But in this tempestuous hour, as in more peaceful times, good and bad ideas, valuable and worthless devices, noble and generous as well as sinister and mercenary purposes are mingled in the vast multitude of projects which are presented for acceptance and adoption. The power of the nation is magnified by the impulse which arouses it; but in its exaltation it still retains its errors and defects. It is the same people, with all their characteristic faults and virtues, stimulated to mighty exertions in a sacred cause, who have been so often engaged in petty partisan contests, swayed by dishonest leaders, and carried astray by the base intrigues of ambition and selfishness. Yet, as the masses, at all times, have had no interest but that of the nation which they chiefly constitute, and have sought nothing but what they at least considered to be the public good, so even now, in these mad and perilous times, the predominating sentiment and purpose of the people, in whatever sphere they move, are, on the whole, good and worthy of approval. Every one must at least pretend to be controlled by honest and patriotic motives; and in such an emergency hypocrisy cannot possibly be universal or even predominant. Although men may seek chiefly their own interest and profit, they must do so through some effort of public usefulness. They must commend themselves, their works, and ideas, as of superior importance to the cause of the country; and in this universal struggle and competition—this mighty effervescence of popular thought and action, it would be strange and unexampled, if some great, new conceptions should not dawn upon us. The very condition, physical, social, and moral, of our twenty millions of people in the loyal States is unlike all that has ever preceded it. Their general intelligence, the result of universal education, makes available their unlimited freedom, and establishes their capacity for great achievements. The present momentous occasion makes an imperative demand upon all their highest faculties, and they cannot fail to respond in a manner which will satisfy every just expectation.
What the Government has undertaken in this crisis is worthy of a great people and springs from the large ideas habitual to Americans. The blockade of the whole Southern coast, with its vast shore line, and its intricate network of inlets, harbors, and rivers; the controlling of the mighty Mississippi from Cairo to the gulf; the campaigns in Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas; and the pending attacks on Charleston and Savannah—these gigantic and tremendous operations have something of that grandeur which is familiar to our thoughts—which, indeed, constitutes the staple of the ordinary American speech, apparently having all the characteristics of exaggerated jesting and idle boast. We frequently hear our enthusiastic countrymen talk of anchoring Great Britain in one of our northern lakes. They speak contemptuously of the petty jurisdictions of European powers contrasted with the magnificent domain of our States, and they sneer at the rivers of the old continent as mere rills by the side of the mighty 'father of waters.' The men whose very jests are on a scale of such magnitude, do not seem to find the extensive military operations too large for their serious thoughts. No American considers them beyond our power, or for one moment hesitates to admit theirultimate success. No difficulties discourage us, no disasters appal. We move on with indomitable will and determination, looking through all the obstacles to the grand result as already accomplished. Does slavery stand in the way, and cotton seek to usurp the throne of universal empire, dictating terms to twenty millions of freemen, and demanding the acquiescence of the world? The first is annihilated by a word proclaiming universal liberation; the second is blockaded in his ports, surrounded by a wall of fire, suffocated and strangled, and dragged helpless and insensible from his imaginary throne. A proud and desperate aristocracy, rich and powerful, and correspondingly confident, undertake to measure strength with the democratic millions whom they despise. These Northern people, scorned and detested, have ideas—grand and magnificent as well as practical ideas, nurtured by universal education and unlimited freedom of thought and act. The fierce and relentless aristocracy rave in their very madness, and defy the people whom they seek to destroy; but these bear down upon the haughty enemy, slowly and deliberately—awkwardly and blunderingly, it may be, at first, but learning by experience, and moving on, through all vicissitudes, with the certainty and solemnity of destiny to the hour of final and complete success. The confidence in this grand result dominates every other thought. All ideas and all purposes revolve around it as a centre. It is the internal fire which warms the patriotism, strengthens the purpose, stimulates the invention, sustains the courage, and feeds the undying confidence of the nation, in this, the hour of its desperate struggle for existence.
'Youwill not bid me stay!' he said,'She calls for me—my native land!Andstay? ah, better to be dead!Acowarddare not ask your hand!'My crimson sash you'll tie for me,My belted sword you'll fasten, love!I swear to both I'll faithful be,To these below! to God above!'And if, perchance, my sword shall winA laurel wreath to crownyourname,He will not count it as my sin,That I foryouhave prayed for fame!'
His name rings thro' his native land,His sword has won the hero's prize;Why comes he not to ask her hand?Dead on the battle field he lies.
Time, O well beloved, floweth by like a river; sweepeth on by turreted castles and dainty boat-houses, great old forests and ruined cities. Tender, cool-eyed lilies fringe its rippling shores, straggling arms of longing seaweeds are unceasingly wooing and losing its flying waves; and on its purple bosom by night, linger merrily hosts of dancing stars. Bright under its limpid waters gleam the towers of many a 'sunken city.' Strong and clear through the night-silence of eager listening, ring the chimes of their far-off bells, the echoes of joyous laughter: and to waiting, yearning ones come, ever and anon, deep glances from gleaming eyes, warm graspings from outstretched hands. And well windeth the river into grim old caves, and even the merriest boat that King Cole ever launched flitteth by the dark doors, intent only on the brilliantchateaux, that shimmer above in the gorgeous sunlight of a braveEspagne. But laughing imps, with flying feet, venture singly into these realms of the Unknown. Bright streameth the light there from carbuncles and glowing rubies; but of the melodies that there bewilder them, no returning voice ever speaketh, for are they not Eleusinian mysteries? But when thou meetest, O brother, sailing down the stream under gay flags and rounding sails, some Hogarth or some Sterne, who playethrouge et noirwith keen old Pharaohs, and battledore with Charlie Buff; who singeth braveLibiamos, and despiseth not the Christmas plums of Johnny Horner; who payeth graceful court to the great and learned, and warmeth the pale hearts of the shivering poor with his kind cheer and gentle words; who sitteth with Socrates and Pericles at the feet of an ever-lovely Aspasia, and whisperethcapriciosto Anna Maria at the opera; know then, O beloved, if thou hast ever trodden the mystic halls, that this man is the brother of thy soul! Selah!
But the bravest stream that ever was born on a mountain side has its shoals and quicksands, and far out in the sounding sea rise slowly coral reefs. Now, if on every green, growing isle newly rising to the sunlight, the glorious jealousy of some Jove should toss a Vulcan, how would our Venuses be suddenly charmed by the beauties of a South Sea Scheme! how would their tiny shallops dot the curling waves, and what new flowers would spring upon the smiling shores to greet their rosy feet!
'And why a Vulcan?' says the elegant Narcissus Hare, with a shiver; 'a great, grim, solemn, limping monster, that Brummel would have spurned in disgust! And he to win our ladies with their delicate loveliness! Faugh, sir! are you a Cyclops yourself?'
Alas! my Tinkler, do you remember that Salmasius began his vituperations of Milton with gratuitous speculations upon his supposed ugliness, and that great was his grief when he was assured that he contended with an ideal of beauty. Have you forgotten that the Antinöus won the distinguished favor of his merry, courteous queen Christina, and that the satirist and man of 'taste' died of obscurity in a year? Beware, my little Narcissus, lest the next autumn flowers bloom above your grave in Greenwood, and your fair Luline be accepting bouquets andbonbonsfrom me.
You, Roland, are pale from the very contemplation of such a catastrophe, such an unprecedentedhægiraof dames! It is as if from every gay watering place, some softly tinklingbell should summon the fair mermaids. Beplaided and betrowsered, with their little gypsy hats, would they float out beyond the breakers, waving aside with farewell, airy kisses, the patent life boats and the magical preservers, and pressing on, like Gebers, with their rosy faces and great, hopeful eyes ever laughingly, merrily turned to the golden east—theirMorgen Land!
Ah! but—have we no Vulcans among us? 'Fair Bertha, Beatrice, Alys,' come out of the Christmas ecstatics of the dear old year that has just streamed out like a meteor among the stars;—youknow, fair ones, that the stars are only years, and the planets grave old centuries; lock away the jewels and the lace sets—charming, I know—the glove boxes and the statuettes, the cream-leaved books, and the fragile, gracefulbabioles; pull up the cushions, and group your bright selves around the register—it's very cold to-day, you roses—and let us settle the question—have we a Vulcan among us?
Magnificent essayists, O dearly beloved, have handled 'Our Husbands,' 'Our Wives,' 'Our Sons' and 'Our Daughters' in a masterly style. Very praiseworthy, no doubt, but so unromantic! Why, there's not a green leaf in the whole collection! The style is decidedly Egyptian, solid and expressive, but dreadfully compact. No arabesques, those offshoots of lazy, dreamy hours and pleasantly disconnected thoughts, disgrace the solemnly even tenor of these fathers of 'Ephemeral Literature,' as some 'rude Iconoclast' has irreverently styled the butterfly journeyings of our magazine age. But we, O merry souls and brave, are still young and frivolous: we still look at pictures with as much zest as before our dimly remembered teens; and we belong to that happy branch of the Scribbleri family, that prefer the sympathy of bright eyes and gay laughter, to the approving shake of any D'Orsay's 'ambrosial curls,' or the most unqualified smile from the grimmest old champion who even now votes in his secret heart against the New Tariff, or charges with unparalleled bravery imaginary or windmill giants on the floor of a Platform or of a Legislature.
But this, our paper, purporteth to be, in some wise, a disquisition on Beaux, and, by our faith, we had well-nigh forgotten it.Retournons à nos moutons, as the ancient lawyers used to say (and many a tyro, in the interim, hath said the same) when they grew so entangled in the mazes of Jack Shepherd cases that they lost sight of their original designs. And lest I should grow wearisomely prosaic, and see the yawn behind your white hand,belleBeatrice, let me make my disquisition a half story, and point my moral, not as fairies do, with a pinch, but with the shadow of a tale.
And here,signorina, though in courage I am a Cæsar, here I shrink. The birdseye view I would take of a few leaves of beau-dom, should be from the standing point of your own unquiet, peering eyes; and if even Cupid is blindfold, how may I, to whom you are all tormentingly delicious enigmas, hope in my own unaided strength to enter the charmed citadel of your experiences? Oh, no! But happy is the man, who, with an inquiring mind, has also a sister! Thrice happy he whose sisters have just now flitted down the staircase, from their own inner sanctuaries, into the little library, bearing with them in noisy triumph the Harry of all Goodfellows, the truant Henrietta Ruyter! Ah! she is the key that will unlock for me those treasures of thought and observation that I will shortly lay before you, O readers!
And now to you, O much-traduced star, that presided at mydébutinto this vale of tears, may the most glorious rocket ascend that Jackson ever said or sung, one that shall break out in pæans of brilliant stars!—for, when I entered the charmed presence, the very ball that I had been wishing to roll wasupon the carpet. But of this I was unconscious as I admired Fanny's new dress, the mysterious earrings of our stately Bertha, and ventured upon a slight compliment to Henrietta, who lounged upon the divan. With admirable dexterity, the young lady caught thefleuretteupon her crochet needle, reviewed it carelessly, and finally decided to accept it; an event that I had undoubtedly foreseen, for the compliment was a graceful and artistic one. But brothers, as you, Gustav, my boy, have long since discovered, are not events, and I was presently consigned to the 'elephant chair' in the corner, with a portfolio of sketches that Henrietta had brought from over the sea—and the dames continued, in charming obliviousness of my presence.
'Girls,' said Henrietta, having deposited my compliment snugly in her little workbasket, whence it may issue to the delectation of some future young lady group, 'how are you going to entertain me? Such a Wandering Jew as I am! A perfect Ahasuerus!Whata novelty it will be that will interestme!' and with a most laughingly wearied air, the pretty eyebrows were raised, and waves of weariness floated over the golden hair in its scarlet net.
Fanny looked concerned. 'We may have a week of opera.'
'I've been—in—Milan,' returned Henrietta, with a well-counterfeited air of the disdain with which Mrs. De Lancy Stevens views all republican institutions since her year in Europe. Bertha laughed.
'You have grown literary, astronomical perhaps, with your star gazing, and Len has become such a Mitchellite of late, that two shelves of his bookcase are filled with works on the heavenly bodies. What a rapture you will be in at the sight!'
'Quite an Aquinas,' said Henrietta, with gravity.
'How so, Harry,' asked Fanny, after a pause, during which she had been deciding that her friend meant—Galileo!
'Oh, he wrote about angels, you know; said these heavenly bodies were made of thick clouds, and some other nonsense, of which I remember nothing.'
I, in my corner, was devoutly thankful that angels now assume more tangible shapes, which chivalric sentiment, finding expression only in my eyes, was recognized but by Henrietta, who rewarded me with a lightning smile.
'Bertha, my queen,' continued she, as that lady's serene countenance beamed upon her in apparently immovable calmness, 'doesanything ever arouse you? Have you forgotten, my impenetrable spirit, the sad days of yore, when we sobbed out grandariasto the wretched accompaniment of Professor Tirili, blistered our young fingers on guitar strings, waded unprofitably in oceans of Locke and Bacon, and were oftener at the apex of a triangle than its comfortable base? And you always as calm as though 'sailing over summer seas!' Come—I am absolutely blue;' and the half-fretful belle, who had really exhausted her strength and amiability by a grand pedestrian tour in the Central Park that morning, stretched out demurely her gaiter boots, and drew with an invisible pencil on imaginary paper, the outline of her boldly arched instep.
'If Landon would only come,' sighed Fanny, musingly, counting the beads for the eye of the Polyphemus she was embroidering on a cushion for that gentleman's sofa meditations, 'he would entertain you, as well as the—one—two—three—witches in Macbeth.'
'No doubt of it,' said Henrietta.
'Five blues and two blacks,' said Fanny, not heeding the reply. 'See, girls,' and she held up the glittering orb, 'what a lovely eye!'
The enthusiasm of her audience was delirious but subdued. I caught an occasional 'Sucha love!' 'How sweet—how fierce!'
'Now,' said Henrietta, decidedly, 'if Medusa had but one eye, and this dear creature two, I should die as miserably as the lady who loved the Apollo Belvidere. I have hadoceansof knights errant—butsuch! I think of writing a natural history like—Cuvier.'
'Yes,' said Bertha, quietly, 'or Peter Parley.'
'Suppose I read you the advance sheets some morning?'
'Charming,' said Fanny, with a little shrug of approaching delight.
'Mr. Landon Snowe, Miss Fanny,' said a crusty voice, and from under a tower of white turban, Sibyl's face looked out—at the door.
'We will see him here, Sibyl,' said Fanny, brightly; 'and oh, Sibyl, ask Mott to make a macaroon custard for dinner, for Miss Ruyter.'
'Excellent,' said that lady, again with the De Lancy Stevens air, 'I ate—those—in—Paris. They actually flavor them there withHaut Brion!and they are delicious!' and Henrietta's lips fairly quivered at the remembrance, that was by no means a recollection of the long-ago enjoyed dainties.
'Such extravagance!' said Fanny, opening her eyes, and arranging sundry little points in her attitude that were intended to be very piercing indeed to the gentleman, whose step was now heard in the hall. 'Such extravagance, Harry! Your father, I suppose. You'll get nothing better than Port here. Good morning, Mr. Snowe.'
'Talking of ports, ladies,' said that gentleman, airily, after he had prostrated himself, figuratively as well as disfiguratively, before Miss Henrietta, bowed over Bertha's hand, and drew his chair to Fanny's sewing stand, for the triple purpose of confusing her zephyrs, flirting at a side table, and ascertaining whether Henrietta had fulfilled the luxuriant promise of her earlier youth. Snowe was, womanly speaking, as you will see, 'a perfect love of a man.' 'Newport, for example, and charming drives? Williamsport and the Susquehanna, Miss Fanny?'
Very statesmanly, O Landon G. Snowe, Esq., both the glance beneath which my poor little sister's eyes fell, and the allusions twain to the scenes of many a pleasure past. But Fanny, though not mistress of her blushes, can, at least, control her words.
'You are not a very good Œdipus, Mr. Snowe; we were discussing imports.'
'Such as laces and silks?'—
'And punch,' suggested Henrietta.
Mr. Snowe's eyeglass was here freshly adjusted, and his attention bestowed upon the young lady who talked of punch, a thing unheard of in society! The prospect was refreshing. Henrietta was stylish, piquant, and pretty. Fanny was uncertain, indifferent, but, for the moment, divine. He magnanimously sacrificed himself to the impulse of the moment, and the courtesies of hospitality, and walked courageously over to Henrietta, under cover of a huge book.
'They were views from the White Mountains, he believed. Had Miss Ruyter seen them? Allow him;' and he wheeled her sofa nearer the table, and unfurled the book. Henrietta was charmed.
'The Schwartz Mountains? She had not understood. These are glaciers? How they glisten! And these little flowers below are violets? Such pretty, modest, ladylike flowers. Had Mr. Snowe a favorite among flowers?'
Mr. Snowe was prepared. He had answered the question exactly five hundred and ten times. To Cecilia Lanner, who was almost areligieuse, and who wore her diamond cross from principle, he was the very poet of a passion flower, such holy mysteries as its opening petals disclosed to him! To Lucy Grey, who wore pensive curls, and had a sweet voice, he presented constantly fragrant little sprays of mignonette, cunning moss baskets with a suspicion of heliotrope peeping out,and crushed myrtle blossoms between the leaves of her most exquisitely bound books. To Katy Lessing, who rowed a small green boat somewhere up the Hudson in the summer, he confided the fact that water lilies were his admiration: he loved the limpid water; its restless waves were like heart throbbings (this nearly overwhelmed poor Katy). All great and noble souls loved the water;—he forgot the sacred fakirs, and the noble lord who preferred Malmsey wine! He had repeatedly assured Regina Ward that the camelia washisflower, so proudly beautiful! His soul was 'permeated with loveliness,' and asked no fragrance. Regina is a great white creature, lovely to behold, and, perfectly conscious of her perfection, no more actively charming than the Ino of Foley. He won Milly White's favor by applauding her love for wild flowers, declaring that a field of buttercups reminded him of the 'spangled heavens,' and that on summer days he was constantly envying the cool little Jacks in their green pulpits.
A pretended Lavater—and there have been such—would have convicted Snowe at once of the most artful penetration, could he have seen the lowering curve of his brows as he watched the nervous fluttering of Henrietta's hands over the pictures, and the decided but softly pleasant rounding of her white chin. But it was the general unconsciously powerful indifference of manner, that advised him to prefer, in reply to her question:
'The snapdragon, yes, beyond the shadow of a doubt. I have an odd fashion (very odd, Gustav!), Miss Ruyter, of associating ladies with flowers, and that gorgeous three-bird snapdragon always looks to me like some brilliant belle, who holds her glittering sceptre and wields it, capriciously perhaps, but always charmingly.'
'A sort of Helen,' observed Henrietta, calmly.
'A witching, arbitrary, lovely Helen,' promptly returned Snowe, who had a vague idea of Greek helmets and golden apples, wooden horses, a great war, and 'all for love.'
Henrietta heard the magnificent vagueness, and became so intently interested in a view, that Snowe came softly over to my window, and looked into the garden. Lilly Brennan coming in just then, the conversation became general, and presently Snowe accompanied her down the street.
'Fanny,' said Henrietta, with an inquisitorial air, after the girls had decided that the slides on the bows of Lilly's dress were too small, and that her 'Bird of Paradise' was lovely enough to fly away with them all, 'Fanny, are you the 'bright, particular star' of that man?'
'I believe so,' said Fanny, with a stare.
'Do you intend to beam on him for any length of time?' persisted Henrietta.
'I haven't decided,' said Fan, honestly. 'I love beauty, and Landon Snowe is magnificent.'
'So is the Venus de Medicis,' said Henrietta, fiercely; 'but look at her spine! What sort of a brain do you thinkcouldflourish at the top of such a spine? Not that I suppose that man to have the least fragment of one; don't suspect such a thing! Don't you observe his weak, disjointed way of carrying his head, and the Pisan appearance of his sentences? I should dread an earthquake for such a man as Mr. Snowe—you'd have nothing but remnants to remember him by, Fanny.'
'But earthquakesarephenomena,' said Fanny, stoutly, 'and I'm not in the least like one. As long as Landon never fails except spiritually, I am contented—and even in that lightInever knew him to trip,' and the child was as indignant as her indolent nature would permit.
'Trip! of course not,' echoed Henrietta, 'when he's buried like a delicate Sphinx up to his shoulders in the sandsof your good opinion, and the mummy cloths of his own conceit; but just remove these, and you'll see a downfall. My dearFrancesca, this man is yourCecco, and he'd far better retire into a monastery than hope to win you. Why, I'd rather marry you myself,Francesca! Such charms!' and Henrietta, with her own delicate perception and enjoyment of the beautiful, kissed my sister's deprecatingly extended hand, and, as the dinner bell rang, waltzed her out of the room.
'It's perfectly bewildering the interest some people take in music,' she resumed later, building a little tent on the side of her plate with thedébrisof fish. 'There's Bartlett Browning, telling me the other evening a melancholy story of some melodious fishes, off the coast of—Weiss nicht wo; oysters, I suppose; conceive of it! the most phlegmatic of creatures. I suppose some poor fisherman heard a merlady singing in her green halls, and fancied it the death song of some of his shells. But that's nothing to some of Bartlett Browning's musical tales. The man's a perfect B flat himself!'
'Well,' said Nelly, Phil's little girl, who had come around to show her new velvet basque, 'but shellsdosing, for I've often listened to mamma's, and Bessy gives it to me at night to put me to sleep.Youknow, Aunt Bertie, for you once made me learn what it said:
'Oh, sweet and far, from cliff and scar,The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!'
'Fish-land, my beauty,' said Henrietta, playfully; 'let us hearyoursong, fishlet,' and she held a little gleaming shrimp by his tail, and looked expectantly at his silent mouth. And here I remember, with a smile of amusement and some astonishment, that Herman Melville, in nervous fear of ridicule, apologized, most gracefully, of course, for his beauteous Fayaway's primitive mode of carving a fish; but I fancy I hear myself, or you either, sir, begging the community to shut its dear eyes, while Harry's little victim, all unconscious of his fate, disappeared behind the walls, coral and white, of her lips and teeth.
Oh, isn't it perfectly delicious to meet a real, frank, merry, wise sort of a girl, who doesn't wear spectacles or blue stockings, nor disdain the Lancers or a new frock with nineteen flounces? Just fancy it, Gustav, my dear fellow, chatting with the Venus of Milo, in a New York dining room, and she all done up in blue poplin, with cords and tassels and all that, with that lovely hair tumbling about in a scarlet net, and such a splendid enjoyment of her own great grace, and royal claiming of homage! Eating mashed potatoes too, and celery, and roast beef, to keep up that magnificent physique of hers! Oh, it's rare!
But Henrietta couldn't forget Snowe, any more than Snowe could forget himself; so, after she had gazed with delight at the red veins of wine that threaded the jelly-like custard, with its imprisoned macaroons, looking like gold fish asleep in a globe of sun-dyed water, she went on, as if the conversation had not been interrupted:
'Do you know, Fan, that he reminds me constantly of champagne. If there's anything on earth or in a cellar that I do detest, its champagne; such smiling, brilliant-looking impudence, that comes out fizz—bang! and that's the end of it; there's not so much as the quaver of an echo. You drink it, and instead of seeing cool vineyards and purple waters and cataracts of icicles in your glass, you find a pale, gaunt spectre, or a poor, half-drowned Bacchus, staring at you. It's just so with your Landon Snowe. You, and other people, too, have ahabitof admiring him, a great creature with eyes of milky blue, who goes about disbursing his small coin like some old Aladdin! Why, my dear children, the man, I don't doubt, is this moment congratulating himself, in his solitude at Delmonico's, upon his great penetration. Didn't you see him studying me with a great flourish ofdeference, and throwing his old, three-birded snapdragons into my White Mountains? If he had been as ugly as a Scarron, now, and had known what he said, I could have loved him for that, for, of all things, I do delight in dragons! Such sieges as I have had at zoological gardens and menageries, from Dan to Beersheba, just to see one; and ugly old lizards have been pointed out to me, and scorpions, and every imaginable object but a dragon. But one day I dug a splendid old manuscript—a perfect fossil—out of some old library in Spezia, and opening it, by the merest chance came upon a most lovely, illuminated, full-grown dragon, the very one, I suppose, that Confucius couldn't find! I gazed in raptures, my dearest; he perfectly sparkled with emeralds; his eyes were the most luminous opals. Dear, happy old Indians, who had their dragons at the four corners of the earth, and could go and look over at the lordly creatures whenever they felt melancholy. And besides, I have a little private system of dragonology of my own, that approaches the equator more nearly. I've always worn opals since that day on every possible occasion; I mean to be married in them.'
Hurra!belle Henriette!thou hast a weakness. At the end of a long aisle, shrouded in sumptuously colored perfumed light, stands an altar, and white surplices gleam through the effulgence.—Thou queen! and that thy crowning!
'Len,' said Fanny the next morning, as I sat, after breakfast, over the paper, 'don't you think Harry is a little, just a little, satirical, and—well—notperfectlyladylike and kind, to talk so dreadfully of one's friends?'
'Satirical!? Bless your little, tender heart, not the least mite in the world; she's quite too straightforward for that. Unladylike! Why, my dear Fanny, don't you know 'the wounds of a friend'? Did you never think, little sister, that some girls are sent into the world to perform the office of crumb-scrapers for your serene highnesses, and themselves as well?'
'Like a lady, who gives a dinner party, jumping up and brushing off her own table,' said Fanny with an amused laugh.
'Just so, dear; and as they go wandering about, not a fragment can be omitted. Now, a little dwarf of a thing like you couldn't do that with any grace; but Harrycould, you know, and make everybody think it was charming. So, if fragments of poor Snowe fall under her unsparing hand, and she brushes them off carelessly, don't let anybody's tears go rolling after, don't let anybody's heart ache, for such a trifle; think of the dessert, Fanny, that is sure to follow.'
'Then you too, Len, youwantme to give up Landon?'
'Yes, my dear, let Landon—slide.'
Fanny here boxed my ears with emphasis, and retreated, with an expression of great disgust on her pretty face.
'Come back here, my child,' I said, pulling her down on my knee, 'and let me reason with you.'
Such an oracle as I am with the girls! There's nothing like it, Gustav; for every fan or bracelet you give your sisters, you'll be amply rewarded by revelations and love; and it's something to have a dear, white, undulating wreath of a girl in your arms, and rosy lips on yours, even if it is your sister. Bless the sweet creatures!
'What do you want to marry Snowe for?'
'Well, you see, Len, it's so grand to have such a great beauty always at one's hand, and the girls are all dying for him; and, you know, Len, the truth is,' (very low,) 'he loves me, as you see, and—we girls are such silly creatures—and I suppose the compliment pleases me,' and the frank, darling face crimsoned, and tears stood in the blue eyes. I kissed them both, and laid her hands on my shoulders.
'Pet,' I said, earnestly, 'you are worth a gross of Landon Snowes. He loves you, of course—he'd have been anicicle to have failed in so obvious a duty; but it's only a matter of pure admiration, scarcely of any complicated feelings. Besides, dear, these whitewashed, sinewless, variable fellows fade like the winter sun, without any twilight; their features go wandering off in search of becoming expressions, and they would want a wife like a chameleon to satiate their variety-loving natures. No, dear; give Landon to Henrietta, and when Napoleon comes back, I will enter no protest, even Harry will be silent, and'—
'Oh, Len, what nonsense! couldn't you recommend me to the man in the moon, through a telescope?'
Fanny laughed, and we went again into the library, where Harry, as usual, was tapping her rings with the carved handle of the crotchet needle, that was as ornamental, and about as useful, as Cleopatra's.
'I am going to live in a new country,' said she, gravely, as we entered the room; 'I would go sailing off like a squirrel on a piece of bark. I begin to have intense yearnings after my double.Wheredo you suppose I'm to find him, the gorgeous, tropical anomaly?'
'In Pompeii, or the Cities of the Plain?' I suggested.
'Fanny,' she continued, laughingly, 'is very grave about her vanishing Snowe-flakes; but for poor me, who have been persecuted by the most distressing men, she has no pity. Girls, I promised you an inventory of these treasures.'
'Oh yes,' said Fan, gleefully; 'go out, Len, or you will never be able to endure Harry afterward, for your counterpart will be peeping out, and then woe to your pride!'
'No danger,' said Henrietta, 'that'sperfectly invulnerable. Lenox may remain; it will be a wholesome discipline for him—a warning, you know, my hero; although, girls, Lenox is tolerably faultless,
'Littleheloves but a Frau or a feast,Little he fears but a protest or priest.'
Praed altered. Sit down, disciple, at my feet if you will; I am in the oratorical mood to-day. Hypatia, if you please,notGrace the Less.'
There was a pretty picture of theImmaculée Conceptionover the sofa, one of those lithographs that you see in every bookstore, that Bertha fancied because it was 'sweet.' The Virgin, a woman with a child-angel's face, and the mezzo-luna beneath her feet. That artist knew what he was about, sir. I'd give more for a picture with a good, deep idea, boldly launched forth, than for a thousand of your smiling, proper, natural 'studies,' and Bridal Scenes, and Dramatic or Historical Snatches. If artists, now, were all poets and scholars, as they should be, it would be the work and delirious rapture of a life to go through a gallery as large as our Dusseldorf. Men would go there to write novels and histories, and women to learn to be good and beautiful—that is, to learn to think. Oh, what a school for great and small! But when is this new era of the real and the true in art to begin? You boy artists, who are just opening glad eyes to the glorious light, the great world looks toyouto inaugurate the new, to pour ancient lore and mystic symbols and grand old art into the waiting crucible, and melt the whole, with your burning, creative genius, into forms and conceptions before which, hearts shall be silent in very rapture. But the time is not yet. One here and there cannot change the Iron to a Golden Age, and it is to thoughts rather than their great embodiments that earnest art-worshippers now bow. And yet men fancy they are artists, dream of a fame glorious as that of Phidias! Why there's young Acajou, who chiselled a very respectable hound out of a stray lump of marble, stealthily, by a candle, or more probably a spirit lamp, in his father's cellar—was discovered and straightway heroized. I don't say the boy hasn't talent, genius if you will; but it isn't the genius that will overflow his soul and etherealizehis whole nature. Yet already he 'progresses like a giantess,' has attracted some attention in the Academy, and will directly be sent to Rome. But the idea! I know him too well! The other night I heard him criticizing Michael Angelo! and when I gave him an engraving of that delicious Psyche of Theed's to admire, the creature talked as if she were a manikin or a robed skeleton! Is there nothing due to the idea, Acajou? 'The idea!' dear me, why he didn't exactly know what theideawas! So he'll go trolling about the Louvre and the Luxembourg gallery, the Pitti palace and all Rome, and his mind will be as full of elbows and collar bones as the catacombs; he'll talk to you of the Grecian line of beauty and of 'pose,' and sketch you such a glorious arm or ankle that you, fair lady, wouldn't know it from your own! But do you see a single softened line in his own face? Has he ever drunk deep draughts from old fountains of poesy? Has he ever thought of the Vatican library—even though to long is all he may do? Oh no! He says mythology is a wornout dream, and insulting to a Christian age; that it's all well enough to know Jupiter and Bacchus (Silenus too?) and Venus and the head men back there, but this century wants originality, progress! Oh, pshaw!
Oh, but I was saying that Our Lady stood over the half moon, and Henrietta sat below it, with that soft cashmere morning dress, fighting all around her to see which fold should cling most lovingly to her graceful form. It was all a delicious poem to me, and if I were Horace, you would have had a splendid ode. Oh, well!
'Why, what a Joseph he is!' said Henrietta, waking me out of this reverie.
'Oh,' said I, starting, 'how did you know that?'
'Only conjecture, my dear friend; but when we see a man with his eyes fixed in that ghostly way, and his mustaches and all in perfect repose, we reasonably imagine that he's seeing visions; and I suppose you'll come flaming out presently with some dreams that shall have, for remote consequences, a throne in some Eastern paradise, and a princess, perhaps—who knows?'
'Who knows?' echoed I; 'but go on, Hypatia.'
'Oh yes! where shall I begin? Oh! there is Penhurst Lane, girls, you remember?'
'The raven?' said Bertha.
'No,' said Fanny, 'that is Mr. Rawdon. Penhurst Lane is an idealist.'
'Averyidealist, just so,' returned Harry. 'Well, the way I've been a martyr to that man's caprice is perfectly heart-rending. He came of some gorgeous family in the middle of Pennsylvania, where all the tribes, like leaning towers, incline toward Germany. To be sure, you'd never dream it from his looks, for he is a perfect Mark Antony in that respect. You needn't laugh. Didn't he havebonnes fortunesas well as Alcibiades? Not that Penhurst hadbonnes fortunes, or ever dreamed of such things; but he always had such a proclivity toward any one who would listen to his harangues; and I must say, justinter nos(the only bit of Latin I know, Lenox, I got it from the English 'Don Giovanni'), that I have quite a talent for listening well. But I'd as lief encounter a West India hurricane or a simoom. I used to feel him coming an hour beforehand. Then I would read a little in Blair, take a peep at Sir Charles Grandison, swallow half a page of Cowper's 'Task,' and look over the Grecian and Roman heroes; then I was fortified. 'Why didn't I take Shelley?' Oh my! why, he couldn't endure Shelley, said he was a poor, weak creature,all gone to imagination! Then I would assume a Sontag and thick boots, if the weather was cold, to appear sensible, you know, and await his coming; that is, if I didn't become exasperated before that stage, and rush in to see Lil Brennan to avoid him. And his opinions, such an unfolding! You never caughthim looking with admiration, oh no! I might have laid a wilderness of charms on the floor, at his very feet, and he would have brushed them all away with indifference. His mind revolved around a weightier theme than any 'lady of fashion;' like a newly discovered moon, he flew around the earth, and with miraculous speed. He stopped in China to say 'Confucius;' in India, to say 'Brahma;' in Persia, to say 'Ormuzd;' and so on around. My dear Lenox, if you had asked him whether Ormuzd was at peace with all the world, he would have retired into himself, for he hadn't the faintest idea. As for music, or any fine art, he never approached it but once, when he led me to the piano, begging for some native American melody, and not a German romance. Well, I played him 'God save the Queen,' with extravagant variations, which he took for 'Yankee Doodle.' No matter! I made a mistake when I spoke of his opinions; he hadn't any. He was what some call 'well read,' that is, he had a distant desire to 'improve his mind,' but his magnificent self so filled his little vision, that his great desire was obscured and distorted. Like my beloved Jean Paul, he had once said to himself,Ich bin ein Ich(I am aME), and the noble consciousness overwhelmed him, and excluded all after thoughts on any minor subject. He never heard Grisi, never saw Rachel; they were triflers, 'life was too grave, too short;' but he escorted me occasionally to lectures and orations. I remember two or three of these. A lecture on the 'Fossils of Humanity and Primeval Formations,' which was unintelligible, consequently to him 'sublime;' one on 'the Exalted,' that soared out of sight and beyond the empire of gravity, and one on 'Architecture,' by Dr. Vinton, a splendid production, the fruit and evidence of years of study and rare talent, that sent me home with longings and unaccustomed reverence for the Great in every form, and with grief that my own ignorance rendered it only a half-enjoyed pleasure to me; while Penhurst talked as if it were only the echo of his own thoughts; pretended to say it was very 'sensible!' But you've had enough of Mr. Lane, who was never known to laugh except at his own wit, who patronized me because I was a 'solid' young lady, and not given to flights. You may readily imagine that our interviews were generallytête-à-têtes, for general society was to him a thing 'stale, flat, and unprofitable.' Of course you know I only endured his visits because among the girls it was considered a compliment to receive them, and they were all dying of envy. Besides and principally, it is neither politic nor pleasant to offend any one, and I could not have denied myself to him, without doing this; so'—
'But, Harry, he is married now.'
'Ah me! yes. He saw me in a cap and bells once with you, Lenox, and not many weeks afterward married a damsel who reveres him as a Solon, this man, who said:
——'The wanderingsOf this most intricate UniverseTeach me the nothingness of things.Yet could not all creation pierceBeyond the bottom of his eye.'
'Areyou done, Harry?'
'Yes, Lenox.'
'Then sing us Béranger'sGrace à la fêve, je suis roi.'
She has such a delicious voice.
'And while I am on tiresome people, who think only of themselves, let me recall P. George Rawdon; the Raven, Bertha; I always believed his first name was Pluto, because of the shades around him. They say every one has a text book; his was neither the Bible, the Prayer Book, Thomas à Kempis,La Nouvelle Héloise, or 'Queechy,' but Mrs. Crowe's 'Night Side of Nature.' Talk of having a skeleton in the house! the most distressing ones that ever preceded Douglas and Sherwood's were nothing to him! he reminded one constantly of an Egyptian feast. He lookedsadly at children, and gave little Henry Parsons, his godchild, a miniature dagger with a jewelled handle, with which the child nearly destroyed his right hand. When poor Mary was married, he walked mournfully up to the altar, and stared during the ceremony unmistakably at an imaginary coffin, hanging, like Mohammed's, midway between the ceiling and the floor. Poor man, it's really curious, but he contrives to be always in mourning, and everybody knows that he goes only to see tragedies, and has the dyspepsia, like Regina and her diamond cross, from principle. He composes epitaphs for all the ladies of his acquaintance, and presents them, like newspaper-carrier addresses, on New Year's days. I have one in my writing desk in a very secret drawer; asoul-cheering effusion, but not particularly agreeable to the physical humanity. This I intend to bequeath to the British museum, where it will be in future ages as great a treat to the antiquary as the Elgin marbles. What a doleful subject—pass him by!'
'Don't forget Leon Channing,' suggested Fanny, who was listening with great interest, and from a natural dread of ghosts and vampires was glad to see that Mr. Rawdon had come to a crisis.
'Dear me, no!' said Henrietta, cheerily, 'it's quite refreshing to come to an individual who creates a smile. I never was born for tears and lamentations, Bertha, any more than a lily was made to be merry; and if it were not for Len Channing, I don't suppose I should ever have been sharpened to such a dangerous degree; it's this constant friction, you know; well, as some darling of a cosmopolite has said, 'We must allow for friction in the most perfect machinery—yes, be glad to find it—for a certain degree of resistance is essential to strength. I like Leon very well. No one is more safe in a parlor engagement, always in the right place at the right tune, never embarrassed, neverde trop; but then the queer consciousness, when he's giving you a meringué or an ice, that if you were a 'real pretty,' graceful, conversible fawn or dove he would be doing it with the same interest!Why?Oh, because he says women belong to a lower order in the animal creation! Yes, veil your face, Mr. Lenox Raleigh, and be mournful that you are a man! 'A lower order of humanity!' Well, of course, I'm always quarrelling with him. To be sure he's a shallow kind of a philosopher, one of your rationalists; thinks Boston is the linchpin of the whole universe; has autograph letters from Emerson and Longfellow, and all that sort of thing. Now, I dare say it's very fine for a Schelling or a Hegel once in a while to beam over the earth, but it always seems inharmonious to me to see little jets of philosophers popping up in your face and then down again, all the time, thinking themselves great things. That's the way with Leon. Let me tell you what happened when I saw him last; and that was in Cologne, more than a year ago. I was sitting in our room with a great folio of Retzsch's engravings before me, and father writing horrible notes in his journal at the table, and wishing the eleven thousand virgins and all Cologne in the bottom of the Rhine, when I looked up, and somehow there was Leon. Of course we were rejoiced to see him, it's always so pleasant to meet friends abroad. After some talk, father went out to take another look at the cathedral, and indulge in speculations and legends, and left Leon and me in the window. It's as queer and horrible an old town, girls, as you ever dreamed of, and, as there was nothing external very fascinating, Leon soon turned his gaze inward, and, after twanging several minor strings, began to harp on his endless 'inferiority of woman.' I plied him, you may know; I gave him Zenobias and Didos and de Staels and de Medicis—in an emergency Pope Joan, and finally the Boston Margaret Fuller. Leon only stroked his beard and smiled.
''Miss Henrietta,' said he, at last, when I stopped in exultation, 'do you grant the Africans the vigor or variety of intellect of the Europeans?'
''No,' said I.
''Yet you concede that there may be instances among them, where education and culture have developed great results.'
''Yes,' I thought, 'there might be.'
''Just as I, bewildered by Miss Henrietta's keen shafts and graceful manœuvres, yield that a woman is, once in a century, gifted with a man's depth of thought and her sex's loveliness.' The comparison was odious. What did I do? Oh, I (the swarthy Ethiop) only rose from my faded arm chair, saluted Mr. Channing (the lordly European) as if I were his partner in a quadrille, and brought out my cameos and mosaics to show him. In about half an hour the beauty of his reasoning and comparison reached his brain, but mine was impenetrable to his most honeyed apologies; as I very sweetly assured him, 'I couldn't understand, didn't see the drift, couldn't connect the links.' Leon says ancient history is a fable, and Herodotus a myth, and all because awomansat upon the tripod at Delphi, and because awomanwore the helmet and carried the shield of wisdom.'
'What's the matter, Harry?' asked Fanny, compassionately, as her small fingers were stretched like infant grid-irons before her eyes, and a silence ensued.
'My new bonnet, Fanny dear, I am wondering what it shall be; we must go down this very morning and decide.'
Did you ever think, Narcissus, and you, Gustav, and all of you boys, when you are engaged in your small diplomacies andcoups de main, and feeling like giants in intellect beside the dear little girls who play polkas for you of evenings and sing sweet ballads, thatpour bien juger les grands, il faut les approcher? I thought so that morning, as I heard the animated discussion that succeeded Henrietta's monologue; a discussion into which all sorts of delicate conceits of lace and flowers entered largely, and which savored about as much of the preceding elements as last night's Charlotte Russe of this morning's coffee.
Since Henrietta's oration, I am more than ever afraid of a Vulcan. It is very plain that our most fashionably cut suits and most delicately perfumed billets are not all powerful,—that the dear creatures are either waking or we have been asleep.Reveillons!
'Aux armes, citoyens!'
Now, while I was writing that last word, a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and looking up, I saw—Nap. I love Nap. I have a girlish weakness (let some lady arraign me for this hereafter) for him; so I shouted out and grasped his hands.
'How are the boys?'
'Flourishing. Come to stay?
'Yes, old fellow.'
'Stocks up?'
'To the sky.'
'The governor?'
'All right.'
Ihaven't any governor. Nap has; and one that saw fit to persecute him from twenty to thirty, because he declined to take 'orders.'Per Bacco!Never mind, a fit of paralysis has shaken the opposition out of the old gentleman at last, and Nap is in sunshine in consequence, and rushes around Wall street like a veteran.
But I didn't promise to tell you about Nap, or the girls either; it was only a few rays of light I had to dash over 'our beaux;' so where is your mother, belle Beatrice? I must make my adieux.
What say you, little one? You like Henrietta; you want to see her again? You pull me back with your wee white hands; I will talk to you for an hour longer, if I may hold the little kittens in my own. I may? And kiss each finger afterward? Ah! you dear child! Well, then—
'Are you going to Van Wyck's to-night, Lenox?' asked Bertha of me, as we rose from dinner, a month afterward.
'Yes, after the opera. And you? I fancy—yes—from your eyes.'
Bertha did not answer, and I strolled up stairs into the little back drawing room. From the library above I could hear Fanny's merry voice and the ring of Nap's cheery replies. Such a comfort as it was to me to see those two so fond of each other. You see I am, in a way, Fanny's father, and took no very great credit to myself when she half laid her hand in the extended one of Snowe. How curiously that witch Harry managed the thing, though! Dear little Fan; she stood in more than one twilight by the garden window, and whispered over: 'Addio,Francesca!addio,Cecco!' and Snowe faded in the returning spring of her heart, and into the blooming vista of their separation, hopefully walked Nap, and was welcomed with many smiles.
This afternoon, I walked over to the garden window, and there was Harry, scrawling an old, bearded hermit on the glass with her diamond ring. We both looked out—nothing much to see—a New York garden, thirty feet square, with the usual gorgeousness of our winter flowers!
'You are thinking of Shiraz, Harry.'
'Yes,' said she, dreamily, 'I am thinking of Shiraz!'
She didn't say it, but don't you suppose I knew just as well that she was wishing for her Vulcan and a great rose garden? I began to sing the 'Last Man,' but didn't succeed admirably; then I lighted my pipe—Harry didn't mind, you know, indeed she only looked at it wishfully.
'In my rose garden,' said she, with a laugh, 'I shall smoke to kill the rosebugs.'
'Don't wait,' said I, taking down a daintyécume de mer(the back drawing room was my peculiar 'study,' and the repository of several gentlemanly 'improprieties'), and I adjusted the amber mouth piece to the cherry stem, 'Don't wait for Persia, make your rose garden here.'
Harry shook her head: 'You know, Len,' she said, 'that my roses would grow like so many witches in a Puritan soil. I always thought that story of the Norwegians' taking rosebuds for bulbs of fire, and being terrified, was a very delicate and poetical satire uponallsuperstition.'
'Are you going to wash awayallsuperstition?' I asked hastily.
'No,' said she, with a smile at my fierceness; 'no, I like to see the sun shine on the dew drops that the webs catch and swing between the tops of the grasses.'
I looked at her as she laid her head back against the curtains. My nonchalance was as striking as hers, and—as genuine! We were no children to be awkward in any event. I took her hand; it was a glowing pulse—and mine? She wore one of those curious little cabal rings; there were the Hebrew characters for Faith, traced as with a gold pen dipped in melted pearls on black enamel. My seal was an emerald, Faith also, impaled. I snatched it up and laid it by the ring on her hand. She smiled—such a smile! intensest sympathy, deepest! Could it be? to love the same old symbols, the same weird music? I caught her close, and bent over her lips. The gold hair waved over my shoulder; the great, glittering eyes foamed into mine, then melted and swam into deep, quivering seas of dreams. I whispered, 'Zoe mou!' Oh, the quick, golden whisper, the flash of genial heartiness, the daring—oh,howtender! 'Sas agapo.' I held her off, radiant, glowing, fragrant, and Bertha's dress rustled up the stairs.
Henrietta stooped to pick up the seal, which had fallen; she balanced it on the tip of her finger—the nervy Titan queen! and drew Bertha down by her side on the sofa. It was growing dark.
'I must be off, girls, and get your camelias. What will you have, Bertha? a red or a white, you've a moment to decide?'
'Neither, Len; I do not go.'
'Why, Bertha? Oh! I remember, it is your anniversary,' and I kissed her.
'And you, princess!' I turned to Henrietta.
'Only roses, good my liege.'
What was the opera that night? Pshaw! what a rhetorical affectation this question! as if I could ever forget!Die Zauberflöte, and it rang pure and clear through my thrilled heart. It followed me around to Van Wyck's, where I found Henrietta and Fanny. A compliment to madame, a German with mademoiselle, and home again. A great light streamed out of the drawing room. I pushed the door open. With a cry of joy, Fan rushed into the arms of the grave, fair man who put Bertha off his knee to welcome her. Nap, who had followed us in, for a moment stood transfixed, and Henrietta, more quiet, stood by their side, saying: 'Here is Harry, Fred, when you choose to see her.' And he did choose, her own brother, whom she had not seen for three years!
'Come in, Nap,' I said. 'Fred Ruyter.'
'Nap and Fanny,' I whispered; Fred smiled invisibly.
And Bertha? Oh, you know, of course, that she's Bertha Ruyter, and that Fred is her husband, just home from six months in Rio, and exactly a year from his wedding night! Oh, Lionardo! what mellow, transparent, flowing shades drowned us all that night!
'Harry,' I said, the next morning, before I went down town, as I lounged over her sofa, 'you have my emerald?'
'Yes!' and her bright face turned up to mine.
'You will keep it, and take me also, dear?'
'Ma foi! oui,' was the sweet, smiling reply.
'I'm not quite ugly enough for a Vulcan, I know; but after a while, if you are patient, who knows? What sayest thou, Venus?'
'I will try you,bon camarade.'
'Your hand upon it, Harry.'
She gave it; I kissed the gold hair that waved against my lips. Fanny rushed impetuously upon us, with half-opened eyes, and stifled us with caresses.
'Such a proposal,' said she musingly, after she had returned to her wools and beads, '14° above zero!'
'And the Polyphemus, Fanny?'
'Is for Nap,' and Fanny blushed and laughed. She was wondering if that great event, an 'engagement,' always came about in so prosaic a way. But looking at Bertha, I caught the bright, long, gravely humorous gleam from her dark eyes, and walked upon it all the way down to Exchange Place.
Adieu, little Beatrice; my story hath at last an ending. Keep the little hands and little heart warm for somebody brave by and by. Go shining about and dancing, and smiling, Hummingbird; may sweetest flowers always bloom around you; may you dwell in a fragrant rose garden of your own,mignonne! Adieu.
Take the diamonds from my forehead—their chill weight but frets my brow!How they glitter! radiant, faultless—but they give no pleasure now.Once they might have saved a Poet, o'er whose bed the violet waves:Now their lustre chills my spirit, like the light from new-made graves.Quick! unbind the braided tresses of my coroneted hair!Let it fall in single ringlets such as I was wont to wear.Take that wreath of dewy violets, twine it round their golden flow;Let the perfumed purple blossoms fall upon my brow of snow!Simple flowers, ye gently lead me back into the sunny years,Ere I wore proud chains of diamonds, forged of bitter, frozen tears!Bring the silver mirror to me! I am changed since those bright days,When I lived with my sweet mother, and a Poet sang my praise.My blue eyes are larger, dimmer; thicker lashes veil their light;Upon my cheek the crimson rose fast is fading to the white.I am taller, statelier, slighter, than I was in days of yore:—If his eyes in heaven behold me, does he praise me as before?Proudly swells the silken rustle—all around is wealth and state,—Dearer far the early roses twining round the wicker gate,Where my mother came at evening with the saint-like forehead pale,And the Poet sat beside her, conning o'er his rhythmed tale.As he read the linked lines over, she would sanction, disapprove:Soft and musical the pages, but he never sang of love.I had lived through sixteen summers, he was only twenty-one,And we three still sat together at the hour of setting sun.Lowly was the forest cottage, but the sweetbrier wreathed it well;'Mid its violets and roses, bees and robins loved to dwell.Wilder forms of larch and hemlock climbed the mountain at its side;Fairy-like a rill came leaping where the quivering harebells sighed.Glittering, bounding, singing, dancing, ferns and mosses loved its track;Lower in it dipped the willows, as to kiss the cloudland's rack.Soon there came a stately lover,—praised my beauty, softly smiled:'He would make my mother happy,'—I was but a silly child!Came a dream of sudden power—fairest visions o'er me glide—Wider spheres would open for me;—dazzled, I became a bride:Fondly deemed my lonely mother would be freed from sordid care;Splendor I might pour around her, every joy with her might share.Then the Poet, who had never breathed one word of love to me,—We might shape his life-course for him, give him culture wide and free.How I longed to turn the pages, with a husband's hand as guide,Of the long-past golden ages, art and science at my side!To my simple fancy seemed it almost everything he knew—Ah! he might have won affection, faithful, fervent, trusting, true!I was happy, never dreaming wealth congeals the human soul,Freezing all its generous impulse—I but saw its wide control.Years have passed—a larger culture poured strange knowledge through my mind—I have learned to read man's nature: better I were ever blind!How can I take upon me what I look upon with scorn,Or learn to brook my own contempt, or trample the forlorn?I cannot live by rote and rule; I was not born a slaveTo narrow fancies; I must feel, although a husband rave!I cannot choose my friends because I know them rich, or great;My heart elects the noble,—what cares love for wealth or state?Very lovely are my pictures, saints and angels throng my hall—But with shame my cheek is flushing, and my quivering lashes fall:Can I gaze on pictured actions, daring deeds, and emprise high,And not feel my degradation while these fetters round me lie?Once the Poet came to see me, but it gave me nought but pain;I was glad to see the Gifted go, ne'er to return again.For my husband scorning told me: 'True, his lines were very sweet,But his clothes, so worn and seedy—scarce for me acquaintance meet!Artists, poets, men of genius, truly should be better paid,But not holding our position, cannot be our friends,' he said.'As gentlemen to meet them were a very curious thing;They were happier in their garrets—there let them sigh or sing.There were Travers and De Courcy—could he ask them home to dine,At the risk of meeting truly such strange fellows o'er their wine?'Then he said, 'My cheeks were peachy, lips were coral, curls were gold,But he liked them braided crown-like, and with pearls and diamonds rolled.I was once a little peasant; now I stood a jewelled queen—Fitter that a calmer presence in his stately wife were seen!'Then he gave a gorgeous card-case; set with rubies, Roman gold,Handed me a paper with it, strands of pearls around it rolled;Names of all his wife should visit I would find upon the roll:—Found I none I loved within it—not one friend upon the scroll!And my mother, God forgive me! I was glad to see her go,Ere the current of her loving heart had turned like mine to snow.Must I still seem fair and stately, choking down my bosom's strife,Because 'all deep emotions were unseemly in his wife'?Must I gasp 'neath diamonds' glitter—walk in lustrous silken sheen—Leaving those I love in anguish while I play some haughty scene?I am choking! closer round me crowds convention's stifling vault—Every meanness's called a virtue—every virtue deemed a fault!Every generous thought is scandal; every noble deed is crime;Every feeling's wrapped in fiction, and truth only lives in rhyme!No;—I am not fashion's minion,—I am not convention's slave!If 'obedience is for woman,' still she has a soul to save.Must I share their haughty falsehood, take my part in social guile,Cut my dearest friends, and stab them with a false, deceitful smile?Creeping like a serpent through me, faint, I feel a deadly chill,Freezing all the good within me, icy fetters chain my will.Do I grow like those around me? will I learn to bear my partIn this glittering world of fashion, taming down a woman's heart?Must I lower to my husband? is it duty to abateAll the higher instincts in me, till I grow his fitting mate?Shall I muse on noble pictures, turn the poet's stirring page,And grow base and mean in action, petty with a petty age?I am heart-sick, weary, weary! tell me not that this life,Where all that's truly living must be pruned by fashion's knife!—I can make my own existence—spurn his gifts, and use my hands,Though the senseless world of fashion for the deed my memory brands.Quick! unbraid the heavy tresses of my coroneted hair—Let its gold fall infreeringlets such as I was wont to wear.I am going back to nature. I no more will school my heartTo stifle its best feelings, play an idle puppet's part.I will seek my banished mother, nestle closely on her breast;Noble, faithful, kind, and loving, there the tortured one may rest.We will turn the Poets' pages, learn the noblest deeds to act,Till the fictions in their beauty shall be lived as simple fact.I will mould a living statue, make it generous, strong, and high,Humble, meek, self-abnegating, formed to meet the Master's eye.Oh, the glow of earnest culture! Oh, the joy of sacrifice!The delight to help another! o'er all selfish thoughts to rise!Farewell, cold and haughty splendor—how you chilled me when a bride!Hollow all your mental efforts; meanness all your dazzling pride!Put the diamonds in their caskets! pearls and rubies, place them there!I shall never sigh to wear them with the violets in my hair.Freedom! with no eye upon me freezing all my fiery soul;Free to follow nature's dictates; free from all save God's control.I am going to the cottage, with its windows small and low,Where the sweetbrier twines its roses and the Guelder rose its snow.I will climb the thymy mountains where the pines in sturdy mightFollow nature's holy bidding, growing ever to the light;Tracking down the leaping streamlet till the willows on it rise,Watch its broad and faithful bosom strive to mirror back the skies.Through the wicker gate at evening with my mother I will come,With a little book, the Poet's, to read low at set of sun.'Tis a gloomy, broken record of a love poured forth in death,Generous, holy, and devoted, sung with panting, dying breath.By the grassy mound we'll read it where he calmly sleeps in God,—My gushing tears may stream above—they cannot pierce the sod!Hand in hand we'll sit together by the lowly mossy grave—Oh, God! I blazed with jewels, but the noble dared not save!I am going to the cottage, there to sculpture my own soul,Till it fill the high ideal of the Poet's glowing roll.