Did you ever pass the remains of a "boom" town in your travels? Did you never gaze upon the remains of "Bunk City," where but yesterday all was life and bustle, and to-day it looks like the ruins of Babylon? The empty fields for miles and miles around are laid off and dug up in streets, and look like they had been struck with ten thousand streaks of chain lightning. Standing here and there are huge frames holding up mammoth sign boards, bearing the names of land companies, but the land companies are gone. Half driven nails are left to rust in a few old skeleton buildings, the brick lies unmortared in half finished walls, and tenantless houses stand here and there like the ghosts of buried hope. Down by the river stands the furnace, grim and silent as the extinct crater of Popocatepetl; and the great hotel on the hill looks like the tower of Babel two thousand years after the confusion of tongues. The last of the speculators, with his blue nose and his old batteredplug hat which resembles an accordion that has been yanked by a cyclone, stands on the corner and contemplates his old sedge fields which have shrunk in value from one hundred dollars a front foot, to onedollar for a hundred front acres, and balefully sings a new song:
"After the boom is over, after the panic's on,After the fools are leavin', after the money's gone,Many a bank is "busted," if we could see in the room,Many a pocket is empty, after the boom."
"After the boom is over, after the panic's on,After the fools are leavin', after the money's gone,Many a bank is "busted," if we could see in the room,Many a pocket is empty, after the boom."
"After the boom is over, after the panic's on,
After the fools are leavin', after the money's gone,
Many a bank is "busted," if we could see in the room,
Many a pocket is empty, after the boom."
COMING.COMING.
An impecunious speculator once flooded a town with handbills and posters containing thisannouncement: "Your Uncle is coming." The streams of passers-by looked at the bill boards and wondered what it meant. The speculator rented the theatre, and one day a new flood of handbills and posters made this announcement: "Your Uncle is here." He gave orders to his stage manager to raise the curtain exactly at eight o'clock. The speculator himself stood in the door and received the admission fees and then disappeared. In their curiosity to see the performance of "Your Uncle," the villagers filled every seat in the theatre long before the hour for the performance arrived. The curtain rose at the appointed hour, and lo! on a board, in the center of the stage, was a card bearing this announcement in large letters: "Your Uncle is gone."
What a splendid illustration of modern speculation and its willing victims who are so easily led into the "Paradise of Fools!"
GONE.GONE.
But why mourn and brood over broken fortunes and the calamities of life? Why tarry in the doldrums of pessimism, with never a breeze to catch your limp and drooping sails and waft you on a joyous wave? Pessimism is the nightmare of the world. It is the prophet of famine, pestilence, and human woe. It is the apostle of the Devil, and its mission is to impede the progress of civilization. It denounces every institution established for human development as a fraud. It stigmatizes law as the machinery of injustice; it sneers at society as hollow-hearted corruption and insincerity; it brands politics as a reeking mass of rottenness, and scoffs at morality as the tinsel of sin. Its disciples are those who rail and snarl at everything that is noble and good, to whom a joke is an assault and battery, a laugh is an insult to outraged dignity, and the provocation of a smile is like passing an electric current through the facial muscles of a corpse.
God deliver us from the fools who seek to build their paradise on the ashes of those they have destroyed. God deliver us from the fools whose life work is to cast aspersions upon the motives and characters of the leaders of men. I believe the men who reach high places in politics are, as a rule, the best and brainiest men in the land, and upon their shoulders rest the safety and well-being of the peace-loving, God-fearing millions.
I believe the world is better to-day than it ever was before. I believe the refinements of modern society, its elegant accomplishments, its intellectual culture, and its conceptions of the beautiful, are glorious evidences of our advancement toward a higher plane of being.
I think the superb churches of to-day, with the glorious harmonies of their choral music, their great pipe organs, their violins and cornets, and their grand sermons, full of heaven's balm for aching hearts, are expressions of the highest civilization that has ever dawned upon the earth. I believe each successive civilization is better, and higher, and grander, than that which preceded it; and upon the shining rungs of this ladder of evolution, our race will finallyclimb back to the Paradise that was lost. I believe that the society of to-day is better than it ever was before. I believe that human government is better, and nobler, and purer, than it ever was before. I believe the Church is stronger and is making grander strides toward the conversion of the world and the final establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, than it ever made before.
I believe that the biggest fools in this world are the advocates and disseminators of infidelity, the would-be destroyers of the Paradise of God.
I sat in a great theatre at the National Capital. It was thronged with youth, and beauty, old age, and wisdom. I saw a man, the image of his God, stand upon the stage, and I heard him speak. His gestures were the perfection of grace; his voice was music, and his language was more beautiful than I had ever heard from mortal lips. He painted picture after picture of the pleasures, and joys, and sympathies, of home. He enthroned love and preached the gospel of humanity like an angel. Then I saw him dip his brush in ink, and blot out the beautiful picture he had painted. I saw him stab love dead at his feet. I saw him blot out the stars and the sun, and leave humanity and the universe in eternal darkness, and eternal death. I saw him like the Serpent of old, worm himself into the paradise of human hearts, and by his seductive eloquence and the subtle devices of his sophistry, inject his fatal venom, under whose blight its flowers faded, its musicwas hushed, its sunshine was darkened, and the soul was left a desert waste, with only the new made graves of faith and hope. I saw him, like a lawless, erratic meteor without an orbit, sweep across the intellectual sky, brilliant only in his self-consuming fire, generated by friction with the indestructible and eternal truths of God.
INFIDELITY.INFIDELITY.
That man was the archangel of modern infidelity; and I said: How true is holy writ which declares, "the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God."
Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell!
"A solemn murmur in the soul tells of a world to be,As travelers hear the billows roll before they reach the sea."
"A solemn murmur in the soul tells of a world to be,As travelers hear the billows roll before they reach the sea."
"A solemn murmur in the soul tells of a world to be,
As travelers hear the billows roll before they reach the sea."
Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no risen Christ!
When every earthly hope hath fled,When angry seas their billows fling,How sweet to lean on what He said,How firmly to His cross we cling!
When every earthly hope hath fled,When angry seas their billows fling,How sweet to lean on what He said,How firmly to His cross we cling!
When every earthly hope hath fled,
When angry seas their billows fling,
How sweet to lean on what He said,
How firmly to His cross we cling!
What intelligence less than God could fashion the human body? What motive power is it, if it is not God, that drives that throbbing engine, the human heart, with ceaseless, tirelessstroke, sending the crimson streams of life bounding and circling through every vein and artery? Whence, and what, if not of God, is this mystery we call the mind? What is this mystery we call the soul? What is it that thinks and feels and knows and acts? Oh, who can comprehend, who can deny, the Divinity that stirs within us!
God is everywhere, and in everything. His mystery is in every bud, and blossom, and leaf, and tree; in every rock, and hill, and vale, and mountain; in every spring, and rivulet, and river. The rustle of His wing is in every zephyr; its might is in every tempest. He dwells in the dark pavilions of every storm cloud. The lightning is His messenger, and the thunder is His voice. His awful tread is in every earthquake and on every angry ocean; and the heavens above us teem with His myriads of shining witnesses. The universe of solar systems whose wheeling orbs course the crystal paths of space proclaim through the dread halls of eternity, the glory, and power, and dominion, of the all-wise, omnipotent, and eternal God.
Angel over butterfly
The infinite wisdom of Almighty God has made a plane of intelligence, and a horizon of happiness, for every being in the universe, from the butterfly to the archangel. And every plane has its own horizon, narrowest and darkest on the lowest level, but broad as the universe on the highest. Man stands on that wondrous plane where mortality and immortality meet. Below him is animal life, lighted only by the dim lamp of instinct; above him is spiritual life, illuminated by the light of reason and the glory of God. Below him is this old material world of rock, and hill, and vale, and mountain; abovehim is the mysterious world of the imagination whose rivers are dreams, whose continents are visions of beauty, and upon whose shadowy shores the surfs of phantom seas forever break.
We hear the song of the cricket on the hearth, and the joyous hum of the bees among the poppies; we hear the light-winged lark gladden the morning with her song, and the silver-throated thrush warble in the tree-top. What are these, and all the sweet melodies we hear, but echoes from the realm of visions and dreams?
The humming-bird, that swift fairy of the rainbow, fluttering down from the land of the sun when June scatters her roses northward, and poising on wings that never weary, kisses the nectar from the waiting flowers; how bright and beautiful is the horizon of his little life! How sweet is the dream of the covert in the deep mountain gorge, to the trembling, panting deer in his flight before the hunter's horn and the yelping hounds! How dear to the heart of the weary ox is the vision of green fields and splashing waters! And down on the farm, when the cows come home at sunset, fragrant with the breath of clover blossoms, how rich is the feast of happiness when the frolicsome calf boundsforward to the flowing udder, and with his walling eyes reflecting whole acres of "calf heaven" and his little tail wiggling in speechless bliss, he draws his evening meal from nature's commissariat. The snail lolls in his shell and thinks himself a king in the grandest palace in the world. And how brilliant is the horizon of the firefly when he winks his "other eye!"
The red worm delves in the sod and dines on clay; he makes no after-dinner speeches; he never responds to a toast; but silently revels on in his dark banquet halls under the dank violets or in the rich mould by the river. But the red worm never reaches the goal of his visions and dreams until he is triumphantly impaled on the fishhook of the barefooted boy,
Who sees other visions and dreams other dreams,Of fluttering suckers in shining streams.
Who sees other visions and dreams other dreams,Of fluttering suckers in shining streams.
Who sees other visions and dreams other dreams,
Of fluttering suckers in shining streams.
And Oh, there is no thrill half so rapturous to the barefooted boy as the thrill of a nibble! Two darkies sat on a rock on the bank of a river, fishing. One was an old darkey; the other was a boy. The boy got a nibble, his foot slipped, and he fell headlong into the surging waters and began to float out to the middle of the stream, sinking, and rising, and struggling,and crying for help. The old man hesitated on the rock for a moment; then he plunged in after the drowning boy, and after a desperate struggle, landed his companion safely on shore. A passer-by ran up to the old darkey and patted him on the shoulder and said: "Old man, that was a noble deed in you, to risk your life that way to save that good-for-nothing boy." "Yes boss," mumbled the old man, "I was obleeged ter save dat nigger, he had all de bate in his pocket!"
Not long ago I wandered back to the scenes of my boyhood, on my father's old plantation on the bank of the river, in the beautiful land of my native mountains. I rambled again in the pathless woods with my rifle on my shoulder. I sat on the old familiar logs amid the falling leaves of autumn and heard the squirrels bark and shake the branches as they jumped from tree to tree. I heard the katydid sing, and the whip-poor-will, and the deep basso-profundo of the bullfrog on the bank of the pond. I heard the drumming of a pheasant and the hoot of a wise old owl away over in "Sleepy Hollow." I heard the tinkling of bells on the distant hills, sweetly mingling with the happy chorus of the song birds in their evening serenade. Every living creature seemed to be chanting a hymn of praise to its God; and as I sat there and listened to the weird, wild harmonies, a vision of the past opened before me. I thought I was a boy again, and played around the cabins of theold time darkies, and heard them laugh and sing and tell their stories as they used to long ago. My hair stood on ends again (I was afflicted with hair when I was a boy), and the chills played up and down my back when I remembered old Uncle Rufus' story of the panthers. He said: "Many years ago, Mas. Jeems was a-gwine along de path by de graveyard late in de evenin', an' bless de Lo'd, all of a sudden he looked up, an' dar was a painter crouchin' down befo' 'im, a-pattin' de ground wid his tail, an' ready to spring. Mas. Jeems wheeled to run, an' bless de Lo'd, dar was annudder painter, crouchin' an' pattin' de groun' wid his tail, in de path behind him, an' ready to spring. An' boaf ov dem painters sprung at de same time, right toards Mas. Jeemses head; Mas. Jeems jumped to one side. An' dem painters come to-gedder in de air. An' da was a-gwine so fast, an' da struck each udder wid sitch turble ambition dat instid ov comin' down, da went up. An' bless de Lo'd, Mas. Jeems stood dar an' watched dem painters go on up, an' up, an' up, till da went clean out o' sight a-fightin'. An' bless de Lo'd, de hair was a-fallin' for three days. Which fulfills de words ob de scripchah whar it reads,'De young men shall dream dreams, an' de ol' men shall see visions.'"
THE MUSIC OF THE OLD PLANTATION.THE MUSIC OF THE OLD PLANTATION.
I remembered the tale Uncle Solomon used to tell about the first convention that was ever held in the world. He said: "It wuz a convenchun ov de animils. Bruder Fox wuz dar, an' Brudder Wolf, an' Brudder Rabbit, an' all de rest ov de animil kingdom wuz geddered togedder fur to settle some questions concarnin' de happiness ov de animil kingdom. De first question dat riz befo' de convenchun wuz, how da should vote. Brudder Coon, he took de floah an' moved dat de convenchun vote by raisin' der tails; whereupon Brudder Possum riz wid a grin ov disgust, an' said: 'Mr. Chaiahman, I's unanimous opposed to dat motion: Brudder Coon wants dis couvenchun to vote by raisin' der tails, kase Brudder Coon's got a ring striped an' streaked tail, an' wants to show it befo' de convenchun. Brudder Coon knows dat de 'possum is afflicted wid an ole black rusty tail, an I consider dat moshun an insult to de 'possum race; an' besides dat, Mr. Chaiahman, if you passes dis moshun for to vote by raisin yo' tails, de Billy-Goat's already voted!'"
I sometimes think that Uncle Solomon's homelystory of the goat would be a splendid illustration of some of our modern politicians. It is difficult to tell which side of the question they are on.
THE HAPPY LONG AGO.THE HAPPY LONG AGO.
I remembered the yarn Uncle Yaddie once spun at the expense of Uncle Rastus. Rastus looked sour and said: "You bettah not go too fur; I'll tell about dem watermillions what disappeared frum Mas. Landon's watermillion patch." But Uncle Yaddie was undismayed by the threatened attack upon his own record, and said: "Some time ago Rastus concluded to go into de egg bizness, an' he prayed to de Lo'd to send him some hens, but somehow or nudder de hens never come; an' den he prayed to de Lo'd to send him after de hens, an' lo! an' behold! nex' mornin' his lot wus full ov chickens. Rastus fixed de nestiz, an' waited, an' waited fur de hens to lay, but somehow or nudder de hens wouldn't lay dat summer at all; an' Rastus kep git'n madder an' madder, till one day de ole rooster hopped up on de porch an begun to flop his wings an' crow. Rastus looked at him sideways, an' muttered, 'Yes! floppin' yo' wings an' crowin' aroun' heah like an ole fool, an' you caint lay a egg to save yo' life!'"
The darkies fell over in the floor, and every body laughed except Rastus. But to appease his wrath, Uncle Yaddie rolled out a big "watermillion" from under the bed, which lighted up the face of the frowning old Rastus with smiles, and as the luscious red pulp melted away in his mouth, he cut the "pigeon wing" in the middle of the floor, and sang like a mocking bird:
"Oh, de honeymoon am sweet,De chicken am good,De 'possum, it am very very fine,But give me, O, give me,Oh, how I wish you would!Dat watermillion hanging' on de vine!"
"Oh, de honeymoon am sweet,De chicken am good,De 'possum, it am very very fine,But give me, O, give me,Oh, how I wish you would!Dat watermillion hanging' on de vine!"
"Oh, de honeymoon am sweet,
De chicken am good,
De 'possum, it am very very fine,
But give me, O, give me,
Oh, how I wish you would!
Dat watermillion hanging' on de vine!"
Then old Uncle Newt rosined his bow, and the welkin rang with the music of the fiddle.
There I sat in the old familiar woods and dreamed of the happy long ago, until a gang of blackbirds, spluttering in a neighboring treetop woke me. And when I rose from the log and threw myself into the shape of an interrogation point, and touched the trigger, at the crack of my rifle old bullfrogg shot into the pond; the hoot-owl "scooted" into his castle in the trunk of an old hollow tree; the blackbirds cut the "asymptote of a hyperbolical curve" in the air; the squirrel fell to the ground at my feet,with a bullet through his brain, and there was silence—silence in the frog pond; silence in the trees; silence in "Sleepy Hollow;" silence all around me.
I shouldered my rifle and wended my way back to the old homestead on the bank of the river and silence was there. The voices of the happy long ago were hushed. The old time darkies were sleeping on the hill, close by the spot where my father sleeps. The moss-covered bucket was gone from the well. The old barn sheds had "creeled." The old house where I was born was silent and deserted.
As I looked upon these scenes of my earliest recollection, I was softened and subdued into a sweet pensive sorrow, which only the happiest and holiest associations of by-gone years can call into being. There are times in our lives when grief lies heaviest on the soul; when memory weeps; when gathering clouds of mournful melancholy pour out their floods and drown the heart in tears.
Oh, beautiful isle of memory, lighted by the morning star of life! where the roses bloom by the door, where the robins sing among the apple blossoms, where bright waters ripple ineternal melody! There are echoes of songs that are sung no more; tender words spoken by lips that are dust; blessings from hearts that are still. There's a useless cradle, and a broken doll; a sunny tress, and an empty garment folded away; there's a lock of silvered hair, and an unforgotten prayer, andmotheris sleeping there!
AMBITION'S DREAM.AMBITION'S DREAM.
There, under the shade of the sycamores, on my father's old farm, I used to dream of the years to come. I looked through a vista blooming with pleasures, fruiting with achievements, and beautiful as the cloud-isles of the sunset. The siren, ambition, sat beside me and fired my young heart with her prophetic song. She dazzled me, and charmed me, and soothed me, into sweet fantastic reveries. She touched me and bade me look into the wondrous future. The bow of promise spanned it. Hope was enthroned there and smiled like an angel of light. Under that shining arch lay the goal of my fondest aspirations. Visions of wealth, and of laurels, and of applauding thousands, crowded the horizon of my dream. I saw the capitol of the Republic, that white-columned pantheon of liberty, lifting its magnificent pile from the midst of the palaces, and parks, the statues, and monuments, of the most beautiful city in the world. Infatuated with this vision of earthly glory, I badeadieu to home and its dreams, seized the standard of a great political party, and rushed into the turmoil and tumult of the heated campaign. Unable to bear the armor of a Saul, I went forth to do battle armed with a fiddle, a pair of saddlebags, a plug horse, and the eternal truth. There was the din of conflict by day on the hustings; there was the sound of revelry by night in the cabins. The mid-night stars twinkled to the music of the merry fiddle, and the hills resounded with the clatter of dwindling shoe soles, as the mountain lads and lassies danced the hours away in the good old time Virginia reel. I rode among the mountain fastnesses like the "Knight of the woeful figure," mounted on my prancing "Rozenante," everywhere charging the windmill of the opposing party, and wherever I drew rein the mountaineers swarmed from far and near to witness the bloodless battle of the contending candidates in the arena of joint discussion. My learned competitor, bearing the shield of "protection to American labor," and armed to the teeth with mighty argument, hurled himself upon me with the fury of a lion. His blows descended like thunderbolts, and the welkin rang with cheers whenhis lance went shivering to the center. His logic was appalling, his imagery was sublime. His tropes and similes flashed like the drawn blades of charging cavalry, and with a flourish of trumpets, his grand effort culminated in a splendid tribute to the Republic, crowned with Goldsmith's beautiful metaphor:
"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm;Though 'round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm;Though 'round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm;
Though 'round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
I received the charge of the enemy "with poised lance, and visor down." I deluged the tall cliff under a flood of "mountain eloquence" which poured from my patriotic lips like molasses pouring from the bung-hole of the universe. I mounted the American eagle and soared among the stars. I scraped the skies and cut the black illimitable far out beyond the orbit of Uranus, and I reached the climax of my triumphant flight with a hyperbole that eclipsed Goldsmith's metaphor, unthroned the foe, and left him stunned upon the field. Thus I soared:
"I stood upon the sea shore, and with a frail reed in my hand, I wrote in the sand, 'My Country, I love thee;' a mad wave came rushing by and wiped out the fair impression. Cruel wave,treacherous sand, frail reed; I said, 'I hate ye I'll trust ye no more, but with a giant's arm, I'll reach to the coast of Norway, and pluck its tallest pine, and dip it in the crater of Vesuvius, and write upon the burnished heavens; 'My Country,I love thee! And I'd like to seeanydurned wave rub that out!!'"
Between the long intervals of argument my speech grinned with anecdotes like a basketfull of 'possum heads. The fiddle played its part, the people did the rest, and I carved upon the tombstone of the demolished Knight these tender words:
"Tread softly 'round this sacred heap,It guards ambition's restless sleep;Whose greed for place ne'er did forsake him,Don't mention office, or you'll wake him!"
"Tread softly 'round this sacred heap,It guards ambition's restless sleep;Whose greed for place ne'er did forsake him,Don't mention office, or you'll wake him!"
"Tread softly 'round this sacred heap,
It guards ambition's restless sleep;
Whose greed for place ne'er did forsake him,
Don't mention office, or you'll wake him!"
I reached the goal of my visions and dreams under that collossal dome whose splendors are shadowed in the broad river that flows by the shrine of Mt. Vernon. I sat amid the confusion and uproar of the parliamentary struggles of the lower branch of the Congress of the United States. "Sunset" Cox, with his beams of wit and humor, convulsed the house and shook the gallaries. Alexander Stephens, one of the last tottering monuments of the glory of theOld South, still lingering on the floor, where, in by-gone years the battles of his vigorous manhood were fought. I saw in the Senate an assemblage of the grandest men since the days of Webster and Clay. Conkling, the intellectual Titan, the Apollo of manly form and grace, thundered there. The "Plumed Knight," that grand incarnation of mind and magnetism, was at the zenith of his glory. Edmunds, and Zack Chandler, and the brilliant and learned Jurist, Mat. Carpenter, were there. Thurman the "noblest Roman of them all" was there with his famous bandana handkerchief. The immortal Ben Hill, the idol of the South, and Lamar, the gifted orator and highest type of Southern chivalry were there. Garland, and Morgan, and Harris, and Coke, were there; and Beck with his sledge-hammer intellect. It was an arena of opposing gladiators more magnificent and majestic than was ever witnessed in the palmiest days of the Roman Empire. There were giants in the Senate in those days, and when they clashed shields and measured swords in debate, the capitol trembled and the nation thrilled in every nerve.
But how like the ocean's ebb and flow are therestless tides of politics! These scenes of grandeur and glory soon dissolved from my view like a dream. I "saved the country" for only two short years. My competitor proved a lively corpse. He burst forth from the tomb like a locust from its shell, and came buzzing to the national capital with "war on his wings." I went buzzing back to the mountains to dream again under the sycamores; and there a new ambition was kindled in my soul. A new vision opened before me. I saw another capitol rise on the bank of the Cumberland, overshadowing the tomb of Polk and close by the Hermitage where reposes the sacred dust of Andrew Jackson. And I thought if I could only reach the exalted position of Governor of the old "Volunteer State" I would then have gained the sum of life's honors and happiness. But lo! another son of my father and mother was dreaming there under the same old sycamore. We had dreamed together in the same trundle-bed and often kicked each other out. Together we had seen visions of pumpkin pie and pulled hair for the biggest slice. Together we had smoked the first cigar and together learned to play the fiddle. But now the dreams of our manhood clashed.Relentless fate had decreed that "York" must contend with "Lancaster" in the "War of the Roses." And with flushed cheeks and throbbing hearts we eagerly entered the field; his shield bearing the red rose, mine the white. It was a contest of principles, free from the wormwood and gall of personalities, and when the multitude of partisans gathered at the hustings, a white rose on every Democratic bosom, a red rose on every Republican breast, in the midst of a wilderness of flowers there was many a tilt and many a loud huzzah. But when the clouds of war had cleared away, I looked upon the drooping red rose on the bosom of the vanquished Knight, and thought of the first speech my mother ever taught me:
"Man's a vapor full of woes,Cuts a caper—down he goes!"
"Man's a vapor full of woes,Cuts a caper—down he goes!"
"Man's a vapor full of woes,
Cuts a caper—down he goes!"
The white rose triumphed. But the shadow is fairer than the substance. The pathway of ambition is marked at every mile with the grave of some sweet pleasure slain by the hand of sacrifice. It bristles with thorns planted by the fingers of envy and hate, and as we climb the rugged heights, behind us lie our bloody footprints, before us tower still greater heights,scarred by tempests and wrapped in eternal snow. Like the edelweiss of the Alps, ambition's pleasures bloom in the chill air of perpetual frost, and he who reaches the summit will look down with longing eyes, on the humbler plain of life below and wish his feet had never wandered from its warmer sunshine and sweeter flowers.
But let us not forget that it is better for us, and better for the world, that we dream, and that we tread the thorny paths, and climb the weary steeps, and leave our bloody tracks behind in the pursuit of our dreams. For in their extravagant conceptions lie the germs of human government, and invention, and discovery; and from their mysterious vagaries spring the motive power of the world's progress. Our civilization is the evolution of dreams. The rude tribes of primeval men dwelt in caves until some unwashed savage dreamed that damp caverns and unholy smells were not in accord with the principles of hygiene. It dawned upon hismightyintellect that one flat stone would lie on top of another, and that a little mud, aided by Sir Isaac Newton's law of gravitation, would hold them together, and that walls could be built in the form of a quadrangle. Here wasthe birth of architecture. And thus, from the magical dreams of this unmausoleumed barbarian was evolved the home, the best and sweetest evolution of man's civilisation.
John Howard Payne touched the tenderest chord that vibrates in the great heart of all humankind when he gave to immortality his song of "Home, Sweet Home;" and thank God, the grand mansions and palaces of the rich do not hold all the happiness and nobility of this world. There are millions of humble cottages where virtue resides in the warmth and purity of vestal fires, and where contentment dwells like perpetual summer.
The antediluvians plowed with a forked stick, with one prong for the beam and the other for the scratcher; and the plow boy and his sleepy ox had no choice of prongs to hitch to. It was all the same to Adam whether "Buck" was yoked to the beam or the scratcher. But some noble Cincinnatus dreamed of the burnished plowshare; genius wrought his dream into steel and now the polished Oliver Chill slices the earth like a hot knife plowing a field of Jersey butter, and the modern gang plow, bearing upon its wheels the gloved and umbrella'd leaderof the Populist Party, plows up the whole face of the earth in a single day.
What a wonderful workshop is the brain of man! Its noiseless machinery cuts, and carves, and moulds, in the imponderable material of ideas. It works its endless miracles through the brawny arm of labor, and the deft fingers of skill, and the world moves forward by its magic. Aladdin rubbed his lamp and the shadowy genii of fable performed impossible wonders. The dreamer of to-day rubs his fingers through his hair and the genii of his intellect work miracles which eclipse the most extravagant fantasies of the "Arabian Nights."
A dreamer saw the imprisoned vapor throw open the lid of a teakettle, and lo! a steam engine came puffing from his brain. And now many a huge monster of Corliss, beautiful as a vision of Archimedes and smooth in movement as a wheeling planet, sends its thrill of life and power through mammoth plants of humming machinery. The fiery courser of the steel-bound track shoots over hill and plain, like a mid-night meteor through the fields of heaven, outstripping the wind.
A dreamer carried about in his brain a greatLeviathan. It was launched upon the billows, and like some collossal swan the palatial steamship now sweeps in majesty through the blue wastes of old ocean.
Six hundred years before Christ, some old Greek discovered electricity by rubbing a piece of amber, and unable to grasp the mystery, he called it soul. His discovery slept for more than two thousand years until it awoke in the dreams of Galvani, and Volta, and Benjamin Franklin. In the morning of the nineteenth century the sculptor and scientist, Morse, saw in his dreams, phantom lightnings leap across continents, and oceans, and felt the pulse of thunder beat as it came bounding over threads of iron that girdled the earth. In each throb he read a human thought. The electric telegraph emerged from his brain, like Minerva from the brow of Jove, and the world received a fresh baptism of light and glory.
In a few more years we will step over the threshold of the twentieth century. What greater wonders will the dreamers yet unfold? It may be that another magician, greater even than Edison, the "Wizzard of Menloe Park," will rise up and coax the very laws of natureinto easy compliance with his unheard-of dreams. I think he will construct an electric railway in the form of a huge tube, and call it the "electro-scoot," and passengers will enter it in New York and touch a button and arrive in San Francisco two hours before they started! I think a new discovery will be made by which the young man of the future may stand at his "kiss-o-phone" in New York, and kiss his sweetheart in Chicago with all the delightful sensations of the "aforesaid and the same." I think some Liebig will reduce foods to their last analyses, and by an ultimate concentration of their elements, will enable the man of the future to carry a year's provisions in his vest pocket. The sucking dude will store his rations in the head of his cane, and the commissary department of a whole army will consist of a mule and a pair of saddlebags. A train load of cabbage will be transported in a sardine box, and a thousand fat Texas cattle in an oyster can. Power will be condensed from a forty horse engine to a quart cup. Wagons will roll by the power in their axles, and the cushions of our buggies will cover the force that propels them. The armies of the future will fight withchain lightning, and the battlefield will become so hot and unhealthy that,
"He who fights and runs awayWill never fight another day."
"He who fights and runs awayWill never fight another day."
"He who fights and runs away
Will never fight another day."
Some dreaming Icarus will perfect the flying machine, and upon the aluminium wings of the swift Pegassus of the air the light-hearted society girl will sail among the stars, and
"Behind some dark cloud, where no one's allowed,Make love to the man in the moon."
"Behind some dark cloud, where no one's allowed,Make love to the man in the moon."
"Behind some dark cloud, where no one's allowed,
Make love to the man in the moon."
The rainbow will be converted into a Ferris wheel; all men will be bald headed; the women will run the Government—and then I think the end of time will be near at hand.
I heard a song of love, and tenderness, and sadness, and beauty, sweeter than the song of a nightingale. It was breathed from the soul of Robert Burns. I heard a song of deepest passion surging like the tempest-tossed waves of the sea. It was the restless spirit of Lord Byron.
I heard a mournful melody of despairing love, full of that wild, mad, hopeless longing of a bereaved soul which the mid-night raven mocked at with that bitterest of all words—"Nevermore!" It was the weird threnody of the brilliant, but ill-starred Poe, who, like a meteor, blazed but for a moment, dazzling a hemisphere, and then went out forever in the darkness of death.
Then I was exalted, and lifted into the serene sunlight of peace, as I listened to the spirit of faith, pouring out in the songs of our own immortal Longfellow.
With Milton I walked the scented isles of long lost Paradise, and caught the odor of its bloom, and the swell of its music. He led me through its rose brakes, and under the vermilion and flame of its orchids and honeysuckles, down to the margin of the limpid river, where the water lilies slept in fadeless beauty, and the lotus nodded to the rippling waves; and there, under a bridal arch of orange blossoms, cordoned by palms and many-colored flowers, I saw a vision of bliss and beauty from which Satan turned away with an envy that stabbed him with pangs unfelt before in hell! It was earth's first vision of wedded love.
But the horizon of Shakespeare was broader than them all. There is no depth which he has not sounded, no height which he has not measured. He walked in the gardens of the intellectual gods and gathered sweets for the soul from a thousand unwithering flowers. He caught music from the spheres, and beauty from ten thousand fields of light. His brain was a mighty loom. His genius gathered and classified, his imagination spun and wove; the flying shuttle of his fancy delivered to the warp of wisdom and philosophy the shining threadsspun from the fibres of human hearts and human experience; and with his wondrous woof of pictured tapestries, he clothed all thought in the bridal robes of immortality. His mind was a resistless flood that deluged the world of literature with its glory. The succeeding poets are but survivors as by the ark, and, like the ancient dove, they gather and weave into garlands only the "flotsam" of beauty which floats on the bosom of the Shakespearean flood.
Oh, Shakespeare, archangel of poetry! The light from thy wings drowns the stars and flashes thy glory on the civilizations of the whole world!
"Unwearied, unfettered, unwatched, unconfined,Be my spirit like thee, in the world of the mind;No leaning for earth e'er to weary its flight;But fresh as thy pinions in regions of light."
"Unwearied, unfettered, unwatched, unconfined,Be my spirit like thee, in the world of the mind;No leaning for earth e'er to weary its flight;But fresh as thy pinions in regions of light."
"Unwearied, unfettered, unwatched, unconfined,
Be my spirit like thee, in the world of the mind;
No leaning for earth e'er to weary its flight;
But fresh as thy pinions in regions of light."
All honor to the poets and philosophers and painters and sculptors and musicians of the world! They are its honeybees; its songbirds; its carrier doves, its ministering angels.
Roman ruins
I walked with Gibbon and Hume, through the sombre halls of the past, and caught visions of the glory of the classic Republics and Empires that flourished long ago, and whose verydust is still eloquent with the story of departed greatness. The spirit of genius lingers there still like the fragrance of roses faded and gone.
I thought I heard the harp of Pindar, and the impassioned song of the dark-eyed Sappho. I thought I heard the lofty epic of the blind Homer, rushing on in the red tide of battle, and the divine Plato discoursing like an oracle in his academic shades.
The canvas spoke and the marble breathed when Apelles painted and Phidias carved.
I stood with Michael Angelo and saw him chisel his dreams from the marble.
I saw Raphael spread his visions of beauty in immortal colors.
I sat under the spirit of Paganini's power. The flow of his melody turned the very air into music. I thought I was in the presence of Divinity as I listened to the warbles, and murmurs, and the ebb and flow of the silver tides, from his violin. And I said: Music is the dearest gift of God to man. The sea, the forest, the field, and the meadow, are the very fountain heads of music.
I believe that Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Schubert, and Verdi, and all the great masters,caught their sweetest dreams from nature's musicians. I think their richest airs of mirth, and gladness, and joy, were stolen from the purling rivulet and the rippling river. I believe their grandest inspirations were born of the tempest, and the thunder, and the rolling billows of the angry ocean.