'If you love me as I love you,No knife shall cut our loves in two.'
'If you love me as I love you,No knife shall cut our loves in two.'
etc., etc.?
This story of chances is an old, old story. It is a failing of human nature. There isn't a young woman in the world who has been gazed at admiringly by a young man, but has imagination strong enough to convert that look into a chance. That story won't do. I want something more definite.
In the second place, I would like to know if any of my correspondents who have had so many chances improved one of them and got married? If so, I would like again to know, what in the world you are complaining of? Is it quite complimentary to your other half, who buys your bonnets, provides your beefsteaks, pays your washerwoman, and looks after the pocket-book side of your marital contract? With that estimable man in your eye—and I should hate to deny in your presence, Madame, that he was not estimable—how can you have the assurance to deny that there are women who would marry, if they had the chance? Are the grapes which grow on your vines soured? Has the honeymoon grown bitter in its waxings and wanings? Have you put your finger in the fire and been burned?
I hope not, but it looks so, my dear—it looks so.
I have a letter from still another correspondent—writtenin a savage, vinegary sort of chirography—who lugs in that stale crowd, Anna Dickinson, Miss Anthony, etc., to prove that women will not always marry when they have a chance. I do not recognize anything womanly in these clamorous individuals bawling from stumps, and crying themselves hoarse for rights which any of them can have if they have sense enough to take them. If a woman will deliberately unsex herself, she has no right to expect chances. If she ever, by some mysterious dispensation of Divine Providence, gets a chance, it is kindness to the dumb brute who gave her the chance, when she refuses it. The good God, when He established the relation of the sexes, never intended that man should ally himself to a woman with ice-water in her veins and a head full of syllogisms. He might as well marry a treatise on metaphysics and have done with it. I am sick of this crowd of one-idea women who are invariably trotted out when it is necessary to do or say anything. They are exceptions to all rules, and prove nothing. A cow with five legs and a hen with no tail furnish no data from which to judge of the general family of cows and hens.
It is rather curious that nearly all my correspondents hurl my Maiden Aunt in my face to prove that I am wrong in asserting that every woman would marry if she had a chance. The Maiden Auntdidhave a chance, and would have accepted the chance, had not Death stepped in and taken it away from her. She could not love twice, and so she preferred to wait until she could be united to him eternally. It would have been the crowning glory of her life, if she could have married him for whom she wore the forget-me-not so long, andher life therein would have been more perfect than it was. She was ready to marry when she had the chance, but Fate ordered it otherwise, and she bowed her head and submitted to the decree which forbade the chance, but could not forbid the love. And they who were divided in life were united in death, and I know are quite happy now.
September 4, 1869.
September 4, 1869.
I THINK you never saw a happier little family circle than gathered about the breakfast table this morning. The dark cloud which has hovered over us so long, casting its shadow over all the household, has dissipated, and behind it we saw that the sun was still shining, although we faint hearts had begun to believe that we should never sit in the sunshine again.
Old Blobbs has past the crisis and weathered the storm. The staunch old man has baffledpallida morsby resolutely contesting every inch with him. For a day he hovered on the brink of the chasm between the two worlds, but there was no trace of terror, or even of impatience, in his serene face. I think he was so near to Heaven that gleams of its light irradiated him, for I never saw such a rapt face before. I think that he heard the sound of the harps coming faintly to him, as we sometimes hear music coming over the water in the hush of night, for now and then he would close his eyes and listen very attentively, seeming to forget us who were standing around, fearing that at any moment he might see the gate of Paradise and pass through, leaving us disconsolate on this side. And I know, by a quick glow of recognition and a smile of ineffable pleasure,which once lit up his face, that he saw the Maiden Aunt, and a little child who once left us, somewhere in that land so far from us, but so near to him, for he raised his thin white hand as if he would grasp the hand of another. We could not speak to him. In that solemn time we dared not. The doctor sat upon the bedside and watched him with anxious face. Mignon, in the intensity of her grief, sat with her face buried in her hands. She had placed the faded forget-me-not, which the Maiden Aunt sent to her as her dying souvenir, in Blobbs' hand, thinking, perhaps, that he might take it to her, as they do not grow where she is, for memory There is eternal.
It was growing towards sunset, and through the interlacing leaves of the ivy which covers the window, a golden shaft of sunlight shot into the room and fell upon the bed. It caught Old Blobbs' eye. He faintly smiled, turned his head away, and closed his eyes. The doctor lightly felt the pulse and motioned us to be silent. In a few minutes, the doctor beckoned us to retire to another room, and then said to us: "Your friend is sleeping. He has passed the crisis and will be spared to you. It is only necessary that he should be kept quiet."
On the day before the crisis, Parson Primrose called to see Old Blobbs in the performance of official duty, and undoubtedly actuated by a sincere desire to smooth his pathway into the Valley of the Shadow. There was just the faintest expression of impatience upon Blobbs' face, when he saw him enter. Primrose had assumed a conventional, business-like look of grief, not unmixed with a slight anxiety, as if he were not at all certainthat Blobbs' pathway needed any smoothing. And I knew that Blobbs was convinced how utterly impotent Primrose was to afford him any consolation or shed any light upon the future.
In a dry, formalistic way, Primrose asked: "My dear brother, are you prepared for the great change!"
I never shall forget Blobbs' look of profound astonishment as he replied: "Yes, sir! Certainly. I have always been prepared for this from my boyhood up. I supposed it was a man's first duty to have his household always in order for such changes—most of all, the common change which may come any minute. Why, of course, sir, I am prepared, and hope I shall meet the change like a gentleman."
Primrose added: "And have you prepared yourself for this great change by attendance upon divine worship?"
"Yes, sir," replied Old Blobbs. "I may say to you, however, as we had better understand each other, that I have not always deemed it important to attend divine worship within four walls. I have been rather oppressed, sir, by this gregarious form of worship, and have not always received satisfaction or consolation from the gentlemen of your cloth—and this, with all respect, sir. I imagine that I have been rather exacting, and expected to find a guide, rather than a companion who knew no more of the way than myself. In such cases, I always found that I got much nearer the Great Father by going out into Nature, the house which He built, and by loving my fellow-man and all the forms of life which He has created, even down to the insects. There has always, I may say, sir, been more satisfactionto me in this warm, active love than in that affection which has been regulated by rules and bounded by dogmas."
"Then you have never settled upon any creed or form of belief," said Primrose.
Blobbs' face again wore an impatient look, as he replied: "Belief with me, sir, has been instinctive. It never had any prescribed form, and never needed defining by any ritual. I have never troubled myself much about any creed, as I have never seen any record of creeds where I may soon go. I do not expect, if I had a creed, that it would be anything but an impediment to me in crossing the river. If I got safely over with it, I am confident, sir, that St. Peter would make me leave it outside the gate, as something for which they had no use inside."
"Then, you have believed in no doctrine, and belonged to no church, my dear friend?" said Primrose.
"You mistake me, sir," said Blobbs, rather impatiently. "I have always believed in charity, which is greater than faith or hope, and in the sublime words which Christ, and Confucius before Christ, uttered: 'Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.' I have always belonged to the great church of humanity, which, I think, sir, in ages to come, will be the church of mankind——"
"When the millenium comes, and man is perfect?" interposed Primrose.
"No, sir!" replied Blobbs, emphatically. "I look for no millenium of perfection. Man can never fully develop, if this world shall stand for millions of ages yet. To assume that, would be to deny the principleof infinity which is in him. The perfect development can never be attained except in eternity. We must be freed from this frail envelope of the body before the soul can rise, untrammelled."
"Upon what, then, if you have no doctrine, or creed, or church, do you depend for your salvation?" said Primrose.
"Upon the love of our common Father," replied Blobbs. "He has carried me, sir, in the hollow of His hand since childhood, and has never done me harm. I am not afraid now, sir, to trust myself to Him, confident that He knows better than I what is best for me, and that He will do what is best. I think that He will solve all these mysteries, so that what is dark to my feeble comprehension will become quite light. I am willing, sir, to trust myself to Him, and, sir, if you can throw any light upon the place to which I am going, I shall be very grateful to receive it. As to the manner of going, I am quite willing to leave that to Him who knows more than I."
Primrose, after a few generalities, took his leave, satisfied that at least he had done his duty, but Old Blobbs turned his face to the wall with a feeble smile and a shake of the head.
I think Blobbs was fully convinced, as well as the rest of us, that he should not live long, for on that same day he handed me his diary, which he desired me to keep. He has since that time expressed his willingness to have me use what I please of it. On looking it over, I found some thoughts which perhaps may interest you.
In one place he says:
"I think I have but one regret in leaving this world.When I look into the past and see what is doing, I would like to live into the future some centuries, to see what a magnificent world this will be."
Again he says:
"Every man carries in his breast an aspiration and a skeleton. The one is a yearning for an ideal which is never realized here. He will never find it, be his search ever so long or so faithful. It must always end in the fate of the Prince who sought the fountain of perpetual youth, and the alchemists who wasted their lives and energies looking for the philosopher's stone. And yet it seems to me this unattainable ideal is one of the surest proofs of immortality. The other is the reverse of the ideal—a fearful secret—a chained tiger—a terrible power. Sometimes it assumes only the form of a melancholy. Sometimes of a despair which kills."
Again:
"The keen, earnest love of Nature always involves the warmer love of man as the noblest type of Nature, and yet the love of Nature is the compensation for the loss of man. When all men forget you—when the bright hues with which you have invested the ideal of the soul fade like a morning mist—when the heart in its lowest depths of despair finds only artificial instead of real men, when you even despair of humanity—vivifying Nature remains a faithful friend, and brings compensation in her flowers and birds, her mountains and cataracts."
Again:
"Sympathy with anything that is beautiful can never be completely exercised when you are alone. It must find expression, and there must be the presence ofanother who shall be the recipient of that expression. Worship demands isolation, which begets reverence. Sympathy demands the presence of another, and begets friendship or love, according to the nature of the object and the companion. Either in the presence of nature, which inspires friendship, or of music and some forms of art, which inspire love, the presence of the second person is essential to complete sympathy; and he who has sought either love or friendship, and lost both, is richer than he who has never sought either."
Blobbs' diary contains also some pretty severe strictures, which I might be tempted to give you were it not for the fact that he will now soon be with us again and speak for himself. I saw him this morning, and he is quite like himself again. He took me by the hand and said: "Well, my dear boy, they say the old ship is going to weather the storm."
I congratulated him upon his improvement, and he added:
"I thought we were getting into the haven and coming to anchor. But the voyage isn't quite over yet, so we must clear away the decks, crowd on all sail and out again into the blue waters, with the rest of our little fleet, and trust all to the good Pilot at the helm, Who knows what is best, after all."
August 28, 1869.
August 28, 1869.
IF you should ask me why I went to Hell, I do not know that I could answer you. I only know that I have often wanted to go there. I have more than once envied Swedenborg, who could go in a jiffy where he pleased, and the rat who lived in a well, and when he died went——you know where. If you do not know, I can tell you that the place rhymes with well.
I only know that I went there and came back safe and unsinged, and with no smell of fire in my garments, although I saw and talked with him who is never mentioned in polite company, strange to say, considering that he is the politest person that I ever met.
It may have been owing to the fact that, just before I went to sleep, I was thinking of these coming fall days; of the maple boughs which will soon be blazing with the red and scarlet flames of the frost; of the smoky haze which will soon hide the hill-sides; of the sumachs and vines which will soon sheet the road-sides with flame. It may have been this smoke and fire which sent me there, for the most of us form no other idea of that place, under the heavens, except in the light of brimstone, sulphur, anthracite coal, lava, molten iron, andother pleasant compounds, into which we are to be immersed forever and a day, to roast, boil, and bake, and yet never get cooked.
But, as I said before, I have been to Hell and got back safely, and I should be unfaithful to my post as a public benefactor, and my duties as a journalistic chronicler, did I not tell you what I saw.
You may remember that some months ago I told you of my trip to Heaven. My route to the other place was partially the same. I passed through our system of stars and planets, dodged the comets as before, found that the Man in the Moon was ill from the effects of the recent eclipse, saw the Archer-road milkmen still running from the stump-tail cows in the Milky Way, passed from planet to planet, and from galaxy to galaxy into other systems, and at last reached the sea of golden light, of which I told you before—the sea of Immortality. Between this and the crystal sea above it, however, I diverged, and my way led through rifts of dark leaden clouds, across blank moors, which were illumined by a lurid light which seemed to come from no source. There were strange whisperings in the air. Dark-winged birds now and then flitted by me, and ever and anon I could hear a sullen roar in the distance, which seemed to come from the flow of a river. Thus, on over the blank moors, until my way led to a hill-side, at the foot of which I was stopped by one of Lucifer's officials, who briefly examined me, and then said I was qualified to proceed.
I proceeded up the hill, and at the top I looked down to a river—the River of Lethe—flowing sluggishly along through a valley. Across this river I could see a countryof vast extent, which was very thickly peopled. I went down the hill-side, and came to the river, and there I found an old ferryman and his boat waiting to convey me over the dark flood. He asked me for the obolus with which to pay toll across the river, but, unfortunately, I hadn't a cent with me. He then asked, rather impatiently, if my friends were so poor when I died that they couldn't afford to put an obolus in the coffin with me. I smilingly replied that I wasn't aware I had ever died, whereat he answered, very seriously, that he had carried a great many dead men across, but never any dead-heads. I tried to coax the old man into giving me a ride gratis, but he obstinately refused, saying that only the disembodied were allowed to cross, and that if he took me over he would catch the——
"Just the man I want to see," said I. "If I cannot go to him, except as a blessed defunct, will you have the goodness to hand my card to him, and say that I come from Chicago?"
The old man took the card, and, after taking on board two or three people whom I used to know, and supposed were saints, he paddled across and soon returned, saying that the Devil had sent his compliments and was willing to see me. He also sent word that he was desirous of sending back by me his thanks to Chicago, which was just now conferring a great favor upon him in the way of business.
I accordingly jumped into the boat. The old man had to work very hard in getting me over. The spirits which he was accustomed to carry weigh nothing and pack close, but I was quite substantial.
In my passage across the river I observed that it was full of robes, mitres, crosiers, censers, creeds, canons, and other articles floating along, and I asked the old man the cause of it. He simply replied that he didn't know what they were. He believed they were some sort of stuff which some people brought along with them and had to throw away because nobody used them here or in the other place. When we had reached the other shore I landed, and the old man informed me I was in Hell, and would find the Devil a short distance away. I found him without difficulty. As soon as he had settled a little dispute between some Board of Trade men who had been getting up a corner,—which he declared was too disgraceful even forhiscountry,—he turned to me and bade me welcome.
I must acknowledge that I was disappointed in his appearance. He was a very polite, affable person, and, apparently, a perfect gentleman. There were certainly no claws upon his fingers. His feet were not cloven. There were no horns upon his head. Neither did I, after a rather secret and anxious scrutiny, discover any indications of a tail. He greeted me as if he knew me well, and at once put me at ease with himself. I made bold to congratulate him upon his personal appearance, whereat he smiled and said: "Yes, the old story—horns, hoofs and tail, I suppose. I know it is the custom for you people on that little planet, which is called, I think, the Earth, when you wish to represent anything infamous or abominable, to paint the Devil, and you generally paint him very black. Now we know a thing or two here, and we always return the compliment, for when we wish to represent anything infamous or abominablewe paint Man in his natural colors. I assure you sir, I am not so black as they paint me. Why, sir, I have been obliged to blush more than once at the crimes which some men have committed who come here for cleansing."
I acknowledged the justness of his remarks and then, anxious to settle a suspicion which had been troubling me, I asked him where the fire was. He smiled again, and said:
"Fire? It is all round you. Hell-fire is by no means a falsehood. Look at these people. They have brought all their passions with them. We cannot manufacture a fire which can burn and consume like the fires of passion in man's breast. We know of no hell so terrible as the hell in a man's bosom. Let me tell you there isn't a man or woman on your Earth without a tiger chained in his breast. Let him but once unloose the beast and hell has broken loose in himself. These tides of passion never ebb. They are resistless in their flow, and they burn and kill, as they flow, like a stream of molten lava running down the side of the volcano into the fertile plains. That man there, who killed his brother is none the less a murderer now, only that his passion to kill is intensified without the means of its gratification; and you will notice that he carries the skeleton of that brother tied to him, from which he cannot escape. Do you think fire would be any such punishment to him? That miser, who was eaten up with avarice in his mortal life, is doubly the miser now, only the gains which he hoards are forever swept from him. So with them all. They bring their passions with them here only to have them intensified, to have their capacitiesfor passion correspondingly increased, and never to have the opportunities of gratifying them. That is the kind of hell-fire we have here, and it burns until the victim is burnt out, and purified, and regenerated, and rendered capable of receiving pure enjoyment. We who are placed in charge of them have no sympathy with them, for we have no passions. We have living brains, but dead hearts.
"And yet," I remarked, "many of these people seem to be very quiet and calm. They do not look as if they were troubled at all by passions."
"There is where you make a great mistake," the Devil replied. "Appearances are as deceitful here as they are on Earth. Outward quietness is no sign of inward peace. The ocean, which is in continual war with the elements, lashing its surface into ungovernable fury, is secret and silent in its depth, while some hidden lake in the mountains, or some pool in the valleys, which never feels the ocean storm blowing over its surface, yet mirrors every storm-cloud in its breast and is disturbed in its depths by violent currents. Appearances are deceitful, even here, you see."
The Devil then offered to show me about his dominions, and we trudged along together. I was surprised to find so many people there I had known on Earth and supposed were saints; men whom I had known with serene faces, and upturned eyes, and saintly expressions, who were all the time deprecating the sinfulness of Earth; who held up their hands in holy horror at pleasures and snuffed evil in every wind that blew; and among them some whose names had been blown abroad loud and long, and who had mountedupon the top of popular opinion by means of the step-ladders of piety. The Devil noticed my surprise and said: "Yes! we have a good many of that sort. They are all entered on the books as hypocrites. One of our choicest vintages, which we serve on State occasions, is their tears bottled up. They are much superior in flavor to the tears of the crocodile."
He took me further on and showed me the men who had been cruel to animals, each of whom was tormented by the animals he had tormented in life. Brutal cartmen, who had lashed their horses to death, were in harness, and the horses were lashing them. In one place, there was an entire horse-railroad company drawing overloaded cars. A man who was cruel to his dog was pursued and constantly bitten by a howling pack of them. Another, who had wantonly killed a little bird, was chained to a rock, like Prometheus, and vultures were forever pecking at him. Nero, who took delight in killing flies, was forever stung by swarms of insects. This one, who had been cruel to his ox, was harnessed to a plow, and the ox was goading him along. That one, who had been unnecessarily cruel to a fish, was forever swimming in bottomless waters, pursued by sharks. Thus each was punished in kind, and cruelty to the dumb beast brought its own compensation. Whereat I rejoiced, and quietly pressed the hand of the Devil in token of satisfaction.
And he said to me: "Even we devils, bad as we are supposed to be, hardly know a crime so wicked as the crime of cruelty to the animal, from man down to the insect. We have no worse punishments than that for violations of the law of kindness, which is the law of love."
We wandered on, and found several other classes of persons, each of whom was punished in some unique manner. There were pot-house politicians by the multitude, who were chasing after offices which constantly eluded their grasp just as they thought they had them. There was an army of street-corner organ-grinders condemned to wander for a term of years and never to cease grinding "Captain Jinks," while the man who wrote "Captain Jinks" was condemned to follow them and listen to it as long as they played it. There was a large multitude of people from Cincinnati, condemned to sit for a thousand years upon a bank of a river and read the daily papers of Chicago. There was a crowd of tradesmen, who cheated with false weights, condemned to trudge for centuries with their weights hung about their necks; and others, who mixed sand with sugar, and turmeric with butter, and sold other villainous compounds for the genuine article, who were forced to eat their own abominable adulterations incessantly. And thus we went on until we came to a spot where there was a fearful chattering and screaming. The Devil stopped his ears as we approached, and I immediately discovered a crowd of able-bodied, stout-armed women chasing a piece of paper which was fluttering through the air. Every time that they were on the point of seizing it, a puff of wind would blow it away again. And on the paper was written the single word "Ballot." I smiled as I recognized some of them.
Thus we went on, but it was everywhere the same story. Those who had bad passions on Earth brought their bad passions along with them, and made their own hells. Those who were foolish on Earth were foolishhere, and everyone was punished in kind. Each person had his crime fastened upon him, and whatever chalice he had forced others to drink was now commended to his own lips.
And as we retraced our steps, I asked the Devil if there was no cessation from these punishments, and he answered: "Love will finally triumph at last, for it is the law of laws, both on the Earth and in the Heavens."
We again reached the River Lethe, and I asked him what word he wished to send to Earth. He smiled, as he answered: "Nothing special. My business is doing well there, and I have no fault to find with your representation. The supply quite exceeds the demand."
He paused a minute, and said: "And yet I think I might send some advice by you. A great many good souls upon Earth are troubled about the meaning of life. There was one poor fool named Dr. Faust, who once sold himself to me, in order to get at the meaning of the riddle. Tell them that any one who can appreciate the littleness of life and not lose his own dignity has come near enough to solving the problem. Tell them, also, to realize, if they can, that their condition is human, and that, whenever they try to ape the divine, they are opposing the eternal fitness of things. The best happiness, and glory, and virtue they can reach is in beingmen, and loving their fellow-men. If they become angels on Earth, they have nothing left to do when they get up there. That old poet whom you are accustomed to style a heathen was just right when he said: 'I am human, and I deem nothing human a stranger to me.'"
I promised the Devil I would take his message toEarth, and then said: "I have but one more question to ask."
"What is that?" he replied.
"Do editors come here often?"
"No! they have quite enough of this place where they are."
I thanked him from my heart of hearts, and bade him good-bye as one not utterly bereft of comfort and consolation.
As the old ferryman landed I noticed that his boat was full of stock speculators, and that the Devil looked utterly disgusted when they stepped into his dominions.
We passed over the river in silence. I climbed the hill and crossed the blank moors, passed through the golden sea again, and then on through the systems until I reached Earth and awaked.
It may be barely possible that a quarter section of hot mince pie had something to do with this visit.
September 19, 1869.
September 19, 1869.
IT is only a few brief lines, and I must say good-bye to the reader, and the book closes. You and I have kept company together through nearly three years of pleasant intercourse—a brief time as numbered by years, but long enough in the calendar of words and deeds. I trust neither of us is the worse for the company, and that we shall part with kindly words, good wishes and mutual blessings, until we see each other again. I trust that in these preceding pages, each one of you may have found some thought you will deem worthy to lay away for preservation among the locks of hair and old letters and faded flowers and other souvenirs which each of you keep and look at when the world presses heavily upon you with its cares and anxieties.
I trust that you may have found something that is beautiful in the lives of each one of our little family with whom you have been made acquainted, in your companionship with me. I frankly confess to you that I have a tender regard for them all, and that I shall be disappointed if you do not share the same, as I have only been their mouthpiece when they have spoken. I know that they regret the parting with you as much as I, and that if we ever meet again, they will extend to you the same warm welcome as I.
And now the book closes, just as the birds are flying to the warmer South and the groves are growing strangely silent; just as the flowers are fading in the gardens and in the fields; just as the leaves are falling in the forests, and the hill-sides are beginning to drape themselves in the melancholy and tender beauty of the Autumn. I cannot make this parting without a feeling of regret and a certain sadness; and, as I extend my hand to each and all of you—to some whom I have met daily, to some whose faces have grown familiar, and to some whom I have never seen and may never see, and yet have sent me precious words of sympathy and encouragement during these past three years—I should be ungrateful were I not to acknowledge the constant kindness which has greeted these careless letters as they have appeared in the columns of theTribune.
Hoping that, in some future time, we may meet together again as now, it only remains to say Farewell, and to write those saddest of all words—
THE END.
September 22, 1869.
September 22, 1869.
FOOTNOTES:[1]The Northwestern Saengerfest, held at Chicago, June, 1868.[2]The completion of the Pacific Railroad.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]The Northwestern Saengerfest, held at Chicago, June, 1868.
[1]The Northwestern Saengerfest, held at Chicago, June, 1868.
[2]The completion of the Pacific Railroad.
[2]The completion of the Pacific Railroad.
Transcriber's Notes:Obvious typographical errors were repaired.Archaic or variant stylistic spellings, and hyphenation inconsistencies, were retained.Redundant title page at the beginning—displaying only "Letters of Peregrine Pickle"—was removed.
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious typographical errors were repaired.
Archaic or variant stylistic spellings, and hyphenation inconsistencies, were retained.
Redundant title page at the beginning—displaying only "Letters of Peregrine Pickle"—was removed.