand, and gazed into his eyes.
+
+"And then I can drink and be happy," murmured he, as he leaned over
+the side of the ship and listened to the rippling water, as if it had
+been the music of the fountain of oblivion.
+
+"Drink! drink!" said the smoking old man.  "Fountain! fountain! Why, I
+believe that is what I am after. I beg your pardon," continued he,
+addressing the Alchemist. "But can you tell me if I am looking for a
+fountain?"
+
+"The fountain of youth, perhaps," replied the Alchemist.
+
+"The very thing!" cried the smoker, with a shrill laugh, while his
+pipe fell from his mouth, and was shattered upon the deck, and the old
+man tottered away into the mist, chuckling feebly to himself, "Youth!
+youth!"
+
+"He'll find that in the Hole, too," said the Alchemist, as he gazed
+after the receding figure.
+
+The crowd now gathered more nearly around us.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," continued the Alchemist, "where shall we go, or,
+rather, where are we going?"
+
+A man in a friar's habit, with the cowl closely drawn about his head,
+now crossed himself, and whispered:
+
+"I have but one object. I should not have been here if I had not
+supposed we were going to find Prester John, to whom I have been
+appointed father confessor, and at whose court I am to live
+splendidly, like a cardinal at Rome. Gentlemen, if you will only agree
+that we shall go there, you shall all be permitted to hold my train
+when I proceed to be enthroned as Bishop of Central Africa."
+
+While he was speaking, another old man came from the bows of the ship,
+a figure which had been so immoveable in its place that I supposed it
+was the ancient figure-head of the craft, and said in a low, hollow
+voice, and a quaint accent:
+
+"I have been looking for centuries, and I cannot see it. I supposed we
+were heading for it. I thought sometimes I saw the flash of distant
+spires, the sunny gleam of upland pastures, the soft undulation of
+purple hills. Ah! me. I am sure I heard the singing of birds, and the
+faint low of cattle.  But I do not know: we come no nearer; and yet I
+felt its presence in the air. If the mist would only lift, we should
+see it lying so fair upon the sea, so graceful against the sky. I fear
+we may have passed it. Gentlemen," said he, sadly, "I am afraid we may
+have lost the island of Atlantis for ever."
+
+There was a look of uncertainty in the throng upon the deck.
+
+"But yet," said a group of young men in every kind of costume, and of
+every country and time, "we have a chance at the Encantadas, the
+Enchanted Islands. We were reading of them only the other day, and the
+very style of the story had the music of waves. How happy we shall be
+to reach a land where there is no work, nor tempest, nor pain, and we
+shall be for ever happy."
+
+"I am content here," said a laughing youth, with heavily matted
+curls. "What can be better than this? We feel every climate, the music
+and the perfume of every zone, are ours. In the starlight I woo the
+mermaids, as I lean over the side, and no enchanted island will show
+us fairer forms. I am satisfied. The ship sails on. We cannot see but
+we can dream. What work or pain have we here?  I like the ship; I like
+the voyage; I like my company, and am content."
+
+As he spoke he put something into his mouth, and, drawing a white
+substance from his pocket, offered it to his neighbor, saying, "Try a
+bit of this lotus; you will find it very soothing to the nerves, and
+an infallible remedy for home-sickness."
+
+"Gentlemen," said M. le Baron Munchausen, "I have no fear. The
+arrangements are well made; the voyage has been perfectly planned, and
+each passenger will discover what he took passage to find, in the Hole
+into which we are going, under the auspices of this worthy Captain."
+
+He ceased, and silence fell upon the ship's company.  Still on we
+swept; it seemed a weary way.  The tireless pedestrians still paced to
+and fro, and the idle smokers puffed. The ship sailed on, and endless
+music and odor chased each other through the misty air. Suddenly a
+deep sigh drew universal attention to a person who had not yet spoken.
+He held a broken harp in his hand, the strings fluttered loosely in
+the air, and the head of the speaker, bound with a withered wreath of
+laurels, bent over it.
+
+"No, no," said he, "I will not eat your lotus, nor sail into the
+Hole. No magic root can cure the home-sickness I feel; for it is no
+regretful remembrance, but an immortal longing. I have roamed farther
+than I thought the earth extended. I have climbed mountains; I have
+threaded rivers; I have sailed seas; but nowhere have I seen the home
+for which my heart aches. Ah! my friends, you look very weary; let us
+go home."
+
+The pedestrian paused a moment in his walk, and the smokers took their
+pipes from their mouths.  The soft air which blew in that moment
+across the deck, drew a low sound from the broken harp-strings, and a
+light shone in the eyes of the old man of the figure-head, as if the
+mist had lifted for an instant, and he had caught a glimpse of the
+lost Atlantis.
+
+"I really believe that is where I wish to go," said the seeker of the
+fountain of youth. "I think I would give up drinking at the fountain
+if I could get there.  I do not know," he murmured, doubtfully; "it is
+not sure; I mean, perhaps, I should not have strength to get to the
+fountain, even if I were near it."
+
+"But is it possible to get home?" inquired the pale young man. "I
+think I should be resigned if I could get home."
+
+"Certainly," said the dry, hard voice of Prester John's confessor, as
+his cowl fell a little back, and a sudden flush burned upon his gaunt
+face; "if there is any chance of home, I will give up the Bishop's
+palace in Central Africa."
+
+"But Eldorado is my home," interposed the old Alchemist.
+
+"Or is home Eldorado?" asked the poet, with the withered wreath,
+turning towards the Alchemist.
+
+It was a strange company and a wondrous voyage.  Here were all kinds
+of men, of all times and countries, pursuing the wildest hopes, the
+most chimerical desires. One took me aside to request that I would not
+let it be known, but that he inferred from certain signs we were
+nearing Utopia. Another whispered gaily in my ear that he thought the
+water was gradually becoming of a ruby color--the hue of wine; and he
+had no doubt we should wake in the morning and find ourselves in the
+land of Cockaigne.  A third, in great anxiety, stated to me that such
+continuous mists were unknown upon the ocean; that they were peculiar
+to rivers, and that, beyond question, we were drifting along some
+stream, probably the Nile, and immediate measures ought to be taken
+that we did riot go ashore at the foot of the mountains of the
+moon. Others were quite sure that we were in the way of striking the
+great southern continent; and a young man, who gave his name as
+Wilkins, said we might be quite at ease for presently some friends of
+his would come flying over from the neighboring islands and tell us
+all we wished.
+
+Still I smelled the mouldy rigging, and the odor of cabbage was strong
+from the hold.
+
+O Prue, what could the ship be, in which such fantastic characters
+were sailing toward impossible bournes--characters which in every age
+have ventured all the bright capital of life in vague speculations and
+romantic dreams? What could it be but the ship that haunts the sea for
+ever, and, with all sails set, drives onward before a ceaseless gale,
+and is not hailed, nor ever comes to port?
+
+I know the ship is always full; I know the gray-beard still watches at
+the prow for the lost Atlantis, and still the alchemist believes that
+Eldorado is at hand. Upon his aimless quest, the dotard still asks
+where he is going, and the pale youth knows that he shall never fly
+himself. Yet they would gladly renounce that wild chase and the dear
+dreams of years, could they find what I have never lost. They were
+ready to follow the poet home, if he would have told them where it
+lay.
+
+I know where it lies. I breathe the soft air of the purple uplands
+which they shall never tread. I hear the sweet music of the voices
+they long for in vain. I am no traveller; my only voyage is to the
+office and home again. William and Christopher, John and Charles sail
+to Europe and the South, but I defy their romantic distances. When the
+spring comes and the flowers blow, I drift through the year belted
+with summer and with spice.
+
+With the changing months I keep high carnival in all the zones. I sit
+at home and walk with Prue, and if the sun that stirs the sap quickens
+also the wish to wander, I remember my fellow-voyagers on that
+romantic craft, and looking round upon my peaceful room, and pressing
+more closely the arm of Prue, I feel that I have reached the port for
+which they hopelessly sailed. And when winds blow fiercely and the
+night-storm rages, and the thought of lost mariners and of perilous
+voyages touches the soft heart of Prue, I hear a voice sweeter to my
+ear than that of the syrens to the tempest-tost sailor: "Thank God!
+Your only cruising is in the Flying Dutchman!"
+
+
+
+FAMILY PORTRAITS.
+
+  "Look here upon this picture, and on this."
+  _Hamlet_
+
+
+We have no family pictures, Prue and I, only a portrait of my
+grandmother hangs upon our parlor wall. It was taken at least a
+century ago, and represents the venerable lady, whom I remember in my
+childhood in spectacles and comely cap, as a young and blooming girl.
+
+She is sitting upon an old-fashioned sofa, by the side of a prim aunt
+of hers, and with her back to the open window. Her costume is quaint,
+but handsome.  It consists of a cream-colored dress made high in the
+throat, ruffled around the neck, and over the bosom and the
+shoulders. The waist is just under her shoulders, and the sleeves are
+tight, tighter than any of our coat sleeves, and also ruffled at the
+wrist. Around the plump and rosy neck, which I remember as shrivelled
+and sallow, and hidden under a decent lace handkerchief, hangs, in the
+picture, a necklace of large ebony beads. There are two curls upon the
+forehead, and the rest of the hair flows away in ringlets down the
+neck.
+
+The hands hold an open book: the eyes look up from it with tranquil
+sweetness, and, through the open window behind, you see a quiet
+landscape--a hill, a tree, the glimpse of a river, and a few peaceful
+summer clouds.
+
+Often in my younger days, when my grandmother sat by the fire, after
+dinner, lost in thought--perhaps remembering the time when the picture
+was really a portrait--I have curiously compared her wasted face with
+the blooming beauty of the girl, and tried to detect the likeness. It
+was strange how the resemblance would sometimes start out: how, as I
+gazed and gazed upon her old face, age disappeared before my eager
+glance, as snow melts in the sunshine, revealing the flowers of a
+forgotten spring.
+
+It was touching, to see my grandmother steal quietly up to her
+portrait, on still summer mornings when every one had left the
+house,--and I, the only child, played, disregarded,--and look at it
+wistfully and long.
+
+She held her hand over her eyes to shade them from the light that
+streamed in at the window, and I have seen her stand at least a
+quarter of an hour gazing steadfastly at the picture. She said
+nothing, she made no motion, she shed no tear, but when she turned
+away there was always a pensive sweetness in her face that made it not
+less lovely than the face of her youth.
+
+I have learned since, what her thoughts must have been--how that long,
+wistful glance annihilated time and space, how forms and faces unknown
+to any other, rose in sudden resurrection around her--how she loved,
+suffered, struggled and conquered again; how many a jest that I shall
+never hear, how many a game that I shall never play, how many a song
+that I shall never sing, were all renewed and remembered as my
+grandmother contemplated her picture.
+
+I often stand, as she stood, gazing earnestly at the picture, so long
+and so silently, that Prue looks up from her work and says she shall
+be jealous of that beautiful belle, my grandmother, who yet makes her
+think more kindly of those remote old times.  "Yes, Prue, and that is
+the charm of a family portrait."
+
+"Yes, again; but," says Titbottom when he hears the remark, "how, if
+one's grandmother were a shrew, a termagant, a virago?"
+
+"Ah! in that case--" I am compelled to say, while Prue looks up again,
+half archly, and I add gravely--"you, for instance, Prue."
+
+Then Titbottom smiles one of his sad smiles, and we change the
+subject.
+
+Yet, I am always glad when Minim Sculpin, our neighbor, who knows that
+my opportunities are few, comes to ask me to step round and see the
+family portraits.
+
+The Sculpins, I think, are a very old family.  Titbottom says they
+date from the deluge. But I thought people of English descent
+preferred to stop with William the Conqueror, who came from France.
+
+Before going with Minim, I always fortify myself with a glance at the
+great family Bible, in which Adam, Eve, and the patriarchs, are
+indifferently well represented.
+
+"Those are the ancestors of the Howards, the Plantagenets, and the
+Montmorencis," says Prue, surprising me with her erudition. "Have you
+any remoter ancestry, Mr. Sculpin?" she asks Minim, who only smiles
+compassionately upon the dear woman, while I am buttoning my coat.
+
+Then we step along the street, and I am conscious of trembling a
+little, for I feel as if I were going to court. Suddenly we are
+standing before the range of portraits.
+
+"This," says Minim, with unction, "is Sir Solomon Sculpin, the founder
+of the family."
+
+"Famous for what?" I ask, respectfully.
+
+"For founding the family," replies Minim gravely, and I have sometimes
+thought a little severely.
+
+"This," he says, pointing to a dame in hoops and diamond stomacher,
+"this is Lady Sheba Sculpin."
+
+"Ah! yes. Famous for what?" I inquire.
+
+"For being the wife of Sir Solomon."
+
+Then, in order, comes a gentleman in a huge, curling wig, looking
+indifferently like James the Second, or Louis the Fourteenth, and
+holding a scroll in his hand.
+
+"The Right Honorable Haddock Sculpin, Lord Privy Seal, etc., etc."
+
+A delicate beauty hangs between, a face fair, and loved, and lost,
+centuries ago--a song to the eye--a poem to the heart--the Aurelia of
+that old society.
+
+"Lady Dorothea Sculpin, who married young Lord Pop and Cock, and died
+prematurely in Italy."
+
+Poor Lady Dorothea! whose great grandchild, in the tenth remove, died
+last week, an old man of eighty!
+
+Next the gentle lady hangs a fierce figure, flourishing a sword, with
+an anchor embroidered on his coat-collar, and thunder and lightning,
+sinking ships flames and tornadoes in the background.
+
+"Rear Admiral Sir Shark Sculpin, who fell in the great action off
+Madagascar."
+
+So Minim goes on through the series, brandishing his ancestors about
+my head, and incontinently knocking me into admiration.
+
+And when we reach the last portrait and our own times, what is the
+natural emotion? Is it not to put Minim against the wall, draw off at
+him with my eyes and mind, scan him, and consider his life, and
+determine how much of the Eight Honorable Haddock's integrity, and the
+Lady Dorothy's loveliness, and the Admiral Shark's valor, reappears in
+the modern man? After all this proving and refining, ought not the
+last child of a famous race to be its flower and epitome? Or, in the
+case that he does not chance to be so, is it not better to conceal the
+family name?
+
+I am told, however, that in the higher circles of society, it is
+better not to conceal the name, however unworthy the man or woman may
+be who bears it. Prue once remonstrated with a lady about the marriage
+of a lovely young girl with a cousin of Minim's; but the only answer
+she received was, "Well, he may not be a perfect man, but then he is a
+Sculpin," which consideration apparently gave great comfort to the
+lady's mind.
+
+But even Prue grants that Minim has some reason for his pride. Sir
+Solomon was a respectable man, and Sir Shark a brave one; and the
+Right Honorable Haddock a learned one; the Lady Sheba was grave and
+gracious in her way; and the smile of the fair Dorothea lights with
+soft sunlight those long-gone summers. The filial blood rushes more
+gladly from Minim's heart as he gazes; and admiration for the virtues
+of his kindred inspires and sweetly mingles with good resolutions of
+his own.
+
+Time has its share, too, in the ministry, and the influence. The hills
+beyond the river lay yesterday, at sunset, lost in purple gloom; they
+receded into airy distances of dreams and faery; they sank softly into
+night, the peaks of the delectable mountains.  But I knew, as I gazed
+enchanted, that the hills, so purple-soft of seeming, were hard, and
+gray, and barren in the wintry twilight; and that in the distance was
+the magic that made them fair.
+
+So, beyond the river of time that flows between, walk the brave men
+and the beautiful women of our ancestry, grouped in twilight upon the
+shore.  Distance smooths away defects, and, with gentle darkness,
+rounds every form into grace. It steals the harshness from their
+speech, and every word becomes a song. Far across the gulf that ever
+widens, they look upon us with eyes whose glance is tender, and which
+light us to success. We acknowledge our inheritance; we accept our
+birthright; we own that their careers have pledged us to noble action.
+Every great life is an incentive to all other lives; but when the
+brave heart, that beats for the world, loves us with the warmth of
+private affection, then the example of heroism is more persuasive,
+because more personal.
+
+This is the true pride of ancestry. It is founded in the tenderness
+with which the child regards the father, and in the romance that time
+sheds upon history.
+
+"Where be all the bad people buried?" asks every man, with Charles
+Lamb, as he strolls among the rank grave-yard grass, and brushes it
+aside to read of the faithful husband, and the loving wife, and the
+dutiful child.
+
+He finds only praise in the epitaphs, because the human heart is kind;
+because it yearns with wistful tenderness after all its brethren who
+have passed into the cloud, and will only speak well of the departed.
+No offence is longer an offence when the grass is green over the
+offender. Even faults then seem characteristic and individual. Even
+Justice is appeased when the drop falls. How the old stories and plays
+teem with the incident of the duel in which one gentleman falls, and,
+in dying, forgives and is forgiven. We turn the page with a tear. How
+much better had there been no offence, but how well that death wipes
+it out.
+
+It is not observed in history that families improve with time. It is
+rather discovered that the whole matter is like a comet, of which the
+brightest part, is the head; and the tail, although long and luminous,
+is gradually shaded into obscurity.
+
+Yet, by a singular compensation, the pride of ancestry increases in
+the ratio of distance. Adam was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers
+that he was knighted--a hearty, homely country gentleman, who lived
+humbly to the end. But young Lucifer, his representative in the
+twentieth remove, has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was
+so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung up at home, and Lucifer
+has a box at the opera.  On a thin finger he has a ring, cut with a
+match fizzling, the crest of the Lucifers. But if he should be at a
+Poictiers, he would run away. Then history would be sorry--not only
+for his cowardice, but for the shame it brings upon old Adam's name.
+
+So, if Minim Sculpin is a bad young man, he not only shames himself,
+but he disgraces that illustrious line of ancestors, whose characters
+are known.  His neighbor, Mudge, has no pedigree of this kind, and
+when he reels homeward, we do not suffer the sorrow of any fair Lady
+Dorothy in such a descendant--we pity him for himself alone. But
+genius and power are so imperial and universal, that when Minim
+Sculpin falls, we are grieved not only for him, but for that eternal
+truth and beauty which appeared in the valor of Sir Shark, and the
+loveliness of Lady Dorothy. His neighbor Mudge's grandfather may have
+been quite as valorous and virtuous as Sculpin's; but we know of the
+one, and we do not know of the other.
+
+Therefore, Prue, I say to my wife, who has, by this time, fallen as
+soundly asleep as if I had been preaching a real sermon, do not let
+Mrs. Mudge feel hurt, because I gaze so long and earnestly upon the
+portrait of the fair Lady Sculpin, and, lost in dreams, mingle in a
+society which distance and poetry immortalize.
+
+But let the love of the family portraits belong to poetry and not to
+politics. It is good in the one way, and bad in the other.
+
+The _sentiment_ of ancestral pride is an integral part of human
+nature. Its _organization_ in institutions is the real object of
+enmity to all sensible men, because it is a direct preference of
+derived to original power, implying a doubt that the world at every
+period is able to take care of itself.
+
+The family portraits have a poetic significance; but he is a brave
+child of the family who dares to show them. They all sit in
+passionless and austere judgment upon himself. Let him not invite us
+to see them, until he has considered whether they are honored or
+disgraced by his own career--until he has looked in the glass of his
+own thought and scanned his own proportions.
+
+The family portraits are like a woman's diamonds; they may flash
+finely enough before the world, but she herself trembles lest their
+lustre eclipse her eyes.  It is difficult to resist the tendency to
+depend upon those portraits, and to enjoy vicariously through them a
+high consideration. But, after all, what girl is complimented when you
+curiously regard her because her mother was beautiful? What attenuated
+consumptive, in whom self-respect is yet unconsumed, delights in your
+respect for him, founded in honor for his stalwart ancestor?
+
+No man worthy the name rejoices in any homage which his own effort and
+character have not deserved.  You intrinsically insult him when you
+make him the scapegoat of your admiration for his ancestor.  But when
+his ancestor is his accessory, then your homage would flatter
+Jupiter. All that Minim Sculpin does by his own talent is the more
+radiantly set and ornamented by the family fame. The imagination is
+pleased when Lord John Russell is Premier of England and a whig,
+because the great Lord William Russell, his ancestor, died in England
+for liberty.
+
+In the same way Minim's sister Sara adds to her own grace the sweet
+memory of the Lady Dorothy.  When she glides, a sunbeam, through that
+quiet house, and in winter makes summer by her presence; when she sits
+at the piano, singing in the twilight, or stands leaning against the
+Venus in the corner of the room--herself more graceful--then, in
+glancing from her to the portrait of the gentle Dorothy, you feel that
+the long years between them have been lighted by the same sparkling
+grace, and shadowed by the same pensive smile--for this is but one
+Sara and one Dorothy, out of all that there are in the world.
+
+As we look at these two, we must own that _noblesse oblige_ in a
+sense sweeter than we knew, and be glad when young Sculpin invites us
+to see the family portraits. Could a man be named Sidney, and not be a
+better man, or Milton, and be a churl?
+
+But it is apart from any historical association that I like to look at
+the family portraits. The Sculpins were very distinguished heroes, and
+judges, and founders of families; but I chiefly linger upon their
+pictures, because they were men and women. Their portraits remove the
+vagueness from history, and give it reality. Ancient valor and beauty
+cease to be names and poetic myths, and become facts. I feel that they
+lived, and loved, and suffered in those old days. The story of their
+lives is instantly full of human sympathy in my mind, and I judge them
+more gently, more generously.
+
+Then I look at those of us who are the spectators of the portraits. I
+know that we are made of the same flesh and blood, that time is
+preparing us to be placed in his cabinet and upon canvass, to be
+curiously studied by the grandchildren of unborn Prues. I put out my
+hands to grasp those of my fellows around the pictures. "Ah! friends,
+we live not only for ourselves. Those whom we shall never see, will
+look to us as models, as counsellors. We shall be speechless then. We
+shall only look at them from the canvass, and cheer or discourage them
+by their idea of our lives and ourselves. Let us so look in the
+portrait, that they shall love our memories--that they shall say, in
+turn, 'they were kind and thoughtful, those queer old ancestors of
+ours; let us not disgrace them.'"
+
+If they only recognize us as men and women like themselves, they will
+be the better for it, and the family portraits will be family
+blessings.
+
+This is what my grandmother did. She looked at her own portrait, at
+the portrait of her youth, with much the same feeling that I remember
+Prue as she was when I first saw her, with much the same feeling that
+I hope our grandchildren will remember us.
+
+Upon those still summer mornings, though she stood withered and wan in
+a plain black silk gown, a close cap, and spectacles, and held her
+shrunken and blue-veined hand to shield her eyes, yet, as she gazed
+with that long and longing glance, upon the blooming beauty that had
+faded from her form forever, she recognized under that flowing hair
+and that rosy cheek--the immortal fashions of youth and health--and
+beneath those many ruffles and that quaint high waist, the fashions of
+the day--the same true and loving woman. If her face was pensive as
+she turned away, it was because truth and love are, in their essence,
+forever young; and it is the hard condition of nature that they cannot
+always appear so.
+
+
+
+OUR COUSIN THE CURATE.
+
+  "Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
+    The heart ungalled play;
+  For some must watch while some must sleep;
+    Thus runs the world away."
+
+
+Prue and I have very few relations: Prue, especially, says that she
+never had any but her parents, and that she has none now but her
+children. She often wishes she had some large aunt in the country, who
+might come in unexpectedly with bags and bundles, and encamp in our
+little house for a whole winter.
+
+"Because you are tired of me, I suppose, Mrs. Prue?" I reply with
+dignity, when she alludes to the imaginary large aunt.
+
+"You could take aunt to the opera, you know, and walk with her on
+Sundays," says Prue, as she knits and calmly looks me in the face,
+without recognizing my observation.
+
+Then I tell Prue in the plainest possible manner that, if her large
+aunt should come up from the country to pass the winter, I should
+insist upon her bringing her oldest daughter, with whom I would flirt
+so desperately that the street would be scandalized, and even the
+corner grocery should gossip over the iniquity.
+
+"Poor Prue, how I should pity you," I say triumphantly to my wife.
+
+"Poor oldest daughter, how I should pity her," replies Prue, placidly
+counting her stitches.
+
+So the happy evening passes, as we gaily mock each other, and wonder
+how old the large aunt should be, and how many bundles she ought to
+bring with her.
+
+"I would have her arrive by the late train at midnight," says Prue;
+"and when she had eaten some supper and had gone to her room, she
+should discover that she had left the most precious bundle of all in
+the cars, without whose contents she could not sleep, nor dress, and
+you would start to hunt for it."
+
+And the needle clicks faster than ever.
+
+"Yes, and when I am gone to the office in the morning, and am busy
+about important affairs--yes, Mrs. Prue, important affairs," I insist,
+as my wife half raises her head incredulously--"then our large aunt
+from the country would like to go shopping, and would want you for her
+escort. And she would cheapen tape at all the shops, and even to the
+great Stewart himself, she would offer a shilling less for the
+gloves. Then the comely clerks of the great Stewart would look at you,
+with their brows lifted, as if they said, Mrs. Prue, your large aunt
+had better stay in the country."
+
+And the needle clicks more slowly, as if the tune were changing.
+
+The large aunt will never come, I know; nor shall I ever flirt with
+the oldest daughter. I should like to believe that our little house
+will teem with aunts and cousins when Prue and I are gone; but how can
+I believe it, when there is a milliner within three doors, and a
+hair-dresser combs his wigs in the late dining-room of my opposite
+neighbor? The large aunt from the country is entirely impossible, and
+as Prue feels it and I feel it, the needles seem to click a dirge for
+that late lamented lady.
+
+"But at least we have one relative, Prue."
+
+The needles stop: only the clock ticks upon the mantel to remind us
+how ceaselessly the stream of time flows on that bears us away from
+our cousin the curate.
+
+When Prue and I are most cheerful, and the world looks fair--we talk
+of our cousin the curate.  When the world seems a little cloudy, and
+we remember that though we have lived and loved together, we may not
+die together--we talk of our cousin the curate. When we plan little
+plans for the boys and dream dreams for the girls--we talk of our
+cousin the curate. When I tell Prue of Aurelia whose character is
+every day lovelier--we talk of our cousin the curate. There is no
+subject which does not seem to lead naturally to our cousin the
+curate. As the soft air steals in and envelopes everything in the
+world, so that the trees, and the hills, and the rivers, the cities,
+the crops, and the sea, are made remote, and delicate, and beautiful;
+by its pure baptism, so over all the events of our little lives,
+comforting, refining, and elevating, falls like a benediction the
+remembrance of our cousin the curate.
+
+He was my only early companion. He had no brother, I had none: and we
+became brothers to each other. He was always beautiful. His face was
+symmetrical and delicate; his figure was slight and graceful. He
+looked as the sons of kings ought to look: as I am sure Philip Sidney
+looked when he was a boy. His eyes were blue, and as you looked at
+them, they seemed to let your gaze out into a June heaven. The blood
+ran close to the skin, and his complexion had the rich transparency of
+light.  There was nothing gross or heavy in his expression or texture;
+his soul seemed to have mastered his body. But he had strong passions,
+for his delicacy was positive, not negative: it was not weakness, but
+intensity.
+
+There was a patch of ground about the house which we tilled as a
+garden. I was proud of my morning-glories, and sweet peas; my cousin
+cultivated roses. One day--and we could scarcely have been more than
+six years old--we were digging merrily and talking. Suddenly there was
+some kind of difference; I taunted him, and, raising his spade, he
+struck me upon the leg. The blow was heavy for a boy, and the blood
+trickled from the wound. I burst into indignant tears, and limped
+toward the house. My cousin turned pale and said nothing, but just as
+I opened the door, he darted by me, and before I could interrupt him,
+he had confessed his crime, and asked for punishment.
+
+From that day he conquered himself. He devoted a kind of ascetic
+energy to subduing his own will, and I remember no other outbreak. But
+the penalty he paid for conquering his will, was a loss of the gushing
+expression of feeling. My cousin became perfectly gentle in his
+manner, but there was a want of that pungent excess, which is the
+finest flavor of character. His views were moderate and calm. He was
+swept away by no boyish extravagance, and, even while I wished he
+would sin only a very little, I still adored him as a saint. The truth
+is, as I tell Prue, I am so very bad because I have to sin for
+two--for myself and our cousin the curate.  Often, when I returned
+panting and restless from some frolic, which had wasted almost all the
+night, I was rebuked as I entered the room in which he lay peacefully
+sleeping. There was something holy in the profound repose of his
+beauty, and, as I stood looking at him, how many a time the tears have
+dropped from my hot eyes upon his face, while I vowed to make myself
+worthy of such a companion, for I felt my heart owning its allegiance
+to that strong and imperial nature.
+
+My cousin was loved by the boys, but the girls worshipped him. His
+mind, large in grasp, and subtle in perception, naturally commanded
+his companions, while the lustre of his character allured those who
+could not understand him. The asceticism occasionally showed itself a
+vein of hardness, or rather of severity in his treatment of others. He
+did what he thought it his duty to do, but he forgot that few could
+see the right so clearly as he, and very few of those few could so
+calmly obey the least command of conscience. I confess I was a little
+afraid of him, for I think I never could be severe.
+
+In the long winter evenings I often read to Prue the story of some old
+father of the church, or some quaint poem of George Herbert's--and
+every Christmas-eve, I read to her Milton's Hymn of the Nativity.
+Yet, when the saint seems to us most saintly, or the poem most
+pathetic or sublime, we find ourselves talking of our cousin the
+curate. I have not seen him for many years; but, when we parted, his
+head had the intellectual symmetry of Milton's, without the puritanic
+stoop, and with the stately grace of a cavalier.
+
+Such a boy has premature wisdom--he lives and suffers prematurely.
+
+Prue loves to listen when I speak of the romance of his life, and I do
+not wonder. For my part, I find in the best romance only the story of
+my love for her, and often as I read to her, whenever I come to what
+Titbottom calls "the crying part," if I lift my eyes suddenly, I see
+that Prue's eyes are fixed on me with a softer light by reason of
+their moisture.
+
+Our cousin the curate loved, while he was yet a boy, Flora, of the
+sparkling eyes and the ringing voice. His devotion was absolute. Flora
+was flattered, because all the girls, as I said, worshipped him; but
+she was a gay, glancing girl, who had invaded the student's heart with
+her audacious brilliancy, and was half surprised that she had subdued
+it. Our cousin--for I never think of him as my cousin, only--wasted
+away under the fervor of his passion. His life exhaled as incense
+before her. He wrote poems to her, and sang them under her window, in
+the summer moonlight. He brought her flowers and precious gifts. When
+he had nothing else to give, he gave her his love in a homage so
+eloquent and beautiful that the worship was like the worship of the
+wise men. The gay Flora was proud and superb. She was a girl, and the
+bravest and best boy loved her. She was young, and the wisest and
+truest youth loved her. They lived together, we all lived together, in
+the happy valley of childhood. We looked forward to manhood as
+island-poets look across the sea, believing that the whole world
+beyond is a blest Araby of spices.
+
+The months went by, and the young love continued.  Our cousin and
+Flora were only children still, and there was no engagement. The
+elders looked upon the intimacy as natural and mutually beneficial. It
+would help soften the boy and strengthen the girl; and they took for
+granted that softness and strength were precisely what were wanted. It
+is a great pity that men and women forget that they have been
+children. Parents are apt to be foreigners to their sons and
+daughters. Maturity is the gate of Paradise, which shuts behind us;
+and our memories are gradually weaned from the glories in which our
+nativity was cradled.
+
+The months went by, the children grew older, and they constantly
+loved. Now Prue always smiles at one of my theories; she is entirely
+sceptical of it; but it is, nevertheless, my opinion, that men love
+most passionately, and women most permanently.  Men love at first and
+most warmly; women love last and longest. This is natural enough; for
+nature makes women to be won, and men to win.  Men are the active,
+positive force, and, therefore, they are more ardent and
+demonstrative.
+
+I can never get farther than that in my philosophy, when Prue looks at
+me, and smiles me into scepticism of my own doctrines. But they are
+true, notwithstanding.
+
+My day is rather past for such speculations; but so long as Aurelia is
+unmarried, I am sure I shall indulge myself in them. I have never made
+much progress in the philosophy of love; in fact, I can only be sure
+of this one cardinal principle, that when you are quite sure two
+people cannot be in love with each other, because there is no earthly
+reason why they should be, then you may be very confident that you are
+wrong, and that they are in love, for the secret of love is past
+finding out. Why our cousin should have loved the gay Flora so
+ardently was hard to say; but that he did so, was not difficult to
+see.
+
+He went away to college. He wrote the most eloquent and passionate
+letters; and when he returned in vacations, he had no eyes, ears, nor
+heart for any other being. I rarely saw him, for I was living away
+from our early home, and was busy in a store--learning to be
+book-keeper--but I heard afterward from himself the whole story.
+
+One day when he came home for the holidays, he found a young foreigner
+with Flora--a handsome youth, brilliant and graceful. I have asked
+Prue a thousand times why women adore soldiers and foreigners. She
+says it is because they love heroism and are romantic. A soldier is
+professionally a hero, says Prue, and a foreigner is associated with
+all unknown and beautiful regions. I hope there is no worse reason.
+But if it be the distance which is romantic, then, by her own rule,
+the mountain which looked to you so lovely when you saw it upon the
+horizon, when you stand upon its rocky and barren side, has
+transmitted its romance to its remotest neighbor. I cannot but admire
+the fancies of girls which make them poets. They have only to look
+upon a dull-eyed, ignorant, exhausted _roue_, with an impudent
+moustache, and they surrender to Italy to the tropics, to the
+splendors of nobility, and a court life--and--
+
+"Stop," says Prue, gently; "you have no right to say 'girls' do so,
+because some poor victims have been deluded. Would Aurelia surrender
+to a blear-eyed foreigner in a moustache?"
+
+Prue has such a reasonable way of putting these things!
+
+Our cousin came home and found Flora and the young foreigner
+conversing. The young foreigner had large, soft, black eyes, and the
+dusky skin of the tropics. His manner was languid and fascinating,
+courteous and reserved. It assumed a natural supremacy, and you felt
+as if here were a young prince travelling before he came into
+possession of his realm.
+
+It is an old fable that love is blind. But I think there are no eyes
+so sharp as those of lovers. I am sure there is not a shade upon
+Prue's brow that I do not instantly remark, nor an altered tone in her
+voice that I do not instantly observe. Do you suppose Aurelia would
+not note the slightest deviation of heart in her lover, if she had
+one? Love is the coldest of critics. To be in love is to live in a
+crisis, and the very imminence of uncertainty makes the lover
+perfectly self-possessed. His eye constantly scours the horizon. There
+is no footfall so light that it does not thunder in his ear. Love is
+tortured by the tempest the moment the cloud of a hand's size rises
+out of the sea. It foretells its own doom; its agony is past before
+its sufferings are known.
+
+Our cousin the curate no sooner saw the tropical stranger, and marked
+his impression upon Flora, than he felt the end. As the shaft struck
+his heart, his smile was sweeter, and his homage even more poetic and
+reverential. I doubt if Flora understood him or herself. She did not
+know, what he instinctively perceived, that she loved him less. But
+there are no degrees in love; when it is less than absolute and
+supreme, it is nothing. Our cousin and Flora were not formally
+engaged, but their betrothal was understood by all of us as a thing of
+course. He did not allude to the stranger; but as day followed day, he
+saw with every nerve all that passed. Gradually--so gradually that she
+scarcely noticed it--our cousin left Flora more and more with the
+soft-eyed stranger, whom he saw she preferred.  His treatment of her
+was so full of tact, he still walked and talked with her so
+familiarly, that she was not troubled by any fear that he saw what she
+hardly saw herself. Therefore, she was not obliged to conceal anything
+from him or from herself; but all the soft currents of her heart were
+setting toward the West Indian. Our cousin's cheek grew paler, and his
+soul burned and wasted within him. His whole future--all his dream of
+life--had been founded upon his love. It was a stately palace built
+upon the sand, and now the sand was sliding away. I have read
+somewhere, that love will sacrifice everything but itself. But our
+cousin sacrificed his love to the happiness of his mistress. He ceased
+to treat her as peculiarly his own. He made no claim in word or manner
+that everybody might not have made. He did not refrain from seeing
+her, or speaking of her as of all his other friends; and, at length,
+although no one could say how or when the change had been made, it was
+evident and understood that he was no more her lover, but that both
+were the best of friends.
+
+He still wrote to her occasionally from college, and his letters were
+those of a friend, not of a lover.  He could not reproach her. I do
+not believe any man is secretly surprised that a woman ceases to love
+him. Her love is a heavenly favor won by no desert of his. If it
+passes, he can no more complain than a flower when the sunshine leaves
+it.
+
+Before our cousin left college, Flora was married to the tropical
+stranger. It was the brightest of June days, and the summer smiled
+upon the bride. There were roses in her hand and orange flowers in her
+hair, and the village church bell rang out over the peaceful fields.
+The warm sunshine lay upon the landscape like God's blessing, and Prue
+and I, not yet married ourselves, stood at an open window in the old
+meeting-house, hand in hand, while the young couple spoke their
+vows. Prue says that brides are always beautiful, and I, who remember
+Prue herself upon her wedding-day--how can I deny it? Truly, the gay
+Flora was lovely that summer morning, and the throng was happy in the
+old church. But it was very sad to me, although I only suspected then
+what now I know. I shed no tears at my own wedding, but I did at
+Flora's, although I knew she was marrying a soft-eyed youth whom she
+dearly loved, and who, I doubt not, dearly loved her.
+
+Among the group of her nearest friends was our cousin the curate. When
+the ceremony was ended, he came to shake her hand with the rest. His
+face was calm, and his smile sweet, and his manner unconstrained.
+Flora did not blush--why should she?--but shook his hand warmly, and
+thanked him for his good wishes. Then they all sauntered down the
+aisle together; there were some tears with the smiles among the other
+friends; our cousin handed the bride into her carriage, shook hands
+with the husband, closed the door, and Flora drove away.
+
+I have never seen her since; I do not even know if she be living
+still. But I shall always remember her as she looked that June
+morning, holding roses in her hand, and wreathed with orange
+flowers. Dear Flora! it was no fault of hers that she loved one man
+more than another: she could not be blamed for not preferring our
+cousin to the West Indian: there is no fault in the story, it is only
+a tragedy.
+
+Our cousin carried all the collegiate honors--but without exciting
+jealousy or envy. He was so really the best, that his companions were
+anxious he should have the sign of his superiority. He studied hard,
+he thought much, and wrote well.  There was no evidence of any blight
+upon his ambition or career, but after living quietly in the country
+for some time, he went to Europe and travelled. When he returned, he
+resolved to study law, but presently relinquished it. Then he
+collected materials for a history, but suffered them to lie unused.
+Somehow the mainspring was gone.  He used to come and pass weeks with
+Prue and me.  His coming made the children happy, for he sat with
+them, and talked and played with them all day long, as one of
+themselves. They had no quarrels when our cousin the curate was their
+playmate, and their laugh was hardly sweeter than his as it rang down
+from the nursery. Yet sometimes, as Prue was setting the tea-table,
+and I sat musing by the fire, she stopped and turned to me as we heard
+that sound, and her eyes filled with tears.
+
+He was interested in all subjects that interested others. His fine
+perception, his clear sense, his noble imagination, illuminated every
+question. His friends wanted him to go into political life, to write a
+great book, to do something worthy of his powers.  It was the very
+thing he longed to do himself; but he came and played with the
+children in the nursery, and the great deed was undone. Often, in the
+long winter evenings, we talked of the past, while Titbottom sat
+silent by, and Prue was busily knitting.  He told us the incidents of
+his early passion--but he did not moralize about it, nor sigh, nor
+grow moody. He turned to Prue, sometimes, and jested gently, and often
+quoted from the old song of George Withers, I believe:
+
+  "If she be not fair for me,
+  What care I how fair she be?"
+
+But there was no flippancy in the jesting; I thought the sweet humor
+was no gayer than a flower upon a grave.
+
+I am sure Titbottom loved our cousin the curate, for his heart is as
+hospitable as the summer heaven.  It was beautiful to watch his
+courtesy toward him, and I do not wonder that Prue considers the
+deputy book-keeper the model of a high-bred gentleman.  When you see
+his poor clothes, and thin, gray hair, his loitering step, and dreamy
+eye, you might pass him by as an inefficient man; but when you hear
+his voice always speaking for the noble and generous side, or
+recounting, in a half-melancholy chant, the recollections of his
+youth; when you know that his heart beats with the simple emotion of a
+boy's heart, and that his courtesy is as delicate as a girl's modesty,
+you will understand why Prue declares that she has never seen but one
+man who reminded her of our especial favorite, Sir Philip Sidney, and
+that his name is Titbottom.
+
+At length our cousin went abroad again to Europe. It was many years
+ago that we watched him sail away, and when Titbottom, and Prue, and
+I, went home to dinner, the grace that was said that day was a fervent
+prayer for our cousin the curate.  Many an evening afterward, the
+children wanted him, and cried themselves to sleep calling upon his
+name. Many an evening still, our talk flags into silence as we sit
+before the fire, and Prue puts down her knitting and takes my hand, as
+if she knew my thoughts, although we do not name his name.
+
+He wrote us letters as he wandered about the world. They were
+affectionate letters, full of observation, and thought, and
+description. He lingered longest in Italy, but he said his conscience
+accused him of yielding to the syrens; and he declared that his life
+was running uselessly away. At last he came to England. He was charmed
+with everything, and the climate was even kinder to him than that of
+Italy. He went to all the famous places, and saw many of the famous
+Englishmen, and wrote that he felt England to be his home.  Burying
+himself in the ancient gloom of a university town, although past the
+prime of life, he studied like an ambitious boy. He said again that
+his life had been wine poured upon the ground, and he felt guilty. And
+so our cousin became a curate.
+
+"Surely," wrote he, "you and Prue will be glad to hear it; and my
+friend Titbottom can no longer boast that he is more useful in the
+world than I.  Dear old George Herbert has already said what I would
+say to you, and here it is.
+
+  "'I made a posy, while the day ran by;
+  Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
+       My life within this band.
+  But time did beckon to the flowers, and they
+  My noon most cunningly did steal away,
+       And wither'd in my hand.
+
+  "'My hand was next to them, and then my heart;
+  I took, without more thinking, in good part,
+       Time's gentle admonition;
+  Which did so sweetly death's sad taste convey,
+  Making my mind to smell my fatal day,
+       Yet sugaring the suspicion.
+
+  "'Farewell, dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
+  Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
+       And after death for cures;
+  I follow straight without complaints or grief,
+  Since if my scent be good, I care not if
+       It be as short as yours.'"
+
+This is our only relation; and do you wonder that, whether our days
+are dark or bright, we naturally speak of our cousin the curate? There
+is no nursery longer, for the children are grown; but I have seen Prue
+stand, with her hand holding the door, for an hour, and looking into
+the room now so sadly still and tidy, with a sweet solemnity in her
+eyes that I will call holy. Our children have forgotten their old
+playmate, but I am sure if there be any children in his parish, over
+the sea, they love our cousin the curate, and watch eagerly for his
+coming. Does his step falter now, I wonder, is that long, fair hair,
+gray; is that laugh as musical in those distant homes as it used to be
+in our nursery; has England, among all her good and great men, any man
+so noble as our cousin the curate?
+
+The great book is unwritten; the great deeds are undone; in no
+biographical dictionary will you find the name of our cousin the
+curate. Is his life, therefore, lost? Have his powers been wasted?
+
+I do not dare to say it; for I see Bourne, on the pinnacle of
+prosperity, but still looking sadly for his castle in Spain; I see
+Titbottom, an old deputy book-keeper, whom nobody knows, but with his
+chivalric heart, loyal to whatever is generous and humane, full of
+sweet hope, and faith, and devotion; I see the superb Aurelia, so
+lovely that the Indians would call her a smile of the Great Spirit,
+and as beneficent as a saint of the calendar--how shall I say what is
+lost, or what is won? I know that in every way, and by all his
+creatures, God is served and his purposes accomplished. How should I
+explain or understand, I who am only an old book-keeper in a white
+cravat?
+
+Yet in all history, in the splendid triumphs of emperors and kings, in
+the dreams of poets, the speculations of philosophers, the sacrifices
+of heroes, and the extacies of saints, I find no exclusive secret of
+success. Prue says she knows that nobody ever did more good than our
+cousin the curate, for every smile and word of his is a good deed; and
+I, for my part, am sure that, although many must do more good in the
+world, nobody enjoys it more than Prue and I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Prue and I, by George William Curtis
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