SUNDAY IN GOTHAM.’Tis Sabbath morning in Now York. You are wakened by children’s voices, pitched in every variety of key, vying which shall shout the loudest: “Her’ld—Dispatch—Sun’y Times—Sunny Atlas”—parenthetized by an occasional street-fight between the sturdy little merchants, when one encroaches on the other’s “beat.” You have scarce recovered from their ear-splitting chorus, before the air is rent by a sound like ten thousand Indian war-whoops, and an engine thunders by, joined by every little ragamuffin whose legs are old enough to follow. Close upon the heels of this comes the milk-man, who sits philosophically on his cart, and glancing up at the windows, utters a succession of sounds, the like of which never was heard in heaven above, or earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.Now, saloons and cigar stores open half a shutter each, and apple-stalls multiply at street corners. Then the bells ring for church, and, with head and heart distracted, you obey the summons. On your way you pass troops of people bound to Hoboken, Jersey, Williamsburg—anywhere, but to the house of God. Groups of idle young men, with their best beavers cocked over one eye, stand smoking and swearing at the street corners; and now Yankee Doodle strikes on your ear, for the dead is left to his dreamless sleep, and the world jogs on to a merrier measure.You enter the church porch. The portly sexton, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, meets you at the door. He glances at you: your hat and coat are new, so he graciously escorts you to an eligible seat in the broad aisle. Close behind you follows a poor, meek, plainly-clad seamstress, reprieved from her treadmill round, to think one day in seven of the Immortal. The sexton is struck with a sudden blindness. She stands one embarrassed moment, then, as the truth dawns upon her, retraces her steps, and, with a crimson blush, recrosses the threshold, which she had profaned with her plebeian foot.Now the worshipers one after another glide in; silks rustle; plumes wave; satins glisten; diamonds glitter; and scores of forty-dollar handkerchiefs shake out their perfumed odors.What an absurdity to preach the gospel of the lowly Nazarite to such a set! The clergyman knows better than to do so. He values his fat salary and his handsome parsonage too highly. So with a velvet-y tread he walks round the ten commandments, places the downiest of pillows under the dying profligate’s head, and ushers him with seraphic hymning into an upper-ten heaven.From this disgusting farce let me take you to the lecture-room of the Rev. Dr. Tyng. It is the first Sunday afternoon of the month (when he regularly meets the children of his parish, who are mostly members of his Sabbath-school). It would seem aneasy thing to address a company of children. Let him who thinks so, try it! Let him be familiar without being flat; let him be instructive, and at the same time entertaining; let him fix roving eyes; let him nail skittish ears; let him stop just at the moment when a child’s mental appetite has lost its digestive power. All this requires a—Dr. Tyng.See—group after group of bright faces gather around him, and take their seats; not one is afraid of “the minister.” He has a smile of love and a word of kindness for all. He has closed his churchpurposelyto meet them, and given the grown-folks to understand, that the soul of a child is as priceless as an adult’s, and that he has a message from God for each little one, as well as for father and mother and uncle John. He asks some question aloud. Instantly a score of little voices hasten to reply, as fearlessly as if they were by their own fire-side. He wishes to fix some important idea in their mind: he illustrates it by an anecdote, which straightway discloses rows of little pearly teeth about him. He holds up no reproving finger when some lawless, gleeful little two-year-older rings out a laugh musical as a robin’s carol. He calls on “John,” and “Susy,” and “Fanny,” and “Mary,” with the most parental familiarity and freedom. He askstheir opinionon some point (children like that!), he repeats little things they have said to him (theirminister has time to remember what even a little child says!) He takes his hymn-book and reads a few sweet, simpleverses; he pitches the tunehimself, and, at a wave of his hand, the bright-eyed cherubs join him.Look around. There is a little Fifth Avenue pet, glossy haired, velvet skinned—her dainty limbs clad in silk and velvet. Close by her side, sits a sturdy, freckled, red-fisted little Erin-ite, scantily clad enough for November, but as happy, and as unconscious of the deficiency as his tiny elbow neighbor; on the same seat is a little African, whose shiny eye-balls and glittering teeth, say as plainly as if he gave utterance to it,we are all equal, all welcome here.Oh,thisis Christianity—this is the Sabbath—this is millennial. Look around that room, listen to those voices, if you can, without a tear in your eye, a prayer in your heart, and Christ’s sweet words upon your lips: “Feed my Lambs.”ANNIVERSARY TIME.MR. GOUGH AT THE OPERA HOUSE.Funny, isn’t it? Country ministers, with their wives and daughters, in the unhallowed precincts of an Opera House! I trust they crossed themselves on the threshold, by way of exorcising Beelzebub. Observe their furtive glances at the naked little dimplednesses perched upon yonder wooden pillars. How legibly is—Saints and angels! where are thosechildren’s trowsers? written upon the elongated corners of their evangelical mouths. R-a-t-h-e-r different, I confess, from the Snagtown “meetin’-house,” with its slam-down seats, its swallow-nested roof, and its shirt-sleeved chorister; but, my strait-laced friends, if you strain at a harmless marble Cupid, how could you swallow an electric flesh-and-blood ballet-dancer? Such as we are wont to see in this house? I have tried to educate myself up to it, but may I be pinched this minute if I do not catch myself diligently perusing the play-bill, whenever they execute one of their astounding rotarypas. I can’t stand it; and yet my friends, at the risk of being excommunicated, allow me to say, that I would rather stand a ballet-dancer’s chance of getting to heaven, than that of many a vinegar-visaged saint of high repute in your churches.But this is a digression. Just see those women seating themselveson the stage. Saucy as I am, I could not do that; nor, if I did, would I put my feet upon the rounds of a chair in front of me—and the audience. How patriarchal Solon Robinson looks, with his clear, calm face, and his long, snow-white beard! He is quite a picture. What a pity he ever burned his fingers with “Hot Corn.” But let him throw the first stone who has never by one well-meant, but mistaken act of his life, called forth the regretful “what a pity!” The river which never overflows its banks may never devastate, nor—does it ever freshen the distant and arid Sahara.Many a poor man has blessed, and will bless, the name of Solon Robinson; and many a hard-toiling woman, too, whom he has instructed how to procure the most nutriment for her starving children from an old bone or a couple of onions. Let those who make wry mouths at “Hot Corn,” taste his “poor man’s soup,” and do justice to the active brain and philanthropic heart of its originator.I used to think the “New York Tribune,” of which Solon is agricultural editor, a great institution, until I discovered two things: first, the number of able, talented, practical men employed in its getting up; secondly, that abull’s headis kept constantly seething in the machine boiler to impart a wholesome ferocity to its paragraphs!Hush! here comes the speaker of the evening—John B. Gough, supported by Dr. Tyng (who believes in preaching to dear little children, as well as to their fathers and mothers). John says, “Ladies and gentlemen” (not—Gentlemenand ladies, as do some ungallant orators). “Ladies and gentlemen, when the admission tickets are twenty-five cents I feel doubtful of giving you your money’s worth; judge then how a fifty cent ticket embarrasses me.” A very politic preface, John; but ere you had spoken five consecutive sentences, I knew it was mock-modesty. You know very well that no man understands better how to sway a crowd; you know that many an audience, who yawn through addresses that are squared, rounded, and plumb-ed bynicest rules of rhetoric, will sit spell-bound unconscious hours, and laugh and cry atyourmagnetic will. John, you are a good and a great institution, and right glad am I that the noble cause in which your eloquence is enlisted, has so pleasing and indomitable a defender.But John—it is not all inyou. Double-edged is the sword wielded in ajustcause; and not a man, woman, or child has listened to your burning words to-night who did not know and feel that you spoke God’s truth.Success to the Temperance cause, and all its apostles, both great and small; and above all,neverletwoman’slip baptize the bowl, which, for aught she can tell, may sepulcher her dearest hopes this side heaven.WAYSIDE WORDS.I wonder is there a country on the face of the earth, where the Almighty is oftener called upon to send to perdition the souls of those who offend its inhabitants? Everywhere that horrid imprecation, so familiar that it is unnecessary to shock you by writing it, meets the pained ear. I say pained, because I, for one, can not abhor it less on account of its frequency, or consider it less disgusting, because it filters through aristocratic lips. Everywhere it pursues me; in crowded streets, on ferry boats, inomnibusses, and, I am sorry to say, in ladies’ parlors, which should afford a refuge from this disgusting habit.From old men—whose toothless lips mumble it almost inarticulately; from those who would resent to the death any question of their claim to the title of gentlemen; from young men, glorious else, in the strength and vigor of youth; and sadder still—from little children, who have caught the trick, and bandy curses at their sports.An oath from a child’s lips!One would as soon expect a thunderbolt from out the heart of a rose. And yet, there are those who deliberatelyteachlittle children to swear, and think it sport, when the rosy lips, with childish grace, lisp the demoniac lesson.An oath from awoman’slips! With shuddering horror we shrink away, and ask, what bitter cup of wrong, suffering, and despair, man has doomed her to drink to the dregs, ere she could so belie her beautiful womanhood.One lovely moonlight night, I was returning late from the opera, with a gentleman friend, the delicious tones I had heard still floating through my charmed brain. Suddenly from out a dark angle in a building we passed, issued a woman; old, not in years, but in misery, for her long, brown hair curtained a face whose beauty had been its owner’s direst curse. To my dying day I shall never forget the horrid oaths of that wretched woman as she faced the moonlight and me. Perhaps I had evokedsome vision of happier days, when she, too, had a protecting arm to lean upon; sure I am, could she have read my heart, she would not have cursed me. But oh, the wide gulf between what she must have been and what she was! Oh, the dreadful reckoning to be required at the hands of him who defaced this temple of the living God, and left it a shapeless, blackened ruin!CHARLOTTE BRONTE.Who has not read “Jane Eyre?” and who has not longed to know the personal history of its gifted author? At last we have it. Poor Charlotte Bronte! So have I seen a little bird trying bravely with outspread wings to soar, and as often beaten back by the gathering storm-cloud—not discouraged—biding its time for another trial—singing feebly its quivering notes as if to keep up its courage—growing bolder in each essay till the eye ached in watching its triumphant progress—up—up—into the clear blue of heaven.Noble Charlotte Bronte! worthy to receive the baptism of fire which is sent to purify earth’s gifted. I see her on the gloomy moors of Haworth, in the damp parsonage-house—skirted by the grave-yard, sickening with its unwholesome exhalations, crushing down, at the stern bidding of duty, her gloomy thoughts and aspirations; tending patiently the irritable sick, performing cheerfully the most menial household offices; the days “passing in a slow and dead march;” cheered by no mother’s loving smile, or rewarding kiss; waiting patiently upon the hard, selfish, unsympathizing father, who saw, one by one, his gifted daughters sink into untimely graves, for want of the love, and sympathy, and companionship for which their yearning hearts were aching.I see these sisters at night, released from toil, when their father had retired to rest, denied the cheerful candle-light, pacing up and down, in utter darkness, the dreary little sitting-room, talking of the vacant past and present, and trying vainly to pierce the impenetrable future for one glimmering ray of hope; and as years passed on, and vision after vision faded away—alas! with those who wove them—I see Charlotte, the last survivor of that little group, pacingalonethat desolate sitting-room; while the winds that swept over the bleak moor, and through the church-yard, and howled about the windows, seemed to the excited imagination of the lonely, feeble watcher, like the voices of her sisters shrieking to be again enfolded in her warm, sisterly embrace. Alone—allalone!—no shoulder to weep upon—no loving sister’s hand to creep about her waist—the voices of her soul crying eternally, unceasingly, vainly, Give, give—and he who gave her life, sleeping, eating, drinking, as stoically as if ten thousand deaths were not compressed, to that feeble girl, into each agonized moment.One smiles now, when the praise of “Jane Eyre” is on every tongue, at the weary way the author’s thumbed manuscript traveled from publisher to publisher, seeking a resting-place, and finding none; and when at length it did appear in book form—the caution of the sapient book-dissecting “London Athenæum” containing only “very qualified admissions of the power of the author”—also of “The Literary Gazette,” which “considered it unsafe to pronounce upon an unknown author;” also at “The Daily News,” which “did not review novels”—but found time soon afterward to notice others. Mistaken gentlemen! you were yet, like some others of your class, to take off your publishing and editorial hats to the little woman who was destined to a world-wide fame, but—and if ye have manly hearts they must have ached ere now to think of it—not until the bitter cup of privation and sorrow had been so nearly drained to the dregs by those quivering lips, that the laurel wreath, so bravely, hardly won, was twined with the cypress vine.Literary fame! alas—what is it to alovingwoman’s heart, save that it lifts her out of the miry pit of poverty and toil? To have one’s glowing thoughts handled, twisted, and distorted by coarse fingers; to shed scalding tears over the gravest charge which can be untruthfully brought against a woman’s pen; to bear it, writhing in silence, and have that silence misconstrued, or speak in your own defense, and be called unwomanly; to be a targetfor slander, envy, and misrepresentation, by those of both sexes who can not look upon a shining garment without a wish to defile it—all this, a man’s shoulders may be broad enough to bear, but she must be a strongwomanwho does not stagger under it.I see Charlotte Bronte in the little parsonage parlor, at Haworth, draperied, hung with pictures, furnished, at last, with books from the proceeds of her own pen; and upon the vacant chairs upon which should have sat the toiling, gifted sisters, over whom the grave had closed, I see inscribed, Too late—Too late! and I look at its delicate and only inmate, and trace the blue veins on her transparent temples, and say, Too late!—even forthee—Too late! Happiness is not happiness if it be not shared—it turns to misery. But, thank God, at last came the delirious draught of love, even for so brief a space, to those thirsting lips—but which, incredible as it may seem, the father, in his selfishness, would have dashed aside; relenting at last, he gave up this tender, shrinking flower to more appreciative keeping; but the blast had been too keen that had gone before—the storms too rough—the sky too inclement. We read of a wedding, the happiness of which the selfish father must cloud at the last moment, by refusing, for some inexplicable reason, or no reason at all, to give away the bride in person according to episcopal usage—we read of a short bridal tour—of a return to a love-beautified, love-sanctified home—we read of a pleasant walk of the happy pair—of a slight cold taken on that occasion—of a speedy delirium—of a conscious moment, in which the new-made bride opened wide her astonished eyes upon her kneeling husband, pleading with God to spare her precious life; and we read the heart-rending exclamation of the latter as the truth flashed upon her clouded intellect—“O! I am not to dienow?—when we have been so happy?” and with streaming eyes we turn away from the corpse of Charlotte Bronte.
’Tis Sabbath morning in Now York. You are wakened by children’s voices, pitched in every variety of key, vying which shall shout the loudest: “Her’ld—Dispatch—Sun’y Times—Sunny Atlas”—parenthetized by an occasional street-fight between the sturdy little merchants, when one encroaches on the other’s “beat.” You have scarce recovered from their ear-splitting chorus, before the air is rent by a sound like ten thousand Indian war-whoops, and an engine thunders by, joined by every little ragamuffin whose legs are old enough to follow. Close upon the heels of this comes the milk-man, who sits philosophically on his cart, and glancing up at the windows, utters a succession of sounds, the like of which never was heard in heaven above, or earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.
Now, saloons and cigar stores open half a shutter each, and apple-stalls multiply at street corners. Then the bells ring for church, and, with head and heart distracted, you obey the summons. On your way you pass troops of people bound to Hoboken, Jersey, Williamsburg—anywhere, but to the house of God. Groups of idle young men, with their best beavers cocked over one eye, stand smoking and swearing at the street corners; and now Yankee Doodle strikes on your ear, for the dead is left to his dreamless sleep, and the world jogs on to a merrier measure.
You enter the church porch. The portly sexton, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, meets you at the door. He glances at you: your hat and coat are new, so he graciously escorts you to an eligible seat in the broad aisle. Close behind you follows a poor, meek, plainly-clad seamstress, reprieved from her treadmill round, to think one day in seven of the Immortal. The sexton is struck with a sudden blindness. She stands one embarrassed moment, then, as the truth dawns upon her, retraces her steps, and, with a crimson blush, recrosses the threshold, which she had profaned with her plebeian foot.
Now the worshipers one after another glide in; silks rustle; plumes wave; satins glisten; diamonds glitter; and scores of forty-dollar handkerchiefs shake out their perfumed odors.
What an absurdity to preach the gospel of the lowly Nazarite to such a set! The clergyman knows better than to do so. He values his fat salary and his handsome parsonage too highly. So with a velvet-y tread he walks round the ten commandments, places the downiest of pillows under the dying profligate’s head, and ushers him with seraphic hymning into an upper-ten heaven.
From this disgusting farce let me take you to the lecture-room of the Rev. Dr. Tyng. It is the first Sunday afternoon of the month (when he regularly meets the children of his parish, who are mostly members of his Sabbath-school). It would seem aneasy thing to address a company of children. Let him who thinks so, try it! Let him be familiar without being flat; let him be instructive, and at the same time entertaining; let him fix roving eyes; let him nail skittish ears; let him stop just at the moment when a child’s mental appetite has lost its digestive power. All this requires a—Dr. Tyng.
See—group after group of bright faces gather around him, and take their seats; not one is afraid of “the minister.” He has a smile of love and a word of kindness for all. He has closed his churchpurposelyto meet them, and given the grown-folks to understand, that the soul of a child is as priceless as an adult’s, and that he has a message from God for each little one, as well as for father and mother and uncle John. He asks some question aloud. Instantly a score of little voices hasten to reply, as fearlessly as if they were by their own fire-side. He wishes to fix some important idea in their mind: he illustrates it by an anecdote, which straightway discloses rows of little pearly teeth about him. He holds up no reproving finger when some lawless, gleeful little two-year-older rings out a laugh musical as a robin’s carol. He calls on “John,” and “Susy,” and “Fanny,” and “Mary,” with the most parental familiarity and freedom. He askstheir opinionon some point (children like that!), he repeats little things they have said to him (theirminister has time to remember what even a little child says!) He takes his hymn-book and reads a few sweet, simpleverses; he pitches the tunehimself, and, at a wave of his hand, the bright-eyed cherubs join him.
Look around. There is a little Fifth Avenue pet, glossy haired, velvet skinned—her dainty limbs clad in silk and velvet. Close by her side, sits a sturdy, freckled, red-fisted little Erin-ite, scantily clad enough for November, but as happy, and as unconscious of the deficiency as his tiny elbow neighbor; on the same seat is a little African, whose shiny eye-balls and glittering teeth, say as plainly as if he gave utterance to it,we are all equal, all welcome here.
Oh,thisis Christianity—this is the Sabbath—this is millennial. Look around that room, listen to those voices, if you can, without a tear in your eye, a prayer in your heart, and Christ’s sweet words upon your lips: “Feed my Lambs.”
Funny, isn’t it? Country ministers, with their wives and daughters, in the unhallowed precincts of an Opera House! I trust they crossed themselves on the threshold, by way of exorcising Beelzebub. Observe their furtive glances at the naked little dimplednesses perched upon yonder wooden pillars. How legibly is—Saints and angels! where are thosechildren’s trowsers? written upon the elongated corners of their evangelical mouths. R-a-t-h-e-r different, I confess, from the Snagtown “meetin’-house,” with its slam-down seats, its swallow-nested roof, and its shirt-sleeved chorister; but, my strait-laced friends, if you strain at a harmless marble Cupid, how could you swallow an electric flesh-and-blood ballet-dancer? Such as we are wont to see in this house? I have tried to educate myself up to it, but may I be pinched this minute if I do not catch myself diligently perusing the play-bill, whenever they execute one of their astounding rotarypas. I can’t stand it; and yet my friends, at the risk of being excommunicated, allow me to say, that I would rather stand a ballet-dancer’s chance of getting to heaven, than that of many a vinegar-visaged saint of high repute in your churches.
But this is a digression. Just see those women seating themselveson the stage. Saucy as I am, I could not do that; nor, if I did, would I put my feet upon the rounds of a chair in front of me—and the audience. How patriarchal Solon Robinson looks, with his clear, calm face, and his long, snow-white beard! He is quite a picture. What a pity he ever burned his fingers with “Hot Corn.” But let him throw the first stone who has never by one well-meant, but mistaken act of his life, called forth the regretful “what a pity!” The river which never overflows its banks may never devastate, nor—does it ever freshen the distant and arid Sahara.Many a poor man has blessed, and will bless, the name of Solon Robinson; and many a hard-toiling woman, too, whom he has instructed how to procure the most nutriment for her starving children from an old bone or a couple of onions. Let those who make wry mouths at “Hot Corn,” taste his “poor man’s soup,” and do justice to the active brain and philanthropic heart of its originator.
I used to think the “New York Tribune,” of which Solon is agricultural editor, a great institution, until I discovered two things: first, the number of able, talented, practical men employed in its getting up; secondly, that abull’s headis kept constantly seething in the machine boiler to impart a wholesome ferocity to its paragraphs!
Hush! here comes the speaker of the evening—John B. Gough, supported by Dr. Tyng (who believes in preaching to dear little children, as well as to their fathers and mothers). John says, “Ladies and gentlemen” (not—Gentlemenand ladies, as do some ungallant orators). “Ladies and gentlemen, when the admission tickets are twenty-five cents I feel doubtful of giving you your money’s worth; judge then how a fifty cent ticket embarrasses me.” A very politic preface, John; but ere you had spoken five consecutive sentences, I knew it was mock-modesty. You know very well that no man understands better how to sway a crowd; you know that many an audience, who yawn through addresses that are squared, rounded, and plumb-ed bynicest rules of rhetoric, will sit spell-bound unconscious hours, and laugh and cry atyourmagnetic will. John, you are a good and a great institution, and right glad am I that the noble cause in which your eloquence is enlisted, has so pleasing and indomitable a defender.
But John—it is not all inyou. Double-edged is the sword wielded in ajustcause; and not a man, woman, or child has listened to your burning words to-night who did not know and feel that you spoke God’s truth.
Success to the Temperance cause, and all its apostles, both great and small; and above all,neverletwoman’slip baptize the bowl, which, for aught she can tell, may sepulcher her dearest hopes this side heaven.
I wonder is there a country on the face of the earth, where the Almighty is oftener called upon to send to perdition the souls of those who offend its inhabitants? Everywhere that horrid imprecation, so familiar that it is unnecessary to shock you by writing it, meets the pained ear. I say pained, because I, for one, can not abhor it less on account of its frequency, or consider it less disgusting, because it filters through aristocratic lips. Everywhere it pursues me; in crowded streets, on ferry boats, inomnibusses, and, I am sorry to say, in ladies’ parlors, which should afford a refuge from this disgusting habit.
From old men—whose toothless lips mumble it almost inarticulately; from those who would resent to the death any question of their claim to the title of gentlemen; from young men, glorious else, in the strength and vigor of youth; and sadder still—from little children, who have caught the trick, and bandy curses at their sports.An oath from a child’s lips!One would as soon expect a thunderbolt from out the heart of a rose. And yet, there are those who deliberatelyteachlittle children to swear, and think it sport, when the rosy lips, with childish grace, lisp the demoniac lesson.
An oath from awoman’slips! With shuddering horror we shrink away, and ask, what bitter cup of wrong, suffering, and despair, man has doomed her to drink to the dregs, ere she could so belie her beautiful womanhood.
One lovely moonlight night, I was returning late from the opera, with a gentleman friend, the delicious tones I had heard still floating through my charmed brain. Suddenly from out a dark angle in a building we passed, issued a woman; old, not in years, but in misery, for her long, brown hair curtained a face whose beauty had been its owner’s direst curse. To my dying day I shall never forget the horrid oaths of that wretched woman as she faced the moonlight and me. Perhaps I had evokedsome vision of happier days, when she, too, had a protecting arm to lean upon; sure I am, could she have read my heart, she would not have cursed me. But oh, the wide gulf between what she must have been and what she was! Oh, the dreadful reckoning to be required at the hands of him who defaced this temple of the living God, and left it a shapeless, blackened ruin!
Who has not read “Jane Eyre?” and who has not longed to know the personal history of its gifted author? At last we have it. Poor Charlotte Bronte! So have I seen a little bird trying bravely with outspread wings to soar, and as often beaten back by the gathering storm-cloud—not discouraged—biding its time for another trial—singing feebly its quivering notes as if to keep up its courage—growing bolder in each essay till the eye ached in watching its triumphant progress—up—up—into the clear blue of heaven.
Noble Charlotte Bronte! worthy to receive the baptism of fire which is sent to purify earth’s gifted. I see her on the gloomy moors of Haworth, in the damp parsonage-house—skirted by the grave-yard, sickening with its unwholesome exhalations, crushing down, at the stern bidding of duty, her gloomy thoughts and aspirations; tending patiently the irritable sick, performing cheerfully the most menial household offices; the days “passing in a slow and dead march;” cheered by no mother’s loving smile, or rewarding kiss; waiting patiently upon the hard, selfish, unsympathizing father, who saw, one by one, his gifted daughters sink into untimely graves, for want of the love, and sympathy, and companionship for which their yearning hearts were aching.
I see these sisters at night, released from toil, when their father had retired to rest, denied the cheerful candle-light, pacing up and down, in utter darkness, the dreary little sitting-room, talking of the vacant past and present, and trying vainly to pierce the impenetrable future for one glimmering ray of hope; and as years passed on, and vision after vision faded away—alas! with those who wove them—I see Charlotte, the last survivor of that little group, pacingalonethat desolate sitting-room; while the winds that swept over the bleak moor, and through the church-yard, and howled about the windows, seemed to the excited imagination of the lonely, feeble watcher, like the voices of her sisters shrieking to be again enfolded in her warm, sisterly embrace. Alone—allalone!—no shoulder to weep upon—no loving sister’s hand to creep about her waist—the voices of her soul crying eternally, unceasingly, vainly, Give, give—and he who gave her life, sleeping, eating, drinking, as stoically as if ten thousand deaths were not compressed, to that feeble girl, into each agonized moment.
One smiles now, when the praise of “Jane Eyre” is on every tongue, at the weary way the author’s thumbed manuscript traveled from publisher to publisher, seeking a resting-place, and finding none; and when at length it did appear in book form—the caution of the sapient book-dissecting “London Athenæum” containing only “very qualified admissions of the power of the author”—also of “The Literary Gazette,” which “considered it unsafe to pronounce upon an unknown author;” also at “The Daily News,” which “did not review novels”—but found time soon afterward to notice others. Mistaken gentlemen! you were yet, like some others of your class, to take off your publishing and editorial hats to the little woman who was destined to a world-wide fame, but—and if ye have manly hearts they must have ached ere now to think of it—not until the bitter cup of privation and sorrow had been so nearly drained to the dregs by those quivering lips, that the laurel wreath, so bravely, hardly won, was twined with the cypress vine.
Literary fame! alas—what is it to alovingwoman’s heart, save that it lifts her out of the miry pit of poverty and toil? To have one’s glowing thoughts handled, twisted, and distorted by coarse fingers; to shed scalding tears over the gravest charge which can be untruthfully brought against a woman’s pen; to bear it, writhing in silence, and have that silence misconstrued, or speak in your own defense, and be called unwomanly; to be a targetfor slander, envy, and misrepresentation, by those of both sexes who can not look upon a shining garment without a wish to defile it—all this, a man’s shoulders may be broad enough to bear, but she must be a strongwomanwho does not stagger under it.
I see Charlotte Bronte in the little parsonage parlor, at Haworth, draperied, hung with pictures, furnished, at last, with books from the proceeds of her own pen; and upon the vacant chairs upon which should have sat the toiling, gifted sisters, over whom the grave had closed, I see inscribed, Too late—Too late! and I look at its delicate and only inmate, and trace the blue veins on her transparent temples, and say, Too late!—even forthee—Too late! Happiness is not happiness if it be not shared—it turns to misery. But, thank God, at last came the delirious draught of love, even for so brief a space, to those thirsting lips—but which, incredible as it may seem, the father, in his selfishness, would have dashed aside; relenting at last, he gave up this tender, shrinking flower to more appreciative keeping; but the blast had been too keen that had gone before—the storms too rough—the sky too inclement. We read of a wedding, the happiness of which the selfish father must cloud at the last moment, by refusing, for some inexplicable reason, or no reason at all, to give away the bride in person according to episcopal usage—we read of a short bridal tour—of a return to a love-beautified, love-sanctified home—we read of a pleasant walk of the happy pair—of a slight cold taken on that occasion—of a speedy delirium—of a conscious moment, in which the new-made bride opened wide her astonished eyes upon her kneeling husband, pleading with God to spare her precious life; and we read the heart-rending exclamation of the latter as the truth flashed upon her clouded intellect—“O! I am not to dienow?—when we have been so happy?” and with streaming eyes we turn away from the corpse of Charlotte Bronte.