ZERVIAH HOPE.

‘There’s naught in this life sweet,If man were wise to see’t,But only melancholy.’

This noisy generation has lost their secret. As for me, I am content with the grays and drabs. I think the brighter colors would disturb my mood. I know it’s not a large life, but it is a safe one.”

I did not at the moment remember that this had been Armstrong’s very saying fifteen years ago, but some unconscious association led me to mention him.

“Armstrong and you have changed places in one respect, I should think,” said I. “He is keeping a boarding-school somewhere in Connecticut. And instead of leading a Tulkinghorny existence in the New York University building, as he firmly intended, he has married and produced a numerous offspring, I hear.”

“Yes, poor fellow!” said Berkeley; “I fancythat he is dreadfully overrun and hard up. There always was something absurdly domestic about Armstrong. They say he has grown red, fat, and bald. Think of a man with Armstrong’s education—and he had some talent, too—keeping a sort of Dotheboys Hall! I haven’t seen him for eight or nine years. The last time was at Jersey City, and I had just time to shake hands with him. He was with a lot of other pedagogues, all going up to a teachers’ convention, or some such dreary thing, at Albany.”

I had an opportunity for verifying Berkeley’s account of Armstrong a few days after my conversation with the former. The Pestalozzian Institute, in the pleasant little village of Thimbleville, was situated, as its prospectus informed the public, on “one of the most elegant residence streets, in one of the healthiest and most beautiful rural towns of Eastern Connecticut.” Over the entrance gate was a Roman arch bearing the inscription “Pestalozzian Institute” in large gilt letters. The temple of learning itself was a big, bare, white house at some distance from the street, with an orchard and kitchen garden on one side, and a roomy play-ground on the other. The latter was in possession of some small boys, who were kicking a broken-winded foot-ball about the field with an amount of noise greatly in excess of its occasion. To my question where I could find Mr. Armstrong, they answered eagerly: “Mr. Armstrong? Yes, sir. You go right into the hall, and knock on thefirst door to the right, and he’ll come—or some one.”

The door to the large square entry stood wide open, and through another door opposite, which was ajar, I saw long tables, and heard the clatter of dishes being removed, while a strong smell of dinner filled the air. I knocked at the door on the right, but no one appeared. Finally, a chubby girl of about ten summers came running round the corner of the house and into the front door. She was eating an apple, and gazed at me wonderingly.

“Is Mr. Armstrong in?” I asked.

“Yes, sir; he’s about somewhere. Walk into the parlor, please, and sit down, and I’ll find him.”

I entered the room on the right, which was a bleak and official-looking apartment,—apparently the reception-room where parents held interviews with the instructor of youth, or tore themselves from the parting embraces of homesick sons at the beginning of a new term. There is always something depressing about the parlor of an “institution” of any kind, and I could not help feeling sorry for Armstrong, as I waited for him, seated on a sofa covered with faded rep. At length the door of an inner room opened, and the principal of the Pestalozzian Institute waddled across the floor with his hand held out, crying:

“Franky Polisson, how are you?”

He certainly had grown stout, and his light hairhad retreated from the forehead. He wore glasses and was dressed in a suit of rusty black, with a high vest which gave him a ministerial look—a much more ministerial look than Berkeley had. His pantaloons presented that appearance which tailors describe as “kneeing out.” He sat down and we chatted for half an hour. The little girl had followed him into the room, and behind her came another three or four years her junior. The older one stood by his side, and he kept his arm around her, while he held the younger on his knee. They were both pretty, healthy-looking children, and kept their eyes fixed on “the man.”

“Are those your own kids?” I inquired presently.

“Yes, two of them. I have six, you know,” he answered, with a fond sigh: “five girls and one boy. The lasses are rather in the majority.”

“I heard you were quite apaterfamilias,” I said. “Won’t you come and kiss me, little girl?”

To this proposal the elder answered by burying her head bashfully in her father’s shoulder, while the smaller one simply opened her eyes wider and stared with more fixed intensity.

“Oh, by the way,” exclaimed Armstrong, “of course you’ll take tea with us and spend the evening. I wish I could offer to sleep you here; but the fact is, Mrs. Armstrong’s sister is with us for a few days, and the parents of one of my boys, who is sick, are also staying here; so that my guest chambers are full.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said. “I couldn’t stay over night. I’ve got to be in New York in the morning, and must take the nine-o’clock train. But I’ll stay to supper and much obliged, if you are sure I sha’n’t take up too much of your time.”

“Not the least—not the least. This is a half holiday, and nothing in particular to do.” He bustled to the door and called out loudly, “Mother! Mother!”

There was no response.

“Nelly,” he commanded, “run and find your mamma, and tell her that Mr. Polisson—from New Orleans—an old classmate of papa’s, will be here to tea. That’s a good girl. Polisson, put on your hat and let’s go round the place. I want to show you what an establishment I’ve got here.”

We accordingly made the tour of the premises, Armstrong doing the cicerone impressively, and every now and then urging me with emphatic hospitality to come and spend a week—a fortnight—longer, if I chose, during the summer vacation.

“Bring Mrs. Polisson and the kids. Bring ’em all,” he said. “It will do them good; the air here is fine; eleven hundred feet above the sea. No malaria—no typhoid. I laid out four hundred dollars last year on sewerage.”

It being a half holiday, most of the big boys had gone to a pond in the neighborhood for a swim, under the conduct of the classical master,—a Yale graduate, Armstrong explained, who had stoodfourth in his class, “and a very able fellow,—very able.”

But while we sat at tea in Armstrong’s family dining-room, which adjoined the school commons, we were made aware of the return of the swimming party by the constant shuffle and tramp of feet through the hall and the noise of feeding in the next room. At our table were present Mrs. Armstrong, her sister (who had a frightened air when addressed and conversed in monosyllables), the parents of the sick pupil, and Armstrong’s two eldest children. I surmised that the younger children had been in the habit of sharing in the social meal, and had been crowded out on this occasion by the number of guests; for I heard themfremuntingin carcerebehind a door through which the waitress passed out and in, bringing plates of waffles. The remonstrances of the waitress were also audible, and, when the wailing rose high, my hostess’s face had a distrait expression, as of one prepared at any moment for an irruption of infant Goths.

Mrs. Armstrong was a vivacious little woman, who, I conjectured, had once been a village belle, with some pretensions toespièglerieand the fragile prettiness common among New England country girls. But the bearing and rearing of a family of children, and the matronizing of a houseful of hungry school-boys in such a way as to make ends meet, had substituted a faded and worried look for her natural liveliness of expression. She bore upbravely, however, against the embarrassments of the occasion. In particular, it pleased her to take a facetious view of college life.

“Oh, Mr. Polisson,” she cried, “I am afraid that you and my husband were very gay young men when you were at college together. Oh, don’t tell me; I know—I know. I’ve heard of some of your scrapes.”

I protested feebly against this impeachment, but Armstrong winked at me with the air of a sly dog, and said:

“It’s no use, Polisson. You can’t fool Mrs. A. Buckingham and one or two of the fellows have been here to dinner occasionally, and I’m afraid they’ve given us away.”

“Yes,” she affirmed, “Mr. Buckingham was one of you too, I guess, though heisthe Rev. Mr. Buckingham now. Oh, he has told me.”

“You remember old Buck?” put in Armstrong. “He is preaching near here—settled over a church at Bobtown.”

“Yes,” I answered, “I remember there was such a man in the class, but really I didn’t know that he was—ah—such a character as you seem to infer, Mrs. Armstrong.”

“Oh, he has quieted down now, I assure you,” said the lady. “He is as prim and proper as a Methodist meeting-house. Why, hehasto be, you know.”

This amusing fiction of the wildness of Armstrong’s youth had evidently become a familytradition, and even, by a familiar process, an article of belief in his own mind. It reminded me grotesquely ofJustice Shallow’sreminiscences withSir John Falstaff: “Ha, Cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that, that this knight and I have seen.... Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I have spent!”

The resemblance became still stronger when, as we rose from the table, the good fellow beckoned me into a closet which opened off the dining-room, saying, in a hoarse whisper:

“Here, Polisson, come in here.”

He was uncorking a large bottle half-filled with some red liquid, and as he poured a portion of this into two glasses he explained:

“I don’t have this sort of thing on the table, you understand, on account of the children and my—ah—position. It would make talk. But I tell you this is some of the real old stuff. How!” And he held his glass up to the light, regarding it with the one eye of a connoisseur, and then drank down its contents with a smack. I was considerably astonished, on doing the same, to discover that this dark beverage—which, from Armstrong’s manner, I had been prepared to find something at least as wicked as absinthe—was simply and solely Bordeaux of a mild quality. After this Bacchanalian proceeding we went out into the orchard, which was reserved for family use, and sat on a bench under an apple-tree. Armstrong called his little boy who had been at supper with us and gave him a whispered message, together with somesmall change. The messenger disappeared, and after a short absence returned with two very domestic cigars, transparently bought for the nonce from some neighboring grocer. “Have a smoke,” commanded my host, and we solemnly kindled the rolls of yellow leaf, Armstrong puffing away at his with the air of a man who, though intrusted by destiny with the responsibility of molding the characters of youth, has not forgotten how to be a man of the world on occasion.

“Well, Charley,” I began, after a few preliminary draughts, “you seem to have a good thing of it. Your school is prosperous, I understand; the work suits you; you have a mighty pretty family of children growing up, and your health appears to be perfect.”

“Yes,” he admitted; “I suppose I ought to be thankful. I certainly enjoy great mercies. It’s a warm, crowded kind of life; plenty of affection,—plenty of anxiety too, to be sure. I like to have the boys around me; it keeps one’s heart fresh, though in a way it’s sometimes wearing to the nerves. Yes, I like the young rascals—I like them. But, of course, it has its drawbacks. Most careers have,” he added, in a burst of commonplace.

“It is not exactly the career that you had cut out for yourself,” I suggested, “when we talked our plans over, you remember, that last evening at New Haven.”

“No, it’s not,” he acknowledged; “but perhaps it is a better one. What was it I said then?I really don’t recall it. Something very silly, no doubt.”

“Oh, you said, in a general way, that you were going in for money and celibacy and selfishness,—just as you havenotdone.”

“Yes, yes; I know, I remember now,” he said, laughing. “Boys are great fools with their brag of what they are going to do and be. Life knocks it out of them fast enough; they learn to do what they must.”

“Do you ever write any poetry nowadays?”

“No, no; not I. The muse has given me the go-by completely. Except for some occasional verses for a school festival or something of the kind, which I grind out now and then, I’ve sunk my rhyming dictionary deeper than ever plummet sounded. The chief disadvantage of running a big school like this,” he continued, with a sigh, “is the want of leisure and retirement to enable a man to keep up his studies. Sometimes I actually ache for solitude—for a few weeks or months of absolute loneliness and silence. Mrs. Armstrong has fixed me up a nice little private study,—remind me to take you in there before you go,—where I keep my books, etc. But the children will find their way in, and then I’m seldom undisturbed anywhere for more than an hour at a time; there’s always some call on me,—something wanted that no one else can see to.”

“You ought to swap places with Berkeley forawhile. He’s got more leisure than he knows what to do with.”

“Berkeley! Well, what’s he up to now? Philately? Arboriculture? What’s his last fad? You’ve seen him lately, you said. I met him for a minute in New York, a few years ago, and he told me he was going to an old book auction.”

“He’s got genealogy at present,” I explained.

“Genealogy! What hay! What sawdust! Aren’t there enough live people to take an interest in, without grubbing up dead ones from tombstones and town clerks’ records? Berkeley must be a regular old bachelor antiquary by this time, with all human sympathy dried out of him. No, I wouldn’t change withhim. Would we, fatty?” he said, appealing to a small offspring of uncertain sex which had just toddled out the door and across the gangway to kiss its papa good-night.

I took leave of Armstrong and his interesting family with a sense of increased liking. His worldliness, good nature, and simple little enthusiasms and self-satisfactions had somehow kept him young, and he seemed quite the old Armstrong of college days. I afterward learned that the excellent fellow had just finished his law studies, and was preparing to enter upon practice, when his father’s health failed, forcing him to give up his parish, and leaving a number of younger brothers and sisters partly dependent on Armstrong. He had accordingly taken the first situation that promised a fair salary, and, having got startedupon the work of teaching, had been unable to let go until it was too late; had, indeed, got deeper and deeper in, by falling in love and impulsively marrying at the first opportunity, and finally setting up for himself at the Pestalozzian Institute. Poor fellow! Good fellow!Amico mio, non della fortuna.

My next call was upon Clay, who had rooms in the Babel building in New York, and was reported to be something of a Bohemian. He received me in a smoking jacket and slippers. He had grown a full beard which hid his finely cut features. His black eyes had the old fire, but his skin was sallower, and I thought that his manner had a touch of listlessness mingled with irritability and defiance. He was glad to see me; but inclined to be at first, not precisely distant, yet by no means confidential. After awhile, however, he thawed out and became more like the Clay whom I remembered—our college genius, the brilliant, the admired, in those days of eager hero-worship. I told him of my visits to Berkeley and Armstrong.

“Berkeley I see now and then in town,” said Clay. “It was rather queer of him to turn parson, but I guess he doesn’t let his theology bother him much. He has a really superior collection of etchings, I am told. Armstrong I haven’t seen for years. I knew he was a pedagogue somewhere in Connecticut.”

“Don’t you ever go to the class reunions?” I asked.

“Class reunions? Well, hardly.”

“I should think you would; you are so near New Haven.”

“How charmingly provincial you are—you Southern chaps! Don’t you know that, to a man who lives in New York, nothing is near? Besides, as to my classmates at old Yale and all that, I would go round a corner to avoid meeting most of them.”

I expressed myself as duly shocked by this sentiment, and presently I inquired:

“Well, Clay, how are you getting on, anyway?”

“That’s a d—— general question. How do you want me to answer it?”

“Oh, not at all, if you don’t like.”

“Well, don’t get miffed. Suppose I answer, ‘Pretty well, I thank you, sir.’ How will that do?”

“Are you writing anything now?”

“I’m always scribbling something or other. At present, I’ve got the position of dramatic critic on the ‘Daily Boreas,’ which is not a very bad bore, and keeps the pot boiling. And I do more or less work of a hack kind for the magazines and cyclopedias, etc.”

“I thought you were on the ‘Weekly Prig.’ Berkeley or somebody told me so.”

“So I was at one time, but I got out of it. The work was drying me up too fast. The concern is run by a lot of cusses who have failed in variousbranches of literature themselves, and undertake, in consequence, to make it unpleasant for every one else who tries to write anything. I got so that I could sling as cynical a quill as the rest of them. But the trick is an easy one and hardly worth learning. It’s a great fraud, this business of reviewing. Here’s a man of learning, for instance, who has spent years of research on a particular work. He has collected a large library, perhaps, on his subject; knows more about it than any one else living. Then along comes some insolent little whipper-snapper,—like me,—whose sole knowledge of the matter in hand is drawn from the very book that he pretends to criticise, and patronizes the learned author in a book notice. No, I got out of it; I hadn’t the cheek.”

“I bought your book,”[A]said I, “as soon as it came out.”

“That’s more than the public did.”

“Yes, and I read it, too.”

“No! Did you, now? That’s true friendship. Well, how did you like it? Did you get your money’s worth?”

I hesitated a moment and then answered:

“It was clever, of course. Anything that you write would be sure to be that. But it didn’t appear to get down to hard-pan or to take a firm grip on life—did it?”

“Ah, that’s what the critics said,—only they’vegot a set of phrases for expressing it. They said it was amateurish, that it was in a falsetto key, etc.”

“Well, how does it strike you, yourself? You know that it didn’t come out of the deep places of your nature, don’t you? You feel that you’ve got better behind?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A man does what he can. I rather think it’s the best I can do at present.”

“Why don’t you go at some more serious work; somemagnum opusthat would bring your whole strength into play?”

“Amagnum opus, my dear fellow!” replied Clay, with a shade of irritation in his voice. “You talk as if amagnum opuscould be done for the wishing. Why don’tyoudo amagnum opus, then?”

“Why don’tI? Oh, I’m not a literary fellow—never professed to be. What a question!”

“Well, no more am I, perhaps. I don’t think any better of the stuff that I scribble than you do. It’s all an experiment with me. I’m trying my brushes—trying my brushes. Perhaps I may be able to do something stronger some day, and perhaps not. But at all events I sha’n’t force my mood. I shall wait for my inspiration. One thing I’ve noticed, that as a man grows older he loses his spontaneity and gets more critical with himself. I could do more, no doubt, if I would only let myself go. But I’m like this meerschaum here,—a hard piece and slow in coloring.”

“Well, meanwhile you might do something inthe line of scholarship, a history or a volume of critical essays—‘Hours with the Poets,’ or something of that kind, that would bring in the results of your reading. Have you seen Brainard’s book? It seemed to me work that was worth doing. But you could do something of the same kind, only much better, without taking your hands out of your pockets.”

Brainard was a painstaking classmate of ours, who had been for some years Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, English Literature, and European History, in a Western university, and had recently published a volume entitled “Theism and Pantheism in the Literature of the English Renaissance,” which was well spoken of, and was already in its third edition.

“Yes, I’ve seen the stuff,” said Clay. “My unhappy country swarms with that sort of thing: books about books, and books about other books about books—like the big fleas and little fleas. It’s not literature; it’s a parasitic growth that infests literature. I always say to myself, with the melancholy Jaques, whenever I have to look over a book by Brainard or any such fellow, ‘I think of as many matters as he; but I give Heaven thanks and make no boast of them.’ No, I don’t care to add anything to that particular rubbish heap. You know Emerson said that the worst poem is better than the best criticism of it. The trouble with me is that what I want to do I can’t do—at present; what I can do I don’t think it worth while to do—worthmy while, at least. Some one else may do it and get the credit and welcome.”

“But you do a good deal of work that you don’t care about, as it is,” I objected.

“Of course. A man must live, and so I do the nearest thing and the one that pays quickest. I got eighty dollars, now, for that last screed in ‘The Reservoir.’”

“But,” I persisted, “I thought that money-making had no part in your scheme. You could make more money in a dozen other businesses.”

“So I could,” he answered; “but they all involve some form of slavery. Now, I am my own master. After all, every profession has its drudgery, and literary drudgery is not the worst.”

“Well,” I conceded, “independent of what you accomplish, I suppose your way of life furnishes as many daily satisfactions as any. I sometimes envy you and Berkeley your freedom from business cares and your opportunities for study. What becomes of most men’s college training, for example? By Jove! I picked up a Greek book the other day, and I couldn’t read three words running. Now, I take it, you manage to keep up your classics, among other things.”

“Oh, my way of life has its compensations,” he answered. “But Sydney Smith—wasn’t it?—said that life was a middling affair, anyway. As for the classics, etc., I find that reading and study lose much of their stimulus unless they get an issue in action,—unless one can apply them directly towardhis own work. I often think that, if I were fifteen or even ten years younger, I would go into some branch of natural science. A scientific man always seems to me peculiarly happy in the healthy character of his work. He can keep himself apart from it. It is objective, impersonal, makes no demand on his emotions. Now a writing man has to put himself into his work. He has to keep looking out all the time for impressions, material; to keep trying to enlarge and deepen his own experience, and he gets self-conscious and loses his freshness in the process.”

“I am surprised to find you in New York,” said I, by way of changing the subject. “I thought you had laid out to live in the country. Do you remember that pretty little word-picture of a winter afternoon that you drew us—something in the style of anIl Penserosolandscape? I expected to find you domesticated in a Berkshire farm-house.”

“Yes, I remember. I tried it. But I find it necessary, for my work, to be in New York. The newspapers—confound ’em!—won’t move into the woods. But, after all, place is indifferent. See here; this isn’t bad.”

He drew aside the window curtain, and I looked out over a wilderness of roofs to the North River and the Palisades tinged with a purple light. The ferry boats and tugs plying over the water in every direction, the noise of the steam whistles, and the clouds of white vapor floating on the clear air, made an inspiriting scene.

“I’m up among the architects here,” continued Clay; “nothing but the janitor’s family between me and the roof.”

We talked awhile longer, and on taking leave, I said:

“I shall be on the lookout for something big from you one of these days. You know what we always expected of you. So don’t lose your grip, old man.”

“Who knows?” he replied. “It doesn’t rest with me, but with thedaimon.”

I was unable to visit Doddridge, the remaining member of our group. He lived in the thriving town of Wahee, Minnesota, and I had heard of him, in a general way, as highly prosperous. He was a prominent lawyer and successful politician, and had lately been appointed United States district judge, after representing his section in the State Senate for a term or two. I wrote to him, congratulating him on his success and asking for details. I mentioned also my visits to Berkeley, Armstrong, and Clay. I got a prompt reply from Doddridge, from which I extract such portions as are material to this narrative:

“The first few months after I left college I traveled pretty extensively through the West, making contracts with the farmers as agent for a nursery and seed-farm in my part of the country, but really with the object of spying out the land and choosing a place to settle in. Finally I lit on Wahee, and made up my mind that it was a town with a future. It was bound to be a railroad center. It had a first-rate agricultural countryaround it, and a rich timber region a little further back; and it already had an enterprising little pop. growing rapidly. To-day Wahee is as smart a city of its inches as there is in the Northwest. I squatted right down here, got a little raise from the old man, and put it all into building lots. I made a good thing of it, and paid it all back in six years with eight per cent. interest. Meanwhile, I went into Judge Pratt’s law office and made my salt by fitting his boy for college—till I learned enough law to earn a salary. The judge was an old Waheer—belonged to the time-honored aristocracy of the place, having been here at least fifteen years before I came. He got into railroads after awhile (is president now of the Wahee and Heliopolis Bee-line), and left his law practice to me. I married his daughter Alice in 1875. She is a Western girl, but she was educated at Vassar. We have two boys. If you ever come out our way, Polisson, you must put up with us for as long as you can stay. I would like to show you the country about here and have you ride after my team. I’ve got a pair that can do it inside three minutes. Do you remember Liddell of our class? He is an architect, you know. I got him to come to Wahee, and he has all he can do putting up business blocks. We have got some here equal to anything in Chicago....“Yes, I am United States judge for this district. There is not much money in it, but it will help me professionally by and by. I shall not keep it long. Do I go into politics much, you ask. I used to, but I’ve got through for the present. The folks about here wanted to run me for Congress last term, but I hadn’t any use for it. As to what you are kind enough to say about my ‘success,’ etc., whatever success I have had is owing to nothing but a capacity for hard work, which is the only talent that I lay claim to. They want a man out here who will do the work that comes to hand, and keep on doing it till something better turns up....“So Berkeley has turned out a dilettante instead of an African explorer. I heard he was a minister. He does not seem to have much ambition even in that line of life. I should thinkArmstrong had got the right kind of place for him. He was a good fellow, but never had much practical ability. You say very little about Clay. How is old ‘Sweetness and Light,’ any way? I saw some fluff of his in one of the magazines,—a ‘romance’ I think he called it. This is not an age for scribbling romances. The country wants something solider. I never took much stock in philosophers like Berkeley and Clay. There is the same thing the trouble with them both: they don’t want to do any hard work, and they conceal their laziness under fine names,—culture, transcendentalism, and what not? ‘Feeble and restless youths, born to inglorious days.’”

“Yes, I am United States judge for this district. There is not much money in it, but it will help me professionally by and by. I shall not keep it long. Do I go into politics much, you ask. I used to, but I’ve got through for the present. The folks about here wanted to run me for Congress last term, but I hadn’t any use for it. As to what you are kind enough to say about my ‘success,’ etc., whatever success I have had is owing to nothing but a capacity for hard work, which is the only talent that I lay claim to. They want a man out here who will do the work that comes to hand, and keep on doing it till something better turns up....

“So Berkeley has turned out a dilettante instead of an African explorer. I heard he was a minister. He does not seem to have much ambition even in that line of life. I should thinkArmstrong had got the right kind of place for him. He was a good fellow, but never had much practical ability. You say very little about Clay. How is old ‘Sweetness and Light,’ any way? I saw some fluff of his in one of the magazines,—a ‘romance’ I think he called it. This is not an age for scribbling romances. The country wants something solider. I never took much stock in philosophers like Berkeley and Clay. There is the same thing the trouble with them both: they don’t want to do any hard work, and they conceal their laziness under fine names,—culture, transcendentalism, and what not? ‘Feeble and restless youths, born to inglorious days.’”

This letter may be supplemented by another,—say Exhibit B,—which I received from Clay not long after:

“My Dear Polisson: It occurs to me that your question the other day, as to how I was ‘getting on,’ did not receive as candid an answer as it deserved. I am afraid that you carried away an impression of me as of a man who suspected himself to be a failure, but had not the manliness to acknowledge it. You will say, perhaps, that there are all degrees of half success short of absolute failure. But I say no. In the career which I have chosen, to miss of success—pronounced, unquestionable success—is to fail; and I am not weak enough to hide from myself on which side of the line I fall. The line is a very distinct one, after all. The fact is, I took the wrong turning, and it is too late to go back. I am a case of arrested development—a common enough case. I might give plenty of excellent excuses to my friends for not having accomplished what they expected me to. But the world doesn’t want apologies; it wants performance.“You will think this letter a most extraordinary outburst of morbid vanity. But while I can afford to have you think me a failure, I couldn’t let you go on thinking me a fraud. That must be my excuse for writing.“Yours, as ever,E. Clay.”

“You will think this letter a most extraordinary outburst of morbid vanity. But while I can afford to have you think me a failure, I couldn’t let you go on thinking me a fraud. That must be my excuse for writing.

“Yours, as ever,E. Clay.”

This letter moved me deeply by its characteristic mingling of egotism with elevation of feeling. As I held it open in my hand, and thought over my classmates’ fortunes, I was led to make a few reflections. From the fact that Armstrong and Berkeley were leading lives that squarely contradicted their announced ideas and intentions, it was an obvious but not therefore a true inference that circumstance is usually stronger than will. Say, rather, that the species of necessity which consists in character and inborn tendency is stronger than any resolution to run counter to it.

Both Armstrong and Berkeley, on our Commencement night, had spoken from a sense of their own limitations, and in violent momentary rebellion against them. But, in talking with them fifteen years later, I could not discover that the lack of correspondence between their ideal future and their actual present troubled them much. It is matter of common note that it is impossible to make one man realize another’s experience; but it is often quite as hard to make him recover a past stage of his own consciousness.

These, then, had bent to the force of chance or temperament. But Clay had shaped his life according to his programme, and had the result been happier? He who gets his wish often suffers a sharper disappointment than he who loses it. “So täuscht uns also bald die Hoffnung, bald das Gehoffte,” says the great pessimist, and Fate is never more ironical than when she humors ourwhim. Doddridge alone, who had thrown himself confidingly into the arms of the Destinies, had obtained their capricious favors.

I cannot say that I drew any counsel, civil or moral, from these comparisons. Life is deeper and wider than any particular lesson to be learned from it; and just when we think that we have at last guessed its best meanings, it laughs in our face with some paradox which turns our solution into a new riddle.

By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

⁂Scribner’s Monthly, November, 1880.

In the month of August, in the year 1878, the steamerMercy, of the New York and Savannah line, cast anchor down the channel, off a little town in South Carolina which bore the name of Calhoun. It was not a regular part of her “run” for theMercyto make a landing at this place. She had departed from her course by special permit to leave three passengers, two men and one woman, who had business of a grave nature in Calhoun.

A man, himself a passenger for Savannah, came upon deck as the steamship hove to, to inquire the reason of the delay. He was a short man, thin, with a nervous hand and neck. His eyes were black, his hair was black, and closely cut. He had an inscrutable mouth, and a forehead well-plowed rather by experience than years. He was not anold man. He was cleanly dressed in new, cheap clothes. He had been commented upon as a reticent passenger. He had no friends on board theMercy. This was the first time upon the voyage that he had been observed to speak. He came forward and stood among the others, and abruptly said:

“What’s this for?”

He addressed the mate, who answered with a sidelong look, and none too cordially:

“We land passengers by the Company’s order.”

“Those three?”

“Yes, the men and the lady.”

“Who are they?”

“Physicians from New York.”

“Ah-h!” said the man, slowly, making a sighing noise between his teeth. “That means—that means—”

“Volunteers to the fever district,” said the mate, shortly, “as you might have known before now. You’re not of a sociable cast, I see.”

“I have made no acquaintances,” said the short passenger. “I know nothing of the news of the ship. Is the lady a nurse?”

“She’s a she-doctor. Doctors, the whole of ’em. There ain’t a nurse aboard.”

“Plenty to be found, I suppose, in this place you speak of?”

“How should I know?” replied the mate, with another sidelong look.

One of the physicians, it seemed, overheard thislast question and reply. It was the woman. She stepped forward without hesitation, and, regarding the short passenger closely, said:

“There are not nurses. This place is perishing. Savannah and the larger towns have been looked after first—as is natural and right,” added the physician, in a business-like tone. She had a quick and clear-cut, but not ungentle voice.

The man nodded at her curtly, as he would to another man; he made no answer; then with a slight flush his eye returned to her dress and figure; he lifted his hat and stood uncovered till she had passed and turned from him. His face, under the influence of this fluctuation of color, changed exceedingly, and improved in proportion as it changed.

“Who is that glum fellow, Doctor?”

One of the men physicians followed and asked the lady; he spoke to her with an air ofcamaraderie, at once frank and deferential; they had been classmates at college for a course of lectures; he had theories averse to the medical education of women in general, but this woman in particular, having outranked him at graduation, he had made up his mind to her as a marked exception to a wise rule, entitled to a candid fellow’s respect. Besides, despite her diploma, Marian Dare was a lady—he knew the family.

“Ishe glum, Dr. Frank?” replied Dr. Dare.

But the other young man stood silent. He never consulted with doctresses.

Dr. Dare went below for her luggage. A lonely dory, black of complexion and skittish of gait, had wandered out and hung in the shadow of the steamer, awaiting the passengers. The dory was manned by one negro, who sat with his oars crossed, perfectly silent.

There is a kind of terror for which we find that animals, as well as men, instinctively refrain from seeking expression. The face and figure of the negro boatman presented a dull form of this species of fear. Dr. Dare wondered if all the people in Calhoun would have that look. The negro regarded theMercyand her passengers apathetically.

It was a hot day, and the water seemed to be blistering about the dory. So, too, the stretching sand of the shore, as one raised the eyes painfully against the direct noon-light, was as if it smoked. The low, gray palmetto leaves were curled and faint. Scanty spots of shade beneath sickly trees seemed to gasp upon the hot ground, like creatures that had thrown themselves down to get cool. The outlines of the town beyond had a certain horrible distinctness, as if of a sight that should but could not be veiled. Overhead, and clean to the flat horizon, flashed a sky of blue and blazing fire.

“Passengers for Calhoun!”

The three physicians descended into the dory. The other passengers—what there were of them—gathered to see the little group depart. Dr. Frank offered Dr. Dare a hand, which she accepted, likea lady, not needing it in the least. She was a climber, with firm, lithe ankles. No one spoke, as these people got in with the negro, and prepared to drift down with the scorching tide. The woman looked from the steamer to the shore, once, and back again, northwards. The men did not look at all. There was an oppression in the scene which no one was ready to run the risk of increasing by the wrong word.

“Land me here, too,” said a low voice, suddenly appearing. It was the glum passenger. No one noticed him, except, perhaps, the mate (looking on with the air of a man who would feel an individual grievance in anything this person would be likely to do) and the lady.

“There is room for you,” said Dr. Dare. The man let himself into the boat at a light bound, and the negro rowed them away. TheMercy, heading outwards, seemed to shrug her shoulders, as if she had thrown them off. The strip of burning water between them and the town narrowed rapidly, and the group set their faces firmly landwards. Once, upon the little voyage, Dr. Frank took up an idle pair of oars, with some vaguely humane intent of helping the negro—he looked so.

“I wouldn’t, Frank,” said the other gentleman.

“Now, Remane—why, for instance?”

“I wouldn’t begin by getting overheated.”

No other word was spoken. They landed in silence. In silence, and somewhat weakly, the negro pulled the dory high upon the beach. Thefour passengers stood for a moment upon the hot, white sands, moved toward one another, before they separated, by a blind sense of human fellowship. Even Remane found himself touching his hat. Dr. Frank asked Dr. Dare if he could serve her in any way; but she thanked him, and, holding out her firm, white hand, said, “Good-bye.”

This was, perhaps, the first moment when the consciousness of her sex had made itself oppressive to her since she ventured upon this undertaking. She would have minded presenting herself to the Relief Committee of Calhoun, accompanied by gentlemen upon whom she had no claim. She walked on alone, in her gray dress and white straw hat, with her luggage in her own sufficient hand.

The reticent passenger had fallen behind with the negro boatman, with whom he walked slowly, closing the line.

After a few moments, he advanced and hesitatingly joined the lady, beginning to say:

“May I ask you—”

“Ah,” interrupted Dr. Dare, cordially, “it is you.”

“Will you tell me, madam, the best way of going to work to offer myself as a fever nurse in this place? I want thebestway. I want real work.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, nodding; “I knew you would do it.”

“I came from the North for this purpose, but I meant to go on to Savannah.”

“Yes, I know. This is better; they needeverythingin this place.”

She looked toward the gasping little town through the relentless noon. Her merciful blue eyes filled, but the man’s look followed with a dry, exultant light.

“There is no porter,” he said, abruptly, glancing at her heavy bag and shawl-strap. “Would you permit me to help you?”

“Oh, thank you!” replied Dr. Dare, heartily, relinquishing her burden.

Plainly, this poor fellow was not a gentleman. The lady could afford to be kind to him.

“I know nothing how we shall find it,” she chatted, affably, “but I go to work to-night. I presume I shall need nurses before morning. I’ll have your address.”

She took from her gray sacque pocket a physician’s note-book, and stood, pencil in hand.

“My name,” he said, “is Hope—Zerviah Hope.”

She wrote without comment, walking as she wrote; he made no other attempt to converse with her. The two physicians followed, exchanging now and then a subdued word. The negro dragged himself wearily over the scorching sand, and thus the little procession of pity entered the town of Calhoun.

My story does not deal with love or ladies. I have to relate no tender passages between the fever-physicians, volunteers from New York, forthe afflicted region of Calhoun. Dr. Marian Dare came South to do a brave work, and I have no doubt she did it bravely, as a woman should. She came in pursuit of science, and I have no doubt she found it, as a woman will. Our chief interest in her at this time lies in the fact that certain missing fragments in the history of the person known as Zerviah Hope we owe to her. She hovers over the tale with a distant and beautiful influence, pervading as womanly compassion and alert as a woman’s eye.

I have nothing further to say about the story before I tell it, except that it is true.

That night, after the physicians had gone about their business, Zerviah Hope wandered, a little forlornly, through the wretched town. Scip, the negro boatman, found him a corner to spend the night. It was a passable place, but Hope could not sleep; he had already seen too much. His soul was parched with the thirst of sympathy. He walked his hot attic till the dawn came. As it grew brighter he grew calmer; and, when the unkindly sun burst burning upon the land, he knelt by his window and looked over the doomed town, and watched the dead-carts slinking away toward the everglades in the splendid color of the sky and air, and thought his own thoughts in his own way about this which he had come to do. We should not suppose that they were remarkable thoughts; he had not the look of a remarkable man. Yet, ashe knelt there,—a sleepless, haggard figure blotted against the sunrise, with folded hands and moving lips,—an artist, with a high type of imagination and capable of spiritual discernment, would have found in him a design for a lofty subject, to which perhaps he would have given the name of “Consecration” rather than of “Renunciation,” or of “Exultance” rather than of “Dread.”

A common observer would have simply said: “I should not have taken him for a praying man.”

He was still upon his knees when Dr. Dare’s order came, “Nurse wanted for a bad case!” and he went from his prayer to his first patient. The day was already deep, and a reflection, not of the sunrise, moved with him as light moves.

Doctor Dare, in her gray dress, herself a little pale, met him with keen eyes. She said:

“It is averybad case. An old man—much neglected. No one will go. Are you willing?”

The nurse answered:

“I am glad.”

She watched him as he walked away—a plain, clean, common man, with unheroic carriage. The physician’s fine eyes fired.

To Doctor Frank, who had happened in, she said:

“He will do the work of ten.”

Back to Index Next