"GOOD-MORNING, Mrs. Barnet," cried the Doctor, as we drew near a neat farm-house during one of our morning drives.
A tall, healthful young woman, in the bloom of matronly beauty, was feeding chickens at the door. She uttered an exclamation of delight and hurried towards us. Perceiving a stranger in the wagon she paused, with a look of embarrassment.
"My friend, who is spending a few weeks with me," explained the Doctor.
She greeted me civilly and pressed the Doctor's hand warmly.
"Oh, it is so long since you have called on us that we have been talking of going up to the village to see you, as soon as Robert can get away from his cornfield. You don't know how little Lucy has grown. You must stop and see her."
"She's coming to see me herself," replied the Doctor, beckoning to a sweet blue-eyed child in the door-way.
The delighted mother caught up her darling and held her before the Doctor.
"Does n't she look like Robert?" she inquired. "His very eyes and forehead! Bless me! here he is now."
A stout, hale young farmer, in a coarse checked frock and broad straw hat, came up from the adjoining field.
"Well, Robert," said the Doctor, "how do matters now stand with you? Well, I hope."
"All right, Doctor. We've paid off the last cent of the mortgage, and the farm is all free and clear. Julia and I have worked hard; but we're none the worse for it."
"You look well and happy, I am sure," said the Doctor. "I don't think you are sorry you took the advice of the old Doctor, after all."
The young wife's head drooped until her lips touched those of her child.
"Sorry!" exclaimed her husband. "Not we! If there's anybody happier than we are within ten miles of us. I don't know them. Doctor, I'll tell you what I said to Julia the night I brought home that mortgage. 'Well,' said I, 'that debt's paid; but there's one debt we can never pay as long as we live.' 'I know it,' says she; 'but Dr. Singletary wants no better reward for his kindness than to see us live happily together, and do for others what he has done for us.'"
"Pshaw!" said the Doctor, catching up his reins and whip. "You owe me nothing. But I must not forget my errand. Poor old Widow Osborne needs a watcher to-night; and she insists upon having Julia Barnet, and nobody else. What shall I tell her?"
"I'll go, certainly. I can leave Lucy now as well as not."
"Good-by, neighbors."
"Good-by, Doctor."
As we drove off I saw the Doctor draw his hand hastily across his eyes, and he said nothing for some minutes.
"Public opinion," said he at length, as if pursuing his meditations aloud,—"public opinion is, in nine cases out of ten, public folly and impertinence. We are slaves to one another. We dare not take counsel of our consciences and affections, but must needs suffer popular prejudice and custom to decide for us, and at their bidding are sacrificed love and friendship and all the best hopes of our lives. We do not ask, What is right and best for us? but, What will folks say of it? We have no individuality, no self-poised strength, no sense of freedom. We are conscious always of the gaze of the many-eyed tyrant. We propitiate him with precious offerings; we burn incense perpetually to Moloch, and pass through his fire the sacred first-born of our hearts. How few dare to seek their own happiness by the lights which God has given them, or have strength to defy the false pride and the prejudice of the world and stand fast in the liberty of Christians! Can anything be more pitiable than the sight of so many, who should be the choosers and creators under God of their own spheres of utility and happiness, self-degraded into mere slaves of propriety and custom, their true natures undeveloped, their hearts cramped and shut up, each afraid of his neighbor and his neighbor of him, living a life of unreality, deceiving and being deceived, and forever walking in a vain show? Here, now, we have just left a married couple who are happy because they have taken counsel of their honest affections rather than of the opinions of the multitude, and have dared to be true to themselves in defiance of impertinent gossip."
"You speak of the young farmer Barnet and his wife, I suppose?" said I.
"Yes. I will give their case as an illustration. Julia Atkins was the daughter of Ensign Atkins, who lived on the mill-road, just above Deacon Warner's. When she was ten years old her mother died; and in a few months afterwards her father married Polly Wiggin, the tailoress, a shrewd, selfish, managing woman. Julia, poor girl! had a sorry time of it; for the Ensign, although a kind and affectionate man naturally, was too weak and yielding to interpose between her and his strong-minded, sharp-tongued wife. She had one friend, however, who was always ready to sympathize with her. Robert Barnet was the son of her next-door neighbor, about two years older than herself; they had grown up together as school companions and playmates; and often in my drives I used to meet them coming home hand in hand from school, or from the woods with berries and nuts, talking and laughing as if there were no scolding step-mothers in the world.
"It so fell out that when Julia was in her sixteenth year there came a famous writing-master to Peewawkin. He was a showy, dashing fellow, with a fashionable dress, a wicked eye, and a tongue like the old serpent's when he tempted our great-grandmother. Julia was one of his scholars, and perhaps the prettiest of them all. The rascal singled her out from the first; and, the better to accomplish his purpose, he left the tavern and took lodgings at the Ensign's. He soon saw how matters stood in the family, and governed himself accordingly, taking special pains to conciliate the ruling authority. The Ensign's wife hated young Barnet, and wished to get rid of her step-daughter. The writing-master, therefore, had a fair field. He flattered the poor young girl by his attentions and praised her beauty. Her moral training had not fitted her to withstand this seductive influence; no mother's love, with its quick, instinctive sense of danger threatening its object, interposed between her and the tempter. Her old friend and playmate—he who could alone have saved her—had been rudely repulsed from the house by her step-mother; and, indignant and disgusted, he had retired from all competition with his formidable rival. Thus abandoned to her own undisciplined imagination, with the inexperience of a child and the passions of a woman, she was deceived by false promises, bewildered, fascinated, and beguiled into sin.
"It is the same old story of woman's confidence and man's duplicity. The rascally writing-master, under pretence of visiting a neighboring town, left his lodgings and never returned. The last I heard of him, he was the tenant of a western penitentiary. Poor Julia, driven in disgrace from her father's house, found a refuge in the humble dwelling of an old woman of no very creditable character. There I was called to visit her; and, although not unused to scenes of suffering and sorrow, I had never before witnessed such an utter abandonment to grief, shame, and remorse. Alas! what sorrow was like unto her sorrow? The birth hour of her infant was also that of its death.
"The agony of her spirit seemed greater than she could bear. Her eyes were opened, and she looked upon herself with loathing and horror. She would admit of no hope, no consolation; she would listen to no palliation or excuse of her guilt. I could only direct her to that Source of pardon and peace to which the broken and contrite heart never appeals in vain.
"In the mean time Robert Barnet shipped on board a Labrador vessel. The night before he left he called on me, and put in my hand a sum of money, small indeed, but all he could then command.
"'You will see her often,' he said. 'Do not let her suffer; for she is more to be pitied than blamed.'
"I answered him that I would do all in my power for her; and added, that I thought far better of her, contrite and penitent as she was, than of some who were busy in holding her up to shame and censure.
"'God bless you for these words!' he said, grasping my hand. 'I shall think of them often. They will be a comfort to me.'
"As for Julia, God was more merciful to her than man. She rose from her sick-bed thoughtful and humbled, but with hopes that transcended the world of her suffering and shame. She no longer murmured against her sorrowful allotment, but accepted it with quiet and almost cheerful resignation as the fitting penalty of God's broken laws and the needed discipline of her spirit. She could say with the Psalmist, 'The judgments of the Lord are true, justified in themselves. Thou art just, O Lord, and thy judgment is right.' Through my exertions she obtained employment in a respectable family, to whom she endeared herself by her faithfulness, cheerful obedience, and unaffected piety.
"Her trials had made her heart tender with sympathy for all in affliction. She seemed inevitably drawn towards the sick and suffering. In their presence the burden of her own sorrow seemed to fall off. She was the most cheerful and sunny-faced nurse I ever knew; and I always felt sure that my own efforts would be well seconded when I found her by the bedside of a patient. Beautiful it was to see this poor young girl, whom the world still looked upon with scorn and unkindness, cheering the desponding, and imparting, as it were, her own strong, healthful life to the weak and faint; supporting upon her bosom, through weary nights, the heads of those who, in health, would have deemed her touch pollution; or to hear her singing for the ear of the dying some sweet hymn of pious hope or resignation, or calling to mind the consolations of the gospel and the great love of Christ."
"I trust," said I, "that the feelings of the community were softened towards her."
"You know what human nature is," returned the Doctor, "and with what hearty satisfaction we abhor and censure sin and folly in others. It is a luxury which we cannot easily forego, although our own experience tells us that the consequences of vice and error are evil and bitter enough without the aggravation of ridicule and reproach from without. So you need not be surprised to learn that, in poor Julia's case, the charity of sinners like herself did not keep pace with the mercy and forgiveness of Him who is infinite in purity. Nevertheless, I will do our people the justice to say that her blameless and self-sacrificing life was not without its proper effect upon them."
"What became of Robert Barnet?" I inquired.
"He came back after an absence of several months, and called on me before he had even seen his father and mother. He did not mention Julia; but I saw that his errand with me concerned her. I spoke of her excellent deportment and her useful life, dwelt upon the extenuating circumstances of her error and of her sincere and hearty repentance.
"'Doctor,' said he, at length, with a hesitating and embarrassed manner, 'what should you think if I should tell you that, after all that has passed, I have half made up my mind to ask her to become my wife?'
"'I should think better of it if you had wholly made up your mind,' said I; 'and if you were my own son, I wouldn't ask for you a better wife than Julia Atkins. Don't hesitate, Robert, on account of what some ill- natured people may say. Consult your own heart first of all.'
"'I don't care for the talk of all the busybodies in town,' said he; 'but I wish father and mother could feel as you do about her.'
"'Leave that to me,' said I. 'They are kindhearted and reasonable, and I dare say will be disposed to make the best of the matter when they find you are decided in your purpose.'
"I did not see him again; but a few days after I learned from his parents that he had gone on another voyage. It was now autumn, and the most sickly season I had ever known in Peewawkin. Ensign Atkins and his wife both fell sick; and Julia embraced with alacrity this providential opportunity to return to her father's house and fulfil the duties of a daughter. Under her careful nursing the Ensign soon got upon his feet; but his wife, whose constitution was weaker, sunk under the fever. She died better than she had lived,—penitent and loving, asking forgiveness of Julia for her neglect and unkindness, and invoking blessings on her head. Julia had now, for the first time since the death of her mother, a comfortable home and a father's love and protection. Her sweetness of temper, patient endurance, and forgetfulness of herself in her labors for others, gradually overcame the scruples and hard feelings of her neighbors. They began to question whether, after all, it was meritorious in them to treat one like her as a sinner beyond forgiveness. Elder Staples and Deacon Warner were her fast friends. The Deacon's daughters—the tall, blue-eyed, brown-locked girls you noticed in meeting the other day—set the example among the young people of treating her as their equal and companion. The dear good girls! They reminded me of the maidens of Naxos cheering and comforting the unhappy Ariadne.
"One mid-winter evening I took Julia with me to a poor sick patient of mine, who was suffering for lack of attendance. The house where she lived was in a lonely and desolate place, some two or three miles below us, on a sandy level, just elevated above the great salt marshes, stretching far away to the sea. The night set in dark and stormy; a fierce northeasterly wind swept over the level waste, driving thick snow-clouds before it, shaking the doors and windows of the old house, and roaring in its vast chimney. The woman was dying when we arrived, and her drunken husband was sitting in stupid unconcern in the corner of the fireplace. A little after midnight she breathed her last.
"In the mean time the storm had grown more violent; there was a blinding snow-fall in the air; and we could feel the jar of the great waves as they broke upon the beach.
"'It is a terrible night for sailors on the coast,' I said, breaking our long silence with the dead. 'God grant them sea-room!'
"Julia shuddered as I spoke, and by the dim-flashing firelight I saw she was weeping. Her thoughts, I knew, were with her old friend and playmate on the wild waters.
"'Julia,' said I, 'do you know that Robert Barnet loves you with all the strength of an honest and true heart?'
"She trembled, and her voice faltered as she confessed that when Robert was at home he had asked her to become his wife.
"'And, like a fool, you refused him, I suppose?—the brave, generous fellow!'
"'O Doctor!' she exclaimed. 'How can you talk so? It is just because Robert is so good, and noble, and generous, that I dared not take him at his word. You yourself, Doctor, would have despised me if I had taken advantage of his pity or his kind remembrance of the old days when we were children together. I have already brought too much disgrace upon those dear to me.'
"I was endeavoring to convince her, in reply, that she was doing injustice to herself and wronging her best friend, whose happiness depended in a great measure upon her, when, borne on the strong blast, we both heard a faint cry as of a human being in distress. I threw up the window which opened seaward, and we leaned out into the wild night, listening breathlessly for a repetition of the sound.
"Once more, and once only, we heard it,—a low, smothered, despairing cry.
"'Some one is lost, and perishing in the snow,' said Julia. 'The sound conies in the direction of the beach plum-bushes on the side of the marsh. Let us go at once.'
"She snatched up her hood and shawl, and was already at the door. I found and lighted a lantern and soon overtook her. The snow was already deep and badly drifted, and it was with extreme difficulty that we could force our way against the storm. We stopped often to take breath and listen; but the roaring of the wind and waves was alone audible. At last we reached a slightly elevated spot, overgrown with dwarf plum- trees, whose branches were dimly visible above the snow.
"'Here, bring the lantern here!' cried Julia, who had strayed a few yards from me. I hastened to her, and found her lifting up the body of a man who was apparently insensible. The rays of the lantern fell full upon his face, and we both, at the same instant, recognized Robert Barnet. Julia did not shriek nor faint; but, kneeling in the snow, and still supporting the body, she turned towards me a look of earnest and fearful inquiry.
"'Courage!' said I. 'He still lives. He is only overcome with fatigue and cold.'
"With much difficulty-partly carrying and partly dragging him through the snow—we succeeded in getting him to the house, where, in a short time, he so far recovered as to be able to speak. Julia, who had been my prompt and efficient assistant in his restoration, retired into the shadow of the room as soon as he began to rouse himself and look about him. He asked where he was and who was with me, saying that his head was so confused that he thought he saw Julia Atkins by the bedside. 'You were not mistaken,' said I; 'Julia is here, and you owe your life to her.' He started up and gazed round the room. I beckoned Julia to the bedside; and I shall never forget the grateful earnestness with which he grasped her hand and called upon God to bless her. Some folks think me a tough-hearted old fellow, and so I am; but that scene was more than I could bear without shedding tears.
"Robert told us that his vessel had been thrown upon the beach a mile or two below, and that he feared all the crew had perished save himself. Assured of his safety, I went out once more, in the faint hope of hearing the voice of some survivor of the disaster; but I listened only to the heavy thunder of the surf rolling along the horizon of the east. The storm had in a great measure ceased; the gray light of dawn was just visible; and I was gratified to see two of the nearest neighbors approaching the house. On being informed of the wreck they immediately started for the beach, where several dead bodies, half buried in snow, confirmed the fears of the solitary survivor.
"The result of all this you can easily conjecture. Robert Barnet abandoned the sea, and, with the aid of some of his friends, purchased the farm where he now lives, and the anniversary of his shipwreck found him the husband of Julia. I can assure you I have had every reason to congratulate myself on my share in the match-making. Nobody ventured to find fault with it except two or three sour old busybodies, who, as Elder Staples well says, 'would have cursed her whom Christ had forgiven, and spurned the weeping Magdalen from the feet of her Lord.'"
IT was one of the very brightest and breeziest of summer mornings that the Doctor and myself walked homeward from the town poor-house, where he had always one or more patients, and where his coming was always welcomed by the poor, diseased, and age-stricken inmates. Dark, miserable faces of lonely and unreverenced age, written over with the grim records of sorrow and sin, seemed to brighten at his approach as with an inward light, as if the good man's presence had power to call the better natures of the poor unfortunates into temporary ascendency. Weary, fretful women—happy mothers in happy homes, perchance, half a century before—felt their hearts warm and expand under the influence of his kind salutations and the ever-patient good-nature with which he listened to their reiterated complaints of real or imaginary suffering. However it might be with others, he never forgot the man or the woman in the pauper. There was nothing like condescension or consciousness in his charitable ministrations; for he was one of the few men I have ever known in whom the milk of human kindness was never soured by contempt for humanity in whatever form it presented itself. Thus it was that his faithful performance of the duties of his profession, however repulsive and disagreeable, had the effect of Murillo's picture of St. Elizabeth of Hungary binding up the ulcered limbs of the beggars. The moral beauty transcended the loathsomeness of physical evil and deformity.
Our nearest route home lay across the pastures and over Blueberry Hill, just at the foot of which we encountered Elder Staples and Skipper Evans, who had been driving their cows to pasture, and were now leisurely strolling back to the village. We toiled together up the hill in the hot sunshine, and, just on its eastern declivity, were glad to find a white-oak tree, leaning heavily over a little ravine, from the bottom of which a clear spring of water bubbled up and fed a small rivulet, whose track of darker green might be traced far down the hill to the meadow at its foot.
A broad shelf of rock by the side of the spring, cushioned with mosses, afforded us a comfortable resting-place. Elder Staples, in his faded black coat and white neck-cloth, leaned his quiet, contemplative head on his silver-mounted cane: right opposite him sat the Doctor, with his sturdy, rotund figure, and broad, seamed face, surmounted by a coarse stubble of iron-gray hair, the sharp and almost severe expression of his keen gray eyes, flashing under their dark penthouse, happily relieved by the softer lines of his mouth, indicative of his really genial and generous nature. A small, sinewy figure, half doubled up, with his chin resting on his rough palms, Skipper Evans sat on a lower projection of the rock just beneath him, in an attentive attitude, as at the feet of Gatnaliel. Dark and dry as one of his own dunfish on a Labrador flake, or a seal-skin in an Esquimaux hut, he seemed entirely exempt from one of the great trinity of temptations; and, granting him a safe deliverance from the world and the devil, he had very little to fear from the flesh.
We were now in the Doctor's favorite place of resort, green, cool, quiet, and sightly withal. The keen light revealed every object in the long valley below us; the fresh west wind fluttered the oakleaves above; and the low voice of the water, coaxing or scolding its way over bare roots or mossy stones, was just audible.
"Doctor," said I, "this spring, with the oak hanging over it, is, I suppose, your Fountain of Bandusia. You remember what Horace says of his spring, which yielded such cool refreshment when the dog-star had set the day on fire. What a fine picture he gives us of this charming feature of his little farm!"
The Doctor's eye kindled. "I'm glad to see you like Horace; not merely as a clever satirist and writer of amatory odes, but as a true lover of Nature. How pleasant are his simple and beautiful descriptions of his yellow, flowing Tiber, the herds and herdsmen, the harvesters, the grape vintage, the varied aspects of his Sabine retreat in the fierce summer heats, or when the snowy forehead of Soracte purpled in winter sunsets! Scattered through his odes and the occasional poems which he addresses to his city friends, you find these graceful and inimitable touches of rural beauty, each a picture in itself."
"It is long since I have looked at my old school-day companions, the classics," said Elder Staples; "but I remember Horace only as a light, witty, careless epicurean, famous for his lyrics in praise of Falernian wine and questionable women."
"Somewhat too much of that, doubtless," said the Doctor; "but to me Horace is serious and profoundly suggestive, nevertheless. Had I laid him aside on quitting college, as you did, I should perhaps have only remembered such of his epicurean lyrics as recommended themselves to the warns fancy of boyhood. Ah, Elder Staples, there was a time when the Lyces and Glyceras of the poet were no fiction to us. They played blindman's buff with us in the farmer's kitchen, sang with us in the meeting-house, and romped and laughed with us at huskings and quilting- parties. Grandmothers and sober spinsters as they now are, the change in us is perhaps greater than in them."
"Too true," replied the Elder, the smile which had just played over his pale face fading into something sadder than its habitual melancholy. "The living companions of our youth, whom we daily meet, are more strange to us than the dead in yonder graveyard. They alone remain unchanged!"
"Speaking of Horace," continued the Doctor, in a voice slightly husky with feeling, "he gives us glowing descriptions of his winter circles of friends, where mirth and wine, music and beauty, charm away the hours, and of summer-day recreations beneath the vine-wedded elms of the Tiber or on the breezy slopes of Soracte; yet I seldom read them without a feeling of sadness. A low wail of inappeasable sorrow, an undertone of dirges, mingles with his gay melodies. His immediate horizon is bright with sunshine; but beyond is a land of darkness, the light whereof is darkness. It is walled about by the everlasting night. The skeleton sits at his table; a shadow of the inevitable terror rests upon all his pleasant pictures. He was without God in the world; he had no clear abiding hope of a life beyond that which was hastening to a close. Eat and drink, he tells us; enjoy present health and competence; alleviate present evils, or forget them, in social intercourse, in wine, music, and sensual indulgence; for to-morrow we must die. Death was in his view no mere change of condition and relation; it was the black end of all. It is evident that he placed no reliance on the mythology of his time, and that he regarded the fables of the Elysian Fields and their dim and wandering ghosts simply in the light of convenient poetic fictions for illustration and imagery. Nothing can, in my view, be sadder than his attempts at consolation for the loss of friends. Witness his Ode to Virgil on the death of Quintilius. He tells his illustrious friend simply that his calamity is without hope, irretrievable and eternal; that it is idle to implore the gods to restore the dead; and that, although his lyre may be more sweet than that of Orpheus, he cannot reanimate the shadow of his friend nor persuade 'the ghost-compelling god' to unbar the gates of death. He urges patience as the sole resource. He alludes not unfrequently to his own death in the same despairing tone. In the Ode to Torquatus,—one of the most beautiful and touching of all he has written,—he sets before his friend, in melancholy contrast, the return of the seasons, and of the moon renewed in brightness, with the end of man, who sinks into the endless dark, leaving nothing save ashes and shadows. He then, in the true spirit of his philosophy, urges Torquatus to give his present hour and wealth to pleasures and delights, as he had no assurance of to-morrow."
"In something of the same strain," said I, "Moschus moralizes on the death of Bion:—
Our trees and plants revive; the roseIn annual youth of beauty glows;But when the pride of Nature dies,Man, who alone is great and wise,No more he rises into light,The wakeless sleeper of eternal night.'"
"It reminds me," said Elder Staples, "of the sad burden of Ecclesiastes, the mournfulest book of Scripture; because, while the preacher dwells with earnestness upon the vanity and uncertainty of the things of time and sense, he has no apparent hope of immortality to relieve the dark picture. Like Horace, he sees nothing better than to eat his bread with joy and drink his wine with a merry heart. It seems to me the wise man might have gone farther in his enumeration of the folly and emptiness of life, and pronounced his own prescription for the evil vanity also. What is it but plucking flowers on the banks of the stream which hurries us over the cataract, or feasting on the thin crust of a volcano upon delicate meats prepared over the fires which are soon to ingulf us? Oh, what a glorious contrast to this is the gospel of Him who brought to light life and immortality! The transition from the Koheleth to the Epistles of Paul is like passing from a cavern, where the artificial light falls indeed upon gems and crystals, but is everywhere circumscribed and overshadowed by unknown and unexplored darkness, into the warm light and free atmosphere of day."
"Yet," I asked, "are there not times when we all wish for some clearer evidence of immortal life than has been afforded us; when we even turn away unsatisfied from the pages of the holy book, with all the mysterious problems of life pressing about us and clamoring for solution, till, perplexed and darkened, we look up to the still heavens, as if we sought thence an answer, visible or audible, to their questionings? We want something beyond the bare announcement of the momentous fact of a future life; we long for a miracle to confirm our weak faith and silence forever the doubts which torment us."
"And what would a miracle avail us at such times of darkness and strong temptation?" said the Elder. "Have we not been told that they whom Moses and the prophets have failed to convince would not believe although one rose from the dead? That God has revealed no more to us is to my mind sufficient evidence that He has revealed enough."
"May it not be," queried the Doctor, "that Infinite Wisdom sees that a clearer and fuller revelation of the future life would render us less willing or able to perform our appropriate duties in the present condition? Enchanted by a clear view of the heavenly hills, and of our loved ones beckoning us from the pearl gates of the city of God, could we patiently work out our life-task here, or make the necessary exertions to provide for the wants of these bodies whose encumbrance alone can prevent us from rising to a higher plane of existence?"
"I reckon," said the Skipper, who had been an attentive, although at times evidently a puzzled, listener, "that it would be with us pretty much as it was with a crew of French sailors that I once shipped at the Isle of France for the port of Marseilles. I never had better hands until we hove in sight of their native country, which they had n't seen for years. The first look of the land set 'em all crazy; they danced, laughed, shouted, put on their best clothes; and I had to get new hands to help me bring the vessel to her moorings."
"Your story is quite to the point, Skipper," said the Doctor. "If things had been ordered differently, we should all, I fear, be disposed to quit work and fall into absurdities, like your French sailors, and so fail of bringing the world fairly into port."
"God's ways are best," said the Elder; "and I don't see as we can do better than to submit with reverence to the very small part of them which He has made known to us, and to trust Him like loving and dutiful children for the rest."
THE pause which naturally followed the observation of the Elder was broken abruptly by the Skipper.
"Hillo!" he cried, pointing with the glazed hat with which he had been fanning himself. "Here away in the northeast. Going down the coast for better fishing, I guess."
"An eagle, as I live!" exclaimed the Doctor, following with his cane the direction of the Skipper's hat. "Just see how royally he wheels upward and onward, his sail-broad wings stretched motionless, save an occasional flap to keep up his impetus! Look! the circle in which he moves grows narrower; he is a gray cloud in the sky, a point, a mere speck or dust-mote. And now he is clean swallowed up in the distance. The wise man of old did well to confess his ignorance of 'the way of an eagle in the air.'"
"The eagle," said Elder Staples, "seems to have been a favorite illustration of the sacred penman. 'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount upward as on the wings of an eagle.'"
"What think you of this passage?" said the Doctor. "'As when a bird hath flown through the air, there is no token of her way to be found; but the light air, beaten with the stroke of her wings and parted by the violent noise and motion thereof, is passed through, and therein afterward no sign of her path can be found.'
"I don't remember the passage," said the Elder.
"I dare say not," quoth the Doctor. "You clergymen take it for granted that no good thing can come home from the Nazareth of the Apocrypha. But where will you find anything more beautiful and cheering than these verses in connection with that which I just cited?—'The hope of the ungodly is like dust that is blown away by the wind; like the thin foam which is driven by the storm; like the smoke which is scattered here and there by the whirlwind; it passeth away like the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day. But the righteous live forevermore; their reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them with the Most High. Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful crown from the Lord's hand; for with his right hand shall He cover them, and with his arm shall He protect them.'"
"That, if I mistake not, is from the Wisdom of Solomon," said the Elder. "It is a striking passage; and there are many such in the uncanonical books."
"Canonical or not," answered the Doctor, "it is God's truth, and stands in no need of the endorsement of a set of well-meaning but purblind bigots and pedants, who presumed to set metes and bounds to Divine inspiration, and decide by vote what is God's truth and what is the Devil's falsehood. But, speaking of eagles, I never see one of these spiteful old sea-robbers without fancying that he may be the soul of a mad Viking of the middle centuries. Depend upon it, that Italian philosopher was not far out of the way in his ingenious speculations upon the affinities and sympathies existing between certain men and certain animals, and in fancying that he saw feline or canine traits and similitudes in the countenances of his acquaintance."
"Swedenborg tells us," said I, "that lost human souls in the spiritual world, as seen by the angels, frequently wear the outward shapes of the lower animals,—for instance, the gross and sensual look like swine, and the cruel and obscene like foul birds of prey, such as hawks and vultures,—and that they are entirely unconscious of the metamorphosis, imagining themselves marvellous proper men,' and are quite well satisfied with their company and condition."
"Swedenborg," said the Elder, "was an insane man, or worse."
"Perhaps so," said the Doctor; "but there is a great deal of 'method in his madness,' and plain common sense too. There is one grand and beautiful idea underlying all his revelations or speculations about the future life. It is this: that each spirit chooses its own society, and naturally finds its fitting place and sphere of action,—following in the new life, as in the present, the leading of its prevailing loves and desires,—and that hence none are arbitrarily compelled to be good or evil, happy or miserable. A great law of attraction and gravitation governs the spiritual as well as the material universe; but, in obeying it, the spirit retains in the new life whatever freedom of will it possessed in its first stage of being. But I see the Elder shakes his head, as much as to say, I am 'wise above what is written,' or, at any rate, meddling with matters beyond my comprehension. Our young friend here," he continued, turning to me, "has the appearance of a listener; but I suspect he is busy with his own reveries, or enjoying the fresh sights and sounds of this fine morning. I doubt whether our discourse has edified him."
"Pardon me," said I; "I was, indeed, listening to another and older oracle."
"Well, tell us what you hear," said the Doctor.
"A faint, low murmur, rising and falling on the wind. Now it comes rolling in upon me, wave after wave of sweet, solemn music. There was a grand organ swell; and now it dies away as into the infinite distance; but I still hear it,—whether with ear or spirit I know not,—the very ghost of sound."
"Ah, yes," said the Doctor; "I understand it is the voice of the pines yonder,—a sort of morning song of praise to the Giver of life and Maker of beauty. My ear is dull now, and I cannot hear it; but I know it is sounding on as it did when I first climbed up here in the bright June mornings of boyhood, and it will sound on just the same when the deafness of the grave shall settle upon my failing senses. Did it never occur to you that this deafness and blindness to accustomed beauty and harmony is one of the saddest thoughts connected with the great change which awaits us? Have you not felt at times that our ordinary conceptions of heaven itself, derived from the vague hints and Oriental imagery of the Scriptures, are sadly inadequate to our human wants and hopes? How gladly would we forego the golden streets and gates of pearl, the thrones, temples, and harps, for the sunset lights of our native valleys; the woodpaths, whose moss carpets are woven with violets and wild flowers; the songs of birds, the low of cattle, the hum of bees in the apple-blossom,—the sweet, familiar voices of human life and nature! In the place of strange splendors and unknown music, should we not welcome rather whatever reminded us of the common sights and sounds of our old home?"
"You touch a sad chord, Doctor," said I. "Would that we could feel assured of the eternity of all we love!"
"And have I not an assurance of it at this very moment?" returned the Doctor. "My outward ear fails me; yet I seem to hear as formerly the sound of the wind in the pines. I close my eyes; and the picture of my home is still before me. I see the green hill slope and meadows; the white shaft of the village steeple springing up from the midst of maples and elms; the river all afire with sunshine; the broad, dark belt of woodland; and, away beyond, all the blue level of the ocean. And now, by a single effort of will, I can call before me a winter picture of the same scene. It is morning as now; but how different! All night has the white meteor fallen, in broad flake or minutest crystal, the sport and plaything of winds that have wrought it into a thousand shapes of wild beauty. Hill and valley, tree and fence, woodshed and well-sweep, barn and pigsty, fishing-smacks frozen tip at the wharf, ribbed monsters of dismantled hulks scattered along the river-side,—all lie transfigured in the white glory and sunshine. The eye, wherever it turns, aches with the cold brilliance, unrelieved save where. The blue smoke of morning fires curls lazily up from the Parian roofs, or where the main channel of the river, as yet unfrozen, shows its long winding line of dark water glistening like a snake in the sun. Thus you perceive that the spirit sees and hears without the aid of bodily organs; and why may it not be so hereafter? Grant but memory to us, and we can lose nothing by death. The scenes now passing before us will live in eternal reproduction, created anew at will. We assuredly shall not love heaven the less that it is separated by no impassable gulf from this fair and goodly earth, and that the pleasant pictures of time linger like sunset clouds along the horizon of eternity. When I was younger, I used to be greatly troubled by the insecure tenure by which my senses held the beauty and harmony of the outward world. When I looked at the moonlight on the water, or the cloud-shadows on the hills, or the sunset sky, with the tall, black tree-boles and waving foliage relieved against it, or when I heard a mellow gush of music from the brown-breasted fife-bird in the summer woods, or the merry quaver of the bobolink in the corn land, the thought of an eternal loss of these familiar sights and sounds would sometimes thrill through me with a sharp and bitter pain. I have reason to thank God that this fear no longer troubles me. Nothing that is really valuable and necessary for us can ever be lost. The present will live hereafter; memory will bridge over the gulf between the two worlds; for only on the condition of their intimate union can we preserve our identity and personal consciousness. Blot out the memory of this world, and what would heaven or hell be to us? Nothing whatever. Death would be simple annihilation of our actual selves, and the substitution therefor of a new creation, in which we should have no more interest than in an inhabitant of Jupiter or the fixed stars."
The Elder, who had listened silently thus far, not without an occasional and apparently involuntary manifestation of dissent, here interposed.
"Pardon me, my dear friend," said he; "but I must needs say that I look upon speculations of this kind, however ingenious or plausible, as unprofitable, and well-nigh presumptuous. For myself, I only know that I am a weak, sinful man, accountable to and cared for by a just and merciful God. What He has in reserve for me hereafter I know not, nor have I any warrant to pry into His secrets. I do not know what it is to pass from one life to another; but I humbly hope that, when I am sinking in the dark waters, I may hear His voice of compassion and encouragement, 'It is I; be not afraid.'"
"Amen," said the Skipper, solemnly.
"I dare say the Parson is right, in the main," said the Doctor. "Poor creatures at the best, it is safer for us to trust, like children, in the goodness of our Heavenly Father than to speculate too curiously in respect to the things of a future life; and, notwithstanding all I have said, I quite agree with good old Bishop Hall: 'It is enough for me to rest in the hope that I shall one day see them; in the mean time, let me be learnedly ignorant and incuriously devout, silently blessing the power and wisdom of my infinite Creator, who knows how to honor himself by all those unrevealed and glorious subordinations.'"